Written for the stydia big bang on tumblr! This was beta'd by madgegoldpin (tumblr) and rongasm/writergirl8 (once again). There is also amazing art and a title card to go with this piece, as per the spirit of a big bang, which you can find at stydiamonth * tumblr * com/post/157168374885/the-kitchen-is-their-place-its-where-they-grow.

I wish you could see your face right now,

'Cause you're grinning like a fool

And we're sitting on your kitchen floor

On a Tuesday afternoon

"A Daydream Away" – All Time Low

. . .

October, 2003

The first time Stiles speaks to Lydia, she's sitting in his kitchen. She's not alone—both of their mothers are there too, chatting over the table.

Stiles knows Lydia, of course—who doesn't, at the small primary school of Beacon Hills? Despite the fact that they've been in class together for three years, they've never really talked before. Lydia doesn't hang out with people like Scott and him—boys who don't play soccer with the other kids at recess, and use Scott's health as a way to hide the fact that they're both terrible at it.

(Or maybe, his mom tells him whenever she's trying to get him to make new friends, they'll never improve if they don't practice).

Lydia Martin doesn't hang out with people, actually. More like, she lets people hang out with her. Stiles and Scott watch her from their spot on the stairs at the other end of the playground. She sits on a bench—always the same, always free for her, even by the older kids— with her back straight and her feet not quite touching the ground.

It's what he's reminded of when he runs into his kitchen on a rainy afternoon of a random day in October (the eighth, actually). It's the Lydia of the playground he sees when he skids to a stop and she doesn't even acknowledge him.

Her Mary Janes, red and shiny—like her hair, he thinks—hover six good inches over the ground. Her hair is in complicated braid, same as it was during the day. She's sipping her cocoa from the red and white mug they never use, her tiny fingers elegantly splayed across the ceramic.

They don't go all the way around.

"Stiles!" his mother says when he dumps his bag on the table of the breakfast nook. "There you are. Come say hello."

He says good afternoon to Mrs Martin, who makes him suspicious with her patterned dresses and her straightened hair, and nods to Lydia.

"We're in class together," he grumbles at his mother when she raises an eyebrow at his manners. She's very high hung about manners.

Lydia glances at him, eyebrows raised. He rolls his eyes.

There's only one class per grade at Beacon Hills primary school.

"Natalie and I were in school together too," his mother tells him. "We haven't seen each other in ages. Oh, Natalie, can you remember that time Bobby—"

Stiles tunes her out because he never knows any of his mother's friends except by their last names. He pads to the stove and dips his finger in the pot full of milk on the stove, hissing when it burns his finger.

"You shouldn't do that when you haven't washed your hands," Lydia tells him haughtily.

Stiles rolls his eyes again, because Lydia is always haughty. She always speaks with long, complicated words that aren't used nowadays—he knows because he remembers them and looks them up when he gets home. He can often only find them in his mother's dictionary that was printed in 1964. She looks at people in the eyes when she talks to them, she cocks her eyebrows (both of them, and Stiles has been learning to raise only one, so take that, Martin), and she walks slowly because people always part before her.

To piss her off even more, he sticks his finger in his mouth, then dips it again when she's looking. She opens her eyes wide for a moment, but scowls at his grin.

"D'you want some?" he asks innocently when the adults' conversation dies down.

"No thanks," she answers, equally as innocent.

He shrugs and pours the rest of the pot in his favorite blue mug. There's just too much milk, and though it doesn't overflow, he has to lean forward to loudly slurp the excess.

"That's disgusting," Lydia says quietly behind him.

"It's in the mug!" he protests. "It's not like I'm licking the counter."

His mother ruffles at his hair on her way to the living room— we're going to have a an adult conversation, so stay here and play! Or start your homework.—Yeah, right.

He sits at the table across from Lydia, and pulls out his Game Boy from his backpack. Scott lent him a new Mario Kart game that he got from his crazy old great-aunt, the one who's still sure his birthday is in September and not in October.

"What are you playing?" Lydia asks after a moment.

He's too focused on the race to remember to be snappish with her.

"Mario Kart," he grunts.

"Which one?"

"The new one."

He sways his whole body to the right as he takes a bend over a bridge, and swears when he misses the speeder.

"Danny got it three weeks ago," Lydia pipes up again. "He showed us at recess."

He knows the road is straight-forward for a few meters, so he has time to look up at her face.

"And?" he says scathingly. Of course, Danny got the game three weeks ago. Of course Lydia is friends with Danny. He's one of the nicest and most popular boys in their grade.

"Nothing," she shoots right back. "You're losing."

The Game Boy in his hands beeps and dings, and, okay, he's losing. He's not very good at Mario Kart.

He glares at her through his lashes as he lowers the sound of the game, and waits impatiently for his car to be brought out of the water.

He finishes the race in silence, luckily not interrupted by Lydia again. His knee is jiggling, and the sound of the rubber sole of his sneakers moaning against the floorboards marks the tempo.

Banana peel. Squeak. Speeder. Squeak. Missed coin. Squeak.

It's when he loads the second turn that Lydia moves again.

"What?" he asks after a moment.

She stops clicking her nails on the mug immediately, but she doesn't look contrite.

"Nothing," she says, and it's so widely different from her former one that he pauses the game.

"What," he repeats flatly.

"Nothing!" She huffs at him and turns her whole upper body away from him to look out of the window.

Stiles hasn't really thought about it, but even after the first moment of surprise, there still is something weird about having Lydia Martin, of all people, in his kitchen. Lydia Martin isn't supposed to exist past the school gates at three-thirty.

Lydia Martin is for the school like one of those statues that adorn the old castles and churches they've been studying in history; she's an integral part of a complex whole, always there and visible and characteristic of the universe that revolves around her, but who, ultimately, doesn't really belong anywhere else.

Lydia Martin isn't supposed to be transposed, huffing and snapping, in the blueish light of his kitchen, sat at his father's place at the round table. She's not supposed to tap her nails against his mugs, or sway her legs from his chairs, or toe his table with her red shoes.

Lydia Martin is a small, redhaired creature, and she looks out of place here.

So he pretends to play the game again, but he studies her instead. She's holding her chin on her hand and looking out of the window. Soon after, she crosses her leg and huffs again. She peers into her empty mug—and really, too bad for her, Stiles thinks fiercely, because he did offer her some more milk and she said no—, brushes her hair back, then forward, and starts braiding a strand. He watches as she clears her throat and begins to trace lines on the wood.

"Are you playing tic-tac-toe against yourself?" Stiles asks after following her movements closely.

She startles guiltily, and looks up at him with furrowed brows.

"No," she says. "Why would I do that?"

Stiles shrugs, but he has a suspicion she's lying.

"It's okay," he says offhandedly. "I do that too sometimes."

"Don't tell me you beat yourself."

"One time."

She huffs a laugh.

"There are only that many combinations you can end up with, anyway," she says.

"Do you know that by experience?"

"No. It's math. There are only nine cases, and two symbols, and seven winning combinations for each—"

"So what you're saying is, you cheat at tic-tac-toe."

"No!" She crosses her arms and he's nearly sure that she would have stomped her foot if they were standing. "And, anyway, it's a stupid game. It's not like... I don't know, cheating at blackjack."

"What's blackjack?"

She stares at him for a moment before answering. He's put down the Game Boy on the table. He's pretty sure she's dropped the snobbish tone.

"It's a card-game. It's played in casinos."

"Like in Las Vegas?" She nods. "And you can cheat at blackjack?"

She hesitates.

"It's complicated," she admits. "I can't explain it without a deck. But technically, you can count the cards, and predict what cards the other players have."

"But how?" He insists.

"There are only fifty-two cards, Stiles," she says with a hint of frustration in her voice, and he's pretty sure it's the first time she's said his name out loud. "There isn't an indefinite number of possibilities."

"But that's still a lot! How can you count cards and play at the same time?"

He thinks of the way he still can't completely focus on doing his homework with music in the background. His mother tells him it's because of ADD, and that everyone is different, but he has a sneaking feeling that it's difficult anyway, and that Lydia is not quite like everyone else.

"I don't know, you need practice, I guess. It's a bit like chess, I think."

"I play chess," he counters.

"I don't know, okay!" she snaps finally. "I've never tried."

He's surprised by her outburst, but not undeterred, because despite her best efforts to hide it, he's seen Lydia Martin in class. He's seen the way she thrives on challenges, and her look of disdain for people asking stupid questions. So he says:

"Okay. Well, you'll have to show me sometimes."

"What makes you think I'll be around to do it?" she asks, crossing her arms.

He points a thumb over his shoulder, towards the living room from where laughter floats to them.

"They were making plans for a shopping session ten minutes ago."

Lydia bites her lip, obviously not wanting to believe him. She seems to hesitate a moment, and when she finally jumps to her feet, Stiles says: "You can go check if you want".

"I"m going to the toilet," she says immediately, brushing her hair over her shoulder.

"Sure."

He plays the game again, and he's halfway through winning the race when the fleeting thought of too bad she's not here for him to rub it in her face sends his car hurling towards a banana peel.

He's mourning the three places he's just lost when she pads into the room again, looking dejected.

"Did you find the restroom?" He asks, because they both know that's not what she was doing.

(Hey, it's not like he's thrilled she's there either.)

She doesn't say anything but takes her place at the table again, leans down to retrieve her bag from the ground.

There is a new lapse of silence, interrupted by Stiles' foot tapping rhythmically against his chair and pages turning quickly. When he looks up again from the screen, he sees that she's absentmindedly browsing through a hardcover. He's pretty sure it's not for school.

"What are you reading?" he asks, because she's not actually reading, and he's curious, and losing at Mario Kart has become boring.

She looks up to him, without snobbism or animosity, for once, and closes the book with a sigh.

"The Little Mermaid," she says. "But I already finished it at lunch."

"The Little Mermaid?" He repeats. "They made a book out of the movie?"

She levels him with such a look that he feels like any progress he's made so far has been for nothing, and that he's suddenly back at the "brainless baboon" case.

"It was a book first. Most of the Disney movies are. It was written by Hans Christian Andersen in the 19th century."

He nods slowly.

"So why are you reading it if you've already seen it?"

"Because the story isn't the same. Disney changed the ending, for one."

"How did this Harrison dude end the story, then?"

"Andersen."

"Yeah, him."

"I can't tell you."

"Why?" He's gaping at her, feeling betrayed. Here's Lydia Martin, the girl who once stayed mad their teacher for a whole week after she refused to be more explicit on a math lesson, refusing to give him information as well. He knows Lydia Martin, and he knows she's always the first one to raise her hand in class to give the answer and more, and no one makes fun of her because she's always, always right. He's starting to think he's overestimated her thirst of knowledge when she leans in and says:

"Because then you won't want to read it."

"That's the most terrible excuse I've ever heard in my whole entire life," he protests.

"Would you still watch Star Wars if I told you Darth Vader was Luke's dad beforehand?"

"Duh," he says, stretching to grab her book. "Have you seen the lightsaber fights?"

"Yes, and really they're not all that great."

"I thought girls didn't watch Star Wars," he counters back, because Scott's been using that excuse for the last three months to get out of watching the movies with him, and, well, no.

He makes a wild grab for her book but she slides it out of his reach.

"I thought boys didn't care for Disney princesses," she replies.

"It's not Disney, it's Harrison—"

"Andersen."

"—Besides, it's an old book, so it doesn't count."

"What's the logic behind that?"

"Well, it's old, so it's a classic, isn't it? It's literature. Who cares if there are princesses in literature?" He gives up trying to get it across the table and gets up to come by her side.

"Disney's Cinderella came out in 1950," she says, grabbing the book before he can. "Besides, the date doesn't necessarily make a classic," Lydia says, frowning. "My cousin's been studying To Kill A Mockingbird in class and it's from 1960."

"Will you just let me read the summary?" he sighs finally.

"I don't lend my books," Lydia warns him. "And it's a present from my grandmother."

"I won't ruin it." He rolls his eyes, but steps away, holding out his hands in a pacifying gesture. "Just put it flat on the table, I want to read the summary."

She judges him for a moment before complying. The cover flashes before his eyes for second before she turns the book over, and he can just make out a wild-haired silhouette, standing out against the white globe of the moon, all in all quite different from the Ariel he knows.

The summary is brief and more complimentary to the author than anything else. He's a bit disappointed; he thought he could read something that would tell him how vastly different the two stories are, but there's nothing interesting.

He pretends like he's just read one of the most thought-provoking piece of literature ever, though, just to prove Lydia's reticence wrong.

"So, it's a good book, then?" He asks, genuinely curious. Apart from the speaking fish, he doesn't remember much of the movie that Scott's aunt made them watch two years ago.

"My favorite," Lydia says right back. "The movie doesn't make it justice."

"My favorite book is Harry Potter," he confesses. "I've read the five books this summer."

Lydia hums lightly, with a small smirk on her face.

"What is it?" He squints his eyes. "Was it a medieval myth before or something?"

If Lydia Martin was physically capable of looking anything else than poised, she would have snorted, Stiles is sure.

"No," she says gracefully. "It just reminded me how long I waited for the fifth one."

"Waited for the fifth one?"

"Mom bought them all to me when The Goblet of Fire came out."

"That was three years ago!" Stiles exclaims, gaping at her.

"That's what I'm telling you," she says. "A long time."

"So you've read Harry Potter and you've watched Star Wars," Stiles says, settling in the chair next to her. "I didn't know that."

"I don't see why you would have," Lydia says.

"Why don't you come and join us when we were playing Hogwarts at recess?" Stiles asks. "Scott hasn't read them over the first two, so we can't play the Quidditch World Cup."

She shrugs, but Stiles plows on:

"Come on, join us tomorrow, it'll be fun!"

He gets excited too quickly, as usual, but the thought of Lydia Martin joining their game is too alluring an opportunity to pass. He gets his hopes too high, though, and the fall back down to reality is a bit harder than he would have wished it.

"No!" she cries out, looking alarmed. "Are you crazy? I'm not going to play out scenes from Harry Potter with you."

"What? Why?"

He tries not to sound too hurt, like he favors her approval too much, but Lydia still looks uncomfortable, not meeting his eyes as she fiddles with the jacket of the book. That alone is enough for Stiles.

"Okay," he says drily. "Doesn't matter."

"It's just that there are only boys playing and the other day someone got hurt," Lydia says. "I don't want to ruin my skirt because Dave Richman pushed me down."

"Dave's an idiot," Stiles says immediately.

"Well, yes, but he's playing."

"Okay. Suit yourself." He waits for a moment, then turns towards her again and adds: "So what else do you do that I don't know about?"

"Lots of things," Lydia says, drawing herself taller. "But I'm really, really good at Mario Kart."

"Yeah? Well I bet you can't beat me." He holds up his Game Boy. "I've been practicing all day."

"How much do you want to bet?" Lydia asks, starting the game. "'Cause I know for a fact you're horrible at it. You complained about it at lunch."

Stiles watches her small hands expertly hold the blue device. He gets the sudden feeling that Lydia Martin always knows more than she lets on and generally more than she's supposed to know.

It's intriguing.

She wins by a landslide. That's less surprising.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives a good definition of the word "friend".

Lydia knows that, because she likes to read it up before bed, tracing the small letters that break words apart, wide-open like on one of those autopsy tables in the shows her mother watches.

Lydia stares at the words and the tiny black characters, but the words don't resonate in her anymore. When Lydia thinks about friends, she doesn't see letters quietly lined on thin paper. Instead, she thinks about messy fights around the kitchen.

She thinks about messy fights in the kitchen and homework spread on the Stilinskis' round table. She sees the first time Stiles introduced her to Scott, the way he'd smiled at her nicely but shyly.

The bench is cold under Lydia's skirt when she watches Scott and Stiles lean their heads together under the big oak at the other end of the playground, so she's decided not to sit there alone anymore.

Now she huddles under the oak with her two boys, and she repeatedly destroys them at Mario Kart until they decide to play another game; Stiles and Lydia gang up on Scott until he agrees to watch the third Harry Potter film.

There is a quiet simplicity in having friends, Lydia realizes. It's as simple as Scott-and-Stiles-and-Lydia.

May, 2004

Lydia volunteers her house for the May PTA bake-sale. They have to bring cakes by groups, this year, because the teacher has decided the class needs to be closer. Nevermind that it's already early May, and that they have less than two months of school left.

But joke's on Ms Sanders, really, because Scott, Stiles and Lydia don't even share a look before she raises her hand and groups them together.

"You can come to my house this Sunday," Lydia says after school when they're walking to the school parking lot—Scott and Stiles take the bus, but Lydia's mother insists on picking her up herself.

Lydia wishes she didn't, because she knows that's when Scott and Stiles plot most of their schemes. They sometimes desperately need someone to tell them that no, wrapping the McCall's dog in toilet paper is not a good idea.

They nod and that's that. They don't say anything, but when Lydia replays the conversation in her head, she's pleased to file the moment in the "tact" folder.

. . .

Lydia closes her book shut when she hears a car pull up in the driveway. The police cruiser she sees when she pads to her window tells her two things: Stiles is not going to be in a particularly cheery mood, and Scott will go home late.

She runs downstairs before the bell rings, and to her father's office to tell him not to move, she's got it. There's no particular need to either, because he doesn't take his eyes from the computer.

