Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stiles is fairly accustomed to bizarre requests — occupational hazard of, you know, the whole werewolf pack/supernatural world thing — and mostly he remains unfazed by them. Honestly nowadays he’s more surprised when there isn’t a crime to help someone cover up, no questions asked. (Stiles isn’t so great at the no-questions-asked part, but he knows the best ways to cover up a crime, and that’s why he gets to stay on the werewolf pack team.)

Mundane requests, though. He doesn’t get a lot of those anymore.

That’s his excuse for being taken aback to the point of speechless. For being at a loss for words when Lydia shows up on his doorstep on Monday after school and says, “I want you to teach me to drive manual transmission."

When he blinks at her for too long, she huffs and says, “Earth to Stiles? Do I need to repeat myself?”

“Nope, all good, I heard you the first time, just…processing,” Stiles says. “You want me to teach you to drive stick? Like a stick-shift? Like my Jeep?”

Lydia sighs long-sufferingly, like she still hasn’t admitted to herself that in order for Stiles to teach her to drive stick, she’ll need to actually get behind the wheel of what she considers, quote, “the most offensive piece of junk in Beacon Hills.” Stiles doesn’t take it personally. Most things probably seem like junk to Lydia Martin. She’s kind of Sharpay Evans like that.

(He’s probably Chad in this scenario, somehow, but it’s not like he’s spent time thinking about it.)

“Yes,” Lydia says, with a surprising amount of patience. “Will you do it or not?”

Stiles weighs the benefits of undertaking this task with the far more obvious drawbacks for about zero point three seconds. “Oh, I’ll do it. I’m a hundred percent in for this. In fact,” he pats his pockets down, then holds up a finger like one second, “I’ll grab my keys and we can start right now.”

He’s launching himself back up the stairs before she can protest. It’s the best way to get Lydia to agree to something, Stiles has found: disappear before she can argue.

By the time he returns to the front door, she has her arms crossed and an expectant look on her face.

“Shall we?”

Lydia steps back and Stiles steps over the threshold into the balmy early evening. “After you."

If he were smarter and more inclined to self-preservation he would have set this task to his dad, who has a success rate of 100% for teaching people how to drive a manual transmission. In fairness, his dad has only taught one person — Stiles — but that’s still one more person than Stiles has taught. And starting with Lydia kind of feels like starting a new video game at the boss battle.

It’s just as well that Stiles is an idiot with no self-preservation instincts.

He’s driving them to the empty parking lot of the high school when he asks, “Mind if I ask what made you want to learn?”

Lydia sighs. “I can only learn so much from reading,” she says. “No one in my family drives stick. No one else I know, actually. It seems like the kind of useful skill I might need someday, but it’s too technical to get from a book, not like sewing or cooking or—”

“Making self-igniting Molotov cocktails with the contents of a high school chemistry lab,” Stiles finishes.

She throws him a wry smile. “I can do a lot, but I can’t do everything.”

“Well,” Stiles says, a little too childishly proud to know something Lydia doesn’t know. “I pretty much can’t do most things, but I can definitely drive stick, so. Maybe that makes us a good team.”

“I don’t think that’s what makes us a good team,” Lydia says.

Stiles glances over at her. He wants to prod that statement, ask her to elaborate, but there’s a good atmosphere in the car right now, and they’re going to need all the good vibes they can get if Stiles intends on leaving this lesson with all his limbs attached.

“Whaaaat,” he says instead. “No, I’m pretty sure that’s what makes this relationship so solid. The chauffeur and the genius.”

“We’re a regular buddy cop comedy,” Lydia says, amused. “But you should give yourself more credit. You are, on rare occasion, the genius.”

“And sometimes you’re the chauffeur!” Stiles waves an arm out in front of him. “It’s poetic cinema in action.”

She laughs softly as they pull into the parking lot.

(A year ago, she would never have laughed at that. Progress.)

Okay, not progress. Not enough progress, anyway.

“Ease up on the clutch,” Stiles says for the hundred thousandth time, just like his dad did when Stiles was first learning. “Find the catch point.”

If Stiles had a nickel for every time his dad had told him to find the catch point he’d have enough money to buy a better goddamn car.

“I am trying,” Lydia hisses, but to no avail: the car stalls out, again. She grunts in frustration and shifts the gear back to neutral. “How do you do this? How on earth did you learn this?”

“It’s, uh, it’s not, you can’t really…” Stiles scratches the back of his neck. How to approach this topic without sending Lydia into a whirlwind of vengeful rage at his terrible teaching skills. “It’s a lot less logical than you think it is, okay? I mean, yes, there are basic steps, but it’s — it’s about more than that. You have to listen to the car, feel the vibrations. If you can feel it start to shake, that’s the catch point. You can’t calculus your way through this one, you just have to feel it.”

“I hate that,” Lydia grumbles. “I hate this. I hate you.”

“All valid complaints. Definitely things I said to my dad when he was teaching me. But you can do this. You can do this, Lydia, I know you can.” He curls his hand over hers on the steering wheel and feels her vise grip start to loosen under his palm. Her gaze is fixed on the dashboard. “You’re not just book smart, you’re smart in every way. You love to learn, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard, because it makes the victory that much sweeter. And you are not going to be beaten by Beacon Hills’ most offensive piece of junk, are you?”

Lydia flits her eyes up through the window, then over to Stiles. The corner of her mouth twitches. “No.”

“No, you’re not,” Stiles agrees. He withdraws his hand. “Try again. Slowly.”

Clutch. Brake. Twist the ignition. The Jeep rumbles to life. With laser-like focus, Lydia presses down on the clutch, shifts into first, and then slowly, slowly, eases up on the clutch as she steps on the gas.

Stiles doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until the car lurches forward and he releases it in a gust of air. They’re driving. Finally.

“Hey! You did it! It was my pep talk, wasn’t it?”

“If it helps you sleep at night,” Lydia says lightly, which means it totally was his pep talk.

The thing about driving stick is that it’s a lot of one step forward, two steps back. For every time Lydia manages to get the car moving, she stalls out at least twice. And Stiles doesn’t really have any advice left to give — he’s used all of his lines, both his father’s and his own. Find the catch point. Check. Listen to the engine. Check. Feel the vibrations. Check. You can do this, Lydia. Check, check, and triple-check.

Stiles mourns the day he has to teach her to start the car on an incline.

But that’s a problem for another day. Currently, night is falling around them, and Lydia’s mouth is set in a hard line, grim face determined. Obviously, she has no intentions of being bested by Stiles’s piece-of-junk Jeep.

(The fact that she is being bested by it — that’s just semantics. The Jeep may win the battle, but ultimately Stiles knows Lydia will win the war.)

Miraculously, she has yet to claw his face or kick him out of the car or even burst into tears. She only snaps at him once, and then immediately sinks back into the seat, an apology falling from her lips.

“It’s cool,” Stiles tells her. “When my dad was teaching me, I swore at him so much he threatened to throw me in jail.”

She breathes a chuckle at that. That’s one more small step for Stiles, one giant leap for mankind.

“You can yell at me all you want if it helps,” he adds. “Seriously. I know it’s frustrating as hell. Believe me, I know.”

“I’m just,” Lydia sighs, “not used to learning this slowly.”

No shit, Sherlock.

