1.

There are three things that Lydia hates more than all other things in the world: Peter Hale, the gum-commercial that always makes her cry, and wearing clothes that other people have picked out for her.

In this case, the offender is a teal dress that Kira had decided would look excellent draped over the bodies of all eleven of her bridesmaids. Lydia calls bullshit. There is no possible way a dress can flatter every single body- and she is standing next to an array of them, all fluttering around the room, trying to make themselves as useful as possible. Lydia, for her part, has six bobby pins between her teeth and is focusing hard on arranging the silky strands of Kira's hair into a similar updo to the one Lydia had worn for their senior prom.

Kira is antsy in her chair, but in an excited way, with cheeks that would be pinkened even without the blush that her college roommate, Jane, has applied to them. She keeps bouncing, trying to release some of the energy that is thrumming through her body, and it would be cute if it weren't impeding Lydia's progress in creating an updo so beautiful Michelangelo would weep.

"Keep still or I'll have Malia come over here and hold you down," threatens Lydia, her voice hard even though her eyes are twinkling. Kira stops fighting instantly, biting her lower lip to show how contrite she is. Lydia rolls her eyes at her but squeezes Kira's robe-covered shoulder to let her know that it's okay.

"Where exactly is Malia?" she asks, frowning. "Last time I saw her, Ellie was trying to stop her from turning her bridesmaid dress into a romper."

"Ellie was successful," says Jane, slapping Kira's hand away as she goes to rub her eye. "But then we had a mascara tragedy, so-" Kira's mouth opens and Jane raises a hand to stop her. "Don't worry. I took care of it. Look, there's Malia now."

She is stomping into the room, awkward in the dress that tangles around her ankles. When she notices the three of them staring at her, she spits some hair out of her mouth and crinkles her nose.

"Can I at least shorten it?"

"No," they all say simultaneously.

"Fine," sighs Malia, plunking herself down in the chair next to Kira. "So, Scott's here."

Kira nods.

"He's supposed to be."

"Oh," Malia says, frowning. "I wasn't sure. Isn't that weird?"

"It's not weird," Kira says. "We've been through so much together. It's only right that he should be at my wedding."

"Plus," adds Lydia, "you two had what could only be considered the most amicable breakup in the history of breakups."

"Exactly," says Kira. "So don't worry about it."

Malia pauses for a moment. Then she looks sideways at Kira.

"You know that Stiles is here too, right?"

There is no reason as to why Kira's eyes should flicker nervously up to Lydia's face. She frowns at Kira, but the bride just smiles innocently and directs her gaze back towards Malia.

"Of course I do. He RSVP'd yes."

"Just checking," Malia says, shrugging until her body is slumped over in her seat. She sighs contently and hunkers down a bit more to watch Lydia finish up Kira's hair.

Lydia, for her part, hopes that Malia can't see the tension in her body. Because Stiles is here. In this building. And she hasn't seen Stiles since Christmas of junior year, the last time Scott had made any sort of an attempt to put the pack back together.

At that point, it was too late. They had all fallen apart.

"You guys should all hang out together during the reception," Kira says. "It'll be a good opportunity to catch up."

She's looking at Lydia again. Maybe Kira is actually the one that always tried too hard to keep the pack together. Or maybe Lydia never should have gotten drunk on long island iced teas last year and confessed that she's never really felt about anyone the way she used to feel about Stiles. Maybe this is her fault.

"It'll be great to see Scott again," she says, neatly side-stepping Kira's pointed comment. "I haven't seen him since... well, maybe before grad school."

They do text occasionally, but it's mostly polite catch-up messages and the occasional supernatural-based update. She can sometimes hear Stiles' sense of humor in the way Scott phrases a text message, and it always makes Lydia drop her phone to the side and not look at it for a good thirty minutes.

The problem with technology is that it would be far too easy to send out a one-word message and un-scab a wound that has healed reasonably nicely. The good thing is that Lydia has spent the last three years resisting that urge. The bad news is that it seems that Kira is trying to play matchmaker despite Lydia's careful control of herself.

Well, Lydia isn't going to be match-made at all. She and Stiles have known each other since they were in third grade. If they were going to get together, they would have done it already. They don't need to be shoved into a relationship by a kitsune who has an alarmingly good grasp on relationships and arguably perfect hair.

"You're ready," she says, sliding one last bobby-pin into Kira's hair. "If this thing collapses at any point during your wedding, I would blame the supernatural world, because it sure as hell won't be my fault."

"Thank you," Kira says, laying a hand on Lydia's hand, perched lightly on her shoulder. "It looks great."

"It will look even better with your headpiece," Lydia tells her.

"Half of it will be covered," points out Malia. She freezes at the looks on their faces. "Oh, I'm sorry. You were having a moment. Go on. Sorry."

Lydia laughs through her nose, offering Malia a small smile before heading to the back of the room to put on her shoes. All they have to do is get Kira into her dress and down the aisle and then Lydia can smile through the reception and get out of this dress that she never would have picked out for herself. She can go home and ignore the fact that she had broken up with her plus-one exactly two weeks before this wedding, just because she had no reason to be with him except for said wedding. And she can ignore the fact that she had spent the night with a group of people that used to mean everything to her and now, somehow, don't exist in her life anymore.

Seeing Stiles and Scott again feels like a page from a storybook.

As Lydia walks down the aisle, her steps perfectly in time to the music, she can't help but search for them. She finds them a little too near to the front, both looking thoroughly uncomfortable in their fancy clothes. At twenty-four, they both could've grown beards by now, but today they are clean-shaven, and they look like the two boys that Lydia had gone to high school with, not the men whose pictures she occasionally sees on Facebook.

Scott grins at her as soon as he sees her, the smile lopsided and adorable, but Stiles is slumped over with his head ducked and is fiddling with his phone, his knee bouncing up and down. He doesn't notice Lydia until she has already reached the end of the aisle.

When he looks up, his eyes land on her almost immediately. He scrambles up, straightening quickly, and his mouth pops open at the sight of her. She realizes that she probably looks more like a ghost than anything else to him, and it's this realization that makes her offer him a small smile. He responds with a tiny wave, his chin tilting inwards as he smiles in surprise at her. Satisfied, Lydia gives him a curt nod and turns to the aisle to see Kira walking towards her husband-to-be, absolutely glowing with excitement.

She pretends not to think about Stiles as the two of them say their vows. Thinking about him would mean that he affects her, and Lydia would rather ignore him for the rest of her life than admit that he could still have the power to break her.

After, she walks back up the aisle and can feel his eyes on her all the way to the door.

"I never actually liked dancing."

The words are said with such casual disdain that Lydia thinks she would know it was Stiles even if they had been said in another man's voice. She leans back against her wall and turns her head to the right so that she can give him a narrow-eyed look.

"Then why did you force me to dance with you so many times?"

He snorts.

"What? What times?"

"The Winter formal, senior prom, that time when it was raining and you said, 'hey, Lydia, it's just like The Notebook!' I don't even know why you've seen The Notebook."

Stiles pauses.

"Uh. I haven't seen The Notebook."

"Oh, please," she scoffs. "Go tell that to someone who will believe it."

Stiles pretends to scout the room for a victim.

"Not Scott," he mutters to himself, "he was with me when I watched it."

Despite herself, Lydia laughs.

"So how have you two been?"

"Oh, you know. Buried under eighty individual piles of law books and biology books, respectively."

"Can you see the floor in your apartment?"

"Naw," says Stiles, scuffing his foot across the floor. "But that's just because we've kind of covered it with clothes, pizza boxes, and beer bottles."

"Damn. Some things never change, do they?"

"Right?" Stiles agrees, loosening his tie slightly. "You'd expect us to have gotten over pizza by now, but we keep coming back for it. Every freaking time."

Lydia shakes her head, smashing her updo against the wall as she does so. For a few moments, they sit in an uncomfortable silence, during which Lydia wonders if Stiles is her pizza and then wonders if Stiles is wondering where he can get pizza, despite the fact that they had just consumed a steak dinner that had, personally, rocked Lydia's world. Then, randomly, Stiles pipes up.

"God, weddings stress me out."

When Lydia chuckles, the action is forced.

"Why is that?"

"Well, I guess it's more... people our age getting married stresses me out. Just in, like, a 'how have you worked past existentialism enough to make this decision' kind of way."

"Oh, sure," Lydia agrees. "Maybe they just never exposed themselves enough to Hemingway to really get that fear instilled in them."

"Wow. I wonder if they can sleep through the night."

"It must be so easy to live without the shadow of existentialism looking over you."

He smirks slightly, shaking his head as he rubs his lips together, staring out at the people who are swaying together on the floor. Scott is dancing respectfully with a bridesmaid who looks like she's trying to wiggle closer to him. Scott, however, simply rests his hands in a respectful spot on her waist and looks contently around the room, obliviously soaking in the atmosphere.

Lydia hates to interrupt Stiles as he scans the floor for something to be cynical about, but she's been to too many weddings at this point, and people-watching isn't as entertaining as it used to be.

"So if you hate dancing so much, why did you always dance with me?" she asks, turning around so that she's actually facing him. Stiles' brows crease when he sees the expectant way she is looking at him, but it's not in Lydia's nature to back down, and she knows he doesn't expect her to.

He shrugs. "It was The Notebook, Lydia."

She purses her lips.

"Did you know that I actually used to like that movie?"

"What happened?"

His expression is almost too casual, eyes still glancing over the crowd as though he's expecting to find the answer in the throng of dancing people. But Lydia knows better, because she knows the answer to the question and knows that it is exactly what he would and wouldn't want to hear.

Jackson. The supernatural. Life. You.

"I grew up," she answers.

Stiles nods, eyes coming to rest on hers.

"Right. Absolutely." And for a second, Lydia thinks that this is the moment that their friendship finally snuffs it. She thinks that this moment, in a dimly lit ballroom with Sexy And I Know It playing in the background, might be the last one where she can pretend that things could've been okay with Stiles Stilinski at some point. And she thinks that maybe a wedding, with an open bar and a plethora of other, newer people to pay attention to, is probably the best place for this inevitability to occur.

But then, he smiles.

"You grew up, huh?" he says, eyes twinkling as he leans conspiratorially towards her. "Okay, then. Wanna grow down?"

It's not difficult to snatch a bottle of champagne when the bartender turnsturns around. Stiles does it with something almost akin to dignity, then shoots off towards the door of the ballroom, grabbing Lydia's wrist to pull her with him. She's laughing at him until he tips the bottle to her lips, and then she just obediently sips, following him down a corridor.

"Where are you going?"

"Dunno," Stiles says, steps just a bit too large for her as he almost skips down the hallway.

"That's no good," Lydia decides, stopping abruptly in the middle of the hallway. "You have to have a plan for things."

Stiles runs a hand through his hair, making the short strands stand up messily. "When have plans ever gotten us anywhere?"

"Plans got me through college," Lydia states. "Planning is getting me through grad school. Don't knock plans." Slowly, Stiles raises his closed fist to the wall. He grins at Lydia. "No. Don't do it." He knocks. "You're such a shit."

"So what's your amazing plan?" asks Stiles, wiggling his eyebrows.

"There's a secret passageway in the bridal suite."

It's good enough to light his eyes up, and so she doesn't need to ask him to follow her. Just turns on her heel and begins gliding down the hallway in the teal dress that suddenly feels more like it fits around her skin. A moment later, he catches up to her, this time taking care to match his steps to hers. It makes his gait appear odd, like a penguin walking next to Lydia as she strides confidently towards the elevator.

As they travel to their floor, Stiles bounces up and down on his toes, fingers locked together around the champagne bottle. He stares at the numbers on the elevator wall as they shift upwards, letting out a small, energetic whoop as soon as the doors slide open. Lydia follows closely behind him, decidedly not noticing the way his ass looks in those pants as he bounds towards the door of the bridal suite. She takes her time when he realizes that he can't get in and he ends up waiting expectantly at the door for Lydia to hand him her keycard, which she produces from the left cup of her strapless bra.

Stiles makes no comment.

"I think it's right over here," Lydia says, pointing in the general direction of the tiny doorway that she'd seen earlier.

"Cool," says Stiles, throwing his shoulder against the solid wall, hard, and letting out a pained yelp when it doesn't give way. He glances back at Lydia, eyes hopeful. "Is there any chance you didn't see that?" Lydia slow claps for him. "I thought so."

"It's up there," she says, pointing. "It was ajar earlier today. That's how I noticed it."

Stiles frowns.

"That looks tiny?"

"Well," Lydia says, straight faced, "good thing you have nimble hips, Mr. Stilinski."

"Yeah, that's a really good- wait, what?"

"Help me up," Lydia instructs, tapping him expectantly on the arm. He sighs, as if world-weary from how demanding Lydia Martin is, but he stations himself behind her and lifts her into the air anyways, helping her reach the small hole in the wall. His cheek is pressed against her hip as he moves her closer to it and waits for her to press against it. Luckily, the small door pops open with a quiet click. Lydia braces her hands on either side of it and scrutinizes it carefully, trying to make sure it has enough space for both of them.

"Can you see anything?" Stiles asks.

"There's definitely a room," she replies, wriggling out of his grasp until half of her body is in the hole. She has to army crawl her way through the tunnel, but she's drunk enough that she doesn't care, especially when Stiles' head pops up in the entryway behind her and he turns bright red when he realizes that he can see up her skirt. Lydia takes it upon herself to lighten the mood. "Hey. Did you just get taller?"

"I'm standing on the table."

"You're going to break it. Get in here."

"Aye aye, cap'n." In a moment, he has joined her in the tunnel, army crawling with a sloppy smile on his face.

"You look far too happy for someone who could be kicked in the face by a six inch stiletto heel at any given moment." The smile vanishes from his face. "Don't worry. I'll be careful."

"I'm holding you to that."

Lydia sighs in relief when she sees that she wasn't wrong- there is a room at the end of the tunnel. She slithers out of the tunnel and into the room, then turns around with a beam on her face to watch Stiles do the same. When his feet finally do hit the ground, she is glad to find that he is still clutching onto the champagne bottle.

"Nice," she compliments, nabbing the bottle from him and taking a sip.

"Are you commenting on the room or my army crawl?"

"Both," Lydia teases, glancing around at the dark room. "Is there a light switch?"

She can see the moon out the window, and it throws two couches and Stiles' cheekbones into sharp illumination. The rest of the room is a mystery to her. Stiles slams his hand against a few walls before lights finally flicker on, brightening the room. It's a warm burgundy with leather couches, a fireplace, television, and a mini-bar.

Lydia immediately makes her way to the small refrigerator, digging through until she finds a nip of whiskey.

"So," she says, bouncing onto one of the couches and kicking off her shoes. "It's been three years. What have you been up to?"

"Well," he says, blinking innocently, "my plan for world domination is almost complete."

"That's very interesting," Lydia nods. "Not as cool as my plan to eradicate this earth of all bugs, but still very interesting."

"Well, I won a presidential election, so I think I beat you."

"That's fine, but bear in mind that I have performed eight times at Madison Square Garden."

"I learned to bake."

She squints.

"Actually?"

"Actually."

Lydia raises her flask in the air and tips it towards him appreciatively.

"You win."

"Nice."

They don't speak for a moment as Lydia wiggles her toes, adjusting to their newfound freedom, and Stiles stares across at her, a quizzical expression on his face but absolutely no question on his lips.

"How are you liking law school?" For the first time, she's actually being serious.

"It's good to want something really badly," Stiles replies, fixing his eyes on where his fingers are twisting around the neck of his champagne bottle. "Good to feel like I have the time to want it."

"To make it happen, too."

"Yeah, exactly. You feel the same way about your degree?"

"I do," she says simply. "It's rewarding as hell to stay put for a while. I feel like the vast majority of high school was just… running. Running away from myself, running away from bad guys…" running away from you.

"Damn. It took us point-five seconds to get back to high school."

"It is the only thing we have to talk about," Lydia says, deadpan. "What else is there in life?"

"Wow. If you're asking that question, you clearly haven't tried Scott's mom's mashed potatoes."

"I have, and they're storebrand."

"Storebrand?"

"Bob Evans, in fact."

His mouth pops open.

"What?"

"Sorry. Hate to burst that particular bubble."

"But you like bursting other bubbles?"

"One might say I live for it."

"What else do you live for?" he asks, leaning a bit closer.

She has half a mind to be sarcastic with him- tell him that she lives for sprinkling the tears of children into her soup and for days when the weather can't quite decide what it wants to do with itself. But his eyes are the same shade that she remembers from all those years ago when they had stared up at her, believing.

Lydia wants him to know her the way he used to know her. Wants to see if he would still gaze up at her with that stupid, beautiful look in his eyes.

"Coffee shops," she says. "I like studying in them. I live for coffee shops and driving with NPR on the radio and getting bread from the restaurant that I like that's three blocks away from my apartment." She doesn't know why he's smiling so hard. But then, maybe it doesn't really matter. "And I think I live for the times when I have to drop everything I'm doing because I know that if I ignore myself and give in to my powers, I can save somebody else's life."

Stiles' back hits the couch as he considers this. He twists his lips back and forth, finally settling on a smile.

"You still use them sometimes?"

She doesn't want to say 'when I have to' because that's not what she means, so Lydia takes a moment to carefully consider her answer.

"When they need me to," she settles on, cringing at how corny it sounds. But that's how it works, isn't it? "I can ignore them," she clarifies. "Most of the time. Ignore the voices and the whispering… but sometimes I just get dizzy and nauseous and the only way to stop it is to know when to listen. So I do."

Stiles looks almost sleepy as he licks his upper lip and rubs his index finger against the red leather on the couch.

"I tell people that I'm studying law because I like puzzling things together. Putting them in order. Figuring them out. But the truth is… after everything that happened, I don't think I could really find value in anything mundane anymore. Not like I used to be able to. I don't think I could ever have a job that didn't involve feeling like you have some sort of importance in the world. An influence. A leg up." He shrugs, scratching awkwardly at his eyebrow. "I think maybe once you play hero for a bit, you can't go back to being impotent."

He frowns down at his bottle, face darkened as he taps his fingers against the base.

"Hey," Lydia says, and Stiles' head shoots up, searching her face for the reaction that he hadn't wanted to see. "Tell me about your apartment."

It's her way of keeping things normal. It's her way of telling him that he's normal. It's her way of making him smile.

When they walk back into the ballroom two hours later, Scott doesn't ask them where they've been.

2.

If Lydia were less hungover, she probably would be more apt to enjoy this wedding. But the music that thumps through the speakers seems to simply be taunting her, reminding her of all of the blow-job shots she'd had last night at Dave and Busters. Honestly, she never should have tried to best Stiles. She can hold her drink, but she's 5'2" and, when she really thinks about it, she never even had a chance.

