Break Me One More Time [McLennon]

in which john's nightmares return

"NO!!"

It was the twentieth of July the next time Paul woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of John yelling in his sleep. In a moment he was out of bed and kneeling beside John. "Wake up, Johnny," he hissed. "John."

"NO, PLEASE!"

"JOHN, WAKE UP!!" Paul shouted.

John's eyes flew open and he threw his arms around Paul. "You're okay, you're okay.." He whispered. "You're okay. Oh, God. You're alive."

"Ssshh," Paul hugged him back and it felt oddly right, like they were meant to be pressed against one another. Like they were made to fit together like puzzle pieces. "I'm fine, it's okay. Everything is alright. You're fine, I'm fine. Everything is okay."

When John was asleep again, Paul felt strange. He and John never acted this way around one another before.

It was everything that was being changed. It made things so different and, frankly, kind of awkward between Paul snd John... And Paul hated it. So much.

~~~

In the morning, they didn't dare talk about the terrible nightmare that was obviously about Paul or how well their bodies fit together or how Paul had practically rocked John back to sleep. They proceeded as normal, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened to night before. And in a way, it hadn't. Because that was soon to become the norm...

By early August, John was having the dreams every night - without fail! And every night he would scream Paul's name in terror and Paul would wake him, then he would sit with him and hold him close and help him back to sleep. They fell into a perfect pattern, and Paul hated it. He hated how perfect it was because this just wasn't right!

He could never love John. He loved Linda! And he was going to get to see Linda again in just a few years!

But then again, he never felt with Linda the way he did when he was holding John close to him.

~~~

After Barney's visit on July sixteenth, he didn't come again until August eleventh. "I know I haven't been here in a while," he sighed. "And I'm sorry. But everything at work right now is just so...so screwed up!" He was nothing like the Barney that Paul had met back in May anymore. He was stressed, severely overworked, and downright exhausted.

"It's okay," Paul shook his head. "It's been pretty uneventful here. Well, it's been somewhat eventful but...it's complicated. John's nightmares are getting worse. I have to wake him up every night now instead of just once or twice a week."

"Ah," Barney nodded and sighed. "Yeah, that's going to keep happening for a while... They'll stop eventually, I promise, but it's going to be a while longer."

"Yeah, I figured," Paul sighed. "Oh, I wanted to ask you if there was any way for me to contact you while you're away?"

"No, unfortunately there isn't," Barney frowned. "Under different circumstances, I'd give you a specially made cell phone that's able to reach me but I can't risk anyone seeing a cell phone and throwing off the space time continuum in a way that it's not meant to be altered in. Sorry."

Paul shook his head. "It's okay, I get it."

"So, John's nightmares are really really bad, huh?" Barney crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah," Paul said.

"And they're still about you?" Barney questioned.

Paul nodded.

"Good," Barney said. "That means everything is going as planned."

"Great," Paul said dully with a blank expression in his face. At long last, he'd given up on trying to get Barney to tell him anything about John's realization from Hamburg -and anyway, he was pretty sure he had just about everything figured out already. "Well, I'm going to go and get some sleep because I haven't been getting enough of that lately and I'll probably have to wake John up sometime in the next two or three hours, so..."

"Of course," Barney nodded. "Night, Paul."

"Goodnight," Paul said snd when Barney disappeared, he turned and went to the bedroom he shared with John. Just as he entered, John began to stir and he began muttering. Paul dropped down beside him and shook him. "John! Wake up!"

His eyes flew open and he breathed heavily, then his eyes slid shut. "Paul... Paulie, we've got to do something about these nightmares. I don't know just how much more I can take."

"I know, John," Paul sighed as he pulled John's covers back up. "But I don't know what there is for us to do. I mean, how do you stop nightmares?"

"I've got a few ideas," John murmured.

"Hm?" Paul said.

John shook his head. "Never mind. Night, Paul."

Paul stared at him for a few moments, then nodded. "Okay. Night, John." He stood and changed into pajamas then crawled beneath his covers.

John couldn't seem to fall back to sleep and Paul was waiting to make sure John was sleeping peacefully before he rested himself. They both laid there, staring up at the ceiling, for several hours.