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Stiles is avoiding Allison’s eyes.
She can tell, because he’d had a habit of staring so earnestly into your face that it got uncomfortable, but she’d gotten used to it. Now she’s lucky if Stiles even glances at her.
Scott shrugs and says that it’s probably nothing, that maybe Stiles hasn’t taken his Adderall, that Stiles has been more jittery lately. Allison knows it’s more.
She knows in the way that Lydia keeps glancing at him, out of the corner of her eye, over Jackson’s shoulder. She knows it’s more in the way that Boyd and Erica seem to lurk around the school more often, eyes on Stiles, and the way that the guidance counsellor puts her hand on Stiles’s back in a way that she doesn’t with her other students.
Stiles looks tired, and not tired like Allison is tired, or Scott is tired, or even Derek is tired. Stiles looks like he’s sinking and he can’t find it in him to kick his way back to the surface.
But it’s the eyes that have her most worried.
* * *
The next time Allison and Stiles are alone she holds his chin, her fingers pressing uncomfortably into the shadow of bruises still left on Stiles’s face, but she can’t help it anymore – can’t keep her fingers gentle after all the vicious hours of training.
Stiles looks so afraid that it makes Allison’s breath catch, and there are so many questions she wants to ask, so many secrets she wants to unravel.
Instead she asks, “Who did that to you?”
And Stiles looks past her, over her shoulder, and closes his eyes. “Just some Lacrosse jocks,” he murmurs, a wry twist to his lips.
Allison doesn’t need werewolf senses to know that he’s lying.
* * *
The only time Allison feels gentle is when she has her head on Scott’s chest, his hands massaging her scalp. Warm and contented, their legs twisted up together, their naked bodies pressed against each other – it stills the wild, angry thing within her and allows her to breathe. They shouldn’t be doing this, she knows that, and they still avoid even naming what this is, because everything’s unsure. Of course they’re officially separated, but sometimes shooting arrows and throwing knives doesn’t settle Allison and it’s only Scott that can, so he will smooth his hands down her back and she’ll bite his neck with a laugh and things are okay, for a little while.
The sweat is cooling between them and it would be gross if Allison hadn’t seen a lot worse, and she can’t manage to so much as move her head as Scott brushes the hair from her face and traces his fingers around the curve of her ear.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs.
Allison wonders if that is the question she should have asked Stiles when she had the chance, and she closes her eyes, listens to the steady beat of Scott’s heart.
“How long have you known Stiles?”
Scott’s hand stills, then resumes stroking her hair. “Should I be worried that you’re thinking about Stiles right after we have sex?”
Allison laughs, looks up at him. “Maybe.”
Scott grins. “We grew up together,” he says, ignoring her jibe. “So I guess my whole life.”
Allison nods. Stiles Stilinski. Scott refused to tell her Stiles’s real name, even when she’d begged and pleaded. Sometimes Allison wonders whether Stiles did it on purpose – changing his name, becoming the goofball that people so easily overlook. Even Allison could admit that for a long time Stiles was just sort of there, Scott’s sidekick, the messenger between her and Scott.
“I’m worried about him.”
Scott shifts then, uncomfortable, strained. “I know.”
“Are you?”
There’s a long pause, and with it Allison can feel the weight of everything Scott has to be worried about – Derek, Boyd, Erica and Isaac, the new Alpha pack, Peter, and Allison herself. And maybe asking Scott to be worried about Stiles as well is just too much, too much for any of them to bear. But she does it anyway, because Stiles needs Scott and Scott needs Stiles and none of them would be alive if it wasn’t for Stiles, not really. So Allison waits for his answer, and hopes that he gives the right one.
“Yeah,” he says finally, “yeah I am.”
* * *
The thing about Stiles is that he’s good at deflecting. Sometimes the things he says startle you so much that you completely forget what you were about to say in the first place. Other times he doesn’t let you get a word in edgewise. So people definitely start to notice when hardly a word comes out of his mouth.
“Bolinski!” Coach Finstock yells. “What about this play?”
Allison hides a smile at Stiles’s startled expression – it’s the first time he’s been asked for input on team strategy after undoubtedly being the hero of the last match.
Scott nudges his best friend and sends a wink over to where Allison is standing at the door of the locker room.
Scott’s shoulders slouch though when Stiles shrugs.
“S’okay.” Stiles says, looking at the ground. Even the coach looks perturbed, glancing around uneasily.
