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There was a wolf in Stiles’ apartment. Was the universe kidding him right now? He was exhausted, ready to just eat some leftovers and crawl into bed and sleep until the death-wail of his alarm woke him up in time for work in the morning.
He didn’t even feel up to making a quick call to the guy he’d been dating, and been getting steadily more and more serious about, for the past three months. Even if he hadn’t spoken to him in days, what with their schedules being so incompatible at the moment.
Stiles would be glad when the department finally hired a few new bodies to help fill in, like they had been promising since Davis retired and Janie went on maternity leave. Because as much as Stiles appreciated his paycheck, he also occasionally required sleep.
So he said hi to the wolf, why the hell not, and opened up the window to the fire escape. And then he headed into the kitchen to heat up some food from his fridge. A few minutes later, food hot and smelling like a balm to both the soul and Stiles’ hunger pains, he went back into the living room to eat.
And there was the wolf, still on his couch. It was staring at Stiles with what he hoped was hunger for Stiles’ beef and broccoli, and not, say, Stiles’ delicate human flesh.
He paused for a moment, and went back into the kitchen, grabbed a bowl, and then headed back into the living room. Yep. The wolf was still there. Possibly not a sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination. He had just gotten off a double shift at the sheriff’s department, and he hadn’t slept well the night before, so he was running on fumes at the moment.
He doled out some of his dinner, heavy on the beef, light on the broccoli and rice, and set the bowl on the floor in front of the couch. The wolf didn’t move from its place on the couch, but it began eyeing the bowl with a healthy dose of interest, rather than eyeing Stiles.
Stiles finished off his dinner while standing awkwardly in the living room, not yet willing to take his eyes off the fuzzy killing machine. At least, not while he still had food to eat. Eventually, his hasty dinner gone and belly no longer feeling resentful and empty, he went to throw away the empty takeout container.
As he stood in the kitchen, he had a brief moment of insanity where he wondered if the wolf would appreciate one of the last two fortune cookies he had tucked away on the counter, and decided that he was done for the night.
Stiles went around the apartment going through his usual pre-bedtime checklist, and keeping a healthy distance from the couch as he did so. He double checked that he had locked up, turned off all but one of the lights, and did what he needed to in the bathroom. Then he went to bed, door firmly shut behind him.
He was really hoping he would wake up in the morning with a bowl of spoiled leftover Chinese on the floor and an apartment full of flies from leaving the window open without the screen up. Because he was at the point where ‘hallucination from lack of sleep’ was better than ‘actual wolf in his home’. But he would also take waking up to an empty bowl and lack of wolf in the apartment, too. That would be completely acceptable.
When he got up the next day, feeling groggy and disoriented from getting his much-needed rest while not actually getting enough of it, he stumbled into the kitchen to make his morning coffee. Not that the caffeine would really do much of anything for him, but there was the placebo effect to consider, and a nice warm cup of bitter mud-water was a mandatory part of his daily morning ritual.
He realized, as he passed the couch and felt a cool breeze wafting past him, that there was, in fact, no wolf in his apartment. There was, however, an open window, and an empty bowl on the floor.
Whatever. It was too early for this.
He closed the window. He went and picked up the bowl, and... no. Nope. There was....
Stiles was beginning to wonder if someone had drugged him last night.
Because there was a crisp twenty-dollar bill folded in half right where the bowl had just been. Did a wolf seriously leave him twenty bucks for, what, room and board?
He couldn’t bring himself to ponder over it any more. He was making his coffee. He was going to take a shower. He was going to get dressed. And then he was going into work.
It was too damn early for this.
---------------------
It had been more than a week since the utterly bizarre, and not at all insane, incident with the wolf in Stiles’ place of residence. He even managed to put it out of his mind. Totally, and fully.
Really. He had.
He hadn’t even been tempted to try to get the bill dusted for fingerprints. Or pawprints. At least, not tempted enough to actually do it.
Or, at least, not after he came to terms with the fact that trying to get prints off of cash, no matter how new the bill looked, was a ridiculous endeavor. Too many people could have handled it by the time someone got it from a bank, and Stiles would honestly rather live in denial that he imagined the wolf.
Of course, if he had imagined the wolf, that also means he must have been sleepwalking that night, ate the food he left in a bowl on the floor, and for some reason put twenty dollars, in cash that Stiles did not have, under the bowl before heading back to bed.
But that wasn’t important.
What was important was the fact that Stiles spent last night dealing with three different domestic disturbance calls. He also had to type up an incident report wherein he was forced to explain why his partner needed six stitches after bananas were thrown at them by an angry housewife at two in the morning. The only explanation Stiles could come up with for that type of assault was that people did weird shit on the full moon.
