Author's Note: It's official, I cannot stop writing Teen Wolf stuff. Somebody send help.

This work in unbeta'ed, so all the mistakes you find are mine. Sadly.

Samantha is beautiful. Her fair skin is warm under his touch, pliant as he runs his hand up and down her muscular thigh. Her long red hair is soft in his grip, and it smells softly of apples and mint. The way she presses her body against his, pushing him further into the old leather couch of his living room, pulling his shirt from inside his pants and dragging her nails across his back, is nothing short of incredible. There is nothing for him to complain about.

Perhaps she isn't as curvy as he would've liked, and he misses the weight of heavy breasts pressed up tight against his chest. Perhaps she kisses him more rushedly than the lazy seduction he is used to, demanding his response rather than teasing all his senses until he snaps and just takes what he wants. Perhaps she insists on making these loud, shrill noises every time he squeezes a little harder, and he has to force down the need to politely ask her to keep it down.

None of this should matter to him. It's ridiculous. Stiles is a healthy, attractive, single twenty-eight years old, and, other than the age thing, so is the woman attempting to climb onto his lap, which, in theory, should work out perfectly. There is no rational reason for his mind to wander to other places, darker places, old places, places where there was also a red-headed woman on top of him, but she wasn't called Samantha. No, her name is still Ly—

Nope. Not going there.

Stiles forces himself to moan, pulling Samantha to straddle his lap, biting her bottom lip until he feels the copper taste of blood in his mouth. It's a Saturday night, and Stiles refuses to waste it on useless thoughts.

"Babe, you're so hot," Samantha whispers against his lips, her stupid green eyes focused on him. At that distance, all he can think about is that they're just a pair of clear green eyes, no mix of colors, no hazel blending into the green in the middle, no changes of shade each time the light hits it. Just green eyes, staring right at him, the pupils dilated with arousal.

And Stiles wants to say something back. Anything, really, about how hot she is or how her mouth looks plump enough that he is tempted to use his dick to part it open so that he can stuff it full. Yet, his entire concentration is necessary not to push her off his lap while giving her a piece of friendly advice as to why she shouldn't be calling one-night stands 'babe'.

Fortunately—or rather, unfortunately—that's the moment his door opens. No one knocks, no one rings the bell. There's only a faint noise of keys being shuffled, and then the door is being pushed open, and his ex is striding inside his house as though she still lives there.

"Oh, I see you have company here," Lydia says, giving Samantha a once-over without any attempt at disguising it as something else, before giving the smallest shrug, as if she had judged her and found her lacking.

"Lydia," Stiles says, exasperated. "Can I help you?"

Samantha sends a confused look in his direction, probably wondering what the hell is happening, but remains seated on his lap, putting only the minimal distance necessary to carry a conversation between them.

Meanwhile, Stiles is too busy noticing the dress Lydia is wearing. It looks lovely on her, which isn't surprising considering that even his grandma old curtain would look stunning if Lydia was wearing it. No, what draws his eyes is the tiny green dragons scattered all over the white fabric.

It isn't any dress. Stiles bought that one for her one day when he had been walking home from work and saw it at a window display of a boutique. It was ridiculous and adorable, and nothing Lydia would've chosen for herself, which made it the perfect gift. He thought she had gotten rid of it the second she ended things.

"I need peanut butter," is what she says, as though that is a perfectly valid excuse for invading one's ex's house on a Saturday night.

And Stiles, well, Stiles must be bat-shit crazy, borderline close to dementia, because he nods and mumbles. "Oh, ok, yes." Like he understands it; like it makes total sense.

With that, Lydia turns and goes to turn towards the kitchen, dropping her bag on the table next to the door the way she always used to do when she came back from the university after a long day, and all she wanted was to drop the heavy weight on top of the first flat surface available. It knocks over the bowl where he keeps his wallet, badge, and keys, and it all falls down to the floor—exactly like it almost always did.

It's too much for Stiles. He shoves Samantha to the side, ignoring the protesting, indignant noise she makes, before getting up and making his way to the mess of the floor.

"For God's sake, I keep telling you not to throw your bag like a neanderthal, Lydia," he complains, the old argument falling from his lips with disconcerting easiness. "It doesn't take three Ph.D.'s to hang it where it should be hanged."

She crosses her arms. "You shouldn't put the bowl so close to the edge, Stiles. It should be in the middle."

