Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lydia finds herself deep in the Beacon Hills Preserve somewhere between midnight and dawn on an exceptionally chilly late December night all thanks to the strong willed and obnoxiously persistent teenage boy. Stiles walks two steps ahead of her with a flashlight aimed at the ground in one hand, a baseball bat in the other, and is almost constantly glancing back over his shoulder to check on her. Despite it being well over a year since they last saw bear traps in the woods, he hasn’t stopped insisting on walking a few steps in front of her ever since she narrowly escaped losing her foot when she stepped on one of the ones that Mr. Tate had left out – no matter how many times they have made this very same trek over the last month.

“Let’s just walk a little more, then we can turn around, okay Lyds? Something is bound to turn up,” her companion says as he looks at her again over his shoulder – all nervous energy and focus.

It’s been just over two months since the Dread Doctors were defeated, and Stiles in particular seems ready to jump out of his skin at the apparent lack of supernatural activity happening in Beacon Hills. The rest of the pack hasn’t minded the lack of funny business going on these days, Lydia herself being especially relieved that she’s not stumbling across dead bodies constantly or screaming her throat raw with warnings of impending doom. Being semi-regular teenagers for the first time since - well sophomore year? – has truly been refreshing for all of them. Lydia has even seen multiple movies in the theater in recent weeks, mostly accompanied by Stiles of course, but it’s been fun – which is something that’s been sorely missing in their lives.

“Nothings out here Stiles,” she tells him for maybe the twentieth time since they got out of his jeep over an hour ago.

Lydia tries to bury herself deeper into the Beacon Hills Lacrosse hoodie that was sitting on the front seat when she opened the door to the Jeep earlier, clinging to the warmth it gives her. She relishes the way it smells like Tide laundry soap and Irish Spring body wash - the way it smells like Stiles.

“Yeah, well you can never be too certain.”

“I’m a banshee. I am supernaturally certain about things – it’s in the description.”

Lydia can practically feel Stiles roll his eyes. “Death Lyds. You’re only ever supernaturally certain about dead bodies or death adjacent things.”

“Who’s to say whatever you think is coming for us all isn’t death adjacent ?” she snarks at the lanky, brown haired boy that’s in front of her. She hears Stiles snort a laugh and hopes he’s getting ready to turn back to her – to engage in their normal banter and wit which proves that things between them are finally getting back on track.

Instead, Stiles curses under his breath and stops so abruptly in front of her that he causes her to collide directly into his back. Lydia nearly loses her balance before she reaches out and clutches on one of his biceps to keep herself on her feet.

“Did you see something?” she whispers from where she stands protected behind his back. Protected being the operative word here, since the two mostly human members of the McCall Pack have taken to running off into the woods without any werewolves in sight in recent weeks. As if a baseball bat and some mase would help them out in the long term.

Stiles lets out a big breath and shakes a shudder out of his body before he crouches down unceremoniously, wordlessly beckoning Lydia to join him in searching through the leaves that litter the forest floor.

“Stiles, you gotta tell me what I’m looking for if I’m going to help you find whatever it is.”

Stiles pauses from his frantic search to regard Lydia with whiskey brown eyes that she has seen many emotions – happiness, mirth, panic, pain, sorrow, resilience, love – cross over since the winter of sophomore year, eyes that currently read determined .

“You and Allison used to come out here, right? She’d practice her bow out here sometimes?”

Lydia nods her head quietly, her heart aching momentarily at the thought of her first real best friend.

“Yeah. Especially after the sacrifices when the Nemeton was still affecting you three. Remember she almost killed me that one time? If Isaac hadn’t been lurking around…” her sentence trailing off when she notices how white Stiles knuckles get from gripping his flashlight at her casual mention of that particular incident.

He huffs a noise of annoyance out of his nose.

“How could I forget that? I haven’t kept a running list of Lydia Martin’s Near Death Experiences since sophomore year for fuckin’ nothing,” he says with a tone of sarcasm, even though Lydia half suspects that there’s more truth to that statement than he’d be willing to admit.

“Okay, so what does this have to do with why we’re squatting on the ground of the Beacon Hills Preserve at some ridiculous hour in the morning?”

Her companion sighs lightly, like he’s unwilling to give her an answer – so she pokes one perfectly manicured nail in the spot between his armpit and rib cage – close enough to where she knows he’s ticklish in hopes of him explaining himself. Stiles swats her hand away, moves an inch or so from where he’s been resting beside her on his jean clad knees, and runs his free hand through the disaster that is already his hair.

“I just thought I caught the glint of something silver on the ground.”

Lydia’s heart jumps into her throat at the mere thought of what Stiles isn’t saying.

