I wanted to end the planned prompts for @whumpmasinjuly on something sweet, maybe a little sad. Just pure angsty sweetness between Emmett and Faye and baby August, I don’t know how else to describe it, and I won’t give any more than that away. Not whumpy, but I hope you enjoy!
Emmett’s Master List
Tags: @lave-whump, @highwaywhump, @pebbledriscoll @whumpinggrounds (Let me know if you’d like added or removed from the tag list)
cw: bbu general warning; referenced conditioning and training.
~*~*~
“How do I..?” Emmett struggled for words. it was as if the small bundle in Faye’s arms kept stealing them away from him. Every time he opened his mouth, the words dried upon his tongue. They jammed in his throat, his brain deciding they weren’t adequate for the moment.
Faye smiled at him, exhausted. “Hold him?”
Emmett nodded, coming to sit at the edge of the hospital bed. He let Faye quietly arrange his arms and hands, then rested the baby in them. She moved his hands, his fingers, and then sat back against the bed, satisfied.
“Thank you,” he managed in a frail voice.
Faye smiled gently, her eyelids drooping. “Of course, dear.”
He smiled at her for a moment, then all his attention was pulled back to the baby in his arms. Their baby. His baby. He was breathless, complimenting the speechlessness. He laughed under his breath, thinking about how he hadn’t been trained for this. This kind of care was not built into him. He knew in his gut that it would not come naturally, let alone easily, and the mountains of unknown still left to uncover shook him.
The weight of August’s small body in his arms made him want to try. The exhausted but elated shine in Faye’s sleepy eyes reassured him.
He wished he had brought his sketchbook. It had been left behind, resting on the kitchen table. Drawing was the quickest relief for his nerves. The swirl of emotions inside of him was cacophonous, echoing against his skull and ringing in his ears. His fingers itched for his pencils. There were too many small moments he needed to preserve on paper, right this second before they faded from memory.
“Hard to believe we were ever so little,” Faye murmured. Her eyes had finally closed, head tilted to the left. Her dark hair was spread over the sheets in a tangled fan.
“It is.”
Emmett cracked a smile -- she would be terribly upset to know how it looked right then. He wanted to take her picture. Not because he wanted her to see or because she looked especially beautiful. In fact, that wouldn’t be the word he would use to describe the woman he loved at that moment. No, he wanted her picture then because she finally seemed at peace. After months of seeing her in a thousand other states, here she was, resting.
“Faye?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I keep holding him?” He ran gentle fingers over August’s sleeping face, still pinkish and squished with newness. Emmett knew the question was childish, silly sounding. He knew the answer, but he was compelled to ask. Compelled to get all the uncertainty out of him before her sisters and father arrived in an hour or so. For now, it was just him and her and August in the blanket of very early morning.
“Em?” Faye’s eyes had opened again, were locked on his face. Emmett felt himself still and tense underneath them, but forced it down. He let out a steadying breath; she could call him that. She wouldn’t use it to hurt him. She would only ever say it with love. “You can hold him as long as you like. He’s yours.”
“I can?” The words fell from his lips before he could think better of it. He coughed and tucked his head back to August, suddenly ashamed of himself. It was disquieting sometimes how easily he could lay himself bare before her. “Sorry, forget that. I know I can.”
“Em? Could you look at me?”
He did, not wanting to avoid her.
She held out a hand for him on the blankets.
He swallowed. “I don’t. I don’t know how-. I don’t think I can hold him with one hand, Faye.”
Faye nodded and pushed herself upright. She winced, letting out a slow breath. She twisted her hair at the base of her neck and leaned forward to kiss him. Emmett met her, still holding August close to him. When she pulled away, one of her hands rested against Emmett’s neck, the other was on top of August’s head, fingers smoothing his sparse dark hair.
“I don’t have anything important to say,” Faye said finally, her eyes lingering on August’s face. “But you need to know you don’t need to ask me permission. He’s your son, just as much as he is mine.”
