You were no stranger to pain, and yet you were sure this was the worst you’d ever experienced.

As a woman, you’re expected to simply acknowledge the pain of your period, and move on with your day. Today that, to put it simply, was so not happening for you. Curtains drawn, lights off, and some movie playing on the TV, you buried your face in the pillow, trying to will the pain away. You’d had to call out sick from work, that’s how bad it was. If men had periods, you scoffed internally, they’d get time off. Unfortunately, that reality was not this one. So, with your heating pad on what’s probably a dangerously high setting, you managed to find yourself in a merciful half sleep. Lessening the pain— though only slightly.

Though, you were awoken to the sound of your bedroom door opening and the rustling of shopping bags. Weakly lifting your head from the pillow, you’re met with the sight of Spencer, multiple bags in hand. Chivalry must still be alive; in the form of your boyfriend buying all of your favorite snacks. You supposed he’d snuck out earlier to buy things for you when you’d banished him to the couch, because as much as you loved him, you knew you wouldn’t make the best company this morning. Eventually, he’d relented, although he wasn’t idle. Clearly. He sets the bags down on a nearby desk, revealing an array of various snacks.

“Did you know,” he starts, gently removing the snacks from the confines of plastic bags, “that in the medieval era, they believed that wearing a burned toad’s ashes could cure cramps?”