Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chris still doesn’t know how this happens.

He and John are in his kitchen. Half of tonight’s dinner is assembled next to them, bowls of diced vegetables and a pan of marinating pork tenderloin rattling as John drives into him from behind. A bottle of cumin suddenly tumbles over his fingers and Chris jerks his head up, starts to curse, grabs at it, only to have John’s cock press right over the button for taking out his knees. He groans and barely clutches himself to the counter, and the cumin rolls into a loaf of bread.

It’s not dinner for John and Stiles. That’s next week, and in fact, John isn’t even supposed to be here, but he texted that he had something to pass over, and Chris doesn’t have time to stop by the office tomorrow because he’s meeting a buyer two towns over. So Chris told him just swing by and drop it off, and then John comes in for a glass of water while he’s at it, and now Chris has his jeans down around his knees, bent over his own kitchen counter, smelling like the garlic he’d been mincing.

“God, please, please, John,” he’s moaning.

John’s shushing him, mouth wet on the back of his neck, stubble rasp alternating with soft lips, as gentle as his cock isn’t. He pins Chris by the hips against the cabinets, first with his hands, then with his weight. His hands come up and grind Chris’ wrists into the counter as he pistons up a last time.

Come squeezes out around his cock, dribbles a little down Chris’ thighs. Chris whines, feeling it. He just cleaned the floor yesterday, and fuck, dinner bare inches from them, still waiting to be cooked, and John just makes him forget about that, drawing him back against the other man. Running warm flat palms down his legs as he shudders onto the cock spreading his ass, smooth going down till they hit the bind of the denim around his thighs, then a little scratchy on the way up.

Chris grabs shakily at whatever he can, gets a drawer handle and then John’s belt, just about the hip. The drawer pulls out towards him and he curses, letting go and stumbling back, and then curses again as John’s hands wrap around his cock and his balls, respectively. His feet slip some and he seizes John’s forearm with his free hand, then shudders as he seems to also slip, impossibly, just a little further onto the man’s cock.

John laughs at him. Not mean, just enjoying whatever the hell it is about Chris that gets him so willing to do these little things. House calls. Heaving up Chris’ slumping body, licking and sucking up and down Chris’ neck till he half-revives, only to whimper at the steady, insistent pull of a tight hand over his cock. Big blunt fingers cup his balls, giving them the occasional squeeze that seems to go all the way up into his ass and belly, taut ripples that he can barely breathe over. He clings to his flimsy holds on the belt and arm, and just wills himself to keep his head up when he comes.

It’s touch and go for a couple seconds. The world swims, all gentle haze, and then John shifts behind him and that cock still tucked into Chris, it’s soft but it’s still big enough to make him shiver. He tightens his grip on John’s arm and John grunts at him, semi-amused, and lets go of his cock to wrap that arm around his waist. Pushes a little into Chris, slightly cold, tacky come rubbing out over Chris’ buttocks and Chris should—get a towel or something. Get cleaned up. Stop staring at those damn half-cut vegetables.

He doesn’t. He just lolls back into the other man, trying to catch his breath, half of him wondering why the hell he likes this as much as he does. Half of him lazing in it, like this is just a sunbeam on a Sunday morning in a quiet house, something nice and innocent like that, and not like he’s sitting on another man’s cock and aching from it and wishing he could just sit like that all day.

“So.” John leans his head into the back of Chris’ skull, snorts a little. He rubs his hand over Chris’ thigh, thumb slipping to the inside, and then curls his fingers over to grip up near the crease, so the back of his hand’s brushing the bottom of Chris’ balls. “Uh. Your provisional license came in.”

“Oh.” Chris has no idea what John is talking about. He’s sagging his head against the man’s shoulder, trying not to twitch every time his scrotum touches John’s hand. He still feels like his skin is a couple sizes too small, dancing nerves everywhere, and then John nuzzles his throat and he inhales and sways and it’s like pins and needles and glory, fuck. “What? I—what came in?”

“License?” John says. The son of a bitch is picking up on it, as usual, and enjoying it. He keeps nuzzling, though he at least does all the work where staying on their feet is concerned. “Provisional? So you’re good while the last background checks are going through?”

A bleary memory of a manila envelope in John’s hand stirs in Chris’ head. He glances around and finally picks it out over on the dining table, and then his eyelids flutter like some fainting fairytale when John wraps one hand over his hip and tugs up. “Godda—fuck, John.”

“You gotta get off some time, Chris, I can feel my knees creaking,” John says, because he’s an asshole.

Chris snarls at him, this flimsy thing a werewolf baby probably would be ashamed of, and then reluctantly works with the man to tilt them off that counter and forward towards the other one, so Chris can brace himself. Then he hitches up, hissing, feeling the slide out of John’s cock. His ass clenches down on the absence, has that weird, uncomfortable vacated feel, and then John backs right up into him again, kissing the back of his neck, rubbing soothing palms over the tops of his hips as he breathes out slowly.

“Oh. Yeah.” Chris finally manages to get his head in order. “Oh, great. Thanks.”

John pauses, then scoots a little to the side so his arm’s draping over Chris’ back. He cranes his head over Chris’ shoulder and the bulk of him is still curved around Chris, solid in ways that make that bit of medieval peasant think thick walls and safety. “You all right?”

“Huh? No, I’m fine. I’m…just, I don’t know, forgot about it.” Chris blinks, then shakes his head again. Shrugs. “Yeah, I know, I…no, it’s good. Good news. Why?”

“Just checking.” Though John’s got that little tilt to his head that means he’s saving it to mull over later. He’s not exactly subtle, how he tries to puzzle out Chris, even if he’s a damn sight more diplomatic about it than his son.

It’s on the tip of Chris’ tongue to apologize, because honestly, it’s not worth the effort and it’s not even a puzzle, so much as Chris just having a lot of problems he’s not the best at juggling. But that’s just going to put the flags up all over John’s radar, so Chris shrugs again and then gropes around for the paper towels.

“Good enough news you came in person,” he says.

John blinks, then grins, even as he’s getting his back with a clap of his hand to the back of Chris’ neck. He curls up his fingers to scratch a little at the marks he’s left—probably not any hickeys this time, but it feels like stubble rash for sure—and bumps his hip into Chris. “You asked me to come over. Don’t blame me for this.”

“Downside of Allison taking up runes again is now she can tell half the ones here are the same as the ones on my bedroom,” Chris mutters. He doesn’t hand John any paper towels and rolls his eyes at the mock-injured look John gives him. “I don’t even know if I can serve dinner with a straight face, damn it. Maybe we’ll just order carryout.”

“Oh, come on, it’s not like we got near the food or anything,” John says, going over to the sink. He wets his towel, wipes himself off—bastard hadn’t even done anything past unzipping his fly, and Chris is ignoring the new flush going through him at that—and then comes back. Puts his hand on Chris’ shoulder and then dabs up between Chris’ legs without asking. “I eat all the time on counters I know Stiles has messed with Derek and Peter on. That’s what disinfection wards are for.”

Chris can’t help arching his neck a little, or shivering as the chilly towel scrubs at his hole, but he manages to not drop his towel. He wipes off his fingers and then pushes back into the other man, nudging him over to get at the trash. “Well, you and your son, and the rest of the world, John. No offense.”

“Sure,” John says, and then bends over Chris’ shoulder for a kiss.

The trashcan lid clatters down, and Chris knows the stupid towel lands on it, not in it, but he’s half-twisting away from it anyway, into John. He needs to get dinner finished, goddamn it, but—

—the entrance wards tingle, Allison’s home early. Chris jerks back, swearing, and then grabs at his jeans. He yanks them up. Catches himself on the zipper a little and winces, loses a couple curly hairs but keeps on trying to tuck himself in as he hears the front door swing open. John’s scrambling, too, swiping around with the paper towels and muttering cleaning cantrips.

“Dad?” Allison calls. “Dad, hey, Mr. Stilinski’s car is out front, is he still here?”

“Yeah, hi, Allison,” John calls back. He glances at Chris. “Something the matter? Stiles call?”

“Oh, no, I just…wanted to make sure,” Allison says. She sounds slightly too cheerful, although at least it’s not that fake happy she puts on when she’s stonewalling him. “Lydia and me are back with our dresses, Dad! We’ll be in my room, let me know when I should come down!”

“Lydia’s here? Is she staying for—” Chris starts, and then Allison’s door upstairs slams shut “—dinner. Fuck.”

He does not look at John. He gets his jeans up and starts to jam his shirt-tails in, and then just sighs and stares at the dinner fixings.

“Shut up,” he mutters.

The trashcan opens and shuts, and then a pair of hands grab him by the waist, just as he starts to turn. “You think she suspects?” John says.

“Shut up,” Chris says, rolling his eyes. He pushes at John’s hands, then twists his head around and okay, yeah, he’s looking for a kiss. Just not one with tongue, no matter how good—he jerks back, then starts backwalking them towards the garage door. “Shut up, John, get out of my house, I need to cook—”

“Yeah, yeah,” John says, and lets Chris turn so he can crowd them up against the door and kiss Chris’ recovering knees out from under him. “Dinner will be fine, I’m sure.”

Chris hits the man in the shoulder, then lets his head drop back against the jamb. John’s grinning at him and as irritated as he is, he can feel his mouth trying to twitch towards a smile. Then John reaches up, strokes the side of his face, thumb lingering down his jaw and then dusting over his throat, and Chris just…sometimes he wants this so bad he thinks he’s gutshot, it hurts so much.

John’s grin shrinks. Worry lines pop up on his forehead, and then he smiles again, but smaller, somehow warmer. He pushes up Chris’ chin with the backs of his fingers, once playfully, a second time so he can press their cheeks together. “I left the class registration forms and schedule in there with the license,” he says. “Let me know when you want to do that, all right?”

“Yeah…yeah, sure,” Chris says.

He breathes in a little when John backs up. The other man’s eyeing him again, but John just gives him a nod and then steps out.

The house feels odd for a couple minutes afterward. It’s…it’s the same size as it’s always been, but Chris catches himself measuring up the kitchen’s dimensions like he’s never been there before. He can hear Allison and Lydia walking around over him, sharp thuds from high heels, and John’s car pulling into the street, but down on the first floor it’s just—it’s quiet. And Chris doesn’t mind quiet, normally, but he just…

He gives himself a shake. Washes his hands, tries not to notice how the slap of water in the sink makes him start. Checks that there isn’t any of his and John’s mess still left around, and then goes back to cooking dinner.

* * *

“…was going to just pick me up from here, but Lydia’s mom has this friend of hers who does hair professionally, and she said she’d do ours for free, so I was thinking I’d go over to Lydia’s and then Scott and Jackson will take us to the dance,” Allison says, drying off the last glass. She opens up the cabinet and puts it away, and then looks over. “Is that okay?”

Chris still can’t help that little prickle whenever he thinks of his one child going out of his sight, but he swallows it down and puts down the dish sponge. “Are you going over at the same time, then?”

“Lydia said I should come over at five so we’ll have time to do both of us. She said I could just eat dinner there,” Allison says. “And our committee meeting’s over at four-thirty anyway, so I don’t know if it’s worth me just coming home and going again? Plus if she drives me over, you don’t have to run into her mom.”

“I think Natalie finally realized when she saw me dropping Melissa off at the PTA meeting last week,” Chris mutters. He wipes his hands dry on a towel. “Well, all right, but you’ll—”

“—call when I’m taking off, and call when I’m at Lydia’s, and then I’ll call you when we’re on our way to the dance. And Scott will text you if he loses me for more than half an hour,” Allison rattles off. She’s done that mad, bored, or resigned, but this time she just lists them like she’s reading from the to-do board clipped to the fridge.

Chris should be glad she’s not resenting him anymore, but honestly, that was probably easier to deal with. Now he’s looking at her and she’s so beautiful, his daughter, beautiful and young and getting to go to school dances, and she just…she shouldn’t be used to telling him that sort of thing.

“Dad?” Allison lifts her hand towards him, frowning. “Dad? Is…is something going on?”

“What? Oh, no. Not that I know of,” Chris says in a rush, because now she is starting to get that pinched look, like she’s scared and worried about what he’s not telling her. “No. It’s just—sorry, it hit me. This is your last winter formal.”

“Oh, God, Dad, don’t talk like that, you’re gonna make me feel old,” Allison says. Her shoulders drop in relief and she smiles tentatively at him. “Lydia was already going on and on about how it’ll be such a relief to get the dance over with and get onto real social climbing at college, whatever that means, and I just want to enjoy my senior year. I have another four years for college, after all.”

“That sounds sensible to me.” Chris does his best to look happy for her. And he is happy, damn it. They’ve gotten this far, against some ridiculous odds, and he might have a hard time believing it but he’s not stupid enough to turn it down. “So what time is Scott bringing you back?”

Allison smiles at him again. Puts her hands behind her back and a little extra honey in her voice. “Well…Scott was saying his mom’s taking the day off, and she’s not chaperoning this dance, so…I thought I’d check first whether Scott should take me here or over to his house?”

“I think Melissa and I would be happy to meet you at either,” Chris says with a straight face. Then he snorts at her. “I also think you’re spending too much time with Stiles.”

“Oh, come on, Dad, if I was going to be like Stiles, I’d just tell you I’d be home at midnight, research some crazy camouflage runes and then sneak Scott in the back window,” Allison says, rolling her eyes. “Seriously. There are a couple after-parties—Jackson’s throwing one, and I think Stiles is going there—”

“With the Hales?” Chris asks.

