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Leon’s relationship with sleep could be considered… complicated. At best.
He’d never been one to whom sleep came easy, even before his first and last day at the RPD. Chronic insomnia made his experience at the academy that much more difficult, but the physical activity would at least allow his body to force itself into resting even if his mind wouldn’t. It proved to still be the best method after his conscription; if he couldn’t sleep, he wouldn’t survive. Sometimes a little life-or-death ultimatum is all someone needs, he’d learned. Unfortunately, he’d also learned that that’s something a body can grow used to. Now throw in a healthy dose of ‘based on true events!’ nightmares, and you have the perfect recipe to drive a man to madness. Leon wasn’t lucky enough to lose his mind. Drinking himself unconscious seemed to work well enough for a while, but apparently that’s not a good coping mechanism, and will do more harm than good in the long run, and ruining this mission debrief, go home and sleep it off, Kennedy. Okay, he’ll admit it, quitting the booze improved his life in nearly every way. But this one pesky issue remained.
At this point, he’d tried it all: every position, every flat surface, several not-so-flat surfaces, meditation, white noise, jacking off until his wrist hurt, several prescribed medications, a few not-so-prescribed medications. Nights where he and Chris were actually in the same city at the same time were better, but even on those nights Leon wasn’t sure if he’d actually gotten more sleep, or was just calmed by the other man’s presence. Other than that, it was a crapshoot whether or not he’d sleep on any given night. He’d have better luck consulting the stars trying to figure out why.
On this night in particular, Leon found himself splayed out on his stomach— arms and legs spread wide across the mattress under the monotonous hum of the ceiling fan to combat the late summer heat. The sweat on the back of his neck that had made the edges of his hair uncomfortably stick to his skin had since chilled over in the breeze, making the muscles stiffen and ache. Leon couldn’t bring himself to care; he was teetering on that blissful edge and refused to risk another sleepless night by moving even an inch. It was probably for the best that Chris wasn’t home— adding a human furnace to the mix wouldn’t help, but Leon still missed him anyway. Leon had just returned home to his empty apartment from a relatively quick and easy assignment earlier that day, while Chris was still out of the country on one of his own, due to return back in a day or two. If they were lucky, they would get a few nights together before the DSO tugged on his leash.
Eyelids finally drooping, Leon felt his breathing deepen and slow. Each of his limbs sank infinitesimally into the soft fabric below him, the tension he constantly carried throughout his body laxing as consciousness finally slipped through his fingers.
Leon woke with a start, eyes flying open. For a disorienting moment, he took in his surroundings with frantic eyes, before calming when he blearily recognized his sparse bedroom. He rolled his gaze over to the bright red glow of the alarm clock on his nightstand— not even ten minutes had passed since he’d last checked. Great. At least the handful of minutes of sleep he managed to get were dreamless; something had to have woken him up, but he thankfully had no memory of it. Since it didn’t look like sleep was in the cards for him tonight, Leon decided he may as well get up. But when he went to move… he couldn’t.
Irritation swiftly morphed into something closer to panic. Leon tried to move the hand splayed out in front of him, feeling ice run through his veins when he couldn't so much as twitch a finger. Trying to move his legs, feet, neck, head— all led to the same result. His head was stuck turned to the side as an invisible weight tethered his chest to the mattress, his breathing the only source of movement it allowed. Mouth closed, the staccato breaths rushing through his nose felt constricting, unable to take in a full lungful of oxygen.
He tried to open his mouth but his jaw refused to listen. A quiet, choked off whine was the only thing he could force from his throat, more a sound of distress than a genuine attempt to call out for help. Who would be able to help him anyway?
The only thing he could move were his eyes. Flitting them up, down, left, right in quick succession. Repeating the motion as if he would see something different with each revolution. The room looked exactly the way it had when he laid down. The drone of the fan no longer felt soothing like it had when it lulled him to sleep; it now felt deafening, mocking, overwhelming. His frenzied scanning of the room came to a screeching halt when he made out a shape in the darkness.
