Steter
So, the last fanish thing I wrote was a long Steter fic from Teen Wolf. I binged a bunch of fanfic, and there were a few things that annoyed me.
1. Perfect Stiles. Look, I love Stiles as much as the next person, and I am perfectly willing to power him up (literally); however, Stiles trips crossing a living room. If you make him all suave, he's not Stiles.
2. Sweet Peter. I happen to think Peter had a really good motive for killing all those people season one. He killed killers. We all rooted for Dexter when he did that, so I have no trouble treating Peter like an anti-hero instead of a villain. However, he has a dangerous edge, and even when he's calling Stiles "sweetheart," he's still going to be plotting the literal or metaphorical deaths of his enemies.
3. Quick Sex. I can see either Peter or Stiles indulging in casual sex. What I can't see them doing is jumping into bed quickly with each other or anyone they know. If it's a relationship, they're going to invest time and loyalty, and I don't see that coming with quick, easy sex. They need to build up to it.
And of course the thing that motivates most of my fanish writing is a good plot hole in the original. In Buffy, I never understood why Xander made a wish to Sweet. He knew better. He wouldn't be that stupid. So either he was drunk/stoned or he was covering for someone else, which is why I wrote Butterfly Kisses. Most of my fanish work comes from my annoyance at either canon or a fanon trope with logical flaws I can't forgive. That's when I have to rewrite them in my head (and often on the computer). Teen Wolf is rife with illogic.
a. Why can Scott become a True Alpha when that's apparently rare?
b. If Corienne didn't want to lose her power to a female child, why not get a legal abortion? Why not kill the infant?
c. How did Talia end up with Malia if Corienne knew that the baby was a threat to her?
d. Why did flashbacks sometimes show Peter and Derek having a great relationship and sometimes show dysfunction out the hoo-ha?
e. Why would Peter work with Kate to de-age Derek?
f. What the hell is up with Deaton. Seriously? What?
So I wrote a very long fiction that is posted over at AO3. It was one of those stories that I posted several chapters a week because it ate my soul. I tried to fix the logic holes that annoyed me while giving Peter and Stiles a healthy relationship. BTW, healthy required 100,000-120,000 before the sex, so don't expect the boys to be getting it on.
Anyway, here's the first chapter and a link to the whole series.
Stiles opened the door to have a bare-chested Peter practically fall on him. “Whoa! Personal space,” he yelped as he shoved Peter away. Peter tumbled to the ground, grunting as he landed on his elbows. That’s when Stiles noticed his back. Long, angry welts stood out against his pale skin. “Oh shit. What happened?”
“Most recently?” Peter asked dryly. “A barely legal human with a fraction of my strength or common sense pushed me to the floor.”
“Shit. Sorry.” Stiles knelt down next to Peter and got a hand under his arm. “Come on.” Stiles urged him to get onto his feet. “How can I help?”
“I need to rinse the poison off and apply an ointment, but given that it is on my back, I am limited in my ability to treat myself.”
“Rinse and ointment. I can handle that. That’s doable. What happened? Do we have another big bad on the horizon?” Stiles helped Peter up the stairs as he wondered if he should change his flight. He had a week before he was supposed to head back to Virginia for university. If there was a new evil in town, they needed to get with the banishing because Stiles didn’t want to develop a reputation for flakiness.
It was one thing for his high school teachers to rightly assume he didn’t pay attention in class, but Stiles had his sights set on the FBI. He had an interesting reputation already. On the one hand, he had waded in, saving a potential suspect who turned out to be the victim of a series of violent crimes-one Derek Hale. On the other hand, he had waded into an armed situation and had gotten shot in the foot when he was supposed to be staying at the van to observe. He needed to balance that out with years of boring, reliable college records. And if they had another rogue Druid or alpha pack on the hunt, it was going to be hard for him to be boring and reliable in Virginia.
“It turns out that someone who didn’t like Derek or the mighty true alpha decided to take it out on my back,” Peter said, his gritted teeth a testament to his pain. Considering that his skin appeared to be disintegrating in stripes, pain was reasonable. So very reasonable.
“Let’s get you in the shower.” Stiles walked sideways as he supported Peter’s weight through the bathroom door.
“My shoes,” Peter said. “They are alligator and I refuse to have them ruined.”
Stiles snorted. “Of course you do. Geez. They’re shoes. I’m more worried about your back.”
“My back will heal, I assure you. Thousand dollar alligator shoes do not.” Peter braced himself on the vanity and tried to bend over, but he only managed a sickening whine.
“I got it. I got it.” Stiles knelt down for the precious shoes. “They’re alligator. Shouldn’t they be fine getting wet?”
“Not since the skin was removed from the actual alligator.” Peter lifted each foot so Stiles could get the shoes off.
Stiles hesitated before he offered, “Do you want to take off your pants?” As much as he didn’t want to see naked Peter bits, the man was injured, and Stiles didn’t know how far the injuries went.
