Without Mythologies (gift for tw_holidays)
Title: Without Mythologies
Author: verbyna
Recipient: tw_holidays
Pairings: Derek/Peter (Derek/Kate Argent, Peter/Chris Argent)
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,012
Warnings: canon-appropriate violence, secondary character death, incest, Hale approximations of mental health
Summary: “He’s my alpha,” Peter tells Stiles, only slightly reproachful. “His mother was my alpha and it was my job to look after him. I’m not obsessed.”
Author's Notes: Many thanks to [to be revealed] for the beta, and to the mods, who made it possible to participate in the exchange despite RL foiling me at every turn.
the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it - you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them
- from The Promise by Sharon Olds
i.
Peter delivered Derek two weeks before term, down in the basement, while the pack fought upstairs and outside to keep the hunters away.
Mine, Peter thought, holding the crying baby. He handed him over carefully, body curved to present a bigger target should a hunter find them. None did.
Two years later, Derek and Laura’s mother became alpha. She never stopped being Peter’s sister, but she had more to worry about: alliances and threats, a witch, playing human. Peter babysat the kids after school and brought them to his girlfriends’ houses on full moons. His grades fell, but the rest of the pack stopped looking at him like he was a liability. School had never been important; he played sports and flirted, got into fights and made out with Chris after games, but everything he learned that was truly useful he learned at home.
“I wish I’d waited,” Peter’s alpha confessed to him once. Peter’s wolf lowered his eyes at the admission. “They would’ve been stronger if I’d had them now.”
“But they wouldn’t be Derek and Laura,” he said, hoping not to be hurt.
She smiled at Peter. “They’re lucky to have you.”
It wasn’t quite right. He didn’t correct her.
ii.
The woods around the house aren’t exactly an ideal place to play with children, but Peter makes do. Until they learn to control themselves, especially the growling and penchant for bloodsport, he can’t let them run around with other kids.
They roll around in the cover of fallen leaves while Peter watches, shouting instructions at Derek. When he has Laura in a headlock, he laughs up at Peter, open and trusting.
“Get up,” Peter tells Laura. “Pin him back against the tree.”
“Mean,” Derek pouts after the ensuing scuffle. There’s a cut on his cheek, already healing.
“I don’t play favorites, kiddo,” Peter says, brushing the dirt off Derek’s sweater briskly. He stops to squeeze his shoulder, maybe soften the blow, but then Laura jumps on his back and he’s obliged to tickle her until she screams.
“You’ll be the death of me,” he mutters once she’s settled down, looking around at the swaying trees and scenting the air for a rabbit. “I can’t wait to take you hunting.”
“Yes,” Laura hisses from the ground. “Can we? Can we go tomorrow?”
“Not until Derek can keep up.”
“But-”
Peter raises an eyebrow at her . She punches Derek in the leg sullenly. “Hurry up and grow.”
iii.
Peter didn’t go to college. It was a relief not to have anyone pushing him that way, but Chris left for upstate New York in the fall, and suddenly it was just little Kate running down from the Argents’ porch when Peter jogged past in the mornings.
He got a job at a call center two towns over and stopped running. He did push-ups at night in his bedroom, and sometimes Derek came in with his blanket and watched him quietly from the corner.
Peter never sent Derek back to his room. Chris never e-mailed Peter back, and it was better to fall asleep with Derek at his back than staring at the computer screen, waiting for news from someone whose father hadn’t been torn in half. Because Chris was many things, but he was neither a werewolf nor a friend. He was a brother, though. He understood why Peter always had to choose family over Chris, over school, even over himself. Soldiers are loyal.
It would be another eleven years before Kate Argent showed Peter what Chris didn’t become when he chose to leave the town, when he didn’t tell Peter what he was. Even soldiers have their limits.
iv.
He keeps getting fired. They don’t get it and he never explains: Peter doesn’t fuck coworkers because he wants to break the rules, he does it because everyone working working shitty minimum-wage jobs can use a little pick-me-up. Anyone can use a distraction.
On cold winter afternoons, with the sun sinking fast behind the hills, he stops by the side of the road and pulls out his books. The grimoires, the paperbacks, the anatomy textbooks he stole at night from the library. His breath mists over the pages. He growls under his breath when he can’t figure something out, and the woods go quiet around him.
Laura is being trained by the alpha. Peter’s sister has the child she chose to groom and Peter has Derek waiting for him at home. Between work and sex and PTA meetings, teaching Derek to ride a bike and Laura to fix cars, it’s only by the side of the road that Peter finds time to make himself useful for later.
Derek is his, and underneath her mother’s training, so is Laura. Making dinner and helping with homework won’t keep them safe when they’re old enough to be a threat for others. And they’ll be dangerous. He’ll make sure of it.
v.
Derek stops coming to Peter’s room to sleep when puberty kicks in. They go hunting at night sometimes, and when they come back to wash the blood off, Peter teases Derek about girls while the water runs pink in the cast-iron kitchen sink.
