Work Text:
It’s been three weeks since Thanksgiving, and Stiles feels like a fraud of a Christmas fan.
Since he flew back to school exactly three Sundays ago, he has not sung one Christmas song, decked a single hall, or drunk any glasses of eggnog. He’s yet to attend an ugly Christmas sweater party, hasn’t gone ice skating, decorated a tree, anything. The most Christmas spirit he’s had in the past twenty one days is the gingerbread latte he orders every other day on his study breaks.
There is a reason he is acting like a complete Grinch, however, and that reason is finals.
The thing is, soul sucking tests have completely consumed his time and have kept him from celebrating a holiday he usually loves. Finals hit him harder than a freight train— his first semester of college had been tough, and now final exams are proving to be even tougher. Stiles can’t really remember the last time he saw the light of day, or read something that wasn’t a textbook or pages upon pages of lecture notes. He hasn’t had time to get in the holiday spirit, because he’s been too busy selling his soul to the chemistry demons so he can pass gen chem with a semi decent grade.
But he’s almost done now— one more final on Monday, and then two days before his flight back home to California— and he’s finally allowing himself to indulge. His last final is in criminology, and he’s not nearly as worried about it as he had been about his other exams, so he gave himself the afternoon off, wandering the snowy streets of Boston and letting himself begin to enjoy the festivities of Christmastime.
It feels like a crime not to celebrate Christmas here too, where the powdery white snow covers everything and lights twinkle among rows of icicles, like something out of a Christmas card or an old-timey holiday movie. Don’t get him wrong, the below-freezing temperatures suck, but Stiles almost wishes he had more time in Boston this Christmastime, just to enjoy his first truly white Christmas.
He somehow finds himself in Cambridge during his— ahem, very extended— study break. (He’s spent the past three weeks with his nose buried in a chemistry textbook. He’s pretty sure he deserves the afternoon off at this point.) It’s freezing out, though, and his fingers are starting to go numb even with his gloves, so he ducks into a little independent coffee shop on the corner, with twinkling lights and garland strung over the door and through their large windows.
It’s warm inside, thank god, and even more festive— there’s a Christmas tree in the corner, decorated with all sorts of colorful mugs, holiday songs playing over the radio, and garland and twinkling lights everywhere. The shop is cozy by itself too, all red tone bricks and warm wood panelling, with a fire crackling in the fireplace on the far wall. It feels like a coffee shop in a Lifetime movie, so Stiles joins the line, content to order his usual gingerbread latte and warm up for a little while in this cafe.
The shop is busy, full of what seems to be a lot of other college students in Harvard and MIT apparel, cramming for exams like he’s been doing. Stiles wishes he were the type of person who could efficiently study in a busy coffee shop like this— he knows he would be so easily distracted that productivity would be at a low for him. Apparently that’s not an issue for these students, because he’s surrounded by a gaggle of them as he waits at the end counter for his latte to be made. He checks his phone idly as he stands there, responding to Scott’s text message asking when he’s flying home for winter break. This is the longest period of time he’s ever gone without seeing his best friend, and he can’t wait to get home just for their reunion.
“Gingerbread latte for Stiles!” the barista calls out, and Stiles looks up from his phone to see her walking away from a newly-placed coffee on the counter. He scrambles up to the front of the throng, taking the drink she’d just placed there, happily slurping the whipped cream off the top.
He’s in the process of scanning the cafe to find an empty seat somewhere— hopefully over by the fireplace, because he still can’t really feel his toes— when he brings the coffee cup to his lips, taking a sip and expecting to get the wonderful, sweet flavor of gingerbread with his coffee.
Instead, he chokes as the liquid hits his tongue, spitting the drink back into the cup and trying not to gag. Peppermint. Gross.
He sighs, because the baristas look busy, and he doesn’t want to bother them, but they also screwed up and gave him the wrong flavor latte, and he hates peppermint. He dolefully walks back to the counter, expression already shifting into an apologetic look as he prepares himself to say hey, I’m so sorry, this was supposed to be a gingerbread latte, not peppermint. Do you mind remaking it? But then he sees the one cup still left on the pick up counter, with his name scrawled messily across the red cardboard.
Stiles’s stomach drops, and he quickly shifts the cup in his hands so he can see the writing on it. There, in the barista’s hasty handwriting, is written peppermint latte— Lydia.
Oh, shit.
There’s only one other person at the counter now, a little redhead in a green winter coat, her fingers tapping on the counter like she’s annoyed. “Sorry, I just thought I heard you call my name,” she says to the barista there, and the barista scrunches his eyebrows together, like he’s trying to recall something.
“What did you order again?” he asks the girl.
“A peppermint latte,” the girl responds, and Stiles’s stomach floods with dread.
“Oh, shit,” he thinks again, but this time, he can’t stop himself from saying it out loud.
