
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13006785.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      Gen, M/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Peter_Hale/Stiles_Stilinski, Derek_Hale_&_Kira_Yukimura
  Character:
      Stiles_Stilinski, Peter_Hale, Derek_Hale, Kira_Yukimura
  Additional Tags:
      Dark_Stiles, Morally_Ambiguous_Stiles_Stilinski, Morally_Ambiguous_Peter
      Hale, Sadism, Masochism, Rough_Kissing, Rough_Sex, Loss_of_Virginity,
      Virginity_Kink, Power_Dynamics, Spark_Stiles_Stilinski, Magical_Stiles
      Stilinski, Power_Bottom_Stiles_Stilinski, Painplay, Blood_Kink, Self-
      Acceptance, Post-Nogitsune_Stiles_Stilinski, Consensual_But_Not_Safe_Or
      Sane, Snarky_Stiles, Tattoos, werewolf_powers, Sex_Magic, Dark_Romance,
      Marking, Biting
  Series:
      Part 2 of Astrae
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-01-01 Chapters: 2/3 Words: 15784
****** clasp it in your hand (hide it in your heart) ******
by Siavahda
Summary
     “You have alerts set up to notify you of my financial movements,”
     Peter said slowly.
     “And your actual locational movements, your internet search history,
     and any and all uses of any of your four passports,” Stiles added,
     mock-helpfully. “Mr Hale-Delaunay-Mirren-Addams.”
     “Of course you do.” The werewolf paused a moment, clearly
     considering. “I think I’m flattered,” he decided.
     Stiles wants answers. Peter wants to go back to bed. Turns out,
     they’re not mutually exclusive desires.
Notes
     Happy New Year, everyone! So, this is probably not the thing any of
     my followers was hoping I’d update next - for what it’s worth, I have
     been working on the next chapters of Knives and also Reforged.
     Fingers crossed you’ll actually get to see them sometime in the next
     century.
     In my defense, I got my first ever job not long ago! So far it’s
     going well, but jumping from sick-leave-for-two-years-because-
     depression to part-time is apparently exhausting; I’m told I’ll get
     used to it soon and have the energy for writing again on my days off.
     I’m very much looking forward to it.
     RE this: I have no defense, okay. This whole chapter was not supposed
     to happen this way (this series was meant to be SLOW-BUILD DAMMIT)
     but it did and now we get to deal with it. Oh well. I’m sure at least
     some of you won’t mind.
     More worldbuilding tidbits are dropped for you here, and yes, Stiles
     is supposed to be that moodswingy/shift between personalities like
     that. This is basically all smut, and I think all the warnings are
     covered in the tags - let me know if I missed something that needs
     tagging. Stiles is 17 in this series, which by my British standards
     makes him Of Age for sexing, but I understand the age of consent
     differs in different places, hence the underage warning. The fic
     title is meant to fit with that of part one - I have several
     installments planned and the titles kind of follow on from each other
     - but the chapter titles do not.
     Thank you for all the wonderful comments left on part one. I do read
     every one, though I rarely have the energy to answer. I never
     expected so many people to enjoy my crazy fic idea!
     I hope you enjoy this one as much :)
***** twinkle twinkle little star, how dark and beautiful you are— *****
No one knew where Peter made his den, which considerably narrowed down the
number of people who could be knocking on his door at four in the morning.
Narrowed it down to one, in fact.
He contemplated remaining in bed and simply waiting for them to go away—and
then considered the likelihood of finding his visitor curled up on his doormat
when he went out to buy milk in the morning, if Peter didn’t answer now. The
probability was irritatingly high.
The probability that this particular visitor would, upon tiring of waiting to
be let in, simply pick his locks and brush through his wards as if they weren’t
even there, on the other hand—was practically a guarantee.
Peter swallowed a growl, and got out of bed. He didn’t want to have this
conversation—spending a full day in the meditative state required for calling
to and finding the kirin had drained him more than he liked, after going so
long without practice at it, and he’d been badly shaken by how close he’d come
to reaching Stiles too late. He could still smell, very faintly, the scent of
Stiles’ poisoned blood on his own hands; could still, without effort, feel it
smearing warm and wet as tears beneath his fingertips as he’d clutched Stiles’
face. He had already known both those things would make for a difficult night’s
sleep, and he didn’t need it made any harder by being forced to a confrontation
he would have to navigate as carefully as a minefield.
He did not think anyone should know, yet, that it hadn’t been the kirin’s horn
that cured Stiles of Noshiko’s poison.
But if he was not at his best, then at least he wasn’t the only one. The
nogitsune had been destroyed—he glanced at a clock—less than seven hours ago;
if Peter was tired, then Stiles must still be weak and off-balance and shaken,
more so than he was ever likely to be again. Peter’s advantage would lessen
with every hour he put this off, every moment he gave Stiles to recover, to
think,to bring that dazzling, labyrinthine intelligence of his to bear upon the
questions of what and how and why. Stiles would force him onto the defence, if
Peter let him, and if that happened Peter might as well bare his throat for the
bear-trap jaws of Stiles’ mind, because Stiles would never let it go until he
had the truth caught like a beating heart between his teeth.
He laid his hand flat on his front door, and briefly let his forehead rest
against it, closing his eyes. Listened to the heartbeat on the other side, and
felt his fingers throb with his claws’ desire to slide free.
Slide free, and tear down the door, and drag Stiles in and close and safe and
tell him everything, tell him what he was, tell him what he could do and
unleash him on the world and watch—
Fuck. Peter exhaled hard, deliberately. Fuck. This was madness. Damn the idiot
for not being home in his own bed where he should be, anyway, for dragging
Peter out of his in the middle of the night after too long a day. Let him stand
on the doormat all night if he wanted to, let him catch cold or pass out from
exhaustion while Peter went back to bed, while Peter tried to sleep through the
scent of Stiles’ blood and the memory of his light and the full-moon pull of
his presence just outside the door—
Peter felt himself will his wards down, felt his own fingers turning the keys
of lock after lock and pressing the door-handle open, and the only thing he
couldn’t feel was surprise.
                                       *
“Should I even bother asking how you found me?”
Stiles’ brain skipped like static, and he could almost feel his pulse leap too,
hitch and stutter. He didn’t need to feel it, could see it reflected in Peter’s
face as clear as the neon spike on a heart monitor, for all that Scott, Derek,
even Allison would have missed it: the precise fraction of an inch that Peter
tilted his head, the micrometer-minute movement of his eyelids, the fleeting
ghost of tension there-and-gone at the corner of the werewolf’s mouth. A
reaction where no one else would have seen it at all.
Well. Lydia might’ve. Stiles never bet against Lydia. And even Lydia wouldn’t
have blamed Stiles for that little jump, probably, because all werewolves were
built like GQ models and Peter was always wandering around in those v-necked
cardigans with nothing underneath,and Stiles had been possessed and un-
possessed and poisoned and undergone magical surgery all in the last 24 hours,
but he was still a red-blooded seventeen-year-old and that was a whole lotof
shirtlessness to be faced with unexpectedly, okay.
Like. A lot. Peter slept without a shirt, because of course he did. And greeted
middle-of-the-night visitors in the same state, because he had absolutely
nothing to be ashamed of.
“Please, I found this place twenty minutes after the realtor logged your
purchase agreement, and it only took me that long because I left my phone at
Scott’s and didn’t get the alert until I sat down at my laptop.” The scoffing
tone came out on autopilot, and Stiles was grateful because his mouth was dry;
he could remember being held against that chest, the steady beat of Peter’s
heart as the werewolf cradled him. The warmth of Peter’s body, that sense of
solid strength wrapped around him, and most of all the slow, unhurried, even
sound of that heartbeat against Stiles’ ear had been more reassuring than the
results of all the hours of tests—both the hospital’s and Deaton’s—that had
declared him free and clear and clean.
“You have alerts set up to notify you of my financial movements,” Peter said
slowly.
“And your actual locational movements, your internet search history, and any
and all uses of any of your four passports,” Stiles added, mock-helpfully. “Mr
Hale-Delaunay-Mirren-Addams.”
“Of course you do.” The werewolf paused a moment, clearly considering. “I think
I’m flattered,” he decided.
“Why did you do it?” Stiles blurted. And damn it, he’d had a more graceful
segue into that question planned, he’d plotted out a whole dialogue in his
head, but the need to know was like razor glass in his throat, cold and bloody
and shredding any other words he tried to speak.
Peter rolled his eyes and stepped back from the door. “I realise you and your
friends are all hormone-riddled barbarians, but let’s at least pretend to be
civilised people and not have this discussion on the doorstep, please.”
Stiles licked his lips and tried to keep his fingers from twitching, from
tapping out a rhythm only he could hear on his thigh. Every time his hands went
to do that, he remembered his fingertips dancing over the hilt of the sword in
Scott’s stomach, tapping out a quick and bright and bloody tune, and he felt
sick at how not-sick the memory tasted. “Civilised? Doesn’t that disqualify you
immediately?” he snarked as he stepped over the threshold.
Stepped past Peter, close enough to touch, to feel the furnace-hot werewolf-
heat of him.
“You wound me, Stiles.” Peter closed the door behind him, and Stiles heard
locks turning, metallic clicks that made him think of rounds being chambered.
Manacles that could never hold him closing around his wrists. “Besides, I’m not
the one dropping by at a wholly unreasonable hour.”
“Yeah, well, I had questions and I’m not that great with delayed
gratification,” Stiles said.
“Oh, but it can be such fun,” Peter murmured, almost as if to himself. “Drawing
out the anticipation, honing the excitement, braiding it through with the
possibility that it might not come at all… There’s much to be said for it.”
Stiles stared at him, heart suddenly pounding, something tight and hot and
clawed twisting in the pit of his stomach.
Peter smiled. “What was it you wanted, again?”
“Why did you do it?” Stiles had seen—had memorised—the floor-plan of Peter’s
ridiculously sized penthouse the day Peter bought it, and in the corners of his
vision he caught flashes that on another day would have made him gape, glimpses
of a rich, elegant luxury that made Lydia’s and even Jackson’s homes look like
dirt huts in comparison; paintings under climate-controlled glass and a
seamless, beautiful blending of centuries-old objets d’art with furnishings so
ultramodern they looked like something from science fiction; an honest-to-god
tapestry on one wall and a multi-storied library visible through an open
doorway; something that might have been a 3D printer and something else that
was definitely the Heintzman crystal piano, holy shit. But right now, none of
it mattered, none of it really processed; there was just Peter, leaning against
a wall with his arms crossed over his bare chest, his head tilted with a
playful inquisitiveness that fooled neither of them, and his eyes fixed on
Stiles.
