#micheal townsend one shot

[littlemissmentallyunstable]

title: put your hand on my heart

pairing: micheal townsend x reader

synopsis: you know you’re panicking but you can’t stop it and nothing is helping. the last person you want to see you like this turns out to be your saviour

warnings: panic attack, overwhelming anxiety, dark thoughts

a/n: thanks for reading 🤍🤍

taglist: @inmyheaddd @midiosaamor @lyrakanefanatic @aleatorio1234 @maybe-dj124 @book-nerd-emi @maybxlle @foreverwinter22 @sweetreveriee @hermesenthusiast @shattered-glass-roses @gandergaal @sheisntyou @arias-archive @lila-77 @downrightbooks

Please, please, please. Not again. Not this again. I stumble into the bathroom making sure the door shuts behind me, hastily trying to reach a source of water. My finger shake as I turn on the bathroom tap, they can barely grasp the metal. I wait for the cold water to run before splashing my face three times. It’s meant to be a shock tactic, it’s meant to pull me together, it’s meant to help, but it isn’t doing what it’s meant to, it isn’t doing anything. It never does anything.

I try to swallow but it feels like I’ve forgotten how. It feels like my trachea is slowly constricting, the walls on either side slowly closing in creating a claustrophobe’s nightmare. My throat aches as my mouth fills with saliva that I’m desperate to get rid of. I touch my neck, my fingers scraping against the skin. I want to pry it open. Maybe then I’ll be able to breathe, be able to swallow.

I glance up at myself in the mirror and don’t recognise the girl staring back at me. Her eyes are rimmed with thick black smears, her lips are dry and cracked, there are red streaks of art winding down her neck and her face is a sickly pale colour. I’m but living in the shell of body that used to be mine. The things that made me myself are long gone, a ghost of a whisper living somewhere deep within my veins. I don’t know what parasite has infiltrated my body, all I know is I want it out. I want it gone.

But some things you can never kill, so long as they live in your mind, you’ll never truly be rid of them.

Panic wraps bony fingers around my ankles and yanks me into murky waters, Fear holds my head under and makes sure I can’t scream for help. Is this how you felt mum? Is this how you felt when they drowned you? My lungs burn, scream, beg but I already know I won’t ever get to grace them with oxygen again. My hands and feet are bound with thick rope that cuts deep into my flesh. They tied you up too mum. Why? Did you even fight it? I glance at my captors with pleading eyes, they only laugh. Amused by the emotions that fed them running riot through my soul. Did you look at them like me mum? We always had the same eyes, that’s what everyone said. Did they laugh at you too mum?

I feel my body grow weak, I watch as the world spins and I grow dizzy. I’m lost in a state between life and death, beneath this ocean of panic. My body is still trying to fight for survival even though I want to give up. You never wanted to give up, did you mum? But you had to, they forced you to. Panic gives me one last gift, placing something heavy on my chest. It crushes my rib cage but there’s nothing left in me to cry out. No one would hear anyway, I was underwater. No one heard you, mum. I didn’t hear you either. The weight pushes me down further and further from the surface and slowly, slowly it all grows black. Is this what you saw mum? When your body sunk to the bottom? Were you plunged into the darkness the same way I am?

I’m gasping and spluttering. My chest is in agony, red hot pain prickles over my torso. I want to rip my skin off, claw every inch away with my nails. I throw my sweatshirt over my head so the cotton of my shirt was the only thing touching my upper body. I look back to the stranger in the mirror and prod my face with unfamiliar fingers. The veins under my skin throb, almost like my pulse is so fast it might burst them altogether. Part of me hopes they might, at least I’d be rid of these feelings.

My heart thumps loudly through my ears, each boom more demeaning than the last. It feels like the organ pulsating out of my chest each time it beats. A torturous, monotonous thunderstorm that I can’t avoid.

“I don’t like the thunder,” I tremble in my mother’s arms, clinging to the soft fabric of her shirt as if my life depends on it.

