But Scott hadn’t cared, playing with the books on the shelf and acting like he could read the hard words, and knew all the definitions. They were 7 and 8 years old, he doubted it mattered until they were older.
He didn’t really know Lydia anyway, just knew she had one of the best packed lunches and was always dressed in nice clothes. He and his mom and dad were in the firm middle class, so he didn’t care about money, or the quality of his clothes.
On the other hand, Stiles dad was the sheriff, but his mom had recently gotten sick and he had started buying the school lunches. They hadn’t been all that popular, was what Scott was getting at.
Not to mention, Stiles had a problem with babbling and attention and very clumsy. Scott thought it was the charm of Stiles, but the rest of their third grade class did not.
It didn’t matter, anyway. He didn’t know what was in store, he was 7 or 8 and Stiles had said the same thing about the blonde in class 2A last week.
Years passed.
Sixth grade he got put at a two person table in home room with Lydia.
It had been awkward at first. Not much talking and sometimes the bump of a shoulder, brush of a knee caused stunted apologies. But it melted after awhile.
She helped him with homework and he told her if her makeup looked good. He assured her that the girls who talked bad about her hair and her figure were just jealous.
She was still high class, still best dressed and still had the best packed school lunch. But she paid him some attention, certainly more than when they were elementary school.
Scott had fallen to the poor side of middle class by then, his mom living paycheck to paycheck as he got ready to find work, to help out. Deadbeat dad had suddenly cut himself from the picture, and it sucked, but it made Scott think a satisfying good riddance when he sat in his room at night. Alone, cold and listening to his mother stuff back tears over the bills barely being met.
But Stiles. He just had his dad now. There was no real talk of their financial situation, and Scott knew it was because they were still paying off medical bills. Apparently, they would be paying those off until Stiles senior year of high school. It ate at Stiles that this was all she left them with to remember her by. Scott knew that if he ever brought it up with Stiles, he wouldn’t say much. Money meant talking about his mom.
But that wasn’t what mattered at this point in time. It wasn’t about their financial standing. It wasn’t about the things outside of homeroom. It was about Lydia and Scott connecting. Meeting each other and feeling that pull underneath everything, telling them to be closer.
It was tentative, but it was something. She didn’t immediately fall in love with him, but she knew she liked him, maybe in a more than friends way. She knew there was something and she wanted to figure it out, in the sharp way she always does.
Within the months they’d gone from a kinda friendship, to an almost-definite friendship. And that’s about the time Stiles found out that Scott and Lydia were friends and crashed their table before class one day.
It’d made all the other kids whisper as Stiles, the awkward, gangly kid whose mom had died and had anxiety attacks was talking to Princess Lydia Martin. It’d made kids whisper about how the chubby, asthmatic was friends with her. And worse, the school bully, Jackson Whittemore, had been there for all of it.
The girl had a reputation to uphold, one that was currently more important to her than the bond she felt with the nice, slightly chunky, asthmatic she sat next to every day.
Lydia used her position as future queen bee to disgrace the two boys socially. Shoving them to the bottom of the totem pole with just a few well placed, harsh words. Setting up their future for the entirety of middle school and some of high school.
And that’s how the Capulet household rose, joining the Montague’s own in the unbeknownst forbidden love that would bloom. Lydia championed as Juliet and Jackson as her Tybalt.
They suffered through it for awhile, before Scott joined Lacrosse and made second string to try and redeem himself. To show he was good at something, and that he wouldn’t let dirty looks and taunting words tie him down.
After all his complaints to Stiles about how they never played him, his best friend tried out as well (and made second string as well) so they could sit together. So their brotherly bond wouldn’t fade, Stiles his own Mercutio, sticking with him, even when he’d rather not.
Years passed. The households stood through them, unaffected by the passing time.
Their freshman year, Scott had an asthma attack so bad during try-outs he had to be taken to the hospital. The allergens of the fading summer had aggravated his lungs and the sports hadn’t helped at all.
Stiles started carrying a spare inhaler to more than just P.E. and lacrosse games. It made them closer, but it set a block between them and everyone else as he didn’t make the team and he had set himself up for the rest of the year as ‘the kid who almost died from an asthma attack on the field’.
Him not making the team had been upsetting. It had been one of his favourite things, made him feel included, and part of a team. So, he was pumped to try again his sophomore year.
He wanted to show he was a person. He was here. He wouldn’t blend in to the background anymore. He wouldn’t be a no one.
The year went by. The night before the first day of sophomore year, after Scott had laced his lacrosse stick and got ready for bed, his whole life changed.
Stiles wanted to search for a dead body in the woods. Or half of one. Scott should have known better.
He got bitten.
Enter his Rosaline. Allison Argent came into Beacon Hills High School missing a pencil and sporting a smile that made hearts melt. Scott had, not only a pencil, but a heart ready to melt.
The rest was history.
Romeo and Juliet skirted around each other, not acknowledging each other, not turning their eyes away from their significant other. From their roles. They weren’t moving towards each other, but were parallel lines at that point in time.
They made out once. It had been fire, it had been searing, like touching an open flame. It had been hot hands and nipping teeth and soothing tongues and not thought out at all. Right, it had been so right in a way the two were refusing to talk about.
They hadn’t really done anything after that. Hadn’t acknowledged the way they felt better together than the one’s they were pledging their love to.
Both unsure if they wanted to test the limits of their houses like that again. Wanted to burn so brightly, that they used each other up and left permanent marks on the other forever.
They just revolved near each other. Coming into orbit together sometimes and then drifting apart in other times. Not damning the stars and their plans, not choosing each other despite the circumstances.
Stiles took Lydia to the dance, somehow morphing into Paris, while Scott had his Rosaline.
