Archive of Our Own

“What do you want, dude? Hot chocolate?”

“Strawberry frapperino!”

Lydia finds that listening to the normal hustle and bustle of this oft-frequented Starbucks near campus, with its underlying strains of soothing hipster music, is her ideal study-time ambience.

Ambience suddenly interrupted by a small, freckled face slurping on what appears to be a Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino. “Do you know who you look like?” the little face asks, then, without bothering to wait for a reply: “Ariel.”

Before she can properly answer, another voice cuts through, reprimanding the girl gently.

“T, what did we decide about accosting innocent bystanders? Let’s leave the nice lady alo-”

The guy - youngish, around her age - to whom the voice belongs actually does a double take, whole body jolting and eyes blinking forcefully when they land on her face, but he recovers quickly. “Why, hello, Lydia Martin.”

Now it’s her turn to be surprised. “Uhhhh,” she blinks and stutters, inarticulately. What the hell?

He smiles, not unkindly, at her confusion. “You probably don’t remember me… “ he starts, but becomes distracted, turning back to the little girl. “Hey, wash those dirty little paws before you eat your apple,” he instructs, pausing to squirt hand sanitizer into her outstretched hands.

Suddenly, it clicks. The boy in front of her is no longer baby-faced or buzz-cutted or flailing in a Beacon Hills High classroom, but here. In Boston. The last place she would have expected to run into anyone even remotely connected to her previous life. (Which was, in fact, The Plan.)

“Stiles,” she says, squinting slightly at her former classmate when he turns his attention back to her, expression brightening with her recall. “Um, what are you doing here?”

“I go to Northeastern with the rest of the mildly intelligent,” he answers, smiling wickedly for some reason. “Not all of us got into Harvard.”

She’s still processing this turn of events. “Oh.” And, for lack of anything better to say, she adds: “Who are your, um, friends?”

“This is Thea, certified pillow fort architect, cheese stick connoisseur, and dinosaur enthusiast.” He gestures to the sleeping baby strapped to his chest. “And this is Wes. He, ah, enjoys long naps, drinking his milk, and pooping, mostly.”

She’s baffled. Still high-energy, but there’s a confidence, an ease about him. Also, hair. Now he has hair.

He glances at his watch, making a face. “Well, we gotta go, but it was nice running into you. Small world, huh?” Without waiting for a response, he’s throwing a diaper bag over one shoulder, and taking the little girl by one hand, offering a final little wave with the other.

She catches Thea’s small voice as the trio maneuvers towards the exit. “Can we watch The Little Mermaid when we get home?”

“Depends. Are you gonna let me sing Sebastian’s parts this time, or is the ban still in effect?”

Lydia smiles into the palm of her hand, in spite of herself, turning back to her Folklore and Mythology reading.

It happens again several days later.

She’s camped out in her usual spot, a medium sized table in the corner near the restrooms, directly next to an outlet for her laptop. (She swears this particular outlet charges her computer faster than all the others; someday when she’s bored she’s going to conduct an official experiment proving it true.)

“Hey, Lydia.” She looks up, and Stiles waves from the dairy-and-sweetener station, the same two kids in tow. Today, the girl - Thea? - is holding onto a small paper cup, eyes narrowed critically. “Can we call her Ariel, at least?” she asks Stiles, who just laughs.

“What are you reading?” he asks her instead, sidling closer to her table, while adding extra sugar to his own venti-sized coffee.

She stretches, surprised by this repeat run-in, but not finding the interruption entirely unwelcome. “Just some readings on Cajun folklore and witchcraft for my mythology course.”

“Witchcraft, huh? Seems a little lowbrow for Harvard,” he teases.

She adjusts her ponytail, shrugging a little. “Threw it in there for fun, you know, a little break from all the seminars on taking over the world.”

His smile is closed-lipped and kind of crooked, like he’s attempting to hold back a bubble of laughter. “What about the classes on being generally superior to the rest of humanity in every way?”

“Those too,” she affirms, nodding seriously, but also wondering: what on Earth is going on here?

Thea’s been rolling the stroller with the baby in it back and forth while Stiles has been chatting momentarily with Lydia. His eyes suddenly dart upwards, noticing the stroller now careening towards a ten-foot display of ceramic travel mugs and coffee beans, and manages somehow to wrangle both Thea and the wayward stroller in one fluid, elegant sort of motion - clearly not for the first time. “Okay, guys. We’re outta here,” he announces, aiming them in the direction of the entrance.

“Hey,” he adds, turning back to Lydia, thoughtful. “Would you ever, I don’t know, want to grab a beer or something? Reminisce about warm weather? Bemoan the East Coast’s shameful lack of Jamba Juice establishments?” He drops his voice to a whisper, glancing about furtively. “Be able to bash the Celtics without fear of repercussion?”

She doesn’t like reminders of her hometown. She left for a reason - multitudes, actually. Not the least being the sensation of overwhelming claustrophobia, of clutching desperately onto the bars of a cage that was gilded in appearance only.

She certainly doesn’t care to be reminded of the girl she used to be, a paper-doll semblance of her actual self, and certainly not by a boy she never cared to notice, who may have thought he knew her, once.

Not now, after she's managed to slough off the drama and the damage. Not now, after she has rebuilt herself into something sturdier and lighter and true. Not now, when she’s finally free and far, far away.

For the record, she also already has friends. Nice, new, shiny college friends, and plenty of them - she’s not looking to collect any more.

He’s not pushy about it, though, or expectant. His expression is so relaxed, so open - she thinks that’s what does her in.

“Sure, Stiles.”

She blinks. “You’re a nanny,” she realizes. Yeah, gender equality and political correctness and all that, but for some reason, this is hilarious to her in the moment. “A male nanny. A manny.”

“I prefer child care provider, actually, but… yes.” He reaches for another slice of pizza, completely unfazed.

“And how did this happen?”

He shrugs, trying to wrangle wayward strands of cheese into his mouth. “I was making minimum wage at the sandwich shop, right, dealing with whiny college kids and a boss that hated me, totally miserable. Then my friend Alex mentioned that she was making almost twice as much as I was babysitting, and I was like ‘fuck that, I had a pet snake once, I can babysit.’ Besides, my best friend Scott-” he pauses, as if to check for an indication of recognition, she nods, though only having a vague recollection of dimples and floppy dark hair. “He’s studying to be a vet, and is also basically a saint, so I had to try to one-up him somehow.”

“Clearly,” she allows. “And you decided the best way to go about this was by trading whiny college kids for actual whiny children?”

He smiles brightly, reminding her for some reason of sunny elementary school days and popsicle stick crafts and the way Miss Cushing’s classroom always smelled like Elmer’s glue. “Exactly.”

“For a lot more work. Not to mention the added responsibility of keeping them alive.”

He nods. “Yup. But there are perks. Like, chicken nuggets on the regular. And daily discussion about dinosaurs.” Here he pauses, staring at her intently. “Dinosaurs, Lydia. Also, there’s glitter. Lots of glitter. And the playground. Playground automatically wins out over sad, sad sandwiches.”

She shakes her head, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from tilting upwards. “It astounds me that any responsible parent would willingly put their children under your charge.”

“I’m certified in CPR. I have Poison Control programmed into my phone. The number for 911,” he taps the side of his head, grinning. “Right here.”

He comes over, after, to borrow her Little Mermaid blu-ray, after she learns that Thea had watched hers consecutively so many times that the disc had gone to “the great DVD player in the sky,” according to Stiles. He had informed her that of course he immediately ordered a replacement from Amazon, but even with Prime it wouldn’t arrive by the following day.

She considers herself a good person now, or at least one hoping to atone for any residual high school bitchiness. She will now do her part in order to protect Stiles from what would surely be an epic level meltdown when the kid finds out she’s out one favorite movie. That’s what she tells him, at least. (Really, though… it’s The Little Mermaid. She understands. Then she contemplates what it means about her life that she feels spiritually connected to a six year old on a cinematic level.)

Part of her hopes her roommates are out, as being witnessed hanging out with some new guy none of them have ever heard of before will inevitably bring forth a bevy of annoying and invasive questions. A smaller part almost hopes they’re all home, as the Eva/Whitney/Allie trifecta has, over time, become her greatest litmus test.

Eva in particular, is a useful weapon in scaring or pissing off guys (often both) - though generally that’s a screening process reserved for guys she’s actually dating. Whitney can be intellectually snobbish, and will dismiss someone immediately if she deems them unable to keep up, if they proclaim to be Republican, or if they have strong anti-pickle sentiments. And Allie, well… on second thought, Allie’s no help, really, she likes everyone.

The girls manage to behave like semi-normal creatures for the twenty minutes or so that Stiles is actually in the suite, but they pounce the millisecond she’s finished closing the front door behind him.

“Who’s that?” (Whitney)
“He’s cute.” (Allie)
“He’s like, a boy next door. But hot.” (Whitney again.)
“If you don’t want to fuck him, I will.” (Eva. Of course.)

She waves them off. “Oh my god, we went to high school together. We happened to run into each other. No big deal. No deal at all, actually.” She assures them (or perhaps herself) that it's hardly about to become A Thing, or anything at all, really.

Lydia has had three years to perfect her schedule: early morning run along the Charles (barring inclement weather), shower, coffee, class. Retreat to Starbucks for homework and writing papers, the library if she’s studying for exams. Back to the suite to meet up with the girls for dinner, then getting suckered into whatever new show Eva and Allie are binge watching. (Whitney refuses to watch television, she says it turns your brain to mush, and she wants her neurons to remain as fully functioning as possible, at least until she gets accepted to medical school.) Her weekends are for more homework and getting dressed up and going out with her friends, and for lazy Sunday pajama days.

Somehow, Stiles slips into her evenings and her weekends and her afternoons, becoming an everyday fixture. He’s a habit as normal and necessary as brushing her teeth, or falling asleep to Allie’s soft, melodic snores.

After that first night, they fall into spending time together so seamlessly - what starts as an occasional late-night drink when neither of them can stand to study a single moment more, turns into decimating their competition at pub trivia every Tuesday after Stiles gets off work, which leads to all that plus random Saturday mornings spent wandering the Museum of Science, arguing over whether to see the dolphin IMAX or the one about national parks. They text constantly, sending random snaps of all the stupid shit their roommates do and their own weary, suffering expressions. (The first time Lydia met Stiles’ roommate Will, he had a condom stretched over the entirety of his head, which basically sums it up.)

They’re definitely not dating, despite Eva’s lewd remarks and constant insinuations. Instead, they are actually, genuinely - surprisingly, she thinks - friends. She loves her girlfriends beyond all reason, but while she’s almost positive that they would literally kill for her and vice versa, they can also be judgmental (Eva), neurotic (Whitney) and prone to exhausting emotional breakdowns over nonconsequential events (Allie). Her newfound friendship with Stiles is as effortless as breathing - no expectations, no drama. Just ease and banter and beer.

It’s nice, she decides.

If you boiled Lydia Martin down to the purest of her essence, you'd probably be left with two things: red lipstick and a love for learning.

Over the course of the fall semester, she learns a lot about Stiles Stilinski. She learns the day-to-day: that he subsists on an ungodly amount of sugar and caffeine and far too little sleep; that he calls his father every day (and wants to talk to him, which kind of blows her mind); and how walking into his apartment is a bit like entering a war zone, as he and his roommates are constantly trying to prank each other, and booby-traps are copious, though varying in their degrees of success.

