A/N: If anyone's still interested, I have every intention of updating everything. The hard part is coming up with it. Haha. So naturally I start something else. Many thanks to Monica for fabulous beta job and much needed advice.
Jake Dawson has nightmares about people on fire.
The people are different; sometimes it's a beautiful blond woman about his age being consumed by flames, other times it's a tall, lean kid with dark hair. The venues change too; most often it's obviously a house, but the odd time or two the place has the feeling of something transitory, like a motel. The only constant in these dreams is the fire, the unbearable heat against his face. The horrible screaming that pierces through his awareness and wakes him up.
Oh, and the fact that they're pinned to the ceiling.
He's gotten a lot of practice at waking quietly. The majority of nights, he's out of bed with a change of clothes before his wife Sarah has any idea there might be something wrong. She wakes up to an empty bed, and eventually finds him asleep on the couch in the front room, the light from the muted television lighting his face in flickering bursts.
Tonight is not one of those nights.
The nightmare is one of the worst he has experienced. The heat is beyond unbearable, even in the dream he fears he might be burned. The flames flickering across the ceiling and the nightdress of the woman stuck there are brighter, and much more vibrant than anything he has seen in real life. The woman, her long blond hair having burned away, isn't screaming, but her lips are moving and Jake feels as though she is trying to say something to him. But he can't make out the words, and the image of her lifeless body pinned to the ceiling, trying desperately to communicate this one last message, is something that's going to be seared across his eyelids for months to come. Through all this, the scorching fire, the roar that accompanies it, he can hear the softest of sounds; a baby crying, and it's that sound that affects him stronger than anything else in the dream, it's that sound that echoes in his ears as he feels his wife touch his arm, and realizes he's awake and sitting up in bed with the images of the dream playing across his vision like an old fashioned movie projector.
He must've woken with a yell, because although she's a very light sleeper, it's not too often that he rouses her with his dreams. She's looking at him with such concern written across her features, and yet he can tell she's not all there, that there's somewhere she'd rather be. And than he notices the crying baby wasn't entirely in his head, because he can hear the tinny cries of his nine-month old son over the baby monitor sitting on the nightstand.
He waves a hand at her, absolving her of her wifely duties to see what woke him, if he's all right, and she takes it without question. He bends at the waist, burying his face in his hands as she leaves the bedroom and heads down the hallway towards the nursery.
The nightmares are commonplace now. They happen often enough, and with such alarming frequency, that he has come to expect them. A night when he does not dream of death and destruction and burning is an anomaly. And yet, every night he retires next to his wife, turns out the bedside lamp and closes his eyes, he thinks maybe this will be the night. Maybe tonight will be the night when he manages to get a full night's sleep, and does not have any disturbing images to mull over while he drinks his morning coffee.
So far, it isn't working.
"Was it a bad one?"
He lifts his head from his hands. Sarah is standing in the doorway of their room, little baby Ben cooing happily in the secure crook of her arm as the tears are still drying on his cheeks. Jake shakes his head.
"Not really, no." He doesn't like lying to her, especially when his stomach is churning from the horrible solidity of the nightmare, but he knows there's nothing she can do to stop them. They've already tried nearly everything they can think of; why give her cause to worry when neither one will gain from it?
But Sarah is far from stupid, and she frowns as she walks forward and sets Ben down on his stomach on top of the covers. She notices her husband's hands still trembling as he reaches out to the baby crawling towards him with manic delight.
"Jake, keeping it bottled up inside isn't going to help." She sits on her side of the bed, drawing her long legs up beneath her. She knows Jake has more nightmares than he tells her; he might think he's getting away with it, but she's not so heavy a sleeper that she can doze through the man next to her thrashing and moaning. Pride is very important to her pig-headed husband, and most nights she lets him think his attempts not to wake her are successful. The truth of the matter is that his nightmares are depriving them both of sleep.