Silver = Arrowhead.

Arrowhead = Allison.

“Does any of this look familiar to you?” the boy asks as he aims the beam of light across various points of the woods around them.

If she’s being totally honest here, the woods look terrifying at night – they always have. Who knows what sort of monsters could be lurking just out of their sight? She’s not about to admit that here though, not when she’s alone with Stiles and not a single other supernatural around. She takes a different approach.

“Of course, it does Stiles. But not because it reminds me of Allison, we’ve just spent so much time in these woods the last few years. For all I know, I found a body here in a fugue state at some point,” she states gently, not trying to upset the young man that looks at her so hopefully.

“Shit. Maybe we should head back to the jeep then,” her partner states, raising himself from his knees before offering her a hand to do the same.

Lydia shakes her head. “No. If you think you saw an arrowhead, something that possibly belonged to Allison, we owe it to her to search for it. Now get your ass back down here Stilinski.”

The boy gives her a wordless salute before dropping back to his knees, his large hands expertly clearing leaves and brush efficiently out of his way.

They search in silence over a 5ft patch of ground for the next 30 minutes before Stiles plants his ass in the dirt looking defeated. Lydia gives up 10 minutes later, fingers freezing as she blows on them to get some of the feeling back in them before Stiles reaches over and wraps them up in his larger, warmer – always warmer – hands. She leans her forehead on his shoulder and buries her nose into his flannel momentarily before pressing her cheek into his bicep as they stare at the ground in front of them.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles murmurs before leaning his cheek on the crown of her head.

Lydia squeezes their joined hands. “It’s alright. Allison has been gone for… too long. Finding some piece of her out here… would be remarkable.”

“I know. I just. I’m so sorry Lyds.”

Lydia pulls her head out from under his cheek so she can turn and face him directly. She’s long known that part of him still blames himself for Allison’s death – it wasn’t him, he didn’t control the nogitsune - but she thought that they were past this guilt.

Quietly she places a hand on his cheek, rubs her thumb across his cheekbone as he nuzzles into her hand. Stiles wraps long fingers around her slim wrist and places a gentle kiss on the palm of her hand before dropping them in his lap. This casual intimacy between them is still new – a recent development post Eichen House – and only a little terrifying to Lydia. Their mutual feelings for each other have been complicated in recent weeks, neither of them certain of when or how to proceed moving forward. Lydia likes to think they are both okay with how things are right now, at least Stiles hasn’t given her any indication that he’s not.

“It’s not your fault Stiles. Allison died doing what she loved, being a warrior, being a friend,” she says softly, eyes trained on where their fingers are intertwined in his lap.

“It’s not just Allison that I’m sorry for Lydia. Yeah, I’m always going to feel guilty about that, but that’s not all I need to apologize for. Last year, after she died, I wasn’t exactly the best friend I could be to you. It was too hard. Being around you just reminded me of her, reminded me that it’s my fault your best friend is dead. So I kinda… hid from you for a while.”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Stiles. Stop. It wasn’t your fault anymore than it was mine. And don’t forget that you were in a new relationship, Malia was your first girlfriend. Of course, you weren’t focused on me, I wouldn’t have expected you to be.”

“That doesn’t excuse just how shitty I was. Like, I was really fucking shitty sometimes so please don’t try to excuse that. I promised you I’d always be there, just a phone call away. And I stopped keeping that promise because I suck. I got wrapped up in Malia and… I don’t know – I just, kinda lost myself,” he tells her sincerely as he pulls their joined hands up to his mouth to press a kiss to her knuckles.

Another apology.

“We all lost ourselves after Allison for a while. You lost yourself in helping Malia, Scott lost himself in Kira and then helping Liam, even I lost myself in figuring out things with…” she stops short of saying Jordan’s name because of all that implies.

“Parrish?” Stiles supplies, a sad sorta smile playing on his lips.

“It was never like that. Strictly professional.”

She doesn’t know why she felt the need to say that, because there was nothing to defend and even if there was – she was a free woman at the time.

“But you didn’t want it to stay just professional. It’s alright Lyds, you can tell me, Parrish is quite hot. Literally, very hot,” he says with wink and a shit eating grin spreading across his face. Of course he can’t resist a Hellhound joke.

“I’ll be sure to let him know you think so.”

“Oh, he knows.”

He’s giving her that crooked grin of his, the one that melts the rough edges around her heart, and if they are having an unexpected heart to heart, she owes it to him to be honest.

“I just needed someone to be there for me at that time. Jordan, he was there when I needed him. It didn’t hurt that we were kind of in the same boat, figuring out what exactly we were in the supernatural world. Being harbingers of death bonded us in ways I didn’t expect, tied us together. It’s different from our tether, but it’s still important to me.”

