It's a strangely familiar sensation, the pain in her stomach and the sinking heart. "Boyd…" She pushes his hand from her abdomen, jolting him from his sleep and when he looks up at her, he knows.
Time slows to an almost painstaking pace and he can hear the two tears roll down her respective cheeks. It's nothing a pair of exceptionally healthy twenty-somethings should be going through. His thumb glides over the skin of the back of her hand rhythmically, hoping to add some sort of comfort. She sort of crumples into herself and he wraps his arms around her, muttering "I love you"s and "I'm sorry"s. "Maybe it's alright," he whispers, though he hears no third heartbeat in the room like he did yesterday. She nods wordlessly, gazing through the doctor who comes in and simply says, "I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Martin."
He shuts his eyes as tightly as he holds her and she quietly presses her hands to the empty bump one last time as the hot tears fall onto the hospital bed. "Let's go," he murmurs in her ear, but her will is long gone and she stays there until she feels his arm under her legs and the other around her back. He lifts her effortlessly, but carefully, holding her close to his chest.
He carries her to the Camaro, which Derek must be in shitting himself over. They drive in silence, her hands still in the same position and one of his resting on her thigh. He carries her again, back into the loft and past their pack, who'd all woken up at the sound of the car pulling up, and into their bedroom. The sheets are clean, like the whole ordeal is erased. Like there was never a pool of blood. Like everything is still okay. He rests her down on the bed and she curls up instinctively, staring blankly at the dark wall. She feels smaller already, not physically, but emotionally, like part of her heart has been ripped out of her chest.
A day passes before she wills herself to squeeze his hand when he takes hers. The tears have stopped flowing but she still cries. It builds up during the day; starts as a slight breath hitch in the morning and ends the night with a few full-blown sobs before she falls into a listless sleep.
It's a week before she lets him hold her again. She feels unworthy, undeserving of his love. She was the one carrying it, the one who lost it. And he's so gentle, so patient with her.
He's not prodding her to open the blinds, to get out of bed, to eat something like Stiles is. He's not trying to get her to crack a smile or asking if she wants anything every twenty minutes like Scott and Isaac are. He asks once, when he wakes up, if he can kiss her good morning and doesn't protest the slow shake of her head.
She thinks it's because he understands. Not completely because he can get up in the morning and smile and laugh and go to school and work and come home and not want to die like she does. But it was his too; the baby was part of him. So, he has to understand, at least a little bit, how much she wishes she could take the place of their child, how she wishes it was still inside of her, growing and moving.
"I love you," he whispers, morning and night, right in her ear when he holds her as she cries. It gives her a hollow comfort, knowing he still loves her despite her losing their baby. "We can try again," he says, three weeks later. A ghost of her former self, she's managed to sit up now, to hug her knees to her chest. She shoots him a look, a Lydia Martin pre-incident look. It's the most familiar she's looked to him in weeks, so he smiles.
She says a full sentence for the first time at the one-month mark. The extent of her conversational skills diminished to quiet yeses and nos, if one was lucky enough to even be acknowledged by her roaming eyes.
"I brought you a burger and fries aaaaand the Orgo lecture notes," Stiles practically waltzes into the room, white teeth flashing as he sets the notebook at the edge of the bed. He sticks the greasy bag out at her and shakes it twice. "C'mon, Lyds, you gotta eat. Boyd said you haven't had anything other than water in a month. Look, I'll eat a fry and show you how good they are." He unravels the top of the bag and sticks his hand inside, pulling out a handful of golden french fries. "Your turn," he mumbles through a full mouth.
She takes the bag from him and pulls out a single fry. "Thank you," she sighs once she swallows it. The salt burns her throat, but she attributes that to not having eaten in a month. "Thank you for buying me this," she looks up at Stiles, whose mouth hung open at the sound of her voice, then back down at the food, signaling the end of the conversation.
He comes home after ten every other day because of his work hours. She never goes to sleep without at least seeing him safe, knowing how easily a life can be torn away. "Stiles told me you talked today," he says, hushed so the entire house doesn't wake up. "Can I kiss you now?"
She hugs her knees closer to her, her eyes locked on the mirror in front of her. He sighs and pulls off his work clothes. "You can kiss me," she murmurs in the middle of the night, groggy from the sleep she awakes from and turns in his arms to face him. He's still awake, the whites of his eyes shining back at her and she knows he's smiling. She touches his face and he presses his lips to hers for the first time in a month, softly, tenderly, unsure of how she would react.
