Hi! You can call me Anya, and this is my trash side blog devoted to all things teen wolf - but mostly stydia. Icon requests are closed. Header by @stydiaislove. Mobile links: Fics | Icons | Edits | Art | Navigation
so I’m almost never on tumblr anymore, but in case any of you remember my old fics, I wanted to come back to let you know that I FINALLY finished the second part to this fic that I wrote for the Stydia Big Bang almost four years ago haha
there’s also some excellent art for it that @wellsjahasghost and @sydrianssage made for it way back in 2017 that you can check out here and here if you would like :)
enjoy!
(Rated M)
“I can't believe I've been a ghost for ten years, and nobody thought to tell me about the new Star Wars trilogy until today. ”
“Stiles, nobody even knew you existed until last month.”
Kira slapped Malia’s knee—lightly, because Kira was still incapable of giving an actual reprimand. “Well, we’ve told you about it now,” she said, offering him her brightest smile. “What did you think?”
“I think… I miss my blissful ignorance from eight hours ago, when I didn’t know that George Lucas greenlit this absolute garbage fire,” Stiles whined. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, The Force Awakens started out with a lot of potential, and the cast is full of extremely hot and talented people, but what the fuck?! My only regret is that my death tree wasn’t transformed into a desk in the writers’ room for these movies, or I could have haunted those dipshits until they figured out how to write a plot that actually made sense.”
“Your only regret, huh?” Lydia asked, keeping her tone dry and incredulous.
“No, you're right,” Stiles said, his expression instantly transforming into the biggest shit-eating grin Lydia had seen since before he'd died. “I also regret not inventing ectoplasmic grocery stores before my death. It’s unfair that I cook for all of you and don't get to eat any of it.”
“Not our fault you actually enjoy cooking,” Malia pointed out. “And depleting Lydia's bank account.”
“I am going to strangle you,” Lydia said. “Werecoyote strength or not.”
“But then who’s going to sit next to you in bars and make fun of everybody we see?”
“Yeah, you need her for that,” Kira added. “I’m terrible at judging people, and so is Scott.”
Scott toasted her with a grin, looking relaxed and comfortable against the armrest of the oversized couch he was currently sharing with a ghost and a realtor. Stiles took one look at him and snorted.
“Scott’s a terrible judge of many things,” he agreed. “People… the distance between a car bumper and the curb… movies…”
“Movies?”
“Yes, Scott!” Stiles crowed, now fully recovered from his initial disappointment. “This trilogy may have been a mess, but in order to watch it, you must have seen the other two trilogies too, and that means you have to know how great they are! Admit it, Star Wars is amazing, you were wrong, and I was right! Not watching it with me earlier was the biggest mistake of your life!”
“Maybe not the biggest,” Scott said, the grin on his face slipping a little. Lydia’s fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass. “Anyway, I already knew the Star Wars movies were good. I watched them junior year.”
“Junior year?! ” Stiles squawked, so surprised that he started sinking into the couch. “And you never told me?! What the hell, man, all those times you pretended not to get my references and you—”
“Of college,” Scott clarified, and the room went silent.
Lydia set her wine glass down on the coffee table with trembling fingers. The tapping of glass on wood sounded like a gunshot, a bullet to the lungs. There was a crescent moon outside. For one heart-shattering moment, Lydia swore she could smell wolfsbane.
“I’m going to go get a glass of water,” she said, voice too harsh to her own ears, bouncing off the walls and clanging in her skull. Another bullet to the lungs.
The next thing she became aware of was the press of a cabinet knob against her back, the solidity of a hardwood floor underneath her body. She was leaning against the kitchen island, eyes level with the cabinet that Stiles had poked open over and over again to entertain Brooke all those weeks ago. Tonight, though, when she opened it herself, there was nothing inside.
Lydia clung to the knob anyway and tried not to cry.
It wasn’t Stiles who came to check on her after a few minutes, or Scott, or even Kira. Instead, Malia was the one who tugged the cabinet door out of Lydia’s hand and dropped to the floor, flinging her legs out to one side and meeting Lydia’s eyes without flinching.
