A/N: Please note that rating has changed to M to reflect content. Happy Labor Day and happy reading ;)
Splash.
Splash.
Lydia scans the kitchen, looking for a leaking pipe, a spilled glass of water, a running coffee pot, but there's nothing there to account for the noise, a steady splish-splash, like a heavy object being thrown into a pool.
"Lydia? Are you okay?" Stiles sidles up next to her against the kitchen counter. "You've been drying the same plate for five minutes."
"Oh." She looks down at her hands; she's holding her plate in her left hand while the right mechanically wipes a dishtowel back and forth across it. "Do you hear that?"
Stiles frowns. "Hear what?"
She tilts her head, listens to the steady sound of running water. "You really don't hear it?"
Stiles takes the plate gently from her hands and places it in the dishwater. "What do you hear?"
She leans down and examines the tap but nothing's coming out of the pipe, not a drop. "Nothing. Sorry, never mind."
"Hey." Warm hands curl around her hips and turn her around so she's facing him. "Talk to me."
Lydia leans back against the edge of the sink, spreading her legs so Stiles can step between them, gives him a reassuring smile. "I'm fine."
One of his hands comes down to the counter and the other snakes around her waist and up to the back of her neck. "You sure?"
His lips are only inches away from hers, she can see a little smear of syrup in the corner of his mouth, his hair still damp from his morning shower. Lydia likes him like this, messy and sweet and hers for the taking.
"I told you," she says slowly, enunciating each word as his eyes follow every flick and curve of her tongue as she talks. "I'm okay."
He shifts his weight a little closer and with the slightest tilt of her hips he's right up against her, the thin cotton of his sweatpants brushing her bare thighs. His eyes flick down to hers and hold contact for a second, an silent agreement being made, and all it takes is the gentle pressure of Stiles' hand on the back of her neck to bring her lips to his in a kiss. It's a slow gentle thing, soft pressure against her lips and his thumb running over her vertebrae.
Lydia sighs into the kiss; Stiles tastes like maple syrup from the pancakes he made them for breakfast and coffee, rich and bittersweet. Her tongue flicks into that corner of his mouth and licks the syrup off, pulling her lips away from his to make a show of licking her own mouth clean.
"Jesus,"Stiles breathes, his hand squeezing her neck a little, just enough to make her knees shake. "You're so - you don't even know Lydia. I just wanna - I wanna -"
The thought gets abandoned as his mouth crashes back against her, rougher than before, coaxing her mouth open so he can slide his tongue against hers, flicking and tasting and holy shit of course Stiles is a genius at making out. The guy has an oral fixation like she's never seen, constantly sticking things into his mouth and sucking, his tongue curling obscenely around pens and straws and Red Vines.
She plunges her fingers into his hair and pulls, and Stiles gasps sharply, hips stuttering against her.
"Oh god," he groans. "Oh god, Scott's gonna be home from his study group soon."
"How much time do we have?"
Stiles glances down at his phone on the counter and pouts. "Twelve minutes if he walks slow."
Lydia grins slyly. "I can work with that." She holds up one of her hands to him, palm out, while using her free hand to pull his sweatpants down over his hips. "Lick."
Stiles' eyes go comically wide. "Seriously?"
"Last night you said anytime," she reminds him casually. "But if you don't-"
"Nope, no, I said anytime, I definitely said anytime," he says in a rush, and licks from the bottom of her palm up to her middle finger, swirling his tongue around the tip with an impish look on his face.
"Oh you think you're just so cute," she mocks, and sticks her hand under the waistband of his boxer briefs to wrap her hand around him.
"Holy shit, holy shit," he blurts out, rocking into her hand, perfectly hard for her already.
Lydia pulls out all her best tricks, plays with her grip, pulling him hard and then soft, twisting her hand over the head and sliding back to the base as Stiles pants, staring down at him in her hand like he can't believe she's even touching him, let alone jacking him off in their kitchen at eleven in the morning.
Stiles moans pitifully. "This is gonna be over so fast."
"Kind of the point," she reminds him, her hand falling into a steady rhythm of glide, twist, pump.
