throwing stones - Stiles/Derek, Peter/Derek, Peter/Stiles/Derek
part of my new years resolution was to finish - or at least polish up and post -- all the WIP fic bits sitting around
this is definitely unfinished, but at least a bit polished :D
inspired by this but mostly this, you bastards.
warnings for vague derek/peter incest and mentions of serial killing what even is my life
a lot less killing than the final version would have had, for sure
Stiles meets Derek on a Saturday night. The club is packed, bodies shoved in wall to wall, and the music is loud enough to deafen. Derek is built like a tank and looks like an asshole, but his eyes are soft and he hears every word Stiles says, somehow, head tilted just to the side when Stiles talks.
The sex is fantastic, Derek’s apartment is a spartan horror vision, and the next morning Derek bashfully angles for Round Four while clumsily inviting Stiles to brunch.
Oh, Stiles thinks. Yes. This one.
Derek’s not the perfect boyfriend, but he tries so hard he might as well be. He’s beautiful, he’s loving, he’s damaged -- like someone smacked him around hard enough to shatter, once, and then left Derek to clumsily put the pieces back together himself. He’s a werewolf, though he’s terrible at hiding it, and Stiles can’t wait for the moment Derek finally admits that while avoiding all eye contact.
Derek’s perfect, and Stiles loves him.
Meeting Peter fills in most of the blanks the remain. Derek’s talked a little of his romantic failures - the scars of those are all over him -- but there was something else too.
Ah, Stiles thinks, as he shakes Peter’s soft, manicured hand. Derek didn’t put himself back together at all; Peter did.
Peter, as always, plans carefully.
Derek doesn’t often take put himself out on an emotional limb, so its rare enough he takes someone home. Rarer, still, that they come back around more than two or three times.
It’s been a while since Derek had a boyfriend.
[peter about to do a MURDER]
Only to slam against an invisible force. Christ. Mountain ash? That’s new.
"You're not very subtle, you know.” New Boyfriend saunters out from around a corner and leans against the leans the wall just inside the doorway, smirking all the while.
"I'm not great with subtle," Peter admits, because it’s not exactly a secret. He re-sheathes his claws and steps away from the door, into the porchlight. If New Boyfriend has magic, whether he’s a mage or a witch or something a little less human, lurking in the shadows isn’t going to do much.
Peter idly wonders if New Boyfriend remembered to put mountain ash around the upstairs windows as well.
"Hello, Derek’s New Boyfriend,” he says instead. “How are things going between you two?”
“Pretty good, actually.” New Boyfriend looks amused. Very calm. Not at all scared. “Just a quick question - do you really think you’ll ever win his affection this way? That this was gonna work for you?”
Peter snarls at the word affection. It is, simultaneously, exactly what he does and does not want. Affection is the least of it. Affection is light years away. And yet - and yet.
"What would you suggest?" he asks, barely biting back his sharper teeth. New Boyfriend might have the gift of giving, of the magical tit for tat.
Or maybe he’ll just inspire Peter to find a reason to come back later.
“I understand this whole ‘trimming away the buds’ thing you had going on, I get it, dude, really. I can only imagine the kind of idiots Derek attracted before me. But there’s not much point to all the trimming if you’re never going to let him bloom.” After a moment, he wrinkles his nose. “Mixed flower metaphors aside.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Peter asks after a moment.
New Boyfriend - Peter is apparently going to have to learn how to pronounce his name - folds his arms. “We see this through. Together.”
“Oh, he stopped by the apartment one afternoon!” Stiles says, and throws his hand up to his forehead with a loud, overdramatic thwump. “I may have forgotten to mention it.”
“It’s fine--”
“Classic me, to be honest, sorry,” Stiles continues. “I think we talked about Battlestar Galactica for at least a half hour. Or maybe Gattaca. Definitely Blade Runner. He invited us to dinner!”
Derek looks at Peter suspiciously. Peter has never been overly solicitous of Derek’s playthings, true, but that’s no reason for all the distrust.
It’s not like Derek knows about the murders.
“Oh, absolutely dinner,” Peter says firmly. “Thursday? Friday? I’m learning to make burrata.”
Dinner goes well. Peter can charm with the best of them, of course, and he knows Stiles has plenty of tricks up his sleeve, but it still goes better than expected.
He had perhaps lost sight of why he was doing this, Peter realizes. It wasn’t that he liked seeing Derek suffer -- although Derek in agony was transcendent, in its way -- but Peter might have lost track of his long-term goal, all told.
“Your uncle’s hot,” he hears Stiles say, as he leaves.
Derek makes a small choking noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t -- why would you say that?”
“What?” Stiles’s voice is still nearly crystal clear to Peter’s ears. “He is, dude. And he’s young. I mean, ish. He’s gotta be closer to your age than your parents, anyway.”
Derek sputters. “Well - yeah, I mean. His age! He was in college when I was in high school.”
“Awww.” Stiles says. “Were you buddies?”
“Shut up.”
Derek’s ears are probably turning slightly pink at the tips, Peter thinks fondly, as he slams the door of his car and the voices fade away.
“The next part’s tricky,” Stiles tells him. They’ve taken to going to the same cycling class -- Stiles makes joking comments about keeping off the pasta pounds Peter tries to put on him; Peter sarcastically remarks he has to keep young. Derek, who belongs to an old school gym that reeks of mildew and sweat even to a human nose, pretends it doesn’t baffle him. “You can’t come on too strong to him, and you certainly can’t come on to strong to me--”
“And Derek won’t make a move to save him life,” Peter finishes. “So what’s our move?”
“Well, me hitting on you could backfire as well, obviously,” Stiles says thoughtfully. “Something has to be very.... manufactured. Without Derek smelling a rat. Frankly, I’m baffled.”
“Oh, good,” Peter says. “Glad we’ve decided to do this.”
Peter’s werewolf power, his stalker tendencies, his history with Derek -- Stiles’s position in Derek’s life, his smarts, his emotional (un)intelligence -- it’s a match made in heaven that Stiles didn’t see coming.
Stiles is good at what he does, but so is Peter - and when the two of them are lined up just right, Derek strikes back and forth between the two of them like a captive ball.
[so, so much later]
“One thing I never quite figured out,” Peter says. “Why did you bother? Why not tell? Explain what I’d been doing to Derek. It was the truth. He would have believed you.”
Stiles thinks about it for a moment. “I didn’t want to, I guess. I understood what you were doing. I understood why.” He shrugs. “There’s no need to waste that, I guess.”
