Work Text:
Allison's car is idling in front of Lydia's house by the time she escapes out the front door. It's a crisp fall day that Lydia's workout clothes don't have much defense against, and she's glad that the car is only a short walk away.
"Hey," she says, opening the passenger side door and swinging in. "Am I late?"
"Perfectly on time," replies Allison, looking up from her phone and sounding board.
Lydia smirks.
"I know. I just wanted to hear you say it."
The fond way that Allison grins and rolls her eyes before shifting the car into drive makes Lydia feel some sense of strange satisfaction. This is what it's like to have a best friend— sometimes it all catches up to her, and she remembers to revel in it. The ease that she has with Allison is something that Lydia's simply never had before, preferring books and plasticity over sleepovers and text threads with too many emojis.
"I hope you don't mind, but we have to make a stop before we go to zumba."
Lydia's phone buzzes with a text from Aiden, and she looks down to sweep her eyes over it discerningly before she answers Allison's question.
"No, I'll get a coffee too," she replies absently.
"Actually," Allison says, flicking on her turn signal and taking a way too careful right. "A different kind of stop than that."
Lydia jerks her head upward, surveying their surroundings. They're heading deeper into the residential district, away from Allison's favorite coffee shop with the cute plants, and away from Lydia's favorite coffee shop, too, the one with the extremely fast service and laptop plugs at each and every table.
"Where are you going?" she asks suspiciously, dragging too too much, but Allison doesn't say anything. Instead, she hums low in her throat to the indie song on the radio before taking another left and turning onto a familiar street. "Allison?"
The minor panic in Lydia's voice isn't something that she's necessarily proud of, but Allison's car is barrelling right towards Stiles Stilinski's driveway, and seeing him is about thirty-five slots down on Lydia's list of things she wants to do this morning, right after learning how to do her laundry and going to get pedicures with Kali.
She and Stiles haven't really talked much since the day she held him down in that bathtub until the breath slipped away from his body. They haven't talked much since she pulled him back to life with the weight of his feelings for her. They haven't talked much since she had sat on the floor of the boy's locker room with pebbles and dusty dirt pressing into her knees and pushed her lips right up against his, determinedly avoiding how right it felt to be kissing him.
Lydia isn't sure which part of that is the most monumental.
But, in all honesty, she is certainly not ready to find out. Not now, when she's wearing a ponytail and a green and black workout outfit and absolutely no lipgloss.
"So," Allison says nonchalantly. "I invited St—"
"You invited Stiles?"
"He's been having terrible nightmares lately, and sometimes the endorphins released in exercise can help with different sleep processes."
"You invited Stiles."
To answer her question, the door to the house bangs open and out stumbles Stiles Stilinski, with his newly grown hair and permanently flushed cheeks. He turns around and yells something back into the house, presumably speaking to his father, then stomps down the stairs and barrels into Allison's car, bringing in a burst of energy and fresh air.
"Hi!" he says brightly, panting a little bit as he tries to close the door behind himself, momentarily forgetting that his foot is still on the ground because his eyes find Lydia's in the rearview mirror.
There's a horrible, terrible moment of I kissed you once and awkwardawkwardawkward as they stare at each other, and then Stiles smiles at her, lopsidedly, hesitantly, in the mirror.
"Hi," Lydia says in return, voice thick. When she hears it, she blinks, and immediately looks away from him, eyes flicking back down to her phone. "If you're going to infiltrate girl's morning, I expect you to keep quiet back there."
In her peripheral vision, she sees Allison's dimples appear on her cheeks before she asks Lydia if it's okay if they stop for coffee after zumba instead of before. Lydia's mouth falls open in indignance, but then Stiles' seatbelt clicks into place and Allison is zooming down the street towards the small dance studio that they attend their class in.
Lydia pouts down at her phone while Allison and Stiles enthusiastically discuss the new episode of a show they both watch; it's ridiculous, how they use trashy TV to bond. Lydia had gone to one of their The Bachelor marathons last summer and had ended up pulling out her phone halfway through so that she could read the e-book version of Applied Artificial Neural Networks.
She's silent for the entire way there, determinedly avoiding the rearview mirror. As compelling as it is to look at Stiles— to really look at him, and try to figure out exactly why she had so fervently enjoyed kissing him in that moment— she finds herself not wanting to know if he's looking back.
There had been a shocking lack of questions. Lydia had been prepared to fend him off yet again; to tell him that it hadn't meant anything, that she was just trying to stop his panic attack. She had been prepared to point out to him that Deaton had pulled Scott back to life and Scott most certainly isn't in love with Deaton. Lydia had been ready to defend her choices, defend her actions, defend her heart. Instead, Stiles had never asked the questions, and Lydia had ended up making the excuses to herself instead.
It doesn't mean anything. You kissed him because you were trying to stop his panic attack. You don't care about the way he looked at you when you pulled away. You don't care that he told you you're smart. This is Stiles Stilinski. You don't like him.
