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When Darnell was a kid, his mom told him he was one of the lucky ones. Which, to be fair, was an insane thing to say out of context about the situation, but he was getting ahead of himself.
Migraines ran in the family. Chronic ones, specifically. His mom got one just about twice a week, sometimes more, and they usually lasted a couple days. The first time he'd gotten a migraine, she didn't even bother taking him to the doctor. She already knew the deal.
The luck kicked in when you realized that he only got migraines two or three times per month, and they tended to go away on their own within a day. So sure, maybe he could count his blessings and say that he'd gotten off easy in the headaches from hell department. Didn't make them hurt any less atrociously, though. And maybe it was just him, or maybe because God Himself hated him, but he was pretty sure his attacks had the worst timing in the entire fucking world.
Case in point, our story today.
It was weirdly uncommon for the whole polycule to be able to get together on the same night, considering they were all, y'know, varying levels of unemployed. They'd been planning this date out for a week. The plan was for Nene to pick him up to meet BF, GF, and Pico at the mall at five-thirty. It felt like a bit of hassle when he was only dating Pico in the first place, but hey, it was always nice catching up with BF, and seeing Nene actually being in a mostly-healthy relationship (for once in her life) with GF was sweet.
Anyway, the morning of the date, Darnell awoke feeling like someone stabbed him in the neck in his sleep, along with all-too-familiar beginnings of an ache from just above his left brow down to his jaw, and immediately thought god fucking damnit.
He really should've expected this, honestly. Murphy's Law, or whatever. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, especially when it has to do with us five in particular.
For about an hour, he managed to convince himself that, okay, maybe this was fine. Maybe, for the past eight years, he'd just been exaggerating, and his headaches weren't so bad that he couldn't handle hanging out for a few hours that evening.
Thirty minutes later, presumably just out of spite from the universe itself, he was hurling his life up into a trash bin in the corner of his bedroom. So scratch that idea.
After spending a couple minutes washing out his newly designated puke bucket and rinsing his mouth, Darnell finally admitted defeat. He rolled closed the blinds of the window in his room to achieve as close to pitch darkness as he could get at three o'clock (yes, he woke up around one, not like he had better things to be doing), and pathetically crawled back into bed, his head complaining violently with every movement.
It took a moment for him to process the thought that he should probably message the group chat to tell them he was sick. Damn brain fog.
Fumbling with his hand for way too long to try and pick his phone up off his bedside table without having to prop himself up, he ended up feeling minimally victorious when he managed to grab it without knocking it onto the floor. All sense of accomplishment then immediately vanished the second he turned the screen on and he was subsequently blinded. Even after scrambling to turn the brightness all the way down, it still felt a bit hard to look at.
Jesus, his fucking head.
Darnell opened the chat and managed to type something to the effect of, 'hey, can't make it tonite, migraine. dw abt changin plans. don't have too much fun wo me', except likely with way more typos, considering he could barely see the screen with how hard he was squinting and also the fact that it felt like someone had crammed a molten metal rod directly through the left half of his skull.
If he wasn't dying, he would've kept the phone on long enough to see everyone's responses, but unfortunately, he was not long for this world. He set it aside, fitfully burying the aching side of his face into his pillow like it would somehow help.
Realized a second too late that it would probably help him relax to pull up fireplace noises on YouTube or something, and ultimately decided it wasn't worth the effort. Even his impulse to look at fire was stunted. Truly, it was a sign of the end times.
(Not that he didn't want to make something explode right now. He just hardly had the motivation to get up and do it.)
Antsy now from thinking about it, he rolled onto his back (ill-advised, ow) and let his mind wander to a healthier outlet. Something to occupy himself, just for the moment.
The last thing he remembered thinking about was how the Fourth of July was soon, which meant firework shows. More accurately, he remembered thinking about that really hard, about all the different types of fireworks and how they were made and what he would say if anyone would let him ramble about it...
