Chapter Text
Technically speaking, Stiles didn’t just have one way to ‘teleport.’ He had three—well, three and a half.
There was the pure power method, where he just willed himself into another location. It was basically apparation, but without the loud bang.
Then there was the anchored method, which he had shamelessly stolen from Naruto. The ‘half’ was also anchored—but instead of using strategically placed magical items made specifically to be used as anchors, he used his bonds. Which was how he’d managed to take care of the nemeton without appearing to visit Beacon Hills.
The third method was one he’d learned from the nogitsune, and it was the easiest to use for both long distances and bringing along a passenger. Stiles called it shadow walking. Scott called it creepy. Basically, he walked into a shadow here and walked out of a shadow wherever he was going. Which, yes, looked incredibly creepy. Which definitely wasn’t one of the reasons it was his favorite. Not at all. Nope.
It was also an ability that he didn’t publicly use as himself. Which meant Peter was going to be learning one of his secrets. Stiles didn’t mind nearly as much as he should.
“Alright, I need to disguise you before we go.”
Peter raised an eyebrow, silently demanding an explanation.
“Stiles Stilinski can’t shadow-walk. I have a…friend, of sorts, who lets me use his shop as a destination, but if ‘Jason’ shows up with Peter Hale, and Stiles Stilinski is later seen walking around with Peter Hale, it won’t take much effort to guess that Jason and Stiles are one and the same.”
Peter looked surprised, but nodded agreeably. Then Stiles pulled on the red hoodie he wore in his ‘Jason’ persona and he froze. Stiles smirked.
Jason—which, yes, was absolutely a reference to Red Hood and therefore an indirect ‘little red riding hood’ joke—was the identity he used when he was functioning as Left Hand. He didn’t say that outright, of course, never said what Pack he was tied to or even if he was, but he also hadn’t quashed the rumors when they started. That was practically a confirmation.
“I keep waiting for you to get less perfect, but instead you just—” Peter growled in frustration and pulled Stiles into a kiss.
When they pulled away, breathless and panting with hair disheveled, Stiles buried his head in Peter’s shoulder and found the courage to speak. “It’s not just you, you know. I keep waiting for you to decide I’m too much, for you to find something out and for that to be the thing that tips the scales. I’m… a lot. And that’s without the magic and the chaotic luck. I just… all these things that I’m used to people being willing to put up with because they care about me, and you’re just like ‘I love that you do this thing, that’s really attractive to me, this thing is amazing.’ And I think I could probably fall in love with anyone who looked at me and saw that, but it’s you. You’re smart and hot and funny and deadly and just—you’re everything I ever wanted, and you want me too.”
Stiles felt Peter turn his head enough to kiss his cheek, then pressed their temples together. “Yeah, Stiles, I do. I really do—chaotic luck, impossible magic, ruthless loyalty and all. It scares me, how much I want you, how much I already care about you. It’s a lot, and it’s fast, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Well—maybe one thing.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. If I had my way, we’d have had this conversation an hour ago, when we didn’t have a meeting to get to soon.”
Stiles huffed, but nodded and pulled away. Peter smirked at him. “I’m a mess, aren’t I?”
“Little bit.”
Stiles rolled his eyes but went to the bathroom and did his best to fix his appearance. Peter followed him in and did the same. Once Peter was satisfied with both of them, Stiles flicked an illusion over each of them. Peter pouted. Stiles rolled his eyes.
“Pretty people stand out. You can deal with looking like a normal person for the half hour we’re likely to spend in the shop.” When Peter shot him a look, Stiles rolled his eyes. “Most of that will be after the meeting. I know we don’t have time before. Now, what am I calling you if I have to?”
“Hm. Tom.”
“Got it.” Stiles swung the door enough to create a convenient shadow, grabbed Peter’s arm, and stepped through.
Being pulled out of the shadows felt a bit like being pulled through a sheet of tissue paper, if tissue paper had the texture of silk. He hit a barrier, and it was startling enough that the instinct was to stop, to back away, but Stiles’ hand pulling on his arm reminded him to ignore that instinct. As soon as he stopped resisting and pushed forward, the barrier was easily broken.
The man behind the counter didn’t jump when they appeared from the shadows, just nodded politely. “Good to see you again, Jason. Anything I can help you and your…friend with?”
“Not right now. We have somewhere to be, but I’ll be back to pick up a few things after we’ve taken care of that bit of business.”
The man nodded. “Of course. I won’t keep you.”
As soon as they left the shop, Peter felt like he’d been wrapped in Stiles’ magic. Peter wondered if he was becoming more sensitive to magic somehow, or if it was just Stiles, because he felt it as something swept over him from head to toe, felt it catch on something, felt the something quickly dissipate. He followed Stiles’ lead as he guided them into a blind spot, which he used to drop his illusions. The red hoodie looked blue now, but Stiles quickly removed it and stored it in his backpack. It wasn’t until they were out of sight of the shop that the intensity of Stiles' magic sharply dropped, and the remainder quickly dissipated.
