A/N: This is ridiculous, shameless sex pollen fic. I just needed to write something in a happier setting because 3B kind of wrecked my emotions.

Warnings for: sex (not explicit), some language, everyone lives AU. This is technically canon-compliant in most ways but there's no real time-frame or setting. Tbh, I'm writing this in the setting of what Teen Wolf could have been, not what it's become.

Title comes from 'You're the One' by Charli XCX.

The woods are quiet.

"Too quiet," Stiles says, as if he's reading her mind. He seems to have developed a particularly unsettling ability to do that. "I don't like this."

"If you don't like it so much," Lydia snaps, as a bramble digs painfully into her lower thigh, "then why are we out here?"

"Scott said to worry if they weren't back by eleven," Stiles reminds her, adjusting his grip on his bat and looking over at her.

Lydia checks her phone with her free hand - the one that isn't currently holding a huge flashlight (seriously, this flashlight looks like Stiles bought it at a military surplus store - which he probably did, come to think of it.) "It's eleven-oh-two," she says. "They might be on their way back to the jeep right now." Lydia has faith in Scott, Allison, and Isaac's abilities to navigate the woods at night - she doesn't have nearly as much hope for herself and Stiles. She slides her phone back into the pocket of her skirt, which is probably covered in grime or torn by now. Or both, knowing her luck. Great.

"Well, then they'll be waiting there when we get back," Stiles points out. "I dunno, I've just got a bad feeling about this."

Lydia's got a bad feeling about this, too; she's got a bad feeling about anything that involves her roaming around the Beacon Hills preserve after dark. The fact that there's a coven of witches lose in Beacon Hills right now doesn't help at all. Currently, Lydia doesn't have one of her banshee bad feelings, the kind that tell her someone's about to die. That's subject to change, however. "Stiles, we should go back," she says, aiming the flashlight at something that turns out to just be a tree. "This isn't safe."

"We have to find the others," Stiles says, right before something leaps out from behind the aforementioned tree and knocks him to the ground.

Stiles yelps and Lydia lets out a shrill cry. The thing turns out to be a young woman, clad in flowing robes of tattered silk. Lydia aims the flashlight at her face, and the witch looks up, smiling with lips painted black. Her hand is on Stiles's throat.

Stiles thrashes, but the witch must be stronger than she looks, because Stiles can't even budge her. Lydia contemplates hitting her with the flashlight (a blunt stick made of military-grade aluminum to the face probably won't be pleasant for just about anybody), but thinks better of it. Perhaps pissing off a witch isn't the best idea, especially when her long black nails are poised to rip out Stiles's throat. "Let go of me!" Stiles shouts, panicking and flailing his long arms. He must have dropped the bat when he fell - Lydia wants to look around for it, but she doesn't trust this witch one bit, so she refuses to move or look away.

"Please let him go," Lydia says, trying to keep her voice even. The witch laughs, and Lydia shudders slightly. She's not even squinting, despite the bright light shining directly into her eyes; it's unnerving, to say the least. The creepy giggling is just a bonus.

Stiles gasps suddenly - the witch is dragging her nails across his throat. She isn't hurting him, exactly, but it can't be comfortable. Stiles starts thrashing again, screaming, and the witch won't stop laughing. Lydia panics and swings the flashlight at her, catching the witch in the jaw with a satisfying thud. The girl shrieks, lurching backwards and clutching at her face.

The next sequence of events happens so quickly that Lydia doesn't even have time to react. Stiles scrambles to his feet, gasping for air now that he can breathe properly. The witch rises as well, and draws back a clenched fist like she's winding up to throw a baseball. "Stiles!" Lydia shrieks, trying to warn him. He turns to look instinctively, and then throws himself in front of Lydia (like the stupidly brave idiot that he is.) The witch, her teeth bared in a snarl, lets fly a handful of powder. It crosses the flashlight's beam and Lydia registers that it's brightly colored - fuchsia, to be exact - before it hits Stiles right in the face.

He falls to his knees, gagging on the sickly-sweet smelling powder, and Lydia opens her mouth and screams. The witch flinches, stumbling backwards, and as soon as Lydia stops screaming, a distant howl answers her. That seems to seal the deal, because the witch backs away before disappearing into the shadows from whence she came. Lydia falls to her knees, bones protesting at the sudden slam against hard earth, but she doesn't care at the moment. She shines the flashlight at Stiles, who has gone silent. "Don't you dare be dead," she commands, her voice quavering.

