"Yeah, you're right," she sighs. "Lets just go."
Stiles picks up both his and her luggage before she can even turn around, and lets her lead the way back to the parking lot. "Come on, then. We can call the pack on our way back."
xxxxxxxxxx
They don't.
Stiles is far too alert while driving, paying excruciating attention to the road and to the pouring rain that just won't stop falling, and Lydia is far too aware of how he's cautious, so she decides on making the phone call wait and be watchful with him as much as she can, just in case.
The weather just worsens as they approach campus, their moods and grumpiness right along with it. It's barely 6AM (their early flight was literally the only one they could get on to be back in California in time for Christmas Eve), they haven't slept that much the night before what with last minute packing, and the traffic is so congested that, by the time they get home, Stiles and Lydia realize it took them over two and a half hours to make a drive that usually would take them less than forty minutes.
It doesn't help much either that they start arguing over where they're headed when they're halfway home.
("Stiles, you don't have a heater. I am not going to spend Christmas freezing! We're going to my dorm."
"Not if you want to starve yourself to death, we're not!"
"I can cook!" she huffs.
"Desserts are not meals, Lydia.")
They end up compromising, like they always do.
They stop by her dorm first and Stiles is the one who goes inside to get her electric heater and a handful of blankets, but what he gets is drenched in the process. Lydia rolls her eyes at him when he's back behind the wheel and starts complaining about the fact that his baby – Roscoe, obviously - is now getting wet because of their bad luck and the shitty storm. Stiles pays Lydia's mocking face no mind and just glares back at her as per usual, muttering under his breath that if Lydia wasn't such a disaster in the kitchen and had actual food in her apartment, they could have stayed in her dorm just fine.
She thinks of retorting a snarky comment at his ramblings, but soon enough they're arriving to his dorm and she's the one whose clothes get soaked as soon as she leaps out of the Jeep, after they decide that it's better if they just carry everything back upstairs before the streets are flooded and they can't come down to pick up some of their things anymore.
("You're moving, Stiles, I swear to god!" he hears her mumble when they're marching up the stairs, freezing and trying their best not to let their belongings fall to the floor with how much they're shaking because of the cold. "You need to move! Who in their right mind would even get an apartment on a third floor?"
He can't help the smile that escapes him. "It suits me just fine. Who ever thought you'd spend so much time here anyways?"
That shuts her up.)
The bickering only comes up again, briefly, when Lydia's hands are so cold that one of her bags does slip from her fingers and makes her trip on it, resulting in the banshee almost falling on her face if Stiles wasn't right behind her to avoid it, but as it turns out his hands are even colder than hers and Lydia reflexively flinches away from him and his icy touch when she straightens up, just full on glaring at him, fuming. It does nothing but incite him to get his hands on her more, teasingly.
Usually (and it's been happening more and more, not that she can complain much) it's wherever he finds naked skin of hers – like on her arms or her cheeks, sometimes her shoulders or lower back if he dares (happened over the summer, ended up with Lydia throwing him into the pool only for Stiles to come back out and take her with him) -, but this time he goes for her neck.
An unexpected Christmas
Start from the beginning
