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It all starts when they finally get around to putting up the Christmas decorations.
In all honesty, Stiles is beyond proud that they actually managed to decorate their house. House being key— they’d moved from their cute little apartment in the heart of San Francisco into an actual house with a yard and a driveway and a patio in the back about six months ago, which, come to think of it, probably wasn’t a great thing to do while Lydia was five months pregnant, but they had wanted a real house when the baby arrived, and they had found the perfect place by chance about forty minutes south of the city, considerably closer to where Lydia worked at Stanford, and before they knew it they were homeowners.
Their house is mostly unpacked, the rooms mostly decorated (which had been 100% Lydia; Stiles had just done the heavy lifting— and by heavy lifting he means he recruited Scott to actually do the heavy lifting) but Christmas with a not-yet-two-month-old means that Stiles had been, until yesterday, reasonably convinced they weren’t going to get much more than a Christmas tree and stockings up in terms of decorations. But last week his dad and Scott’s mom had volunteered to take the baby for the day on Saturday, and he and Lydia had gone to pick out a tree before spending the rest of the day decorating their new home with twinkly lights and festive throw pillows and bowls of fancy ornaments. They’re both beyond exhausted, sleep deprived and in over their heads with a newborn, so a day with just the two of them had been a much-needed break. Lydia took an hour long shower, and Stiles cooked a fancy meal with plenty of leftovers, and Lydia had kissed him under the sprig of mistletoe they’d gotten at the tree nursery before they got in the car to go pick up the baby.
Even with how exhausted and overwhelmed he is on the daily since Felicity was born at the end of September, holding his little girl in his arms and watching her blink her big, wide eyes up at him is still the best thing in the entire world.
Stiles drives them back to their house while Lydia keeps an eye on the infant in the back seat, and when they finally pull into their driveway, he carries all of Felicity’s bags of stuff into the house while Lydia cradles their little girl. She’s already asleep, out cold in her mom’s arms, so they put her to bed and try to catch some sleep before she wakes up in the middle of the night hungry.
Everything seems normal the next morning when they get up for the day, Stiles making pancakes for breakfast while Lydia feeds Felicity at their new kitchen table, freshly adorned with a red-and-white table runner and bouquet of poinsettias. Everything seems completely fine until Lydia takes the baby in the living room for a minute, walking around as she tries to burp her, and his wife screams.
“Lydia?” he yelps, panicked, abandoning the pancakes and rushing into the other room. “Are you okay?”
“No, it’s— it’s not me, it’s Felicity,” she says, voice shaking, her hands clutching at the baby in her arms, trembling fingers stroking the infant’s face. Felicity’s eyes are screwed shut, her face red, and her breath sounds raspy, like she’s having trouble breathing.
“Oh my god,” Stiles says, his heart beating at a pace much too fast to be healthy, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He feels like he’s about to fight off supernatural monsters, but there’s nothing here for him to swing a bat at— just their daughter, incapable of breathing anymore. There’s a rash beginning to break out on her chubby little cheeks as well, angry and red and splotchy. It’s downright terrifying.
“She sounds like she’s choking,” Lydia says desperately, and Stiles immediately thinks back to learning the heimlich for infants in their parenting class.
“Bring her in the kitchen,” Stiles says, hands still flailing nervously. “I remember how to do the heimlich.”
“Okay,” Lydia says, voice still completely unsteady, as she follows Stiles into the kitchen. Immediately, Felicity’s breathing returns to normal; her face is still red and splotchy, but it’s beginning to fade back to its normal color, and her little mewling cries taper off, relaxing in her mom’s arms from all the commotion.
“What…?” Stiles says, completely taken aback. They hadn’t done anything yet, and she was just… miraculously fine?
“That was… so weird,” Lydia says, meeting Stiles’s gaze with nervous eyes. He just nods silently, still unsure what to make of this, his heart pounding in his chest with leftover adrenaline.
“Is it overreacting if I say I want to take her to the emergency room still?” Stiles says, voice quiet. Lydia immediately shakes her head assuredly.
“I was thinking the same exact thing.”
Five minutes later Felicity is buckled into her carseat and they’re on their way to Beacon Hills Memorial. She seems fine now, but Stiles still spends the entire ride turned around, keeping an eye on the sleeping baby to make sure they don’t have any repeats of this morning in the living room.
“Sounds like she had an allergic reaction,” the pediatrician on call tells them when they finally get a doctor in the ER. “Did she eat anything strange?”
“No,” Lydia tells him, shaking her head. Felicity is happy and smiley in Stiles’s arms again, like the events of this morning that scared her parents so much have been completely forgotten.
They talk with the doctor another couple minutes, before he says to keep an eye on anything that she comes in contact with that causes a similar reaction. They thank him and then he’s out the door, leaving the three of them alone in the exam room. Stiles clears his throat, turning towards his wife.
