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the_water_clockAuthor: Clio
Title: Control of the Game
Pairing: Erica Reyes/Lydia Martin
Rating: PG
Summary: Allison had been waiting for Lydia to say something about her whole Erica thing—though what she actually had to say was surprising, and would lead Allison to seek some advice, herself.
Warning: none
Length: 2000 words
Notes: Written for Femslash February. Title from "Lust to Love" by the Go-Go's. Set a week or so after "Distractions" and in the same timeline as the "baking and waiting" Sterek series. Thanks to verity and radioaches for the once-over!
When Lydia and Erica first started hooking up, Allison was mildly surprised because she hadn't known either of them to be bisexual (unlike Stiles, who'd made sure everyone knew about his bi-curiosity). But Lydia wasn't the type to stay single for long, and Erica was a challenge, so there you go. And while neither of them seemed particularly serious, at least they were in the same place.
That is, until the staring started at pack meetings. Stiles had nudged Allison and all but pointed, gleeful that it wasn't him, for once, who was mooning over someone in the meeting. Not that anything Lydia did could be accurately described as mooning, but for her, it was close enough.
Through all of this Allison waited for Lydia to bring Erica up, to say something, anything at all, but she didn't. And Allison had mostly accepted this until she got a phone call, one morning after a night at Jungle where Lydia and Erica had all but had sex in the middle of the dance floor, then likely had sex in the bathroom.
"Hey," Allison said. "Everything okay?"
Lydia cleared her throat. "I think I'm ready to talk about it," she said.
"Okay," she replied. "One sec." She put her hand over the phone and poked Scott.
"Yep, yep," he said, sitting up.
"I'm going to Lydia's. She needs to talk."
He nodded sleepily and kissed her on the cheek before laying back down. "Bring her breakfast," he said.
So Allison arrived at Lydia's door with smoothies and coffee, and they went right out to the pool.
"I don't even know," Lydia said, draping herself across a chaise. "Maybe this is a mistake."
"What part?" Allison asked. She pulled the back of her chaise up so she could sit up straight.
"The part where I try to start a relationship with someone six weeks before I leave for college four hours away. Who does that?"
"Sounds like that would be perfect for you, actually," Allison said.
Lydia gave her the side-eye.
"I'm serious!" Allison said. "You hate it when people are in your face when you don't want them to be. You know that Stanford is going to be tougher than Beacon Hills High, so you'll need more time for homework. Why would you want to date someone who was in half your classes and lived in the next dorm and wanted to meet up in the library to study all the time?"
Lydia made a face. "You have a point," she said. "I could even keep my lives entirely separate. It's appealing."
"Of course it is," she said.
"And we're already used to having sex over Skype," Lydia added.
"That's … good," Allison said. "Maybe you can just add actually talking over Skype?"
"Oh my god," Lydia moaned, and put her arm over her eyes. "I asked her out on a date and we ended up just fucking."
"Not just fucking," Allison said. "You also danced—"
Lydia looked at her. "And that was different from fucking how?"
"Point," Allison said, nodding. "But you came out to the diner and you were just as couple-y as any of us."
"I suppose. But she didn't stay and I forgot to ask her to stay and so it ended up just the same anyway."
"It's not a disaster, Lydia. She didn't have a bad time. Just ask her to do something else. Something during the day. "
"During the day? Erica seems so nocturnal."
Allison smiled. "Maybe that's just how you've seen her."
"What do werewolves do during the day? Other than getting more muscled?"
"Scott and I go for walks sometimes," Allison said, shrugging. "The nice thing is, you're already with a werewolf, so if there are any creatures out there you shouldn't have much of a problem."
"They do have a tendency to push you behind them and then growl at a thing, don't they?" Lydia said.
"It'll be nice," Allison said. "You can put some trail mix in your bag or whatever and I'm sure you have some adorable hiking shorts."
"Of course I do," Lydia replied.
"There you go then," Allison said, sipping on her smoothie. "Problem solved."
"Good," Lydia said. "I knew this couldn't be impossible. After all, boys do it all the time."
Danny was at the Coffee Hut the next day, working in the corner on his laptop, when Allison came in for her mid-morning post-workout fix. She looked at him and thought, maybe a little outside advice would be helpful.
