by pebble/scifipony
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Melissa McCall, Scott McCall
Words: 1,035
Tags: Reflection, Character Analysis, Family
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Originally posted to AO3 and SqWA on February 1st, 2024. Written for the Scottuary Bingo event on tumblr for the prompt "Wolf Eyes". Inspired by this post on tumblr.
Melissa remembers the first time she ever saw her son’s eyes. Tiny and exhausted and brand new to the world that would treat him so cruelly, she held him tight in her arms. And those beautiful brown eyes melted her heart.
As he grew older, those eyes grew warm and kind. They reminded her of his father — though she secretly hoped that was the only trait he would inherit from him. They were always so full of life. So full of curiosity and mischief and love.
She knew without a doubt that someone someday was going to fall in love with those kind eyes and the beautiful soul looking out through them. She could only hope that person would be good to her son.
She remembers the first time she saw his eyes in a different color. The warm brown replaced with bright gold — both cold and dangerous. They hadn’t looked like her son’s eyes at all.
She feels ashamed now, when she thinks back on her reaction then. She remembers her son’s courage in facing her with his true nature on full display, the fear and the silent plea on his face begging for acceptance. And her own response had been to recoil in horror.
It took some time to adjust to the reality of what her son was, but they got there eventually. It helped that she quickly saw how unchanged he really was. The what may have changed, but the who of Scott McCall was the same as ever. He was still her son.
With that initial shock gone, she made herself study his new eyes. He didn’t show them to her often at first — no doubt out of fear of seeing her rejection again — but he slowly let his guard down on that front. Every glimpse she got of them, Melissa made herself memorize the gold bands and everything they carried.
They were dangerous, but she realized they were never actually cold. They carried every bit of the same warmth and fire that his brown eyes did. They were still filled with the same curiosity at every new thing. They still sparked to life with mischief when he and Stiles were playing pranks on each other. They still burned with fury when he was angry. They still welled with tears when life was uncommonly cruel to this child trying his best to navigate it. They still gazed at his family and friends with an impossible amount of love and empathy. They were still kind.
Her initial fear faded quickly, and she accepted these eyes as being every bit a part of her son as his brown ones were.
She remembers vividly the first time she saw his red eyes.
After the rescue from the Nemeton, there was a lot of confusion as they tried to sort everything out. They only had a couple vehicles, so rides had to be figured out. Several people were in need of medical attention. And there was a lot of new information to take in as everyone tried to catch the parents up to date on what was happening.
The news of Scott becoming an alpha was a surprise, but not entirely unexpected, she quickly realized. Of course he was a True Alpha. (Whatever that actually meant; they still hadn’t fully explained it to her yet.) He’d always been an alpha at heart, and part of her had always known that.
It was during their drive home that night that she first saw them. Scott was dozing in the passenger seat, no doubt exhausted from saving the town yet again from unspeakable evils. The passing streetlights lit up the side of his face in alternating flashes as they drove.
A dog darted out in front of the car and Melissa hit the breaks with a gasp of surprise. Beside her, Scott jerked awake, on high alert instantly. It was probably going to take some time for him to fully let go of the survival mode his brain had been forced into the last several weeks. She glanced over to reassure him that everything was fine… and that was when she saw them.
Even knowing his new status, she somehow expected the usual golden glow in his eyes. Instead, they were a burning red.
He glanced over at her, the red fading back to brown almost immediately as he relaxed again. Melissa smiled and told him to go back to sleep, they still had a bit of a drive to get home.
That split second glimpse — that brief flash of blood red power — made it finally, truly hit her. Scott was an alpha now. Her son wasn’t even through his junior year of high school yet and he was now burdened with an impossible responsibility. One which, from what she’d seen of other alphas so far, most adults weren’t even capable of shouldering responsibly.
It wasn’t fair. Life never seemed to be fair, but Scott so often drew the short end of the stick. She wished she could protect him from all of it.
The next time she saw his alpha eyes, she had longer to actually look at them. He was helping Liam learn to control his shift, and the alpha powers were apparently helping. (How, she had no clue. Sometimes she preferred not to ask about the werewolf side of his life.) His eyes were on full display for her now and she drank in every speck of red in those familiar irises.
They were a dark crimson, and yet shone bright all the same. The color of blood and power and sacrifice. They were terrifying, probably, to anyone who found themselves on the wrong side of an alpha. She could imagine how they would look with the force of Scott’s anger behind them, or the protectiveness when someone he loved was in danger.
Then Stiles made a joke and those eyes brightened with laughter, the same way they did when they were gold or brown. Melissa felt something loosen in her chest and she smiled.
Scott, like all teenagers, was ever growing and ever evolving. But the core of his being would always stay the same. And his eyes were still her son’s eyes.
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