It starts like this:
"You should come to that party with me tomorrow," Allison says one day when they're leaving their self-defense class.
Lydia hums in agreement.
Or like this:
"You know, you should meet my best friend-"
Lydia pretends not to hear and leaves before Scott can suggest more.
Or maybe it starts with the music, too loud, and the alcohol in her drink, too strong—two essential components to a college house party.
Lydia closes her eyes for a brief second at the sound of the door opening behind her; when she opens them again, she's not alone on the back porch anymore.
"Hey," the guy says, and it's simply so predictable and expected that Lydia can't help but roll her eyes.
She ostensibly turns away to look over the patch of grass pretending to be a backyard and brings her glass to her lips.
"Erm," she hears again, and from the corner of her eyes she sees an aborted gesture, as if he started reaching for her and lost his nerve at the last moment.
"What?" she snaps, and it makes her even madder that her only goal in coming to this party was to hook up with a random guy and forget about everything for a few hours.
Instead, she got introduced to Allison's new boyfriend-"We're not dating," she'd said earlier with wide eyes. "But I like him." And, if Lydia were to guess, she'd say that Allison's comment won't be true for long, from the way Scott was looking at her-narrowly escaped meeting Scott's best friend, who he had, wrongly, deemed worthy of Lydia's time, as guys are prone to do, and got the beginning of a migraine.
So, she's really not in the mood anymore, no matter how cute this guy is.
And he is kind of cute, if Lydia's being honest with herself, which she always is. His hair looks particularly soft and his cheekbones are noteworthy, though not in the obvious way Jackson's were. He's an unassuming kind of handsome, and probably very awkward, from the way he's rolling on the balls of his feet, hesitating between accosting her and fleeing away.
Social anxiety, her brain supplies, and then, because she's Lydia Martin and she's in a mood: how can I take advantage of this?
He lifts his hand, maybe because he wants to scratch his neck or pass his hand through his hair, only to get splashed by the red cup he's still holding. He throws it an incredulous glance, like he can't remember how it got there, but by that time Lydia's already annoyed-she doesn't owe anyone her time, and especially not tipsy guys wearing plaid.
She taps her foot on the floor exactly three times before saying in an icy voice:
"If you need a second to sort out how to be a functioning human being, I'm happy to leave you to it right now. No need to look for me afterwards."
"What?" He looks affronted but quickly loses his confused expression, and that's when Lydia notices his eyes for the first time. Oh, hell no. "No, I just wanted to tell you not to drink from that cup."
It's Lydia's turn to be taken aback.
"What?"
He gestures to the house with his left hand, which is holding a bottle of beer.
"It's a college party," he says. "Plenty of suspicious people, don't take your eyes off your drink, don't accept candy from strangers…"
"I had it in my hand the whole time," Lydia protests, frowning at the deep red liquid.
"I'm pretty sure I saw someone drop something in it when you turned around."
Lydia brings the cup close and smells it discreetly. The sugary tang of alcohol is too strong to detect anything else, but the stranger is right, and better safe than sorry. She glares at him for a bit, because she's pissed and he's there, before throwing the content of her cup in the flower bushes. She can see the sticky punch splashing the petals from up here, but from the look of it, she's pretty sure the flowerbeds are used to getting more alcohol than water on a daily basis.
When she looks back at him, the guy is playing with the unopened bottle of beer in his hand.
"Someone spilled the punch after you left," he says. "So… here."
He thrusts the bottle at her. Lydia crosses her arms to her chest, stares him down, despite the fact that he's half a foot taller than she is, and flicks her hair.
"I don't drink beer," she says.
"It's cherry-flavored beer."
"Interesting. It's still a no."
He opens his mouth to argue some more, but she cuts him off before he can make a sound.
"Why are you here, exactly?"
"I told you. Someone slipped something in your drink."
"Someone," Lydia repeats. "That's not very specific. Can you tell me who?"
"What, do you want a police sketch? I know a guy who's skilled with a pencil, if you want."
"I can draw sex offenders myself, thank you very much," Lydia says without missing a beat, and it's only when the guy huffs a laugh that she realizes what she's doing. "You didn't have to bring me a beer," she adds.
"I kind of wanted an excuse to talk to you," he admits, and she'd be interested if only they hadn't been talking about rape half a minute earlier.
"Well," she says, because she can't bring herself to reject him totally-he has a very cute nose, she notices fleetingly- "We're talking right now. You have ten seconds to keep my interest or I'm walking away."
"Brown hair, Caucasian, around 5'6. Wearing dark clothes, probably looking like an asshole," he says, and it's so unexpected that it startles a laugh out of her.
