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peachy-panic · 2 days

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Lonely

Hi everyone, I'm alive! Have some Torley Era Jaime content.

This kind goes along with a (much happier) future piece I'm hoping to finish writing and post soon, so stay tuned for some better vibes. For now:

WARNINGS: BBU/BBU-Adjacent, hunger, the sadness of stray cats (no animals were harmed in the making), brief suicidal ideations, gun mention, implied noncon

Restless. That is how Jaime thinks of the long weekdays in the Torley house, when the boys are at school and his Keeper is at work, and Jaime is left on his own until they return home to demand his attention.

It is not that he is without work; Mr. Torley holds high expectations for his home, and Jaime strives to meet them all, even if it means double, triple, cleaning over a room he’s already scrubbed bare or taking all of the glassware out of the cabinets just to polish and arrange them again. But there are days when he finds himself with idle hands, in the time between completing his chores and his keeper’s return. That’s when anxiety creeps in. He knows it’s a conditioned thought, but it’s in him too deep to ignore. He can’t rest, can’t be useless, can’t be found being lazy when Mr. Torley comes home.

It gets lonely, though, these pockets of restlessness. He is so fucking. lonely.

Sometimes he wishes that he had permission to go out on errands—collecting groceries, making returns, dropping off suits at the dry cleaner—just so that he can have a reason to talk to another person. He was trained to believe that many domestic contracts allow for that kind of thing, but Mr. Torley has made it clear that Jaime’s place is in the house. In the month that he has been here, he has never once been allowed to step foot outside, and he knows better than to ask.

He is usually good at avoiding temptation, but on one Friday morning, Jaime is caught off guard.

He is cleaning the sliding glass doors at the back of the house when he catches a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. Jaime flinches, startled, but when he looks into the backyard, he finds that the source of the motion was a fluffy, white cat, now tucked halfway behind a thick tree root, peeking up at Jaime with obvious apprehension. Through the thick glass, he can make out a muffled meow.

It must be the same cat Kade saw last night. Jaime hadn’t seen it himself, but he overheard the argument between him and his father from the next room.

“Dad, we should keep her!”

“It probably already has a home, Kade.”

“No it doesn’t,” he shot back. “Look, she doesn’t have a collar.”

Ubidden, Jaime’s hand rose to the metal band at his own throat. Funny, he thought, how a collar is the mark of a safe home to some.

“That doesn’t mean it’s our responsibility.”

“Daddy,” Jaime recognized the edge of frustrated tears slipping into Kade’s voice. “What if she’s hungry?”

“She’s fine.”

“Can I give her some water at least?”

“Kadence.” Even from the next room, Jaime couldn’t help but flinch at the impatient tone in his Keeper’s voice. “You will not give this cat anything, do you understand me? You feed it once and it will keep coming back. That’s the last thing I need to deal with.”

“But Dad—”

“I said, do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Without really thinking about it, Jaime stuffs the washrag into his back pocket and crouches down, putting himself closer to eye level. The cat perks his head up in response, fixing him with a steadier stare.

“Hi,” Jaime mouths, lifting one hand to wiggle his fingers in a half-wave. The cat puts a hesitant paw forward, and Jaime smiles. “Hello, there.”

Another soft meow, and then it pulls its paw back.

“Don’t go,” he whispers, struck by the sudden, urgent fear that it will dart away and leave him alone. All at once, it is Jaime’s greatest wish to keep this small animal in his sights, if only for a little while. If only to feel just a little less alone for a few minutes. It's desperate and sad, but it's true.

Jaime’s eyes flick up to the latch on the sliding door, just above his head. It would only be for a moment. Just a moment, just long enough to see if the cat will come closer. He won’t be breaking any rules—not really.

When he looks back to the cat, he sees that it has moved several paces closer, and it’s all the push he needs. Slowly, Jaime reaches up and flips the lock open. The sound is enough to freeze the small animal in place, but it doesn’t retreat. Still, he slows his movements even further as he wraps his fingers around the handle and pulls it to the side. The burst of clean, fresh air on his face is the best thing he’s felt in months.

The noise of the door startles the cat into motion again, but when Jaime stretches out his arm, his palm open, it bounds toward him instead of away. It slows its approach as it gets within a couple feet of him, stretching out its tiny, pink nose to sniff at his hand.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, keeping himself still and steady. When the tip of its nose makes contact with Jaime’s finger, the cat only jumps back for half a second before it twists its neck, pushing its tiny head into Jaime’s outstretched palm.

