Chapter Text
Stiles flopped face-down on his bed with a pained groan. He was done. Finito. Fucking expired. Endless hours of research, and he had nothing to show for it except a throbbing head and a severe sleep deficit. He hated it when the newest supernatural menace was being elusive and frustrating. Which was... pretty much always, really.
His phone rang, and he whimpered as the sound reverberated through his already aching head. For a split second, he was almost tempted to ignore it, but most of the calls he got these days were kind of life and death - or at least serious injury - related.
He groped blindly in the direction of his nightstand for the phone, and sighed in victory as his hand closed around it. A quick glance before he answered told him it was Scott.
“Yeah, buddy?”
Scott’s answer was a tortured groan that was probably supposed to be his name, and Stiles pretty much leaped off the bed in panic and adrenaline.
“Scott? What’s wrong? Where are you, what happened?”
“I’m at home, I don’t know how this happened, but something... oh god, something’s not right. I feel like I’m dying,” Scott explained on a whine, before being cut off by this odd scrambling, and then...
“You’re throwing up,” Stiles stated, because that’s what it sounded like. And then the implication of that hit him, and he sort of panicked. He’d never seen a werewolf puke in an even remotely normal scenario. “Oh my god, you’re a werewolf, you don’t get sick, why are you throwing up?! Oh, this is bad, this is so bad.”
The only reply was a pitiful whimper and more retching. This was so bad, Stiles wasn’t even remotely equipped to handle supernatural puking illnesses. He snapped his fingers in triumph as the obvious answer hit him
“Okay, hang on, I’m coming to get you, I’ll take you to Deaton, he’ll know what to do, just stay right there, okay, buddy?” Hastily grabbing his keys and wallet, he waited for a groaned affirmation before he hung up, and crashed down the stairs while he trying to find Deaton’s number on his phone.
Frankly, it was something of a miracle that he survived the trip. “Hey, dad,” he called to the back of his dad’s head where it was visible above the back of the couch as he rushed through the room. “Scott’s having a medical emergency, I’m heading over. Bye, dad.”
“Stiles!” his dad yelled, turning around to fix him with a worried look. Stiles froze in his tracks. He knew that tone. It was one that brooked no nonsense or opposition. “Medical emergency? Is he okay?”
“Oh yeah, it’s just like a stomach flu food poisoning thing? He’s just feeling kinda miserable, and Mrs. McCall’s at the hospital, so...” Stiles was cut off by his dad sighing.
“Gotcha, go. Wouldn’t want to leave Scott stewing in his misery. Just don’t catch anything, alright, kid? Be careful.” His dad shot him a quick smile before turning back to the TV, and Stiles wanted so badly to just hug the man for being the best dad ever; even though Stiles had basically been nothing but a disappointment lately, his dad still cared, and still believed him.
“Will do, dad. I don’t think it’s infectious, though. Probably just something he ate. Okay, love you, dad, bye!” Stiles rushed for the door, and it had almost closed behind him when he heard his dad’s ‘love you too, kiddo’, float out after him. He swallowed around the lump in his throat, and pressed call with a triumphant cry as he came to Deaton’s number.
“C’mon, pick up, pick up,” he mumbled as he got into his jeep and started it, quickly throwing it in reverse, bouncing in his seat from impatience.
“Deaton speaking.”
Finally, an answer, after what felt like half an eternity. He let out a shaky, nervous sigh. “Hey, yeah, it’s me, Stiles. We’ve got a problem, it’s Scott...”
“You’ve got food poisoning,” Deaton said as he calmly peeled his gloves off and stepped back from where Scott was curled up on his steel examination table, shivering and moaning, clenched around a small bucket. He headed for his office, and Stiles was left with Scott, giving his best friend his absolute best ‘dude, wtf’ expression.
“Werewolves can actually get food poisoning?” he asked, incredulous. He ran his fingers through his hair, kind of relieved that this wasn’t anything serious, or anything out to kill them all. “Scott, what did you eat?”
Seriously, what in the world could possibly be strong enough to defeat the ridiculous thing known as the werewolf immune system and give them food poisoning?
“I don’t know, man,” Scott whimpered into his bucket. “The only thing I can think of is the leftover Chinese from that place over on, y’know, Ivy Hill Row.”
“Dude! You did not!” Stiles hissed at him. Surely Scott wouldn’t do that to him. “I told you that place was evil! Okay, when were you possibly stupid enough to get food from there?”
An awkward silence spread through the room, so deep Stiles could hear Deaton rummaging through his office. Stiles crossed his arms fixed Scott with an accusing look that Scott saw pretty much nothing of, because he was fervently avoiding Stiles’ eye. “You can’t even remember, can you? You ate leftover Chinese food from the shadiest restaurant in all of California, that you have no idea when you even bought? Do you have, like, a death wish or something? Because not only am I’m pretty sure there are easier ways to do it, it’s also my job as your bro to stop you from doing stuff like that. Seriously, even werewolves aren’t indestructible.”
“It smelled just fine!” Scott protested sulkily, curling up in a smaller ball on the examination table. “I figured it was okay.”
Stiles couldn’t believe he was hearing the words coming out of Scott’s mouth. Wasn’t he supposed to have super senses, or something? “You should probably try seeing if it’s possible to get a refund or exchange or something on that supersniffer, ‘cause yours is clearly broken.”
Scott’s retort was interrupted by Deaton coming back in with a small box. He opened it and shook something out. “Here, take this. It should help calm your stomach down,” he said and handed Scott a pair of pills. Scott eagerly took them and swallowed them dry.
He was clearly braver than Stiles was. If he’d been throwing up that violently, he’d be more careful about trying to swallow stuff. And more careful about just downing any kind of drug. But then again, when you were feeling that shitty, it was kind of any port in a storm territory.
“Wait, I thought drugs didn’t really work on werewolves?” Stiles asked with a confused frown. And if there were drugs that worked on weres - that was trippy to say even in his own head - he wanted to know about them. And acquire them. He was kind of proud of his slowly growing Supernatural Shenanigans Salubrious Stockpile, with items to counteract and heal all sorts of weird stuff he was sure they’d bump into - or bump into again - someday.
“Ah, no, those I made myself, from the dried petals of a certain rare type of wolfsbane,” Deaton said as he got Scott a glass of water.
“Thanks, doc,” Scott said with a grateful smile as he took his first sip. He was already looking less pale, and what? That didn’t even make sense, how could it work that fast?
Not to mention, why did it work? Stiles had spent more hours on botany pages than he wanted to think about researching this, and wolfsbane was highly poisonous, that was the whole point, it killed everything, not only werewolves or wolves. So why would that calm Scott’s stomach?
Stiles groaned in frustration and rubbed violently at his face. The worst thing about the supernatural stuff in his life was that nothing made sense anymore. He missed the days when he could rely on science. Not that there was any point dwelling on it.
Stiles shook his head to try to get into research mode. It wasn’t all that easy, with how his head was still aching pretty badly. “Okay, so, rare strain. Can we cultivate it? What sort of stuff does it work on?” It seemed kind specific that it cured food poisoning in werewolves. Not to mention, who had even figured that out, in the first place? ‘Crap, I’m a werewolf puking my guts out, let’s try to fix it by eating this thing that usually kills me.’
Yeah, that made sense. Oh well, he probably shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Come by here tomorrow, Stiles,” Deaton said with his ever-present zen smile. “I’ll show you a couple of things.”
That sounded vaguely ominous, but he needed this knowledge. “Will do. Thanks.”
And down the wolfsbane rabbit hole he went...