Chapter Text
It is sticky hot outside, the kind of hot that has Lydia's light shirt sticking to her back, beads of sweat rolling down her skin. She stays inside all day, seated comfortably on the window seat in her living room, snapchatting Scott, texting Stiles, and watching the rays from the brightly burning sun settle over the woods that contain so many of her fears. The air conditioning that blasts through her house almost assuages the agony of the heat. She thinks that maybe this is the kind of day you can only suffer through if there's someone there complaining with you.
Unfortunately, Stiles hasn't been able to come over today, as his dad has been forcing him to clean out his closet. They're preparing to leave for college in less than a month, and all of them seem to be pulling their lives up by the roots, attempting to not become messy from the dirt that's still clinging to them. Lydia thinks, though, that it might be too late for her. She's already got mulch all over her knees, and she's got no desire to be clean.
She feels, for the first time, like she has found her people. Feels it when she's helping Malia with her math homework; when she's sitting on Scott's porch swing, talking late into the night; when she's laying on Stiles' bed, watching the sun come up in his eyes. These are the people she's supposed to be with. And Lydia, despite the fact that everything is about to change, feels perfectly still. Perfectly content.
After several hours of blessed silence, Prada finally skids up to her and yips softly, prancing towards the door.
"You want to go out, Prada?" Lydia asks. She marks her place in her book, sets it down on the soft cushion of the window seat, and stretches languidly before she gets up, padding across the floor as she goes to the screen door to let Prada outside.
She's leaning against the arbor, responding to a text from Isaac, when her phone begins to buzz and whirl in her hand. Stiles' goofy contact picture comes up— he's shirtless and in her bed and making the dumbest face in the entire world. She's in love with it. She's in love with him.
"Hey," she says happily, eyes still on the sunset. "It's too hot."
"That's for damn sure," he mutters, sounding far more annoyed about it than any rational person would be. Then again, it's Stiles. There isn't much about him that's rational.
"Want to come over and do something that definitely won't cool us down?"
She hears him laugh through his nose over the phone, but when he speaks, he sounds downtrodden.
"I'd love to, but we actually have to go."
Lydia's smile drops almost immediately.
"The coven?"
"They came back."
"And they're going for the tree?"
"Yeah. We were right."
Lydia's heart goes cold.
"Who was on guard?" she asks, patting her knee until she gets Prada's attention. The dog prances up to Lydia, licking at her ankles as Lydia ushers her into the house and closes the door behind the two of them.
"Liam," says Stiles. "He texted Scott, and we gotta get there fast."
"Are you almost here?" Lydia asks, sliding her feet into the pair of flowered Keds that she has in her front hall closet. She's wearing high waisted shorts with a pretty tank top tucked into it. It's too late to change now. Lydia hopes that nothing happens to her shirt.
"Yeah, I'll grab you on my way," he says, and the line goes dead. She snatches her keys from the hook by the door and sprints down her driveway, reaching the end just as Stiles' jeep pulls up. Lydia hauls open the door and pulls herself easily into the jeep.
"How long ago did Scott call you?" she asks, habitually buckling her seatbelt.
There's a bit of sweat disappearing from Stiles' collarbone into his t-shirt. On a normal day, she'd ask him to pull the jeep over and tug his shirt over his head. For now, though, they're being serious. They have to be.
"Like, five minutes?"
"Shit. Stiles—"
"I know," he says. "Their powers are crazy, we could be too late… I know."
"We can't let them near that tree," she says resolutely, braiding her hair back as she speaks. "People could die."
Stiles takes an abrupt turn, the tires squealing against the pavement as he curves into the woods. He sticks an arm out so that Lydia doesn't pitch forward too much, which makes her roll her eyes but still fills her stomach with warmth. He's always doing these little things to protect her. It's instinctive. He doesn't even realize he's doing it. And it feels so good to have someone who wants to care for her— not take care of her. It's not like she can't take care of herself. Lydia's the one who pushes herself to jump; he's just there to make sure she has soft ground to fall on.
"Almost there," he mutters to himself, hands already back on the wheel. "Almost… yeah."
