Author's Note: I absolutely love this couple. I think they support each other in the best ways. I was inspired a bit by a quote from Doctor Who:
"It's the oldest story in the universe. This one or any other. Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events - war, politics, accidents in time. She's thrown out of the hex or he's thrown into it. Since then they've been yearning for each other across time and space. Across dimensions. This isn't a ghost story, it's a love story."
I think that Stiles and Lydia have been separated by so much - her relationships, her insanity, his insanity. It's never been the right time for them. In a dream world, I would hope that things would slow down and they would finally get to see that they aren't living in a horror film - it's much more of a love story than they could ever imagine.
REVIEWS ARE SO APPRECIATED!
A Haunted Little Narrative
"It's a ghost story."
"Is it?"
He's more than a little exasperated. Here he is, pushing himself, trying to step back into his life and unfortunately that means an English assignment. A short story, a narrative. It's the perfect intro assignment – after all, he's got hundreds of little horror stories playing out in his mind every night. But Lydia Martin is really starting to make him question his journey back to sanity.
"What do you mean? Of course it is. Clearly it is. Are you sure we're reading the same thing?"
She'd agreed to meet him in the library during free period to discuss his work. Her specialty may be math and science, but she's a genius at everything. And hey, he might not technically need the help, but he had missed her. In his last real memories of time spent together, he had either been nearly incapacitated or not himself, hissing in her ear and threatening to murder her friends.
And he had. Inadvertently, he had. And his friends too. Yeah, he had some nightmares that would be just fascinating to read.
But this time together isn't going as planned. She's not that impressed with his story. She doesn't seem to get it at all. In fact, she has her head bent over it now; apparently searching for proof that he is in fact wrong but about his own damn genre. Stiles slides a hand over his face, half annoyed and half watching the way her soft red curls are falling in her face at the moment.
And then she's pulling out a highlighter.
"Oh my – oh my god. You are kidding me. Lydia, seriously, this is supposed to be my final draft – you know how I am about going to the lab to print! I know you take school seriously, but I thought it was pretty clear that I asked you here as more of a 'Hey, I miss you' thing not a 'Hey, I'm trying to win the Pulitzer' thing…And how much could actually be wrong? I used spell check!"
She looks up at that, smirking at him and he kind of forgets why he was angry for a second. But then she's aggressively coloring line after line a jarring pink and he's growling a little bit under his breath. When she's finally done, she caps her highlighter primly and slides his once pristine final copy over the desk between them.
"It's a love story."
"Umm… what?" And he can't help himself and he knows it's silly now, but he's counting his fingers anyway, counting hers as subtly as he can across the table. Because in what reality would Lydia Martin completely misunderstand anything. She notices, and her expression softens.
"If you're going to turn in a paper and you have to specify a genre, I'm pretty sure getting it right is a large part of the grade."
Now the thing about his story is that it's about ghosts. It's about a hero, plagued by demons both real and imagined. He had written it in during a bout of insomnia, hands flying across the keyboard. It had been easy – to anyone else it was fantasy, a tale of the X-Files variety, but to him it was essentially a story he had lived. And the feeling was the same – the hero had friends beside him, but in all the important ways was always alone.
It's hard to fight your own mind and not feel alone.
So now Stiles is scoffing, scanning the offending pink lines of his personal hell put on paper. And they are all about a girl. He's a little embarrassed that she'd caught it, honestly – he had even thought to give the girl blonde hair to erase suspicion. The girl was the hero's friend. She was the only one in his story who could see the demons too. She was always trying to help the hero, but the thing about monsters is they hurt everyone they touch. She was a little crazy too, but maybe the hero liked that. Was it obvious the hero liked that?
Stiles can feel his hands shaking a little bit as he looks up at her. Lydia's eyes look too bright as they stared right back. Her hands are moving across the table, settling his nervous ones in hers. He looks down at their intertwined fingers, the counting a bit more difficult with them laced together like that.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
"Stiles, I know right now you can only see this one way. And that's okay. But I think you should know – this is most definitely a love story. "
Her voice is breaking a little bit and he fully realizes she's not talking about his paper anymore. Maybe she never really was. His hands are gripping hers tightly, and he can feel his heart hammering away in his chest. This feeling is one he hasn't felt in a while. If he was feeling especially brave, he would call it hope.
"It's going to be a pretty good one with a little work, isn't it?" He's trying to be funny and charming and all the things she likes, but his voice is breaking too and he hopes she won't mind.
"Yeah," she says, laughing slightly as she squeezes his hands one more time before pulling away. "It is."
And Stiles is staring at her across the table. And the sunlight is streaming in, illuminating her face – her face that he's watched every expression flit across since the first day they met. And her beautiful mouth is smiling and her beautiful eyes are looking at him, really looking. And he realizes that, as always, Lydia Martin was completely right.
He's been writing a damn good love story.