Lydia looks up at him and gives him a closed mouth smile, and Stiles just leans down and presses another kiss across her knuckles.

“I just want you to know that I understand it. Your connection to Malia is important, just like mine to Jordan. And we’re all one pack, we take care of each other.”

Stiles tilts his head at her for a minute, studying her face in the dark of the Beacon Hills Preserve. He clears his throat before pushing ahead.

“I just, I feel like I ruined what we had? We were the dynamic duo there for a while, the brains of the whole operation. And god – I just feel like I fucked up so much of the end junior year? Not just with you, but with everyone – everything. And then summer came and went and I didn’t spend nearly enough time with you – with you all. God I should have spent more time with you and Scott,” he starts rambling, going off on one of his many tangents.

“Stiles, we have all the time in the world,” Lydia tells him quietly, steady reassurance in her voice.

The boy across from her shakes his head frantically. “No, we don’t. We have a semester of high school left, and then what? Can we keep the pack together, can we all stay near Beacon Hills for college and then I dunno, the rest of our lives? Jesus Christ, you’re probably off to Harvard, or Yale, or I don’t fucking know, Penn or some shit.”

Lydia purses her lips together before cutting off Stiles continued rambling with the most likely answer. “MIT. Try MIT.”

This causes her companion to pause. He blinks at her once, then twice, before he shakes himself out of his stupor. “Seriously?”

She nods slowly, biting her bottom lip. “Yeah. Nothing is official, I’ve had other offers, but MIT is still trying to figure out where to place me academically and if it’s a better offer than the others – I think I’m going there.”

“Fields Medal by 30 huh?” he says softly, reverently even.

“That’s always been the plan.”

They sit there in silence, just taking one another in. Lydia doesn’t know when she got used to Stiles regarding her in such open awe, it used to annoy the hell out of her, but now it’s just normal. He’s always looked at her with a little bit of amazement, like most of the population of Beacon Hills High had until she went crazy post Peter Hale bite sophomore year, but whereas others stopped regarding her in that manner – Stiles never did. Sometimes she’d even catch him staring at her momentarily when he was still with Malia – though he quickly corrected himself those days. She idly wonders if he’s ever caught her looking at him in the same manner, if her attempts to hide the affection she held for him has been betrayed by her own eyes.

She feels herself let out a raspy breath before she disentangles their fingers and she finds herself cupping his cheek again. The way he looks at her under his sooty black lashes makes her want to surge forward and press their lips together again – just like they did on the dirty locker room floor last year – but instead she softly presses a kiss to his cheek, just near the edge of his mouth.

“What was that for?” he asks as she pulls back, brown eyes blinking slowly.

“Maybe I’m feeling sentimental,” she replies with a shrug as Stiles reaches forward and drags her bodily into his lap, his arms a vice around her slim frame as he runs a hand through her hair and buries his nose into her neck.

This is quite possibly the closest she’s ever been to him where one of them isn’t nearly dead. She finds it’s more comfortable and familiar than she would ever have expected – she likes it.

“Don’t get mad, but I have another apology to make,” the boy beneath her mumbles into the skin of her neck, causing it to break out in goosebumps. 

“Go for it,” Lydia says softly as she absentmindedly plays with the hair on the back of his neck.

Stiles pulls back from her, eyes serious as he places both of his large hands on her cheeks and presses his forehead to hers.

“I’m sorry I froze in the sheriff’s station when Tracy attacked you. You were bleeding out on the floor of my dad's office, Kira covered in your blood , and all I could do was stand there and watch. I didn’t know how to help, I panicked, and you could have died,” Stiles tells her hoarsely, voice thick with emotion.

Her eyes widen because this wasn’t anything she expected. That moment in the sheriff's office was just a haze of barely there memories from a truly terrifying few months in their lives. “Oh.”

“I can’t believe fucking Theo, ” he spits the name out like it offends him, “did more to save you than I did. And I’m so sorry for that.”

Lydia leans in and nuzzles her nose against his briefly, affectionately – hoping to convey all the things she’s not ready to say aloud. “But you have saved me. And I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

Stiles blinks rapidly when he realizes what she’s talking about, his hands sliding down from her cheeks to her neck and finally resting on her maroon clad shoulders. The warmth of his hands sink into the material of the sweatshirt and Lydia can feel the heat rising in her cheeks as his eyes take their time studying her, and she notices the way his mouth works – like he’s trying to puzzle out what to say to her.