Right at the edge of the mattress, the streetlight filtering in through the narrow slits in the blinds illuminated something creeping over the frame. Leon’s breathing stopped, he refused to blink. The dark shape was imperceptible enough that maybe if he blinked a few times, it would disappear, that it would turn out to just be a shadow distorted by his tired vision. But he couldn’t let himself look away as it started to shift. Fingers. A hand, curling around the flat surface and blindly feeling the crumpled sheets. The fingers were slow, sluggish in their search— the joints seemed to strain and jerk with their movements as mangled nails caught on the fabric.
His eyes widened, rapid breathing restarting as it tipped over into hyperventilation. The hand’s flesh looked necrotic, the blood coating it having long since dried but leaving it caked in viscera. Muscles and sinew peeking out through ripped skin, bones exposed where even the deepest layer of meat had been stripped. As it crawled closer, Leon swore he could smell it. That stench was something he longed to forget, yet never could. His eyes burned, the breeze from the fan only exacerbating their dryness as he forced himself to keep them open. A sudden jerk of the hand made him flinch and his eyes shut for a fraction of a second, the only reaction his body would let him have.
The hand was gone.
There wasn’t anything on the bed; no blood, no trail of grime on the clean sheets. The fabric wasn’t even crumpled where it had been dragging itself along with stuttering fingers.
Leon’s breathing slowed little by little, now painfully aware of the blood rushing in his ears with the way his heart was pounding in his chest. He scanned the room again.
Nothing.
He slumped into the bed, more emotionally than physically, with the crash of his adrenaline. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been real.
But what if it was?
Leon wrenched his eyes back open as soon as they’d fallen shut. Anxiety crawled up his throat at the thought. He couldn’t clear the room, couldn’t defend himself. What if there was something else in here? Just out of his field of view? Something could be looming in his blind spots and he’d be none the wiser. What if the hand had simply retracted, its owner now under the bed, lying in wait? What if it had already crawled under and out on the other side, and was behind his back at this very moment?
The panic came back in full force. Every hair on his body stood on end– anticipating something, anything. The light from the street was no longer streaming in, leaving him blind to his surroundings. Only able to barely make out what is right in front of him, everything else just inky blobs in the darkness loosely resembling the few pieces of furniture. The red LEDs of the alarm clock seemed to bleed out and smother the room, bathing it in a sinister glow.
He couldn’t think. It felt like whatever was preventing him from moving his body was also holding the electrical currents of his brain in place. No synapses firing, no blood circulating— only terror remaining, inciting the fear that he’d soon go brain dead. If Leon were in his right mind, he’d know that he needs to slow his breathing. The only thing depriving him of oxygen right now was himself with the rapid, shallow breaths he was taking. But in this moment, he could only feel his basest emotions, heightened to a frightening degree: fear, anxiety, panic. Like a child crying out in the darkness, unable to even comprehend what it is that is terrorizing him.
A breath ghosted over the back of his neck. Lips brushed against his ear. A tall figure stood in the corner. Something skittered across the ceiling. Empty eyes were staring back at him in all directions.
The hand was back. This time joined by countless others.
He tried to jerk back, to kick, to scream.
He couldn’t.
— — —
Chris was exhausted.
As soon as he touched back down at BSAA HQ in Toronto, he was already making his way to get back on yet another flight. The op in Belgium went much smoother than anyone had been anticipating, including himself, so he got the pleasure of sitting on yet another international flight just to be able to spend the next twenty four hours with Leon. If he was lucky.
Chris debated texting him that he’d be home earlier than expected, that maybe they could go out for breakfast in the morning. But the two of them were far too superstitious for that. Sending a text like that would be a surefire way to cause some global outbreak that would prevent either of them from being able to even think about breakfast for weeks. Even so, he wouldn’t want to wake Leon with how late it was when he landed, but odds were that the man wouldn’t be asleep at all. He was probably sitting up on the couch, crankily watching reruns of some sitcom like an old man, surrounded by box fans to bring the temperature down to something more manageable. Chris smiled to himself at the thought.
