In today’s edition of Publishing Drafts I’ve Had Saved For A While: Faye Murphy’s nightmares and Emmett trying his best to comfort her for @badthingshappenbingo prompt Nightmares. I’m really gearing up for Whumpmas in July here and trying to post this story more consistently, so you all can get to know them before that pops off. I really love them, I love Emmett’s story, and I hope you all do too! Enjoy!
Emmett’s Master List
Tags: @lave-whump, @highwaywhump, @pebbledriscoll (Let me know if you’d like added or removed from the tag list!)
cw: bbu general warning; nightmares, panic reaction, fear reaction, past physical injury, past strangling, past manhandling, predatory behavior (male to female). Essentially hurt/comfort, but be careful out here, folks!
~*~*~
Faye smiled to herself. She had missed her office at the clinic and it seemed to have missed her.
Tara had kept it just the way she had left it, save for the signs of the accident and some light dusting. All the neat piles or papers and patient files; all her pens and highlighters; journal articles, desk calendar, and carefully arranged sticky notes. Just as she likes, just as she had left them, no interference.
She reminded herself to thank Tara later, maybe buy her lunch.
On instinct, she rose from her chair and walked around her desk. Her favorite pen twirled through her fingers as she walked towards the door. She didn’t know how, but she knew her next patient stood just beyond it waiting eagerly for their time with her.
Faye had always wanted to help people -- a fact that felt trite to admit but was the whole truth. When she was little, that need to help was directed towards he Barbie dolls and baby dolls. In middle and high school, it was giving the best advice she could to her friends, sisters, and cousins. By college, she had found the right path -- a career as a psychiatrist.
She had devoured each lesson, raced through each certificate and degree and internship she needed to be able to practice. She had thrown herself mind, body, and spirit into her patients and working her way towards practicing on her own.
The accident had shaken her to the core and left her scraped up, but she wasn’t about to let it stop her.
She hated being away from it all. She had missed the joy, the satisfaction that came with each day’s sessions. With knowing she had helped someone step in the right direction and move towards healing. Her heart pounded happily in her chest as she reached for the door handle.
She couldn’t wait to get back to it.
“Hey there, peaches.”
Faye blanched. “Lee?”
The man smiled at her, familiar and charming. “Did you miss me?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, stunned and near-stuttering. She took a step back, as if just being inside the threshold could protect her. “I’m working right now, Lee, and-, and-.”
“And, and, and,” lee mocked, his usual shit-eating grin turning sharper with each passing second. He leaned against the door frame then stepped forward, as if proving he could. Purposefully invading her space with that mean smile, neat haircut, and khakis he never ironed himself. “C’mon, Faye-baby. You know how to finish a sentence.”
She stepped back further, into the center of her office. Lee matched her pace for pace, eventually closing in on her. “You have to go, Lee. I--.”
“You what?”
“I don’t want you here,” Faye stumbled over her words, then over a chair. She caught herself on her desk and leaned back against it. She was trapped now, caught between furniture and the ex who had happily kicked her when she was all the way down. “I have patients to take care of and things to catch up on, and we aren’t together anymore, Lee--.”
“Oh don’t be like that, peaches,” Lee dismissed her protests with a blithe wave of his hand. He kept moving closer and closer, but Faye’s shoes were stuck fast to the carpet. His smiling face darkened, becoming more threatening now. Fear worked its way up her throat, sticking tight against each breath. “I know we had a little trip-up, but I’m a caring guy. I’m patient. You just needed time to get your mind right after your little meltdown--.”
“It wasn’t a meltdown!”
“You were hysterical, Faye!”
“I was not hysterical!”
“Look at you. You’re hysterical right now,” Lee said with mocking concern. He leaned forward, trapping her between his arms against the hard edge of her desk.
Faye froze, panic eating up her insides and seizing her fully. He was close. Too close. So very very close. She could feel his breath at her ear, on her neck. She could feel his hand skimming against her thigh over her skirt. She wanted to scream and swat at the hand. She wanted to push him out of the door, out of her office, and lock him in the hallway.
Lock all of it, everything, outside of the safety of her office.
“C’mon, peaches,” Lee whispered, taunting. “I know you still want me. I know you do, look at you. I know you’ll come back after you’re done with this washout you’ve been shacking up with.”
Faye let out a gasp, the only sound she could muster.
“Didn’t think I knew about him, now did you?” Lee chuckled. His hands moved up her legs, hips, waist. Just like he had done so many times in four years. it hadn’t terrified her then the way it did now. The same fear coursed through her as it had when his hand was wrapped tight around her throat.
His hand was on her throat again now.
Squeezing. Tighter, tighter, tighter.
“You can’t leave me, Faye,” he whispered. He squeezed harder, hand shaking her. Just as before. Somehow worse now. “I won’t let anyone else have you.”
She couldn’t even scream.
~*~*~
Faye awoke with a yelp, fingers scrabbling at her neck. Ghostly fingers pressed against her windpipe and not so easily pushed away. Something heavy lay one her right side. Something pressing her down, holding her down, keeping her from moving. She thrashed, tangling herself in the bedsheets until she fell over the side of her mattress and onto the floor with a bang.
