Entry tags:

active: derek hale, inactive: allison argent

WHO: Derek Hale & Allison Argent
WHERE: The apartment
WHEN: Thursday night
WHAT: Allison's not herself, Derek notices, they don't talk about it.
WARNINGS: Nup
STATUS: Complete


On the whole, Goodland didn’t seem to be too unusual.

There was less danger, less life threatening incidents. That much was for sure, and it wasn’t a bad thing at all. Although it did highlight Derek’s slip back into his previous coping methods. Before he’d returned to Beacon Hills, even after that, he’d always been somewhat reclusive. It’d been easy to isolate when there wasn’t a need to save the town every other day.

He’d read three books in the space of two weeks. It was like being in New York with Laura all over again.

He did still venture from the quiet space of his room, occasionally stopping by the library, keeping up work at night, grocery shopping. But he was by no means a social creature.

Food was probably the most constant thing. And he did what he could to make sure that Allison and Isaac still had some degree of normalcy with that, even if he wasn’t the best cook in the world, it wasn’t difficult to follow recipes and make sure there was a meal every night.

It was chicken pasta that night, which meant a little extra prep work, but he’d finished reading and wasn’t working that night, so it was at least something to do during the calm.

~~~

Opting out of enrolling in high school and instead studying for her GED was probably one of the smartest moves Allison had made since she’d shown up in Goodland, because not only did it give her the chance to avoid the awkwardness of not having her friends around, but it also meant that she could stay in her room for hours on end, studying or not.

She’d left the light off and the window open for most of the day to try and improve her mood, but as she started to blink at the lack of direct light on her screen, she realized she was starting to feel a little hungry. Her appetite had been mostly non-existent for a while now, but she still ate when she could so that she could make sure she at least kept up the pretense of everything being fine and normal right now.

After closing her laptop, she stood and stretched, then headed out of the apartment to the kitchen. When she saw Derek starting dinner, she gave him a small smile. “Hey.” Things had been weird with him for a while, but now it seemed they were all settling into something of a normal routine, and Allison had discovered she actually liked him, which made living with him easier. Walking over to the counter, she snagged an apple and pulled out a knife from the block, then leaned against it as she started to cut slices.

“What’re you fixing?”

~~~

Given the disastrous state of things after Isaac had lived with him before, Derek had been decidedly apprehensive about having both Isaac (who he was technically responsible for) and Allison living with him. He had taken a while to come to terms with Allison, and while his hesitance was better known now rather than just a dislike for hunters, he had worked through seeing all Argent’s as Kate.

She helped Isaac settle, and she seemed to need the familiarity just as much as the young wolf, so Derek learned to cope with it, finding things to focus on that made it easier rather than difficult. He saw more of Chris in Allison now anyway, less of her aunt, mother or grandfather.

“Chicken pasta.” Things that it was hard to mess up, things with pre-made sauces, they made more sense than Derek screwing something up that might affect people -mostly Allison, since he and Isaac couldn’t exactly get food poisoning. “Cheese and ham sauce.” Along with some vegetables so that the teenagers at least had a balanced diet.

“How’s studying?”

~~~

“You can make pasta from chicken?” She said with a perfect deadpan look on her face, before breaking down a little and grinning as she dropped her eyes to the apple in her hands.

“That sounds like an...interesting combination.” And maybe a weird one, but when you lived with two werewolves you didn’t really question their food choices. She’d gotten used to the amount of food they consumed, but sometimes the flavors together were still a little strange.

“Pretty good, but I think I’m starting to really be over the whole Napoleonic Wars era,” she replied with a roll of her eyes before turning away to set the knife carefully in the sink and grab a paper towel to put her slices in so she could eat them.

~~~

Derek hadn’t exactly gotten to the stage where his eyebrows didn’t do half the talking for him, a side glance at Allison with the arch of his brow to indicate she was just as hilarious as she thought she was, while he paused in slicing the chicken breasts into strips. “Came in the jar.” And cheese and ham was more appealing than onion and beef. Especially on pasta.

Trying to think back, Derek couldn’t rightly remember if he’d gotten to the Napoleonic Wars before moving to New York, history had never been his subject though. Hell, most subjects hadn’t been his thing. School was utterly distracting really. “I never understood why so much of the history taught in school focused elsewhere.”

Who really needed to know about short French men fighting people after all? God, Derek couldn’t even remember if it was the British or the Germans that Napoleon fought. Greeks? Probably not. “Do you have a date for your tests?”

~~~

“Probably because America’s one of the youngest nations, so it doesn’t have a lot of history itself?” She smiled before popping an apple slice in her mouth, glancing over to watch him cut up the chicken. Idly, she wondered if doing that ever made him want to ‘wolf out’.

It was probably better not to ask.

At the question, Allison shook her head and looked away again. “No. I’m supposed to pick it from a list of them myself. Sometime in April, probably.” It was just so weird, because she’d never pictured her senior year going like this. “I haven’t really looked that part up yet.”