A sound bubbles out of Jaime’s mouth, and it takes longer than it should to recognize it as his own laugh. Carefully, desperate not to scare it off, he scratches between the small animal’s ears and elicits a soft, vibrating pur.

“Hi,” he says again through another burst of delighted laughter. “Hi, sweet girl.”

He’s not sure if he’s right about that guess, but it feels better than referring to it like an object. He decides to trust Kade’s intuition on this one. She meows up at him, and he chooses to take that as approval enough.

“Are you lost?” Jaime asks, noticing without conscious thought that his voice has risen to a pitch he only ever uses for Kade’s bedtime stories. “Do you have a home around here?”

He knows the answer before he asks it, though. The edges of her white fur are caked with mud and grime, and he can feel her spine a little too prominently through her skin.

Jaime remembers well what that kind of hunger feels like. A dangerous thought begins to take shape.

He glances at the clock in the hallway. He still has a couple of hours before he expects Mr. Torley home. That should be plenty to sneak something out. Even if it’s just some water. Jaime can clean it up and put everything away before his Keeper comes home. He never needs to know.

He flinches as the thought lands. These are the kinds of things he’s not supposed to think about anymore.

But Mr. Torley does plenty he isn’t supposed to do, doesn’t he?

He hesitates, just for a moment, before he stands, knees cracking.

“Will you stay here for a minute?” he asks, scratching under her neck when she raises her head. “If I go to get you something to eat?”

She scuttles back a few steps at the sudden movement but doesn’t run away. He will have to hope for the best.

In the kitchen, he goes straight for the plastic bowl in the cabinet that is designated for Jaime at mealtimes. He used to think about the fork scratches in the bottom when he first arrived at the house, wondering how many boys before him had eaten from the same bowl. He would never use any of Mr. Torley’s good dishes, but this serves him perfectly well as he fills it halfway with water from the tap.

Food is another matter. Jaime has never had a cat before, but he knows the basics. Normally, he would expect to find a can of tuna or two stashed away in the back of someone’s pantry, but Mr. Torley isn’t the pantry staple kind of person. He likes his food fresh and expensive and expertly prepared, and—

Salmon. In the refrigerator, there is a small strip of leftover salmon filet from two nights ago. Mr. Torley never eats leftovers, and the boys hardly touched their fish to begin with. Jaime might have allowed himself to it before he would be expected to throw it away, but this is a far better use. No one will notice it's gone. No one will miss it.

Before he can talk himself out of it, Jaime carries out the bowl of water and the strip of salmon on a paper towel, relieved to find the cat waiting for him in the same spot.

“Here you go,” he says, setting the offering on the cold cement patio. Her hunger becomes more apparent as she dives headfirst for the small piece of fish, tearing away large bites at a time. Jaime feels a pang of guilt that he doesn’t have more to offer her.

She purrs as she eats, poking her head up every few seconds to glance at Jaime—either to check that he is still there, or to make sure he’s not coming close enough to snatch away her food. He sinks into a crouch a couple feet away, happy to watch her filling her belly for the night. In the back of his mind, somewhere well into dangerous territory, he starts to think of ways he might be able to sneak her food in the future. Maybe, if he’s smart about it and he plans his meals right, he will be able to save back small portions of whatever meat they have for dinner. Even if Jaime needs to slim down his own portion, it’s not a big deal to save a little bit for her the next day. Maybe if he only keeps her fed during the daytime, Mr. Torley won’t ever see her when he’s home.

He is pulled from his planning when the cat suddenly stops eating and goes rigid. There are still a few bites left on the napkin, but she has turned her attention toward the side gate, her little ears twitching at something unseen.

It takes Jaime another second, and then he hears it, too: the low, almost silent electric hum of Mr. Torley’s car in the driveway.

He’s home early. Hours early.

Fear ices him over, but Jaime has no time to freeze. He has less than a minute before Mr. Torley will make his way around to the front door.

It breaks his heart to have to pull the last bits of salmon away before she can eat them, but he hurriedly bunches the napkin into a fist, trying to pick up the tiny shreds that have fallen on the patio with shaky fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to the cat, who has started meowing in objection. “I’m so sorry. You need to go now. You should go.”

He curses under his breath as he spills a bit of the water bowl, but that’s easily explainable enough, he supposes, if he’s asked about it, he just—

He has one foot through the patio doorway when the sound of the gate latch stops him cold. Mr. Torley never comes through the back gate. Why is he coming through the back gate?

