Title: King Lear
Authors: vkdemon and karomeled
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Alan Deaton/ Chris Argent
Genre: Angst
Rating: M
Words: 2335
Warnings: discussion of homicide
Summary: Things spiraled out of control. Chris laughs at the euphemism and it's an ugly, choked sound.
The love story of Alan and Chris told in five acts.
AN: Part 3 of "For a Lover of Long Ago" series.
"We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves." - Shakespeare : King Lear
Things spiraled out of control. Chris laughs at the euphemism and it's an ugly, choked sound.
Kate's dead. Victoria's dead. Allison... His sweet, perfect Allison has her aunt's eyes: cold and unforgiving. He has no control over his own child, he can't help and sooth and save from the same mistakes he watched his sister make. The Code... He laughs again, shoulders shaking against the glass door of the veterinary. His whole moral guide was a joke.
"The sign must be malfunctioning. We're closed." Deaton heard the door and was alerted to a person approaching far before the distraught hunter walked in.
"Then throw me out," Chris said calmly and flashed a smile.
"What now? Another carcass for me to look at?" Deaton did not return the gesture.
Chris looked at him through half closed lids before tearing himself off the door and marching in. "You fucked him, didn't you. I didn't get it first. But of course you did. Have you miss me this much?"
"What the hell are you talking about? I don't entertain drunken conversations with hunters. Now, leave."
"Jack!" Chris stepped up, swaying a little. "You have a penchant for doomed relationship, don't you?"
"That's a name I haven't heard for years. Yes, I had relations with him. And despite what you thought, it wasn't doomed. He was surprisingly gentle and sweet." He cocked an eyebrow at the swaying man.
Chris chuckled. "Not sweet enough to let people know you were fucking," he sneered and shored himself on the counter separating the hall from reception. "So now what? There aren't any more Argents you can go after in this town. Although I can give you some phone numbers if you're willing to travel."
"I am so very through with Argents." Alan walked forward as he watched Chris stumble. He grabbed the man's arm. Damn his healer's instincts. "You are drunk and picking fights about the long past. Why?"
Chris huffed but leaned on the man. "There's nothing left. Everyone is gone."
"Well then, let's get you a cup of coffee and talk about it." He helped Chris along into the little kitchen area. There was a small table and chair setup for a break room. He deposited Chris there.
Chris sighed and leaned back on the chair, his eyes following the man moving over the small space. "Are you going to poison me?"
"I would have done so years ago if I wanted to." He fixed a coffee black and placed it in front of Chris.
The hunter sighed in agreement. "Maybe you should. Or give me something."
"Why are you here?"
"You know about Victoria?" He asked quietly.
"Yes. I saw it in the paper. My condolences for your grief." The low tone of Alan's voice was sympathetic and sincere.
"I drove the knife in," he said and tentatively took a sip of the scolding dark liquid.
"I assume there was a reason. I doubt depression would ever be the downfall of Victoria Argent."
"She got bit," Chris said simply.
"And we know all about fatalism in the Agent family psychology." He couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice. "Another casualty of this Montague and Capulet feud."
"Allison took it badly," he said as if he didn't hear the man. "She was so upset." He reached for the cup, grasping air for a moment before his fingers closed around the handle.
"Seeing as she had found a way to coexist peacefully with a were-boy, I can understand her dilemma. Do I even need to ask how she was bit?"
"Were-boy...? Ah, Scott. Right." Chris' eyebrows knitted in deep thought and he said slowly. "I think she's going to kill Scott."
"Are you proud?" He frowned, watching Chris' reactions. "This is bothering you, why?"
"Because she really wants Derek. He... bit Victoria. I don't think Allison can stand against Derek and his pups." He raised his eyes to the man. "Will I bury my own daughter, Alan?"
"At this rate... yes." He hadn't heard his first name from Chris' lips since he was 18. It rang bittersweet and out of place. "Derek will not allow hunter to kill his new family. And your daughter is young and untried and blinded by hate."
Chris swallowed hard, his lips twitching in suppressed cry. "I can't do anything. I can't," he says finally, small and broken. "Gerard controls her every thought."
"Chris, what does the code say about hunters who break the code?" Alan's words were carefully measured.
"What...?" Chris snapped out of the haze and looked up at the man. "I... I don't think it says anything. Just that anyone who threatens the peace for selfish reasons shall be treated like enemy." He recites with a shrug. "It's garbage, all of it."
"What do you do to an enemy when they take an innocent life or turn an unwilling person?"
"You know what we do. We kill them."
"Then the solution is simple. You don't want to see it. I'm guessing it was Gerard who killed that wandering omega. And who has preyed upon your daughter's grief to turn her away from the code and being a decent human being." He took the coffee cup and refilled it.
Chris stood up shakily and loomed over the man with a scowl. "So I should kill my own father, that is what you're saying? Because I can't raise my daughter right?"
Deaton looked up into the hunter's face. "I'm saying to kill the disease you isolate the infection. I don't envy you the choice but you have it. Either you watch your daughter become a cruel and heartless killer like Kate or you man up and take responsibility for your family. How can you follow a code that demands you give absolute judgement on life against entire race and yet the atrocities of your own kind is swept under the rug?"
"But I can't just... How? Alan, how can I kill him?" He took hands of the table to rub at his face and stumbled a little. "Please."
"Subtly." He reached up to cup Chris's cheek for a brief moment. "Let the witch make you a brew. I don't think he deserves it, but it won't be too painful."
Chris closed his eyes leaning on the hand. "I'll owe you," he whispered.
"You already do. You've owed me since I let your sister go without facing her crimes." He allowed Chris to continue leaning on his hand. Moments like this he wished caretaking wasn't so deeply ingrained in him. He gently guided Chris to lean forward to take comfort against him.
