Chapter Text
Stiles woke up to the smell of copper and something else—something wild and wrong that his hindbrain recognized before his conscious mind could catch up.
His eyes snapped open in the darkness of his bedroom, heart already hammering against his ribs like it was trying to escape his chest cavity. The digital clock on his nightstand read 2:47 AM in angry red numbers, and there was someone in his bed.
Not just in his room. In. His. Bed.
"What the—" Stiles jerked upright, or tried to, his body moving on pure adrenaline and panic. A hand—large, solid, and way too close—pressed against his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to stop him mid-thrash.
"Stop moving."
That voice. Low, smooth, with that particular edge of amusement that made Stiles' blood run cold even as his brain finally, finally caught up with what his instincts had been screaming at him.
Peter Hale.
Peter fucking Hale was in his bed.
"Get out!" Stiles' voice cracked embarrassingly on the second word, shooting up an octave. He twisted away from the hand on his shoulder, scrambling backward until his spine hit the headboard with a dull thunk that rattled his teeth. "Get out, get out, what the hell are you—"
"I said stop moving." Peter's voice was sharper now, irritation bleeding through the amusement. In the dim light filtering through Stiles' curtains—streetlight, moon, whatever—Stiles could just make out his silhouette. Peter was sitting on the edge of the bed, not lying down, thank God, but still. Still there. Still too close. "You're making this significantly more difficult than it needs to be."
"Difficult?" Stiles' laugh came out high and manic. His hands were shaking. He pressed them against the mattress, trying to ground himself, trying to think. His phone was on the nightstand. His bat was—shit, where was his bat? Downstairs? "You broke into my house, you're in my bed, and I'm making things difficult? Are you—did you hit your head? Is this a concussion thing? Because I swear to God, Peter, if you're here to—"
He lunged for the nightstand, for his phone, for something, and his hand collided with Peter's.
Stiles froze.
His palm had landed directly on Peter's knuckles, and they were wet. Sticky-wet. And when Stiles' fingers instinctively curled around Peter's hand—just for a second, just from the momentum of his movement—he felt the torn skin, the swelling, the unmistakable texture of an injury that was still bleeding.
"You're hurt," Stiles said stupidly. His brain was still stuck on Peter Hale is in my bed, but this new information was trying to wedge itself in sideways. "Your hand is—"
"Irrelevant." Peter tried to pull his hand back, but Stiles—in a moment of absolutely suicidal curiosity—held on.
"Dude, you're bleeding." Stiles fumbled for the lamp on his nightstand, nearly knocking it over in his haste. The room flooded with warm yellow light, and Stiles immediately wished he'd stayed in the dark.
Peter looked like hell.
Well, no. Peter looked like Peter—stupidly attractive in that dangerous, sharp-edged way that made Stiles think of straight razors and broken glass. But his knuckles were destroyed. Both hands, Stiles realized, as Peter finally yanked the one hand free and Stiles caught sight of the other resting on Peter's thigh. The skin was split open across all four knuckles on each hand, bruised purple-black and swollen. There was blood—not a lot, but enough—smeared across Peter's fingers and dried in the creases of his palms.
For a werewolf, that was bad. That was really bad.
"What happened to you?" The question came out before Stiles could stop it, and he immediately wanted to take it back. He shouldn't care. He shouldn't be asking. He should be screaming for his dad, or grabbing his phone, or—
"Nothing that concerns you." Peter's eyes—blue, not the alpha red Stiles remembered from nightmares, just regular Peter-blue—fixed on him with an intensity that made Stiles want to crawl out of his own skin. "Now, if you're quite finished with your hysterics—"
"Hysterics?" Stiles' voice shot up again. "You broke into my house! You're in my bed! I think a little hysteria is pretty fucking justified!"
"I didn't break anything. Your window was unlocked."
"That doesn't make this better!"
"Stiles." Peter's voice dropped, low and dangerous, and Stiles' mouth snapped shut on instinct. Survival instinct. The kind that remembered Peter ripping out throats and smiling while he did it. "I need you to be quiet. I need you to stop thrashing around like a landed fish. And I need you to—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "Just. Stop. Talking."
Stiles stared at him. His heart was still trying to break his ribs from the inside. His hands were still shaking. But underneath the panic, underneath the very reasonable terror, his brain was starting to work again. Starting to pick apart the wrongness of this situation.
Peter was hurt. Badly enough that his werewolf healing wasn't keeping up. And instead of going to a hospital, or to Derek, or literally anywhere else, he'd come here. To Stiles' house. To Stiles' bedroom.
"Why?" Stiles asked. His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "Why are you here?"
