Archive of Our Own

Why Stiles is out in the woods in the middle of the Wednesday night with a caravan of complete idiots, he’s really not sure.

To be fair, he asked to come along. Scott had told him that he and Derek were checking out what could potentially be dangerous animal traps set up in the woods and Stiles might as well stay home, but Stiles’ fear of missing out kicked in like it always does, just like it did all those other times he accompanied people stronger than him on dangerous missions, and now here he is trampling through the dead leaves with the rest of the tag-a-longs: Isaac and Peter. It's a sad group he wishes he didn't have to lump himself in with.

"Do you think we could start carrying a flashlight on these little escapades?" Stiles says, hoping it comes out less like a suggestion and more like a demand. A tree root slams into his foot and nearly sends him sprawling. "One of you? Any of you? For the sake of the poor little human?"

"Shut up, Stiles," Derek says, offering no thoughts on the flashlight proposal.

"Gee, what a great rebuttal," Stiles says. "That's really insightful. Anybody else want to add to the counter argument or side with me?"

"Shut up, Stiles," Peter says.

He should’ve stayed home. He needs to work on being okay with being bored at home, pretending to be a normal teenager, because he’s pretty sure he needs the relaxation. He might even be good at it, and it’ll certainly lower his blood pressure so he doesn’t end up having a heart attack at twenty-five. He doesn’t have the headlamp anyone without laser vision needs to have to romp around the woods at night and he doesn’t have the reflexes to not accidentally walk into a bear trap or trip wires if there really are any lurking around.

God, he really glamorizes the drama in his life a bit too much sometimes when he ends up sitting at home without getting any SOS texts for longer than a few days. Doing absolutely nothing has its merits. There’s guaranteed safety and always food around.

“I’m also extremely parched,” Stiles declares loudly. If he keeps talking, somebody has to acknowledge him eventually with something other than monosyllabic demands to be quiet. “But that’s fine. I’ll just die of thirst.”

Distantly, Stiles can hear Isaac cussing under his breath, speeding up so he’s no longer in stride with Stiles, which Stiles takes real offense to considering he’s helped Isaac out in times of crisis in the past, like when he shows up for an economics test without a single number two pencil to fill in test bubbles with. Stiles is always friendly enough to give him a spare pencil even though he knows he won't ever see it again. Isaac could show a little respect.

“Sorry, Stiles,” Scott says to him, the only one Stiles will bother putting in his will. “I don’t have anything.”

“Yes, because nobody brings beverages to these things,” Isaac says, no longer bothering to talk under his breath. Stiles is never lending him a pencil again.

"Here," Peter says suddenly, pushing a water bottle into his hands. "Shut up."

Stiles, on principle, is a little on edge when it comes to taking anything from Peter if he doesn’t have chromatographs around to check for poisons, but he’s giving Peter the benefit of the doubt this time since there are people around who inevitably witness his cold-blooded murder should he go down thanks to deliberate contamination. He takes the bottle and drinks a few much-needed gulps of water that actually do very little in helping his dry throat.

“Yuck,” he says, because something in that water seems to be growing its own life. Possibly fermenting. “What is this, sewage? Do you get your water from creeks?”

He hands it back to Peter, definitely not planning on drinking from that ever again. That was a bad idea. He probably just got giardia from whatever prehistoric water Peter finds fit to consume on the regular, and he licks his palms a few times to try and get that bizarre taste out of his mouth.

“It was an unopened water bottle. You just like hearing the sound of your own voice,” Peter says dryly.

“You know what, Peter? I do. I do like my voice.”

To think that he was ever legitimately scared of this man. He stops talking when it feels like his mouth is drying up at a seriously alarming speed, like someone’s pulled the bath plug in his throat and all the moisture that’s supposed to be on his tongue is oozing away. That's not natural.

Things are definitely swaying a little bit now. It feels like he’s just stepped off of a spinning roller coaster after riding it five times in a row, everything from the nausea to the unfocused vision hitting him like a baseball bat to the face. He stumbles over something—another tree root, a forgotten beer can, maybe his own feet—and suddenly, a branch is right in front of his face.

“Hey, watch out!” Scott’s voice is shouting distantly, much too late.

“Shit,” Stiles says in between the nanosecond of registering the branch and actually whacking his head into it.

--

It feels like approximately three seconds pass before Stiles comes to, and definitely not in the woods for that matter. He wakes up in a soft bed, with a comforter wrapped up to his chin, and an arm slung over his chest.

Well, all right. If this is him being coddled after his run in with death, he's glad he's finally being appreciated and properly nursed to health. He twists around, cushioned in unbelievably silken sheets, and sees—

"What the fuck?"

Stiles pushes the sheets off of himself with so much force he ends up propelling himself off the bed in the process, promptly landing ass first on the carpet in the process. Then, to confirm the nightmare as reality and not just a startling hallucination of the mind, Peter Hale's sleep-mussed hair emerges from the bed like a dragon waking from slumber. In his head, Stiles hears nothing but music of doom, death, and danger.

Peter's eyes take in Stiles' position. There he is, sprawled over the floor with his legs tangled in the linens he managed to inadvertently pull down with him during his most graceful tumble off the mattress. Then Peter snorts.

"Smooth," Peter says. "Now get back in bed."

He understands, now more than ever, the horror Marty McFly must've felt when he awoke to the sight of his young, attractive mother looming over him. He's feeling the same fright right here and now as he takes in Peter—shirtless and possibly missing more articles of clothing—patting Stiles' side of the bed with a sultry grin on his face. He looks serious. Stiles shouts into the void.

"What," his throat manages, and then stops. "I mean—how. What the fucking hell. Why."

Peter raises one elegant eyebrow. "I don't know what these sentences are supposed to mean," he drawls. "Is it breakfast? Do you want to be fed?"

The last thing on Stiles’ mind right now is food. Is he being punk’d? Is he the subject of a wildly inappropriate prank? He thinks he would've remembered a misguided trip to Vegas that ended as all misguided Vegas trips do, with the fuzzy memory of a chapel and a few blurry pictures of Elvis Presley the ring bearer. He looks, frantic, for that glimmer of mischief on Peter’s face—not that it’s usually not there, but still—and sees nothing but sleepy confusion and a complete comfort to be here with Stiles in his bed.

Why is Stiles in Peter’s bed? Why has the world stopped making sense? He grabs his hair just to have something to hold onto and tug a bit.

“This is some kind of weird joke, right?” Stiles asks. “Well, it’s not cool. Not cool!”

The confusion becomes more prominent on Peter’s face. “…so you don’t want to be fed?”

“No! I want some answers! Why am I here?”

Peter groans and rolls onto his back, rubbing the bridge of his nose like all of these questions are inconveniences for him. Like Stiles should be in the know. “I thought we’ve talked about this. Your bed gives me too many back problems.” Peter spares him a pinched glance. “Is my mattress so terrible?”

Something is going on. Something is very, very wrong.

“I need to go,” he says. He just has to get home. Once he gets home, things will be fine.

He gets to his feet, everything about his manner in doing so hysterical and uncoordinated, and realizes a moment later that he’s clad in nothing but low-hung boxers. The urge to pull sheets up to his neck like a modest, unmarried Victorian-era woman strikes first, then the urge to ask as many questions as possible as to why he's in this state of undress in the first place. He whips around the room looking for a pile of clothes, any clothes at this point will do, and sees a trail of clothing articles that seems to be breadcrumbed toward the door, like he was too occupied with something else—Stiles curses his own imagination right now—to strip down properly in one place. He snatches up every piece, forcing his limbs into whichever holes are available in the fabric, and makes a run for it.

He almost has complete tunnel vision, hardly even focusing on the strange surroundings and the unfamiliar apartment he tumbles his way through, looking for nothing but the door. Sunlight is pouring in the windows like it’s a happy day, like things are as they should be, like birds will soon be chirping, and Stiles is in congruence with absolutely none of it. He finds the door, vaguely aware of Peter calling him from the bedroom as he opens it and hightails it out.

The good news is that Stiles’ Jeep is in the parking lot and this disaster of a morning won't turn into a walk of shame. He fumbles for the keys he can feel poking him through his jeans pocket as he wrangles on his last sock and shoe, desperate to keep moving instead of wasting time on accurately clothing himself and just drive the fuck home. Things will be fine at home. He throws himself into the car and repeats that to himself over and over in the vain hope that he'll start believing it.

This is honestly the least funniest joke in the world. Whoever is responsible—once Stiles calms the fuck down—is going to pay for putting him in bed with Peter Hale. Last he remembers, he was getting up close and personal with a tree, and he’s currently having issues connecting the dots between that incident and waking up nearly naked in Peter’s bed. Was he snatched out of his hospital bed by Peter himself, who thought kidnapping Stiles to whisk off to his abode would be a very beauty-and-the-beast-esque show of drama and flair? Or was this orchestrated by others too, a funny joke that Stiles is the very unfortunate butt of? And how the hell did Peter manage to keep such a straight face?

Stiles cranks up the radio so he doesn’t have to hear the uncontrollable screeching in his own head. The entire drive flashes by like the car is operating itself, bringing Stiles to the safest possible place as quickly as possible. There’s a buzzing in his pants pocket the entire time like someone’s texting him repeatedly, and the slightest of chances that it could be Peter is keeping him from doing anything but consider throwing it out the window. All he needs to do is find help.

Once he makes it home, he gives himself free rein to have a panic attack. He runs upstairs and shuts the door to his room and even considers hunkering in the closet like he used to when he was younger and frightened of the Basement Monster, rummaging around in his pants until he finds his phone. There’s a slew of unseen text messages on his lock screen that Stiles tries his best to see past, going instead straight to his contacts and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling until the right name pops out at him.

Scott will help. Scott is his best friend. Scott always comes to the rescue.

"Scott," Stiles says urgently the minute he hears the ringing cut off. "Something's weird. Something's totally wrong."

"Woah, what's wrong?" Scott's voice is groggy, just like Peter's, like today's a lazy Sunday everybody's taking advantage of to sleep in and forget responsibilities. Right now, Stiles needs everyone alert and sharp as cheddar.

"Everything," Stiles says. "I feel like I'm in a frickin' 13 Going on 30 nightmare. I woke up this morning and stuff was." He stops, trying to think of a word adequate enough to describe exactly how bizarre the circumstances are. "Different."

"What happened?"

"For starters, I woke up in Peter's bed," Stiles pauses for reaction, then emphatically repeats himself. "Peter's bed!"

A long stretch of silence follows. Then, to absolutely no help to Stiles, Scott starts laughing.

"Okay, and?" Scott says.

“What do you mean, and? Isn’t that horrifying enough?!” Stiles plugs his other ear just to make sure he’s hearing this conversation correctly. What he needs now are facts. Explanations. “What happened in the woods?”

“The woods? Why were you in the woods?”

“You were there too!” Stiles holds onto his hair with his free hand. There’s no way Scott would be in on this joke. Scott would never sit down with Peter Hale and agree to play with Stiles’ sense of reality for shits and giggles. He would give Peter a gut check if he ever so much suggested a plan to him that involved Stiles undergoing any type of pain, ridicule, nausea, or unpleasant emotions. “Didn’t I hit a tree?”

“I didn’t see any of this,” Scott says, sounding baffled. “Are you sure I was there?”

“I’m sure. I’m so fucking sure.”

"Are you feeling all right?" Scott asks warily, and wonderful, now his sanity is being questioned. He twists his fingers into his hair until they’re practically knotted onto his scalp.

"Yes! Except for the part where I'm panicking about being in a world that isn't my own! Everybody else is the problem here!"

He stops ranting when something catches his eye on the wall above his bed. It's his haphazard, makeshift billboard, typically full of pictures of him and Scott and police clippings with articles about mysterious animal-related incidents. Right now, however, it's nearly empty save for an All Time Low poster, a few family photographs, and one decidedly new picture of Stiles and Peter looking happy.

It's horrifying. Stiles nearly yanks it off the wall where it's secured with a thumb tack to examine it. If this is all an elaborate prank, not only is it mortifyingly extensive, but it's also including some impressive photoshop work. The picture is one Stiles has zero memory off—Peter with his eyes crinkled in laughter and Stiles' nose tucked into his neck, nothing but his smiling teeth visible, the two of them close enough to be one cohesive unit. Stiles is going to throw up.

He turns around, suddenly aware that the rest of the room isn’t exactly compliant with his memories of it either. His investigation board isn’t there, and his spools of yarn to decorate said board with aren’t piled up in the corner, replaced instead with a stack of textbooks. His ridiculous snowboarder decal is still up on the wall. There isn’t a single old book stolen from the library about werewolf lore in the bookcase. And there’s a leather jacket draped over the edge of his dresser that definitely isn’t his own.

"Stiles? Are you still there?"

Apparently, Scott's been talking. Stiles' hand jerks to readjust the phone.

"Yeah," he says. "What did you say?"

"I said you should get some rest. Sleep off whatever you've been drinking."

He hasn't been drinking a thing. Stiles' head is remarkably clear, so much that every memory he's ever had is running through his brain right now just to double check he hasn't missed these rather large pieces of information he's apparently missed. He feels distinctly like he's been shrunken down and is now living in a fish bowl.

Suddenly, interrupting his horror, a knock on his bedroom door sounds, and a moment later, Peter's barging in.

"Stiles," Peter says. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Lots of things, apparently. There are just too many damn fires all over the place for him to be putting them all out. He takes a deep breath.

"Scott, I'll call you back," he says into the phone, stuffing it into his back pocket before Scott can tell him to nap off his forgetfulness and drink some herbal tea as his parting words. He turns to Peter, extremely aware of his body and the space between them as he does so. "Sorry, what?"

Peter looks extremely disgruntled. Stiles notices that his shirt's buttoned up unevenly, like he dressed himself in a haste before chasing Stiles after his speedy goodbye. "You running out. Freaking out, actually. I'm tempted to call it a tantrum."

"I didn't have a tantrum," Stiles feels the need to clarify right away. "I'm not five years old."

Peter's lips thin into an annoyed line. "All right," he says, apparently finding it difficult to agree. "Then what happened?"

I was thrust unexpectedly into an alternate universe where up is down and light is dark and we're apparently a thing, so give a man a second to adjust. "Nothing," Stiles says. He runs his palm over the back of his head, ruffling the hair there. "I just had to leave. I have a, um." Dentist appointment? Spaceship to catch? Mind-blowing concussion? "Paper I forgot to write."

Peter’s looking at him skeptically, and for a second, Stiles thinks he’ll refuse to leave and stay until he weasels out the real reason because there’s real life concern on his face that Stiles doesn’t think he’s ever seen on his features before. Something is wrong.

“You didn’t tell me you had homework,” Peter says. “You told me you finished it last night already.”

What Stiles wants to say is why the hell do you care about my education. What comes out is, “I forgot about an English essay.”

For a few moments in which Peter stares Stiles down, Stiles almost doesn’t expect to get away with his impromptu fibbing. Then again, he’s had the last few years of chatting with his father to get the art honed, so he shouldn’t be all that surprised when Peter sighs in resignation and shrugs, apparently not interested in challenging Stiles' bluff.

“Fine,” he says. “Call me when you’re done. We can spend the afternoon together. You can help me buy new sheets and pillows after school if you're still up for it.”

He leans in, Stiles frozen all the while, and kisses his cheek, stopping briefly only to nip at his chin before he pulls away and turns around, Stiles mouthing emphatic what the fucks at his retreating back all the while. Cheek kisses?! Sheet buying?! He looks down at his hand just to make sure he isn’t also wearing a wedding ring. He isn’t, which is about the only good news of the morning so far.

--

Stiles spends the next thirty minutes panicking. He screams into a couch pillow, he pinches himself places the body does not enjoy being pinched, and he slaps himself in the face.

Afterwards, the world still looks the same. Completely different than his own.

He picks up his phone and, holding his breath, opens up his text messages. Up on the top is Scott, confirming plans for a Monday night movie outing. Underneath is his father reminding him that there are leftovers on the stove. And there, instead of the usual messages from Isaac, Allison, or Lydia, is Peter. The last one before all of the questions about why he left the bed so fast from an hour ago reads goodnight, sweetheart.

Sweetheart. What the fuck.

He goes to his computer next, jamming his finger into the power button with more force than strictly necessary. When he pulls up the Internet, the first thing he checks is his history, the sort of thing that can reveal the deepest secrets of a man. What he finds is, instead of the usual searches about obscure monsters and werewolf legends, is YouTube videos of sloths, an online store selling imaginatively shaped dildos, and a how-to website giving tips on how to give a satisfactory blowjob.

Clearly, this is a very elaborate ruse someone's playing on him for the sake of either a) driving Stiles crazy and ultimately killing him with the insanity that has engulfed him or b) a hearty laugh at Stiles' expense. He’s still unconvinced that Scott would voluntarily join in on this, unless this is payback for Aprils Fools ’07, which he’s definitely been harboring some resentment for if Stiles is any judge of his best friend’s character.

He goes downstairs after powering down his computer, hardly brave enough to do so. What's in the living room? Is his father having an orgy with the neighbors? He can hardly know exactly how many people have been roped into messing with him for the sheer sake of watching Stiles flip his shit.

Downstairs is empty, which is only a hollow victory considering Stiles ends up finding more evidence of his worst nightmare in the kitchen. There’s a note from his father on the microwave letting him know that he’ll be working late, and a pot of coffee by the sink waiting to be downed within the next ten minutes, and sitting innocently on the fridge is another photograph of him and Peter right underneath a fridge magnet. Peter’s biting his cheek and Stiles is in the throes of laughter, eyes nothing but tiny slits of happiness, and the photoshop work is either getting better and better or the situation is looking truly grim.

Stiles sits down when all of the digestion of information comes to be a bit too much to do while standing. He takes deep breaths, tries to rationalize the wildness pushed into his life without permission, and faces the incriminating facts: it looks very much like he and Peter Hale are in a relationship. A loving, laughter-filled, lively relationship.

Okay. He’s not going to be up for school or sheet and pillow buying. He's going to need to a long nap.

--

The long nap turns into sleeping through the night, and by the time Stiles wakes up at three a.m., fully rested and no better prepared for the madness he’s still surrounded by, he thinks he needs to turn to the anxiety medication.

He checks at least three times after awakening if his room has returned to normal, but each time he firmly blinks his eyes and peels them back open, the same billboard of polaroids of him and Peter stare back at him. He spends the rest of his night sitting cross-legged on the bed while he browses through his phone’s inbox and photos just to get a better idea as to where and when he is. It’s exactly the same day he thought it was, Thursday, during exactly the same year, which is reassuring, but also does little in easing the confusion as to what exactly is going on.

The migraine from trying to riddle out the confusion comes at five a.m., at which point Stiles gives up sitting in the dark and goes downstairs to prowl through the kitchen and shut his nerves with leftovers. He takes his phone with him, as three a.m. proved to be pretty unforgiving as far as good choices go, and his instinct at the time had been to send very long, very angry messages to Scott demanding answers. He planned on doing the same for Lydia, Allison, and Isaac just in case they were also in on the destruction of his sanity, but found that their numbers weren't even in his phone.

It’s so concerning that it brings him to the point where he starts doubting the existence of his own father and is enormously relieved when, back in his room hiding the leather jacket that smells like good books and cologne and sandalwood in his closet so he doesn’t have to look at it and accept its implications, he hears his father getting up through the wall and the water turning on in the bathroom. At least there’s that. At least he's not an orphan.

He’s downstairs trying to scrounge together a waffle before school when seven a.m. finally rolls around and his phone buzzes in his pants, and upon fishing it out, he sees it’s a text from Peter. It says I’m outside.

“What the fuck?” Stiles says. He stuffs the waffle into his mouth and goes to the living room window to pull back the curtain. There, in a driveway, Peter’s car sits. It’s not as sleek as Stiles remembers, a little shabbier around the edges, a lesser brand on the hood. He honks. “What the fuck?” Stiles says again, the words muffled in the waffle. It’s still a little frozen, which is hardly the best way to start his morning.

He pulls his coat on and slips outside, approaching the idling car. He squints at Peter through the window with suspicion before Peter, his patience thinning, reaches across the seat to nudge the door open for him.

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asks critically.

“Driving you to school. Now get in.”

“My Jeep is right there,” Stiles tells him obstinately, pointing across the driveway.

“Get in,” Peter says again. “What’s wrong with you?”

