So here's a sweet one-shot of what happened after the ghostrider battle. :) Enjoy.

The Ghostriders had ridden the storm out of town, and once again, Beacon Hills was safe. Scott, Malia, Stiles, and Lydia drove away from the high school, each feeling a strange sense of calm and completeness that they hadn't felt ever since the riders had come into town and began messing with all of their memories.

Scott's house was the first on the route, and he reluctantly left his friends, his pack, as he jumped out of the light blue jeep and headed toward the front door. As soon as the headlights had flashed in the windows, Melissa had run to the window to see that her son was safe and sound. The two embraced in the doorway, and the others drove off down the road.

"Do you think you could actually drop me off at Peter's? He's staying at the loft for a few days before heading out of town, I wanted to see him..." Malia mentioned timidly before Stiles could continue any further toward her house.

"Uh, yeah, sure." Stiles pulled a U-turn and headed toward Derek's old loft. The three were silent, though Lydia didn't have much of a choice as she had dozed off to sleep the minute she had climbed into the passenger seat. She had used the extent of her strength that day, each scream nearly drained her of all of her energy, this was something she had come to realize in training - and she had used her power quite a few times that day, so it was safe to say she was exhausted.

"Malia, can I talk to you about-" Stiles began.

"Yah know, it's okay with me right?" Malia interrupted.

"What?"

"You and Lydia."

"What? How did you…?"

"Well, aside from the fact that you guys have practically been dating since before me and you even broke up," Stiles looked at her with a guilty expression in the rearview mirror, "I don't mean that in a jealous condescending way or anything. It's just how it's always been. You always loved her."

"I was in love with you too, yah know." He flinched at the past tense of his words.

"Stiles, me and you… we never would have worked. Not in that kind of way, at least."

Stiles purposefully lifted his foot off the gas pedal in an effort to elongate the conversation, knowing very well that Malia didn't often open up in this way.

"You're my anchor. You always will be. And I'll always love you, you're one of my best friends. But that doesn't mean we have to have sex for that relationship to stay intact." Stiles scoffed at Malia's blunt explanation of the situation. Malia smiled, knowing she had broken through the guilty expression on his face. She had never much liked that expression, the one he got every time he thought he messed up, or when he was worried or stressed.

"Thanks, Malia."

"So seriously, you need to go for it. Because, she really really has the hots for you."

Stiles laughed loudly, then looked over nervously to make sure he hadn't woken Lydia.

"You think I'm kidding… these past few months before the hunt, I could literally smell the hormones on her whenever you were around."

Stiles stops at a red light and looks back at her, as if to gauge if she was joking. Her expression said that she was not. He then looks at Lydia. She looks so calm, in her perfect state of sleep. It was as if this was the first good sleep she had gotten in months. Now that he thought about it, it probably was. His eyes flickered to her softly parted lips. They had been rougher than he remembered from the last time they had kissed. Maybe that was because lipbalm application wasn't exactly priority when you're fighting off the wild hunt. Or maybe, he thought, that he was no longer romanticising the girl. Looking back, he was unsure if her lips really had been all that soft when they had kissed back in junior year. Maybe he had made it all up, just because he was so infatuated. Not to say he wasn't still totally in love with the girl. Because he was, totally and completely in love with her. But rather, it was a different kind of love. No longer was he a nerdy nobody who could only dream of what Lydia Martin's lips felt like. No longer was she raised so high above him on an incomprehensible pedestal. They were equals now. He was in love with her. And she was in love with him. And yes, her lips felt rough. But that didn't mean they weren't the best lips he had ever kissed.

"Stiles."

"Huh? What?" Stiles snapped out of his daydreaming.

"Green light." Malia motioned out the front window.

Soon enough they had arrived outside the old loft, and Malia was reaching over from the back seat to give Stiles a tight squeeze. "I'm glad we got you back." She gave him a kiss on the cheek and hopped out of the car. When she got to the locked industrial door she banged three times and yelled "Dad! Peter!" Sure enough, the red light above the door turned green and she was on her way in.

Stiles wasn't quite sure what to do with the sleeping girl beside him when he pulled out of the abandoned parking lot. Should he take her home? Would her mother even be there? As if on command, Lydia's phone, which was sitting in one of the cupholders beside him began to ring. It lit up with an image of her and her mother and the word "Mom." When Lydia didn't stir, Stiles picked up the phone and answered it.

"Hello?" He said quickly.

"Stiles?" Mrs. Martin said in a tone that seemed to mix confusion, relief, and worry all in one.

"Yeah, I picked up cause-"

"Please tell me Lydia is okay."

"Oh! Yeah she's fine. She's just sleeping. I was gonna drive her home right now actually."

"No!" Natalie Martin yelped.

"What! What? Why not?"

