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It takes Stiles about a week to figure out that the Hales are werewolves.
His boss, Peter, is admittedly better at hiding it than the rest of his family, none of whom seem to understand the purpose of advance notice, or a schedule, or a literal pile of chairs in front of a door in regulating who does and doesn’t go into the room behind it. But the guy still blocks out every full moon on his calendar with a different excuse every month (seriously, standing alibi, consistency is the key to success), leaves his computer screen unlocked and pointed towards news coverage of “animal attacks,” and when the office lights auto-dim after-hours, likes to stalk around without triggering them back on as if that’s regular creepy-officemate behavior. Granted, he’s the youngest name partner in the firm and a big deal locally, so maybe that last one is more ego with a side of idiot relatives than anything else. God knows nobody in town seems to want to call him out on it any time soon, and Stiles needs this job.
His 1L grades are great and his law school is regionally respectable, if not a guaranteed feeder into big-paycheck land, but a couple family constraints mean he can’t go too far and unfortunately his area of California isn’t exactly a hotbed of legal happenings. The job with Peter is the highest-paying one by far, and when Stiles took it, he did check out the firm’s footprint in various ratings outlets, and it scored well-known enough that he figured he could land decent reference letters for next summer, when he should have a little more flexibility for job opportunities. And Peter’s not actually wolfing out in the breakroom or going around biting the ankles of the paralegals (even if he’s prone to snarky comments about overwrought perfume and cologne), so Stiles bones up on werewolf lore, makes plans to crash at a friend’s place in SoCal for the full moons, and prepares to suck it up for the summer.
The problem is, he finds out two weeks in, that Peter’s really bad at being a werewolf.
Okay, clarification there. Peter’s not bad at being a werewolf. Peter is a werewolf, it’s an identity and not a skill element, and unless one is an unenlightened dickwad, you do not shame somebody for failing to live up to the ill-informed constructs that society imposes on individuals. Stiles went to law school to move progress forward, not prop up privilege. So what Stiles really means is that Peter’s bad at playing a werewolf.
Because seriously. Wolves have complex pack structures and are naturals at it, so why the hell is Peter taking all his social cues from high school drama queens?
“Ah, Stiles, you’re just in time,” his boss purrs as Stiles bustles in the door, carrying pastries and espressos from downstairs that he slides onto the table between Peter and a very frowny man slouching in the opposite seat. “I was just feeling that afternoon stretch and thinking we could use a little inspiration to fire our brains. One wouldn’t want to take a hasty step and accidentally burn the place down, would one?”
The other man barely looks at Stiles. He’s presumably a client but not exactly dressed like one, his grimy jeans and tattered—albeit showing some nice ripped musculature underneath—nineties band t-shirt not even screaming start-up wunderkind. And when Stiles leans over to drop a handful of napkins by the tray, the guy literally looks at Stiles’ throat, sniffs loudly, and then laughs as Peter pointedly grabs Stiles by the arm.
“Sure, Hale. Let’s talk about this and see whether somebody’s gotta get burned, like good little doggies,” the guy says as he reaches for a pastry. “Speaking as the one who doesn’t own a big fancy house, I’m not that worried.”
Peter then pulls Stiles back, which is nice of him, but also flicks a look at Stiles’ throat that’s kind of less about preserving respect for all staff members that make this place run and more about contradicting the sexual-harassment training Stiles just took this morning. “Thank you, Stiles. Do be a good boy and go find something to do.”
“Right away,” Stiles says, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes.
“Shut the door after you,” Peter says, no longer looking at him. “And clear my calendar.”
When Stiles gets there and does that, Peter’s leaning forward, hands clasped on either arm of his chair and shoulders straining the seams of his suit-jacket so it molds lovingly around those firm delts. Judging from the now tense look on the other man’s face, burning is still very much on the agenda.
Annoying objectification aside, Stiles wants this job to last at least one paycheck cycle, so once he has 1) rearranged Peter’s calendar, 2) researched, corrected, and approved several urgent corporate filings panicking paralegals brought to him because of 1), and 3) left copies of suggested amendments to their standard intake forms that will reduce likelihood of recurring errors in the future, Stiles gets on the amazing databases he gets access to as part of this gig and does some research on Other Guy. Based on what he’s learned deducing that the Hales are werewolves, he determines that Other Guy (hereinafter referred to as ‘Ennis’ even though that name’s about one move old) is also a werewolf, has a criminal record like you wouldn’t believe, and his last three official places of residence coincide with unsolved murder sprees.
