Work Text:
15ish Years Prior
It was raining. Not the kind that brought peace or relief, but the kind that soaked through armor and skin and turned earth to mud—just enough to stain, not enough to cleanse.
The barn was old and empty, isolated on a forgotten property outside Beacon Hills. Half its walls were rotted out, its roof sagging like the world itself was tired of standing. Chris had tracked the creature here—no, not a creature. He wouldn’t dehumanize him like that. He knew exactly who it was.
Peter Hale.
Peter was dangerous, unhinged. But tonight night, he was feral. Not just from the moon or the rage or the blood in his mouth. He was in heat. Chris recognized it too late—the scent in the air was laced with something sharp and wrong, almost sweet, like rotting fruit under gunpowder. Peter had been clawing at trees for hours, howling into the storm, leaving destruction in his wake.
Chris had followed the trail with loaded clips, silver rounds, a heart too raw to feel fear. Victoria had been dead less than a week.
When he kicked open the barn door, Peter was there, shirtless, blood drying on his collarbones, panting like he’d run ten miles through a war. His eyes glowed, half-lidded and predatory. His hair clung to his face. His claws were out.
Chris raised his weapon.
Peter didn’t flinch. “She’s dead,” he said, like he could taste Victoria on Chris’s skin.
Chris fired once. Peter dodged.
And then they were fighting.
It wasn’t clean or honorable or tactical. It was raw—grief against madness, silver against claw. They slammed into beams, shattered rotting wood, rolled through rain-slicked hay and mud. Chris got one good shot in Peter’s shoulder. Peter got three deep gouges down Chris’s ribs. They grunted, growled, cursed, bled.
“Why are you still alive?” Chris barked between strikes, teeth clenched. “Why do you get to breathe and she doesn’t?”
Peter roared and tackled him. Chris slammed back against a beam, gun falling somewhere in the mud. Peter pinned him by the shoulders, his breath hot and ragged in Chris’s face.
“You think I asked to live?” Peter hissed. His voice cracked with something primal. “You think I wanted this?!”
Chris tried to headbutt him. Peter didn’t pull back.
Instead—he kissed him.
Hard. Mouth to mouth. Brutal. Just lips, pressed and shaking. Like Peter didn’t know what the hell he was doing, like he was trying to rip something out of Chris with nothing but his mouth.
Chris froze. For a moment, shock stole everything from him. And then—he kissed back.
Not in surrender. Not in desire. But in shared grief. In something ancient and brutal and wordless.
Two men who had lost too much. Two enemies whose pain, for just that moment, aligned.
Their lips parted.
The rain hit the broken barn roof, steady like drumbeats.
Peter stared at him, chest heaving. Then he snarled, low and sharp, like the moment had gutted him.
He turned. Walked into the rain, his bare feet slapping against the wet wood, mud caking his jeans. No goodbye. No explanation.
Chris stood there, still pressed against the beam.
Lips tingling.
Heart hollow.
Gun somewhere in the mud.
And the taste of Peter Hale still on his mouth.