“Sorry for the reminder that you’re human,” he says, quirking his lips. “Or at least mostly human.” She inclines her head. “Hey, everyone has their Kryptonite.”

“Driving stick is not my Kryptonite,” Lydia insists. “I categorically refuse that.”

And categorically refuse she does. Her next five attempts at getting the car moving in first gear are all successful.

Stiles wolf-whistles. “Okay, I take it back. You have no Kryptonite. You’re a badass.”

“Well,” Lydia says, “obviously.”

He has to get home for dinner, which unfortunately ends their first lesson.

“Great progress,” he tells her as he parks in their driveway. “You did way better than me. Next time I’ll teach you how to, you know, actually drive. Spoiler, it’s way easier. Like way easier. Starting the car is the hardest part by a long shot.”

“Noted,” Lydia says, smiling — what, timidly? Definitely not, because Lydia doesn’t do things timidly. Still, there’s something humble in her smile. It looks incongruous on her face. “Same time tomorrow?”

“You got it,” Stiles says. She gets out of the car and Stiles calls after her, “Get home safe! Text me when you’re home!”

She turns back and it’s hard to read her face in the dark from this far, but he’s pretty sure she’s still smiling.

(Eight minutes later his phone buzzes.

I’m home, her text reads. Here is your requisite text.

The next one says, See you tomorrow. And thank you for today.

No problemo, Stiles replies, beaming ear-to-ear. I’ll clear my schedule for you.)

She catches up with him as soon as the last bell dismisses them.

“Stiles!”

The locker door slams into his face in his haste to turn towards the call. Cool. Nice. Very smooth, Stilinski. Way to go there.

“Yo,” he says, leaning against the (now closed) locker. Lydia approaches, one eyebrow raised.

So she saw that little display, then. Just his luck.

“Are you busy right now?”

“Um, recovering from mild head trauma,” he rubs at the spot over his forehead where it connected with the locker door, “but otherwise no?”

“Good. Now you are.” Her fingers wrap around his wrist, and she pulls him into step with her. It’s actually incredible how quickly she can walk in heels. “Our next lesson starts now.”

“Now like right now? You don’t want to go home first?” He glances at her shoes. “Put on some better shoes for driving, maybe?”

Lydia doesn’t break her stride. “I always drive in heels.”

“Were you in heels last night?”

She pauses without pausing. “No.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it, then. At least not when you’re still learning.”

“Stiles, we are doing this now.”

“Doing what now?”

They both run into Scott. Lydia only avoids falling because Stiles heroically steadies her. “Yo,” Stiles says for the second time in as many minutes. A memory clocks him over the head. “Oh, shit, I’m driving you home! Almost forgot.”

“Yeah, but the mechanic called me last period, said my bike is ready for pickup, so you can just drop me there,” Scott says. “Thanks.”

“How’s Isaac getting home?”

Scott sighs. “Said he's going home with Allison. Studying.” The look on his face says he knows exactly how ‘studying’ with Allison tends to go, and that he’s not particularly pleased about it but is resigned to having no say in the matter.

Stiles is very good at reading Scott’s face. It’s an art.

“Studying,” Lydia says, pursing her lips in a smug smile. “Good for them.”

“Hey, whose side are you on,” Stiles mutters. “At least pretend to be supportive.”

“I am being supportive!” Lydia chirps. “Of Allison. My best friend.”

“They’re actually studying,” Scott insists. Mercifully, no one pushes it. “Anyway. You ready to go?”

Stiles turns. Lydia still hasn’t released his wrist. “Lydia?”

“I’ll come with you.”

Scott looks confused. “Um…what? What are you…what’s going on?”

“I’m teaching her to drive stick,” Stiles explains. Turning to her, he adds, “Seriously, though, it makes more sense if I drop Scott off first and then come pick you up. You should go home. Put on some sneakers. Or at least something without a heel.”

“If it’s that important to you, I’ll drive barefoot.”

“Lydia.”

“I’m coming with you,” she says, fingernails digging into his skin.

Stiles yelps, “Ah, ow, Jesus, woman! Okay, fine, sheesh, come with. But don’t forget you’re the one requesting my services.”

Scott frowns. “Is something wrong, Lydia?”

First of all, duh, what’s wrong is that she’s treating Stiles like a human stress ball. Stiles thinks that’s pretty self-evident.

Lydia only blinks innocuously up at him. “No,” she says. “I’m just…eager to learn.”

Come on. Even Stiles can tell that’s a lie.

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened!” There’s a bite to her words. “Look. I’ll leave my car in the parking lot, it’s not a big deal.” She whirls on Stiles. “Stiles. Please?”

“This feels like a trap,” Stiles says, swiveling his head between Lydia and Scott. “Okay, come on. Let’s drive Scott back to his baby.”

“I totally get it if you lied because you don’t want to talk about it, but you know that’s not really my jam, so I’m just gonna ask anyway,” Stiles says as they pull away from the shop, leaving Scott to his devices. “Did something happen? Why the sudden urgency?”

“What makes you think I would tell you but not Scott?”

“So there is something to tell!” Stiles says triumphantly.

Lydia does not look impressed. “I was speaking hypothetically, smartass.”

“Sure you were.” Stiles drums his fingers on the steering wheel and starts navigating back to the school. “Fine, hypothetically, I…don’t know.” 

He doesn’t know. That’s the truth. There’s no reason Lydia should entrust him with something she wouldn’t tell Scott; Scott’s the Alpha now, and Lydia is as much a part of his pack as Stiles is. They were connected enough for her to save him from permanent death by ice bath/surrogate sacrifice, but for all Stiles knows, she could have done that for Scott, too. No obvious reason comes to mind that would justify Lydia confiding in Stiles before she’d confide in Scott. 

He just. Kind of thinks that she would. 

“I don’t know,” he says again. “But hypothetically, if there was something wrong, or if you ever wanted to talk…I’m always here, you know? Not hypothetically. Actually.”

Lydia is quiet. When she inhales to speak, Stiles almost thinks she’s going to tell him why she seems off, but she only says, “The school parking lot probably won’t be empty for a little while. If you want an empty parking lot, you might want to try someplace else.”

Stiles hums his acknowledgment. “Any suggestions?”

The elementary school parking lot, of course. They let out an hour earlier. Lydia continues to be the smartest person in the Jeep.

On arrival, they switch seats. Stiles turns the car off so Lydia can practice turning it on. It’s quiet around them, though bright enough outside that it’s not entirely terrifying. In the dark, he suspects he’ll feel differently, but that’s not for a while.

“Okay,” he says, once they’re both situated. “You remember how to turn the car on?”

“Yes, Stiles, I know how to turn the car on, I’m not a complete idiot,” Lydia says tightly. Clutch, brake, twist the ignition; the car comes alive.

“Alright, I get that it’s frustrating not to be able to immediately do something for once, but we haven’t even started yet,” Stiles huffs. “So either tell me what the hell happened that has you so worked up, or lay off a little.”

There’s nothing but the steady rumble of the Jeep’s engine for a long moment. Lydia stares ahead at rows of empty parking spaces. “You’re right,” she says finally. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She presses her lips together. “I’ll save the attitude for when you actually do something annoying.”

“Thank you,” Stiles says. It’s about the best he could’ve hoped for, all things considered. “Alright. Car is on. We’re in what gear?”

“Neutral.”