He doesn't answer her - he doesn't even react. She checks his pulse with a shaky hand. His heart rate is steady, but he's pale except for the faint red lines left on his throat by the witch's claws. "Stiles?" she says, giving him a gentle shake. "Stiles!"

He still won't wake up, and Lydia starts internally panicking. What if he's dying? That had to be poison the witch threw at him. Lydia never screams like that unless someone's dying, so either she's finally figuring out the more useful aspects of this whole banshee thing or - more likely - Stiles has been poisoned. Lydia pulls out her phone and dials Allison's number with trembling hands, periodically waving the flashlight around and scanning the area for any more witches. The phone rings and rings until it finally goes to voicemail. "Allison, call me back as soon as you get this," Lydia says, voice breathy with nerves. "It's Stiles. Just - call me, okay?"

Lydia tries Scott next, but he doesn't pick up, either. She gives Isaac a call then, but it goes straight to voicemail - what a perfect time to for your phone to be off, Isaac, she thinks irritably. She tries to rouse Stiles again, but all he does is moan weakly and go limp again. A second later, Lydia hears what sounds like another howl. It's much farther away than the first one, hardly even audible. Lydia swallows down a sudden burst of fear and shakes Stiles a bit more roughly. "Stiles, come on," she says. "We need to get out of here."

He finally opens his eyes, but he doesn't seem capable of coherent speech at the moment. Whatever the witch had thrown in his face had really packed a punch. Lydia's able to get him to his feet, but she practically has to drag him along. By the time they make it out of the woods, Lydia's hair is thick with tangles and leaves (unfortunately, this isn't the first time that's been the case), and Stiles's cheek is bleeding from running into a low-hanging branch. Lydia gets him safely into the passenger seat before he loses consciousness again, then runs around to the driver's side. The keys are still in the ignition, the result of an incredibly lucky bad decision on Stiles's part. She turns the jeep on, throws it into gear, and heads for the only place she can think of that's safe to take Stiles right now - Deaton's office.

She breaks about nine hundred traffic laws on the way there, but every cop in Beacon Hills seems to be off-duty tonight (Lydia's honestly not surprised.) She swerves into the parking lot of the animal clinic, gets out of the jeep, and runs up to the front door. Finding it locked when she tries the knob, she knocks three times in rapid succession and calls out, "Dr. Deaton! Dr. Deaton!"

She's about to pull out her phone and call him when she hears, "Coming!" from the other side of the door. Lydia sighs with relief; if there's one thing she can count on in this town, it's Deaton's penchant for hanging out at his clinic way after closing time. Deaton opens the door a second later and pauses before saying anything, taking in her disheveled appearance. She knows she looks like a mess - there are leaves in her hair, the hem of her skirt is torn, she's littered with scratches and nicks from walking too close to thorny bushes, and her legs are covered in dirt from kneeling next to Stiles. She'll worry about her appearance later, when Stiles is not possibly on the verge of death.

"Lydia?" Deaton says. "What's going on? Are you alright?"

He probably thinks she's gone into another fugue state and doesn't know how she got here, Lydia realizes. Sometimes - okay, most of the time - being a banshee really, really sucks. "It's Stiles," Lydia explains. "He's been poisoned."

Deaton looks like he has more questions to ask but something about Lydia's expression makes him think better of it. He makes a beeline for the passenger side of the jeep and together, he and Lydia get Stiles safely into the back room of the clinic. Deaton manages to maneuver Stiles onto the metal table in the center of the room. The entire time, Stiles is mumbling, "I'm okay, I'm okay," and swatting halfheartedly at them, which makes things much more difficult.

Deaton walks over to his cabinets and starts calmly rifling through them. Lydia fights the urge to ask him to kindly put some pep in his step. "How long has he been like this?" he asks.

"Only a few minutes," Lydia replies. "As soon as it happened, I got him out of the woods and brought him here."

"You were in the woods?" Dr. Deaton asks, raising an eyebrow at her. "Don't tell me you two went with Scott to meet with that coven. I told him things could get violent."

"It wasn't my idea," Lydia says defensively. "We don't know where Scott, Isaac, and Allison are, or if they're okay. Stiles thought we should go look for them." To be fair, Lydia had chosen to go with him when she didn't necessarily have to. But clearly, Stiles could not be trusted on his own in the woods.