Peter turned more of his attention to his surroundings. He’d been to New York before, keeping up contacts, doing business, and visiting his niece, but he hadn’t known there was a magic shop in this part of town. That was good to know, even if the shopkeeper had been… off. He wasn’t quite sure what it was about the man, but he knew he hadn’t been human. Something about him just screamed ‘other’ to the werewolf. I won’t keep you, he’d said, and the phrasing was… oh.
“We’re only a block and a half away from the café your contact wanted to meet at,” Stiles informed him, probably assuming from his distraction that he didn’t know the area.
Peter nodded absently. “Are you aware that the shop owner is Fae?”
Stiles snorted. “Yeah. The first time I walked in, he asked if he could have my name. Bit of a giveaway.”
Peter vacillated between alarm and curiosity. “What did you say?”
“‘No, but you can call me Jason.’”
Peter snorted, but nodded. It was a good answer. “You said he’s a friend?”
“Of sorts. More of a business acquaintance, really, but we’re friendly enough. He’s a Changeling, so he’s spent more time in the human world than most Fae. Still dangerous, of course, but he likes it enough here to play human. Running a shop suits him.”
“He lets you use his shop as a landing pad?”
Stiles shrugged. “We made a deal. Nothing too complicated. For every time I use his shop’s shadows to travel, I have to purchase at least one item from him. I usually take care of that right away, but we have an appointment to get to. There’s a few things I need to pick up for the ritual anyway; I figured I’d just buy them from him after things have been ‘approved’ by your contact.”
Peter relaxed. Making deals with the Fae was dangerous, but the circumstances and the deal were about as safe as that sort of thing got.
When they got to the café, Peter pointed out his contact. He hadn’t told either of them much about each other, and he was looking forward to seeing their reactions.
When they both sat down, Peter smirked at Stiles. Smugly. “Allow me to introduce you to Marcus Callan, an expert in rituals and a member of the Emissary Council.”
Stiles laughed, leaned over, and kissed Peter’s cheek. “Alright, we won’t bring up the ritual when negotiations start again.”
Peter smiled softly and took his hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. “Good.”
Marcus was looking between the two of them, eyebrows near his hairline. Peter’s smirk returned. He suspected Stiles’ banishment would have been the subject of gossip in the Emissary Council, and he was curious what his friend’s reaction would be. “Marcus, I’d like you to meet Stiles Stilinski, member of the McCall Pack.”
Marcus grinned. “Are you really? Excellent. You have to tell me what you did to piss off Hettie. The betting pool is outrageous but she refuses to answer any questions about it.”
Peter hadn’t noticed how tense Stiles had gotten until he relaxed and grinned back. “For once, I suspect the truth is much less exciting than the rumors.”
“For once?” Peter asked. “Isn’t that usually the case?”
“I did mention I have chaotic luck, didn’t I? You should get used to the phrase ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’”
“Looking forward to it.”
“Stop teasing! I’ve been wanting to know for two years now.”
Stiles laughed. “Alright.” He glanced around. “You mind if I put up some privacy wards first?”
Marcus waved him off. “This place caters to the supernatural. The tables are already warded.”
Stiles raised an eyebrow. “I know. And?”
Marcus looked surprised, but shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Stiles reached into his backpack, pulled out a stone covered in carved runes, and placed it in the center of the table. He tapped it with one finger. There was a faint hum before things seemed to return to normal, but Peter could feel something in the back of his awareness. Marcus whistled. “Don’t you think that’s overkill? I’ll admit, I’m impressed, but…”
Stiles’ smile was lopsided. “McCall Pack Rule: there’s no such thing as overkill. Our territory is starting to settle, but I seriously doubt it’ll ever be what you'd call peaceful. Anyway, to understand what happened with—what was her name? Hettie?—the first thing you need to know is that the McCall Pack is new, nontraditional, and short on people who grew up knowing about the supernatural. In fact, the only one who did joined the Pack after all of this went down, and his name is Christopher Argent.”
Marcus nearly choked on his coffee, and Peter would bet his favorite shoes that Stiles had timed that deliberately.
“Exactly. Sorting out what’s good information and what’s thinly veiled racism is a nightmare. The only reliably accurate things are the ‘how to kill it’ bits. Which, sadly, still makes their information useful, but for trying to build a pack and establish a presence in the supernatural world in general? Nope.”
Peter looked sidelong at Stiles. “What about Allison?”
