Hi! Could you please write headcanon where something bad happened to Emma (someone made her upset for example) and she run to Thomas for help/comfort? Their relationship is so cute! I would love to see them together more often!
🍷Join me for a Drink 🍷 - TBITW: Tommy comforting Emma
[Celebration] [Celebration Masterlist] [Masterlist]
This was written as part of my Series The Boy in the Window and contains spoilers
It happened at one of the charity functions of the Shelby Family Foundation where they were re-opening a hospital after paying for the renovations. Tommy had already been on edge given what happened the last time around. He would have far rather left the children safe at home, but given the fact that there is a brand new shiny playground for children too, he couldn’t back out of it. That doesn’t mean he didn’t watch Emma and Charlie like a hawk, just as he had men stationed at every door and below every window. That the roads were closed was such a strange coincidence, the other guests thought.
After the ceremony, they were all gathered for tea, drinks, canapés and chatter, undoubtedly actively working on donations and connections alike. Tommy had vetted and researched all the guests thoroughly. He really wasn’t taking any chances.
He tried his absolute best to avoid the meaningless chatter, preferring to survey the situation best he could, seeing Ada, Polly and Lizzie work the room, while watching (Y/N), although she preferred to talk to the head nurse and the doctors. Charlie was diligently holding her hand. But without Emma.
Instead of him finding her, she found him- hitting his leg in full force and wrapping her arms around his hip.
His relief at finding her was short lived when her reaction to him trying to talk to her was only to clutch him tighter, which tells him all he needs to know. For such little people, children have a surprisingly tight grip that isn’t easily loosened. He has to practically pry his clothes out of her little hands and once he had done so, he lifted her up in his arms and left the room in quick strides for the privacy of the corridor. No matter what had made her upset, a room full of people would not make it better.
There, he tried to sit her down on the windowsill so that she was of eye level to him. Emma protested heavily, not with her words, but by trying to hug him again. Tommy captured her hands and held them in his while asking what had made her upset. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were wide and her hands shaking - the absence of tears unnerved him.
She was fighting for words for a while until she repeated bits of a conversation she had overheard in which some women referred to her mother as a, in her words, “conevience” and that it was “inneditable” that he would get tired of a woman with baggage and leave for good.
“For good means forever and I don’t want you to leave forever! We can take turns carrying the baggage so you won’t get tired!”
Saying it out loud made the tears come, but before they had a chance to spill, Tommy already felt rage bubbling up inside him.
But Emma first, anger second. So he wiped her tears away and cupped her face, promising he would never ever leave, and even if he had to go away for a day or two, or even a week, he would always come back.
It takes a full five minutes of promises until she believed him and only then did he pick her up. She wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling her head in his neck and clinging to him. He held her, stroked the back of her head and walked back and forth, seething with rage and counting his lucky stars that Emma was too young to understand the true meaning of what she had overheard. The only thing preventing carnage is the fact that Emma needs comfort now and that there would be time for the appropriate response later.
But there would be a response, so once Emma had calmed down and was giggling again thanks to a cheap trick where he produced a sweet from behind her ear and a bit of tickling, he carried her back inside, where they were met by a rather anxious (Y/N) and a frowning Charlie, but Tommy assured her that everything was just fine (or at least going to be).
Then he asked Emma to point out the people to him, which she did. Tommy of course, had in his research collected a dark secret or two. After setting her down, he sent her to the sweets table to find the biggest biscuit there. That would keep her occupied for a bit.
They all were very flattered, when Tommy joined their conversation - all were so very impressed with his work and deeply motivated to support and one even expressed interest in a literacy scheme he was also involved in.
Tommy made it known that he appreciated that, and would be open to it, however there might be trouble given their varying interpretation of certain words and concepts.
This left the women confused, but he was only too happy to explain, that for example “baggage to him” was a son who has a habit of sneaking his affairs onto the navy ship he was stationed onto despite being engaged to the daughter of a higher officer, or a husband who wrote off his cigarettes, whisky and nocturnal expenses off from the charity account his wife ran, or a certain niece that lived overseas and was curiously born towards the end of the war while the third’s husband had been deployed for over a year.
This has them quiet for once, each staring at the other in a mixture of shock and disgust.
“So if any of you ever feels the desire to talk about my wife or my children again, please remember that I will be all too happy to ensure that your baggage graces the front pages of every single newspaper from Inverness to fucking Plymouth for an entire month straight.”
~
Bonus Headcanon:
Nightly visitors were no strangers, but the children would climb in on her side as they had gotten used to her arms shielding them from nightly terrors and nightmares, but one particular night, Tommy watched Emma climb in on her mother’s side and was ready to close his eyes again when she got up again, little bare feet padding on the hardwood floor until she found the stool of her mother’s dressing table.
In the darkness, she was but a pale shadow in her nightgown as she pushed it up against the foot of the bed, using the added height to climb into the bed and settling into the small space between them. A mother’s arms can keep many terrors at bay but after some nightmares, it is better to be protected from both sides.
Tommy didn’t even mind when Emma ends up hogging the blankets, both his and (Y/N)’s. After all, he feels too warm inside to feel the cold. And it was completely incidental that Tommy moved a chaise longue at the foot of the bed the very next day, which was far safer and sturdier than that little dressing table stool and was before long in frequent use by children and dogs alike.
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