For Our Very Own Baby Buttface :D
Rune, you are the greatest. I am ridiculously horrendous at sappy dedications or anything relatively emotional (I play Peter Hale, for Godâs sakes), so please accept the rather extensive drabble as my thanks for being such a beautiful example of humanity.
âDo you ever think about why it was you?â Stiles asks one day. Itâs a quiet day, one with birds chirping and sun shining through the crack in the curtains of Scottâs window. No one has called or texted or burst in with news of hellfire or demon wolves or the like (Lydia called to rant about a broken heel, but that so far has been the extent of the drama). The boys are sprawled out across Stilesâs bedroom. The alpha has his limbs discarded in various directions across his bed, while his best friend is curled awkwardly in his usual place in the arm chair on the other side of the room.
      Scott cracks one eyelid at the question. âWhy what?â
      âYou knowâwhy Peter bit you?â Stiles throws back. He seems taught, like heâs had too much Adderall, and Stiles hasnât taken Adderall since they set Peter Hale on fire with Molotov cocktails.
      âRight place, wrong time?â he replies. Scott doesnât like to think too much about the mechanics of how he was turned. Deatonâs advice is always to learn from the past, not to dwell on it. Not that he hadnât thought about it before. Really, what were the chances that Stiles would have dragged him out of the house in the middle of the night to chase down a crazy story that his best friend had heard by listening in on the sheriffâs police calls?
      That was like asking what was the possibility of a dog with an itchy butt hole dragging his ass along the carpet. Obviously, the chances were very good.
      Stiles scoffs. Scott can appreciate the sound, now. Before, when werewolves and banshees and vendetta-driven alphas were the cast of a bad horror movie, Stiles used to make noises of disbelief all the time. Even when he was the first to admit the impossible was, in fact, not only possible butplausible, Scottâs best friend still looked twice at crazy suggestions. Now, though, the snorts of disbelief are few and far between, and Scott pays special notice of when he hears them.
      âYeah, right. And Jackson turned into a Kanima because Derek is secretly a radioactive lizard.â
      âStiles, that doesnât even make any sense.â
      âWell, thatâs kind of the point,â Stiles shot back with a dramatic wave of his arms, âWhat I said makes just as much sense was what you did.â
      Scott frowned. Stilesâs logic was always a little âout-thereâ but this one seemed to be reaching, even for him. But it got him thinking, and maybe that was the point.
      Theyâd both been in the woods. Peter could have just as easily attacked Stiles as theyâd stumbled through the trees in the dark, and yet heâd waited. Even after Stiles had been apprehended by the Sheriff and escorted back home, they knew what alpha Peter was capable ofâa few deputies and their dogs were no match for him.
      âLook, I donât know dude. Peter was all bat-shit-alpha-crazy and I probably just smelled better? Especially if you still had that mint-mojito gum in your pocket. That stuff smells gross.â
Stiles laughs and drops the topic, preferring instead to launch into another lecture about the complexities of intergalactic relations between various planets in the Star Wars universe, to which Scott nods solemnly and pretends like heâs paying attention. His mind, though, is already miles down the road outside a mountain ash-boarded cell in the supernatural wing at Eichen House.
      âI didnât want to do this to you, Peter.â
      âSave the false pity, Scott. You know youâve been waiting for an opportunity to finishââ
âFalse pity? We were helping each other! All of this could have been over, but you hooked up with Kateââ
âTechnically, Derek hooked up with Kate, but thatâs beside the point.â
âYou wanted to kill me!â
Both wolves stared at each other, breaths coming short and fogging up the glass of the cell wall. Peterâs gaze was liquid fire, and Scott had a feeling that were it not for the wolfsbane poisoning the older wolfâs system, his eyes would be glowing and heâd be baring his fangs.
âYou killed me. Now imagine, for a second, what itâs like to have one of your betas try, at every turn, to take what is rightfully yours. Your home, you pack, your powerâall of it, stolen by someone, something, that you created.â
âI didnât ask for the bite.â
âAnd neither did Liam.â
âI was trying to save himââ
âI was trying to save ME. I had nothing left, Scott, nothing but years of torture and revenge fantasies to keep me alive. You talk a big game, with all your self-righteous âwe donât killâ doctrine, but when comes down to it you are just like me. Just. Like. Me.â
âYou can keep telling yourself that. If being delusional helps you sleep at nightâŚâ
âOne of these days someone is going to come along and show you just how alike we are. Youâll find yourself in a position where you will have to choose between two things you cannot live with, and trust me when I say killing will be the easier of those two choices.â
âI didnât have to kill you, and if it ever comes down to kill or be killed, you know Iâd give up my own life first.â
Peter stepped away from the glass with a glint in his eye and a smirk on his lips. âDeception smells acrid, Scott. And right now you reek of it. Youâd like to think you can be so noble, but I know the truth.â
âOh yeah, and what truth is that? That you have some psychotic fetish with trying to ruin perfectly good people?â
âYou hold yourself to such an impossibly high standard because it makes you necessary. Your pack needs a rock, an unshakable foundation to be successful. And, letâs face it, without that pretty little moral compass of yours, youâre not much more than a hormonally imbalanced, adolescent animal. You need to be needed, and if live like every other werewolf, you become irrelevant. Thereâs nothing special about you.â
Scott shook his head. Peter had a way of making nonsensical things sound logical, and vice versa. Like if you said the same word over and over again it didnât sound like a word anymore. Â If he stayed around the other wolf too much longer, he was going to start questioning every choice heâd made, his motives, etc. The alpha turned to walk out, and he heard Peter shuffle toward the glass.
âEver wonder why I bit you that night? Why you and not Stilinski?â
Scott almost turned around.
âMcCall? Scott, waitâSCOTT!â
So maybe heâd never know exactly why Peter had bitten him. It very well could have been chance, as Peter had claimed before. Or maybe Hale had had some idea of what Scott would become, or maybe heâd seen something entirely different in the boy. Regardless, Scott doesnât need the âwhyâ behind the âhowâ. He has his pack, his family, his town is safe (for now), and things are swaying back into a normal swing. He chooses to take his mentorâs advice and sweep the questions he canât change under the rug, and focus on things like graduating high school and getting Stiles something cooler than what he got for his birthday last year.
But in the quiet hours of the night, sometimes he wonders.
Heâd be lying if he said the wondering never made his skin crawl. Â