“There’s no one,” Derek says. Peter keeps whispering the same shit he heard in the locker room until Derek is red in the face.
Then, one night, it’s Kate Argent.
Peter doesn’t call Chris, even though everything in him twists at the idea of Kate with Derek. In retrospect, maybe he should’ve, but he raised Derek to trust his instincts.
vi.
He can feel it when his sister dies and Laura becomes his alpha. Through her, Derek’s pack bond is sharper - sharp enough that Peter knows exactly when they’ve crossed territory lines.
For seven years, it plays like a movie in his head: the flames licking up his face, Derek’s terror as Laura pulled him away from Peter, and that crystal-clear sense of Derek’s wolf through the only other person in the world who truly knows them both.
For seven years, he hates his sister for failing to protect him. He burns with it while his body heals, slowly, from the inside out.
And then a Hale alpha comes back just as he learns to use the wolf to move his body around. He rips her in half. He doesn’t die in the fight, because no matter what his human side might feel about this half-life, the wolf always fights to survive.
It takes him two days to realize it was Laura, and another two hours to remember she left him behind when she should’ve saved him. As an alpha, even without a pack, Peter can’t imagine doing that. She cut him off when she made it into town. He was alone with his nightmares.
vii.
The only time Stiles asks Peter why he turned Scott, Peter tells him the truth. It was dark.
viii.
He likes Stiles for the same reasons he liked Chris. They’re fighters: they protect people with everything they have, from their hands to their quick minds. They’re loyal and they can draw lines between their own and everyone else.
They’re wolves, whether they know it or not.
He likes Lydia because she’s everything Laura would’ve been if not for the fire. She’s fierce, and even though she’s abjectly terrified of him and the web he’s weaving to pull himself from death’s grip again, she’s stronger than she knows.
When he’s not walking the back corridors of Lydia’s mind, Peter plays a game of Fantasy Pack to pass the time. If he were still the alpha, if Derek hadn’t killed him, they’re the two he’d want for his own.
ix.
If there’s one thing Peter learns by the time he’s thirty-seven, it’s that dying isn’t the worst kind of pain. Coming back makes it pale in comparison.
He promises himself to avoid it in the future.
x.
Derek doesn’t hate him. Under all the alpha bluster and paranoia, he is what Peter made him.
The problem, of course, is that Peter wasn’t meant to be an alpha any more than Derek was, so he couldn’t teach Derek how to lead. Peter is himself again, though, and he makes himself useful.
Bad alphas get their packs killed. Derek doesn’t hate Peter, but he doesn’t trust him either, and Peter can’t explain that he delivered Derek from his mother and later pushed him into Laura’s arms so they could get away from the fire. Derek tried to get in, but Peter couldn’t let him. He doesn’t regret it. Not even when he thinks of being trapped down there with the house falling down around him.
He can’t make Derek trust him, so he doesn’t even try. He just gets his laptop out and figures out what they can do to stay alive.
He’s not surprised in the least that Stiles is an asset. He grew up as Scott’s second-in-command, his father’s second-in-command. Of course he does what needs to be done and never expects any thanks.
It was dark when Peter bit Scott. He was half-mad when he tried to fix his mistake and offered Stiles the bite.
Nobody’s perfect.
x.
Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two, Derek kept up the workout routine that Peter got him on during his brief stint as a personal trainer in ‘03. Even so, if they were human, Peter could (probably) take him in a fight.
They’re not human. Derek is Peter’s alpha, and for all that Peter is a weapon, he’s Derek’s weapon now. Peter’s always aware of Derek’s whereabouts, looking for the trigger finger to his barely restrained violence. He watches Derek when they’re in the same room and shadows him when he’s out, less and less these days with the alpha pack circling; when Derek’s sleeping, Peter ventures out to Deaton’s clinic to keep an eye on Scott and Isaac, since Derek is clearly in over his head where those two are concerned.
It’s no coincidence that hanging around Deaton’s clinic, wisely outside the perimeter wards, doubles as an opportunity to track Stiles.
It’s very simple: any werewolf who kills an alpha becomes an alpha in turn. Peter won’t do it with his mental walls so thin that he catches himself snarling at floorboards, and Erica and Boyd already left once. If one of them gets an alpha form, they’ll take off sooner rather than later. Isaac is a beta if Peter ever saw one. Scott as an alpha would challenge Derek and fail to build a pack if he won.
Stiles is not a werewolf. He’s got it in him to kill an alpha, or more - the magic comes so easily to him when he allows himself to use it, in his room, when he doesn’t have to worry about others - and he won’t tear the pack structure apart in doing so.
xi.
Derek’s breath is hot on Peter’s face. Peter tilts his head back in a show of submission and looks back at him lazily from where he’s pressed against the wall of Laura’s old room. Derek’s hands tighten in response; his eyes are red, and if Peter wasn’t worried he might be banished, he’d tell Derek off for losing control so easily.
“What are you doing with Stiles?” Derek asks.
Peter can’t breathe, so he rolls his eyes heavenward and wheezes.
