Gunshots
Stiles is with Peter when he gets shot. The pack is long gone fighting the good fight in the forest where they tracked some traps some hunters had made. They’d left Stiles back at the loft and Peter to watch over him, much to Stiles’ very verbal protests. This was one trap the pack hadn’t thought about. Neither Stiles nor Peter, yet here Stiles was, filled with two bullets lodged in his chest and two holes to accompany them.
The hunters that had come hadn’t left alive. Peter had made sure of that. So now, Stiles lays dying in Peter’s arms while Peter desperately tries to call Derek. When the phone slips from his bloodied grip and clatters to the floor, Peter lets out a gut-wrenching roar and hopes to whomever that the pack heard him.
It’s enough to shake the rafters and draw a bubbling chuckle from Stiles on the floor. “Who - who knew you’d be this upset at my - my death?” He mumbles around the blood spilling from his mouth. He almost laughs again, but then there’s pain pulling at him, and Stiles has to stop and brace himself.
Peter wastes no time in gathering Stiles in his arms. “Give me some credit, Stiles.” He says around a growl. It isn’t for him, though; it’s for the pain he’s pulling from Stiles as he carries him down and out of the loft. When he reaches his car, he has to stop and concentrate on getting Stiles in with the least amount of jostling. Stiles still manages an ooph upon impact, but Peter’s already shutting the door to the back seat. “Hang on, okay, Stiles?” He asks as he climbs into the driver's seat.
He’s left his phone upstairs, probably in the puddle of Stiles’ blood, but he hopes that if Derek heads this way, sees it, he’ll get the gist and join them at the hospital.
“Why do you keep saying my - my name?” Stiles wheezes from the back seat. Another bout of pain hits him, and he doubles over to whine, putting pressure on the bullet holes by doing so, blood still seeping out in slow globs. Peter reaches a hand back and frantically searches for one of Stiles’. Stiles doesn’t mind so much, not while it helps with the pain, and takes Peter’s hand for the brief relief as black lines snake up Peter’s arm.
Stiles might also be squeezing a bit too hard, but Peter doesn’t say anything beyond a hiss, doesn’t pull away, nor look away from the road ahead. He takes a sharp right, and Stiles jerks a bit in the seat. “It’s a good name. I’ve always liked it.” Peter replies.
It may be a lie; Stiles would never be able to tell. Maybe he should have taken the chance to become a werewolf; then no one could lie to him. He could also probably heal a lot quicker too. He coughs and sputters, unapologetically spitting over the side of the seat to clear his throat. “It’s just a - a nickname.” He winces.
“So tell me your real name,” Peter says as he makes a left turn. His fingers are all but numb now with the way his arm is angled back, but he can still feel Stiles gripping his hand, and that’s all that matters. If he hadn’t been so lazy, so uncaring of the threat, he could have prevented this. He could have made sure Stiles was indeed safe, but Peter had been playing the part of an asshole for so long, it was easy to slip into. Easy to get close to Stiles that way. Stiles’ hand starts to fall away, so Peter chases it, takes his eyes off the road for a second to glance back at him over his shoulder. “Hey, hey Stiles. Tell me your real name, come on.”
Stiles coughs again, but he squeezes Peter’s hand, watches beneath heavy lashes as Peter risks their lives for one second before resuming his gaze back on the road. He takes a deep breath because it’s getting harder to stay afloat. “Mieczyslaw.” He manages in one go, a bit proud of himself for saying it so loudly and clearly. He’d had trouble with it in his youth, hence the birth of his nickname, but Peter wanted to know it, and Stiles wanted to tell him.
Peter scoffs, ending on a breathy chuckle. “What a mouthful.”
“Hey now-” Stiles coughs and leans over to spit again. His throat feels heavy, full of the blood that keeps rising from somewhere inside. One of the bullets moves in its wound, and Stiles’ breath hitches again. Peter absentmindedly shakes his hand, drawing Stiles’ attention back to him. “No flirting on my - my deathbed.” His voice is raspy, and it’s starting to hurt, talking. If he weren’t dying, Stiles would be laughing at that notion.