“You’ll have to be a little more specific,” Peter said.
“Why did you save me?”It clawed itself out of Stiles’ throat, raw and half-
choked. “You knew—you know—I saw you see it, see me,Scott didn’t and Lydia
didn’t but you did.” His hands had curled into fists at his sides without
thought, his knuckles so white his nails cut into his palms. “You know what
I—did, what I am,why it chose me—”
“I do.” Peter pushed himself away from the wall, and Stiles took a step back
instinctively, because his mind shouted you should have let me diebut his body,
his flesh and bone, reacted with primal programming to the animal intensity in
Peter’s face, the laser-like focus that locked onto Stiles like a sniper’s
cross-hairs—like a wolf scenting blood. A slow, dark smile curved Peter’s lips
like a blade at whatever he heard in Stiles’ heart, his eyes lighting with
simmering blue fire at whatever he smelled in Stiles’ sweat, and Stiles didn’t
know what that was, what signals he was giving off what he was feeling,because
Peter came towards him slow and deliberate and fucking prowling and there was
fire and ice beneath Stiles’ skin, steel and velvet, something like terror and
something like exhilaration and something like starving, something that said
run and something that said don’t and something that said bare your teeth,
stand your ground, make him kneel and beg andbreakfor daring to think you prey.
He was more terrified of that last voice than he could ever be of Peter.
“I do,” Peter repeated, and he was still moving forward and Stiles was still
moving back, thinking of wolves driving a deer where they wanted it and of
flinging Derek across the loft like a doll and of coming back from the poison
with Peter’s claws on his face. He was breathing faster, could feel and hear it
and knew Peter could too, could feel himself trembling with want but he didn’t
know,want for what, for escape or closer or tearing teeth and blood, relief or
pleasure or pain, wanting to be hurt or not to be or to be the one doing the
hurting—? “But then, I know a great deal about kitsune, Stiles.”
Stiles’ back hit a wall, and he froze.
He could have bolted, could have tried,but his body locked like the safety
catch of a gun as Peter closed the distance between them because if Stiles
moved, if he pulled the trigger, he might—
He might—
Might what —?
“The question is,” Peter purred, and Stiles fucking gasped, tried to catch it
between his teeth and failed completely as Peter pressed the full length of his
beautiful, powerful, dangerous body against Stiles’, with the same terrifying-
maddening slow deliberation as every step that had led them here, gradually
increasing the pressure to press him into the wall, pin him to it and the total
unyielding strength of him made Stiles shudder, made something in him melt and
something else twist to the breaking point, made him pant and tremble and every
breath he took scorched his throat, carried Peter’s scent and Peter’s breath
into his lungs, and something about that drove Stiles crazy, crazier than the
unmistakable, shameless hardness of Peter’s cock through his drawstring
sleeping-pants, crazier than it pressing unyieldingly against his own, not even
moving, not letting Stiles move—no, it was the thought of all the tiny
molecules of Peter passing through Stiles’ mouth and throat and into his lungs,
from his alveoli into his bloodstream, into his everywhere, everywhere inside
him as Peter seemed to be everywhere outside him, against him, chest-to-chest
and thigh-to-thigh. The sweep of Peter’s mouth was sharp enough to cut Stiles
open but Stiles already felt flayed, stripped bare; Peter laid his forearms
either side of Stiles’ head to cage him in and he didn’t need to, the blue of
his eyes seared Stiles to the core, set him alight and burned him down and lit
the fuse of him, something building, something breaking, something going to
explode—“how do you know?”
For a long, heady moment, Stiles couldn’t remember what Peter was talking
about. He wasn’t sure he remembered his own name.
And then he knew he didn’t, because Peter ducked his head down and put his
mouth just under Stiles’ ear and everything blazed blue inside him, Stiles
smacked his skull back against the wall—no, into Peter’s palm, Peter’d moved
his hand between Stiles’ head and the plaster quick as lightning, protecting
him from himself, protecting him again—and arched, his spine curving and it was
nothing like the poison, nothing like it, he just, he, wanted, needed, his
hands flew to Peter’s shoulders and he was gasping and digging his (claws)
nails in, they couldn’t get closer but Stiles pulled at him anyway, clawed at
him, tearing, he didn’t have names for the sounds he was making as Peter drew
his lips open-mouthed down the line of Stiles’ jaw, down his throat—
Dragging his teeth—
“Did it tell you, Stiles?” Peter breathed, and Stiles shuddered full-bodied,
Peter’s mouth against his ear now and his hands sliding down Stiles’ body, his
claws grazing Stiles through his shirt and Stiles ripped at him, didn’t mean to
didn’t think to didn’t care he had to, his nails tearing through Peter’s skin
as Peter pinned Stiles’ hips even more firmly against the wall and rolled
against him, sinuous, serpentine, sinful, Stiles wanted to scream at how
maddening-good it felt and might have if he could have found the breath, if he
could have, could have—
“Did it tell you that you were dark and terrible?” Peter whispered, his voice
hoarser, rougher, maybe because his blood was on Stiles’ nails and Stiles
fucking sobbed, fighting to writhe and thrilling down to his core when he
couldn’t, when Peter wouldn’t let him. “Did it tell you that you were made for
blood and screams and power, that you were born to make the whole world bow and
burn? Did it tell you the light would never fit inside you, that it would drown
in you, because you are a depthless wonder, you are greater than them all, too
beautiful and too wild and too glorious to be chained by their laws, their
rules, their pathetic moralities? Terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible,
they should beg for the privilege of kneeling to you, it told you that and you
knew it already, you’ve always known it, Void let you taste their pain and it
was what you’ve been craving your entire life—”
Stiles shoved his blood-tipped fingers into Peter’s short hair and dragged
their mouths together, burning-desperate, starving, tears falling from his eyes
as they closed because it was so true it hurt, so good it hurt, he needed Peter
to stop and he needed him to never stop, needed to swallow every word down into
the aching empty place where the nogitsune used to be, take them all inside
himself and know that he was known, seen, understood;they’d pulled him from the
Void and it had been like dying, losing the one who knew him better than anyone
else ever could, knew all the fucked-up dark vicious ruthless parts of him and
loved him for it, chose him for it, twined around his soul and told him he was
perfect because of not in spite of—
But Peter knew, Peter knew,Peter knew—
Peter made a startled, starving sound low in his throat as Stiles pulled him
down and Stiles felt it like a line of fire down his spine, a thrill of power-
lust that he could make someone sound like that, someone as dangerous, as
always-controlled as Peter Hale, and god, fuck, he’d never been kissed like
this, reeled between the contrast of Peter’s soft lips and hard mouth, opening
Stiles up with sharp teeth and silken tongue, slick and cruel and filthy,
licking Stiles’ moans out of him like he was feasting on every one, devouring
them, devouring Stiles,like he couldn’t get enough—
Stiles dragged his nails lightly down the back of Peter’s skull and felt the
werewolf shudder, felt it like a drug; he did it again, harder, ripping down
the back of the werewolf’s neck and Petersnarled into his mouth, vicious and
delicious, and Stiles felt the same sweet-sick thrill he’d felt as Void,
feeding on the pain, feeling it light him up like foxfire—brighter than
foxfire, hotter-better-more,because Peter didn’t try to pull away or escape it,
Peter shoved harder against him and Stiles could feel the edge of desperation
in it, the silver-sharp need toxic as wolfsbane and addictive as heroin, Peter
fucking Hale’s perfect’s control fraying at the edges, coming undone, his body
grinding into Stiles’ and his hands everywhere, cradling Stiles’ face, dragging
hungrily down his sides, clutching his hips, shoving at and under his shirt and
frenzied, rabid forhim, for Stiles and it was so good, it was so terrifyingly
good, Peter’s claws dragging lightning over his skin, the claws that had ripped
Kate’s throat out, that could tear Stiles apart like paper, and Stiles felt
himself pushing into the razored points, panting, biting at Peter’s mouth,
craving, crazed, there were too many fucking clothes—
Some instinct-urge made him crook his fingers just-so, pressing the points of
his nails into the back of Peter’s neck right where Scott had pressed his into
Stiles for the mind-meld, and Peter went still against him. Stiles opened his
eyes and found Peter’s right there, somehow both werewolf-bright and desire-
dark at once; Stiles thought of Mission Bay in San Diego, the way the ocean
there sometimes glowed blue at night as if the aurora borealis had been poured
out of the sky and into the surf. Peter’s gaze looked like that, like
phosphorescence over midnight waves, like magic and burning and drowning.
“If you want to stop,” Peter said, low and rough, “say so now. I won’t ask
again.”
His pupils were dilated, blown. Deeper voids than the nogitsune had ever been.
Stiles pressed with his nails, used his grip to pull their foreheads together,
lips so close they breathed each other’s breath. “I want you in me deeper than
it ever was,” Stiles heard himself saying, not begging but commanding,hissing
it against Peter’s mouth. “I want you to fall into me, I want you to drown in
me, I want to swallow you whole—”
Peter groaned and cut him off with a savage kiss, his hands briefly raking
through Stiles’ hair. “You can try,” he breathed against Stiles’ lips, and in
one quick motion his hands fell and ripped Stiles’ shirt open like it was
nothing, like it was paper, like it was skin. Stiles caught his mouth again,
hungry, following him when Peter stepped away from the wall so they could
disentangle Stiles’ arms from the remains of his sleeves. The fabric fell to
the floor and Peter’s claws sliced through Stiles’ belt, Stiles wrapped his
arms around Peter’s neck and tangled his fingers in Peter’s too-short hair as
the werewolf cut through the buttons on his jeans. Stiles didn’t hear them land
on the carpet, was too busy wrapping his legs around Peter’s waist as the
werewolf just grasped the back of his thighs and picked him up,shoved them back
against the wall again and Stiles was the one who snarled, the drag of skin-on-
skin so blindingly good and the press of Peter’s cock against his stomach made
his head spin but his fucking jeans, the crotch of them was cut too low and too
tight, he rocked his hips and nearly screamed with frustration when he could
get hardly any pressure where he needed it—
He wrapped his hand under Peter’s jaw and shoved his head back, dragged his
teeth down Peter’s neck and bit. “Get these off me, Peter,” he breathed through
Peter’s strangled almost-shout. He knew the werewolf could still hear him. “Get
them off and fuck me.”
Pain sang through him as Peter’s claws cut too deep this time, scratched long
thin lines down the outside of Stiles’ legs, but the pain was a prize because
it was a sign of how badly Peter was losing it, and that should have terrified
him, it should have woken him up, should have made him realise how fucking
stupid and dangerous and wrong this was, the hot stinging drag of a werewolf’s
claws tearing him open too shallowly to bleed—but it thrilled through him
instead, locked his legs tighter around Peter’s waist, not caring how it made
it harder to shove the tatters of his jeans away, out of the way, drunk on
Peter’s kisses and his need and the feel of his skin, the heat of him that
burned all the places the nogitsune had left cold.