She learns the academic, like how Stiles wanted to come to Northeastern to learn from one of the sociology professors who specializes in murder, criminology, and the sociology of hate after seeing him on an episode of Dateline in middle school. (“And he looks just like Einstein, Lydia.”) Stiles’ enthusiasm is evident as he rambles on about going on to consume every one of the professor’s books and subsequent articles, his hero-worship also apparent (and sort of adorable, though she’d sooner eat one of Will’s’ “special” brownies than admit that to anyone’s face).

Obtaining knowledge normally satisfies her, or uplifts her, or makes her feel in control. Regarding his intensity towards his chosen field of study, though, she honestly feels a bit envious - she herself went to Harvard because it’s Harvard and for its convenient location some 3,100 miles away from the town that made her feel like her skin had somehow shrunk in the wash, leaving her feeling tight and itchy and unable to breathe.

She learns that they have a lot in common, mostly regarding things that they hate. They make fun of the tourists who go on the Duck Tours (“Is it a boat or a car?” she poses philosophically, while Stiles shudders. “It’s not normal, is what it is.”), and their Ugg-wearing classmates (“I don’t care if Tom Brady is their spokesmodel,” Stiles scoffs. “Even more reason.”), and their assorted friends and acquaintances who insist on marking every ridiculous dating anniversary (3 months! 6 months!) with an overpriced, overhyped dinner at the Top of the Hub (here, Lydia mimes vomiting into the nearest wastebasket).

Essentially, she learns that they’re both assholes.

She also learns that he’s an asshole who gets hit on, gets hit on a lot.

Lydia’s mouth is still hanging open by the time they’re seated in the bar and have received their appetizer. “The mom has a thing for you.”

Stiles continues his rapid fire intake of the poutine they’re supposedly sharing. “Oh, she does not.”

Lydia levels him with an incredulous glare but he’s not even looking her way, instead inspecting a particularly cheese-laden french fry, unperturbed.

She shakes her head. This is ridiculous. “How do you do it?” she demands. “First the girl at the gym, then there was that checker at the grocery store-”

He squints at her. “I’m pretty sure she was passing judgment on the state of my life, considering I was purchasing aerosolized cheese and lunchables.”

She ignores this. “And now the woman - the married woman, I’m sorry - who currently employs you wants to do you. Jesus, did you even have a girlfriend in high school?”

He’s staring at her now, looking like she’s lost her damn mind. “Like you should talk,” he retorts, waving a fry he has speared through his fork accusatorily in her direction. “You actually take people’s breath away when you walk into a room.”

She’s attractive and all, but this sounds like a possible exaggeration. “People?” she asks, her doubt apparent.

He nods emphatically, still waving that goddamn french fry around.

“Give me actual instances.”

He thinks for a moment, finally popping the fry in his mouth, nodding to himself as he finishes chewing. “Okay. Last Tuesday, at trivia. The bartender was so struck by your beauty that she couldn’t speak right away.”

“To be fair, I’m not sure that English was her first language. Try again.”

“The first time you came over to the apartment, you bent down to pick something up and Paul choked so hard on his nachos, he actually threw up.”

“Paul is a fucking moron. Why do you even live with him, again?”

“Me and him and Will were randomly assigned as roommates freshman year, and then trying to find new friends just seemed like too much work?”

“So you’re all morons, then.” She says it playfully, though, the way they frame all of their incessant back-and-forth teasing.

He’s looking at her, eyes crinkled in amusement, like he’s delighted. Like there’s nothing in this world that makes him happier than her insulting both his personality and also his choice of friends. She feels a warmth fill her stomach that probably has nothing at all to do with the alcohol she has been drinking and everything to do with the boy in the god-awful flannel shirt sitting on the bar stool beside her.

“Evidently,” he muses, shaking his head and reaching for his beer, eyes never leaving hers.

There’s an easiness between them, a soothing level of comfort, as though they’ve been friends for longer than a fistful of months. Inside jokes and other shorthand dot their conversations, which begin via text alongside 8am classes and first coffees of the day and don’t trail off until after the pounding bass belonging to Lydia’s party-obsessed upstairs neighbors has long since faded away. It’s evident in the way their ankles tangle together when they’re watching their way through The X-Files, or the way Lydia sometimes falls asleep, head resting against his arm on late-night train rides home.

There are other moments, though. Like when she sometimes catches him looking at her, eyes so soft and lips parted slightly, like he’s witnessing something miraculous, instead of watching her doing something completely mundane, like painting her toenails or matching her socks.

Or the time she gets to his apartment early and Paul lets her in, saying that Stiles is still in the shower. She waits in his room, busily criticizing the reading materials on his bookshelf (true crime, true crime, more true crime and Stephen King), when he waltzes in, unaware. His towel is wrapped low on his hips, treating her to a display of damp, mole-splattered skin. He yelps, not expecting her - which is kind of hilarious. Less hilarious is the image of the hair leading from his belly button south that she swears she can feel being encrypted by her hippocampus and saved, tucked away for safekeeping in her frontal lobe somewhere.

For the first time in her life, she curses science.

Fuck.

She treks over to his apartment one weekday night during peak commuter traffic, under the completely reasonable assumption that they’d be picking up their X-Files rewatch, because they had left off with Mulder being on his deathbed and Scully in mortal peril. Stiles waits until she’s in his kitchen, boots off, when he springs on her that what they’re actually going to watch is an updated documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Needless to say, she’s less than thrilled.

“It’s history, Lydia! You love history. You’re taking that American History class strictly for fun.”

“It’s Gangsters, Spies and Revolutionaries,” she murmurs, lips pursed in annoyance. “The class focuses on the seedy underbelly of US power, and it’s fascinating.” She almost has him distracted at “seedy underbelly,” but he’s particularly determined today, physically steering her towards the living room.

“This is literally your homework,” she protests, but sits on the couch anyway, grabbing the Beacon Hills lacrosse fleece blanket from its spot, neatly folded on the back of the faded couch. “Is this clean?” she asks, suspiciously.

“Of course it is, I did laundry yesterday,” he says, lighting a vanilla candle on the counter, ostensibly to mask the odor of college aged males and fast food, which is appreciated. “And okay, maybe it is part of an assignment - not that I wouldn’t watch it anyway - but c’mon,” he waggles his eyebrows at her. “I’ll make you popcorn?”

She contemplates leaving to prove her point, but she’s made it all the way over to the boys’ apartment, her butt has already made contact with the couch cushion, and she is only just now starting to get warm. “Throw some alcohol in there and you’ve got a deal,” she surrenders, rolling her eyes. (For emphasis. He deserves it.)

Stiles manages to locate some truly terrible cheap white wine, which he ends up serving in Despicable Me themed plastic juice glasses.

“What?” he asks, noting her expression. “Thea picked them out for my birthday last year.” He smiles proudly. “Aren't they great? Who doesn’t love Minions?”

She treats this as a rhetorical question.

He offers her a crazy straw, too, and she shuts that down quickly, terrified because she’s nearly certain that he’s not kidding. They sell normal wine glasses at like, the dollar store. She makes a mental note to get him some for Christmas.

The documentary airs shortly thereafter, intriguing enough to hold her interest, but bleak and infuriating and irrefutably depressing. It's almost puzzling, she thinks, his rabid fascination for the disturbing - she's so used to him buzzing from a surplus of caffeine, or laughing drunkenly and open-mouthed, or with his eyes alight with childish whimsy from playing with Thea and Wes.

He’s leaning forward, eyes rapt, and she’s struck by a startling zap of jealousy. He’s so consumed by his chosen field of study, so 110% into taking care of Thea and Wes, even. Her concentration in Molecular and Cellular Biology, while compelling, does not exactly fill her with the same sense of intense purpose.

Since they’ve become friends, the occasional snippet from their childhood will reemerge, floating to the surface, but faded, like underdeveloped film. Their red rover team winning the field day final in first grade. Star Wars themed birthday cupcakes. Their third grade class making cards after his mother passed away.

(His fervor for unraveling mysteries, for finding reason and answers in the midst of chaos and death makes more sense, after that.)

He’s shuffling through a stack of books near his desk, back turned to her, trying to locate “the quintessential Ted Bundy book” that he had been insisting for weeks that she read.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to not immediately notice the giant bulletin board on his bedroom wall - overtaking the entire wall, pretty much - which is now covered in a dizzying array of haphazard notes, photos, and articles with multi-colored scribbles in the margins.

She raises her eyebrows. “It looks like Wikipedia threw up on your Murder Board.”

Pausing in his efforts to turn back towards her, he glances up, then shrugs apologetically. “My research for my Psychology of Crime project.”

“You’ve seen far too many crime procedurals,” she informs him conversationally from her perch sitting cross-legged on his (neatly) made bed.

Will happens to be passing by the open doorway. “He’s either gonna be the groundbreaking profiler of our generation, or a serial killer himself, there is no in between,” he calls out, shaking his head back and forth, the picture of faux concern.

Stiles flips him off good-naturedly, and Will continues down the dim-lit hallway of the apartment, his laughter echoing.

“Do you ever think about the astonishing number of murders that take place in California?” Stiles asks.

“Um, no.”

“It's literally insane. California has the 4th most out of the whole country.”

“It’s a big state, Stiles.”

“It's a literal beacon for serial killers, Lydia.”

“You are morbid. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“That’s what the ‘M’ stands for, actually.”

“You remember that we went to school together for thirteen years, right? I have it on good authority that that’s not it.”

“Yeah, but so much easier to pronounce,” he answers automatically, finally holding up a battered paperback triumphantly. He tosses it towards her, looking pensive, too lost in thought to put much mental effort into his aim, as evidenced by the way she just barely catches onto it with the tips of her fingers.

He continues. “Thinking about this stuff all the time might be morbid, but there’s so much... darkness out there, you know? Even if it messes me up, I’m curious. It’s better to know than to... not. I want to know. I want to help.”

“So, what do you want to do, exactly?” She suspects he would - or could - never go the beat cop route. “Like, the FBI or something?” she could see that, at least in an image-culled-from-television sort of way: Stiles, eschewing all dress codes like the spunky lead, radiating with sarcasm and fueled by caffeine and a need for justice.

“Nah, too late for that, I’ve already smoked pot; they’ll never take me now.”

“Tsk. That was poor planning.”

“I don’t think I’d do well with all the rule-following and stringent expectations, to be honest. It’s probably for the best.”

“Mmm,” she murmurs in agreement, nodding her head. “Probably.”

Four other words replay busily in her head, over and over again, an aching sentiment as familiar as her own name, or the sound of his voice.

I want to help.

“Okay, Class Genius, Best Dressed, Best Hair… I feel like I’m forgetting one.” Stiles stares up at the ceiling of the girls’ living room, as if expecting all of Lydia’s senior superlatives to be painted there, perhaps in some kind of code.

On second thought, he would love that, actually.

“Um,” Lydia thinks back. “Best Eyes” was the fourth, but she’s desperate for this awkward avenue of conversation to come to an immediate end.

“That’s right!” Allie exclaims. “You guys knew each other in high school?”

