The Upward Turn - (Teen Wolf, M, 2/?)

[Garnet]

I wasn't going to post this here but you know what, fuck it. I'm 32 and have watched a few seasons of Teen Wolf in this the year of our lord 2019. It's... it's not a good show. It's actually kind of a trash fire, but fun enough and suffers from a crippling case of Hot Dad Disease. I don't think you need to know much about the show canon to read this, since it ignores almost everything post S3 anyway. If I want to make Peter Hale an ultimately good person and also make him horny for a grouchy widower, that’s my business.

Involves grieving after a major character death, but I tried to present it as a healing scar rather than anything too graphic or overt. 

Not sure how many parts this will be, or if I won't punt it to the Adults Only section eventually, but here you go!

 

---

 

It takes a long, long time to come back from this type of despair.

Chris has grown comfortable with many different types of loss, in his life. He knows the highs and lows of it, knows what it will feel like when it settles into his bones, when time dulls the sharp edges and he can breathe again without it hurting. He's no stranger to grief.

Losing Allison, though. Losing her feels like a missing limb, and it will be hundreds of days and thousands of miles before he learns to live with that reality.

 

---

It's not that he never thinks about that sleepy, wooded little town in Northern California. Some formative parts of Chris's life were spent in Beacon Hills, both when he was younger and... since. Not all of them are good. They were his family's training grounds, where he was beaten, shaped, and refolded over and over like tempered steel for a singular purpose. It's also where he once shoved a lanky werewolf up under the bleachers after school, however, kissing him ardently and thrilling that his father would drown Chris in the lake if he found out. It's where he raised his own family, at least for a little while, but it's also where Allison...

Well.

Beacon Hills isn't the only hotspot for every rogue pixie in the world. There are other nemeta, other configurations of ley lines and telluric currents that drive strife between the supernatural and the human communities. He has his expertise, he can mediate. If all else fails, however he also has a lot of bullets. A hunter can make good work for themselves on the road.
He ranges across Europe for months, trailing jentils and luring church grim to their rightful plots. Chris tries to keep his work honest, now, but he has his days when the pall of everything turns his mood dark, and he gets himself involved with individuals or communities he should have stayed away from. He doesn't always make decisions he's proud of.

He thins and reorganizes and adds to his broad network of contacts, which can be bitter work in and of itself. He has to vet other hunters so carefully now. The Code has as many shades of grey as any other microcosm of human morality. Like any ethic, too, it can take a lifetime to piecemeal together a whole outlook that feels right, that seemsright? But what does he know. He's just one man who's made a lot of mistakes and has no other choice but to spend a lot of with his thoughts.

He's not always lonely. He makes connections. Sometimes they're genuine and meaningful, sometimes they're just flings and fairweather friends. The Argent name has stretched far and wide for centuries, but Chris is reluctant to use it as leverage, or even mention it in conversation. Those waters have bad blood in them, now. Instead, he keeps his head low and his skills close to his chest until such a time as they become convenient.

He spends a month with a small clan of hunters on the Breton coast. Very small, intimately small, just a husband and wife, her grandmother, and their two adult daughters. He spends a month sleeping in their spare room, cooking in their kitchen, playing cards at the table and flushing out a reoccurring population offeu follet from the local harbors. The family barely knew what they were doing before he spent a night in the town, a waypoint to his next destination. They have hardly any resources left to them from older generations, but Chris does and his damned soft spot for weak but willful things makes him stay. It's the closest he gets to feeling grounded again, that pull of domesticity and clan and belonging. He doesn't dare to use the F word.

Of course he's right out the door the second they finally uncover the source of all the wayward souls, when parts of the shipwreck start washing ashore. Take it from here, kids. He has feelings to run from.

After that, he spends a solid week with a su iyesi in Antalya, all drunken sin and debauchery, shop talk and snark and no personal connection at all. It cleanses his soul a little bit.

He's not that he never thinks about Beacon Hills. He has too many memories not to let it drift in and out the way it does, sometimes organically and sometimes forced. He still has his finger lightly on its pulse, and just enough contacts left in the area to know that no news is good news. After a couple rough years of everything bad in the world, the little community has finally hit its stride of self-governing werewolves and druids and what few trusted hunters he had left behind. It's fine, Chris isn't avoiding it, not pretending it never happened.

There's just no reason for him to ever go back, is all.

 

---

It's been over a year when his latest burner phone finally lights up with a text that convinces him otherwise. He's already been appraised of the situation back ho-- back in California by some of the contacts he's left there, and they're concerning, but Chris can't quite get a good read on the picture from afar. A series of supernatural disappearances and rumors of a ragtag band of hunters for hire in the area, definitely operating outside the Code unless they're really tweaking their definition. It's really nothing too out of the ordinary for Beacon Hills.

Although he rarely exchanges any words with the current reigning Alpha, it finally takes a plea disguised as a tip from Scott to grudgingly sway his mind. He's not currently in the middle of anything better, after all.

So, Chris packs up his meager belongings and rearranges his flight itinerary. He feels the wayward emotions on the fringes of his consciousness already starting to crowd in, eager for an excuse to exist again, but he neatly puts that baggage away as well. It's a business trip, and nothing more. He'll be in and out as soon as the situation is reasonably handled.

That's still the plan when he rents a cheap-ish motel on the outskirts of town for a week, and meets Scott and a couple of the pack members in a diner even further outside of Beacon Hills. It's worth it to keep a low profile for a while, they all agree, while they suss out the situation.