“There you are, Stiles,” Peter says as he drops by Stiles’ desk. “Good work putting off Jacqueline, but I’m afraid I’ll need you to move that one to next week. I’m leaving early today for a family issue.”
“Okay, no problem,” Stiles chirps as he grabs the little notebook he keeps around primarily because it helps hide how he’s minimizing all of his damning incognito windows with his other hand. “I’ll get on that right away. Oh, did you see the notes I left on—”
“No, but just forward a summary to me. If it’s truly important, I’m sure my fellow partners will pull on their hunting gear and track me down,” Peter says, with a dry look across the room at one partner bent over the copy machine, who Stiles actually likes a lot given she didn’t mind helping him with billing codes and does her own faxes if her assistant hasn’t come back from lunch yet. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Stiles actually meant the notes on the forms, because every partner who he had to talk to today was totally unsurprised at Peter’s flakiness and totally willing to cut loose about how inconvenient it was in front of Stiles—again, except for Sharmila—which don’t really constitute notes to pass along, in Stiles’ opinion. But Peter seems like he’s in a hurry so Stiles just smiles and nods and appreciates the back view, since Peter’s got his suitjacket draped over his bag and whatever else he does, has a great tailor.
And then he goes back to checking out this Ennis guy. “Definitely a gang,” he tells his dad when they have their nightly call later.
“Kid, what have I told you about this kind of stuff?” his father says.
“Law enforcement is law enforcement for a reason, and if I want to learn about it, I first have to respect it?” Stiles says. “Which, yeah, but also, that’s not incompatible with assembling information as a concerned citizen and making it nice and easy for someone else to pick up.”
“I hope you mean the local sheriff by that, Stiles,” his father says. “And not your boss, who sounds worse every time I hear about him. For all you know they’re in bed together.”
“Yeah, nah, Ennis totally isn’t Peter’s type. Peter’s got this tell—uh, not that I’m, y’know, sizing him up or interested in sex stuff in any way, shape, or form,” Stiles says, as his dad’s wince comes in loud and clear through the airwaves. “Look, I’m not trying to do anything, I’m just trying to make sure I get to come to work in the morning and even if Peter’s not going to be a poster child for civic morality any time soon, I am learning important stuff here, Dad. I want to keep this job. Unless you’re—”
His father sighs. “No, nothing different on my end. Look, Stiles. I…I know you know how to handle yourself, you just get a little ahead for that when you’re excited. And you can have—sex thoughts, just keep ‘em away from me. Deal?”
“Deal,” Stiles says, because paranoid as his dad can be, it ultimately comes from a good place. “And hey, let me know if you want me to research anything here. I mean, I do have some free time and these amazing databases with all these government records and—”
“Stiles, we talked about this. I want you to finish your degree first,” his father says firmly, and then, after a little more nonessential chitchat, he hangs up.
So Stiles still has the free time, and so he does listen to his dad and once he’s put together some good profiles on Ennis and his crew, he shows them around at the on-off dice game the cleaning staff have in the backalley and turns out that Enrico’s cousin works at the motel where at least some of them can be found. Stiles puts the appropriate anonymous word out to interested parties and then double-books Peter so Peter’s stranded downtown when shit goes down and Ennis’ gang is legally removed from town.
Interestingly, this results in Peter being in a snit for several days, to the point that Stiles—who does not appreciate spending four and a half hours throwing together a detailed financial rundown of a client whose half-drafted filing got unrecoverably deleted when Peter smashed his laptop, only to have it sit for the entire afternoon unopened in Peter’s inbox—starts to think his dad was right about Peter’s connection to Ennis. But then Peter’s sister Talia arrives and, as is par for the course, swans straight past Stiles’ stammered warning about client meetings, and kicks out the actual real client with Peter.
“No, don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it,” Sharmila tells Stiles when he begs her to take the client off his hands. Because he can do the paperwork and everything but what he really needs is someone with a fancy enough office to impress the very justifiably angry client into not just storming off to file an ethics complaint. “I always handle it.”
