Chapter Text
Jay is ten years old and doesn’t quite have the words for the pain yet.
His mom, having finally resigned herself to coming upstairs after many a call for breakfast had gone unheard, finds him buried under the covers in his twin bed, the way he might do when he’s sneaking his GameBoy late at night. He thinks she doesn’t hear him, hear the way he rushes to shove it under his pillow and pretends to be asleep, breathing heavy, ragged, in the split second between the door clicking open and her feet finding their way into his room.
This, she can tell, is something else entirely.
“Jay,” she says firmly, that strange mix of sternness and concern in her voice that only a mother could possess. “Jay, for goodness’ sake, you’re going to miss the bus. What are you doing? Get up.”
All she gets in response is a tiny, unhappy noise from beneath the thick blanket, one that tells her no amount of coaxing is going to get him out of bed. She’s heard him do this before, when it’s the dead of winter and he’s too cold to leave the warmth of the covers, or on weekends where they’ve got plans but all he wants is a lie-in, but those are usually drawn-out, melodramatic little groans, and this sounds like nothing of the sort.
“Alright,” she sighs, kneeling down beside the bed and slowly pulling back the blanket, met with some resistance and another one of those weak little sounds. “Come on, you’ve got school. I’ve made you pancakes.”
A whiny “no” is all he can manage, voice small, thready, as he curls in tighter on himself. His mother clicks her tongue, more than used to the theatrics.
“What’s the matter, hm?” she asks softly, indulging him for now as her hand finds its way onto his forehead. “Do you not feel well? You’ve not got a temperature.”
“...head hurts.”
Muffled as his voice is by the mattress, she can still hear the genuine misery in it, and it softens her frustration a bit.
“Your head hurts,” she echoes. “Is that it? You’ve not been sick?”
He shakes his head, just barely, an only just perceptible shudder coursing through him as it seems to aggravate the pain even more. “...might be.”
“Oh, dear.” His mother runs a hand over her face, then through his hair, moving in gentle, soothing strokes. “Alright, darling, we’ll keep you off,” she says decisively. “Make sure it doesn’t end up as anything worse.”
He’s crying now, quietly, more visible than audible in the steady shakes of his body and the pinched brow she can make out in the tiny sliver of his face he allows her to see.
“Honestly,” she mutters softly, sitting herself down on the edge of the bed. “Such a fuss over a headache.”