Work Text:
From the moment Emma wakes up she knows something is wrong.
Well, in reality, everything is probably fine. However, she can tell immediately that her brain is not on the same page.
She wakes to that familiar tightness in her chest, the telltale sign that she's on the verge of a panic attack. This doesn't happen to her often, or at least not that often. She doesn't know what causes it. She's fine when she goes to sleep. She has no memory of any bad dreams or triggers. Then she wakes up like this.
Which is just fucking great.
She's at Brendon's house, well, technically it's their house now. She moved in a couple months ago and she was pleasantly surprised to find out that he was just as excited as her. Possibly even more excited. She's very aware how he comes off to other people, she was on the receiving end of it for the first time about a year ago. She finds it hard to reconcile that version of him to the version of him she gets everyday now.
It was her first day on the job and she was actually feeling pretty good about it, if not a little shaky. Aside from the fact that she'd been attacked, she was really liking it. The Pitt left her brain with absolutely no time to overthink or wander. It's the perfect speed for her.
The only thing that's not great about having no time to overthink is she also barely has time to think in general. Which is how she finds herself flat on her ass in the hallway, radiology results scattered around her on the floor. It felt like she hit a wall but as she looked up she realized she actually ran straight into the most intimidating, and unreasonably attractive, man she'd ever seen.
"Watch where you're going," he said in a flat tone that did nothing to hide his annoyance. Although, as he finally looked down at her, and really looked, a new expression crossed his face, if only slightly. So slight that she would have missed it if she weren't already staring at his face herself.
"I- I'm so sorry, oh my god. I was really in a hurry and I- I just wasn't paying attention and I didn't even see you there which is kind of crazy considering you're like huge," she seriously needed to stop and think before she opened her mouth, "I- I mean not huge, I mean not in a bad way you're very built and handsome just in a big way and I'm so sor-"
She didn't get to finish that thought, which was okay because she really needed to shut up, when he said as much.
"Stop talking." That hung there for a second before he took a breath and said, "Please."
She nodded and realized he had held out a hand to help her up, which she took gratefully. She learned five minutes later from Princess, who had watched the whole exchange, that that was the nicest interaction she'd ever seen from the man. Which unbeknownst to her had turned into a betting pool almost instantly about how long they would take to get together.
Which made zero sense when she found out but at about nine months later she had to admit Princess had seen something she hadn't.
Despite how he comes off and their first interaction, he is the sweetest man and the biggest softy in the world. The minute they get home it's like his work mask drops and he's instantly doting on her in any way he can, despite the fact that he also just got off of his shift.
He loves to cook for her and hold her while they eat. He loves to give her foot massages after a long day and braid her hair for her in the early morning. He loves soothing her after a sleep paralysis episode or if she's in her head and panicking for no reason. He just loves to care for her and she wants him to do what he loves.
This morning though, he's not next to her in bed. Which is fine. It makes sense, he had work and it's her day off. She sits up and stretches, trying to remember if she woke up for a goodbye kiss this morning. He usually wakes her up before he leaves, telling her he loves her and kissing her until he almost makes himself late. She doesn't remember that happening this morning though. Maybe he just forgot. Maybe he was already running late.
Maybe he's mad at you.
Maybe he didn't want to kiss you.
Maybe he doesn't actually love you.
That feeling she woke up with starts to swell. Making it hard to breathe. She can almost feel the pressure in her chest move up her throat, expanding behind her eyes until her vision starts to blur.
No. No, stop. Everything is fine. She's just in need of a long hot shower and some breakfast. That's it. She's fine, he's fine, everything is fine.
Everything is not fine.
The shower didn't help and she couldn't even eat because of how upside down her stomach feels right now. She's checked her phone a million times now to see if there's a text or call from him. There's not, which is still not surprising, because she knows that he has back to back surgeries today and he's not going to text her while he's working.
Logically, she knows this. However, logical thinking has never really helped when she's like this. Every single time she checks her phone and doesn't see a message, the pressure grows. She feels like she's going to explode by the time she finally decides to text him to hopefully ease some of her worry.
Bren 🦈🫶🏽
hey love ! i hope surgery is going good
i was thinking pasta for dinner
with my granny's sauce
js how you like!
lmk
i love you <333
She's aware that that was too many texts at once, but when her anxiety gets bad she feels like she has to do everything in her power to stop the pressure. He doesn't answer immediately, which is totally normal. But it doesn't help the pressure at all. The longer she goes without a response, the louder it all gets.
He doesn't want to talk to you.