"You just described half of the lacrosse team."
She didn't expect the affronted look on his face either, but he does look offended when he exclaims:
"It's ice hockey!" Then, like an afterthought: "Wait, do you even go to Northeastern?"
"Nope."
"Well that explains how you missed the loud demonstrations of school spirit," he says, and Lydia finds herself leaning back on the railing, closer to him. "Where do you go, then?"
She waves her hand in the air, in the direction of what she vaguely believes is north.
"MIT," she says with a hint of pride, and watches him closely. If his surprise is too strong, or his interest too lewd-
"Oh, and what made you cross the river?"
"I live in Back Bay," she says, just to be contrary. "But also, my best friend."
"Nice." He inclines his cup towards her. "Me too. Or I wouldn't have come. Social anxiety," he adds when she just hums in response. "I'm not really into parties."
"Well, I wouldn't have come either," Lydia admits. "I have a thesis proposal to write."
Another test that he avoids with what Lydia is starting to think is his very own sense of obliviousness.
"Oh, I know, I heard you talk about it earlier." His strange confidence seems to escape for a moment, and he's nearly embarrassed when he adds: "That's why I wanted to talk to you, actually."
"Are you a Biological Engineering graduate?" She knows he's not; for one, it's a Northeastern undergraduate party; for another, she simply cannot imagine this jumpy person in a lab, surrounded by glass and the requirement of meticulousness.
"Ah, no. I'm a junior and majoring in Criminology. But… you sounded passionate about it and you didn't get to finish the conversation, so."
The guy she had been chatting with had left with a glassy look in his eyes after asking her if he could touch her boobs and hearing the subsequent never, so no, Lydia hadn't gotten to finish her conversation. It unnerves her a bit that he could listen to her without her noticing, but he is handsome, and there's something soft in the way he stands in front of her, slightly hunched and still holding a bottle of beer neither of them want.
She throws caution to the wind and says:
"I'm not talking about my thesis without a drink."
"Can't do it sober?"
"I'm parched. It's a long conversation."
They both look down at his empty cup and the beer and share a small laugh. Lydia's good temper is starting to come back, so she leads them inside in the kitchen, and helps him try to locate the cooler where he claims that he saw cider earlier. They end up with a bottle of rum and half a gallon of orange juice; it turns out there's no cider to be found in the kitchen.
The back porch is still empty when they make their way out with their two bottles and two new glasses. They settle on the padded bench set just outside the circle of light from the lamp and the window to the kitchen. It's oddly intimate, even though they were standing three feet away ten minutes earlier without any of this new tension.
His thigh ends up pressed against hers, and she knows it's a conscious decision when he lifts his eyes to her face for a second, gauging her reaction. Instead of giving him one, Lydia stretches over his lap to grab the bottle of rum from the table on the other side of his legs. He's warm enough to repel the coolness of the night, and with alcohol buzzing in her veins, this is starting to look like a really good idea.
"Oh," she says as an afterthought, in the middle of their second drink, "what's your name?"
He stops the war he's fighting with the lid of the bottle of orange juice, trying to screw it back on.
"Uh? Oh, Stiles."
"Stiles." Lydia tries the word in her mouth. It's not an unknown sound, but it feels weird when applied to a human being and not an inanimate object. She chases the feeling with a mouthful of rum and sees him do the same.
"That's me."
"Stiles," she tries again, stretching the vowel. It doesn't help: it's still a weird name. "It's a weird name," she tells him.
"Well, what kind of name is Ariel?" he asks, offended, and Lydia blinks at him.
"What?"
He gestures to her hair, its coppery glow visible even in the semi-darkness.
"Like the Little Mermaid? That's your name-"
"It's really not," Lydia says firmly.
"-It's your name in my head," he says over her, with the slightly slurred and rushed speech of the inebriated, "'cause I didn't know it and I didn't wanna keep referring to you as 'the hot girl.'"
"I thought it was my conversation that you found riveting."
"Yeah, but also, objectively, you're hot." He gestures vaguely to her face.
"I'll drink to that," Lydia says, and they down their third drink.
"Yeesh," Stiles says, pulling a face at the taste of alcohol. "That was strong. So what's your name?"
"What do you know about twin embolization syndrome?" Lydia answers. For some reason, she wants to see him work for it.
It's a fun game, and he's a good player; he pouts at her with huge eyes and the slightest curl of his mouth downward. She fleetingly thinks about what it would take to smooth it up, and then not so fleetingly wonders about the feeling of his lips on hers.
"Ariel," he says, and pokes her in the side when she pretends not to hear him. "What's your name?"
