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littleleolionsblog · 3 months ago

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not a lot, just forever | e.p

Tags: flangst, momily, hurt/comfort, nightmares, typical momily guilt, this is actually not a reader insert fic because reader isn’t here (yet), idk where they are honestly, single mom!emily, probably inaccurate portrayals of children because I’ve never spent more than an hour around a toddler

Summary: Nightmares haunt the Prentiss household—more recently targeting its smallest member—but this time, Emily may have found a solution.

Word count: 2.2k

Emily is not a heavy sleeper. She used to be, when she was knee deep in her idle teenage years and wading through conjoined shadows of depression and loneliness, but that changed. Her body did. It was a rewiring in her brain; the more she became conscious of the world, her own vulnerability in it, the less she dipped into subconsciousness. The change began slow: after a couple of months in Interpol—a gun on her hip that followed her home to take up space in her bedroom safe—a year-long stint in Tuscany. By the time she joined the BAU her barrier between sleep and wakefulness was paper thin.

Then she became a mother.

The dip of her mattress goes unnoticed. It sinks beneath a familiar weight, and then she’s conscious of a knee pressing into her stomach, bony elbows and the scent of baby shampoo pulling her awake even before a sniffled Maman? breaks the silence.

Her eyes peel open. Emily sits up groggily on instinct, her spine straightening off the mattress then curving beneath the heft of her exhaustion. It stiffens again when she sees her son.

Matthew’s silhouette is blurred even though he’s only a few inches from her face. Tears shine on his cheeks, dripping off his chin and soaking her pajama shorts like warm patters of rain. Emily doesn’t get to blink the sleep from her eyes before he’s crumpling into her chest, arms tight around her neck, his hiccups only slightly stifled into her skin. They echo off the walls, loud as gunshots as she wraps her arms around him, automatically shushing, her hands rubbing wide circles on his back—limbs heavy and lined with sleep, tongue barely unstuck from the roof of her mouth. Her heart pounds from the fright of being woken up, and her son’s crying doesn’t help any in calming it down.

“Hey, hey.” She rasps, barely audible over the sound of his crying. Matthew’s chest stutters against hers, his breathing jagged and uneven. A sigh gets trapped in her lungs, gets buried down next to the knot in her gut that forms each time this happens.

“It’s okay. You’re okay, mon coeur. Maman’s got you.” Emily gathers him fully onto her lap and sags back against the headboard, blinking hazy exhaustion from her eyes as she continues to whisper nonsense into his hair. Her heart twinges through his sniffles, the heat of tears on her neck just about cracking it clean in half.

Nightmares have become more often lately. Like clockwork, always between the hours of 3 and 4, the stillness of the night breaks beneath Matthew’s cries. There’s no apparent reason, none that she can find, and it’s sending them both half insane. Some nights he’s too terrified to go to bed; all the cuddles and stories and reassurances swirl down the drain, fear poisoning his thoughts until he’s begging to sleep with her, a small tremble to his lips. She relents most of the time, guilt knotting in her throat, but she’s been trying to put her foot down.

And this is what happens when she does.

Emily should know what to do by now, but the uselessness washes over her every time, hitting her like a brick. She still isn’t used to his nightmares, fumbling her way through the same words that dissolve in the face of yet another bad dream—it’s not real, you’re safe, it’s okay to be scared.

Words have never been her strong suit, and Matthew needs them. He doesn’t know how to speak the silent language she substitutes for words, and she’s still trying to learn how to reassure and comfort with nothing but her tongue. Eventually the repetitive reassurances turn to ash in her mouth, useless and falling on deaf ears, so she resorts to whispered sweet nothings instead—mostly in French, the rumble of her voice working in tandem with the heel of her hand pressing down on his back.

It doesn’t take long before Matthew goes limp in her arms, sniffling weakly as his fists loosen to flat palms on her shoulders. By the time he’s quieted down she’s wide awake, her shirt damp with tears and snot, the inside of her chest bruised from the still frazzled beat of her heart. She rubs between his shoulder blades and grimaces; his body is warm, his shirt damp where it sticks to his back.

