So I had this whole story plotted out and everything for fnf's favorite bomb boy and the gang that revolved around fun-sized whitty and how he would've been involved, but I lost interest a while ago... Anyways here's one of the fluff chapters that need no context at all. Oh and fun-sized whitty was dubbed Itty (like itty bitty whitty haha). There's an intro chapter if you want an idea of where this was headed btw.
(Not my characters, they belong to their creators)
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It had been one of Whitty's favorite kind of nights. The kind where the apartment was cool and quiet and there was rain outside the window that he could watch if he wanted to. But that had been three hours ago and the rain had turned into a storm since then. He didn't mind storms all that much, but they were annoying when the crack of thunder and flash of lightning kept waking him up. He wasn't a deep enough sleeper to ignore the loud noises, so he was left to stare either out the window or at the doorway in a daze waiting for the noise to finally stop.
On one hand, he supposed he could get up and go do something to pass the time, but on the other hand, no one else was awake and he was rather comfortable despite not being on the bed he had been given. It had been too ingrained that he had to be ready to move at any and all times in case he was caught up to, so settling down and shutting his eyes for eight long hours just didn't happen. Instead he opted to sitting in the corner facing the doorway, sometimes still sleeping with his eyes opened, but the longer he stayed with Carol the less on edge he felt. And he didn't know if that was a good or bad thing for his general safety. But that was a problem for the brighter hours of the day. As of right then, he was perfectly content to relax into the pile of pillows that Carol had stashed in his corner when she figured out where he slept. Those were nice. He had never had those before. He definitely preferred them over the hard wall and floor after being told what they were for. Softness was new, but he was finding that it wasn't necessarily bad.
So, yes, he was comfortable enough to rest with his eyes shut and listen to the rain in between the crashes of the storm. But then there was a new noise. It wasn't anything like the storm, it didn't sound like passing people outside, but it didn't sound happy. It didn't sound like it was outside at all really. It was much closer than that. It was whimpering. Was someone crying?
Whitty opened his eyes and took a wary look around. He didn't think the sound was coming from Carol's room. She was a deep sleeper and while she hadn't ever cried as far as he knew, the sound didn't match her voice. This left the only other person in the apartment. Itty. The little bomb had taken to sleeping in his bed since he didn't use it. A glance over in the bed's direction confirmed it. Even in the dark of the room, Whitty could tell that Itty had managed to fight the blankets into a knot around himself and was trying to lash out against something in his dream. He didn't have those very often. Dreams. The few he had had were either ungodly amounts of bizarre or absolute terrors that he woke up from crying. After a morning of waking up to one of the bad ones, he had asked Carol about if she ever did that. She had said yes to having what she called a nightmare, but she said she didn't usually wake up crying from them. The concern in her features was obvious even to him, but it wasn't the first time she had looked at him like that, and it definitely wouldn't be the last.
With that in mind, Whitty took on the job of being concerned as he got up and walked over to the far side of the bed where Itty was struggling. He was fairly certain that his own nightmares were due to his past including both the lab and The Greater Good always on his heels. But as far as he and Carol had figured, Itty didn't remember much about his past, at least, nothing painful... Yet here he was, crying out in his sleep, scaring Whitty half to death when he started saying coherent words.
"No—! St-stop! Please! It—hurts! Please! No!"
It was painful to watch to say the least. Whitty had never seen the kid look so distraught, with the exception of when he had accidentally caught himself on fire, but that had been more of a panic. This was despair and agony. Thick black tears streamed down the kid's face while he shook and tried to jerk away from whatever was assaulting him. "Please! Stop! Why are you—! Please! I ca-can't!"
He had had enough of that, so Whitty reached down and tried to shake the little bomb awake. At first Itty's struggle only worsened with the grasp on his arm, but after Whitty shook him more insistently he finally seemed to waken a little.
Ittty's eyes shot open and he looked around wild-eyed, clearly not seeing his surroundings, and still shaking, but he did see Whitty and lurched towards him. Well he certainly tried to anyways. The blankets were too tight around him for him to get very far. When he realized this, he only cried harder. "P—please!" He was desperate.
