· 1st Time They Kiss.
When Lydia's parents announced their divorce, it wasn't much of a surprise, but it still hurt to hear and she bolted the moment they finished their 'Official Sit-down Martin Family Meeting'. After 10 minutes of driving through her hometown, she was pretty sure she got lost.
"I don't know why I called you." Lydia inhaled deeply and then sighed.
"I know why," Stiles said and she could hear his smirk through the phone.
"Oh yeah? Enlighten me," she scoffed and pushed open her car door to stretch her cramped legs. Sitting and contemplating dialing and not dialing for an hour and a half had done nothing for her feelings of numbness aside from lace it with back pain.
"If you called one your bourgie friends then it'd come out that the mighty Martin Empire is falling," he said trying to sound wise and sagely to cover the sound of his yawn, but reined it in when she sniffed back a wince. "And you secretly hope there's still a chance your parents will work it out," he sounded quieter and because of which, sounded sleepier with every word.
"Are you still there?" Lydia breathed out shakily, she felt alarmed by the nearness of a drive-by car and the true-soundness to his words. Moving further from her car, she walked along the shoulder of the road, drawing the line up the path and hoped he could hear some of the disdain she had in his analysis.
It was half past three on a school night and she felt tired too but the only thing she wanted less than someone listening to her in this state, was someone seeing her in a ditch, looking tear-stained, in utter shambles with barely a coat thrown over her pajamas.
"Yeah, I am if you are? I wasn't sure if you wanted me to go on," he sounded truly apologetic.
"Keep going," she gulped, not trusting her voice entirely but knowing he couldn't hear the rolling of her eyes and she flipped off a car that honked past her.
"If you called me, even if I had anyone to tell, which I don't," he sounded flippant and funny, "who would believe me? This insignificant waif from the wrong side of the tracks."
"'Waif' is taking liberties with the definition, and Beacon Hills doesn't have train tracks," grinning she sniffed back a few tears. She grumbled as she stepped off a curb and tried to step over a low gate she found further down the road. It gave her a nicer prospect than watching traffic and obsessing angrily.
"Fine... uhm, how about 'good for nothing lowlife with a superiority complex.' You okay?" his voice wobbled between nearer and further, as she convinced herself climbing the small hill of stone would give her a better reception.
"I'm okay, just tripped on a little wood fence."
"Where are you that there's a wood fence that you would consider little? Lilliput?"
"Funny."
"So funny, you considered possibly laughing? Maybe even for a split second? Or did the Lilliputians tie your tongue?"
She scoffed lightly, the closest she could muster to a laugh. "I told you. I got lost. I just thought the view might be nice from over here."
"Is there a view?" He asked after a moment, sounding invested and clearheaded.
"It might be, if I could see the city better through the trees."
"Not a metaphor, is it? You know, I have half a mind to go up there and-"
"And your complexes have hardly progressed enough to qualify as 'superior,'" she cut in and started to smile but it felt watery and the view, while pretty made her feel bone cold. She wished she had worn boots instead of slippers.
"Ah, well." He hardly sounded bothered. He sounded like the reception went harsh and noisy, then he asked a little uncertainly. "But the rest?"
Her chest tightened, she didn't think she could feel any worse that night than she already had when she stormed out of the dining room. "You aren't insignificant, just... I don't know."
"Convenient?" he sounded amused, which infuriated her and amused her. "Like navigation systems in cars."
"No, that thing has been reading go west into a river for three miles." Lydia said haughtily, and distractingly. Squeezing her eyes shut, she gave way to a few reluctant tears and admitted. "At least I know you won't tell me whose side I should pick. Or keep dictating to me exactly how everything is going to be fine. You wouldn't judge me if I... felt something..." she kept fumbling for the end of her sentence because she didn't like the sound of it, even as it choked at the back of her throat.
"Like crying? You should let yourself cry Lydia, if that's what you want." Stiles' words were measured and his voice sounded uncommonly strong to her ears.
Instead of replying Lydia nodded. When her breathing became what seemed like the loudest thing in the world, a passing car roared below and it startled her to the bone. She giggled from nerves, then tears started to sting her eyes and tumbled over from more nerves and grief and a little laughter.
Stiles sounded less confident the more he spoke, "Millions of songs written about this, you know. Birthday songs, love songs, break up and make up songs. All of them say great things about tears. I don't know of any 'Parents-just-Got-Divorced' songs, but if there are any, I bet they're country and I bet they're damn good."
"Stiles..." Lydia all but croaked and then clearing her throat she tried again. "I called you because you're the first person I think of, the first one I want to call if there's an emergency."
"So, like an earthquake?" A growing, grinning cockiness could be heard clearly in his voice. "Forest fire? Dead body?"
"Yes," she replied, her voice dripping in just as much sarcasm. "In any of those ridiculous impossible situations."
"Yeah?" he laughed lightly. "Not even 911? That's flattering, irresponsible but incredibly flattering. Dammit!"
"Learn to take a compliment," Lydia laughed briefly. When there was no reply she asked, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I just tripped- hey, 'know you don't have to wait for a natural disaster to call me and vent."
"I know," she nodded, smiling and sniffling.
"And even if I did have someone to tell, I'd never tell them anything about us anyway."
That gave her pause but a strange sense of peace as well, "I know that, too."
"And I'd never judge you for crying," when Stiles said that Lydia struggled to hear him clearly through the strange echoing in the phone. "Besides, I think you look really beautiful when you cry," while the last of his statement took time to register, she had already recognized his limping figure walking up the path in her wake.
