come here/ come slowly to me/ i've been waiting, waiting patiently- (go slowly, Radiohead)
"Stiles Stilinki, the love of my life… What can I do for you handsome?" Kira says lightly, a wide smile playing on her lips.
Stiles can't help but grin back; Kira was, after all, his favorite lesbian in the entire world. "Kira, my love, my light…" he says dramatically, a whimsical tone to his voice. "Have I ever told you how much-"
"Cut the shit and tell me what you want, Stiles," Kira snorts, rolling her eyes. She could always see right through his bullshit.
He shrugs, cutting to the chase. "Dirt on Derek Hale," he says simply.
She cocks an eyebrow, "Last time I checked, you didn't need my help in that department." Kira closes her locker with a click.
"I mean new and more interesting dirt…" Stiles elaborates, shifting on the balls of his feet in subtle excitement. "I need to show Mr. Hale that you have to face the consequences of trying to fuck over Stiles Stilinki," he huffs. "So… what do you think?"
Kira smirks. "Well, what do you have in mind?" she asks.
"I was thinking of a tasty and ridiculously hot new freshman for Derek Hale to sink his teeth into," he says, already knowing the answer Kira's clever mind will come up with.
He knows he's got her reeled in when she says wickedly, "I think I may know just the person."
His thumb hovers over the contact flashing on the screen of his iPhone, his hand shaking, his breath shallow, and his nerves jumbled. His brows furrow as he continues to stare at the name on the screen. After all this time, he still hasn't erased the contact from his list… It's still stored away in the memory of his phone… in his speed dial.
It's been three years and he still has Kira's phone number etched in his brain—every single number still ready to roll off the tip of his tongue if asked—as well as in his phone.
He throws the phone on Lydia's bedside table with a thud, rubbing his forehead with his fingers, wiping away some of the sweat that has started rolling down onto his cheek from his brow.
He sighs as he hears Lydia turn the shower on. "You coming?" she yells softly from the bathroom.
He just sighs again and slowly pushes away the covers and gets up from the bed. He's really is going soft, isn't he?
"God, Stiles! You greedy bastard…" Lydia exclaims light-heartedly, pushing him away from the showerhead with a playful shove. "You do this every fucking time; you just take over all the hot water until I have none…I need to take a shower too, you know?"
He raises his eyebrow, a wicked glint in his eyes.
"Well, I did offer to hold you under the water with me," he says with a lopsided grin, wiping the water from his eyes. "But as I recall, you have this—ridiculous, I might add—rule about no hanky panky in the shower… So really, it's your own fault I got all the hot water," he finishes with a teasing shrug of his shoulder.
"Hanky panky…?" Lydia scoffs, laughing. "Jeez, Stiles, update your vocabulary… Come back to the present, please," she says sarcastically, closing her eyes slowly as she leans her head back into the warm water, combing her fingers through the tangles of her strawberry-blonde curls.
Stiles reaches for the bottle of shampoo that is always sitting on the edge of the bathtub, squeezes a big glob into the palm of his hand, and begins scrubbing it into his scalp. The smell of lavender intermixed with sunflowers is swirling around in the hot steam of the shower. The smell begins to fill up his nostrils in an almost intoxicating assault of his senses, making him feel calmer and more alive than he has in a while.
The smell of Lydia's body wash, shampoos, and conditioner always did have an odd way of setting him at ease when he began to feel the whole world caving in on him, although he'd never admit to that. All these lovely smells had been one of the reasons that he had been so drawn to Lydia all that time ago… It somehow reminded him of his mother.
"Stop it…" she says after he squeezes the third glob of shampoo in his hand, her fingers still running through her hair as she pops one eye open. "Before you use all of my shampoo too," she smiles knowingly at him, like she knows a secret about the deepest, well-hidden parts of him that he's not even privy to. On any normal day, that would unnerve him but he's feeling really compassionate today so he just gives her a warm smile in return.
"It's not like you can't buy more," he says simply, squeezing an extra amount of shampoo in his hand just to annoy her, but she just smiles back.
"Stiles…?" Lydia asks a few moments later, freshly showered, her damp hair cascading down her back in curly waves as she sits down in her expensive red velvet robe. He almost feels an odd affection for her as he watches her comb through the tangles in her hair, humming quietly and sweetly. She looks like an innocent and normal teenager… someone who he could see himself loving and spending the rest of his life with… not the raging, vindictive bitch that he knows she can be. It's almost peaceful to know that she hadn't been born a scamming leech like him.
"Yeah," he murmurs, water dripping from his hair onto his face as he puts on the clean Dickey slacks and gray flannel shirt that Lydia tends to have carelessly lying around in her bedroom on the off chance that he might actually like to spend more than fifty minutes in her presence.
He grabs a forgotten towel lying next to him and wipes some of the water off his face.
"Where did you get that bruise on your left hip from?" she asks seriously, as she continues to brush through her hair, her fingers working in tandem with the black comb. She has that odd look on her face again like she had the other day… a fine mixture of concern and curiosity swipes across her beautiful face, making her look wise and sincere.