"That's nice, dear," he says, typing away.

She opens the door to reveal the Sheriff, as expected, with Scott and Stiles on each side. The latter is silently holding his backpack, and Scott is struggling with a large shopping bag. They seem distracted as the Sheriff visibly berates them.

"And Stiles, don't—"

"Good afternoon," Lydia says cheerfully. "Come in."

"I can't stay," the Sheriff says, ushering the two boys in. "I'm sorry, I have a work emergency."

"Don't worry, I'll tell mom." Natalie won't be home until later in the afternoon. "Have a great day!"

Scott and Stiles hang their jackets in the coat closet, with all too much ease considering their lack of knowledge of the house.

"We brought supplies," Scott says, holding up his bag. When Lydia peers in, she can see a considerable amount of bowls and whisks, as well as chocolate chips and several other cookie flavors.

"Great," she says. "We are severely lacking in any filling for these cookies."

"Well, there's definitely chocolate," Stiles says proudly, holding up too many bars for his hands. "This is going to be so cool."

"We're eating nothing before tomorrow, you know that, right?"

"Yeah, but I think that it depends of your definition of 'nothing'," he smirks.

"I mean nothing, rien, nada, niet," Lydia says primly.

"Have you been reading your grandmother's school books again?" Scott asks knowingly. "That's so cool," he continues at her nod as they settle into the Martins' large, untouched kitchen. "Start with Spanish, then Stiles will have no idea what we're saying."

"Hey!"

Stiles shoves him slightly into the bar stools, and Scott retaliates by kicking in the vague direction of his shins. They scuffle for a few moments as Lydia busies herself around them, being the only one able to locate vanilla essence in the large, white room. They break apart when she comes behind them and pokes them both in their sides.

"Ouch," they both whine and snap out of it.

"Why do you always have to get the spots that hurt the most?" Stiles grumbles, rubbing his side.

"Because I've studied anatomy," she answers. "Acupuncture is a very interesting branch of medicine."

"If you say so."

That's when the front door is thrown open and Lydia's mother stomps inside.

"Michael!" she calls. "You absolutely need to fix the car—or bring it to the repairman, I don't know, but do something; I swear it was ready to smoke—Oh, hello boys."

"Good afternoon," they chorus.

"I'm sorry, my father couldn't stay," Stiles keeps on. "Work emergency."

"That's fine, Stiles," Natalie says. "How's your mother?"

Stiles' brows furrow, but he manages to keep a neutral tones as he recites his usual spiel about his mother's being tired but fine, really, she's a bit bored at the hospital. Natalie doesn't pick up on it . Lydia can't decide if it's a conscious effort not to talk too much with the son of a woman with a serious and incurable disease, or if she's already planning her next visit to her old school friend and what she can gossip about.

Lydia loves her mother, but sometimes she thinks it's the latter.

She makes sure to stand closer to Stiles than she would have done usually, because she's learnt that physical closeness is a way of communication that the Stilinskis are good at—she may not fully get it, but who is she to judge? Scott is doing the same thing on Stiles' right, and Lydia has to fight back a scowl.

It's not that she's jealous of Scott's and Stiles' friendship.

She's not.

But sometimes, like right now, it feels a bit alienating to be the only girl between two boys. She doesn't always understand when they talk video games and lacrosse.

(The first one because her mother refuses to buy her a console, saying she'll get addicted and she's better off with books, and the second one because she has no interest whatsoever in rolling around in the grass).

It reminds her that Scott-and-Stiles exist since preschool, and have spent more half of their lives as friends.

But then Stiles turns and smiles at her and not to Scott, and Lydia is made achingly aware that he's the cement in this friendship. Scott and her aren't that close; they've mainly been thrown together because they both gravitate around Stiles.

Scott is nice. She has to change that dynamic—she can't not be on an equal footing with two thirds of their group.

So she turns toward him first when she opens the cooking book, and makes sure to answer yes and no questions in Spanish for the next hour.

It bothers Stiles a lot, despite the fact that he can absolutely understand what they're saying, but it effectively distracts him from his home situation, so it's only a bonus, isn't it?

. . .

"No, not the fruity ones!" Stiles moans as they pour over the glossy pages of Lydia's baking book.

"It's fresh fruits, Stiles," she says. "We don't have to use figs if you don't like them—" He pulls a face—"but we have raspberries."

"Okay, so we're definitely doing the fruity ones."

He turns back the page to the index, and they peruse the names.

"Do we make brownies, cupcakes or cookies?" Scott asks, because they've been bickering about that for the past ten minutes.

"Cupcakes," Lydia says immediately.

"Brownies.".

"We don't have enough chocolate to makes brownies and something else!" Lydia protests. "Besides, there are more recipes with cupcakes."

"Cupcakes are dry," Stiles counters.

"What do you think, Scott?" Lydia asks, whipping around to face him. Stiles exclaims loudly when her hair hits him in the face. "Cupcakes or cupcakes?"

"Cookies?" He suggests sheepishly.

They all groan.

"My mother has a really good cookie recipe!" He protests. "They're easy to bake and they're not dry, and they don't use that much chocolate."

"Mrs. Martin," Stiles interrupts loudly, "can you agree with me that brownies are better than cupcakes and cookies?"

Lydia's mother shoots him a surprised glance, as many adults tend to do when Stiles goes full-on Stiles.

"They're certainly quicker to do," she says. "Less dishes to wash, less batches to bake."

Stiles makes a triumphant sound as Scott shrugs. Lydia's pretty sure he caved after the word "wash".

"Cupcakes will be better at a school fair," Lydia argues. "We can use more flavors and please more people."

"But everyone loves chocolate and chocolate chips," Stiles states. "Not everyone likes the fruity cupcakes."

"Three plates of brownies will be easier to bring to the school than three bags of cupcakes, sweetie," Natalie says.

"You have a car!"

"Ask me again tomorrow," she mutters, glancing at the garage door. "I'm with Stiles on this one, sweetie. Call me when you need to heat the oven!"

Stiles hollers triumphally as Lydia's mother leaves the room again—she doesn't bake and never has, so Lydia's sure she's as useless as three third-graders in a kitchen. They turn back to the baking book.

"Okay, so, brownies," Lydia says briskly, turning the cupcake pages hurriedly.

"Hey," Stiles says, stopping her hand. "We can still make the fruity recipe, if you want. It just won't have a cupcake form."

Lydia sighs. Pouring cupcake batter in the pans and decorating them is more than half the fun. Baking brownies in large dishes, to be cut in small squares with an aluminium knife in front of screaming children, is not quite the same.

"Okay," Scott sighs; "three flavors max, one each. I'm voting peanut butter. Stiles?"

"Double chocolate with a Nutella heart."

Lydia makes a noise of protest. She keeps her Nutella well secured behind her mother's tea collection. They're not using the entire jar to bake stupid brownies.

"I brought the Nutella," Stiles adds, elbowing her. "Lydia?"

"Chocolate and raspberry," she decides.

. . .

There is a small flaw in the plan, which Lydia had not expected to matter that much; none of them has ever baked alone before. Scott and Stiles argue again over the best way to mix the ingredients—Scott wants to add baking powder, while Stiles swears that if they mix eggs and sugar together, they won't need to use any.

Lydia thinks of unwrapping the robot her mother got for her last birthday, which is currently stored in the garage. She's seen the videos; she knows they would already be finished if they let an artificial intelligence do chemistry for them.

The boys looked at her as if she was crazy when she suggested the idea, each clutching to his mother's recipe and banning the use of something as barbarian as a robot. Lydia gave them each a whisk and a large bowl, claiming she wouldn't help because she would get chocolate on her yellow dress.

And now they're arguing again.

"What if we just followed the recipe?" Lydia asks finally, taking the raspberries out of their plastic wrapping.

She puts them in a bowl because it's prettier, and counts the chocolate bars they need. Five in total; it's already making her nauseous. She picks a raspberry when the boys are not looking, and wishes they were in the batter already, because she can feel her restraint crumbling.

"Okay, okay, truce," Scott says."We'll never be finished at this rate. Lydia, what are the first steps?"

She bends over the book and they fall into a natural rhythm: Lydia reads the book, and the boys comply. They are surprisingly good at what they're doing, which Lydia had never considered before, because as far as she's concerned, cakes are just a finished product. Soon they have three batches of brownie batter, lying in their baking pans, and Lydia has to call her mother to heat up the oven.

"Congrats," Natalie says as she comes in the room. "It looks delicious."

"It's raw," Lydia remarks."It's just raw batter."

"No, no it is good," Stiles says, sticking a spoon in the batter and licking it.

"You're gonna get sick," Lydia says. "Raw eggs are bad for your health. You'll get salmonellosis and then you'll die."

It's not exactly true, but Stiles doesn't need to know that, does he?

"Scott can have my part of cake if anything happens."

"Thanks, I feel much better about your death," Scott deadpans, gathering the last bits of batter from the bowl to dump it in the pan.

"You'll think of me one last time."

Scott smacks him on the chest with his spatula, or at least tries, because Stiles escapes with a manic laugh and takes refuge next to Lydia.

"Seriously, what's salmonellosis?"

"A disease induced by a bacteria," Lydia answers as she watches her mother set the timer for the oven. "I think there are several types, but most of the time you get it through raw meat and eggs."

When her mother is out the room, Lydia goes to the table and puts aside Stiles' backpack, going through a pile of her own things, scattered at the far end of the table.

"What are you looking for?"

"Papers and a deck of cards," she says. "I got the deck but I'm still missing the papers... oh, here they are."

"Blackjack?" Stiles says, sitting straighter.

"Nope. I'm not teaching you how to cheat."

"Cheat?" Scott butts in, frowning.

Glancing once at the papers to make sure she has the right hand technique, Lydia shuffles the deck triumphantly, grinning when the cards smoothly go from two piles to one.

"Poker," she says. "I'm going to teach you how to play poker. Come on."

The boys push their stools closer to hers and Lydia deals the cards confidently, starting with Stiles at her left.

"Don't look at your cards when I'm still dealing," she warns as she sees a flash of Stiles' queen of spades.

"What are we betting?" He asks, putting his cards down quickly.

"Why? Are you in a hurry to win?"

"Maybe, Scotty, maybe."

Lydia rolls her eyes and reaches for the papers she's printed—she knows what she tells Stiles will probably not be remembered unless he reads it himself, so she's come prepared.

"Okay, so first thing first, the winning rankings. The highest one is the royal flush."

She's proven right when Stiles tugs the papers to himself and starts looking through them as she tells Scott all about the most common mistakes beginners make. Sometimes she interrupts herself and snaps her fingers under Stiles' nose to remind him to turn to page three, as if she was a teacher.

Surprisingly, considering the little amount of concentration he displays at school, he seems to be following her instructions, even if he jumps a foot in the air when the oven timer goes off twenty minutes later.

They don't end up actually playing—apparently, explaining poker takes longer than she had thought, so Mrs. McCall comes from the hospital before they get the chance to bet the candy Stiles brought.

Lydia walks Scott out like the good hostess she is, and when she comes back in the kitchen, Stiles is still there, gathering the last of his supplies. He looks up when she enters and stops suddenly.

"Hey, um, Lydia?"

There is a weird quiver in his voice that alarms Lydia. She's pretty sure she knows this quiver. It's the Isaac-Lahey-giving-her-flowers-at-the-school-fair quiver. The boy-likes-girl quiver that she knows is powerful, but ultimately rather unwanted at present.

(Swift as usual, her brain is quick to whisper to her, and how did Stiles react when Isaac gave you flowers?

She's just as swift to dismiss it.)

"Yeah?" she asks, heart beating and pleading.

Please. Please. Please.

She's not even sure what she's pleading about. Does she want Stiles to give her flowers? Does she want to trample them before they become a real alternative to their friendship in his mind?

He hands her the queen of spades card she spotted earlier.

She takes it, unsure of how to respond.

"It just made me think of you," he says, and she's not sure she can hear the quiver anymore; just his normal over-enthusiastic tone that he always uses when talking to Scott and her.

She tries to quell her disappointment. She doesn't look up from the card when she says:

"The queen of spades? Why?"

"It was in the papers you printed." He shrugs. "See you tomorrow for the bake-sale?"

"Sure."

Stiles left the paper on top. It's a leftover of her search about cartomancy, of course. He circled it for her:

The Queen of Spades is usually depicted as Pallas-Athena, representative of intelligence, with practical, logical, and intellectual judgement.

Stiles' mother passes away in December.

It hurts like a punch in the gut at first. It's red and raw and he doesn't understand it.

Then they come back to the house after the hospital, and Stiles feels like his entire body has just melted. Water has replaced his bones, it's the only explanation, really. Otherwise why can't he stand straight, why does he tremble, and why he is crying so much he stumbles up a step on the porch?

He just thinks that he needs to ask Lydia about it, because he knows there's a scientific reason behind his behavior. He stands numbly in the kitchen for a while, watching his father sit at the table, pour himself a drink of the whiskey that has been sitting there for a while, now.

He sits as he's done recently, wearily, easing himself onto a chair with caution, as if he is going to crumble if he moves too fast.

He thinks about Lydia telling him about grief and hormones and the way the brain works—because of synapses, she says. It doesn't totally make sense to him, but it appeases him to listen to her talk about things—anything, really, because she has a relaxing voice. He likes it when she tells him about science the most, though. Because she never stutters on complicated words, even those that sound even more elaborate than his name.

He hates his name, mostly because he can't pronounce it, but he finds himself desperate to tell Lydia, if only because he always wants to tell Lydia everything. He thinks about the way she would say it, smoothly and easily, like the way she rolls her r when she reads Ancient Greek out loud.

The only thing he can't talk to Lydia about is Lydia, and it's a shame because Stiles has so much to say about Lydia.

Except. Except that Stiles used to tell Mom about Lydia, and isn't that downright ironic?

February, 2005

He's working on a math problem when she comes in, and he's not even surprised to see her; it's only been two months in the year, but they've seen each other every day for the last fifty-five days, even on Sundays.

Sometimes they hang out, just the two of them, in the kitchen or in the tree house that's built in the woods behind her house (the part that her parents own, even if it's not directly in their garden, because they're rich like that). They play cards listening to the radio from an old orange transistor that belonged to her grandmother, or they do their homework.

Lydia's finally relented and has started teaching Scott and him how to count cards at blackjack, but they're not very good yet; Scott doesn't really know how to play, and frankly Stiles can't concentrate long enough to focus on the counting part.

It's the first time he's seen her at the Sheriff station, though, and he's smart enough to figure that she's not here just to see him—not here, not on a Sunday evening at dinner time.

"What're you doing here?" he asks her, blinking rapidly.

She sits next to him at the small aluminium table so naturally that it's recomforting. He swings his bag down to the floor and pushes away his homework.

"Mom needed to report a burglary," she states, voice calm.

"What?"

She shrugs and lifts her chin, but Stiles can see the way her right eyelid twitches nervously. A glance at her hands reveals that the skin around her nails is botched and red—she's been picking at her nails again.

(It's a shameful habit that she tries hard to cover, and Scott and Stiles have express orders to swat at her when she indulges in it.)

"We just got back from the lake house and someone broke in."

"Did they take anything?"

She shrugs again.

"Mom wouldn't tell me. She and my dad just started arguing, so we left for the station."

"I'm sorry."

She nods, and they're quiet for a moment.

"What are you working on?" she asks then, leaning forward. Stiles knows an attempt at distraction when he sees one, so he jumps on the opportunity and slides his notebook toward her.

"Math homework. Tara was helping me, but she got called in to bust a party."

"When I'm older, my parties will never be crashed by the cops," Lydia says absentmindedly.

"You can't really control that," Stiles counters, more out of habit than conviction.

There's no arguing with Lydia Martin if she's convinced to be right, which is the case most of the time.

"Sure I can," she says. "I just have to make them into something that people will want desperately—that means exclusivity in the guest list. That way, when they finally get invited, they'll see it as a privilege and they'll be more inclined to do whatever I want them to do."

"I didn't know you were so cutthroat," Stiles remarks.

"I won't win any prize by letting others best me," Lydia says lightly. "Answer c is sixty-two, not sixty-three, by the way."

He corrects it mechanically, mind still spinning with her words. Lydia is a bit ruthless. He's always known that. But up until now, he had always thought that she didn't care all that much about popularity. After all, they've been friends for a year and a half now, so it's natural that she always sits with Scott and him at recess, and for lunch, and for lessons (though less so, because she claims that their constant talking distracts her).

Still, there's something thrilling about Lydia's resolve.

"You can still count on me for every step of the way, you know that, right?" He finally asks. She looks up at him and stares at him for a second too long. Panicking, he backtracks and puts his foot in his mouth, as usual. "I mean, you're so short, you need someone to give you a leg up."

She snorts.

"If I ever needed a leg up, I wouldn't ask you, Stiles. You fell down last time you gave me one."

"You kneed me in the nose!"

"Besides, you're not a lot taller than me."

"You'll see when I hit my growth spurt. I'll be so much taller than you, you'll have to stand on your tiptoes."

"That's what heels are here for," she reminds him. He picks up a draft, rolls it up and throws it at her nose in retaliation. "Why must you always resort to violence to win our arguments?" she complains, smoothing out the sheet.

"I'm working on my aim," he points out. "Now, are you going to help me with that math problem or not?"

