Work Text:
“I can’t believe you’re using magic to keep your hair under your wig.” Lydia’s adjusting her bow in the mirror, imperceptible shifts left and right. Allison knows she won’t stop until it’s perfectly centered. She looks adorable, but Allison values sex and her life in general too much to say that. “Marin is going to tease you for weeks.”
“Well, I wasn’t actually going to bob my hair. Are we sure Stiles has magic? I’m pretty sure my hair grew back even slower than usual last time. I’m never cutting it again.” The wig, at least, is comfortable and flawless. Sometimes trusting the internet is a risk worth taking. The jet black hair ends blunty just above her chin. “Besides, I know you didn’t do a Koolaid dye job on yourself why I was out.” She sticks out her tongue as she slips back into the bedroom to suss out which flats are hers. It’s a Goldilocks game with the three pairs identical beyond size – Lydia’s are tiny and Erica’s are just big enough to rub blisters on Allison’s ankles if she nabs them instead of hers.
Scott and Stiles’s Halloween party is something the entire coven has been excited about for weeks. Their house isn’t the biggest – that’d be the Hale house or Marin’s, by far – but it’s the homiest, and the most welcoming to guests. Everyone even a little involved with a witch is invited tonight, which means they need a ton of room, but more importantly a house that’s somewhat magic-resistant. Melissa had specifically made sure that Marin herself took care of the home that her boys moved into. It’s a perfect fit.
Just like their costumes this year. Marin’s daughter with Braeden, Avery, is deep into a cartoons phase, philosophizing over Steven Universe and Gravity Falls. Kira’s taken it upon herself to inject a little throwback content into the rotation. Two weeks later, planning her own costume, Avery looked up from her eggs and sagely advised that her aunts were clearly the grown-up Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup.
“I would look silly with pigtails,” Erica had teased, gathering her in her hands and wrinkling her nose. It had been nothing more than giggly fun, but once Lydia got an idea into her head… It helped that she needed the least effort to dress as Blossom – glamour magic like hair color was something she’d practiced early and often after Marin took them in. Jackson hated it, demanding everything be changed back after Lydia had proven she could do it. Scott’s smiles from those weeks, though, are some of Allison’s favorite memories of the last ten years. He’d beamed for days at a time, sporting his cotton candy hair. After all that, Lydia’s costume boiled down to borrowing a bow from Avery and tinting her hair a few shades.
With her flats on, Allison checks her white tights and makes sure her dress isn’t riding high in the back. They’d summarily decided on the spot, that first day, that they weren’t turning the costumes into some sexy version. No kids are invited tonight, but no doubt the pictures will get around, and the last thing any of them needs is hard evidence of tasteless twists on childrens’ shows. She checks her teeth and hair one last time in the mirror when she goes to collect Lydia, leaning in close to her reflection and jumping a little when it winks to her. Some things about magic she may never get used to.
“Why’d you even bother?” she asks her girlfriend, tugging at strands of her pin-straight hair. “It’s basically orange to start with.” Her hands wander down, only copping the slightest of feels before she smooths out Lydia’s black belt, making sure it’s snug around her soft waist. They’re all going to look so good.
Lydia raises her eyebrows in warning instead of answering, but she finally stops fussing with the big red bow and summons her shoes across the floor, leaving a black scuff mark that someone will have to clean up later. She slips her feet inside and lets them buckle themselves, shoving her arms up under her dress to smooth away any rumples beneath. “We should take Erica’s shoes down to her.”
Three women in a bathroom usually equals a lot of misguided elbows and smeared mascara. Erica uses enough hairspray to kill a small child on most days, though, so she volunteered to get dressed downstairs more mornings than not. They don’t, however, find her in the downstairs bathroom.
“Erica,” Lydia says, fingers fanning out at her sides, reminding Allison of every Animal Planet documentary she’s ever watched with Malia. Spreading for intimidation might not work so well in a Powerpuff Girl outfit. “Where’s your costume?”
Whatever she’s typing seems to take priority over them, but Erica glances up from her laptop after the decisive final click of acrylic nail on keyboard. “I’m wearing my costume.” Her perfect Vanna White gesture shows off her low-cut top, fitted pants, and heels. “I’m a witch.”
It takes half an hour to talk her into ‘this stupid couple costume’, Lydia chiding her all the while that they aren’t a couple, so the same rules don’t apply. Allison straightens her hair, slightly burning her fingers with the stray magic, and pulls it into pigtails while Lydia does her makeup, making her eyes look almost comically wide. The effect is, as predicted, somewhere between adorable and uncanny. Allison loves it.
By the time they’re ringing the doorbell – a chorus of wavering ghostly moans rather than the usual ding-dong – they’re far more than fashionably late, but among friends, it won’t matter. Isaac answers the door, eir curly hair framing eir face, shirt and skirt printed with playing cards. “That is the laziest costume,” Erica says. She gets Allison’s elbow and a giggle for her troubles, but Isaac doesn’t seem troubled.
“You’re gonna be real disappointed about Boyd and Cora’s, then,” ey says, smirking. Allison peeks past him to see Boyd and Cora dressed more or less like the ace flag, capped off by their matching purple running shoes and athletic socks. “We’ve been busy and this was fast. And I needed to do something with this pattern anyway.” Ey twirls around, skirt floating up around eir thighs. “Now, come in. You’re late.”
