just want you (to dance with me tonight)

by LaughingSenselessly

"She's mad at me," Stiles mutters. He can tell, simply from the look she just gave him. But Scott just sighs loudly. "She's mad because you haven't asked her to prom yet." (Or: Stiles tries to ask Lydia Martin to the senior prom. Operative word is 'tries'.).

A/N: thanks to rongasm on tumblr for reading this over for me and also offering suggestions because I am. So. Rusty. At. Writing. Stydia. It's embarrassing, honestly. Yikes. *hides face in shame*

This is... easily one of the most random things I've ever written lmao, but anyways I hope someone will like it.

---

Stiles isn't sure whether Lydia really remembers their conversations back when he went dress shopping with her, but he definitely does. Every single word, branded into his memory. She hadn't talked to him, necessarily, but she more so talked at him; like she was educating him on the intricacies of shopping in that prissy voice of hers. It was really hot, honestly, and he'd eaten it up.

She had airily told him, as she sorted dismissively through the dresses on the rack at one of the mall's posh dress shops, that while prices do sometimes indicate quality, that in her opinion there was just a point where the price starts to become ridiculous, and is really just pumped up to disguise the inferior nature of whatever product is being bought.

To illustrate her point, she'd ripped a truly ugly vomit-green dress off the rack and wrinkled her nose at it, then jabbed a finger at the price tag. Stiles had leaned in a bit to get a look and nearly choked on his tongue at the number of zeroes.

"See?" she'd said primly. "Case in point. Inferior." She'd clucked her tongue and tossed the dress at a hapless sales assistant who appeared to be frozen in fear as the entire conversation unfolded in front of her, and Stiles Stilinski had fallen even more in love with Lydia Martin.

The reason Stiles is recalling this conversation at the moment is because the prom ticket he's just purchased at the booth set up this morning at Beacon Hills High has him convinced that Lydia was absolutely right. The flimsy piece of paper he's just bought was ninety dollars. And nothing is that expensive without being inferior. So, he's deduced, senior prom is going to be complete shit.

Not that he's surprised.

"Here are your tickets," the girl at the booth chirps, thrusting out a hand and waving the two rectangular slips of cardstock at them. "Enjoy the prom!"

Stiles coughs out, "Yeah, right," and Scott shoots him a nasty look before turning his panty-melting smile at the ticket seller and accepting the tickets.

"Why do I feel like we got ripped off?" Stiles mutters, as they both slink away from the ticket booth.

Scott shrugs. "Because you always think we got ripped off."

Stiles tucks his ticket into his back pocket, where it will inevitably get folded and a bit ripped and forgotten until the very last minute before prom— at which point he'll desperately go through his entire closet trying to find it, probably while not wearing pants, because that's just how these kinds of situations seem to work. "Remind me again why we're even going to this thing."

"Because," Scott dutifully reminds him as they walk through the halls to their lockers, "we thought it would be nice for the four of us to go to senior prom. We never do anything fun anymore."

"Fun?" It seems like a foreign concept at this point. Especially after everything they've been through. Especially after all the dances and parties gone by in their high school careers that were decidedly not fun, because the supernatural decided to piss on it. And most especially because the last dance they went to was junior prom; it was right after Allison died and in the half-hour they endured before leaving, sitting silently together at a corner table, there wasn't any "fun" involved at all.

Scott doesn't appear to be thinking about that, though. "I guarantee it," he's saying.

Stiles arches up a brow, dubious. "And exactly how do you plan on doing that?"

Scott looks up at the fluorescent lighting of the hallway for a moment in contemplation before nodding to himself and opening his locker. "If you haven't cracked a smile an hour into it, I'll do the four-legged werewolf run across the dance floor."

Stiles cracks a grin at the imagery despite himself. Scott hasn't done that in so, so long. "You know just the way to my heart, Scotty."

It's at this moment that Lydia and Malia walk past them on their way to their own lockers, and Stiles kind of forgets all about the conversation he's having at the moment.

Lydia's in some sort of heated discussion with Malia, but as always Stiles finds his breath hitching slightly upon the first look of her. She's wearing a plaid skirt today, one that whirls around her thighs as she walks— glides?— down the hall. And her hair is piled up in a bun at the top of her head, wisps of auburn sticking out artfully. He's actually finding himself kind of mesmerized at the way the lines of her hair twists into that bun. Despite being probably hairsprayed into place, her hair has movement, like a painting that tries to capture the currents of a river. Hair is fucking art, Stiles decides right there, and Lydia's is a masterpiece.

"I don't think I'm the only one," Scott comments lightly, and Stiles manages to tear his gaze away from Lydia to see his best friend watching him with amusement.

It takes Stiles a good minute to remember what the hell they were even talking about, but when he does he just shrugs, unabashed. He loves Lydia. This much is obvious to everyone. Or rather, it is now.

Scott goes on. "Last night, did you take her home?"

Stiles casts one last look down the hall at her, watching her tilt her head and laugh at something Malia's saying, and then turns back to his locker to open it. "Yeah." Last night had been a full moon; normally, there aren't any problems anymore, but Liam had lost control due to a series of Hayden-related events that frankly, Stiles doesn't give enough shits about to find out the details of.

What Stiles does give a shit about is when Liam goes on a rampage and tries to rip his head off. And everyone else's, too. It had taken a while to catch him. As in, Stiles had gotten maybe half an hour of shut-eye last night.

Scott is still stuck on the topic. "And?"

"And I took her home," Stiles reasserts. "That's it."

His tone is laced with finality, but Scott's not having it. "And then?"

He sighs. "I went in with her. Just to make sure she got in okay."

"And?"

"She had a scratch from Liam," Stiles gives up, demonstrating on his arm with his pointer finger. "We cleaned it."

"And?"

"Then we sat on the floor of her bathroom for like an hour and stared at the wall. Happy?"

"No," Scott says, and then once again prompts: "And?"

Stiles scowls and slams his locker shut, throwing his hands up. "And then we made out for a while. Accidentally. Happy now?"

Scott does seem more pleased with that answer. "Okay, but did you talk about it?"

"Talk about what? The werewolf that tried to pull out our intestines earlier in the night, or the five million supernatural cases that we're currently trying to solve?" Stiles snorts. "Because we did talk about that. That was the whole bathroom floor conversation, to clarify."

"No," Scott says impatiently. "I mean, did you guys talk about you?"

Stiles blinks, at a loss, and Scott sighs and elaborates.

"What are you guys? Are you together or what?"

Stiles blinks several times, and the lengthy silence that follows this question causes Scott to sigh loudly. "Okay…" he acquiesces, "we haven't talk about that. Yet."

Scott folds his arms. "And how many times have you 'accidentally' made out with Lydia?"

He sounds condescending, and Stiles narrows his eyes. "I'm not exactly keeping a tally, here…" he trails off nervously while Scott scoffs, because Lydia, some ways down the hall, has chosen this moment to look up and catch his eye. Helpless to her gaze as always, he instantly feels himself fading away from the conversation again.

She looks at him, and he tries to smile at her. She doesn't smile back.

That in itself isn't abnormal— Lydia doesn't really smile all that much, anyway. Most of the time, it's those sugary, condescending ones, or fake ones that don't reach her eyes at all (he's immeasurably glad he's never been on the receiving end of one of those— he'd take her death glare over that plastic grin any day). The point is, it's her eyes that matter most when she's looking at someone. That's the real smile of Lydia Martin— in her eyes, and Stiles has had the pleasure of feeling it quite a bit lately.

Not today. Today she levels him with a flat looking stare.

Scott interrupts his thought process. "She'd say yes, you know."

He jerks his head away from Lydia to look at Scott. "What?" It seems out of nowhere.

"To prom," Scott explains. "If you asked her, Lydia would say yes. You know why?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Because she's practically your girlfriend, you idiot."

Right. There's that. He keeps forgetting, somehow.

But Lydia isn't technically his girlfriend. Sure, they kissed, he realized she like-liked him, and it was all very deep and dramatic— he's still not over that, by the way— but the fact of the matter is that they haven't talked about it properly, not beyond the supernatural life-or-death situations they've found themselves in. Nothing about them, or how they've grown together, has been normal. So it feels strange to even label themselves a typical high school couple. Stiles isn't even sure she wants to be that with him. Maybe she just wants him to be by her side in a fight; to hold her at night when they both can't sleep; to reassure her that she's not a monster, the same she does for him.

But does she want him to hold her hand in the hallway on the way to class? Kiss her cheek when he drops her off from school? Take her to prom? Or is she above all that now, after everything she's been through?