“I think I would rather avoid the poison running onto that skin. Having my back skinned is quite different than having other parts similarly damaged.”
Peter could sound so proper when discussing having his penis potentially skinned with poisonous chemicals. It was a talent-one that Stiles never wanted to develop since being burned alive twice probably had something to do with his lack of flappability. “So, is this something that could strip my skin?” Stiles asked as Peter stepped into the bathtub.
“No, it’s specific to various species of weres. I am sorry we did not have a store of it after dear Kate became a werejaguar. I would have enjoyed watching her skin disintegrate.”
“I would worry about your sadism showing, but since Kate locked you in a burning building, I would probably call that karma.”
“At least I survived,” Peter said softly.
He generally didn’t talk about his family, so Stiles wasn’t sure what to say about that. Normally he filled this sort of awkward silence with words. Wrong words, true, but words. But somehow that felt disrespectful of Talia Hale and all the others who died in the fire Kate had set. So he focused on getting the shower head set on the most gentle setting before diverting the water. It didn’t help much. Long strips of Peter’s back still came free, sliding off like silly slime. Stiles gagged, but he kept a hand under Peter’s arm.
“I should call Deaton. What sort of ointment would help?”
Peter even managed to make a snort sound elegant. He might be a murdering, sadistic bastard, but he did it with a certain panache. “What makes you believe Deaton is in town right now? He is absent as much as he is present these days.”
“True, but we need help with this. Should I call Derek?” Stiles bit his lip. He hated how Derek and Scott acted around Peter. True, Peter was a bastard who had killed innocent people, but the pack had killed him back, and ever since he had returned from the dead, he had been fifty percent less evil. And while Stiles was perfectly happy distrusting Peter or making fun of him or even giving Peter the sucky jobs like playing bait, he wasn’t okay with doing all that and then slamming the door in Peter’s face when he came over to Derek place. And he didn’t understand how Scott could forgive Deucalion who had killed far more people with far less reason and then condemn Peter. It all felt so hypocritical, and Stiles had never done well with hypocrites. So generally, he avoided being in the same space with Peter and the other two. Once again, Peter answered with an elegant snort. He was talented that way. When Stiles snorted, he sounded like a dork and had once-in an infamous incident that he refused to mention ever again-had blown snot all over his shirt.
“I have ointment in my car,” Peter said. “As I said, I simply couldn’t effectively treat my back.”
“Okay, will you be okay if I run out and grab it?” Stiles asked.
Peter waved him away, his other hand braced on the tiles. Stiles took off, but he wasn’t more than a half dozen feet before he raced back to the bathroom and stuck his head in. “Where exactly in your car did you leave it?”
Peter gave Stiles such a withering look that it was clear that he questioned Stiles’ intelligence. That was totally unfair. Stiles was brilliant, he just had a little trouble focusing on details. And he was getting better. In the past, he wouldn’t have realized he didn’t know where to look until he was down at the car.
“On the passenger side seat,” Peter said. “And Stiles?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t tell the others I am here or that I am injured.”
It was the ‘please’ that got to Stiles. Peter didn’t use that word. Ever. It made Stiles feel guilty for having a stray thought about calling Scott. “Of course not,” Stiles said with a bright smile before he darted downstairs. He didn’t actually blame Peter for not wanting the others around. Derek hunched his shoulders every time Peter spoke, and the rest of the pack would flinch, so Stiles could image what sort of scents Derek was putting out. Or maybe the pack was getting something through the pack bonds. Malia has said she could feel the aggravation and anger when Derek was in the same room with Peter.
No wonder, really. Stiles got it. If Peter had killed Stiles’ sister, Stiles would have trouble forgiving him. Lucky for Peter, Stiles didn’t have a sister, and since he’d helped kill Peter, Stiles didn’t feel the same anger as Derek. And Scott had been way worse since Derek had returned. Honestly, Stiles wasn’t sure why Derek had even bothered coming back if he was just going to make everything more awkward.
Ever since Derek had gotten back, Scott was always “Shut up, Peter” about this and “Go away, Peter” about that. The man ended up sitting on the steps behind the rest of the pack, unable to even voice an opinion without someone telling him to shut up. Stiles could not imagine the torture of being forced to remain silent while everyone else had opinions.
Peter sat with his chin resting on his fist as he watched as though amused at the pack’s flailing through the problem of the week. Sometimes Stiles got the impression that Peter knew a lot more than he was saying, but Scott did not want to hear that. Stiles opened the passenger side door of Peter's fancy car and found a leather satchel with a bunch of vials and tins and a bottle of bourbon. Since he wasn't sure which of the various medicines Peter needed, he just grabbed the entire satchel and headed for the house as fast as he could. Even werewolf healing was no match against getting skinned alive, so Stiles needed to get him the medicine as fast as possible.
