Swords Drawn at Dawn ✒️

When Dennis emerged from the bathroom, clean and dressed, he found Robby sitting on the couch, glasses on his nose, a book in his hand. He was nestled into the corner of the cushions and the armrest, one elbow thrown over the back, his ankle crossed over his knee. Relaxed. Comfortable. Reading. An entirely normal activity. Mundane, even. Dennis’ face warmed anyway, because apparently he was incapable of seeing Robby just exist without blushing now. He filed this reaction away in the same place as his question of faith, amid the buzz of static and the unhurried intention to define these things eventually, just… later. 

The Car's in Reverse, ch. 28, by third_crow ( @itsfrthebirds )

happy pride to this TCIR scene!

Currently at the "they make me SICK" stage of the shipping journey (especially smitter Robby, control yourself old man!)

mindless fidget

Stiles is nervous because he accidentally sent Peter intimate photos

everything ends well

Oooh, cool prompt! I almost feel bad to give such a short fill, but I really appreciate having some prompts that are quick and fun. 😀

-

When Stiles realizes what he’s done, he checks his sent messages a dozen times in the desperate hope that, somehow, the results will change. But no matter how many times he looks, he’s still sent his attempt at sexy photos to Peter Hale instead of his friend Petra, who is in his upper level mythology class and taking an photography elective.

Peter is not likely to give the same gentle critique Petra had promised.

Stiles spends almost an hour periodically checking his phone and swallowing nausea before Peter’s response arrives.

I assume I wasn’t the intended recipient of those. Perhaps a little quid pro quo will make you feel better.

Stiles had a second to wonder what Peter means by ‘quid pro quo’ before the next message arrives.

It’s a photo. Of Peter.

In his underwear.

Stiles’s mouth goes dry. There’s no creative lighting, no special backdrop or props, but somehow this simple picture is blisteringly hot. Stiles can’t help but notice that Peter isn’t entirely soft. And he’d taken this after looking at Stiles’s pictures.

Of course, Peter sends, You sent more than one. Shall I continue?

Stiles shrugs out of his hoodie and leaves it draped over the back of Peter’s couch. Peter looks up, exasperated, but when he catches sight of Stiles he stops abruptly, then blows out a hard breath. “Okay, I concede, I have to ask. Are you doing it on purpose?”

“Doing what on purpose?” Stiles asks innocently. Throwing his clothes around is definitely on purpose, but he’s not going to admit it.

“The red,” Peter says. 

Okay, that’s unexpected. Stiles just gives him a blank look.

“The red clothes,” Peter nods at Stiles’s shirt. “You wear red clothes far more than average. Is it on purpose?”

“I… like red?” Stiles offers. 

Peter rolls his eyes. “Little Red Riding Hood, Stiles.”

“Oh!” A laugh bursts out of Stiles. “No, not on purpose. It is kind of thematically appropriate though, isn’t it?” He grins. “I guess that makes you the big bad wolf.”

Peter arches an eyebrow. “Not Derek?”

Stiles scoffs. “Derek might like to act big and bad, but we both know he’s a marshmallow.”

Peter’s smile is pleased. He likes being the big bad one. 

Stiles sits on the hard, narrow bunk, head in his hands. Tomorrow he’ll work on surviving, on finding a way out of this place, but for right now he needs a minute to process the fact that this has somehow happened again. 

After everything that the pack has been through with Eichen House, Stiles never imagined they’d let anyone be admitted there again, nevermind one of their own. He’d thought the worst thing that could come of studying magic behind Deaton’s back was a stern lecture. 

Instead, Stiles is “a threat to himself and others.” According to Deaton, Eichen is the only place that has a chance of containing him.

Stiles will never forget how quickly Scott allowed himself to be convinced.

So yeah. He’s got some friendships to mourn. He can only hope they didn’t consult his dad on locking him up; Stiles hasn’t seen him since the pack turned on him.

“Stiles.” Stiles’s head jerks up; he stares in shock at Peter Hale standing outside his cell. He’s shifted, and his hands are bloody from claws to elbows. He opens Stiles’s cell with a blood spattered key. “Time to go,” Peter says, holding the door open.

Stiles hurries out, following after Peter when he starts down the hall. “My dad—?”

“He’s doing what he can to cover our tracks,” Peter says, and relief sweeps through Stiles. “Your admission here was far from official, which helps, but I had to kill a few more people than I hoped, which might complicate things.”

“We might be able to clean up some of that after the fact,” Stiles says, already thinking of spells to dissolve bodies and Eichen House’s less than pristine record keeping. 

Your choice for Peter or Stephen, or both? Just so completely at the end of their rope that they get a case of the giggles and can’t get a grip

I’ve picked Peter for this. :D

-

The worst part of fighting a dream monster, Stiles decides, squinting at the laptop screen and putting the brightness down a bit more, is that they can’t sleep. They’re going on 52 hours now, and Stiles is learning that there is a very real difference between a three day research binge in which he sleeps maybe an hour or two at a time and more than two days without any sleep at all.

His eyes have passed the gritty stage and now feel like hot coals in his head. He’s had three cans of Monster in the last hour and he still wants to sleep so badly he can hardly think about anything else. 

“Dream monster is totally the wrong name for this thing,” Stiles says, staring at the laptop screen without really seeing it. “A dream monster should make you want to sleep.”