"Wanted to impress you," he admits sheepishly, his hands clutching at her shoulders, her waist, constantly moving to the rhythm of the drag of her hand.
"You've already impressed me," she murmurs, and turns her head to kiss his jaw. "I don't need you to do anything okay? Just enjoy."
She says it because she doesn't want to be like that, not with Stiles, some haughty girl on a pedestal allowing him to attempt to prove his worth. She remembers what it was like with Jackson and then Aiden; always a challenge, a duel for power.
But she's not that girl anymore.
She wants this: sleepy morning sex, sunlight coming in through the windows and drenching her skin, the warmth of Stiles' familiar body curved over her, the feel of him heavy and full in her hand.
"Lydia," he chokes out, his head dropping to her shoulder. "Fuck, you feel so good."
Her free hand curves around his hip, fingers teasing around that shallow contoured dip of muscle. "Of course it feels good," she says softly. "It's you and me."
"Do you remember..." Stiles sounds wrecked, his wet mouth pressed against her collarbone. "What I said...at the rink? We went-"
"Skating," she murmurs. "And you said, sometimes things that you wouldn't think would be a good combination end up being a perfect combination."
"Like two people," he grits out. He starts to shiver a little, breath hot against her skin.
"Like you and I," she whispers. "Perfect."
"Oh my god," Stiles gasps, does a full body shudder and spills over her fist.
Lydia reaches behind herself and finds a hand towel, uses it to clean Stiles off while he recovers, breathing against her neck, shell shocked.
And then he glances down at his phone and jumps, looking horrified. "Four minutes! We have four minutes! Oh my god, Scott is going to kill us!"
Stiles runs around the apartment throwing open all the windows while Lydia scrubs her hands with hot water and soap, and if Scott can smell it when he comes home three minutes later he either doesn't notice or he's too polite to say anything.
/
Lydia gets called into the coffee shop to work an emergency closing shift that afternoon; one of their baristas has the flu and the computer system crashed. She spends her entire shift behind the register doing all the math by hand, a slow steady ache developing in the back of her neck as she bends over the counter, pencil flying over a pad of paper, feeling the heat of her customers' glares on the back of her neck as they wait for her to write down all their credit card information so she can run their bill.
Everything sounds louder than usual, the hiss of the coffeemaker ringing in her ears, jumping every time she hears water hit the basin of the sink. She feels twitchy, which bothers her because she's always been able to focus, especially when all she's doing is rudimentary math.
Stiles texts her when she's on the last hour of her shift, he's picking up Thai for dinner from a little hole in the wall place a few blocks away from the coffee shop and wants to know what she wants. She texts him back under the counter and they agree to meet there when she's done Lydia's never been so relieved to leave at the end of her shift, all the sounds are grating at her: chairs being flipped over, dishes clanking in trays as they get bussed, all that splashing water.
The temperature has dropped now that the sun's gone down. Lydia pauses on the sidewalk to button her cardigan, regretting not bringing a jacket. The temperature shift in San Francisco is a little more extreme than Beacon Hills and she feels a momentary longing for her old green pea coat, abandoned in her mother's coat closet when she left for Stanford.
She turns hard left in the direction of the Thai place to meet Stiles and the heel of her ankle boot sinks into mud, sending her flying off balance and hissing in irritation. She finally gets her boot unstuck and squints in the darkness, when did it get so dark?
She turns in a slow circle, the rushing in her ears reaching a fever pitch.
Trees, trees, everywhere. A light mist of fog obscuring everything, like she's been dropped into a shadow world, very quiet except for the wind against the leaves, branches crackling, and far away but definitely distinct - water.
Lydia's in the Presido.
For a moment she just stands there, shocked, heart hammering in her chest as she tries to breathe. And then her hands fly to her purse, thank god, her phone is right there in the inside pocket. She pulls it out and swears out loud.
No signal.
She has seven panicked texts from Scott and Stiles combined and fourteen missed calls.
It's 4:42 am.
"Okay," she whispers to herself. "Okay. What do you do when you get lost in a forest?"
Follow the sun. Find a body of water. Listen for the sound of cars.