Deaton gives a long-suffering sigh. Lydia knows exactly how he feels. "Well, one crisis at a time, I suppose," he says, moving aside a box of gauze in one of the cabinets and then pulling out a small but otherwise nondescript bottle.

"What is that?" Lydia asks nervously. It's not that she doesn't trust Deaton, because he clearly seems to have an idea of what to do - it's just that she really doesn't want Stiles to die right now. Well, she doesn't want him to die ever, really, but right now in particular.

"Ammonium carbonate," Deaton says, unscrewing the bottle. "Otherwise known as -,"

"Smelling salts," Lydia says, miffed.

Deaton waves the bottle under Stiles's nose, and Stiles jerks slightly, his eyes fluttering all the way open for the first time since being dragged out of the woods by Lydia. "What the fuck happened to me?" is the first thing out of his mouth. This is followed closely by, "Why does it taste like cotton candy vomited into my mouth?"

"Cotton candy?" Deaton repeats, confused.

"The poison," Lydia explains, while Stiles continues to sniffle, thanks to the smelling salts and whatever witch dust is left in his nose right now. "It smelled like -,"

"Cotton candy puke," Stiles interjects.

"Was it a powder or a liquid?" Deaton asks.

"A powder," Lydia says, giving Stiles a nervous look as he sits up on the table. "It was pink, too. Really bright pink. The witch threw it in his face."

"Did she say an incantation? Was there any glowing, flashing lights, that sort of thing?" Deaton asks.

Lydia shrugs helplessly. "I don't think so," she answers. Truthfully, she'd been too busy freaking out to make a mental note of whether glowing had been involved, and Stiles had been too busy hyperventilating until he passed out to notice at all. "Is he going to be okay?"

"I feel fine," Stiles offers. "Maybe it was just supposed to knock me out. It worked, I guess."

"Well, you should probably stay here for a while, until we know for sure you're alright," Deaton says, studying Stiles. Color is rapidly returning to Stiles's face - in fact, his cheeks look positively rosy. He doesn't look like he's slowly dying, but looks can be deceiving. Lydia's not going to let him leave - unless it's to go to the hospital - until Deaton is absolutely sure Stiles is fine. "I think you're going to be okay, Stiles. But I need to check something first."

Deaton disappears into another room - when Lydia peeks in, she can see row upon row of filing cabinets. Leaving Deaton to hopefully figure out what exactly Stiles has inhaled, Lydia turns her attention back to the poisoning victim in question. "Are you sure you're alright?" she asks.

Stiles nods. "Yeah," he says. "Totally. I feel great, actually."

Lydia sighs. "Well, let this be a lesson for all of us," she says. "You don't need to be doing any more playing hero in the woods, and I don't need to humor you ever again."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Are you forgetting that our friends are still missing?" he points out.

"They're not missing," Lydia says automatically, her gaze flicking to the clock on the wall. It's eleven-thirty; one of them should have called by now. Lydia checks her phone, but she has only one new text message, and it's from Danny (who wants to know what pages they're supposed to read by Monday for Economics class.) She'd forgotten all about those readings. Shit.

"Well, I'm gonna call Scott again," Stiles says, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and pulling out his phone, which he'd miraculously managed not to lose in his bout with the witch. While Stiles is waiting for Scott to answer his phone, Lydia helps herself to some of Deaton's gauze, dampening it in the sink and using it to wipe smudges of dirt from her legs and hands. While she's at it, she combs her fingers through her hair, wishing she'd brought her purse inside so she could use the emergency cosmetics inside to actually make herself look presentable again. She feels uncomfortably dirty after their little trek through the woods.

Stiles groans behind her, and she whirls around, immediately worried. However, he seems to be directing the groan at his cell phone. "He won't answer," Stiles says, tapping the redial button. "Come on, Scott, pick up . . ."

Scott doesn't answer the phone, and neither do Allison or Isaac when Stiles tries them next. Lydia supposes that perhaps none of them are answering their phones because they're currently in the middle of a peaceful conversation with the leader of the witch coven and they don't want to be rude, but getting her hopes up for that seems foolish. At best, they're probably still in the woods somewhere, either fighting the witches, injured, or unconscious thanks to the same poison that had taken Stiles out in seconds. Lydia's not sure how to proceed from here. She can't leave Stiles when he could be dying from slow-acting poison, and even if she could leave, going into the woods alone to search for her friends doesn't seem like a very good idea. It might be time to give the sheriff a call, even though she knows Stiles will protest because calling the sheriff may mean putting his life in jeopardy - and revealing that Stiles isn't actually safely on his ass in front of the TV in Scott's living room right now.