She's looking forward to getting into the familiar comfort of the dance studio, but then Stiles holds the door open for her and Allison and absently places his hand on her back as they walk through the doorway. Suddenly Lydia needs to crawl out of her skin and get away from him— get away from the fact that she doesn't mind him touching her like that, get away from the questions she wants to ask about why it comes so naturally to him.
Jackson never touched her needlessly like that. His touches always had purpose.
Maybe Stiles wouldn't be like that.
"Just so you know," Allison is saying, dropping her bag on the floor and beginning to stretch. "I have absolutely no rhythm."
"You've seen me dance, right?" Stiles responds, shooting her a look that clearly conveys the sentiment, 'Allison, please.'
For some odd, senseless reason, Lydia doesn't like that they have their own language. That's what she and Stiles have— it's why they're able to read each other just from looks, and why they've finished each other's sentences more times than Lydia can count on one hand anymore.
"Actually," she says, suddenly wanting her voice in the mix. And it's unsettling, that feeling possessive is what makes her speak. "Allison is a very graceful dancer."
With that, she turns around and bends to the floor, giving Stiles a spectacular view of her ass— and her flexibility— as she places her palms on the floor. She watches his reaction in the mirror, vindication coursing through her when she sees his Adam's apple bob dramatically once, twice, three times before he tears his gaze away from her.
Allison places her palms on the floor as well and gives Lydia a knowing look.
The one that Lydia sends her in return is simply smug. She's figured it out. She doesn't like Stiles. She's Lydia Martin. She likes attention. And Stiles has always given that one thing to her, no matter what happened. She'd just been fixated on him giving her attention because she hasn't seen Aiden in a few days. It has nothing to do with the fact that she had kissed him, it was more to do with whether or not he would still look at her like she hung the moon after she did it.
Now that Stiles has sheepishly stared at her ass, she's over it.
Totally, completely over it.
"Everybody up!" the instructor calls from the front of the room. They finish the stretches that they're on and pull into lines just as the opening notes of Call Me Maybe drift over the speakers, so loud that the music thumps through the room. The instructor begins swishing her hips side to side as she steps, which Lydia and Allison instantly follow. They come to class every Saturday morning, so they know all of the steps reasonably well at this point.
Stiles, however? Stiles… does not.
He's steps clunkily and clumsily, is always several seconds behind and intensely confused when their instructor switches steps, and when he's concentrating too hard on the movies, he starts mouthing the lyrics under his breath as if this would somehow help him figure out the steps better.
Allison calls him out for it after he knows every single word to both Drive By and I Knew You Were Trouble.
"My jeep doesn't have an aux cord and the CD player's broken," he says, shrugging as he shakes both of his hands down his torso while ponying from foot-to-foot. Lydia covers her hand with her mouth and tries not to giggle at the sight, adding a head tilt to her own routine, so that her ponytail swishes back and forth, brushing against her shoulders.
At some point during Rumor Has It, she completely loses track of time, just as she always does in the dance studio. Everybody else moves away, and it's just Lydia and the movements that she's learned countless times, so familiar in their structure and their rhythm. She's soaring along with the songs until suddenly the opening strains of Sexy and I Know it float from the radio, and Allison is asking Stiles if they can switch places.
"I can't see," she explains, moving so that he's standing right next to Lydia, smiling guiltily down at her.
Lydia lifts her chin and turns towards the instructor, getting ready for the first set of step-touches with her hands on her hips.
Next to Stiles, Allison gracefully flows through the steps, barely breaking a sweat, her expression filled with ease. Lydia has always been envious of how long Allison's arms and hands are; there's something so stubby about her that she has always loathed.
Hoping to gain some confidence, she turns her gaze over to the boy next to her, wearing baggy gray sweatpants and a very focused expression. Stiles looks absolutely ridiculous doing these moves— she watches him in the mirror, the way his mouth hangs open with a smile, the way his feet clomp heavily to the floor with absolutely no finesse. And it's funny, for a while. It's so funny that she has to keep herself from laughing.
It's funny right up to the body rolls.
When Stiles does body rolls, his torso ripples like raindrops. Nothing about him has ever seemed quite so limber before— his hips follows his torso follows his hips follows his torso. The look on his face is one of such intense concentration it almost makes Lydia's knees go weak, right until he decides he's figured out the move and suddenly there's a look of total ease on his face. His arms lounge lazily, confidently, at his sides as he rocks from side to side, letting his body move almost of its own accord.
And, distantly, Lydia hears her own voice from back in September. Sitting across from Allison, the first week of school, her eyes focused and locked and serious: I want one.
The rest of the song moves like autopilot through her body as she thinks about Stiles' hips. The way they move with such fluidity, such ease. She imagines them ramming into her; her fingers sliding down white sheets; the flush of his cheeks spreading across his bare chest as he pushes into her like rain pattering on a windowsill.
