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All Lydia had been planning on doing was seduce young Beacon Hills millionaire and bachelor Jackson Whittemore. Not get involved with the ‘tragic’ romance of Derek and Stiles, and also Jackson’s two workers' bumbling attempts at finding romance in Los Angeles.
Then again, when had her life ever been so simple?
*
Miss Lydia Martin made it her life to know and meddle in everything. Amongst other things, she sorted out the poorly done accounts, helped figure out your evening wear, and organized everyone’s parties.
She mostly matchmade though. And she was damn good at her job.
People needed the help with love, couldn’t seem to tell for themselves whether or not the person they planned to be with was suitable to live with them for the rest of their life. Lydia could always tell though, how well someone could be to each other. She was also devious and cunning enough to make it all happen.
She prided herself on a 100% success rate, of course.
Lydia was predatory. She’d be damned if she let her prey out of sight.
So when her prospective catch of a husband Jackson told her that he plans to ask Allison Argent down at the archery store to marry him, she knew she had to move quickly.
*
Lydia was too much of a busybody for her own good.
She used this later as her main reason for why things all go south with such a fervent bang.
She had stopped outside the Sheriff’s house to examine herself in her compact mirror. The man was planning to take his new wife, a former Mrs Melissa McCall (her handiwork, obviously), out to dinner at the Harmonia Gardens for their one-year anniversary. The sheriff had also been not-so-subtly dropping hints that he may call on her to take his son down to LA for a week or so to ‘see the sights’.
Said son, who apparently had a would-be suitor the sheriff did not approve of.
She realized this when she sees, from her vantage point in the shadow of the house, Derek Hale (another rich millionaire of Beacon Hills but a bit too prodigal for her tastes) scaling a tree to knock on the Sheriff’s son, Stiles Stilinski’s window and begging (read: growling at) him to ignore his idiot father and elope together with Derek.
Lydia had to snicker internally at the Romeo and Juliet vibe they were pulling off.
“Derek, that’s my dad you’re grumbling about,” She heard Stiles groan as she walked closer.
“I thought you wanted to marry me,” Lydia heard a definitely-grumbling reply, and even she could hear the mild hurt in Derek’s voice in the growl.
“I do, so much,” Stiles replied evenly and affectionately before looking sad. “But I want Dad to be happy about this too. I want him to give his blessings and dance at our wedding and make embarrassing dad speeches. I want him to bug us about adopting grand kids and come over for Sunday tea. Not turn to the bottle to drown out the fact his son eloped with a former suspected murderer —yes I know you’re innocent, sheesh— that he doesn’t trust. Even if Melissa is here now to make sure he doesn’t grab for the whiskey bottle.”
Stiles was quiet for a moment before continuing. “I want him to be happy about us.”
And of course she’d never been able to resist helping pining doe-eyed, sweet-lookers. Her life seriously.
“Well I can help with that.”
Stiles let out a little meep and Derek turned to glare at her. Lydia, unfazed as Lydia Martin normally is, took the opportunity to hike up her lovely skirt and proceed to climb the tree as well while Stiles gawped at her from the window and Derek stared blankly at her.
“Well, out of the way,” She said critically at Derek once she reached the branch just below him. “We all can’t have important conversations about love up in a tree. It’s so juvenile and horridly tacky.”
Once they were all in Stiles’ room, she brushed down her skirt, tidied her hair, and turned to face the couple sitting on the bed.
“Well then since I’m new to this situation let’s take stock of everything now shall we? You two met...”
“...In the woods six months ago,” Stiles supplied helpfully from his position on Derek’s lap.
It was Lydia’s turn to glare critically at them. “And that is not suspicious how?”
“It wasn’t anything like that,” Stiles said hurriedly, hands flailing until Derek took hold of them. “I was there looking for Scott, my friend, and helping him look for wolfsbane sprigs for one of the Whittemore store’s brews. Derek came across me trying to tug out a stubborn bunch just on his property. It was love at first sight.”
Stiles sighed in mock dreaminess, and Derek rolled his eyes in (something Lydia placed as) fond exasperation. “More like annoyance at first sight.”
Lydia ignored their playful elbowing and continued. “So after meeting so-not-suspiciously, falling head over heels for each other, and meeting each other for months, you now want to proceed with the next big step in life. Which is not happening because?”
“I went to ask for Stiles’ hand in marriage yesterday,” Derek replied. “The sheriff refused. We had a...disagreement.”
“More like a screaming match, I gather,” The epic screaming match between the Sheriff and the resident Hale bachelor was the gossip of the town. Stiles wrinkled his nose in agreement and distaste.
“Dad rejected him on the grounds of being unable to “provide for me,” Stiles scoffed slightly at that. “As if I’d need Derek to.”
Lydia tilted her head questioningly. “He’s Hale money. There’s no problem with providing for you.”
“Oh no no. It’s not the money,” Stiles gave Derek a pointed look. “Dad thinks Derek’s too uncouth and wild to be able to properly ‘take care’ of me. Like Derek’s going to go feral on me and lay waste to my nubile body, ha.”