He honestly isn't sure what she wants, but he figures it's best to let her make the first move.

"She's not," he finally replies. "We— we're just—" He's at a loss, and Scott simply gives him a dry look.

"Are you, like, friends with benefits? Is that it?"

That doesn't feel right either. Things have admittedly— perhaps— gotten a little R-rated at certain points, but it's sporadic at best, and only happens when emotions are running high. In any case, Stiles gives up. "It doesn't matter. She's mad at me anyway." He can tell just from the look she gave him. She's always more closed off during the day, but this is different.

Meanwhile, Scott sighs loudly. "Because you haven't asked her to prom yet."

Stiles taps a nervous rhythm onto his jean clad thigh, watching Lydia's hips sway as she retreats out of sight. "It doesn't matter anyway. I thought we were all going as singles. Just as friends, the four of us."

The warning bell rings, and Stiles realizes he's going to be late to class. "Shut up and just ask her," Scott says, pushing his shoulder. "You have first period with her, right? Econ with Coach?" Coach has recently been kicked out of rehab and is back to teaching, much to his eternal dismay and to Stiles' endless entertainment.

Stiles anxiously runs a hand through his hair, flashbacks of Lydia's frosty demeanor from when they were younger going through his mind.

"You can't seriously tell me you think she'd say no," Scott says, exasperated.

"Like I said," Stiles reiterates loudly, "we're supposed to go all together, right? We're going as friends. No one left out."

Scott stares at him for a few moments, and Stiles betrays himself accidentally by letting his eyes flit down the hall, to where Kira's locker used to be.

Scott lets out a breath. "Oh."

Scott's expression is sinking a little bit, and Stiles claps a hand on his shoulder, already hating himself for bringing about the somber look on Scott's face. He hates that this has happened to Scott— that the people he loves, he always seems to lose.

Kira just recently, and before that, well... Stiles is suddenly very glad that the love of his own life is separated from him by six doors down the hall, rather than six feet of dirt and regret.

"It doesn't matter, you know," Scott says after a few moments, and his voice has returned strong and full of conviction. "We don't have to go as singles. We can all still hang out if you go with her. So no more excuses. Just ask her, dude."

His voice is decisive, like he's made the decision for Stiles, and Stiles chooses not to answer, instead clapping his best friend's shoulder and wheeling around to book it to class.

"Dude, don't be a pansy!" Scott yells at him as he goes. Stiles simply lifts a hand and waves without turning back.

—

As soon as he walks into class, his eyes fall on Lydia. She's got a book open on top of her Econ textbook, twiddling a pen in her hand and looking very bored.

Her eyes flick up to his, amused, as soon as Coach notices he's walked in (two minutes late) and starts yelling at him— Stiles tunes him out and makes his way to the empty seat in front of Lydia's, dropping his bag on the ground and sprawling out in the chair.

He waits until five minutes have passed and Coach's attention is successfully diverted back to teaching before he turns around. He can tell she notices that he does, because her eyes that have been roving back and forth over the lines of text in the book she's reading pause for a moment before they continue. She reads really fucking fast. Not that he's surprised.

"Hey," he whispers to get her attention.

Lydia raises her eyes from the book, irises startlingly green.

She doesn't say anything, so Stiles decides to test the waters. "How's your arm?"

"Good," she responds without inflection, and he licks his lips, thinking about the fact that he'd been kissing her not six hours ago. Maybe she's thinking the same thing, because he's pretty sure he sees her gaze flick down a bit before coming back to his eyes.

"What are you reading?" he tries.

"Friedrich Nietzsche," Lydia answers pompously.

"Gesundheit." He's rewarded with the sight of Lydia trying her best to force down the corners of her mouth. All he wants is to make her do it again. "Seriously, which book?"

She lifts the book slightly so he can see the cover, and her hot-pink painted nails tapping against the title.

"'The Birth of Tragedy'," Stiles reads, and nods sagely. "Greenberg's autobiography?"

Then she smiles. Widely. Genuinely. It's a fleeting one that reaches her eyes, lasts just a moment, but it warms his soul. He grips harder to the back of his chair, suddenly feeling brave. He just made her smile twice— that's got to be a good sign, right? Maybe she'll say yes.

Because, as he realizes very strongly with a pang in his stomach in this moment, he wants normal with Lydia. Not just the parts where they cling to each other after narrowly avoiding death, or confessions about their feelings spurred on after narrowly avoiding death, or furiously making out in the back of his Jeep after, well, narrowly avoiding death.

(Wait, hold on, there's definitely a pattern here.)

But anyway, right now he's fantasizing about the most boring high school relationship they could have. He wants that with her. He always has.

She's still staring at him, maybe a little quizzically now. He realizes his gaze is probably a little intense right now and attempts to tone it down. He goes for casual. "Lydia."

She cocks her head, smile gone but eyes still a tiny bit warm. "Stiles." Her voice is playful now.

"Did— did you buy your prom ticket?" he asks almost breathlessly. He can't seem to ask the question directly.

"I did," she replies breezily, but she's suddenly clutching onto her book a little tighter.

He nods, fast. "Okay. Good. Uh, so I was thinking."

"Congratulations."

He ignores this. "So I was thinking since we're together." She blinks, and he backtracks, because no they're not, that's the entire problem. "No— I mean, I kissed you, and you didn't slap me, which I figure is a good sign, and we've uh, made out a few times—"

She cuts him off before he can rehash their entire history. "Yes." Her tone is inscrutable. Which isn't helping.

"Would you— would you maybe want to—" he takes a deep breath and Scott's voice echoes through his head: Don't be a pansy! "Do you think maybe you'd want to go w—"

"Stilinski!"

Coach's voice sounds like a goddamn gunshot, and Stiles jumps, barely catching himself before he falls off his chair and wheeling around to face the front.

Coach is staring at him like Stiles broke a lacrosse stick in two right in front of him.

Stiles gulps. "Yes, Coach?" he tries to offer a lopsided smile, but his attempt at charm apparently falls flat.

Coach walks over and places his hands on Stiles' desk, leaning forward a bit. "You know what I want in life more than anything else, Stilinski? More than having my missing testicle reattached to my body?"

Despite the fact that he knows this is all a set-up, Stiles finds himself genuinely curious as to the answer of that question. "What?"

Coach leans closer, so close that Stiles can smell the faint smell of beer on his breath. "For you to shut the hell up for once."

Well, he really should have expected that. He salutes. "I can do that."

Coach squints at him. "Can you? Can you really?" Without waiting for an answer he straightens and looks past Stiles. "Martin, keep him in line, will you?"

Stiles glances back quickly. Lydia's still clutching her book rather tightly, and simply nods mutely at Coach before he walks off to continue rambling about whatever it is that today's lesson is supposed to be.

Stiles blows out air and slinks lower in his seat.

Any bravery Stiles might have possessed in those moments has evaporated by the time class ends. When the bell rings, he turns again, and she's watching him already.

As people file on past them, they remain in their seats. Stiles opens his mouth to ask but what comes out is, "So, um, did you get your prom dress and stuff?" The four of them had made the decision to go to prom rather late, and the event is coming up fast.

"No," she says slowly. "I'm going over the weekend."

He nods, fast, and starts bouncing his knee. "Oh. Are you going with someone? To buy it?"

"No," she says again, drawing the word out. They're the only ones left in the room; apparently there's no class in this room next period.

Stiles blinks, about to open his mouth and ask about Malia, but then he remembers that Malia's never had much patience for shopping. "I could go with you, if you want," he offers without thinking. Her eyes flash and he realizes he's said exactly the wrong thing.

She stands up abruptly. "I don't need your presence out of sympathy." She tries to brush past him, and in a panic he catches her arm, standing up as well.

She winces slightly, and he's distracted from his original goal to look down. "It's still hurting you, isn't it?"

"It's fine," she tries to say, but he ignores her and tugs the sleeve up just a bit, brushing his knuckles along her skin as it goosebumps from his touch— the scratch from Hayden's claws is bandaged, but it looks like it's bleeding through just a little bit, a tint of red seeping through the white bandage.

He lets out a breath. "You should have said something."

"It's nothing to worry about," she murmurs.

He lets go of her arm, and she lets it drop loosely to her side. "Lydia." Now that they're alone, and they're in familiar territory with the topic revolving around the supernatural, he can't help but cup her jaw with one of his hands and say, "I will literally always worry about you."

Her lips part, and it's a moment before she says, "I told you it's nothing."

He rolls his eyes and on instinct, leans forward and kisses her, just the faintest brush of his lips over hers before he leans back and says, "You gotta get that bandage changed."

