He wasn't sure why he'd come here, exactly. He hadn't been here, not since the funeral and that was a day he didn't want languishing in his memory because with it came rushing back all the nightmares he'd lived and breathed these past few months. Added to that was the fact that she hadn't exactly been his best friend, not while she was alive, and definitely not when she was dead. Lydia was the one who communicated with dead people, not him. She hadn't yet, but Stiles always assumed that was part of the banshee arsenal.

But some force had pulled Roscoe here, and he wasn't one to abandon his precious, and standing here in front of this headstone which by the way, did a terrible job of representing Allison, made his lungs fill so dangerously with words that it threatened to spill out if he so much as breathed, and at this point he wasn't sure that would be a such a bad thing because brave though he was, he could only suppress so much before he exploded, and Stiles had caused enough harm for a thousand Disney movie villains without adding ticking-time-bomb-that-may-destroy-several-relationships-in-close-proximity-with-hurtful-words to the list.

"Uh, hey Allison." He mutters under his breath, a little concerned about being overheard, because mentally unstable and fucked-up though they may be, Stiles was sure none of his friends had resorted to talking to inanimate objects and he wasn't ready to be declared the most insane just yet.

The headstone just stares back at him mundanely. To be fair, Stiles doesn't expect it to reply, but a little encouragement would have been nice. He just wanted a sign. That maybe he wasn't fully crazy and she was listening, somewhere. Stiles didn't have a fully developed concept of heaven or the afterlife in his head, mostly because he was so preoccupied with making sure that people around them wouldn't die, but when it came to Allison, and his mom, and all the people they had lost in this ceaseless battle, he liked to believe that death wasn't the end, and that they were all watching over Scott and him, silently rooting for the good guys, helping out in whichever way they could, even if their assistance was limited to being forced to listen to Stiles drone on about the pathetic mess that was his love life.

"I uh…don't quite know why I'm here. You're probably wondering how desperate I must be for a soundboard that I'm actually talking to, well, a stone." He scratches his head sheepishly, looking around cautiously to make sure there was no one to witness his foolery.

"So this is weird. Given that I may or may not proceed to rant about your best friend. Ex-best friend. I'm sorry if I'm being insensitive, I don't really know how a friendship works when one party is dead?" he shakes his head and tries to correct himself, or apologize, but this headstone doesn't seem least affected by his insensitivity, so he doesn't bother with niceties.

He clears away some dead leaves and sits down, his eyes falling on a familiar bouquet of white lilies placed carefully on the ground directly in front of the stone. Sighing deeply, he shakes his head with a tired smile because even here and now, when he's doing something so spontaneous and out-of-character, its almost as if she knows he's going to be here, like she's telling him off the record that it was okay to visit a friend's grave, and maybe even a little alright to talk to Allison like she was still alive. Whatever it was, she seemed to be doing a damn good job of this tether thing, because so far he'd been about as useful to her as a skateboard in a snowstorm.

"So, Lydia was here, huh. Did she say anything about me? Something along the lines of Stiles Stilinski is a douchebag and the only thing stopping me from killing him is the fact that I am completely in love with him?" he chuckles quietly, adding hastily, "You know what, don't answer that."

He fiddles with a stray red leaf on the ground and even though it is dying, or already dead whatever, he can't stop it from triggering memories of the time when he told Scott that fall was his favourite season because the colours made it seem like Lydia was all around them. It was almost as if she'd chosen to share her beauty with the world for a few months, and Stiles of course, never tired of seeing her, feeling her, all around him. which is probably more than he can say right now. That didn't mean he didn't want her around him. he did. He wanted her more than just around him, if Cupid or any other gods listening would will it.

Just putting that out there, he thinks, I would be totally fine with maybe say, Lydia's lips around mine. But his thoughts are abruptly killed off by the appearance of a certain coyote in his mind, and for a brief moment, he is guilt-ridden and apologetic, because she was his…well, she was something to him, and that probably meant he was not allowed to think these roving thoughts.

He realizes then that his thoughts are moving at the speed of light again, and poor Allison or this stone that is impersonating her at present, has been left in the lurch. So he clears his throat awkwardly.

"Right, I should probably start with Malia, seeing as you…" he feels a lump rise in his throat, but he is strong and will not think of masked black figures on cold wet nights plunging swords into the fearless girl with the bow. He will not. He will not.

"…seeing as you left before she, well, before she joined us." He finishes lamely.

He still can't wrap his mind around the word died, can't say it out loud because it just doesn't seem real. She can't really be dead, not really. So he substitutes it with words like left and gone because they feel easier to say, and the worst part is that no one calls him out on it.

