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The moment Stiles stepped into the tunnel, the bright light of the rift winking out behind him, he had promptly collapsed. Lydia, being at the front of the pack, rushed forward to catch him, but her body gave under his weight. Scott and Malia were right behind her, the alpha supporting his best friend’s body while the coyote grabbed Lydia to keep her stable under Stiles’ weight. Slowly, the four of them lowered themselves to the ground.
“You remembered,” Stiles croaked, before his heavy eyes gave in and fell shut.
Lydia gasped and put her hands on his shoulders.
“No, nonononono,” she mumbled. “Stiles wake up! Please. Open your eyes. You have to open your eyes, okay? Stiles - no - ”
Her hands had moved to his cheeks as she pleaded with Stiles to open his eyes, and Scott was hit with a sense of deja vu.
He squeezed his eyes shut, the memory gaining clarity. It had just been a flash when he was in hypothermic state, but now he saw, Stiles, hovering over a motionless Lydia, hands brushing bits of glass off her face, begging her to show me your eyes, okay?
Now he was looking at the same scene, except that it was Lydia leaning over Stiles, and Stiles -
Stiles hadn’t flat lined.
His heartbeat was faint beneath the sounds of Lydia’s pleas, but it was there, and steady. When Scott strained his ears, he could also hear the even breaths Stiles was taking.
He looked up at Malia, who was awkwardly rubbing Lydia’s back in small circles. When she met his eyes, he asked, “Do you hear that?”
The hand on Lydia’s back paused as Malia furrowed her brows, straining to hear the same signs of life. She straightened when she too did.
“Lydia! Lydia, he’s alive,” she said in a stage whisper. “He’s just passed out.”
Lydia turned her head to face the coyote, uncertainty in her eyes. Malia reached over and gently shifted one of Lydia’s hands to Stiles neck, pressing the banshee’s fingers to Stiles’ pulse point. She held them there until Lydia exhaled in relief, her whole body relaxing as she felt Stiles’ pulse.
“Thanks,” Lydia said softly, nodding at Malia, then Scott, before turning back to Stiles. Her eyes couldn’t leave the human’s form for long.
The corners of Malia’s lips twitched into a small smile. “He thought me how to do that, that time when Liam lost control and ran into a tree and - ”
A relentless pounding on the tunnel door startled them, the metallic sounds echoing around them.
“Scott?” a voice called.
Speak of the devil.
“Liam, what are you doing here?”
Scott unlocked and heaved open the door to let his beta in, but the younger boy remained at the threshold, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Something’s happening. To Beacon Hills. I don’t know - is that - Stiles? Wait, did I - ?”
He frowned at his shoes, confused.
“He’s back now. We can explain everything later,” Scott assured him. “What’s happening to Beacon Hills.”
Liam looked up, getting jittery again. “I - I - I can’t explain it. I have to show you.”
Scott looked back at Lydia and Malia, Stiles lying in front of them. “Let’s carry him out of here first.”
When they crawled out of the bunker, they were greeted by the sight of train tracks running across the road in front of them.
“Oh my…” Scott muttered, as Stiles stirred and curled into his chest, now just asleep. The alpha had one arm under Stiles’ back and another around his hips. Lydia, despite her lack of supernatural strength, had insisted on hefting the human’s long legs.
“It’s everywhere,” Liam told them about the tracks. “At the hospital, at school…”
“The train station,” Lydia spoke up. Everyone turned to see her looking up from Stiles’ body, eyes wide with realisation. “That’s why I kept hearing - you saw it, right? When he was walking towards us, there were tracks behind him.”
She looked at Scott and Malia for an answer, but they only returned her with frowns.
“We didn’t see anything,” Malia told her. “There was just light, and then Stiles appeared.”
Lydia looked away, distraught.
“Wait,” Liam piped up. “You said Stiles told you to look for Canaan, right? There was a sign in the hospital showing arrivals. Canaan was one of the previous stops. I think Lydia’s right.”
