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“I’m not healing right,” Cora says, and she’s on Lydia’s doorstep wearing a blood-stained tank top and a white face, which has never happened before. Werewolves on her doorstep, yeah—generally bleeding werewolves on her mom’s pristine white carpet even, but never Cora, fingers putting pressure on a no doubt disgusting gape in her stomach.
There’s a long moment where Cora looks like she might bolt, a little animal behind the eyes, but then Lydia says, “Okay, sure,” and steps aside.
She’s wearing pajama shorts and a stretched out Cyclones t-shirt that doesn’t smell like Jackson anymore but is covered in Cora’s blood once she stumbles over the threshold and into Lydia’s arms. Cora’s not hard to hold up, maybe because Lydia’s been having a decent amount of athletic sex or maybe because Cora’s small, taller than her but light even when she goes limp.
Cora swears under her breath, a string of violent Spanish.
“Okay,” Lydia repeats, hoisting her up as much as she can until Cora’s standing on shaky feet again, leaning heavily into her side. “Let’s just baby step while you tell me exactly how you got impaled.”
They move slowly towards the staircase, Cora wincing every time she shifts forward. Lydia would take her to the bathroom downstairs, but her mother’s already asleep and it won’t really do to have her wake up and find a blood-soaked stranger in her home. She might do something stupid, although reasonable, like call the police. Better to inch up the stairs and get blood on her sheets (again, she’s already switched to a lower thread count because it’s not even worth it anymore), even if Cora looks mostly dead, her face screwed up in pain when she says, “Hunters. Big ones. Sharp knives.”
“Hunters?”
“Well, they chased me through the woods, said a lot of dehumanizing shit, and then shanked me, so yeah, I just kind of assumed,” Cora shot back, then groans, pitching forward a little like she’s lost her breath. Lydia tightens an arm around her waist.
“Do you think they were Argents?” she asks.
“Nah,” Cora mutters. “Not pretty enough.”
They make it to the top of the stairs, then the bedroom, with no major damage. Cora tries to step forward on her own and immediately crumples, collapsing onto the edge of
the bed with a cutoff shout. Lydia rushes forward to help her get up and lay on her back. When she gazes up at her, Cora’s eyes are hazy, barely there.
"Thanks, red," she says, hoarsely, then immediately passes out.
"Why do you always talk like an extra from The Outsiders," Lydia mutters, hovering over her.
She pulls up the hem of Cora's shirt to see that the wounds are still fresh and red. The bleeding has stopped, at least, stiffening the fabric pushed up under her breasts as it dries. Lydia’s kept a first aid kit under her bed since Jackson kind of died that one time for expressly this purpose. She cleans the wound and bandages it neatly, feeling it start to slowly knit itself back up under her fingers. She thinks about how it must feel to be so hard to break as she carefully lifts Cora to pull her shirt off.
She’s wearing a faded black sports bra, a little loose like she’s lost weight since she bought it, not quite clinging to where her stomach dips down and her waist starts to curve in and almost show ribs.
Lydia covers her with the comforter before she goes to throw her shirt in the washing machine and get everything she needs to get bloodstains out of cotton.
◊
“Did we get to second base or something?” Cora asks, and Lydia turns in her chair to see her sitting up in bed, sheets falling around her waist. Her voice is wrecked.
“You wish,” Lydia says, raising her eyebrows.
Cora ignores her, shaky fingers trying to pull at the bandages on her stomach. Lydia makes a disapproving noise and goes to help her, peeling it away to show a pale pink scar.
“Huh,” Cora says.
“It really works wonders when you don’t just collapse in the dirt somewhere and hope to heal correctly,” Lydia says.
Cora smirks at her.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she drawls. She makes to get out of bed, gasping a little when she swings her legs over the side. Lydia rolls her eyes and catches her arm; Cora’s skin is damp and warm, still a little tacky with blood and dust.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she asks, primly.
Cora looks at her. A long moment passes, with Cora raising one dark eyebrow and Lydia meeting her gaze for gaze, and then Cora says, quiet and pointed, “Derek’s.”
“Derek’s,” Lydia repeats. “Derek’s abandoned, probably asbestos-ridden squatter loft at the other end of town.”
“What, do you want me to stay and have a sleepover?”
“I don’t want you to, but as a known werewolf sympathizer, I feel ethically obligated to make sure you don’t almost die again tonight because you’re too stubborn to sleep after a
major abdominal wound.”