“Do you not want to sleep?” Peter asks. His voice is hoarse, and when Stiles looks over at him his eyes actually look sunken, the circles are so dark.

“Of course I do,” Stiles groans. He puts his head down on the keyboard for a moment before jerking it up again, blinking quickly to pull back from a perilously close slide toward sleep. “But you know. You snooze, you lose.”

Peter makes a choked sound. Stiles peers over at him quizzically and finds him covering his mouth, his face quickly going red. When he sees Stiles looking his hand drops and he breaks down into helpless giggles, punctuated by the occasional loud snort. “You snooze,” he chokes out between giggles, “you lose.” 

“It wasn’t that funny,” Stiles says, bemused, but Peter just laughs harder. Every now and then he sucks in a few deep breaths and lets them out slowly, but a snicker always sneaks in at the end and then he’s off again, laughing until tears are running down his cheeks.

Stiles shakes his head. “I broke you, and I wasn’t even trying.”

The only event I know anything about that has kiss cams is a baseball game, so here we go. 😂

-

Going out of town for a date is supposed to be the prudent option. Sure, baseball games are televised, but the crowd’s so big, it’s not like anyone’s going to spot Peter and Stiles amid the sea of faces. 

It’s warm and sunny and Peter is smiling—not smirking but actually smiling—and their team is winning and Stiles is so insanely happy that he doesn’t think about it, he just leans over and lays one on Peter. Peter kisses back, of course, he always kissed back, no matter what, and when they pull apart there’s one perfect moment before a massive Awwwww goes through the crowd and Stiles looks up at the giant monitors to see his and Peter’s kiss replayed within a frame of flashing, animated hearts. 

Stiles blushes hard while Peter grins and waves at the camera. When it cuts away from them, Stiles slaps one hand over his face. “So much for being discreet,” he says, but he has to laugh, too. This is absurd.

“Well, at least you can stop worrying about how to tell your father, now,” Peter says, unashamed.

“Small favors,” Stiles says, and leans in to kiss Peter again.

I love the human alpha Stiles trope! I feel like it needs more build up than a ficlet allows to be done really well, but I took a shot at it. 😀

This is a *handwave, handwave* AU in which Scott goes off to college and Stiles stays in Beacon Hills. I’ve picked Boyd, Erica, Cora, and Isaac as the rest of the pack. (Lydia and Jackson also went away for college.)

-

After seeing Scott off, the pack gathered without discussion in the Stilinski home. Stiles pulled out the wheeled board and its map of Beacon Hills. Patrol routes were marked with colored yarn and points of concern with colored push pins. Stiles contemplated it for a while. 

“You know,” he said eventually, “I thought losing three pack members would seriously impact our ability to cover Beacon Hills, but I don’t think it’ll actually be that different? Not as long as we have good communications with my dad and his deputies, anyway.”

Erica snorted. “Like you didn’t already know who was doing most of the work.”

“They contributed a little bit!” Stiles protested.

Peter stood and came to stand next to him. Stiles automatically leaned into him, pressing their shoulders together and running an absent hand down his back. “A very little bit,” Peter said dryly.

Boyd shrugged when Stiles cast him a glance. “They’ve got a point.”

Stiles turned away from the map, smiling distractedly at Peter when his hand came to rest in the small of Stiles’s back. “Well, next order of business, then. Do we need to lure an alpha to Beacon Hills?”

“We’ve got an alpha,” Cora said firmly.

Stiles flushes. “Okay, but having Scott here did give us certain advantages, including the ability to make more werewolves. Do we need to make up for that?”

“Being free of the hobbles Scott put on us will make up for that,” Peter said firmly. He put his hands on Stiles’s hips and turned him so that they were facing each other. “You’re all we need, sweetheart.”

Stiles paused, then carefully raised his hand to cup the curve of Peter’s neck, a much more intimate claim than he’d casually asserted earlier.

Absolutely! Although I have no idea where this ficlet is going, so if folks want more of them, I wouldn’t object if they asked for something in particular. 😂

The first part of this is here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65777890

-

Stiles had been worried about how inter-pack relations would go after Scott left. Werewolves were very hierarchical; Stiles always had to be careful, when negotiating on Scott’s behalf, not to seem like he was overreaching his authority. The pack called him their Alpha, but he still wasn’t a wolf—what would other packs think of that?

He certainly hadn’t expected relief.

“I’ll be glad to see our eastern border properly secured,” Alpha Seward says, shaking Stiles’s hand in… congratulations? They’ve already done greetings. “I know you and Hale did your best, but it leaked threats like a sieve under Alpha McCall.”

Stiles swallows the instinct to defend Scott. It would make him look weak, and Seward wasn’t wrong. “Please let me know if we miss anything,” he says instead. “Border security is a priority.” And then, because getting the word out will help, “As is expanding the Hale pack.”

Seward raises an eyebrow. “Not the Stilinski pack?”

Stiles shakes his head. “No. The Hale lineage is an old, strong one. I want to build on that foundation.”

Alpha Seward nods approvingly. 

Apparently, the respect Stiles had always gotten from him had never been for Scott. 

Bonus points if certain things are bigger in Beta mode 😉😏

I went with established relationship smut because it made the set up easier. 😀 I also skip over or abbreviate some things I’d normally write out, because I am trying not to let every fill go past 300 words. I mean, I failed, but if I hadn’t this would be even longer! 😂 

Warning for drunk sex. They are both drunk, they’re both into it, but it’s a thing.