A/N I'm not dead and this story is not abandoned. I just can't get a fucking minute to work on this story. However, November and with that NaNoWriMo is lurking just around the corner and I have to wrap this story up before that. There are only a few chapters left ...
Peter might have been a bit rough on Stiles but they both needed to let out some steam and Stiles wasn't complaining. Peter wasn't sure if he was able to form words right now, though.
Lying in a puddle of sweat and other body fluids, Peter took a moment to catch his breath before he dared to glance over to where Stiles was equally panting. He had an arm thrown over his face, his chest was glistering with sweat, and his stomach was smeared with semen. His half-hard dick still twitched with the aftershocks of his latest orgasm.
"You good?" Peter asked between short puffs of air. But damn, that had been good. He'd needed that.
Stiles made a sound that Peter decided to interpret as "I'm fine".
Peter rolled to his side to have a better look at him. He'd left a few nasty bite marks on him which stood in stark contrast to his pale skin. Tomorrow they would have bloomed completely. Peter couldn't help a proud grin.
"Admiring your work?" Stiles peeked out from under his arm but otherwise, he didn't move. He seemed content.
"I missed this," Peter admitted. He reached over and put a gentle hand on the mark he'd left on Stiles' collarbone. That one would be hard to hide but he pegged Stiles for somebody who would wear it with pride.
"Me too." Stiles let out a sigh. "Once this is over and Deucalion is behind bars, you, me, and Derek have to sit down and have a talk."
"Do I have a chance?" Peter asked and put his mouth on that mark. Stiles bucked under him when he sucked at the already abused flesh.
"You're making a good case for yourself." Stiles keened, helplessly clawing at the back of Peter's head.
"Now I only have to convince Derek." Peter kissed the bruised spot before he angled upward to catch Stiles' mouth who met him in a hungry kiss.
"He doesn't need much convincing," Stiles said and stole another kiss before he brought some distance between them. "But we need to talk."
Stiles was right. What they had just done had happened on the spur of the moment which might be fine on occasion but they had to establish some ground rules.
"Speaking of Derek, I should go," Stiles said.
"Something to worry about?" Peter asked, he didn't like Stiles' tone.
"Allison wanted to see him earlier." Stiles rolled to his side but it was far from smooth. He winced when he got up to sit on the edge of the bed. "Not sure how that went. He might need me."
"What does she want?" The afterglow forgotten, Peter propped himself up on one elbow. With Deucalion and all that going on, he'd forgotten about Allison Argent. That name still left a bitter taste in his mouth. It tasted like ash.
"Dunno." Stiles shook his head. "Might be a good thing that they finally talked. I should check on him."
Peter watched him while he stiffly put on his pants.
"Keep me updated?" Peter asked when Stiles was ready to leave.
"Will do." With that Stiles left.
Once he was alone, Peter dropped back into the pillow.
"What a mess," he mumbled to himself. They both had been more than eager to get into each other's pants but now he wasn't so sure if it had been a good idea. Stiles didn't seem to be that worried but what would Derek think? They were on low contact after all.
Those thoughts wouldn't lead him anywhere good so Peter put them to the back of his mind and went for a shower. First Deucalion, then Derek and Stiles.
When he came out of the bathroom with just a towel around his hips, Braeden was sitting in the chair, feet on the table.
"It's not Italian," she said when she noticed his disapproving look. She did not put her feet down.
"Did something happen?" Peter asked while he gathered his scattered clothes.
"The walls are thin." She gestured around the room. "I couldn't help but notice that Stiles has been here."
"Did we bother your delicate ears?" Peter came up with his pants that somehow had ended up between the nightstand and the bed. Turning his back to her he dropped the towel and shimmied into the pants.
"I'm more interested in what you were talking about before you fucked him into oblivion." She watched him getting dressed without even blushing. "Kudos for the stamina, though."
"Jealous?" Peter inspected his shirt but when he spotted a questionable stain on the front, which wasn't questionable at all, he'd jizzed himself like a damn teenager, he threw it into the corner to deal with it later.
"I'm not that desperate." Getting serious she did put down her feet. "What did he say?"
"If things go according to plan," Peter said while he went through his other shirts to find something to wear, "Deucalion's organization is going to be shattered and the blind man himself is going to be in jail by next Wednesday."
"If things go according to plan," Braeden pointed out. Of course, she had to point that out. Peter glared at her. "A plan you still haven't told me about."
"Stiles didn't give me the details either." Peter pulled the V-neck he'd come up with over his head before he sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his socks. "But he set up attacks from multiple directions, Deucalion won't know what hit him. And Stiles can pin him down for multiple murders."
"He can?" Braeden raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.
"He built up a pretty solid case." Peter was done getting dressed and didn't know what to do next. A nap sounded good.
"If you say so." Braeden didn't sound convinced.