And then he woke up, incredibly groggy, in marginally less agony, and vaguely aware that something felt off, before–
"Christ, man!" He jolted upright before he could convince himself that he didn't need to panic. Pico, standing over his bed like a total fucking creep, didn't offer any more reaction than widening his eyes a bit. He could've been sympathetic enough to look guilty, at least. Darnell pressed a hand to his throbbing temple, letting out an aggravated sigh through his nose. "You ever heard of knocking, dipshit?"
Pico clearly wasn't fazed, merely squinting at him in a way that felt highly judgemental, even if it wasn't what he intended. "Tried. Twice." He gestured vaguely, implying he meant the front door and the bedroom's. "If I was here to kill you, you'd be dead as fuck right now."
Honestly, at this point, that might be a mercy. Not deigning the comment with a proper response, he flopped back down, covering his eyes with his arm. "What time is it?" Between sleep, dehydration, and getting sick earlier, his voice sounded like he swallowed a cheese grater. Which wasn't too out of the ordinary for him, but still.
"Little after five," the redhead answered easily. He lifted a bottle of water that Darnell previously hadn't noticed he had, holding it out in front of himself for him to take as soon as Darnell peeked up at him again. "What part of that two-forty-something IQ made you think it was a good idea to not drink any water, by the way?"
Darnell squinted as his brain managed to finally pull together a full thought. It took him another moment to finally muster the will to sit up again, much slower this time. Luckily, it didn't do much more than make his neck ache. "Dude, you gotta be at the mall in thirty minutes."
The water bottle was emphasized as Pico flicked his wrist to swirl the contents around, making Darnell finally give in and take it. "I tapped out too, I've been hanging out with B and G all weekend anyway."
"Thought I said not to worry about changing plans," Darnell said with a frown. He knew they'd all been looking forward to this, he didn't want everything to fall apart just because he couldn't go.
Pico scoffed. "Date night can wait, and you're a dumbass," he said, "and you never answered my question."
Darnell tentatively unscrewed the flimsy plastic lid of the bottle, daring to meet his eye. "Who says I haven't been drinking water?"
The gaze was returned with equal scrutiny. "Have you been drinking water?"
He took a long sip, licking his dry lips as he fixed his gaze firmly on the now very-interesting corner of his bed, formulating his very articulate and nuanced response to these allegations. "... no."
"Take any medicine?"
"What is this, a damn interrogation?" He replied moodily, though his words had no bite. He still spoke a bit louder than he intended, making him wince at the sound of his own voice. It earned him a huff - exasperation, amusement, concern, take your pick - and Pico shortly produced a packet of two OTC painkillers. Darnell scowled at them, still bitter. "You know they don't work for me."
"Might take the edge off, at least." The words were said casually, but Darnell knew better than anyone how stubborn Pico was. It didn't take him long to give in, if just to make Pico feel better. He hated pills, man.
After drinking enough water to get the chalky aftertaste mostly out of his mouth, which he was sure was yet another of Pico's goals, he set the bottle aside. "Anyone ever tell you that you worry too much?" He teased.
"Every single day of my life." Despite that, the tense concern in Pico's features had finally loosened, giving Darnell a peek at the stupid smug little smirk he loved so much. It was followed quickly, of course, by a more direct command. "Move over, I'm sick of standing."
When he scooted over as asked (well, more told, but that was just how Pico tended to ask for things), he, for whatever reason, did not anticipate Pico getting into the bed with him.
He wasn't sure why it flustered him so much. They'd been dating for a few weeks now, and it wasn't like they'd never shared a bed before then, either. Wasn't he too old for all those stupid butterfly-in-stomach feelings, anyway? Eugh.
"You look so serious," Pico said with another sharp exhale of a laugh. Darnell hadn't noticed the face he'd apparently been pulling up until that point and forced himself to relax, though his boyfriend decided to make that significantly harder by lifting a hand to rub little circles into the back of his neck.
It didn't take him long to relent to the fact that it felt really good though. Melting into the touch was enough to earn him a more audible chuckle. He cracked an eye open just to make sure Pico was aware of his offense. "You like that, huh?"