There's frustratingly little that the pack has managed to glean on their own so far, which is disappointing. Chris knows for a fact that at least a few pack members have a good bit of intelligence clout under their belt, but he doesn't ask questions. Lots of things can change in a year. Still, they've only got a couple of suspected individuals so far on the hunter front, nothing concrete. The only thing they can confirm for sure are the murders of a couple Omegas that had been passing through the territory last month.

"Two dead Omegas doesn't a rogue hunter make," Chris warns wearily, over his black coffee. He doesn't have much of an appetite. He arrived earlier that night with a bone-deep ache and a throbbing sensation in his head that lingers too long to be chalked up to air pressure change, from the airplane. It's that vague, back-of-the-throat unwellness that warns of a routine cold trying to settle in and make space for itself in his head. It's not really that unexpected, after a long flight in close quarters with plenty of fomites. He's been running himself ragged even before this, before threatening to pick at old wounds until he pries them open. His otherwise rugged immune system is still only human, and it was bound to give out some time.

He doesn't have the patience to nurse that shit for a week, though, on top of what is still in many ways a band of unruly puppies. Instead, he says nothing and drinks enough swill coffee that the faint, tarry burn of it becomes indistinguishable from other discomforts.

"We know that," Lydia answers carefully. Chris has learned to kind of turn his brain off to Scott, but it's still a little difficult to look at the young banshee's primly pursed lips and not get fleeting images of her spending the night at their house, cradling Allison's feet in her lap as she paints her nails and gives her exhaustive lectures on all the eligible teenaged bachelors she's missing out on. He blinks to clear the memory, and takes another slow sip of coffee. "But they were killed with wolfsbane bullets. It's pretty hard to get a hold of those unless you know a hunter, and all of the locals we know of are still in your pocket. Aren't they?"

Chris hums noncommittally, but it's not a no.

"Erego, not out killing innocent Omegas," Lydia finishes.

Chris rubs a thoughtful thumb and forefinger at the inside corners of his eyes, grateful that he doesn't have to downplay how exhausted he feels. A day of travel will do that to anyone.

"About that. There's two issues at hand here: who took out them out and why. It's true that any hunter I'd back would own their kill, if it was done out of necessity. That points a convincing finger at whoever shot those bullets, but how much do you know about these Omegas?"

Lydia frowns. "I mean. They weren't pack, obviously, but they did everything by the books." She drums her polished nails against the cracked, cheap veneer of the diner table in thought, making a sound like dice in a tumbler. If it hadn't been a universal decision to meet here, Chris doubts that Lydia would be caught dead in this kind of dive, picking at the limp remains of a Caesar salad. The thought makes him smile a little bit, on the inside.

"Amy and Jasper followed etiquette. They informed us well in advance what they'd be doing near Beacon Hills, made sure we didn't see them as a threat. They even talked to your people so nobody felt like they were getting the drop on us. Scott and Liam and I met up with them the first night they got in town, but we didn't get any fishy vibes."

"And they still got whacked," Scott grumbles. "On our territory. That looks so bad. That's so.."

Lydia ignores him and folds her hands on the table, primly. She's not a wolf, and has no problem ignoring her technical Alpha to take charge of the situation. Even if seeing her is a little bit painful, Chris is grateful she's here. Scott's a good kid, just... such a dumbass sometimes. "It doesn't explain the witch bottle we found, either."

Chris resists the urge to snort, if only because his sinuses are a little tender. That's another part of this equation, sure, but he's less convinced about how well it fits in. "Witches make enemies all the time, there's no guarantee it was a hit by a hunter."

He's not actually trying to defend these suspect killers, if that's what they are. Playing Devil's Advocate is a good way to take some of the bias out of a situation, though. It helps to examine it from all angles. A lot of the pack are still kids, and prone to being stubborn and rash. Chris can't be too angry -- he was stubborn and rash to the core, when he was their age. Not for the first time, though, he kind of wishes that there were more adults in this situation, at least fewer teenagers. He supposes they're all young adults now, cusping 18 and on the verge of scattering the pack to the wind as they all head off to college in the coming months.

He refuses to let himself think about Allison doing the same.

"Nora did everything by the books, too," Scott offers. "I mean, we didn't know her that well... she was new, kinda," Scott admits, scratching uncomfortably at the back of his neck. "Between your people and ours, I just... feel like we've had a pretty good handle on everyone in the area, for a bit. Everyone's been checked out at least once, it's weird to have a witch get killed by a pretty archaic method like that."

Chris doesn't mention that he's a bit surprised at Scott for using big words like archaic, but he is right. The kind of knowledge an effective witch bottle requires isn't common, and isn't easy. Not something that could be cobbled together out of a few old books and hearsay. By all accounts, Nora was human, and there are scores of easier ways to take those out than the brutal, magical unmaking of a witch. Even if it isn't hunters, for hire or for their own contorted reasoning, Chris is a little concerned about what kind of person is out in Beacon Hills fashioning witch bottles.

He doesn't know what to think yet, but all of the information so far leaves him rubbing his temples and wondering if maybe he should have booked more than a week. This might not be just some light reconnaissance work and an experienced voice of reason, after all.

"I'll talk to my people, do some groundwork," Chris says, once they've spent another half an hour cobbling together information and poking at runny eggs that have long gone cold.

"If I don't--..." He starts, but the thick, bitter coating of bad coffee finally catches up with him. His throat stings sharp, and he turns to duck a quick, harsh fit of coughs into his shoulder. It drags on a bit longer than he can chalk up to a bad swallow, or a random tickle, but he pulls a couple of careful, shredded breaths, clears his throat firmly, and gets a hold of himself. They kids are polite enough not to say anything. "Sorry. I'll be in touch."

Scott keeps looking at him uncomfortably after the conversation is tying itself up, though. There's a bevy of emotions writ plain in his puppyish features and steepled brows. Chris doesn't want to unpack or receive any of them.