Lydia hums and chases a drop of rum with her finger, spilled from her glass onto her collarbone. She's only satisfied when she sees his eyes follow the path of her finger, then briefly drop lower.
"Uh," he says, and doesn't hesitate when Lydia waves him closer.
She takes her time stretching to his ear-even sitting down like this, he has a couple of inches on her-and revels in his full body shiver at the graze of their arms when her lips brush against his ear.
"Lydia," she says in a low voice.
"Lydia," he repeats, and it's her turn to fall victim to the goosebumps.
Her skin is buzzing and he's watching her with eyes that makes her want to talk about anything other than biology-or rather, not talk at all.
"Hi Lydia," he says hoarsely when she pulls back.
She doesn't lean back all the way.
"That is such a cliché line," she answers, but there's no heat in her voice.
Her knee hitches up on the bench from its own volition, and she turns her body half toward him. Stiles hums and splays his hand between their two bodies, maybe five inches away from her bare legs.
"I've got a better one," he says, and his tone is serious, unlike his eyes.
She likes the little thrill that comes with that paradox. He leans in closer; his hand slides from five to four inches.
"So what's your thesis about?"
Lydia laughs. She can't help it; she throws her head back a bit and lets out a surprised laugh, at odds with the churning feeling in her stomach, the one that has nothing to do with hormones.
"Twin embolization syndrome," she says. "I think. I'm not sure yet; I still have to write my proposal."
Stiles frowns, but doesn't steer the conversation away.
"What does that mean?"
"Fetal resorption. Vanishing twins in utero?" He grows increasingly more confused, and Lydia decides she's having too much fun. "When people eat their twins in utero, in the grossest way to put it."
"Oh. I don't think I'm drunk enough for that," Stiles remarks airily, looking down into his cup.
"It's not actual cannibalism. It's not gross or anything."
"I'll take your word for it."
It's science, it's biology, and it's Lydia's master's thesis; but as Stiles sticks out his tongue to catch the last drops of his drink, it's also the last thing on her mind. Earlier, she would have gladly taken the opportunity to impress someone with her intelligence, her graduating two years early and, most importantly, the freedom she's gained since high school.
Now, however, Lydia wants very different things.
"So," she starts, putting down her cup on the floor. "Are we gonna make out or what?"
"Uh," Stiles says after a beat. "Yes?"
"You don't sound so sure."
"No! I mean yes. I'm-very sure. Yes."
Lydia kneels up on the bench, her heels forgotten on the floor, pushes at Stiles' shoulders until he's lying against the back of the bench, and presses her lips against his. They start slow, but he still mumbles a few words of surprise against her mouth, which turns out to be a curious but enjoyable moment.
It's not that he's not experienced. He's a good kisser, certainly, and the slow pace of his hands on her skin has nothing to do with uncertainty and everything to do with the trail of goosebumps the pads of his fingers leave behind them. But Lydia is starting to think he kisses like he speaks: with a lot of enthusiasm to cover hidden depths.
Stiles opens his mouth under hers and her train of thought disappears; she lets the hormones take over her brain and tries to forget the anxious feeling that hasn't left her since she set foot in this house.
Yes, Lydia thinks as Stiles' tongue curls around hers and his hands slide up her skirt with a shift of her hips. That's exactly what I need.
He curls an arm around her waist and tugs her closer to him, until she can feel the small buttons of his blue plaid shirt bite into her chest. She arches a bit more in retaliation, making sure to graze her breasts against him, and their kisses take a more frantic turn.
She lifts her hand up to his hair on a whim, and feels her lips curl around a small gasp of surprise. It's so soft, and the feeling of it brushing against her fingers is glorious. She does it again, then again, brushing the short strands back or combing through it back to front. She's so lost in the moment that it takes her a while to notice that Stiles' mouth has left her own.
"What?" Lydia huffs when he meets her eyes, amused.
Stiles sends her a smile that goes right to her core, and she bites her lip before she can help herself.
"Nothing," he says. He has the nerve to laugh.
She hunches down a bit and catches his mouth, still open on the edge of a laugh. Lydia sucks on his lower lip until the laugh in his chest turns into a throaty groan, before sitting back to admire how rumpled he looks, with wild hair and a very red mouth.
Stiles follows her up and twists them until she's pressed back against the bench and he's hovering over her. Their legs are all tangled between them in what promises to be a painful mess in a few minutes, but Lydia can't find it in herself to mind. Her bare foot brushes against the soft fabric of his pants, and if she presses down she can feel his body heat seep into her.
Stiles hums into the corner of her jaw, where's he leaving soft open-mouthed kisses that make her twist his flannel in her hands.