She rolls her eyes but picks up a pencil anyway. He doesn't need any help with this homework. They could both do it with their eyes closed, but it's long and boring; maybe that's why Lydia doesn't hesitate to directly do it for him, instead of helping him guess the answers as usual.

They've barely worked together for five minutes before Lydia puts down her pencil and stretches ostensibly.

"Show off," Stiles mutters as he hurries to finish his part.

He gathers their papers once he's done, comparing their handwritings with a smile. Hers is perfunctory, all straight lines and perfect curves while Stiles' eights, according to Scott, look like two potatoes smashed together. He enlists her with helping him with his science project on hypothermia, and she accepts readily—after all, it is science, and there's nothing Lydia loves quite as much as science.

His reasons aren't all selfish either, despite appearances, because when he goes and asks Tara for her laptop, he can still see the Martins in his father's office. He must be pulling a face when he comes back in the kitchenette, or maybe she has super powers; either way, Lydia seems to know immediately.

"She's still there?" she asks.

He nods silently, and pretends to busy himself with browsing different scientific sites. He knows he'll end up leaving it to Lydia to discard them as unreliable, but it gives him an excuse not to look at her face as she sits down again.

"Dad came too," she says darkly. "It must be important if he deigned to move."

Stiles wants to tell her that, come on, her dad isn't the most horrible father of all times—in Stiles' opinion, Rafael McCall wins that award—but he doesn't, because arguing with Lydia over her father really isn't productive.

"We're supposed to go to the dinner later," he says instead. "Do you want to ask if you can come?"

Lydia nods slowly, still prepping the paper. He watches as she carefully writes "hypothermia" at the top, underlines twice, and moves onto the margin.

"What are you writing?" He asks, craning his neck to see hover her hand.

"Your name."

"Oh, ok." he keeps typing for a few moments before a thought makes him freeze. "Wait—"

She laughs maniacally as he tries to get a hold of the paper, moving it out of his reach.

"Lydia, I swear to God—"

"How is the sub supposed to know you don't like going by your real name?"

"Because I told him, like, four times? It's not my fault he's an idiot."

"Be nice to your teachers. He obviously made a real effort to pronounce it the right way."

He rolls his eyes and snatches the paper out of Lydia's hand when she lets him, erasing the first carefully written letters: Mieczys, the beginning that sounded like "mischief" to him when he was younger. He pointedly writes Stiles instead, and moves the paper out of the way—and away from Lydia.

It's a real crime that she doesn't share Scott's and his enthusiasm for pranks, because he knows that she could rival with them; She's far from the rule-abiding student illusion that she likes to feed the teachers.

Actually, she may even beat them, and maybe that's why she doesn't follow through; she doesn't like challenge-less competition.

"You know, it's nothing to be ashamed of," she says. "You don't have to hide it from everyone."

"I'm not ashamed of it, it just irks me when people say it wrong. It's like they've never seen a Polish name. I mean, the letters aren't even that different."

"Did you know Miguel Najdorf's name was a variant from Mieczysław?" Lydia says, seemingly out of the blue.

"Who's that?"

"A famous chess player. He invented an opening move, the Najdorf Variation. And there's also Mieczysław Weiberg, a musician—though there's some confusion about his name. He wrote more than five hundred works, which is about the same as Prokofiev."

"The guy of Peter and the Wolf?"

"Mmmh."

"Is there a scientist in the bunch?" Stiles inquires after a moment of silence. (With Lydia, there is always a scientist in the bunch.)

"Mieczysław Wolfke," she says immediately. "He was a pioneer in X-ray photography, and his work inspired Dennis Gabor to develop holography."

"Huh."

They work in silence for a while after that, jotting down facts and knowledge like they both like to do.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Stiles asks finally.

"Sure."

"It's about my mom."

Lydia puts down her pen and turns toward him, her face serious and focused. He doesn't talk about his mother much, he knows that, and he also knows that Lydia has been waiting for him to do so.

"It'll be three months on Tuesday," he says, eyes on the calendar pinned to the wall.

"I know."

"It feels like longer," he admits.

She doesn't say I know again, but he can sense that she wants to, only she's reining herself in. He appreciates it, so he tries his best to speak quickly and stop beating around the bush; Lydia likes people talking and exposing their intentions clearly.

But still, it's hard, speaking out the words he's never told anyone, not Scott, not the guidance counsellor, and especially not his father.

"You won't tell anyone?"

"Stiles, I would keep your secrets to the grave, you know that. Unless it's something your father needs to know. For your safety."

"It's not," he says quickly. Then, licking his lips, he leans toward her and says: "Sometimes it feels more than three months. I mean—sometimes life doesn't seem like it's changed that much."

The words strangle in his throat a bit, and the knot that has constantly tied his stomach for the last few months tightens. His throat is scratchy and he shakily exhales. Contrary to his previous belief, saying the words doesn't make it easier to breathe, to accept them. On the contrary, it seems to make it worse, and he can't believe he was the one to throw this dark ball of shame between the two of them. He wants to yell at Lydia to leave before it rolls to her and taints her white socks, but he also wants to tug her to him and hide with her.

It's hurtful and confusing, and just when he thinks he may not be able to breathe ever again, Lydia does one of the things she does best: she speaks.

"How so?"

That's all she says: How so?, as if he's explaining a scientific concept to her, and she's trying to get it. How so?

It's simply so soothing. He feels some of the tension leave his body at once, like the therapist said he should practice to do. He can't meet her eyes, though; not when what he bears on his mind will make this whole balance of peace go astray. He desperately doesn't want to scare her away, but ultimately he doesn't even have to force himself to talk; around Lydia, he never has.

"Life's just the same as it was when Mom was in the hospital, you know? We do everything as we've done last year. I already stayed at the station after school, and Thursday dinners at Scott's were already a thing, and Dad's done the laundry for so long, even my summer clothes smell like the detergent he likes, not the one Mom used."

The words flood the silent kitchenette like a river. He remembers watching a video of the Hoover dam's gate opening, and being awed by the violence of the water coming through. There was a world's difference between the stillness of the lake behind the gates and the massive influx of water breaking on the concrete.

It feels like that, right now; he's not realized how strong the feelings were until he opened the gates.

"That's a normal feeling," Lydia says finally, getting up with their two mugs. She waits until they're turning in the microwave, refilled with milk, to add: "Stiles, you don't have to feel guilty about it."

He nods, but it's not a real assent, merely a reflex.

"If you want the scientific explanation," Lydia continues, in the softest voice he's ever heard her take, "it's because your brain is coping with the loss and the grief by creating scenarios and a new sense of normalness. It looks for patterns because habit is a natural coping mechanism. Without it you'd drown. That's why a lot of people find solace in their work."

"And if I don't want the scientific explanation?" Stiles asks with a shaky breathe. He's trying hard not to cry, staring hard at the words on Tara's computer screen.

"You'll miss your mom regardless of habits you create without her, Stiles."

"I like the scientific explanation better."

"We all do, because it's farther from our reach, and less relatable."

"Except for you," he chuckles weakly.

"Well, yes, but I'm one of a kind, aren't I?"

That she definitely is. The microwave dings and Lydia gets up before he can something stupid like kiss her on the cheek, but when she sits down right next to him, he gladly follows her lead and leans his head on hers.

"Do you want me to tell you a story?" Lydia asks after a while.

"Please. You have the best stories."

"It was the summer before third grade, and I spent it at my grandmother's house, as usual. She lived at the lake house, a bit north. It's my parents' now. And we used to read The Little Mermaid together."

"Yeah, and she got you this old edition for your birthday," Stiles says, remembering the seriousness with which Lydia has accepted to lend him the book, a year and a half ago.

"Shh, I'm telling the story." He puts up his hands in surrender. "She got me the book because I was completely obsessed with the story. I wanted to be called Ariel, and it drove my parents crazy. But my grandmother liked it; it made her laugh. She'd call me Ariel and bring me cookies and lemonade on the pier, and I ate them half in the lake."

"Like a mermaid."

"Yes. And I wanted to get a dog, a big one like Max, even though he's not in the novel."

"What were you going to name it?" Stiles asks.

"Andersen, like the author. But I mostly liked the idea of a big dog that could carry me."

"You didn't know about ponies yet?" Stiles snickers, and the thought of a small Lydia on the back of a huge dog with lots of hairs doesn't fail to amuse him.

"A dog is much lower maintenance than a horse! And I was small, at the time. I thought it could lift me."

"You're still small, though, you know that?"

He pokes her in the side for good measure, and she retaliates a bit too strongly. Stiles doubles over in pain, pressing against his flank.

"Ouch, Lydia, that hurt!"

"Sorry, sorry! Let me see, do you have a bruise?"

"No, it's okay, it doesn't hurt that badly."

She looks unconvinced when the door opens.

"Are you killing my son in a building full of cops, Lydia?" The Sheriff asks, poking his head inside.

They both look up.

"Hey, Dad! Are you finished? Can Lydia come to the dinner with us?"

"Answer's no and no," he sighs. "Although, Lydia's parents are going now, and invited you for dinner, actually."

"Oh." They share a look. It's rather unexpected, since Lydia's father doesn't like guests a lot, specifically children. That's why they mostly go to Scott's or Stiles' house.

"Right, let's go," Lydia says, getting up and closing the laptop. "I'll bring that back to Tara."

She flies out of the room, and Stiles knows she's taking the first opportunity she sees to speak privately to her parents, so he gathers his papers and pencils slowly.

"Where are you going to eat?" He asks his father.

"The night squad is going to order something in, don't worry."

"Let me just speak to Oliver," Stile says, bypassing him to the open area. "Make sure he eats your curly fries before you."

He is propelled toward the exit by a strong hand on his back, and another one ruffling his hair.

"Go, the Martins are waiting. And for God's sake, behave."

"I always behave!"

"Sure. Natalie said she'll drive you home. Do you have your keys?"

Stiles waves his bunch of keys over his shoulder as an answer and runs down the hallway, bursting through the doors in time to see one of the Martins' car speed up down the street.

"Stiles!" Lydia calls from his right, and he can see her mother and her, standing next to the Martins' second car. He doesn't say anything as he approaches, taking in Natalie's stiff back, bent over her phone as she furiously types a text, and Lydia's moody face.

"We're ready?" Mrs. Martin asks after a moment, visibly shaken but hiding it. "Let's go, then. What do you want to eat, Stiles?" And then, without waiting for an answer: "Italian okay with you guys?"

She drives slightly above the speed limit on the whole way to the restaurant, but Stiles and Lydia don't care; they play paper-rock-scissors and argue about whether guns are allowed or not.

(They're not, Lydia states finally, and so the matter is closed, but Stiles makes sure to use the move with Scott before they establish the same rules.)

When they park, though, and Natalie makes them wait at the car while she checks there's a table available at the restaurant, Lydia turns to Stiles and says, very fast, as if trying to hold back any emotion:

"My parents fought again. I think they're going to get a divorce soon."

She's not as good at hiding her feelings as her mother can be; he can see the anger in her tense shoulders, and the hurt in her eyes, too downcast for Lydia Martin, queen of the playground. Right now, she's Lydia, the middle ring of a chain trying to break apart, and Lydia knows enough mathematics to know that three isn't divisible easily.

But Stiles doesn't know how to answer to that, so he offers her a one-armed hug, and they wait until Natalie comes back, smiling, waving them back inside.

Middle school is a weird place for everyone, except, apparently, for Lydia Martin.

Or, at least, not physically. There's not awkward growth spurt that leaves her gangly and uncoordinated, no acne that resists her Clean & Clear products, no unfortunate haircut. She lets her hair grow free, trimming it every few months, to Stiles' delight— he takes great satisfaction with seeing it swish down her back everytime she steps.

She doesn't escape visits to the dentist, but she doesn't get braces, just those night guard things to gently put her teeth in place. She never wears it during sleepovers, except when those are exclusive to Scott and Stiles, and Stiles knows it gives her anxiety.

"The more I wear it, the faster I'll get rid of it," she tells him on the first night she slips it on, as she still can't really pronounce "t" correctly.

The sleepovers are less and less frequent, though, as they grow older and their parents start looking at each other with knowing smirks whenever Stiles and Lydia are alone together. It's not the only factor, of course, but it's the less painful one.

There are other things that change their friendship in an irremediable way, like popularity—or lack thereof—, middle school, society.

Scott sees the positive, as always. Lydia's staying true to herself, and following that she's making a name for herself— among girls and among boys— and Stiles would like a chance to get jealous, but the truth is that he and Jackson Whittemore are not even in the same category, so envy seems rather futile, and he settles for moody instead.

Stiles would feel a bit left behind, but then again he's got Scott, and Wednesday lunches when Lydia always, always eats with them. He's got junior league lacrosse, which he knows annoys Lydia because she never shows up, not even for Jackson.

Victory tastes sweet, even if the bitter taste of seeing Lydia kiss Jackson never fully leaves his mouth.

July, 2008

"D'you think Jackson will be here?" Stiles asks Scott as they make their way through the Martins' front door. Everyone is gathered around the pool in the back, which means the foyer is empty as they step inside.

Scott shrugs.

"I think I saw the Whittemores' car parked on the other side of the road," he says darkly. "Besides, you know how rich his parents are. And it is a fundraiser."

Stiles grunts. The Martins' deciding to get more involved in the neighborhood should not have led to Scott and him walking half a mile under the merciless Californian sun just to see Jackson of all people.

But Natalie chose to give money to the Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, which is always on the verge of being closed. It's old and crowded, and all the money is spent fixing the lighting and the power failures. Medical equipement comes second to lightbulbs, apparently.

And that generous decision prompted Melissa to send her son—and thus, Stiles, because since when did they do anything separately?—to the event, even though she couldn't come herself because of work.

"I can't believe we're going to spend a whole afternoon with Jackson," he says, disgruntled.

"We won't be alone with him. There'll be Danny, and Rebecca, at the very least. And Lydia," Scott adds almost as an afterthought.

"Great, then we can sit and watch her and Jackson making googly eyes at each other all day. I feel so much better, thanks."

"Don't take it out on me. We can always stay in the pool or use Lydia's portable DVD player."

"She won't let us watch The Lord of the Rings with guests present, you know that, right?"

"They don't have to know. C'mon, Stiles, don't make it worse than it is on purpose."

Stiles rolls his eyes but Scott trips him lightly as they walk up the Martins' impressive driveway, causing him to nearly fall into the poisonous cactus Natalie planted there three years earlier. They're still snickering as they let themselves in.

Natalie insisted they made themselves at home, so Stiles doesn't hesitate to tip over the potted plant under which they hide the spare key.

"D'you think there'll be an ice cream sandwich cake?" Scott asks in a low voice as they cross the empty house to the back patio.

"Lydia said something about a sundae bar, but who knows?"

The kitchen is as empty as the rest of the house, and Mrs Martin did tell them to make themselves at home, so Stiles has no problem peering in the cooler set on the table and cutting a part of the half-eaten ice cream sandwich cake he finds there.

"That's rude," Scott says, frowning. "You didn't even ask me if I wanted some."

"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry. Do you want some, Scotty?" He puts on a fake concerned air as he offers Scott half of his part.

Scott considers it for a moment, then shrugs and swallows it whole, wincing slightly when the cold hurts his teeth.

"You're so lazy," Stiles marvels as they step outside. "There was a whole cake for your convenience but you had to eat my part."

"Tastes better when I steal it from you."

"Yo, that's my line. Don't steal my lines too!"

"I guess we spend too much time together."

"I don't like it," Stiles mutters. "I'm going to find Lydia, you coming?"

They trudge to the teenagers group after stopping by the adults to say hello, and escaping thorny problems like making small talk with the parents of their middle school archenemy.

Scott was right; as they approach the outdoor kitchen, they can see Danny, Rebecca, Jackson sitting around Lydia at the table. From the way all of their heads snap up when they come close, they're not the only ones having a bad feeling about the evening.

"Hi!" Scott says brightly, waving at everyone but mainly Lydia, who loses some of the tension accumulated in her shoulders.

She smiles back brightly, which causes Stiles to smile at her goofily, which causes her to laugh, which causes Jackson to frown even more.

Great.

Lydia ignores him, though, which is a relief and a victory and prompts Scott to step on Stiles' foot as he starts smirking.

"Ow, dude!" He can't help whispering as Lydia turns away to show them the sundae bar. "Mind your feet."

"Mind your face," Scott mutters back. "Oh, sweet, marshmallow sauce!"

. . .

Minding his face is starting to get difficult as the afternoon unfolds. First there is the fact that the pool is at their entire disposition, and as a result everyone goes around their business half clothed, half-dripping chlorine and water. There is a knot in the back of Stiles' throat as he takes in the way Lydia's long hair is starting to curl at the end from air drying.

It looks nearly golden under the harsh rays of the sun, and Stiles keeps remembering her exasperated face as she told everyone in the first grade how her hair was actually strawberry blonde.

Then there is the obvious crisis between Jackson and Lydia, which seems to get worse as Lydia freely mingles with anyone but him. She hangs with Danny in the pool, shrieking loudly as he drags her underwater, and even giggles and whispers with Rebecca for a long moment.

(For Stiles, it is worth noticing, because Lydia doesn't like her very much, but that's mostly because Lydia doesn't like girls very much in general. She's told Stiles that in middle school, having boy friends is more valuable than having a lot of girl friends.

