Happy Wolfenoot! A wolf!Peter ficlet felt like an appropriate celebration.
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“So he’s stuck like this?” Derek asked, rubbing a tension line in his forehead.
“Likely for a few days, yes,” Deaton answered, ignoring the growls coming from the wolf on the examination table in front of him.
“Shut up,” Derek growled back at wolf, glaring.
The wolf barked, snapping his teeth, but Derek’s no doubt scathing response was interrupted by Stiles running full tilt into the room, skidding to a stop next to the cabinets.
Expression frantic, he swiftly asked, “Is he okay? Is he-” He stopped, finally noticing the huge black wolf in the room. His expression suddenly flipped a 180 into sheer delight. “Oh my GOD is that him?? Peter is that you? Holy shit you’re adorable!!”
Peter immediately sat up straighter and preened.
Derek rolled his eyes.
“Take your idiot boyfriend home, Stiles. I’m not going to let him pee on all my furniture.”
Stiles wanted to protest in Peter’s defense, but knew that Peter would, in fact, do something exactly like that if Derek tried to take him home. However-
“I don’t even know what’s going on though. I thought you guys were just going to go talk to the witch?” he asked, moving over to the examination to sink his fingers into Peter’s new thick fur, grinning when Peter rumbled happily.
“That’s all we did,” Derek said grudgingly. “She… didn’t like what we had to say.”
Stiles rolled his eyes this time.
“I told you not to be rude to her.”
Derek scowled back at him.
“She walks around on literal chicken legs, it’s not like we were afraid of her-”
“You should have been,” he said bluntly. “Can you imagine what kind of power you’d have to get in order to be willing to live with chicken legs in return? You’re probably lucky this is all she did.” He looked disapprovingly at Peter, who looked indignant and started yowling and shaking a paw at Derek.
Stiles raised an eyebrow, looking back at Derek.
“What did you do?” he demanded accusingly.
Derek’s mouth dropped open.
“I didn’t do anything!”
Stiles gestured at Peter behind him, who was looking smugly at Derek over Stiles’ shoulder.
“Peter says differently,” Stiles said staunchly.
Derek opened his mouth to argue back, but Deaton interrupted.
“You didn’t tell me she had chicken legs,” he said slowly, brow furrowed. “If she was a Baba Yaga, then this might be an even more archaic curse than I thought.” He frowned contemplatively, and then looked at Stiles. “How long have you and Peter been dating?”
“A few months,” Stiles answered, confused at the abrupt change of subject.
Deaton nodded thoughtfully.
“Do you love him?”
Stiles startled.
“Uh, that’s kind of personal-”
“It’s important, Stiles, have you told him that you love him?” Deaton asked in that infuriatingly placid way of his.
Stiles shifted on his feet a little.
“Yeah-”
“Kiss him.”
Stiles’ and Derek’s mouths fell open.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Give him a kiss.”
Stiles waved a hand in the air expansively, trying to indicate the sheer amount of absurdity he felt the request deserved.
“Do you honestly think I can undo this with a true love’s kiss??”
Deaton shrugged.
“It can’t hurt to try.”
“It sure fucking could!” Stiles argued back. “Aside from you being severely unsympathetic to the possible emotional ramifications if this doesn’t work, exactly what kind of kiss are you talking about here? Because in the earliest versions of Sleeping Beauty-”
“Just a kiss, Stiles,” Deaton cut in, taking his own turn for an eye roll. “Like you would kiss the top of a pet’s head. And if it doesn’t work, that means nothing about the state of your relationship, it simply means it’s not the solution for whatever type of curse is on him. It’s best to start with the simplest answer.”
Derek and Deaton looked at Stiles expectantly.
Stiles sighed and looked at Peter, who was holding completely still aside from the occasional twitch of his furry little snout.
“You’re coming with me to therapy next week, and we’re gonna talk about this no matter how it turns out,” he said sternly. Then he leaned forward and dropped a smooch on Peter’s head.
Nothing happened.
Deaton nodded.
“Alright, at least we have the answer to that-”
While Deaton spoke, Stiles couldn’t help but be disappointed. The whole idea was absurd, of course, but…
Peter snuffled into his space, whining a little as he took in Stiles’ expression. He leaned forward and gave a little lick to Stiles’ cheek-
POP
Peter sat naked on the examination table, hair askew and looking just as surprised as everyone else.
“Ah,” Deaton said. Everyone was quiet for a beat.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Stiles blurted out. Did Peter love Stiles more than Stiles loved Peter? Was he Peter’s soulmate, but Peter wasn’t his? Was slobber a necessary component of the spell??
“It means she was a crafty old witch, Stiles,” Deaton assured him calmly as he fetched a spare set of scrubs. “She inverted the spell. Rather than receiving a true love’s kiss, he had to give one. It means nothing specific about your relationship. I’m sure you and Peter both…” He furrowed his brow just the tiniest amount. “Love each other very much.”
“Oh my God, please never go into relationship counseling. You’re the worst,” Stiles groaned out, leaning on Peter and scrubbing his face with his hands.
Derek quickly excused himself after that, clearly eager to get home and away from the love discussions. Peter pulled on the scrubs and allowed Deaton to check his heartbeat and lungs only because Stiles refused to take him home until he was cleared.
Stiles drove them both back to Peter’s apartment afterwards, and after a quick shower they rolled into bed together.