“It can’t hurt you little one,” she whispers, stroking my hair with her tender touch, “but don’t fret, you’re safe, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’m here.”

I don’t like thunderstorms. I never have. But my mother’s arms aren’t here to be my refuge, all I have are these four bathroom walls.

I try and will myself to cry but there are no tears. My face isn’t damp and my eyes don’t water. They refuse, my mind too stubborn to give me an outlet for my pain. I should be crying, I know I should, it’s unnatural not to, it’s not normal.

But I’m not normal.

I feel the dreaded panic attack me again. It’s like a million tiny bullets are being fired at my body all at once. I can’t avoid a single one, I’m stood in no man’s land. And yet despite being shot so many times, I don’t seem to be able to die. Only writhe in my own agony.

My breathing quickens still, which by now I’d thought might be medically impossible. I wish for Sloane to be here to give me a statistic about breathing or wallabies, I wish for Lia to tell me the lie that I would be okay a thousand times over, I wish for Cassie to hold me until I stop shaking looking at me with her kind eyes, I wish for Dean to help me understand why I’m like this and I wish for Micheal to never, ever see me like this.

My wishes don’t come true. Wishes usually don’t for girls like me.

I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have control of my own body, of my own mind, thoughts and feelings. They’re constantly hijacked by a stronger power. A power that comes dressed in black hood and carries weapons of destruction. Though he doesn’t always use them, not straight away. He presents them first, the fear of the threat. Then at the moment of his choosing - the middle of the night, when I’m out shopping, the early morning, in the middle of a case - he would use them.

I have become a prisoner to the man in my mind.

He remembers everything. My mother. He knows all. She was kind and smart and funny and passionate and bold. The details I wanted to forget. Her cold dead body, hauled from the bottom of a lake. Blue skin, closed eyes, hair plastered to her forehead. The things I’d left in the past. She used to tell me I could do anything, be anything. That I was something. That I was special. Brighter than the stars. All that I’d blocked out. The killers that I couldn’t find, that I’d failed to find.

Another overbearing wave of panic crashes into me and my legs begin to feel unsure of themselves adopting an unnatural wobble. Sure I might fall, I sink to the floor in a helpless heap of heavy breathing and blurred thoughts. The cold tiles that press against the back of my thighs are the only thing to remind me that I can feel.

I need five things. What can I see? What can I touch? What can I hear? What can I smell? What can I taste?

I pry my eyes back open. I can see the bathroom door, it’s white with a golden handle. Two towels hang on a hook from the back of it. They’ve been recently used and are still a little damp. The smile on my mum’s face.

I can touch the fabric of my shirt. I play with it between my fingers. It’s soft, it’s smooth, it can’t hurt me. Her fingers weaving a braid through my hair.

I can hear my heart. No, I have to hear past it. I strain my ears. Talking, I can hear my friends talking in the room next door. Sloane, Cassie, Lia, Dean and Michael. I can hear Sloane’s voice most immediately, then Lia’s. The words are blurred, a soup of sound, too overwhelmed by the pounding in my chest. The hum of her sweet song, the one she wrote just for my name.

I can smell bleach. It’s strong and sterile. The bathroom has been recently cleaned. Rose water and buttermilk. She always smelt of rose water and buttermilk. As long as I could remember.

I can taste nothing. My throat is dry, my lips are dry, my tongue is so dry it’s stuck to the roof of my mouth. The honey sweet syrupy liquid she often gave me before I slept.

I lean back further into the wall and close my eyes again. Is it working? Is it helping? I’ve listed the five things, my task is done. Why do I still feel the same? I shouldn’t still feel the same. It’s not working, it never works, I don’t know why this time I thought it might. I’m an idiot. I always have been.

“y/n? Are you in there?”

I know that voice and I know I don’t want him anywhere near the door. I know I’ve forgotten to lock it and I can’t move from the position I’m in. I know I need to tell him I’m fine, that it’s okay. I know that I should then explain I need Lia to get me a tampon to scare him away.

