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Sometimes Derek wonders why it took them so long to see it. Skinny, defenceless Stiles – it would be ridiculous. Except it’s not, not at all.
Because Stiles, Stiles is the perfect target, someone who flies under their radars, because you know, he’s Stiles. Funny, witty, with his sharp tongue and lack of coordination, his freckles and huge bambi eyes and amazing smile. He could never be the bad guy.
And the Nogitsune saw that, saw how Stiles was in everyone’s blind spot and took it’s opening, slipped in when no one was looking.
The ones you don’t see coming are always the hardest to defeat.
-
They don’t sleep. Instead, they sit together on the floor, holding hands, until the sun is fully risen and the darkness chased away. Lydia helps him pack, stuffing clothes into a duffle as he grabs any weapons he can find.
“You have to come with me,” he says as they load the car.
“I know,” she says and gets in beside him.
They drive to her house in silence. It looks the same on the surface; her key still fits, her dog still yips from upstairs.
“Maybe he hasn’t been here yet,” she says, and her pulse jumps with relief.
Except Derek can smell the sweet-metallic scent that makes his teeth ache. Sure enough, when they go upstairs, her parents are laid out in her room, artfully posed for their viewing pleasure. They’re not eviscerated, not in the way the others were, but they’re bloody and they’re dead and Lydia’s legs give way instantly. He barely catches her before she hits the floor.
-
They get in the car and drive. Derek takes the highways, always speeding. Neither of them is sure how long they have before Stiles comes after them.
“We’re never going back, are we?” She asks as they cross the state line.
“Maybe,” he says.
They both know the answer is really no.
-
Nevada stretches before them, endless desert and somewhere in the distance, the twinkling lights of Vegas.
“Where do you want to go?” Derek asks.
Lydia rolls the window down so that the cool air blows in, carrying scratchy bits of sand and dirt. “It doesn’t matter,” she says and turns her face into the wind.
In the end they keep heading east, away from the glittering promises of Sin City. They make it to Salt Lake City in eight hours, Derek speeding down icy roads, skidding round slippery corners. The full moon is fast approaching and he wants to be able to run free.
“In this snow?” Lydia says, then laughs at his scowl. “Should’ve thought of that before you started driving,” she says.
In the end, they barely make it into the foothills before the moon crests the horizon. It’s cold up here, low thirties, and the air makes her skin tingle when they finally stop at the first motel they find. Derek hangs back while she gets a room, flirting with the receptionist like everything’s fine.
The room looks like it hasn’t been decorated since the Eighties, and possibly not cleaned since the Nineties.
“This is awful,” she says, expecting Derek to come back with his usual snark, but there’s only silence. When she turns round, he’s on the edge of the bed, hunched over, wolfed-out “What’s wrong?” she asks. “Is it the moon?”
He doesn’t answer, just sits there, grabbing at his head with long claws. She goes to him; when her hands touch his shoulder he whimpers, a horrible noise, like a wounded animal; it might be the most pathetic sound she’s ever heard. She curls herself around his back and holds on, until his body begins to shake and judder and his breath comes out in heaving sobs. She’s never seen him cry. It breaks her heart a little.
Eventually Derek slumps against her, hands coming up to grasp at her where she’s clinging to him. “I’m okay,” he murmurs.
She smiles into his shirt. “Me too,” she says; “Let’s get some sleep.”
He lets her pulls him up onto the bed, curls around him like a child, head on his shoulder and arm across his chest. He rests a hand on the back of her neck and watches her breathe in the yellow light of the lamp.
Neither of them fall asleep for a long time.
-
Stiles leans into him, a smile on his lips. He’s close, close enough to kiss, and so Derek leans up, presses their mouths together. Stiles keeps smiling.
That’s when Derek wakes up.
-
Lydia uses the receptionist’s crush on her to get access to the office computer. The first thing she does is check for any news coming out of Beacon Hills. Surprisingly, there’s nothing.
“Maybe they haven’t found them yet,” Lydia says, voice cracking a little. “Maybe they haven’t figured out it’s him yet.”
She doesn’t say what they’re both thinking: maybe they’re all dead, the whole town; maybe there’s nothing left of Beacon Hills to write about.
-
Cheyenne is red brick and white snow.
They hit a couple of bars and Lydia hustles pool like a pro, calculating angles in her shortest skirt with a smile on her face and a drink in her hand. She plays the clueless college girl well. Someone must realise though because when they leave, there’s two guys on their tail.
“We want our money back,” the one built like a brick shithouse says.
