A/N: AU Stydia inspired by the prompt 'Stiles saving Lydia'.
Stiles is walking back from his study group on a random Wednesday night in October when he sees her across the quad, a girl stomping along the path a hundred yards ahead, pale glowing skin clothed in a silvery strapless dress and high heels, no coat, even though it's dark out and so cold he can see his own breath.
It's late, almost midnight, and there's a girl up ahead, walking alone at night and Stiles just knows that something terrible is about to happen.
He thinks of closing the distance between them, of introducing himself, offering to walk her home, but to her he's only another stranger, just another guy with an agenda who's spotted her like prey. So he keeps his pace even, watching as she wanders across the grass, head scanning the empty quad, like she's looking for something.
A man melts out of the shadows from the opposite side of the grass, a man wearing a long black coat and something is glinting at his side -
"Hey!" Stiles shouts, and starts to run. "Run!"
The girl spins around and stares at him and for one second Stiles stops because holy shit this girl is gorgeous - and then he sees the other man getting closer and he screams, "Run! Run!"
She's fast but not fast enough.
The man in the long black coat slams into her. She crumples to the ground and Stiles is screaming, because there's no one else here and he's standing frozen in the grass six feet away from where the man is crouched over the girl. Stiles can't see what he's doing, the girl is so small and the man is so fast.
And then the man leaps up to his feet and their eyes lock and Stiles. Can't. Breathe.
The girl on the ground is still and quiet, and what the hell, did Stiles just witness a murder? How is this his life? All he wanted was to go home, eat the pizza he knows Scott saved for him, because Scott's the best like that, take a hot shower and get five hours of sleep before his Crime and Western Civilization lecture in the morning.
Is Stiles about to be murdered?
The man brings his finger up to pursed lips. Shh. Stiles feels his head bob like it's not attached to his body, hands dangling uselessly at his sides.
The man smirks. "Good boy," he says sardonically, his coat flapping in the wind as he spins around dramatically and starts running in the opposite direction.
Stiles drops to his knees in front of the girl, who's splayed out on the grass like a broken doll, blood spreading across the bodice of her dress. She has red-gold hair pinned back from a very pale face, sweat beading at her forehead. He gets his phone out of his pocket and dials 9-1-1 with shaking fingers, sets it to speaker and places it on the sidewalk.
He tears his sweatshirt off, unbuttons his plaid shirt, gathers it in his hands and presses it against her stomach, wincing, watching her face carefully for signs of life while quietly hyperventilating over her body, one ear pressed against her chest to try and figure out if she's still breathing.
"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?"
The girl gasps to life, revealing huge green eyes, all white around the iris, unable to focus, mouth open in surprise, like she can't believe she's still alive.
"I need an ambulance," Stiles shouts. "A girl's been stabbed, northwest corner of the quad, one block east of the Cobblestone Avenue and Market Street intersection. Suspect is a white male wearing a black coat, last seen headed west on Market."
The girl makes a horrible choking noise and arches up into his hands, her fingers twisting in the damp grass at her sides.
"Sir," the nameless voice responds. "Sir, do not engage" -
"Just send an ambulance!" Stiles snaps, and takes one hand off of his blood-soaked shirt to pick up the girl's hands, flexing uselessly in his grip, and weaves their fingers together over her stomach, holding the shirt against her wound with careful pressure.
God, Stiles really hates blood.
"Hey," he says, trying to make his voice sound low and comforting and not like he's five seconds away from a full-blown panic attack. "Hey, what's your name?"
She inhales, staring warily at him, her breathing fast and shallow. "Ly-Lydia," she rasps.
"Hi Lydia." His hands are getting wet; she's bleeding through his shirt. "I'm Stiles and yes, before you ask, it's a nickname and no, I'm not going to tell you my real name because trust me, you don't want that foisted upon you."
Lydia's eyes roll up in her head for a second. "Where - he," she pants, sounding terrified.
"He's gone," Stiles says quickly. "It's okay, you're going to be okay."
She shudders and her eyes do that thing again. Stiles squeezes her fingers, hard. Shock, he thinks, she's going into shock. "Lydia," he says loudly, "Lydia, I need you to stay awake for me."
Her eyes flutter open. "Cold," she whispers.
Stiles fumbles for his discarded hoodie and spreads it over her chest and bare arms. "There you go, better?"
She's still breathing too fast but she's awake and her eyes are starting to focus on him. "What's ha...what's happening?"
"You're hurt," Stiles says softly. "But an ambulance is on its way and it's going to be here really soon, okay?"