"Are you, uh, okay Mr. Argent?" Chris narrows his eyes, but Scott's widen as he hastily stumbles to clarify a thought that hadn't actually crossed Chris's mind, for the first time in five minutes, until he mentions it. "I didn't mean-- ... I meant... you just sound like you're maybe coming down with something."

Chris takes a slow, guarded breath. Easy, now.

"I doubt it," he says. He learned to control the slow, steady rhythm of his heart when he was just a teenager, and he has a lot of experience with lying to werewolves. Especially over something so trivial. He instead gives Scott a tight, wry little smile instead and snags the check for the midnight breakfast before anyone can protest. "Just say no to cigarettes, alright kids?"

They don't need to know that he stopped smoking when he was 28, and never looked back.

Then he's up, stretching to hide the tension and hurt starting to coil in his muscles, and headed out to the rental car and a particularly poor night's sleep.

 

---

The second day in Beacon Hills isn't much more productive than the night previous. It doesn't help that Chris only manages to snag a couple hours of sleep, jetlagged and stiff on a stale and crinkly hotel mattress. He doesn't really care about the less than stellar accommodations. He has slept on the ground or out under the stars more times than he can count. He's not picky. By the time he jerks awake to the tinny screech of the motel alarm, however, he can already tell that the scratchy throat and prickling sinuses aren't going anywhere. He's going to enjoy this nice, bitter reunion with California's local supernatural epicenter while sick as a dog.

But there's no point in ruing the inevitable, so Chris just gets his shit together. He showers, doesn't shave even though his beard is no longer neatly-trimmed and is getting a bit wild. He stops at the gas station just down the road for more stale coffee and a breakfast sandwich that has probably been sitting under the heat lamp for a couple hours at least. It doesn't matter, because everything has that same faintly metallic taste that comes with the early stages of sickness, when his throat and the spaces behind his jaw feel sore and hot anyway. Also, his sustenance standards are about as exacting as his sleep ones.

He keeps up with a network of hunters and the supernatural all up and down the West Coast. Not as many as he once did, but not as exclusively biased either. Two of the sources he still trusts near Beacon Hills are ex-hunters, Daniel Marsh and Ava Torres. Nominally ex-hunters, anyway. He doesn't doubt that either of them would pick up a rifle or a crossbow if they had to. Like Chris, however, they've let their roles evolve with the changing times.

Neither of them are Argents, yet his family has employed them both before. If the Argents had anything to their name, beyond centuries of tradition, it was no shortage of lackeys. He doesn't consider either of them that now, of course, but there's still a strange sort of energy in the air to join them in their 4Runner and head for the woods way up north of the Preserve for an afternoon of tracking and spitballing.

"How well did you know the witch?" Chris asks, holding a close leash on one of Marsh's shepherd mixes as it roots nose-down through the leaf litter. Every allied wolf within miles has already been over these trails, he's sure, but it doesn't hurt to do repeat sweeps, especially if there's been activity since.

That's one of the things he's missed, in his nomadic lifestyle. The Argents raised beaucerons and mastiffs before -- big, muscular powerhouses that were unafraid of going toe to toe with a werewolf. He's missed that sort of non-human camaraderie in a different way.

Torres shrugs, as she inspects marks on a nearby tree. She quickly dismisses them as a bear rub, versus anything supernatural in origin, and squints back at Chris.

"Nora? I don't know, well enough. She'd been in Beacon Hills for about four months. Quiet, cottage witch type. Shy girl. We knew she was here before the wolves did, but don't think she knew that we knew." She scratches her jaw thoughtfully, as if trying to untangle her own phrasing and make sure it's sensible. She nods once, brisk, and goes on. "It's why she reached out to them first, I'm guessing, but Marsh went by her place a few times, didn't you?"

Marsh shrugs, looking halfway sheepish. "She makes good brownies."

Chris resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. It's only in part because the air out here, away from the city, has a crispness to it. A bite. It's clear and unseasonably cold in his nose and lungs, for California, but he's not complaining because it makes him feel a little light-headed. It's because it makes his nose want to run, and he was hoping to stave that off for at least another few hours.

It's also because he likes Marsh, truly, but he's a little bit of a dope.

Instead, Chris hauls in a sharp sniff, clears his throat without it sticking too much, and sighs. "And we're sure the witch bottle was intended for her?"

Marsh licks his lips. "We brought it to Deaton, he confirmed the uh... the magic's intent?" He looks uncertain, and seems to know it. "I don't know how to explain it. The way he did made sense, I just..."

Chris saves him with a brusque nod. Deaton's always had his own agenda, and Chris makes a mental note to speak to him directly about the matter. He doesn't resist touching his nose this time, and digs a thumb against the bridge when it prickles faintly. Not now.

"That," Torres says, the roll of her eyes nearly visible beneath her shades. "And the wolves think that some of the hair in the bottle was hers. It was all kind of muddle togeth--... "

She trails off, abruptly, looking at Chris with a wrinkle forming in her brow. It's understandable. He's taken a habitual step back, despite that he, Torres and Marsh are fanned out more then twenty feet from each other. His attention has clearly drifted from the conversation, because that faint prickle has surged upwards, stinging into the tender spot behind and between his eyes, until he's forced to take in a sharp breath.

The first sneeze of an incumbent cold is always such a big, dramatic affair for him, and he has to take an actual moment to brace himself, make sure he's still holding tight to the dog's leash, before letting it double him forward.

"HEIJSHH-oo!"

