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"Hey Danny? 'Nother weird question for you," Stiles jogged up to the lacrosse goalie in the middle of a drill during practice Monday morning. The taller boy just rolled his eyes.
"What's the deal, Stilinski?"
"You know that girl, from the party? Did you happen to catch her name?"
Danny's jaw would have dropped if he were prone to such reactions. Instead his half-squinted expression simply asked, seriously?, yet the look spoke volumes in Stiles' mind.
"You know what, never mind!" Stiles attempted a fancy spin move to distract the goalie with zero success. He could hear Finstock berating him before he was even half-way back to the end of the line.
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Mr. Harris wasn't torturing Stiles for once, but was fully focused on chewing out one of the few AP freshmen in their chemistry class. He'd already separated McCall and Stilinksi, though, so Stiles was passing notes through Lydia, who glowered every time a page slid across the table. He'd had another night of dreamless sleep and was beginning to lean toward the temporary-insanity-with-a-side-of-fetish-attack explanation. But Scott said he still smelled off, and Isaac had obviously sniffed him from across the hall that morning.
"Stiles, flirt on your own time," Lydia hissed as she refused to pass along another note.
"Come on, Lydia," Stiles protested, one eye on the lookout for Mr. Harris' attention.
"No."
"Miss Martin! Mr. Stilinski! Am I going to have to move you a second time?" Stiles winced and Lydia groaned at the sound of Mr. Harris's peeved voice. "Perhaps you'd like to continue your conversation in detention?"
"Really, Mr. Harris, that's not necessary," Lydia simpered. "I'm so done with him."
Harris briefly smirked back before slapping down pink detention slips in front of each of them.
Lydia groaned at their teacher's back as he walked away. Her scowl fell on Stiles and her lips mouthed words that looked suspiciously like I hate you. Stiles rolled his eyes back.
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Harris had left Lydia and Stiles alone in the chemistry lab, practically daring them to get into some further form of trouble before he returned. Lydia refused to acknowledge Stiles, flipping her strawberry blonde hair over her shoulder to create a barrier between them while she undertook her homework.
Which took practically no time at all. Stiles was 99% certain that she'd had her valedictorian speech prepared since freshman year. He almost felt guilty that he was the cause of probably her only detention, ever. Almost.
With nothing left to do, Lydia carefully repacked her bag, touched up her lip gloss, and updated all of her Words With Friends matches from her cell phone before boredom and curiosity finally took control.
"What the fuck are you guys up to, anyway?" Lydia demanded.
"We're trying to figure out what's wrong with me, and if I've been infected with something."
"What? You're not turning into a furry freak, too, are you?" she scoffed.
Stiles quirked an eyebrow at her. "No. You don't know about the whole-" Stiles gestured manically around himself - "'Stiles got bit by a raver chick' thing?"
"The whole what now?" She gave him a dubious look and a once-over.
He sighed. "I went to this rave with Danny?" His stress turned it into a question. Stiles massaged the back of his neck in a failed effort to relieve his feeling of idiocy. "And I, like, hooked up with this chick," he could feel the blush rising on his cheeks. "and I guess she bit me. I didn't even notice until Scott and Derek said I smelled funny, but..."
He was in disbelief that he was actually telling Lydia all this, but she was in on a lot of the pack's secrets these days, so it really wasn't any different. He lifted his eyes from his focus on a floor tile and met Lydia's incredulous expression.
"Stiles, you're an idiot."
"I know, Lydia." Her expression shifted from scorn to something like a pensive determination.
"What was she?"
"I don't know. Just a girl, as far as I can tell."
"So, you smelled funny because you made out with some girl. What's the big deal? Aside from you making contact with a female." She threw in a harsh barb for good measure.
"The big deal is, apparently, I still smell wrong to the pack. And the bite, once I noticed it, started speed-healing more like a wolf. And how did Allison not tell you all of this?" Stiles' tone was suddenly accusatory. Lydia just shrugged and frowned.