It isn't fair, she decides, that she should be the one reacting so strongly to this. Stiles is nearly composed when he focuses back on her mouth, alternating deep and long kisses with quick, soft presses of his lips that she has to chase up with a small sigh.
She moves her thigh out of the way and Stiles falls into her with a small sound of surprise, like he's just got the wind knocked out of him, when all Lydia's done is allow their hips to meet with remarkably less obstacle between them.
She takes her chance when he pulls back to rest his forehead against hers and rocks her hips up until she feels him react, sneaking her hands under the gap of his shirt that their position creates, grinning when his stomach shivers under her nails.
He groans again, but his eyes are open and Lydia finds herself looking right back at him. In the dim light, they appear particularly clear, even if she remembers well their golden shade of brown. What she sees in them unsettles her for a moment. She looks down, lost, as her fingers dance under the loose material of his shirt.
"Lydia-" Stiles begins, his breath hot against her lips, but she doesn't let him finish as she swallows the rest of his words in a bruising sort of kiss, using her tongue and teeth and hands until she's sure they're not weapons anymore.
Stiles kisses her through her breathy moans, rubbing at the skin of her ribs until his hands ghost over her bra. Lydia is dimly aware, in the part of her brain that still registers that kind of thing, to be grateful she wore a shirt and a skirt instead of a dress. But then Stiles' mouth meets his hands and suddenly she's not aware of much, apart from the hot touch of his tongue over the cups of her bra.
Thank god for lace bralettes, she thinks as she feels her nipples harden in the rush of cold air that follows Stiles' retreat.
She lets out her loudest moan yet when she feels him shifting against her, and they both freeze.
"Um," Stiles says as he sits back, putting a few inches of October night between them.
Lydia blinks up at him as if her shirt isn't rolled up over her bra and his face hadn't been up there a few seconds earlier. It hits her that it's incredibly more intimate than anything she's ever let anyone she doesn't plan on sleeping with do to her. From the look on Stiles' face, he's either thinking about the same thing, or his self-consciousness has come back at the sound of the party on the other side of the wall.
But he still has that other look on his face and in his eyes, and Lydia doesn't trust herself not to do something she might regret later-like take his hand and lead him to her place. She tugs her shirt back down, and moves until she doesn't feel like falling anymore.
"Do you want to, erm." Stiles waves a hand in the air.
"We probably shouldn't," Lydia tells him.
"Yeah," he agrees, and there's a moment of silence as they both gaze down to his lap.
It's nothing time won't cure, so Lydia tries not to feel too bad as she searches for an appropriate topic of conversation. Suddenly, fetal resorption doesn't feel as adequate as it did before.
Stiles is staring decisively at the wall on the other side of the yard when Lydia's phone goes off, so they both jump at the loud buzzing sound.
"Mine," she tells Stiles when she sees him going for his own pocket. She crouches to get her phone from her jacket, crumpled at the foot of the bench.
It's a text from her voicemail; apparently, she missed a call from Allison. She sounds tipsy when Lydia puts the phone to her ear, although not as much as Lydia would have thought.
"Hey Lydia! I walked home with Scott because we couldn't find you, so I said that you were surely with someone and not to bother you-" There's a masculine laugh in the background and Lydia smiles a bit, but Allison's voice is different when she resumes, more hurried. "-but then my father called, and you know how he always listens to the news late? Yeah, so apparently there's been a guy attacking people on Massachusetts Avenue lately, and you really shouldn't be walking home at night, okay? Especially not-" There's a muffled sound like Allison's dropped the phone, and she definitely sounds worried. "Especially not tonight. So we're coming back to get you, okay? We're getting a cab, so don't move and wait for us, okay? We're getting a cab," she says again. "Don't walk home."
The message ends, so Lydia interrupts the automatic voice that follows and hangs up. She's left staring at the phone, wondering why she didn't hear about those attacks before.
"Everything alright?" Stiles asks her.
"Yeah, just my friend. She went home."
"With someone?"
"Mmmm."
"Sucks."
Lydia plops down on the bench and opens up her text messages, feeling Stiles do the same next to her.
"Hey, I've been left stranded too," Stiles tells her after a moment of silence. "Do you want to take advantage of that situation?"
Lydia considers him for a moment, then looks back at the text message she's composed (I got your message. How long?). She looks back at him, taking in his eyes that intrigue her so much and the gentle slope of his nose, and thinks back to the urgency in Allison's voice. She looks for the flame of need they kindled earlier and finds it reduced to a low simmer.
"Don't take this the wrong way," she starts. "But I have my own apartment, so that part's not up for debate."
"Oh thank god," Stiles says, getting up. He passes a hand through his hair and messes it up even more. "I have two roommates, and they're both way hotter than I am."
