A/N: now THIS is a bit of a departure from my norm, lol, but it's been hella fun to write. i've never written anything for Supernatural before or with those characters, so it was both an experiment and an adventure, but i sort of love how all this turned out. XD

(ps, yes, the Stiles/Dean is intended to a romantic slash kind of way, turn back now if you don't like it)

Allison didn't look too great when she answered her front door. Well, really, she looked the same as she always did—obnoxiously pretty and generally well-put-together—but she didn't have the same warm smile on her face that she usually did when she greeted Stiles. Instead she looked kind of grim, a frown on her lips and a little crease of worry between her eyebrows.

"Hey, Stiles," she said. "Thanks for coming."

"Anytime. What's up? Your text sounded kind of urgent."

She stepped back to let him through the door and closed it behind him, ushering him into the apartment.

"I might have a tiny situation," she admitted. "Or potentially not-so-tiny, I don't know yet."

"Okay," Stiles said slowly, following her down the short hallway to a home office type room. He leaned into the doorway, hands in his pockets and watched curiously as she came to a hover in the middle of the room. "And you call me for this situation? Just me? Seems more like a Scott thing. He's usually the one everyone goes to for situations."

"He's busy with alpha things," Allison said distractedly. Her hands flitted over the back of her dad's desk chair for a moment, then skipped over to the nearest shelf to run along the spines of the books there. Her eyes were just as restless, darting around the room on a loop without ever settling on anything. "And anyway, I don't think his help is the kind I need. This is more up your alley."

"Feel free to tell me what 'this' is anytime," Stiles said mildly.

He couldn't think what kind of thing would be up his alley but not Scott's, unless it was specifically a magical problem. But even then, most people would go to Deaton before him, which was understandable. As strong as his spark was and as much progress as he'd made so far, he still wasn't up to Emissary level yet. He was still an apprentice, at least technically speaking. And besides, he felt like Allison would've said magic right off the bat if that had been the case.

No reason for her to be this cagey if it was magic. It was kind of making him jumpy. He wasn't nervous yet, per se. He wasn't getting any overwhelming sense of impending doom like he did with a lot of the situations the pack had found itself in over the years, but the way Allison was biting her lip and twisting her fingers around each other wasn't particularly reassuring either.

Abruptly, Allison turned to face him fully and let out a quick breath.

"Dad went on a hunting trip," she said bluntly. "And he hasn't come back yet."

Stiles waited for further elaboration, but none seemed to be forthcoming.

"So...when you say a 'hunting' trip, do you mean, like, hunting hunting?" he asked.

"Yes," Allison said. "And he was supposed to be back yesterday. He hasn't called me, or even texted. He's never been late getting back from a hunt without at least calling to let me know he'd been delayed."

"Yeah, that's not like him," Stiles muttered, the first twinges of worry cropping up in his chest.

Chris was the diligent type, always very punctual and always very conscious of his responsibility to the only family he had left. He would never just lose track of time or forget to tell his daughter what was going on. If he hadn't called, it was because he couldn't.

"Do you know where he was going? What he was hunting?" Stiles asked.

Allison sighed, dropping heavily into the ergonomic chair in front of the surprisingly disordered writing desk.

"No," she said. "You know how my dad is. He's been so adamant about keeping me out of the hunting scene, at least on a large scale. He's fine with me keeping up my skills and protecting the town when necessary, but anything past the county line and suddenly it's none of my business anymore."

She rolled her eyes and Stiles snorted at how thoroughly petulant she sounded. It was very teenager-y. She smiled at him, then bit her lip again.

"That's where you come in," she said, sounding hopeful. "I figured, if anyone could track him down, it would be you. He takes a lot of notes, does a lot of research, and it's all here. It's just that I don't know what's relevant to right now and what's not. But you're so good with patterns and putting puzzle pieces together! I thought maybe you could do some sleuthing for me?"

"You—you're giving me permission to poke around in Chris' personal office?" Stiles asked, shocked and maybe a little bit honored at being given that level of trust by a usually very cautious person.

Allison gave him a look that was as much amusement as reproach.

"I'm asking you to help me find my dad," she reiterated. "And if you have to invade his privacy to do it, then he'll just have to deal with it when we get him back."

Stiles took a moment to scan the stacks of papers and manila folders and reference books piled up on the desk, studded with dull yellow post-it notes. It was a hell of a lot of shit, half of it in Chris' spiky scrawl, and at least one drawer was stuffed too full to close all the way. The other drawers looked like they might be locked, but that had never stopped Stiles before.

He pushed himself off the doorjamb and cracked his knuckles, a thrill of anticipation putting a smile on his face.

"Well, what're we waiting for?" he asked. "Time's a-wasting and we've got a wayward Argent to find."

Dean pulled his sleeve down over his hand before opening the motel room door, the better to avoid getting blood and other unidentifiable substances all over the handle that they would just have to clean up later. He was barely inside before he was stripping off, tossing his mostly-clean jacket onto the rickety table and wondering if he would have to burn everything under it because there was no way those stains were coming out.

"It's official," he said, dragging his ruined t-shirt over his hair to get the worst of the muck out. "I hate rugarus."