"She doesn't tell me everything. I think she thinks it'll protect me. Like I can't take care of myself."
Stiles rolled his eyes. Immune or no, Lydia – and everyone else in Beacon Hills, for that matter – was still in danger from the myriad other horrors lurking around Northern California.
"Besides, you know the pack doesn't trust me. Derek doesn't trust me. So if Allison knows, Scott probably made her promise not to pass it on."
Stiles hadn't considered that. Maybe he shouldn't have been talking to Lydia about it after all. He didn't want to give the Alpha any more reasons to get in his face.
Stiles' uncertainty was quickly assuaged.
"Relax. Derek's not going to find out about this little conversation." Stiles sighed. "Probably," Lydia added as an afterthought.
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When Harris returned to dismiss them, smelling only faintly of cigarettes, Lydia had surprisingly offered to go over the list of "what we know" with Stiles for a little reassurance. She easily waved away her boy-toy of the moment, who didn't look pleased but didn't argue either, and followed Stiles out to the picnic tables behind the high school gym.
"So, freaky werewolf healing without the werewolf transformation." Lydia listed healing in her notebook in purple ink.
"Check," Stiles confirmed.
"The wolves say you smell weird." She scrunched up her nose and listed smells on the next line.
"Check."
"And all this came after you kissed a girl at a rave." She listed bitten by raver with the other two entries.
Stiles didn't like Lydia's tone of voice with that last one. "Check," he confirmed begrudgingly.
"What else? Anything?"
Stiles fidgeted with the loose laces of his lacrosse stick. He was grateful that Lydia had offered to help, but he was beginning to question his decision to take her up on the offer. Again. What the hell.
"I've also been having these weird dreams. Recurring dreams."
Lydia penned in dreams and hesitated.
"What kind of dreams?" Stiles could feel Lydia's appraising gaze on the side of his face. He fidgeted some more.
"There's this girl, and I'm in the desert, and she's got this flaming sword. And sometimes she kisses me..."
"You're just dreaming about the raver girl, aren't you," Lydia sighed.
"No, no," he insisted. "At first I thought they were the same, but... the dreams started before I went to the desert with Danny."
"Oh."
It grew quiet. Stiles hazarded a glance in her direction, but Lydia's expression had fallen. She looked preoccupied, as if she were wrestling conflicting thoughts in her head, so Stiles continued.
"I mean, after I hooked up with her, I was sure it was the same girl. But then I had another dream right after, and they were definitely different. I feel like she was trying to tell me something. It felt so vivid, even though it was a dream."
Lydia scrawled prophetic(?) in front of dreams.
"What do you mean 'vivid'? What did it feel like?" Lydia looked concerned as she asked.
"I dunno. It felt real. Like, even though this girl carries around a sword, and there was a desert in my bedroom, when she put her hands on me it actually felt like someone was there. Like I was interacting with a real person, in real life, and not a dream."
Lydia's cheeks had paled considerably given her generally flawless complexion. It worried Stiles, and his fidgeting increased.
"Lydia?" he hazarded. She looked up at him, but her gaze wasn't seeing him at all.
"That's what it was like when..." she trailed off, voice low. "That's how it was when Peter..."
"Oh. Oh my god! Lydia, I'm sorry, I'd totally forgotten." Stiles tried to apologize, wanted to comfort her for bringing up something that would remind her of how the former Alpha had used her. But what could he do?
He took her hand in his two. That seemed to bring Lydia out of her memories.
She looked down at their hands together over her notebook, then up to Stiles' face. She pulled her hand away, and Stiles snapped back sheepishly.
"It's okay. I'm over it," she began to insist. "I just wonder if that's what your raver dream girl is."
"An evil, manipulative-vengeful-undead, former-Alpha wolf?" Stiles questioned uncomprehendingly, stringing his adjectives together in a hideous mouthful.
"No," Lydia huffed. "Just dead."
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A/N: Thank you for reading!