“Did it tell you that you’re lethal?” Peter murmured hoarsely against his
mouth. “Because you are. Brilliant, beautiful, lethal boy—” He held Stiles up
one-handed without any sign of strain, running the other up Stiles’ spine,
ghosting the points of his claws against the base of Stiles’ skull, tracing
nerves so sensitive Stiles half-whimpered, tipping his head to bare himself to
the touch, pleading for more of it, panting at the velvet static it sent softly
shocking through him, that he could feel all the way down to his aching cock.
The delicacy of the touch, knowing Peter only had to exert just a little more
pressure, only needed one quick jab of claws into flesh to sever Stiles’ spine,
slice through his brain-stem, kill him instantly—it just made it better, it was
a relief somehow, made him melt and moan and grind the damp cotton of his
boxers, which were hanging on by literal threads after Peter cut his jeans
away, into Peter’s rock-hard stomach. Somehow Stiles found his hands moving
over Peter’s shoulders, sliding up his neck, found his palms brushing Peter’s
jaw as Stiles kissed him. Cupping Peter’s face with Peter’s blood under his
fingernails.
“Don’t let me hurt you,” Stiles whispered. It was nonsensical, he knew it—he
didn’t have the nogitsune’s super-powers anymore, couldn’t pick up a werewolf
and throw him across the room like a toy, couldn’t punch through a demon’s
chest and rip its heart out, couldn’t swallow foxfire that would have burned a
human alive—he was no threat to Peter at all—and yet. And yet. Brilliant,
beautiful, lethal boy;the words made him shudder with pleasure and fear in
equal measure, made his veins run with molten honey and with ashes. “I don’t
want to hurt you.”
Peter nudged Stiles’ jaw, tipping Stiles’ head up, and Stiles let his head fall
back, bared his throat not with trust but with anticipation-dread-demand, his
fingers twisting into Peter’s hair and his whole body jerking around a cry as
the werewolf’s teeth bit down, so delicately, precisely, perfectly cruel. It
twisted like a knife in his gut, the pleasure and the pain together, flooding
him with fire, proving he was real,he was here and awake and his body was all
his, unpossessed and free—
“Do you know what I heard just then?” Peter murmured, and he licked at the
bite, the marks of his teeth that would linger, no nogitsune-quick healing for
him now, Stiles should have cared and didn’t, only moaned at the sugared-chilli
ache of Peter’s tongue stroking the wound, only wondered if it was saliva or
blood he could feel trickling down to his collarbone, wishing he knew which he
wanted it to be as Peter’s hand slid down his back again, pushed sheathed-
clawed fingers along the crease of his ass— “Your heart beating slightly faster
over the words I. Don’t. Want.”
Stiles’ hips bucked completely without permission; he made some nameless,
choked sound and nearly came right then and there, might have if Peter hadn’t
done something quick and wicked with his fingers between Stiles’ legs, pressing
between his hole and his balls through his boxers in a way that jerked him back
from that precipice, but only just—fuck, only just,because Stiles remembered,
he fucking remembered the last time Peter had said those exact words to him,
and he’d been right then as he was right now, and god Stiles was sick, he was
so fucking sick that that could hit him so hard and low and hot—
Brilliant, beautiful, lethal boy—
“I’m not saying goodbye this time, Stiles,” Peter breathed, and then he was
crushing Stiles to him, taking his mouth like he’d take a kill, Stiles’ sore
swollen mouth and Stiles clawed at him, clutched at him, biting and tearing and
he nicked his tongue on one of Peter’s fangs, a bright flash of pain and then
the taste of copper filled both their mouths and they moaned in unison, Peter’s
melting into a delighted laugh, Stiles’ into a growl of impatient want, and
fuck, Peter’s strength,they were kissing and Peter was moving them, finally,
carrying Stiles through the apartment without any need to put him down and it
drove Stiles wild, the power in the arms wrapped around him, the muscles
shifting against Stiles’s chest, abdomen, between his legs. Peter could break
him, Peter could protect him, could protect himself, could take all that
werewolf strength and drive it into Stiles until he shattered—
I will kill you,Peter had promised Noshiko, and he’d said it with Stiles in his
arms, he’d said it for Stiles, meant it for Stiles, with his heart underscoring
the absolute truth of it with every steady beat, his willingness, his readiness
to kill for Stiles—
Why, why did that make him feel so perfectly safe and so utterly dangerous at
the same time, so powerful and so shiveringly, deliciously weak; why did it
make him want to tear Peter apart and be torn apart by him—?
He felt Peter stop walking, and Stiles opened his eyes, his heart racing, every
nerve-ending straining towards Peter through his skin, reaching for him,
howling for him.
“Your bedroom?” he asked, and was almost surprised to hear his own voice:
husky, sultry, hungry. Nothing shy or hesitant in it.
“Mm.” Peter kissed him again, deep and slow with a predator’s lazy, easy
confidence in its possession of its prey. “And you won’t leave it until I’m
done with you.”
But then, how could he be shy with Peter looking at him like that? When he’d
made Peter look at him like that? How could he harbour the faintest flicker of
insecurity about his body when Peter had laid hands on nearly every inch of it
and called him beautiful, lethal—? And as for his inexperience…
Stiles felt himself smirk, wicked and elated, and leaned in to bite Peter’s
lip, very gently. “You know I’ve never done this before, right?” he murmured.
Running the fingertips of one hand down Peter’s throat, onto his chest,
playfully, teasingly. Knowing exactly, instinctively, how the knowledge would
hit the werewolf like a silver bullet. “Not with anyone. Boy, girl, or other.
Nothing but some kisses.” He brushed his lips over Peter’s cheek, tracing
Peter’s cheekbone with his nose. “You’ll be my first everything,” he breathed.
The sound Peter made wasn’t even a little bit human, so savage-raw-rabid that
it exploded straight through to Stiles’ lizard-brain, a billion years of
instincts recognising danger-death-predator-run! as Peter fisted a hand in his
hair and crushed Stiles’ mouth against his, under his, crescent-sharp teeth
tearing him open and devouring—
And Stiles was sick, so sick, because he wanted to run towardsnot away, instead
of making him afraid it only thrilled him seared him made a wild thing of him
too, feeling Peter coming apart under his hands, his lips, the shape and press
of Stiles’ aching cock grinding through the soft damp cotton that was all that
separated them—
“Lethal,”Peter gasped, growled, desire-approval-awe-want-need,and he took a
step forward and tossed Stiles onto the bed, threw him down into thick silken
softness, and Stiles bounced once and laughed, delighted with and thrilling in
his own power, in the taste of Peter’s lust for him, tipping his head back and
stretching hedonistically on the werewolf’s bed, arching his spine and his hips
in a taunt, a dare, revelling in the drag of fabric on his skin and the burn of
Peter’s eyes on him—
For the half-instant it took before Peter fell on him like a starving thing, a
maddened thing, his pants discarded and his cock dragging naked against Stiles’
thigh, thick and hot and real as he swallowed Stiles’ laughter in another of
those deep vicious kisses that made Stiles shudder and melt for him, under him,
open to him, drag him in and drag him down and oh god it was so good, Peter’s
solid heavy weight pressing him into the mattress, covering him, caging him,
crushing him to powder as their hips moved, rocking, seeking. Peter’s claws
caught on the last of Stiles’ boxers and then they were gone, there was only
skin, heat, Stiles gasped into Peter’s mouth and heard-felt-tasted him purr,
kicking Stiles’ legs apart with such fucking casual strength that Stiles arched
into him, helpless and feverish and so viciously desperate as Peter moved over
him, sliding their cocks together, slipping and slick like Peter’s tongue in
his mouth—
Nothing had felt this real since the nogitsune started scratching at the door
in his mind—nothing had ever felt this real, this immediate, this urgent, this
good—
Peter’s mouth broke away from his to kiss his jaw, his neck, drag the sharp
razors of his teeth over the pounding pulse in Stiles’ throat, over the marks
of his earlier bite, and Stiles groaned and tipped his head back, baring his
neck for Peter’s lips, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, twisting his fingers
in Peter’s hair to encourage him on. There was no stillness, only shifting
restlessly and endlessly against the sheets, against Peter’s skin, under
Peter’s stroking hands, under his hips, the friction, the pressure, and
everywhere Peter touched was branded, every point of contact and sensation a
line drawn around Stiles’ self, re-affirming the boundaries of the territory
that was his body so he knew where it was, where and who he was, not nogitsune
or Void but Stiles—
Brilliant, beautiful, lethal Stiles—
And this was Peter, here and with him, wanting him, murmuring sin-sweet
everythings against Stiles’ throat, in his ear, against his mouth as Stiles
mapped the planes of the werewolf’s shoulders with his hands, the shape of his
skull, the ivory sweep of his spine—the curve of his lips and the taste of him,
the armoury of his teeth, the power that moved through every sleek muscle—Peter
Delaunay-Mirren-Addams-Hale, whose hands were stained as red as Stiles’ own,
whom even death itself could not keep caged; Peter, who had seen him embrace
Void and still wanted him, still come for him, still saved him—
Clawed hands on his face, a steady pulse beneath his ear, a voice saying I do
and I don’t care—
You are a depthless wonder—
It was like being the god and the sacrifice on the altar, both at once—
Peter pulled away from him, breathing hard, and smirked at Stiles’ rough sound
of protest. “Lube,” he murmured, explanation and expiation, brushing his lips
lightly over Stiles’—Stiles darted his tongue across the seam of Peter’s mouth,
and revelled in the werewolf’s low groan.
“Ashmedai,” Peter said hoarsely, and Stiles grinned up at him, smug and wicked.
“King of Hell and prince of lust? I hope you don’t expect me to take that as an
insult.”
“No,” Peter said. He dragged his thumb across Stiles’ lower lip, his pupils so
wide and dark only a sliver of shimmering azure showed around them. “It’s only
the truth.” He kissed Stiles again, bruisingly, and then pushed himself up and
away.
