𝟎𝟗 𝑨𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏

✯☾✯

"𝑯𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒚 𝒃𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒅𝒂𝒚!"

Lizzie squealed as the door to the Argent household swung open to reveal a reticent Allison. In the smaller brunette's arms she held multiple bags. The girls had decided a sleepover was the best way to celebrate Allison turning 17. Lizzie had decided not to question Allison's age seeing as it wasn't really her business and she probably just got held back a year in her other schools. So, Lizzie had brought with her two bags which she could carry by hand. They contained Allison's gifts. She also brought her backpack full of her overnight gear.

Lizzie was extremely doubtful about whether she should actually come to Allison's that evening in case Isaac needed her or he was in trouble, lately she'd being going out of her mind with worry especially since she hadn't visited Davis at all that day and Isaac hadn't been in school on Friday.

"Come on in, L." Allison grinned a toothy smile and stepped aside so Lizzie could enter the house. Frankly, it was fucking huge. It was so much bigger than any other of Lizzie's friend's homes or even her own home. It was gorgeous too; the interior design had been thought out with perfect articulate detail. Lizzie automatically slipped her shoes off upon entering.

"Oh, you don't have to do that." Allison told her friend, but she only brushed her off.

"Are you kidding? Your floors are far to shiny for my muddy converse."

Allison laughed and led Lizzie into their kitchen which was also pretty large. The first thing she noticed was three people sat or stood around the marble kitchen island. Allison cleared her throat and the people turned round to face the two.

"Uh, Lizzie, this is my mom,Victoria and you've met my dad, Chris."

Chris, the hunter that wanted her friend dead, gave her a pleasant nod and Victoria shot a wave.

"And then that's my Aunt Kate."

Allison pointed at a younger looking woman who was leaning on a counter.

"You've got a lot of bags, Lizzie." Kate aimed a finger at the many bags hanging on different parts of Lizzie's body.

Lizzie held them up a little so Kate could get a better look and smiled. "I take sleepovers extremely seriously. Besides most of the stuff are either gifts for Allison or snacks. Not that we're going to eat all of them because then we'd be sick. I promise I won't make your daughter vomit. That would be awful."

Lizzie took a second to catch her breathe before continuing. "I was once sick on my birthday. I think it was because my nana's jam tarts were still raw but that doesn't matter. I also have Scott's gift for Ali seeing as-"

"Lizzie, why don't you get set up upstairs?" Allison briskly cut the girl off at the mention of her now secret boyfriend's name. Lizzie looked confused but obeyed her friend's ask at look of pleading in her eyes. The Argent's were left stunned after Lizzie's ramble. They felt as though they'd been hit by a hurricane.

Once Lizzie was out of the room, Allison faced her family awkwardly. "So that's Lizzie."

"She seems..." Victoria started but she couldn't seem to find the right words.

"She's very different to Lydia." Chris decided to finish off for his wife. Allison cringed slightly at her parent's words of description but looked to Kate.

"She's sweet." Kate reassured. Allison left with a nod and went to find where Lizzie had got to as she remembered she hadn't actually told the girl which one was her room.

✯☾✯

From the vicinity of Allison Argent's bedroom, loud thumps of music and dancing could be heard. It was 10 pm and the night had taken the surroundings of Beacon Hills once again, leaving only the moon and the stars to watch over the dark city.

The music from the teen girl's bedroom may have perhaps been recognised as the Taylor Swift song, Enchanted which Lizzie had been playing on repeat for the past half hour. The reason being, her new friend Allison hadn't listened to many Taylor Swift songs in her lifetime and therefore hadn't experienced the true beauty of her lyrics. Lizzie believed Taylor was a lyrical genius who had so much to say and knew exactly the best ways to word it so that they'd make every listener feel something powerful.

The music died down and the two girls crumpled on top of Allison's queen-sized bed, weary from the screaming and shouting. Allison was more tired than her smaller friend who probably could have kept going for the rest of the night but then again, Taylor Swift fuelled all. Allison twisted her neck to the side to see Lizzie lying next to her with her dainty hands to her face.

