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Allison isn’t entirely sure why she comes over, except that… Well, Scott asked her. She owes him, she tells herself as she pulls her hood up and prepares to run out into the pouring rain, but she knows deep down that she would have come even if he hadn’t saved her earlier.
The front door is unlocked; his mom’s crashed out in the living room, still in her scrubs, tv sending flickering light down the hall. She still keeps her footsteps silent on the stairs, skipping the fifth and seventh steps altogether, and hesitates only a second when she reaches Scott’s door.
It’s closed, but she doesn’t knock, just pushes it open and steps in.
The first thing she sees is Isaac, soaking wet and wearing one of the bleakest expression she’s seen on him. It’s a far cry from the smirks and smiles from this afternoon. It reminds her of the split-second of dawning horror on his face when the janitor’s closet clicked shut, right before panic set in.
Scott’s standing beside the bed, and when he sees her, his expression goes from worried to thankful. He nods to Isaac, who is soaked and listlessly sitting on Scott’s bed. She knows without Scott saying a word that he needs her to find out what’s wrong with Isaac. Scott’s never been the best at prying; he respects people too much.
She knows what Kate would have done, what Gerard would tell her to do. She knows interrogation techniques, but she isn’t as certain about her ability to be gentle. She takes a deep breath. They aren’t the enemy. She can do this.
She shuts the door quietly behind her, and takes the time to pull off her soaked jacket. The rain is battering against the window, and Scott still has the air on. There are chill bumps on Isaac’s arms, and it gives her somewhere to start, something to break the silence with.
“Isaac, you need to get into some dry clothes,” she says as soothingly as possible. Werewolves can’t catch colds, but being warm and dry will help with his misery. She hangs her jacket up, then takes the sodden sweater from Isaac to lay out to dry.
Isaac seems to notice for the first time that he’s dripping on Scott’s bed; he leaps to his feet and starts apologizing.
“It’s fine, dude,” Scott says without hesitation. “Do you need something to wear?”
Isaac shakes his head, and Allison notices a black bag sitting by the door. “I have all my things in there.”
Allison wishes Scott had told her more; she has only the faintest idea what’s happening. “Why do you have all your things?”
Isaac’s eyes drop to the floor, and again, Allison is reminded of his behavior in the janitor’s closet. “Derek kicked me out.”
It’s obvious Scott hasn’t heard this yet. He stares at Isaac. “But he’s your alpha.”
“He said he has Cora now, and I can’t be there anymore.” Isaac sounds more confused than anything. “My things were already packed when I got ho—there.”
It doesn’t surprise Allison that Derek would arbitrarily destroy someone’s life; he’s already done it to her. But Scott says, “That doesn’t sound right. He should protect you,” with feeling.
It’s his wolf side talking, she can tell from the surge of confidence in his voice. She knows that it’s as much a part of him as his crooked smile, but it seems so much more pronounced, now. Allison steadily keeps her eyes trained on Isaac.
Isaac shrugs, drawing in on himself, and Allison finally knows why Scott asked her to come. Why he didn’t just handle Isaac on his own, using the influence he has over Isaac’s wolf. Scott wants her here because she’s been shattered, too, and he must think she knows how to put the pieces back together.
She doesn’t. She knows how to tear people apart; she knows how to kill werewolves; she knows how to protect her own life. But none of her family’s lessons taught her how to pull someone back together.
She relied on Scott for that.
Allison has to do something, so she looks at the bag that’s filled with all of Isaac’s earthly possessions and carefully unzips it. Isaac doesn’t protest. She finds a t-shirt and running shorts, and hands them to him. “Go take a hot shower, as hot as you can stand.”
It’s what she does when she’s trying to wash away Gerard’s influence; maybe the same will work for Derek’s.
“Thanks,” Isaac says. He brushes his fingers against hers as he takes the clothes from her before moving into Scott’s bathroom. She does her best to pretend like it doesn’t affect her.
Scott notices. Of course he does.
“Thanks for coming,” he says, eyes focused on her hand. His expression is carefully neutral.
Allison shrugs, and says, “Is he going to be okay?”
The shower’s running, but Isaac can still probably hear her, if he’s trying.
Scott looks at the bathroom door. “Yeah. Isaac’s tough. It’s just been a rough…”
“Life?” Allison wonders how fragile Isaac is, that he could go from the prankster this afternoon to this. She runs a hand through her hair. “I know the feeling.”
Scott shifts. “I’m so—“
Allison cuts him off with, “Don’t. None of us asked for any of this. We just need to deal with it.”
Scott’s looking at her in a way that makes something twist in her chest. She lost her mom, Isaac lost everything, and Scott lost…
Her.
“I miss you,” blurts Scott.
It’s too close to what she was thinking, and Allison makes the mistake of meeting his eyes. She’s tried, all summer, to shut down the things she feels for Scott, but then he smiles all hopefully at her and she feels like everything that’s happened can be erased. That there’s hope for them.
“It was a long summer,” she says, which is as close as she can get to admitting that she misses him too.
