The fact existed that Isaac was, indeed, a being of the supernatural. He could transform physical aspects of his body at will, metabolize at astonishing rates, and he was affected by lunar phases. He was what horror novelists wrote about, what children were afraid might be in their closets, why hikers were afraid to go out at night. In short, he was scary.
And he was currently huddled in the corner of Allison's couch, keeping a trained eye on a stay-at-home dad.
Chris Argent wasn't someone to take lightly, however. Yes, he was getting up there in age, and yeah, he said that he'd sworn off the werewolf hunting thing. Be that as it may, Chris Argent still had a lot of guns and had killed a lot of people. In short, he was also scary.
Isaac cursed Scott and Allison for dropping him off like a kid at day care. Whatever detective work they were doing, it was obviously too dangerous for poor little baby Isaac who obviously had no idea how to use his razor sharp fangs and claws and heightened senses. They thought it was a much better idea to stick him in the same room as Allison's supernaturally homicidal dad.
"We won't take long," she'd assured him, "maybe an hour. Just… try not to do anything to provoke him. He's been on edge lately." With a nervous clench of her fists, she followed Scott down the hall to the elevator, and Isaac was alone. Well, he wasn't quite alone, but that was the problem.
The original plan was to sleep off everything that had happened. The fights, the storms, Boyd… But apparently Isaac was too frail to go anywhere alone, even home.
No, not home, he told himself. It was just temporary. Don't get attached. Bad things happen when you get attached.
Isaac jumped two feet in the air as Chris rounded the corner with some files in his hands. He felt his wolf stir a little and had to suppress the urge to transform. With the added protectiveness of a parent, being in the home of a known threat wasn't easy. The hunter stood back a little himself, but allowed an amused smile to let slip.
"Did I scare you?" he asked, relaxing his shoulders. It took Isaac a minute, but he, too, sunk back a little. The teen shook his head. "Good."
Chris ventured into his office and didn't come out for a bit. Isaac tried to pick up on what he was doing, but all he could hear was the shuffling of papers and turning on and off of lamps. Maybe the hunter had backed off a little and was leading a normal life. In a tiny corner of his mind, Isaac envied his ability to step back from the supernatural, to take a break.
Time went on and Isaac stayed in his position on the couch and Chris stayed in his office. It felt like hours, but when Isaac checked his phone, Scott and Allison had only been gone for twenty minutes. Isaac sighed.
The couch was very comfortable, but not so much when you're scrunched in the corner of it for twenty solid minutes and the urge to pee is getting stronger. Also, Isaac hadn't eaten in four hours. Now, just being a growing boy made him hungry enough, but on top of being a werewolf and a pregnant one at that, he was starting to get a little ravenous.
Chris was staring at him. Isaac felt it like a feather on the back of his neck. He turned around and the two stared at each other like two opposing hawks.
"You've been twitching for the last five minutes," the hunter remarked, arms crossed. Had he? "Bathroom's around the corner, y'know."
Isaac took that as an invitation and raced around the corner. His ears picked up on Chris's amused laughing as the man shuffled around the house. Alright, so maybe he wasn't so bad. But Isaac would still be sure to keep an eye on him.
The peeing fifteen times a day thing was getting annoying, and Isaac grumbled to himself as he exited the bathroom. The whole ordeal was getting to be a bit much. Sleeping more often, emotions out of control, hungry all the time-
The werewolf's stomach growled loudly as soon as he thought of it and he put his hands over it an a vain attempt at silencing it's cries. But unfortunately, one didn't need a wolf's hearing to hear it, and Chris turned his attention immediately back to the teen.
"You hungry?"
And Isaac could nothing but nod in earnest.
As it turns out, Mr. Argent was actually a pretty good cook. It only took him ten minutes to whip up some pesto pasta and garlic bread and the two sat down at the most unorthodox dinner ever. The retired werewolf hunter and the pregnant teenage werewolf. It sounded like the beginning to a bad young adult fantasy novel.
Isaac attacked the food with predatory violence, so much that Chris paused with bread halfway to his mouth and watched. The two locked eyes and there was that silence again, weighing them down through cultural differences. Chris laughed.
"...What?" Isaac asked, looking around him for something he'd done wrong.
The hunter shook his head. "It's just, ah… You remind me of my wife, actually, when she was pregnant with Allison." He smiled fondly and lowered his bread back to his plate. "She scared me a little sometimes, with just how ferocious she could be." Chris spent a moment lost in the memories of his late wife. Isaac had come to understand that this was the same woman that had plotted his murder several times over, and the murder and/or torture of the rest of his pack, and the manipulation of Allison. But with the way Mr. Argent spoke about her just then, Isaac couldn't feel anything but pity.
"I'm sorry," the teen managed to squeak out awkwardly. He himself had experienced loss before, in greater magnitudes than any sixteen year old ever should. His parents, his brother, his friends, his teachers, all gone, most of them in the last year. Sometimes he didn't know how he held himself up, especially when the effects of his father's "treatment" still lingered. He was afraid of the dark, small spaces, raised voices, violent gestures, the whole nine yards. He should've been seeing eight counselors a week and be prescribed medicine, but something kept him going. His hand lingered unconsciously to his stomach and stayed there, his body reminding him that he still had purpose. That if there were any reason to keep fighting, it was this. Fuck the struggle for good and evil; he had two new lives on the way.
Chris caught the action and his face softened into a smile.
"You know, if someone told me three years ago that I'd be having dinner with a young werewolf and not have a gun strapped to my thigh, I'd have probably shot them." Chris laughed to himself and Isaac glanced up. Not the best conversation starter, but at least he was trying.
"Well, if someone told me three years ago that I'd be a werewolf, I don't think I'd do something so drastic as shooting them, but I'd probably laugh in their face," the teen replied. The two men shared a good laugh and silently bonded over their differences. They spent the rest of the night, or until Scott and Allison got home, in content silence.