Chapter Text
All I Need is a Whisper
Lydia pulls up to a red light and exhales apprehensively. She remembers pulling up to Harvard on her first day of freshman year full of confidence and excitement. She had a plan, she knew exactly where her life was going and she had a boyfriend. But this isn’t Harvard, or her freshman year. She doesn’t have a plan or know where she’s going, and she most certainly doesn’t have a boyfriend.
Thank God, she thinks.
Lydia’s life couldn’t be any more different than she thought it would be. But yet, here she is, at Stanford transferring in her Senior year of college.
Like that doesn’t seem sketchy.
Lydia rolls her eyes and mentally gives herself a pep talk.
“I don’t really care who thinks it’s weird that I’m transferring in my final year. I’m not here to make friends and I’m not here to have fun. I’m here to get my degree, get into a masters program, and win a Fields medal. You’ve lost sight of it once, don’t do it again, Lydia.”
Lydia looks to her right and to her horror, an insanely cute boy wearing a Mets cap is staring at her in his insanely beat up jeep wrangler. The car is filled with more boys, all of which are attractive as well. The boy with the Mets hat gives her a million dollar smile and motions for her to roll her windows down and she does.
“You know, a pretty girl like you shouldn’t be talking to herself, you could be talking to me.” The boy says cockily, with a wink, the sweet talk reminding her a bit of Jackson.
Jackson.
Lydia looks at the boy disgusted.
“And a boy like you, or should I say any human really, shouldn’t be driving a beat-up death trap like that, but here you are.” Lydia counters.
The golden-eyed boy’s mouth drops and she hears her friends chime into a collective “Ohhh”
Just as the boy is about to retort, the light turns green and Lydia slams on her accelerator trying to avoid any more awkward interaction with this arrogant, beautiful, but arrogant asshole and his friends. She looks back in her rear-view mirror and notices the car not moving. She realizes the car must have stalled.
Karma. Lydia smirks to herself.
No boys, Lydia. Especially not ones like that.
And no friends, she adds. Whoever it is she’s living with can do whatever they’d like, she is just going to stay in her room and do what she needs to do to get to the end of the year.
Lydia had found two girls who needed a third roommate in an apartment right near campus. Lydia had got into contact with them on Facebook before she had to delete her account. They both looked like nice girls, and maybe at a different time, Lydia would have given them a chance. But none of her friends at Harvard or at home gave two shits about her when she needed them the most.
You can only trust yourself. No friends.
As Lydia is thinking this, she sees the two girls sitting on lawn chairs outside of their apartment with a “Welcome Lydia” sign in the front lawn. She tries hard not to, but gives into her smile. Even though she doesn’t want to let herself like these girls, it does feel nice to feel welcomed for once.
Lydia waves politely to the girls and they follow her car as she parks. Lydia gets out of her car and is immediately enveloped into a hug, which catches her off guard.
“Hi! It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Kira.” The extremely pretty Asian girl lets go of Lydia and smiles at Lydia.
“Sorry about her, Kira we talked about this.” The other girl, Allison she presumes, comes into view. She looks at Kira with playful disapproval and holds out her hand for Lydia to shake.
“I’m Allison Argent.”
Lydia takes the beautiful brunette’s hand.
“Lydia, it’s nice to meet you guys.”
Kira is positively beaming, but no one is talking, and in truth it’s pretty awkward. These two girls, who have probably known each other for the past three years, if not more, are going to live with a completely random girl who they know nothing about.
And will continue to know nothing about. Lydia reminds herself.
Allison finally breaks the tension,
“So, we wanted to help you with your things!”
“You really don’t have to,” Lydia says obligatorily. Truthfully, Lydia had no idea how she was going to move all of her stuff into the apartment, especially since they were on the sixth floor. She always had Jackson to help her with her things. Her stomach does a familiar turn when she thinks of him again.
“Oh my goodness, there is no way we were gonna let you do this alone! In fact, our guy friends are on their way over now to help too,” Kira says happily.
Lydia’s stomach drops. She’s still a bit apprehensive about being around guys, a fact that really annoys her, but she can’t help it.
“Oh no! I’d hate to be a nuisance. Please tell them they don’t have to come,” Lydia pleads.
“Don’t you worry, you’re not being a problem at all! Believe me, they would just be at home playing video games not doing anything productive at all. We need every excuse to get them out of that damn house,” Allson says warmly to Lydia.
“Plus, I’m all about girl-power, but some man strength would be nice with moving this stuff,” Kira says enthusiastically. “I just don’t know where they are, they said they were on their way a little bit ago, they should be here.” Kira adds.