“Whatever it is, stop it.”
Peter doesn’t drop to his knees when Derek releases him, though he wants to give in to the impulse just to see the look on Derek’s face. He allows himself to slide a little down the wall and - there it is. Derek presses forward to catch him.
He doesn’t jump back when Peter stills and wets his lips, neck still exposed, but he freezes in place.
Peter finally lowers his eyes to stare into Derek’s, and then, pointedly, down between them.
“Stop it,” Derek warns again, and stalks off to sulk in corners and plot ways to make Scott go against his own nature.
Peter huffs a laugh and goes to find his laptop. He promised Isaac he’d download some comics for him, now that there’s no room to store trade copies, and he’s bidding on a mint condition grimoire against a certain dtone73 from California. In other words, he’s too busy to explain to Derek that Isaac is the key to keeping Scott around, and that Stiles is how they’ll survive. He’ll catch on eventually, and maybe he won’t kill Peter (again) for it.
xii.
Derek isn’t the bonding type. Even when he was younger, before Kate, he was easily frustrated and uncomfortable with honest shows of emotion. Peter can’t blame himself for it when he knows for a fact that Derek’s been that way since he learned how to talk.
He doesn’t have pack meetings, and he doesn’t ask about Erica’s parents or Boyd’s grandma. He pretends not to notice that Boyd and Erica are pretty serious about each other, and that Isaac is left out most of the time and spends too much time with Scott at Deaton’s clinic. And worst of all, he turns into a freak around Stiles, who’s possibly the most upfront person that Peter’s ever come across.
It’s Stiles who approaches Peter, in the end. He sits down across from Peter in the diner booth, shoves his hands in the pocket of his Little Red hoodie, and chews on the insides of his cheeks until Peter can smell blood. He smirks when Peter’s nose twitches; there’s wolfsbane in his system.
“Stiles,” Peter says. “I see you’ve been using those books I left for you.”
“I would’ve preferred something, you know, in pdf. I live with the sheriff, I can’t put a password on, like, an ancient tome of conspicuous magical knowledge.” Stiles pauses to upend the saltshaker on the table and draw a glyph in the mess with a fingertip, relaxing a little when he’s done. “It was creepy, by the way, all the lurking and the books. But I guess I’m valuable if you’re doing it, so you won’t let the alphas kill me if you can help it.”
Peter smiles, somewhere between unnerved and delighted. “You could say that. How’s your training going?”
“That’s between me and Deaton. How’s babysitting Derek working out for you?”
There’s nothing in Stiles’ face to suggest that he knows about Peter’s role in Derek’s life, but it’s the first time anyone’s acknowledged it, even as a conversational stab in the dark. Peter hums to buy some time and narrows his eyes at the overly bright sunlight pouring in through the window. When he looks back, Stiles seems amused.
“I assume the salt thing was a silencing trick?” Peter settles on saying.
Stiles nods and snaps his fingers at a passing couple, who keep walking like they don’t even notice Stiles is there. “Handy, right?”
“Especially in class, I’d imagine,” Peter says. “If I were you I’d keep the books at school and read them in class. I mean, that’s what I did. Too loud at home.”
“Huh. Well, it’s too law-enforcery at home, so yeah, I only pay attention in, like, chemistry and physics. A lot of this stuff is physics with a cheat sheet, anyway.” Stiles shrugs like it’s no big deal.
They don’t talk about Scott, or Isaac, or the fact that Stiles turned his body into a trap to disable any wolf who touches the blood he’d use in lethal spells. When Stiles leaves, he blows on the glyph in the salt to erase it and mouths a few words as he walks past the window on the way to his Jeep, looking at the sky.
Peter takes his time walking home through the thunderstorm. It was a nice gesture; the light was hurting his eyes.
xiii.
Derek can smell Stiles on Peter after every meeting. Peter can take the frowns and the disapproving looks, and he honestly doesn’t mind being shoved into a wall every other day. He refuses to explain it to anyone but Isaac, who’s smart and wants to hold the pack together almost as much as Peter does.
“What do you need me to do?” Isaac asks, after Peter’s done filling him in. “Other than not tell Derek about it.”
“Well, aren’t you brave,” Peter says, patting Isaac on the shoulder and relishing the way the kid doesn’t recoil. “I’ll let you know what Stiles needs, but for now, keep an eye on Deaton. I’ll take care of Derek.”
Isaac bites his lip and shifts his weight. Peter waits. Finally: “He’s wrong about you. Derek, I mean. He’s wrong not to trust you.”
“No, he’s not.”
Isaac does recoil this time, but he sketches a smile back at Peter and accepts it. He’s too much like Peter to look down on his choices.
xiv.
Stiles and Deaton have a plan. Peter is pretty sure it doesn’t involve Stiles summoning him to a warehouse for a private meeting, but he’s willing to go along with it.