Lydia gave him a grateful half-smile.
“There’s a train,” she insisted. “It’s going to run through Beacon Hills. You have to find a way to divert it.”
“Alright,” Scott decided. “Liam and I will look for a way. Lydia, Malia, you two bring Stiles to my house. And stay with him. Let him rest.”
“You can’t face the Ghost Riders alone,” Lydia told him.
“And Mr Douglas,” Liam reminded.
Lydia and Malia shared a look. Then Malia turned to Scott.
“I’ll find you,” she offered, “once Lydia and Stiles get there safe.”
They all agreed and parted ways. Scott and Liam split up to follow the train tracks in both directions while the girls drove Stiles to Scott’s. The boy didn’t wake during the trip. He barely even stirred, which Malia noted was odd if Stiles was just sleeping. That got Lydia worried, which Malia also noted.
“Do you want me to stay here?” she kept asking Lydia. “Scott can protect himself.”
Lydia shook her head. “I don’t like how he is out there alone.”
“Are you sure?” Malia asked again. “Lydia you smell like sadness, and that emotion Stiles also gets when he gets worked up about - ”
“Anxiety.”
“Yes, you smell terrible. And it’s making me worried. And Scott’s house isn’t the most secure place, believe me I know.”
“That’s why you need to help Scott stop the Ghost Riders, so we can all be safe,” Lydia replied.
When Malia still looked reluctant, Lydia promised to try to contact the Sheriff. Eventually, Malia left to look for Scott, but not without a “Scream if anything happens, okay? I - we don’t want to lose both of you.”
That left Lydia, and Stiles, alone in an empty house.
She tried calling the Sheriff multiple times. When she couldn’t get through, it became apparent to her that he had been taken too, along with almost everyone else. She should have realised it when Liam showed up alone.
They had tucked Stiles into Scott’s bed where he lay, unmoving. He was alive, Lydia could feel his pulse and his breathing, but his stillness was unnerving. It reminded Lydia of junior year, when he’d fainted after they’d defeated the Nogitsune. It was with this same stillness he had lain on the school floor, pale and weak, fingers cold where Lydia had clutched his hand.
She sat next to his bed and took his hand as she did just over a year ago. Once again, Stiles’ body had no response. She imagined him visiting her in Eichen, holding her hand and getting no response.
She had known he came to see her, could always sense his presence at the back of her mind, but it was only when her memories returned that she got to inspect them more closely. In the background of her mental communications with Meredith, there was the warm and gentle pressure on her hand, sometimes stroking up and down the length of her arm. There was his voice in her ears. She could not make out what he was saying, but his voice dulled the ache in her head whenever it echoed around, drowning out the other voices.
Lydia didn’t know how long she sat there, simply holding his hand, before she spoke.
“I saw that you visited me at the start of sophomore year, right after I got attacked,” she started. “I always knew someone came to see me. I remember my mom brought them in and I said your name, but I never actually thought about whether I had been talking to you. I only realised it when I was remembering you.”
“That was when it all started, didn’t it? Scott had just been bitten and you just scrambling to find out who did it. You mentioned the DVD store the next summer, when you explained everything to me, but you never told me you came to check up on me.”
“You also didn’t tell me you tried to stop Peter when - ” Lydia swallowed and inhaled through her nose. She often avoided thinking about the night of the formal, how she’d been torn apart in what was the start of a period of hallucinations and questioning her sanity.
She looked down to find that she had been squeezing Stiles’ hand for comfort.
“I thought I heard someone scream for me to run. Once again I didn’t know it was you until the memory came back to me. I’d actually forgotten what I heard, even though I never associated it with you. When I heard you again, it hit me with relief. Suddenly I realised that I had not been left to bleed out on the field, that someone had come to look for me.”
Her eyes welled up with tears and she blinked to force them back.