He’d tried to get as much sleep on the plane as he could, but found himself too wired. Now, as he climbed the handful of flights up to Leon’s apartment in DC, wiping the sweat from his forehead, he felt like he was about to crash. Tears beaded in his eyes from an exceptionally large yawn as he dug around for the spare key in the duffle bag he’d grabbed when he left base.
He cracked open the door slowly, in case Leon actually was on the couch— awake or not— not wanting to blind him with the lights from the hallway. But the living room was empty.
A glance around showed that the windows were all left open in an attempt to get a crossbreeze going. There was an empty bag from a local chinese restaurant on the kitchen counter. A glass in the sink. Business as usual.
Dropping the bag off of his shoulder, Chris made his way down the hall to the bedroom. He still wanted to change and maybe rinse off before collapsing into bed, but he wouldn’t be able to relax without getting eyes on Leon first.
He ducked his head into the dark room and saw the man spread out across the mattress, gangly limbs in all directions. The mop of blond hair covered Leon’s face from this angle but Chris knew that if he had been awake, he would have been out of bed the second Chris walked up to the front door. He laughed inwardly at the way Leon was fanned out, before leaning back out into the hall to continue on to the bathroom.
As he was about to take another step, a small sound caught his attention. Chris stood completely still for a moment, straining his ears to try to catch the noise again.
A whimper.
His brow creased as he turned back to the bedroom, leaning in again just as he had a moment ago.
“Leon?”
Another whimper. So quiet he almost missed it, but unmistakable.
Nightmares were common occurrences in their household— for both of them, but Leon suffered from them far more frequently. What was confusing Chris at this moment was the fact that Leon’s night terrors often came with physical manifestations. He would clench his fists into the blanket, shake his head, toss and turn until his legs were tangled in the sheets. The movement next to Chris in bed would wake him more often than the sound of heavy breathing and panicked muttering.
But right now, Leon was as still as a stone.
Taking another step closer to the bed, Chris now saw that the only movement coming from Leon was the quick rise and fall of his back. Too quick. Chris closed the distance between them in a single stride and sat on the edge of the mattress.
“Leon, hey. Can you wake up for me? It’s just a dream, baby.” Chris settled into the familiar routine of trying to coax Leon from a nightmare. He kept his tone soothing yet firm, placing a hand on the other man’s back to ground him, and maybe hold him back if he woke up swinging. Which wasn’t uncommon. But when Chris placed his hand between pale shoulder blades, he flinched at the wetness from the sweat that had pooled there. Leon was drenched; it soaked into the sheets where his skin was glued to the fabric. He knew it was hot in the city this week, but not that hot.
Chris stood to turn on the light on the nightstand, but when he turned back he nearly jumped at the sight of wild blue eyes staring back at him.
Leon was panting through his nose, staring up at Chris like he’d never seen him before in his life. There were tears welling at the corners of his eyes. He looked utterly terrified.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s just me, can you tell me what’s wrong?” Chris dropped down to Leon’s level to hold eye contact. Leon tracked his movement with only his eyes, unblinking, the whites completely bloodshot. He clearly wasn’t asleep. “Are you hurt? Talk to me, Leon.”
Leon’s throat bobbed with a choked off noise, clicking dryly. Chris reached out and grabbed the hand laying on the mattress between them and squeezed— he thought Leon would squeeze back, but the hand remained limp in his grasp, despite the fact that Leon was staring right at him.
“Breathe, Leon, just breathe,” Chris soothed. He needed to help Leon stop hyperventilating. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere without Leon telling him, and that wasn’t going to happen if he couldn’t breathe. He took in a large, exaggerated inhale and held it for a few beats before letting it out just as slowly, pointedly holding eye contact. “C’mon, do it with me.”