"You're right, she is a brilliance." Allison giggled slightly and Lizzie pulled her head up and down in a forceful nod of agreement. As Lizzie faced Allison, she noticed how truly gorgeous she was. She had beautiful hair that seemed to fall in the most perfect ways. Her pale skin was clear and spotless, she was wearing no make-up and yet she looked so scenic. Especially in the shimmering moonlight emerging through the window.

It was girls like these, so wonderful without trying, who Lizzie had envied greatly in freshmen year. She'd hate herself for not looking like them and torture her mind and body because it wasn't what she wanted to look like. It seemed unfair to her how girl's her age looked so different to her. Freshmen year was one of the worst years of Lizzie's life, she had to go through a lot of judicious counselling and therapy to help untangle the mess in her head. Sure, she was better now but she'd still always have that gleam of self-loathing hidden in the back of her conscience just waiting to be pushed through again.

"A brilliance, a goddess, royalty. Taylor is many things, but you will come to learn that, my baby swiftie." Lizzie patted Allison lovingly on the head causing a few more erupting giggles before the two sat up. Lizzie reached over to pull one of her bags from the pile of discarded wrapping paper which were tossed under the bed carelessly after Allison had opened her gifts.

Lizzie couldn't afford to buy her a lot of things, but she managed to acquire some lip-gloss, a bouquet of flowers and some fluffy pink socks (her father's idea). The rest of the gifts were home-made: she'd fashioned a pair of friendship bracelets, blue for Allison and pink for Lizzie and she'd also made Allison a small wooden jewellery box in her shop class.

Lizzie unclasped her bag and pulled out a couple of Tupperware boxes and sweet packets. The girl had spent all day baking with her dad and her brother for the sleepover and Davis. The boys were seeing him that evening and were going to bring him their goods.

She popped open the lid of one of the boxes to reveal many cookies and tilted it to offer Allison one. She happily took one and broke a little off it to nibble at.

"I think I love Scott." Allison quietly murmured just out of the blue. Lizzie stopped mid-chew and widened her gaze at her.

"Whaff? Oh my goff!" Lizzie asked, her words slightly hushed as her mouth was still full. Allison glanced down and fumbled with her fingers, an easy blush surfaced on her cheeks.

"Oh god, don't make me repeat it." She chuckled with a smile. Lizzie squealed and swallowed her cookie completely. She jumped from her cross-legged position on the bed and tackled Allison into a hug causing them both to fall crashing down onto each other. Lizzie's head dropping into her friend's neck as the two stayed in their embrace.

"Do you think he loves me too?" Allison nervously asked and Lizzie scoffed the second she heard the question worded.

"Ali, I know he loves you too. Have you seen the way he looks at you?"

Once again, Allison's cheeks turned painfully red, and she giggled pleasingly. The two untangled themselves from each other and lay on their stomachs facing each other.

"You wanna watch a movie?" Allison offered sweetly; a small strand of her brunette locks fell gracefully in front of her pristine face. Lizzie gasped in delight.

"Oh yes please!" She clapped her hands. "Have you got Mama-Mia?"

"Duh! Turn of the lights."

Lizzie rolled herself to the bedside light Allison had on her nightstand and moved her hand to the switch. But before she even managed to touch it, the light turned itself off and the large bedroom sunk into blackness. Lizzie retracted her hand in shock and stared for a few seconds.

Did she do that?

Following this, she shifted her hand forward barely a little and the warm hue of yellow light illuminated the room again. She pulled her hand away again and the lamp switched off as it had done before.

"Well, wasn't that weird?" She mumbled to herself. Her hand was held close in front of her eyes as she inspected it. Her thoughts were filled with hopeful and confusing possibilities.

"Sorry what did you say?" Allison asked after hearing Lizzie saying something incomprehensible.

"Oh me? Nothing...nothing..." Lizzie trailed off her sentence and made a mental note to tell Stiles and Scott about the strange occurrence later.