“I know.”
“Are you telling me what I want to hear, Em?”
“No,” Emmett answers. He fumbled to thread together his tumbling thoughts into words, then a sentence, something comprehensible and meaningful. He doesn’t believe he gets the hang of it, all of the pieces feeling like near misses that he hopes she’ll grasp. She had always done it before. “I know I don’t need to ask. And I know he’s mine. Your family would hardly let me forget it.”
“Oh, Em-.”
“I’m not sure what to do or what to think right now.” Emmett sighed and shifted a hand so his fingers would touch her’s. “He’s a funny thing isn’t he? Small, totally new. He’ll be so much, it’s dizzying. He’ll never know what I used to be. All of that, he won’t ever know. He won’t know why I don’t have a family like yours, where all the little marks on my arms came from, what I was to... Well, that I ever belonged to someone.”
Faye didn’t reply, but he could feel her “patient eyes” on him. The expression she would wear when she worked, urging them and now him to say all of what was in his head and then more. So he did.
“Part of me wants him to know. I mean, he might ask some day. There are things we can’t shield entirely. And I don’t want to worry about that day, but I know I can’t and I won’t.” Emmett exhaled. “I want it to stay just like this for a while. Just us. I like that there are three of us now.”
“You do?”
“I do. It feels right, complete. Holding him now.”
Faye laughed softly. “I was just thinking. It’s odd seeing him when I could only feel him until a few hours ago.”
“I can only imagine,” Emmett smiled.
“Strange. But good.” Faye kissed his cheek, then his nose. “I like seeing you hold him.”
“You do?”
“Mhmm. I’ve never seen you look so hopeful before.”
Hi, anon! Thank you so much for this prompt -- I picked Henry in his first therapy appointment for this one. Enjoy!
cw: recovery timeline, therapy appointment, vaguely referenced training and conditioning, reference underage box boy; nervousness, distrust.
~*~*~*~
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” Henry said archly, slouching down in the seat he’d been give. A nice, squishy armchair, faded from years for use. He had expected a therapist to have a couch.
Dr. Hawkins was a referral, a recommendation. Someone brand new who Henry was supposed to trust. He was older than Caleb. He looked like the Philosophy professor who’s lectures always left him turned around. He seemed okay, all things considered, but Henry had had enough mind games for two lifetimes. “Therapy” just sounded like a clever disguise for more.
“Why do you think I would I lie to you?” The older man asked. He sounded like an NPR host, calm and easy going. It set Henry’s teeth on edge.
It couldn’t mean how it sounded.
Nothing ever meant how it sounded.
Henry didn’t really want to answer. He didn’t really want to be here. He had promised June he would go, that he would be honest and try. So he sucked his pride behind his teeth and tried.
“I think you’d lie to me because I don’t know you, but you know who I am. You probably saw me on the news or heard about me somewhere,” Henry said slowly. “I think you’d lie because you’re an adult and I’ve been manipulated before, and no one I’ve been with in the last year hasn’t looked at me without knowing exactly what they wanted from me.”
Hawkins scribbled two words on a pad in his lap, talking at the same time. A practiced professional. “How have you been manipulated before?”
“I was a kid. Literally a kid,” Henry huffed. “And I just. I just wanted them to like me. I did everything they asked me to...”
“Why did you?” Hawkins asked. “And I don’t mean because of their influence, I mean why did you Henry want to do what they asked.”
Henry shrugged. “Didn’t know any different. I thought it was what I was meant to do. Make them happy, that is.”
“Okay. What would have happened if you didn’t?”
“They,” Henry hesitated, getting his story straight. “They would have sent me back.”
“I understand you ran away.”
“That was later. Like almost two years later. Once I started getting how fucked it was…” Henry rubbed the heel of his palm into his right eye. Keeping himself in check. He wasn’t going to show this guy a shred of vulnerability until he was sure, very very sure.
