Hi everybody!

I wrote this Stydia fanfiction this morning, after seeing the Stydia hug in the midseason trailer.

Hope you like it! :3

The only exception

One is an isolated case. Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern.

The words of his father emerge from a forgotten corner of his memory. Stiles, his fingers touching the chin, as he does every time he focuses on something, comes back a few steps.

- The overall vision. The overall vision. - repeats to himself, without even understanding if he is really talking or if his thoughts are so strong and determined to appear with their own item.

He glued a series of photographs and newspaper articles, connected by red arrows on the board of transparent plastic. At the center, the silhouette of a bust on whose face is hatched a question mark.

Stiles is rocking the red marker between his fingers in rhythm with the nervous and hurried pace of Lydia, who is back and forth now for a couple of minutes tapping the phone against her palm, her head bowed and her mind threatening to explode.

Twenty million dollars for a banshee who cannot even manage her own powers. Or they are crazy or they have mistaken her for her wardrobe, or what her wardrobe was, since she had to sell more than half to scrape together some change.

- Give me ten minutes. - Stiles says, closing his eyes for a moment and squinting, as if this one movement could help him clear his mind to examine critically the whole situation.

Concentrated as he is, he doesn't even notice that Lydia has stopped a few steps from his bed, her arms a little extended on the sides and the face turned toward the opposite wall.

- From one to ten minutes from ... -

Let me concentrate, Lydia.

Stiles is about to say.

Only ten minutes.

- ... how much do you think it will take for two fifteen-years-old kids to kill one girl whose only defense are an useless scream and a pair of heels? -

Lydia's voice pierces the plastic board, accurate and transparent thin as a blade, and sticking in the chest of Stiles.

The boy leaves the pen in the cradle of wood that has mounted at the base of the board. Suddenly, in his mind there is no place for newspaper clippings, names, pictures, assumptions, analysis and investigations. There is no place for anything, because Lydia's question has eradicated any thought more or less sensible of his head, which was already confused. It is like a magnet stuck to the walls of his brain and continues to repeat itself, more and more insistent, more and more terrifying.

Stiles joins her in two seconds, but the few steps separating them seem endless.

When he pours in her face, Lydia continues to look straight ahead, her mouth half open, as if she herself was surprised by what she has just said.

And that's when Stiles understands. Her question took aback even her. It came from a dark corner hidden in her chest, it was there, waiting to be released.

- Would take. - corrects Stiles, following her gaze patiently until he manages to capture her attention. - I was expecting that Lydia Martin knew the importance of verb tenses. Will take implies a certain percentage of security. -

The tone he uses to talk to her is soft. Lydia would not know how else to define it. It's as if she was asleep and he laid her carefully on the bed, extending the blankets on her.

Soft.

Lydia's hands tremble, and it is a miracle that the mobile phone is not yet slipped from her fingers.

Stiles feels almost her armor falling down with a crystal-clear sound.

He sees the security Lydia flaunts every day slipping from her face, which now seems to lose color and vitality. He sees the glacial indifference that she has always simulated fade from her eyes, as if her make-up is melting.

But Lydia doesn't let go even a tear. She stands there, still, with her arms at her sides, and Stiles doesn't understand even if I'm still breathing.

- You know what I read about the banshees? -

Lydia shakes her head. Stiles lets out a sigh of relief.

He found her.

- That they have a tendency to isolate themselves. – he explains, without taking his eyes from her face: you never know, Lydia could take advantage of a moment of distraction to escape again. - And maybe that's why they are so vulnerable. -

Lydia swallows loudly and shakes her eyelids once, twice, three times. She feels her eyes burn as if flames licked them thin and sharp to annoy her.

- And you know what else I know? -

Again, Lydia shakes her head. A node becomes tangled in the throat. She seems to be in a room that is too narrow, the walls get closer and closer to her and have no qualms to compress and crush her. Lydia sticks her teeth into her lower lip, trying to stop it from shaking in a so ridiculous and childish manner.

The heart rate increases dramatically, while Stiles guides her head to his shoulder and strokes her hair. Wraps his arms around her waist, and for a moment, that seems to crystallize forever, Lydia stiffens. Stiles thinks he has crossed an invisible border, to have annoyed her, perhaps.

- I know that Lydia Martin is the only exception to the rule. – he whispers.

Lydia closes her eyes.

- I know that Lydia Martin is not alone. -

It is then that Lydia melts. Literally. Her arms seem to turn to jelly and she feels the need to let go and just trust Stiles. There is something very natural, in the way that the face of Lydia adheres perfectly to the shoulder of Stiles. It seems that someone has drawn them because, one day, they should embrace in that exact way. And there's something very unsettling, in the way that Lydia is almost certain that Stiles is most reassuring than her old armor.

Stiles smells of coffee. Lydia asks herself how many coffes he has thrown down to keep himself awake. He also gives off a scent that seems moss or something like that.

Stiles smells like home.

Stiles gives off the scent of a refuge, not a cold mask that anesthetized her by every emotion.

Stiles is not even so tiring to build, then.

Lydia no longer has to worry about holding her armor up, because Stiles is now creating a protective bubble around her.

Stiles holds his breath. It is the third time this has happened with Lydia particularly close to him.

One is an isolated case.

His mind becomes the scene of quick images that chase each other. The dressing room. The shortness of breath, the sweat pearls his front, the words that seems to scratch his tongue each time that he tries to say them.

Lydia's hands that touches his face, giving him a minimum balance. Stiles holds his breath.

Two is a coincidence.

Lydia does not think twice before throwing himself into the arms of Stiles and let him string. And Stiles not even realize it, do not even understand that he stopped breathing. Once again.

Three is a pattern.

Probably, Lydia has just devised a plan to kill him.

- They have no idea who they're dealing with. – he lets out, brushing the hair of Lydia with her chin.

Just have no idea.