Stiles narrows his eyes as he eases himself into the car. Is this normal? Do they do this often? Peter backs the car up, clearly not as bothered by the abnormality of the current events as Stiles is.

“Plus I thought I ought to check up on you after yesterday,” Peter adds.

Stiles wonders if he’s supposed to put out a handful of excuses now—he wasn’t feeling well after he finished his essay, he had an awful dream, he wasn’t sure how to handle the world he was suddenly pushed into without warning. That last one probably won’t work.

A hand tangles out of the blue into Stiles' hair, a thumb brushing by his ear, and Stiles nearly rockets out of the seat. He looks over and there's Peter watching him with a fondness that looks much too genuine to actually fit his face. It's alarming. Peter's shoulders are too wide for a girl's and he smells of leather and a sharp cologne that seems vintage in its own right—the same scent on that damn leather jacket—and Stiles tries to figure out what he sees in him. What he possibly could see in him.

God, Stiles has no fucking clue how to act here. Does he go with the flow and just resign himself to the madness? Does he break off this bizarre relationship here and now to save himself the struggle of surviving it until he turns things back around so everything's right side up and normal again? Or does he let his curiosity steer the ship, hating himself along the way?

If he does decide to just roll his eyes and let himself be Peter Hale's boyfriend—holy shit—he has no idea how to act. Is he a touchy lover? Maybe Stiles is the type of guy to ask for road head, or maybe he's classier and enjoys wining and dining. Stiles doesn't know. He doesn't have enough personal experience to know these intimate details about himself.

And now that he's thinking about intimate details, what's the sex like?

"I was going to call you last night, see how you were doing," Peter murmurs. "But I figured I'd let you come to me." His fingers run down the side of Stiles' cheek before slipping away. "We're okay, yes?"

Stiles bites his lower lip to keep the snorting at bay. What kind of world is this where Peter is, with very real worry in his eyes, checking if their relationship is intact. He rolls his lips into his mouth and nods, waiting for the reflex to laugh to pass.

"Yeah," he says.

He leaves it at that. It seems to appease Peter enough, as the rest of the drive is quiet up until he curves into the school parking lot to let Stiles out. He leans across the console while Stiles unbuckles himself and fishes his backpack out of the foot room. "I'll pick you up at three," he says.

"Great," Stiles says. He grabs the door handle and is promptly seized by the sleeve.

"Where do you think you're going?

Stiles points out the window with furrowed eyebrows. "To school. To learn and prosper."

"You have to say goodbye first," Peter chides him, and before he can drawl out uh, okay, see you like a dope, Peter's pulling him in with a fistful of his shirt and planting a kiss on his mouth.

It shouldn't surprise him, not when that's what couples do and that's apparently what Stiles is, a couple, but it still does. Peter's teeth tug on his bottom lip and his tongue runs over the bite, and this doesn't feel like a good-luck-at-school-kiss, this feels like an off-to-war-kiss.

Peter pulls away when he's satisfied, the car humming loudly underneath them as it idles. He leaves one last soft kiss on Stiles' lips and straightens out his shirt.

"Now you can leave," he says with a coy grin, and Stiles has to spend a moment collecting his thoughts again before he grabs his backpack and leaves the car.

Peter waves at him through the window before he drives away. Stiles watches the car roll out of the parking lot, very much aware of Peter's saliva on his lip.

--

So Stiles goes to class like everything is fucking normal. Considering that Peter drops him off with a kiss and Scott's standing by the bike racks waiting for him with that same stupid, dopey hairdo Stiles remembers from sophomore year, things are definitely not so.

He sits in class letting his hands aggressively doodle out his confusion while the teachers talk. Everything about him is more jittery than usual, something he can probably owe more to the whole Crazy New World horror story he's trapped in than the espressos he had at four in the morning. He texts Scott under the desk too, sheepishly apologizing for blowing up his phone with accusations that he’s the leader of this pranking squad and that Stiles is feeling extremely, extremely hurt by this monstrous betrayal.

Stiles tries to rationalize. He lives in a town of monsters, so how bizarre is being sent into a totally different universe anyway? Stiles should be used to it, he thinks while not panicking. Not at all.

He thinks about the articles he's read about comatose patients who, while they're out, live decades upon decades of a life that doesn't exist anywhere but their own head—what if that's what's going on? It does, unfortunately, make him start to roam down a particularly dark path—which life really is reality then? In all fairness, the world without werewolves and monsters and everything from Michael Jackson's Thriller video come to life does seem like the more logical contender for real life, which is nothing if not concerning. What if his current world is the real one, a reality where he and Peter are a happy go lucky item with a penchant for simultaneous snarking and his best friend will walk around for the rest of his life with a bad haircut and never get the girl of his dreams? What if this is the most exciting things will ever be? What if this is his life now, handed to him like he's been plucked out of the world by the back of his shirt and dragged, against his will, somewhere confusing and new and supposedly pleasant?

No, no, no. This line of thinking is just another countless example as to why Stiles' brain should not be left alone to stew. He'd have to remember what happened before the coma for this to be real, like falling in love with Peter or meeting him under circumstances presumably different from being confronted by him and his Two-Face burns and psychotic nurse in the hospital.

This just isn’t reality, so the only other option that Stiles thinks is possible here is that he’s in an alternate reality. A parallel universe. A fucked up reshaping of the world he knows into something new and frightening that exists in a different dimension. How he got here, that’s the real headscratcher, and he doesn’t even have his typical team of brains to throw ideas around with to figure it out.

And why, of all the differences, is one of them that Peter's his romantic partner? Why not anybody else? He just doesn't have any answers for himself here, just sheer, unadulterated panic, his old buzzcut, and very human friends. Would the Internet even be helpful here in finding answers? What sort of results could he possibly get for "stuck in alternate universe" that don't go directly to video game forums?

"Stilinski," Mr. Harris' voice says sharply, cutting into the tornado of horror that is his head and his thoughts. Stiles is so startled to see him alive that he doesn't even care that he's about to be insulted. "Are you listening, or is that blank expression on your face a permanent installation?"

"It's pretty permanent," Stiles says. He can't believe he's happy to see Harris, of all people. "It's damn good to see you, you know that?"

Harris raises an eyebrow and behind him, Stiles hears Jackson snort. "Are you looking for detention, Stilinski?"

"No," Stiles says. He watches Harris grip the ruler in his hand like he's daydreaming of beating Stiles with it before moving along down the aisle, amazed at how alive and well and rude as ever Harris is.

It makes him think—maybe Stiles is Marty McFly. Maybe this is his chance to live his life differently, to fix things and improve them. Not that that explains Peter, unless he's Stiles' own personal project, someone to keep innocent and clean of any criminal records to make the world a better place. Not that Stiles needs to have free access to what's in his pants to do that. Not that Stiles would ever willingly sign up for that.

Still, maybe the worst—the shock, mostly—is over now. Maybe now it's just a matter of finding the switch to going back to the real world. And how much more could possibly surprise him after waking up almost naked in Peter's bed?

--

Turns out, a lot.

Stiles figures that much out when he's informed that he and Peter have date night on Thursdays. Every damn Thursday. Stiles would barrel over with laughter if he didn't know it would only make him look as if there are marbles rolling out of his head when Scott first tells him after Stiles asks him if he wants to come over to rock out with Guitar Hero after school—but dude, isn't it date night with Peter?

It is a sentence so bizarre Stiles doesn't think anybody on the history of the earth has ever said it in regards to Peter Hale before. He doesn’t want to go. He’d much rather play Guitar Hero with Scott and try and first marinate a bit more in this madness before he confronts it head on, but another part of him is morbidly curious about exactly how date night with Peter even goes. Does he open doors for Stiles? Does he cover the check?

He ends up giving into his interest of discovering what will happen. This world's Peter is like a strange, new, exotic zoo animal that just has to be analyzed and observed, and Stiles can't help it any more than he can stop himself from meddling with any other intriguing aspect of life, whether it’s looking for half a body in the middle of the night or throwing himself into a murder mystery. So he lets Peter drive him home after school so he can drop off his backpack and switch hoodies in anticipation for their date instead of following through with his original plan of telling Peter he already has a way home secured, ride the handlebars of Scott’s bike back to his house, and lock his doors and switch off all and any porch lights that make it seem like he's home and/or up for visitors.

He comes back downstairs after changing where Peter's standing by the front door, ready to court Stiles like an honest gentleman. He very much wants to snap pictures just in case his brain ever forgets the mental image of Peter wavering in his living room like a high school boy waiting for his prom date to show up, because if he's at a point in life where he’s ever scared of Peter again, photographic evidence of this experience should erase any and all remaining fear.

“Where do you want to go?” Peter asks him. “Do you want to stay in, watch a movie?”

Stiles looks over his shoulder where the couch is and is instantly assaulted with a slew of suggestive images of exactly what could transpire if they saddle up for a movie together while sharing a popcorn bowl and the same intimate corner of the couch. Like lovers. Stiles gets flashes of a hand on his thigh and a mouth on his neck during the boring scenes and instantly decides public places are safer. Public indecency laws will save him.

“I’m hungry,” Stiles announces. “Let’s grab something to eat. How’s that?”

He’s already grabbing his jacket so Peter can’t protest, but his hastiness seems unnecessary, as Peter shrugs, perfectly willing to accommodate Stiles’ teenage appetite, and opens the front door for them. It's almost like he's nice.

“Sure,” Peter says. “What do you feel like?”

Stiles shoots him a look. He keeps waiting for at least flashes of the real Peter, someone who would choose the restaurant without asking and not bother to wait for Stiles’ opinion. It makes Stiles wonder if he's not even a werewolf, and if being born one is what gave Peter his edge, if there’s a visceral, dominant, animalistic set of chromosomes in the lycanthropy make-up that make him more likely to bite first, ask questions later, that just doesn’t compute to a human.

“Something greasy,” Stiles says. “I could really go for some burgers.”

Peter has no complaints. They walk out to his car and head to the nearest fast food dive, Peter’s free hand curving over Stiles’ fingers as he drives. Is that something that happens often, that Peter holds his hand whenever he can get away with it even when Stiles’ palm starts getting moist? Stiles isn't sure he's a hand holding type of fellow.

He’s uncomfortable, that much is for sure. He just doesn’t know how to behave, and that in turn transforms itself into anxiety, which Peter can surely smell from only a few feet away. Unless, like he was considering—

Stiles stops. There’s no easy, casual way to ask someone if they happen to be a werewolf. Things are starting to add up that Peter isn’t—the lack of lycanthropy literature in Stiles’ search history and his bookcase, the missing Argents, the fact that Peter seems much more human on a very internal level that Stiles can’t even put his finger on. Still, he wants to check.

“Do you,” he begins, biting his lip when nothing brilliant is coming to mind. He finally finds a semi-reasonable question that might cinch his theory in. “Do you have any scars?”

Peter shoots him a curious look as he settles to a stop at a red light. “Of all people, Stiles, I’d think you’re the most familiar with my skin.”

If there was anything ranging from gum to an entire lobster in his mouth right now, Stiles would be choking and leaving this mortal world forever. “Right,” he says. “I meant. Do any of them have any fun stories behind them?”

“Oh.” Peter takes a left turn. Stiles realizes that he’s heading to his favorite Burger King, the one that sits on a hill so the view out the window is the most enjoyable. It disturbs him a little that Peter just knows. “Well. The one on my lower back is from falling off the roof when I was twelve years old.”

Well, there’s that. Plus a surprisingly hilarious visual of Peter falling off of things that Stiles didn’t realize he desperately needed in his life.

It makes Stiles wonder—do werewolves exist at all in this world? Is this a monster-free existence? If there are no monsters, there’s no reason for anyone to torch down the Hale house and Peter to werewolf rage and kill half the town, unless he’s inherently such a bad person that Peter will kill something sooner or later no matter the circumstances. Stiles has to say, though, from his gentlemanly door holding alone, Stiles has trouble believing that the Peter next to him has ever so much as suffered a traffic violation, which definitely throws out his original assumption that he’s here to fulfill some larger purpose, life changing revamp of Peter’s character. Peter’s character seems almost squeaky clean.

Well, that’s too wacky to even consider.

They park at a fast food chain—the Burger King Stiles had suspected he was being brought to—and it gives Stiles the chance to wipe off his sweaty hand on his jeans before Peter tries to grab it again as he hurries out of the car. Why can’t they be like one of those couples that never touch, too wrapped in modesty and abstinence and respect for each other’s bodies to bother with sexual urges? It sounds like he’s describing a nun instead of a teenage boy, but still, Stiles has trouble imagining any version of himself that actually genuinely enjoys Peter being all over him.

They head inside and Peter tells Stiles to go grab them a table, confident that he knows Stiles’ order without having to ask. Stiles complies hesitantly, finding a booth by the window, and tries not to stare in disbelief as Peter returns with a tray full of Stiles’ favorites. Even the extra packets of mayonnaise he need sometimes for his fries.

"Can I ask you a stupid question?" Stiles asks after ten minutes of comfortable silence as he's chewing his hamburger. "How did we meet?"

Peter briefly spares Stiles a glance from where he's sprinkling salt onto his french fries. Stiles realizes then that he hasn't noticed yet that Peter's face is completely clean shaven, his bristly facial hair absent on his cheeks and chin.

"You mean the day Derek caught you trespassing on our property?"

It dredges up a memory in Stiles—a real one. "I was looking for Scott's inhaler."

"You were," Peter says. He sounds almost fond. "Derek tried to chase you off. And then Laura came out and told Derek to stop being so—what's the right word? Uptight?—and helped you look."

"Laura," Stiles says slowly. All he knows about her is that she's the maimed body Scott only found half of the night they sneaked into the woods cruising for excitement, and in this world he's seen her face and heard her voice and maybe even become her friend. It’s a morbid thought that gives his spine a good rattling.

"And then I came outside to figure out what everybody was doing in the yard and saw you and, well."

"You creamed your pants," Stiles fills in the blanks helpfully.

“No,” Peter says, dribbling ketchup onto his hamburger. “It wasn’t about sex for a while.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Come on, you know that we took our time,” Peter’s shoe nudges his calf. “It was all about romance for a long time. Wooing you out of your socks.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Romance? You?”

He tries just to imagine it—Peter Hale delivering the entire moonlight and roses spiel. Peter Hale creating romantic mixtapes that he leaves in Stiles’ mailbox. Peter Hale constructing poems, letters, and maybe even a sonnet too all for the sake of love. The idea won’t be created in his brain, not even the sketchy outlines. Peter frowns at him as he chews.

“How can you not remember?” Peter says, sounding a little indignant.

“How can we not have had sex right away?” Stiles counters, looking Peter up and down. All he can imagine of Peter as a lover is that he’d have the sex drive of a hungry lion, even in this world. Lots of biting. Lots of rough and tumble foreplay. Definitely not any self-control.

Peter shrugs. “You were young. I felt guilty deflowering the sheriff’s son at only sixteen.”

“You felt guilty?” Stiles repeats dumbly. Even the thought of Peter having a conscience is laughable. “So we waited until I was actually legal?”

Stiles is only a few months into eighteen. How new is this Stiles to sex? How does he feel about it and has it lived up to his wildest expectations after the proverbial carrot has been dangled in front of him by his apparently very moral boyfriend who’s given him a whole two years of abstinence? Has he topped?

Stiles pops a fry in his mouth and finds himself wishing he could remember the memories his alternate self has lived. “Okay, Mr. Romance,” Stiles says, chewing. “Jog my memory. That first time—were there rose petals?”

Peter’s eyes narrow at him. “You don’t remember?”

Stiles takes a leap of faith and says, “The orgasm stole all other moments from that night from my memory.”

Peter chuckles. It was clearly the right thing to say, Peter shining with a proud smugness. Apparently Hale cockiness transcends all universes.

“Typical,” Peter murmurs, and he expresses his fondness by swiping his thumb over the greasiness gathered on Stiles’ bottom lip. It startles Stiles, his first reaction being for his tongue to dart out; it touches Peter’s thumb for a brief moment. “So that expensive dinner I sprung for. I shouldn’t have bothered, right? Since you don’t even remember?”

“I remember,” Stiles says, even as he doesn’t. He hopes Peter doesn’t challenge him.

“Good,” Peter says. Real Peter would’ve tested him, demanding detailed descriptions of the appetizers that night. “Well, after the nice dinner, we took a bath.” Stiles takes a moment to save himself from the threat of choking on his food. That's twice in one day. “And you told me that unless I planned on following through, I shouldn’t even think about soaping you up.”

Stiles snorts. “Well. I am a hormonal teenager.”

“Trust me—I know,” Peter says, almost darkly. “So we adjourned to the bed. And we had sex.”

Was it good is on the tip of Stiles’ tongue, but he hears how offensive it might be before he has a chance to say it out loud. His filter rephrases it. “Did you like it?”

Peter’s eyebrows raise in disbelief. “Are you seriously asking me?” He peppers salt over his fries. “Insecurity isn’t a good color on you.”

“Just answer the question,” Stiles grumbles.

“It was incredible.” He says it off-handedly, casually, staring at his food as he talks. Stiles realizes that he’s honest to goodness embarrassed if not shy about it. “Which I’ve already told you before.” He shoots a glare across the table at Stiles. “You just like hearing me say it.”

“So waiting,” Stiles says, breezing past his complaints. “You don’t regret it?”

“I have nothing but respect for your father, Stiles,” Peter says. “So no. No.”

Stiles cackles and throws a fry at him. It leaves a greasy spot on his shirt that werewolf Peter would’ve dodged. “You’re a liar,” Stiles says. He puckers his lips in the sexiest face he’s ever seen himself pull off in the mirror. “You restrained yourself for months. I’m irresistible, aren’t I?”

“Sure,” Peter murmurs. “But now I can have you whenever I want. So. All’s well that ends well.” He tips his head to the bathroom around the corner and slips his hand over Stiles’ knee. “For example. Want a quickie in a stall?”

It stops being fun very quickly. The smile is wiped off of Stiles’ face the moment Peter’s hand crawls up his thigh, making it very apparent that Stiles should really be more careful about joking with his boyfriend about having sex if he doesn’t want to inadvertently end up suggesting he’s in the mood. He’s not. He will never be the in mood again, not with the sensation of Peter’s hand on his leg now permanently engraved into his brain. He drops his hamburger.

“Relax,” Peter says, withdrawing his hand. “I learned my lesson already. Sex in public places is too risky when there’s a sheriff father involved.”

It’s a story Stiles doesn’t even want to hear. How many times did they get caught necking in a changing booth or a parked car by his unsuspecting father? Even just the idea is making all the color rush from Stiles’ face, running out his feet and far away. For whatever reason, the fact that it's Peter he was always caught with is making it three hundred times worse.

“Um,” Stiles says. “Later.”

One of Peter’s eyebrows twitches. “Promise?”

No, Stiles does not promise. What he does do is drop his hamburger again and try to pretend he isn’t a grown eighteen-year-old man getting flustered by the idea of sex, or in this specific, weird as hell case, sex with Peter.

He needs to find his way out of this world. As soon as physically possible.

--

The next day in school Stiles notices Erica sitting in the back of his science class with earbuds underneath her uncombed hair and a sweatshirt over her small figure.

In the hallway after math, he catches a glimpse of Boyd by his locker, standing alone, no one to chat with during passing period.

During lunch, he sees Isaac sitting near the end of a table far away from where he and Scott are eating breadsticks over their math textbooks. He seems to favor his left side when he gets up to throw his trash away, like maybe he was hit in the stomach a night ago.

"Hey," Stiles says, nudging Scott's elbow. "Do you know Isaac Lahey?"

"Sort of." Scott shrugs. "He sits on the bench with us during lacrosse sometimes, right?"

Stiles looks at him and tries to figure out what the hell he's even talking about before he remembers—they used to be completely hopeless benchwarmers watching Jackson being carried around on the team's shoulders. It bothers him more than it should.

"Right," Stiles nods. "I think he's being abused by his dad."

Scott looks over his shoulder where Isaac's eating alone. Boyd is a few tables away, also alone. Further in the cafeteria, Lydia sits feeding Jackson spoonfuls of cafeteria pudding, ignoring Stiles and Scott's existence. The fact that he can't go up to any one of them—and hell, Allison isn't even here—and ask them for advice on homework or chat about his day or make plans to save the world without them staring at him like he needs to be locked up in a psych ward is downright jarring.

"Why?" Scott asks.

