"Stiles, I'm telling you, there IS a dead body here. There has to be." Lydia said defiantly, her near-shouting echoing through the high school halls.
"Well, Lydia, I don't see one, and neither do you. You call me up at four a.m., and there's nothing here Lydia! Just admit that you were wrong. You were wrong, there's nothing here." He's not looked at her since they arrived, his eyes bouncing to everything in his line of vision that isn't her.
And of course, Lydia knows he's not just talking about the lack of corpse. He's talking about the kiss - the one she had meant kindly, maybe if she was being honest pitifully, but she did it without thought to consequence. She was trying to calm him down from a panic attack, but all she'd done was give him expectation for something she wasn't going to give. He was right, there's nothing here for them.
"Stiles, I -" Lydia starts to cry, tears rolling down her soft cheeks.
At seeing this, his countenance changes, his face softens and he takes a step closer. "Lydia, I'm sorry. You called me, so there must be a reason. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell." He finally looks at her, if for only a second.
This only made Lydia cry more - this sweet boy who couldn't stand to hurt her feelings even when she deserved it. He was so good, so much better than she was. Wasn't he?
She thought about elementary school with him, seeing the two dorks sitting in the back, playing games outside during recess, one constantly wheezing, the other fidgety. She loved how he fidgeted. It was something so utterly Stiles.
But she didn't love him.
She thought about that night, of how frustrated he was that she wouldn't even dance with her. That speech he'd made, unplanned but clearly had been floating in his head for too long. He'd called her lifeless, cold. At that she shivered, feeling her own insensitivity in the air.
She thought about the way he'd screamed her name, right as the Worst Thing happened. She thought about what Scott had told her - how frantic Stiles had been, offering his life in place of hers to Peter, just as long as she would be okay. She thought about how she'd glanced back after holding Jackson, and there was this broken boy...hurt in a way only she could cause.
She knew that it wasn't her job to like the boys that liked her. She's always known that, because of course, she's never had a shortage of boys chasing her. But she had kissed him, held him, whispered things she hadn't meant. And Stiles was so different to every other boy. He was worth her love, if anyone was.
"Stiles, it's occurred to me... I don't think there is a dead body."
Stiles threw his arms up at this. (Finally, his sarcasm had returned.) "No, there isn't."
"I think I got Banshee-Me and Lydia-Me confused." She paused, considered lying, but decided to continue. "I really... I just wanted to say that I'm sorry." She had said that she thought there was a dead body, but she hadn't woken up screaming - she'd woken up crying.
Sarcastic, cute Stiles was gone in that instant, and she regretted it.
"Yeah, well." He said, clearing his throat, looking away. "We should probably go."
"I'm just so sorry." She whispered.
At this, she walked out of the classroom, and went home. She had done all she could to repair this.
Oh, how she wished she loved him.