“Stop,” Mr. Torley says simply, low and cold. Not a shout, but a single, flat syllable that raises the hair on the back of his neck. Jaime nearly drops the bowl of water with the lurch of dread that curls in his stomach. In his periphery, he sees a ball of white fur retreat across the yard and disappear.

He knows that, no matter what happens now, the last thing he should do is keep his Keeper waiting, so Jaime pulls in a shuddering breath and turns to face him.

“Put it down,” Mr. Torley says, “And come here.”

Of all the things he could have said, that unexpected directive inspires a spike of fear. Regardless, Jaime places the water bowl and the wadded napkin on the ground at his feet and makes his gallows march across the yard.

He stops a couple of feet away, keeping his eyes trained on Mr. Torley’s expensive shoes. Helpless words race through his mind, scrambling to arrange themselves into a coherent explanation, an apology, anything that might soften the blow of his inevitable punishment.

But his Keeper doesn’t ask for an explanation or an apology. He simply raises a hand to the gate latch—making Jaime flinch—and pulls it open once more.

“Get in the car,” he says.

Jaime’s eyes rise to meet his, confusion and alarm ringing through his skull. “Sir?”

Mr. Torley doesn’t move toward him, doesn’t raise his voice. He simply repeats, a beat slower this time, “Get. In. The car.”

On trembling, boneless legs, Jaime walks through the gate. He hasn’t been this far outside in nearly a month, but the terror and the strangeness of the moment takes away any joy he might have derived from the fresh air and sunlight.

Mr. Torley’s car sits in the driveway, sleek black and still humming quietly. Jaime has never ridden inside, and he hesitates a moment before reaching for the back door handle. It’s locked, much like his throat when he tries to vocalize it. Instead, he stands silent and unwillingly disobedient with his fingers clutching the handle, waiting. Mr. Torley takes his time latching the gate and walking to the driver’s side. He gets in, closes the door, and fastens his seatbelt, all before Jaime hears the quiet click of his lock being undone. He scrambles into the backseat and barely closes the door behind him when the car lurches into motion.

Jaime flattens himself against the leather seat back as they glide faster than what he’s sure is legal down the road. He doesn’t fasten his own seatbelt, too afraid in this heightened unknown to make a single move without explicit permission. His fists curl into the soft material of his pants, and he only realizes then that his feet are still bare.

Where are they going? Where is he taking him? Why isn’t Mr. Torley saying anything? The quiet feels like a threat of its own, but Jaime doesn’t dare be the one to break it. Should he? Would an apology gain him any ground? What is expected of him here: his silence or his contrition?

The lump in his throat makes the decision for him, blocking any hope of words along with the ability to draw a full breath.

That is, until, the car jets past a familiar sign on the highway, and cold acid releases into his bloodstream.

“Sir?” The words come out less than a whisper, and are met with more stony silence. Jaime grasps for another pull of oxygen and sits up further in his seat. “Mr. Torley?”

Nothing.

Jaime’s heartbeat pounds in his fingertips, his temples, his throat, his chest. It could be a coincidence. Wherever they are heading could just be in the same direction. The sign doesn’t have to mean anything.

And then they pass another sign, in bold, harsh, undeniable lettering: EXIT - WRU PITTSBURG. The car glides smoothly onto the ramp, and the dam holding back Jaime’s panic bursts wide open.

“Please,” Jaime whispers in horror as the first corner of the concrete hell comes into view. “Mr. Torley, please. Please.”

Nothing.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Jaime babbles, tears blurring the massive wall of false windows that seems to stretch a mile long. He is suddenly struck by the irrational fear that Handler Smith can see him already, that he already knows Jaime is here, is being returned, is being surrendered for early termination.

“Let me catch you back here early from a contract, even once,” Handler Smith had whispered to him a week before he was assigned. “Let me find out you’ve embarrassed me by forgetting your manners, and I promise you, you’ll wish you would have slit your wrists before ever showing up in my training room again.”

Wildly, he pictures the razor sitting out on Mr. Torley’s bathroom counter and thinks, He was right. I should have.

“Please don’t do this,” Jaime cries, tears falling openly now. In a desperate corner of his mind, he wonders if it will help. Jaime so rarely grants him the opportunity to see his tears, and he knows just how much he enjoys them. In any case, he can’t stop them now. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, please, I won’t do it again.”

