1983/Sleep, Sugar

Sleep, Sugar
Date of Scene:	08 August 2017
Location:	The Hyperion Hotel
Synopsis:	Sam struggles to cope in the aftermath of his rescue from Hydra. Fred presents him with a special gift to help him out.
Cast of Characters:	Sam Winchester, Winifred Burkle
Tinyplot:	Blood on My Name
Tinyplot2:	Tayaniye

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Sam Winchester has posed:
August 8, 2025

3 AM

Sam Winchester sits in the darkness. Awake. Alert. Staring down the barrel of a disturbing fantasy about demon blood, a recurring thing that keeps coming at him out of nowhere.

Afraid to sleep.

Afraid to relax his vigilant stare at the door of Fred's hotel room.

He has his back to her headboard. He is stretched out atop the covers. He pulled his jeans back on at some point, if not his shirt.

The Beretta in his lap. In his hand. A familiar posture now; his habit of four days.

Dean took off. He became withdrawn. What he has, he gives to Fred, but it is a taciturn sort of thing; expressing his very real love for her physically but saying almost nothing. He gives quiet, considerate gestures: making the bed, making her food, yesterday a flower?but all his words seem lost inside him now.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
Fred is not exactly a heavy sleeper. A couple of years living in a cave where there are predators in the night and patrols of demons looking for wayward 'cows' tends to leave one ready to wake up at a moment's notice. She woke up a little when he left the bed, but then went back to sleep, used to his restlessness. He said he was fine and she knows that he is not, but people heal in different ways. Sometimes they need to howl at the moon, sometimes they need to pretend as if everything is normal, sometimes they need to keep a vigilant watch. She understands that this is Sam's way of working through things.

She's given him some space, made sure that he's eating and healing and every once in awhile she'll ask him how he's doing to see if he's ready to talk. The withdrawing worries her, though she certainly knows that Dean's absence is partly to blame for it.

Tonight, though, she wakes up at 3AM and sees Sam sitting in the bed, eyes watching the door. It's a different one than he last saw, she took a door from one of the other rooms and installed it. There are also ropes and weights on either side with a sharp axe attached: her new security measure. Sitting up, she pulls a large shirt on - most likely his. "Sam," she says softly. "You've gotta get some sleep."

Sam Winchester has posed:
"Yeah. Yeah, of course. I will."

He has also been studying this contraption. It honestly brings a little smile to his lips when he sort of focuses back in on it, but his attention comes and goes.

He doesn't want to distress Fred. He gently sets the Beretta on the bedside table, close to hand. He turns his back on it with some difficulty. Lies down behind her, curls around her until he becomes the big spoon.

"I'm sorry. For waking you."

Winifred Burkle has posed:
"You've been staying up for the past few nights," Fred observes. While she doesn't always wake up completely, it's something she certainly has noticed. It's hard to miss the fact that when she does during the night, he's sitting up and watching the door.

As he settles down, she rests her head back on the pillow and leans against him. The apology for waking her is easily dismissed, "It's fine. I'm a light sleeper." Her eyes focus back on the room Sam's been so intently guarding. "You're gonna wear yourself to exhaustion if you keep doing that, you know. Angel'll know if someone's in the hotel. He's nocturnal and all. Plus, we've got the axe. Neither of us'll be able to sleep through that." A part of her knows it's not just the fear of the Winter Soldier returning that's keeping him up, but this is how she can assure him, to possibly start the conversation.

Sam Winchester has posed:
"I should introduce myself to Angel. It seems wrong for someone to be out there guarding my safety-- well, more yours than mine, but I'm still benefiting-- without so much as a 'pleasure to meet you' and a handshake."

He arranges the covers back around himself, coming in closer, pressing his face into her hair. In the dark of the night words come easier, perhaps, or perhaps she's just leading in there in the right way. It's more words than he's been able to give her, more than he's been able to find inside of himself.

