~In which a normal evening suddenly goes sideways~
Chris & Emma masterpost
In 2019, I wrote a little whumplet for Whumptober. Then I wrote another in 2020. And then a few more. This series exists in the Head Wind AU, where Cade and his team work for some kind of covert agency, not yet specified. So far, it's the only Cade series from an outsider's POV.
Much appreciation to the anon who's periodically requested more in the series. I don't think I'm done with it yet, thanks to you. 🩷
~~~
The doorbell startles Chris awake. His book tumbles off the sofa onto the living room rug as he sits up. That late already? He hadn’t meant to nap for long.
When he opens the door, though, the sun is just setting. And it’s not Emma. It’s a man about his own age, in an olive-green jacket over a Crossfit T-shirt. “Hey, I’m sorry to bother you,” says the man. “I think I took a wrong turn, and I can’t get a GPS signal. Do you know how to get to Lee’s Smokehouse?”
“Oh, yeah, you’re not too far from it.” He lets the door swing open a little wider.
As Chris turns to point down the road to the west, the man slams into him like a linebacker intent on a mid-field tackle.
The impact knocks him backwards, into the house. He can’t react fast enough to keep his feet under him. Some half-forgotten bit of training spurs him to roll instead of trying to halt his fall, but the hallway floor delivers a painful jolt to his knee, hip, and elbow. What the absolute f....
Instinct demands a counterattack. He looks up to locate his target. The man is two steps inside the door, sweeping his jacket aside to pull a dark, angular shape from his waistband.
About to spring up, Chris freezes, watching in stunned disbelief as the gun’s barrel swings up and locks onto him. His knuckles whiten on the smooth wood surface under his hands.
Another man enters behind the first one, closing the door behind him with swift precision. This one is older, his short dark hair peppered with gray. He drops a small tool bag on the floor and strides past Chris, leading with his own pistol as he scans the rooms immediately around them.
What the hell is going on? Who are these guys? He’s never seen them before. Their stiff bearing reminds him of his ex-military coworkers. For the briefest moment, he wonders if—hopes that—this is all a horrible joke, a setup the guys engineered to fuck with him. But he can’t make himself believe it. That shove had been full force, not pulled at all.
The older man finishes his assessment of their surroundings and returns, directing a brusque order at Chris. “On your face.”
It makes as little sense as everything else that’s happening. Maybe he’s dreaming, still asleep on the sofa. But the boot that shoves the back of his shoulder for emphasis feels distinctly solid. Still incredulous and confused, Chris lets himself be pushed down. A knee comes down between his shoulder blades, and a rough hand pushes his head to the floor.
“Is there anyone else in this house?” the man asks in a businesslike tone.
Well-worn brown boots walk up to stand in front of Chris’s face, so close he can smell the shreds of damp leaves clinging to them. He flinches back, expecting a kick, but a sharp blow from above sends stars ricocheting through his skull.
“Answer me before I get mean,” the man says coldly. “Is there anyone else in this house right now?”
This is real. This is bad. With effort, he dredges up an answer. “No.”
“You’re the only one here?”
“Yes.”
“Expecting anyone tonight?”
“No.”
“Clear it,” the older man directs, and the brown boots depart. The sound of doors opening comes from down the hall.
Chris closes his eyes briefly against a wave of dizziness and nausea. The lie had been instinctive. Whatever the hell is going on, he’s not about to tell a pair of armed criminals that his sister is coming to visit. How long before she shows up? It’s a two-hour drive from the school to here. If the sun is setting now, and she’d left work and started driving...no, she’d have gone home first, wouldn’t she?
Footsteps come back toward them and deliver a report. “This level’s got a living room, kitchen, three rooms toward the back, couple bathrooms and closets. It’s clear.”
“OK. Downstairs?” the older man answers.
The boots move off again and tramp down the stairs.
Chris racks his brain for anything that could have made him a target. His house doesn’t look prosperous. He’s gotten the interior into a decent condition since he and Emma inherited the house from their grandfather, but he hasn’t yet done anything about the faded siding or the overgrown bushes. Maybe the men are desperate.
But desperate for what? More importantly, how long will it take them to collect it?