"I'm getting really worried," Stiles says, after a moment of tense silence. "That girl was, like, freakishly strong. A bunch of witches could probably overpower a werewolf."

"Even an alpha?" Lydia asks, wetting another piece of gauze and approaching him. The scrape on his cheek isn't bleeding anymore, but the dried blood will make his skin itch, and Lydia just knows Stiles will reopen the wound by rubbing at his face.

"I don't know," Stiles says honestly. He tilts his head obligingly, not even bothering to complain about Lydia mothering him like this. Lydia gently wipes at his cheek with the gauze, one hand automatically coming up to cup his other cheek to keep him from flinching away from her. The second her bare skin touches his, Stiles jerks as if he's been slapped, and Lydia lets out a gasp. Tingles shoot up her arm - it doesn't hurt, but it's certainly a surprise. It's gone a second later.

"What the hell was that?" Lydia asks. She can only assume Stiles felt it, too, judging by the way he'd jumped.

"I have no idea," Stiles admits, reaching up to rub his face. "Did it -?" he begins, but then his eyes meet hers, and just like that, he stops talking. Lydia knows why, because she feels it, too. As soon as he looks into her eyes, the entire world goes still.

Lydia feels warm - too warm for the cool atmosphere of the animal clinic. "Stiles," she says, voice weak. She can't look away from him, can't stop thinking about how pretty his eyes are (she's always thought he had nice eyes, but they're suddenly all she can think about.) Part of her is confused, but another part of her really doesn't care.

"Oh," he says, equally magnetized, his hands coming up to cup her face. Thanks to the fact that he's still sitting on the table, he has to swoop down to kiss her. It's fairly graceless, but Lydia finds it hard to care when he's kissing her like she's everything, like she's oxygen or sunlight or -

Two things happen in very quick succession. A large parrot perched in a cage on the floor nearby chooses that moment to squawk loudly and flap its wings against the bars of the cage, and a beat later Deaton calls from the storeroom, "I think I've figured out what you were hit with, Stiles."

Lydia and Stiles spring apart a split second before Deaton enters the room, holding a dusty manila folder. Deaton lays the folder on the table next to where Stiles sits and opens it, revealing a few sheets of paper covered in scrawling cursive. He seems unaware of the tension between Stiles and Lydia, and if he's noticed the flush on both of their cheeks, he doesn't seem inclined to mention it yet. "I think it was a powdered love potion," Deaton announces calmly, as if that isn't a line straight from some medieval fairy tale.

"A love potion?" Stiles repeats, his tone slightly strained. He's still blushing, Lydia notes, and his lips look pink and inviting. It takes her a good deal of willpower to look away from his mouth once that thought occurs to her. She doesn't know what's come over her; it doesn't feel foreign, but it's definitely . . . unexpected. But still, only part of her has the wherewithal to question it - the rest of her is too focused on Stiles. He's fidgeting, long fingers rhythmically drumming on the edge of the table, and only Deaton's voice snaps Lydia out of her reverie as she watches the movement.

"In layman's terms, yes," Deaton clarifies. "The good news is, you're not in any real danger. It will cause a temporary state of arousal, but masturbation or orgasm should clear it up quickly enough."

Stiles's cheeks are even redder than before, but at this point, Lydia thinks it's mainly from embarrassment. "Got it," he says, his voice even more strained than before. "Um, I think I need some air." He hops down from the table and walks hurriedly from the room. Lydia follows, more out of habit than anything, but Deaton stops her.

"Lydia," he says, as she turns to leave. She hesitates, giving him a distracted look.

"Yes?"

"I thought you might like to know that the, well, condition brought on by the love potion can be passed on to another," Deaton says, carefully maintaining his neutral, all-knowing expression. "If there's a mutual attraction between two people, physical contact can trigger a similar response in the second person."

Lydia goes still, processing this. So now she has what Stiles has - and all because she'd touched his cheek. She'll probably be pissed about that later.