Stiles had expected to find Peter still in the bathroom, but Peter had made his way into Stiles’ bedroom and sat on the bed with his shoulders hunched and his head hanging. The bloody tatters of his back were on full display now and the wound wept a yellowish fluid that made Stiles want to barf all over the floor. However, since Peter was already contributing to the unpleasant bodily fluids in the room, Stiles decided to forgo that pleasure.
“Which of these do you need?” Stiles opened the satchel right in front of Peter. Peter took a second before he raised his head enough to look in the satchel.
“Put some towels down behind me to soak up the mess and pour the bourbon over my back.”
Stiles stared at the bloody, weeping mess. “I don't think that's a great idea.”
“It is a perfectly horrendous idea,” Peter agreed in a near-amused voice. “However, the alcohol is necessary to neutralize the poison.”
Maybe it made Stiles an asshole, but he looked at his Star Wars bedspread and his sheets. “This might be better in the bathroom.” He reached for Peter’s arm.
“If I were in any way capable of supporting my own weight, I would agree. However, moving is not an option right now, and if you attempt to move me, I fear I may lose control.”
Stiles froze. An out-of-control Peter was very high on Stiles his list of creatures to avoid. They'd already gone through an entire year of what an out-of-control feral Peter could do, and that had included murder. A little booze smell in his bed was not nearly as horrifying as a feral Peter. Stiles went and grabbed a couple of garbage bags to protect his mattress and a bunch of towels to put on top. By the time he got back, Peter was a picture of misery. He had his elbows braced on his knees and his head hung low. “We should tell Scott there's someone doing this in his territory,” Stiles whispered. Maybe Peter was the murderous, creepy uncle in their dysfunctional family, but he was family.
Peter huffed. “I imagine Scott already knows that people hate him, and this is someone who is clearly unwilling to take action against either Scott or the more significant members of his pack. I rather think the danger is only to my designer shirts.”
“Seriously, you are creeping me out. Can you please care more about your skin than your shirts?” Stiles inched closer, forcing himself to look at the damage.
“As I already explained, my back will heal. My shirt will not.”
Sometimes Stiles wondered if Peter had ever truly recovered from his bout of insanity. Wolfsbane in the brain did not lead to logical decision, and maybe Peter wasn’t a murdering avenging angel anymore, but this didn’t seem logical. “This is going to hurt,” he warned.
“Far more than you can imagine, since a human would pass out from pain long before my werewolf constitution will allow me to. If I do manage to pass out, please refrain from moving me. I would feel devastated if Scott chose to hunt me down because I accidentally turned his friend.” Peter lifted his head enough to give Stiles a creepy smile.
“I can't say I’d be happy about getting turned, either.” Stiles wondered whether Peter was as selfish if he sounded or if this was his weird way of teasing.
Peter considered him like Stiles was a piece of art. “I've always told you you'd make a beautiful wolf.”
“You're not really doing a good job of convincing me to help.”
“And yet, you will help,” Peter said with confidence. “That is why I've always liked you and wanted you in the pack. You have loyalty that far outstrips your common sense, and that is an admirable trait in a wolf. One I personally do not possess, but I can still admire it.”
“Now you're just trying to butter me up so I’ll torture you by pouring alcohol and open wounds.”
Peter gave a strangled laugh but fell silent. Wincing, Stiles poured the alcohol over the weeping wounds. The liquid turned pink with Peter's blood and Peter hissed as his fingers grew long claws, but he controlled himself. “Is that enough?” Stiles asked once he had touched every bit of bleeding back.
“Is it still weeping yellow?”
“Most of it isn’t.”
“Any place where you see weeping, poor alcohol until the weeping stops.”
“This is seriously gross,” Stiles muttered, but he tipped the alcohol bottle up again. Peter reached out and grabbed Stiles’ leg. Stiles heart pounded in his chest, and he would've run away, only Peter's tight grip held him in place. After a heart-stopping second, he realized that Peter was just holding onto him like a teddy bear. It was almost endearing if one could ignore the vicious claws that were dangerously close to both his femoral artery and other pieces of equipment that he was very fond of. “I'm almost done here.”
“Thank the gods.”
“Are you going to tell me what attacked you?” Stiles set the bourbon to one side and picked the satchel up-and the whole time, Peter held onto his leg firmly.
“As I said, a creature that has a rather distinct dislike for the one-true-failure.”
“Don't call him that,” Stiles snapped. Maybe Scott was an asshole around Peter, but he was Stiles’ best friend. Even before the werewolf stuff, it had been the two of them against the world. Stiles, the spastic ADHD loser and Scott the asthmatic dork. Even Scott’s powers as a true alpha couldn’t change their bonds of friendship.
“What? Am I forbidden from pointing out the truth?” Peter huffed. “I created Scott to be a beta for me, to help me regain my sanity when parts of my brain were still infused with wolfsbane and I struggled to even recognize reality from the nightmares that it haunted me for six years. After your possession by the Nogistune, I imagine you understand something of the madness that follows when you are no longer able to discern reality from the nightmares that shred your psyche.”