“Well let’s get a head start,” Allison says as she begins to grab things from Lydia’s car.
Lydia and Kira start grabbing things as well.
When they get into the apartment, Kira and Allsion do a quick tour. The place is okay, but there is a huge window in the living room overlooking Stanford’s campus. Lydia takes a moment to look out and take it all in. Before she turns around and goes with the other two girls into her room, which is actually quite big.
“You lucked out, this is the biggest room in the apartment.”
Lydia looks at Allison questioningly.
“Why didn’t one of you guys take it? I don’t mind a smaller room.”
Allison shakes her head.
“It’s really no big deal, Kira and I have been living here over a year now, we love our rooms.”
Lydia nods appreciatively and goes with the two girls to get more of her stuff.
Kira and Allison start asking Lydia the normal get-to-know questions like, “Where are you from?” And “What are your favorite hobbies?” Lydia answers everything as short as possible, hoping the two brunettes will catch a hint. They don’t, or maybe they do and just won’t let up.
On their third trip on the elevator, Kira calls someone on her phone.
“Hey Scott, where the hell are guys? You’re so late and we can only dance around the heavy artillery for so long before we’ll have to actually do it ourselves, which we could do because we’re strong, independent women who don’t need boys to do anything for them, but would just really like boys to do some things for them because…
Allison nudges Kira,
“… oh okay sorry, I’m rambling! Just get your asses over here ASAP, goodbye.” Kira shuts off her phone and the elevator door opens.
“Sorry about that, the guys are always late, literally always.” Kira says clearly annoyed.
“Well, I bet they weren’t jumping out of their seats with the prospect of moving someone in,” Lydia says, surprising herself by getting involved with conversation.
“Oh you are so wrong! The boys were so stoked when we told them they were helping us move you in,” Kira says.
“Yeah because you told them, and I quote, ‘So a really hot girl is moving into our house on Saturday, wanna help move her in?’” Allison replies.
“To be fair, Scott would have helped regardless because he’s a good person,” Kira replies.
“That is very true, even though you’re biased because he’s your boyfriend.”
“And you’re biased because he WAS your boyfriend.” Kira says. Lydia’s eyes widen as she turns to look at Allison’s reaction, but she just laughs at Kira. Allison turns to Lydia.
“So here’s the lowdown, I dated Scott for four years. We met our sophomore year of high school and then broke up our sophomore year of college.”
“But they're still friends!” Kira adds. Allison nods.
“Great friends.”
“And then I started dating him last year because Malia of course…”
“Let’s not talk about Malia, we don’t want to scare her.” Allison says.
Lydia doesn’t know who this Malia girl is, but her roommates didn’t seem to be too fond of her.
“Anyways, so there’s Derek, who is a grad student. He doesn’t really talk much or involve himself with anything, but he lives with the boys just down the road. He always has a sourpuss look on his face, but I swear he doesn’t hate you. He’s actually quite nice if you get to know him.”
“Then there’s Isaac, he’s an exchange student from England. Beware, he will flirt with you until the end of time,” Allison warns.
“Especially you because you’re beautiful.” Kira says, Lydia can’t help but smile at the girl.
“But Isaac is actually a really good guy, a bit secretive for my liking, but a good guy,” Allison says fondly.
“And then there’s Stiles.”
“What the hell is a Stiles?” Lydia asks despite herself.
Allison and Kira roar with laughter.
“Oh that’s great, I’m gonna have to tell him that one,” Kira says.
“Stiles…well Stiles, I’ve known him for a really long time and I love him, don’t get me wrong. But he’s kind of…
“An ass.” Kira says.
“An ass, yes.” Allison agrees.
“But I swear, if he lets you in, you will see just how amazing he is.”
“I just wish I knew what the hell he was thinking dating Malia…”
Allison and Kira go off talking about their friends and Lydia sits back and smiles.
So maybe she didn’t really want to befriend her roommates, but I guess it wouldn’t be a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. Maybe Stanford wouldn’t be that bad.
“We’re here!” there’s a yell from outside the door, which is unceremoniously busted into. In walks four boys. It takes Lydia a moment to register it, but her jaw drops when she notices the Mets cap on the one boy.
“Sorry we’re late, had some car trouble, but we’re here now and we’re ready to…Oh, hello pretty girl.” The boy with the Mets hat says once he notices Lydia sitting there.
Lydia was wrong, Stanford was going to be terrible.