Archive of Our Own

Chris is twenty-two when his tattoo finally appears. Silvered on the inside of his left wrist, almost like old scar tissue, are three curlicues arrayed in a triangle. He’d expected to feel more excited, but there’s still the subtle thrum of anticipation coursing through his veins. Chris chalks it up to not having met his soulmate yet, slips on the leather cuff he’s been wearing since he turned sixteen, and goes on about his life, still waiting.

****

Peter smells Chris before he sees him, and feels the pull in his gut that says mate, but something’s not quite right. The electric zing is there, though, when Peter walks up to Chris and taps him on the shoulder as if to ask him a question. There is enough roundabout questioning and hinting to realize they share the same almost-metallic spirals embossed on their skin.

The triskelion is a Hale symbol, though, and has been for as long as (longer than) anyone can remember. Peter knows the longing he feels even now that he has Chris has something to do with the vast abyss in the middle of their tattoos, with the unconnected loops floating above their veins, waiting for the final piece that will link them together.

Peter and Chris cling to each other, and continue to wait.

****

Stiles’ wrist itches for weeks leading up to his birthday, but not in such a way that he can tell what will eventually appear there. It’s just a subtle itching spanning the inside of his wrist in an amorphous blob that is sometimes just a pinprick and sometimes flares out to almost an inch and a half in diameter. He’s so full of anxiety that his dad convinces him to start wearing a training cuff so he doesn’t rub the skin raw trying to soothe the sensation.

They don’t joke that the tattoo is just like Stiles, impatient to get on with things, or that it’s because Stiles’ soulmate is older and tired of waiting for him, but sometimes Stiles thinks they’re both thinking it. It’s painfully obvious his dad is trying not to worry about maybe losing him, that once Stiles is sixteen and technically an adult he’ll finish his schooling online and go galloping across the globe in search of his soulmate. It’s not an unjustified fear, since it was only chance that his American father stumbled across his Welsh mother when she was in the States on a study abroad year.

Not everyone manages to find their soulmate, and even those who do sometimes have to travel across continents and oceans to find them. But Stiles is going to stay at home at least until he’s done with school; make sure his dad can handle living on his own, and that Stiles can bear leaving him. That doesn’t mean he’s not pumped about being of age or that he’s not hoping he’ll find his soulmate locally and sooner rather than later. He’s not above wanting to have his kayak and heat it too if it means staying near his dad.

Stiles doesn’t so much wake up the day he turns sixteen as look at the clock and realize that he’s succeeded in distracting himself so well that it’s now three hours and twenty-seven minutes into it, and nearly knock his laptop off his desk in his haste to look at his bare wrist. He’d assumed the itching would eventually coalesce into a brief pain when his tattoo finally appeared instead of fading so gradually he hadn’t even noticed when it stopped. Stiles almost feels cheated, but he has a shiny (wow, kind of literally) new tattoo to check out.

His tattoo is more intricate than he’d expected, even though his parent’s simple brown infinity knot shouldn’t be enough to base such a judgment on. The color is nothing exciting, barely lighter than his own pale skin, except there's a silver sheen where the light from his desk lamp hits just right. The three-looped Celtic knot makes his breath catch for a moment, his heritage shining through even though his mother’s been gone a little over five years now. He assumes the whorls spinning off each loop to nest in the dips must be his mate’s influence.

He pulls up his browser and by morning knows more than enough about the triquetra and what he’s assuming is an integrated triskelion (because it sounds cooler and makes more sense than just being random curlicues) to question that assumption, as well as why his tattoo is (probably) made up of two trinity symbols. Triple bonds are rare, but not unheard of, but they’re also the sort of thing that only happens to a friend of a friend or a distant relative, that people nervously gossip about in the hallways.

Stiles almost hopes he’s wrong, but the apprehension doesn’t do much to dampen his excitement over the prospect of being able to find his soulmate. ...Mate(s). All the same, he doesn’t mention anything to his father, and proudly upgrades up to a leather cuff.

****

Peter and Chris have lived with a phantom limb for nineteen years now, and all but given up on ever finding the solution. On the bad days they wonder if maybe their third died before the tattoo had a chance to appear, if maybe this is what they have to look forward to for the rest of their lives.

Not that it’s a bad life, of course. They work well together now, the rough edges smoothed by nearly two decades of work. Sometimes they hit a breaking point and can’t deal with each other anymore, and one of them will go off for a few hours or days until they’ve both had a chance to calm down and come back to each other. The early days, especially, were difficult; neither of them was really ready for what it meant to shift your life around to fit someone else in comfortably.

