When do you know? When do you know for certain? The first look, catching their eyes across a crowded room? The shy smile, the furtive glance?
Lydia stood at the doorway of the third grade classroom. Her fingers twisted nervously around each other as she surveyed the room. The other children were already splitting up into their already-established friendship groups from last year, and she wondered for a moment if there would be room for her in any of them.
A quickly-developing social radar summed up and rejected most of the empty desks. She crossed to one in the middle row, closer to the door than the windows, and sat down. Twisting the ends of her red-gold (strawberry-blonde, her mother called it), hair around her fingers, a nervous habit she was trying to break, her attention was caught by a crash from the front of the room, and a shrill voice exclaiming, "Jackson!"
It was a scene she would see repeated many times in the next few years. Scott or Stiles – or both – sprawled on the ground, with Jackson looming over them, a smug grin on his face.
But this was the first time, and she wasn't to know how much she would become involved with the group of them, especially the one on the ground scrabbling to collect his books and pens together.
He seemed to sense someone watching, and looked up to meet her eyes.
Brown eyes met green, and if Lydia was truly a Disney Princess, she would have seen a spark fly between them.
Then Jackson slumped into the seat in front of her, and she couldn't see his eyes any more.
No, that's not when you know.
XXX
When do you know? Is it later, when the roots of familiarity have grown down, extended deep into the earth? Is that when you know?
All through middle school, and into Junior High, Stiles was just there. Sitting in the row behind her usually, and for one extremely long semester, next to her in Math.
It didn't seem to bother him at all that she treated him with ill-disguised boredom, if she even deigned to notice his existence.
Then he wasn't there for a month, and she had this nagging sense of "wrongness" whenever she looked around and there was an empty chair where he should be.
She tried to mention it one day when studying with Jackson – well, she was studying, he was talking team tactics with his best friend Danny.
He barely looked up when she asked, "Have you see Stiles lately?"
"Hasn't he been around? Hadn't really noticed." He thought for a moment. "Actually, it's been a lot quieter, you're right."
Danny shook his head slightly at Jackson's dismissal. "His mom's really sick. I think he's been with her."
"Oh," Lydia said blankly. That wasn't at all what she was expecting.
"I can tell him you were asking after him if you like," Danny offered. "I know he'd like that."
That roused Jackson from his contemplation of the team sheet.
"Don't say anything to him, thanks. He doesn't need the encouragement," he ordered.
Danny looked a bit taken aback at this, flicking a quick glance to Lydia to see her reaction to this high-handed demand.
She shook her head minutely. "I'm sure he's got better things to worry about at the moment. Forget I mentioned it."
That's not when you know.
XXX
When do you know? Not in the first moments, not then. And not as life continues, as you almost forget everything that was and it turns into something different. It can't be then.
It was a year of changes and strangeness and people dying in various freaky ways. And in the midst of all this upheaval, Stiles' devotion to her was the one constant.
She did occasionally wonder, in the small corner of her mind that thought of such things at 3am, what exactly she had done to deserve it. It wasn't as if she had ever encouraged him, quite the opposite in fact.
Lydia tried to be a supportive friend to Allison – she rather enjoyed having her as a best friend most of the time – but she did draw the line at asking Stiles to the Winter Formal. She had planned on finding a fabulous dress, and telling one of the other members of the lacrosse team that they were taking her, and then Allison goes and spoils things by doing that.
Just another freaky thing that happened that year.
Pink and satin-shiny, a dress that was meant for an expensive car, not a beat-up blue jeep that was Stiles' pride-and-joy. She hopped lightly down from the seat, brushing the non-existent dirt from the skirt, and sighing inwardly. Of course Stiles would have to park right next to Jackson's Porsche. And of course Jackson and Allison went past them at just that moment.
Before she could help herself, she blurted, "Jackson. You look handsome."
Her ex-boyfriend looked her up and down before saying dismissively, "Obviously. It's Hugo Boss." Then he sniggered, like some cut-price cartoon villain, and sauntered into the gym with Allison before she had a chance to reply.
Taking a deep breath, she thought, "I don't care. I don't want compliments. I will not fall prey to society's desire to turn girls into emotionally insecure neurotics who pull up their dresses at the first flattering remark."
Lydia didn't realise that she had spoken her thoughts aloud until Stiles said, "Well, I think you look beautiful."
The obvious sincerity in his voice made her stomach do a slow roll. She had been called pretty, or hot, or gorgeous, before, but not one of those compliments had ever sounded like Stiles' one did.
"Really?" she asked with a small smile.
In answer, he smiled and crooked his elbow in invitation, and together they entered the school's gym.
"Wanna dance?" Stiles asked nonchalantly, seeing that Lydia was studiously ignoring Jackson and Allison who were dancing about two feet away from their table, despite them sitting on the opposite side of the dance floor.
Lydia barely looked at his offered hand, before saying flatly, "Pass."
She went back to studying her fingernails, and for once Stiles lost his patience with her. Standing up, and leaning over the table at her, he said, "Let me say that again. Lydia, get up off your cute little ass, and come dance with me now."
Lydia frowned in surprise, and said considering. "Interesting tactic, but I'm still going to go with 'No'."
"Arrgh, Lydia, get up! You're going to dance with me!" he demanded.
She huffed in annoyance, and slumped back into the tacky folding chair. This was not her plan for the night, she wanted to sulk in the corner, and be the generally unpleasant person that most people saw her as. It made things much easier in the long run. But, as she was discovering this year, Stiles ignored this behaviour, and kept demanding that she lived up to the pedestal he had placed her on.
