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4.
Stiles Stilinski has always been in love with her. She’s known that for a long time, in a hazy, peripheral, this-barely-registers-on-my-radar kind of way. It’s just a fact, like any other. The sky is blue, there are 365 days in a year, liquid nitrogen boils at -196 degrees Celsius, and Stiles Stilinski is in love with Lydia Martin.* Plain as day, no doubt about it.
This is what’s running through her mind while Stiles raves and rants, looming in front of her dressed in a slightly ill-fitting dress shirt, his face fiercely determined and his tie drawn too tight as he loudly proclaims her intellectual smarts to the world. On one hand, she wants to push him down and shove her hand over his mouth, forcing him to shut up. This is something she’s worked so hard to hide in the past and here he is, blabbing about it for all to hear.
Despite what American sitcoms would have people believing, it’s not easy being the most popular girl in school; grooming herself to immaculate perfection day after day, playing dumb and batting her lashes coyly as a distraction, using sass and sugar-coated condescension as a shield, her weapon against the world. Oh, Lydia’s a smart girl alright; she’s always known that to keep her place at the top of the high school eating chain, she needs to play it safe. And that means hiding her academic intelligence at all costs, because nothing says ‘loser’ quite like a girl who secretly devours college-level physics and calculus textbooks in her spare time.
And yet, as she watches Stiles radiating fervor and passion and righteous indignation on her behalf, she can’t help feeling this strange warmth blooming inside her, betraying the kind of softness she usually tries so hard to quell. She finds herself wondering how a person so purely and utterly genuine has survived at Beacon Hills High School so far – surely someone would have eaten him alive by now? Jackson being, of course, the obvious candidate.
How has Stiles Stilinski managed to slip through the cracks – and, more importantly, how has he seen through her façade? Lydia considers herself a top-notch actress. She considers herself a top-notch everything, truth be told. But where Jackson sees wavy auburn locks, pouty pink lips and perfectly rounded breasts, Stiles sees… what? She doesn’t know exactly, but it makes her feel strange and squirmy and almost nervous inside.
She can’t hide how astonished she is and how, well, good it feels to be noticed for something intrinsically her for a change, as opposed to the sought-after, bitchy Barbie-doll persona she portrays on a daily basis. Maybe this is why she finally cuts Stiles some slack and flashes him her famous heartbreaker smile, dragging him out onto the dance floor. Maybe it’s the way he so cutely (and idiotically) mistook the Nobel Prize for the Fields Medal. Maybe she was tired of Jackson weighing on her like a heavy stone in the pit of her stomach. Maybe she just wanted to be a normal teenage girl at a normal teenage dance, having fun with a normal teenage boy. Maybe it was all of these things, who knows.
It’s a little awkward at first – of course it’s awkward, because it’s Stiles. But when he fumbles and blushes slightly, seemingly nervous to really touch her, she sighs impatiently and rearranges his hands on her body herself, because god knows how long it would take him to figure it out on his own. And then after that, it just kind of works.
He draws slightly closer, she meets him halfway, and she feels her own surprise at the way he neatly aligns against her. He’s not well-muscled like Jackson is, nowhere near that, but his chest is decently defined and his shoulders are actually pretty respectable. He’s almost the perfect height for her, as well; his mouth is hovering somewhere near her right ear, and when she presses her cheek against the side of his jaw, she distinctly feels his imperceptible intake of breath.
She leans back very slightly and catches his eye. He meets her gaze, and there’s something intensely alight in those golden-brown eyes that she can’t quite define. His eyes drop down to her mouth for a split second before he drops his head against her shoulder, sighing softly so that her hair ruffles against her cheek. They continue swaying in a sea of couples, bursts of sparkling light from above briefly illuminating them every now and then.
She can still feel the sharp edge of Jackson’s cutting words from earlier in the night, and his absence hovers persistently in the back of her mind, demanding her attention. Yet despite all this, Lydia admits for the first time that if things were slightly different, she wouldn’t really mind turning her head ever so slightly and pressing a soft kiss to Stiles’s lips. It would be like a social scientific experiment, she decides. She has a hypothesis in mind and she wonders, with a detached kind of curiosity, how the conclusion would turn out.
Or at least, this is what Lydia tells herself.
3.
She’s shivering on a plastic hospital chair, still swathed in Sheriff Stilinski’s enormous green jacket, when Stiles drops onto the seat next to her. Lydia stiffens somewhat and lifts her chin in a rather pale imitation of her usual proud manner. Granted, it’s not her most dignified moment. But even if she did go rampaging through the woods for two straight days with no memory whatsoever of the incident, and even if half the Beacon Hills sheriff’s department and Stiles himself saw her emerging from the wilderness completely buck-naked, she’s still Lydia Martin. And Lydia Martin never shows her vulnerability. It’s a personal motto of hers.