Allison looks a little skeptical herself, but she shrugs. “Lydia bribed him with some gadget I honestly don’t want to know about. He didn’t say whether he’s taking both, but I know Derek’s going as his date and Peter’s supposedly patrolling the school parking lot. Anyway, the lacrosse team’s going to be there, so Scott says he probably has to go for a little while, but you remember how Jackson’s last party went, right?”

Slightly overfermented wolfsbane tincture in the drinks, resulting in underage were drinkers puking all over the place and non-weres tripping on what, thankfully, didn’t turn out any worse than a pot high. How Jackson hasn’t ended up with a juvenile record yet is a testament of some kind to his father’s lawyering skills.

“Yeah,” Allison says, making a face. “So Scott doesn’t really want to deal with that either, so he was thinking we’d just say hi and sneak out. So we weren’t planning to be out really late or anything, but I did kind of want Scott to, well, stay the night? So can he?”

Chris isn’t under any allusions about what his daughter and Scott get up to, but so far Scott’s been considerate enough to not actually sit down to the breakfast table with them. Except for Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago at the Hale house, which…yeah, Chris is fighting the inevitable on this one.

Anyway, he’s long since accepted that Scott and Allison do genuinely love each other, and Scott’s a good kid. Honestly, Chris likes him. It’s just hard to get out of the habit of watching for the boy to screw up.

“Well, if Melissa doesn’t mind either—” Chris starts, sighing.

“Thank you, Dad!” Allison hugs him tight, beaming, and he finishes that sigh but he can’t help but hug her back.

“Just make sure you have enough condoms,” Chris mutters.

Allison jitters a little in embarrassment, then lets go of him to try and scrub the blush off her face. “Oh, my God, okay, fine. God, Dad, you know, it’s not like that’s all Scott and I do when we’re alone. Considering we never seem to have any here, I…”

And she’s brave, his daughter, but when she looks up and catches his eye, she’s not quite the type to be able to finish that sentence. Allison blushes harder, then goes back to thanking him and telling him it’ll be great, he doesn’t need to worry.

“I’m not worried,” Chris finally says. He takes Allison by the shoulders and looks at her, and then gives her a kiss on the forehead. “I’m not. You grew up great, Allison. Just…have a good time, all right?”

“I know, Dad,” she says, smiling. “I will.”

* * *

“I could give you a couple boxes to stick under the bathroom sink,” Melissa says. She’s pressing her lips together in that way that means she’s dying of laughter inside, but she knows and respects how difficult this is, and will be professional for his sake. “You know, dress it up some. I guess we could even take out a couple once in a while. Leave a wrapper in the trash.”

Chris sinks a little lower in his seat. “Shut up.”

They’re sitting in the conference room at the Forest Service office. After a couple days of letting it sit on his desk, Chris finally gave in and checked over the remedial class schedule—he gets to skip the basic first-aid and firearms safety stuff, but he still has to retest on Service regulations—and came in to sign up. Melissa was already there, and they’d just said hi when John came out, blinked hard, and then said great, saved him a phone call. Then he showed them in, muttered that Talia would be along in a couple minutes, and ran off.

“I have to say, she’s quicker than Scott on that one. I still don’t think he’s noticed that I’ve been swapping out the box in his desk drawer,” Melissa says. She stretches her legs out and folds her hands over her belly, then rolls her head over to look at him. “Hey. You all right? Like I said, I don’t know what it’s about, but if it was anything as bad as a death, I’d definitely know.”

“Hmm?” Chris sits up, then shakes his head. “No, I’m fine about Talia coming, even if it’s short notice.”

Melissa looks at him, then reaches over and casually grips his knee. It’s not tight, or even really that lewd or anything, just a…thing any couple might do. She never looks like she’s trying when she does something like that and he just wishes he could do a little of the same for her. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to do it, or hasn’t done it before; he and Victoria’s relationship had been fine with displays of affection but it’d been—different. Both of them coming from established hunter families, they’d—well, they’d had unspoken rules about what to do when, and that had made it a lot easier. Chris never knows whether he’s pushing too far with Melissa.

“Thanksgiving helped?” she says.

“Well, I don’t think I like her any better, but I respect her a little more for reining in that pack,” Chris mutters after a moment. He shrugs. “I guess I’m getting used to her, hadn’t seen much of her before that, when she wasn’t just yelling at me about my family. But…do I look worried, or something? Because I’m really not. I’m curious but yeah, John just looked pissed at something. Didn’t he?”

“If I had to lay any money, I’m guessing somebody dropped the ball and we have to deal with it,” Melissa says. She gives his knee a circle rub, then lets go. Grins a little when he reaches up and grabs her hand, and then scoots over so they can put their laced fingers on his armrest. “You don’t look worried, you just…when I saw you, I thought he’d dragged you in for something. You just didn’t look like you wanted to be here. And you know, usually you’re pretty excited to head up to the office.”

Chris glares half-heartedly at her. “You make it sound like I wag my tail or something.”

“No, come on.” Melissa gives him an indignant face, and then a softer, more concerned one. “But give. What’s bothering you?”

Just then, there’s a knock on the door, saving Chris from having to answer. A second later, John steps in, followed by Talia and Francis. John has a couple folders under his arm, one of which he passes over to Chris and Melissa.

“Sorry about that, we were waiting to see if we could get Peter, but he’s in some no-devices mediation,” John says. “Anyway. I just got a message from the Coeur d’Alene office about a rabid werewolf who might be heading this way.”

“And we heard from Alpha St. Marie, the man’s an omega, and one of those extreme naturalists,” Talia says, grimacing.

John looks over. “A what?”

“It means he doesn’t believe in getting medical treatment for anything his healing can’t deal with,” Chris says. He pauses, because both Melissa and Talia had looked like they wanted to jump in, but they don’t. And now John’s looking at him. “Basically, you’re going to have to catch him and jail him to make him get treatment.”

“If that would even work on him at this point,” Talia says. She takes a seat across the table and starts paging through her file, with Francis looking over her shoulder. “It’s been a week since infection, you said? An alpha might be able to survive a month, but I haven’t heard of any lasting longer than that. I know what your protocol is, but it’s probably kinder to shoot him with a bullet at this point.”

John doesn’t seem particularly surprised by that, but he’s still oddly reluctant. He fingers the file he’d kept, then takes his own seat. “Is he still rational? Well, I know—”

“He can stalk and hunt, if that’s what you mean,” Francis says. “That’s one of the last things to go. But choosing his targets for anything besides looking weak, I doubt that.”

“I’m asking because we don’t know for sure he’s headed this way. His trail so far’s been erratic, from what we can tell, though he could get here on foot within the week,” John says. “We’re getting a heads-up mostly because he has family in the area. A niece he hasn’t seen in a couple years, but before that, he visited a few times, sent her a couple gifts.”

That makes Chris sit up straight. He flips through the file till he finds that page, with a belated look of apology to Melissa—who’s not even looking at him—and then frowns. “Isn’t she in—”

“Erica Reyes, right,” Talia mutters. “We’ll go talk to her family today. They’re reasonable people, they’ll be sad but they’ll understand. And they certainly will be happy to get booster vaccines, if that’s necessary.”

“Like I said, he might not even get here, so let’s not get that worked up, either,” John says. He and Talia share one of those looks, where he’s staring her down and she’s absolutely delighted by it, and then he sighs. Lifts his hand and taps his file instead of rubbing his temple like he looks like he wants to. “Right now this office is just on observation. If the guy gets nearer, we’ll talk again, obviously, but you—well, you know he’s already got a pair of hunters assigned to him, right?”

Talia looks scornful, although clearly not at John. “Yes, Alpha St. Marie mentioned that. Why he can’t just take care of his own business, I don’t—”

“You’re just going to get mad again, he’s not worth it,” Francis mutters. He must do something under the table, too, because Talia slowly softens towards him, her head tilting so he can lean in and sniff under her jaw.

“Anyway. I just wanted to get everyone together and get us on the same page—” John says.

“The Fronsacs?” Talia murmurs, buried in the file again. “Never heard of them. Are they a known family?”

John pauses. “They’re on and off, from what I understand,” he says slowly. “Always been zoologists and that sort of thing, but they don’t hand down hunting from generation to generation. I’ve met Grégoire before, he knows what he’s doing, and he has a very good record.”

“They’re from the same region as your family,” Francis observes, looking over at Chris.

“Grégoire worked as a liaison with the First Nations for a while, so I think that’s how he met Alpha St. Marie,” John says, almost at the same time.

“Yeah,” Chris says, because no point in hiding public information. He knows John is looking at him, and Melissa is squeezing his knee again, less about affection and more about support. He shifts a little, more uncomfortable with that than with how Talia and Francis are looking at him. “Technically they’re one of the families, but they’ve never acted like it. They’re known for going off and doing their own thing, don’t really mix with the rest of us. I’ve never met any. John would know more about them than I would—I think I heard Grégoire and Marianne usually do their hunting in Africa. Probably why you haven’t heard of them.”

Talia hums thoughtfully, tapping her finger against her file. Her nail is blunt, though when Chris glances up, she gives him a small, knowing smile and then looks even more amused at his wince. “They may have a sterling record abroad, but I don’t know how I feel about them operating near my territory,” she finally says. “This is very different from Africa. I personally would prefer a local person.”

Chris blinks a couple times. Because…if anything, it sounds like she wants him to offer. And that can’t be it. They had worked together a few times before Kate and Gerard blew everything sky-high, but with obvious reluctance on Talia’s side. Chris has never figured out whether that’s because Talia hates admitting her pack can’t handle something, or because she just dislikes hunters on principle, but either way, she only asks for a hunter when she absolutely has to.

“Well, the hunt’s not here yet,” John breaks in. He’s eyeing both of them like he’s picking up the same vibe. And, honestly, like he’s thinking it should be his call who the hell hunts around here. Sometimes Chris just cannot understand how John doesn’t see how damn dominant he acts.

“And the man was Alpha St. Marie’s responsibility, he gets first call on how to deal with him,” Francis says, very good-naturedly, though he’s watching his wife carefully.

Talia presses her lips together, then sighs and leans back in her seat. “Yes, dear, I realize,” she says. She tilts her head, then flicks shut the file and lets it swing from her pinched finger and thumb. “Very well. John, you’ll keep me updated?”

“Me or Stiles.” John gives her a dry smile. “I think we got the area covered, between us.”

They exchange a couple more pleasantries and then John shows them out. Melissa gets up and shuts the door in their wake, and then comes to flop back into her chair. “Well, I’d hate to be Alpha St. Marie,” she says. “I wonder why he didn’t take care of it himself. Everything I’ve heard, he’s pretty competent.”

“He’s kind of a germophobe, what I hear,” Chris mutters. “Always hires a hunter for this kind of thing.”

“While I bet Talia would just shoot up rabies vaccine and then go out and handle it if John isn’t careful,” Melissa says. Then she frowns, watching him get up. “Where are you going?”

“Well, aren’t we done?” Chris says, just as the door re-opens.

John comes in, shaking his head. “For God’s sake, the latest sighting was two hours ago and the guy’s still a hundred miles away. Doesn’t that woman have pack conferences to terrorize, or something like that? Bad enough I’ve got FBI and the sheriff lined up for this afternoon for contingency planning.”

Chris raises his brows. “A hundred miles isn’t that far for a rabid werewolf, it’s not like he’s stopping to check into motels. You really that sure he’s not headed over?”

“No, of course not, but Grégoire knows what he’s doing and both he and his wife are crack shots, so I don’t think we need to be planning a goddamn artillery battery in the middle of the suburbs,” John says. “You just need one bullet.”

“He’s a week rabid, and isn’t taking any treatment,” Chris says. “I guess if you got a headshot, it’d drop him, but otherwise I’ve seen them power through a hell of a lot.”

John looks at him.

“Sorry.” Chris grimaces. Realizes he’s still holding his folder and drops it on the table, which makes John frown for some reason. “I’m not trying to make your job harder.”

“He wanted to do that, he’d remind you that the winter formal’s in a couple days,” Melissa says.

Now John looks at the ceiling.

“Sorry, sorry!” Melissa gets up, but just so she can perch on the table between them. “But seriously. Is the principal on your schedule yet?”

“He’s my three-thirty, and I already know how that’s going to go,” John mutters. “I’m certainly going to take into account that this is an important milestone in our children’s lives, and they would be unhappy if it was canceled, and unhappy kids mean unhappy parents and yes, let’s just not mention it and hope nobody gets drunk or high and wanders into the woods in the middle of a hunt.”

“I keep telling you you should invite the guy to the shooting range one of these times,” Melissa says. “You know, just show him how good you are at your job and all.”

John looks at her, starts to say something, and then stops to press the heel of his hand to his temple. “I’m saving that for whenever Stiles gets around to having to kill somebody in the school, and doesn’t get the body out in time.”

Melissa sighs. “John, honestly, it wouldn’t kill Stiles to get detention for that for once.”

“You think he’d just get detention?” Chris says. “Where the hell was he going to school before this?”

“I…think that’s still too classified for you to know, sorry,” John says after a moment’s thought. He laughs a little at Chris’ face, then sobers up. “Hey. So look, I’m sorry about this. I know it’s awkward but I only just heard myself, and the Fronsacs have already been on the job for two days now—”

Chris must look very odd, because John clams up and then glances at Melissa. The two of them work something out, and then Melissa hops off the table and slides up towards Chris’ left side, while John goes for the right. They’re clearly not attacking him, but it’s a weird time and place to be jumping him, and—well, he doesn’t know. He backs up out of the pincer and stares at them, then puts up his hands.

“Wait, wait, I’m missing something here. I…is there something wrong with the Fronsacs? Or Alpha St. Marie?” he says. “I mean, you’re acting like I should have this job.”

“Well, like you said, they might end up here,” John says, very slowly and very carefully.