He can feel Peter’s hand tighten around his, and before he can resist the urge, Stiles moves his hand until their fingers lace together. It’s awkward, the angle, but the tips tangle in each other, and it feels nice. It’s not something Stiles would have thought of Peter being: nice. None of this is how he thought Peter would react should he ever wind up dying in front of him.
Stiles always imagined a bit of snark, maybe even some of Peter being purposely unhelpful, not this panicked mess who's trying so hard to keep Stiles awake as he traverses the roads. Maybe he’s trying to find a spot to bury him without the others knowing, flying out of town like a bat out of hell to someplace he’ll never be found.
Lights flashing, blue and white and red, from the windows answer him quickly enough to know Peter’s brought him to the hospital. The car comes to a rough stop, jolting Stiles a bit. He groans and sputters over the side of the seat once more. Peter turns around to look at him, and Stiles wants to look at him too, but he can’t keep his eyes open for long. He thinks he hears Peter talking, but all Stiles can hear now is the blood rushing in his ears.
If he has to die, jumping in front of Peter to save his life is a nice way to go. He may not be strong or wield a lot of power. He may rely on a weapon instead of sheer force, and he may be human, but for once, Stiles can call himself a hero. If he hadn’t gotten in the way, Peter’s backside would have been covered in these wolfsbane bullets, and the hunters would have come for his head. It’s okay, he thinks, as Peter lets his hand go, feeling it fall to the side without the strength to keep it up.
It feels like forever, the trek around the car, until Peter can pull Stiles from the backseat, until he can carry him inside. People are milling about, a few running down the hallway, but no one’s looking at him, and that’s a shame because Peter’s got something precious in his arms, and Stiles deserves to be looked at by everyone. “Hey!” He calls out. “Somebody help me!” And wouldn’t it be fortuitous that Melissa McCall is working tonight, running around her nurse’s station to heed the call of help?
She stops just short of Peter, wary, as she should be. He feels like he’s one wrong step to losing control, holding everything in while he holds Stiles against his chest. She notices the boy in his arms and reacts almost instantly. “What happened?” She asks, not bothering to chase it with what did you do.
“He’s been shot,” It's all Peter can say as Stiles starts to feel cold in his arms. “Hey - hey Stiles-” He mumbles into soft brown hair, lips ghosting over Stiles’ forehead. It’s enough to stir Stiles into awareness, even if he can’t open his eyes. As ever-present as Scott never is, Melissa seems to notice and hesitantly takes Peter by the elbow to steer him down the hall.
She yells for a gurney, a few doctors, and a nurse because Stiles needs to be taken to the OR now. Now or it's too late. Stiles sighs and sags against Peter, and it’s now. Now or it’s too late. Peter doesn’t want to let him go, but they pull him away and strap him to a bed, and suddenly Peter feels weightless. He grips the backside to a chair, afraid he’ll float away if he doesn’t, and Stiles is wheeled on down the hallway to a place Peter can’t go.
Derek and Scott, and the rest of the pack show up, bursting through doors like valiant heroes here to save the day. But the day is down in surgery, waiting to be saved by doctors and medical equipment. Derek snarls and growls and grabs Peter by the scruff of his shirt. The wall is solid against his back where Derek shoves him, but Peter isn’t in the mood. Not with Stiles down the hall, not with his car reeking of death and decay, not with the state of losing all control on the line.
Scott pulls Derek off of him if only to replace himself a moment later. He doesn’t touch Peter, though, rightfully so, and it gives Peter a chance to catch his breath. “What happened? What did you do?” It’s not at all soft, dipped in venom and spat out before him in a pile of accusations that should make Peter question himself, but he doesn’t. The only thing Peter blames himself for is not pushing Stiles out of the way in time.
That boy had been quick, reflexes even wolves could be jealous of. Peter hadn’t heard a thing, too focused on Stiles and the way he flipped through pages of a book, at the speed with which his knee bounced, at the curve of his spine as he hunched over the table trying to concentrate on anything that wasn’t the ‘pack in peril.’ It was with his usual gracelessness that Stiles managed to kick the chair out from under himself and bolt to the backside of the couch Peter was laid out on, just in the nick of time.
