"Right." Stiles nodded, Lydia could tell he was feeling guilty. "Sorry about that."

Lydia did her best to pretend not to care, "It's fine, I don't care if you want to spend all of your time with that were-coyote."

Stiles licked his lips, "What's your problem with her anyway?" He asked, irritated.

"Nothing," Lydia replied innocently, earning her a glare from Stiles.

"Really? Because it seems like you're the only one of us who hasn't tried to help her out at all."

It was now Lydia's turn to scowl at him, "I gave her my math notes!" She defended herself.

"Yeah, your incoherent notes."

"Excuse me?" She demanded, stopping short. "My notes are fantastic, that's why you guys always copy them!" She was about to go on before Stiles interrupted.

"That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Usually, yes they are. But this time it seems you weren't paying attention." Stiles was saying as he pulled her notebook out of his backpack showing it to her, before Lydia could go off on him about her 5.0 GPA. "You see?" He asked handing her the notebook as she flipped through the pages. Lydia's brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of what was on the pages. "I don't remember writing any of this." She murmured as she studied the pages.

"I figured otherwise you wouldn't have gave them to Malia." Stiles commented, causing Lydia to tear her eyes off the page to glare at him.

"Of course you're making this about Malia." She sighed, turning back away again.

"What? Lydia, I'm not making this about Malia!" He followed after her again, bringing back memories of last year.

"Yes, you are. You make everything about Malia now! Your weekends, your lacrosse games, I can't even text you without you bringing up Malia, and that's when you bother to reply!" She shot at him, not meaning to go on as much as she did but couldn't stop herself.

"Lydia, what is your problem?" He demanded, causing her once again to stop.

"My problem?! My problem is that I miss you. There, I said it. You're one of my best friends, one of the ones I have left, and I miss you. But you keep replacing me with the were-coyote! So, go have fun tonight with her." She snapped at him, turning back at the crowd of people that had noticed their fighting. She glared at them, causing them to divert their eyes as she stalked down the hallway once again with Stiles, surprisingly, not following her.

-

Lydia had done her very best to ignore Stiles the rest of the day, despite the fact they had several classes together. And after each one, Stiles would call after her, causing her to walk faster to her next one. Which totally would have worked, until their last class of the day.

"Lydia, common! You can't ignore me forever!" Stiles pleaded with her outside in the parking lot as she was walking to her car.

"Watch me." She replied, not turning back.

"Technically you just acknowledged me." Stiles grinned at the tiny victory, only for the smile to disappear when Lydia did nothing but glare at him. "Sorry-I'm sorry. Can we please just talk?"

"I would, Stiles. But I have to go do some research tonight, so why don't you just tell Malia hi from me?" She rolled her eyes, walking off to her car.

-

It had only been a few hours since Lydia had dug into research, and she already missed Stiles. The room was so quiet without him there, and even when it was quiet while he was there, she could feel his presence, hear him typing on the computer, it was just better. Without him, she just felt lonely.

She sighed, jotting down notes in a clean notebook on whatever she could find. She had a assortment of highlighters in front of her and was currently highlighting things when she heard a knock on the door, which was strange since she was sure her mother told her she was going out. "Mom, I'm fine!" She shouted through the door, to busy with her research. "I'm just doing homework." She lied smoothly until the knock came again.

"Uh, Lydia, it's me."

"Stiles?" She asked, getting up from her bed to open the door, revealing Stiles standing there. "What are you doing here?" She raised an eyebrow.

"You're mom let me in as she was leaving." Stiles explained, leaving out the part about Lydia's mom commenting on the fact Stiles hasn't been over in a while.

"That doesn't explain why you're here." Lydia still remained in front of the door.

"Well, you said research earlier so I assumed I was invited." He tried, earning a slight eye roll from Lydia, but didn't throw him out, but instead went back to her spot on the bed. "Can we talk please?" Stiles asked, still not moving into her room.

"Sorry Stiles, kind of busy here." She gestured to the notes.

"Lydia, the notes have been that way for 3 days, they'll still be like that in 5 minutes. Please?" He begged, Lydia still not looking up. He sighed, "You're one of my very best friends, too." He admitted, earning a look from Lydia as she set her notebook aside. "And I miss you, too." He looked up at her, removing his eyes from the floor. "I know loosing Allison has been hard on you, and I'm sorry I've been such a bad friend by ignoring you when you needed me. I just thought you'd want some space..." He trailed off, noticing how Lydia stiffened when he mentioned Allison.

