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Shane woke to the sound of a whimper beside him - small, muffled. He reached out to his side of the bed at Ilya’s place and turned the light on. Ilya was facing him on his left side, eyes squeezed shut in pain, hands holding his head. He was sweating and breathing like he just ran a marathon.
“What’s going on?” Shane asked.
“Head. Bad.” Ilya’s accent was thicker through the pain. “Shut light off please.”
Shane’s hand snapped up and shut the light, once again plunging them into darkness.
“Is this a migraine?” Shane asks. He remembers Ilya mentioning he gets them sometimes in passing, a result from a concussion sustained on the ice back in Russia. Ilya had shrugged it off like it was nothing, but this looked like far from nothing to Shane.
“What does look like?” Ilya snapped, slurring around the words. He could feel Shane retreat in response. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Shane breathes. “What do you need? Water? Ice? Do you have medication? Should I-“
“No sound,” Ilya takes a hand off of his head to grab Shane’s arm. “Can’t think. Can’t talk. World moving,”
“Okay,” Shane bites his lip in worry. He feels fucking useless right now - this is the first time he has ever seen Ilya be sick, or unwell, or anything other than strong and stable and quite a bit cocky. It was odd.
Not to mention, they didn’t do this, right? They fucked, they slept over (not even - this was the first time), they made each other slightly angry and very horny. They didn’t comfort. They didn’t care. They couldn’t.
And still, Shane swears he can feel physical pain growing in his chest at the thought of Ilya feeling like this and not being able to help in some way. So I’ll learn, he figures.
He gets off the bed slowly, trying to minimize the mattress shifting, but Ilya still groans with the weight moving. He steps quietly from the bedroom to the kitchen, stares at his bright phone screen glowing back at him in the illumination of the overhead stove light.
Partner migraine what to do
how to help migraine?
Migraine symptoms how to help
His chest tightens a bit at the “Partner” verbiage, but he shrugs it off. He skims article after article, learning timelines, symptoms, what to expect, how to actually help during the attack, how long attacks last. He commits everything he can to memory like it’s sacred scripture. He ignores the reason why.
Shane loves control. Loves a plan. Loves having something to do even in the face of something that seems unbearable. He moves quietly but efficiently, locating a washcloth in the bathroom and wringing it out in ice cold water, finding a packet of electrolytes in the cupboard and dissolving the powder into a bottle of water, looking in Ilya’s medicine cabinet for anything that reads “Triptan” - what the hell is a Triptan, he thinks. He finds it. He places all of these items in his arms and heads back to the room.
Ilya is awake but not moving, dozing in the space between sleep and awareness. His face is still scrunched in pain - Shane can see it through the dark, still. He sets down the medication bottle and water on Ilya’s nightstand and places the cold washcloth on Ilya’s forehead.
The act feels strange and unfamiliar, the opposite of casual, but Shane could care less about that currently. Ilya makes a noise somewhere between pain and relief when the cool hits his skin.
“Too cold?” Shane whispers.
“Good.” is all Ilya can manage to get out.
Shane carefully shakes two pills into his hand and holds them out to Ilya in the dark, along with the water bottle. Ilya slowly accepts, sitting up only enough to swallow them. His eyes, now open, dart back and forth just a smidge from side to side as dizziness envelops him with the small movement of his body. It scares Shane, but he doesn’t comment on it. He had read about this too. He notices, when Ilya is done, that his hands were shaking when they held the water bottle up. Jesus. Why have you never told me about these?
When Ilya lays back down, Shane settles on the bed next to him. “I’m right here if you need anything,” Shane whispers. Ilya just makes a small noise in acknowledgment.
Shane really downplays how incredibly difficult it is for him to sit here - in the dark, in Ilya’s bed, not using his phone nor moving a muscle as to not disturb Ilya. His eyes keep closing lazily, but he forces them open. He plays with his hands, mind drifting to how badly he wishes he could take this from him. I would trade places with you.
It’s maybe two hours later when Ilya shifts, suddenly, and tries to stand. “Whoa, hey,” Shane gets up quickly, voice still quiet but full of concern. He gets a hand on Ilya’s waist to steady him.
“Sick,” Ilya breathes out in a panic. “Need bathroom,”
“Okay, okay,” Shane says, now hurriedly half-dragging, half-walking Ilya to the en-suite bathroom, which is luckily only a few steps away. When they get there, Ilya collapses in front of the toilet and retches violently, Shane wincing at the sound.
He doesn’t turn the light on. He just hovers behind Ilya on the bathroom floor, hand wanting desperately to reach out and rub his back in an effort to comfort, but he read that touch can be overwhelming. He decides against it.