“So this was in the beginning of your time with them.”
Henry nodded.
“And you wanted to do everything they asked… So they wouldn’t send you back to foster care?” Hawkins jotted a few more things down, then looked back up at Henry. “Is that right?”
“Yeah…” Henry sucked the truth back behind his teeth. “Yeah, that’s right.”
I’ve been hinting at a piece revolving around Dr. Uma Cochran and her attempted recruitment by Facility 004 for a while now. While I don’t have plans for anything longer at the moment, today’s @whumpmasinjuly prompt seemed like an excellent opportunity to play in the space. This takes place quite a bit before the current timeline (i.e. in this Kieran is maybe 9-10 years old and he’s almost 32 when he meets Henry for the first time). If anything trips you up, I’m always around for questions, so please don’t be afraid to ask!
Enjoy!
Cw: bbu; referenced conditioning, training, pet whump, medical whump, manipulation.
~*~*~*~*~
Uma chewed her lip as she drove the highway, taking them safely home. The car speakers played public radio but she couldn’t focus on it. She kept glancing into the backseat, her subconscious making sure that her son was still there. He was, swinging his legs and reading with his thumb in his mouth.
She should never have brought Kieran with her. She hadn’t thought anything of it when she had been invited for a tour. Kieran and Felix often came with her to conferences and symposiums without fuss. This time should have been no different from taking a tour of a University’s new surgical wing. It was just supposed to be an easy day trip, an excuse to spend some time in the car just the two of them.
She hadn’t thought anything of it.
She was kicking herself for not.
The Facility was deep into New York State, out in the boondocks and employing most of the young men in the nearby town. She had been expecting a rehabilitation center — that’s what they had told her over the phone — not a prison.
Uma prided herself on seeing things for what they were at first glance. Seeing the flaws and minute cracks, scraping back the shine and gleam to see the often rather dull underside. Uma had been lied to, but rarely tricked. She had been tricked, plain and simple. By smiling people in uniforms, not scrubs, who seemed to think their Business As Usual was perfectly acceptable.
Young people, deprived of names, locked behind sturdy doors lining a long hallway. “Re-Training Rooms” that used equipment last seen in long-defunct mental institutions. Food was the bare minimum. Restraints were liberal.
It looked like a bad conglomeration of every horror trope ever invented, like a poor recreation of one of the frightening movies Matthew occasionally watched.
And Uma couldn’t scrub it from behind her eyes. She likely wouldn’t sleep that night.
The farther away they drove, the safer she began to feel. The less terrified she became, the less worried she was that her son would be looked at, sized up, lured away. She had kept a strong hold on him the whole time, for her own sake. Kieran was always well-behaved, but Uma knew she would have to watch him closely for the next few days. Anything he saw could trigger some dark memory about his birth mother, could remind him of something that would rattle him. She had done her best, scooping him up and pressing his face to her scarf, but she couldn’t control what he saw.
She could have controlled it if she hadn’t brought him.
She shouldn’t have brought him.
Uma was not one to make poor choices, especially when they related to her boys. She wouldn’t dream of putting them in harms way without an excellent and thoroughly-vetted reason. She should have looked into the company more, should have done a little more research, should have just let Matthew handle both the boys for the weekend he had done it plenty of times before —
“Mama?”
Uma blinked, eyes flickering up to the rearview mirror. “Yes, moosham?”
Kieran set his book in his lap and pushed his glasses up his nose. “How much longer?”
“Only an hour,” Uma smiled, working to keep her voice even.
“Promise?”
“Promise. Are you alright?”
“Yeah, fine,” Kieran shrugged. “I’m almost finished with my book and don’t have another one. So I wanted to know how long.”
Uma nodded, turning back to watch the road signs. “Not long then, and tomorrow we’ll go to the library for another one.”
“Really!”
“Mhmm, my treat for you being so well-behaved today.” Uma’s throat tightened as soon as she said the words. She had heard something similar in the facility.
