Fandom: Teen Wolf
Story Title: "Be Changed or Be Undone"
Summary: Lydia can tell the difference between an empty bed and a full one half asleep. She did the math for it once, calculating the average male's body weight and height while adding the resistance that her bed upheld against gravity. The numbers had come out nice and even, which had made her smile.
Character/Relationship(s): Stiles Stilinski/Lydia Martin
Rating: T
Warnings: Language
Story Word Count: 2500
Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognizable.
Notes: Happy birthday, Libby! I love you, even if you're mean to me.
Be Changed or Be Undone
Lydia can tell the difference between an empty bed and a full one half asleep. She did the math for it once, calculating the average male's body weight and height while adding the resistance that her bed upheld against gravity. The numbers had come out nice and even, which had made her smile.
That, plus the extra warmth, made her stretch her toes. It was weird, because Lydia didn't remember inviting anyone over last night, but she smiled anyway. The clock on her bedside said it was seven, so no time for round two, but still enough time to wake them up to admire her.
She pulled the covers down from where it was covering his head, and out popped Stiles Stilinski. Lydia couldn't help but shriek and push him from her bed, hard.
"What the hell?" he asked from the ground, one sleepy eye open as he rubbed his forehead. He might have hit it on the bedside table on the way down. "What the hell was that for? If you're trying to experiment with different ways to wake me up, I totally vote for what happened yesterday-"
"Shut up," she told him, not wanting to deal with his voice. An alarm went off then, making her jump and meaning that she should get up. She padded along to the bathroom—which was connected to her door, not like her bathroom at home, the master bath—in bare feet and shut the door.
In the mirror she looked like herself, at least. Only she was wearing a sweatshirt that was clearly Stiles's—there was no way, in any universe, even if she was drugged and spelled up, that she would ever own something Batman—and nothing else. No underwear, no nothing. Not even her skin cream which she put on every day religiously to make her look her best, even when she went to bed.
There was no way that she would have gone to bed with someone else without putting it on, and without one of the lacy nightgowns that she wore whenever she knew someone was going to stay the night.
Lydia breathed, continuing to look at herself wide-eyed in the mirror, before straightening up. There had to be some of her own clothes and make-up here, and clothes always made her feel better, the armor and facepaint of the modern woman warrior.
The first door that she opened was the closet, and Lydia couldn't help but smile when she saw it. Everything was hung according to length and the colors—all on her pallet—were a nice mix. The shoes were to all to die for, all things that she would wear, and they comforted her.
If there was a section for Stiles's clothes, only taking up a quarter of one of the racks and a drawer, Lydia didn't see them.
On her wrist was a bracelet that she didn't notice before, artistically woven hemp with silver charms, that she hadn't realized before. It didn't match what she was wearing, but no matter how hard she tried to pull it off it wouldn't budge.
Well, whatever. This morning had been a string of disasters, and the bracelet wasn't that ugly. It might have added too much of a hippie touch to her outfit, but whatever. One little thing being out of control wouldn't bug her that much.
.
Downstairs smelled amazing.
Stiles had been out of the master bedroom by the time that Lydia had come out, make-up and clothes impeccable, so she had hoped that he'd be gone completely. No such luck, though.
Instead she could see his butt sticking out of the fridge, and he was whistling Here Comes the Sun. On the table there was a stack of blueberry waffles—not the Eggo ones but the real ones, fluffy and covered in butter—and turkey bacon. Lydia gave the plate a cool stare.
No one, absolutely no one knew that this was her favorite breakfast. Not even Allison. How Stiles could know this churned her stomach. Blueberry waffles were the food a smiling six-year-old ate, not a mature woman. Her mom only made them on special occasions and the first day of school, when no one else was there to see her dig into them. They had always been a little burned or a little raw, but at least her mom had tried.
These, though, these looked like perfection and her stomach rumbled just thinking about them.
"What," she asked, voice clipped, "the hell. Is this?"
Stiles made a surprised noise and jumped, hitting his head on one of the shelves of the fridge, and turned to look at her. His face was full of bacon, but he finished and swallowed, looking at Lydia as though she was the one that had lost her mind.
"I always make you blueberry waffles before you go see your thesis adviser, remember?" he asked her. "You hate her, think that she's the devil, and they make you feel better..." he trailed off lamely. "You look amazing, by the way. More dressed up than usual, but..."
Lydia straightened her jacket. She had dressed to intimidate, a little, and Stiles looked confused.
"Well I don't need it today," she said, walking to the fridge and grabbing a yogurt. There was plenty of blueberry, her favorite.
In fact, there were plenty of things that she had noticed strewn throughout the house that were either hers or exactly her taste. It was unsettling and she hated it. Hated this. She didn't remember any of it.
"Where the hell am I?" she asked instead.
"You're at 1653 Jordan Dr, Beacon Hills, California of the United States of America, Planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy. Does that answer your question?" Stiles was starting to look less confused and more worried.
"Is this one of your sick little fantasies or something? Did you somehow transport me here or what? Because I know I would never be here by choice." She thought of LA and Seattle and Boston and even New York, all of the places that she had dreamed of going, planning to escape this supernatural hell hole after she graduated high school. Lydia thought of Peter, thought of the Hale house in all of its original glory, of wolfsbane and punch, and she wanted to throw up.
"What the hell, Lydia, I would never do that to you," he told her. "You're the one who wanted to buy this house and settle down in Beacon Hills."
"With you?" she asked, incredulous. She didn't even particularly like Stiles, couldn't believe that she would have willingly bought a house for them to live in. She couldn't even imagine wearing one of his Batman sweatshirts or him knowing her weakness for blueberry waffles or even having this conversation.
