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Peter is walking away from him, getting into the dead nurse’s car, and Stiles is torn. On one hand, creepy mo-fo apparently bent on destroying Scott, on the other hand…
…on the other hand, a man who spent ten years in hell, a man who’s lost everything, a man who was abandoned and left to rot by what little family he had left, a man who is simply doing the only thing he knows how to do to cope.
Fuck. There’s really no choice about this for Stiles. He doesn’t want to be like Peter is because no one sane wants to be like Peter is, he was telling the truth about that, but there is a difference between ‘like Peter is’ and ‘what Peter is.’ He does want the bite, but he doesn’t want to be like Peter. Peter is only a stone’s throw away from being bat-shit-crazy, and he should have never gotten to this point. Pack bonds, from what he managed to infer from several ‘talks’ with Derek, were supposed to help stabilize an injured or crazed alpha, not galvanize them.
“Wait,” he calls out.
Peter doesn’t. He’s shutting the door, starting the car, getting ready to go and commit murder and lose what little sanity he has left. He’ll be killed in turn, Stiles knows this. If the Argents don’t get the man, Scott will, because Scott doesn’t want this, and Derek’s given him the only hope Scott has: a cure by murder. Stiles doesn’t believe it will work, believes that if Scott succeeds, all Scott will have is a dead corpse on his hands. There is no cure to lycanthropy.
“You don’t have a pack,” he shouts, frantic. “You said you needed a pack to deal with the Argents, but you don’t have one.”
Stiles has one heart-stopping, terrifying moment to think that his best friend is going to be a murderer before he graduates high school, before he notices that Peter has stilled. He’s sitting there, hands on the wheel, no expression to be seen on what little of his face Stiles can see in the side-view mirror. Stiles takes this all the permission he needs to hurry up and continue.
“Look, I get that Scott wasn’t exactly your first choice and that once you bit him you had to make do, but he’s not your pack. He doesn’t have whatever bond Derek was trying to explain to him with you. Maybe at the school you almost had him, but you don’t anymore. And, just a thought, but I’m pretty sure that by now, you don’t even have Derek, if you ever did.” Stiles doesn’t look away from that reflection of Peter, because he knows this is important. Somehow.
The concept of pack is important to Peter, even if what it implies is so far out of Stiles’ comfort-zone as to be completely and utterly alien. This says something about the man, something he thinks Peter doesn’t even realize is being said. Perhaps it is out of the sympathetic thought of what he would do if someone ever deliberately locked his father, Scott, and Melissa in a house and set it on fire, but Stiles cannot just stand by and let Peter drive his way into either certain death or certain madness, because that's the strange fear that’s really driving Stiles right now: Peter will go mad if he gets his vengeance.
He has a memory of his father just after the accident that took his mother’s life, standing in the kitchen holding his service pistol. His father wasn’t doing anything particularly alarming, just standing there, looking at Stiles as he watched his father. His father eventually put the pistol away and brought out the whisky, never saying a word. To this day, Stiles doesn’t think his father remembers the incident. But Stiles will never forget the look in his father’s eyes as he held the gun, the yawning distance between his father’s grief and his father’s rage, and the empty madness that lied between. Grief won out in the end for his father, and Stiles will never tell the man how grateful he is for that. But now he has seen the same yawning pit in Peter’s eyes, has heard it in his voice, and Stiles can’t just sit there and watch this time.
There is an idea niggling in his head. It is a bad idea, he knows it, but he also knows it is not the worst of ideas he could be having, and any idea at all is better than no idea right now. He’s listened to Derek’s pathetic attempts at explaining what a pack-bond was as it existed alpha-to-beta and beta-to-beta, and he’d assumed at the time that all the bond shit was meant metaphorically. But all of the sudden he was remembering things Peter had said that night at the hospital and things he’d read on the internet and taken with a grain of salt. All of it implied rather severe consequences if those bonds were lost, both physical and mental.