He takes a step forward, but then looks over at the bathroom door. It’s not the time, and the summer has matured him enough that he visibly realizes it. Allison feels a little pang of regret, and wonders if she did the right thing, coming tonight.
“I should have thought of that,” Scott says, gesturing towards the bathroom. “I offered to play video games with him, but he just shrugged.”
Scott would try to treat Isaac like everything was normal. Isaac isn’t Stiles, isn’t able to push things down and act like the world isn’t falling down around him. Allison isn’t sure that Isaac has ever had anything approaching a normal life, except for this summer, with Derek.
“Why would Derek do this to him?” Allison wonders aloud. Knowing why Derek bit her mom is too new. She hasn’t forgiven him, probably never will, but what Scott said earlier is true. Derek is Isaac’s alpha, and everything she knows about werewolves screams that this is wrong. It goes against every instinct a wolf has.
“Last night he was willing to die for Boyd and Erica,” Scott says thoughtfully. “Then he went into that basement, thinking he wasn’t coming back out. You didn’t see him collapse. He doesn’t abandon pack. Something happened.”
The confident tone is back. Scott’s thinking more like a leader, but Allison knows how dangerous that can be. There are already too many leaders in it, and like that, Allison thinks maybe the Alphas are involved in this somehow. She doesn’t bring it up. She’s already planning on investigating this pack, after what they did today. This just gives her extra motivation.
She just nods, quietly resolved, and says, “We’ll find out.”
Scott picks at his comforter, looks around the room. Allison wonders if she should offer to find Isaac some blankets, but the thought of telling him to sleep on the hard wood floor seems cruel, after what he’s been through. “I think maybe we should just let Isaac get some rest.”
“Don’t leave,” Scott says quickly. Allison is surprised; she hasn’t really done much since she got here.
“Please,” Isaac adds. Allison hadn’t even heard the shower turn off, but there’s Isaac, toweling off his hair in the doorway. He smiles crookedly at her, but she can see how shaky it is. “You were right, a hot shower does help.”
He’s not magically better, he’s just putting on an act. Allison should know, she’s an expert.
She’s heard that sometimes the act can become real, and she hopes that’s true, for all of their sakes.
“You know you can stay here as long as you need, right?” Scott offers. He’s watching Isaac closely. Allison wonders, sometimes, just how much he’s taking in. She’s been taught about werewolves’ abililties, but when she’s actually around them, it seems like there’s more going on between them than just hyped-up senses could account for.
Isaac takes in a deep breath. He looks like he’s still trying to plan out a course of action, trying to figure out where else he can go. “I can’t…”
“Derek’s an asshole,” Allison tells him, because he needs to hear that. Scott starts to speak up, starts to defend Derek, but she doesn’t let him. “Even if Scott’s right and there’s something behind this, he should trust you enough to tell you, not just… shoo you away like you’re a stray dog. You deserve better than that.”
“You’re awesome and I’m happy to have you here,” Scott adds. “My mom won’t mind, she always says you look like you need to be fed lots of soup. She makes great veggie soup.”
“I… appreciate that,” Isaac says after a moment. He looks as lost as Allison feels. She can hear Gerard’s voice faintly in the back of her mind, hissing that she’s supposed to kill werewolves, not comfort them.
Scott doesn’t hesitate, though. He pulls Isaac into a hug, and Allison can hear him whisper, “You’re safe here. Allison’ll protect us.”
Isaac muffles a laugh into Scott’s shoulder. “Maybe she can stab Derek for me.”
“Anything to help,” Allison says a little too quickly. Her fingers itch to notch an arrow, and she curls them in.
Isaac looks up at her, eyes bright enough that she wonders if they’ll flash gold. Scott gives him one final squeeze, and he catches Allison’s hand when he steps away from Isaac. “Watch a movie?”
She nods. She should drop his hand, but it’s Scott. She follows him to the bed, and when she notices that Isaac is hesitating, she pats the spot beside her. Isaac sits down, folding his long limbs up to take up as little room as possible.
Allison looks over at Scott, to see if he notices, and he nods. They’re going to make sure that Isaac knows he’s not alone, that he’s welcome. He gets up to turn off the lights, to stick in the dvd, and when he returns, he takes the spot on Isaac’s other side.
Scott once explained to her that physical contact became far more comforting to him after he got bit. She hadn’t really put much stock behind it, other than indulging him in cuddle sessions that she quite frankly enjoyed. The bestiary and her family’s lessons hadn’t mentioned anything about it, but then, knowing how werewolves sought comfort from their pack hadn’t been a high priority
She believes it now, watching as Isaac seems to melt into Scott’s side while letting out a tiny sound of contentment. She’s sitting cross-legged, and when he rests his hand on her knee, he gives her a faint smile. Scott smiles at her too, over Isaac’s head, and Allison…
She feels more complete than she has since her mother died. She remembers that Scott considers her pack, and she wonders if this feeling, this comfort, is what that means.
If it is, no wonder Derek was so desperate to create one.