“Hell yeah we are. So let’s get this baby up and running. Kick it into first, m’lady!”

“You are so lame,” Lydia says in a tone both condescending and fond. She disengages the parking brake and tries to shift into first gear, but the car stalls out. “Damn it.”

“Try again,” Stiles says.

Lydia does. It works the second time. They jerk forward in first gear, and that’s when Stiles remembers that he’s forgotten to give any briefing on driving in gear.

“Okay, hell yeah, well done,” he says. “Now let’s pump the brakes, literally, so I can walk you through the rest of this gear shift.”

First gear isn’t for driving. This lesson has been drilled into his head many, many times. Don’t drive in first gear; first only exists as a jumping off point. The instant the vehicle starts moving in earnest, shift to second.

When he explains this to Lydia, she frowns and says, “Why?”

“Why? I don’t know, why do cars do anything? I’m not a fuckin’ mechanic, I just drive the thing.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“Not really,” Stiles says. Then amends: “Well, okay, I’ll admit I wish I knew more about the car, but it’s not exactly at the top of my list of priorities. Mainly because my list of priorities has been pretty much swamped with supernatural events lately.”

“Our lives,” Lydia says resignedly.

“Our lives,” Stiles echoes. “Yup. So anyway. First gear is not for driving. Say it. First gear is not for driving.”

Lydia glares at him, but Stiles holds his ground. Finally, rolling her eyes, Lydia says, “First gear is not for driving.”

“Right on,” says Stiles. “Now what do you say we take her for a spin on a real road?”

Thank God the road by the elementary school is barren.

“You should shift to third,” he says as Lydia accelerates a little more. “Listen to the engine. You hear how hard it’s working?”

“I can’t hear the engine, there’s too much other car noise,” Lydia snaps. “How do I know which one is the engine?”

“It’s the one that sounds like it’s begging for the sweet release of death,” Stiles says dryly, “because you’re going thirty in second gear.”

“Well I don’t know, Stiles!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, you’re learning, this is how you learn,” Stiles says. “If you’re driving thirty, you should be in third gear. Maybe even fourth.”

Lydia concentrates intensely on moving the gear shift into third, and mercifully remembers the clutch this time. The horrible grinding noise from when she’d tried shifting into second gear without it minutes earlier is seared into Stiles’s brain. His poor Jeep. His poor, poor baby.

The things he does for Lydia Martin.

“You can slow down a little bit,” he tells her, so she does. They keep an easy pace, cruising at twenty-five. Stiles grins across the dash. “Hey, you’re driving stick!”

“I’m driving stick,” Lydia concurs. A smile tugs at her lips. “How about that.”

How about that, indeed. Lydia Martin, driving Stiles’s piece-of-junk manual transmission Jeep down the roads of Beacon Hills. Stiles is heavily immersed in the supernatural, but he’s pretty sure this is the most unusual thing he’s experienced in a while.

“Should I turn around?”

“Yeah, probably a good idea.” If they can manage that.

Lydia hesitates. “How— what gear—” She breathes in, out. “Can I shift into a lower gear?”

“Yeah, yeah, you can downshift. You should, actually, if you’re gonna turn around — I mean you’re gonna have to, ‘cause there’s not really anywhere to make a U-turn, so you’ll have to do a three-point turn.”

Lydia swallows. “What if I hit something? Or break your car?”

“You’re not gonna break my car,” Stiles says. “Or hit something. Worst case scenario, we stall out.”

“In the middle of the road.”

“Don’t sweat it. It’ll be okay. There’s no one around us. You can shift to neutral and just use the car’s momentum to pull into any of these driveways. Then you can reverse out and turn right around.”

Lydia's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Stiles starts to think he may have made a mistake here.

“Neutral?”

“We’ll keep moving until you brake,” Stiles says. “Or, you know, friction or air resistance or an approaching building stops us.”

“Neutral,” Lydia repeats under her breath, possibly for her own benefit. She presses down on the clutch and jerks the gear shift into neutral, turning the car into an empty driveway coming up on the left. When it stops moving, she turns to him. “You never taught me how to reverse.”

“Ah,” Stiles says, “so I didn’t.”

Really, really should have enlisted his dad’s help.

A quick explanation of how to reverse later, Lydia is staring out the back window. She has yet to actually shift into reverse, so Stiles gently says, “Uh, it’ll be a lot easier to reverse once you’re in gear, you know.”

To which Lydia shoots him another glare. “I know that. I’m just making sure there are no cars. It’s called being a responsible driver.”

It’s called being a neurotic driver, actually. Stiles would know. He was once the poster child for it.

“Okay,” he says carefully. “You think you could maybe skip to step two of being a responsible driver? You know, the part where you actually start driving?”

“You’re a terrible teacher.”

“Ouch, that was ruthless. I’ll never recover from that one.”

Lydia sighs, dramatic, and finally shifts them into reverse. Painstakingly. Like every move is life or death.

Stiles sets a record for most self-control by keeping his mouth shut until she’s well within the lane again, and then only to say, “Nice.”

Lydia doesn’t answer him. She’s too busy trying to shift into first gear. The car shudders with great effort —

And stalls.

“Fuck,” Lydia mutters. She tries again, but fails again. Whirls around to check the still-empty road. Stalls out a third time. “ Fuck.”

“Okay, easy,” Stiles says, sensing panic. “Don’t get worked up. Take a deep breath.”

“We’re in the middle of the road, Stiles!”

“Any car coming will see us a mile away and brake in time. No one is going to hit us. Just breathe.”

“I hate you,” Lydia says, and her voice is so small. “I hate you and I hate this. Why isn’t this easy? Why can’t I do it?”

“You can,” Stiles says firmly. “You can do it. You’ve done it many times before and you only just learned yesterday, do you know how amazing that is? You wanna know how long it took me before I could reliably get into first gear without stalling out?” He laughs quietly. “A month, Lydia. An entire month. It may not feel like it, but you’ve picked this up crazy fast.”

“Not fast enough.” Her palm hits the steering wheel and she grunts, a half-shout of fury. “Stiles!”

“You can do this,” Stiles says.

Lydia shakes her head. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t even start a fucking car. What if it comes down to this? What if it comes down to me to save you and I can’t do it because I can’t even drive your fucking car?”

Okay, this is officially a situation. Lydia’s hands are so tight around the wheel that her skin is almost translucent. She’s breathing too fast and her voice is too high and this is just. Not good.

“Come on,” Stiles says, jumping out of the car. “Move over. I’ll drive.” He pulls open the driver side door as Lydia scrambles into the passenger seat. 

He starts the car before both doors are fully shut, and quickly maneuvers them back to the elementary school parking lot. Neither of them says anything. There’s no noise except for the murmur of the engine and Lydia’s breathing, which gets slower and slower with every inhale.

By the time Stiles parks, she sounds like she’s back to baseline. Stiles turns to her. “So,” in a quiet voice. “You wanna tell me what that was about?”

With a shuddering exhale, Lydia admits, “I had a dream last night. A nightmare.” She swallows. “About you.”

Well. Isn’t that just awesome.

Stiles tilts his head, prompting her. Slowly, Lydia continues, “I don’t remember most of it,” and Stiles gets the feeling that’s a lie, but he lets it slide when she keeps talking. “Just that…you were dying.” She gasps and clenches her fist. “Somehow, you were dying, and I was supposed to save you, and I just. I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I couldn’t— I couldn’t reach you. I couldn’t help you.”