But I can’t speak, I can’t answer him. When I try I end up gasping for air like a fish out of water. I grip the side of the sink, my knuckles going white, trying to hoist myself up. He can’t see me like this, out of everyone it can’t be him. The moment I get myself to stand, my legs give way and I fall back to the floor. They’re too weak to support me anymore.

I’m too weak.

I land with a crash, sending a shooting pain up my back. I wince and make some sort of strangled sound, a scream but with no breath to make it sound like a scream. Immediately he bursts in, uninvited in classic Micheal style. Though he might be the emotion reader of the two of us, I see the worry on his face, through his eyes. I try to glare at him but can’t even muster that. I know there’s no getting out of this now, the moment he lays eyes on me he knows exactly how I feel. Even if I were Lia I don’t believe there’d be any lie good enough to cover up my situation.

“Woah, woah, woah,” he rushes, dropping to his knees immediately, “hey, it’s okay, I’m here.”

“It’s okay, I’m here.”

My mother’s words echo through my mind. His hand settles on my thigh. I don’t need you here’ I wanted to scream. I need Sloane, Lia, Cassie, Dean, Judd, heck even Briggs just anyone but him. He shouldn’t know that this is the real me, that this is the kind of relationship he is really getting into.

He sees it. He sees my fear, my desperation, my panic, my worry, my pain, my anger. He sees it all in technicolour.

Micheal takes my face between to soft palms, “breathe with me, sweetheart,” he says very slowly, “I need you to breathe with me.”

I can’t even talk. I try to reply, but I physically can’t.

“Don’t try to talk,” he tells me gently, “it’s not going to help you. I need you to try and breathe with me.”

I can barely hear him over the sound of my heart raging through my ears yet manage to shake my head vigorously. I need to explain to him that it won’t work, that it never works.

“Try,” he murmurs, understanding, “with me. In… and out…”

Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Nothing overtly complicated. Yet it feels like the most difficult task I’ve ever had to do in my life.

“In…” he guides me, steadily, “…and out.”

One. I do it once.

My breathing is still rapid, I am panting like a dog but I did it. Once. He sits down beside me, interlocking his hand into mine. A constant, a rock, he’s telling me he isn’t leaving. His back is up against the cool tiled wall. Gently he puts his hands on my hips. I don’t shy away from his touch, I don’t flinch, I don’t slap him away. I want his hands on me. I want him to distract me.

He pulls me between his legs. I lean on him pressing my back up against his firm chest. I need to feel something, someone, anyone. I need to know that I’m not alone. I want his lips to transport me somewhere else, I want his hands to make me forget everything. I tilt my head so ours eyes meet. I plead silently. I know he can read what I want, what I need. I know he can see it all displayed on my face.

“You have to get your heart rate and breathing back to normal,” he says, “a distraction won’t help that.”

“Need,” I choke, through loud gulps of air.

He presses a kiss to my temple, “breathe, my love, you’re safe, I’ve got you.”

“You’re safe, I’ve got you.”

I see my mum’s face. I roughly grab onto his legs, clawing at the material of his trousers, digging my fingernails in, like some sort of scared animal. I feel his hands on my waist as my chest heaves up and down, still uncontrollable. The untameable beast in my brain still a torrent of darkness.

“It’s okay, I’m here,” he repeats, his voice so smooth, so soothing. I want to believe him, “focus on me…”

I do. I’m focusing on his breath I can feel tickling the back of my neck and his outstretched legs I can see in front of me. I’m focussing on the shade of blue the sweatshirt is and how he smells of that fancy cologne he insists on buying. I’m focussing on the tingling sensation his lips let behind on my temple and the warmth of his body against mine.

“My voice…”

It’s low and even. Steady and constant. The words he says are sweet and soothing and kind. He wants to help me. He cares enough. They’re said softly, gently, tenderly, calmly. He wants me to know I’m safe. He wants to fight the man in my head as much as I do.