“Well, no,” she hesitates, unsure how to quantify twelve years - thirteen, if you count kindergarten - of peripheral classmate-ship, while really having nothing to do with one another.

“We didn't exactly run in the same circles,” Stiles explains with a wry smile, now wriggling out of his plaid overshirt. “I tended to associate with the, ah, more socially downtrodden.”

Lydia averts her eyes from his newly revealed arms. (Eva, on the other hand, unabashedly ogles his biceps like they’re her favorite gourmet donut, the maple walnut one from the bakery down the street.) “Stiles was sort of the class clown type,” she says, scrambling for something to offer up. “Especially in middle school. Lucky for us, he grew up.”

Stiles glances down at the assortment of Barbie stickers, presumably courtesy of Thea, scattered across his t-shirt. “Not enough, apparently.”

“What else?” Whitney asks, rabidly curious. “She said everyone was surprised when they announced valedictorian, that must have been hilarious, it sounds like something out of a teen rom com.”

“People were surprised?” he snorts, looking at Lydia. “Please. In elementary school, the rest of us were barely getting through the Cat and the Hat and you were reading Little Women, that book was bigger than my lunchbox.”

A prickle of embarrassment ticks across her chest, brought on by the strange sensation of someone, a recent addition to her life, a former stranger, seeming to know her so intimately. Her own boyfriend at the time had been befuddled.

“Oh my god,” Stiles groans. “Do you remember what a raging bitch Mr. Harris was?”

Alternatively, it’s kind of nice to have someone who understands.

Shortly into their commiserating over the epic horror that was chemistry class, (“I can’t believe you went on to major in science,” Stiles shudders. “I start breaking into a cold sweat at the mere sight of a Bunsen burner.”) Eva, Whitney, and Allie start preparing to head out, having decided earlier that the Halloween season would not be complete without a haunted trolley tour, something about visiting the city’s oldest, most supposedly haunted cemeteries.

Stiles perks up at the mention of an even remotely death or supernatural or mystery related activity. “You didn’t want to go?”

She shakes her head. “Graveyards give me headaches. They always have.”

“Hmm,” he muses, cocking his head to the side, looking for all the world like an overgrown, over-caffeinated puppy. “More candy for us, then.”

With the suite to themselves, they sprawl out to watch their show, only once getting sidetracked to have an impromptu competition of tossing Skittles into each other’s mouths from opposite ends of the couch.

“You have the unfair advantage of a naturally huge mouth,” she mock-complains, dragging the bowl of candy to the side of the coffee table nearest her. “Besides, your aim is deplorable.”

He sticks a rainbow-hued tongue at her, and they fall into comfortable silence, at least until Lydia snorts in response to a derisive Scully comment that was decidedly on-point, causing Stiles to throw his arms upwards in a sort of indication of victory.

“So you are a mere mortal. Nice to have proof, finally.”

“Why are you nice to me?” she asks, a sudden outburst. She’s been wondering for a long time. She’s Lydia Martin, one hallmark of her entire personality is that she needs to know.

He rolls onto his side, looking at her quizzically.

“I was terrible in high school.”

“Not to me, particularly.”

“Because I didn’t speak to you.”

He shrugs. “High school was a battlefield,” he says. “It doesn’t count. Besides, you calmed down a lot by senior year. I think you might have even smiled at me once.”

He ducks his head, unable to avoid the throw pillow that hits him squarely in the stomach, but she smiles, feeling reassured.

“You were probably mistaken.”

He shrugs again, entirely unworried.

“You’re here now.”

Whether Stiles takes the kiddos to the playground near the McCoy’s townhouse, or runs errands, or is out in public with them in any capacity, he’s constantly being paid attention from girls and other nannies and moms and the occasional guy who think “it’s so cute” that he’s caring for children, etcetera.

“Are they yours?” he gets, constantly. And, “You must be the big brother, right?”

It gets worse when he discloses the truth. “You’re a nanny?!” they exclaim, eyes and ovaries lighting up.

Lydia assumes the accounts are at least slightly exaggerated for improved comedic effect, until she finds herself roped into such a playground visit one unseasonably warm, sunny November day, able to witness the spectacle for herself.

Shortly after their little group’s arrival, a pretty blonde approaches, smiling hugely. Stiles shuffles awkwardly, kicking up sand and distant memories of when they were the small ones. (Missing front teeth. Sparkly red shoes. Double dutch at recess. Scott McCall’s pet frog at Show and Tell.)

Lydia edges closer to the play area, waving at Thea and pretending to be enthralled by her monkey bar tricks instead of by the interaction taking place several feet to her left.

The girl and Stiles make clumsy small talk about school, and the girl makes far too many mentions about her dog. At one point, Lydia overhears the girl remark about how Stiles hasn’t called her, causing Lydia to startle.

She’s not sure why - he’s funny and tall and moderately attractive. In spite of his infatuation with both true crime and Star Wars, he’s bound to date.

She takes note that the blonde is careful to be playful instead of plaintive, which almost makes her feel for the girl. She attempts an honest effort at sympathy, instead of on the twisting in her gut.

The coil in her stomach lessens somewhat when he answers - rambling and a bit mumbly, offering excuses of not having much free time and school and work. He’s using his polite voice, the benign and foreign one reserved for professors or strangers and thankfully never for her.

Pettiness, or perhaps a smug superiority, rolls over her, dragging some of the dread in her throat with it as it ebbs away. He has time to binge watch The X-Files with me, and go to pub trivia with me, and sneak into my dining hall so he can see how much it looks like Hogwarts with me.

Interesting, she thinks to herself.

She’s not sure about these feelings or these thoughts - what to make of them, least of all what to do with them.

She does nothing, just pushes them aside, tamps them down in the mental box labeled “Stiles: Unsolved.”

Later, though, she does ask him, and subtly, about his apparent lack of interest. Because they’re friends, right?

His answer is vague and slightly infuriating. “They don’t know me, and I don’t know them.”

“Well, until a few months ago, you didn’t know me, either, and I’m pretty sure you spend more time with me than anyone else over the age of six. ”

“Eh, I knew enough. Don’t forget, I’ve known you since you were bringing your My Little Pony backpack to school every day. You knew me when I had no front teeth. Some things transcend.”

He grins. “Besides, between you and Thea, I have my hands full.”

As the end of fall semester draws nearer to a close, the days get darker earlier and the temperatures plummet. Lydia and Stiles should be studying for finals. So naturally, they go Christmas shopping instead.

Lydia picks out earrings and perfume for her mother, and flounders when it comes to something for her father.

“What does he like?” Stiles asks.

“Good question,” she mutters. “Golf? Expensive gin? His new family?”

She settles on an obligatory gift card.

They move onto the toy store, spending literal hours trying to find the perfect gift for Thea.

“What about this?” Lydia holds up an architectural Lego set, a replica of the Capitol building.

Stiles glances at the box, unable to keep his features from quirking in amusement: over a thousand pieces, recommended for ages 12+.

At his expression, she huffs. “What? She loves legos. And it’s educational.”

He jabs her teasingly in the side with the foam pirate sword he’s been carrying around since aisle two. (She’s not sure who’s going to have more fun after the gifts have been opened: Stiles or Thea. It’s a toss up, at best.)

“Fair. Throw it in the cart, Martin.”

They’re headed toward the checkout when Lydia stops dead in her tracks, the soles of her wedge booties squeaking against the rubber flooring.

“Lydia, are you-” Stiles trails off when his gaze follows hers.

It’s a dollhouse, large and wooden and slightly vintage, done up in pastels and tiny perfect detail, a marked contrast from the plastic-y, commercialized others grouped around it.

His head is tilted curiously, assessing her facial expression and body language, always taking measure.

She presses her lips together. “I had a dollhouse at my grandmother’s house,” she explains, swallowing down sudden emotion. “God, I loved that dollhouse.”

“Your Grandma Lorraine?” he asks, quietly and with understanding.

She nods, eyes brimming with unwanted moisture and heart filled with nostalgia. She had loved that dollhouse, until her younger self became more engrossed with pretending for real - directing the narrative of her actual life, the stories and intrigue of middle school, with influencing and maneuvering flesh and blood people.

“I don’t -,” she starts, furrowing her brow. “God, I don’t even remember what happened to that dollhouse. Put out on the curb as part of my mother’s post-divorce purification process, most likely.”

His hand slips into hers. They stand there for a moment, allowing Lydia to wallow before she tugs him away. He starts into a long-winded story about going fishing with his mom - he never talks about his mom, not ever - and she suspects he’s doing it on purpose, in solidarity, but it’s a welcome distraction; it helps.

Her mother comes to visit her the weekend before finals start, despite Lydia’s already having told her mother that she needed to stick to her study schedule. She dutifully carves out time out of daughterly obligation - they get manicures and lunch on Newbury Street on Saturday, then do some shopping at the Pru. Lydia picks out a new wool winter coat, and Coach booties with a stacked heel (much more practical for the brick and cobblestone sidewalks, especially in winter). On their way out, they drool over a gorgeous Givenchy bag that she’s almost positive she can convince her father to pay for. (News flash: he does. Lydia and the guilt card: infinite victory, Mr. Martin’s credit card: 0)

She exchanges gifts with her suitemates before they go their separate ways for break. From Eva, she receives a Victoria’s Secret gift card (“Don’t spend it on anything lame, like yoga pants.”) She unwraps a box of homemade fudge, and mittens and a hat intricately knit from heathered green yarn (“Because redheads look bomb in green.”) from Allie. Whitney gives her a beautiful hardcover anatomy coffee table book, and designer candles.

“Why did Lydia get candles and I only got poo pourri?” Eva inquires, suspicion drawn over her pretty features.

Whitney is unapologetic. “Because I trust Lydia not to burn the building down, and you probably should see a gastroenterologist.”

Her favorite gift comes from Stiles, despite his having wrapped the package like a five year-old in the throes of an epileptic fit. He thrusts it into her hands as he’s getting ready to leave her suite the night before she’s due to fly home - he still has a handful of finals left before he returns to Beacon Hills, and by then, she and her mother will already have left for Jamaica, continuing their fourth annual evasion of the holidays.

Their big house mocks them with its emptiness when it’s just the two of them alone, and Lydia’s past caring enough to spin excuses about not spending time with her father and his new family in Sausalito. Watching her father interact with her new stepmother and little half-siblings, who for all intents and purposes, are utter strangers sharing half her DNA? There wasn’t enough wine in the world, thanks. Pass.

“Promise not to open it until you get home?” Stiles asks, sheepishly. The box in her arms is large, considerably weighty, and will be a bitch to get onto the plane, but she promises, curving her pinky around his when he insists, a solemn vow.

The package takes up most of her carry-on, and thankfully falls within TSA regulation. All the hassle is worth it when she finally makes it home, to her childhood bedroom, which had long ago stopped feeling like a safe haven, becoming more of a foreign land the longer she stayed away.

Under the gaudy wrapping paper (multicolored dinosaurs wearing tiny santa hats - selected by or for Thea, no doubt), he’s given her the Ravenclaw-themed collector’s edition of Harry Potter books. Scribbled inside is the note: “For the smartest person I know. And because I’m still not convinced that Harvard isn’t Hogwarts in disguise.”