She nods, eyes softer than before, and when he strokes his thumb over her cheek and it catches on the corner of her lip, her breath catches. He's so wrapped up in this moment that when the warning bell for next period rings, they both jump.

She steps away from him, away from his hands, and he lets them drop to his side awkwardly. The voices from outside in the hallway come rushing back to his ears, and she stares at him for an extra moment before starting for the door.

Oh, what the hell. "Hey, Lydia?" he says to her back, on instinct.

She tilts her head, hand on the door. "Stiles."

"I want to go with you dress shopping." He holds his breath for a second, and when she doesn't respond immediately, he goes on in a rush, "Only if you can tolerate me, that is."

His attempts to coax a smile from her seem to work. She's still facing away, but he can see the silhouette of her cheek rise in a smile before she says, "I think I can."

"I know you could." He grins. "You need a coat rack."

The callback to the last time they went dress-shopping causes her to make a sound that sounds like a snort, except it's Lydia so it actually sounds classy, and then she pushes through the door, tossing a "Bye, Stiles," over her shoulder. He doesn't think he's imagining the extra spring in her step as she goes.

He feels ridiculously happy for a moment, until he realizes he didn't actually ask her to prom.

—

"So... you didn't ask," Scott summarizes flatly.

Stiles bangs his head against the steering wheel of his Jeep. "It's Coach's fault, not mine."

"But you were talking to her after. And instead you asked to go… dress shopping with her?" He sounds incredibly puzzled, like he's trying to work out how Stiles' mind works.

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut because he's honestly in the dark about that as well. "It felt like the next logical step!" he snaps. "I'm taking things slow."

Scott's silence sounds very disapproving. Stiles bangs his head against the steering wheel again, and this time he hits the horn by accident. It blares over the school parking lot, and Lydia, who's talking to some other girls across the lot, looks over quizzically. Stiles lifts his hand and gives her an awkward wave. She stares for a moment and then goes back to her conversation.

"Smooth," Scott notes.

Stiles sighs and rubs his forehead, where— he checks the rearview mirror and yup— a red mark is beginning to bloom. "You're right. I'm a fucking pansy."

—

The weekend rolls around, and Lydia starts regretting taking Stiles up on his offer to come dress shopping with her.

For one, he's picked up a large soda from the food court on his way to meet her, and his loud slurping sounds are not doing her headache any favours.

Two, he just looks really good today. His flannel is dark green, and rolled up his forearms and unbuttoned to reveal the white shirt he's got on underneath. And the way he's hollowing out his cheeks while he sucks obnoxiously on his straw, makes her simultaneously want to strangle him and… do other things with him.

But.

It's complicated.

And it really shouldn't be. Once they kissed, it was supposed to be easy. But it's not. They never seem to get the right opportunity to talk about it. There's still this lingering awkwardness, of what do we do now?

She didn't think it was that obvious to everyone else, but as she was leaving the house to go shopping, she'd mentioned Stiles, and her mom had been quiet for a moment before asking, "Honey, can I ask you something?"

Lydia pretended to consider this as she put on her heels, already knowing what her mom was wondering. "You can ask."

"Is Stiles your boyfriend?"

Lydia paused on her way out the door. "Ask me again when I get back."

And now she's here, and she's starting to think she still won't have an answer when she comes home tonight.

"Lydia, I feel like you're just picking the heaviest dresses now," Stiles complains from behind the growing mountain of fabric in his arms.

That's exactly what Lydia's doing. "Don't be ridiculous," she sniffs, ripping another dress absolutely laden with beading and jewels off the rack and throwing it into his arms. She can't really see his face at this point.

He mutters something but she doesn't catch it, choosing instead to keep walking briskly down the aisle to the next rack of dresses. She looks behind her to see him still standing there.

"Try to keep up, will you?" She turns away without waiting for a response, now violently shoving dresses to the side on this new rack.

She's absolutely fed up with him. He won't talk to her properly about this. Lydia supposes she could bring it up herself, but. She's still holding out on the hope that he will.

She's way too far gone over this boy, she thinks. The one currently behind her, tripping over his own socked feet as he tries to keep up (it's one of those really posh stores where you have to take your shoes off when you enter).

"Hi, honey," a new voice pipes up, and Lydia is wrenched out of her fuming to see a saleswoman standing next to her, wide smile on her face. "Looking for a nice prom dress?"

"Well, I'm looking," Lydia replies primly, raising an eyebrow at the dress she's examining. "But I don't see much 'nice' around this place right now."

Stiles coughs something that sounds suspiciously like "cutthroat." Lydia ignores him.

The saleswoman— Jen, according to her nametag— perks up. "But just let me help you!" she exclaims, a tinge of desperation in her voice. Hmm. Paid by commission, Lydia deduces as the woman places her hands on Lydia's shoulders, pushing her back a little so she can look her up and down. "Oh, I know just what will work for you. What do you like? Short or long dresses?"

"Short," Lydia replies, and then Stiles speaks.

"But you always wear short dresses," he whines, voice slightly muffled, and he adjusts the pile of clothes in his arms so that he can see her properly.

The saleswoman finally notices him, and starts at the sight of the tall heap of dresses precariously balanced in his arms. "Oh, dear! I can take those off your hands, if you'd like. I'll put them in the dressing room for your girlfriend." Lydia doesn't even have time to correct her before Jen whips back to her and beams. "And then I'll bring you some more nice dresses to try on, how about that?"

Lydia almost wants to tell her not to take the dresses from Stiles, to make him sweat a bit more, but in the end she keeps her mouth shut and watches Stiles sigh in relief, shaking out his arms as Jen takes the pile and deposits it onto the counter to sort out.

Lydia continues striding down the aisle, and Stiles easily catches up to her with his longer legs now. "I kind of want to see you wear a longer one." His tone isn't pushy at all, merely thoughtful, but it still irks her.

Ask me to prom, you idiot! She glares at him. "And what makes you think that what I wear is any of your business?"

He blinks, looking sufficiently reprimanded. "I don't, I'm just sugges—"

"If I wanted fashion advice, I would have brought someone else," Lydia cuts him off, turning away.

"Yeah, you just wanted a coat rack," he mumbles back. It's the same thing he said earlier, but it's not a joke now. He just sounds vaguely grumpy.

So now they're both grumpy, and the conversation takes on a sour edge for the next few minutes, finally dissolving into frosty silence as she rifles through the dress racks, until Jen calls from the back of the store, "Dear? I've put them all into the back for you here. Whenever you're ready."

That's a relief. Lydia just wants to get out of here, as fast as possible. She instantly drops the dress she was looking at back on a shelf and crosses the floor. Stiles follows.

The dressing rooms are an extravagant affair; they're not just stalls, they're actual rooms, and Lydia feels a little bit like she's stepped into a bedroom with no furniture when she locks the door behind her. Her feet sink into the plush carpet. There's a mirror on the wall opposite to the bench, and beside the bench are all the dresses she'd picked out, plus a few more, hung neatly on the wall's dozens of hooks.

She takes her time with the dresses, knowing Stiles is sitting on one of the benches outside and probably getting antsy. Good.

None of the dresses she tries on are really to her liking. But that's sort of her own fault, because she wasn't paying a lot of attention while she was ripping clothes off the racks.

She eyes one of the dresses that Jen had chosen for her. It's a dark green one, a gown that falls straight to the floor.

Oh, what the hell. She tosses the dress she was just trying into the corner and shimmies into this one instead. She quickly realizes it's much too long for her— she's practically swamped in the fabric, and as she walks around the dressing room experimentally she keeps stepping on it.

But— she glances up into the mirror— it looks unexpectedly nice, even for a long dress.

She just needs to do it up from the back, but she realizes after twisting a bit in the mirror that it's got a corset back, not the zipper she's used to.

She sighs and strides to the door, cracking it open to say, "Jen?"

The saleswoman is nowhere in sight.

She opens her mouth again to repeat herself, but then she hears Stiles stir on the bench just outside her line of sight. "Lydia? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she snaps at him. "Where's the saleswoman?"

She hears him slurp loudly from his soda before answering. She can practically hear him slouching. "She went to get you some of those dresses in a smaller size, I think."

"How long will she be?"

"I dunno," he responds. "Oh, wait," he says, and she hears him getting up. "I think she's talking to someone else now."

Great. Lydia's not waiting around that long. She sighs. "Do you by chance know how to do up a corset?"

"Uh, no."

"Well, can you tie two strings together?" she asks impatiently.

He snorts. "No, Lydia. That's why I wear Velcro shoes, don't you know?"

