Chapter Text
There's a cute boy lying beside Harry. Whimpering. Moaning. Screaming out obscenities as if every word is being punched out of him, one by one. It's something out of Harry's wildest wet dreams. Only the boy isn't tangled between Harry's sheets. He's in the bed beside him and well, he's not exactly conscious.
That probably sounds terrible. Harry is not some kind of deluded creep who has dirty fantasies about unconscious boys. Though objectively speaking, this unconscious boy might just be the most gorgeous thing Harry's ever seen. When he awakens, Harry wouldn't mind getting his name and perhaps a date, if he should only be so lucky. A tumble in the sheets could well be in their future. However, all of that comes second to the deep concern spreading through his chest at the sight of the boy tossing and turning wildly in his sleep, his face the picture of agony. It's beautiful, in a torturous way. His face is a work of art, every sculpted plane of it painted in waves of sorrow.
The moonlight casts a luminous glow over his honeyed skin, revealing deep distress. It forms determined creases amongst his lovely elfin features. Lovely, however is not a nice enough word to describe him. Harry's heart pulses with want. It's hard not to feel this stranger’s pain. Particularly when it’s obvious there's something happening inside him that he can't control. And what would he give to control it, Harry wonders. He watches the way the boy's soft feet kick out against the sheets. Dainty brown ankles twisting desperately in a sea of white.
There's no break in the stream of wounded cries that fall from the boy's lips like ash from a fire. He can't seem to hold them in, nor the fearful whimpers that echo around the room in between. Harry fears this boy's torment will haunt his own dreams for many years to come. His cries are impossible to ignore, noisy and mournful as they are, his throat hoarse from screaming out. It settles uncomfortably in Harry’s chest and has him fighting for breath himself, overwhelmed tears tracking their way down his cheeks. Harry would consider himself a pretty empathetic person but he's never felt such a swell of sheer sadness for anybody in his entire life. Let alone someone he's not yet spoken to.
Harry only arrived at his new home this evening, lugging a suitcase behind him while his family dutifully followed behind.
"They call this is a dorm room?" Gemma had scoffed. "It's more like a closet. My flat is twice the size of this."
"Oh come off it Gem." Harry rolled his eyes. "This is all part of the uni experience. Living out of home. Working a shitty job. Making do with a shoebox like this...that's normal! We can't all be instant internet sensations with steady, flowing incomes, now can we?"
Gemma's blog was irritatingly popular. Harry liked to make pointed jabs about her fame.
"Harry," she gripped him by the shoulders and shook him a little. "There's mould on the window sill."
"But at least there's a window," he said cheerfully, dimples fixed firmly in place.
He'd always been highly capable of finding a silver lining. More capable than most anyway.
After Gemma (begrudgingly) helped their parents settle him in, the three of them hugged him close one last time. With slightly misty eyes, they departed, wobbly little smiles gracing their cheeks. Harry supposed it wasn't every day the baby of the family decided to fly the coop.
It was just verging on evening when Harry's family left. The sun had started its evening descent, bathing the dorm room in a peachy glow that filled Harry’s heart with promise. It was about dinner time, which explained his roommate's absence. What it didn't explain was why his roommate's side of the room looked like it had been ransacked by a bunch of thieves.
Clothes covered both the floor and the bedspread, all of them turned inside out. As if they'd been tried on numerous times before being flung in vastly different directions. There was mess everywhere and no organisation whatsoever, just disaster zone chaos. Obviously, his roommate had arrived, dumped their clothes on their bed, then been hard pressed to find something they wanted to wear. It explained why there appeared to be a half empty can of hairspray lying by the foot of the bed and a hair straightener tangled around a brush. Clearly his roommate was quite concerned with his appearance. Harry didn't let that dissuade him from excitement. Despite their obvious differences, Harry found himself intrigued. The mess scattered across the floor was less than appealing but Harry decided to look on the bright side. His roommate had managed to contain the mess to his side of the room. There was at least some basic decency in that.
