"Allison...Allison?"
Allison jerks awake to someone shaking her shoulder. She blinks and raises her head, wincing at the crick in her neck from sleeping sitting up. She's still in her dad's hospital room and Melissa is standing over her worriedly.
"Allison, you really should go home now," Melissa says, taking her hand off her shoulder. "It's almost ten. Have you eaten anything?"
"No," Allison mutters, looking around Melissa to her dad, still lying unmoving in the hospital bed.
His face is horribly bruised and he's wearing an oxygen mask to help him breathe. He'd been conscious earlier and Allison managed to talk to him a bit, but he'd fallen back asleep after only a couple minutes.
"Can I just stay here?" she asks, sitting up straight in her chair. She knows her dad is out of the woods, but she doesn't want to leave in case he wakes up again.
"You can't stay here," Melissa says gently, rubbing her back soothingly. "Call Scott. You can stay with us tonight."
Allison is so exhausted she doesn't have the energy to fight and just nods, giving her dad one last look as Melissa leads her out of the room. She waits in the waiting room until Scott comes up to the nurses' station, exchanges a few words with his mother and then comes up to her and takes her hand.
"C'mon," Scott says gently, handing her a helmet.
He pulls her up, but Allison doesn't take the helmet. "I...my car's here," she says, rubbing her eyes as he wraps his arm around her waist and leads her to the exit. "I can drive."
"I don't think that's a good idea," Scott says insistently, pushing open the door to the parking lot. "Just come with me, okay?"
Allison nods and puts on Scott's motorbike helmet. She gets on his bike behind him and wraps her arms around his waist, letting her cheek fall against the back of his shoulder. She's so tired, physically and emotionally, and all she wants to do right now is fall into bed and sleep for days.
Allison barely remembers the ride to Scott's house. All she can think of is how close she came to losing her dad, again. It was over, for now, but would it ever really be over? She hadn't realized how radical her decision to change the code was, that she and her father would become the targets of every hunter in North America. Twelve hunters in total had come after them this time and they had barely gotten out alive, but what about next time? Would there be more?
Allison stumbles getting off the bike and Scott grabs her arm to steady her.
"C'mon," he says gently and helps Allison inside and up the stairs.
Allison groans when her head hits Scott's pillow and turns to bury her face in the sheets.
"Allison?" Scott says, talking off her shoes and coming back up to hover over her. "You want to borrow something to wear?"
"No, I'm okay," Allison says, the mere idea of changing into something else making her even more tired. "Scott? Can you...can you stay with me?"
"Of course," Scott says quickly, and gets into bed behind her, looping an arm over her side and stroking her hair out of her face.
Allison sighs and leans back into his chest.
"He was bleeding internally when you brought him in," she whispers, closing her eyes against the sudden urge to cry. "The doctor says it could have been really bad if it had gone on much longer."
"He's going to be fine," Scott soothes, reaching down to lace their fingers together. "I promise. Nothing bad's going to happen to him."
"You can't say things like that," Allison says with a small sob. "What if this was just the beginning? What if more come after us?"
"We'll deal with them then," Scott says and Allison doesn't know how he can remain so positive after everything that's happened.
"Don't worry about that right now, okay," Scott continues, leaning over her to kiss her cheek. "Just try and get some sleep."
Allison takes a shaky breath and nods. She grips his hand tightly and tries to calm down, shut down her mind from imagining scenario upon horrible scenario in which more hunters come after them. Scott strokes her hair soothingly and holds her hand, and slowly Allison begins to relax and drifts away into sleep.
When she wakes it's to Scott's alarm blaring annoyingly. Allison groans and reaches over Scott to turn it off, wincing when she can't find the right button right away.
"Shit," Scott groans, rolling onto his back. "We have to go to school, don't we?"
"Yeah, probably," Allison says blankly, staring at Scott's ceiling. She doesn't want to go. The idea of going to class and preparing for finals while her father lies injured in the hospital is not a pleasant one, but she's already missed so many days already and her father wouldn't want her to skip school to sit by his beside all day.
"C'mon," Scott says, sitting up and stroking the side of her face with his fingers, expression very kind. "We have to go. I need to check on Isaac too."
Isaac! Allison had completely forgotten to ask.
"I thought you went to check on him yesterday afternoon. How was he?" Allison asks, sitting up and attempting to straighten out her wrinkled gray skirt.
Scott grimaces and gets out of bed, grabbing his jeans off the floor and putting them on. "I dunno. He's not the easiest person to read, you know. He said he was fine, but..."
But he'd looked horrible when Allison'd seen Scott pull him out of the closet. He'd been as white as a sheet, eyes open and unseeing as he stared blankly ahead of him and didn't move no matter how much Scott had shaken his shoulders and said his name. His fingers were bloody with the effort to claw himself out of the closet.
"I think, I think I might've freaked him out last night, too," Scott says, jaw clenching and looking around his room for his shirt instead of meeting her eyes. "Well, night before last. I had no idea he was going to just jump out my window like that."
"I'm sure it wasn't your fault," Allison says, trying to get her hair in some order.
