Chapter Text
There’s no safer place in all California than the Citadel, they say. It’s a well-kept secret but it’s starting to spread, whisper to whisper, pack to pack, from a werewolf here to a banshee there, an email between druids, a retweet by a sorcerer who everybody quietly knows is in the know.
@citadelcoffee: All-nite board game tournament starts Friday at 8PM! Come #caffeinate and GET YOUR GAME ON
The McCalls’ll fix you up. Pretty good coffee, too.
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It’s a fact: if you come into the Citadel Coffee House more than twice, Allison McCall’s going to know your name.
Most of their clients are still perfectly normal humans. The Citadel is the only place in Beacon County besides Denny’s that has free 24-hour wifi--and the Citadel has couches. It’s a solid draw all on its own, even without all the careful supernatural protections etched around the windows and into the heavy, homey wooden tables. Besides, Malia’s pastries are delicious.
They do a lot of repeat business. Allison doesn’t just keep track of her customers to have an idea of who’s in trouble or who might want to cause it. She’s got a business degree and enough experience in customer service to actually be good at her job. But okay, fine; when it’s 3 AM and some new guy shows up on his own three times in a week, Malia knows to get a full run-down of his deal to report in the morning, because Allison likes to know what’s going on in her own house.
“Raspberry mocha and an onion tart,” Allison says, passing the cup and the plate over the counter with a smile. “Good luck with the studying.”
Thursday afternoons are usually pretty quiet past the lunch rush, at least in the main part of the cafe. Besides Tina with the mocha and the history midterm tomorrow, there are two tables in use in the main room, and a pair of middle-aged women chatting on one of the big squishy couches in the sunroom. Allison puts a hand at the small of her back and stretches.
“You’ve got this, right?” she asks the new barista. “I’m going to sit down for a few minutes before the 3:00 class.”
Erica rolls her eyes. “No you’re not,” she says. “Kira’s taking the 3:00 class. You can sit down, though.”
Allison raises her eyebrows. “You remember the part where you’ve worked here a month and I sign your paychecks, right?” she asks. “Kira’s assisting me, and I’ll be in the back room getting ready for the 3:00 class.”
“Dr. McCall said I should sit on you if tried,” Erica says. “You can sit down for a few minutes, though. Or like an hour.”
“Oh he did?” Allison’s going to have to have words with Scott later. “Well until I grow four paws, Scott’s my husband, not my doctor, and you’re my employee, not my mom.”
“If you want to explain it to him,” Erica shrugs. “But I’m not going to be the one to tell him why his pregnant wife was trying to teach a self-defense class and got hit in the stomach.”
Ugh. Allison should really get in there and try to wrestle her way into her workout clothes anyway. Thursday afternoon self-defense in the back room at the Citadel is her thing, her baby. Kira took over Allison’s half of the Saturday morning yoga classes when Allison got too big to bend, but Allison’s still perfectly capable of demonstrating how to break a chokehold or throw a punch.
Then again, she’s been down in the cafe since about 5:30 this morning, and even though Malia and Isaac refused to let her stand up and work the counter for the breakfast rush, her back is killing her. Usually class on Thursday is just the thing Allison needs to break up a long day of standing in one place, but right now she really just wants a nap.
“Hire my friend Erica, Isaac said,” Allison sighs. “She’s nice and respectful and pulls a great espresso shot.”
“There’s no way Isaac said I was nice and respectful,” Erica scoffs. “And I pull an awesome shot.”
“He definitely overexaggerated your niceness,” Allison says.
Not that it really matters. Erica fits in with their weird, cobbled-together little family just as well as any of the misfits who call the Citadel home. She’s decent to customers unless the customers are rude first, and if she’s already taking orders from Scott on how to mother-hen on his behalf, then she’s pretty much figured out how things work around here.
“I don’t really do ‘nice’,” Erica agrees unapologetically. “Go sit down.” At this point, it’s all Allison’s feet and back really want to do anyway.
“I’ll be in the back room,” Allison says. There are chairs back there. Maybe she’ll just sit for a little while and get ready to have the same argument with Kira in half an hour.
