Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski
Really backdated…to the end of the Hell Plot | Their apartment | PG-13 Stiles has been through actual hell, Lydia offers her best distractions
⚠ Vague references to murder, nothing much
Stiles flopped back onto the couch beside Lydia, leaving enough room to set the bowl of popcorn between them. Against his better judgement he’d left picking the movie up to her, with the only caveat being ‘not The Notebook’. He’d already suffered through that once for her under duress, and that was two hours of his life he was never getting back.
In truth, he hadn’t hated it quite as much as he let on, but he was committed now. He couldn’t just let her have her way every time just because he’d step in front of a speeding train if she asked him to. This Lydia, a Lydia who hadn’t lived through everything he had, didn’t need to know that sometimes he’d found himself wondering if she was beginning to see more between them too. To this Lydia, they were friends. And that was good. That was enough. More than enough. So much more. And Stiles wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He’d have to look up what that expression meant, later.
He didn’t know how much of a movie he’d get through, if he was being honest. He was pretty exhausted. Without much prompting he thought he could probably sleep for a good week. That sounded pretty nice, actually. He wondered if Lydia would stay with him if he asked. Probably not. She had more important things to do. Like translating books at the library.
They hadn’t talked about it, and he had every intention of keeping it that way. But it was always there. The knowledge that she knew now. She knew what he’d done to Donovan. And self defence or not, the part of him completely lacking in self preservation still wanted so badly to ask what she thought, regardless of his desire that the subject never be broached.
“Popcorn, as ordered.” He shook himself out of his thoughts, focusing on the strawberry blonde sitting beside him. “What are we watching? It’s Star Wars, isn’t it? It’s alright, you can admit it’s your favourite. I won’t tell anyone.”
Lydia allowed herself to roll her eyes at him. Truth be told, it could have been Star Wars. She’d seen it a number of times (and once upon a time, she would have never admitted that to anyone but she also had never admitted her intelligence to people either), and it would have been a better option for Stiles after what he had been through. But that would have been too obvious, right? He didn’t need coddling after that. He needed a distraction. If he did need coddling and he had asked Lydia, she absolutely would have given it but she knew him well enough to know that he would want to put that behind him.
So, the movie wasn’t Star Wars. Maybe in a few weeks.
“Oh, no, you’ve seen right through me, now I don’t know how to deal with you knowing this about me.” She was speaking his language. The language of sarcasm.
He grinned brightly at her completely over the top sarcastic response. She was playing along for his sake and he knew it, but he didn’t care in the slightest. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
It stayed there, right on the tip of his tongue, to ask her. Like the urge to stick your finger in wet paint when there’s a sign warning you about it. Knowing the thing would hurt had never been a good enough deterrent for him in the past. Curse his stupid brain.
He silenced the urge by shoving some popcorn in his mouth. “So what movie is it really?” He asked around a mostly finished mouthful of food.
Lydia just looked at him and shrugged. “I turned the discs over and picked one of them at random, so even I don’t know. I guess we’ll see what it is shortly!”
She knew. Oh, she knew exactly what she had put in there which means her round innocent eyes were even rounder and more innocent. It was a ridiculous little prank but she hoped it would take his mind off of everything they had gone through.
And still keeping her round innocent on him, she clicked play on the remote and the opening title for The Notebook came on.
It didn’t take someone who knew Lydia Martin as well as he did to know when she was bullshitting, and no one would believe that beguiling innocent stare thing she had going on right now. Still, for the sake of not dwelling on a whole lot of crap he didn’t want to be dwelling on, he was fully prepared to play along.
Still, when the rower appeared on screen with that quiet little piano melody there was no denying the distinctive memory of the last time he’d seen this with her. He could remember every minute - mostly because they’d all seemed to last an hour. He sighed theatrically, throwing himself back into the couch with his handful of popcorn. “Even I don’t know,” he mimicked, putting on a higher, false innocence, Lydia kind of voice. “You just love to torment me, that’s what this is.”
Lydia broke out into a grin, possibly moving a little closer when he sat down, her body angled toward him as she brought her feet up and tucked them underneath her. She leaned against her arm which rested on the back of the sofa. “You love my kind of torment, don’t deny it. It’s the kind of torment you would absolutely miss.” And the kind of torment she wished he had gone through instead of Hell.