Whitty, not really sure why, acted without thinking and got to work untangling the sobbing bomb. The second Itty was free, Whitty found himself having to brace against the impact of Itty jumping at him. When he got over the fact that Itty was now latched around his neck in a vice-like grip, he actually registered what was happening. Itty, the poor little kid who had the same start he had, was crying his eyes out and scared out of his mind. At first Whitty started to panic a little on the inside. What was he supposed to do with this?! He didn't know how to help in this kind of situation??? But then he looked down at Itty and it clicked. What would I have wanted when I was like this?
The answer to that was an easy one. He didn't even realize what he had wanted until he had been given it with Carol. He didn't want to be alone. He wanted someone there with him. No one would ever truly know what he was and had been going through, but someone's nonthreatening presence would have helped to ground him. As he looked at Itty in his little cat patterned pj's, it occurred to him that that wasn't entirely true, not anymore. He wasn't completely alone. Itty had been put through the same crap that he had, but the kid was lucky. He had Whitty to help him through it.
So with his mind made up, the older bomb moved as gingerly as possible, sat down, and shifted until he was leaning against the headboard with Itty tight against his chest. He wasn't very good at the whole affection thing yet, but he had seen Carol comfort Itty enough times to have a good idea of what he was supposed to do. First things first? Get him to stop crying.
"Hey," he muttered down to the crying kid. "Itty. Look at me."
Itty had his face buried in Whitty's neck and didn't seem to hear him, sobs still wracking through his little body.
Whitty blew out a puff of air before trying again. "Itty." He nudged him out of his hiding spot and offered a small smile when he saw the pair of normally bright, but now horribly scared eyes finally look up at him through the tears streaming down his face. "Hi. Think you can focus on me for a second?"
Itty looked so so confused, but after a second he gave a hiccuping nod. Then a clap of lightening struck followed by the deafening boom of thunder and sent Itty into crying hysterics all over again. He was right back in the hollow of Whitty's neck, but for a whole new reason.
Whitty glared at the storm outside, the rain wasn't going to ease up anytime soon and neither would the noise. How was he supposed to get the kid to ignore something as loud as thunder?! The headphones Carol had given him were on the other side of the room, but he knew that getting up wasn't even remotely an option with Itty attached to him. So he looked around for something nearby. Something to block the noise...?
Then he looked down at Itty again and it appeared that the kid already had it covered, or at least unintentionally had a good idea. The little bomb, in his panic, was trying his hardest to burrow into the side of Whitty's hood and hide from life and the loud scary things in it. That was a fairly easy solution Whitty figured. Plus it would even shield Itty from the flash of lightning so maybe he would calm down and go back to sleep. He's still not sure how he managed to get to the zipper with Itty in the way, but after a few minutes of rearranging and struggling with the petrified child, Itty ended up resting snug in the jacket with his head now on Whitty's chest and safely hidden away from the storm outside.
Another flash and crack of the weather outside had Itty tightening his grip again much to Whitty's annoyance. I thought we just fixed that issue. But he supposed that still made sense. Just because he couldn't see the storm didn't mean that Itty couldn't still hear it. It shook the apartment for Pete's sake. Of course he'd notice it. He needed a distraction or something else to focus on. But what else was there for him to do? It's not like there was anything he could go get for Itty to listen to. What else did Carol do when the kid was upset or feeling down? What did she do when he was upset?
He scrunched up his face trying to think as he watched another flash light up the room and scare Itty again. Normally she would get his attention and get him to sit down so he was at her height. Then she could effectively hug him and not his legs, and so far Whitty had the Hug Step accomplished. After that it was a toss up between talking him through whatever had stressed him out at the time or being quiet and there with him until he calmed down, depending on how upset he was. Well...that or she got him to sing. He liked singing with her quite a lot, so she usually hummed something that he could hum right back until he was up to singing and by then he had usually forgotten about what had set him off in the first place. ...How he had managed without her a year ago, he had no idea.