Heave after heave keeps coming, Ilya gasping in between as each one brings another wave of pain to his head. His curls are now damp where they meet his skin, and tears are streaming down his face from the force of the vomiting. Shane feels his chest tighten in sympathy.
When it finally seems to slow, Ilya pants as he leans back against the wall, eyes closed again. Shane reaches forward and flushes, Ilya wincing at the sound. “Sorry, sorry, don’t want you to smell it and keep being sick,” Shane explains.
He heads to the room and grabs the water bottle from earlier, crouches down. He holds it out to Ilya. “Just a few sips,” he whispers.
Ilya’s eyes open just slightly to take the bottle from him and take two small, slow sips. A few moments later and the water comes back up as Ilya folds forward again.
“Okay, we’ll try again later.” Shane whispers, hand now just resting on the small of Ilya’s back, physically needing to do something, anything, now.
“Sorry,” Ilya whispers once it’s done. Shane flushes again.
“No, no. Don’t apologize. Do you want to go back to bed?”
“Yes, but. Floor is moving. Feels like boat,”
“Okay, hold onto me,” Shane says, linking Ilya’s arm around his shoulder and walking him back to bed. His balance is wrecked, body not seeming to understand where it is in space.
Once Ilya is laying down again, his eyes slide shut. Shane once again settles next to him, and he feels Ilya’s hand glide to his and link their fingers together, holding on like he’s the only thing left to anchor him to the world. Shane smiles to himself in the dark.
Hours pass like this - silence, dark, Ilya’s quiet breathing and small gasps of pain and groans he accidentally lets slip out every once in a while. Shane wants to do more. Can’t do more. He hates it.
The only other time Ilya slightly shifts is to move from his side to his back. Shane notices the way his breathing has become even more uneven and shallow, like he’s trying to push through something.
“Hey, hey,” Shane whispers, squeezing Ilya’s hand just a smidge.
“Feel sick again,” Ilya whispers. “Can’t get up again. Tired. Dizzy,”
“Okay, I’ve got it,” Shane says, quickly getting off the bed and grabbing the small trash can from the bathroom, bringing it to Ilya’s side of the bed.
“Is gross,” Ilya whispers, eyes lazily realizing what Shane meant.
“It’s practical,” Shane counters. It’s a few moments later when Ilya suddenly gags and has no choice but to lean over the trash can and let it happen.
The waves are weaker now, less violent, but more agonizing. Eventually Ilya is dry heaving, Shane’s hand resting on his back but not moving as he feels the muscles work under his hand.
“Easy, easy,” he murmurs. “You’re okay,”
Truth is, he’s absolutely not okay, but I’m here, Shane thinks. I’ve got him.
When Ilya is done he settles back into the pillows with a groan. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Is humiliating,”
“It’s not. You’re in pain,” Shane responds as he replaces the warming washcloth on Ilya’s forehead with a newly cold one.
Shane then settles back into bed next to Ilya and grabs his hand again. Ilya turns back on his side, the cloth staying in place by being tucked under his head. The constant cold seems to help, as Ilya finally falls into a deeper sleep. Shane still doesn’t move a muscle as he sleeps, refusing to disturb what fragile peace might’ve been found.
It’s a good stretch of sleep, Ilya waking three hours later. “Head is less bad,” he reports. “More heavy. Less knives.”
Shane feels the first sense of relief he’s had all damn night. “Good, that’s good,”
“Feels like I played triple overtime,”
Shane had read about that too. He realizes Ilya is shaking now in a different way.
“Are you cold?”
“Yes,”
Shane gets up and grabs an extra blanket from the dresser, covering Ilya with it. He then gets into bed next to him again, this time under the covers, and hovers his arm around Ilya’s waist before touching.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes, can touch now.”
Shane lets his arm settle around his waist before pulling Ilya back into his chest. He lays a small, quick kiss on Ilya’s curls.
He can feel Ilya falling asleep again already. “I’m sorry,” he starts.
“For what?”
Shane genuinely doesn’t understand why he would be sorry.
“Ruined your night, our night,” Ilya breathes. “I know we do not do this.”
“We do this,” Shane responds. “You needed help. I helped. Logic,” he smirks.
He can feel Ilya smile just a little bit against his arm.
“I do not like being weak,”
There it is. The small admission - the Slavic upbringing, the little boy who lost his mother too soon.
Shane wishes he could undo everything Ilya’s father taught him in one go. “You just dealt with your head trying to kill you for hours,” he huffs. “You’re not weak, Il. Everyone knows that. I know that. You were sick,”
Ilya just hums in response as sleep gets a better hold on him now.
“Sleep,” Shane whispers. “I’ll be here,” as he finally lets himself doze off too.