✯☾✯

The two eldest Brown siblings exited their dad's car with fake smiles because as much as they tried to stay positive for their slowly deteriorating father, no amount of pretending could change the way they were feeling about their little brother.

While Davis seemed to be feeling better, all three if the Brown's knew it was only a matter of time before things got worse. They'd learnt that the hard way four years ago. Everything had to fall before they began the climb.

Lizzie glanced over to her brother as they scaled the stone steps. His expression was unreadable and icy as it usually was nowadays. "Are you okay, Bobs?"

Bobby blinked lifelessly at the sound of his sister's voice almost like he'd never heard it before. Slowly, he twisted his head to look at Lizzie and nodded gently although his answer wasn't very convincing. However, Lizzie didn't want to upset him more than he clearly already was, so she left him with a group of his rowdy lacrosse friends.

As she entered the halls of the school, a taller presence appeared next to her, sighing as they fell into step.

"I'm ghosting Scott so, I'm going to need you to be the messenger."

"Hey, Stiles! How's your dad?" Lizzie greeted as cheerfully as she could. Sheriff Stilinski had been injured on the night of the parent/teacher conference although Lizzie still wasn't entirely clear on what happened. Stiles threw her a smile and adjusted the straps of his backpack.

"Better than he was the other night. Okay, now let's talk about you." He paused to lower his voice into a whisper yell. "Do you have the force or is it like a moving light sort of situation?"

"I don't know, oh god, doesn't that sound amazing though. I'm could either be like freaking Luke Skywalker or Dazzler from the Marvel comics." Lizzie exclaimed exuberantly.

"Let's not forget you possibly have healing powers and your hands- wait did your hands glow purple when you switched off the light?"

Lizzie shook her head and the two entered their first class of the day which Stiles and Lizzie had been seated next to each other for and to the hyperactive boy's dismay, Scott was seated behind him. As they strode in, Stiles lost focus in whatever Lizzie was rambling about and pierced his gaze into his strawberry blonde crush.

Noticing this, Lizzie stopped her blather and let out a light laugh. Before they sat down, she poked Stiles in the stomach and laughed further. "Ask her out."

Stiles scoffed as the two took their seats. "Ask her out? You are kidding right?"

Lizzie rolled her eyes playfully. "If you don't, I will."

"Excuse me?" Stiles' eyes widened at the thought of having to battle yet more competition for Lydia's heart.

"You heard me. If you don't ask her out I so will. She's so beautiful it actually hurts." Lizzie hissed and glanced over to the girl. She wasn't lying, Lydia was honestly one of the most gorgeous women to walk the planet.

"So, you're gay?" Stiles asked uncertainly, he'd always assumed his friend was straight especially after witnessing many occasions of intense pining and fawning over Isaac Lahey. However, she never failed to let him know how attractive she found Keira Knightley and Taylor Swift.

Lizzie sweetly smiled in attempts to quell Stiles' nervousness. "I'm bisexual, Stiles."

Stiles' honey brown irises shrunk as his pupils grew. "Wow-uhm okay, thanks for telling me, I guess. No- it's good to tell people. I mean- I'm glad you told me. That means you trust me. I think. Uh- oh I totally support by the way, you know the whole ally thing- uh I am totally okay with. Not that it should matter if I wasn't- you just be you and-"

Lizzie giggled and cut off Stiles' frantic witter by reaching over the gap between their desks and squeezing his arm. "Thank you."

Stiles' tense features softened, and he nodded. "Always."

Then, out of the corner of his eye he spotted his other best friend who he was supposed to be avoiding. He pulled his game face on and tried to make himself look mad and to be honest he really was mad. Scott had ditched them for Allison again. He had no idea how Lizzie could possibly be calm about the situation. The boy fumbled with his textbook, refusing to look at Scott as he took his seat behind him.

"Hey, Scooter." Lizzie beamed, earning a harsh glare from Stiles signalling for her to shut up. So, she did and averted her eyes to the back of a familiar curly-haired boy.