You did something wrong and he's done with you.
You're so annoying and he can't stand you anymore.
She can feel the pressure behind her eyes and behind her heart growing. She's tried her breathing techniques and she turned on her comfort show, Once Upon A Time, and nothing is working. She can't eat and she can't relax and she can't get the thoughts to stop. Then, everything pauses as she gets a text.
Bren 🦈🫶🏽
Surgery went good. Pasta sounds great. Next surgery starts soon,
should be straightforward. I love you too.
okay ! i'll see you after <333
You'd think by her response that that answer had helped.
You'd be wrong.
Again, logically she knew that there was a difference in how they texted. He hated texting and was often as efficient about it as he could be. He was also twenty years older than her, which meant he used proper punctuation and grammar and everything. She was usually good at telling herself that that's just how he texts and there's nothing to worry about.
She was not doing very well with that at the moment though. His response just made the thoughts louder and the pressure grew stronger.
He's pushing you away.
He's not being efficient he just doesn't want to talk to you.
He's going to get rid of you soon.
He said he loves you but he was just trying to placate you so you'd shut up.
The pressure finally bubbled over then, becoming too much for her to handle. Her vision blurred completely and she doesn't know if it's from the tears or from the fact that she feels like she can't breathe. Her deep subconscious briefly supplies her with the thought that Brendon would want her to tell him that she's feeling like this. That he would want to help. Unfortunately, the stupidly overpowering, anxiety riddled part of her brain just told her more hateful things that were absolutely not helpful.
She doesn't know if she cries for minutes or hours but she quickly finds out when she finds her phone on the coffee table, looks at the time, and realizes that Brendon should be getting home soon. So it's been hours then. She's been known to fully zone out when she gets like this so it doesn't surprise her to see how long it's been. She knows that the only thing that will make her feel better is him. His physical and verbal reassurance will make everything okay. So she waits.
And waits.
And waits.
And waits.
She looks at her phone again and realizes there are no new texts from him. No calls. No location notifications. Nothing.
It's 7:45 now. He's fifteen minutes late. Yet again the rational part of her brain tries to tell her that this is normal. He's a surgeon and sometimes things take longer than they're supposed to. She should know, I mean, she's a nurse in the ED. Things never go to plan and they always take longer than they're supposed to.
But it's that pesky part of her brain that's doing all the talking right now and it says the one thing that she's been avoiding thinking since they got together. With her brain though, it's inevitable.
He's not late.
He's not coming home.
He's dead.
Brendon was exhausted. Of course his last surgery of the day had to run over by almost an hour. All he wanted to do was go home, see his girl, convince her to shower with him, and eat her delicious cooking. In a mere five minutes that's exactly what he'd be doing.
Usually when he gets home from work (and she's not with him), she's waiting for him by the door. Which is why he's slightly confused when he opens the door to a quiet, still house. He doesn't even smell her granny's secret sauce or garlic bread, which she usually makes when they eat pasta. When she doesn't come running after he takes off his shoes and throws his keys in the bowl by the door, he goes looking for her.
"Baby?"
No answer.
"Em?"
Nothing.
"Emma?"
Still nothing.
He doesn't get anxious or worried very often but when it comes to her, he feels like he's in a constant state of worry. Albeit a small constant state, but constant nonetheless. He's always worried when she's at work, thinking of her being attacked again and taken away from him for good. He worries all the time that she'll realize she has so much life left and she doesn't want to be stuck with a guy twenty years older than her. So he just does everything he can to be the best man he can be for her.
But this situation is not helping his worrying in the slightest. Did she leave? Where would she be if she did? Is she hurt? He makes his way down the hall and through the kitchen when he sees her. Their house has a very open floor plan, so the living room is fully visible from where he's standing in the kitchen. She's sitting on the couch, moving almost imperceptibly but only to take shallow hitching breathes. He rushes into the living room, crouching down at her feet so he's on her level. He could now see the silent tears streaking down her face.
"Baby? Hey, baby look at me." He tries to verbally get her attention while gently cupping her jaw and tilting her head so they're looking at each other. Her eyes seem to focus then and her face fully crumbles when she locks on to him.
"Bren?" Her voice sounds so small, barely a whisper, and it breaks his heart to see her like this.
"Hi baby, what's wrong?"
Instead of answering she threw herself off of the couch and into his arms; almost knocking him over. He wrapped his arms around her as tight as he could (without hurting her) and cradled the back of her head in his hand. He stood with her still in his arms, moving himself from the floor onto the couch, so she was sitting on his thighs. Her body was shaking with the most heart wrenching sobs he had ever heard. He wasn't sure what was going on, and she didn't seem to be in any mindset to tell him right now, so he just held her as tight as possible and tried to calm her down.