“I’ll get the file together and if you can stall for five minutes, I’ll shoot you bullet points to bring you up to speed,” Stiles says.
Sharmila smiles at him, and, after muttering under her breath that Hale doesn’t know what he’s got, thanks him. “Oh, and if you want to hide out over here, you can scoot in next to Tessa,” she says. “You don’t want to be around Talia Hale when she’s in a fit. I almost forgive Peter whenever she comes by, given he basically got raised by that.”
Which…gets Stiles curious, he’s not going to lie. So he declines the offer, since all the other times a Hale has dropped by, they end up slinking out of Peter’s office with their—maybe not metaphorical? Stiles is really starting to want to know—tail between their legs as he smirks after them. Besides, Talia had clearly been zeroed in on Peter, and Stiles’ shirt today is pretty close to the wallpaper around here anyway.
The walls are thick enough that Stiles can’t tell anything except they’re not telling anymore, but Peter obviously doesn’t think about the fact that Stiles has delegated authority over his inbox and can read all his emails. Including the draft ones, which tends to be how Peter takes his notes—he is very much a paperless guy, which Stiles both appreciates and despairs of.
Mostly despairs of right now, as he watches Peter jot down thoughts about ways to get Ennis and Ennis’ gang free before they get transferred to some facility they’re worried about. Or more likely it’s somebody, since there are several notes about people they can’t call about this. Stiles gets the impression that’s why Talia came in like she did, something about all the burned bridges they’ve got to work around now.
Also, apparently it’s not Ennis’ gang, the real leader is a blind guy called Deucalion. Several research avenues later, Stiles puts that guy together with a guy called Gerard Argent who has law enforcement connections of the non-Dad-approved kind.
“Okay, kid, I get the point about not wanting to literally dump people with assholes who murder kids for changes they had no control over,” his father says when he goes over everything later that night. “But I still don’t think it’s on you to step in. It sounds like the Hales are already on this, so do you really need to do anything?”
“Well, maybe no…but maybe yes. I mean, I don’t know, Dad, I just know what I’m putting together. And that Peter asked me to basically buy all the commercially-available wolfsbane in this county,” Stiles says. When his dad doesn’t say anything, Stiles realizes he hadn’t updated on that part in a while. “Oh, so that’s werewolf-related, I think it’s actually more of a thing for them than silver, it’s basically like picking up survival supplies.”
“So they’re what, stocking up for a turf war?” his dad says sharply. Then he sighs. “Shit. Okay, look, let me see what I can do over here—”
“What? Dad, no, it’s okay. Whatever’s going down, Peter definitely doesn’t want me anywhere near it. He actually suggested I take a week off, and I had to point out that I’m only here for eight weeks,” Stiles says. “Look, I’m not gonna run towards the firefight, I promise. I’m just going to sit at my desk and learn how to do legal stuff and do everything totally legally.”
His father’s quiet again, for long enough that Stiles has to sit on his hand to not fidget with the phone. He finally sighs a second time. “How many weeks do you have left? Five?”
“Four and a half,” Stiles says, fudging a little with the July Fourth weekend.
“Okay. Just don’t skip a call.” His dad pauses. “Do what your mom would do, not me. I am not your role model here. Got that, Stiles?”
“You’re a great role model, Dad. Although yeah, I agree, style doesn’t solve everything. Which is why I’m a lawyer in training! I’m gonna learn the right way things are done! Not just how they look like they should be done!” Stiles says. “Even if, totally not biased, I do think style points are important.”
His father’s eye-roll lands all the way through the space-time continuum. “Thanks, kid. Just…be good, would you?”
Stiles promises to, again, and then holds himself to that for exactly nine hours. Which is when Peter calls him in for what’s supposed to be their weekly check-in, proceeds to spend nearly the entire half-hour asking distracted questions about stuff Stiles already took care of for him, and then has Stiles sit there through a three-minute call with Talia that’s not nearly as cryptic as they think they’re being because talking about a pack of wild dogs is. Just. Why all the dog references.
“Well,” Peter says, curt and under his breath as he finally puts the phone down, just shy of a slam, on his desk. He keeps his hand on it for a moment, then looks up at Stiles. Blinks as if he’d sort of forgotten Stiles was there. “Where were we?”
