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Minho knew something was wrong the moment he woke up to goosebumps on his arms and definitely not warm enough under his blanket. Groping for his phone in the darkness, he shined the light of the screen on the small heater the boys had in their room and furrowed his eyebrows. They must’ve forgotten to turn it on. But it wasn’t only the fact that the air temperature well below Thomas’s liking that set Minho on edge — it was the boy himself. In the silence of the dark room, Minho could hear a faint whimpering.
Minho bolted out of his bed the moment Thomas’s whimpers turned into terrified cries, his voice slicing through the silent house. Minho lunged for Thomas’s bed, finding the boy trembling, curled into a ball on the left side of the bed, and crying. Minho gave himself one moment to take a deep breath and pray that this was a particularly bad regular nightmare, and not one of those nightmares.
“Thomas,” Minho whispered, reaching over to pull gently on Thomas’s arm. The boy flinched violently.
“Don’t touch me!” Thomas cried out, his eyes still closed tightly with tears streaming down his face. The boy’s arms came up to cover his head, as if something was attacking him. Minho felt his heart drop and ice flood into his veins. Throwing away any hope of staying silent for the sake of Newt in the next room, Minho kneeled on the edge of the bed and reached for Thomas, just like he had done a thousand times. Thomas reacted to his touch once more, screaming out again, much louder. Minho fought the lump that formed in his throat after hearing the pain in his best friend’s voice. He needed to wake Thomas up.
“Thomas!” Minho cried, his voice cracking a bit. Thomas trembled violently again, but his body rolled over to face Minho. Shuck man, work with me here, Minho thought as he weaved his hands through Thomas’s arms and pulled the younger boy towards him. Thomas fought in his sleep, but Minho was stronger and definitely experienced with Thomas’s nightmares. It took longer than usual, which worried Minho immensely considering Thomas had gone so long without a nightmare like this, but Minho finally managed to pull the younger boy into his chest and rub the back of his neck. Minho pressed against the tight knots and tucked Thomas’s shaking figure into him. Thomas began to sob, his fingers pressed hard into the side of his head. Minho really began to worry now — this was taking much longer than usual.
“Thomas, I need you to wake up,” Minho said, his voice cracking again. It hurt him so damn much to see Thomas like this — he would give anything for Thomas’s nightmares to be gone once and for all.
When Thomas had one of those bad nightmares in the past, it was about this point that he began to calm down and wake up from the hell inside his mind, but this was different. Minho could tell.
Minho tried to shift his grip on the boy but Thomas took the momentary freedom from Minho’s arms to lash out. Minho stifled a groan as Thomas’s elbow collided with his side. The younger boy writhed on the bed, free of Minho’s embrace once more, but his voice was getting louder and louder.
“GET OFF ME!” Thomas cried in his sleep. His sobs were racking his body. Minho felt as if someone had ripped his heart in two, but he blinked rapidly forming tears out of his eyes and dove for his friend again, desperately trying to calm him down.
There was a moment where the two began to grapple, Thomas’s screaming getting louder by the second. Minho struggled to get a hold on his friend as he kicked out repeatedly, but soon realized that Thomas was going to crush his skull if he didn’t let go of his head. Minho, in a desperate lunge towards the light switch on the wall above Thomas’s bed, flicked the lights on and saw that Thomas’s knuckles had begun to turn white. Minho managed to grab his wrist, but got a strong kick to the stomach in return, and the screams just got louder.
“Thomas! Please!” Minho cried. Damnit, wake up man, he pleaded in his head. He faintly heard a door slam open and light footsteps coming from the hallway.
“Minho, what the bloody hell is happening?” a terrified voice cried. Minho, keeping his weak grip on Thomas’s wrist, turned to see a groggy and scared-half-out-of-his-mind Newt.
“Newt — I’ll explain later, just—grab his leg— help me!” Minho forced out while avoiding another kick to the stomach. Newt spared no time and raced to the bed, holding down on of Thomas’s legs while Minho reached for his wrists. Thomas’s pillow and sheets were soaked through with tears. His voice had grown hoarse from screaming.
“Don’t! Fucking! Touch! Me!” Thomas screamed as Minho grasped both sides of his friends face. Minho could feel tears spilling over his own cheeks, and one glance back at Newt told him that his friend was equally, if not more, terrified.
“Thomas, wake up! It’s just a nightmare!” Minho cried, shifting his position so that he was closer to Thomas.
“Min— his hands… Look at his hands,” Newt whispered in shock. Newt’s face was completely white. Minho, with his heart threatening to beat itself out of his chest, tried as hard as he could to pry Thomas’s hands off the side of his face before he crushed his head. It was slow, but with Newt holding Thomas’s legs down, Minho managed to peel the boy’s hands away. Minho laced his fingers through Thomas’s, feeling the boy’s steely grip shift around his hands. He bit his lip to keep from crying out when Thomas’s grip got too tight, but he was able to lower the boys hands and pull him closer to Minho’s chest. Minho shifted again so that Thomas was leaned back into his chest, and Newt moved closer, taking one of Thomas’s hands from Minho and clutching it between both of his. Minho used his free hand to hold the back of Thomas’s neck and tuck his head under his chin.
