Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/692182.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV), Wicked_-_All_Media_Types
  Relationship:
      Lydia_Martin/Erica_Reyes
  Character:
      Erica_Reyes, Lydia_Martin, Laura_Hale, Derek_Hale
  Additional Tags:
      Alive_Laura_Hale, Alternate_Universe, Wicked!_AU
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-02-20 Words: 2426
****** Delusions of Grandeur ******
by polytropic
Summary
     Erica is, basically, through accepting limits because doctors,
     biology and conventional reality say they're so.
     (AU based on the musical Wicked)
Notes
     This is kind of a weird AU that isn't actually in the Gregory Maguire
     or musical Wicked worlds or in the actual Teen Wolf canon world. It's
     a ridiculous hybrid, I suppose, and all praise or blame for the idea
     should go to hungylikethewolfie because they said "I’m just imagining
     ‘Defying Gravity’ being about Erica deciding to accept the bite, and
     Lydia trying to talk her out of it" and I died a lot inside.
     Warning is, as usual, for mentions of people under age 18 engaging in
     consensual sex. Explicit rating is for people over age 18 actually
     engaging in consensual sex. I also want to warn for discussion of
     epilepsy and seizures and for how Erica might feel about them,
     especially by acknowledging that I don't have epilepsy or any chronic
     medical condition. I wrote about Erica's feelings about her body
     partially using my feelings about my gender/body dysphoria, and I'm
     so sorry if that means I've gotten something wrong or been
     disrespectful of her experience. Let me know and I am more than happy
     to fix it.
     Title comes from "Defying Gravity". I know you must be very surprised
     by that.
If there’s been one phrase that sums up Erica’s life before age 16, it’s been
“Some things you cannot change.” It’s the constant refrain: parents, doctors,
therapists, and of course the obnoxious amateur experts who decide to give her
unasked-for advice as if they possibly have something new and interesting to
say about her seizures. You can’t change it, Erica. Some things you can’t fix
by wishing hard enough.
She knows it, and at the same time, she doesn’t. Because she knows it but she
doesn’t believe it. It’s not fair, and yeah whatever life isn’t fair, but it
doesn’t seem possible, that the universe could do this to her, that she would
be so screwed so early with no hope of appeal. She’s too young for acceptance;
to angry and cheated to move on from railing at her fate to learning to live
with it. She refuses.
When she meets Laura in New York, finds out what she is and what it can do,
it’s like her lifetime of belief suddenly bursts into painful, actual hope.
This isn’t medications with their side effects or ECT or a ten-years-from-now-
with-the-right-research-maybe. This is her solution, her magic fix, finally.
The thing everyone called a fantasy, laid out in front of her by the tall dark
girl with the red eyes.
Lydia tells her she’s crazy. They’re there together—technically Lydia’s there
to give a talk at the university and Erica’s there as her hanger-on/date—and
they both see together what Laura and her quiet, scary brother can do. They
both get the sales pitch. Lydia looks down her nose scornfully and brings her
comfort in her own perfection up to 11; she doesn’t even need to say anything,
they just nod and turn to Erica.
“I’m in,” she says, and Lydia makes an outraged noise and grabs her elbow as if
she can drag Erica back to sanity.
“Erica, don’t you dare.”
“Oh, I dare.” Ericaalways dares. Dared to fight with perfect, angelic Lydia
Martin, Queen of the School, loud and screaming in the hallways while everyone
looked on in horror; dared to raise her hand in class and sweetly point out
“Lydia knows the answer” and catch her by enough surprise that she said it
without bothering to dumb her words down; dared to cross the room to her bed,
long after they’d stopped fighting, and look her in the eyes and say “I think
you want to kiss me.”
“This is forever,” Lydia hisses, eyes narrowing as she sees that Erica’s
serious.
“I sure as hell hope so.”
“Oh my god, Erica, just slow down and think about this for a second! Who knows
what kind of catch there is? We met them five minutes ago!”
“How many things are worse than what I’ve got now, d’you think?” Erica says.
She feels like she can barely concentrate on forming words, like her whole
attention is focused on the lightness spreading through her body from her toes
upwards, this fizzy sparkling excitement.
“Uh, death? Life as a lycanthropic serial killer? Abdicating your place in the
human race?” Lydia lists sharply. “This is not the way, Erica! You know I’ve
been working on it, I’ll make you a serum just like I promised, just give me
more time!”
It warms her that Lydia remembers the promise, whispered into her mouth one
night in a close dorm room bed. But Lydia, for all that she does know about
Erica, doesn’t understand this. She thinks “wait” is okay to say. She thinks
“maybe someday” is a thing Erica’s willing to settle for when she has “now,
today” right in front of her.
