Marvel owns the rights to Sabretooth & Birdy, all others are my creation.

Reviews and constructive criticism welcome.

Creed had been in a lot of different types of pain before, cut off limbs, bullets to the chest, and nut shots, but nothing quite compared to a headache. A pain burrowed deep inside his temples and forehead that he couldn't get at to touch, it drove him insane. He was wide wake, lying in bed with Emma turned away from him. Her naked back healing his claw marks from their lovemaking earlier in the evening. When did he start to consider sex lovemaking? He had no patience for semantics right now. She was snoring softly and he hated her for it. The pain in his left temple was starting to blur his vision. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and punched her in the back in the rib cage. It made an effective thud but wouldn't hurt her so much as awaken her, which she did.

"What the fuck?" Emma rolled over irritably and faced him. Creed didn't answer as she wiped sleep from her green eyes. Adjusting the sheets in the enormous bed, she inched closer into his arms and noted the scowl written all over his face. "Headache?" She took the grinding of his teeth as a yes. Gently, she brushed the wispy light blond baby hair from his temple while pulling herself up on an elbow. "Want a pain killer?" Her answer was a strong exhale through his nose.

Naked, Emma slipped off her side of the bed and quietly plodded to the bathroom where she didn't turn on the light until the door was closed behind her as not to aggravate his pain. Healing factor or no, nothing seemed to help his headaches except good, old-fashioned extra-strength Advil. She popped the cap and shook out two capsules, turned out the lights and grabbed a bottle of water from the mini fridge for such occasions so they wouldn't have to make their way to the kitchen on the other side of the mini-mansion.

His eyes were closed, trying to shut out of the aching. Emma cracked the top of the bottle and handed it to him. He took a sip, then a mouthful of water. She handed him the pills and he added them to his mouthful, swallowing both in one go then clearing his throat. Emma took the bottle back, tightened the cap, and put it on his side of the bed. Crawling back into bed, she adjusted the covers and willed him to fall asleep.

Eventually he did and his snoring was enough to give her a headache. Emma was wide awake now. She sat frustrated in the middle of her side of the bed for a few minutes torn between an active mind and a tired body. She left the bed for the second time that night and found some yoga pants and a thick tee-shirt on the back of her chair by the window where she liked to read books and apparently leave her laundry. She grabbed a pair of fuzzy socks Birdy had given to her the Christmas before and made a quiet escape down to the kitchen.

The light was on and Birdy was doing her best to quietly load the dishwasher. Even being on the other side of the house, Victor's super hearing could pick up on the tickling of ceramic plates and he would be immensely pissed if he was disturbed in the middle of the night. Birdy looked up in surprised as Emma walked in, they were both in comfy night clothes, looking like they had been sleeping only an hour earlier.

"Hey." Emma whispered.

"I forgot to run the dishes before bed." Birdy gave a lop-sided smile. Creed had been more temperamental than usual and little things were setting him off. Normally he wouldn't care about dishes so long as breakfast was ready, but Emma knew Birdy wasn't going to take a chance. "What's your excuse?"

"He had another headache and I couldn't get back to sleep."

Birdy nodded and slipped in one fork at a time into the utensil baskets. She stopped then. "Do you think I should run the dishwasher then? I don't want to wake him if he just got back to sleep." Birdy had beautiful, clear blue eyes that understood a lot more than they let on. Her blond hair was usually tied in a ponytail on top of her head for convenience, but as she had just been sleeping, it was down around her shoulders, cascading down her back.

"You know what, go back to bed, I'll run it. Let him be mad at me if it wakes him." Emma waved off the other woman's concern. "I'm going to rummage around for food anyway."

Birdy approached her and gave her a hug. "You're some kinda saint, you know that?" She laughed with relief.

As Birdy made her way to her room, Emma pulled open the pantry cupboards looking for 3 a.m. snacking candidates. Clearly she would have to go grocery shopping in the morning specifically to find munchies in the event that this situation becomes a habit.

She was craving comfort food so gave in and began boiling linguine and pulling some leftover shrimp from the fridge. Melted butter, fresh parsley, garlic and capers later, she was eating Shrimp Scampi at the kitchen island when the door swung open and Victor was standing there in striped pyjama bottoms and looking a bit rough around the edges.

"Did I wake you?" Emma asked as he padded barefoot across the linoleum toward her. She twirled some pasta around her fork and pricked a shrimp on the end then offered it up to him. Creed accepted and chewed slowly, his gaze softly focused on the counter.

"I woke up 'cuz you weren't there." It must have been awful around here while I was gone then, Emma thought to herself.

He pulled open a drawer and found himself a fork, pulled an island stool up beside her and helped himself to her midnight snack. Emma picked at some capers in between bites before asking, "Are you alright?"

His green eyes were sharp now, and looked at her while chewing through another bite of the Scampi. "What d'you mean?"

"This is your third headache in two weeks, and they're bad enough that you have to take something." The pasta was gone and both of them felt a grumble of disappointment from their stomachs.

"Weird, innit?" He let her take his fork and put the dishes in the dishwasher before adding soap and turning it on.

It remained unspoken that Creed wasn't sure what was wrong but he would not take any suggestions from her. "Well, if you need anything, just let me know."

"I need ya t'come to bed." He picked her up as though she were nothing but a pillow and brought her upstairs with him and back into bed where he was asleep again within minutes, but Emma was still wide awake.