She blinks and a tear rolls down her cheek. A brief wave of micro-expressions flash across her face, something like horror-shame-fear-pain. "St-stay?"
"Yeah," he promises, and squeezes her hand. "I'm right here."
She gasps softly and Stiles feels her fingers tighten around his. She blinks at him and another tear slides out of the corner of her eye. "Usually," she rasps, "I make them buy me dinner before moving on to the blood-play portion of the date."
Stiles looks down at her in shock but then he sees the hopeful upturned corners of her mouth and he chokes on a wave of hysterical laughter that comes out sounding more like a sob. "I would absolutely buy you dinner first, just so you know."
"And they say chivalry is dead," she murmurs, and her eyelashes flutter shut.
"Hey, hey, Lydia, don't go to sleep." Her eyes don't open so Stiles makes a fist with his right hand and slides it underneath his hoodie, rubs circle over the ice-cold skin of her chest, under her collarbone. She whimpers but her eyes open and Stiles drops his head in relief.
"Sorry," she says, her voice thick. "Keep...keep talking."
"Okay," he says gently. "I can do that. I can absolutely do that."
Stiles kneels over her, hands soaked in the blood of this girl he's never met before, and he talks. He tells her about his dad, about Scott. He talks about the classes he's taking and the whole time she watches his face, her hands too cold in his, her awful shallow breathing growing more and more unsteady.
"My - my mom," she whispers, and makes this little sound, this awful keening sound that makes Stiles want to throw up.
"Hey Lydia, no, you're going to be fine," he argues, because Stiles cannot deal with this, he knows why she's asking and he's not going to watch someone die, way too young, like this.
But she just looks up at him with these big pleading eyes and Stiles breaks, promises he'll make sure someone calls her mom. And then there's the scream of sirens and people are yelling and someone pulls him off of her, sir, sir, give us some room to work, and Stiles staggers back and throws up all over the grass as the paramedics hoist Lydia onto a stretcher.
The city police show up as they're loading Lydia into the back of the ambulance, his sweatshirt still spread over the top half of her body. Stiles begs one of the paramedics to call Lydia's mother and is reassured the hospital will notify her parents, and is redirected to a waiting police officer.
Stiles gives a witness statement and then waits an agonizing thirty minutes for campus police to show up, and watches both police departments attempt to coordinate a campus-wide manhunt, which is apparently some kind of jurisdictional nightmare for reasons Stiles doesn't totally understand, so he sits on the curb with his head in his hands before he gets called back to give his statement to another detective.
It's almost two a.m. by the time they let him go. Stiles is freezing and trembling all over, shaking from the adrenaline. One of the campus cops offers to drive him home but Stiles waves him off, assures him that he only lives a few blocks away. He walks home is a daze, phantom sirens still ringing in his ears.
Lydia's blood is all over his hands, smeared and drying across his palms.
He lets himself into the apartment he shares with Scott, stumbles through the dark kitchen and tosses his backpack in the vague direction of a chair. In the fridge there's a plate with three slices of pizza covered in plastic wrap. Stiles takes it into his room, peels off his jeans and his blood-streaked shirt. He takes a shower, watching as Lydia's blood swirls down the drain and then it's gone, like it never happened.
He hopes they find her mom.
Back in his room he pulls a pair of sweatpants on over his boxers, eats a slice of cold pizza standing up and passes out facedown on his bed. He falls under a black wave of sleep, too exhausted to dream, a blessing, until his alarm rudely wakes him up five hours later.
Stiles pulls on a clean pair of jeans and finds a shirt that's not too wrinkled. He looks around for his red hoody before remembering that he gave it to Lydia last night and has to grip the edge of his desk to fight the sudden recall.
Shudders once at the memory of her bleeding out under his hands, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the strange color of her hair, like a sunset. How she'd asked him to stay, like it was hurting her pride, like she was afraid he would say no.
And shudders again at that wave of coldness he'd felt when the man had locked eyes on him. That split-flash moment of acceptance that this was it, this was how his story was going to end, with a beautiful strange girl he'd only meet in death; before the man ran and all the fear came flooding back in.
In the living room Scott's watching tv on the couch with a bowl of cereal in his lap. "Hey man, I thought you'd still be sleeping. Didn't you get home crazy late last night?"
Stiles looks blearily around the room, trying to remember where he threw his backpack. "I have lecture."
"Dude, didn't you hear? Classes got canceled today, campus is totally shut down."
"What?" Stiles leans against the arm of the couch and squints at the tv. Scott's watching the news, they're showing stock aerial footage of campus next to a reporter with a very serious look on her face. Stiles skims the banner running at the bottom of the screen: city-wide manhunt, stabbing, unknown suspect remains at large.