He steps into the circle knowing that he’ll be at Stiles’ mercy, and lets the strange peace of it seep into him like its own protection. Stiles detaches himself from the shadows and walks up to him slowly. In his wake, the air seems to shimmer and stretch, distorting the graffiti on the far wall.
“Do you like it?” he asks Peter. His voice is strong, doesn’t echo, and Peter thinks, That’s what belief sounds like.
“You’re learning,” he says instead.
“I could kill you. Right now, and you couldn’t stop me.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Peter says honestly. “Although no sane person could blame you.”
Stiles considers this for a moment, then laughs bitterly. Peter’s lungs seize and he wonders if he’s misjudged things after all, but Stiles shrugs it off and the pressure passes.
“They really can’t. You turned my best friend into a werewolf because it was dark. Seriously? And you’re obsessed with your nephew, who’s not only, like, a blood relative - which, gross - but he uses his attractiveness like a blunt weapon. You sort of deserve each other. I think it’s easier to just watch it unfold.”
“Funny. He’s my alpha,” Peter says, only slightly reproachful. “His mother was my alpha and it was my job to look after him. I’m not obsessed.”
“That’s debatable, but you should look into denial. Just FYI.” He stops to flex the boundaries again before shifting his focus back to Peter. “Was Laura your alpha too? Are you trying to make up for what you did?”
This is an interrogation, then. Peter blinks and flashes back to the fight, the night he killed her, how sore his muscles were and how badly he’d wanted to spread the pain out to someone who’d get it. Someone who deserved it and could offer relief. Stiles is watching him closely.
“That was unfortunate,” Peter settles on saying.
“She was the alpha and she left you behind,” says Stiles, comprehension dawning along with a bit of ill-disguised horror. “So that’s - but if her mom was the alpha, then - is it hereditary? Did you even - did you know it was her?”
“She did was she was meant to do,” Peter says, suddenly exhausted. “She saved what was left of the pack.”
“Derek.”
“The pack,” Peter repeats, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. Stiles looks understanding, and maybe that’s the worst part.
It’s not until later that Peter realizes there must’ve been something other than a plain caster’s circle waiting for him in the warehouse. He respects Stiles a little more, but stops wishing he’d bitten him instead of Scott the night he killed Laura. He has a type, and they’re not inclined to make his life easy.
xv.
The last time Derek asked Peter what he should do was the night he lost his virginity to Kate Argent.
Peter was thirty and he’d never lived away from home, hadn’t slept with anyone who mattered since he was eighteen and Chris moved to New York. He didn’t like his life. He couldn’t bear the thought of changing it.
It was May, like now. Derek came to Peter’s room, all lean muscle and soft jawline, and leaned against the wall, flexing his fingers. He didn’t look at Peter.
“I really like her.”
There were owls in the trees outside. Derek followed one with his eyes as it took off, then turned them on Peter, golden and piercing.
“Are you going to tell your mother about her?” Peter asked, although he knew the answer.
The things the two of them didn’t tell the alpha could fill a book. How Derek never shook off all the petty humiliations from Laura, who asserted herself in the pack more and more and thought Derek needed to toughen up to be her second-in-command. How he stood with Peter just outside the territory line sometimes when they couldn’t pretend that they were what their sisters needed, and how he always looked for Peter first when they shifted. How his eyes changed when Peter came home smelling like other people, and he never asked Peter if he had someone, because he didn’t have to.
“Should I tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her about Chris Argent.”
“Kate’s brother? You and him, you mean - Kate says he got married. Has a kid, Allison. She’s ten.”
“Yeah, I figured. Look, kid - Derek. We’re not like other people, but we can still get what we want once in a while.”
Derek rubbed his hands across his face and gave Peter a long look. “Can I borrow your jacket? Laura’s out tonight. I’m meeting Kate.”
Peter took off the jacket and held it out for Derek, watched him put it on. “There are condoms in the chest pocket. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“So that’s it?”
Peter smoothed his hands down the leather sleeves and stepped back as casually as he could. “Sometimes we get what we want.”
Derek left. Peter paced around his room for hours, so that by the time he fell asleep, he was exhausted. He didn’t wake up when the smoke rose to the second floor; it was the screaming that woke him. He ran downstairs, but almost everyone was already unconscious.
Derek and Laura arrived at the same time. Peter pushed Derek out of the house and trusted Laura to hold him there, then went back to try and get the alpha out. He was in the basement when the floor collapsed, but he was awake long enough to see Laura dragging Derek away to safety.
Derek was wearing the jacket when he buried Laura. Peter could smell it on him. He came into town driving the car she fixed with Peter, and it took everything in Peter to hold the wolf back long enough to let Derek get away.
xvi.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a bite.
There’s glass stuck in Peter’s back but he doesn’t care to stop, lets his skin heal over it - barely feels the pain, really, because Stiles came through for them and Peter’s the one Derek came back to after they won.
“What, no ‘thank you’?” Peter rasps, grinning viciously.
“Shut up,” says Derek with a mouthful of blood. He’s heavy and his eyes are red and he’s miraculously, gloriously alive.