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They lucked out with the property for the Citadel. It’s huge--four tiny, cozy little interconnected rooms for the cafe in front, the community room in back, the meeting space in the basement and the apartment upstairs. The only way they could begin to afford it was by using every last cent Allison's dead grandfather left her and buying a foreclosure in Pine Valley instead of Beacon Hills proper and fixing it up themselves. They'll be in debt for approximately the rest of their lives, but they’re millennials. That was pretty much a given to begin with. This place is home.
You can’t exactly apply for grants to establish a social center and engage in grassroots community-building for werewolves and banshees. Allison and Scott had joked about the idea once, back in Davis, while Scott was grinding his way through vet school and Allison was splitting a sixty-hour work week between unpaid internships and her shifts at Starbucks. The supernatural community was so fractured. How could you build something that wasn’t even supposed to exist?
When Scott was bitten in his senior year of high school, he got about ten words of advice from Derek Hale, half a dozen threats and muttered imprecations from the Calevera hunters who showed up to shoot Peter Hale down and burn the body, and whatever Stiles could dig up off the internet. Everything else--everything they have now, everything that lets Scott actually get up in the morning and go to work and lead a normal life, with a wife and family and a minimum of fear--they had to figure out themselves.
It wasn’t right. Scott had learned to manage by the time Allison met him in college, but that didn’t make it right. And everybody else they met along the way--from Kira, who was fine enough but didn’t know anything about the supernatural except through her mother, to Malia, who was stuck living like a coyote for years until a bunch of teenage college kids finally figured out how to help her because nobody else was there to do it--everybody else, it was the same story. They worked it out as they went. They helped each other.
There’s a back room in the basement, behind the meeting room, with beanbag chairs and manacles for full moons. Scott’ll treat anybody who shows up at the back door in the alleyway, day or night, no questions asked. They had four alpha werewolves sit down and discuss terse terms of a truce in that basement meeting room last summer, and nobody even died.
As for Allison, well. She’d never had a home before college, not a real one. The longest she’d ever lived anywhere was about nine months. She’d never had anyone besides her parents and her aunt, when Kate wasn’t jetting off to some distant part of the country or getting into fights with Allison’s dad at their father’s funeral and never coming around again. She’d never had much of anything at all to call her own before Scott, and their friends, and the strange little community they’ve built for themselves.
The Citadel is hers--her fortress, her domain, every last brick of it. The bags of fair-trade coffee beans and the carefully placed bookshelf in the fireplace room with the unmarked binders full of homework help and abuse survival advice. People are safe here. People can build themselves something here.
.
The community room at the back of the shop is a long, open space that gets rearranged twenty times a week for Open Mic Wednesdays, local Girl Scout Troop 173 on Monday afternoons, Saturday yoga, biweekly self-defense, and any other group that wants to rent it out. Isaac and Malia put up the chairs and tables after last night, but Allison does not actually want to go wrestling the heavy mats out of the storage closet to set up for class by herself.
And then her phone rings. If it’s Scott calling to check up, she’ll kill him, but it’s a great excuse to sit down for a minute anyway.
“Hello?” Nobody is here to see if she slips her shoes off and puts her feet up on one of the tables. Scott will probably know, damn him, but so be it.
“Hi, honey,” says somebody who is definitely not Scott.
“Dad!” Shoot, Allison had been supposed to call him, hadn’t she? “Hey, what’s going on?”
“I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time. I was expecting your voicemail,” he admits. “I just wanted to confirm travel plans for next week.”
“Next week?” Allison asks blankly. “That’s next week?”
“The twenty-fourth,” her dad says. “That’s next Tuesday. We get into San Francisco at 3:00?”
“Right.” Next week. Allison rubs at her forehead. She’s been too fuzzy and absent-minded lately. “It’s on a post-it on the fridge, Scott knows. You’re definitely booked at the hotel starting on the twenty-fourth, so if that’s next Tuesday, you’re good for next Tuesday.”
