Your whumpee has been in considerable pain since The Event but nobody believes them.
So they take whatever painkillers they can find (alcohol, pills etc), but this just makes everyone even angrier at the whumpee. As time goes on, they’re told their pain doesn’t exist - that it’s all in their head and that they just need to get on with it. The physical wounds have healed, so why do they need to keep bringing it up?
The pain is phantom, until it isn’t.
It's phantom until the whumpee collapses and doesn’t wake up, only for tests to reveal severe internal complications that nobody listened to. Maybe the whumpee deliriously denies pain medication, trying to say their pain is not real after months of being denied as such.
Their pain is 'phantom' until they become more lucid, and reveal that yes: their pain is real.
No. 30: RECOVERY
Hospital Bed | Holding Back Tears | “What have I done?”
AO3 got banned in my country and VPNs have not been working well on my PC lately, so I am not going to post these there for now. But hopefully I can do that at some point.
This is taking place in my own DnD/fantasy world.
Barnaby is a fungal mage who loves mixing drinks. A mycologist mixologist, if you will.
This is a moment from his teenagehood.
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Apple puree
Barnaby's bandages up right hand is shaking a little when he takes the spoon. There is a small bowl in his healthy hand. It is full of apple puree. He has not had "solid" food in months. Ever since he managed to fight off the Fungal Plague, he has been stuck to exclusively drinking things due to what the mycelium and the surgeries to remove it did to his stomach.
The first week or two he could only drink the same healing herbal soup made by Polina following his doctor's instructions. Then he was allowed to try compote. He vomited the first time but after another couple of days, he was able to keep it down. Then he was allowed to drink tea, milk and many other things. He enjoyed coming up with new combinations things he could drink and making them with Polina. His brain had something to work on and his tongue was finally pleased with him, although not all combinations were successful.
Now the moment of truth is here. He feels like he is more than ready to handle a puree but his doctor urged him to be careful still.
He dips the spoon in and collects as much of it as he can, hearing a sigh from the doctor. He would normally grin at that but he is too focused now.
He almost drops a bit of it before his wobbly hand reaches his face. He inhales sharply at that danger. Not a single piece will be wasted. Unless he throws up after this but that is a problem for a future Barnaby.
The spoon goes into his mouth and he wraps his tongue over it to lick off all the puree. It is not the best tasting thing he has had in the past weeks but the texture is heaven. He can feel the skin under his remaining left eye begin to itch and burn as the tears threaten to well up in it as his teeth close on a harder piece and crush it.
What have I done?
The sudden thought appears in his mind.
I could have just stayed at home. I could have avoided all the hurting and almost dying, being unable to eat or walk. And I could have still had both of my eyes.
He curses himself as the spoon pops out of his mouth. After chewing a couple more times, just because he can, he finally swallows the puree.
He waits with bated breath.
Nothing hurts. He does not want to vomit.
He waits some more.
It is still okay.
And a little more for good measure.
Nothing.
It could have always been like that.
He did not suffer for some great cause or heroic deed.
He suffered because he chose to take a stupid useless risk. He snuck out as the Plague was raging on and ended up bitten.
Barnaby sniffles and scoops another spoonful. A few tears roll down the left side of face as he continues eating.
This all could have been avoided if he were not so impatient.
Decided to put my Paul Higgs story on the backburner so I can have more fun with it, and wrote a wee little epilogue for this week's Nanda and Jameson showcase instead!
For @amonthofwhump's Mafia Madness - Family Business
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Kidnapping | Snitches and Stitches | Vendetta | Assassination | Family Business
CW: Pet whump, intimate whumper, internal injuries, injured whumpee, creepy comfort, some brief dubcon references, dehumanizing/degrading language, Nanda is kind of a possessive creep, but also this is pretty soft? They’re so weird. Just a little epilogue, of sorts.
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The pet’s eyes narrow as he watches Nanda enter the room. He’s weighted down under heavy blankets, layers that keep the air around his body warm, working with the painkillers to keep him loose-limbed and languid, barely able to move.
Not that he wants to. Every slight shift sends a thrill of pain up his spine from somewhere deep inside of him. Even taking too deep a breath brings to brief, blurry life the aches and pains he’s littered with. It breaks through the wall constructed by the drugs that hold him, fuzzy and protected from the awful ache of his own body.