Stiles propped himself up on one elbow to watch him, admiring the smooth
flexing of lean muscle and feral grace, hunger and anticipation twisting
together like heated wires inside him. For the first time, he saw Peter’s back
as the man swung his legs onto the floor and reached for the bedside table, and
felt a flicker of surprise: the room was dim, but enough light spilled through
the uncurtained windows and from beyond the open bedroom door to make clear
that, like Derek, Peter was tattooed—not with the same splayed-hand’s-width
triskele as his nephew, but with three massive interlocked crescents that
covered his entire back. One swept like a razored smile across his shoulder-
blades, and the other two curved down before and behind and through it,
interwoven, crossing each other in the process, all three black as ebony, as
ashes. It was dark and stark and elegant, all sharp curves and deadly-looking
points, the lowest of which reached all the way down to brush the base of
Peter’s spine.
And probably it meant something, the way Derek’s triskele meant something—the
three werewolf castes and their interconnectedness, the implication therein
that the unity of the pack was the most important thing, the core of all—but
for once Stiles’ curiosity was drowned out by something stronger. At some other
time, any other time, he would have asked Peter about his tattoo, what it meant
and when he’d gotten it and why—but not now, when even this brief pause made
craving drag hot claws through his insides, made him feel touch-starved.
Instead Stiles followed Peter up, looped his arms around the man’s torso from
behind and put his mouth on that top kukri[1] crescent, tracing the sweep of it
with his tongue.
He hadn’t expected to, but he could taste it: bitter, and sweet, and strange in
a way that set jewels on his tongue, that sent ribbons of embers braiding down
his spine. It was unnaturally smooth under his lips, silky like a scar.
“I like it,” he said simply. He scraped his teeth over the back of Peter’s
neck, and felt the werewolf shudder under his lips; the rush of dark, hot
desire spilled into the pit of Stiles’ stomach like mulled wine, all sweet red
heat.
Without answering Peter turned swiftly into his embrace and kissed him, hard
and fierce and maybe desperate, pushing Stiles onto his back in the process.
They hit the mattress together and Stiles arched into him, twisting around him,
hooking his ankles around the back of Peter’s thighs to pull them closer
together, to rock and grind and gasp and groan. But Stiles couldn’t hold him;
Peter broke his grip with an ease that stabbed into Stiles like a blade still
hot from the forge, pushing Stiles’ thighs apart and holding them flat against
the bed, swallowing the sound Stiles made with that savage hunger, that primal,
animal greed that made Stiles shake and burn and surge up into Peter’s mouth.
Which one of them was the more dangerous: the one with fangs and claws and a
wolf’s tearing hunger—or the one that made him rabid and unleashed him?
The question simmered in the line Peter’s lips drew down Stiles’ throat,
pounded in the pulse at the base of his neck, curled like heated satin under
his collarbone. Peter’s hands held him down and his teeth dragged over Stiles’
ribs, sharp and catching at Stiles’s breath, breaking his harsh panting into a
stifled gasp as Peter laved one hard nipple with his tongue, closed his teeth
around it so fucking gently Stiles wanted to claw him, bite him bloody, one
hand in Peter’s hair and the other fisted in the sheets, his hips jerking
against Peter’s hold uselessly, helplessly. It felt like worship, Peter’s hands
on him, the silken heat of his tongue drawing a line down Stiles’ body, his
thumbs on the jut of Stiles’s hip bones stroking circles whose tenderness
belied the sharp prick of his claws, and Stiles couldn’t breathe and didn’t
want to, not with Peter shifting predator-smooth down the bed, moving down
Stiles, leaving citrus-sharp bites and dark-chocolate kisses in his wake,
sucking dark, bruising marks onto Stiles’ skin and Stiles wanted to snarl and
wanted to sob, to beg and to command, hovering on a knife’s edge of black bliss
between the two conflicting urges as Peter drew closer and closer to Stiles’
aching cock—
The blue glow of his eyes flicked up to watch Stiles’ face as if to be sure he
was watching—as if there were any chance Stiles could have been looking
anywhere else—and if someone had asked him Stiles would have said he’d expected
Peter to smirk, to look smug, silkily mocking and supremely pleased with
himself for working Stiles into such a state—but Peter was none of those
things; he looked up at Stiles and Stiles saw him, saw into him, saw through
the human skin and the wolf beneath it to the pomegranate-raw core of what
Peter was, and it was like gazing into an obsidian mirror, staring into the
abyss, the howling-burning-vicious thing inside Stiles perfectly reflected back
at him through Peter’s eyes, every drop of his own savage hunger echoed in
Peter’s face, the deadly joy and fierce shameless euphoria of being a monster
and the need, the soul-screaming need to share it, to run through the darkest
woods alongside another, to be seen and adored and known—
And in that moment Stiles understood it right down to the bone, wordless and
absolute: Peter had saved him because they were both beautiful lethal things,
and to let Stiles die would have been to doom himself to run alone through that
inner forest, to howl and hear nothing but silence in answer.
Because before the nogitsune he’d glimpsed Stiles through the trees, running
too fast to catch, too far away to be certain of, a shadow on silent feet
refusing to answer Peter’s call.
But then Void had come, and Stiles’ soul had finally, finally howled, loud
enough to make the stars ring with it: not with fear and terror, but with the
joyous-defiant triumph of freedom and the rush of intoxicating power, a
piercing cry of dark and untamed celebration, and Peter could no more have let
it go unanswered—let it be silenced—than he could will himself not to breathe.
Lust was too small a word for it. Love was too small a word. No human language
had a name for what Stiles saw in Peter’s face then.
Or for what it made Stiles feel, to be allowed to see it, to see it at all, to
recognise it, understand it, know it—
“Peter,” he whispered, and the name was a prayer thick with fear and awe and
longing on his tongue, blood and syrup and holy water—
As if he could only bear to be so naked for so long—naked in a way bare skin
could never match—Peter ducked his head. He dragged his cheek against Stiles’
cock, open-mouthed, the points of his teeth trailing sweet fire down Stiles’
abdomen, and Stiles choked as much at the sinful sight of it as at the
sensations. His hips bucked, helplessly, so hard only Peter’s werewolf strength
kept him pinned to the sheets and Stiles’ fingers were still clenched in
Peter’s hair, tightened and twisted as Peter turned his face to Stiles’
arousal, brushing his lips lightly against it, touching just the tip of his
tongue to the flushed, swollen skin—
“Peter,” Stiles—gasped, whimpered, snarled, he could never remember which
afterwards and it tangled together in his throat, in his head, in the pit of
his stomach, in his cock that twitched heavily against Peter’s mouth, and
Stiles nearly lost it completely as the little spurt of pre-come gleamed on
Peter’s lower lip.
“Stiles,” Peter purred. His palms stroked from Stiles’ hipbones down his
thighs, skimming the edges of his claws against soft, vulnerable skin. Stiles
remembered how Scott’s flesh had opened beneath Kira’s sword and his eyes
shivered closed; what was this, this penance-pleasure, the black fire that
coiled tongues of ebon flame around his bones every time he thought of how
easily Peter could tear him apart? “There’s no need to hold back, sweetheart.
Really, I don’t know if I should be insulted you’ve managed to hold on so
long.”
“Don’t want to come until you’re inside me,” Stiles said without thinking, and
Peter’s face, his playful smugness—it whited-out, everything human in it seared
away in an atom-bomb flash. Before Stiles could take another breath Peter
lunged for him, was back on top of him and his mouth came down on Stiles’ like
a lightning strike, flooding his every nerve and vein with skyfire, with power
and light and heat until he shook and blazed with it, until he felt like living
flame—
“Lethal,” Peter hissed against his lips, hoarse and wrecked, and Stiles wanted
to laugh and purr and moan, licked back into Peter’s mouth and rolled his hips
to rub them together, skin dragging on skin and Peter’s teeth sharp as knives
as they parted for his tongue, letting him in, letting him take, the rush of it
enough to make Stiles shudder—
To be deemed a dangerous thing by someone like Peter, with his werewolf-
strength and crescent-moon claws, who had cut through Beacon Hills like a
scythe to avenge his pack—whom death itself had not been able to hold—to be
caressed like a precious, priceless thing by hands that could destroy him
without even trying—
It should have been horrifying.
It was everything but.
After some instantaneous eternity Stiles fisted a hand in Peter’s hair and
dragged their mouths apart; his cock twitched against Peter’s stomach at the
look on the man’s face, the dazed and rabid hunger. “I meant what I said,”
Stiles told him. His tongue still stung where he’d cut it on Peter’s fang; his
lips ached, hot and swollen. “I don’t want to come until you’re inside me. So
get inside me, Peter.”
Some far-away and insignificant part of him couldn’t believe what he was
saying, who he was saying it to, the fierce and wild shamelessness he was drunk
on. Stiles didn’t care about that small voice in the back of his mind, barely
heard its stunned whispers, certainly didn’t listen. Not when Peter’s lips,
just as kiss-bruised as Stiles’, parted around a soft snarl that stroked down
Stiles’ spine like velvet and made him shiver; not when Peter darted down to
kiss him once more, a kiss like burning brandy spilling down his throat, before
moving to obey.
Peter. Moving to obey. To obey Stiles.
Good boy, something in Stiles purred, hot and heady; the same silky, obsidian-
fanged darkness that had wanted Peter on his knees and begging, breaking, for
looking at Stiles as if he were prey, earlier. But Peter hadn’t been thinking
that at all, had he? No, he’d known what Stiles was—known it all along—
Couldn’t get enough of it—
Peter slid down Stiles’ body and Stiles pushed himself up on one elbow and
watched him, amazed and aroused almost beyond bearing by the sight; the
scratches Peter’s claws had left on his legs throbbed in time with the heavy
pulse in his cock, and Stiles could already feel where his hips and waist would
be bruised with Peter’s fingerprints tomorrow. He didn’t, couldn’t resist as
Peter pushed his thighs apart and settled himself between them, pressing his
face to Stiles’ hip and inhaling deeply, as if the very scent of Stiles’ skin
were a drug.
God, nothing he and the nogitsune had done had made Stiles feel as powerful as
the cobalt shimmer in Peter’s eyes when he glanced up at Stiles’ face to see
him watching.
He had more sense than to actually murmur good boy aloud, no matter how
smoothly it rested on his tongue, but he slid a hand into Peter’s hair, letting
his nails brush the back of Peter’s neck, and felt it low in the pit of his
stomach as the werewolf shuddered for him.
And slowly, watching Stiles all the while through half-lidded eyes, tipped his
head into the caress, just enough to deliberately bare his throat.
For Stiles. To Stiles—
Whatever Peter saw in his face, it was enough to make him shudder again,
closing his eyes briefly, though they were lit so brightly Stiles could make
out the glow of them through his eyelids. Even through the dark roaring in his
ears, even through the Void-vicious craving to drag Peter back up and flip him
over and sink his teeth into the werewolf’s neck until he bled, Stiles thought
he’d never seen anything more beautiful, more intoxicating, than the radiance
of Peter’s eyes burning too brightly for him to hide.