“My touch…”

His fingers are delicately wrapped around my waist, but one hand is drawing slow, light circles on my stomach. I feel the shape spiralling in and then back out again. The muscles in his upper arms are against the muscles of my upper arms, they brush together. His heart is beating a little faster than usual against my back.

I think about Micheal. I focus on what he tells me to. Each time I take in oxygen it gets the slightest bit easier. I inhale and I exhale. He waits and he listens and he draws circles on my belly. Sometimes he talks and sometimes he stays silent. But we stay like this until my breathing is only a little worse than normal. The breaths are still short and jagged but they’re less of a gasp, less of a prayer for air.

“You’re okay,” he repeats, “I’ve got you, you’re safe, I’m here.”

I twist my neck to meet his eyes. He looks like he’s in pain. I never meant to cause him pain.

“I’ve got you. Can you feel me?” he whispers, “I’ve got you in my arms. That means you’re safe.”

Safe. Would I ever really be safe when my biggest enemy lived in my own mind?

“I… need… touch…” I tell him, through little breaths.

I haven’t heard the man in my head since Micheal got here. I know this will help. I know I need it. He can make things go away, he can help me, he can keep me safe. He’s got me in his arms. That means I’m safe.

“Okay,” he whispers.

His hand slowly moves from the tight grip on my waist to the bottom of my shirt. It slips under the material, slowly trailing up the bare skin of my stomach. His fingertips skim over my bra and find their way to just below my collarbone on the left side on my chest. He flattens his hand against my heart, pressing down firmly. It’s warm in contrast to the coolness of my skin.

“Breathe again love,” Micheal says in my ear, his voice in the back of his throat, “breathe for me.”

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. It’s getting easier. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Do it again. It’s getting easier. It’s getting easier.

I can feel him, only him. Micheal Alexander Thomas Townsend. My heart thumps against his palm. I close my eyes and rest my head back onto him. I feel it, as he presses the lightest of kisses onto my face, first my forehead, my nose, then my lips. Him, it’s all him. He can take this away, this darkness, this sickness, this disease in my mind. He can make it leave.

After what feels like a while, I’m somewhat what I was before. I can’t say things are back to normal because I am not normal. But I can breathe again, my chest doesn’t hurt, my heart isn’t the only thing I can hear and the man in my head has left. For now.

I realise for the first time how Micheal has seen me. This isn’t the me he’s used to. I take his hand from my shirt and move away from his touch. I stand up shakily and he’s quick to follow, ready to catch me should I fall. I lean against the sink, breathing deeply in and out. I can’t rely on him,I can’t afford to. The last person I relied on was my mother and look where that got me.

“You weren’t meant to see that,” I say, my back still towards him. I can’t bear to look him in the eye, not even for a second.

“It’s not a crime to panic,” he tells me slowly, there’s something tentative in his tone.

I turn around to face him, “yes. It is.”

I’m no emotion reader but something in his face looks scared. I had been taught long ago that I had to stay in control. That if anyone saw me out of control, unnatural, disobedient to the requirements set, that I would be less of a person. A nothing in this world. I’m not going to let this make me nothing. Not after I’d been something for so long.

Something to my mother. Something at school. Something to Briggs and his colleagues. Something to the Naturals program. Something to the friends I’d made here. Something… something to Micheal.

“I’m strong Micheal,” I say trying to steady my shaky voice, “I’m strong, I don’t break,” I falter as tears fill my eyes, I haven’t cried in so long, “I’m not like this, it’s not me.”

I meet his eyes again. He can see all of it, the emotions I show him and even the ones I’m holding back. I’m like a naked body in a room full of mirrors.

“Oh sweetheart,” he says, reaching out to take me in his arms once more.

