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“I cannot believe they’re moving in together.”
Lydia tips back the bottle of champagne, waiting for the last few measly drops to fall on her tongue before clumsily setting it down and watching it roll away across the hard wood floor.
“It sounded like it was to save money. Malia said Stiles’s dad is still having issues with all kinds of bills,” Kira tries to reach for some explanation to comfort her friend. “I mean, they are going to the same college anyway. It might not be that big of a deal.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure that’s the only reason they’re doing it,” Lydia scoffs and rolls her eyes. “You know Isaac is going there, too. If he was just trying to save money so badly, he could save money and live with Isaac!”
Kira can only shrug her shoulders at that, a pitying expression on her face that makes Lydia’s blood boil and her mouth dry with the craving for more alcohol.
Gracelessly crawling off the floor to her feet, she stumbles her way to her mother’s liquor cabinet in the corner of the living room.
“And I bet the decision to move in together has nothing do with the prospect of having absolutely no adult supervision and 24/7 access to each other’s bodies,” she snarks as she searches for another bottle of champagne.
“Actually, I don’t know if that would be that big of a deal to them.”
“Really?” Lydia immediately stops her search and looks over her shoulder at her friend, hating the way her heart is skips a beat at the hope that there is some trouble in paradise she is unaware of. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, I mean, I think Malia sneaks through his window at least a few nights a week now to sleep in his bed.”
Lydia deflates, turning back to continue her search for alcohol because she needs it now.
“Plus, the sheriff works such long and weird hours that they pretty much have the house to themselves a lot of the time.”
Lydia abandons any thoughts of champagne and instead garbs a bottle of vodka from the front of the cabinet, immediately unscrewing the cap and taking a pull.
“Malia told me a few months ago that there were three weeks in a row that the Sheriff had the night shift so she and Stiles-“
“Kira!” Lydia barks out as she coughs from the rough burn of the alcohol in her throat.
“Right, sorry!” the kitsune quickly apologizes, wincing with regret at putting her foot in her mouth.
Sighing, Lydia takes another gulp from the bottle before shakily making her way across the room again. She tries to resume her position next to her friend on the floor gracefully, but instead ends up falling on her bottom with a thud and sloshing some of the liquid on the ground. She’d probably be drunkenly giggling right now if she wasn’t so pissed off.
“You know,” Kira speaks up hesitantly, “maybe it’s time you tried to get over him.”
“You think I haven’t been?”
Kira shrugs. “Maybe not as much as you think you have. I mean, you’ve gone on a few dates with different guys and you and Parrish were even together for a little awhile. But you know you never really gave him or any of the others a chance.”
Lydia’s eyes glaze over as she listens to Kira, her words hitting way too close to home. She leans back against the wall and continues to sip at the bottle clutched tight in her hand, her heart heavy in her chest.
“You’ve liked Stiles for a really long time but maybe it’s just not meant to work out right now.”
Biting her lip to hold back a sob, Lydia hastily wipes away the few tears that slip out of her green eyes and onto her cheeks. Bitterly she thinks how Kira doesn’t even know the half of it. Nobody does.
All Kira knows is that at the beginning of senior year she caught Lydia mindlessly doodling Lydia Stilinski in her notebook like a fucking seventh grader, leaving the banshee no choice but to admit she liked the spastic human.
Kira has no idea about the way Lydia’s heart pounded so hard in her chest right after she kissed Stiles on that locker room floor that she thought for a few seconds she might have been having a heart attack. Or about how on the night that she was bitten, Stiles was the first person to tell her he saw and liked the real her and to call her out for faking who she is for everybody else. Or about the fact that Stiles used to like her too, a long time ago, before he became one of her best friends and before she realized that she liked him too.
Lydia tips back the bottle and takes a few long gulps and comes up coughing and sputtering. She dimly notices for the first time how the room around her has become a little off balance and her limbs feel tingly and numb.
“Maybe you need to move on.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Lydia demands, her words starting to run together.
“I- I guess I don’t know exactly.”
She lets out a noise that is somewhere between a scoff and a laugh and lets her head fall back against the wall behind her because it is suddenly way too much work to hold it up on her own any longer.