Lydia smiles at him, sugary and fake. “I won it fair and square, sweetie.”
“You cheated,” the guy says and grabs her arm.
Derek bristles beside her. “You should let go,” he says, voice almost a growl.
“What you gonna do about it?” the other asks, moving in.
Lydia kicks the big one in the balls as Derek punches the other in the face. They both fall into the snow, whimpering in pain.
“If you don’t like losing then you shouldn’t be playing,” she says and drags Derek away before he can hit them again.
They drive away in stony silence. The tension is palpable.
“Maybe I shouldn’t do that again for a while,” she says. The look he gives her is sharp and angry. “What? So I’m a pool shark! It’s just basic math, which I’m good at, so –”
He cuts her off: “It’s not about that,” and his voice is shaking.
“We need the money.”
“But we don’t need the attention. This is the kind of thing that what will tell it where we are!”
She opens her mouth to say something cutting but when she looks at him, his hands are white-knuckled on the wheel and his breathing is erratic. It’s not anger: it’s fear. She softens.
“He’s not left Beacon Hills yet,” she tells him. There’s a long pause.
“Are you sure?”
She frowns, thinking of the buzzing and whispering in her ears, how it fades the further they get from home. “I think I’ll know when he does?”
Derek trusts her judgement but when they leave he drives close to the mountains, just in case. It’s a good place to disappear and while the snow is thick everywhere, in his gut he knows that he can handle it if needs be. Lydia just looks exceptionally put out by the whole idea.
“I don’t like the cold,” she tells him.
They’re in Denver and the city is beautiful under a layer of white, but Lydia is California born and raised so she has only a handful of jumpers, none of which are thick enough for a Colorado winter. He buys her extra layers in a thrift store and laughs at her outraged expression.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “They’ve probably not all been worn by dead people.”
Her shrieks echo around the shop.
-
Living together is weird.
They don’t know each other well enough to have figured out a rhythm; it’s all stepping on toes and awkward apologies. Lydia tries to change the radio station and Derek smacks her hand away. Derek accidentally walks in on her in the shower and spends the rest of the evening in embarrassed silence. They brush their teeth at the same time and avoid each other’s eyes in the mirror.
It gets better though. Derek picks awful movies and hides the remote so she can’t change the channel. Lydia buys him a nodding dog for the dashboard, bright pink and horrendously ugly. She uses the bathroom while he showers and flushes it so he gets doused in burning water. They sing along to the radio together.
It’s fine, normal even, but even that doesn’t make either of them feel any better.
-
The Kansas border is no different to any of the other borders they’ve crossed in the last couple of weeks, just the same sign and road stretching in both directions. The only difference is that Kansas is flat where Colorado was mountainous, prairieland stretching as far as the eye can see.
They drive for hours, nonstop, until Lydia is twitching behind the wheel and Derek is dozing against the window. She doesn’t want to leave the highway, not with what could be pursuing them, but Derek is asleep and her foot is cramping and the prairieland is boring to look at for more than a minute. World’s Largest Spur, a sign says, and that sounds better than more driving.
“Shall we get off here?” she asks. Derek snores in reply. “Alright then,” she says and takes the exit.
The World’s Largest Spur is kind of a letdown. It is a spur, and it is large, but other than that there’s not much to it. Derek tilts his head at it with a frown.
“We took a detour for this?”
She laughs and makes him take a dozen photos on her cell. It’s only when she tries to send them to Allison that it finally hits her: Allison’s dead, they’re all dead, and it feels like someone’s punched her in the stomach.
Derek finds her behind the car, ducked down so she can press her hands to the frozen ground. She’s breaking down, face red and blotchy as she cries, and he just holds her to him until she finally settles into small, hiccupping sobs.
“We couldn’t save them,” she mumbles into his shirt, and he shushes her gently.
“They were dead before we got there, Lydia.”
He sounds so calm, so rational, and she hates him just a little bit for being right. She tries to pull away, but his grip on her is firm and the fight drains out of her as fast as it arrived.
“We should’ve been there. We just let them die.”
Derek tilts her head back with careful fingers. “We would be dead too,” he says, and he looks as bad as she feels. “It’s not your fault, Lydia, you have nothing to feel guilty about. It was the Nogitsune that did it all.”
But she does feel guilty because she heard Stiles in the dark. Sitting in her car as the machine ramped up, clank-clank-clank, and all she could think was how much she wanted the noise to stop. She didn’t think of anything beyond that; didn’t think that maybe it was something important, someone important. It wasn’t until Scott told her about the MRI that she even recognised the sound.
