II. seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you
The worst part about this scenario, Peter rapidly decides, is that in between bouts of agony no human could endure, he has to put up with being lectured. Sometimes even during, because as he's been informed, part of their new arrangement is going to feature a whole new level of communication.
At first, the script is easy, straightforward.
"Yes, that hurts."
"Yes, that hurts a lot."
"Yes, that hurts so badly I'd rather be dead."
But then, Stiles starts asking real questions, demanding real answers, and now?
Now Peter's got a carpenter's nail through his kidney. One that Stiles is flicking absently in a way that should be making Peter scream but isn't because he has to find a way to speak if he's going to make it stop.
"Come on, Peter, it's not even that difficult of a question. What do you actually want?"
You, Peter thinks. I want you, wrong and twisted and clever and sharp. There's something so wrong with you but I want you despite it — because of it. It's possible I caused it but I want you to be mine.
What he says — croaks, more accurately — is, "I don't want to be alone," and that…
Stiles pulls away, tips Peter's head back because he can't on his own, and smiles. "Now we're getting somewhere."
John Stilinski's life is worth three days to his son, apparently. Stiles makes them count.
Nothing is different.
Well, that's not entirely true. Everything is different, it's just nothing actually changes. Something really should have, Peter feels. Stiles tortured him. That should matter, Peter's almost positive, but somehow it just… doesn't.
Stiles wakes him with a few rough slaps - love taps compared to the last time Stiles hit him - and Peter finds he can move his arms and legs freely. That he is no longer shackled or bound to anything.
He'd like to say he leapt at Stiles immediately; got his hands around that long, fragile neck and squeezed until the whites of Stiles's eyes were red with burst veins. Part of him wants to - a dark, seething thing that whispered, Vengeance. Vengeance. Make it bleed. Make it beg. Make it pay - but mostly he's tired.
He wants to drink a gallon of water and sleep for a week somewhere soft and warm, preferably a bed. Somewhere far away from the stench of his blood and piss. He wants clean air and dark trees and the red flash of blood fresh from the kill.
He wants the summer Stiles turned fourteen, he realizes. Klamath National Park. Wilderness and fucking and they'd been happy, hadn't they? Why? Why?
Peter stares out the window the entire drive home, thoughts and questions plaguing him but it comes back to three things above the others.
Peter crawls into bed with the firm intention of never coming back out and when he wakes up there's a glass of water on the side table exactly where Stiles used to leave it when this bed had been theirs and somehow the sight of it - the fact of that glass of water - is too much. The last straw. The nail in the coffin. Every cliche about a crystallizing moment given shape and form.
The first thing he does when he gets up is shave. The second is to drag the mattress, sheets and coverlet outside where he sets them on fire. The third is to buy a new bedroom set and yes, he explains over the phone, he will pay for same day delivery.
Stiles gets an odd look on his face when he comes home from school to the charred remains in their backyard. Peter knows because he's watching from the upstairs window.
No, he doesn't care if it's stalkerish. He needs to see this. He has to know.
Stiles stares at it for thirty seconds, his gaze not quite blank. Peter would think it was indifference if not for the way Stiles's eyes glow, sharp and searching and for a moment there's something mournful there that makes Peter's heart clench in his chest before it's gone.
Stiles nods a little to himself and goes inside, but Peters stays, staring; thinking. Trying not to think.
Everything is different, he reminds himself.
But nothing is changed.
It takes Peter longer than it should to figure it out. Why Stiles has been acting strangely, hinting in his roundabout way. Peter ought to have smelled it on him but considering how often Stiles and Derek reek of one another he thinks he can be excused on that count.
No, what bothers him isn't that he missed something, it's that as soon as he understands, he understands.
Erica Reyes is pretty under the hopelessness. Peter can see it and he knows Stiles can, too. That tenacious will inside her; the one that insists without reason or hope that if she just tries hard enough - strives long enough - somehow it will get better.
It's fairly amazing high school hasn't managed to beat that out of her yet. Enough that Peter's a little intrigued despite himself.
