Chapter Text
It all happened one rainy day six years ago. It hadn't been the first time Sheriff Stilinski encountered something strange and had called the gang (who had all scattered around the country and gone to their respective colleges) to help him deal with it. Needless to say, the simple case had turned out to be much more and Stiles and Lydia had had to put their heads together to once again figure out what exactly is causing this. After that, they had holed themselves in Scott's room to drink on their success (well, success. Derek had grumbled something about his apartment being completely destroyed, but no one had really paid any attention to it).
Stiles grabbed the bottle Malia had passed him and took a swing.
“God, this is disgusting,” he grimaced and shuddered.
Lydia rolled her eyes and took the bottle. “Then why are you still drinking it when all you do is pull that face and complain?”
“I'm giving in to peer pressure,” he said with straight face, nodding his head.
Isaac snorted at that.
“Oh shut up. What are you even doing here? You wanna talk about complaining? Here you have mister my-jeans-are-completely-ripped,” he said, gesturing to Isaac, who had changed into one of Scott's sweatpants. “Did you even help at all? All you did was to get yourself knocked out by that werebear thingy. Now how did that help, tell me?”
“Says the one who didn't even join the...”
“Whoa, and I thought we were over this phase,” Scott joined the conversation stopping Isaac from finishing his sentence and trying to calm them down.
“We're never ever ever going to be over this phase,” Stiles gave Scott look as if he grew second head. “Honestly, do you not know me at all?”
Everyone just rolled their eyes and smiled a little. Malia put her hands around Stiles' neck.
“He's just hiding his affection for Isaac behind all that sarcasm,” she said with straight face. At that, everyone started laughing.
“I knew it,” was the only thing Isaac said after what the laughter died out, but it was enough to get them laughing again.
No one said anything for a while after that. Stiles just sighed.
“God, I mean, this is a pain in the ass, but I love doing this, you know? It gives me this... sense of purpose. Like there's some mystery in this world and I can solve it and I can basically forget about everything else for a while.” He rested his head on the bed he was leaning against.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Lydia after a while. “It's great that we can just put our heads together and just focus on that particular problem. To just try and come up with a solution.” Stiles just nodded at her words.
No one said anything for a long while.
“Wow, why don't you guys just open a detective agency or something so you can stop being party poopers?” said Isaac finally.
“Hey, but that's so not a bad idea,” Kira sat up, her eyes glowing with excitement, wildly gesturing with her hands. “Like, at all. I can totally imagine you two just solving one supernatural case after another and being, like, great at it.”
“Wow, a great idea. You think people are just going to see a werewolf outside their window and think 'Oh, look at that, I better call the Martinski agency'?” said Stiles immediately, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Martinski?” Isaac frowned.
Lydia raised her eyebrows at that. “So, I see you haven't thought about that... at all.”
Scott giggled.
“Okay, maybe it has crossed my mind,” he admitted after a while. “But still. How would we even start? We'd need capital, some space for offices, also have you forgotten we're in college? Oh and how do you even plan on actually doing this. Honestly?”
“Well, you could scan the newspapers for strange things and I don't know, wedge yourselves in the middle of investigations or something. I mean, you do have a practice with that,” Isaac said, taking a sip of the vodka that made its way to him.
“Yeah, and I can start sending you people with supernatural problems,” said Scott, apparently also pretty excited by the idea.
“And we could help you set it up,” supplied Kira. “And you could do it like cases so if you'd be too overwhelmed, you could tell the clients no,” she added after a while.
“Seriously guys, that would be so amazing!” exclaimed Malia.
“God, I don't know...” started Stiles.
“Honestly, I'm not even sure if I actually want it or whether you're just projecting your excitement onto me.” Lydia help up her hands.
“Although it might be good,” admitted Stiles. He would definitely lie if he said he had never thought about this before. How he and Lydia could absolutely be good at this. With their brains and also Lydia's added Banshee powers. But those were silly dreams – or at least he thought they were – and nothing more.
But when he looked at Lydia in Scott's old bedroom, with all their friends around and her looking back at him with a little smile, he knew that this was something he really wanted – and he knew that she did, too.
Stiles remembered that moment as if it happened yesterday, and couldn't help but recall it when were standing in the hallway of their newly rented offices. Third time's the charm, right?
“So... where do you want to start?” he asked, looking at Lydia who seemed to be just as lost as him.
They had moved all the boxes a while ago, Stiles had managed to put mountain ash all around the building (good thing about magical dirt – the wind had no effect on it and neither did people who would accidentally step on it, thank god), they had already put the fans in place – the temperature definitely wasn't getting any lower - but now they just stared at their new, 4 rooms big office, and felt slightly lost.
“Well, we should probably figure out what goes where, right?” said Lydia after a while, putting her hand on her waist. “Like, my room, your room, common room, storage? That's what we wanted, right?” she looked at him.
“Yeah, yeah, sure... Just...”
“Which is which, right?”
“Yeah”
They looked at each other, again.