"Stiles! Stiles, hey, are you okay?" Scott's face is right in front of his and Stiles doesn't understand why until he realizes that he's on the floor, nauseous and dizzy, with Scott bending over him.
"Yeah - I..." Stiles inhales once, hard, and uses Scott's outstretched hand to pull himself up. "I just need some caffeine, I think I'm gonna go to the coffee shop and get some work done."
"Stiles." Scott's got his skeptical face on, which is not quite as bad as his worried face. "Seriously, are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, you know, I just didn't sleep that much." Stiles finally locates his backpack hanging precariously off the arm of the chair, victory, and snags it.
Scott crosses his arms across his chest. "Uh-huh."
It's not that Stiles doesn't want to tell Scott. It's just that he knows if he does Scott will freak out and get all overprotective and Stiles won't be able to shake him for at least a week, and as much as he loves Scott Stiles can't deal with him following around with the sad puppy dog eyes.
Stiles pulls on a pair of Converses, mourning his red hoodie a bit when he liberates his grey one from the front hall closet. Oh well, at least it was lost to a good cause. "I'm fine Scott."
"Okay." Scott shoves a hand through his hair. "We still on for beers with Isaac later?"
"Yeah, sure, sounds good." Stiles isn't quite able to meet Scott's eyes as he leaves.
It's damp outside, the air cool and thick, like it might start raining any minute. Stiles flips his hood up and walks to the coffee shop around the corner. He buys a large red eye, staring the barista down when his hands shake as he swipes his card.
The hospital is a forty minute walk away. Stiles cradles his coffee cup and relaxes as he feels the heat sink into his palms, that green smell of rain and ozone in the air. He inhales greedily because he can swear, he still smells her blood, can feel its slickness all over his fingers. Stiles doesn't realize until he gets there that he only knows Lydia's first name, hasn't even thought this through, but when he gets halfway to the reception desk someone calls out Stiles! and then Assistant Principle Martin is throwing herself at him.
Like, from Beacon Hills High School Assistant Principle Martin.
"When the police said Stilinski I knew it had to be you, how many Stilinskis can there be in Northern California, let alone Stanford?" she babbles, and kisses his cheek before releasing him. "They said you saved Lydia's life but I can't say that's a surprise, given who your father is."
Stiles blinks at her. "You're - you're Lydia's mother?"
"When her father and I got divorced I moved back to Beacon Hills but Lydia decided to finish out high school in Santa Barbara," she explains. "The police called me in the middle of the night." She sniffs and carefully wipes under her eyes. "God only knows where her father is."
"Oh," he says dumbly, because what are the freaking chances of that? "How - how is she?"
Ms. Martin gives him a motherly smile and Stiles feels every bone in his body settle in relief. "Come on," she says, and curls her hand around his shoulder. "She's awake, I'm sure she'd love to properly meet the boy who saved her life."
Lydia is in a private suit on the third floor, a cop posted outside her door. Stiles gets stuck in place for a moment because even after all these years he still feels sick whenever he's in a hospital, but then Ms. Martin is nodding to the cop and pushing Stiles into the room. Lydia's awake in bed, wearing a truly awful green hospital gown, an IV needle taped to the crook of her left arm, paper-pale but alive and just as beautiful as he remembered, even like this.
"Lydia honey," Ms. Martin says softly. "Look who came to visit.
Lydia blinks, her eyes glassy. "Jackson?"
Stiles feels Ms. Martin tighten her fingers around his shoulder. "No baby, Jackson's in London, remember? This is Stiles."
Lydia's gaze switches to him and Stiles steps a little closer so she can examine him, her eyes sweeping over his face, making little reconnaissance glances down to his hands. And then she smiles dreamily at him and the entire room lights up. "What's a Stiles?"
Ms. Martin laughs nervously. "I'm afraid she's a bit woozy, they have her on medication."
"It's okay," Stiles assures her. Lydia's still staring at him, wide-eyed. "Hey Lydia."
Her fingers curl in toward her palms and then stretch out to him. Stiles shivers, seeing her hands twist in the grass again, remembering how they were ice cold under his hands. "Jackson?" she asks again, her voice painfully hopeful.
"No, Lydia," her mother corrects, sounding a bit tense. "This is Stiles. He saved you. Remember?"
Lydia suddenly jackknifes up with a gasp and her heart rate monitor shrieks. Stiles rushes over to sit on the edge of her bed, easing her back against the pillows. Ms. Martin stifles a gasp, her hand over her mouth.
