Work Text:
The thing about chronic migraines is that you start to believe you've outrun them.
Conrad had been good (better than good, really) for seven months. Seven months of taking his prophylactic medication every night before bed, of keeping his sleep schedule tight, of limiting caffeine and staying hydrated, and doing all the tedious, unsexy work of managing a body that wanted to betray him. Seven months of almost forgetting what it felt like when his brain decided to stage a coup.
He should have known better than to drive to his dad's place after a twelve-hour shift. Should have known better than to agree to dinner when he was already running on four hours of sleep and spite. Should have definitely known better than to let his father bait him into the same circular argument they'd been having since the funeral - about responsibility, about the house, about whether Conrad was "wasting his potential" by taking a gap year before med school.
"Your mother would have wanted—" his dad had started, and that's when Conrad walked out.
He didn't say goodbye. Didn't grab his jacket from the back of the chair. Just got in his car and drove, hands tight on the wheel, jaw tighter.
The night was clear and cold, the kind of October darkness that felt like it had weight. Conrad took the back roads out of Boston, avoiding the highway, letting the curves and stops soothe something jagged in his chest. He wasn't going back to campus - not yet. Maybe he'd drive to the beach house, even though it was winterized and empty. Maybe he'd just drive.
He was twenty minutes outside the city when it started.
At first, it was just a weird shimmer at the edge of his vision, like something was caught in his peripheral. Conrad blinked, tried to clear it. The shimmer spread, fractaling into a bright zigzag that crawled across his line of sight like a crack in glass.
"No," he said aloud, to no one. "No, no, no."
His hands felt distant on the wheel. The streetlights ahead of him doubled, tripled, their halos bleeding into each other. Sound went muffled, like someone had wrapped his head in cotton. His pulse was everywhere - in his throat, behind his eyes, in the tips of his fingers.
He knew what this was. Migraine aura. He hadn't had one like this in two years.
A red light appeared ahead - or maybe two red lights, it was hard to tell. Conrad eased off the gas, his depth perception shot to hell. He couldn't tell how far away the intersection was. Ten feet? Fifty? His foot found the brake through sheer muscle memory.
The car stopped. He wasn't sure if he was at the light or before it. The world had gone kaleidoscopic, fracturing into geometric patterns that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He felt his stomach lurch, a warning.
Conrad fumbled for the turn signal, managed to guide the car toward what he hoped was the shoulder. The tires crunched on gravel. He put it in park, or thought he did. Everything was happening through a layer of gauze.
The aura would pass. He knew that. Fifteen minutes, maybe thirty, and his vision would clear. Then the pain would come - the real pain, the kind that felt like his skull was being split with an axe - but right now he just needed to sit still and breathe and wait for his eyes to work again.
Conrad leaned his head back against the seat. Closed his eyes. That was somehow worse - the patterns were still there, burned into his retinas, pulsing red and silver and wrong. He opened them again. His hands were shaking.
He should call someone. Belly. Jeremiah. He should call Belly.
His phone was in the cupholder. He reached for it, but his fingers wouldn't cooperate, clumsy and numb. The screen was too bright when he finally grabbed it, the icons swimming. He couldn't read them. Couldn't make his thumb land where he needed it to.
The nausea kicked up another notch. Conrad's mouth flooded with saliva - the kind that meant he had maybe thirty seconds before he threw up. He tried to find the door handle, to get out, to at least make it to the grass, but his hand slipped. Once. Twice.
He gave up. Leaned forward. Hoped for the best.
His body decided to be merciful - the wave of nausea crested but didn't break. Conrad stayed bent over the steering wheel, breathing through his mouth, trying to count. Trying to think of anything except the feeling that his brain was trying to push its way out through his eye sockets.
Time stopped meaning anything. He might have been there for five minutes or fifty. The aura was starting to fade at the edges, which meant the headache was coming. He could feel it gathering like a storm system, pressure building behind his right eye.
Then there was light in his window - too bright, stabbing - and someone was knocking.
"Hey. Hey, man, you okay?"