"It's her father… he just showed up on the porch out of nowhere. I'm dealing with it. I just don't want her to have to hear us fighting. You said she's sleeping. She hasn't slept in months. She needs her rest. Could you take her to the lakehouse? She should have a key on her keyring."

"Uh, yeah. Absolutely."

"Thank you, Stiles. I'm glad you're back... she was a mess without you."

Stiles nodded, though he knew she couldn't see him and looked over at the sleeping banshee beside him. He couldn't help but smile, finally realizing for the first time, after what both Malia and Natalie Martin said, just how much he meant to her.

Pulling into the driveway of the lakehouse where he had spent so many full moons with the pack, Stiles felt oddly nervous. What if, since everything was back to normal, Lydia changed her mind. What if it was all a sort of heat of the moment thing? What if now that he was back she would remember all the reasons she didn't want to be with him? What was that saying… you don't know what you have until it's gone? But what about when it comes back? He shook his head as if trying to dislodge the thoughts from his brain. He got out and went around to the passenger side where he carefully opened the door and unbuckled the petite girl's seat belt.

"Okay, Lyds." He gently picked the girl up and she sighed, tucking her head into his neck, seeming almost more content in his arms than in the cushioned seat of the jeep. When he got to the front porch, he realized that he would have to unlock the door and set the sleeping redhead softly on the bench to his right and dug around in her purse to find the key. A minute later with no luck in his search, he resorted to dumping the bag out onto the ground and pulling out his phone to use as a flashlight in an attempt to find the key in the dark.

"Keys, keys, keys, keys, where do you keep your keys, Lyds?" he muttered to himself as quietly as he could. It only took a few moments for him to realize that the keys were definitely not in her purse. "Shit," he exclaimed a little too loudly.

"Stiles?" Lydia's groggy voice sounded behind him.

"Shit," he repeated, "sorry, Lyds, I uh…" He looked from her to the innards of her purse that lay on the ground and began shoving the interiors back into the purse.

"Looking for these?" She dangled her keys which had been in the pocket of her cardigan.

Stiles sighed and nodded. Lydia swung her legs off the bench and shuffled over to the door, trying her best not to trip on her tall heeled boots in her sleepy state. Following behind her, with the purse slung lazily over his shoulder, Stiles tried his best not to panic as he realized that since she was awake they would actually have to talk about the recent events. His mind flashed once again to the thought that she may not want to be with him after all of this. Again he swatted the idea away and tried to think of something else. Pizza. Yes, he would think about pizza. Shit, pizza sounds good right now, he thought. His stomach grumbled loudly, as it, after all, hadn't had anything to eat in some three months. Mindlessly, lost in his ravenous thoughts, he followed Lydia up the stairs and into her bedroom. He sat on her bed as she pulled off her leather booties and pulled on a grey hooded sweatshirt, which he was pretty sure was actually his, before plopping down next to him.

"What's on your mind?" Lydia asked, her voice soft. She wondered if he was thinking about their kiss. Her fingertips grazed her bottom lip, they were chapped and rough from all of her screaming. She recalled how they had buzzed with electricity the moment his lips had touched them. She wanted to feel that again. Her eyes flickered to his lips which were pursed, something they always did whenever he was deeply concentrating on something.

"I'm like… starving," he said honestly. She had to say she was expecting something else.

Lydia scoffed and nodded, "that happens when you are trapped in a train station for three months and six days."

Stiles looked at her and frowned. "You counted the exact days?"

"Yeah…" She didn't meet his eyes as she spoke, "there was a point, a few weeks after you'd disappeared, where I was the only one looking. No one believed me. I thought I was going insane… again… So I backtracked to the exact day that I could remember something changing."

Stiles put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side, the way her voice seemed to shake when she spoke about his time away broke his heart. "Well, I'm back now. And it's because of you, Lyds. You saved me, you brought me back."

She wrapped her arms around him and they just sat like that for a moment until his stomach decided to protest once again with a loud growling noise that rivaled even the most ferocious of alpha's roars.

Lydia giggled and pulled reluctantly out of the chocolate eyed boy's arms. Pulling out her phone, she suggests, "How about we order a pizza?"

"Did you gain the ability to read minds while I was away?"

"No? Why?"

"Just checking," he says with a smirk.

After ordering a half pepperoni half pineapple pizza, the two are once again greeted by a comfortable silence as they sit on Lydia's bed. Stiles runs his fingers through his hair and realizes that in addition to not having eaten in three months, he also hasn't showered in that time. And while there had to be some kind of magical other dimensional voodoo happenings that made it so that no one began to smell in the train station, he couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious. Though Lydia's close proximity throughout the night seemed to argue that even if he did smell, she didn't mind.

"Do you mind if I shower?" He says as he runs his fingers through his hair once again.

"No, not at all, I just have to get you some towels." Lydia jumped up and hurried out of the room.