He also knows that she likes being the only girl in the group because it gives her a special and unique position, but that she'll never admit to him.)

Then she saunters back to the shady outdoor kitchen where he and Scott are noisily playing would you rather.

"Are you having fun?" she asks, settling in front of them to close the triangle, their usual seating arrangement.

"Sure. I've just discovered that Stiles would rather kill a person he knows than three strangers," Scott says conversationally.

Lydia raises an eyebrow.

"Well, it's three times less chances of getting caught and it doesn't have to be someone you like, does it?"

"My point exactly!" Stiles exclaims. "Thank you."

They high five without looking, and it's at least an eight out of ten.

"Besides, you're the one who thought of this question," Lydia points out. "Why do teenage boys have to be so gory?"

"Fine, your turn, then."

She thinks for a moment.

"Would you rather… Would you rather... " Her eyes are distant as she gaze upon her backyard. "Would you rather pretend about everything for the rest of your life or always tell the truth?"

There is a determined kind of look on her face, and Stiles suspect there is more to it than simply the spectacle of pretend their parents are playing.

"Always tell the truth," Scott says firmly.

"Sure? What if… your great-aunt wishes you your birthday in September again? What do you say then?"

"If you don't say anything, it doesn't count," Stiles points out.

"He'll have to say thank you at some point."

"But if the intention is there, it's not lying," Stiles insists.

Lydia considers that for a moment, then shakes her head.

"No, it's still lying. You can't pretend or it's lying. And you, Stiles?" She whips her head to stare at him. "Tell the truth or pretend?"

He thinks about it, glancing at her intensity. As defensive he's just been of Scott's choice, always telling the truth seems like a far-fetched concept for him. He's tempted, just for a moment to choose the other option, but something in Lydia's gaze stops him from pursuing that train of thought.

He looks at her, taking in her pinched lips and furrowed brows, and he knows immediately that there is simply no choosing "pretend". There's no pretending with Lydia; there is no version of his life in which Lydia doesn't share a part of it. And if there is, he doesn't want it, anyway.

"Truth, I guess," he says then, and he sees Lydia's shoulders drop from the pent-up emotion she's been repressing all day.

It's a test, he knows that, but despite his extensive knowledge in all things Lydia, he can't figure out what and why. The uncertainty is troubling and unfamiliar; it makes him feel like he's lost his footing, and he can't shake out an uncomfortable feeling in his chest, as if he's just missed a step. Looking at Lydia in that moment, he almost sees a stranger, or worse— the hard, Lydia-shaped wall she put up for other people.

(But not for him, never for him; he can always tell, and isn't that the whole problem?)

"Your turn, Stiles," Lydia says finally, breaking the moment.

He jumps, but it's okay, because he's always jumpy; Scott and Lydia don't even blink an eye. Then Lydia curls up in her chair, throwing her hair back behind her shoulder in a swift and practiced movement, and Scott slides her a cupcake-shaped scoop of strawberry sorbet, her favorite. The thin balance of their previous exchange is shattered, but ultimately not this one; this moment, right there with Scott and Lydia in the Martins' outdoor kitchen, is familiar and easy, like the string of numbers of his father's license plate.

. . .

Lydia gets up and mingles again at some point, because that's what she's here, after all, but it doesn't bother Stiles so much, because she's mostly parading for adults, playing one of her favorite games, which basically consists on leaving condescending adults awestruck by her intelligence.

"Time me?" she asks to Stiles when she comes to the bar to get yet another sorbet. Stiles and Scott play bartenders and try to prepare them before she arrives, arguing over flavors.

He frowns.

"Lydia, those people are your parents' friends. They already know you're a genius."

She stretches her lips wide, in the plastic grin that she's perfected over the school year. Stiles doesn't like it, and neither, he suspects, does she; it's too cold and shallow, too perfect to be real.

"That's the challenge," she says confidently. "Come on. I swear I can make Mr. Whittemore do that surprised blinking thing under ten minutes."

"You had him at 'Whittemore'," Scott laughs, topping all of their sundaes with melted chocolate.

Stiles sets the timer on his watch with a grumble, but like Lydia's perfunctory smile, there's no heart nor feeling behind it.

"Ready, set, go," he says in one breath.

"I'm not even gone yet," she protests.

"You're the one who wanted a challenge, aren't you?"

She takes her walking over the chair where Jackson's father is seated, browsing through his BlackBerry. They watch as Lydia comes up next to him with fake enthusiasm, sits in the chair next to him, and soon engages in an animated discussion.

"She made him put down his phone," Scott says around the third minute.

"A first, I'm sure."

Stiles chokes in his soda mid-snigger as something bumps into his back, violently throwing forward.

"Dude!" He exclaims, barely catching himself on the table. He watches dejectedly as his Coke spills on the pretty paper tablecloth, tainting the pastel flowers brown.

"My bad," Jackson says with a nasty smirk. "Got you confused with the planted flowers over there."

"Maybe you need glasses," Scott says innocently.

"Ever considered taking your head out of your ass?" Stiles mutters, trying to stop the pool from attacking the cupcakes cups. "I heard it's pretty dark up there."

He had spoken in a low voice, but Jackson hears anyway, of course. He stops glaring at Scott and rounds up on him with fury behind his blue eyes.

Jackson makes Stiles extremely uncomfortable, for reasons he's yet to fully understand. There is something behind his straight features that hides promises of violence and cruelty, and Stiles is surprised he seems to be one of the only ones to see through. There's no boy whose affections Lydia's been playing with for all of seventh grade, no upcoming lacrosse star, no richest boy of the school whenever Jackson interacts with Scott and Stiles; just an over-reaching, noxious jerk.

He's like a snake, Stiles has often thought, slithering and hissing until he strikes you hard in the stomach.

Jackson makes a sudden gesture, as if to grab him by the collar, and as much as he hates it, Stiles' step back is instinctive; he sees Jackson smirks before Scott jumps to his feet and grabs his arm, forcing it back.

"Fuck off, McCall," Jackson growls, but he takes a step back even as he yank his arm free.

"Then don't act like an ass," Scott says. "Seriously, you get lost."

"I have every right to be here. My parents got invited, remember? By the way, where are yours?"

"They couldn't come," Scott snaps.

"Yeah," Jackson says, with a malevolent glint in his eyes. "I guess some of them can't be bothered to be here anymore, can they?"

He looks straight at Scott as he says it, and Stiles can physically feel the sting of blow on his best friend. Scott's parents' divorce is still a recent wound, and though he doesn't like to talk about it, Stiles knows the wound hurts.

He doesn't even think before jumping to his feet and shoving Jackson back. He registers the impact of his palms against another chest before he can form the thought; he hears the clang of Jackson's bumping into the fancy pizza oven before he can even remember they're not at school or in the street.

Scott is the one restraining him, again.

"Not here," he whispers.

"Sensitive about single parents, Stilinski?" Jackson bites off, standing straighter. "I guess you have more experience."

This time Scott doesn't restrain him; in fact, he's even closer to punching Jackson than Stiles is. He has forgotten all about the Martins' backyard and the twenty-something adults milling on the other side of the pool. There are only the bricks of the pizza oven where he wants to bash in Jackson's head.

The violent nature of his thoughts only hits an instant later and he falters, stopping short of grabbing Jackson's shirt.

Lydia's voice is cold like ice when she comes up behind them.

"Your mother's looking for you, Jackson," she says, effectively breaking the fight. "Everybody's leaving."

There's a definitive note in her tone, but even that doesn't stop Stiles' blood from beating in his ears. Jackson nods shortly and sidesteps around Scott, but there's no trace of his trademark superior smirk.

"I guess we should go as well," Scott says awkwardly after a moment.

"Oh, you're both invited for dinner. Your mom called," Lydia answers, her voice much lighter, and Stiles can see Jackson's back tense as he slams the kitchen door behind him.

Good.

. . .

"What did Jackson say to you?" Lydia asks later, when they're boxing up the leftover ice cream, emptying and putting away coolers.

Scott and Stiles share a look. Lydia is staring at them levelly; she can't possibly have heard, or she wouldn't be so calm, he knows that. No matter how much she likes Jackson, and no matter how big the part of indifference she plays at school for popularity, she wouldn't.

"You didn't hear?" Scott says after a few awkward moments.

"No." She looks confused for a second, then worried. "I just assumed—listen, if it was about me, don't worry about it. We're having a fight and he's not very happy with me right now, but I swear it's nothing—"

"Nothing worth repeating," Stiles cuts in, not wanting to hear Lydia make any more excuses. Not for someone as unworthy of her excuses—of any excuses, for that matter—as Jackson frigging Whittemore. "We just don't go along, that's all."

"You were rather close to punching him. Stiles, this is more than just 'not getting along'."

"The heat got to our heads," Scott supplies. "It was nothing."

She lets it slide rather easily after thought that maybe she doesn't want to know more makes Stiles' stomach churn unpleasantly.

"Why did you two argue about?" He asks. "I thought you were dating?"

"We're not."

"But everyone saw you two kissing after the lacrosse game."

"Two people kissing doesn't always mean they're dating afterwards, Scott."

In Stiles' mind, yes, it does. But what does he know of it? He's never thought about dating or kissing anyone else than the girl currently talking to him about another boy, which he supposed could be considered as a bit pathetic.

(He doesn't.)

"But… I mean, you like him, right?"

He clears his throat, hardly believing he's saying the words. Sometimes, he truly has no idea what crosses his mind. His friends mustn't either, because Scott's face is fixed into an expression of horror akin to his (maybe greater, because it's enhanced by his unwavering empathetic nature). The look Lydia flashes him can only be described as quizzical. Incredulous. Questioning.

"Yes." His heart sinks like the goddamn Titanic, but then again he did ask, did he not? "But that's not the problem, Stiles. I can't start dating him right now. What if we get sick of each other before we even make it to high school?"

I don't see the problem in that, the little voice at the back of his brain says, but he shushes it imperiously. This is not what Lydia needs right now. She visibly needs someone to confide in, and to help her clear the situation for her—because, clearly, if she thinks this jerk is boyfriend material, she's confused.

"So, what, you told him no?"

"Mmmh."

"Just like that?"

"Mmmh."

He blinks at her, but he has trouble containing an incredulous grin.

"You turned Jackson down?" He repeats, fully laughing now. "Wow, no wonder he was touchy-feely."

"Shut up. It's not funny!"

He puts his hands up in surrender but the grin doesn't leave his face all evening.

In the beginning there is Jackson.

That's not entirely true, Lydia knows, but sometimes that's how it feels. High school is easy for someone as intelligent as her, as charismatic as Lydia Martin, for someone with a boyfriend such as Jackson Whittemore. Life is easy because Lydia makes it so.

Except that Lydia's life starts to slip from her control.

First, there is Allison, who becomes Lydia's best friend—a title that Stiles used to claim, but not anymore; things have changed, and doesn't in that category as clearly as before. To avoid further confusion, Lydia creates a new box in her mind, labels it "Stiles" and puts him on the shelf, away from her immediate thoughts but always present.

She meets Allison abruptly and without warning and she loses her to France the same way, but it's a funny story of two girls bonding over a jacket (That jacket is a killer, Lydia says to Allison the first time she sees her, because it's true and because she's noticed the glances from and toward Scott) and watching lacrosse from the cold metal bleachers (Who is he? Allison asks, and Lydia is proud to answer, That's my friend Scott. He's very good).

Then there is the winter formal in sophomore that she spends in the ER with Stiles because of the sprained ankle she got by tripping in the lacrosse field. She was looking for Jackson, but it's Stiles who holds her hand when the pain becomes too much to walk, and Stiles who opens her Reese's pieces for her, aware of her scraped and hurt fingers.

Then there is Jackson, who was the beginning and the end of something in her life—she can't say what exactly, but it hurts at first.

(I do, I do love you.)

He leaves for London, which is so cliché that Lydia wants to roll her eyes. She does, after a moment, simply because she can, now.

She sees Stiles and Scott nearly everyday that summer, but summer always ends, and it ends with Malia.

April, 2012

The hypocrisy of the situation is what gets Lydia the most.

It's not like they're actively avoiding each other, or don't speak outside of class—they do, and that's the worst part. That way she has no excuse for the influx of Stiles-inducing feelings.

It's new.

She didn't understand them, at first, but Allison opened her eyes, constantly dropping hints and innuendos. She confronted her in the hallway, in her room, in Beacon Hills' only bookstore as they're picking up school books.

She supported her, then, after she'd made her say the words.

(I like Stiles. As in, more than a friend. As in, I want to kiss his stupid face senseless. Oh, God, Allison, what did you just make me say?)

But now, of course, she doesn't have Allison anymore, not like before. There are miles and miles separating the two places—just over five thousand and six hundred miles, which must amounts at nine thousand kilometers, since Europeans use the metric system. More than that, there is a distance between the two of them that Lydia doesn't like, but doesn't know how to fight.

It scares her, because if losing Allison is so easy, even though they've become so close, then who can say what, or who, will stand between Stiles and her?

(Her name is Malia and she has long, long legs, and a blunt personality that rubs Lydia the wrong way; Stiles finds her hilarious.)

Now, standing in his kitchen after eight years and a half of friendship and developing feelings, it feels like a double betrayal.

"Okay," Stiles says, slamming the last bowl on the counter hard than necessary. They both wince and Stiles absentmindedly pets the counter to amend. "Birthday favor officially cashed in."

Lydia rolls her eyes, but she can't help but feel pettily victorious. Is Malia here today—or any other day, really—to learn baking from Stiles? The answer, easily provable, is no, of course, because Malia doesn't like cooking.

Lydia just doesn't care about it on her own, and that's where the difference starts.

"What are we doing?" she asks, picking up Claudia's old cook book.

The pages are wrinkled and stained, and when she puts down on its spine, it automatically opens to the vegetarian lasagna recipe. Stiles reaches over, arm brushing against her own, and he flips the pages to the index.

"Well, first, we're not having lasagna in the middle of the afternoon," he says casually, still totally oblivious of her personal space.

She rolls her eyes again. It seems to be a reflex whenever she is around Stiles these days, like it was when they were nine, but the intention behind it has changed.

Stiles nudges her and it snaps her out her thoughts.

"What?" she says, maybe a bit too aggressively, as she often is nowadays.

"Everything okay?" he asks instead of answering, and isn't so much like him, to be concerned about her while steadfastly ignoring any of her signals? "If you don't feel like it, we can do this another day. Or never, I know you hate baking—"

"I don't hate baking," she says, because she doesn't, not when it includes watching Stiles measuring flour, his tongue poking out as dusty white powder gets all over the apron that his father won at the station's end of the year lottery.

"Or I can just do it and you watch," he finishes.

She's tempted to say yes, but then the thought of staying around, useless, stuck in the same spot as he actually moves around the kitchen is too reminiscent of the current state of their relationship to be comfortable.

"It's your birthday present," she states.

"Nobody will know."

"Nobody cares except for the people present in this room, Stiles."

"Okay. Then apron up."

She disregards the old grey one he holds out for her and opens the closet,knowing she'll find at least half a dozen more. The Stilinskis have a thing about winning aprons whenever they buy by mail order, and of course there was the incident of 2009 when the Sheriff bought three by accident, so they have quite the collection.

She rifles through the closet, putting aside the old and battered plaid apron (dating back from the Sheriff's college years, which she seriously believes started the trend in Stiles). She finds what she's looking for in the back, still stiff and creased like the day it got out of the package.

"There," she says, brandishing their cutest apron, a pale purple one that's visibly never been worn. "I want this one."

"I'm impressed," Stiles admits. "I completely forgot about that one. I think Dad was saving it for you, too."

She feels a pang in her chest and stops fumbling with the cords for a moment.

"Really?" she says, trying to go for detached and unmoved.

"Yeah. It's the smallest we got, see?"

There's another reason why Lydia doesn't cook; at 5'3, most aprons are too big for her, and awkwardly fall under her knees, which is ridiculous and annoying to walk with. This one stops just above them, a first in Lydia's personal history with aprons, and the neck tie is short enough to actually cover her chest, though that may have less to do with length per se.

They lace their respective aprons (Stiles discreetly tries to go for the plaid apron, but Lydia squashes this hope by stating that if she's going to spend three hours in this kitchen ruining her manicure, then she's going to do it without eyesore, so no mixing up plaids, please) and turn back to the cook book. Lydia peruses the baking index, the familiar names bringing up memories of a simpler time.

"Have you tried all of them?"

"Basically," Stiles bobs his head.

"Even the tarte tatin?"

She sees Stiles' back stiffen. She's playing dirty, she knows, but she also knows he has a thing about people speaking foreign languages, and it's not like Malia's doing marvelously in French.

(That's unfair, a part of her protests. She's been home schooled since she was eight and she admitted herself that the online lessons weren't good in that aspect.)

Look at me, she thinks fiercely. Look at me like you used to. Look at me like you mean it.

Stiles doesn't turn his back. It's a pretty accurate representation of their relationship, really; two former best friends turned newly into strangers, standing in a kitchen cooking.

"Yes, even that one," he says finally, still busying himself with the egg-mixer.

"I want to do it. It can't be that hard, can it?"

She quickly scans the recipe; no special ingredients, the explanation is short.