The odd, unpleasant medic is gone – with his businesslike invading fingers, his way of causing pain without any method of making it good, his flat stare as he worked. His pet is gone, too, the Platonic who had come out of shock only to cry until Arvid took him in his arms and whispered to him, the pet nodding and nodding like a puppet on a string, his sobs turning to sniffles and then to whispers in return.
He had never looked at the pet, not once. The other pet had treated him like he’s invisible, like the others always treat the Romantics, but at least it’s better than treating him like he’s a lying little snitch.
Eventually, they’d gone, with Arvid shoving a bottle of rattling pills into Nanda’s hand and giving him timing and dosage the pet couldn’t overhear. He doesn’t know if he’s being given too much or not enough.
He just has to trust Nanda.
And he tries.
Now, as he enters, Nanda has his phone to his ear. His eyes rake over what he can see of the pet - just a bruised and beaten face, framed by the pillows that keep him slightly propped up, bandaged wrists visible where his hands are peeking out from the blankets. Just his hair flopped over his forehead, a messy halo of sorts around his head.
He pauses, taking him in, and the pet feels a subtle shiver of pleasure at the warmth in Nanda’s expression, just for him.
Fucking gorgeous, Nanda mouths, and the pet thinks sometimes his praise is the thing the pet is living for entirely, not the sex. Just to hear him say you’re beautiful or good boy.
“You should have known better,” Nanda says into the phone, voice warm and rich but sharp. He moves across the floor, dressed in only his black sweatpants, low on his hips. There’s a power to his motion, to the smattering of old scars just visible as shimmers of silvered skin along ribs, hips, just below his navel, even just to the roughness of his hands.
The pet knows how those hands feel on every inch of his body, how they can close off his air even as those deep eyes hold nothing but adoration as they watch him fight, with increasing terror, to breathe. He knows the weight of that body pressing him into the floor, or the bed, or against the wall. He knows how it feels to have a whip tear welts into him deep enough to bleed and look up to see Nanda look at him just… like… that.
“Yeah, but not because of you,” Nanda continues, turning away from the pet – like the sun going suddenly behind a cloud – and walking towards the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the master bedroom. He leans against the frame of the one furthest to the right, light shining in on his face. Exhausted, a little haggard, and yet impossibly handsome - at least to a pet who had been literally designed to love him. “Mmmhmm. Do you even grasp what they did to him?”
More silence. Nanda looks back over at him, and the pet pushes himself up a little, hissing softly. The blankets shift downward, and his body is bared to the navel as he manages to reach over and grasp the glass of ice water, sipping it through a straw. The cold crawls down his throat and spreads through his chest, as if he can freeze himself from the inside out, if he will only drink fast enough.
Nanda hums, appreciating, the pet thinks, the purpling bruises, some of them close to black. His neck is ringed with them above and below his collar, his ribs and stomach are mottled and discolored. When he looks over at Nanda through his eyelashes, he catches Nanda’s looking not at his face, but staring fixedly at the bandage wound around his torso.
Nanda’s eyes flick up to meet his, and he gives the pet a grin. Distracting, he mouths, and goes back to his conversation.
“He’s not just anything, Ysa. Do you know how rare it is to find someone like him?... no, not that, anyone with legs can-... right, yes. You were never all that interested, as I recall-... no. Let me rephrase. If you want me to kill off your exes, you can pay for the privilege like everyone else. Target my pet and I’ll target something you can’t replace.”
More silence. Nanda begins to pace, and the pet feels his mouth go dry - even with the straw still there, even still drinking water - at the way sunbeams move over muscles and the way he’s going a little soft at the stomach with age, how it curves just a little above the waistband of his pants. It’s the only softness on him, and the pet loves to lay his head there, once he’s been shattered and is finished pleading that he’ll never disobey again. When the blood is washed away and the wounds are bandaged and they lay boneless together after.
