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Chris and Stiles stagger through the door to Peter’s penthouse with the man strung between them, his own legs only doing about 20% of the work of carrying him. That doesn’t stop him from moaning and bitching at them under his breath about the indignity and foolishness and unnecessariness and anything else he can think of to protest the situation and cover up his discomfort at requiring assistance with anything.
Chris and Stiles ignore him, barely managing to kick off their shoes at the door — leaving Peter in his, regardless of how he’ll bitch about the mud later — and drag him through to his bathroom. They plop him unceremoniously onto the closed toilet lid without needing to discuss it first.
Stiles marches back out of the room without a word, fists clenched at his sides and footsteps just shy of stomping, while Chris crouches in front of Peter and starts helping him undress with his lips tightly pinched together.
“Honestly—” Peter attempts to protest, but Chris cuts him off with a cutting glare.
“No.”
One simple word, underscored in steel.
Peter shuts up, finally absorbing just how furious his two companions apparently are. He presses his own lips together and watches in uneasy silence as Chris unties his shoes and slips them off his feet with swift, economical movements, followed by his socks. When Chris reaches up and grasps the hem of his shift, Peter grasps weakly at his usual bravado, not liking how uneasy Chris and Stiles’s attitudes are making him.
“Chris, if you wanted to see me naked all you had to do is ask.” He leers down at the man, unwilling to admit that it’s shakier than usual.
Chris remains unamused, leveling him with a flat stare as he tugs the torn and blood-stained material up Peter’s chest until he lifts his arms to allow it to be removed entirely. He winces as the movement pulls at his injuries, his ribs still a little tender and several slash marks from the harpy’s vicious claws still sluggishly bleeding where they’d ripped through skin and muscle like butter.
“This isn’t funny, Peter. You could have died.” Chris’s voice is more gravelly than usual, a muscle in his cheek twitching as his lips form a line so thin his lips practically disappear. He doesn’t look at Peter’s face as he speaks.
Peter swallows convulsively, opening his mouth to say he isn’t even sure what, when Stiles stomps back into the room with the same fierce scowl he’d left with. It seems to be some sort of unspoken signal, because the couple moves around him in tandem, somehow perfectly coordinated without speaking a word.
Peter ignores the pang that sends through him. It’s the tugging of his wounds, that’s all.
Chris stands from his crouch as Stiles starts digging through the cabinets under and around the sink, moving with easy familiarity as he pulls out wash cloths and a first aid kit and a bottle of foaming bath salts. Chris, meanwhile, turns to the large bathtub next to them and turns on the faucets, checking the temperature before he plugs the bottom to allow it to start filling. He accepts the bottle Stiles silently passes over his head and dumps some of the bath salts into the stream, the subtle aroma of lavender and tea tree oil slowly filling the room.
While Chris tends to the bath, Stiles takes his place kneeling at Peter’s feet. Tension radiates off both of them in waves, the scent of their displeasure filling the room far thicker than the bath salts can stifle. Peter makes a very uncharacteristic choice and stays quiet.
He doesn’t understand why they’re acting this way, and that makes him wary.
The pack had been fighting a harpy in the preserve, their numbers dwindled since half of the younger generation had moved away for school. Stiles had returned for summer break, but several had not. It had only been Chris, Peter, Stiles, Derek, Isaac, Cora, and Malia fighting the harpy that had entered their territory a few days earlier and already landed one hiker in the hospital in critical condition. Peter had gotten slashed by its deadly talons several times during the fight, but that didn’t seem out of the ordinary to him — nothing that would trigger this level of ire. He wasn’t even the only one to sustain injuries, though his were by far the worst. He didn’t see Stiles and Chris fussing over any of the others. No, they’d hustled him straight to the jeep with barely a word to the rest and driven him home. Peter had been somewhat in and out of consciousness during the drive, though his brain and mouth came back online much faster than his limbs did — hence the protesting when they entered.
Stiles dumps some rubbing alcohol on one of the cloths and starts cleaning the wounds on Peter’s side, a dark look passing over his face when Peter instinctually hisses and flinches away from the sting before he manages to tamp down that reaction. Despite the agitation in Stiles’s earlier movements and the drawn, pinched look on his face now, his actions are surprisingly careful as he wipes away the blood and grime on Peter’s torso. Peter’s throat goes inexplicably tight at the gentle — dare he say, tender — attention he is receiving. He doesn’t know what to do with it, and stares determinedly over Stiles’s shoulder at the wall.
Once Stiles has cleaned the worst of the dirt and blood away and disinfected each of the wounds — thankfully now mostly clotted, only the two deepest ones still oozing trace amounts of blood — Stiles tosses the dirty cloths into the sink to be dealt with later and packs the supplies away into his first aid kit. He stands and leaves the kit open on the counter, presumably for later use which honestly Peter thinks is going overboard. He’s a wolf; he’ll heal.