She turns her head and finds Stiles watching her. To her slight relief, there’s no pity in his gaze. Giving her statement to the Sheriff had been equal parts humiliating and bewildering; Lydia must have repeated “I don’t know, I honestly can’t remember” a dozen times over, feeling like the proverbial broken record. Her mother had hastily hurried her away, asking her to wait on the hospital chairs while she spoke to Sheriff Stilinski in private, but it was too late; Lydia had already seen the looks on everyone’s faces. The assortment of nurses and officers present had conveyed a range of emotions, none of them particularly comforting – a mixture of alarm, unease, concern, and sympathy. Even though Lydia knows that for the most part, they’re well-meaning, these reactions only conspire to make her feel utterly stupid. An emotion that, unsurprisingly, does not sit very well with her.
“How are you feeling?” Stiles asks tentatively, and even though she feels like snapping something sarcastic in return (“How would you feel after two consecutive days of memory loss?”), she consents to simply shoot him a repressing glance.
Instead of this deterring him, however, Stiles only leans closer, suddenly invading her personal space. All at once, she feels irritated that it’s he, not Jackson, not someone who makes sense, who is here beside her.
“Listen, I know you probably don’t want to talk about it right now,” he says earnestly, interrupting her reverie, “but Lydia… it’s really important. Honestly, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t. What really happened to you in the woods?”
There’s a silence. When she doesn’t respond, he ventures, “We were really worried, you know. Scott, Allison, and I.”
Lydia opens her mouth, not exactly sure what’s going to come out. She thinks she’s going to tell him to get lost, but then she hears herself saying, “Look, I wasn’t lying to your dad, okay? I can’t remember, I’ve been wracking my mind for hours and I don’t know and I don’t know why I don’t know but I just don’t.”
She’s gritting her teeth by the end and her hands are suddenly shaking but she clenches them into fists, determined not to let Stiles see her like this. Lydia hates this, hates feeling out of control, and for once in her life she can’t apply her able mind to the task at hand and come up with a solution in 0.003 seconds. Her mind is the problem, this time. It scares her more than she can bear to think about.
She doesn’t know why Stiles is asking her about this, nor does she care. Perhaps it’s just his innate curiosity, but she gets the sense that it goes much deeper than that. Either way, she tenses and prepares herself for more probing questions, for further eager inquiries, or even for him to rise and slowly back away with his hands in the air. Lydia wouldn’t judge him for doing the latter – hell, she sounds crazy even to herself.
But again, not for the first time (or probably the last, she thinks with an inner eye roll), Stiles manages to surprise her. He says nothing, simply takes her right hand and slowly, gently unfurls her fist, his fingers smoothing over her palm and fingers. He holds her hand in both of his, and the contrast between their skin tones becomes suddenly noticeable. Hers, so small and pale; his, slightly more tanned and dotted with dark, star-like freckles.
She sits there, momentarily stunned, before her mouth catches up with her brain. “What are you doing, Stilinski?”
He looks faintly embarrassed but doesn’t drop her hand from where it’s cradled within his. She tries to ignore how large and warm his hands are. “I don’t know. It seemed like the right thing to do?” His voice ends on a high note, like he’s asking for her permission.
She feels herself relax very slightly, and sighs. “Yeah, well, making a move on a girl when she’s cold, confused, and possibly deranged? Not really the best way to go about it.”
He raises an eyebrow and then grins, a modest crooked little grin that she suddenly can’t look away from. “Oh, I don’t know. I have already seen you naked, after all.”
Lydia tries to fight it, she really does, but the small smile that emerges on her face is unstoppable. “You’re an idiot,” she announces decisively, finally wrenching her hand from his grasp. This only makes him laugh, but she ignores it, just as she ignores the suddenly overwhelming temptation to lean over and shut him up with a good kiss.
2.
She turns into the fifth aisle of the supermarket, and that’s when she sees him.
His back is turned towards her, but she would recognize one of those hideous plaid shirts anywhere. Besides, his father is standing right beside him, furrowing a quizzical brow as he contemplates two brands of soap. Lydia swears softly under her breath and makes to back away, but before she can pivot on her three-inch heel, Stiles swivels around to grab a handful of dish towels and then catches sight of her. His eyes widen, and for once she curses her flaming hair. Its vivid colour is practically a homing beacon, especially for boys who have apparently been in love with her since the third grade.