Nanda moves around the bed and sits heavily on the edge, legs off the side, leaning slightly back on one hand. The pet reaches out - and can just barely brush fingertips down the heat of his back. His arm aches, but he ignores it. He even pushes through the pain, grateful for the woozy plush way the painkillers hold him and keep the real agony at bay, and shifts until he is seated behind Nanda, leaning forward to rest his chin on Nanda’s shoulder.
Nanda turns his head, and his lips brush against the pet’s temple.
“He’s not a slut, Ysa. He’s my slut. No one scars him but me - no one scares him but me, for that matter. This little whore cost a pretty penny and I’m the one who paid for him, and you’ll respect my fucking private goddamn property.”
Something twists, a kind of deep bitter humiliation, jealousy of those who can sit behind the ones they live for and not hear themselves called property, just legs to spread, a mouth to open. The pet closes his eyes and moves to kiss along Nanda’s shoulder, starting on the right and working to the left, then the back of his neck, where silvered dark hair tickles his nose.
“Right. Sign of trust - I won’t tell the Barracuda about this, and you make sure everyone in your organization knows that no one fucking touches my things, not ever again, and if they do they will not survive overstepping that boundary. Got it?” He pauses. “Good.”
He exhales as he hangs up, dropping the phone on the bed and turning to look at the pet behind him. “You’re meant to be laying down,” He says, tsking softly. He turns enough to lift a hand, brush the pet’s cheeks with the backs of his knuckles, slowly letting them graze down the side of the pet’s ruined throat, over his collarbone.
“You’re meant to make threats from a different room, so you don’t fucking wake me up,” The pet counters, to Nanda’s low, slightly patronizing laughter. He pinches a nipple, just enough to make the pet jump and hiss at the blend of pain and pleasure at the feeling, then whimper softly as his other injuries echo it.
“I needed to see you,” Nanda confesses. His fingertips dance along the pet’s ribcage now, pressing just a little here and there, pushing on a bruise just enough to give the pet a hazy, pulsing warmth of arousal building within him. Lazy, slow touches. Just enough pain to keep him building. “Needed to see you awake. But I needed to speak to her, too.”
The pet nods, and when Nanda puts fingers to his lips he kisses the end of each fingertip, one by one. “To tell her not to touch your things,” He says, and if Nanda hears the slightly plaintive note there, he doesn’t show it.
He just smiles and gets back up, leaving the pet with his heavy soft blankets in the enormous bed. “Right. To tell her not to fuck with my family.”
He leaves the pet there, alone in the bedroom, the sun shining in through the windows. It’s warm and cold, both at once.
The pet lays back down, staring at the door where Nanda has gone.
He waits until he’s absolutely certain that Nanda can’t hear him before he speaks, in the faintest whisper.
Whumptober day 4! Ft. Oliver when he’s captured by EUNAP (the space government)
Disoriented
Oliver felt someone gently shaking him awake and winced as the motion jarred his injuries. He curled tighter into himself and squeezed his eyes shut. It wasn’t morning yet, there was no sunlight through the cracks in the shed walls.
“Oliver! Oliver wake up!”
The voice wasn’t quite familiar and the shaking got worse. Oliver whimpered as the movement sent searing pain through his chest and sides. Tears formed in his eyes. Where was Silas? Why didn’t he tell whoever it was to stop and leave him alone?
Had the guards beaten him? Or- oh, right, he had fallen off the wall trying to make sure he could climb to the top of it. Cassie’s mother said he had broken his ribs.
“Leave him alone, Luna,” said another unfamiliar voice. “I think you’re hurting him.”
Oliver’s head started to pound in agreement. Jolts of pain made his breathing broken and his eyes squeeze shut even tighter. Breathing made his chest hurt more and- oh, oh stars he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe-
In a panic he jerked up into a sitting position, trying to heave air into his burning chest. Instead, pain exploded all over his body and he screamed in fear and anguish. He was going to die, he was going to die and leave Silas all alone and-
‘Oliver.’
He sobbed, but he knew the voice. It was soft and deep and soothing, and it calmed his white-hot terror.
‘Breathe, Oliver. I know it hurts, but breathe deep.’
Oliver dragged air into his lungs. His breath sputtered and he doubled over as knives of pain stabbed through his chest. But he kept breathing, slowly, carefully, until his pain lessened into a throbbing ache.