“We can figure it out though,” Kira offers optimistically. “You just need some kind of closure from the situation, you know? Something that signifies it’s the end and you can move on.”
“Closure,” Lydia repeats, letting the words roll around on her tongue. Her mind feels like it’s getting foggier by the second, but something about that word sounds like it’s the solution to all her problems. “Closure. Yes, that’s what I need! Closure!”
Kira grins, “Great!”
“How do I get that?”
The kitsune’s face drops. “Um, I-I’m not sure.”
Lydia scoffs in protest and disbelief as if all hope is lost before taking another sip from the bottle.
“You’re both moving away to college soon,” Kira points out quickly. “That could be closure.”
“Not for another two months! And our schools aren’t even an hour apart so I don’t know how much closure that is. He’s already said something about me riding back with them for Thanksgiving and Christmas next year,” Lydia explains, horrified. “I can’t ride with them back and forth every holiday for the next four years!”
“Okay, okay! I totally get it. That’s why we’re going to figure out how to get you closure, okay?” Kira tries to assure and calm down her increasingly drunk and uncharacteristically hysterical friend. “Now, let’s just think. Closure would make you over him, right?”
“Right.”
“Then all we have to do is figure out what it would take for you to be able to say, ‘I’m over you, Stiles Stilinski,’ and that will be what you need to do.”
“Huh,” Lydia mutters, her mind trying to process how easy those words seem coming out of her friend’s mouth. “I-I’m over you, Stiles S-Stilinski.”
“Right, so what-“
“I’m over you, Stiles Stilinski,” Lydia repeats, her voice gaining strength as the words start to feel powerful on her tongue. “I’m over you, Stiles Stilinski.”
“That’s good, Lydia,” Kira placates, eyeing her friend strangely. “Now let’s just-“
“No, you know what? I can say it now,” Lydia declares confidently. “I’m over you, Stiles Stilinski.”
She finishes her statement with the perfect affect of nonchalance and smiles to herself with pride, feeling for a moment like she’s overcome and accomplished something major in her life. Something about it feels off though; not quite as satisfying as she would like. Lydia looks to Kira, who is giving her a look like she is unsure of what the hell to do next, when it hits her: it’s because she needs to say it to Stiles.
Setting aside the bottle, she doesn’t even bother to try to stand and instead begins to crawl across the floor on her hands and knees toward her purse.
“Lydia?”
She digs through her bag for a moment before pulling out her cell phone in triumph. She turns it on and immediately starts scrolling through her contacts before giggling to herself when she remembers that Stiles is on her speed dial.
“Oh my god, Lydia, no!”
Kira anxiously moves to snatch the phone away from her but Lydia ducks away.
“Hey, this was your idea! This is what I have to do to get closure!”
“No! That’s not what I meant-“
“Shh! It’s ringing.”
“Lydia, hang up the phone!”
At the sound of his voice, Lydia prepares herself to speak before she realizes it’s a recording. “Voicemail.”
Kira sighs in relief. “Oh, thank god.”
“Just waiting for the beep…”
The kitsune’s eyes widen. “Lydia! No-“
Lydia holds a finger to her lips to silence her friend and sits as straight as she can in the middle of the floor, her chin held high.
“Hi, Stiles. It’s Lydia. I just wanted to call and tell you how happy I am that you and Malia are moving in together. I actually have a cousin that is realtor in San Francisco. I can give you his number and he can help you guys find a really nice place.”
“Oh my god…”
“So, you see, since I am so graciously offering to help you find an apartment, I am obviously over you. So I am not going to do this stupid unrequited love thing anymore because I, Lydia Martin, am over you, Stiles Stilinski. And that, my friend, is what they call closure.”
——
Slowly, Lydia’s eyes peak open to the piercing first rays of early morning sunlight shining in her eyes from the gap in the living room curtains.
She frowns, squinting around and realizing that she must have spent the night sleeping on the hard wood floor. There are a couple of empty bottles on the floor nearby and she vaguely remembers that Kira was over last night. The kitsune must have been the one who gave her the blanket currently draped over her and the throw pillow tucked under her head.