“I know, but…I’m not designated hunter or anything like that.” Then Chris laughs. He sounds a little tight and he cuts it short as soon as he realizes. “I just got my provisional, John. Having werewolf genes doesn’t mean I get all territorial over my work like Talia does. The Fronsacs sound like good hunters, if they get it done and get this guy without anyone else getting hurt, I don’t see why I should object.”

John and Melissa look at each other again, and then John shrugs. He turns and starts collecting the files from the table. “All right, all right. Sorry, just wasn’t sure. Your family was designated for this area—”

“But we’re not now, and I’m…I think I’d best look after my license situation first, and then deal with all of that later,” Chris says. “I mean—thanks for thinking about me. But it’s not my first priority here.”

“Got it,” Melissa says. She comes up, pauses when he stills, and then tucks her arm into his. “All right, well, I’m going to go let the hospital know, and get them to check whether we’ve got enough vaccine on hand. John—”

“It’s my four-thirty,” John sighs. He comes over and kisses Melissa, then nuzzles Chris’ cheek. Maybe spends a second longer than usual. “Anyway, thanks for coming on the short notice. Hopefully it’s just nothing.”

* * *

Much to Chris’ surprise, Melissa doesn’t try to grill him as they leave the office. Then again, she is a professional, and she and John are probably going to be running ragged coordinating with everyone. Chris has no idea how she handles two jobs, let alone always manages to be the one shoving him and John into the shower before bed, but he admires the hell out of it.

Allison, on the other hand, fires about ten questions at once about rabies the moment Chris mentions the omega, and then tries to search on her phone while holding a knife. She’s lucky she doesn’t stab right through her fingers.

“Okay, let’s just—put this down first,” Chris says, taking the stiletto from her. “And I don’t know the details of how it happened, but a week in, it’s pretty hard to mistake rabies for any other disease.”

“But shouldn’t they take a blood test or something to make sure?” she says. She gives him a sweet, sorry smile about the knife, and keeps on tapping at her phone. “What if they’re wrong?”

“They probably have been testing this whole time. Not on him, but on anything or anyone he’s bitten, since they’ll have to get vaccinated,” Chris says. “Rabid weres are dangerous because they’ll chew up all the wildlife in the area, too. One infected stray dog wandering into town and you could be looking at having to call in the national guard.”

Judging from her face, Allison’s reading just about the same thing on her phone, with added photos. She looks a little green and then she puts her phone down on her vanity. “Yeah. I guess. It just—it seems really sudden to just shoot him.”

“Well, if they can get him within the next couple days, they’ll try and tranq him first, because there’s still a small chance the doctors could treat him.” Chris puts the stiletto down, too, and then looks at his daughter. “He’s borderline for incurable right now. But after that—I know it doesn’t sound nice, but…”

“Nice isn’t what I’d say. We’re pretty much executing him,” Allison mutters. She sits down on the edge of her bed and starts to pull up her legs, then jerks them down and pushes her skirt back over her knees. She peeks at him, blushing, and then rolls her eyes. “It really doesn’t go up that high, Dad.”

Chris can’t help but look a little doubtfully at her dress. The thing is already slinkier than a tube sock, and he’s pretty damn sure he just saw that scar Allison got when she was five, and fell down a hill and got a stick in her hip. “Good, because they call it a ‘formal’ for a reason,” he says. “You remember you have to look all your teachers in the eye afterward, right? Including Harris?”

“Dad,” Allison moans, though she’s picking at her skirt hem like she wishes it was shorter. Lydia’s not been the best influence as far as that goes, from Chris’ perspective. “Ew. Also, we’re not going to be sitting around, it is a dance.”

“I think it’s going to hike even higher if you try anything faster than a slow walk,” Chris says.

Allison’s eyes narrow. Then she gets up off her bed. Slips her feet into those teetering heels—also Lydia’s pick, Chris would bet, Allison never went higher than an inch before—and then takes a couple steps, then looks at her back in the mirror. She pivots on one heel, throwing out her hip, and it’s so much like a magazine cover that Chris bites his lip.

Then she yelps and tips over, and Chris has to grab her. He sets her back on her feet, then snorts and holds her shoulders as she kicks off those heels.

“I think you’re right, you can totally see the buckle and the scabbard when I twist,” Allison says. She scoots herself behind her desk and Chris averts his eyes, and then she comes back out, unbuckled knife sheath in one hand while the other smooths down her skirt. “If I turn it the other way—”

“If you stick it on the inside of your leg, you’re going to cut yourself if you have to draw fast,” Chris sighs. “It takes a lot of practice, Allison, and even your mother liked to keep hers in her purse.”

Allison glances up a little quick and her mouth tightens. She looks at the sheath, purses her lips a few times. Speaks very carefully, her eyes a little lower than Chris’ face, when she asks. “How come I never saw that?”

“She—she had it in the handle. You remember it was a stiff rod, right?” Chris says after a moment. “It was a custom job, a wedding present from her godmother. And…knife like that, it’s a last resort, you know. If you’re that close—”

“You’re doing it wrong,” Allison says. She tips up her head and she’s just as nervous as he is, though she’s at least trying to smile. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Chris says, very quietly. He swallows hard, then sets his shoulders back and glances over their head. “You know, I’m not sure what I did with that purse. It’s probably up in the attic with the rest.”

“That’s okay, I don’t want to put you through that,” Allison says in a bit of a rush. She bumps his arm with her hand, then leans against her vanity and sticks the knife back in its sheath, then taps it against her palm. “It’d take hours to dig it out, and anyway, wouldn’t match the dress at all, and…well, it’s not a spy theme dance, I guess I can just go with a taser in my bag. Lydia was saying something about hiding high-frequency emitters in our necklaces, anyway…Dad, come on, she does know what she’s doing.”

Chris makes a face. “I’d rather you just stick with Scott, if it comes to that. Or call me.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Dad. Really.” Allison taps the sheath into her palm one last time, then puts it down. She grabs her jeans and blouse off the bed and ducks into her closet to change. “Scott made Stiles promise. Something about owing him for a skate-rink party when they were little, I didn’t really want to ask…so are we up to date?”

“Up to date?”

“On our shots. I mean, I’m not going to go out hunting by myself. I promise. But what if the omega makes it all the way here? That’s why Erica was out this morning, right? She and her family were getting boosters?” Allison sticks her head out of the closet and looks curiously at him. “She was kind of bitchy about it. Wouldn’t say what was up, just that her hillbilly uncle had screwed them all again.”

Chris raises his brow. “Yes, we are up to date, and you didn’t nag her, did you?”

“Dad. Come on, I’m friends with Lydia, I’m not her.” Then Allison drops back, probably to pull her blouse on. She comes out a few seconds later, fussing with her hair, her winter formal dress back on its hanger. She lays the dress on the bed and starts to zip it back into its liner bag. “Stiles was super-interested, though. His dad’s gonna explain to him, right, because otherwise if you want to worry about people going off on their own—”

“John said he’d have the tree keep a lookout, so yeah, I’d imagine Stiles will know, if he doesn’t already,” Chris says. “Anyway, I think Stiles would’ve seen rabid werewolves before. If he’s been helping his dad out as long as he says—the Forest Service is usually the agency that ends up dealing with them.”

Allison’s hands pause with her dress halfway zipped up. Then she pushes off the bed and turns towards him. “You think he’s killed any?”

She’s got an odd tone Chris isn’t quite sure how to read. It’s trembling a little, but she doesn’t look excited. She doesn’t exactly look put off either, although thank God, she doesn’t have that glint in her eye that Kate used to get, like it was all just games.

“I don’t know, and I don’t really want to guess if I don’t know,” Chris finally says. “If he wants to mention it, then that’s up to him. But it’s not something a lot of people like talking about.”

“How come?” Allison asks. She winces a little, like maybe it got away from her, but she’s not looking away.

Chris winces himself, because he can’t help a small scuff towards the door. He doesn’t think she noticed, but he noticed, and he—really has to be better than that, if they’re going to get better. “I think because…yeah, you are killing a person. It’s not easy. A lot of times—a lot of the time, they’re still having lucid flashes up till the end, and they know what’s happening to them. They don’t want to be hurting people either, and they’ll ask you to make it stop, and it’s harder because of that. It’s harder than if they just couldn’t talk back to you.”

“I…um, I didn’t mean…” Then Allison just comes over and hugs him. “Sorry, Dad.”

“It’s okay.” His hands shake a little when he puts them around her. He makes a face at them till they level out. “It’s something you should know—should hear. I…I’m not going to pretend I ever want you to see it yourself, Allison, but if you’re going to be a good hunter, not just a killer, you should keep that kind of thing in mind.”

“I know. I’m glad you told me,” she says. She squeezes him a little tighter, then lets go. Touches her face and then cringes a bit when she finds a couple tears. She rubs at her eyes and ducks away, going back to fuss with her dress. “Anyway. I want to be prepared, you know, but I’m kind of with Scott on this one, it’d be nice if we just…went to the dance and had fun, like all the other kids. Not that anything happened at the other dances, Dad, don’t freak out. It’s just—it seems like it got a little crazy again, this semester, and you need a break once in a while. Right?”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “Yeah. I know. So don’t worry about this omega, all right? It’s not like it’s all on us. There are a lot of good people working on it, and I’m sure what needs to be done will get done.”

* * *

“So why aren’t you jumping to get out there?” Laura Hale asks him.

The eggs slip out of Chris’ fingers. Thankfully, he had them most of the way into his basket, so they don’t break, but he can’t help a snarl as he turns to her. “Why is it always the grocery store?”

Laura smiles sunnily at him, just like her mother. “Change your routine once in a while, Mr. Argent,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Speaking of, you were pretty pushy about managing hunts before, so why the change of heart—”

“Oh, hey, Mr. Ar—Chris!” Scott pops out of the cereals aisle, waves, and then jogs up to them. “Hey, I thought I saw you coming in. So Mom, um, wanted to, um…”

Scott has courage, all right, but like John says, the boy can’t lie worth a damn. He stammers something about Melissa wanting to know whether Chris is allergic to eggs, while Laura grins and slowly sidles around Chris so she’s squaring up to Scott. His shoulders go back and he’s making an effort to stand his ground, but…

“Laura,” Peter says, coming up behind Scott. He waits for Scott to eep and flail out of the way, and then walks forward and puts his hands on Laura’s shoulders and then keeps walking. “Don’t ambush him by the breakables, that’s just rude. Wait for the dry goods.”

Whatever Laura says in return is lost as Peter shoves her into another aisle. Chris runs his hand over the top of his head, then drops it to massage the back of his neck in a stupid attempt to fight off the migraine brewing there. Then he sighs and turns to Scott.

“What,” he says.

Scott is frantically texting somebody. “Sorry about that, Stiles got stuck waiting at the meat counter and hang on, okay, yeah, he’s coming.”

Chris sighs again.

“Okay, honestly, me and Stiles were just shopping. Really. Mom’s doing a double shift tonight since she’s got tomorrow off, and Stiles’ dad got called into a whole bunch of new meetings,” Scott says, looking up from his phone. “Stiles’ jeep has some problem with the new transmission so Peter was driving us, and then Laura randomly showed up by the melons. And then she said she smelled you around and ran off and Peter went after her and—”

“Excuse my niece, she’s thrilled to have any excuse to not be finishing her thesis,” Peter says, coming back. He pauses, then smiles winningly at both of them. “I was joking about the dry goods. You’re perfectly safe to take care of your rice and baking needs.”

“I’m very thankful,” Chris says dryly. “Although I think most people would consider ‘safe’ to mean they’re also not being stalked around the store.”

Peter looks mildly put-out. “I assure you, I have absolutely no interest in what you’re doing with those eggs and that tenderloin,” he says, glancing into Chris’ basket. “As for Laura, we’ll take her out with us.”

“She’s not even supposed to be here, if Dad’s gotta suffer through a Park Service call, he’s not gonna suffer alone.” Stiles, of course, joins them before Chris can take that out. He pushes up a cart filled with frozen food boxes—it’s some weird point of pride for him and John to still operate a microwave once in a while, even though between the Hale kitchen and Chris, they probably don’t need to cook for themselves—and then gives Peter a jab in the ribs. Then he frowns at Chris. “And why are you here? Didn’t Dad call you?”

“Did something happen?” Chris says. He’s pulling out his phone at the same time, though he doesn’t see anything from John. “I don’t think he did.”

“Oh.” Stiles stares at him for a couple seconds, then shakes his head like he just remembered something. Glances at the eggs. He reaches out and grabs a half-dozen carton and checks the expiration date. “Okay, well…never mind. Um, nice to see you, Chris.”

“Okay,” Chris says. And he should just walk away. Really. “Okay. What.”

Stiles and Scott look at each other, while Peter appears to be gazing at a holiday ham display at the far end of the store. “Hunt update, but if Dad didn’t call you,” Stiles starts. He pauses and fiddles with his shirt cuff. “Um. I guess call him?”

“You can’t just tell me?” Chris sighs.

“Well, I could, but it’s not like it’s an immediate threat and Dad said not to bother you if he didn’t, and he’s running the meeting and you technically don’t have to be there, unlike Laura, and I don’t want to violate protocol just because somebody’s asking,” Stiles says. Then he looks at Scott. “What?”

Scott shrugs. “Every time you’ve ever called me?”

“Shut up,” Stiles says. He drums his fingers on the cart handle, then looks at Chris. “Okay, you know, this is really awkward and also, unfair as hell, because Dad clearly thinks this would bother you but you want to know anyway, but just don’t make me figure out which of you is being the weird one here, please?”

“Sure,” Chris says, blinking. Because he…thinks he knows what Stiles is trying to say, and that’s a legit complaint. “Yeah. Sorry to trouble you.”