They left a blue glow on Stiles’ skin when they opened again, and Stiles half-
imagined he could feel it, a whisper-warm caress, just before Peter turned his
face and ran his tongue up the length of Stiles’ cock.
“Fuck!” Stiles jolted; only Peter’s hands on his thighs stopped Stiles’ hips
bucking up against that wicked smirk. The muscles in Stiles’ arms trembled,
threatening to drop him back onto the bed, but he didn’t want to lose sight of
this, the curve of Peter’s lips as he licked another slow wet ribbon over
Stiles from base to tip, only to lap at the head, at the pre-come beading and
smearing there, and if his goal had been to clean Stiles up then it was
completely backfiring because every stroke of Peter’s tongue only grew more
filthy, saliva and pre-come mixing together under Peter’s lips and Stiles’ hips
strained against Peter’s grasp with helpless little jerks, desperate for more,
desperate to come and just as desperate not to, not yet, but oh, fuck, oh,
fuck—his knuckles went white in Peter’s hair and Peter’s growl of approval
vibrated all through Stiles’ cock and Stiles was swearing, curses spilling from
his lips and high, keening whines from his throat, the blue light of Peter’s
eyes gleaming on the wet, slick mess between Stiles’ legs and Stiles’ toes
curled with the effort of not coming all over Peter’s face.
He hardly noticed when one of Peter’s hands went away, except to wrap the freed
leg around Peter’s shoulders, holding him close without thinking about it;
later he didn’t remember hearing the cap of the lube clicking open, though it
must have, because Peter’s lips closed around the head of Stiles’ cock just as
his fingers slid slickly between the cheeks of Stiles’ ass and against his
hole.
Stiles nearly cried out, bucking up; and then he did make some loud nameless
noise because Peter let him, let him thrust up and push deeper into Peter’s
mouth in the process, his cock sliding between Peter’s lips and over his
tongue, all hot wet vicuna taking him in and sucking, leisurely, fucking
evilly,and Stiles didn’t need to look to feel Peter’s smirk wrapped around him.
Not that he could look away, even for a second, even with the arm propping him
up shaking with the strain of not just collapsing back on the bed and bucking
into Peter’s fucking mouth,his deadly-beautiful-wicked mouth,all sharp silk
tongue and sharper fangs and the relief-release-terror-thrill of knowing that
Stiles had never been more vulnerable, not even when a spirit of chaos had been
slithering into his fucking head—
As Void—it had felt so good to be so powerful, so in control; and it still did,
he still was, Peter’s eyes burned that bright a blue because Stiles lit the
fire but there was something—something about knowing how easily Peter could
hurt him—something about surrendering to that, and to the pleasure, in a way
that was nothing like letting the nogitsune in had been—something about knowing
that there was someone who could stop him if he couldn’t or wouldn’t go back,
now, to being good, being human, being Stiles instead of Void—
(Even though Peter would never stop him, even if he could; would be right there
beside Stiles as the blood splashed and the ashes rained down and why had the
nogitsune never thought to ask Peter to play with them, oh god it would have
been so good, the games they could have played together—)
(Even though Stiles didn’twantto go back and didn’t know how, how to close the
Pandora’s box in his deepest self now it was open, how to pretend he wasn’t
what he was: someone Void could fit inside like a tailored glove, someone who
had danced with Chaos and loved it, someone who had exulted in‘It is now’ and
had hurt, hurt like dying, when he’d been pried free from the spirit’s sick-
sweet embrace—
Someone who’d overturned the board when he saw his friends watching him play
and felt like such a coward, such a two-faced, back-stabbing traitor, for doing
that to the one person who’d known him completely and loved him anyway, loved
himbecause—)
(It wasn’t love, it was killing him, he knows it all and yet it doesn’t seem
tomatter—)
Peter’s fingertips were satin-rough beneath the lube, cruelly gentle, tender
torture stroking over Stiles’ hole again and again, circling it, pushing just
enough to barely dip inside, enough to make Stiles jolt and gasp and thrust up
into his mouth and Peter just took it, letting Stiles slide in almost all the
way into his throat, and it was all jagged shards of lightning crashing
together and interlocking in a flash of searing blue heat, Peter’s fingers and
his tongue and his smirk wrapped around Stiles’ cock, his eyes like marsh-fire
in the dim room and it was all so good, so much, like being Void again, except
instead of devouring agony he was feasting on pleasure, it was filling him up
until there was nothing else and Stiles felt drunk on it, wild with it, heard
himself snarling with impatient, vicious desire and felt Peter groan around
him.
Stiles slid his hand down the back of Peter’s head, pressed his nails to the
back of Peter’s neck again, right where an Alpha would slide their claws into
his soul. “Now,Peter,” he ordered, his voice pitched low and dark and
demanding—and felt the darkness in him crack apart again as Peter’s finger
pushed into him, slow and steady and strange, making him Stiles again, a wise-
cracking teenager looking to lose his virginity and not a, not a—
Beautiful, brilliant, lethal boy—
It ached, a little; Stiles had tried this once or twice by himself but Peter’s
finger was thicker than any of his, and longer (and could grow clawed, could
turn razor-sharp at any moment), immediately and obviously different—but it
wasn’t bad, it was fine, Stiles was just impatient to get on with—
And then a wave of bright silver rapture pulsed through his body, lighting him
up like a nebula, and Stiles nearly screamed, only managed not to because it
hit him on the in-breath and he choked on it instead, forgot how to breathe as
molten silver spilled through his every nerve-ending, pouring from Peter’s
finger to gild him inside, every vein, every cell—
Peter let Stiles slip from his mouth and laughed softly; he licked a slow, wet
stroke over Stiles’ cock, watching him. “Did you think we could only take
pain?” he asked, fucking purred, and another throbbing wave of pleasure seared
through Stiles, an aurora borealis all in shades of burning blue bliss curling
and blazing inside him, flooding him from toes to skull sweet as honey, if he
screamed now would light or ambrosia come spilling out of his mouth—?
“Oh, god,” Stiles choked, “oh, fuck, oh god, what are you, Peter, fuck, Peter—”
Peter pushed a second finger into Stiles and Stiles came instantly, went
supernova, so much so good and he probably did scream, spine a crescent-moon
arch lifting him off the bed with Peter’s mouth quickly back around his cock,
swallowing him down, taking it all as Stiles bucked and writhed and came apart,
shattering around the silver Peter was still pouring into him, wave after
silken wave of it, what did it matter if he swore by God or by Peter when right
here, right now they were the same thing—?
“You did come with me inside you,” Peter said smugly when Stiles collapsed
against the mattress, trembling with the sweet aftershocks. The werewolf
crooked his fingers and yeah, no, refraction time was apparently not an issue
with werewolf magic playing your pleasure receptors like harp-strings and
making them sing. It should have hurt, probably, getting so hard again so fast,
but Peter’s fingers just kept stroking in and out of him, nuzzling and lapping
at Stiles’ cock, and it was so good, Stiles couldn’t stop shivering and
twisting his hips and panting as Peter worked him back up. Not that he’d really
let Stiles come down to start with.
“Cheat,” Stiles managed, and Peter laughed, dark and delighted, sending another
steel-razor shiver down Stiles’ spine and another ripple of that supernatural
power twisting hot and sleek up inside him. “Fuck. No w-wonder Allison went
straight from Scott to another werewolf, this is so not in the Bestiary—”
Peter nipped his thigh. “Please. Just because we can,doesn’t mean we all know
how. I guarantee your friends have no idea how to properly please a bed-mate. I
know my nephew doesn’t.” He flicked a look up at Stiles’ face. “And that is the
last mention of Scott I will tolerate in my own bedroom, thank you.”
It was Stiles’ turn to laugh, breathless. “No, but seriously, we should put it
in the Bestiary, they’d make you guys a protected species in seconds if they
knew you could holy fucking shit—”
He lost his words for a while, which was no doubt Peter’s intention. After that
first brutal-bliss jolt to shut him up, though, Peter kept the pleasure to
languid waves, lapping at Stiles’ body like silver surf. Stiles’ pulse skipped
and his head fell back, lips parting on nothing, no curses or gasps just,
just—feeling it, the slow thrust in and out of Peter’s fingers, a little deeper
every time, anticipation beating bronze wings in his ears, strobing in his
head, blurring into the twist of Peter’s tongue, everything simultaneously
winding tighter and tighter and turning hot and molten inside him, melting,
melting open for that second finger, and then a third, and Stiles didn’t
remember deciding to move but he found his hips rolling with it, slow and easy
and anything but, all at once. It was like a dream and a nightmare twisted into
one, the hazy taffy-sweet stretching of time and the taut-wire tension, the
feeling of flying and falling, spiralling from one to the other and back again
with the crook of Peter’s fingers, the graze of his teeth, the tide-like rise
and fall of his power—
Stiles was either going to hit the sun or crash to earth and he didn’t want to,
not again, not yet—savagely, viciously didn’t want to, and he didn’t know if he
was ready, prepped enough, but ready or not he was ready—
And his nails were still on the back of Peter’s neck.
He pulled—pulled with his nails, sharp and brutal and dragging Peter off of
him, and Peter made that sound again as Stiles’ cock slipped from his mouth;
low and animal, something caught between a moan and a snarl, arching to press
his neck into Stiles’ human-claws, baring his throat in the same motion, and
the look he gave Stiles was all hunger and challenge, daring him—
Daring him to be lethal—
And Stiles slipped his legs from the werewolf’s shoulders and dragged him up,
his free hand flying to clutch at Peter’s hair and pull him back up Stiles’
body so they were face-to-face again, those blue eyes deadly-dark even as they
burned, lips red as blood as Stiles pulled them down onto his, surging up into
the kiss even as Peter fell on him like a starving wolf. His hands were clawed
again as they ran greedily down Stiles’ body, catching on the soft skin of
Stiles’ thighs as he pushed them where he wanted them and Stiles could taste
himself in Peter’s mouth, not a good taste but one that made his whole body
clench tight with hunger and heat anyway.
“Condom,” he managed when they broke for air.
Peter bit Stiles’ lip, and Stiles shuddered, his cock twitching against Peter’s
stomach. “I don’t have any.”
Everywhere they touched Stiles could feel the silver threads of Peter giving
pleasure unspooling into him, and they were touching everywhere; he had a flash
of what it would feel like with Peter’s cock inside him, and nearly whimpered,
nearly let it go, but he’d been raised smarter than that, damn it. “Bullshit,”
he accused, flexing his nails on Peter’s neck; the werewolf’s hips jerked
sharply, something like a hiss escaping from between Peter’s teeth. “You have
some, go get one so you can fuck me.”
