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thetomorrowshow · 2 years

Text

froze in shock

empires superpowers au masterlist (incomplete)

i'm this close to dropping my title scheme

cw: angst, nightmares, seeing someone dead in ur dreams?, relationship fights

this story takes place approximately 7 months after the end of 'poisoned rats'.

For the most part, Scott loves Jimmy’s strange behaviors and quirks. He loves the way he knocks four times before opening any door. He loves the way he glares through slitted eyes at any sort of electronic appliance. He loves the way he never takes his wallet anywhere and tries to just waltz out of stores without paying.

Something he doesn’t exactly love is just how stiff Jimmy is all the time.

Not personality-wise, or emotionally, but physically. When they watch movies all cuddled up together, Jimmy stares at the screen without seeming to need to shift his seating position, even as Scott readjusts about a billion times. They read together and Jimmy doesn’t move an inch from where he’s curled up on the couch. They lie in bed and Scott tries to sleep, but Jimmy is absolutely motionless in his arms.

It’s just frankly weird, and too many times Scott’s poked Jimmy to make sure he’s still alive only for Jimmy to turn those big puppy-dog eyes on him, terribly wounded by a little prod. Scott always rolls his eyes and cuddles Jimmy a bit closer, putting it out of his mind. That is, until today.

It’s the weekend, and Scott wakes up this morning after a terrible nightmare (He’s too late, Jimmy’s on the ground with blood dripping from his mouth and utterly motionless, he hasn’t got a pulse and no matter how many times Scott shakes him he doesn’t rouse), but he shakes it off and slips out of bed to make pancakes, eyes lingering on the sleeping form of his boyfriend.

Ever since he was eighteen, cooking’s something he’s done to keep his mind occupied. It had taken quite a bit of work on Aeor’s part to get rid of the idea that only women cook, only women do chores, but once that particular brand of toxic masculinity had been debunked, he’d grown to love cooking. It's a safe haven, a place to stretch some mental muscles and focus solely on the task at hand. Plus he usually gets something delicious out of his labor, so while others may consider cooking a chore, Scott sees it as one of his favorite pastimes.

He’s just finished the first couple of pancakes when Jimmy shuffles out of the bedroom, pajama shirt half off and hair sticking up. He yawns, leans over Scott’s shoulder for a kiss (Scott smiles and acquiesces, taking in his boyfriend alive and safe and moving), then heads off in the direction of the bathroom.

“Love you!” Scott calls after him. He gets a faint grunt in reply.

When Jimmy exits the bathroom after half an hour, his hair is tamed and his eyes are actually open. He hasn’t showered, which isn’t exactly abnormal, but Scott’s not sure if it’s a trauma thing today or if he just wants pancakes.

Jimmy makes a beeline for the cupboard, retrieving a plate, then a fork from the drawer below. He kisses Scott on the cheek when he reaches over him for the steadily growing collection of pancakes, nabbing two before continuing to the table.

“Sleep well?” Scott asks lightly, blinking back images from his nightmare.

“Fine, I guess,” Jimmy says, and there’s still traces of sleep in his voice that make Scott grin to himself. “Thank you for breakfast.”

Scott nods, flips a pancake. He reaches up into the cupboard above the stove, pulls out the syrup and hands it to Jimmy, who is currently bent over in the fridge for butter.

“Do you have to superhero today?” Jimmy asks after a few minutes, and Scott shrugs.

“It’s not my day for patrol, but I could be called out at any time. If that happens, do you want me to ask Lizzie to come over?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

Elle curls around Scott’s legs, purring softly. He knows what she wants, which is why he’s already made and set aside two tiny pancakes. One of these he dangles between his fingers, drops into Elle’s mouth when she leaps up to catch it. Norman skitters into the room as if sensing the food, gives Scott the most innocent look ever. Scott chuckles, kneels down with the other tiny pancake and holds it out to him. Norman barely takes it in time, Elle lunging forward to try and snatch it.

“You’re such a good cat dad,” Jimmy mumbles around a mouthful of pancake. “Makin’ ‘em pancakes an’ all.”

Scott rolls his eyes. “Right, because they would never whine at me until I gave them one anyways.”

He finishes up the pancakes, clicking the stove off and rinsing the mixing bowl out in the sink. Then he serves himself some pancakes, sits down next to Jimmy, stifling a yawn.

Jimmy, of course, notices, brows crinkling with concern. “Scott, dear, did you sleep last night?”

He did sleep, of course. Just not very well. Scott doesn’t need to answer, though, because Jimmy keeps speaking.

“You look exhausted. Maybe you should nap after breakfast.”

Scott shovels a bite of pancake in his mouth. Now that he’s sitting down, he really feels what Jimmy’s saying. He just wants to lean back and close his eyes for a little bit, and his bed sounds almost heavenly.