Stiles seems to be finding this very entertaining.

"Here's another drink," he says, grinning as he slides it across the table to her. "Smile, Lydia. The ceremony's over. You don't have to be sober anymore."

She wraps her lips around the straw and sucks, staring at Stiles in annoyance as she does so. He scrunches up his cheeks in the most obnoxious smile he can muster and throws back some of his appletini, smacking his lips appreciatively once he's swallowed.

"You know you look like an idiot when you drink that, right, man?" Scott asks.

"Sure," Stiles says easily.

"Just checking," Scott responds, eyes finding Lydia's so that he can give her a good-natured smile. "God, have you guys tried these scallops?"

"I'll grab some," Stiles says, shooting out of his chair. "The wedding party isn't going to be in for a while anyway; those pictures always take forever, and- holy shit."

Lydia frowns up at him, refusing to take the bait of Stiles' wide eyes and stiff stance.

"What is it?"

"Don't turn around," Stiles says insistently. "Um. You should get the scallops."

"No," Lydia says, shaking her head. "We made a bet last night that whoever got a better score on the giant Fruit Ninja game would have to fetch at the the wedding. I'm not getting my ass out of this seat unless it's to do the macarena."

Stiles stamps his foot slightly, distracted from whatever had been bugging him.

"Okay, that's totally unfair because while you did kick my ass at Fruit Ninja, I fucking owned you at Dance Dance Revolution, and-"

"Hey, is this table number six?"

The worst thing in the world is hearing a voice that she would know anywhere and feeling her skin crawl at the sound of it. Nobody with a voice that familiar should make Lydia's heart jump with anxiety, and yet here she is, sitting at table number six with suddenly pale skin and a Stiles who is currently looking so concerned for her that she thinks he may have taken on half of her anxiety as his own.

Lydia fixes a fake smile onto her face before turning around in her chair and greeting the newcomer.

"Jackson," she says, her voice upbeat. "So glad you found us."

Her eyes flick from the place card in his hands to the blond woman standing confidently behind him, her arms crossed lightly over her chest. She's wearing a wine-colored dress that makes Lydia drool and she's wearing a lipstick that Lydia could never pull off because of her hair color.

"Sorry we're late," Jackson says, settling into the chair next to Scott. Stiles takes this as his cue to sit down as well, placing a sympathetic hand briefly on Lydia's knee before withdrawing it and reaching for his drink. "I had a business meeting in Aspen." He turns to his date, eyes expectant. "Babe, you wanna get me a scotch?"

Stiles surreptitiously pushes his appletini towards Lydia, making it seem like it's her drink. She turns to him with an amused look on her face, and he shrugs, trying not to laugh.

"Sure thing," says Jackson's date, leaving him a kiss on his cheek before walking towards the bar. He glances around, snapping his fingers at the closest waiter, who comes over with a tray of spring rolls. "You can just leave them."

Stiles buries his snort in his water glass. Scott, on his other side, kicks him under the table, causing him to startle, then glare.

"So, Jackson, how have you been?" Lydia asks, trying to keep her voice upbeat. But her mouth is dry, and she can't help but remember long, gray evenings with Allison during which Lydia had gotten too drunk on red wine and had spent too much time trying to work her way through how this boy had treated her.

"I've been well," he replies, popping a spring roll into his mouth. "Busy."

Next to her, Stiles squirms. Stiles. Who had picked up the pieces Jackson left- picked them up without even trying. Stiles, who had silently supported her even when he hadn't been there for her. Who had always made her feel worthwhile and important. Sitting at a table with the both of them feels like a different universe.

Lydia hasn't seen Jackson, much less been in the same room as both him and Stiles simultaneously, since high school. She also hadn't realized he would be here, which she now realizes is ridiculous. He used to be Danny's best friend. It makes her wish she had brought Matthew instead of leaving him at home with her dog. It would've been nice to have a date tonight.

But she knows why she didn't bring him. And that reason is currently sitting next to her with his jaw clenched, glaring at Jackson.

Stiles was, somehow, her unspoken date. Lydia hadn't wanted him to give his time to anybody else, despite the fact that she's been with Matthew for six months.

"Lydia has a masters in mathematics," Stiles says proudly, as though it's his degree that he's currently touting. "Which is impressive."

Jackson spares her a second of surprise before his date comes back with his scotch and her vodka cranberry.

"Stiles is in law school," Lydia says. Then, feeling awkward, she adds, "And Scott is a becoming a veterinarian."

"That's fantastic," Jackson replies, tipping his drink at them before taking a sip. "Oh, this is Christina."

"Nice to meet you," Christina says, extending a gracefully slender hand towards first Scott, then Stiles, then Lydia. "How do you all know Jackson?"

There's a charged moment as the four of them exchange glances. Even Jackson's eyes look slightly panicked, seeming to plead with the three of them.

"We knew each other in high school," Stiles says, not taking his eyes off of Jackson. The latter has the decency to offer Stiles a pained smile of thanks before loosening his tie slightly and turning to nod at his date.

"Right. We were all on the lacrosse team together."

"Co-captains, actually," Scott interjects. "Until Jackson left after sophomore year."

The music changes as the announcer calls out the names of the wedding party, and all of them focus themselves on polite clapping as men and women walk into the room in pairs, finally cheering the loudest when Danny and Ethan emerge from the parted doors, beaming and waving. Scott and Stiles whoop and holler extra loud, as if trying to accommodate for the roar that Aiden would have emitted, had he been able to attend his twin's wedding.

A few of their tablemates who had set up station at the bar make their way back to the table, offering Jackson warm greetings. Dinner is served while the group begins to catch up, and as Stiles tucks into his chicken, he leans over to Lydia, who ducks her head down so that she can hear him.

"So."

"So?"

"Rumor has it, Danny's cousin just hooked up with our old music teacher."

"Mr. Barlow?"

She knows he's trying to distract her, and she's grateful.

"The very same."

"Which cousin?"

Stiles points.

"Uh- that one."

"Who are your sources?"

He narrows his eyes conspiratorially.

"I saw them," Stiles says slowly.

"You saw them?"

"Yes. I saw into the room together."

"You're an idiot," Lydia says appreciatively, just as the announcer calls Danny and Ethan onto the dance floor and asks them to have their first dance as a married couple. "Oh, by the way, I saw Scott talking to Danny's mom. I'm pretty sure he's hitting that."

"Nah," Stiles says, brushing it off as more people begin to join Danny and Ethan on the dance floor. "Wolfie would have told me if he scored that couger."

Lydia coughs into her drink, laughing as Scott turns towards them with concerned eyes.

"What did you do to her?" he asks immediately, trying not to laugh. "Stiles, what did I tell you about telling the broken rib story when people are eating?"

"Relax," Stiles says. "This reaction was induced by a discussion about your sex life. Nothing more, nothing less."

Scott is about to answer, and Lydia is certainly looking forward to an explanation of his horrified expression, when suddenly, one of their friends from high school calls the three of them to attention.

"God, Lydia, do you remember when you and Jackson were dating?" She stiffens immediately. Their classmate, drunk and oblivious, thunders through. "Fuck, we thought you were going to make it all the way through high school, the way you talked about each other. What even happened?"

There's a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"I moved to England, Tina," Jackson says eventually. "Remember?"

"No, no, it was before that. You went crazy, and then you two broke up, and then you went crazy after that. Do you remember that? Do you?"

In a perfect world, none of their old classmates would be staring at them with curiosity blatantly evident on their faces. However, this is not their reality, and the result is both Jackson and Lydia staring across the table at each other, wordless.

She truly hadn't ever wanted to see him again. Perhaps, if she'd had a chance to prepare some sort of speech, she would have thrown it at him like a knife spinning through the air. And maybe, if she'd had that chance, the knife would have hit its target. Maybe it would have even made her slightly less broken. Lydia feels like she has spent the last ten years searching for 'slightly less broken.' So far, it has been elusive.

"Hey," Stiles says, breaking her from her reverie. He stands up abruptly, his chair sliding backwards and almost falling over. "Come and dance."

There's a slow song playing, and Lydia is pretty sure it's by Celine Dion, but Stiles doesn't seem to be concerned by what they're going to be dancing to. He just looks at her expectantly, holding out a hand to her.

"Okay," she agrees, taking his hand and following him out to the floor. He twirls her once before spinning her into him and pulling her tight against his body, like he's trying to keep her from running away from the wedding. Lydia sighs heavily, taking the moment to rest her forehead against his shoulder, hiding.

"Thanks," Stiles murmurs, voice quiet. "If I had stayed at that table for one more second, I think I would have decked that douchebag."

"He's not so bad."

"Maybe he wasn't at the start of high school," admits Stiles, looking more disgruntled than he should. "But I reserve the right to hate that guy's guts."

Lydia wraps her arms around his neck like she's hugging him instead of dancing, swaying her hips to the same rhythm as Stiles is swaying his. She feels, for no reason at all, like she's been wrecked by something. Ruined. But Stiles is dancing slightly off beat, and it makes Lydia smile. Wakes her up. Makes her remember, at the exact moment that she needs to, that there isn't any one thing that could ruin Lydia Martin.

She presses her face into Stiles' shoulder, her fingers playing with the fabric of his tie. When she speaks, her words are muffled by his shirt.

"Is it weird that I never thought I would see him again?"

"Lydia, he disappeared." When she doesn't say anything, he seems to take this as an invitation to keep going. "Vanished. Went bye bye. Said sayonara. Flew off into the sun on Apollo's chariot and-"

"You can stop now," she says, jabbing him in the side and making him jump. "I was there."

Appropriate guilt crosses Stiles' face, so Lydia forgives him, re-assuming the song changes from one slow song to another, and she hums lowly into his jacket, feeling her eyes drift shut slightly at the steady sway of their motions.

"I think about Allison at weddings," Stiles says. "God, I think about her so much."

For the first time that night, Lydia feels like she genuinely might want to cry.

"Me too. Constantly," Lydia admits, and Stiles bends down to press his chin against the top of her head. "I keep thinking that she should be having this."

"I wonder if Scott is ever going to have this."

"Has he been dating?"

"No. He doesn't do casual."

"Neither do you."

"You do."

Lydia lifts one shoulder, not wanting to talk about it.

"The alternative is getting burned every time you try."

"Yeah. True."

"Allison would've had the classiest wedding," Lydia predicts, rubbing the tip of her nose lightly up and down Stiles' shoulder. "And she wouldn't have been a horrible bridezilla, either. She would somehow have had the perfect wedding without having to raise her voice once in order to make it happen."

"Woodland creatures would have made the centerpieces."

"And she would have shot the meal herself."

"Oh, of course. Gotta have quality control."

Lydia laughs quietly at his joke, suddenly beginning to dread the song ending. She thinks about how she never would have been caught dead with this boy in high school, and now here she is, absolutely clinging to the man in front of the same people who would have tortured her for wanting him when they were sixteen.

She thinks that there is a distinct possibility that he has never stopped being her anchor.

"And I would have been her maid of honor," Lydia says, almost cringing at the sadness that is seeping into her voice. "God, I would have thrown her the most humiliating bachelorette party ever."

"Awww. She would've hated that," Stiles says tenderly.

"You mean that?"

"'Course I do."

Lydia chuckles.

"So. You made me dance with you again."

"Whoops," he says expressionlessly.

"I think you secretly love dancing," Lydia decides, needling him.

"Naw, I don't," Stiles shrugs. "Just like it with you." His hands are on her back, and she wonders if he can feel her breath hitch. "Hey, you know who loves dancing?"

"Who?" Lydia asks, but her question is answered when a new song begins to play and Scott bounds up to them, pushing up his sleeves as he goes.

"Get in line," he shouts, looking at them like they're crazy. "What are you doing?"

"Wha-?" Stiles begins, but Lydia just rolls her eyes and begins following the instructions.

"Stop gaping and cha-cha real smooth, will you?" she yells over the music, leaping out of the way as Scott sways his hips in every direction humanly possible, and then some.

"Oh, jeez," Stiles says, following suit and quickly stepping into line. She follows Scott to the left, trying not to laugh as Stiles crashes into her, then begins apologizing profusely. Scott is already gyrating backwards, a too-big grin stretched across his face. Lydia and Stiles shake their heads in tandem as they hop up and down twice.

"I always feel ridiculous when I do this dance," Stiles hollers, launching seamlessly into the white boy shuffle.

"Well you look great," Lydia fibs, making Stiles grin excitedly at her before realizing that she's trying too hard to keep a straight face. He ends up flipping her off and knocking his hip into hers as they move to the left. This time, she's pretty sure it's on purpose.

Scott manages to beat Stiles in the Charlie Browns, but Stiles has an enthusiasm for the "reverse" move that is absolutely unparalleled. By the time the song is over, the three of them are weak from laughter and covered in sweat.

"Okay, I'm done," Lydia insists, beginning to walk off of the dance floor. "You're not getting me off my ass until I'm two grasshoppers in and Cotton Eyed Joe is playing."

Stiles is just following her off of the dance floor when, suddenly, the notes from the next song began to swell from the speaker. He stops abruptly and turns around, causing Scott to slam into him.

"What?" he demands at the look of pure joy on Stiles' face. "What is i- oh."

Lydia covers her mouth, trying to hide her smile as she sees Danny, who is standing by the DJ, offer the three of them a thumbs up.

"No," Scott says while Stiles claps delightedly. "No. We're not doing this."

"It's too late, Scotty!" he sings, leaping back into the center of the floor.

"Lydia, have some sense," Scott insists, but Lydia just smirks and goes to stand next to Stiles. "You can't-"

Stiles holds up a hand.

"Dude. This is my time. Don't talk during my time." He turns to Lydia. "You ready?"

"Born ready," she replies.

"Guys, what are you-?"

But their voices join together, singing over Scott's protest as they throw their hands up in the air and shout,

"Aaahhhooo, werewolves of London!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Lydia sees Stiles waving pointedly at Jackson, who is trying to avoid looking at them. Unable to help herself, she waves too.

And for the first time since she was a teenager, she feels like she has achieved 'slightly less broken.'

3.

Stiles Stilinski's stupidly upturned nose is cuter than usual when it is offset by an ocean backdrop.

Perhaps telling him this would be the easiest thing to do, but then he might turn his head and Lydia would be unwillingly forced to stop looking at the way his Adam's apple bobs up and down as he quietly stares out at the churning sea. Instead, she chooses to remain quiet and watch, savoring. That's what she's come to do at these weddings- savor every possible moment she can have with Stiles, because they almost never talk in between them.

But today, he had showed up at the courthouse where Derek and Braeden were signing their papers, and instead of going over to Scott, Stiles had walked right up to Lydia. Like he belonged there. Maybe they both know that he doesn't, but when they go to these weddings, they can pretend.

Which is, of course, why Lydia had taken care to curl her hair into loose waves and put on clanky silver bangles and wear a black maxi dress that had tiny cutouts going horizontally along the top of her ribcage. Because this wedding ends here, at this restaurant in Maine, with Stiles staring at the ocean, the wind fondly ruffling his hair. And, to Lydia, this feels like date night.

Probably the only date night they'll ever have.

After the courthouse, he'd picked her up at her hotel room and told her she looked beautiful. He had dutifully held open multiples doors for her, his hand always on her back as they passed through. And Lydia has found herself wondering if he is about to present her with flowers and chocolate, because when he'd opened the car door for her and helped her out, she'd had the distinct impression that she was about to be stepping into a relationship.

With anyone else, she'd probably be back at the hotel room already as a positive reinforcer for excellent behavior. But it's Stiles, so Lydia is pressed up against the bar, flashing her cleavage at the bartender as she reads the cocktail menu. Stiles is already clutching his pina colada, tapping his fingers impatiently against the glass as he waits for Lydia to decide on what to order. When he sighs pointedly and stamps his foot, she takes an extra forty-seven seconds, just to annoy him.

"I'll have a sex on the beach, please," Lydia decides, nodding to confirm her choice.

"Nah, I wouldn't recommend that," Stiles says without thinking. "Sand everywhere."

Both Lydia and the bartender turn to stare at him. They each handle the following moment in a slightly different way. The bartender, with a quiet cough and a knowing smirk, bends over to begin pouring Lydia's drink. Lydia, however, turns to Stiles with a cat-who-got-the-cream smirk and simply watches him. He swallows.

"What?"

"Nothing," she replies, rapping her knuckles against the bar before turning around, her profile to him. "I just think that you have a lot to learn, is all."

She actually doesn't really have a stance regarding sex on the beach, but she could probably create one if he wanted to argue it. Lydia's done that more than once, if only because she likes making him sweat. Right now, however, Stiles doesn't seem to take the bait. He smirks lopsidedly and puts his elbows on the bar, hands twisting together as he looks at her.

"Not all of us can be Lydia Martin, you know," he says, falseness pervading his tone.

God. She wouldn't want him to be.

"Isn't that too bad."

"The world would run so much more efficiently."

"Everybody would actually get stuff done."

"We'd be so advanced."

"It's the world's loss, really."

The bartender slides Lydia's drink over to her and Stiles picks it up absentmindedly, turning around to carry it back to their table, still bantering in her direction. She decides to tune him out and stare at his ass instead, which is so much more enticing than anything he could be saying about Lydia Martin taking over the world.

She's never actually wanted to take over the world. Just Beacon Hills High School, which had taught her exactly what she needed to learn about total domination. And then she'd lost it, and it had been the best thing that had happened to her, and that is why she is at Derek Hale's wedding at a random seaside restaurant in Maine, settling into a two person table with Stiles Stilinski.

"It's weird to think that Derek Hale got married," Lydia says, laughing a bit louder than the situation would warrant. "Seriously. Someone married Derek Hale."

"I think I almost saw him smile when she signed the certificate, actually."

"No. Really?"

"Really," Stiles confirms, taking a sip of his drink. "I actually hadn't realized he had teeth that weren't fanged."

"I choose to ignore that fact. It makes their first kiss as husband and a wife a far more interesting moment."

Stiles chuckles.

"Having been in a situation where I was kissing someone when her fangs came out, I can say with absolute certainty that it does not feel good." He shudders slightly. Lydia gets a jolt through her system when she hears Stiles mention Malia. They have never talked about Malia. Never. Ever.

"I can't imagine that was the highlight of your relationship," she says, steadying herself.

"Definitely not."

He's so blase about it. Like Lydia hadn't felt herself getting lost when he found Malia. Like he doesn't realize that she had needed him to grab her arm and just tug, and he hadn't been there to do it.

Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe, after all this time, loving Stiles Stilinski has become her best kept secret.

"Are you two, um, okay now?"

She literally doesn't care. At all. She would rather talk about anything else.