She let out a short little laugh, one that wasn't real, what she sounded like before she was about to prove someone wrong. "There was no way that I would still be at Beacon Hills if I was working on my thesis, let alone in some stupid house with stupid Nolanverse posters hanging on the wall and there's no way that I would ever eat anything that you cooked for me. You put me here because you're sick and gross and you made me giving you the time of day for five seconds affect you like a stalker, so you used some magical mojo and brought me here. I bet you weren't thinking that I'd wake up, huh. Or that I'd want a choice?"
Her wrist burned as she kept going, wanting to hurt him. She knew exactly what to say that would wound him the most. Every word that she spoke sharpened the blade more and more until it was deep, impossible to pull out.
Stiles stared at her as if she was someone that he didn't know, before saying in a low, tight voice, "What the fuck, Lydia? What the fuck is your problem? You know that I would always give you a choice. In fact all of this," he said, waving towards the house that was big enough for ten people but only had two, "was your idea. I was willing to follow you anywhere, anywhere that you wanted to go, but you said staying in Beacon Hills was the best place. And you bought this huge house and asked me to live here, even though I help you pay off the mortgage, and what the fuck?"
He looked like he was going to say more as he took a deep breath, but he cut himself off as he looked at her wrist. "Where did you get that bracelet?"
Lydia just stared at him, dropping her spoon, before shrugging. "I don't know. I couldn't take it off this morning. It's tied too tight."
"I'm calling Deaton," he told her. "And then I'm calling Allison so she can come over so you don't think that I'm crazy."
.
Allison comes over first, and seeing her calms Lydia a little bit. "Are you okay?" Allison asks, coming over to where Lydia's sitting on the table, plate of waffles in front of her. They've grown cold.
"Not really," Lydia says, and to her own ears her voice sounds tinny. "I don't know what's going on. Especially with," she waved her hand in Stiles's direction, "him."
"Last I checked you two were planning on getting engaged soon. You were arguing over who would ask who, because you didn't want to 'let the patriarchy and society' win but you wanted him to work for it."
Lydia just raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like something I'd say to someone I was going to marry."
Allison shrugged. "That's the great thing about you and Stiles, though. You can always let your guard down with him. He even managed to figure out that you love waffles even though before you claimed that they were too high in fat." She smiled when she saw Lydia's look. "Hey, I'm your best friend. I'm not an idiot."
"Can you promise that this is real?" Lydia asks Allison. She trusts Allison like she trusted no one before her. Allison has only lied to her once, about werewolves, and only when it counted. It was a good idea to bring Allison here, Stiles has to admit.
"Deaton's on his way over," Stiles said, putting his phone in his pocket. "Has Allison convinced you that this is real yet?"
"I don't know,"Lydia said. "I really don't."
She got up and walked away from the two of them, into the first room that she found. It was an office, and three diplomas with her names on them were on the wall. On the desk there was a picture of Stiles and Lydia, kissing. There's confetti in their hair and Lydia looks...well. She looks happy.
There were stacks of paper, everywhere, which tell Lydia that she'd been working last night. She never would have left things this messy, otherwise. To help calm herself she began arranging the stacks, and a slip of paper fell onto the floor.
When she bent to pick it up she saw the messy scrawl, something that she can immediately link to Stiles. When you're about to be a bad ass and punch your thesis in the face and stop working for your doctorate, it reads, just remember that I love you. You're going to save the world.
It's simple and sweet and it makes her heart clench, oddly.
Even though she's here, in the exact place she never imagined herself to be, she can't believe that it's true. This all just seems so unreal, so...fleeting. Like at any moment this could all be taken away from her. Especially Stiles.
There's a knock on the door, and Stiles was there in the doorway. "Deaton's here." She can't read the expression on his face as he looked at her, focusing in on the note that he wrote before flashing his eyes to her face. "I meant it, you know," he said. "What I said on that paper. I meant it."
Lydia chose not to say anything. She couldn't imagine anyone, but especially not a boy having that much faith in her. Jackson hadn't, and neither had Aiden or any of the other boys that had followed them. But this was Stiles, and Stiles had always thought of her as more. She knew that.
Lydia squared her shoulders and walked past him.
.
Deaton was in the kitchen, speaking quietly to Allison. "Ah, Lydia. Can I see the bracelet that you're wearing?"
Silently Lydia showed him and he touched it, no expression on his face. "The charm is woven tight in this. Where did you get it?" Deaton asked.
"I don't remember. I don't even remember how I got here," she reminded them. "I only remember college, and vaguely at that."
"Right, well. First I'm going to try to cut it off, and we'll see what kind of reaction we get from that. Stiles, scissors, please."
If this was magic, magic strong enough to convince both Stiles and Allison that she and Stiles were living together, she didn't see how scissors were going to help.
"All right, here we go. One... Two... Three..."
.
Lydia woke up in a tiny dorm room bed. Her wrist was raw, and on the floor she saw the bracelet she'd been wearing during that...dream, or whatever it had been. She'd have to find out later, but first things first.
She might have objected to the "future" (if that's what it was) while she was in it, but now that she was back in her dorm room with her weird roommate's Nightmare Before Christmas posters on the wall, she found herself aching for it.
There was no such thing as fate, Lydia knew that. She believed in straightforward answers, in equations that meant that a plus b equaled c. She had always made her own fate. And she could try this one. If it didn't work out, it didn't work out and she would be done. The charm she bought would have been false. Period.
She made a call.
"Stiles," she said after he picked up. "You are going to ask me out on a date. I know you spent the last two years of high school convincing yourself and everyone else that you were over me, but you're wrong and we both know it. So you are going to ask me out on a date and I am going to say yes."
Then she hung up and waited.
Two seconds passed and then Stiles called back. "So," he said, trying and failing to sound suave. Lydia couldn't help but smile faintly, "do you want to go out some time?"