— Success chance: Cannot be failed.
— General results: Taylor is far enough ahead in her studies that this will not cause her to fail assignments or cause her grades to drop. Taylor will spend some time in the evenings over the rest of the week researching up to three capes online.
1.15
You wake up on Wednesday with a growing headache. For a few moments, you lie in bed utterly bewildered— you'd barely even used your powers for days!— before you remember that headaches are in fact allowed to come from sources other than inexplicable superpowers.
That doesn't make it any more pleasant to deal with, though.
You make your way out to the kitchen and wash two aspirin down with your morning coffee. It helps a little, but by the time you've boarded the bus and headed off to school, it's settled into that typical low-key pounding that small headaches tend to do. It's fine so long as there are no sudden loud noises and you don't move your head too fast, but... it's high school.
When first period finally rolls around, you slip into your seat beside Madison and immediately pull her over to you so you can bury your head against the crook of her shoulder, exhaling loudly. You can feel her start a little, then her fingers begin threading through your hair.
She coos quietly as she lightly massages your scalp. "Poor Taylor," she murmurs sympathetically. "What's wrong?"
"My head hurts," you whine. "I took some aspirin, but it's not helping." You pout up at her. Her head sways towards you, instinctively moving to kiss your pout away before she remembers where she is and catches herself. Your pout just grows more prominent. You're pretty sure that Madison kisses fix everything. That's unfair.
She does slide her other arm down to hug you, though, ignoring the teacher's death glare (and how uncomfortable it must be to contort herself into a position where she can rest one arm between your chair and your back) to do so. So there's that. You're pretty sure that a month ago, Madison would never have wilfully ignored a teacher's instructions, let alone do so in order to comfort you.
"Miss Clements." The sound of the teacher clucking in disapproval as he walks over to the two of you makes you clench your jaw in anger against Madison's neck. "Public in... displays of affection aren't appropriate behaviour in the middle of class. Do you have a reason for disrupting the class like this?"
"She's sick, sir." Madison's tone is a bit more challenging than you'd expected from your submissive girl. "She's got a headache."
"Then she should go to the nurse's office," he replies impatiently. "Here— Sophia!" Off to the side, you can just see Sophia's shape jerk up in response. "Take Miss Hebert here to the nurse's office, will you?"
"Sure," you hear Sophia's voice drawl. A few seconds later, you let out a small whine as a dark hand covers your eyes and pulls your head away from Madison's shoulder. Madison pouts too, but slides her arm out from behind your back, causing you to let out a pathetic little moan at the loss of contact. "Come on, Hebert," Sophia grunts.
You reluctantly allow the dark-skinned girl to pull you up out of your chair, letting out an actual groan at the pain the movement sends stabbing through your head. "Shit," you hiss.
"Sorry." Sophia does actually sound a little contrite, and her tugging becomes a little more gentle, allowing you to rise at your own pace. Once you have, she wraps her hand around your wrist; you raise your other wrist to your eyes, making a visible attempt to try to shield off the light streaming through the classroom door. Okay, maybe you're playing it up a little, but it feels nice to have Sophia worrying over you like this. You think you deserve that much from her, at least.
You stumble your way through the halls behind Sophia, too wrapped up in trying to avoid moving too fast to even consider trying to push ahead and make your way to the nurse's office on your own. The girl is gentle with you anyway, setting her pace to one you can match without causing further stabs of pain to travel through your head.
"What did you do last night, Hebert?" she asks eventually. She sounds a little impressed, as though she thinks you'd done something exciting last night.
You shake your head, then immediately regret it. "Nothing," you moan. "I think I went to bed too late. Maybe I slept wrong or something."
Sophia hums. "Sure," she says sarcastically. "Weren't out drinking with your girlfriend, then?"
"No," you protest feebly. "I don't-" You bite your tongue. You'd been about to protest that you don't have a girlfriend, but you're not really sure what qualifies as a girlfriend anyway. Is it just kissing, or is it more involved than that? Do you have to have sex to be girlfriends? On TV, they always told each other they loved them. Maybe that's it? "I don't have a girlfriend," you say eventually. "Just Madison."