"Lydia, have you touched Stiles since he woke up?" Deaton asks, his tone suddenly a bit gentler, like he's broaching a particularly sensitive subject. Lydia starts shaking her head immediately.

"Um, no, I haven't," she says, with an airy tone that hopefully sounds convincing. Dr. Deaton is a huge help when it comes to supernatural problems, but Lydia's definitely not ready to discuss her apparent attraction to Stiles Stilinski with him. She's even been avoiding having that discussion with herself, to be honest. "I'll just get him home, okay? Let us know if Scott, Allison, and Isaac show up," she adds quickly. If they're injured or in trouble, they'll come here first; Lydia has faith in that much.

"Of course," Deaton says, with a nod. Lydia hightails it out of there before he can ask her any more questions related, however loosely, to her personal life.

When she walks outside, Stiles is already in the jeep. He's taken his usual position in the driver's seat, and under more normal circumstances, Lydia would demand that he let her drive (the whole poisoning thing still worries her, even if it turns out to actually be glorified Viagra like Deaton says), but as soon as she opens the passenger side door, Stiles looks over at her and the protests die on her lips. She can hardly believe he'd kissed her only moments ago. To be honest, she really can't believe he's never done that before.

Lydia swallows hard and climbs as gracefully as she can into the jeep. "Are you feeling okay?" she asks, hoping the question will break some of the tension between them. It doesn't.

"Yeah," Stiles says immediately. "Yeah, I'm fine." He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, an obvious nervous tic that completely ruins the effect of that statement.

Lydia decides not to press the issue, for both of them. "You need to come home with me," she tells him.

Stiles gives her a confused look, and Lydia quickly explains, "You can't go to your house, right? Your dad thinks you're at Scott's house." She knows Stiles will do just about anything to avoid getting caught in a lie by his father, and it's even worse under these rather bizarre circumstances. Thus, the only solution is for Stiles to hang out at her house until things go back to normal.

Stiles doesn't reply to that directly; the sound of Scott's name seems to have reminded him, yet again, that his best friend is currently AWOL. "What are we going to do if they don't show up soon?" Stiles asks, as he turns the jeep on and starts backing out of the lot.

"They're going to be fine," Lydia says, trying to assure herself just as much as she's trying to assure Stiles. "I'd know if someone was going to die tonight. I'd feel it." She doesn't bother trying to explain that certainty to him - the whole 'I just know' thing is a hard concept for most people to grasp. Lydia herself doesn't understand it most of the time. "Deaton says he'll call us if there's news about them."

"Right," Stiles says, nervously drumming his fingers against the edge of the steering wheel as he drives. He still seems on edge, but that's understandable. At least he's not actively freaking out and demanding that they go back to the preserve and search for the others. Lydia doesn't know if the weird sex dust is all the witches have in their arsenal, but she doesn't want to run into them again and find out if that had just been some kind of really bizarre warning. The best thing she and Stiles can do right now is stay out of trouble, go home, and - well, deal with their respective cases of sudden arousal.

Stiles and Lydia are quiet for a few minutes as they head to Lydia's house. The suburbs of Beacon Hills are still at this hour - it seems hardly possible that a coven of witches is running loose through the woods only a few miles away, poisoning people with high-powered aphrodisiacs. But the persistent flush on her skin and the way she's keeping her thighs pressed together for her own sanity reminds her that it's all true, and this is actually her life right now.

Stiles breaks the silence as he turns into her neighborhood. "I'm, uh, I'm sorry about what happened," he says. "At Deaton's, I mean."

She looks over at him for the first time in several minutes (she's been successfully resisting the urge until now) and another bolt of heat shoots through her. His hands are clenching the steering wheel tightly, and as a result, the muscles in his forearms - visible thanks to the rolled up sleeves of his jacket - are particularly defined. Lydia swallows hard and then says, "It's okay."

"No, it's not," Stiles argues. He's very carefully not looking at her. Lydia's almost positive he feels the same way she feels when she looks at him. "I kissed you without even asking or anything, and I know you don't -,"

Lydia reaches out and touches his arm, trying to soothe him. "It's okay," she says, the words spilling out faster than she can stop them. "I wanted you to."

Stiles looks over at her quickly, eyes wide. " . . . You did?" he repeats, before his gaze flicks back to the road.