"I just know," Stiles says. "I've, um. Heard things around the station."

"Oh," Scott says. "Is your dad doing something about it?"

Stiles is temporarily too distracted to answer, his eyes cast over the chattering crowd to look for familiar faces. He sees Matt, eating a sandwich like he has no idea he has the potential to be a revenge-seeking cold-blooded murderer. He sees Finstock cruising through the lunch line using his whistle to bustle to the front, perhaps the only person with close proximity to all this mess that was never close to being killed. For a moment, staring at this lunchroom full of two kinds of people: those alone and abused, or those Stiles knows to be dead, he feels hopelessly defeated, like either world is just as screwed up as the other.

“Uh. Yeah. I mean, I’m going to tell him about it,” Stiles says, guiding a forkful of cafeteria jello to his mouth. “Maybe we should make friends with him.”

He’s not the type to suggest making friends, let alone with someone like Isaac who he personally knows to be an irritation factory of the highest caliber when it comes to things that grate on Stiles’ nerves, but then he thinks about every single person who was lured into Derek’s pack of troubled teenagers all had one thing in common: they were mind-numbingly lonely. And, well. Stiles has a best friend, an awesome dad, and a loving boyfriend, so he’s sort of spilling over with company and could stand to spread the joy.

“Isaac?” Scott asks, craning his neck to get another look at him. “We don’t have anything in common, do we?”

It kills Stiles a little bit to see Scott, someone who he knows to be opening and welcoming and a natural leader, be the version of himself he remembers from the start of sophomore year—a dork with an inhaler, no popularity, no idea how to comb his hair, and extremely withdrawn into himself. Stiles nudges his wrist.

“So? He’s a benchwarmer. We’re benchwarmers. We have that in common right there.”

“Our lack of athletic talent?”

“Okay. Hear me out for a second.” Stiles puts his elbows on the table and leans in closer. “There could be another reality out there where you and Isaac are best buds. And that capability to be friends—it still exists. No matter the world. Hell, we could have been prehistoric dinosaurs together at one point. But we won’t know until we try to hang out with them.”

Scott doesn’t seem to be following his logic. His eyebrows are knitted tightly together, clearly not on board with Stiles’ theory. Stiles looks back over at Isaac, curled in on himself like a wounded bird, and can’t believe he actually misses that pencil-thieving bastard. Then his phone buzzes in his pocket, distracting him.

It’s a text from Peter that says thinking of you, and Stiles only hopes that this isn’t his only warning before a dick pic comes his way.

“Peter text you?”

Stiles looks up from his phone at Scott’s words, tucking it back into his pants. “Yeah, actually. How’d you know?”

Scott waves his fork in his direction. “You only smile like that when Peter texts you.”

Stiles can physically feel the heat turn his cheeks pink. “I wasn’t smiling.”

“Uh, yeah. You were. It’s actually a very distinct I’m-in-love-and-jamming-it-in-everybody’s-faces smile,” Scott says, doing absolutely nothing to cover up that strong taste of bitterness in his words. Stiles has never experienced this; he’s the stud in a relationship and Scott is the single one in need of a wingman.

He’s also never had the pleasure of having a happy relationship to jam anywhere. Is it satisfying to look around the world, taking in all the droopy faces of those unfortunate single people he’s typically also representing, and know that he has a person who physically, consciously chose to keep him around both while naked and while not so? It seems special.

“You’re doing it again,” Scott mutters. “Your Peter smile.”

“I don’t have a Peter smile,” Stiles says, taking great care to mold his mouth into a downward arc that can’t be mistaken for anything other than a repulsed frown.

He doesn’t. He won’t ever, he’s sure of that much.

--

Stiles takes a break from the disorienting experience of watching people he knows to be corpses walk around school halls like ghosts ascended from their graves by sneaking out of school early and skipping seventh period—he’s pretty sure none of this permanent; he could hold all of his least favorite teachers hostage at gunpoint if he fucking feels like it and not have to pay the price back at home—and grabs greasy takeout to surprise his father with at the station instead. He’s the only person Stiles hasn’t spent time with to see how he’s changed, and Stiles is pretty sure he hasn’t. The familiarity, the constant his father is in his life, should be refreshing

“Look what I have,” Stiles announces once he makes his way to his father’s office, just where it always is, in a station that hasn’t changed at all from his memory. He holds the takeout bag over his head like it’s a trophy. “Dinner for my favorite father. You’re not busy, are you?”

He would guess not. Amazing how much more time the police station has when there aren’t suspicious wild goose chases after an allegedly bloodthirsty mountain lion happening willy nilly. His father nods, waving him in. “Sure,” he says. “This is a pleasant surprise. You’re out of school a little early, aren’t you?”

“I ditched last period,” Stiles admits. “What am I going to do with geometry? Ever?”

He takes the food out of the bag as a distraction tactic before his father can give him the weary lecture that math is important and graduating high school is even more important, holding out a proffered hamburger with a winning smile.

“Am I going to get another angry call from the school because you’re not attending? Like I did yesterday?”

Oh. Right. Stiles has been wrapped up staring at pictures of him and Peter like he was staring into the face of death and the endless void of hell that he had completely forgotten to fool the school by calling into the office pretending to be his father excusing him from class. He frowns, disappointed by his own absentmindedness.

“I needed a sick day,” Stiles says, then points vaguely at his stomach, his head, his nose, anywhere that could possibly leak disturbing fluids. “Forgot to tell you.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah. It was, a, um. Twenty-four hour thing. Some weird thing going around school.” He takes out his box of chicken fingers and makes himself comfortable in the chair across from his father’s desk. It feels just like old times, like finding a recognizable face in a crowd of strangers after the foreign whirlwind his life has been the last few days.

“You don’t look good,” the sheriff says, making a face.

That’s probably just the stress, the fear, and the general feeling of being in a foreign country that speaks a language he’s never learned without a passport to get him back home. “I’m fine!” he says, probably too loudly. He switches gears. "So tonight." He drums his fingers on the desk. "Why don't you and I just... talk about life. You know, classic father and son bonding. Reminiscing. We could relive the last few years together."

He raises his eyebrows at him hopefully, waiting for an answer. Looking up from his loaded hamburger, his father looks skeptical.

"I thought you were busy tonight," he says.

"What, too busy for my pops?"

His dad shrugs. "Peter called and told me you had plans," he says. "But hey, if he had to cancel I'm happy to hang out."

"Wait—Peter called you?" Stiles tries to process this. "You know about him?"

"I should hope so, he's your boyfriend," he snorts. When Stiles fails to close his mouth, his father frowns at him. "Are you feeling all right?"

It's a question Stiles is starting to get annoyed of hearing. He's not entirely sure how long he can pull off acting like a bumbling amnesiac before the suspicion really starts to set in around him.

"I'm peachy," Stiles tells him.

"Also, hey. Tell Peter me and the guys are expecting him to show up for poker this weekend."

Stiles stuffs a chicken finger into his mouth and rubs at his temples. He's just not sure how to handle this, how to recondition himself when his body has spent years learning not to trust Peter, not to believe anything coming out of his mouth. A part of him isn't sure why he's putting himself through this at all. He doesn't have to play along. He doesn't have to pretend to be the happy boyfriend. He could just as easily put a stop to all of it instead of getting used to the way Peter kisses him with careful intent.

"So you like him?" Stiles asks. "You get good vibes from him?"

"Stiles, we've talked about this," the sheriff says. "I like him. I'm glad he's around. You two are... well, you're something special."

Something special. Stiles agrees, though probably not in the way everybody else is meaning it. He doesn’t understand how everybody in this world is so gung-fucking-ho on Stiles and his meaningful relationship with the salt and pepper hunk who came into their lives out of nowhere. He’s lied to his father about so many things for so many years, from things as small as Ds on tests to his best friend being a real life werewolf, but here and now, Stiles feels the pull to be honest and tell his father that none of this real, at least not for him. He bites that pull back. He isn't sure he's ready to deal with the messy repercussions.

He sits and eats his lunch while his father says nice things about Peter. How he's a good cook. How he has helpful advice about investing money. How the age difference might help Stiles grow up a little bit past the eternal age of nine he seems to have mentally latched onto. It's so unreal that Stiles has trouble keeping a straight face as he listens.

Stiles drives home contemplating the fictitious man everybody around him seems to think Peter is. The man who's good at fixing dinner. The one who has a nice family who he dotes on. The one who makes Stiles happy.

Scott says he's a "nice man" with a "good sense of humor"—but then again, what the hell does Scott know? He's still sporting the overgrown mop of hair Stiles remembers in nightmarish flashes from sophomore year. He had no idea something as banal as Scott having a good haircut was dependent on his lycanthropy.

He wonders what they’d all say if they would get a glimpse of the real Peter, the one who probably spends Halloween night being that sociopath who puts razors into apples before handing them out to passerby. Everything about him from the angular cheekbones to the way he carries himself like most exaggerated Disney villains do screams do not trust me. He doesn’t exactly set an example of boyfriend material.

Stiles keeps thinking about it when he arrives home. He lays down on his unmade sheets and lets his eyes drift shut as he considers that Peter, that fucked up weirdo back home who’s probably doing nothing at all to get Stiles back if he’s left any evidence behind that he’s been abducted into another world, would look at this version of himself and be appalled. He certainly wouldn’t try to learn from him. He certainly wouldn’t be impressed by his choice in men.

Or would he?

Stiles decides then and there that’s enough introspection.

--

"Do you believe in werewolves?"

From where he's mixing pancake batter in Stiles' kitchen, Peter throws him a glance. "I believe in a lot of things," he says ambiguously. "Why?"

Stiles does his best to casually shrug. "I was just thinking about it. A world where there'd be werewolves."

Peter goes back to stirring. "You'd be eaten alive," he says idly.

"Not yet." Stiles says it quietly enough that Peter, lacking his usual werewolf hearing, can't hear. He would like to preen about it, auto-congratulate himself about his survival thus far, but he's in the wrong world to do so and have it actually make sense. The fact that he's a prisoner in this false world is probably also a slight contradiction of his self-proclaimed ability to stay out of trouble.

This morning has been fucking bizarre. Stiles is still trying to wrap his head around the picture he saw when he walked downstairs half an hour ago—his father chatting with Peter over the gurgling coffee machine before work like they're buds. Then again, they have poker nights together where they probably drink scotch and swap humiliating stories about Stiles, so he supposed the morning coffee chatter shouldn't be unexpected.

Plus, Peter's in a suit. A real life, properly tailored, well-fitting suit complete with slicked hair and shiny shoes. He looks like he could be working a lawyer's desk, and it takes Stiles a few blinks to get used to seeing him in anything other than skintight henleys. It hits him a few moments later—holy shit, Peter has a job. Like a regular human.

The smell of sizzling oil wafts across the kitchen where Stiles is sitting on a countertop. It really is a little sweet for Peter to make pancakes for Stiles before he heads off to work—the stock market, apparently—and he should probably throw some gratitude his way as he slaves over the stove.

"Have you ever killed somebody?" Or, he could ask that.

Peter’s hands stutter for a moment where he’s balancing the batter bowl in one hand and the pan in the other. "Excuse me? What kind of question is that?"

"I'm just wondering," Stiles says defensively. "Have you?"

"No."

"Have you thought about it?" Stiles presses. He rocks his legs back and forth, feet thudding against the cabinets with every swing. "Even just a teensy weensy bit?"

Peter thrusts the pancake batter spoon at him for him to lick, presumably to get him to shut up. "Don't ever say teensy weensy to me again."

"Noted," Stiles says. He licks a stripe down the spoon. "So have you?"

"Sure. It's totally natural."

Stiles arches forward to hear more, nearly falling off the counter as he does so. "Really?"

"It is," Peter says. "Everybody lays in bed imagining setting their mortal enemies on fire, or thinks about how much fun it would be to throw someone down a flight of stairs. It's a psychological phenomenon."

A Psych 101 lesson is not what Stiles wanted out of this. "Okay," he says, fishing some more. "So what about—just hypothetically—someone burned your house down—again, just for funsies—with your family trapped inside." He narrows his eyes, waiting for Peter’s reaction. "Would you kill them?"

"I suppose," Peter says, pouring batter into the sizzling pan. He sounds very mild about all of this, and it's driving Stiles up the wall. He had been waiting for—hoping for, even—a familiar sign of evil in his eyes, like a far off look of nefariousness or a hissed diatribe of all the people he's thought about poisoning in their sleep. Dramatic it may be, but Stiles would appreciate the familiarity.

"So you wouldn't go crazy or anything?"

"Stiles," Peter says. "What's this all about?"

"What?"

"All the inane questions at nine in the morning?" He tosses an annoyed glance over his shoulder at Stiles. "I'm trying to make pancakes here."

"Just trying to get to know my," abort, abort, abort, "booooyf," he can't do it, "man buddy," he catches Peter's arched eyebrow, "partner," no, that sounds fucking awful, "in crime... better."

Peter's full out frowning at him by now as he flips a golden pancake onto a plate. He licks a stray dollop of batter off his thumb and murmurs around his finger, "What the hell is wrong with you today?"

"Nothing," Stiles throws his arms up. "Can't a guy just ask some out of the box questions now and again?"

Peter says nothing, clearly suspicious, and rummages around Stiles' fridge. The tilt of the door lets Stiles get a great angle of the photograph of the two of them where Peter's pretending to bite his cheek. He looks away from it.

Peter walks over to him with a plate of steaming pancakes in his hand. There's already a gathering of whipped cream on top, the sight of the white peak turning Stiles' stomach when he realizes that Peter knows how he likes his pancakes best. Peter leans in, plate still firm in his grasp, and starts peppering kisses on Stiles' throat. It nearly tickles, the light brushes of his lips like bolts of electricity. Stiles' hands come up to Peter's back, tracing his spine with his fingertips, like it's instinct.

Is this a thing that happens in the morning? Peter makes breakfast and then they make out for a few minutes? Stiles thinks as his eyes flutter closed that he could get used to it, which is a dangerous, bizarre, and hopefully hormone-driven thought.

"Tell me you love me," Peter murmurs, the words vibrating on his neck.

Stiles' eyes snap open. "What?"

"I made you pancakes," Peter says. As if on command, the smell of fluffy, warm, perfectly prepared breakfast drifts up his nostrils. "So do it."

Stiles swallows. "I love you," he says. The words feel strange, foreign in his throat, tickling his tongue.

It seems to satisfy Peter, who pushes the plate into Stiles' grasp and steals a kiss from him. The tongue that touches his lips tastes of black coffee, and Stiles lets it deepen the kiss out of curiosity more than anything else.

When Peter pulls away, Stiles has trouble remembering his mouth should probably be closed and his eyes should probably be open again. He does, and there's Peter, inexplicably close to him, so much so that Stiles nearly goes cross-eyed focusing on him.

"Hey," he says, sliding his hand over Peter's knee. "Do you know about that theory that coma patients can live whole other lives while they're not conscious?"

"Yes," Peter says slowly. "Are odd questions the theme of the day?"

"Just bear with me," Stiles persists. "What if the life we're living now is that comatose dream? What if you woke up one day and things were different? What would you do?"

"How would things be different?"

Stiles rolls his shoulders and pretends to think about creating a fictional scenario. "You and I aren't together. We don't get along. And just for kicks, there are monsters everywhere."

"Your imagination runs wild, doesn't it?"

Stiles grabs him by the chin to focus him. "Just consider it," he says. "What if you were a monster, and I was some annoying human kid and sometimes we'd work together even though we wouldn't want to?"

"Work together to do what, save the world?" Peter asks, his tone critical.

"Yeah," Stiles shrugs. "For instance."

Peter seems to indulge him by considering his premise. He raises an eyebrow. "What's keeping us from getting along?"

"I don't know. We're just on different sides." Stiles thinks harder about it and decides not to sugarcoat. "And you're kind of a dick. Theoretically."

"Hmm," Peter says. Other than his mouth twitching, he says nothing concerning the offhand dick comment. "Then I might just become the man I remembered being. Comatose Peter. The one who was actually pleasant."

"But it's not Comatose World. The circumstances would be… different."

Peter's hand slides over Stiles' cheek. "Stiles," he says gently. "What are you looking for me to say? In some worlds, maybe we wouldn't work out. Maybe we'd hate each other."

His rationality and reasonable thinking shocks Stiles. Even after days of being trapped in this existence without the outlines fogging over like he's about to be pulled back, he still can't seem to fully figure Peter out. He thinks he has, thinks he's drawn the lines connecting the dots between Real Peter and Surreal Peter, but then the latter Peter says something so completely from left field that Stiles has to start all over again. It makes him wonder if Real Peter is just as much of a three dimensional person but Stiles has just never bothered to find out. That's a thought that warrants a theatrical full-body shudder.

"But you'd miss me," Stiles asks. For whatever reason, he's hanging onto his answer. "If you woke up and weren't in this world anymore. You'd miss me?"

He doesn't mean to say it like a question, but it comes out as such. It sounds like he's fishing for compliments. Really, he's just morbidly fascinated with the idea, something he can't put his finger on, something that's nagging him.

Peter's hand slides from Stiles' cheek to the curve of his neck. "I would," he says, dropping a kiss into his hair. "I would."

For a split second, Stiles feels a wave of affection like he's channeling the thoughts of the Stiles meant to be in this world, getting a momentary peek into his brain. It feels like he's happy. If that Stiles has been put into the real world to replace real Stiles, he probably won't be happy for much longer. His boyfriend's a serial killer with a dead family and his life is overrun with monsters coming from all corners like an undefeatable video game boss fight that he definitely, definitely won't be prepared for. He'll be traumatized for days.

Briefly, he touches a part inside himself that wonders if he’ll miss Peter when he gets back to normal. Then again, the Peter he remembers has the almost astounding talent of making an entire room roll their eyes, turn their backs, or send collective rude gestures in his direction just because of one comment. It might turn out that it’ll be very easy to shake all of this off, like when he wakes up from a dream and the details are already fuzzy, flying away from him.

“What about you?” Peter asks he starts preparing his own batch of pancakes, pouring more batter into the pan.

“What about me?”

“Would you miss me?” Peter says. “If you woke up one day and your world would be different. Full of monsters and what-have-you that your morbid little brain thinks up.”

Stiles looks down at his pancakes. The plate is very warm on his lap. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean. Who’d make me pancakes?”

“Well. Isn’t someone thinking with their stomach,” Peter comments. “I love you too, by the way. Just in case you were curious.”

Stiles wasn’t. But there’s a part of him that feels like it's nice to know anyway.

--

Stiles makes the snap, possibly ill-advised decision to tell Scott everything later when they're home from school in Scott’s room that same day.

"Listen," Stiles says, hanging partially off the bed, "if I told you something really bizarre, would you believe me?"

“Sure,” Scott says from where he’s focusing more on the video game in front of him than on the Stiles next to him. Stiles had almost forgotten how much time he and Scott had for video gaming before all the life-saving and near death experiences became a regular thing for him. He used to absolutely smash it at Guitar Hero.

“Okay. So. I have to tell you something really bizarre.”

“Mmm.”

Stiles would appreciate a bit more concentration. He watches as Scott manages, with extreme precision, the controller in his right hand while his left hand sneaks across the floor into the bag of chips, and is pretty sure that that move alone took at least ninety percent of his brain power, leaving little left for Stiles and his serious problems. He taps Scott on the shoulder. “I’m serious.”

Scott spares him a momentary glance and seems to see something in Stiles’ face—frantic fear, probably—that convinces him to pause his game. He turns to him, eyebrows furrowed. “Okay.”

Stiles takes a deep breath, suddenly feeling a little hot under the full attention he so direly wanted a few seconds ago considering the doozy of a bomb he's about to drop. Here goes. "I'm not from this universe," Stiles says. "I'm from a different world. Parallel existence, or something like that.” He keeps himself from looking at Scott to avoid the inevitable astonishment in his eyes and continues. “You’re a werewolf. Peter’s a werewolf. Derek’s a werewolf. Pretty much everyone except me is a werewolf, and we spend most of our time trying to save the town from more werewolves.”

He exhales the breath he’s taken in and lets himself catch Scott’s eyes. The shock, as expected, is painted all over his face. Then it’s replaced by a mighty snort. “Okay,” Scott says, full of doubt. “Do you want the last chip?”

Stiles does, but this isn’t a time to focus on chips. He snatches the bag up and puts it aside. “This is serious,” he says. “I don’t have any way to actually prove it to you, but it’s true. Has been since last week.”