Stiles making his presence known, letting her see him as her end game if she didn’t challenge the stars soon. Letting her see all how Stiles would be there, how he would love her. All she had to do was follow that. To not look away from that. Turning her gaze away from Tybalt for a moment.
But then, both Lydia and Scott lost their significant other in one night. Cut their bonds with people they thought were always going to be there. Jackson went home, leaving Lydia to Peter. Allison saw Scott for what he really was.
The world beat them down but they got back up. Time and time again, they got back up, and kept moving forward. Moving them closer as a pack. As a family, but not taking down the households holding them back, not yet.
Lydia found herself drawn to Scott and Stiles more and more. Towards her Paris, her Romeo. And she knew everyone was pushing her towards Paris, was expecting her to be with him at the end. But there was more, there was something deeper when she looked at Scott. When she sat with him at lunch, ignoring their households, ignoring the fact that the Montagues were not supposed to be with the Capulets.
They’d become a pack despite it, they struggled through a kanima, they struggled through the hunters, they struggled through Peter’s rise from the dead, they struggled through the alpha pack and the darach.
And they didn’t all make it. Erica and Boyd’s lives wasted casualties in this seemingly, never ending battle. Jackson running off to London, abandoning it all completely. Matt Daehler drowning. Kate Argent getting her throat ripped out.
And, somehow, none of it prepared them for the nogitsune.
Scott and Lydia became closer, could feel it now. Could feel the string connecting them. He’d held her hand the night she faced death with the darach. He yelled for her when the nogitsune stole her away. He had been with her at the ice skating rink, told her not to show off. Had drank the kool aid right beside her after she’d spiked it the night she raised Peter. He’d stuck with her, supported and protected her when she thought she was going crazy. He’d been there through it all, watched it all.
And he found a new her, discovered the woman lurking under the front she put up. Pressed, like a diamond, under all the weight of the circumstances crushing them. Crushing her.
In elementary school, she’d been liked for her lunchbox and clothes, and in middle school her attitude and looks, and here, in front of him, this young lady was becoming a woman. And he felt his love for Rosaline wane. Diminish within him. She had someone else anyway, she had Isaac.
Because, here, beside him, growing into someone with layers, was his Juliet. He just had to reach for her, make her see him there. Like he’d finally seen her.
Stiles wasn’t in his right mind. He spoke with Lydia, forging some different, yet binding, bond. Being shown off to the rest of the world that they would be together. Go through things together. Grow together. That he was Paris and she was his promised bride, like he was 7 or 8 again, boldly stating it to the world.
Scott didn’t really talk to him about it, as they tried to figure out what was wrong with his best friend. Never went out of bounds for his Mercutio. Watched the woman who made everything in him want to smile and talk and unravel her to her core, fall for someone else.
Watched Allison die at the hands of his best friend.
Rosaline slipped out of Romeo’s reach forever and he took to mourning her. Mourning the love lost, the amazing girl gone. Feeling the heartbreak like it was torn out of him. Scott felt like the crushing weight left in his heart was punishment for not loving her enough. Not paying enough attention, not trying harder. Made him lock parts of himself away, to not get hurt.
Stiles had killed her. And he found it hard to find the motivation to get out of bed most mornings, knowing he’d be faced with his actions consequences. They all knew he couldn’t have stopped it, but they were all too emotional to pull together and talk it over. It became taboo to even mention her. It was a dark stain they had to live with.
Stiles met Malia, who was just as damaged as him. Maybe putting her back together would help him put himself back together as well. They tried, and sure it wasn’t perfect but it was working. They were healing. His promised bride was put on the back burner as he tried to put all his pieces back into place.
Kira showed up before Allison died, she was the Rosaline 2.0… but she wasn’t the same Rosaline. Left him aching and feeling guilty and it was a stigma he was working out on the wrong person. He wanted a Rosaline he could not have, and this amazing girl would never be.
Kira deserved better, at any rate. Kira was strong and capable and new to all of this, but she took beautifully to it. She did what she had to and she fought for the McCall pack and she was fierce. She wasn’t Allison, but she made something in Scott feel an indescribable amazement. Maybe not in the same way as with her, but it didn’t change the facts. She would not be just a love interest. Not when she was so much more. More than Scott understood.
But Lydia. She spent more time with Scott. And more time. And more time. And even more time. Pushing her way into his life, despite the obvious problems it raised in their households.
Kira did not take over as Rosaline, thankfully. She had other things, other plans than just being the girl he pined for. He was happy about that, slowly and surely seeing Lydia now next to him. Despite her household, she still stood with him. His Juliet.
He listened to her talk about the things that interested in with rapt attention, even when he didn’t understand. He stared at her like she had been sent from heaven at random times during the day and he never abandoned her. He took the pain so she wouldn’t bear it, be it from a car battery or any guilt she felt. And in turn she anchored him, she depended on him and helped him and she never wavered in her love.
Because calling it any other name, it wouldn’t be as honest. Wouldn’t captivate the truth as good as that word did.
Lydia kissed him one month after he bit his first beta, Liam.
She had been waiting, getting over the guilt of dating her dead best friend’s ex-boyfriend. Getting over the fact that even Stiles, the normal boy she fell back on was putting himself back together. Getting over the fact that she didn’t have to act around Scott, and she could be herself. Nobody mattered but him and the pack they’d built together.
And so she found her Romeo. She had him by her side and she would keep him there for as long as she possibly could.
So what if another big bad came? They had each other. A whole new household, that didn’t care about rivalries or prejudices. Like hell they were going to be stopped after everything they’d been through. Happily ever after’s may not exist, but Scott got the closest thing he could, wrapped up in Lydia’s arms. And she would be lying if she didn’t say the same.