"Yeah," she says. She bites her lower lip, then adds, "I felt what happened when I touched you. That stuff worked on me, too." She hesitates, about to add that it's all thanks to the fact that she's been harboring a carefully buried crush on him for months now, but she stops. This is about lust, and that's the way it should stay, right? Lust is safer, anyways. Less awkward in the aftermath, and less chance for someone to get hurt.

Stiles frowns. "Wait a minute," he says. "Are you telling me - I gave you sex poisoning? Like cooties?"

"That's pretty accurate, yeah," Lydia replies. "Childish, but accurate."

"Fuck," Stiles mutters, as he turns onto her street - he seems to be steering the car on autopilot now. "Sorry about that."

"Wait," Lydia says. Stiles lets off the gas instinctively. "Park there," she continues, indicating a spot on the side of the street, several houses down from hers.

He does so, his expression one of mild confusion, and Lydia sighs and says, "Look, I can't risk my mom looking out the window and seeing your car parked in the driveway." Lydia has absolutely no problem sneaking boys in and out of her house, no matter the hour, but she's not even close to being stupid enough to leave a stranger's car parked in her driveway in the middle of the night. Luckily, Stiles doesn't question this - he just shuts off the jeep and pockets his keys, waiting for her to tell him what to do.

They make their way to her front door quickly and quietly, and as soon as she unlocks the front door and drops her keys back into her purse, Lydia grabs Stiles's hand and starts leading him through her house. As they pass the master bedroom, Stiles trips on the rug in the middle of the hallway, but miraculously makes very little noise as he regains his balance. Lydia squeezes his hand and yanks him the rest of the way down the hall and into her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him. She's as cool as a cucumber, but Stiles is brimming with adrenaline.

"Are your parents asleep?" he asks, without moving any farther into her room. "Do you think I woke them up?"

Lydia still hasn't let go of his hand, she realizes. She starts to pull away, whispering back, "No, I don't think so." Stiles, however, doesn't let go of his gentle grip on her hand.

"I'm really sorry about all of this," he says. Lydia's starting to get tired of listening to him apologize.

"Look, I'm not angry," she says, shifting to look at him. This is the closest they've been to one another since she cleaned the cut on his face (since he kissed me, she amends silently.) "You'd know if I was angry." I'm mostly just turned on and stressed out, she wants to add, but she doesn't. She's sure he understands.

Stiles actually smiles at that, although it's a bit strained. Lydia wonders if her proximity is - affecting him. She's abruptly glad she wore her favorite perfume tonight. "Yeah, I guess I would."

"You definitely would," she argues, her tone light. Flirting with him like this is probably a really bad idea (okay, it's definitely a bad idea) but it's also soothing her frazzled nerves.

"Well, you might be mad at me later," Stiles admits sheepishly. "For kissing you and all."

"I won't be mad," Lydia says, her voice still barely more than a whisper. She's not sure when they moved even closer to one another but they have. "Are you forgetting that I kissed you before?" It seems so long ago, but it's suddenly fresh in Lydia's mind. He'd tasted like tears then, she remembers. She wonders what he might taste like now.

Stiles gawps at her for a second before stammering, "I thought . . . I thought that didn't count."

Neither did I, Lydia wants to say, but things change. "What about this?" she asks instead, and kisses him.

He seems stunned for a second, just like she'd been when he'd kissed her in the animal clinic. But Stiles is is quick and sharp and brilliant - he catches on soon enough, wrapping his long arms around her and kissing her back with every ounce of fervor he possesses. Lydia starts mindlessly pushing him towards the bed - ordinarily she'd try to be a bit more sexy, tease him a little, but she doesn't care. This is Stiles - out of all the boys she's ever been with like this, he's the one she doesn't have to put on a show for. Not that he'd be opposed to a show, she's sure.

He seems to think she's pushing him away, because he makes a little noise of protest, but she shushes him quickly. "The bed," she says, pulling away from his mouth, "Go to the bed - and be quiet."

Stiles nods rapidly, stumbling towards her bed just as he's been told. She joins him, kicking off her wedge booties as she goes, and seconds later they're in a disgraceful heap on her bed. Lydia really hopes that Stiles had actually listened to the whole 'be quiet' thing, because he may not have alerted her parents to his presence by nearly falling in the hallway, but she's already got him pegged as a noisy one. She turns out to be right on that, judging by the way he moans when she unbuttons his jeans and sticks her hand straight into his underwear, but it's a quiet moan, so she doesn't complain - in fact, it only serves to encourage her.

