#i think i've finally wrestled it into submission tho

[peachy-panic]

This Could Be The Moment

This is it. The chapter I’ve been fist-fighting for weeks. This was one of those moments that was in my brain since the original conception of Do No Harm, so naturally there’s a lot of internal pressure to get it right. I hope I’ve done it some justice for y’all.

WARNINGS: BBU/BBU-adjacent, ongoing sleep deprivation, nightmares, PTSD, the most fucked up of headspaces, whumpee fearing caretaker, noncon kissing, nudity, two survivors of trauma navigating some messy, messy waters

Jaime wakes in a cold sweat.

His first instinct is, as always, to look toward the bedroom door. Where moments ago there was a vivid silhouette against a backlit hallway, lurching toward his bed, there is now only a closed door. The house beyond it is still and silent, and Jaime is alone. As always, the only looming monster in the vicinity is his own imagination.

He closes his eyes, trying to catch his breath. It’s routine by now, but even after so much repetition, the physical toll never seems to lessen. The bed sheets beneath him are soaked through, his hair matted to his forehead in clumps. Jaime sits up, peeling the soiled nightshirt from his body and tossing it into the laundry basket. 

He rolls out of bed, knowing there is no point in trying to steal a few more hours. Some nights, he gets lucky enough that the exhaustion wins out over the lingering anxiety and knocks him out. But most nights, his only solace is a hot shower while he waits for the sheets to dry. It doesn’t do much to quash the crawling sensation under his skin, but it’s a few less minutes spent tossing on a mattress and watching the slow approach of daylight through the curtain.

Blinking away the last remnants of sleep, he drags himself silently to the bathroom. He cranks the faucet to the hottest setting and forces his body under the flames.

As the water runs through his hair and scorches lines down his back, Jaime finds himself swaying. Crumbling. He doesn’t cry easily these days, but he feels the burn of frustration building behind his eyes. How long can he sustain this? How long can he wait out what feels like the inevitable?

It feels so much like those first few terrifying weeks at the training facility, where sleep was a commodity earned through acts of submission. The deprivation was torture then, and it’s torture now. This house is nothing like the cold, cement walls of that prison, and Sebastian is nothing like Handler Smith, but the fear is the same. He can’t seem to separate the feelings in his head.

At least in the facility, and even with the Keepers from his past, Jaime had learned what to expect. And he never had to wait long to find out for sure.

In the daylight, things with Sebastian have begun to crawl, slowly, toward a better place. The two of them have found routine in the small things: morning runs around the neighborhood, cooking sessions in the evenings, movie binging on the weekends. It is, objectively, the best living situation Jaime has had in years, and beyond what he could hope to have again. He recognizes this as fact. But Jaime can’t control his subconscious mind. He can’t help what comes at night.

The nightmares about Sebastian—about Sebastian touching him, hurting him—haven’t stopped. They haven’t even slowed down. If anything they’ve increased, and a vicious cycle has ramped into a hurricane: the more nightmares he has, the less sleep he gets, and the more difficult it becomes to discern reality from fiction. The nightmares get worse. The sleep becomes more sparse.

Even after a good day, Sebastian (or the shadowed version of him that exists in Jaime’s worst fears) finds him in sleep. The warm eyes that Jaime has come to recognize in the light get replaced by a cold leer, the gentle touches turned rough and demanding. The ghosts of those memories follow him into the daytime, whispering in his ear that everything Jaime so desperately wants to believe is a lie.

It’s the anticipation that suffocates him. The not knowing, but the suspecting. The when, not the if. Even when Sebastian has done everything he can to make Jaime feel safe, the guess work that goes into trying to brace for the moment when the rug gets ripped out from under him bleeds him dry of all his energy. No one has ever signed his contract with pure intentions. All kindness comes at a price.

Every day, Jaime stares at the black and white “rules” posted on the refrigerator door, listing out a dozen iterations of promises not to hurt him. Every day he watches Sebastian from the corner of his eye—when they’re in the kitchen, on the couch, in the car—and wonders if this will be the moment it happens. The moment he finally reaches out, lets his skin make contact, lets his hand linger the way it always begins in his nightmares. Jaime knows, sure as anything, that he won’t fight him when it happens. Even if his position as a Companion allowed him the space for resistance, Sebastian has been so good to him. And Jaime has done more for less deserving men.

This is the thought that plants the seed of an idea—one Jaime has never entertained. He has never been the one to initiate sex, and he wonders: if it’s going to happen anyway, would it be better under the illusion that the choice is his? He doesn’t know how he would go about it, if he ever gathered the courage to try. The thought floods him with nausea that he can’t seem to shake, but so does the waiting. Sometimes he just wonders if it would be easier to get the first time over with.