He waved his arms in the air, trying to convince her. "I don't care that you made out with my best friend for some weird power thing."
Except that she knew that he did care, for all his protests to the contrary.
He continued without pausing for a breath. "Lydia, I've had a crush on you since, like, the third grade. And I know that somewhere inside that cold lifeless exterior, there's an actual human soul." He sounded so angry with her, she really didn't like it at all. Stiles wasn't an angry person by nature.
He must have seen her surprise, as he softened his tone. "And I'm also pretty sure that I'm the only one who knows just how smart you are. And once you're done pretending to be a nit wit, you're going to invent some outstanding mathematical theory, and win the Nobel Prize."
How was it that this boy knew her so well? He was also a lot smarter than people gave him credit for, and a lot more observant. "Fields Medal," she said.
"What?" Stiles' train of thought was derailed by this seeming nonsequiteur.
She stood up and gave him a brilliant, genuine, smile. "Fields Medal," she repeated. "You don't win the Nobel Prize for mathematics. The Fields Medal is the one I'll be winning." She grabbed his unresisting hand and pulled him to the teeming dance floor.
How did he know her so well?
No, that's not when you know.
XXX
Sometimes, you see, you've known all along. You just don't realise that you do. You have to know that you know. You have to find that out. And you know when it's gone. When you see it torn from your hands. When it's never coming back. That's when you know. The moment you risk losing it forever, you know. And sometimes you have to take a chance. Sometimes you act without thinking. Sometimes you make the reckless move to save everything you hold dear. Sometimes you take a leap of faith.
The year after Jackson got bitten and then moved to London, Lydia got pulled further into the freaky supernatural world that Scott, Stiles and Allison lived in. She sometimes wondered how Stiles coped with being the only "normal" one of that group. He seemed to be the anchor, the worrier, the researcher.
He was the first person she thought to call when she found the first dead body. Well, of course she called 911 first, but he was the first real person she called.
And the second one.
And it seemed that at some point in that year Stiles' number was the one she called most often. If you had said to her a year ago that would be what happened, she would have laughed in your face and called you a fool. But that was before werewolves, and kaminas, and people trying to kill them every other weekend.
So this was why she didn't object too much when Allison arrived on her doorstep one morning saying that they had to follow the team bus as something terrible was going to happen if they didn't. Of course, she mad her usual objections, but they were half-hearted at best.
A cold shiver ran down Lydia's back, and her feet froze to the concrete driveway. There was something evil about this motel, so much death and sadness sunken into the bricks and mortar that she could barely breathe.
"I can't go in there," she muttered, clasping her bag in front of her to create the illusion of a barrier. As she had come to expect, Stiles had part of his attention focused on her, and he immediately crossed to her side.
"What is it? What do you feel?" he asked urgently. "Is it the darach? Or Deucalion? Has he followed the twins for some reason?" His rapid-fire questions had an oddly calming effect of her, they kicked her analytical sense into gear, which overcame the bone-deep fear.
"No, it's none of them. It's something different, I can't quite work it out." Then she shrugged her shoulders. "Well, the alternative is sleeping in the bus, and I can't see Coach letting me do that."
"If you're sure. Let me know if things change, we'll be in the room next door. Just bang on the wall and I'll come running," he promised, laying his hand on her arm and giving it a gentle squeeze. Then he was jogging after Scott, complaining about the potential lumpiness of the beds, like nothing else was wrong.
She marvelled again at his good heart, always trying to make sure everyone else was alright, putting others in front of himself. Then she followed Allison across the parking lot and into the horrible room allocated to them for the night. Like Stiles had promised, they were right next door. And deep down, it made her feel safer than she would easily admit to.
The whole horrible night, hearing dead people, seeing dead people, trying to stop her classmates from becoming dead people, culminated in Scott standing in a puddle of gasoline, a lit road flare in his hand, and saying it would be better for everyone if he wasn't there any more.
She and Allison looked on in horror, there didn't seem to be any way that they could stop him from setting himself on fire.
Stiles walked slowly forward, talking calmly all the time. It reminded Lydia of all the times he had calmed her down when something terrible had happened to her. He just knew exactly what words to say.
"Scott, just listen to me. You're not no one, you're someone. You're my best friend, and I need you." He took a deep breath. "Scott, ypu're my brother. And if you're going to do this, you're going to have to take me with you too." As he said the last words, he took the final step into the pool of gasoline, and wrapped his hand around the hand holding the lit flare.
Lydia bit her fingernails, ruining her prefect manicure, but for once she wasn't thinking of her looks or her outfit. She was focussing on the two boys in front of her, and the slowly dawning horror that Stiles – and Scott – could die here and now, and she hadn't known until now just what he meant to her.
Stiles pried the flare carefully from Scott's grip, and flung it behind them, out of the way of the spreading gasoline pool. The two girls sagged in relief that the danger was now over; a ghostly cold finger stroked itself down Lydia's spine, and then pushed the flare back towards the pool.
In that moment Lydia knew. She knew that she couldn't lose Stiles from her life, even if he did drive her crazy most of the time.
It was this thought that made her scream, "No!", and take a running leap for Stiles's back, hoping that her momentum was enough to knock all three of them out of harm's way.
Please, please, please, she prayed, and her mass was just enough to spin Scott sideways out of the pool to safety, and carry Stiles forward to the ground, her landing on top of him and keeping him still until she was sure he was safe.
That's when you know.