"She died choking on her own blood." He wrapped the man in an unsteady embrace. "I doubt anything more could be done," he said matter-of-fact. He knew Kate was unstable. He knew that now. She wouldn't regret anything she did.
"I suppose karma does have a way of coming around. I never liked her aura." He let Chris lean against him. It was comforting to Deaton to have a connection, even as fragile and fraught with complications as this one.
"Do you ever just wonder..." Chris said against his neck. "What if I didn't leave?"
"Which time? The one where I kicked you out or the one where you left me?" His voice was still the same steady calm he always took when facing Chris' emotion.
"The first time."
"I don't think about it too much these days..." It was honest, his affection for Chris was young love, strong, but years past. "But it would have been different. You were even more stubborn of an asshole then."
Chris' voice was firm and void of delusions. "We were destined to fail."
"No. We were destined to do nothing at all. I've never believed in destiny or fate. It is all human will. If we had willed it we could have remained together." His smiled turned sad. "At great cost, but such is the balance of life. You give something to get something. I just don't think I was ever going to be worth what you would be losing."
"I guess you weren't." He shoved the man turning away. He stopped short of the door. "He rarely eats food that isn't prepared by him. But he takes medication couple times a day. It's in his jacket."
"I'll make it in pill form then. Oh, and Argent," He called after the retreating hunter. "This isn't for you. I'm doing it for those kids who don't deserve to die in your family's feud."
He rolled his shoulders and crooked his neck. "Later, Alan," he threw over his shoulder before walking out.
"Screw yourself, hunter." Alan huffed.
It took him too long. Sweat dripped down Alan Deaton's temple as he balanced the delicate tincture. He impressed the image of what he wanted to happen to Gerard into the capsule. Blackness... Black blood bubbling from his black heart to consume the man the way his blind hate had destroyed the lives of so many. Kate had not been purely evil. She had been created by this man. He wanted Gerard to suffer like the wolves he riddled with wolfsbane bullets had.
He poured the mountain ash in the capsules to mimic his medicine. Deaton sent one message to Chris. Come.
The Argent appeared on his footsteps 10 minutes later. He waited another 5 before pushing the button. He didn't want to look desperate, like he waited for the contact. He rang the door and when no one answered, walked into the house. "Deaton?"
"It's done." Alan's eyes were ringed with exhaustion. "Here, the pills need to replace with his regular pills."
"You look terrible." Chris eyed the small bottle. "This will work? What did you use?"
"Mountain ash. I don't know exactly what he's planning so I put all of my will into it." Alan sat himself down behind the counter of the front desk. "I just want to sleep."
"I can't do it," the other man said shortly. "Get McCall, or someone. It can't be me."
"What? After all of this you can't do it? You are such a coward." Deaton shoved out of the chair. "This is your family killing innocents and you can't do it?"
"He is my father!" Chris got right up into his face. "And if anything goes wrong, I might lose Allison to him forever!"
"She's not yours anymore. Your wonderful father is turning her into a murderer." He grabbed the vial of pills from Chris' hand. "You were always a coward. I don't know what I expected."
"It's easy to talk, isn't it? Call me a coward?" Chris' voice sound like a warning. "You'd do that to one of your own in my place?"
"Yes. If my own was helping to start a genocide. Absolutely." Deaton growled and pushed Chris' shoulder.
The man shoved him hard at the counter and turned him around to press his forehead into the cold surface. "You should try more polite tone," he ceded right into his ear.
Deaton coughed as he ran into the counter. "Fucking... bully. Coward and a bully as always."
"Bitch. So many years and not even one call." His teeth closed on the exposed neck. He released the man's shoulder and slid his hand over the man's hip to cup his groin under the counter. "You fucking bitch."
Deaton should have expected the wave of lust. And Chris should have expected the pain that bloomed across his face when Deaton slammed his head backward. "Get off of me."
Chris stumbled, releasing the man. He held his jaw with a pained moan. He looked up at the man with wide eyes and said defeated, "Sorry."
Deaton turned and rubbed at his bruised stomach. "Chris. I have been up for the last 48 hours on that Mountain Ash. Are you going to do something other than use me?"
Chris' eyes narrowed. "When had I ever used you?"
"The least you could do is be honest. You made sure I knew how little I meant to you before you left for college. You wanted sex, and you wanted intimacy and you took it from me. Do you have any idea how long it took me to trust anyone?"
"You knew what we had couldn't be real from the start." He said firmly. "I wasn't going to cling to some delusion that our families would allow that to happen."
"So you made it mean nothing. I didn't care it couldn't last. I wanted you for as long as I could have you." Alan's growl turned into an exhausted sigh. "What harm was it to at least have let me know I was more than a convenient warm mouth?"
"And make it all harder?" Chris glared at him before adding finally. "You want me now or not? It's simple."
"No." Alan waved Chris toward the door. "I want someone who can reciprocate feelings. And that is not you. Get out."
"You know there will be no other chance."
"I didn't want this one. You pushed yourself on me, Argent. Stop acting like you're doing me a favor. I don't want you, especially now."
He scoffed. "The least you could do is be honest," he repeated the man's own words and turned to leave.
"If you could stop posturing for a second you'd see you're the one in need." Deaton snarled at the retreating back.
"I'm the one walking away," he said over his shoulder. "That's hardly close to 'in need'. At least not as close as 'desperately trying to keep me from leaving you again'."
"Let's remedy that then." Deaton walked to where Chris stood at his doorway. He pet the nape of Chris' neck once before shoving him out and slamming the door behind him. He smirked out to Chris and tapped the Closed sign before striding into the back of the shop.