Work Text:
It starts with a tingle in the tips of her fingers, where the markings first appeared. It wanders up her arm, as if following the purple steaks. She sees purple and red spots and her friends’ images distort.
“Beg your pardon,” she mutters and excuses herself from the table. She hopes she says it out loud, politely, and hasn’t just broadcast it directly into her friends’ minds.
The tavern is too loud. The room above it is no better, but she draws the curtains and takes solace in the dark. There’s no pain yet, but the anticipation can sometimes be worse, catastrophizing about how bad and how long and how many times she’ll throw up and who will see and judge or, even worse, be so perfectly understanding and caring while she’s miserable and snarky.
Imogen crawls into the lumpy bed and covers her eyes and ears with the pillow and barely holds back a scream when the door opens.
“Just me,” Ashton says, softly. “I brought you some water.”
The clink as they set the glass on the bedside table is cacophonous.
“Water ain’t gonna fix this,” Imogen complains, mostly muffled by the pillow.
“You know that I know that,” Ashton says as he shuffles to sit on the floor by Imogen’s bed. Their annoyance is clear, but his voice is still gentle, so gentle it’s almost unrecognizable. “But you’re going to get thirsty eventually and now you don’t have to leave the room.”
Imogen sighs and rolls over. “We don’t have time for me to fall apart.”
“We’ve got all the time in the world.” Ashton pats the side of the bed in reassurance. “Do a breathing exercise with me?”
“Fine, but can you count in your head? No more sound waves tonight.”
Breathe in, one, two, three…