painkillers

The yawn hit as he trailed the condiment aisle, seeming to roll on like an endless peel of thunder. Theo pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, squinting away as he caught his reflection in the glass front of the chiller cabinets that stretched against the back of the store. Bags heavier than they’d been since those first few months with Hazel at home, his daughter coming full circle with giving her parents sleepless nights. What he’d have given for it to have been from those three am feeds or wet diapers now. Those were easy to fix, those slow circuits around the house patting the heaving little back until her sobs had trailed off and they’d both been able to slip back under. None of this was.

Squinting at the jars that lined the shelf, he tapped a knuckle against each in turn, counting them off like they were a breadcrumb trail to what he really needed to top off the cart of groceries. Pickles. The biggest jar possible if the final weeks of this pregnancy were going to echo the last. Those broken nights were already there, although this time when Freyja turned to him in the night, he could gather her in, bump and all, cradling her, Bo, trying to hold together their family as something tried to shatter it again.

An empty space on the shelf mocked him. Like the great pickle famine had come to town and nobody had told him about it. Feeling the strain unfurl in his gut, like this one failure was the benchmark everything else was gonna be dragged up to. ”Hey, Logan. Have you got anything out back waiting to be … I’m gonna kiss you.” The relief rolled out on a tired chuckle. Theo paused at the checkout, not bothering to start unpacking the cart before he leaned over and seized the clerk’s cheeks. The family sized jar of pickles was shoved between them. The holy freaking grail!

It went into the bags, settled carefully at the bottom, the foundation he’d try and build everything back on. Pickles weren’t going to erase what Hazel had inherited from him, or the fact that his daughter had almost died in a crash that had killed someone else. It wouldn’t ease Freyja’s heartache over Bo, her Bo, or stop the worries from wrapping around her like some inescapable shroud, but those little comforts were what you clung onto when everything seemed dark enough to swallow you whole if you weren’t careful. The ice cream would maybe do the same for Hazel, the flavours carefully selected as he’d rolled through the ice cream parlour on the way to the grocery store.

His comfort? Theo’s smile was tight as he set the bags in the back seat of the car and climbed in – later than he wanted, but there was no way he was letting Freyja try and cart all this back when she was already carrying almost the full weight of their expanding family. All he could do was support her with hands that would’ve shielded her and their little Hazelnut from everything if they could. Gathering them both close, blocking out the nightmares of the world with a back that was strong (stronger than Frank’s scarred mess of one at least). He could take it – the restless nights, the ball of fear in the pit of his stomach that the third strike of Hazel’s banshee abilities would be the culmination he didn’t want, those little twinges that were back between his shoulder blades, like something was out there just waiting to take that swipe again.

Nope, eyes on the road for the trip home. No constantly scanning behind and around, waiting for hunter or whatever else the universe wanted to throw at them to hit. This pregnancy was supposed to be a world away from the nightmare of the first two trimesters of the last. A reset button hit somehow, their lives spinning out a different way instead of boomeranging back around.

If there was some sort of cosmic message in what was going on, some omen of what was to come, the dogs hadn’t got the message at least. Theo heard them scuttling towards the door as he opened it and slipped inside. Out of the living room, which meant Freyja had curled up on the couch, waiting for him to get home, guarding the door, the keys, their daughter. ”Don’t wake her up and you’ll get a treat,” he murmured low to Freckles and Pluto, grinning as their ears perked up. Soon they’d have to hide their treats up on top of the high counters and even then they could probably go boosting each other up there. Had the woman at the shelter said that they’d make horses look small?

A treat from the cupboard where they were for now for each kept the two of them quiet while he started to unpack the groceries. Ice cream in the freezer, along with a couple of bags of veggies – all the better to ruin a teenager’s dinner – almost everything else in the fridge, refilling what said teenager and her bottomless pit uncles had cleared out. That jar set there at his elbow, alongside the one of peanut butter that had been easier to find, as he surreptitiously loaded the fresh bag of dog treats into the cupboard. The sound of the dogs click-clacking bought out to the living room was a guarantee that their mistress was up.