They learned, though, and cautiously left space for someone else to slot in with them. Nothing as overt as an empty place setting, but sometimes the space in their bed and on their wrists becomes a yawning chasm that threatens to swallow them whole until enough time passes that they can’t help but be inured to it.

That, of course, is when they wake up with a triple loop nestled in the middle of the spirals on their wrists as if it’s been there all along.

****

It’s not really a conscious decision that Stiles goes to the community center after school, because most people who go there are newly adult teens like himself, who plan to sit around and chat and hope to find their mate. There’s no magical pull to guide you to your mate, just the thrill of recognition when you first make skin contact. A lot of teens use this as an excuse for some pretty inappropriate groping in the guise of looking for their other half. Stiles, however, is much more interested in the expansive library on matebonds the center has than feeling up (or being felt up by) his peers. He’s claimed one of the larger tables for himself, which wasn’t hard considering most everyone else there is tucked into the cozy armchairs set up in pairs.

He’s surprised with how many triple bonds have been registered, but it does seem to be something that’s happened with less and less frequency as time goes by. He’s heard the same lore everyone else has, about how trying to balance a bond between three people is nearly impossible and one person is almost always left to either waste away or float tragically between the two other people. Some cultures revere the triple bond, but most modern societies tend to reserve the triumvirates for their deities, and woe betide the mortals who attempt to imitate it. Everyone knows the story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, after all.

Stiles is so engrossed in his reading that he doesn’t notice when two men, much older than those who normally come to the center, enter the room. One trails behind the other as he weaves through the shelves, looking both aimless and determined at once, until they come to a stop at Stiles’ table. The determined one clears his throat and Stiles startles, pencil dropping from where he’d been absently running it along his bottom lip.

The men across from him are both striking in their own way, piercing blue eyes and stubble, tall, but likely a bit shorter than Stiles himself is. The one with the slicked-back hair is staring at him intently, while the other man glances between the two of them until the first places a hand on the small of his back and Stiles thinks oh.

****

Peter and Chris knew what it meant when their tattoos filled out. That their mate must have just turned sixteen. That there was basically an entire generation between the two of them and their third.

They remember when they first found each other, when Chris was twenty-two and well on his way to establishing his own life, and Peter was still stumbling, albeit gracefully, through high school. The reconciliation they had to do, not only between their personalities, but with their entire lifestyles. It got easier as they got older, both from practice and because their needs fell more in line with each other. This, though, could throw an even worse spanner in the gears of their relationship. Sixteen was a long time ago for both of them.

Reluctantly (at least on Chris’s part) they decide to go to the community center, not sure if their mate will even realize they’re part of a triple bond, or even that the mate they’re expecting could be so much older. Peter’s lycanthropy had been a point of contention early in their relationship, but now they’re thankful for it because hopefully Peter will be able to smell their mate. Considering the alternative is having to attempt to awkwardly locate their mate via small talk with an unknown teenager who may not have even considered the possibility of a triple bond they’re incredibly lucky. They’ve waited so long at this point that it’s almost habit to just soldier on despite the ache; they don’t have the energy to try and filter through countless people anymore.

So they go, and Chris tries not to feel like a creepy old man as they stride into the building, obnoxious pop music piping through the lobby. Peter’s gotten incredibly subtle about scenting things over the years, only his meandering path at odds with the devotion he has to his goal. Chris follows him, the tightening in his chest easing with every giggling, ridiculous young adult they leave behind.

He’s too old for this, Chris thinks, and wonders what it is about him and Peter that requires someone so much younger to balance them out. He knows, intellectually, that that’s not how mates work, that it’s about compatible personalities first and foremost, but Chris remembers trying to get along with Peter at that age. He has no idea how they’ll manage this, but apparently it’s possible. He has no illusions it will be at all easy, however.

Chris can’t tell if he’s relieved or not when Peter stops at a table occupied by a boy engrossed in a sprawling mass of texts, chewing on a pencil, quivering slightly in such a way that Chris assumes means he’s bouncing his leg under the table. Peter clears his throat, and Chris glances between them. He doesn’t bother asking Peter if he’s sure, because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have bothered getting the boy’s attention. But the boy is clearly smarter than they’d been hoping because when he drops his pencil and looks at them the recognition rolls across his face.

