Chapter Text
Stiles knew it was going to be a bad skin night before he ever got to Derek’s.
The first red flag had been when he put on a plain, soft t-shirt and it made his skin prickle and begin to itch instantly. It wasn’t even something he could make go away by scratching it either, which, rude.
It shifted and changed as his shirt moved across and found new skin to irritate. The worst was under his arms where the seams and fabric were tighter by design. Stiles became keenly aware of a place on his upper arms that was between the inside that normally met the armpit and the back, a place he had never needed to have an opinion about before and now apparently hated with the focused passion of a middle school theater kid denied a solo.
At times the itch was so visceral it just hurt. Like not scratching it was painful, but scratching it meant it just itched more and demanded more bandwidth towards noticing it existed.
Stiles took it back off and found almost instant relief, or at least relief that was incredibly muted compared to what the shirt had been doing to him. Stiles checked the tag, which was it’s own horror that he was refusing to catalogue.
100% cotton.
“Huh.”
Stiles looked up at his closet and contemplating trying a different shirt. He could try another type of shirt, but polyester and rayon would feel soft, they wouldn’t breathe the way a cotton shirt would. And that would increase the chance of sweat and sweat just—no. Stiles sighed, because he could be frustrated and mad at the shirt if it was made of burlap or regret or whatever punishment fabric old-timey monks used to wear to prove they were better than everyone else. Instead, it was a soft cotton shirt he had worn probably fifty times before, which meant there was no reason for his skin to react like it had been violated.
He changed shirts.
The second shirt was worse.
He changed back.
By then the first shirt was also worse because his skin had noticed the entire process and filed a formal complaint with every nerve ending from his shoulders to his ribs. His socks had joined in out of solidarity.
“Great,” Stiles said to his reflection. “Excellent. Love when my body turns into a reddit comments section.”
He should have stayed home.
That was the smart thing to do. Because MCAS flares usually meant few clothes, low stimulation, no one expecting anything from him, and absolutely nothing touching him that had not been pre-approved by the tiny drunk security guards in his immune system.
He couldn’t go over there in just shorts, that would be weird.
Stiles stuttered to a halt on the stairs. Most of the wolves routinely walked around half naked. Stiles could just say he’s doing a Derek impression. But that would make him more uncomfortable than them, so he quickly scratched that off his list.
He considered cancelling by the time he reached the front door and put his softest hoodie over the shirt. His teeth clenched as his arms felt like needles stabbing him. So he quickly voted against the hoodie.
He could cancel. He should cancel.
But Stiles had already canceled twice that month.
The first time had been because his knee had slipped just enough to make walking feel like he was negotiating with a badly assembled puppet. The second time had been because his POTS had decided gravity was bullying him personally. If he canceled again, Scott wouldn’t be mad, which was worse. Scott would understand in the loudest, gentlest, most emotionally devastating way possible.
So Stiles went.
He spent the drive trying not to move.
Stiles found that incredibly difficult. Stiles had never noticed until now how much driving was unfortunately made of movement. Steering moved his shoulders and arms. Shifting gears made the fabric slide against his chest. Turning his head made the collar skim the side of his neck. The seat belt crossed his torso in one long diagonal accusation.
By the time he pulled up outside Derek’s place, the itch had stopped being one itch and become a problem Stiles was desperately trying to ignore, which also made him irritated.
And it wasn’t as if he could point to anything as proof of his discomfort. He didn’t have hives, or a rash or poison ivy, or even insect bites he could point to and say ‘See? This is why I feel miserable!’
There wasn’t anything useful that would show up dramatically on his skin and make people go, wow, Stiles, that looks awful, perhaps you are not being a delicate Victorian ghost about textiles after all.
Just an itch. An invisible fucking itch. With no known motives or reasoning behind it.
It was just a plain fucking itch.
An itch with no target.
An itch that jumped away when he scratched and came back three inches to the left.
An itch that turned scratching into more sensation, which became more itch, which became pain if he kept chasing it too long.
Stiles breathed deeply as he ran through the only mantra he could grasp.
Don’t scratch.
Do not scratch.
Do NOT scratch.
DO NOT scratch.
DO NOT SCRATCH.
And now Stiles felt like a raccoon with unresolved trauma.
Inside, everything was normal.
That was the first insult.