Okay, she had him there. Not that he’d ever made a big secret of the fact. Not that most people didn’t already know it. He’d been following Lydia Martin around like a lost puppy, figuratively at least, since the third grade.
“I might,” he hedged, knowing full well they both knew he was full of crap. The truth was the thought of losing Lydia was enough to leave him breathless. It had almost happened once, and he didn’t think he’d ever get over that. Seeing her lying there with her eyes closed, not breathing, not responding, it had terrified him more than any of the myriad of Supernatural things they’d been introduced to since the night Peter bit Scott.
He needed Lydia Martin in his life - this was a fact Stiles had long since accepted. Sky was blue, grass was green, Stiles Stilinski needed Lydia Martin. “So the real reason you put on a movie so many times is so you can pay attention to me, right?”
“Oh, someone is full of himself tonight, huh?” Lydia said with a laugh. But actually? Maybe that was part of it. Subconsciously, at least. She’d seen the movie a million times, practically, and it was her favorite of them all… so much so that she could probably just recite the whole movie herself and know exactly what happens where and when. She didn’t really need to pay attention to it. Plus, her motive for this movie night was to make sure Stiles was okay.
His grin simply widened in response to that as he settled back into the cushions, arm brushing hers. “Look, I just call it like I see it,” he pointed out with no small measure of cockiness, all put on of course. The fact was, this light hearted banter was exactly what he needed, and he had the sneaking suspicion Lydia knew that. Was he going to complain? Not even for a second. Being with her right now won out over anything else he could be doing right now. Especially if that meant being alone.
Lydia tried not to think of the sensation their arms brushing sent down her spine. “Have you ever even watched this? Maybe this time, I want to see your reaction to it? So maybe my motives, even if it involves you, still heavily involve the movie?” Of course, the last time she put on the movie to watch someone else’s reaction to it was with Jackson and his reactions hadn’t exactly matched hers. Somehow, she still thought that watching Stiles would be more comical than annoying.
“Yes I’ve watched it. I wouldn’t judge it if I hadn’t seen it. That would be beneath me, Lydia.” And sure, maybe he hadn’t hated it quite as much as he was letting on. But it was two people from seemingly opposite worlds falling in love and eventually ending up together. How could that not appeal to him on some level? And maybe he was secretly just a little bit of a romantic. No one needed to know that. “I think he’s crazy, for the record. Writing to her 365 times? What happened to picking up the phone like a normal person? Going for a drive to see her?” He made a ‘pfft’ sort of sound. “And he says he’s in love.”
Lydia sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. Love bombing. Stiles, you should know that if a man did any of this stuff to me in real life, I’d be tasering his balls in two seconds.” Of course that went against the fact that she loved the movie… but sometimes you just had to pretend to not see the red flags to enjoy it.
That made him laugh, reaching for a handful of popcorn. “No love bombing. Check.” Not that he’d consider doing that anyway. Lydia deserved better than that. Lydia deserved…he didn’t know if he could quite come up with the words for what she deserved. He’d tried, once. They were written on a piece of paper slipped into the back of a photo frame holding the picture of the tree she always drew. But given he’d written them when the Nogitsune had also been convincing him he was losing his mind, he thought the existence of that letter should just be forgotten.
“I appreciate it,” she said with a laugh. She reached over to grab a handful of popcorn and sat back, ready to immerse herself completely in a story, that despite the red flags, was still a classic comfort. Lydia let herself steal a few glances at her roommate, someone who had seemed to quickly become a best friend in the last couple of years she had known him. “Plus,” she said quietly after a moment. “I prefer you as you, not as Noah.”
He was pretty sure he could listen to Lydia laugh all day. Was that pathetic? Probably. Didn’t make it any less true. They’d been through so much back home, she deserved to smile and laugh and be happy. His head shot up at that, looking at her in surprise for a second before covering the expression with some classic sardonic humor. “That’s lucky, because I was not going to offer to lie down in the middle of the road with you.”
You only had done a million other things for her that were probably worse than lying in the middle of the road, she thought, remembering everything they faced back in Beacon Hills. It was almost surreal how it felt so long ago, especially with everything they had so far endured in this world. “Yeah, I also prefer you alive,” she said instead. “Now, shut up and watch the movie!”