Conrad couldn't answer. Couldn't turn his head. He managed to lift one hand in what he hoped was a gesture that meant alive, just barely.
The door opened. The overhead light came on, and Conrad made a sound he'd never made before, something between a gasp and a whimper, throwing his arm over his eyes.
"Shit, sorry—" The light went off. "Okay, what's going on? You hurt? You on something?"
"Migraine," Conrad managed. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "Not—not drugs."
"Alright. Okay. You need an ambulance?"
"No." The word came out sharper than he meant it to. "No. Just—give me a minute."
"You been here a while, man. I passed you like twenty minutes ago, came back to check." A pause. "You got someone I can call?"
Conrad tried to think. His dad? Absolutely not. Jeremiah was hours away. Steven was in California. That left—
"Girlfriend," he said. "Phone."
He felt more than saw the stranger reach past him, carefully, grabbing his phone from where it had fallen into the footwell. "She in your favorites or...?"
"Recent."
There was a pause, the sound of swiping. Then: "Calling 'Belly heart emoji.'"
Conrad would have cringed if he had the capacity to feel embarrassment. As it was, he just focused on breathing. On not throwing up in front of this Good Samaritan who was about to have a very weird conversation with his girlfriend.
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Then—
"Conrad? Hey, did you forget something—"
"Uh, hi, this isn't Conrad," the stranger said, and Conrad heard Belly's tone change instantly, sharpening with alarm. "I'm—my name's David. I found your—boyfriend? I found him pulled over on Route 128, seems pretty out of it—"
"Is he okay? Did he crash? Is he breathing? Did you call 911?"
"No he's okay, he's conscious, he says he's got a migraine, doesn't want an ambulance. But I don't think he should be driving."
"No. No, definitely not. Can you—what's your location?"
Conrad listened to David rattle off mile markers and exit numbers. Listened to Belly's voice go calm and focused, the way it did when she was solving a problem. He wanted to tell her not to come, that he'd be fine, that he could just sit here until the worst passed and then drive himself home. But he couldn't seem to make his mouth work, and besides, the relief flooding through him was too honest to argue with.
He wanted her. He wanted her there so badly it was almost worse than the headache.
"—probably thirty minutes," Belly was saying. "Can you stay with him?"
"Yeah, I can wait. I'm a dad, I get it. Not gonna leave him here."
"Thank you. Thank you so so so much. Tell him—tell him I'm coming, okay? Tell him to take his rescue medication, it's in his glove box, the white bottle."
David relayed the message. Conrad nodded, which was a mistake - the movement sent a spike of pain through his temple that made his vision white out. When it cleared, David was opening the glove box, pulling out the small pharmacy Conrad kept there.
"This one?"
Conrad squinted. Made out the label. Nodded more carefully this time.
David shook out two pills, found an old water bottle in the backseat. "These gonna knock you out or anything?"
"No," Conrad said. "Just—help."
He got the pills down. The water was stale and plastic-tasting but he didn't care. His hands were still shaking.
David pulled over a road reflector and set it behind Conrad's car, then leaned against the passenger's side door, giving Conrad space but staying close. They didn't talk. Conrad was grateful for that. The medication would take twenty minutes to kick in if he was lucky. Until then, every sound felt like it was being driven directly into his brain with a hammer.
He closed his eyes. Tried to find the meditation breathing his therapist had taught him. Four counts in, hold, six counts out. It barely touched the pain but it gave him something to focus on besides the feeling that his head was going to crack open.
Belly made it in twenty-six minutes.
Conrad heard her car before he saw it - the familiar sound of her RAV4's engine, slightly rough in a way she kept meaning to get checked out. Headlights washed over them, then cut out. A door slammed.
"Conrad—"
"I'm good," he said automatically, which was such obvious bullshit that no one bothered to acknowledge it.
Belly appeared in his peripheral vision, crouching down next to David. "Thank you so much for staying with him. I'm Belly."
"David. He's been pretty quiet, took the meds maybe fifteen minutes ago."
"That's good. That's—thank you. Really."
Conrad felt her hand on his knee, warm through his jeans. "Hey. You with me?"