There’s only one way to handle this. Whatever the two men are here for, they can have it. Any resistance from him would only slow them down. Are they planning on leaving a live witness behind? It’s far too easy to picture himself dead, and Em arriving to a horrifying scene...but that would be better than her arriving while they’re still here.
The brown boots come back upstairs. “The sliding door on the side goes to an open area with a TV and a couch. Off of that, two more bedrooms, a workout room, laundry room, another bathroom. No one here other than him.”
“Good.” The end of the gun taps Chris’s head. “What’s your name?”
His throat is as dry as the dusty floor. “Chris.”
“Chris. Big house for just one guy. You sure you’re the only one who lives here?”
“It’s just me.”
“Are you a wealthy man, Chris?” A hint of keen interest lurks under the sardonic question.
A ghost-thin breath of not-really-laughter escapes him. “No.”
The pressure pinning him down shifts slightly as the man looks back up at his partner. “What do you think, put him in one of those rooms back there?”
A grunt of agreement. “One of ‘em’s set up as an office.”
“Got a chair we could tie him to?”
A flush of heat washes down the back of Chris’s neck, followed by a damp chill that makes his skin prickle. Just cooperate. Whatever it takes to get this over with as fast as possible.
“Not really the right shape,” the younger man says. “The desk’s a fucking slab, though. Could tether him to that.”
“Cover him for a minute.” The end of the gun taps Chris’s head again. “Don’t move.”
The man stands up and walks down the hall. After a moment, he returns. “It’ll work.”
He picks up his tool bag and sets it on the floor just past Chris’s head. “Hands up here.”
The floor seems to be rotating around him. No, it’s just that he’s breathing too fast, too shallow, even without the weight of the knee on his back. The blood racing through his body hisses in his ears, a crash of white noise. One thought threads through the static: Emma. He drags his arms forward.
Rough hands grasp his forearms; thin cord loops around his wrists and tightens down. It’s done with an economy of action that completes the task in seconds. “Up,” the older man orders.
Chris pulls his arms in and stumbles upright, lightheaded but vertical. It feels oddly like someone else is piloting his body while he observes from outside. The man takes hold of the back of Chris’s collar and pushes him down the hall.
In the office, the man orders him to sit on the floor by the desk. The younger man had been right; the desk is a solid oak edifice, a relic of an earlier time when furniture-making was more of a craft than an industry. Chris and Emma had decided to leave it here and decorate around it rather than try to move it elsewhere.
The man binds another thin green cord around Chris’s wrists, weaving this one around one leg of the desk and a supporting crosspiece. Chris keeps his eyes on the floor, though his peripheral vision tells him the final knot is tied off where he won’t be able to reach it.
The man stands up. “Stay there. We’ll be back to check on you.” He flips the light switch as he exits the room and closes the door, leaving Chris in the dark.
Chris rests his head against the corner of the desk and draws a deep, shaky breath. At least the room isn’t completely lightless. The gap under the door lets in a bit of light, as well as sound. The voices in the hall are moving away, but they’re clear enough for him to hear one exchange:
Omg omg are you the author of the Caden Hale series on wattpad????? I am absolutely obsessed and I've wanted more for so long and it's been here all along!? If you aren't the author then this is kinda awkward but omg if you are I just- thank you omg lol
I am not the author, but I can point you right to her! @adrenaline-whump is who you want! Isn’t she brilliant??? She and I have collaborated for Whumptober two years running, so that’s why you see Cade on my blog. There’s lots of good stuff in that tag!
The weirdest thing for me about writing is having no idea how long it will take to write something. Sometimes writing is a slog, even if it's something I want to write, and sometimes the words just materialize as fast as I can get them down.
Case in point: I started Undertow in November 2021, and finished it in March 2023. Word count: 21,314.
For my as-yet-unnamed spooky story, I have a completed draft, about 11,000 words. It took me 16 days.
I first started writing for Whumptober in 2018. I was a completionist that year, and the next two. And then...it got harder. Writerbrain just resisted. And this year wasn't any different. I'd resigned myself to not participating this year.
But...
What if...? whispered the writerbrain.
