Work Text:
The migraine hits him halfway through dinner.
They’ve been on the road for days, the weather’s been miserable, and the cheap inn’s common room is far louder than he can tolerate. Too many voices, too much light, too many smells.
Jackson blinks hard, rubs at his remaining eye with the heel of his palm, and forces himself to focus on the plate in front of him. Just the scent of the stew makes his stomach curl.
Still, he keeps his posture straight, forces his breathing even. He’s good at this part. Has been for the past ten years.
Or, well, he usually is. But maybe not today.
His vision swims, dark spots gathering at the edges. As if that’s not bad enough, his ears are ringing, the sound a high, insistent whine that drowns out everything else.
He misses whatever Elliot is saying. Misses Rayne’s question entirely. Misses Mara gently nudging his arm. Misses Pepper staring at him without the usual bright smile on her face.
“Uh, I’m gonna go to sleep.” He blurts, abruptly getting up from the table. He hopes that, if he sways a little as soon as he stands, nobody can see it.
But before he can turn, Pepper’s hand is on his shoulder. He half-wonders when she also got up.
“Hey, are you alright?”
Jackson opens his mouth to say yes. It should be a simple lie, but the word doesn’t come out. The room tilts instead.
Pepper’s hands are gripping his shoulders, steadying him, before he can embarrass himself by grabbing the table. Or worse, by falling straight to the floor.
“Yeah.” he manages at last. “Just tired.”
“Uh-huh…” she raises both eyebrows, voice flat and unconvinced. Her eyes flick briefly to his eye patch, then to the way his good eye is squinting against the light.
“I just need to lie down.” He mutters, more-so to keep whatever he’s left of his dignity in front of the others than anything. He knows she knows what’s wrong anyway. She’s dealt with him and his migraines for a long, long time by now, after all.
Pepper doesn’t press him. She never does. She just nods once and shifts her grip so one hand stays firm on his shoulder while the other slides down to his forearm.
“Okay, let’s get you upstairs.” She says simply before glancing back at the table. “Goodnight everyone!”
If everyone’s giving them weird, concerned looks, Jackson doesn’t want to know. He elects to only listen to their confused chorus of goodnights without looking and lift a hand in what he hopes reads as a casual wave. It probably doesn’t.
Pepper guides him through the common room, angling her body just enough to block the worst of the firelight from his eye, and gets him to the bedroom they’d managed to get themselves for the night.
She shuts the door behind them with her foot, careful not to let it slam.
The room is small and smells faintly of old wood, but it’s not awful. Especially considering how little they paid for it. There’s a single lantern on the bedside table, turned low, casting long shadows across the walls. Even that much light makes Jackson’s head throb.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Pepper grumbles as she helps him sit on the edge of the bed.
He huffs. “It wasn’t so bad until dinner.”
She lets out a quiet, unimpressed sound through her nose. “We could have stopped somewhere sooner if you told us you had a migration.”
“Migraine.” He corrects.
“Don’t change the subject!”
He chuckles despite himself, even if it makes the pain worse. He knows it’s simply because Pepper never got to get any kind of education, but her word mix-ups are amusing and, right now, he doesn’t have the energy to act like they’re not.
She shoots him a look that’s half glare, half relief at hearing him laugh at all.
“Lay back.” she says, already moving to get the blankets. “And don’t argue. You argue, I leave the light on all night.”
“Evil.” He murmurs, but does as told, easing himself onto the bed. The mattress dips under his weight, springs creaking softly. He presses his forearm over his eye, jaw tight.
Pepper reaches for the lantern and turns it down another notch until the room is barely lit at all.
“There.” she says quietly, satisfied.
The dim helps a little. Not enough to make the pain fade, but enough that it stops sharpening every time he so much as moves.
Pepper lingers by the lantern for a moment, as if considering turning it off entirely, then thinks better of it. Instead, she moves around the room, steps deliberately light. She pulls the thin curtains closed over the window, blocking out what little moonlight sneaks in from the street below.
Jackson listens to the sounds instead of looking. The scrape of fabric, the soft creak of floorboards. He figures it would probably be relaxing under other circumstances.
He doesn’t realize Pepper came back by the bed until he feels the flimsy mattress dip with the weight of her sitting next to him.
She makes quick work of getting his brown hair free of the tie. He lets out a relieved breath as soon as she’s done.
“I don’t know why you keep your hair up all the time if it makes the headaches worse.” She notes as she discards the tie on the nightstand.
He shrugs. “I don’t like to have hair in front of my face.”
“You could cut it?” She offers.
Immediately, he grimaces. “Absolutely not.”
She giggles. She already knew that would be the answer she'd get, it always is, but it was worth a try.
He recalls telling her a hundred times about the time he was six years old and a servant cut his hair, giving him something far too close to a bowl cut for comfort. Pepper seems to think it’s particularly funny to imagine him with mushroom-shaped hair, but he’d better describe it as downright disturbing.
She hums softly as she moves a hand through his hair, careful not to tug. Her fingers go on to graze lightly against the band of his eyepatch and she stops there.
“Do you want it off?”
He hesitates. The instinctive ‘no’ rises immediately, sharp and defensive.
He’s never liked taking it off when he doesn’t have to. He usually sleeps with it on. He hates how the missing eye looks, hates the scarring around it, hates everything about it. But he can’t deny it’s kind of bothering him right now, if only because the band presses around his head in a particularly unpleasant way.
“Yeah.” He says finally. “If you don’t mind.”
“Course I don’t.”
Her fingers are careful, albeit a bit clumsy, as she works the strap loose. She’s seen him without it, but he’s never actually allowed her to take it off before, so it takes a little longer than it would’ve if he was the one doing it, but eventually it comes off. She lifts it away slowly, like she’s worried even the air touching the scar might hurt him.
It does, a little. But nowhere nearly as much as the pressure building behind his eye.
Pepper sets the eyepatch gently on the nightstand. “All done. How’s that?”
He exhales and sinks down deeper against the pillow, closing his good eye for a moment. The tightness eases slightly, not gone, but dulled by the dark, the quiet and her presence.
“Better.” he admits softly, his voice rough.
She hums, content, and adjusts the blankets around him. “Good. That’s all I wanted to hear.”
He doesn’t respond, only nods faintly, letting his eyelid fall. The pain isn’t gone, but it feels more manageable here. Besides, sleep has always made him feel a bit better, if only by a little.
The room grows quieter as Pepper watches over him. Surprisingly, he’s the one to eventually break the silence.
“You wouldn’t mind singing that song I like?” He asks, voice barely above a whisper.
Pepper’s eyes widen at the request. But she immediately nods excitedly at the opportunity, even though his eyes are closed and he can’t see it. “Of course!”
Pepper hums softly at first. The low familiar melody fills the dark room without jarring his senses.
Jackson drifts further into the pillow, his body relaxing against the mattress as the tension in his muscles unwinds ever so slightly. The steady cadence of her voice and the careful rhythm of her movements as she shifts a hand to lightly brush his hair aside lull him towards the edges of sleep.
He murmurs something incoherent — half a thank you, half a sigh — and then he’s gone, out like a light.
Pepper takes the time to finish the song anyway, and it follows him into his dreams.