The gift is extravagant and immensely sweet, not to mention astonishingly meaningful. Guiltily, she thinks of the video game and Star Wars socks and wine glasses she had given him. Granted, she had splurged for Crate and Barrel, and he had seemed to love her gifts, had immediately pulled the socks onto his feet, even.

But. Her own mother would default to getting her gift cards if she didn’t pick out what she actually wanted in advance - left to her own devices, Natalie would be well-intentioned, but clueless. Stiles being able to select the absolute perfect gift with what she highly suspected was no guidance whatsoever fills her with uncharacteristic tenderness, a sense of longing so profound she could taste it: like her favorite sleepytime tea lingering on her tastebuds.

It takes a bit of digging, when she should be packing for their trip, or at least completing her nighttime skincare routine, but she manages to unearth all of the yearbooks from her early school years, finding them in a box in the back of her walk-in closet. She flips through the elementary school one eagerly, and without reservation about why.

Fourth grade Stiles is apple-cheeked, gap-toothed and grinning. She spots the note, “H.A.G.S. (Have a great summer!)” scrawled above his name, his handwriting childish and barely recognizable. Eighth grade Stiles is buzz-cutted and surly, with a forced smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. (She sort of wants to hug eighth-grade-Stiles.) There’s no message or signature from him that she can see - only from those who would have been considered top tier, socially. She rolls her eyes at eighth-grade-Lydia.

She flips more carefully through their high school yearbook, finding him in the background of the lacrosse team photo, and several candids, including tiny versions of he and Scott McCall, wearing identical popsicle-stained grins and construction paper hats, as well as a teenaged edition, with ridiculous backwards baseball caps, Stiles’ face captured mid-laugh. She brushes her index finger over the photograph tenderly, her own lips tilting into a smile of their own accord.

Penned messily into a cramped space along the binding of the back cover, she finds it:

She rereads the message over and over again, until her eyes go unfocused, well past the point of starting to burn with the need for sleep.

That night, she falls asleep surrounded by yearbooks, the BHHS Cyclone cracked open, one pink-polished finger still marking the page.

Originally, Lydia’s vision of living in Massachusetts extended about as far as the Harvard brochures covered - her mental images included the brick buildings, cobblestone streets, rich history, culture, classes taught by world-renowned professors. Luckily, the accent, for the most part, isn’t nearly as pronounced as the movies would lead one to believe. Unluckily, the vast majority of the greater Boston area turned out to be fanatic about their sports teams - not only limited to the Red Sox and the Patriots, either - even the college sports are ridiculous and all-encompassing.

College hockey, for one. Each winter, Boston-area college hockey culminates in the Beanpot, a tournament between Harvard, Boston College, Boston University, and Northeastern, an event that Lydia had, in previous years, been able to mostly disregard.

A feat seemingly more difficult, if not downright impossible, this year, thanks to a certain sarcastic, carer-of-small-children-slash-student. The McCoys had given Stiles tickets, and he brought Will to the first day of the tournament. For the final game, however, Northeastern and Harvard would be facing off, a fact that delighted him to no end, and also caused him to believe that only Lydia should accompany him.

His enthusiasm not affected in the least by her lack thereof, he continues to plead with her the night before. “Lydia. C’mon. You’ve gotta come.”

“Sit in the cold for hours, freezing my ass off in the middle of February, watching a sport in which I have no interest? Hm, no thanks.”

“But you’ll have my sparkling personality. And there will be beer!” In response to the face she makes, he changes tactics. “Where’s your school spirit?!”

“At home, with my fuzzy socks and you know, heat, and actual interesting things to do?”

He stills, eyes sparking. She can hear his brain whizzing with an idea. “What if we made the game more interesting, then?”

With Whitney mediating, they outline the terms of the bet: If Northeastern wins, Lydia has to draw something for Stiles. Ever since she had let slip how much she loved her junior year art elective, he had been obsessed, wanting to see her work.

(“A nude portrait, right?” Eva prods. Lydia ignores her.)

If Harvard wins, Stiles has to bake something for Lydia.

(“Pot brownies?” Eva asks. Stiles winks.)

Eva rolls her eyes at the two of them, complaining the whole while about how lame they are, but Lydia’s competitive nature is engaged enough to even marginally care about the outcome of a game.

That’s what gets her there.

Surprisingly, being bribed into attending a sporting event turns out to be less heinous than she had imagined. It’s kind of nice, actually, with Stiles’ hand on her back, guiding her throughout the crowds. He fetches her hot chocolates throughout the game. It almost feels eerily date-like, aside from the rest of their interactions being completely baseline. Quips. Banter. Her mocking his fashion sense or lack thereof. A discourse on Canada being a generally superior country in most regards, but what’s with the Tim Horton’s mania? A slight segue into an analysis of Barenaked Ladies lyrics. (“One Week: the underappreciated opus of a generation.”) Same old, same old.

After one evidently thrilling goal, he grabs her mittened hand in his larger bare one, squeezing tightly and cheering. He hollers and grins at the scoreboard like an idiot, but her eyes fall onto their entwined hands, and suddenly it’s not just the hot cocoa making her feel warm all over.

And then, the upset: Northeastern wins, Harvard loses.

(Him releasing her hand, so nonchalant, feels like a much larger loss.)

Stiles is a surprisingly good sport about it, gloating only minimally, and she considers pushing him in front of an oncoming train a mere one and maybe a half times. She fully admits that she herself would have been monumentally more insufferable, especially since a sporting event day inevitably means bodies packed onto public transportation, and few things make Lydia as cranky as too little personal space. (See also: her father, teachers who refuse to admit when they’re wrong, and wearing clothing someone else has picked out for her.)

Due to the overwhelming crowd, she ends up pressed flush against him, one of his arms bracing her against his chest, holding her firmly in place when the car stutters to an abrupt stop, or jerks forward, on the move again. She’s glad not to be facing him, glad to be able to attribute the flush in her cheeks to the temperature in the train car being akin to what one might find in the second circle of hell.

The first time he leans down to whisper a sardonic observation regarding a fellow passenger into her ear, his breath puffs over her skin, eliciting a shiver that startles her. She hopes, furiously, that he cannot feel the thumping of her traitorous heart - the sweater she’s wearing is thin, and she had foolishly chosen to carry her woolen coat.

They’ve almost reached their stop when he leans down again.

“You okay?”

She wants to hold on tighter.

She wants to push him away.

She wants.

She pulls out her drawing supplies one afternoon, sprawled on her stomach across her bed, sketching his face from memory. She doesn’t notice Whitney, the only stealthy one, until she’s already leaning over her shoulder. “Oh, honey,” she says, patting Lydia’s hair.

She doesn’t give him the original drawing, obviously. Instead, she draws her favorite tree in the quad. It’s not particularly striking, the branches gnarled and reminiscent of a scene from a Grimm fairy tale. Something about it soothes her at her edges, makes her think of home and trust and promises. She just likes it.

She feels too embarrassed to present it to him in any official way, so she just slips it into his bag one day when they’re out getting coffee.

He never says anything about it, she wonders if he even found it, at first.

The next time she’s over at his apartment, she notices her drawing, in a frame, residing on his desk.

She doesn’t say anything, merely ignores the softness that washes over her, defies the flush that sweeps across her cheeks.

She’s surprised when her phone trills early one Saturday afternoon, the display lighting up with her contact photo for Stiles, face covered in Thea’s play makeup, sparkly barrettes sticking out of his hair haphazardly. He had gone with his roommates to Vermont for an ill-advised ski weekend, which should have begun, oh, about four hours ago.

Stiles: you’re studying, aren’t you?
Stiles: lydia
Stiles: it’s saturday
Stiles: STOP STUDYING

Lydia: This is earlier than I even anticipated. Did you even make it down the mountain?

Stiles: once, sort of

Lydia: Oh, no. What did you do?

Stiles: let’s just say both a loss of balance and gravity were involved. lots of gravity
Stiles: also becoming a human snowball like in the cartoons
Stiles: i think i took out an entire family
Stiles: definitely several small children

Lydia: Did you happen to get it on video? And can I add that to your Care.com profile?

Stiles: i may have broken will’s phone, too, so no
Stiles: but sure. add it to my tinder account, while you’re at it
Stiles: LYDIA I’M JOKING

She knows; he doesn’t have a Tinder account, she’s checked.

Lydia: Where are you now? Are you okay?

Stiles: aside from the wreckage that was my dignity. but i played it up and managed to escape.

The next message is that of an almost-consumed plate of nachos, and a beer. The background’s blurry, but it looks like a bar of some sort, the base lodge, she assumes.

Lydia: You had dignity left?

They go back and forth the rest of the night, sending texts and snaps and so on. Stiles commentates some college basketball game that’s playing at the bar (which makes her laugh several times, despite not knowing or giving two shits about the sport - sorry-not-sorry, Massachusetts). She summarizes her art history paper for him (and he not only seems to follow, but asks several surprisingly insightful questions). They’re still texting later that night when she’s snuggled in her bed, only halfheartedly watching old episodes of Downton Abbey on her laptop. She takes a selfie, meaning to capture the disdainful expression and mid eye-roll she’s going for in response to his whining about how he’s alone in the condo, and his friends haven’t come back yet and he’s lonely.

It just so happens that she hasn’t washed her makeup off yet, and it’s pure coincidence that she’s wearing just a cami to bed, along with her favorite push-up bra that makes her cleavage look spectacular. And of course she uses the most flattering filter, because that’s the point, isn’t it?

She doesn’t think anything of it, until there’s no immediate response from Stiles, which is... unusual.
Minutes go by, and still nothing.

She starts to panic over the course of the next 24 minutes, not that she - okay, she totally counts.

He finally answers with a selfie of his own and a caption about her lack of sympathy to his plight. (“I’m *injured*, Lydia. Jeez.”) At first, she credits the slight flush to his cheeks on a trick of the lighting, or her overeager imagination. But there’s something off about his expression, too, like he’s trying to appear normal, but there’s a hint of... bashfulness, maybe, layered under his features.

Oh, she - wonders?

Realizes?

Suspects. Strongly.

OH.

An icy thrill drops down her spine, followed by a spread of warmth, rising from her toes. She imagines it, Stiles wrapping one hand around himself, stroking slowly. Looking at her picture as he speeds up his movements. Biting his lip, thinking about her. Muttering her name as he groans, spilling to a climax. Picking up his phone again, after, sweaty and sated, to continue their conversation.

Her heart hammers in her chest, and she feels feverish, far too hot all of a sudden. She tries to swallow and her mouth is noticeably dry. Oh, fuck.

She wriggles out of her leggings, tossing them unceremoniously on the floor. She slides her hand between her legs, thankful that Allie was home in the suburbs for the weekend, leaving Lydia alone in their shared bedroom. She’s breathless and desperate, the need to get off so overwhelming she considers grabbing her vibrator, almost not caring about the inevitability of Eva overhearing the telltale buzzing through the thinness of the wall.

(Almost.)

Instead, she slides her hand beneath the band of her underwear, opening herself on her fingers, wishing for more, wishing for him. She imagines his long fingers thrusting inside of her, circling her clit. She’s panting and needy and fine, so she thinks about her closest guy friend in an occasionally sexual way. Right now, she doesn’t even care what that might mean, concerned only with the orgasm that she is scrambling towards.