Then, at least, he will know.

He takes as much time in the shower as he can allow himself, but eventually the thought of wasting water forces him to shut off the faucet too early. He shivers in the sudden absence of the spray, but he doesn’t think it has much to do with the temperature. In a daze, he wraps himself up in one of the soft towels that Sebastian bought specifically for him. He makes his way back toward his room, but a light from the end of the hallway freezes him in place.

Sebastian is awake.

He doesn’t know what compels him to walk toward the living room, but he feels his legs moving beneath him, operating several steps ahead of his mind. He sees Sebastian before Sebastian sees him. He is on the couch, hunkered over the computer that rests on his crossed legs, and Jaime’s heart begins to race, because there it is again: that small voice in the darkest corner of his mind whispering, This could be the moment. Something has to give.

He tries to fight against it, to swallow it down, because he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want to do this. He could turn and pad back to the relative safety of the bedroom that Sebastian has never once entered without Jaime’s explicit permission and sweat it out until daybreak like always. But then Sebastian looks up, noticing him for the first time, and the voice in Jaime’s head gets louder and louder.

This could be the moment.

“Oh. Hey there.” Sebastian smiles at him.

Something has to give.

Jaime’s fingers tighten briefly around the towel at his waist, and before he can process his next move, the idea crystallizes into a plan.

****

Sebastian scrubs the heels of his palms over his eyes, but it only seems to dry them out further. He’s been staring at his computer screen for the better part of the last two hours, and that’s on top of the work day behind him. Not that he’s complaining. The work he’s doing now is entirely voluntary, and he doesn’t regret taking it on for a second.

Aria had helped set him up. It involved a secure VPN, some protective softwares that, ironically, look like they might infect his laptop with a virus at any given moment, and a long vetting process; though Sebastian suspects it might have been a little more rigorous if their need wasn’t so urgent.

There are less than fifty doctors and registered nurses in the database who take on Companion cases across the US, and now Sebastian is one of them. It’s a fairly new system, and thankfully a growing one, slow as it might be. Mostly, the cases are a matter of remote visits: giving medical advice, diagnosing where they can, and—at the discretion of each provider—writing prescriptions. Always in the name of the unmarked person helping them. By design, it’s nearly impossible for a Companion to seek assistance or gain any amount of freedom without depending on someone on the outside.

He was surprised to find out that there were others like him; people who have purchased a contract with the intention of helping someone for as long as they can. There are others—fewer, rarer—who are like Ezra. People who have somehow broken free of the system altogether and exist under the radar. The details of those cases are always lock-and-key. Sebastian doesn’t ask, and no one seems eager to tell. Probably safer for everyone that way.

Sebastian’s patients tonight have been fairly simple ones. He was able to provide antibiotics to a young woman with an ongoing infection, sleeping pills to a man with debilitating sleep anxiety, and advice to someone else on managing their chronic pain. For the first time since graduating with his medical degree, Sebastian feels useful.

And still, it never feels like enough.

When he pulls his hands away from his face, he nearly launches out of his skin. Jaime is standing in the mouth of the hallway, hair dripping and wrapped in a towel. Sebastian hadn’t even heard the shower running through the music in his headphones.

He settles himself with a hand over his heart and smiles up at him. “Oh. Hey there.” He starts to take his earbuds out, but he is interrupted by the world abruptly shifting on its axis.

It takes a few seconds after the towel hits the floor to process what happened. What is actively happening. And then he still doesn’t understand.

Because what. The fuck.

Jaime is standing—naked—in his living room, still as a statue, with a towel pooled at his feet. Sebastian is fairly certain Jaime isn’t even aware of the silent tears tracking down his cheeks.

Calling upon every conceivable ounce of composure he can muster, he removes his headphones the rest of the way and sits forward, setting his open laptop on the coffee table. He unfolds his legs and stands, each movement pronounced and broadcast.

“Hey.” His own voice sounds far away, and far more calm than he feels. He keeps his eyes dutifully trained on Jaime’s, refusing to dip away for even a second. “Let’s just… Why don’t we just talk? Okay? Let’s… here.” Acting on the instinct to cover him up, Sebastian reaches for the zipper on his hoodie.

Across the room, Jaime’s breath hitches. His eyes pinch shut for just a second, fists clenching at his sides.

“Hey. No, no, it’s okay. I’m—” Sebastian pulls the zipper down as quickly as he can, only jamming it twice on the cloth. As soon as it’s free, he extends his arm, not daring to take a step closer, and shakes it in his direction. “It’s for you.”