Stillness settles like snow over them. The engine gently purrs, but Stiles is afraid to turn it off — afraid to sit in silence under the weight of this confession.

“I don’t want to feel helpless,” Lydia says, choked and desperate. “But I can’t fight. I can’t fire a gun. I don’t have claws, or fangs, or automatic weaponry. I can barely protect myself, much less anyone else. Stiles, if it came down to it, I don’t know how I would— I don’t know what I’d—”

“Okay, hey,” Stiles says, grabbing hold of her hand and gently prying it open. Half-moon indents linger, impressions from her fingernails. He laces their fingers together. “First of all, you’ve already saved my actual life more than once, remember? You pushed me out of the fire at the Glen Capri. Not to mention the whole tethering-me-to-reality thing? I literally died. You brought me back. I’d say that’s a pretty bang-up job of saving me.”

Lydia shakes her head. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did,” Stiles says. “Do I know what you did? No, of fucking course not. I don’t understand this supernatural shit any more than you do.” She breathes a hollow laugh. That’s a win. “But I was dead, and if not for you, I’d still be dead. You do the math.”

Lydia presses her lips together. Stiles watches a tear roll down her cheek and thoughtlessly wipes it away with his thumb. Her head turns towards him; red-rimmed eyes catch his gaze.

“Secondly,” Stiles says softly, “if it came down to it, I have complete and total faith that you would figure something out. Not just for me, but for anyone. You are the furthest thing from helpless I've ever seen. You’re fiercely loyal, and that’s not a weakness. If I was dying, and it was up to you to save me, Lydia, I absolutely believe you would do whatever it took. Even if that meant learning to drive a stick-shift on the fly.” He squeezes her hand once. “Okay?”

She watches him for too long, blinking back the wetness in her eyes. Stiles starts to get the sense he’s being unwrapped, layer by layer. He wonders what Lydia is seeing.

“You really believe in me,” she whispers. “It might be your undoing, you know.”

Stiles shrugs. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

From the way she smiles, tentative at first but there all the same, he thinks he’s given the right answer.

She practices shifting into first gear until she manages it ten times in a row without stalling. Then, finally, she says, "I want to drive on the road again," and he knows she won't make the same mistake twice.

Her second three-point turn goes off without a hitch. Stiles's chest swells with pride.

"Told you," is all he says, grinning at her.

Lydia smiles back. She looks pleased. She looks proud of herself.

That makes two of them.

Stiles's phone rings as Lydia is driving them slowly up the adjacent road. "Yello?"

"Stiles?" His dad. He sounds worried, or like he's trying not to be worried. "I just heard from Natalie — Lydia’s mom — that Lydia didn't come home after school and she's getting concerned. She said Lydia's car is still in the school parking lot, and she spoke to Allison but Allison said she hadn’t seen her since school, do you know anything—?"

"She's with me," Stiles says, breathing a sigh of relief. No one is missing or dead. This time. "Dad, she's with me."

His dad also sighs with relief. "Great. Okay. That is good to know."

Lydia throws him an inquisitive look. Stiles holds up a finger, then points it commandingly at the asphalt like watch the road.

"I'll let Natalie know," says Stiles's dad.

It's fun how no one can go off the radar for more than five seconds these days without someone else assuming they've been kidnapped and/or murdered and/or ritually sacrificed to a magical tree stump.

Super fun.

"Thanks," Stiles says. "I'll be home soon. Love you."

"Love you, son."

The call drops. Stiles says, "You didn't tell anyone where you were?"

Lydia hums. "I forgot."

"You for— Lydia there are people constantly under threat of death around us!" Yeah, Stiles is president of the assuming-people-have-been-kidnapped/murdered/ritually sacrificed club. "You can't just disappear."

"I didn't! I'm with you."

"Next time tell your mom."

Lydia chews her lip and nods. "It would be nice if one day I could just disappear for a little while without sounding the alarm. Some peace and quiet would be nice.”

Stiles leans back in the seat and says, "Yeah. Maybe someday."

Something tells him probably not. But hey, anything is possible.

Lydia's car is waiting in the Beacon Hills High School parking lot. It's alone in a sea of empty spaces, two and a half hours after the last bell. Stiles pulls up next to it and looks at Lydia.

It feels like now would be the time to say something reassuring. Stiles draws a blank. He falls back on platitudes. "Great work today."

"You mean aside from the meltdown in the middle of the road?" At least Lydia seems less angry with herself. More vexed, now. Stiles can handle vexed. People are often vexed with Stiles.

"The meltdown is an essential part of the process," he says. "It's a rite of passage. You can't learn stick without a meltdown or two."

Lydia frowns. "Stiles, the dream I had…" She shakes her head. "It scared me."

So they're back to this.

"You think it was a prediction?" Stiles' voice drops low. "Like a Banshee thing?"

"No, I don't think so. It didn't feel…prophetic. Just your average, garden-variety nightmare." She looks at him, bright worry in her gaze. "It was just so dark. I couldn't get to you in time. And I don't know what that means, if it means anything. Maybe it's nothing." She brushes a stray hair away from her face and laughs uneasily. "Probably nothing."

Stiles knows something about darkness. The cracked bedroom door from his own recent dreams haunts him. Last night he'd only managed four hours of sleep; panic kept jolting him awake, and he'd hyperventilate until his vision cleared and he saw his real door firmly shut.

Over. And over. And over.

Deaton said there would be darkness, though. They knew about this symptom beforehand; there’s no reason to sound the alarm for this, not this. Stiles nods slowly and says, "For my sake, let's hope it's nothing." Impulsively, he rubs a comforting hand over her shoulder. She gives him a smile.

"Drive safe," he adds when she starts to get out of the car. "Text me when you get home. You know the drill."

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Lydia says, starting to smirk. “And you certainly don’t need to hover like a helicopter boyfriend asking me to text you when I get home every night.”

Stiles scoffs. "I just want to be sure you're home safe! Because I care about your safety and well-being. It's called friendship, Lydia."

Lydia gives him an epic eye roll.

(She texts him anyway, eleven minutes later: Here is your text. Thanks for the lesson.

Stiles grins like a total idiot.)

(He wakes up. It’s dark. The bed is warm on both sides. Lydia sits up. “What’s wrong?” she says, as Stiles stares at the slightly ajar door of his bedroom. He left it closed. Didn’t he leave it closed?

“Nothing,” he says, still watching the door.

“Go back to sleep,” Lydia says gently, brushing a hand over Stiles’s shoulder. “Just go back to sleep, Stiles.”

Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Lydia is wrong. This is all wrong.

“I should close the door,” he says.

Lydia’s grip tightens. “Don’t worry about the door.”

Stiles whips his head around to look at Lydia, but his gaze catches on her hand, curled around his bicep. Absently he counts her fingers. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Six?)

Gasping, he shoots upright, and stares at his own shaking hands, counting in a frantic whisper until the numbers lose all meaning.

This darkness is a real bitch. Deaton should have warned them about that.

Only getting three hours of sleep is also a real bitch, but Stiles is pretty good at running on a low tank of gas. He drives himself to school and drives himself home when it ends, and an hour later Lydia calls him.