The weight was gone.
The fingers were gone.
She could get away.
“Faye? What’s wrong?” A groggy voice sounded somewhere above her. She got her bearings in the dark bedroom and turned to see Emmett, bleary eyed, peering down at her. “Shit, are you alright?”
She could only stare, words gone and utterly confused.
“Faye?” Emmett held a hand out to her over the side of the bed. She took it numbly, rolling up onto her knees but unsure her legs would hold her. Just holding his hand ground her to the reality around her. it kept her still-flaring fear a little subdued. “Faye, are you alright?”
“Just a dream,” she managed to squeak out, more to herself than to him. He squeezed her hand. It was calloused and rough and solid around her’s.
“Can you stand? Did the fall hurt you?” He asked gently.
She shook her head and began to stand. “I don’t think so. Just bumped up, I suppose. I can get up. I’m just... I’m shocked.”
“Want me to check?” Emmett pushed himself up to sitting, the sheets pooling around his waist. Faye felt the faintest blush creep into her cheeks. He was shirtless, which she already knew. He always slept shirtless. But it struck her just then as she slide back onto the sheets.
You’ll come back, after you’re done with that washout...
Faye swallowed tightly against the echo in her brain. She stared at her fingers, still resting inside his grasp. Gentle, so gentle. She couldn’t shake the latent feeling of being watched, of Lee standing too close and just out of sight, waiting to pounce again. She slid closer to Emmett, leaning against him and savoring the warmth of his skin against her’s.
He held her close, his fingers cradling the back of her head and trailing through her hair. Comforting, sweet. He was always so sweet with her. “It was just a dream, Faye.”
“I know. A bad one.”
“It can’t hurt you. No matter how bad. I know that doesn’t help much... Tell me if I should just keep quiet.”
“You’re fine. it helps, hearing your voice.” Faye closed her eyes, tucked herself up against his shoulder. He was warm and sturdy, his voice a settling rumble passing from his body to her’s. It was a low, deep tone -- rolling thunder, waves at midnight. So very different from Lee’s. Whether he knew it or not, Emmett was slowly pulling her from her nightmare’s grip.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“It isn’t worth talking about in the dark.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, for now,” Faye whispered. “Maybe in the morning. Daylight is better.”
Emmett allowed himself a chuckle. She soaked up its feeling, a cat in sunlight. “Sorry, it’s just. It is morning.”
“So literal,” Faye giggled, a little dreamy sounding. She pushed herself up and kissed him. Everything about his was warm and solid and safe. She wanted to be wrapped up in him, smothered by him, protected by him. “What will I do when you go back home?”
His hands were soft at her waist, her hair. “I don’t have to go back.”
“Yes, but you should,” Faye answered. “I’ll figure out something, Emmett. I always have. But I do love you visiting.”
He hummed something in response. Sleep was starting to take back over his body, sagging and then rolling back down onto the sheets. He pulled her back down with him, covering her with blankets and threading his fingers through her hair, tracing small circles on the small of her back. He kept her close to his chest.
She was happy to curl up close to him. She wasn’t tired any longer and probably wouldn’t find her way back to sleep, but stayed put if only to feel him fall asleep underneath her. She would move off of him sooner than later, afraid that her weight would inspire vicious visions of Rhiannon Maddox. For now, she rested against the rise and fall of his chest.
After you’re done with that washout you’re shacking up with.
Faye’s stubbornness kicked in hard and fierce then. She wouldn’t be done with Emmett and the man wasn’t a washout. He was strong and wonderful. He was someone discovering himself in real time. Someone she could encourage and love on and be proud of. She was proud of him. Lee had had everything handed to him and at one time Faye had found stability in that -- in his old money family and all that he could lavish her with. Emmett had an innate strength and that was all the stability Faye needed.
She tilted her head up to look at him. His face was smooth with sleep. Emmett Kerr was a lot of things, a lot of things Faye loved or would learn how to. But she wouldn’t ask him to stay with her. She wouldn’t keep him. She wouldn’t trap him.
She loved him, but he deserved the choice.
In the dark, wrapped in his arms, Faye prayed he chose her.
Had a solid leg day. Not bad but, nothing for the record books either. Then I came home and had a disastrous night so I don’t have any pictures to share.
Turns out I still have panic reactions to guys talking to me in certain ways. Made myself sick. Feeling really gross now, cold, edgy, shaky and I have a headache. My heart rate is still too high to be able to sleep though.
I'm having a little freakout at the moment. Everything just gets a little too much and Dimension Slip is freaking me out. it's so complicated and i dread writing it because it'll be such a tight schedule and i think I just can't do it and gosh … right now I just feel like quitting writing for a while all together.
I'm so tired. Last night I had another panic reaction because there is much to do and so little time. I wrote the hole small essay that I have to write for one class. With all the title and footnotes and picturepage etc I did 8 pages of work. The main text is 3 pages long... I just slept 2 hours :/