And as much as I want to, crave to, yearn to, I don’t. I jerk away from his quickly, hitting my hip on the corner of the sink. The porcelain sends a sharp jolt of pain through my body. There will be a bruise tomorrow. He immediately backs away, a concern I’m not used to seeing rippling through his features. He could hide it if he wanted but he’s choosing to show me. He’s showing me he cares.

“Don’t pity me Micheal,” I try to snap but instead my voice strains and instead sounds like I’m in pain, “please.”

‘I’m not pitying you’ the unspoken words hang in the air but never reach his lips.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks instead.

“I don’t know,” I whisper, fumbling over my words, “I don’t know.”

“Come here,” he says, opening his arms again. This time not reaching out for me, this time letting me choose to come towards him.

And I do.

I fall into his arms and melt into his touch. When I feel him around me, everything falls silent, the noise, the stress, the expectation. It’s only him and me. Him and me.

“You are still strong, even after breaking,” he says into my ear, such power in his words but gentleness in his voice, “because you haven’t broken completely, you’re still here,” he murmurs, “and that’s the strongest thing someone can ever do.”

There isn’t any words to reply and he knows that. I let him hold me for a long while before finally, finally I let myself cry.

ahhhh this is my first naturals fic so I’m lowkey nervous… i try and avoid y/n at all costs but I felt like it was sort of needed here. anyways i hoped you liked it and let me know if you want to be on the taglist :))

the natural’s masterlist

[darkhorse-javert]

Work in Progress Wednesday

The great sticking point, AKA a draft of the peice of my fic where I have been totally stuck. Trying to write Sam in to a scene where she isn’t is not easy. A different version of the scene from Casulties of War (now in autumn 1942 for context.

Any feedback regarding where I need more or less description very gratefully received, I already think it reads too much like a script at the moment.

The cottage was a pretty one, one of a row of brick houses that sloped down the coastal hill, with small sets of steps to their smart white painted doors, the building stones weathered by the years. This one, Sam noted, had even kept its hand railing to the door in spite of the scrap metal drive. But then given the slope of the hill, it would be a safety concern to remove it. She parked the Wolesley in  a gap opposite and set the handbrake firmly on. It would be quite easy to twist an ankle or break a leg by slipping off the side down hill. Mr Foyle led their party across the road and went up the steps, knocking on the wooden half of the front door, firmly, but with a gentleness as well, asking for entry, not demanding it.

A woman opened it, looking over their little trio Sam saw a slight confusion, possibly tinged with fear appear in her eyes.

“Mrs Richards?” The woman nodded, her eyes moving between all of them “I'm DCS Foyle, might we come in?”

Mrs Richards nodded quickly and stepped back from the door. Sam followed Milner up the steps, reaching out and closing the door behind her once she was through. It was like so many cottages in Lyminster, no passage, just a door into the main front room. This room, she noted with interest was divided in half by a beam athwart the width, separating front from rear almost completely. The rear was also lower into the ground ,forming two rooms out of the space.

Mr Foyle and Milner move themselves into the space, together butg alo one on eithe side of the woman they have come to see. It's Mr Foyle who speaks “Mrs Richards I'm sorry to have to tell you this... we found your husband's body this morning.” There was a long heartbeat of silence

“Oh” It was a very small noise in the silence, but also a very flat one Sam noted. More an acknowledgement than a reaction. Still grief and shock took people different ways. Mrs Richards eyes were wide, slightly blank, as she took a long breath, let it out again. But her voice was steady when she spoke “What happened?”

Milner answered, calmly and soothingly “He was shot. It would have been quick.” Mrs Richard's looked sharply away with a wince, closing her eyes.

Sam noted that Mr Foyle watched Mrs Richards with steady eyes “I'm very sorry about this, but can you tell us what you were doing last night?”

Mrs Richards paused before answering , her eyes moving around and down to the floor, a slight frown appearing.

“I don't know where to begin, there's not much to tell...” she looked up at them, earnest in her expression. Or almost earnest “I, I went to bed early. I was so tired. I was so tired. I've been working very hard recently. Michael wasn't in the house when I got in.” Her eyes came up sharply from their wanderings, as if she remembered something “I thought I heard him come in later but obviously I was wrong.”