Theo cracked the jar of pickles as Freyja padded in, speaking his name low. He turned into her as she moved close, dropping his head to kiss his wife as she leaned up into him, the baby globe between them, an insistent push into their lives. ”Hey, I was gonna let you sleep a bit more. The dogs didn’t wake you up did they? The traitors.” He shot a look over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes in their direction. By now they were probably jammed onto the couch, trying to make the most of the warm spot while it lasted.

”Hmm?” He saw Freyja pull away as he looked back, brows pulling together at the sharp edge of her question. Dipping his head, he sniffed himself, wondering if the smell of the lab, or Nixon’s cologne – that stuff could double as a biological weapon if they ever needed to destroy anybody’s sinuses. ”What’s what?” he asked. ”Oh … the pickles. I figured, you know, maybe we could all do with a little … oh no.” In an instant he was slamming the lid on the jar, closing it viciously before he shoved it in the same cupboard as the dog treats.

The first time Hazel had thrown up, he caught it … right down his chest, a couple of drops making it onto his lower lip in a way that had left her heaving. By the time they’d gotten her through kindergarten and the never ending series of stomach bugs kids seemed to pick up as their little bodies strained to find and grow accustomed to every germ in the universe his stomach barely roiled anymore. People were right when they said it was different with your own kids … or your wife. Hesitating just a moment he grabbed a wad of paper towels, a bottle of water from the fridge. ”You know what I had to go through for those?” he asked lightly. His touch was just as light as he brushed her hair back from her face with his free hand. ”Not your thing this time around huh? You want me to burn them?” A thousand yards away from the house maybe to avoid redecorating. A tired smile rolled crooked on his face, the bottle settling on the counter before he gently wiped his wife’s mouth.

Tagged: FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 1306

He hadn’t been born a worrier, not the way he’d been both deaf and a crier. Theo guessed he’d picked up that blithe attitude to his dad serving from his mom, and that hadn’t changed when Frank had enlisted. It was a job where lives were lost, but his mom had always believed her husband would come home and he had. Frank had every time until he got that damn call from Germany. Seeing that mirror image of himself in a hospital bed had shifted something inside of him, left the foundations of his life just slightly off. He hadn’t expected what had happened after, hadn’t expected her. Freyja’s hands had steadied that lingering instability, shoring him up through nightmares and the thing that he’d eventually been killed over. Death had separated them until Cory had broken down that wall, but even through it, Theo had known that Freyja’s hands were the ones getting him through it.

His had already been folded around her, every instinct burning in him to protect the woman he’d come to love. In the clearing in the woods he’d done just that, trying desperately to stand between death and Freyja, death and Hazel. For sixteen years they’d tried to shield their daughter from everything that they knew was out there in the world to hurt her. Now that Bo was on the way they’d do the same, trying to ward off those evils, preparing their kids for what they couldn’t prevent. Caring for their family with every cell in their bodies, even when they didn’t exactly want it.

Theo clucked his tongue like the dogs had been the instigators of the trouble this time, but he’d sneak them another treat later, a reassurance they’d done the right thing, a thank you for not rushing right in when Freyja’s question was cut short by a violence he couldn’t have predicted. At least Logan wasn’t gonna have to scour the entire state for stock, he might have to scour the trash can later though, the clean up of this definitely on him. Starting slow with it, he skimmed Freyja’s hair back from her face, clutched the damp wash cloth like it would magically wipe away the scent of the pickles.

The laugh that rolled out was low, a little strained, like the sympathetic stomach twists were coming back after years of cast iron. ”I think Logan would argue with you about that. He held onto the last jar in the store specially. I offered to kiss him for it, but he turned me down.” He’d have kissed his wife for that smart mouth, but definitely not until the water had been supplemented with some toothpaste. Cupping her chin lightly, he wiped her mouth the same way he’d done Hazel’s a hundred times as she’d gone through that stage of bringing home every possible germ she encountered in kindergarten, often taking her parents down with her too. ”Done,” he promised softly, knowing that Frank and Kit would probably make short work of them if he passed them off tomorrow. Fingers crossed the sudden aversion them wasn’t as transmissible as the stomach flu.