Scott was on the couch. Isaac had stolen the chair closest to the window. Lydia was sitting sideways on the arm of the couch like furniture rules were for people without cheekbones. Derek was in the kitchen, not cooking exactly, but performing some grim werewolf-adjacent ritual involving cutting vegetables with unnecessary competence.
Everyone looked comfortable.
Stiles hated them a little.
Not really.
Just in the small, poisonous way a person hated everyone with functioning skin while their own body was doing interpretive jazz in a burning sweater.
Scott looked up immediately. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Stiles said.
It came out normal enough.
Probably.
Scott’s eyes narrowed.
Damn it.
“You okay?”
“Yep.”
“You sure?”
“Scott, I just walked through the door. Let me establish a lie before you start dismantling it.”
Lydia glanced over. “That means no.”
“That means boundaries.”
“That also means no.”
Stiles pointed at her. “Your hair is dull and your face is shiny but your opinion is noted.”
Lydia narrowed her eyes at him and Stiles found himself swallowing before he quickly moved to take an empty spot on the couch. Because standing in the middle of the room had already turned this into a whole event. He would apologize later to Lydia.
Derek looked up from the cutting board.
Stiles pretended not to notice.
Sitting down was easy. Sitting down was something Stiles could do. Sitting down was fine… for approximately two seconds.
Stiles tried to sit normally. Whatever that meant. Normal sitting. Civilian sitting. Sitting that did not involve holding his elbows three centimeters away from his ribs like he was protecting an invisible soufflé.
The problem was that every version of sitting changed the shirt. If he settled back, the fabric caught against the couch and pulled across his chest. If he shifted forward, it loosened under one arm and tightened under the other, which his skin apparently considered an act of war. If he tried to relax his shoulders, the seams tucked themselves into that newly discovered cursed strip of upper arm and stayed there with the smug confidence of something that paid rent.
He could not get away from it without making it obvious that he was trying to get away from it.
That was the worst part.
Well, no. The worst part was the itch.
The second worst part was being observed by werewolves, a banshee, and Scott, who was basically a golden retriever with medical anxiety and cheekbones.
Isaac had been saying something about a movie. Stiles had lost the thread somewhere around “opening scene,” because his shirt had moved when he breathed and the itch under his right arm had bloomed so suddenly he had to press his tongue hard against the back of his teeth to keep from making a sound.
He did not scratch.
This was heroic. No one applauded.
He hooked one finger under the front of his collar and tugged it away from his chest, just enough to make a little pocket of space. For half a second, relief flickered through him, thin and gorgeous, and then the sleeve shifted under his arm because apparently comfort had terms and conditions. The itch sharpened immediately, moving from one place to another like it had a map.
Stiles let go of the collar.
The shirt fell back against his chest.
The itch came with it.
His hand twitched before he could stop it.
Scott’s eyes dropped to the movement.
Here we go.
“What’s wrong?” Scott asked.
“Nothing.”
“Stiles.”
Derek’s knife stopped moving in the kitchen.
A tiny sound. Almost nothing.
Stiles heard it anyway.
He kept his hands very still on his knees, which lasted until the inside of his left sleeve shifted and brushed the tender place under his arm again. His fingers curled. Not scratching took effort in a way that felt ridiculous to explain. It was just itch. It was the smallest possible problem and also, apparently, a full-time hostage situation.
Lydia noticed the hand first. Of course she did. Lydia noticed loose threads, lies, and emotional structural damage at fifty paces.
“Is it your skin?” she asked.
Stiles looked at her.
That was unfairly close to correct.
“No,” he said.
Lydia raised one eyebrow.
“Yes,” he said. “But no.”
Scott leaned forward. “MCAS?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you need Benadryl?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because you can take—”
“I know what Benadryl is, Scott.”
Scott shut his mouth.
Regret crawled up Stiles’s throat immediately, itchy in its own way, because Scott was trying to help and Stiles was being sharp about it. He knew that. He hated that. He also could not make himself softer right now. Softness required spare bandwidth, and every available inch of his brain was currently devoted to not clawing at his own sternum like a raccoon trapped in a church basement.
He rubbed the heel of his hand against the center of his chest without thinking, chasing one sensation with another. It helped for half a second, just long enough to feel like a trick, and then the itch bloomed worse in it’s wake.
Stiles dropped his hand like he’d been caught doing something obscene.