And if there were consequences for the loss of pack-bonds, then it stood to reason that gaining new ones could repair the damage done. To an extent. Possibly. He’s working with only half-formed theories and very few confirmed facts, but he has an idea. At best it’ll do exactly what he thinks it will. At worst, well. He doesn’t want to think about what might happen in the worst-case scenario.
“Scott’s a lost cause, especially after you threatened his mother. He has enough issues with adult-male authority telling him what to do without adding in the memories of his abusive asshole of a father into the mix. Maybe if you resolve a few of your very obvious issues and actually try to reach out to Scott as a person instead of a fuzzy murder-partner, he might consent to joining your pack, but as it stands right now, you’re fucked on that front. And Derek…” he frowns. “Derek’s his own little joyless bundle of man-pain and issues, not in the least amongst them what Kate Argent’s done to him.” He sighs and shrugs. “You said you needed a pack to deal with the Argents. And if Scott is out, and quite probably Derek, who do you have left?”
Peter’s hands flex against the wheel, and then he’s getting out of the car, every motion very, very careful, as if the older man is afraid of what he might do. That’s okay, because Stiles is afraid of what Peter might do. The man’s gaze is more than a little crazed, and the muscles around his jaw are spasming erratically. He looks one more comment away from committing murder. “You have my attention,” the man says, and his voice is a lethal purr, all danger and bad intent.
“Put off your revenge for a week,” Stiles says quietly, desperately. “Just one week. Let the Argents get as complacent as they’ll get. They’re like angry wasps right now, swarming all over the place.”
Peter’s hands are twitching now, and Stiles can tell Peter’s temper is holding on by a thin thread.
“In the meantime, build yourself a real pack with people who actually want what you’re offering. The bite takes around 24 hours to take, or so I assume based on what I went through with Scott, but I don’t know if consent has any effect on the speed with which it takes, so it could be shorter. After that, you’ll have however many murderous, fluffy balls of instinct. I can only assume that’ll work to your advantage on the vengeance front, though dealing with them afterwards might be a headache and a half – also in the assumption that you want a pack that’ll last.”
Peter isn’t relaxing, but he’s also not ripping Stiles apart or getting back into the car. He’s just watching him, face expressionless but eyes burning. “You refused,” Peter says.
Stile sighs again. “I do want the bite, Peter. But I don’t want the baggage that comes with it. You’re not insane, not really, not yet, but I know that look in your eyes. I’ve seen that look on my father’s face shortly after my mother was killed, and I know you’re not far from jumping that precipice.” He shrugs. “I don’t want to be like you, Peter. I don’t want to find myself on that edge, because unlike my father, I’m not sure if I’ll have the strength to pull myself back.” He studies the older man in front of him. “I don’t think you have the strength to pull yourself back either, but I presume that is what a pack is supposed to be for their alpha – an anchor to keep you on the right side of crazy.”
Stiles takes a deep breath and, cautiously, extends his arm, wrist up. “Take a week. Build yourself a pack. And if at the end of the week, what you need is still to bathe in the blood of Argent instead of exposing them for the crazy, bad-touching, criminal assholes that they are, then I’ll help you do it right, as long as you leave the rest of whoever you bite out of it.”
Peter is still watching him, gaze still burning in its intensity, but now there is an almost bemused expression on his face. “A week,” he says quietly.
“Just one week,” Stiles agrees.
“Build myself a pack.”
“Yes. Considering you bit Lydia, I know at least one other who is already chomping at the bit to get bitten. Jackson’s an asshole, but he does love her, and he already knows all the pros and cons of what he wants.” He swallows, unable to stop the fine tremor that rocks his body. “And you already know I want the bite.”
Peter smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You seem sure that a week is all I’ll need to change my mind.”