“When I heard you speaking through the radio in your jeep, I cried with joy. Scott did too. He really misses you, you have to know that. I remember in grade school, I was reading at the edge of a playground when I heard some people yelling. I looked up, ready to tell them to tone it down, when I saw a boy hanging from the monkey bars, having as asthma attack. Everyone was screaming that he would fall and break his legs. Just as his hands slipped, someone darted out and tried to catch him. You broke your arm because of that, but Scott got away with a few scratches. You saved Scott, like you saved me. You’re always saving everyone.”
She smiled slightly at the memory, one so innocent, from so long ago. Then she looked over and saw that Stiles wasn’t smiling back, eyes still shut, and her heart sank.
“Stiles, you have to wake up. We can’t do this without you.”
I can’t do this without you.
She took a deep breath.
“I can’t go on knowing that I never told you how I feel. I love you, Stiles. I didn’t say it back.”
She sniffed when he didn’t respond, letting one tear roll down her cheek.
She had started absent-mindedly rubbing circles with her thumb on Stiles’ palm when there was a knock on the door. Looking up, she saw the Sheriff standing outside Stiles’ door. Lydia immediately stood up, dropping Stiles’ hand, but the Sheriff strode into the bedroom and pulled her into a tight hug before she could try to explain herself.
“You brought him back,” he mumbled. “Thank you.”
She let herself cry into his shoulder. The Sheriff put a hand on the back of her head until she had cried herself dry, then pulled back, smiling at her.
“I just saw your calls,” he told her. “Everyone’s downstairs. We’re okay.”
He looked at his son over her shoulder. “All of us.”
But Lydia shook her head. “I don’t know, he’s too still, he’s barely moved since he passed out…”
“Lydia.”
She paused and looked into the eyes of Stiles’ father.
“The week leading up to Claudia’s…Stiles didn’t sleep. His mother would be awake at the most random of times, and he wanted to be there, every single time. When she finally passed, Stiles cried himself to sleep. I brought him home, carried him from the waiting room to the car then from the car into the house, up the stairs, into his own room. He did not stir once. It was the least I’d ever seen him move.”
“It only happens when he is really exhausted,” the Sheriff explained. “He’s sound asleep. You don’t have to worry any more.”
Lydia nodded, and then turned back to look at Stiles. Now that her mind was clear, she noticed the more promising signs despite his still form. His skin was not pallid and his chest rose and fell ever so slightly. There were shadows ringed around his eyes, but they were still a far cry from the dark bags from the Nogitsune days.
“He will wake up,” she heard the Sheriff say. “For you.”
Even though he was standing behind her, Lydia still ducked her head as she felt her cheeks heat up.
“I think he would want to talk to you too” she replied softly, stepping around the Sheriff. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
He thanked her one more time before she exited Scott’s bedroom.
When she came down the stairs, she was greeted with five pairs of eyes staring at her. Scott’s were bright with tears, but he was smiling at her. Malia, Liam, and Hayden were all smiling as well, the beta’s more of a grin than a smile. Even -
“Well, congratulations.” Theo broke the silence, a smirk plastered across his face. “He basically gave you his blessing. Now all you need to do is actually tell Stiles when he wakes up.”
Coming back from a state of non-existence was exhausting.
The moment he stepped through the rift, the feeling had immediately crashed down onto him, causing him to collapse. The last thing he saw was the curtain of Lydia’s hair as she leaned over him, before he blacked out.
When he woke up, he found out from Scott that he had been gone for three months. No wonder he’d slept for almost twenty straight hours. He had technically been awake for three freaking months.
Fortunately, no one remembered him not being in school for those three months. In fact, school records showed he had three months’ worth of perfect attendance, a remarkable achievement given all the supernatural problems over the last few years.
In fact, for the most part, everything seemed to be back to normal.
Except for one thing.
Since he woke up the previous day, Lydia had been acting a little strange. Whenever they were with the pack, she could speak to him no problem, but whenever they were left alone, she would get quiet, avoid his gaze, sometimes even run away altogether.
