The park was the closest thing Shaun could find that worked as somewhere for him to cool off. Large cities didn’t offer much in the way of places he found soothing. He didn’t even know what the name of this park was, only that it enabled him to find some isolated corner, separated from the packs of people roaming about. He could still hear the sounds of the city in the distance, but the trees that surrounded him were enough to muffle and ultimately, tune out the noise.

It probably hadn’t been the smartest idea, leaving the hotel room while the possibility of someone stalking them loomed over their heads. But he couldn’t have stayed in that hotel room if he wanted to. The place was too nice, too foreign to his liking for him to have stayed there and been able to calm himself down. If he had tried to stick around, he would have paced back and forth for however long it took Lucas to come back, and then he probably would have ended up attacking him all over again.

He was only sorry he’d made the comment about Lucas’ family, and that was about it. His partner had intentionally gone behind his back on a hunt and let some monster go free. Then, he’d proceeded to hide that fact from him, making it so Shaun had to listen in on his conversation with someone else in order to learn about it. It was hard not to be angry when you learned someone you trusted had gone behind your back, and then lied about it.

Vibration against his thigh startled him, his nerves on high alert, sending his heart thumping at the sudden sensation. It took all of two seconds of him readying himself for a fight before he realized it was just his phone. He hadn’t remembered grabbing it when he left the room, though he must have and he supposed it had been the smart thing to do. They were, after all, possibly being tracked by some monster, and having a way to get a hold of one another quickly could save one of their lives.

He pulled the phone out and groaned when he saw it was’t Lucas calling him, but his mother. Any other time, he would have been thrilled to hear from her. They talked as much as they could, since they both lived pretty busy lives. But since he was currently fuming on some distant park bench in the middle of a strange city, now was not a good time to play catch up. Yet, he would no sooner ignore the call when he wasn’t in danger than he would choose wine over beer. It just wasn’t how he was programmed.

Swiping on the green circle, he put the phone to his ear. “Hi Mama.”

“Hi indeed,” his mother’s good-natured and boisterous voice greeted him. “I was beginning to think you’d gone and forgotten about me.”

He winced. “I’m sorry, Mama. We’ve been a bit busy.”

“I would hope so, it’s been almost a month, you know that right? I would have worried, except I know I’d have heard if something happened to one or both of you.”

Now he got to add another layer of guilt on top of the one he had been trying to ignore. “I was meanin’ to call you soon, but somethin’ came up.”

“Well, that’s the hunting life for you. There’s always something, isn’t there? I’m just happy that you’re both alright. You both are alright, right?”

The sudden shift to concern in her voice made him smile. “Yes, Mama. We’re alright.”

“Well, I won’t ask where you boys are at, just in case. Where’s Lucas at? He still skinny as a rail and looking like he forgot how to make expressions?”

“He knows how to make expressions, Mama,” he chided her, knowing full well that she adored Lucas and doted on him whenever they came around. Sometimes he wondered if maybe she liked Lucas a bit more than she liked him. Lucas sure as hell didn’t have to hear about it if he didn’t call for a few weeks, or if he forgot who he was talking to and swore, on the rare occasion that he actually did swear.

“Well, don’t you sound happy? What’s wrong, tough case?”

He shrugged, forgetting she couldn’t see him make the gesture. “We’ve had worse.”

“Mmm,” she hummed, turning away from the phone to talk to someone else before coming back. “And yet you sound like someone kicked your puppy. Where’s Lucas?”

His jaw tightened and his repeated shrug was stiff. “Somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” she repeated, sighing. “You boys fighting again?”

“It’s not a big deal, Mama.”

“Uh huh, because my memory tells me that every time you boys fight, it’s always a big deal. You two don’t know how to bicker without it turning into a fist fight.”

“That was one time!” he protested, remembering the brawl the two of them had a few years ago. It had been the only time they had gotten violent with one another, and it had also marked the turnaround in their partnership. Shaun couldn’t even remember what the argument had originally been about, just that it was something small that had escalated. What he did know was that after that, the two of them had started finding ways to deal with each other’s differences. Shaun had started listening better to Lucas, and Lucas became more tolerant toward Shaun’s straightforward and stubborn attitude about how to handle things.