She ignores his sarcasm. "Get in here and tie me up." As soon as the words leave her mouth she realizes how they might sound, out of context.

He seems to realize it too, because it's a long and tense moment before he says, lightly, "Kinky." And then he appears standing in her line of vision. He's still holding his soda in one hand, and when he sees the dress, she watches his eyes crawl up and down her body in the span of one moment.

When he meets her eyes again, his cheeks are a little flushed.

Hmm.

She steps aside, and he hesitates before crossing the threshold and entering the room with her. He finally sets down his soda on the bench and she watches him in the mirror as he turns to face the corset on her back.

"Lydia," he begins, looking pained at the sight of it, but she's ready.

"I'm not expecting you to do Chinese knotting," she snaps back. "You just have to tighten it so it doesn't fall off my body while I'm trying to look at it properly."

He mutters something that sounds suspicious like "I wouldn't mind," and it just reminds her how frustrated she is with him. Because he's not bringing it up, and that's irritating her so much it's making her not want to bring it up either.

(Honestly though— is it really that hard to say, Hey, Lydia, I would like to take you to prom? Since we make out a lot? And I'm obviously attracted to you?)

Meanwhile he reaches forward and tugs at the strings of her corset. She's unprepared for the feeling of his knuckles brushing against the small of her back and instead of keeping still to allow the corset to tighten, she falls back against him. He immediately tries to take a step back, and she tries to take a step forward, but she ends up stepping on the hem.

He throws his arms out to catch her. But he's clumsy as always, and instead of catching her, he somehow manages to trip backward onto the bench, and they fall back in a worse mess than it would have been if he didn't try to help. Lydia lands on his lap. His hands fly around her, settling on the outsides of her thighs.

Mortified, she tries to stand, but it's like she's swimming in a sea of the thick silken material, and she only succeeds in squirming around in his lap. His hands tighten around her hips.

"Lydia," he says.

She ignores him, planting her hands on his knees so she can try to hop off.

"Stop," he manages, and it sounds like a pained groan. She pauses in her struggling, to notice that her movements have… well… done something to him.

She can't help but feel a little smug. He deserves the torture, after all the torture he's put her through.

"Stiles," she drawls, her feet finally finding purchase on the floor and hopping off. She smoothes down her dress. "Is that a phone in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" She turns around on those last words to see him adjusting himself in his pants.

She expects some banter from him, but instead he opens his mouth and says, almost carefully, "What would you say if I said I'm always happy to see you?"

She blinks, caught off guard by the genuine tone of voice, the softness in his eyes right then reminding her of how he looked at her after she woke up post-Eichen.

Post-Eichen. When he cradled her face like he was holding the world in his hands, and brushed glass off her cheeks and looked at her more tenderly than he had in a very long time. It was the first moment in a while that she felt certain that he still felt that way about her.

He does feel that way about her, she has to remind herself. Which is the reason this is all so frustrating.

She feels her lips flatten into a line. "I'd say you have a funny way of showing it."

He gapes, blinking confusedly. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know," she replies airily. "Why don't you tell me?" She feels anger returning now, and is suddenly overcome with the desire to make him suffer. If he's not going to go for it, she's going to show him exactly what he's missing. She slips the straps of the dress off her shoulders and pulls it off her head. She throws the dress at his chest, and he doesn't catch it— the flimsy thing falls to the floor.

He's completely still for once and slack-jawed, taking in the sight of Lydia standing in front of him wearing nothing but her black lacy bra and panties.

She arches a brow at him and reaches for the next dress she'd brought to try on.

He's uncharacteristically silent the entire time as she steps into it and hitches it up to her chest. It's a long, strapless lavender princess-style dress that flares out spectacularly from the high waist, and she turns to examine herself in the mirror as she holds it up.

"What do you think?" she asks him offhandedly without taking her eyes off the mirror. In the background of it, she can see him still watching her almost without blinking. "It's pretty, isn't it?" She's toying with him, but as she says the words she realizes it's actually true. She likes this one, even though it's a long dress.

There's a long pause before he answers. "That's one word for it."

His voice is raspier than usual, and Lydia pauses in adjusting the dress, feeling a shiver run down her spine. "Mhmm," she replies non-committally, and then, "Can you do up the back?"

He doesn't say anything, but again gets up and stands behind her. He ties it quickly, with fumbling fingers, and Lydia can tell he's fucking it up with his hastiness, but the end result is what she wanted— the dress is secured around her upper body and she can free her arms from holding it up. She smiles at the look of it, pleased, and whips around. He's still standing very close, and she's caught off guard for a moment, but she forces herself not to step back this time.

"Stiles," she says instead. "Last week, in Coach's classroom."

That's all she says, but his Adam's apple bobs at the mention of the conversation and she knows she isn't imagining the flush blooming on the tips of his cheekbones. "Uh," he responds, as articulate as always.

She tosses her hair back because it's getting in her face and looks him squarely in the eye. "Were you about to ask me to prom?"

He stares at her, and he's definitely blushing now. He licks his lips, clearly nervous, and then his eyes drop down to her lips and back. She's all too aware of the body heat emanating from him.

When he finally speaks, it's slow and measured, like he's thinking about every word before it comes from his mouth; very unlike him. "If I was," he swallows again, "hypothetically speaking only, of course, what would you have said?"

"I'd say I don't like hypotheticals very much," she replies, and is displeased in a corner of her mind at how breathy she sounds right now.

Somehow, his hands have found their way to her waist, where his long fingers are ghosting over the satiny material like he wants to hold onto her but is holding himself back. She's overwhelmed by the urge to cover his hands with hers and put them there.

So she does. She reaches out and presses his hands to her sides. He sucks in a breath, eyes flicking up to hers. She arches a challenging brow at him, and in the next moment he surges forward, sealing his mouth against hers. It's a brief kiss, and the moment she has melted against it he leans away and says, "You like me. Oh, my god, you like like me." He sounds a little smug.

"Do you have to say that every time we make out?" she replies. "It's getting old."

He seems to not have noticed her response. His voice changes tone a little bit, to almost awe. Like this is a dawning realization. His hands flutter nervously over her waist, and he retracts them slightly, fingers curling loosely. "Oh, fuck. You like me," he stutters, eyes widening. "You— wait, you actually—?"

She rolls her eyes and cuts him off, kissing him. And since his stupid mouth is still open, she shoves her tongue into his mouth without any hesitation, catching the tip of his tongue on hers as the word he was going to say gets swallowed up by the kiss. She's kissing him and kissing him without responding to the question that always seems to fall from his mouth when they do this, but in her head her own voice is echoing the answer helplessly: How could I not?

He got inside her head, he warmed her cold bones, he wrapped himself around her soul and decided to call it home. And she has no idea how to exorcise him.

He backs her against the wall, hands on her hips as he kisses her so forcefully she feels herself getting smushed between the wall and him. He tastes like Pepsi, which should irritate her but instead she's threading her hands in his hair and trying to hitch her leg around him. Except, the bountiful material around her legs makes it difficult to do.

He seems to take that as some sort of cue, because then his hands are sliding down her legs a bit, and he grabs fistfuls of the material and rucks the dress up, bunching it over her thighs. Before she can process this, he grasps one of her legs in his hand and hitches it on his hip.

She arches a brow at him when they break apart for air a moment. It's rather a bold move for him.

He shrugs, playing casual. "Just trying to get it out of the way. It's expensive. Don't want to rip such a pretty dress, right?" He dips his head, nosing against her cheek a bit.

"It's too expensive," she tells him breathlessly, trying to think clearly past the sensation of his lips on her jaw. "Almost to the point where—"

"They're trying to disguise how shitty it is," he nods; she can feel a corner of his mouth ticking up against her skin. "You told me."

She has just enough time to wonder when the hell she told him that before he kisses her again, and she forgets all about price tags in favour of rolling her hips against him.

He groans against her mouth, and she does it again. He falters, leaning his forehead against hers. "Wait—"

She makes an affirming noise in the back of her throat before rutting against him again, and this time he grinds against her too, matching her movement in counter.

"Yeah, that's definitely not a phone in my pocket," he breathes, leaning his forearms against the wall on either side of her head, and she would laugh if she had the capacity to. Instead, she captures his bottom lip in her teeth, playfully tugging on it until he makes a protesting noise and she lets go.

They continue kissing sloppily, all loud wet noises and hands everywhere and thrusting hips, like completely horny teenagers— wait, they are teenagers— and Lydia's honestly this close to making the executive decision to fuck him right here, in this posh dressing room— when there's a knock on the door.