Stiles starts to say something, then just flops his face into the cart handle and flings his arms over his head. He…seems all right, despite the dramatic movements, so Chris starts to back off.

“I’ll talk to Laura again,” Peter mutters as Chris passes him. He sounds a lot more serious and a lot less snide than before, though when Chris pauses, his cocked brow undoes some of the latter. “Nobody’s making you get involved, Chris. Laura’s curiosity just got the better of her, but personally, if you’ve lost interest in hunting werewolves, I see no reason to recruit you back.”

Chris considers replying, then just shakes his head and leaves. That’s not accurate, but correcting Peter is the way to…something that’s definitely not getting him out of here before his milk curdles.

* * *

When Chris calls John, he gets a busy signal. He calls the receptionist and she lets him know that John’s booked through with meetings till seven at night, so Chris just tells her to drop John a note that he called, no rush.

He’s not going to deny that he’s curious, or that he’s a little worried now for Allison and the school dance. “But no, I’m not mad. I told you all I’m not the designated hunter, and I’m not. It’d be stupid to act like it.”

“Okay, just checking,” Melissa says, stifling a yawn. She shakes her head at herself and drinks more coffee. “Sorry.”

She and Chris are curled up in their booth at the diner. Well, to be accurate, Chris is curled up, and Melissa’s curled over him, resting her head on his shoulder and trying like hell not to fall asleep there. When he’d picked her up from the hospital, she was so sleepy she’d nearly walked into a parking meter and he’d offered to take her straight home. But John must have at least gotten through to Melissa because she’d insisted on them getting their usual pie first.

It is good pie, Chris has to admit. Lemon meringue this time, sour enough to make your tongue pucker before the sugar hits. “Are you…are you interviewing for new designees?” he asks. He fluffs what’s left of his whipped cream with his fork. “Is that why you and John are dancing around me so much? Because if it is, really, I don’t mind. You guys need somebody on record, then you need somebody. I’m not going to be petty about it.”

Melissa lifts her head up, looking alarmed. “What, Chris, no, we’re not…no. No, of course we wouldn’t think that about you. And we’re not interviewing anybody.”

“Then what it is?” Chris asks. He hears his voice rise and grimaces, even though it’s just them and Leanne in the whole place. “Sorry. It’s just that between you and the Hales, I feel like somebody’s waiting on something from me. And I don’t know—well, I don’t know what it is, I can’t even figure out whether I have it to give.”

“Don’t talk like that either. God, and you wonder why we get worried for you,” Melissa mutters. She hooks her hand over his arm and uses it to pull herself up so she can reach her plate. Then she drops it to his leg. Rubs it over his thigh once before digging back into her pie. “I’m sorry if we were getting on your nerves. My fault, actually. John wanted to just straight-out ask but I thought we’d be making too big of a deal of it.”

“Of…” Chris says.

“Well, it’s the first time there’s been a werewolf hunt around here since Jackson Whittemore got bit.” Melissa looks over at him. She’s still concerned, but she’s got that…it’s not predatory, that watchful stare. She’s not looking to hurt him, he knows that. But it’s a little detached, pushing back what she feels so she can just see what’s going on, and he’s not used to seeing it from a non-were.

Although that’s more than a little complicated with her, he admits. Anyway, in a weird way, it’s soothing. It lets him know she’s still listening to him. “That—no, there’ve been hunts in between—”

“Not fatal ones.” Then Melissa makes a face. “Well. Fatal, government-sanctioned ones. I’m not going to say I know everything about what the Hales get up to, and Deaton wasn’t covert but from what I heard, he got a little unorthodox sometimes. But yeah, it’s the first time a hunter’s been brought in for a kill.”

Chris frowns and sits back and tries to think. That still feels wrong to him, but…he’d turned in his license before the Whittemore incident, both because it didn’t feel right and because he’d just been too damn busy with the mess his father and sister had made. And after that, he’d been busy taking care of Victoria, watching her die slowly from a poisoned bullet from his father.

He still hates thinking about that, and it must show on his face because Melissa puts her hand back on his leg. Firm, grounding press with her palm, and she leans over to nuzzle at his neck, too. He leans back on her, tries to just get his head straight and think back. So he had been keeping out of hunts and the hunter community, both for Allison’s sake and to just try and shake off the damage to their reputations. But he hadn’t been completely sticking his head in the ground. He would’ve heard of a kill hunt, at least, and he’d watched for hunters coming in, for rogues. But hunters in general hadn’t been very thick around Beacon Hills, up till Deaton had retired and people had briefly thought it was open season on the Nemeton.

“Huh.” Chris pokes absently at his pie with his fork. “Yeah. You’re right. I didn’t even think. And the alpha that bit Whittemore, that wasn’t a hunt so much as a targeted strike. I remember they brought in army reserve for that.”

Melissa hums thoughtfully. Runs out of her own pie, so she swipes some of Chris’, including a big chunk of the crust, which is his favorite part. She giggles when he glares at her, then nuzzles his neck again. “You can order more.”

“I’m going to die with a sugar-filled heart,” Chris mutters. He cuts off the rest of the crust and pushes it aside for himself, then tilts the plate so she can get at his crust-less slice a little easier. “Well, I don’t mind, somebody else taking this one on. And it’ll make things less awkward with the Hales, give John less of a headache.”

“Talia actually was asking whether we could get you in, provisional be damned,” Melissa says. When Chris starts, she shrugs and then she takes a good swig of coffee. “John cut her dead. Didn’t even say anything, just stared at her, you know, that you’ve-got-to-be-kidding me face of his where he’s all rumpled and you think he’s just annoyed and then you look closer, and you realize he’s trying to figure out whether he can fit in taking care of your body?”

“I bet she just complimented him on his multi-tasking,” Chris says. He drops his fork and just picks the crust off the plate with his fingers, and starts nibbling on it. “I thought we’d get another week before she started badgering about coming to theirs for winter holidays.”

She’s looking at him oddly, like he’s missing something right in front of his face, and she wants to pick it up but isn’t quite that exasperated yet. “I don’t think it has anything to do with winter holidays. She really doesn’t like the idea of the Fronsacs operating near her.”

“They’re not that near, they’re…” Chris pauses “…are they? Is that the new fuss? They’re still tracking the guy, right?”

“Fifty miles off, last sighting. They almost got him, Marianne hit him with a tracker bullet, but then it fell out.” Melissa throws up her hands. “We have to have all these leftover Cold War bunkers in this county. They think he’s been ducking in and out of them.”

“I was telling everybody back in the day they should just pipe concrete into those, fill them up.” Then Chris shakes himself, because it was made pretty clear back then that that wasn’t his call, and at that time he’d had real standing to ask. “Anyway, I get Talia doesn’t like an out-of-town hunter, but when Whittemore was bitten she took the army over me.”

Melissa stops eating his pie. “I thought you weren’t licensed by then?”

“I wasn’t. Didn’t stop her from throwing it in my face, next meet-up we had,” Chris mutters. “Called me out for not noticing a goddamn rabid alpha in my backyard, if I really wanted to go killing werewolves.”

Thing was—thing is, she kind of had a point. The Hales had been in and out of town at the time, but Chris had stayed put. Had been pretty pointedly told to by the prosecutor in the Richard Hale case, implication being if he even looked like he was running, they’d stop treating him and Allison as just witnesses. He hadn’t had a license but he should’ve seen something, heard something. He could’ve reported it and maybe they would’ve caught the alpha before Whittemore got mauled.

“I’m not going to say what I think about that,” Melissa says, a little abruptly. She puts her fork down with very deliberate, slow movements, and then takes a deep breath. Then she looks at him. She sighs. Reaches up, curls her hand loosely over the back of his neck, pulls his head over to lean into hers. “I know it’s between you two, and I don’t want to—it’s messy, it’s got a lot of stuff I don’t know and can’t know, and I don’t want to mess it up even more. But it’s been a while, you know, and Jackson’s a healthy young man. Healthy enough to drive my poor kid up the wall. Between him and Coach Finstock, somebody’s going to have an aneurysm before the season’s over.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Chris rubs his cheek against her temple a few times, then lifts his chin. He feels Melissa sway in, then catch herself short, not expecting it. But then she turns her face into his throat, tugs with her hand on the other side.

She holds it for a couple seconds, her mouth vibrating softly with each breath right over his pulse. He puts a tentative arm over her shoulders, and when she snuggles in, drops it to her waist. Her scrubs slide up some, just enough for him to feel the warm skin of her side.

“Chris,” Melissa says. She moves her head just enough to look up at him. “Do you want to be a hunter?”

“I…” He shifts around, then sinks back against the booth. Then he looks at her. “I…honestly, I don’t even know what that means anymore. I mean, I know what it is. But…it’s not like I don’t want to help either.”

“Yeah, of course, but you don’t have to be a hunter to do that,” Melissa says.

She’s the obvious example, though she’s kind enough to not point that out. “But it’s what I got,” Chris says. He digs his toe at the floor under the table. “I’m good at it. I have all the supplies.”

Melissa flexes her fingers, reminding him they’re on his neck. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not, I’m serious. I’m just—I don’t know what I’m trying to say,” Chris mutters. He looks across the empty diner. “I’m good at it. And I like being good at things. I like…parts of it, yeah, I like those. I don’t how to say this without sounding like a psycho, but there’s something about being able to track people a lot stronger and faster than you, with better senses, and being good at it, and—that’s what I picked up first about John. He out-tracked me.”

“He does make it look pretty good, crawling around in the dirt,” Melissa agrees.

They share a quick smile, and then Chris sighs. “It’s just I grew up doing it a certain way, and I…I knew it was the right way. Because even coming from a family like mine, you get stuck out there on your own a lot, nobody coming to save you. But you follow the code, you watch out for each other, you’ll get home. That’s what I knew. And then it all blew up, and turned out nobody was watching out for me and Allison, and…it’s easy around you or John. I know what I’m doing, I know what should matter. But I get out there by myself again and I don’t know.”

He doesn’t really sound like he’s making any sense. He knows she’s listening anyway, can feel her stroking lightly at his neck, trying to smooth over all the nerves that seem to be jumping out of him. Sometimes Chris just—really wants to ask what the hell she sees in him. God knows if somebody had ever said half the things he’d said to her and to Scott, back when their kids had first started dating, he never would’ve forgiven them. And then here she is, taking time out of her overflowing life to sit and listen to his rambling.

“You wanna come over tomorrow?” Melissa suddenly says. She sounds cheerful—she is cheerful, when he looks over at her. She’s smiling and she means it, even if her eyes are still tracking his face. “Scott’s going over to the Stilinskis’ place straight from school, something about helping Stiles teach Derek what not to do at the dance, and I could use a wake-up call so I don’t miss the whole thing.”

Chris is so startled he doesn’t think before answering. “I thought you weren’t doing this one.”

“Yeah, I know, best-laid plans. I’m still planning to sleep in till noon. But John asked if I could just keep my phone on, in case the hunt gets any closer and we have to root out all the teenagers drinking in the woods, so I gave in and put my name on the back-up chaperones list,” Melissa says. She stretches her back, then settles with her hand still set on Chris’ neck. “Come to think of it, you might want to bring a suit with you. Scott wants to take the car, so if you end up driving me, you should look it.”

“I can’t help thinking you just want to see that,” Chris says after a second.

Melissa shrugs. “Well, if I have to squeeze myself into high heels and a dress I bought ten years ago, I can’t get a little eye candy?”

Then she laughs at him, because he’s blushing. How she and John manage to turn him into a stupid teenager, he doesn’t understand either.

Though he does know why he doesn’t mind it. He hunches over, but presses their legs together under the table. Then he laughs at her, seeing the yawn that’s almost breaking her jaw. “All right, all right,” he says. “I’ll bring a damn suit. Now let’s get you home, so you can get that lie-in.”

* * *

In the morning Chris checks with Allison that she’s got everything she needs, from dress to fully-charged phone to fully-charged taser, and then he drops her off at school. He goes home, does some diligence on a few deals he has pending, checks his incoming and outgoing shipments, and then he checks his guns.

He meant it when he said he was happy to leave it up to the Fronsacs, but staying out of it is different from being unprepared. And he meant it when he said he liked some of hunting, too.

Chris wouldn’t say he likes guns. He respects them and what they do and mean, and he’s proud of what he personally can do with them. But Kate told him once that holding a gun made her feel like she had everything she was missing, and he’s never felt like that. Never even wanted to, either. Guns—they calm him down. Give him something to think around, hold onto while he’s figuring out what to do. When he cleans them, sometimes he feels like he even thinks a little clearer, sees a little farther.

So he’s kind of irritated when the wards tingle, jerking him out of his routine. Then he’s a little concerned, because he recognizes John’s signature and it’s only a little past lunch.

And then, when he opens the door, he honestly just stares for a couple seconds.

“Yeah, I know,” John says. He flicks at his tie, then rolls his shoulder when it lands up there. Then he pulls the tie down and tugs at the knot, looking like the thing is strangling him. “Believe me, monkey suit’s not my idea.”

Monkey suit is…not what Chris would call it. He steps back to let the other man in, and he knows he’s embarrassing himself but he can’t stop staring. The suit just—it really fits. It’s plain colors, not anything trendy, but it’s…classic feels too flat and old.

“I have a spot or something?” John says. He’s still messing with his tie, but the corners of his mouth are quirking up.

“Don’t be an asshole, Stilinski, I just ate,” Chris mutters. A glint catches his eye as John lifts his elbow, pulling his suit-jacket away from his body. Then the man drops his arm and Chris stares for an entirely different reason as that shoulder holster doesn’t show at all. “Did you…is this thing cut to hide your guns?”