“That’s next Tuesday,” her dad confirms. “We can rent a car at the airport if--”
“No, no, we can pick you up, it’s no problem!” It’s the first time her parents are visiting them since Scott finished vet school and they moved out to Beacon County last year. Allison’s mom and dad haven’t even seen the coffee house yet, except for pictures. It has to be a good visit. “I’m sorry you can’t stay with us, we just, we’re trying to get the baby’s room ready and it’s all such a mess upstairs--” The apartment’s not very large even without the mess of painting supplies and flatpack baby furniture cluttering up every corner. It’s sort of great to have an excuse not to invite her parents to stay in their actual home, but Allison can’t help feeling a little bad about it.
“It’s fine, Allison.” Her dad chuckles warmly. “We’ll be just fine in a hotel. Your mother can’t wait to see you.”
“It’ll be good to see you guys, too.” It’s been almost a year since she and Scott managed to take that long weekend down in New Mexico. “Next week.”
God, there’s so much to get ready before her parents get here, though. Full moon is next Friday and it’s last-Friday-of-the-month board game night, so Allison’s going to have to pick up some extra shifts next week so the whole staff can be on for it. And they’re going to have to go over the basement from top to bottom, and she’ll have to have a word with the staff…
Allison didn’t have the most typical upbringing, but her parents are still by and large pretty normal people. Allison’s just not prepared for the conversations they’d have to have, if she ends up having to finally explain to her parents that werewolves exist.
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On Tuesday morning, there’s a staff meeting. Mandatory for every single Citadel employee and Scott, plus also Mason, who still doesn’t technically work for Allison but picks up an apron and jumps in to help Liam out on a shift often enough that he might as well. The high school kids are on summer break, they can show up to work by 10 AM one weekday if Allison tells them to. Greenberg doesn’t actually come at all, but fine. He only ever works the overnight shift anyway. Allison’s parents will never see him.
The back room is too far away from the front door, so they all crowd into the kitchen together. Malia glares daggers at anyone who edges a little too close to her ingredient rack. Caitlin, god bless her, who out of this whole ridiculous crew is actually a professional, lingers by the door to the counter area just in case somebody needs a caffeine fix in between the breakfast and lunch rush. It’s okay, the speech isn’t for her. She’ll be fine. Unless she and Emily break up again or she and Malia get into another fight about using the kitchen when Malia isn’t there. Oh god.
“Okay so here’s the plan for the next two weeks,” Allison says. Isaac looks half asleep; he never bothered to go home after his shift ended at 8:00 this morning. “I’ll be working the morning shift every day, 5:30 to 11:30, and then I’m off. If something goes wrong outside that time, you all know who the shift managers are. You call me if the actual building catches fire, if one of our staff has to be evacuated to the hospital, or if we get a surprise visit from the health inspector. Scott’ll be around a lot more, so if somebody shows up at the back door bleeding or looking for sanctuary, you can call him, just expect he might make it sound like a vet emergency. You all know how to handle your jobs. If something goes really, really wrong, you know how to contact me, but I don’t see that happening.” Please please please god.
“Well, now you’ve jinxed it,” Malia says dryly.
“Don’t even.” Allison points a stern finger at her. “We’re thinking positively about this. I’m not worried about you getting your jobs done.”
“She’s worried about us embarrassing the crap out of her,” Isaac fills in.
“If you’re going to put it that way, then fine,” Allison says. “I don’t think I need to say this, but I’m asking you. While my parents are here, act like grownups.” Her eyes linger over Liam, Mason, and Brett--at least if they go off, maybe her parents will acknowledge that they are actually still teenage high school students and be generous. “I realize nobody here is very good at normal, me included, but we can at least handle professional. We treat my parents like we should be treating any other customer. Don’t fight in front of them, please for the love of god don’t pick a fight with them, don’t talk about your sex life, or politics, or religion, do not hit on my father--”
“Don’t worry, Lydia’s not here,” Malia smirks. Scott winces appropriately, but nobody else was at the wedding rehearsal dinner six years ago. Isaac and Erica both look delightedly scandalized.
“Can we hit on your mom?” Erica asks. Scott makes a strangled, choking noise. Allison is going to fire everybody who works for her and run the shop entirely by herself.
“No,” Scott gasps. “No, don’t…definitely don’t do that.” Allison can’t even picture her mother’s reaction. Her brain just breaks.
“Please,” Allison says again. “Please.” Just…if they…ngggggggh. “Please.”