“I had to save you Lydia. You would have died there. We left you there for too long to begin with – not that we had much of a choice thanks to your mom – and if I hadn’t gotten to you when I did…” Stiles voice tails off and Lydia can’t help notice the way his Adam's apple bobs like he’s choking back a sob. She can’t bring herself to meet his eyes directly, so she fiddles with the chewed aglet on her hoodie strings.

“I can’t do this without you,” he says in such a strained voice that she feels compelled to make eye contact with him. His brown eyes are brimmed with unshed tears, and Lydia finds herself throwing her arms tightly around his neck as he pulls her back into his lap.

“I’m here Stiles. I’m not going anywhere. You’ll never have to do this without me, I promise,” Lydia chokes out as she soothingly rubs her hand across Stiles shaking shoulders.

Lydia has seen Stiles cry countless times over the years – her earliest memory of him involves a young Stiles crying on the swings at recess after he’d just missed two weeks of school, something she learns much later coincided with the death of his mother. Hell, she’s witnessed him crying over her a dozen or so times since sophomore year, but whatever this is – it’s different – she soon finds her eyes overflowing with tears as well. It’s a dangerous torrent that sweeps them both up in its waves as Lydia finds that she can’t help but succumb to the riot of emotions that tear at her chest.

It’s cathartic, sitting here tangled up in one another as they both release an excess of emotions. Lydia isn’t even sure what she’s crying about – Allison, her dad, being a banshee, maybe even Stiles. She’s been trying her best to hold herself together over the last few years, and she’s mostly succeeded. It’s something that you have to do when you’re constantly fighting for your life and those of the ones around you– but tonight in the dwindling moonlight out here in the preserve, she lets herself be a normal 17 year-old-girl, she lets herself feel.

Slowly, eventually, the lanky boy who’s lap she’s been occupying disentangles himself from her grasp and gently places her on a soft spot of ground next to him. Stiles rubs at his eyes with the palms of his hand while Lydia hastily wipes the remaining tears off her cheeks, wishing she had a mirror to check her makeup. Sure, she’s grown as a person since sophomore year - a fact that she is beyond proud of and can readily admit that her friendship with Stiles helped with - but raccoon eyes are not cute on anyone, so this isn’t about her vanity. It’s just a fact of life.


She sits there meticulously wiping away at the black makeup that runs under her eyes until her fingers come away clean, using this as an opportunity to process all that just happened. It’s not every day you sit in the arms of the guy you’re probably more in love with than you're willing to admit while you both cry over needing each other to survive this crazy supernatural world you both sort of fell into two years ago, right?


Lydia turns gaze on to the guy in question. Even with messy hair and eyes red from crying, Stiles is still so handsome that Lydia wants to smack her younger self for not realizing it sooner. Straight nose, expressive eyes, a crooked smile and pale skin covered in constellations of moles that she wants to map out with her mouth someday. He’s no pretty boy like Jackson or Aiden - not even close to her usual “type” to be perfectly honest, but that's what makes him more attractive to her. The skinny boy who was all elbows and rib cage while they danced at Winter Formal sophomore year has transformed into a young man with defined lean muscles and broad shoulders thanks to a mix of lacrosse and running with literal werewolves.


Stiles turns to look at her then, catches her staring and just holds her gaze like this is something totally normal between them. If his cheeks start to flush a little, she won’t mention it. But the magic is broken when he sniffs loudly and proceeds to wipe his slightly runny nose on the back of his flannel, causing her to break out into a fit of real, actual giggles while she tells him how unhygienic it is.


“Sorry Lyds, next time we decide to have a heart to heart in the preserve I’ll remember to put tissues in my pocket,” he jokes beside her as she rolls her eyes.


“Who said there’s gonna be a next time?”


“Of course there’s gonna be a next time. We’re Stiles and Lydia. Beacon Hills is going to go to shit and we’re going to find ourselves out here trying to figure out how to save everyone.”


“Doesn’t explain the heart to heart.”


He grins. “Sure it does. We save the city, again might I add, but something horrible happens to one or both of us, and we end up back here reassuring each other that we’re never going to leave the other alone. Like clockwork.”


She bites back a grin and looks back down at her fingers, because he’s right. Inevitably they will return to these woods together and reassure one another in hushed voices that they are going to be okay. They are Stiles and Lydia after all.


“I suppose you’re correct.”


“Of course I am. Hopefully next time this happens, it’s a little less intense than that though. That was. It was a lot. And I’m sorry if I freaked you out by dumping all my emotional bullshit on you like that. That wasn’t fair of me.”


Lydia glances back up at him, his eyes open and sincere with her.


“Hey, I cried too. Don’t worry about emotional bullshit, I’ve got mine as well.”