Why Stiles had felt the need to protect Peter was a mystery in and of itself.
Peter tries to collect himself. There are too many eyes on him when he doesn’t want them, so he pushes past Scott and Derek and the rest of them to sit in a chair along the wall. “They knew; the hunters knew where you’d be. They set traps to set up a bigger trap.” But for what? It’s exactly what Derek asks a second later, but Peter has no clue. It’s not as if the hunters would have known that he and Stiles were stashed at the loft. And now - “they’re dead, so I guess we’ll never know.”
Derek’s shoulders drop in defeat, and Scott deflates next to him a moment later. Peter’s pretty sure they’ve seen the bodies littering the floor of the loft. The rest of the pack scatters among the hallway, but it’s all too unimportant for Peter to pinpoint who stands where. “We left the ones in the woods alive. We can track them down-” Scott starts up again, ready to fight, but Derek just looks tired.
Peter’s had enough of it and gets up to leave, but when he looks down at his blood-soaked clothes, he hesitates to go. He isn’t sure which is Stiles’ and which is the blood of the hunters. It all makes him sick, the stench of copper overwhelming, but he bites down the urge to rip his shirt off and sits back down. Scott rambles on, and Peter wants to start a scene, but eventually, Scott tires himself out, and everyone finds a corner to get lost in.
It’s only ten minutes later that the Sheriff comes bursting around the corner, yelling, and yearning to see Stiles, to find out what happened. Derek answers for Peter, and Scott tries his best to calm him down with facts. Which are: Stiles has been shot twice with wolfsbane bullets. He's in surgery, and Melissa keeps them up to date with the procedure. He’s doing well so far.
It takes an hour for any other news to come to them, and by now, the Sheriff is bouncing between rage and denial and grief, which Peter thinks is ridiculous to do, before they know anything else, before they’re given a reason to mourn Stiles.
“Noah?” Melissa’s voice is small, too small to be good news. Peter tracks the muscles in her face, tries to catch the sign of a frown or a chin quiver, but she remains stoic up until the point where she can’t hold in a smile that’s been slowly cresting at the corner of her mouth. “He’s okay, he’s sleeping now, he’ll be just fine.” The collective sigh rings out throughout the hallway, but Peter merely hangs his head in his hands.
It’s a surprise to everyone when another nurse comes out and asks for Peter. It’s worthy of looking her in the eye as he stands and walks over to her. “I’m sorry, he’s asking for a Peter?” Peter doesn’t dare look behind him as all eyes are once again on him. This isn’t quite the attention he’s always seeking. It feels too much like daggers to the back. He nods at the nurse and follows behind her without a word.
No one's meant to see the healing process. Not even when wolves knit themselves back together like magic lives in their veins. That’s why people lock their sick and wounded behind doors with no windows, in rooms with curtains to hide them away from the rest of the world. Peter remembers his hospital room had a window in it, but it hardly mattered when he was trapped inside of his own head.
The room Stiles is in is small, big enough to house the bed and the machinery, and a small chair off in the corner. Screens blip and beep somewhere Peter isn’t paying attention to. Not when Stiles is awake, not when he’s fluttering those long lashes and struggling to look at Peter entering the room.
It takes everything inside Peter not to rush to him like some sappy romance novel main character. Peter isn’t the main character right now, and he can admit that. Stiles is and always has been. “You look like crud.” Stiles wheezes, chased only by a whistling inhale from the tube that lays across his upper lip. The machine next to him blips too quickly for a second before it settles, but Peter doesn’t need to hear it to hear the uptick in Stiles’ heartbeat.
Peter takes a few steps towards him but then diverts his path to the chair in the corner of the room. He pulls it over to sit it next to the bed so he can be close. “I had to drag this self-sacrificing kid to the hospital because he thought he could stop bullets with his body.” Peter groans, easing himself into the chair as if he’s the one who's been wounded. In actuality, Peter’s exhausted. All of his muscles that had been taut with worry and fear relax in one colossal swoop, and suddenly, he feels like a nap is coming on.