Everyone saw anyway, because of course they did.
“It’s fine,” he said immediately.
Scott’s expression did not change, which was rude because Stiles had specifically said it was fine and therefore everyone was legally obligated to move on.
“It doesn’t look fine.”
“That’s because my face is dramatic.”
“Stiles.”
“It’s an itch,” Stiles said, before Scott could start guessing again. “That’s it. Just an itch.”
Scott looked at his chest, then very carefully looked away.
That was worse.
Not because Scott was doing anything wrong. He wasn’t. Scott was trying extremely hard to be normal about it, which somehow made Stiles feel even less normal, because apparently they had arrived at a point in the evening where his best friend had to decide where he was allowed to look.
“It’s not a big deal,” Stiles said.
Lydia’s eyebrow moved.
Stiles pointed at her. “Do not silently fact-check me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought it with punctuation.”
Lydia lifted both hands in surrender, but she did look away, which Stiles appreciated right up until he didn’t. Being watched was awful. Not being watched after being watched was also awful, because then he could feel everyone actively not watching him. Now everyone was politely not looking at him, which meant they were still thinking about him, which meant he was still the problem except with better manners.
Isaac went back to talking about the movie.
Stiles tried to follow it.
He really did.
There was a boat, maybe. Or a basement. Possibly a basement on a boat, which sounded structurally concerning but not impossible for the kind of movie Isaac liked.
His fingers curled once when the itch sharpened under his right arm, then relaxed again before anyone could say anything. He stared at Isaac like he was listening, which was unfair to Isaac because Stiles had absorbed exactly none of the sentence currently happening.
Scott laughed at something.
Stiles laughed half a beat later.
The laugh moved his chest.
The itch brightened.
Stiles stopped laughing and pretended that was a normal place for laughter to end.
He wanted to take the shirt off because he just wanted the fabric gone. He wanted one layer of the problem removed, even though he knew the itch might stay anyway, because MCAS did not believe in clean cause and effect. It believed in vibes, betrayal, and making Stiles look insane in front of his friends.
He also absolutely did not want to take it off, because taking his shirt off in Derek’s living room while everyone politely pretended it was normal sounded like a nightmare wearing a party hat.
Both things were true with equal force, which seemed unfair. There should have been a committee. A vote. A small municipal hearing before his body created impossible demands in public.
He tried to focus harder on the conversation, because participating was the whole reason he had come over instead of staying home in shorts and negotiating a fragile peace treaty with his own nerve endings.
“So wait,” Stiles said, jumping in at what he hoped was a reasonable moment. “Is the chainsaw haunted or is the lake haunted?”
Isaac stared at him.
Lydia said, “Neither.”
“Great,” Stiles said. “Then I’m caught up.”
“You missed the part with the boat,” Isaac said.
“There’s a boat?”
“There was always a boat.”
“Then why are we talking about a chainsaw?”
“Because the chainsaw is important.”
“Is it haunted?”
“No.”
“Then I remain confused by your priorities.”
The conversation moved again, or at least pretended to. Stiles clung to that because it was easier than the alternative. If everyone kept talking, then he was still part of the room. If everyone kept talking, then the itch could stay his problem instead of becoming the room’s problem.
The itch stayed.
That was the thing he couldn’t make anyone understand. It wasn’t only when he moved. Moving made it worse, sure, because the shirt shifted and dragged and found new places to bother, but holding still didn’t make it stop. Holding still just made the itch easier to hear.
It sat under the shirt in one long, low thrum across his chest and under his arms, like his skin had picked up a radio station no one else could hear. Every breath brushed fabric over it. Every swallow moved his collar. Every tiny adjustment changed the shape of it, but doing nothing left him trapped with the same dull, crawling insistence.
Scratch me.
Don’t scratch.
Scratch me.
Don’t.
He kept his hands on his knees.
That was safe. That looked normal... -ish.
His skin prickled across his sternum again, lower this time, then vanished the second he paid attention to it. A new spot lit up near his left side. Then the old place under his right arm joined back in, because apparently the itch believed in ensemble work.
Stiles swallowed a laugh that had nowhere good to go.
“What?” Scott asked.
“Nothing.”
“You made a face.”
“My face continues to be dramatic.”
Scott hesitated.
Stiles braced for another question.
But Scott only nodded and looked back at Isaac, letting the lie stand.