Sam snorted as he kicked the door shut behind them, transferring the duffel bag from his shoulder to the floor. Its contents let out a loud, metallic clank. Dean hoped nothing was broken; good flamethrowers like that weren't cheap.

"Did you not hate them before?" Sam asked. "Or was it just an informal hatred that has now been upgraded?"

"Oh, I hated 'em," Dean assured him, kicking his boots off. "Always hated 'em. Just hate 'em double now. Extra special double helping of burning hatred."

Sam stopped halfway through peeling off his blood-soaked jeans specifically to raise an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

"Burning, Dean? Really? That's what you go for?"

Dean grinned at him.

"Aw, c'mon, Sammy," he said. "Don't tell me you don't appreciate a good pun once in a while."

Sam rolled his eyes and said: "I do. That just wasn't a good one."

Dean threw his shirt in Sam's face and headed for the bathroom, intent on claiming the shower before Sam could try and steal it out from under him. He'd been the one to make the kill, and that meant he got the first shower. Them's were the rules.

The shrill beeping of a phone sounded from somewhere behind him. It was muffled, though, which meant it was one of the backup cells. They didn't get a whole lot of calls on those, at least not non-emergency ones.

Dean backtracked to his bed, unzipping his own duffel and rooting around in it until he found the device making that god-awful noise. Man, he hated default ringtones.

It was an unknown number but, considering there were only three numbers actually programmed into this particular backup, that didn't mean much. When Dean looked his way, Sam shrugged, so Dean shrugged back and accepted the call.

"Hello?"

"Winchester?"

It was a woman's voice, and not one that Dean recognized, or at least not immediately.

"Maybe," he allowed. "Who are you and how'd you get this number?"

"We have a mutual friend," the woman said, which was much too unspecific for Dean's taste.

"Do we?" he asked dryly.

"Yes, we do. Now I need your help."

And hell if that didn't sound more like a demand than a request. Dean made a face, mildly offended by the lady's tone, and Sam made an exaggerated questioning face back at him. Dean put the call on speaker and held the phone out so he could hear it too.

"Honestly, I'm not really seeing a connection between points A and B there," he said. "At least, not one that makes me care. And you still haven't told me who you are."

Static came crackling through the burner phone's shitty speaker and there was a mutter of voices on the other end of the line, too far away from the receiver to hear well. So more than one person on that end too. Whatever argument the speaker and her companion were having only lasted a moment, and then she was back.

"I'm a hunter," she said definitively. "And so is our mutual friend. That makes us allies, does it not? Hunters are a community. We're supposed to have each other's backs."

"How about you give me a name for you and our friend," Dean countered. "You see, allies aren't usually anonymous."

There was another bout of muttering that Dean couldn't make out. And then—

"Argent," she said. "My name is Allison Argent. And I need you to help me find my father, Chris Argent."

"Chris Argent," Dean repeated, rolling the name around in his head. It did sound kind of familiar. He looked to his brother, who nodded.

"We worked with some Argents in Nevada a few years back," Sam said. "Rawhead, I think. It was a clean hunt. There was no Allison there, though."

That wasn't exactly a red flag. This Allison hadn't claimed to know them personally and, if Dean was remembering his dad's old stories correctly, the Argents were a decent sized family full of people in the trade. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that this was just one they hadn't come across before. Still.

"Where'd you get the number?"

"From my dad's files," Allison said, sounding impatient. "Will you help me or not?"

"What the hell's the rush?" Dean asked. "And why are you calling us anyway? You don't even know us!"

There was a moment of silence, on both ends of the line for once.

"My dad went out on a hunt," Allison finally said, and for the first time she sounded less than completely confident. "And he hasn't been home in a few days. I didn't know who else to call."

Dean's heart sank. Fuck, it had to be that, didn't it? If there was one thing he couldn't resist, it was this. When his dad had gone missing, he'd had Sam to fall back on, even if Sam had been wholly reluctant to get involved again. If this girl was calling up distant business acquaintances of her missing father on the off-chance they would be willing to help, she must really be desperate.

As if she'd read his mind, Allison said, "Please. I can't find him on my own."

Dean sighed, already wondering just how much he was going to regret this, but Sam had the same look of resignation on his face so at least he wasn't alone in being a pushover in this particular circumstance.

"Where are you now?"

"Do you have any idea how much freaky shit has gone down in this town?"

Dean glanced over at Sam in the passenger seat. He had his phone in hand, scrolling through an internet search. How he had the service for that in the middle of nowhere, Dean would never know, but Sammy just always had service. Always. It was downright eerie, but also convenient so he had learned not to question it.

"What kind of freaky shit?"

"The kind that raises alarm bells six ways to Sunday," Sam said, frowning. "This place is a cesspit of supernatural activity. Or at least it has been for the last couple of years. It wasn't too bad before then, but recently..." He huffed out a laugh, more morbidly impressed than amused.

"Then why haven't we come this way before?" Dean asked. Usually they followed the signs and tracked things back to the source. If there was so much weirdness here, they should've at least made a few pit stops.

