"Try again."
Stiles closes his eyes, memories swirling behind them. He thinks of the motel room, the bed, the way it smelled. Like old sweat and stale cigarette smoke, and a hint of Lydia's lavender shampoo. The way it felt, the sheets rough and itchy against his arms, his legs, the contrast of Lydia's soft skin where it touches his. He tries not to let that distract him. With every ounce of focus within him, he imagines them there, back when they should be. He concentrates so hard that his head starts to pound, the picture going black around the edges, until-
"Wait, Stiles, stop." The worry in Lydia's voice pulls him back to the present, the living room of their apartment in San Francisco, and he blinks.
"What?"
"Your"- she spins on her heel, grabbing a box of tissues from the desk beside them. "Your nose is bleeding."
Now that she mentions it, he can taste copper at the back of his throat, feel the sickly slow drip. Making a face, he takes a tissue, pressing it to his nose.
"So, that went well," he mutters darkly, wincing when his own voice sends a wave of pain through his skull. His voice is thick, distorted by what is quickly becoming an uncontrollable nosebleed. Lydia's face appears directly in front of him, eyes wide with concern.
"Are you okay?"
He shrugs.
"It's just a nosebleed." But there's something in her expression that's making him uncomfortable, a familiar sliver of fear. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. "What?"
And then her eyes go cloudy, a million miles away, and he knows.
"It's okay," he says softly, lacing his fingers through hers. "Go ahead."
For the first time in a long time, she doesn't. She clamps her lips together, shaking her head.
"Lydia-" This doesn't seem healthy, he can practically feel the vibrations rolling off of her, the energy she's trapping inside. Her hand is grasping his so tightly that he swears he can hear joints popping. After a minute or so, she lets out a long breath, her grip loosening, the color returning to her cheeks.
"It's fine," she says, but it doesn't sound fine, she sounds exhausted and frightened, and he want to know, but he doesn't want to push.
"Is it?"
Her hazel eyes focus on him, careful, considering.
"You're…cold."
"Cold?" And then he understands. "Oh, you mean, like, cold." Something suddenly occurs to him. "Didn't Argent say Voyageurs were immortal? On account of the whole used to be an angel thing?" He runs over the hunter's words in his head, trying to remember the specifics of it. They have hundreds of pages of literature, but so much of it is just lore, unconfirmed and ultimately contradictory, that it feels a bit like using the bible to study the history of evolution.
"Mmm," Lydia frowns. "Uh, yeah."
He flashes her a wry grin. "You don't look convinced."
"Maybe I'm wrong." The words, so hopeful, fall flat between them. They're both too smart to really believe that. Then, a little more convincingly, "Sometimes I interpret things wrong. Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe its not you."
"It's only the two of us here, technically," he reminds her. "So unless you're predicting your own death, or could somehow feel the death of someone five years in the future before we got here, I think we can pretty safely assume that it's me." Her first warning had come in the parking lot, back in 2015, and even then she'd been sure it was him.
Besides, if the alternative is that Lydia is the one in danger, he'll gladly take another sword to the stomach. Or claws to the throat. Or a million terrifying, gruesome supernatural deaths. Anything, if it means that she survives.
Of course, if he dies, she's stuck here.
"Are you scared?" She wonders suddenly. He blinks at that.
"Sure. But I've been scared since I was twelve, so. Even this whole 'your life is in mortal danger' or, actually, would it be immortal danger in my case?"
She makes a noise, a mix of amusement and impatience, and he continues.
"Anyways, the dying thing. Not new." And, he thinks privately, not the thing he's most afraid of anymore. That would be losing her. God, she looks sad, in that moment, his words a reminder of everything their circumstances have stolen from them. Their innocence, their freedom, friends.
Pieces of themselves, bigger every time. Sometimes Stiles wonders if one day there won't be anything left. If he trusts the reality they're in now, he supposes it will take longer than five years to completely waste away. 2020 Stiles seems to be doing alright.
"Are you sure you're ready for work, tomorrow?"
She's changing the subject. He allows it.
"No. But I can't really just never show up to the station again. I'll get fired. And we still don't know how this works, if the changes we make will be permanent." His mind runs through the various possible outcomes of going back to 2015, the eventualities that might come from the choices they make. "Do you want to end up back here in five years and have to support your unemployed fiancé?"
She doesn't say anything, and Stiles suddenly realizes the assumption he's made.
"I mean-I didn't mean we'll-"
She cuts him off, yawning.
