A/N: I know it's insane o'clock but I couldn't sleep :( so here's the product of my mad imagination and my inability to sleep (I think those two issues may be connected). And thank you for all the wonderful reviews for the first chapter.
Sarah x
Hanssen woke when he heard a noise in his house. It was coming from upstairs, and it took him a moment for him to remember Serena Campbell was sleeping in his bed tonight. It was being muffled by the closed living room door but it sounded like...screaming? "Oh, God," he muttered, getting to his feet quickly.
He picked up the empty wine bottle as a precaution and threw the door open, running up the stairs. It was definitely screaming, and Serena was definitely doing the screaming. He opened his bedroom door. The moonlight was sweeping the room, and it was empty, aside from Serena. She was shrieking in the bed; the noise was going right through Hanssen. He hated the sound of her terror.
He knelt down and shook her gently. "Ms. Campbell," he said, but she wasn't waking. She was still screaming, her arms protecting her head. He took her wrists so she didn't accidentally hit him. "Ms. Campbell!" said Hanssen again; what was he meant to do? She wasn't waking for him. "Serena!" he shouted her first name, hoping to get a response that wasn't an ear-splitting, heart-wrenching cry, but it was unsuccessful.
He reached down for her face, tapping it lightly. He could feel her cheeks were wet; she was crying in her sleep. This had to stop, but he couldn't wake her. "Serena!" he shouted. "Wake up!"
She woke up suddenly, and she flew away from him. "Are you alright?" he immediately asked. He instantly felt like an idiot. Of course she wasn't alright. She'd just been crying and shrieking in her sleep. "Nightmare?" he said, sitting down on the bed. He reached over and turned the bedside lamp on to see her ghostly face.
She nodded in answer to his question. "You'd think I'd be used to it by now," she admitted. "Obviously not though."
"Why would you be used to it?" he enquired, not understanding what was going on. She crawled back over to him, pulling the duvet over her legs. She was very warm, like she was overheating. She looked guarded. Uncertain. "Ms. Campbell?" he asked, returning to his more formal way of addressing her.
"Mr. Hanssen?" she replied sarcastically. It was clear to him he wasn't going to get very far here. She was too upset and too cautious of him to tell him what she'd meant by what she had just said.
"Well, I'm going to sleep here tonight, I think," he asserted to her, surprised by how much he actually cared about her. He didn't want her to feel alone and start having nightmares again. He knew himself that he was always terrified of going back to sleep after the very few times he'd experienced a nightmare. He could only imagine the fear she must have felt to scream like that.
"In this bed?"
"Yes."
"With me?"
"Yes."
"You wouldn't dare," she challenged.
"Believe me, I would," he retorted. She just stared at him, like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Contrary to popular belief, he was not a cold monster. And he didn't want to leave her alone in case the nightmare she had started up again through the night.
"No funny business," she warned him, her tone flatly lethal.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied, and he could feel a smirk playing on his lips. Her face broke into a weak, tired smile as he walked around the bed, climbing in the other side next to her. He wasn't quite sure why he even cared about her, really. She'd crossed him too many times for him to feel anything for her, and yet he hated the thought of leaving her alone in case she dreamt something awful again.
She turned the lamp off and pulled the duvet up to her chin. He could hear her breathing begin to even out again, and her kept moving, trying to get comfortable. He didn't need to face her to know what she was doing. "I'm sorry," he heard her whisper.
"What on Earth for?" he replied, confused as to why she felt the need to apologise.
"Waking you up," she said.
He turned around to face her. "Don't be absurd."
She turned to face him too, so they were lying face to face. "I'm not," she answered back. He found himself fighting the urge to laugh. She could be childlike when she let go of the stresses of work. They way she'd kissed his cheek tonight had been so innocent – the one thing he knew she wasn't. The way she'd pulled the duvet over herself was so immature, going against how she tended to act in front of him. She always seemed either angry or devious, but he'd seen the infantile side to her tonight.
"Why did you have that nightmare?" he whispered into the darkness. Her words were playing on his mind; she'd said she should have been used to it. What did that mean?
"I don't know," she responded, but he could tell from her tone that she was lying. He could feel her body heat up and her breath catch as she said it, and he knew he wouldn't have been lying in bed with her had she not been scared to go back to sleep alone. He had an unpleasant feeling that she faced sleep alone after one of these nightmares all too often.
"Don't lie to me, Ms. Campbell," he said. "The noise that came out of you was enough to wake the dead. You must know what's causing it." He heard her inhale sharply. Whether it was out of impatience or fear, he wasn't sure.
"I'm not," she said.
"You are. I don't even need to see your face to know when you're lying to me," he reminded her.
He felt the bed move a little as she shifted her position. She seemed unable to get comfortable, constantly tossing and turning. "When I was a little girl, my dad had a 1967 Ford Cortina," she stated. Her breath was sweet as she spoke; it smelled of wine and chocolate from earlier. "When I was nine years old, he was driving me into town to get my hair cut. We lived in a village, couple of miles from the nearest big town."