But Malia is in a corner, talking to one of Braeden's friends from god-knows-where, and there's a huge part of Lydia that desperately wants to know why Stiles is sitting over here instead of with the girl who he had actually had a relationship with.

"Fine," Stiles shrugs. He leans closer to Lydia, lowering his voice. "I kind of forget that we dated sometimes."

Lydia almost chokes on her drink as she tries not to laugh.

"God, I wish I didn't know exactly what you mean, but… I just do."

He starts laughing too.

"Yeah! Right? It's like… it was so long ago now, and it ended so fucking effortlessly that sometimes it feels like it never happened, and-"

He goes on and she thinks about just telling him. He's probably the only person left in the world that doesn't know. She thinks about different ways to phrase it- whether she should lay it all out on the table or keep it in the past, hanging onto whatever she feels in this moment. Keeping it.

But then Stiles' words peter out and he looks across the table at her, thinking, and Lydia instinctively knows that it's not her turn to talk yet.

"I guess it doesn't matter much, anyways," he says, absently drawing something in the condensation on the table. The shadows from the waning sun are settling comfortably across his face, but Stiles doesn't seem to notice. "I guess it started off as something that was supposed to… well… do a certain thing. And then it became something bigger, and that was great. But the problem was that it didn't do the thing that it was initially supposed to, and that thing never really got done, and it kind of made the relationship easier to let go of."

Lydia blinks.

"Do you want to… elaborate, or are we just going to-?"

"No, I'm good, actually," Stiles says contently. Lydia laughs, feeling the tension leave her body at the lazy grin that he flashes her. She sways slightly to the easy music that is playing in the background.

"Okay, then."

There is a candle between the two of them, illuminating Stiles' chin, where there is a random scratch that stretches all the way across the flesh. She wants to ask. Then she decides not to. Instead, she stirs the straw of her drink with her finger and looks out at the ocean.

"Say it's beautiful," Stiles suggests.

"And why would I do that?"

"Because then you can be all, 'it's beautiful,' and I can look at you and go, 'yeah, it is,' and then we can make the candle on this table feel like it's in the right moment."

"You do realize, of course, that none of that made sense?" Lydia asks, turning back towards him and lifting her straw to her lips.

"Sure."

"I'm so glad."

He turns out to the ocean, shoulders shrugging for no reason. Then:

"It is beautiful, though." She can literally, physically see him straining not to laugh. She sighs. Rolls her eyes. Fights it- not nearly hard enough.

"Yes," Lydia agrees. "It is."

Stiles' mouth curves into a wry smile.

"Gotcha."

"Don't make me regret it."

He places a hand over his heart.

"I would never."

Lydia purses her lips in his direction and sarcastically raises her glass at him. Stiles clinks, then grins around his straw as he sucks on it, drinking his pina colada.

"So how do you like Izzy?" Lydia asks when he's done drinking. Stiles' mouth twists back and forth and he frowns, searching the bar for Scott and his new girlfriend.

"She's really great," he says. "It's just kind of… weird."

"Weird how?" Lydia asks, bangles clinking as she reaches into the middle of the table for a peanut.

She can tell that he's trying to be casual because he is not at all acting like he feels casual about this.

"Scott doesn't really date anymore," Stiles informs her, voice taking on a slightly sardonic tone. "It might have to do with the fact that he's still trying to navigate school while also dealing with random supernatural shit that keeps coming up because he won't fucking leave Beacon Hills behind."

"Aren't you insightful," Lydia deadpans, tilting her head. Her voice softens. "Do you think he needs to get out of there?"

"Yeah. Doesn't mean he will."

She nods slowly.

"I like Boston," she admits. "I like it a lot. But I don't think I'll ever stop feeling obligated to Beacon Hills. And I think that's why I don't live there anymore."

It suddenly feels ridiculous that they are sitting at a round table for two, their elbows on the unpainted wooden deck railing as they are looking out at the water. It feels ridiculous to be precariously perched on top of tall, plastic black chairs as they sip cocktails. People are dead and they are watching Isaac and his girlfriend standing in the ocean together, holding hands and not needing to speak. They are watching Derek leaning down to whisper something in Braeden's ear that makes her raise her eyebrows almost to her hairline before turning back to the person she's speaking to. They are watching Scott carry two drinks back to Izzy, his lopsided smile seeming to light up in her face.

"Scott's never gonna get out," says Stiles darkly. "And I guess I'm not either."

"That's not necessarily true," Lydia refutes. He looks too surprised as he raises his eyebrows. "Well, things change." Stiles doesn't say anything still. Lydia knocks her head to the side, widening her eyes pointedly. "Stiles. Izzy."

His nose crinkles.

"So what. Scott's dating."

"You just said-"

"He's also becoming a vet and buying a truck. Doesn't mean anything's changing, or getting better."

"Bullshit," she says clearly. "Scott's not dating. He's bringing a girl to a wedding. A girl who is his girlfriend. And that means that he feels safe enough with himself, and with someone else, to bring a date to Derek Hale's wedding. Which means things are changing. Which means you are willfully ignoring these facts because it's easier to feel like life is going to stay the same forever. It's not."

"Scott met some girl in his bio class and suddenly life doesn't stay the same forever?"

Their words begin to become rapid, like they're throwing darts at each other.

"Remember when you used to wish that things would go back to how they were?"

"That was when I thought it was a possibility."

"You're being stubborn."

"When am I not?"

"You could try the 'not' thing. Right now. Ready, set, go."

"As soon as all of this goes away, you're gone forever."

Lydia's breath catches. She waits too many beats to speak again.

"What?"

"As soon as we're okay, you're gone," says Stiles to the table. "The only time we talk between weddings is when we Skype about supernatural stuff. Other creatures. Other people. So as soon as Scott settles down and Beacon Hills becomes safe for all of eternity-" she has to crack a smile at that one, but his next words wash it right off of her face. "-Lydia Martin leaves it forever." Lydia doesn't say anything. "That's how it works."

"You don't kn-"

"There's nothing to keep you there," he says humorlessly.

But there's a small smile on his face, because he knows he's caught her out. If she says that he's the thing that has always kept her coming back to Beacon Hills, they have to admit that this goes so far beyond having an unspoken date to a wedding. She has to admit that she will have dreams about dry banter accompanying Cotton Eyed Joe for three weeks after every wedding they attend together. She will have to acknowledge the fact that she looks for him in the crowd even at weddings she knows he won't be attending.

She'll have to tell him that she spends every day missing him because she is too afraid to try out not missing him.

"Keep me right now," she says instead. "I'm here, I've only had one drink, and you've almost finished your pina colada. So you can keep me right now, and I can let you."

He looks at her like he doesn't know what she's talking about, so Lydia, with her heart in her throat, stands up. Stands next to her chair. Stares at him. Waits for him to follow her.

"Are you being serious?" he asks, squinting at her.

"Don't ask stupid questions," Lydia instructs.

He stands up too, watching for her reaction. Her face doesn't change.

"Okay," he says. "Yeah."

"We have to say goodbye to Derek and Braeden and thank them for inviting us," Lydia says, "and you need to say goodbye to Scott, and then we have to decide-" He steps forward and kisses her, cupping her cheeks in his hands. She whimpers as his hands skate from her cheeks to her back, where his fingers easily find the cutouts in her dress. They slide into them, warm and calloused against Lydia's skin, and when Stiles pulls back, his eyes are dark.

"Yeah," Stiles says, "we aren't doing any of those things, actually."

Lydia snatches up her purse and speedwalks to the exit, ignoring Scott's incredulous stare as Stiles follows after her, fingers curled around her outstretched fingers so that he doesn't lose her in the crowd. She finds his car and climbs inside, ignoring the jumpiness of her body as he scampers into the driver's seat and fumbles with the key. The radio blasts on, a loud song that thumps at the same pace as Lydia's exhilarated heartbeat, and when Stiles' hand scrambles for the dial to turn it down, Lydia stops him with her fingers. He looks over at her and meets her stare, a look that resonates all the way through her.

"Drive," she instructs, because that's literally all she can say right now, and he grabs the stick and changes gears more quickly than Lydia would have thought possible. She allows her fingers to skate past his wrist, up his arm, over his shoulder, and to the nape of his neck, where she winds the short strands of hair around her fingers.

"Where-?"

"Mine's closer," he says, answering her unasked question. "Izzy booked a bed and breakfast close to the restaurant."

"And she booked a room for you too?"

He looks over at her.

"Scott's staying there," he says, shaking his head to accompany the implied 'duh.'

"Oh, of course."

"Shut up," he says, eyes back on the road.

"As if saying that has ever worked on me."

He grins.

"I don't really know why I keep trying."

"It's because you don't want me to shut up."

"Well, not in most circumstances."

Stiles' driving is certainly suffering from the fact that Lydia's hands begin to wander as soon as he says that, but she is almost disappointed when they pull into the driveway of the B&B. His cheeks are red and his hands are trembling and if she didn't want him so bad right now, she might tell him to take another lap around the block, just so she could keep torturing him. Instead, she bolts out of the car, snatches up her purse, and slams the door shut. Stiles locks the jeep and follows behind her quickly, opening the door to the B&B and allowing her to go first. His hand is on her back when she walks through the door, but it's so much lower than it was earlier in the night, and Lydia swallows at his own form of torture.

It's late, so the front desk is empty, and they make for the stairs as fast as they can. Lydia can feel his eyes on her the entire way up, their gaze heavy as she moves. When she reaches the top of the stairs, she turns around to ask him which room it is, but he just shoves her violently against the wall and begins to kiss her, hands immediately moving to her ass. His body is curved over hers, their figures being devoured by the shadows of the dimly lit hallway, and the intensity of Stiles' kiss is making Lydia's knees weak.

"Which room?" she demands when his fingers find the cutouts in her dress again, sneaking inside of them so that his hands can wrap all the way around her waist. He digs in his pocket for the room key and pulls her away from the wall, still kissing her. As he tries to dig the key into the lock with shaking hands, Lydia presses kisses against his neck, lashes fluttering slowly against his skin. The door swings open, and Lydia grabs him by the shirt, walking backwards into the room. Stiles kicks the door closed with his foot and grunts as she moves in to kiss him again, his hand searching the wall for the light.

When it turns on, they both jump, startled, at the sight of the room.

It is covered in images of cats. Pillows. Blankets. Fucking needlepoints.

Stiles glances over at Lydia, nonplussed.

"I, uh, sort of forgot about this part?"

She's still a little breathless at the sight of her red lipstick smudged across his upper lip, so she nods robotically.

"How, exactly, did you forget about it?"

"Inexplicably, I was just sort of… very focused on sex."

She can't argue with that because she has been too.

"That's forgivable."

"So we just go do it in the car."

"No," Lydia says. "We take the pillows off of the bed, turn the needlepoints around, and put the stuffed animals in the bathroom."

"What about the comforter?"

"There's no time, Stiles!"

"Fine," he says, "I'll grab the portraits, you do the pillows."

He moves immediately to the walls while Lydia goes over to the bed and begins throwing the mountains of pillows off of it. For a few moments, she hears Stiles fighting with one of the larger paintings, making loud, annoyed sounds as he struggles. Then, suddenly, it goes quiet. When she turns around, he is staring at her, tongue on his lower lip. Lydia drags her gaze from his lips to his eyes.

"Oh, fuck it," he says, reaching her in two strides and slamming his body into hers as he kisses her again. She falls back onto the bed, dragging him with her, and he pushes her hair off of her neck so that he can kiss her wherever he wants.

"What about the cats?" Lydia asks breathlessly, only half-teasing as she works to unbutton his shirt. He shakes it off of his arms and throws it carelessly to the ground before returning to Lydia's body.

"They can watch," Stiles says into the skin on her neck. "Just ignore them."

He slides his hands downwards again, this time moving them back so that he can ruck her dress up and pull it over her head. Lydia sits up to make it easier, snapping back to his mouth as soon as it's off.

"When you woke up this morning and decided not to wear a bra, were you attempting to drive me up the fucking wall the entire night, or is that just how it worked out?"

"Merely an entertaining coincidence, actually," Lydia says as she lays down again, hair fanning out under her. "I was mostly thinking about how I could upstage the bride." Stiles snorts against her skin, moving his lips down to capture a nipple. "How- how did I do?"

He releases it, looking up at her with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, I think you did alright."

She bucks her hips up as he moves to her other nipple, squirming as he sucks and licks at it. When his hand dips into her red lace panties, Lydia only allows him to touch her briefly before she slaps his hand out of the way with the small amount of strength she has left.

"There are condoms in my bag," she says. "And when you come back to this bed, your pants had better be on the floor."

He finds her purse resting on the ground by the door, and Lydia sits up on her elbows as he searches through it, taking a bit too long as he fumbles around. Finally, he pulls out an unopened box, shaking it slightly at he looks at it, then turns to look up at her incredulously.

"You bought these for this weekend." It's not a question. Lydia swallows.

"Maybe."

Stiles starts to grin.

"You thought we were gonna have sex, didn't you?"

"Um-"

"You planned this."

Lydia crosses her arms over her chest, eyes flitting from him to the ceiling.

"So what if I did?"

He opens the box, pulls out two condoms, and walks back over to the bed with a shit-eating grin. Lydia sits up and scoots to the edge of the bed, moving her hands to the buckle on his trousers because he is taking way too long and she finds herself completely done with waiting when his smile reaches the corner of his eyes.

"So, if you did, it means that not only did you wake up in the morning and decide not to wear a bra, you also decided to wear those panties. And you were thinking about me seeing you in them." She focuses on getting his dark blue boxer-briefs down instead of the enormous smirk on his face, but when he puts a finger under her chin and tilts it upwards, Lydia's hands still at the serious look in his eyes. "And now I get to take them off."

It had taken Lydia at least thirty-four seconds to decide which pair of panties she was going to wear, and only about three seconds for Stiles to slide them down her legs, ripping them slightly in the process. She's going to bill him for it as soon as he makes her come.

But then he's kissing her again, wet and hungry and with hands that seem to know exactly the right place to make Lydia's eyes roll backwards behind her closed lids. And she's rolling them over so that she can put the condom on him, but she has shaking hands and skin that is already beginning to get sweaty despite the fact that they've barely done anything. Lydia huffs in frustration as she struggles, her cheeks heating up, until suddenly Stiles' hand is on hers.

"I got it," he says, grabbing the condom from her and rolling it on far more effortlessly than Lydia could have done when every part of her feels like it's smoldering.

He's disgustingly overconfident, and she can't believe the nerve of him for not being a shaky mess. With anybody else, Lydia would have him get her off before he even got his pants off. But Stiles is currently bearing the most smug look she has ever seen, and the curve of his lips seems to be heading straight to her clit. Instead of allowing him to entertain the concept of superiority for any longer, she sinks onto him with no preface, watching his face tense at the feeling of her body around him. There's one moment of triumph as his expression softens and slackens into something so vulnerable that Lydia finds herself gasping with it. And suddenly she is smiling at the way his stupidly beautiful eyelashes flutter as he closes his eyes, the breath whooshing out of him.

"Stiles," she sighs, swiping her thumb across his cheekbone. He opens his eyes, which are completely glazed as she moves over him. The only thing Lydia can see is Stiles watching her, his vision clapped on the look on her face; on the way she's watching him. His fingers dig desperately into her hips, and she wants them to leave marks. Wants to be on a train heading home tomorrow with his fingers still all over her, in places only he gets to touch her.

Gasping, Lydia leans forward and grips the headboard, moving more quickly. Stiles is moaning beneath her, alternating between watching her and closing his eyes, squeezing them shut to try to make sense of the overload of sensations that are pulsing through his body.

"Fuck, Stiles," Lydia whimpers as he leans up to suck on one of her breasts. He hums around it, and the vibration bolts through her already trembling body. "Oh god. Oh my god."

"Feels so good, Lyds," he mumbles, head slamming back against the pillow. She bites her lip and lets go of the headboard so that she can throw her head all the way back when he moves his hand down to circle around her clit. "You gonna come?" Lydia barely has the presence of mind to nod. She just moans, shivering at the added feeling of her hair tickling her body. "I'm gonna make you come again after this," he promises. "Wanna eat you out so bad, Lyds. Wanna see your face when I make you come on my tongue."

She's breathing so loudly that her breaths, high-pitched and whiney, seem to bounce around the room, ricocheting off of the walls and landing between the two of them with their heaving chests and erratically thumping heartbeats.

Lydia lets herself snap when she sees that Stiles is about to come. She lifts her hands to her head and tugs at the roots of her hair as she feels herself letting go, her voice so loud in her own ears that it's deafening. When she hears Stiles' voice join hers, she forces herself to open her eyes and watch the way his face contorts. Finally, his body sags into the bed and he turns his head to the side, sighing across the pillow. Lydia collapses next to him, breathing hard as she looks over at him. His eyes are closed, a boyish smile drifting across his lips.

Contently, she revels in her ability to be quietly in love with this man. She turns onto her stomach, hair landing across one shoulder as she moves her lips closer to his, almost-but-not-quite kissing him. When he feels her there, he chases her warmth and kisses her softly, moving his body closer to hers until he is cupping her into him.

"Hey," she says, words slurring lazily against his lips. "You're better at that than you were last time."

Stiles' eyes pop open. He looks furious.

"Really?" he complains. "You had to bring that up?"

"What?" Lydia feigns innocence, placing her hand on her chest. "It's a compliment."

"I was eighteen," Stiles protests. "You were the second girl I'd ever been with."

"I'm just saying that you lasted way longer this time."

He groans, grabbing the pillow out from under her and using it to cover his face.

"It was one time. I could have lasted longer if we'd done it again."

"Sure," Lydia says innocently. "That's what I've been telling myself every single day for the past eight years."

He throws the pillow at her.

"I'll prove it to you."

"How, exactly?"

He pauses.

"I don't know." Lydia snorts. "Fine, I'll make it up to you."

She wants to tell him that there's nothing to make up for, but he's already kissing her again, a quick goodbye before he slides between her legs.

Lydia closes her eyes and keeps them that way until her smile turns into a moan.

4.

Stiles is late. Late. For an entire wedding. It's a miracle that the bride hasn't beat him down the aisle, because the wedding was supposed to begin four minutes and twenty-two seconds ago, and Isaac is up by the altar, looking tense. Scott, standing next to him, tries to say something to him, but Isaac just offers him a terse smile and continuously glances towards the door for his bride.

"Where is he?" Lydia mumbles to herself, but the question is answered by Izzy.

"He probably missed his first flight. He was supposed to be here two hours early."

Lydia nods, crinkling her nose distastefully.

"That'll do it."

"It's not his fault," Izzy says softly, reading her mind. "His boss wouldn't let him off earlier. There was a big case."

Lydia doesn't have anything to say to that because she had gotten in at 1 AM the previous night and had proceeded to collapse on the bed in her hotel room, completely exhausted, only to almost miss her alarm the next morning.