Of course, I was like "Where tf have you BEEN" and "What are you on about, writerbrain" and "are you really coming up with a plot on October SECOND"
And after many negotiations, it seems like there might be some words. But the way it's probably gonna go down is, they'll be inspired by 31 Whumptober prompts, but probably will wind up posted on AO3, and may not get there until the end of the month.
But by golly I'm going to do SOMETHING with the 1600 words it gave me for the first 3 days.
(It's gonna be a lil bit spooky, it's going to involve Cade and Donnie, and there will be a bit of whump but that won't be the center of the story.)
It's done! 11,000 words of Spooky!Cadeverse have materialized out of the Whumptober prompts and are posted on AO3. This one's called Earthbound.
It's not a typical Whumptober set; I took the 31 prompts (including a few alts) and used them in order as inspiration for story direction and detail. And MAN, I had fun with this.
Summary: Cade wasn’t OK with dying, but he wasn’t really prepared to not die, either.
Context: Immediately after In the Wind, after the phone call that confirms Hank is OK.
This is all @redwingedwhump’s fault for saying nice things about my team dynamics. :)
~~~
“First,” Donnie said, “Let’s run you by a hospital real quick to get checked out.”
“First, we’re going to pick up Hank,” I said. Hank was in South Carolina without any way to get back to us, so we had to go get him. The plan was to meet him at the highway welcome center just past the state line.
“We only need one car for that,” he said. “Alex can go get Hank, and we—”
“It’s not like I’m bleeding out. I’ll be fine. I'll go later.”
He gave me an exasperated look, but no way were they going to drag me to a hospital right then. I’d just talked to Hank, so I knew he was OK, but I needed to see him face to face. I don’t know why. I just did.
The drive was pretty miserable, although that wasn’t Donnie’s fault. He asked me if I’d rather talk or listen to music, so I chose music. And then every other song seemed to be some guy smashing his guitar while screaming about not being OK. I could've asked to change to another station, I guess. But he might have asked why, and explaining felt like too much work.
I’d run out of energy a long time ago, burned through all of it waiting for Owen to finally get around to killing me. If I’d had any reserves, I’d burned through those too. And it just wouldn’t end. I felt hot and hollow, like the last log in a campfire, ready to collapse into sparks and ash.
The longer we drove, the more scrapes and bruises woke up and started complaining. I started to rub my eyes and stopped when I saw the back of my hand was scraped to hell. When had that happened? I couldn’t remember.
I remembered walking into the cabin. Nothing was out of the ordinary, or so I’d thought at the time. I watched the replay in my head, over and over, looking for where I’d screwed up. The door had been locked when I got there. I didn’t think I could’ve mistaken an unlocked door for a locked one. Then what? The light in the kitchen had been on. I’d assumed one of us had left it on, but I probably should’ve wondered, right? If I’d paused for one second and looked down the hall, maybe everything would have turned out differently, and I wouldn’t have come so close to getting Hank killed.
What the fuck was I going to say to him? There wasn’t an apology strong enough for the gnawing disgust that snarled my insides.
“How you doing over there?” Donnie asked.
“Fine.”
“Of course.” He let out an exaggerated sigh. “That hurts my feelings, dude. Lying to my face like that. I thought we were friends.”
“I’m lying to your face because we’re friends.”
“Points for honest lying, I guess. Or lying honestly. You don’t have to be fine, but you do need to tell me if you feel sick or dizzy or something, in case I need to divert to the next hospital.”
“OK.”
He was keeping his curiosity to himself, I could tell. He was dying to ask what had happened, where I’d been, how everything had played out. He and Alex and Hank had spent too many stressful hours waiting and wondering what was going on. And now here I was, the guy with the answers.
I watched the dark landscape scroll by the window. Talking about it would mean thinking about it, and I was already doing too much of that.
We crossed the South Carolina border, and my heart started thumping harder. It wasn’t like Hank was going to yell at me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice. But whatever he’d gone through between when I walked away from him and now was my fault.
Too soon, a blue sign pointed us off the highway to a tidy little brick building with picnic tables on either side. Hank was sitting on a bench out front. As we pulled in, he stretched a little and stood up, like it was totally natural to be hanging out at an empty rest stop at 4:30 in the morning. Donnie pulled into the closest space and glanced at me expectantly.