“Greenberg!” He shouts, “what about you?”
Allison bites her lip.
* * *
The school is dark and empty when she breaks into the counsellor’s office.
The lock on the filing cabinet is ridiculously easy to pick, and Allison smiles as she searches for Stiles’s file, full on laughing when she sees that his first name has been crossed out again and again until its unreadable and the file instead reads: STILINSKI, STILES.
She flips open the folder, rifling through the papers, skipping over the ones about ADD and behavioural issues and his overuse of sarcasm. She reaches the last file, where the counsellor has hastily scribbled notes.
Tension between him and both his father and Scott Mccall
Worries about both Allison Argent and Scott Mccall after the events of Matt and Mrs. Argent’s deaths
Insomnia
Hyper vigilance
Recurring Panic attacks
Possible suicidal thoughts
Biting her lip, Allison sees the counsellor’s final note on Stiles’s file:
Don’t let him drown.
* * *
She’s pushing her trolley through the supermarket when she hears Sheriff Stilinski’s voice, and she comes to such an abrupt halt that her father slams straight into the back of her. He grips her elbow and steps beside her, his hand immediately going to his gun belt.
Allison shakes her head, frowning, and he relaxes. She tilts her head slightly, trying to block out the distractions of the other shoppers and listen solely to the conversation going on in the aisle next to her.
“… Lacrosse training going?” She hears the Sheriff say.
“Good, everything’s good really. I mean, obviously, now that I’m the… what did you call me dad? The hero?”
“No need to milk it.”
“No no, I think I need to milk it a bit more, the udders still full you know? Bursting really, on all the unsung tales of my heroism.”
“Sure thing Stiles.” Sheriff Stilinski has an odd tone to his voice, distracted. “Stiles… about that game a while ago?”
“The one in which I was clearly the best on the field?”
“Well… I rang the principle of the other school. About, you know, the beating.”
There is silence between the two men, and Allison holds her breath. Her father is rigid beside her.
“I’m sure he was very sympathetic, but boys will be boys, you know?” She can hear the false calm in Stiles’s voice, and it makes something in her clench with worry.
“That’s the thing Stiles, all of their team, every single one, was accounted for during the time you were beaten up. They were all being loaded onto the bus, with three teachers witness.”
“Dad…” Their voices are fainter, and Allison pushes her trolley again to catch up with them.
“… I mean, I didn’t really see what they were wearing, it could have been anyone. Anyway, I’ve practically forgotten about it now.”
“You can tell me anything, you know. If anythings going on.”
“Nothing’s going on Dad,” Stiles says, then his voice turns light. “You know, besides the crazy new teacher at our school. Dad I swear to god you have to do a background check on her, I think she may be an escapee...”
Allison looks over at her father, who’s been silent through the whole exchange. His mouth is pressed in a firm line and he’s watching her, though his eyes flicker every so often in the direction of the next aisle.
“I just… he’s been weird with me lately, that’s all,” Allison says, trying to justify her actions.
Her dad nods his head once, and puts his arm around her. Allison wonders if Stiles gets the same comfort from his dad that she gets from hers, and then she wonders, if he does, why Stiles doesn’t just say who beat him, why Stiles doesn’t just fall into the protection of his father like he should.
But obviously he can’t, which makes the beating a werewolf thing. Allison’s ears buzz and she feels underwater for a moment – like she’s right alongside Stiles, sinking further and further, and all she needs to do is kick and break the surface.
It’s been two weeks since the beating, and Stiles still can’t look her in the eye.
* * *
She goes to Erica and Boyd first, because Derek tells her that he thought they would run scared. Allison has a suspicion about what’s keeping them here.
She finds them lurking around beside a tree at the back of the school, Erica talking in a low voice to Boyd, who is staring over Allison’s shoulder. Allison turns, squints her eyes to see into the distant classroom, and finds Stiles sitting at his desk. His head is pressed against the huge glass window, his shoulders slumped and he is clearly not paying any attention to the class.
Allison turns back to Erica and Boyd and sees both their eyes fixated on her now, their claws already extended, their fangs sharp. She draws in a breath and approaches them anyway.
Boyd growls as she gets closer. “What do you want?” He demands, stepping in front of Erica.
“Just to talk,” Allison reassures. “I just… I have some questions.”