Malia rushes them as soon as they’re inside, the fringe of her dress tickling Allison’s legs through her tights. “I hate this costume,” she whispers into her ear, and Allison relays it to Erica and Lydia, knowing that’s what she wants. Erica loves it, of course, the sparkling silver reflecting the light from Stiles’s beloved crystal chandelier. Her offer to switch only gets a wrinkled nose and a shake of the head from Malia, though.
“That dress would be two inches above your ass,” Lydia says, not quite managing to sound like she disapproves. They immediately fall into a fight about whether Malia and Erica are the same height, and Allison is going to need a lot of spiked punch for this night, most likely. She threads her way through friends of Marin’s - some gabbing as if they were just as young as the rest of the crowd, some silent in a way that crackles, not so different from Malia’s near-constant quiet. The magic that not speaking generates is a specific sort of power, tightly controlled like the discipline it takes to be nurtured. It doesn’t scare Allison, but she can’t imagine putting in the work that it takes, nor wielding that power. She’ll stick with her communication with the mirror worlds and mixing potions with Lydia.
Hayden and Liam are manning the punch bowl, wobbly and giggling already, their noses touching as they whisper to each other. The bottles of homemade flavored vodka are displayed around the bowl, one of them nearly empty down to the orange rinds and herb sachet nestled in the bottom.
“Does Stiles know you’re drinking up all of his hard work? Where’s your chaperone?”
“Getting laid,” Liam announces to the room at large, making Jackson in his suit look up from his phone, rolling his eyes. “Said he’d be back before the witching hour’s over. Something about…something something whole coven, something convergence, spirits and shit.” Hayden cracks up, clinging to his shoulders. At least he’s finally managed to get a little taller than her, taking her weight without tipping them both into the punch table. The back of his cute little vintage cheerleader sweater is soaked with the punch open on the table, though, and Hayden’s football pads have been dragged lopsided. “And this vodka is for us. Late wedding present.”
Stiles has a history of making strong boozy brews for the coven and friends; she’d once made him reshake all his bottle by telling him he’d missed one but she’d forgotten which. That was ages ago, long before Hayden and Liam or even Mason. The orange peel is probably the strongest flavor, but if the vodka’s a wedding present, there’s probably rosewater, thyme, rosemary – something else to boost that marital bliss goal he was aiming at. Allison would be afraid all of the magic was keeping the two of them together unwillingly if they hadn’t been just as sickeningly sweet before Derek had started gathering bridewort and ivy for wedding decorations.
She can hear Stiles’s voice coming from the kitchen, climbing high with incredulity, and she takes a glass of the punch with her when she goes to investigate, hoping it’s nothing more than a revelers’ brew. She almost trips when she sees Kira, one hundred percent without a doubt on fire and still tucked beneath Derek’s arm.
“She spent months teaching herself to do this and you can’t be Hellboy for her?” Stiles is shrieking, gesturing at Derek’s robes and badge – he’s a prefect for some Hogwarts house or another. Allison was never as into Harry Potter as Erica and Stiles have always been. “She is literally on fire, Derek.”
“He didn’t want me painting him,” Kira explains, not sounding nearly as miffed. Her leather jacket and black pants don’t look like much of a costume, but clearly it’s something important.
“Yeah, because you would’ve ended up staying home for body paint sex,” Allison speaks up, giving Stiles a kiss on the cheek. She waves her hand through the phantom flames surrounding Kira and feels a prickle of cold rather than heat, making her shiver. “And you’d have missed the party.”
“And we’d have had to sacrifice a fox to hold your place,” Stiles grouses, seemingly more irritable than usual tonight. Scott opens his mouth at the oven, stirring what looks like thick, veggie-rich chili, and everyone puts up a hand. “We don’t sacrifice animals, I know. I know.” He doesn’t care half as much as his boyfriend about the wellbeing of small woodland creatures, but he abides by Scott’s rules anyway – at least on their property. Allison’s pretty sure Stiles and Erica get up to things on the preserve sometimes, deep in the magically charged woods on the Hale land.
The kitchen is a comfortable safe haven from the rest of the party, full of sober people talking about what’s been going on. They see each other often, obviously, with all of them finally setting their roots down in Beacon Hills, but things get busy. Stiles and Kira are both working more often than not, and though Scott keeps regular hours at the office, Allison still doesn’t see him as often as she’d like. Derek, she sees more often than Lydia wants to tolerate, but sometimes a girl needs to go on an herb run. It’s a lot more convenient to go out and pick with Derek in the garden or the preserve than to spend time and money searching shops or Etsy.
Kira’s busy telling the story of how she’d mistaken Braeden’s Danny Zuko costume for no costume at all before she’d seen Marin when a loud cheer goes up from the foyer. Mason and Brett must’ve finally made it back from wherever they’d been. There aren’t thirteen of them anymore, not since Kali and Jennifer ran off together and The Thing They Don’t Speak Of happened with Matt, but the whole coven is here, supplemented by their friends and family. Halloween is ready to begin.