Sophia lets out a low, rough chuckle. You wish you were feeling well enough to use your powers to see what she's feeling. This kind of thing is so much trickier when you have to try and figure out what someone is feeling just through what they say. "Right," she says, lightly sarcastic still. "You saying that Madison isn't your girlfriend, then?"
You squirm uncomfortably, blinking at the sudden influx of light when you drop your hand away from your eyes. By the time your eyes have adjusted again, Sophia isn't looking at you any more. Damn it.
"Madison is... Madison." You squeeze Sophia's hand gently, smiling when you feel her hand tighten in response. "She's my girl, but she's not my girlfriend."
Sophia scoffs a little, shaking her head. "You're a weird one, Hebert," she replies. You're glad to notice that her tone has gone back to a joking one, though. "Come on, we're almost there."
She leads you to the nurse's office, a dimly-lit, sterile environment. There are three plastic chairs in there, a cot with a stiff white linen sheet, and too many posters filled with disturbing diagrams of people's innards for you to want to count.
"Miss Hess." You hear the nurse's cold tones emanating from the far corner of the room, where a small door with a glass frame gives him some semblance of privacy and keeps the school's physical medical files out from the hands of students. "Who have you bought me today?"
She levels a flat, unimpressed glare at the nurse. "Taylor Hebert," she says. "Says she's got a headache. I was asked to bring her here. Got me out of class, so eh."
You can see the doctor move backwards on his wheely chair through the glass pane of the window. "Yes, yes. Take a seat on the cot, Taylor. Would you like Sophia to remain with you, or-"
"Yes," you reply instantly, squeezing Sophia's hand. She smirks at you, but doesn't argue, just taking a seat in a nearby plastic chair. You didn't think she'd mind getting out of first period.
"Right," he replies distantly, his voice trailing off. You're pretty sure you're not meant to hear what he says next, judging by how his voice drops lower but he's clearly forgotten that the door is ajar. Both you and Sophia can clearly hear what he murmurs. "Hmm, depression, anxiety, no history of family illness..."
Depression? You wonder absently what he's reading from. Maybe he has a list he likes to read off of? The most common list of illnesses in Winslow. You imagine depression and anxiety would be pretty high up there.
"Okay," he says eventually, louder this time. You're meant to hear this one. "Let's see what's wrong."
For the next ten minutes, you undergo a variety of simple tests. The nurse measures your heart rate, shines a light in your ear, puts a wooden stick on your tongue and asks you to say 'aaaah', and other strange doctor miscellania as you've experienced so many times before. You're impressed at how much patience Sophia exhibits, yawning and staring around the room instead of mouthing off to either of you.
The doctor eventually nods to himself, as though he's confirmed something. "Right," he says. "I suggest you go see a GP, but I don't think you're sick. Tell me, Taylor, have you been doing anything stressful lately?"
"Uhh..." You rub the back of your neck sheepishly. "Yeah."
He nods. "I thought so," he says. "You should speak to your parents about it, but I recommend you take some time to yourself for a while. You're exhibiting signs of stress, that's probably where your headache comes from. In the meantime, I can't give you any more aspirin yet, but if your headache is still bad by lunchtime, come back and see me and I'll give you some more. Okay?"
You nod reluctantly. Take some time to yourself? You already do. That's silly. There's like, an entire hour each day where you're not doing other stuff! But then your head throbs again, and you wince. Okay, maybe it sounds silly, but the man is a registered health practitioner. You probably shouldn't dismiss his advice out of hands. Then again, he's also a Winslow employee, so who knows...
He keeps you in there for the rest of first period, giving your head a chance to recover a bit. You mostly just lie there, staring at the ceiling and clutching Sophia's hands. She doesn't let go the whole time, which surprises you a little bit, but comes as a welcome surprise.
Eventually, though, the bell for second period rings, and you're forced to trudge there with Sophia. She lets your hand go once you reach the office doors; even your pout doesn't persuade her to pick it back up.
When you're about halfway there, and away from the worst of the noise of the other students as they barrel to their next classroom, Sophia leans closer to you. "I don't know if it'll help, but when I get stressed, I go running," she tells you. "It's a good escape, and gets you thinking about other things. Maybe it'll do you some good."