Stiles was reaching out to her, trying not to let it in, screaming as loud as he could, and she heard every bit of it and did nothing to stop it.
-
January ticks over into February and Derek finally buys a map. Lydia spreads it out on the hood and studies it. She plots routes with red marker, chewing the ends until they crack between her teeth. He has a hard time tearing his eyes away from where the ink stains her mouth.
She keeps asking which way, which way, which way, like the bratty teenager he knows she’s not. He doesn’t have an answer for her, until one day he opens his mouth to tell her so and what comes out it: “As long as we’re together.”
He feels ridiculous the moment he says it but then Lydia looks up at him, shocked into silence, before a blinding grin spreads across her face. It’s a bright spot in an otherwise bleak day.
-
It’s been nearly 2,000 miles and they’re still alive.
-
The Camaro breaks down just outside of Kansas City. He wants to fix it; Lydia does not.
“It’s too expensive,” she yells at him, “and the mileage is crap. We need to get something else.”
She's right, as usual, but it’s harder than he would like to admit to let it go. It’s the final part of Beacon Hills they’re holding on to and saying goodbye feels like he’s drawing a line under everything, starting anew. Lydia finds them a battered old truck instead; half blue, half white, with peeling paint and creaky suspension.
When he pulls out of the lot, she takes his hand and doesn’t let go.
-
She used to dream about Peter, because he literally lived in her mind for a while. He would talk to her, and run his hands through her hair, and on one memorable occasion turned her bedroom into a ballroom and made her dance for hours, hands wrapped around her waist.
They weren’t friends; she barely saw him after she pulled him out of his grave. But she was always aware of his presence, a faint prickle in the back of her mind that meant he was close by or had his eye on her.
Now that connection is gone, and when she dreams of Peter she wakes screaming at the feeling of a sword slicing through his stomach and cutting him in half.
-
Kansas blurs into Missouri and Lydia starts smoking, somewhere around Springfield. She bums one from a guy at the gas station and smokes it sitting on the hood while Derek pays.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” he says when he finally comes back.
She kicks her legs and jumps down, raises her eyebrows at his frown. “At this point they’re hardly going to be the thing that kills me,” she says.
She flicks the butt at him and he crushes it under his heel. They drive on.
-
Finally the news trickles out of Beacon Hills.
Stiles Stilinski, the Sherriff’s son, is arrested for multiple murders. Then he escapes from police custody, just opens the cell door and vanishes into the night.
The police can’t find him, but they’re without a Sherriff so they’re mostly spinning their wheels. The FBI can’t find him either, but their best agent just lost his son and ex-wife so they’re not doing much better. There are posters with his face on: five foot eleven, 150 pounds, wanted for multiple homicides, escaping custody, fugitive from the law.
“Is he coming after us?” Derek asks as they stare at the face on the screen before them.
“He might be.” Lydia shrugs. “But I’ll hear him if he gets close.”
She says if, not when, but they both know deep down that it’s only a matter of time.
-
Driving gets harder and harder when they have no destination in mind. They argue about stopping constantly, until Lydia just throws her hands up and tells him to pick a place, for God’s sake.
-
The Ozarks are cold and the people are colder. They live short lives in the wilderness, trapped by a cycle of hardships that never end. To her the air smells like smoke and frost. To him it smells like chemicals, acrid and burning in his nostrils.
“They cook drugs up here,” Lydia tells him as they drive along roads lined with bare trees. “Welcome to the meth capital of the USA.”
“We’d better not let anyone know how smart you are then,” Derek says with a smile. “We don’t want a Breaking Bad situation on our hands.”
Lydia snorts, amused. “I’ve always wanted to be a criminal,” she says wryly.
It’s as good a place to stop as any. No one wants to rent them a house, but Lydia eventually sniffs out someone. It isn’t much, but it’s something, and when Derek carries their bags across the threshold something settles in his chest.
It’s not hard to live off the land. Derek hunts in the woods and she plants up vegetables in the yard. He gets a job with a logging crew and Lydia cracks lumberjack jokes that make him chuckle under his breath. They have two beds, but most nights she climbs in with Derek and presses her cold toes to his burning skin until he pulls her in and wraps himself around her like a second blanket.
It’s easy, comfortable, even though they’re both too skinny, with matching dark circles under their eyes that never seem to go away.
-
Time passes quickly in the backwoods. Before they know it it’s March and her birthday is round the corner, the Worm Moon fast approaching. She thinks of Peter, of life and death and rebirth. Funny how much can happen in a year.
