Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/493866.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage, Rape/Non-Con
  Category:
      F/M, Gen
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Kate_Argent/Derek_Hale
  Character:
      Kate_Argent, Derek_Hale, Chris_Argent
  Additional Tags:
      Season/Series_02_Spoilers
  Series:
      Part 1 of nothing_but_the_bones, Part 4 of Author's_Favorites
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-08-23 Words: 2881
****** smile (everything will be fine) ******
by Tyleet
Summary
     "This is a joke to you?"
     "Sweetheart. There are werewolves running around in the world right
     now. Everything's a joke to me. How else do you think I stay sane?"
     Kate Argent and the fire.
Notes
     There's a bit that was stolen from Supernatural's "After School
     Special," because--I think Dean and Kate actually have a lot in
     common? The title is borrowed from a song that I heard as a teenager,
     but don't remember anything else about now. Also, I haven't read the
     prequel book, so if we're calling that canon then this is definitely
     AU.
     I feel like the archive warnings are a little nonspecific, here, so,
     a few extra warnings: implied minor character death, explicit sex
     with a fifteen year old, child abuse of the sort Chris and Gerard
     pulled on Allison in season two.
She's twenty-two years old on a hunt all her own. She's got a cheap sublet in a
town at least five hundred miles away from the nearest hunter, a sawed-off
shotgun in the dashboard of her car, and a potted aconite clipping growing in
her bathroom. She's got an eye on her target, a brand new CD changer in her
car, and a wary eye on the local law enforcement. She's happy.
*
She's ninety percent sure it's the Hales. Big old family, keep to themselves,
been in the area for generations, every single one of them supernaturally
beautiful--oh yeah. She's not wrong.
"You don't have any evidence linking you to the Hales," Chris tells her over
the phone, frustrated.
"Another body cropped up last night," Kate replies, drumming her fingers on the
steering wheel. Chris hates it when she answers the phone while driving. "A
teenage girl, partially eaten in the woods. The police are saying it's a
grizzly bear."
"So you find out what did it," Chris says, voice hard. "But you do it right.
You can't take on an entire pack by yourself, not if they've gone feral."
"I'll cross all the Is and dot the Ts," she tells him, rolling her eyes. "And
don't say that you can be here in a couple hours if I need you, because believe
me, I got this."
He sighs. "Do you want to talk to Allison?"
She does.
*
She loves her niece like she loves nothing else except her father and the
satisfaction she gets from ending a hunt. As soon as Chris passed her this tiny
pink bundle, it was like her heart started shuffling things around and tossing
things out to make enough room, and Kate's glad it did, because it means she
can say things like "I'd die before letting anything hurt her," and mean it.
Allison is eight years old and the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, with
soft black hair and a solemn little face that breaks apart into this enormous,
goofy smile whenever Kate does something to make her laugh. Which is a lot.
It's almost enough to make spending time with her brother worth it.
*
Chris is a buzzkill, but then he always has been and what he doesn't know won't
hurt him. She's read and reread the Code he loves so much, and it says quite
plainly that men are weapons and women are generals, that men are too violent
and emotional to make the hard calls the women can. She believes this, has
believed it since the first time she saw Chris let an omega go just because it
wasn't of legal drinking age yet. She knows better than her brother, knows how
to make the tough calls, knows how to shake off the guilt that shadows her
brother's eyes and enjoy wasting a couple monsters.
Chris believes they're doing something dirty, but necessary. Like
exterminators, she thinks, rolling her eyes. She knows better. The job is a
gift.
When she was fourteen, her first boyfriend broke up with her because she got
angry and broke his ex-girlfriend's nose. Looking back, she's pretty sure she'd
been scaring him for a while before that: he was the football captain and she
was the tiny blonde transfer student who smirked at the horror films he took
her out to, who did a triple flip out of her bedroom window to meet him on a
night when Chris was watching her and said she couldn't go out. She must have
seemed like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, peculiar and fierce, but less appealing
in real life.
She tried to convince him that she hadn't meant to break Stacey's nose, she'd
just let her temper get the better of her, and wouldn't he rather she just suck
him off in the car and forget about it, but he wouldn't stop looking at her
with this disgusted expression on his face.
"I was wrong about you, Argent," he'd said, voice loud in the school hallway,
where people were still gathered after the fight. "I thought you might be
pretty cool, underneath your freakish exterior. But I was wrong about you, huh?
You're a freak right down to your bones."
She shot back something about how he hadn't cared about that last night, and
maybe something else about how he had a small dick, and he'd laughed.
"You've got a great mouth, honey," and his voice had dripped condescension,
"but it doesn't change the fact that you're a psychotic bitch. I feel sorry for
you. Seriously."
He'd started walking away, and her heart had pounded so hard she could barely
think, and before she knew it she was screaming that he didn't know anything
about her, not a single fucking thing, that she saved lives. She was a hero,
did he understand? A hero.