Scott peers up at him through narrowed eyes, weighing the likelihood of him currently being messed with. “Really?”

Stiles bounces on the bed to his knees, sitting up properly to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. “Yes, really,” he says. “So I need you to skip past all the freaking out and help me get out of here.”

Scott’s eyes go from slanted with suspicion to wide with incredulity. “Help you? How?”

“I don’t know!” Stiles wails. “But I don’t belong here. I belong in a different, totally shittier world.”

“What’s so bad about it?”

“Did you not hear me say that there were werewolves attacking our town every other night?” Stiles says. “Also, Peter’s evil. Derek’s grumpy, but that’s probably because most of his family has been murdered. And there are hunters trying to kill you too. On the plus side, you actually have a girlfriend.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. She’s awesome. Except that she’s a werewolf hunter, and comes from a whole family of hunters, and you’re a werewolf, so there’s that.”

“Woah. Star-crossed lovers,” Scott says. Something in his tone sounds skeptical, like he’s waiting for Stiles to burst into laughter and fill him in on the joke, and Stiles can’t exactly blame him. When he summarizes it like this, it sounds a little comical. A little too soap-opera-esque to take without question.

“It sounds ridiculous,” Stiles admits.

“Yeah, it does.”

Stiles slides off the bed urgently and onto the floor, grabbing Scott’s forearm. “But it’s true. And I have to go back. This is weird. I’m weird here and this whole world is weird. And I belong back where people are constantly trying to kill me.”

Scott’s eyes are slightly narrowed, as if he’s still trying to figure out Stiles’ angle. Stiles can only hope that Scott doesn’t assume drugs are the culprit and involve his mother, which will ultimately end in a lecture on not using crack and a complete lack of help when it comes to actually solving his hard to believe but still very real problems.

“How am I supposed to help you?” Scott asks slowly.

Stiles squeezes his wrist. “So you believe me?”

“I don’t know, dude.”

Stiles gets it. This is the Scott he’s used to, to be honest. He remembers the multiple times he tried to convince Scott he was a werewolf before he actually listened, and that was only after he physically transformed under the full moon, so Stiles has learned that Scott is more of a believe-it-when-I’ll-see-it kind of fellow when unbelievable situations come into play. Stiles can admire that in a friend, that frustrating determination to not be too gullible. It keeps his persuasive skills sharp.

“That’s okay. You don’t really have to believe me, you just have to help.” Which is hard, admittedly, when the situation is so fucked up and nobody has any real facts. An idea strikes Stiles. “Deaton. He might be able to help.”

“Deaton’s a vet,” Scott points out helpfully.

“I know, I know. But he’s moonlighting a werewolf business on the side—at least, that’s what he does where I’m from.” He needs to ease up on the out-of-this-world comments. “Can you ask him during work?”

“Ask him what?”

“If he knows anything about parallel universes. Out of world experiences. Just, you know. Discreetly.”

“Discreetly? How?”

“I don’t know, Scott! Worm it into the conversation!” Stiles mimes a worm with his finger and hopes Scott has enough tact to pull this off. Deaton would certainly be a big help if he turned out to be a magical guru no matter what world he’s in, although there’s a very big possibility that in the here and now he knows nothing more than how to cure pet allergies.

Okay, so now there's a plan. Stiles always feels better when he's proactively figuring something out, when there's a solid goal to reach, and now that he has Scott with him, it feels like someone's taken the burden of being a one man brainstorming team off his shoulders. That seems to be the end of that conversation, except Scott is still staring at Stiles like he’s an alien that’s levitated down to earth. Stiles frowns at him.

“If you have questions, just ask them.”

Scott readjusts himself so he’s pivoted entirely toward Stiles. "Okay, yeah. So you really don't remember anything from your life here?" Scott asks, eyes wide. The video game is long forgotten at this point. "Are we even friends in your universe?"

"We're friends no matter the world, dude," Stiles says, settling onto his back again and staring at the popcorn notches in the ceiling. "There's that much."

"What about Peter?" Scott asks. "Do you remember being with him? Do you remember the mistletoe?"

Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose. "Is that how we got together?"

"Yeah," Scott says. "Do you want to know?"

"No!" Stiles can't say it fast enough. He's never felt more like he's the subject of an ABC rom-com. A mistletoe was their relationship catalyst? What came after, romantic ice skating rendezvous and caroling together? "It's honestly weird enough as it is. Peter's a totally different guy where I'm from. Seeing him like this—it's." Mind-rattling? Thought-provoking? "Strange."

"He's a werewolf," Scott confirms slowly.

"Yeah, an evil one. He's an evil guy. He went on this murder spree and then we all got together to torch him to death." Stiles decides to hold his tongue before he brings up the self-resurrection. "He's got facial hair too."

"Oh.” Scott pauses. “You know you sound insane, right, dude?”

Stiles rubs his forehead. He’s pretty sure the time he’s spending over here in this alternate dimension is going to end in him acquiring at least five new stress lines on his face. “Yeah, I know. But you believe me?”

Scott seems to think about it. Stiles wouldn’t blame him if he said no, wrote this off as Stiles honing his skills in the act of lying, and went back to video gaming, but then Scott gives him a little nod and says, “If you’re sure—”

“I’m fucking positive.”

“—then I believe you.” Scott’s mouth seems to fight a smile. “So you said I had a girlfriend?”

--

Stiles spends the majority of his evening answering Scott's questions about his world once the shock wears off, questions that revolve mostly around Allison and if she's beautiful and if they've ever indulged in PDA at school before and what the likelihood of him finding her in this world are. He finagles his way out of the Q&A Scott seems to be trying to live through vicariously around seven p.m., heading back home to eat a late dinner of leftover pizza on the stove and get comfortable in his unfamiliar surroundings.

He then spends the rest of the night looking through all the text messages between him and Peter he can before he drops his phone on his face and starts getting sleepy. There are even two saved voicemails, one of Peter telling him he had a great time—presumably after their first romp in the sack—and one of Peter telling him he loves him in a soft, worried voice—presumably during a klutzy moment that ended with Stiles in the hospital—that Stiles sees he’s replayed seven and eleven times respectfully.

The text messages aren’t better. They're riddled with nicknames and saccharine goodnights and goodbyes, stretching back way too many months. Stiles even stumbles upon a particularly heated night of sexting—complete with pictures—that his morbid mind wants to skip over but ends up focusing on anyway, like a ten-car-pile-up on the road that he can't look away from.

It’s late when he realizes that he can’t sleep, not when his mind is currently in overdrive, leaving him too awake to sleep but too exhausted to think. Despite all the evidence proving otherwise, a very real part of Stiles was still looking at his relationship with Peter as a joke, a facsimile of a real relationship, a puppet show for his own amusement, to make him appreciate the real world and how Peter’s never held his hand in it, and it’s starting to register in him that it isn’t for show. It’s a real thing that somehow, someway, has been cooked up for him to experience. All the loving messages and selfies of them together and reminders on his calendar to buy Peter birthday presents, they’re proof at just how real all this is.

Following a strange reflex that feels almost natural to his muscle memory, Stiles moves over to his contacts and calls Peter. He doesn't even know what he's looking for, what he wants to hear, but it feels like something this Stiles would do, and Stiles wants to... at least understand this version of himself. Why he’s made the choices he’s made, why he’s so fond of Peter.

"Hey," Peter's voice says softly through the phone. The second he hears it, Stiles thinks he maybe shouldn't have called. "What's up?"

"I just can't sleep," Stiles says. He looks over at the clock through the darkness and sees numbers much too close to a.m. hours and realizes how rude it probably was to call at all. "Sorry. I shouldn't have called so late."

"No, it's fine," Peter murmurs, but he sounds like he's freshly awoken. "What's wrong? Why can't you sleep?"

Stiles shakes his head, not even sure he wants to talk about it. "I'm just... pondering stuff. I was looking through our old texts and it distracted me and just had me thinking too hard." He tries to focus on something through the shadows and sees the vague outline of his knees, skinny under the sheets. "And I felt like you... would be the right person to bother at midnight on a weekday. I'm just that shitty of a boyfriend, I guess."

"You're not," Peter murmurs. "You're lovely." There's a pause in which Stiles wonders if Peter's fallen back asleep. "What messages were you looking at?"

"All of them, honestly."

"Were you looking for something?"

Was he? Maybe it was like watching a horror movie even through the fear just to prove to yourself that you can do it. Or maybe Stiles just wanted to know more, wanted to feel more what it was like to be with Peter like this, so intimately that I love you and be careful! and don't forget an umbrella today texts are commonplace for them.

"I guess I just wanted to relive the moments," Stiles says.

"Mmm. I get that." There's a sound like sheets shuffling, like Peter's sitting up in bed. "Stiles, I know we're not in that phase anymore where we act like newlyweds because everything's fresh and new. And those times were… amazing. But we have so much more to still look forward to together."

"I wasn't going to say that," Stiles says, shaking his head. "I actually think that it's almost disgusting how totally in love with me you are."

Peter laughs at that, the rumble of it rough from sleep. "I am."

He wants to ask things like am I in love with you? and how can you tell? but something about sitting in bed talking in gentle voices as to not disturb the night with Peter on the phone feels like he ought not to. There's also a very bizarre part of himself tucked deep into his brain that feels as if he's disgracing real Peter by talking to him like this, by cocooning himself into Peter's loving words and romantic nothings when he should be remembering that the one who actually exists has a reputation of being a mentally deranged douchenozzle, by being hoodwinked by his love. He should be much busier not falling for any tricks and accidentally ending up head over heels for someone that won't catch him when he wakes up.

"Listen, Stiles," Peter mumbles. "I'm about to fall asleep on you here. Can we talk in the morning?"

Stiles nods before he remembers that Peter can't see him. "Yeah. Sure."

"Okay. Love you."

He swallows. "Love you too."

The call ends, leaving Stiles staring at Peter's page on his contacts and the tiny selfie of the two of them that he has set up as his picture. They look happy, just like every picture of them together. The flash is even on and Peter’s eyes are normal, human, bright blue in the light.

It seems like everything he looks at, Peter's touched. There's Stiles' bed, which smells of his cologne, and his wall, full not of his investigatory prowess, but developed photographs of him and Scott and his dad and Peter at barbecue restaurants and bowling alleys, and his chair, covered in Peter's gently folded forgotten clothing, souvenirs from their many sleepovers. In his bathroom is Peter's spare allergy medication. In the kitchen is a fridge decorated with pictures depicting their sickening happiness. Peter's everywhere.

It’s weird, but Stiles can’t help but wonder if it’ll be weirder when he goes back and all of it is gone.

--

Stiles comes home from school the next day after another day of watching people he knows to be dead walk around the hallways and do their homework in the cafeteria, feeling a little like he’s just survived a blender attack to the brain. This universe is fucking with his brain in more ways than one, and the nagging thought that he might be stuck here isn’t dislodging itself from his mind, keeping him jittery, nervous, high-strung, even though all he really wants is to take a deep breath and compose himself and keep the panic at bay.

He makes the choice to take a nap and give his poor overrun brain a break, dumping his backpack by the door and lugging himself up the stairs. He opens the door to his room and promptly has a heart attack.

“Jesus Christ!” he cries out, because there’s Peter, watching TV on his bed. Does that never change? Does Peter always creep around his house like a burglar in the night no matter the world? “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Peter says, flicking off the TV. “What’s wrong?”

Stiles holds his pounding heart and briefly considers the dying-in-a-dream old wives tale and if having a stroke in this reality will affect his mortality over in the real world. “How did you even get in?”

“I unlocked the door. My legs carried me upstairs. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the concept.”

Stiles doesn’t even want to wrap his head around the fact that Peter has a key. He’s a senior in high school and he’s practically living with his May-December boyfriend. They’re so domestic.

“By the way,” Peter says. “I had an ulterior motive for coming here.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “Seasoning me for your next meal?” Sometimes he feels like he can weasel the real Peter out of this one if he tries hard enough, but Peter’s only response is an off-handed snickering.

“I’m inviting you to a work party, actually,” he says. “It’s a few days away and everyone’s bringing SOs, so you’d fit right in.”

“SOs?”

“Significant others,” he says. Stiles laughs, feeling like this should be a low point for Peter, but he doesn’t seem to be on the same wavelength as Stiles that walking around with couple lingo and fancy abbreviations that aren’t really necessary coming out of his mouth makes him look ludicrous. "What's funny?"

“Nothing. Yeah, okay.”

“So you're up for it?”

Stiles thinks about an evening full of tall white men in suits and uncomfortable conversation versus an evening of sitting at home watching Buzzfeed videos on his computer in the comfort of his room. “Will there be one of those red ribbons that somebody cuts with giant scissors?”

“No.”

“Ah. Then I don’t think I’m interested in that invitation.”

Peter’s foot arches off the bed to tap Stiles in the hip. “You’ll get to see my ass in a suit,” he says in a low murmur. “I know how that does things for you.”

Does it? Is it wrong that Stiles is oddly curious to really see if it does? “Okay, fine. I’ll come to your boring ass work party.”

"Great. You could stop by my place around four," Peter offers.

"No," Stiles interjects hastily. He doesn't think he could stand actually seeing the Hale House, full of life and a happy family and people who, when he makes it back, will all be dead, are supposed to be dead. "We should go straight to the party."

"Okay," Peter says slowly. "I'll pick you up, then. Wear your suit."

Stiles absolutely does not have a suit. The last time he wore one, he was attending his mother's funeral, and that outfit only lived for one night before he and Scott symbolically torched it in a bonfire behind his house that almost set fire to the tool shed. "My suit?" He dubiously starts rifling through the clothes in his closet.

"The one you wore last year when we went to Laura's wedding together," Peter reminds him. Stiles takes a moment to baffle at the fact that they actually go to weddings together. He could hurl.

“Right,” he says faintly, reaching the back of his closet where a few garment bags are sticking out. He unzips one of them, catching a glimpse of a dark blue blazer underneath. He tries to imagine what it was like when he wore it back at the wedding he and Peter supposedly attended like the old married couple they supposedly are. Did they dance? Did he spill cake on his lapels?

“Remember that night?” Peter murmurs, stretching out on Stiles’ bed. “You ripped your underwear doing the salsa.”

“…right,” Stiles says again. It does actually sound like something that would happen to him.

“And I told you to just take them off and go commando,” Peter says. “And you did, but your boxers poked out of your pocket for the rest of your night and nobody had the heart to tell you. Hey, come here.”

Peter sits up to seize the back of Stiles’ shirt, pulling him onto the bed. Stiles isn’t expecting the sudden jostling and goes down flailing, desperately trying to keep his balance only to end up on top of Peter’s legs. When he readjusts himself, squirming into a comfortable position, Peter’s very close, smiling at him. It makes Stiles realize something he’s never noticed before: Peter’s eyes are very, very blue.

“Your eyes are very, very blue,” Stiles whispers, verbalizing his thoughts.

“Thank you,” Peter murmurs, then drags his hand up Stiles’ waist.

“I never noticed before.” He points at his jaw. “I think the facial hair took away from it. Without it, they’re just like—pop.”

“I always shave.” Peter drags his hand further up, hiking up Stiles’ shirt as he goes to reveal his stomach. “Do you want me to grow a beard?”

“Kinda. Yeah.” Stiles wonders if it’s because real Peter has facial hair, if he’s trying to mold the man in front of him into something he actually recognizes, to make him as he is, or as he should be. Why he’s doing this is probably a field day all on its own for psychologists. “Wait a minute. Is there any rug burn involved with that on my end?” He brushes his fingers down Peter’s soft cheeks, trying to imagine what it would be like to make out with someone growing what essentially feels like a boar bristle hairbrush on their face.

“I can be gentle with you,” Peter suggests, readjusting them so he's sliding on top of Stiles.

“Okay.” Surprisingly, that isn’t doing anything for Stiles, and there’s literally a warm, moving body on top of him right now. He frowns. “Can you be a little rough with me while you’re at it?”

“You want me to be rough with you?”

Yes, Stiles’ brain pipes up without being asked. “We could try it.” I want you to tear my shirt off with your teeth and then bite your way down my chest. Just to see if I like it, Stiles’ brain continues, like the student in class who speaks without putting their hand up. Stiles will have a hell of a time piecing his thoughts back together when he goes back to his world, especially the bit where he tries to figure out exactly how gay he really is. Maybe gay porn can help with that.

Then again, why bother watching when you could be feeling firsthand.

Peter’s fingers tap against his chest. He smirks. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”

Hey, you too, Stiles wants to say. As a matter of fact, the last few days have been like nothing but a very long, very emotionally stressing surprise party where every time he opens a new door, another group of people jump into the air and scream at him. Just when he thinks he’s getting used to this ridiculous world, a new shock smacks him into the face. At this point, he’s just hoping he doesn’t find an engagement ring nestled in Peter’s sock drawer.

“You have no idea,” Stiles says, grinning, and decides making out with Peter for the next few hours might not be the worst thing to do in the world.

--

“So. What are all your brilliant ideas?”

Based on his empty notebook complete with a grand total of absolutely no ideas, Stiles isn’t putting too many eggs in the basket that Scott has come up with the amazing hidden-in-plain-sight solution to getting him back home in one piece Stiles had been hoping he'd brew up. He taps the eraser end of his pencil against his forehead repeatedly, the blank pages staring up at him as if in mockery—ha ha, you're stuck here for life!

“I don’t know if I have any ideas,” Scott says. He looks extremely lost, and Stiles can’t blame him. It’s not like Stiles was thrown unaware into the world of parallel universes and werewolves and wolfsbane and banshees without any warning, he was eased into it, the ride smoothed with the help of Google searches, and here he is dunking Scott into the icy water without any of the necessary gingerness.

“Did you talk to Deaton?”

“Yeah. I really don’t think he’s involved in any of this stuff,” Scott says. “I mentioned alternate universes and everything and I even brought up Twilight so we could talk about werewolves. I didn’t get the impression he knew more than he was letting on.”

Stiles knows firsthand that Deaton is the master of the Cool, Enigmatic Face, but Stiles can believe his lack of involvement. From the looks of it, absolutely everything’s normal here, so there wouldn’t be much use for Deaton to be hoarding a pantry of magical knowledge behind the cat food. Still, that’s another dead end, which is not good news.

“Damn. I was really sort of hoping he had some fairy powder to sprinkle on me to send me back home,” Stiles sighs. “But hey. You and I are like a two-man Scooby Doo team. We can figure this out.”

“Maybe you’re stuck.”

Stiles feels that pang of panic he’s been suppressing jab into his stomach at Scott’s words. He doesn’t even want to think about that. He has a home, and that’s where he needs to go, and that’s how simple it is. “Stop,” he tells Scott. “I’m going to have an asthma attack if you don’t stop being realistic.”

“But—”

“Other ideas,” Stiles says loudly. “We need other ideas. How else could I get out?”

Scott’s looking at him like he’s the one kid in the family who refuses to admit that their goldfish has died. He doesn’t want the sympathy, or even worse, pity because he isn’t smart enough to realize that being stuck here is a very real thing that might happen to him. Stiles knows perfectly well, he just doesn’t want to physically confront that option. It hasn’t been that long; maybe this world just hasn’t run its course on him yet. Maybe he just has to wait it out.

“Well. I mean. You said your world is really different, right?”

“Different doesn’t even begin to cover it, my friend,” Stiles says.

“Okay. So maybe this is about experiencing something new. Something different.”

“I’m not following.”

“Maybe you just have to… embrace it,” Scott says, lifting his arms. “Everything that’s different, just do it anyway. Really live it. It could be a growth thing. Forcing you to see things from a new perspective.”

It’s an interesting concept. Terrifying, but interesting.

“So what you’re saying is that I’m supposed to—you want me to—I should just. Embrace the whole gay relationship with Peter thing.” At Scott’s nodding, Stiles buries his face into his hands. Okay, so he hasn’t hated the ass pats or hearing someone say nice, romantic things to his face, but it’s another thing to start actively behaving like Peter’s boyfriend. “That’s so fucking weird, dude.”

“Is it?”

“You have no idea, Scott,” Stiles says, dragging his hands down his face until he’s pulling down the lower lids of his eyes. “If you met the real Peter, or, well. The other Peter. You’d get it.”

“What’s he like? Other than… evil.”