Stiles swallowed. This is not a topic he wanted to discuss, but he did understand. The others thought Stiles could somehow walk it off, but what the Nogistune had done with his mind and his body would haunt him for the rest of his life. Stiles suspected that he had accepted the offer to go to university in Virginia largely because he needed to get away from California. He needed to get away from anything that reminded him of that darkness and madness and fear. The fact that the program in Virginia was known to feed straight into the FBI was a simple bonus.
Even though Stiles had not said anything, Peter nodded slowly. “I knew you would understand. And since Scott was created to help rein in my madness and help me find myself and the stability of pack bonds, you can hardly blame me for describing him as a failure.”
“He's a true alpha. He created his own spark.”
“Humans are inherently magical. Most humans do contain a spark, perhaps not one strong enough to ignite or balance the wolf to create an alpha, but the potential is there in most humans. It is only the belief and the knowledge which is lacking. You yourself have a spark that was at one point brighter than Scott's.”
“At one point?”
Peter didn't say anything, but Stiles knew. The Nogitsune had destroyed so much of him. It had smothered him, and in a way, Stiles still felt smothered, as if a blanket had been thrown over his true nature.
“What do I do now?” Stiles would rather focus on the more pleasant subject of Peter’s skinned back. Hell, Stiles would rather have a skinned back himself than reopen that wound.
“The blue bottle, pour some in a bowl with the powder from the black tin. Those will accelerate the healing and protect the muscle until the skin recovers.” Peter’s voice was, once again, businesslike. Stiles had no idea how he maintained his calm with this much damage.
Stiles had a clean bowl sitting on his desk from where he'd been trying to practice scrying, not that it worked. He tried to pull away, but Peter held his leg so Stiles had to stretch to pull the bowl closer so he could mix the two.
“Not so much liquid,” Peter corrected him. “Make it closer to a paste or gel that you can smooth on.”
A shiver went down Stiles a spine. He was going to have to touch those wounds. However, he wasn't willing to leave Peter shivering in pain, and calling another member of the pack didn't seem like a good solution, not when their help would come with conditions, assuming they would help at all.
So, gritting his teeth, he scooped up some of the purplish gel and carefully smoothed it over the worst of the stripes. Peter hissed in pain, but he didn't move. He did, however, tighten his hold on Stiles’ leg until pinpricks ran along his nerves.
“Sorry,” Peter muttered before he loosened his hold and leaned farther down to make it easier for Stiles to treat the wounds.
“There are white fibers in the skin.”
“No doubt the remains of my shirt,” Peter said with a mirthless chuckle. “If you can easily remove them, please do. It will make it easier for me to heal.”
“These aren’t healing well. Did an alpha do this?” Stiles bent all the way over Peter to get the wounds low on his back.
“No.”
“But they aren’t healing.” As far as Stiles knew, werewolf healing worked against all other injuries.
“A werewolf’s ability to heal is dependent upon the strength of his bond to his alpha and pack.” Peter sounded bitter. Stiles took a deep breath and tried to rein in his temper as he realized Scott’s unwillingness to maintain strong pack bonds was hurting Peter. “After all,” Peter said, “healing is magical, and it is insanely difficult for a wolf to maintain a spark of magic. A wolf is magic, but it does not wield magic as most humans can. The wolf smothers it, so typically the alpha with the stronger alpha spark is the one who maintains the magical aspects of the pack.”
“Could Scott help with this?”
“Could he? Undoubtable. Will he? We both know the answer to that.”
Sadly, Stiles did. Some days he didn’t understand Scott. He wasn’t the same boy who had teamed up with him to survive Jackson’s bullying and dream about becoming a first-string player on the lacrosse team. Sometimes Stiles suspected he wasn’t even a good person.
Stiles flinched away from that thought. Scott had an ethical core that allowed him to become an alpha without killing another for his spark. And if he had problems with Peter-well, it wasn’t like Stiles didn’t have his own problems with the asshole. Peter might have been insane during his murderous vengeance phase, but it wasn’t like Stiles was a fluffy bunny either.
Stiles rested his hand on Peter’s shoulder and considered the slick mess of wounds and medicine that covered his back. No matter how vicious Peter could be with his words, he deserved pack support for something like this. Stiles felt a warmth grow in his chest. In the space of a heartbeat, a pain shot through him and then settled into a glow that felt like he’d sat in a hot tub too long. It verged on painful while feeling absolutely fucking perfect.
“What the hell was that?” Stiles looked down into Peter’s startled face. Startled. But not confused. Peter had done something he hadn’t expected Stiles to notice, only Peter’s subtlety button was clearly broken because that had been as subtle as a freight train full of TNT.
Stiles jerked back, freeing his leg from Peter’s hold. “What the fuck did you do?” he demanded. A half second later, his common sense reminded him that he was alone in a room with Peter, whose hold on sanity and morality was questionable in the best of circumstances.
Peter sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. “I had hoped you would not notice that.”
“Notice what?” Stiles demanded.