Derek merely grunted and proceeded to wrap Stiles in a possessive back-hug. Stiles looked at her as if to say ‘you see my point?’ The exasperation was lost considering how Stiles leaned into the hug.
But Lydia could well see the point, and why the sheriff was worried with Derek’s I-am-suspicious demeanor.
“Well then, that problem of caveman-Derek should be easily remedied.”
Derek glared at her for the caveman jibe. Stiles merely snorted in laughter, making the older man give him a light peck to ‘shut him up’.
Rolling her eyes at the absolute cheesiness (heartwarming as it is), she proceeded to lay out a plan in which Derek would win over the sheriff’s approval by bringing Stiles around LA for a wonderful afternoon, then later dining at the Harmonia Gardens and joining the polka dancing competition that the restaurant had almost every weekday night.
“What is the point of dancing?” Derek frowned disapprovingly. She remembered circle gossip about Derek Hale’s atrocious dancing habits. Man had no finesse, the ladies sighed when sour-graping about the fact he wasn’t indulging his Grecian body with them.
“The point,” Lydia emphasized, “Is to show the sheriff that you are an upstanding refined gentleman of the gentry who can provide for his precious baby of a son. Not some loose cannon five minutes from chewing someone’s head off and scares people with five o’clock shadow.”
Derek’s frown deepened, and Stiles made an affronted noise about the baby quip.
“I can’t dance,” Derek finally grumbled out, sounding slightly sheepish.
Lydia hands him her card reading “Can teach brooding dark gentlemen how to dance in just five minutes”.
Derek quirked a brow in disbelief when he read the card. He looked contemplative. Then looked at Stiles with enough sexual tension between them that Lydia was certain they’d make the perfect case study for the existence of eye sex.
Really, the man was going to owe Lydia half his fortune for her impromptu help.
*
She got the brainstorm when she overheard Scott and Isaac, Jackson’s two store workers, plotting to leave the Whittemore shop and go down to LA.
She knew Allison did not love Jackson. She’d told Lydia herself that the reason she was looking for a husband was so that her father would stop giving her that worried look. Like Allison dying a spinster would be one of the worst things in the world to happen to her.
She thinks of how naive-but-honest Scott is and how cool-yet-shy Isaac tended to be. She thought about Allison’s strong willed nature and Erica’s tough girl attitude, both fraught with an inner girlishness. She thought about how Scott and Allison, Isaac and Erica would make good couples respectively.
She certainly does not think of how this would conveniently clear the path from her to Jackson. No, not at all.
Which is why she says a breezy “Hey boys” and tells them of the pretty archery bow crafter and her assistant Erica Reyes. Tells them how the two ladies would be charmed to meet such ‘fine young bods’ as Scott McCall and Isaac Lahey.
She offers Allison and Erica’s shop address and tells them to call on them at two (conveniently before Jackson’s two-thirty appointment), and the two boys thank her profusely (though Isaac does cast her a mildly curious glance), closed up shop by exploding some cans of chicken mush for rancid smells to cover up the real reason they were closing shop.
She followed Jackson to the store of course (I have to be there to witness my brilliance, hon), pleased to see Scott’s beaten straw hat still lying on the table when he ducked into the closet to hide.
Lydia watched afterwards with properly concealed glee as Allison tried in vain to hide the two boys, as Erica screamed in confusion and horror when she found Scott in the closet (thankfully the boy has enough sense to stay inside it; Lydia helped by making sure that Jackson never gets a clear look inside it)and Jackson realized that Allison had male guests.
Not so out-of-place, considering she was an archery store, but male ‘guests’ that she was hiding quite furtively? Oh Allison, she played into the role so perfectly.
Lydia waited until after Jackson had left the store in a furious tirade without even bothering to propose; until after she’d soothed all four panicking ladies and gentleman into going on a double date to the Harmonia Gardens this evening; and until after they’d left to go watch the parade.
(Really in just under an hour Allison and Scott looked so sickeningly sweet and puppy-eyed towards each other that Lydia suspected she might have a toothache. Erica and Isaac seemed more playfully coy than anything else, with Isaac getting a sudden burst of confidence, and Erica putting on her feminine swag.)
After they left her to ‘rest’ at the park, she let herself have a small dance of satisfaction.
Her plans were falling in perfectly.
*
Until she met Peter, of course.
*
She saw him marching along with the Volunteer Armed Forces when she walked towards Jackson in the front of the group. A man who looks in his thirties with a handsome face, posh slicked-back hair in a nice sophisticated wave and piercing brown eyes that were staring at her as she shimmied up to Jackson and convinced him to join her for dinner at the Harmonia Gardens, as an apology for the ‘disappointment’ with Allison.
He continued to stare at her even as she walked away back to the crowd, smug in her success thus far. If she kept up like this, she’d be married to Jackson in no time.
Although. That man from the back was dashing, in an older suave feral sense.
