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Stiles was furious. He was fuming. He was so angry that if he was a cartoon, steam would be billowing out of his ears. He was livid, and he was channelling all of those terrible no-good feelings into banging on the door to Peter’s apartment.
He managed to punch the wood three more times before it swung open and his fist accidentally collided with Peter’s very firm chest.
Which only made him angrier!
“I have a bone to pick with you!” Stiles shouted, and then he stormed into Peter’s apartment.
He went right to the kitchen, because that was where Peter kept his snacks and Stiles wanted to anger eat. He wasn’t sure if anger eating was a thing, but emotional eating was a thing and anger was just another emotion, so it all checked out in his head.
Stiles angrily munched on a handful of salted, pre-shelled pistachios as he heard Peter’s voice carry into the room. He was saying something to someone, probably one of his neighbours since Stiles had been a little loud and there were two other rich assholes who shared the somehow-not-a-penthouse-apartment floor with him.
He knew them. He hated them. Peter said that he had to be nice to them and he couldn’t call them names when he saw them in the hallway.
Boring.
Stiles angrily ate another handful of delicious, salty nuts, since knowing so much about Peter was just pissing him off even more. First he went and was stupidly built and now he was showing off how genuine their friendship was? Ugh, he was such a dick!
Finally the man returned to his apartment, breezing into the kitchen like he owned the place.
Since he did.
“What in the sweet hell is wrong with you?” Peter demanded sharply, his face pulled into a mask of anger even if Stiles could see the concern behind his eyes.
He pretended he didn’t, because it made his heart ache.
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?” Stiles asked angrily.
Or, he tried to. He really tried to demand it angrily, but his voice broke and his shoulders caved inwards, and some of the ugly insecurity he’d been keeping at bay by being angry crept in and choked him out.
Which was terrible.
He watched as the concern behind Peter’s eyes spread out across the rest of his face. His eyebrows pulled down into something more worried and less angry, and his lips pulled together in thought. He hated it. Stiles hated how easily he could read him, because Peter could read him just as easily.
His question clearly wasn’t enough, though, because all Peter did was ask, “What?”
“I asked you why you haven’t kissed me yet!” he cried, throwing his arms out and accidentally launching a pile of pistachios across the room. Peter didn’t even look away, so to distract him from the mess, Stiles hastily added, “I’m twenty years old! I thought you were waiting for me to get older. When I turned eighteen and you didn’t make a move, I brushed it off. When I turned nineteen and you didn’t make a move, I tried to get more obvious. But I am twenty, you spent the whole afternoon with me and my friends, and you still haven’t kissed me!”
Peter swayed back against the torrent of words. That wasn’t exactly what Stiles had been planning on saying, but he hadn’t actually been planning on saying anything. He was just mad and sometimes angry Stiles had a mind of his own. Besides, he wasn’t even supposed to be here! It wasn’t his idea to confront Peter over him being a dick and not kissing him.
No. His dad had found him face down in a container of ice cream, wallowing at their kitchen table after what could have been a really great twentieth birthday party if only he’d gotten the one gift he kept waiting on.
When his dad had finally gotten the truth out of him, he’d taken his own big bite of ice cream, and then told Stiles to grow up and go get his man. It hadn’t actually taken a lot of convincing, and his dad had been very supportive in a kinda surprising turn of events.
And that’s why Stiles was here, in Peter’s apartment and demanding when the other man hadn’t made a move in all the years they’d been dancing around being something more.
“Despite popular belief, I’m not actually evil,” Peter drawled, but he was tense in a way Stiles wasn’t used to seeing him when it was just the two of them.
Huh. That was unexpected.
“Why the hell would that make you evil?” Stiles asked incredulously.
Sure, Peter had made a lot of mistakes, but they’d gotten over all the murder and betrayal before he’d even graduated high school. For the last three years, they’d been friends, if not something more. And after all that time, Stiles couldn’t think of Peter as anything close to evil.