But Jaime doesn’t move to take it. His pale chest heaves with breaths that are coming too fast and too short, and the glassy look in his eyes tells him that Jaime might not be all the way with him. He needs to tread lightly.

Sebastian takes a cautious step forward. “Jaime?” His eyes snap to him, wide and wet. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” When he’s within arm’s reach, Sebastian holds his sweatshirt out again, and Jaime’s gaze falls to it for a moment, before flashing back to him. He still doesn’t take it.

Sebastian is about to reiterate his assurance that Jaime is okay, that he is safe and that he is not in trouble, but before he can speak—

Jaime—

He—

Jaime’s mouth is on his.

Their lips only touch for half a second before Sebastian jerks back, but the brief contact sends a shockwave of horror through his body. It’s so much happening at once: the heat of naked skin through his clothes, wet hair dripping onto his chest, the tremble in the arms draped around his neck, but Sebastian can’t afford to panic right now. They can’t both be falling apart at once.

With all the deliberate gentleness he can manage, he reaches up and wraps his hands around Jaime’s wrists, pulling his arms from around him. They stand painfully still for several long seconds, Jaime’s arms suspended between them. The whites of his eyes jump as he searches Sebastian’s expression, utter terror written all over his own. Slowly, Sebastian lowers his grip, releasing Jaime’s hands at his sides.

“No,” the word stutters out of him. “Jaime, I… No.” He needs to find the words to elaborate, to tell him he’s not in trouble and that Sebastian’s rejection isn’t meant as a chastisement, but before he can formulate them, Jaime sinks to his knees, and a fresh pit opens in Sebastian’s chest.

“Please,” Jaime says—the first he has spoken since coming into the living room. Fresh tears leak from his eyes. “Whatever you want to do, I… it’s fine. We can do it. I… I want to.”

Unable to tolerate towering over him right now, Sebastian sinks down to one knee, then the other. Carefully, he takes the sweatshirt in his hand and drapes it over Jaime’s shoulders. “Jaime,” he says finally, “you’re crying.”

In a desperate, childlike gesture, Jaime swipes at the tears running down his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he says.

You don’t have to be sorry. But it’s very clear to me that you don’t want this.”

“I can,” Jaime insists, fixing his wide, brown eyes on him. “I can learn to want it. With you. Please, just tell me what you want.”

“I…” Sebastian’s mind is speeding past him in circles, unable to land on a singular thought except the resounding question of How the fuck did we get here?  Because genuinely, Sebastian had thought things were getting better. He thought things were, if not ideal, at least okay. But this… This is the furthest thing from okay.

“Did I…?” Sebastian clears his throat and starts again. “Can you tell me—did I do something? To make you think that I wanted this?”

He remembers the stilted half-conversations they had once upon a time. In the clinic, when Jaime was brought in for testing after each contract. Sebastian knows what happened to him with past Keepers. His tests may have come back negative, but Jaime had confirmed in the only way he could that he had been sexually abused. He had hoped that Jaime knew he never had to fear that from him. He realizes now how selfish that assumption was.

Jaime’s gaze breaks away momentarily. “No, but I…”

“What?” he prompts gently. “If I did something, I want to know. I’m not going to be upset with you. I just want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The inquisition seems to press him further into himself. He curls over, retracting into a ball before he can reach out. The notches on his spine protrude through the shirt in a trembling arch. His fingers are twisted through his hair, pulling so tightly at his roots that Sebastian has to restrain himself from tugging his hands away. Then the noise. At first it sounds like he’s choking; a desperate, clunky gasp for air where there is none. And then the sobs erupt, almost completely silent but heavy enough that his entire body convulses with the force.

And Sebastian is absolutely fucked. His heart is thumping against his ribcage like it wants to escape, his fingertips have gone numb, and the spot where their lips had briefly touched buzzes with the intensity of a fresh wound. But he can’t fall apart right now. After a moment of hesitation, Sebastian places a palm over one shoulder blade, and when he is not shaken off, he begins to rub a slow, steady circle.

“Jaime,” he tries as soon as he is sure his voice will withstand it. “I don’t know what’s happening right now. I don’t… I don’t know what to say to you to make you feel okay, but you are safe. I can promise you that. I am not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you while I am here.”

It goes on for as long as it takes Jaime’s body to exhaust itself to silence. Over the next several minutes, the sobs whither to raspy pulls for breath, and then eventually soft sniffling. Sebastian doesn’t remove his hand. When he has gone nearly silent, Sebastian makes a decision.

“Can you sit up?” he asks softly. “Please? Can you just… look at me for a minute?”

Jaime obeys the request a little too quickly. When their eyes meet, Sebastian takes a deep breath, willing his own tears to stay where they are.

