Big Tim: the human (pieceoftoast) wrote in multifariousic, @ 2015-06-16 02:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, derek hale (lookmaimmawolf), tim murphy (pieceoftoast) |
WHO: Tim Murphy & (canon)Derek Hale
WHAT: Nightmares
WHEN: Tuesday morning 6/16 approx. 3:00-4:00 am
WHERE: Derek’s room.
WARNINGS: Angst and adorbs?
STATUS: Closed, Complete
“Timmy, what is it?” “It’s a velociraptor…” “...it’s inside…” It was always the kitchen. It was always the kitchen and he always heard that bark; his sister screaming...the raptor screaming. In his nightmares, she never got out of the cabinet before the raptor got back on its feet. He always watched her die. Always. And it didn’t matter how many times he had the dream or how much he knew it hadn’t happened that way and it never would, it was never easier to have it. It was never the kind of thing that faded fast enough to go back to sleep. It was the kind of imagery that stuck with this little boy and it was the kind of thing that had always had him sneaking into the far side of Sharon’s bed when Cap hadn’t been around. Tim was soaked in cold sweat when he jolted upright, awakened at the same spot in his dream as he was every other time, when Lex wasn’t there to shut the door to the freezer when he slid back out of it; when the raptors started to close in on him...just before they reached him. Every night since he’d gotten to the City, without fail, he relieved the nightmare he’d experienced, only in his dreams, it always ended worse. For a long while that felt like forever, he sat up in his bed, shaking and panting, his wide eyes searching the room as if to make sure that the dinosaurs hadn’t followed him out of his dreams like Freddie Kruger. Timmy looked at the digital clock on the table across the room from the bed and it read 3:01am. At 3:34, when he still felt like his heart was going to beat right out of his chest, Timmy finally relented. He felt guilty already as he padded out of the bedroom in his night shorts and Avengers t-shirt that was soaked through with sweat. His stomach tumbled with discomfort at the idea of having to admit to his coach that he was such a wimp. Timmy took a shaking breath and stopped outside Derek’s door, his hand hovering over the doorknob for a few long minutes before he finally mustered up the courage to turn it and peek inside. “...Coach…?” The voice came out choked back and almost whispered out of reflex. Moreover, it came out ashamed. Derek was a light sleeper, so when the sound of his bedroom door knob turning squeaked through the room his eyes fluttered a little and opened when he heard a small voice coming from the far side. He looked over to see the figure of Tim, looking almost fragile, in his doorway, and he could smell it in the air. Sweat, anxiety. Fear. Derek frowned and slowly unwrapped his arms from around Joey’s waist, making sure not to disturb her as he carefully shifted out of bed to his feet. He was going to ask him what was wrong, but he didn’t have to, the closer he got; the kid looked terrified. Not urgently, as if there was an intruder, but he was covered in sweat, and it was obvious that he had had a nightmare. “Hey, Tim…” Derek approached him slowly and reached out a hand, placing it carefully on the small boys shoulder before crouching down to meet him at eye level. He had no idea how to do this… he wanted to give the kid a place to live, because he sure as hell couldn’t live on his own, but Derek wasn’t prepared of the responsibilities that came with that. He was winging this, completely, but Tim was already afraid. He didn’t need to know that. “Nightmare, huh?” He frowned a little in sympathy, his own eyes still a little heavy with sleep, but he moved a hand to ruffle the boys already bed messed hair. “Come on. Let’s get another shirt for you, alright? You can’t be comfortable in that.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Joey was still in bed before standing up straight, leading the boy out into the hall and back to his own bedroom to open up his top drawer. He searched around for a sleep shirt before glancing over. “Wanna talk about it, kiddo?” As Derek got out of the bed, Tim’s body language shifted into something more contained. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed down just slightly, and his eyes averted to the floor. It was better when it was Cap or Sharon because they already knew about the nightmares. It was better when his coach didn’t think he was a wimp. So when Derek crouched to eye level in front of him, Tim’s eyes shifted to his face for a second before going back to the floor and he gave a half-hearted shrug, not actually answering the question one way or the other before moving right on to the next question. “Okay…sorry,” he replied, the apology genuine in its tone, because he could’ve gotten his own dry shirt and he knew that. Maybe he should’ve. When Derek turned to look over his shoulder, Timmy looked, too, and felt even worse because he’d forgotten Coach’s girlfriend was staying the night. Tim’s weight shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other before Derek was up again and leading him back to his own room. Tim climbed back onto the bed and went through the motions of covering his legs up while he peeled off the wet shirt, dropping it on the floor to put in the hamper later. “I don’t know,” he answered, giving another shrug. He sounded less than confident. Part of him wanted to talk about it, because he always felt better when he talked about it with Cap, but the other part kept reminding himself that Derek was his coach; he looked up to Derek and he wanted to be like Derek, and Derek probably didn’t have the same dumb nightmare every night. So he shrugged again, face drawn and stomach twisting. He watched carefully as Tim climbed back into bed, looking almost ashamed of himself, and Derek’s stomach twisted a little bit before he closed the drawer and approached the bed as well. He didn’t know how to do this. He wasn’t good at this, and Derek was quickly realizing that he had bitten off way more than he could chew when he had taken Tim in. But what was he going to do? There was nowhere else that he could send him, and Derek found that he felt protective over him. He wanted to make sure that the kid was alright, and that he was being well taken care of. It was a conflicting emotion. He handed Tim his new shirt and he sat next to him on the edge of his bed, cracking a small smile. “You probably should.” He encouraged. He tried to think back to what his own father did; would have done. But there were no memories there. None that he wanted to pass on, at least. “I talk about it still, sometimes, when I have nightmares. It’s like talking about them gets them out of my