𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 (𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐤)
Emma is in Guadeloupe, probably buried in sand, feeling warm and sated beneath the sun, and Brendon is miserable. She has been gone for 25 hours, officially longer than a day, and he has realized how boring his life is without her.
When life is normal, he wakes to the smell of her, his nose at the nape of her neck, his hand flush against her stomach beneath the satin of her nightie.
Brendon does not sleep the way most people do. Something is always stirring beneath his skin, a thought, an idea, a restless desire that roils in his gut. For months, it's been Emma hijacking his brain. Even when his heart rate slows, when his eyes twitch beneath their lids, she takes the reigns of his mind. And when he wakes, he relishes in the feeling of her for fifteen minutes before she follows suit.
Today, however, he woke to an empty bed. He had slept for maybe two hours, and when he turned to look at the clock on his bedside, it read 3:05 am.
It is now 1:30 pm, and he has done nothing but wander around the house listlessly, taking in what is left of her. Bright pink trainers by the front door, her denim jacket hanging off the back of a chair, one of those British mystery books on the coffee table. Each item is a reminder that she will be back soon. If five days is considered soon.
Brendon is staring at the calendar on the fridge – she had put it there two months ago, a pink highlighted line running through March 16th to March 21st – when a ring comes from the door. He frowns.
In the first two years he had lived in this house, he had opened the door for neighbors only three times. The second day living here, a couple brought a blueberry pie over. They rang again two years later because they ran out of flour, and then a year later because the wife was going into labor and needed someone to roll their trash bins to the street the next day. After that, they didn't stop by for four years.
Now, it's been a few months where it seems that the bell won't stop ringing.
Brendon swings open the door and is met with a squeak.
"Dr. Park? Where's Emma?" It's the couple's toddler, Isla, who is sporting purple sunglasses and floaties. Her father stands behind her, sunscreen painted onto his face.
Brendon clears his throat, nods at the father, and attempts to give Isla a smile. "Sorry, kid. She's not here."
"What? But we're supposed to go swimming! I don't have Pre-K today," Isla explains. Her verbosity endeared her to Emma, who spends at least an hour a week with the little girl.
But Brendon is not Emma. He does not know how to reassure children when they're on the verge of tantrums, nor can he put up with them when they're screaming and crying.
"So where is she?" Isla asks, crossing her arms.
"She's visiting her family in Guadeloupe," Brendon says.
"One thousand, nine hundred and thirteen miles away. Eight hours and thirty minutes by plane."
He's met with silence, and when he refocuses his eyesight, Isla and her father are staring at him as if he's grown a second head.
"Sorry, kid," he says again, his ears growing warm. "I'm sure she'll go swimming with you when she comes back."
The girl opens her mouth, but her father scoops her up and begins to walk away.
"C'mon Isla. It's okay," he says. Over his shoulder: "Thanks, Dr. Park."
Brendon spends the rest of his day staring at the photo Emma sends him. She is in flimsy scraps of nylon that reveal her smooth skin, the swell of her breasts, and the dip of her stomach.
Very pretty, baby, he texts in response.
For the rest of the day, he thinks of how disappointed Isla would be to know that Emma was swimming without her, and how disappointed he is that when Emma inevitably grows tired of fighting against the waves, energy leeched out of her by the sun, he won't be able to hold her and kiss her goodnight.
The next day, she FaceTimes him at 9:37 am. He has been awake for five hours, and purple bags have appeared under his eyes.
"Brendon!" Emma whisper-shouts when he picks up. "You look so tired."
"Well, good morning to you too," he says, but his insides warm. As much as he loves to dote on her, wrap her in a towel when she gets out of the shower, spoon-feed her ice cream as she sits on his lap, he likes when she gets all worried about him.
"Good morning!" She smiles. Her skin is tanned, her cheeks pink, and she looks beautiful. "We're going to see Granmè and my cousins today. They live in Capesterre-Belle-Eau. It's only thirty minutes away."
"That sounds fun. Are you driving?"
She shakes her head. "My brother is."
"Good," he says, and he means it.
This has been a source of several arguments between them. Emma is of the belief that Brendon's desire to drive her everywhere means she's paying off her car for nothing. Brendon, who secretly wants to pay the car off himself, has seen more driver's seat injuries than passenger seat injuries and thinks this is a good enough reason to be her personal chauffeur.
Emma rolls her eyes. She's walking through her aunt's home, sunlight pouring onto her face, making her wet curls glint.
"Did you just shower?" he asks.
"Yeah, I went on a jog before." She pauses. "Brendon, you really do look tired."
He shakes his head. "I'm fine, baby. By the way, Isla came by yesterday."
"Oh, shoot! I told her I'd go swimming with her," Emma says. She looks genuinely crestfallen.
"I told her that you will when you come back."
She frowns. "You're sleeping well?"
"Honestly," she whispers into the speaker, "no. My bed's kind of lumpy. And I miss you, Bren."