Chris stands from where he’d been monitoring the filling tub, occasionally swirling his hand through it to check the temperature and agitate the water to increase the amount of foam building on its surface (he silences the amused voice that sounds far too much like Stiles that says “it’s bubble bath, Peter. Stop being such a snob and call it what it is.” As if he’d ever have something as childish and plebian as bubble bath. The bath salts had healing properties and a soothing aroma that just happened to create a layer of foam when agitated in water, that's all.)
“Up,” Chris says, pulling Peter to his feet with a hand under his bicep which Stiles mirrors on his other side.
“I am not an invalid, I do know how to stand on my own!” Peter snaps. He locks his legs firmly to hide the way his legs tremble under his weight. Stiles and Chris both level him unimpressed looks and release his arms at the same time, only to catch him again when his legs almost immediately give out beneath him.
“Right,” Stiles drawls. “You know how to stand on your own — have your legs gotten the memo?”
Peter scowls at him, lip curling up over fangs with a deep rumble.
“Stop that,” Stiles says, and flicks him on the nose.
Peter gapes at him.
Chris snorts and shakes his head at them, checking to see that Stiles has a firm grip once again around his upper bicep before releasing him. He shuffles in front of Peter, hands going to his belt.
“I can–!” Peter starts to protest, before Stiles cuts him off with a resurgence of his former scowl.
“Shut up, you asshole, and let us help you.”
Chris strips him out of his pants easily, Stiles stabilizing him as he steps out of them, and then quickly removes his own clothing. Peter’s so caught up in his humiliation he doesn’t even realise what’s happening until he too is stripping out of his muddy jeans, leaving them both in boxers.
“Alright, do you want your boxers on or off?” Chris asks.
“This is ridiculous,” Peter mutters again, though when Stiles opens his mouth again he quickly replies “Off,” because the thought of sitting in a tub in soaking wet boxers is appalling. Besides, never let it be said that Peter Hale has body issues. He’s got absolutely no problem with either of these two seeing him naked, even if he’d always envisioned it under much different circumstances.
Once Peter’s boxer briefs have been stripped off, Chris steps into the tub and turns to help Stiles guide him into the warm water. The heat is shocking at first, though he instantly relaxes into it, releasing a breath as he’s eased down into the water, thick foam preserving his modesty.
Peter’s bathtub is easily large enough to fit three adults so Chris has no problem fitting behind him. Stiles hands him one of the clean washcloths and a bottle of Peter’s expensive bodywash before leaning over Peter to press a chaste kiss to his lover’s lips. He could almost swear he feels Stiles’s fingers ghost over his hair before he spins and strides once more from the room.
Despite Peter’s best efforts to remain stiff and on guard, the combination of the warm, scented water and gentle motion of Chris running the wet, soapy cloth over his skin has him relaxing back into the sensations. His eyes flutter shut, and it’s not until he feels the warm, firm press of muscle against his shoulder blade that he realises he’s leaned back into Chris, half reclined against his chest. He stiffens automatically and goes to pull away but Chris just lets out a low hum, his free hand coming up to his shoulder to hold him in place while the other arm wraps around his torso to carefully wipe down his chest.
“There’s nothing wrong with letting us take care of you once in a while, you know,” Chris murmurs next to his ear, the deep tenor and brush of breath on his neck making him shiver before he can stop it. Chris doesn’t show any sign of noticing, simply continuing his gentle ministrations, dipping the cloth into the water periodically and squeezing it out over his skin to rinse off the soap and bubbles that cling to him.
By the time Chris has reached his legs, practically wrapped around Peter to reach, Peter’s just about trembling. He’s overwhelmed by being on the receiving end of such gentle care in addition to the vulnerability inherent in the situation. He can’t remember the last time he’d been treated this well, this delicately. Like he matters. Like he’s something fragile that might break if not treated right.
He swallows down the constriction in his throat. He thinks he must have gotten some soap in his eyes, going by the way they sting.
The fact he’s recieving this care from the man he’s pined for for much longer than he’d like to admit, the man who is currently in a relationship with the other person Peter had mistakenly fallen for, hurts all the more. It feels like some sort of cruel irony. A joke from the universe, giving him a taste of something he can never have.
Stiles’ return pulls him from those thoughts before he can follow them any further. He glances over to see a large stack of fluffy towels in his arms, with a pile of clothes on top. He sets the pile on the counter and comes to sit on the side of the tub.
Peter is relieved to see much of the earlier anger drained away, though it’s left him looking weary and drawn. He grabs Peter’s bottle of shampoo and places his free hand on Peter’s shoulder, applying the slightest pressure.