“I find myself with some unexpected free time,” she says. “Since my best friend is currently engaged in a very intricate mating ritual with her ex-boyfriend’s roommate.”

“...Huh?”

“Allison blew me off to help Isaac with something. Or, possibly, have sex with him.”

“I don’t think they’re hooking up,” Stiles says. “Yet?”

“Not yet, no,” Lydia agrees. “Anyway, the point is I’m available.”

“Okay,” Stiles says slowly. “Congratulations? Or I’m sorry?”

Lydia makes a noise like he’s being too dense. “Stiles, I’m asking if we can continue with the driving lessons. Are you going to pick me up or do I need to come to you?”

In retrospect, that seems obvious. He really should have worked that one out for himself.

“Oh, driving lessons,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll come pick you up. Be there in ten.”

Something’s wrong. Stiles opens his mouth but Lydia beats him to it. “If you tell me to listen to the engine one more time I am going to hit you.”

“I, uhhh, yeah,” Stiles stammers, and shuts up. 

Lydia huffs, takes a breath, and shifts into third gear. Stiles exhales with relief as the engine quiets down.

It’s not weird to empathize with a car, right?

“It’s not that I’m not listening,” Lydia says, annoyed. “It’s that I can’t tell what to listen to.”

“It just takes practice,” Stiles says. “Wish I could be more helpful, but you just have to know what to listen for. Actually — here, I’ll show you. Speed up but don’t shift gears. Yeah, go forty.”

“This is a twenty-five zone.”

“Fine, then downshift to second. No! Wait. Do not down— don’t do that. God, okay. Slow down, shift to second, then speed up.”

“Stiles,” Lydia snaps. “Too many instructions, not enough instructing.”

Right, right, right. Not that she’s reacted too well to Stiles doing any instructing, but, well, he did sign up for this when he agreed to teach her. “Slow down,” he repeats. “Down to fifteen miles an hour or so. Okay, now shift into second.” Lydia complies, skillfully downshifting. “Good, really good. You’re doing great. Now I want to show you what I mean about the engine, so you’re just gonna drive faster but not shift gears yet, okay? Just keep speeding up. Slowly,” he yelps, when the car shoots forward. Lydia glares at him and eases up on the gas. “Slowly!”

The speedometer creeps up. It crosses thirty. The rumble of the engine grows louder. “Do you hear that?” he asks, and Lydia furrows her brow.

“I hear a car,” she says, sounding frustrated. “I don’t know what you’re hearing that I’m not.”

Oh, the irony.

“Okay. That’s okay. Just go a little faster.”

“I don’t want to break your car, Stiles.” Lydia pauses. “Well. Not this desperately.”

“Don’t worry about the car, just keep going. The further out of gear you are, the harder the engine is working to keep the car moving. You hear that?” They’re going forty now and the engine is roaring. “That, that loud rumbling sound?”  

“Oh,” Lydia says, eyes wide. “Oh, that.”

Stiles nods emphatically. “Yes! Yes, that, keep listening to that, and now shift to fourth.”

“Fourth? I’m in second!”

“You can skip a gear. You’re going fast enough for fourth right now.”

So Lydia shifts to fourth — she trusts him implicitly with this, Stiles realizes, a kind of trust he’s not used to having — and immediately the thundering of the engine dies down. It fades to a droning hum. Lydia exhales.

“Oh, wow,” she says. Genuine awe is written all over her face. “I heard it that time.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, smiling. “Kinda cool, right? It’s like, like the car is communicating with you. Driving stick is a team effort, you know, it’s you and the car working together. Just gotta know how to listen.”

“Well, fortunately I’m getting very good at listening,” Lydia says smoothly, slowing them back down to hover just above the speed limit and shifting into third gear. Once again, Stiles marvels at how quickly she’s mastered it. “Are you hungry?”

“Always,” Stiles says. “Why, are you?”

Lydia hums. “I could eat.” Up ahead, Beacon Hills’ one and only twenty-four-hour diner materializes out of nowhere. “Perfect timing. We’re here.”

Stiles does a double-take as Lydia turns into the diner’s parking lot. She shifts into neutral and then seems to lose her stride; by the time Stiles has recovered from the surprise of Lydia’s subterfuge, the car has stalled out.

“Damn it.” Lydia gives the dashboard the evil eye. “So close.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Stiles says automatically. “Hey, uh, what are we doing here?”

“Eating,” Lydia says. “Duh.”

She gets the car started again and eases them into an empty parking space with all the expertise of a veteran stick-shift driver.

“My treat,” she adds, yanking the parking brake. “Consider this a thank-you.”

Can I consider it a date? Stiles does not say, and instead allows her another moment to revel in his incredulous smile.

A basket of fries lands on the table between them. Stiles’s mouth waters.

“Thank you,” Lydia tells the server. She draws her milkshake straw to her lips and takes a drink. Stiles does the same with his own — chocolate, obviously. Hers is strawberry. Stiles really doesn’t know what to do with that information. Aside from be disappointed in her for ordering a strawberry milkshake when the chocolate option was right there.

“So,” Stiles says, stirring his shake with his straw between two fingers. “Be honest. Do you really think Allison would do anything with Isaac? Do you think she’d do that to Scott?”

“Allison is her own woman,” Lydia says airily. “What she does and with whom she chooses to do it is her own decision. Not Scott’s.”

“No, I know, I know. Obviously. I just mean…I don’t know.” Stiles lifts a shoulder. “They really had something, and he seemed so convinced that she was, like, his endgame, and now…I don’t know, it just seems weird. Seems wrong for him to be wrong about it.”

“No one’s first love is their true love,” Lydia says matter-of-factly. “Especially not for a teenager.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” 

“Besides, there’s also Isaac to consider,” Lydia points out. “I mean, he lives with Scott. It’d be almost as weird for him as it would be for her.”

“Yeah, and he’s kind of like an adoptive Beta now that Derek is gone and Scott’s an Alpha,” Stiles muses. “You think Scott could stop him, if he wanted to? Do his Alpha thing and forbid Isaac from seeing Allison?”

“What, like an overprotective father?” Lydia raises an eyebrow. “Like, say, how Allison’s dad forbade her from seeing Scott?”

“There’d be some kind of poetic irony in that.”

“Not to mention that’s not the kind of person Scott is.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves anyway,” Stiles says. “I mean, how do we even know there’s anything between them? Don’t you think Allison’s been traumatized enough from dating one werewolf to turn her off of them for the rest of her life?”

“Well,” Lydia says pensively, “I guess that depends on how persuasive Isaac can be.”

“If she had any taste at all, she’d still be with Scott,” Stiles says, in defense of his bro.

Lydia laughs. “Because you’re such a good judge of taste.”

“Hey, you can’t do better than Scott. Unless you’re with Stiles.” He jabs his thumb into his chest. “They call us Stilinski and McCall, Beacon Hills’ most eligible bachelors.”

“This is why you’re perpetually single,” Lydia informs him.

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs, shoving a couple fries into his mouth. He grabs a longer fry and dips it into his shake. “Next question: do you think there are hard drugs in these milkshakes?”

“Yes,” Lydia says seriously. “I do.”

God damn it. If first loves aren’t true loves then Stiles might be permanently fucked, because he has yet to get over his first love, and every time he thinks he might move on she gives him a reason not to.