Peter thinks, Mine to keep.
END
Author: verbyna
Recipient: tw_holidays
Pairings: Derek/Peter (Derek/Kate Argent, Peter/Chris Argent)
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,012
Warnings: canon-appropriate violence, secondary character death, incest, Hale approximations of mental health
Summary: “He’s my alpha,” Peter tells Stiles, only slightly reproachful. “His mother was my alpha and it was my job to look after him. I’m not obsessed.”
Author's Notes: Many thanks to [to be revealed] for the beta, and to the mods, who made it possible to participate in the exchange despite RL foiling me at every turn.
the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it - you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them
- from The Promise by Sharon Olds
i.
Peter delivered Derek two weeks before term, down in the basement, while the pack fought upstairs and outside to keep the hunters away.
Mine, Peter thought, holding the crying baby. He handed him over carefully, body curved to present a bigger target should a hunter find them. None did.
Two years later, Derek and Laura’s mother became alpha. She never stopped being Peter’s sister, but she had more to worry about: alliances and threats, a witch, playing human. Peter babysat the kids after school and brought them to his girlfriends’ houses on full moons. His grades fell, but the rest of the pack stopped looking at him like he was a liability. School had never been important; he played sports and flirted, got into fights and made out with Chris after games, but everything he learned that was truly useful he learned at home.
“I wish I’d waited,” Peter’s alpha confessed to him once. Peter’s wolf lowered his eyes at the admission. “They would’ve been stronger if I’d had them now.”
“But they wouldn’t be Derek and Laura,” he said, hoping not to be hurt.
She smiled at Peter. “They’re lucky to have you.”
It wasn’t quite right. He didn’t correct her.
ii.
The woods around the house aren’t exactly an ideal place to play with children, but Peter makes do. Until they learn to control themselves, especially the growling and penchant for bloodsport, he can’t let them run around with other kids.
They roll around in the cover of fallen leaves while Peter watches, shouting instructions at Derek. When he has Laura in a headlock, he laughs up at Peter, open and trusting.
“Get up,” Peter tells Laura. “Pin him back against the tree.”
“Mean,” Derek pouts after the ensuing scuffle. There’s a cut on his cheek, already healing.
“I don’t play favorites, kiddo,” Peter says, brushing the dirt off Derek’s sweater briskly. He stops to squeeze his shoulder, maybe soften the blow, but then Laura jumps on his back and he’s obliged to tickle her until she screams.
“You’ll be the death of me,” he mutters once she’s settled down, looking around at the swaying trees and scenting the air for a rabbit. “I can’t wait to take you hunting.”
“Yes,” Laura hisses from the ground. “Can we? Can we go tomorrow?”
“Not until Derek can keep up.”
“But-”
Peter raises an eyebrow at her . She punches Derek in the leg sullenly. “Hurry up and grow.”
iii.
Peter didn’t go to college. It was a relief not to have anyone pushing him that way, but Chris left for upstate New York in the fall, and suddenly it was just little Kate running down from the Argents’ porch when Peter jogged past in the mornings.
He got a job at a call center two towns over and stopped running. He did push-ups at night in his bedroom, and sometimes Derek came in with his blanket and watched him quietly from the corner.
Peter never sent Derek back to his room. Chris never e-mailed Peter back, and it was better to fall asleep with Derek at his back than staring at the computer screen, waiting for news from someone whose father hadn’t been torn in half. Because Chris was many things, but he was neither a werewolf nor a friend. He was a brother, though. He understood why Peter always had to choose family over Chris, over school, even over himself. Soldiers are loyal.
It would be another eleven years before Kate Argent showed Peter what Chris didn’t become when he chose to leave the town, when he didn’t tell Peter what he was. Even soldiers have their limits.
iv.
He keeps getting fired. They don’t get it and he never explains: Peter doesn’t fuck coworkers because he wants to break the rules, he does it because everyone working working shitty minimum-wage jobs can use a little pick-me-up. Anyone can use a distraction.
On cold winter afternoons, with the sun sinking fast behind the hills, he stops by the side of the road and pulls out his books. The grimoires, the paperbacks, the anatomy textbooks he stole at night from the library. His breath mists over the pages. He growls under his breath when he can’t figure something out, and the woods go quiet around him.
Laura is being trained by the alpha. Peter’s sister has the child she chose to groom and Peter has Derek waiting for him at home. Between work and sex and PTA meetings, teaching Derek to ride a bike and Laura to fix cars, it’s only by the side of the road that Peter finds time to make himself useful for later.
Derek is his, and underneath her mother’s training, so is Laura. Making dinner and helping with homework won’t keep them safe when they’re old enough to be a threat for others. And they’ll be dangerous. He’ll make sure of it.
v.
Derek stops coming to Peter’s room to sleep when puberty kicks in. They go hunting at night sometimes, and when they come back to wash the blood off, Peter teases Derek about girls while the water runs pink in the cast-iron kitchen sink.