After he finished unpacking the last of things, Harry took a trip to the shower. Communal bathrooms were about as offensive as he'd expected; a little bit grimy but not altogether too bothersome. He showered with his shoes on and spent a bit of time familiarising himself with the best way to achieve optimal temperature (there really was no trick to it. Harry settled for scalding hot). With that done, he decided that a muesli bar from a nearby vending machine would have to suffice for tonight. He felt like he needed a good night's sleep before he braved the cafeteria or any other public domain.
It wasn't that he feared meeting new people. Making friends was something he rather enjoyed. It’s just that he tended to shift between varying extremes of craving interpersonal communication and staving it off completely. There was only so much charm one person could spare.
Harry didn't hear his roommate come in. He's always been a deep sleeper. It’s why it’s so surprising to have woken up to the sound of someone's cries, loud enough to disturb even his deepest dreams. Despite his confusion, Harry doesn’t feel particularly vexed or hateful towards his roommate. How could he feel that kind of hatred for anyone in such genuine pain, let alone this boy?
When he looks across the room, Harry sees a beautiful yet undeniably grief-stricken boy. This guy looks like the last person you'd ever expect to see trembling with fear and whimpering into his pillow. He’s pretty enough to be a model and fit enough to be an athlete. He looks like the kind of person who achieves anything he sets his mind to through sheer will power alone. Yet here is, naked with vulnerability, struggling just to take a breath.
Unconscious tears slip out the sides of the boy's closed eyelids, dripping down his tan cheeks and coating the pillow beneath. It's a sorry sight, really. There are no two ways about it. Harry feels hard pressed to ignore it. Yet ignore it he does as the call of sleep is too strong and this boy, too foreign a concept. What could Harry possibly offer him anyway? He closes his eyes and does his best to close his ears too.
Unfortunately Harry's attempts to ignore the boy remain wildly unsuccessful. He suffers for hours, trying to stifle the noises with his pillow. The boy’s anguished cries continue to build. Like a symphony orchestra climbing towards a dramatic crescendo. It’s hypnotising, haunting. So much so it hurts to behold. It reminds Harry of a tragic opera that burns your ears with its soulfulness. Each time Harry gnashes his teeth together in frustration, another choked out sob convinces him to just let it be.
That is until their neighbours start banging on the walls in protest.
The sound of it leaves the boy even more distressed than before. He seems to be legitimately struggling for breath, tensing against the sheets with his body pulled taut like a wire. It looks painful and twisted. The boy’s face is too soft to be looking that tense. While Harry could not care less about the people banging on the walls, he finds that he really does care about the added pain it's causing his roommate.
He makes his way over to the other boy's bed, crouching down bedside him with a hint of trepidation. It brings the boy’s figure into sharp focus, offering Harry an unobstructed view of his soft skin, tan like caramel.
"Time to wake up mate," Harry coos, cupping the boy's shoulder.
He shakes him gently to no avail. The boy tosses and turns, shaking Harry off in the process. He whimpers into his toned bicep, biting down on the hardened flesh. Harry gasps softly, more affected than he's willing to admit. He lifts the boy's chin up and away from his arm, dreading the look on this boy's face when he wakes up and finds Harry, a total stranger, gingerly cupping his face.
"C'mon wake up," Harry pleads. "Please."
It’s not working. The boy is clearly locked in a vivid nightmare and nothing short of a siren would wake him up at this point. Harry just can't bring himself to startle the boy into wakefulness. For all he knows waking him like that could make it worse.
"Okay... okay, that's fine." Harry breathes out, contemplating his next move.
He watches the boy's face twitch with pain, his little fingers clenched into white knuckled fists. The pitifulness of it is just enough to dissolve the last of Harry's reservations, leaving him desperate and unsure.
"I'm just going to give you a hug?" He suggests doubtfully, as if the crying boy might wake and give him permission.
It feels awfully strange proposing to hug a total stranger. This person who could be a terrible narcissist for all Harry knows. Here he is trying to comfort this boy in his sleep and they've not yet exchanged names, let alone confessed their deepest fears. However, Harry finds himself compelled to help, no matter the lack of knowledge between them. With no other options, this is his best idea yet, though hardly inventive. He remembers reading something the other day about the intrinsic power of touch. It centred around the relationship between a caregiver and their infant and mentioned the importance of skin on skin contact in reducing infant distress. If holding a baby is enough to soothe their anxiety, surely it can work its magic on Harry’s anxious roommate?
