Work Text:
"Jeeeesus, Mary, and Joseph," I hiss out from between grit teeth, pressing my fists into my eyelids. It doesn't quite feel like my eyeballs are on fire, but it's close enough that I feel alright about complaining this much.
I press my face into my pillow. How long ago did I take those painkillers—fifteen minutes? Thirty? If it was any longer than thirty, all hope for me is lost, so I try not to think about any numbers higher than that.
"Grace still have pain, question?" Rocky asks. I told him I was going to sleep about an hour ago, and he had taken up his post right next to my bed. I could hear the subtle rhythm of him clicking away at something. The sounds he made when he worked had become like a sort of white noise to me. I barely noticed them anymore, but when they were absent, my whole world felt wrong.
"Yeah, buddy, still have pain," I mutter into the pillow.
"Recognize first two names. Who last one, question?"
I raise my head just a bit. I have almost all the lights off, but some animal instinct is still compelling me to burrow into someplace cooler and darker, and it protests when my eyes open to the dim room. "Huh?"
Rocky's tinkering pauses for a moment. "Grace say, 'Jesus, Mary, and last one'. 'Jesus' is exclamation. 'Mary' is ship. Who last one, question?"
"Oh. Uh, it's an extended form of the, uh," I wave my hand around, "'Jesus' exclamation." No, I haven't taught Rocky about religion yet. All the times I say 'Oh my god!' are usually not opportune moments for explaining Christianity.
"Understand." He gets right back to his work. With my head raised, the rhythms are clearer, I realize. And the pillow hasn't been cool for a while now. I turn to rest on my back, where I can look right up at Rocky pretty easily.
Movement might have been a mistake. The pain roils through my head and for a second the room spins just a bit. Am I nauseous? God, I hope I'm not nauseous.
I groan and turn onto my side, clutching my head between my hands. When that doesn't work, I interlace my fingers on the back of my neck and squeeze the side of my head with my arms. My brain seems to be getting tossed around inside of my skull, but it finally stabilizes, the pain subsiding with it.
"Grace?" Rocky figured out earlier that he needs to be quieter when I'm like this, and with my ears covered by my arms I can just barely hear him. I murmur some kind of affirmative, and Rocky continues, sounding sort of like he's talking to himself, "Grace say head hurts and Rocky cannot fix. No understand. Grace head not injured."
Yes, I have a terrible migraine right now. Yes, any kind of movement makes it feel even more terrible. But Rocky is confused, and he hates being confused, so I decide to clear things up.
I relax my vise grip on my head and the pain returns, but I push through it to explain. "Yeah, you're right. My head is fine, physically. It's on the inside," I bring up a finger and tap my forehead, "that it hurts."
Rocky is quiet for a moment. His work stops, too. I hear his claws tap together just a bit, the way they do when he's trying to understand a new word I'm giving him.
"You can't fix it," I tell him, "but neither can I. It's like being sick, but more temporary. Sleeping will help."
More tapping. Then he asks, "Pain come from where, question?"
I wish I knew. My hands migrate around to the front of my head, and I massage my temples. Still, my brain feels like it's inside of a pressure cooker, but the motion helps the tiniest bit.
"A lot of different reasons." I wonder if I had migraines back on Earth, or if this is some kind of space-only development with plenty of troubling implications. It's hard to imagine a middle school teacher dealing with migraines. You'd think they'd be naturally selected out of the process. "Sometimes, a lot of loud noise causes it. Or too much heat. Or too much exercise. Or looking at screens for too long."
"Wow," Rocky trills, and he sounds genuinely impressed. "Human body find so many ways to hurt itself."
I huff out a laugh. "Yeah. It's pretty terrible."
"But Grace have medicine to help. Not working, question?"
"No, not this time. But my odds improve if I can get to sleep." My eyelids flutter for a moment, and even doing that is a bit painful, so I decide to just keep them open. "Hard to sleep with a headache, though."
"Headache," he repeats, just cramming his melodies for 'head' and 'pain' next to one another. He does it so quietly that I might not have heard it if I weren't lying completely still an otherwise-quiet spaceship.
"We not have this on Erid," he continues, and his tools start up again. When he's knocked off his stride, he can't work on anything, but once he feels like he's in control again, oh man, he can whip up xenonite stuff faster than anyone this side of the Petrova line. "But, understand pain. Understand pain from sound. Is sickness. Eridian hear too much sound, too often, and entire world becomes too much sound. Treatment is send Eridian to quiet place like cave for one Eridian day." Rocky pauses thoughtfully. "Like Grace headache. Grace need quiet, and hear no light, and stay very still. Rocky stay quiet and watch, and Grace wake up, head fine."
If it didn't hurt to do everything right now, I swear I'd start crying. But as it is, my muscles can't spare a single contraction, so instead I just lie there and think. I wonder if anyone back on Earth ever brought me painkillers, or massaged my head for me, or held me until my head felt better. I have to stop thinking about that immediately when I remember that crying will really hurt.
A few minutes go by before I notice that the rhythm of Rocky's work has stopped. "Rocky. Why'd you stop?"
He hesitates. "Grace need quiet." There's a little undercurrent in his voice, a lower tone that I've come to realize is uncertainty.
"Yeah. I do. But you can keep working." I pull a blanket over myself and shift around a bit until I'm comfortable. "I like it."
Another hesitation before he speaks. "But is noise."
"Good noise," I reply.
He must know better than to argue right now, because after a few seconds, I hear the sounds of his work pick back up. Neither of us say anything more. The pain is nearly imperceptible by the time I fall asleep.