A/N: I just fell in love Take Two when I saw the pilot. It's the right amount of fun, serious, drama and mystery to make me love it. Eddie and Sam are totally adorable together and I just can't help myself from shipping it. Anway, after the "About Last Night" episode this idea came to me.
I would really love if in season 2 (or 3!) if something like Sam having committed a crime while drunk / under the influence of drugs came to light and what "always the right thing Eddie" would do! Because drama and angst are the best. This isn't very angsty (yet) but more cute. But it has the potential to be if I decide to do something more with it!
Enjoy!
-All Those Nights-
"I solved the case," Sam said as she brushed past Eddie into his apartment.
Since Eddie was barely awake, saying he was happy to hear this was a bit of a stretch. Especially since it wasn't the first time she'd shown up this late. Not even the first time this week. Still, he closed the door and followed her to the sofa.
"Sam. It's -" He lowered his gun and checked his watch. "-two in the morning. Couldn't this wait six hours?"
"It is? Oh well, it's the gardener. He stole the jewelry," Sam declared. Her eyes looked wide and faintly red-rimmed. She didn't look bad - Sam Swift couldn't look bad. Or at least Eddie couldn't imagine it. Even when she was soaking wet or had make-up smeared all over her face she was stunning. Somehow. But clearly, something was going on with her. Something that was costing her sleep.
"What about his allbi-" Eddie started as he went to his bedroom put his weapon away, trying to focus on the case rather than her.
"Was faked," she said as he came back out into the living room as she opened a folder to show a photo of a security camera. "This is a picture of his cousin getting out of the car two minutes after having run the red light. He did it to give the gardener an alibi but really he never left the house."
"Great," Eddie said, rubbing his eyes. "Now, is he leaving the country? Planning some other robbery? One that's is going down in the next few hours?"
"No?" Sam said, closing her folder, glancing up at him.
"Then why are you here Sam? It's the middle of the night. This could have waited until morning," he said, trying to keep his voice calm and nonaccusatory. But there was a little bit of it there, even though he was worried about her, he was also tired.
"Yeah, right." She looked vaguely uncomfortable, her eyes trailing all around, not settling, not meeting his. "I'll go then."
She looked lost he couldn't let her go without at least attempting to make sense of why she was here. What was costing her sleep.
"Sam," he said as he reached out to gently grab her arm. "Is there something going on?"
"No," she said, shaking him off. "I'm fine. Kind of."
"Kind of?"
She turned away from him, walking over to the window. She seemed smaller than usual. A little less straight. It was like she'd lost a little of her unique Sam-energy. That thing that made her upbeat and positive even when she was struggling. It annoyed him sometimes, but with it diminished, he found he missed it.
"Ever since," she began. "Ever since we had our memories erased, I've been having nightmares." She turned back around to him. "About one of my missing nights. From before. Drunk and disorderly Sam." The last bit she attempted to make sound funny in her Sam way, but she didn't quite manage it.
"Alright," Eddie said, not sure how to help her with this. A bad guy he could track down. A nightmare, not so much. "Come, sit."
She hesitated but then came over and they both sat on the sofa.
Eddie had often found, both as a cop and a PI that silence was one of the best ways to make someone talk. It compelled the other person to fill it. Only he didn't want to make Sam talk. He wanted her to want to share this with him. Even if it was a problem he couldn't help her with, he wanted to know. To try. In fact, he wanted to be the one that she shared all her problems with, big or small. When had that happened?
"Will you tell me about it?" he asked and when she began to fiddle with the photos in her folder, took it from her and put it on the coffee table.
"I always used to check the gossip sites after I got blackout drunk," she said, nervously glancing up at him. "At least at first. I wanted to fill in the blanks, just like we did. I rarely managed to get the whole picture but I always felt I knew kind of what had happened. But then, as it got worse… somethings..."
Part of him didn't want to know this. His Sam was not the Sam from the tabloids. But at the same time, she was. It was part of her history. It had, in a way, made her the way she was.
It was the reason they'd met.
Best not to think too hard on that. On how it all connected.
"I've woken up a lot of strange places," she said, biting her lip. "With a lot of strangers. Taken combos of drugs that could have killed me. Embarrassed myself in countless ways. But the dream...it's worse."
"Worse than waking up to a stranger with no memory?"
"Yes."
She said nothing more. Just pulled her legs up, curling herself into a ball. She kept looking into space for a long time. Re-living the dream?
"Do you want to stay here tonight?" he asked, and then quickly added. "How about you take the bed? It's pretty comfortable."
"I remember," she said, actually smiling a little. "I might not have had any memories when I woke up in it, but my back felt really good."
"Alright, I'll take the so-"
"I'm not going to oust you from your bed Eddie. Besides, I don't think you'd even fit on the sofa," she said, even though she was looking towards the bedroom. "How about we share the bed? This time with clothes on though."
Eddie wondered if he should protest this, Sam back in his bed seemed both amazing and torturous. In the end, he shrugged.
"It might stop the dream," she said, continuing to argue her case even though he'd already surrendered. "When I was a kid and had a bad dream I'd always go sleep in my sister bed."
