Chapter Text
According to the Beacon Beacon, Beacon Hill’s recently incorporated newspaper, Beacon Hill had been undergoing a revival since the reveal of the existence of supernatural people and magic. The local presence of two packs as well as a few well known supernatural rights advocate leaders, in addition to the druid grove that had formed around the Nemeton, had brought more and more fascinated humans and supernatural people looking for a safe place to live. It was now considered (by the Beacon Beacon) ‘the Northern California Mecca of the Supernatural’ (a statement both irreverent and nonsensical, as was typical of the rag; the Beacon Beacon did not attract the highest quality of writers).
The ‘revival’ meant that all of the previously empty storefronts in Beacon Hills’ downtown were gobbled up, shops opening so fast that some weekends you could go to four different ‘opening events’. Among the normal fare of a small town’s downtown area– post offices, banks, a shoe store selling out of fashion leather shoes no one ever went to, a screen printing shop mostly kept in business by children’s sports leagues, a cheap pizza joint, the one ‘fancy’ Italian restaurant frequented by teenagers on awkward fancy dates, a health food and smoothie shop that put too much kale in everything, etc– Beacon Hills also had shops unique to a ‘Mecca of the Supernatural’, the most recognizable of which was a tourist shop that make a killing selling knock-off three-wolf-moon t-shirts, bumper stickers that read ‘Honk if you howl at the moon’, and a variety of fake magical charms, potions, spell books, and potpourri.
But there were genuine magic shops as well if you knew what you were looking for; these tended to be a little more gritty, and clustered together on a side street that had been nicknamed ‘Diagon Alley’ until everyone collectively decided J.K. Rowling was too TERF-y to celebrate and now was generally referred to as ‘Sparkle Street’. This was entirely the doing of one Mieczysław ‘Stiles’ Stilinski, who had graffitied ‘Sparkle Street’ on the side of a building at the head of the street in the middle of the night (although he was quick to protest he hadn’t whenever the topic was addressed).
Stiles had completed his magical education a few years prior in New Orleans (where magic and the supernatural had always been a bit of an open secret) then returned to his hometown to be closer to his dad and childhood friends; Scott McCall, accidental werewolf and vet tech, Alison Argent, one of the leading voices in the hunter reform movement, and Cora Hale, graphic novel writer and all around badass bitch.
He’d opened his own tiny shopfront with a loan from Talia Hale. Originally he’d meant it to be a kind of catch-all magic store, supplying both magic users and the mundane alike; magical supplies, solutions, wards, etc. But not too long after Stilinski’s Supplies opened, Margo’s Magic Emporium opened next door with much more floor space than Stiles had, and then Weixiang’s Well-designed Wards opened a few doors down and, honestly, Weixiang was much better than Stiles at ward craft, so there wasn’t even any competition there, and anyway he was getting enough people in for curses and other weird magical anomalies by that point that it didn’t endanger the running of his shop. So he changed the name, and Weixiang did his wards for him as a bit of an apology, taught him how to make a really effective curse-proof circle, and they went for drinks every Tuesday night, and Margo gave him a discount on magic supplies and shared her grandmother’s rugelach recipe, so in the end everything had turned out all right.
Soon Stilinski’s Fix-It became the place to go if you had a haunted or cursed object (he didn’t do haunted real-estate, not after a poltergeist almost turned him into a Stiles-skewer– every request he passed on to the Hernández brother’s Hauntings and More business).
The majority of his customers were antiques dealers and antiques hunters– word of him had gotten around in the antiques world, since a magical object was much more likely to cause trouble for someone it didn’t know (magical objects rarely caused trouble when they were passed down with love).
And that brings us to the present, with local troublemaker and suspected (but never proven) criminal antiques dealer Peter Hale stepping into Stiles’ shop for the thousandth time.
“I had a wonderful morning, so I should have known I was due for trouble,” Stiles said as Peter entered, not looking up from what he was working on.