“Yes, yes, I know. For hunter partners that’s probably a record, but you know, you didn’t hear about anything like that coming from your Father and I.”

“Mama, you two are married.”

She snorted. “And you two might as well be.”

He shifted, uncomfortable with this line of conversation. “It’s nothin’ to worry about, we’re just disagreein’ is all.”

“And what are we disagreeing about this time?”

He didn’t like the way she said it, like they were two boys getting into a schoolyard fight over a toy. For a moment, he thought about making that exact point, but figured it was wiser to just let it go. He was almost thirty years old, but he had yet to best his mother in a disagreement. She had a way of turning things around and making him feel foolish. Sometimes that was a good thing, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“I found out somethin’,” he began hesitantly, knowing he was going to catch holy hell for how he found it out.

“You’re being vague, what’s this ‘something’ and how did you find it out?”

He sighed. “I heard him talkin’ on the phone the other day with that Ana woman.”

“Aw, she’s a sweet girl. Bit peculiar, but sweet. Don’t tell me you’re jealous of her now. Are you?”

It wasn’t the first time she had asked something that made him wonder if she suspected there was more going on between he and Lucas than just a close partnership. She hadn’t once come straight out and asked or actually said it, but still he wondered. It was a toss-up as to who was the more observant one in his life: his mother, or Lucas. He hoped the day never came where she directly asked, because that was a conversation he did not want to have with anyone, ever.

“No, Mama. They were talkin’ about a hunt we were on last year. Found this werewolf bitch in the city by herself. She had already given this other hunter a hard time, so they brought us in on it. Didn’t know it at the time, but Lucas went and let her go when we had her cornered. Gave ‘em some sob story about her brats and he let her go. Then, he didn’t even tell me.”

“But he told Ana? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you heard a conversation you had no business listening in on.”

It wasn’t a question and he winced. “He thought I was sleepin’.”

“We’re going to address your bit of eavesdropping, first. Now I know I raised you not to be a sneak, at least not with the people who’re supposed to be your friends and family.”

Sighing heavily, he shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “It wasn’t like it was planned, Mama. I woke up to ‘em talkin’ and he sounded odd.”

“So, you just started listening. Didn’t let him know you were awake, huh?”

“Fine, I was eavesdropping’. I got nosy. It ain’t no worse than him keepin’ something like that from me!”

“Shaun Michael, don’t raise your voice at me! I’m not the one you’re mad at.”

“Sorry Mama,” he deflated, feeling like a little boy all over again.

“Better. Now listen to me, okay? You know you shouldn’t have been listening in on him, and I’m sure he knows he shouldn’t have kept something like that from you.”

“He sure don’t act like it.”

She laughed softly, that knowing laugh that he knew all too well. “No, probably not. When it comes right down to it, I don’t know which of you is more stubborn. You’ve both come a long way toward working as a team, but that don’t mean you boys suddenly stopped being stubborn. You two have learned something called compromise, which is good. Now I want you to do me a favor, can you do that?”

“Guess it depends on the favor.”

“Don’t get smart,” she told him, though there was no fire behind her words. “I want you to try and think what’s going through his head. He don’t feel as strongly about killing as you and your daddy do. You know that. You’ve told me that yourself. You had to know something like this would happen at some point.”

“I guess. Just didn’t think he’d hide it from me.”

“Well, you got your daddy's temper, and you aren’t exactly the most understanding when it comes to what you’re hunting. Maybe he shouldn’t have kept it from you, or done it without telling you in the first place, but I understand why he did it.”

“You do?” he asked, honestly bewildered. His mother had never said how she felt about that sort of thing. Though now he thought about it, she always seemed to purposefully stay out of those sorts of discussions.

“Well of course I understand. That boy is a thinker, and however tough he might act, he’s got a soft heart underneath it all. Put those two things together with the kind of history he’s got and no, I’m not surprised, especially if this werewolf had children. It’s perfectly understandable that he was more than a little soft when it came to them.”