"Hey," she said, sitting opposite him. "Got a minute for a question?"
"Shoot," he said, looking up.
"How do you manage him?" she asked.
"I don't," he replied, to his credit not even bothering with asking who she meant. "Anything else?"
She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, then crossed her arms.
He sighed. "Okay, fine, what do you want to know?"
"When he's working against what he says he wants …"
"Ah," Danny said, nodding. "Well, you gotta pick your battles."
"Of course."
"Try to make her think she came up with it herself."
"Right," she said, trying not to flinch when Danny said, "she," because of course he knew who she was talking about, too.
"And sometimes," he said, pausing, looking around, and leaning in closer, "get help from the other person."
"Really?" Allison asked, leaning in herself.
"There might have been a few occasions when I made a very small suggestion to her," he said.
"And it worked?"
Danny shrugged.
"Well," Allison said. "So what are you drinking?"
"Americano," he replied. "Lattes are for the afternoon."
"Then the next one's on me," she replied.
Two days later, in the early evening, Allison got a text from Lydia:
Are you home? Are you alone?
To which she replied:
Yes and yes. But if this isn't Lydia I'm also armed and very dangerous.
About ten minutes later Lydia was at her door. "You know how you said that going out dancing and then having sex wasn't a disaster?"
"Yes?"
"Hiking was," she said, storming into Allison's house and slamming the door behind her.
"Okay?" Allison said, and followed Lydia into the kitchen.
Lydia was going through the cupboards. "We should have done this at my house," she said. "At least we have wine there."
"Sit down," Allison said, putting both hands on Lydia's shoulders and steering her toward one of the stools. "I'll make us some tea."
"You said we should talk? Well we talked," Lydia said. "We argued and bickered the entire time."
"About what?"
"Where we were hiking. I had a map!" She pulled it out of her little backpack. "I had noted the trail! But no, Erica was all, 'I'm in these woods all the time' and all of that and kept taking us off the trail!"
"So you got lost?" Allison asked.
"Not exactly," Lydia replied. "I mean—no, no we didn't."
Allison turned to the cupboard to hide her smile. "But you fought."
"It was very unpleasant," Lydia said. "She simply wouldn't listen to me and kept just going ahead and what could I do? I had to follow!"
"You were on Erica's territory. Literally."
"Oh, so you're on her side?"
"No one's on anybody's side," Allison said, pouring water into each of their cups. "I'm just saying that she spends more time running through those woods than you do."
"Well anyway we got to where we were going—you know, that spot near the cliffside where you can see everything—and I had just about had it with her. But it was so beautiful, and I sat down and looked at it all and calmed down."
"That's not so bad," Allison said.
"And then we had to walk back—"
"And you fought all over again?"
"Pretty much," Lydia replied.
"Well, at least you had a date that didn't end in sex?"
"Oh, it did," Lydia said. "I was so angry and then we were back at the car and we were shouting and then we were kissing and I really thought that only happened in movies." She sighed and put her head in her hands. "We fucked in the backseat of my car! I've never fucked anyone in a car! It's undignified! At least we had a blanket to cover the upholstery but still!"
Allison blinked. "You drive a Beetle."
"Apparently werewolves are very flexible."
She walked around the island and sat on the stool next to Lydia. "I assumed one of the reasons you liked Erica is that she doesn't let you have your own way all the time."
"It is," Lydia said, nodding.
"Then you'll have to figure out how to be around someone who doesn't let you have your way all the time. Trusting that she knows the forest around here better than you do seems like a good place to start."
Lydia looked up, her lips pursed. "Perhaps," she said.
"I have faith in you," Allison said, smiling. "You'll figure it out."
But given what Danny had said, Allison also thought it might be good to put her finger on the scale a little, so after Lydia left she went first to Erica's house, and then to Derek's place hoping to catch her. And indeed she was on Derek's couch, playing a game on the Xbox.
"Scott isn't here," she said, not looking away from the screen.
"I know," Allison said, sitting down on the other end of the couch. Scott was at work.
"Derek and Stiles are upstairs," Erica said, with an eloquent roll of her eyes, and Allison was glad she didn't have werewolf senses.
"That's fine. I came to talk to you, anyway."