There is a pounding at the front door that makes her head throb and she quickly puts together that the knocking must be what woke her up in the first place. She waits a few seconds and rubs her temples but the knocking doesn’t stop. Sighing, she gives in and stumbles to her feet.
“Just a second,” she calls out, running her fingers through her hair and hoping she looks at least halfway decent. The knocking just gets louder and she grits her teeth in annoyance as she finally reaches the door. “I said just a sec-“
She swings open the door to see Stiles standing there, a heavy but unreadable expression on his pale face. She waits a beat for him to launch into rambling about whatever the hell has brought him to her house so early in the morning but when he stays uncharacteristically silent and just studies her with warm, watery eyes, she assumes the worst.
“Stiles, are you alright? Did something-“
“You’re over me?” he suddenly speaks up, sounding so broken and hollow that it makes her heart pound in her chest.
“Wha- Stiles- I…”
Suddenly it all comes screaming back to her. How heartbroken she was after Maila and Stiles told everyone they were going to go spend the weekend in San Francisco looking at apartments. How Kira took her home and stuck around to comfort her, only for her to get beyond trashed and call Stiles to say-
“You’re over me,” he repeats again, but this time it’s not really a question and his lower lip trembles as he speaks.
She’s speechless, frozen under his penetrating gaze as her own vision blurs with barely held together emotion.
“When were-“ he begins shakily, before clearing his throat and starting over. “When were you… under me?”
“Oh my god,” she groans, burying her face in her hands because this cannot be happening right now. Immediately, she turns on her heel and retreats back into her house in a weak attempt to avoid her suddenly suffocating embarrassment.
“Lydia,” he calls out after her and doesn’t hesitate to follow her inside. He finds her in the living room and watches from across the room as she paces by the window, anxiously chewing on her bottom lip. “Lydia, were you- do you…?”
She looks up at him with wide eyes full of a million different emotions and decides the best tactic is to try to avoid his question and explain away her actions. “I’m sorry I called you last night, Stiles. I didn’t mean to. Well, I mean, I guess I did, but I was drunk and-“
“Lydia… please,” her interrupts her, voice breaking and everything about him begging her for the truth.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she hesitantly admits after a few long moments, her voice raspy and low.
“Then start at the beginning,” he softly suggests as he takes a step closer. “Why did you get drunk last night? Because you were completely sober when you left with Kira.”
Lydia sighs to herself because he must know why. She knows what she said on that message and she knows he must have put it all together by now. Part of her expects him to be throwing it all in her face - every other guy she’d ever been with definitely would be. She knows Stiles though, and she knows he is doing his best to try to be patient with her and let her explain herself, which she usually appreciates to no end.
“Because,” she begins but then hesitates and looks into his whiskey eyes for reassurance before finding it in herself to be honest. “Because you’re moving in with Malia.”
“What does that have to do wi-“ Stiles starts only to stop short as the meaning behind her words dawns on him. He can’t help the way his mouth falls open in shock because this all seems so surreal. “You’re jealous?”
Lydia automatically rolls her eyes. “I think I would put it differently.”
“Okay, then how would you put it?”
She shrugs helplessly and looks away again, trying to will away the tears she feels building behind her eyes.
“Please, Lydia, I just-“ he begins, desperation edging his tone until he forces himself to stop. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath to try to steady himself. “I just want to understand, okay? I want to know what you meant by that message. I have to know. God, I’ve been driving around in circles for hours trying to figure it out since the moment I heard it. I was starting to go crazy so I thought I’d just come see you and you’d tell me I heard it wrong. Or maybe… maybe…”
He pauses and studies her, unsure of what to say next and wishing she would fill the maddening silence with something. She remains quiet though, pressing her lips together and hugging her arms to her chest and all of his hopes start to die away too fast for him to handle. He shakes his head to himself and lets out a humorless laugh. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come-“
“Heartbroken,” Lydia suddenly blurts, her soft, raspy voice reverberating in the heavy stillness and shocking both of them. “I- I’m heartbroken that you’re moving in with her.”
