She comes over and the board is clear.

No red strings, no green strings, no yellow, no blue, nothing.

There was pictures – last week, a month ago – but not now.

Not that Beacon Hills has been quiet. It hasn't been quiet. At all. But Stiles can't devote all of his attention to solving crimes and saving lives right now. His grades are steady C's when they should be steady B's, and he's stuck between applying to colleges close to home, to magic, or far away, to a different magic, and he wants to spend time with his girlfriend that does not involve howling at the full moon and he wants to spend time with his best friend that does not involve rescuing people or dying.

So his mind is on other things besides who's killing who this week.

She leaves and the board is full.

Mugshots, candids, sketches, scratches, scribbles, string – all red.

He isn't sure if he wants to strangle her pretty little neck or kiss her. Hard. Because of course he can't ignore this. This new mystery to solve, this new creature to discover, this new killer to catch, these new lives to save. Grades and applications and holding Malia's or Scott's or whoever's hand are pushed to the side. This is what's important right now. To all of them.

And not because Lydia Martin said so.

She just reminded him, is all.

He feels her hand brush against his. Her pinky laps over his pinky, glides across his knuckles, drags her other fingers along the back of his hand. She laces her fingers with his from behind. He squeezes gently, feels the blood pulse in her tips, against his palm.

His heart is ba-beating ba-beating ba-beating painfully, erratically against his chest. Fast one second, slow the next. Then steady. Always steady.

He wants to open his eyes and see her sitting next to him. Glance to his left and see her strawberry scalp nestled perfectly in the space between his jaw and his shoulder. Bury himself in the red.

He pretends that he will for a moment too long. And then the moment passes and he isn't his heartbeat anymore. He just has one.

And he's awful.

Because he knows the fingers around his are not the manicured ones he envisions but jagged, polish-free ones. Tan ones. Long ones. Fingers that he likes but will never be satisfied with. Homemade chocolate chip cookies when his favorite will always be store bought.

He imagines telling Malia he loves her. He imagines wearing sneakers half a size too small.

He imagines professing his love for someone else, anyone else. He imagines breathing the words heavily, like a breathe, normal as air, into Lydia's mouth.

And, God, he's awful.

He's awful.

He's confused.

Are they still talking about chemistry or are they talking about chemistry?

No, he was not aware that lithium and H2O will explode if combined. No, he is also not aware why this frustrates Lydia to the point of tears.

She says alkali metals and water simply do not belong together. She knows that. But she keeps forgetting. She can never remember. And she's such an idiot because she always mixes lithium with water, sodium with water, potassium with water, rubidium cesium francium with water, and it's annihilating.

"Didn't you date a guy named Rubidium once?"

"Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

And he does but he doesn't.

She's a work of art, a masterpiece, painted with strokes of her own hand, set aflame, burnt to crisps with matches she lights herself.

He knows how she functions. He knows how she works.

He doubts he'll ever know why.

She asks him if he's ever taken milk and put food coloring in it. If he's ever mixed the two with soap. Does he now how beautiful it looks? How magnificently the three blend together? How the colors become fluid and twirl and pulse with life? Soap, milk, and color.

He tells her he has, he agrees. It's really something else. They're really awfully wonderful together.

She'd like to combine them herself one day.

He promises to provide her with soap.

Can she feel the breathing of the engine beneath their seats?

Can she feel his envy scalding and bubbling beneath his skin?

Can she feel his fingers tightening around the steering wheel and holding on to this one last shred of something?

Parrish. She's been talking to Parrish.

Is that even legal? Is Stiles the only one who thinks it's weird for an officer to pursue a high school student?

Because it is. It's weird. He would think so even if his heart didn't dive from the top of his skyscraper chest when Lydia mentioned her lunch with him.

Parrish.

Her eyes are on him. He's not looking at her, focusing only on the never ending road in front of him, but he knows. She's the scientist and he's the subject. She's analyzing him.

Why does he care? Parrish is helping them. It was lunch. He's a friend.

So is Scott and so was Aiden and Jackson was a pal once too and she stuck her tongue down all of their throats, didn't she?

She tells him to stop the car.

They're on a deserted dirt road. Nothing but green around them and brown below them and crystalline rain falling from God's waste baskets in the sky. There's a murderer on the loose. Probably more than one. Possibly several.

He stops the car.

What he's doing? It's unfair, she tells him. He cannot have his cake and eat it too, whatever that means. Stiles has a girlfriend. He is not allowed to be angry because Lydia is speaking to other people. Especially when she is speaking to other people in a totally platonic way.

How dare he be jealous when he's the only person she's allowed to hold her heart? Who she's trusted to gather all the microscopic, shattered little increments and crazy glue them back together in a rougher, truer way? Has anyone else felt it beating? Has anyone else sent blood roaring through its veins?

She gets out of the car. Steps into the rain.

She begs him not to forget that.

She comes over and the board is full.

Mugshots, candids, sketches, scratches, scribbles, string – none of it red.

The red is being rolled up. Lydia holds one end. Stiles holds the other.

They wrap it around their hands, following its lead, taking small, eternity steps to each other.

And then they meet.

The toes of his worn out converse bump into the tips of her wedges.

He stares down at the crown of her head, sees her cherry locks cascading down her back – the red sea. His eyes travel along the path Moses must have parted as he crossed it.

She lifts her head, meets his gaze. The glint in her emeralds is more rare, more valuable than the Heart of the Ocean. It's greater than any wonder of the world. It's the only wonder of the world.

And his breath hitches in his lungs and he remembers how it feels when her acrylic nails bump into his and how he couldn't take his eyes off of the soap and the milk and their colors and he reminds his heart not to swell too much in his chest when he sees her, it needs to make room for her patchwork soul and the board is full.

But the mystery is solved.