John shuffles a little like he’s abashed, but he’s outright grinning now. “Don’t look like that, it’s not a tuxedo.”

“You keep saying what you do is nothing like a James Bond movie,” Chris says.

“Because it’s not. Ninety percent of it is counting migratory animals and another nine is shoveling around mud, and the last one’s running around like a moron, herding other morons. Yeah, I get this one suit, but I pull it out maybe once a year,” John snorts. He closes the door behind him, then runs his hand through his hair. “Hey, I didn’t catch you in the middle of anything, did I?”

Chris starts to answer, then looks at him again. “So, by ‘catch,’ you mean…”

“I didn’t come over to mess around,” John says, rolling his eyes. He runs his hand through his hair again, glancing at Chris’ hands. Looks at the grease smeared over them in a way that should just be ridiculous, considering how that stuff isn’t exactly pleasant to smell or feel, but that just makes Chris’ face heat up. “Seriously. I wish that was why I was—anyway. The Fronsacs caught that omega.”

“You don’t look so thrilled,” Chris says. “Did something go wrong?”

“Well, not with the hunt. They got him alive, and he’s on his way to quarantine, thankfully. But word about him got out, and we’ve been picking up chatter about people going out in the woods and trying to spot him.” John flicks at his tie again. “I got roped in to making an announcement at the formal to try and keep our local idiots out of it, in the damn suit so nobody gets frightened. I know you don’t want to get involved, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up in case anybody asks you.”

Chris grimaces. “I didn’t say that. I mean, if you need a hand…you and Mel talk?”

John looks a little more closely at Chris, irritation fading out of his face. His hand twitches like he wants to reach out, and he’s already spreading his shoulders so Chris wants to just let them back up against the nearest vertical surface, get the man’s weight on him and just let it press him calm.

“Not really. You know, she doesn’t run back and forth between us, it’s not like I expect her to pry at you for me,” John says after a second. “She just said she’d asked if you were all right with being left out of the loop, and you said yeah. You just seem sort of…reluctant about it all.”

“I…” Chris glances down at the floor. Flexes his hand, wishes he had a gun in it and then winces at how fucked-up that sounds, even just in his head. He keeps telling himself whatever the hell went wrong with Kate and Gerard, it was a choice, not a…genetic trait, or something like that. “Yeah. Shit. Don’t tell Mel I said that, I didn’t mean—shit.”

“You all right?” John asks, a little more softly. He does reach out now, puts his fingertips on Chris’ shoulder. “You know, that thing you have with helping me, you don’t have to—”

“I know,” Chris snaps. He jerks his head up and pushes John’s hand off at the same time, not thinking. Then he freezes.

He looks at John and John just looks so…so damn nervous. Not like Chris gets nervous these days, not like he doesn’t know what’s going on but he knows it’s all just flying off on him, but like John thinks he’s poked a sore spot and he wishes he could make it better. As if things aren’t a thousand times improved since he took a look at Chris and decided he liked it.

“I know. I know, and it’s not…that I’m uncomfortable.” Chris rubs his hands against his jeans. Realizes he’s getting them dirty, and keeps rubbing them anyway. “Well, not like you think. I just—I ran my own hunts after I broke with my father. Rest of the family wasn’t big on it, you know, thought I might not be too different from Gerard after all, but we all pretended I was building up for Allison.”

“This isn’t about them showing up at Thanksgiving, is it?” John says. Then he winces. “Shit. Sorry, I’m talking over—never mind. What were you saying?”

“…not sure,” Chris mutters. He breathes in, then can’t help but think about that whole mess. It’d turned out better than he would’ve thought, sure, nobody got hurt, except Allison made him so proud that hurt, but he’s been pushing it back since then. “I don’t think that made a difference. I wasn’t thinking about them before they—it’s just I wasn’t doing it for Allison, when I was hunting before. I was doing it to show up my father. Show the rest of the family somebody over here knew what they were doing. And I’ve been thinking and I don’t know that that’s really a good reason, at the end of the day.”

John regards him silently for a couple seconds. “Why’d you reapply for your license?”

Chris blinks. “What? Oh…Allison was asking questions. She wanted to know—for me to show her, honestly, and I just thought I’d better make it legal, considering everything. I’m not—I’m not saying I lied to the psych evaluator, I do think I should pitch in since I’ve got the knowledge and the skills, and I want to do it right. I just—I have a lot of other shit rattling around in my head too, that I don’t think I really thought through. If you think I should withdraw—”

“You’re on a provisional anyway, you’ve got another couple months,” John says. He’s a little abrupt and he smooths it over by reaching up and laying his hand against the side of Chris’ neck. Then he sighs and pulls them flush together, tucking his chin over Chris’ shoulder. “Jesus, Chris, you always jump to the worst.”

“It’s called contingency planning,” Chris says, snorting. But it’s a pretty brittle attempt at a laugh, he’ll admit. And he’ll also admit he’s gladder than is rational about John pulling him in, just leaning into him. “John, I haven’t made my own calls about who lives and who dies in years. Yeah, I stepped in a couple times when I had to, but just to get the authorities in to finish it off. And now Allison’s getting to the point where she’ll be ready to make those calls, and I’m trying to teach her, and I don’t even know if I can do it myself anymore.”

He’s pretty shaky by the end of that. One way or the other, John takes out his knees, Chris thinks, and then just pushes his face into John’s neck. He just barely remembers to keep his greasy hands off the man’s suit, hooking them into his jeans pockets so they’re clear, but otherwise he puts as much of his weight as he can into the other man.

John doesn’t object, though Chris feels him adjust to take it. He rubs his hand up and down Chris’ neck; his thumb’s bent under so it’s tracking in one of the natural muscle grooves, as firmly demanding as it is calming. So damn alpha, and Chris takes a deep breath and remembers it’s okay to be amused.

“I’m always laying these things on you,” he mutters.

“Well, last I checked, we were in a relationship, you’re supposed to talk to each other,” John says. He eases off on the neck petting, but sneaks a kiss before he pulls back. “Anyway, not like I haven’t been there. I still wonder once in a while whether I should’ve taken that last out-of-town trip instead of Claudia.”

Chris bites down on his sucked-in breath, looking at the other man. Honestly, he’d thought John’s reaction to his mother-in-law throwing that in his face had been too reasonable, but he hadn’t wanted to push, even to ask Melissa. Seemed a little ungrateful, what with the timing.

“Stiles needed a tree, we couldn’t take a time-out or pretend he wasn’t what he was, so I didn’t have the time to think whether I was doing the right thing. I just had to do what I thought we needed, and hope it came out okay, and that’s probably the only difference between you and me,” John adds. “People seem to think I’d be a great master of the hunt, or strike team leader, or things like that, but I’ve met the good ones and they put stuff behind them a lot better than me.”

“I think you’re selling yourself a little short there,” Chris has to say. Because his judgment’s shaky in a lot of places, but he doesn’t think it is on that one. And if he and Talia Hale and Wanda Brzezicki can all agree on it, he’s pretty sure that means there’s something.

John raises his brows. Raises his hand, too, and floats his fingers under Chris’ chin for a second. “Yeah, well, I’m not gonna say that isn’t good for my ego. But look, Chris, you figure out whatever you need. Just remember it’s modern times, all right, you got more types of hunter than the big Old World teams.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Chris pauses, then leans forward and nudges John’s jaw with his forehead. “I know, but thanks.”

“So Mel mentioned you were going over to hers,” John says after a moment. “She’s probably going to end up getting called in to chaperone, we’re going to put extra patrols around the school limits.”

Chris sighs. “I’m guessing we’ll both see you at the dance, then?”

“Well, I’ll look for you, but I’ve got rangers to corral as soon as I make my speech and get out of this suit,” John says. He cocks his head. “I told her to take pictures in case I do miss you.”

“I don’t have any suit good as that,” Chris says, looking John up and down. Then he winces and flushes, because shit, but John suddenly looks like he wants to get them up against a wall. “My hands are greasy.”

John laughs, but he keeps looking at Chris like that. “Yeah, and I gotta…I need to go. Anyway, have fun, get her a drink and a dance or something.”

“We’ll take video if that happens,” Chris says dryly. Then yeah, grabs a kiss on John’s way out. And maybe it’s got a little bit of tongue. He still manages to keep his hands off, and so does John, so that’s better than half the times John is over.

He’s feeling pretty good for a few minutes afterward. He doesn’t really have anything sorted out in his head, but he just—feels like maybe he can manage it, at some point. And then Chris looks around and it’s quiet and he’s by himself, and he just thinks…he remembers, really. He doesn’t just have this. He has more than that, now. And maybe that’s why he’s having such a hard time figuring things out.

* * *

Melissa doesn’t mind at all if Chris comes over a little earlier than planned, though she warns him she’ll still be in the middle of getting ready, since they are heading for the dance. Which means she looks so beautiful when he walks in that he forgets he’s holding flowers, and nearly mushes them into the door.

“Roses,” she says, grinning at them. “For a guy who claimed he didn’t even have a suit, you’re doing it right so far.”

Chris recovers enough to shrug as he hands them to her. She likes them, but she’s also going to crack a joke at him, he can tell from how she’s tilting her head. “They were next to the cash register,” he says, and then hands her the bottle of wine he’d also bought. “I figured if we’re going back to school, might as well go the whole way.”

“You are such a better date than my high school sweetheart,” Melissa says. She nods approvingly at the wine, then leans up to peck his cheek. The skirt of her dress brushes up against his hand as she does, and it’s thin enough that he can feel the warmth of her leg through it. “You look good, too. I like the shirt, brings out your eyes.”

Then she turns around to carry the roses back and he maybe gets stuck looking at her ass and he just—God, he’s wondering if he can see a panty line or not. He’s getting as bad as her and John. “Right, thanks,” he says, several beats later.

Thankfully, Melissa’s too busy rushing back to the bathroom to notice. She just calls for him to help himself to anything in the fridge, and that she should be done in another couple of minutes. He translates that as fifteen to twenty, and walks into the kitchen to find some unwashed dishes in the sink.

Well, it’s not his best suit, and there’s time to kill. He strips off the suit-coat, rolls up his sleeves and tucks his tie out of the way, and then cracks open the wine while he’s at it. Then he scrubs up.

“So much better than any of my exes,” Melissa says when she finds him stacking the last of the glasses. She steps up and pulls his tie out of his shirt-button line, smoothing it down his chest. Then she blinks. Sticks her hands under his arms, slides them straight down his sides and then to the small of his back, all of that brisk and impersonal. “You’re not carrying?”

“I thought we were all-clear, except for teen pranks?” Chris says. “John came by and yeah, I saw he was, but I figured that was just—”

“Him, yeah, he might hate suits but if he has to wear one, he straps up. I never understand that, it’s not like the holster makes his collar any less tight,” Melissa says, rolling her eyes. She takes her hands off him and looks apologetic. “Sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

Chris can hear a little more than embarrassment in her voice, but he lets it pass. Grabs his coat off the chair, then turns as he’s putting it on to see her sipping from what’s left of his wine. She makes a like-like noise, then sees she’s left lipstick on the glass rim and makes a face. And then she pushes at him as he leans in, stiff arm, giggle in her voice. “No, come on, I spent an hour with the straightening iron, Chris, you do not know what torture that is.”

“I’m not touching it,” Chris says, and he’s not. It just—something she put on her hair or in it, it smells really nice. He reaches up and grabs the wineglass so she doesn’t splash him, and takes a nice long sniff.

“Getting in touch with your wolf side?” Melissa says, amused. She slides her hand up and gets him by the back of the neck. Squeezes lightly, doesn’t push him back. She works the glass up over his shoulder and finishes off the last of the wine while he’s just drifting his nose down the side of her face. “Come on. Chaperones aren’t the ones who show up with their clothes all wrinkled.”

Chris shrugs. Curls back into her grip, presses his knee into the swish of her skirt till it runs into something firmer. Rubs up against her thigh. “Wouldn’t know, never did school dances on the other side.”

Melissa stills. Then there’s a clink as she puts the glass on the counter. She brings her other hand around so she can rub both sides of his jaw. “Hey, you said it,” she says, but she’s soft about it, more encouraging than mocking. “Really?”

“All-boys boarding school in France a couple years, before my mom died, and after that, dance nights were some of Dad’s favorites to run hunts on. You know, since everybody’d be too busy to pay attention,” Chris says, shrugging. Yeah, he did say it, and he’s not sure why. He’s not exactly embarrassed but he knows how people are going to react to it, and he’s pretty sure they don’t need to know that to know he wasn’t brought up right. “I mean, hunters have these cotillions—I met Victoria at one—but those are…different.”

She nods, still stroking his jaw. She’s not smiling but she…she’s warm. It’s just warm, how she’s looking at him. A little hesitant, yeah, but mostly she just looks like she’s happy to listen, even if it’s something ridiculous like this.

“So we should go now,” Melissa finally says. And she does get a little wicked-looking when he eases closer to her, hands lifting to her hips, but she pushes her elbows into his chest. Breathes in sharply. “Do a patrol, say hi to the kids, then get you some punch so we can sit on the bleachers like I did through half of high school.”

Chris’ brows tick up. He shifts even closer and she breathes in quick again. “Really?”

“Why I fell for my ex-husband and got pregnant before I graduated, cute older guy walking the wallflower home,” Melissa mutters. Her face fills with disgust, then almost immediately smooths out as their bellies graze up against each other. “Anyway. Chris. I dressed up. You’re not smearing my make-up before I get my formal photos.”

“I’m not wearing make-up,” Chris says.