“There’s no one,” Derek says. Peter keeps whispering the same shit he heard in the locker room until Derek is red in the face.
Then, one night, it’s Kate Argent.
Peter doesn’t call Chris, even though everything in him twists at the idea of Kate with Derek. In retrospect, maybe he should’ve, but he raised Derek to trust his instincts.
vi.
He can feel it when his sister dies and Laura becomes his alpha. Through her, Derek’s pack bond is sharper - sharp enough that Peter knows exactly when they’ve crossed territory lines.
For seven years, it plays like a movie in his head: the flames licking up his face, Derek’s terror as Laura pulled him away from Peter, and that crystal-clear sense of Derek’s wolf through the only other person in the world who truly knows them both.
For seven years, he hates his sister for failing to protect him. He burns with it while his body heals, slowly, from the inside out.
And then a Hale alpha comes back just as he learns to use the wolf to move his body around. He rips her in half. He doesn’t die in the fight, because no matter what his human side might feel about this half-life, the wolf always fights to survive.
It takes him two days to realize it was Laura, and another two hours to remember she left him behind when she should’ve saved him. As an alpha, even without a pack, Peter can’t imagine doing that. She cut him off when she made it into town. He was alone with his nightmares.
vii.
The only time Stiles asks Peter why he turned Scott, Peter tells him the truth. It was dark.
viii.
He likes Stiles for the same reasons he liked Chris. They’re fighters: they protect people with everything they have, from their hands to their quick minds. They’re loyal and they can draw lines between their own and everyone else.
They’re wolves, whether they know it or not.
He likes Lydia because she’s everything Laura would’ve been if not for the fire. She’s fierce, and even though she’s abjectly terrified of him and the web he’s weaving to pull himself from death’s grip again, she’s stronger than she knows.
When he’s not walking the back corridors of Lydia’s mind, Peter plays a game of Fantasy Pack to pass the time. If he were still the alpha, if Derek hadn’t killed him, they’re the two he’d want for his own.
ix.
If there’s one thing Peter learns by the time he’s thirty-seven, it’s that dying isn’t the worst kind of pain. Coming back makes it pale in comparison.
He promises himself to avoid it in the future.
x.
Derek doesn’t hate him. Under all the alpha bluster and paranoia, he is what Peter made him.
The problem, of course, is that Peter wasn’t meant to be an alpha any more than Derek was, so he couldn’t teach Derek how to lead. Peter is himself again, though, and he makes himself useful.
Bad alphas get their packs killed. Derek doesn’t hate Peter, but he doesn’t trust him either, and Peter can’t explain that he delivered Derek from his mother and later pushed him into Laura’s arms so they could get away from the fire. Derek tried to get in, but Peter couldn’t let him. He doesn’t regret it. Not even when he thinks of being trapped down there with the house falling down around him.
He can’t make Derek trust him, so he doesn’t even try. He just gets his laptop out and figures out what they can do to stay alive.
He’s not surprised in the least that Stiles is an asset. He grew up as Scott’s second-in-command, his father’s second-in-command. Of course he does what needs to be done and never expects any thanks.
It was dark when Peter bit Scott. He was half-mad when he tried to fix his mistake and offered Stiles the bite.
Nobody’s perfect.
x.
Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two, Derek kept up the workout routine that Peter got him on during his brief stint as a personal trainer in ‘03. Even so, if they were human, Peter could (probably) take him in a fight.
They’re not human. Derek is Peter’s alpha, and for all that Peter is a weapon, he’s Derek’s weapon now. Peter’s always aware of Derek’s whereabouts, looking for the trigger finger to his barely restrained violence. He watches Derek when they’re in the same room and shadows him when he’s out, less and less these days with the alpha pack circling; when Derek’s sleeping, Peter ventures out to Deaton’s clinic to keep an eye on Scott and Isaac, since Derek is clearly in over his head where those two are concerned.
It’s no coincidence that hanging around Deaton’s clinic, wisely outside the perimeter wards, doubles as an opportunity to track Stiles.
It’s very simple: any werewolf who kills an alpha becomes an alpha in turn. Peter won’t do it with his mental walls so thin that he catches himself snarling at floorboards, and Erica and Boyd already left once. If one of them gets an alpha form, they’ll take off sooner rather than later. Isaac is a beta if Peter ever saw one. Scott as an alpha would challenge Derek and fail to build a pack if he won.
Stiles is not a werewolf. He’s got it in him to kill an alpha, or more - the magic comes so easily to him when he allows himself to use it, in his room, when he doesn’t have to worry about others - and he won’t tear the pack structure apart in doing so.
xi.
Derek’s breath is hot on Peter’s face. Peter tilts his head back in a show of submission and looks back at him lazily from where he’s pressed against the wall of Laura’s old room. Derek’s hands tighten in response; his eyes are red, and if Peter wasn’t worried he might be banished, he’d tell Derek off for losing control so easily.
“What are you doing with Stiles?” Derek asks.
Peter can’t breathe, so he rolls his eyes heavenward and wheezes.