He abruptly stops the car, kills the engine, and wiggles out of his seat, dropping to the ground. Lydia slams the door behind her and hands her phone to Stiles so that he can put it in his pocket before the two of them begin sprinting towards the sounds of fighting.
When they get there, the first thing Lydia sees is Scott ducking, his whole body bending down as he avoids a ball of fire that's being thrown at his head. He uses the momentum from his bend to push back up and swing his leg at the witch, but it's too late, and another fireball releases from her hand, almost hitting Hayden.
"God," Lydia says, almost awestruck.
"Holy fuck," Stiles curses in agreement.
"You have to stay here," Lydia says shortly. "There's no way you can hold your own against fireballs."
"Lydia—"
She grabs his hand and squeezes it tight.
"Stiles. You can't be in this. You understand, right?" He swallows, hard. Then he nods. Lydia presses a brief kiss to his lips, sweeping her thumb across the shell of his ear and down to his chin. "I love you," she says quietly. Then she takes off towards Scott, smacking a witch in the face with one hand as she uses her power to push Corey over so that a fireball misses him.
Scott looks over at her, his eyes grateful, and Lydia has time to give him a small nod before she swings her leg around, pushing her foot into a witch that's going for her. The witch ricochets back, and Lydia uses the white wisps of her power to throw her against a tree. Her braid swings as she focuses on the next witch that is coming at her. This time, she doesn't bother to use her body at all and screams loud, pushing white energy from her hands that knock the breath out of the witch. Lydia has a chance to shield Malia from a fireball that's coming at her— which is how she finds out that the fireballs cannot penetrate Lydia's sound barriers— before another witch is on her, snarling as she begins to use hand-to-hand.
As much as Lydia doesn't prefer that, she begins fighting back skillfully, prepared from long afternoons of sparring with Malia, who doesn't go easy on Lydia like Scott always does. The witch shrieks as Lydia slams a palm against her heart and then screams in her face, shoving her back.
Aggressive negotiations, Lydia thinks to herself, smirking as she recalls the line. Maybe she'll be Padme for Halloween this year. That would probably make Stiles happy.
She smacks a witch in the face with the back of her hand, causing the witch's nose to break. Except what Lydia doesn't see is the other witch coming for her at the same time. Doesn't realize it's happening until an arm is snaking around her waist, pulling her close, a knife pressed cooly against Lydia's throat.
Once upon a time, before witches and woods and wet grass under her knees as Lydia sat with Allison, Lydia had been strangled. She'd had a mark here on her neck, pink and delicate and small. She can remember the way it felt to have the chord digging into her flesh. And it's much more desirable, Lydia thinks, to not be a sacrifice. To not be anybody's sacrifice, or have to sacrifice anything.
"Give us the tree!" The witch howls, her stomach pressing against Lydia's back. "Let us have it, or I slit her throat."
Scott looks horrified. Lydia sees him lowering his hands, and she shakes her head desperately. No. This tree is the source of everything. This tree is worth so much more than her life. They can give up anything to save Beacon Hills because this tree is everything.
"Don't," warns the witch holding her, digging the knife in a little bit. Lydia's throat works in panic, a little gasp escaping her. "Give it to us!" she repeats, louder, digging the knife in more deeply.
Lydia feels blood being drawn. She feels it pooling on her flesh. And she feels it as the witch's body gets knocked away from her, knife nicking at her skin as the witch goes down.
Her hands find her knees as she hunches forward, gasping in relief, ignoring, for the time being, the sound of desperate screams. She doesn't straighten up until it occurs to her that she can see all the members of the pack. Every single one of them.
Everyone except Stiles.
When Lydia turns around, the screaming has already stopped. Her body rotates until her eyes finally find Stiles, standing with a baseball bat in his hand. There's blood on his t-shirt. On his arms. He looks confused, and horrified. When his eyes find hers, he seems lost. Lydia peers behind him, at the body on the ground.
She is unrecognizable.
