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In all honesty, Lydia hadn’t been trying to be a bitch.
She knows she sometimes has the tendency to get a little stone cold and unsympathetic— her nickname “ice queen” in high school was probably well deserved— but this time, it genuinely is an accident. And it’s really all because of finals, because if she didn’t have six tests and four final projects all in the next two weeks, she probably would be considerably more organized and wouldn’t have resorted to last-minute laundry. Lydia is normally not a last minute laundry type of girl. She’s the type of girl who always has her homework done early, projects completed well in advance, tests mapped out and study guides neatly written up the week before. That’s how she’d been for all of her undergrad, but the work for grad school, in addition to the research she’s conducting in the labs outside of class, is finally starting to hit her hard right before finals week.
Is this how other students feel all the time? she muses as she tosses the dress she’d worn to class today in the hamper. It’s exhausting. It’s not really that her work is too challenging, it’s just too time consuming.
Regardless, while she was working on one of her many final papers last night, she had gotten so invested in the research she was writing up that she had totally forgotten to do her laundry. And then today she had studied for the whole morning before realizing she had two and a half hours until she needed to be at Allison and Scott’s Christmas party, and she had absolutely nothing clean that was suitable to wear.
She’d taken an emergency break from studying, but her mind was still completely focused on how to solve the set of partial differential equations she’d been working on, so laundry was kind of a secondary, autopilot thing. All the washers in their building had been full, but one of them had been finished running, wet clothes sitting still while the others washers whirred. Lydia knows it’s not the best thing to take someone’s clean clothes out of the washer and put them on top, but this building has a very large tenant to washer ratio, and desperate times call for desperate measures. She had placed them very neatly on top of the washer, in her defense, making sure nothing had fallen out onto the floor or gotten dirty in the transfer; shoving her clothes in, she had deposited her coins in and picked her cycle and returned upstairs to finish her problem set before she had to get ready.
Half an hour later, she closes her textbook, finally satisfied with the amount of work she’d gotten done, before grabbing her laundry basket and roll of quarters to switch her clean clothes over to the dryer. But when she gets down to the laundry room, her washer is empty, no pile of clothes on top or anything. Confused, she walks closer, and that’s when she sees it: a note written in messy scrawl, stuck to the wall above her machine.
Her jaw drops more and more as she reads, until she’s pretty sure it’s close to brushing the floor.
To the person who stopped the washer in the middle of my wash cycle and took my clothes out just to wash yours…
Yeah, you’re an asshole.
Unfortunately for you, so am I. You can find your wet clothes frozen outside in the snow. Any problems? Come see me in 301.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lydia says to herself, unable to contain her rage. A glance out the window, however, shows that person was not kidding, because there is all her clothing, laying in the inch of snow dusting the ground, looking decidedly icy and frozen.
She hadn’t even realized the washer hadn’t been done, Lydia thinks defensively. The clothes weren’t moving. How was she supposed to know the cycle was only halfway over? Probably, her stupidly rational brain cuts in, from the timer on the front of the machine, which she hadn’t even noticed because she’d been so consumed with thoughts of finals. Minor details. That still doesn’t give someone the right to go leave all her clothes outside while it’s below freezing out.
Lydia is fuming as she kicks open the laundry room door, prying all her very frozen clothing out of the snow and tossing it into her laundry basket. Of course this December is the one where there’s actually snow on the ground, and while Lydia is all for the simple magic of a white Christmas, the snow is starting to lose its charm as she pulls chunks of it off the red dress she was going to wear tonight. Her laundry basket starts to drip once she comes back inside, the snow starting to melt at the blast of heat from the dryers.
She could let it go, she knows. She’s not entirely innocent in this situation, although her blunder had been a simple mistake and this mystery person in apartment 301’s actions had been deliberately malicious. Lydia most probably doesn’t have time to go argue with one of her neighbors, especially now that she has nothing to wear to Allison’s party, but the pettiness wins out. She’s in 311 anyways, so 301 is right down the hall for her. Hardly even a detour. And there’s still rage bubbling in her veins at the thought of all her clean clothes literally frozen. She has some deep desire to unleash the high school ice queen on this stranger who thought they could beat her out.
That’s how Lydia finds herself, after depositing her laundry basket of frozen clothing in her bathtub to deal with at a later time, pounding on the door of apartment 301, note from the laundry room clutched tightly in her other hand.
The door opens after a second, and Lydia hates that her initial reaction is that the guy who sabotaged her laundry is cute. She’d secretly been hoping for some pimply eighteen year old right out of high school, or some balding middle age man old enough to be her father. She had not been hoping her laundry bandit would be attractive, with an upturned nose and sharp cheekbones and eyes the color of amber. He looks adorably baffled, like he has absolutely no idea why one of his neighbors would show up at his door.
