When the nogitsune wearing Stiles' flesh comes for her, it's with a soft voice and even softer footfalls.
Lydia isn't supposed to be here. In fact, Allison had made her promise not to seek him out, with a knowing glint in her eye, an almost-smile. Her best friend knows her a lot better than she thinks she does, and the growing whatever-it-was with Stiles doesn't go unnoticed. Anyway, Allison had clasped her hand mere hours before and had outlined an – excruciatingly detailed – plan of exactly where she would shove her arrows if Lydia disobeyed her.
She hadn't listened, obviously. She knows, possessed or not, Stiles will always come when she calls. Lydia is his tether. Lydia pulled him back once, and she can do it again.
He's exactly how Scott and the others warned he'd be, but she is still unprepared for the utter absence in his voice. Sure, there's a kind of bored amusement there – a sadist with his preschool dissection kit – but it's empty of everything that Stiles ever was. The reverence he used to look at her with is gone; in its place, only sick fascination. Only finger-drumming, lip-licking obsession.
He taunts her, tells her the boy who loves her so is dying, whispers things that he knows she can hear. The pipes running along the walls speak, and his awful prophecies (he's gone he's gone) weave through the mess of noise to her ears, where they sit and dig their claws into her flesh. She runs because it's all she knows how to do.
Not-Stiles calls for her as she stumbles down the dank hallway of the Echo House. He walks slowly, with purpose, like he knows there's no rush – because he'll get her, eventually. The thought rings true in her head, and terror lances down her spine like ice.
Lydia can mark out the differences between the boy and trickster, draw clear distinction with barely a glance. This not-Stiles is made of sharpest shadow, skulking where he should bound, his gait far too smooth and sinuous for the body in which he sits. He drags his fingertips across the walls like they're meant to be knives – and in the darkest corner of her mind, Lydia can hear the screech of metal against stone. Bone.
"Banshee-girl," not-Stiles greets, his voice coaxing and slick, "have you come to paint me red?"
She knows what he means. Red lipstick. Gaze darting to her mouth, over-obvious and meant to intimidate. Sexual innuendo. Amateur.
"Give Stiles back." She demands, her tone clipped.
Yes, she put makeup on for this – let it not be said that Lydia Martin doesn't dress to kill.
The nogitsune quirks a grin, and in more ways than one it is his grin – but there's such a taint to it, an awful darkness. It's carved to his lips not in any innocent mirth, but in anticipation of suffering. It's funny how he smiles without teeth, but there's more bite to it than there ever was. He looks at her with hungry eyes. "I am Stiles, banshee-girl. Better. New and improved."
"I doubt that."
Not-Stiles rasps out a wheezy giggle. He brings up his left hand – it has to be her imagination when she notes the disturbing similarities between his fingers and a spider's legs, how thin they've become, it has to be some trick – and taps the digits against his temple. The movement is seamless, birthed from the kind of grace the real Stiles could never muster. "Ooh," he croons, "a hitch up here. Don't say things like that or he'll explode." Another giggle. "And don't doubt that I'm better, Lydia. Much, much better."
She presses a cold smile to her mouth. "I'm not here to swap innuendo," she snaps, "I want Stiles back. My Stiles."
The nogitsune tilts his head slowly, sickeningly. "Your Stiles."
She sees where this is going, but Lydia is well-versed in this specific brand of manipulation. There's been enough slander scribbled on desks and bathroom walls at school about her – LM is a whore, Lydia would fuck anything holding a lacrosse stick, Lydia Martin sucks Coach's cock to keep her grades up – for her to practise the art of pretending she doesn't give a shit. She lifts her chin, sticks to her guns. "Yes. My Stiles. I give you something, you give me him."
A slow smirk unfurls across his lips. "What could you have that I don't, already? What could you possibly have to bargain?"
"The last kitsune tail."
He scoffs. "Liar."
She lifts her shoulders in a shrug, schooling a comically-sheepish expression onto her features. "Eh. Got you here, though, didn't it?"
Not-Stiles grins, full-blown this time, teeth and all. It sends darkness squirming to her bones – his smile is merciless, his eyes flat and evil. "What's the point?" he asks, and she realises that he never intended to trade with her. It was all a game to him, a hideous joke.
The punchline: a scream.
Lydia wedges her tongue between her teeth, flashing him a cat-like curling at the corners of her lips. "Research," she says lightly, "keep your enemies close, and all that."
"Anything to note?"
"Other than the, quite frankly, novice intimidation tactics? The cryptic phrases? The predictability? Oh, nothing."
He takes a step forward. She reacts with a jerky move back, but then cold wall is at her spine and not-Stiles is inches away.
He looms over her, head angled down to stare right into her eyes. She gazes boldly back; no trickster can make the banshee squeal.
"He begs me not to touch you," not-Stiles murmurs, "all the time, like you wouldn't believe. Please please please, y'know?"
"Give him back." Lydia hisses, and her voice is concrete.
"But," he ignores her, "I kinda wanna. Just to hear him shake." He brushes the back of his hand across her cheek, ghosting it over her lips. "Bet I could make you shake, huh, Lydia?"
"Fuck. You." She spits out the words with as much vehemence as she can muster, curls them up tight at the back of her throat and sharpens them on her teeth. They taste bitter, and even though she knows that Stiles – wherever he is – knows she's speaking to the trickster, she waits for that all-too familiar hurt to tug at his lips. She waits for him to stutter, to jut out his chin and stare at the ground.