Stiles starts fumbling with the buttons of her blouse while Lydia mouths at his neck, but eventually he just makes a frustrated noise and Lydia wordlessly stops what she's doing and unbuttons the shirt for him. The rest of their clothes follow soon after, and Lydia's gearing herself up for the main event when Stiles abruptly says, "Lydia - Lydia, wait."

"What?" Lydia asks, before internally cursing how breathless she sounds. But fortunately for her, Stiles doesn't sound much better off - there's a husky note to his voice that she kind of likes, actually. Like a lot.

"I don't know if we should," he says, even as his hands slide down her back towards her ass. "I don't want you to - to do something you might regret, because of that stuff."

Lydia knows what he's getting at - he's still blaming himself for giving her what he'd so delicately referred to as 'sex poisoning'. He still thinks that's the only reason she wants him. As far as Lydia's concerned, the love potion had only been a catalyst; this would have happened eventually, some way or another. She realizes that now, even if she's been hiding from the thought for a while.

Lydia doesn't exactly know why - maybe it's because she's really turned on, or maybe it's because he's looking at her in that lovesick way he does sometimes - but all of a sudden she just thinks, fuck it. "Stiles, this isn't only because of that stupid sex dust," she informs him, a tad exasperatedly. "It's not possible for you to just infect me with it. The attraction has to be mutual."

Those words hang in the air for a second while Stiles stares at her, open-mouthed, and for a second, Lydia is struck by a sudden feeling of insecurity. The tension breaks, however, when Stiles says rather mildly, "Oh."

Lydia bites back a smile. "Now can we have sex or not?"

Stiles nods. "Um, yeah," he says. "We can do that."

They do, and it's pretty great - surprisingly so, really. They're both turned on to the point that waiting any longer would be agonizing, and Stiles won't stop whispering her name in a way that kind of makes her want to keep him with her forever, and it's good. Afterwards, Lydia just lies on top of him for a minute or two, still straddling him, her hair fanning across his chest.

Eventually, the sweat between them starts to get kind of uncomfortable, so she moves, but she doesn't go far. She's cuddly to begin with (might as well make the most of all the oxytocin, she figures), but this is Stiles, and this whole situation has established she's already pretty touchy with him. He seems content to bask in the afterglow as well - actually, he seems rather dazed, and he can't stop smiling.

Stiles is absently stroking the skin of her back and Lydia is contemplating the logistics of a second round when she hears the muffled sound of orchestral music nearby. "What the hell is that?" she asks.

"My phone," Stiles says, sitting up immediately and searching for it, patting the sheets on her bed like his phone might suddenly leap into his hands. "Allison is calling me."

"Is that the Xena: Warrior Princess theme?" Lydia asks, sitting up as well. Stiles just nods, and Lydia rolls her eyes.

Stiles finally locates his phone on the floor, in the pocket of his hastily discarded jacket. He answers it with, "Allison? Are you guys okay?"

It hits Lydia then that Allison, Scott, and Isaac have still been missing this entire time and wow, does she feel kind of shitty right about now. Stiles, however, looks relieved as he listens to Allison speak. "Yeah, I'm fine now. It was just . . . you know what, never mind," he says. "Lydia? She's right here." Stiles listens for a second longer, then wordlessly offers Lydia the phone.

Lydia presses Stiles's phone to her ear and says, "Allison? It's me."

"Lydia," Allison says, with a sigh of relief. "You didn't answer your phone. I called like three hundred times."

Lydia bites her lip, then says, "Oh. It must be on silent. I didn't notice."

"So you guys are okay?" Allison clarifies.

"Yeah, we're fine," Lydia says, glancing over at Stiles, who is still very naked. So is she, to be fair. "What happened to you guys? Did anyone get hurt?"

"Um, sort of," Allison says evasively. "But we're all fine now."

"Sort of," Lydia repeats. Something about Allison's tone isn't quite right. "Expliquez, s'il vous plaît."

Allison lets out a heavy sigh, and then says quietly, "Something happened. Something kind of . . . major."

"Yeah?" Lydia prompts, curious as to where this could possibly be heading.