"It's a small table. Its only purpose is to hold things I'll need before going out. Almost all of it is close to the fucking edge."

"Then maybe you need a bigger table," Lydia says, a mocking smile plastered on her face. She turns and heads to the kitchen without another word, and somehow Stiles finds himself going after her, following the noise of her heels on the wood floor.

They both stop mid-step when Samantha makes her presence known.

"Wait. What's going on here?" She asks from her place on the couch. "I don't get it."

"I'm not surprised," Lydia whispers under her breath, low enough that Samantha wouldn't be able to hear, and Stiles turns to glare at her before answering.

"This is Lydia," he says, which probably isn't the best explanation in the world, judging by the look of confusion still settled onto the girl's face. "She's my ex."

"Okaaay." Samantha drags the word, making a weird face. "And she comes unannounced to your place to fetch peanut butter?"

"Apparently," he agrees with a shrug. It was far from being the weirdest thing one of them had done. Very, very far. It's so far, indeed, that it almost looks reasonable.

It surely doesn't sound reasonable to her, though, because she carries on asking. "She has the keys to your apartment?"

"I'm pretty sure I told her to leave them here, actually," Stiles says, turning to give Lydia his best not-amused look.

"Did you? Weird, I can't remember," she says, and that angelic face might have worked on someone who didn't know her since they were six.

"Of course you don't."

"Am I not allowed to forget something?"

"When have you ever forgotten something in your life, Lydia? You still complain about that time in the hospital three years ago like it was yesterday."

She gasps. "Who doesn't bring underwear to someone at the hospital, Stiles? It's not normal. Candy? Sure. Sixteen stupid balloons? Absolutely. Clean underwear? No way."

Stiles' hand goes for his heart in a pretty dramatic move. "You said you liked the balloons? They were Harry Potter themed. How dare you!"

Lydia rolls her eyes. Her hazel-green eyes that never fails to make his heart skip a beat. "I liked the goddamn balloons, alright?" She admits, releasing a deep breath like it was a deep pain for her to do so.

"Whatever. See if I buy you any more balloons."

"Should I leave?" Samantha asks, and when Stiles turns to look at her, he sees she has already put on her shoes and grabbed her bag. She gets up from the couch. "You two look busy."

"What?" Stiles asks, shocked. "You don't have to go. Lydia will grab her weird peanut butter and be on her way."

"We'll do this some other time," she says, moving closer to the door and waving them goodbye.

"Wait!" Stiles tries to call her back, but she already left, closing the door on her way out. She never left a number, and he had no idea how they were supposed to get in touch with each other.

"How rude," Lydia says, twisting on her spot, her wavy dress flowing around her, and turning to the kitchen, unfazed by the whole thing.

Stiles runs after her. "You are unbelievable!"

"Me? Your undergraduate hook-up is the one who left without even saying goodbye," she protests, opening his cabinet and pulling out the unopened jar of crunchy peanut butter inside. "And really, Stiles? College girls? She couldn't be a day over twenty-two."

"I can date whoever I want. She's legal—I'm not committing any crimes here."

"You keep telling yourself that."

"I was about to get laid, Lydia. Laid." Only he wasn't, not really. Lydia didn't need to know that, though. "You do know that there's this stuff on supermarkets, right? The jar doesn't magically appears inside this house, even though you insist on this inability to buy it yourself."

"Don't pout, it's not as cute as you think it is," she orders, but she pouts too. "I needed it now. There's nothing open at this hour."

"For the love of—"

"It's an emergency, Stiles."

"No, it isn't. This isn't even close to an emergency." He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Is there an actual reason for you to be here?" He finally asks, looking at her pointedly.

She opens the sealed jar and grabs a spoon from a drawer before answering. "Is there a reason you bought this when you don't even like peanuts?"

He bought it because it's automatic for him to go to the supermarket, search for crunchy peanut butter—always crunchy, never smooth—, and always go for Skippy over Jif. Stiles has no idea how to get rid of the thousand Lydia-related habits of his life.

Lydia doesn't need to see just how enormous the hole she left behind is, though, so Stiles opts to say: "I-What, that's-I mean, I bought it for visitors."

"No, you didn't." She instantly rejects his truly ridiculous lie, and Stiles tries to build a solid counter-argument, but her eyes sparkle with quiet amusement, and it's Lydia, and all that comes out of his mouth it's a weak mumble.