Something shifts in his eyes and he breathes her name in that way of his that makes it seem like so much more that just a word; like it means more to him than anything else in the world.
She can’t blink back the tears anymore and they slowly slide down her cheeks but she makes no move to wipe them away and they make no move closer to each other, both of them too scared to break the moment.
Stiles eyes are shining as he anxiously twists his hands in front of him out of habit. When he speaks again, his voice is low and rough and all he can manage is one word, “When?”
Lydia takes a shaky breath and shrugs helplessly. “I’m not sure when it started exactly. I think it was way before I ever realized what was happening. It’s like there were all these little moments that meant more to me than anything but I guess I never really took the time to add them all together.”
He hesitantly takes a few steps closer as she speaks, his gaze fixed on her like she is the only person in the world.
“But I think- I think it might have been the night you disappeared when you were sleep walking. I felt like I would never be okay again if we didn’t find you safe. That was when I realized that I…”
“Lydia,” he breathes in quiet disbelief and awe as he comes to stand in front of her, “that was a year and a half ago.”
“Believe me, I’m aware of that.”
“Then why didn’t you ever say anything?” he questions, helpless frustration edging his tone.
“When would I have been able to say something?” she retorts incredulously. “Right after that was when we found out you were possessed and we had to deal with the Nogitsune and then…” she pauses and looks away, her voice losing all of it’s fire. “Then Allison died.”
Stiles reaches out and touches her wrist on reflex, gently rubbing his thumb across her cool skin to comfort her.
“By the time everything had started to go back to normal, you were dating Malia.”
His fingers halt their movement and he freezes before repeating his girlfriend’s name to himself like a momentarily forgotten concept.
The reminder of his current dating situation breaks the hold his warm, whiskey eyes and his gentle voice has on her and suddenly her cheeks burn bright red at all that she’s admitted to him. She gently shakes off his touch and steps back, crossing her arms over her chest protectively.
“So what?” he questions in desperation as he watches her walls go up. “Now you’re just over me?”
Lydia shrugs and tries to look unaffected but can’t help it when she looks up at him with hopeful eyes. “Are you over me?”
Stiles eyes widen and he hesitates before opening his mouth to answer but nothing comes out except a few half stuttered beginnings of words that mean absolutely nothing.
“You know what, don’t answer that,” she cuts off his stuttering, putting in place a blank facade to conceal the absolute heartbreak she feels. “I know that you’re happy with Malia. That’s why I haven’t said anything this whole time. I want you to be happy. So I’m sorry I just asked you that and I’m sorry I called you last night.”
“Lydia-“
“I needed closure and maybe having it out in the open will be what it takes for me to get it,” she monotonously reasons even though she doesn’t believe a word of the logic at all. “So thank you for listening to me. I just hope this doesn’t ruin our friendship.”
“Of course not. Nothing ever could,” he quickly assures her, looking stricken at the thought. “But I-“
Rushing forward, Lydia cuts him off by abruptly pulling him into a hug, the action surprising both of them. She doesn’t give him time to return it though before she is pulling away and awkwardly patting him on the shoulder.
“Have fun in San Francisco!”
Stiles lets out a noise of protest but can only watch as she turns on her heel and heads up the stairs in a rush, leaving him alone to let himself out and sort out what the hell just happened.
——
Leaning back in the hard, wooden chair, Lydia studies the stars in the clear black night from her front porch. Something about watching the unwavering dots of light in their fixed, predictable patterns had always been comforting to her. Tonight, however, it’s just not doing the trick.
Sighing to herself, she wraps her blanket tighter around her small frame and curls into herself.
She tries not to think of how Stiles is probably getting settled into a hotel room with Malia right about now or how tomorrow the two of them will probably find the perfect apartment to share for the next four years.
Or how she most likely ruined her friendship with Stiles forever by making a careless drunken phone call and then spilling her guts and admitting everything like a delusional idiot.
Blinking rapidly, Lydia refocuses herself on the task at hand: finding all the constellations she knows, which just so happens to be all of them. It’s too difficult though when the stars brighten and blur together, their dim light fragmenting in her unshed tears.