He decides not to move the boy. Thinks it's best not to, given his perilous state. Instead he wraps his arms around the tops of the boy's shoulders, resting his head in the hollow between the boy's shoulder and neck. The skin there is warm, almost hot. It smells of something unmistakably boyish and yet equally sweet. It’s a scent Harry recognises. Gardenia and jasmine. He has a candle which smells just like it. Harry fights the inclination to inhale and lays there quietly breathing, his body twisted at an awkward angle as he fully embraces the boy.
It's a few moments before it occurs to him that it's actually working. The boy is still making noises but there's no tossing or turning. His cries have quietened slightly. His breath is significantly deeper and much less shallow. The feel of it is almost addictive. Harry is more or less keeping this boy from his torment. It's both this and the soreness of his body in this position that persuades him to go further, peeling back the covers slowly. He’s unable to fight the fondness in his face as the boy's expression curls into bitter displeasure.
"Give me a second," Harry whispers, lips pursed in a barely there smile.
His smile falters as the boy gasps then shudders against the sheets, struck by terror again. Harry moves quickly and clumsily. It's a wonder his roommate doesn't wake but alas, his eyes remain closed. Harry slides into the boy's bed and lifts his roommate up until he’s cradled against his chest, lips quivering gently. Harry holds him there in his lap while he settles himself against the back of the bed, readjusting so that he can hold the boy close.
"Shh," he murmurs, combing his fingers through the boy's fringe. It’s a slightly darker caramel than his skin. "It's okay. Please don't cry."
The boy snuffles wetly, sighing as he situates his head on Harry's collarbone. Finally he seems to give his poor lungs a rest. It's though the more Harry touches him, the calmer he feels. That said, Harry keeps his hands to himself as much as he possible, never venturing any lower than the waist.
After ten minutes of straight silence, only broken by the boy's soft, calm breaths, Harry makes an executive decision. It’s time to move back to his own bed. Mission accomplished, he thinks to himself. Yet as soon as he puts a foot on the carpet, effectively releasing the boy from his grip, the whimpering starts right back up. And it’s louder than before.
"Okay I'm sorry," Harry huffs, gathering the boy back up into his arms. "Please stop crying. You're breaking my heart mate."
After a few minutes back within the enclosure of Harry's arms, the boy's expression clears. He clings to Harry like an octopus, wrapping his limbs around him in some kind of koala bear hug. It's clammy and not altogether comfortable but Harry is a sucker for a cute boy with a broken soul.
"You're awfully small for a uni student.” Harry tells him an hour in, eyeing his dainty wrists and fit little legs. "But I like your tattoos."
There's a chest piece catching Harry's eye at the moment. It draws attention to an impressive set of collarbones, standing out from the boy’s chest. Though when Harry looks over his tattoos again, he's equally taken with the seashell behind his ear or the word boo etched across the side of his little finger. This boy has character.
Harry quickly realises that it's not going to be possible to leave him tonight. They're going to have to stay intertwined this way with Harry bent up against a wall. It’s kind of a problem given that they don't know each other whatsoever. The boy is liable to completely freak out if he wakes up in a stranger's burly arms. Harry knows he would. So he does the wise thing and sets an early alarm. He doesn't have any clue whether the boy is an early riser or not but given the restless way he sleeps, he predicts not.
At ten to six, Harry slips out from behind the boy, tucking him in tight before moving back to his own bed. Thankfully he seems to have lulled the boy into a deep sleep. He makes no protest this time, allowing Harry a clean getaway.
It's Harry that surprisingly feels a little bit lost. His bed seems strangely empty without the warmth of his Nightmare Boy all over him. He shakes his head at that, completely exasperated. Only he could fall partially in love with someone he’s never even spoken to. Twisting his head to look at said boy, Harry wonders if the boy’s smile is as loud as his suffering. Is it the kind of smile you can’t look away from, the kind that can’t be ignored? Harry thinks it is. He thinks he might never be the same again once he’s seen it.
He mustn’t get ahead of himself though. If tonight’s events have proven anything it’s that even the most heavenly of angels have demons.