Shit. Stiles sighs again. “Can’t get anything past you, huh?” He laughs helplessly. “My dad’s pretty smart, you know? He doesn’t know a thing about werewolves, or hunters, or you, but he’s got a pretty good idea about what really happened ten years ago. He’s tracked down people, gotten statements, did some basic detective work that others should have done, and he’s going to start arresting people sometime within the next week.” He meets Peter’s eyes. “Kate Argent is being arrested tomorrow morning on a multitude of charges, including but not limited to statutory rape, assault and battery, vehicular manslaughter, arson, murder, bribery, theft, illegal surveillance, and illegal possession of firearms.” He smiles bitterly. “Dad found a pattern. Yours is not the only family she’s butchered. Yours is just the only one with survivors.”
Peter reaches out and grabs Stile’s arm, yanking him sharply forward. Stiles crashes against Peter’s body, grunting at the impact, which hasn’t even made Peter twitch. “You…” Peter can’t seem to finish whatever he’s trying to say, the hand holding Stile’s arm tightening hard enough that there’s a tight, throbbing burst of pain that radiates from the bone, and Stiles hopes that Peter hasn’t just broken his arm. He whimpers, curling inwards as best as he can given the awkward angle his arm is being held at, and Peter – thankfully – relents his grip a bit.
Stiles breathes deeply, fighting back the sudden nausea and the impending panic attack he can feel just waiting to spring itself on him. “I’m not saying he’ll be able to make anything stick,” he finally manages to say. “I’m not saying that Kate won’t escape. I can’t offer guarantees or promises, because I’m not stupid enough to believe 100% in our legal system.” He does his best to look Peter in the eyes, because despite the pain he’s in, he needs Peter to understand that he means this. He doesn’t know why this is so important to him, doesn’t understand why he just can’t let Peter go, but he’s used to working off of gut instinct and poor impulse control, and somehow, he knows he needs this to happen, needs Peter to be as whole as he can be. “I can promise, however, that if you give my dad that chance, and he fails, I will help you do what you need to do to settle your family’s ghosts.” He hesitates only briefly before tacking on a quick: “I will do my best to keep you from losing what little sanity you have left once you do it.”
“A week,” Peter says, and this time when he says it, Stiles can hear the considering note in his voice.
“Yes,” he says.
Peter studies him, the anger leaving him as he does, and Stiles doesn’t relax so much as he just slumps against the older man, arm still twisted awkwardly. He’s suddenly very tired. There has just been entirely too many emotionally charged discussions going on today, most of them with this man, and the physical aspects of the day have not helped. He just wants to curl up somewhere and go to sleep, and he knows that the adrenaline rush that has been keeping him going for the past hour or so is finally starting to fade. He’s going to crash soon, and when he does, he’s going to crash hard.
“You don’t even realize what you’re offering, do you?” Peter finally asks, voice quiet. The man adjusts his grip on Stiles’ arm, moving the limb into a more natural position. He also brings his other hand up to cup the back of Stiles’ head, fingers absently playing with the shorn fuzz of his hair.
Stiles doesn’t move. Peter radiates heat like a goddamn furnace lives under his skin, and it’s actually kind of comfortable. Scott didn’t burn this hot, nor did Derek, although Derek definitely ran at higher temperatures then humans did. And did he mention he is crashing? Sleep sounds absolutely wonderful right now. “Anchor,” he finally manages to get out, and he’d be embarrassed about how incoherent he is being if he could be bothered to care. Peter smells good too, for a man who’s been running around trying to kill people.
“Much more than that, Stiles,” Peter laughs, and the sound isn’t entirely pleasant. There’s a touch of cruelty in it, more than a touch of satisfaction, but it’s a good sound, considering Stiles just flipped the man’s world on its axis. Stiles has noted that people who do that to Peter don’t tend to live long, and usually murders are committed with howling and/or growling, so the fact that Peter is laughing in any capacity is reassuring none-the-less. Besides, hoping new bonds will help heal the man mentally doesn’t mean Stiles is a naïve idiot. He knows that Peter is not a nice man, but that’s okay, because Stiles has never been accused of being a nice boy.
“’t’s okay,” he slurs out, slumping further.
He doesn’t so much as twitch in protest when Peter moves him back just far enough to get Stiles’ arm between them and raised to Peter’s mouth. “A week,” Peter says, promises, threatens.
He bites.