They both freeze, and Lydia stares into the mirror at the comical position they've stopped in. His mouth is on the skin right above her breast, and she's got one hand in his hair and the other sneaking under his flannel. The dress is hiked up so much that her leg is essentially bare, wrapped around his hip, and her eyes are wide with surprise.

A voice outside speaks, voice muffled by the door. "Dear? I've got some more dresses for you."

It's Jen, and Stiles lifts his head, hair mussed and lips swollen. There's no mistaking what they've just been doing.

Also, she's pretty sure he's not even allowed in here, so there's that.

Lydia clears her throat and raises her voice. "Just leave them outside!"

"I can't do that, dear," Jen replies, blissfully ignorant. "Someone else might mistaken them to be theirs, and we don't want that. I picked these up from the back especially for you."

Stiles smirks against her skin and murmurs, "She's really laying it on thick, isn't she?"

Lydia gives him a withering glare. Jen speaks again.

"Just let me open the door, and I can put them on the hook." To her horror, Lydia can see the doorknob turning— Jen's got a key and no boundaries, apparently.

"Wait a minute!" Lydia snaps, sharply, and the doorknob pauses. "I didn't say you could come in yet. I'm— changing."

"Alright," Jen says from outside, but there's no click-clack of heels as she retreats. She's simply waiting on the other side of the door.

Lydia makes an executive decision. She pushes Stiles away from her and pats her dress down. It's really, really fluffy, and she looks up at Stiles where he's watching her with hooded eyes. "Get under my dress."

His eyes widen. "Lydia, are you nuts—"

"I said," she hisses, "Get. Under. My. Dress." He's not moving. "Unless you want to be banned from the mall for being caught in a womens' change room."

That gets him moving. "Oh god, oh fine," he practically groans, shifting from foot to foot with his eyes now cast on the bottom half of her dress. "I want you to know, I'm only doing this because this mall has the only GameStop in town."

She doesn't respond, simply lifts her dress as Jen knocks again impatiently. Stiles sighs and ducks under her dress, and she throws the material around them so that it covers him completely. Luckily, the thing is so long that it's not a problem at all.

She's satisfied. "Come in now," she raises her voice. Meanwhile, under her dress, she can feel Stiles sit on the floor, clutching onto her leg like it's a lamp post. In a different situation, this might be funny. But it's not. Lydia smoothes down her hair and presses her lips together so they won't seem so obviously… kissed.

Jen walks in, holding a heap full of dresses, and pauses when she sees Lydia. For a moment Lydia's seized with panic— is Stiles' foot poking out, or something?— but the woman just smiles and nods. "That one looks absolutely spectacular on you, dear."

Stiles taps his fingers against Lydia's upper thigh under the dress, as if in agreement.

"Thanks," Lydia says tightly, just wanting the woman to fucking leave.

"Do you like it?" Jen asks.

Lydia feels Stiles' breath, hot and damp, fan over the back of her knee. She struggles to formulate her answer. "Um… yes," she says. "Perfect. Aah—" Stiles has pressed his mouth to the back of her knee, more on her thigh, and oh she is absolutely going to kill him as soon as he gets out of her dress. "Yes. It's fine."

"It's a little long, though." The saleswoman tuts as she puts her pile of dresses down on the bench. "We'd have to cut it."

"Yes, I suppose we would," Lydia says. Her voice is too high. Stiles' other hand wraps around her calf, and he gently tugs her leg; she widens her stance subconsciously. It's a mistake.

Jen takes a step closer, eyes on the pooling fabric. "I could take the measurements right now."

Stiles fingers slide around to her inner thigh, near her ever-growing heat, and she instantly clamps her legs shut tightly together, trapping his fingers between her thighs before they can go any further. Stiles actually yelps a little in pain— it's very quiet, but Jen suddenly tilts her head and frowns slightly.

"No!" Lydia practically squeaks while keeping her thighs clamped tightly closed. She can feel Stiles' fingers wriggling weakly despite the fact that she's cutting of circulation pretty effectively. It's the fakest smile she's ever plastered on her face and it might actually look a little pained. "No, don't do measurements yet. I want to try the other ones first."

Jen's looking at her rather oddly. "Alright." She stays for one more agonizing moment, hovering, and Stiles presses his mouth on her skin again, but this time it's much higher up her thigh than it was before. Lydia's this close to just screaming at Jen to leave but then— finally— thankfully, she leaves, throwing a "Just shout if you need something!" over her shoulder in an overly friendly chirp.

Yeah. That's not likely. Lydia decides she's not tipping this woman anything if she ends up buying a dress today.

And then she's gone, closing the door behind her. It's only an instant before Stiles starts stirring under her large skirt, and she relaxes her thighs, letting his fingers free and steps away from him.

The skirt of her dress catches over his head as she moves away from him, and when she finally collapses onto the bench he's right where she left him two paces away, on his knees. His hair is in complete disarray, sticking up very unfashionably in all directions. His cheeks are even more flushed than before, lips full and red, eyes wide and darkened with lust.

Sexy.

That's the word that comes to mind, and she makes yet another executive decision.

She extends her legs out and hooks her knees around his shoulders, jerking him in close; he makes a noise of surprise and falls onto his hands, now at eye level with her lap.

"You are a nuisance," she hisses at him. He's between her legs looking up at her through long, dark eyelashes, leaning his cheek against her thigh a little, and she's still aching somewhere deep in her core and more frighteningly, in her heart; so she decides now is as good time as any.

He straightens a little, getting back up onto his knees and placing his hands on her thighs instead. "I'm your nuisance." He pushes a bit off her thighs, like he's trying to get up, like after teasing her that much he's just going to get up and continue on with his day. No way. She pushes down on his shoulders when he tries to rise.

He raises his eyebrows.

"You stay down there and finish the job," she tells him, haughtily.

Sex, she's good at that. Sex is uncomplicated. It's the rest of it that doesn't come so easily to her.

He brightens. "Yeah?"

"Yes," she tells him clearly. The moment the word is out of her mouth, he's nodding enthusiastically, then hiked up her dress again, pausing before letting out a deep breath and pulling her panties down her legs.

He stops for a moment.

"What?" she squirms impatiently. She's not made uncomfortable by him looking at her, but it's the way he's looking, more awe than lust. Just another thing that unsettles her about him.

His eyes come up to meet hers, and she sees that no, he's got more than his fair share of lust about him. He licks his lips (again), grips her knees and spreads them farther apart. "Just taking a moment to thank any deities that might be listening," he grins cheesily.

"Stiles, I'm going to— ah!" Her threat is cut off because he leans forward and, without any preamble, licks her with the flat of his tongue.

The next minute is a bit of a haze, but she's dimly aware of him rising on his haunches as she wraps her legs around his shoulders, pulling his head closer, and murmuring "shh" against her every once in a while, sending a pleasant vibration through her core.

He doesn't waste too much time teasing her at the start, probably because he's eating her out in a dressing room— but while he's thoroughly fucking her with his tongue and she's steadily climbing with the sensation of it, he pulls away with a slick sound and says, huskily, "So, about prom—"

She's ready to kill him for stopping, but then they both freeze at a knock at the door.

Lydia nearly cries in frustration. "Don't come in," she calls, breathlessly.

"I think Jenny over there just really wants a show," Stiles whispers, a goofy smile tugging on his lips despite everything.

"Dear? Are you still in there?" She's honestly going to kill this woman. The look of bloody murder must be on her face as well, because Stiles snorts a laugh against her thigh. His mouth and chin are warm and wet against her skin.

"What do you want?" Lydia finally manages.

"I just realized I brought you the wrong size of one of the dresses," Jen calls. "I have the right one with me now."

Stiles presses his face against her all of a sudden, nose brushing against the most sensitive part of her, and Lydia takes a moment to gather herself before she responds. "It's fine. I'm done here anyway."

"Are you sure?" Jen calls again. Stiles grabs one of her thighs in his hands and pushes it up and out before placing his mouth deliberately back on her. He doesn't really do anything, just hovers there, breathing warmly against her.

"I'm sure," Lydia says, even higher-pitched than before. She puts a hand on his face and pushes him away from her. He goes easily but licks the hand covering his face like the asshole he is. She barely manages to hold in a shriek. Meanwhile, Jen is still blissfully unaware.

"It won't take a moment—"

"Did I not say that I'm sure! Go away!" Lydia practically yells, her patience finally breaking. Stiles' shoulders shake in restrained laughter, and Jen is rendered silent. There's a long, sticky pause before she finally finally walking away— Lydia strains her ears and hears the woman's heels clicking away.

Stiles is still laughing. "And you're calling me a fuckin' nuisance?" In response, she cants her hips more directly at his face to smother it, and she can feel his smile still on her for a moment before he gets back to business, bringing her over the edge quickly.

