Work Text:
The nightmares these days are less reminiscent: just an unwelcome grey haze and police stations and a silent jury. He dreams of blood, rich, hot blood splattered up his arms and his handprints on a neck – there’s never a face – standing over a body he doesn’t remember. Marbled skin, cold and lifeless, street trash whipping around his ankles and garbage bags spilling in the gutter. Sirens growing closer. Crammed in the back seat, the gridded bars rattle. Metal biting his wrists, in the car, in the holding cell, in the courtroom. Guilty for a murder he had committed – had he? The dream warps and twists and he doesn’t remember if he did, if he didn’t, and their faces blur. Just Buford’s remains clear.
Even if the details of the nightmares disappear, Derek wakes to the sickening panic each time, heart thumping, palms flush with sweat and kicking the sheets free from his ankles. That never does change. The ones about Buford always were the worst.
He hadn’t had them for years.
The night they get back, it isn’t a surprise when he only sleeps through a couple of hours.
Quiet paws pad along the hall; a twitching nose nudges the door open. Clooney watches him then jumps up on the bed he knows he’s not supposed to be on, walks a neat circle and curls in a soft ball of fur. Derek scratches behind his ears and he licks lazily at his wrist, tail thumping.
“All right, boy,” he murmurs, wipes his face.
Clooney presses his wet nose into the palm of his hand with a contented huff.