“Come with me,” she says, and it’s stupid the minute it comes out of her mouth.
Of course not. Lydia has Plans, Erica knows that, and she doesn’t want Lydia to
abandon them just for her. She doesn’t.
“No, don’t go,” Lydia insists. She doesn’t even think about it for a moment,
and that tears at Erica a little. “You don’t need anything you think they can
give you. You don’t need to change for them or for people at school or for
anyone, you know that!”
“Lydia. I love you,” it catches in her throat; neither of them have said it out
loud yet, “but this is for me. I’m doing it, and you can’t stop me. I won’t ask
you to wait, either, because they said I’ll have to go with them, and who knows
how long that will take. Go home. Be brilliant. And…maybe, someday. Okay?”
“Not okay!” Lydia’s nails dig into Erica’s elbow. She loves this about her:
Lydia is vicious and unashamed of it, she fights. Never willing to admit when
she loses, either. Erica wonders how long it will take her to accept, this
time.
“I’m sorry. Well, no, kind of…I’m not sorry. But I want you to be happy, and I
want us to be…I want us. But I want this more. Okay? I want it more than
everything, and I’m going to get it.”
That seems to silence Lydia, long enough for Erica to lean in and kiss her, a
lot more slowly and sweetly than they usually prefer. So that’s what ‘goodbye’
tastes like, then.
“When you get home, can you tell everyone something from me? Tell them the only
things you can’t change are the things you give up on.” Erica pauses. “Also,
tell them ‘fuck you, you’re stuck in Beacon Hicksville and I’m awesome.’”
Behind her she hears a distinctly masculine snort of laughter. “Oh, decided to
like her after all? Good, that makes things easier,” Laura mutters to her
brother in the background.
That seems to break Lydia out of her daze. “Fine. Fine!” her voice goes shrill.
“You want this more than us? Fine! I hope it makes you happy, Erica. I hope
when you’re out on the werewolf commune scratching fleas and barking at the
moon, that it’s everything you want in life. I hope you think of me in my human
job and my human life and my human bed with my human boyfriend and think about
everything you’re missing, and I hope you’rereally happy with all your
choices!”
She drops Erica’s arm like it burns her. She’s so gorgeous when she glares,
hair shining, eyes glittering with anger. And a little hope, Erica sees,
because she always thinks that if her mind can’t get her what she wants, her
rage is sure to. Erica wants to give in, for just a moment—to turn that
fragile, weirdly vulnerable anger-hope into joy. But it’s just a moment, and
then it passes.
“I hope you’re happy too. I really, truly, honestly do,” she tells the first
girl she’s loved.
Erica looks at Laura and Derek, and nods, and turns, and goes to them. She
doesn’t look back in case Lydia is crying; she never seen her do it before, and
she doesn’t think she could bear it if the first time is because of her.
~~Five Years Later~~~
“Excuse me if my pack is a little skittish; we’re still getting used to
“scientists” and “werewolves” in the same sentence without the accompanying
“lobotomy”, “neutering” or “experiments” somewhere in there,” Laura says dryly
as the team is ushered in the Hale home.
“We’ve come a long way since those days, I hope you’ll agree,” Lydia responds
calmly. She glances back at her team. “If you idiots suddenly decide now is the
time to make any jokes or anything similarly clever, let me remind you that
“lobotomy” can be our special word just for what will happen to you. This is a
Deaton Initiative project, and we don’t tolerate speciesism. Understood?”
“Yes Doctor Martin!” they chorus. Ah, grad students, so delightfully willing to
obey. She loves it.
“Good. Teams of two, everyone use your prepared questions, and for God’s sake
be considerate. Alpha Hale is being kind enough to set up these pilot
interviews, but this project is groundbreaking, all right? Screw it up for me
and I will hang you by your thumbs from the chapel tower.”
“Which cha—“
“The tallest one I find. Go!” They scatter. Laura Hale watches them with a grin
and nods to Lydia like they’re anything approaching equals in status.
“Cute pack, Alpha Martin.” She saunters off to her own interview with Lydia’s
two nervous-looking TAs. She didn’t tell her project supervisors that she
wasn’t interviewing the Alpha herself. They would have asked why, and none of
the explanations would have led anywhere good. She hasn’t carefully
orchestrated the last eight months of this project to put her where she needs
to be just to have Deaton or Morrell get curious at the last minute.
Lydia opens the door of her interview room and it’s like being electrocuted.
It’s stupid; she had time to prepare herself for this, she knew it was coming.
