A warm summer breeze caresses bare shoulders and leaves long tendrils of strawberry blonde hair floating in the night air. It's peaceful outside, a rare moment of silence in a town once wrought with banshee screams and werewolf howls.
The time glares up at her, bright and angry in stark contrast to the gentle night sky. 3:19 AM. She should be asleep. He's probably asleep, curled up against lanky arms and sun-kissed skin.
The thought makes her stomach turn sour. Are they still together? Is he happy? Does he ever think of the girl he spent most of his life loving?
Her thumb hovers over the screen. Maybe she doesn't want to know the answers to those questions, but maybe she does. Maybe she has to know, has to stop driving herself half-crazy with questions and uncertainties and raw, all-consuming hope.
She presses the button, and the phone starts to ring.
He startles from sleep. Even now, six years since the pack (mostly) dispersed and his world became a little more normal, he doesn't sleep well. The smallest thing sets him off, a perpetual flight or fight response ready to kick in at a moment's notice.
There's a grumbling somewhere behind him, and he's quick to shoot out a hand to grab the phone from his nightstand before it can really wake her up. Stiles squints at the screen, and the name makes his chest do an unpleasant stutter in his chest.
He lurches from the bed. His feet get tangled up in the sheets and he stumbles, nearly leaving him sprawled across the bedroom floor. Just barely manages to pull himself together so he can slip through the bedroom door, thumb already sliding across the screen to accept the call.
"- Hello?"
His voice is everything she remembered, but better. Low and raspy with sleep (she outright ignores the thought that he's trying to be quiet to keep from waking Malia); soft and questioning just like she'd expected.
She nearly hangs up right then and there, too afraid of what this might mean - of what this might lead to. But at some point his voice became her favorite sound and she's missed it too much to do anything other than lose herself in it.
"Hey."
Her voice sounds like coming home. Like a warm summer's day, like the promise of tomorrow, like love. God, her voice has always sounded like love to him.
He stumbles for a beat too long, throat closing around all the things he wants to say. Why are you calling? It's been six years, Lydia. Six goddamn years since you walked out and never looked back.
But she's Lydia and he's Stiles and there's such a damn inevitability about everything they are and everything they've ever been.
So, instead, he swallows thickly and closes his eyes, hand closing around his mouth for just a moment longer.
"Is everything okay?"
Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know.
Yes, she's physically okay. Months have passed since banshee screams tore from her throat and she can't remember the last time a casual encounter ended in blood and tears. She's graduating with her Masters at the top of her class and she's well on her way to earning her PhD. She's stunning and brilliant and better than she's ever been.
Except no, she's not. She comes home exhausted day after day after day. She wakes up each morning and everything is wrong. The arms encircling her waist are too muscled and too tan. The hands that pull her closer aren't big and protective. The eyes that meet hers aren't filled with the purest love she's ever known.
It's not Stiles that welcomes her home each day, so no. Everything is not okay.
"Okay is a relative term."
He doesn't bother questioning her further. He earned a PhD in all things Lydia Martin somewhere around the fifth grade, and it wouldn't take a genius to pick up on the dips and cracks of her voice each time she speaks.
She's barely holding it together, and the thought makes his heart ache. He's spent the last six years convincing himself she's okay, she's happy. It was the one thought that kept him from calling, from hopping on a plane just to make her explain why. He's clung to that thought over and over again, but he was wrong.
She's not okay. She's not happy.
But then again, neither is he.
"Is that why you're calling me in the middle of the night?"
His voice drops impossibly lower, and something in her gut stirs to life. It's something she hasn't felt in six damn years; something no stranger has been able to replicate, no matter how many she took home at the end of the night.
She chooses not to respond. Not yet, anyway. Instead, brings the bottle of wine to her lips and takes a good, long drink. Her go-to form of liquid courage; the very same brand she chose to rely on six years ago when she needed an excuse to make a move.
Now, it becomes her excuse for honesty.
"It's been a long time."
His reply comes within an instant. "Six years." Tries to keep traces of accusation from his tone, but they weave their way into his words without his permission.
She winces. Another swig, another hard swallow. Another realization of how badly she fucked up. "Last I checked, phones work two ways."
His lips part with surprise. But is he surprised? Not really. It's so entirely Lydia to push away her mistakes in a halfhearted attempt at defense. He sighs, eyes fluttering closed as he moves to lean against his kitchen counter. "Look - if you're just going to turn this around on me, we might as well hang up now. We both know you never wanted me to call."
Her fingertips turn white pressed up against the bottle. For once, he's wrong. For once, he misread the signals. For once, he misunderstood everything she wanted to stay. "Do we know that?" Her tone is sharper than she intends - bitter. Angry. It takes her a moment to reel herself in, but when she does, regret weighs heavily on her tongue. "Did you - did you want to call?"
They're playing a dangerous game, and both Stiles and Lydia know it. His gaze flickers towards his closed bedroom door, all too aware his girlfriend is sleeping soundly on the other side. A good boyfriend would hang up. A good boyfriend would walk down that hallway and open that door. A good boyfriend would crawl into bed and pull her close; press a kiss to her cheek and fall asleep at her side.
But he's never claimed to be a good boyfriend.
"We both know the answer to that question, too."
His words lie heavily between them, and the silence that falls seems to stretch on forever. He can hear her breathing through the line, uneven and broken and scared. And even through the phone, all he wants is to reach out and comfort her. All he wants to do is make it better. Some habits die hard.
He's opening his mouth to retract the statement, to make this easy and claim he's moved on, when she says the only three words that could keep him hanging on. Three words he's been dying to hear since she walked out that door and never looked back.
"I've missed you."