“Whatever it is, stop it.”
Peter doesn’t drop to his knees when Derek releases him, though he wants to give in to the impulse just to see the look on Derek’s face. He allows himself to slide a little down the wall and - there it is. Derek presses forward to catch him.
He doesn’t jump back when Peter stills and wets his lips, neck still exposed, but he freezes in place.
Peter finally lowers his eyes to stare into Derek’s, and then, pointedly, down between them.
“Stop it,” Derek warns again, and stalks off to sulk in corners and plot ways to make Scott go against his own nature.
Peter huffs a laugh and goes to find his laptop. He promised Isaac he’d download some comics for him, now that there’s no room to store trade copies, and he’s bidding on a mint condition grimoire against a certain dtone73 from California. In other words, he’s too busy to explain to Derek that Isaac is the key to keeping Scott around, and that Stiles is how they’ll survive. He’ll catch on eventually, and maybe he won’t kill Peter (again) for it.
xii.
Derek isn’t the bonding type. Even when he was younger, before Kate, he was easily frustrated and uncomfortable with honest shows of emotion. Peter can’t blame himself for it when he knows for a fact that Derek’s been that way since he learned how to talk.
He doesn’t have pack meetings, and he doesn’t ask about Erica’s parents or Boyd’s grandma. He pretends not to notice that Boyd and Erica are pretty serious about each other, and that Isaac is left out most of the time and spends too much time with Scott at Deaton’s clinic. And worst of all, he turns into a freak around Stiles, who’s possibly the most upfront person that Peter’s ever come across.
It’s Stiles who approaches Peter, in the end. He sits down across from Peter in the diner booth, shoves his hands in the pocket of his Little Red hoodie, and chews on the insides of his cheeks until Peter can smell blood. He smirks when Peter’s nose twitches; there’s wolfsbane in his system.
“Stiles,” Peter says. “I see you’ve been using those books I left for you.”
“I would’ve preferred something, you know, in pdf. I live with the sheriff, I can’t put a password on, like, an ancient tome of conspicuous magical knowledge.” Stiles pauses to upend the saltshaker on the table and draw a glyph in the mess with a fingertip, relaxing a little when he’s done. “It was creepy, by the way, all the lurking and the books. But I guess I’m valuable if you’re doing it, so you won’t let the alphas kill me if you can help it.”
Peter smiles, somewhere between unnerved and delighted. “You could say that. How’s your training going?”
“That’s between me and Deaton. How’s babysitting Derek working out for you?”
There’s nothing in Stiles’ face to suggest that he knows about Peter’s role in Derek’s life, but it’s the first time anyone’s acknowledged it, even as a conversational stab in the dark. Peter hums to buy some time and narrows his eyes at the overly bright sunlight pouring in through the window. When he looks back, Stiles seems amused.
“I assume the salt thing was a silencing trick?” Peter settles on saying.
Stiles nods and snaps his fingers at a passing couple, who keep walking like they don’t even notice Stiles is there. “Handy, right?”
“Especially in class, I’d imagine,” Peter says. “If I were you I’d keep the books at school and read them in class. I mean, that’s what I did. Too loud at home.”
“Huh. Well, it’s too law-enforcery at home, so yeah, I only pay attention in, like, chemistry and physics. A lot of this stuff is physics with a cheat sheet, anyway.” Stiles shrugs like it’s no big deal.
They don’t talk about Scott, or Isaac, or the fact that Stiles turned his body into a trap to disable any wolf who touches the blood he’d use in lethal spells. When Stiles leaves, he blows on the glyph in the salt to erase it and mouths a few words as he walks past the window on the way to his Jeep, looking at the sky.
Peter takes his time walking home through the thunderstorm. It was a nice gesture; the light was hurting his eyes.
xiii.
Derek can smell Stiles on Peter after every meeting. Peter can take the frowns and the disapproving looks, and he honestly doesn’t mind being shoved into a wall every other day. He refuses to explain it to anyone but Isaac, who’s smart and wants to hold the pack together almost as much as Peter does.
“What do you need me to do?” Isaac asks, after Peter’s done filling him in. “Other than not tell Derek about it.”
“Well, aren’t you brave,” Peter says, patting Isaac on the shoulder and relishing the way the kid doesn’t recoil. “I’ll let you know what Stiles needs, but for now, keep an eye on Deaton. I’ll take care of Derek.”
Isaac bites his lip and shifts his weight. Peter waits. Finally: “He’s wrong about you. Derek, I mean. He’s wrong not to trust you.”
“No, he’s not.”
Isaac does recoil this time, but he sketches a smile back at Peter and accepts it. He’s too much like Peter to look down on his choices.
xiv.
Stiles and Deaton have a plan. Peter is pretty sure it doesn’t involve Stiles summoning him to a warehouse for a private meeting, but he’s willing to go along with it.
He steps into the circle knowing that he’ll be at Stiles’ mercy, and lets the strange peace of it seep into him like its own protection. Stiles detaches himself from the shadows and walks up to him slowly. In his wake, the air seems to shimmer and stretch, distorting the graffiti on the far wall.