Peter didn't answer. He just looked at Stiles for a long moment, something unreadable flickering across his face. Then, slowly—so slowly that Stiles could have moved, could have scrambled away, could have done something—Peter leaned forward.
Stiles' back was already against the headboard. There was nowhere to go.
"Peter—" His voice cracked again. "Peter, don't—"
But Peter wasn't lunging for his throat. Wasn't grabbing him. He just... leaned in. Close enough that Stiles could feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that Stiles could smell blood and something else, something earthy and sharp that his brain unhelpfully labeled as werewolf. Peter's face was inches from Stiles' neck, his shoulder, and Stiles' entire body locked up in terror.
This was it. This was how he died. In his own bed, in his stupid Star Wars pajama pants, because he'd forgotten to lock his window.
But Peter didn't bite. Didn't hurt him. He just... breathed.
Long, slow breaths. In and out. His eyes closed, and the tension in his shoulders—tension Stiles hadn't even registered until it started to ease—began to drain away. Peter's jaw unclenched. The tight line of his mouth softened. And his hands, those ruined, bloody hands, slowly uncurled from the fists they'd been clenched into.
Stiles didn't move. Didn't breathe. He was pretty sure his heart had stopped entirely.
Peter was smelling him.
The realization hit like ice water down his spine. Peter was leaning into his space, breathing in like Stiles was—what? A particularly interesting flower? A meal? Stiles' brain offered up a dozen horrifying possibilities, each worse than the last.
"What are you doing?" Stiles whispered. He didn't mean to whisper. He meant to yell, to shove Peter away, to do literally anything other than sit there frozen like prey. But his voice wouldn't cooperate.
Peter's eyes opened, and for just a second, Stiles saw something in them that looked almost like relief. Almost like gratitude.
Then it was gone, replaced by Peter's usual expression of vague amusement and barely-concealed irritation.
"Nothing that concerns you," Peter said again. He pulled back, putting a few precious inches of space between them, and Stiles sucked in a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Go back to sleep, Stiles."
"Are you—" Stiles' laugh was borderline hysterical. "Are you insane? You think I'm just going to roll over and go to sleep with you sitting there?"
"I think you don't have much choice in the matter." Peter stood, and Stiles tracked the movement like his life depended on it. Which, honestly, it might. "I'll be gone soon."
"You'll be gone now." Stiles grabbed his phone from the nightstand, holding it up like a weapon. Like a phone could do anything against a werewolf. "I'm calling my dad. I'm calling Scott. I'm—"
"You won't." Peter's voice was flat, certain. He moved toward the window, and Stiles noticed for the first time that he was limping slightly. Favoring his left side. "Because you want to know why I'm here. You want to know what I'm doing. And if you call your father, or Scott, you'll never find out."
Stiles opened his mouth. Closed it. Hated that Peter was right.
"I hate you," Stiles said. It came out weak. Shaky.
"I know." Peter paused at the window, one hand on the frame. In the lamplight, his knuckles looked even worse—raw and painful and wrong. He glanced back at Stiles, and something in his expression made Stiles' stomach twist. "Lock your window, Stiles. There are dangerous things out there."
Then he was gone, dropping out of the second-story window like it was nothing, and Stiles was alone in his room with his racing heart and his shaking hands and absolutely no answers.
He sat there for a long moment, staring at the open window. At the space where Peter had been. His brain was trying to process what had just happened, trying to make sense of it, but all he could think about was the way Peter had leaned in. The way he'd breathed. The way his entire body had relaxed like Stiles was some kind of—what? Medicine? Drug?
Stiles grabbed his laptop from the floor beside his bed, flipped it open, and pulled up Google.
His hands were still shaking as he typed: werewolf healing methods.
Then, after a pause: why would a werewolf smell someone.
And finally, because his brain wouldn't let it go: werewolf soulmate bonds.
The search results loaded, and Stiles started reading.
He didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
The first three nights, Stiles didn't sleep at all.
He locked his window. Then checked it. Then checked it again. He dragged his aluminum bat up from the garage and propped it against his nightstand where he could grab it in half a second. He kept his phone charged and within arm's reach, Scott's number on speed dial, his dad's number right below it.
He lay in bed with every muscle tensed, listening to every creak of the house settling, every rustle of wind through the trees outside, every distant car engine that might be someone—something—coming back.
Peter didn't come back.
By the fourth night, Stiles managed maybe three hours of fitful sleep, jerking awake every time he drifted off, convinced he'd felt the mattress dip or smelled copper and earth.
By the end of the first week, he'd read everything Google had to offer on werewolf healing (not much that was useful), scent-marking (mostly forum posts from people who were definitely just writing fanfiction), and soulmate bonds (a weird mix of mythology, romance novel excerpts, and what appeared to be someone's Twilight AU).