However, she hadn't been late for a wedding.

The doors burst open, and Isaac looks up excitedly, only to groan when he sees Stiles half-sprinting down the aisle. He searches the crowd quickly for Lydia, spots her, and beams at her as he strides up to her.

"Right on time," he says happily, kissing Lydia on the cheek before taking the seat next to her. He leans over her to do a brief handshake with Izzy, then settles comfortably in his chair, clearing his throat as he adjusts his tie.

Lydia, for her part, can't stop staring at him as Stiles waves hello to Scott, Derek, and Isaac, all standing up at the altar. It has been a year and three months, and his cheekbones seem to be poking out of his face more than usual. The music starts to swell and Stiles jumps, startled, causing both Izzy and Scott to begin laughing. When the doors open and bridesmaids begin walking down the aisle, Stiles turns back to Lydia, ignoring the parade of beautiful girls floating towards the altar.

"Hey," he says, cheerful. "How was the flight?"

"Good," Lydia says. "Yours?"

"Not as long as yours," Stiles says. "So, yeah, probably better. Contract's almost up, in any case, so I won't have to take the flight after that. It'll be nice."

Someone sitting behind them taps him on the shoulder, shushing him when the crowd stands up so that the bride can begin to walk down the aisle. Izzy twists all the way around, eager to see her, but Stiles stays looking at Lydia even after they're standing, waiting for her to respond to him.

"Have you been enjoying it?" she whispers, genuinely curious. She's seen pictures on Facebook of him out with his coworkers, totally buzzed and with large, open-mouthed smiles. There's a close-up of him lifting a nacho into his mouth that had made Lydia squirm with the knowledge of where that tongue had been. Then she thought about where else that tongue had been, places she didn't know about, and that had made her squirm in the entirely wrong way.

Needless to say, she'd stayed off of Facebook for a month after that.

"Yeah, it's been great," he responds, voice just a bit too loud. "Really rewarding experience."

His words are so robotic that Lydia laughs, causing a delighted look to cross Stiles' face. They all sit down before he can high-five himself.

"What're you up to?" he asks as the officiator begins speaking about how love is eternal and should never be taken for granted. "Still working with BU?"

Lydia nods, not sure if she should talk to him or focus on what's going on in front of them. She tilts her head down and turns it to the side, waiting for Stiles to follow.

"Same research lab, yes," she murmurs. "And is it me, or does Isaac look like he's about to sneeze on her?"

Stiles' eyes flit up, narrowing as he tries to closely inspect what they're looking at.

"God. You're right."

"He's just getting emotional," Lydia reasons. "It's a very important day."

"Do I look like I'm about to sneeze when I cry?" Stiles asks, looking like this thought is just dawning on him.

"No," Lydia says, still whispering. "Oh, no, Scott's giving us the stink-eye."

"Eh," Stiles says, shrugging off-handedly, but he straightens up anyways, flashing Scott a 'see, I can behave' type smile, which makes Scott give Stiles a look that tells all three of them that they know, very well, that Stiles is physically incapable of behaving.

Ten minutes later, Lydia is bored. And that means that Stiles is bored as well. When she glances over at him, he has his mouth scrunched up and is digging into his front pocket, searching for something. When she raises her eyebrows in question, Stiles merely lifts one finger to tell her to wait and then grins when he manages to extract a piece of notebook paper with a list on the front. When he turns it around, it's blank.

"Pen?" he mouths at her, and Lydia reaches to the floor for her purse, grabbing a BU pen from it. "Thanks." Stiles takes the pen and writes, in large, sloppy writing at the top of the page, four letters. Four letters that Lydia has not seen in years. M A S H.

"No," she whispers. "Stiles, no. We are not playin H."

"Aw, c'mon," he argues. "You used to love this game in elementary school."

"I cried whenever I didn't get 'mansion!'"

"Okay. Maybe I liked it. Whatever. One of us liked it."

"And we are, after all, interchangeable human beings."

"Two peas," he says, writing down the different categories. "Of one-"

"Nation. Under god. Indivisible. With liberty and justice-"

"The answer was 'mind,' genius girl."

"Did you just write down 'Severus Snape' under husband?"

"You know I did," he says, cheeky.

"Fine. Then give me someone good," she says. He writes down 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' in block letters. "Stiles!"

"Fine!" he says. "Fine. I'll give you what you want." Pointedly, he puts the pen against the paper and writes 'Justin Timberlake,' dotting the 'i' with a heart.

"I hate you," Lydia mutters flatly.

"What?" Stiles asks under his breath, smiling impishly. "You don't like ol' JT anymore?"

"Literally, go fall in a hole."

"I'm out of time, I only got four minutes fricky fricky four minutes, ay!"

"Just pick my last prospect so we can get this over with."

"Kay," he says, writing his own name down under Justin Timberlake's. "You're welcome."

She's briefly stunned into silence as she stares at the page. It takes a lot to knock Lydia Martin off of her feet, but it's safe to say that she's there as she turns to look at Stiles incredulously. In any other situation, she would sarcastically ask if this was a proposal, but he's looking innocently up at the altar, where Isaac is stuttering his way through his vows, looking like he's so happy that he's about to cry. Scott is staring at Izzy, seeming almost as overwhelmed as the groom.

"You want to put yourself in this against Justin Timberlake?"

"Only because whatever happens in MASH actually has to happen in real life," Stiles deadpans. "Only because of that."

"Just… give me a good job, for the love of god."

"Why? If you end up married to Bill Nye, you'll for sure be a trophy wife. No work for you."

"Right, but Snape has a Professor's salary, and I am used to a certain standard of living."

"You work for a university."

"Magical education is free, so Hogwarts probably doesn't pay that much, and-"

Izzy leans over to them. "Don't forget that Hogwarts probably has a lot of really wealthy alum though. Basically the entire ministry of magic went there." They blink at her. "Also, your banter is cutting into my ability to listen to Isaac's vows."

"Sorry," Stiles says, not sounding very sorry. "We will play MASH in silence." Izzy frowns. "We will play MASH not at all and listen only to Isaac blubbering about his love for Gabrielle."

"Better," allows Izzy, settling back into her chair.

They don't speak again until Isaac has kissed the bride and the small crowd of people is cheering the two of them on as they clasp hands and rush back up the aisle together.

"Wow," Stiles says, applauding still. "What a sappy-ass wedding." Izzy gives him a sternly annoyed look as Scott approaches her and kisses her, smiling against her lips. "Aw. Tongue. Just what I like to see."

"Shut up," Scott says, clapping him on the back. "How was the flight?"

"No, dude, where's my tongue?"

Scott's eyes flit over to Lydia.

"Don't make that joke," she warns, holding up a hand to stop him. Stiles smirks.

"Nice one, Scotty."

"How do you stand it?" Lydia asks, directing the question towards Izzy.

"I lean into the skid," she says, looping her arm around Lydia's and tugging her toward the exit. "So. Lydia. Tell me more about your research."

"Do you know a lot about physics?"

Izzy's smile doesn't leave her face.

"Nothing at all. Tell me more."

They talk all the way to the reception, chatting over the center console while the boys sit together in the backseat, seeming to need to catch up despite the fact that Stiles' job is barely two hours away and, according to Izzy, they Skype every day. As Stiles recites what he'd had for lunch the previous day, Lydia tries to explain her job the best she can. Izzy asks questions that are surprisingly insightful, and Lydia finds herself enjoying it.

Which doesn't, of course, stop her from feeling Stiles' eyes on her. Constantly. He's sitting behind the driver's side, eyes flicking over to her randomly, and Lydia tries to distract herself by adjusting the skirt on her purple cocktail dress, smoothing her hands where the hem rests above her knees. When she looks back over at him, his eyes are on her legs, where her black nails are curled into her fists, digging into her palms.

It's a good thing that Izzy has been babbling on about some detail regarding hers and Scott's wedding, because Lydia doesn't think she can focus on anything but Stiles right now. The air seems to be heady with his aftershave, which she can smell too well in the confined space of the car. Normally, that would be a bad thing, but it's not overpowering. Or maybe she just hasn't smelled him in more than a year. Maybe she just misses him. Missed the warmth of his body under hers and his hands on her and his mouth and, yes, his scent.

By the time they pull up to the reception hall, Lydia is so high strung, she thinks she could snap from a light breeze.

As she fumbles for her purse, Stiles jumps out of the car and opens the door for her. She thinks he's being polite, but then there's this brief moment where his hand is on her ass as he guides her out of the car and there's a smirk on his face that reminds her, irresistibly, of the time he'd gone down on her, and Lydia suddenly wishes that her nude heels were easier to walk in. She's been walking in heels for her entire life, but that doesn't mean she's prepared to do so with Stiles Stilinski's stupid hand on her ass.

Lydia stops walking so that she can whirl around and meet his eyes. She presses a hand against his chest, tilting her head back so that she can look up at him.

"Don't take this the wrong way," she says, "but we have to get through this entire reception before we can head upstairs and have sex, so I need you to stop looking at me like… like…"

"Like what?" Stiles challenges.

"Like…" She takes in the soft eyes that are terribly mismatched with the confident grin he wears. "Like that."

"This?"

"That exact face you're making, right there."

Stiles straightens his features.

"This better?" he inquires robotically.

No, because he can't turn his eyes off and they are distracting her.

"Yes," Lydia says rigidly. "Keep it that way."

She turns around and stomps into the hotel, ignoring Stiles' laughter as he follows behind her.

The reception hall is already filled to the brim with the relatives of Isaac's new wife, all of whom are currently swarming around the bar. Lydia finds her name card at the same table as Stiles' and plops down into a chair, wanting to avoid the swarm. It's a small but pretty hotel, and Lydia can't help but think that the only reason the wedding party is so tiny is because Isaac had been forced to build his family from scratch. Scott is out with the wedding party, taking pictures, and Izzy is hovering over Lydia's shoulder, assessing the situation they're in. Braeden stands in a corner, talking to Chris Argent. From her hand gestures, Lydia strongly suspects that they are discussing guns.

"The gang's all here, huh?" Stiles says, but the lack of warmth in his voice tells her that he is thinking about exactly who isn't here.

She doesn't know why they have to do this at every single wedding, but then she suspects that these silly dances in pretty dresses wouldn't mean anything if they didn't realize how lucky they were to be alive enough to attend them.

"You want a drink?" Stiles asks, wrinkling his nose when he sees the line by the bar. "I think I'll brave it."

"Whatever you're having is fine," Lydia replies. "And be sure to use those bony elbows to knock down the elderly. That always works."

"Hey, don't underestimate the elbows," Izzy warns as Stiles vanishes into the crowd, middle finger surreptitiously sticking up towards Lydia. "They've gotten us to the front of multiple concerts."

"Oh, right!" Lydia says, snapping her fingers. "That reminds me. How was Taylor Swift? Did Scott cry?"

Izzy pulls a face.

"Wildest Dreams gets him every time."

"Thought so."

"Honestly, Stiles isn't much better."

"I never claimed he would be."

"He's living wedding to wedding, you know," Izzy says abruptly, scrutinizing Lydia carefully for her reaction. "He doesn't date in between."

"He's a busy man."

"That's not why he doesn't have girlfriends."

"Izzy-"

"But you have boyfriends."

"I do."

"And he has to see pictures of you two on Facebook or twitter or instagram or wherever they are, and he has to shut up about it because he doesn't feel like he's allowed to be jealous, but he's been shutting up for years, and I'm worried that one day, he's just going to snap, and it's not going to be in the right direction."

"I think about that too."

"And you always seem to break up with those men right before you see Stiles. Like James. Three weeks ago."

Lydia swallows.

"So?"

"So. Are you breaking up with them for the weddings? For Stiles?"

Izzy's spot-on accusations are mercifully cut off when Stiles finds his way back to their table, two cosmos in hand.

"I haven't had one of these in forever," he says, smacking his lips.

"Thanks, Carrie Bradshaw," Lydia says flatly, taking a sip. She hopes that the tremor in her voice doesn't betray how shaken-up Izzy's words have made her feel.

"You're welcome," Stiles says, tilting his glass towards her. "Always happy to be of service."

Scott reappears before Lydia can make a joke about better ways Stiles can be of service to her. Which is probably, if she really thinks about it, for the best.

"Our table's over there," he says, grabbing Izzy's hand and kissing her wrist. Her engagement ring glints as he does so, nearly blinding Stiles when Scott lowers the hand again. "See you guys later!"

"Bye!" Lydia says, twiddling her fingers at Scott. For the first time, she turns back to their table, noticing who they're sitting with. She swears under her breath, which Stiles naturally takes as an invitation to lean forward and say,

"What?"

Lydia lifts her eyes slowly to the ceiling before responding.

"We're at the singles table."

He looks around at the other people, for the first time noticing the fact that Derek, Braeden, and Chris Argent are seated across the room.

"Aw, shit." Isaac and his wife burst into the room to great applause, but Stiles ignores this as he takes a long drag from his cosmo. "Are we getting too old to sit at the singles table?" Stiles wonders out loud.

"I have a PhD," Lydia says. "And you are licensed to practice law. So… yes."

"Just checking."

As dinner begins to get served, more people in their early twenties flock to their table, and Stiles and Lydia spend most of the dinner creating random backstories for Gabrielle's various relatives. They manage to make it about thirty minutes into the meal before anybody at the table even bothers to pay attention to them.

Unfortunately, bliss can't last forever.

"Whereabouts are you two from?" asks one girl, smiling brightly. She looks like she just got her braces off. Lydia quirks an eyebrow.

"Um, we grew up with Isaac in Beacon Hills."

"That place is on the news a lot," one boy says, frowning. "I remember being in middle school and hearing about this girl that wandered naked around the woods for two days straight."

Lydia's heart begins thumping in her throat. She glances over at Stiles, alarmed, but he shakes his head almost imperceptibly and plasters a fake, vacant smile on his face.

"I lived two towns over," says one of the kids, taking a sip of her drink. Lydia isn't even sure if she's old enough to be drinking. "I remember my mom telling my older sister that she thought there was some sort of drug epidemic going on. She thought that girl was on some crazy shit."

Stiles gently places his right hand on Lydia's bare knee, soothing his thumb across it.

"Whenever Beacon Hills had a curfew, we had a curfew," recalls one kid. "It was way annoying."

"And the school was always getting destroyed! They spent so much of the tax payer's money constantly rebuilding that place. My parents got pissed."

"People were always dying."

"That place was totally fucked up."

Stiles' hand moves up on Lydia's leg, rubbing circles over her thigh. She slows her breathing carefully, trying not to make it too obvious that everything they've been saying is triggering her. His eyes keep flickering over to her to make sure she's okay, but Lydia just squares her jaw and concentrates on keeping her eyes from welling up.

"So what's your major?" Stiles asks the girl seated across from him, effectively interrupting everything that everybody else is saying about Beacon Hills. She jumps at being addressed so directly, but when Lydia offers her an encouraging smile that feels painfully ingenue, the girl launches into a discussion about her business major and what she wants to do with it.

This sparks a discussion about how useful majors can be when you never actually end up doing what you want to do, and pretty soon the entire table is lamenting about their mountains of student loans. Lydia's body seems to unwind slightly as they move completely away from Beacon Hills. She's almost completely calmed herself down by the time his hand has moved all the way up her thighs.

It happens so slowly that Lydia barely notices at first, but suddenly he's rubbing circles over her skin and she thinks about how that would feel if he just moved over a few inches. When Stiles moves his hand as close to the inside of her thigh as he can and lightly presses down, Lydia spreads her legs without even thinking about it. Immediately, the teasing circles begin again.

A glance down tells her that they are totally covered by the white tablecloth that is draped over the table and by the close quarters of the table. When she turns her head towards Stiles, he is looking at one of the guys and nodding as though he is actually interested in what he is saying. In actuality, he is rubbing circles on Lydia's clit over her panties.

She scoots up in her seat, wondering if he's actually going to do this. A small smile ghosts across Stiles' lips and, okay, this is happening if she wants it to. Lydia raises her eyebrows and ducks her head down, smiling at the table. Stiles pushes the material of her thong aside and dips a finger inside of her, answering a comment about the current state of the economy as he does so. Lydia bites her bottom lip as he makes slow circles on her clit with his thumb, nodding at his conversation partner all the while. When he cuts his eyes over at Lydia and jerks his head to the side slightly, she takes this as her cue to move her leg over, draping it over his under the table. He holds her there with his left hand, never breaking conversation. He's just speeding up his movements when someone's voice cuts through Lydia's haze.

"Lydia, what do you think?"

She looks up from the table with eyes that are probably too bright and cheeks that are too flushed.

"Yeah, I'm actually interested in finding that out myself," Stiles puts in, applying more pressure with his thumb. Lydia contemplates killing him when he grabs his fork and lifts a piece of steak into his mouth, chewing as he stares at her, waiting for her to respond.

"I really disagree with Stiles," she says. "I think he sounds like he's just spitting out random newspaper articles instead of actually doing any research and forming an opinion for himself."

"Do you, now?" Stiles questions, stopping his movements on her clit.

Lydia swallows.

"I do."

Stiles pulls his fingers out, tapping them lightly against her inner thigh.

"Are you sure about that?"

She swallows hard. Glares at him. He smiles calmly at her.

"No," she says. "I'm not sure." Stiles doesn't go back to what he's doing, and Lydia almost groans out loud. She could probably go to the bathroom and get herself off, but her fingers aren't nearly as long or calloused as Stiles', and why would she bother with them when he's right there? "Stiles is probably right," she says emotionlessly. He puts one finger back inside of her. "He does very thorough research." Another finger. Lydia's eyes shoot fire at him, but Stiles just hums lowly and smiles.

"Why thank you, Lydia," he says. When the others turn away, he finally puts his thumb back on her clit.

If anybody else talks to Lydia for the next two minutes, she doesn't notice. Lydia concentrates on focusing all of her shaking to her thighs, which are trembling around Stiles' wrist. She thinks she might be sweating, and she definitely might be a bit red, but she knows for a fact that she has her face under control, except for the small crease between her brows.

The biggest challenge is keeping her mouth shut, which she barely manages to do. When she feels herself start to clench around Stiles' fingers, she turns her head towards his, meeting his eyes. She's startled to find that he's already been watching her, and his eyes are darker than usual. When she meets his gaze, he crooks his fingers just right, and that's when she finally comes around him, her knuckles turning white as she clamps her hand around his arm and holds onto it with a vice-like grip.

As her hold on him finally relaxes, Stiles slowly moves his wrist away from her, pushing a glass of water towards her with his left hand. Under the table, he wipes his index and middle fingers on a cloth napkin. And when Lydia sets her water glass on the table after draining the entire thing, he's got his elbow on the table and is sucking her wetness off of his thumb on the pretense of biting his thumb nail.