“I was seeing if you needed me to do anything this week?” Stiles prompts, not with a ton of hope. “Any meetings? Filings? Research?”
The last one makes Peter twitch a little, but then he shakes his head. His lips press together before he mutters something about probably wouldn’t be worse than some. “No, I think I’m set for the week, Stiles. But I appreciate your diligence—I do know that I’ve been rather absent lately, but I think Sharmila’s been giving you some work?”
“I…had some time so yeah, I gave her a hand,” Stiles says cautiously. “Nothing I can’t reprioritize if you need something. I’m here to help you.”
Peter smiles and there’s an odd little wistful note to it, very different from his usual glossy smirk. He’s still not looking directly at Stiles. “I appreciate your always asking that too.”
“Well, it’s my job,” Stiles says, and then winces as Peter glances over at him. “I mean, it is, but also…you sure you don’t need me to clear your afternoon, or something like that? If you’ve got to do something, I can make sure people understand. I, um, I know family’s kind of…challenging sometimes.”
A little bit of old Peter shows in his slightly-contemptuous amusement. “Oh, do you. Well—thank you, Stiles, but no. I’ll manage it, as I always do. When we’re closer to the end of your time here, make sure that you pull a list of all the matters you worked on for Sharmila and me, Stiles. You might as well have the credit for what you’ve done around here.”
Stiles blinks hard. “Oh, you no—I mean, yep. Will do.”
“Oh, I’ve been busy, but I know you’ve been up to quite a bit too, Stiles,” Peter says, with a full-on purr and a light in his eyes like he knows exactly what it would feel like to have it running over bare skin. “You’ve been a very good…assistant, and I’m sure you’ll be rewarded appropriately.”
It’s a good show. It’s good enough that when Stiles gets out of there, he makes an excuse to pop into the bathroom and splash cold water not just on his face but in his pants too. But once he’s calmed down some, he thinks about it and he’s almost positive it’s just a bluff—if what he’s dug up about werewolves is right, he bets Peter’s just using super-senses to cold-read the shit out of him. And yeah, that’s a great little parlor trick, but…Peter’s still taking notes to himself in draft emails.
Peter’s arranging some kind of call between him and this psycho Argent with his own private militia. And no, it doesn’t reassure Stiles at all when someone named Chris Argent calls later that day to try and get an appointment with Peter, since even though Chris is reasonably polite—if surprisingly on the ball with how he shoots holes through Stiles’ standard excuses—he’s still got kind of a track record. Admittedly, one that doesn’t seem to align with his dad’s, but still. Stiles can smell a showdown of some kind coming.
He's not entirely sure how to deal with it, and when he calls his dad that night, he gets redirected to a new voicemail that both apologizes for being somewhere he’s not getting reception any time soon and warns Stiles not to do anything stupid again. Stiles is pretty touched his dad remembered to update it—the old one just tagged on at the end of a standard snarkfest for Stiles to go home and stay there—but it’s still not really helpful here.
Anyway, he leaves a message for his dad, and the next day he goes in figuring he’ll do some brainstorming once Peter’s done the two meetings planned for the day (both early morning so he’ll be out by eleven). Because nobody’s going to do anything during the day, right? What with werewolves not being real and real werewolves worrying about undisclosed detention facilities, right? Right?
Apparently, the only one who thinks about this stuff is Stiles, because this Chris Argent—whose back view is also not bad but who has Issues tattooed all over him—shows up with Peter’s criminally hot and also criminally likely to get himself killed nephew in tow, and then proceeds to try and talk, bribe, and threaten his way into Peter’s office while Peter isn’t there. The receptionist out front isn’t having it and she knows what she’s doing, so Stiles goes past her and onto his floor, where he hears weird noises that lead him to give Security a call. Whereupon there’s a whole incident on the side of the parking lot that faces Peter’s office window.
Peter shows up in the middle of the police response and smiles through gritted teeth as he hastily works around to get both his nephew and Chris Argent out of what seems like pretty well-deserved shit. The moment he thinks he’s got enough privacy, he lays into Derek about it, but Stiles does notice that Peter also gets in some jabs at Chris for something about a family tradition of exploiting the young and underinformed. Because yes, let’s do this at work, perfect place to dissect our secret family trauma instead of, say, dealing with what definitely looks like a multi-party asymmetrical turf war at this point.