Stiles thinks evil covers it pretty well, honestly. “Do you want to know how we met? Huh? Cause there was no magical mistletoe. We met because he was trying to kill you. Or actually, convince you to kill all your friends to go join his pack. A seriously large part of sophomore year was just me terrified I was going to shit my pants because this guy was around.”

“You were scared of him?” Scott asks.

“Did you not hear about the part where he was trying to kill us all?” Stiles furiously scrubs his fingers through his scalp, wishing there was some magical way he could make Scott feel even a snippet of the fear that was wrapping them both in a hug of death a few years ago. How they thought they were going to die trapped in that school. How they thought Peter was finally done and dealt with only to have him come back to life. How he stood in dark corners and left Stiles waiting for that next big plan to murder them all when they least expected it to pop up in Peter's eyes.

Yeah, they’ve come to work together on occasion, even sit on the same proverbial side. And yeah, battling with Peter’s rapier wit has been fun sometimes when they’re the only ones left behind during a mission. And yes, Stiles doesn’t mind his company. He’s not exactly friendly, but he is interesting, and sometimes Stiles thinks Peter finds him interesting too.

Stiles shakes that thought away like a wasp sitting on his shoulder. “It’s just really fucking weird being here and I don’t think I’d ever get used to it. It feels like someone’s taken my life and put it into a cardboard box and shaken it up.” He’s starting to get a headache. His feelings are coming at him like footballs aimed at his face, feelings for the fake Peter, and feelings for the real Peter, as he is, all blending together into one black hole of perplexity. He looks at Scott. “Be honest with me. Do I really love that guy?”

Scott looks like he’s been trapped in a trick question, but the truth is that Stiles just wants to know. If there's really a version of himself who can be enamored and interested and in love with a version of Peter. Any version of Peter.

“Well, yeah. Don’t you?”

Stiles exhales what feels like the biggest breath in the world, his lungs taking their time as he sighs. “I want to.”

“Do you—I mean. Do you at least see why you might love him?”

Stiles sighs again, but this time it’s a short, huff of a breath. His lungs just aren’t big enough to encapsulate exactly how mixed he feels about these questions. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this Peter. As a matter of fact, he’s almost perfect. Just not to Stiles. “Not really.”

Out of the blue, the sheriff’s voice calls upstairs. "Stiles! Peter's here!"

"Great," Stiles grumbles. They were really making headway with figuring out the root of the solution, or at least they were throwing some pretty wild ideas around, which in Stiles’ experience, are usually the ones that turn out working. “Just what I need now.” He gets up, brushing off his knees. “I’ll be back in a second. Just have to kiss my loving boyfriend hello.”

“Don’t use tongue.”

“Thanks, Scotty.”

Stiles makes his way out of his room, ambling down the steps to brush Peter off for whatever movie evening or date night on the town or ceramic mug painting he has planned for the evening with the convenient excuse that he has lab work to do with Scott, but he screeches to a halt when he hears a few murmuring voices in the kitchen, one of them distinctly his father and the other Peter.

"—really strange."

"What do you mean?"

Something about the tail end of this conversation is intriguing Stiles enough to suggest that he not interrupt it so soon. He listens to his instinct, staying curled out of sight behind the wall. There's a faint sound of trickling water like the sheriff is pouring them both beverages, presumably leftover coffee but also possibly some of the bourbon Stiles' father thinks he has well hidden.

"He just seems to be very... detached," Peter's saying. "He's not being as open as he usually is with me."

Well, they're talking about him. That much is clear. Stiles really should interrupt now—he's horrible with handling the harsh reality of what people really think of him—but he's just too fucking interested in hearing it all. He holds his breath to make sure he goes undetected and scoots closer along the wall.

"Eh, that might just be stress," the sheriff says. "He's still just a kid. He has school to juggle. You guys seem fine to me."

“So you haven’t noticed anything off about him? That he’s a little… withdrawn lately?”

“A little forgetful, maybe, but that’s Stiles for you.”

Stiles’ mouth drops open. His memory is impeccable, and for his father to take a jab at it just because he sometimes forgets to do the dishes now and again is a low blow.

“If he says anything to you, tell me,” Peter says. “If he’s stressed, he doesn’t have to hide it from me.”

"He wouldn't. Stiles doesn’t know how to keep his emotions bottled up, all right?" the sheriff says. “If something’s wrong, he’ll tell you.”

Peter sighs. “I hope so.”

Stiles feels the impulse to bang the back of his head against the wall a few times. He doesn’t think the real Peter has ever even said Stiles’ name to another person, even in passing, let alone actually had a heart-to-heart with someone about Stiles’ feelings and his stress and if he’s getting all the nutrition he needs.

People are starting to get suspicious of him, that’s for sure. People are picking up on the fact that he’s missing important memories and not treating people as he ought to, and if he keeps this up, even if he follows Scott’s advice and throws himself into everything he should be according to what people know of him, this alternate universe might end up causing more trouble for him than he can handle. He’s not saying people are going to be coming after him with pitchforks throwing vicious doppelgänger accusations at him, but there are pitchforks in his worst case scenario.

He has to try. He has to at least see if Scott’s idea has any merit and be what everyone wants him to be and see if that does the trick. Throw himself down the rabbit hole and kiss Peter back with all the passion a teenager in love is supposed to have. Smile when people talk about him and pretend to remember all those memories lost to him. As long as he gets home, it won’t matter—no one will know. No one back home will actually be able to identify the haunted look on his face he’ll probably be carrying for a while as the look of someone who had to be Peter’s boyfriend, no questions asked, and suffered the consequences. Or, well, benefits.

It’s not so bad to kiss someone, or hold someone, or let someone coo in your ear. Stiles can do this. Stiles can absolutely do this.

--

Peter picks Stiles up promptly at four the next day for his work party when Scott is still hanging out in the living room looking for Friends reruns, and in his peripherals, Stiles sees Scott watching him with eagle eyes as he opens the door and lets Peter in.

Peter’s in a suit again, this time with a crisp tie and with gel in his hair. He looks like the type of briefcase-wearing yuppie that Stiles used to watch pass by him in the mall and wonder if underneath all those professional clothes there hid a sex dungeon or an unspeakable fetish. Before Stiles can make fun of the eel juice that seems to have set up residence in Peter’s hair, Peter swoops in and plants a hello kiss on his mouth that gets a little saucy when his tongue swipes over Stiles’ lower lip, pretty feet-sweeping for a quick hello. Stiles makes a noise that Peter bites away.

“Hey, hey,” Stiles says on Peter’s mouth, pushing his shoulders. “Scott’s right there.”

Peter offers Scott a nod of a greeting, then turns back to Stiles. “Nothing he hasn’t seen before.” He grins, cheeky as can be, and gives Stiles another peck to the corner of his lips. “I’m using your bathroom. You better be dressed when I’m done.”

With that, he’s headed up the stairs, leaving Stiles to look anywhere but Peter’s ass in those pants. He must fail at the mission, because he zones out for a few seconds thinking about how he’s probably allowed to grab Peter’s butt now and again or even throw in a playful pinch, and when he floats back out of his thoughts, Scott’s looking at him from the couch with raised eyebrows.

“What?” Stiles asks when he notices. He wipes at his lips, something tugging at him to do so just to clean away any evidence that Peter’s tongue was just on his mouth.

“Nothing,” Scott says. “It’s just a little weird, that’s all.”

“Shouldn’t you be used to seeing us like this by now?”

“Well, yeah,” Scott admits. “But you don’t—I mean, isn’t it weird for you? Since you’re not used to it?”

Unwillingly, Stiles touches his lips again. “I’m getting used to it,” he says, and then immediately regrets even letting his mouth speak. “Not that I’m—not that I’m thinking of continuing this—I mean.” He scrubs a hand over his face.

Scott gets up from the couch and slides closer to Stiles with an urgency on his face. For a moment, he looks like the Scott Stiles remembers—always ducking close, always ready to tackle a problem with Stiles, always thinking. “You should tell him,” he says. “It might make things better.”

“Tell him?” Stiles squeaks. “What, that I’m from a different world where we’re not together and he’s actually sort of a huge asshole and that the whole… gay make outs thing is weird to me?”

Scott tilts his head, momentarily suspended by surprise. “Wait. You’re not gay in that other world?”

“No!” Stiles howls.

“Maybe not yet,” Scott muses. “At least bi, right?”

“No!” Stiles says, and then gives himself a moment to think about it. Sure, he’s had his moments where he’s even watched Scott change in the locker room, and he may’ve had a secret crush on Zac Efron once. Not that that matters in the grand scheme of things; Zac Efron charms everybody.

“Then this is really weird for you, isn’t it?”

Stiles supposes it should be. To be honest, he hasn’t given it much thought. He looks over his shoulder where Peter’s in the bathroom, freshening up. “Do you think now’s a good time to have an existential crisis about this?”

Scott shakes his head. “Don’t think so,” he says. “Since you’re about to go on a date.” He shoots Stiles a look of intermingled sympathy and disbelief. “I could make up an excuse for you. You could pretend to throw up in the backyard.”

Stiles shakes his head. As crazy as it is to admit it, Peter cares too much to let his boyfriend vomit on the grass all alone. “No, I’ll go,” he says. “I’m just a little… surprised by these events, I guess.”

“What? That you like guys?”

“That—well. I enjoy appreciating… some guys’… assets.” Scott gives Stiles a look like he’s very much aware that Stiles is thinking about Peter’s ass and would appreciate a little bit more discretion. “This is all a little overwhelming, okay? I’ve never thought about any of this before and now I sort of have to and it feels like someone’s bludgeoning me over the head.”

“No one’s bludgeoning,” Scott assures him. “If you’re uncomfortable, just tell him. He’ll give you the space you need.”

Yes, yes, Stiles knows all about how understanding Peter is towards boundaries and Stiles’ comfort and yada, yada, yada. Is it so terrible that Stiles wouldn’t mind Peter seizing him by the shoulders, pushing his thigh between Stiles’ legs, and kissing him so hard that he has trouble remembering what day of the week it is?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Stiles mumbles, rubbing a hand over his face. “He’s a good man. I know. Besides, weren’t you the one to suggest that maybe I’m supposed to embrace this life and everything in it? I think that includes him.”

Scott tilts his head and seems to be one second away from asking follow up questions about Stiles’ grumbling about Peter’s affability when, to the rescue, Peter appears at the foot of the stairs, interrupting their conversation.

“You’re not dressed,” Peter says.

“Right. I’ll go do that,” Stiles says, grateful for the shortcut out of this conversation, and heads up the stairs, catching the residue of Peter’s cologne with his nose as he goes.

--

The party should really not be called a party. It seems to be a stifling, uncomfortable work function that includes meals that are only one quick bite and coworkers who aren't happy to see each other, up until a tipsy project manager starts up a karaoke session and the bow ties come off.

Peter keeps his hand on the small of Stiles' back the entire time. Considering how much they've touched the last few days, Stiles really should be used to it, but he isn't in the least. It's not even that it's unpleasant, it's just that being touched by Peter, being touched with purpose by Peter, it's like it will never be anything but bizarre.

He meets a lot of people, fully expecting to be brushed gently aside when the coworkers find Peter in the crowd, but he isn't. He doesn't know why he expects Peter to be ashamed of him, to want to erase all implications of intimacy the second anyone approaches. Maybe because it's what he himself would do with Peter, which makes him feel rather unnecessarily guilty. At least, it's been his reaction for the last few days—a constant, very insistent itch that he can't even scratch to ensure everybody that this relationship is all very unreal, just a fabrication of bizarreness, by slipping away from Peter to leave space between them every time someone's eyes rove over the closeness between them. Peter does the opposite, pulls him close and touches his hair with his lips, no matter who's nearby, almost like he's proud of Stiles and that he's on his arm.

He remembers his real world, how Peter would be something to be ashamed of there for sure. How absolutely no one would understand. How he himself might not either. And hey, Peter would probably be ashamed of him too.

The conversation with Scott has left him reeling just a bit, Stiles thinks. That realization that he's attracted to Peter and might as well go with the flow while he's here—what happens in an alternate universe stays in an alternate universe, and all that—has been feeling a little sharp around the edges, like a suit fitted on him that's still held together with pins. There’s something missing, something Stiles still can’t put his finger on, but he knows one thing, and that is that Peter’s light stubble and defines chest and muscular arms are undeniably making his nether regions wake up like someone’s set an alarm clock for them to start noticing how good looking Peter actually is, and that's probably a large, blinking sign that Stiles might as well skip the existential crisis he had bookmarked for later and just accept his blatant bi-curiosity.

Peter’s coworkers drift over and away as the party flows, most of them all wearing photocopies of the exact same suit and making flat jokes that Stiles pretends to find funny while Peter holds him close by the shoulder. It’s a little drab, Stiles is finding, this world that Peter’s immersed himself in. Family weekends and Thursday date nights and a nine-to-five desk job with three hundred other identical schmos all sitting sentinel in a cubicle all day. He could stand to liven his life up with a bit of diabolical scheming or harmless vandalism.

“So what exactly do you guys even do all day?” Stiles asks around his champagne flute full of apple juice that was handed to him by Peter’s no-nonsense boss when he tried to grab the actual alcohol.

“Play solitaire,” Peter deadpans, and the circle of coworkers surrounding them all burst into the same bout of mild laughter. “Generally slack off.”

“No, I mean it,” Stiles persists. “What do you do? Crunch numbers? Collect taxes?”

The same laughter ripples through the group like Stiles isn’t actually speaking real words.

“We save the world, kid,” some employee with a handlebar mustache Stiles wants to tear off with his bare hands says, like Stiles’ attention span is too short to handle the real answer. Man, there really are a lot of douchebags in the world sitting behind desks who probably think they’re keeping the world afloat. Stiles pokes Peter in the side.

“Seriously,” he says, lowering his voice so Handlebar Mustache can’t hear him and pipe up again. “Wouldn’t you rather do something a bit more exciting?”

“My job isn’t exciting enough for you? You’d rather have me doing stunt work? Jumping out of airplanes? Encrypting files for the government?”

“It’s not that I don’t find it exciting.” He doesn’t, but that’s not the point. “I’m asking if there’s something you would rather do.”

Peter shrugs. His complete lack of ambition feels like Stiles is staring into a fridge full of expired foods that are too far gone to reach their potential, like Peter is that runny, smelly yogurt in the back that’s past the point of no return. “I’m pretty content here,” he says, and Stiles supposes that’s that.

God, is this place boring. He wishes he wasn’t thinking it, but Peter’s pretty boring too—Stiles actually caught him genuinely laughing at a coworker’s joke that Stiles has seen circulating through the internet for nearly a decade by now. He’s a good kisser, Stiles will give him that much, and his hands certainly know what they're doing, and his ass is actually pretty killer in some well-tailored slacks, as promised, but Stiles keeps waiting for Peter to lean into his ear and suggest that they vandalize the CEO’s car with his claws before he remembers that it just won’t happen.

Still, he’s embracing. He’s following the plan. He doesn’t mind leaning into the warmth of Peter’s side, or tilting his head onto his shoulder, or playing with the back of his belt until Peter swats his hand away. He doesn’t want to say it out loud, doesn’t even really want to form the words in his head, but it’s not hard for him. It’s not that he’s having a bad time, which is more concerning than he’d like, because it isn’t even Peter’s personality that’s driving him to feel him up under his blazer. The personality is almost getting in the way, which means that what’s turning Stiles on is—

"You should know," Peter murmurs under his breath, "if you keep doing that thing with your hand I'll blow you right here and now."

Stiles flexes his fingers, apparently roaming comfortably over the curve of Peter's rear without his knowledge, as if burnt. And why, why exactly is he removing them? Impromptu blowjobs are exactly the sort of shenanigans he should be encouraging as a horny teenager. He’s embracing. Embracing the world of oral sex.

"I'm not against that idea," Stiles says to him.

Peter lifts an eyebrow. "Here? In front of everyone?"

Stiles shrugs. He's feeling loose-limbed and crazy and hungry for an orgasm, anything that will distract him from how mind-numbingly monotonous this place is, a combination of feelings that's making him too reckless for comfort. "There's a bathroom we can disappear off to, right?"

Peter's hand tightens where it's on Stiles' waist. "No," he says. "We're leaving. Going to dinner, and then, straight to my place."

Okay, Stiles can work with that too.

--

The restaurant Peter chooses is a little stuffier than the places Stiles would’ve chosen himself, but he and Peter do blend in with their tuxes. As a matter of fact, they look like they’re celebrating their wedding and are looking for some overpriced food to nosh before they go off and consummate their union on the flight to the honeymoon.

Then again, that might just be Stiles’ brain zeroing in on the sex. Or rather, the fact that he’s very much aware and thinking about the fact that he’s probably going to have sex with Peter tonight. He just hopes to god it won’t be boring sex.

"Pass me the salt, babe."

Stiles promptly dissolves into a fit of coughing in his desperation to clear his windpipe from the barbecue sauce now lodged in his esophagus. A hand pounds his backside until oxygen comes back to him.

"What did you just," Stiles says, dumbfounded, as he massages his throat. "Babe?!"

"The salt," Peter says again. "Pass it."

He holds his hand out expectantly. Stiles hands him the salt shaker, uncomfortable as ever. It’s really bothering him, how Peter doing anything distinctly nicer than what Stiles is used to from Peter is almost like a turn off. Like Stiles wants ‘em murderous, rough, and allergic to domesticity. He needs psychological help.

“You’ve been a little… odd lately,” Peter murmurs while Stiles massages his throat, trying to dislodge the piece of steak wedged there. “Anything you need to talk about?”

Stiles off-handedly considers Scott’s advice as he picks up his utensils again, just to blurt out the truth and go to hell with embracing it and see what happens. Peter would probably disregard him; after all, he hasn’t exactly been making lots of sense these last few days, his ramblings of false universes just another drop in the bucket.

But the thing is, if he told him, and if Peter then believed him, he’d probably put a stop to everything. He’d protect Stiles’ virtue and stop holding his hand or palming his ass or kissing him hello or sending him goodnight texts. He’s just that much of an infuriating gentleman. And Stiles has come to the rather unfortunate realization that he’s been enjoying it, and it’s not just some Big, Gay Revelation, it’s a Peter Revelation, that he’s very much attracted to him and enjoying the way his hand feels on his back or how he kisses, slowly and thoroughly and delectably. Maybe he just wants to enjoy that for however long he’s still here. Everything has an expiration date, doesn’t it? Surely this does too.

“No,” Stiles says. He downs a few gulps of water to get the feeling back in his throat. “Well, maybe. I’ll just say it.” He tips his foot forward under the table, hooking it around Peter’s ankle. “You make me weirdly happy.”

Peter smiles. "Weirdly?"

"It makes sense. To me, anyway. Trust me."

"I can do that. I wouldn't dare try and figure out how that brain of yours works," Peter says around the rim of his wine glass. When he pulls it away, his bottom lip is stained burgundy from the wine, right before his tongue slips out to lick away the color.

A part of Stiles wants to still be honest even if he doesn't want to be about the whole alternate universe debacle. He still wants to blurt out that Peter's damn sexy and watching him drink wine makes him feel like lightning bolts are dancing down his thighs. They're all things he won't even consider saying in the real world, so it might be a now-or-never situation. Besides, he thinks it might be oddly freeing to say it out loud—he's attracted to Peter, he's most likely bisexual, and his pants are getting a little snug thinking about it all.

"I'll be honest," Stiles says, leaning across the table a fraction. "I've been thinking a lot lately about stuff."

"Right. Monsters and comas."

"And some other stuff," Stiles continues. "Like… my sexuality. And what’s really… me.”

Peter arches an eyebrow. “Where is this going?”

"Nowhere bad. I've just really been... you know, looking into myself here."

"Babe, if this is a sex thing, I'm not quite getting the metaphor."

Stiles seizes Peter's wrist, squeezing to get him to shut up already. "Let me talk, you dick," he says. "What I'm trying to say is that, well." He slides his hand off Peter's arm and lets it slip into his own lap. "I've been given the opportunity lately to... try new things. And do stuff out of my comfort zone. Come to terms with some things about me that I never bothered to think about before."

Peter squints. "Like what?"

"What it is really doesn't matter," Stiles says, grabbing his utensils again. He stops to tilt his fork at Peter. "Hey, how did you know you were gay?"