When she sags against him, he climbs up her body and kisses her. It sends a delighted zing through her to taste not only him, but also herself on his lips and on his tongue. She's still ravenous for him; she wants to make him fall apart in her mouth— so she tugs at his belt.

He shakes his head, breaking free from the kiss to rasp, "No, wait. We can do this later." She must look surprised, and he shrugs. "I really don't wanna be banned from Gamestop."

She rolls her eyes but concedes the point. "We're pressing our luck," she agrees. Noting the wetness still on his mouth and chin, she frowns and reaches to the side for her purse. He watches with hooded eyes while she digs in her bag.

"I literally will not be surprised if that lady comes back with a battering ram next," he says, nodding his head at the door. "Maybe we should build a barricade."

She feels her lips twitch and finally produces a few napkins from her purse; he tilts his head up, still kneeling between her legs, and she wipes his face roughly with the napkins. He accepts the ministrations without complaint. "You're a mess," she informs him, but a bit of fondness seeps into her voice. He still looks properly ravished, and she imagines so does she. A quick check in the mirror confirms that.

He shrugs, unbothered, and taps his fingers against her thigh. "Hey, was it okay though?" He actually looks worried, as if he thinks he wasn't good enough to live up to her standard.

She can't bring herself to tell him that, in many many different ways, he's become her standard. Instead, she pats his cheek and says in a sugary voice, "Hmmm. A sold six out of ten."

He narrows his eyes, indignant. "Six—?"

"There's always room for improvement," she says, and while he's still sputtering she cups his cheeks and kisses him again. He melts against it just as she's pulling away. "Now…" she pushes an index finger firmly at his chest. "Get out."

—

A solid twenty minutes later, Lydia approaches the front counter with the lavender princess dress in hand, and Jen looks up meekly from the cash register. "Uh… are you buying that?"

Lydia feels a twinge of guilt for how she treated the woman earlier, and tries to smile genuinely. "Yes. I am."

As Jen is ringing her through, Stiles suddenly appears in her line of vision, now once again slurping on his soda— seriously, he hasn't finished that yet?— and she casts a glance at him.

He'd gone to the washroom to clean his face up better, so he looks relatively normal. His hair looks messy still, but it wasn't much better beforehand anyway. He raises his eyebrows at her. "You're buying that one?" he asks her in a murmur. "I thought you said it was too expensive."

"I decided I like it," she replies, a little defensive.

"Hmm," he muses, glancing over at the thing as Jen carefully puts it into a bag, eyeing the same material he'd been hiking up Lydia's thighs twenty minutes ago. His face splits into a rakish grin. "I like it too."

Jen turns from the cash register to hand Lydia her receipt, wide grin on her face now. "There you are."

Lydia nods, accepting the bag. Jen looks to be in much better spirits all of a sudden, and Lydia wonders why until she follows the woman's gaze to where she's looking— at the soda Stiles is now tipping backwards to catch the last drops of.

Lydia's suddenly hyper aware that it was sitting on the dressing room bench when Jen had come in.

"Have a wonderful prom, both of you," Jen says brightly. Her eyes are twinkling.

Lydia wheels around and leaves, Stiles in tow, before the saleswoman can see the blush rising to her cheeks.

—

But then on her way home, she realizes Stiles never actually asked her to prom, so she's in the same position as she was at the beginning of today. Well, plus one very well-deserved orgasm.

She's decidedly grumpy as she walks into her house, and her mom pauses in wiping down the kitchen island.

"He's not my boyfriend," Lydia snaps before she can ask.

"I didn't say anything," her mom says.

Yeah, neither did Stiles.

—

He calls her a few days later, in the week before prom, asking what colour her dress was again.

She pauses in painting her nails, heart beating a little faster. "Why do you want to know?"

There's the longest pause of the century, and the line is static-y so she doesn't catch what he mutters to himself and then he says, clearer, "Wow would you look at that time! Well, I gotta go."

"Stiles, you literally just called me."

He talks loudly over her. "Can't be late for work."

"You don't have a job—" The line goes dead and she's left staring at the phone in her hand and his contact photo, which is a goofy one of him and Scott in their lacrosse uniforms.

Out of spite, she changes it to a chimpanzee, and feels marginally better.

—

"Shit," Stiles says, throwing his phone down. "I forgot to ask."

Scott doesn't even look surprised anymore. "Let me get this straight," he says, holding up a hand to stop Stiles from talking, without even taking his eyes off his AP biology textbook. "You were eating her out— a detail I didn't necessarily want to know, by the way—"

"Now you know my pain."

"—and you kissed her, and you basically went on a date, but you still didn't talk about it. And you still didn't ask her to prom."

Stiles throws up his hands. "I don't know, okay! Something always gets in the way! I meant to," he asserts, as Scott quirks up a doubtful eyebrow. "I seriously meant to. I guess… I forgot." He covers his face with his hands. He'd called her spontaneously, after remembering he was supposed to get a matching tie for his date, and of course it was only in the middle of the phone call that he remembered he didn't actually have a date.

"Unbelievable," Scott voices Stiles' own thoughts. "Why don't you call her back and ask her, then?"

Stiles makes a disbelieving noise at this suggestion. "I can't ask her to prom over the phone, Scott, are you nuts? Knowing Lydia, she'll just hang up on me." He's giving up on this endeavor, honestly.

"I think you kind of underestimate how into you she is, dude." Scott sounds exasperated.

"Well excuse me if I don't take your word for it," Stiles huffs, "considering the last time you said she was into me, you were actually making out with her in Coach's office."

Scott finally looks up from his textbook, and they stare at each other for a long moment before they both start howling laughing. In retrospect, it's become a rather funny memory, despite the angst that it caused back in the day.

But seriously. Stiles will never be over that.

—

It's two nights before prom when she calls him, hiccupping over barely restrained tears as she tells him about a nightmare. He's on one of his late night Wikipedia spirals when she calls, and doesn't even hesitate to leap out of his chair and drive to her house.

When he gets there, she's waiting in her bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, expression hollow and a little sad. "You didn't have to come," she whispers.

He kicks off his shoes and crawls into her bed where she's lying, automatically wrapping his arms around her. "Yeah, I did." She snuggles a little more against his body, and he asks softly, "You wanna talk about it?"

It's a long moment before she responds. "No." Then: "Were you asleep when I called?"

He smiles a little ruefully. That's optimistic. "Nah, don't worry."

"I do," she says, and she sounds sleepy but also like she's chastising him. "You need to sleep more." He blinks, not having expected this answer, but before he can think about it more she leans up and kisses him.

It's slow at first, and he tangles one hand into her hair, relishing in the soft feel of it around his fingers. She presses herself against him in the meanwhile, sighing a little into his mouth before letting go. "Promise me you'll actually try to sleep after this, instead of spending the whole night in the dark corners of the internet."

He smiles ruefully; he doesn't know how to tell her that the dark corners of the internet are still lighter than the dark corners of his mind.

She yawns against him, tucks her face into his chest. "Promise."

"Pinky swear," he agrees, and they lapse into silence for a long, long time.

It's only after a while of staring idly at her wall that it occurs to him to ask.

"Hey, Lydia," he says into the dark, "wanna go to prom with me?"

There's no answer. He looks down. Her face is still pressed against her chest, but he suddenly realizes her breathing is too deep and slow and steady to be awake. Well, that's okay. They don't have to figure it out right now.

He feels his eyelids going a bit heavy. Maybe— maybe he'll ask her later. But he should probably go now.

Instead, he falls asleep in her arms, and when they both wake up they realize they've overslept, by a lot, and first period of school has already started— so there's no time at all to ask her anything.

—

On prom night, Stiles goes for a black tie. As expected, he can't find his prom ticket. Even when he goes through his closet frantically.

Lydia calls him and tells him Malia found his prom ticket in her backpack. He hears the werecoyote yell from the background that she'll give it to him when they meet up at the hotel the prom is being held at.

He's quiet for a few moments trying to figure out how the hell his ticket somehow got into Malia's backpack. "Wow, I honestly have no idea how that happened."

He can practically hear Lydia's blasé shrug through the phone. "You don't need to explain to me," she says, airily. "It's none of my business."

Except it is. It's pretty clear in the way the tension over the line practically vibrates.

On the drive there, Scott asks: "So you never ended up asking her, huh?"

"Nah," Stiles says, trying to sound offhand even though his grip is suddenly very tight on the wheel.

Scott's quiet, and Stiles thinks he's going to let it go, but then he says: "Do you really want the supernatural to dictate your love life, dude?"