The girl turns around, looking at him with piercing eyes greener than her coat, and Stiles freezes up for a second. She’s beautiful, he can’t help but think, even though this is probably the most inopportune moment to be ogling a stranger, seeing as he just stole her coffee, but wow, is she pretty. Her hair’s more of a strawberry blonde, he realizes, and it falls in soft, loose curls around her face. Stiles finds he can’t look away from her green eyes, a gorgeous shade of emerald filled with little flecks of gold, even though they are growing increasingly more angry with every passing second.
The girl— Lydia, he realizes— opens her mouth like she’s about to say something, but Stiles begins talking, because he should probably explain himself.
“I must have grabbed yours by accident. I am so sorry,” he says emphatically, gesturing to the cup in his hand.
“Oh,” Lydia says, her eyes narrowing a little bit. “Okay.” She holds her hand out for the drink, and Stiles realizes she thinks he just grabbed it, not that he almost drank it.
“Uh,” Stiles says, unsure how to put this eloquently, and Lydia just looks at him expectantly, hand still outstretched. “Well, I took a sip of it, because I thought it was mine, but I don’t actually like peppermint so I sort of… spit it back in. And I ate all the whipped cream on top,” he adds, grimacing in what he hopes is an apologetic manner. Lydia drops her hand, her eyes narrowing even more, perfect brows furrowed together. God, she is so pretty. It’s making it hard for him to think, so instead he’s just standing there frozen, like a total idiot.
He thinks that not checking the name on his cup first probably indicates he is a total idiot, and from the way Lydia’s looking at him, he assumes she thinks the same.
But he does have some manners, despite the constant sarcastic comments that he generally reverts to, and he feels genuinely bad for taking this girl’s drink. “Let me buy you a new one,” he offers, still clutching her ruined drink in his hand. The barista behind the counter has disappeared, apparently content to let them figure out this issue by themselves.
“It’s fine,” Lydia says, shaking her head. It’s evident from her tone of voice how annoyed she is, and he feels even more guilty. “Really. Don’t worry about it.” He opens his mouth to say more, but she’s already walking away, retreating to a table over by the fireplace covered in a wide variety of textbooks and notes.
Stiles just stands there another minute, still frozen, unsure what to do. He looks over towards Lydia ruffling through pages of her notebook, seated at her little table again, and then down at the coffee in his hands, whipped cream gone and growing cold in his hands.
Stiles makes note of the scribbled instructions on the side of the cup, drops it in the trash, and grabs his own drink from the counter (double checking the name this time) before he gets back in line.
He waits attentively by the counter this time, phone securely in his pocket where it can’t distract him, and when they call out his order, he double checks the name and the order description scribbled on the side of the cup before he walks away.
Lydia looks up when he approaches her table, and suddenly Stiles is tongue tied again, her gorgeous green eyes locking on his. Her brow quirks in surprise, and Stiles just holds out the coffee to her wordlessly, briefly glancing down to make sure it is hers and not his gingerbread latte.
“Thanks,” she says, taking the coffee from him slowly. “You didn’t have to do that.” Stiles shakes his head vehemently, the ability to speak suddenly returning to him.
“Yes I did,” Stiles says, his heart starting to race again. Just talking to this girl is having an effect on him. “It’s the least I could do. I should have checked the name before I grabbed the cup.”
“Yeah, probably,” Lydia says, and there’s a hint of a smile pulling at her lips. Stiles feels like he’s succeeded, making her grin a tiny bit. He doesn’t even know this girl, but god does he want to— call him lovesick or infatuated or whatever, but there’s something about her that is special, like this spark inside him has suddenly caught, pushing his heart into overdrive.
Still, she has work to do, and he’s given her the coffee, so Stiles turns to leave. He doesn’t want to impose or interrupt her more than he already has— clearly she’s here to get stuff done, and as much as he wants to get to know her, he’s not going to push himself onto her.
(Plus, there’s the fact that she’s wildly out of his league, and the rejection he’s imagining in his mind is probably much kinder than what would happen in real life.)
“Hey,” Lydia says, and Stiles whips around so fast he’s mildly impressed he doesn’t drop his own drink. Lydia’s looking at him with those green eyes, and there’s a hint of something in them he can’t quite figure out— like she’s intrigued or something.
“What’s your name?” she asks, head tilting a little bit, and Stiles takes a step towards her table again.
“Stiles,” he says, heart hammering. She grins at that, but mercifully doesn’t say anything about what a ridiculous name it is. She can probably tell he already knows.
“Stiles,” she repeats, like she’s testing it out, and he loves the way it sounds on her lips. “I’m Lydia,” she offers, and he grins at her, unable to help it.
“Do you want to sit down?” she asks, eyebrows raised, and Stiles thinks his heart actually stops.
“Uh, sure,” he stutters out, and he can’t help but think he probably sounds like a total fool. Lydia doesn’t seem to think that, though; she slides her papers closer towards her, clearing half the table so he can sit, placing his half-drinken latte down there. Stiles pulls out the chair opposite her, heart hammering, before taking a seat across from her.
She smiles at him, wider and warmer than before, and the spark in her green eyes as they meet his again feels like possibility.