Derek doesn’t get her a cake; instead he brings her a box of cupcakes from the nearest town, with thick pink frosting.
“It’s not much,” he says when he hands them over, and she grins at him, bright in the grey afternoon.
“It’s perfect,” she says and licks frosting off her fingertips with delicate sweeps of her tongue.
-
Things they don't talk about: the time he tried to kill her; the time she nearly killed him; the future.
-
It’s been a month. A month of fresh meat: squirrel, rabbit, crow. A month of cold shoulders from their neighbours. A month of chopping wood in the yard and fires in the evening.
Lydia starts wearing his clothes for extra warmth. She smells of him all the time and it drives him crazy. She clearly doesn’t get the significance of it, the way it makes his chest tighten and his blood spark. Derek doesn’t tell her though because then she’d stop; he’s already lost too many of his pack and the implications are probably more than enough to scare her away too.
Instead he goes hunting to get away from her, armed with only his teeth and claws. One day while he’s out, there’s a knock at the door and when Lydia opens it, a man is standing there. He’s tall, tattooed; she’d think he was just some angry redneck, if it wasn’t for the red of his eyes. An Alpha then, and not a happy one at that. At the bottom of the stairs are a group of rangy-looking individuals, all eyeing her suspiciously: his pack.
“Do you live here?” the Alpha asks, craning his neck to peer around her in the doorway.
“Yes,” she answers, “can I help you?”
He tilts his head at her, slow, a predator watching his prey. “Where’s your mate?”
It takes her a moment to figure out what he means. Then it clicks: Derek, of course, a lone wolf living in their territory uninvited. She doesn’t want to think what might happen if they find him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says and puts her chin up, defiant.
He crowds her against the wall then, a wall of muscle; once upon a time she would have found it attractive, but now it just makes her feel faintly nauseous. He grips her chin and tilts her head up so that she has to look into his blood-red eyes.
“I asked you where he is,” he snarls at her, and she can see where his fangs are razor-sharp. “Don’t play with me, little girl.”
“I don’t have a mate,” she gets out between gritted teeth.
He just sniffs her and growls low in his throat. “Your mate, the one who’s smell is all over you.”
When she looks down she sees she’s wearing one of Derek’s shirts, the one he wore to work the day before. It probably stinks of him; no wonder the Alpha’s going crazy, and she wonders for half a second if it makes Derek feel the same way.
Then he’s backhanding her, a sudden strike, and she topples. The porch is cold beneath her hands and her mouth tastes like copper, sharp and metallic. Derek is nowhere to be found, lost deep in the woods, and she thinks maybe it’s time she started saving herself.
Show no fear, Alison had once said, and she steels herself, stands up. She is Lydia Martin, she is a banshee, she runs with wolves, and she has faced much worse than one angry Alpha. She opens her mouth and screams.
-
Derek breaks through the tree line, vicious and snarling, and stops suddenly in the yard. The Alpha is on his knees, blood trickling from his ears, his pack cowering behind. Lydia stands at the top of the steps, towering over them like a vengeful goddess.
It’s certainly a sight to see.
The Alpha tries to get up when Derek gets close, but Lydia plants a boot on his shoulder and he topples back into the dirt.
“Stay down,” she says. Her voice is harsh and angry. He goes to her, slides their fingers together, and she clings onto him for dear life.
“I’m gonna kill you,” the Alpha snarls, eyes glowing. Behind him the betas shuffle uneasily.
“That’s cute,” Lydia sneers. “Does the big bad wolf think he has any power in this situation?”
“I’ll rip you to shreds,” he growls.
She rolls her eyes, opens her mouth, but Derek gets there first. “We’ll be gone by tomorrow,” he says. “If you leave now, we will too. No harm, no foul.”
He can tell Lydia’s glaring at him, probably hard enough to cut glass, but he ignores her and stares down the Alpha even though he can feel his wolf wanting to submit. The man considers them for a moment, probably trying to figure them out, but eventually he nods and stands up. The pack vanishes into the woods and they’re left alone on the porch.
Lydia turns on him, anger spiking through her, but Derek just reaches out, holds her still. “Are you okay?” he asks, hands shaking as they cradle her face.
She’s not, not even slightly, but in the end she says, “I’m fine,” because what else is there to say?
He pulls her in, wrapping her in his arms, and she buries her face in his shoulder, breathes in the scent of the woods and motor oil and Derek.
“Thought I lost you too,” he murmurs into her hair. She can’t help smiling into his shirt. “How the hell are so calm?”
