Hotch request w Jack and new baby!!! Coming back from the hospital and reader is in bed with new baby and Jack while Aaron is in another part of the house (maybe making food in the kitchen) and reader starts crying because she’s in pain and jack is all concerned and sweet and goes to get Aaron??
thank you for requesting, sorry I messed up where everyone was! fem, 1.3k
“He’s gonna stab him!”
You blink from the spot you’d been staring at, pain momentarily forgotten. “What! Where’d you learn that word?” you ask in surprise.
Jack leans back against his big velvet pillow, blue with silver stars, looking as though he’s in the lap of luxury. “At school.”
The cartoon mouse on the TV raises his fencing sword high in the air.
“He’s not stabbing anyone, they’re fencing,” you say, reaching for his hand to hold. “Stabbing… that’s pretty scary. How did that make you feel?”
“Well, I’m not gonna stab anyone,” Jack says.
He’s confused that you’re making a fuss, just old enough to realise you’re poking around for his feelings. You worry lately that you aren’t paying him enough attention because of his new brother, and the word stab isn’t exactly age appropriate.
But maybe that’s what the boys his age are talking about? You frown more, your hand slipping along his arm to curl behind him. You pull him toward you. “Come on, handsome. Cuddle me.”
You’re too sore to move, so Jack has to come to you. He crawls across the couch until his arms can wrap around you and his cheek can rest against your chest. Stab is an apt word for the feeling in your stomach. Jack’s arm squeezes at you and the pain worsens, so you move it up your front and curl your arm around him.
“Is it a bad word?” he asks.
“No, it’s just like hit or slap, I guess. And I know you’re not gonna do any of that to anyone. You’re too gentle.”
“Gentle is a good word.”
“Yeah.” You kiss his forehead, a moment of self indulgence. You love your stepson, and he is oh so kissable. “Oh no, look at the mouse.”
Charlie sleeps in his swing seat, the soft whirring of its constant motion almost as comforting as the sound of his soft breaths. You watch him for a while, Jack climbing up at your side to press his face to your neck, leg on your thigh, slowly pressing against the tenderness that is your abdomen. “Uh, Jack,” you breathe, trying to pick him up, “you’re gonna have to climb off of me, my tummy hurts too much.”
“Sorry,” he says quickly, slipping off of you and onto the couch cushion. His foot kicks out as he rights himself, a jamming of his toes against the pain like a spike.
You take a deep breath. Ouch.
“It’s okay,” you say, groaning softly as the pain thrums, hand on your stomach as though your touch can make it stop, “just a tummy ache. I– I’m okay.”
“You got little tears?” he says, his voice going wobbly. You try to blink away tears and end up with a straggler curving down the slope of your cheek. “I’ll go get dad!”
“Jack, I’m okay,” you say.
Too late. Jack scrambles from the couch and away from you, up the stairs to find his father. You’re not sure what Aaron’s up to, he’d only said, “I’ll be right back,” twenty minutes ago. You’d guessed laundry.
You’re glad Jack’s run upstairs when you realise the pain isn’t going away. It’s not bad, not half as bad as your contractions had been, but the whole labour process has sapped you, and you feel weak as a willow branch in bad weather. You shift heavily onto one leg and cross them, uncross them when the pain spikes again, letting out a weird and breathless whine as it turns to a full blown cramp.
Jack returns with Aaron in tow. His hair is dripping wet, soap suds on his neck and his shirt stuck to his chest. He’s rushed out of the shower to see you.
“What’s wrong?” he asks as he rounds the couch. “Jack told me you’re not feeling well.”
You hold your arms out for a hug. He doesn’t falter, simply does as you want, his hair wringing wet and dripping onto your shoulder as he gathers you in his arms.
You hold onto him like a lifeline. The cramp curls, and tightens, has you seizing up against him.
“What is it?” he asks softly. “Stomach pains again?”
The nurse said it’s your uterus shrinking. Whatever it is, it’s sudden agony. You shudder into Aaron’s shoulder until the pain pangs and fades, leaving your stomach a tense mess. It hurts to move, so you stay clinging to your husband and let him hover over you.
“Are you okay?” Jack asks.
You sniff.
Aaron pulls away to take your face into his hands. He holds you with care, his thumbs under your jaw, index fingers running diagonally under each eye, tips at your brows. Just a stolen few seconds for him to check you over. No tears to be wiped away.
“Still hurting?”
You shake your head, eyebrows pulled down in a bad frown.
“Okay. Alright. Motrin?” he asks.
“No,” you whisper, “can you just stay here?”
Jack says your name.
You peek past Aaron’s body. “Jack, sorry.”
“Are you okay now?”
You grimace, “I’m gonna be fine, it just hurts sometimes and I didn’t have any medicine today. That’s all. Sorry, I scared you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” he denies.
You can’t help smiling, then. “Okay, I didn’t. Thanks for getting dad for me.”
“He’s our hero,” Aaron says. He sits down beside you carefully, his voice quiet and his hand gentle as he holds your thigh. “I’m glad he did.”
Jack climbs into his dad’s lap. Aaron wraps an arm around him, the other at your side, fingers tapping at you.
You rub your forehead. Tip your head back and take a deep breath.
“Jack,” you whisper, breathing out, “I’m sorry if I startled you. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“It wasn’t scary, I said that already.”
“Oh, you did?” Aaron teases.
“It was okay, I just don’t want you to hurt.”