It still comes a little slowly, leaving her with that much. A slow crack of the door, letting in just a little bit of light. She's telling him to sleep, but what she's getting, instead, is the slow drip-drop of words in the shadows.

He lets out a long, slow sigh. Tries to relax his body. Painkillers, food, continued showers, and naps during the day have done wonders, allowing the oldest of the bruises to fade at last. The variety SHIELD gave him was specifically a non-drowsy formula which might have been counterproductive in this instance.

He decides to let one more, small thing fall. Just an explanation. "They didn't let me sleep at all in the beginning. And not much, later. I think I got used to being awake."

Winifred Burkle has posed:
"You should, though I think your reputation preceded you," Fred tells Sam. "He looked a bit freaked out when I told him why I kept borrowing his car." The reason was often to pull Sam from a brush after being attacked or save him from a den of vampires. "It'll be good to put his uneasiness to rest. If that's possible for him. He likes to worry. I think it's 'cause he's so old. But, I know he'd protect you. He's a Champion, so that's sorta his thing." That champion has the sound of an uppercase C. Much like the differences between Hydra and hydra.

The silence stretches for a moment as Sam noses his face into her long brown hair and holds her close. It's peaceful and Fred even closes her eyes for a few moments, perhaps thinking Sam will finally rest and so she will as well. However, there is still the tenseness in his body she can feel. Despite his assurances, she knows he is not close to sleep.

He tells her about the fact that they didn't let him sleep. Her grip on him tightens just slightly, an attempt to physically convey some form of comfort. "I'm sorry," she says, unsure of what else to say in the face of torture. "I can stay up if you want. I can keep a watch till you're asleep. I don't know if that'll help." That doesn't seem enough. "Wait, I got it."

Still dressed in Sam's shirt, she slips out of the bed and to the dresser against the wall. Pulling out the top drawer, she pulls out a small, slightly ragged stuffed rabbit with glasses attached to its face. Coming back to the bed, she lays down, now facing Sam and holds it out to him. "This is Feigenbaum. He might be able to help. He's a master of chaos. I named him for the physicist who founded chaos theory." It might seem childish, or silly, but Fred looks deadly serious as she hands the rabbit to Sam.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Of all the things Sam expected when Fred got out of bed, a ragged stuffed bunny was not among them. He looks momentarily poleaxed, then tender. He had remained silent in the face of his reputation, not sure how to feel about it? on one hand, it's good that monsters have Concerns where the Winchesters are concerned; on the other, Angel very clearly is not among them.

Still, he just stays silent about that, and silent in the face of her apologies; apologies which bring a grimace when she offers to stay up on his behalf. He is shaking his head, trying to forestall any such sacrifices-- though he's certainly keeping her awake anyway-- when she goes to the dresser.

He finally takes the bunny into his arms. He is 21 years old. He has killed enough things to make a vampire hundreds of years his senior nervous. He is muscular and at least by some definition supposedly strong, and he feels nearly undone by this, even as he clings to it. Because it's not a stuffed bunny, or at least not just a stuffed bunny, but a piece of this amazing woman, something she's entrusting him with.

His eyes soften, go a bit red rimmed; he doesn't let the tears fall-- God, sooner or later he's going to have to figure out how to be strong for her on any level-- but he feels it for a moment. He clears his throat and says softly, "I think he will. Thank you, Fred."

And then, curious, just as softly, "Why the Master of Chaos?"

Winifred Burkle has posed:
Fred would clearly fight him on staying up being a sacrifice, especially in the wake of knowing that part of his torture was them not allowing him to sleep properly. A few nights of little sleep seem small in comparison to that.

Instead, though, she brings him a stuffed animal. There's not much from Texas that Fred keeps in this room. She painted over the equations and crazy writing that cramped these walls. Feigenbaum remains. There is no embarrassment in giving Feigenbaum to Sam, or the fact that she still has him despite being older than him. Instead, there is a serious faced hope that he might help with the insomnia and - in the gift - that she can help him as well.