He felt like they’d lost it, that easy friendship they had rebuilt since he rescued her. Nights of banter, chasing possible supernatural occurrences, and easy conversation. Study sessions in each other’s bedrooms, with long looks and averted gazes. Meeting one another at their lockers before and after classes, sunlight streaming down the school hallway, teeming with students but empty to them.
He told her he loved her.
That was the only explanation Stiles could conjure, and it pained him to think it. He’d done the one thing he had been afraid of all throughout the better part of last year. He’d ruined their friendship with his feelings.
But he had kissed her on the cheek. She had refused to leave him. She had held his hand as they ran and cried as he poured his heart out to her, swearing to keep him on her mind.
He had been so sure -
“Oh my god.”
Stiles snapped his head up to glare at Liam. The young wolf had been less fortunate in his attendance record, which resulted in coach forcing him to have mandatory tutoring sessions every week from “former successful team captains”, effectively Scott. Stiles usually studied with them, because he was never splitting up with Scott ever again.
“Dude, stop,” Liam complained.
“I’m not even doing anything,” Stiles retorted.
“Yes you are!” Liam whispered harshly. He had to watch his volume as they were in the library. “You’re thinking of Lydia again.”
Liam’s statement caught him by surprise, and Stiles struggled to think of a comeback.
“What, are my silent and private thoughts interrupting you from doing your homework?” he asked. Then, realising he hadn’t denied the statement, added, “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“You smell of love and adoration and it’s really overwhelming,” Liam hissed.
Stiles turned to Scott, putting on his best incredulous look that would say this kid, right? but Scott returned him an apologetic expression. “He is kind of right.”
“It comes off Lydia too,” Liam continued. “Can you two please act on your mutual feelings and spare all of us from smelling your very strong emotions?”
Stiles shook his head.
“Lydia isn’t in love with me,” he said bitterly. It hurt, but it seemed to be true.
“Yes she is,” the beta replied quickly. “She said it when - ”
He paused, body frozen, then shared a look with Scott, who shook his head.
Please don’t say anything to him. Lydia had asked of them. I want to say it myself.
Stiles noticed the exchange between the two werewolves and narrowed his eyes.
“When what?” he asked. “She said what?”
Liam coughed awkwardly. “Nothing important. The point is, she is in love with you too. So can you two please act on your mutual feelings and spare the rest of us from smelling your overwhelming emotions?”
“Lydia isn’t in love with me,” Stiles said bitterly. It hurt, but it seemed to be true.
a new voice chimed in. Malia dropped her tote bag onto the table and pulled out the chair next to his. “She zones out in math and writes your name over and over and then she starts to smell like the perfume section at Marcie’s - ”
“You mean Macy’s,” Scott supplied.
“ - but even stronger, so it’s worse.”
“That’s why everyone ran off that time you tried to make us have movie night as a pack,” Hayden added, appearing from behind Malia, Mason close behind her. “It’s because the smell is too strong when you two are in the same room.”
“You people don’t appreciate Star Wars,” Stiles grumbled. “Why are all of you here anyway? This period doesn’t end for another twenty minutes.”
“Pop quiz. Finished early,” Mason answered. “And I can’t smell any emotions but I can observe people, but I’ve seen the way Lydia looks at you. Yesterday I was asking her about an advanced calc problem set when you came out of class and she pretty much forgot I was there. Also, last year when the beserker attacked us in school? She was worried about you. Like, she mentioned the pack, but she said your name specifically. Only your name.”
She thought about me? Stiles remembered worrying about Lydia as they drove to Mexico, wondering why she never answered his calls. The thought had taken a back seat when they figured out the ploy to kill Scott. He remembered his relief when his dad called him and mentioned he was with Lydia. Had he been on her mind as well?
“You’re doing it again.”
Stiles groaned and packed his belongings, deciding it was the perfect day to go to class early.
He sat against in the empty hallway, waiting for the earlier class to be released, left to his own thoughts.
Was it true? Did Lydia really love him back?
But why is she avoiding me?
Because she is afraid to say it, just like you were in junior year?
“They’re right, you know.”
