Written as a gift to rememberiloveyou on tumblr, for the stydia secret santa!
Title from "Midnight Starlet" by Foy Vance.
Happy holidays!
The bell rings right five minutes after seven, which is early for Lydia. She's always very strict about being fashionably late—at least to parties, because God knows she doesn't stand lateness otherwise. Stiles learnt that the hard way.
"Hey," she says, holding out a large but indistinct shopping bag. "I come bearing gifts."
"Well, Lydia is a Greek name. Should I be wary?"
"Mmm. Very." She brushes past him to get inside, which makes him realize he's still standing in the way.
"Sorry," he mutters, stepping to the right, effectively trapping Lydia between his arm and door.
There's an awkward shuffle for a few seconds as they both step to his left, and Lydia seems to consider ducking under his arm for a second, until Stiles remembers to actually let go of the door he's still holding wide open like a total idiot.
"Wait, sorry," he starts to say again, and he swears he hears her laugh under her breath, which is good, until the words die in his strangled throat.
"Move over, Stiles," Malia says, dragging him back by his hoodie. "Lydia, come on, I've been waiting forever, I think we have a kitchen-related problem."
"Hey, that's my expertise," Stiles protests, closing the door and following the girls to the McCalls' kitchen. "Lydia burnt soup once, okay. You can't burn soup. That's the one thing that doesn't burn."
"It's for the punch," Malia explains.
"What do you care? You can't even get drunk."
"Yeah, that's why we need it to be tasty," Scott says from the living room.
"I heard that!" Melissa calls from upstairs. "There'll be no punch or alcohol for anyone under the age of twenty-one in this house."
"But we're not even driving!" Stiles protests, because really, if he's going to survive sleeping on the McCalls' floor close to Lydia for a whole night, then he's going to need liquid courage.
Melissa makes her way downstairs at that moment, sporting her usual Christmas-party-at-the-office green dress. Stiles has seen her in it for years now, and the way the fabric shimmers under the warm light of the hallway feels like as much of a tradition as listening to Christmas carols over the radio while cooking.
"Well," she says, standing on the last step. "How do I look?"
"Amazing, mom," Scott says, coming from the living room.
"As always," Stiles adds instinctively.
Melissa rolls her eyes at them, but kisses them each on the cheek and graciously accepts her handbag from Lydia, who is the closest to the coatrack.
Lydia doesn't even wait for the taillights to disappear down the street before opening her huge handbag.
"Here," she says, brandishing a bottle of what looks like expensive red wine. Scott rolls his eyes and retreats to the living room, seemingly to supervise the intense battle that has started over the Xbox.
"Cool," Stiles says, looking at the bottle as if he knows anything about wine. "We won't let the young ones come close to this one, though."
"Of course not," Lydia says, and puts the bottle back in the bag conspiratorially. "That's for us humans who can fully appreciate alcohol."
"Lydia Martin, are you planning on getting drunk with me on New Year's Eve?"
"Maybe," she says with an exaggerated pout. "Possibly. I need to think about it."
"Come on. I'll even tell you who your secret santa is."
She quirks an eyebrow at him.
"Okay, I don't know exactly who your secret santa is, but I strongly suspect." Actually, he's ninety-nine percent sure it's Scott, because his interest in Lydia and Stiles' relationship peaked again after they drew names, and he sent him trick questions like: "What's Lydia favorite color?" followed by: "How can you know that she's fluent in Italian but you still won't talk to each other".
And, well, it's not like they're doing it on purpose, but at some point over the past year, they've got used not talking about important stuff. Stuff that isn't supernatural-related. Stuff that matters.
They're slowly falling back in step, however. Scott is constantly pressuring Stiles to cut the crap and move things along, but even his subtlety is new to Stiles.
The worst thing is that Stiles doesn't really know. He's not a hundred percent sure of Lydia's feelings for him; he suspects and sometimes he hopes, but he's not sure. So he tries to build them back together slowly, and sometimes, like tonight, it actually feels like she's doing it on her side too.
Lydia brushes past him on her way to the living room, where Mason and Malia are still engaged in a heated discussion about something or another, and it's such an unnecessary touch of her arm against his that he feels his stomach churn.
It's a nice churn, though.
The evening is a pack-only thing, and Hayden couldn't come, so their group is rather small and intimate, and it feels nice in a way family reunions have never felt. There's Scott happy laugh, and Malia's boots on the coffee table, Liam and Mason shenanigans on the Xbox. There's Lydia warm body, curled up on the couch next to him, or perched on the armrest next to him, or dealing cards on the floor next to his leg, or leaning on the back of the couch between Scott and him.
It's like there's some kind of pattern here.
It's like she's radiating warmth, which Scott smiles at when Stiles tells him in a moment of weakness over a batch of cookies fresh from the oven. And it's not like he knows a lot about fashion, but he's pretty sure the little sparkles in her top are winking at him when she sits close to the fireplace.