So okay, Peter has some legitimate reasons to be distracted, and Stiles did deliberately click on Peter’s desk intercom while being shooed out so Peter could have this fight. And Stiles also deliberately rewired said intercom to route directly into his earbuds because why not, it’s not as if Peter’s giving him enough work to not be looking up hacks like that on his work computer.
Also because it lets him keep tabs on what’s going on there while he helps out Sharmila and the paralegals and does stuff elsewhere in the office, since Peter’s been so erratic lately that staying chained to his place in front of the man’s desk doesn’t make sense. But the man is still his boss, and he does want to make sure he doesn’t not do what the man needs him to do, and…he kind of feels for Peter at this point. Guy’s still a—hot—asshole, but he also is showing increasing signs of stress.
“No, you can leave me out today,” he says when Stiles comes by to see what he wants for the usual mid-afternoon run to the café downstairs. He’s actually hunched over his laptop, one elbow propped on the desk beside it with his hand scrunched into his hair. “If anyone needs anything from me, tell them it’ll have to wait till tomorrow. I have a pressing deadline that takes precedence over everything else.”
“Family emergency?” Stiles asks. Not in mockery, just wanting to know what the party line should be.
Peter’s head snaps up and for a second there Stiles thinks the flesh of his face looks weirdly malleable. It’s only a second, and then Peter has his smooth charm back in place as he says no, just a deadline, no need to be concerned about his family who are all just absolutely wonderful. He says, as his hand digs and digs through his hair.
So that doesn’t fool Stiles for a second, and he mulls over that as he goes back to his laptop. From what he’s seen of them, the Hales aren’t exactly great together, but they do mostly stick together when someone else comes at them—Derek had been backing up Peter at the end of the argument, and it’d been more like him escorting Chris Argent out—and there’s something weirdly admirable about it.
Also he checks Peter’s emails. Peter hasn’t sent anything in the last two hours he’s been in his office, which is insane. Or means the man’s actually working in a personal account, which great, he’s not a complete moron, and ugh, now Stiles has to get illegal on this.
“Dad, for the record, I really, really tried, but I just have a bad feeling about this. And look, you’ve been a good role model. I know you always say not to be you, but you—do the right thing when it comes up, and I think that’s, well, right,” Stiles says when he leaves a voicemail that night. “So I did promise I wouldn’t run towards the fight, and I’m not. I’m cautiously assessing what’s going on and then going to plan appropriate countermeasures. So seriously, if you don’t come back I’m going to do the same thing to you and—yeah, same time same song tomorrow! Bye!”
And then Stiles hangs up and cracks his knuckles and puts what he’s learned in the month of working for Peter to work. The full moon is tomorrow night, so Peter’s calendar is already blocked out, but he told Facilities not to turn down the A/C on their floor after-hours so somebody’s going to be in late. The cleaning staff mention they were asked to give the big conference room an extra once-over and then lock it for the rest of the day, and when Stiles checks in with the office floor manager, she confirms that Peter booked it. Security tells Stiles very pointedly to go home early for once when he drops by them with their midday office, and tips like that are totally why he doesn’t mind being the gofer.
So clearly, Peter’s hosting some kind of after-hours meeting. Stiles considers his options while re-reviewing his intel on Gerard Argent and Deucalion, and reluctantly concludes that he’s not going to be able to handle this one on his own. He wants to do the right thing, like he told his dad, but also he’s not interested in dying.
Stiles gets Peter arrested and the rest of the Hales tied up in their house by an FBI squad, which uses up a lot of favors all at once on that kind of snap timeline, but hey, it works. Well, except for Derek, who’s smart enough to, when he sees the taskforce descend on his driveway, casually turn down a jogging path instead, but who then has to go call Peter’s office number to shout all kinds of totally unfounded accusations about how Peter’s going to get them all killed, starting with little sister Cora, who’s apparently a hostage with Deucalion. It’s a hostage situation.
“Well, fuck,” Stiles says, about-facing from the very well-deserved—he’d thought—taco hit he’d been about to grab. He logs out of Peter’s office voicemail from the street and heads back to the office.
