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Chris Argent only ever travels with maps. He’s used to the teasing and occasional less-than-good-natured jabs he receives at the fact from other hunters. He’s used to Kate urging him to evolve. “Come on, Chris,” she’ll say. “Even Gerard is using GPS nowadays.” He’s used to the eye rolls he gets from hunting partners whenever he unfolds one.
Despite everything no one is ever really surprised by the maps. He’s Chris Argent. He’s loyal, still believes in things like honor, and proudly wears the code with its traditions and rules like a crown. He’s just and quick to call out anyone who misuses the code. He is, by all counts, what every hunter considers old-fashioned so of course he prefers maps.
The truth is he likes maps for their simplicity. Their crisp pages that soften as you religiously fold and unfold them, navigating through towns and back roads. He likes that they give him a visual representation of an entire town, city, state, a symbolic portrayal of the country and not just the next bend in a pixelated screen.
He likes to follow lines and curves through each sharp angle of the creases in the page. He slips around each bend until the road ends and he needs to start over with another map. And that’s the thing, maps carry him away without needing to know where he’s going. Maps don’t judge you if you’re running away.
The first time Chris bought a map seems like a lifetime ago. He remembers standing outside the local gas station with a map of California laid out on the hood of his beat up Ford. The old woman who ran the cash register had given him a pitying look as she handed him his change. He didn’t blame her. He was nineteen and a lost kid, all loose limbs and blemishes, still growing into himself. He remembers how his fingers shook as he routed his way out of town, away from his life, from his family.
Away from Peter Hale.
He remembers telling himself that they were always meant to fall apart. Their beginning was brilliant and intense and ignited fiercely like a match. Their ending was only destined to fade suddenly and burn them as it finally extinguished. Or at least that’s what he had tried to tell himself.
In reality, they were never meant to be one without the other. At nineteen, Chris had already experienced and lost a love that never leaves you the same. He remembers laughing bitterly and muttering something about his life being a Tennyson poem.
They fought during their last night together and it had been ugly, it left them both reeling. They rarely fought but when they did it was always about the same things. Werewolves and mates, hunters and the code, and their families. When Chris is feeling honest with himself he can admit he had instigated their last fight. He pushed Peter until he snapped and what followed was a collision of pent of frustration and anger and fear. The fight ended as quickly as it began with them tangled in the sheets of the hotel bed, desperation in their every touch, every breath. Quick to forgive because even then they knew time was too precious to waste on resentment.
In the early hours of the next morning Chris arrived home to find a bag of his things on the kitchen table and Gerard waiting. Chris' stomach dropped and he had known instantly that his secrets were no longer kept. He listened numbly as Gerard instructed him that he was leaving town. If he didn’t Peter would be dead before the next full moon. He remembers staring at a picture of his mother as Gerard detailed all the ways Peter would suffer if Chris continued with this abomination. He fixated on her warm smile as Gerard spit out how disappointed she would be. He remembers how his voice shook as he asked to say goodbye to Kate. He had dragged his body upstairs to her bedroom where he didn’t dare wake her as he kissed her forehead. He stopped by his own room to take the hidden picture of him and Peter out from under his mattress.
And then he walked out his front door and left Beacon Hills behind.
He headed east after that and didn’t stopped for anything but food for days, not wanting Peter to follow his scent. He had finally stopped in a small town straggling the state line of Missouri. He checked into a motel and as he grabbed his things he glanced in the back of his truck, littered with maps. He took one.
That night he laid out a map of the US on the dingy walls of his motel room. His finger touched the place where Peter would be. He gently followed the small lines that would lead Peter to him. And there, in the hush of his loneliness, the miles fell away and their distance was merely finger-lengths.
For years he drives, losing himself in the hunt. His collection of maps always following. After a couple years, Gerard finally lifted his banishment and lets Kate join him on hunts. And every night, in every motel room, he would trace his fingers across the map until it found Peter.
One year, Gerard began to pressure and push and demand of Chris because his life of solitude wasn’t enough to convince him of Chris’ loyalty anymore. So when he meets Victoria and she’s breathtaking with her harsh angles and fiery red hair, he asks her out. She’s not most women and she’s not Peter. She always deserved more than he could give.
They start their family. And Chris still spends most of his time driving. At night, he still places his fingers to that familiar spot on the same map and idly draws himself to Peter. He still loves and longs for the boy he left behind all those years ago, still feels the pull of their bond. He feels it as he dreams of blue eyes and pale skin. In his dreams he hears Peter’s laughter like a melody as they pick up from where they left off. Then one night he suddenly wakes from one of those dreams in a cold sweat and his chest feels like it’s been crushed.
He finds out about the fire the next morning and heads west for the first time in years.
The first time he sees Peter his legs give out. His hair is longer than Chris remembers it. Well, whatever hair that isn’t covered in bandages. His chest is broader and Chris notes that the angles of his face finally lost the last stubborn bit of baby fat. Again, whatever part of him that isn’t covered in bandages that is. He sits in silence holding Peter’s hand for hours and all he can manage to think is that Tennyson was wrong.
He stays in Beacon Hills to rule out rival packs as the cause of the fire. When he begins to hear whispers of the Argents being involved he decides it’s time to leave. He stops by Peter’s hospital room one last time. He let’s himself gently trace the side of Peter’s face as he gives them the proper goodbye he always deserved. Before he leaves he takes the well-worn map out of his back pocket. Stubbornly blinking back tears as he pins it to the wall across from Peter’s bed. He places his fingers to Peter’s spot and lets his hand drop. Before he leaves he opens Peter’s window - he had been in a room without one when Chris first arrived and he had him moved immediately - to let the air and all the scents of the woods it carried drift in. He makes it to the doorway when he finally makes up his mind. He turns back into the room and walks over to Peter’s nightstand, grabbing the pen that lies there. He carries it to the map and draws a straight line leading to Virginia. It’ll be vague and meaningless to anyone else. But it’ll be enough for Peter. He traces his finger across the line once then he finally leaves.
If he could, Chris would laugh at the irony as he stops at the same gas station to buy another map. The cashier this time is a bored looking teenager who smacks his gum as he hands Chris’ credit card back to him. He’s no longer the kid with gangly limbs and acne but he still feels lost. He stands outside and the cool, crisp map in his hands is a direct contrast to the burning need to leave this place. The ground beneath him has set fire and he’s suffocating to escape.
He goes back to his family and he hangs a new map on his wall and wears it out with his traces to Peter. He still lets maps guide him away, follows their dips and curves over land and around waters and through mountains. And once a year for five years, the maps lead him to Peter. And every year those blues eyes are still as empty as the last. On the sixth year, Laura Hale is killed and Chris knows what he has to do.
He stops running.