Are You Satisfied (With an Easy Ride) (gift for espressopotluck)
Title: Are You Satisfied (With an Easy Ride)
Author: brilligspoons
Recipient: espressopotluck
Pairings: Lydia gen with background Derek/Stiles and a little bit of Erica/Lydia
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3200
Warnings: none
Summary: After Jackson and his parents move away, Lydia starts over again.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta readers for making this story work! Hope everyone enjoys reading this! :)
***
Somehow Jackson's goodbye when Lydia sees him and his parents off at the airport doesn't hurt nearly as much as she's expecting it to.
"I'm not," he starts to say. He hesitates, then swoops in and kisses her on the forehead. He pulls back a little and says, "If you wanted to make this a long-distance thing - I mean, it's not like we won't talk to each other after this. Right?"
Lydia smiles and shakes her head, says, "I think it's better if we try new things, new people," because it seems like the appropriate thing to say. She'll decide later if she actually means it or not.
Jackson nods as if he knows what she means, and he probably does know to some degree. He steps back and lets her hug both his parents, and then they're joining the line of people waiting to be let through security and moving farther and farther away from her until she can barely recognize Jackson's head in a sea of other heads all checking to make sure they have the right gate. She stands there in the crowd of families and friends and significant others being left behind and feels, vaguely, like all the sound and movement around her has suddenly amplified, and she hates it.
She has the airport valet retrieve her car while she scratches at an imaginary itch on her arm. She only cries for the first half of the ride back to Beacon Hills.
***
As expected, there are people whispering about the Whittemores moving over the summer when Lydia walks into school at the beginning of the new school year. Only a few people approach her with questions, mostly Jackson's friends from the swim team and lacrosse, and for the most part they're genuinely curious rather than anything else. Lydia spends most of AP statistics and history idly wondering how many of his opportunistic ex-teammates will be asking her out on dates over the next few days - not that she's interested in any of them. She just hates being unprepared.
Oddly, she's looking forward to seeing how Stiles acts around her more than anything else. To be fair, Lydia does have a list of actual questions for him, and he'd been suspiciously unreachable for a majority of the summer. There are worse people to be seen with these days, she decides during history.
Stiles has third period AP English with her. She waits for him to sit down next to her in the front of the classroom, assuming that he'll take advantage of the free space by her, but he picks a seat at the very back next to the window instead. Lydia stamps down on the spark of annoyance that bites at her insides. This is the most frustrating thing about Stiles: not the ridiculous crush on her that's apparently existed since grade school (she gets it, okay, she's been in love with Jackson for longer than anyone actually knows), but the apparent lack of any sort of recognizable pattern it follows. It grates on her.
Lydia drums her nails against her desk, and then she stands and gathers up her bag and notebooks and stalks to the back of the classroom. She glares at the girl who took the spot next to Stiles.
"You're in my seat," she says.
The girl frowns. "No, I'm not."
Lydia sets her notebooks down on the desk. She rests both palms down on the flat surface and leans forward into the girl's personal space, stares directly into her eyes and glares. "Yes," Lydia says, "you are."
Lydia is pleased to note that her intimidation skills are still operating at full capacity. Stiles gapes at her as she settles down into the seat and selects the pen she's going to use for note-taking. He blinks and looks to the front of the room where the other girl is (sullenly) taking Lydia's original desk choice, and then he turns back to her.
"You hate sitting in the back," he says.
Lydia makes a noise of agreement. He opens his mouth to say more, but the teacher enters the room before he can form the words, and then it's all basic literary criticism and assigning project partners. Lydia grabs Stiles' hand and raises it with her own when the teacher asks for volunteer pairs. She can practically feel his confusion and nervousness rolling off him, and she allows herself a brief moment of satisfaction.
This is as good a plan for starting over as any, I suppose, she thinks.
***
Lydia gives Stiles a week before addressing the werewolf-shaped elephant in the room. She follows him back to his locker after their English class and stares at him while he grabs his physics textbook and notes. He very obviously stalls for as long as he can, and the hallway is almost clear when he finally sighs and closes the locker door.
"Look," Stiles says, "not that I haven't been thrilled with you actually paying attention to me the last few days, but I think I know you well enough by now to know you're after something."
"Very intuitive," replies Lydia. "You're not busy after school today, are you?"
