I’d been there before, in the exact same clutches of subconscious, and Johnny had always been the one to wake me up. I’d wake up screaming, sweaty, and drenched in tears, and Johnny would hold me. He would rock me back and forth, whisper it was all okay and that the bad men couldn’t get me anymore, and he’d do that until I fell asleep.
Agent Reyes didn’t have a Johnny to rip him from his nightmares.
Fuck.
I should leave him. I should leave him to scream out his horrors until his throat bled dry, and I should go. I should go. I should fucking go. Now. Right now. Right—
I bolted for him, heart hammering away in my chest as I threw myself to my knees in front of him. His face was drawn out in a perfect display of grief, eyebrows slanted things of remembered pain and mouth dropped open to let out the cries.
I scrambled on top of his legs, fighting my way between them as quick breaths worked my chest in shallow heaves. My hands latched around his biceps, shaking gently.
“Reyes, wake up,” I tried, pushing my voice past the quiver that stitched in. Snapping in front of his face didn’t work either. Nightmares still twisted his body and his face in torment, and more shouts poured out of him.
“Let her go! Fucking let her go!”
My grip on his arms tightened as I shook him harder, and I saw the feeling of my touch fan across his face. And it only brought more terror.
“No! Get off. I’ll kill you,” he huffed. “I’ll fucking—”
“Reyes-James. James, stop!”
Fuck, he was struggling against me and so much stronger. His leg came up and knocked me to the side with a shriek, toppling me over into the pine needles. My hands shot out to catch my fall, and I righted myself back on top of him, straddling his waist this time for better leverage.
“James! Wake up, man. Wake the fuck up!” I slapped his chest once and then twice to no fucking avail. Whatever he was dreaming about had its teeth in him and wasn’t letting go.
I brought my hands up to the sides of his face, holding his head still. “James, it’s Scarlett. It’s me. I need you to wake up, okay?” My thumbs brushed through the coarseness of his beard on each hollowed cheek, trying to soothe him. Trying fucking anything to get him to wake up.
A dry sob cracked out of him, punching right through my chest as his face cracked in sorrow with it. His sob hit my face and washed my tongue and nose full of the anguish in his soul.
Awful. It was awful, and I wanted it to stop. His pain tasted like poison, souring my stomach and spiraling my mind to make it stop.
Make it stop. Make it stop.
His eyebrows furrowed in pain, and I smoothed my thumbs across them both, working the hurt out of them.
“James, it’s not real. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream,” I soothed, touching my forehead to his, feeling the sweat his nightmare had worked up. “None of it can hurt you. Come on, James.”
Ragged breathing fanned my face, and I watched his eyes move back and forth beneath closed lids.
“James Reyes, wake up right now.” He shook his head as if he was telling me he couldn’t, and I pressed into him harder, thumbs tracing calming circles in his beard. “You’re safe, I promise. I promise. It’s me and it’s you, and you’re okay. Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
A choking gasp jerked James awake, his body twitching as his hands flashed up and clamped around my upper arms.
I shot back a few inches, heart thumping as I watched him catch up to his surroundings. His eyes were everywhere over my face, taking me in and the fact that I was real and with him and he wasn’t anywhere near where his nightmare had taken him.
The cold grip of fear drained from his wide stare as his fingers indenting into my arms loosened. Neither of us spoke, but neither of us looked away either.
A sheen of sweat shined below the moon's glow as he laid his head back against the trunk of the tree, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing under his skin as he stared up at the cover of branches.
I stayed where I was on his lap but slid my hands back to myself, cautiously waiting for him to speak.
“Thank you for waking me up,” he spoke, slightly hoarse from the hollering but still even and deep.
I nodded even though he wasn’t looking at me. “Sure.”
After another second or two, his hands dropped the rest of the way down my arms, sitting at my elbows and not moving from there. James cleared his throat, dislodging the vulnerability right out of his system.
“Don’t ask what it was about.”