“Maybe,” he agrees. The more he thinks of it, the more appealing it sounds. It's not like it takes much convincing to get him to do something he wants to do, though. “Wake me up if the hero phone rings?”

Jimmy smiles, bounces a little in his seat. “I didn’t actually think I would convince you!” he says. “You must be really tired. Of course I will, of course! Just go rest, my love! I’ll clean this up.”

Scott chuckles, leans over for a sticky kiss. “Okay. I’ll go to bed.”

Scott shoots up with a gasp—Jimmy’s gone, he’s dead, he’s lying unmoving on the floor and there’s no blood but his skin has taken on a grey pallor and there’s nothing Scott can do but take his pulse over and over with no results—and Jimmy’s in front of him, hands up placatingly.

What?

“Are you awake?” Jimmy asks cautiously, and Scott glances around the blurry world only for his bedroom to come into focus. He blinks at Jimmy again, trying to reconcile the man in front of him with the one he’d just seen.

A dream. A nightmare.

The Jimmy before him—the real Jimmy, the living, breathing Jimmy—is shirtless, a towel tied around his waist. The scars that mar his torso are a shiny pink, his hair wet and flat against his head. In his hand is a flip-phone, outstretched toward Scott.

“They’re calling for you, but I can tell them you’re sleeping if you like,” Jimmy says, squinting at him. Scott takes a moment to regulate his breathing, still out of control after a repeat of last night’s dream.

“Yeah, no, I’ll go out,” he mumbles, rubbing his eyes and kicking off the tangled sheets. “Does the message say who the villain is?”

“The Oracle,” Jimmy reads. “Apparently Joel went up against him, but you know how sensitive he is to the Oracle’s powers.”

Scott sucks in a breath, suddenly fully awake. That’s bad news. “They should’ve called me right away. Is Joel okay?”

Jimmy shrugs.

“Right, tell them I’m getting ready.” Scott rolls out of the bed, heads to the closet. “Sure you don’t want to come?”

Jimmy snorts. “Right. I’m gonna get back to my shower. Have fun out there, love you.”

“Love you,” Scott calls after his retreating back, before slipping his supersuit on. Apparently he’s got a villain to fight.

The Oracle is a quiet villain with haunted eyes, and Scott hates fighting him these days because of how much that reminds him of Jimmy. He scares him off anyways, helps Joel (who is tugging on his own hair, eyes squinted shut as he lies curled on the sidewalk) to Lizzie, then returns home, somehow more exhausted than he was before he took his nap.

Jimmy’s on the couch when he gets back, Norman on his lap as he watches whatever it is he’s watching. He lights up when Scott stumps through the back door, kicking off his boots and pulling off his mask.

“Hello, my love!” Jimmy says brightly, pausing his show. “I’d get up to kiss you, but Norman is asleep on me.”

Scott can’t help but smile at him. “It’s fine, Jimmy. How about I go change out of this and then we put on the next episode of Stranger Things?”

Jimmy agrees and soon enough they’re both on the couch cuddled up to each other, Norman having slunk off to some other room. Scott flips through the episodes until he finds the one they’re on, then settles in, the bowl of popcorn that Jimmy had prepared resting on his lap.

They’re barely past the title screen of the second episode when Scott feels the exhaustion start to take over. His limbs grow heavy, his eyelids flutter shut, he sighs and lets his head rest more heavily on Jimmy’s shoulder.

And then Jimmy’s dead under him, too still to be anything but that, and his heart isn’t beating under Scott’s ear and he doesn’t know how it happened—

“Scott—Scott!”

Scott’s eyes shoot open and he sees Jimmy, eyes wide, hands pushing gently against his chest. But he’s still so motionless—Scott’s hands are gripping his shoulders and he shakes him, Jimmy has to wake up he can’t be dead he just can’t be—

“Scott!” Jimmy cries out, fear flashing across his face before he fully pushes him away.

Scott blinks, takes in his surroundings.

He’s on the couch in his living room. The TV is playing something—Stranger Things—on low volume, like Jimmy had turned it down so he could rest easier. Jimmy’s on the far end of the couch from him, hands up defensively.

And maybe Scott’s just exhausted. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been able to sleep lately without being haunted by nightmares of Jimmy dead under his fingers. Maybe the fight with the Oracle had tipped him over the edge. But instead of doing what a good partner would do, instead of apologizing and explaining his actions, instead of offering Jimmy a hug and safety, Scott lashes out.

“I thought you were dead!” he spits, hands clenched in fists. “I—I keep dreaming that you’ve died, that I was too late to save you, and then you make everything worse by how freakishly still you are all the time! It’s like cuddling with a statue, I swear! I woke up from a nightmare that you weren’t moving and you weren’t moving here, either! I just—” dread (or maybe tears) chokes him, but Scott continues— “I just wish you weren’t weird like that.”