It's sharp on the side of loud, declarative, and leaves his eyes wet and his whole head ringing. Chris is slightly embarassed even as he scrubs his face against the back of his hand and pretends nonchalance. He can bite them down, stifle into near-silence for stealth and if he really has to. Without a great degree of effort, however, it falls into the category of what Allison had once teasingly described as a Dad Sneeze.

Kill him.

"Bless," Torres says, regarding him with arched brows. Chris nods gruffly in acknowledgement. She looks like she's about to say more, but thankfully he's saved by the shepherd's sudden short, sharp wruff.

It brings its head up, whole body canted forward right to the point of its ears. All three hunters come to attention as Chris lets out a little of the lead. The dog plows further out through the leaves, snuffling and turning in little circles, tracking with suddenly fervent intensity.

"Damn, he actually has something?" Marsh murmurs as he hauls his own hound close.

Chris's dog bulls on ahead, with Chris letting out so much slack that they eventually have to jog to catch up. The lead goes taught against his fingers when the shepherd hits a fever pitch, baying wildly, so Chris lets him fly and brings the same hand automatically to the holster hidden under the jacket. In the corners of his eyes, he sees Torres and Marsh doing the same.

The shepherd bounds on ahead like a freight train, barking like a hellhound, but Chris's pace starts to brake with suspicion, because the pile of brush it's barreling towards looks only small enough to contain...

... the raccoon that suddenly erupts from beneath it and flies up the nearest tree, shrieking and hissing. The shepherd dances around its base, whining piteously.

Chris turns Marsh a slow, deadpan look.

"Ahhh... what are the chances that that's a supernatural raccoon?" He tries, as he hands his dog off to Torres and scrambles forward to reclaim the shepherd's lead, cheeks hot. "Could be a... uh... a shapeshifter, you know?"

It... maybe wouldn't be an unfair question to ask, with the way that their lives go, but Chris is in no mood. He rubs a hand across his eyes and allows himself a deep, indulgent, irritated sniffle with the hope that it's masked by the dog's ruckus.

"I think... not likely."

"Sorry, Chris. We're still working this one," Marsh admits, his face still a little red. Chris can't be too mad. It's not like they have whole, sprawling clans to back them, now, so he vents his irritation in the form of a sigh. It aborts itself in a series of quick, muffled coughs into his jacket.

Torres looks at him with a flicker of concern, annnd that's his cue.

"You two keep combing. I'm going to go give Deaton a call," he croaks, and retreats back to the 4Runner. Thank God that his word is mostly still law with these two. Neither witness the spastic, irritated coughing fit he's overcome with, once barricaded inside the truck. It's not the deep-chested, ravaging hack that it's going to be in a few days, but it still scrapes his throat raw, and Chris spends a few moments afterwards just catching his breath with his face in his hands.

This is... maybe going to be slightly more hell than he bargained for.

 

---

The call with Deaton wasn't, unfortunately, any more enlightening than searching the woods. The pack has been doing their own sleuthing, but no one seems to have much to go on. It's frustrating, but he'll have more outlets to explore tomorrow. He's hoping for the clarity that more than a couple hours of sleep will bring.

Chris is already practically nodding off when he gets back to the motel that night. He's also regretting not stopping by the store to pick up some cold medicine, or at least tissues. Future him is going to hate past him so much, in the morning. He can't quite bring himself to crawl back into the car, though, so he just snikts the keycard into the lock, fumbles tiredly with the door handle, and freezes.

The back of his neck prickles with a sixth sense of dread awareness. Then there's a soft rustle, and in a splitsecond Chris has his back to the door and a semi-automatic trained on a werewolf. More specifically, a murderous undead werewolf, who is one hundred percent the last thing Chris needs in his life right now.

Peter Hale leans against Chris's rental with his arms folded over his chest, head cocked slightly to one side.

"It's good to see you too," he says, a smile in his voice, when Chris doesn't immediately change his posture or lower the gun. Peter makes him feel a lot of things, and relief is certainly not one of them.

"Hale," he greets curtly, eyes hard. Peter just keeps looking back at him calm expectancy, so finally, slowly, he lowers the weapon and sighs. "... what do you want?"

"I can't greet an old friend when I hear that he's back in town?" Peter blinks. His innocent puppy face has always left something to be desired. Especially now, when the years have filled him out into the compact, muscular little scrapper that he was always meant to be, looking like sin and dressing like he knows it.

Chris is far too tired to entertain those thoughts, but also too tired to squash them. Instead, he sighs again and rubs his face. "We're not friends," he says, which is true. Even when Chris was active in Beacon Hills, he and Peter might have shared a similar orbit. Their presences brushed off each other occasionally, but there was always an element of willful distance. Chris had been married, with a daughter, and Peter has been a piece of work since he was born. Long before a series of personal tragedies left him with memories and morals like swiss cheese.

"Unless you've got something immediately, pressingly pertinent, I'm tired and going to bed." He doesn't mean to sniffle after he says it, but the momentary shock of adrenaline is trickling back out, and his headache and runny nose haven't gone anywhere.

"Maybe I do," Peter shrugs. "Can I assume that the disappearance of our visiting Omegas and one particularly likable kitchen witch has something to do with why you're here?"

Chris narrows his eyes. He has no reason to believe that Peter isn't involved with the matter, and there's no telling which side of the equation he even falls on. The wolf has always had his own agenda, and Chris doesn't trust anything he says for a second.

He's also still processing Allison, in the midst of all this. He doesn't want to be processing Peter, too.

Weary and aggravated with himself, Chris elbows the door handle open.

"Come. You've got five minutes, and if I see a single claw I'm going to shoot you right between the eyes."

Peter brightens, and brushes past Chris, who holds the door open with his body so he never has to put his back to the wolf.

"You were always such a charmer, Chris."

