Skin Deep (Are the Secrets I Keep)

CHAPTER 7

Stiles doesn't see Peter again until next weekend.  This time, they're back at Raven's Desk, and when Peter joins him at his designated corner of the shop, Stiles just glances up for a second before returning to his chemistry textbook.

They don't talk about last week.

They take a break at around one, going downstairs for a bite in the café.  Peter buys a muffin and a tea.  Stiles tops up his coffee and gets a tray full of scones.  He eats three, announces he's full, and buries his nose in the book he needs to read for a Spanish test on Monday.  When he looks up again, the rest of the scones are gone, and Peter is gathering up the trash.  They go back upstairs until dinnertime, Stiles buys enough food for two, and then they part ways.

Sunday morning, Stiles wakes up to find a tome on werewolf pack structure and roles and the development of both throughout history in his mailbox.  He spends the rest of the day and the whole night devouring it, and even though he's tired, he goes to school with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face that scares people, probably because they've never actually seen him this happy.  It isn't often someone manages to give him a brand-new subject to study.

The next weekend goes about the same – he goes to a nearby park this time, Peter tracks him down, they spend the day together, Stiles feeds him two square meals, and he gets a book on pack politics on Sunday.

They don't talk about Derek or Scott or any of the others either, and going forward, Peter only mentions them on occasion – how there's a darach in town and Stiles should stay inside because she preys on virgins, how Scott's become a True Alpha (seriously?) and Derek's become a beta; how Peter's niece Cora is miraculously alive but wants nothing to do with him because the others couldn't wait to tell her he killed Laura; how Deucalion has his eyesight back but Scott let him go even after the dude tortured three kids, was indirectly responsible for murdering two of those kids, and killed countless packs over the course of the past five years, all because he's promised to repent (SERIOUSLY??); how the new girl at Beacon Hills High and Scott's new girlfriend has somehow inserted herself into the pack; how the latest killing spree is because Scott, Allison, and Lydia listened to Deaton and messed with an old magic tree out in the woods to save their collective parents, thereby unleashing a dark kitsune who went on to possess Allison; even how Isaac is now dead not because of the official mugging story circulating around school but because the oni killed him when they went to rescue Allison and defeat the nogitsune.

("Peter, if this is your way of trying to lure me back into the fold for Scott or something-"  "Sweetheart, I'd slit my own throat before I'd do anything on Scotty's orders.  I simply thought you'd like to remain... informed.")

Beacon Hills is a supernatural cesspit of death and violence, and Stiles is stubbornly still not a part of it.

Their fourth weekend together follows the same pattern, with one exception – he and Peter get into an argument on pack law and whether or not it's fair for it to apply to other species instead of only werewolves just because they're part of a werewolf-dominant pack.  The next one – a discussion on the 1834 treatise when werewolves finally officially gained representation in the American Tribunal.  And the next one – a debate on the merits and flaws of hunter interference in pack-established territory.

By the time December swings around and winter break is approaching, Stiles looks up one day from an old text with singed crumbling pages detailing various strains of wolfsbane and their effects on werewolves, casts his mind back over the past several months, and thinks – far, far too late – that he might just have a problem.

-0-0-0-

Stiles doesn't leave the house the weekend after school lets out for Christmas.  Naturally, that means Peter comes knocking on his door.  At least the dude has manners.

"Hey," Stiles greets, stepping back to let the werewolf in.  Peter steps inside, that outdated laptop of his under one arm.  Peter was working on creating an electronic copy of the Hale library before the fire but he only got through a third before it all burned down.

"Hello, Stiles," Peter volleys back as he shrugs out of his coat and toes off his shoes.  "Not going out today?"

Stiles shakes his head but doesn't say anything else until they're in the kitchen.

This is what it's come to, he laments as he watches Peter brighten when the man catches sight of the two plates stacked high with eggs, sausages, and toast on the dining table, still hot because apparently their routine has become this predictable.

Stiles was supposed to be cutting ties.  He probably would've stayed for the long haul, go on to college or whatever, get a job and stick with Scott no matter how dangerous their world got if he didn't have that falling out with Scott first.  But he did, and sometimes – when he thinks about it long enough – it still makes him want to kick something because he wasted six years of his life on a friendship that apparently didn't mean half as much as he thought it did, falling apart so easily in the end.

He sighs, shunts those thoughts to the back of his mind, and sits down for breakfast.

He's quiet the rest of the day.  It doesn't take long for Peter to catch on but the werewolf doesn't call him out on it.  They give conversation a miss though, since it's clear Stiles is too distracted to focus.  By the time Peter leaves, they've barely shared a handful of sentences all day, and Stiles almost groans when he sees something cagey and shuttered in Peter's expression as he sees the werewolf to the door, both of which he hasn't seen on Peter's face in... weeks.  Stiles didn't even know there was a difference until now, and he's dismayed to find that that dismays him.

It isn't as if he and Peter are friends.  That doesn't even make any sense.  They haven't hung out any more than usual, still only the weekends, sometimes only Saturday or Sunday, sometimes both, but never more than that.  They haven't even had any particularly intimate or personal conversations.  So how did this happen?  How could Stiles let this happen?

And more importantly, what the hell is he going to do about it?

When he's alone again, he pulls out his mother's chest from his closet, pushes aside all the books and notes and random artifacts that Mom left to him upon her death, all the things he's been studying up on because he will not be helpless even when he'll be more or less starting from scratch in a new country.  At the bottom is a music box, and inside is a stack of letter paper and envelopes.  They're a light kelp green, with delicate runes decorating the edges.

He's been putting this off for a while now.  He doesn't have to but, well, his mother had an older sister, Stiles' aunt, and he figures it's only polite to give her a heads-up of his impending arrival before he actually arrives instead of just turning up on her doorstep one day out of the blue.  Who knows, maybe she doesn't want to see the son of her sister who ran off and married a human.  Maybe she won't want Stiles staying in her house.  And that would be okay.  Stiles would survive.  Stiles always survives.  His mom left more than enough coin, and he himself has earned a pretty penny by writing essays for other students, so he can get that exchanged into the local currency once he gets there.  He'll be fine if it turns out that even the last of his family doesn't want him.  But... Maybe it's stupid, but he'd like to try.

It takes five attempts on regular paper before he's finally mostly satisfied, and after another few days of dithering, he finally treks out to the nearest river, seals it in its envelope with the address he found in his mother's belongings carefully inscribed on it, and tosses the whole thing into the roiling black depths.  There's a rush of bubbles, just like one of his mom's books said, and then the letter disappears.

All that's left now is to wait.