Chapter Text
Stiles stepped into the living room and immediately regretted everything.
Lydia was on the floor with her notes spread out around her in some system only she understood. Allison sat on the arm of the couch closest to the door, which Stiles had clocked the first week he met her and had never stopped thinking was interesting. Isaac had claimed the good chair and was pretending not to enjoy it. Derek was standing because Derek stood so he could loom over people and that was the best vantage to do that. Scott was already on the couch, and Stiles dropped down next to him, their shoulders settling together the way they had since they were seven.
Lydia held a page up toward him without looking away from what she was reading. He leaned back slightly instead of taking it.
"Not too close," he said to no one and everyone. "I'm sick."
She looked up at him then, actually looked, and lowered the page.
"How long have you felt like this?" Melissa asked. She had a mug in each hand, bending down to give one to Lydia before she turned to stop and look at him the way she’d been doing since he was nine with unexplained bruises even he couldn’t explain and loose joints he couldn’t control.
“I’m fine.”
“Not what I asked,” Melissa said as she pressed a hand to his forehead.
His dad appeared in the doorway, and Stiles felt the particular calculus of being surveilled by two parents at once, neither of whom he could fully deflect.
"A few weeks," he sighed. "Maybe more. It comes and goes. It's a sinus thing."
“You ate, right?” his father asked handing the second cup in his hand over to Stiles.
“Yes!” Stiles snapped, annoyed now.
His dad just lifted his brows with that ‘don’t bullshit me’ look he reserved for just Stiles.
Stiles huffed, “Maybe?”
Noah nodded slowly, “Today?”
Stiles took a long pull from the mug, “Uh—”
Noah shook his head and turned back to the kitchen muttering, “That’s a no.”
He picked at the hem of his hoodie. "I know, I know. I'm working on it, it’s the Adderall."
Melissa sat down on the coffee table across from him, which meant she was doing the nurse thing and not the Melissa thing, and Stiles braced slightly.
"The headaches?" she asked.
He paused. "How did you—"
"You've been squinting since you walked in."
He had not known he was doing that.
"They're not bad," he said.
"But they're there."
"Yeah." He nodded and instantly regretted it. "They're there."
The room had gone quiet in a way Stiles found awkward. Lydia had stopped turning pages. Isaac was watching the scene with quiet curiousness. Scott was very still beside him.
Stiles sneezed, hard. Twice.
Several voices echoed automatic replies:
“Bless you.”
“Gesundheit.”
“Ugh!” Stiles sniffled and sighed. He needed a tissue.
He stood up and blinked hard.
Peter, who had not moved from his position near the window, said without particular inflection, "Why does your heart do that?"
Stiles turned. "Do what?"
"When you stand." Peter's eyes moved to him with that quality he had, like a lens adjusting. "It spikes. Every time."
"That's just— it's normal." Stiles scoffed.
"It isn't."
Scott shook his head slowly. "No, he's had it since—since I was turned I noticed it but I thought—" He stopped. "I thought it was the Adderall."
Peter shook his head. "Adderall wouldn't care whether you were sitting or standing. This only happens when you stand."
Stiles scowled, “Are you stalking me again?”
“I notice things,” Peter sighed.
“That feels like a passive-aggressive yes.” Stiles eyed Peter carefully, because that’s what you do with Peter.
Melissa was looking at Peter with an expression Stiles couldn't read, and then she looked back at Stiles, and he recognized the shift in her, that moment of pieces clicking.
“Do you get dizzy when you stand up?” she asked.
Stiles turned towards her slowly, "Sometimes?"
"Does the room tilt or do you go gray?"
"Um, sometimes black at the edges."
"For how long?"
"Few seconds. It goes away."
"Stiles." She leaned forward slightly. "How long has this been happening."
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Always?" he said, and it came out smaller than he meant it to. “Why?”
Melissa gave him that look when she was putting the pieces together about him. “Because that’s not normal.”
Stiles turned to the room and glanced at Isaac, Lydia, Melissa, Peter, Derek, Scott, then his dad. “Wait—” he slowly sat again. “What?”
Stiles felt something shift under him that wasn’t in the room. He thought this was just how standing felt. It was just the tax everyone paid for getting up.
"Do you ever itch?" Melissa asked. "No rash, nothing there, just— itching?"
Noah came back in from the kitchen with a plate and set it on Stiles's knee without a word. Stiles looked down at it and then up at his dad and did not say anything either.
Stiles shrugged. "Sometimes, yeah."
"How often is sometimes?"
Stiles opened his mouth. Closed it. "Most days?"
"Smells?" Melissa asked.
"What?" Stiles tilted his head.
"Do certain smells make you feel sick or nauseous?" She clarified.
Stiles thought for a moment, the sandwhich his dad had made half way to his mouth. He nodded, slower this time. "Yeah... Now that I think about it. They do. Lydia's has this perfume that smells great but feels worse."
"The 'Parfums de Marly Delina' or the 'Baccarat Rouge 540' one?" Lydia asked.
Stiles blinked owlishly at her. "I have no idea what those words mean in that order."
“Okay,” Melissa interrupted them. “Given your EDS, this can sometimes travel with a couple other things.”
Melissa nodded slowly. She looked at Noah, then back at Stiles. "Okay. I want you to ask your doctor for a referral to an allergist or immunologist.”
Stiles opened his mouth.
“And before you argue with me,” she added, softer, “I’m going to explain why I’m saying that.”
She stood up and went to the kitchen. She came back with a couple Benadryl and Aleve from her purse and a bottle from the fridge, blue, cold, slightly sweating, and held them both out to him.
"Benadryl now, it might knock you out—” she looked at Noah, “—it’s your house so that’s okay. See if the Benadryl helps the sinus stuff. If it does, that points toward Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. It’s common in EDS. Use Aleve, not Tylenol with the migraines, they sound POTS related. NSAIDs help with the inflammation in your blood vessels—that’s partly what’s driving the migraines.”
Stiles stared at her. "Those are a lot of words."
"I know."
"Those are a lot of words for what I thought was a sinus infection."
She pressed the bottle into his other hand. "Drink that. Salt, it helps you bring water into the blood vessels so they can keep the pressure up and not pool because gravity and you have never gotten along.”
She pointed at the sandwhich still halfway to his mouth, "And eat that."
He looked down at the bottle and felt, for a reason he couldn't entirely name, like crying.
He didn't.
Instead, he downed them both with the Gatorade. He was dozing on Scott’s shoulder twenty minutes later.