Part of him wants to insult her and send her away just to be petulant but he isn't stupid and he knows a good investment when he sees one.
Erica Reyes will pay dividends once she gets used to the fur.
Stiles smirks up at him from where they're seated on the couch, an array of papers and textbooks spread across the coffee table, and for a moment it's like it was before Derek. Just the two of them, not always in sync but always united and the regret burning through Peter is neck and neck with the relief that they still have this at all.
Because even though Stiles is not being subtle about trying to replace himself in Peter's affections, the principle is sound. A pack needs to grow.
Erica looks at Peter nervously, fear rolling off her almost as strongly as the adoration she'd been beaming at Stiles. "So... I'll see you tomorrow?"
Peter feels a pang of sympathy watching her face light up when Stiles turns that grin on her, easy and nice in a way Stiles isn't, promising, "Definitely," like it's a foregone conclusion.
Almost makes Peter feel sorry for her. He knows what it's like to be in love with Stiles. Maybe he should start a support group. Derek could be the President.
Once she's cleaned up her things, darted with a nervous attempt at a smile past Peter and shut the door behind her, Stiles throws his feet up on the table, smugly satisfied in the decision Peter's already made.
"You're not cute," Peter says, half bitter, half fond, and the full, rich sound of Stiles's laughter rings out like it hasn't for weeks.
Peter hadn't even realized he missed it until just now. It catches him off guard, leaves him raw in a way he wasn't expecting and maybe that's why he says, "It's not going to work, you know."
If he hadn't been looking he would have missed it, but there's a flash of something in Stiles's eyes, there and gone before Peter can read it.
"You should try to make it," Stiles says, voice thick with affection and it shouldn't be possible for Stiles to feel that way about someone he tortured for three days.
For Peter to feel this way about someone who tortured him.
Peter thinks, He doesn't even know what you are.
None of it changes the fact that it's Derek's room Stiles slips into and despite appearances Peter is not actually a glutton for punishment.
The look in Stiles's eyes, though. He tries not to think about it because he doesn't actually know what it was, just... what it could have been - might be - and really, that's so much worse.
Maybe Erica will swap stories with him if he threatens her.
She comes around once or twice a week, top a little tighter with every visit until Derek literally can't stand to be in the same room as the two of them.
It doesn't seem to matter that Stiles never reciprocates, doesn't even glance at those - admittedly impressive - curves. Derek apparently can't stand it on principle, the thought of someone throwing themselves at Stiles that way.
Maybe it makes him a bastard, but Peter just has to poke at that little bruise.
Stiles glares as he moves to follow Derek, mumbles, "Little petty for you, isn't it?" Too low for the girl to catch, just loud enough for Peter to hear across the room.
"Whatever made you think I wasn't, Stiles?" Peter murmurs back, enjoying the way Stiles is bound by his own charade.
Derek is furiously pretending to read the dictionary when Peter walks into the bedroom. He doesn't bother knocking because he's a mature adult and not petty in any way, shape, or form, clearly.
"Was it the arousal pouring off her or the way he smiled that finally got to you?"
Derek grinds his teeth slightly before answering, "I couldn't really smell her through your bitterness, actually. Is that because he's only sleeping with me these days or because your beta is making pack decisions without you?"
And that... that hits a little too close to home, actually, but it has nothing to do with Peter's reasons for plopping into Stiles's chair like he owns it. He doesn't let a hint of the deviant things he's done to Stiles in this chair show in his smile. And he definitely doesn't get a kick out of knowing that Stiles will smell him there later. Might even have Derek go down on him with the scent of Peter in his nose - on his tongue.
"It's cute, don't you think? She has no idea what he is - what she's inviting. No clue all the ways he'd twist her just because he could." There's a speck of dirt under Peter's thumbnail and he worries it as he speaks, watching Derek from the corner of his eye. "He might do it anyway once she's in the pack. Until he gets bored, at least."
Derek flips the book shut, tosses it on the bed and stalks out the door almost as angrily as he'd stalked in and isn't that just fascinating?
"You're a little more aware than I gave you credit for, nephew."
