There were many pains Ford had been forced to learn to bear in his life.
Pains of never being accepted by others; pains of heartbreak; pains of abandonment, betrayal, guilt, shame, grief, gunshot wounds, stab wounds, broken bones, electrocution-you name it, he'd probably gone through it at least once. And for the most part, he'd learned to deal with the physical types of pain, and to tolerate (but despite what he told himself, never completely recover from) the emotional ones.
One type of pain, though, which should have been less of a problem than the others but still managed to be an all-encompassing, all-pervading, impossible to deal with pain, was headaches.
It sounded so dumb when compared to everything else he'd been forced to deal with in his life; he'd been tortured by Bill Cipher for an almost literally endless amount of time, for pity's sake, he should be able to just ride them off with no trouble!
But it was so impossible to think when it felt like the inside of his head had rocks rolling around and crashing into each other over and over, and bright light made his eyes throb, and all he wanted to do was put his head in his arms and hide until it all stopped .
"Sixer, how much sleep did you get last night?"
Ford growled something incoherent at his brother and continued drawing the hawktopus he'd seen earlier today in his journal; he'd thought the one in Gravity Falls was too stupid to study, but the fact that there was apparently another branch of the species all the way on the other side of the world made them a little more interesting. Now if only the stupid ibuprofen would do its job and make it easier for him to think again, everything would be perfect.
He used his free hand to apply pressure on the top of his head, where the pain was strongest. It felt like either a tension or dehydration headache; maybe he should try drinking some more water, but he'd tried that and it didn't seem to do any good ! He was rapidly running out of options-
Suddenly a familiar warm hand from behind him was batting his own hand away from his scalp...and then fingers buried themselves in his hair, rubbing small, gentle circles into his head that he could feel even through the metal plate.
It didn't completely get rid of the headache, but Ford could feel the pained frown that had risen between his eyebrows fading away under Stan's touch.
The massage moved from side to side of his head, before going down to his neck, and then both hands were being used against his shoulders, working the tension out of them.
Before he knew it, Ford's pen had dropped from his limp fingers, and he was being half lifted and towed over to bed, where his glasses were removed and he was dropped face-first into his pillow.
"Don't think I don't recognize that you're playing dirty," he grumbled into it as his boots were removed and the blankets were tucked over and around him.
He heard Stan rumble with laughter, and then the fingers were running through his hair again, forcing him to relax even more deeply.
"You'll be a lot happier studying the weirdness when you're not feelin' lousy, knucklehead. Trust me."
Ford grumbled a little-but not too much, because he didn't want the massage to stop.
I'm with Ford on this one; I absolutely detest headaches. Unlike him however, I don't have someone around to massage my throbbing scalp and alleviate them a little.
...*Wistful sigh*...