“Yeah but I just. It’s different for me, Lyds. It’s always been different for me.”


“ If you die, I will literally go out of my freakin’ mind” pops into her head suddenly, the admittance of just how strong his feelings for her were way back in sophomore year, before he really even knew her as a person. She’d seen those words in action over the years, Stiles' consistently deep concern for her well being was something she marveled at - no one had ever treated her so well and they weren’t even dating.


Somehow the words pop out before she even has a chance to think about them. “It’s different for me too. I promise Stiles, it’s different for me too now.”


He stares at her with wonder in his eyes, gulps deeply before he twists his body to be facing hers directly.


“I know we haven’t talked about whatever's been going on between us these days, and I’m not upset about it because I know you just had some traumatic experiences and I need to give you time. I figure we’ll get there when we get there. But I just need you to know that I’m all in when you are.”


She doesn’t say anything because she’s certain her voice would betray her at that moment, so she just bites her lip and nods her head at him. Stiles gives her a smile that could blind her if she looked at it too long, he just radiates happiness over something as small as her nodding in agreement.


Stiles places a large, warm hand on her cheek and she takes a moment to nuzzle her face into it much like he did to her earlier in the night. Ever so gently he places a rogue piece of hair behind her ear as his hand slides slowly to the back of her head. Lydia feels herself inching closer to him, pressing her legging clad knees into his own jean clad ones, allowing herself to get swept up in his orbit. They may not be together yet, but what would one kiss hurt? It’s gotta be better than the rushed one from last year, and she’s admittedly curious about it.


“Is this okay?” Stiles asks as his breath washes across her face, eyes rapidly searching her face for her permission.


Lydia sighs a yes and moves her hands from her lap to the ground in order to press herself up to his waiting mouth. They are mere seconds from connecting when she feels a sharp pressure on the palm of her hand and she pulls herself from Stiles grasp with a whine of pain. He’s confused for a moment, eyes opening back up to see her inspecting the small cut on the palm of her hand.


“What the fuck?” he mutters mostly to himself as he wipes the small amount of blood pooling in her hand away with his shirt sleeve.


“I pressed my hand down on the ground to give me some leverage and something stabbed me,” she tells him as he quickly tears a piece of fabric off the bottom of his old flannel to wrap around her hand in a makeshift bandage. It’s nothing a quick visit to the McCall house won't fix later.


Then it hits her as Stiles is tying off the knot on her hand. The whole reason they ended up sitting on the cold ground to begin with.


Allison's arrowhead.


“Stiles. Something stabbed me.”


“Yeah, you said,” he says nonchalantly as he makes to stand up from the ground.


“Stiles. Something stabbed me,” she repeats herself a little more forcefully.


His eyes get almost comically huge when he realizes what she’s saying. “Something stabbed you. Something stabbed you!”


It’s quick work this time, the two of them digging in the ground in the spot they had just been sitting in. A few minutes of digging and they manage to unearth a perfectly persevered silver arrowhead, the Argent family crest stamped neatly onto the blade. The two of them sit there in stunned silence as Lydia runs her fingers over the precious metal for who knows how long, the sounds of the woods around them awakening in the background.


“Thank you,” she whispers as she clutches the piece of her best friend to her heart.


“It was nothing,” comes Stiles' easy reply - as if he didn’t just give her the best gift she could ever receive.


Tearing her eyes from where her fist clutches the arrowhead, Lydia looks up to where Stiles still sits across from her. The amount of love he holds in his eyes for her is enough for her to second guess her decision to not come clean to him with how she feels about him tonight, but he quickly stands up and dusts his knees off before offering her his hand with a wry grin and she knows they have time yet. He said he’s ready when she is, and for now that’s good enough.


She lets him help her to her feet and as she gets up, she places both hands on his chest while he places one on her hip and uses the other one to brush back her hair. She knows he’s not going to try and kiss her, that moment has been lost to them, but she smiles just the same as he sweeps a thumb across her cheekbone before pressing his lips to her forehead. The woods around them are coming alive now, and the first rays of sun are peaking over the horizon as they stand there together, Lydia playing with the collar of Stiles flannel as he wraps loose strands of her hair around his finger, eyes reserved solely for the other person occupying their space.


Lydia glances around at the woods around them, not a monster in sight, just trees.


“Let’s go. If we’re fast enough, we can catch Melissa before she heads to the hospital and she can take a look at your hand,” Stiles says, completely unrushed as he drops his hand into hers and starts heading back to where they parked the Jeep all those hours ago.


Lydia pockets the arrowhead into the front of her hoodie and gives Stiles a reassuring smile as he leads her out of the woods.