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Peter ignores the rowdy teenagers cluttering the loft. He’ll move fully into his apartment soon—his morbid interest in his nephew’s pack has lost its shine. Wonder of all wonders, they’re in an argument about whether or not it’s ethical to kill a monster that kills.
Peter’s only sitting on his perch of the spiral staircase because he’s found entertainment in Stiles’ internet browsing. Stiles backed out of the debate minutes ago and since then he’s pulled up web pages on various poisonous plants. Peter had moved the loft’s desk to a perfect angle that allows him to read over the shoulder of whoever sits there.
Before Stiles closes his laptop, he searches images of dicks and subtly stretches to the side in order to make eye contact with Peter and flip him off.
Peter smirks. Clever boy. With nothing interesting left to watch, Peter gets up and goes to snoop in Derek’s room. He’s learned Derek’s taken up reading as a new hobby. He hides it, keeping his books to his room. It’s yet to be known if this is because he’s personally embarrassed by it or doesn’t want Peter having easy access to his business if he leaves books lying around the loft.
Peter peruses the new additions to Derek’s collection. Poetry has been his choice of late. Peter pulls out a thin book with a noticeably dog-eared page.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.
Typical. Peter scans the poem, vaguely remembering its contents. His amusement fades and he closes the book.
No wonder Derek hides his reading. It reveals far too much.
///
You do not have to be good.
///
Peter might have been good, once. He might have taken his younger packmates out for ice cream after picking them up at school. He might have pain-drained every injury of his sister’s youngest human child. He might have moved out of his apartment and into the family home to help with his sister-in-law’s pregnancy.
Peter might have been many things before the fire.
///
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
///
Derek is like the burned out husk of their former home. Cold, broken, hollow. A landmark to tragedy.
Peter is a house on fire. He’s burning and ready to spread flames to everything around him. He doesn’t know any other way to be. He doesn’t know if he wants to be any other way. He’s gone so far into the dark. He doesn’t want to step into the light and see his reflection.
He avenged his family. He took penance in dying. He’s sticking around his nephew’s pack, now, for what? To show he’s better—not feral? To ask Talia’s forgiveness for killing her daughter and making it right by looking after her son?
///
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
///
Peter doesn’t love Derek. He doesn’t love Cora.
He’ll protect them. But he doesn’t love them. He doesn’t think he can love anymore. If he could, he wouldn’t want to.
Losing his pack once destroyed him. He won’t go through that again.
///
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
///
“I can’t be here,” Stiles says. The Nogitsune hasn’t left him in good condition. He reeks of depression and anger.
“They’ll forgive you,” Peter says.
Stiles pushes his way into Peter’s apartment, saying, “I don’t want forgiveness.”
“Whatever you’re looking for,” Peter says, “you won’t find it in me.”
Stiles rolls his eyes. “Do you really want to stay in this fucking town? Aren’t you tired of it?”
It’s too easy, the way Peter simply asks, “Where are we going?”
“Get in the car,” Stiles grins a wolfish smile, “and maybe I’ll tell you.”
///
Meanwhile the world goes on
///
The grand canyon is one of many classic stops.
“Do you know how many people die every year here?” Stiles asks.
“Twelve,” Peter cuts in. “Two or three of which are from falling over the rim.” He shoots Stiles an unimpressed look. “So stay close.”
Peter’s taken to secretly looking up information on the places they stop at. He’s become an expert at predicting what questions Stiles will set up. His reward is a squinty annoyed look from Stiles and lips that almost curve up in a smile.
“Did you find yourself?” Peter asks later that evening.
Stiles stopped rising to the bait of Peter’s mocking several landmarks ago.
Stiles sits on the hood of the car, looking up at the stars. This is one of Peter’s favorite parts, sitting on the hood at night or early morning, Stiles’ pale neck stretching back.
“Not yet,” Stiles says. “I think that’s Jupiter.”
Peter follows Stiles’ pointed finger. “Stiles, that’s an airplane.”