“Sweetie, this is hardly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Remember the time my boyfriend was a homicidal lizard? Or when my English teacher tried to strangle me?” Derek huffs out a reluctant laugh. “Yeah, that’s more like it.”
They stay there for a long time, pressed together on the porch. Eventually Lydia starts to shiver in the cold air, and he hustles her back into the house. In the bedroom, he pulls out suitcases and starts to pack, steady and methodical, but the tremor of his hands betrays him still.
Lydia sits beside him on the bed. “So we’re leaving?” she asks as he passes her clothes.
“If we stay, they’ll come back. They know what you are and they’ll be better prepared. It’s safer to go.”
She sighs. “Fucking werewolves.” Her tone is so weary that he reaches out and squeezes her hand. She smiles at him sadly. “What do we do now?” she asks.
Derek shrugs. “We keep driving,” he says.
-
They do just that.
Lydia is a closet Elvis fan and so they hit Memphis. They go to memorials and museums, forts and federal buildings, at least half a dozen shows while Derek makes increasingly bad Elvis jokes. Graceland is the best part, luxurious and opulent, and she drags him around the entire thing, making him take photos of every little thing. She laughs in the sunshine and holds his hand the entire time.
They hit Appalachia as spring blooms. They skirt the Georgia border as they drive through the mountains, amongst towering firs and spruces, weaving their way between State Parks and National Forest. They stay in tiny inns and B&Bs where the owners coo over how cute they are. They stop getting two beds and sleep curled together, Derek’s arm heavy over her side, his nose pressed into her hair.
Lydia drives them across the border on a Wednesday, shades on, looking like she hasn’t a care in the world. The window lets in the smell of trees and animals and blossoming flowers, and carries the scent of her shampoo over to him.
They follow a winding road, under overhanging trees, past a Police Department that makes both of them avert their eyes. The houses build up until they’re rolling down Main Street, cruising past a diner, a convenience store, a bookshop, half a dozen other places. In the distance the mountains loom.
“Want to stop here?” Derek asks over the afternoon noise.
Lydia looks out of the window at the people and the buildings. It’s quaint and quiet, and nothing like Beacon Hills. She smiles.
-
Life falls into an easy rhythm. Out here no one’s heard of Stiles Stilinski and those who have have more important things to concern themselves with.
Derek rents a cabin in the woods, a squat building with a tiny kitchenette and an outdoor shower and only one bed. He gets a job as a ridgerunner and disappears for days on end up into the hills to commune with nature or some shit.
Lydia buys a bike and cycles into town every day on the hunt for jobs. She gets one in the diner; her uniform is bubblegum pink and she matches her lipstick every day. She’s good with customers, remembers their orders and always knows when someone wants a refill. The cook Hank, a grizzled old man with a beard as long as Santa’s, teases her mercilessly and she mocks him right back.
Amy is the other waitress, a sunny smiling girl with sandy hair that reminds her of Peter. She always eyes Derek up and down whenever he stops by the diner, and Lydia can’t help but feel a wave of resentment at her obvious stare. It stops quickly when it becomes obvious that Derek is only there for Lydia.
“He’s so sweet to you,” Amy drawls one afternoon as the diner empties out.
Lydia rolls her eyes and continues clearing tables. “He’s not always sweet.”
Amy laughs, a tinkling sound, like fairy bells. “Did you two run away?” she asks with a smile.
Lydia feels the happiness drain from her. Yes, they ran; they ran from a monster wearing their friend’s face, a monster still out to get them no matter how far they run.
“Something like that,” she says, and not even Amy’s cooing can resurrect her smile.
-
Summer crashes over them, a sudden rise in temperature that leaves the whole town sluggish and lazy. No one orders a hot drink for days, only lemonade and water with as much as ice will fit in the glass. Derek spends nearly two weeks up on the mountain, and the house is quiet and empty without him. She works double shifts in the diner to make up for the silence.
“I don’t miss him,” she says to Amy when they share a cigarette on the backdoor steps.
Amy rolls her eyes, says, “How long have you been together?”
She opens her mouth to say we’re not, but closes it with a snap. Thinks about it, thinks about Derek. Five months on the open road. Their fingers slotting together across the front seat of the truck. Derek wolfed-out and snarling in her defence. His hands on her face, pulling her back from the edge. The look in his eyes in dark motel rooms in the middle of the night. The pull in her gut when she catches him looking.
All the pieces line up and suddenly fall into place.
“A while,” she says and takes a drag.