He blinks several times in quick succession. "Uh, no. Not that I know of, anyway. It's Friday, though, so Scott and me, we were -"
"I'm not interested in whatever video game marathon you were planning. I want to know more about the supernatural, and you're going to tell me everything you know," she says. "Today. If I'm going to be dealing with this sort of stuff on a regular basis, I need to have the facts."
"Um - okay? But I don't -"
"Not interested. I'll be at your car after last bell."
Erica is sitting in the back of Stiles' car when Lydia gets there at the end of the day, her booted feet propped up by the headrest of the passenger seat. She's scraping the last bits of yogurt from a plastic container, and she gives Lydia a smile around the metal spoon when she opens the door (tsk tsk, Stiles, Lydia thinks, shouldn't leave your door unlocked, you'll attract all the strays). Lydia stares at her for a moment, then starts tapping her foot against the blacktop when Erica doesn't take the hint and move.
"Cute, Reyes. Very cute," Lydia says.
"Why, Lydia, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just waiting for my ride. What are you doing here?"
"Stiles and I are having a long overdue chat about things that go bump in the night this afternoon." She glares at Erica, daring her to try and stop them. Rather than intimidate her, however, the announcement seems to perk Erica up.
"Hot. Can I watch?" she asks.
"Oh, that's original -"
"Ladies," Stiles says from behind Lydia. She doesn't jump, but it's a near thing. "We're all headed in the same direction, no need to start anything where basically the whole school can see. Erica, what did I say about your heels and my car's upholstery?"
Erica's smile has just a hint of fang in it. "That I do what I want, or I throw you in a dumpster again."
Stiles scowls at her but climbs in behind the steering wheel without another word. Erica shifts and allows Lydia to climb in front.
The ride is, well, awkward, to say the least. Patience is not one of Lydia's strong points, but she likes to think she's taught herself how to ignore minor inconveniences and annoyances over the years. After all, while she loves Jackson and has fond memories of their time together, their relationship was not without its...moments. So when she first feels Erica's breath on the back of her neck, Lydia purses her lips together and says nothing, ignoring the way her spine tingles at the sensation. She's doing rather well with letting it go, too, until -
"Get your nose off my neck," Lydia says. She keeps her voice and breathing as even as possible.
"Okay," Erica says, but she licks a stripe from the junction of Lydia's neck and shoulder to right behind her ear before settling back in the seat. "You just let me know if you change your mind, hm?"
Stiles lets out a strangled noise. Lydia turns and glares at him, but he's parking the car next to a shiny black Camaro and scrambling out of his seat before she can say anything to him about it. Erica giggles behind her.
"Poor guy doesn't know what to do with himself," she says.
Lydia whips her head around. "If you were doing that just to put on a show, I -"
"Cool it, red," Erica interrupts with a wink, "I'm not in the habit of making promises I don't intend to keep, audience or not. Besides, I'm pretty sure he's got other things on his mind at the moment." She jerks her chin. Lydia follows the direction of the motion with her eyes and spots a half-naked, sweating Derek Hale doing chin-ups in a doorway. Stiles is speaking to him, gesturing a bit more wildly with his hands than is probably necessary.
"I see," Lydia says, though she really doesn't. Yet.
Stiles runs back to the car and opens the door for Lydia. "Are you ready for supernatural 101?" he asks. "Because we can, you know, not do this now, we can wait, we can -"
Lydia raises an eyebrow at him. "Don't say stupid things," she says. "It's unattractive."
***
The new plan, as it turns out, is almost more annoying than not having one at all, mostly because the new plan involves werewolves and other assorted supernatural beings.
"I told you," Stiles gasps out as they're running together over uneven ground and around trees, "I thought - after Jackson and Peter and the whole -"
"I swear to god, Stilinski, if you're about to tell me you were giving me space out of some misguided attempt to protect me and my poor, traumatized brain, I will have your balls nailed to my wall," Lydia says.
Stiles lets out a burst of laughter that's bordering on the hysterical. She doesn't blame him - they'd been trapped in the smallest fairy circle ever for just under thirty seven hours, unable to attempt escape or even sleep because fairies are vicious little fuckers who like to zap their captives with sparkly lightning bolts at random intervals. Lydia never really had an opinion either way on fairies, but now her favorite cashmere sweater is riddled with holes, and that is just not okay.
"Does mountain ash work with fairies, or is that just shapeshifters?" Lydia asks between rasping breaths.
"I don't know. I didn't even know fairies were real until two days ago."