Leon wasn’t listening. He was holding Chris’s gaze like he was a predator who could pounce at any moment. Chris couldn’t stand it. He reached out his free hand to push back the sweaty hair that was sticking to Leon’s face, wanting to help comfort him in any way he could. But the second his hand started to reach forward, Leon let out a heartbreaking whine, clenching his eyes shut in absolute fear. Chris stopped in his tracks, wanting nothing more than to finish reaching out and cup his partner’s face the way he always does, but also becoming increasingly nauseated at the fact that his actions had elicited such a response. That Leon was afraid of him.
With a short exhale, he continued the action anyway. Leon didn’t move an inch, his eyes still firmly clenched shut and breathing still panicked, as the hair was gently combed back from his forehead. Chris rested his palm against the man’s cheek, rubbing slow circles with his thumb into the creases that had formed from how tightly he was squeezing his lids shut. Something about the motion must have helped because Leon slowly cracked his eyes back open, recognition bleeding into the little amount of emotion he was able to express.
“You back with me?”
Leon still didn’t respond, but his breathing started to slow down, becoming less frantic. Chris resumed the exaggerated breaths for Leon to follow along with. They came out shuddering and took much longer than Chris would have liked to even out, but eventually returned to a somewhat normal rhythm.
Something twitching in his hand pulled his gaze from Leon’s face to the hand he still had tightly clenched in his own. Leon’s fingers wiggled ever so slightly, curling loosely around Chris’. He couldn’t help but let out a small laugh in relief.
“That’s great. Keep going.”
It took a few more minutes, but soon enough they were properly holding hands, and Chris’ mind was suddenly overcome with the mental image of them as two stupid teenagers, figuring out where their fingers should lay as they intertwine them for the first time.
“C-c’ris.”
The choked out name had him wrenching his eyes up from their hands to Leon’s face. His brow was twitching, creasing and smoothing as he tested out the muscles. Chris could see him working his jaw as he shifted his head for the first time tonight.
“I’m here, take your time.”
Leon flexed the muscles in his fingers, neck, back, arms a few times before responding with a slightly muffled, “Y’re back… early.”
Chris couldn’t help but laugh at that, a response that was so textbook Leon; that that’s the first thing he’d say in a situation like this. The corners of Leon’s mouth twitched up ever so slightly at the sound, draining some of the remaining tension from Chris’s shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m back early,” he said through an exhale, sitting back on the edge of the bed. “Good thing, too. What happened there?”
Leon huffed out a somewhat irritated breath, blowing a few stray hairs out of his face.
“Bad nightmare.”
Now Chris really knew he was back to normal.
“No way, I thought you were having the time of your life.”
Leon lazily rolled his head up to shoot Chris a glare but the intended effect fell flat, betrayed by the exhaustion in his eyes and the slight smile he was clearly struggling to keep off of his face.
“You asked,” Leon snorted. He shakily pushed himself up and rolled over to his back, peeling the sheets from his skin. Chris winced in sympathy at the pops that came from his neck– it had to have a hell of a crick in it.
“A few times, I’ve had bad ones where I can’t move,” Leon continued with a sigh. “It’s like I’m awake and can see, but my body’s still asleep, and the nightmare keeps going. That was one of them. It’s hard to snap out of it in the moment.”
Chris had heard of that before. He remembered reading an article about it once and just the idea of it scared the shit out of him. He had no idea that was something Leon experienced.
“You’ve never mentioned that.”
“It’s only happened a few times. And never while I was with you.” Leon threw Chris a stupid, tired smirk. “Maybe you’re my good luck charm.”
Chris nudged him over with a grin before flopping down on the mattress. “Well, if you keep your luck going, there might be a massage in your future. Gotta unlock those muscles.”
Despite the heat, Leon rolled into Chris’ side and buried his nose in his neck. “God, yes, please,” he replied, muffled.
“Okay, okay,” Chris laughed. “But let up, I’m gross right now. Let me take a shower.” He sniffed loudly and overdramatically. “You could use one, too.”
A disgruntled, muffled threat was the only response he was going to get.