"I'd rather have my friend more." Lydia mumbled, breaking Stiles' heart.

"I'm really sorry Lydia, I was just trying to help Malia I didn't mean to ignore you, I mean I was trying to give you and Scott some time, and I thought it'd be nice to help Malia, I swear I wasn't trying to-"

"I know." Lydia interrupted him, sighing. "I know you weren't doing it on purpose." She took a deep breath, "It just hurt." She admitted, looking up at him still standing in her doorway.

"You know I could never replace you, right?" Stiles asked her after a moment, now gluing his eyes on her. "You're Lydia Martin! You're a strawberry blonde banshee genius! You're irreplaceable." He continued, trying to prove his point.

Stiles could swear he thought he was hallucinating when he saw Lydia's lips turn up into a slight smile. "Really?" She asked, not looking at him. "Of course." He answered without a doubt. Causing Lydia to get up off her bed and wrap her arms around him.

She immediately felt better the second he wrapped his arms around her too, and she sighed comfortably in his arms, and a feeling in her chest that suggested she might have feelings for him, she just wasn't ready to admit that yet though. They stayed like that for a few minutes, just being with each other, Stiles being there for Lydia, and Lydia appreciating that. "We should probably get to researching." Lydia broke away first, unwillingly. Stiles just nodded, "By the way," Lydia looked up at him, "You're irreplaceable to me, too." She smiled, trying to think of someone she felt the same way about as she felt for the brown eyed boy was impossible.

Stiles grinned, his eyes lighting up the way they did when Lydia said something nice like that to him. "So, what do you have so far?" Stiles asked, making his way to the computer.

"Here," Lydia handed him her notebook from the bed, going back to the books while Stiles read over her notes.

"Nice highlighting system." He commented grinning, noticing the red, yellow, and green colors on the page.

"I'm sure I don't have to explain it to you." She grinned back.

"It's the same one Malia uses..." He mumbled.

"And you said I didn't do anything to help her." Lydia glared at him playfully for a moment.

"What?" Stiles asked, confused on how Lydia and the highlighters had anything to do with Malia.

So, maybe I should’ve known going into all of this that the married life would be difficult. It would bring about serious changes, problems, and things that would stress us out to the max. My husband was borderline hysterical nine out of ten times, our best friends were werewolves who came out to play at night, and I was a banshee that supposedly existed from the 1400s. Obviously nothing was easy for us...like, ever. 

We fight. On some days, it could last two minutes and end up with us laughing it over. On other days, it’s a screaming match (and obviously the banshee wins because, hello.) and those kinds of fights are scary. The scariest, though, are the ones where we just sit in silence until eventually Stiles will speak while I stare at my hands in quiet. Sometimes it’s scary for me, but mostly for Stiles’ sake because when I’m silent, it means he’s surely screwed himself over.

Chores are another thing. Usually he’s a very good husband, and he’ll try to do most of the tasks so I don’t have to because he knows how remedial I think the act of having to take the trash out is. He’ll insist on doing everything around the house, but the second I get home it looks worse than when I left that morning. I know my husband means well, but seriously Stiles? Covering your mess with a blanket might’ve worked when you were seven, but not when you’re twenty nine.

Ugh, the laundry is one thing I have absolutely no patience for. Stiles will take care of it all, following the directions written in extra small print on all the black tags of my clothing to the tee while I normally stand there screaming and yelling, kicking the washing machine and staining all of his white clothing with red streaks from my silk chemises. I don’t mean to, but how can someone take those directions so seriously when one can barely even make the letters out!?

Men who’ve had a bit of alcohol in their system will chuckle and ask who makes the dinners. Well, me, obviously. Would you trust Stiles with using an oven that has the capacity to go up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit?! If I know it’ll be a busy day for the two of us, I’ll put something together in the crook pot and let it cook while we’re both at work. I’ve also been known to freeze meals weeks in advance because ‘this tofu crap you keep trying to feed me is not real food, Stiles.’ Our favorite take away restaurants have made a permanent place in our phone book because no matter what, I cannot make a better Chinese dish than the Chinese restaurant down the street. 

And after dinner, if there’s no supernatural business to tend to (and yes, scott has made stiles and my place the official meeting place for everything paranormal and supernatural, anything that goes boo in the night) we’ll cuddle up on the couch and watch some meaningless television. Most of the time it’s a show we both hate, but aren’t paying enough attention to so we don’t bother with turning it off. That’s the thing, every time I look into Stiles’ eyes it’s like the first time I really saw him. 