"Still not talking to me?" Scott sighed and Stiles said nothing.

"Can you at least tell me if your dad's okay?" The wolf tried but he still earned no response from Stiles. "I'm mean it's just a bruise, right? Some sort of tissue damage?"

Not a single word came out of Stiles' mouth and he only clucked his tongue in a scoff.

"Nothing big? You know I feel really bad about it, right?" Scott feebly attempted again. He glanced at Lizzie in hopes of reassurance, but she wasn't even paying attention, too busy gazing.

She'd completely zoned out of all sound around her as she usually did when she took to her staring. Although she thought it was a little creepy, looking at Isaac brought her a sense of serenity. Like the illumination within the shade. He was currently sat in the corner next to the door, fumbling around with his pencil. His face was mercifully clear of any grievances, but Lizzie made a mental note to check on him after class.

Her thoughts suddenly snapped back when she noticed Stiles finally turning round to talk to Scott so she redirected her senses to look at her friends. "Hey, you guys made up, that's great. Please never fight again, it's incredibly awkward."

✯☾✯

A large orange world history book was passed across the lunch table to one Scott McCall. He immediately opened it up ducked his face behind it to avoid being seen by his girlfriend who he was trying to avoid. Stiles sighed at his friends' actions.

"I think the book is making it more obvious. Besides," He looked behind him to the table Allison was sitting at. "She's reading anyway."

Cautiously, Scott peaked his over the top of the book and stole a glance at Allison who was in fact reading. "So did you come up with a plan yet?" He asked Stiles.

Before the sarcastic boy could answer, a tray slammed down beside him. Lizzie plonked herself down in her seat and grunted indignantly. "They weren't serving cookies. They always serve cookies! Stiles, did you get a cookie?"

Stiles shook his head so Lizzie turned to Scott, not bearing any head that he was hidden behind a book. "Scott?"

Scott slowly nodded and produced a cookie from his tray. Lizzie's face lit up and she smiled at her friend hopefully. He rolled his eyes and handed it to the girl who squealed in excitement. Then the conversation was turned back to the particular supernatural topic which their lives seemed to revolve around.

"I might have got a plan." Stiles said, taking a bite out of his apple. Scott's eyes glinted with confidence.

"Does that mean you don't hate me now?" He tried.

"No." Stiles said without missing a beat. "But your crap has infiltrated my life, so now I have to do something about it."

He paused whilst he chewed his apple and Lizzie took a loud sip of her orange juice.

"Plus, me and L are definitely better Yodas than Derek."

"Amen." Lizzie piped up from her seat beside Stiles.

"Okay, yeah, you guys teach me." Scott agreed, his face still hidden by the large book propped up on the table in front of him.

"Yeah, we'll be your Yoda. Right, Lizzie?" Stiles glanced at the girl and she nodded eagerly, desperate to be of some use.

"Yeah, you two be my Yoda."

Stiles contorted his voice into the best impression of the actual Yoda. "Your Yoda we will be."

Lizzie giggled. "Teach you well we shall." She matched her voice with Stiles' but only hers sounded higher and girlish.

Scott shook his head at his friend's childishness causing Stiles to explain what they just did as if Scott didn't get the joke. Then, the book-shield was ripped away from its position in front of Scott and Lizzie was dragged out of her chair by a frustrated Stiles. That just left Scott completely exposed to the eyes of his girlfriend.

✯☾✯

A heavy bag of God knows what was dumped into Lizzie's arms and both her and Stiles began to walk through the bleachers and out onto the very bland Lacrosse pitch. It had been irregularly sunny for the past week or so causing the grass to turn from a luscious green to a dried-out beige.

Once Stiles had settled on one of the benches and Scott had arrived next to him, he reached into the bag Lizzie was holding a pulled out a black strap type thing.

"Put this on." Stiles instructed, handing it to Scott who glanced blankly between Stiles and the item.

"Isn't this one of the heart rate monitors for the track team?" Scott recognised.