Oliver gave a hiccupping sob and rubbed the tears out of his eyes. He was in the big cell, with Luna and Sirius. Close by, they watched him, eyes wide.
‘I am sorry, little one,’ came Almitak’s voice in his mind. It sounded so sad and broken that Oliver wanted to hug him.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said softly aloud. In his mind, Almitak sighed.
“Okay, I won’t be,” said Luna, kneeling down next to him. “You okay? They must’ve drugged you really good this time.”
Oliver sniffed, more tears dripping from his eyes. “I wish I still was.”
Sirius came over and sat on his other side, gently setting a hand on his back. “The pain will either go away or they’ll heal it before next time.”
Oliver nodded, and as he did the pounding in his head worsened. He pressed his aching head into his hands as his tears redoubled and his broken body shook with painful silent sobs.
He felt Sirius and Luna’s arms wrap gently around his shoulders, and in the mindscape he felt Almitak’s presence cover him like a blanket and cocoon him, easing his pain. Oliver found himself sitting in his mind wrapped in warm purple, blue and gold light.
“Go to sleep, little one,” said Almitak. “I will sit up in your mind for a while.”
Oliver curled up in the light-blanket. “Okay, Tacky. Wake me up if you need a break.”
Almitak gave a choked laugh and shook his head.
“I won’t.”
Hi, I’d just like to say that I discovered your blog a few months ago, read everything, and I love it so much! :D As for prompts, could you please write a story in which Rex is injured, and he and Ahsoka have to wait for a medevac (or something like that)? I’m just so interested in what dynamic they might have in that situation. Thanks! :)
Ahsoka sets her craft down in the first empty area she can find in the chaos. There’s running, shouting, sirens from emergency craft arriving. Smoke, noxious fumes, boots pounding the dirt and pitiful cries from the injured. At the epicenter, a downed flagship.
Ahsoka’s heart pounds. There had been hundreds on board, and many of them were her men, or Anakin’s.
She reports to the hastily-improvised medic’s station, where an older clone with a grizzled face – Splinter, if memory serves - is barking orders as he passes out masks and sterile gloves.
“Rule number one,” Splinter orders the group gathered around him. “Stay off the comms. We need all the resources we have to communicate with approaching craft. Rule number two,”
He stops to lean both hands on the holoprojector table. “Keep moving. Those who can walk, send them here.” He pauses to point at the holographic map. “General Koon is there, accounting for the survivors. Those who can’t walk, program their coordinates into the database and tell them to hang tight. The medics will be doing triage and making decisions on who to transport first. Leave the dead. Am I perfectly clear?”
It’s easier said than done. Ahsoka finds and unburies two deceased victims before she hears someone shouting out. She follows the sound to where a trooper lies. His leg is broken, but he seems stable. She wants to stay and help, but her orders were to flag his location, reassure him briefly, and keep moving.
There’s a large piece of the hull smoking and collapsed upon itself. She thinks she hears something echoing inside.
She climbs up to the shattered airlock door, which is tilted towards the sky. She hears it again - someone is coughing.
“Hello?” she calls out. “Is somebody there?”
More coughing replies.
Ahsoka crawls through the tight space, avoiding sharp debris. She sees the tip of a regulation boot in between two melted beams, and her first thought is that there’s no way its owner is living. She shies away, reluctant to see another corpse up close. But then she hears the coughing again.
She starts pulling debris away from the beams, and sees that not only is the trooper breathing, but he is helmetless, and his hair is the color of bleach, stark in contrast to the deep crimson around him.
Ahsoka swallows the sudden lurch deep in her gut.
“Rex!”
“Kix?” Rex mumbles through trembling lips. Ahsoka glances around, but the medic is nowhere in sight. She’s not sure if Rex is trying to let her know that Kix is nearby, or if he’s just hurting and wants the medic to appear and help.
Ahsoka kneels by his head, gaze searching for any obvious open wounds.
“Rex, buddy, I’m going to get you out of here,” she announces. With careful application of the Force, she lifts up the durasteel beam that is pinning him down. Fear tugs at her heart and her control wavers, but she manages not to drop it, instead setting it gently to the side.