"I like her, you know. She and I have something. We're still figuring it out…its early days, but there's something there. And I think I owe it to myself to try because…" he struggles, trying to word his next sentence in a way that wouldn't be offensive to Lydia, but then he remembers that he's here to rant, and rant he will, so he proceeds to rant as promised, we don't want to disappoint Allison now do we, with reckless abandon.

"Because your best friend is an idiot. I'm sorry I have to call her that, but let me tell you, what she's doing merits way more than a tame idiot. I'm actually cutting her some slack because you know, I'm sympathetic to her very obvious deficiency in the EQ department."

Stiles is a little thrilled that Allison, or the stone that's filling in for her, whatever, doesn't call him out on his usage of idiot for the strawberry blonde who he knows, more than anyone, is anything but an idiot in terms of intellect, but he also knows, again, more than anyone, that she could definitely do with some improvement in the emotional intellect area.

"She's been so distant and cold, well, more than usual, these past few months. And I realize that may be because she's still uh, grieving or whatever, but I just can't shake the feeling that this is…something else."

He casts his mind back to Mexico, and that strange expression that flits across her eyes when he makes eye contact with her in the rearview mirror. And her evident discomfort and almost cattiness, while interacting with Malia, and him, in hindsight.

The Lydia he knows is sarcastic and even a little mean at times, but this is different somehow, and its killing him because he can't figure out why. And he's determined not to ask, not to lose this battle of wills because god knows he's lost enough of those to Lydia freakin' Martin and her sharp tongue.

There is however, a concealed undercurrent of thought, where he doesn't want to go, because it always manages to replete his reserves of hope and longing, something that he'd decided he wasn't going to feel, not about Lydia, not anymore. this decision, of course, was only 9 years too late, but he was sticking by it anyway.

His affection and hope and longing do win out in the end, though, because when it came to Lydia, his resolve was a dilapidated, sorry excuse of a building, already in shambles.

"Do you think she's…." he starts hesitantly, almost as if he's afraid of being laughed at, even though Allison wouldn't laugh. Not just because of the small obstacle that being dead posed, he just knew that she wouldn't.

"Could she maybe, you know…be jealous?"

"She can't be though, can she. She doesn't see me like that, we've already established that a countless number of times in the past nine years…"

But the moment he says the words see me like that, he's back in a dusty locker room, and the light is framing her beautiful face and her fiery hair that's the colour of a million tangled sunrises, and she's looking at him like he was the centre of the universe, and forget Lydia Martin, he doesn't think he's ever seen anyone look at anyone else like that, and for a minute he forgets that the world needs saving and all he sees, all that matters, is the way she is looking at him right now, like he is the epiphany she's waited years to have, like he's the sun and moon and all the stars, and so he goes along with it. Because nine years is a hell of a long time to wait for a girl to look at you like this, to ruin the moment by asking stupid questions, which he does anyway, because he's Stiles, but that isn't a problem right now because his mind is completely blank anyway, he remembers how to breathe but nothing else.

He is jolted back to reality, still reeling from the realness of the memory, clear as ever, like it was just yesterday that she'd said, "When I kissed you, you held your breath." And he'd blinked stupidly and the only words that'd co-operated enough to fall out of his mouth at the time were "I did?".

"She kissed me." He blurts out, to no one in particular. He pauses in anticipation, wondering if this was old information to Allison or her jaw had dropped somewhere in heaven, if she was even bothering to listen to this stupid out-pouring of feelings.

"Did she ever tell you that?"

"Right," he said awkwardly after a minute of pointed silence, "didn't really expect an answer to that."

"She did, you know." he said, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply, trying desperately to taste her lips on his. "She kissed me that day, the day of the sacrifice. It was to stop my panic attack, is what she said after, but I swear I thought I saw something. Guess I was wrong, though." He admits, smiling ruefully.

"Sometimes," he begins earnestly, "I wish we could just talk, you know? I wish I could just ask her if she ever loved me, or even thought she could like me in an un-platonic way."

"But with all this saving the world hijinks we get up to, it seems so trivial and foolish and just…selfish, you know. Wanting someone to love you back, it just seems so low on our priorities list right now, but I'm guessing its not that low because I blew Lydia and her very fun interrogatory session with Peter off to come here and make a fool out of myself."