-
Derek reappears on a Saturday. One minute the yard is empty and the next, he’s there. He looks leaner and rangier, if that’s possible, and his skin is tanned from the summer sun.
“I brought you a present,” he says, and pulls two jars of moonshine out of his pack. Lydia laughs, loud in the heavy summer air, and goes to get her cigarettes and the sachet of wolfsbane Derek uses when he wants to get drunk.
It’s only midday but they sit on the steps and drink until they’re both fairly buzzed. The booze is cloudy in the jar but it tastes sharp and clean, and makes her skin tingle. She flops back against the boards of the porch and closes her eyes to the afternoon sun, Derek a solid weight against her bare legs.
“I miss them,” he says suddenly, and she glances up at him in surprise, the sharp lines of his profile, the deep creases of wrinkles.
“Me too,” she says.
And she does. Her heart aches, all the time. It’s like there’s a hole there, where her parents and Allison and Scott and the rest were ripped from her. Stiles too, because they couldn’t find a way to get the Nogitsune out.
She misses him the most, more than anything. His huge eyes, too big for his face. The fragile line of his collarbone. The downy baby hair at the nape of his neck. His crush on her, the way he would smile whenever he saw her. His wit, his intelligence; she may be smart, but Stiles was always the one with the plan. He could always put the clues together in ways she, with her genius-level IQ, never quite could.
It must show on her face because Derek lies back beside her and reaches out, tangles their hands together.
“Why haven’t we hooked up yet?” she asks into the silence that settles around them.
Derek makes a noise like a strangled cat, but his hand is suddenly clammy against hers; she doesn’t need to hear his heart to know that it’s pounding a mile a minute. She props herself up on one elbow and watches him, quiet and careful in the still of the afternoon. She reaches out to turn his face towards her, and the look in his eyes makes her squirm. She knows desire when she sees it.
“Lydia,” he says, voice pitched low like a warning.
She rolls her eyes; “Shut the hell up,” she says and kisses him.
-
She gets up in the morning and goes to work, leaving Derek behind, snoring under the sheets. He rolls into the space she left and buries his face into the pillow.
“Looks like someone had a good night,” Hank says through the window, pointing at her neck.
When she checks in the mirror, there’s a series of hickey trailing across her skin, red-purple blotches in the shape of Derek’s mouth. Amy laughs, but lends her some makeup to cover it up.
“Your boy sure likes to bite,” she jokes and Lydia ducks her head, embarrassed for a moment until she remembers how she’d tilted her head back so that Derek could get his mouth on as much skin as possible.
The bell above the door rings out and Amy flushes suddenly, eyes wide as she scurries off without another word. When Lydia turns around, Derek is right there.
“Hey,” he says, and touches her arm gently. “I have to go up the trail for a couple of days. I’ll be back Friday.” He half-smiles, eyes wary. “Will you be alright?”
She nods, “Of course,” and goes back to serving. He leaves without another word.
-
He knows he’s running away. It’s what he does. All he’s done since he got to Beacon Hills is get people killed and run away.
Up on the mountain though, the wind and the heat and the smell of summer take his fears away. It feels like he can breathe in a way he hasn’t in a long time, not since before Kate, before his family died.
It’s beautiful up here. The trails snake along the hillside, winding their way through the thick trees. When he looks out over the landscape, the view is endless: in the distance are the sharp peaks and dips of the mountains, stretching out endlessly across the state line and away, and down below, the creeks and rivers snake their way through the lush valleys. Birds sing a gentle tune in time with the steady pace of his footsteps as he climbs up and up and up.
The job is easy enough: walk the trails, keep an eye on the hikers, make sure the forest is kept in a good state. At night he sleeps at one of the campsites, a watchful eye on the holiday makers. They are his charges now, his to watch out for, and contentment settles in his gut when he listens to them snoring in the night. He eats with them in the mornings, sharing picnic table with young children who ask him all the questions they possibly can. They remind him of Cora when she was little, always badgering him, constantly asking why? why? why?
The steady pace and quiet beauty of the forest gives him time to think.
The thing about Lydia is: they weren’t friends before, not really. They never used to speak. He never met her, not before Peter bit her, and not after, at least until she blew wolfsbane in his face and brought Peter back from the dead.
After that though, he kept an eye on her; more importantly, kept Peter away from her. They still didn’t really talk, but they were in each other’s peripheries, drifting in and out of each other’s company. It wasn’t until the Alphas were coming for him and she hustled him out of the building and into the car that she really registered in the way the others did: as pack.