None of it explained Peter Hale breaking into his room, bleeding all over the place, and then just... breathing him in like Stiles was some kind of supernatural air freshener.
"You look like shit," Scott said at lunch on day five, poking at his pizza while giving Stiles the concerned puppy-dog eyes that meant he was about to start asking questions Stiles didn't want to answer.
"Thanks, buddy. You really know how to make a guy feel special." Stiles shoved a fry in his mouth to avoid elaborating.
"No, seriously. Are you okay? You've been weird all week."
"Define weird."
"Jumpy. Paranoid. More paranoid than usual, I mean." Scott leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Is it... supernatural stuff? Because if something's going on—"
"Nothing's going on." The lie came out too fast, too sharp. Stiles forced himself to take a breath, to sound normal. "Just had a nightmare. Couldn't sleep for a few days. I'm fine now."
Scott's eyes narrowed in that way that meant he was trying to decide if he believed Stiles or not. His nostrils flared slightly—oh God, could he smell lies now? Was that a thing?—but after a moment, he just nodded slowly.
"Okay. But if something is going on—"
"I'll tell you. Promise." Another lie. Because how the hell was Stiles supposed to explain this? Hey Scott, remember Peter, the guy who killed a bunch of people and tried to kill us? Yeah, he broke into my room last week and smelled me. No, I don't know why. No, he didn't hurt me. Yes, I'm aware this sounds insane.
Yeah. That conversation would go great.
By week two, Stiles had almost convinced himself it was a one-time thing.
Peter had been injured—badly injured, judging by those knuckles—and he'd needed somewhere to hide. Somewhere safe. And for whatever weird werewolf reason, he'd chosen Stiles' room. Maybe because Stiles was connected to Scott, who was connected to Derek, and there was some kind of pack-adjacent safety thing happening. Maybe because Stiles' house was close to wherever Peter had been when he got hurt. Maybe because Peter was just a creepy bastard who enjoyed freaking Stiles out.
Whatever the reason, it was over now. Peter had healed up and moved on, and Stiles could go back to his normal life of worrying about regular things like homework and lacrosse and whether his Jeep would make it through another winter.
He stopped checking his window obsessively. Stopped sleeping with the bat quite so close. Started actually sleeping through the night again, though he still woke up sometimes in the early morning hours, heart pounding for no reason he could name.
By week three, he'd almost forgotten about it entirely.
(That was a lie. He hadn't forgotten. But he'd gotten good at not thinking about it, which was almost the same thing.)
By week four, Stiles had convinced himself that whatever had happened that night was just a weird blip in the ongoing supernatural shitshow that was his life in Beacon Hills. Peter Hale had needed something, had gotten it, and had moved on. End of story.
Which was why, when Stiles woke up at 3:17 AM on a Tuesday night to the now-familiar smell of copper and earth and wrong, his first thought was: Oh God, not again.
His second thought was: I'm going to die.
His eyes snapped open, and there—sitting on the edge of his bed in the exact same spot as last time, like he'd never left, like the past four weeks hadn't happened—was Peter Hale.
"No," Stiles said. It came out as barely a whisper. "No, no, no—"
"Good evening to you too." Peter's voice was dry, amused, like this was a perfectly normal social call and not a complete violation of every boundary that existed.
Stiles scrambled backward, his back hitting the headboard hard enough to rattle his teeth. His hand shot out toward the nightstand, toward his phone, toward the bat—
"I wouldn't." Peter didn't move, didn't grab for him, but something in his tone made Stiles freeze. "We've been through this already. You're not going to call anyone."
"The hell I'm not!" Stiles' voice cracked. His heart was trying to break through his ribcage again, that same sick terror from four weeks ago flooding back like it had never left. "You can't just—you can't keep breaking into my house! This is—this is illegal! This is stalking! This is—"
"Necessary."
That one word, flat and certain, cut through Stiles' panic like a knife.
"Necessary?" Stiles stared at him. "What the hell does that mean? Necessary for what?"
Peter didn't answer. He just looked at Stiles with those too-blue eyes, and in the darkness of the room, Stiles could make out more details now that his eyes were adjusting. Peter looked... better than last time. Not as obviously injured. But there were still signs—a bruise fading to yellow-green along his jaw, scratches on his forearms that looked a few days old, and a tightness around his eyes that spoke of pain he was trying to hide.
"What happened to you?" The question slipped out before Stiles could stop it, and he immediately wanted to take it back. He shouldn't care. He shouldn't be asking.