The slam of a car door abruptly cuts through the air and Lydia’s gaze drops from the sky to land on the jeep parked on the street in front of her house and Stiles stepping up onto her lawn.
He quickly crosses the grass, determination pushing him forward as he mentally runs through the gamut of his never ending thoughts on the events of the past 24 hours and tries to force himself to get it together before he reaches her door. He’s already half halfway across the lawn when he gets this overwhelming feeling where he just knows when he looks up, Lydia will be there.
Immediately his eyes lift and find her green eyes glistening in the soft moon and star light. His feet slowly come to a halt and his mind goes blank of all the things he planned to say.
“Stiles?” Lydia breathes as she watches him stop a few feet away, unsure for a second if she is imagining him there or not because he should be far, far away right now.
He swallows drily before blurting, “I didn’t go to San Francisco.”
“Oh,” she breathes, her heart swelling with hope in an instant. “That’s- That’s interesting.”
“No. No, it’s not actually,” Stiles retorts, hands flailing out. “It’s very, very uninteresting. It’s actually the complete opposite of interesting-“
She sighs as her heart sinks. “Alright. I get it, Stiles.”
“You had no right to tell me you ever had feelings for me.”
Her green eyes narrow. “What?”
“I was doing great with Malia before I found out about you!” he bellows in frustration, eyes bright as he steps closer.
“Well I was doing great before this, too,” she answers back, her voice gaining strength under her own mounting frustration. “You think it’s easy for me to see you with her?”
“Well, you should have told me sooner! Or maybe soberly,” he offers with a cruel smirk. “Or better yet, maybe you could have told me on purpose.”
“Stiles-“
“And do you think this has been easy for me? You’ve known for years how I’ve felt about you- the whole time we’ve been friends! Yet I stood by and didn’t say a word while I watched you date asshole kanimas, alpha werewolves, and- and kanimas!”
“Hey, there was only one kanima,” she bites back venomously, “and do you even have a point?”
“The point is I… I don’t need this right now,” he shouts, his voice breaking. “It’s too late! I’m with someone else! This is the plan now and it’s going exactly the way it is supposed to. Malia and I are going to the same college, we’re moving in together, and-“
“And what, Stiles?” Lydia cuts in. “You just put away your feelings or whatever the hell it was you felt for me-”
“Hey, I’ve been doing it since the third grade. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it.”
Anger flares in Lydia’s chest as her heart breaks at his words. “Oh, that’s just great, Stiles. Why don’t you just get the hell out of here and continue on with your little plan then because I don’t need this right now either!”
“Fine.”
“Great,” she glares with a fake smile on her lips.
Stiles scoffs and rolls his eyes at her. “Great.”
Her bottom lip quivers the second he turns away, tears slipping down her cheeks as she watches him stomp across the yard and leave her behind.
She can feel a sob climbing up the back of her throat and can’t bear the thought of him hearing it so she quickly buries her face into her blanket and presses the fabric to her lips. Her shoulders shake and her whole body feels sick with absolute agony, the feeling of losing something with Stiles that she never even had too much to handle.
It’s only after a couple minutes of silently crying that it occurs to her that she hasn’t heard the door to the Jeep slam; never heard the rickety, old engine turn on.
Her eyes dart up and she pulls the blanket fall away from her face. A tiny gasp escapes her at the sight of Stiles standing in the middle of her front lawn, watching her in fascination through warm, watery eyes.
He swallows against the lump in his throat, the first of own tears falling. “Lydia…”
Suddenly she is pushing herself up from her seat, the need to get to him rapidly overwhelming her. She knows he must feel it too because the second she moves, he does too, bounding across the grass toward her.
They meet in the middle. Lydia presses up on her bare tip-toes and Stiles bends his neck to meet her and their lips crash together in a way that would probably be painful if everything about it didn’t feel so unbelievably right.
Lydia’s hands grasp at the front of his plaid shirt, slide up his chest, fingertips glide across his throat, before settling in the shaggy hair on the back of his head.
Their lips move hungrily together, both of them desperate and fighting for more.