“Well, that was, uh…”
“Unhelpful,” Lydia finishes, her expression disgruntled.
“What do we do now?” Stiles asks. “Just go home?”
“I guess so,” she says, shrugging on her coat and gesturing for Stiles to hand her their daughter. Lydia strokes Felicity’s tiny cheek as Stiles puts on his coat, his hand drifting to the small of her back automatically as they walk back into the hallway.
They almost immediately run into a familiar face, and Melissa meets them with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. “What are you three doing here?” she says, crossing her arms. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” Lydia says with a huff and a roll of her eyes. “Felicity got really sick this morning, out of the blue, for just a couple minutes, and the doctor had no idea what was wrong.”
“That’s weird,” Melissa agrees. “I’ll walk with you. Tell me what happened.”
Stiles follows behind the two women as Lydia recounts the events of the morning in perfect detail, Melissa listening intently. They pause for a minute in the waiting room, and Lydia finishes telling her about this morning. “It was the weirdest thing,” she tells Melissa. “It was like all of a sudden she just—”
“Lydia!” Stiles interrupts, his heart dropping again, because in her arms, Felicity has started to turn red again, eyes screwed closed in discomfort.
“Oh my god,” Lydia says, her face going ghost white. “What do we do?!”
Melissa is the only one out of them who stays calm, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her eyes dart around the room, before suddenly going wide, and she takes Lydia by the arm.
“It stopped before when you took her in the kitchen, right?” Melissa checks, pulling Lydia over towards the opposite side of the waiting room. Lydia nods, her eyes still panicked. Stiles feels like his heart might actually beat fast enough to jump out of his chest, he’s so scared.
“Yeah,” Lydia says, but in her arms, Felicity has stopped crying, her normal color returning. Lydia’s expression shifts from panic to confusion, as they both study their daughter. Stiles can’t process anything but relief that she’s okay again.
“Is there mistletoe in your living room?” Melissa asks, pointing to something on the ceiling, and both Lydia and Stiles’s eyes go wide. Hanging right over where they’d just been standing is a festive sprig of mistletoe, tied up with a pretty red bow.
“Yes,” Stiles says, realization dawning on him. “Oh my god, it’s the mistletoe that’s making her sick.”
“I think so,” Melissa says, nodding her head. “I’d call Deaton to make sure, but that’s my guess.”
Stiles lets his head drop to Lydia’s shoulder, relief flooding his system. Mistletoe, he can handle.
“Goddamn supernatural herbs,” he mutters, but Lydia laughs, and suddenly everything feels like it’s going to be okay.
***
A quick chat with Deaton confirms Melissa’s suspicion, and he concludes that since their baby banshee is so young, the mistletoe is affecting her a lot more than it would Lydia. “It won’t kill her or anything,” Deaton assures them. “But it’ll block her powers and make her uncomfortable enough that she would get sick with prolonged exposure to it.”
Now that they know what the issue is, it’s much less scary. The mistletoe hanging in their living room is immediately taken down, and then placed in their neighbor’s trash barrels outside on the curb, because Stiles is not taking any risks. Lydia laughs at his new war on mistletoe, but Stiles is not letting anything hurt his baby daughter, not when it’s something he can control.
See also why he’s currently screaming at Isaac, Lydia standing in the doorway and laughing like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen in the world.
“Isaac,” Stiles demands, and his hands are angry-flailing, he can just tell. “Didn’t you read my text message? I said if you have any mistletoe, get rid of it!”
“Why do you think I read your text messages?” Isaac asks, and Stiles goes quiet at that. It is a fair point, he has to admit.
“Regardless,” Stiles says, returning to the task at hand. Isaac just rolls his eyes, like he’s being overdramatic. “You have mistletoe hanging up in your foyer. Do you want to be responsible for poisoning my baby daughter?” Isaac just looks at him at that, his eyebrows scrunching up in confusion.
“Okay, hon, you’re being a little dramatic,” Lydia says, taking a step inside the house. She’s very over the whole situation, now that they haven’t had any repeats of that morning in the kitchen, and they know what’s responsible for Felicity’s outbreaks.
“How am I being dramatic?” Stiles demands. “This is our daughter’s life and comfort!”
“Malia, could you just take down the mistletoe and go throw it in the backyard?” Lydia asks, and the werecoyote nods, grabbing the plant in one swift movement and heading for the back of the house.
“See?” Lydia says, kissing Stiles’s cheek on her way into the living room with the baby. “Easy.”
“Hey, Lydia, wait,” Stiles says, rushing ahead of her, scanning the room for any signs of the plant. “Come on, you gotta let me check first.”
Lydia laughs again, but her smile is fond, and the way her eyes shine when she looks at him lets him know how much she appreciates it. Stiles just grins back in response, his eyes flitting from his wife to his daughter, snuggled up in her mom’s arms.
He might not always be able to protect Felicity, but he’s still going to spend the rest of his life trying.