"Relatively," Stiles agrees. He comes up behind her, seemingly out of the weird mood he was in a moment ago. "Let's do it."

. . .

After she nearly burns the caramel—because apparently you need to move the pan around to make sure it cooks the same way everywhere, which should be obvious but isn't, for some reason, and this is why she doesn't cook—, Stiles charges her to cut the apples.

It's downright degrading, but Lydia doesn't complain; it gives her the opportunity to unabashedly watch Stiles' profile as he leans over the stove, foot lightly tapping against the floor.

"Is it ruined?" she asks to remind him she's here.

She's right to do so, because he jumps at least half a foot, and swivels to stare at her.

"Don't scare me like that," he complains.

"Better now than when you're holding a scalding hot pan," she says. "Did I ruin it?"

"Nah, you did nothing wrong."

"Yet," she mutters darkly. "I decline any responsibility for the state of the finished product. You knew what you were getting into. I'm the worst baker ever."

"You're the best, Lydia," he says absentmindedly. The simple sentence—something they told each other a lot as children, because Scott was the best at getting things from adults, and Stiles was the best at getting them into trouble, and Lydia simply was the best at a lot of things—, makes her freeze, knife in stuck in the last apple.

"Stiles," she begins, the words heavy in her suddenly dry mouth.

He's not listening to her, he's hurriedly seizing the pan and swirling it in wide circles far from the stove, spreading the caramel.

"Come on, come on. C'mon, don't be ruined… Yes! Can you turn off the fire?"

She does, completely out of her league, and obeys him religiously when he tells her to put the apples directly on the still boiling caramel. Then they work on the dough, from scratch, which is when they overcome their first obstacle.

"No way," Lydia says, staring at the mess of flour, butter and eggs she has to work into shape.

"You were the one who wanted to do a tarte tâtin!" Stiles protests. "You have to knead the thing by hand, otherwise the chemical reaction doesn't work as well."

"Don't try to sweet talk me into this," she huffs, perfectly aware that's what she did earlier, and why they're in this predicament.

"I warned you!"

"When?"

"I told you baking could be messy. I know I did."

"Not the chunks-of-butter-under-the-nails kind of mess," she snaps. "How am I supposed to even get it out?"

"Oh, I don't know, Lydia," he lashes out. "Try washing your hands? I hear it's very in fashion with the children."

She wants to slap him, but crosses her arms to rein in the urge. She sort of wants to try, which is ridiculous, but she can't help it. Stiles stares at her for a few seconds, then deflates completely.

"Sorry, I can't stay mad at you," he says. "I'll do the kneading, but you can spread the dough before laying it on, okay? You can do it with your knuckles, you won't ruin your nail polish. I promise."

She nods mutely, but she sits down when Stiles pats down the chair next to him and watches him expertly knead the dough. It's unnerving, following those large hands, those long, long fingers, because they remind her of a simpler time, a time when they grabbed onto each other easily. Nowadays, they're hardly ever sitting close, let alone touching.

And now—well. It's another problem. It's a problem of where she wants his hands and what she wants him to do with her, but also of where he's learnt all of what she thinks about at night. That's where the line is drawn, where Lydia steps back, for her own sake more than anything.

"You're lucky you have horrible circulation," she says after a while. "If your hands were too hot, the butter would melt immediately."

"I've been telling you it's a gift for years, but do Scott and you trust me? No, of course." He shakes his head dramatically. "There. Spread some flour?"

He shows her how to spread the dough using the flat of her palm and her knuckles so there aren't any holes, and she has to admit that it's fun; it makes her think back of modeling small DNA chains with Fimo clay when she was in kindergarten.

She still gets butter on her hands, but not under her nails, so she's in a good enough mood to pretend to look away as Stiles eats the excess of raw dough and spare him her usual spiel on salmonellosis.

"It's better raw than cooked," he'd told her one day as the Sheriff had just put a batch of cookies in the oven. She'd been so horrified that she'd turned off the timer behind his back and let the cookies five more minutes, to make sure they were a bit more than crispy.

They make hot cocoa while the tart cooks, and Lydia does the dishes with her Lydia-gloves that the Stilinskis keep under the sink for the countless times she stays over for dinner and insists on helping. Her name is written inside because Scott has the same ones, but they all drew symbols on them in Sharpie to further distinguish them; they're nearly works of art.

"My name is nearly washed out," she says, rinsing the last measuring cup.

"Already? C'mere."

He's already rummaging in a drawer for a Sharpie when a loud knock interrupts them. The sound of the key turning in the hole echoes directly in Lydia's head, and she feels dread settle .

"Stiles!" Scott exclaims from the entrance.

"In the kitchen!" Stiles bellows back, closing the drawer—sans Sharpie, Lydia notes.

"Where else?" Malia says, but when she comes in, she makes a beeline for the oven. "What is it? Smells delicious."

"A tarte tatin," Lydia says in her most perfect French.

Malia looks at her sharply, but she brushes off Scott's accusatory look.

"How was practice with Kira?" She asks him instead.

"Good!" He beams, as she knew he was going to. "She's doing really well, I don't think Coach is going to regret taking her in."

"She's still nervous with an audience, though," Malia remarks.

"Who isn't?" Stiles says, inspecting the oven. "I think it should be good soon. Is she coming?"

"No, she stayed at school with her father. Something about revamping the history class? I'm not sure."

Stiles takes out two new mugs, and Lydia feels a powerful satisfaction when he asks Malia if she wants the green or the black one, after he gets Scott's without hesitation.

They settle around the table, watching the clock tick as they wait for the tart to bake. Well. Lydia watches the clock tick, then the leaves outside the window, then counts the knots in the table; Scott furiously texts away on his phone and his giddy smile makes her suspect the culprit is no one else than Kira. She doesn't want to turn around to see what Stiles and Malia are talking about, if Malia's legs are slung over Stiles' lap like that time they went to the dinner after lacrosse.

She gets up and crosses the room to the drawer Stiles was searching earlier, locating the Sharpie on the first try, and she sets on tracing the letters of her name over the washed out remnants.

"What's this?" Malia says after a few moments, and Lydia looks up to see her standing over her shoulder.

"My name in Greek," she answers, drawing the curve of the delta with a flourish.

"You forgot the point on the i."

"There are no points on iotas," Lydia explains.

She finishes the last alpha and caps back the Sharpie. Malia inspects the glove without a word, then she grabs the notepad.

"Can you write mine?"

Lydia's so surprised that she doesn't say anything for a minute. She likes that part of Malia; the curious side of her that makes her persevere so hard in school and study Lydia's math notes until she knows the numbers that dance across the room.

"Well, your name isn't Greek," Stiles pipes up from behind them. "Move over, it's hot!"

They set everything aside to watch Stiles turn the pan upside down in a plate, and applaud when the whole thing comes off clean at the first try.

"That doesn't mean we can't write it in Greek," Lydia says finally, when he's done bowing dramatically. She feels a rush of affection for Malia's social inadequacy. "Come on, I'll teach you the alphabet."

"I'll forget it by tomorrow," Malia grumbles, but she slides in the chair Scott's vacated to cut the cake, since Stiles cannot be trusted to cut equal parts.

"You can ask Stiles to teach you, he took one lesson in seventh grade," Lydia says.

"Biggest mistake of my life."

"Besides, you know some letters from math and physics already."

Malia's unusually focused, asking the name of each letter, but Lydia can see her reluctance when she sees some of them.

"Are you telling me the e looks like an n? And the n is a v?"

"Wait till you see the capital letters," Stiles says around a mouthful of cake. "Lydia, this is delicious."

"You did most of it yourself," she says graciously, but the compliment warms her inside.

"Well, those are the best cut apples I've ever eaten."

"So it's just an upside down apple pie?" Malia asks, taking a second part. "You'll have to show me."

"Sure, just come around for dinner next Saturday, Dad will be home."

"There are two ways of writing the sigma, depending on its place in the word," Lydia says a bit sharply when Malia sits back.

"What? Oh, sure. That looks confusing."

"It's the same thing with the beta, really. Remember?"

Malia doesn't remember. Lydia's lost her attention. She leaves her nestled on her chair, joking with Stiles about coach's reaction to the team's last training—Malia comes to all the practice sessions—and excuses herself for the bathroom.

She tries to forget how Scott's eyes follow her as she turns around the corner, and how much she wishes that another pair of brown eyes would do the same instead.

. . .

When the Sheriff comes back from work and finds them sprawled around the kitchen table, he takes one look at her face and invites them all to stay for dinner.

Maybe he knows that Malia is supposed to be home that evening, maybe not. Nevertheless, Lydia doesn't miss the way the invitation is mostly directed toward Scott and her, nor does she misses Malia's uncharacteristic quietness immediately afterwards.

Lydia can't very well blame her for it. In addition to her two-month-old relationship with Stiles, giving her an obvious advantage on eight and a half years of friendship (Careful, Lydia, a voice, not unlike her mother's, says in her head. You're turning sarcastic), she mainly wants to fit in their tight-knit group, and Lydia's been giving her a harder time of it than she did with Kira, which she can obviously feel.

Still, that revelation doesn't help smooth the sharp edge in Lydia's stomach whenever she looks at her two friends together, or help the sorry look in Scott's eyes whenever she turns away.

(He knows, of course he knows.)

So she politely declines. She's had enough of outside intervention in her feelings for her best friend; if Stiles persists in being oblivious, then it's a matter they need to settle together. Or better yet, something Lydia must need to learn to bottle up, as she's done so many times in the past.

Sometimes, she thinks as she puts on her shoes, she really wishes he never taught her to open herself to feelings and others.

Look where that led her.

She tries, but she can't.

She keeps her distance; she spends the whole summer at her parent's' lake house, and the only person she invites is Scott. They don't speak a lot; they tan in the sun and dive in the lake; they work on building Scott's one-hell-of-a-record for UC Davis.

He asks her where she wants to go for college, and she says MIT, because she's Lydia Martin and Lydia Martin gets the best.

He smiles and says she'll have it, for sure, because Lydia Martin is the best. She doesn't have the heart to tell him about the letters she's been sent, and the emails she already exchanged with teachers; how the words possibility of a direct enrollment in sophomore year lull her at night.

She wants to tell Stiles first, but he's not here to tell.

Once, Scott tries to convince her to head back south to Beacon Hills.

"He misses you," he says. "And Malia is busy with summer school, so he's alone a lot."

"And you're busy with Kira," she deflects. "what's happening between the two of you, now that she's in New York?"

She gets cards and texts from Kira, too; pictures of buildings and statues of famous people, captioned with quotes and facts. But you already know that! Kira writes at the end of each of them, but Lydia never tells her so, because she looks at the dates and the names written in Kira's cramped handwriting and she thinks, No, I don't. Teach me.

Kira doesn't need to teach her niceness. In the end, Lydia finds some of her own.

Malia calls her on a random Thursday afternoon, so lackadaisical that Lydia knows she's upset.

"Stiles and I broke up," she says in lieu of greeting. "Just thought you should know."

Lydia gives her directions to the lake house and they spend the afternoon drinking cocktails under the sun. It doesn't occur to her to be happy until after Malia's asleep on the porch swing.

When she heads home the week before senior scribe, she finds Stiles like she left him back in January and her friendship with Malia unwavering.

October, 2012

There is a suspicious amount of tipsy teenagers in the McCall's' living room, which isn't really to Lydia's taste, and, frankly, a bit surprising. She cocks an eyebrow as she lets herself in with the key she's had since freshman year (Stiles gave her one after he had them made unbeknownst to Melissa. Lydia had accepted after notifying the owner of the house that they were invading her privacy in such a blatant way, which didn't seem to faze her so much).

"Lydia!" someone shouts from the other side of the room, and it's truly a proof of good taste that she can hear it over the music.

It's Scott's birthday, after all, even if he wasn't in charge of the organization; Lydia and Danny were, so it means that all the guests were actually invited, the punch is excellent and the is music not loud enough to not be able to hold a conversation.

Lydia's parties are renowned at BHHS because people can actually remember the honor of being invited and having a great time in her parents' pool. Danny's parties are renowned at BHHS because no one can actually remember anything the next day.

It's all a question of taste.

It's Stiles who makes her way to her, in the end, because of course it is. He's wearing a striped sweater and the Red Pants, and Lydia can't wait for him to walk away because damn if they don't do wonders for his ass.

Focus, Martin, she berates herself.

He comes for a hug, and blinks at her in surprise when she sidesteps to avoid getting drenched in red hot punch.

"Cup, Stiles," she says with fond exasperation.

"Oh, yeah."

He holds it above her head, making a show of bending down to sneak an arm around her shoulders. She shoves in the coat rack that threatens to dip down every time the door opens.

"Great party," he says honestly, lowering his head to her ear as they pass the speakers.

"Isn't it? I don't know who made it, but I love the punch," she adds after stealing a sip from his cup. She tries not to revert to a seventh-grader swooning about indirect kisses.

"Fishing for compliments doesn't become you," he points out, claiming his cup back. "Besides, I think the hiding and diversion work was the best executed part of the plan."

"Do you mean the way Scott's pretended not to be aware of the surprise party for the last three weeks?"

"He so did not!" Stiles gasps, letting his arm fall to face her.

"Did too."

"Did not."

"Stiles, he sent me a text this morning telling me that his mom was indeed working tonight. With a winking smiley face."

That shuts him up. Scott never sends winking smiley faces.

"Damn him," he mutters. "I had to make up an excuse about wanting to work on my back shots to keep him from going home after school. All that for nothing."

"Oh, Stiles," Lydia can't help but say. With an surge of boldness, she steps forward and pats his chest. "I wouldn't say nothing exactly."

She lets him gape after her as she fully steps into the McCall's kitchen. Danny had drawn a rope across the stairs, so Lydia expects the room to be full of people looking to escape the music, but apparently the back porch with exterior heating is more attractive to a bunch of teenagers who are used to rolling around in damp grass on Friday nights.

Go figure.

"Where is the man of the evening, anyway?" Lydia asks as she helps herself a large cup of punch (and it is good, damn).

"Talking lacrosse with Kira," Stiles says, pointing to the back porch. Lydia can make out Scott's broad shoulders in the black jacket he loves, Kira's grinning face tilted up to him.

"So, flirting."

"Yeah."

They clink their plastic cups against each other like champagne flutes and Lydia sweeps a content gaze on the rather civilized crowd enjoying the McCalls' living room.

"Are you having a good time?" she asks, because despite the fact that it's not held at her house (her mom has her reading club over, which Lydia is still appalled at), she is the hostess.

Stiles hums an answer.

"Nobody called the cops yet, so I'd say I'm okay," he admits.

"And nobody will," Lydia promises. "I organized this party, remember?"

There is a reason Stiles doesn't go to parties a lot. Apart from his obvious social anxiety that often prevents him from enjoying too large crowds, the fact is that he often ends up on the porch, arguing with deputies who've seen him grow up not to shut down the party, as everyone waits behind the door with baited breaths and barely contained drunk giggles.

Hypocritically, he hates it, which never fails to amuse Scott and Lydia. Taking advantage of his father's work is apparently something Stiles likes to do for his own good only.

"Wanna dance?" Stiles finally asks, clearing his throat.

Fighting off a smirk, Lydia accepts.

Stiles is a terrible dancer, to the point where Lydia suspects he's doing it on purpose most of the time. Actually, because of the Summer They Don't Talk About, she knows he's doing it on purpose. But there is a reason they don't talk about that summer and there is a reason Scott is always bugging them about it. And there is a reason Lydia has been dreading Scott to remember what she drunkenly promised to show him at Stiles' seventeenth birthday.

She holds her arm out and he grasps her forearm to tug her forward. His palm is warm against her skin, as they always are, and her skin feels hypersensitive to his calloused fingers.

It's a familiar brush that she's felt for years. Jackson sported them, and Aiden; Danny and Scott, who also play lacrosse, have acquired them too. But it's never quite like Stiles' long and nervous hands—she never craves their touch the same way either.

She lets Stiles sweep her to the dance floor with large and exaggerated moves that make her laugh. She can't tell if it's the first cup of punch kicking in (it's not, her brain whispers), or just the light feeling of happiness.

Stiles begins twirling her, completely ignoring the thumps of the speakers, and Lydia goes willingly, adding extra impetus to the spin, compliments of years of dance lessons and ice skating, so that her hair whacks his face.

"Oh, you wanna play?" Stiles mutters around a grin as she rights herself perfectly.

"Not now," she answers back before he can act on his threat.

Not ever.

"We promised Scott, remember?"

"I do. He may not. Hopefully. If luck is on our side." He throws her a pointed look. "Stiles, we made a pact!"

"The pact of Let's Never Talk About That Summer again," he says. "I know. But... look at him. He would be so happy to see that."

It's not that her reputation matters to Lydia like it used to, mainly because now it's effortless. People used to respect Lydia Martin because they feared and envied her. Now, people respect Lydia Martin because she is Lydia Martin. She knows it's not what Stiles is talking about—their present for Scott's eighteenth birthday—that could change that, not after years of simply not giving a fuck.

Still. It feels like an intrusion, allowing people in a Stiles-and-Lydia moment.

Stiles bows down to her logic and they simply enjoy dancing in a silly way to a top 40's song that Lydia doesn't like; She focuses on the feeling of his hands on her sometimes, the way he leans down to shout social commentary in her ear, and his Red Pants in general.