Stiles’s fingers dig into the sides of her waist before easing their way to the small of her back to press her closer. He shifts and wraps his arms around her, hugging her tight when he can’t get her close enough. He’ll never be able to get her close enough.
Lydia pulls away first, dizzy from lack of oxygen and so much Stiles. She closes her eyes and tries to memorize everything about the moment while she catches her breath.
He presses his forehead against hers, studying her as her warm breath puffs against his cheek.
“I lied. I’m so sorry but I completely and totally lied,” he quickly admits, his voice shaking. “It’s not too late. I’m not over you. I don’t think I’ll ever be over you.”
Her heart clenches at his words and she blinks her eyes open to look into the warm amber of his gaze.
“I just.. I wasn’t expecting this. Ever,” he continues as he runs his fingers slowly up and down her spine. “I thought we’d always be friends. We’d always be in each other’s lives…”
Lydia can’t help the way her lips curl up at that.
“But any thoughts of anything beyond that, I made myself put aside because I never thought that you would…” he trails off and sighs, closing his eyes.
“Things change, Stiles,” she tells him as she snuggles closer to him, her nose grazing across his cheek.
He sniffles and lets out a small breathless laugh because he can’t believe this is happening. “You’re telling me.”
Her heart flutters at the sound of his laugh and she presses her lips to his, slow and firm.
This time though it’s Stiles’s turn to pull away first, his face falling.
“I have to figure things out. I have to talk to her.”
Lydia nods reluctantly, hands moving to tangle in the front of his plaid shirt. “I know,” she agrees quietly, focusing on the buttons on his shirt as she fidgets with them. “She’s your first girlfriend. Your first love. I understand.”
“You’re my first love.”
Her eyes snap up to his and he’s giving her that look, the one that she’s sure she’s never deserved; the one that makes her forget how breathe. She stands there dumbfounded as he leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead and before she can comprehend what is happening, he is stepping backwards and she’s grasping at nothing but air.
“Stiles…”
“I’ll be back,” he assures her, eyes soft as he backs away.
She watches as he finally turns away and rounds the front of his Jeep. He revs the engine to life and sends her one of the warmest smiles she has ever seen before he takes off, leaving her hugging herself where she stands barefoot in the grass, watching his taillights until they disappear.
-----
Lydia doesn’t think Stiles lied, per se, when he said he would be back but she realizes four days later that maybe she should have made him clarify his timeline a little bit before he left.
Sighing, she trails her fingertips across the spines of the long line of books, too distracted with her thoughts to really find what she is looking for.
The library is practically empty, the beautiful summer day keeping the kids far away. Of course, there’s still a few people around including a moody woman who keeps glaring at her for her clicking heels. After the third time it happens, Lydia doesn’t even try to hide her eye roll before she purposefully stomps her way to the other end of the building.
She winds up in the historical fiction section and resumes her aimless wandering of the shelves. Here and there she picks up a book, skimming the back cover and flipping through the pages until she’s bored with it.
All she can think is that maybe he changed his mind.
What the hell is she going to do if he stays with her?
Slipping another book back into it’s place, her shoulders slump as drifts into the next row of books, eyes still distractedly roaming the titles.
“Hey.”
Jumping at the soft whisper, her eyes dart up to see Stiles leaning back against a shelf, watching her with a soft smirk.
Her heart races at the sight of him, a smile starting to curl her lips instantly. “Hey yourself.”
Pushing himself toward her, he can’t stop grinning as he crowds her against the bookshelf behind her, letting his hands come to rest on the shelf on either side of her shoulders.
“What are you doing at the library on a summer day?” she whispers, gazing up at him and bringing her hands to rest against his chest.
“Why, looking for the only teenager I know who would actually choose to go to the library during the summer at all, of course,” he teases softly, beaming down at her. “Have you seen her? She’s such a nerd.”
She lets out a surprised laugh and drops her jaw in mock offense. “I am not a-"
Stiles cuts her off with a kiss, bending to softly mold his lips to hers and press her against the shelf behind her.
Lydia needs more of him immediately, grabbing the front of his shirt to pull him closer and then winding her hand into his hair when it’s not enough.