///
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain, are moving across the landscapes,
///
“I’ve always liked rain,” Peter says.
Stiles is caught up in snuffles at the Airbnb they’re resting at.
Running, wolf unleashed, is a beautiful feeling. His cousins used to splash in mud puddles on rainy days in the preserve. Peter’s almost tempted to go for a run despite the indignity of it.
Stiles coughs and Peter slips out of his daydreams. “Come on,” Peter says. “Time for your next dose of meds.”
Four days later, Stiles pulls on a ridiculous rain poncho they bought at the convenience store and drags Peter out to a hiking trail. “Does it smell good? You know how rain—”
“—petrichor, yes,” Peter says. Stiles pouts and looks at Peter expectantly. “It’s pleasant. The pack used to run after the first rain of the season. It was a celebration.”
“My mom used to say April showers bring May flowers.”
“It’s November.”
“As if time has meaning,” Stiles snorts, pausing to pick up a leaf the size of his palm. It’s a pale yellow. Stiles futilely shakes water droplets off of it. It remains wet and limp in his hand. “This is pretty.”
“That’s a leaf, not a flower.”
“Does it really matter? Give me your book.”
And, well, does it matter? Peter grumbles and pulls out the book he bought at the bookstore yesterday. He opens it to a random page and Stiles gingerly places the leaf on the page, smoothing out wrinkles ever so gently. Peter takes as much care in slowly closing the book and sliding it back in his bag.
///
over the prairies and the deep trees,
///
They make their way back to California a year or two later. They visit Muir Woods. Peter’s surprised to find Derek waiting there.
“Surprise,” Stiles says. Derek doesn’t look surprised. He and Stiles text, Peter knows. Stiles similarly bullied Derek into leaving Beacon Hills. But while Stiles snagged Peter, Derek went after Cora to go on a backpacking trip.
Peter indulges in occasional forced video-chatting.
An expensive-looking camera hangs around Derek’s neck. Stiles keeps posing and demanding to be photographed but Derek quotes that he only takes candid shots.
“Oh my god, you’re a hipster,” Stiles says. “I love it.”
Peter trails after them, taking in the enormous sequoia trees and remembering old tales of great wolves roaming the earth. Cora eventually shows up, a silent shadow popping up and giving Stiles a heart attack.
She looks good. Peter says so. She punches his shoulder.
Stiles marvels at a tree that he can go inside of and Peter smiles, watching Derek take a picture.
///
the mountains and the rivers.
///
“I fucking hate this,” Stiles says, heartbeat racing so fast it gives Peter a headache.
Stiles loathes the cold and against all of Peter’s protests—for his own sake because he doesn’t want to deal with Stiles’ constant stream of anxiety—Stiles insisted on traveling to the mountains.
It’s too late for Stiles to back out now and Peter doesn’t offer him sympathy as they slide off the ski lift. Stiles’ knees buckle immediately and he has to duck down so the next lift doesn’t hit him.
Peter laughs and finally takes pity, guiding Stiles over to the top of the short mountain.
“Fuck it,” Stiles says. It’s not a strategy Peter approves of in this circumstance but Stiles propels himself forward before Peter can snag his puffy coat.
Peter sighs and prepares to show Stiles what real grace looks like and how to not eat snow.
It turns out to be a fucking abysmal time.
“I told you the woman at the bar was a witch,” Peter says. He’s pretty sure the sharp pain that healed was a broken wrist. He’s freezing and wants to leave with what little dignity he has left. “I’ve been cursed. She cursed me with your Bambi legs. How do you live like this?”
Stiles clutches his stomach in laughter.
“Stiles, I’m serious. That was not natural. I do not simply fall over.”
“I’m going to pee myself,” Stiles wheezes.
///
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
///
“Oh my god, did you know baby geese are so cute? Holy shit,” Stiles grabs Peter’s hand, “Peter, look at them.”
They are remarkably cute.