And she has to admit… god. He's good.

Under the table, Lydia finds Stiles' hand and squeezes. When she tries to pull away, he hangs on tight, offering her a small, guilty shrug when she gives him a questioning look.

Lydia holds on tighter.

Eventually, everybody starts dancing, and they get the table to themselves. It would make more sense to get up and dance with everybody else, but due to some unspoken agreement, Stiles and and Lydia remain at the table, playing tic tac toe on Lydia's open palm and making the occasional comment about Scott McCall's smooth dance moves.

"His wedding is in four months," Stiles says quietly.

Lydia sighs.

"Don't remind me. I have to take the flight all over again then."

"I think Izzy is going to ask you to be a bridesmaid," mentions Stiles, drawing an 'o' in the corner of Lydia's hand with his index finger.

Lydia raises her eyebrows in surprise.

"I barely know her."

"It's for Scott."

"Then I'll say yes."

Stiles smiles.

"Good."

They're silent as Lydia draws an 'X' on her palm, effectively winning the game.

"I missed you," she says, staring at her own hand. "After Derek's wedding. I missed you a lot."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm."

He looks very satisfied with himself.

"I missed you too."

"And I was thinking that… that maybe we don't have to have radio silence between weddings."

"No?"

"You walked into the room earlier today- late, I might add- and I think… I think I would have known you were there even if I hadn't seen you." She looks up at him. He doesn't seem like he doesn't believe her. He's just listening. "I think that matters."

"'Course it does."

His eyelids are fluttering closed as he leans towards her; moves closer. And as Stiles' lips land on Lydia's, she realizes that he hadn't gotten off earlier. She kisses him harder, opening her mouth and drawing him into her, fingers dragging him closer by winding into his hair. But Stiles just pulls back and beams at her, something peaceful resonating through his eyes.

"Do you want to go upstairs?" Lydia asks, bringing her hand around to cup his cheek. He leans into her and kisses the corner of her palm where he had been drawing x's and o's just minutes before.

"Nah," he says, shaking his head around her cupped hand. "I wanna dance with you."

Lydia laughs.

"You… you do?"

He nods.

"Yeah."

She feels emotion begin to strum through her as she looks at this man, somehow so open with her despite the fact that she has given him nothing. Offered him nothing, much less the honesty that he deserves.

Claiming him should be the easiest thing she's ever done, but the fact that she had just offered him sex and he had asked for a dance first makes it so much harder. She's not walking into anything with Stiles Stilinski until she knows that it's the final page of this book. She's not going to start something unless she's certain that it's the beginning of the sequel. She's not going to do that to him.

For now, all she can give him is a dance.

5.

When Lydia gets to baggage claim, Stiles is standing there with a stupid grin on his face and a sign that has her name written on it in handwriting that is too messy. She spots him first, and her fingers tighten around her carry on as she takes in his gray t-shirt and the antsy way his converse are tapping against the ground as he searches the crowd for her.

Lydia smiles first, taking a moment for herself. Then she raises her arm and waves.

The second Stiles spots her, his face lights up. His mouth falls open as he grins and wiggles the sign high in the air, pointing towards it with his left hand. Lydia covers her mouth to stifle her laughter as he quickly moves closer to her, jamming into other people on his way and apologizing briefly before he finally reaches Lydia. He wraps his arms around her enthusiastically, hitting her in the head with the sign, and she laughs into his side as he swears loudly and drops the sign to the ground.

"Hey," she says, "I think is the first time I haven't seen you in a suit in… years."

Stiles glances down at his dark jeans and gray shirt. He looks back up at her, running a hand through his hair.

"How am I doing?"

"I have to admit- I'm disappointed in the lack of flannels."

He claps his hand over his heart.

"Wow. Way to take a stab at my fashion sense. That was the one thing I had left."

"You're right," Lydia says, moving closer to the conveyer for her flight. "Your dignity gave up long ago."

She spots her suitcase, bright pink with a black ribbon tied around the handle, and snatches it up before turning back to Stiles.

"Ready?" he asks, taking it from her.

"You don't have to-"

"Please," he says. "You can't carry this. It clashes with your outfit."

She glances down at her sleeve-less button-down top and the navy blue high-waisted skirt into which it disappears.

"No it doesn't," she argues, even though it sort of does. "Come on. I wore flats just so I could carry my own suitcase."

"But if I let you have it, I can't show off my muscles. So you automatically lose."

The alternative to just shutting up would be to tell him that she much prefers his thigh muscles to his arm muscles, for reasons that they definitely had solidified after Isaac's wedding, but Lydia bites her tongue and follows him to his Jeep, breathing in the California air as he digs through his pockets for the keys.

"Did it come this color, or did you have it done to look like the older one?" Lydia asks as she swings the door open and hops in, desperately hoping that Stiles won't notice the little running start she'd had to take.

"It was cheaper as a standard, so I used the extra money to redo the paint job," he says, patting the console tenderly. "Gone, but never forgotten."

Lydia leans over to the cup holder and snatches up his thermos of coffee, taking a sip.

"Hazelnut."

"Decaf."

She groans.

"Just stop at Starbucks."

"Nope. We have shit to do."

Lydia's mouth pops open incredulously.

"You expect me to do shit with no caffeine in me? It's 8 AM!"

"And I'm the poor sucker who had to get out of bed at 7 o'clock to pick you up at the airport. You owe me one."

Lydia hits her head against the headrest as Stiles backs out of the spot, his arm on the back of her chair as he rapidly turns the wheel. She lets her eyes follow the veins up his arms to the moles on the side of his neck. And she swallows.

It's been four months since she's had sex and she is suddenly beginning to realize that Scott getting married isn't the only reason that she'd taken extra time off to get to the wedding early.

God, does she need to fuck Stiles.

"Hey, Stilinski, can we make a pit stop?"

He tsks.

"I'm not taking you to Starbucks."

"Not the coffee kind of pit stop."

Now curious, he looks over to her, brows pinched suspiciously.

"What kind of pit stop, then?"

She licks her bottom lip.

"The kind that requires an empty parking lot," she hints, eyes on the road instead of Stiles. He slams on the breaks and puts the car into reverse, backing up until he can take the left that they'd just passed. "Where are you-?"

"Soccer field," he says. "Kids are in school so there's no games on a Thursday morning."

"You came up with that kind of fast," Lydia points out, keeping her voice casual.

"Either that, or I stayed awake thinking about it all night last night." He shrugs. "Either way."

She shivers slightly as he makes another turn onto a dirt road and directs the car towards a thick thatch of trees.

"And what did you think about?"

"Mostly you naked in the backseat of my jeep," he tells her, eyebrows raised into a challenge. "And a little bit about how much louder you'd be in such a small space." His lips quirk up at her bright-eyed, wordless stare. "Why? Were you thinking about something else?"

As soon as he throws the jeep in park and kills the engine, Lydia crawls into his lap, hovering above him as she kisses him. He moans into her mouth almost immediately, hands starting at her hips and travelling up into her hair. They make out until Lydia's ass accidentally honks the horn and, laughing into her mouth, Stiles grabs for the switch on the bottom of his chair. The seat shoots backwards, allowing her to settle more comfortably on top of him and begin to unbutton the little pearl buttons that go down her shirt.

"I thought about this too," she says, seeing as he's too mesmerized to stare at anything but the way Lydia's shirt has revealed her salmon and black lacy bra. "Thought about sucking you off while you drove home. Payback for Isaac's wedding."

"God," he groans, and she can feel him getting harder underneath her. "Pay me back any time you want."

She laughs, bucking her hips over his. They both sigh at the contact, and when Stiles begins tonguing at her nipple through her bra, Lydia can't help the way she rocks against him. The stiff fabric of his jeans feels unbelievably good, so she simply keeps going while he pants into her breasts. She can tell he's overwhelmed when he simply rests his head on her chest, using his hands on her waist to guide her hips over his.

"Do you have a condom?" Lydia pants, barely present enough to ask the question. She could come like this, but she would much rather have him inside of her.

"Glove compartment," he manages to grunt out, and he cries out when Lydia twists the upper half of her body all the way around to reach the glove compartment, the movement creating a new friction against him. She's about to comment, but then she sees the unopened twelve-pack of condoms there, and she suddenly understands.

"Stiles," Lydia says. He looks up at her with glazed, unfocused eyes and cheeks that are a brighter red than her nail polish. "Stiles, how long has it been for you?"

He swallows hard, his Adam's apple jumping in his throat.

"Four months."

Immediately, Lydia is kissing him again, wet and hot and sloppy.

"Me too," she whispers. He exhales harshly, thrusting a hand into her hair as he shifts upwards to kiss her again. Lydia's eyes drift shut as her hands fumble for his jeans, diving for the button, then the zipper. "Off."

She lifts herself off of him only long enough for Stiles to tug off his jeans and boxers in one go, putting the condom on him immediately afterward. Then she pushes her panties aside and sinks down onto him, a high pitched whine in her throat because she is already so close and he fills her in a way that she can feel at the tip of every point in her body.

"Lydia," Stiles says, voice choked, and she want this to be good for him so good, because he deserves nothing less from her. He deserves everything from her.

Slowly and carefully, Lydia grinds her hips in circles around Stiles, watching the way his head tilts back and his mouth slips open. She digs her nails into his shoulders and arches towards him, desperate for more stimulation on her clit.

"Look at me," she demands, and his eyes fly open, clamping onto hers. He must see how close she is, because he moves his hips to meet hers more quickly, sucking on his lip as he concentrates. She ends up biting her fist as she comes, collapsing over him as he pulses inside of her, his voice low in her ear.

For a moment, the two of them just breathe together, their bodies locked. Then Lydia languidly straightens her body, leaning her head against the cool window of the car and watching her breath fan out over it.

"You good?" Stiles asks, somehow looking like the sun to her despite the fact that his hair is a sweaty mess and his cheeks are still so red. She lifts herself off of him and slides back into the passenger seat, subtly attempting to look for her panties before remembering that they never took them off. "What the fuck do we do with the condom?" Stiles says suddenly, and Lydia meets his befuddled eyes with an uncertain look of her own. Simultaneously, they both burst out laughing.

"So. Dry humping," Lydia says conversationally as Stiles tugs his jeans back over his hips and she works on buttoning her shirt. "I don't think I've done that since high school."

"College, for me," Stiles recalls. "I'm terrible at sealing the deal."

Lydia snorts.

"Honestly, if you start driving now, you can seal it again in fifteen minutes."

He doesn't need to be told twice.

The afternoon light is pouring in through Stiles' bedroom window when Lydia finally wakes up. A quick glance at her phone tells her that it's two o'clock, but when she sits up in bed and listens for the sound of Stiles' footsteps, she can't hear anything. Lydia gets out of his bed and attempts to locate Stiles in his small living room and even smaller kitchen. Nothing.

She only finds him because of the loud music that can be heard through the window. Intrigued, Lydia walks over to the kitchen window and finds herself looking at Stiles in the parking lot of his apartment building, shirtless and slathering white paint on a giant chuppah.

A chuppah.

He is building a chuppah.

Shaking her head, Lydia opens the window and calls out, "Hey, bozo!" Stiles hears her immediately, shielding his eyes from the sunlight as he looks up at her and waves.

"Hey! You're awake!" he calls up to her, turning the music down.

"You're building a chuppah," Lydia points out.

"I know," Stiles says, nodding. He strokes some of the unpainted wood tenderly. "Me and Scott started it from scratch."

"From scratch?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"Depends on how long you tell me you've been working on it."

He shakes his paintbrush at her.

"I'll have you know that Scott and I are both very capable chuppah contractors. Now will you get down here and help me paint?"

"What's the magic word?" He holds up the number of fingers equal to how many orgasms he'd given her since she had gotten there this morning. Lydia groans. "Fine."

She pads back into Stiles' bedroom and grabs her suitcase, yawning hugely as she unzips it. There's a crop-top that she'd brought to wear with a skirt, but it will work with her high-waisted shorts as well, so she tugs them on before going to Stiles' front hall closet and digging until she finds a baseball cap. Which is how she ends up next to Stiles in sunglasses and a ponytail tucked into a Mets cap, painting a chuppah for Scott McCall's wedding.

"You wanna be in charge of the music?" Stiles asks, throwing her his phone, which is hooked up to a bluetooth speaker. She scrolls through until she finds a song from an indie band that Kira had turned them both onto, then tucks his phone in her back pocket and wordlessly takes the paintbrush that he hands her. "We're gonna wind lights around it," Stiles tells her, subconsciously painting in time to the music. "It's gonna be really beautiful."

"Are you going to put a canopy up above it?"

"Nope, we have so many rungs up top, we figured it would be cooler to do the lights all the way through."

"I like the ones with the canopies," Lydia notes, scrunching her nose as she notices some white paint covering the manicure that she'd gotten for the wedding.

"I'll keep that in mind," says Stiles without thinking. They both freeze, and Lydia decides to wait for Stiles to get himself out of this one. "So, um, you look good in the Mets colors."

She curtsies slightly.

"I mean, I'm not surprised. Blue and orange are a fantastic combination."

Stiles raises his arms- and his paintbrush- to the sky.

"You heard it here first!" he shouts. "Dr. Lydia Martin confirms that blue and orange are, in fact, the perfect combination."

"I didn't say perf-"

"No takesies backsies," Stiles says sternly, flicking his paintbrush at her. A splotch of paint lands on Lydia's nose. Glaring at him, she reaches a hand up to wipe it off. "Sorry," he says, grinning.

"Are you?" she asks rhetorically.

"Nope," he answers.

"I could leave right now," Lydia threatens, but she's not going to because Stiles has just turned around to paint the side of the pole that is facing Lydia, and she is able to watch as his shoulder and back muscles move slowly up and down with his arm.

"Wow, looking productive," comes a voice, and Lydia startles when Scott appears at her

shoulder, offering her a knowing look.

"I was trying to get over the indignity of Stiles flicking paint at me," she says weakly, pointing at her nose for added proof. Scott wouldn't have believed her if she swore on Prada's grave. He kisses her on the cheek to tell her hello, then searches the ground for a third paintbrush.

"So was your flight okay?" he asks, dipping it in the paint and immediately setting to work.

"It was fine," Lydia says. "It's good to be back so soon."

"You could come back to stay," Scott hints. Stiles stops what he's doing but doesn't turn around, and the fact that she has an audience puts a pit in Lydia's stomach. That being said, she chooses her words carefully.

"I want to. Someday. It's not that I don't love Beacon Hills. But right now, I have… commitments."

"What kind of commitments?"

"Job commitments," Lydia says, emphasizing the word. She sees Stiles' back relax, then watches as he starts to paint again. Assured that he is otherwise occupied, Lydia rounds on Scott and glares at him. He shrugs sheepishly.

"Hey, Stiles, did you make sure to cancel those strippers you ordered for my bachelor party?"

"Sure I did," Stiles says, winking.

"Dude!" Scott complains. "I said I didn't want strippers."

"I know." Stiles winks again.

"Okay, I know you haven't gotten laid in four months, but, seriously-" He stops talking abruptly, head whipping around to see if Lydia has noticed.

"I already know," she says calmly.

"How?"

"Because he got laid, ah…" She pulls Stiles' phone out of her pocket and checks the time. "Three hours ago."

"Repeatedly," Stiles says, high-fiving her.

Scott looks very proud. Then he looks very annoyed.

"You were having sex when you should have been working on the chuppah?"

"Yep," Stiles replies, popping the 'p.'

"Okay, you know what," Scott says, "you have four hours until we have to go to dinner with Izzy's sister. Can you be done by then?"

"The maid-of-honor?" Lydia asks. "Have you met her before?"

"Nah, she lives in Chicago," Stiles answers. "What was her name again?"

"Leah," Scott says, looking as though he's said it too many times. "Not to be confused with Lydia. As in, please do not ignore her because Lydia is here."

Stiles pouts.

"But-!"

"No. Be polite," Scott instructs, putting down his paintbrush and taking his keys off of the keyring clipped onto his belt loop.

"Marriage has changed you," complains Stiles as Scott heads over to his truck.

"I'm not married yet!" he shouts back. "Two days!"

Stiles frowns at the discarded paintbrush that is resting on the pavement, his nostrils flaring.

"He couldn't even stay long enough to help with the chuppah," he grouses, rumpling his hair.

"Well," Lydia says brightly. "You have me."

Stiles looks up from the brush, suddenly smiling again.

"Yeah," he says. "I do."

Lydia shrugs. Shuffles back and forth.

"Exactly."

He hesitates.

"Hey, you wanna go upstairs and-"

"After we finish the chuppah."

"Right. Right."

She doesn't think she's imagining the way he begins to paint faster.

Luckily for everyone at this wedding, Lydia Martin has come prepared.

She has everything: Tissues, alcohol, condoms, phone chargers, playing cards, a copy of The Princess Bride, and even a glass cup for Stiles to shatter if he needs to do so. She has also come prepared with two backup best man speeches from two different blockbuster movies for Stiles to choose from, just in case he forgets his or he chokes on his words. In short, this wedding is going to go perfectly for him, and it is her job to make it that way.

After all. It's not every day your brother gets married.

Stiles is already at the altar when Lydia walks out. She goes slow, exactly to the pace of the music, just as they had practiced during the rehearsal dinner. In the light of the setting sun, the chuppah glows, and Stiles glows with it, his eyes bright as he looks at Lydia. But there is something so wrong about the picture- her dress is pale pink, not white, and she does not end up standing across from Stiles at the alter.

She can see his smile slip slightly when she walks away from him. Can feel her own stomach falling as well.

But Lydia just readjusts her flowers in her hands and makes sure that her smile is just as large as the one on the face of the next bridesmaid over.

As the rest of the bridesmaids walk down the aisle, eventually leading to the maid of honor and the bride, Lydia wonders which of the things she's brought will be most necessary. The truth is, Stiles doesn't look like he's about to break down into emotional sobbing at the loss of his best friend. He just seems happy as Izzy takes her place across from Scott, who begins giggling like a little kid as he stares across at his bride. That makes Izzy giggle too, and then Stiles is laughing, and Lydia, and Scott's mom and Stiles' dad, and Isaac, chuckling quietly to himself behind Stiles. Even Derek, standing behind Isaac, looks like he's about to crack a grin.

The Rabbi begins to speak in an old, carrying voice that makes Stiles grin harder, and Lydia can feel the joy inside of him shooting over to her as the old man begins to talk about love and relationships and partnerships.

That word jumps out at Lydia almost as soon as he says it. Partnership. Partner. Because out of all the men in her life, Stiles has always been the one who most felt like a partner. She can't claim that either of them are better or worse. More flawed, less flawed. They have skills in similar areas and skills in differing areas and they fight constantly, but they agree just as much. For all of these years, with 3,000 miles between them, they have somehow been together the entire time. Partners.