“Kira started talking about BB-8 again,” she said. “Scott looked like he wanted to change the subject.”
Lydia pressed her lips together, looked away, and settled her hands on her knees with careful precision. “That was nice of her. I’m sure he did.”
“He told me, you know,” Malia continued without missing a beat. “About what you told him. About Stiles wanting you to sell the house.”
Lydia’s fingers clenched around the hem of her dress. “Yes.”
Malia narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to?”
“I have to,” Lydia said, “or Yvenne will just find another realtor.”
“Okay, maybe,” Malia said. “But who are you going to sell it to ?”
Lydia froze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “I know you’ve been considering it. You’ve been eyeing the curtains in the living room like you can’t wait to change them all night.”
“Maybe I just can’t believe Yvenne expects me to find a buyer for this house when it’s been decorated so poorly.”
Malia rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’m more observant than you think, and I’m not Scott or Stiles. I’m not going to try and stop you.”
Slowly, precisely, Lydia tilted her head and met Malia’s piercing gaze. “You know what you’re saying, right? Scott and Stiles would try to stop me.”
“Yeah,” Malia said. “And that matters, because Lydia Martin always does what people tell her to do. And I had a normal childhood. And math was my favorite subject in high school.”
After a long moment, Lydia stood. Malia mimicked the movement. “I just think we’ve already lost enough people,” Lydia admitted. “I don’t want to lose him twice.”
“Like I said. I’m not going to try and stop you.”
For a while, Lydia told herself that she hadn’t made up her mind. She let Stiles cook her every meal and listened to him relive memories from high school and the two years of college he’d gotten to enjoy, doing his best to help her appreciate the times they’d shared together without losing herself in them. She fell asleep on the couch with him while they watched movies together and pretended that she didn’t know he’d been playing with her hair when she woke up. She allowed him to teach her how to cook and change the oil in her car, life skills that she’d always expected him to handle in their relationship, life skills he wanted her to master before he moved onto wherever he expected to go once he stopped being a ghost, but—
But then, on a Thursday afternoon a week before Yvenne’s deadline, Lydia’s phone rang.
They were in the middle of making stir fry, but Stiles nudged her with the spatula he was using—one loophole he’d found for their inability to make physical contact—and told her to answer it “just in case.” “It could be important, Lyds.”
That was precisely why she didn’t want to answer it, but with a long-suffering sigh and a pointed glare, Lydia wiped her hands off on a paper towel and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello, Lydia Martin? This is Shea O’Malley.”
Predictably and irksomely, Lydia’s heart rate increased. “What can I do for you, Shea?” she asked, smoothing on her realtor’s smile even though Shea couldn’t see. Between the way Stiles’s eyebrows were raised and the way his head was tilted so he could hear Shea’s half of the conversation, Lydia needed the extra armor.
“Well, Ben and Piper and I have been shopping around the neighborhoods near that lovely red house you showed us, but we simply haven’t found a place that compares. After a long discussion, Ben and I have decided that there’s no use searching any longer. We would like to place an offer on that red house.”
Lydia’s head was all white noise and bloodstains and terror. She tried to picture saying goodbye to Stiles and watching him dissolve into whatever dimension the rest of their dead loved ones had ended up in. She tried to imagine handing the keys over to the O’Malleys and leaving the red house for good. She tried to convince herself that it was possible for her to move on.
But like the O’Malleys, Lydia discovered that it was no use.
Once upon a time, it might have been possible for her to move on. But now Lydia’s heart was inextricably entwined with this red house.
The only difference was that Lydia had the ability to hold onto it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the white noise fading to a treacherous whisper. (So, basically nothing. Treacherous whispers were old friends in Lydia’s mind.) “You’re too late. The red house has already been sold.”
Stiles froze. Lydia froze, judging his reaction. Over the phone line, Lydia heard Shea’s breath catch, and then she sighed. “Are you certain there’s no chance of the buyer changing their mind? I mean, if we could place a counteroffer—”
“I’m afraid that there’s no amount of money you could offer that this particular buyer wouldn’t match,” Lydia said with as much gentleness as she could muster. The O’Malleys really were a nice family. “They’re quite dedicated, have a substantial savings account, and are at least as attached to the house as you are.”