The question as to why he is the Master of Chaos is met with a smile. "I named him after Mitchell Feigenbaum. He's a physicist who found that while you might observe a singular linear event, under certain circumstances it acts randomly. This point, when you got closer to it, began to exhibit bifurcations. It was a singular point, then two, then four, then six. It became chaos and he tried to map that chaos. He tried to map it and now there's something called a Feigenbaum Constant that attempts to account for the randomness, the chaos in the universe."

That's Fred's physics lesson for the night. After handing Feigenbaum over to Sam, she smiles, an arm moves to wrap about his waist over the covers. "I thought you two might understand a bit of each other."

Sam Winchester has posed:
He holds the bunny between them now, squishing it between their bodies even as he keeps it tucked under his lower arm. The upper winds around her waist. His forehead rests against hers as he looks down, deep into her eyes. He winds a leg around her, and for a moment the shadows ease as he thinks about this.

"It sounds like it erupts into chaos when you start studying the pattern too closely," he says slowly. "But there's still a pattern all the same, an underlying order to things. Cause an effect. Atoms that do the same thing more or less every time you put them in the same places. But then you get the butterfly effect, and that's certainly real enough?"

He gives a sheepish flash of a grin. He was a Liberal Arts major, after all; he understands these things in more poetic terms than mathematical, when he grasps them at all. He was a straight-A student, but only because he worked at those required science courses with everything he had. He adjusts the bunny a little till it's under his chin, the little ear tickling at Fred's chin in turn.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
While Sam was a liberal arts major, Fred was purely science. She gets what Sam is saying, but can't help but correct him. "You're thinking of the observer effect in Quantum Physics. By observing something, you change it. It's similar, but a bit different in actual working theory. You see, in chaos theory there's..." she pauses, realizing she's about to get into an entire lecture about the difference between chaos theory and observer effect after giving Sam a stuffed rabbit. This was meant to be a gesture, not a lesson.

A hand reaches up to cover her face for a moment, her own form of a sheepish grin emerging. "Sorry." Her head tilts downward, ruffling the rabbit's ears all the more. "This was silly! You don't need a stuffed rabbit." Her other hand reaches out to him without looking up. "He just helped me. My parents brought him back to me when I got back. He reminded me that there's meaning to the chaos. That maybe things don't happen for a reason, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless. I'd sit in here and tell him the Feigenbaum Constants and the decimals of pi I memorized and it helped."

Peeking through her fingers, she looks back up at him. "I just want you to know that if you can't talk to me, he's a real good listener."

Sam Winchester has posed:
'You don't need a stuffed rabbit,' she says, and Sam chuckles. "Who says?" he asks warmly, teasingly holding Feigenbaum a bit closer...though he's uncertain, really, what he might be taking away from her by accepting. The thing is, he has a death grip on the bunny now, and at this moment would be hard pressed to let go.

Meaning to the chaos. Things have meaning. He opens his mouth to tell her that he is actually interested in the difference between the Feigenbaum Constant and the Observer Effect, but then she says that last bit, and his face softens.

"Fred?"

He clears his throat (not because he's lying this time, though that's often his tell for that as well), but because he needs to clear a lump.

Haltingly: "I'm not-- I'm not trying to shut you out. That's the last thing I want. I do feel like I can talk to you about anything. I feel like you would never judge me, and I don't know if I've felt that way about anyone."

/Anything, Samoshka?/ The whisper is a mocking voice in the back of his head, and he shudders. Because he doesn't want to talk about this growing compulsion feels. He wets his lips, feeling a burning sensation through his body. He's been trying to force visions...of Claire, and of Dean, and sometimes he's gotten enough to note they're alive. But doing so has come with the consequences of compulsion, and feeling more unclean than ever.

He swallows hard, feeling it all stick in his chest. Haltingly again: "I just can't-- quite-- stop judging myself, maybe."

