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Phil rubbed his temples. “Can you take paracetamol with triptans?”
“Umm,” Dan said. “I don’t know.”
“I know,” Phil said, fighting down a wave of irritation. He liked Dan, loved him, even, and the migraine was just making him irritable and mean. “Can you figure out?” He put his head down on the dressing room table.
“Sorry, yeah.” Dan’s voice was as gentle as always. “I’ll look.”
Phil closed his eyes and tried to relax. It didn’t work.
“Drugs.com says no interactions found,” Dan said, looking up from his phone. “Do you want me to call the doctor to be sure?”
“If it was really that dangerous, someone would’ve already told me not to,” Phil decided, digging through his bag for a pill bottle, though it was hard to read the labels in the dim light.
Dan reached a hand out to block Phil’s arm. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Phil said, pushing Dan’s hand out of the way to grab the bottle. “I need to be on stage in thirty minutes.”
“I don’t want you to collapse and die on stage,” Dan said.
Phil unscrewed the cap and shook two pills into his hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t die,” he said dismissively. “If I do, it’ll add drama.”
Dan sighed. “Alright.”
Phil glared at him while he swallowed the pills, just to emphasize his point. No one got in between Phil Lester and his migraine medication.
“Anything else you can take? Should I get anything?” Dan asked, still scrolling on his phone, his brow furrowed.
Phil slumped back down dramatically. “Cut my head off,” he pleaded. “Lobotomy. Drill a hole in my skull.”
“No,” Dan said, which was honestly a little rude. “This Reddit thread suggests Benadryl,” he said.
Phil groaned. “Get off Reddit,” he said, though if his headache didn’t let up within the next five minutes, he was tempted to grab a bottle of Benadryl, drowsiness be damned.
“Fine.” Dan shoved his phone in his pocket. “Did you already have coffee and ibuprofen?”
Phil nodded. “Almost forty minutes ago.” He looked at Dan with despair.
“How many tablets?” Dan asked.
“Two,” Phil said.
“You could have two more,” Dan said, and Phil could have kissed him. “How long has it been since the sumatriptan?”
“Like thirty more minutes?” Phil shook another two tablets out of his ibuprofen bottle and swallowed them.
Dan rocked back and forth on his feet, thinking. “It’s too early for a second dose,” he said.
“I know,” Phil said miserably. “I want one anyway.”
“We could have someone hold an extra dose for you backstage,” Dan suggested. “Give it another fifty minutes and see how you feel.”
Phil sighed. “Okay.”
Dan let a hand rest on the side of Phil’s face. “And take some deep breaths, okay?”
Phil would have glared, if it didn’t hurt his eyes. “Are you going to tell me to drink more water too?”
“Not if it won’t help,” Dan said, unfairly reasonable. “I know you’re not ‘just stressed.’ But I also know it hurts less when you’re able to relax.”
Phil let his face fall forward, into Dan’s shirt. “It’s just so hard sometimes.”
“I know,” Dan said quietly. He rubbed Phil’s head. “I’m sorry. Do you need a shoulder rub?” He paused, and Phil could hear the smirk in his voice. “A something else rub?”
Phil hit him in the stomach, without much conviction. “I hate you.”
“So that’s a no, then?”
Phil pulled back and looked up at Dan, pretending to consider, but they were interrupted by a knock at the dressing room door.
One of the venue workers stuck her head in. “You’re late. What’s going on?”
“Sorry,” Dan said, moving to block Phil’s view of the door. “We’re trying to get his head feeling better before we get out there. We’ll be out as soon as we can.”
Even from a distance Phil could tell she was not happy. “You’re late because Phil has a headache?”
Dan leaned in. “Do you get migraines?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I understand it’s painful, but part of being a professional adult is taking an excedrin and getting on with your life.”
“I’m not sure you do understand, if you think that’s all it takes to handle them,” Dan said pleasantly, and Phil winced.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“You have no fucking idea what Phil has been through, and his medication doesn’t work nearly as well when you expect him to be running around and staring into a bunch of bright lights. Give us a bit more time for the meds to kick in. Just… five minutes.”
She gave a startled laugh. “You should see a doctor, if it’s really that bad,” and, okay, Phil didn’t feel bad for her anymore.
“You’re joking,” Dan said in disbelief. “You’re actually fucking joking.”
“You know what? Never mind,” she said. “Let us know when you’re ready.”
She left, probably to talk shit about them, but Phil didn’t really care.
“You didn’t need to make it that big of a deal,” Phil said. “I’m being dramatic.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You don’t really need to cut my head off.”
Dan shook his head in disbelief. “She said you should see a doctor.” He spun around, throwing his hands in the air. “Wow! Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Other than that,” Phil said. “You can yell at her for that. I don’t mind.” He managed a smile.
Dan calmed down, a little. “Good,” he said.
“I’ll do the show with a migraine,” Phil said.
Dan shook his head. “You don’t have to.” He grabbed Phil’s hand, and his eyes were so close, so dark and so wide, and a little watery.
“I do,” Phil said. “We are not putting the show off until I get this migraine under control. You know that could be days.”
Dan hesitated. “You’re feeling better, at least?” he asked.
“Yes,” Phil said, only half lying. The first triptan dose had cut the pain down by at least half, though he regretted waiting so long to take it. The ibuprofen and caffeine were only starting to kick in, but he knew they would help.
The paracetamol wasn’t likely to do anything, but, well, it was moral support.
“Okay,” Dan said. “If you’re sure.”
“I am,” Phil said, trying to sound confident. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with an ice pack, but he’d been through worse than one show with a headache.
“One thing. What the fuck is excedrin?” Dan asked, and Phil couldn’t help but laugh.
“It’s an American brand,” he said. “Aspirin, paracetamol, and caffeine.”
Dan tilted his head. “Oh,” he said.
“It’s pretty good,” Phil admitted. “You wouldn’t think the paracetamol would help, but it kind of does. You should try it. You’d stop having a headache in, like, twenty minutes, probably.”
Dan laughed. “You know ibuprofen doesn’t take much longer than that for me.”
“I know, and I hate you for it.” Phil frowned, and making the expression only hurt a little. “I want your brain.”
Dan bumped his arm. “You have it, bub,” he said gently.
“I want it to replace my brain,” Phil clarified.
“Then I’d be sad,” Dan said. “You’d be sad too, probably, with my brain,” he reminded Phil.
“I’d be so sad,” Phil said. “Two of you? One’s enough.”
“Oh, shove off,” Dan said. “We should get going.” He glanced at the door.
“Right,” Phil said. He pushed through the door, holding his hand up to block the outside light.