Jake scoops up the warm bundle of baby, lays him against his chest and wraps his arms around him as tight as he dares. He loves the heavy, comforting feeling of his children in his embrace; he loves feeling Ben's tiny fingers take hold of his t-shirt, Ben's warm breath against his neck. He especially loves the smell of his son's fuzzy blond hair, like a mixture of baby shampoo and laundry detergent. Most of all, he loves the way the baby looks at him like he's the only person that matters in that moment.
"She was trying to tell me something," he says, words muffled by his lips pressed against the top of Ben's head.
Next to him, Sarah clicks on the bedside lamp and sends him a puzzled glance. "Who was?"
"The woman. It was the woman again. She was burning, her hair was all gone, her skin was peeling off, but she was trying to tell me something. Whatever she needed to say, it's important. I can feel it."
His voice has taken on a haunted quality, as though he's not aware of his wife's presence any longer, and is merely speaking to himself. His hazel eyes stare off into the farthest corner of their room. Alerted to his father's distress, either by his increased heartbeat, tension in his arms, or some other, subtler way, Ben wiggles, his pudgy baby features twisted in displeasure. More for his son's benefit than his own-the selfless touchstone of Jake's existence-he takes a breath and forces himself to relax.
Sarah lays a gentle hand on her husband's arm. "Jake, honey, it was only a dream. Dreams can't speak to you."
He hears her words, and recognizes the logic in them, and yet some part of him knows she's wrong. The dream had a different quality tonight, more urgent than the others, as if he's rapidly approaching a deadline that he never knew existed. He feels that whatever the woman had been trying to tell him is somehow related to that feeling.
He kisses the top of Ben's head, and turns to his wife. "Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I'll stay up with this guy for a while."
Sarah glances at her pillow longingly, but when she looks back to Jake, her gaze is reluctant. "Are you sure? You've got work in the morning."
He smiles, reaches across the space between them to press a kiss to her lips. "I'm sure. I won't be able to sleep anyway. Sarah, it's fine. Go to sleep."
She sighs, and Jake knows he has won. "Fine. But if he keeps you up for too long, for god's sake, wake me up. The absolute last thing you need is to lose another night of sleep." Even in the muted light of their bedroom, she sees Jake roll his eyes. If not for the baby in his arms, she would whap him with her pillow. "I mean it. You need your sleep."
He smiles again, mock-salutes her with his free hand, and she lays back down cursing softly about sarcastic, stubborn-as-mules husbands. It's a matter of moments before her breathing evens out and she's out like a light.
It doesn't take long for little Ben to follow his mother into the land of slumber, and Jake waits another few minutes to make sure he's out before replacing him in his crib in the nursery down the hall.
The hallway is dark when Jake makes his way towards the stairs; outside, the moon and its illuminating glow is hidden behind a thick veil of clouds. But Jake has never needed light to navigate his home, and tonight is no exception. He steps over the darkened shape of Moose, the family's German Shepard, sleeping sprawled out on the wooden floor outside Jake's oldest son's room.
Downstairs, more out of habit than anything, he makes a circuit through the house, checking the doors and windows to ensure they are locked. Crime is nearly non-existent in their little suburban pocket of the town, but Jake has seen enough during his life to know that a lack of precedent doesn't really mean anything.
He stops at the bay window at the front of the house, feels pressure on his left side, and looks down to see Moose standing next to him. The dog moves incredibly quietly, considering the house is floored in hardwood, and even as often as they trim his nails, he can't take a step without being followed by a click-click. Jake wonders if maybe he's a little more out of it than he would like to admit.
He drops one hand to fondle the dog's ears gently, while the other pulls the curtain back a few inches. The street is quiet at 3am; the fog that descended upon the town just after dinner is lit eerily from above by the orange bulbs of the street lamps. It's the perfect setting for a zombie-horror movie, Jake decides, and begins to replace the curtain when he notices something strange.
Parked across the street, just outside the sphere of sickly orange light cast by a single lamp, a dark, classic car sits unattended, gleaming despite the lack of natural light. Jake, who has a passive interest in American muscle cars, admires the smooth lines and classic design, despite the slight damage to the front end, and the scratches that are visible along the driver's side. The depreciation is negligible, and Jake is reasonably sure the dents and mars could be buffed out with minimal expense.