"If I thought these things would leave us alone instead of catching us again, I'd trip you right now." She dodges a low-hanging branch and chances a quick look behind them. A fine, shining mist is trailing after them. She curses.
Stiles swerves to the left and calls out, "There's a cabin over here."
She follows him after a brief hesitation. She wonders what hiding in a cabin is going to do for them but runs inside regardless and doesn't protest when he shuts and bolts the door. She throws herself down on the bed that's sitting in the corner of the room. Her chest burns like it's about to explode, and her legs twitch as her muscles attempt to recover from the sprinting. Stiles joins her on the mattress and heaves. Lydia takes several deep breaths and holds them before letting them go, and soon enough, she notices her heart rate begin to slow down. She twists her head around to check the windows. The fairies seem to be circling the cabin, slamming themselves against the outer walls and the glass panes, but they don't make any attempt to enter the building.
"Well," she says, "I'm glad we managed to find the one fairy-proof cabin in the whole reserve. How does that even happen?"
"Let's not question this one, please," says Stiles. "I feel like I need to rip my lungs out and throw water on them, they hurt so much."
Lydia turns onto her side, facing him. "You know, Stiles, when I asked you to explain all this supernatural stuff to me, I was thinking we would start with the theory - like the bestiary translation. I would have liked having a solid foundation prior to risking life and limb."
"You and me both," he says. He sighs and rests a forearm across his nose. "Look, it's not like I have a lot of options here. Either I ask Peter, who gives me the creeps, or I ask Allison's dad, which I don't envision being a viable option either at the moment. I'm basically just going on what I've picked up along the way."
"You're winging it. That's fantastic. You couldn't just tell me that ahead of time?"
"Okay, okay! I was trying to impress you." Lydia punches him in the arm. Stiles flails and lets out a yelp, glaring at her. "What the hell was that for?"
"I'm going to say this once, and then we're never going to speak of it again," Lydia says. "I'm not interested in you romantically. Your little rant in your bedroom in the spring? That was charming and all, and I'm willing to admit that I probably needed to hear it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to date you."
"Yeah, I got that."
"Do you."
"Yes," Stiles says. He scratches the top of his head. "I, uh. I've had a lot of time to think about - stuff. Recently. And I'm sorry for yelling at you that night. I wasn't really thinking straight."
Lydia nods. "None of us were. Having the shit kicked out of you will do that. Apology accepted, though." She settles down on her back again and stretches out her legs carefully. The box spring beneath the mattress creaks loudly in the surrounding quiet. "Now - where were you all summer?"
Stiles' face and neck immediately flush a dark red. Lydia's eyebrows shoot up.
"Nowhere," he mumbles, shooting her a quick look before averting his gaze again. She pokes him in the arm. "Seriously, I was still here. Just," he waves an arm in the air, "working with Derek and Isaac. There was a - a thing."
"A thing," Lydia repeats. She pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
"Yeah, a thing. A thing where we had to fight a pack of alpha werewolves to get Erica and Boyd back and prove that Derek was a worthy alpha, blah blah blah. You would've been bored. It was actually kind of anticlimactic at the end."
"Except for how you can't say Derek's name without blushing like a middle schooler," Lydia says, ignoring the way her brain flashes immediately to Erica's golden curls. Sudden realization dawns on her. "Oh, I see."
"You see nothing. There is nothing to see here."
"Did he have to prove himself by flexing his muscles a lot? Did he walk around shirtless? Did you swoon?" Stiles covers his face with his hands. Lydia smirks. "I'll take that as a 'yes,' then."
Stiles groans. "There was no swooning over anything. I just got to know him a little better, is all."
"Right, of course." Lydia twists herself off the bed and walks over to one of the windows. She looks around outside, expecting to see the fairies circling them still, but there's nothing. The sunlight is fading, though, and there's no way they'll be able to make it back to a main road safely in the dark. She turns back around and crawls into the space next to Stiles, curling herself up into a ball. "They must have given up, but we'll have to stay here tonight anyway. Oh, and next time you run off to take care of werewolf business, or whatever it is you do, I'll be coming with you. No arguments."
Stiles nods but doesn't say anything. The blush on his neck is almost gone, and Lydia finds herself drifting off to sleep as she watches it disappear entirely.
***
There's a text message waiting for her on her phone when she and Stiles finally make it back to civilization. It's from Jackson, the first one he's sent since he left. She stares at the notification for a moment before tapping the screen to open it.