Peter looked up at him. “Notice that I was creating a pack bond.”
Read the rest at AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139276
1. Perfect Stiles. Look, I love Stiles as much as the next person, and I am perfectly willing to power him up (literally); however, Stiles trips crossing a living room. If you make him all suave, he's not Stiles.
2. Sweet Peter. I happen to think Peter had a really good motive for killing all those people season one. He killed killers. We all rooted for Dexter when he did that, so I have no trouble treating Peter like an anti-hero instead of a villain. However, he has a dangerous edge, and even when he's calling Stiles "sweetheart," he's still going to be plotting the literal or metaphorical deaths of his enemies.
3. Quick Sex. I can see either Peter or Stiles indulging in casual sex. What I can't see them doing is jumping into bed quickly with each other or anyone they know. If it's a relationship, they're going to invest time and loyalty, and I don't see that coming with quick, easy sex. They need to build up to it.
And of course the thing that motivates most of my fanish writing is a good plot hole in the original. In Buffy, I never understood why Xander made a wish to Sweet. He knew better. He wouldn't be that stupid. So either he was drunk/stoned or he was covering for someone else, which is why I wrote Butterfly Kisses. Most of my fanish work comes from my annoyance at either canon or a fanon trope with logical flaws I can't forgive. That's when I have to rewrite them in my head (and often on the computer). Teen Wolf is rife with illogic.
a. Why can Scott become a True Alpha when that's apparently rare?
b. If Corienne didn't want to lose her power to a female child, why not get a legal abortion? Why not kill the infant?
c. How did Talia end up with Malia if Corienne knew that the baby was a threat to her?
d. Why did flashbacks sometimes show Peter and Derek having a great relationship and sometimes show dysfunction out the hoo-ha?
e. Why would Peter work with Kate to de-age Derek?
f. What the hell is up with Deaton. Seriously? What?
So I wrote a very long fiction that is posted over at AO3. It was one of those stories that I posted several chapters a week because it ate my soul. I tried to fix the logic holes that annoyed me while giving Peter and Stiles a healthy relationship. BTW, healthy required 100,000-120,000 before the sex, so don't expect the boys to be getting it on.
Anyway, here's the first chapter and a link to the whole series.
Stiles opened the door to have a bare-chested Peter practically fall on him. “Whoa! Personal space,” he yelped as he shoved Peter away. Peter tumbled to the ground, grunting as he landed on his elbows. That’s when Stiles noticed his back. Long, angry welts stood out against his pale skin. “Oh shit. What happened?”
“Most recently?” Peter asked dryly. “A barely legal human with a fraction of my strength or common sense pushed me to the floor.”
“Shit. Sorry.” Stiles knelt down next to Peter and got a hand under his arm. “Come on.” Stiles urged him to get onto his feet. “How can I help?”
“I need to rinse the poison off and apply an ointment, but given that it is on my back, I am limited in my ability to treat myself.”
“Rinse and ointment. I can handle that. That’s doable. What happened? Do we have another big bad on the horizon?” Stiles helped Peter up the stairs as he wondered if he should change his flight. He had a week before he was supposed to head back to Virginia for university. If there was a new evil in town, they needed to get with the banishing because Stiles didn’t want to develop a reputation for flakiness.
It was one thing for his high school teachers to rightly assume he didn’t pay attention in class, but Stiles had his sights set on the FBI. He had an interesting reputation already. On the one hand, he had waded in, saving a potential suspect who turned out to be the victim of a series of violent crimes-one Derek Hale. On the other hand, he had waded into an armed situation and had gotten shot in the foot when he was supposed to be staying at the van to observe. He needed to balance that out with years of boring, reliable college records. And if they had another rogue Druid or alpha pack on the hunt, it was going to be hard for him to be boring and reliable in Virginia.
“It turns out that someone who didn’t like Derek or the mighty true alpha decided to take it out on my back,” Peter said, his gritted teeth a testament to his pain. Considering that his skin appeared to be disintegrating in stripes, pain was reasonable. So very reasonable.
“Let’s get you in the shower.” Stiles walked sideways as he supported Peter’s weight through the bathroom door.
“My shoes,” Peter said. “They are alligator and I refuse to have them ruined.”
Stiles snorted. “Of course you do. Geez. They’re shoes. I’m more worried about your back.”
“My back will heal, I assure you. Thousand dollar alligator shoes do not.” Peter braced himself on the vanity and tried to bend over, but he only managed a sickening whine.
“I got it. I got it.” Stiles knelt down for the precious shoes. “They’re alligator. Shouldn’t they be fine getting wet?”
“Not since the skin was removed from the actual alligator.” Peter lifted each foot so Stiles could get the shoes off.
Stiles hesitated before he offered, “Do you want to take off your pants?” As much as he didn’t want to see naked Peter bits, the man was injured, and Stiles didn’t know how far the injuries went.
“I think I would rather avoid the poison running onto that skin. Having my back skinned is quite different than having other parts similarly damaged.”