When she gets there, it’s the kind of climax that whitens your vision, convulsing on a seemingly endless crest of pleasure, on and on and on.

When she gets there, she’s still thinking about moles and messy hair and an adorably upturned nose between her thighs.

“Lydia? Can you do a fishtail braid like last time?”

“Sure,” she acquiesces, dragging the brush through Thea’s fine brown hair. Kids are mercurial and perplexing at best, but braiding hair remains straightforward, simple instruction and application. Even she and her own mother had bonded over hair in their day.

Fishtail braids are easy enough, just time-consuming. Lydia patiently crosses tiny sections of hair, pulling the rest of the braid taut after each motion to keep the already woven section in place.

Less patiently, Thea wiggles in her chair.

“Lydia?”

“Yes?”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Taken by surprise, Lydia’s fingers still, mouth opening to respond, but - nothing.

“Stiles is gonna find the bad guys,” Thea continues, speaking conspiratorially, her tiny voice proud.

Lydia smiles, fingers moving methodically through the strands of Thea’s hair. “I know. I think he’ll be good at that.”

Another wiggle. “Me too.”

A noise from behind them causes Lydia to peek over her shoulder, finding Stiles, carrying a wide-eyed Wes, and looking pleased.

“Well, I’ve had some practice with monsters under the bed,” he grins, eyes going crinkly at the corners.

Thea looks up at Lydia. “He’s right,” she says seriously. “We etermin- exterminated them. Like in Ghostbusters.”

“We sure did,” Stiles confirms, and the look on his face - she wants to photograph it, burn it into her memory, paint it onto her skin. He’s looking at Thea with such softness, such profound affection; it’s radiant, like the sun.

Her father had looked at her like that once, a long time ago, until he started looking more at his Blackberry and then also at women who weren’t Lydia’s mother. She wonders if he looks at his new children like that, like they’re the axis upon which his life rotates, like they matter.

“What do you think, T, macaroni and cheese for dinner?”

Thea’s question reverberates in Lydia’s mind, even by the time she makes it back home for her own dinner with the girls.

“Lydia, what are you thinking about?” Whitney asks, ladling pasta and garlic bread onto plates. “You’re putting on that stuck-in-your-head face.”

“Thea asked me something earlier,” she replies, pouring wine into yes, actual glasses.

“When are you and Stiles finally gonna bang?” Eva interrupts, successfully snagging a piece of garlic bread but not completely missing Whitney’s resulting swat with a dishtowel. “I think we’d all like to know the answer to that question.”

“She asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, and I was completely taken aback. I honestly couldn’t think of what to say.”

“You’re majoring in biology,” Allie points out, gently. “I kind of hope you want to, I don’t know, maybe do something with that?”

“You can come to med school with me,” Whitney suggests.

Lydia shudders. “No.”

Eva nods authoritatively. “How do you not know? Even I have a firm plan. By the time I’m 35, I want to be a CEO, have a trophy husband, and also my name emblazoned on a helicopter. In big letters. The biggest.”

“I’m going to provide better healthcare to rural areas. Appalachia, maybe. I’d like to do mission trips overseas, someday. That kind of stuff,” Whitney adds.

Allie chimes in. “I want to have finished my PhD and to have written a novel.”

“The next Great American Novel?” Eva teases.

Allie looks scandalized. “Shit, no. A romance or something. Something steamy.” She turns to Lydia. “What happened to getting your doctorate? Am I gonna have to suffer alone? I thought you wanted to teach?”

“I’m not sure, anymore,” Lydia sighs into her wine glass. “I think I want to do something, I don’t know, more helpful, you know? Do more good.”

I want to help.

Stiles winces, one hand rubbing at his left shoulder.

“What was that?” she asks, narrowing her eyes, honing in on the anomaly.

“Hmm?” he asks, still looking at the board.

“You winced.”

“Oh,” he blinks, like he’s just realizing himself. “It’s just my shoulder. I think I pulled something.”

“Doing what? Do you even do any sort of physical activity?”

“Well…” he hedges, cheeks flushing. (Intellectually, she knows this is merely a result of the veins in his face dilating in response to the chemical transmitter adenylyl cyclase, which causes an increase in blood flow, and therefore, the appearance of blushing. Emotionally, this does swooping things to her stomach that she’d honestly prefer not to think about.)

She swats at him. “That’s not what I meant, idiot.” (They’ve been doing this more and more often lately: where they used to tread lightly regarding the topics of dating and especially sex, veiled references and innuendo have been popping up with increasing frequency. It’s thrilling, a jolt of adrenaline - it’s also dangerous ground, she knows.)

“Nah, I fell asleep at my desk again last night.”

“At least you slept,’ she mutters, beckoning him closer. “Come here.”

He obliges, scooting closer to her on the cushion, and she tentatively runs a hand over the pitch of his shoulder, leading toward his neck. (She gives the girls massages sometimes, and Eva swears hers are better even than the place in Harvard Square that’s rumored to offer happy endings. This is fine. Fine and friendly. Nice and normal.)

Against all mental self-reassurances, her heart rate picks up - she can feel the cadence beating traitorously in the tips of her fingers that are pressed against his skin. She’s glad he’s facing away from her, glad he’s not witness to the rosiness broadcasted across her own cheeks, glad she can leisurely study the arrangement of moles decorating the back of his neck unnoticed. Moving in a circular pattern, she presses her fingers against the tense muscles, gradually increasing the amount of pressure as her motions wear down the knots.

His eyes are closed - she can’t see his face, but can somehow sense that they are. She breaks the silence with: “You should come to yoga with me sometime. You’re holding way too much tension.”

Head still bowed, Stiles murmurs something that sounds like an agreement.

“You look pretty,” Allie says the next week, brown eyes flitting very suspiciously over the (very natural, very subtle, mind you) mascara, lipgloss, and blush that Lydia had carefully applied - a departure from their usual straight-out-of-bed yoga-going appearance. Not to mention the strappy top and Lululemon pants that hug her ass nicely.

Stiles scrambles into class at the last possible second, whispering too-loud apologies as the instructor launches into her opening spiel, and all but falling onto the mat spread out in the space Lydia had saved beside her.

Allie’s whole face brightens, like she’s a lightbulb personified, and she quickly folds herself into child’s pose to hide her knowing smile.

What can she say? Stiles had been on a date the other night; she’s not playing fair.

She doesn’t want to complicate the most effortless relationship, platonic or otherwise, that she’s ever known. She doesn’t even want to admit that she wants him. But she selfishly wants him to want her. The idea of him dating other girls, fills her with a territorial sort of panic, despite the fact of that making her a hypocrite.

(Hypocrite. From the Greek hypokritḗs, meaning “a stage actor,” or “one who pretends to be what he is not.” That’s her. Lydia Grace Martin, actress of the year.)

“I can smell a lie,” Stiles tells Thea, very seriously.

Her eyes widen. “What does it smell like?!”

He leans closer, lowering his voice. “Farts.”

The McCoys had gone to Denver, ostensibly for one of Mr. McCoy’s work conferences, though perhaps more for skiing, based off the numerous photos they had sent to Thea. Stiles was supposed to stay at the townhouse with the kids until the McCoys returned on Friday afternoon, after which the plan was for him to head home, barricade himself in his room, and finish his “goddamn Psychology of Crime paper” that counted for over half of his semester grade.

That was the plan, until Mrs. McCoy called up in a panic. Denver was engulfed in blizzard conditions, and all flights had been delayed indefinitely. (Snow was another thing Lydia had learned about in Boston. Snow, she had discovered, was the Devil.)

There was no one else - Mrs. McCoy’s mother was elderly, in a nursing home. Mr. McCoy’s family all resided in California. Mrs. McCoy’s best friend was in the Outer Banks, vacationing with her own family.

Stiles, being Stiles, had told them not to worry, he’d spend the weekend or as long as it took with the kids, he’d charge them triple his normal rate, but they’d all be fine.

Then, Stiles still being Stiles, had promptly called Lydia, freaking out.

“Hey,” she says soothingly, when he finally pauses between panic-spewn words. “I don’t really have any plans this weekend. I’ll come help you. I can watch the kids, or help you with your paper,” she offers.

Breath whooshes out of him. “You’d.. You’d do that?”

“Sure,” she confirms. “Your academic standing is at risk. I won’t stand for it.” She pauses. “But like, you can’t leave or anything. Just to be clear.”

“Oh my god, Lydia. Are you sure?” he asks, voice a creaky combination of distress and relief, his breathing sounding more even already.

Again, something about him does her in.

“Yeah. I’m sure, Stiles.”

Two hours later, she’s markedly less sure, but she shows up on the McCoy’s front stoop with a cardboard pizza box balanced in one hand and her Louis Vuitton weekender bag over one shoulder.

Stiles opens the door, taking the pizza from her and beckoning her inside. “Lydia Martin. You actual angel. An uncanonized saint. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she smiles innocently. “There are veggies on the pizza.”

He swears loudly upon investigating - spinach and sundried tomatoes - further.

Thea enters the kitchen, wagging her finger at him. “No naughty words, Stiles!” she sing-songs.

He salutes at her in repentant response, but she stares at him, as sternly as a first grader wearing a tutu can do anything.

“You owe me a sundae,” Thea states, as if checking for confirmation.

“Yes, ma’am,” he sighs, resigned. “You are correct.”

Lydia looks pointedly at the pizza. “Good thing I got vegetables. You need the occasional nutrient, you goon.”

“Beer is made with hops. Hops are like, a flower. Vaguely plant-like.”

“I don’t think that cuts it,” she informs him, wrinkling her nose at him.

“Here, hold him for a sec.” Stiles doesn’t wait for a response, merely thrusts a wiggling Wes into her unprepared arms.

She holds the baby a bit away from her body, awkwardly, looking at him with trepidation. He seems to be regarding her in much the same way.

Smart kid.

Lydia doesn’t move a muscle, afraid of making the wrong move that might cause her to drop this unfortunate child on his adorably bald little head.

Thea grabs one of Wes’ tiny hands, pressing it to her lips.

“Baby Wes,” Thea coos. “You’re the cutest thing that’s ever lived.” Clutching her pizza in one hand, a juice box in the other, she waltzes into the other room, unconcerned.

Stiles returns. “Hey, what are you doing? Don’t let his number two diapers fool you, he’s not actually an explosive.”

She makes a panicked sort of face at him. “Stiles, I don’t know what to do with it,” she hisses.

“Oh, Lydia. You’re the cutest thing that’s ever lived,” he teases, scooping Wes back out of her arms easily, propping him against his own shoulder.

“Are you really getting your lines from a six year-old?” She raises an eyebrow. “That explains a lot, actually.”

“C’mon, little guy. Don’t mind Lydia, it’s nothing personal, she’s not used to us yet.”

“You’re so good with them,” she states. (He is. It’s just a fact. She has him beat in terms of mathematics and personal style, but his ability to do pushups and superior skill at interacting with the tiny humans remain uncontested.)

“It’s not like, rocket science. It’s not that hard.” He reconsiders. “You probably have a deep knowledge and understanding of rocket science, don’t you? That’s a class you’ve taken, isn’t it? No,” he decides. “Oh my god. You read up on it for fun.”