He sits up a little straighter and gestures silently to the empty chairs across from him, and they sit, glancing at each other before each reaching a hand to the middle of the table. The boy takes a deep breath and gently places a hand of his own on each of theirs. His breath doesn’t hitch, but Chris is relatively certain that’s because the boy has stopped breathing, but his already big brown eyes grow even wider as the bond zips through Chris and he knows that they’ve found their soulmate.

They don’t stay in the center, not wanting to draw attention when it will be obvious why the three of them are there, so they go to a diner. Peter and Chris sit across from Stiles, not for lack of maneuvering on Peter’s part, but Chris slides into the booth, effectively trapping Peter. He compensates by leaning eagerly on the table, obviously much more optimistic than is warranted by the circumstances. Chris just hopes that they don’t terrify the boy into never speaking to them again.

****

Stiles isn't sure how he’s supposed to slot himself into a relationship that’s been established longer than he’s been alive (and he's trying so hard not to think about that right now, that Peter and Chris had been together for three whole years before Stiles was even born). And if he can't bear to think about how he's certainly not prepared to even think about why this bond needs a baby-faced sixteen-year-old to be balanced. What he could possibly have to offer that these two have clearly been getting along without all this time?

Not that Stiles had bought into the whole true love at first sight thing the movies like to play up, but he’d definitely thought he’d be more excited about meeting the person he’s going to probably end up spending the rest of his life with. If it were just the triple bond or only the age difference he might be able to commit himself, but the two together is a lot to work through.

Eventually Stiles begs off, because he may technically be an adult, but he’s only just turned sixteen, and his dad has been keeping a closer eye on him because of the whole potentially finding his mate thing. Chris gets a handshake, because he’s been cautiously optimistic, while still respecting Stiles’ leeriness at the situation. Stiles almost feels bad about the way he blatantly steps back from the hug Peter tries to give him and the way the man deflates when Stiles just keeps holding out the hand Chris just shook. Chris catches Peter’s hand in his afterwards, though, and Stiles can almost see Peter shake off the rejection. The easy intimacy between the two of them both intimidates Stiles and fills him with longing.

Stiles heads home to meet his dad for dinner, and manages to catch his father off-guard when he tells him he’s found his mates. The conversation doesn’t really go anything like he’d thought it would, but that’s par for the course so far. He can tell his dad isn’t happy, exactly, but there’s not really anything they can do about it. The Sheriff promises to support Stiles in whatever way he can, though, and holds Stiles close before heading up to bed.

****

Peter wouldn’t say he’s giddy that they’ve found their Stiles, but he hasn’t felt like rolling around like this since he found Chris that day in the grocery store. Chris heaves a sigh beside him in the car, but Peter won’t let Chris get him down. Chris is used to waiting, Peter thinks, more than Peter will ever be. They’ve never explicitly spoken about it, but Peter remembers their first fumbling days together, how Peter’s enthusiasm was almost overshadowed by Chris’s desperation at having had to wait six years for Peter.

Since then, though, Chris has steadied them, pulling Peter back from his more ridiculous exploits, anchoring both his wolf and his restless wit. Peter knows Stiles will be good for them, though, because he realizes now that they have Stiles that he and Chris haven’t been balancing each other so much as stagnating, the two opposing poles of their personalities keeping them in a deadlock. He’s not certain if it’s just because they’ve spent all this time waiting, but Peter suspects that if he and Chris had been left to their own devices they would have torn each other apart. Peter is too volatile and Chris far too staid without the shared motivation they had to wait for Stiles, to not sabotage the three of them by destroying the relationship before Stiles even had a chance to find out about them.

Peter’s spent long enough with Chris to realize that the particular look he’s getting is going to be followed by a lecture, and that maybe he needs to reevaluate his plans, if only to keep the peace. It wouldn’t do to rock the boat now that Stiles is about to step in, after all.

****

Stiles had thought his life would change a lot more when he found his mate, but he’d also thought that mate would be singular. He’s still not sure about Peter or Chris, let alone Peter and Chris. Peter is strangely by turns suave and doting, and more familiar than Stiles is entirely comfortable with, soulmates or no. He sees why Peter and Chris are together though, because Chris is much more reserved, in action and affection. Peter is more likely to bring Stiles tokens and send him what are supposed to be adorable texts, but it’s Chris that Stiles spends time actually talking with.