“Well, how about we look around, then meet here in, let's say, ten minutes, say which rooms we want and then we'll just figure out the two left?” Lydia came up with a solution. Stiles just nodded in approval and they both went exploring.
Stiles liked it here. It wasn't expensive, it was in the middle of the town, so they wouldn't have to worry about having to cross the entire city to get to a case, the offices looked pretty good, and were just big enough. He already knew that the big one in the middle would be their main room – or something like that. He wasn't sure whether they'll even use it that much since they'll probably just barge into each other's offices and start the brainstorming. But Lydia wanted this shared room for their clients and he had to admit that she had a point. And that big table they bought exactly for this purpose will definitely give them a more professional look.
He wasn't sure whether he liked the glass doors separating every room. But upon Lydia's snarky “and what are you even going to do there that you'd need to hide” he gave in and decided that it wasn't so bad after all. And since the smallest room, right next to the bathroom door, didn't even have any windows, he was fairly sure he found their storage room.
Now he just had to decide which of the two rooms he liked better. It was kind of stupid though, because they were both opposite each other, separated by hallway leading to the main room and basically identical. But he still managed to choose and when he finally got to their 'meeting' place, he spoke up as soon as they – just as he thought – agreed on the two rooms left.
“I'm taking the blue one,” announced Stiles at the same time Lydia said “the blue one is mine.”
That left them both speechless for a while. A really short while.
“You don't even like blue!”said Stiles finally.
“They're both blue!”
“Why do you even want that one so much?”
“Why do you?”
“I don't know, I just like it!”
“They're identical, Stiles!”
“Exactly, so why can't you take the one on the right?”
“Why can't you?”
“Oh my god, are we gonna argue about this for ten hours?”
“I'm not giving that room up,” Lydia said at last. They stared at each other for a while.
“Let's toss a coin?” said Stiles at last. He'd lie if he said this was the first time they sorted an argument this way. But it was working and while there was a winning and a losing side, they were quite satisfied with their little system.
“Fine,” she said, tossing a strand of hair over her shoulder.
Stiles rummaged through his pockets until he found a coin and then, without any ceremonies, tossed it in the air. They both already had their assigned sides and neither of them wanted to change it.
“Ha, tails! Suck it!” he said, making his little victory dance.
Lydia just sneered at him and began moving her boxes to her new office.
***
She couldn't say she was mad, exactly. Maybe disappointed a little, yeah. But not angry. It was one office, after all, and while she definitely liked the view from the other one better, she wasn't going to cry because of it. And she was glad she could laugh when Stiles continued doing something he called a 'victory dance' (although she had a valid doubts about it even deserving the term 'dance') and falling when he had tripped over one of the boxes. At that, she had run to see if he was okay when he hadn't got up for a while, but thankfully, he just hadn't felt like getting up. She had told him he was an idiot and had gone back to unpacking her things.
She hadn't brought that much, so it was a matter of a few minutes – she was glad that she had all her books in her apartment, otherwise she'd probably quit after filling one shelf.
When she finally came out of the office, she saw Stiles hadn't even begun to unpack and was just sitting in his chair, doing nothing. Well, as much of a nothing as can a hyperactive person do. “What are you doing?” she asked, leaning against the door frame.
“Well, I figured we're gonna paint anyway, right? I mean, I like the blue, but it's so... bland blue... so I decided not to unpack until then,” he shrugged.
“Right. And until then, if a client comes, they're just supposed to ignore all that mess around and believe we're a serious business, right?”
“Everybody already knows we're a serious business.”
“Not everyone. And it's always nice to make a good first impression. Which you know. Stop acting as if this were your first rodeo.”
“As if anyone was coming in this weather,” he said, rolling eyes.“Even Scott called and said they're so not leaving the lake today. And do you have to use that analogy? Because let me tell you, that analogy sucks.”
“Oh, Scott called? What did he say?” she said, deciding to ignore Stiles' analogy trouble.
“The usual. How the road was awful. How Allie loves water. How Kira makes him do everything. Blah blah blah.”
“You're just cranky because he promised to help us get settled in here. Which is exactly why you haven't unpacked yet,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
Stiles stopped turning in his chair to look at her. “What? How has that even crossed your mind? That's stupid. Do you hear me? Completely stupid.”
“Scott's got a family now, Stiles. Get. Over. it. Not everyone's single and annoying like you,” she said, gesturing to him.
“Oh, right, because you and what's-his-name are so serious, right?” he said, nodding frantically.
“We're not talking about me right now,” she replied, backing from the doorway. Yeah. She so wasn't going to go over her love life with Stiles. If only because he had the nasty habit of finding out what exactly was bothering her and then getting her to confront the issue. Lydia didn't like that. At all.
“Suuure,” he called after her in a sing-song voice.
She just gave him a cold look and began to turn around when the door to their offices barged open and two very distressed looking kids came running through. Lydia managed to see the girl was bleeding before they both collapsed on the floor. Okay, maybe this wasn't going to be as such a slow day as they originally assumed.