Once there, he determines that one, he’s earlier than everybody else, and two, the other two parties to this are still ready to dance, judging from the incoming he can see out of Peter’s office window. Stiles thinks really hard really fast, and then runs down to where the conveniently-absent Security team keeps the keys. He gets them, gets into the electrical system, and rewires the parking lot lights to do a little fancy spotlighting, because yep, that high-school theater-nerd stuff does come in handy.
In corner one, Gerard Argent, old but pulling off that Victorian pimp cane and overcoat like nobody else in this NorCal, Mediterranean-climate city. He comes with a pack of goons obviously carrying, not just weapons but a very pissed-off, very tied-up Chris Argent. Though Chris gets left in one of the cars and based on the way he immediately ducks out of sight while everyone else is exclaiming and pulling out guns to point at the bright shiny lights like none of them have seen a floodlight before, that might be helpful.
Or not, Stiles isn’t going to count on it. Given that in corner two is Deucalion, who is much more legitimately rocking some impressive body under the country-club wear as he and his small crew of strutting leatherclad werewolves snarl and flash glowy eyes and generally look very annoyed about having their sneaky entrance ruined. He and Gerard immediately start yelling at each other about whatever, so Stiles takes a quick look for anybody who remotely could be Cora and spots her unmistakably pissy-model Hale features getting dragged along by Ennis. He slides the light off her and into Ennis’ face, and when Ennis flinches, Cora yanks free and then scrambles towards the dumpsters lining one end of the parking lot.
Gerard’s guys spray and pray, which Stiles redirects with some judicious light manipulation. Deucalion’s people take offense to the bad aim or something and charge forward rather than, like, flank, and at that point Stiles just puts the lights on random and takes his phone out. He puts in a call to emergency services, watching as the car Chris Argent’s in suddenly peels out of the parking lot with a brief stop to let Cora hug its side on the way out, and then he runs back through the building.
By the time he gets to the front, Chris Argent’s hit the driveway there. Two dark figures run up to it and Stiles reaches for his phone again, cursing—but no, that’s Derek, he recognizes the angry hand-waving even before he sees the guy’s face. And the other man is Peter.
Stiles retreats. He’s got no idea how Peter got out of custody that fast, and also, firefight still going on in the back lot, so…he’s going to head for high enough ground that the likelihood of a bullet interrupting his re-review of certain falsified comms to certain law enforcement agencies is nil. Peter’s law firm did invest in some seriously sturdy doors, and there’s still the untouched refreshments in the conference room, and then the SWAT team converges on the back parking lot and long story short, Stiles spends the night at work.
Between the food and Peter’s office couch, it’s not so bad, and Stiles is kind of worn out anyway. So worn out, in fact, that when someone shakes him awake the next morning, he forgets to put on his befuddled intern face and just smacks at them. There’s an amused, very masculine laugh, right over his head, and the sheer amount of gleeful boundary-violation steaming off of it makes Stiles shoot straight up.
“Good morning, Stiles,” Peter says, looking as amused as he sounds. He looks like he got a shower and at his closet in the last six hours, but his hair is clearly Not Done for the day and he’s got his older sister standing right behind him, looking like the joke is much less funny to her. “I’m very sorry to have to interrupt you, you were sleeping so sweetly. But I’m afraid we have some questions for you.”
Stiles sizes things up, then sighs and writes off his reference letters. “Okay, you werewolf, me over-invested, sorry. I get carried away sometimes, but I honestly just wanted to make sure I didn’t have to explain on my character and fitness test how my first legal boss got himself murdered with bad planning.”
Peter had been going to ask something. He’s got it all teed up with a raised eyebrow and a lifted hand and then he freezes in place, his eyes flicking back and forth across Stiles’ face as he has some kind of really unexpected, mind-derailing thought. It’s an interesting look on him.
“Bad planning?” Talia picks up from behind him, so unfortunately, Stiles can’t spend a lot of time unpacking Peter’s expression. “Actually, wait, go back to how you even know about werewolves. Are you with another pack?”
“Uh, no, I’m just…very good with calendars?” Stiles tries. Then sighs again when he sees the glowy-thing start in her eyes. “Okay, look, this is how I know.”