“Oh, she joined early on, but her family wasn’t exactly happy about it. And her parents didn’t want to raise her to be a hunter. They wanted her to have a choice. So while they still gave her a lot of the training, they didn’t tell her about the family legacy until she turned eighteen. She had about a year and a half head start on the rest of us, but she didn’t exactly have easy access to Argent resources after joining the Pack until she made up with her dad.”
“Ah. Carry on.”
“Thank you,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “So a lot of what we figured out was sort of based on context clues. Hunter manuals mentioned that it was best to take out the Emissary first in order to avoid dealing with wards, so we think ‘ah, this implies that magic is real, can be used to make “wards,” and that Emissaries are the ones to make and maintain them.’ And it was all like that. Eventually we started making some contacts, got our hands on some books, started to get a clearer picture of things. But a lot of the knowledge about traditions and Pack structure and Pack roles isn’t written down. So we were back to working off of context clues there. Which brings us to a year and a half ago, approximately a year after Scott McCall was bitten and we started building a pack. I’d discovered I could use magic and was teaching myself how with occasional pointers from a grumpy kitsune. I started calling myself the Pack Emissary about eight months into things because we thought that was pretty much what I was doing. Only, I started making more contacts, got some more information about the role of an Emissary, and realized that I definitely wasn’t one. I do not have the disposition for it. At all. But, I also knew enough to know that the Pack needed an Emissary. I did what I could, but—yeah. It was eleven months after Scott was bitten that I finally found out the Emissary Council existed.”
Marcus covered his face with his hands. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes. It took me three week to find the headquarters. By then, I’d heard that people were supposed to be introduced by a certified Emissary, but I didn’t know any and we needed an Emissary.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yep. I snuck in, approached an old lady who looked important and tried to explain what was going on.”
Marcus snorted.
“Yeah. She wouldn’t let me finish a sentence, accused me of ‘impersonating an Emissary’ for ‘nefarious purposes.’ I finally lost my temper and yelled at her to ‘shut the hell up for a second.’ Only… I accidentally reinforced that with magic. Next thing I knew, I was back outside and couldn’t get back in. Same deal when I tracked down one of the satellite offices. A couple of weeks later, I got a letter with an official reprimand calling me a mannerless, uneducated reprobate. Thus endeth the tale of the Banishment of Stiles Stilinski.”
“That is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Did you win the betting pool?”
“Not even close, but I don’t care.” He paused, and looked sheepish. “I should have asked—you don’t mind if I spread it around, do you?”
Stiles waved off his concerns. “Not at all. Please do. We still need an emissary, and if this’ll help, I’m all for it.”
“A lot of emissaries will disapprove,” Marcus cautioned.
“Then they wouldn’t be good fits for the McCall Pack anyway.”
“As fun as this has been,” Peter cut in, “we are here for a reason.”
“Oh, right!”
Stiles started digging around in his backpack. This time he didn’t bother being subtle—probably because of his warding—and Marcus’ eyebrows rose again when his arm sank in up to his shoulder. He emerged with an “Aha!” holding a journal that looked very similar to the one that had held his warding notes. This one was a different color, though.
He flipped through it until he reached the page he was looking for. “Here it is.”
He slid it across the table. Marcus squinted at it.
“Oh, right, sorry.” Stiles tapped the page, and Peter watched as the writing neatened into typed print and the letters rearranged themselves. Right—Stiles wrote his notes in code. “That should be easier to read.
Marcus read slowly, looking more and more bewildered as he went. On the fifth page he suddenly froze, his eyes went wide, and he flipped back to the beginning, reading much more quickly. Peter sat back, feeling decidedly smug.
Stiles was brilliant and impossible, and he was going to be his. Watching Marcus realize exactly how amazing Stiles was was immensely satisfying.
“Is this—what is this?”
Stiles frowned at Peter. “You didn’t tell him?”
“Well, given that he’s one of the foremost experts on rituals, I assumed he’d be able to figure it out.”
Stiles rolled his eyes. “Of course. Well, it’s a cleansing ritual, obviously.” Marcus mouthed ‘obviously’ to himself, which Peter found both worrying and hilarious. “It’s designed to target any magic the person’s inherent magic/energy is trying to reject and purify it—turn it into neutral power.”
“But—how? I can see that this is an adaptation, but I have no idea what it was adapted from. Where did you find a ritual that could do something like this?”
Peter grinned. He wished he had popcorn.
“I didn’t? I created the original. It’s—” He glanced at Peter, looking nervous. “It’s a cure for Bite rejection.”
Peter got it immediately—Stiles had come up with it looking for a ‘cure’ for the Bite. Considering what he knew of the McCall Pack—a pack of bitten ‘wolves who hadn’t chosen it—it wasn’t surprising. He squeezed Stiles’ hand. “The Bite is a gift—one that is meant to be offered, not forced on someone. It’s understandable.”
Marcus was looking between the two of them. “Alpha McCall was bitten without his consent?”