New school doesn't have a lacrosse team. This is actually hell.
Lydia smiles, and just as she's about to text him back, another message from him pops up.
Make any bad decisions yet?
She taps out, Only a couple, and adds two xs and sends it before she can change her mind. Jackson's next message is a complaint about his swim team captain, and it devolves from there until she's turning down his suggestion of phone sex. It's nice knowing that he still thinks of her like that, in a way, but - that isn't the point anymore, is it, she thinks.
She falls asleep with an itch underneath her skin.
***
Lydia counts being friends with Stiles as one of her bad decisions, though watching him maneuver Derek into a relationship without Derek realizing it sort of makes up for her apparent loss of sanity. It's amusing, seeing Stiles trip all over himself, though she'd never admit that out loud to anyone. She's already dealt with Jackson sending her frowny face after frowny face after telling him who she's been hanging out with - telling him that she finds Stiles' wooing attempts sweet would only make it worse.
"God, I get heartburn just looking at them," Erica says from behind her.
Lydia jumps about a mile out of her body. "Didn't Stiles buy bells for all of you?" she asks, scowling at Erica as she joins her on the couch.
"He did, but I haven't found a collar to put it on yet. He's been too busy chasing Derek's tail to get on my case about it, too."
Lydia's brain halts for a moment at the mental image of Erica in a collar, and suddenly the strange itch from the other night and the airport starts up again. Erica is staring at her, blood-red lips quirked up on one side of her mouth in a knowing smirk. Lydia immediately wants to wipe the look off her face, preferably by attacking it with her own lips, but - but.
"Black leather doesn't really do much for you," Lydia hears herself say, and it sounds like a lie even to herself.
Erica raises an eyebrow, smirk still firmly in place. "Would you like to know what does do it for me?" she asks.
Lydia is torn between leaving and saying yes, god, that is exactly what I need, and Erica is leaning in closer to her, and - Stiles sits himself down on the couch in between them.
"Someone explain to me why I'm doing this again," he says. Erica snorts and shoves him into Lydia before getting up off the sofa and sauntering into the kitchen. "What? What did I do to deserve that?"
Lydia shoves him away from her for symmetry's sake and goes home. The itch doesn't go away, and she spends the rest of the night thinking about trying new things.
Author: brilligspoons
Recipient: espressopotluck
Pairings: Lydia gen with background Derek/Stiles and a little bit of Erica/Lydia
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3200
Warnings: none
Summary: After Jackson and his parents move away, Lydia starts over again.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta readers for making this story work! Hope everyone enjoys reading this! :)
***
Somehow Jackson's goodbye when Lydia sees him and his parents off at the airport doesn't hurt nearly as much as she's expecting it to.
"I'm not," he starts to say. He hesitates, then swoops in and kisses her on the forehead. He pulls back a little and says, "If you wanted to make this a long-distance thing - I mean, it's not like we won't talk to each other after this. Right?"
Lydia smiles and shakes her head, says, "I think it's better if we try new things, new people," because it seems like the appropriate thing to say. She'll decide later if she actually means it or not.
Jackson nods as if he knows what she means, and he probably does know to some degree. He steps back and lets her hug both his parents, and then they're joining the line of people waiting to be let through security and moving farther and farther away from her until she can barely recognize Jackson's head in a sea of other heads all checking to make sure they have the right gate. She stands there in the crowd of families and friends and significant others being left behind and feels, vaguely, like all the sound and movement around her has suddenly amplified, and she hates it.
She has the airport valet retrieve her car while she scratches at an imaginary itch on her arm. She only cries for the first half of the ride back to Beacon Hills.
***
As expected, there are people whispering about the Whittemores moving over the summer when Lydia walks into school at the beginning of the new school year. Only a few people approach her with questions, mostly Jackson's friends from the swim team and lacrosse, and for the most part they're genuinely curious rather than anything else. Lydia spends most of AP statistics and history idly wondering how many of his opportunistic ex-teammates will be asking her out on dates over the next few days - not that she's interested in any of them. She just hates being unprepared.
Oddly, she's looking forward to seeing how Stiles acts around her more than anything else. To be fair, Lydia does have a list of actual questions for him, and he'd been suspiciously unreachable for a majority of the summer. There are worse people to be seen with these days, she decides during history.