“Why would I have condoms here?” Peter asked hoarsely. He nudged his hips
forward slyly, his cock sliding against Stiles’ ass and Stiles snarled at him,
reactive, bestial; he raked his nails down the back of Peter’s neck and heard
him choke, saw his eyes roll back a little.
“Don’t you dare,” Stiles hissed, fury like dark wine rushing through his veins.
“Condom, Peter. Now.”
“I don’t have any,” Peter repeated, hoarse, and Stiles felt himself bare his
teeth.
“I don’t believe you.” His hand trailed down from the already-healing scratches
he’d left on the back of Peter’s neck—and slid to smoothly grasp his throat,
the throat Peter had bared for him, tight and hard. Peter moaned, his eyes
fluttering closed and his pulse racing under Stiles’ fingertips, and he was so
beautiful like that Stiles almost forgot what he’d been saying. Almost. “Don’t
tell me everyone you bring back here forgets basic sex ed when you bat those
pretty blue eyes at ’em—”
“I don’t bring people here.” Peter looked drugged—probably why he hadn’t made
Stiles pay for calling him pretty—and without thinking Stiles found himself
stroking his thumb up and down the side of Peter’s throat, revelling in it when
Peter shuddered full-bodied for him. “It’s a non-issue for werewolves anyway,
since we can’t catch or carry human diseases, but on those occasions I feel the
need for another body,” and it was the way he said it, another body, making it
so clear that that was all they were, “I make a call to one of several discreet
escort services and meet them at a hotel. If they want condoms they bring them
themselves so I don’t have to bother thinking about it. I don’t bring people
here.”
Stiles’ thumb stilled on Peter’s throat. He stared up at the werewolf, and
Peter stared down, his eyes dark even through the azure fire in them, and it
happened again: they saw each other, monster to monster, stripped naked of all
masks and pretence, obsidian mirrors reflecting back each other’s howling
hearts into infinity—
There was no telling who moved first: Stiles surged up and Peter lunged down
and they kissed like comets colliding, all teeth and heat and Stiles’ fingers
sliding into Peter’s hair and Peter’s hands dragging claws and silver bliss
over Stiles’ hips and thighs, lifting them so Stiles could wrap them around his
waist, skin dragging against skin and three of Peter’s fingertips still just a
little slick and Stiles’ blood was a rushing roar in his ears. He wrapped one
arm around Peter’s shoulders and Peter was licking into his mouth and pushing
himself forward, his cock silky with lube—when had he done that?—as it slid
against Stiles’ perineum and down, one of Peter’s hands guiding it and the
other wrapped around Stiles’ thigh, fingertips just brushing the scratches his
claws had left earlier and pushing thin silver threads into them, mixing
pleasure into the stinging pain and Stiles bit him for it, for how
shudderingly-good it was, for the anticipation-dread-desire-now whirlpooling in
the pit of his stomach.
The head of Peter’s cock brushed Stiles’ hole, and the werewolf broke off the
kiss. “Show me,” he murmured, almost against Stiles’ lips, hunger so raw Stiles
could nearly taste it.
“Ruin me,” Stiles hissed, and Peter snarled against his mouth and pushed into
him.
It wasn’t gentle and it wasn’t quite slow but it was exactly, exactly what
Stiles wanted, everything he’d craved and more than he’d imagined; the thick
burning ache of someone else’s flesh sliding into his, bruising and sweet and
strange; the heavy weight of Peter’s body over him, pressing him down, pressing
into him, solid and real; the taste of Peter’s breath on his tongue, their
mouths so close they almost touched, the hyperawareness of his lips as
seemingly the only place they weren’t touching; the sharp delineation of their
bodies even as they interlocked because Peter’s ran just a few critical degrees
too hot to be human, just enough to whisper werewolf down Stiles’ spine, just
enough to spiral down into Stiles’ cold dark hollowness and light it up with
incandescent blue.
It was all he could see, that azure blaze. Even when he closed his eyes,
letting himself gasp instead of hiss, letting his head fall back with a
shuddering whimper, baring his throat in a tease that wasn’t teasing at
all—there was the blue fire, and Stiles let it drive away, just for a minute,
the wild snarling darkness inside of him, let it burn through the part of him
that was dangerous to the part that was defenceless, raw, young and vulnerable;
he let the masks and armour fall away and showed Peter exactly what he’d wanted
to see, the desecration of the one little bit of innocence Stiles had had left
and Stiles feeling every second of it—
Peter’s teeth closed around his throat, and the silver spilled from his teeth
into Stiles’ veins in whorling, star-bright curlicues and distantly Stiles
wondered if this was what the Bite was like, pleasure so bright and strange it
hurt as it seared through you.
If it was, no wonder some people died of it.
Peter let go of his neck, but the silver still stroked through Stiles in
shimmering waves, rippling through him from Peter’s hands and the lap of his
tongue over Stiles’ lip, from every place they touched and Stiles moaned,
arching into it because he’d so, so underestimated how that werewolf-magic
would offset and twine with the dull pain of being fucked, how it would melt
into the heat of Peter’s body and the brush of his claws over Stiles’ skin. It
made every scratch and bite and bruise sting and sing, jewels set in flesh
Peter was replacing cell by cell with precious metal—and that was all on top
of, or beneath, the purely mortal pleasure-strangeness of two bodies joined,
the terror-thrill of the raw intimacy of it, the vulnerability of being open
and full of someone else, not just someone-anyone but Peter, werewolf, adult,
the worst monster Stiles knew—
(Even Duecalion never came back from the dead, even Jennifer had been human,
even Jackson-as-kanima was only being controlled the whole time—)
He opened his eyes.
—except for the one he saw reflected back at him in Peter’s gaze, his own face
rendered in cobalt fire.
It should have been terrible, not beautiful, that realisation-reminder, but it
was both, terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible and the wild rush of it
was beyond words, those blue flames licking over Stiles’ black-oil-core and
igniting with a roar, the wild darkness that had never belonged to Void surging
through him again and Stiles leaned up and caught Peter’s mouth with his teeth,
pulling him down with the fingers still in the werewolf’s hair, the arm wrapped
around his shoulders, tightening his legs around Peter’s waist as he swallowed
Peter’s snarl and it should have been horrifying, terrifying, Stiles knew it
and didn’t care, laughed with rich and bloody delight as he stole Peter’s lips
and tongue and breath, daring him, teasing him, challenging him.
Touch me with your bloodstained hands, kiss me with your killing teeth,  burn
me down with your blue fire—
Give it to me, give itallto me—
He ran his palm down the back of Peter’s neck, and up again, stroking over the
healed-smooth skin—and stabbed his nails in deep, deep enough to feel wet blood
against his fingertips, feel it spilling down like a collar of crimson wire
around Peter’s throat, dripping onto Stiles’ collarbone warm as tears—
And Peter broke like a bone for him.
Stiles felt the difference in the splinter of a second before Peter moved,
tasted it as Peter’s teeth were suddenly sharp as shards and Stiles’ mouth was
full of blood, his own as Peter’s snarl savaged his lips and the blinding blue
neon leaving sunspots on his vision and Stiles was laughing, was moaning, was
maybe even screaming as he was suddenly the only human in the room, whatever
shape Peter wore it was the wolf in bed with Stiles now and oh, god, it hurt,
it did, but it hurt like fire, like lightning, jagged bolts of flashing silver
spearing through him as Peter thrust so hard, too hard, not hard enough,
dragging his clawed hands over Stiles’ thighs and waist and shoulders as if he
wanted Stiles closer, wanted in deeper, wanted to tear him open and eat him
alive and Stiles twisted bloodstained fingers in Peter’s hair, urging him on,
sick and wrong and wild with triumph and power and pain, pain Peter snatched
away even as he gave it, a dizzying whirl of a storm spinning Stiles ’round and
’round and upside-down, the silver currents of blazing bliss rushing into him
and the black coils of pain slithering out and the hot solid weight of the
werewolf’s body the only anchor, moving over him, moving in him, rough and raw
and real—
But not deep enough.
‘I want you in me deeper than it ever was—’
Stiles moved.
‘I want to swallow you whole —”
It was something Alison had shown him and Lydia in one of their how-to-be-
human-and-survive-the-supernaturaltraining sessions, and it probably only
worked because he whimpered prey-sweet and sugar-soft into Peter’s mouth to
distract him (not only to distract him) first; he felt Peter’s low growl of
savage, hungry approval reverberate in his chest (it skittered over Stiles’
every bone) and then Stiles had him, one leg trapping Peter’s and one arm
hooking over the werewolf’s shoulder and the twist of his hips, shoving down
against the bed with his other foot, made Stiles groan and Peter snarl, and
almost before Stiles flipped them over Peter was sitting up, surging up to meet
him, wrapping an arm around Stiles’ waist to settle Stiles in his lap.
Distantly, Stiles noticed that Peter’s other hand was a clawed fist in the
sheets, shredding the fabric in his grip. But that was far away, far away and
irrelevant; he moaned, rolling his hips a little, stunned by and revelling in
how much of Peter this position let him take. He did it again, pressing forward
a little to grind his cock into Peter’s stomach, falling back to screw himself
open. His hands were in Peter’s hair again, restlessly carding through it as he
figured out how to move, how to take—
He didn’t realise he’d closed his eyes until Peter made a sound like a wordless
prayer of violence and lust; when he opened them he saw the werewolf staring up
at him as if drugged, watching him with a raw and starving desire. His eyes
burned darkly, and his mouth was smeared with Stiles’ blood; without thinking
Stiles cupped Peter’s face and bent down to him, licked his own blood from
Peter’s lips until they parted for him with a groan.
Stiles was still bleeding. It slicked the slip and slide of their mouths, their
tongues, dark, coppery silk spilling down their throats, dripping down their
chins. When Peter’s hand pressed against the small of Stiles’ back, pulling
him, pushing him, showing him how to rock his hips—when Stiles broke the kiss
to let his head fall back with the intoxicating pleasure-pain-power of it all,
shuddering-simmering through him—when Peter buried his face in Stiles’ bared
throat with another saw-toothed groan, thrusting up to meet him so silver fire
burst behind Stiles’ eyelids, Stiles felt the wet of Peter’s lips against his
skin and knew it was his own blood, and his knuckles went white where they
twisted in the werewolf’s hair.