Erica pushes forward, shouldering Boyd out of the way. “Like your grandfather had questions? Are you going to shoot us with your bow again? Over and over and over…”
Allison winces, remembers the feel of the bow in her hand, the powerful thwack of it next to her ear. Even now she remembers the satisfaction she got in hearing her arrow sink into Boyd again and again, thinking only of Derek, only of revenge. It made her feel strong, it still makes her feel strong, even though the act is now tinged with guilt and regret. Allison clenches her fist, her fingernails biting into her palm, and she stares steadily into Erica’s eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Erica and Boyd both look taken aback for a moment, then their glares return.
“I mean it,” Allison says. “I wasn’t in a good place, I wasn’t… I’d lost everything that made me human, and I suppose it’s no excuse but I really do regret what I did.”
“Just ask your questions and then leave,” Erica bites out, her eyes dark and heavy with eyeliner.
“Do you know who beat up Stiles?”
Their sharp intakes of breath tells Allison that she’s surprised them.
“I think tortured is a more accurate term for it,” Boyd says, his voice dark.
Allison closes her eyes, tries to keep steady. “Okay…” she breaths out. “Okay. Tortured then. Do you know who tortured Stiles?”
Erica laughs, harsh and grating.
“Yes.”
The question she wants to ask is burning on her tongue and she licks her lips, once, twice, breathes steadily, and asks a different question instead.
“Is that why you’re staying? To make sure he’s alright?”
“No one else seems to be,” Boyd says, staring over her shoulder again.
“Will you align yourself with Derek?”
Erica’s eyes are judgemental now, a sneer on her lips.
“Playing interrogator now are we? I see Derek and Peter have recruited you now that your grandfather’s dead.”
Allison clenches her hands into fists again. It hurt her to say it - to put aside her worries for the sake of the town. But the Alpha pack were nearly here and even her father agreed that working with Derek was the best option they had.
“Will you align yourself with Derek?” She repeats. “They need you. The Alpha pack is coming.”
“Not our problem,” Boyd says, and there’s something like disgust in his voice. He’s still watching Stiles.
“It will be when they try to kill all of us! You, Erica, everyone!”
“We’ll be long gone.”
“No you won’t!” Allison yells. “What are you even waiting for?”
This time Erica interrupts, fierce, her eyes shining and her teeth bared. “You know nothing, Allison. You look at Stiles and you feel sorry for him but you don’t understand. You don’t know how Stiles looked when he was having the living shit kicked out of him – his ribs being broken and his faced smashed and the smell of his tears and piss. You don’t know how he called out for his father when he could barely remember who he was, when he was being electrocuted and when a man spit on his face afterwards and dared to call him weak. Weak and human. You look at his face, Allison, and see only faint bruises and you can’t imagine what happened to him.”
Tears are gathered in Allison’s eyes, and she finally, finally asks the question she’s been wanting to ask all along. “Who was it?”
This time Boyd laughs, wrenches his eyes from Stiles and looks at her, almost sadly. “I think you know, Allison.”
The next morning, Boyd and Erica are gone.
* * *
The code is the key Allison, her father had said. Stick by the code and you’ll remain human. Stick by the code and you’ll be able to sleep at night and know that… that you did what you had to but that you remained merciful, that you remained in control. Use it to remind yourself that sometimes monsters are human and sometimes humans are monsters. Allison had nodded, had taken the bow off her father and shot arrows into targets and thrown knives into trees and learnt the exact measure of electrical current that would stun a werewolf, all with the knowledge that she could protect herself from the monsters that should have remained in fairytales. She had never imagined that the closest thing to a monster that would break its way into her house would be her grandfather.
* * *
“It was him, wasn’t it?” She says to her dad later, when the night is too quiet and empty without her mother’s presence, and she feels too close to crying because her mother’s death broke something in her that she feels like she can’t repair.
“Gerard… didn’t stick by the code.”
“You know Stiles,” Allison says, and then she is crying, angry and heartbroken – for Stiles, for his father, for her father and the mess that is her family and how could she do that to Stiles? How could she allow her grandfather to… she doesn’t finish that thought, because it hurts and because she knows where it leads. “He’s looked out for me,” she says instead. “He’s my friend.”
Her father pulls her closer, and she feels the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“I know. I know. By the time I realised what was happening, who was down there, Stiles was already being dropped off home, a neat message to Derek’s pack about what happens when Argents forsake the code.”
Allison sits up straighter, out of her fathers embrace. “He didn’t though,” she says. “He refused to let himself be the messenger anymore. He didn’t talk to anyone about it. He tried to be strong.”