Wrapping his arms around her waist, he clutches at the fabric of her dress as he hungrily kisses her, never satisfied that he’s gotten enough. His lips trail from her mouth, across her jaw, to move against her throat.
She grips his hair tighter and has to press her lips together to stop herself from moaning.
The loud sound of someone clearing their throat causes both of them to freeze.
Lydia peeks over first but any embarrassment she might have felt vanishes when she sees that same woman who glared at her earlier now staring them down. “Can I help you with something?”
“I need to put back this book back, so-“
“Oh, I can do that for you,” Lydia offers with a fake smile as she reaches out a hand, still keeping the fingers of her other hand tangled in the back of Stiles’s hair.
The older woman looks scandalized as she huffs and hands over the book.
“You’re welcome,” Lydia calls after her retreating form before dropping the book indiscriminately on the shelf behind her.
It’s then that she notices Stiles’s shoulders are shaking, his breath short and fast as it hits her skin where he’s been hiding his face against her neck. He’s laughing at her.
“Shut up,” she breathes through her sudden smile and nudges his arm.
But it seems he can’t, helplessly starting to chuckle out loud as he finally pulls back to look at her, his cheeks flushed red and his hair a complete mess.
She shushes him even as her own smile grows. A second later, she is suddenly giggling too. It’s infectious. Their laughter quickly becomes uncontainable the more they try to stop it.
Abruptly grabbing her hand, he pulls her after him and leads her rushing through the shelves, past the few scattered patrons, and to the exit as quickly as possible.
The second they burst out of the library doors, they dissolve into laughter, leaning into each other as they stumble through the parking lot.
Their feet come to a stop once they reach the jeep, trying to catch their breath as their laughter slowly fades out. They become completely enraptured by each other as the city sounds surround them in the early afternoon sun.
Stiles leans back against the side of his Jeep, tugging their intertwined hands to pull her to stand in front of him. He brings his other hand up to cup her cheek, running his thumb across her skin as he takes her in.
“So,” she begins softly as she stares into his amber eyes, her smile still lingering on her lips. “Are you mine now?”
His eyes are shining when he nods down at her. “I’m yours.”
Her heart pounds in her chest at the way he’s looking at her and her smile shifts as she grows serious. Slowly and deliberately, she leans up and presses close to him to brush her lips softly against his. She lingers there after the kiss, watching his amber eyes from so close and simply breathing him in.
His fingers tremble against her skin and he takes a shaky breath. “Lydia…”
“I love you,” she whispers against his lips.
He swallows roughly, completely overwhelmed at the unexpected admission. He finds himself at a loss for words, his amber eyes wide and misty as he watches her bring her hand up to cover his against her cheek.
“Stiles, I love you,” she repeats fiercely, needing him to know just how much she means it. “I do, so much, I just…”
When she trails off, he leans forward and closes the couple inches between them.
He’s breathing heavily when he pulls away from the kiss, finally finding his voice. “I love you, too. God, Lydia, I love you.”
“Yeah?” She smiles up at him, eyes glistening because she can’t really believe this is happening.
A grin spreads across his face. “Yeah. Very, very much so.”
Letting out a breathy laugh at him, she reaches out and brushes his hair back from his forehead affectionately. “So then what are we doing for our first date?”
“Our first date?” Stiles repeats back, brow raised as he contemplates the idea. “I don’t know about you, but I could go for some lunch about now.”
“Lunch? Right now?”
“Well, yeah. Otherwise, I guess we could leave here now in our separate cars and I’d come pick you up in a few hours to take you out to some really fancy place for dinner,” he reasons out loud before simply shrugging and pulling her closer. “I’d rather not have to be away from you just yet though.”
Lydia’s heart warms and she presses her lips together, completely in awe of him. She’ll never understand how she was lucky enough for this boy to fall in love with her.
“Is that okay?” Stiles hesitantly asks after she’s silent for a beat too long. “Because if it’s not, I mean, that’s completely fine, you know. Whatever you-“
“Shut up, Stiles.” She rolls her eyes at him affectionately, a soft smile curling her lips. “It’s perfect.”