Chris ignores him, and sinks onto the foot of the single bed, beginning to unlace his boots and unstrap his holsters. The gun doesn't go anywhere, though, sitting right beside him on the cheap and ugly motel quilt. He's a quick draw.

While he dresses down from the rigors of the day, Peter paces the perimeter of the room curiously, inspecting the outdated coffee pot, opening a couple of the drawers that Chris hasn't bothered to put anything into. He picks up the Bible stashed inside by some well-meaning Gideon, and thumbs its pages briefly. His nose wrinkles.

"I understand that you're living under a certain... aesthetic now, but you could do a lot better for yourself than The Carriage House," Peter says, gesturing to their surroundings. He's not wrong. The Argents were old money, like the Hales, and Chris has the means. He shrugs.

"You're wasting your minutes."

"Are you keeping track?" Peter smiles, and rubs his neat goatee in thought. "Fine. How much did our True Alpha and his misfit puppies tell you about the Omegas?"

Chris rocks a hand side to side, but he's not disinterested. He is feeling his cold, though, the more his body relaxes, and thinks he maybe might have to sneeze again. He'd rather not be too symptomatic in front of Peter. He settles for a cautious sniffle, and a swallow. "Information was a little limited, but they seemed supportive."

"Mmm," Peter hums, strolling a few steps closer. Chris rests his hand pointedly on the bed, next to the gun. Peter stills obediently, but doesn't show his own hands, where they're clasped lightly behind his back. "Trusting little optimists, aren't they? Even after everything. I took the liberty of looking into them a little more closely, of course."

At that, Chris arches a brow. "You know, I'm a little surprised to see you still hanging around Beacon Hills at all. You're not exactly pack, are you?"

Some emotion passes over Peter's face, gone too quickly to identify, before he resets into his default smarm. "Words hurt, Chris. My family will always be pack, whether I like it or not, and I've never needed more than a thread," he shrugs. "Besides, without you around who can I trust to wrangle all these half-cocked teenagers. Melissa? The Sheriff?"

Chris actually huffs a little breath of amusement at that, even if it stings his throat a bit. "Alright. Go on."

Peter looks at him for a second, then complies. "Jasper was an Omega from the Anderson pack up in Spokane. It was a small pack, but an old one. At least as old as the Hales."

"You said 'was'," Chris says, sniffling a little more and pressing a thumb carefully near the bridge of his nose. It's been consumed with a constant sort of low-grade itch all day, but it's a bit worse now. He tries to ignore it.

"I did say 'was', because the Anderson pack ran afoul of a coven several years back that wiped them out almost completely."

"I vaguely remember that," Chris sniffs, and swallows hard.

"Yes, you would have. A hunter family came down over the border from Canada to take care of the witches. Too little too late, I'm afraid. What I don't have access to is their report on the matter. Obviously according to our side of the equation," he says, with a motion towards himself. The werewolf side. "... the Anderson pack did no wrong, but it's certainly unusual for a coven to out-of-the-blue decide to decimate a stable pack that they'd been living peacefully near for years. It begs questions."

Chris digests that information. "I might have a few strings I could pull to get the records. And Amy?"

"A little harder to track down," Peter admits, politely ignoring Chris's increasingly frequent sniffles. "She admitted upfront that she was a bitten werewolf, non-consensual," he says, looking a little... something. Like it's never far from Chris's mind how Scott ended up furry and fanged at all. He's not wrong, but Chris doesn't tell him that he can't one hundred percent blame Peter for his actions when he was completely out of his mind.

"I haven't been able to find the Alpha that bit her. It may have no bearing on any of it," he shrugs, then pauses when Chris utters a soft, inadvertent breath following by a shivery inhale.

He's already sick of interrupting people with his sneezing, but there's not much he can actually do but press a sleeve to his nose and let himself wrench viciously over his own lap.

"--hd'JSSHHH-uh!" He tries to unfold, pry his eyes open, but ugh it itches like tiny claws in his sinuses, and the most Chris can manage is another long and shaky breath. "--HEHJSHHH-oo!"

It's awful. He barely feels relieved afterwards but he pushes through it with a wet sniff and forces himself to look up. Clear this throat. Get on with it.

"Gesundheit," Peter says softly, simply. Chris expects some snide remark or ribbing to follow, but to his surprise Peter doesn't add anything else.

"...thank you," he rasps at last, and clears his throat. "And the witch?"

Peter rocks his head side to side slightly, bringing the thick musculature of his neck to definition. "Also frustratingly vague. They never even found her body, just blood and fingernails. It's officially still a missing person's case."

Chris grimaces. "There isn't always one, when a witch bottle is involved, but good to know." He doesn't ever want to be grateful for Peter Hale, but he can at least say that the man has his fingers in more pies than Scott's pack does. Based on his willingness to surrender that information to Chris, hopefully it also means that he's in the same corner. He can't be sure yet.

Peter might actually be thinking the same thing, because he considers Chris for another moment, before showing his hands in a careful, palms-out surrender and stepping forward. Chris allows it, glaring warily, right up until Peter is close enough to give his shoulder a light squeeze. He does so, and then steps back.

That's... surprising. He knows that wolves are tactile, even to the most casual contacts. It's still a strange moment to be touched by anyone familiar, by Peter especially, and it's only by luck and Chris's cold-dulled reflexes that he didn't snap immediately for the gun.

"... I'm glad you're here, if I'm honest. It's been dull, and it's like the puppies forgot how to do all of this, for a while."

Chris blinks slowly, but rises to accompany Peter to the door, as he edges towards it. He'd been fully prepared on having to kick the werewolf out with mountain ash and squared shoulders and thunder, but he'll take this small reprieve.