His body rose and fell, again and again, his hips rolling slow as summer surf;
savouring, lingering. But it was too good, too much, and Peter’s hands settled
on his hips, his ivory claws pricking Stiles’ skin, black and silver threads
twining around his fingers, drawn out of Stiles’ body or sliding into him like
Peter’s cock, pleasure so bright and pure it was cruel, a razor of bliss. His
hands tightened on Stiles and Stiles’ pulse raced, thinking of that werewolf
strength, feeling it twist deep into the pit of his belly as Peter lifted him
and pulled him down with every thrust, moving him as easily as a doll, a grip
Stiles couldn’t escape if he tried. And if he did, if he tried to run, Peter
would only catch him and drag him down before Stiles even reached the bedroom
door, before he reached the edge of the bed,even—
“I thought he was you,” Peter said hoarsely. He dragged his teeth across
Stiles’ jugular, star-splinter sharp, and Stiles shuddered, whimpered, jerked
his hips hard in Peter’s hold. “Your scent was on his jacket…”
“What?” Stiles barely heard, didn’t understand, didn’t care with the silver
ensnaring him like Sleeping Beauty’s killing rose-vines, closing around him
like a cage, Peter’s cock thick and hot inside him, sliding, thrusting, a
bright blue spiral twisting tighter and tighter in his core—
Peter raised his head, pressed his lips to the corner of Stiles’ mouth. “That
night,” he said, and his voice was rough, guttural as if he were mid-change,
moon-drunk, a wolf trying to shape human words. “I was confused, reeling from
taking an Alpha’s power, more than half-mad from the burns, the memories, the
coma…There were two boys in my woods, my territory, and one—one stank of fear,
and the other was fearless. He hunted for death and was excited by it, wanted
to find it. Which meant he wanted to find me.”
Stiles was breathing faster; his skin felt drawn tight and hot over his bones.
He couldn’t—he didn’t—he whimpered again, bucking in Peter’s hold, and his cock
jerked in the tight press between them, slick and messy with pre-come, dragging
against the werewolf’s skin with every thrust—
Peter’s mouth brushed along Stiles’ jaw. “Your scent was on Scott’s jacket,” he
whispered. “I thought he was you. I wanted you, Stiles. I knew you’d make such
a beautiful monster—lethal—strong—brilliant—and you did. You do.”
He sounded…he sounded like he was on his knees before a god’s altar, and Stiles
couldn’t imagine Peter ever kneeling, ever submitting that wholly, no matter
how great the Greater Power—
Except. He’d bared his throat for Stiles, hadn’t he?
Oh, god, the silver—the blue—
“It was supposed to be you,” Peter said, like he was falling, like Stiles was
swallowing him whole after all—only Stiles couldn’t tell who had who—which of
them had the other—who was in control— “It was you I meant to Turn. I wanted
you.”
And maybe every word of it was a lie, Peter had always lied as smoothly as
Lucifer, but—
Stiles dragged his fingers through Peter’s hair, ran his palms over the back of
the werewolf’s skull. “Bite me now,” he breathed against Peter’s lips, stroking
a fingertip along the line of drying red around Peter’s neck, the collar of
Stiles’ blood— “Peter. Bite me now.”
For an instant their eyes met, and Stiles had no name for the expression on
Peter’s face—wondering, fierce, starving, awed, savage, collared—
Mine—like me—
And then Peter ducked his head under Stiles’ chin and Stiles tipped his head
back, pressed Peter’s face into his neck, urging-commanding-wanting-needing as
those teeth closed around his throat like something beautiful, like jewellery—
Like something brilliant, and beautiful, and lethal—
And suddenly Peter surged forward, driving his fangs into Stiles’ skin,
slamming Stiles onto his back again, and the pain met and meshed with the
spiralling silver, the blood and the meat and Stiles clung to the monster as if
to a life-raft, locking his legs around Peter’s hips, wrapping an arm around
his shoulders, fisting a hand in his hair, shattering under the wolf’s body
over and over with every rutting thrust, snarling and sobbing and screaming
until Peter sealed his bloodied mouth over Stiles’, not to silence him but to
take the sounds for himself, into himself, and afterwards that was always how
Stiles would remember it: the taste of his own blood on Peter’s lips as the
world exploded into blue and silver, silver and blue, detonating into something
as far beyond pleasure and pain as it was beyond the ability of words to
describe.
At some point he felt Peter shudder above him, and come, inside him, a rush of
wet heat into bruised, raw flesh, and that, too, was viciously, impossibly
perfect.
Stiles had lost all sense of time a while ago; he didn’t know how long the two
of them lay there, breathing hard, still joined, echoes of pleasure and
throbbing ripples of pain shivering through them both. Peter was still taking
his pain, or at least some of it; when he nuzzled Stiles’ mouth, and softly
kissed it, Stiles’ savaged lips hurt far less than they probably should have
done. Their tongues stroked lazily between their mouths, slow and easy, rich
and sweet, until Stiles turned his face away, not in rejection, but just to
breathe.
“Addams?” he asked finally. As if he wasn’t bleeding and bruised, wasn’t lying
naked in Peter Hale’s bed. Didn’t have Peter’s softening cock inside him.
“Really?”
Peter smirked. “‘We gladly feast on those who would subdue us’ is a crede I can
get behind, even if they butchered the Latin.”
And Stiles couldn’t do anything but laugh.
                                       *
Unsurprisingly, Stiles’ energy faded quickly as the rush of adrenaline and
endorphins settled; it was something of a miracle—and rather personally
flattering—that he had stayed awake so long, after all he’d been through in the
last 24 hours. Peter took enough of the teenager’s pain to allow him to drowse
comfortably as Peter reluctantly left the exquisite tableau he made sprawled on
Peter’s bed to fetch the necessities.
He returned to find Stiles more than halfway asleep, which was probably for the
best; Peter would have been too tempted to try for another round if Stiles
hadn’t been so clearly in need of rest. He hardly stirred as Peter used a damp
washcloth to wipe him clean of blood and semen, and only murmured nearly
inaudible nonsense syllables when Peter carefully applied a healing salve—not
one of the estimable Dr Deaton’s—to the worst of the teenager’s cuts and
bruises.
He brushed the magic-imbued cream over Stiles’ lips with his thumb, gently, and
used the same care to apply it internally, sliding his fingers between Stiles’
legs and into his body to massage the honey-scented stuff into beautifully
abused flesh. There was an undeniable thrill to touching Stiles so intimately
while he was unaware of it; as near to unconscious as made no difference,
terribly, stunningly vulnerable. Peter couldn’t quite resist the urge to
stroke, so very lightly, over the boy’s prostate; the faint shiver that ran
through Stiles’ body at the touch made Peter’s teeth ache to bite into the back
of his neck, roll him over and have him just like this, slack and loose and
soft, that beautifully terrible creature rendered into something Peter could
mount and rut and own, for however short a time. The thought was intoxicating
in a completely different way than meeting what Stiles would probably insist on
naming his ‘dark side’ had been; teasing the wolf’s prey-instinct, and the
man’s urge to cage and possess, rather than seducing wolf and man alike with
the appeal of a true peer, however young.
He massaged a different ointment into the marks he’d left on Stiles’ throat,
watching as they closed over and faded a little. Nothing he possessed could
heal Stiles completely; his injuries didn’t melt away and vanish as they would
have on a werewolf, but the magic in the various bottles and jars sped their
healing, as though it had been days and not minutes since they’d been
inflicted. It was the best Peter could do—and, however much his baser instincts
wanted to see Stiles covered in his claim, necessary. There would be far too
many irritating questions to answer—not to mention a shotgun-wielding father to
deal with; how far would the Sheriff’s gratitude for Peter’s saving his son’s
life extend? Best not to find out—if Stiles were unable to walk tomorrow.
Later today, rather. It really was abominably early.
His phone rang as he was boxing up his medical supplies, and Peter picked up
device and elderwood chest both before Stiles could stir, slipping into the
ensuite bathroom. Only a few numbers had the necessary permissions to make it
through his phone’s night-mode; a glance at the screen made him smile as he
swiped to answer the call. “Miss Martin?” he said politely, softly enough not
to disturb Stiles in the next room.
“Peter,” Lydia acknowledged crisply. “Stiles is missing. His father took him
home from the hospital around midnight, and he supposedly went to bed then, but
he wasn’t in his room when the Sheriff checked in on him a little while ago. Do
you know where he might be?”
This was why her number was on the whitelist: because she only called if it
mattered, and she never wasted his time. She offered no apology for disturbing
him at this hour, and he liked her better for it. Almost as much as he
appreciated the keen intelligence that had her calling him at all. Were he a
betting man, he would place a great deal of money on the likelihood that no one
else in Scott’s little band of misfits had thought or wanted to consult him,
despite Stiles having every reason to crave the proximity of the one who’d
saved him. Plagued by memories that played like nightmares, shaken and left raw
by the night’s events, he might well have turned  instinctively to the one
source of proven safety. It would have been a perfectly understandable
reaction.
But then, Peter doubted anyone, even Derek, could imagine finding Peter a
reassuring presence.
Except Lydia. Not for the first time, Peter felt a fleeting regret for the
necessity of the actions that had alienated her from him. She would make a
formidable ally—and an exquisite wolf, if not for her immunity to the Bite.
However well that immunity had served him, in the end.
“Stiles is with me,” he said simply.
“I thought he might be,” she said, once again confirming his opinion of her
intellect. “Is he all right?”
“He was distressed when he arrived,” Peter said, which was perfectly true, if
misleading. “But he’s sleeping soundly now, and I’d rather not disturb him.
Please reassure the Sheriff that all is well, and I’ll escort Stiles home in
the morning.” He paused, considering the likelihood of Stiles getting up before
noon. “When he wakes,” he corrected himself.
He heard her cover her phone to consult with someone else. Even werewolf
hearing didn’t allow him to hear more than the phone transmitted; he was
hampered by the technology’s relative deafness. But it was another safe bet
that she was passing his words on either to Stiles’ father or to Scott.
“Acceptable,” she said briskly when she returned. She’d spoken to the Sheriff,
then; Scott would have put up much more of a protest. “Thank you for clearing
that up for us. And for taking care of him.” Whatever your motives,he could
almost hear her thinking. “Good night, Peter.”
“Believe me when I say that the honour is mine,” he said, unable to resist. Let
her stir that into her stew of suspicions. Besides, it was nothing but the
truth. “Good night, Lydia.”
He put the potions away and made his own ablutions before allowing himself to
return to bed, a soft thrill not racing but drifting through him as he slipped
beneath the sheets and drew Stiles against him.
“An honour, huh?” Stiles said blearily, without opening his eyes.
Peter kissed the back of his neck. “Go back to sleep, Stiles,” he murmured.
“M’kay.” Belying his promise, Stiles wriggled to turn in his arms and nuzzled
into Peter, tucking his face against the werewolf’s chest. “You’re so warm,” he
sighed blissfully.
And Void had been cold, and left him even colder when they were separated,
before it was destroyed.