This guy does not look like enough of an asshole to leave all my clothing out in the snow, Lydia thinks, watching him blink at her in confusion. But unless the real laundry bandit wrote someone else’s apartment number on that note, it has to be him, so she steels her expression, crossing her arms angrily.
“Uh, can I help you?” the guy says, and it’s clear how confused he is from his voice.
“Yeah,” Lydia says, her voice icy, and she holds up the piece of paper in her hand.
As soon as the guy sees the note, his entire expression shifts, and suddenly, he looks just as angry as Lydia feels.
“What the hell was this?” she demands, eyes blazing. Her expression is the same one she uses when she’s arguing with people and she knows she’s right, but the guy only looks half terrified to death at the look on her face, which is a disappointment, really. “What kind of jackass puts someone’s clothes out in the snow in the middle of December?”
“What kind of jackass stops someone’s wash cycle in the middle of it to wash their own clothes?” the guy spits back. “Like, how unaware of others do you have to be to deem your clothes more important than theirs, when they got their first?”
“I didn’t realize your clothes weren’t done,” Lydia retorts.
“How did you not realize?” Clearly, he isn’t buying it. “There’s a timer on the front of the machine!”
“Your clothes weren’t spinning, and I was in a rush!” Lydia defends. “I didn’t notice the timer!”
“And you also didn’t notice the soap still all over them?” the guy says, crossing his arms, expression incredulous.
She can honestly say she didn’t, but Lydia’s done arguing. Clearly this guy is not apologizing any time soon, and she still has a party she needs to get ready for.
“I still maintain that putting my clothes out in the snow is significantly more of an asshole move than me accidentally pulling your clothes out too early,” she tells him. He just rolls his eyes.
“You can think that if you want,” he tells her, “but I still think my actions were perfectly justified. I hoep you have fun defrosting your clothes.”
And with that, he closes the door in Lydia’s face.
She doesn’t stick around to dwell on it. Making a face at her asshole neighbor’s door, she stalks back down the hall, pulling out her cell phone as she walks and dialing Allison.
“Hey, Allison,” she says when her best friend picks up. “So I had a bit of a clothing issue. Do you have something I could borrow for your party tonight?”
“Of course,” Allison answers, and Lydia almost sighs in relief. “Come over whenever, you can borrow anything I have.”
“You’re the best,” Lydia responds, letting herself back into her apartment. “I’ll be there soon.”
***
She doesn’t go into the details of her clothing debacle when she gets to Allison and Scott’s place. But Allison hands her a green dress— which conveniently, was the one Lydia was thinking of borrowing— and she slips it on, touching up her makeup afterwards until she’s party presentable.
“You look great,” Allison tells her when she enters the kitchen to help her friends finish setting up. “I’m so glad you could still come. It’s been way too long since we all hung out.”
“I know,” Lydia agrees, giving Scott a quick hug in greeting before she begins helping him transfer hors d'oeuvres from the pans on top of the oven to more decorative plates. “Are Kira and Malia and Isaac coming?”
“Yep,” Scott says, nodding. “I think Liam’s coming too. And my best friend just moved back here from DC a few weeks ago, so you’ll get to meet him too.”
“He’s in the FBI,” Allison says, raising her eyebrows and smirking at Lydia in a way that lets her know Allison and Scott will totally be trying to set her up with Scott’s mystery best friend all night.
The buzzer for their apartment rings then, and Allison turns to Scott, wide eyed. “Scott, can you go let everyone in?” she says, finishing pouring chips into a bowl. “Go play hostess. Lydia, do you mind helping me finish up with the food?”
“Not at all,” Lydia tells her, grinning. “It’s the least I can do. You lent me a dress.”
They can hear the door open and close multiple times as they finish plating the hors d'oeuvres, the chatter of voices in the living room growing louder by the minute. Finally the last tray of pigs in a blanket are out of the oven, and Allison’s pulling off her apron, throwing all the discarded pans in the sink. “Alright,” she says to Lydia. “Let’s go mingle.”
Kira and Malia are already there, and Lydia gives them both big hugs, because it feels like it’s been much too long since she saw them. The apartment is filled with other people too— some of their collective friends, some people Scott works with, some of Allison’s friends from her research team. She chats with people she recognizes, counting down in her head until the moment Allison appears and tries to set her up with Scott’s best friend.
It takes about thirty minutes, which, in all honesty, is about twenty more than Lydia had been expecting.
“You have to come meet Scott’s best friend, Stiles,” Allison says, and Lydia quirks an eyebrow. What the hell kind of name is Stiles? “I know, I know,” Allison goes, like she can read Lydia’s mind. “It’s a nickname. Anyways, he and Scott have known each other since they were kids— he’s in the FBI, and he just got moved back here to the San Francisco office.”