With some of the pressure off his lungs, Rex begins coughing again in earnest. Each forceful expulsion of air from his lungs splatters droplets of blood on his white armor. There are bruises already starting to purple around his face, but Ahsoka suspects the worst damage is internal.
She knows better than to try to move him without knowing whether he has a neck injury. They need a medic and a hoverstretcher.
She reaches for her wrist commlink. “This is Commander Tano, requesting emergency medical assistance. I’m with Captain R—with Clone Captain 7567 and I think he might be in critical condition.”
The comm switches off. She returns to the captain’s side. “Are you with me, Rex?
Rex’s answer is interrupted by a burst of static, then a voice:
“Medics are in the field, triaging as they can. Please help keep this channel clear for aerial communications, Commander.”
“He needs help,” Ahsoka insists immediately. “He needs it now. He’s the Captain, star’s sake,”
“With all due respect Commander, it doesn’t matter if he’s the Grand Admiral. We are doing our best, and you need to stay off the comms.”
Ahsoka huffs.
“It’s alright,” says Rex, unconvincingly with his lips as bloodstained as they were.
“It isn’t alright.” Ahsoka is shaking. She types a new frequency into the comm. “Hey Skyguy, when you get this, Rex and I need help. I’m scared it might be really urgent. Please respond.”
She was going to dial Obi-Wan’s frequency next, but Rex stays her hand.
“Is Kix coming?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Ahsoka says. She doesn’t know if Kix is among the medics responding, or if he is injured himself somewhere. It worries her a little that Rex keeps bringing it up.
Rex made eye contact, then looked away. He was chewing his bottom lip.
“What is it?”
“I’m, uh, losing feeling in my toes, Commander.”
That’s not good, Ahsoka thinks.
He coughs again while Ahsoka removes the shin guards from his legs, hoping it might help his circulation. “Stay here.”
Ahsoka climbs out of the hull again and shouts for help. Troopers scanning the wreckage ignore her. She runs up to a medic who is applying pressure to a brother’s wound and begs him to come with her.
“Commander, we have to make our way to the injuries people have flagged as urgent first.”
“This is urgent!” Ahsoka protests.
“Then I’m sure someone will be there soon!” he snaps.
Ahsoka buries a flash of anger in the Force and accepts that she is being irrational. She makes her way back to where Rex lies, and he seems less alert than before.
He reaches up and lets her grab his hand. “Don’t…” he murmurs. “Don’t go away again.”
“I won’t,” she promises. “Rex, buddy, are you still with me?” she asks again. “Can you tell me what year it is?”
He ignores the question, and whispers, “It’s numb all the way past my knees now.”
He sounds scared, and that’s an emotion Ahsoka has never witnessed him expressing. He is fighting to stay conscious. Ahsoka squeezes his hand harder. She wonders if she could get in contact with R2, who is waiting where she docked her own ship. Somebody, anybody.
After an eternity, there are footsteps climbing down the side of the hull where Ahsoka entered. The trooper pulls off his helmet, and relief floods Ahsoka’s veins like a tidal wave when she sees the lightning-bolt tattoos at his temples.
“Kix,” Rex exhales, and Ahsoka is also relieved that Rex is still coherent enough to recognize him. But then immediately, as if the medic’s presence gives him permission, he starts to drift out again.
Kix approaches with a quiet frown on his face. “Stay awake if you can, brother,” he whispers.
He gestures for Ahsoka to start easing a blanket under Rex’s frame so that they can lift him smoothly onto the hoverstretcher. Ahsoka finally lets go of Rex’s hand, placing it down by his side.
TAT - honestly though, anything that involves internal injuries tends to really stroke my goat. When nothing can be seen visibly accept that the whumpee is very clearly dying, and all the friends (read teammates) of whumpee can do is hold them and wait until helps arrives.
Same. Copious amounts of blood is great and all, but sometimes not seeing the blood is just as whumperfly enduring.
So general battery and general blunt force trauma (via telekenesis but still) what kind of injuries from that might send you to a more extended hospital stay?
Blunt force trauma may not penetrate but it can still cause concussions, crush injuries, broken bones, torn ligaments, severe bruising, organ damage and internal bleeding.
