#hello yes I would like to be sappy about Steter again

[beaconfeels]

"I cannot make speeches...If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me." --Jane Austen in Emma

Stiles awoke with a yell, his heart pounding in his chest. The room was dark, and it took him a bit to orient himself. That’s right. He’d fallen asleep on the couch at Derek and Peter’s apartment. 

The dream was still present with him, overlaying reality enough to make it hard to slow his heart, to unclench his fists from the blanket someone had apparently put over him while he slept. 

He heard rustling from the hall and a murmur of voices that made him snap his head toward the noise, heart picking up again. 

Then he registered the words, “Go back to bed, I’ve got him,” and his brain finally caught up to the fact that he’d simply woken up the whole house with his middle of the night terror. 

Someone came into the room then, and Stiles was apologizing before he even recognized who it was. “I’m so sorry. I’m fine now. You can go back to sleep.” 

It was Peter who knelt beside him, Stiles’s eyes adjusting enough to make out his face, and the one raised eyebrow he gave as he reached over to uncurl Stiles’s hands from the edge of the blanket. He hadn’t even realized he was still hanging on for dear life, as if the blanket could somehow shield him from anything that was coming. 

“I’m okay,” Stiles whispered, because despite his racing heart and the vivid images still splashed across his brain from his nightmare, he was objectively alright. Nobody would really be hurt if he spent the rest of the night alone trying and failing to fall asleep again. 

“Come on,” Peter said, holding out his hand. 

Stiles took it without protest. He’d learned that Peter was every bit as stubborn as he was, and while he sometimes enjoyed their arguments, he was too tired to push up against the brick wall of Peter’s resolve just now. 

Peter led him to his bedroom, and Stiles wished there was a light on so he could see it better. Despite how close they’d gotten over the past years, he’d yet to see it fully.  Peter’s bedroom was sacrosanct. Even Stiles and his endless curiosity knew it. It was the only part of the apartment he hadn’t poked his nose into every corner of. He’d glimpsed bits of it when Peter came in and out—rich wood, a king sized bed with dark linens, gray walls—but nothing significant. 

“You’ll see it in the morning,” Peter said, humor in his voice. He read Stiles’s mind accurately far too often. 

Peter pulled him into the bed with him, and tugged him right into the curve of his body, like this was something they did all the time. 

The shock of being brought into Peter’s bed and Peter’s arms seemed to have swept away a lot of the residue from his bad dream, but now his heart was racing for a different reason. 

“Shhh,” Peter soothed. He wrapped his hand around the back of Stiles’s neck and pulled him closer still, until Stiles wrapped his arms around him and pressed his nose into the crook of his neck. 

He breathed in Peter’s scent: warm sleepy skin, a lingering of the light, woodsy cologne he wore, and that undefinable smell that was just the Hale family scent, one that had begun to smell like home to Stiles. 

Peter’s hand rubbed in soothing strokes up and down his back, and Stiles let himself relax into it. 

He didn’t let himself think about Peter much outside of annoyance or friendship or any other platonic feelings Peter had managed to raise in him on any given day. He’d slammed the door shut on anything that spoke of love, or even a crush. He’d had enough unrequited love in his lifetime. 

Yet here in the dark, wrapped up in Peter’s arms, his longing slammed into him like a freight train. It left him in fragments of ache and want and hurt and please. 

He clung to Peter and he squeezed his lips together because none of this could come out. He wouldn’t let it ruin what little bit of peace he’d managed to carve out. 

Then Peter was pulling back and Stiles used every bit of willpower he had not to whimper. 

Peter’s voice was low but urgent. “What’s wrong?” 

He furrowed his brow. Had Peter smelled something of his emotions? But then Peter swiped his thumb across Stiles’s cheekbone, and he realized he was crying. 

“Baby, what is it? Is it the nightmare?” 

Stiles let out a hitching breath at the endearment, the ache blossoming behind his sternum. “I just want this so much,” he whispered, as if the darkness would swallow it up for him, let him say it without consequences. 

Of course the darkness did no such thing, and in any case he was dealing with someone with super hearing. It was a futile hope. 

“What is it that you want?” Peter asked. 

“You. This. Falling asleep beside you. Waking up beside you. Arguing with you,” he was still whispering, still pretending it couldn’t blow up in his face. 

Peter did not whisper. He flopped on his back and covered his face with his hand and said vehemently, “Thank fuck. Finally.” 

Stiles’s mouth dropped open. “What?” 

“Sweetheart, I’ve been trying to woo you since the moment I met you. I was about to give up.” 

“What?” Stiles said again, feeling remarkably stupid even as his heart fluttered. 

Peter laughed, and it sounded incredulous. “I flirt with you constantly, I compliment you and defend you, I’ve eaten—and paid for—more meals with you at that insufferable diner you love so much more than I’ve eaten anywhere else in this town. I keep you and your dad stocked in meat and fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market. I bought you your last laptop! I’ve never had to work so hard for anyone in my life.” He laughed again, pulling at his own hair like he maybe wanted to tear it up by the roots. 

Stiles’s cheeks heated because yeah, it did seem incredibly obvious in retrospect. “Sorry?” He said, grimacing. 

Peter rolled back to his side, cupped Stiles’s cheek with his hand. “Don’t be sorry,” he said, voice gone soft and tender, “I loved every second of it.”  

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You should probably kiss me now,” Stiles said. 

“I’ve done all the work so far,” Peter countered, “maybe you should kiss me first.” 

That seemed fair enough. Stiles nudged Peter until he rolled onto his back, and then he laid half on top of him, propping himself up on one elbow so he could really get a good look at him. He leaned forward and kissed Peter gently on the cheek. “You’re everything to me,” he said. 

Peter looked away, like Stiles being soft with him was almost more than he could take. “Stiles,” he said, and his voice sounded rough and a little desperate. 

“I’m going to make you so happy,” Stiles promised, then added, “I mean, I’m going to keep making you insane too because that’s, like, a core part of our dynamic, but you’re going to be happy about that too.”  

“I know,” Peter said. He smiled, and it was genuine and beautiful and kind of made it hard to breathe. 

Stiles cradled Peter’s head with his hand, and then he kissed him. Slow and sweet, and then hard and passionate and then slow and sweet again. 

He was going to have to create a new file system just to store Peter’s little moans and intakes of breath and the way his hands wouldn’t stop roaming all over Stiles’s body. 

Hours later, he lay with his head on Peter’s chest and Peter said, “I love you,” like it was a simple fact. Like it wasn’t too soon, or complicated at all. 

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this would be the one thing that got to be easy for them. For once in his life he decided to be an optimist.