Shaun hadn’t thought about it like that. When it came down to it, he knew Lucas looked at things from a more general and broader point of view than he did. Lucas tended to look at things on a case by case basis, rather than Shaun’s preferred straightforward method. It was one reason that Shaun was comfortable with Lucas being the one to pick the hunts most of the time. He had always suspected that Lucas purposefully picked monsters that he deemed to be true hunts, rather than going after any old monster he happened to sense nearby. Since they were still hunting and taking out monsters, Shaun didn’t bother saying anything about it. Maybe this time, they had finally come across something that didn’t fit his partner’s criteria for a hunt, and the sight of a mother defending her children had been the breaking point for Lucas.

“I didn’t…think of it like that,” he admitted softly.

“Well, I can forgive you for it, since you’re just doing what you do best. Your heart is in the right place, but that temper of yours is gonna get the better of you one of these days.”

“You’re not makin’ me feel much better about this.”

She sighed. “I know, and I’m not trying to make you feel bad. If you were really that bad, do you think Lucas would have stayed partners with you all this time? You’re a good man Shaun, and you have a good man who fights beside you too.”

“I know that,” and he did too. “But how do I…?”

“What? Get over the fact that he’s a human being with different ideas of how things are done than you? You do what you two have always done: you find a way to work it out. That’s what you two do. You find something you’re both stubborn about, have it out, sulk, then figure out a way to make it work again.”

“I do not sulk!” he protested.

“Really? So, you’re telling me that you’re both still sitting in the same room, waiting to calm down and discuss this like rational men? And not, by chance, separated on opposite ends of whatever town or city you’re in, in your own respective corners, glowering at your surroundings.”

Shaun looked around the patch of trees he was sitting in and grunted. “Still not sulkin’.”

“Yes, and your father doesn’t swear like a sailor when I’m not within earshot. Men, I’m telling you. You all think you’ve got the market on hiding things.”

“Mama!”

She laughed, and he could see the way she used to pat his leg affectionately when she laughed like that. “I know, I know. Let you have your delusions. Listen, I can’t tell you what to believe, any more than you can tell Lucas what to believe. What I do know is, you two work as one of the best pairs of hunters I’ve seen come through these doors here. You boys do well together, and it would be a downright shame to throw that away because the two of you are being stubborn. This might feel like a big deal to the both of you, but I know you care about each other enough to find a way around it.”

The sheer fondness in her voice brought his anger down a few levels. It meant that the guilt of having used Lucas’ family as a low blow came more into focus. Damn, he was going to have to apologize for that one.

“I’m still mad as hell that he kept it from me, and that he did it in the first place,” he told her stubbornly.

“Language. And of course you are. I’m not saying you’re wrong for being hurt. But you have to get past this somehow. If you two could get past that first year you were together, I know you can get past this little squabble.”

He didn’t know if that made him feel better or not, but he knew it made him feel a little more clear-headed. “Okay, you’re right.”

She laughed again. “Well of course I am. Mamas usually are.”

He grinned. “I didn’t say that. You did.”

“Uh huh, well, when you two are done feuding and with whatever you’re doing out there, you make your way back here, you hear me? I haven’t seen you two in a minute, and I know I’m gonna have to fatten Lucas up again, because that boy doesn’t know how to eat right.”

“I will Mama,” he told her, surprised to find himself still grinning.

“Good, now you go find that boy and you two have it out right this time, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, now I hope to see you two here soon. You take care of yourself out there, okay? I love you, Shaun.”

“I love you too Mama,” he told her, still smiling as he hung up the phone. The smile lasted until the call screen disappeared and showed that he had a text from Lucas. Bracing himself, he opened the text and felt his stomach drop as he read the words:

Probably won’t be back tonight. If I do, it’ll be late. I’m safe.

“Aw hell,” he muttered dejectedly, Lucas had found himself some company for the night, Shaun would put money on it. Which meant he was in for a lonely, cold night on his own in the room after an argument they had yet to settle.

“Maybe I can just sleep on this bench instead,” he mumbled to himself, pocketing his phone after shooting back an acknowledgement text.