It’s not exactly that they have more in common, but Chris can weather and temper Stiles’ flights of fancy, and he has a subtle dry wit that makes Stiles’ wildly careening trains of thought crash and burn in sudden fits of laughter. It had been kind of weird to find out that Chris’s family business is weaponry, but if they’d been involved in anything shady the Sheriff would have made it known. Possibly via a trip down to the station. The profession doesn’t suit Chris, exactly, but he’s got a good temperament for the logistics of it all, Stiles supposes.

Peter, when he isn’t trying so hard, proves to be just as clever as Stiles, which is a welcome change from the everyday. He handles the behind-the-scenes parts of the business- the bookkeeping and paperwork and such. When Stiles thinks about all the laws about gun control alone he’s not surprised, because Peter seems like he’d enjoy figuring out how to work the law to their best advantage. Sooner than he’d expected the three of them are hanging out for hours at a time, talking and joking as if they’ve all known each other forever.

The first few awkward months are spent trying to arrange meetups (Stiles refuses to call them dates at this point) around school, extracurriculars, and Peter and Chris’s business trips. Around the three month mark Stiles comes home from most of their meetups flushed with happiness, comfortable enough that hanging out is actually fun and not a weirdly pressuring not-quite obligation. They’ve gotten glared out of more than one restaurant for being too rowdy, but that’s more down to Peter and Stiles, although there was the one notable occasion where Chris laughed so loud and suddenly at something Stiles said that their server dropped the tray of dishes she was carrying. Stiles is relatively certain that the three of them can manage to at least be friends.

Apparently his father is thinking much farther ahead, though. A few weeks after Stiles’ half-birthday (they’re totally a thing, okay) he comes home from an afternoon at Peter and Chris’s to an incredibly awkward lecture from his dad. With pamphlets. Illustrated pamphlets. Followed by the gift of a paper pharmacy bag containing lube and condoms. It’s hard to tell which of the two of them is more mortified, but Stiles dutifully takes the bag and his thoughts upstairs to his room.

He’s noticed, of course, that Peter and Chris are both good-looking. He also knows that they literally sleep together in the same (ridiculous California King) bed. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that they also have sex in said giant bed. If the two of them have a sexual bond then it would logically make sense that Stiles would have a sexual bond with the two of them as well. Bonds are about balance and equality, and it just wouldn’t make sense if one person in a triple bond had a different kind of bond than the other two already do with each other.

Stiles knows all this intellectually, as discrete pieces of information, but he’s also been avoiding explicitly thinking about it in the context of his actual life. Fantasies are one thing when they’re just that, but Stiles wasn’t really prepared to entertain the idea of things that have a definite possibility of happening.

The idea’s been planted, though, and the disembodied touches of Stiles’ wet dreams spawn faces and voices and names over the next few weeks. Before long the wet dreams have bled into waking fantasies and Stiles catches himself wondering things like if Chris’s stubble will feel like his hair when he gets it buzzed really short, and how different it would be to feel that against his face. What that would feel like compared to the goatee Peter has cultivated despite (or perhaps because of) Chris’s exasperation, what the curve of Peter’s smirk would feel like against Stiles’ mouth.

He’s sure Peter, at least, can tell why Stiles is suddenly so much shyer around them, and even if Chris doesn’t figure it out while Stiles is there Peter is sure to tell him. After another few weeks of nothing changing aside from the color and temperature of his face Stiles starts to think that maybe he’d been making a fuss over nothing and manages to control his overactive blood vessels. (Either that or Peter has stopped smirking every time he blushes, and Stiles is pretty sure that Peter will never lose that smug expression when he knows he’s even partially responsible for whatever misfortune he’s witnessing.)

Stiles quickly realizes that it was definitely his exceptional facial control that was responsible when Peter starts touching him all the time. It’s not badtouching, not by any means, but the blush is rapidly becoming standard attire, and Peter’s smirk has fallen into something a little gentler. The touches are little things: resting a hand on Stiles’ shoulder as Peter passes by, fingertips on Stiles' hand or arm to get his attention. It’s enough to send a thrill up Stiles’ spine, but not to freak him out entirely.

It takes a few Saturdays spent together before Chris gets in on it, and they almost make a game of it, the three of them dancing around each other in what Stiles thinks is possibly the most awkwardly adorable flirting ever. He’s almost settled into it, still looking sharply when he feels fingers on his back or his waist, but not jumping anymore, when Peter presses Stiles into the counter and kisses him. Stiles doesn’t think anyone can blame him when he runs out of the house, Peter’s howl echoing behind him.