I almost couldn’t get out of the truck. I felt sick again. Maybe that bump on the head would turn out to be a fatal head bleed after all. On the plus side, if I stood up and immediately passed out, I wouldn’t have to decide what to say.
Unfortunately, I stayed conscious the whole time my feet got me out of the truck and walked me toward Hank. He seemed OK, as far as I could tell, though I couldn’t make myself look him in the eye. I took a deep breath as I stopped in front of him. “Hank, I—”
“C’mere, buddy,” he said, and hugged me like he was my dad.
I almost lost my shit. Again. All the apologies I’d set up in my head fell apart, and I just croaked fuck into his shoulder. And then said it a few more times, as my eyes burned and I tried not to drip anything on his shirt. He was there, solid and real, the same Hank as always, which meant that even though I’d still fucked everything up, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
He finally let me out of the hug so he could look me over. “You look like shit,” he observed.
“I know,” I said. “Listen, I’m...I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” He sounded honestly baffled. “We’re all going home, buddy, and that’s all I care about.”
Back to Memphis. Familiar things. Normal things. Home. I didn’t know why it felt so disorienting, like being underwater and the surface isn’t where you thought it would be.
He glanced at the brick building. “Want to run inside and wash up a little? The sinks have decent hot water.”
Alone? It struck me as another strange idea. Free to just walk off by myself...that sounded good. Really good. And hot water sounded even better.
~~~
As Cade disappeared into the building, Donnie and Alex joined Hank.
“Hey, guys. Thanks for coming down.”
Donnie shook his head. “You know, I wasn’t a big fan of this plan...but I have to admit, you are looking remarkably not-dead.”
Hank shrugged deprecatingly. “It’s a talent.”
“Talent.” Alex’s deep voice had the slightest edge. “If any of us dived into shit expecting talent to get us out, what would you say?”
“It could’ve been a bad call,” Hank said evenly, “but it was mine to make.”
“Yeah.” Donnie rubbed his head. “But let’s not ever do that again, OK?”
“Agree.” Hank tilted his head at the building. “How’s he doing?”
Alex and Donnie looked at each other.
“Not great,” Alex said.
“Yeah,” Donnie said. “He’s pretty fucked up.”
“Did you take him anywhere?”
Donnie snorted. “You know how he feels about hospitals. He says he’s not hurt that bad. But he can hardly move his left arm, he holds himself like he’s got a cracked rib or two, and he admitted he took a couple of skull taps, though he says he didn’t get knocked out. That’s physically. Mentally...” Donnie paused, uncharacteristically serious. “I’m not criticizing, just observing: if Owen had ventilated you, I think Cade would’ve lost his mind. He’s better now, but he’s still...not great.”
“Well, he hasn’t slept, probably hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday...”
“Dehydrated,” Donnie said. “I don’t think Owen gave him anything that whole time.”
“And then I sprang the trade on him. Lucky for both of us that it worked.”
“For all of us,” Alex said. “It’s not like Donnie and me would’ve handled it any better.”
Hank nodded. “Fair. The three of us can debrief after we get back. I’ll talk to Cade as we drive. Will you two head back to the cabin and bring our gear back to Memphis? We can sort out everything at the office.”
“Will do. And you’ll head straight back?”
“Mostly. That boy’s going to get checked out at a hospital if I have to frog-march him in there myself.”
These whumplets were inspired by a variety of prompts – Whumptober 2019 and 2020, Febuwhump 2022, and a few other individual prompts. Many of these include doodles from the talented pen of @whumpadoodle!
Prior to In the Wind:
Stab Wound – They say you might not even notice at first.
Recovery – Post-whump healing with a side of friendly mockery.
Run – Cade finds a bottle with his knee.
Secret Injury – Please don’t tell Hank.
Grief – A tragedy in Cade’s past. [CW: parent death]
Rescue – Who would win: two Memphis crooks, or Cade and one helpful stranger?
Stitches – You’re looking a little green, Cade.
Gunpoint – Sometimes the skip finds you.
Explosion – Wrong place, wrong time.
Disorientation – Post-explosion, Cade deals with ringing ears and suspicious cops.
