Work Text:
“Fudging beluga whales!” Stiles exclaimed.
Lydia stifled a giggle as she turned to him. “The kids are asleep. You don’t need to censor yourself.”
“No, I do… because if I don’t they’re going to wake up and repeat everything I say and you’re going to be mad at me.” He paused before adding sheepishly, “…Again. Gah! Fiddle faddle on a stick!”
“I have issues with my sperm!” he replied, and Lydia raised an eyebrow. “I mean…how difficult would it have been to pass on a Y chromosome. Huh?”
“Well, that’s a question for your sperm.”
“I mean…boys’ toys are easy! Open the package and BAM! They’re ready to go! You don’t have to build freaking dollhouses from scratch! Son of a Mother Goose egg!”
Lydia softly grabbed Stiles hands. “Deep breaths, Sweetie.”
“We have to build three of these things and we haven’t even gotten one put together,” he whined. “Can’t we just put one up and then say it’s for all three of them?”
“Do you want a fight on our hands?”
“Yes?” Lydia sent him a glare, and he sighed. “No. Can I work out a compromise? We only put two together.”
“One will be for the twins and the other will be for Clara.”
“You can’t give Mia and Rorie just one between the two of them! They are two separate people, and we are not going to encourage referring to them as a unit.”
“Fine! We’ll give them to Mia and Rorie.”
“And then Clara will be upset because she wants to be like her big sisters.”
“And then, we can teach her that we can’t always get what we want. Like sometimes, we want sons, just to balance out the estrogen in the house and make Christmas presents easier to put together...but instead, we get daughters…lots and lots of daughters.”
“You love your daughters and you wouldn’t have it any other way,” she told him and kissed his lips lightly.
He sighed. “Yeah…you’re right. Maybe we could just return the dollhouses and get them gift cards.”
“You want to get two five-year-olds and a three-year-old gift cards?”
Stiles huffed and reached his hands toward Lydia’s slightly protruding belly. “Please be a boy.”
“You know…you say you want a boy…but I don’t think you really mean that.”
“Okay, I'll tell you what. I’ll put the doll houses together, and you can take the dolls out of their boxes. Deal?”
Lydia began to put the doll house together and seemed to be having an easier time than Stiles had. Christmas tunes played softly through the speakers and Lydia was humming along to “Silent Night” when Stiles suddenly exclaimed, “For the love of spam on cheese and rice!”
“How in the Beacon Hills do you get these things out?! I’m going to need fracking pliers!”
“Five years of having girls...how have you never opened a doll before?”
“Because I don’t buy them dolls. They creep me out…with their dead, soulless eyes.” Stiles shuddered.
Lydia bit back a smile. “Well, you can just untwist all of those little ties or... if you want to speed things up, I think we have some wire cutters in the garage.”
“Wire cutters...to open a doll...Do you see what's wrong with that picture?” Stiles shook his head as he stood up.
He walked away, and Lydia stood up and took a step back to admire the finished dollhouse, smiling softly to herself.
“I've got the wire cutters. Let's do this thing.”
Lydia looked up to see Stiles, wire cutters in hand, and safety goggles on his face.
“What are you wearing?”
“Goggles, to protect my eyes...look, I'm snipping tiny wires. When things start flying, I'd rather not end up spending Christmas in the ER.”
“Fair point,” Lydia said with a nod.
“Did you finish the dollhouse?”
“Well, one of them.”
“Well, look at that! My wife, the contractor.” He put an arm around her and kissed her temple.
“And my husband, the...” she looked him up and down, and smiled. “The best dad in the world.”
Lydia wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly on the lips. Stiles wrapped his arms around her waist and looked down at her.
“Can you believe we're here?” he asked her, barely above a whisper. “I mean, I know we say this every year, but after all of the stuff that happened to us...I mean... how the fudgesicles are we still alive and able to spend Christmas Eve putting together dollhouses and not chasing down some supernatural creature, or being stuck in another dimension?”
“It's a miracle,” she shrugged.
“A Christmas miracle,” Stiles clarified, before kissing her again.
They suddenly heard a crash next to them, and they both froze.
“Dollhouse?” Stiles asked without looking .
"Yep,” Lydia told him.
Stiles sighed. “I'll go check on the kids...make sure that didn't wake them up.”
“I'll put more cookies in the oven and start another pot of coffee for you.”
“Deal.” Stiles began to walk away.
“Stiles,” Lydia called him back.
“Yeah?” he asked, spinning around on his heels.
“Leave the wire cutters and goggles. You don't want to scare them.”
“Right...”
“And Stiles?”
“Yeah?”
“It's officially midnight. Merry Christmas.”
He smiled goofily. “Merry Christmas.”