"Uh, the witches - they poisoned us," Allison says, sheepish. "With an aphrodisiac. It was bright pink -,"

"- and smelled like cotton candy, yes, I'm familiar," Lydia cuts Allison off, relief and amusement filling her in equal measure. So not only are her friends uninjured, they've just been fucking in the woods this entire time - which is undignified and probably unsanitary, yes, but it's much better than being dead. However, Lydia quickly realizes that this means one pack member is left unaccounted for. "Wait - Scott or Isaac?" she asks, giving a sideways glance at Stiles to see if he's caught on to the gist of their conversation yet. His smug expression says he knows just enough.

"Um, both?" Allison says. Lydia's jaw drops, and Stiles mouths 'what is it?' at her with a curious look.

"Well, that's an interesting development," Lydia says mildly, once she's recovered from her momentary shock. She's not incredibly surprised, over all. Allison and Isaac are already sleeping together, but Scott and Allison are clearly not over each other, and Isaac and Scott have always been really keen on extended eye contact (as in, to the point that it makes bystanders uncomfortable.) Maybe this is yet another thing that would have happened eventually, just much farther down the line.

"Yeah," Allison says, with a small sigh. "I'm guessing the next group movie night is going to be a little awkward."

"Probably," Lydia agrees. "Well, how was it?"

"Worth the awkwardness," Allison admits, her smile evident in her voice.

Lydia laughs and then waves a hand vaguely at Stiles, who is still giving her an impatient look as he waits to be filled in on what's going on. She stops laughing when Allison suddenly says, "Wait a minute, you said you're familiar with the aphrodisiac, right? How do you know about it?"

"Well," Lydia says, resisting the urge to glance over at Stiles. "It's kind of a long story."

It takes Allison exactly three seconds to put two and two together. "Lydia," she says, with a smug tone. "You never told me what happened to Stiles."

"Well, he's okay now."

"He was poisoned, wasn't he," Allison says. Lydia's heard of a shit-eating grin, but this is the first instance of a shit-eating tone. "Were you?"

"No," Lydia says, finally relenting. "Apparently it's communicable. I'll tell you everything later, okay?"

"Okay," Allison says, with a chuckle. "Well, movie night is going to be double awkward now."

"You can say that again," Lydia says, rolling her eyes. Moving on, she asks, "So, is our witch problem solved? Do we need to come get you guys?"

"No, Scott called Deaton and he should be here any minute," Allison says. "I think we scared the witches off, for now."

"For now," Lydia repeats dryly. "Great." More weird sex dust may, unfortunately, be in their future.

Allison and Lydia say their goodbyes, and Lydia hands Stiles's phone back to him. "They were poisoned, too," she clarifies. "So they've been fucking in the woods this whole time."

"I gathered that," Stiles says. "To be honest, I'm kind of annoyed we bothered worrying about them if they were just fooling around in the preserve."

"Well, to be fair," Lydia says, "we weren't worried about them the whole time."

She's not sure how to go about discussing the events of tonight (well, the events not related to witches.) She hasn't had a lot of practice; most of the boys she's been with have been casual hookups. Stiles seems to be equally at a loss, so at least they'll be muddling through this together. "No, I guess we weren't," Stiles agrees, fidgeting nervously. Lydia's not sure if it's the post-sex hormones or if it's just because of Stiles, but she finds it oddly endearing.

"Are you okay now?" she asks. "Physically, I mean."

"Yeah," Stiles says. "I think it's out of my system."

"Me, too," Lydia says. She no longer craves his touch like she's going to die if she doesn't have him - but she wouldn't mind touching him. Not at all, really; in fact, she actually wants to. That scares her a little (it reminds her just how attached she already is to him) but she can't help but think that this is Stiles. Stiles Stilinski, he of the freckles and amber eyes and the gigantic, thinly veiled crush on Lydia Martin. She doesn't have it in her to be afraid of him.

"So . . . uh . . ." Stiles finally says. He's still fidgeting, wringing the edge of her sheet nervously. Lydia wants to tell him to stop (these sheets are expensive, thank you very much) but she doesn't want to interrupt him. "Did that . . . count?" he finally asks, referencing what she'd said earlier. Lydia tilts her head to hide her smile.

"I don't know," she says. She's not sure what the rules are for sex that occurred under the influence of an aphrodisiac.

"Oh," Stiles says, mildly disappointed.

Lydia gives him a mischievous look. "But I guess the second time just might."