"It feels surreal," he admits, sniffs, and chucks a knuckle briefly under his nose. "But... yes. I'll talk to the Sheriff tomorrow. Do you..." His eyes squeeze shut for a moment. "I don't even have your number anymore."

Peter smirks patiently, and holds out a hand for his phone. When he passes it back, he's entered himself under the contacts as Old Flame. With emojis.

"You flatter yourself," Chris says dryly.

"Get some sleep," Peter replies, lofty, then he ambles out into the night.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2019 by Garblin

[Mr. Black Cherry Berry Tea]

Hi. I am nearly 30 and I too have enjoyed quite a bit of Teen Wolf (fanfic) and a smaller quantity of this mediocre-to-bad television program. Also I adored this. Please write more, I love it.

(and everything post S3 is irrelevant.)

[Garnet]

On 3/6/2019 at 4:49 PM, Mr. Black Cherry Berry Tea said:

Hi. I am nearly 30 and I too have enjoyed quite a bit of Teen Wolf (fanfic) and a smaller quantity of this mediocre-to-bad television program. Also I adored this. Please write more, I love it.

(and everything post S3 is irrelevant.)

I think that we've had pretty similar experiences in digging through Teen Wolf fanfic, and I appreciate that ❤️

Also, thank you! Here's some more.

 

Chris manages to snag more than a couple of hours, this time around, but the motel mattress is just as shitty as it was the first night, and his cold has made the executive decision that it's not going anywhere. It takes almost a full half hour for him to drag himself towards consciousness, like a part of his brain is desperately trying to spare him from getting up and being forced to process the full extent of his gaining misery. It's not like his waking brain can ignore the thick, warm sludge that he feels behind his eyes, at the back of throat, and creeping into his lungs. In point of fact, he spends a long time doubled over the thin blankets, feeling hungover and throbbing as he coughs for several minutes, until his throat is dragged raw.

He's had better starts to the day.

Supernatural disappearances and potential bands of roving, unchecked guns-for-hire hunters don't take sick days, though, so by 9 AM he's up and choking down another cup of hideous gas station coffee, foregoing the breakfast sandwich this time. His appetite isn't really there, and even his college-aged self might have taken a beat to consider a second round with that particular brand of plastic cheese and indistinguishable meat product.

The first order of business is purchasing a refurbished, cheap laptop from the nearest Best Buy forty minutes outside of town. It's an annoying time-suck, but all of Chris's bestiaries and personal records are stored on thumb drives, and for more than a year he's just been relying on any platform that gets the job done. He left his last, janky Asus in Italy four months ago.

It takes him the morning to hone in on the Desjardins family that finalized the incident in Washington. Samantha Desjardins, who is a ferocious and no-nonsense whip of a hunter at just twenty-four, takes the call.

"Wish I could have some neatly tied-up ends to tell you," she says, after they've made their niceties and established the case. She's friendly enough, recognizes the Argent name, but remains wisely guarded. Chris can still hear her thumbing through some paper copies of records in the background. She's already promised to send him the full files in digital. "We were really just damage control, you know."

"I know," Chris sighs, looking wearily down at his screen. He's glad to have gotten through to the Desjardins at all, but isn't so sure how useful they'll be. Maybe it's just the headcold making him pessimistic. "I appreciate anything, at this point. You said a witch from the coven had married into the pack?"

"Lila Keering, mm-hmm. Not to an actual were, though, but to the pack's emissary, Adrian Vonner. A real Romeo and Juliet situation," Samantha says drily. Maybe not so stark a contrast as werewolf and hunter, but it's still not that common for the supernatural to mingle outside their species.

"And her death a month out was ruled a suicide."

"The local PD couldn't find anything to contraindicate it. Neither could we. Keering had a history of mental illness, for whatever that's worth." Chris grimaces to himself in acknowledgement. In their world, the two often go hand in hand. Even when they don't, the oblivious general public make that connection more easily than witches and werewolves running around the Pacific Northwest.

"But obviously the coven felt differently?"

"The Sisters of the Black Branch actually took the whole thing alright, from what we could tell. Obviously we couldn't chase down any of the pack to corroborate, only local contacts. The pack mostly kept to themselves. It wasn't until Vonner made a private appointment with the Sisters that he admitted he'd coerced his fiance into suicide."

Chris frowns deeply and tak-taks out a few notes on the laptop. He's not recording the phone call, a gesture of good will towards the Desjardins, but he is keeping a personal log of their conversation. "Why the hell would he admit to that?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. He had a whole story cooked up, though. One of those anti-magic purists that thought weres were the superior species. You know the type?" Chris does know the type, but only faintly.

Most werewolf supremacist groups are smart enough to keep their heads down around hunters, so he hardly ever hears of them in practice. His family pushed the propaganda on him, of course, but Chris is experienced enough now to realize it would be also be suicide on the whole pack's fault to make that kind of stance. Against an established coven with a huge family of hunters like the Desjardins just a couple hours north? The whole thing sounds off.

"He said the coven needed to pack up its bags before they ended up like Lila. He implicated the whole pack in the sentiment, and he seemed to have the receipts to back it up. Phone logs, paper trails, private accounts. The coven kept everything that Vonner showed them, and transferred the evidence to us after the fact. We couldn't find any forgeries, but you're very right if you're thinking it all came out of left field."

Chris makes a soft sound in his throat with agreement, then quickly pulls away from the phone to muffle a quick, pulsing string of coughs against his arm. "Sorry," he croaks, when he returns the receiver to his ear. "I was thinking that exactly. My contact implied the Anderson pack and the Sisters had been coexisting for decades. Why hide it so long, or make a move suddenly? A change in internal politics?"