When they meet at these weddings, it feels like they've been apart for a week. Not months. Not years. Never years, because as soon as Stiles smiles at her, he is just… he's hers again. Hers to love, hers to be with, hers to want.

And she does. She wants him.

"The ring, please," says the Rabbi, and when Lydia looks up, Stiles is holding out a wedding ring to Scott, who smiles a watery smile as he takes it from his best friend. Stiles claps his hand on Scott's shoulder and grins, just before Scott looks over Izzy's shoulder to look at Lydia. He watches her for a second, warmth in his eyes as he tilts his head to the side slightly. And Lydia nods, mashing her lips together to keep herself from crying. She looks over at Stiles, who still has his hand on Scott's shoulder, and for a moment they all breathe her in together. Allison.

"Today, I, Scott McCall, choose you, Isabelle Klapper, to be my lawfully wedded wife, my partner, and my one true love." Stiles looks over Scott to find Lydia, his eyes red with tears. She wants nothing more than to hold him, or to squeeze his hand at the very least, but he just shakes his head and wipes away a tear that is sliding down his cheek. "I promise to trust you and honor you and laugh with you. I promise to be yours in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for the rest of our days together."

Stiles hasn't stopped looking at Lydia- doesn't, even as Scott kisses Izzy hello for the first time as her husband. He doesn't look away until Isaac taps him on the shoulder and he reaches to the floor to present Scott with a glass wrapped in bubble wrap. Scott rams his foot into it and whoops when it shatters, causing Izzy to kiss him again, laughing, while the crowd collectively shouts "Mozel tov" and begins applauding.

Then Stiles is jumping up in the air with Scott, and Melissa is hugging all three of them, Scott, Stiles, and Izzy, and Stiles is breaking free to pull Lydia into the group and she can't help but wonder how she had gotten so lucky to become a part of a family that had accepted her without pretense and without question.

When Sheriff Stilinski greets her by giving her a bear hug, Lydia feels breathless with happiness as she sees the joy on everyone's faces.

"This is gonna be so great," Stiles says, rubbing his hands together as he walks up to the two of them. "I've been practicing the hora for weeks now. I'm ready."

"No one is ever ready for the hora, son," the Sheriff says wisely. Stiles blinks at him.

"No. I've been practicing."

Lydia tugs on his arm.

"Hey, we have to walk, Billy Elliot."

"Who?"

"I'll tell you on the way down the aisle."

Stiles says a quick goodbye to the chuppah before they leave, patting it tenderly with his hand before he follows Scott out of the building, his arm hooked around Leah's. The pictures take double the time they usually do because Stiles won't stop cracking jokes to the very annoyed photographer, and his joy is infectious, as is Scott's. Izzy barely has it in her to "mom" Stiles- instead, she jokes along with the two of them and continuously tosses Lydia fake-exasperated glances.

They end up getting back to the tent when it is almost completely dark, folksy music lulling out of the instruments that are set up on a makeshift stage for the band.

"I'm starving," Stiles says, dropping into a chair at the wedding party table and picking up his fork, banging it vigorously against the surface. "Where's the food?"

Lydia is amused as she glances over at him from where she is seated.

"I don't think it's being served yet," she says. "Do you want to grab a drink?" He groans. "Oh, c'mon. We can go together."

They get halfway across the tent before they are stopped by three of Izzy's relatives, coming over to tell them what a beautiful couple they are.

"Oh, we're not-" Stiles begins, but the woman cuts him off.

"Oy, with his cheekbones and her cheeks, think of the children!" The three women walk off together, cackling to each other about kids.

Stiles looks taken aback.

"They're awfully… forward."

"Let's just go," Lydia says, tugging on his arm. "The sooner we get drinks, the sooner we don't have to think about how hungry we are."

They get in line behind two more old ladies who are discussing some sort of scandal with the Rabbi's son.

"He was going to be a doctor," one of them wails, and Stiles snorts behind her. She turns around, looking surprised, but then delighted when she sees the two of them. "Oh, it's the best man!" she crows, grabbing his cheeks and pinching them. "You looked so happy for your friend. When are you getting hitched yourself?"

"As soon as you can find him a wife," Lydia says, trying to save him when Stiles' eyes bug out of his head. She smiles smugly, as though they've fallen completely into her trap.

"A wife, you say? How about you, sweetheart?"

Then she turns around, snorting to herself.

"Hey," Stiles says, bending low so he can whisper in Lydia's ear. "You don't think Izzy told her relatives to try to matchmake us, did she?"

"No," Lydia replies, waving a hand dismissively. "She's a bride. She's busy. She doesn't have time to worry about your marriage pros- oh. Yeah. She definitely did that."

"Great," Stiles complains.

"I think it's sweet. She cares for you."

"I wish she would've made sure her family didn't," says Stiles, moving up in line. "Hi, one strawberry daiquiri, please."

"I'll have a scotch on the rocks with a twist," Lydia says, smiling sweetly at the aghast look on Stiles' face.

"Do you like that stuff?"

"You don't?"

"I just… why would you want a scotch when you can drink fruity alcohol?"

"You know, I have no idea."

He looks very satisfied with himself as he wraps his lips around the straw and takes a sip. She wants to tell him that he hasn't won the argument, but then decides to let him have it as he hums around the straw and tilts his head back in pleasure.

They narrowly dodge a married couple who are making a beeline for them on the way back from the bar, but don't manage to avoid an old man who tells a long, rambling story about his days in the army with a redheaded nurse and how he regretted never telling her how he felt.

"I'm pretty sure Izzy wrote that," Stiles says, horrified as the man walks away. "Lydia, she's giving them scripts."

"We'll be safe once we get back to the table," she lies, because the older relatives are everywhere and every single one of them is looking at Stiles and Lydia as they cross the tent.

But as soon as they sit down, they are joined by two more ladies, both of whom sit down right next to them and begin talking.

"What do you do, gorgeous?" asks the first one, directing her words towards Stiles.

"Huh?"

"What are you? I have a daughter, you know. Twenty-four. Very pretty."

"No, Rose, that's the one Izzy wants us to fix up!"

"Well, fix-ups can be redirected, Esther!"

"I'm… I'm a lawyer."

Lydia cringes.

"Oooh, a lawyer!" says Rose with her heavy accent. "And what's your name, Mr. Lawyer?"

"Uh, Stiles?"

"Stiles what?"

"Stiles… Stilinski."

"Oh, Polish!" she sings, leaning towards him.

"Yeah," he nods. "My family is Polish."

"What part of Poland are you from?"

"Oh, I mean, we're not really Polish. We just… used to be."

"So what part is that, exactly?"

"Rose!" Esther shouts over the music. "Rose! He's Polish like you're Russian."

She pauses. Blinks. Nods slowly.

"Oh! Oh. I understand. So is it near Warsaw?"

Stiles looks helplessly over at Lydia.

"Yes," he responds. "Yes it is."

"And how do you feel about converting, Polish Stilinski?" "

"Rose, look, your daughter is dancing with a man!"

"Who?" she demands, snapping her head around.

"Someone with tattoos- you'd better go talk to her," Esther says seriously. Rose vanishes into the crowd. Esther nods at Stiles and Lydia.

"You two would make beautiful children, for the record."

They stare after her in absolute shock.

"This would never happen at a Martin wedding," Lydia says finally.

"Why not?"

"Because," she says, taking a sip of her drink. "Everybody would be too drunk to speak at this point."

"And that's preferable?" Stiles asks. She tilts her head to the side, considering.

"Definitely yes."

In sixty years, when Lydia is lying on her death bed with six Fields Metals and one Nobel Prize sitting on her bedside table (because why the hell should she not have at least one of those, right?), she thinks that several moments from Scott McCall's wedding will flash before her eyes.

She will picture Stiles dancing over-enthusiastically with Melissa McCall while Izzy dances with Raph and Lydia dances with the Sheriff. She will picture Scott and Izzy screeching as they are lifted into the air in chairs, Stiles' face red from holding back laughter as he hoists them up, watching the two of them jokingly kicking to get down. She will picture herself joining hands with Stiles on one side and Isaac on the other as they dance in a circle, going in and out and trying to scream lyrics that aren't even in their own language. She will picture them whizzing around, elbow in elbow, trying not to accidentally let go of each other, even though they're laughing too hard to have much control over anything. She will think about dancing to Man, I Feel Like A Woman with Izzy, and slow dancing with Scott when he lets Stiles have Izzy for a dance. Mostly, she will think about how Stiles was able to pack no less than eleven thinly hidden werewolf puns into one best man speech.

That's probably a new record.

Through all of the weddings Lydia has ever been to, she doesn't think she has ever ached so wonderfully. She feels the happiness spreading all around her body: her fingertips, her toes, her tongue. For hours, she ignores her hollering feet and doesn't even consider sitting down, because sitting down would mean letting go of one single moment of this wedding and she would rather be pumping her fist into the air with Isaac's wife than let anything pass her by.

At the end of the night, Stiles and Scott go for a walk, and Lydia takes the opportunity to collapse into a chair next to Chris Argent. She shucks off her shoes, sighing in relief as they fall to the ground.

"Have you danced at all tonight?" she asks, only because she already knows the answer.

"No," he responds, voice not unkind. He's always gentle with them these days. Probably because he knows how easily any one of them could break. "Just… thinking."

Lydia nods slowly.

"Me too," she says softly. She hadn't thought she could get through this wedding without tears, but it still surprises her when she needs the tissues in her survival purse before Stiles does. Her eyes well quickly, only because she lets them. Everything is heightened tonight: the joy, certainly, but also the fear and loneliness and loss. Lydia can't feel any of them at different levels when she's feeling so much all at once. "I'm going to say what you can't say to yourself."

He looks up at her, eyes too dark and too weary. Just looking at them makes Lydia feel herself darken as well. His loss seeps into her, knocking on her bones and flowing through her her blood until she can feel it heavy on her tongue.

"Sometimes, tonight, it has felt like the wrong wedding."

She enunciates carefully and clearly so that he understands what she's saying, and Lydia isn't surprised when she sees the words resonating through his eyes.

"I know," he says briefly.

"I feel awful for thinking that," Lydia admits. "But it doesn't… it doesn't make it less true."

Mr. Argent chuckles humorlessly.

"Is it sickening that I'd take this girl's happy ending away from her in an instant if it meant that Allison could have one instead?"

"It's human," Lydia tells him. "And not all humans have been forced to feel humanness to the extent that you have. So I would say that nothing about what you're feeling right now is sickening, except for the fact that you have to feel it in the first place."

He smiles weakly at her as he notices something over her shoulder.

"Don't be a stranger, Lydia," he says, nodding at the person behind her, and when she turns around, Stiles is standing there, placing his hands on her shoulders and massaging like it's nothing.

"You ready to go?" he asks, voice low. She wonders if he can sense her sadness.

She nods. "Did you have a good talk with Scott?"

"'Course I did," Stiles says offhandedly. "But he and Izzy are going to Spain and Stiles would like to go to sleep."

"That's fair," Lydia says, picking up her shoes. She leans over to Mr. Argent and kisses him on the cheek. "I'll talk to you soon," she promises. Then she slips her hand into Stiles' and follows him out of the tent and to his car.

They drive home in silence, the radio softly buzzing with noise that is not quite loud enough to hear over the sound of Stiles drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. Lydia leaves the window open and lets her arm hang out of it, leaning into the wind as it blows in her hair.

"You asleep?" Stiles whispers fifteen minutes into the drive. Lydia shakes her head, lolling it lazily over to look at him.

"Just… thinking."

"About how smooth of a dancer I am?"

"About how happy Scott was, actually."

Stiles smiles.

"Yeah. I thought about that a lot too."

She wants to tell him that she wants that for him, but she doesn't know how, so instead she strokes some hair out of his eyes when they're stopped at a red light and keeps her hand on his shoulder when he starts driving again, drawing his name with her thumb. By the time they've pulled up at his apartment outside of Beacon Hills, they haven't spoken for a while. Stiles parks the car and turns it off, then spends several moments just sitting there, his eyes on the windshield.

Eventually, he unbuckles his seatbelt and turns to Lydia, licking his lower lip as he stares at her imploringly.

"You ready?" he asks.

She knows the answer he wants, and it isn't the one she gives.

"Sure," she responds. "Let's go up."

He isn't bitter about it. Just nods and gets out of the car, taking the elevator up to his floor instead of the stairs because they're too tired from dancing to move any more than they have to. The apartment is dark, but Stiles goes around turning on the lights while Lydia heads to his bedroom and tries to decide what to put on.

She's got a red bra and underwear set, and a black teddy, and a lacy purple thing that she really likes as well, because it somehow manages to make her breasts look like they're exactly, perfectly shaped.

But then Stiles barrels into his bedroom and throws his jacket onto the floor along with his tie, not caring as they begin to wrinkle. He shimmies out of his pants, pooling them in a puddle, and unbuttons his shirt, then grabs his t-shirt at the back of his neck so that he can throw that on the floor too. He yawns, ruffling his hair as he walks past Lydia, shirtless and in boxers. Then he reaches into his drawer, pulls out a random t-shirt, and tugs it over his head before collapsing on his bed and faking loud, raucous snores.

Lydia looks at his mouth, open against the dark blue blankets, and makes a decision about what she's going to wear.

"Can I borrow a t-shirt?" she asks as she undoes the clasp of her bra.

"Sure," he replies, snuggling into his pillow and smacking his lips. "Wake me up in five minutes so I can brush my teeth, will you?"

"That seems like a very unlikely possibility," Lydia says.

"Fine," harrumphs Stiles, getting up on auto-pilot and walking over to the bathroom. As he turns on the water and begins brushing his teeth, Lydia pulls one of his t-shirts against her chest and breathes it in before she puts it on.

It stops midway down her thighs, and that makes her smile. She takes three deep breaths before she walks into Stiles' bathroom to find her toothbrush sitting on the counter.

"Toothpaste," she says, grabbing her brush and sticking it out for him. He's already holding the tube, so he squeezes it onto the brush without comment and Lydia begins to brush her teeth next to him, staring at the two of them in the mirror.

Jesus. It doesn't usually occur to her how much taller than her he is, because she's always wearing heels. But they're brushing their teeth together and he's multiple heads taller than her and she feels tiny next to him, despite the fact that he never makes her feel that way normally. She loves that about him.

Stiles spits first, and Lydia follows suit a few seconds later, swiping at the corner of her mouth with her thumb afterwards.

"Can I ask you something?" she asks his reflection.

"Sure," he says, hopping up onto the bathroom counter. Lydia leans her hip against it as she tries to think of how to phrase what she needs to say.

"Did you feel like you were losing something tonight?"

"Yes," Stiles replies without hesitation.

"How so?"

He squints as he thinks about it.

"Scott's my best friend," he says, scratching his cheek while he continues to consider it. "And it's kind of weird to think that I'm not a priority anymore, you know? Like, if it was me and Izzy in a burning building, I always kind of assumed he would grab me and then we would go get her together. But now that they're married, they're the unit, and I'm the poor sucker alone in the fire."

"You're not alone. You're still Scott's brother."

Stiles grins.

"Yeah. That's why I didn't freak out tonight. He has Izzy, and I have him, and he has me, and I have Izzy, and Izzy has me, and… it's gonna be okay. We're gonna be fine. We always are."

"I thought you were going to need saving tonight," Lydia admits as Stiles hops off of the counter and crawls into his bed. Lydia flicks off the light and follows him under the covers.

"Is that why you had three boxes of tissues in your purse?"

"How did you find those?" she asks as he tucks his blankets around the both of them.

"You asked me to grab a phone charger for Braeden."

"Right," Lydia recalls, propping herself up on her elbow. "I also had three different types of hard liquor and a movie."

"Which movie?"

"The Princess Bride."

"Hey. Nice choice."

"Thank you," she says, turning around and making herself comfortable on the pillow. Stiles leans across her to turn off the lamp.

"Hey, Lyds?" he says after a moment.

"Yes?"

"I… I thought I'd feel more left behind today, ya know?"

She doesn't, but she nods anyways.

"Yes," she says softly.

"But then I got to come home and you were in my bedroom putting on your pajamas and your pajamas are my shirt and we brushed our teeth together and I… I don't feel like that at all. Like I'm behind. I just feel like I'm here. With you. And I'm really fucking happy about that."

And out of all the moments from earlier tonight, she thinks the one she will keep the longest is the feeling of Stiles sleepily kissing the back of her neck as he tugs her closer to his body, settling in to fall asleep with her.

6.

"So, don't talk to my grandfather about guns. Like, ever."

Stiles furrows his brow where he sits on the bed, flipping through one of Lydia's magazines. He's got his entire body splayed out diagonally on the gold colored comforter, looking out of place there in the outfit that Lydia had picked out for him. He keeps tugging at the collar of the blue-striped button down and wrinkling his nose when he catches sight of the vest that she'd made him wear, just to see if she could do it.

"Why can't I talk with him about guns?"

"Because he's a nut about them, that is why," Lydia says as though it is obvious, frowning at the way her deep red shirt disappears into her skirt. "Maybe I should wear something else."

She's talking to herself, but Stiles still feels the need to comment.

"I think you look hot."

"I'm trying to look respectable, not bangable."

"Luckily, you're always both."

Lydia scowls at his reflection in the mirror.

"This is why I don't like getting dressed in front of men."

"Because they compliment you?"

She hums, but doesn't respond, instead unzipping her skirt and letting it fall to the floor. Stiles seems much less interested in the magazine as she bends over a dresser drawer and pushes aside his boxers so that she can reach the strapless black and white dress with enormous horizontal stripes, tossing off the red shirt and pulling that over her head instead. She throws her hair into a bun, pulls on a red cardigan, slips into red heels, and checks herself in the mirror.

"Red lipstick," she says decisively, and turns back around when she's done applying it. "What do you think? Do I look like the ever-so-devoted girlfriend of a lawyer?"

"Every moment of every day," says Stiles unblinkingly. "What are you so worried about, anyways? That your family will figure out that we're not really together?"

"That is exactly what I am worried about," Lydia says, throwing her black pencil skirt at him. "Hello, where have you been?"

"Right here, on this bed, for the last eight outfits."

"Eight? It wasn't eight."

"It was eight. I know because I've been keeping a log of how many times I've seen you in just a bra since Derek's wedding."

"Of course you have." She pauses. "Roll down your sleeves."

"Nope," replies Stiles, flipping a page. "If I'm wearing this ridiculous vest, I'm at least keeping my arms free."

"Your veins are distracting me."

"Let them."

Lydia sighs, sitting down next to him on the bed.