All she can hear is water but she can't figure out which direction it's coming from.
Her throat tightens with the threat of unshed tears. She knows Scott and Stiles must be looking for her but the Presido is huge and she realizes her boots and calves are soaked in mud and the hem of her dress is wet. If she walked through water it'll be harder for Scott to track her scent.
She closes her eyes against the sensation of vertigo, breathe shallowly through her nose. Help, she thinks desperately. Please, help.
Her eyes snap open when she hears the noise, something whistling through the air, and turns her head to see an arrow embedded in the trunk of a tree only a few inches to her right.
Lydia turns her head slowly, following the trajectory of the arrow and stands very still, afraid to move or blink when she sees it, a vision, maybe one hundred yards away:
A girl, with long dark hair falling in loose curls around her shoulders, leather riding boots, a bow slung over her shoulder.
Lydia's tears spill over and she wipes them away with a shaking hand. "Allison?"
Allison jerks her head in the direction of some trees and starts to walk, quickly blurring into the fog.
"Wait!" Lydia takes off running, refusing to take her eyes off the other girl's back. "Allison, wait!"
Lydia follows after her, slipping in the damp earth to keep up with Allison. She doesn't look back at Lydia, marching between trees at a clipped pace and forcing Lydia to chase after her.
Lydia's freezing, wind making her eyes tear up and her ears ache as she runs. The toe of her boot catches on a root of a tree and she goes flying, landing on her hands and knees in the dirt. Lydia scrambles back up, ignoring the pain so she doesn't lose Allison, who's fifty paces away and waiting for Lydia to start walking again, her face as pale and mysterious as the moon.
She doesn't let Lydia catch up to her but she doesn't drift away either. She marches them through the trees with all the confidence of an Argent: head held high, spine straight, cool dispassionate glances back at Lydia to make sure she's still behind her.
They walk and they walk and Allison never says a word, the only sounds Lydia hears are the chitter of birds, the dirt squishing beneath her boots and closer and closer, water.
Allison gets to a break in the tree line and waits. Lydia hurries to meet her, feeling a strain in the back of her throat and her chest, tripping over rocks and brambles to reach Allison, who's watching her calmly, a silent guide, and when Lydia finally catches up Allison steps a few paces forward, and turns back and actually winks.
They've reached the ocean.
The heels of Lydia's boots sink into cool damp sand, the water almost black in the early pre-dawn light. Down the beach to her right is the Golden Gate Bridge and hope rises within her like a balloon; Allison has brought her to a landmark, a safe base.
She turns her head to thank Allison but she's gone; Lydia is alone on the beach, shivering cold, eyes scanning the tree line for the ghost of her best friend. She feels nauseous, something cold and slippery in the back of her throat and then she's falling on her knees, screaming as she sees a black bag big enough to hold a body get hurled from the bridge into the water and land with a sick heavy splash.
Lydia keels over, face pressed into the wet sand.
She doesn't know how long she lays there, knees curled to her chest, grains of sand on her lips, but eventually, when the first rays of sun rise in the east and start burning up the fog, she hears the echo of her own name.
She lifts her head to see Scott burst from the tree line, running, sand flying beneath his sneakers. He skids to a stop in front of her, sinking down to his knees, looking frantic and scared.
"Are you hurt?" he demands, one of his hands skimming her shoulders, her back, her neck, her head. Injury check. "Lydia, I need you to tell me if anything hurts."
"I saw it," she croaks out. "I saw it, Scott."
Scott's hand stills on her forearm, thin black snakes of pain winding up to his shoulder. "What did you see, Lydia?"
Tears burn her eyes. "It's in the water."
His voice is very soft, like he's talking to a trauma victim. "What's in the water?"
There's the sound of another set of footprints and then Stiles's familiar wheeze as he jogs down the beach, looking pale and out of breath, tripping over his own two feet to collapse next to her and Scott.
"Are you okay?" he gasps, and chokes, turns his head to hack something up. "Oh my god, I really need to go running more so I can keep up with Scott, Jesus Lydia, if you don't start talking in the next ten seconds I cannot guarantee that I won't freak out, we've been looking for you all night, what the hell, where have you been?"