"Stiles has a weapon registered to Deucalion with his blood and fingerprints on it." Peter should probably not tell her about this, the fewer people knew about it the better, but Braeden deserved to know. "It can be linked back to the death of several gang leaders."
"That should make it stick." Braeden gave him an impressed nod. "Do I want to know how he got his hands on something like that?"
"Oh, you do want to know." Peter grinned at her with too many teeth.
"That's … damn." Braeden shook her head while she tried to wrap her head around the fact that Ennis' death would be Deucalion's downfall.
"Poetic, isn't it?" Peter agreed.
"Remind me to never get on Stiles' bad side."
"It's not bad for a math professor, isn't it?"
"Yeah …," Braeden started but then something seemed to catch her eye. "What's that?" She narrowed her eyes on something to Peter's left.
"What?" Peter tried to follow her gaze but aside from the pile of shirts he'd left a bit messy from his rummaging earlier, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary. And he doubted that Braeden cared about wrinkles in his shirts.
"Didn't peg you for a knife guy." Braeden got up to have a closer look at whatever.
"What knife?" Peter had no idea what she was talking about but then she pulled out the dagger he'd bought on his day out with Derek and Stiles. Right, he'd stuffed it between his shirts.
"Oh, that." Bemused he watched her examining it. "It's fake."
"I noticed." She made a show of running her thumb over the blunt edge. "What is this even made of?" She weighed the dagger in her hand.
"It's for decoration." Peter snatched it out of her hand. "It's a souvenir."
"You're even less a souvenir guy than you're a knife guy." Braeden wrinkled her nose at him but didn't try to get the dagger back.
She studied him for a long second and then, without breaking eye contact, she reached back and from somewhere she produced a small sheathed knife.
"Here, take this." She tried to hand it to him.
"What am I supposed to do with it?"
"It's more useful than that thing." She pointed at the dagger with it.
"I have you for that kind of situation."
"That's why I'm not giving you a gun. You would shoot your own foot." Braeden put the knife in his free hand. "The blind man is crazy and he might lash out when he feels trapped. I want to know that you can at least defend yourself."
"I doubt that will be necessary," Peter said but accepted the knife.
"At least with this, you can cut some bread if nothing else." She shrugged.
Peter didn't cut anything with that knife, not even himself which for some reason Braeden felt the need to point out, but he kept it at hand. To make Braeden happy if nothing else.
Derek would be out of town with a bunch of his students for some stargazing over the weekend and Stiles had hinted that he would feel lonely so Peter was looking forward to that. Maybe by then, they would have a reason for victory sex.
Through the grapevine, he heard about one of Deucalion's containers getting confiscated before it even left the ship and a busted drug lab in someone's basement but he doubted that Deucalion would lose sleep over small incidents like that. Even if those little things did start to add up.
Peter was still holding his breath for the big bang. So far nothing, though.
When on Friday in the early afternoon his phone rang, Peter expected to see Stiles' name on the screen. That man had the libido of a horny teenager and it looked as if he was more than willing to go back to how things had been before. They still needed to sit down like adults, Derek included, to see where they stood.
However, it was not Stiles' name on the display. It was Kali's.
"Didn't expect to hear from you," he answered the phone in a too-cheerful voice. "Thought you would be too busy to remember me."
"I don't know what you did but my organization has turned into a bunch of headless chickens." Peter couldn't see her over the phone but she was making a face. She sounded tired. Most of Stiles' little attacks hadn't even hit yet so Peter did wonder about Deucalion's way of leadership. He did notice the my in her statement, though.
"I didn't do anything," Peter felt the need say. "I wanted to handle this like an adult. I wasn't the one who turned this into a vendetta."
"I know, I know." She let out a sigh. "That's why I'm calling. Deucalion took a few men and left half an hour ago."
"Going for a joyride?" Peter asked but in his mind, he was already pondering if he should waste time packing or if he should just grab Braeden and run. Looked as if they were busted.
"Heard you're the one going for a joyride."
"I am?" Peter asked, unsure if that was her way of telling him to run or if she thought he was already on the road.
"He said something about you trying to sneak out right under his nose," she said. "That you poked the bear and now you're not ready to deal with a poked bear. He was rambling, I don't know." There was a rustling in the line as if she was pinching the bridge of her nose or something like that. Peter would have liked to have this conversation face to face, it might make more sense that way.
"Sounds as if he's on a wild goose chase," Peter said. "I'm currently in a hotel room here in New York and I have no intention to leave anytime soon."
"That man makes less sense with every day," she muttered under her breath. "He was rambling about you using your nephew to sneak out of New York while last week he wanted you gone like yesterday."
"What did he say about Derek?" That bit got Peter's attention. Derek and his students should be on their way to wherever Derek usually went for his stargazing. If Deucalion thought that Peter was with them …
"Something about you using him as a guise to leave New York?" She sounded unsure.
"He and a few of his students just left for a field trip," Peter confirmed, already looking for his keys.
"Where are they heading?"