****

Chris has never been so conflicted. They’d been working so well together, Stiles sliding into their dynamic over the course of the past months. He handled finding out Peter is a werewolf better than they could have hoped, finding the most ridiculous and credible things on the internet, asking Peter questions about anything and everything. He hadn’t ever shown any fear of Peter, but Chris isn’t sure if it’s because Stiles trusts Peter’s control that much after so much time spent living with Chris, or if Stiles just instinctually knows that Peter literally can’t hurt Stiles because they’re soulmates.

They’d grown comfortable enough for Stiles to invite Peter and Chris over, but carefully timed so that his father couldn't give Peter or Chris more than a stern look and a firm handshake on his way out the door. Chris decides that he and Peter won’t mention the lunch the Sheriff drops in on, or the not-so-subtle threats he’d made if either of them hurt Stiles. Peter looks offended that Chris thought he needed the verbal confirmation.

He’d been sure that Peter had screwed everything up when he started touching Stiles, but instead Stiles had been tickled pink. Chris had watched Peter like a hawk at first, sure he was going to overstep his bounds and scare Stiles off, but he hadn’t and so Chris had joined in. He’d worried at first that Stiles would be too young for them, but his delight at everything is almost contagious. The guarded mistrust that characterized their first encounters with Stiles has given way to belly laughs and quiet, lip-biting smiles. Chris won’t deny that he wants to be the cause of the light in Stiles’ eye and the flush along his jaw that Peter sparks so easily these days.

Chris should have expected something when Peter started speculating out loud about Stiles. About how he might react when they touch him, finding out what he likes, the logistics of three bodies rather than two.

He’s not stupid enough to think Peter hasn’t been fantasizing about Stiles longer than Chris probably wants to know. He suspects it may coincide with the way the pencil rolled off Stiles' lip that first day in the center library, and how Stiles' mouth had been open and wet and soft-looking. That’s not even touching the fact that Peter left more marks on Chris when they got home that day than he had since they first got together. Twenty years is a long time to learn what a person likes, and Chris knows Peter at this point as well as he knows himself. He’s also not blind, but he has some pretty strong scruples and well-honed self-control.

Chris is even mostly over the fact that he’s gotten himself off more than once lately thinking of Stiles’ hands or mouth. Chris would even bet that Stiles thinks of them when he’s home by himself. But he can also tell that the innocent, if frequent, touches the three of them have been exchanging don’t mean that Stiles is in any way ready for anything serious.

As always, though, Peter is the impulsive one, and Chris is left to clean up the remains. The main difference between this and previous times, though, is that Peter knows exactly what he’s done as soon as he’s done it. It’s all Chris can do to keep Peter from tearing into himself when he shifts and howls out his misery right there on the kitchen floor.

It’s nearly an hour before Peter is calm enough to shift back, and Chris wants to be furious with him, but he can’t bring himself to do it. At the same time, though, he can’t bring himself to do more than he has already, and he leaves Peter curled up in their bed, and drives into town to nurse a whiskey.

He’s simultaneously surprised and not when the Sheriff takes the stool beside him and orders the same. It’s not the first time they’ve shared space like this. There are only so many bars in town, life has been rough for the Sheriff since his wife died, and Chris has been trying to single-handedly anchor an incomplete triple bond even longer. He and Peter have a lot of the big problems worked out, but if they were able to get them all they wouldn’t have a triple bond. This is the first time, though, that they’re both there because of Stiles.

They sit in silence, Chris almost blurting out everything several times before washing the words back down his throat with another sip. Chris drains his glass and debates a second, although the question is more whether or not he’s ready to go home and deal with Peter rather than any desire to actually imbibe. He decides against the drink, and rubs his hands over his face, remembering the Sheriff next to him only when he feels a hand fall heavy on his shoulder.

Chris feels like they should talk about this, knows that Stiles probably ran home in a (completely justified) panic, thinks that he owes Stiles’ father some sort of explanation, but now that he’s resolved himself to it he can’t find the words. Something must show in his expression, though, because the Sheriff claps him on the shoulder again as he stands and wishes Chris a safe drive home. Chris clings to the hope that this means Stiles hasn’t written them off entirely.

He wants to send Stiles a text, but doesn’t know what to say. It’s not his place to apologize for Peter, not that he wants to. In the end he sends off a simple will you be okay? because if Stiles was okay he wouldn’t have run off and the Sheriff wouldn’t have hunted Chris down in a bar. It’s not until he bunks down across a wide swathe of mattress and bedclothes from Peter that his phone pings an alert.

yeah. thanks. sorry.