“Wanna try mine?” He slides his glass across the table. “I can’t believe you didn’t get chocolate. Cannot believe.”

“Fine,” Lydia says, and pushes her own milkshake towards him. “Trade.”

An unsolicited memory surfaces of that scene from Friends where Chandler hides an engagement ring in his mouth moments after Phoebe does. We’re practically kissing.

Stiles stares down at Lydia’s shake and then watches as she casually takes a sip from his. When the straw leaves her mouth, there’s a print left from her lipstick.

Be fucking cool, Stiles, it’s a fucking milkshake straw. Yup. Stiles is fine. He tastes Lydia’s milkshake and swallows it along with every indecent thought suddenly clamoring for attention in his mind. Shut up. He’s cool.

Just because they actually have kissed —

“Yours is okay,” Lydia says contemplatively, without emotion. 

“Just okay? It’s crack cocaine in a glass.” Stiles snatches it back. “Give it back, you don’t deserve to have it if you’re not going to appreciate it.”

“Give mine back then!” Lydia grabs her own milkshake away from him.

Stiles twirls the straw between his fingers and says, “And you got your lipstick on it, thanks a lot,” because he has never claimed to be the master of impulse control. Frankly it’s the tamest thing he could have said. That’s a win in his book.

“You’re welcome,” Lydia says, with a coy smile. “Some guys would kill to taste this lipstick, you know.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “That— you—” She raises an eyebrow. “I hate you,” he grumbles.

She’s deliberately infuriating, and Stiles is easily infuriated. What a goddamn pair they are.

That night, he sleeps two hours and spends both of them stuck in nightmares. When sleep becomes an obviously futile endeavor (and his heart has stopped racing), he reads the entire Wikipedia page on manual transmission cars. None of it really makes sense to him. The rabbit hole sends him to various different pages, and then to a string of forums, discussion boards, Reddit threads, and YouTube videos. At four in the morning he texts Lydia:

Can’t drive in first gear because it’s not designed for driving - just for getting the car moving. Has waaay more torque (you need a lot more power to get a car to start moving than to keep moving, Newton’s law of motion, blah blah blah). Plus if you kept speeding up in 1st eventually you’d hit a ceiling, probably around 20mph depending on the car.

Tbh the Jeep probably wouldn’t make it past 10.

She texts him back at quarter to eight, while he’s midway through watching a video of a man shifting into first gear while going 65. (Spoiler alert: the car does not survive.)

Did you sleep??

Stiles chews his lower lip and doesn’t reply.

She’ll only worry when there’s nothing to worry about. Stiles doesn’t need anyone worrying. Stiles is fine.

(Stiles almost falls asleep at the wheel on his way to school. He may not be quite as fine as expected. This postmortem darkness shit better sort itself out soon — if it causes him to crash his Jeep he’ll be beyond pissed.)

At lunch, Lydia squints at him until he caves. “What?”

“You look worse than usual,” Lydia says, with her usual degree of bluntness. “And you can’t expect me not to worry after you texted me at four in the morning. And never answered me, by the way. Did you sleep?”

“Yes, I slept. And I’m fine. Totally fine.” Stiles scrubs a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t ghosting you, I just forgot to reply.”

Lydia hums like she doesn’t believe him, which Stiles takes issue with on principle, even though he’s lying. People need to start believing him when he says he’s fine. Stiles would be happy to fake it ‘til he made it if everyone else would just fake it alongside him.

“I think we should drive on the highway today,” Lydia says, as Allison sits down. Stiles blinks. They’ve changed topics. 

“Okay,” he says. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

“Ready for what?” asks Allison, leaning on her elbow.

Stiles glances at Lydia, who brusquely explains, “Stiles is teaching me how to drive stick. And yes, I’m ready.”

“She’s a fast learner,” Stiles for some reason feels the need to put in. “But we knew that.”

“It’s an important skill,” Allison says. “And I’m sure you’ll pick it up faster than I did.”

Both Stiles and Lydia seem surprised. “You can drive stick?”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Why is that such a shock?”

“Uh,” Stiles says, “because your family doesn’t actually have a stick-shift car?”

“We used to. It got wrecked in San Francisco so we got a new one before we moved to Beacon Hills, but my mom taught me how to drive it.”

“So I could have just asked you,” Lydia says ruefully. “And then I wouldn’t have had to enlist Stiles’s teaching services.”

“Ouch!” Stiles throws his arms out in an effort to express a what the hell! sentiment. “I’m not that bad.”

“You’re not that good.”

“Uh, yes I am! You’ve practically mastered the thing and we’ve only been at it three days. Now maybe that’s mostly because you’re a genius but it has to be at least partly because of my decent teaching skills.”

“Come on, he can’t be that bad,” Allison says, and Stiles decides that he’ll forgive her if she hooks up with Isaac.

“You’re a fine teacher,” Lydia says, finally sounding genuine. “I suppose I could have done a lot worse.”

“And anyway I couldn’t have taught you, I don’t have a car to teach you with,” Allison points out. She smiles; her dimples cave in. It’s amazing how they do that. “So I guess you’re just stuck with Stiles.”

Stiles is tempted to rescind his unsaid blessing. “Where exactly is Scott? I’m starting to feel outnumbered here.”

“Here,” Scott says as he appears over Stiles’s right shoulder. Isaac is immediately behind him and they both sit down at his side. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that the girls are ganging up on me.” Stiles folds his arms over his chest.

Isaac smirks. “So nothing out of the ordinary?”

Stiles glares as Allison and Lydia giggle. Even Scott (traitor) hides a smile. Stiles hates all of his friends.

Stiles isn’t sure about this, but Lydia is, so here they are, pulled over on Route 115. Rush hour won’t hit for another hour and a half at least, which means it's relatively safe for a pseudo-new driver for now. A few intermittent cars fly by and quickly shrink into the distance. Beacon Hills Preserve stretches out in every direction, a sprawling forest in Stiles’s peripheral vision. Everything is in his periphery lately; everything feels just out of reach, only visible out of the corner of his eye. The door in his dream. The darkness in his heart. The girl in his passenger seat.

He turns to look at Lydia. She’s still there. Without a real reason, he reaches out touch her, and is surprised to feel relieved that he can. Five fingers splay over her shoulder. He blinks and realizes he’s counting. 

Lydia looks at him in confusion. “Stiles?”

“Uh,” Stiles says. “Yeah, just, you had, uh, a piece of— there was some fuzz. Fuzz on your shirt. That’s all.” He brushes her shoulder for appearances. “You ready to take the wheel?”

Lydia nods.

Impressively, she starts the car on the first try. They roll forwards. Lydia quickly shifts to second gear and pulls onto the road behind a passing car. She steps on the gas and the speedometer climbs.

Somehow, Stiles keeps his mouth shut.

Lydia is singularly focused. It's kind of amazing to watch. She shifts to third, then hits forty miles per hour and shifts to fourth. Their speed keeps increasing. Lydia’s posture starts to loosen, and she starts to relax.

“How fast should we be going before I put it in fifth?” she asks him, eyes steady on the asphalt ahead.

Stiles shrugs his shoulders. “Feel it out. Listen to the engine. You’ll know.”

“Could you be more cryptic, please? You don't sound quite enough like Derek yet.”

“That’s fucking uncalled for,” Stiles says indignantly. “How could you say that to me?”

Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. Lydia glances over at Stiles, and he nods. Sighing, she shifts into fifth gear. The engine dulls back down to its droning hum.

“You could have just said,” Lydia huffs.

“Like I know the number,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. 

She quirks her lips. “This isn’t so bad once you get started.”

“Yeah, it really isn’t.”

“It took you a month to learn this? Really?”

“Hey,” Stiles says, defensive. “I didn’t have a teacher who was willing to drop everything for me and sacrifice hours of his free time just to listen to me bitch about how bad of a teacher he was.”

Lydia gnaws on her lip.

“Not,” Stiles adds pathetically, too late, “that I mind.”

“No, you’re right.” Lydia flicks her hair back behind her shoulders. It’s stuffy inside the car without the windows cracked. Stiles wants to open them, even just a bit, but the whistle of the wind would drown out whatever Lydia is about to say, and he really wants to hear whatever Lydia is about to say. Which turns out to be: “I’m sorry about lunch today. You really are an excellent teacher. I think I just…”

“It’s okay,” says Stiles. “Really.”

“I appreciate that you’re doing this for me,” Lydia says quietly. “It means a lot.”

Windows would be good. Fresh air would be nice. Even the rumble of the car as it cruises down the highway isn’t enough to muffle the sound of Stiles’s heart thumping in his ears. Thank goodness Lydia’s not a werewolf or she’d probably be going deaf from it.

“It means a lot that you asked,” he says honestly. “And that you let me teach you even when I’m sure you wanted to punch me.”

“Many times,” Lydia agrees good-naturedly. “Though I admit I’m not always the easiest student.”

Stiles interlocks his fingers and taps his thumbs against each other, a fidgety habit he’s never been able to shake. “So you’re a difficult student and I’m an infuriating teacher. Sounds like we’re pretty well-matched, huh?”

“Yeah,” Lydia says, flashing him a small smile. “We are.”

It’s great. Lydia kills it in the Jeep. Stiles almost forgets she’s brand-new at this — until she stalls out at a light on their way home.

To her credit, she doesn’t even seem fed up. She starts the car again, patient and steady, and keeps driving.

Stiles wants to say something like I’m proud of you or do you want joint custody of my car? but he’s been so good about filtering his thoughts today and he refuses to slip up now. They’re almost back at Stiles’s house. If he can just hold out for five more minutes, he’ll have gotten through the whole drive without saying anything face-palmingly embarrassing. And won’t that be a miracle.

“Tomorrow,” Lydia says as she pulls up to Stiles’s house, “we’re putting on music.”

Stiles considers this. “Only if it’s my music,” he bargains.

Lydia sighs, rolls her eyes. “Deal.”

“Wow, I really did not think you were gonna agree to that.”

“I’m feeling charitable.”

“I can see that. Well, thank you for driving me back to my house, in my car.” Stiles shifts in the passenger seat. “Uh…I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“Stiles, wait,” Lydia says, and Stiles freezes with his hand on the door handle. She turns to face him. “Don’t bullshit me.” Her elbow rests on the steering wheel and a lock of hair falls over her face. She looks like a princess, Stiles thinks absently, but then again when does she not. “Are you okay?”

Stiles strangles a laugh in his throat. He’s not sure what the laugh is for. The sheer irony of that question. Is he okay?  No, he died and came back to life. His dad was almost ritually sacrificed by their English teacher. According to Deaton there’s a permanent darkness tattooed on his heart, and he’s having nightmares about doors and waking up still dreaming, so no, he’s obviously not okay.

But on the other hand, there’s nothing she can do about it. Nightmares aren’t exactly something you fight; they’re something you bear. Knowing won’t do Lydia any good. And it won’t help Stiles.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he says with a hopefully-convincing smile. He wants to stop lying to the people he cares about, but old habits die hard.

Lydia digs her teeth into her lower lip. “Okay,” she says. “But I want you to know that what you said to me before? It goes both ways. I’m always here if there’s anything you need to talk about. Contrary to popular belief, I can be very comforting.”

“That’s not contrary to my belief,” Stiles says. His smile gets more real. He thinks she can tell. “Thanks, Lydia. I’ll— I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And please sleep,” she adds as they both step out of the car. “The average teenager needs seven to nine hours a night.”

“You got it,” Stiles says, shooting finger guns at her. She gives him a look like she can’t decide whether or not she’s going to roll her eyes, and then turns away, maybe so Stiles can’t see what she lands on. Schrodinger’s eye roll.

(Like he doesn’t know how much sleep teenagers are supposed to get. Going to sleep isn’t an issue for him. It’s staying asleep that’s the problem.)

“Hey, drive safe! Text me when you get home!” he calls after her. She slides into the driver seat of her own car and doesn’t respond.

But ten minutes later, when Stiles is tapping his pencil idly against his homework, his phone buzzes.

Made it home without any deer running headfirst into my car. Small mercies, it says.

Stiles grins.

(He wakes up. It’s dark. The bed is warm on both sides. Lydia sits up. “What’s wrong?” she says. She rubs Stiles’s shoulder. Stiles flattens his hand over hers.

The door to his bedroom is open. Just a crack. Just enough to let something in.

“The door,” Stiles says.

Lydia frowns. “What door?” She tugs at his shirt. “Just go back to sleep, Stiles.”

“The door,” Stiles repeats. “My door, it’s — I thought I closed it.”

“Obviously you didn’t,” Lydia says.

“I should close it,” Stiles says.

Lydia shakes her head. “No, Stiles, don’t worry about it.” A note of urgency bleeds into her voice. “Just go back to sleep. Don’t worry about the door.”

“I should close it,” Stiles repeats. “What if someone gets in?”

Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

“Like who?”

“Like—” He doesn’t know. He shakes his head. “I should just…”

He starts to pull the covers back and Lydia’s hand darts out to grab his wrist. 

“Sleep.” She’s almost begging. “Please. Stiles. Just get some sleep.”

Stiles looks down at her hand encircling his wrist. Time seems slower than usual. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. His vision blurs.

Five. She has five fingers. That means—

That means—

“I have to—”

“Stiles,” Lydia pleads, tightening her grip. Stiles tries to pull his hand away. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Six fin—

Fingers?

He stares at his hand and then stares at Lydia and then he looks up at the door and)

He almost falls off the bed as he jerks upright, an all-consuming terror in his bones.

Count. He needs to count. He needs to be sure. Five on the left. Five on the right. His heart pounds out a death march in his chest. Stiles grabs a book off his bedside table and reads the title. Then reads it again. And again.

It takes a long time for him to recover his breath, and then he sits in bed as time slips away, head ducked between his knees, muttering words and numbers to himself like a mantra.

For their fifth — and, Stiles sort of presumes, final — stick-shift lesson, they’re doing it road-trip style. That means music up, windows down, and Lydia at the wheel. Stiles, in addition to playing DJ, is providing the snacks. Lydia is providing her radiant self.

And the gas money.

It’s for the best that she’s driving because he probably shouldn’t be trusted behind the wheel of a car for extended lengths of time. His dad has warned him time and again about the dangers of driving while tired — “It’s just as bad as driving drunk,” he’d said once, which Stiles hadn’t believed then, but could probably be convinced of now — and while he’s not typically one to heed his father’s warnings, he doesn’t want to kill Lydia because of irresponsible driving practices.