Stiles entered the pristine white bathroom and pulled off his shirt, already beginning to feel better ridding himself of the flannel that he had no desire to wear ever again. He didn't realize that Lydia had returned and was standing in the doorway, staring at him - no, not just at him, but at his arms. Lydia Martin was checking him out. He let out a sort of breathy laugh and Lydia's eyes snapped to his.

"Here's some towels…"

"Thanks, Lyds." He graciously accepts the towels and quickly plants a kiss on a very frazzled looking Lydia Martin's forehead, which only further propelled her into that frazzled state. He loved that he was having this influence on her. Was this a new thing? Or had it always been like this and he never noticed?

She bit her lip and backed out of the room. As the door shut behind her, she took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself. She looked at herself in the mirror, her hair was a mess and her makeup ran slightly under her eyes. She felt like she needed a hot shower - she found herself looking back at the bathroom door where she knew Stiles was totally unclothed and an imaginary scenario in which she joined him flashed in her mind - or maybe a cold shower. The doorbell snapped her out of her hormonal trance.

She tipped the pizza delivery boy generously, placed the warm box on the kitchen counter, and busied herself by pulling out napkins and plates. Though the pizza did smell enticing, and her stomach growled, she didn't want to start without Stiles - after all the pizza was supposed to be for him. Lydia marched herself back upstairs and decided she would make an effort to make herself look presentable. In her mother's bathroom, she quickly jumped in the shower. Knowing Stiles would be done at any minute, she chose not to wash her hair, which was usually a five to ten minute ordeal. Instead she combed through it with her fingers, pulled it into a ponytail on top of her head, and went on to wash her face and body. In record time, she finished and was pulling on the clothing she had grabbed from her dresser prior.

Returning to her room, she found Stiles sitting on her bed once more, his hair damp and tousled, free of his usual spiky moussed up look. Luckily, he had had a spare pair of joggers and a tee shirt that he usually kept there for full moons when the whole pack stayed the night. He was looking through a photo album which Lydia kept near her bedside. It had pictures in it from as early as sophomore year. The first picture was one of her and Allison. Stiles smiled, they both looked so young. Lydia, especially. Her cheeks were rounder and rosier, she wore more makeup and her hair was tightly curled. Though, to him, she looked just as beautiful as she does now. Simply it was just a different kind of beauty. That girl in the picture was insecure, unsure, and unaware of just how powerful she was. Stiles felt eyes on him and he looked up to find the very genius unleashed, the banshee woman full of power and beauty, that he had been thinking of.

Lydia watched as Stiles stared lovingly at the photo album Allison had given to her for her birthday just a few months before her best friend had died. Joining him on the bed, Lydia put one hand on his arm. Stiles looked into her eyes and she smiled softly and turned the page and pointed. The next picture was from the night of the dance. The dance that changed her whole life. It was a candid photo of the two of them slow dancing in the middle of the dance floor under the flashing disco lights, Allison had snapped it without telling her. Lydia wore a silver dress with a kitschy headband, both of which she recalled were torn off of her in the ambulance on the way to the hospital that night.

"Yah know you've really bulked up since then, huh?" Lydia said in a teasing voice as she squeezed Stiles' toned arm.

"Constantly fighting for your life will do that to a person," he says, not meeting her eyes, a soft blush spreading across his face.

Lydia looks dreamily at the image and whispers, "what I wouldn't give to go to a dance with Stiles Stilinski right now…" He looks at her then, but she seems far away. Trying to think of something powerful to say at that moment, his mouth opens. His stomach chooses then to grumble. Lydia snaps out of her daydreaming and jumps up. "Pizza is getting cold!" She yelps and drags Stiles by the arm down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Soon enough the two were chowing down on their half pepperoni, half pineapple pizza. After just a few slices Lydia felt like she was going to burst. But, unsurprisingly, the person in the room who hadn't eaten in three months was nowhere close to finishing.

Seeing a pause in Stiles' constant chewing, Lydia chooses then to ask the question that has been on her mind all night - well, one of them. "Why'd you bring me to the lake house instead of home?"

Stiles looks at her guiltily and wipes his hands and mouth with a napkin before speaking. "Your mom," he says as runs his hand through his damp hair, "she called and said she wanted you to come here instead."

"That's weird… did she say why?"

As she asks he quickly takes another huge bite of pizza in an attempt to delay his own response to the hard question. Lydia waits patiently, not seeming to catch on to his reluctance to answer.

Finally he swallows. "Uh… your dad… is in town…"

Lydia's eyes widen and she looks down at the pizza. "Oh." That's it. That's all she says, just a simple 'oh'. Taking the last piece of pizza out of the box and setting it on the plate in front of Stiles, she closes the greasy cardboard box and tosses it into the garbage. "Are you tired? I'm really tired."