“Happy to ruin your day whenever you like, darling” Peter replied in that silky, suggestive voice of his. “You said you were going to call and you didn’t. I was terribly heartbroken.”
“If I recall correctly,” Stiles said, still fully focused on his work, unwinding the curse slowly. “You said I was going to call.”
“That doesn’t sound right.” Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles could see Peter leaning on the counter, poking at an assortment of charms hanging on display.
…
Stiles had first met Peter when he was two, according to Hale family lore. Stiles’ mother had been a witch back when the supernatural reveal happened. Talia Hale had immediately formed a local supernatural support group and Claudia had brought baby Stiles. Peter had been a teenager then, a pretentious philosophy-reading hipster type (so basically the same). Stiles had been a grubby, grabby, babbling baby (so also basically the same) who had, for some reason, made a bee-line for Peter and kept trying to get on his lap, smearing mysterious baby-goo all over his dry-clean only fancy pants. Peter had pushed Stiles away and he’d fallen on his diapered bottom and Stiles, always precocious, had set Peter’s hair on fire with baby-magic. It had had so much product in it it had gone right up in flames, and Laura Hale had had to dumped a pitcher of ice tea all over him to put it out.
Stiles had giggled, the story went. Peter had stomped away in teenage rage.
Peter had held onto the grudge until Stiles was about six. Stiles was always at the Hale house, running around with Cora and conspiring with her to set as many things around Peter on fire as he could manage, from his tattered copy of Nausea to his secret supernatural romance guilty-pleasure reading.
Then Peter had gone to college and Stiles and Cora had to find a new target for their mischievous trouble-making (Derek mainly, since Laura always gave as good as she got. They’d targeted Laura once (made her lipstick melt as she was putting it on) and her retaliation (shaving both of them bald in their sleep) was so extreme they’d realized she was off limits practically right away).
Peter hadn’t come back to Beacon Hills properly for eight years, not until Stiles was fourteen and right in the middle of the horrors of adolescence and questioning his sexuality. One glimpse at Peter cutting wood in the Hale’s backyard, muscles bulging and shiny with sweat, was enough to resolve that question once and for all.
So Stiles had matured from a firebug to a pestering fly, gravitating towards Peter whenever he was around like a clueless moth heading straight for a porch light, babbling the way he always did, with an extra side of nervous incoherence, until Peter got so annoyed he told him to ‘scat’ or got in his car and drove away.
…
While the main Hale house served as a pack house and the home of the alpha’s nuclear family, Peter had decided to build his own dwelling to his own pretentious specifications on the other side of the pack lands. It was a Frank Lloyd Wright knock-off, all glass and stone and designed for indoor-outdoor living. Talia thought it was an eyesore and a waste of money, but Cora claimed she just didn’t like her baby brother living so far away (twenty minutes by car, eight as the werewolf runs). Stiles suspected that Peter’s main motivation had been being able to conduct his burgeoning criminal-adjacent business away from his sister and alpha’s prying eyes.
Of course, Stiles and Cora snuck in when it was finished and spent an afternoon laughing at Peter’s literary tastes, which hadn’t really changed (publicly pretentious and privately pulp), helping themselves to Peter’s artisan bread, expensive cheese, and craft beer, bitter and hoppy. They snuggled into his big leather couch and spent a while messing up the algorithms and watchlists on all his streaming services, then tested out the springs on his bed by jumping up and down on it like they were five and not fifteen.
Stiles, who was a little tipsy at this point, had to run into the bathroom to vomit, missed the toilet and spewed all over the rug, and Cora, who didn’t know what to do, hustled him out of the house and brought him to their old treehouse where they hid until Peter had stopped his angry rampaging.
They’d both been grounded (separately) for their actions and had had to save up their money to buy Peter a new bathroom mat (luckily they didn’t have to replace the stupid $400 bath mat Stiles had ruined) and every time he’d seen Peter for the next seven years or so, Stiles had done his best to avoid him out of pure and overwhelming embarrassment.