“I’ve never read up on children though,” she deflects, ignoring the way his eyes have lit up, reminiscent of the shine of a freshly minted penny. “Kids might as well be… aliens. What do you do with them? What do you talk about? During forced extended family interactions, I end up asking my little cousins about school for lack of anything else to say. It makes me feel like I’m four cats and one ill-advised face lift away from turning into my great aunt Irene.”

Wes begins to cry in earnest, as though he completely understands the magnitude of such terror.

“You don’t even like cats,” Stiles points out, as if this is the most ridiculous part, then transitions into making soothing shushing noises, bouncing Wes a little in his arms. “Alright, my man, dinner’s coming right up.”

She watches intently as he mixes Wes’ bottle, giving her instructions - three level scoops in six ounces of water, bring to a palatable temperature under running warm water from the tap - as he goes.

“Does this make you want kids, or just the opposite?” she asks, once Wes has finally begun feasting upon his Enfamil. For science.

He contemplates, brow furrowing. “I guess I always thought, vaguely, that yes, some far off day I’d like, get married and have kids, the whole thing. But dude, I’m 21 years old. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next week, much less in like, ten years. I exist on ramen noodles, Red Bull, and chicken nuggets shaped like sea creatures. What the fuck do I know?”

“Well, now you know to avoid mixing Red Bull and Adderall.”

“Maybe there’s hope for me yet.” He looks pensive, then asks: “What about you, Lydia Martin?”

She shakes her head helplessly, crossing her empty arms across her chest. “I don’t know what I want, yet.”

“You’ll figure it out.” He sounds so sure, scratchy voice running over with conviction. It makes her feel lighter, somehow, like perhaps one day she will.

Eventually, Lydia is deemed competent enough to be left alone with the kids, albeit with Stiles locked away with his laptop and research materials within screaming distance in the guest bedroom.

He emerges several hours later for “just a quick break, Lydia!” She’s already put a sleeping Wes in his crib and they make it about halfway through the fourth Land Before Time movie (seriously, how many of these are there?) before Thea finally succumbs to sleep, almost mid-whine about wanting more popcorn. Stiles nods off soon thereafter, head tucked at an awkward angle against the overstuffed couch upholstery.

Lydia starts to clean up quietly, placing the popcorn bowls and water glasses in the large farmhouse style sink. On her return trip to the living room, she hesitates in the doorway, taking in the scene.

Stiles still sleeps in the corner of the couch, looking more peaceful than she’s ever seen him. Thea’s cocooned in a blanket, snuggled next to him. She watches them for a long moment, the display reeking of domesticity and warmth, and not only the kind brought on by the giant fireplace.

Something undefinable settles itself in her heart, cozying up, like the emotional version of a protective Prada sleeping curled at the bottom of her bed, warming her feet.

I could want this someday, she thinks. With you.

“Wait, so what’s your topic sentence there?” Lydia asks, hovering over Stiles’ shoulder. With both the kids tucked safely in their beds, she had offered her editorial services. Squinting at a piece of crumpled notebook paper, she attempts to decipher the mess of his haphazard outline.

He scratches the back of his neck, screwing his eyes up at he looks towards her blankly. “Uh, I don’t have one? Yet?”

She eyes him with significant alarm. “Stiles, your paper is due on Tuesday.”

“I work better at the last minute. I need the threat of looming deadlines and impending failure to get the brain cells really fired up. Also, coffee.”

She silently takes several long moments to compose herself, wondering not for the first time: how the hell did I get here?

“Okay. Why don’t you lead with that,” she directs, pointing to a paragraph on the glowing laptop screen.

“Lydia. Oh my god.” His excitement fills the length of his body, from the gleeful nod of his head to the tapping of his toes. “That was so smart, I could kiss you right now.”

What she says: “Do not kiss me.”

What she means: “You could, you know.” (Only not here, not now, not like this.)

Impulsively, he leans forward, and for on heart-stopping moment, she thinks he’s going to do it, that he’s making his move, that he’s actually going to kiss her.

Which, in a way, he does - by smacking a wet, playful kiss on her cheek, eyes sparkling.

For a second, her vision goes blinding white, then she freezes, processing, as still as one of those terrible ornamental cherubs her mother had purchased for the garden.

Ridiculous.

His fingers, already flying over his laptop’s keyboard, match the stuttering staccato of her thumping heart. He’s saying each sentence aloud as he types it out, head nodding a bass beat to the muttered thoughts about childhood trauma and psychological deviance of serial killers.

He’s fired up, literally. His intellectual spark lit, he flickers with intensity, reminding her of fire. It's one of the things she likes best about him, actually: the way he burns, devouring knowledge, always wanting information and answers.

Her heart is tinder and he doesn’t even know it.

She clears her throat. “I’ll uh, I’ll put on another pot of coffee, then.” She slips out of the room, retreating to the kitchen, where she lets a breath out in one wild whoosh.

When she returns, fresh coffees in hand, she’s managed to compose herself.

“Are you gonna stop nannying once you get a real job?” Her eyes widen slightly at the unintentional insinuation - she knows how hard he works, how an office job anywhere would be less taxing. Thankfully, Stiles doesn’t appear offended.

He licks his lips, eyes darting about. “Like, I want to do this for a career. It’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Thea thinks I’m a badass for banishing the imaginary monster under the bed, but the real monsters are out there,” his hand waves nonspecifically toward the window. “But I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to say goodbye to these kids, you know?”

She thinks of Thea, naming her favorite stuffed animals after the Golden Girls. Wes, already looking less like a squishy baby and more like a little person. Stiles, singing off-key but enthusiastically to the Frozen soundtrack. Herself, somehow here in the midst of the chaos and the magic.

“I can see that.”

Having just returned to the boys’ apartment after (dominating) trivia, Stiles detours to throw their hard cider six-pack into the fridge, so Lydia’s the one who pushes his bedroom door open, not noticing the precariously balanced bucket above the entryway. One moment, the members of All Time Low are looking down at her jauntily from the poster above Stiles’ messy desk. The next, the world becomes an explosion of cold.

And wet.

And sticky.

Her startled shriek brings Stiles running. He slides, sock-footed, through the mess on the floor, catching himself on the edge of the doorframe, barely remaining upright.

He stares at her, jaw dropped open and horror-struck. Almost comically, if she wasn't covered in… whatever it is that is drenching her from head to toe.

She wipes a hand across her face, glancing down at her fingers in disgust. Whatever it is, is thick and brown and smells vaguely familiar, but oh, god. Ew.

Stiles picks up a chunk of her now-slimy hair, inspecting it carefully. He lifts it to his nose, smelling the mystery substance - bravely, she thinks, through her shock. When he wipes some of the brown stuff off with a finger and actually licks it - she’s unsure whether to scream in repulsion or vomit, honestly.

Instead, she makes a strangled sort of disgusted whimper.

Stiles nods, eyes narrowing. “Maple syrup,” he mutters, wrinkling his nose. Then, growling: “Paul. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

He ushers her into the bathroom with a flurry of apologies and a stack of towels. From outside, she can hear him yelling at Paul for making her an unwitting victim of the roommate prank war, then fragments of an argument about who in the hell was going to clean the mess.

She climbs stiff-limbed and still dripping into the surprisingly clean shower, allowing the warm spray to start washing away as much of the syrup as possible. Pouring some of the generic drugstore shampoo, the only hair product in the shower, into her palm, she thinks longingly of her own salon shampoo and conditioning mask. Her hair is going to be positively straw-like, though she supposes that is still an improvement over doused-in-syrup-like-a-pancake. After she runs over the washcloth Stiles had given her with the bar of soap, she brings it to her face and her spirits lift.

She breathes in the scent, so clean and so familiar. So Stiles.

When she pads back into his bedroom, dwarfed in a pair of his flannel pants and a hoodie, he’s standing in the doorway, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

“I’m gonna need to get the steam cleaner back from the neighbors,” he mutters, looking up. When he sees Lydia, his lips part, eyes going soft in that way that she loves. She lets herself wonder, for a moment, if it’s because of her makeup free face, or her damp, piled into a ballerina bun hair, or the fact that she’s wearing his clothes.

There’s a soft, secret part of her that likes being allowed, encouraged, even, to wear his clothes. Even so, she’s not about to wear them in public - she still calls an Uber to come take her home.

The details are not clear - something about Stiles’ roommate Will somehow knowing one of the brothers, or maybe dating one of the brothers, honestly she zoned out early on in that rambling account - but somehow they end up with an invite to an MIT frat party. Eva, of course, insists that they go, and threatens to throw herself from the steeple of the Old North Church should Lydia deny her this opportunity.

Lydia has little patience for such theatrics, so, in order to preserve both her sanity and her friend’s livelihood, off they go.

Once inside and devoid of their outerwear, Eva notes Lydia’s cream colored top and deep magenta skirt and Stiles’ gray and white plaid flannel and red pants. (Which Eva previously coined “The Red Pants of Sin,” much to Lydia’s chagrin.)

“Do you guys call each other in the morning before getting dressed?”

Stiles smiles. “Of course,” he says easily, taking a casual sip of his beer. “Except on Wednesdays. On Wednesdays we wear pink.”

Lydia rolls her eyes, which unfortunately doesn’t prevent her from catching Allie motioning frantically, her beer sloshing onto the scuffed hardwood floor, mouthing “MARRY HIM” from over Stiles’ shoulder.

There are several kegs and “actually excellent,” according to Stiles, homebrew in the kitchen, and raucous drinking games on the main floor. Bodies - many half-dressed and almost all in varying degrees of intoxication - line the rooms and cram the hallways. Concerned about getting seperated in the crowd, Lydia reaches for Stiles’ hand automatically, at the same time his fingers find hers, linking instinctively.

Somehow, they end up in the basement, where the music is thunderous, and Lydia can hardly make out a single word of the lyrics, though Stiles swears a Selena Gomez song is playing. (“She’s so preeeeeetty,” he rhapsodizes. And also: “Fuck Bieber, honestly.” She clinks her bottle to his, cheersing the sentiment.)

She wishes she were in her room, wearing leggings and her slippers, and drinking wine, or maybe one of those yummy drinks Allie makes that taste like Shirley Temples.

“Is that why you haven’t dated anyone in ages?” she asks distractedly, peering through the horde, scanning for Whitney’s blonde waves, or Eva’s thundering voice, or any of the other attributes belonging to their friends, whom they had lost track of about two drinks ago. “Holding out for Selena? Because I hate to break it to you…”

She realizes, suddenly and fuzzily, that they’re still holding hands. His fingers are threaded between hers, holding on just enough to be reassuring, not tightly enough to be sweaty or cloying. It’s comfortable. Easy.

When she turns back to face him, his expression is peculiar - it has morphed from a goofy smile and openness to something conflicted, eyebrows drawn together. He opens his mouth to say something, then takes a long sip of his beer instead.

“Wait. Are you saying I wouldn’t have a chance with Selena?”

She doesn’t see a boy that she’s been acquainted with since she was five years old. Doesn’t see the overactive, yammering class clown. Doesn’t see the this-side-of-unpopular sheriff’s son. She doesn’t see a boy who looks at her like she’s just a girl. She sees a boy who treats her like a person, a remarkable person, even. She sees a sharp mind and quick wit and warm brown eyes with the most gorgeous eyelashes-

And okay.