He personally didn't feel like singing right then. The room was pretty quiet aside from the storm, but his singing voice was not. He wasn't trying to compete with the thunder (even though he probably could and win), he was just trying to be a distraction. The question of if he should hum at all was answered the second he looked down at Itty's shaking frame. The poor kid hadn't asked for any of this. So Whitty sighed and started to hum. At first he didn't really know what he was humming, there hadn't been any song in particular on his mind at the time, but after a few notes he realized that it was the same song that Carol sang to him when he was upset.
Itty didn't react immediately, still flinching at the next bout of noise from the storm, but slowly his grip loosened and his crying faded in to sniffles and then just hiccups. He tucked himself closer to Whitty, but not out of terror this time. This time he was trying to get closer to the calmer sound of Whitty's song.
This entire time Whitty as been more or less still sprawled out on the bed, with his long legs propped up over the end of the bed and his arms still at his sides, unsure of what to do with himself. As Itty's breathing slowed, the need to curl around the kid suddenly hit him and he really had no idea what do with that. But...Carol did tell him that it was okay to respond to instincts like that. They were normal. Some of his amalgamated DNA was human after all. He had just never had a chance to indulge in any of the more touchy feel-y instincts before. But...they were why he liked hugs after he had had one. So now he hesitantly glanced at Itty, who looked pretty comfortable where he was, and shifted until his legs were crossed under him and his arms were curled protectively around the kid.
If it was any condolences to him, Itty almost immediately sighed and didn't even register the next crack of thunder. In fact, he appeared to be dozing off again. Perhaps Whitty had actually done it! Still humming, the bomb couldn't help but smile a little at his victory. He had calmed down a frantic, teary-eyed kid, without anyone else's help. And the thunder didn't even bother Itty anymore! Double win!
After a while Whitty ended up settling enough to shut his own eyes for a while, not to sleep—at least, not intentionally—but he could enjoy the weird but not bad feeling of Itty leaning against him. It wasn't entirely new to have someone using him as a pillow, Carol did it all the time. Her napping on top of him kept him in place and out of trouble, and he got to bask in the comfort of her trusting him enough to sleep within such close proximity. But Carol wasn't like him. She was soft and little.
Itty was little too, he supposed, but he wasn't soft. Not like Carol. He and the kid were made of the same stuff. They were both had rough skin and were often scalding to the touch when upset. And well. Itty was just in tears over a nightmare. Whitty didn't think anyone else could handle the little bomb when he was truly upset, just like the previous "fire" incident. But to him, the burning hot was nothing more than warm. Now, he didn't like why Itty was so worked up, but it was comforting to have someone so similar to himself. It was familiar.
Everything in life was so foreign to him. Affection, technology, people not being violent to him, having a roof over his head, eating a full meal...but Itty was not on that list. Itty was like himself, and he knew himself pretty well. The way Itty responded to situations was just like how he did. If something ticked him off Whitty recognized the heat rolling off of the kid's frame just as he recognized the spark at the end of his fuse and the little cracks in reality at his feet when the kid was truly angry. Itty's reactions were small compared to his own, but seeing another react the same was...it was interesting. Other people saw that all the time—people reacting in similar manners to themselves, but Whitty never had before. It was somewhat comforting if he was being honest.
He briefly wondered if that was what it was like to have a family. It seemed like a family thing, but he wasn't exactly an expert on that. The TV shows Carol watched sometimes had families involved and it seemed to line up with his thought process. People reacting similarly to the people around them who in turn knew and even expected the reactions. These families always seemed to enjoy each other's company to some degree, and he enjoyed Itty's company most of the time. Was that the same thing?
Whatever it was, Whitty decided it wasn't a bad thing, at least, it didn't make him feel anything bad. Looking down at Itty one last time, the only thing he felt was warm. Warm wasn't bad, right? He felt warm every time Carol grabbed his arm to show him something and even when Hex excitedly called him over from the other side of the basket ball court. Warm always followed him when he was around them, people he trusted or at least, people he wasn't afraid of. So yeah, he supposed, even if family wasn't the right word, he liked the feeling that was nestled in his chest as he accidentally drifted off with the smaller bomb leaning against him.
It was another new weird thing, but perhaps he could get used to it.