“Down,” Stiles murmurs, guiding him to duck his head under the water and come back up. He drizzles some of the softly scented shampoo into his palm and lathers them togther before working it into Peter’s hair.
Peter’s breath catches and he practically melts under the sensation of Stiles’s fingers massaging the shampoo into his scalp, eyes slipping closed. He lets out an embarassingly low groan in the back of his throat when Chris’s hands join the fray, having released the cloth into the water to run his soapy hands over his upper back and around his neck, kneading stiff muscles.
“Do you understand why we were so mad?” Stiles finally breaks the silence, speaking in a low murmur, concentrated on what he’s doing with his hands. He doesn’t bother waiting for Peter to answer — which would have been a decidedly grumpy no. “You kept jumping between us and the harpy. You weren’t just drawing it’s attention and egging it on, you were actively taking hits that could have been avoided, putting yourself at unnecessary risk. A swipe that would have grazed Isaac nearly gutted you, because you jumped between them.” His fingers clench in Peter’s hair, not pulling any of the strands but balled up in an attempt to suppress a resurgence of emotion. Peter’s not sure if he imagines the slight tremble.
Peter doesn’t look at his face, staring at the wall directly in front of him instead, but Stiles's voice is tight. Anger, fear, and frustration infuse his scent in a complicated swirl. Behind him, Chris’s motions have come to a stop, hands fallen still on his shoulders.
“You are not expendable,” Chris murmurs, fingers clenching and releasing unconsciously. Peter's fingernails dig into his thighs below the water.
“You act like it doesn’t matter if you get hurt, or that it matters less than anyone else in the pack—” because it’s true, Peter doesn’t say, “—but you’re wrong.” Stiles’s voice is firm despite retaining it’s low volume. After a slight pause, his fingers resume their earlier motions in his hair. “You’re wrong,” he murmurs again. “You matter, and we don’t like seeing you get hurt. So just, just stop it okay?”
Peter doesn’t know how to answer, doesn’t think he can, thoughts swirling in a jumble he doesn’t want to untangle, so instead he just lets himself get lost in the smooth motions of his companions. Neither seem bothered by his lack of answer, nor like they’d expected one. There is a weight to this silence, but it’s not tense or uncomfortable. They’ve grown used to sitting in comfortable silence together over the past years. It’s heavy and familiar, yet full of unspoken words that curl between them.
Peter maintains his silence as Chris and Stiles work together to finish bathing him, carefully rinsing the shampoo out of his hair and repeating the process with his conditioner. He focuses instead on remaining as unaffected as possible. He’s barely holding on by a tether, his jaw shut tight as he concentrates on the ache in his muscles and sensation of his wounds slowly closing beneath the water, instead of their hands running over his skin and Chris’s near naked body pressed up against his back. The disappearance of his usual bravado is already telling enough; he doesn’t need his body giving him away as well.
“Alright, up you get,” Chris says once his hair is all rinsed out and the bubbles are more than half gone from the tub. Peter’s sturdier on his feet this time as he stands on his own, but Chris and Stiles still rise with him, hands hovering and ready to steady him if needed.
Chris pulls down the detachable showerhead before they step out of the tub, switching it on while Stiles pulls the plug. He keeps it aimed away until he’s sure the water is warm and then runs the gentle stream of water over Peter’s body, washing off the suds that had clung to Peter’s skin when he stood up. Stiles meanwhile moves to grab a large towel from the counter and holds it open for Peter while they step out.
“Oh, come on,” he sighs as, instead of handing the towel over, Stiles steps forward to dry him off himself, running the luxuriously soft towel over Peter’s skin as Chris grabs his own, shucking off his sodden boxers behind them.
Chris towels himself off in quick, brisk movements while Stiles uses slower, softer motions, yet still clinical in his application. His face is focused, unbothered by Peter’s nudity or his protests. Peter’s vaguely aware of Chris reaching past them to grab clothes off the counter, but his eyes are glued to the concentrated expression on Stiles’s face while he wills his body to behave just a little longer. At least his wounds are nearly completely healed. He tries to focus on that fact instead.
Peter snatches the clean pair of boxers out of Stiles’s hands the second he sets the towel down and turns to him with them, refusing to lose all of his dignity. He bristles at the thought of being treated like a child by anyone but especially by these two men. He doesn’t need them feeling as if they have to baby him.
Still, Chris grabs the next pair of sleep pants and bends down to have Peter step into them before Peter can make a nab at them, and Peter can tell from his silent determination that he will wait until Peter gives in. He grumbles to cover up the way his stomach clenches at the care they are still taking with him.