Peter could sound so proper when discussing having his penis potentially skinned with poisonous chemicals. It was a talent-one that Stiles never wanted to develop since being burned alive twice probably had something to do with his lack of flappability. “So, is this something that could strip my skin?” Stiles asked as Peter stepped into the bathtub.
“No, it’s specific to various species of weres. I am sorry we did not have a store of it after dear Kate became a werejaguar. I would have enjoyed watching her skin disintegrate.”
“I would worry about your sadism showing, but since Kate locked you in a burning building, I would probably call that karma.”
“At least I survived,” Peter said softly.
He generally didn’t talk about his family, so Stiles wasn’t sure what to say about that. Normally he filled this sort of awkward silence with words. Wrong words, true, but words. But somehow that felt disrespectful of Talia Hale and all the others who died in the fire Kate had set. So he focused on getting the shower head set on the most gentle setting before diverting the water. It didn’t help much. Long strips of Peter’s back still came free, sliding off like silly slime. Stiles gagged, but he kept a hand under Peter’s arm.
“I should call Deaton. What sort of ointment would help?”
Peter even managed to make a snort sound elegant. He might be a murdering, sadistic bastard, but he did it with a certain panache. “What makes you believe Deaton is in town right now? He is absent as much as he is present these days.”
“True, but we need help with this. Should I call Derek?” Stiles bit his lip. He hated how Derek and Scott acted around Peter. True, Peter was a bastard who had killed innocent people, but the pack had killed him back, and ever since he had returned from the dead, he had been fifty percent less evil. And while Stiles was perfectly happy distrusting Peter or making fun of him or even giving Peter the sucky jobs like playing bait, he wasn’t okay with doing all that and then slamming the door in Peter’s face when he came over to Derek place. And he didn’t understand how Scott could forgive Deucalion who had killed far more people with far less reason and then condemn Peter. It all felt so hypocritical, and Stiles had never done well with hypocrites. So generally, he avoided being in the same space with Peter and the other two. Once again, Peter answered with an elegant snort. He was talented that way. When Stiles snorted, he sounded like a dork and had once-in an infamous incident that he refused to mention ever again-had blown snot all over his shirt.
“I have ointment in my car,” Peter said. “As I said, I simply couldn’t effectively treat my back.”
“Okay, will you be okay if I run out and grab it?” Stiles asked.
Peter waved him away, his other hand braced on the tiles. Stiles took off, but he wasn’t more than a half dozen feet before he raced back to the bathroom and stuck his head in. “Where exactly in your car did you leave it?”
Peter gave Stiles such a withering look that it was clear that he questioned Stiles’ intelligence. That was totally unfair. Stiles was brilliant, he just had a little trouble focusing on details. And he was getting better. In the past, he wouldn’t have realized he didn’t know where to look until he was down at the car.
“On the passenger side seat,” Peter said. “And Stiles?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t tell the others I am here or that I am injured.”
It was the ‘please’ that got to Stiles. Peter didn’t use that word. Ever. It made Stiles feel guilty for having a stray thought about calling Scott. “Of course not,” Stiles said with a bright smile before he darted downstairs. He didn’t actually blame Peter for not wanting the others around. Derek hunched his shoulders every time Peter spoke, and the rest of the pack would flinch, so Stiles could image what sort of scents Derek was putting out. Or maybe the pack was getting something through the pack bonds. Malia has said she could feel the aggravation and anger when Derek was in the same room with Peter.
No wonder, really. Stiles got it. If Peter had killed Stiles’ sister, Stiles would have trouble forgiving him. Lucky for Peter, Stiles didn’t have a sister, and since he’d helped kill Peter, Stiles didn’t feel the same anger as Derek. And Scott had been way worse since Derek had returned. Honestly, Stiles wasn’t sure why Derek had even bothered coming back if he was just going to make everything more awkward.
Ever since Derek had gotten back, Scott was always “Shut up, Peter” about this and “Go away, Peter” about that. The man ended up sitting on the steps behind the rest of the pack, unable to even voice an opinion without someone telling him to shut up. Stiles could not imagine the torture of being forced to remain silent while everyone else had opinions.
Peter sat with his chin resting on his fist as he watched as though amused at the pack’s flailing through the problem of the week. Sometimes Stiles got the impression that Peter knew a lot more than he was saying, but Scott did not want to hear that. Stiles opened the passenger side door of Peter's fancy car and found a leather satchel with a bunch of vials and tins and a bottle of bourbon. Since he wasn't sure which of the various medicines Peter needed, he just grabbed the entire satchel and headed for the house as fast as he could. Even werewolf healing was no match against getting skinned alive, so Stiles needed to get him the medicine as fast as possible.
Stiles had expected to find Peter still in the bathroom, but Peter had made his way into Stiles’ bedroom and sat on the bed with his shoulders hunched and his head hanging. The bloody tatters of his back were on full display now and the wound wept a yellowish fluid that made Stiles want to barf all over the floor. However, since Peter was already contributing to the unpleasant bodily fluids in the room, Stiles decided to forgo that pleasure.