He clicks his tongue, crooning, "Oh, baby. I miss you too. You know, it's weird without you in bed."
Her eyes narrow. "So you're not sleeping well."
Brendon is about to respond when Emma jerks back from the camera and looks to the side. She says something in French, which means their call is about to end.
"Do you need to go?" he asks.
She bites her lip and nods. "Sorry. But I'll text you later. Love you…"
Their five minute call sustains him for about an hour before he starts to feel empty again. True to her word, Emma texts him in the afternoon. It's a selfie of her with her baby cousin, her chin propped on a little head.
He likes the message, and responds, I love you.
I love youuu, she writes back. But it hurts to not hear her say it out loud.
That's Just the Thing That Happens When My Baby Goes Away
"What the hell is going on here?" Brendon snaps. "Is there even an attending on this case?"
The trauma room is silent, two wide-eyed nurses and a first-year resident staring at him. A sedated man lies on the bed, and his right arm is in the hands of an intern.
"Um," one of the nurses begins to speak, but is interrupted by a voice.
It's Al-Hashimi walking through the door. Brendon generally does not have a problem with her, but his patience is like a old fishing line, threatening to snap. Two days without working and three without Emma has made him weak.
"Care to explain why I wasn't paged, I don't know, ten minutes ago?" he asks.
Al-Hashimi cocks her head and begins to speak slowly, her hands clasped behind her back as she approaches. "This is not a severe avulsion. There are no contaminants or tissue that would indicate amputation. This man is young, it was a blunt cut, and the warm ischemia time is less than an hour. We have already established that the arm can be replanted."
Brendon sneers. "You could have paged Garcia at the very least. Call up to the OR. I'll be waiting."
When he leaves, he overhears a nurse telling the intern, "He's not usually this crabby."
Brendon thinks the same, but it's obvious what's wrong with him. From the OR to the ED, he has not been able to check his phone. He's desperate to see Emma's name on his screen next to the iMessage icon: Attachment: 3 Photos. He wants to know where she is, what she's eating, who she is with.
This must be some kind of withdrawal symptom. Usually, he doesn't need to know what she is doing at every moment, but he craves that information now, as if it will soothe his frayed nerves.
Less than 72 hours, he thinks, eyes closed, and she'll be back.
It's Weird. She's Not Here
He's in the shower the next night when a pang of unfulfilled lust threatens his balance. Brendon never considered himself to be one of those men, the kind who were driven by sex and thought of nothing else. College was the closest he ever gotten to that. 20-year-old Brendon didn't think it was particularly bad that he had hooked up with two different girls on Spring Fling, but then his roommate informed him that the girls were best-friends. Well, he's given up on that kind of life, evidently.
He misses no one else, thinks of no one else but his girl. His Emma. The one he can pick up and pin against the shower wall as if she weighs nothing. The one whose breath gets caught in her throat as he kisses and sucks at her skin.
Phantom feelings of her hands on his back make him shiver. God what he would give to slide inside her right now, feel her tremble around him. He would give anything to hear the noise that she makes when she comes – the broken cry that's born at the base of her lungs – and watch the way she mouths, oh, God. Oh, God—
"Oh, fuck," he groans, and he's suddenly spilling onto the shower floor.
He hadn't even realized that his hand had been on his cock. It had been weeks since he had last masturbated because, well, he never needed to. It's so weird to come without her.
And the bliss of his orgasm dissipates into melancholy.
What Can I Do, But Think of You?
PIT is one of the better airports Brendon has spent his time in. It's miles better than his hometown's Logan and much better than LAX, where he'd fly into every fall for college. Whatever. Maybe he's just waxing poetic about the terminal and the free waiting garage because his girlfriend landed ten minutes ago and should be at baggage claim in no time.
He paces along the wall, hands in his pocket. The rest of the night has been planned. He'll call her favorite Indian place as they're leaving the airport so it's ready in twenty minutes, and then they'll eat on the couch with a movie on. The movie will just be white noise, of course, because he knows she'll abandon any attempts at paying attention when he rests his hand on her thigh. She'll straddle his lap and kiss him breathless, her little hands tugging at his shirt.
The wind is suddenly knocked out of him from behind, and his every fiber of his being stands at attention. Lost in thought, he had not seen her emerge from the terminal, not seen the way her face lit up when she saw him.
He turns, wraps his arms around her without saying a thing, and ignores the way his throat begins to feel tight. She smells so good, feels so good, his girl in his embrace once more. Five days without her is five days too many, and he can feel the cracks in his heart begin to mend.
"You're never leaving me again," Brendon says finally.
"I love you," he whispers into her hair.
He hears her echoed response muffled into his chest.
Then she looks up at him, beaming with wet eyes. "Let's go home."
All I've been listening to recently is Olivia Rodrigo's new album, and "maggots for brains" gave such babyshark vibes that I had to write something.
I used this page as a reference for the trauma room scene, but I could have interpreted it all wrong. Sorry!
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
yousharknotpass
izzy806
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