Safe Space

Summary: MC (Tamsin) has a nightmare and seeks reassurance.

Note: Set immediately after Chapter 11. Also a shout-out to lolablackwrites and her latest amazing Beckett fic – apparently our muses were on the same wavelength?? 🙂

The next shadow monster Tamsin encounters is the worst. It towers over the others, moves with impossible speed, and seems to know her every move even before she does. She’s exhausted, out of breath and about ready to accept that this is it, this is how it all ends, when she sees Beckett come up behind it. He seems to appear out of nowhere. Her heart leaps into her throat. What is he thinking?

Beckett catches her eye, a determined look on his face. For half a second, the world seems to stop. The shadow monster has paused momentarily, its burning red eyes locked on hers. Beckett creeps up behind it, getting closer, closer, slowly raising his hands. Tamsin is frozen.

Please, she thinks. Please please please, whatever his plan is, please let it work.

A scream rises in her throat when the shadow monster suddenly whips around.

“No!” Tamsin cries out.

The shadow monster spots Beckett and the determined look on his face turns into sheer panic.

“Beckett!”

Tamsin wakes herself up with her near screams. She bolts upright in bed, gasping for breath. Her forehead is clammy with sweat when she reaches up to push her hair back. Her hand shakes when she grabs her phone. 2:13 AM it reads.

Atlas looks up groggily from her sleeping bag on the floor. “Do you always call out for Beckett in your sleep?”

Tamsin doesn’t even have the energy to come back with a snarky remark. “No,” she says. “Just… a nightmare.”

Atlas sighs and rolls onto her side to face Tamsin. “They’ll probably get worse. Just a heads up.”

“Of course they will,” Tamsin mutters. “Can’t wait.”

“They’re not as bad when you’re not close to people,” Atlas offers.

Tamsin thinks Atlas means the comment to be helpful, but at this particular moment, it’s really not.

“Yeah, well, I’m not just going to stop caring about my friends,” Tamsin snaps.

“One of those friends has also obviously been hiding something from you,” Atlas retorts, looking pointedly at the PEND PALS bracelet sitting on Tamsin’s desk.

Tamsin grits her teeth against a biting comment. “So you’ve said.”

She kicks the blankets off and slides her shoes on, then grabs a sweatshirt from her closet.

“Where are you going?” Atlas asks, sitting up.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep,” Tamsin replies.

Logically, she knows Beckett is fine. It’s the middle of the night. He’s probably asleep in his dorm room, blissfully unaware of the horrific scene her brain has decided to plague her with. They have class early tomorrow. But her brain isn’t really being rational right now, and she’s overcome with the urge, the need, to see for herself that he’s okay.

“You know he’s fine,” Atlas says with a sigh, flopping back down.

Tamsin scowls. She’s heard of twins being able to practically read each other’s thoughts, but they’ve just met. She isn’t ready for a near-stranger to be in her head.

“I’ll be back,” Tamsin says. “Just… stay here.”

Atlas rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Don’t say I didn’t advise against this.”

She has her eyes already closed again when Tamsin quietly slips out into the common room. Shreya’s room is quiet. The hallways are quiet when she tiptoes out of her dorm and heads for Beckett’s room. She’s grateful no one else is out wandering the halls at this hour. When she gets to Beckett’s door, she knocks, cringing when it comes out a little louder and a little more urgent sounding than she means it to. Then she remembers he also has a roommate, and crosses her fingers that it’s Beckett who answers the door. There’s nothing but silence for several long seconds, and then she can hear someone opening the door.

It’s Beckett. Tamsin exhales in relief. He’s shirtless and sleep-rumpled and looks completely confused to see her. If it wasn’t so late and she hadn’t just woken up from that awful nightmare, she thinks she’d be more distracted by the sight of him. But she’s too relieved to see that he’s okay to think about anything else at the moment.

“Tamsin?” he says. “What is it?”

“You’re okay,” she breathes out. “You’re okay.”

“What?” Beckett asks, stepping aside and letting her in. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

He shuts the door behind them and turns back around. She practically launches herself at him and has her arms looped around his neck as soon as he does.

Beckett grunts quietly at the impact, then brings his arms around her waist and holds onto her. Tamsin buries her face into him, inhaling his scent, feeling his warmth and the steady reassuring beat of his heart. She sighs when Beckett tentatively runs his hand through her hair.

“Did something happen?” he asks.

She nods against him, then laughs quietly, partly out of relief, partly out of feeling ridiculous now that she’s seen that Beckett is perfectly fine.