"Yeah, I just..." Scott sighs, looking guilty. "I guess I should have taken him home. I just thought it would only worry his roommates and I wanted to make sure he was okay."
Allison looks at him softly as he pulls on his black tanktop and grabs a white button up shirt hanging over his desk chair. It amazes her sometimes how Scott is able to be so kind even in the midst of such dire situations. Allison doesn't have that kind of focus, or as she's beginning to understand, the same innate kindness. Maybe she once did, but that's all over now.
Besides, Isaac is extremely suspicious and wary of people around him. It's not hard to believe that he'd wouldn't take to being put in such a vulnerable position well.
It's weird going back to school like nothing had even happened. It always is, of course, but this time it feels surreal, like walking into an alternate universe. Stranger still is seeing Lydia come to school with a black eye, having made no attempt to cover it up with make-up. She garners more than a few wide-eyed looks from the other students and teachers, and to Allison's annoyance more than a couple people glare at Scott like they think he's responsible.
Isaac comes to school, but he doesn't spare a glance in their direction during class and he is always the first out of the room. By lunchtime it is obvious that he is avoiding them, and so Allison leaves the rest of her friends at their lunch table discussing how to get Malia's father off a murder charge without it being obvious that the Sheriff is completely corrupt and goes off to look for him.
She finds him the corner of the library, sitting against the wall with his French textbook out in front of him, brow-furrowed as he mouths the words in front of him. Allison sits down next to him and he stiffens, giving her a suspicious look before turning back to his book.
"You okay?" she asks quietly, after he makes no attempt to start a conversation.
"I'm fine," he says tightly, like he's sick of saying it. "How's your dad?"
"Don't change the subject," Allison tells him, looking at his face carefully for signs of trauma.
Isaac scowls and it's only when he shifts away from her that she realizes how close she'd been sitting to him. Their hips had practically been touching and she thinks she sees him blush as he ducks his head down to circle a vocabulary word in his book.
Allison looks at his hunched back and feels a sudden overwhelming urge to run her hand down his spine, to soothe him and press a soft kiss to his neck, and tell him that everything is going to be alright.
She shakes herself a little, trying to get a hold of herself as she realizes exactly where that fantasy was bound to end up. You have a boyfriend, she tells herself, looking away from Isaac to the bookshelf a couple feet in front of them. Get a hold of yourself. She'd clearly embarrassed Isaac too, who prefers to pretend he doesn't have feelings for her. She needs to respect that.
"You can come sit with us, you know," Allison says, looking straight ahead of her at the bookshelf. "You don't have to avoid us."
Isaac doesn't say anything.
"Isaac..."
"Don't," he says warningly, shoulders stiffening. "I just don't want to deal with them right now."
Allison bites back her question if she counts as one of "them."
"Okay," she says simply. "You need any help with that?"
Isaac shakes his head. "Nah, it's just memorizing."
She gets the impression that he just wants to be left alone and reluctantly gets to her feet. She can give him space, if that's what he needs. Isaac's never been comfortable discussing his feelings, even with Chantille.
"Alright," she says, looking down at him as she straightens her skirt. "See you in class."
And before she thinks better of it, Allison pats him on the head and turns on her heel, feeling his eyes burning into her back.
What the hell was that? Allison thinks in utter mortification as she exits the library, feeling her cheeks flush with color. She'd patted him on the head. That was so weird. Her right hand twitches as she recalls the sensory memory of his curls. They'd been coarser than she thought they'd be and Allison remembers that he didn't have conditioner in his shower. Scott's hair is fine and soft, and for some reason she'd expected Isaac's would feel similar. Now that she's got a taste she wants to touch it again, just to make sure. She wants to bury both of her hands in his hair, get a feel of it in her fists. She wonders what it'd feel like trailing down her breasts or brushing against her inner thighs.
Allison stops in the middle of the hallway, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, trying not to imagine going back to the library, dropping to her knees between his legs, burying both her hands in his curls, and pulling him toward her for a kiss. It would be nice, the simplicity of it, to just kiss him deeply, maybe pin him against the wall and press her chest against is, feeling his arms around her, his hands on her back, long legs tangled in hers. She can imagine the way he'd look up at her, blue eyes half-lidded, obscured by long blond eyelashes. It's nice to think about, even though she knows it can never happen. Too nice.
Stop thinking about it, she tells herself and for the first time since she acknowledged her feelings for Isaac she feels ashamed. What would Scott think if he knew what kind of thoughts she's having about his new friend?
It seems dishonest not to tell him, but Allison doesn't want to think of how Scott would react, his disappointment, even though they both knew Allison would never cheat on him.
"Did you find him?" Scott asks quietly when she sits back down next to him at their lunch table while Stiles babbles on about police procedure and Malia watches on with a little too much interest and Lydia eyes the group of senior boys at the next table over speculatively.
"Yeah, he'll be okay," Allison says, and leans in to kiss Scott on the cheek. "What'd I miss?"
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter, but I thought we needed a bit of an interlude after the last couple chapters. Also, for some reason, my chapters are shorter in the second half of this fic than the first. Not really sure why, it just...happened? I swear I didn't do it on purpose! Please review!