"Nothing that concerns you." The same non-answer as last time.
"Bullshit." Stiles' fear was starting to give way to anger, hot and sharp in his chest. "You broke into my room a month ago, you broke in again tonight, and you won't tell me why. That concerns me! That very much concerns me!"
"Lower your voice." Peter's eyes flicked toward the door. "Unless you want to explain to your father why you're shouting at three in the morning."
Stiles' mouth snapped shut. His dad. God, his dad was asleep down the hall, had no idea that Peter Hale was sitting in his son's bedroom right now. If Stiles screamed, his dad would come running. Would have his gun. Would—
Would what? Shoot Peter? Arrest him? Peter was a werewolf. He'd already come back from the dead once. What was Stiles' dad supposed to do against that?
"Why are you here?" Stiles asked, quieter now but no less intense. "What do you want from me?"
Peter tilted his head, studying Stiles like he was a particularly interesting puzzle. "I don't want anything from you."
"Then why—"
"I need to be here." Peter's jaw tightened, like the admission cost him something. "That's all you need to know."
"That's not an answer!"
"It's the only answer you're getting."
Stiles wanted to scream. Wanted to throw something. Wanted to grab Peter by his stupid leather jacket and shake him until he started making sense. But he was also acutely aware that Peter could kill him in about half a second if he felt like it, so instead, Stiles just sat there, shaking with a mixture of fear and frustration.
"How long?" Stiles asked finally. "How long are you going to be here?"
"As long as I need to be."
"That's not—" Stiles took a breath, forced himself to think. "Are you going to hurt me?"
Something flickered across Peter's face. It might have been offense. "No."
"Are you going to hurt my dad?"
"No."
"Are you going to hurt anyone?"
"Not tonight." Peter's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "I'm not here to cause trouble, Stiles. I'm here because I have to be. The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be for both of us."
"Accept—" Stiles' laugh was borderline hysterical. "You want me to just accept that you're going to keep breaking into my room? That you're going to keep doing... whatever this is?" He gestured vaguely at Peter, at the space between them. "What are you even doing? Last time you just sat there and—and breathed at me like some kind of creepy werewolf pervert—"
"I wasn't breathing at you." Peter's voice was sharp now, irritated. "I was—" He stopped, jaw clenching. "It doesn't matter. You wouldn't understand."
"Then explain it to me!"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it's none of your business."
"It's literally happening in my bed!" Stiles' voice was rising again. "That makes it my business!"
Peter stood abruptly, and Stiles flinched back on instinct. But Peter didn't move toward him. He just stood there, one hand pressed against his side in a way that suggested his ribs hurt, and looked at Stiles with an expression that was equal parts frustration and something else. Something that looked almost like... desperation?
No. That couldn't be right.
"I don't have time for this," Peter said. "I don't have the energy to argue with you, and I certainly don't have the patience to hold your hand through an existential crisis about werewolf biology."
"Werewolf biology?" Stiles latched onto that. "So this is a werewolf thing? What kind of werewolf thing? Is it a pack thing? A territory thing? Are you marking me or something? Because I swear to God, Peter, if you're using me as some kind of—"
"I'm not marking you." Peter's voice was flat. "And this conversation is over."
He moved toward the window, and Stiles' brain screamed at him to let Peter go, to just let this end so he could have his room back and his sanity back and his normal life back.
But his mouth, as usual, didn't get the memo.
"You're going to come back, aren't you?" Stiles asked. It wasn't really a question.
Peter paused, one hand on the window frame. He didn't turn around. "Yes."
"When?"
"When I need to."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." Peter glanced back over his shoulder, and in the dim light, his eyes looked tired. Actually tired, not just physically exhausted but something deeper. "Lock your window, Stiles."
"Why? You're just going to break in anyway."
"Lock it anyway." Peter's voice softened, just slightly. "There are worse things than me out there."
Then he was gone, dropping out the window into the night, and Stiles was alone again with his racing heart and his shaking hands and even more questions than he'd had four weeks ago.
He sat there for a long moment, staring at the open window. At the space where Peter had been.
This wasn't a one-time thing. This wasn't Peter being desperate and injured and needing a place to hide.
This was a pattern.
Peter was going to keep coming back. And Stiles had no idea why.
He grabbed his laptop, flipped it open, and pulled up his browser. The tabs from four weeks ago were still there—werewolf healing, scent-marking, soulmate bonds—and Stiles stared at them for a long moment before opening a new search.
Why would a werewolf keep visiting someone
Werewolf compulsive behavior
Werewolf needs human scent
The results loaded, and Stiles started reading again.
He had a feeling he wasn't going to sleep for the rest of the night.
Again.