Shea’s second sigh was only slightly less audible than the first. “Well, that’s it, then,” she said tiredly. “Thank you for all of your help, Lydia. We all thoroughly enjoyed meeting you the other day.”
“If you still haven’t found a different house in the next few weeks, let me know and I’ll help you keep looking. Free of charge,” Lydia blurted, because she was going to keep the house and Stiles and therefore she could afford to offer a little kindness to the family whose dream home she had just poached.
“Why, that’s very kind of you,” Shea said, oblivious to Lydia’s silent betrayal. “We may just take you up on that offer. Thank you again.”
And after the exchange of a few more pleasantries, she hung up.
“What the fuck?” Stiles said into the resulting silence. “A buyer made an offer on this house, and you didn’t tell me about it?”
Lydia set her phone on the counter. “You don’t really want me to leave.”
Stiles dropped his spatula. “What?”
“Come on, Stiles,” Lydia said. “Who do you think you’re talking to? If you really wanted me to move on, you never would have opened your mouth. I would have walked into this house on that first day, sold it, and walked right back out without ever knowing that you were here.”
“I—” Stiles spluttered. “I was surprised, and I just—”
“Maybe,” Lydia replied. “But that could have been it. I told you not to make it difficult for me to sell this house, and instead you scared off buyer after buyer until I figured out who you were. You say you want me to move on, but you’re here, Stiles. You’re standing right in front of me, and I’m never going to move on when I could have this instead!”
“What do you want me to say?” Stiles demanded. “Do you want an apology? Because I know you deserve one. I—I—I’m sorry for talking to you, I’m sorry for cooking you dinner, I’m sorry for being here! I didn’t mean to make this harder for you, and I’m sorry that I did! Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“NO!”
It wasn’t a banshee scream, but it left Lydia hoarse and aching all the same.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” she whispered. “I just want you to want me to stay.”
“Well, I am sorry, Lyds. And I can’t give that to you.”
“Stiles—”
“Pick up the phone, Lydia. Call the O’Malleys. Tell them the buyer changed their mind.”
Lydia took a deep breath and looked at the man who was the love of both her life and whatever came after that. “No.”
“Lydia.”
“No, Stiles! I’m not going to do that! These last few weeks have been the happiest weeks of the past ten years. You can’t honestly stand there and expect me to give that up.”
“That’s the thing, though,” he said. “I’m not actually standing here.”
“That doesn’t matter to me.”
“But it should.” Stiles reached out, brushed his fingers through a loose strand of her hair, and then stepped away. “I might not be able to stop you from buying this house, but that doesn’t mean I have to give you a reason to live here.”
There was a whoosh, as if he was opening up that interdimensional doorway again, and then he disappeared.
“It’s not up to them, it’s up to you. You have to want this because they’re going to keep coming at you, they’re going to keep knocking you down, and you have to get back up. You have to show them you can get back up, leaders don’t run.”
I keep your old scarf from that very first week
‘Cause it reminds me of innocence and it smells like you
I can’t get rid of it ‘cause I remember it all too well…
sometimes there’s other things you wouldn’t think would be a good combination end up turning out to be, like, a perfect combination, you know, like two people together - who nobody ever thought would be together, ever.
“I’ll stop waking you in the middle of the night, if you want,” Stiles said.
Lydia kept her eyes at the street lights, but seconds later with a hammering heart, she softly spoke, “don’t.” Feeling so small and fragile. Scared that the world gonna snatch the private calm intimate moments she spends with him away from her. It was the first time she admitted it out loud that she loves spending time with him. How can’t she? She gets to witness him humming with each song that comes on the radio, steal glances at him thinking that he isn’t noticing but from the soft smile stretching on his face, she could tell that he did, and if she was lucky he would even reach and hold her hand, leaving her all giddy inside. Sometimes they would park somewhere and talk, forgetting the reason why they’re awake at 3AM, both way too weary to filter their talks.