"That was the coven's suspicion," Samantha sighs, crackling over the line. "They reached out to the Alpha, but according to the Sisters, the pack stonewalled them at every attempt. The whole thing was a mess. Obviously they kept Vonner in their immediate custody for a couple of days, tried to figure out the appropriate course of action without tipping off the locals. They'd actually reached out to us the same day that the witch bottle turned up."

Chris's stomach sours a little, he's not sure if it's with dread or adrenaline or just the lack of anything but coffee in his system. "An actual witch bottle?"

"Mm-hmm. We've still got it down in the vault. The thing's all teeth and urine, it's absolutely disgusting. Seemed to all belong to Lila. Everything mobilized pretty quickly after that, as you can imagine."

Chris digs the thumb and forefinger of one hand into the corner of his eyes. This conversation wasn't exactly safe to have in one of Beacon Hills' few cafes, but he needs to get out of the hotel room now. The air is stale, and he needs to talk to the Sheriff. Then the pack. Maybe Peter, too, in the quite likely event that he knows more about the Omegas and the Anderson pack than what he initially told Chris. "Would you still send me the full records? Photographs and all."

"Of course," Samantha agrees, but he can hear the firm trust in her voice as she adds, "Provided that you send us all the details about our long lost Omega."

"I will as soon as I have them," Chris agrees. He's been doing his level best not to cough, sniffle, or even breath too heavily near the phone, but he's about reached his time limit on keeping symptoms under wraps. He allowed himself the quick, damp curl of a sniff, and hurriedly disengages. It probably sounds more like he suddenly has a great lead than that he needs to sneeze imminently, but Samantha doesn't need to disbelieve that. "You've been so helpful, Samantha, I really appreci--..." His breath half-wavers, and only by sheer willpower does he reign it in, face scrunching. "I appreciate it. I've got to go make some calls, but I'll be in touch."

He just manages to hit the End Call button before dropping the phone onto the bed and twisting aside to avoid spraying the laptop.

"H'JSSZSHH-uh!" Chris waits for a fuzzy, stinging moment, the sensation having temporarily wiped clean the hundred thoughts buzzing through his head. It would be almost zen, if he didn't inevitably have to draw in that sharp second breath, and practically jerk his neck out of place with the follow-up sneeze. "--HUH'JSSHH-ue!"

He's pretty sure his neighbors on both sides of the motel room can hear him, but fuck it. At least no one is actually born visual witness to the dreary sight as he pulls himself back together. He really, really should have picked up tissues while he was at the store, because the thin roll of motel toilet paper is absolutely not cutting it anymore.

All things considered, though, it's the least of his concerns.

 

---

A brief stop at the police station makes Chris glad of two things: that Sheriff Stilinski has been thoroughly brought on-board with the supernatural, and that his son is taking an early semester at Berkley.

Chris knows it's not the boy's fault, he knows that. Stiles is a good kid, and wouldn't have ever meant any of it. He can't blame him. He doesn't. Even so, it's hard enough to look John in the face right now, nevermind...

He corrals his own thoughts back to the present headache rather than past trauma, with another guiding sip of bitter coffee. The police department's brew is better than the diner or the gas station tar, but just barely.

"Sure you don't want some tea? We've got more than just a token couple bags of Lipton's, I promise," the Sheriff gauges him carefully, from behind the desk. Chris shakes his head, and sniffs carefully. He gave the Sheriff (and himself) the token allowance of accepting a single tissue from the box nudged surreptitiously to the edge of the desk. He's planning on making it last throughout their entire meeting.

"I'm fine, John. Thank you." He glances back to ensure that the Sheriff's office door is not just shut, but also locked, before turning back with a sigh. "I don't imagine you can get me the full records."

The Sheriff massages his mouth with one hand, leaning his elbows on the desk and looking at at Chris with eyes that are always seamed and warm, but also permanently exhausted. "I can't get you squat, because we barely have any records. Her criminal background's squeaky clean, and the rest of it is so milquetoast it makes my social life look exciting." He flicks his gaze towards the blind-shaded windows for emphasis of the gossiping reception and dispatch.

"No friends, family?" Chris prods, as he folds the tissue carefully in one hand, downplaying the action, then presses it briefly against the nostril that seems to have a better chance at leaking. Even the softer touch of the tissue is starting to sting a bit, after a day and a half of scraping by with napkins, toilet tissue, and jacket cuffs.
"Parents deceased, extended family all scattered to the wind years ago. We managed to get in contact with an estranged brother that left home when he was sixteen, but he hadn't spoken to Nora since she was nine."

Chris sighs heavily through parted lips. "And no evidence of any... mentor? A self-taught spellcaster?"

John cuts him a slightly cautious glance, because even in this modicum of privacy, they're still surrounded on all sides by people who are mostly unaware of things like witches. Not the real ones, anyway. "Her record includes a small botanical shop in Connecticut she worked at for a couple of months, that's my only guess. We've got contacts in the area scoping it out, but so far nothing out of the ordinary."

"And the rest of her employment history?"

John finally huffs a frustrated sigh. "A car wash, a gas station attendant, a Wendy's near San Diego. Is any of this ringing any bells for you, Chris? Because it all seems to dead end for us. The only people who seem to know a damned thing about this woman are a bunch of extra hairy teenagers and your goons."

Chris closes his eyes, takes a moment and tries to remind himself that the Sheriff, too, has had a very difficult year. He's just as frustrated as Chris, and snapping back at him won't do them any favors.

The gradual and inexorable failure of the tissue to keep up with his cold also forces him to pause his thoughts, so. There's that. He sniffs quickly behind the cover of one hand, then again, and finally a third time with a wobbly breath that he's growing too familiar with. It's like he doesn't even get a choice to fight this o--

"H'DJSHHH!"

