Work Text:
Caleb groaned as he held his head in his hands. He had a headache for the last few hours.
Every noise was too loud.
Everything was an almost a blur.
And he hardly had the energy to move.
Caleb had gotten out of bed a while ago but regretted the decision and ended up crashing on the couch, shoving his face in one of the throw pillows. He was tempted to sandwich his head between to pillows to block out the noise of the stupid fireplace before turning to look at it, hissing in response and shoving his face back into the pillow.
God, this headache sucked.
“Are you alright, Caleb?” John asked, his voice startled Caleb somewhat but he only gave his father a hum in response. John reached down and pressed the back of his hand against Caleb’s cheek and gave a small noise. “you’re sick.”
“it’s just a headache.” Caleb’s answer was muffled by the pillow
“How long have you had this headache?”
“a while now.” Caleb turned his head to face John. “Everything is loud, and it hurts to see somethings.”
“Like?”
“Lights are too bright.”
“Ah.” Was John’s only response “if you aren’t feeling well, then you should be in bed instead of out here.”
“don’t feel like moving.” Caleb mumbled.
John sighed before moving to pick up Caleb and dragging him off to his room. Once there, John placed Caleb on his head and tucked him in. “let me see if we have any medicine to help with that, alright?”
“Ok.” Caleb replied as the red head pulled the sheets over him and Left the room.
A few hours had past, and Caleb felt a bit better, still terrible, but didn’t feel like everything was blinding or anything. He perked up at the sound of footsteps but could tell immediately that it was one of the twins based on the metal clanking against wood.
“Tom?” Caleb called out. The footsteps stopped and Caleb couldn’t tell if Tom was going to run off or ignore him but was surprised that Tom walked toward his room and crack open the door.
Tom looked at him and tilted his head slightly to the left. “What are you doing?” Caleb asked. A shrug from Tom.
“Where are the others?” Tom gave a prayer motion with his hands.
“So, mom, Benny, and Lillian are at church?” a nod.
“What about dad?” Tom pointed downstairs.
“What about Tim?” Tom pointed outside.
Caleb sighed and flopped back onto his bed before looking back at Tom, who tilted his head slightly. “Do you have something that could pass the time?”
Tom thought for a moment before leaving, returning a few minutes later with a couple of books and comic books.
“how’d you get all those?”
Tom held a finger to his masked lips, as if saying the old ‘a magician never tells his secrets’ line after placing the comic books and books on Caleb’s bed, who started to dig through them rather quickly. Tom hesitated before climbing onto Caleb’s bed and looked through the books as well. The twin had read through the books plenty of times to remember every main detail, but he was a bit pleased to see Caleb digging through the stash to find a book he likes, and Caleb eventually settled on a comic book and started to read it.
They spent a while looking through the small collection of books and Caleb wasn’t as bothered by the headache anymore.