Still, he's glad when Scott announces that they should set up the beds in the living room around eleven, after they've opened presents (and Scott was Lydia's secret santa, which, again, Stiles totally called) and before anyone can start a round of strip poker or anything that makes Stiles wants to run away from here and his rapidly showing feelings.
"We'll never do it when we want to sleep," Scott argues, and really, it's hard to debunk logic like that, so they run around the house, bringing down mattresses—two poor souls will have to sleep on the couches—and enough blankets and pillows to build a Death Star-sized fort.
Stiles and Lydia have, of course, been put in charge of that last part, because they don't have super strength to move around beds and couches easily. They of course get to the hallway upstairs after everyone, and they of course end up alone with after-presents glow and Stiles' loud thoughts.
"So you did know who my secret santa was," Lydia says, gathering pillows in her arms.
Stiles takes two from her and adds them to his pile, because she's starting to disappear under the crackling plastic cases.
"Uh, yeah, I strongly suspected."
"Do I have to thank you for the book?"
"Hey, give Scott some credit." He trusts his upper body in the closet to reach for blankets, and also maybe to hide .
"I am giving him some credit. I love the hand warmers. I've only mentioned wanting some once around him."
"I sense a 'but' here."
"But you're the only one I told about learning Italian," she says.
"Oh."
Stiles drops two blankets on top of her pillows, grabs the others and closes the door.
"I didn't think you were going to keep it a secret," he says finally.
Stiles takes the lead downstairs, rushing down the stairs he could climb up and down in his sleep, and Lydia follows him with more care for the creaking steps and the mass of pillows blocking her view.
"I don't," she huffs. "But I think there's a far cry between knowing I'm learning Italian, which I may have mentioned over the summer, and buying me Dante's Divine Comedy in the original version."
"Which you told me you wanted to read three weeks ago. Yeah, okay, so Scott may have asked—woah, you okay?"
He drops the blankets and the pillows in his haste to catch her wrist as she loses her balance. Her socked feet slide on the trick step, the middle one that groans and creaks, but she catches herself on the banister at the last second.
"Yeah," she says as she straightens herself. "I'm good, thanks."
Still, she doesn't let go of his hand until Mason comes running in, asking if they need help, and they pick up the mess of blankets on the floor.
And that's the kind of thing that makes him suspect.
They stop the Monopoly game a full minute before midnight, and Liam races to switch the lights off, so they're all standing around the fireplace and the Christmas tree. They look young for once, even in the semi-obscurity.
Stiles slowly gets up, taking advantage of the situation to move his hat one case to the left—he's so not paying Malia for rent. Lydia rolls her eyes at him.
"What?" He mutters. "I seized the opportunity! Isn't that, like, rule number one in Monopoly?"
"I won't tell if you don't," she says evenly. "Or if you're quiet enough that not all the wolves in the neighborhood can hear you."
"How nice of you."
"Yes, I thought so too."
He almost trips over Scott's abandoned punch glass—and nonalcoholic, if you please—, and when he looks up, he sees that Lydia has joined their friends. Scott has one arm thrown over her shoulder and she's laughing at something Malia has just said. They're all silhouetted by the streetlamp and the gentle glowing coming from the Christmas lights.
Scott gestures at him when the countdown on his phone hits 19, and throws his free arm around him. Lydia leans backward to smile at him over Scott's back, and Stiles could swear she holds his gaze until their mouths curve around zero.
When he shouts Happy New Year at the top of his lungs, he makes sure to convey it to her out of all the others.
He's glad 2012 is over, because hell was it a long, long year.
Lydia brings the wine out when they're both alone in the kitchen.
"I can't believe I actually forgot about it," Stiles says when she holds the bottle in front of him.
"Shall we?" Lydia asks, picking up two glasses from the shelf.
"Lead the way."
They end up half outside, sitting on the back door's step. It's a tight fit, but Stiles doesn't mind. Lydia's warmth, pressed against him, is comforting.
"So," Lydia says as she pours them drinks. "Did you—"
"I have a gift for you even if I didn't get you for secret santa," he cuts in before she can say anything else.
She starts pouring for an instant, quirking an eyebrow, the open her mouth around a silent "oh".
"I swear it's not weird," Stiles rushes through, for fear of losing his nerve. He thinks back at his fifteen-year-old self, with his stomach tied in knots by the good kind of excitement.
It's not quite the same, now.
Lydia is still looking at him expectantly, both glasses at her knee. Stiles trust his hand in his hoodie's pocket and takes out his present, smoothing down the ribbon tied around it as he goes.
"Sorry, it's been in my pocket all day."
"Lipstick?" Lydia says, curious.
"Yeah, 'cause you said yours broke the other day?"
"It didn't survive Prada burying it in the garden," Lydia says absentmindedly as she carefully unwraps the ribbon. "Mac's Ruby Woo," she reads in the dim light.