Over the days, the geese grow up surprisingly quickly. Peter picks up a sour tinge in Stiles’ scent. He doesn’t comment on it.
“Which one is the ugly duckling?” Peter says.
The sour scent disappears. Stiles smacks his chest. “Of course you’d ask that. It’s not the outside that matters, but the inside.”
Peter snorts. “If that’s true, we’re fucked.”
Stiles laughs. A few nights later, Stiles sleepily mumbles, “Your insides aren’t so bad, Peter Hale.”
///
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
///
Derek and Cora meet up with them again a few months later.
“When’s your birthday?”
Cora shrugs.
“Do you seriously not know or are you guys fucking with me about werewolf ages again?”
Cora smirks and shrugs.
“Fine, twin birthdays then. Mine's in three weeks. How are we celebrating?”
Cora stiffens, eyes wide. Stiles kicks her under the booth of the diner they're at. Cora scowls and kicks back. The next day, she gets behind the wheel.
“Where are we going?” Peter asks.
“Get in the car and maybe I’ll tell you,” Stiles says with a smirk.
Vegas. They go to fucking Las Vegas. It is too bright and too loud and too everything. Cora loves it and Stiles is her partner in crime. They are frighteningly good gamblers.
Derek shows Peter a bottle of wolfsbane vodka and raises his eyebrows.
Peter doesn’t remember much of Las Vegas after that and astonishingly no one ends up drunkenly married to Stiles. They all fall asleep in a cuddling pile with far too many feather boas.
///
Peter drinks coffee and cleans up the apartment they’ve been renting. Stiles is on the phone, working his way through his usual calls.
If there’s one thing you learn from road tripping with someone, it’s that manners and boundaries go out the window. Peter eavesdrops.
“...thanks. No—just let me say it, okay? Thanks.”
It’s quiet after that.
“You know you have a reputation,” Lydia’s voice comes through the call.
Cora told them about this. Derek got Stiles a batman t-shirt for his birthday as a sentimental gift that could be passed off as a joke since Stiles has become infamously known for his bat wielding.
Peter misses the next part of the conversation, his thoughts lost in the way the shirt shrunk at the laundromat and how it stretches obscenely over Stiles’ broad shoulders.
“I’m on a panel for a math conference in May.”
It’s the closest anyone has come to saying come back in a long time.
“She’s not asking us to go back,” Stiles tells Peter. “She’s willing to meet us halfway. Besides, we don’t go back, we go forward. That’s not home.”
///
Peter kisses Stiles for the first time in the rain.
Stiles breaks away from the kiss, breathless, saying, “Okay, Noah Calhoun.”
“You hate that movie,” Peter says.
Stiles kisses Peter. “I don’t hate you.”
They go inside and shower. Peter doesn’t need to be warmed up, he’s perfectly fine to towel himself dry, but Stiles yanks him under the scalding water. They wash each other’s hair and bodies and lazily jerk each other off.
Stiles hits his head on the soap shelf and Peter drains his pain.
“Did you find yourself?” Stiles asks.
“No,” Peter says. “I think we’ll have to try again.”
“I’ll add it to the itinerary.”
///
“I will push you off the cliff, Stilinski,” Cora says.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Peter watches Derek creep up behind Stiles and in one swift move, hike Stiles up into his arms and jump into the water. Cora laughs, lets out a whoop, and disappears over the edge. Peter listens to the splashes.
“MOTHERFUCKER,” Stiles’ voice echoes.
Peter smiles to himself. He can imagine what Stiles looks like, long hair plastered to his head and face laughably scrunched up in fury. He hears Cora say he looks like a wet cat.
///
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
///
“You seem good,” Peter tells Derek honestly.
Derek smiles. “So do you.”
Peter studies Derek, the ease in his shoulders, the unclenched jaw. Does he ever miss Beacon Hills? Does it call to him? Does he feel shame in not protecting Hale territory?
Stiles makes calls to ensure the territory is safe, but the need is solely for his father and not the land.
