Title: Some Devious Feminine Plan
Summary: "Nothing, huh?" Stiles and Erica have a talk. It's possibly the beginning of a beautiful friendship. pre-Sterek.
Disclaimer: Just a fangirl.
Erica presses her gloss-sticky lips to his chapped ones for the span of one heartbeat, then another. Nothing else between them is touching, Stiles' hands flailing at his sides at the unexpectedness of it; Erica's hovering over his shoulders like she wants to touch but can't quite bring herself to, as they stand in the empty hallway next to his locker.
When she pulls away the corners of her mouth are twitching a little as though she's repressing a smile. Stiles chooses to focus on that rather than the hint of sadness in her brown eyes.
"Nothing, huh?" she says, flippant, and she does touch him then, smoothing the collar of his shirt in an almost motherly manner.
"No," says Stiles, and then, "I'm sorry," because he is. He's sorry that he never noticed Erica Reyes pining for him the same way he pined for Lydia Martin because he knows how much it sucks to be that person. He's sorry because he thinks he gets, now, that even if something did happen with Lydia, even if he kissed her, she would stand there afterwards and apologize to him. Maybe she'd even mean it now.
It doesn't bother him as much as it should, as it would have before.
Erica does smile at his apology, smiles and shrugs. "If it was Lydia…"
"Yeah," Stiles says automatically, except that his heart must have skipped or something, the traitor, because one of her perfectly done eyebrows goes up and she steps back, folding her arms across her chest. Stiles' eyes flicker over her leather jacket that will always make him think of Derek. "No," he admits, more to himself than to her despite him saying it aloud, "not if it were Lydia, either."
"Thought so." Erica seems just a little smug, making Stiles wonder how many of her actions the past few minutes have been part of some devious feminine plan. "You should tell him."
He also wonders, even as he stutters out a denial—he doesn't know what she's talking about, tell who what?—and ignores the knowing look she's giving him, how it is that Erica, out of everyone around him, is the one that's noticed. The answer is, of course, that she used to observe him the way he observed Lydia, which makes him a little sad for all the things that could have been.
"Whatever, Stiles," Erica finally says, cutting off his ramble with a roll of her eyes. "You should tell him. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but you should still tell him, soon." She grabs him by the elbow and starts tugging him towards the school's front exit. "C'mon, we're going to be late."
And if later, at the pack meeting, with Erica sitting next to him on one side shooting him knowing smirks and Scott on the other completely oblivious, his mouth goes a little dry and his heart kicks up a notch when Derek throws a deliberate glance in his direction like he's waiting for Stiles to chime in, well.
Nobody needs to know.
But it's nice that somebody does.