“Lydia! Hey, Lydia!” Stiles calls, dropping the dish towels and making his way down the aisle towards her. The Sheriff turns his puzzled face in her direction and she sees his expression change to one of amusement, much to her chagrin. She hauls a smile onto her face, although it feels more like a grimace, as Stiles comes to a stop in front of her, his eager grin fading into something a little more somber. “Hey, uh… how’s your summer been?”
Hmm, let’s see. My boyfriend has been attacking people all year as a freaky homicidal lizard and almost died before getting shipped away to London by his father, I’ve been recovering from months of emotional and mental abuse at the hands of a psycho alpha werewolf, and my best friend’s been in France this whole time so I have absolutely no-one to talk to about it. So pretty swell, thanks, how about you?
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but judging by Stiles’s suddenly nervous and contrite expression, it’s pretty clear that her thoughts are written all over her face.
“Fine,” she finally offers. There’s a pause, and then, “How are you?”
“Yeah, good,” he says immediately, and then adds, “Just been lying low after everything, you know? Hanging out with Scott and… stuff,” he finishes lamely. Scott and Allison’s current non-relationship, and everything they can’t really talk about, suddenly looms up unbidden, a ghost haunting the gaps between their words.
Playing for time, Lydia studies Stiles and takes account of all the physical changes over the last three months. He’s grown slightly taller, if that’s possible, and he’s let his hair grow out, so that dark locks stick up in styled tufts over his forehead. It suits him much better than the buzz cut, she thinks critically, and the answering surge of attraction coiling in her belly both alarms and amuses her.
She can’t quite put her finger on why she feels so out-of-sorts around Stiles now. It’s partly to do with Scott and Allison, she knows, and some irrational part of her wonders if Allison would mind her even talking to Stiles (although she knows that if she were to actually ask her best friend this, Allison would simply lift a derisive eyebrow and laugh at the notion).
But she suspects it has a lot more to do with the never-ending roulette of Jackson substitutes currently hopping in and out of her bed, day and night. As terrified and overwhelmed as she’d been at that moment when Jackson had tackled her into his arms, as hard as she’d clung to him and sobbed on his shoulder because she’d been so relieved, later on she’d recalled Stiles’s face, remembered the complete heartbreak on it and the tears coursing down his cheeks.
It’s guilt, she realizes, standing in front of him now, I feel guilty. Immediately on the heels of that thought, she feels both defiant and annoyed. Stiles is not her boyfriend, she owes him nothing – and yet, she can’t help feeling a little bad. Internally cursing herself (she never used to be this soft-hearted), Lydia hoists a bright smile onto her face and tilts her head back the way she came.
“Yeah, well… it was good to see you. I’d, um, better get going, my mom’s waiting for me. I was just here to grab some–” she looks wildly around for the nearest item “ –washing powder.”
Lydia starts towards the highest shelf on her left that displays a range of the aforementioned washing powders, but Stiles makes it there first. Damn his long limbs.
“It’s cool, I’ll grab it for you,” he says, reaching up for the one she’d been gravitating towards. She steps away slightly, and, against her better judgement, lowers her eyes to watch as the hem of his shirt rises. She’s a hot-blooded female who enjoys regular sex and has a fine appreciation for the male form; of course she’s going to look, Lydia thinks to herself, feeling defensive without really knowing why. Boys shouldn’t wear such short shirts, it’s like they want girls to just ogle them shamelessly in supermarket aisles. Really, it’d be rude if I didn’t.
She feels her mouth go dry as more and more of Stiles’s lower body is revealed. A leanly muscled stomach, a slight trail of dark hair leading south, and are those… abs? Since when does Stiles Stilinski have abs? Not a six-pack or anything, of course, but Lydia suspects Stiles has been working out at the gym a lot lately. That, or he’s somehow been hiding that amazing torso for years. She eyes the hipbone closest to her, wondering what would happen if she just leaned down and gave him a nice, wet–
“Here you go!”
She jolts back to reality as Stiles looks down and hands her that damned washing powder, a friendly smile on his face. Clearly, he hadn’t noticed her eyeing him up like a pound of meat, for which she should be eternally grateful.
Lydia says her farewells, offering a hasty wave to Sheriff Stilinski who has wandered further down the other side of the aisle, and hightails it out of there. Fantasizing about Stiles? God, she needs to get a grip.
Lydia pulls out her phone as she hits the parking lot, already firing off a txt to one of her many eager bedmates.
1.
If she had to compile a list of the worst days in her entire life, Lydia thinks this one would rank somewhere within the top five. It wouldn’t entirely take the cake, she reflects wearily, her head lolling on the cracked red bus seat, because that honour would probably go to one of the many times Peter Hale royally fucked her over. But there’s no doubt that it’s been the most stressful twelve hours she’s ever experienced.