Stiles blinks.

"The way it's going," Scott continues, and it almost feels like he's delivering a rehearsed speech, "you two will never make any progress unless something life-or-death happens to one of you. And you don't want that. Trust me, you don't want to wait for life-or-death before you realize that what you wanted was in front of you all along."

Stiles swallows, because he knows this isn't just about him anymore. He can tell from the slight wobble of Scott's words.

"Dude," he starts softly, but he doesn't know where to go from there, and it doesn't matter anyway because Scott is awkwardly clearing his throat and turning the radio dial all the way up. Apparently that's all he had to say.

The rest of the ride is silent, but Scott seems in much better spirits once they actually reach the fancy hotel the function is being held at, and they meet the girls in the lobby. As expected, Lydia looks stunning. Her hair is up in some sort of elaborate twist, lips glossy and eyes done up in a way that makes the green in them stand out. Her dress has been tailored so that it falls perfectly at her feet and not any further. Malia looks beautiful, too, in a different way. Lydia's managed to wrangle her into one of her shorter dresses and a bit of makeup.

Malia's grumbling as they approach. "... I feel so restricted in this." She tugs at the hem.

"I told you, you could have gone in a pantsuit," Lydia replies impatiently.

Malia wrinkles her nose. "That's even more restricting."

"You both look great," Scott says with a wide smile at them both. Stiles says nothing because he's not sure he can make a sound. He can barely tear his eyes away from Lydia as is.

Meanwhile, her eyes flick over him and whatever warm expression might have been on her face solidifies into something frostier. Ah. Great. So his various blunders between the mall fiasco and now haven't gone unnoticed.

He pretends he doesn't see her reaction. In fact, they all pretend not to notice the slight tension. He's grateful neither Scott nor Malia say anything.

They get their pictures taken, the four of them. One of the photographers mistakens them for a pair of couples and asks them to hug their date for the next picture!, and all four of them freeze before Scott turns and wraps his arm around Stiles' waist, winking in exaggerated fashion. Stiles throws a leg over Scott's hip for effect and bats his eyes at the camera. Malia jumps on Scott's back, wrapping her arms around his neck, and Lydia simply leans an elbow on Stiles' shoulder, pouting at the camera.

They manage to keep straight faces for one snap of the camera before they all break down laughing.

It's less tense after that.

—

Lydia hasn't had much reason to dance in the past few years, but as the night goes on, she finds herself loosening up along with everyone else.

Her hair falls messily from her updo as she does; Malia kicks off her shoes in the middle of the dance floor; off go Scott and Stiles' suit jackets and up go their shirt sleeves, rolled up their forearms. Lydia tries not to notice Stiles'. Because that boy has beautiful arms. And hands.

She stops herself before she can go any further. She's supposed to be mad at him.

At some point, they're dancing to a fast-paced, sexy sort of song, and he's dancing next to her and looking at her in a way that unnerves her, so she says, "You're a terrible dancer."

He doesn't seem bothered; in response, he simply dances right up against her, shimmying his hips and waggling his eyebrows aggressively. She snorts.

"Try again," he says as if he's made his point, now throwing his hips in a circle like a diva.

She tilts her head. "You want to know what I think?"

He leans forward, and the way they're jumping up and down causes his nose to brush against hers for just a moment. "I'd really like to know, actually."

She pauses for a moment because there's a double meaning there, but she chooses to ignore it for now. "I think," she announces, loud enough that Scott and Malia dancing on their other side cock their heads sideways to listen, "that you dance in an overly exaggerated way to put people under the impression that your awful dancing is on purpose."

Malia and Scott laugh out loud, and Stiles sputters indignantly. Lydia merely smiles sweetly, batting her eyelashes at him and feeling vindicated.

The song ends, and it changes into a slower one. Lydia's already internally panicking at the sight of couples starting to sway around them and she immediately steps back from Stiles, ready to follow Scott and Malia back to their table. But Stiles catches her wrist. "Hey."

She looks down at his long fingers wrapped loosely over her skin, and then at his face, raising her eyebrows. His expression is a little more serious now as he considers her.

"It wouldn't be fair," he tells her softly, "if you didn't give me the chance to prove that I could dance."

It's against her better judgment that she nods, but when he smiles and his sharp cheekbones glow prettily in the dim lights of the room, she decides it's worth it.

She steps into his embrace and he puts his hands high on her waist, bends his head down with his lips barely brushing her hair. As the music continues to wave over them, she can't help but tuck her face into his shoulder. He still smells like he did years ago, so good and so very Stiles that even back then, she couldn't help but to turn her nose to his throat and inhale. Just as she does now, while clinging to him and wondering why she can do this with him, why she can make out with him in a frenzy, why she can banter with him endlessly, but she can't seem to communicate to him effectively enough that she wants to be his girlfriend.

They're silent for the whole song, and Lydia feels strangely emotional when it's over. Then the chicken dance comes on, and Lydia looks over at the DJ to see Scott beside him, winking at Stiles and giving him the thumbs up.

Stiles sends him the middle finger right back. The moment is over, and she doesn't talk to Stiles for a while after that.

An hour later, Lydia's decided she's pretty much over whatever anger she was harbouring towards Stiles. Whatever. It doesn't matter anyway. In fact, she hardly feels anything at all when she sees him lean in towards Malia and laugh at something she said, and only the faintest flicker of irritation that he doesn't try to touch her again.

She's very pleased with her new ability not to give a shit, at least until Scott comes up behind her, out of breath from the dance floor, and comments out of the blue, "So apparently someone spiked all the punch with vodka a few hours ago."

Lydia looks down at the glass in her hand and realizes her new ability not to give a shit is in liquid form. Making a disgusted noise, she plops the thing on the table and heads over to grab a glass of water instead. Scott follows her. "Are you having fun?" he asks her.

She mulls that one over in her head, and is surprised at the truth. "Kind of, actually."

He smiles sunnily. "Great. You wanna dance again?"

"Not really," she replies. She's all danced out right now.

Scott nods slowly, eyes on the dance floor. "I'll ask Malia if she wants to dance." Lydia follows his gaze, where Malia is still swaying in the middle of the dance floor. "Greenberg keeps trying to grind on her and I think she's getting tired of it."

Lydia smiles into the rim of her glass.

"Oh god, she's looking at his crotch now," Scott says fearfully.

That gets Lydia's attention. Malia is staring daggers at Greenberg, but it doesn't exactly look like she wants to do him or anything. "What?" she asks, confused.

"Not like that," Stiles corrects, materializing at her side with a glass of punch dangling from his fingers. Knowing him, he's perfectly aware it's spiked and that's the precise reason he's been drinking copious amounts of it all night. "She's eyeing his crotch like it's a soccer ball and it's her turn for the penalty kick, if you know what I mean." His voice is very matter-of-fact.

Scott winces. "Nice imagery."

"Thanks, buddy." Stiles downs his glass of punch in one go. "I got an A in creative writing last year."

The three of them lapse into silence as the song that was playing transitions into the Macarena. Lydia watches idly as people begin to go into formation to start dancing it in coordination, and inevitably a few couples continue grinding despite the ridiculous music. Classy. She snorts into her cup unattractively. Malia dances over near the end of the song and tugs on Lydia's hands, grinning crazily, and Lydia lets herself be pulled into the crowd. The music is so loud that she only barely hears Stiles mutter to Scott behind her, "Watch this. She's going to make the macarena look sexy."

"Dude, you think everything she does is sexy."

If that exchange lends an extra bounce to her step in the next few minutes of dancing, she chooses to ignore that.

The song transitions again, into something fast and energetic, and Malia finally asks. "What's going on with you and Stiles?"

Lydia barely blinks. Honestly, she's impressed Malia held out this long. She's normally impressively blunt, so this is a testament to how awkward the situation is. "I don't know," she replies truthfully.

"Did you guys make out or something?" There's a knowingness behind her blunt tone, and Lydia hesitates before answering.

"Yes."

Malia nods. "So you'll work it out." This is the extent of Malia's ability to comfort, but her voice is exceedingly gentle, letting Lydia know it's okay.

Lydia doesn't fully know the terms of Stiles' and Malia's breakup— sometimes she suspects that they don't really, either. It's like they just... fell apart, more or less amicably. Lydia's just grateful she doesn't have to deal with that anymore, and that she still has Malia as a friend.

Malia is still watching her carefully. "I'm pretty sure he's in love with you."

It's the wrong thing to say to her right now, and Lydia drops her arms from where they were raised over her head. "You know what? I need some air." She sends the girl a quick smile before pushing through the sweaty crowd.