Cora keeps staring, and Lydia almost feels her resolve falter when Cora visibly slumps, falling back against the pillows.
“Considering your tendency to fuck them, I’d maybe call you more than a werewolf sympathizer,” Cora mutters, and Lydia gracefully gets to her feet and shoots her a baleful smile.
“Why don’t you get up and take a shower before I change my mind?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lydia shows her to the bathroom, how to get the shower on hot, where the towels are. She lingers long enough that Cora says, “Are you going to offer to bathe me, too?” which, okay, no. She just wanted to make sure that Cora didn’t stumble again and brain herself on the shower edge or knock a hair dryer into water or something else, what with the infamous Hale luck she’s got going for her.
She goes back to her room and a copy of Essential Neuroscience, taking neat notes in the margins until she hears noises behind her and turns around to see Cora crawling back into her bed, hair hanging damp around a defensive face. She was going to offer her the bed, anyway, so Lydia tucks her book under her arm and heads towards the door when Cora stops her, asking, “Where are you going?”
“Sofa,” Lydia says. “I’m going to be up with this for a while, anyway. Might as well let you get your beauty sleep.”
“Like I need it,” Cora replies, shifting into a smile, less on edge in one of Lydia’s t-shirts and surrounded by pillows. If Lydia didn’t know better, hadn’t cleaned the wound out herself, she wouldn’t have ever guessed that she’d just been stabbed a few hours ago.
“I take it you haven’t seen the bags under your eyes,” she says, instead of that.
“I like them, they lend me an air of mystery,” Cora says, gamely. “Also, seriously, there’s a lot of bed here. I might be a bitch, but I’m not going to make you sleep on your own sofa.”
Lydia pauses for just a second. It’s not like she’s not used to sharing a bed; she practically lived with Jackson when they were actually dating, and Allison and her have had a lot of clingy sleepovers since Allison broke up with Scott and true love died. She’s about to shut her door and get in when Cora says, “Unless you’re uncomfortable,” and Lydia laughs.
“Why would I be uncomfortable?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I mean, I’m clearly not the first wolf you’ve had in your bed.”
Lydia rolls her eyes and goes to drop her book on the desk with a heavy thud. When she turns the lights off, Cora’s eyes glow in the darkness, following her as she climbs onto the bed and under the sheets. There’s enough room between them that they don’t touch once they’ve both settled in, but Lydia can feel her there, anyway, the heat of her body and the way the bed dips when she moves. She’s shutting her eyes to actually try to sleep when Cora says, a little gruff, “Thanks again.”
“I wasn’t going to let you bleed out on my front lawn,” Lydia says.
“Of course,” Cora replies. “What would the neighbors think.”
◊
Lydia wakes up to see her mom staring down at her, startles and sits up just to find that Cora’s arm has settled around her waist and is holding her down. She takes back everything she thought about how small she is yesterday; when she’s dead weight, Cora’s an immovable object.
“Lydia, there’s a young man downstairs asking about his sister,” her mom says, looking supremely uncomfortable. Cora stirs at that, eyes opening slowly.
“Oh,” she says.
“I’ll just tell him you’re here, then.”
“You didn’t call Derek,” Lydia says, when her mom is gone. Cora is already out of bed and pulling on her clothes from yesterday, the tank top still a little blood-stained but nothing out of the norm for someone like her. Lydia moves to sit on the edge of the bed, watching her pull her hair back into a low ponytail with a band she steals from Lydia’s dresser.
“He probably tracked my scent here,” Cora says, fondly. “I’ll just go so he doesn’t try to track mud and leaves into your house trying to find me.”
“He probably thought you were dead,” Lydia says. She’s been in enough weird supernatural situations in her life so far that she’s the first to call someone if something goes wrong. The everything’s okay text has become a necessary addition to her social dynamic.
“Well, I’m not,” Cora says. “Thanks to you, I guess.”
She draws off, then walks towards Lydia. It doesn’t seem like either of them knows exactly what’s happening, a long buzzing moment, but then Cora’s fingers are splayed out on her shoulder and Cora’s fingers are tangled in her hair. She almost says something or pulls away, but then Cora swoops down to press a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth. Lydia’s stomach does a feat of gymnastics that she doesn’t recover from until Cora’s already out the door, heavy booted footsteps on the staircase.
Well.
That’s new.