"I was born bedazzled," Peter murmurs around his food, and at Stiles' narrowed eyes, he rolls his own. "It was easy. I saw a man. I liked what I saw. And that's the grand story." He leans in. “Are you considering leaving me for a pretty girl? Is that what’s happening here?”

“Girls are awesome,” Stiles says. He can’t imagine any world where he doesn’t love girls, their soft hair and glowing skin and the curves of their legs. He just might be… expanding his menu to include some other options as well. “I mean, girls are really beautiful. But how many times can you enjoy kissing a guy before you sort of have to accept that you’re a little gay?”

Stiles turns to Peter, halfway expecting a concrete answer, and realizes that this is probably a conversation he ought to be having with himself if not in his head, not with on a date with his boyfriend.

The truth of the matter is that Stiles doesn’t want to hurt Peter. He doesn’t want to shatter the charade and tell him that this entire relationship is new to him and too overwhelming and too unreal—even outside of the plan he and Scott have cooked up, he doesn’t want to go against the grain here. He might actually feel a little bad if he ends up breaking the heart of the guy in front of him, and he’s not even sure that Peter’s strong enough to take it. For all he knows, this Peter’s using his occasional snark just as Stiles is, as a handy defense to his inner weakness, because he’s certainly an all bark and no bite kind of fellow.

Stiles sort of misses the bite.

“You know what? Never mind,” Stiles says, going back to his steak. “I’m not leaving you for a girl. I like you.”

“Good. I like you too.”

Stiles smiles down at his plate. “Anything you don’t like about me?”

He’s almost positive that real Peter could have a list as long as a fucking medieval scroll at the ready to pull out of his blazer. He talks back too much. He’s too jumpy. He has no body control whatsoever. He loves to complain. He’s a big human burden. He might even get a "too fascinating for his own good" if he’s lucky.

“Sure. That toothbrush thing you do is annoying,” Peter says around a mouthful of salad. “You sort of—tap it against the sink. Water goes everywhere.”

“That’s it?” Stiles says. “You know, you can be meaner. I won’t take it personally.”

“You want me to say mean things to you?”

“No. I just.” Stiles can’t find the right way to put the words together. He keeps trying to put together the Peter he knows, as he is, keeps trying to mold the man in front of him into something ruder, cruder, and all around worse as far as morals, kindness, and lovability goes, and he really ought to try and shake those urges. Maybe it’s just because he would like the familiarity, because he craves home too much. “I want you to be honest with me.”

“I am honest,” Peter says. “Are you?”

No. And he won’t be. He just—wants to hold onto this for a little bit longer. Just a bit.

“Yeah,” Stiles says around his fork as he stuffs his mouth full of steak to hide the deception probably written over his face. “Totally honest.”

--

On the way out of the restaurant, soft music tinkling out after them, Peter grabs hold of his hand. It feels like what hell freezing over must feel like.

He holds his hand mechanically more than he does romantically, like they've done it so many times that it's like a reflex more than anything else. The way he holds Stiles, even the way he carries himself, seems uncharacteristically passive for the attitude he's known to associate with Peter—harshness, feeling, intensity. If the real Peter held hands, he'd do it with his claws out.

"So this is a thing we do," Stiles says under his breath, more to the wind than anything else. He swings their joined arms just to see if Peter will tolerate it. He does, albeit with a twitch of his eye.

"Remind me to try more off of their seafood menu," Peter says idly. "The salmon tonight was superb."

"My food wasn't bad either."

It feels like they've had this conversation a dozen times. Leave an upscale restaurant, gab about the food, hold hands like all couples do. It seems predictable.

Stiles tucks himself closer to Peter's side, breathing in the scent of his aftershave that he's grown quite accustomed to, and lets himself close his eyes and imagine for a few forbidden seconds that all of this is real. It feels startlingly comfortable.

"This was really, really nice." He looks between their bodies and can hardly believe he's looking at their intertwined hands. He can hardly believe that any of this is real life—at least, it is in some universe. It makes a part of him still very much want to throw up and another part want to give in and just let all this happen. Most of him is on the side of the latter by now, even if he still feels like an imposter, like a man in a mask fooling all the people around him. Or maybe it's the other way around, and the entire world is in masks Stiles still isn't used to.

"You say that like you're surprised," Peter murmurs.

"I am," Stiles says. "I mean. The nice dinner and the hand holding—it's really nice."

Peter arches an eyebrow. "It's just Thursday night."

Thursday date night. It still sounds so ridiculous Stiles can't even fathom his own tongue shaping the words. "Right. I mean, I know." He chuckles. He wonders if he's the only one left out of the joke or the only one who gets it. "I guess I'm just still waiting for you to marinate and bake me when my guard is down."

"Your brain seems like a haunted house."

"I mean it. I think I'm used to you being different," Stiles looks at Peter's face, drawn together with confusion. "Meaner. Maybe even smarter?"

"Stiles," Peter says, and then silences him by pushing their lips together, his fingers curling around Stiles' wrist to stop them both.

It's good, which is as disconcerting as it'll probably always be for Stiles' poor overloaded brain. Years later when he's wrinkled and gray and back in his own world, he can picture himself thinking back to all those moments he made out with Peter Hale and liked it and then die a premature death out of shame and embarrassment. Peter's tongue is more talented than he's ready for and his hands seem to be in multiple places at once, running up and down his body and in his jacket and nearly down his pants—and woah, Stiles is about to pop a stiffy right here in public if Peter doesn't detain the roaming fingers.

He makes a noise of protest at the public indecency that Peter seems to swallow. He's pressed even closer to him now, chest flat against Stiles' and one knee pushed between his legs. Briefly, Stiles sees both heaven and the inside of a jail cell simultaneously.

Peter eventually pulls away before a wolf whistle or homophobic slurring really becomes one of Stiles' problems, but his lips linger near Stiles' mouth, warm and tempting. "Do you want to talk some more," he says, "or do you want to go back to my place?"

"Your place," Stiles' libido says instantly for him.

"Good choice."

Peter kisses him again, fierce and quick on the mouth, and then he's lacing their fingers back together and dragging him down the street. Stiles doesn't complain.

--

Peter's apartment looks a lot whiter than Stiles imagined. Or remembered, considering he had a brief encounter with it back when he was running for his life out of it after waking up in Peter’s bed.

Of course, it’s not that Stiles has seen real Peter’s apartment. Real Peter's apartment could be built inside a cave for all he knows with blood red sheets on his bed and minimal lighting in every room. This Peter, the new and improved Peter, likes bright open spaces and large kitchens that make Stiles feel like he's been thrown into an IKEA commercial.

He thinks about commenting on his taste in decor, from the black and white photography on the wall to the leather couches in the living room, before his filter kicks in and he remembers that the Stiles he's masquerading as right now should be perfectly familiar with Peter's home. Still, there are things he'd like to talk about, like the piano in the hall or the cookbooks lined up in the bookcase or the weights behind the coffee table.

"Wine?" Peter offers. He's extending a glass of smooth burgundy alcohol under his nose when Stiles looks up from the family pictures lined up on the mantel over the fireplace. They all look professionally captured and brushed up with Peter almost always in the center, like he wouldn't dare frame a picture that isn't showing his best side, never mind everybody else's.

"Nah, no thanks," Stiles says. He wonders if the Stiles Peter's used to is enough of a snob to drink—possibly even enjoy—wine. "I like my alcohol to taste like soda."

"Drink it," Peter says.

"You know I'm not actually old enough to—"

"Drink."

The glass is pushed into Stiles' hand like a gun. Stiles gives in and takes a small, hesitant sip that, as predicted, leaves his lip curling. He takes a seat on Peter's sofa, swilling the glass left and right like getting some bubbles to the surface will improve its taste, and Peter sits down next to him.

"Too dry," he grumbles out loud, reluctantly taking another sip that tastes like cardboard. Two hundred dollar cardboard probably if Stiles had to guess what Peter's budget and requirements for wine are.

"It'll relax you," Peter tells him. "You've been so... odd lately." He's squinting at him like he's trying to figure Stiles out.

"You've mentioned," Stiles grumbles. If one more person points out that Stiles is doing a shitty job being Stiles, he'll have a coronary. "How exactly?"

Peter's hand comes up to brush through the hair by his ear. Stiles jolts, his knee-jerk reaction still to put distance between him and the serial killer werewolf, before the touch has him melting into submission. It feels amazing, like there's a massage therapist combing their hands through his hair around his scalp.

"You seem very reluctant to let me touch you," Peter murmurs. "And you haven't let me fuck you in over a week."

Stiles nearly drops the wine. When he speaks again, his voice has jumped an octave. "I've been busy," he says against the rim of his glass.

"Too busy for sex?"

Stiles understands his confusion. Typical Stiles would never be caught dead saying the words I'm too busy to orgasm, except nothing about his situation lately includes the thought processes of Typical Stiles.

"A little," he says. "Stuff just kind of... piled up unexpectedly."

Peter stares at him for an inordinately long amount of time. Stiles waits for him to call bullshit, his narrowed eyes reeking of suspicion, but then the hand by his ear travels down and curls around the nape of his neck.

"Well," he whispers. "You're not busy now, are you?"

Stiles sees where this is going, oh my god, he does, and he's fairly certain he doesn't want to put a stop to it. By the time he registers this, Peter is already leaning in and planting his lips onto Stiles' jaw, biting and licking and dear god sucking on the skin of his neck. Despite himself, he lets out a gasp. He can feel Peter's grin on his neck a moment later.

He tries to get it through his head that he's in a world where this is normal, where he can go over to Peter’s apartment and get laid whenever he damn well pleases. Peter. Peter Hale. The name doesn’t even seem like it should be his, mostly because it’s just Peter’s body. Everything else is so wildly different, so completely upturned, so sweetened. Stiles is still waiting for the sugarcoat to wear off, for the snarling, caustic, usual Peter to show up.

Peter's pulling the wine glass out of his hands right now, his official warning sign that things are about to get hot and heavy. Does having sex count in this world? Or can he strike it from the record like a Vegas weekend when he gets back to reality?

His thinking is interrupted by Peter pushing him down the couch, wedging himself between Stiles' legs and dragging his tongue up his neck. His teeth are involved too, keeping Stiles perpetually on his toes. He had expected this Peter to be soft in bed like he has been in life, delicate and ginger, but Stiles was deadly wrong—apparently Peter's an animal in bed even if he isn't an animal in any other ways in this life. Feebly, Stiles registers himself thinking thank god.

"So," Peter says on his neck, his breath hot on his jugular. "Are you too busy to continue?"

Over Peter's shoulder, Stiles can see the door. It wouldn't be too hard to make a run for it, telling a far-fetched excuse over his shoulder as he hightails it back home, and without the advantage of werewolf strength and speed, Peter might not even catch him.

Then, Peter bites down on his shoulder, pushing the neck of his shirt out of the way, and Stiles only encourages his mental struggle for a few more seconds before grabbing Peter's waist and thinking, resolutely, fuck it.

"I think I have some time," Stiles says, giving in.

Peter rumbles against his throat with approval, crawling back up his chest to kiss him again. His lips are rougher this time as he kisses Stiles, one hand winding into his hair and the other slipping down his torso, down his thigh, down to—oh.

Dear god, Peter's hand is on his crotch, cupping his dick, touching his erection—and holy shit, when did that happen?—and squeezing his member through his jeans with nothing but a few layers of fabric separating him from his hand. Contact on contact. Skin on skin. Stiles' eyes nearly roll into the back of his head.

"I see that our little time apart," Peter says on his mouth, chuckles falling between their kisses, "has made you extra responsive."

Of course he's responsive. This Stiles hasn't been touched by a set of hands that aren't his on purpose in too long—namely, never. His nickname could be Quick Draw. His Sexual Experience points are in the negative. The museum of his naughty escapades is very much in progress.

He could continue. His mind could ramble on and on about how he's got no game, except none of that seems to matter even an ounce now that he's redeeming himself. Peter's rubbing him through his pants and Stiles is practically seeing dead relatives, which he's slightly concerned will mean he's going to bring this party to a screeching stop before his boxers even come off.

"Slower," Stiles breathes, his hand gripping Peter's wrist.

"Very responsive, then," Peter murmurs. He's grinning.

Of course he's still a fucking tease in this universe. Of course he's still all snark. Some things you're just born with, apparently.

Slower doesn't seem to be a word registered in Peter's vocabulary. He rakes his fingernails softly up Stiles' stomach and over his abdomen while he arches closer and sucks Stiles' bottom lip into his mouth and holy shit Stiles might not even need his dick to be touched for this to be over too soon. He squirms, desperate both to elongate this past a few embarrassing seconds and grind up into the body above his and go wild. Peter seems to pick up on the latter desire much more than he does on the former, just as riled up by Stiles writhing beneath him as Stiles is by Peter writhing above him, and grabs the hem of Stiles’ wrinkled tee to yank it off his head.

Peter’s shirt follows after that, Stiles’ needy hands making sure that they go down together as far the stripping goes. If he’s going to be a happy queer boy, he’s going all the way. And to be honest, he’s not trying that hard, he’s just going with what his body is into. Maybe that needs some looking into when all this is over.

“I’ve missed this,” Peter says, ducking back down to lick up Stiles’ neck, kiss under his ear.

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees. Right now he’d agree with anything being said to him, the curse of having a warm body moving between your legs. He lets his thighs fall open until Peter’s nestled between them, his hard-on obvious where it’s pressing through his jeans into his leg, barely nudging Stiles’ equally excited erection. He pushes up on instinct and their cocks bump, suddenly making the shirt removal not nearly, nearly enough. The pants have to go. Everything has to go.

He doesn’t want to rush, though, not really. This is a once-in-an-alternate-lifetime opportunity. He lets Peter give him what has got to be the meanest hickey his skin’s ever had the pleasure of receiving while he slides his hands between their bodies and feels his way down Peter’s chest, smattered with hair, reveling in how his muscles flutter and hiccup under Stiles’ touch.

“Mmm,” Peter hums straight onto Stiles’ neck, licking over his collarbone. It’s the best sound Stiles has ever heard in his life and is going into the permanent collection in his spank bank, he knows that much. He slides his hands around to Peter’s back, scratching and pulling upwards until Peter gets the hint and tips his head up to give Stiles a kiss, this one wetter.

The tongue in his mouth and the teeth playing with his lower lip is one thing, but Stiles’ brain goes into overdrive when Peter mixes a kiss with a hand unzipping Stiles’ jeans and worming into his underwear, sliding his dick free and thumbing over the head. It’s like drinking and driving. Getting high and getting groceries. It’s dangerous. He ends up gasping straight into Peter’s mouth, body arching up into Peter’s touch.

“Oh my god, take them off,” Stiles demands the second he breaks the kiss, wriggling his hips. “Rip them off, I don’t care. Just get me naked.”

“Your wish,” Peter murmurs, then shimmies down his torso to fulfill it. It’s more arousing than it should be, watching Peter disrobe him and pull his jeans down his legs before yanking them off his ankles and tossing them aside.

He doesn’t grab the boxers right away, though. Instead, he takes his time picking Stiles apart, unraveling his restraint, leaning in without warning to mouth at Stiles’ dick as he’s simultaneously inching the underwear down his thighs, revealing more and more skin that Stiles wants him to explore for days. His legs are the never ending voyage, and Peter’s tongue can be Lewis and Clarke. He just wants it to go on for months, and makes this clear by thrusting his hips upward and easing his legs apart until Peter chuckles and starts sucking spots into his inner thighs.

"God, Peter," Stiles breathes out, grabbing onto his own hair and letting his eyes fall shut. "Talk to me."

He wants to hear the filth stream out of his mouth, wants to get off on Peter talking dirty to him. He can only hope his probably flushed cheeks and open mouth and shaking body are enough inspirations for Peter to talk, and they seem to be, become Peter swears on his skin and says, "I want to touch you everywhere."

Stiles pushes his hips up into his touch. "Yeah? Make me yours?"

"You are mine," Peter tells him. "All mine."

"Show me."

“Can I fuck you?” Peter breathes out right there on his leg, licking his way higher, higher—

Stiles growls in frustration. He wants Peter to take charge, to grab him by the thighs and sink his teeth into his shoulder and declare I’m going to fuck you with purpose, with certainty, so Stiles can do nothing but tremble in anticipation and moan at how Peter can take control from him and he doesn’t even mind. He reaches down, grabbing hold of Peter’s hair. “Yes.” He spreads his legs further. “Don’t ask. Just ravish me like you really mean it.”

Peter chuckles. The sound reverberates through his leg, echoing in his bones, and then Peter’s pushing his legs up by the underside of his knees and exposing him where the sun doesn’t shine. Stiles gulps on a mouth that feels like the fucking desert.

“All right,” he says. “Stay like that.”

Stiles obeys, watching as Peter rummages around the pocket in the back of his jeans and comes back with a tube of lube. Stiles momentarily sits up, snatching it out of Peter’s grip.

“What the fuck is this, travel sized lube?” He has to admit, it would’ve been even better if it was flavored. “I’m a little irked, to be honest. This is presumptuous. Did you know I would put out tonight?”

Peter shrugs, taking it out of Stiles’ hands and pushing him back down on the sofa. He leans in closer between Stiles’ legs, grinning. “I can be very persuasive.”

It sounds familiar, and it takes Stiles a minute to remember where from—he and Peter, crouched over Peter’s laptop propped up on a car trunk the night of the formal, Peter warning him about how persuasive he can be. Oh god, is that what he had been thinking? Had that been a sexual promise? Is it terrible that it turns Stiles on a little bit to know that he might’ve gotten his mind fucking blown—and other things too, maybe—that night if he hadn’t cooperated?

Stiles reaches out to grab his arm. “This is you trying to turn me on, yes?” He just has to know. “This is you doing a move?”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “Obviously.”

Stiles has to admit, this is a pleasant ego inflation he wasn’t expecting. He’s about to internally gloat a little bit, but Peter throws a wrench in that plan by touching his entrance with a slick finger, and suddenly nothing matters except for the thumb playing with his ass. A soft cry escapes his mouth, hips jerking, so Peter holds him down by the pelvis and keeps rubbing, teasing, outlining the muscle and pressing against it every time Stiles’ entire body shudders with the touches. He leans in, his scent filling up Stiles everywhere, fogging his brain, and parts his lips on Stiles’ chin.

"Tell me how badly you want it," Peter murmurs right on Stiles' jaw, his mouth crawling up to his ear.

Badly, actually. There's a finger circling his hole and his knees are pressed up to his chest and he's about to be fingered by someone who probably knows what they're doing, and Stiles definitely wants to see how this will play out. He keens, the noise desperate in his throat.

"A lot. Embarrassingly much," Stiles all but sobs out. He holds his legs up, hooking his hands under his knees to expose his entrance. This entire situation is already humiliating. He might as well enjoy it.

"Tell me what you want."

Peter's lips drag over the shell of his ear. He might be borderline bland in life, but he's still amazing in bed—instantly, it makes Stiles wonder what the real Peter can do under the sheets, and exactly how much better it could get. His hips arch upward, causing Peter's finger to nearly slip inside him.

"Come on," he says, his face hot. "Finger me."

"Magic word," Peter whispers. He's going to smack him.

"Please," he says. "Pretty please with all the cherries you fucking want on top."

Peter grins. Stiles hates how much he's enjoying himself, and totally hates him too, up until he gives in and slips two fingers into Stiles to the knuckle.

It's not like he's never done it to himself before—in the shower, after the suds are washed away, the hands get curious—but never like this. The angle of his hand was always awkward, his fingers never quite right. Peter's are most definitely right. Actually, that word might be a bit too mild—amazing and mind-thumping is more accurate. Peter's fingers scissor inside him, pushing and twisting, and then he drags them out only to arch them back in and Stiles' hips jerk involuntarily in response.

He can't let Peter see him like this, all open and vulnerable, or he'll be forced to move to another continent. He pushes his face into the cushion, hiding it in the couch, but Peter's hand tips his jaw until they're looking straight into each other's eyes. It's almost overwhelming, and Stiles realizes a moment later it's because he feels safe. It's almost disappointing, because with Peter he always feels annoyed and ruffled and out of his depth and in constant danger, and those feelings are oddly exciting, like adrenaline. Like really living.

"More," Stiles pleads.

Peter raises an eyebrow but offers no comment, instead focusing on sliding a third finger inside him. It makes him quake, the unyielding push of Peter's digits coursing through him with spasming thighs. The most frustrating part is that he's clearly taking his time, like he wants to see Stiles fall apart before he even considers getting to the good part. Stiles whines, trailing his hand down his chest to wrap around his cock, leaking against his stomach. Peter responds by slapping his hand away.