/She deserves someone stronger. Someone a little more like Dean./

Winifred Burkle has posed:
"I wasn't trying to say you were," Fred tells Sam truthfully about why she gave him Feigenbaum when he says that he isn't trying to shut her out. "Sometimes you've gotta holler and sometime you have to stay quiet. I get that." She truly does. As Sam attempts to explain, she reaches out to pull him closer to her. "Sometimes it's easier with a rabbit."

The shudder is felt and a hand rests gently on his face, even though she doesn't know why it is opening up to her might be terrifying to him - if that is even the reason he shudders. She doesn't know if this is a recent development or something deep seeded. She knows there is certainly trauma in his past in the form of demons and murdered fiancees.

"I've got no room to judge. Certainly not you." There's a pause. After a moment, she decides he might be judging himself for the wrong reasons. The fact that he might think she should be with someone stronger doesn't even cross her mind. Instead, she asks, "Why d'you think you did something wrong?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
He's silent as she rests her hand on his face. As ever, his cheek turns into that hand, and he closes his eyes. They remain closed, heavy and tired as they actually are, but that doesn't stop him from speaking. It might even help, not having to look at her reactions.

"Meddling with the Winter Soldier in the first place, for starters. Everyone told me not to do it, and I did it anyway. And look at what happened as a result. Mercy's friends are dead. Claire's in their clutches-- though that one, at least, has nothing to do with me. You're on Hydra's radar. The Soldier told me he intends to kill Dean, and now Dean's run off, I think after him, injured."

He tilts his face into Feigenbaum, almost as if he is, in fact, murmuring to the rabbit instead of to Fred. He's not, and yet he is, because it gives him some focus.

"I didn't resist them, Fred. Not even really before things got really bad. I knew they had soldiers, and the Soldier, I couldn't find an escape vector that didn't get me killed, so I just didn't resist much. A little, maybe, but not much. And I sure didn't resist after. I obeyed them pretty much without question. I answered whatever they asked. I started to feel things I shouldn't have felt, and I was weak. I should have found my own way out. I should have been smart enough not to get caught in the first place-- Barnes didn't overpower me, he just /tricked me/ and drugged me."

A pause. And then one hand snakes up to hold her palm tight against his cheek.

"I feel like the only way I can redeem myself from any of it is to get back in the saddle, toughen up. Move forward. /Walk it off./" Dean's favorite saying ever.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
There is certainly no loved lost for Fred when it comes to the Winter Soldier. Had someone killed him, she would most likely think upon them kindly. However, the person she cares about very deeply cares about his own interactions with a man she would see (without remorse) fed to a woodchipper. For his sake, she says nothing of her own broiling hatred.

"You wanted to help him," is instead what she says. She knows he would try to see the best in this man and it's part of the reason why she may - in fact - love Sam Winchester. "You wanted to help others."

There's a moment where she could be kind, be completely ignorant of the realities in front of them, or she could speak about them frankly. After a pause, she decides upon the later approach. "They wanted you for a reason. It didn't matter what you did. Me? Dean? It all wrapped up in that." She looks down at Feigenbaum, too, now, resting her forehead against his. "He came for me once, but he left because he thought you were more compliant if I weren't hurt. It's why I have that axe at the door now. That choice you made? It might have saved my life, Sam."

There's a breath, she realizes this might not at all actually be helpful. She may be only adding to his nightmares, his fears. "What I wanted to say is that you weren't weak. And you don't need to redeem yourself to me. I don't think you did anything wrong."

Sam Winchester has posed:
She's speaking sense, because he knows exactly what questions they asked, and they weren't at all the questions he expected. He does hold her so very close, so very tight, when she says the soldier was here, threatening her. He swallows hard. On one hand, it might add to his anxieties. On the other?

Well, they were already pretty much there. So he can hold on to having saved her life. That was, after all, what he had been trying to accomplish. He kisses her forehead, then her lips, finding her easily even though he keeps his eyes shut.