"I did."

"Nuh-uh."

"Goddammit, Lydia, I bought it for visitors."

But Lydia shakes her perfect head, swallowing her mouthful of peanut butter before stating, rather matter of factly. "What visitors? You don't even like people—other than me, Scott, Allison, and Derek, that is. And that's not for them."

Which was an unfairly good point, to be honest. Stiles never had anyone in his house. It's his private space, and he is rather reluctant to share it with people he considers acquaintances at most. Samantha was the first hook-up he had ever brought home, and only because the thought of having sex with her in her dormitory made him feel like an old pervert.

"I like people." He tries to defend himself. "Some people."

"Is that so?" Lydia asks, tilting her head to the side. "Like who, for example?"

"Like… uh… my dad! I love my dad! There you go. I like people."

She shakes her head, as if he had just proved her point, spooning more peanut butter into her mouth and speaking around it. "Sure, sweety."

And, just like that, the playful banter stops being funny and all Stiles can think about is how much he had missed Lydia in his kitchen, in his house, in his life. He wants nothing more than to catch her by the wrist and pull her closer until there is not an inch of distance between them, and he can touch every inch of her perfect body.

Being away from her is like losing half of his body, his entire mind, and still having to function as an ordinary person despite the unbearable pain. It's torture. The worst kind of torture, where you have no perspective of ever escaping it.

She left, and Stiles has no clue on how to deal with a life without Lydia Martin in it.

It was three months ago.

He wants to move back to Beacon Hills, to stay with the rest of the pack, to go back to the life they had before everyone left for college and grew apart. It makes sense to him, wanting to be near the people he loved. His dad still lives there, Allison is finally pregnant with her and Scott's first kid, and even Derek had decided to rebuild his family house in the preserve.

The pack is getting back together, in a weird, dysfunctional, new way, and even though he loves the commodities of living in a big city, Stiles wants to be near them again.

His things are mostly packed already. He's moving back in two weeks.

They had fought for months and months over his desire to go back, each of them agonizing over every detail, trying to come up with better arguments, hoping to sway the other's decision. Stiles refused to cave to the hundred tiny persuasions Lydia tried with him. It's, somehow, a new thing for them—Stiles putting his feet down and refusing to recapitulate no matter what the repercussions were.

The memory of seeing Lydia walk out of their house, out of his life, still steals his breath at the most unexpected moments. The wound is not healing, won't ever heal, but Stiles is dealing with one day after the other, doing his best to ignore the voices screaming inside his head begging for him to go back crawling to her.

He grabs the jar out of her hands, his hands trembling ever so slightly. "Please go," he asks, pleads, closing his eyes and wishing she would just disappear from his sight in a puff of smoke and he could go back to his attempts at forgetting her.

Lydia only snags the jar back, huffing in indignation at his daring. "I don't think so. You can't get rid of me so easily, Stilinski."

Stiles refuses to listen, to open his eyes. "Lydia, please go away. You were the one who left, remember? I can't do this," he says, and his voice cracks pitifully.

"Can't," Lydia denies. "I have no place to sleep, so you're housing me."

And he snaps, his eyes opening without his consent. "What? Lydia, are you fucking kidding me? Did you seriously come here after everything to sleep at my place without even thinking—" He pauses. "Wait, you have no place to sleep?"

All throughout his rambling, she remains calm, only an eyebrow raised, probably waiting for him to catch up. She takes a step forward, and suddenly Stiles can smell her, and it's not her expensive Jo Malone fragrance, but his much cheaper lime and basil body wash scent that's coming off of her.

"I handed over the keys to my apartment today. All my stuff is packed in storage, so, yes, Stiles, I have no place to go."

"But you signed a contract of two years with them. The owner couldn't have asked for the place back."

"He didn't."

"I don't understand," Stiles whispers when Lydia steps even closer, only he does, 'cause he's far from stupid, and he knows Lydia better than he knows Scott, and that's saying a lot. He doesn't dare to hope, though, when he's the one who will have to pick up the pieces of his own broken heart when she leaves. Again.

Lydia's hand comes up to rest on his chest, right over his pounding heart, and she grabs his right hand with her other hand and places it directly above her own chest so that he can feel her equally fast heartbeat. It's heady, and Stiles is ready to lean down and capture her bottom lip between his, but she's speaking, and he has to listen.

