Chapter Text
It's the worst possible time for state playoffs. The full moon hangs low and orange and huge in the early night sky, and Peter feels torn between taking off toward the distant woods and running, running, running, or finally ripping the face off the latest girl Chris is screwing.
Chris jostles into him as they crowd into the dormitory elevator, and Peter takes a deep breath and does neither.
“You doing okay?” Chris asks under his breath.
“I'm fine,” he snaps back, and he really is; hadn't even come close to shifting or killing anyone during the earlier game.
Chris just grins and shifts closer, pressing his side flush to Peter's. That's the best thing about Chris finally knowing – he knows Peter isn't really mad at him. It's just the wolf crawling under the surface, pissed off that it's being forced to subvert to the human half for tonight. He knows Peter is really saying that he's anchored, that he's good, that he's glad Chris is here amidst the sea of all of their annoying peers. Peter leans his head back against the paneled wall and closes his eyes, concentrating on Chris rather than their other team members and cheerleaders.
Chris smells happy, of course. They won the game, which puts them in the final tier for tomorrow. But he also smells like leather and gunpowder and soap from locker room showers after the game. Lake water and sun warmed wood. Sweat and boy. Best friend. Home.
He smells like Christopher.
The elevator finally dings for their floor and all the boys spill out, excited chatter about staying on a college campus and plans for the evening filling the hall. It creates an irritating buzz that Peter tunes out as he follows Chris down the hall. They're rooming together, of course. That hadn't even been in question; they hadn't even had to ask. Everyone is too used to the two of them. He doubts Coach even thought about it when he assigned them out.
Their room is tiny and their beds are tiny and Peter would never, ever, ever be able to live in a college dorm, but Chris closes the door and shuts the rest of the world out and that's all Peter really cares about in the moment. He drops his bag and collapses face first on the bed with a happy groan.
The lack of sound says that Chris is not doing the same. Peter turns his head and cracks one eye. Chris is still at the door, shifting back and forth on his feet in the way that screams he's about to say something he knows Peter won't like. He pushes up on his elbows. “What?”
Chris jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the door. “Stilinski said they're setting up an Atari down in the lounge. Coach is gonna order some pizza and stuff. And the cheer coach gave the girls permission to hang out, too. It's gonna be pretty rad. Wanna go?”
“No,” Peter says petulantly, then drops back to his stomach, cheek comfortable against the pillow.
Chris shrugs and dumps his bag next to Peter's. “Okay.” No argument, no attempt to cajole Peter into changing his mind. He sits on his own bed and starts unlacing his sneakers. Which is great, because Chris is the only company Peter likes on the full moon.
Except it's not. Because he knows Chris actually wants to go. Chris actually likes most of those plebeians they play on the team with, and whatshername will be there. He won't go, won't even complain, out of loyalty to Peter, but while he's Peter's best friend, he's not Peter's – Peter doesn't even pretend there's any chance of that ever happening – and Talia says he's supposed to work on not being so selfish or some such bullshit like that. As if he doesn't know her real goal is to gradually work the two of them apart. She'd never had any complaints before they'd found out the Argents were hunters.
Still. She might have a point about the selfish thing.
“You should go,” he mumbles halfheartedly into his pillow.
“Hmm?” Chris looks up from where he's got one shoe off and is working on the other.
“You should go,” Peter says, this time clear and confident.
“Nah, I'm good.” He catches his bag with his foot and drags it over. “I've gotta study anyway. Dad'll ground me if I fail another Latin test.”
“Oh, screw him. Go. I'm just gonna go to sleep anyway. Get this night over.” He flips on his back and throws an arm over his face. “God, this room is so fucking small.” When he looks under his arm, Chris is still sitting there, frowning indecision on his face. “Go. Be social and all that shit. Feel a cheerleader up for me or something. I'm fine.”
Chris rolls his eyes, but then breaks out in a wide, beatific grin. “Yeah? You sure?”
He flaps his hand toward the door. “Go!”
“Okay.” Chris tugs his shoes back on, stands, and stretches. Then he curls one corner of his mouth up in a smirk. “But if you come, you can feel up your own cheerleader. I've got in on good authority both Brittney and Savannah would be more than willing.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Maybe even at the same time.”
His stomach churns uncomfortably but he covers it with his own eyeroll. “Cheerleaders are too much work. You can take that one for the team.” Really the only thing that was more work than acting like he actually likes it when Chris practically throws random girls at him was cultivating the certain numbness he's developed over Chris' continuous string of short term girlfriends.
“Well, if you insist,” Chris says, walking backward toward the door. “I'll see if Stephanie's into that kind of thing.”
Peter already has his head buried in his pillow by the time Chris opens the door. He hears him step out into the hall, and then suddenly, reverse directions. There's quick footfalls toward his side, and then the brief, warm pressure of Chris' fingers against his cheek.
Chris' voice is soft and serious. His real voice, the one without the brashness and boasting the rest of the school knows him by, and Peter knows if he looks up, he'd see Chris' real face, stripped of armor and open and laid bare.
“Be safe, Petie.”
And then he's gone.
Peter sits up and strips. Digs through his bag and changes into a pair of shorts. He flops back onto his bag and stares at the ceiling. Without Chris' presence, the room becomes oppressively small and silent. Smothering. He flips onto his stomach. Then his side. Grits his teeth and closes his eyes.