Stiles has third period AP English with her. She waits for him to sit down next to her in the front of the classroom, assuming that he'll take advantage of the free space by her, but he picks a seat at the very back next to the window instead. Lydia stamps down on the spark of annoyance that bites at her insides. This is the most frustrating thing about Stiles: not the ridiculous crush on her that's apparently existed since grade school (she gets it, okay, she's been in love with Jackson for longer than anyone actually knows), but the apparent lack of any sort of recognizable pattern it follows. It grates on her.
Lydia drums her nails against her desk, and then she stands and gathers up her bag and notebooks and stalks to the back of the classroom. She glares at the girl who took the spot next to Stiles.
"You're in my seat," she says.
The girl frowns. "No, I'm not."
Lydia sets her notebooks down on the desk. She rests both palms down on the flat surface and leans forward into the girl's personal space, stares directly into her eyes and glares. "Yes," Lydia says, "you are."
Lydia is pleased to note that her intimidation skills are still operating at full capacity. Stiles gapes at her as she settles down into the seat and selects the pen she's going to use for note-taking. He blinks and looks to the front of the room where the other girl is (sullenly) taking Lydia's original desk choice, and then he turns back to her.
"You hate sitting in the back," he says.
Lydia makes a noise of agreement. He opens his mouth to say more, but the teacher enters the room before he can form the words, and then it's all basic literary criticism and assigning project partners. Lydia grabs Stiles' hand and raises it with her own when the teacher asks for volunteer pairs. She can practically feel his confusion and nervousness rolling off him, and she allows herself a brief moment of satisfaction.
This is as good a plan for starting over as any, I suppose, she thinks.
***
Lydia gives Stiles a week before addressing the werewolf-shaped elephant in the room. She follows him back to his locker after their English class and stares at him while he grabs his physics textbook and notes. He very obviously stalls for as long as he can, and the hallway is almost clear when he finally sighs and closes the locker door.
"Look," Stiles says, "not that I haven't been thrilled with you actually paying attention to me the last few days, but I think I know you well enough by now to know you're after something."
"Very intuitive," replies Lydia. "You're not busy after school today, are you?"
He blinks several times in quick succession. "Uh, no. Not that I know of, anyway. It's Friday, though, so Scott and me, we were -"
"I'm not interested in whatever video game marathon you were planning. I want to know more about the supernatural, and you're going to tell me everything you know," she says. "Today. If I'm going to be dealing with this sort of stuff on a regular basis, I need to have the facts."
"Um - okay? But I don't -"
"Not interested. I'll be at your car after last bell."
Erica is sitting in the back of Stiles' car when Lydia gets there at the end of the day, her booted feet propped up by the headrest of the passenger seat. She's scraping the last bits of yogurt from a plastic container, and she gives Lydia a smile around the metal spoon when she opens the door (tsk tsk, Stiles, Lydia thinks, shouldn't leave your door unlocked, you'll attract all the strays). Lydia stares at her for a moment, then starts tapping her foot against the blacktop when Erica doesn't take the hint and move.
"Cute, Reyes. Very cute," Lydia says.
"Why, Lydia, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just waiting for my ride. What are you doing here?"
"Stiles and I are having a long overdue chat about things that go bump in the night this afternoon." She glares at Erica, daring her to try and stop them. Rather than intimidate her, however, the announcement seems to perk Erica up.
"Hot. Can I watch?" she asks.
"Oh, that's original -"
"Ladies," Stiles says from behind Lydia. She doesn't jump, but it's a near thing. "We're all headed in the same direction, no need to start anything where basically the whole school can see. Erica, what did I say about your heels and my car's upholstery?"
Erica's smile has just a hint of fang in it. "That I do what I want, or I throw you in a dumpster again."
Stiles scowls at her but climbs in behind the steering wheel without another word. Erica shifts and allows Lydia to climb in front.
The ride is, well, awkward, to say the least. Patience is not one of Lydia's strong points, but she likes to think she's taught herself how to ignore minor inconveniences and annoyances over the years. After all, while she loves Jackson and has fond memories of their time together, their relationship was not without its...moments. So when she first feels Erica's breath on the back of her neck, Lydia purses her lips together and says nothing, ignoring the way her spine tingles at the sensation. She's doing rather well with letting it go, too, until -
"Get your nose off my neck," Lydia says. She keeps her voice and breathing as even as possible.
"Okay," Erica says, but she licks a stripe from the junction of Lydia's neck and shoulder to right behind her ear before settling back in the seat. "You just let me know if you change your mind, hm?"