So he walks them through it. Talia is not impressed by Peter’s lax approach to workplace security and privacy, but then shuts up when Stiles explains how her iron fist on the local government actually made it a lot easier for him to manufacture fake red flags to federal, given all the documented failures the sheriff’s department has with picking up routine arrest warrants. And then they both ask a bunch of questions clearly designed at ferreting out just who Stiles got info from within the law firm about what, because at least they have instincts there.
Stiles isn’t about to sell anyone out, so he’s still fending them off when there’s a knock at Peter’s door. “Not now,” Peter says, but before he’s finished, the knock comes again.
“Peter has visitors,” Talia barks, with the attitude of someone who expects to be instantly recognized.
Since it’s Sharmila who opens the door, she obviously was. “I’m sorry, but you need to see who this is,” Sharmila says, with more of a gritted-teeth look at Peter.
Who, credit to him, narrows his eyes and puts his hand on Talia’s arm, which gives Stiles’ dad the second he needs to slide into the room. “Hey, kid,” he says.
“Dad!” Stiles says, blinking hard and long. “Dad, what are you—you’re back? You’re back!”
“Yeah, sorry, I managed to swing an early—”
“You’re Johnny, aren’t you?” Talia asks in a very different, very strangled voice. She’s staring at Stiles’ father with wide eyes and Stiles, watching his father twitch, starts placing mental bets on which had-to-leave-town excuse it’s going to be this time. “Johnny Cage? The actor?”
“Oh,” Stiles’ dad says, relaxing. Then he offers up an easy grin that still pays for a good half of their bills. “Yeah, though it’s been a while since I did that. But it’s always nice to meet a fan.”
Peter snorts, then turns and sees how Talia’s still looking at Stiles’ father. His doubletake is hilarious, and Stiles just wishes he had longer to see it. But openings are openings and this is as best as Stiles is going to get, so he ducks out from the couch and grabs his dad in a big, spin-them-so-they’re-halfway-out-of-the-office hug. “Dad! Oh, man, I’m so glad you’re here, you wouldn’t believe what just happened!”
“Okay, sure, if you say so,” Stiles’ dad says, and while he’s still keeping half a smile aimed at Talia, his pat on Stiles’ back communicates plenty of wariness. Then he slides his arm over Stiles’ shoulder, stepping them a little further back. “Well, so why don’t you fill me in—”
“I’m very sorry to have to break this to you, Mr…Cage, then? Not Stilinski?” Peter says, with fake uncertainty in his voice and very real, live, strangely intense curiosity in his eyes. “But it’s about your son’s job with us.”
“It’s Stilinski for both of us, since I’m out of Hollywood these days, but I’m never gonna turn down a Johnny Cage moment,” Stiles’ dad says, switching over to look at Peter. His arm slides off Stiles’ shoulder, too, and Stiles discreetly steps back and bumps Sharmila out of the way while he’s at it. “What about Stiles?”
“Well, unfortunately, we’re firing him,” Peter says. He blinks once, smile firmly pitying. “We just can’t have his kind of behavior around here.”
* * *
“I’m not gonna say I told you so,” Stiles’ dad says as he and Stiles tuck into a consolatory early lunch at a restaurant down the street. “I know you’re already going over and over it in your head, and listen, I’m your dad and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you just have to take it on the chin and keep moving sometimes. You’ve still got half the summer left and now that I’m back—”
“Yeah, I know, I’m not—okay, I’m a little worried, but Dad, seriously, I’m not thinking about how this is going to wreck my legal career. Sharmila passed me her card and said she’d still help out when my bar application comes along, and I can get another job,” Stiles says. “We can work that out.”
“Oh. Okay. Good,” Stiles’ dad says. Sounding a little confused, because he still doesn’t really have down all the steps to becoming a lawyer, but under that he’s supportive. “Nice lady.”
So Stiles nods and eats some fries. Stiles’ dad nods and eats some fries. They sit there, eating fries, till the tension gets ridiculous.
“I’m just pissed off because I saved the day and I didn’t even have to call a bunch of warriors together from all the different dimensions, I did it with lateral thinking and judicious application of the legal system and they still fired me, Dad!” Stiles bursts out, and then he takes a deep breath.