After a few, slow, painful minutes, Thomas stopped screaming. After a couple more, his shaking stopped. Minho pressed his face into Thomas’s hair.
“Thomas, it’s okay, you’re okay. He’s not really here, it’s just a nightmare. Just wake up buddy, c’mon, I know you can do it,” he whispered against Thomas’s fluffy hair. Minho closed his eyes tightly and waited for the tears to drip off his own chin. When he opened them again, Thomas was silent and still and Newt was wide-eyed.
“I’m so sorry,” came a tired, cracked, and heart wrenching voice. Minho let out a tight breath, hearing Newt do the same. Minho felt the boy in his arms stirr for a moment before curling into Minho’s chest and beginning to sob again. The steely grip on Minho’s hand relaxed, as well as the one on Newt’s, and Thomas collapsed completely into Minho. “He was there again Min, I couldn’t do anything…” Thomas whimpered.
“Hey, buddy, it’s okay. He’s gone...We’re here, we’re here…You’re awake now, it’s over. He’s gone,” Minho whispered over and over. He wrapped his arms around Thomas’s shaking shoulders and held his friend. Newt was still clutching Thomas’s other hand in his own, tears streaming down his pale skin. Minho and Newt shared a look.
They stayed like that for a moment, Minho holding Thomas and rubbing the spot between his shoulder blades while Newt traced circles on the back of Thomas’s hand.
“How bad was it?” Thomas asked quietly, his voice painfully weak. Minho looked down to see Thomas’s terrified Bambi eyes staring up at him. He gave his friend a weak smile.
“Worse than before, but it’s over now,” Minho said quietly. Thomas shut his eyes painfully for a moment before clutching Minho hard and tucking his face back into Minho’s neck.
“Let’s get you some water,” Minho said after Thomas stopped crying again, following their routine for Thomas’s nightmares. Wake him up, hold him close, let him drink some water, and then stay close for the rest of the night. It was a thoroughly practiced routine.
Thomas slowly nodded, then uncurled himself from Minho’s embrace and tentatively sat up, rubbing his head. Minho grimaced as he noted the raw bruises forming on either side of Thomas’s face, where his hands had dug into his skull. Newt slowly let go of his hand and all three boys sat together on the edge of the bed.
Minho was the first to stand, holding a hand for Thomas to follow. Thomas gladly took it, standing up weakly. Minho wrapped his friend in a proper hug, breathing into the younger boy’s shoulder. Thomas’s arms wrapped around his neck tightly, and Minho could feel the enormous breath of air Thomas took.
“I’m sorry Min,” Thomas whispered once he pulled back. “And Newt — god, I’m so sorry I woke you up…” Thomas turned from Minho to face Newt with his head low. Newt gave somewhat of a pained laugh to Thomas before throwing his arms around the darker haired boy. Minho watched as Newt pressed his face into Thomas’s shoulder and blinked tears out of his eyes.
“You scared the bloody klunk out of me, but don’t you even think about apologizing. I’m glad you’re okay,” Newt said quietly, pulling back to look Thomas in the eyes. Thomas nodded slowly.
“Water?” Thomas asked, and the three boys left the room to head towards the kitchen, flipping on the lights as they went.
They didn’t talk much as they all took a glass of water. Thomas looked hammered; he was sweaty, still shaking a bit, and blank faced. His eyes kept unfocusing and drifting off. Newt was curled in on himself, his hands woven around the glass of water in front of him, eyes low. Minho leaned against the counter, wiping tears from his face.
Thomas wiped at the beads of sweat on his face for a moment before meeting Minho’s eyes sheepishly. He didn’t say anything for a moment, but finally opened his mouth after finishing off his glass of water.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Thomas asked quietly. Minho nodded grimly, casting a glance to Newt, who had turned his head away. Newt stood to leave for a moment, but Thomas grabbed his hand.
“Thank you,” Thomas whispered as he clutched the blond boy’s hand. Newt gave him a weak smile and went off to his room for a moment. Thomas turned his wide eyes to Minho.
“I’m so sorry Minho,” he breathed after a moment. Minho came around the counter to stand beside his friend.
“Thomas, we’ve been over this. You do not need to apologize. I’m just worried about you...It’s been a while since you’ve had one and it’s never been this bad…Did something happen?” Minho asked, his chest caving in. Fear had him in a choke hold as Thomas took a deep breath.
