Title: Hawks and Handsaws
Prompt: #306 North
Author:
ladygray99 Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Charlie, Don
Word count: 300
Warnings/Spoilers: none
Summary: Charlie has a headache and just might be losing his mind.
Notes: Written for
numb3rs100 . This one features wee!Charlie and is a little dark
Beta: none
Hawks and Handsaws (#306 North)
Someone told Charlie, when the numbers were still just starting to swim around his head, that if he ever went insane he'd never know it.
Charlie isn't so sure about that.
They're all crammed into the hot, dark of the school's theatre watching the drama class throw themselves around the stage. Charlie is twitching, his eyes squeezed shut in the dark, the numbers flashing behind them.
“I am but mad north-northwest,” 'Hamlet' shouts from the stage.
Charlie tries not to whimper. He can feel a headache coming on. The odds of it being a migraine quickly appear.
He tries to focus on the iambic pentameter of the play but the students trip over their lines and Shakespeare breaks form to emphasize his points. It's like sharp slashes of a razor across the numbers.
He knows the drama students smoke pot, the whole school knows that. He wonders if they'd give him some if he offered to do their math homework. Don says drugs will make him stupid but he wants to be stupid right now instead of calculating the meter of the words and the volume of air being shifted with each breath in the stuffy room.
Charlie is trying not to cry now. He's got an idea concerning the wave/particle dichotomy of light but it's more a feeling than an idea. He can't put it into words. His math isn't good enough. He feels like his head might just crack open with all the thoughts and pain spilling out and running across the floor.
He pulls his knees to his chest.
Then he feels a hand on his head. He waits for the yank or the wad of gum, instead the hand just slowly rubs. Charlie remembers that Don is sitting behind him and the numbers start to ease.