They've been planning for hours and they still have nothing. Stiles has been missing for two days. Naturally, none of them have slept in the past forty-eight hours, having spent every second searching for him, but they are running out of time. They all feel it.
Derek, Isaac, and the twins are still out patrolling the town for any sign of Stiles, along with every possible officer. Kira's at home trying to get every possible detail on the nogitsune from her mother. And as for Peter, well, nobody really knows or really wants to know what the hell he is doing. One problem at a time.
Scott, Allison, and Lydia have been pouring over potential plans for the past four hours, bouncing ideas of one another. Four hours and they still have nothing. No way of finding Stiles, no way of getting rid of the nogitsune, no way of saving him.
"He has to show back up eventually, Scott," Allison tells him, aiming for reassuring.
"Yeah, but before or after he kills more people?" Lydia adds, missing reassuring by a freaking mile.
Scott glares at her, the frustration palpably radiating off all three of them.
"If we wait for Stiles to show up, maybe we can just lead him somewhere and be waiting for him there," Allison says, trying to diffuse the situation.
"Lure him out," Lydia confirms, nodding her head.
"Exactly."
"Yeah, but how?" Scott asks. "I mean, we don't even know where the hell he is and we can't find him. How can we know he'll show up anywhere?"
"We should be trying to figure out where he is already going to show up then," Lydia says.
"You can't outsmart a fox," Scott reminds her.
"No, but it doesn't mean we have to sit back and let it kick our asses," Allison argues, pulling out floor plans of the sheriff station, school, and hospital. "We need to be prepared, Scott."
He nods and walks up behind where she's hunched over a table. The three of them run through a list of likely places the nogitsune might show up at, run through possible ways they could trap him, for another hour or so. Scott presses in close to Allison, reaching an unsubtle arm across her chest to point at another exit. He pulls his arm back after an unnecessarily long period of time, but he doesn't step away from her. Allison stretches, leaning back into Scott's chest.
Rolling her eyes, Lydia stands up and leaves to join the search party.
Scott and Allison can look over floor plans on their own.
They still aren't sure where the nogitsune is going to make an appearance, but they have managed to narrow it down to three probable options: the high school, the sheriff's department, and the Stilinski home.
They have a plan of attack for each option and now all they need to do is get weapons from the Argent home. Chris went to speak with the sheriff, filling him in on what's going on, leaving Derek behind to wait for Scott and Allison.
Derek doesn't have to wait long before the two of them show and Allison immediately begins pulling weapons, nonlethal of course, from various locations in her father's study. She tries to yank a tranquilizer gun down from where it's hanging on the wall, but can't quite reach. Scott crosses the room to help, their hands brushing against each other, and the two of them pause.
Derek rolls his eyes and walks out, mumbling, "fucking teenagers," under his breath.
Scott and Allison could handle the weapons on their own.
The whole group meets up at Derek's loft to decide who is going to wait at which location.
"So how are we gonna do this?" Isaac asks once everyone's arrived.
"Aiden and Ethan, you guys go with Lydia and wait at the school," Scott orders, his alpha dominance finally shining through. "Derek, Chris, and Isaac will be out continuing the search. The sheriff has his department covered and my mom is at the hospital on the off chance that Stiles chooses to go there. Kira and Allison you're with me. We'll wait at Stiles's house."
"What about Peter?" Isaac asks, eyeing the former alpha suspiciously.
"Yes, what about me?" Peter repeats condescendingly.
"Go help look for Stiles," Scott answers with a shrug, hoping Chris and Derek will be enough to keep Peter in line, just for tonight.
"Let's go," Lydia says impatiently, tugging on Aiden's sleeve.
Everyone heads out, Allison, Scott, and Peter opting to wait for the elevator rather than taking the less-than-safe flights of stairs. Allison trips stepping into the elevator in a graceless move that surely would have had her sprawled face first on the dirty ground had Scott not lunged forward to catch her. She lets out a breathy laugh and a small "thank you" as he helps her right herself. He doesn't move his hands from her hips as the elevator starts descending and she is having a difficult time focusing on anything other than his incredibly soft looking lips –
"You're hormones will have to wait, children," Peter says, rolling his eyes and exiting the elevator to catch up with his assigned group.
Scott and Allison really should be left to watch over Stile's home on their own.
The nogitsune picked the high school.
Lydia called Scott the second Aiden caught sight of Stiles in the hallway.
"Lydia, stay away from him!" Scott tells her over the phone. "I'll call the other, wait for us to show up before any of you approach him."
Scott calls Derek while himself, Kira, and Allison crowd into Stiles's jeep.
"Stiles is at the high school," Scott blurts out the second Derek answers his call. "Yeah. Yeah, we're on our way," Scott says as he turns the key and – nothing. The jeep won't start. "Shit. No. No, Derek, don't go to the school. Stile's jeep isn't working, you need to come get us first….No, Derek! We need every person there fighting, you have to get us!...Good."
Derek obeys Scott's command, most likely because he knows the nogitsune is a formidable opponent rather than him recognizing Scott as an alpha, as his alpha. But he listens, so Scott doesn't really care one way or the other.
They all cram into Derek's Toyota, but there are seven of them and only six seats, so Allison sits on Scott's lap. Chris spends the drive to the high school steadfastly keeping his eyes on the road, not wanting to his little girl in some boy's lap. Kira is next to them, trying not to let her irritation show. She understands that Allison was with Scott first, that something is obviously still between them, but do they really need to flaunt it?
Kira bursts out of the car before it's even in park, rolling her eyes, and rushing towards the school.
It's a tough battle, between the nogitsune, armed with a sword, and the werewolves. Allison forgot the tranquilizer gun in the jeep and the other weapons didn't seem to have any effect on him. They head back to the loft to recover after the nogitsune escapes and everyone's basically fine by the time they reach that side of town.
Everyone except for Scott, that is.
He isn't wounded severely, but he isn't healing as fast as he should be. Peter says it's the trauma of being stabbed by his best friend, that healing is as much a mental task as it is a physical one. Little does he know that it isn't a first, that Scott knows exactly what it's like to be stabbed by Stiles. And he knows, he knows this isn't Stiles, but it's his body, his hands, and Scott is having difficulty separating the fox from the boy.
Scott is sitting on Derek's worn out couch, slumped against the back of it, while Allison tends his wounds. Watching Allison rub her hands over Scott's abs after applying a bandage is sickening and Isaac can't take it.
"Will you two jus fucking get on with it?" Isaac blurts out, voicing what everyone in the loft has been thinking for the past few days.
Scott and Allison turn to stare at him with confused eyes.
"The sexual tension is suffocating," he adds, less loudly but with just as much bite. He's jealous, it's been a long night, and he can't really help it.
Allison turns her face away, blush obvious even in the dim lighting, and moves to snatch her hands away from Scott's stomach. He stops her, though, grabs her wrists in his hands gently and stares into her eyes when she looks up at him from where she's kneeled on the ground in front of him. She flicks her eyes down, looking once again at his soft lips and leans in.
There's a chorus of "finally" and "thank god" and eye rolling, but they ignore all of it, focusing on kissing each other. And it feels like they never stopped.