Stiles is a psychopath. It's not a judgment, it's just a fact. Peter's a psychopath, too, and honestly, he doesn't see a problem with it. It's a personality trait. No one is perfect. And if Stiles is a little more psychopathic than Peter, it's no better or worse than, say, Stiles being less of a morning person. It's what he is.
It's who he is and Peter's fine with that. More than fine, really. Peter doesn't mind when Stiles needs something to break and that something is him. Quite liked it, actually, watching Stiles get off on his pain. God knows Peter's gotten off on Stiles's enough that it's only fair.
He's not too proud to admit that the lack of Stiles aches like a bruise; a vague, throbbing sort of absence that plucks at him until he has to get away or go mad and frankly, he kind of misses seeing that glint in Stiles's eye when he's got damage on his mind.
Stiles is what he is and sooner or later, it's going to be Derek he breaks. Not all at once, probably, but eventually, with time. Derek doesn't seem to mind the idea of it, either, and Peter's smelled blood sometimes after they've had sex - from Stiles and Derek both, so it's at least partly equal opportunity. Derek might not be a psychopath but he's definitely not normal and he's definitely not nice.
He's also not stupid. He understands that once something is broken, it's broken. And Derek is afraid.
See, Derek isn't broken the way Peter is, the way Stiles always has been. Derek is fractured, mending little by little and who knows, if he hadn't come back to Beacon Hills maybe he would have gone right on healing until he could live a normal life.
Maybe he would have met a nice boy who would have taught him to be nice in turn and Laura would still be alive teaching dance somewhere in Manhattan.
Maybe someone would have smashed him into little pieces and ground him under heel for the hell of it. Who knows. The point is, Derek's not broken but it's only a matter of time before Stiles breaks him. He probably doesn't even mind, masochistic little bastard, but once Stiles breaks him, Derek has no guarantee Stiles will want what's left and that is something Peter can work with. That's a weakness he can abuse.
Peter isn't stupid, either. Stiles wants him, still - always - and no, it's not the same way he wants Derek. It's different between them. Darker. It's what they made it, this desire, but it's real all the same and just because Stiles can choose to ignore it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Stiles doesn't need to be convinced to want Peter. He needs an excuse to take him.
The fact that Peter can't currently think of anything that even remotely seems plausible isn't a deterrent. He can be patient if he has to. He can wait.
As long as there's something worth waiting for.
There's something almost touching about the way Derek supports Stiles without question. It's sort of beautiful, that level of acceptance.
Peter hates him for it, of course, but that's really a foregone conclusion at this stage in their relationship. There's a twisted sort of justice in the fact that he killed the niece he loved to keep the boy he wanted, then lost him to the nephew he wishes were dead.
Well, not dead, really. Miserably unhappy. And maybe bleeding a little. It's not hard to imagine, Derek's bloody mouth half open as he crawls across the floor. Towards Stiles, probably, and in Peter's perfect little fantasy Stiles doesn't even notice, just runs a claw tenderly down Peter's throat before he carves his name across it.
Derek might not even -
Peter accidentally shatters his teacup, the beauty of his revelation is that terrifying to behold. It rolls through him with all the hot immediacy of pain, a hope so fierce it could wreck him if it turns out to be false. Cautiously, his body held in rigid stillness against the maelstrom of emotions surging through him, Peter finishes the thought, gives it words and a voice and this feels like the most dangerous moment, like the slightest misstep here could ruin the very possibility he's contemplating.
Derek might not even mind as long as Stiles carves his name into Derek, too.
The really infuriating thing about Derek is how oddly passive he can be. All that brooding and scowling and for what? The sake of appearances? Posturing? Derek doesn't want power. He isn't obsessed with control the way Peter and Stiles are. Derek's obsessed with wanting and being wanted. He needs to keep and be kept so if Stiles comes home covered in blood, Derek will burn the clothes and if Stiles wants new betas, Derek will help him get new betas and if Stiles wants someone he can fuck up, maybe, with the right prompting, Derek will let it be Peter instead.
He'll put the lapse down to distraction. Everyone deserves a break now and again.