Matthew lets out a protesting noise when she stands and lifts him onto her hip, his grip tightening on her shirt.

“It’s okay,” Emily soothes. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re just gonna get you into some new pj’s, sweet boy. These are all sweaty.” She makes a stop in the bathroom to wash his face before making her way to his bedroom, all in the semi-dark, her eyes barely picking out the edges of the shadows.

Matthew calms down after the water, but he still clings to her so close she feels the lingering tremble in his bones. This she’s used to—his nails digging into her arm and shoulder like he wants to rip a hole in her skin and bury under it. Nose skimming her collarbone, head just under her chin; every unsteady exhale beats across her skin, loud in the stillness of the house.

Emily sighs. “That nightmare did a number on you, huh? Wanna tell me about it?”

“No,” he mumbles into her shoulder. The rough grate of his voice stabs through her skin.

She chews on her lip, squinting when she walks into the warm yellow of his nightlight, and takes out a pair of pajamas from his closet. Her eyes don’t miss the twisted sheets of Matthew’s bed, his stuffed animals knocked carelessly to the floor. “That’s fair. I don’t like talking about my bad dreams either.”

Matthew frowns a little as she sits both of them down on his bed, his lips curving into a sullen pout. “Mommy gets bad dreams too?” He rasps.

Emily presses her lips into a smile, the edges of it curling downwards as she smooths some of his unruly hair back from his face. Bad dreams hardly covers the bloody horrors her mind conjures in its sleep. “Yes, Matthew.” She murmurs. “Everyone gets bad dreams sometimes, even me. It’s normal to have them.” She strips him of his sweaty shirt and tugs the clean one over his head.

The word is acrid on her tongue. It feels like a lie, though countless articles and pediatricians and even—heaven help her—her own mother have reassured her multiple times that yes, it’s normal for her preschooler to wake up kicking and screaming several times a week for no apparent reason. She doesn’t have a scale for it, her more than anyone else. Emily’s nightmares were never close to normal. Blood and guns and Matthew’s hand suddenly disappearing from her own have haunted her for so long she forgot what technically classifies as a normal nightmare.

Matthew is silent as she guides his arms through the sleeves. He’s always been quiet, inching towards shy—clinging to her pant legs and stifling mumbled words into her body. Emily has mostly learned how to coax them from him, but he’s taught her to be patient. Sometimes they stick to the roof of his mouth with cement; sometimes it only takes a nudge for him to spill rivers of words in her ear. She lets him be, even when curiosity eats at her, when she wants to know what it is that swirls deep beneath his raven curls.

His brows furrow in thought, a crease forming above his damp eyes.

“Even Sergio?” He asks after a few quiet beats.

The question makes her laugh. “I don’t know, bug. I never thought of that.” Emily tugs him up, switches Spider-Man pants for space rockets. “I think his worst nightmare would be running out of tuna.” She stifles a yawn, words lost in a vortex of warm air.

“But…” Mathew’s lip wobbles. “He’ll be—he’ll be scared.” He looks up at her with wide eyes—exactly like her own and so, so much more tearful.

Emily sighs quietly. She takes him back into her chest and he latches on to her, arms and legs tight around her neck and waist. Again she feels herself about to stumble, words already weighing her tongue down. Her thoughts pulse sluggishly, the movement of her hand far more adept as she rubs down the ridges of his spine.

“The scary feeling doesn’t stay forever, Matthew. We just think it does, but it’s…it’s tricky. It’s not forever.”

She cringes into his shoulder. God, does he even understand what she’s saying? He’s still so little, just turned four, and the nonsense she’s spewing hardly even registers through her own head. Emily’s head spins, the thick sluggishness of sleep unshakeable.

“You know what I do after I have a bad dream?” She blurts out, going heavy at the thought of more tears. Matthew’s hair tickles her jaw as he shakes his head. Emily rubs at his back, coaxes him away from her shoulder so she can meet his eyes. His shiny, red-rimmed eyes that openly reflect every emotion she’s spent most of her life hiding.