"It's sort of Argent territory," Sam said with a shrug. "Most of the big, established hunting families have a region they're centered in, and they usually keep it pretty well in hand. The Argents have kind of been decimated in the last few years, but according to Bobby they still have the area relatively under control. They never sent out a distress call or anything, so everyone let's them handle things around here."

"No distress call until now, you mean," Dean pointed out. "Allison called us."

"Bobby said he thought Allison wasn't a hunter at all," Sam told him, tucking his phone away. "He's worked with Chris a few times before, and he was under the impression that Chris wanted to raise his daughter outside of the hunter lifestyle."

"Easier said than done," Dean said grimly.

"Yeah, especially considering the girl's mother, aunt, and grandfather were all killed within a year of each other. And all through suspicious means."

"You mean, through supernatural means."

"Bingo. And now she's introducing herself as a hunter." Sam shook his head. "My guess is she took up the life so she could watch her father's back because everyone who used to is dead."

"And now her father goes missing from under her nose," Dean finished. "Poor kid."

A sign flashed past the window, weathered and dull, that read Welcome to Beacon Hills. Considering what Sam had said about the rate of supernatural attacks in this place, Dean was surprised the sign didn't have a postscript that read it has been _ days since our last monster-related death.

"Hopefully we can help her out," Sam said, eyes already scanning the trees on either side of the road like clues might start popping out at him.

"Course we can," Dean said bracingly. "We found our dad, didn't we? We can find hers, no problem."

The town was really no different than any of the other medium-sized towns they had crawled through across the country. It had all the same down-home charm to it, and all the same slightly suspicious stares from the locals. Dean manfully resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at a little girl when she pulled on her mom's hand and pointed at them as they drove past.

They followed the GPS instructions to the address Allison had given them and pulled into the parking lot of an upper-scale apartment complex. They didn't need to go inside though, which was good because she hadn't given them a unit number.

Allison Argent was waiting for them outside the complex's main building, stance wide and arms crossed over her chest. Long dark hair curled over one shoulder, the front pinned back to keep it out of her face. She had on a short skirt with leggings underneath and decent boots. All in all, she looked very much like every other fashion-forward teenager, except for the fact that there was a very expensive-looking composite bow slung across her back and a quiver of arrows poking out over her shoulder.

She didn't smile as they got out of the car to approach, but the guy leaning casually on the wall behind her did. Dean didn't know who he was—Allison hadn't deigned to give them any information beyond the bare basics of how to find her before she'd hung up on him, which was rude but he would forgive her under the circumstances—but the guy obviously knew who they were. He looked Dean up and down with narrowed eyes even as the grin stayed on his face, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his skinny jeans.

Something about that look made Dean want to fidget. He cleared his throat instead.

"You Allison?" he asked, and the girl nodded.

"Thank you. For coming," she said with what was probably supposed to be a smile but was too tight and anxious to be welcoming. She held out a hand and Dean shook it, then Sam. She had a firm grip; that was a good sign.

"And who's this?" Sam asked lightly, pointing over her shoulder.

The guy didn't even bother kicking off the wall to stand straight, much less shake their hands. Nor did he offer up a name like a civilized human being. He just said, "Her backup."

Dean clenched his teeth; he did not appreciate being given the runaround and, judging by the way Sam shifted on his feet next to him, neither did his brother.

"You a hunter too?" Sam asked, his friendly tone a little less friendly.

The guy's shit-eating grin just widened like he knew exactly how frustrating he was being and got off on it.

"Not exactly," he said. "But sure, let's go with that."

"How about we go with who the hell you are and what you're doing here," Dean snapped, "because I ain't letting some punk kid who won't even tell us his name watch my back on a hunt."

The guy just cocked his head, peering critically at Dean like he was an interesting puzzle, and Dean seriously considered punching him. Or just getting back in the car and driving away because, seriously, they were here to help. They were doing this chick a favor. The least her scrawny little asshole of a guard dog could do was play nice.

The standoff lasted all of two seconds before Allison sighed and turned back to give the guy a look. Finally he pushed himself up off the wall to face them, crossing his arms to mirror Allison's pose.

"Name's Stiles," he said. "And what I'm doing here is going with you. Call me paranoid, call me overprotective of my friends, call me nosy as fuck and a thrill-seeker to boot, but I'm not letting Allison ride off into the mist with two strange and undoubtedly dangerous men without someone she trusts to watch her back."

"Well, Stiles—" And what the hell kind of name was that, anyway? "—what makes you qualified to watch her back if you're not a hunter?" Dean demanded, unaccountably stung by the insinuation that they weren't trustworthy, that they would turn on the lady after posing as her allies.

"I have my ways," Stiles said, though he didn't seem inclined toward divulging what those ways were.

"Look," Allison butted in. "I just want to find my dad and get him home safely. Stiles is my friend and he wants that too. Can we all work together on this?"

Dean chewed on his tongue, biting back any number of snarky-ass comments because Allison had dark circles under her eyes and even Stiles was looking the tiniest bit abashed at the reminder that there might be a man's life on the line here.

Beside him, Sam was pinching the bridge of his nose and looking like he was already regretting every life choice that brought him to this moment. Then he dropped his hand with a sigh.

"How can we help?"