And now – now Lydia Martin, she of elaborate hairdos and perfect makeup, is living in the Georgia backwoods with him. She keeps house. She cooks him dinner. She shares his bed at night. It all means something, and of course Lydia figured it out first, the little genius.
He can’t believe he’s been blind to it until now.
-
It takes a few days but eventually Derek comes back to her. He brings a string of rabbits and looks so nervous when he hands them to her that she can’t help but smile.
“And what am I meant to do with these?” she says as she takes them from him. His face falls and she immediately feels bad. “Okay, come on then, show me what to do."
Derek teaches her how to skin the rabbits. It’s bloody and disgusting, the flesh soft and slippery under her fingers as she tries to pull the hide back. Memories swarm in her mind and she feels sick to her stomach.
“I can’t,” she says and puts her knife down on the counter, breathing deep.
Derek moves up behind her, palms sliding down her arms until they circle her wrists. He fits their fingers together and guides her with a steady touch. The feeling of him fitted against her back makes her breath catch and something twist in her gut. His hands still.
“Lydia,” he murmurs.
He presses his nose into her hair and breathes in the smell of sweat and arousal and something uniquely Lydia, sweeter than any flower on the mountain.
“God, I want –”
His voice cuts off as he presses his face into her neck and his hips into hers, breath ghosting warm over her skin. She can’t help but tip her head back onto his shoulder, insides going liquid as his hands move across her body, rucking up her shirt to get at the skin beneath. His fingers are smooth and firm, perfect, and he drags them in circles as his mouth moves in matching shapes under the curve of her jaw.
“Fuck this,” she says, and turns on him, hands on his face, bringing their mouths together.
It’s like a tidal wave crashing over them and when she bites his lip, he surrenders to it.
-
“Do we need to talk about this?” she asks in the morning, propped up on his chest.
Up close her eyes are so much greener than he’s ever noticed before. Her skin is creamy and soft to the touch as he curls a hand over her side. It distracts him long enough that she flicks him on the nose.
“Derek, do we need to talk about this?” He shakes his head, no, but she just raises one perfect eyebrow at him. “Really? No comments on how I’m a child, how you’re robbing the cradle –”
He covers her mouth with his hand. “Lydia, you’re the strongest, smartest woman I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t insult you by calling you a child.”
Her lips move against his skin, whisper soft. When he takes his hand away, Lydia’s smiling up at him.
“I didn’t know you were such a romantic,” she says softly, and leans up to kiss his frown away.
-
They take a well-deserved holiday and hike up into the hills.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” she says, but lets Derek take her wherever he wants, higher and higher up twisty paths, leaving the trails far behind them.
They camp in secluded spots, cooking over fires and sleeping pressed together in the tight space of the tent. Derek takes them all over the mountain and it’s fun, the most fun either of them have had in a long time.
It’s a week before they get back to where the jeep is parked. Derek charges his phone at the ranger station and listens to his voicemails while Lydia chats to the other ridgerunners. There’s a message from Cora about selling the loft; an update from Agent McCall on how the case is going; and a third which makes his blood run cold.
-
Derek. Derek, I don’t know where you are, but it’s me. It’s Stiles. I can’t – I don’t know how long I’ve got before it wakes up, but I’ve got to – Derek, I want to make sure you’re okay. I have to make sure you’re okay. It’s looking for you, you and Lydia, are you – together? I’m somewhere in Kentucky, I think, I mean I was last time I checked, I could be closer now. I just – Derek, you have to be okay. Please please please be okay –
-
“Lydia,” he says, “we have to go.”
-
It’s hard to tear themselves away from the life they’ve created. Three months is a long time. Amy cries and Hank hugs her tight.
“Maybe we’ll see you again someday,” he says with a smile.
The truck is full of their bags and boxes, piled high with all the pieces of their life. “Which way?” Lydia asks as she steers it towards the interstate.
Derek shrugs at her and reaches out across the bench to grab her hand. It’s shaking, pale against the black of the wheel.
“Whatever way you want to go,” he says, and squeezes it tight.
-
In the end they find the road south and let it guide them.
In Atlanta they visit the aquarium and kiss in the blue light of the fish tanks. In Montgomery they go to Fitzgerald’s house and Derek quotes ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’ to her. In Gulfport they hit up a casino and Lydia counts cards until they get thrown out.
They plan to find a place in New Orleans and vanish into the crowds. It starts off well: they wander the quarters, admire the architecture, eat spicy gumbo until their lips are numb. They get drunk on Bourbon Street and have breakfast on their balcony.