Her drunken mind will allow the admission: in the here and now, she wants him. She wants his eyelashes against her cheek and his hands on her body and his tongue in her mouth. She wants him against and under and inside of her.

She glances up at him, suddenly thankful to her heeled booties for the additional three inches of height. She reaches up, tracing her fingers over the incline of his cheek, over the slope of his nose.

“What are you doing?” he asks. She can tell by the shapes made by his lips; she can hardly hear him over the pulse of the music, or the thundering rush in her ears.

“Or is there maybe another reason?” she asks softly, running her thumb over the edge of his top lip, inhibitions numbed just enough from the beers she’s consumed.

After all, there's a reason why she turned down the cute senior from her neurobiology lab, a reason why she hardly ever goes out dancing with the girls anymore, a reason why she prefers to spend her Saturday nights tucked under a blanket emblazoned with her high school mascot, eating popcorn and arguing with Stiles.

The looks. The touches. The disinterest in other girls. She’s tired of looking the other way. Of dissuading herself. Of pretending.

She leans into him, breathing in the scent of laundry detergent and sweat and soap - familiar, but not familiar enough, not in this way. Her lips skim over his skin, just under his ear, barely making contact. She kisses the mole below the point of his ear lobe out of sheer convenience and limited self-control, causing him to pull in a sharp intake of breath.

“Lydia,” he says, her name sounding raw, his voice serrated like the edge of a knife. He pulls away, hands holding onto her by the shoulders, and he stares, looking reckless and ruined and wild.

She stares back. Did she overestimate? Was she wrong, this whole time? Oh god, is she all alone in this?

“I… I’m sorry,” she gulps, a spiral of hysteria engulfing her. “Was I wrong?” She can totally play this off as a drunken lark, right? Maybe even claim blackout, pretend it never happened?

He blinks, his entire expression changing - like he’s always seen the world through a limited palette of black and white, and is just now blown away by overwhelming technicolor.

“Okay, first, when have you ever been wrong? And second…” He licks his lips. Her heart hammers in double time, waiting.

He doesn’t finish, not with words. Instead, he moves so quickly, she hardly has time to open her own mouth in preparation before his lips collide into hers, hard and demanding, at first. He tilts his head for maximum access, his hands finding her waist, smoothing along her ribcage, finding a home in the small of her back.

She returns his kisses, pulling at his bottom lip, wanting to give him anything and everything. She slides her tongue along his, tasting beer and hope. Even with her eyes closed, she can feel him smiling against her mouth, which is so Stiles, it makes her feel lightheaded, dizzy with yearning.

Their lips meet, their movements frantic, desperation building.

Again and again and again.

They’re closer to Lydia’s dorm, but Stiles has a bedroom to himself, so they head towards the Northeastern campus.

By the time they make it inside, the silence of the apartment is deafening. The air is cold and hesitant; they’ve lost the momentum and heat on the long walk home. This isn’t fire and lust and impulse and alcohol any more, this is a conscious choice, this is vaulting over a wall. Their eyes meet, uncertainty more apparent than anything else. She reaches up and pulls the knitted Mets hat from his head, ruffling his hair in the process. His gaze flicks down to her lips for a moment, and that’s all it takes.

She throws herself at him, and he’s already meeting her, slamming her lips against his, hot and insistent, and he kisses her back ferociously, like the contact is enough to sustain him indefinitely.

His arms slide around her, steering her carefully towards his bed. They don't quite make it that far - he suddenly hoists her, hands under her ass, onto the edge of his desk, stumbling forward into the space she’s left, resulting in one of his legs pressed between her thighs.

They are so far past accidental touches, or innocent kisses on cheeks. They’ve rocketed into previously uninvestigated territory, but it’s not awkward. Maybe scary, but in a thrilling, adrenaline-pumping way. In a why-haven’t-we-done-this-before sort of way.

A way that makes it feel like maybe, all the other times were just for practice.

His lips travel across her jaw and begin to focus on her neck, causing her to squirm, rutting against his thigh. Slowly, infuriatingly, and with uncharacteristic precision, he unbuttons her top, kissing every newly unveiled inch of skin until, at last, he has uncovered her blush colored bra.

He leans into her, his hands reaching out to cover her breasts reverently, letting out a long, disbelieving breath, before squeezing gently. He leans down to press his mouth against her chest and she whimpers.

She tugs his head up suddenly, needing to see him. His eyes widen when he takes in her face, drinking her in. She wonders if she looks as wrecked as he does, as crazed as she feels.

His fingers slide down to grip her hips, smoldering. When she glances down, her eyes following his movements, she half expects to find his fingerprints burned into her skin.

She imagines if that was a biologic possibility, to have indelible proof of his touch, scorching like this.

Her chest constricts, breathless with need, and she nudges him up and towards his bed, articles of clothing slipping to the floor as they stagger towards the inevitable.

When they’re both finally bare in every sense of the word, he doesn’t say anything as he takes her in. His expression, though - eyes wide, cheeks flushed, lips parted - oozes something holy or devout.

She’s never felt so beautiful, not like this.

“Lydia,” he groans into her hair, and this time, it sounds like an oath.

She feels so present, grounded by the weight and warmth of him sliding inside of her. She shows him everything she doesn’t know how to say with her hips and her hands and her mouth; gives to him all of the pieces she would like to take.

His touches turn awestruck and playful, trembling as he traces every hidden inch of her. He’s gentle even though she knows he knows she’s strong, a realization that elates her almost as much as when they finally come together, the world a spinning, shaking blur.

She wakes at dawn, a mess: head pounding, stomach spinning, heart reeling.

(Body aching, deliciously.)

She’s on the precipice, has already thrown her head and her heart across the threshold.

Moving forward, well, there are so many variables.

In the end, she’s a coward. Draws in all of her exposed pieces back as she carefully redresses, slipping out the door like a figment or a phantom.

She likes the idea of two people staying together, but it’s a childhood dream, a fairytale just as much as Snow White or The Little Mermaid. Instead of poison apples and sea witches, though, real life gives you expectations and temptation and resentment.

Happily ever after is as flimsy and fleeting as cotton candy on her tongue, like the kind her father used to buy her at fair.

She knows what happens at the end.

When she opens the door to the suite, the girls are lounging in the living room, which is usual Sunday routine, though uncharacteristically early: this feels somewhat of an ambush.

“Morning,” she chirps, sounding fake even to her own ears.

“How was the rest of your night?” Whitney asks, laden with insinuation.

“Fine.” She tries to beeline into her room, wanting nothing more than a shower and then coffee and time to obtain some clarity.

“Lydia,” Eva says, perfectly threaded eyebrows raised into accusatory points, the tone of her voice stopping Lydia in her tracks.

“Yes?”

“You’re wearing a Northeastern hoodie.”

“So?” she snaps.

Whitney snorts. “So, you don’t go there.”

“Also, it’s way too big for you,” Allie pipes in.

She stares at her friends. They stare back.

“Allie saw you,” Eva supplies gleefully. “Sucking Stiles’ face off. Please tell me that’s not all you sucked last night.”

Lydia doesn’t answer.

Eva’s eyebrows fly even further upwards. She claps her hands delightedly. “More?!”

Finally, Lydia sighs.

The girls erupt into cheers.

Eva instantaneously bombards her with questions. “So, how big is he, exactly? Can you draw it to scale, I need specifics. I think I have graph paper somewhere.”

Allie’s eyes actually get a bit misty, and she busies herself, starting to make what Lydia assumes to be celebratory mimosas while everyone hands cash over to Whitney.

She shrugs in response to Lydia’s questioning stare. “Closest without going over. Simple combination of psychology and probability.”

Allie’s the first to ask the actual question. “So, are you guys together now?”

Lydia just shakes her head. She feels numb.

“Why not?!” (Allie, concerned.)

“What do you mean?” (Whitney, impatient.)

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.” (Eva, looking murderous and accidently knocking her mimosa onto the floor.)

Thankfully, they’re in such shock they let her escape.

She has 4 missed calls from Stiles, and twice as many texts.

Stiles: lydia, what happened?
Stiles: hey, are you okay?
Stiles: let me know you got home safe at least?
Stiles: lydia?
Stiles: will you please talk to me?

Later that night:

Stiles: please please PLEASE fucking answer me
Stiles: we can pretend it never happened, whatever you want

And then, one final text, the next day.

Stiles: i’m sorry

She erases the voicemails without listening to them, then she turns her phone off. Puts it in her purse. Puts her purse under the bed.

Irony of ironies, the small purple envelope arrives in her mailbox the next day, inviting her to Thea McCoy’s seventh birthday party.

Lydia leaves it on the corner of her desk, self-punishment. She plans on RSVPing no, but never calls, too afraid that Stiles will be the one to answer the phone.

Weeks go by. Classes continue. Lydia reverts, fog-like, back to her pre-Stiles routine, breathing and eating and sleeping and functioning pretty minimally as a human being. She also maintains her studious avoidance of Stiles and all mentions thereof, out of fear.

Also, shame.

“I’m fine,” she insists, as if she can convince her friends, her mother, herself.

(Her mother, at least, believes her, doesn’t even notice that anything has shifted. )

The New England weather hits the dreary pinnacle of late-winter gloom, everyone miserable and morose and itching for spring. As if she’s not pathetic and ailing enough, Lydia comes down with the GI bug, like half of their dorm. She drags her wretched self to the store for provisions, waits in line to purchase ginger ale and cold medicine, the good kind they make you show your ID for, in case you’re trying to manufacture meth in your basement.

Ahead of her, a man - the dad, probably, though who knows, maybe the manny - holds onto the hand of a little girl with reddish hair. She’s giggling and pointing at the novelty ice cream treat she wants. When she turns, her The Little Mermaid backpack swings into view.

Lydia leaves, wordlessly, without buying anything.

The misery of late-New England winter plods along, inching ever closer to Lydia's birthday.

“That came while you were out,” Whitney gestures and Lydia turns, noticing the enormous box next to the doorway.

“An early birthday gift?” Allie asks, smiling.

The top of the box says, simply, “For Lydia,” in a messily familiar scrawl. Her heart does a thing that feels like a lurch.

Lydia opens the box carefully, half expecting a giant fist to come flying out of the box, like in the cartoons of her childhood. The top of a large wooden structure is revealed, instead. She thinks her mouth drops open as realization hits her and suspicions deepen.

She and Allie end up opening the box around it, pulling back wads and wads of newspaper to reveal a wooden dollhouse.

It’s gorgeous, and undoubtedly custom made. Most of the rooms are decorated in a soothing palette of blues and greens and grays. The kitchen has faux granite countertops, a gleaming wooden farm table, white china organized on open shelving, white peonies in a simple glass vase that are exactly her taste.

The bedroom, also done up in blues and greens - reminding her of the sea - has several dresses hanging in the closet, and a Chanel bag containing a tiny purse. There’s an office/library on the top floor, a pretty purple floral paper serving as wallpaper, miniature books stacked neatly on a bookshelf. There’s a whole set of tiny Tolkien novels, and several textbooks: thermodynamics, and calculus, and even one on banshee mythology.

It’s so beautiful.

Personal.

Perfect.

She sits back on her heels; stunned. This must have taken him hours. Days. Longer, even.