But, he thinks with a sigh as he lets the curtain fall back, he drives a sluggish SUV, his wife a mid-sized sedan, and despite how much he may want one, there is no room in their bank account for a car of that nature. A gas-guzzler, one that he couldn't explain away with towing capability and four-by-four drive. With three kids, a wife, and a dog, it just isn't practical.
"You gotta admit, though," he says to Moose, as he turns to head back upstairs. "It's a damn nice car."
He begins to move up the stairs, expecting to hear the telltale noise of dog nails on wooden floor, but silence greets him. He backtracks, heads back to the window where Moose has planted his front feet on the sill, peering outside with an intent rarely seen in the absence of snausages.
Jake looks outside again. For all intents and purposes, the dog is staring at the car. At least, Jake thinks he is. The colour and shape of Moose's eyes make it difficult to tell where exactly his attention lies, but if it's true that dogs begin to act like their owners after long enough, and vice versa, Jake can be reasonably sure that Moose has developed a love for finely built American motor vehicles in the past years.
"Come on, buddy. If I plan to wake up at all, I should probably get a few hours of sleep in." He waits patiently for the Shepard to react, but nothing happens. Nothing happens when Jake begins to walk away, slapping his thigh. Nothing happens when he brings out the big guns, stern voice, 'come' command and all. Nothing continues to happen until Jake begins to worry. Clearly something about the car is bothering Moose, and though he has never based his life on relying on the instincts of his pet, he has been shown more than once that the dog has good insight. It's this trust based on experience that makes Jake want to grab his Sig Sauer out of the hallway safe, and go check it out.
He gets so far as to back slowly towards the closet when a tiny voice from the stairs stops him in his tracks.
"Daddy?"
As if summoned by her father's thoughts, Maggie stands on the fourth step up, rubbing her eyes with a fisted hand and dragging a plush Batman behind her. Her normally pencil straight blond hair is sticking up in random directions; her porcelain skin marred by pillow lines.
"Hey monkey, what are you doing up? You should be fast asleep."
Jake moves forward and scoops the girl up, Batman and all. She lays her head sleepily on his shoulder, and curls an arm around the back of his neck.
"I hadda dream 'bout you, daddy. 'Cept you weren't you."
Her words were muffled by the worn fabric of his t-shirt; if she had spoken them in the middle of the day, he might've taken them more seriously. But if he fretted every time this child had a strange dream, he would've dropped dead from a heart attack years ago.
"Really? Well, I hope I was still this devilishly handsome. And a few extra dollars would be sweet. Was I rich in this dream, munchkin?" Maggie giggles quietly against his neck, but is already half asleep and has little interest in her father's poor attempt at humour.
Complete with clinging four-year-old child, Jake moves back to the window, but Moose has lost interest. When he checks, he's unsurprised and yet strangely concerned to see the car gone. What kind of person moves their car at three in the morning? And why hadn't he heard it start? Surely a car like that started with an intimidating roar. His senses are tuned well enough that there is no way he could've missed a sound like that. Had he imagined the whole thing? Maybe he'd been a lot groggier than he previously thought, and simply conjured the image out of some misplaced desire to own a similar car himself. But surely that couldn't be it. He may be tired, but he isn't delusional.
Sighing, he calls Moose to his side, who finally comes happily, and the trio heads back up the stairs. There is no need to worry about it now, he decides. There is little that can be done about phantom cars at three in the morning. A good few hours sleep should clear his head of any cobwebs, and he can give it an in-depth ponder over breakfast.
Morning came much quicker than he would've liked, and when he shuffled into the kitchen, scruff-faced and bleary-eyed, nothing was any clearer than it had been the night before. If anything, the only noticeable change had been to further question his sanity. Sane people didn't imagine classic cars parked out in the road in the middle of the god-forsaken night. But if he imagined it, what was with the dog? Unless they suddenly operated on the same brain wavelengths, that just didn't make sense.
