Work Text:
Breaking into the hospital room is painfully easy.
He walks right up to the front desk. The nurse behind it is young, pretty-eyed and too new to recognize real pain, so when he says "Peter Hale" like just stating the name ages him, she titters sympathetically and looks up the room number without asking about his relation to the catatonic man.
"Old friend," he would have said.
The truth is that he doesn't have a single damn relation to Peter Hale. Well, that's not necessarily true: there's a certain relationship between the hunter and the hunted, but he doubts predators get many visiting hours with their prey. Furthermore, he can't really say he's been hunting Hale long enough to form any sort of bond with him. He got a call from a fellow hunter just this morning about a helpless werewolf a few towns over. Injured in some fire a couple weeks ago, cut off from the pack and beyond repair, even with werewolf healing capabilities. A dog just waiting to be put down.
How could he pass that up?
Anxious to get back on the road, he only takes a minute to hiss in disgust at the sight of the poor bastard's half-burnt face before he's pressing his gun to the mutt's temple.
Wolfbane bullets of course, because he's no amatuer.
"You shouldn't be here."
He snaps his head around. In the doorway is a man - average height, blue eyes, green jacket and blue jeans. Hair and stubble that's just beginning to gray. He realizes that this might be Chris Argent, and if so, he may be very fucked.
He's heard of the Argents, of course - again, not a fucking amatuer.
Any hunter who's been in the business longer than two seconds knows not to cross an Argent.
"Just putting down a stray," he grumbles.
Argent smiles, a small twist of lips that looks more threatening than friendly. "Funny," he says, his voice clear and smooth, not at all gruff like most men in his business. "I don't remember calling animal control."
Argent takes a few steps into the room. His blue eyes stare expectantly at the gun until it's reluctantly lowered, then he graces him with another one of those cold smiles.
"Get out," Argent says.
He gets out. Not a fucking amatuer.
Once he's out in the hall, he turns back. The blinds covering the windows are open just enough that he gets a glimpse of the room between the horizontal stripes. He sees Argent stand beside Hale and run a hand through the unresponsive man's hair. The gesture is so brief, so casual that a normal person would have doubted their eyes, but he doesn't. He trusts his eyes, and his instincts.
The relationship between the hunter and the hunted, indeed.