"Control," Peter says, shaking his head.

"Please," Stiles gasps. "More."

"I don't think you can handle it."

"I can," Stiles pleads, wrapping his fingers around Peter's wrist. He squeezes.

"No," Peter says. If possible, he slows down the push of his fingers.

"Jesus fuck," Stiles grits out on a frustrated gasp. "You're the literal worst. Always. Why the hell are we together."

"We fit," Peter says. It's a statement so near romantic that Stiles gets the strong urge to bury his face in the cushion again. "Let me take my time. You're tight."

Of course he’s tight; he’s a blushing virgin. But he’s not a fucking glass figurine threatening to shatter into a thousand pieces just because a dick slips inside him. He reaches out to grab Peter’s shoulder, squeezing, and feels the muscles flex under his touch.

“Come on. I’m not made of sugar.” He moves his hand helplessly, something he hopes Peter understands to mean hurry the hell up.

Not even Peter can seem to stand his own teasing for long, ultimately submitting to the lure of Stiles' body, presented to him complete with gasps, bucking hips, and complete desperation. He looks at Stiles like he's all his, all of Peter's to love and destroy and mark up. Maybe he is.

Peter sighs. “Fine,” he says, and then his fingers slip out of Stiles. “Do you want me to eat you out first?”

The hand on Peter’s shoulder digs in, completely unprepared for the off-handed suggestion. He wants to meet the Stiles getting his ass eaten out on the regular and give him a humongous high five, because he’s clearly doing something right. He laughs a little on a dry mouth, then shakes his head. He has an agenda tonight, and that’s to be fucked.

“Maybe later. After.” Stiles laughs again, because holy hell, he’s having sex. “Go ahead and plow me like a farmer. I’m ready.”

He wiggles his hips, making himself comfortable, and ignores Peter’s arched eyebrow at his perfectly apt farmer’s analogy.

"Come on," Stiles says, reaching out to slide his hands into Peter's hair. He pulls him down for a kiss that's wet and soft. "Do it already."

Peter looks like he's about to decline, push his fingers into Stiles some more and prep him until he’s sobbing, but he stays firm on his promise and gets the show on the road. He scoots backward a bit, giving Stiles the room to maneuver.

"Turn around," he says, then pushes a couch cushion into his hands. "Under your stomach."

Stiles takes it. "Didn't know you were such a gentleman."

He does as he's told, the nerves multiplying as they blend with his arousal. Okay, he's going to be fucked. He should probably be less excited and more freaked out, but that's an existential crisis he can have later when he's not settling himself onto his stomach for sex. He waits, hands curled into the armrest, and lifts his ass a few inches as a suggestion. Peter groans.

"Just a second," he grits out, and then Stiles registers the rustling of denim and the distinct sound of a condom being unwrapped. He twists around, watching Peter slide it on himself.

"What do you need that for?" Stiles asks. "You're a freaking werewo—" He stops himself, remembering reality. Or rather, not reality. Stiles should stop dedicating time to thinking about the logistics. "Never mind. Just get on with it."

Peter slides two of his fingers into Stiles' mouth to shut him up, which is admittedly an effective technique that Stiles won't object to. Then Peter’s cock pushes into him and Stiles quickly changes his mind and realizes that not even knuckles in his mouth can keep him quiet now.

He figures out pretty fast that this isn’t going to be anything like fingering himself clumsily in the shower, not even like Peter fingering him five minutes ago. It’s a whole new sensation, one that’s painful and pleasant and prickling and overwhelming all at once, overwhelming just like all these last few days have been, like being loved by Peter in a genuine, real way. As if reading his mind and feeling the need to show off exactly how much he cares—just like he has this entire damn time that Stiles has been here in this fucked up world—Peter’s hand strokes over Stiles’ neck, touching his ear.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs.

Stiles isn’t sure words can do justice to what he’s feeling right now, not ever, not even years later when he’s relaying this story as a far off legend to scare his kids, that sex can be so amazing that all the words you’ve ever learned will leave your body. He can’t find it in his muscles to nod, so he lets out nothing more than a feeble grunt of approval that he hopes will convey his message that he’s more than okay.

“Stiles,” Peter says, his hand sliding down to Stiles’ spine. “Are you okay?” he asks again, clearly needing a clear answer.

“Stop talking,” Stiles grits out. “For the love of god.”

Peter laughs, something breathless and happy, a sound Stiles doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. He swoops down and kisses Stiles between the shoulder blades, and then he doesn’t waste any more time before grabbing Stiles by the hips and shifting, pushing further in until he’s fully settled inside Stiles, then pulling out, then easing back in.

Stiles realizes just as the drag of Peter's cock sliding inside him leaves him clutching onto a pillow for something to dig his fingers into that it may very well be that the only reason he's letting this happen is because he knows it never will in real life. Knows he'll never have Peter like this, see him like this, feel him like this, all soft and undamaged and concentrated whole-heartedly, lovingly, on Stiles. Knows that one day he'll be back in his reality staring at a colder, harder Peter from a distance feeling like someone's snatched something he was never meant to have but given anyway out from under him. It feels special, to experience something he never will again, like he’s found a precious gem deep in the ocean that no one will ever find replicas of.

Peter speeds up, his rhythm going from slow and gentle to fast and purposeful, enveloping Stiles in a sweaty heat that seems to have trapped him. Stiles grinds against the sofa beneath himself, creating friction for his erection while he pushes back onto Peter’s thrusts, meeting them, trying to keep up with them. His head is spinning.

At least he’s taken Stiles’ request to be a little rough to heart, Stiles thinks, what with how Peter’s fingers are digging into his hipbones and his hips are snapping into him with increasing force, knocking the breath out of Stiles each and every time. It feels almost like his every thrust is stitching Stiles together and tearing him apart simultaneously, finally giving him that insight he wanted as to why people are so damn excited about sex. Hell, not just sex, penetrative anal sex. Stiles can never go back to jerking off in a bathroom alone again.

“God, Peter,” Stiles says, and it feels oddly hot to say Peter’s name as he’s about to come, as he gets closer and closer. “Keep that up.”

It seems like Peter’s okay with following orders, because he does not relent. His hands move Stiles’ hips, pulling his ass up, making way for an angle so good that Stiles knows that’s his prostate right now being hit with every thrust, sending him into worlds where he can smell colors and taste music.

“Perfect,” Peter says, his voice hoarse. One of his hands comes up from the vice grip on Stiles’ hip and tangles into Stiles’ hair, smoothing over his scalp, then slipping down to his shoulder. “You’re perfect.”

“Me?” Stiles grunts out, hardly able to do so.

“Yes, you.” He accentuates that with a particularly hard push of his hips. “Exactly as you are, Stiles.”

God, has anyone ever told him straight to his face that he’s this loved? It’s almost jarring, hearing someone feel comfortable enough to put it into words. Real Peter never would. If he got even close to feeling actual human emotions, he would say it other ways—tuck Stiles behind him to protect him when there’s danger, bring him pizza but eat half of it himself, slash the tires of a teacher he didn’t like. He pushes himself back against Peter’s hips, mouth open where it’s biting back groans into the sofa cushion.

“Come on,” Stiles says, voice muffled by the couch against his teeth. “Fuck me.”

“I’m at it,” Peter responds. It almost sounds like he’s repressing laughter.

Stiles sort of wants to weep because of how good everything feels right now. The manhandling, the fingertips digging into his hip, the dick in his ass stimulating him places he’s never been touched before, all of it accentuated by the slightest of intimate touches from Peter’s free hand, whether it be tracing his spine or squeezing his shoulder or rubbing his side. He wants to do this again, many more times, actually, and it sucks a little bit that he won’t, at least not with Peter. He would say he wants it to last forever, but he’s almost at the very edge and knows he can’t last much longer, so chances are that wish isn’t going to be granted.

Instead he focuses on the task at hand: coming. He can tell from the increased amount of soft noises leaving Peter’s mouth, the groans and the sharp intakes of air, that he’s close too, so he ruts his body harder against the couch and lets it wash over him.

"I'm so close," he warns, feeling wrecked and desperate. "Peter—god, I'm gonna come."

When he does come, it’s almost like knocking himself out with a frying pan. He grips the couch and cries out, body taut as the pleasure courses through it like a furious tide, and then Peter’s bending over to press his chest to Stiles’ back and whisper in his ear, kiss his neck, brush his nose into Stiles’ hair, breathing soft compliments and praise to him all the while. It’s honestly the nicest orgasm Stiles has ever had, leaving him trembling and truly fucked out, and it’s not until he’s practically passed out, glued onto the couch with his own sweat, that he realizes that Peter’s come too. He tries not to feel a little jaded about the fact that he probably would’ve noticed if the condom hadn’t been there to keep some of those sensations at bay.

Things settle down after that, the sensory overload dimming, leaving Stiles aware of the dampness on his back and the furious pounding of his excited heart and the way his ass is already leaning on the sore side. He takes a deep breath, blinking the spots from his vision just as Peter leans down to kiss his neck, then his hair.

“I love you,” Peter murmurs. Stiles’ heart gives a little hop that feels like an electrode on his ribs transmitting a zap. “It’s always good with you.”

Stiles isn’t sure if he’s talking about the sex or just life, and he lets himself entertain the idea that he might actually make Peter Hale happy, if not a better, more well-rounded person. He finds the will to move his limbs and twists around on the sofa, not bothering to complain about how sticky he is and how sticky Peter is and how much stickier they are when they’re pressed up together. Peter’s bare thigh falls between Stiles’, still naked. Still warm.

"Funny," Peter says, trailing his hand down Stiles' jaw.

God, please don't be talking about his sex game. Stiles turns to him with dread. "What?"

"That felt a lot like our first time."

Oh. Stiles wants to laugh, so he gives in and does. There’s a pleasant feel of lazy sex in the air, accompanied by the strong smell of it and the gentle caresses of Peter’s hand up and down his side, and it feels like maybe the night has just begun. He’s fine with that. He’s fine with the all-night sex marathon if that’s something that’s up for grabs. In between his laughter, he kisses Peter’s jaw.

“Come on,” he murmurs, softly biting down on the bone by his chin. “Let’s do that some more.”

--

It's two a.m. when Stiles tires out.

They've moved to Peter's bed. It's very soft, the kind of sheets that are positively ideal for Stiles' post-sex haze. He can't even begin to describe how much of a different man he feels he is now. The world post-sex looks much brighter, much more colorful than the world pre-sex, like now he's finally allowed to experience miracles and see shooting stars and meet Santa Claus.

Next to him, Peter's completely naked. So is Stiles. He doesn't think he's ever been this naked before, this touched with ardent intent, this thoroughly ravished by something other than his own fingers. Peter's hand, the one that isn't tucking Stiles—still naked—onto his chest, is tilting around his unfinished glass of wine, retrieved from the living room after their second go around.

He sips at it. "Do you remember what you told me the other day?"

Stiles freezes. Why all these questions he never has answers to always seem to come up lately, he's not sure. "Not word for word."

Peter huffs. "We were lying in bed," he explains. "And you told me that nothing exciting ever happens in this town."

"Oh," Stiles says slowly. He picks himself up from Peter's chest. "I did?"

"And then I said, maybe I could kill someone, and you said, like you would," Peter waits for the recognition of the conversation to make itself apparent on Stiles' face. When it doesn't, he rolls his eyes. "Your memory is dismal." The hand trailing up and down Stiles' arm encircles his wrist. "Anyway. I thought of something we could do to excite you."

Stiles waits for the worst. Murder spree, revenge killing, and animal slaughtering comes to mind. What's the saying—a zebra never changes its stripes?

"I was thinking we could toilet paper Derek's apartment," Peter says. "You know it'll drive him crazy. He'll be complaining for weeks. It'll be delicious."

Stiles blinks. He sits up, trying to figure out if his ears are still working properly.

"Hold on," he says slowly. "You're offering to teepee Derek's house because I said there's nothing to do in this town?"

Peter nods, looking inordinately pleased with himself for the idea. Stiles really said that? In what ridiculous world could he possibly find Beacon Hills to be lacking in excitement? Is the Stiles of this world that itchy for drama? Is he bored? Does he spend his days daydreaming of scenarios where he's Superman and he's saving the world from unseen harm? Does he even believe in the idea of werewolves? Does he know that being a superhero, or even a sidekick, takes a lot of effort?

Stiles lets himself consider if that Stiles—the one he's impersonating—is living a better life than the one he's actually been living for the past few years. If in the end, wishing for excitement and danger is infinitely better than being trapped in it and surrounded by it and suffocated by it. Stiles doesn't think it is.

He looks at Peter and wishes he were looking at the real Peter, the one he knows and snarks at and watches be a total psycho. He's more interesting. He has nice facial hair. He's totally fucking insane. Stiles actually sort of likes him in comparison to the vanilla, clean-shaven man in front of him.

And okay, fine, maybe this is the only world where a relationship with Peter would ever work out, let alone be started in the first place. In the world Stiles is familiar with, even being in the same room as Peter is a challenge, and the idea of them being friends is laughable. The idea of them being more is almost preposterous.

And exciting. And thrilling, and crazy, and so insane it could work on ludicrousness alone. Suddenly, the white room and gentle sheets and mundane Peter next to him seem like a second rate universe that's keeping him captive from the interesting life he could be living. It makes him realize what's been missing, what's been nagging at him these last few days—physically, he's attracted to Peter, but when it comes to personality, Stiles has been aching for the bite, the wit, the sharpness. The boring job and the lack of humor and the shaven jaw were some things, but Stiles draws the line with toilet papering.

"Peter," Stiles says to the naked man lounging in front of him like an old Grecian sculpture that he doesn't know at all. "I think you're great. Really, really undamaged."

Peter's eyebrows knot together. "Pardon?"

"But you're so—you're so—" Stiles winds his hands into his hair and can't believe he's about to say what he's about to say. "You're not crazy enough."

Peter repeats himself. "Pardon?"

"It's almost like you're normal, and I have idea how to deal with that," Stiles says. He shoots him a smile that's a little sad, a little relieved. Old Stiles, the sixteen year old boy in over his head with the real life horror film he was suddenly starring in, would've found this Peter refreshingly typical, if not magnificent. "I like crazy. I just work well when things are totally off their rocker. It's like it's my life's calling to be that weird kid in the back of the superhero comics who's the comic relief and never really knows how to handle a situation and you—you're supposed to be the hot bad guy, but instead you're. You're this."

Is he even in the comic book in this universe? Are any of them? Who the hell would read a story about a bunch of bored teenagers sitting around a quiet town? Stiles wants to be in the story.

Peter seems to have trouble comprehending the words coming out of Stiles' mouth unabated. "I'm not crazy enough for you?"

Stiles heaves a sigh. "Yeah," he admits. "And maybe that makes me a little crazy." He lets the words settle around them like dust and wonders if he's done the right thing. He looks at Peter. "I'm sorry."

He gets up, sliding the sheets off his naked body and fumbling to grab his boxers. He feels like he's not articulating himself well at all, and if he's stuck in this world forever, it might eventually become a problem when he keeps talking of a faraway alternate universe where all of them are different and jaded and hurt. Still, at least they're all themselves.

"I will say this, though," Stiles says as he's pulling his pants on. "The sex is amazing. I mean, mind blowing."

Peter's still squinting at him like he's not quite sure anything he's seeing right now isn't an elaborate skit for his benefit. "Thanks," he says, rather dryly, and then, "get out."

Stiles hurries to pull his shirt over his head. "Right," he says, saluting him. He considers letting him know that he really is cool, if not charming, but Stiles just really—stupidly—prefers the creepy, damaged version of him better, and decides to keep that particular statement to himself.

On his way out, he runs straight into the doorway and goes down seeing stars.

--

When Stiles wakes up, he's in a hospital.

He doesn't have to open his eyes to know. He hears the beeping of a machine to his left and the echoing noise of a nurse over the intercom wafting over from the ceiling. His forehead hurts. He reaches up with careful fingers to press into the skin over his eyebrows. Definitely hurts.

The branch. The tree. The stupid walk through the woods at an ungodly hour of the night. Nobody listening to his rambling about flashlights.

"Hey," a voice speaks up. It's Scott's. "Hey, are you all right?"

It confirms things for him. It would be Peter next to him if things were still as he remembered them—or rather, as things weren't supposed to be. Even after their last conversation, it'd still be Peter. He tries to remember the details of what he said to him, but they're already fuzzy, gone like the smoky tendrils of a dream wisping away in the morning light, nothing but lingering feelings left behind.

A hand lands on his thigh, shaking him by the leg. Stiles considers ignoring it for at least another five minutes so he can wake up in peace, but he eventually gives in and peels open one eye.

"Let me guess," Stiles mumbles, his voice thick with sleep. "Tree?"

From where he's sitting fuzzily in front of him, Scott nods. The entire room is extremely bright.

"Does it hurt?" Scott asks. Stiles rubs his eyes until he can see more clearly. Scott's hair is back to normal, shorter like he remembers. He looks good.

"Like a bitch," Stiles says. "But was the hospital really necessary?"

"There was... some blood," Scott mumbles. "I didn't want to take any chances."

"Lovely," Stiles says. He lets his fingers crawl back to his forehead and slides them higher, this time encountering a bandage taped onto his forehead. He can only imagine how irresistible he looks. A few more details come back to him—the dry mouth, the dizziness. "So who poisoned me?"

"What?"

Stiles waves his hand into the air. "Poison. Mojo. Cursed. What happened after I passed out?"

"Nothing happened. Why? Are you okay?"

"I just... had a weird experience."

The hospital lights are so goddamn bright. Stiles tries to open his eyes to take in the familiar universe around him, but the fluorescents are directly overhead and cruelly determined to burn Stiles' retinas.

He could've sworn there was poison, if not at least intervention. Everything had felt shockingly real, too real to be your average mid-concussion dream. Then again, it hardly seems so now; the specifics are blurring together quickly like it really has all just been a dream.

"Who else is here?"

"Lydia and Allison and Isaac are in the cafeteria. Your dad came even though I told him it wasn't that bad. Derek and Peter are here too."

Stiles' stomach gives a funny little jolt at Peter's name. It's a reflex he'll have to condition himself out of. "Why are they here?"

"Who, all of them?"

"No," Stiles says. He had expected his voice to be croakier, as if unused for weeks, but aside from a slightly dry mouth and orange spots forming behind his eyelids courtesy of the obnoxious overhead lighting, he feels fine. "Derek and company. Doesn't seem like a Hale family kind of scene."

Scott shrugs. He probably hasn't spent any time out of this room since Stiles was brought in and knows very little of what chatter is going around outside Stiles' room. How much time has even passed? Stiles is guessing not more than a handful of hours.

“I’m gonna, uh.” Stiles slips his legs off the mattress, Scott instantly standing up in case he wobbles. He stays perfectly steady, getting to his feet. He looks down. “Is the gown really necessary?”

Scott procures his clothes seemingly out of nowhere; he hands Stiles his jeans and t-shirt without another word as Stiles pulls the pulse monitor off his finger.

“Where are you going?” Scott asks him.

“I—I just want to. Check something.”

He gives Scott a smile to assure him that he’s physically strong enough to travel around the place, yanking the robe off and getting back into preferable clothing.

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing—the theme of his life, really—but he wants to find Peter if he’s still in this hospital and try to riddle this out. He wants to look him in the face and see if that crazy, heart-pumping wallop to the face still happens when he sees him. He gives Scott one more reassuring smile, promises he'll be back in a jiffy, and heads out the door.

He walks around a few hallways looking for familiar faces. They're fairly deserted, too late in the night to be stuffed with bustling doctors and visitors, so Stiles takes the elevator downstairs to the first floor to peek in the cafeteria and see if anybody he knows is grouped around the coffee maker, which is where he'd probably be camping out if somebody else was hurt at—Stiles checks his watch—one in the morning. He wonders what Scott said to the nurses to convince them to let him stay in the room past visiting hours.

Turns out, he doesn't have to go as far as the cafeteria. He gets off the elevator and rounds a corner and there, standing by a vending machine, is Peter. He's in snug pants and is sporting a generous five o'clock shadows. Exactly as Stiles remembers. As he should be.