Malia is the first one to make a move. She takes out a witch standing near her, and then everybody starts to move into action together. Lydia ignores them, running at Stiles. He drops the bat as he sees her running towards him, and Lydia grabs his hand, snatching it in hers. Her hand slips on the wet, sticky blood that runs across his palm.
"Stiles, come on. You have to run. Stiles!"
His head turns to her, shocked. There's blood on his cheeks and splattered across his nose.
"Lydia?"
"Stiles," she begs. "Run."
"Lydia," he says again, voice quiet and trembling. "What did I do?"
Stiles is in his bedroom, where the blinds are closed tight and his covers are pulled close around his head. It's Saturday morning, meaning his dad is at work, and Lydia has an iced coffee for herself and a frozen hot chocolate for Stiles.
She's pretending that it's normal, which is better than pretending they don't care. It doesn't feel as wrong against her skin.
Lydia has to move some clutter off of Stiles' bedside table in order to place the drinks on it. She shoves papers, pieces of yarn, condoms— seriously, there isn't a better place for him to hide condoms than in plain sight?— and his cell phone to the floor before she sets the two drinks onto the nightstand and climbs over him onto his bed, peeling the covers back from his face. He's on his stomach, lids closed, face turned towards the sun-filled empty space on the bed where she would be lying if they had gotten to fall asleep together.
It would be surprising that she hadn't already woken him up with noise if Lydia didn't suspect that Stiles had probably only fallen asleep a few hours ago.
She kisses his forehead, then snuggles into his side and presses her nose against his cheek.
"Hey," she murmurs, waiting for his eyes to open to her. They don't. "Stiles?" He still doesn't move. "Okay," Lydia sighs heavily. "I guess you leave me no choice."
She licks his neck. His eyes pop open.
"What the fuck?" he asks, his voice rough and gravelly from sleep. "Did you just lick me?"
Lydia smiles contently.
"Mhmm."
"What the fuck?" repeats Stiles, looking like he's trying not to laugh.
"Want me to do it again?" Lydia asks, her voice getting low, one eyebrow quirking up. His eyes move from her eyes down to her mouth. She watches his tongue dart out to wet his bottom lip. Then she watches the demeanor of his face change as he blinks, melting into something softer and quieter.
"Maybe later," he says, turning over, onto his back.
Her heart plummets slightly. She edges over on the bed, giving him some space. She sees that register in Stiles' eyes, but then he swallows hard and shuts down his expression.
"I brought you sustenance," Lydia says, flicking her eyes to the frozen hot chocolate. "You should probably eat something else too, though."
"Is this your way of trying to get me to cook you breakfast?" Stiles asks, mouth quirking up.
"That is a very real possibility," admits Lydia, considering all the mornings she's spent sitting on the island of Stiles' kitchen while he putters around, making her scrambled eggs. He's usually shirtless— if he isn't at the start of the morning, he is by the end— and he's almost always wearing plaid pajama bottoms that are slung low on his hips. His hair is never gelled yet, and she likes to wrap her legs lazily around his hips from behind, pulling him towards her until she can scrape her teeth over his ear or bend into his neck and bite him lightly or turn him around and press small kisses against his lips.
"I can do that," he assents, propping himself up on his elbow. "Did you sleep okay?"
She nods, choosing to burrow into his second pillow, watching him watch her. Neither of them speaks for a few moments, waiting for her to ask.
"How about you?"
Stiles cringes, and Lydia doesn't exactly know why he's surprised that she brought it up.
"Fine, I guess."
"What time did you fall asleep?"
"Four?"
"Nightmares?" she asks, already knowing the answer. He shrugs, turning around and putting his feet on the floor. She watches the muscles in his back move as he stretches, and resists the urge to sit up on her knees and trace her fingers over the moles there. When Stiles bends down to the floor to grab a shirt, however, Lydia darts forward, hooking her finger into the elastic of his pajama bottoms and tugging him back into bed. "Hey," she says. "Look at me."
He turns his head to the side, but doesn't shift all the way around. Lydia bites her lip, wanting desperately not to cry, but she's been feeling anxiety clawing at her stomach for the past three days, and she can't stand this. She can't stand not knowing what's going on in his head. Stiles has been so honest with her. She can't lose that just because he's being stubborn.