The car slams to an abrupt stop, hard enough for Jaime to jerk forward, jamming his wrist as he catches himself from slamming his face into the seat in front of him. They are stopped short of the entry booth for incoming cars, veered to the side of the road. Mr. Torley spins around to face him, making Jaime shrink back.

“What are you sorry for?” he asks, eyes hard and resolute.

“F-for—”

“For getting caught?”

Jaime presses his lips together to stop them from quivering. Mr. Torley reaches into his pocket—and Jaime has the wild, hysterical vision of him pulling out a gun and dumping his body on WRU grounds. But he only pulls out his phone, flipping the screen around to show Jaime a camera feed of the back door at the house.

“I have an alert set,” Mr. Torley says, “To monitor all exits of the house. Imagine my surprise when I was on my way home for an early weekend, and received a notification of my backdoor opening, unauthorized.”

“I wasn’t trying to get out,” Jaime rushes to assure him, shaking his head. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t going to run.”

“No?”

“No. I promise.”

“What, then?”

How much will his honesty buy him now? Is it worth anything when Mr. Torley has clearly already seen, already knows? It’s better, at least, than a lie, and it’s all he has at his disposal.

“The cat,” he whispers pathetically. “She seemed… hungry. I fed her the leftovers that would have been thrown out. I gave her water. I’m sorry.”

“And you did so thinking you wouldn’t be caught?”

The affirmation feels like slipping a noose over his head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“I’ll have you say it.”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“And you did so after hearing me explicitly forbid it to my own children?”

He swallows. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Torley inclines his head toward the building ahead of them. “What do you think the people behind those doors would have to say about such abject deceit and disobedience from someone they sent out on a paid contract?”

Jaime pinches his eyes shut, shaking his head.

“Answer me.”

“I…” Jaime begins, his voice pinching. “I would be disciplined.”

“What kind of discipline do you think this warrants?”

Behind his eyelids, he sees the lash of a thick leather cord, a shock clip locked to his throat, a tub of ice cold water.

“I don’t know,” Jaime whispers.

“You don’t know,” he echoes.

Jaime shakes his head, and he can feel Mr. Torley’s stare burning through him.

Then, as abruptly as they had arrived, Mr. Torley faces forward in his seat and turns the gear shift. Jaime opens his eyes as the car rolls into motion once more, making a U-turn away from the facility.

“Well,” Mr. Torley says once they’re back on the highway. “You’ve got thirty minutes to think of a better answer.”

Jaime spends the rest of the night, and the rest of the long weekend that follows, atoning.

On Monday morning, he sees the cat again. When she catches a glimpse of Jaime cleaning in the next room over, hunched on his hands and knees, she raises one tiny paw and scratches against the glass. He forces himself to look away. And when her hungry meows come muffled through the glass panel, he scrubs harder, bending his head closer to the floor so that the scritch scritch scritch of bristles on the hardwood almost manages to drown out the noise.

After that, she gives up on coming back at all.

***

@whumpervescence @shiningstarofwinter @distinctlywhumpthing @whumptywhumpdump @nicolepascaline @anotherbluntpencil @hold-him-down @crystalquartzwhump @maracujatangerine @batfacedliar-yetagain @thecyrulik @pumpkin-spice-whump @finder-of-rings@melancholy-in-the-morning @insaneinthepaingame @skyhawkwolf @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @mylifeisonthebookshelf @dont-touch-my-soup @whump-world @inpainandsuffering @cicatrix-energy @quietly-by-myself @whumpsday @extemporary-whump @the-whumpers-grimm @thebirdsofgay @firewheeesky @whumperfully @hold-back-on-the-comfort @termsnconditions-apply @cyborg0109 @whumplr-reader @pinkraindropsfell @whatwhumpcomments @honeycollectswhump @pirefyrelight @handsinmotion

#im updating my DNH masterdoc today #i didn't realize i hadn't done it since 2022 lol #always living with the fear that tumblr will fall into a sinkhole one day and ill lose everything #anyway #thinking about this chapter

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peachy-panic · 15 days

Note

🧽 Receiving a sponge bath - Derek

tw: post-prison whump, spongebath, light med whump

notes: read chapter one of derek's back first for context, if context is important to ya :)

from this ask game

✥ ✥ ✥

Derek Lewis, or what's left of him, anyway, sits on the center of the exam table. His legs dangle over the side, his hands limp in his lap. Looking at him, one might think he was completely absent of thought, absent of the ability to process any of the events of the last few hours. Something in the way he hunches his body, though, just a little bit, or in the way his black eyes, every so often, wander from the floor to the mahogany desk in the corner, to the large canvas paintings, to the American flag hung by the door, and then back to the floor, give Agent Brody Grant hope that, at least on some level, he’s aware that his circumstances have shifted.