He throttles it mostly down, choked into his throat and sinuses, but it still feels like a depth charge rocking through him, and it's taking longer and longer to recover each time. Sniffling woozily, he doesn't miss the Sheriff huffing out a soft bless you. Chris waves him off.
"... sorry," John apologizes first, drumming his fingers on well-worn oak. "I didn't mean... I just hoped we were past some of this, for a while. Back to routine traffic stops and minor break-ins at the liquor store." He rubs his face.

"I get the sentiment. But you're never going to be past it, living here," Chris rasps softly. "Especially not knowing what you know now. It's the nature of the beast." If a place were a beast. Beacon Hills feels like it.

John's expression does... something, Chris isn't sure whether it's sad or resigned. But his forehead steeples, he sits back, and nods once. That seems to be the end of it for now.

"Can you get me a partial report? Unofficial."

The Sheriff nods again, but slowly now, like it's mostly to himself. "I can, but I'll have to drop it off later." The station doesn't need to suspect that Chris has any involvement in the case. "You're at The Carriage House, right?"

"For now," Chris agrees, absent-mindedly rubbing one shoulder. Even if he doesn't want to humor Peter in any way whatsoever, the accomodations are really doing a number on his joints. For now, he'll chalk it up to being sick, and not just getting older.

 

---

He drops by Deaton's again, for a closer look at the evidence he's cached away.

The witch bottle is about as unsettling as described, and Chris would have to do some digging in his family's records to fully understand it. As he'd confirmed with Scott, there are much easier and more modern ways to dispatch a witch.

The bullets responsible for the two dead werewolves have already been inspected by Deaton, Torres, and Marsh. They're a basic thirty caliber custom-cast. Not stamped, of course, and the wolfsbane encapsulated within them is certainly uncommon, but also not unheard of. Sleeping Monkshood is particularly adept at breaking through spell barriers bound to an individual, whether it be blessing or curse.

Deaton's expression is grim, when Chris looks up. He's already aware of the question that hasn't formed yet.

"There wasn't any magical residue left to trace, by the time we found the bodies." He docks his hands in the pockets of his scrubs. "It's anyone's guess what spell they were meant to penetrate."

Chris grunts in acknowledgment. Techniques like ballistic fingerprinting aren't within their reach, yet. Not without alerting the rest of the world to the supernatural. As it is, he has to request temporary custody of the bullets, which Deaton reluctantly grants.

By the time he has them neatly packed and is migrating back out to the rental, it's afternoon coming on evening, and Peter Hale is once again leaning up against his borrowed car.

Chris pauses, a reluctant frown forming. "Are you following me?"

"You're not exactly covering your trail," Peter says, lightly, then rocks his hips to push himself out of his sprawl and strays a few steps closer. He's wearing a butter-soft looking Henley, collar parted in a lazy V, and jeans snug up against his most appreciative features. Chris locks up, but holds his ground.

Peter blinks, yet his expression is peaceful. "Any news from the Sheriff?"

"Nothing you don't know about," Chris snarls, angling to keep him in his sights.

"Alright."

Peter follows him towards loading the evidence in the back of the car. He anticipates the wolf growing bored and wandering off, the more that Chris grey-rocks him. To his faint surprise, he just circles around to the passenger's door and pops the latch.

"Have you eaten?" He prompts, as Chris stares a hateful ray at his driver's seat for the two seconds it takes to accept the situation.

"I'm fine," he says, congested and annoyed. With Peter, with this dead-end case, with the fact that he's in Beacon Hills at all with no sort of lifeline. He feels like he's just bobbing along in the stream and being occasionally dinged against the rocks.

His knuckles tighten, then relax a little when Peter casts him an unimpressed glance.

"That's not a No. Drive to Shore Street, off of Central," Peter says, as he reels down a seatbelt. "There's a new cafe there. They have good sandwiches."

Against his better judgement, Chris complies.

 

---

The late lunch ends up being a good idea, a fact that Chris will never admit as he bites silently into his turkey panini. Peter has settled across from him at their little two-person table near the window, legs and knees shamelessly knocking.

"You knew about the Desjardins," Chris accuses, once he's swallowed a few bites. The congestion doesn't let him really appreciate the meal, but his primal brain is satisfied by carbs and protein over the liquified, bitter caffeine slurry he's been subsisting on.

"I knew their name," Peter confesses, playing lightly with the corner of his napkin. "Nothing else. Do you think a family that old would talk to a werewolf?"

They might have, but probably not a werewolf like Peter. Chris keeps that thought to himself, as he eyes his lunch companion.

Peter flicks the napkin again, then spoons up a seemingly-reluctant mouthful of his minestrone. He's tense, but not, and it sets Chris's jaw in a strange way trying to make sense of his emotions. Before he can overthink it to death, agonize the thought into submission, Peter clears his throat and glances up.

"Did you ever think we'd end up here?"

Chris frowns. "Here how?"

Peter stirs his spoon languidly. "Chasing family ghosts and wrangling a pack of baby wolves who don't know their tails from their snouts. It can't have been what your father wanted."

It's a mean remark, and Chris's hand tightens on his crumpled napkin. At the same time, he knows Peter well enough to recognize when he's lashing out. He takes a breath, re-centers.

"No," he says slowly, then sniffs and brings the mangled paper cloth to his nose. "I didn't. But we make the best of it, don't we?"

Peter laughs shortly, and the sound is forced, but there's some real yet indefinable emotion on his face. It's gone by the time he looks back at Chris, smiling beatifically. "So we do."