That’s Where You’ll Find Me
Fandom: Teen Wolf / The Wizard of Oz AU
Characters: Stiles + Lydia, Prada, Scott, Allison, Alan Deaton
Then, being prepared for the journey, they all started for the Emerald City. - L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
“…the Wicked Witch of the West had come to an end, and they were no longer prisoners in a strange land.”
Stiles, having read the last line of chapter twelve, sets the book down.
It’s calm. Everything is calm. The rain. The wind. The room. Lydia.
It’s 8:08 a.m., and she’s curled beside him with her fingertips tucked into his shirt pocket, green thread from his flannel still wrapped loosely around her index. The lamp on her nightstand casts a soft orange glow on her skin, makes her shine like the sun, makes the murky grey sky outside her window seem less dull and depressing.
He hasn’t nodded off since the last time, but he feels like he’s just waking up or like he was split in two and part of him was somewhere else for a while. The place was unfamiliar — older and darker, cold — but the energy wasn’t. That he’d recognize anywhere. It was warm and powerful. Vibrant. Unmistakably, Lydia.
Something happened between them.
Unlike the sex fantasy he had of them in a forest, he can’t remember much of what it looked like. But he remembers what it felt like. Like his heart had been touched by Lydia. Like she put her hand right inside his chest and squeezed.
And it didn’t hurt. Not one bit. It was the purest expression of love he’s experienced in his nearly eighteen years on Earth. It felt like proof that they can always reach each other.
“I think we’re through the worst of it,” he tells her. “Don’t you?”
The corner of her mouth hitches, ever so slightly, like she agrees.
“That’s right. It’s gonna be easier from here on out.”
At the sound of his voice, Prada stirs from her most recent nap. She looks up at him with big brown eyes, fluffy tail slapping against Lydia’s book as if to say, keep going.
He pats her head, takes a sip of water, and flips to chapter thirteen. “How ‘bout we get to the really good part now, Lydia? The part where you come home to me?”
“Hmm…home,” she mutters. “Stiles.”
He feels that squeeze again, and he hopes it’s a sign that only a few more chapters stand between this moment and Lydia waking up.
🏷️ @folglore13, @kylermalloy (drop a comment if you’d like to be tagged for the final chapters)
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