"Sounds nice," he commented.
"It was. I wasn't," she confessed. "I was being a bit of a brat, shouting that my hair was fine the way it was, demanding Dad took me back, etcetera, etcetera."
"Not much has changed then," he smirked, and he knew she was going to ignore that comment.
"There I was, throwing a tantrum over my bloody hair," she continued, "and the brakes failed. Straight into a wall. I was lucky to have survived it."
"Your father, I take it, was not so fortunate?" Hanssen asked, feeling awful for her.
"It was before the time of collapsible steering columns," she explained. "Before they became commonplace, anyway. He got both barrels, so to speak. Impaled by the steering column, chest crushed by the steering wheel. He didn't stand a chance," she whimpered. He was starting to think this was the first time she'd spoken about this; if she'd told this story before, she would not have been so raw about it. "I can remember the shaft in his chest, and not being able to move to get to him."
"I'm sorry," he whispered, fighting back the unexpected tears at her story. It was dark, and he couldn't see her face, but her voice told him she was crying. It was broken and thick with tears.
"Thirty-five years have passed and I still have nightmares about it," she admitted. He moved his hand under the duvet, touching her arm lightly. He traced his fingers down her arm until he reached her hand, and took it in his. He rubbed his thumb gently on the back of her hand, wanting her to know that he was next to her if she needed him.
"You've never spoken about this, have you?" he asked her, keeping his voice low.
"Police statement," she replied. "After that, nobody got a word out of me about it. Not even my mum."
"Is it a recurring nightmare you have about it?" he said.
"Yeah," she sniffed. "Yeah, same every time. I'll never get rid of it. It's just the memory of what happened playing itself over in my mind."
"Even after all those years," he sighed. For some bizarre reason or another, he just wanted to put his arms around her and tell her it was alright. She was a woman who had created a front for herself, a barrier of sarcasm, anger and frightfulness, but had just revealed that she'd watched her dad die right before her eyes as a child.
She moved her fingers, linking them with his, and he wondered what she was thinking. What she was feeling. He had some idea – his mother, after all, had committed suicide when he was a child, walking into the lake outside their home. It had not been a rough, violent end like Serena's father had met, but traumatic in the sense Henrik knew his mother actually wanted to die. That she'd killed herself in the knowledge her husband was missing, leaving her child with nobody, had hurt Henrik more than he cared to admit.
So, yes, he did know the pain Serena felt. Thankfully, he didn't face nightmares like she did, every night, it seemed. He had the odd dream about it, but he thought he was capable of reigning it in most of the time.
The other difference, too, was that it sound like Serena herself had nearly died in that crash but lived while her dad was killed. Survivor's guilt. "I do understand," he said against his better judgement.
"Why? What happened?" she immediately replied.
"When I was a child, my mother committed suicide," he revealed, and he heard her stop breathing just for a moment. "I do understand what it is to lose a parent so young," he repeated.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, just like he had done. Suicide didn't take much of a description, in Hanssen's eyes; it was what it was. His mother had deliberately ended her life for whatever reason. He felt her reach out, and pull him into an awkward one-armed hug with her free arm, their fingers still interlocked.
Because it was dark, he had no idea how close together they were, or how dangerous the water he was treading was. He could feel her hand on his back and she pulled the top section of his body close to her as a comfort he suspected was both for him and for herself. It was all he could do to put his other arm around her clumsily, completely clueless about this type of situation. He rubbed her back lightly for a moment before letting her go, pulling back from her when he realised he could feel her heart beating against his chest.
He didn't separate their hands; he felt she needed that comfort still, and hoped she may not dream that same terrible dream with a hand to hold. "Goodnight, Henrik," she whispered.
"Goodnight...Serena," he replied, bringing himself to use her first name.
She fell asleep quite quickly, he thought. After a few minutes, her breathing had slowed and her hand felt limp in his, though he would not let it go. What he found intriguing was the her body was subconsciously moving slowly towards his, like he was some sort of defender, someone to keep her safe.
Before he knew it, her body was dangerously close to his. Close enough that she would probably be horrified in the morning. At that moment, though, it was irrelevant. He could barely believe she'd opened up to him. She'd said herself that no-one had ever got her to talk about it until now, disregarding the police statement she would have had to make. Why had she opened herself up to him, when she was in such a vulnerable position? It wasn't what she would normally have done. He'd expected a glare and warned to shut up, not the truth about why she'd had a recurring nightmare for the last thirty-five years.
He's been right before – childlike. She was childlike. When she was hurt and vulnerable, when her guard had been shattered on the floor or voluntarily dropped, she could be like a child. It was adorable. Not a word he'd ever have used to describe Serena Campbell before tonight, but true all the same.
Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you thought!
Sarah x