“I want to talk about this,” he says. “We absolutely should talk about this. But before we do anything else… Do you maybe want to put some clothes on? We can just… we can take a minute.” God knows he could use one himself. “If you want to keep talking after that, I’ll put some coffee on and we’ll stay up and talk, for as long as you want. If you would rather go to sleep, that’s okay too. I’ll still be here for you in the morning. It’s your call. Sound okay?”

Jaime hesitates, then nods.

“Okay.” Sebastian picks up the towel between their knees and extends it to him, already turning away. Once Jaime takes it, Sebastian shuffles around awkwardly on his knees until his back is to him. “I’ll wait out here. I won’t look. Just… take your time.”

Sebastian listens to the brief silence of his hesitation, then the quiet rustle of cloth and clicking of joints behind him. He counts the soft pad of footsteps retreating down the bedroom hallway and waits for the door to latch shut before he breaks. He pulls his knees out from under him and puts his head between them, taking slow, even breaths.

Slowly, his heartbeat recedes to a sustainable pace, but his mind buzzes with the prospect of the conversation ahead of him, and his lips still burn from a kiss that never should have happened.

***

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[msmargaretmurry]

Matthew curls/slutty collarbone-appreciating anon again - BOSTON!!! Home of another rat king! My home! (Not living there at the moment, but I miss it so, if you’ve seen Letterkenny/that one episode with the two dudes from Newfoundland getting all melancholy and homesick when Newfoundland is mentioned, that is me rn. No hard feelings re: Ratthew et al. knocking out Boston, though, I was still cheering for my slutty rat boy in the final.) I hope you and all of the other scholars are having an excellent time! Are you attending/watching any games? Don’t know if the Bruins are home or away tho, I haven’t been to the Garden in years, it’s such a fun venue. Bummed the PWHL team won't be able to play there, but I get it, schedule's packed. (Much as I love Boston, I will readily admit that the fans are… eh. Basketball is probs the best of the bunch.)

Matthew is only escalating his slut phase and I am living for it, that French girl lounging, Matthew is not beating those submissive and breedable accusations (or at least the breedable ones, he’s down for a fight first, if someone wants to wrestle him down and sink their teeth into the back of his neck and hold him there he/I will not be opposed, you know.) And you know, in a post-trade Matthew/Leon scenario, what’s a rat boy to do when he’s surrounded by men who want to fuck him up/probably also fuck him, when his former ?? hookup/fuckbuddy/fuckenemy/boyfriend/baby daddy (????) is all the way in Edmonton, not flirt with them? And of course when you’re a bitchy tank who only gets to play his… whatever Ratthew is to him, best not to think about that, twice a year, you’re not gonna not seize the opportunity/nearest storage closet to chew him up a little. It’s just not done.

I am very here for this vampire AU and neck/throat appreciation/biting. I am also generally here for Matthew the problem child and/or Matthew the generally good and together child whose one moment of rebellion is bringing home a nightmare boyfriend and/or Matthew with daddy problems or at least an adrenaline/danger kink whose constitution is incapable of not goading hot vampire into trying to bite him. And hot vampires cannot be blamed, he is flashing an irresponsible amount of collarbone as is.

hello again anon! yay boston!! absolutely one of my favorite cities. i am home now and even though i love home i am missing it already. just a lovely place to spend a lovely long weekend with lovely friends (whom i also miss already 😭😭😭). i am, i'm sorry to tell you, anti-boston sports (me being an east coaster NOT from boston, i feel like this shouldn't be a surprise), but y'all do always seem have a handful of players i love anyway, and even i must admit fenway is one of the most fun ballparks i've ever been to. the bruins sadly were not in town, but we went to the bc vs. denver game on saturday, and on sunday we schlepped out to worcester for a railers game, and both of those were very fun 💞

but onto the more important topic: our beloved rat boy. a concept related to your original ask i am currently mulling over is one where they are Totally Just Frenemies Who Occasionally Sleep Together (they used to be rivals who occasionally slept together but leon is not going to call anyone who plays in florida a "rival") which means that matthew can fuck whoever he wants. and does. and tells leon all about it while they hook up, and for some reason comes out of these hookups looking like leon tried to eat him alive. perhaps he will need to invest in a tshirt that he hasn't mutilated so that he can talk to the media in the days afterward without showing off all the teeth-shaped bruises he seems to have acquired. surely this all means nothing. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

i have a couple of other asks about the vampire leon extended universe so i am going to save my thoughts about THAT for answering those so i can stick them all in their own tag 😅 thank yoooouuuu for the ask though!! 💖