Work Text:
Allison took a deep breath and let it hiss slowly out through her teeth. It was a beautiful morning, golden sunlight filtering through the remodeled kitchen's new gauzy white curtains, filling the room with the cheerful optimism of a brand new day. And Allison desperately needed to kill something. Anything. Anyone. Vampire, harpy, she'd even take an unusually aggressive jackalope, literally anything to distract from what felt like her uterus trying to pick axe it's way out her back. Her fingers dug into the green marble countertop and she imagined riping it off the island and throwing it through the picture window.
She'd already taken enough tylenol to eat a hole through her stomach so now her only recourse was to bear through it and bury her troubles in fried dough and powdered sugar. A new New Orleans style cafe had opened in Beacon Hills and the more lunarly inclined of her friend group had nearly floated through the air like cartoons after the scent of hot beignets. They'd piled into Stiles' jeep to pick up "Second Breakfast!" so she had maybe fifteen minutes max before the pack poured back into the new house bearing forty thousand calories worth of distraction.
"Babe, are you okay?" If she'd been in a less miserable mood then she would have appreciated the miles of tanned skin on display as Scott stepped into the kitchen with only a threadbare pair of gray sweatpants clinging to his hips. But as it were, she just felt irritated at how chipper he sounded.
He had to know. Allison pressed her forehead to the cool marble and tried to stretch through the cramp. Hell, they all had to smell it, he was just trying to be polite so she turned her head to give him a polite smile in kind. "Err, my back hurts."
"Aw, I can give you a massage if you want?"
Allison felt her smile go brittle. Scott was in truth one of the sweetest men that she'd ever met but the fact remained that amateur massages were complete garbage. Good intentions counted for a lot but not when some well-meaning idiot ground their knuckles into your vertebrae. As angry as she felt, she didn't want to snap at him over something that wasn't his fault and was just about to wave him off when he put his big hand on the small of her back. Allison let out a heavy sigh and melted into the countertop. Scott's hand was the perfect hot pad. his werewolf metabolism had him radiating the ideal temperature to take the edge off. Of course he tried to dig his fingers into her spine so she slapped her hand down against his to flatten it out. "No, no. Keep it just like this."
"Why aren't you taking her pain?"
"Jesus Christ Derek!" Scott nearly jumped out of his skin and Allison threw him a scowl for moving before grabbing his hand and putting it back where it belonged. It wasn't his fault really. Derek, despite being much more settled now that he had himself a den that wasn't on the county's list of condemned buildings, still couldn't break himself of the habit of having a good lurk. "Where did you come from ?"
Derek rolled his eyes. "It's literally my house, Scott."
"He could take my pain?" The beastiary had mentioned that ability among pack but Allison hadn't heard of it being done to humans before. Of course, the Argent histories were pretty sparse when it came to information that didn't deal with killing.
"Yes." Derek's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion as he looked back at Scott. " I thought you were using pain drain to help the animals at Deaton's?"
"I've never done it with a person before. Is it different than with a dog?"
"It shouldn't be but I can give you an example before you try." Derek took two steps forward before he stopped and met her eyes. "Allison, would that be okay with you?"
Allison smiled, she appreciated the gesture. "Being pain free sounds fantastic, yes."
Derek reached out. "Where are you hurt?"
"Err, it's cramps."
Derek's hand froze before he snatched it back, eyes wide. "Oh. *Oh* no. Nope. Scott, try doing it and I'll talk you through it if you have trouble."
"You won't do cramps?" Scott's voice held a gleeful tease and he put his other hand on her back and Allison sighed at the added heat. "I've seen you shot. I've seen you impaled. You asked Stiles to cut your arm off but you won't take cramps?"
Derek shuddered, a motion so incongruous with all his eyebrows and muscles that Allison felt like giggling. "Laura always made me take hers and no. I absolutely do not do cramps if I don't have to."
Scott did chuckle a little. "Well, I can do it. Allison, let me know if it works or if I've got to try something else." A warm wave of relief washed over her and her eyes fluttered shut at the pure euphoria of being pain free for the first time in two days. Scott however sounded considerably less content. "Whaaaaat is this?
Ow, why does my back hurt so much? Your uterus isn't in you back!"
Allison let out a blissful sigh and thought about just falling asleep. "I dunno. Never made sense to me either."
Derek came around the other side of the island, frowning slightly. "When you take pain you're only supposed to feel a shadow of that pain. If Scott is really in this much pain, maybe you should see a doctor, Allison."
Allison craned her neck to look at him and saw that he definitely did not look good. Scott groaned, his face a little green. "Shut up, Derek. You said you hated taking cramps."
"Yes, because it felt really weird to feel pain in an organ that I don't have, not because I was in so much pain I was sweating."
"Oh my god, I'm not sweating." He was in fact glistening, dewy. All those pretty adjectives that happen before you start sweating like a pig.
The front door crashed open and the mix of yips, laughter, and growled shit talk that swirled around the pack filled the house as they made their way back to the kitchen. Boyd had two bulging bags filled to the brim with beignets. Isaac had a party sized cardboard jug of coffee while Erica already had her own to go cup in her hand. Stiles spilled in after them with another big bag that had a delicious greasy smell wafting from it. "They had alligator sausage! I think we bought them out, I've got like ten pounds of...what is going on in here?"
Scott whimpered. "Bro, girls are so tough and strong."
Erica took a sip of her coffee. "You're goddamn right we are."