He knew Ally must be wondering why he'd blow Lydia off, I mean make up your mind boy but he didn't know how to explain to her that he just couldn't be around Lydia right now. It was so hard, to even look at her, because all he saw in her those heart-stopping green eyes was a kind of dignified sadness, like she was barely keeping herself together but she didn't need anyone's help with it. And he thinks maybe if Scott were to try…but he wouldn't dare to try himself, because he wouldn't be surprised if her response was more vicious than Malia's to math.

"I'm sorry I'm saddling you with stories of my miserable love life. You weren't really a loyal subscriber to Stiles' Lame Love Story Weekly when you were alive either." He laughs bitterly, wondering when he became so lonely that he'd turned to Allison Argent of all people for a ear. Its not that she wasn't his friend too, or that he didn't miss her with a deep ache in his chest every time he saw that look on Scott's face. He just knew that Allison would always be on Lydia's side, even if his argument was completely reasonable.

And it was, too. He'd waited. No one could argue to the contrary. He'd waited almost all his life, and when she'd kissed him, he'd had the slightest glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, she was finally starting to see something in him she'd never bothered to see before. But then she'd turned around and made out with Aiden. On multiple occasions, too. Stiles was only human. So he'd done what anyone else would've done a long time ago. He gave up.

His thoughts are interrupted by a loud sound of twigs breaking under someone's feet, and Stiles is up in an instant, allowing his conditioned response to the supernatural take over as he wearily turns around to face the newest danger. But instead, all he hears is a shrill "Stiles? Stiles!" and he recognizes the voice in an instant because how could he not, it's the same one that burned the words when I kissed you, you held your breath and Stiles, you're the one who always figures it out into the back of his brain and maybe even his soul, who knows.

She appears approximately 15 seconds after he's responded with an "I'm here!", treading carefully around an unusually large headstone with her hands out on either sides, gingerly trying to traverse the distance between them in her killer heels.

"There you are!" she almost yells when she's finally standing in front of him.

Stiles tries to open his mouth but she's already saying something else.

"I've been looking for you all over, you idiot. We have a prob-OH" her eyes widen as she looks over his shoulder and her mind finally registers where exactly in the cemetery they are.

She looks back at him, but Stiles is too busy being mortified to look remotely in her direction, because she doesn't realize, but he feels strangely ashamed being here, as if he's stolen a secret of hers, stolen Allison's memory from her, never mind the irrationality of it all.

Her features soften and she steps uncomfortably close to him, and Stiles is terrified at this violation of personal space, mostly because he really, really likes it and can't breathe properly and the last thing he wants is to ruin this very intense moment by having another panic attack although the last one he had with Lydia around didn't turn out so bad but he just generally dislikes giving girls- especially strawberry-blonde girls the feeling that they were making out with an asthma patient every time they decided kissing him wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.

And then she's standing on her toes with one hand on his chest and whispering into his ear so softly that its hard to discern the sound of the wind from her voice, "It'll be alright, Stiles." And the way she says his name makes his heart hurt and it doesn't help matters that her hand is literally inches away from it. But she's not done giving Stiles heart palpitations though, not even close. Its subtle and he barely feels it because its so brief, but he shivers when her lips graze his cheek and that's how he knows its real. Because why not give the boy a coronary while she's at it, right. Lydia Martin, giving boys heart attacks since 1996.

And just like that, she's gone. She disappears into the darkness, presumably to give him some time alone and some vague part of Stiles' brain is trying to get his muscles to co-ordinate enough to follow after her but he's still a little dazed from the thought that Lydia kissed him again and he knows its not sensational news after she's already kissed him kissed him once, but she did it again and oh my god.

He's driving back home when his phone lights up, vibrating noiselessly. His heart drops when he sees her name on the screen, and he exhales loudly, willing himself to be calm before he answers.

"Hey."

"Hi."

"…."

"Uh, we're at the clinic, and Deaton has some new information about the assassins."

"…"

"Stiles?"

"Yeah. I'll uh, be there in 10."

"Okay, great. See you then."

And then,

"Stiles?"

"Yeah?"

"You alright?"

"I am, yeah. I'm great."

"I'm glad."

And it was that simple between them. Because they were Stiles and Lydia. Because she was his tether and he was hers. Because she was the shore and he was the confused, lost waves that always found its way back to her. Be it drunken kisses at parties or kinky sex with coyotes, he would always come back to the girl with hair the colour of autumn and bonfires and sunrises and everything that symbolized new beginnings, strange as that was because she was the only obstacle to new beginnings, drawing him back to her time and again even when he so stubbornly refused, even when there was finally someone to love him as he'd always wanted her to.

So here he was, again. Everything had been the same. Until one day it wasn't anymore because the girl of his dreams had, it seems, fallen in love with him.