Human Shield – It’s not stupid if it works.
Sticks and Stones – Donnie and Cade make a good team.
Blindness – The lights go out at the Orpheum.
Hospital – Cade would like to go home now.
Between In the Wind and Wind Shear:
Fade to Sunrise - A necessary detour to South Carolina.
Context: Taking a break here from the last three days’ storyline. This one’s in the Cadeverse, the morning after Wind Shear concludes, referencing events in Undertow, chapter 8 specifically.
~~~
Donnie didn’t want to be awake this early. Rest was key to recovery, and getting over yesterday would take some time. Unfortunately, his shoulders ached in whatever position he lay in, unless he was flat on his back, and that was like lying on a barbeque grill.
He levered himself out of bed, his breath hissing through his teeth as every bruise and overworked muscle made itself known. Ibuprofen would be on the breakfast menu again. Yum.
A splash of cold water from the bathroom sink helped him feel more human. Even with his eyes averted from the mirror, he could sense the red stripes curving around his ribs. Just surface irritation; it would heal.
He returned to his bedroom and found one last clean pair of jeans in his dresser. He put them on gingerly, like an old man with vertigo. Even his hands hurt.
The T-shirt drawer was empty. Right, he’d thrown a load in the dryer right before everything went to hell yesterday. He grinned at the surreal idea of his shirts placidly drying themselves while he was being dragged off to East Nowhere.
He opened his bedroom door quietly and cocked an ear at the stairs. Cade and Liz were probably still asleep on the crash pad...separately or together; not his business either way. He walked past the kitchen and opened the dusty closet that held the laundry machines, where the T-shirts waited in a dry, wrinkled pile. He rooted through them until he found one with long sleeves and worked it over his head, careful not to scrape the fabric against his back.
Job accomplished, he turned around—and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Holy shit, don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Liz stood at the top of the stairs, with sleep-tousled hair and wide eyes. “I...I’m sorry,” she said. “I heard you moving around up here, and...and I...”
Donnie told his heart rate to settle down. “No worries,” he apologized. “I thought you two were still asleep, so I wasn’t expecting to see someone standing there, that’s all.”
“Cade’s still asleep,” Liz said. “Donnie...what happened to you?”
Shit. She’d seen it. “Looks bad, huh?”
She nodded wordlessly.
Great. He hadn’t planned to talk about it. “Do you want some coffee?”
He beckoned her into the kitchen and busied himself with coffee grounds and water. “It’s not as bad as it looks, I promise. One of the Reaves goons wanted to know about Tara and the laptop, so he asked me with a belt. It’s fine, though. In a day or two, you won’t be able to tell.”
“We never asked if you were OK,” she said, stricken. “I was so worried about Cade, I never thought to ask you. I’d never have guessed...but why didn’t you say anything?”
“Not worth bringing up,” he said. Water gurgled and began to drip into the pot. He turned back to her and smiled, keeping his posture relaxed. “Don’t worry about it. Cade asked if I was OK before we came back to Memphis.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I was fine.” She frowned, unconvinced. He’d have to try a different tactic. “Liz, I need to ask you a favor. I don’t want Cade to know about...what you saw just now.”
Her concerned expression deepened. “Why not?”
“You know Cade; he’d feel guilty as hell. It would eat at him, especially because he can’t do anything about it now. It’s not something he can fix. And really, it’s not a big deal. I’ll be sore for a day or two. That’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Liz said. “You two are friends. You’d want him to be honest with you, wouldn’t you, about something like that?”
She had a point. If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just Cade he was protecting. Donnie never let anyone see him in pain, not unless the person was someone he completely trusted. Very few people qualified. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest thing, but habit was habit.
The coffee finished filling the carafe, and he poured two mugs. “Last night, when I asked you why you and Cade weren’t dating, you said, It’s complicated. It was super rude of me to be all up in your business like that, and I’m about to do it again.” He handed her one of the mugs. “Have you talked to Cade about that complication, whatever it is?”
She looked away and shook her head.
“Then you get it,” he said gently. “Even with friends...there are some things you want to keep to yourself.”
She nodded, subdued. “I won’t tell Cade. But I think you should.”