“Okay,” Lydia says, because sometimes it’s easier to humor her friend than try to argue with Allison. She follows the other girl up to Scott and a guy with his back to them, wearing a foresty green flannel with red pants. She can’t see much of him other than the abundance of plaid and his shock of chestnut hair, but she does have to admit, those red pants make his ass look really nice.
“Scott, Stiles,” Allison says, catching the boys’ attention. They both turn to her, and it’s clear from Scott’s expression he’s been prepping his best friend for this set up as well. “Stiles, this is my best friend Lydia,” Allison says, but Lydia freezes, because Scott’s friend has turned around now, and she can see his face.
Stiles is the laundry bandit.
“Oh my god,” Stiles says, his jaw dropping. Lydia’s sure she has a similar expression on her face.
“It’s you,” Lydia says, and Allison blinks at the hostility in her tone.
“Sorry,” her best friend says, eyebrows scrunching in confusion. “Do you guys know each other?”
“Somewhat,” Lydia spits, speaking before Stiles has a chance to cut in. “This guy is the reason that I had to borrow your dress, Allison, because he put all my wet clothes out in the snow this afternoon.”
The anger fades from Stiles’s expression, morphing into embarrassment at the the looks on Scott and Allison’s faces. “She stopped my wash cycle in the middle of it and put all my soapy clothes on top of the washer so she could wash her own clothes!” Stiles defends.
“I didn’t realize they weren’t done!” Lydia retorts. Are they seriously living through this argument again? “I made a mistake, and your retaliation was much too extreme!”
“Okay,” Allison says, her tone apprehensive, hands raised in surrender next to the two of them. Clearly this setup is not going as she and Scott envisioned. “Well, uh, I’m glad we established that. I’m going to go get a snack. Lydia, you want to come?” Lydia can tell by the desperate look in her best friend’s eye, she is supposed to say yes, so she does. At this point, she’ll take any excuse to get away from the jackass laundry bandit— Stiles, she corrects herself— even if that excuse is completely fabricated.
Allison, predictably, does not try to set her back up with Stiles for the rest of the night. Lydia tries her best to avoid him— he spends most of the party with Scott anyways, she notices. But seeing him not angry is almost more frustrating— when he throws his head back to laugh, or talks aggressively with his hands, it’s really hard to not think about how cute he is.
He froze all your clothing, Lydia, she reminds herself. He left your red dress you were going to wear tonight outside in the snow. He has no respect for high quality silk, and therefore no respect for anything.
Still. She catches him laughing at something Kira says later on, his eyes shining and grin wide, and she wishes that he wasn’t the laundry bandit, because then she definitely would have let Allison try to play matchmaker.
It’s not until the party is almost over that she runs into Stiles again. Most of the other guests have left, only Kira and Malia and Isaac and a few others still there, everyone lounging on the couch, finishing off the end of the the appetizers. Lydia’s in the kitchen, trying to find a drink that’s not alcoholic, because she’s had her fill of champagne tonight and she does have to drive home eventually. She finally discovers eggnog in the fridge, pulling it out triumphantly and closing the fridge. But behind the door is Stiles, blinking in surprise as they come face to face.
“Hi,” Stiles says, all that hostility from their confrontation earlier gone. Lydia doesn’t know what to say, so she just stands there in silence. “Sorry, I was looking for…” Stiles trails off, gesturing to the water dispenser on the front of the fridge. She just nods, stepping out of the way so he can fill his cup up.
Lydia’s ready to drop it, leave the room and rejoin their friends, but Stiles clears his throat, and she freezes again.
“Hey, I’m really sorry about earlier,” Stiles says, his fingers drumming on his thigh, expression meek. “Scott yelled at me for being such an asshole, if it makes you feel better. I shouldn’t have overreacted so much at the whole laundry thing. Especially since you didn’t mean to take my clothes out early.”
“I honestly didn’t,” Lydia says, matching the sincerity in his tone of voice. “I should have been paying more attention, really. I never would have pulled your clothes out if I had realized they weren’t done washing.”
“Even if you had meant to, I probably shouldn’t have put all your clothes outside in the snow,” he says, flashing her a lopsided grin that makes her stomach flutter. Lydia shrugs, smiling back slyly.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I might have done the same. I hate when people touch my clothes.”
Stiles smiles meekly again, before taking a step closer to her. “Well, what can I do to make it up to you, then?” He laughs, putting his drink down on the counter. “I can pay for your next load of laundry. I think that’s only fair.”
Lydia grins, an idea flitting into her mind. She can see his eyes shine from this distance, a soft amber color with flecks of gold in them. The soft look in them makes her heart flutter a little bit. Sure, he may have made one asshole move, but there’s something about Stiles that intrigues her, and she can’t help herself wanting to get to know him a little more, under less hostile circumstances.
“How about,” she says, “you take me out for coffee sometime instead?”
Stiles grins, wide and bright, and then her heart really does flutter.
“Deal.”