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It’s one of those days.
You woke up with a mild headache, nothing too bothersome. Just a bit of pain at the nape of your neck and behind your eyes. You drank some water, had a bit of tea for the caffeine, and went about your day, hoping that it would sort itself out.
The spots showed up mid-morning, dancing in your peripherals. You have to grab onto a chair as vertigo seizes you. It’s swift. The swing of an axe. Suddenly it feels like someone lives inside your skull, trying to kick your eyeballs out of their sockets.
It’s one of those days.
You make it back to your room and crawl into bed. You should close the curtains. That would help. But that requires staying upright, and you’re pretty sure that if you have to stand upright for one more second you’re going to end up losing your breakfast all over your floor, so you just hide your face in the crook of your elbow. That helps a little.
You lose sense of all time as the pressure builds, getting worse and worse and worse. In an effort to find the smallest bit of relief, you twist around, hoping that if you turn your neck just so-- or maybe if your spine was like that-- but no. Nothing helps. And you desperately need water. Water would help. But that requires getting up, and you know that you’ll throw up if you do that. Inanely, you wonder if that might help. Then logic kicks in and reminds you it won’t. It’ll just make your muscles tense up, which’ll make the pounding in your head feel like a you’ve got Grond in there.
So, you just lie there on the verge of tears as the minutes slip by. Every single second is torture, and you can’t do anything about it-- too miserable and sick to help yourself-- until it feels like there’s a belt cinched three sizes too tight around your head and you think you’ll crack open like an egg.
It’ll go away eventually.
Or maybe you’ll fall asleep and it’ll still be there the next day. It’s happened before.
You barely register the door opening. The next sound comes from across the room. Someone’s shutting the curtains. A moment later the metallic scrape from the fireplace rake hits your ears, then the slow, merry crackle of a fire waking to life in the grate. Objectively, you’re sure it’s not actually that loud, but it might as well be a thundercrack. You whine and grab the nearest pillow and press it over your head to muffle the noise.
The mattress dips. Your visitor tugs on the pillow and lifts it just enough that you can hear them whisper:
“I know that hurt. I apologize. But a cold room will only make it worse.”
Ada.
Relief floods through you. You pull the pillow away and he presses his hand to your head, soft, slightly calloused. Vilya is pleasantly cool where the gold band touches your skin.
He hums a few bars of Music and the pain leeches out, like he’s pulling it by a string through his fingertips. Opening your eyes no longer feels unbearable. The room is dark, now, the kind of darkness that’s warm like black velvet. You can just make out Ada’s silhouette against the backdrop of firelight glinting red in his hair.
“It’s a bad one,” he observes softly.
Mutely, you nod. His own jaw is clenched and you know that’s because the part of your migraine that’s eased has gone into him.
That warm touch moves to your temple, soothing over it, carding some of your hair back behind your ear. You flip to face him and your eyes slip shut again.
“Have you eaten?” he asks.
You shake your head.
“Nauseous?”
You nod once.
He makes a displeased noise in the back of his throat and stands. Without really meaning to, you reach for him. He’s quick to take your hand and squeeze it.
“I won’t be long, don’t fret.”
He puts one more log on the fire before leaving. While he’s gone, the room heats. At any other time you’d be uncomfortable, but the heat is a kind of pressure of its own that squeezes in all the right places, unwinding the pain coiled inside your skull.
When he comes back, he sets a tray on the bedside table and bends to adjust your pillows.
“Can you sit up?”
You groan incoherently because the vague concept of being anywhere close to upright sounds like torture. He mutters something in sympathy but hikes you upright nonetheless, and is quick to massage around your temples and neck the second it makes your head pound.
When the pain stabilizes again, he hands you a cup of steaming black tea strong enough to bench-press a cave troll and smelling of ginger and mint. When you take a sip, there’s another quality, one that coats your tongue, vaguely metallic. Magnesium.
The mint helps quell your stomach. The caffeine, ginger, and magnesium helps the rest, and whatever’s left Ada soothes away with an expert massage to your tense muscles until finally the world isn’t spinning and you can hear yourself think.
He tugs you up against his chest, enveloping you in a tight hug. You can hear his heartbeat in your ear, gentle and steady.
“Better?” he asks.
You nod. Your eyes slip closed again. You’re so tired. It’s exhausting, getting sick like this.
He drops a kiss to the top of your head and strokes your hair.
“Sleep for a little while, dear one,” he says. “I’ll be right here.”