Stiles looks at the clock and it reads half past eight. "Lyds, it's not even nine o'clock."

Seemingly ignoring him she takes away the dishes, including the one with an uneaten piece of pizza on it, and empties the scraps into the garbage before placing the plates in the sink.

"You and I both know I could have eaten that!" Stiles jokes around, attempting to get some semblance of a smile from the very stoic looking banshee.

Lydia stands at the sink, the water running as if she is about to start washing the dishes but doesn't make the move to actually do so. Stiles gets up from his seat at the island counter, and moves to stand directly behind her. "Lyds." She has to restrain herself from jumping, surprised by his close proximity. She can feel his breath on her neck, making her stomach flutter. Unexpectedly, for both himself and for Lydia, his hands find themselves on her waist. He wasn't sure what came over him, but each move he made felt extraordinarily natural to him. He heard her breath catch, and he knew he had been successful at getting her attention.

"I just… really really don't want to talk about my dad. Not tonight," her voice is pleading.

"Okay…" Stiles says as he turns her small frame to face him, never moving back from where he stood. Her face was just inches from his, if they had been the same height their noses would have been touching. "Then what do you wanna talk about?"

She looks up at him, his hands are still on her waist. "Well, for one, you're back," She says simply.

"I am."

"So I wanna talk about how amazing that is. Not about how infuriating it is that my father chose such a perfect night to come fumbling back into my life."

"Okay, Lydia Martin." He picks the petite girl up easily and sets her so that she is sitting directly in front of him on the counter. She doesn't squeal like he thought she would, in fact she seems totally unsurprised by the movement. "Now talk to me about how amazing I am." His tone is joking, though he really wouldn't mind hearing what she did have to say on the subject.

Lydia rolls her eyes and finally smiles. Stiles looks at her upturned lips with a huge grin on his face. She places her arms around his neck, locking her hands behind his head. "Well, Stiles Stilinski," she begins, "you are amazing at-"

Suddenly, before she can even finish the sentence, he is kissing her. And sure enough, she is kissing him. Hard. His hands clutch harder onto her hips, pulling her even closer to him. Her legs wrap around his waist, trapping him - though trapping would insinuate that he would rather be anywhere else, which was definitely not the case. Once again he is lifting her up, as if on autopilot, being controlled by years of pent up lust for the girl. Feeling herself being moved, Lydia's lips move from his lips to his neck. Stiles releases a moan as he scales the stairs two at a time, and the two crash into Lydia's bedroom and onto the bed.

Immediately, Lydia's hands find their way under Stiles' shirt, feeling the lean muscles she had been so enraptured by earlier in the night. Soon enough his shirt was on the floor and so was hers.

"Stiles," her voice was whispy, and breathless. Her hands were at his waistband and when she began attempting to slide them off of him, his brain finally comprehended what was happening.

"Holy shit." Stiles jumped back, leaving Lydia empty handed and confused on her bed wearing nothing but a pair of leggings and a lacy bralette.

"What?" Lydia questioned, wondering if after all this time he was realizing that he didn't actually want her - she surely hoped not. Her hand went to her lips which felt plump and electrified, just as they had earlier that day in the locker room. Did he not feel the same sensation?

Realizing that it probably looked like he was rejecting her, Stiles sat down beside the girl he loved and put his hand on her cheek. He placed a soft and chaste kiss on her lips and then pulled away once more, looking closely at her face. Her eyes remained shut when he pulled away, as if she was savoring the sensation. He couldn't believe the effect he was having on her. He could have never even imagined something like this a few years ago, let alone a few months ago.

"I really. Really... really wish that we didn't have to stop." As if taking that as a cue, Lydia moves forward to kiss him again. "But," he says quickly, dodging her kiss, "I also really, really want to talk first."

Lydia nodded, waiting for him to continue.

"I love you, Lydia," he says as he looks deeply into her eyes. A huge weight lifting off his shoulders as he is finally able to say the words he has always felt. Saying them in the right setting. Not because they were about to die, or because he was about to be taken. But because they were both in a comfortable state, where he could say those words with nothing but his feelings to motivate him.

"I love you," she says firmly, her voice sure and unwavering.

He looks at her in almost disbelief, and finds himself needing to clarify his statement, just in case. "I'm in love with you."

Without a second of hesitation she takes his face in her hands. "I'm in love with you, Stiles… Mieczyslaw Stilinski."

The wonder in his eyes as she said the words was unparalleled. The smile on her face was pure and genuine, and the tears in her eyes even purer. "You came back to me…" she whispered softly. As one tear drops down her cheek, Stiles wipes it away with his thumb.

"Hey, I know it sucks to be in love with such an idiot but you don't need to cry," he jokes.

"So, can I kiss you now?"

"Absolutely."