She raised an eyebrow. "If you came to tell me to leave Lydia alone, I guess I'd say that's more up to her than you."
"Whoa, defensive much?" Allison replied. "You're right, it is more up to her than me, which is why I'm here."
Erica paused the game. "To say what?"
"To say that Lydia is trying, but she doesn't really know what she's doing, and you might have to take matters into your own hands."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Allison shook her head. "Don't play dumb," she said. "Lydia was trying, with those two dates, and they just didn't turn out the way she'd hoped."
"Those were dates?" Erica asked, cocking her head.
"Oh god, it's worse than I thought," Allison said.
"I thought they were okay," Erica said.
"She said you fought the entire time you were hiking."
Erica shrugged. "Lydia's bossy but she followed me anyway. The after sex was good. Though, the sex is always good."
"So I've heard," Allison said, clearing her throat.
"Here," Erica said, handing Allison the other controller. "We can talk and play at the same time."
"Oh, I'm not very good at—"
"That's because you tried to play with Scott and Stiles. No one likes playing with Scott and Stiles. They had controllers grafted to their hands when they were seven and now they're twins that speak to each other in their own made up language."
Allison laughed at that.
"Besides anyone who can shoot as well as you can should be able to play a game," Erica continued.
"Could we play something not so violent?" Allison asked.
"Worried that you'll get all hard core serious business about it?" Erica asked, grinning.
"A little," Allison admitted.
"Don't be," she replied. "I actually kind of like you like that. You know, as long as you aren't pointing anything at me."
"Good to know," Allison said, nodding, then sat back against the couch cushions as Erica saved her game and loaded a different one. She quickly showed Allison how to shoot things, and then they just did so for well over a half an hour, and it was a lot less awkward than Allison had been expecting. Though she was beginning to wonder if she'd have to bring up the subject again when Erica finally spoke again.
"So what was the problem with those dates?" she asked. "Which she never said were dates."
"I think Lydia was trying for something more than sex," Allison replied.
"Really?" Erica asked, a hopeful little hitch in her voice.
"Really," Allison said, nodding.
"Huh," Erica said, and she was smiling.
Title: Control of the Game
Pairing: Erica Reyes/Lydia Martin
Rating: PG
Summary: Allison had been waiting for Lydia to say something about her whole Erica thing—though what she actually had to say was surprising, and would lead Allison to seek some advice, herself.
Warning: none
Length: 2000 words
Notes: Written for Femslash February. Title from "Lust to Love" by the Go-Go's. Set a week or so after "Distractions" and in the same timeline as the "baking and waiting" Sterek series. Thanks to verity and radioaches for the once-over!
When Lydia and Erica first started hooking up, Allison was mildly surprised because she hadn't known either of them to be bisexual (unlike Stiles, who'd made sure everyone knew about his bi-curiosity). But Lydia wasn't the type to stay single for long, and Erica was a challenge, so there you go. And while neither of them seemed particularly serious, at least they were in the same place.
That is, until the staring started at pack meetings. Stiles had nudged Allison and all but pointed, gleeful that it wasn't him, for once, who was mooning over someone in the meeting. Not that anything Lydia did could be accurately described as mooning, but for her, it was close enough.
Through all of this Allison waited for Lydia to bring Erica up, to say something, anything at all, but she didn't. And Allison had mostly accepted this until she got a phone call, one morning after a night at Jungle where Lydia and Erica had all but had sex in the middle of the dance floor, then likely had sex in the bathroom.
"Hey," Allison said. "Everything okay?"
Lydia cleared her throat. "I think I'm ready to talk about it," she said.
"Okay," she replied. "One sec." She put her hand over the phone and poked Scott.
"Yep, yep," he said, sitting up.
"I'm going to Lydia's. She needs to talk."
He nodded sleepily and kissed her on the cheek before laying back down. "Bring her breakfast," he said.
So Allison arrived at Lydia's door with smoothies and coffee, and they went right out to the pool.
"I don't even know," Lydia said, draping herself across a chaise. "Maybe this is a mistake."
"What part?" Allison asked. She pulled the back of her chaise up so she could sit up straight.
"The part where I try to start a relationship with someone six weeks before I leave for college four hours away. Who does that?"