But eventually it falls apart. They go to a street party and she loses Derek to the crowd, buoyed away from him by the bump and grind of hundreds of people dancing to the pounding beat. Lydia forces her way out of the crush until she’s on the sidewalk, able to see in all directions over the swaying mob. Derek is nowhere to be seen.
Someone grabs her hand and she turns, expecting to see Derek’s stubbly face, but instead it’s an old woman who stares at her, blank-eyed.
“Can I help you?”
The woman tilts her head, and smiles. Lydia’s blood runs cold. It’s a familiar smile: the same twisted smirk that Stiles wore as he stood beside the Nemeton, bloody hands reaching out.
“Poor Lydia, all alone at the crossroads.” The woman lifts their joined hands and jolt of power dances across Lydia’s skin. She tries to pull away but the woman grabs harder. “Beware, banshee, he won’t stop looking for you.”
With that, she vanishes into the mob. Lydia stands frozen on the corner until Derek finds her again.
“What happened?” he asks, and she collapses into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. “Lydia, what’s wrong?”
This time it’s her turn to say, “We have to go.”
-
That night Lydia has her first nightmare in months.
Stiles is lying beside her in bed, all soft smiles and sleepy eyes. He rolls over and brushes his hand along her cheek. His skin is warm and glowing in the fading sunlight.
She watches out the window as the sun sets and the moon rises, painting the world silver. A buzzing starts up, echoing in her ears. When she turns back to Stiles, his face is cold and blank, dead-eyed. He reaches out to her and his hands are dripping, bright bloody red.
She wakes screaming.
-
Derek follows the curve of the coast, on and on for hours until he has to stop for gas. The town they find themselves is on the edge of the swamps, and full of people who know how to mind their own business. Lydia charms a fisherman into renting them a house, and just like that they have a home again.
Their new house is right on the river, with a jetty jutting out into the slow-moving water. It’s barely more than a shack, but it’s all they need, tucked away in the middle of nowhere beneath the cypress trees. In the morning the sun reflects off the river and makes glittering beams dance around the rooms. In the evening the sunset makes the world orange, and they sit on the porch to watch it vanish below the horizon.
On the full moon, Derek goes running in the bayou. She sees him flash past, completely naked, and can’t help but cracking up. Her laughter follows him between the trees.
“How very True Blood of you,” she says when he comes back, sweaty and grinning.
Life is good, and for once the only buzzing in her ears are flies and mosquitoes.
-
It’s hot as hell, the air so heavy that Lydia drives around in a bikini top because she can’t bring herself to wear an actual shirt. She goes to the store and comes back with a bottle of champagne. When he asks her about it, she smiles, shy but happy.
“It’s your birthday,” she says, “And it’s been six months.”
Six months since they left Beacon Hills. Six months since they got in a car and never looked back. Six months since they escaped a demon and rebuilt their lives with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
He reaches out a hand to her and she comes to him, lets him wrap her in his arms and breathe deep. She smells like detergent and motor oil, and beneath that like honey and swamp and home.
She tilts his head with her hands and kisses him softly. “Take me to bed?” she asks, eyes warm, smile playing on her lips.
Derek’s hands slide under her thighs and he’s hoisting her up onto his hip, mouth moving over her neck, teeth scraping skin as they stumble through the doorway. He throws her onto the bed and looks down at her, a silhouette backlit by an orange glow. Lydia grins at him and god, she’s gorgeous in this light, hair on fire against the pillow.
She tilts her head at him, what?, and he can’t help the way his heart stutters a little. Her hands come out, beckoning, demanding, because Lydia Martin gets what she wants. He listens to her pulse, the steady thump of it that he knows so well. It’s his anchor, she’s his anchor, and why has it taken him so long to realise that?
He presses her down into the mattress and kisses the smile from her face.
-
Derek turns 26, tucked away in the back woods of Louisiana. The night is humid. They’ve opened all the windows and a faint breeze rustles the drapes softly. In the dark of their bedroom, Lydia leans over him and kisses his mouth, his cheek, his neck. He wraps his hands around her waist and holds her close.
His phone rings at midnight exactly, as the clock ticks over to the next day, as Lydia brushes her lips along the curve of his jaw.
They both freeze. No one calls them anymore; everyone who did is dead. When he picks it, the glowing numbers aren’t ones he recognises; Lydia shakes her head at him when he shows it to her.
“Answer it,” she says, and rolls over to lounge against the pillows.
He does and the voice on the other end makes him sit up straight in bed: “Derek,” Stiles says, voice impossibly quiet, “I need your help.”