“I mean - I did,” Stiles chuckles and then winces, and Peter shoots up in his seat. “I’m okay,” Stiles whines, shifting a bit on the bed. He’s bandaged quite a bit underneath the hospital sheets. The monitor next to him blips a few times out of sync.
Peter huffs a sigh and reaches out to take Stiles’ arm without a second thought, but when Stiles lets him curl his fingers around his wrist, realization dawns on Peter that he hadn’t asked first. He hadn’t asked back in the car, but that was a different situation. Stiles had been dying, but here he lay, not dying and suddenly touching Stiles now felt like a completely different thing.
Stiles doesn’t move, doesn’t pull back. He lets Peter pull the pain from him without saying anything, following the trail of black lines from his fingers as they travel upwards on his arm. His gaze lands on Peter’s, and then neither can look away. The machine blips out of sync again and ruins the moment. Stiles’ face flushes pink, and Peter lets slip a smile.
It’s a genuine one, not curled upwards at the corners in a smirk or pulled taut in a teasingly fake, I’m-better-than-you grin. Peter looks tired as if he has some healing of his own to do. Stiles feels marginally better, enough to shift again on the bed. Peter pulls his hand away, looking perplexed at the way Stiles scoots to the far side of the bed. There’s an empty space between them begging to be filled, and just as most of their conversations don’t go, Peter wordlessly climbs in next to him.
The silence is an odd way to communicate when it’s almost normal to snark and sneer and chide one another. Peter misses Stiles’ anger, but their quiet is also good. Stiles curls against him like he’s never done before, as if he were meant to fit against Peter’s chest, but Peter turns on his side as well and faces him. Now they both seem to fit.
Stiles reaches upward towards Peter’s face, places a hand there as if he’s always been allowed. The IV tube sits against Peter’s neck, cool and heavy as it helps pump fluids into Stiles’ broken body. Stiles’ hand feels hot on his cheek, but the tips of his fingers feel cold where they run through Peter’s hair. “You saved my life,” Stiles mumbles, warm breath puffing against Peter’s face as he speaks.
Peter can feel the thank you coming in the way Stiles’ throat works when he’s dying to say something but can’t. Of course, it’s hard for him. It’s hard for a lot of people to talk to Peter. He’s burned so many bridges in his life, too many to keep count, and it’s hard to stand on the ashes and demand gratitude when all they receive from Peter is a pale comparison of truth.
Stiles doesn’t demand gratitude. He never asks to be thanked, not so much since growing up and growing older. He takes the tasks handed to him and researches ancient texts as if he’s actually happy to bury his nose in old books. When told to stay behind, he’s still reluctant, but he’s aware of the risks and puts himself to good use outside the lines of danger, and when the pack returns home, he’s there for them like no one else. Not once has Peter heard him grumble for a thank you or whine for some form of acknowledgment for a job well done.
He argues, because he wouldn’t be Stiles without a little banter or wit being flung like a weapon at the pack, but with the others, it’s because Stiles worries for them. Stiles never worries for Peter, never feels the need to. Peter can take care of his own, but it’s second nature in Stiles to care for others, fling himself in front of danger to protect those who matter to him.
Peter is unsure when he became one of those few.
Stiles stares at him, the ghastly lights of the hospital room reflecting green off his pale skin. He looks sickly and weak and human, and Peter has to remember that Stiles is not some wild thing coming to disrupt the wolves. He’s human and delightfully so, wedging himself between their fur. He finds a home amongst their claws and fangs and blood, cloaking himself in the guise of some weakened fool, ready to trick those who find him and wrong the rest of them.
Stiles could have very well saved Peter’s life tonight, but Peter feels like he’s been doing so for far longer. He steels himself for honesty because tonight was too close, leaning forward to brush his lips against Stiles’ forehead. “Mine too,” He mumbles against Stiles’ skin. “But don’t get used to it.” He adds, and Stiles huffs a chuckle and burrows closer until both are warm enough to sleep.
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