Stiles rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Theo?”
He refused to look at the other boy. Sure, he had helped Scott fight the Ghost Riders, but Stiles still had not gotten over the attacking-his-dad-then-killing-Scott-then-making-Lydia-catatonic thing from last semester.
He could hear Theo’s chuckle regardless.
“I overheard your conversation,” the chimera told him. “And I verify your friend’s statements. Lydia is in love with you.”
“Oh, like your opinion totally validates things, right?” Stiles sneered.
“I’m just saying, you stopped denying it.”
And then Theo went his own way, leaving Stiles outside the classroom.
Half a minute later, Scott was sliding down next to him. Was everyone going to take turns now?
Scott sighed. “You know how Lydia meets you at your locker every morning?”
“Used to meet,” Stiles corrected. “She doesn’t do that anymore. And sometimes we met at her locker. Or in the parking lot, which we also don’t do anymore.”
Scott nodded. “When we first felt someone was missing, Lydia said she came to school and went to your locker to wait. She was disappointed that you didn’t show, and confused because she couldn’t remember who she was going to meet. After she told me this, she said, ‘whoever it was, I think I loved him.’”
Stiles’ heart fluttered, but he suppressed it. “Think, Scott. She isn’t sure.”
This time, Scott shook his head. “Stiles, you didn’t see her. You didn’t smell her emotions. Every time we found a new clue, her heart would speed up at the thought of finding you. And every time we hit a dead end, she would become extremely sad. There were times when we doubted her, even I did, and you could smell it all over her. She was distraught. But she never gave up on you.”
“When you spoke to us through the jeep. After the connection was lost, I could hear her breaths get shorter. Her heart actually faltered. It sounded like it was literally breaking,” Scott continued. “It happened again after she got all her memories back. She remembered being with you right before the Ghost Riders took you. Then, it was as if she realised something. I heard her heart falter again, and then she said ‘I didn’t say it back.’”
Stiles was staring at the opposite wall, but Scott could see his eyes getting glassy with tears.
“I told her,” the human whispered. He didn’t need to elaborate for Scott to figure out what he meant. He had guessed it in the bunker, when Lydia reminded him about how he felt holding Allison in his arms, unable to respond to her, and Stiles had just confirmed it.
“At Eichen,” he pressed. “At the animal clinic. You nearly said it, didn’t you?”
Stiles looked up. “How did you know?”
“Just something I noticed,” Scott answered. He was thinking about Lydia, hovering over Stiles’ unconscious body, Lydia talking to Stiles as he lay asleep in Scott’s bed. He was thinking about Stiles visiting Lydia at Eichen House, sitting by her bedside until Natalie Martin kicked him out, Stiles with glass on his back and his hands on Lydia’s face. “When she finally woke up, why didn’t you tell her?”
“I was just so relieved,” Stiles mused. “She was alive. That was more important. I didn’t want to overwhelm her. After that…I just lost the nerve again, I guess.”
Scott nodded once more. He pat Stiles’ shoulder and got up just as the bell rang. Students swarmed the hallway as thoughts swarmed Stiles’ head.
It was safe to say he did not pay attention in class at all. He spent the hour debating the possibility of Lydia loving him.
She remembered his confession. She called out to him through the rift, recalling the time she kissed him. She pulled him back into reality.
After that, I just lost the nerve again…
Finally, he decided that if Lydia was in love with him (he allowed himself that sliver of hope, even as the pessimistic figurative voice in his head told him not to get his hopes up) she would come to him in her own time. And if she didn’t -
He walked out of class and almost immediately spotted her down the hallway. at her locker, pressed up against the metal by some unknown guy. He could not make out the student’s face, but he knew from the angle of their heads what they were doing.
Suddenly, he was sixteen again, but without the bright naivety he’d lost over the last two years.
She didn’t love him.
It had been an odd afternoon for Lydia.
First, Malia kept turning around to look at her during math, but never asked any questions. Lydia brushed it off as the girl gaining a better grasp of the concepts, and trying to solve the problems herself.