“Who’s that from?” Eva asks, walking in from the kitchen.

She’s too busy staring, realizing too late that tears are sliding down her cheeks. (So much for “fine.”)

Allie, eyes wide, turns to Eva, mouthing “Stiles.”

“Well, shit,” Eva mutters. “We’re gonna need tequila.”

Typically, she’d deal with a setback by throwing herself into her schoolwork with added zeal, or going for a therapeutic run, or maybe by indulging in a bubble bath.

So when they find her still nestled in her bed with her laptop playing a continuous Netflix loop for the third straight day, empty takeout containers strewn about, the girls are appropriately alarmed.

Eva stomps into her room, throwing the blinds open with a rattling force. “You have well surpassed your 48 hour grace period. Enough.”

Allie peers into the nearest styrofoam container. “It’s a curly fry shame spiral,” she notes, giving the others a significant sort of look.

“Lydia, there’s grease on your comforter,” Whitney says, staring at her like she’s lost her mind.

She shrugs half-heartedly.

“I get it, to a point,” Whitney admits. “If Cody ever leaves me, I’ll stay eternally single. I’ll collect cats and babies. But,” she adds, throwing a disapproving look in Lydia’s direction. “I’ll get out of the damn bed.”

She misses them. She misses the way Thea calls her “Lyd-dee-ah,” always drawing out and pronouncing the syllables distinctly in her tiny voice. She misses Thea begging her to braid her hair, and the inevitable remarks of “you braid so much better than Stiles’” causing him to pout and make her promise that “my storytime voices are at least better, right?” She misses the sweet smell of Wes’ downy head, his serious face, the way he looks at her like she’s someone who can be trusted.

Mostly, she misses Stiles.

He had become so ingrained in the fabric of her life, filling in the crevices that she hadn’t realized existed before. Trying to get him out is like pulling loose red threads. Her chest hums indignantly when a new true crime podcast automatically downloads on her phone, or when she overhears someone making a truly terrible pun, or when she sees anyone wearing flannel. (This last one is especially disastrous, as she lives in Cambridge. Between the college students and the hipsters, the flannel epidemic is widespread.)

She expected love, when it happened, to be a crashing, burning, sudden thing - an explosion. She figured that’s what it would take to knock through her well-crafted and carefully maintained defenses. She never expected it to sneak up on her, as soft as her favorite sweater, as clever as a fox.

She certainly never envisioned it stumbling into a Starbucks with messy hair and two children in tow. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t able to properly identify it at first - it’s excellent disguise. What started as one thing (a truly platonic friendship) evolved into something else (actual romantic feelings), burrowing into her heart and her life before she ever even noticed. Unbidden, her mind connects the word “evolve” to Stiles and Thea’s voices discussing Charmanders and Charizards in intensive detail - as if she needs further clues that she’s in this too deep.

The girls give up, leaving her alone in her self-inflicted misery. She knows they haven’t given up, only retreated, probably to strategize. She expects them to send an emissary.

Allie would never push, so she assumes Whitney will be the one, with her thought-provoking questions and analytical, bossy nature.

Instead, she gets Eva.

“That’s it,” Eva demands, crawling into her bed with her, crumbs and all. “We’re doing this.”

“You’re not anybody’s boss yet, you realize that, right?” Lydia grumbles, scooting into a sitting position, to avoid getting sat on.

“You’re moping around the damn place like some kind of ghoul and it’s really a bummer, you realize that, right?”

“Is this supposed to be helpful?”

“I wore my glasses to get in character for psychoanalyzing your sorry ass - I’m channeling the great Dr. Feinstein, who guided me through my tumultuous adolescence, FYI, so... yes.”

“Oh. They look cute.”

“Thanks. Now, tell me why you’re moping around like a little bitch.”

Lydia makes a face and says nothing.

“Honey, you are languishing. You got a B on your last paper. We are all deeply concerned.”

“If you don’t get hired by a Fortune 500 company, definitely look into the CIA.”

“They’re on the list, don’t worry.” Eva quirks an eyebrow. “Stop stalling.”

Lydia swallows. “He should be mad at me.”

“I think,” Eva starts cautiously, glancing surreptitiously at the dollhouse in the corner. “That it’s pretty apparent that he is not, in fact, mad at you.”

“He should be.”

“Probably,” Eva allows. “But, fuck, Lydia. You two were like an old married couple. You were constantly chastising him about his caffeine intake and yelling at him to get more sleep, and he was always doing annoying things to get under your skin and like, fetching you beers and stuff. Oh, and don’t get me started on the creepy way your outfits always seemed to match.” She narrows her eyes. “That definitely wasn’t on purpose, right?”

Lydia smiles in spite of herself, but Eva’s not done. “You let him see you in your ratty old sweatpants. He wasn’t threatened by your hotness or your intelligence, you two were always yammering about whatever random nerdy shit. Unlike any of the other random douchenozzles you’ve dated, you were just… yourself. His fashion sense needs some work, but I liked him. We all did. Especially you, whether you’ll admit it to yourself or not.”

“I did. I do.” She lets out a long, self-pitying breath. “But I messed up.”

Eva stares her down, the power not lost behind the decorative veneer of her glasses. “You are Lydia Martin. You are a smart girl. So put on some badass bitch boots, and some lipstick, and go fucking fix it.”

It’s in neither of their natures to be overly gushy, but as she leaves, Eva gives her an encouraging sort of slap on the ass.

She’s not used to wanting. Her parents, for all their faults, have always provided the necessities for her: food on the table (usually takeout salads, but still), a roof over her head. And then some, materially: brand name clothes, designer handbags, a credit card emblazoned with her name. Yes, she could have done with more emotional support and less psychological damage, and to not have been used as a pawn in their divorce-era reindeer games, but they never intentionally hurt her.

Not like how she must have hurt Stiles.

(Joke’s on her, because according to social media, one of them has been making snowmen and going bowling and laughing over beers with people who aren’t her, while the other has been doing nothing but homework and wallowing in her grease-stained bed. )

Now, she wants in a new and desperate way. For him to be hers; to belong back to him. She’s scared to want it, but sure. She wants the mess and the majesty, the highs and the lows. She wants his mole-smattered face to be the first thing she sees in the morning, his raspy voice the last thing she hears at night. She wants to press her bare toes against his legs when they go to sleep to warm them up. She wants his Minion juice glasses to find a home in a cabinet alongside her pretty Anthropologie teacups. She wants the friendship and the everyday and the big, scary everything of it all, with him.

What she doesn’t want is the empty house that reminds her so much of the home she grew up in, doesn’t want that drafty, dim, lonely life.

The morning of Thea’s birthday party, she takes her time. She curls her hair, paints her lips, applies plenty of her favorite Chloe perfume. She changes her mind nearly as many times as her outfit. But then she imagines the alternative, imagines wondering what if? Either way, she needs to know.

She heads out, her prettily wrapped gift under one arm. (The Lego White House. Because why should Thea settle for Congress?)

When she arrives, she stands back, watching him play with the little kids, so open: with his laugh and his arms and his heart.

One of Thea’s classmates points at Stiles. “Who’s that?” she overhears the little girl ask.

Thea beams, broadcasting pride from every pore of her sweetly freckled face. “Oh, that’s my Stiles.”

That’s my Stiles.

“Lydia?” He utters her name, surprised, the moment he lays eyes on her. She thinks she catches a glimpse of hope in the timbre of his voice.

I’m in love with the way you say my name.

Her own voice doesn’t seem to be working.

“Hi,” she croaks, following him to the edge of the room.

His face though, closes and stills, a barricade, and his hands tuck into his pockets. It’s as if he’s scared of taking up too much space, which twists Lydia’s insides into a painful contortion, spurred by guilt.

“Thank you for the dollhouse,” she starts, working to keep her voice even.

“You could have sent a note. Or answered my texts.” There’s no venom behind his words, which makes the bite of them sharper, somehow.

“It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. It’s stunning, Stiles.”

“You’re welcome.” His voice remains impassive, but his eyes are softening, like the line of his mouth.

“I don’t want an empty house,” she blurts. She takes a careful breath, and tries again.

“Someone asked me not too long ago what I wanted my future to look like. I didn’t have an answer at the time, but… I want to be happy, Stiles.”

“Okay.” He’s cautious. She doesn’t blame him.

He’s always patient with her, always somehow knows the very thing needs most, so it shouldn’t come as such a surprise when he asks the question.

“So… what will make you happy?”

“You,” she says, and she’s the plucky heroine of a Nora Ephron movie, or maybe living out a Taylor Swift song. She’s free-falling, hurtling through time and space, and if he’s not going to catch her, damn it, she’ll scrape herself of the ground, she’ll figure it out by herself, but at least for once she tried.

“I want you and your propensity for sarcasm that knows no bounds. The way you’ve never willingly eaten a vegetable in your life. Your mind that goes in a million directions all at once and makes these crazy connections and your extensive and concerning knowledge of ‘90s pop songs. The way you actually listen when I talk, and how you remember things about me that my parents don’t even know. The way my crazy friends didn’t scare you off. You give so much of yourself to everyone around you, Stiles. It’s… it’s brave.”

“You think I’m brave?” he asks, hands remaining in the pockets of his hoodie. His expression, for once, is inscrutable.

“You make it look easy,” she says quietly.

His eyes crinkle in bewilderment, like he’s still not sure where she’s going with this. “What?”

She waves a hand, as if the small gesture could possibly encompass all of how she means it. “Caring about people.” She swallows. “Loving them.”

He doesn’t say anything, just continues to look at her, waiting.

“I’m not good at that. And it’s scary. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “You always make sense to me, Lydia.”

I’m in love with the way you look at me.

“That’s… insightful. And oddly poetic.”

“Will's been listening to a lot of One Direction lately.”

She’s been so afraid of giving too much of herself away, equating offering pieces of herself with making herself less, a simple matter of subtraction. She hadn’t considered, before, that by letting him in, she could end up being more.

The protection around her heart is already shattered, swept away. It’s too late, it’s his.

So she tells him.

“What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry. And I miss you. And I want you.” A sudden, horrifying thought comes to her. “Unless you can’t forgive me.” An equally as horrifying thought: “Unless there’s an Amanda from Sociology class or a Jen who you met at the gym-“

He shakes his head, frantically. “Lydia. There’s no Amanda from Sociology or Jen from the gym. There’s no one else. Even if there was, they’re not Lydia Martin who goes to Harvard and has a little dog named Prada and who is going to change the world and has already changed mine.”

She’s motionless, unable to breathe properly, utterly struck. “You changed mine, too.”

I’m in love with you.

“I’m in love with you, you know.”

He blinks, eyelashes fluttering wildly, mouth falling open, his entire expression blooming with surprise. His hands fall from his pockets, coming up to cup her cheeks as she’s the one to take the final step forward, eye locked upwards on his. His long fingers stroke over her cheekbones hesitantly, his face soft and desperate.

“I love you, too, Lydia.”

He ducks his head to properly kiss her, chastely at first, then building in fervor, emotion spilling over.

“Stiles,” she says breathlessly, between kisses.

“Mmm,” he sighs into her mouth.

“We’re at a child’s birthday party.”

“They can watch.”

She’s slightly distracted, but she swears she hears a nearby small, impatient voice calling out.

“Finally.”