Chapter Text
Everyone assumed Stiles first meeting with Peter Hale had been the night in the hospital when he and Derek and first figured out that Peter was the Alpha. But everyone was wrong, not that Stiles would ever correct them or anything, but it was still the wrong assumption.
No, Stiles met Peter nearly three years before Scott was ever bitten. Before he ever learned werewolves were real. Before his life got turned upside down and shoved through a freaking blender that shredded his understanding of the world. He met Peter the same day his mom was moved into the hospital. He'd gone to visit her after school, carrying a small bouquet of wild flowers and, in typical Stiles fashion, had gotten himself turned around and wandered into the wrong room.
He stood there for a moment, confused and a bit freaked out, staring at the man in the wheelchair, the man whose face was partially covered in burns. His heart had leapt up into his throat and while some part of him screamed that he should just turn around and leave. But he found himself walking forward, slowly crossing the room. He swallowed nervously as he stopped just a few feet from the chair.
The man hadn't moved. Hadn't looked up. Just sat there. Eyes staring ahead yet not looking at any one thing. It was like the lights were on but no one was home.
Stiles bit his lower lip, debating if this was a good idea, before he slowly inched closer. "Umm...sir?"
Nothing. Not even the slightest twitch of movement.
Once he was closer, close enough to touch really, he found himself slowly sinking into the chair that had been set out. Either the guy had had a visitor recently or was expecting someone. He tried to smile, just in case the man knew what was going on around him, but fell short despite his best attempts. He carefully laid the flowers for his mom on his knee, not wanting anything to happen to them, and drew a shaky breath.
"You...uh...you don't know me...but...uh...I guess...umm..." Stiles rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I don't even know why...I mean...I just kind of wandered in...and well...I don't...see I came to see my mom. She's...She's real sick and they moved her...here but...they don't think she's going to...uh...she's not..."
The words quickly died in his throat and Stiles blinked the tears away. He looked away from the man, trying to occupy his mind for a moment, just to push the fear and pain down so he didn't break down and start bawling like a child. And that's when he noticed the vase of flowers on the little bedside table. They were old, withered and dead, something placed there long ago and forgotten. He wondered then if that's what had happened to this man. Abandoned here because he wasn't whole. Because he wasn't who he might have been before.
Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Stiles looked back at the man, focusing on his face, despite the queasy feeling in his stomach at the sight of the scars.
"You don't get a lot of visitors, huh?" Stiles ran a finger over one of the flowers meant for his mom. "That's...it's not cool. It...It shouldn't matter how you look...you...should still have someone come...someone to...I don't know...talk to you...I guess..."
His phone suddenly chirped and he wrestled it out of his pocket, a text from his dad asking where he was. He drew a deep breath and quickly texted back. A little white lie about having just gotten to the hospital. He tucked the phone back into his pocket, not moving to stand or leave the room. He looked again at the dead flowers on the table, then back at the man. Standing up he carefully took the dead flowers from the vase and replaced them with the ones he'd intended to give to his mom. She'd understand.
He quickly tossed the dead flowers into the garbage can before turning back and smiling at the man again. "So I...I got to go see my mom...for a bit but...uh...maybe I can...I can come back some afternoon and...I dunno...read to you maybe..."
There was no reaction but Stiles felt like the man understood anyways. He touched the man's hand, the one that wasn't burned, and smiled again. "So...yeah...I'll come back tomorrow...and...and read to you." His smile widened a bit. "I promise."
He gave the man's hand a squeeze hoping that it was felt or at least that the man knew he was offering some comfort. After that he turned and walked out of the room, doing the smart thing and asking a nurse for directions to his mom's room.
For nearly three months he kept his promise. He went every day to see his mom for a few hours before he slid silently into that man's room to read to him. Stiles used the book they were reading in English class, because he wasn't much of a reader and usually his reading material leaned towards comic books. It took a few weeks of that before a nurse mentioned the man's name was Peter and that it was nice to see him have a visitor. For nearly three months he went and read to Peter, sat and chatted, even if there was never a response.
But then, one evening, when he was halfway through the newest book, Stiles heard his mom's room being mentioned over the hospital intercom and something about a code blue. He knew, from spending so much time in the hospital, what it meant. The book fell from Stiles' hands as he leapt up, rushing from the room and for his mom's. His dad was already there, catching him before he could get into the room, before he could get to his mom. Holding him. Protecting him.
That night his mom died.
That night he stopped going to the hospital all together.
He knew he should have gone, just to tell Peter why he wouldn't be there any more, but the memories, the grief and sorrow, were drowning him as effectively as water would and he just couldn't do it. So instead he stopped doing anything that would remind him that there was a great big hole in his heart. Part of him screamed that he wasn't doing the right thing, and that he was no different than whoever had previously abandoned Peter, but he just couldn't risk anymore suffering. He couldn't.
Stiles never knew that Peter's nurse had picked up his book, had carefully placed it in the drawer of Peter's bedside table and there it sat until the day that Peter found himself healed enough to move. On that day Peter took the book from the bedside table and flipped through it, the scent laced into the pages from the boy who'd held it was faint, barely there anymore, but it brought a small smile to Peter's face. Reminded him that, for a time, someone had cared.
So the night in the hospital, when he'd come face to face with Stiles again, he'd seen the recognition, the understanding in the boy's eyes and he'd known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wanted the boy in his pack. Bitten or not. This was just the beginning.