They'd moved pretty soon after that, and at this point the only thing Kate
really remembers about the guy is that he was wrong and she was right.
*
Derek Hale is an easy way in. He's young and pretty--the way they are--but he's
also fiercely lonely, clearly out of place at school, fifteen and uncomfortable
in his own skin. Probably just uncomfortable wearing a human skin, she amends.
Whatever the reason, he's the easiest to get on his own. He walks the same way
home every day--and that alone is a clue, because what teenage boy is fine with
walking ten miles into the woods after school?
She parks her car by the side of the road at the entrance to the Beacon Hills
preserve, and casually lifts up her hood and loosens the car battery
connection. Then she waits.
Ten minutes later, a teenage boy comes walking up the road.
As it turns out, he does know something about cars. She also finds out that
he's soft-spoken, serious, but when she jokes about not being used to playing
the damsel in distress, he grins, and his teeth are just uneven enough that it
looks like he's got too many of them to fit in his mouth.
"Well aren't you just as sweet as can be," she says, and he actually blushes.
Yeah, she's got this.
*
Kate has a few simple truths about life and the job. First, it's better to
laugh than deal with the alternative. Second, if you have to do it anyway, you
might as well enjoy it.
*
When Kate was eleven years old, she and Chris were picking up burgers from a
local diner when she went inside to use the bathroom. As soon as she came out
of the stall, someone slammed her into the wall and threw a bag over her head,
and when she screamed she felt the sharp prick of a knife at her neck and
someone gruffly warned her not to do it again. She was lifted up bodily and
dragged through something--probably the bathroom window--and the next thing she
knew she was in the trunk of a car. When they picked her up again, she took the
risk and started screaming at the top of her lungs, but that just meant she got
manhandled more. When they finally took the bag off her head, she was tied to a
chair in a dark concrete room--probably a basement, with a single bare
lightbulb hanging from the ceiling--and she couldn't stop shaking.
"And you're dead," her father told her gently, stepping into the light. She
just made out the shape of Chris behind him, drawstring bag in his hands, face
expressionless.
For some reason that made her laugh. Better than the alternative.
"Chris will be waiting for you outside," her father said, and dropped a knife
at her feet.
Five hours later, Chris was leaning against the car. He saw her and applauded
slowly. "Good job," he told her, and she flashed a grin at him.
*
She doesn't push her luck, at that first meeting. She waits two days, until she
can plausibly bump into Derek at Starbucks and insist on buying her rescuer a
mocha.
Derek isn't what you'd call handsome, even with his gorgeous pale skin and
plush pink mouth. His hands, his ears, and his eyes are all just a little too
big for his body, his hair and eyebrows are shockingly dark against that skin,
and there are those sweet crooked teeth. He looks like an awkward teenage boy
teetering right on the edge of becoming a beautiful adult, although probably
none of the kids his age have seen it yet. She's willing to bet he hasn't been
able to persuade a single girl to kiss that mouth, not yet.
She changes her body posture, leaning in, lowering her voice so he has to lean
in, too, and lets her foot just brush the inside of his calf.
He tells her about how he loves baseball but nobody in this town cares about
anything except lacrosse, about school, about how his favorite musician is
actually Bela Fleck, and his ears actually redden when she tells him she's
heard of the Flecktones.
"Not really my speed, though, sweetheart," she tells him, grinning slyly. "I
like my music hard and fast." His eyes drift down to her mouth and stay there,
and she casually licks her lips.
He tells her about his family, dragging his eyes up with an obvious effort. His
family's huge. They all live in the same house, together. No, he doesn't feel
crowded. He doesn't need much space. They don't get out much.
Kate tells him she knows about insular families, rolling her eyes, and tells
him that her brother used to live with her and her dad, even after he got
married and had a kid. Wasn't that weird?
He shrugs, and tells her that's kind of normal in his family. "I guess normal
is the watchword, huh?" he says, and she laughs.
She learns that he's the only one in school, except for his older sister, who
just started her first year at Stanford, and except for his younger sister, who
does kindergarten in the mornings, but comes home by the afternoon.
"Tell me more," she says, and when he starts to frown she winks and adds,
"about you."
*
The first thing her father taught her about werewolves was the most important
thing.
"They may look human, Kate, but you have to remember. That werewolf over there,
who watches movies, who plays football, who wants to convince you he's just as
much a person as you? That isn't a human. That's the thing that killed him."
"They're like rabid dogs," Chris put in. "Once they've been infected, they need
to be put down, before they lose control."
"And they will," her father said, heavily. "They always do."
She didn't think to ask him about the werewolves that were born, not made,
until much later.
"That's an even sadder case," her father said. "They were never human to begin
with, but they don't know any better. They don't have souls, you understand,
like humans do. Even the ones we can't touch, the ones protected by the Code
because they're too young, or haven't spilled human blood--you need to
understand that they will, eventually. It's in their nature."