There’s a moment of silence as all those ugly words hang in the air between them, and for a moment Scott feels viciously pleased, pleased that they’re finally out of his head. Then that moment is gone and Jimmy is rolling off the couch and running into their bedroom, the door slamming shut behind him.

Scott sits there for a moment, fuming. Oh, so he doesn’t get to be critical of anything? Jimmy’s just scared him half to death, and Scott doesn’t even get the chance to ask him to not do that?

And then his brain seems to catch up with his mouth.

Oh no.

Scott may have no idea why Jimmy doesn’t fidget. It may bother him a lot. That doesn’t mean he gets to blame Jimmy for it. It doesn’t mean he gets to be mad at Jimmy. If something about Jimmy’s actions truly bothers him, he’s meant to talk it out with his therapist and figure out the best conversation that can be had for the both of them over the issue, and remember that they both have to make concessions for this relationship to work. This is certainly something he can concede.

Not anymore. Not now that he’s ruined everything. Jimmy hates him. He’d yelled at him for something that he probably didn’t even realize that he was doing, for something that Scott had never even expressed bothers him. And now Jimmy’s going to break up with him and Scott deserves it.

Maybe he can fix things, a little bit. Or at least find a way to apologize to Jimmy before he leaves him.

Scott dashes away the tears that have begun to roll down his cheeks, kicks off the blanket that he doesn’t remember putting on and trips over the overturned popcorn bowl, knocking even more kernels all over the carpet. He sighs, crouches down, and begins picking up each piece to throw away. He could get the vacuum out—he should get the vacuum out—but this is more difficult, and he deserves more difficult.

Once he’s collected it all, he carries the bowl to the kitchen and dumps it in the trash, then puts the bowl in the sink. From there, he rinses any other various dishes and loads them into the dishwasher, then opens the fridge and gets out the ground beef he’d set to defrost the day before.

They’d planned lasagna for dinner. He sets a pan on the front right burner, plops the ground meat into it with some oil and onion flakes, then sets a pot of water to boil on the back left burner. He moves mechanically, just following step after step, repeatedly blinking back tears. This is something he knows how to do, something he knows Jimmy will enjoy eating.

As if summoned by the thought of him, the bedroom door creaks open and Jimmy sidles out, pads down the hall and into the kitchen. Scott doesn’t look at him, just wipes his nose on his sleeve and stirs the meat.

“Babe,” Jimmy says softly, stepping closer. “Baby, you’re overworking yourself. Sit down, yeah? You literally fell asleep on my shoulder earlier.”

Scott sucks in a shuddering breath, reluctantly lets Jimmy pry the spatula from his fingers. At another nudge, he falls into his chair at the kitchen table.

He hadn’t realized just how far he was pushing himself until he sits down, feels his muscles relax, soreness he hadn’t noticed resolving into relief.

He shouldn’t be feeling relief. He should still be struggling. He deserves to struggle.

“Now. We need to talk about what just happened,” Jimmy tells him, tossing the meat around. “To start off, I’m sorry.”

Scott blinks. “I—sorry for what?” he asks incredulously. “You didn’t do anything!”

“I’m sorry for running out when you were hurting,” Jimmy says simply. “I should have stayed and tried to talk you through it, but I panicked and bolted. I want to get better at staying in uncomfortable conversations, and it’s something I’m going to talk to my therapist about.”

He’s so perfect. Jimmy’s the most perfect boyfriend in existence, and that’s why Scott doesn’t deserve him. He didn’t do anything wrong, Scott was the one to freak out on him for no reason—

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Scott sniffles. “Thinkin’ about how much I don’t deserve you.”

“Okay. And what upset you earlier?”

Scott’s not sure how to say it, because now that they’re in the brightly lit kitchen and Jimmy’s tapping the spatula against the rim of the pan, it seems ridiculous. “I—” he cuts himself off, arms twitching up like he’s about to hide his head in them. Maybe he should. “I’ve been having bad dreams,” he says eventually. “Where you . . . where I’m too late. And they’ve k-killed you. And it always ends the same way—I’m listening for your heartbeat, and there’s nothing, and you’re so very very still—and I should’ve never freaked out at you about it, you—”

Jimmy snorts. “‘I should’ve never freaked out at you about it’ should be the title of my autobiography.”

“Yeah, but—” Scott’s hands are shaking, he’s not sure why— “but I had literally no reason! And you might have a reason for not fidgeting, and—” “Whoa, back it up!” Jimmy sets the spatula down, turns to him, his brows raised in concern. “Do you think I have no reason for freaking out when I have a panic attack over the door being closed?”

“I—what? No! But that’s a trauma response, it’s—” “And you think your nightmares aren’t a trauma response?”

Scott stops. Thinks.

It’s . . . it’s certainly possible that rescuing Jimmy was a traumatic enough experience that he can’t stop dreaming about it. But. . . .

