On the final day of his final year at Beacon Hills High School, Stiles Stilinski gets his wish. And no, not the one to do with Coach and a flock of angry geese. The one to do with the strawberry blonde who had placed her hand on his heart and left an imprint there forever.
It's a fumble of feelings and emotions, like someone has placed them in a washing machine and set it to fast spin. A stolen moment in the middle of the Senior prom, when Lydia places her hand on his back and says that dancing was never her thing anyway, in a voice that sets every single hair on his body to alert mode. They hadn't even come together. But Lydia had other ideas, and Stiles was ready to go with it.
The empty classroom had so many memories imprinted on it; Scott digging claws into his own hands to keep himself from transforming, a maths test where Stiles ended up doodling Lydia's name on the back of the sheet over and over again. But now one last memory, just in time. A giggle as Lydia pushes him against the wall, appraises him for one second before pressing her lips against his. There's a moment of terror when Stiles thinks she must be drunk and he's going to have to be moral, but her breath smells of nothing but the strawberry-flavoured lip gloss she always wears. So he kisses her back with the desperation of a boy who has been waiting all his adolescent life to do this, and then some.
When she pulls away countless seconds later, she has the same smug look she wears when she beats him at Monopoly (every damn time). He wears the look of a boy trying to determine if he's dreaming or not and, for once, he doesn't care about waking up from this one.
"What..." He tries. "How..."
Lydia comes to his rescue as one hand trails up his arm, coming to rest around his neck. "You didn't think I'd let you graduate without a goodbye kiss did you?" she asks, one eyebrow raising at a perfect angle of supreme smugness.
"I wasn't expecting it, no. I mean...I thought..." Stiles grits his teeth, finding his own lack of language skills hugely frustrating.
She grins, taking his hand and pulling him over to sit on a desk. She sits beside him, plaits there fingers together. "Stiles, we've been building up to this for weeks and you know it."
She's right. Ever since Stiles and Malia went for friends rather than partners, the dynamic had shifted. Slowly but gradually, in little baby steps. Stiles had started putting a kiss at the end of their texts about homework. Lydia had returned them. Stiles had placed his hand closer to hers when they sat next to each other at lunch, and Lydia had closed the gap even more. Stiles started spending time on the weekends with her without bringing homework or supernatural related puzzles to solve. Lydia had stopped bringing her own cardigans round for their Thursday night study sessions and had found his hoodies instead.
This acceptance of the facts obviously shows on his face because Lydia rests her chin on his shoulder and purses those enchanting lips of hers. "So, are we going to just sit here reminiscing or...?" she trails off and that delicate pause is enough to cause Stiles to let out a small moan as if he's desperately trying to find words but is coming up completely blank.
They hit the classroom floor moments later, a tangle of limbs and built up feelings. Stiles' hand entangled in her hair, Lydia's hand diving under his shirt to explore skin that she's found herself imagining at night. Hearts skip and race and duck and dive, unable to fathom quite what they're feeling right now.
Until, in a blink of an eye, it's over. Sweat glistens on their skin, Lydia's painstakingly selected prom dress lies in a crumpled heap and her head rests in the crook of his collar bone. They can hear the real world creeping back to claim them; the thud of the prom's DJ, the titter of some other pair of teenagers coming together, the gentle pattering of a summer rainstorm. But they don't return just yet, far too content between the lines of desks and with the smell of Lydia's perfume intermingling with musty textbooks.
A week later, Lydia's lipgloss resting almost comfortably beneath the lobe of his ear, Stiles gets the letter he's been waiting for, but also dreading. A scholarship for the school he's been dreaming of, the one that he knows will get him on the path to the FBI. The one that his father made him apply to because there was nobody else who could crack crimes like a Stilinski could. Especially a Stilinski like Stiles.
He's dreading it because it is on the other side of the country. He's dreading it because he knows he'll be leaving her, and because he hasn't even told her yet. He's dreading it because he knows she'll make him go, because it's what is best and even though she'll be furious about that fact, she'll have to face it. He has to go.
Of course, he's right. He's very rarely wrong when it comes to Lydia Martin. She gives him a hard look and a mouthful of venom for not telling her, then oversees him confirming it, arms crossed over her lacrosse sweater covered chest, tears pulled right back from the corners of her eyes. She wants to be happy for him, and refuses to let him see how sad this makes her.
And that's how the problem starts. Because even Lydia Martin can't keep that much sadness inside and soon it begins to fester, begins to grow furry patches of mould and as the days until he leaves tick by, things start to go wrong. She can't see him, because it hurts too much, so she makes excuses. Silly excuses instead of telling him the truth. Then he gets cross, frustrated. I've only got five days left with you and you want to spend it shopping for shoes? He keeps pushing, keeps sniping and then finally she can't take it anymore and yells at him that he's smothering her, that this isn't working, that a few nights wrapped together does not make her his damn wife. It's volcanic, plate-shifting stuff. Yelling at each other across Stiles' bedroom, Lydia's cheeks red and damp with frustrated tears.
Hateful untruths fly across the space. I never wanted to go out with you. It was just one night. You're too clingy. You lied to me. I never realised what a cold heart you had, Lydia Martin. At some point she storms out, pushes past the worried Sheriff and out the door, slamming it behind her.
And then, in the wreckage of a relationship that tried to fly before its wings had grown in, he has to leave. Lydia watches the planes drawing cloud lines across the sky and wonders which one holds her heart in the scruffy suitcase of the bastard boy who stole it.
Two days later, the throwing up starts. 7:35am every morning like clockwork. On the fourth day, she sits in the mall toilets and stares at the positive sign grinning up at her from a little white stick of plastic. Who would have known such a small, flimsy item could hold her future for ransom.
She knows who it belongs to, knows they took a risk in the heady rush of prom night. But Lydia Martin is a stubborn soul and she won't call him.
In fact, she doesn't call him through thousands of miles of travel, hours spent screaming in an unfamiliar hospital room on the other side of the Atlantic and five years of being a mother.
But Stiles Stilinski is a stubborn soul and, five years later, he goes to find the girl who put his heart in her pocket and disappeared into the creases of the map.