Title: cognitive dissonance

Summary: She gestures at his worn out plaid shirt, "You really didn't have enough time to get yourself a new shirt in the afterlife?" StilesLydia

Author's Note: It's semi-impossible to write StilesLydia, but I adore them and I'VE LITERALLY WRITTEN THIS FIVE TIMES SO YOU HAVE TO LIKE IT!

I'm posting this before this new episode so clearly it has nothing to do with it okay I might be crying a little bye.

/

His hair still looks soft. That's the first thing she thinks.

Then she thinks about how she's holding a cigarette in her hand, and she curses softly to herself.

"Good to know that you know I disapprove," he says instead of hello. "Seriously Lydia, beside the obvious grossness of your new habit, have you not learned anything from AP Psych? Cognitive dissonance. You'll go crazy from all of your contradictions." And then he laughs, "After school special Stiles. That's a new one. Hi."

Lydia's mouth seems to be in a permanent flux of moving up and down. The cigarette is hovering near her bright lips. Her eyes widen. She has to fight the urge to reach out and touch his face.

"Stiles?"

"That's my name," he says loudly, awkwardly. And then softly, "Don't wear it out."

She feels the tears forming in her eyes, a reaction that's been too common in the past few weeks.

"God, Stiles," she says, disbelieving. He looks scared, so she rubs her eyes and laughs, gestures at his worn out plaid shirt, "You really didn't have enough time to get yourself a new shirt in the afterlife?"

He smiles faintly, and fingers the faded material, "Well, you know what they say."

She shakes her head, eyes still pricking with tears, smile so wide that her lips actually hurt, "No, what do you they say?"

"Oops, I forgot," he says. "I just like this shirt."

She struggles to place it, wants it so desperately to be the one she kissed him in but she knows it's not, "I don't know if I've ever seen it."

"Yeah, well," he shrugs. "S'not that important."

But it is because Stiles is here and Stiles is dead and there's been a hole in Lydia's heart for the past month because she had to watch him lowered into the earth, so yeah, it's important that she can't place his plaid shirt he claims to like. She opens her mouth but the cigarette in her hand is dangerously close to burning her, so she throws it on the ground and lights another but doesn't inhale, just lets it burn between her fingers again.

Stiles rocks on his heels, "So, how are you? Like, what's going on in your life – other than the smoking, which I don't approve of, of course. What have you guys been up to while I've been..."

"Gone?" she says, coldly. "Oh well, Stiles. We've just been having a grand old time, you know. It's been great." Her voice sounds like it would turn any living person to stone, "Yeah, ever since you decided to kick the bucket early and give up on us, we've been really fucking swell."

"Swell," he says to himself. "Sounds like a me word."

"Didn't know you had ownership on awkward words," she says back, sounding dumb, childish and everything she's not. "I'll be sure to look through your personal dictionary so I don't use any of them."

Silence falls between them and Stiles smiles, "That was really fucking terrible, you know."

Lydia laughs softly, "Yeah, I know. I'll leave the bad jokes to you."

He looks at her so lovingly that she almost gets nauseous. She takes a deep drag finally, blows it out into the ground, and stares at the cracks in the sidewalk. "We're coping," she says. "Barely. You really fucked things up, Stiles."

"My specialty, it seems," he says, looking at his hands.

Lydia looks at him, "Stiles, are you... are you tangible?"

His eyes look warm and she thinks, hey remember when I thought I could drunk off of that gaze and the thought seems like it was thought a million years ago, lifetimes away.

He doesn't wait for her to reach out to him. He plucks her cigarette, throws it on the ground, and wraps her in his arms. At first, she's relieved to be in his embrace, but soon, she's comparing it to his old hugs – it's not as warm as it used to be and his heart doesn't thud against hers, just stays still and motionless. Lydia almost chokes on her sadness. She has to push away, arms grabbing at his elbows, and breathe heavily, head leaning against his chest.

"I'm sorry," he says, softly. He nestles his face into her strawberry blonde hair and Lydia feels his shoulders quaking. She feels the tell-tale wetness on her scalp and he curses under his breath. "Sorry," he says, pulling his head away, body moving from hers. "I didn't mean to get your hair wet."

Her breath gets lost when she sees his tears. She thought she'd never see him cry again, and although she shouldn't be happy, she can't help but feel the emotion run through her entire being. She reaches out and links her fingers in his.