Lydia slips out of bed on her side, walking around so that she is standing in front of Stiles, who is still seated on his mattress, braced to run. She stands above him, cupping his cheeks, and he leans into her, placing his hands over hers as he stares at her.
"Stop hiding," she says, her voice commanding. She doesn't let on to how scared he's making her feel because that would give him permission to be afraid of himself. And she can't do that. She can't let that happen. "You're hiding from me."
"Lydia, I—"
"Saved my life," she breathes out. "I would have died."
"Killed someone." He finishes his own sentence, ignoring what she'd said. "I murdered somebody else."
"To save me."
"I've killed two people. More. More, if you count what I did when the nogitsune was possessing me."
"Which I don't," Lydia says. "Because it wasn't your mind."
The stripes from his blinds are making the sun shine sharply in Stiles' eyes while most of the rest of his face is in shadow. He blinks up at her, looking lost and confused.
"I don't even remember doing it," he whispers. She doesn't know which time he's talking about. She doesn't want to ask.
"Our lives aren't normal circumstances," points out Lydia. "Stiles, it's… complicated. It's complicated, okay? You can't blame yourself."
"Scott's never had to kill anyone."
"You're not Scott," she says sharply. He looks like she's slapped him.
"Yeah," he says, voice too quiet. "I guess you're right."
"That's not a bad thing," Lydia says desperately, grabbing his chin and tilting it towards her, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Stiles, I'm in love with you."
"You deserve—"
"Shut up," she says, cutting him off. "Stiles, you did the right thing. I didn't feel like I was going to scream. Not once. Do you know why?" He shakes his head, sliding backwards so that he's in the center of the bed, where she can't touch him. "It's because you were always supposed to do that. You were always supposed to save me."
She doesn't even know if she believes it herself, but she does know that she is willing to say absolutely anything to make this go away. To make him believe that he did the right thing.
"I don't—"
But she crawls into his lap, wrapping her legs around his waist, and he holds her automatically, lowering his head so that his ear is against her chest, listening to her heavily thudding heart that belongs irreversibly to him.
"I want to be alive," she whispers, stroking his hair from the top of his head, letting her hand drift softly down his neck, and repeating it over and over again. His arms are around her torso, and his body is so contorted that she knows he can't be comfortable, but she continues to speak, letting him clutch onto her. "I want to be alive with you."
He breathes out a long, stuttering breath, and Lydia disentangles herself from him long enough to pull her shirt over her head and take off her bra, letting him press kisses into her breasts as she rocks herself over him.
A few minutes later, she finds herself on her back, giving herself to him over and over again, hoping that the rhythm that their bodies create is enough to keep him with her. Hoping that it's enough to make him see.
He cuddles into her afterwards, arm slung across her stomach, smile pressed into her shoulder, and she thinks, rather naively, that she's won.
The heat breaks on a Thursday night when the pavement in Beacon Hills begins to crackle with rain. Lydia watches from her bedroom window, her laptop on her knees as she curates a list of things she's going to need for the move to a dorm room. She's in the process of wrinkling her nose at the idea of having to wear flip flops in the shower when her phone lights up with a text from Stiles, asking if he can come over. She responds with the affirmative, trying to ignore the excitement in her gut and the way her heart has started to thump a bit faster.
Lydia sets her laptop down and goes to her dresser, grabbing her hairbrush and pulling it through the messy strands before checking herself in her full length mirror. Bare feet. Green dress. The usual rings on her fingers. And a reasonably unusual smile on her lips, stretched wide, reaching her eyes as she presses her lips together. She looks like she has a secret, Lydia thinks, and she presses it further to her chest, keeping it.
Stiles' jeep pulls into her driveway, crunching against the gravel. Lydia waves to him out her open window before she dashes down the mahogany staircase and throws open the door to her house. He gets out of the car slowly, causing Lydia to become antsy as she stands in the entryway to her house, waiting for him.
She doesn't want to wait anymore.