It hits Stiles like a blow to his already fragile head that Peter is still every bit as attractive as he was in his dreamscape. He had hoped that that would fade a bit too, that his undeniable sexiness was exaggerated, like now he'd be back to the unphotoshopped version versus the magazine ready version he had gotten used to drooling over, and reality would strip away all of the residual emotions still lingering in Stiles’ mind. If anything, Peter looks better, what with his chiseled chest shown off in his tight shirt and his pleasantly angled facial hair, not to mention the lack of the abhorrent hair gel.

He has to say something, but now that he’s here, he’s not sure what. He probably should’ve waited until all of this simmered away, until he could think rationally instead of on instinct, but Stiles isn’t always known for his good plans. He’s known for being irrational and sudden and a giant mess of impulsive limbs, and it’s worked for him so far in life, so maybe he ought to continue with the planless plan and not bother to map out his words. He should just say what he thinks. If he could only figure out exactly what he’s even thinking, that would be a plus.

Peter’s head tilts in Stiles’ direction, catching his scent or the sight of him in his peripherals. Stiles looks at that mouth of his and thinks I know what that mouth looks like when it’s saying I love you.

"Hey," Stiles says. For a moment, he's unsure how to go about this, even how to talk to Peter. The situation is a little confusing, with how Stiles has been in the middle of a world where Peter eats him out and cares about him, all experiences that the real Peter, the one standing in front of him now with one eyebrow cocked like a gun, didn't get to try out for size himself.

"Nice bandage," Peter murmurs. "You look even more like an idiot than you usually do. Which is... impressive, considering."

Stiles lets that one pass. "Listen," he says instead of the comeback begging to be let out of his mouth, taking a few uncertain steps closer. "How do you feel about pet names?"

"I don't," Peter deadpans.

"That's what I thought," Stiles says. "I'm glad."

Peter's lethal eyebrow still doesn't lower back into place. "You've been thinking about my affinity for pet names?" An indulgent smile graces his face. "I'm flattered I take up so much room in your brain."

"I'm glad you're you," Stiles interrupts him, uninterested in whatever witty banter Peter's trying to provoke. "And that everybody else is who they are too. And even if it was stupid, that you attacked my best friend in the middle of the woods and made this town a goddamn madhouse. And especially that you have better ideas than toilet papering Derek's apartment."

Peter looks at him. He seems close to walking away and having a nurse haul Stiles back to his room where he can be properly treated for his head injury, but then he speaks up. "Toilet papering is so juvenile." He curls his lip in distaste. "And tacky."

"Right?" Stiles says, oddly glad to hear this come out of Peter's mouth. "I think so too."

"Where is this coming from?"

"From you!" Stiles says. His head really does hurt. "At least, it did where I'm from." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Something really weird happened to me."

"I know. You walked into a tree."

"Weirder than that," Stiles tells him. He's still a little woozy from what he can only assume are some low quality pain meds better suited for knocking him out than actually curing the pounding behind his skull, and realizes the drugs would make a very convenient scapegoat should he regret the words threatening to spill from his mouth. He jumps off the proverbial cliff. "Are you interested in me?"

Peter's eyes narrow. Then they travel down Stiles' pants to squint critically at his crotch.

"What the hell are you doing?" Stiles asks, resisting the urge to fold his legs together.

"Just checking to see where the balls you've apparently grown are."

"Oh my god, you fucking nightmare," Stiles says. "Don't dodge my question."

Peter does little but stare. “What question?”

Stiles feels the heat crawl up his neck like spiders. “Are you interested in me,” he grits out, not bothering to add the question mark at the end. It’s a statement he’s embarrassed to even say out loud once, and now he’s done it twice.

“Why are you asking?”

Stiles hates people who answer questions with questions. It’s like running in a circle, and he’d rather stand still and focus right now. “I had a weird experience and it just… shook up some stuff for me. Mentally.”

“Clearly.”

"Fine," Stiles grumbles, throwing his arms up, already annoyed. But this is what he wanted, isn't it? Things to not be so damn easy all the time. "I don't care if we never are what we were in that other universe. Chances are, we never could be them and I don't really want to be." He remembers the other Peter, how his life had been bland, and the other Scott, and how he didn't have Allison or a pack or even a spot on the lacrosse team, and the other Stiles, how the most exciting, worthy thing in Stiles’ entire alternate life was Peter, a bizarre, incongruous presence in his boredom. "But imagine how totally crazy it would be."

His brain has totally been overusing the word crazy. He can't help it. He feels like it describes them perfectly.

Peter's mouth shifts. Stiles feels like a kid in a school project who's just shared an idea he's proud of and is now staring into the unimpressed faces of his peers waiting for them to get on board.

"Are you asking me out?" Peter murmurs. He sounds like any moment now he'll be taking out his phone so he can record this conversation just so he can prove it actually happened.

"I don't know," Stiles says helplessly. What is he doing, other than being a fucking loon? "You know when you wake up from those really intense dreams you have about someone, it doesn't even matter who, and you walk around thinking about them for the next few hours until you can shake off the really stupid feelings your dream made you think were a good idea?"

"No."

"That's sort of where I'm at now," Stiles sighs.

"You had a dream about me," Peter sums up, and he sounds interested by now. "What happened?"

"Sort of. It felt real." Stiles shakes his head as the memories come back to him, his ears hot at the mere idea of sharing what he's experienced. No, he's not thinking about if real Peter's dick looked anything like the other Peter's. "I don't want to tell you."

"You don't?" Peter says. "Then there really wasn't much point in coming over to talk to me, was there?"

He turns around as if to leave, bored of Stiles and his inability to finish the stories he starts. So Stiles grabs him by his sleeve and yanks him in again and kisses him.

He just wants to see if it feels the same, or better, or worse, or like the biggest mistake of his life. He's wavering between all four, trying to figure out when he became this gutsy with werewolf murderers, but then Peter's teeth are brushing his lower lip like he's considering kissing back right before he pushes Stiles away to hold at arm’s length and observe, probably for signs of demonic possession.

Stiles looks away, too humiliated to meet Peter's piercing, critical gaze. His lips are wet from where Peter's mouth pressed into his, a real thing he did in the real world apparently without his real brain. He had forgotten how nice it was to do things in the other reality, how it felt like everything he chose to do could be as brave or as dumb as he wanted since in the end, in the real world, it didn't count. It counts now.

"You've lost your mind," Peter says flatly, like it's a fact. Stiles nods. Peter's thumb grips his chin to lift his head so he can stare directly into his deeply embarrassed eyes. "How long have you wanted to do that?"

"Like ten minutes," Stiles says, shoving Peter's arms away. "Don't get a big head." Then, despite himself and his better judgment and self-control and working knowledge of his own logical thinking, he says, "Do you want to do it again?"

"Kiss you?" Peter asks. He licks his lips, his eyes flicking down to Stiles' mouth. "Hmm.” Something draws over his face, a tautness pulled so by confusion and a tiny light of revelation. He turns halfway around, arching away at an angle that Stiles can still see him rifling about in his jacket pocket. Something silver emerges from the inside flap, gleaming under the lamps, and Stiles tips up onto his toes to try and catch a glance.

"What is that?"

Peter wheels toward him, allowing Stiles to see that his other hand is holding something too—a metallic thermos, alike in shape and color to what's sitting in his left hand. Under closer observation, Stiles can tell one is a water bottle and the other is a vial full of something distinctly potion-like that a gnarly witch would probably keep in her sock.

"What is that?" Stiles asks again, this time pointing firmly to the vial.

Peter shakes it innocently. It's not entirely full; there's some liquid missing. "This? Family heirloom."

He attempts to stow it, curling his lips into an uncomfortable puckered circle after rolling them into his mouth. Something about the gesture is so familiar to Stiles that it takes him a moment to realize he's seen the other Peter, the unburned, kind, boring Peter, do the same when under pressure.

"What is it?" Stiles repeats. He lets his voice go softer at the end, hating himself as it happens, trying to separate himself from the person and the reactions and the feelings he was and had just a few hours ago, the person who learned to be warmer around Peter. "Peter."

Peter’s shoulders sag for a moment before they upright themselves again. “Out in the woods—you asked me for water, didn’t you?” Peter says. “There was a small mix-up.”

Stiles feels dread well up in him as it sinks in. At least he was right, he was poisoned, the only question being if it happened intentionally or not. The blind urge to leap at Peter and grab the vial for further inspection briefly flits through his head.

“Oh my god,” he says. “What the hell was it?” A million more questions go swirling through his head and he tries to find the one that needs priority. “Did you do it on purpose?”

“What? Of course not,” Peter spits, apparently affronted that Stiles would even consider that as an option. “I stole it for myself, not to accidentally hand off to you.”

“Stole it?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Just from Deaton. He won’t notice,” he says, like that makes it okay. “It wasn’t anything dangerous.”

Like hell it wasn’t. Stiles bristles, remembering all the emotions stormed up inside him, all the false memories and the vivid people around him, warping his mind, his reality, and worst of all, his attraction to Peter. Before all this, he never would’ve paid any attention to the fact that Peter’s well-built, with a nice chest and a pleasant smile, slightly crooked when he smirks. Now he has to live with the fact that not only does he notice those things but he admires them too.

“I respectfully disagree,” Stiles grits out, keeping his fists tight by his side. “That was—it wasn’t fun.”

Well, the gay sex, that was a little fun. Waking up to the repercussions here and now, not so much. The fact that his lips are still a little slick from where Peter’s teeth slid over them is ringing in his ears like a siren.

“What exactly happened to you?” Peter asks, all confusion overwritten with morbid curiosity. “You and me—”

“No. No, I’m not going there.” Stiles holds up a hand to emphasize this. He can only imagine what his face looks like. He presumes a well-roasted tomato complete with thin lips and blazing eyes, all brimming with embarrassment. “Just tell me what it did. What it was for and why you can now add thief and burglar to your list of offenses because of it. God.”

“I’ll tell you. If you tell me what happened to you.”

Of course there’s a requirement. Peter works in strategic business transactions, not acts of free will. Stiles swallows his pride and tries to sum this up as succinctly as possible. “We were, you know.” His mouth almost won’t say the words. “Together.”

“Romantically?”

Stiles grinds his teeth. If he’s lucky, he’ll pulverize them and won’t be able to keep talking. “Yes. You were my boyfriend.”

The words make themselves comfortable in the silence. Stiles wants to go run and hide, especially when he looks at Peter and there’s a funny gleaming in his eyes. Stiles feels like he’s on the outside of some very crucial information. Then Peter says, “It was a dream potion. I was going to take it myself one day and lay down for a bit and just see the results, but I will admit this is more interesting.”

“A dream potion?”

Peter pulls it out of his pocket again. The vial, glittering like there’s moonlight shining on it, sits in Peter’s hand like a crystal ball whispering him secrets. “It was supposed to show you a world you wanted,” he says. “Things you yearned for. Until, of course, you decided the real world was better. Or someone slipped you the antidote. Or you were just done sleeping.” His eyes widen a fraction. “It’s probably a good thing you woke up. I wasn’t sure if death was an option, too. The consequences of pilfering potions without asking for instructions, I suppose.”

Stiles feels himself deflate. He’s droned out everything Peter’s said after things you yearned for. A world without monsters, maybe, and a world where Derek doesn’t always walk around with deep, old man creases between his eyebrows, sure, a world where more people are alive and innocent, of course. A world with Peter by his side was never really in the forefront of his mind. If he was red earlier, he knows he’s a brilliant shade of burning magenta by now.

“You’re kidding,” Stiles says, because it’s the only option. “This is funny for you, right?”

“I’m not. And it is.” Peter’s looking at Stiles like he’s seeing him with totally different eyes, ones that are probably one hundred times more judgmental than the old ones. “I suppose this clears a few things up. The kiss, for instance.” He smirks and it just about breaks Stiles in half. “I had no idea you felt so… passionately for me, Stiles.”

“I don’t!” Stiles says hotly. “That’s why I’m here. I chose this world. The one where you and I keep a distance all the time.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “And I’m not all that sure that really is a dream potion. It’s probably a nightmare potion, so you can appreciate the world you actually live in.”

“I don’t believe you,” Peter says, and it takes a moment for Stiles to remember Peter’s hearing is focused on him, listening to his heartbeat, a talent other Peter couldn’t use on him. “After all. You kissed me.”

“It was—” Stiles stops himself, not sure what excuse he can possibly whip up. He’s frozen from the humiliation, probably, which is why his tongue has stopped working. “Listen. I would prefer just to forget about this entire nightmarish thing. It really wasn’t pleasant. You really aren’t boyfriend material.” He was, but that isn’t really helpful right now. “As a matter of fact, it was reminiscent of banging my head against a wall. That’s what it felt like, honestly.”

He straightens up, molding his face into something convincingly grim. Peter steps closer. Stiles wishes he wouldn’t.

“Yes,” Peter says suddenly, like he hasn't been listening at all.

“What?”

“Yes, I want to do it again,” Peter says, slower this time, like Stiles needs words spelled out for him. Stiles’ brain burns rubber spinning backwards in their conversation until he reaches the point Peter’s referring to—the humiliating, careless, absolutely ridiculous request to kiss him again. It doesn’t help that Peter sounds like he's agreeing to complete a chore, like mowing the lawn or throwing out the trash. Stiles is about to twist around and leave to get himself some stale pastries from the cafeteria, which is still better than standing in front of Peter like a chump, when Peter stops him.

Peter wheels him back in with a few fingers snagging his shirt, his werewolf strength apparent as he slams him close to his chest and backs him up to the wall. He grabs Stiles by the wrists, his fingers like handcuffs, and kisses him thoroughly, deliciously, without a shred of delicacy. It’s almost savage. It’s certainly not familiar. Peter’s hand twines into his hair, holding it roughly, and then Stiles is pushing himself closer, pulling and shoving at the thin fabric of Peter’s shirt where it sits on the curve of his back. The reaction seems almost reflexive, primal, like this is something that’s okay to do in a hospital, like it’s something Stiles’ body is attuned to. It’s very different from the kiss Peter broke away from—and hang on, why had that happened? Why is this happening?

Stiles is the one to step away this time, the questions he has advising him to do so. He pushes against Peter’s chest until he retreats, giving Stiles about a fraction of an inch to breathe.

“Now,” Peter purrs. His voice is like chocolate, very smooth where his breath is puffing out over Stiles’ upper lip. “That didn’t feel like banging a head on a wall, did it?”

Stiles feels white hot rage pulse through him. He pushes Peter until he’s even further away, this time catching him slightly off guard. “Stop it,” he says sharply. “This—this having a laugh at my expense. You think it was fun, seeing you being all nice and normal in that—that other world and still wanting the real you? Fuck.”

Somebody should really follow him around with a whistle to stop him from saying out loud anything potentially disastrous. One hard blow in his ear would’ve stopped his brain from blurting that out. Finstock would probably be up for the job.

“Don’t,” Stiles says the second Peter opens his mouth, presumably to let something cocky and unhelpful slide out. “I’m not saying—I’m not asking—I think it would be absolutely insane. I just realized maybe I happen to like insane.”

He doesn’t meet Peter’s eyes. There’s a string of tension between them like a lightning bolt, spitting electricity that’s waiting to be addressed, either diffused or surrendered to. And that’s when Scott comes skidding into the hallway, eyes frantic.

“Stiles!” he says. “I just got off the phone with Deaton.”

Stiles thinks he knows what’s coming. He looks at Peter, suddenly interested in the ceiling. Of course his he wouldn’t notice the petty theft theory would be debunked. Deaton is meticulous.

“It’s okay, Scott,” Stiles says. “I think I already know.”

Scott looks between him and Peter, drawing conclusions that Stiles doesn’t want him to draw just to save him from humiliation overkill. He knows his secrets are written all over his face; he glances away before Scott can read them all.

“You do?” Scott says. "And everything's... fine?"

Stiles sneaks a glimpse at Peter; he's still focused entirely on a ceiling tile. No, everything's wrong and on fire and collapsing in on itself, but the complete breakdown he'll have after this conversation is over can wait.

"It's fine," he says, knowing that Scott can tell it isn't. "I'll be back up in a minute, all right?"

Scott gets the hint. “Okay. I’ll just.”

He spares them one more glance before backing gently out of the hall, hopefully not listening around the corner. Then again, if anyone’s eavesdropping, it’s clearly Isaac. Possibly even Derek, even though he probably would’ve appeared like a furious jack in the box the second Peter slammed Stiles up against a wall and mauled his mouth.

“Well, I can’t blame you,” Peter says once Scott’s left and the silence floats around the room oppressively, replacing the electricity. “I am very desirable.”

Stiles can’t believe he’s being rejected by Peter Hale. He can’t believe he actually asked Peter Hale out. What he needs is a long nap and an overload of painkillers to soothe his head and a talk with Deaton about locking up his unsavory concoctions so people like Stiles don’t become inadvertently victimized by them.

He remembers the other Peter, how Stiles had asked him if he’d miss him in an alternate universe. I would. That bit in particular shines out at him with unfortunate clarity.

He realizes suddenly that he never asked Peter how they started going out, what exactly happened between the trespassing and the sex. Dating, probably. Maybe Stiles should be stupidly assertive and give that a try.

“Was it like head banging for you?” Stiles asks. His voice sounds funny, like it isn’t really his own.

“The kissing?” Peter murmurs. Stiles nods. “Not really.”

Stiles feels like he’s pulling teeth. “So was it good?”

“Hmmm.” Peter lets him wait a long, excruciating moment. Eons seem to have passed before he speaks up again. “Let’s double check.”

He crowds closer and kisses him again. Stiles counts this as the third time they’ve kissed in the past ten minutes, which definitely doesn’t feel like a happy accident. More like intentional making out. Peter tastes like coffee. Sharp black coffee, and it throws Stiles back to that morning with the pancakes where he was gently touched against a kitchen counter. He finds himself briefly wondering if that's a taste that'll forever be tarnished with an edge of frustrated arousal for him now.

Then Peter's manhandling him against the wall, pinning his wrists and drawing Stiles' lower lip into his mouth with his teeth, and Stiles is reminded of the fact that he's still actually a hospital patient. He finagles a hand into Peter's hair to tug him away from his mouth for a minute—maybe just a few seconds—and take the chance to speak.

"Hey. I'm the victim of a head injury. Take it easy there, cowboy," Stiles murmurs, poking Peter in the ribs.

Peter's fingertips graze the edge of Stiles' bandage. "You're fine," he says. “You look like usual to me.”

“Oh, that’s charming—”

Peter cuts him off with another kiss. It seems to be a thing by now, something being done with intent, and Stiles grabs Peter’s shirt to keep him close, keep his lips on his. Against his mouth, Peter murmurs, “Did you do this with me before?”

“Yeah,” Stiles admits. “Not like this, though.”

Peter raises an eyebrow, waiting for Stiles to elaborate, but Stiles isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of providing evidence why he’s the best version of himself he can be already—he’s not, he’s just better than the diluted bore of a person he could be.

“You fell in love with me in your dream, didn’t you?” Peter asks.

“No.” Stiles takes great glee in smashing that down. “You were so boring. So dull. You kiss by the book. No beard to make me itch or anything.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“So you fell in love with me.”

“Easy with the love, all right?” Stiles says, feeling hot all over. “I like you better than someone who doesn’t exist. How is your ego getting inflated from this?”

“Maybe because a person who didn’t exist made you want me,” Peter huffs out, like it’s obvious. “That’s very flattering.”

“You’re still awful. And you’ve done some really terrible things to me. But—but I.” Stiles takes a deep breath, feeling light-headed and dizzy and not even because of the medication. He grabs onto Peter’s lapels for support just in case what he’s about to say is going to cause him to keel over. “I like you.”

"And you want to go out with me?"

Stiles knows he's flushed all over at this point, especially when Peter's finger lifts up to touch the side of Stiles' mouth where his skin is probably speckled red. It feels like his touch is speaking for him, whispering I like you too. "Yeah," Stiles admits. "Is that crazy?"

"Absolutely."

He laughs. "Yeah, I thought so too. But I can't even fucking help it. I just—I want you."

Peter’s smile crooks. It might be because he’s flattered and self-obsessed, but it also looks like he might be feeling a little bit… affectionate. Fond. Hopeful. His finger traces Stiles’ hairline. “As I am?”

Stiles leans into the touch. He thinks of how impulsive, manipulative, primal, cocky, selfish, and demanding Peter is. Then he says, “As you are.”