Page 48 of All Right No

“Not even a hand job?” She offered him a saucy smile.

Ash shook his head. “Sorry.” He turned away from her.

“We could cuddle instead. I could make us some hot drinks, and we could give that film from earlier another try.”

“Cuddles are almost as good.”

He must think she was blind and deaf if he thought she couldn’t see he was in pain. Tension riddled his whole body. He had his shoulders pulled in and up and the tendons in his jaw were pulled taut.

“Ash, are you okay?” She rested her chin against his shoulder again.

“Fine!”

“I’m a girl. I know that fine doesn’t mean fine.” She got off the sofa so that she could walk around him to see his face. His teeth were gritted, and his eyes were narrowed to mere slits, courtesy of his intense grimace.

“All right, no. It fucking wrecks!”

“Has this been happening a lot?”

He shook his head. Probably because the only thing likely to come out if he opened it was a scream or some serious blasphemy.

“Do you ever think that maybe flushing your meds wasn’t such a hot plan? Yeah, I know why you did it, but putting yourself through this is nonsensical. I’m going to find you some painkillers.”

“Don’t.”

“We’re talking about a couple of paracetamol, Ash. Not a morphine shot.”

He shook his head, which made him wince even more. “Don’t want it. It’ll be fine. It’ll pass in a moment. Just need to ride it out.”

“I think you’re taking this a bit far. I’m sure you’ve downed plenty of Resolve after a heavy night on the tiles before. You were a student. Everyone has. And you’re not telling me you’ve never taken any painkillers to get you through a head cold or to sort you out so you could get on stage when your head’s been ready to explode.”

“I don’t want them now. This isn’t like that. This isn’t going away. It’ll be too easy to keep taking them and wanting more.”

“Fine, tough it out, but I’m going to call Rock Giant tomorrow and ask him if he’s any thoughts about natural methods of pain relief.” He was bound to have some ideas. Some of them might even be good ones.

“I don’t want you to tell any of them anything, and I already know what he’ll say—masturbation.” He huffed a ghost-like laugh. “Course, you’ll have to tug it for me, ’cause we both know how well my hands work.”

“How about I stick to rubbing your big toes? That’s supposed to work for headaches.”

“It isn’t my head that hurts.”

“Okay, well maybe if you just rest.” She settled at one end of the big sofa, and tugged him against her, so that he was squeezed between her legs with his head resting on her chest. “Ash, this is madness.”

“It’s not very often it happens now,” he whimpered, snuggling in to her body. “Probably over did it, but it was fun.”

“Yeah.” Ginny gently brushed her fingers through the longer strands of his hair.

He was asleep within five minutes.

“I love you,” she muttered, kissing his brow. “It’ll be okay, Ash. We’re going to figure this out. And we can have mad sex tomorrow, all right?” She pulled a fleecy throw over the pair of them. Neither of them stirred from the sofa until the sun streamed through the window the next morning.