   As much as I’d like to lie, our relationship wasn’t always smooth sailing with witty remarks.

Obviously when you’re in this deep with the supernatural world it would put some strain on any form of relationships you have, but it only helped that Stiles was just as deep as myself.

And sometimes, sometimes it felt like we were choking under the current, under the rough waves trying to bury us.

Banshees, nogistunes, fae folk, witches and warlocks - it seemed like it was all something you’d find in a crappy Halloween thriller but it all came alive when the sun hid below the horizon for the night.

As dark came, so did the creatures with glimmering eyes and sharp claws and fangs so white it could blind you.

Let’s not even get started on the fact that Stiles was easily hypnotized by a vampire last week, that was just a shit show in it of itself.

Still, we moved through it, and everything ebbed and flowed like it rightfully should. I never had that cliche high school relationship - I was always used, thrown to the side, never had a relationship like Scott and Allison did.

     Oh, the loss of Allison. That took me two years to fully get over, and it took Scott at least twice as long.

It left a hole in each of our hearts, especially Stiles’ because ‘she died for me, i did this to her..’  was a common thought in his guilty subconscious even though it wasn’t as true as he thought.

Personally, I blamed Kira’s mother. That...that bitch, how could she allow something like this to happen in the first place?!

I shook my head, clearing the thought out and trying to focus on what I was saying prior.

Oh, yes. Our relationship wasn’t perfect and it probably never would be, but we were both perfectly fine with it.

Nothing in our lives made sense (ever), and the thought of having a story book relationship felt so foreign it wasn’t even worth wishing for.

Stiles with the fingers that wouldn’t stop moving, the mouth that could go on and on until he was blue in the face (and then go on for more), and the jittery nervous energy he always had balled up in his stomach wasn’t perfect.

Me, Lydia, with the banshee screams at the bottom of my throat, the whispers in my ears swirling around my head at all hours of the day, and the memories of being haunted subconsciously and abused subconsciously for months wouldn’t fade.

I wasn’t perfect. I might’ve pretended to be for a long time, but after being with Stiles, I realized something. Our imperfectness made us perfect together, and that’s all that mattered.

     Anyway, I’m getting side tracked. Back to the point.

Because our relationship suffered from so much rough water, it was a rare occasion that we got to just...go out, act like teenagers. Wow, that sounds like something two parents would say, but I suppose it’s fitting because let me tell you, being pregnant and fighting off rampant centaurs and shape shifters definitely wasn’t easy.

He took me out one night that we both designated for a non-supernatural night (and I made sure to give the pack and any other mythical creature that wanted to show up the memo), and we acted like a real couple.

    I got dressed up like I always used to in a pretty navy dress that glided over the small baby bump I’d been sporting as of late, put on a pair of killer heels and my makeup was most certainly on point.

It was true, the whole pregnancy glow sort of thing. Stiles had warned me when I was putting my heels on in my bedroom that heels that tall were definitely not made for pregnant women, but I obviously ignored him.

What does he know? He’s a boy who isn’t five foot three and three quarters.  Stiles cleaned up nicely as well - a navy button down (which he did on purpose) and a pair of black slacks. He still wore his sneakers, but there was no taking the boy out of the man, I suppose.

     This time he had really surprised me with the date. We went to the boardwalk first as the sun was setting and grabbed some dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the water, and he let me steal some most of his dessert.

After paying he took me by the hand and we continued to stroll down the boardwalk once more, reaching one of the little concert nooks the beach had and having me close my eyes.

I rolled my eyes but obliged, how could I say no when he looked so excited? He made me walk a bit further (‘see, lyds, i warned you that these shoes would be a disaster!’ stiles scolded me when i almost fell. ‘well, if you were holding on to me and guiding me correctly, i wouldn’t of stumbled!’) and soon enough he had me open my emerald eyes.

I looked around, taking in the sight before me. It was the shell where there was just a stage and flat cement, and I saw couples cuddling on blankets while a local band played some smooth love songs from the stage.

Around us were twinkling fairy lights cascading down and around the entirety of the shell, making it glisten like a diamond in the white moonlight. “I...Stiles, this is amazing.” I whispered, looking up at him as he wrapped his strong arms around my waist.

(Oh, yeah, he’d been training with the wolves lately and I was definitely thankful for that.)

“You’re welcome, lyds. You deserve it, now dance with me.” And so we slow danced to the song that the band was playing. 

‘Let’s get stupid, dancing with cup tonight, don’t it feel all kind of right?’

song is here : x