A/N- No copyright infringement intended! All characters belong to MTV and the creators of Teen Wolf (Thank you, Jeff Davis!)
Stiles dragged his feet up the stairs of his house carrying his his heavy backpack and heavy heart. His head was pounding, probably due to the lack of sleep. Stopping outside his door with his hand on the knob, he could hear the sound of a pen being tapped repeatedly from inside his room. He turned the knob and opened the door, standing quietly in the entryway. Malia sat on his bed, legs folded and textbook in lap. She was vigorously tapping one of her many highlighters against a calculus textbook with a furrowed brow. Stiles felt his mouth quirk up into a grin in spite of himself.
"Hey," he greeted her quietly, standing frozen in the doorway.
"Hey!" Malia responded, closing the textbook and tossing it aside as if it was useless to her. Stiles thought she would agree it probably was. Still sitting in the center of his bed, she smiled at him.
"You look tired," she observed. "And you didn't sleep last night. I could feel you stirring for hours."
Stiles moved from the door and sat down on the edge of his bed with her. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you up."
"What's wrong? You never make eye contact with me when something is wrong. And your pulse quickened when you sat down," she stated her observations.
"No, it's nothing. Just tired," he promised, leaning his elbows on his knees and placing his head in his hand to try and wipe the exhaustion from his eyes.
"Are you sure? It seems like more."
"I'm sure. I just haven't been able to turn my mind of long enough to sleep. There's a lot going on with the whole gang of evil doctors creating chimeras, murdering people, and all."
"Did you figure out something else? Something bad?" Malia questioned, fear creeping into her voice.
"No, no nothing else," Stiles reassured. Nothing about the Dread Doctors at least.
"Well, if nothing is going on," she paused and turned to him with raised eyebrows to check that this was indeed the case, and he nodded his head in confirmation. "Then do you want to help me study?"
"Are you sure you want my help with calculus? You know you'd probably be better off asking-" his voice caught on her name. He swallowed and finished, "Lydia."
"You might be right. We could always not study," Malia said with a smirk, getting up from her spot in the center of the bed and settling in next to Stiles at the edge of the mattress. She reached a hand around and placed it on his cheek to turn his face to hers for a kiss. Stiles froze. His earlier decision came back to him, he was determined to make things work with Malia. Stiles wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned in to kiss her. He felt the corners of Malia's mouth curve up into a smile as he began to respond more enthusiastically to her advance. Slowly they lowered onto the bed so that Malia's back was flat against the comforter and Stiles was leaning over her, propped up mostly on his side.
He was trying. Stiles was trying to shut his mind off and just give in to the comfort and goodness of their physical connection. He prodded his brain and flooded his mind with memories of the amazing times he and Malia had shared. It began to work, and he closed his eyes, returning Malia's kiss. Their lips moved together and Stiles ran a hand up Malia's back. She arched her frame so that there was no space between them. He wound a hand in her chestnut hair, keeping her face secured to his. For a minute he felt better; then he remembered the gleam of strawberry blonde hair in the sun, and he sighed as he pulled away.
Giving up her up is going to be harder than I thought, he groaned internally.
Hours later, Stiles sat alone at a table in the library of the school once again. However, now he was very much awake. In front of him sat his photocopied packet of "The Dread Doctors" book. He stared at it, torn between wanting to read it and find out what they may have done with him and staying blissfully unaware of such knowledge. After a period of time long enough for him to bore holes through the paper with his fixated gaze, he exhaled shakily and picked it up.
"I mean how much worse could it really get?" he asked himself aloud with a hint of sarcasm.
Just as he flipped open the cover and started scanning the first page, he heard a crash. It was late and no one else should have been in the library but him or one of his friends. A minute ago he was sure he was alone, but evidently he was wrong. He found himself wishing he had grabbed that baseball bat he considered taking as he left the house. Because that definitely would have made me unstoppable, he thought to himself sardonically.
Standing up, he shut his book and looked all around the room. Stiles couldn't see anyone, yet the hairs on the back of his neck still stood raised. He sat back down slowly, thinking that maybe a book somewhere had just fallen off of a shelf or something else similarly harmless.
Then he heard Lydia's piercing shriek echo off of every wall in the library and every corner of his mind. Stiles jumped up from his chair so quickly that the force of his movement knocked the piece of furniture over on the tiled ground. He took off running towards the row of bookshelves from where her cry had come. He was running so fast that he ran past her and had to grab the next bookshelf in order to bring himself to a halt so that he could turn around to reach her.
Lydia sat on her knees in the center of the non-fiction aisle. Books from the surrounding shelves were crashed down in piles, fanning out from where she sat in the midst of the chaos. With glazed eyes, she stared straight ahead, completely unaware of Stiles's presence. Tears streamed left tracks down her flushed cheeks. It seemed to Stiles that her whole body was shaking slightly.
"Lydia," Stiles murmured frantically, crouching in front of her. He waved a hand in front of her vacant face. Nothing.
"Lydia!" he said more loudly, reaching a hand out and placing it on her shoulder to give it a gentle shake.
It was like she had been burned by his touch. Lydia gasped violently and fell forward to her hands and knees, taking ragged breaths.
"Stiles?" she asked quietly, not looking up.
"Yeah, yeah Lydia it's me. Are you hurt?"
"No, no, no, no…" she mumbled in a panic.
"Lydia what's wrong? What is it? What did you see?" he asked her.
"Not you Sitles. Please anyone but you!" she exclaimed distraughtly.
"What's going on?" he begged, reaching a hand to gently rub her back in soothing circles.
"They said the person who found me would be next Stiles. And that's you, of course. Stiles," she said, grabbing him by the shoulders, "You're in serious danger."