As it is, the nogitsune jerks his head forward, then – and suddenly his nose is pressed to her cheek, his spider-fingers gripping her thigh. When he sighs "I want my chaos," against her skin, she smells blood on his breath.
Fear tremors through her, ice-cold, if not for herself then for the boy who cowers behind those empty eyes. She can see pock-marks on his neck, like he's been picking at his skin. The flesh there is grey, sickly-looking, his hands freezing on her leg.
She'll give anything to bring the warmth back.
"You'll get it," she promises them.
Not-Stiles sweeps his thumb up the smooth flesh of her inner thigh, pressing himself closer. Lydia's heart stutters – traitor, she thinks acidly, even as she reminds herself that fear or panic can sometimes trigger mixed reactions in the body, even as she makes note of the fact that it's Stiles' body that feels so warm against her skin, not the trickster's.
"Are you a whirlwind, banshee-girl?" He asks. His lips press to that sweetspot under her ear; her knees quake.
"A hurricane –" she counters with a whispered almost-snarl "– and I swear to God I'll strip you to the bone."
"Pretty words. Pretty..." his tongue laps against his teeth as he draws the word out, "lips. Do they scream truth?"
Lydia stretches her mouth wide to show him, but the nogitsune is quick – quicker than werewolves, even – and he brings silence with lips on hers.
It's nothing like the first. Not-Stiles kisses to murder the noise in her throat, while she'd wanted to stir his lungs to birth breath. He kisses in a way that speaks of hate; bruisingly, bitingly, cruelly. He licks into her mouth like every swipe of his tongue is a claim; as if he can own her. His teeth sink into the flesh of her bottom lip, just hard enough to make her gasp, and for an awful second – minute – she kisses back, her hands fisting in his shirt. She tastes mint, and lipstick, and Stiles – so much so that reality comes crashing down on her with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs. Lydia tries to pull away but the nogitsune holds on for moments more, buries his fingers in her hair and the gathered material of her skirt, rocks his hips into hers – a whine, deep in her throat –
He wrenches his head to the side suddenly, but doesn't move away. A smile steals over his lips. "Like that, did we?" He intones, and she can't tell who the taunt is for.
"Let go of me." She commands, but her voice is breathy and weak.
Not-Stiles chuckles and snaps his hips forward. Lydia sucks in a breath and bites back the hitching moan that bubbles in her throat.
Reaction to the fear, she thinks. Mixed messages. Stiles. Stiles.
"Do you really want me to, banshee-girl?" he murmurs softly. "Maybe you like it, I really do. You know what you do to us, Lydia?"
She feels her head thud back against the wall. His fingers skitter up her waist, her breasts, her neck, to join the others where they are fisted in her curls, then down again. The touches are gentle, almost tender; she knows he's imitating exactly what she imagines in the darkest hours of the night, when no-one's around to see her blush. She knows he's borrowing some of the real Stiles and dangling it like bait, just out of reach.
"You're a problem," he whispers, and it sounds almost confessional. "A distraction."
The voices get louder. She hears distant cries of decades ago, whispers, tremors. She thinks of screaming to drown them out, to find clarity, but his hand slips under her shirt and cups her breast. He pinches her nipple, firmly enough to send pain as well as pleasure quivering down her spine, but she clenches he jaw and purses her lips.
"Don't." She tells him, staring past the empty of his eyes.
He makes a tutting noise. "I've been in your head, Lydia. I know what you think about," his hips rock into hers slowly, slightly, and arousal strums low in her abdomen. "You want me to fuck you –"
"Stop it."
"You do." He insists, and darts his head down to lick a broad stripe from her collarbone to her neck, and she can't help the choked-off mewl that sighs from her lips. He yanks the left cup of her bra aside, and sharp panic floods through her even more than it already has – this is too much, this is too far – she cries out, wriggling in his grasp.
Not-Stiles leans forward, covers her body with his. "He's so pissed," he tells her delightedly, "ironic, right? His wildest dreams – Lydia Martin, against a wall, moaning – and it's not even his body anymore."
Lydia cranes away from him, snarling. "It will always be his body." She grits out, struggling against his iron grip.
The nogitsune giggles. "No, banshee-girl, it's mine. Stiles is gone, don't you see? Stiles is empty, I carved out his soul and sat in its shell –"
"I can tell when you're lying –"
"You can tell when Stiles is lying." He yanks her head back to him and nips at her jaw, his knee pushing apart her thighs and jamming between them.
Lydia yelps, feels tears burning at her eyes. She squeezes them shut.
Not-Stiles presses a kiss to her mouth; a token of dominance. "I'll make you scream, banshee-girl."
His hand is at her throat when she whispers, "I'll scream for your death, nogitsune. I'll scream for silence. For my Stiles."
The fingers round her neck tighten briefly, then come loose. A low chuckle against her cheek. "Killing you is... tempting. Fucking you is better. But," he says sharply, "letting you go is gonna be so much fun."
Lydia's eyes fly open. The nogitsune steps back, his hands falling to his sides. "Why?" she demands. "Why?"
He gives a little smirk. "There it is."
He turns to melt back into the shadows, and she watches the faded, bloodstained material of his shirt until her vision blurs with tears and it shifts into darkness.
A sob wracks her body; she slides to the ground, cold seeping through her clothes. Her lips burn. "God, Stiles," she whispers brokenly, "I'm sorry."
Of course, there's nothing to answer her except the ache between her thighs and the emptiness in her chest.