After All This Time

Arms

Stiles drove until he got to a little diner right outside of Beacon Hills. He used to take Lydia here when they needed to get away from the craziness for a while. It was open twenty four hours and they both agreed it had the best homemade donuts. Silence wrapped the car tightly as the duo sat there and watched the old light flicker on the front of the building. It's been flickering like that since he and Lydia found the place junior year.

"Wow. This is perfect." Stiles didn't need to look over to see the grin on Lydia's face. Those only came every once in a while, and to see her like that was like Christmas for him, and it always radiated through the room.

Lydia had been to all the places she first fell in love with every side of Stiles today, except the high school and his bedroom but that wasn't the point. The point was she was with him now, at a place that seemed timeless and she felt her love becoming timeless. And she noticed the presence of the clock ticking away. She could feel her life going by and for once she didn't feel like she was wasting it, but she didn't know how she felt. Because as the clock ticked relentlessly she realized that her love was only getting stronger. She was sure he would never know. And she knew she would never find a Stiles Stilinski again. She knew she was slowly loosing him, with every tick of the clock, and there was nothing in the world that scared her more.

All she wanted to do was hold Stiles' hand like she used to when she felt unsure. That's all she wanted to do before leaving for Columbia. And suddenly, everything had happened before Columbia. She began to regret the last four years of her life. She got a degree and satisfaction but she lost so much. She had it, she had him right in front of her, ready for the taking and she left. Maybe it wasn't the people around her that always left. Maybe it was her all along, maybe she would always run instead of fight, and she hated that. She is stronger than the feet that could carry her miles away from her latest problem.
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Lydia was finally leaving. She was just trying to grasp the concept that home wouldn't be home anymore. That the place where she grew up, the place she had fallen in love with science and had her first kiss and the place where she Learned to drive. The place where she fell in love with that goofy boy, really in love for the first time would be her past, and she wasn't sure she was ready for that.
She wasn't ready because she was still growing, and she was definitely still in love with that goofy boy who held her together when she was falling apart. She tried to tell herself that this new place that she hadn't been yet would be home. That she would find a new little diner on the corner, and a new lookout spot where she would see all of New York. It would be a haven for her, she could finally be free of all of the things holding her back. And it still didn't stop her from turning around and driving back home, back to him at least 15 times before she finally put her car into drive, took a deep breath, and refused to look back.

She was almost out of California when she heard incessant honking from behind her. She looked in her rear view mirror, almost entirely blocked from boxes, and she saw it. A powder blue jeep with a very frantic looking stiles in the front. She immediately pulled over.

"Lydia?!" Stiles yelled out.
"Stiles? What are you doing? What's going on?" He ran towards her and he grabbed her hands in his. Lydia felt a wave of panic flow through her body, she was expecting the worse. She always did now. It seemed like the worst was all that ever happened anymore.

"You almost forgot this." He said holding up one of his old t-shirts Lydia always wore when she spontaneously stayed over at his house for the night.

"You drove four hours for a t-shirt?" Lydia was confused. She didn't know why, but it was exactly something Stiles would do for her. He knew how much she loved that shirt.

"Yes." Stiles took a breath trying to get the courage, even just a second of it to say what he needed to say, "No. No I didn't. I drove four hours for this." Stiles pulled Lydia's face towards him, until their lips touched.