Stiles lets out a strangled noise. Lydia turns and glares at him, but he's parking the car next to a shiny black Camaro and scrambling out of his seat before she can say anything to him about it. Erica giggles behind her.
"Poor guy doesn't know what to do with himself," she says.
Lydia whips her head around. "If you were doing that just to put on a show, I -"
"Cool it, red," Erica interrupts with a wink, "I'm not in the habit of making promises I don't intend to keep, audience or not. Besides, I'm pretty sure he's got other things on his mind at the moment." She jerks her chin. Lydia follows the direction of the motion with her eyes and spots a half-naked, sweating Derek Hale doing chin-ups in a doorway. Stiles is speaking to him, gesturing a bit more wildly with his hands than is probably necessary.
"I see," Lydia says, though she really doesn't. Yet.
Stiles runs back to the car and opens the door for Lydia. "Are you ready for supernatural 101?" he asks. "Because we can, you know, not do this now, we can wait, we can -"
Lydia raises an eyebrow at him. "Don't say stupid things," she says. "It's unattractive."
***
The new plan, as it turns out, is almost more annoying than not having one at all, mostly because the new plan involves werewolves and other assorted supernatural beings.
"I told you," Stiles gasps out as they're running together over uneven ground and around trees, "I thought - after Jackson and Peter and the whole -"
"I swear to god, Stilinski, if you're about to tell me you were giving me space out of some misguided attempt to protect me and my poor, traumatized brain, I will have your balls nailed to my wall," Lydia says.
Stiles lets out a burst of laughter that's bordering on the hysterical. She doesn't blame him - they'd been trapped in the smallest fairy circle ever for just under thirty seven hours, unable to attempt escape or even sleep because fairies are vicious little fuckers who like to zap their captives with sparkly lightning bolts at random intervals. Lydia never really had an opinion either way on fairies, but now her favorite cashmere sweater is riddled with holes, and that is just not okay.
"Does mountain ash work with fairies, or is that just shapeshifters?" Lydia asks between rasping breaths.
"I don't know. I didn't even know fairies were real until two days ago."
"If I thought these things would leave us alone instead of catching us again, I'd trip you right now." She dodges a low-hanging branch and chances a quick look behind them. A fine, shining mist is trailing after them. She curses.
Stiles swerves to the left and calls out, "There's a cabin over here."
She follows him after a brief hesitation. She wonders what hiding in a cabin is going to do for them but runs inside regardless and doesn't protest when he shuts and bolts the door. She throws herself down on the bed that's sitting in the corner of the room. Her chest burns like it's about to explode, and her legs twitch as her muscles attempt to recover from the sprinting. Stiles joins her on the mattress and heaves. Lydia takes several deep breaths and holds them before letting them go, and soon enough, she notices her heart rate begin to slow down. She twists her head around to check the windows. The fairies seem to be circling the cabin, slamming themselves against the outer walls and the glass panes, but they don't make any attempt to enter the building.
"Well," she says, "I'm glad we managed to find the one fairy-proof cabin in the whole reserve. How does that even happen?"
"Let's not question this one, please," says Stiles. "I feel like I need to rip my lungs out and throw water on them, they hurt so much."
Lydia turns onto her side, facing him. "You know, Stiles, when I asked you to explain all this supernatural stuff to me, I was thinking we would start with the theory - like the bestiary translation. I would have liked having a solid foundation prior to risking life and limb."
"You and me both," he says. He sighs and rests a forearm across his nose. "Look, it's not like I have a lot of options here. Either I ask Peter, who gives me the creeps, or I ask Allison's dad, which I don't envision being a viable option either at the moment. I'm basically just going on what I've picked up along the way."
"You're winging it. That's fantastic. You couldn't just tell me that ahead of time?"
"Okay, okay! I was trying to impress you." Lydia punches him in the arm. Stiles flails and lets out a yelp, glaring at her. "What the hell was that for?"
"I'm going to say this once, and then we're never going to speak of it again," Lydia says. "I'm not interested in you romantically. Your little rant in your bedroom in the spring? That was charming and all, and I'm willing to admit that I probably needed to hear it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to date you."
"Yeah, I got that."
"Do you."
"Yes," Stiles says. He scratches the top of his head. "I, uh. I've had a lot of time to think about - stuff. Recently. And I'm sorry for yelling at you that night. I wasn't really thinking straight."