Peter voices a different question. “How awful is it—sharing a bond with Stiles?”
Derek raises his eyebrows at Peter, playful and judgemental. “See it for yourself,” he says.
Peter does not like this mysterious, well-adjusted version of his nephew.
But, now that he’s voiced it, Peter won’t back down from the challenge. The anxiety, the lingering self-hatred and insecurity, the fear—he lets it swell up.
He lets go.
Peter is wolf and human; human and wolf. He is one. There, in the crater inside his soul, are three bonds reaching toward him. For a moment, he’s paralyzed, unable to reach back. He fights the panic that there is nothing left of him, that his ability to form a bond is burnt away with all the other bonds charred inside the crater.
And then—it happens fast. A surge of attachment flares to life and Peter sucks in a deep inhale.
It feels like he’s surfaced from water after years of drifting at the bottom of the ocean.
Peter presses his forehead into Derek’s shoulder and weeps for the first time since Laura.
///
Stiles drives Peter to a parking garage. It’s not until they get out of the car that Peter connects the dots. Stiles, his clever, clever boy, manipulated Peter into wearing a blood-red shirt.
Pressing Peter against the car, Stiles bites his wrist hard, enough to draw blood.
Peter watches, unable to move as Stiles pulls back. The wound is already stitching but there’s blood on Stiles’ teeth.
Time blurs and falls away as Peter devours Stiles, pulling their bodies flush together like he’s trying to merge them into one person.
Stiles breaks their kiss, panting. “We’re going to be late for the symphony.”
Peter’s voice is rough, a rumble in his chest. “You hate the symphony.”
“Yeah but you love it,” Stiles says. He licks his swollen lips and damn, Peter wants to ravish him. “Don’t make me use the bond.”
“Threatening me with bond abuse?” Peter asks. “This is not the reward system I was looking for.”
“Peter,” Stiles whines. “I’m being romantic.”
And, in Stiles’ weird way, he is.
“You have me forever,” Stiles goes on, “but the symphony is a one-time deal.”
Peter tugs Stiles close and buries his face in his neck. He takes deep breaths of their mixed scent. He presses an open-mouthed kiss under Stiles’ jaw, lightly scraping his fangs down Stiles’ neck before stepping away with great reluctance.
Stiles falls asleep on Peter’s shoulder during the performance. He snores.
It’s the best date Peter’s ever had.
///
“We missed New Year’s?” Stiles screeches. They’d hiked the John Muir trail.
Peter cocks an eyebrow. “What happened to time is meaningless? A construct?”
Stiles scowls. “Come on, we’re stocking up on party stuff. Call Cora and Derek.”
Stiles sets up a movie that hits the climax of the story right at midnight. He and Cora pop poppers and everyone is forced into paper crowns. Peter takes out the sparklers and lights it on his own. Stiles terrorizes them with a kazoo and Derek breaks his no posing rule for taking pictures.
There are cheap glasses with numbers for the wrong year and no one is watching the movie.
Cora fake-barfs when Stiles dips Peter down in a swooning kiss. Stiles responds by pressing a sloppy kiss that just barely misses her mouth. Derek gets yanked in for a cheek-to-cheek scenting and a kiss to the forehead.
“This better not have been your invitation to a foursome,” Derek says.
Stiles laughs, loud and bright. “Nah, I just love you guys,” he says in the cheesiest voice possible.
“Good. Because that would have been tacky,” Cora says. Peter grins at her forced casual, “I guess I love you, too, dork.”
“Of course you do," Peter says, "we’re pack.”
“We’re pack,” Derek echoes, and the party starts again.
Peter twirls Cora to music from someone’s playlist—not Stiles’ because whoever put it on has good taste—and Derek and Stiles get caught up in an argument about how to waltz and who is leading.
Stiles is infectious this way, sometimes, and the Hales are left with no option but to follow in a daze.