~~~

“And yet they miss so much of it out.” Or at least sanitised it. History really was boring to Derek, but half the stuff that he ended up wondering about were never covered in the curriculum. Probably why he flunked it.

“Still have time.” It was probably odd enough, knowing she died and all of this was her only shot at things. Probably a good enough reason to not attend the last few months of senior year again either. “Better doing things at your own pace?”

At the very least she could focus where she needed the most work. Or was the most interested.

~~~



“Are you thinking of teaching history?” She asked with a hint of teasing in her voice, since he seemed to have opinions about it. At his next words, Allison nodded her agreement. There wasn’t a huge rush, she just didn’t feel fully settled there - and the nightmares and hallucinations weren’t helping.

“Yeah. I mean, that’s always better. School would’ve just been weird without Lydia and Scott and Stiles.” It still made her feel odd to know they’d all gotten older. Plus, since she’d turned 19 right after coming here when she should still be 18, she felt even more out of place.

Absently lifting one of the slices to take a bite, her eyes fell to it and Allison’s hand jerked, because it suddenly looked utterly rotten. She knew this wasn’t real, but it killed her appetite anyway, and she balled it and the rest of the apple in the paper towel before moving to toss it all in the trash as she tried to steady herself again. “Um. How long until dinner’s ready?”

~~~

“I’d need to learn it first.” Watching tv shows and the occasional book wouldn’t really cover all the bases. And while Derek had the odd passing interest, it wasn’t exactly something he was overly invested in, definitely not enough to make a career. Throw in his aversion to strangers, people in general really, it wouldn’t be the best move to make.

Getting used to here definitely wasn’t something that just happened, Derek didn’t imagine getting used to knowing you were dead wasn’t something that’d be easy to get used to.

He’d just wrapped up with the chicken, sliced up and trimmed on the board when he heard the odd jump to Allison’s heartbeat, there and gone. He glanced over while washing his hands, as Allison dumped her apple after barely eating it. It was odd enough behaviour.

“Probably about twenty minutes.” Long enough to cook the chicken and pasta. “You okay?” He didn’t want to pry, but it didn’t really seem like something to brush off.

~~~

“Yeah - I just. I think I might lay down. Or skip dinner, I’m not really that hungry,” she said. Allison tried for a smile, but it was hard at the moment and she kept her face turned away, afraid that she’d show just how freaked out she was at the moment.

“Can you just save me some? I’ll eat it later. Or tomorrow.” Tucking her hair behind her ears, she took a quiet breath, then let it out slowly before looking over at him and actually forcing out a smile this time. “If you and Isaac can avoid eating it all, that is.” There was a look in his eyes that said he knew she was lying, but Allison chose to ignore that for the moment. She didn’t want to worry him or anyone else.

She was fine.

~~~

For a moment, Derek considered explaining the non-verbal cues that werewolves can pick up; like the heartbeat, the adrenaline spike, the scent of stress. But it was enough that he was still explaining to Isaac what it was he was smelling when he wasn’t paying attention rather than trying to inform Allison that privacy wasn’t really a thing when you lived with a werewolf, at least not a born one.

“Yeah, it’ll keep,” it’d be easy to keep a serving for later, let Allison work out whatever she wanted to work out and get it later. Derek had a tendency to make enough that there was an option for Isaac to go back for more if he wanted to. “I’ll leave some in the oven for you.”

Derek could try and poke at Isaac to see if he knew what was going on, give it a little time before he really had to poke at things. “Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

~~~

She gave a slightly relieved nod when he didn’t push about the apple or anything else, and absently rubbed her hands on her jeans as though there was dirt or something on them. “Thanks,” she replied, before turning to go.

When he spoke again, Allison looked over at him. “I ever figure that out, I will.” It wasn’t what she’d actually meant to say, because that answer implied that something was wrong, so she pressed her lips together and turned again towards the exit. “If you see Isaac before I do, let him know I’ll find him later if he’s still up.”

~~~

His childhood was so buried under trauma and memories he didn’t want to remember, pushing the better memories down just because it was complicated remembering the better times. But something that Derek was starting to hold onto was the way his parents never pushed. They were there, and around, and made sure all of their kids knew that they were around.

But they let them work out what was wrong and waited for them to ask for help or advice or assistance. And Derek had tried the heavy hand before, trying that with his betas and it didn’t work. Allison and Isaac were more independent now and didn’t have the same background as normal ‘kids’.

Letting them work out when they wanted to talk about things rather than pushing them to open up. “I’ll let him know,” most likely, it’d be that Derek was telling Isaac to give Allison a little bit of space before she wanted to venture out to see him.

~~~