…
“What have you got there?” Peter asked, apparently bored of playing with his phone.
“What does it look like?” Stiles blindly reached for his pile of tools and grabbed something that had begun life as a dental pick. He carefully prodded at the inscribed glass.
“A Christmas Ornament with… a rather terrifying depiction of Frosty the Snowman.”
“There you have it.”
“And it’s cursed?”
Stiles spared a glance at him, eyebrow raised.
“What is the curse?” Peter persisted. He was a stubborn, persistent asshole. Stiles hated how much he respected that.
“It sets trees on fire,” Stiles said, very delicately beginning to modify one of the runes.
“The trees it’s hung on?” Peter asked.
“Yep,” Stiles said.
“Is there a delay built in?”
“A random timer. It’s actually fairly brilliant.” Dammit– Peter was always good at drawing Stiles into conversation, well aware that Stiles loved nothing more than to talk about his particular brand of magic.
“Devious. How was it found out?”
“After the third tree fire the owners got suspicious and brought in the Hernándezes.”
“Why not just smash it?” Peter asked. “Are they attached to it?”
“It’s some kind of collectible,” Stiles said. “They’ve got a whole theme going to something.”
“Frosty the Snowman but Terrifying’?”
“I’ve seen your carved animal skull collection, so I don’t know if you have room to talk.”
“Don’t start,” Peter said. “You love my carved animal skull collection. You covet it.”
“Sure, because the vibe I’m going for in my apartment is ‘expensive but creepy’.”
Peter sniffed. “Better than the ‘I went to a thrift store and bought the most hideous things there’ vibe you currently have going.”
“It’s kitsch,” Stiles defended.
“It’s an eyesore. It’s like you took the best styles from every decade and combined them. The last time I was there I had to wash my eyes out with soap.”
“I had to fumigate to get rid of your terrible cologne,” Stiles countered. “I can’t believe a werewolf would wear a smell that vile.”
“I ran to Talia and begged her to remove my memories of the whole evening.”
“I mainlined peppermint extract trying to get rid of the smell.”
“I stole Argent’s wolfsbane pepper spray and sprayed it into my eyes, but sadly it didn’t work.”
“I burned my apartment building down and the smell still lingered in the ashes.”
“Plaid now makes me nauseous.”
“The Argents are now using your cologne to make scent bombs.”
“They’re using your shirts as camouflage because no one can stand to look at it.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Stiles said, finishing up the section of the curse he was working on. “What did you bring today?”
Peter put a ring box on the table. Stiles carefully controlled his heart beat until it no longer threatened to jump out of his chest. He slipped on a pair of gloves and opened the box, revealing a pair of rings.
“The legend is that any couple that uses them is destined to break up within the year,” Peter explained.
“And you want the curse removed?” Stiles said, testing Zia’s gambit on the rings– there definitely was some kind of enchantment on them.
“Hell no,” Peter said. “Do you have any idea how much a pair of rings with this curse is worth?”
Stiles stared at him.
“I’ve got seven potential buyers already.”
“People who want to make sure a couple has no chance?” Stiles guessed.
“Lots of people hate their potential in laws,” Peter agreed, with a shrug.
“That’s horrible,” Stiles said, closing the box again and stripping off the gloves.
“Is it?” Peter asked. “If you’d had the chance to make sure Derek and Jennifer used these rings, would you have?”
Stiles pressed his lips together.
“That’s what I thought.”
“But you’re going to sell them to some rich woman who doesn’t think her future daughter-in-law is good enough for her family, not someone like Derek, who has appalling taste.”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe.” He slipped the box back in his pocket. “I’m not running a charity after all.”
Stiles threw the gloves onto the counter. “And you wonder why we didn’t work out.” He couldn’t even explain why he was so angry so suddenly.
Peter raised his eyebrows, his mouth pressed into a tight line. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite,” he shot back and stormed out of the shop.