She seemed to calm down pretty quickly but she still wasn't talking. She was just quietly sniffling into the crook of his neck and shoulder. She was holding him so tightly that he would be scared for his ability to breathe if he wasn't so much bigger than her. He still had no idea what had happened. He tried to wake her up before he went to work this morning but she was so tired she just mumbled sleepily something about ten more minutes. He told her loved her, kissed her forehead, and left as he does every morning.
At work, he texted her when he could. He wasn't the most expressive texter in the world but he tried his best. He didn't think he said anything wrong. He was a little late getting home but that happened all the time. Surgery didn't have a set time frame all the time given complications and unknown circumstances.
Maybe something happened while he was gone. Maybe her family tried to contact her again. Maybe they took Once Upon A Time off of Disney+. He didn't necessarily think that would cause this level of emotion from her but maybe it was a tipping point. He wanted to understand but he didn't want to push her. He just wanted to comfort her but he couldn't really handle how sad she was right now. It hurt his heart in a physical way. He didn't want to push but they needed to talk about this.
Her sniffles had grown few and far between now. He decided this would be the best time to figure out what exactly happened while he was gone. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, hoping that this conversation would go well so he could see her beautiful smile again.
"Baby?" He tried to keep his voice even and calm, even with the slight anxiety rushing through him at her current state.
"Mmhm" was all he got in response.
"Do you want to talk about what happened?"
She seemed to curl into him a little more before shifting to look into his eyes. Her eyes were red rimmed and glassy and she looked so tired. As if what ever had happened today had physically exhausted her.
"Umm it's really nothing. It was kind of stupid honestly." Her voice was a little less shaky but it still sounded so small. It was a little gravelly too, on account of the crying, and he felt something tighten in his chest. He would literally do anything to make sure she never sounded like that again.
"Baby, anything that made you react like that is not stupid. Whatever happened upset you and it is okay that it did. I just want to know what happened so I can help." She did this sometimes, belittling her feelings. Like she wanted to make sure she didn't cause any problems, make sure she wasn't a burden. Like when she was attacked on her first day. She told everyone she was fine, that it happened sometimes and it hadn't bothered her. Then, when they got together months later, he was comforting her at 3am when she had woken up from a nightmare about it. He's been trying to prove to her that her feelings matter and he'll keep trying until she gets it through her pretty little head.
"I just freaked out a little bit. Nothing even happened. I was just being stupid."
"Alright. New rule. If you say stupid one more time I'll edge you for a week." She blushed at that and it was a sight to see. "You're not stupid and neither are your feelings so just tell me what happened and we can work through it together."
She took a deep breath before she spoke. Her eyes were focused on her hands, which were fidgeting the way they did when she was anxious. "O-okay, umm, I-I just woke up feeling wrong, like I was on the verge of a panic attack. Nothing even happened, no nightmares or anything, I just felt like something was wrong with, umm, us. It's stu-" she caught herself before it came out, "Um, I mean, it's just- ugh I don't know."
She put her head down in her hands, rubbing them up over her face and into her hair to lightly tug at the strands. He reached up and gently took her hands in his, holding them and giving them a reassuring squeeze. He nodded a little at her silence, letting her know that she was good to keep going when she was ready. She stared down at their entwined hands as she continued.
"I have this, um, anxiety. I mean, you know the gist of it because I've told you almost everything but I have like regular anxiety and also, um, separation anxiety." She looked up at him then, maybe to gauge his reaction. He just kept a soft expression on his face and waited for her to continue. "I used to think it was just this thing that like animals had when they were away from their owners," she gave a sad little laugh, "but it turns out that people have it too and it is not fun. It tends to make me think that we're like not good when we're not physically around each other. It's not bad most days. I can usually rationalize with myself pretty well but today… I just couldn't. I kept trying to tell myself that everything was fine, that you were just in surgery and you were busy and I could wait. Then I was just agonizing over all the thoughts in my brain and I couldn't take it anymore so I texted you. Usually texting helps give my brain the reassurance it needs but today I just couldn't stop analyzing your texts. Like, my brain was saying you were being short with me even though I know rationally that you're just not a big texter and there's the age difference so we don't text the same anyway but nothing would work and I-"
He cut her off then, for only a second, because he wanted to hear the rest but she was hardly pausing to breathe and she was gripping his hands like he was going to slip away.