With her plans going so smoothly though, there really was no need to get involved further.
*
And then it all but fell apart in the most spectacular way possible at the Harmonia Gardens.
Peter Hale, Derek’s wayward-but-also-very-rich uncle who is also the same piercing-eyed man from the parade, snuck his way into Harmonia Gardens and onto the dance floor. The man quite obviously tried to get a feel of Stiles, and Derek retaliated (quite predictably) by throwing the man into the bandstand and starting a brawl.
The brawl had alerted the sheriff, who had promptly arrested both of them. And of course, found Stiles cheering Derek on. With promises of blowjobs.
She doesn’t mistake the look of mean satisfaction the sheriff has in cuffing Derek out of the restaurant. Melissa had just sighed at the ruined date and ushered a protesting Stiles out of the restaurant.
The sheriff also found Jackson Whittemore screaming at his stepson (who he found, surprisingly enough, on a date with a gorgeous girl) for leaving his post at the Whittemore store, and his normally mild-tempered stepson screaming back at Whittemore and saying he quits his job.
Sheriff Stilinski took the time then to give Jackson a charge for disturbing the peace, then dragging out Scott and hustling him to his mother as well.
Somehow Scott was still able to blow kisses and endearments at Allison even as Melissa tugged him along back to Beacon Hills.
Jackson left the restaurant in such a furious huff (seriously, the man was an even bigger primadonna than her at times) that Lydia was barely able to say a word edgewise to him.
And Lydia? Lydia was left with the task of apologizing to her dear friend Alonzo for the mess and promising him that eligible rich bachelor Derek Hale would foot the bill and pay for the damages his fight caused.
She was also ignoring the look Peter Hale had shoot her — smug, amused and charmed to meet your acquaintance, Ms Martin — before he was escorted out by the Sheriff and his men.
So yes. The night was a total mess.
On the bright side Sheriff Stilinski did soften his stance on Derek, who proved that he could and would defend Stiles and protect him from danger no matter his reputation, which was all the man had been worried about (heaven forbid his ‘fragile’ son be swept into Derek’s whirlwind life and suffer injury).
The blessing and its subsequent wedding and honeymoon got settled ridiculously fast after that.
Allison and Scott continued to be googly-eyed for each other, and he found a job as an assistant for Dr Deaton, a veterinarian who was an old friend of the Argent family. The pay was better, and he was able to see Allison almost everyday.
Even though Chris Argent was somewhat disapproving of Scott, Lydia was certain the man would come around after being faced with their adorable sappiness for a while longer.
Scott was getting more acquainted with the Argent family armory in the meantime.
Erica and Isaac continued to banter with each other and skirt around while Isaac started work at Allison’s store as well.
So everyone got their happy ending in the end. Except Lydia. Who found out that her target suitor was actually in love with his best friend.
*
“Let me get this straight: you decided to ask Allison to marry you because you thought Danny wouldn’t say yes?”
Jackson’s miserable nod made her groan. Why did the gods have to conspire against her so? To make it so that Jackson was actually gay for his best-friend-cum-typist-at-the-registry Danny Mahaelani, and puppy-eyed beseeching enough that Lydia was still unable to resist helping the poor guy out?
“Okay, this is what we’re going to do.”
*
Lydia met Peter again at the Beacon Hills church, when everyone was there for Jackson and Danny’s wedding.
“I’m surprised you’re even daring to show your face here, Mr Hale,” Lydia started off immediately when Peter sat down gracefully on the pulpit seat besides her.
“Can’t a man visit his nephew and said nephew’s new husband to tease them about their honeymoon?” Peter said glibly.
Lydia casted a glance to where Derek was sitting with the Stilinski family, one arm wrapped around Stiles’ shoulder as he chattered away, words buzzing into a pleasant drone that helped relax Derek.
“If you were here to visit them, you would be sitting over there and bothering them.”
Peter laughed. “True, my dear. True.”
They fall into a companionable silence as the church fills itself with sunlight, the scent of honeysuckle from the bushes outside and the sound of family and hearth.
“You knew didn’t you,” Lydia finally said. “That the sheriff needed to know that Derek could protect Stiles. That’s why you tried accosting him.”
His smile widening was her only indication she was right.
“And with Jackson as well. You knew he was gay didn’t you?”
Peter turned to look at her directly in the eye, eyes bright and clear liquid amber. “How are you certain that I didn’t do that just to make sure you didn't marry him?"
“And why would you do that?”
“Because I can tell a bad match when I see one. He’s too good for you, Ms Martin. All that feisty sass and brilliance.”
“And I’m guessing this is where you tell me that you can match my level?”
They didn’t break eye contact. Not for a moment. "I don't guess, Ms Martin. I know so."
“Why Mr Hale. You’re quite the charmer aren’t you?” Lydia said, slightly breathless with feeling.
Peter smirked, eyes twinkling, and Lydia could feel herself matching his impeccable smile.
*
How she and Peter got together was simple:
It was love at first smirk.
~FIN~