She settles in more comfortably. Scott’s arm is behind Isaac, his hand is brushing her side, and Isaac’s thumb rubs slow circles on the inside of her knee. She’s hyper-aware of the places of contact, of the way they’re setting her nerves alight. She doesn’t have to focus on the movie – Scott chose Labyrinth, and she’s seen it so many times already that she can relax, able to pick up the plot of the movie at any time, and just let herself drift.
The Goblin King has just explained the real-life applications of fairness when Allison notices Isaac move. He tilts his head up and presses a kiss against Scott’s neck. Scott doesn’t look shocked, just meets her eyes with a question in his. He’s always been easy to read; he’s asking if she’s okay with this.
Allison knows two things: she loves Scott more than she probably should, and that she wants Isaac with an intensity that surprises her.
She nods. When Isaac raises his head, his eyes are full of dread again, like he thinks that he’s messed everything up. Before he gets a chance to apologize, Scott kisses him on the mouth.
It’s a soft kiss, one that makes Allison regret the months she’s spent away, because she remembers how those kisses made her feel. Isaac’s eyes flutter shut, and his hand tightens on her knee, as though he’s trying to anchor himself in the present.
When the kiss breaks, Isaac leans heavily against Scott. “Why’d you do that?”
He glances nervously at Allison, and Allison realizes that she probably should be jealous, but she isn’t, at least, not in the ways she should be.
“Because I wanted to,” Scott says. It’s simple, but it says all that needs to be said, and Allison reaches over and squeezes his hand.
“Do you mind?” Allison asks, and Isaac shakes his head.
She realizes as she leans over them, supporting her weight on a hand she fits in a gap between their bodies, that Isaac thinks she’s going to kiss Scott. She stops inches from him, waits until he understands what she’s really asking.
His eyes widen and dart down to look at her lips, and Scott laughs as she takes it as an invitation, and kisses Isaac herself.
Isaac kisses like he’s afraid she’s going to disappear at any second. It’s different even from the kiss he just shared with Scott, and she knows that makes sense: their connection has been gradually building for months, and has a thousand undercurrents about pack and safety and things that she’ll never quite understand.
Her connection with Isaac, she finds, is more about heat. There’s a strange tension between them—werewolf and hunter, visceral in a way that never happened with Scott, because she never tried to kill Scott, not in the bloody way she had with Isaac. She thinks he hasn’t quite forgiven her for it, but she doesn’t mind.
Not when it lends this sort of heat to their kiss, which is deepening and a little desperate. She tangles her fingers into Isaac’s curls, and she dimly hears Scott say, “Jesus.”
Scott slides his hand onto her back, and leans in and pulls her hair to the side, kisses her neck. It’s too much, being between the two of them, and when she breaks the kiss, Isaac makes a small, needy sound. He takes her arm, the one with the scratch marks on it, and tenderly kisses the unmarked skin between them.
It’s enough to nearly make her lose her balance. Allison slides one of her knees in between Isaac’s legs to give her a little more leverage. She could probably just put all her weight on him, or on Scott, and they wouldn’t even notice. She doesn’t; there are already too many points of contact between their bodies, entangled as they are, and it’s already overwhelming her senses.
Then Scott kisses her.
It’s her turn to make a needy sound; Scott knows her inside and out. They’ve spent hours exploring each other’s mouths, but this time it’s different. It’s their first kiss since… everything, and it feels like coming home.
She can feel Isaac’s eyes on them, can feel Isaac’s heat against her skin, and it sends shivers racing across her skin to settle deep in her belly. There are hands on her sides and she doesn’t know who they belong to, and it doesn’t matter.
Scott grazes his teeth lightly against her lip as they break apart, the way he knows she likes. She doesn’t move, doesn’t pull away from either of them, even though she isn’t sure where this is going next. Where this should go next.
“You didn’t have to kiss me better,” Isaac says into the silence that’s fallen between them. It turns out it’s his hand on her hip, long fingers tucked under her shirt against her bare skin. She’s got her own hand tangled with Scott’s, and his other arm is draped over Isaac’s shoulders.
“Again, we want to,” Allison says, because honestly, it’s just not fair, looking at him all flushed and beautiful, watching them like they’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“This is awesome for us, too, don’t worry,” Scott offers. She wonders if she and Scott are becoming us again, but really, if she’s truthful with herself, they probably never stopped. There’s a certain freedom in knowing someone as well as she knows him, and it means they’re both on the same page, realizing that Isaac means a lot to them.
It’s too early to put a name to this, to assume anything, but Allison likes the thought of Isaac being part of us.
The movie is still playing behind them, but their collective attention has shifted in towards themselves, to these three bodies lazily intertwined, exchanging kisses and soft touches.
No one seems in any rush to push things beyond this. It would be too much, too fast, Allison knows, no matter how strong the desire is to straddle either of them, to press herself against them until they pushed back, until they tightened their grip on her wrists and gave her all of themselves.
Scott’s bed wouldn’t be big enough for all three of them except for the way that they’re tangled together, and when Allison starts to drift off, she makes sure that she’s touching them both – an ankle hooked around Isaac’s, a hand resting on Scott’s back.
She doesn’t need the anchor, but she’s glad for it, anyway.