"Baby, breathe, please." She did, taking a big, although a little shaky, breath in and slowly letting it out. "Good girl. I'm not going anywhere, there's no need to rush."
"Okay, okay, um, yeah so the texting didn't work. I tried all my other go to remedies, hot shower, comfy blanket, breathing techniques, even Once Upon A Time, but nothing helped so I kind of just… cried for a while. After crying for a truly unreasonable amount of time, I realized that you should be home by then and I kind of started to panic. It's part of the separation anxiety thing. The longer you were late, the louder the thoughts got and… I-I thought, I thought you were, um,"
She stopped then, lower lip trembling and tears gathering in her eyes again. He let go of her hands to wrap his arms around her waist and held her tight.
"I was what, baby?"
"Dead."
The word was so quiet he almost didn't catch what she said and then her face crumbled a little as a few tears fell. He pulled her all the way in then, with her resting her head in the crook of his neck, her tears wetting the other shoulder of his scrubs. She thought he was dead? No wonder she had this much of a reaction. If he thought she was dead he doesn't know what he would do. He'd probably just stop functioning altogether.
He pulled back a little so he could see her face. She seemed to be fairly calm now that she'd gotten it all out. It probably helped that he was here now as well, now that she was able to tell that he was real and alive.
"Baby, I am so sorry you felt that way. Surgery ran a little long and it couldn't be helped."
"No, no it's okay. I rationally knew that and I completely understand. Just in the moment, my brain wouldn't listen. I had this problem when I was young too. If i didn't get picked up on time or someone came home late or if a friend didn't answer their phone or texts fast enough. It's just how my separation anxiety works."
"Okay, well here's what we're going to do. I don't care what I'm doing. I could be in surgery, I could be sleeping, I could be working out, it doesn't matter. I want you to call me when you're feeling like this. I'll let my scrub nurse know to answer any calls from you and-"
"No, Bren you really don't need to do that. I can deal, it's fine I'll-" He leveled her with a stare that made her pause.
"I wasn't finished. A five or ten minute phone call is nothing to me if it means giving you peace of mind. Obviously there will be times where I can't pick up right away, a complication arose that can't wait, but then I will call you back when the situation is stable. You are important to me and your feelings are important to me. If you need to call me so this doesn't happen again, then I will answer. I won't tell anyone why, that is your business, but I will let my scrub nurse know that if you are calling it's an emergency and it can't wait. I love you and I want to help you, so let me."
She looked a little sheepish, maybe embarrassed about needing this, but he's not letting her out of this. He loves her more than he thinks he's ever loved anyone and he won't let her suffer if he can help. She looks up at him then, still a little embarrassed, but the look in her eyes is one of so much love and adoration that he feels a warmth in his chest that rivals the sun.
"Thank you Bren. I love you so much I think I might actually explode sometimes."
And then she finally smiled and he's never seen a sweeter sight. He's glad that she told him. It makes him happy beyond words that she trusts him with every part of her, even the parts she may deem unworthy or burdening.
"I love you too baby, so much more than you'll ever know. But, now that that's over, I have one more thing to ask you."
She looks a little nervous again at that, and he kind of hates himself for wording it like that after everything she just told him.
"O-okay, um, what is it?"
"Can we have some pasta now?" He says with a mock serious look on his face.
She looks at him for a second and then fully bursts into a fit of giggles. He thinks that might be his favorite sound in the world. Right up there with the sound of her voice, the sounds she makes in bed, and the sound of a perfect joint reduction (what? he's a bone nerd at heart).
"Yeah, yes we can have pasta now." Her smile drops a little before she says, "I, um, I never actually got around to making it though."
He gives her a soft smile. "That's okay baby, we can make it together. How about you start on the sauce and I'll start on browning the meat and cooking the pasta."
She nods a little then and hops off of him with a huge smile on her face. She loves when they cook together, so he makes sure they do whenever they can. She holds out a hand for him and he takes it, though if he actually used her to help him get up, he'd probably just end up pulling her back down to the couch. They walk back to the kitchen hand and hand. They start getting out the ingredients they need but once everything is set out he grabs her around the waist and pulls her in before they can get started.
He's been rearing for a kiss since he got home and he's decided he can't wait another second to get it. He lowers his head and gives her the sweetest kiss he can possibly give. There's a little hunger to it but that can wait until his other type of hunger is satiated. He pulls back and she smiles at him again.
And finally, since the moment he left for work this morning, he can relax and so can she.