“Which of these do you need?” Stiles opened the satchel right in front of Peter. Peter took a second before he raised his head enough to look in the satchel.
“Put some towels down behind me to soak up the mess and pour the bourbon over my back.”
Stiles stared at the bloody, weeping mess. “I don't think that's a great idea.”
“It is a perfectly horrendous idea,” Peter agreed in a near-amused voice. “However, the alcohol is necessary to neutralize the poison.”
Maybe it made Stiles an asshole, but he looked at his Star Wars bedspread and his sheets. “This might be better in the bathroom.” He reached for Peter’s arm.
“If I were in any way capable of supporting my own weight, I would agree. However, moving is not an option right now, and if you attempt to move me, I fear I may lose control.”
Stiles froze. An out-of-control Peter was very high on Stiles his list of creatures to avoid. They'd already gone through an entire year of what an out-of-control feral Peter could do, and that had included murder. A little booze smell in his bed was not nearly as horrifying as a feral Peter. Stiles went and grabbed a couple of garbage bags to protect his mattress and a bunch of towels to put on top. By the time he got back, Peter was a picture of misery. He had his elbows braced on his knees and his head hung low. “We should tell Scott there's someone doing this in his territory,” Stiles whispered. Maybe Peter was the murderous, creepy uncle in their dysfunctional family, but he was family.
Peter huffed. “I imagine Scott already knows that people hate him, and this is someone who is clearly unwilling to take action against either Scott or the more significant members of his pack. I rather think the danger is only to my designer shirts.”
“Seriously, you are creeping me out. Can you please care more about your skin than your shirts?” Stiles inched closer, forcing himself to look at the damage.
“As I already explained, my back will heal. My shirt will not.”
Sometimes Stiles wondered if Peter had ever truly recovered from his bout of insanity. Wolfsbane in the brain did not lead to logical decision, and maybe Peter wasn’t a murdering avenging angel anymore, but this didn’t seem logical. “This is going to hurt,” he warned.
“Far more than you can imagine, since a human would pass out from pain long before my werewolf constitution will allow me to. If I do manage to pass out, please refrain from moving me. I would feel devastated if Scott chose to hunt me down because I accidentally turned his friend.” Peter lifted his head enough to give Stiles a creepy smile.
“I can't say I’d be happy about getting turned, either.” Stiles wondered whether Peter was as selfish if he sounded or if this was his weird way of teasing.
Peter considered him like Stiles was a piece of art. “I've always told you you'd make a beautiful wolf.”
“You're not really doing a good job of convincing me to help.”
“And yet, you will help,” Peter said with confidence. “That is why I've always liked you and wanted you in the pack. You have loyalty that far outstrips your common sense, and that is an admirable trait in a wolf. One I personally do not possess, but I can still admire it.”
“Now you're just trying to butter me up so I’ll torture you by pouring alcohol and open wounds.”
Peter gave a strangled laugh but fell silent. Wincing, Stiles poured the alcohol over the weeping wounds. The liquid turned pink with Peter's blood and Peter hissed as his fingers grew long claws, but he controlled himself. “Is that enough?” Stiles asked once he had touched every bit of bleeding back.
“Is it still weeping yellow?”
“Most of it isn’t.”
“Any place where you see weeping, poor alcohol until the weeping stops.”
“This is seriously gross,” Stiles muttered, but he tipped the alcohol bottle up again. Peter reached out and grabbed Stiles’ leg. Stiles heart pounded in his chest, and he would've run away, only Peter's tight grip held him in place. After a heart-stopping second, he realized that Peter was just holding onto him like a teddy bear. It was almost endearing if one could ignore the vicious claws that were dangerously close to both his femoral artery and other pieces of equipment that he was very fond of. “I'm almost done here.”
“Thank the gods.”
“Are you going to tell me what attacked you?” Stiles set the bourbon to one side and picked the satchel up-and the whole time, Peter held onto his leg firmly.
“As I said, a creature that has a rather distinct dislike for the one-true-failure.”
“Don't call him that,” Stiles snapped. Maybe Scott was an asshole around Peter, but he was Stiles’ best friend. Even before the werewolf stuff, it had been the two of them against the world. Stiles, the spastic ADHD loser and Scott the asthmatic dork. Even Scott’s powers as a true alpha couldn’t change their bonds of friendship.
“What? Am I forbidden from pointing out the truth?” Peter huffed. “I created Scott to be a beta for me, to help me regain my sanity when parts of my brain were still infused with wolfsbane and I struggled to even recognize reality from the nightmares that it haunted me for six years. After your possession by the Nogistune, I imagine you understand something of the madness that follows when you are no longer able to discern reality from the nightmares that shred your psyche.”