“Only baby pains,” you say.
For a few minutes, you and your small family sit there in silence. Aaron works a hand behind your back to hug you, Jack snuggles into his chest, and Charlie stirs in his swing seat. The quiet calms him, and he goes back to his soft snoring seconds later.
“I’m sorry about your shower,” you whisper.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry about my baby,” Aaron whispers back, drawing circles into your lower back, “he didn’t mean to chew you up.”
“Ugh, I know.”
Jack raises his nose. “What? Chew? Do babies bite?”
“It’s an expression, babe.”
“Oh.” He looks at his baby brother with suspicion anyways. “He doesn’t even have teeth?”
“Buddy, it’s just a joke,” Aaron says, laughing as Jack slips out of his lap to go and look at Charlie in the seat.
“Maybe he did have teeth,” you say.
Aaron ushers you toward him, rests his cheek on your forehead. “It’ll feel better soon. You need to rest, that’s all.”
“Your hair is so wet.”
“I was in the shower.”
“Sorry…”
“Don’t be,” he says. “Don’t be.”
You reach up to tousle his wet hair. “Miss showering with you.”
“We showered last night.”
“No, I stood there and you helped me wash my back, that’s not the same.”
“Well, I enjoyed it.”
“I bet you did.”
Your fondness attracts many, many kisses, his nose nuzzling your cheek. You settle under the weight of him and watch Jack where he frowns at Charlie, big brown eyes squinted, waiting for a show of teeth that won’t happen. Aaron brings a hand to your tense stomach, waiting for you to lean back before he begins massaging the tensed muscle there with a slowness that borders unmoving.
“Tell me if it hurts too much,” he says.
“You can go finish your shower.”
“I was finished. M’gonna start pressing in, okay?”
You wince as Aaron begins, but slowly, slowly, the tenseness from your cramp softens. It still hurts, but he makes it manageable. Jack delivered your rescuer, and your rescuer loves a soft touch.
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my thoughts about how Stanley got into the In-Between in the HWINEBHABWNAJCAHOWEEATOWEUB au :3 bc he's my son and i am in terrible terrible pain. i just got a little silly and neeeeeded to get this out of my brain
@a-scary-lack-of-common-sense i'm lowkey (highkey) sure you didn't want 2 be pinged but here is my offering (ricky, when i catch you ricky. when i catch you ricky. ricky when i catch you ricky. ricky when i catch you ricky--)
uhh word count is ~600, just a little baby drabble
---
Shadows. Gold and red, triangles and hands and overwhelming fear.
Stanley.
Stanley, Stanley, Stanley, the cause for Ford’s own terror, he was with the gold and not the scarlet, but he was not supposed to be there, so close to the screaming dangerdangerdangerdangerdanger.
So far from them, he could see his brother's lips moving, moving fast, no doubt speaking whatever he thought may get him out of the situation.
Good, Ford thought bitterly. The demon was his problem and his problem alone, born of his own foolishness.
He’d be damned if Stanley found his way into its maw because of him. He needed to get up, get going, movemovemove before he lost something so dear to him once more. Fidds had been enough to teach him his lesson right and proper.
(Stanford tried to ignore that he’d almost missed the universe’s cue. That he’d almost continued his work towards the likely end of his species.)
No, no– He was almost stilled by the choking darkness, as though he were moving through a sea of molasses to get to his brother. The great beast’s eye did not move, but he could feel its look upon his skin, boring through flesh and sinew and bone into the very depths of his skull. His struggles had drawn its attention.
Yet still, it did not look as starved as it did trapped.
And its newest victim was its only likely way out.
STANLEY!
His voice, though loud in his ears, rang out exactly nowhere. This damn place, trapping him as a witness. Could he fight it? Could he push against it? Where even was he?? A mindscape? If so, who’s? Stanley’s? Because this was a very depressing mind if so. But it wasn’t his, and he had incredible doubts it was Cipher’s. And that was hinging on the question of if they could enter his or not.
A dream, maybe. He prayed it was a terrible, awful, fever-dream vivid nightmare.
That he was very much consciously thinking about and aware of. He wasn’t one to experience lucid dreams, they’d never come to him as easily as they did–
Right, Stanley. Stanley. How had he forgotten? It was, quite literally, the most important task at hand. He needed to try and do something, fight against the oppressing disgust the place was beginning to cause him and the way it felt as though it was beginning to crawl into his limbs and settle there, weighing him down.
Shit. Keep moving, keep kicking. If he stopped he might not try again to get up and that would leave his twin all on his lonesome.
Red and yellow and white and black black black black black black black black– It was all alarmingly starting to mix together in his swimming head. It was getting to him.
What was getting to him?
Right. Stan. Stan. He had to move. The scarlet was being swallowed up by the grow of the golden glow and that was never a good sign.
Stanley still wasn’t looking at him, he’d hardly moved besides the short, uncomfortable fidgets Ford knew of him (they hadn’t talked in so long. Did he get any back from their childhood, out from under pa’s thumb? Did he lose any? How well did he even still know his brother?) and the occasional glance around when the triangle had moved.
Oh, but now he was hastily backing up. A good idea. Ford was closer, but still not close enough.
Not enough to reach Stanley. Not enough to stop the gilded arm that grabbed at his twin while Ford shrieked.
Up it went, the pyramid breaking its shape to bend backwards and
down
and
down
and
down.
And Stanley was gone.
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