After All This Time

Back To You

Lydia tried to get herself together enough to answer the buzzer that Stiles relentlessly pushed. Then she heard his voice, and she felt goosebumps spread all over her body. She missed it, but at the same time she felt like she'd just heard a ghost.

"Hey, Lydia? Can I come up?" He said like it wasn't five years later, like nothing changed. Lydia didn't say anything back, she just pressed the button to open the door and waited for her world to come crashing in.

Seconds later Stiles knocked on the door, and Lydia held her breath. Little did she know stiles was doing the same exact thing. And it took them back to high school, straight into the boys locker room.
---
"Stiles look at me. Shh shh. Look at me." Stiles was in the middle of one of his panic attacks. Lydia felt her head spinning, she just wanted him to be okay.

"Just Try to think about something else... Anything else"

"Like what?" Stiles looked helpless, fear littered his expressions and put a sour taste in Lydia's mouth.

"Happy things! Good things. Friends, family." She bit her tongue. His father was missing, which was the reason for his panicking, and she just brought it up.

"Not family, I mean. Oh god." She felt so stupid, and so, so weak. She should be able to help him. So she did the only thing she could think of doing, the thing she'd been thinking about doing quite a lot lately.

Their lips crashed together and she felt the world around her stop, he felt the same thing. She remembered feeling electricity, a surge of power. She never wanted to pull away, but she did. And the moment they lost that connection they both wanted to make it again. As much as Lydia kissed him to stop the panic attack, she'd felt something.

And she knew he'd see it as her being logical, clinical like she always was and she wished that she could be the girl everyone saw her to be, the strong and honest girl, and tell him how un-clinical and irrational the kiss was, like she'd imagined it would be. She wish she could say that she wanted what he wanted, all of him. But sometimes the way you look on the inside is simply a twisted image of how you are on the outside. So she hushed the voices in her head, the impulses, and never let her feelings show. She regrets it of course, she regrets a lot of things.

"How'd you do that?" Stiles had stopped panicking. Now he was just trying to sort through all his feelings. Lydia sat in front of him, her mind somewhere else, and the faintest smile on her face. Her emerald eyes shimmered in the sun shinning thought the small window, and she chewed her lips, which Stiles couldn't stop staring at. She had the perfect lips. And then it hit him; The girl he's loved since forever just kissed him, and he'd never felt more alive, or confused.

"I read somewhere that holding your breath could stop a panic attack." They both shifted awkwardly, they didn't care about anything else in the world except looking in each others eyes, trying to read each others feelings, and each of them also trying to hide their own simultaneously. "And when I kissed you, you held your breath." He smiled at her with his little half smile that made her insides do backflips.

"Thanks." He took a deep breath.

"That's really smart."
---
Those words echoed in her head before she finally snapped out of her daze and heard Allison.
"Lyds? Are you going to let him in or is he supposed to stand out there forever?" Lydia rolled her eyes at Allison, hoping she saw the over dramatic look on her face, and walked over to open the door.

Stiles walked in and he searched the room until he found Lydia's eyes, she did the same to him. They studied each other just long enough to notice all the things that were there before that weren't now, and all the things that weren't there before that are now. Scott and Allison stood back smiling at each other, wondering how two people could be this in love, still, and not even know it. They stayed like that for a solid 3 minutes before Stiles moved over to Lydia pulling her into a hug.