📚 Walter
Astraphobia
Masterlist
A/N: Hi anon! Thanks for the ask! I hope it's okay that it's Walter comforting someone else by telling a bedtime story! A major shoutout to @geralts-yenn for checking this for at least somewhat accurate six-year-old-ness.
(This was written from a promt from this ask game!)
Characters: Walter Marshall, littlebrother!Mikey, OFC
Summary: Walter doesn't have quite the night he had planned on when a thunderstorm scares both his girlfriend and his little brother...
Word count: 1.2k
Warnings: Fluff. Mention of 'underage'(?) sex (They're both sixteen.) A mom saying a totally un-hilarious, major cringy thing.
@deandoesthingstome @geralts-yenn @ellethespaceunicorn @mayloma @keanureevesisbae @summersong69 @ylva-syverson @peaches1958 @sillyrabbit81 @livisss @peyton-warren
“Shit,” I groan as I sit up. Outside, the rain is picking up, and I can hear the beginning rumble of thunder in the distance. I look next to me, where I had just managed to get Christina mostly naked. “Get dressed.”
“Why?” she asks. “What’s going on?” It takes absolutely everything I’ve got to ignore what the finger she’s dragging down my back is doing to me.
“Mikey,” I answer bluntly. “There’s a storm coming. He gets scared.” The words are barely out of my mouth before I hear him scream in the other room. Chris and I both scramble to get our clothes back on, finishing in the nick of time, just as there’s a soft knock on the door. I chuckle when I hear it. Since when does this kid know how to knock?
“Hey, little buddy,” I say after opening the door and picking Mike up off the floor. He’s on the verge of crying. Kid really doesn’t like thunder. One look at that trembling bottom lip tells me he’s about to break, so I walk him over to my bed and put him under the covers between me and Chris. It’s cozy, for sure, because this queen-sized bed really isn’t made for three people, even if the third is a tiny one like Mikey. “It’s okay, no need to be scared.”
Never in the history of trying to calm someone down, has the phrase ‘there’s no need to be scared’ actually been helpful, but it’s the only thing I can think of. I look at Chris and pray she’s better at this than I am.
“Come here, cutie,” she says, pulling him closer. It doesn’t seem to calm him down much just yet, but he does snuggle into her arms, which is a good start.
“Bear,” he sobs softly, and I almost fly out of bed. ‘Bear’ is Mikey’s black and white stuffed dog, and he absolutely can’t sleep without it. That does make it fairly easy to retrieve, because it’s going to be on his bed – probably. Yep! Armed with Bear, and Mike’s favorite blanket, I make my way back to my room, careful not to trip over anything in Mike’s room, or the hallway, in the complete dark. It’s definitely a challenge, but he’ll never fall asleep if I turn on a light now.
“Bear is right here, Mikey,” I whisper. The first flash of lightning brightens the room just as he reaches out to grab the plushie. Chris impatiently grabs my hand and pulls me back into bed. “You don’t like the storm, either, do you?”
“No,” she admits, “I hate it.”
“You’re scared, too?” Mikey asks. Just because the tears aren’t flowing now, doesn’t mean they won’t come back, so I don’t pat myself on the back just yet.
“I am,” Chris says softly. I can’t see her face, but it sounds like she’s embarrassed about it.
“I was, too, when I was small,” I tell Mikey.
He gasps. “But… you’re not afraid of anything! You’re not even scared of girls!” I never thought I would find the start of the ‘girls are gross’ phase so funny, but I do.
“Trust me,” I tell him, “I’m plenty scared of girls.” Behind him, Chris snickers – and almost chokes while she’s at it… I really don’t need a second crisis on my hands here. Luckily, Mike is too young to understand the innuendo – at least I really, really hope he is.
Every time thunder or lightning strikes, Mike squeals like a hurt puppy, and Chris squeezes him tighter. The tears don’t come back, though, and I’m really happy he seems to have calmed down at least a little bit. I hate seeing Mikey scared. For a moment, I think we might actually be ready to go to sleep, but then Chris asks a still trembling Mikey if he wants to hear a story. Of course he does! Now, one might have assumed that because Chris was the one to offer, she actually has a story to tell him. She doesn’t. So that falls on me, I guess. Fine.
I toss another pillow behind my bed, so I can sit up a little, pull Mikey on top of me and Chris into my side. The whole thing feels so ridiculously domestic that it should probably scare me at this age – and if I’m being perfectly honest, it kinda does. Plenty scared of girls, remember?
Selecting one isn’t easy to begin with – it can’t be a story they made a Disney movie out of, because Mikey knows those by heart and will interrupt me to point out every mistake he thinks I make. I also have to keep in mind that the kid is already scared, so half of the Grimm-repertoire is out. The first three options I call out, apparently mom has already told him in the past week or something. We finally settle on Rumpelstiltskin – a story I hate for no reason other than that I have told it to him six million times. Now, instead of Mikey pointing out all the errors in my fantastic – if I do say so myself – interpretation, it’s Chris.
“Excuse me, do you want to tell this story, miss ‘I don’t know, you tell him something’?” I’m a little snippy, I know, but it’s the third time she’s interrupted me before I even managed to finish my second sentence.
“No,” she says quickly, ending her answer on a shriek and nestling into my side when lightning flashes again. I continue, and after a while, I can tell Mike is about to fall asleep. He never makes it to the end of bedtime stories. The one thing this kid knows how to do is sleep like a log. It takes a while to get him to settle down enough to actually go to sleep, but once he’s asleep… Soon, I find myself finishing the story for Chris. I’m not sure if she knows that, but I can’t bring myself to stop; she seems to like that I keep talking.
“Thanks, Walter,” she says softly when the story is up, “for not making fun of me.”
“Why would I make fun of you?” I ask. What is she thinking?
“I was every bit as scared as Mikey,” she confesses. It sounds silly, but she’s talking like she committed a crime or something.
“Good thing I was here, then,” I say as I give her a kiss on her forehead before carefully putting Mikey in between us.
“So, did you guys have fun last night?” mom asks without looking up from the food she’s making.
“Yeah,” I groan. Between almost getting pushed out of my bed by Mike and getting kicked in the shins every time Chris was bothered by the storm, I didn’t sleep a wink…
“Quite a storm, huh? Was Mikey okay?” Mom continues. I almost drop the stack of books I’m holding. She knew.
“You… Damn!” I yell. “Did I…” I can’t even finish my sentence, because I’m floating somewhere halfway between angry and impressed, and I don’t know how I want to finish that sentence.
“Did you what? Get cockblocked by your mom? I guess. I’m sorry.” I wince – as any sane person would – when my mom says ‘cockblocked’.
“Trust me, Walt, I hated saying it as much as you hated hearing it,” she laughs, “but the look on your face right now makes it more than worth it…”