"Yeah, I borrowed it."

Stiles received disbelieving looks from his friends as Scott corrected him.

"Stole it."

"Temporarily misappropriated." Stiles fought back. "Coach uses it to monitor his heart rate with his phone while he jogs and you're gonna wear it for the rest of the day."

"Isn't that coach's phone?"

"That, I stole."

"Why?"

"All right, well, your heart rate goes up when you wolf, right? When you're playing lacrosse, when you're with Allison, whenever you get angry. Maybe learning to control it is tied to learning how to control your heart rate." Stiles explained, his hands and arms flailing around as he spoke.

Acknowledgement drifted across Scott's face. "Like The Incredible Hulk."

"Kind of like The Incredible Hulk, yeah."

Lizzie, who was drawing circles on the surface of the cold bench with her finger, glanced up to the boys. "Hey, can we talk about that movie please because compared to the comics, it really wasn't the best. It lacked gravitas in the key action moments and it's probably the most ballsy comic film ever made. However-"

"Lizzie, shut up. Scott put the strap on." Stiles scolded and both of his friends did as they were told.

For Stiles' plan to work, Scott had to have his hands duct-taped behind his back and he was positioned in the middle of the lacrosse field. Lizzie and Stiles stood a few meters away, lacrosse sticks in hand and although Lizzie still had no idea what she was meant to be doing, she had a feeling it wasn't going to go well for Scott.

"All right, you ready?" Stiles asked.

"No." Scott deadpanned as he still really had no idea how this was going to help him learn control.

"Remember, don't get angry." Stiles directed, ignoring Scott's previous comment.

Stiles leaned down and picked two lacrosse balls out of the bag he had placed by his feet and put one in Lizzie's net and one in his. He then lowered his head to whisper the plan to her. Lizzie cringed as soon as he told her. The erratic plan Stiles had come up with was to actually pelt balls at Scott to make him angry and then see if he could control it.

"I can't." Lizzie hissed. "I have literally no aim!"

Stiles wound his stick up behind him ready to throw. "Just chuck it as hard as you can in the general direction of Scott."

Before Lizzie could complain further about not even knowing how to use the stupid stick, Stiles shelled the ball out of his net and hit Scott right where the sun don't shine. Scott groaned and bent down in pain; he gritted his teeth using it as a way to conceal his bubbling frustration.

"Woah!" Lizzie stood in a moment of shook before realizing how fun it actually looked. "I'm so sorry for this, Scott."

She joined Stiles in showering a generous amount of hard lacrosse balls at the poor wolf. The first few of her shots missed at an embarrassingly broad length but she soon got the hang of it. In fact, one of her shots hit Scott with such force, the intensity of the blow caused him to topple backwards onto his ass.

"Nice shot, L." Stiles called, his voice strained as he threw another ball.

Ball after ball, the teen wolf's heartbeat managed to stay at a reasonable speed and his anger remained trapped. The only bursts of rage escaping were through curses at the world and Lizzie and Stiles.

That was until Stiles landed a particular shot to the chest and the beeps from the heart rate monitor grew more frequent. Scott lay on the floor, groaning in agony and Lizzie and Stiles glanced anxiously at each other. The girl pointed to the cell phone in Stiles' bag which rapid beeps were coming from. Stiles picked up and squinted his eyes between the device and Scott.

"Scott?" He nervously called out.

"Scotty, you okay?" Lizzie added.

Scott clenched his fists and grunted, his fury getting the better of him. He squeezed his eyes shut and slowly the beeping of the monitor decelerated. Once Lizzie had realized Scott was calming down, she rushed over to him. She crouched down to his level and placed a soothing hand on his back, rubbing up and down gently.

"I don't know what happened. It was like the angrier I got, the stronger I felt." Strained Scott through fast breathes. Stiles ran over to join Lizzie in the crouch.

"It's okay." Lizzie quietly said. "Maybe Derek is right. It is anger."