Most of her life, until she had him.

Emily cups his small cheeks, the soft roundness of them filling her palms. “I close my eyes really tight and I think of the good stuff. Everything that makes me happy.”

Matthew rubs a fist into his eye. “Like what?” He mumbles, the nightlight catching stray tears smeared on the back of his hand.

“Like you,” Emily whispers, pulling his hand away and running her thumb under his eye. She feels the slippery tears gone cold on his skin and wipes them away.

“Me?” He frowns.

“Yes, you.” She presses her finger to the small wrinkle between his brows, smoothing it out. “I tell myself, “hey, remember that time when Matthew spilled flour all over himself and Serg? And they both had to get into the bath ’cause they got flour everywhere?”” Matthew lets out a raspy giggle at the memory. Emily’s chest lightens; she laughs, too. “Wasn’t that silly? Sometimes I think of my friends at work, too. Or the plans we’ll make for tomorrow. It helps me forget the scary stuff.” She murmurs, combing the dark tangle of his hair away from his face.

“And cinnamon rolls too?” He whispers, tripping over n’s and m’s, chewing them together in a way that makes her grin.

“And cinnamon rolls,” Emily laughs, finally feeling that she’s doing something right. “All the good stuff I can think of, until I stop being scared. How about we try that now, sweetheart? I’ll sit here with you, and you close your eyes.” She stands and straightens out the sheets, then gathers the fallen soldiers littered on the floor and returns them to their perch by Matthew’s side.

He looks at her uncertainly, brows pinched in a frown far too serious for his young face. Emily gives him a reassuring smile, leaning down to press a kiss to his hair. “C’mon, bug. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

It takes more coaxing and nudging to get him under the covers, even as his eyes grow heavy the deeper they slip into the night. Emily tucks him in and gives him his stuffed bear—creatively dubbed Mr. Bear—to hold, before settling down on the fluffy, carpeted floor beneath his bed. He’s reluctant to close his eyes; Emily grabs his hand and holds it between both of hers, softly rubbing against the back of it until he finally relents. She feels the exhaustion settle in her own body, a heavy weight returning to its perch on her shoulders, but she blinks the sleep away and focuses on her son.

“Want me to help you out?”

Matthew nods.

“Okay. Hmm, let’s see—you mentioned cinnamon rolls a little while ago. Those are good, right?”

“Uh-huh. With the”—he wiggles his fingers, sprinkling invisible garnish over Mr. Bear’s head—“the thingy on top.”

“Pecans,” Emily laughs. Matthew’s eyes shoot open as he grins, two half moons of dimples in his cheeks. She gently touches his lids, forcing his lashes to flutter shut. “Well…what do you say we go get some tomorrow? And we’ll eat them in the park, and play on the swings.”

“And play with my bike.”

“And play with your bike,” Emily agrees, swallowing back a yawn. She tries to count the threads of his closed lashes as Matthew mumbles about getting a hot chocolate with his cinnamon roll (lots of cream on top), and wearing his light-up Spider-Man sneakers, and inviting an unsuspecting Henry to play with his scooter. Emily nods and hums and agrees, her thumb skimming over the flat of his wrist and feeling for his pulse as it begins to slow. He doesn’t get to elaborate much further before his words start to stick together, honey-coated and sleep-drenched, muffled into the cushion of his lips.

Emily takes a second even after she’s sure he’s asleep. A second to rub one more path over his hand, to scan the way his chest moves evenly up and down. His hold on her hand still hasn’t loosened; she carefully unfurls his fingers from hers, ignoring the cold sweep of the air on her skin as she presses a kiss to his forehead.

On her way out, she spots Sergio curling up at the foot of Matthew’s bed. He blinks sleep hazed eyes at her, trilling softly when she scratches between his ears.

“You’ll keep him safe,” she whispers, bending to kiss his forehead too. “We both will.”

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