. . .

It catches her later that night, when the main buzz has died down, and people are starting to doze off on couches or leave. It's more intimate now. Maybe a dozen people, most of them gathered in groups. She'd seen Scott during the evening, when he and Kira destroyed Stiles and her at beer pong—there is a reason Stiles has been benched for most of his high school lacrosse career, after all. But she hasn't had the opportunity to talk to him face-to-face.

If she's being honest, she's trying to avoid him and the repercussions of her bold "Stiles and I'll show you on your birthday!", seven months earlier.

She finds refuge among girls, for once—she hasn't really done that since Allison left brutally for France, and it feels nice, even if she can't help but be a bit wary of Malia at times. But Kira is there too to smooth any blunt angles and it feels nice to giggle without any thoughts of upturned noses and upside down smiles clouding her judgment.

(Oh, who's she kidding?)

"So, I'm still indecisive," Kira finishes off, biting her lip.

"I don't see why," Malia says, draining the last of her beer. "New York seems like the best bet. I say apply the fuck to Columbia."

"Yeah, but… I mean, there may be opportunities in California I haven't considered."

"What kind of opportunities? College opportunities?" Lydia inquires. She doesn't miss the way Kira glances back to Scott's general direction when she says that. "Look, my advice is: look up colleges in California and New York. Apply to where you honestly think you stand a chance—"

"Easy for you to say," Malia says humoredly, "you got accepted early to MIT."

"No, I haven't—not yet, at least." The letter should come in December, and Lydia is excited, but not too worried. She knows she's good enough. "Anyway, what I was going to say is that you've got a choice to make. Not saying it's easy, but remember: no regrets."

The words feel incredibly heavy on her tongue. It's shit advice, really, something all parents will tell their children, and particularly hypocritical from Lydia. No regrets—if she could, she would laugh bitterly. Lydia suspects that she'll finish high school with Stiles-shaped regrets branded under the sole of her shoes that will burn the Bostonian pavements.

She doesn't want to think about that, though. Not tonight, not when the evening isn't about her and the game of uncertainty that she unwillingly plays with Stiles. She busies herself with chasing the last drops of her piña colada to hide her confusion. When she looks up, she finds Malia's gaze on her.

"What?" she starts to ask, but Malia just smirks at her and hops off her stool.

"I'll leave you to it," she says, and throws her empty bottle in the recycling bin before heading to the dance floor.

Lydia wants to call her back, shout at her retreating back that there's nothing to leave her to, when a familiar arm leans against the table, just a little too close for her nervous disposition.

"I don't know what you were talking about," Stiles begins, "but it may be a little too late for regrets, because Scott remembers and wants that dance."

"Oh, no," she mutters dejectedly, but the whooping sound she hears from the living room doesn't leave her much choice.

"Come on, Lydia," Scott pleads. "You promised."

He gives her puppy eyes, which is totally unfair, because he knows she's never been able to resist them; not in the seventh grade when she let him read her English essays, and certainly not now. With a sigh, she stands up and meets Stiles' eyes.

"We're going to need space," she says, and everyone actively jumps in motion. "Push the couch back and the kitchen table this way."

Once the space between the living room and the kitchen is mostly cleared up, she turns towards Stiles, communicating with one look to start this misery, already. He wipes out his phone and connects it to the bluetooth speakers.

"Before we start," Lydia says as the first notes fill the room, "I want to blame my aunt for getting married two years ago and forcing everyone in the family to take dance lessons."

"Which I was roped into attending with Lydia because I'm such a good friend," Stiles chimes in.

"Right."

They get into position, clasping hands and gripping each other's shoulders. Lydia's muscle memory kicks in as she waits for the tempo to pick up.

"Relax," Stiles whispers, rolling his shoulders to get her to loosen her grip.

"You relax," she counters back, readjusting their hands. "I just haven't done that in so long."

And here they go. Salsa is difficult, and the footwork is the worst part, especially for Stiles. They're not particularly coordinated or skilled enough when they're sober—after all, they only attended the few compulsory classes for her aunt's wedding and, even then, she knows they didn't pay attention—and they're even sloppier when tipsy.

Still, dancing with Stiles brings back fresh memories of an easier time—of a time when her confused feelings about her best friend could blossom and spread peacefully. She hasn't had that luxury in almost a year.

"Eh, you've taken dance lessons your whole childhood. You'll be fine."

"Classical dance. Not salsa."

There are several instances when one of them stops abruptly, muttering "wait—", before the other one leads away. Lydia nearly trips on a fallen cup, which Stiles smoothly disguise as a dancing move.

She has to laugh and so does he. She's glad, on one hand, that it's happening like it is. Stiles' hand is in hers, the other one burning a hole through the light material of her dress. She suspects her subconscious has taken the decision to dance for her, because the skirt of her blue dress twirls around her thighs, creating the perfect effect for salsa. It bats against Stiles' red jeans, pale against dark. As she lets her feet take over, she can almost detect a hint of orange in the fabric. It's enough to bring an old conversation to her overwhelmed mind, an argument about orange and blue, in the icy immensity of the Beacon Hills ice rink.

She can just see their past selves, all buzzcut and middle part. It's the color of the Mets, he says with indignation. And, softer: sometimes things you wouldn't think would be a good combination end up turning out to be a perfect combination.

They were talking about baseball, only they were not talking about baseball, and Lydia had cut the conversation short by skating all the way to the opposite side of the ice rink. She likes to have the last word, and how could she win against baseball? She had appeased her boiling mind with cool and petty thoughts, and that had been enough for several months.

The music speeds up slightly, and it's the moment Lydia has dreaded the most. They both take one step back, and then Stiles, with focused eyes and the tiniest bit of tongue poking out, is spinning her three times in a row: twice towards him, and one last so she springs away from him like a blossoming flower.

The music stops on one last thrilling note, but Stiles and Lydia keep the pose, panting slightly.

The round of applause that breaks out just after reminds them that they have an audience. They both jump in surprise, and let go of their joined hands.

"Thank you, thank you," Stiles says, taking a dramatic bow.

Lydia rolls her eyes but accepts the glass of punch someone hands her. She lets Scott hug them both at the same time, Liam clap her excitedly on the shoulder, Kira pester her about dance lessons.

"We're not that good," she says, raising her brow. "You should ask a professional."

"We're terrible and I don't even know the name for half of these steps," Stiles butts in.

"And he'll step on your toes," Lydia says, poking him in the ribs.

"Ouch, what was that for?"

"For including me in that 'we'."

"Geez, Lydia, I didn't think grammar would fire you up so much."

He escapes another attack, laughing, and manages to muss her hair up before he stalks to Scott for protection. She laughs at his retreating back and gets a weird hand gesture in response.

Malia's eyebrows nearly disappear under her hair.

"What?" Lydia asks, suddenly sobered.

"Nothing." The corners of Malia's mouth quirk up anyway. She reaches to pat Lydia's arm. "Good luck, that's all."

Lydia eyes her retreating back as she climbs up the back of the couch and butts into a poker game that's just starting. She hopes it's not strip poker, because Hayden is playing and still a sophomore, but she finds that she can't really concentrate on the matter as she turns to the punch. Everyone is apparently starting to stick with non alcoholic drinks for the end of the evening, and the deep red liquid has never felt more alluring.

It's nearly the exact same shade as her lipstick, Lydia notices absentmindedly, pouring her a generous glass with the large ladle Melissa only uses for soup.

. . .

Lydia wakes up at three in the morning with Scott's comforter around her shoulder and a sore ass. She sleepily blinks at her friends, all spread out on the McCall's back porch in various sleeping positions.

They had sent the youngest to sleep around one, so it's just Malia, curled up around the heater, and Scott and Kira against the railing, sharing two or three checkered plaids on top of the other. She hears a sound to her left, and she looks up to see Stiles waking up on the swing next to her.

"Hey," he says drowsily, making no effort to untangle their feet meeting in the middle of the seat.

"God Stiles, this is a two seater and I'm only taking half a seat. Could your legs be any longer?"

He stretches out until his socked foot is brushing against her shoulder and she pushes it away forcefully. She's rewarded by nearly falling off the damn thing when Stiles flails and rocks the swing noisily.

"Shh!" she says when he's stopped reenacting a drowning scene. "Shouldn't we wake them up?" she whispers.

Stiles shakes his head.

"No, let them sleep. You know Scott and Malia are all about the great outdoors."

"Well, I'm all about the great indoors," Lydia says as she draws the comforter tighter against her shoulders. "I'm going inside, you coming?"

"Hot chocolate?"

"You bet."

They tiptoe to the door and crack it open until it starts to creak. They've done that for years, and Lydia is sure Melissa doesn't grease it for a reason. She feels like the space to sneak in reduces every year.

While she waits for Stiles to wriggle in, she glances at the thermometer on the wall. It's an unusually warm October night, which is why they chose it to hold the party. Even at the coldest hour of the morning, it's nearly fifty degrees.

She still turns up the heat on her way in.

"Everyone else left?" she asks as she pads in the kitchen.

"Yup," Stiles says as he takes out the smallest sauce pan. "It's just us and all the marshmallows we want."

He gives a little shake to the package he dug up from who-knows-where.

"We're not eating all of Scott's marshmallows," she protests. "Honestly, Stiles—"

"I bought them just for you because I knew you were going to wake me up in the middle of the night." He shakes his head. "You and your cocoa cravings."

It sounds much more domestic than it should be. Lydia's heart squeezes as she revels in all the ways Stiles knows her, and all the ways she knows Stiles. Sometimes it feels like the biggest irony of all that she should fall in love with someone she knows better than she knows herself.

Stiles pours the milk in the pan while Lydia takes out their mugs from the cupboard. The Sheriff grew tired of Scott and Lydia always stealing his favorite mug when they came over, so he brought them to the store and made them each choose two mugs. Then they would each have their own at the other's houses.

Lydia's mug at Scott's is large and round, with a boring white exterior. Stiles huffed and mocked it until she showed him the Grim dog spray-painted at the bottom. As Prisoner of Azkaban had just came out, he was insanely jealous and pouted for a whole weekend.

His had red and green lightsabers in fluorescent paint, but they faded after less than a year. Stiles demanded that they handwash all of their mugs after that, and they stopped using the microwave to make cocoa, choosing to resort to his mother's recipe, in a pan.

"Can you put on some music?" he asks as he pours a few drops of vanilla extract before mixing with a whisk.

Lydia wonders why he must act like a chef every time he steps in a kitchen. Most people would be content with slamming the microwave door and punching a few buttons; Stiles has to make it a near religious experience.

(Where was she going with that train of thoughts?)

She hops on the counter next to the fridge, the spot they always fight about because it provides easy access to the pantry and the fridge. Stiles eyes her with a pout but drags a bar stool next to her to keep an eye on the milk.

"My head's hurting," she complains. "No music."

"That's not the music, that's the three gallons of punch you drank."

She hums noncommittally. He's probably right, but dehydration doesn't help and she's eyeing the milk simmering in the pot. She closes her eyes and leans against the cupboards.

"Something soft, then."

"And no top 40's, I know."

He finds something soft and nice, a singer with a gentle voice and sad lyrics. The song resonates weirdly with her, but half of her doesn't want it to. Stiles is her best friend, she thinks, and after a while the bitterness fades away to simply let the fact sink in. She watches him stir the milk and she thinks that she would be content staying that way.

Not happy, but content. For someone as intelligent as Lydia, content is already a worthy goal.

"Ready," Stiles says, turning the stove off as the milk begins simmering.

She makes for the marshmallow package, but he takes it from her and tears it open, heedless of her protests.

"Oops," he says. "Now we have to eat them all."

"What a tragedy."

The hot chocolate is divine, as always. It burns a delightfully warm way down her trachea and the marshmallow melt on her tongue; Memories of evening spent in the exact same way bubble up in her head.

She takes another sip and she can't help but saying:

"La madeleine de Proust."

"What?"

"Proust's madeleine," she translates, and she nearly leaves it at that because she realizes how vulnerable it's making her. Stiles is looking at her so intensely that she feels troubled. "It's a kind of French cake."

"Do you want to bake some, or…?"

"No! No, it's an idiom," she says, and she tries to ignore the way every word feels like saying I love you. "Marcel Proust was a writer at the beginning of the twentieth century. A prolific one. He wrote this passage in one of his book, where he told how eating a madeleine as an adult brought him back to his childhood and memories of eating his mother's madeleines."

"So, like a sensory stimulus?" Stiles asks.

"Well, now it designates any phenomenon that triggers a recollection, but overall yes. It's been a saying ever since the twenties."

"Are you saying cocoa is our madeleine?"

Stiles has never taken French, and he stretches the syllables in a way that makes her want to kiss him.

"Cocoa and late hours," she muses.

"Kitchens," Stiles adds, playing the game.

"Oh, yes, Stiles. Every time I step in a kitchen I am forcefully reminded of the time I destroyed your highest score at Mario Kart."

He grins at her around his mug.

"Let's play a game," he says after a moment. "Botticelli?"

"You choose."

He thinks for a moment, staring at a point over her shoulder, worrying his bottom lip in a way that has Lydia yearning to smooth it; with her thumb or her lips, she's not picky.

(Lips. Definitely lips.)

"M."

"First name or surname?"

"Surname."

"Stiles."

She sighs and pokes him in the forehead, careful of her long nails. He reels back and swats her hand, scowling.

"What?"

"Remember when we said you couldn't use Scott or me for Botticelli?"

"But you're gonna be famous one day! You'll win a mathematics Nobel Prize before you're thirty—"

"Fields Medal, for the last time—"

"—I wanna get ahead. I get to call dibs on Lydia Martin at Botticelli."

"You have a milk mustache," she says because she doesn't know what else to tell to that boy, that ridiculously devoted boy she loves so passionately.

It burns her from the inside, that love she feels for him; it's like a blaze formed by the sparks of a low fire, so bright and clear against the night that she wonders how someone as perceptive as Stiles Stilinski can possibly miss it. She wants to thrust it at him, rip it from herself and present him with it, a physical manifestation of the urge growing in her.

"Wait," he says after checking himself in the reflection of his phone.

He dips his fingers in his mug and, quick as a snake—or at least quicker than Lydia, because, once again, lacrosse—, traces a sloppy mustache on her upper lip. She's shrieking her outrage before he has even finished the first half.

"Stiles! Seriously? No, no phone, no way—"

"Come on, it's Scott's eighteenth birthday, don't you want memories?"

"Give me that phone," she says, and snaps a picture of him smiling goofily. "There, memories. You can now change your Facebook profile picture for the first time in three years."

He's looking at her with an odd look on his face, a look of perfect stillness that precipitates the flutter of the butterfly' wings in her stomach.

Fight or flight instinct, she berates herself. Adrenaline. Norepinephrine. Not butterflies.

Stiles clears his throat before speaking.

"Can we—can we play another game?"

"What ga—"

"Truth or Dare."

She raises an eyebrow. They haven't allowed each other to play truth and dare for years because of how competitive each of them gets, and there have been more than a few excesses committed as Scott and Stiles dared each other.

"Sure."

"Lydia, truth or dare?"

He licks his lips nearly imperceptibly as he looks at her, and Lydia freezes, meeting his eyes with equal intensity. She cocks her head to the side, a reflex whenever she contemplates a new problem arisen before her, and it dawns on her. For the first time in months, it feels like they're on the same emotional plane, at the same place together at the same moment: in Scott's kitchen, at the start of something new.

It's an occasion they need to catch before the world wakes up. The question is, how?

"Dare," she says, because she's tired of words.

They've got a whole life to talk. They have talked their whole life, or close enough. It's been nearly nine years since they met another kitchen, completely different people but also essentially so identical. Lydia's mind is reeling, adding up and multiplying a lifetime of memories; nine years equal a hundred and eight months, which is also four hundred and twenty nine weeks—three thousands two hundred and eighty five days.

She can hear the clock ticking, and decides here and then that she doesn't want to add another minute, another second, to the count.

She leans forward, slowly sliding her hand up his chest. It's a weird feeling; she's touched Stiles a thousand times before, but now despite the layer of his hoodie, it feels new and exciting. She wants to tear it off him, learn the names of all two hundred and six bones in his body and map everything, so she can finally say she knows him whole, inside-out.

"Wait," he mutters again when they're barely six inches away from each other.

The word is so foreign in its simplicity that Lydia has trouble focusing on it.

"What?" She huffs, partly because she's frustrated and partly to hide the effect of hormones on her breathing.

He doesn't answer; at this point, Lydia isn't sure she wants him to. She wants him to act.

He does, lifting his hand to her face, cupping her cheek lightly, running his thumb over her lips. She's surprised for a moment, until she feels the sticky brush of their two skins. The mustache. The fucking mustache.

She was about to kiss Stiles Stilinski with a milk mustache, and it goes against everything she's worked towards in the past.

It follows the path she's set for herself in middle school; the hopes and the dreams she's allowed herself to have, her resolve to get the better of the opportunities presented to her; to make her own opportunities.

Here's one, smiling up at her with messy hair and a milk mustache that miraculously disappeared, with moles dotted all over his pale skin and eyelashes that curl just a bit too readily.

She leans forward with no warning and brings their mouths together, silencing his breathy gasp of surprise.

