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Stiles shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, hood pulled up to hide him from any watching eyes or cameras, his eyes glaring out at the Châteauesque building he quickly walked up to. The darkness of the night and the knowledge of what really waited in front him meant the building stood that much more menacingly, cruel and gluttonous and wrong.
He had never wanted to come back here. Never would have, if Scott hadn’t pushed him back into this particular corner. It seemed the other man always seemed to forget that Stiles and corners had never gotten along, and that when push came to shove Stiles would demolish it all if he needed to.
The doors opened as he approached, prompted by the magic that was vibrating off of him, sensing the oncoming storm and relishing in the release that was so, so close. Feeding off of is fury and sadness and pain like it could never be satisfied.
Magic, he’d discovered, was like that. Hungry and needy and greedy as it took and took, building in power as it tried to drain him dry. It was why most magic users either practiced strict control, like Deaton, or used sacrifices like the numerous witches and warlocks that had passed through.
Stiles though, was a spark, which meant he was filled with a fire that blazed brighter the more his magic tried to take and burned more powerfully the more it was utilized. His magic would try to devour him whole and his spark would grow stronger in response, a continuous and never ending cycle.
He stepped through the doors of Eichen House, the frigid chill of remembrance going down his spine making him that much more angry as he approached the bored looking person at the front desk who idly scrolled through their phone without a care.
“Excuse me, but you guys took something that belongs to me, so I’m going to need it back.” He said lowly, the words catching the attention of the other person even through the cloaking spell he had wove into his hoodie to force people to overlook him. Unless, of course, he called attention to himself.
The nurse jumped, eyes widening as they practically toppled their chair over backwards at what seemed to them was someone who had appeared out of nowhere.
“I-I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over.” They said, an ingrained response even as they registered the obvious threat, one hand drifting down to the emergency button hidden under the desk to call the police.
“Trust me, I’m not going to be here long. And you won’t want to touch that.” Stiles said, forcing the words out through his nervously tightening throat.
He only had one chance at this.
The nurse had frozen at his deceptively casual comment, wide eyes unblinking as they stared up at him, and he forced himself to keep his discomfort from showing on his face.
“I am about to do something very drastic, and you probably know more than you should about what this place is. Or, at least, more than the people running this place want a normal nurse to know. And so if you’re smart, you are going to unlock the door, and pretend like you didn’t see me, just like you pretend like this is a normal mental facility.”
The nurse stared back at him, hands shaking, before one slowly shifted over and pressed one of the buttons on its surface.
The door into the true depths of the facility opened with a buzz.
“Thanks.” He muttered, slipping past the desk and through the now open doors, following a path he had long wished he could forget down, down, down into the depths of the facility.
Down to a hallway where the cries and howls of the trapped “patients” were different than the ones kept above. He pushed back his hood as he began to walk down the final hallway, uncaring that the cloaking spell he’d woven into the hoodie slipped away as well.
After all the cameras wouldn’t matter in a bit.
“Where’s Peter Hale?” He asked the long hallway, fluorescent lights flickering and buzzing despondently in tune to the moans and wails of the trapped people and creatures around him. A patrolling guard jumped to attention from where they had been watching one of the subjects through the door’s peephole, whirling around while jerking a charged baton out of the holster he had over his scrubs.
“How did you get in here?” The man hissed, hand flexing around it’s grip on the baton as it began to crackle threateningly.
“I walked through the front door, and that was not an answer to my question.” Stiles sighed, words almost friendly seeming even as everything else about him remained threatening. “I can reword it, if you’d like.” He offered kindly.
Then it was like the oxygen had left the hall, the guard struggling to breathe as the other man’s eyes flared bright copper and the dozens of doors around them began to shiver and shudder in their reinforced frames.
“Bring me to Peter Hale.” The spark commanded, the ground practically shivering with the power of the command, and the doors began to buckle inward.
Peter had just kind of… Happened.
It felt a bit wrong, saying it like that. Like something so significant and big was an accident of the universe but Stiles was pretty sure that it was, because one day he and Peter were doing their typical trading of scathing retorts and sarcastic comments and then it seemed like the next he had the man’s tongue down his throat and his hands on his ass.
And then sex had become dinners had become breakfast had become dates had become Stiles moving in, the condo a mix of the two of them and Peter Hale being the person that Stiles knew better than anyone else and vice versa.
“Stiles, he’s dangerous!” Scott and company had bemoaned time and time again, and they were right of course, but the thing was so was Stiles.
“Stiles, you need to be careful!” They had scolded as the relationship had grown like a bushfire, quicker and more powerful than any of them could have expected. And he hadn’t wanted to be careful, so tired of being told to do so by Deaton about his magic, by his dad about the supernatural, by the pack about everything because he was nothing more than a squishy human to them at the end of the day. Peter was the only one who encouraged him to do more, to be more. Who would give him books on the supernatural so he could learn, who would listen to him like it mattered. Who would watch him practicing magic with hungry eyes that made him want to burn all of Deaton’s rules just to see how Peter would look at him then.
So getting together with Peter may have just happened, but falling in love with Peter was a decision he had marched right up to, knowingly and wilfully.
They must have gotten too cocky, or maybe the world just loved to fuck with him, because while he’d been happily living the life of the magical sugar baby he’d never known he could be, everyone else had looked at the happiness he had decided to take for himself and said that it wasn’t quite right.