“Sleep, silver boy,” Peter said, still more softly. From a space inside him
he’d thought as dead and cold as his family’s ashes an impulse rose,
irresistible; as if from very far away, he saw his thumb gently trace a
crescent moon on the boy’s brow. Waxing, for blessing, benediction. “Sleep.”
He felt the last of the tension in Stiles’ body melt away, listened to his
breathing deepen and slow as he slid into dreams as trustingly as any cub
nestled against one who was pack.
But it was a long, long time before Peter closed his eyes and followed him into
sleep’s embrace.
 
===============================================================================
[1] A Nepalese knife with a curved blade.
 
***** a flicker of foxfire *****
Chapter Summary
     A brief interlude.
Chapter Notes
     EEEEE, thank you so much to all the people who have commented! :D I
     read them all, and they all make my day, every time, even when I
     don’t have the energy to comment back <3 I’m ridiculously delighted
     that so many of you are enjoying this, and I can’t wait to show you
     guys more!
     This, however, is not more Steter - just a quick moment of cuteness
     that the muse insisted was necessary to the story. Fear not; the next
     chapter will be the morning after ;)
                              A few hours earlier
 
Derek hauled the door open and stepped inside and out of her way, flicking on
the lights. “This is it,” he said. “It’s not much…”
He wasn’t underselling it. Kira looked over the bare, blocky expanse of
concrete that was Derek’s apartment, and clutched the Walmart bag—full of the
necessities Derek had insisted on buying for her on the way home, toiletries
and a few changes of clothes—a little more tightly. Apart from the wall of
windows, the place made her think of a prison cell; the few bits of Ikea
furniture scattered here and there like the afterthoughts they clearly were
didn’t really help.
“We can always call Scott,” Derek said hesitantly, and Kira realised her
reaction must be like a flashing neon billboard to someone with a werewolf’s
senses. “I’m sure he—Mrs McCall—Chris—Lydia—I’m sure someone else has a spare
room. We can call somebody else.”
Kira shook her head firmly. “This is fine,” she said, and saw him relax because
it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t. Nothing else was fine—well, no, actually a lot of
tonight was fine; Stiles being saved and Allison being safe were both great
things, but what her mom had done—what her dad had allowed her mom to do—that
wasn’t fine, at all. And she would take this chilly cement cell over having to
go back to her parents, no question. Or bothering anyone else tonight, when
everyone was taking care of Stiles or Allison or themselves, after the last few
days they’d all had. “Where should I sleep?”
“I’ll show you.” Derek led her up the tight spiral staircase in the corner, and
where the first floor was open plan the upstairs was divided up into a number
of smaller rooms. Derek pushed one of the doors open, revealing a plain but
perfectly normal-looking bedroom that was nonetheless a bit of a surprise after
the spartan style of the downstairs. “You can stay here for—for as long as you
stay here,” Derek said lamely, and Kira abruptly remembered Peter’s promise to
her mother.
I will kill you.
Lydia and Allison had said that Peter was a murderer who had unrepentantly
killed half a dozen people; Kira hadn’t remembered that until she was in
Derek’s car. The fact that he’d only killed the people who had murdered his
family made it more likely, not less, that he’d meant every word he’d said to
Kira’s mom—because Stiles was like Peter’s family, wasn’t he? They were part of
the same pack, right? Scott’s pack. The way Peter had rushed to Stiles’ side,
the way he’d touched him, held him—it was obvious that he cared about Stiles.
Which meant he probably hadn’t been making idle threats.
Which meant her parents—or at least her mom, but where her mom went, her dad
followed—were going to have to leave Beacon Hills.
For the first time it occurred to Kira to wonder if she’d be going with them.
Derek was offering her sanctuary, but would it extend past tonight?
Did she want it to?
“Thanks,” she managed, trying to put all of her very genuine gratitude into the
word. “It looks great.” She walked inside—the floor was carpeted, not bare
concrete like it was everywhere else—and set her sword and bag on the bed.
“I’m going to order pizza,” Derek said, apropos of nothing. She noticed that he
very carefully didn’t enter the doorway, not even touching the doorframe, and
she was really, really tired, but it made her think of wolves and territory,
made her wonder if werewolves had rules about claimed space. And what it meant,
if Derek viewed this room as her territory after just a few seconds. That he
thought she would stay? “What do you want?”
What do you want,not, do you want any. Not giving her a choice about getting
fed, or a chance to protest that she didn’t want him spending money on her.
She’d tried that at Walmart, until she saw how her attempts at polite refusals
were making his eyebrows grimmer and grimmer; until she understood that this
must be a wolf thing. A pack thing. That she might very well be insulting him
by refusing his attempt to take care of her.
She was Scott’s girlfriend, so she was Derek’s pack? Probably? And pack took
care of each other. Scott hadn’t really talked about it a lot, but Kira paid
attention and she thought she’d inferred the basics. The pull of pack was
strong enough that Derek hadn’t broken away from the uncle who’d murdered his
sister; it was surely enough to sweep up a kitsune Derek’s Alpha was dating.
If she was the Alpha’s girlfriend, did that make her like the alpha female of a
wolf pack? Oh, god, she hoped not. She was barely passing calculus, she wasn’t
ready to be a, a den-mother.
Would that make her, like, Derek’s mom? But no, he was trying to look after
her,not acting like she was supposed to be taking care of him…
She realised she’d left Derek hanging, and guilt nipped her even though he
looked perfectly patient on the other side of the doorway. “Pepperoni,” she
blurted. “Lots and lots of pepperoni. Please,” she added belatedly.
For what might have been the first time that night—actually, maybe the first
time ever—she saw Derek smile. “I’ll call you when it gets here,” he said, and
padded quietly away.
Kira sank down onto the bed and put her head in her hands, only suppressing a
groan because Derek would probably hear her with his freaky werewolf ears.
She had a katana, and a Walmart bag; thank god her phone had been in her jacket
pocket, because otherwise she wouldn’t even have that. Her mom was an attempted
murderer, and her dad was an accessory at best, and downstairs, a werewolf was
ordering her pizza, because she might be his pack-mom or even his pack-queen.
But Allison was alive, and so was Stiles, and the nogitsune was gone for good.
That was worth a whole lot of weirdness.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she reached for it without thinking, with a
teenager’s reflex. And felt her lips curve into a stupidly big smile when she
saw the Whatsapp message from Scott, sent just as she needed it as if he was a
psychic as well as a werewolf.
Hope ur ok. U were amazing 2nite. Love you. <3
I’m good, she typed. & u weren’t so bad urself. Love you too xxx
She saw the little ticks beside her message turn blue, marking it as read, and
smiled again to think of Scott in his room across town, holding his phone and
thinking about her.
She tucked her phone away, and started unpacking the Walmart purchases into the
room’s chest of drawers, feeling both lighter and more solid as she propped her
sword next to the bed.
She had no idea what was going to happen next, but they’d figure it out. After
everything they’d faced in the last few weeks, after having her entire world
turned upside-down and inside-out, she could still believe in that.
                                       *
Kira passed out on Derek’s shoulder somewhere around her eighth slice of
double-pepperoni—he’d ordered six pizzas, but at least he’d ‘only’ expected her
to eat two of them—and it was still dark outside when she stirred.
Derek glanced down at her, his face illuminated by the glow from his phone
screen. “Does your neck hurt?”
Kira straightened abruptly, her cheeks burning—and winced, rubbing the back of
her neck as it twinged. “Yeah, actually.” She smiled sheepishly. “Karma. That’s
what I get for using a defenceless werewolf as a body pillow.”
Derek snorted, the corner of his mouth curling for just a moment as he turned
to her. “Here.”
He placed his fingertips on the side of her neck, as carefully as if she were
made of glass, so softly she forgot to startle. He smelled like leather and
musky sweat and amber, and a little like the meat-lover’s pizza he’d had
earlier, and instead of glass she felt like fulgurite where he touched her, the
jewel formed where lightning struck the earth: glittering and unearthly and
full of hidden fire.
And then she blinked, and breathed in sharply as the pain in her neck bled away
like dirty water swirling down a drain. “You’re painkillers too?” she blurted
without thinking. “You’re super-strong and you can hear everything and you’re
all ripped like supermodels and you can, you know, turn into wolves,and you’re
also magic painkillers?” She threw her hands up. “I am never dating anyone but
werewolves ever again. My standards have officially been raised too high.”
Derek laughed, drawing back from her. “I’m sure Scott will be glad to hear it.”
He glanced down at his phone.
Kira followed his eyes. “Is everything okay?” she asked hesitantly, painfully
aware that she was in fox-printed pyjamas and Derek must have sat quiet and
still for hours rather than wake her when she fell asleep on him.
Like, literally on him. She was the worst pack-mom-queen-thing ever.
“Yeah.” Derek didn’t look up though; he typed something out quickly. “There was
a bit of a scare for a few minutes—Stiles disappeared, and obviously his father
was worried. But Stiles is with Peter.”
Kira remembered how Peter’s claws had clasped Stiles’ bloodied face so
carefully, how the older werewolf had held Stiles against his chest. “So he’s
fine then,” she concluded.
Derek’s mouth quirked again. “Scott isn’t quite as convinced, but yeah, I think
so.” He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s just—Stiles is
at Peter’s apartment.”
Kira waited, but when nothing more was forthcoming she poked Derek’s shoulder
gently. “Is that bad?”
“No,” Derek said slowly. “It’s just—Peter doesn’t let anyone into his private
space. He doesn’t let anyone near it. I don’t even know where his apartment
is,and he’s my uncle. I have no idea how Stiles found it. Or why Peter let him
in.”
“Well, Stiles is still kind of ill, right?” Kira wasn’t sure what else to call
it; everyone had said Stiles wasn’t actually sick, and he definitely wasn’t
possessed anymore, but he was worn out and needed a lot of rest. “Maybe Peter
thought it was better to let Stiles have the couch than let him drive home and
maybe have an accident or something.”
Derek snorted again. “You don’t know Peter. He doesn’t care about people like
that. Not anymore.” But he looked a little thoughtful.
Kira shrugged, and got ungracefully to her feet. “Guess you’ll just have to ask
him, then. I’m going to brush my teeth and go to bed for real.” She ducked her
head. “Thanks for letting me sleep on you. And the pizza. And letting me stay
here. And—”
“You’re welcome,” Derek cut her off. But he was smiling, so she must have got
something right. “Don’t worry about school tomorrow. The whole pack’s taking
the day off, so sleep in as long as you want.”
“Oh thank god,” she said fervently, and Derek’s laughter followed her up the
stairs, warm as an electric blanket wrapped around her.
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