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This was going to be a bad one.
John didn’t often get headaches. Not seriously, anyway. Tension headaches, sure, but they were minor nuisances, irritating but ignorable. Sinus headaches occasionally, when he had a cold or something-or-other bloomed during the autumn, but that was really more a side effect than anything, and the Lemsip usually chased it away along with everything else.
Every so often, though, he got a real headache. A brain-splitter. A nearly completely incapacitating event, where every bit of light hurt, where moving hurt, where doing anything but lying more or less completely still in a darkened room and trying not to whimper was the order of the day. And it usually was a day; between the onslaught and the recovery, he was almost thoroughly wrecked for around twenty-four hours. Medicine was pretty much useless against these; John had never found anything that gave him any relief.
They were painful, they were horrible, and they were boring on top of everything else. John wasn’t cut out for lying still and doing nothing (but hurt, and hurt, and hurt) for hours at a time. But when one of these hit, he couldn’t read, he couldn’t watch telly, he couldn’t use his laptop, nothing. He could sometimes tolerate very calm music, played very quietly, but it didn’t provide enough of a distraction from the pain to be worth the bother. He put it on anyway, usually, just on the off-chance that it might provide some brief relief from the agonizing tedium.
John could feel one of those headaches coming on like a tube-train at rush hour: pressure building, hollow rushing sensation as everything grew twenty times more intense. Colors, sounds, smells (oh GOD the smells, even now his stomach twisted with unease at all the smells bombarding him), touch. Everything.
Fortunately his locum shift was nearly over. He begged off the last hour, and he must have looked almost as bad as he felt, because instead of protesting at his leaving them short-handed, they just called him a cab.
By the time he stumbled up the stairs to the flat, John was nauseous from the pain, and barely able to focus well enough to navigate. He staggered into the sitting room, wincing against the light. The telly was blaring (or at least was on and leaking light and making noise, damn it), and he noted a Sherlock-shaped blur on the sofa, but couldn’t focus well enough to register what (if any) expression he wore.
“John?”
“Headache,” he mumbled by way of explanation. “Going to bed.”
“Ah.” The telly clicked off, blessed relief.
John shuffled off to his room, glad he didn’t have to try and explain things further. He’d had one around Sherlock before, back in the early days of their sharing the flat, but he couldn’t always count on Sherlock not deleting these things from his hard drive.
Pulling down the shades, stripping off everything but his shorts, and getting into bed took the last of his energy. He couldn’t be bothered with trying to find his headphones or music. He lay there, head pounding fit to kill, utterly miserable, and thoroughly wide-awake. That was the worst thing about these. If he could just go to sleep it wouldn’t be so bad, but sleep was out of the question.
Time passed. How much, he had no idea. Maybe minutes, maybe hours. It was all the same, unrelenting, unending.
The door creaked open, and John winced as the sound drove yet another spike through his skull. He bit back a whimper.
A rattle of a teacup in its saucer. John cautiously cracked open one eye. There was very little light in the room, but to John’s over-sensitized eyes, it seemed nearly as bright as if every lamp in the room was switched on. He clearly saw Sherlock, standing by his nightstand, having just set down a mug (why had he thought teacup and saucer?) and a glass. “I’ve brought you weak tea and lemon-water,” he murmured, his voice scarcely audible and far more soothing than John ever expected. “Both seemed to help, last time, and you need to stay hydrated.”
John was touched. Not only had Sherlock remembered the previous incident, he’d clearly observed what little John had done to try and care for himself during one of these headaches. He tried to whisper thanks, but it just came out as a pained garble, and the effort sent yet another stabbing sensation through him.
“Don’t – talking hurts you,” Sherlock advised, his voice still that low, not-painful thrum on the bare edge of hearing.
“So? Ev’thing hurts,” John choked out with gallows humor.
Some emotion flickered across Sherlock’s face, something very like distress. “I know. And standard painkillers obviously do not provide you adequate relief, or you’d have prescribed yourself some.”
“Right.” John let his eyes sag shut. “Nothing…but time.”
“And you’re bored as well as in pain.”
Surprise almost made John open his eyes again, but he settled for a simple grunt.
“I have something that might help. With the boredom, I mean, not the pain of course. I did some research after the last time, and combined what I learned with some deductions based on your general reactions to stimuli, and made a few preparations, just in case…”
If it had been anyone else, John would have said Sherlock sounded unsure, almost babbling with nervousness. Still in that soothing voice, but babbling. Almost. He made the effort to open his eyes and try to focus, only to screw them shut again immediately. “Okay,” he gasped.
“…right. Let’s try this. I’ll need to touch your head, just a little.”
John nodded a fraction of a degree.
A whisper of sound. A soft, damp cloth touched his forehead and the skin over his eyes, resting there lightweight and room-temperature, almost unnoticeable. Soft, cool cushioning over his ears – headphones of some kind? – muffling the room further without being too much agonizing pressure on his over-sensitized skin. Moments later, one of Sherlock’s long-fingered hands threaded into his own.
“I’m going to turn up the sound, very slowly. Squeeze the moment it’s enough.”
Silence, then a faint noise that resolved itself into Sherlock’s voice, reading something in those same low murmuring tones that didn’t hurt, at least not compared to most noises. A poem. Robert Frost?
John’s hand tightened on Sherlock’s as much in surprise as in signal.
“Enough? Not too much?”
John huffed out a sigh, the closest he could come to agreement. He didn’t want to talk – and he didn’t want to miss a word.
The poem was followed by another – Shakespeare this time, John thought – and then an exceedingly filthy limerick. John almost choked on the laughter that welled up within him, painful, but helpful too. Sherlock’s hand tensed at his reaction, but relaxed again almost immediately when John tapped it reassuringly with his thumb.
“S’good,” he mumbled. And it was. He listened, entertained, and utterly unable to predict what Sherlock might read next. It didn’t take the pain away, but it helped, and that was more than John ever could have expected.
Particularly the one about the cow. He never, ever could have predicted the bit about the cow. He’d have to ask Sherlock where that one came from, when the pain finally went away and he could think and speak again.