Maybe it had started with Deaton, who Stiles had taken to blatantly ignoring when it came to matters of his magic. Maybe it had started with Scott, always so ready to judge a bleak divide between what was right and wrong, so long as Peter was always and forever on the side of wrong . Maybe it had even been Lydia, who hated Peter—rightfully so, of course, more so than anyone one else—and who saw her opinion as a fact in all matters and in this one in particular, her opinion was that Peter had to have an agenda to be with Stiles.
Maybe it was one of them or all of them, but one day he’d gone out on a patrol with his dad because the man had said he’d wanted to talk to him about something serious, just like old times. And they'd talked about a lot of things, about if Stiles had been thinking seriously about graduate school, about maybe finally going through mom’s things in the attic, about if his dad was thinking about downsizing now that Stiles had officially moved out.
He didn’t know how much they’d told him, if the sheriff had known exactly what they'd had planned, but Stiles had gone home and found the pack in his and Peter’s space, serious looks on their faces and their little intervention just missing a banner as they let him know they needed to talk.
Peter, apparently, had become too influential over him. They had to make sure nothing was going on, that he wasn't being controlled in some way, that he wasn’t being used . And it was temporary, of course, just until they knew for certain. Just until they knew he was safe.
They put him in Eichen House, like that was just something you could do. Like they’d forgotten what the place had done to Stiles, and had done to the numerous other supernatural people in its clutches.
Or no, not like they’d forgotten. Like they’d decided Peter deserved it. And for what? For deciding that Stiles was worthy of being loved?
Looking down at Peter, strapped down to a bed with no blankets, eyes barely opening from the weight of the sedative being continuously pumped into his veins, incisions still just barely healed from whatever the doctors had decided to do while Peter was within their clutches, Stiles knew then and there that he could never, ever, forgive them.
He knocks the guard out as the man tries to take advantage of his distraction by coming at him from behind with the baton, his magic surging out like a battering ram to throw the man back into the wall and then down onto the floor, unconscious. And then he moves, hands jerking from a dangerous mix of anger and sorrow as he took off the restraints and removed the IVs, petting Peter’s arms and sides soothingly as the man struggled to the surface.
“Hey, it’s alright. I’m here now.” Stiles murmured, “But I need you to get with it, because we need to finish out the rest of this epic prison break.”
It took a few agonizingly long minutes before Peter was coherent enough to sit up, werewolf healing working overtime to try and get rid of the sedative but only able to do so much so fast. Unfortunately, it had to be good enough because Stiles knew they didn’t have much time, and so he hurried to force Peter to stand, one of the other man’s arms thrown over his shoulders as he walked them forward and out of the small room.
Right out into a hallway that was quickly filling with guards who had tasers and sedative guns at the ready.
Peter gave a small growl, thready and not quite there, basically an imitation of what he could typically do, and Stiles seethed.
“Release the patient, and keep your hands in the air!” One of the guards demanded.
Stiles’ answer was simple and succinct, especially considering his usual wordiness.
“Fuck off and go to hell.” Stiles ordered, voice thick from the weight of his anger as he lifted a hand, palm out, and then focused and slashed it through the air.
There was a boom as the room’s pressure changed in an instant, the explosion throwing all off the guards back so harshly into the cement walls that some hit the ground without another sound.
He extended his hand again, cupping it upward to form a claw and holding it until the doors he had crumpled slightly before began to shake with a new urgency. Then he pulled, and the metal doors burst out of the walls, falling out into the hallway to let the special guests of Eichen House step free.
Stiles looked over to find Peter, still in his drugged haze, staring at him with blazing blue eyes to match his own copper, and he knew that even this was not enough. That it could never be enough.
He took Peter to the stairs and made sure the man was looking forward as he sent one final pulse behind him, and set the entire thing on fire.
They leave Eichen house to burn to ash, the supernatural inmates escaping into the night, the humans one being escorted to safety by the real nurses once the fire alarms began to go off.
Stiles very vindictively wishes that the place could feel pain as he watches it burning in his rear-view mirror as they leave town, everything important enough to matter to them packed up tightly into his Jeep.
It takes an hour for Peter to wake up, the sun just beginning to show signs of wanting to come over the horizon as Stiles continued to drive.
“You continue to make me realise that I can never quite fully expect you.” Peter croaked out, and Stiles glanced over to see something that could have been adoration blatantly written over the other man’s face.
“Got to keep you on your toes. Only way to keep our relationship feeling fresh.” He chuckled half-heartedly before focusing his attention back on the road.
“Where are we going?” Peter asked after a couple of moments of silence that wasn’t quite comfortable, but wasn’t quite awkward either. Stiles didn’t know what it was.
“Dunno. I’ve quite literally burned out bridges with the pack and I don’t really know where else we can go. I guess I’ll try and find someplace outside of a controlled territory for us to lay low for a bit.”
He’s surprised by Peter’s chuckle.
“Really Stiles, you need to stop holding the rest of the world to the poor standard set by McCall and his facsimile of a pack.” He snorted, words slurred and far less cutting than they otherwise would have been.
Stiles would of course die before ever mentioning that it was a little cute.
“You are a spark, the rarest and most powerful magic user there can be, and I was once the enforcer to the strongest pack in North America. It was only through me that many things the Hale pack under Talia’s reign is still known for could have been done. While in Beacon Hills we are seen as things that must be kept at arms length or controlled, everywhere else in the world packs will both fear and respect us.” He said like it was something Stiles should just know.
“And?” Stiles asked, not quite getting it, fingers tapping a nervous and irregular beat on the steering wheel.
“And so what I’m saying, Stiles, is the world is open to us. So take your pick.”