Stiles swallowed. This is not a topic he wanted to discuss, but he did understand. The others thought Stiles could somehow walk it off, but what the Nogistune had done with his mind and his body would haunt him for the rest of his life. Stiles suspected that he had accepted the offer to go to university in Virginia largely because he needed to get away from California. He needed to get away from anything that reminded him of that darkness and madness and fear. The fact that the program in Virginia was known to feed straight into the FBI was a simple bonus.
Even though Stiles had not said anything, Peter nodded slowly. “I knew you would understand. And since Scott was created to help rein in my madness and help me find myself and the stability of pack bonds, you can hardly blame me for describing him as a failure.”
“He's a true alpha. He created his own spark.”
“Humans are inherently magical. Most humans do contain a spark, perhaps not one strong enough to ignite or balance the wolf to create an alpha, but the potential is there in most humans. It is only the belief and the knowledge which is lacking. You yourself have a spark that was at one point brighter than Scott's.”
“At one point?”
Peter didn't say anything, but Stiles knew. The Nogitsune had destroyed so much of him. It had smothered him, and in a way, Stiles still felt smothered, as if a blanket had been thrown over his true nature.
“What do I do now?” Stiles would rather focus on the more pleasant subject of Peter’s skinned back. Hell, Stiles would rather have a skinned back himself than reopen that wound.
“The blue bottle, pour some in a bowl with the powder from the black tin. Those will accelerate the healing and protect the muscle until the skin recovers.” Peter’s voice was, once again, businesslike. Stiles had no idea how he maintained his calm with this much damage.
Stiles had a clean bowl sitting on his desk from where he'd been trying to practice scrying, not that it worked. He tried to pull away, but Peter held his leg so Stiles had to stretch to pull the bowl closer so he could mix the two.
“Not so much liquid,” Peter corrected him. “Make it closer to a paste or gel that you can smooth on.”
A shiver went down Stiles a spine. He was going to have to touch those wounds. However, he wasn't willing to leave Peter shivering in pain, and calling another member of the pack didn't seem like a good solution, not when their help would come with conditions, assuming they would help at all.
So, gritting his teeth, he scooped up some of the purplish gel and carefully smoothed it over the worst of the stripes. Peter hissed in pain, but he didn't move. He did, however, tighten his hold on Stiles’ leg until pinpricks ran along his nerves.
“Sorry,” Peter muttered before he loosened his hold and leaned farther down to make it easier for Stiles to treat the wounds.
“There are white fibers in the skin.”
“No doubt the remains of my shirt,” Peter said with a mirthless chuckle. “If you can easily remove them, please do. It will make it easier for me to heal.”
“These aren’t healing well. Did an alpha do this?” Stiles bent all the way over Peter to get the wounds low on his back.
“No.”
“But they aren’t healing.” As far as Stiles knew, werewolf healing worked against all other injuries.
“A werewolf’s ability to heal is dependent upon the strength of his bond to his alpha and pack.” Peter sounded bitter. Stiles took a deep breath and tried to rein in his temper as he realized Scott’s unwillingness to maintain strong pack bonds was hurting Peter. “After all,” Peter said, “healing is magical, and it is insanely difficult for a wolf to maintain a spark of magic. A wolf is magic, but it does not wield magic as most humans can. The wolf smothers it, so typically the alpha with the stronger alpha spark is the one who maintains the magical aspects of the pack.”
“Could Scott help with this?”
“Could he? Undoubtable. Will he? We both know the answer to that.”
Sadly, Stiles did. Some days he didn’t understand Scott. He wasn’t the same boy who had teamed up with him to survive Jackson’s bullying and dream about becoming a first-string player on the lacrosse team. Sometimes Stiles suspected he wasn’t even a good person.
Stiles flinched away from that thought. Scott had an ethical core that allowed him to become an alpha without killing another for his spark. And if he had problems with Peter-well, it wasn’t like Stiles didn’t have his own problems with the asshole. Peter might have been insane during his murderous vengeance phase, but it wasn’t like Stiles was a fluffy bunny either.
Stiles rested his hand on Peter’s shoulder and considered the slick mess of wounds and medicine that covered his back. No matter how vicious Peter could be with his words, he deserved pack support for something like this. Stiles felt a warmth grow in his chest. In the space of a heartbeat, a pain shot through him and then settled into a glow that felt like he’d sat in a hot tub too long. It verged on painful while feeling absolutely fucking perfect.
“What the hell was that?” Stiles looked down into Peter’s startled face. Startled. But not confused. Peter had done something he hadn’t expected Stiles to notice, only Peter’s subtlety button was clearly broken because that had been as subtle as a freight train full of TNT.
Stiles jerked back, freeing his leg from Peter’s hold. “What the fuck did you do?” he demanded. A half second later, his common sense reminded him that he was alone in a room with Peter, whose hold on sanity and morality was questionable in the best of circumstances.
Peter sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. “I had hoped you would not notice that.”
“Notice what?” Stiles demanded.
Peter looked up at him. “Notice that I was creating a pack bond.”
Read the rest at AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139276