A driving lesson is also a perfect excuse to make Lydia do all the driving. It means he doesn’t have to admit to her face that after she insisted he get some sleep, he went ahead and did basically the opposite.

What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. Or him.

“Alright,” he whoops, cranking down his window the moment they hit thirty on the highway. He’s got ‘Ocean Avenue’ playing at a reasonable volume and the sweeping wind jump-starts to all his sluggish nerves. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

To his pleasant surprise, Lydia seems to be smiling.

“How ya feeling?” he asks, cranking the window halfway up to muffle some of the noise from the wind. As they speed up, Lydia remembers to shift gears, reaching for the gear shift without even looking. She moves fluidly, with confidence.

“Like you successfully taught me to drive stick,” Lydia responds. “And I’m happy about it.”

Stiles beams. “Hell yeah I did. And hey — I’m proud of you. Best driving student I ever had.”

“Well, obviously.”

“And worst.”

“Nope.”

“Yep. You’re 100% of my driving students, that means every superlative belongs to you. In addition to being my best and worst student, you’re also the most likely, out of all my students, to get addicted to meth. And you’re the class clown. And you have best hair.” Stiles makes a show of peering around the car. “We all voted. It was unanimous.”

Lydia huffs a laugh. “That last one, at least, is true.”

They continue down the road, lane lines blurring out every window. After a couple minutes of quiet, Stiles starts talking. He tells Lydia some of the tricks he’s picked up in his short years of driving the Jeep, things like how to rev the engine (hit the gas in neutral) and how to get a boost when it feels like the car won’t speed up (downshift and accelerate). He tells her about how much harder it is to start a stick-shift on an incline, then hastily adds that if anyone can do it, it’s her. He explains coasting downhill in neutral and reminds her not to ride the clutch, and when she looks confused he realizes he hasn’t actually told her not to ride the clutch yet, so he tells her again for the second first time, and then his mouth opens and closes and nothing comes out and he realizes he’s fresh out of things to say.

A long exhale later, Lydia says, “So…you didn’t sleep, did you?”

Stiles scrambles to straighten up. “What? ” He gapes. “How did— were you even listening to me? I was just giving you all my trade secrets!”

“Those are basic tips and tricks. I could have found those online. I’m more concerned with your sleep schedule,” Lydia says. “Tell me how many hours you got. If you lie to me, Stiles, I swear to God.”

“I,” Stiles says, with a pained expression. “I don’t…I feel like it’s better for us both if I don’t tell you.”

“Stiles.”

“You’re just gonna worry!”

“I’m worried already, and I’m more worried now that you’ve said that,” Lydia retorts. “Stiles, I will stop this car and leave you for dead on the side of the road.”

“One hour,” Stiles groans. He presses the heel of his hands into his eye sockets until fireworks start exploding into their darkness. Lydia doesn’t speak. “I got one hour of sleep last night. It’s just nightmares, though, okay? They’re gonna go away eventually and I’ll get back to a semi-normal sleeping schedule and you can stop worrying, which means there’s no point in you worrying at all, so just. Don’t worry.”

His hands fall back into his lap. Five on the left, five on the right. Thumbs tapping together.

“What kinds of nightmares?” asks Lydia, softly.

Stiles gestures uselessly. “Just…you know, scary ones. Standard-issue. Your average, garden-variety nightmares. Dark, scary feelings making me feel dark and scared, yadda yadda. Deaton said there’d be darkness, so we knew about this in advance, and I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to be sacrificed. I don’t regret it. I’d do it again.”

“I’m not saying you should,” Lydia says. “Or shouldn’t. I haven’t said anything, actually. You’re being awfully defensive about it.”

“You’re being awfully nosy about it,” Stiles shoots back.

Lydia’s mouth thins into a line. At first Stiles thinks she’s just irritated, but as another moment passes he realizes that’s not it.

She’s not irritated. She’s unsure.

“I just,” she says quietly, “I feel like…something’s not right. I keep thinking about the dream I had earlier this week. And now you’re having nightmares too.”

“We’re all having nightmares,” Stiles reminds her.

Lydia shakes her head. “I know. I know that. But I— I don’t know.”

At least they can agree on that.

“In the nightmare I had,” she says, carefully choosing her words, “I didn’t see any danger, I just. Felt it. Around you. I could tell something terrible was going to happen to you. I could tell you were going to die if I didn't do something. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew. And you didn’t.”

Stiles swallows. “You sure that wasn’t a Banshee dream? Y’know, an actual prediction of my actual imminent death?”

Lydia gnaws on her lip and nods. “I’ve never had them asleep. Not that I know of. And I can usually figure out what they mean. This one…I have no idea.” 

“I know the feeling,” he admits under his breath. It’s not a terrifically inspiring degree of confidence, but if Lydia says it’s just a nightmare, he has no choice but to trust her.

“I hope it’s nothing,” Lydia says desperately. She looks at him. “How could it not be nothing?”

Pretty much the past year of their lives has been dictated by the notion that everything is something. At this point, anything being nothing is a pipe dream, but it’s a pipe dream Stiles is clinging to.

“Look,” he says, speaking for both of their benefits now. “Jennifer — the Darach is dead. The Alpha pack is gone. Yeah, Deaton said the Nemeton would draw stuff here, but so far we haven’t seen anything. So I say we not look this gift horse in the mouth, okay? Right now my biggest problem is the Chemistry test I definitely bombed today, and your biggest problem is that you’re getting driving lessons from the worst driving instructor in Beacon Hills, in the most offensive piece of junk around. That’s good enough for me.”

Lydia inhales and exhales. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. That’s good for me, too.”

“Good.” Stiles racks his brain for a way to change the subject. “You want a snack? I brought Reese’s. I know you like those.”

Lydia smiles. “I would love a Reese’s,” she says. “Chocolate and peanut butter, a match made in heaven.”

Stiles unwraps the chocolate and hands her a Reese’s cup. “Agreed,” he says, taking a bite out of the other one. “Although I gotta say, I’m more of a chocolate-and-strawberries kinda guy.”

Lydia laughs. “Is that so?”

“Well,” Stiles says, licking his lips. “I’m flexible.”

Lydia smiles like she’s going to do something devious. She reaches out and shifts the car to neutral, and suddenly a revving engine roars in Stiles’s ears.

“I’m starting to see the appeal of this,” Lydia tells him with a glint in her eye. “Can I get back in gear?”

“I’m starting to think I should never have taught you,” Stiles answers, his message undercut by the grin on his face, “and yes, you should. You can go straight into fifth, we’re going fast enough.”

Lydia’s fingers curl around the gear shift. One, two, three, four, five. There’s a smudge of chocolate at the corner of her mouth.

She shifts into fourth instead, steps on the gas, and rockets them forward like a racecar.

Stiles laughs. He cranks his window down and turns the music up. Instead of arguing, Lydia puts her window down, too, and throws him a reckless grin.

He’s never seen her smile like that. Suddenly, fiercely, he wants to see it again for the rest of his life.

“Where are we going?” he asks, watching long stretches of pavement disappear beneath the car.

Lydia lifts a shoulder in clear nonchalance. “Wherever the wind takes us, I suppose. Unless you have a destination in mind?"

Anywhere with you.

“Nope,” he tells her, ruffling his hair, settling back against the seat. “I’m right where I want to be.”