She feels dizzy, her body is aching from exhaustion, and not for the first time, Lydia wonders how this is even her life. A year ago, her worst nightmares were about getting a B in her English Lit class and whether or not Jackson would dump her in front of the whole school. These days, her worst nightmares have taken a hellishly supernatural turn, and even worse, they’ve actually come to life.
She’s on the brink of falling asleep when she hears footsteps climbing up the bus steps. Raising her head very slightly, Lydia focuses on Stiles as he makes his way down towards her. He hesitates, then takes the seat right next to her, settling himself down quietly so as not to disturb her.
Slowly, Lydia turns her head to face him. She watches the play of light from the neon motel sign outline his profile, drawing deep black shadows across his face and emphasizing the inky quality of those long lashes, the bright white planes of his cheekbones. Chiaroscuro, Lydia thinks idly, the use of strong, bold contrasts between light and dark to affect a whole artistic composition.
“How is Scott doing?” she asks, when he makes no move to speak.
Stiles pauses for a moment, then responds, “He’s okay, I think. As okay as you can be, after going through something like that. Allison’s with him now.”
She nods, feeling so tired. There’s a long pause this time, and she almost falls asleep again. But then–
“I’m sorry,” Stiles says, and his voice is so soft that it takes her a few seconds to understand his words. “Lydia…” He rubs a hand over his face and it strikes her that he looks more exhausted than even she feels. “I’m sorry for what I said, I’m sorry that I thought it might have been you. I’m just… I’m really sorry.”
He finally turns to look at her with those all-encompassing eyes, and it’s not like she catches her breath or gasps. It’s nothing quite so dramatic. But something tightens and then loosens inside of her, unspooling warmth, and Lydia understands that somehow, she’s actually grown to care what this boy thinks of her. She’d tried to ignore the pang of hurt she’d felt when he accused her of having something to do with the craziness surrounding them; she’d masked her feelings with narrowed glares and disdainful frowns as she’d done so many times in the past, but she doesn’t think it was half as effective as usual.
“Stiles, it’s okay,” she allows, sighing softly in resignation. “Honestly? I probably would’ve thought I was involved too.”
Lydia doesn’t really like talking about that time in her life, especially the night she blithely poisoned all her friends at her own birthday party. Knowing she wasn’t responsible for her actions doesn’t erase the anger and humiliation she still feels, violated and brainwashed to play a pawn in Peter Hale’s twisted, hungry game of power and revenge. It’s a chapter of her life she simply doesn’t wish to dwell upon. But with Stiles, she finds she doesn’t mind it quite so much as with anyone else.
Stiles shakes his head, and she gazes at him sleepily as he leans closer. “Lydia… no. We’re a team now and we should trust each other. I’m sorry it took so long for us to bring you into this, but for the record… I’m really happy you know everything now.”
He’s so close. Lydia can make out every mole and freckle on his face, every last eyelash; she finds herself tracing the shape of his lips with her eyes. His breath mists on her face, suddenly coming out just that little bit faster, and when she raises her gaze to meet his, she finds him already looking at her with an intensity that both frightens and thrills her. It would be so easy, she thinks. She could just lift her chin very slightly and meet his lips, hovering right above her. Lydia wonders what it would be like to kiss Stiles Stilinski; whether he’d be good at it, whether he’d used his tongue, whether he’d bite her lip.
Her body feels like a live wire. She’s paralysed and all she can do is watch him watching her, both of them suspended in the moment, both of them willing and unwilling to make a move. This is the boy who’s always been in love with her, and she doesn’t know when that stopped being a burden and started becoming a rather pleasant thought…
“Goodnight, Stiles,” she hears herself say, her voice soft and slightly hoarse.
Stiles blinks, once, twice, and she watches him seemingly come back to himself. He clears his throat and mumbles an answering goodnight as he slides into another seat across the aisle. And not a moment too soon; seconds later, Scott, Allison, Boyd and Isaac are piling onto the bus, speaking quietly as they choose their makeshift beds for the night. Clearly none of them had wanted to sleep in the motel of horrors either, and Lydia can’t blame them. If she never sees Motel California again, it would be too soon.
She glances at Stiles, fully stretched out on his seat with his eyes already closed, and feels a mixture of longing, relief and regret.
+1.
Lydia’s barely thinking in the moment; she’s running on blind panic and desperation. The thought strikes her with all the brilliance of a lightning bolt and then she’s moving, surging forwards before she has the chance to even consider it properly.
When she kisses him, it feels like a revelation.
When she sees the look on his face afterwards, and feels the pure awe reflected on her own, she’s knows that she’s in deep, deep trouble.