Lydia nods. "None of us were. Having the shit kicked out of you will do that. Apology accepted, though." She settles down on her back again and stretches out her legs carefully. The box spring beneath the mattress creaks loudly in the surrounding quiet. "Now - where were you all summer?"
Stiles' face and neck immediately flush a dark red. Lydia's eyebrows shoot up.
"Nowhere," he mumbles, shooting her a quick look before averting his gaze again. She pokes him in the arm. "Seriously, I was still here. Just," he waves an arm in the air, "working with Derek and Isaac. There was a - a thing."
"A thing," Lydia repeats. She pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
"Yeah, a thing. A thing where we had to fight a pack of alpha werewolves to get Erica and Boyd back and prove that Derek was a worthy alpha, blah blah blah. You would've been bored. It was actually kind of anticlimactic at the end."
"Except for how you can't say Derek's name without blushing like a middle schooler," Lydia says, ignoring the way her brain flashes immediately to Erica's golden curls. Sudden realization dawns on her. "Oh, I see."
"You see nothing. There is nothing to see here."
"Did he have to prove himself by flexing his muscles a lot? Did he walk around shirtless? Did you swoon?" Stiles covers his face with his hands. Lydia smirks. "I'll take that as a 'yes,' then."
Stiles groans. "There was no swooning over anything. I just got to know him a little better, is all."
"Right, of course." Lydia twists herself off the bed and walks over to one of the windows. She looks around outside, expecting to see the fairies circling them still, but there's nothing. The sunlight is fading, though, and there's no way they'll be able to make it back to a main road safely in the dark. She turns back around and crawls into the space next to Stiles, curling herself up into a ball. "They must have given up, but we'll have to stay here tonight anyway. Oh, and next time you run off to take care of werewolf business, or whatever it is you do, I'll be coming with you. No arguments."
Stiles nods but doesn't say anything. The blush on his neck is almost gone, and Lydia finds herself drifting off to sleep as she watches it disappear entirely.
***
There's a text message waiting for her on her phone when she and Stiles finally make it back to civilization. It's from Jackson, the first one he's sent since he left. She stares at the notification for a moment before tapping the screen to open it.
New school doesn't have a lacrosse team. This is actually hell.
Lydia smiles, and just as she's about to text him back, another message from him pops up.
Make any bad decisions yet?
She taps out, Only a couple, and adds two xs and sends it before she can change her mind. Jackson's next message is a complaint about his swim team captain, and it devolves from there until she's turning down his suggestion of phone sex. It's nice knowing that he still thinks of her like that, in a way, but - that isn't the point anymore, is it, she thinks.
She falls asleep with an itch underneath her skin.
***
Lydia counts being friends with Stiles as one of her bad decisions, though watching him maneuver Derek into a relationship without Derek realizing it sort of makes up for her apparent loss of sanity. It's amusing, seeing Stiles trip all over himself, though she'd never admit that out loud to anyone. She's already dealt with Jackson sending her frowny face after frowny face after telling him who she's been hanging out with - telling him that she finds Stiles' wooing attempts sweet would only make it worse.
"God, I get heartburn just looking at them," Erica says from behind her.
Lydia jumps about a mile out of her body. "Didn't Stiles buy bells for all of you?" she asks, scowling at Erica as she joins her on the couch.
"He did, but I haven't found a collar to put it on yet. He's been too busy chasing Derek's tail to get on my case about it, too."
Lydia's brain halts for a moment at the mental image of Erica in a collar, and suddenly the strange itch from the other night and the airport starts up again. Erica is staring at her, blood-red lips quirked up on one side of her mouth in a knowing smirk. Lydia immediately wants to wipe the look off her face, preferably by attacking it with her own lips, but - but.
"Black leather doesn't really do much for you," Lydia hears herself say, and it sounds like a lie even to herself.
Erica raises an eyebrow, smirk still firmly in place. "Would you like to know what does do it for me?" she asks.
Lydia is torn between leaving and saying yes, god, that is exactly what I need, and Erica is leaning in closer to her, and - Stiles sits himself down on the couch in between them.
"Someone explain to me why I'm doing this again," he says. Erica snorts and shoves him into Lydia before getting up off the sofa and sauntering into the kitchen. "What? What did I do to deserve that?"
Lydia shoves him away from her for symmetry's sake and goes home. The itch doesn't go away, and she spends the rest of the night thinking about trying new things.