Weak and human, Gerard Argent had spat at Stiles.
“Allison…” her father says gently. But she already knows what he’s going to say.
That maybe Stiles’s silence was the worst thing of all.
* * *
Scott cries, when she tells him. The tears drip down his nose and his eyes are red and he buries his face into her neck and just breathes, slow and steady.
Allison holds him as best as she can and doesn’t say ‘Stiles will be okay’ because she doesn’t know and she doesn’t have it in her to lie to herself anymore.
* * *
Stiles doesn’t look her in the eye as she sits down. Allison wonders if it’s because she has the same shaped nose, the same red cheeks as Gerard. She wonders if it’s because it hurts him to look at her – to see her and remember what she’s done and what her family did to him.
“Is this an intervention?” he babbles, “because I swear I’m not taking too much Adderall.”
Allison tries to smile, covering his hands with hers. “No, not an intervention.”
“Is it about Scott? Oh my god, has Derek eaten him? I knew he would!”
“No no Stiles, everyone’s okay.”
“All right.”
There is silence between them, and Stiles coughs uncomfortably.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the hand–holding, but what is going on?”
Allison tries to ignore her nerves, her fears, and takes a deep breath. “Can you look at me Stiles?”
And this time she catches his eyes, holds them and feels something settle inside her. She knows what she has to say, she knows that maybe he needs to hear it – that maybe he needs to know that he doesn’t have to suffer alone and doesn’t have to pretend that things don’t hurt anymore.
“I’m sorry about what Gerard did.”
Stiles visibly stills, tension settling in his shoulders. “Allison…”
“No listen to me. I’m to blame too – I can’t... I can’t take back what my family has done to you but I wish I could Stiles, so desperately. And I know that you find it hard to look at me and I know that I can’t possibly imagine what happened to you but I’m sorry Stiles, I’m so, so sorry. You’re more to me and you’re more to Scott than a messenger, you’re our friend and you’re hurting and… you’re not weak. My grandfather was the weak one, the monster. You’re stronger than most of us, I think.”
Stiles is shaking as he wrenches himself from his seat and propels so far away from Allison that he nearly falls. He fumbles to collect all his books but drops most of them anyway, snatches his bag from the floor and with a choked. “I… I have to go,” leaves Allison sitting at the table alone.
Allison takes a deep breath in the sudden stillness, presses the heel of her palms to her eyes to stop the tears, and then gathers the rest of Stiles’s books into her arms.
* * *
It’s not even lunch when Allison sees the cop car pull into the school, Sheriff Stilinski stepping out of the driver’s side. And then Stiles is running down the stairs, throwing himself into his father, who catches him and pulls him close. His father is saying something, and Allison can’t hear it but she knows Scott can by the way he trembles next to her. Mr Stilinski rubs his hands up and down Stiles’s back, and Stiles clings to his father and it makes something in Allison ache. Then the Sheriff bundles Stiles into the car, and Allison can see his chest heaving with barely restrained tears before he visibly stills himself. He gets into the car, and Allison and Scott watch as they disappear.
* * *
The next morning Scott tells her how he’d knocked on Stiles’s door. How he’d apologised and cried and Stiles had called him an idiot and hit him on the head before inviting him inside to watch the latest Twilight film. He tells her how he’d slept on Stiles’s bed like they used to when they were little – legs overlapping and arms tangled and then he tells her how Stiles confessed it to be the first nights sleep in a few weeks that hasn’t been interrupted by a panic attack, and Allison smiles, because it’s a small victory.
* * *
“I accept your apology,” Stiles says as he gathers up the Lacrosse equipment with Allison.
Her shoulders lose the tension that they’d been holding since the apology, and she smiles at him. He’s leaning on one of the sticks, casually, like he hadn’t just acknowledged how sorry she was about the fact that her grandfather had tortured him.
“Are you going to be okay?” She asks, worrying her lip, her palms sweaty.
He smiles, slips a little and loses his balance before he looks at her in the eyes, earnestly, and Allison can almost see him kicking to the surface, returning. “Yeah,” he says.
Later Allison will watch from afar as Stiles shouts at Scott for using his werewolf powers to defend the goal, and she’ll laugh as Scott tackles his friend and she’ll scream as they both tackle her together and she’ll know that even if things aren’t alright, that the three of them are in it together, leaning against each other, their own pack. And that’s all that matters.
END.