"Yeah." He tried to open his eyes, managed to get them to slits. Belly's face was pale in the darkness, her hair pulled back, wearing the BU hoodie she'd stolen from Jeremiah last year. She must have left the moment David called. "Sorry."
"Don't." Her hand squeezed. "Can you walk?"
"I think so."
"Okay. We're gonna get you to my car. David offered to follow us in yours, drop it at my place. That okay?"
Conrad wanted to argue (wanted to say he'd be fine to drive soon, that David didn't need to go out of his way), but the part of his brain that made the decisions was offline. He just nodded.
Getting from his car to hers was a special kind of hell. Every movement jarred his head, sent fresh waves of nausea rolling through him. Belly kept one hand on his elbow, steady and sure, while David hovered on his other side. The ten feet felt like a mile.
Then he was in the passenger seat of Belly's car, the familiar smell of her cherry chapstick and the vanilla air freshener she kept clipped to the vent. She'd already reclined the seat back, draped her scarf over the window to block the streetlights.
"Keys," she said, and Conrad managed to fish them out of his pocket, hand them over to David.
There was more conversation - Belly giving David her address, thanking him again, promising to Venmo him gas money. Then she was sliding into the driver's seat beside Conrad, and the world narrowed down to just the two of them and the dark road ahead.
She didn't start the car right away.
"Scale of one to ten," she said quietly.
"Seven." It was closer to an eight, creeping toward nine, but he didn't want to scare her.
"When did the aura start?"
"Red light. Twenty, thirty minutes ago."
"Okay. Medication should start working soon." Her hand found his in the dark, laced their fingers together. "You're okay. We're gonna get you home."
Home. She meant her apartment, the little one-bedroom she shared with her roommate who was never there. Conrad had half his stuff in her closet, a toothbrush by her sink. He'd been staying there more than his own place lately.
The car started. Belly pulled out slowly, carefully, keeping her speed even. She didn't turn on the radio. Didn't try to make conversation. Just drove, her thumb tracing circles over his knuckles.
The medication started to take the edge off around the fifteen-minute mark. The pain didn't disappear - it never really did, just dulled from ice pick to heavy ache. Conrad's stomach settled. His hands stopped shaking. He could open his eyes without wanting to die, though the streetlights still had halos and his depth perception was shit.
"Better?" Belly asked, like she could sense the shift.
"Getting there."
"Good."
They lapsed back into silence. Conrad watched the broken white lines of the road unfurl in the headlights, hypnotic and steady. Belly took the long way, he realized - avoiding the highway, the bright lights and traffic. Taking the coastal route where it was darker, quieter.
"Your dad," Belly said eventually, carefully. Not a question.
"Yeah."
"You wanna talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Okay."
That was it. No pushing, no therapy speak, no trying to fix it. Just acceptance. Conrad felt something loosen in his chest, something that had been tight since he walked out of his father's house.
"He said—" Conrad started, then stopped. Swallowed. "He said Mom would have wanted me to go straight to med school. That I'm wasting time."
Belly's hand tightened on his.
"He doesn't know what Mom wanted," Conrad continued. His voice was rough, scraped raw. "He wasn't—he wasn't there. Not at the end. He doesn't get to tell me what she would have wanted."
"No," Belly agreed. "He doesn't."
"And I was doing so good, you know? I've been taking the meds, sleeping right, all of it. Seven fucking months."
"This isn't your fault."
"I know that." He did know that. But there was a difference between knowing something and believing it, and right now the gap felt enormous. "I just—I thought I had it under control."
"You do have it under control. This is—Conrad, stress happens. Life happens. You can do everything right and still get hit sometimes. That's how chronic shit works."
He knew she was right. Had told himself the same thing a hundred times. But hearing it from her, in the dark, while his head still throbbed and his body felt wrung out - it landed differently.
"I scared you," he said.
"Yeah. You did." She glanced over at him, quick, then back to the road. "When that guy called from your phone I thought—I don't know what I thought. Something worse."
"Sorry."
"Stop apologizing." She said it gently, but firmly. "You didn't do anything wrong. You pulled over. You were safe. You let someone help you. That's—that's actually really good, Conrad."