"It's fine Sam. We're both adults," he said, leading the way back into his bedroom. "Friends."
"Yeah," Sam agreed, her voice a little strained though. "Sure. Friends. Friends can share a bed. That's totally normal."
Eddie raised an eyebrow. She was the one who had made the suggestion.
She hesitated for a second before slipping her shoes off and getting into the bed, still in sweatpants and a t-shirt. She smiled at him quickly, still not quite a real smile. Then she turned away from him, as he sat down on the bed and shut the lights off.
As they lay in the dark Eddie wondered just what she could have dreamt, what kind of nightmare, would affect her like this. Enough to make her scared to sleep alone. Must be one heck of a scary dream.
No.
Not just a dream.
Memory.
The fact that she hadn't shared just what it was and the way she was avoiding worried him. He'd interviewed enough sexual assault victims to feel a tinge of worry at that kind of behavior. Only she'd just admitted to waking up with strangers in strange places. Not that drunk sex and rape were the same thing. Still, he hoped and worried that her dream was something else. Anything else. Sam had dealt with enough.
"Eddie?" she said, breaking the silence. "How do you know what the right thing to do is?"
"I don't," he said, glancing over at her. He could see her clearly despite the darkness of the room. Her face mere inches from his. "Not always. But most of the time it's not very complicated. Or at least the knowing isn't. Actually doing the right thing and dealing with the consequences, that's different."
She looked like she agreed but it didn't make her feel better. She turned away from him again with a whispered, "Goodnight Eddie."
"Goodnight Sam," he said softly.
A scream woke him and his first instinct was to reach for his gun, sure that his next door neighbor was being murdered. But the scream was too close for that. Then he remembered; Sam. She was right there, next to him.
Rather than find her still in the throws of her nightmare, she was sitting up, scanning the room. As if searching for what or who had terrified her so in her dream.
"You okay?" he asked. "You had the nightmare?"
"It's like clockwork. I go to sleep and an hour later I wake up screaming." She pulled the sheet put further around herself. "But it's fine."
"It's not fine Sam," he countered, putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with her dark eyes still full of fears and exhaustion. "You were screaming like you were being murdered."
"I'm sorry I woke you. I'm sorry I came here so late. I should probably just go home," she said, but thankfully she made no move to get up.
"It's the middle of the night, Sam," he protested, gently tugging her back down, closer to him then was probably right between just friends. "Just lay back. Try to get some more sleep."
"O-okay," she said and relaxed against him.
"Will you tell me about the dream?" he asked after a minute, enjoying the feel of her hair tickling his neck. Of having her soft body close.
She said nothing for a long time. Then, in a small voice she began, "In the dream, I wake up naked, on a bed of grass, covered in blood, holding a knife. The blood is not mine but that doesn't make me feel better. The sky is blue and the sun is shining down on me but I'm ice cold."
Her words were clear and precise but her tone shaky.
"I get up and I realize I'm in a maze. I walk and walk but hit dead end after dead end. I'm trapped. It feels like hours before I escape. Once I do, I end up in a graveyard. I bury the knife at the foot of a grave and when I stand back up, there is a man with black eyes smiling down at me. He's just an ordinary man except for the eyes, yet he terrifies me. I scream. Then I wake up. It's the same dream. Over and over. And Eddie, it's so real."
"So real it's making you think it's a memory?"
"Yes," she agreed. "What if I killed someone?"
He pulled her even closer to him. "You didn't." Sam wasn't the type. Maybe in the most extreme of situation she'd take a life. But a situation like that would have shone through even a drugged haze. She'd have remembered it back that morning. The dream, most likely, was just a dream. Most likely. He couldn't know just what Sam might have taken. How memories might become dreams because of them? Nightmares, with some truth in them?
"But what if?"
How did he answer that? How did he reassure her? He couldn't promise her it wasn't true. Eddie had a rule about not making promises unless he knew one hundred percent that he could keep them. Or he tried not to. Sam made him want to break all the rules though. Both his own and just about any other that got in the way. Which was new for him.
"Do you remember the name on the grave?" he asked after thinking it over for a minute. "Date of birth and death?"
"Yes."
"Tomorrow we'll search the databases and see if the grave is real," he said.
Now it was her turn to be quiet. "And if it is? And if we find the bloody knife?"
"Then we'll get a sample of the blood," he answered. "Chris will run it and we'll see if there is some connection to you."
She tensed. "But Eddie..."
"Yes?" he asked, stifling a yawn.
"You always do the right thing? If I killed someone-"
"You didn't," he told her, still sure of that. Also suspecting, that even if he knew for sure she had, he would find a way to rid of that knife. Sam did not belong in for twenty to life. Not for one night. "Now go to sleep. We'll figure it all out in the morning."
"Thank you," she whispered and snuggled closer to him.
So, this is going to just be a one-shot for now. I'm not sure if it's 100% in character but I tried. And I do have some ideas for making this into a longer story but I so don't have time to start a new fanfic. In fact, I need to finish the one Timeless fic I do have here, plus my three original works on Wattpad AND the book I'm working on for my actual publisher before I even think about it!