"I want to come back home," she finally says, her eyes filling with unshed tears. "I'm ready, Stiles. I don't want to live without you."

He wants so badly to believe her, but Lydia would never quit MIT. "I-I'm still moving, Lydia-I haven't-I mean—"

"I know," she interrupts, sliding her hand up and toward his neck, resting it at his nape and squeezing it in reassurement. "I'll be able to work from home, from now on. I've arranged to give my classes online a few times a week, and the rest of the time I'll continue to do my research individually. I can do numbers from anywhere, I guess."

"Are you serious? Lydia, if you don't know for sure, maybe it woul—"

"Before I was Dr. Martin, before Boston and MIT, before leaving Beacon Hills and thinking I knew exactly who I was, before all that, I was Lydia Martin, Stiles," she says, and now tears are running quietly down her cheeks. "Lydia Martin, who had no clue about the supernatural, who had no real friends, who hid a 170 IQ because she thought no one would like a know-it-all."

"Fuck that Lydia," Stiles jokes, wiping the tears on her face while trying to force his own eyes to remain dry by mere force of will.

"You loved that Lydia. You snapped at me and forced me to dance with you, and you saved my life more times than I care to remember, and you did all that without ever making me feel as if I owned you anything, even though I did. God, Stiles, I did. I do own you so damn much."

"You don't." And he wasn't lying. Stiles never thought he deserved something for loving Lydia and sticking by her side; he did it because he simply did not know how not to. He was Stiles Stilinski, and Stiles Stilinski loved Lydia Martin.

"Shut up. Just... shut up. I do, of course I do. I love you. I love you so much that it feels like I haven't been myself since the day I walked out that door," she says, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. "So I'm wearing this crazy dress, and I'm showering with that ridiculously drying body wash, and I'm drinking mint tea, even though I hate mint."

"Please desist of using my body wash. It's mine, and I'm not open to sharing it," Stiles orders, at lost of words. He wants to say that he, too, loves her so much it's killing him, or that she looks so gorgeous standing there that it feels like something is clogging his air pipes, or maybe that there's a small part of his brain telling him to wrap his arms around her, and pull her closer, and run until there's only the two of them and no one else.

"Stiles," Lydia says, her tone urgent. "My head is too much sometimes. I'll overthink and create seven hundred scenarios in my head that will never possibly exist, trying to see things from every possible angle. I'll exhaust all the minor details while forgetting to look at the bigger picture—which is why we are perfect together, because that's what you do. So you have to promise me. Promise me that if this ever happens again, if I ever say that I'm leaving again, that you'll tie me to a bed and say all these things I've told you back to me."

She takes a deep breath. "Until I listen, alright? You are not to stop until I've seen reason. Whatever I say, make me remember that I'm miserable without you."

"Alright. I promise," Stiles agrees, perhaps too eagerly or far too serious, but he takes promises seriously, and Lydia, of all people, has to know that.

And she must, because she nods, equally as serious, before she releases him, pulling the chain wrapped around her neck until the end was no longer hidden in the valley between her breasts, and right there, at the end, is a platinum ring with a black diamond nestled in the middle. Stiles is deeply familiar with that ring.

"Is the offer still standing?" She asks, and her voice is steady, but her hands are shaking like hell.

Stiles tries to breathe, knowing oxygen is necessary to keep him alive. "Can I wear my Batman tie?" Is the question he makes, because, honestly, what else is there to say about it?

"If you must," she concedes.

"Then fuck yes, it's still standing. Lydia Martin, will you please marry me?" He asks once more, this time skipping the whole 'champagne, flowers and getting down to one knee' thing. "So that I can make my dreams come true and finally become Stiles Martin?"

"Yes. Yes, I will. God, yes," she says, all smile and drying tears, jumping into his arms and wrapping her arms around his neck. "You're still keeping Stilinski, though."

"What? That's not the plan." He groans, far too close to whining for comfort. "Lydia!"

And maybe he should've argued more or said all the shit that went through his mind in the last three months, defended his wounded pride and demanded whatever, but just before he can think about doing any of that, his mouth gets otherwise occupied, and, well, there's always the next day.

With them, there's always the next day.

AN2: And that's it. I hope y'all liked it. Comments are greatly appreciated. Xoxo.