Wincing, and with his hands held up in surrender, Stiles went onto explain how he used the details of how the glitch in Google maps gave away most of her location but in combination with the time of night, walking distance from her car, the description of the hill view and the little fence he pretty much calculated she would probably maybe be there. Or possibly Albuquerque.
Without replying, Lydia disconnected the call, dropped her phone into her coat pocket, intently chewed her lower lip and ignored the way wind whipped at every exposed piece of skin. He looked bad off, although not worse off than her. The borrowed hoodie he wore swam at his wrists and off of his collar, he looked child-like with hair like a bird's nest, and dark open eyes equally startled and filled with sleep.
Walking down through the trail to meet him a third of the way, Lydia nodded without hearing him. When he reached up to help her step down, she used the hill's incline to pull him toward her and kissed him, gripping his face like she feared he'd slip away.
To Stiles' great credit, some unholy power kept him from toppling over and gave him the grace to swoop instead of tilt. Then for a moment, it was as though they were dancing, turning in each other's hold, his hands wrapped around her waist, a hand flat on curve of her spine, while her arms circled his shoulders, her hands fisting his hair. There was no faltering thought, or lingering doubt, and nervousness over ideals.
Then came new knowledge that Lydia's breaths came out like small hums as her kiss deepened. Or the feeling when Stiles' cheekbone pressed and nuzzled, insistent in-between breaths like he needed to come in for more kisses even when he was the one who came up for air. Or the magical detail with which Lydia's lips could remain simultaneously the strongest sensation yet softest touch in the known universe. Not to mention the most significant detail, being the indecipherable composition of Stiles' skin and how it begged to have fingernails trace along it forever.
A while later, blinking but unseeingly, Stiles leaned back and whispered, "I wasn't sure if complimenting someone crying really constitutes a compliment."
"It doesn't really." Lydia's smile lengthened, and she let go of her hold slowly, reluctantly. "I just wanted you to know I appreciate your opinion." With that, she patted his chest and led their way back to their vehicles.
On street level once more, Lydia headed back to her car but assured Stiles she would call him once she got to her front door. And that was that.
True to her word, the moment she got to the front door of her family home she called and confessed she couldn't bring herself to go inside. Which he thought was alright, since he couldn't bring himself to stop driving around so, if she wanted to drive around in awkward angsty silence he was her ride.
"You can be awkward and angsty if you want, I'd just like to take the ride Stiles," she said with a short laugh, while she waved his Jeep over from the curb.
.
The next kiss came soon after and easier, in fact it was almost boring in its traditionalism. They were in the dark of a movie theater. The humor being that Lydia had been Scott's date and Stiles went as Allison's.
For a good while in their dating career Allison and Scott kept it a secret from their over-protective parents. During that time they couldn't be seen picking each other up, meeting each other in public, or even buying popcorn together. Of course Lydia and Stiles said yes to perform the duty as faux-date/chaperone, like they had many times before.
Except this time when Scott and Allison ditched them to go 'watch' the movie up front and center aisle, Stiles and Lydia didn't leave to kill time in the mall like they usually would. Instead they stayed seated in their banishment seats in the far-rear left, practically hugging the wall.
When Stiles reached across for popcorn from their shared bag, a Eureka moment struck him. He even gave off a little 'eep' sound. Still licking butter off of her fingertip she glanced over at him in concern, afraid he had managed to choke himself to death before the beginning credits. Instead, with slow delicate intent Stiles brought his hovering hand down to her chin and ran his forefinger along her jawline, grazing her ear and threaded his fingers into the loose strands of her hair. Lydia inhaled sharply, her eyes intently found his in the growing dark and she managed to remove the popcorn bag from between them without tipping the bag.
With less rush but more intensity, they tasted the warmth of sweet Reese's pieces and sour skittles, slick on the touch of each other's lips and tongues. Sometimes their fingers linked and crushed each other's tight, other times they got lost wrapped up in the others hair or the fabric of their clothes. When he felt starved for air he caught his breath, like a steam engine against the crook of her neck while she peppered his face with kisses. She kept him sometimes laughing, sometimes pining but always secure in knowing they would meet again in the dark.
After the movie, the four of them split off to Lydia and Stiles' separate vehicles and Scott and Allison perceived their silence as discomfort rather than thoughtful reflection. (Their excessive kiss-up-thanks was the guiding force that lead to Allison and Scott's coming out as a couple the following day.) While Scott and Allison babbled, gleeful, glowing and gratefully to their faux-dates/chaperones Stiles looked over at Lydia sharing none of that blushing glow or youthful exuberance. For a split second it gave room for doubt, maybe they were flawed in their connection?
But as Allison rushed to Scott, where he waited by Lydia's VW Beetle for his ride home, they finished their lengthy romantic goodbye, Stiles discovered Lydia standing beside his Jeep, familiar and cordially as ever. He hadn't seen her at first, small, cross-armed and smiling, leaning casually, looking beautiful even washed out in the unflattering garage light. Smirking, he swaggered up to her, and slouched to lean against the Jeep.
"Typical, desperate lovebirds." Lydia rolled her eyes, then looked up toward him. "We're not like that, are we?"
"Desperate?" Stiles made a face, of exaggerated distaste. "No, not at all."
With a finger tugging at his sleeve she urged him to lean over and kiss her, neither heated nor rushed, simply a satisfying 'goodnight kiss' with the promise of a future where there would be so many more.