"They can't help it?" Kate asked.
"They can't," her father confirmed.
*
She gets a call from her contact at the Sheriff's department. They found the
bear, blundering into someone's backyard, and shot it full of lead.
They found human remains in its stomach.
She calls Chris, and it goes straight to voicemail. "Hey, sunshine," she says,
feigning disappointment, "you were right about me jumping the gun. Turns out it
actually was a bear, this time. They found bits of the last victim in its
digestive tract, and everything. I'm still pretty sure there is a pack around
here, but it looks like they're minding the Code, so I'm gonna head out.
Tonight. Wanna meet me back in Chicago on Monday? Tell Allison I'm dying to see
her."
She hangs up. Dials another number.
"Hey, sweetie? I'm bored. Wanna come over and keep me company?"
*
She punches Derek's v-card on the ratty sofa in her sublet, kissing him
breathless, mindless, his awkwardly large hands gripping onto her shoulders
like he's afraid he'll fall if he lets go. She breaks the kiss and he gives an
almost panicked gasp as she wrestles his shirt off.
He shudders as she licks her way down his abs, hands sliding under the waist of
his jeans.
She keeps her eyes on his face as she sucks him off, waiting for it, waiting
for it. She's not that patient. She uses a bit of teeth, and he whimpers. She
pulls off, just a bit, and he makes a sound like a frustrated growl and fists a
hand in her hair, pushing her back, and she laughs, flushed with victory
closing in.
When he comes, it's with a broken gasp and a flash of shockingly blue eyes, his
mouth opened wide and stunned so she can see his lengthening teeth, feel the
claws pressed into her neck.
Almost before he's done coming, he's turning white and mortified, begging her
not to tell, please, please, he swears he's not dangerous, he didn't think he
would lose control, he just didn't expect--
She gathers him up in her arms and kisses him until he's quiet and hard again
against her leg.
"I won't tell," she promises. "It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay, I won't tell."
Derek looks at her with hazel eyes soft with wonder, and she reminds herself
that those teeth are designed for the rending of flesh, that those claws on her
neck could have killed her, that even if he's soft and beautiful now, when he
grows up he'll be a killer.
And then, because she's won, after all, she unzips her jeans and reaches into
her back pocket for a condom. Kid shouldn't have to die a virgin, after all.
*
The night of Kate's seventeeth birthday, she went to a club and danced herself
mindless and drank four shots of tequila and failed to be vigilant. She woke up
handcuffed to a chair in a cabin, her father looking seriously down at her.
"You need to be more careful," he told her with genuine pain in his voice.
"I was out with my friends," she snapped. "It's my birthday. I'm allowed to
have a life."
"You're not normal," her father said. "You need to be so much better than
normal."
And the thing is, she knew--knows--he was right, so she didn't flinch when he
told her she had fifteen minutes to get out before the smoke inhalation killed
her, didn't flinch when he went outside and she could smell the gasoline, hear
him striking the match and dropping it.
When she stumbled out fifteen minutes later, coughing so hard she can barely
breathe, eyes streaming from the pain and the smoke, both her thumbs
dislocated, her father grabbed her and hugged her hard, stroking his hand over
her hair. "I'm so proud of you," he told her, and she was still coughing,
shuddering against him. "You did so good, sweetheart. I'm so proud of you."
*
"Your eyes are too big for your face," she murmurs, as close to Derek Hale as
two humans can be, and he averts them immediately. "It's okay," she assures
him. "I like it." My, what big eyes you have.
She proves it by kissing them shut, and Derek lets loose this sweet little sigh
that would just about break her heart, if she didn't know what he was.
*
She gets things in order, and decides to do it in the afternoon. She tells
herself it's more practical this way--no chance of anyone being out grabbing
dinner, or unexpectedly picking Derek up from school. She decides it doesn't
matter that Derek will survive. She can always come back, if she needs to.
It's a hard job, but it's worth it. She's never doubted that it's worth it.
She's known since the first time she saved someone from a werewolf, actually
saved this guy's life, and when the omega was dead and the police cars had
shown up, he was hugging his wife, and he'd looked at her and said thank you,
thank you, god, thank you so much. She knows it's worth it with every body she
finds, blue-lipped and pale with a single festering bite-mark in their sides.
She's known it's worth it since the first time she felt Allison's tiny heart
beat in her baby chest, and remembered there were monsters out there in the
world.
"Showtime," she says to the hooker she's paying to be an arsonist on the other
end of her phone. She hangs up, breathes in.
*
She hits the road in less than an hour, and she can just see the black smudge
drifting up to the clouds above the Beacon Hills preserve. She rolls down her
window, turns up the music. Reminds herself she needs to buy Allison a present
before she gets to Chicago.
She catches her own gaze in the rearview mirror, pale and serious. Come on,
smile, Kate, she tells herself. Why don't you smile more?
She drives away from the smoke.
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