"Lydia!" Stiles says in surprise as she rams into him. He catches her as she stumbles, and it takes roughly five seconds before Lydia is jerking herself out of his arms like his touch burns her skin.
She can't like Stiles Stilinski. He's an idiot. He had a terrible buzzcut that was almost worse than his terrible crush on her, and he belongs to an online RPG community where he battles mythical creatures. He's the boy who walked around with tears clinging to his eyelashes for months when they were in fourth grade, silently letting them fall onto his desk while he stared at the dark wood with a stiff expression on his face.
"I need some air," she says abruptly, leaving the room with flames tickling her heels.
Which, actually, is quite an accurate analogy, seeing as Lydia Martin is in actual, literal hell right now.
She collapses onto a bench outside of the dance room and waits for the ground to swallow her up, but instead is greeted by the sound of the door banging open, What Makes You Beautiful getting louder as it does so.
"Lydia! Hey, Lydia!"
His voice is a little too loud, a little too eager, and it makes her pang for a moment. It's gotten deeper lately— it's almost never like this. It's growing up. He's growing up.
They're growing up, and when Stiles Stilinski settles onto the bench next to Lydia, staring at her with wide, earnest eyes, she has a sudden, horrified feeling that he is doing it too fast. Suddenly, she wants to see that brutally cropped buzz cut and the jerky, ridiculous, out of control body movements.
"You're not half-bad," she tells him, staring at the wall. There's pictures lined up from the dance classes over the years, rows and rows of little girls in pink tutus and big, fake smiles, all holding second position.
"Oh," Stiles says, startled by the opener. "You complimented me." Another pause. "Thanks."
Lydia crosses her arms over her chest, still staring at the wall.
"Don't get used to it."
Two hands go up in the air as he stares at her innocently.
"I would never."
A part of her thinks he's telling the truth. Another part of her hopes he's telling the truth.
"Lydia, are you okay?" Stiles asks tentatively. "Are you having blackouts again?"
"No," she says quickly, wanting to set him at ease. "No. I'm not, I promise."
"Okay," he replies slowly. "But you know—"
"To call you first when I find a dead body?" she finishes for him. "Each and every time, Stiles."
He laughs through his nose. Looks down at the hands that are fiddling on his lap before he abruptly pushes off of the bench. Lydia watches as he strolls over to the wall and begins looking through the pictures, eyes searching each and every one.
"There were some freaking awful haircuts in the 80s," he says, amused. "Whaddaya think? Could I pull off a mullet? Superman had one in the 90s. I could be Superman."
"If Paul McCartney couldn't pull of a mullet, neither can you," Lydia says flatly. "He's the second most attractive Beatle."
"Who was the first?" asks Stiles, still studying the pictures.
"George," Lydia tells him. "Obviously."
"Oh, it was that obvious, huh?" Stiles replies, amused.
"Of course. His cheekbones could've cut glass."
"And I'm sure they did," says Stiles, his voice mock-serious. Lydia's looking down at her hands, smiling at his remark, when she hears a small intake of breath and looks up to see Stiles staring intently at one picture, his mouth gleefully popped open.
"Oh no," Lydia says, just as he turns around to look at her.
"Oh yessss," Stiles replies. "Lydia Martin. You took dance classes."
He jerks his thumb behind himself, and Lydia grimaces as she steps forward to look at the picture of her twelve-year-old self standly proudly next to the other ballerinas, easily the shortest in the bunch.
"I'm going to tell you something, but only so you stop smiling." It's not going to make him stop smiling. She knows that. But she happens to like his smile. "I'm classically trained in ballet. I was good, but I had to stop because I'm too short and it was throwing off the lineup of the dance routines. Plus, I decided that my hair didn't go well with the pink leotards."
He blinks at her in surprise for a moment, then the smile grows bigger.
"Do you have to be perfect at everything?" he asks, beaming down at her.
(And, god, yes. She likes that smile. She likes their talks. She likes him.)
"Yes," she says shortly, making him bark out a laugh.
The door to the studio opens, and out steps Allison, looking perfectly put together as she hoists her bag over her shoulder.
"I was wondering where you guys disappeared off to."
"Just taking a trip to the past," says Stiles cheekily.
"Well, I'm ready for coffee," Allison says firmly. "Do you guys want to go to that place down the street?"
Lydia glances down at her outfit. She's a little sweaty. The curls that she'd done in her ponytail have come undone a little bit. She can only assume that some of her mascara is running, and that her cheeks are flushing in a ruddy, unattractive way.
And yet, Stiles is looking down at her with a hopeful gleam in his eyes that makes her heart skip a beat, just one, just enough for her to notice.
"Okay," she says. Allison raises her eyebrows at how breathy Lydia's voice is, but doesn't say anything. "Sure. Let's go get coffee."
Stiles puts his hand on her back as they leave the dance studio.