She could give the chemical explanation for the way his lips feel against hers—could think about neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, estrogen, and dopamine, and oxytocin—but she likes the heat of the moment better; the scientific accuracy that comes from experience.

There is something absolutely thorough about kissing Stiles.

Not simply physically, although that part is unsurprisingly enjoyable—his lips are bit chapped because they always are in fall and winter, and his heart is beating fast, fast, fast, under her palm. His breath is hot against her skin as they draw apart a bit too soon for her taste.

His mouth curves in a surprised O and he blinks once, twice, before beaming wider than Lydia has ever seen him smile, wider than the day she sat with Scott and him at lunch for the first time, wider than the time she kissed his cheek under the mistletoe.

She smoothes the yellow fabric of his hoodie, just over his heart, where she's bunched it up without noticing. She feels his thumb ghost over a tense knot in her shoulder, and she's surprised for a moment that there can even be one part of her body that isn't flooded by hormonal tranquility.

She feels happy and light, but above all she feels calm.

"Did we actually just—?"

She nods slowly.

"Yes."

"Cool."

Lydia presses her forehead on Stiles' shoulder, and it's so natural, almost as natural as the weight of his arm around her back, his distinctive scent of boy and laundry detergent in the crook of his neck.

"About time, really," she chuckles, still grinning.

"Wanna do it again?"

As if he needs to ask.

She reaches for him at the same time he steps forward, so that he is pressed against her calves. His mouth slides right back in, more insistent than before, and Lydia welcomes the pressure readily, giving back as much as she's given. It's a game of tug-of-war; fun and light-hearted at times, intensely serious at others. The heaviness of the consequences is new, but so is the heat growing low in her stomach.

They alternate between swift presses of their lips together, soon gone but soon returning, like as many memories; they light and burn quickly, each a part of a larger promise.

There are countless kisses for the countless moments of Stiles and Lydia they can remember. There's a kiss for the time they got caught pulling the alarm on mischief night, and another one for the annual Star Wars marathon they always watch without Scott.

Here's one for that time you said I was so smart, you could kiss me, Lydia thinks. For the winter formal we spent at the ER.

Then there are other kind of kisses, deeper and more frantic from the desperate need to get closer. They are the kind that build up between them like architecture; there are soft nose brushes that leave Lydia's skin tangling, the running of Stiles' hands on her back, and hers, cupping his cheek to deepen the angle.

She scoots forward, taking advantage of her raised position on the counter, and wraps her legs around him, pulling him closer, always closer.

He lets out the first groan; she knows, because she's been waiting for it. She soothes the bite on his lip with the slow stroking of her tongue, and she muffles his sighs.

Everything isn't perfect, though; there's a fair amount of fumbling, of Lydia's head banging back against the cabinets—or nearly banging, because Stiles cushions the impact with his large hand through her hair. At one point, she has to tug his arm out the way as he nearly burns his hand on the induction plate.

They break apart once, twice, three times, only to dive right back in, each time more curious than the other; Lydia tries to predict how she will angle her head, or how soft the skin just under his ear is, or how much she likes burying her hand in his hair, but those feelings aren't predictable. They wash over her like a tidal wave, too quick and too strong to really oppose any sense of restraint. She gladly abandons ship, letting her instincts take over and Stiles' quick answers lead her.

They're both panting heavily when they break apart a last time. Lydia's tongue darts out automatically, licking her lips, tasting Stiles once again. He's looking at her, a bit shell shocked, but the glint in his eyes tells all about the complicity and the intimacy of their moment.

"So," she says after a while of simply holding onto each other, "just how long have you been waiting to do that?"

"What year is it?"

"Stiles."

He adjusts her head in the crook of his neck so he can properly lean his cheek on top of it. It's a pose they've often started, without ever going all the way to such levels of intimacy, and it acts like a curtain raiser for Lydia.

So that's what it feels like to be in love with your best friend, she realizes in a fleeting thought.

Alright, then.

She sighs and waits for Stiles to overcome whatever emotional barrier he's put up for himself, absentmindedly tracing patterns on his right shoulder.

(She knows the symptoms, after all.)

"Since... the third grade?"

"Are you kidding me?" She pulls away slightly, meeting his sheepish grin with her own serious look. "Wait, did you befriend me because you had a crush on me?"

"Um. Maybe a little? But it came afterwards, when you lent me your copy of The Little Mermaid."

"That was the first time we ever talked, Stiles."

"But you didn't let me read it that day. I'm talking about two weeks afterwards."

She rolls her eyes but doesn't comment. The words are a powerful comfort, filling in months' worth of doubt and emptiness.

"And you?" he asks, and she finds herself thrown off by the question.

"I don't know," she admits before she can think about it—for once in her life, she doesn't want to think about it; she wants it to be instinctive, loving Stiles, like it's written in her DNA code with a new combination of nucleotides. "I can't pinpoint an exact moment."

"Are you going all Darcy on me?"

"It depends. Do you want to go on a long walk and forget time?"

"I'm good where I am," he grins, squeezing her hips with his large hands.

"I'm too tired to head outside," she admits, stifling a yawn. It suddenly dawns on her that it's nearly four. "But since we're talking Jane Austen—"

"Lydia, no, come on, you've seen it a hundred times already," Stiles groans.

"We have an annual rewatch of the Star Wars trilogies," she argues. "You can stand a few hours of Pride and Prejudice."

"It's for Scott's sake! I'll break his resolve, one day."

"You literally didn't invite him to the last one."

"That's because I have a plan," he says, leaning close enough to kiss her.

His lips stay a few millimeters from hers and as much as she wants to close the distance to rekindle the fire, appeased but not extinguished, in her stomach, she also wants to hear what ridiculous plan her best friend—-boyfriend?—has imagined to trick Scott into watching a movie about scientific inaccuracies in space and Harrison Ford.

"I actually have Kira's help," he continues, turning his interest to her cheek, her nose, her eyelids. "She's going to invite him at her house and show him the movies."

The fluttery feeling of his lips moves down, to her cheekbones, her jaw, until he's moving her hair out of the way and nipping at her neck. He explores blindly for a few moments, kissing and nipping and sucking along her pulse point, until she guides him toward the sensitive patch of skin under her jaw.

"Stiles, I forbid you—oh—to meddle with Scott's love life," she manages to get out, losing herself to way his hair softly runs through her fingers.

She tugs a little when she doesn't get an answer.

"Stiles."

He hums what could be taken for a "yes", but before she can insist, she feels his hand on hers, his thumb brushing her knuckles; she can feel him trace letters: y, e, s.

It makes her think of a game they played for a summer in fourth grade, when they had to trace words on each other's forearms for the other to guess. She used to trace long and complicated words, scientific names she picked up in National Geographic and Greek words from Aristophanes' plays.

She brings her hand to Stiles' chest, feeling the skin and the muscles and the bones under all his layers, and traces her own message for him, full of old memories and new promises.

"Yes," Stiles says immediately, looking at her with his usual intensity. "Lydia, of fucking course I want to be your boyfriend."

She thinks she may never have smiled wider.

Their relationship is full of firsts, for Lydia as much as for Stiles, but above all it's simply natural.

It makes sense, for Lydia, to wake up most mornings with half-a-dozen texts from Stiles, ranging from an ironical "good morning gorgeous" to a late night realization that "Lydia, scientists can make diamonds out of peanut butter".

It makes sense when they spend hours driving around in his Jeep, first, then her car when the old blue relic is deemed a public danger.

It makes sense when she allows Stiles to go down on her, curious and excited and fearless, for the first time.

It's beautiful when they lie together in his narrow bed afterwards, and she draws equations on his blue bedspreads, around the nail polish stains she made when she was thirteen. It's bittersweet when he takes her to the cemetery in silence, on an early December day, and they relive countless childhood memories when they read the name: Claudia Stilinski.

It's exciting when they go out to the movies with their friends and they get to hold hands the whole walk to the theater, but it's even more heartwarming when they become such a part of Beacon Hills' everyday life that no one comments on their relationship anymore; they're Stiles and Lydia, that's all.

(And everything.)

June, 2013

"It was definitely Greenberg."

Lydia sighs, fishing the keys from his right pants pocket.

"Stiles," she says, voice low because it's late, "we've been over it. Just because he sucks, doesn't mean that Greenberg was the one who spiked the punch."

"Lydia. You know what they say, it's always the quiet ones."

She rolls her eyes, but Stiles keeps his stubborn, frowning face on. He toes off his shoes, kicking them in the corner, and throws his jacket, causing it to land right on a chair in the dining room.

"Jackpot!" He says, pumping a fist. "Try and beat that."

"With what? I don't have any layers."

He turns towards her, smirking slightly, with that knowing glint on his face that drives coach crazy. He sneaks his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against him.

"You do have one layer," he points out innocently, as his fingers play with the billowing excess of fabric at her side."Come on. I dare you to hit the lamp, like last time."

She has to blush at that. She is used to sex and passion; but the memory in question may feature her ripping Stiles' shirt open and knocking the lamp down. The lamp hadn't broken, but it had killed the mood anyway because Stiles nearly fell off the couch from laughing too hard.

Stiles nuzzles her cheek, humming lightly to himself, as he traces the creases of the fabric on her stomach. He is warm against her back and she finds herself pressing back against him. She doesn't mean for anything to come off it—not in the Stilinskis' entrance, anyway—and it doesn't; they stay swaying slightly on their feet. Before long, she realizes that the humming is actually a song, the one from the last slow dance they shared at prom

Barely two hours ago.

She bites her lips to stop the very uncharacteristic giggle that threatens to ruin her reputation when Stiles runs his mouth down her neck and his hands up her sides.

"Stiles," she says finally when he's been up and down several times.

"Tickles?" She feels his mouth curls up just under her ear.

He knows perfectly well what he's doing, of course. He discovered Lydia's tickling spots years ago. In retaliation, she suddenly steps out of her pumps, so that he finds himself with a mouthful of hair when she drops down fourth inches.

"Hey," he protests, "not fair, you can't just use my height against me like that. That's just cheating."

"Stiles, for the last time, the measuring tape said five eleven, not six feet."

"I am six feet tall and taller than Scott," he insists. "I refuse to listen to reason."

"At least you realize you're wrong," she sighs, stepping away.

She curls her toes against the cool floorboards. It's a blessing after hours spent in too-new shoes, but it breaks the illusion that the long skirt creates, billowing around her whenever she takes a step. It just isn't the same when the skirt hits the floor by an inch.

"I liked that song," she says as she glides down the hallway to the kitchen. "What was it called?" She tiptoes and twirls one last time, taking great satisfaction in seeing the seafoam green fabric blossom around her.

"Your mind, it wanna make me know you more," Stiles croons, terribly off-key. "No idea, but half of these songs have never made it on radio anyway." He shrugs. "The organisation committee said they'll post the playlist on Facebook before Monday, though."

He follows her in the kitchen and grabs her hand to make her twirl once more. She's starting to get a little dizzy, but he's looking down at her with his lopsided smile and squinting eyes, so she doesn't tell him.

"This dress would be so great for salsa," he says offhandedly as it twirls around his legs.

"Never again," Lydia groans.

He laughs but doesn't push it, thankfully.

They make hot chocolate for old time's sake, and it feels like a definitive milestone in the history of socially-imposed rites of passage.

The Stilinskis don't have a back porch, so they sit on the threshold, as usual. They used to fit perfectly, the three of them—ScottandStilesandLydia—but now it's just Stiles and Lydia, pressed against each other and the cool wood.

Just another metaphor for their childhood coming to terms, Lydia reflects. It's not a bitter thought, though.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Stiles asks around a spoonful of marshmallows.

"Society's need to regulate and box in lives through the use of media and relatable cliché feelings, pushing people to celebrate meaningless occasions."

"Yeah, high school's over and we're moving out in September."

"Mmmh."

"Tell me about MIT again," he asks, looking at her intensely.

"Well, I can't wait for classes, and I talked to the professor in charge of the mathematics department—of course, coming in as a sophomore is unheard of, but we've cleared the administrative problems, and I heard there's a course that—"

She stops when she sees the fond look on Stiles' face. It's one that she's often seen across the years, but that she's only recently come to attribute to utter devotion. It's the look of someone in love, and it hits her that she's the one causing it. For a brief moment, she thinks she could cry over a look like that, and it would be just as sweet. She doesn't cry, of course, but her face must reflect her emotions because Stiles tugs her at her left hand until it lets go of her mug and their fingers press against each other.

"Tell me about your dorm," Stiles prompts. "Is it super old?"

It's not. He knows that because she snapchatted him videos and pics the whole time she visited with her mother, back before senior year ended, and even before they got together.

His fingers ghost against her palms as she talks about the view from the fourth floor that she particularly liked and the board in the common area covered in colorful flyers, and the way her mom disapproved of the clanking radiators.

"What are you doing?" she asks when she's done talking. The brush of his fingers feels more determined, less wandering, against her palms. "You're not actually reading my lines, are you?"

"I took a free online class." He brings her hand up to his face and squints at it. "Ah, Miss Martin," he says with an attempt at a mysterious voice. Lydia bites her lip. "I see that your life line is straight and long, it means you will live a long and genius-y life—"

It doesn't. Lydia doesn't accord a lot of credit to palmistry, but she knows how it works, and she knows what a straight and long line means: cautious when it comes to relationships.

"And look at this one, uh, the head line! It means you'll study mathematics until you mix up your z with zetas—"

"Stiles, seriously, that happened once—"

"And look how short this one is! This one symbolizes your willpower to resist your amazing boyfriend's sexyness. Note that it's almost non-existent."

She has to laugh out loud when he finishes off by tapping his middle finger on her wrist, the way he does on her inner thigh when he's eating her out.

"Look," Lydia says, taking his hand and looking for the shortest line there is—ironically, his health line—, "this one's your refractory period."

"Very short," he agrees readily. "Only for you."

He turns his hand down and rest their joining hands on his knee.

"Hey," he says suddenly, "we've never had sex in the kitchen."

"No," Lydia exclaims before he has even finished. "No way."

"Okay, but listen: we've done nearly all the other rooms! My bedroom," he starts counting, "of course, the bathroom, of course, the living room, the laundry room,—"

"When did we ever have sex in the laundry room?"

"That time we spilled tomato sauce everywhere and you had to stay and wash your dress?"

Oh. She remembers, now. The washing machine, yes. She gestures at him to keep going. This is getting interesting.

"So, laundry room, in the garage, in the jeep." (They had been too lazy and too much in a hurry to move to his room.) "And the dining room when we were studying for the SATs and I fingered you under the table. Oh, and even the hallway."

"That was dry humping and we finished in your room," Lydia objects, but Stiles waves her off.

"It totally counts."

"Okay, fine. But there's still your father's room, though." She says that to get a rise out of him, but they both end up cringing at the mental image.

"Ew, gross, no. Gross, Lydia!"

"Yeah, sorry. My point still stands, though: no need to have sex in the kitchen because we'll never have all the rooms, anyway."

Stiles' answer is cut short by the loud clanging of the neighbors' door being locked for the night. They watch in silence as the lights flicker off downstairs.

"Please tell me we weren't talking loud enough for the neighbors to hear," Lydia whimpers. Noise seems to carry far in the summer evening air, and she's watching the open windows with mild horror.

It's way past one am on a Friday, she ponders. Why are people still up?

"I don't know. I tend to get loud when we're having sex, you know."

"We're not having sex, we're only talking about it!" Lydia whisper-shouts. "Honestly, Stiles—"

He moves around uncomfortably. They hold their laugher for a whole minute before it comes out, uncontrolled.

"We'll be leaving one hell of a reputation."

"You'll get a new one in Boston," Stiles assures her. "Is it still a no for the kitchen, though?"

"Definitely. Stiles, we eat on that table."

"Cause I was thinking that I could cook you something, you know? Whip up a sauce, maybe some crêpes?" She glares at him. "I need to christen that new egg-mixer we got last week. Oh, and we finally have cupcake pans—"

He leans forward her, and she tries hard to keep a straight face. The little flyaway strands around her ear flutter under his breath.

"Stiles—"

"You know, I was looking up bread recipes the other day—"

That does it, and she collapses in fit of laughter. Stiles joins her, but in-between the snickers, she is horrified to discover that the mental image of Stiles kneading bread, with cliché slow-mo and music, isn't all that unpleasant.

"I can play too, you know," she says after a bit to get her pride back.

"Yeah? Cause I got vanilla syrup and lemon meringue pie on my side."

"Tu es ridicule," she tells him, first in French and then in Italian. "Sei ridicolo."

"Oh, Lydia," he sighs, holding a mocking hand to his heart. "The language of love."

He's taking the piss, but she doesn't miss how intensely he's watching her. She changes tactics and leans down until their lips are a hair width away apart. She can feel the energy buzzing off him as she runs her fingers down his neck.

"Suave, mari magno—"

Stiles doesn't even let her finish the first verse and leans forward, bringing their lips together. He bites and lick at her lower lip playfully, until she's not sure who lets out the first groan. Lydia cards her hands through his hair, letting the soft caress of his hair against her fingers kindle the fire in her. There are more than sixteen thousands nerve endings in a square inch of her fingertips, a fact which makes them one of the most sensitive part of her body. It makes her a little giddy that all of them are currently only touching and feeling Stiles. There is something strangely powerful in the realization.