"Sounds like that would be perfect for you, actually," Allison said.
Lydia gave her the side-eye.
"I'm serious!" Allison said. "You hate it when people are in your face when you don't want them to be. You know that Stanford is going to be tougher than Beacon Hills High, so you'll need more time for homework. Why would you want to date someone who was in half your classes and lived in the next dorm and wanted to meet up in the library to study all the time?"
Lydia made a face. "You have a point," she said. "I could even keep my lives entirely separate. It's appealing."
"Of course it is," she said.
"And we're already used to having sex over Skype," Lydia added.
"That's … good," Allison said. "Maybe you can just add actually talking over Skype?"
"Oh my god," Lydia moaned, and put her arm over her eyes. "I asked her out on a date and we ended up just fucking."
"Not just fucking," Allison said. "You also danced—"
Lydia looked at her. "And that was different from fucking how?"
"Point," Allison said, nodding. "But you came out to the diner and you were just as couple-y as any of us."
"I suppose. But she didn't stay and I forgot to ask her to stay and so it ended up just the same anyway."
"It's not a disaster, Lydia. She didn't have a bad time. Just ask her to do something else. Something during the day. "
"During the day? Erica seems so nocturnal."
Allison smiled. "Maybe that's just how you've seen her."
"What do werewolves do during the day? Other than getting more muscled?"
"Scott and I go for walks sometimes," Allison said, shrugging. "The nice thing is, you're already with a werewolf, so if there are any creatures out there you shouldn't have much of a problem."
"They do have a tendency to push you behind them and then growl at a thing, don't they?" Lydia said.
"It'll be nice," Allison said. "You can put some trail mix in your bag or whatever and I'm sure you have some adorable hiking shorts."
"Of course I do," Lydia replied.
"There you go then," Allison said, sipping on her smoothie. "Problem solved."
"Good," Lydia said. "I knew this couldn't be impossible. After all, boys do it all the time."
Danny was at the Coffee Hut the next day, working in the corner on his laptop, when Allison came in for her mid-morning post-workout fix. She looked at him and thought, maybe a little outside advice would be helpful.
"Hey," she said, sitting opposite him. "Got a minute for a question?"
"Shoot," he said, looking up.
"How do you manage him?" she asked.
"I don't," he replied, to his credit not even bothering with asking who she meant. "Anything else?"
She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, then crossed her arms.
He sighed. "Okay, fine, what do you want to know?"
"When he's working against what he says he wants …"
"Ah," Danny said, nodding. "Well, you gotta pick your battles."
"Of course."
"Try to make her think she came up with it herself."
"Right," she said, trying not to flinch when Danny said, "she," because of course he knew who she was talking about, too.
"And sometimes," he said, pausing, looking around, and leaning in closer, "get help from the other person."
"Really?" Allison asked, leaning in herself.
"There might have been a few occasions when I made a very small suggestion to her," he said.
"And it worked?"
Danny shrugged.
"Well," Allison said. "So what are you drinking?"
"Americano," he replied. "Lattes are for the afternoon."
"Then the next one's on me," she replied.
Two days later, in the early evening, Allison got a text from Lydia:
Are you home? Are you alone?
To which she replied:
Yes and yes. But if this isn't Lydia I'm also armed and very dangerous.
About ten minutes later Lydia was at her door. "You know how you said that going out dancing and then having sex wasn't a disaster?"
"Yes?"
"Hiking was," she said, storming into Allison's house and slamming the door behind her.
"Okay?" Allison said, and followed Lydia into the kitchen.
Lydia was going through the cupboards. "We should have done this at my house," she said. "At least we have wine there."
"Sit down," Allison said, putting both hands on Lydia's shoulders and steering her toward one of the stools. "I'll make us some tea."
"You said we should talk? Well we talked," Lydia said. "We argued and bickered the entire time."
"About what?"
"Where we were hiking. I had a map!" She pulled it out of her little backpack. "I had noted the trail! But no, Erica was all, 'I'm in these woods all the time' and all of that and kept taking us off the trail!"
"So you got lost?" Allison asked.
"Not exactly," Lydia replied. "I mean—no, no we didn't."
Allison turned to the cupboard to hide her smile. "But you fought."
