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He’d learned about soul mates when he was a child. The Hales had been big on the idea of soul mates, finding the one who could sate the man and the wolf in equal measure and harmonize the warring spirit of a werewolf. Talia had been so happy to find her husband, and seeing them together had been both smile- and gag-inducing.
Peter never believed in the idea of a perfect mate. The thought of one soul being so perfect, so precisely formed, that it fit you like a puzzle piece, was ridiculous.
He’d never met anyone who calmed his soul. The whole world only made it burn colder and harsher, inside him until his body had been burned on the outside to match. And yet, after all this time…
Stiles is Derek’s mate, and both of them are too stupid to figure it out. Oh, it’s a beautiful thing to watch, the way they dance around each other, spun in sugar and glittering glass. Like a fragile little fairytale, a tender rosebud just waiting to unfurl. It makes Peter sick, because love is a fairytale and his dear darling nephew does not deserve a happy ending.
And Derek loves Stiles. At least, Peter thinks he would, if he ever gave it a thought. As it is, he pushes the thoughts deep down along with all his other emotional baggage and treats the boy like dirt.
Which is… just perfect, in fact.
Stiles lusts for Derek. Oh yes, Peter pays attention, sees the way Stiles’ eyes follow the alpha like a magnet, a slight flush to his cheeks. Well, look at his nephew, who wouldn’t be affected? And of course, even if Derek looked like the Phantom of the Opera’s less photogenic side, Stiles would still find him attractive. That’s the thing about mates, isn’t it? They see your warts and scars and love you anyway.
But Stiles is smart, so smart, and rather funny when he wants to be, and Peter likes having someone to match wits with. Someone to smile at the jokes that fly over everyone else’s head. And Derek wants him so much already, and Peter so likes to take other people’s toys. It’s easy to pretend to care.
So he steps in. He starts as a friend, a tutor. Books about the occult and the supernatural, knowledge that Derek can’t offer. The forbidden fruit, and Stiles has a mouth that was meant to bite and be bitten.
The boy is skeptical at first, naturally. Peter understands, and sometimes he too still feels the burn under his skin caused by this boy and he wants to shred his pretty throat and cut out his heart. But only sometimes.
And Stiles has such a nice smile, once he starts to relax. He starts to joke and banter, and Peter smiles and banters back and keeps his itching hands in fists. Not yet, not quite.
Derek notices, of course he does. It’s glorious; Stiles flushed and angry on Peter’s behalf, berating Derek for treating his uncle so poorly. And Derek just stares and snaps and says all the wrong things, just like Peter knows he will. He’s just a child, still, and it shows in everything he does.
Stiles leaves in a huff, and invites Peter over to his own house so that Derek can’t hover and glower. Which is lovely. Stiles’s room smells like the boy, every inch, and it’s a treat to lay back and relax in the warmth and the smell, the chatter of his prey a calming white noise in the background. There are no other wolves here, no one to challenge his claim, and slowly Stiles’ room becomes his den. His smell is as strong as the boy’s, ‘lost’ jackets and afternoon naps strengthening the scent, and Stile is so soft and welcoming and…
It’s nice, having someone waiting for you. Peter likes it, more than he thought he would. Stiles bakes him sweet things and tells him sweet things and Peter finds himself watching the clock, waiting for the boy to be in his room. Expecting him.
Derek gets angrier and angrier, and the rift between the two widens. Stiles doesn’t smell like lust anymore around Derek, only fatigue and exasperation and a certain sense of wistfulness. What happened to us? He imagines the boy thinking, and he slings an arm around the boy's shoulders when he leaves a pack meeting and leans a little too much. Derek still smells like lust and longing. Peter hides his smile in Stiles’s hair.
So easy to twist and turn, every one of them.
And then he finds himself watching the curve of Stiles’s smile as the boy reads a book, and wanting nothing more than to keep watching that curve get bigger and brighter. He finds himself watching the boy while he sleeps and waiting for him to wake, and he’s not sure what’s happened to him. He's twisting, turning, anything to get closer, because close feels good and far feels...
Stiles smiles at him and kisses him, so lightly and spritely, and tells him in a small, soft voice that he loves you, Peter. And Peter wants to cry, wants to kill this stupid, lovely little boy that has done this to him.
Instead he kisses the boy back.
And Stiles does love him. He smells like love and lust and laughter and light, and it makes Peter feel like he’s falling without a safety net. He smells love on himself too, unfamiliar over the known scent of lust, and he tries to scrub the stench from his skin at first, scours until his skin’s raw and bleeding and then he curls in the bathtub until the water clears of red and he’s stopped shivering. The smell never goes away, and his skin heals over every time without a mark, and eventually he stops trying. He falls without a safety net, knowing all too well what awaits. He knows how this story is supposed to end.
It’s awful, because there’s a pull, you see, between real mates, true mates. And Derek still looks at Stiles like he’s the first star at twilight when you’re scared of the dark, and sometimes the way that Stiles looks back at him is gently pensive, absentmindedly bemused. Like he’s not quite sure why he’s sitting here next to Peter, and Derek’s across the room. There’s no stink of guilt in his scent, no betrayal; he’s Peter's lovely puppet but someone else is pulling his strings. Pulling him towards Derek. There’s a thread between the two of them, tugging them closer and closer into each other’s orbit. They’re the fairytale lovers, meant to fall into each other’s arms and live happily ever after, and Peter hates it.
He doesn’t have a thread, never has, adrift in a cold world that doesn’t love him and that he doesn’t love. He didn’t think that he’d find Stiles. He didn’t know that he’d love Stiles.
He didn’t….
So maybe he knows how this story is supposed to end. So maybe Stiles is supposed to be with Derek. Maybe he’d be happier with him, but he’s happy enough here, all rosy cheeks and bright eyes and kiss-swollen lips. Maybe Derek would be happier with Stiles too, but Peter really doesn’t give a damn, not when Stiles sighs into his neck and curls even further into his body as they lie together on the narrow bed.
Maybe Peter doesn’t have a thread of fate tying Stiles to him.
He’s got claws instead, and threads are easy enough to break.