You nod, taking the advice in seriously. It might help, it might not. You'll see how it goes.
Your headache does fade somewhat by lunchtime, but you go back for the aspirin anyway. By the time you get home, it's mostly abated. You remember what the doctor said, though, and instead of reading up on your World History texts until midnight, you stop studying at ten. For a while, you're left floundering— what can you even do?— before you remember what the mystery girl, Amy, had talked to you about yesterday.
It takes some digging around, but eventually you find your copy of Pride and Prejudice. You wander in and out of the story as you go, less enthralled by some parts than others, but you persevere. And, sure enough, you do feel somewhat more relaxed when you head to bed the next night, your head for once not brimming with formulas and chemical equations.
The next day, you wake up early, having set your bedside clock to ring at six. Sophia had advised that you go running in an attempt to clear your head, and you're willing to give it a try, at least. You take a plastic bottle of water with you, not daring to drink a cup of coffee first in case it unsettles your stomach.
It's unsafe to wander too far around your house, so you end up just jogging around the block a few times. After a bit over half an hour, you feel yourself getting winded, and swap to walking for a few minutes. You alternate between walking and jogging then, until you think about an hour has passed— fifty-four minutes, you discover when you head back inside— and head over to the shower to get ready for school.
You're actually a little surprised at how much better you feel now. Not necessarily mentally, but physically. You never quite realized that you'd constantly felt so tired until, finally, you feel like you actually got a good night's sleep for once. It might not last forever, but you quite enjoy not feeling like there's a constant weight on your back any more.
Of course, not everything is good. You're pretty sure you annoyed your teacher by keeping Sophia out so long, judging by the way he keeps shooting you little glances throughout first period that day, and for a while you worry that Sophia is avoiding you. She slides into place without seeming to be too concerned come Chemistry, though. Maybe she's just hiding her annoyance with you. You try to keep your head down and not annoy her, and it works— she doesn't make any biting comments towards you or anything.
But still, overall, you're feeling a bit less stressed out, which is good.
Now you just have to keep that up over the weekend.
Speaking of which; with your suddenly much more plentiful free time, you spend a bit of time working on your plans for the weekend. You've already booked up some of your time on Sunday to go in and see about this job Doctor Fitzgerald had told you about, but the rest of your weekend is free.
In the end, you decide to... [Pick three.]
[] Ask Madison if it's okay to go over to her house for the weekend. She told you during tutoring on Thursday that her mother is going away over the weekend to visit her sister, so this is a rare chance for you to visit Madison at her home without risking drawing her mother's ire.
— Success chance: Cannot be failed.
— General results: Visit Madison at her house. Probably not the greatest opportunity for sexy times, but Taylor will give it her best. Keeps Madison's concerns at a low simmer by spending time with her.
[] Invite Madison out on a date. You still don't have any money, but that's okay— there are a few places you can take her even without any money, right? [Write-in; Where are you going to take her, and what are you going to do with her? Keep in mind that Taylor both has no money and they have to get there by walking.]
— Success chance: Depends on the place.
— General results: Taylor will take Madison out on a date. Dates will be vetted by the GM. Keeps Madison's concerns at a low simmer by spending time with her.
[] Spend some time at the library browsing this 'PHO' site. It's not a perfect resource, but it's the best place you have to go learn about cape news, and there are a couple of capes you want to learn some more information on for various reasons. [Write-in up to three parahumans to learn more about, excluding Panacea [as it'd ruin Amy's storyline
], and possibly also reasons as to why Taylor wants to learn more about them.]
— Success chance: Cannot be failed.
— General results: Taylor will spend some of her time over the weekend researching several parahumans at the local library.
[] Go visit Glory Girl's book club again. You're pretty sure that she'll fly you home again, and you can take the opportunity to push her a little bit more. Maybe if you tease her enough— not in the middle of the book club, that's getting a bit dangerous, but during the flight home— you can draw her into being the one to kiss you, this time. The more she participates in this, the sexier she's going to find the idea of cheating on her boyfriend with you.