“Stiles, I am seventeen years older than you,” Peter told him plainly, like it was a very simple answer and Stiles was being an idiot.
He wasn’t. He seriously wasn’t, and the implication made anger spike.
“And I’m not an idiot,” Stiles said in the exact same tone, since he wasn’t stupid, thank you very much. Well, if Peter was going to be stubborn and rude, Stiles was going to up his ante.“I’ve known where this was heading since I found out what a bite to the wrist meant when I was sixteen, Peter.”
“I—” Peter started, but then clicked his teeth shut. He took a deep breath, and then asked, “How is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know!” Stiles shot back. His hands curled into fists as his anger mounted again. “Did you… have you changed your mind?”
“If you know what a bite to the wrist means, then you know that isn’t how this works,” Peter told him sharply, his eyes flashing blue.
And while it was something, it wasn’t enough.
So Stiles pulled out the big guns.
“Then why haven’t you mated me yet!”
Peter growled. Like, right away. His eyes burned blue and he growled in a way that sent a shiver down Stiles’ spine. Ugh, why did he have to have a danger kink?
“Be careful, Stiles,” Peter warned, but Stiles was done with being careful.
“Or what?” he asked challengingly. He closed the space between them, asking, “Is the big bad wolf finally going to eat me up?”
“Stiles—”
“I want this, Peter,” he said, softer. He’d been taller than Peter for a few years, and looking down at him was familiar. Baring his soul like this was pretty new, but his dad had given him some good advice and Stiles was putting it into practice and being clear with his intentions. “I want you. I’ve wanted you, and I want you in all the ways that you want me.”
“You can’t mean that,” Peter told him, but there was a desperate edge to his voice that Stiles hated.
Peter had lost so much. Stiles couldn’t even imagine the weight of his grief, and he never tried. He knew loss too, after all. But Peter was still going. He was still trying, and even though it had to be hard, it was obvious that Peter didn’t dwell on the past.
But it was during times like this that everything he’d lost seemed so big between them. Peter’s eyes were wide, but the twist of his lips was disbelieving. Even after years of them toying the line of being something more, Peter still didn’t believe that Stiles could want him.
Not anymore.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Stiles told him seriously. “If you don’t want me to, you need to tell me.”
Peter didn’t say anything, so Stiles cupped his jaw and leaned down to kiss him.
Thankfully, not everyone at College had thought Stiles was ugly and awkward, so he’d kissed a few people here and there. Sure, he’s been head over heels for Peter since before he even graduated high school, but it wasn’t like he was going to save himself away or something equally ridiculous. Besides, he’d never done anything crazy!
The little bit of experimenting he had done made him confident as he claimed Peter’s mouth in a deep kiss. Peter was his, and as the older man looped his arms around Stiles’ waist to pull their bodies together, Stiles kissed him deeply enough to show him just who he belonged to.
The press of their lips tapered out when they needed to breathe. Peter nipped at his bottom lip and then snapped playfully at his nose when Stiles pulled back, and something that sounded embarrassingly like a giggle slipped out of his mouth.
“I love you,” Stiles told him simply. “You’re mine. My dad expects a proposal after an appropriate amount of time dating, but you’re it for me, Peter Hale.”
“Jesus Christ, Stiles,” Peter panted, his eyes glowing but his pupils so blown out that the electric blue was simply a thin band. “Where the hell did you learn how to do that?”
“Eh, I did a little light practicing for this,” Stiles said with a smirk. He leaned down and pressed a smacking kiss to Peter’s lips before pulling back. “Right, now that we’ve settled that, I’ll pick up the nuts.”
He took a step back to do just that—he knew how much Peter hated messes—but Peter tugged him back in and rolled their hips together in a way that had him moaning low and deep.
“Oh, absolutely not, sweetheart,” Peter purred, his hands trailing up Stiles’ sides in a way that made him shiver. “Now that I have you, I’m not letting you go that easy.”
Stiles let out a delighted laugh as Peter tugged him into another kiss, and then let himself get lost in the press of their mouths.
Mission accomplished!