Peter immediately pulled Stiles back into his body as the little spoon, and whispered into his neck, “True love’s lick.”
Stiles snorted a laugh and brought Peter’s hand up to his mouth to kiss his palm gently.
“Personally I liked the kiss better,” he said. “What a dumb curse.”
Peter smiled against Stiles’ skin, peppering him with kisses.
“Very dumb.” He pulled at Stiles to flip him over so they were face to face. “I can think of a lot of uses for true love’s lick, though,” he said suggestively.
A slow smile spread across Stiles’ face.
“I’m not sure I can believe that without evidence,” he said, grinning.
Listen. Listen. I just took a double dose of cold medicine and I’m ready to ride this angst train into the jaws of hell.
Because Peter didn’t expect Stiles to take care of him. No one has taken care of him before, he’s always been perfectly self sufficient. Even as a child, his parents supplied his material needs and then left him to his own devices for everything else.
Peter doesn’t need anyone else to care for him, to care about him. If you ask him whether or not he wants someone to care for him, he’ll scoff and look down his nose at you… but he won’t answer.
And Stiles never wanted to be in this position again. After his dad got clean/Stiles left home/whatever, he was done. When he’s out with friends, Stiles stays for two drinks and leaves, every time. He’s never around when people get sloppy drunk because he knows he would feel obligated to help, and he’s done doing that.
So part of the reason Stiles turned the water on Peter was because he was angry. Angry at Peter for getting this drunk, angry at himself for seeking out Peter when he knew he would be this drunk- kind of hoping that the shock of water will sober him up enough that he’ll get up and take care of himself.
Instead, Peter just says “thanks” and then passes out in the shower.
And Stiles considers leaving him there. He really does, but he’s worried, and frustrated, and every of the other ten thousand feelings that come with caring about Peter Hale, and all of those feelings combined outweigh Stiles’ determination to never be put back in the same caretaker situation he was in with his dad as a child.
So he takes Peter home.
Cleans him up.
Puts him in recovery position.
And waits for him to wake up.
Peter’s hangover muddles his brain enough that it takes him a few minutes in the morning. When he finally realizes that he’s at Stiles’, that Stiles must have taken care of him last night, a part of him is thrilled. He feels loved in a way he’s not used to experiencing.
Stiles, on the other hand, upon seeing Peter awake and no longer in danger of choking to death on his own vomit, is furious.
He tears into Peter (loudly, with zero regard for Peter’s hangover) yelling about how irresponsible that was, and how Stiles isn’t a babysitter, and how Peter needs to start taking care of himself-
And that’s when Peter starts to cut back with words, because like hell is anyone going to accuse him of not taking care of himself when that’s all he’s ever done.
They’re both frustrated and confused and full of all those deep emotions that are so, so terrifying when you’ve had a childhood filled with coping rather than growing.
In the end, it comes down to Peter yelling (hangover be damned), “I didn’t ask you to come take care of me!”
And Stiles of course yells back, “You didn’t have to ask me to take care of you, that’s just what you do when you love someone!”
Peter is stunned into silence, but Stiles isn’t done yelling. He keeps going.
“I just never wanted to love someone who would put me that position again!”
And now they’re both silent, staring at each other.
Because where do you go from there?
JFC, @twothumbsandnostakeincanon , get your germ-encrusted fingers off the keyboard and go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done. I need to fix this shit before you make me bawl like a baby at almost-2am.
Peter’s stunned like he almost never is, and Stiles is silent, won’t look him in the eyes as he starts to move around the apartment angrily, slamming around the kitchen as he makes breakfast and tortures Peter’s poor booze-soaked brain at the same time. It’s efficient, he’ll give the boy that.
He hauls his sorry carcass up and into the shower, and is too busy trying to wake up and put together the pieces of Stiles’s explosive cocktail of love and fury to snoop through the medicine cabinet while he’s in there. By the time he’s puttering back out in borrowed sweats and an old hoodie that has Stiles’s scent engrained in the fabric, he thinks he has the general shape of things–which is enough to make him push down his own resentment and bitterness, because he can indulge those later, but this, what Stiles said, that can’t be put off.
He waits until they’re both seated in front of scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. “Why would you say you love me?” He asks it like it’s not important, like the answer he gets isn’t going to be the single deciding factor in where his life goes from here. Like this isn’t a fork in the road.
Stiles rolls his eyes. “Gee, Peter, I don’t know. Why do you think I said it?”
He raises an eyebrow. “I think your father is a functioning alcoholic, and that he had a non-functioning phase you had to steer him out of. I also think that you’re projecting your daddy issues onto a man old enough to be your father who happens to enjoy bickering as a hobby.” He smirks, and if it has more of an edge than usual, no one will know. “But, if it’s closure you’re after, kiddo, by all means, consider me at your service.”
Maybe I’m an old man but goddamn, these vampires with blood dripping down their chins–that’s your food!! THAT’S YOUR FOOD!! Close!! Your!! Mouth!! You think some asshole slobbering chicken noodle soup or yogurt or clam chowder all down themselves would be sexy??? What makes you any different, you sticky-stained slackjawed screwball??? Close your mouth!! Use a napkin!! And for godssakes stop looking so smug, like, “Oooo, I’m a creature of the night look at what sustains me” yeah uh huh a fucking lack of basic hygiene is what I’m seeing and it is not impressive!! At all!! My nephews are three years old and they drool less than you do!! You’re how many centuries old?!?! ACT LIKE IT
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