"Okay. What did we talk about on the plane?"

"How you prefer flat sprite to cold sprite?"

"No, after that."

"The time you had plane-sex with your ex-boyfriend just because you were in the middle of writing your dissertation and forgot to buy him a birthday present?"

"Before that."

"Okay, we said… keep your mom away from your dad, talk to your dad about nothing but sports and cars, talk to your mom about nothing but you- that should be hard, you're a fairly simplistic person- and if I see your Aunt Caroline holding an empty wine bottle, run, because it means she's drunk and about to throw it."

"And Uncle Harold?"

"Uncle Harold will try to squeeze your ass and I am to stop him with whatever means possible."

"Even if it means grabbing it first. You got it?"

"Couldn't forget that part, Lyds."

She smacks her thighs with her hands before standing up and adjusting her dress.

"And how have you enjoyed Psychology Today?"

"Well, I've diagnosed myself with at least six different illnesses, but other than that it was a very rewarding read," he tells her, getting off of the bed and rolling his eyes as Lydia straightens his tie and pulls at his vest. He pointedly spreads his arms like he's a ragdoll, causing her to tug harder on the vest, just to piss him off.

"Sleeves?"

"No."

"Fine."

She grabs her purse and heads for the door to the room she always stays in when they're at her grandparent's vineyard, allowing Stiles to go through it first. He has his hands in his pockets as he walks down the hallway, taking small steps in order to keep up with Lydia.

"Do you need to go over the story of how we met one more time?"

"Lydia, it's literally the story of how we met."

"Just making sure you can remember!" she says defensively.

"I will be dead before I could forget," he replies, grumpy.

When she'd asked him to come to her sister's wedding as her fake-boyfriend, she hadn't actually considered how difficult it would be to not have to act at all. Bringing Stiles as her date to the wedding seemed like the natural option- they have chemistry, and things in common, and a history. But Lydia hadn't thought about how they would be sleeping in a bed together for three days straight, or showering together, or how they'd be talking to her family members about truths that are lies and lies that are true and, to be truthful, neither of them really know what's what.

The only reason she'd even wanted a fake boyfriend for her sister's wedding was because she is nearly thirty years old and doesn't have time to bother with a real one. At this point, however, Lydia thinks that maybe it would have been easier to leave Stiles home and face her family alone.

But then they reach the top of the staircase and Stiles pretends that he is about to slide down, his face totally deadpan, and Lydia thinks that if she had left him back in his apartment just outside of Beacon Hills, she wouldn't be laughing nearly so much this weekend. Plus, she wouldn't have had a partner in yesterday's badminton tournament. She's not sure if Stiles had been so terrible because of his natural clumsiness or because of her short skirt, but she'd been good enough to get them to the final round on her own anyways, and it had been nice to have a partner who would fuck her in the shower after the game, despite how sweaty she was.

Plus, his ass does look damn good in those pants.

As they emerge onto the front green and grab their first drinks of the night- wine, wine, and more wine- Lydia begins pointing out which family members are best to avoid.

"That's my crazy cousin Carrie… and that's coming from me. I've never seen anyone get kicked out of so many boarding schools. And there's my Uncle's girlfriend… she's off her fucking rocker… oh, and if you dance with her, she will try to twerk on you."

"Well, someone ought to."

Lydia chokes on her sip of wine at that mental image, causing Stiles to open his mouth indignantly. Before he can retaliate, however, she grabs his sleeve.

"Uncle Harold."

Smoothly, Stiles slides over and casually places his hand on her ass, tucking her body into his.

"Like this?" he asks lowly.

Lydia swallows.

"Yep, that's good."

"Lyddie!" her Uncle calls out, cheeks stained almost the same red as the wine in his glass. "Who is this young feller?"

Stiles cringes at the word 'feller' being used by anyone not from Alabama.

"This is my boyfriend, Stiles Stilinski," Lydia says, placing her hand on his chest.

Shit, that feels weird to say. Good weird. But still weird.

"Pleasure to meet you, sir," Stiles says, and Lydia has to hold back a laugh at how polite he's being.

"Heddie, come over here, Lyddie's got a feller!"

She groans internally as her Aunt Heddie, plus the small gaggle of people that she'd been talking to, look up in curiosity and flock over to the two of them. Stiles perks up, moving his hand up from her butt to her hip and squeezing it lightly, as if trying to affirm that they've got this.

"Lydia, is this your boyfriend?"

"Mhm," she replies through a tight-lipped smile. "My boyfriend. Stiles Stilinski."

"And what do you do for a living Mr. Stilinski?"

"I'm a lawyer," he answers. "Probably have Lyddie here to thank for that."

She pinches his side at the nickname, causing him to jump in surprise.

"How so?" asks one of Lydia's relatives.

"She made me love to argue," Stiles says, making everybody 'awww' loudly, and Stiles smirks.

"That's right; there's nothing Stiles likes more than a good argument," Lydia says, voice syrupy.

"Except making up," he adds, stroking her nose lovingly and trying not to laugh.

Oh no. No. No. No. No!

"So how did you two meet?" Uncle Harold asks.

"First grade," Stiles says. "Mrs. Levington's class. We actually sat in the same desk cluster two months in a row. Best two months of my young life."

That's actually true. Lydia remembers because they'd gotten into multiple arguments over which Pokemon was best, and she hadn't been able to stand the fact that his choices were so ignorant. Plus, Scott had always backed him up, even when she was clearly right, and it had driven her up the wall.

Whatever. She preferred Greek Gods anyways.

"And when did you two begin dating?"

"Oh, a few years back at a friend's wedding."

"We saw each other again and we just knew it was right," Lydia says simply. "He happens to be an excellent dancer."

"Oh, honey, you're writing checks that I'm not going to be able to cash at the reception," Stiles jokes, wiggling his wine glass disapprovingly at her.

"Can I help it that I just love bragging about you, pumpkin?"

He shrugs modestly, lifting his eyes to the sky.

"I guess not, sugar lips."

Sugar. Lips. When has it ever been okay to call someone sugar lips? At least pumpkin is a reasonable terrible nickname. Sugar lips goes way too far.

Eventually, Lydia leads him away from her heckling relatives under the guise of needing more wine. To their credit, they actually do need more wine.

Stiles won't stop looking around as they make their way across the lawn.

"Is there anything here but wine and cheese?"

Lydia pats him comfortingly on the arm.

"Don't worry, sugar lips. You will soon be too drunk to want anything but more wine."

"Oh, you liked that nickname, didja?"

"It improved the quality of my life tenfold," says Lydia dryly, stopping at a table and lifting a glass of wine from a tray. "Here," she says, handing it to Stiles. "Drink up. The drunker you are, the better the nicknames will be, right?"

"Funny," he says, but he takes a sip anyways. "Hey, does your mom know the truth about us?"

"The fact that we fuck like bunnies but aren't actually together?"

"Yep, that's the one."

Lydia nibbles on a piece of cheese, trying to figure out how best to articulate the extent to which her mother does not know that they fuck like bunnies.

"I just told her I was bringing a date to the wedding and artfully dodged her when she asked me if she needed a separate room for him."

"Did you, uh, mention his name?"

"That would be a no. Why do you ask?"

"Well, a little bit because I'm interested, but mostly because her jaw just dropped open and she's about to come over here to confront us."

"Great," Lydia replies, smile freezing on her face.

"Stiles!" her mother says, sounding blown away. "You're Lydia's mystery date."

"Yup, that's me. I'm an enigma."

Her mother nods, wordless. Her hands tap nervously against her wine glass.

"We've gotten a lot closer lately, and I thought it might be fun to bring him."

"To meet Stefanie?"

"To keep me company," Lydia says, tightening her grip around Stiles' arm. "You know how weddings can be." There's a long pause. "So, um, how's Florida?"

"We talked on the phone two days ago. You know how Florida is."

"Oh, that's right. Shuffleboard. Beaches."

"We talked two days ago and you never mentioned that I know your date."

Lydia shrugs.

"I thought it wouldn't be a big deal."

Her mother clearly thinks differently. Lydia doesn't blame her. The last time she'd heard about Stiles, Lydia had been having one of her rare breakdowns alone in her room, then decided to up and date a twenty-six year old man. Not exactly a coo towards Stiles. At all.

The moment is interrupted, thankfully, by Lydia's Aunt Cynthia.

"Lyddie!" she says, kissing Lydia on both cheeks, despite the fact that she is not European and, with that, has absolutely no excuse for her extremely affected accent. "How have you been?"

"Oh, well, I got a PhD and I've got a research grant from MIT, and-"

"And who's this?" her Aunt Cynthia asks, cutting her off.

Lydia deflates slightly.

"This is Stiles. He's a lawyer."

"A lawyer! And so handsome too, oh, what a catch Lyddie! Natalie, you must be so proud."

By the end of the night, Lydia is dragging her feet up the marble stairs and trying to decide what had annoyed her more: her fourteen-year-old cousin getting drunk off of wine and singing a Lady Gaga song at the top of his lungs, or every single other one of her relatives.

"They don't even care about the fact that I work at an ivy league school," she complains, stomping particularly hard on the next step. Stiles brings up a hand to touch her shoulder, then realizes that he is carrying her heels and quickly switches hands.

"Yeah," he says sympathetically. "But it's only because they suck."

She grabs her key from the cup of her bra and unlocks the door to her room, instinctively flicking the lights on.

"I felt like one of those pretty little trophy wives that everybody in our high school thought I was destined to be."

Stiles lets out a low whistle.

"That got way real way fast."

"I'm not in the mood for anything else."

He undoes his tie first, practically kicking it to the ground as his hands go for the buttons of his vest, which he proceeds to throw across the room. It lands on one of the doorknobs of the French doors that lead to the balcony and swings there.

"Ten points," he says proudly. "Beat that."

"I would, but I'm an adult."

Her dress pools on the floor and she drops her bra as well before she stretches towards the ceiling.

"Thank god," she moans. "Ten points to my breasts for putting up with that all night."

"Good job, R2 and D2," Stiles says as his pants fall to the floor. "You guys were troopers today."

"Are you going to shower tonight?" Lydia calls after Stiles as he heads into the bathroom wearing nothing but green boxers and a pair of black socks.

"Tomorrow morning," he replies, grinning when she walks into the room wearing the Star Wars t-shirt he'd bought her last Christmas. "Hey, I recognize that."

"I wear it to bed sometimes," Lydia says offhandedly. "What? It's comfy!" She says when he won't stop smirking at her. "Oh, shut it."

"I think you look great in it."

"Just so you know, you're not getting laid tonight," Lydia says around her toothbrush.

"Oh? And why not?"

"Because of the nicknames," Lydia informs him, spitting. "They will haunt me for the next two days at least. I can't let you get away with it."

"Fine," sighs Stiles, turning off the faucet and heading out of the bathroom. Lydia throws a towel at him when he turns off the light while she's still in there, glad that he can't see her smile.

They find themselves curled up under the covers, the room illuminated by nothing but the stars, leaking in through the glass French doors. They lie there in silence for a while, Stiles' body spoons Lydia's, until she eventually realizes that she isn't going to be asleep any time soon.

"Stiles," she whispers.

"Mmm?" he grunts.

"Are you awake?"

"I am not."

She pauses.

"How about now?"

"Oh, well, now everything's different."

"Great."

She flips over so that they are face to face, then slides onto his pillow, pressing her nose against his briefly before looking at him.

"So."

"Yeah?"

"How do you like my family?"

Stiles chuckles.

"They are very…"

"Very?"

"Very drunk."

Lydia nods seriously.

"That's the description we should put on the website."

"It is a nice house, though. House might actually be an underrepresentation of what it is."

"My grandparents have lived here forever," she says.

"Your dad's parents?"

"Mhm. I actually always sleep in this room. It's, like, my room."

"Is it weird to have someone else in here?"

"Aside from my American Girl dolls? Yes."

"So," says Stiles. "What's your real room like?"

"My… real room?"

"Like, at home."

"You've been there."

"No, I mean Boston home. In your apartment. In Boston."

It suddenly seems odd that he doesn't know what it looks like. They've Skyped a few times- one of them being the time when she had asked him to fake-date her for her older sister's wedding. But he hasn't stood in her kitchen or sat on her couch or fought over the remote with her, like they've done at his apartment.

He hasn't been near it.

"My bedroom walls are this seafoam color that I really like," she says. "And I have… um… really nice light bulbs." Stiles shakes with silent laughter. "And there's a framed poster of the Periodic Table of Elements that Allison gave me for my birthday one year, and… and my comforter is gray with constellations stitched onto it. It's kind of childish, but it makes me smile."

"Lyds, I have a framed Star Trek poster in my bedroom. I'm not judging."

She realizes that she is lying in a bed with a shirtless Stiles Stilinski, who has eyes that are shining in the light of the moon, and who keeps squinting at her like he can't believe she's there. It slams into her, and Lydia isn't sure if she's drunk on wine or Stiles as she throws her head back and starts laughing. Stiles' eyes widen as his smile grows, and he covers her mouth with his hand to quiet her.

"Your sister is down the hall and she is getting married tomorrow," he reminds her, a disbelieving laugh in his voice. "Shut the fuck up."

For once, she listens to him.

"Fine," she says, turning over. "I don't have to tell you anything else about my bedroom."

He gives her about twenty seconds before his warm fingers sneak under her shirt and around her waist, asking her to pay attention to him again. Lydia sighs laboriously and turns around.

"What?" she asks quietly. "What now?"

Stiles tugs her closer so that he can press their foreheads together. "Tell me a secret."

"A secret?"

He nods against her.

"Something cool."

Lydia lowers her voice.

"Supernatural creatures are real," she whispers, wiggling her eyebrows conspiratorially. Stiles nudges her knee with his leg.

"Like, something I don't know about you, dingus."

Something he doesn't know. About her. Something that Stiles Stilinski doesn't know about Lydia Martin after all these years.

'Well," she says slowly. "I was in love with you in high school."

His entire body freezes.

"W...what?"

"I was in love with you," she murmurs. "I wanted to be with you so badly. I loved… I loved your fingers, and the way you looked at me, and the way you never asked me for any more than I gave you, even though I knew you wanted it." His breath hitches.

"Are you being serious right now?"

She ignores this.

"I loved your cheekbones and your handwriting and the way you never realized how much I loved you, because it meant that you gave me everything you could possibly give me without expecting anything in return. Nobody's ever done that for me. I loved you so much for it."

His body is hovering over hers in a second flat, lips covering hers gently as she arches up into his touch, brushing her thumbs against the cheekbones that she had just been speaking about.

"I'm sorry," he says, lips smothered by her lips. "Sorry," he says again, moving down to her collarbone. "Sorry, sorry, sorry." He kisses the top of her breasts, then crawls down and lifts her shirt so that he can place a kiss just above her belly button.

"It's okay," she promises, blinking tears away from her eyes as he pulls her shirt over her head and presses kisses against her ribs, rubbing his thumb over the spots that his lips have just vacated. "I didn't tell you." She never tells him.

"I never said it either," he says, looking up at her with an earnestness in his eyes that doesn't sit right with the words he'd just said. "God, we had sex and I didn't even say it."

"It's not your fault that you thought it was a one-off."

"I thought you were just anxious about leaving for college," he admits. "That's… that's what I told myself afterwards."

"I told myself that you were fulfilling some ridiculous boyhood fantasy. Because if I thought otherwise, I'm not sure I could've gotten onto the plane the next day."

"I thought about you every day," Stiles says, folding his hands on her stomach and resting his chin on them so that he can look up at her. "I never stop thinking about you."

"I missed you every day," Lydia tells him, running her fingers through his hair. "I still do, even when I get to see you."

He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing, and when he opens them, he's ready to kiss his way up her body and back to her mouth.

"Lydia-"

"Mhm," she responds, sliding her hands under the waistband of his boxers as she kisses him. "Please do."

"Kay," he breathes against her skin, before reaching onto the floor and grabbing one of the condoms that had spilled onto the ground when they'd ripped open the box on their first night at the vineyard. He sets it on the bed next to Lydia, then disappears under the covers, kicking them off when he reaches her thighs. He kisses the inside of her right thigh, then her left, eyes on her the entire time. Calmly, Stiles slides Lydia's panties down her legs and pulls them off, tugging her legs further apart so that he can settle between them. His lips and tongue are gentle as he expertly sculpts a fire in her, starting from where he is and shooting through Lydia's body. He keeps his eyes on her until she isn't sure what's making her breathless anymore- the way he's touching her, or the way he's looking at her. She can't take her eyes off of his, and even when he wraps his lips around her clit and hums around it, Lydia fights to keep her eyes open.

"Please," she gasps out. "Stiles, please."

She doesn't need to say anything else, because he snatches the condom and unwraps it, sliding it on with hands that haven't stopped shaking in several minutes. It's different this time. It's not from excitement, or from lust. It is the trembling of someone who is full to the brim and needs to move to try to shake some of the emotion from his body. Because it's too much. Everything that she is feeling, everything that she wants to give to him, is too much for both of them.

The way he pushes into her is so painfully slow that Lydia has half a mind to tell him to speed up. But he's moving so deliberately that she knows better than to say anything, so instead she meets his pace and moves against him in a way that is unhindered by anything. She feels open to him in a way that she never has before, because he knows now- he knows everything that she has been guarding and he is still looking at her like she's the most magical thing he's ever seen in a world full of supernatural creatures.

He's bracing himself above her, one hand by her shoulder, one hand flat against the headboard, and she moans as she thinks about the weight of him pressing her into the mattress as he slides in and out of her. But this isn't something heavy, or something that would drag them down, so Lydia wraps her fingers around Stiles' wrist, barely getting them all the way around, and mirrors the action with her legs around his hips.

The thing that is so striking about this moment is that it isn't about getting off. It's not about fucking Stiles, or watching him come. It is about savoring the feeling of him inside of her for however brief a time they can be together. It's about the burn of the way he stretches her, and the way she wraps her body around him so that she can be as close to him as possible.

She leans upwards to press her lips against the sweat that has formed at his sternum, making him gasp. He's struggling not to speak, but she knows what he wants to say anyways, so she drags his head down so that she can kiss him and say it back.

Later, he sleeps with his arms wrapped around her and doesn't have a single nightmare.

She watches him dream and thinks about the possibility of never saying goodbye.

Lydia's face is flushed from dancing by the time the sun sets over the vineyard. Her sister is still in the middle of the floor, wearing her second gown of the night as she throws her hands into the air and sways her hips to the same beat that Lydia's grandmother is swinging hers. For a moment, she sharply misses Scott.

"Damn, you have a nimble grandma," Stiles says from behind her, approaching with two drinks in hand. "Mint mojito?"

Lydia takes it appreciatively.