“Do you like it?” he asks Peter. His voice is strong, doesn’t echo, and Peter thinks, That’s what belief sounds like.
“You’re learning,” he says instead.
“I could kill you. Right now, and you couldn’t stop me.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Peter says honestly. “Although no sane person could blame you.”
Stiles considers this for a moment, then laughs bitterly. Peter’s lungs seize and he wonders if he’s misjudged things after all, but Stiles shrugs it off and the pressure passes.
“They really can’t. You turned my best friend into a werewolf because it was dark. Seriously? And you’re obsessed with your nephew, who’s not only, like, a blood relative - which, gross - but he uses his attractiveness like a blunt weapon. You sort of deserve each other. I think it’s easier to just watch it unfold.”
“Funny. He’s my alpha,” Peter says, only slightly reproachful. “His mother was my alpha and it was my job to look after him. I’m not obsessed.”
“That’s debatable, but you should look into denial. Just FYI.” He stops to flex the boundaries again before shifting his focus back to Peter. “Was Laura your alpha too? Are you trying to make up for what you did?”
This is an interrogation, then. Peter blinks and flashes back to the fight, the night he killed her, how sore his muscles were and how badly he’d wanted to spread the pain out to someone who’d get it. Someone who deserved it and could offer relief. Stiles is watching him closely.
“That was unfortunate,” Peter settles on saying.
“She was the alpha and she left you behind,” says Stiles, comprehension dawning along with a bit of ill-disguised horror. “So that’s - but if her mom was the alpha, then - is it hereditary? Did you even - did you know it was her?”
“She did was she was meant to do,” Peter says, suddenly exhausted. “She saved what was left of the pack.”
“Derek.”
“The pack,” Peter repeats, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. Stiles looks understanding, and maybe that’s the worst part.
It’s not until later that Peter realizes there must’ve been something other than a plain caster’s circle waiting for him in the warehouse. He respects Stiles a little more, but stops wishing he’d bitten him instead of Scott the night he killed Laura. He has a type, and they’re not inclined to make his life easy.
xv.
The last time Derek asked Peter what he should do was the night he lost his virginity to Kate Argent.
Peter was thirty and he’d never lived away from home, hadn’t slept with anyone who mattered since he was eighteen and Chris moved to New York. He didn’t like his life. He couldn’t bear the thought of changing it.
It was May, like now. Derek came to Peter’s room, all lean muscle and soft jawline, and leaned against the wall, flexing his fingers. He didn’t look at Peter.
“I really like her.”
There were owls in the trees outside. Derek followed one with his eyes as it took off, then turned them on Peter, golden and piercing.
“Are you going to tell your mother about her?” Peter asked, although he knew the answer.
The things the two of them didn’t tell the alpha could fill a book. How Derek never shook off all the petty humiliations from Laura, who asserted herself in the pack more and more and thought Derek needed to toughen up to be her second-in-command. How he stood with Peter just outside the territory line sometimes when they couldn’t pretend that they were what their sisters needed, and how he always looked for Peter first when they shifted. How his eyes changed when Peter came home smelling like other people, and he never asked Peter if he had someone, because he didn’t have to.
“Should I tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her about Chris Argent.”
“Kate’s brother? You and him, you mean - Kate says he got married. Has a kid, Allison. She’s ten.”
“Yeah, I figured. Look, kid - Derek. We’re not like other people, but we can still get what we want once in a while.”
Derek rubbed his hands across his face and gave Peter a long look. “Can I borrow your jacket? Laura’s out tonight. I’m meeting Kate.”
Peter took off the jacket and held it out for Derek, watched him put it on. “There are condoms in the chest pocket. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“So that’s it?”
Peter smoothed his hands down the leather sleeves and stepped back as casually as he could. “Sometimes we get what we want.”
Derek left. Peter paced around his room for hours, so that by the time he fell asleep, he was exhausted. He didn’t wake up when the smoke rose to the second floor; it was the screaming that woke him. He ran downstairs, but almost everyone was already unconscious.
Derek and Laura arrived at the same time. Peter pushed Derek out of the house and trusted Laura to hold him there, then went back to try and get the alpha out. He was in the basement when the floor collapsed, but he was awake long enough to see Laura dragging Derek away to safety.
Derek was wearing the jacket when he buried Laura. Peter could smell it on him. He came into town driving the car she fixed with Peter, and it took everything in Peter to hold the wolf back long enough to let Derek get away.
xvi.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a bite.
There’s glass stuck in Peter’s back but he doesn’t care to stop, lets his skin heal over it - barely feels the pain, really, because Stiles came through for them and Peter’s the one Derek came back to after they won.
“What, no ‘thank you’?” Peter rasps, grinning viciously.
“Shut up,” says Derek with a mouthful of blood. He’s heavy and his eyes are red and he’s miraculously, gloriously alive.
Peter thinks, Mine to keep.
END