"I remembered because I liked the name," Stiles explains, feeling calmer now that Lydia is smiling with that soft purse of her lips.
"Wait here," she says after a moment of playing with the stick. "Be right back."
He can hear her soft footsteps retreat past the kitchen door, maybe to the living room where the rest of their friends are stiff probably arguing over the Monopoly game—Lydia won the first party after half an hour, Stiles kept shamelessly cheating and Malia kept losing the dice, so they took a break, but last he'd seen them, Scott and Liam seemed ready to face each other again.
He leans back against the door frame with a sigh, and picks up the wine glass, swirling the drink around, like one of those people who actually know something about wine do.
Lydia comes back pretty quickly, browsing through her handbag. She throws herself on the floor next to him and triumphally yanks a compact mirror from a side pocket.
Mildly surprised, Stiles watches her dab the remnants of her former lipstick away and apply on the one's just given to her. It hits him that he's never actually seen her put on makeup before. He discovers that there is something mesmerizing about the simplicity of it, the slow run of the stick to her lips, the vivid red tint that appears as soon as she drags it to another spot.
It makes him feel vulnerable, somehow.
She catches him staring, he's sure, but she doesn't say anything until she's claps her compact shut, pressing her lips together. When she turns back to him, all red lips and curled hair, he's suddenly taken back to junior year, to the both of them studying and researching and talking. He wants to touch her, to make sure she's real.
"So," she says, breaking the silence. "Are we tasting this wine?"
"Sure we are."
He has to hide his gag and a cough as soon as he takes a sip, and settles for an intense grimace instead. He hopes Lydia can't see him in the semi-obscurity, but one glance at her tells him she is looking pensively at the label.
"When did we last eat?" She asks, sniffing the wine.
"Two or three hours ago, maybe? Why?"
"I don't think that's the kind of wine that can be drunk on an empty stomach."
"Really?" He stands up, stretching his legs. "I think there are some cookies left."
"I suppose we have nothing to lose."
They move back inside, since it's getting chilly, and Stiles quickly locates the plate, and so they settle comfortably around it on the kitchen island. The cookies are delicious, melting in the mouth, and the wine, they discover after one sip, is still disgusting.
"Is this even the kind of wine that can be drunk?" Stiles asks after they suffer through another sip.
"Are you doubting my taste in wine?"
"I'm doubting your mother's taste in wine. God, this is really awful."
"Yes," Lydia agrees all too readily. "I suggest we cork it up and forget its existence."
"Yeah, let's do that."
They end up finishing the last of the McCall's milk brick, dipping cookies in their glasses as Lydia talks him through an advanced astronomy lesson.
"No, no," Lydia says, knocking her glass over. Two or three drops spill out on the table, and she dips her manicured finger in the milk to trace a circle. "This is the accretion disk of a quasar. And at the center, you have a black hole—like that—" (she snatches the chocolate chip that has just fallen off Stiles' cookie, deaf to his muffled sound of protest) "and there, the gas—"
She gets interrupted by Scott, who walks in the kitchen in pajamas, holding a toothbrush.
"We're going to sleep," he says, looking at him with raised eyebrows. "You coming? It's nearly four am."
Stiles turns tired eyes to the kitchen clocks, and sure enough, it reads 3:47.
"Oh God," Lydia says, running a hand through her hair. She yawns soon after, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. "Yes, I guess we should go to sleep. That means you too," she adds, watching him with bleary eyes. "Don't think I haven't noticed you haven't seemed to get any sleep lately."
"Sleep is overrated," Stiles exclaims as they make their way upstairs to Scott's bathroom.
She makes a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat, but he doesn't hold it against her. The logic in this one is a tad far-fetched; he'd say it lays somewhere, abandoned, in his brain between kanimas and Dread Doctors.
He hasn't managed to get a full night of sleep for days, for weeks, so even as he walks downstairs with Lydia—makeup-less Lydia, whose face is still a bit sticky from her night skin routine, Lydia in a kimono over her nightdress—he still doubts he's going to pass out as easily as Liam, who is already curled up on one of the couches.
Not twenty minutes later, when he's lying on the floor in front of Melissa's dresser, and everyone has muttered, then groaned, their good nights, he turns around. Lydia is just an arm length away, eyes closed, turned towards him. He starts to make himself more comfortable for sleep, and nearly misses the gentle nudge against his knee.
"What?" He mouths, opening an eye.
Lydia nearly disappears under the comforter, but he can make out her grin, hidden in her hair.
"Happy New Year," she whispers, and Stiles feels a warm feeling spread in his chest. He wonders if any of the supernatural beings listening to them in the room will point out the little branch of mistletoe hanging from a key of the dresser.
"Happy New Year," he says back, and the spark in her eyes when she smiles at him makes him hope.
You can find me at youaretoosmart on tumblr and cave_canem on ao3.