"I could really use a cup of coffee," she says shakily. "Stiles, you wouldn't mind sitting with her for a few minutes, would you?"
"Yeah, of course," he says, watching Lydia's eyes dart around the room. "We'll be fine."
She leaves and just before the door swings shut Stiles can hear her let out a broken sob.
Lydia flinches at the sound, her hands reaching up to clutch at his forearms. "Did you see him?" she whispers urgently. "You - it was you, wasn't it?" Her fingernails dig in through the fabric of his sweatshirt. "I've seen you before."
Stiles carefully detaches her fingers from his sleeves and folds them in her lap. "Yeah," he says softly. "It's okay now, it's over."
"They kept asking me," she whispers. "But I don't know anything, I just remember..." she trails off, staring up at his face. "I know you. I've seen you before. You...you put...your hands on… on my hands... but it's all just flashes," she concludes, sounding confused and frustrated.
"Hey Lydia, it's fine. Don't worry about that stuff, okay? Trauma can do funny things to your memory, it's not you're fault. They'll find him."
"I don't understand," she breathes. "No one will tell me anything."
Stiles can't help it, he has to reach out then and touch the inside of her wrist, where he can feel her pulse beat, erratic but there, and he's has never been so grateful for something in his entire life. "You should focus on getting better."
She sighs and tips her head towards him, this close he can see that her eyes are a luminous, the green even more pronounced and glittering with a thin veil of tears. "You stayed? They said you stayed."
Stiles is suddenly afraid he's going to do something really stupid, like kiss her, or ask her out. "Yeah. Yeah, of course I did."
Her tongue darts out to lick cracked lips and he dies a little inside. "You... can you stay... just a little longer?"
He swallows hard because he knows firsthand how terrible hospitals are. He thinks about all those nights his mother spent alone and how no one deserves that, to be confused and afraid and lonely.
"Yeah," Stiles vows. "I can stay as long as you want."
By the time Ms. Martin comes back Lydia is asleep, her cheek pillowed on his shoulder. Stiles carefully extricates himself, slowly moving off the bed so he doesn't wake her. He gives Ms. Martin an awkward, yeah I was totally cuddling with your daughter but it was innocent, I swear, kind of smile and to his relief she winks at him.
"Hold on," she says softly and reaches into her purse and pulls out an iPhone. "She'll thank me later for this, I promise." And pushes the phone into Stiles' hands.
Stiles just stares at, wondering if he just doesn't get it or if he's really that sleep deprived, and she chuckles. "Put your contact info in," she says. "Trust me, I know my daughter and she would never forgive me if I let a boy as cute as you go without getting your number."
He flushes horribly but does as she says and accepts her parting hug goodbye, promising to tell his dad she says hello. Outside the weather has cleared up and Stiles squints against the emerging sun before sinking down on the bench next to the bus stop. He kills the rest of the day napping and kicking Scott's ass at MarioKart before heading out to the bar they always go to on Thursday nights to meet Isaac, Scott's lab partner, who's shy but nice enough and shares Scott's borderline obsession for their bartender, Allison.
They're halfway through their third round, Scott and Isaac recounting how someone in their lab yesterday had almost set the room on fire, complete with a tipsy physical reenactment, when Stiles' phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket, sniggering to himself as Scott almost falls out of his chair to follow Allison with his eyes.
When Stiles unlocks his phone there's a text from an unknown number: Still interested in buying me dinner when I'm out of here? No blood this time, promise. - Lydia
Stiles stares down at his phone, not able to control the grin that spreads over his face, fingers tapping over the screen as he saves her contact into.
"Stiles!" Scott says loudly, looking annoyed. "Are you even listening?"
"Yeah," Stiles lies, staring down at the name Lydia Martin. "Uh-huh, totally. Fire, very bad."
"Sti-iles." Scott's pouting at him. "You're not even paying attention."
Stiles texts Lydia back. Absolutely, let me know when they release you and we'll celebrate, and locks his phone. "Sorry buddy, I'm listening now."
Scott cocks an eyebrow at him. "Everything okay?"
Stiles taps the edge of his phone and grins. "Yeah, Scott. I'm good. Everything's good."
A week later he takes her to an Italian restaurant and she wears a blue dress and bright red lipstick, and within five minutes makes it apparent that she is simultaneously the smartest and sexiest person Stiles has ever met. She lets him pay the bill at the end of the meal and when they leave she wraps her arm around his waist and looks up at him like she's seeing something important, something that makes her cheeks flush and her eyes twinkle and yes, hell yes, Stiles thinks.
Everything's good.