She feels marginally better in the hallway, but there are still couples taking photos there; she heads out of the hotel lobby to the warm, breezy spring night outside.

She doesn't even notice Stiles is there until she's sat down on the sidewalk, not mindful of her dress at all, and taken a few deep breaths of air.

"Hey," he says from behind her, and she closes her eyes in irritation. Really? Is it impossible to escape him now?

"What do you want?" she snaps, and he pauses in the middle of sitting down.

"Just wanted to sit with you," he says carefully. "If you're okay with that." He sounds ready to leave if that's what she tells him, and in the end it's that fact that causes her to nod her head slowly.

He stretches his legs out over the curb. For a moment they just sit there on the sidewalk, listening to the sounds of crickets chirping, of cars that drive past the front of the hotel, and the faint thumping of music from inside. "I just wanna talk to you," he says softly.

She draws her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. "So talk."

"Okay," he says, still staring straight ahead. She's doing the same. "Before we get interrupted by something, I need you to know I was gonna ask you to prom."

She blinks despite herself, but he keeps going, a little faster now.

"I don't— I don't know if you would've said yes, but the point is, I was gonna. I thought you should know that."

She's silent.

He twists his hands together, now looking thoroughly anxious. "I just don't want you to think— that I only care about you when something supernatural and evil happens to us. I care about you all the time. Whatever we have, it's— it's important to me. You're important to me. You know that, right?"

Her mind flashes back to the night they'd rescued her from Eichen again and she opens her mouth. "Why are you telling me this now?"

He turns his head finally to look at her. She sees it in her peripheral vision. "I just had a thought tonight," he says quietly, "watching you dance. I don't want to lose you." He coughs. "Not any more than I already have, anyway."

Those words touch her somewhere inside. "You never lost me, Stiles." She sounds tired, and she is. She's exhausted of being angry with him over their many shared miscommunications, and she feels any leftover irritation melt away from her bones. "And by the way, yes."

He cocks his head, sounding baffled. "What?"

It's her turn to turn her head, look him squarely in his whiskey-coloured eyes. "If you'd asked me to prom, that's what I would've said."

She watches the cogs turn in his head, and then the way his eyes brighten like a little kid's. "Really? You would've said yes?" A goofy grin starts to spread on his face.

She pretends to think about it now. "Depends on how you asked."

He nods fast, like he was expecting this. "I was thinking of getting you flowers to ask it, maybe."

"Hmm." She's unimpressed.

"The other option I was heavily weighing the pros and cons to was getting 'Prom?' tattooed across my ass," Stiles adds very seriously.

"Hmm." She's even more unimpressed, something she didn't think was possible. "I would've said yes if you'd just asked me, Stiles. Period." And her heart flutters pathetically at the way his smile seems to light up his entire expression, smoothing away the guilt and darkness he constantly holds on his shoulders for just a moment.

He nods rapidly. "Wow. Good. That's— good to know."

In lieu of responding, she reaches over and puts her hand on top of his where it's been braced on the pavement. They remain like that for a good minute, and then:

"I want normal with you," Stiles blurts, and Lydia looks up sharply.

"What?" She's at a loss.

He hesitates, and then he turns towards her, drawing his legs up to the curb so he can face her fully. He cups her cheeks with his hands and swallows shakily. "I want normal with you," he repeats, earnest. "Maybe the supernatural stuff has been dictating our lives for the past few years. But I don't want us to just be together because of supernatural stuff. I want us to be together because it's us."

As if in a trance, her hands come up to where his are, still on her cheeks, and cover them with her own. She can't seem to look away from his eyes. They're soft, melting pools of whiskey, full of a genuine love that takes her breath away.

"I— I want that too," she says, softly, unable to help herself; the swelling of warm emotion in her chest is almost too much to bear. She's wanted him so badly for so long.

He keeps going, apparently spurred on. "I want to hold your hand in the hallway, and have you over for dinner, and take you on really shitty dates to Gamestop, and—" he seems to have a thought, "hell, I'll grind with you to the Macarena if that's what you want—"

She's touched at this speech but she cuts him off there. "No." Best to nip that one to the bud right now.

"Damn," he says, but there's a smile in his voice. "How about we replace that one with doing Dressing Room Part two, instead?"

She smiles, cheeks heating slightly at the memory. "I'll consider it." He goes on.

"So— basically what I'm asking you is, do you think you'd be okay with me being your boyfriend in the most boring, ordinary, very normal relationship of all time?"

"You're the farthest thing from boring," she tells him, and maybe it's a bit of the vodka talking here but she can't help it. "But yes, I'd like that." Actually, she'd love that. "Took you long enough to ask."

He's been smiling softly at her answer but at the end there he grimaces at her tone. "Whatever. It's never too late."

"It's too late to ask me to prom," she points out.

He seems to take this statement as a personal offense. "Watch me." He clears his throat and says in a far-too-formal voice, "Lydia Martin, do you want to go to prom with me?"

"We're already at prom," she says wryly.

He leans in and winks at her. "Technically, right now we're outside of prom."

She harrumphs, looking back into the night, and he changes his question slightly.

"Do you want to go back to prom with me?" She looks at him to find him extending his hand out to her, a hopeful smile on his face.

She looks down at his hand, back to his face, just to make him squirm a little. But it doesn't seem to have the effect she's looking for; he simply waits for her answer calmly. Now that he's completely still and not running his mouth off, she takes a moment to fully appreciate the visual of his long fingered hand outstretched towards her, the strong, sinewy forearm attached to it; and then her eyes crawl up his chest and further, to the tie loosened around his neck, and the first two buttons popped open to reveal his throat. On instinct, she takes hold of his tie and pulls him in for a kiss instead of answering his question.

Their lips meet while sitting on the curb of this city street, the noise of cars driving and the faint bass still pounding from inside and idle chatter surrounding them, but in this moment Lydia swears the only sound she hears is his breathing.

Her hand comes up to cup his jaw, and he tilts his head to deepen the kiss, his fingers ghosting over the back of her exposed neck.

He suddenly wrenches his head back, and Lydia chases his lips for a blind moment before realizing that a car horn jolted him out of it— and she was the one who was so very lost in the kiss that she barely noticed it.

A long time ago, it would have felt like an absurd notion. Not anymore. Not when she's so head over heels in love with him.

She'll tell him someday, she thinks, watching as he frowns at the offending car as it speeds by. Someday.

"Interrupted our moment," he huffs with irritation, and then looks at her. "So is that a yes?"

It takes her an embarrassingly long moment to remember the question. "Okay. Yes."

He nods with satisfaction. "Good. I want to grind with you on the dance floor."

His bluntness makes her smile. "Well, as long as it's not the Macarena."

"I make no promises," Stiles replies innocently, and folds his legs underneath him, finally rising. His hand tugs on hers, bringing her up with him.

Her boyfriend, she thinks, and is surprised at the thrill that jolts through her. Lydia finds herself caught up in the idea, and on a whim she suggests,"And then afterwards we should go get icecream."

He grins widely. "Now you're talking." He pauses. "What about Scott? I drove him here."

She doesn't even hesitate. "He can get a ride with Malia."

He nods sagely. "Problem solving. I like it."

They start walking hand-in-hand back up the sidewalk to the brightly lit-up hotel, and Lydia leans her head against his shoulder and murmurs, "I like you."

She almost thinks her words are too quiet to hear, but he says, "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she confirms, and she didn't think she had it in her to be shy, but right now she can feel her cheeks flushing a bit in the warm night air and she fights the impulse to duck her head.

He's smiling now slightly. "Well damn, I like you too. Maybe I even love you a little bit." It's deliberately light and tentative, the way he says it; he's testing the waters.

But strangely, she's unbothered. They've been through too much for her to be scared away by something she already knew, deep inside. "Maybe you're not the only one who feels that way," she tells him, voice equally light.

He doesn't react too much physically, but she thinks she hears his breath hitch, and there's definitely a brief pause before he responds offhandedly. "Huh. Maybe."

And that's the last thing they say before they go back inside, and the music swallows them up again.

—

The rest of the night is completely normal and almost cliche in the way it unfolds, but truth be told, that's exactly what she needs. And besides, there's nothing ordinary about her and Stiles. There never has been; and at some point the thought crosses her mind that she'd like to wake up to the simple extraordinary of his whiskey-brown eyes for the rest of her life.

Someday, she'll tell him that too.

---

A/N: If you enjoyed this, I'd REALLY appreciate and love you if you left a review. *runs away*

*runs back to say one more thing* also! I'm wellsjahasghost on tumblr.