Title: Restless Nights
Summary: Jess POV. Sam calls out in his sleep.
Disclaimer: I don't own this pair of poor tortured souls, nor their TV show, or their car. Makes me sad, but we live with these things.
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I woke up cold - a rare occurrence in California - but it was that time of year when you needed at least a blanket, and my blanket was gone on account of Sam, as it turns out, who was lying next to me on the bed apparently caught up in a rather intense dream. He was breathing heavily, his hands clutching the lower edge of his shirt, his muscles strung so tight I could see them flexing all along his arms and shoulders.
He groaned softly and I giggled, as his long legs stretched out and his toes curled, sending the covers all the way onto the floor.
I really couldn't believe I was seeing this. If I hadn't known him for quite so long as I had I would've been incredibly embarrassed for him. He was 21 for crying out loud.
His exhalations were muffled for a moment as he buried his face in the pillow and I had to clamp my hands over my mouth to stifle the laugh that almost escaped. I thought about waking him before he managed to suffocate himself, but then he groaned again, and dug his fingers into his own thigh, and then he yelled out a name, and it was no longer funny.
I rolled off the bed and escaped into the lounge room.
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"What's wrong?"
I sat my coffee cup back on the table and glared at it's contents before finally giving in to Mirium's questions.
"Sam calls out in his sleep."
She looked at me expectantly, waiting for the rest of it. "And?"
"He calls out for a guy."
The connotations of that didn't seem to hit her for a few seconds. She let out a soft 'oh' of surprise though, when she realised what I was saying. There is nothing quite so chilling as watching someone you love thrash about in bed, caught in the grips of a very intense dream which induces them to yell out a name that is not yours.
"You don't think..." She started, then thought better of it, before deciding it really did need to be said - not that I couldn't figure out what she was suggesting anyway. "You think he likes some guy over you?"
I buried my hands in my hair for a few seconds, staring into my milky brown coffee. "I don't know." I glanced back up at her. "But the evidence is pretty damning, don't you think?"
What was I supposed to think when my boyfriend started calling out for some other guy in the middle of the night?
"Well, is he calling out...like that? Or is he just calling out?"
I thought about it for a second, hearing his voice in my head. It was different to how it was normally, higher and younger. It didn't really sound anything like I thought it had at the time. It was just hard to hear it as anything else when words were whispered in the middle of the night. Or yelled.
"No." I said it hesitantly, but I was pretty confident that I wasn't mistaken now. He hadn't been calling out in some sort of passion induced dream. He sounded more upset.
"I honestly find it hard to believe that Sam loves anyone but you." Mirium stirred more sugar into her coffee, reaching for a cookie.
"It's still hard to think that he'd call out for help and comfort from someone other than me though. It really bugs me. I want to know who it is."
Mirium rolled her eyes and sipped her coffee. "And yet you don't want to ask him because you feel it would be intrusive."
"Yep." I sat back and picked up my cup.
"And you're telling me because you want someone to reassure you that it's ok if you do ask him." "That about sums it up."
She smiled when I looked up at her. "You should ask him."
So I did.
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I could see the fear in his eyes when I mentioned it to him. When I said Dean's name I almost flinched at his expression.
What did it mean? He certainly wasn't feeling guilty. It looked more like he was horrified; like something had been stolen from him. He stalked off to the bedroom and didn't come out.
I ended up sleeping on the couch because I didn't want to go in and disturb him. I felt terrible. I felt like I shouldn't have asked. But for some selfish reason I was glad I had, and that made me feel even worse.
I slept restlessly, waking up and thinking of better ways I could have approached him. But he probably would've had a similar reaction no matter how I mentioned it. So I was incredibly relieved when I woke up in the middle of the night to find him sitting on the floor next to the couch, leaning up against it, his face a few inches from mine. He was staring blankly out the window but it was the thoughtful kind of staring, like he was trying to figure out how to start talking. He turned and smiled at me after a few seconds and leant an arm up on the cushions so he could thread his fingers with mine.
"Life wasn't so great when I was little," he said quietly. "We had it a bit rough when we were kids. But no matter what, Dean was always there. He'd always fix things. He always had the answer. He is the best big brother a guy could ever ask for." He frowned for a moment, sort of surprised that he'd actually said that, then he smiled. "If you ever meet him though, don't tell him that. He's also the biggest arsehole ever to live."
I sighed, quietly relieved. "You hero worship your older brother." There wasn't any boyfriend; Sam was all mine.
He rolled his eyes at me. "Well he was four years ahead of me. He looked pretty impressive."
I giggled and buried my face in his shoulder. "You want to know what I thought when I first heard you?"
He was mortified. Then he told me I had a dirty mind. And that I was warped. And that if I ever told anyone else, he'd call in his older brother to sort me out.
It was nice, I guess, that his big brother protected him. But I was a little disturbed by the fact that he wouldn't say what was so bad about his family. It made me think of all the things a child could possibly go through. What could still cause nightmares even after someone had well and truly left home? We smiled and laughed about it, but it scared me a little. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to meet his family.
That was as close as I ever got to knowing what was in Sam's past though, he never spoke of it again. He still dreamed sometimes, thrashing about and fighting things off, calling out in his sleep, but if I tried to ask him about it, he'd smile and brush it off.
"Don't worry, Dean always saved me. The dream has a happy ending."
I wasn't so sure about that given the way he usually jerked awake, but I left it alone. I thought I'd have years to get it out of him. Life wasn't so short and I could see marriage on the horizon.
I didn't know I'd end up as one of those nightmares instead.
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A very big thank you to Deanish who both encouraged me to write this and beta'd it for me.