“Just a nightmare,” she says. “One of the shadow monsters… you showed up and it saw you and…”

She trails off, tilting her head up to look at him. Tamsin cracks a smile. “It sounds really stupid now.”

Beckett smiles back. “Well, I showed back up at your dorm almost immediately after leaving. I’m not really in a position to judge you for showing up at mine.”

“Except you didn’t show up in the middle of the night,” Tamsin points out.

Beckett shrugs. “Nighttime tends to be when people have nightmares, no?”

She hums in agreement, then rests her head back against his chest. Her hands glide over the solid warmth of his back before she laces her fingers together behind him. Tamsin feels him suck in a quiet breath and his muscles tense, just a little. It’s flattering, really, how strongly she seems to affect him. Of course, he brings out the same reactions in her.

Beckett’s dorm is nearly silent as he slowly sways them back and forth. It relaxes her, her eyes drifting closed with the soothing motion.

“Feel better?” Beckett asks after a few minutes.

“Mm-hm,” she mumbles sleepily.

“You should try and get some sleep,” he says.

Disappointment courses through her. He’s right, and she does feel better, but she doesn’t really want to leave. She likes the reassurance of feeling him against her, having his arms around her. She grumbles in protest and Beckett laughs quietly.

“I know your affinity for coffee, but at some point, your body needs actual rest,” he remarks.

“I get plenty of rest,” Tamsin insists through a yawn.

“I saw you drink six cups of coffee yesterday morning alone,” Beckett points out.

She ignores him. It’s not her fault coffee is so delicious.

“I don’t really want to walk all the way back to my dorm…” she murmurs instead, trailing off.

“I can walk you back,” Beckett offers.

Tamsin huffs out a breath. “Beckett.”

“What?”

She frowns up at him and sees him fighting back a smirk. Oh, he knows exactly what she’s getting at. Tamsin smiles at him sweetly. Two can play that teasing game.

“You could,” she murmurs, then presses her lips ever so lightly to his chest.

His arms tighten around her. She bats her eyelashes up at him. “Or you could let me sleep here for the rest of the night,” she breathes against his neck, rising on her toes to flutter her mouth over his pulse point.

She feels more than she hears his quiet groan and knows she’s won. “I’ll sleep better,” she sighs.

“Or we won’t sleep at all,” she hears him mutter under his breath.

Tamsin grins. “What’s wrong with that?”

His face is faintly tinged pink when she looks up again. “That’s not the point of… you need sleep,” he splutters.

She grins again and leans in to kiss him briefly. “I’m kidding. You make it too easy sometimes, Beckett.”

His response is to deepen their kiss, gently biting her bottom lip, then soothing it with his tongue. He holds her to him, one of his hands burrowing into her hair. She’s breathing hard when they pull apart.

“So do you,” Beckett says with a smirk, tracing his thumb over her kiss-swollen lips.

Her lips quirk up in a smile. “Like I’m going to complain about you kissing me.”

Beckett takes her hand and leads her into his room, closing the door quietly behind them. Despite the late hour and how tired she really is, Tamsin notices how well-organized it is, the monstrous stack of textbooks on his desk, the photo of Beckett with someone she assumes is his sister.

She tugs her sweatshirt off, feeling Beckett’s eyes on her from his bed when her t-shirt slips up with it just enough to expose her stomach. Tamsin climbs in next to him, rolling onto her side so her back is pressed against his chest. Beckett flips his bedside lamp off, plunging them into quiet darkness. She sighs contentedly when he wraps an arm around her.

Her fingers trace absentmindedly over the beaded bracelet circling his wrist. It’s reassuring, the smooth texture under her fingertips; unless he’s stolen someone else’s, it’s obviously not his PEND PALS bracelet that Atlas found. Of course, it still belongs to someone she thought she could trust, but… she’s relieved it’s not Beckett.

Soon, she decides, she’ll confide in him about everything that happened. At least the parts she understands. No matter what Atlas has said, she can’t fathom keeping this from him for long.

“Beckett?”

“Hmm?” he asks sleepily.

She turns carefully around until she’s facing him, their noses nearly touching. Beckett opens his eyes.

“I’m really glad it was just a nightmare,” Tamsin says quietly into the dark.

Beckett tightens his grip around her and presses a kiss to her forehead. “So am I.”

She snuggles into him, letting her eyes drift closed and pressing her hand to his chest.

“Good night, Beckett,” she murmurs.

“Good night, Tamsin. Sweet dreams.”

And though she knows Atlas is probably right and that there will be more nightmares to come, that night, there aren’t any more.