He still wasn’t quite sure, himself, how Deputy Jones managed to injure himself that badly. He was sure that neither one of them were going to live it down at the station for at least a few weeks. Or, to look on the brighter side of things, until someone else managed to humiliate and/or injure themself in the most ridiculous way possible.
Right now, however, Stiles wanted waffles from Angie’s Diner downtown. Waffles and an omelette. Bacon. Sausage. All of it drenched in maple syrup. Maybe he should also get a side of fruit, for balance.
In any case, he’d managed a whopping six hours of sleep since he’d gotten home early this morning, and now he wanted enough breakfast food to feed a walrus. If walruses ate breakfast food.
Although, he supposed, fish and clams and baby seals might count as breakfast food to a walrus, so maybe not the best analogy.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t had any coffee yet, and his Adderall hadn’t had time to kick in yet. Which might have been why he was feeling so hungry. It was definitely why he was contemplating the manner in which wild sea mammals grouped their meals.
Stiles locked his door behind him and trudged downstairs to get to his apartment complex’s parking lot, bypassing the mailboxes completely. He didn’t want to ruin his enjoyment of morning waffles that he wouldn't have to make himself by looking at bills.
He might not have been paying close enough attention to his surroundings as he got into his jeep. No, scratch that. He definitely hadn’t been paying close enough attention to his surroundings, because it wasn’t until he was six blocks down the road and waiting at a red light that he noticed the wolf in his back seat.
He may have screamed. Just a little. A very manly scream of surprise and not at all of pants-wetting terror.
It looked like the same wolf he’d found in his apartment ten days ago. He wasn’t actually sure if he hoped it was the same wolf he’d found in his apartment.
Option: Stiles has a new wolf buddy who seems to be stalking him, with a side of breaking-and-entering. Option: Stiles has become a magnet for wolves. Which weren’t supposed to even exist in the wild in California. Had he changed his cologne recently? His aftershave? Had he started using eau de wolf pheromones without realizing it?
He looked back at the light. Still red. He looked back at the wolf. Still there. Looked back at the light again. Green.
He began driving again, and wondered how he was taking this so calmly. Then he decided he was not taking this calmly at all, he was simply moving on autopilot. Which was maybe not the safest way to drive.
Stiles pulled over at the first available parking space on the road and put the jeep in park.
He wrenched the top half of his body around to get a good look at the wolf, who was curled up in his backseat and looking pitiful. It was licking at an open package of oreos he’d left back there a few days ago.
“Pretty sure those aren’t good for you. Chocolate. Bad for dogs. Wolves. I meant wolves.”
The wolf lifted its head only enough to give him a baleful glower. Stiles would have been intimidated, if it weren’t for the fact that it then let out a mournful whimper and laid its head back down on top of the plastic packaging of the cookies and started licking at them again.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt your pride by comparing you to a dog?”
And now he was talking to a wolf. There was a wolf in his backseat, one he was pretty sure was the same as he’d last encountered, and he was snarking at it.
The wolf huffed with what Stiles thought was an unhappy noise, then drew up a paw to rub its ear before covering its eyes. The plastic beneath its head crinkled loudly in the car’s closed interior, and the wolf whined and thrust out its paw, shoving the package away and onto the floor.
“Dude. Are you sick?”
The wolf whined again, and gave Stiles another glare. It was somehow less intimidating the second time around.
“Do I need to take you to the vet, buddy?”
That comment actually elicited a growl from the lump of fur in the back.
“If I have to clean up wolf puke in my car, you’re going to owe me a lot more than twenty dollars. Just saying.”
Oh, yeah. Stiles had officially lost it.
The wolf puffed out a breath of air, managing to sound irritated and unimpressed, or maybe that was just Stiles projecting. Anthropomorphizing. Assigning human emotions to a non-human entity.
Stiles badly needed a cup of coffee. Or four.
“Fuck it,” Stiles swore, and shifted back into drive. It was too early for this. Or, since it was almost noon, it was too soon after he’d woken up for him to deal with this.
Was there ever a good time to deal with a nauseated wolf with a headache in his backseat?
He pulled into the diner’s parking lot and turned off the engine.
“I’m having breakfast,” he told the wolf. “Please don’t be here when I return.” Stiles got out and opened the back door as carefully as he could, staying behind the door the entire time. Slowly, he moved his arm around the reach for the window crank. The wolf wasn’t moving.