Her eyes go hot and hungry, just a second before she grabs him by the neck again, holds him back from dropping to his knees. “Oh, no, nuh-huh,” she says. “I’m not changing my panties either. This is the only thong I have.”

“Fuck,” Chris says. He stares at her. “Fuck. Don’t say that kind of thing, I’ll have to run home and get new pants.”

“Chris, seriously, we have to—we’re going. We’re going.” Melissa’s half-laughing, half-moaning as she starts pushing them towards the door. “No. Come on. We’re going. We—get there first, okay, do our job, then go screw in the girls’ bathroom.”

“Don’t say that,” Chris says, half-moaning himself. They stumble into the hall and Melissa trips over her heels. He catches her and her breasts press into his chest for a moment, tops spilling up over her dress’ neckline. “Damn it, I did do that—”

“So you know girls’ bathroom blowjobs are the best, right?” she says. Then she shoves him into the front door, while he’s gaping at her. She’s barely upright herself, hanging on by one hand on his shoulder, but as he watches, she straightens up, smooths down her dress, pats her hair and checks that she has her purse. “Okay, Argent. Take me to the dance.”

* * *

The drive over is uneventful, if a little awkward. Melissa keeps snickering to herself, and Chris can’t look at her because he’s busy trying to concentrate on the road, and on ignoring the slightly tight crotch of his pants.

He’s just thinking they might have to sit in the parking lot and wait for him to cool off when Melissa suddenly leans forward. “Chris—”

Is already pulling over, behind the car that’s run up over the curb. It doesn’t look like a bad accident and the pair of boys shivering against the side of the car just look bruised up, but both of them are a little hysterical. They jump at Chris and Melissa, babbling and pointing at things, and it takes a couple seconds to figure out what they’re saying.

“I swear, I didn’t hit her. We were just asking whether she needed a ride to the ER or something, she had this—she had blood all over here—” one of the boys runs his hand from his shoulder to his wrist “—and she didn’t look really good.”

“I asked if she wanted some water ‘cause I thought she was gonna faint or something, and she freaked the fuck out,” says the other boy. He jabs his finger at the front of the car, where claw marks are clearly visible. “She fucking swiped us off the road! I just offered her a water bottle!”

Melissa shoots a look at Chris there, because that sounds like late-stage rabies. Then she goes back to calming the boys down, asking them if either of them touched her, things like that. One of them says they already called 911, so Chris stops mid-dial and calls John instead. He’s expecting a voicemail and jumps when he actually hears John’s voice.

“Hey, I was calling you,” John says. “Are you still at Mel’s?”

“No. Is there another rabid were?” Chris says.

John swears violently. Somebody nearby asks him if he’s okay and he snaps at them to go find Stiles, now. “Where are you?”

“On the county road turnoff, after Yellow Oak and…hang on, let me go find the mile marker.” Chris ducks back to his car and opens up the glove compartment. He takes out his gun and starts to slide it into his waistband, then has second thoughts as he looks around the heavily-wooded sides of the road. “What happened? I thought the Fronsacs got him.”

Melissa comes over and Chris flips the phone to speaker so she can hear. John sounds like he’s still at the dance, and beyond pissed about it. “They did, but they were backtracking his trail, proper due diligence, and they found a torn-up campsite and no camper. Some fuck-up with the local cops mean we didn’t get the missing persons report till Grégoire called and asked about it. Nineteen-year-old female, dirty blonde hair, green eyes, five-two, one-ten, cross-country champ. Were-lynx. What’s her—her name’s Miranda.”

“How long since she was bit?” Melissa says. She frowns as Chris hands her the phone, then nods in understanding when he goes around to pull open some of the passenger space compartments.

“Couple days, but Grégoire said the site looked bad, she probably got multiple infection bites, so progression’s accelerated,” John says. “She lives a little past here, over in Snakehead, guessing we got confirm that she headed straight home? Anybody hurt?”

“Car accident, not bad, I don’t think anybody’s infected but I’ll get the paramedics to vaccinate them,” Melissa says. Then she drops the phone to her shoulder. “I have my tranq gun but I don’t carry that kind of dosage around.”

“Yeah, okay, here.” Chris comes back and hands her his gun, and keeps the electric saber for himself. He sticks a spare battery pack in his pocket. “I’m going to get the mile marker for John, and then see if I can tell where she’s headed.”

Melissa nods. She’s obviously not liking the gun in her hand, but she gets it: if the girl gets past Chris, then it’ll be a situation where whoever’s left had better have the lethal weapon. “You stay where I can see you. This isn’t that close to the preserve, I don’t know if it’s within Stiles’ range.”

“Just up the road there,” Chris says, jerking his chin at the little pale dot. “You see the marker? Then I’ll come back and sit with you and them till the ambulance gets here.”

John’s barking at them, so Melissa has to take the phone off her shoulder. She starts walking back towards the two boys, though she’s still eyeing Chris like she wants to yell at him.

But she talks to John instead, while Chris jogs up to that marker. He calls the number back to Melissa, then crosses the road as he comes back. The kids’ car had been bashed into the rail, like the girl had been walking in the middle of the road…and he finds some drops of blood, and then a couple scuffs where she must’ve dug her claws in to brace for the throw.

There aren’t any other cars coming, although he can hear the ambulance siren in the distance. Chris squats down and squints at the road, and the glimmer from his car’s headlights catches on some divots. He follows them over to the other side of the road, but it’s too dark to make out anything past the rail.

“Chris?” Melissa calls. “John’s heading over. ETA fifteen.”

He’s about to call back when the muscles in his shoulders and back seize up. Chris immediately pushes off the rail and backwalks into the road, bringing his saber around front and on full-power. He doesn’t see anything but he keeps scanning the side of the road. He’s missing some—shit, lynx.

Chris looks up and spots the glowing eyes just as she leaps out of the tree at him. Werewolves can climb just fine but prefer to fight on the ground; were-lynx would rather hook you into the tree and then break you over the branches. He twists so her claws miss him, then tries to hit her with the saber.

The tip of the saber catches a limb, maybe a leg and she yowls over the crackle. Seems to change direction mid-jump, bouncing off another tree and then coming at him from the other side.

He ducks and scrambles further into the road, only to make a rookie error when a car horn suddenly blasts at him: jerks towards the rail, not across the road and towards the others. He wastes a second making sure that hasn’t just thrown him right at the lynx and loses sight of her completely. Spots her again just as the ambulance swerves wildly, barely missing her as she lands on the road. It screeches to a stop about ten yards down.

By then the were-lynx is back in the trees, snarling and screaming as she thrashes around. It looks like the branches are trying to grab at her, but they’re not very accurate; they always seem to be a half-second behind. And then she jumps out, way over Chris’ head, onto the top of the ambulance. She’s fully-shifted and her claws peel up paint and send up a horrendous squealing noise as she rips at the steel.

Chris runs around the back of the ambulance and nearly gets hit by the police car coming up right behind it. He drops his saber and snaps away from the glare of the headlights, half-blinded, shaking his head furiously to clear his vision. The lynx is still yowling from above the ambulance and he can hear other people screaming. Melissa, shouting for someone to just stay inside.

His sight comes back in time for him to see Melissa run up and slam shut the passenger door of the ambulance, then backpeddle as the lynx surges to that side of the roof. Her heels get caught in her skirt and she trips and falls onto one hand. Still has the gun—Chris whips around, sees some idiot cop drawing a bead on the lynx as she jumps off the ambulance and then lunges him into the side of the car, knocking up his gun just in time.

“Shut up, you jackass, you miss you’ll hit the people behind her!” Chris snaps into the man’s angry face. Doesn’t look to see what reaction he gets, just spins back around.

Melissa’s back on her feet, unbitten, though she’s kicked off her shoes and ripped open the middle of her skirt. She’s holding the gun on the lynx, saying something—Chris feels the world tilt crazily for a second, seeing she’s okay, and then pushes that off.

He sees his saber lying in the road and goes forward in a half-crouch, scooping it up as he comes up behind the were-lynx. Stops when she whirls on him. He’s within a couple yards of her by then, too far for a straight lunge, so he just swings up the saber on full power.

“Miranda?” Melissa says. “Miranda. Miranda. Listen. You need to listen. We’re here to—”

The were-lynx whips back towards Melissa, drops to all fours and then screams so loudly that Melissa grabs at the side of her head with her free hand. Froth is dripping in huge gobbets from her mouth. She rips up bits of pavement with her claws, kicking them towards Chris when she realizes he’s edging around her. He needs to get where he’s not blocking Melissa’s shot.

“Miranda!” Melissa snaps. “Miranda! Stop it and listen, damn it!”

Melissa puts a little alpha gravel into her voice. For a human she does a more than decent imitation; were-lynx don’t have alphas but like any were, they recognize a challenge when they hear one.

The were-lynx freezes into a low crouch, staring at Melissa. Her hindlegs shift down, then slightly back.

Chris rushes in and bashes the saber into her side. It disrupts her spring forward, but he started out too far and she had time to extend her body before he hit her. So she twists towards him instead of falls away, and he has to throw himself into a roll to avoid her claws, barely remembers to switch off the saber so he doesn’t shock himself. It’d still be okay except he runs right into the rail along the road, and even if Melissa shoots the were-lynx, momentum’s going to carry her fang-first into him—

The rail dents, groaning, as an alpha werewolf lands on it and lets out a full-throated roar. The sound alone throws the were-lynx off enough for her to skitter sideways, giving Chris a chance to shove himself clear, and then Laura Hale jumps down onto the road, still partly shifted.

Melissa’s retreated back to the two boys, who seem glued to their trashed car. She’s yelling directions at the cops, telling them to back off, just block the road. Chris starts to scoot back towards her, but the were-lynx screams and then leaps right at Laura’s face.

Laura side-steps and then slashes out. But that leaves the were-lynx a clear shot at Chris and then Melissa, behind him, and the girl’s so enraged at this point that she barely flinches from Laura’s claws.

Chris didn’t drop the saber this time, thank God. He switches it back on and brings it around like a baseball bat, and sends the were-lynx back towards the rail. She hits the steel, falls down, and then stays down, groaning.

The saber broke in half with the force of the hit, sending up sparks and dangling wires towards Chris’ face. He throws it as far as he can from him. Turns to check that Melissa’s okay, only to find that she’s right next to him, pressing his gun back into his hand and breathing like she’d just blown through a marathon. The cops are shouting for them to move aside.

“Chris, my God,” Melissa breathes.

“Oh, shut the fuck—” Laura starts, sounding exasperated. She’s looking at the cops.

The were-lynx’s head goes up. Chris swears, grabs Melissa by the arm and shoves her as far to the side as he can. That sends him the other way, into Laura. He’s looking at the were-lynx and there isn’t anything rational in those eyes. Isn’t even anything animal in it. The girl doesn’t give a damn what Laura is, she just wants to kill.

He brings up the gun and shoots her twice in the chest. Her body twists with each bullet but it keeps coming—

At the last moment Chris feels a grip on his elbow and then a wrench up. He’s floating when he feels his arm slip its socket, and then there’s that sickening second of fall, and then—he hits the roof of the ambulance. Blacks out.

Kind of a gift, he thinks, when he starts coming back awake. His entire side would be killing him if his left shoulder wasn’t a mass of white-hot pain right now. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

“He’s not concussed!” someone yells. Laura.

“Well, get me up there and let me see, damn it,” Melissa snaps. “I can hear him, what the hell did you do to—”

“What, no, don’t touch her,” Chris slurs. Shit. He really, really wishes he wasn’t awake. “Gonna pop her arm.”

“I would not,” Laura—definitely a Hale, they all have that deeply offended sarcastic tone. “Grab some drugs before you climb up, Melissa. He’s kind of drifting.”

Melissa snarls, and Chris is just conscious enough to register that Laura is flinching. Then Laura sighs and drops back next to Chris. She puts her hand on his side and that jars something and Jesus fuck that hurts.

“Okay. Look. Chris. I’m gonna…” Laura touches something else, vaguely where Chris remembers his hand should be, and it still hurts but it’s not like sticking a hot poker in him “…okay. Yeah, just breathe, and ignore the weird little tug you might feel, and don’t think about werewolves, and—”

His head is clearing. “’m not an idiot, just do it.”

“Well, just wanted to check you were okay with it first,” Laura says.

And then she stops messing around and actually draws on his pain, and it’s like night and day. He can breathe without feeling like somebody’s got a giant fist around his ribs, and…yeah, they’re bruised up but he’s hopeful nothing’s cracked. None of them are sparking at him, anyway, not like his shoulder is.

“She dead?” he mutters.

“No.” Laura resettles herself so she can stretch and get something from somebody at the side of the ambulance without taking her hand off him. “You put her down long enough for them to get tranqs and restraints on her, but…I think she’s having an allergic reaction to the vaccine. She’s on the way to the hospital, last I heard they were looking into whether she’s got a do-not-revive.”

“Shit,” Chris says.

He’s feeling…like shit, but he can focus his eyes now, so he tries to roll over. Bad idea.

“Stop moving, I can hear you,” Melissa calls up.

“I got him,” Laura tells her, hand on Chris’ good shoulder. Then she leans over so she can look into him. “I called Mom, so don’t worry. She dies, it won’t be a problem, we’ll handle her family.”

Chris grimaces. Tries to at least get his good hand up and loosen his tie, which is halfway to strangling him.

“Give the pride a break, Argent. Yeah, it’s awkward, but is it really as awkward as us owing you?” Laura sighs. She reaches over and gets his tie for him, then sits back.