Stiles snorted. “Not just him. The Alpha who bit him was feral. She managed to bite seven people before we killed her, none of whom consented. She got lucky in her choice of victims; only one of them rejected it.”
“Who—I’m sorry, that’s none of my business. But you’re certain—the ritual cures Bite rejection?”
Stiles looked relieved. “Yes. We had to use it six… no, seven months ago. One of the human members of our pack was injured and asked for the Bite to save his life, but his body rejected it; we were just lucky that it happened on the new moon. But the ritual worked—the magic of the bite was purified and converted into neutral power, which his body absorbed and used to heal itself.”
“Fascinating. Now, in regards to the adaptation—will the recipient still absorb the power? There doesn’t seem to be anything dictating that.”
“That’s intentional. This isn’t meant to be a power boost. Any attempt to change that, even performing the ritual with the intent to gain or bestow power would corrupt the magic. The magic will go where it’s meant to.”
Peter glanced at Stiles, intrigued. “What do you think will happen?”
Stiles was silent for a long moment. “In this case, at most I think the recipient might absorb enough to heal any damage. But nothing beyond that.”
Peter nodded, but didn’t ask anything else. There was more that Stiles wasn’t saying, but he doubted he wanted Marcus to know any of it.
As they started to discuss the details of how it would work, it quickly became clear that, though he was an expert in rituals, he was a novice in Stiles. One of the benefits and downsides of being self-taught: they had different vocabulary that they used to describe the same things, and they often looked at the same information and came to completely different conclusions. Both of them were in a constant state of being both frustrated and thrilled, with the amounts of each varying from minute to minute.
Over all, it was going pretty well, but every now and then they’d stumble on something that would have them going back and forth, getting more and more frustrated until they figured out which basic, fundamental, and completely obvious truth the other either didn’t know or wasn’t considering. (Peter kind of loved it when Marcus was the one who didn’t know whatever it was. Watching an expert get schooled by a so-called amateur was fun enough on its own, but watching said expert being forced to reevaluate everything he knew about how magic worked? Absolutely delightful. Peter was going to have to find a way to repay Stiles for the show.)
The only truly tense moment came at the end, when Marcus groaned and said, “Writing the report on this is going to be a nightmare.”
Stiles went predator-still. “What, exactly, is going to be in that report?”
Marcus blinked, surprised. “Is there…anything you didn’t want me to include?”
“Details about the ritual, myself, and my abilities.”
“You don’t want people to know there’s a cure for Bite rejection?” He sounded disapproving.
Stiles raised an eyebrow. “It’s my ritual. It’s my creation. It’s up to me to share—or not.”
“But—!”
Stiles’ hand was around Marcus’ throat in an instant. Peter felt his magic pulse; when he pulled his hand away, a glowing runic collar was left behind. The light and symbols were absorbed into his skin, then disappeared. “There. Now you won’t be tempted—or able—to reveal anything you shouldn’t. That should make things easier for you.” Stiles’ smile was frigid.
Marcus’ hand went to his throat. He looked from Stiles to Peter, who felt very little sympathy for him. He should know better. When he looked back at Stiles, he was resigned. “You did say you weren’t an Emissary.”
Stiles nodded. “That I did.”
Marcus sighed. “Alright. I do need to write that report, but I have a pretty good idea of what you’ll want me to leave out.”
“Good.”
“One more thing,” Peter said. “I need to know: in your expert opinion, will this ritual work safely and as intended?”
Marcus nodded tightly. “Yes. It’s well-crafted; the recipient will not be in any danger, and it should work as intended.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I ask why?”
Stiles sighed. “Two reasons. The first is that I have every intention of publishing a cure for Bite Rejection.”
“Just not the one you’ve already developed.”
He nodded. “It has too much room for abuse. Some people won’t care that using it as a power-boosting ritual will corrupt them. Then there’s the fact that it works best during the new moon. I’d still be confident in it for the two days before and after, but not beyond that. I’ll come up with something that will work any day of the month. Once I’ve got something I’d actually trust someone else to do, something with some room for error if they mess it up—then I’ll publish the cure. But not now. Not with this ritual.”
Peter nodded. “And the other reason?”
Stiles glanced at him. He… wasn’t sure how much to tell him. He wanted to tell him everything, but he already knew he wouldn’t. There was a good chance Peter had already more or less figured it out, and Stiles was fine with that.
Which was actually the problem. Stiles didn’t know why .
“I revealed a lot about myself. About what I’m capable of. Marcus doesn’t seem the type to point power-hungry witches in my direction, but I don’t know or trust that the same is true for everyone with access to his reports.”
Peter nodded.
Stiles reapplied their disguises before they got in view of the shop, and it wasn’t long before Stiles had made his purchases and brought them home.