Later, she’d passed Corey in the hallway. They greeted each other and he asked her a question related to biology, but when she started explaining, he started twitching his nose, as if he wanted to scrunch it up but didn’t want to look rude. Lydia thought perhaps she had applied one too many sprays of perfume that morning. It would’ve explained Malia’s behaviour as well.
It was when Theo, of all people, came up to her that she realised what it was all about.
“You haven’t told him yet?” the chimera had asked as he passed her locker. “You should, you know. Everyone knows it.”
Lydia sighed as she turned the dial for her locker. She had asked the pack (and Theo) not to tell Stiles about what she had said while he was asleep. After all they had been through, Stiles deserved to hear it from her. She suspected that someone might have let something slip to Stiles, because he had been trying to talk to her. However, every time she found herself alone with Stiles, thinking it was her chance, her throat would close up, her lips would fold, and she could never get the words out.
The boy had poured his heart out to her and she couldn’t even return three words to him.
She was turning the last round of her combination when she felt someone tap her shoulder. Turning around, Lydia found a tall (but not as tall as Stiles, she thought) student in front of her. He looked to be in Liam’s grade.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
The student shifted. “Um…” he began, and then he stepped forward and kissed her.
What the fuck? Lydia thought, and immediately brought her hands up to his shoulders. She made to push him away, but the student pulled back.
“I’m sorry, it was just a dare,” he explained, before running off to rejoin his group of friends.
Lydia glared at the group, trying to memorise their faces. She would ask one of the younger pack members to identify them later, and if that happened to be in Malia’s presence, well.
She was turning back to her locker when something caught her eye. At the turn to another hallway, was Stiles, standing there with a heartbroken look on his face. The moment her eyes met his, he spun on his heel and disappeared around the corner.
No. No no no no no.
Of all the people who had seen them - not Stiles.
It was like she was back in freshman and sophomore year, making out with the hottest guys, proud of all the attention, even that coming from the hopeless kid with the weird name who had a crush on her, who always watched with a pained expression because he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Except right now, his were the only eyes that mattered.
She took off down the same corridor he’d disappeared through, never mind that her own class was starting in five minutes. When she couldn’t spot him, she detoured and ran towards the parking lot. She burst through the doors just in time to see the blue jeep driving away.
“Dammit,” she muttered under her breath.
She cast a look over her shoulder as the second bell rang, signalling the start of lessons. Her last class was AP bio, the readings of which she was ahead of schedule. Scott could fill her in on whatever she missed.
Lydia huffed and hurried down the steps, her heeled boots drumming the concrete as she went.
She punched in Stiles’ speed dial and put her phone on speaker, threw the device onto the passenger seat as she started her car. The tone rang and rang until she heard his jovial voicemail message, and she redialled him again. Over and over.
At the first red light, she fired off a few text messages.
Stiles, please pick up.
Stiles call me back.
I can explain.
She drove to his house, saw the jeep was not there, then drove to Scott’s, the station, and the spot in the preserve where she knew he and Scott used to go to when they wanted to drink. He was not at any of those locations.
She jumped in her seat when her phone chimed with incoming messages, but her heart sank when she saw they were from Scott.
Where are you?
Everything alright? Did something happen?
Lydia??
Please tell me you are with Stiles, I can’t reach him either.
Lydia kept driving around Beacon Hills, trying to think of any place Stiles might go to. She tried the cemetery. She tried the animal clinic. She even went to his favourite chicken drive through and ordered some food just so she could ask if he had been there, but the staff on duty didn’t recall any old beat-up jeeps passing through. She circled back past the station and tried his house again. Still no sign of Stiles, and she had run out of places to look.
She picked up her phone and tried dialling him again, once again going to his voicemail. Hey it’s Stiles, and you missed me…
You missed me.
She slapped her palm against the steering wheel, gasping as she tried to hold back her sobs. Her nose stung as she failed to hold back her tears. Her heart was pounding and her vision was blurring as she started to cry that she missed the sound of a car pulling up and the headlights flashing past her window.