She blinks at him while Scott looks stunned, like he can't believe Stiles' ability to string that many consecutive sentences together with just one breath.
She takes a breath, her lungs burning as they fill with cold air, and uses Scott's hand on her arm to leverage herself to sit up. "There's a body bag in the water."
Stiles blinks very quickly at her. "There's a body bag in the water?"
She nods and it's enough to throw off her equilibrium, sending her tipping over into Scott, who curls his arms protectively around her. "I saw it get thrown over the bridge."
Scott's rubbing both of her arms and it kind of hurts, the numbness in her hands protesting. "She's really cold," he says to Stiles. "We need to leave."
Stiles blinks at them and looks out to the water, like he might be able to see the body. Lydia shudders, a few stray tears leaking out the corners of her eyes. She curls into Scott, the heat of his skin shocking under the damp fabric of her dress.
"Stiles, we need to go, now," Scott snaps. "Lydia, I'm going to carry you back to the car, okay?"
She nods in agreement, twisting her arms around so Scott can peel her sweater from her damp skin. "God you're soaking wet, did you fall in a stream or something?"
"I don't know," she mumbles, hissing when she feels him haul her up in a front piggyback, his skin so warm against hers that in burns.
They walk back into the trees, Stiles trailing a few feet behind them, on his phone to call in an anonymous tip to SFPD.
"I couldn't get a signal," she mumbles, right up against Scott's neck. "I couldn't call."
"It's okay." He sounds tired and she remembers what Stiles' said, that they've been out all night looking for her. "You just scared us."
"Me too," she admits, and lets her eyes drift shut, falls into a half sleep as Scott and Stiles walk through the Presido and back to the car.
The city is still half asleep, no traffic yet, too early, so they get home quickly, Lydia getting transferred to Stiles' arms so Scott can run ahead and unlock the door like she's a small child being passed back and forth between them. Exhaustion is pulling at her, Stiles' hands the only thing keeping her awake, guiding her into the bathroom and shutting the door behind them.
He puts her down on the edge of the bathtub, leaning over her to turn the shower on. "You need to warm up, okay? You probably have fucking hypothermia."
He never stops moving, checking the water temperature, digging through towels, unzipping the back of her dress so he can pull it over her head and toss it into the hamper, leaving her shivering in a bra and panties. His hands ghost over her hair, her bare shoulders, back into the water to test the temperature.
"Okay, I think that should be good," he assesses, threading their fingers together to pull her up. "Get in, okay?"
She eyes the falling spray, remembers how the water splashed when the body hit the surface, shame flooding her when she realizes she's been hearing it all goddamn day and didn't put it together, ignored all the signs until it was too late.
Another girl is dead.
"Hey." Stiles' voice is gentle. "Are you okay?"
She crosses her arms over her chest, looks down at her feet, her muddy legs. "I don't feel good," she whispers. "I'm so cold."
Stiles kisses her forehead and the small kindness makes her want to cry. "Get in please. It'll make you feel better, you'll feel better when you're warm, promise."
She unhooks her bra and flings it vaguely in the direction of the hamper and steps out of her panties. Stiles is looking resolutely away, cheeks flushed.
"What?" she says, managing to inject a bit of attitude into her voice. "It's not like you've never seen me naked."
"Extenuating circumstances," he mutters, but he helps her climb into the shower on shaking legs, shuts the curtain behind her.
She stands under the spray, hot water sluicing through her hair, rolling down her front and back as she breathes in the stream. Lets her tears mix in with the water because she was too late, again, because there's another girl dead in a bag and Lydia is useless, nothing but a faulty alarm system.
She can't help it when the sobs try to break free from her chest, one fisted hand pressed against her lips as the wave of her failure rains down on her. Another girl is dead because she couldn't put the pieces together, couldn't stop it in time.
All she can do is bear witness. This is who she is, this is the curse of the banshee: she lives on the cruel edge of death's knife and is condemned to watch as girls are flung over it.
A wail tears out of her throat and suddenly Stiles is right there, fully clothed in the shower, pulling her to his chest and holding her tightly against him.