“It’s not—that.” Not that Chris wants to have this conversation. He wouldn’t if he was healthy, in one piece, and had a bottle of whiskey waiting for him afterward, and he definitely doesn’t want to have it when he’s seesawing between pain endorphins and plain pain. “Just…okay, appreciate it. Tell—tell your mother—”

“I’m gonna tell her you’re passed out. So that gets you to the hospital before she might catch on, better hope Stilinski gets there before her.” Laura gives Chris a light one-finger tap on the shoulder, then moves away. “Does he need a booster shot?”

Melissa’s voice drifts in from somewhere over Chris’ head. “Everybody’s getting one anyway, whatever their status. I haven’t seen somebody that rabid in a while—that means you, Laura, so—”

“Okay, okay. Going,” Laura says. Sounds like she’s swinging herself into the ambulance.

Her pain-draw effect lasts another couple seconds, and then it starts to wear off. Chris sucks in his breath, bracing for it, and Melissa lets out a long, tired sigh. Her hand curves under his head and he feels a sharp prick at his nape, then a strange cool flush, like iced air blowing against his skin. And then…everything…just gets really…nice.

“Sometimes the R&D guys come up with really good stuff,” Melissa says, putting down something small and clinking. She shifts so she can slide his head onto her lap, leaning over him to tug at his arms and help him shift to support that bad shoulder. “Just don’t get trippy on me, okay? Chris?”

“Huh? Yeah. Right.” Chris turns his head into her legs, then sighs as a slow numbness goes through him, easing all the aching. His cheek and part of his mouth come off her dress and touch warm, bare, sweet-smelling skin. God, she smells so good. “Right. Mel. Hey. Sorry.”

Melissa’s touching his face. He thinks she’s petting him and he leans into it, and then nearly gets her finger in his eye, because she’s checking his pupils. She curses under her breath and then does pet him, rubbing along his jaw and behind his ear. “Please tell me it’s not because you didn’t save me, or something like that.”

“Dance,” Chris mutters. “Girl’s bathroom.”

Her hand stops moving. Then she laughs, and slides it down to lie alongside his throat. “Okay, you’re loopy,” she says, right as he lifts his chin and churrs at her. She makes a startled noise, then pulls her hand away and covers his mouth. “Okay. Okay, let’s get you to the hospital.”

* * *

Whatever Melissa shot into him, it lasts long enough to make it the most painless shoulder relocation Chris has ever had. They do the rabies booster at some point, too, and then strap his arm across his chest and paste a couple butterfly bandages here and there. Then they want him to wait around because the doctors are still processing the x-rays they took to check for cracked ribs. So Melissa goes to get coffee and Chris tries to find a comfortable way to sit in the room’s chair, because now the stuff is wearing off.

He’s just about given up when the door flings open. Chris jumps to his feet and Allison, sobbing, runs over with her arms flung wide. So he tries to lift his arms to grab her, except one’s strapped down and the other’s stiff with bruises, and why is it wearing off.

Allison stops when he flinches. She’s already calming down, though she’s still crying as she nervously lifts her hands towards him. “Dad?”

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay, I’m all right,” Chris says. He cautiously moves his free arm, then gingerly gathers her into a hug. “I’m okay. Did Melissa call you?”

“No, Stiles got me. The tree picked up on the car accident, and we were trying to find his dad and then he said you’d showed up, but it was too far or something, he couldn’t really tell what was going on, and we tried to get over there as soon as we could, but these idiots were fighting each other in the parking lot and blocking the way, and we—oh, my God, I am so sorry.” She jerks her hands off him, then pats at his back and arm. “I didn’t mean to squeeze you, really.”

Chris forces down his pained wheeze. “’s okay. Just banged up a little, nothing major.”

Now she’s looking skeptical, while she’s wiping at her eyes. “Dad, the nurse outside said you’d dislocated your shoulder, and they were still checking if you’d broken anything.”

“I didn’t break anything,” Chris says. He takes Allison by the elbow, then tugs her over so he can put his hand on her shoulder. “I’d know, all right? So gonna be stiff a few days, but nothing that isn’t going to heal. I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Allison says very quietly. She looks at him again, doubtful and relieved, and then gives her eyes a last scrub. The mascara on her hand catches her attention as she lowers her arm and she winces, then backs up. Spots a box of tissues in the corner. She grabs it and then starts wiping off her fingers.

Her shoulders look a little stiff and Chris winces. “Sorry I didn’t…let you know. We weren’t hunting, we just came up on the accident, and—”

Allison looks up, frowning, and then comes back and hugs him again. “Oh, my God, Dad. I’m not mad at you. I just—it was so crazy. We were trying to get out of the parking lot and finally Scott was just, get on my back, I’ll run over to Greenberg’s house, because he lives right by the school, you know. So we did that and finally got a car, but by the time we got to the accident, they’d already taken you to the hospital. And nobody would say how you were, and the cop in charge was an asshole and Stiles had to pull Derek back from punching him, and—”

“Breathe, Allison,” Chris says.

She breathes, and then she really breathes, a huge gust that makes her sag into him. Which hurts, but he tries to not grit his teeth so she’ll hear it.

“Sorry,” she says. She pulls back, then laughs and dabs at her cheek with a crumpled tissue. “It just—I feel like I spent the whole night running all over town, and it’s not even midnight. Wow. It just feels like it’s been hours and hours.”

“Yeah. Yeah. But it’s over, and we’re okay.” He rubs off some of the black smears on her cheek, then laughs as she uses the tissue to clean off his thumb. “Really.”

“Okay.” She smiles at him, then turns around as there’s some kind of outburst in the hall. Then she looks back over her shoulder, just as he’s starting for the door. “Dad? Derek said—he got a call, he said Laura said you shot her. The girl, the were.”

Chris stops.

“I know you had to,” Allison says. She pauses, then reaches out and grabs his hand. “Dad. I just—I know you wouldn’t unless you really had to. And Derek said Laura’s siding with you, he says we shouldn’t have anybody mad at us for it. So we’re okay, right? You’re okay?”

“It’s…well, it happened,” Chris finally says. He presses his lips together, tightens his fingers around her hand. “Look, if there’s any fallout—”

“You’re my dad. We’re in this together,” Allison says sharply. She turns back around to face him. Her chin goes up and she looks like—she looks so much like Chris’ mother sometimes, the one who kept him straight. “You said that, remember?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. But Allison, look, it’s not about whether people get mad at you. They—you’re killing their family, you can’t help that.” Chris sighs. “You can’t tell them not to get mad.”

“But you can tell them you did it because you had to, so other people wouldn’t get hurt.” Allison pulls at his hand, then lets go of it. She looks him right in the eye. “Dad. You did it because it was right. And you’re okay, right?”

Chris has to be honest with her. He hates it when she gets even a little downcast, but he nearly lost his daughter with lies before, and he’s never going back there. “I did do it because I didn’t think there was any other way to stop her. But I’m still thinking it over—sometimes it’s not that cut-and-dried, Allison. And you shouldn’t just take somebody’s word that it’s the right thing. You should—”

“—see for yourself,” she finishes. She’s smiling, for some reason. “Yeah, that’s why I know that’s why you did it. Well, that and if Laura Hale’s telling us we’re good, that kind of says something, doesn’t it?”

“I think it says her mother’s going to be insufferable,” Chris says, sighing. “Anyway…let’s just say I’ll be okay, all right?”

“Okay,” Allison says, still beaming at him. Then she lifts her head. “Is that Melissa? Oh, I’ll go get Scott, he was worried sick about her.”

It is Melissa, with coffee and one of those little paper pharmacy bags. “I got your pain pills, it was on the way,” she says, handing over the coffee. “You still have to wait another hour for the other stuff to wear off.”

Chris sips cautiously at his cup, since he doesn’t need a burnt lip on top of everything else. “What the hell was that anyway? I felt like I was going to tell people my whole life story—shit. Did I?”

“No.” Melissa hides her face in her cup for all of one second, and then giggles. She carefully loops her arm around his waist at the same time. “No, no, you weren’t really that talky, actually. But you did purr a lot.”

“Shit,” Chris says into his coffee.

“It wasn’t that bad. Anyway, I’m friends with one EMT and the other’s dating a nurse here, so they’re not going to blab,” Melissa says. She looks at him, then lifts her arm from his waist and reaches up to rub at where the sling’s digging into his neck. “It’s okay, it was cute.”

Chris makes a face at her, and Melissa goes off to the side, so she can laugh without knocking into him. She’s got those paper slippers on her feet, which have gauze pads taped all over their bottoms, and some bruises on one arm, a couple shiny patches of that spray-on sealer. She’s got three safety pins over that big rip up the front of her skirt, but they’re not doing much to hold it shut.

His suit-coat’s half-off him anyway from his and Allison’s hugs. He gingerly works his free arm up to take it off his bad shoulder, and he’s about to give it to her when somebody whistles.

They both look down the hall. There’s a gaggle of teenage boys Chris pegs as lacrosse team, one of whom looks more than a little tipsy. “Damn, baby,” the boy says, and whistles again.

Jackson’s there. He stares at the boy, then puts his hand over his face, just as Scott walks into view, Allison looking horrified at his shoulder. “That’s my mom,” Scott snaps.

“Oh, God, honestly,” Melissa says, rolling her eyes. “Sc—”

“So next team sleepover, she tucks us in?” the boy says.

Scott punches him. The boy goes over—the other boys all scatter instead of catching him; Jackson’s even gotten out his phone and is talking into it as he swivels away—and Scott glowers at him. Then drags his hand through his hair, looks up, and goes from annoyed to worried to relieved in the same second.

“Mom!” he says, jogging down the hall.

“Hey, baby.” Melissa hugs him tight. “Sorry, I left my phone in Chris’ car in the rush, couldn’t call till we got here. I hope you weren’t too worried.”

“Stiles was updating us and then Laura called. I’m just glad you’re okay,” Scott says. He lets her go, then sees Chris holding out the coat and takes the hint, grabbing it to drape over her shoulders. “Do they have to keep you any longer? The car’s still at school but I’m sure one of the guys can give us a ride—”

“I thought Stiles was saying his dad’s driving over? Shouldn’t we wait for him?” Allison says. She comes up behind Scott and hooks her hands over his shoulders, then gives Chris a wink.

Scott blinks, reaches up to hold Allison’s hands, and then remembers Chris is there. His hands drop to his sides, though when he turns, he’s careful to not knock Allison off. “Oh, hey, Mr. Ar—um, Chris. We heard about what happened, are you all right?”

“I’m up and walking and talking, it’s not bad,” Chris says. He ignores Melissa’s snort.

He can’t really ignore her if she’s actually fussing with his sling straps. She holds onto them when he tries to back off, then resumes tugging and tweaking at the buckles. “Two of those, I’ll give you,” she mutters. “Walking, on the other hand…Scott, you see a wheelchair—”

Chris glares at her. “I am not getting wheeled out.”

“But you should go home and rest, I think she’s right about that,” Allison says. Now she’s come over, just in time to get his car keys as Melissa pulls them out of his pocket. “We can get a ride from somebody. I’ll pick up the car as soon as they let us, so don’t worry about that, okay, Dad?”

“I think you’re—shit.” Chris bites down on his hiss.

Melissa rubs his neck and hastily lets up on that strap. “Sorry, sorry…okay, that should sit better now.”

It does. That buckle under his arm isn’t catching anymore, but he still scowls at her and at his daughter. “You two.”

“Dad, come on, you did plenty tonight, and anyway, the dance is almost over now,” Allison wheedles. She’s backed up to lean into Scott again, who shoots Chris a sympathetic look but who—sensibly, Chris has to admit—doesn’t even attempt to intervene. “We were all going to head over to Jackson’s place anyway.”

“You still okay if we go?” Scott says quietly to Melissa.

She’s trying to tuck Chris’ shirt-collar under the neck-strap and give him some padding. “What? Oh…no, it’s fine, Scott,” she says over her shoulder. “We got the all-clear.”

“Anyway, somebody should get some fun out of tonight,” Chris says dryly. He has to smirk when Scott doesn’t seem to know how to take that, even if that gets him a little poke from Melissa; he likes the boy, sure, but no harm in keeping Scott on his toes.

And then he smiles for real when Allison leans in to kiss his cheek. “You too, Dad,” she says. She grabs Scott’s hand as she backs up, then pulls on a face that’s almost serious. “Call me when you get home, okay?”

Almost serious, and then a little too serious. He feels a twinge that doesn’t have anything to do with the beating he took tonight, but he doesn’t let that show as he nods at her. She gives him a big smile, walking backward a couple steps, and then turns around as Scott takes her down the hall.

“Well, we don’t have to wait for John, if you want to go,” Melissa says. “But you should get off your feet. And don’t look at me like that, you’re trembling, Chris. I’m surprised you haven’t crashed yet.”

He’s going to tell her she’s not, and then he looks at his hand, and…yeah. Chris sighs and sits down in the damn chair.

Melissa looks at him for a second, then goes back out into the hall. Comes back a few minutes later with an armful of those tiny, scratchy hospital pillows, which she stuffs around him till the chair is—well, it’s never going to be comfortable, but he can probably tolerate it for another half-hour.

Maybe an hour, with Melissa squeezing in next to him. His thighs get pinched but it’s worth it for having her shoulder to rest his head on. “Might as well wait for him,” Chris finally says. “Can’t imagine he had much of a night either, don’t want to make him run around for me.”

“He was talking about staging a coup and taking over as sheriff at one point, he’s so mad at the guy,” Melissa says. She runs her hand lightly up and down his free arm, then cups his elbow. “I had to tell him to stand down. It’s not like there’s a conspiracy of lousy sheriffs, that screwed-up missing persons report didn’t happen here.”

“Really?” Chris says. “I should—”

“You even try and get up, and I’ll stick you with my back-up dose,” Melissa says, squeezing his elbow. “John can handle it. And if he can’t, I’ll kick him out till he can deal with it without getting you in the middle of it.”