His dad can’t help a little bit of a dry chuckle, but he puts his arm across the booth at the same time and grabs Stiles by the shoulder. “Kid, listen, if you’re too good for them, you’re…” he stiffens, then raises his chin to address somebody behind Stiles “…too good for them, and even if your sister’s a fan, I’m more than happy to tell that to your face. And trust me, werewolves are the least weird thing I’ve had to take into a back alley.”
“I completely agree,” Peter says, palms raised, as he pauses where he’d been sidling up from Stiles’ blind side.
Stiles turns around. “With Dad telling you you’re an ungrateful asshole, or with Talia being a huge fan of his?”
Peter visibly debates how to respond, which is maybe the least deliberately ingratiating and most authentically endearing Stiles has ever seen him, and then lets out a sigh. “She is a fan, and if I want to manage relations with her, I do have to admit she would very much appreciate a coffee before you leave town, Mr. Stilinski. But what I really came by to say is that we didn’t fire you because you weren’t good at what you did, Stiles. We fired you because you were.”
“So let me get this straight. You fired my kid because he’s too good?” Stiles’ dad says, with that look on his face like he’s about to rain holy hell down.
“He was hired as a legal intern, Mr. Stilinski,” Peter says. “There’s absolutely no way we could keep him in that role. Not only would it be a disservice to his skills, it’s just completely inappropriate for an obvious alpha. We had to fire him so we could ask him to come back in a role that actually suits him.”
“…this might just be me, but that sounds like you’re talking about a bunch of stuff we don’t understand and making it sound very important that we get it,” Stiles’ father says after a long look at Peter.
“Nope, not just you. This totally feels like werewolf lingo baiting you to walk into their world to find out more,” Stiles says.
Peter clearly is sizing up how much longer he has on the crumbling platform before he has to jump, but credit to him, he hangs on in the meantime. “There are some very considerable benefits, Stiles. And also, an apology on my side, for completely overlooking you. You’re a rare talent and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t try to make it up to you.”
When he says that, he kind of drops his voice and intensifies his gaze and does something with his eyes which, while it doesn’t involve glow, does briefly make Stiles feel as if he’s the most interesting thing in the world to Peter. Which is a nice ego boost, Stiles isn’t gonna lie, but—his dad’s right there. His dad is right there.
“I. Um.” Stiles tries not to look in his father’s direction. “I—okay, that’s a different—I think I need to, um—consider this. Yeah. Maybe with, like a benefits summary?”
Apparently, Stiles’ father is not a deterrent in the least to Peter, who just makes his smile even bigger and more blatantly admiring. “Believe me, Stiles, after what I’ve seen, I would be more than happy to fully inform you of what you could be enjoying.”
“Okay, look, while I’m glad you’re apologizing to Stiles, I just—” Stiles’ dad starts, annoyed, and then he jerks around. “—have to deal with that, shit.”
“Dad,” Stiles says, as he also looks at the portal that’s just appeared in the restaurant’s parking lot. “Dad, I thought you finished early.”
“Yeah, I did, the rest of them said they didn’t need me and—oh, goddamn it,” Stiles’ father mutters as he shoves himself out of the booth. “See, this is why your mom thought my world was the better bet. Sit tight, kid, I’ll be right back.”
“’kay, I’ll get you a fresh burger,” Stiles says. “Say hi to Hanzo for me!”
As his father lopes out the door, Stiles reaches over and snags Peter, who’s been staring at the portal, by the elbow. Peter’s clearly alarmed by it but not so much that he doesn’t try getting in on Stiles’ side of the booth. Stiles rolls his eyes and shoos the man to where his dad had been.
“I see I missed a few things besides your intelligence,” Peter says slowly as he takes his seat. Still admiringly, and also he’s not panicking and trying to call his family or running out all wolfed out and Stiles is…kind of starting to like this Peter. “Well, now that my family’s not such a distraction, I do have time. May we start over?”
“Gotta think about that,” Stiles says. He watches his father yell at the portal, and then roll his eyes as an arm comes out to gesture rudely back at him. Then he takes out his phone and checks his messages. When he spots the expected one from the cover-up team, he lets them know his dad’s working and that he can hang out till they get there, whereupon he gets an ETA of an hour. An hour. Peter’s family could improve some things but he has to give them this, they do move on something once they’ve seen it. “Okay, I have time to kill too. Why not?”