She let out something between a shriek and a gasp when the relentless rapping started. She startled, turning towards the sound. Someone was pounding on her car window.
“Lydia?” she heard his voice, muffled through the glass. “Lydia open up!”
She was unable to respond, only prying one hand from the wheel to press it against her window.
Stiles hand found her over the glass, his other not ceasing its pounding.
“Open up!” he called, and when she only stared at him in disbelief, chest still heaving with quick breaths, “Lydia is it a panic attack? Lydia!”
He raised his voice when he called her name again, snapping Lydia out of her trance. She dropped her head, spotting the right control through her still tear-obstructed vision, and quickly lowered her window.
Stiles’ hand found hers as soon as the glass retreated, fingers tightly twisting with her own.
“Lydia what the hell happened? Scott said you disappeared - ”
“You disappeared!” she hissed, tears still falling. “I’ve been looking for you all day.”
“I was just at Scott’s.”
“When? I went there and didn’t see your jeep!”
“I didn’t want anyone else to find me so I hid it in his garage.”
“Scott’s house doesn’t have a garage.”
“It does, but it’s small and the door stopped working a long time ago, so no one ever uses it,” Stiles explained. “I broke in.”
His thumb was now rubbing back and forth across her knuckles. Lydia pulled her hand away to wipe at her wet cheeks.
“You were hiding from me,” she whispered.
Stiles leaned forward, arms cross on the sill of her car window. It reminded Lydia very much of another time he found her in the school parking lot, again crying in her car.
He took a deep breath - or perhaps it was a defeated sigh - and started. “I’m sorry if I scared you into thinking anything was wrong. I just didn’t really know how to react after I saw you and…”
He trailed off, looking at her carefully, and Lydia realise he was waiting for her to supply a name.
“I have no idea who he is,” she told him between sniffles. “He just kissed me for some stupid dare. I tried to follow you and explain but you ran away from me.”
“I’m sorry,” Stiles repeated. “It’s just…everyone was saying…um, I thought…after that time…”
“I know, Stiles,” Lydia said. “I know.”
Stiles blinked at her for a long, silent minute. Then his jaw dropped, his eyes widened, and he started to stutter.
“Oh my god, they were right,” he realised. “Shit, Lydia, I’m so sorry. Oh my god, but - why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“I did tell you!” Lydia yelled. “I said it when you were asleep and they all overheard.”
“When I was asleep?” Stiles asked hoarsely. “After I came back?”
Lydia nodded in confirmation. “You were out for so long, Stiles, I thought something had happened. When you finally woke up, that was all that mattered and I still wanted to tell you but I just - ”
She trailed off, trying to think of the right words, but Stiles found them for her.
“You just lost the nerve again,” he said, voice soft. There was a wistful, faraway look in his eyes. Lydia could almost see the film reel spinning behind those golden irises, memories from his perspective flashing past. Then his large, warm orbs shifted upwards, meeting hers. I know the feeling.
There was a small smile playing on his lips, and Lydia felt hers mirroring the expression. She broke away from his gaze to unlock her car door. Stiles got the message and crossed to the other side, sliding into the passenger seat. Lydia reached over to take his hand in hers as she turned to face her.
She could feel her throat constricting again, part of it the aftermath of her crying, the other part her usual nervousness whenever she worked herself up to say those three words. But this time, when she rolled her lips in nervously, she did forced herself not to stay silent, instead, parting them again to take a deep breath.
“Stiles, I - ”
Stiles lips brushed softly against her own.
“You don’t have to,” he murmured, before kissing her again.
Lydia kissed back with all the strength she could muster. She pressed her lips to his the way she wanted to when she saw he walking out of the light. She moved her hands up to his face, running them through his hair, holding on tightly with no intention of ever letting go again.
“I love you,” she whispered when they broke apart for air.
“I know.” Stiles’ breath bounced off her lips before they claimed hers again.