"Practice," He says quickly, feeling generous enough to offer her that, even though he wants to roll his eyes … He usually just ignores her when she asks questions he doesn't want to answer. "Finstock's been riding us really hard all week for the game tomorrow."
"You've had that bruise for the last two weeks," she says back, glaring mildly. She sounds like she's genuinely taken aback back by his annoyance and his evasive answer. He does roll his eyes this time. One nice day and she reverts to a moon-eyed daft school girl looking for true and tender love. She's a lot more clever and glamorous than that; she's his equal in the art of manipulation and he's vaguely angered by her seeming stupidity. She supposed to be a genius, right?
He sighs before saying, "Forget it, Lydia…" He finishes tying his left shoe before looking at her with a sneer on his face. "Just stick to the things you know, huh? Shopping, money, and giving me head."
Her eyes widen slightly before her usual cold mask of indifference slips back onto her face and her closed off expression spurs him on. He knows now that whatever vile thing he says will be taken with a grain of salt and an equally sharp edged retort. He stands up, stalking over to her and looms over her, leaning into her space with a barely contained rage radiating off him.
"So… get on your knees, Martin, and do what you do best," he orders as he unzips the fly of his pants and stares at her with a scowl. "Suck my dick."
"Fucking jerk…" she spits venomously, shoving him violently away from her. A brief flash of hurt flickers across her blank face, disgust along with it, as she yanks her bedroom door open so hard that the door nearly comes unhinged.
"Get the fuck out!" she shouts as he already makes his way through the door before she tells him to. She slams the door behind him, the walls vibrating with her barely contained rage.
He just walks out of her house, slamming her front door behind him and revving out of her driveway, showing no respect for her neighbors.
He slams the door to his Jeep with loud bang in the quiet air of the cemetery, letting the evening breeze cool his hot face. He has no idea what compels him to come here anymore than he knows what had pushed him to suddenly scroll through his contacts list for Kira's number… He's just there, looking lost and confused, and seeking out of his comfort zone for something that he can't put a proper name to.
He slowly makes his way through the columns, rows of grave markers. Some are unmarked, only a wooden cross indicating that they had once existed and that someone had cared for them about them in their afterlife. Some only have poorly crafted gravestones, showing that they had been of lower class before they died, but they seemed to get more love than the big and flashy ones, like whoever had ever buried them came regularly and cleaned up their grave site, leaving flowers or rocks to show respect. Those graves looked like they continued to get the same kind of attention that his mother's grave had once gotten.
But his grave he stops at looks like people have gone out their way to desecrate it. Obscenities have been left in permanent marker and with a heavy hand, some craved with a knife. The flowers that have been left there are dying, wilting away to nothing, and the ground looks greatly disturbed by either grave robbers or anger townies who will never forget what he had done that day three long years ago.
'Go to hell, Scott McCall!' is the one insult that stood out amongst the others to Stiles, written in faded red marker, the words scribbled violently over the 'beloved son' part of his gravestone. Stiles feels like crying, shouting at the top of his lungs at the people who ruined this grave. Scott doesn't deserve what they're still dishing out about him…
Stiles does. He knows the trust, knows he pushed Scott to the brink of his sanity and for that he deserves it all…But he does nothing; says nothing.
He just goes back to his jeep, gets the cleaning products that he has stored in the trunk of his car, and goes about scrubbing off the harsh words… like he does whenever he visits Scott McCall's grave.
"Claudia…" His father mumbles drunkenly when Stiles walks through the front door of his house a few hours later. His father is slumped across the expensive La-Z-Boy recliner he favors so much, his equally expensive brand of beer leaking droplets of the liquid from the bottle dangling from his hand onto the shaggy rug that his mother had bought when he was younger.
"No… Dad, it's me," Stiles says when his dad tries to get up and greet him like he would back when his mother was alive. "It's Stiles," he adds a few moments later when his dad blinks at him, confused by the tone of voice he's using.
Stiles sighs, at his father's dumb, drunk expression… He's in no mood to appease his father's drunken confusion tonight. If he wants hallucinate about his dead wife, than let him, but he's doing it in his bedroom. Stiles is too tired to look after his father tonight.
"Come on, old man…" He puts his hands underneath his dad's armpits and pulls him upright, beginning to head toward his dad's bedroom. "Time for bed."
"I won big today, love," he slurs, wobbling a little before making himself stand straight again. "It's not big enough to buy you anything, sweetheart… but we'll be able to pay some of the bills." He finishes by stroking Stiles' cheek lovingly with his dry hands… something he'd never do if he was sober.
Stiles just pushes his dad through the door of his bedroom and onto the king sized bed. "How much did you lose?" he snaps a moment later, taking off the old man's Doc Martens and loosening the man's work tie.
"Not much," his dad says timidly, "Not anything like last time anyway, hon." He smiles at Stiles before passing out cold.
Stiles shakes his head, not like last time, running through his head. He digs in his father's pockets for the money and gambling stub showing his lost wages. The pale stub reads five thousand dollars and Stiles sighs in relief.
No, it was nothing like last time.
TBC...