Feeling itchy with the need to have her hands on his body, Lydia closes the door behind herself and walks down the stairs of her front porch, running towards Stiles on her tiptoes as spitting rain begins to drench her body. The sun has just begun to go down, leaving it a little darker than it had been when he first called, but Lydia can still make out the expression on his face as his eyes trace her features. He stands next to his jeep, staring at her, a slight pinch to his brow as he watches her.
"Hi," she says, arms circling his neck, standing as tall as she can on her toes.
"Hi," he replies, wonder in his eyes as he looks down at her. He gets like this sometimes. Stares at her like this, with awe in his expression, like he can't believe he's holding her. "I love you." She smiles, almost feeling shy as she bites her lips and looks down. When his hands grip her waist, she tilts her head to the side and peers back up at him through her lashes.
"Kiss me?"
He doesn't even think about it, just plunges his mouth to hers and kisses her with such verve that Lydia thinks she can feel it down in her toes. There is nothing playful about the kiss; it is long and serious and he is licking at every part of her mouth like he's trying to memorize it all over again.
When Stiles pulls back, his eyes are dead serious. "Lydia. You know I love you, right?"
Her single nod is paired with confused eyes, her hands slipping from his shoulders to press against his chest as she stares up at him.
"I know," she says. "What's wrong?"
He closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers, and when his hand comes around the back of her head to run his fingers through her hair, she realizes that his fingers are shaking slightly.
"I… I brought you flowers."
The window of the jeep is rolled down, and Stiles reaches in, coming up with a bouquet of ballerina pink flowers. They look perfect. They look flawless. Lydia frowns as he thrusts the flowers into her hands.
"Stiles?"
He clasps their hands together and starts to walk them towards her front porch, taking his time before he speaks.
"They're, um, they're rainflowers."
She blinks rain out of her eyes, trying to understand what he's getting at.
"Okay?"
Stiles pulls her out of the rain, up the steps of her front porch, absently running his hands up and down her arms as he speaks in an attempt to rub away some of the goosebumps from the cold rain against her skin.
"They… um… my mom. She had this plant book when I was little. Super old… like, I think it was my grandma's, to be honest, but she used to thumb through it and plant flowers in our garden that were… I dunno, she said they were good omens, or something. She was really superstitious; did I ever tell you that?" Lydia shakes her head wordlessly. "Yeah, it was weird. But, anyways, she—"
"What do rainflowers mean?"
He squeezes his eyes shut at how cold her voice has gone, wincing.
"I'm getting there."
"Stiles." Her voice is loud and harsh and it wavers as she speaks. "What do rainflowers mean?"
The breath that he pulls into his body is shaky at best. She feels the accumulation of dread in her stomach, clawing at her. She thinks about the soft bites she puts in the juncture between Stiles' shoulder and neck, and the harsh bite that Peter Hale had thrust on her. Somehow, Lydia thinks that this moment feels more like the second.
"They mean… I love you back." He opens his eyes. Trains them so intently on her face that Lydia thinks he can see something that isn't there— or maybe he isn't seeing her expression at all. Maybe he's just committing this to his mind. "They mean 'I love you back.' They mean 'I have to atone for my sins.' And they mean 'I'll never forget you.'"
Her stomach bottoms out.
"Stiles."
The energy seems to whoosh out of him in a sudden rush, and he sits on the porch step. She follows him down almost automatically, not sure when she made the decision to move.
"I killed someone else, Lydia."
"You were saving me."
"I'm fucked up. You deserve better than that. You deserve someone who doesn't do fucked up things."
She pushes the flowers back at him.
"I don't want these," she says insistently, horrified by the desperation in her voice.
"I have to go."
"Stiles—"
"I gotta leave," he says hoarsely, leaning over and kissing her temple. "I love you so much, Lydia. So much."
Her heart is beating wildly somewhere in her throat as she watches him walk down the steps of her house, striding slowly towards his jeep.
"Stiles," she calls after him, standing up on the porch step, her voice cutting through the pounding of the rain. "I don't even like flowers."
He pauses. Turns around, body blocking the dying sun.
"Yeah. I know."