Lifting the cloth for the second go around, Theo mopped Freyja’s mouth again, almost ready for a cheek kiss and that comforting hug. Freyja was there ahead of him in needing it though, the welling of the tears in her eyes twisting at his stomach. He set the cloth aside – in the sink, not on the counter, he wasn’t that big a monster – his face crumpling into those worried lines as he cupped her cheek. ”Hey,” he whispered. ”It’s just pickles … not spilled milk. It’s gonna be OK.” An easy promise to make for such an inconsequential thing.

It was different when it was your kid.

Was this what it had been like when the news had come in about Freyja’s brother? Or had it been like this for his parents when the news would’ve reached them – probably before he’d even gotten to Ramstein on the airlift – that Frank’s team had been caught up in the explosion of an IED? Fear that gripped you in a way nothing else did. Claws that dug into your heart and raked at the back of your mind. It wasn’t the same way it had been when Freyja was the one standing in the hunter’s crosshairs, it was a feeling he’d only felt sweep over him when they’d had Hazel. When they’d almost lost her.

Theo caught his wife, drew her in as she pressed as close as their growing child would allow – the triple dig of her forehead, her nose, the beach ball like press of her bump that he could feel in his own bones. He rubbed her back, one hand settling at her neck as he pressed his lips against the safe territory of her hair. ”Hazel had the accident, but we were a part of it too, it wrapped around all of us.” He wanted to tell her that there was no reason to be scared , but the accident that had almost killed their daughter had proved that there were still plenty of reasons out there.

Quiet ssshing noises rolled out of him, his hand patting her back so lightly. The call had come in to her after the accident. Freyja was the one rushing towards the scene while he’d been separated from it by time and the distance from Whitmore to home. His wife had taken the burden of all that fear on her shoulders, while she already had the burden of their unborn child to bear. ”I’m so sorry baby. I’m sorry you had to go through it, I’m sorry she did. I’m sorry you lost him.” He was sorry he’d never gotten to meet the man who’d meant so much to the woman he loved. Sorry for so many things that had left her alone in that car, terrified that their daughter had died the same way her brother had. Sorry he couldn’t stop her heart from breaking now as the dam his incredibly strong wife usually was broke right there in his arms.

Then he’d held her through the story she’d told of how Bo had passed, gathering her up in his arms, rocking her like he’d done a hundred times since while he’d pressed lips to her temple. He’d have done it again now, moving to the table to draw the hefty, incredible, strong, amazing heft of his wife down to his lap, but the apologies had started. Theo’s frown deepened, the hand on the back of Freyja’s neck sliding round to cup her chin and lift so he could look into those tear filled eyes and reassure. ”You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You got there to her, you took care of our girl and you had every right in the world to be relieved that it wasn’t her standing in that road.” The man’s family would grieve him, just as Freyja had grieved her brother, had grieved for him. They would grieve for the loss of some of Hazel’s innocence in that moment, and they would hold each other.

As Freyja’s hands fisted in his shirt, he did move. Sweeping her up the way he would’ve done even six months before wasn’t an option, that sort of ungainliness would’ve had them both sprawled across the tile, but he turned them, leading his wife to the table. Theo drew her down into his lap, where he could hold her against his chest and let her feel the heart that still beat steady in his chest. His fingers found the necklace at her throat, the heartbeat that drummed in her own chest, albeit faster now and not just from the pregnancy and the tiny system that was piggybacking on hers.

”We’re not losing her,” he promised hoarsely, his other hand smoothing over the curve of her bump, knowing it needed to be said now. ”Dreams are assholes, they’re gonna slip into that weak spot in your head and they’re going to play on it, but our baby girl’s safe. We’re going to keep her safe, even if we have to lock her up in her room for the next forty or fifty years. And every time those dreams come, I want you to wake me up. I want to promise you that it’s not Hazel every time. Don’t be scared, honey.” That was easier said than done. Science had explained a lot, cured so many things, but the mind was beyond their reach in so many ways.

Tagged: FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 1428