How could she not...? But Mrs Richards was already answering her unspoken question and unsettlingly Sam found herself under the other woman's eyes, still soft and wide, as if she was seeking support“We sleep in seperate rooms,” She sighed, a sigh that seemed to carry a decision with it “I might as well be straight, things haven't been easy between us for some time. Michael resented my going to work. He lost his own job when they closed St Edmund's.”

“He didn't go with the evacuees?” She spoke the obvious even as her mind whirled with the implications Is this what it is, to be a working woman even in war, to be resented by others in the family, even if it's good for you... It wasn't just her father being protective, but if you stepped out of that little shape, there is coldness, even if you are valuble. It sent a prickle up her spine

“No, he wasn't asked, they took the form tutors, but he wasn't one of them. He gave lessons here instead, for those that weren't evacuated, when they'd come”

She noticed Milner was nodding “I saw the home school, he was doing a good job, as far as I see it.”

She smiled, then understandably sadly “Michael loved his work, he was an idealist, with a career.”

Sam watched and found herself surprised to see how steadily Mr Foyle looked at her, without the softening she expected. Then his lip quirked upwards, a cool tip of the head. something caught his eye. He moved to the desk, picking up a book, gesturing it to Mrs Richards “Townsend. Is this yours?”

She shook her head rapidly “No it's my husband's, Micheal understood more about that than I ever did” Her shoulders drooped “That was one of the reasons for the tension between us, I was there, he was here.”  

“So this is..”, the rove of mr Foyle’s eyes over the desk was as expressive as a gesture might have been.

“His desk” Mrs Richards finished the sentence, then she stepped forward as if assertive. In contrast her voice quailed " I don't see why you're asking all this, its perfectly well known that my husband was a gambler, he stole from the housekeeping from my purse. He fell in with a bad lot, owing them money. I know he was afraid of them.” She seemed both agreived and earnest in her speech

Mr Foylre had glanced at her, but Sam noticed that he had returned to looking over the desk when he spoke again “And, rrm any idea why he would have gone to the research centre last night.” Mrs Richards shook her head “None whatsoever I’m afraid.”

And still his eyes were searching as he looked up at her, speaking slowly “But you didn’t part on very good terms.”

Mrs Richards bowed her head and Sam stepped forwards, placing a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort, and unable to stop a sharpness as she glanced at Mr Foyle, that was unusually blunt of him “No...” A soft sigh “I’ll suppose I’ll have to live with that.” Mrs Richards reached out and took a framed photograph off the top lip of the desk, holding it in her hands “But the man you’re telling me about, the man I last saw... He wasn’t the man I married. This” Her hands gripped the photograph, a mid twenties man in gown and morter smiling at the camera “was the man I married.” Mrs Richards turned into Sams arm, raising the photgraph so she no longer had to peer suruptitiously. There was a brave teary smile on the other woman’s face “Young, idealist, devoted to his career.”

Then as if suddenly thinking she was imposing on a perfect stranger, she pulled away, straighteing her shoulders though her eyes were still sad as they roved between the three of them, Milner, Mr Foyle, coming back to her “The man who was killed, the man you're telling me about, in the end I hardly knew him. The war had changed him so much.”

In the solidness of silence after that declaration Sam found herself biting her lip slightly, made herself stop. It was true, the war changed everyone.

It was Milner who spoke, in the same gentle tone “We’re very sorry to have to bring this news to you Mrs Richards.” He stepped towards the door, a clear cue to leave and Sam also moved, crossing the room to the door. Out the corner of her eye she saw Mr Foyle cast one more look over the desk befoire inclining his head in farewell and joining them.

[littlemissmentallyunstable]

Micheal Townsend Masterlist:

micheal x reader

put your hand on my heart

micheal x lia

coming soon