Chris wants to argue, but he also wants to keep his head on Melissa’s shoulder. He really hurts now, barely feeling the drugs, and when Melissa shifts and he hears the crinkle of that pharmacy bag in her—in the pocket of his coat, which she’s wearing—he contemplates sneaking it out. And then he just sighs and settles against her, and feels very, very tired, and very sore.

“Not his fault, I threw myself in there,” he says.

“Yeah, I know.” Melissa lets go of his elbow, then cranes around to press soft lips against his brow. “And we know you didn’t feel up to it. Why do you think he’s so mad?”

“You shouldn’t worry about me that much,” Chris says after a second. “I know, and I appreciate it, but—I’ve been through worse. I can deal with it. I’ve handled it before.”

Melissa is silent for a few minutes. She shifts her legs, moves how her head is leaning on his, and he’s almost wondering if she’s going to let that go.

“It still sucks, Chris,” she finally says. She doesn’t even look at his face and she knows to snort at it. “Because that’s the thing. We’ve all been through worse. We know. And you’re going to get used to it, you know, being around people who know. Deal with that.”

Chris opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again, so he can rasp out a little, short laugh. Even when he expects it from her, she just gets him like that.

“Just rest for a second, okay?” she adds. “I’ll let you know when John’s here.”

“Okay,” he says, sighing. “Okay.”

* * *

By the time John makes it over, it’s just past midnight. Still early, considering all that he must have on his plate, but he mutters something about Talia’s nosiness working in their favor for once and drives Chris and Melissa himself.

They go to John’s house, since Allison took the house keys too, and Melissa…doesn’t want to go to her house for some reason that Chris doesn’t quite catch, and can’t really bring himself to ask after. John and Melissa are talking the whole time, in low but brisk tones, still working from the snatches that Chris gets, but Chris finally is on the new painkillers and he’s drowsy and just wants to lean into one or the other of them and not think about anything. He barely manages to remember to text his daughter.

And he actually does drift off at some point. He’s not sure for how long, but when he wakes up, it’s in John’s bed, his head and shoulders pillowed on John’s chest. The other man’s still in dress shirt and trousers, and his tie’s hanging around his neck. He’s got his laptop balanced on his knee and is scowling at it.

Melissa’s changed into what looks like a spare buttondown of John’s, with Chris’ suit-coat over that, and she’s sitting cross-legged next to them. She’s on the phone with somebody but gets off when she sees that Chris is awake.

“Hey,” she says. She crawls away, then comes back with a glass of water and some pills. “Thirsty?”

Chris takes them gratefully, because his mouth feels like rotten cotton. Then swears, because he didn’t want to even try and lift his head off John, and now he’s dribbled water over his arm. He rubs his wet wrist against his chin, then hands her the glass back.

John reaches down and swipes his thumb over Chris’ damp jaw, and then leaves his hand there, loosely curled. “So?” he says to Melissa.

“Well, they managed to stabilize Miranda. Still not a great prognosis. Her gunshot wounds all healed, though, so if she dies it won’t be part of cause of death,” Melissa says. She puts her hand on Chris’ shoulder, just as he starts to speak. “Got hold of her parents, too. What I hear, they’re terrified for her but they’re also just glad somebody found her. The last message they had before that was a voicemail where she was screaming, sounds like maybe it’s the initial attack?”

“Shit. And we’re gonna have to ask for that,” John mutters. He looks at his laptop, then shuts the lid and moves it to the bedside dresser. “I should just make the Coeur d’Alene team do it all. Why is it the alpha up there fucks up and I end up with the shitshow?”

Melissa shrugs, right as John looks at her, and John moves straight into dropping his head back against the pillow. The two of them, the way they follow each other’s lead—it’s impressive to the point of making Chris just stare, but once in a while it’s just funny.

John cracks a smile, looking down at Chris as he tries not to laugh. His fingers scratch lightly at the underside of Chris’ chin. “You better?” he says.

“Yeah.” Chris shifts, because it’s an awkward angle to be looking at him, and then grimaces as the dulled ache in his shoulder briefly punches into actual pain.

So John moves his hand to under Chris’s back and helps him up, and Melissa reaches over to steady Chris’ sling, and between the two of them they get him inched up till he’s half-sitting against John, still in between the other man’s legs. Which actually makes it harder to look at John, but something about it just feels really good. And…Chris needs to say a couple things, and like Melissa said, it’s going to suck, and he’s a little selfish. He wants to feel good, just for a second.

“I need your statement, but Melissa and Laura are getting theirs down tomorrow, and then we have the two kids and the two cops, so I don’t think there’s a rush on you,” John says. He hesitates. Shifts his legs a little tighter around Chris. “But you’ll have to go up to Sacramento again. Conflict of in—”

“Yeah, I know, it’s fine.” Chris tilts his head back onto John’s shoulder. He sees Melissa move and looks over, but she’s just coming over John’s knee, getting herself in front of him. He smiles a little and she smiles back, and takes his hand in both of hers. “I’ve done it before.”

John grunts in acknowledgement. His arm slides over Chris’ belly, keeping well clear of the sling. “You sure you’re okay.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to do what I want to do,” Chris says. He struggles with what else to say. “I’m not mad that you keep asking. God, I’m not mad. You know how long it’s been since somebody asked—it’s just, damn it, I used to know why I did this, why I put myself through this kind of shit where I am killing people, and then I wasn’t sure, and now I do again but it’s…I want to do it for you. That’s why. It’s—it’s selfish, I know. It’s not about making things safer. It’s about showing you I can do it.”

Melissa’s frowning. She doesn’t get it. She’s going to say that, and then John does something because she looks at him and then she doesn’t say whatever it was.

“Yeah, but you’re not just showing off how well you can kill,” John says slowly. “You want us to see you hunt. You’re hunting the way we want, even if that’s harder and causes you more trouble, because that’s what we need to see.”

“I—yeah,” Chris says. He breathes a little easier for a second, because…yeah, John does get it. But then there’s the rest to get out. “And that just—it puts too much on you, I know. I know it’d be simpler if I could just—do this on my own.”

“Chris, that’s not—” Melissa starts.

“It puts a lot on only if you want to look at it that way,” John says. He and Melissa share another look, and then John snorts. Nudges his forehead into Chris’ temple for a second. “Look, that might sound snide, but…okay. When I was in Poland, studying with Claudia’s family, they kept going on and on about mastering the hunt. Being the master. It’s a role, it’s the guy who runs the teams for the guardian, because they think the tree should take up all of a guardian’s life. But it’s also this idea that you can lose yourself in the hunt, too. Like the act itself is brainwashing, sort of, and you need to—”

Melissa suddenly sits back on her heels. “Anchor yourself so you know what’s you and what’s not?”

“Yep,” John says. “Except not just for weres, for everybody. And that’s what the master of the hunt job comes down to. Because even if you know what your anchor is, you get distracted by life and maybe you lose it. So the master keeps everybody on point. He knows what anchors them, and if it changes, or is messing you up, or anything like that, he helps you change it. And the rest of the team looks to him for that. He’s the default guide. And yeah, that’s brainwashing too—”

“Good, because I was going to say,” Melissa mutters.

“But I think they do have a point in that sometimes it takes more than just you to stay sane,” John goes on. He pauses, and when Melissa shrugs at him, grins briefly. Then he presses his forehead against Chris’ temple again, just before he rubs his face into the side of Chris’ neck. “I’m not gonna pretend I don’t need Mel around to call me out when I’m being too much of an asshole. And I’d probably have done a lot of things different if Stiles had died along with Claudia. It’d be nice if everybody just did the right thing because that’s what they felt—”

Melissa rolls her eyes. “Nobody does that, because…because come on, nobody knows what’s the right thing unless they’re thinking about what they care about, who they care about, what’s gonna matter then.”

“I know—” Chris starts.

“And it’s your thing, okay, we’re not going to make you share it,” she says. She gets off her knees and crawls up over his legs. Reaches out to hook her hand around his nape, but ducks her head so she’s looking up at him. “But it’s not a big deal to us if you do. I get—we get—that it’s one for you, but Chris, just…we’re okay with it. Okay?”

Chris wishes he could say something to that. But even if he could come up with something—with words that could match up, his throat’s all locked up. He just…he really loves them. God, he loves them. And he thinks they might be starting to love him back, and for a second that is the most terrifying thing in the world.

There’s this thin, weak sound, this little whine, and then he realizes he made it. He winces, tries to move—John holds him down. Presses his mouth to the back of Chris’ neck, not a kiss so much as just a…a ground, warm and firm and not moving, not till Chris stops. And that’s when Melissa pushes in, her hands rising to cup his face.

She kisses him, soft and long, and then she slides over to tuck her face into his throat, just as the breath in it is starting to stutter. She makes slow, soothing noises, and John rubs his cheek around till he’s on Chris’ other side, feathering kisses at the point of Chris’ jaw. Chris takes a deep breath, between the two of them, and he lets it out, and he just…tries it out. Letting that whole idea settle.

It’s hard. He takes another breath, and it’s a little easier. He’s still terrified as hell, but by the third breath, he knows he’s not climbing out of this one. So he just better—get used to it.

“I do want my license back,” he says. He sounds a little croaky and swallows and tries again. “I don’t want to be sneaking around anymore. Well. Not all the time.”

“I’m actually a lot less covert ops these days,” John says mildly. “Just whenever Stiles calls.”

Melissa snorts, and Chris can feel her rolling her eyes against him. She moves over a bit, dropping her hand to his sling to keep that still, and carefully curls up on his good side. “That one’s so obvious, it’s not even worth it,” she says. “But okay. Anything else, Chris?”

“I don’t think I want that designated hunter spot,” Chris says slowly. “Not now. Not for a while, probably. Because I’m not doing it for the office. I can’t make that promise—I’m out doing something for it, you call me for something else, you know which one I’ll go with.”

John pauses before he responds, which actually makes Chris feel a little better. If the man had spoken right away, it’d feel like he was just trying to say what Chris wants to hear. “Okay. Office is going on seven years without one, I doubt it’s gonna hurt to wait some more.”

Chris and Melissa both look up at that.

“Yeah, what, you didn’t know? Since you resigned, it hasn’t been filled. They’ve just been borrowing the designees from other offices,” John says. “I couldn’t believe it either, but there’ve only been two applications this whole time, and Deaton nixed one. The other was voluntarily withdrawn but gossip is Peter and his cronies had something to do with that.”

“I…just assumed they kept leaving because they didn’t get along with Deaton,” Chris finally mutters. “He could annoy the hell out of you with that cryptic bullshit.”

John grins at him. “Nope. I think you’re a harder act to follow than you think,” he says. He pulls Chris back against him, then puts the hand that had been on Chris’ belly on Chris’ thigh instead. “And considering you’re turning it down because you think you’d abuse it, I’m gonna agree.”

“I’m doing it because I want to be around for you,” Chris says. Which comes out a lot easier than he’d been expecting. He pauses, then lets out his breath and lets his head roll into the side of John’s jaw. “Your mother-in-law got that right, seeing it in you.”

“I never said I disagreed with her on that,” John says. He doesn’t sound pleased about it; he’s a little tight, which is probably what changes Melissa’s face from brewing protest to slightly concerned. “Wanda’s been doing this a very, very long time. She knows how to build teams. I just really don’t like what she does with them.”

“Or to them,” Melissa mutters. She runs her hand down to join John’s over Chris’ thigh, then leans in to kiss Chris’ cheek. “Anyway, it’d be nice to have a little company on the sidelines. Everybody always wants to run off and play front-liner.”

“Sidelines my ass,” John says. “Who didn’t even get their gun out tonight?”

Melissa pushes up and kisses him on the cheek too, a dramatic smacking kiss that makes him wince. “You’re just mad you didn’t get to show off your spy suit,” she says.

“I’m mad I didn’t get to see you two before you got all ripped up and dirty,” John says. Then he flicks his eyes up and down her, and she isn’t the only one breathing a little faster at it. “The dress was nice, by the way. Liked how your legs looked.”

“It looked really good from the back,” Chris mutters, and then flashes his throat when Melissa glares at him.

She’s not really glaring, but after the first second, he kind of is baring his throat for real. Melissa’s and John’s hands hitch up his thigh together, and Chris shivers and—fuck, his shoulder.

“He’s drugged,” Melissa says, regretful, still looking a little too hard at his neck. “And that shoulder pops out again, they were talking surgery.”

“He could watch?” John says, right against Chris’ nape, each word a moist puff against Chris’ skin. Then he makes a groaning sound and takes his hand off Chris’ leg to flap at Melissa’s reproachful stare. “Kidding. I’m done for today, and you look pretty close to there, too.”

Melissa sighs. “Yeah. I think my ibuprofen’s wearing off.”

“So we could go to sleep, and in the morning somebody could get me off?” Chris offers.

John and Melissa go still, looking at each other. He can actually see the moment where their minds click into the same groove, and he’s…not really regretting starting them on it, even if he’s probably going to when he runs out of painkillers.

“Sounds good,” Melissa says, smiling slowly. She stoops and drops a kiss on Chris’ mouth, and then slides back so she can start tugging at his trouser cuffs.

It takes a little maneuvering, and in the end they have to move him off of John, but the pants come off. And Chris is kind of wishing he could manage it, feeling their hands on his legs, but he’s also only half-awake at that point. He wakes a little more when Melissa curls up around him, but just so he can get his head squarely on her breasts. John’s stumbling around in the background, cursing softly, and by the time he’s climbing up by them, Chris is nearly asleep. His solid heat at Chris’ back is the last piece Chris needs to relax, and then Chris is out.