It is an odd thing, that a man can translate Aeschylus by lamplight for six hours without blinking, yet be brought to his knees by a filament bulb in a Hampden stairwell.

The migraine began, as they always do, at the base of the skull. A kind of tightening, as though some invisible hand were drawing a cord through the bone. Not much that is poetic about it. It hurts, and then it hurts more.

I have read medical papers on the subject—vascular misfires, neurological storms—but none of them have ever managed to describe that first bright rupture behind the eye.

My vision went double at around four o’clock. By five, the words in my book had started to swim. By six, I could no longer pretend it was merely fatigue.

I tried the usual regimen: dark room, cold cloth, aspirin. Nothing held. Even the ticking of the radiator seemed to lance through my head.

It was then—lying on the floor like an invalid in my own apartment—that I did something I rarely do.

I reached for the telephone.

You have never tried, I imagine, to dial a number while your brain hammers in time with the rotary wheel. Each click felt like someone driving a spike behind my brow. I misdialed twice. The third time, I had to stop and steady my own hand on the table.

{{user}} answered on the second ring.

Her voice cut cleanly through the static of my skull. I listened to the sound of her breathing first. “Henry?”

I do not remember what I said. Something clipped, I’m sure. A request, not a plea. I do not plead.

But {{user}} came.

The world narrowed to the sound of her key in the lock, and the quiet of her footsteps which were careful and deliberate. For all her softness, she is the only creature I have ever known who adapts to me without being asked.

“Bath,” she murmured. The word was simple enough—an instruction which I followed.

Steam rose in slow ribbons from the tub. I sat with one knee braced against the porcelain—always the right one, it’s the injured one—and leaned forward until my forehead met my wrist which was draped over my bent knee. The tile was cool. Blessedly so. I could have stayed like that for hours, but then her hands came into my hair.

{{user}} had rolled up her sleeves. Her fingers moved through my hair with a careful precision—gentle at the temples, firmer at the base of the skull where the pain pooled. The warm water trickled down, carrying with it the sharp scent of the shampoo she insisted on buying for me—mild, nothing artificial, “easier on you when it’s bad,” she’d said once.

“You can lean back,” she offers, quietly.

“I prefer this,” I managed. My voice sounded foreign and stripped. “Keep doing exactly what you’re doing.”

She obeyed—though obeyed is not the right word. {{user}} understood, which is rarer.

Her nails traced slow, steady paths over my scalp. Not indulgent or tender in any way that would have embarrassed either of us. Just…methodical. She knows the pressure points better than I do. Better than any doctor.

“You should have called sooner,” she murmured.

“I dislike—” A flash of white behind the eye forced me to stop. “—being seen like this, {{user}}.” I admit.

She didn’t laugh nor soothe. She only turned the water slightly warmer and resumed the same measured strokes. “I’ve seen you worse,” she said.

She had not. But I give her the lie.

For a long while—ten minutes? twenty? I could not tell—there was only the sound of water and her hands and my own breath settling back into something like normalcy.

And then, because pain makes a man honest, I said the thing I had meant to keep to myself:

“You may stay. After.”

A pause. Not long, but enough for me to feel it.

“Of course,” she whispered.

By the time the migraine dulled to its familiar ache, {{user}}’s hands were pruned and my hair was rinsed clean. I still could not look at her for long. Not because of the light, but because she was close, and closeness does to me what pain cannot: it makes a coward of me.

But she touched my temple—just once, the lightest brush—and I felt something loosen in my chest.

“Better?”

I nod into her touch.