His silence is contemplative. He's thinking about it. What she said. Tension slowly eases. It does help.

"I still want to help him," he admits softly. "He really thinks he's Russian. And I can see the shape of some of it. He said they injected him too. They started calling me Russian names, so. I just-- I can believe that he was once like me. I was afraid I wouldn't be me either, by the time they were done."

And then, softer still: "I wish Dean had stayed."

And in that, the forlorn echoes of a very small child who wants his big brother back and there to make everything okay again.

He slides his hand into her hair, smoothing back some of the strands very gently from her face. His hand drops, heavy. He's tired enough that even trying to hold the Beretta now would be laughable without, say, adrenaline. Holding his hand up to do that much is hard, so he settles for winding it back around her and murmuring, "But I'm really glad /you're/ here."

Winifred Burkle has posed:
Sam still wants to help the Winter Soldier. Barnes. There's an immediate and sour expression on Fred's face when the subject comes up. This man tortured Sam, threatened her, and by all accounts has murdered people. Help him? Into a grave, maybe. Otherwise? It's hard for her to agree. Perhaps it's good that his face is pressed so tightly against her that he might not see her expression. If he did, it would show a barefaced anger and the fact that she is certainly not as willing to forgive Barnes as Sam might be.

"You didn't threaten anyone of your own volition," Fred tells Sam in argument. Despite his wishes to save Barnes, it seems clear in her mind that he is beyond such help. "He's not like you. You care about others. He doesn't."

The statement about Dean is met with a complete and utter derailment of her one hundred other reasons as to why the Winter Soldier sucks and why they should probably kill him when they meet him next. Instead, she wraps her arms about Sam and then pulls him close to her. "He'll be back," she promises in a gentle tone. She doesn't know Dean well, but she can read the gravitas between the pair. It doesn't take a scientist as skilled as she is to do that equation.

"I'm glad you're here, too." The thickness of his voice, the heaviness of his gestures seem to suggest that he might actually sleep now. She doesn't call attention to it, instead she starts to run her fingers through his hair in what she hopes is a soothing way. "I'll be right here when you wake up." She, of all people, knows the comfort in knowing that the world you fall asleep in will the one you wake up in and she wishes to assure him of that. It's her form of a security blanket.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Stroking his hair is a good move. It forms a little smile on his face, and he seems to enjoy it greatly. He doesn't actually argue about the Winter Soldier. He can hear the fury, and he even shares some of it. It's safe to say he's ambivalent about the man. The moments where he'd felt himself slipping away at the edges, even after just 20 days, inform his empathy?

But then there is the same man who threatened Fred, who threatened Dean, who took Claire.

It's a fraught subject, and the fact that he doesn't argue may in fact hint at the other side of his feelings, the ones that are harder and colder. He'd aimed a gun between the Soldier's eyes himself, after all, back in that place. There is part of him that is capable of killing the man without question, without hesitation.

Those two parts are trying to go to war.

But tonight they're not going to get to. "You with your crossbow, me with my Beretta, axe trap, Angel with his...Angel the Friendly Vampire Routine." The words are barely murmured. It's a litany of all that's keeping the Hyperion safe right now. "Visions." Which should warn him, wake him up, if things go wrong. They don't hurt to summon anymore. They just bring the disturbing fantasies.

And so, at last, his breathing starts to slow down, to become soft and even as she soothes him. The big man, large enough that he takes up the length of the bed from end to end, if not the width of it, holds her close and holds this stuffed bunny close.

Should she leave the bed later there will be soft, murmured sounds of protest, but in the end he'll curl all the way around the bunny, just like a small child, someone who, in fact, never had any kind of a stuffed animal that he went to specifically for comfort. It might even be kind of a hilarious image, were it also not such a serious one in its own turn.

He clings to her.

And when he can't, he clings to this token of her care, and the concept that even when there is no reason or order at all, there is still, in fact, /meaning/ to be taken away from every strange and precious moment.