Stiles at least hands him a loose v-neck to slip over his head, absently noting that it’s one of the ones he keeps with the rest of his pajamas in a drawer, and Stiles uses the last of the clothing pile to change out of his own clothes which had gotten splashed in the bath. As Chris nudges him forward towards the door with a hand at the base of his spine, Peter glances at the mirror. His breath catches in his chest.
They’re all wearing his pajamas. Stiles had grabbed clothes from his drawers and put them on easy as could be, unbothered by the way they sit loose on his frame or the fact that he was practically bathing them in his scent — worse with Chris, who also smells like Peter’s particular bath soaps after their time in the tub.
Stiles has to know what he’s doing. After all these years with the pack and his voracious appetite for all things research, he has to know what he was doing to Peter by putting them all in his clothes.
He doesn’t know what to do with that thought, and as always covers it up with a quip.
“You could really give a wolf the wrong idea with all of this, you know,” he grumbles as they maneuver him to his bed. Stiles pulls the blankets down while Chris guides him forward with the hand at his back, nudging him into the center of his big bed.
Stiles snorts loudly while Chris huffs in amused exasperation, both of them climbing in on either side of him. Stiles pulls the blankets up over their lower bodies as he lays down.
“Or he could finally get the right idea,” Stiles grins as he settles at Peter’s side, the soft bite of his usual sass beneath the words. Peter tenses in surprise, the words spinning through him as Chris lets out an agreeing hum, smelling like amusement and contentment as he throws an arm over Peter’s midsection to rest a hand on Stiles’s hip. Stiles plasters himself along Peter’s side and throws his arm over his chest, resting high enough on the pillow that Peter is tucked below his chin. The position makes it impossible for Peter to look up at his face, so he looks at Chris instead, grasping for a reasonable explanation with a tight expression.
Chris smiles gently, propping his head up on his free arm to look down at Peter with a fondness he’d never dared imagine the man directing towards him.
Though he’d looked to Chris for an answer, Stiles is the one to speak again, chest rumbling against Peter’s shoulder.
“You know, you’d think, being the wolf out of the three of us, you’d recognise the signs of courting, but no. Everyone else recognised what was going on while you remained stubbornly, ridiculously oblivious. You have got to be the stupidest smart man I’ve ever met.”
Peter’s heart beats obnoxiously loud in his chest, whooshing sounds in his ears. He’s not sure what his face is doing but it has Chris softening and pressing a kiss to Peter’s forehead, causing his body to lock up in shock.
“Breathe, Peter,” Chris whispers against his temple, and Peter realises with distant surprise that the tightness in his chest is indeed because he’d forgotten to breath. He sucks in a sharp breath.
“What…” he starts, immediately trailing off. He doesn’t know what to say, what to think. He’s trying to figure out what they mean, because surely he’s misunderstood, there has to be another explanation.
That word echoes in his head again.
Courting.
Against his better judgement, Peter’s mind flies through his interactions with the two men for the past year. All the phone calls, late night research sessions in his apartment that turned into dinners and a movie on his couch. Stiles cooking in his kitchen and not letting him help, Chris showing up at his door with bags of takeout. Phone and video calls between the three of them and one-on-one while Stiles was away at school, takeout ordered from hours away set to deliver at his door on nights where the loneliness started to creep in a little too loudly. Legs thrown casually over his own the couch, hands brushing over the back of his shoulders as one of them passed, chests casually pressing against his back as they leaned in to read something over his shoulder. Chris or Stiles picking him up to drag him out with them on errands or casual afternoons around town, all the times he should have felt like a third-wheel on one of their dates but somehow felt inexplicably included rather than left out.
“Oh,” Peter breathes.
He feels Stiles’s smile press into his hair.
“And he finally gets it.” Stiles’s fingers idly stroke his chest.
“That’s enough of that for now,” Chris murmurs, and Peter can feel the deep vibration of his voice through his arm as much as he can hear it. Chris’s hand slips from Stiles’s hip to his own, giving a slight squeeze as he settles more comfortably along Peter’s side. “You need sleep, your body had to do a lot of healing today. And besides that, it’s getting late. We can talk about this more in the morning. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Stiles murmurs, “we’ll be right right when you wake up. You aren’t getting rid of us now, creeper wolf. You’re ours.”
Theirs. He’s theirs.
They’d stolen his heart long ago, but he’d never imagined a day would come when they would claim him in return. The declaration sends a shiver through him, tiny bumps raising along his arms, and he can’t help but turn to bury his nose into Chris’s neck, unable to face them. They adjust around him easily, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and it almost breaks him, fingers coming up to grasp unconsciously at the fabric of Chris’s borrowed shirt. Their scents blend around them in an intoxicating combination that he wants to spend the rest of his life buried in.
As they settle into more comfortable positions for the night, Chris and Stiles's warm bodies bracketing him on either side, Peter dares to believe that maybe, just maybe, he could have this after all.