"Shh, it's okay, you're okay," he murmurs. "I've got you."
"I couldn't stop it," she confesses. "Stiles, I couldn't stop it, all I did was watch it go over. I just watched."
He's got one broad hand spread across the small of her back, the other one curled around her neck. "It's not your job to stop it."
"It's not fair," she cries. "It's not fair." The rage comes out of nowhere, flowing through her veins, and she wants to break something, she wants to shatter glass and smash concrete, she wants to go back in time and rip Peter's heart out of his chest because he did this to her, made her into this, and it's not fucking fair.
She doesn't even realize that's she's hitting Stiles, weak slaps and punches uselessly glancing off him until he gets her arms pinned against her own chest, his hand tight against her wrists. All the fight goes out of her, she sags against him, spent.
"I know, Lydia," he's whispering. "I'm right here, it's okay. It's not your fault."
She fists her hands in his wet shirt, the words she used to whisper when she was locked up in Eichen coming back to her. They're all going to die.
"I can't do this," she whispers. "Stiles, I can't do this, I don't want to do this anymore."
"Lydia-"
"I can't, I can't, please, Stiles, I can't." She doesn't even know what she's asking of him, all she knows is that she's done, she can't do this anymore, cannot imagine the rest of her life like this.
"Okay." Stiles says quietly. "It's going to be okay."
He turns the water off, leads Lydia out of the shower and wraps her up in a thick towel before shucking off his wet clothes and drying off. He walks her to his bedroom, pulls the covers back and lays her down, slides the towel out from under her and pulls the blanket up to her chest.
She blinks heavily, watches him leave with the wet towels and come back a minute later, wearing only a pair of boxer briefs. Stiles crawls into the bed and there's a warm hand on her hip, urging her to roll on her side and then she feels him, curling around her from behind, blanketing her in warmth.
One of his hands drifts low on her stomach, a steady low pulse of heat, the other high on her ribs, right under the fall of her breasts.
"Go to sleep," he tells her. "You'll feel better when you wake up."
"I'm sorry." Lydia whispers. "I'm sorry I keep doing this to you."
His arms tighten around her. "Don't you ever apologize for who you are. Not to me."
Her breath hitches. "Stiles?"
He tucks her head under his chin, throws one leg over her hip to get her in a full body wrap. "Yeah Lyds?"
She feels more grounded now, the weight of him holding her down against the mattress, his body heat sinking into her skin. It's a strange feeling, like she's bottomed out, has shed every piece of her that wasn't really her: all her vanity, her pride, her cold shell, has been stripped bare until there's nothing left but skin and bone.
And her heart, insistently beating against the cage of her ribs, demanding nothing but the truth. "I'm in love with you." The words leave her mouth like a confession, hopeful butterfly wings fluttering in her chest.
He twists a little to lean over her, his face only inches away, his eyes glowing gold in the early morning light. "You don't have to say it if you-"
She reaches up to cover his lips with her index finger. "I'm saying it because it's true."
He's giving her The Look, like that time he came in to find her dying in a pool of her own blood, Kira's hands drenched and pushing down on her stomach. Like he really would go out of his mind if she left him, like every hope and dream he has is tied to the living beat of her heart.
He bends down, his lips brushing over hers in a ghost of a kiss. "You know, I was fully prepared to wait another five years for that."
"You're supposed to say you love me too," she reprimands sleepily.
He drops back down against his pillow, nosing at her hair. "I love you too. I had a plan, you know. A very extensive plan."
"A plan?" She feels a little punch drunk, tired and worn out and lit up all at once.
"To get you to love me back."
"You didn't need a plan," she murmurs. "I just wasn't ready yet."
"I know." Soft lips on the top of her head, strong arms holding her against a muscled chest. "I got good at waiting. I would've waited forever for you, you know?"
She lets her eyes fall shut, can feel sleep pulling her down into the darkness. "No more waiting."
Stiles' fingers, trailing up and down her arms, dragging her deeper under, and its so good, to let it go, to just be honest. "Okay." His voice is honey sweet and she's already half asleep, lulled by the repetitive motion of his touch. "No more waiting."
