Late Night Comfort

[Footiecrinkle]

Jeremy Wren awoke slowly, the moonlight shimmering through his bedroom window illuminated the room around him. In the doorway he saw a small, blue-clad shape. The small shape was holding a clear airsoft 1911, clearing the corners of the room as he entered. Jeremy knew who it was immediately.

“Jeremy?”

His six year old brother Christian entered the room, his footed pajamas swishing over the carpet and his blonde hair glowing in the moonlight. It was shoulder-length now, but he didn’t want to cut it. He lowered the pistol.

Jeremy was impressed, he had handled it just how he had taught him when they had watched the IDPA match, keeping his finger off the trigger and never once pointing it at him.

Christian padded to the edge of his bed, “Can I sleep with you for a bit?”

“Sure, buddy, hop in,” Jeremy could never deny his brother anything. The kid was all right. Mature and intelligent for his age, he was far from the annoying younger brother some of his friends had to put up with.

“Can I lay next to the wall?” Christian asked as he prepared to crawl in.

“Sure, just be careful,” Jeremy replied. His bed was up against the wall, to his left, and Chris liked to lie there, probably feeling safer.

Setting the pistol on the nightstand, Chris clambered over him, the diaper under his sleeper crinkling as he climbed. Chris wore them for a bladder disorder that Jeremy couldn’t remember the name of, and took it pretty much in stride. Their dad had always said that it wasn’t wearing diapers that made you a baby, it was how you reacted to it, like a baby or an adult. The blue footie pajamas with the zipper to the crotch that he wore were a bit small, and short in the arms. Still, they were his favorite, as he and Jeremy had bought them on a trip to the mall together.

Chris burrowed his way under the covers, and snuggled up to his brother. “Thanks,” came his reply.

“What’s up, Chris?” Jeremy asked, “What’s wrong?”

Christian hesitated for a moment, “I don’t want you to go,” he said finally.
Jeremy knew this was coming. He was heading off to college tomorrow, and Chris had been uneasy about the separation.

“Hey, hey. It won’t be forever,” Jeremy said, sliding an arm under his brother’s shoulders and pulling him into a one-armed hug, “I thought you were okay with this.” Despite his suspicions, Chris had never actually come out and voiced any anxieties, at least to him.

“I thought I was but…but…” he choked, tears coming to his eyes now, “but who’ll make good omlettes or check for Slenderman or cover me in Rainbow Six when you’re gone?”

“I won’t be gone. I’ll be back next weekend, most weekends, in fact. And I know it’s not the point, but just pie your corners in Rainbow Six and you’ll be fine. Don’t just run in like a headless chicken,” he chuckled, pulling Chris closer.

Chris chuckled, but still looked troubled, “So it’ll be like when you went for O…Orin..Orin-tayshion?”

“Yep, just like that. I’ll be back soon,” he had stayed a weekend for orientation and he had suspected then that Chris would miss him.

"Okay,” Chris said, laying his head on Jeremy’s shoulder and snuggling close.

“Hey, I still have to come back and finish Thief 2, yeah? We don’t want an eternity of ‘Alllll will hear the woooords of Karras, the woooords of Karras…’” Jeremy imitated the nasally lisp of the game’s robot enemies, which caused Chris to giggle.

“See, it won’t be so bad. We still have the internet. Just borrow dad’s Iphone and FaceTime sometime. Hey…” Jeremy reached up and plucked his Iphone from his headboard shelf, ”let’s watch Doctor House unravel some extremely implausible medical mystery.”

So they snuggled down to watch, the volume turned low so their parents wouldn’t hear. By the time the patient’s eyeball popped out and House realized he was hallucinating heavily, Chris was asleep, his head resting on Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy smiled, picking at a pill on the fleece sleeve of Chris’s pjs, He knew everything would work out.

They were too strong of a family for it not to.
…………………
A/N IDPA stands for the international Defensive Pistol Association, a sport shooting group, and ‘pieing the corner’ is a military/LEO term designating a technique to check a corner carefully before rounding it fully, as opposed to rushing around it and then, checking for bad guys.

That was a real House episode, by the way.

[TalkBoy]

Wow! How did I miss this? This is great! Thanks for writing this!

[Big-baby-bear99]

Two short but showing brotherly love