He wants woods and dirt. Space to move. He wants to shift and run and rend. It roils under his skin so strong he gasps for air.
He doesn't concentrate on that. Instead he focuses on the imprint of Chris' fingers against his skin, warm and solid and sure and always there. It doesn't stop his skin from crawling and he doesn't sleep – not that he thought he would - but he can breathe again.
He lays like that – still and too hot and with careful measured breaths – for thirty minutes, maybe forty, and then there's the sound of the doorknob turning. The door opens to reveal Chris, using his hip to push it wider, and two paper plates balanced on one hand, a plastic cup in the other, and the rim of another cup gripped between his teeth. Peter feels the tension seep seamlessly out through his fingers and toes.
Chris kicks the door shut behind him before setting one cup and plate on the dresser and walking the other set over to Peter. He holds them out and says mildly, “Liar.”
Peter rolls to a sitting position, tuck his legs underneath him and takes the offered food. Rather than refuting the claim, he asks “Why are you back so soon?”
Chris shrugs as he pulls his shirt over his head and kicks off his pants. He tugs on a pair of sweats and then settles in with his food on his own bed. “You weren't there. I was bored.”
“Stephanie didn't come?”
“Nah, she was there.”
Christ, Peter can hear the sounds of the indignant break up already, although Chris looks like the thought hasn't even crossed his mind as he shoves his mouth full of pizza. It doesn't matter, because there will just be some other girl more than ready to fill the spot; as clueless as Chris is about actual relationships, he's also funny, and smart, and popular, and girls seem irresistibly drawn to that line he walks between juvenile delinquent and jock. Peter wonders if that would change if they understood it wasn't even so much that Chris is clueless as he just doesn't care. The girls are soft and warm and seem to fill some kind of hole in Chris' life, but they're all interchangeable and disposable when it comes down to it.
Peter isn't sure even Chris understands that.
Chris grabs his jeans from the floor and starts going through his pockets. “Guess what I lifted from Jared?”
He almost expects Chris to pull out a joint – except Chris wouldn't, not the night before state finals – but he instead produces a deck of cards. Peter raises an eyebrow.
“Lifted?”
Chris just grins. “Wanna play poker?”
Peter shakes his head and holds a hand out. “Later. Give me your Latin book. I'll help you study.
* * * * * * * *
It's ten before they finally put the book away, when Coach bangs on the door and yells lights out and Chris is reasonably sure of the vocabulary list for the chapter labeled House and Home.Peter listens in the darkness as Chris shifts around in his bed until he's comfortable, inevitably ending with his head tucked under his pillow and one hand under the mattress where he's no doubt stowed a knife or a boomerang or who knows the fuck what while Peter wasn't paying attention. His breathing gradually evens out as he drifts into sleep and Peter counts the space between his breaths as his own personal sheep army until he follows after him.
Peter's sleep is riddled with dreams, with nightmares. They're full of the moon and blood and the slashes he'd left across his little brother's face on his first, uncontrolled shift. They're full of him hunting Chris or Chris hunting him. Of him closing his teeth around Chris' throat and feeling hot, wet blood coat his tongue while the light disappears from Chris' eyes. They're full of scared, shaking hands as he tries over and over to stitch up the gaping wound on Chris' side and not being fast enough, good enough. They're full of failure.
He thrashes. Kicks his covers off in his panic and then starts awake when warm, bare skin presses flush to his back and an arm slings over his chest. Chris tucks a leg over his ankle and mumbles sleepily into his hair.
“You were screaming. I got you. You're okay. Go back to sleep.”
“Wha-?” He can hear the foggy confusion in his own voice, and Chris responds by pressing even closer.
“You were gonna hurt yourself.” Chris yawns widely, his jaw popping as his breath huffs warm in Peter's ear. “S'alright.” Chris' voice is fading out under the burden of sleep. “M'here.” He tucks his chin onto Peter's shoulder and falls back asleep between one breath and the next, a warm, half-naked weight anchoring Peter back to reality.
It's both the best and the worst thing ever. The best, because now, half asleep, he can almost pretend this is real. No, that's not fair. This is real. Chris is his best friend and the most important thing in his life and doesn't think twice about crawling into Peter's bed and holding him so he can sleep. But half asleep, Peter can almost pretend this is real in a different way. That Chris knows how much Peter wants all of him, has wanted him for what feels like forever, and that Chris wants him back. Wants to roll his hips against Peter's ass, wants to drag his hand down Peter's chest. Wants to splay his fingers across Peter's stomach and slip his fingers beneath his -
-and nooooow comes the involuntary hard on.
Which is why this is the worst thing ever. Because even half asleep Peter knows it's never going to be like that and he'd made his peace with it a long time ago. Because Chris is his best friend and the most important thing in his life and he keeps Peter sane and Peter would never trade that for anything. Except at moments like this when Chris crawls into his bed and thinks nothing of holding him so he can sleep. Moments when Peter wants and wants and wants, no matter how foolish it is.
Sometimes having a crush on his best friend sucks, no matter what way he frames it.
But in the middle of the night, the wolf couldn't care less about his human quandaries. It just rumbles happily in the lizard part of his brain and quits pumping flight or fight adrenaline into his body. A wave of exhaustion washes over him and he tugs the blanket back up and curls shamelessly into Chris' warmth. In the middle of the night, he just takes what Chris freely gives and lets it lull him down to slumber.
When he sleeps again, it's deep and quiet and unbroken by dreams.