He huffed something that might have been a laugh. "Bar's pretty low."
"For you? Yeah, it kind of is."
That one landed harder than she probably meant it to. Conrad turned his head to look at her - really look at her. The streetlights painted shadows under her eyes. She was wearing leggings and an old t-shirt under the hoodie, like she'd been ready for bed when the call came. There was a crease between her eyebrows that meant she was still worried, still running scenarios.
She'd dropped everything and driven half an hour to scrape him off the side of the road. She'd known exactly which medication to tell David to give him. She'd draped her scarf over the window so the light wouldn't hurt his eyes.
This was love, he thought. Not the big gestures, not the declarations - this. The aftermath. The showing up. The driving home in silence because words weren't what he needed.
"I love you," he said. The words came out quiet, matter-of-fact.
Belly's breath caught. They didn't say it often - it was too big, too weighted, carried too much history. But sometimes it needed to be said.
"I love you too," she said. "Even when you're being an idiot and driving on four hours of sleep."
"Especially then?"
"Especially then."
They pulled into her apartment complex twenty minutes later. David was already there, parked in the visitor spot with Conrad's car. Belly helped Conrad out - he was steadier now, the medication doing its job, but still moving like everything was fragile. David handed over the keys, refused Belly's attempts to pay for an Uber back to his own car, told them to take care of each other.
Then it was just the two of them, climbing the stairs to her second-floor apartment. Belly unlocked the door one-handed, the other still holding Conrad's elbow like she thought he might tip over.
Inside, she steered him straight to the bedroom, to the bed they'd been sharing more nights than not. She'd already closed the blinds before she left, Conrad noticed. The room was dark and cool.
"Lay down," she said. "I'm gonna get your stuff."
Conrad did as he was told, too wrung out to argue. He heard her moving through the apartment - the kitchen faucet running, the medicine cabinet opening. Then she was back, setting a glass of water on the nightstand, putting his sleep medication beside it, plugging in his phone.
"Take your shirt off," she said.
He managed to get it over his head without dying. Belly disappeared again, came back with one of her organic ice packs from the freezer, wrapped in a thin towel. She pressed it gently to the back of his neck, and Conrad made a sound of relief so profound it was embarrassing.
"Good?" she asked.
"Yeah. Good."
She climbed onto the bed behind him, adjusting the ice pack, her legs on either side of his hips. Her fingers found his temples, started tracing slow circles, the pressure just right.
This was the routine they'd developed over the past few months, as Conrad's migraines went from crisis to management. Belly had learned what helped - ice on the neck, pressure on the temples, darkness and quiet and her hands. She'd learned to read the signs when he was spiraling, when he needed space versus when he needed touch.
"You should try to sleep," she said. "The triptan's gonna make you drowsy anyway."
"I know."
But he didn't want to sleep yet. Didn't want to miss this - her hands on his skin, her breath warm against his shoulder. The feeling of being held together by someone who knew all the ways he could come apart.
"Thank you," he said. "For coming."
"Conrad." Her hands stilled. "You know I'm always gonna come. Right? Like—you get that?"
He did. He did, but sometimes he needed to hear it. Needed the reminder that he wasn't too much, that asking for help wasn't the same as falling apart, that the people who loved him weren't just waiting for him to be whole again.
"Yeah," he said. "I know."
"Good."
She kept up the massage for another few minutes, then carefully removed the ice pack, set it on the nightstand. Conrad felt the bed shift as she got up, heard the soft sounds of her getting ready for bed. Then she was back, sliding under the covers beside him, her body curling against his.
"Head still bad?" she murmured.
"Getting better."
It was. The sharp edges of the pain had worn down to something duller, more manageable. He'd have a hangover tomorrow - the post-migraine fog that made everything feel slow and strange - but he'd live. He always did.
Belly's arm draped over his waist. Her forehead pressed between his shoulder blades.
"Your dad's wrong," she said into the darkness. "You're not wasting anything."
Conrad closed his eyes. Let himself believe her.
"Get some sleep," she said. "I've got you."
And he did.