Erica doesn’t even lookthat good, she just…she…
She looks lethal and sexy and like she owns every single inch of herself, from
the leather boots to the curls in her hair. She looks like the Erica Lydia
always saw inside fighting to get out, fighting so hard sometimes she had to
fight with Lydia just to have somewhere to put all of that rage. She’s sharper
now, more honed. Her claws tap lightly on the tabletop.  
“Beta Reyes,” Lydia greets her, and wills her voice not to wobble.
“Doctor Martin,” Erica responds. Oh, god, fuck, did she always sound like that,
throaty with a hint of growl? Lydia had questions, she was going to be
professional about this and ask questions, but she doesn’t trust herself to say
them in a remotely professional voice right now so she refrains. Instead they
just stare at each other, breathing loud in the closeness of the room.
“How’s your human job? Human life?” Erica asks at last, eyes lazy. Lydia’s
amused despite herself, and a little relieved. At least she’s not the only one
who’s been replaying that conversation in her head ever since.
“PhD by 22,” she responds simply. “And Homo sapiens sapiens membership remains
riveting, as always.”
“Cool. And your human bed?” Did her eyes drop to Lydia’s mouth, just for a
second? Was the agony of choosing just the right lipstick for today actually
worth it?
“Warm.”
“…from a human boyfriend?” Erica doesn’t look lazy at all now, she looks intent
and intense, that predator’s gaze drilling right through Lydia’s skull. She
tries not to shiver.
“Occasionally.” Erica snarls. It goes straight to Lydia’s stomach and the heat
pooling there. “But not right now.”
Erica’s eyes widen. “Really.”
“Yes.”
The scrape of Erica’s chair moving back from the table sounds loud and
startling. Lydia feels like her prey instincts sort of want her to run as Erica
prowls around the table towards her, but they appear to have gotten confused
and started moving her forward instead. They meet in the middle of the room,
and Erica may have superspeed now but Lydia’s still the one who gets her hand
into her hair first and yanks their mouths together.
Lydia’s kissed a lot of people since Erica, which she refuses to feel even
remotely bad about, but it’s like she’s seventeen all over again and on fire.
Everything with Erica was so sudden and new when it first happened, and now it
feels familiar in the best way, this pulse-rushing, head-spinning feeling.
When they were teenagers it took them weeks to work up to more than kissing,
but adulthood is great, and Lydia shoves Erica’s leather jacket off her
shoulders without even pausing for air.
“Off, off, the corset—god you’re wearing a corset—get it off,” she pants into
Erica’s mouth, and Erica laughs a little crazily and confesses,
“Wore it for you.”
Lydia can’t even handle that so she just strips off her sweater and shirt in
one quick motion and goes back to biting at Erica’s lips. Erica appears to have
decided the corset isn’t worth the effort of removing, because instead she just
lifts Lydia as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, hands wrapped around her
thighs. Lydia squeaks and immediately tries to pretend that she didn’t.
“At least half the people in the house right now can hear everything, you
know,” Erica murmurs. Her claws scratch along Lydia’s legs and up her skirt,
just light enough to make her shiver and squirm.
“I don’t care even a little bit,” Lydia says, and pops the button on Erica’s
jeans so she can slide a hand inside.
She doesn’t know everything about Erica’s body, not now that it’s changed so
much, but she remembers enough for Erica to feed a steady string of “Yes, god,
oh, oh, please, please” into her ear, breathless and snarling in turns. Erica
always begs in bed and Lydia loves it, loves the rush it gives her to be able
to say yes, to give her what she wants. Lydia bites at her neck, which is
apparently a bigger ‘yes’ now than it was before if the sob it gets her is any
indication, and feels her shake apart.
Lydia forgot Erica was holding her up until she’s set down to sit on the table
with a bit of a thump. Erica breathes into her hair a moment (oh, is she
scenting her? Fascinating, Lydia makes a mental note to ask later), then slides
to her knees. She flashes bright gold eyes for a second, intentional and
teasing, and Lydia winds a hand into her hair as Erica nudges her knees apart.
Lydia wore a pair of her good underwear today because she believes in being
prepared for all eventualities, and apparently it was a good investment. That
is, until Erica rips it off with her teeth.
They lie on the table afterwards, Lydia curled into Erica’s side and marveling
at how much heat she gives off. Werewolf metabolism. Amazing. Erica pets her
hair, human-for-now hands sliding through the waves of red and messing up the
careful styling job Lydia put together. She can’t find it in herself to be
annoyed, just now.
“We should get going. Derek has probably made one of your students cry by now,”
Erica says eventually.
“I gave him the most annoying one I could find, if he kills Stilinski I’ll send
him a fruit basket,” Lydia responds comfortably. “Five more minutes.”
“Five more minutes? You always say that,” Erica says with a roll of her eyes,
and Lydia is so damn happy she could melt.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!