“But that’s your trauma,” Scott whispers. “I—it wasn’t bad for me. I shouldn’t be upset over it when it didn’t even happen to me.”

Silence for a moment. “Scott,” says Jimmy eventually. “After you rest, I hope you realize how stupid that just was.”

“I—what—?” Scott sputters, but Jimmy continues speaking.

“Trauma doesn’t discriminate! And secondhand trauma is a thing that exists. It doesn’t have to happen to you for you to be traumatized. Like—uh, like when Mythics accidentally flashed you that one time? I may have just been in the crowd, and I wasn’t the one who had to help him pull his pants back up, but I was certainly traumatized.”

Scott laughs in spite of himself, some of the tension oozing out of him. Jimmy’s right, and he knows it. He’s even talked to Nora about secondhand trauma and what signs to look out for. He really is just exhausted.

Still.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a minute, “for saying what I did. Sure, it could have been a trauma reaction, but that doesn’t mean I had to say all that.”

Jimmy nods. “Thank you. It sounded like it was something that’s been building up for a while.”

Scott shrugs. It has been, but he doesn’t want to say it.

“I don’t know why I’m so still all the time,” Jimmy says thoughtfully, opening a box of lasagna noodles. “I don’t remember if I used to fidget or not. If I had to guess. . . .” He pours the noodles into the boiling water, pokes at them with a wooden spoon. “Y’know, thinking back I think I did fidget a lot in school. But you’re looking at a guy who had to spend days lying frozen on an operation table.”

Guilt surges through Scott, but before he can open his mouth Jimmy continues.

“But then again, I’ve had to sleep in a lot of tight spaces over the years where there wasn’t room to move. And there was a year or so when I was younger that I was so scared of myself that I barely dared to move. And also, the education system sucks for neurodivergent kids and they might’ve just trained it out of me when I was real small. I really don’t know. I have my theories, but there’s no way to really know. In any case, I never meant to scare you.”

“If I didn’t feel like a jerk before, I definitely do now,” Scott admits. “Being tired is no excuse. I shouldn’t have been so nasty about it. I’ll talk to Nora, try to work out why I responded like that.”

“And I’ll work on moving occasionally, so you feel more comfortable!”

“What?” That’s—no— “Jimmy, no. I don’t want you to change your behavior, you haven’t done anything wrong!”

Jimmy turns the heat of the lower right burner on low, sets down the spatula. He leaves the food to sit beside Scott, takes his hands in his own.

“Petal,” he says seriously. “When you started leaving doors open for me, that was a change in your behavior to keep me safe, even though you weren’t doing anything wrong by closing them.”

“Yeah, but—”

“When I asked you to not stand over me if I’m on the floor, that was a change in your behavior that you made and you definitely didn’t have to, but you choose to crawl across rooms sometimes so that I feel safe. When I asked you not to touch my head, you immediately stopped, even though it was an instinct for you.” Jimmy kisses one of Scott’s hands, smiles softly. “This isn’t a big change for me. And it’ll help you feel safe. Let me do this for you.”

Scott bites his lip. “But what if it is a big change for you? What if you try to fidget and have a flashback?”

“Well, then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jimmy shrugs. He stands, squeezing Scott’s hands before letting go. “Now how about I finish making this, and you hop in the shower, and then we can eat and go to bed. Sound good?”

It sounds wonderful, especially when Scott had convinced himself not long ago that he deserved to be dumped by Jimmy. Maybe his thoughts today haven’t exactly been rational.

He showers, and they eat, and they turn in early but lie in bed and finish their episode on Scott’s laptop. When it’s over and Scott puts the laptop to the side, Jimmy snuggles up to his chest and closes his eyes.

“I feel like I really messed up today,” Scott whispers.

Jimmy hums. “Maybe you did mess up. But we’ll get through it. And tomorrow we can talk about it more to really sort out the issue, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jimmy tilts his head up, presses a soft kiss to Scott’s lips. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

Scott wakes in the middle of the night, frantically reaching for Jimmy’s arm to take his pulse. Jimmy just sniffs, mumbles something in his sleep, presses himself closer to Scott.

Scott watches his chest rise and fall until he feels secure. Then he lets his eyes flutter closed and finally falls into a dreamless sleep.

#empires smp #esmp #empires smp fanfic #empires superpowers au #esh au #mas writes #flower husbands #yeah i'm sorry about this one #i just didn't like the idea that they're both perfect all the time #yk what relationships are messy and you inevitably hurt the other person sometimes #that's okay. you just have to talk about it and fix it #then move on #and i do need to make clear that jimmy messes up too #it happens. they accidentally hurt each other sometimes #i also just wanted to explore secondhand trauma a little bit #as i've not really written about it yet afaik #but lmk what you think!#love you guys

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