///
over and over announcing your place
///
“You know you have to be my best friend first, right,” Stiles says. “Like, before being my lover or partner. You’re my best friend and that’s. That’s important. You’re the person who drove across the country with me. I don’t know how to explain it but—”
“I know what you mean,” Peter says.
Stiles’ eyes are so big and round. “Yeah?”
Peter picks up a sea shell off the shore and presses it into Stiles’ palm. It’s a broken spiral of a shell, some hermit crab’s lost home. “Yes,” Peter says.
///
They’re buying a home in the woods. It’s a house, but Stiles insists that it’s a cabin.
“Do you think we’ll become the spooky cabin?” Stiles asks. “We should pull some wolfy pranks at night so we can become a town legend.”
Derek and Cora help them move in. They’ll come and go just like Stiles and Peter will come and go in their bouts of wanderlust. Stiles and Peter will spend an entire year first, setting up wards and ensuring the town is safe for them.
Stiles goes nuts over the nearby marsh.
“Derek,” Stiles says, “you need to come see these geese. They have babies. It’s adorable. You won’t believe it. You’ll need to take approximately a million photos as payment for rent.”
///
“Guess what I found,” Stiles says, sliding into Peter’s lap.
“Your sanity?”
Stiles jabs his elbow into Peter’s shoulder. He opens up a thick book. Inside, pressed into a page, lies a pale yellow leaf.
Peter ghosts his finger along it. “Do you want to frame it?”
Stiles shakes his head. “I’ll put the book away so we’ll forget again until we open it next.”
Peter presses a chaste kiss to Stiles’ lips. “I wish you had found your sanity.”
“Shut up and come find pretty leaves with me outside,” Stiles says. He knees Peter in the stomach in his ungraceful twisting to stand up.
Peter can’t believe he loves this wild creature.
///
in the family of things.
///
“Peter,” Stiles whines.
///
“Peter,” Stiles scolds.
///
“Peter,” Stiles shouts at the farmer’s market.
///
“Peter,” Stiles says after swearing.
///
“Peter, Peter, Peter,” Stiles whispers into Peter’s neck.
///
“Peter?” Stiles mumbles as Peter carries him off the couch, where he’d fallen asleep.
///
“Peter!” Stiles moans in the foggy forest, his “ghost” voice to scare the local kids trampling around in the dark.
///
“Peter,” Stiles, Cora, and Derek say, waking Peter up on the first rainy day of the season.
///
Peter knows he’s not good. It’s not something he can ignore. But it’s not something that haunts his day-to-day life. Goodness is no longer a label that lurks over his head.
He can just be whatever he wants to be and that’s fine.
Every time they visit the ocean, the water never gives a fuck whether Stiles has gone through a possession or not. He wades in hip deep and screams until his throat is hoarse. Waves don’t rise up dramatically. The sea is just the sea. It doesn’t care about who Stiles is.
It doesn’t matter if Peter is good or bad or evil or a hero or a human or a werewolf when he is running in the rain. Whatever he is won’t change the rain. The rain doesn’t judge him for splashing in puddles.
Peter just is.
Peter is fucked up six ways to Sunday and broken and burned deep in his soul. He is fractured and full of cracks and he’s not fully sound of mind. He’ll always be like this, hurting, grieving. It’s not something that he’ll ever grow out of.
...and he doesn’t have to grow out of it. He gets to be like this for the rest of his life and not be condemned for it.
He’s alive. He’s fucking alive. He survived—fire and a coma and being a packless omega and fire again with a side of slashed throat and death and every monster of the week that rammed into Beacon Hills before Stiles dragged him out.
Peter has survived Stiles. He’s survived cliche road trips and, fuck, being vulnerable. Letting someone love him and opening himself to loving back. He’s survived building pack bonds again, of loving Derek and Cora.
In spite of every fucking thing, Peter Hale made it.
///
Every year, Peter and Stiles watch the baby geese grow. Every year, Peter leans in close and asks which one is the ugly duckling.
Stiles kisses him and whispers the words in Peter’s skin, “You’re my favorite ugly duckling.”