"Come on, Stiles," she says. "Lets go home."

Stiles blinks and Lydia wonders suddenly, will he disappear but Stiles just looks at her and nods, and the thought is lost. They get into her car and she starts driving. It seems strange again, the little thought that Stiles is in her car. Stiles in her car, wiping tears from his eyes and her almost saying don't wipe them away because Stiles here has unleashed the girl within Lydia that loves even the sad bits of Stiles.

And then, just to make her more crazy – to make her heart feel even more feelings, she feels Stiles' eyes on her and God, she wants to hold his hand or lean her head on his shoulder – just touch him again to know that he's still here. She almost clips a man walking across the street and sucks in so much air that she chokes on it. Stiles can clearly see her distress and stays quiet, not making his usual jokes, despite the irony that she almost killed someone while she has a dead person sitting right next to her. She laughs and Stiles doesn't question it, just keeps looking at her.

It makes her head spin, him being so close. Because on one hand, it's Stiles and despite the fact that he has soft hair and warm eyes, he wears plaid and –

Well, Lydia supposes, he used to wear plaid. He used to have soft hair and warm eyes. Even though the world she lives in is muddy, no resurrection spell or ghosts will ever remove the fact that at one point, Stiles was dead. Nothing, not even his warm, loving eyes, will remove the sight she faced that day – walking into his room and finding that lifeless cold version of him curled in a ball on his bed. She knew as soon as she saw him asleep, after all those months of seeing the bags underneath his eyes, that it was final.

Her eyes get so wet and blurry that she grips the steering wheel until her knuckles go white. She pulls into her driveway, turns off the car, and puts her head on the steering wheel. It beeps at first, but she does not flinch; Stiles does.

"It was the note that made it unbearable," she whispers.

Stiles winces again, and Lydia wants to hurt him, wants to scream, wants to lock him up and never let him go, and he looks at her, and she forgets how to think.

"There was no other way, Lydia. I was going to kill you guys. I was going to hurt you." He looks at her hands, "It wanted me to kill you over all of the others, and I couldn't let it happen. I couldn't..."

Lydia curls her fingernails into her skin, leaving half moon crescents scattered on her legs. Stiles looks at them. Lydia contemplates if he still bleeds, but knows the answer is no. Intellect makes supernatural events worse, she thinks. And then she gets angry and Lydia Martin is not rational when she is angry and she blurts out the secret she's had kept away in a box for the past month out of some desperate hope that he will feel the hurt she feels.

"I found a cure."

She looks at Stiles' mouth move up and down and then opens the door to her car and gets out. She perches on the front of the hood and takes deep breaths, closing her eyes. She hears him slam the door and rest right next to her. The hairs on his arm permanently stand on end.

"When?" he says hoarsely.

The sound of his voice makes Lydia wince.

"I was about to come and tell you. I had just figured out a way. God, Stiles. I was so happy."

She looks at him and the sadness that is festering in Stiles' eyes makes her want to double over in agony. She leans her head on his shoulder and he takes her hand in his, rubbing his fingers over her knuckles. She forgot how comfortable she would become with him in times of crisis – bodies contiguous as the world around them came crashing down.

Lydia breathes in and sighs, "I don't even know if it's worth telling you how. I didn't even... I didn't even tell the others." She feels his shoulders tense.

"It was true love's kiss," he says. "I know."

Lydia's heart stops beating for a moment. He knew. He knew and yet he took the sleeping pills and he wrote her the secret note she didn't even show to his father (I told you I'd go insane if you died, but I think it was always meant to be me crazy over you) and she cried for a month straight and he knew.

She gets off the hood of the car, stands right in front of him, eyes looking straight into his, "You knew."

Stiles just looks at her and it is quiet between them for much too long. He gets her a cigarette from the car and she smokes it furiously.

"Yeah," Stiles says, quietly.

"Cognitive dissonance," Lydia points at him excitedly, after a while. "Gotcha."

Stiles hops off the car, and in two quick strides, he reaches her. His lips are on hers before she can invite them and his hands seem to be everywhere at once, and yet, when Lydia opens her eyes, there is nothing.

Just Lydia and the still burning cigarette in her hand and lips ghosting over her own and cognitive dissonance, always.

She stamps the cigarette out.