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“Jesus, Adrien, how can you watch these?” Gabriel frowned at the movie playing on the screen.
“Easy Father, it’s classic horror. It’s not even that scary. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it, actually.”
“I’m not scared. I just don’t like it. I didn’t know we owned them, to be fair-- holy shhhh--” He jumped as a man with a chainsaw appeared out of nowhere on the screen. “Why do they have to do that?!” He rubbed his eyes to try and clear the image that was now burned into his retinas, and Adrien suppressed a smile.
A knock at the door came and Gabriel turned, grateful for an excuse to turn away.
“Sir?” It was Nathalie, tablet in hand. “I’m turning in for the night, but I wanted to let you know your meeting tomorrow with the head of the American branch has been rescheduled for--”
The buzzing of yet another chainsaw murder in progress interrupted her and she looked up from her schedule. “What was…? Ah. I see. Well. Don’t let me interrupt the two of you.” She turned stiffly to leave before Gabriel could respond and shut the door.
Well that was weird, he thought to himself. Nathalie never let anything get in the way of her doing her job. He could have sworn as he turned back to the movie that he heard the click of her heels accelerate into a run.
A crash of thunder rolled through the mansion, and Gabriel was jolted awake. He sat up in the shadowed master bedroom and rubbed his eyes. This unforeseen 2 a.m. storm seemed intent on hailing in the second Great Flood with how hard it was raining. He sighed. He was a light sleeper, and this meant he wouldn’t be getting back to bed anytime soon.
He swung his pajama-clad legs over the side and went to the bathroom for a glass of water. He drank thirstily and lightning flashed again, and in that split second he thought he heard a woman’s voice. He paused with the glass halfway to his lips, listening.
Nothing. Or maybe it was something, and he just couldn’t hear over the downpour. It was probably outside. Nothing that mattered.
He set the glass on the counter and was going to make a feeble attempt at returning to rest when he heard it again.
“ No, please! Please, leave me alone…”
It was coming from inside the mansion, down the hall. There was only one person in this house who could sound like that.
His feet carried him swiftly to Nathalie’s door, and he paused at the knob. Her room was her personal space that he seldom entered, and never without invitation.
“Please...make it stop…”
It was heartbreaking. He had to.
The door swung open and in another flash of lightning he saw her curled on the bed, sheets messily kicked to the side, clutching her pillow. Was she asleep? She appeared to be. He padded over, sock feet silent on the floor.
He could see her face now, the half that wasn’t hidden in a pillow, and as he watched as her brow knotted and she clenched her fist.
“Leave me alone, I don’t want to die!” she cried out.
She was having a nightmare. He wondered if this had anything to do with her reaction to the movie earlier that evening. Either way, this was not the stoic Nathalie he knew, and perhaps it was this fact that allowed him to sink down onto the mattress next to her form without a second thought. It wasn’t long before his hand drifted to her head and gently began to stroke her hair, something he had done when Adrien was little and had trouble sleeping.
“Please…”
Her muscles began to unclench as his hands traced loose strands that framed her face.
Another thunderclap, a particularly loud one, and her eyes shot open.
“ No!” she shouted, and pushed herself up, nearly colliding with Gabriel’s arm, and then recoiled. “What? Who--G-gabr-- sir?!” She scrambled back and he jumped up.
“I-I’m sorry, it was too forward of me, but you were having a bad dream and I couldn’t just, you know,” he stuttered lamely, and cleared his throat, forcing his face neutral. “I’m sorry. I can leave.”
Nathalie’s expression rapidly cycled from shock to embarrassment to tired understanding. She shifted the neckline of her black pajamas as if to cover her bare throat with a nonexistent turtleneck. “You...don’t have to,” she said quietly.
“Are you sure?”
“You can stay.”
“...Do you want me to?”
She looked down. “Please.”
He gingerly returned to his spot next to her on the bed, and between them sat a beat of silence before she spoke.
“I don’t like scary movies. They eat their way into my brain and come back to haunt me at night.”
“That’s fair. I don’t know how Adrien can sleep after watching them.”
“Me either.”
Another silence, save for the rain drumming on the roof and the grumbling of a thunderstorm on its way out.
“Would you like me to stay until you fall asleep again?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Then I will.”
She nodded, and blinked, and her head drooped in tiredness, only to jerk back up as if resisting the pull of rest. Something inside Gabriel’s chest skipped a beat, and he put a gentle arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him, feeling the warmth of her through the silk of her pajamas. She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got you.”