"It was very unpleasant," Lydia said. "She simply wouldn't listen to me and kept just going ahead and what could I do? I had to follow!"
"You were on Erica's territory. Literally."
"Oh, so you're on her side?"
"No one's on anybody's side," Allison said, pouring water into each of their cups. "I'm just saying that she spends more time running through those woods than you do."
"Well anyway we got to where we were going—you know, that spot near the cliffside where you can see everything—and I had just about had it with her. But it was so beautiful, and I sat down and looked at it all and calmed down."
"That's not so bad," Allison said.
"And then we had to walk back—"
"And you fought all over again?"
"Pretty much," Lydia replied.
"Well, at least you had a date that didn't end in sex?"
"Oh, it did," Lydia said. "I was so angry and then we were back at the car and we were shouting and then we were kissing and I really thought that only happened in movies." She sighed and put her head in her hands. "We fucked in the backseat of my car! I've never fucked anyone in a car! It's undignified! At least we had a blanket to cover the upholstery but still!"
Allison blinked. "You drive a Beetle."
"Apparently werewolves are very flexible."
She walked around the island and sat on the stool next to Lydia. "I assumed one of the reasons you liked Erica is that she doesn't let you have your own way all the time."
"It is," Lydia said, nodding.
"Then you'll have to figure out how to be around someone who doesn't let you have your way all the time. Trusting that she knows the forest around here better than you do seems like a good place to start."
Lydia looked up, her lips pursed. "Perhaps," she said.
"I have faith in you," Allison said, smiling. "You'll figure it out."
But given what Danny had said, Allison also thought it might be good to put her finger on the scale a little, so after Lydia left she went first to Erica's house, and then to Derek's place hoping to catch her. And indeed she was on Derek's couch, playing a game on the Xbox.
"Scott isn't here," she said, not looking away from the screen.
"I know," Allison said, sitting down on the other end of the couch. Scott was at work.
"Derek and Stiles are upstairs," Erica said, with an eloquent roll of her eyes, and Allison was glad she didn't have werewolf senses.
"That's fine. I came to talk to you, anyway."
She raised an eyebrow. "If you came to tell me to leave Lydia alone, I guess I'd say that's more up to her than you."
"Whoa, defensive much?" Allison replied. "You're right, it is more up to her than me, which is why I'm here."
Erica paused the game. "To say what?"
"To say that Lydia is trying, but she doesn't really know what she's doing, and you might have to take matters into your own hands."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Allison shook her head. "Don't play dumb," she said. "Lydia was trying, with those two dates, and they just didn't turn out the way she'd hoped."
"Those were dates?" Erica asked, cocking her head.
"Oh god, it's worse than I thought," Allison said.
"I thought they were okay," Erica said.
"She said you fought the entire time you were hiking."
Erica shrugged. "Lydia's bossy but she followed me anyway. The after sex was good. Though, the sex is always good."
"So I've heard," Allison said, clearing her throat.
"Here," Erica said, handing Allison the other controller. "We can talk and play at the same time."
"Oh, I'm not very good at—"
"That's because you tried to play with Scott and Stiles. No one likes playing with Scott and Stiles. They had controllers grafted to their hands when they were seven and now they're twins that speak to each other in their own made up language."
Allison laughed at that.
"Besides anyone who can shoot as well as you can should be able to play a game," Erica continued.
"Could we play something not so violent?" Allison asked.
"Worried that you'll get all hard core serious business about it?" Erica asked, grinning.
"A little," Allison admitted.
"Don't be," she replied. "I actually kind of like you like that. You know, as long as you aren't pointing anything at me."
"Good to know," Allison said, nodding, then sat back against the couch cushions as Erica saved her game and loaded a different one. She quickly showed Allison how to shoot things, and then they just did so for well over a half an hour, and it was a lot less awkward than Allison had been expecting. Though she was beginning to wonder if she'd have to bring up the subject again when Erica finally spoke again.
"So what was the problem with those dates?" she asked. "Which she never said were dates."
"I think Lydia was trying for something more than sex," Allison replied.
"Really?" Erica asked, a hopeful little hitch in her voice.
"Really," Allison said, nodding.
"Huh," Erica said, and she was smiling.