"Neck hurts like a bitch," Darnell replied, though his face was so buried that it was a barely coherent mumble more than anything. Pico offered a sympathetic hum, continuing the gentle massage. Already beginning to doze off again after being so rudely interrupted earlier, his tired mind began to wander again. "Thanks for comin' over. Didn't have to."
"Yeah, I did," Pico said matter-of-factly, like he was lightly reprimanding his boyfriend for some mistake. “Even if you did have any self-preservation instincts in that stupid head of yours, I still, y'know.” He paused briefly, flustered as well. “Don't want you to be alone when you're feeling like shit.”
Darnell shifted slightly as Pico's hand wandered to his shoulder, accommodating the discomfort in his stiff muscles. It would probably be less awkward if he turned all the way over, but there was something charming about all this. The fact that neither of them really knew what they were doing, but they were doing it anyway.
Pico's words were familiar, even if Darnell usually applied them the other way around. It wasn't really an exaggeration to say that, until recently, Pico was having a bad day roughly ninety-percent of the time since the shooting. And usually, it was Darnell that held the stated sentiment. Most of his teenage years were spent making sure that even if he couldn't necessarily stop Pico from feeling like shit, that at least he wouldn't be alone in the process.
He shouldn't have been surprised the feelings were reciprocated after all that time. Especially after everything went down with the whole ‘oh shit, maybe these feelings aren't as platonic as I thought’ thing, and subsequently finding out that Pico felt the same way.
Still, it felt nice. Knowing that Pico felt that way.
Noticing he was dozing off again, Darnell forced himself to rouse just a bit. His eyes were barely open, but he was pretty sure Pico looked amused by this. “We gotta - like, when I'm not fucking dying - we gotta do something together. Just us. Like the old days.”
“Sure. Think I'm running out of unique date spots, though,” Pico mused. This whole time, they were talking in these hushed voices to each other, which was not helping Darnell with the actively falling asleep thing. “Could probably look up if there's any concerts coming up or something.”
“That sounds good. I was thinking that there's firework shows comin’ up, but I know that you don't– you, you'd wanna stay home for that. Which I get. Don't worry about it. But if there was anythin’ you want to do, that we could do together, without the others–”
“Nell?”
“– Yeah?”
“Go the fuck to sleep,” Pico said, amusement obvious even before adding, “you sound drunk.”
Darnell tried his best to pout melodramatically, but he was sure it didn't come across just from the expression on Pico's face. Mumbling something intentionally unintelligible, he gave in, letting his eyes finally fall fully shut. He felt his boyfriend's fingers drift back up to the back of his neck. “We'll talk about it later,” Pico assured. “Focus on getting your brain to stop stabbing you, first.”
He wanted to say something along the lines of, ‘that's a good idea’. All that ended up coming out was “mm.”
If he pushed himself to remember, more had happened in the couple of moments before he completely nodded off. Vaguely, he recalled the back of his head being cupped, and something briefly brushing up against his forehead. Being told to rest easy. Had Pico called him fucking sparky when he thought he was too asleep to be paying attention?
The next thing he was aware of, it was a couple hours later, the pain in his head and neck had dulled to a barely noticeable ache, and Pico, who had apparently also fallen asleep, had pushed himself awkwardly against where the headboard would be if Darnell had one to accommodate his significantly taller boyfriend opting to use his chest as a pillow. Which probably meant that Pico would be the one dealing with neck pain shortly enough.
All things considered, the day hadn't been as horrible as he'd initially thought, and he certainly wasn't going to say no to sitting here cuddled up next to Pico for the foreseeable future. His least favorite part, ever since he was a kid, was always when Pico decided it was time to go home. And hey, the stupid insomniac probably needed the sleep, anyway. So he was staying right where he was.
While he was there, though, Darnell decided to sneakily return that forehead kiss he was half-sure actually happened. While Pico was too asleep to be paying attention, of course.