Scott winced at that. "I can't be around Allison." He told himself more than he told his friends. Lizzie's heart broke for the hurting boy that laid on the ground in front of her. He'd been unwillingly thrust into this whole new world at such a young age which forced unneeded pressure down on him. He had little joys in his life however one of the few things that did actually make him happy he couldn't be near anymore because of the new world he didn't even want to be a part of.

"She makes me weak." Scott informed the teens, voice filled with sadness and anger.

✯☾✯

In Economics class, Lizzie had waved Allison over to sit on the desk next to her to aid Scott's plan of avoiding her but was shut down as the brunette shook her head and pointed to Scott. So, when Lizzie's attempt didn't work, Stiles rushed to sit in the seat Allison was making a bee line for but he didn't get their quick enough. Stiles and Lizzie both threw Scott apologetic glances and the lesson begun.

Noticing the seat next to her had been filled, Lizzie leaned sideways to the occupant.

"Hi, how are you?" She whispered to Isaac who gave her a weary sideways smile.

"I'm okay." He replied. He kept his answer short, so he didn't have to involve Lizzie any more than he already had.

"Good. That's good." She nodded her head and returned her body to an upright position but keeping her gaze on Isaac.

Coach, who ironically taught economics, slammed his book onto the desk to get the class's attention. "Let's start with a quick summary of last night's reading. Greenburg put your hand down. Everyone knows you did the reading."

Coach's eyes scanned the room, looking for his victim to pick on and unfortunately his first was Lizzie.

"Brown!" He barked causing her to jump in a startle. "Did you do the reading?"

Lizzie tilted her head to the side and scrunched her nose. "What do you think, coach?"

"I think that I'm definitely hoping you did the reading, Brown." Coach said although he already knew that there was no way she'd done the reading.

Lizzie shook her head a little. "I'm sorry to disappoint you then."

Coach sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. "While I appreciate your honestly, that's still gonna have to be a detention with me after school."

Lizzie accepted the punishment with a shrug whilst Coach scoped out the next doomed student to be picked on.

"How about you, McCall?"

Scott looked up from his hands that he'd been keeping his eyes on to avoid the eye contact with coach. "What?"

"The reading." Coach rested himself on the edge of his desk.

"Last night's reading?"

"How about the reading of The Gettysburg Address?" Coach sassed and students around Scott began chuckle.

Scott, not getting it, exclaimed another. "What?"

"That's sarcasm. Are you familiar with the term sarcasm McCall?"

"Very." Scott looked back accusingly at Stiles.

"Did you do the reading or not?" Coach barked.

"Um... I think I forgot." The brown eyed boy stuttered.

"Nice work McCall, it's not like you're not averaging a D in this class." Coach leaned down closer to Scott. "Come on McCall. You know I can't keep you on the team in you have a D. How about you summarise the previous night's reading?"

Scott shook his head signalling he hadn't done that either.

"No? How about the night before that?" Coach glared and when Scott didn't reply, he raised his voice. "How about you summarize anything in you've ever read in your entire life?"

"I-"

"No? A blog? How about the back of a cereal box?"

Lizzie could see Scott becoming more agitated and Stiles growing more panicked, bearing in mind Scott still wore the heart rate monitor which Stiles could probably see.

"No? How about the adults-only warning from your favourite website you visit every night? Anything?"

When Scott still didn't seem to come up with anything, Coach totally lost it.

"Thank you, McCall, thank you." He banged on the surfaced of his desk. "Thank you for extinguishing any last flicker of hope i have for your generation. You just blew it for everybody. Thanks. Next practice you can start with suicide runs. Unless that's too much reading."

And just when Lizzie thought he was about to blow, Scott's features relaxed and he sank his body down. Lizzie leaned back to get a better view of what was going on saw the reason Scott had calmed. Underneath the desks, Allison had grabbed onto his hand. That's what had calmed him down. Her. Her touch. She didn't make him weak after all, she grounded him.

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮
edited ✓
Lizzie would have loved Midnights. It's so freaking good.