head so they’re not there for when I fall back asleep, you know? Come on, let me hear it.” At the encouragement, Timmy shrugged again, eyes averted as he took the t-shirt and tugged it on over his head. He suddenly wished with the heaviest discomfort in the pit of his stomach, that he was home. Lex always let him climb in bed with her when he had a nightmare. She probably still would. Back then, they were always about monsters under the bed or the fights he’d overheard his parents having before they finally split up. Now, he bet Lex was having the same bad dreams except she was home and he was here. Tim fidgeted, hunching his shoulders again a little, but he looked up at Derek’s face, finally, when Derek said that he had nightmares, sometimes, too. “...really?” he asked, looking a little surprised. “You get bad dreams, too, Coach?” He was stalling, but the curiosity behind it was genuine, all the same. “Oh, yeah.” He nodded solemnly, giving a little facial shrug before he clasped his hands together. “About a whole bunch of different things. Mine are usually about a fire. ...That’s how I lost my family.” He didn’t know why he was telling Tim, but Derek felt like maybe the boy needed something to relate to. It was a lonely world when you felt like you were the only one who was terrified or weak, Derek knew that all too well. “A lot of people have nightmares, Tim. Especially if they’ve been through hard times, and you’ve definitely seen some hard times, champ.” He shifted a little to face the boy, placing a hand on his shoulder to lead him back into bed so Derek could pull his blankets up around him and tuck him in comfortably. If he was being honest he probably would have let the kid crash in his own bed that night of Joey hadn’t been staying over, so for now he was going to stay in Tim’s room with him, sitting beside his pillow contently and letting his hand relax on the boys shoulder. “They started when I was around sixteen. I used to wake Laura up and everything, and I always felt bad but she was never mad at me. She understood, you know? I thought that it was kind of stupid to have nightmares at my age but they’re normal. They happen to everybody. Hey,” he shifted the hand on Tim’s shoulder to push the boy’s bangs out of his face and off of his forehead, a little frown on his expression once more. “Was it about the park? Talk to me, kiddo, it helps. I promise.” It hadn’t occurred to Tim that even somebody like Derek could have bad dreams. The news that Derek’s family had died in a fire made Tim’s brow crease with concerned sympathy and he wasn’t really sure why Derek was sharing that with him, but it made him feel like maybe Coach was kind of like a friend instead of just a coach. He let Derek guide him back to lay down and Tim’s eyes stayed on Derek’s face as he tucked him in. Tim admittedly felt a little better knowing that if Derek had bad dreams when he was a teenager, then that probably didn’t make Tim a wimp for having them when he was ten. Derek pushed his bangs back like Sharon used to and Tim’s eyes felt heavier, but he fought it. At Derek’s question, he paused before finally nodding. “About the raptors in the kitchen,” he said. “They almost got Lex, but in the dream they do get her...and then they almost get me but I always wake up right before,” he admitted quietly. Derek’s frown only deepened, his brow somewhat furrowed before he gave a low sigh through his nose and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tim,” he began genuinely, “I’m sorry that you have to see that over again. But hey, whenever you have that nightmare, or any nightmare, and it wakes you up, you just come and get me, alright?” He allowed himself to give a crooked little smile. “And if I have a nightmare I’ll come and wake you up. With the two of us together we’ll have these things under control in no time.” He could see the way that Tim’s eyes were starting to slowly droop so he stayed in place, his hand still moving to slowly push the young boys hair off of his forehead. He watched him in silence for a while, and after a few seconds passed by Derek spoke once more. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Tim. You’re safe here, and I’m going to do everything that I can to keep it that way.” He shifted once more, but only to turn his body towards Tim once more, his back to the door so he could give the boy his full attention. “You’re passing out, champ, I can see it. Come on, get some sleep and tomorrow maybe you and I will find something to do in the city. I hear the Museum of Natural History is pretty cool.” He grinned. “And we’ll keep our distance from the dinosaur exhibit if they have one set up. Get some rest. I’ll stay here until you pass out, promise.” Tim let out a tiny giggle at the idea of Derek waking him up to help with a nightmare. "Okay, yeah," he agreed in a yawn he tried to bite back. His coach's words were as reassuring as they were probably meant to be and Tim's eyes drooped a little more. He forced them open again to look back at Derek and nodded sleepily against his pillow. "Okay. Thanks, Coach." Tim went on fighting sleep for a few more minutes before he couldn't, anymore. His hand found Derek's and little fingers curled around the side of it as his eyes finally slipped shut, like he was afraid that as soon as he looked like he was sleeping, Derek would leave — "He left us. He left us!" — and Timmy wanted to hold his coach to the promise to stay until he really was asleep. "Thanks, Coach..." he echoed in a tiny, sleep-choked voice, shifting onto his side and pulling Derek's hand against his chest like any other child might do a teddy bear, his other hand clutching at his coach's wrist before the grip slackened when sleep finally took him. He had expected Tim to want him to stick around, and Derek was just fine with that, but what he didn’t expect was to feel a small hand wrapping around his, and he watched in confusion when Timmy started to doze off while holding onto him. Derek couldn’t help but feel his expression melt into something more content, and by the time Tim had fallen asleep Derek was wearing a small smile. He watched and waited, listening closely for Tim’s faint heartbeat, and he heard it slow down to a comfortable rhythm as his body finally calmed completely. Derek pulled his hand away but watched Tim for a few more minutes, running his hand over the young boy’s hair in the same way he had done when he was awake, and when he was satisfied that the nightmares hadn’t immediately returned Derek leaned down and kissed the top of his head. He stood up, and with one last adjustment to Tim’s blanket Derek finally turned to leave his room, watching him from the doorway for a few seconds before finally shutting off his light. |