Sighing, Jake puts it all out of his head and accepts the mug of coffee his wife hands him. The kids are already up; Ben is sitting in his highchair, giggling madly at some unseen joke and flinging cheerios in every conceivable direction. Maggie is looking through a picture book as she eats her cereal, despite their 'no books at the table' rule, and looking no worse for wear considering her late night, or rather, early morning excursion. The only one missing is Jake's six-year old son.
"Where's Scooter?" he asks his wife, pulling out a chair and plunking down across from Maggie. Since the ripe old age of eight months, when all attempts at some semblance of control were shot down, their oldest son has been known simply as Scooter. That child was able to crawl with the kind of speed that Jake frequently pulled people over for. The kind of speed that when he tried to describe it, he was given a soft smile and a pat on the back, because everyone knows that a father's son is always the best at everything. At least in his eyes. But as proud as Jake was and still it, as intensely as he loves his son, he hadn't made any of it up. But since they hadn't owned a video camera back then, the only proof he has is the nickname that has stuck with the kid since those days.
Sarah, still dressed in her pajamas with her robe cinched tightly around her waist, glances out the window over the sink. "Out back with the dog. He's already been up for an hour." She moves to the stove and flips over the pancakes cooking there.
Jake smirks, looks over his coffee mug and across the table to his daughter. "Better than Miss Maggie-Pie over here. Had another one of her dreams last night."
Sarah forgets what she's doing and looks up in surprise. Unlike Jake, she sees her daughter's sleep troubles and intense dreams bordering on nightmares as something to take seriously, perhaps something indicative of some kind of emotional damage. Countless arguments about said subject had led to only one conclusion: they both saw the situation differently, and would likely stay that way until the dreams ended, or Maggie moved out.
Sarah comes closer, setting a plate down in front of Jake with one hand and caressing her daughter's blond locks with the other. She worries her lip with her front teeth for a moment, before her green-eyed gaze fixes on her husband.
"What about you? Maggie's not the only one with strange dreams."
Jake wants to roll his eyes, but has far more respect for his wife. So he hides the distasteful expression behind his mug as he takes a long pull of his coffee. They've been over this so many times it feels like reading from a script. "Sarah, it's no big deal. People have dreams all the time."
"Sure, people have dreams. But they generally don't wake up shaking like a leaf and drenched in sweat night after night." She dumps the dirtied pan in the sink and begins scrubbing it with vigor.
Jake stands, drains his coffee and picks up Maggie's empty fruit loops bowl on the way by. "I know you worry. I understand that, I probably would too. But I'm standing here, telling you I'm fine. They're just a mild nuisance. Nothing more."
She drops the pan in the sink, wipes her hands on a dishtowel, and turns to face him. Seeing the earnest worry in her eyes, Jake feels bad at having dismissed her concerns so casually.
"You have no idea what it's like, Jake," she says, wringing her hands fretfully between them. "Waking up to you crying out in your sleep, sweating buckets, tossing and turning. Watching you go through all that and knowing you won't accept any help is hell for me. If you won't talk to me, maybe you should talk to someone else."
"What, like a psychiatrist?" He shakes his head vehemently. "No way, I'm fine."
She reaches out and touches his face, runs her thumb gently across the bags underneath her eyes. "Have you looked in the mirror lately? You're exhausted. How much more of this can you take before you crash?"
He opens his mouth to respond, knowing that she deserves at least that much effort on his part, but is saved from having to form any actual words when Scooter and Moose come banging in through the back door. In the resultant confusion of wriggling dog, excited boy with grass stains on both knees of his school clothes, and cheerios flying every which way, Jake plants a kiss on his wife's cheek and bids them all farewell for ten hours.
"You didn't eat anything!" Sarah calls to his back.
He pauses at the front door to shove his feet into his boots, and grab his keys off one of many small hooks by the window. "I'll grab something on the way. See you later!"
And then he's out the door, free from questions about nightmares and worries and thoughts about strange cars parked in the road. At least until his shift ends.