She gets out of bed the next morning, showers and washes her hair and goes down to join everyone at breakfast wearing his sweatshirt. "Hey, hey!" Stiles calls from the table, his signature crooked half-smile on his face. "Look who's up!" Derek silently pulls a chair up for her next to Boyd, but she opts to sit on his lap.
"Love you," he smiles up at her.
"Love you, too," she gives him a short peck, respecting the "minimum PDA" rule they had all agreed on. He wraps his arm around her, his hand resting on her thigh.
"So," Stiles pipes up minutes later, mouth full of food to which Lydia visibly rolls her eyes for the first time in a month. "Are you going to school today? Or should I just bring you the notes?" The table falls silent, waiting for her answer.
"Not yet," is all she says before she gets off of his lap and returns to their room.
She goes back to school a week later.
She emerges from the room in the morning like the Lydia Martin they all knew. She feels good for once, not just okay; her outfit is fabulous, of course, and she's put on makeup for the first time in a month. But she still sort of wants to curl into a ball and cry.
She holds his hand all the way to campus, all the way until she and Stiles have to head off to the Science building and he has to go to the Athletic Center. She's wary to let go of him, even if it's only for an hour and a half class.
She should be behind, her professor expects her to be after a month-long absence, but she's Lydia Martin. She knows the material better than some of the people who attended every class she'd missed. Stiles is more impressed than surprised.
It's a Thursday, which means he doesn't have to work and she leaves campus earlier than everyone else. He's waiting for her outside of the lecture hall and she smiles, actually, genuinely smiles when she sees him.
"Hi," she says quietly.
"Good class?" His eyebrow climbs upward and the corner of his lip curls into a smirk.
"You could say that," she smiles.
They're always home alone on Thursdays. He pulls off the clothes he'd worn and slips into a pair of sweatpants. Shirts aren't his thing, not that she minds. She sits on the bed, legs crossed, and eyes him. He catches her and smiles, then kisses her, resting his forehead against hers. "What are you thinking?"
"I love you," she murmurs, bringing a hand to his cheek and kissing him, tender but hungry.
He knows what it means, but he's uncertain. "Lydia…" He pulls back, looks her in the eyes and brushes her hair behind her ear. "Are you sure?" He asks quietly, because he knows she isn't.
Her gaze falls to the floor and she shakes her head. "I'm sorry," her voice breaks when she looks back up at him, who kisses her sweetly, apologetically. "I'm so sorry," she sobs, louder and uninhibited now because it's just the two of them.
"It's okay," he whispers, his thumbs brushing over her cheeks. "It's not your fault, it's okay." Her eyes are shut, but it doesn't stop the tears. They sting her even more and she presses her hand against his, keeping him as close as possible. "It's okay," he repeats. It's comforting and soon enough she opens her eyes to look at him.
Suddenly, something builds inside of her. It's hot, burning and angry."How do you do that?"
He straightens up, scratches his head twice accompanied by an "uh". "How do I do what?"
"How can you tell me it's okay? How do you just… show no emotion?" She's standing now, challenging him and he steps back. "Have you even cried? I don't think I've seen you cry. How can you be devoid of all feelings towards this and just tell me 'it's okay'? God, it's like you don't even care."
It guts him, her accusation. He's never been one to outwardly show emotion, especially if he had to be someone else's rock. But this, her words and thoughts and assumptions, they hurt him in a way he's only felt one other time. "If I didn't care, I wouldn't still be here," he mutters. His fists tighten subconsciously, though he'd never lay a hand on her. "I have more important things to think about. I don't like to dwell on sadness."
"Important things like what?" She scoffs, crosses her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes, waiting for some plausible reasoning from her boyfriend.
He sighs impatiently, like there are a billion other things he could be doing. "I don't… It doesn't even matter." He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales deeply. "Look, I know this has been hard and—"
"Are you kidding?" She lets out a short, harsh laugh. "You don't know anything, Boyd," she spits. "You don't know how hard it is, you don't know anything—"
"I know how much it hurts me," he interrupts, his eyes soft, pained. "I know how much I wanted…" He stops, swallows past the lump that had formed in his throat, drops his gaze to the floor and his voice to a sullen whisper. "How much I wanted to be a dad. How much I wanted us to be a family. So, yeah, I know."
She blinks once, twice, watching as a tear slides down his cheek and she feels just as bad as she did that night. "I didn't know—"
"Yeah," he shakes his head, "You didn't know. I didn't want you to know. But now you do, so. I'll see you later."
"What are you talking about?"
"I need to go." He pushes past her to the drawers and pulls a shirt over his head.
She drops down on the bed, blinks once, twice. "I love you," she whispers as he moves towards the door.
"I know," he says, pulling the door shut behind him.