“It’ll be okay, Allison,” Liam promises. He’s a good kid, even if Isaac and Erica swear he’s got a crush on her. Personally, Allison kind of thinks it’s Scott. “We know what to do.”
“Suck-up,” Erica accuses cheerfully. “The kid’s right, though. We’ll be okay.”
“We also really want to keep Mr. and Mrs. Argent away from anything that might have to do with werewolves or the supernatural,” Scott continues. “They don’t know what I am or what we do, and there’s no reason for them to ever get involved in it.”
“You already know how to play nice for the public,” Allison says. “Just…keep it up.”
“If you’re having trouble controlling a shift,” Scott says, looking between Brett and Malia even though they all know Malia’s had years to practice her control, “there’s the basement, or the bathroom, just like always. Go get a breath of fresh air in the back alley. Nobody will mind.”
“Meredith, I’m just going to ask that you pay attention to who’s directly in front of you,” Allison requests. She’s been sitting here quietly enough so far. Usually Meredith’s pretty good with telling the reality of the physical world from the things that only she can hear, but it’s hard for her. It takes more work for her than for Lydia, and Lydia’s not the one with a full-time job in the service industry. Usually, Allison’s pretty sure Meredith handles it by just not talking very much at all. “You have my official permission to ignore anybody who’s calling you from another room.”
“I’ll try,” Meredith promises. “I always try.”
Which is true enough, and Meredith is always good with customers when she has a physical person actually in front of her to focus on. It just makes Allison flinch a little, to picture her parents deciding that Meredith is crazy because she’s having a conversation with thin air. They’ll be polite no matter what, just…
Allison’s family isn’t like her. They’re only generous when they want to be, and as much as Allison loves them, that isn’t always very often. And they can think whatever the hell they want about her, but nobody gets to judge Allison’s employees.
“You do fine,” Allison says. “You’re all fine. There’s nothing wrong with any of you, I’m just running kind of crazy with stress right now. I really appreciate anything you can do to make this a little less stressful.”
“Parents are rough,” Erica says. Allison doesn’t know much about hers--another member of her staff with weird family issues? Seems almost inevitable by now. “Life lesson for the babies,” she adds, with a smirk in Liam and Mason’s general direction. “Daddy issues never go away.” Why hasn’t somebody been arrested for letting Erica and Isaac give the teenagers life advice by now?
“Nobody thinks you’re crazy,” Scott promises.
“No, she’s totally going nuts,” Malia corrects. “But I’ve met Allison’s parents, and they’re complete terrifying WASPs, so at least she’s got a good reason.”
“They’re not--” Not what? Terrifying, check. Extremely white, more or less Protestant, check, check… “They’re not that bad,” Allison tries weakly.
“They’re really not,” Scott says. He actually sounds like he means it, too, and Allison’s dad has pointedly shown him the Argent Arms inventory stock every single time Allison’s brought him on a visit since they were first engaged. “We just want to make sure that if anything supernatural does come up while they’re around, it stays low-key. Use the basement, use the back alley, use your good judgment. We trust you.”
Brett tentatively raises a hand halfway into the air. “What about Friday?” he asks.
Friday. God. Allison rubs at the bridge of her nose. “Friday it’s all hands on deck,” she says. “Full moon and board game night. We can pull those both off at once. Caitlin and Meredith can run the tournament and keep people distracted, Isaac’s in charge of front of house, Malia can handle the kitchen by herself, and Scott will be down in the basement keeping everybody in check. Stiles and Kira will both be here helping out early, and Scott and I will ditch my parents and get back here as soon as we can.” It was probably inevitable that her parents would be visiting during a full moon, but of course it just had to be this full moon. “Brett, if you can’t come in, then don’t come in. Don’t try to push through it if you think you’re better off with Satomi and the pack.”
Part of trying to establish a cultural center for the supernatural community is hiring from within the supernatural community, but really, thank god Brett’s their only werewolf on staff right now. Malia’s touchy enough on full moon nights. Allison can’t imagine having to deal with Isaac and Erica, or, god, Liam as werewolves. There wouldn’t be a coffee shop still standing.