He’s been stripped of his clothing, or, if not clothing, of the torn, ratted fabric that was constituting as clothing, which has been placed in a bin to be tested for parasites. So far, he hasn’t spoken.

When they arrived to the makeshift medical unit, pieced together on one hour’s notice in the middle of the night in the Consulate, he didn't speak. He also didn’t speak when he was led down the empty, dark hallway, or when his clothes were removed, or when every inch of his battered skin was photographed.

Now, with a nurse at his side, running a wet cloth over his body again and again, seven, eight, sometimes ten times before satisfied with each patch of skin, he still doesn’t speak.

“Mr. Lewis?” the physician asks, approaching Derek cautiously. Derek’s head lifts in acknowledgement, but his eyes do not.

“You need to drink,” she urges. She lifts his free hand and places a mug of water inside of it, then guides him to take a sip. He does not fight it, but immediately coughs the water back up. The doctor's lips are tight, but she sets the mug to the side.

The boy that Agent Grant collected from within the prison gates was unrecognizable from the pictures in his file. The ghost of the smiling, vibrant boy he had not expected, but hoped for, was deposited at his feet without a moment of hesitation. The guard inclined his head sharply toward the gate, handed the agent a well-loved backpack, and turned on his heels back toward the prison. They hightailed it down the gravel road and into the night, with a singular objective of getting Derek Lewis onto U.S. territory while they worked to understand the implications of everything that had gone down.

The nurse lifts his hand now, turning it over, and works to wipe away months of caked-on filth.

“When did you last access a shower?” he asks, his thumb brushing over Derek’s wrist, presumably to get a handle on what is bruising and what isn’t.

“I don’t know,” Derek whispers. Agent Grant writes it down. It’s not of particular interest, but he’s been tasked with writing down everything, and so far that has been nothing, so he takes what he can get.

“That’s okay,” the nurse tells him, dipping the washcloth in the clean water, wringing it out, and wiping away what can be wiped away. “What about food?” he asks next. No one is under any illusion that Derek wants to talk, but getting him comfortable answering questions may be in his best interest. “When was the last time you ate?”

This time, Derek does not look up. “I don’t know,” he whispers again.

“Are you hungry?” the nurse asks, as the doctor tilts Derek’s head down. Gloved fingers press into dark, matted waves, and Derek’s body curls in on itself, just for a second, before he realizes what’s happened and forcibly adjusts his posture.

“It’s okay,” the nurse whispers, moving to his other hand.

Derek nods, and they finish cleaning him up in silence. His hair is shaved, because it’s the only reasonable way to deal with both the matting and the lice. He’s photographed again, now clean, which he flinches his way through but does not protest. This time, the focus is solely on the injuries. On the scars that run the length of his back, on his wrists and ankles, on his neck. There won't be an investigation, nor will there be restitution, but it may help someone in the future to have these, so they take them. Derek is silent through it, but his suffering, well hidden just an hour ago, is clearer now.

He’s given an IV, because every time he drinks, he vomits. He’s given pain medication, he’s given anxiety medication, and finally, to everyone’s relief, he is given clothing.

He dresses quietly, but he trembles he does, and when he’s led to a cot in the adjacent room, he whispers a hoarse, “Thank you,” before collapsing into it. He’s asleep before he can be offered a blanket, so one is draped over him, and the doctor explains to Agent Grant that between the shock, the medication, and the clear sleep deprivation, it’s neither surprising nor alarming that he sleeps now.

By the time Derek Lewis’s family is called, it’s mid-morning. The Ambassador has arrived, and there’s an air of both celebration and frenzy within the Consulate. This has been something of a win for many of them, and a long-overdue one at that.

And, while it feels like a major piece of Agent Grant's time with the embassy is coming to a close, he can’t help but wonder what the next chapter looks like for Derek. There's no doubt in his mind that Jack will be on the first plane to Turkey, visa be damned, and the thought of their reunion, however tense, however painful it may be, gives him some hope that maybe, against all odds, Derek will find peace.

#I’m—#Derek my beloved!!!!!!!#or what’s left of him!!!!#something about seeing this moment of his life from a third party perspective hits just right #I absolutely gobble down every bit of Derek content I can and this did not disappoint

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