"Finally, something that isn't wine."

"I know, right? I think if your granddad suffered from major blood loss, we could literally re-fill him with wine."

"Remind me again why you're a lawyer and not a doctor?"

"Beats me."

He takes her hand and begins to walk towards the balcony, which is filled with people cooling themselves off from the festivities. Lydia has already made her maid-of-honor speech, so she takes several more sips from the mojito, fully prepared to get drunk in order to come up with snappy new answers in regards to why she hasn't married herself off yet. The sun is setting low in the sky as Stiles and Lydia lean against the railing, looking out across the vineyard. In the distance, she catches sight of two of her relatives leaping around and clutching protectively onto two bottles of wine.

"These people are crazy," Lydia mutters. "I'm so sorry for dragging you to this wedding."

"Naw, it's not all bad," Stiles says happily. "After all, I totally scored with the maid of honor."

"What a coincidence! I hooked up with the mysterious stranger who everybody is talking about."

"How lucky are we?"

"Just… so fucking blessed."

He laughs, mashing his hands together nervously.

"It's gorgeous here," Stiles says after a moment, voice muted.

"It is," Lydia agrees.

"I always pictured myself getting married outside."

She looks over at him.

"You want to get married?"

And Stiles just raises his eyebrows.

"C'mon. You know the answer to that."

Her skin prickles slightly.

"I don't! You've never told me."

"Lydia."

He meets her eyes, pleading with her to understand, and she drops her gaze just as the door to the balcony bursts open.

"Cake!" Someone shouts, causing everybody to begin filing back into the reception hall in one large mass. Stiles doesn't stop looking at Lydia. Lydia doesn't move from her spot on the railing.

Once everybody is gone and the door is closed, Stiles turns around, his back against the wooden rail so that he can look at the group inside.

"I wanted to get a dog, you know."

"I didn't know that," Lydia says lightly, despite the lump that has already begun to form in her throat.

"Yeah," Stiles says, nodding. "I went to the pound, and I was all set to buy a dog, right? I thought, 'this is it. Scott's getting married, Lydia's getting smarter, and Stiles is going to get a dog. This is the solution.'"

"The solution to what?"

"I don't know," he says. "The solution." He pauses, twiddling his thumbs together for a moment. "Except then," he says, straightening up slightly. "The lady asked me if I wanted a big dog or a small dog. And I didn't know. She asked me where I was going to be in five years- an apartment, a house. A city, or the country. And I didn't know. And I thought to myself… would Lydia rather have a big dog, or a small dog? Would Lydia want to be in a house, or an apartment, or a condo, or a fucking brownstone in the middle of New York City? And I didn't fucking know. I didn't even know if it mattered. I realized that I had stopped living my life because I didn't know how you wanted to live yours. And then I left the fucking pound with that knowledge and without a goddamn dog."

Lydia licks her lips, unsure of what to say.

"Stiles, I-"

But his eyes are suddenly so calm. He seems peaceful for the first time since they started talking.

"So I'm just going to do this. Right here, right now, and I'm sorry if it ruins your sister's wedding but… Lydia. I want you." She grips the railing harder. "I want you, so… I'm ready. I'm ready when you are. I haven't stopped waiting for you, and I'm not going to. When you want me, I'm all in."

He leans down, kisses her cheek, and then turns around and walks away.

Six months later, she gets a wedding invitation in the mail and checks the "will not be attending" box.

7.

When Lydia was a child, her favorite house on the ride to school had been Scott McCall's house. It was a slightly smaller house than the one she was used to living in, but it had always been littered with toys that her fingers had itched to play with. There were tiny little cages for putting bugs in, and two wagons, one redder than the other. There was a kid-sized fake car that she would constantly see Scott riding around in with his best friend, both looking like they were having the time of their lives despite the fact that they were going far slower than any actual car would go.

Once, she had driven past his house and seen Scott sobbing as his mom patched up a scrape on his knee. As Lydia watched, she kissed the scrape while Stiles sat in the background, watching with a look of consternation on his face. Lydia never knew what that meant until years later, when she realized that, despite having a perfectly good father to kiss his wounds, it was never quite big enough compared to what he really wanted.

Today, as she drives up to Scott McCall's house, there are no toys on the front lawn. Instead, there are a plethora of chairs set up in neat rows on the freshly mown grass. Lydia imagines Scott and Stiles blasting a series of classic-rock songs as they had set up the chairs, dropping them occasionally to play air guitar.

Parking is nearly impossible to come by, so Lydia leaves her car down the street and walks all the way to the McCall household in her impossibly high heels. She's sweating by the time she gets there, but it's not because of the day. It's because of her quickening breath and speeding heartbeat and the palms that are sweaty against her dress. In a yard full of wedding guests, it's easy to blend in and sneak her way to the front door. It swings open easily for her, and Lydia wastes no time in tromping up the stairs. She isn't sure which room to go to, so she tries Scott's first, feeling as though it might be the most likely place.

When she knocks on the door, the voice that calls out for her to come in is exactly the one she wants to hear.

"Sheriff," she says, smiling brightly at him. "Hi."

"Lydia," he says, surprised. "Ah, hello. We didn't think you were coming."

"I got a last minute flight," she responds. "I hope that's okay."

"Of course it is," says the Sheriff, holding an arm out so that he can hug her. "You got here just in time to help me with this damn bow-tie."

"You got it," Lydia says, hands moving to expertly tie it. "Stiles threw a miniature hissy fit when he had to wear one of these for Scott's wedding. I hope he was better behaved today."

"Just a bit," the Sheriff jokes. "He knows I could still clobber him in a second."

"I have no doubt of that," Lydia says, finishing off the bow-tie and taking a step back to admire her handiwork. "Aim right for the ankles."

"He's always had weak ankles, poor kid. Good thing he was quick on his feet."

"Speaking of feet," she hedges. "How are yours?"

"Toasty," promises the Sheriff. "But you're not here to ask about my feet."

"True," Lydia says, taking a step back so that she can lean against Scott's desk. "I came to ask for… your permission, I suppose."

His eyes are glinting as he crosses his arms over his chest and gives her his best protective-father stare.

"Permission for what?"

"For Stiles," Lydia says, meeting his stare with an unwavering gaze of her own. "I know I've spent about fifteen years hurting him. But if he'll let me, I want to stop doing that. I don't want him to feel that way anymore."

The sheriff frowns.

"All these years… this hasn't been about you being okay with him being in pain. So what was it?"

Lydia folds her hands in front of herself, trying to attribute the shortness of breath to the fact that she had recently climbed an entire flight of stairs.

"I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to hurt him all over again," she admits, moving over to the window. "But this…" She pauses. Stops breathing for a moment when she sees Stiles on the lawn, laughing as Scott elbows him continuously, jumping up and down and trying to push Stiles over. "I'm ready for it. I'm ready to not let go of it. All of it."

He nods. Slowly. Then more quickly as a smile begins to etch its way into the weathered lines around his eyes.

"Then I think we can find an extra seat for you somewhere."

Lydia kisses him on the cheek before she leaves him to finish getting ready for his wedding.

Despite the fact that she sits in the back, Stiles notices her in the midst of Melissa gliding down the aisle. His back stiffens, his eyes hardening for a brief moment when he sees her. Then he swallows hard, and his posture relaxes as he offers her a weak smile.

He doesn't look at her for the rest of the wedding. Doesn't even clap eyes on her until she has moved through the receiving line and is hugging the four people who are so much to each other that it is almost overwhelming- the enormity of what their family means to them. They look perfect together. Like it was meant to end like this from the start of the beginning.

There are fairylights strung up all around Scott's yard, and by the time Lydia has said hello to everybody she needs to, people are dancing in the middle of the floor, barely able to hear the music over the buzz of conversation. She sits with a piece of cake untouched in her lap as she watches Stiles dance with his date.

Her name is Lisa. Stiles had met her through work. She looks beautiful as the fairylights make her face glow with vibrancy.

Lydia knows better than to be jealous.

One song bleeds into another, and the fireflies are flitting off in the distance as Stiles approaches Lydia, his face set into a determined line.

"Hey," he says. "You ready for a dance yet?"

She nods because it is not her place to ask why it had taken him so long. Just allows herself to take the hand that he has offered her and lets him pull her up, naturally threading their fingers together. His palm is sweaty. It's okay. Hers is too.

Stiles' hand is higher on her back than it has been in years, and it would make Lydia laugh if it didn't make her so anxious.

"We thought you weren't coming," he says, twirling Lydia out. She spins back to him.

"Me too," she admits.

"I brought a date."

"I see that. She seems lovely."

"That's a very noncommittal word you're using," Stiles teases, hand relaxing slightly on her back.

"Well, I did just meet her."

"Me too," he says quietly.

"What do you mean? Haven't you known her for a few months?"

He shrugs.

"Yeah."

She's too intelligent not to read the subtext. She's too brave not to use the opening.

"Look," she says. "I understand if you're angry. I dropped all communication after my sister's wedding. I stayed away. I wasn't honest with you when you were honest with me. I get it."

"Who said I was mad?"

"I'm making an assumption based on the fact that your lips are pressed together very tightly."

"Maybe I'm just trying not to ask what you weren't honest with me about."

She strokes her hand lightly up and down his back, tracing the familiar curves and muscles.

"The thing is, Stiles," she says, "I don't care if you bring another girl as a date to a wedding. Even if you think I'm going to be there."

He raises his eyebrows.

"Really."

"Really," she says. "I'm not perfect. I know that I'm damaged and I know that parts of you are damaged because of me. But seeing you with her tonight… and not seeing you at all for these past few months… just… I don't care if you bring her to weddings. Just don't marry her."

"Don't marry her," he says flatly. "Okay. Give me three reasons why not."

Without thinking about it, Lydia stretches up on her tip toes so that she can whisper in his ear.

"Stiles Stilinski," she says, her heart clenching. "I'll give you one."

8.

It is Stiles' idea to do the thing with the sand.

Lydia doesn't have a preference either way- she'd be fine with going to Vegas and getting married by a cheaply costumed Elvis, just as long as she got to wake up in the morning in a reasonably nice hotel room with a husband that she's been in love with since she was sixteen.

After she says that, though, Stiles gets such a horrified look on his face that Lydia ends up doing a complete 180 and throwing the wedding of a lifetime, just to get her fiance to stop seeming like she'd fed him sour lemons.

In the end, she actually likes the sand thing.

They go to the beach the night before and scoop up the tiny granules into a jar, laughing too hard at the way Gabriel falls down in the sand, clutching onto Scott and Izzy's hand as though his life depends on it.

The first time Stiles had held him in the hospital room, exhausted gray circles under his eyes, he had been completely taken aback by how tiny Gabe's fingers were. Lydia had watched his mouth round perfectly as the baby gurgled in his arms.

Luckily, she'd had her camera out already when Stiles had looked up at Scott with complete awe in his eyes.

"Dude," he'd said. "You made this thing."

Scott had grinned, scrubbing a hand across his crooked jaw, his hospital bracelet sliding up and down his arm.

"Crazy, right? I make a baby, you get to be an Uncle."

Ever since that night, Stiles has been taking his duties very seriously. So much so that, today, Gabriel had toddled down the aisle carrying two small jars of sand with him, barely able to make it all the way to them. Stiles had caught him before he fell, lifting him into the air and pressing a kiss against his chubby cheek before sending him off towards his mother.

As soon as he sees Lydia peering around the doorway, Stiles grins hugely and offers her two thumbs up. Then she moves fully into view, and the audience stands up, and he sees her in her dress for the first time and his arms flop to his side. Lydia starts walking, lifting her shoulders in question, and he rolls his eyes, shaking his head and grinning as his eyes fill with tears.

By the time they get the rings on, she is sick of communicating only with her eyes. She wants to ask him how his day has gone, and whether Scott has cried yet, and if he remembered to feed the dog before they left the house this morning. As fairytale as this entire thing is, the fact that they have a life outside of the dress that she is wearing and the tuxedo that Stiles is in makes Lydia's heart beat faster.

She lifts her jar of sand and he lifts his and they pour them together until the grains are no longer distinguishable. Stiles likes it because it's symbolic, and Lydia agrees, but it's not symbolic of their wedding. It is symbolic of who they are and who they have become. What they have been inching towards since they met each other years ago. Who she is has always been the person that Stiles has allowed her to be, and as she watches the granules of sand vanish into each other, she knows with absolutely certainty that she will never have to pretend again.

Never have to pretend, or feel unimportant, or uncared for.

There's no way to separate one person's jar of sand from the other. No possible way to pull them apart.

Before they leave the hall, Lydia makes sure to hand the jar to her mother for safekeeping. She'll put it on their mantel later on. Right now, they have a reception to go to.

She's been to more weddings than she can count, but none of them have actually been Lydia's, and she doesn't realize until they're midway through the reception that she is letting it whiz by her. She's standing next to the cake, holding a small piece of it on her fork and a plate of it in her hand, and everybody is watching, waiting for her to feed it to Stiles, and she is still thinking about whether or not her seating chart is right.

He sees the change in her face as soon as it occurs.

"What?" he says, and when Lydia smiles, his jaw drops. "No. Lyds, no."

She presses a small kiss against his lips before shoving the entire plate of cake in his face.

Lydia's favorite moment happens later on that night, when she and Stiles are sitting at their table, and Scott begins tapping his fork against his glass.

"KISS!" he shouts, and Izzy cups her hands around her mouth to join in.

Stiles leans over and places a quick kiss on Lydia's lips, then picks up his vodka Shirley Temple, intending to take another sip. When he looks back at the crowd, he sees Scott's mouth twisted into a smirk as he holds up a sign that reads '2' in large black lettering.

Lydia raises her eyebrows.

"Apparently Scott is unimpressed with your kissing prowess."

"Fuck him," Stiles mutters under his breath, waving at Lydia's grandmother. She offers him a thumbs down. "Ugh. No. I am a great kisser."

He leans into Lydia again, taking her head in his hands and kissing her. They only pull back when Scott's boo fills the room, and he holds up a '4.' Lydia snorts loudly, then covers her mouth when Stiles looks over at her furiously.

"Aw, fuck this," he says, and then he stands up, pulls her out of her chair, and dips her over the table, kissing her in a way that makes Lydia wonder how weird it would be to leave her own wedding to go fuck her new husband in the bathroom.

They pull apart when Danny whoops so loudly that it echoes across the room. Scott holds up a '10.' Stiles looks far too satisfied with himself. Lydia, on the flip-side, is thoroughly unsatisfied.

She keeps one hand on Stiles at all times until they finally hug the last guest goodbye and get into the elevator. For a moment, the doors slide shut, and they are completely silent. Then, Stiles turns to Lydia, a small, befuddled smile lifting his lips.

"Hey," he says, nudging her. "We got married."

Her lids get heavy as she moves closer to him, lifting her chin so that she can kiss him.

"Stiles," she murmurs, lips grazing his. "Please. Please get me out of this fucking corset."

He laughs, wrapping his arms around her waist and dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

"Sure. And do you want to take a shot for each bobby pin that's holding this up?" he asks, tugging on a piece of her updo that had fallen down while she was dancing.

"No," Lydia says sternly. "I want to remember the Honeymoon."

"Mmm," sighs Stiles, nuzzling her temple. "Me too."

"Although," she says as the elevator doors ding open. "I was thinking… maybe we could start it off before we get there."

"What're you talking about?" Stiles asks, following her down the hallway and to the room. He presses the keycard against the reader while Lydia watches him, noticing the way his jaw jumps slightly when the door unlocks. She pushes into the room and finds the small suitcase that she'd asked Izzy to bring up for her, a folder set on top. The words 'Beacon Hills High School' are printed on the front, something that Stiles notices as soon as Lydia hands the folder to him. "Is this from high school?" he asks, keeping it closed as he searches her face.

"Not even a little," she responds. "Open it."

He opens the folder.

"Your course syllabus for next semester?" he questions. Lydia nods. "And… and a copy of legal paperwork." He's a lawyer. He'll figure it out soon enough. "A… name change request." He looks up at her, wetting his lower lip nervously as he flicks back to the syllabus. "Dr. Lydia Stilinski," he reads softly. "Oh my god. Dr. Lydia Stilinski."

Lydia considers this moment to be the first and last time she can and will ever see him speechless.

"You're sort of stuck with me now," Lydia says, peering up at him mischievously through her lashes. For a moment, Stiles just looks at her, the corner of his lip quirked upwards. Then he walks around until he is behind her and slowly unzips her dress, letting it fall to the ground. One by one, he undoes the hooks on her corset and unties the strings.

"Thank god," he replies. "Lydia, thank fucking god."

She leans against his back, resting her head on his shoulder.

"I love you."

"I love you. Dr. Lydia Stilinski."

Lydia laughs.

"Are you going to call me that the entire weekend?"

"Hey, I didn't think you were going to change your name. This is all new to me. I'm pretty damn excited."

She turns around, sliding her arms around his neck and leaning in to kiss him.

"All these years and we still get new stuff," she says contemplatively. "That's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

"I'm pretty impressed by us," he says, voice husky. "I've always been impressed by you."

"I'm an impressive woman," she teases. "It's not really a surprise."

"Ugh, you're supposed to say it back."

"Hey, I changed my name. Isn't that enough?"

She'd wanted to do it, and he hadn't asked her to, but he still nods slowly.

"Wow. Yeah. You're gonna use that against me for the rest of our lives, aren't you?"

"I am."

"Looking forward to it."

Honestly, she is too.

A/N: A/N: Wow. I can't believe how long this got. If you made it to the finish line... I'm certain you need a pee break. Go pee. Then come back and tell me how you liked it.

Oh, before you do pee, I would just like to thank Polina (trashstiles) for existing and for letting me rant at her randomly but not tell her anything that was going on because I wanted her to be surprised. I would like to thank Ashley (happychesters), Sophii (blackjacktheboss), and Rachel (madgrad2011) for their beta reading skills. There would be so many more typos without these guys.

I also want to thank Holland and Dylan for having crazy distinctive voices that I have borrowed for some purposes that are not altogether pure. Also, thanks to Stiles and Lydia for being who they are, because this fic has made me love them even more. My small, beautiful, perfect children. I cried no less than eight million times while writing this, including actual tears during almost every sex scene.

This fic has been in the making since April or May, so I kind of can't believe I'm actually looking at the words have been floating in my head forever. Like, I'm amazed that this happened. But I'm also so glad that it turned out the way it did (shout out to Speak Now by Taylor Swift, without which this fic wouldn't have been written.)

I hope you liked this fic and that you'll tell me which wedding was your favorite because I can't choose. Also, I am so freaking sorry for the smut. It just happened.

If you want to talk Stydia or fic, I'm on tumblr as dr-lydiastilinski.

~writergirl8/Rachel