“I’ll be fine,” Brett promises earnestly. Allison will have to remind Isaac in private to make sure he and Liam stay as far apart on Friday night as possible.
“We’ve got this,” Scott says. “You all do a really good job here every day. We just want to make sure we’re all on the same page for the next couple of weeks.”
“It’s just practice for when the baby’s born, right?” Caitlin asks, leaning against the doorway. Allison didn’t even see her come back in. “Not like you’ll be down here working a week of twelve-hour days then.”
“I…” It’s true, isn’t it? That’s why she hired Erica. If Allison’s going to be up all night with a crying baby, she might as well spend it downstairs anyway, but she can’t exactly bring a screaming, wailing infant to the coffee shop. “I’m not going anywhere,” she settles on. “I live upstairs. This is just a couple of weeks of extra stress before I’m a little distracted for a while.”
“So yeah, it’s like practice,” Scott says. “We both know you’re going to be just fine.”
.
“ ‘We’re going to be fine?’ ” Allison mutters to Scott, waiting at baggage claim. “Did you jinx us all?”
“Your parents are kind of scary but it’s not like they’ve ever killed anyone,” Scott says reasonably. “You deal with scarier people all the time.”
“I have a taser for those people,” Allison points out. “Shit, there they are. Smile and wave.”
.
“So Scott definitely jinxed us all with that ‘fine’ crap,” Erica says, because there’s no fun in calling him ‘Dr. McCall’ when he and Allison aren’t around to tease. “But if Meredith isn’t talking to the wall yet, we’re probably not all going to die.”
Liam looks doubtful. He’s such an impressionable young kid. He’s so much fun.
Malia, jacket and purse in hand, pokes her head into the fireplace room. “What are you still doing here?” she asks. “Your shift ended like four hours ago.”
“There are no shifts any more.” Isaac doesn’t open his eyes or lift his head from the back of the couch. Erica brought him a triple-shot dirty chai half an hour ago, and it looks like it’s mostly gone, but she hasn’t actually seen him move since he sat down. “All times are here.”
“He wants to see what all the fuss is about when Allison’s parents get here,” Erica interprets. “I can’t wait.” Erica’s on ten to six today anyway, so it’s not like she has a choice.
“No, you don’t,” Malia says. “Trust me, I’m getting the hell out of here before they show up.”
Malia was Allison’s roommate in college or something like that, in between being a coyote--Erica’s not really clear on the details. “What’s the big deal, anyway?” Erica asks. “They can’t be that bad. It’s not like Isaac’s dad is showing up to visit.” Allison’s way too well-adjusted for her parents to be worse than Isaac’s dad.
“If my dad came to visit my work, I’d be calling that sorcerer from last year to find out who’s raising dead people out of hell,” Isaac reports, still without moving. “And then booking a flight to Mexico.”
“Do you know what the big deal is?” Liam asks. The kid actually likes his family. Teenagers these days. Erica doesn’t know what the world’s coming to.
“They’re kind of rich white arms dealers,” Malia says. “Allison didn’t get her niceness from them.”
“I still can’t believe Mrs. Save-The-Werewolves Allison McCall’s parents are arms dealers,” Erica says. “Seriously.”
“You’ve never seen her use that crossbow,” Isaac points out. “Trust me, she’s scary when she wants to be.”
“And they’re about ten times scarier, which is why I’m getting out of here,” Malia says. “Isaac, I’ll see you later. You come on at midnight, right?”
Isaac groans. “I live here now,” he says. “Just wake me up and peel me off the couch when it’s time for my shift.”
“It’s two in the afternoon, you asshole,” Erica says. “Didn’t you say you had to do laundry today?”
“Just leave him,” Malia advises. “Maybe if he dies there we can call it modern art and sell it like those weird sculpture things.” Allison has a thing about supporting local artists. The local artists of Beacon County all kind of suck.
“Just don’t sell the couch with him, I like that one,” Erica says. “Come on, squirt, I bet Malia left a sink full of dirty dishes just for you.”
“Don’t call me that,” Liam mutters, just like always. He follows her anyway.
“Cremate me,” Isaac requests. “And wake me up when the arms dealers get here.”
It’s not quite the average day at work, but eh. At least it’s an entertaining one.