She doesn't know if it's the brush of his tongue against hers, or the warmth of his hand on her hip, or the way his thumb is rubbing gentle circles right where her panties are, or the flutter of his eyelashes on his cheek, but Lydia feels compelled to tell him about it. She wants to tell him about nerve endings, and hormones flooding her body when he's there, and even when he's not.

He pulls her out of her thoughts when he starts leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses on her jaw, her neck, the slope of her shoulders. She's rubbing her nails slightly against the sensitive skin of his stomach, enjoying the way it shivers and moves under her ministrations, before she realizes she doesn't even remember untucking his shirt.

She blinks herself back to the reality of Stiles and her, splayed on the steps for all the neighbors to see, and withdraws her hands. Stiles stops when she tugs gently at his hair. He looks up from his position well past her neck and slings the straps of her dress back up.

"You wanna move back inside?" He asks in a slightly hoarse voice.

She nods and kisses him again, quick and light, and squints when she sees that glint in his eyes.

"What?"

"The quickest way inside is through the kitchen."

"I doesn't mean we're going to have sex in it," she says, trying to look stern.

She must fail, because the only answer she gets is a cheeky grin, before he turns away from the wall and falls back through the door. She lets out a cry of surprise and hastingly catches herself with one hand, hovering over him.

"Well, that was smoother in my imagination," Stiles says as he rubs at the back of his head. "Wait, help me up—"

Still sitting in his lap, she tugs at his arm and help him turn around to lean back against the pan cabinet. It's a bit complicated and Lydia's dress ends up draped across his knees, but when they manage it, Lydia is starting to think back on her previous statement.

Stiles appears to be in a more contemplative mood as he holds her close.

"Can I?" He gestures at her complicated bun, and starts pulling out bobby pins when she nods. "I love your hair up but I kinda want to see what it's going to look like after all this time."

"Wavy and weird, probably," she says. "There's another nest of pins on the left."

"Got it." His eyes don't leave her hair as he says: "I'm going to miss this, next year."

"I'm going to miss you," Lydia says, nestling against his chest. "But I'll come home at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then for Spring break—"

"Lyds, you're talking to the person who literally accompanied you on vacation on more than one occasion. I know we're going to see each other and text and Skype, and I know we're going to be fine because I love you too much for anything else, but it's still hard."

"Did you know that we saw each other every day for a whole year in 2005?" she says. "That's three hundred and sixty five days in a row, Stiles."

"We had attachment issues, didn't we?"

"I'm honestly starting to wonder."

He huffs a laugh against her ear as he takes out the last of the pins. Her hair tumbles freely down her back, and it's like she can feel the knots in it. She's sure there are waves and flyaway strands everywhere there aren't supposed to be. It's probably a mess, but they've both seen her in worse conditions, so she resists the urge to run a brush through it.

"Do you want to bring the couch cushions in the kitchen like we used to do?" she asks, because she knows how melancholic Stiles can get, at times.

He scrambles up to his feet immediately, so she knows she's right. The Stilinskis have taken to keeping the kitchen floor sparkling clean because they had spent their so much time here as kids, but Lydia still sweeps the floor when Stiles is upstairs looking for blankets and pajamas for her.

"Catch!" he yells, and she turns around just in time to watch the shirt flop on the floor at least a foot to her right. "I'm starting to think the jacket was just dumb luck."

"It's a longer shot than earlier," Lydia says, picking the cloth up. "Oh, I was wondering where that went!"

She slips her dress off and the shirt on. It's hers, actually, and she's not surprised to find it here; she remembers stuffing it in his closet during junior year in the hope he would remember her.

"Yeah, I'm not really sure how it got here. Something to say for yourself?"

"Nope," she says airily.

They lie on the makeshift mattresses made of the couch cushions. It used to drive the Sheriff crazy, but since they never actually ruined them, he always grudgingly allowed them to keep on the tradition. Before long, anyways, they didn't have sleepovers, and the only ones they got that year were of a different kind.

Stiles gets up one last time to fetch bread, Nutella and the fruit bowl. The proximity to food is the only real reason they favor the kitchen over the living room anyway.

"For you," he says, handing her a peach.

She reaches behind him for a knife and a plate and Stiles laughs at her like always. He seems to find the formal way she eats her fruits to be totally and utterly comical, even though it's pure common sense. There is no way she is getting her hands sticky with peach juice, no sir.

"Are you going to do your weird chocolate fondue-like thing?" he asks her, eyeing the peach quarters she's cutting.

She answers by dipping one in his Nutella jar with her fork.

"Oh, god, Lyds, that's disgusting!"

Her mouth falls open.

"You eat your fries with chocolate milkshake, so don't talk to me about disgusting" she says, shaking her head. "It's just fruit and chocolate. That's one of the most popular combination to exist."

"But you're getting juice in the jar," he complains, tipping it to peer inside.

"Give it to me," she sighs, picking up a spoon.

"No, no, I'll do it."

"Then what are you complaining about? God."

He ends up stealing pieces of fruit from her plate, of course. She claims them back.

August, 2020

"You know, when you said you had a few new bedroom tricks up your sleeve, this is not what I imagined."

Lydia flips the card face up and holds it to him, smiling triumphantly.

"Is this your card?"

He picks it up staring at the straight lines and colorful shapes that make up the queen of spades.

"Yup. Fuck, Lydia, do you have any idea how much this is turning me on?"

"Everything I do turns you on," she states, shuffling the cards again, but she's smiling the small, secret grin she does when someone compliments her.

"Well, can you blame me?"

"Draw a card," she answers, and he chooses one from the middle because it annoys her.

Three of hearts.

He puts it back when she asks him too, and watches, enraptured, as she separates the deck in three, then six, then nine, twelve. He chooses a card, two, three; they disappear one after the other, but the smirk on Lydia's face doesn't.

"Three of hearts?"

"I swear to God, Lydia—"

She interrupts him with a sweet kiss that quickly escalates into two, three; one for each room they now live in together. Among all the excitement of Lydia's tricks, the realization hasn't made its way to his brain for at least a few dozen minutes, but it comes back full force as Lydia kisses him on the mattress thrown half in their kitchen, half in the living room (it's hard to tell the difference, really).

He loses himself in the feeling of Lydia, everywhere around him; against his lips, under his hands, of course, but also soon in the cabinets behind him, in the shower stall and the shelves next to the mirror, on the other side of the hallway.

She bites on his lip and he groans, pulling her closer; she rises from her her sitting position and easily falls forward into him, catching herself at his shoulders and breaking apart, laughing noiselessly. Her hair has partly fallen down from the bun she knotted it in earlier in the day; whole strands fall down, framing her face.

"Wait, the cards," she says, but he sweeps them down to the floor. "Smooth."

"Yeah, I thought so."

She rolls her eyes, but she brings him down for another open mouthed kiss and, really, who is he to refuse her? She's Lydia Martin; she always gets what she wants in the end.

She tastes like the pasta they had for dinner, the first meal they've had in their new kitchen, the place that's entirely theirs, for the first time. It's making him giddy with emotion, and he can only deepen the kiss, sweeping his tongue across hers, as the thought that they can do that all the time, now that they don't have to mind roommates or parents interrupting, flashes across his mind.

Lydia feels the same, he knows she does, because she's gripping at his shoulders like she never has before, pulling him closer, and then her hands are running over his face, down his neck, then back up through his hair, tugging slightly—and if his eyes weren't already closed, he'd shut them in bliss; but as it is, he keeps his face buried in her neck, tasting the sharp taste of her lingering perfume. He keeps his lips moving along her pulse point, reveling in the erratic throbbing against his lips.

"God, Stiles," she groans against his lips a moment later. "You don't know how much I been thinking about wanting to fuck you in here."

Well, maybe not, but he can guess.

"Since that fateful day with the real estate agent?"

"Did you have to make that comment about the counters' height?"

She gives her best shot at a stern voice, apparently, but if there's one skill Stiles can rightfully boast about, it's distracting Lydia Martin from her stern moods.

He pulls away and nudges his nose against hers, eliciting a little huff of laughter from her.

"Hey, we can start over with that room count we never finished in high school."

"Why did you think I had you bring the mattress in here instead of the bedroom?"

He really suspects that it has something to do with Scott and him dumping the thing on the first patch of available floor space, but he doesn't say it, because he can hear what she has to offer.

And well, apparently kitchens are a kink for he and Lydia.

He drops back on the pillows and rolls them over, swallowing her surprised sound with another kiss, because he can never get enough of kissing her. It makes him feel at home, touching her like that, as if all the words they've give each other for years had simply led to this.

Grabbing a pillow from the floor, he pulls away gently, and he squeezes her hips with other hands, motioning for her to lift them. She complies without a word, biting on her lip hard as she always does, and he knows the sigh she lets out when he ducks down, pulling at her underwear until it's left discarded on the floor.

He loses himself in the feel of her all around him, as usual, and she tugs at his hair gently, as usual, until he drums their little rhythm on the inside of her thighs.

It is particularly comical to him—but damn so useful—that his hyperfocus symptom always seems to kick in whenever he goes down on Lydia. He can register all the little breathless noises she makes above him— the ones that can transform into full pleading moans on occasion, but not always, because she's very quiet in bed— and the physical response of her skin when he runs his lips on the goosebumps inside her thighs.

He starts with kitten licks, small teasing nudges of his nose to her clit, wanting to hear her breath catch in her throat. He looks up when he thrusts a finger in her, meeting her eyes, which are suddenly incredibly dark compared to their usual light green.

"Stiles," she sighs, angling her hips up. "Don't tease me."

"Who, me? Nah, just taking my time."

"No you're not," she huffs. "Get me off, Stiles, come on."

He hums an answer with his face buried in her, one finger shallowly pumping into her. She squirms above, under, around him and he knows that it's not enough, but he wants to make her feel as high about the prospect of a life with him as he is about a life with her right now.

The shameless teasing is just a bonus, really. So he draws it out even more, withdrawing after a moment, right when he knows her arousal is starting to climb down her belly.

"Stiles!" she whines incredulously.

He shushes her with ghost of kisses on her stomach, on the sensitive skin around her belly button; he's rewarded by little shudders shaking her stomach.

"Stop it," she chides, incapable of hiding her laughter.

She draws her arms back, weaving her hands in her hair. Stiles can't help but watch as they follow the long tresses along the path to her breasts, until she's playing with her nipples and sucking in her lip, watching him intensely. She's flushed red from need and her pupils are blown wide; it's a sight to see, Lydia Martin so unravelled, open wide.

She used to take strength in sex, he knows, in being in control of her own needs as well as someone else's, and he knows that that perception changed when she fell in love for good—with him—, but really, looking at her spread out before him like in this moment, he has no trouble understanding how she built that logic.

"Lydia," he whines, hiding his face in her flank. He wants to say more, but he's not really sure how to articulate coherently; he's a bit in awe of her capacity of speech.

"Stiles, get back down there or I'm finishing without you."

He knows her threat is real, from one unreal afternoon during the senior year Christmas break, so he slithers down slowly, mapping the skin of her thighs, the freckles and the small birthmark shaped like a question mark on her hip.

They both groan when he finally sneaks another finger into her; he has to stop for a moment, focusing on the sweet taste of her clit under his tongue, as he takes in the way she clenches around him for more, the heat and the wetness of her.

"You're so wet," he marvels, moving around slightly, looking for something he already knows where to find. "Lydia, you're seriously amazing."

She clenches her wall around his finger to incite him to move, and her thighs around his head too, to remind him he's not, in fact, alone down there. Stiles can take a hint, when the timing is right, so he dives right back in, working his fingers in and out of her, in that deep, quick tempo that she likes. He has to throw his left arm across her hips to keep them down, and she breathes a little "sorry" when she realizes she's starting to pound her hips into his face.

The feeling of Lydia's hand in his hair, half caressing, half pushing it back from his forehead, is compensation enough, and he presses closer, not minding the slightly awkward pose due to the mattress being directly on the floor.

The noises Lydia makes are enough to spur him always harder. God, the noises—little moans and breathy gasps, sometimes akin to mewling, that are both so out of character and so incredibly characteristic to Lydia that they drive him crazy half of the time. There can't be a greatest fear, in that moment, than going deaf and not getting to hear her ever again.

Well, maybe with the exception of blindness. And losing his hands, possibly. And going bald—God, what would he do without the possibility of presenting a firm handle for Lydia?

Lydia lets out a whine louder than the others, his name falling out of her lips like the rain in a puddle: expected, but still a breach of the stillness of the reality. She thrashes her head on her—their—pillows, flushed and incoherent in her ramblings.

"Stiles," she pants. "Stiles, don't stop, please, please don't stop."

Her skin is heating under the arm lying across her stomach; when she reaches down to intertwine their hands and rest them on her breasts, he can feel the sticky feeling that results from hot summer nights filled with sex.

"I love you so much," she says in a sigh, tracing the letters in his palm, cradled on her heart.

The words go right through him, entering by his brain and finding a home somewhere in his stomach. He'd been teasing himself along with her, and he's ready to come, even if it means rubbing himself on the mattress while he's still tongue-deep in Lydia. He desperately wants to finish, but no. Not before he's made her come.

At the same moment this thought crosses his mind, and just when he's wrapped his lips around her clit, Lydia lets go of his hand and pushes herself up on an elbow.

"You okay up there?" he asks hoarsely, lifting his head slightly. He licks his lips on instinct and does it again, with more gusto, when he tastes her.

Lydia's lips are glistening from her attempts to distract herself from his ministrations, he can tell, when she nods.

"Yes, yes. But I needed you inside me ten minutes ago."

"Well, technically, I was." He wriggles a finger, but his laughter dies in his throat when he sees the look on her face; she looks wrecked and deadly serious, nearly desperate. He wastes no time climbing up her body.

Her hair is completely fanned out on her pillow, and Stiles can help but get a bit more excited about it, now that he knows the difference between her bed hair and her sex hair; that's a distinction that he hasn't realized he'd missed all his life until they starting creating a second life together.

"Can you believe this is going to be our life?" Stiles asks in-between kisses.

"It already is," she reminds him.

"Yes, but now I get to fall wake up next to you everyday, and I get to fall asleep the same way, and the time in between is ours."

He reaches down, hitching her legs around his hips, placing the words directly on her upper lip, so there is nothing, no distance, between them. She lets out a long, satisfied sigh when he enters her, and the knowledge that his words have caused it too gives strength to the low, deep rhythm he sets.

The warm of being inside her evokes home to him more than any solid apartment wall ever will, and he clings to it and to her while the wave of emotions rolls down his bare back, all the way from his brain, which reminds him that hey, he's starting a new chapter of his life with Lydia Martin, just like when he was eight and he saw her boredom in his kitchen, to his heart, drowning him in the feeling of Lydia.

He pulls back, nearly entirely out, and they both catch their breaths; he slides back inside, slowly and their bodies snap toward each other at the same time. He takes his time again, because he truly want to spend as many hours he can wrapped in Lydia Martin, in her scent and her touch and her mind, so he sets a slow pace, with long, lazy thrusts that draw little strangled moans from both of them.

"I love you," Lydia says, again and again in the shell of his ear, and she clings to him tighter when he says it back, whispering it against her hair, her lids, her cheeks, between her breasts; I love you I love you I love you, and the words merge together.

He feels Lydia's legs, like her resolve, tighten around him, her heels push into his skin, and she clenches around him suddenly, making him shudder involuntarily and halt the pace to look at her. She's flushed and sweaty, but then again so is he, and when she stares up in his eyes, kissing him gently, there is a slight smirk that he knows well.

"Harder, Stiles," she asks, snapping her hips up to meet his in a slightly quicker pace.

"Okay. Give me just—"

Sliding his arms behind her back, he pulls her closer to him to roll them over so that's she on top, free to set the rhythm she wants; Lydia doesn't hesitate, immediately rolling her hips. It's his turn to look up at her, and he loves that the view is so familiar; he knows the curve of her breasts, the way she pushes her hair over her shoulder in a futile attempt to get it out of the way; he anticipates the moment when the long curls fall down around them like their very own private curtain to shield them from the exterior.

Stiles thinks drowsily that he's never been more in love with Lydia than in that moment of realization; for a short moment before she closes her eyes and throws her head back, he can see through her a thousands of memories, racing on their skins to form their history. She grips his shoulder and he sees sophomore year's winter formal, a flash of a silver dress; she bites out a moan and they're playing in her parents' pool, not even climbing out for snacks; she looks at him and he comes, shuddering under her hands, gripping her thighs to drag her with him.

He does—he does drag Lydia with him, or maybe he's leading, moving along with her—and she comes only moments later, her mouth curved around the shrill syllables of his name as his had been stretching her vowels in the still summer evening.

They don't speak when she collapses on the mattress next to him, or when she stretches to collect their shirts, laying on the ground next to the deck of cards.

The kitchen is quiet as they roll into bed, sharing smiles and touches that only belongs to them, and an intimacy that was born out of books and cocoa topped with too many marshmallows before anything else.

The lights from the street cast moving shadows on the wall where the couch will be, when the rest of the furniture is brought in tomorrow, and to Stiles, pressed in Lydia's embrace, they paint the most beautiful pieces of art of all, moving and changing shapes as their story goes.

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to check out the other big bang fics on tumblr and AO3 (it's a collection) and to leave reviews to fuel authors.

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