Chris isn’t as reassured as he could be.

****

Peter has never wanted anything so much as he wanted his mates, and he’s never been so scared he’s lost everything as he is now. He’d thought he could live, just him and Chris, and work their way around the unspoken gap of their missing third, because they managed for so long. Somehow, though, Stiles has seeped into the spaces they left for him and then some, and Peter can’t imagine going back to just the two of them now that they’ve had Stiles, even just as a friend.

He can’t believe he’d misjudged the situation so severely. The three of them have been dancing around each other for weeks, and he and Chris are the only frames of reference he has for how fast things should progress. Already they’ve spent much longer befriending Stiles than Peter and Chris did getting to know each other. Ten months before he even dared a kiss, when Peter had Chris pinned to a wall by the hips barely a week after finding him.

Peter knows that Stiles wants them, could hear his pulse pick up, see the flush of his skin and the widening of his pupils every time he or Chris touched him. Too late Peter realizes that he and Chris only had each other to consider, that Peter is inherently just incredibly tactile, and that Stiles is trying to make his own way into what is a well-established relationship.

He knows Stiles is fine, though. Chris has been texting him the past couple days, and comes home smelling faintly of Stiles. Close proximity, some light touches. Peter would like to waltz into Stiles’ life again, charm his way back into Stiles’ good graces, but Chris’s presence alone dissuades him. Stiles will come back, Peter’s certain, and probably sooner rather than later, but perhaps this is a situation he should let Chris handle. He can’t resist texting Stiles an i’m sorry the first day Chris comes home smelling like Stiles, though, and tries to decide how much groveling would be too much for when Stiles does come back.

****

Stiles knows that maybe his freakout was a little unwarranted, but he’d realized that before he’d even gotten home. He’d reluctantly confessed to his dad that he felt like an idiot for running away, but it’s not like his dad didn’t already think Stiles was having wild crazy sex anyway, so Stiles figured he came out ahead by letting his dad in on how slow they’re all taking things. He’s surprised, then, when his dad says he’s going out to the bar for a while. When his dad comes back, clears his throat, and talks about how he ran into Chris Argent, Stiles is downright shocked.

He’d known that obviously he’s important to Chris and Peter, but it hadn’t clicked until that moment just how much. What Stiles saw as an overreaction was apparently enough to send Chris to the bottle, and who knows how Peter feels. The text Chris sends him makes him almost feel guilty. He texts Chris back, and again during passing period at school the next day, and they agree to meet up at the end of the school day.

Stiles wants to wrap Chris up in a hug when he sees him, but knows Peter will smell it on Chris and Stiles doesn’t want to make things worse than they already are. They talk things over, and decide to arrange a reconciliation of sorts, and a couple days later sees Stiles pulling up to Chris and Peter’s house. He also knows that Peter has been uncharacteristically quiet since he kissed Stiles, and it’s not been because he’s plotting. He hasn’t been moping, exactly, but he knows he pushed too hard and is waiting for Stiles' cue rather than risk screwing up again.

So when Peter opens the front door to see Stiles on the front porch Stiles pulls Peter into a hug, lets Peter press his nose into the juncture of Stiles’ neck and shoulder. He knows enough now about werewolves to figure out that Peter will need the physical reassurance after what looks like a pretty strong rejection from his mate, but hugging it out isn't going to actually solve anything. Peter is great with words, but habit and instinct have left him with a lot of assumptions that he hadn't realized should probably be discussed with Stiles.

Stiles and Peter haven’t really been the sort to have deeply personal conversations. Long and complex, sure, but generally Peter leaves the heavier parts of conversations to Chris, even if they’re both present. By the time Chris gets back late that afternoon Peter and Stiles are sitting facing each other on the couch, not tangled together, but with a careful intimacy. They each have one leg folded under them, knees touching, and the other resting on the floor, Peter’s foot tucked between the couch and Stiles’ ankle, Peter resting his head in one hand as Stiles gesticulates wildly.

Stiles texts his dad that he’s staying for dinner, and the three of them have a picnic there on the floor. Eventually Stiles has to go, and Peter and Chris walk him to the door. Stiles turns and smiles, and puts one hand on Peter and Chris’s faces and leans down to press a kiss to each of their mouths.

They’ve waited almost twenty years for him, and Stiles is ready.