"I know. Well, I'm supposed to be at the office at seven, so we should probably get to bed." They'd spent most of the day driving back from Beacon Hills, and between the excitement of the week, and the amount of energy he just spent trying to telepathically transport them five years into the past, he's exhausted.
"Does that mean I have to get up?" He wants to know, laying back on the couch, eyes closed. Lydia's voice drifts over, from somewhere in the bedroom.
"You're a grown up, Stiles. If you fall asleep on the couch I'm not going to carry you to bed."
He grins sleepily.
"I'd do it for you."
"I weigh a hundred and ten pounds."
"I weigh…actually," he mumbles, considering the recent changes in his body. "I don't know. Future me must go to the gym."
"Clearly."
His eyes fly open.
"What was that?" He sits up, staring into the bedroom with his eyebrows raised. Lydia is sitting on the bed, tying her hair into a knot on the top of her head. When she notices him staring at her, her cheeks flush pink.
"What?"
"You said-"
"I didn't say anything."
"I said future me must go to the gym," he recounts, getting up and making his way to the bedroom. "And you said 'Clearly', as in, yes, Stiles, I've noticed your suddenly buff and sculpted body. Have you been checking me out?" He wiggles his eyebrows at her. She just rolls her eyes.
"No."
"Oh really?" He's tired, and yes his head hurts, but there's something so perfect about the way a flush burns down her neck as he stalks toward her that makes all of this seem almost okay.
"Stiles." She sounds exasperated. But her eyes flick toward him.
"It's okay, you can tell me." He schools his face into a serious expression, stopping just in front of where she sits on the bed. She doesn't meet his eyes.
"Alright, you're jacked now. Happy?"
He grins, the kind that his father used to warn him would one day split his face in half. Then he stifles it, flopping back on the bed beside her with a bored look.
"Meh."
When her hand comes down on his stomach, hard, it knocks the air out of him.
"Looks like you need to work on your abs," she decides, looking amused that the action has winded him.
"I wasn't prepared," he mutters, sitting up and glaring at her.
"Right." She snorts. "Like that was the problem."
Now they're both sitting up on the bed, faces inches apart. Stiles realizes this as she sighs, and he can smell the peppermint of her chewing gum in her breath. His eyes dart to her lips, he wonders vaguely if they'll taste the same as they did five years ago, and-
He blinks, suddenly remembering where he is. This is Lydia. And he's Stiles. And even if some of the chemistry of their future selves is lingering between them, it's not real, not for her. With great reluctance, he leans back, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. The headache's come back full force, almost knocking him over.
He groans.
"Hey." He feels a small hand on his face, thumb pressing lightly against his temple. It feels good, barely, but it's an improvement. "Are you okay?"
His eyes flutter open, stomach jolting when he finds Lydia's face once again inches from his own.
"I'll live," he mutters, and she parts her lips uncomfortably, reminding them both that he might be wrong about that one. "It's just a headache."
"Is it?"
He shrugs.
"Probably?"
Her eyes narrow.
"Stiles-"
"Weren't you going to go to bed?" He reminds her, hoping to stave off any additional conversation. He loves her voice, usually, thinks she should narrate every audiobook ever published, could listen to her talk forever. But even the smallest noises right now are like white hot pokers to the skull, and he just wants quiet. She watches as he gets up, tugging his shirt over his head. But she's not watching like she was a few minutes ago, as though she's just enjoying the view. He can tell she's looking for something out of place, something wrong. "I just want to go to bed," he repeats.
She relents.
"Okay."
He makes a beeline for the bathroom, where brushes his teeth and washes his face. When he catches sight of the stubble dusting his chin, he sighs. He'll have to shave it in the morning, knows he shouldn't be surprised at exactly how fast his facial hair grows, considering that he's always been a fairly hairy kid. And while the prospect of growing a beard had seemed manly and cool as a teenager, the novelty, apparently, wears off pretty quickly.
After taking a quick shower to get rid of the smell of blood that's lingering in his nose, he slides into bed beside Lydia.
"Did you take some Advil?"
He was almost hoping she'd already fallen asleep.
"Yeah."
"Did it help?"
He sighs.
"No." And it continues to push and throb against his skull, this persistent pain that almost feels alive. Beside him, the sheets rustle, and then she's curled up against him, her breath warm against his back where she's pressing her face into it.
It's intimate, and new, but it feels familiar, it feels like-
His train of thought is cut off as the pain slowly begins to recede, not at once, and not all of it, but enough. As it ebbs away, so does his consciousness, the strain of his earlier mental activities leaving him exhausted. Eventually, he falls asleep, arm trapping the one of hers that winds around his chest, holding on.