“For that matter, please don’t die in the backseat of my car, either. I have no idea how I’d explain it to Animal Control.”
Window fully open, he gingerly closed the door and locked up, glad that it was too late for the breakfast crowd and too early for the afternoon lunch rush at the diner. There was no one around to witness an off-duty deputy in the sheriff’s department talking to a wild animal who’d taken over his vehicle.
It probably wouldn’t look too good on his quarterly review. Not to mention the fact that his coworkers would hold it over his head for weeks.
Thankfully, with the diner so sparsely populated, he immediately snagged an open stool at the front counter, and had his food delivered to him within ten minutes. He forewent the fruit salad in favor of a generous helping of strawberry compote poured over his waffles.
It was still fruit, and Stiles figured he deserved the extra sugar after what he’d just been through.
Halfway through his meal, he felt a presence behind him and tensed, right up until he registered the scent of a very familiar woodsy cologne. He bared the side of his neck without thinking about it, and was graced with a prickly kiss planted on the underside of his jaw.
“You look like shit,” Stiles said cheerfully, eyeing his boyfriend with no small hint of amusement.
“I feel like shit,” Peter said, voice like he had a throat full of gravel. His usual artfully-maintained stubble looked wild and overgrown. And that wasn’t even touching the state of his hair. Normally, it was carefully styled with enough product to keep it straight and well-kempt.
The only word Stiles could come up with to describe its current state was fluffy. He looked adorable, and the cognitive dissonance was dramatic. Peter never looked ‘adorable’. He usually looked like some sort of cut-throat male model who had just been told a dirty secret about you and wasn’t telling.
Even early in the morning after enthusiastic and occasionally athletic sex, Peter somehow always managed to look perfectly groomed. Right now he looked anything but. Even his clothes were hanging limply on him, wrinkled like he’d just pulled them off the floor to wear.
Peter groaned, sounding seven shades of pathetic. “My niece and nephew came by last night and there may have been an overabundance of alcohol flowing. I blame Cora for my current state. Which is strange, because I usually save blame for Derek, no matter who’s actually at fault.”
Stiles snickered, never one to miss an opportunity to revel in another’s poor decision-making skills, and fed Peter the bite of sticky-sweet waffle he had on his fork as the man sat beside him.
Peter grimaced at the sight of strawberry syrup coated breakfast food, but ate it without comment or complaint.
“I’ve never seen you get drunk before, let alone have enough to get a hangover.”
Peter sighed. “Let’s just say that Cora knows where to find alcohol strong enough to strip paint, and I possess enough fondness for her to have indulged her whims last night.”
“And those whims included getting you plastered?” Stiles did not cackle over the thought of Peter Hale being a pushover for his favorite member of his family. He definitely did not cackle at his boyfriend’s pain. It was a cough. It had absolutely been a cough.
Peter didn’t respond farther than a half-hearted glare and a slow drooping of his head.
“Order some food. My treat. You look like you could use half a pound of bacon grease in your stomach right about now,” Stiles offered, choosing to show at least the bare minimum of kindness. It wasn’t often he got to see Peter in any state of vulnerability, and he didn’t want to discourage it from happening again.
“Are you working today?” Peter asked, after the waitress got him a mug of coffee and jotted down his order.
“Nah. Just got off the shift from hell, and I’m lucky enough to be back on days starting tomorrow. Want to come back to my place, after?”
Peter hummed into his coffee in agreement.
“Awesome. Oh, hey, by any chance did you pass my jeep on the way in here? And, maybe, did you happen to notice anything strange about it?” Stiles asked, hedging around the truth in case the wolf had already vacated its premises.
“The driver’s side window in the back was open,” Peter said carefully, a mostly-hidden tinge of amusement curling his words. Stiles wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t spent so much time around the man.
“But that’s it? Nothing else?”
“Should I have noticed anything else?” Peter asked with a manufactured air of innocence.
Stiles’ eyes narrowed as he looked at the man beside him, clothes rumpled, hair a mess, and bags under his eyes. Something about him almost reminded Stiles of... no. Stiles shook his head to loose the strange thought from his mind.
“No, no. Nothing in particular. Just wondering.”
Stiles drained the coffee from his cup and very carefully did not think about his boyfriend reminding him of his very own stalker wolf. Because that was impossible. He even more carefully did not consider the fact that last night had been a full moon.
No. Totally, and completely impossible.
But maybe, on a completely unrelated note, he might think about polishing up his grandmother’s silver cutlery, and start using it when he had guests over. For reasons that had nothing to do with Peter, or wolves, or full moons, or his own sense of insatiable curiosity, at all.