Lydia laughs as she slips back into her heels and shrugs on her jacket. She deletes her previous message and texts a simple: not going that way, don't worry. I'll text you when I get home. She hopes Allison gets it before jumping in a cab; her interest in Scott sounds both strong and mutual, and Lydia doesn't want to put an end to their evening. Not when she has her own interested Northeastern undergraduate for the rest of the night, at least.
"I've been warned to look out for a possible mugger near Mass Ave," she says as they walk back inside, through the party still going on strong despite the late hour, and out into the street.
"Is that where we're going?"
"Not even remotely."
"Good. Talk about a mood killer."
They start down the street to the sound of parties coming from houses on both sides of the road. The party is only twenty minutes away from Lydia's place, and they end up walking all the way, for lack of a cab and to sober up. There's a fair bit of stumbling at first, and Lydia laughs out loud when Stiles walks head first into a pole.
He's grumbling when he comes up to her, shoving his phone back in his pocket.
"I was texting," he explains. "Have you ever tried texting and walking? They made commercials against that, you know."
"You're a walking disaster," Lydia teases. "Literally."
Stiles snorts.
"You should have seen me playing lacrosse in high school. I couldn't really-" he makes an aborted movement over his shoulder, like he's about to throw a ball, and his arm brushes against hers when he drops it back. "Yeah. It was bad."
"We're having sex in ten minutes," Lydia tells him sternly. "I hope you've figured out your coordination issues by then."
"I've been told I'm good with these," Stiles says, wiggling his fingers at her.
"Good. Or I'll have to do it all myself."
They're nearly to Lydia's apartment; she can see the last red light before her building, the Laundromat just on the other side of the street and the little corner where people like to stand and talk in the morning.
Lydia doesn't see Stiles stop at first, and crosses the road at the last moment, jogging the last paces just in time to avoid the flow of cars starting up when the light turns green. She turns to Stiles instinctively, to see where he is, and can just make out the red hue of his shirt in the dark.
She cocks a hip and taps her foot, portraying an impatience she doesn't even feel. Stiles throws his head back in exaggeration and his hands up in a full-body shrug, and laughter bubbles at her lips. Instinct says to bite it back, but she doesn't. The night carries it away, over the sound of cars speeding in front of her. She feels full of energy, like bright liquid spilling out of a tall glass, and she can't resist spinning on herself, testing the sound her new heels make on the pavement.
She glances up from her shoes. There's something in her peripheral vision; she can feel it, tugging at the corner of her eye like a very persistent shadow.
"Lydia!" she thinks she hears, but when she glances over her shoulder, the street is blocked by a large bus.
She can't see Stiles, and in a moment of clarity she realizes she can't hear him; it's simply impossible over the width of the street and the rumble of the cars. On her left, in the distance, she hears a horn or two.
She turns around towards the alley, barely lit by the glaring white neons of the laundromat.
"Lydia!" she hears, distinctively, this time. "Ahead of you-Lydia, run!"
She doesn't have time to ponder any longer, because the night moves in front of her. A shadow rips from the darkness around them and pounces, dragging her away from the spill of light she's standing in. Not a shadow, she thinks incoherently when her flank erupts in pain, hot and piercing like flames.
She twists her ankle falling down, but she registers the pain in a distant part of her brain, maybe only thanks to her skills of observation. It's inconsequential, like the fluttering of wings on her skin, compared to the deep gashes of pain on her sides.
She gasps when she feels a weight pressing down on her other flank. For a short second, she doesn't feel anything as several knives cut her skin open simultaneously. Then her brain catches up with her nerves and she can't do anything but lay in pain, struggling to breathe and feeling the blood seep out of her body in a thumping rhythm.
What a stupid way to die, she thinks as she stares ahead at the dirty bricks of the alley.
She's not sure if she's only imagining the roaring sound in her ears, but she can't focus, can't remember-is it a reaction to trauma and blood loss? Is she supposed to see those red lights, hovering over her like lone Christmas lights?
She closes her eyes. The world turns dark and silent; the traffic sounds so far away that she can barely make it out over the deep vibrations of feet pounding on the pavement.
"Lydia," someone says, or she thinks someone say, or she imagines someone saying. "Hold on, Lydia, okay? Keep breathing-hey, Lydia, no, wake up-"
Her head echoes, empty and full of sound, loud and quick like lightning. The words mingle inside her and come out distorted, louder and shriller. It builds up and builds up in her skull until she thinks she could bleed from it; her throat aches but her body doesn't respond anymore.
She screams silently, helpless and delirious, until it fades into nothing.