“I can’t talk about it now, but I promise in the morning I’ll tell you,” Thomas whispered so quietly that Minho almost didn’t catch it. Minho, calculating this information, inhaled deeply before nodding.
“I want you to try to sleep okay? If you need anything, I swear, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” Minho said, his voice wobbling over some of the words. However, despite his fear, Minho knew he needed to be strong for his friend. Thomas needed stability in his life — warm, kind, stability. That’s what Minho was.
“Thank you Min, thank you,” Thomas said quietly, taking another deep breath. The two boys looked at each other for a moment before falling into another tight hug. Minho tucked his face into Thomas’s shoulder and held the boy in his arms. Thomas clutched him back with all he had, adding a weak pat on the back as he pulled away.
“Can you tell Newt —” Thomas started, but stopped and rethought his words. Minho watched in confusion as he struggled to find the sentence. After a second of what seemed to be internal arguing with himself, Thomas set his jaw. “Just tell him everything. All of it; why it happens, what it came from — he deserves to know. I want him to know,” Thomas said quietly but confidently. Minho didn’t question it. If Thomas wanted Newt to know, then Minho wouldn’t stop him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell him yourself?” Minho asked slowly. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but he at least wanted to give Thomas the benefit of the doubt. Thomas nodded.
“I can’t say it out loud, not right now. One day, I’ll tell him myself, but he needs to know now, and he needs to hear it from you. Please Min,” Thomas breathed. Minho nodded, giving Thomas’s hand a squeeze before refilling the younger boy’s glass of water and shooing him towards the couch.
“Try to get some sleep. I’ll be right here,” Minho pointed to the large armchair next to their couch. “I’ll go talk to Newt and then I promise I’ll be right here the rest of the night.”
Thomas nodded before collapsing onto the couch as if all the fatigue had just now hit him. Minho chucked a blanket from the shelf at the younger boy, and Thomas curled up underneath it as his eyes began to flutter close. Minho ruffled the younger boy’s hair for a moment before padding down the hallway to find Newt.
The brit was holding up pretty well for having just witnessed his best friend go through quite a terrifying episode. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, thin hands wrung together, staring at the floor. Minho tapped on the doorframe, apologizing when he saw Newt flinch.
“You okay?” Minho asked slowly, testing the waters. Newt clenched his jaw for a moment before nodding.
“Is he?” Newt whispered, glancing in the direction of the living room. Minho nodded, attempting some sort of smile that probably came out as a wince.
“He asked me to tell you… Everything,” Minho said slowly. He walked over and sat on the edge of the bed with Newt, their shoulders touching. Newt didn’t say anything.
“It started when we were 12… Right after we met each other,” Minho began, taking a deep breath. This was some hard stuff to thrust on his friend, but if Thomas needed Newt to know, then Minho would tell him.
“We had been friends for a while, just about a year, when one day he came to school with this nasty black eye that had terribly covered up with some concealer. It took me a while to notice it, but when I did, I begged Thomas to tell the teacher. He just shook his head and told me it was fine, that he had just hit his eye on the shelf last night,” Minho explained quietly. Newt stiffened, and Minho guessed that the boy knew where this was going. Newt was a smart kid, a good kid, and Minho felt terrible for dumping all this on him, but also felt glad that Thomas would have someone else to help shoulder the burden.
“I let it go after a while, thinking the excuse was legit. Thomas, I mean you know him— he’s a clumsy shank at best and at worst he’s a bull in a china store.” Newt let out a strained laugh, little more than a puff of air out his nose. Minho continued. “I didn’t push it after that, thinking it wasn’t a big deal. But then he came to school the next day, and he had two bruises on either side of his upper arms, as if someone had grabbed him. I pointed it out again, and Thomas just shook me off him, told me I was being stupid, and ignored me for the rest of the day. He hardly talked to anyone, just sat on the bench at recess and read a book.” Minho closed his eyes, the memory bringing so much pain with it. Thomas had been just 12… not even a teenager then and already suffering. Newt’s fingers were trembling, but Minho picked up where he left off.
“The same thing happened for the next 2 years. I would notice these wounds all over Thomas, all concealed under a terribly-applied layer of cheap makeup, and he would shut me out the minute I asked him about it. So I just stopped asking, but I kept track. I took notice of where the bruises appeared, how long they lasted, how often they showed up. It was finally when we were 14 that he had his first nightmare,” Minho said. The memory flashed behind his closed eyes, sending a jolt of painful electricity through him.
“Thomas had been sleeping over at my house, and it was the middle of the summer. I had just turned 15, Thomas wasn’t that far behind. We finally went to bed around 2 in the morning after playing video games all night, and because the heat had gotten unbearable, neither of us minded shrugging off our shirts to sleep. The night had been enjoyable enough for him to forget about covering his body, I guess. His chest had been covered with these huge bruises, big and raw and ranging in color from purple to yellow, and I saw scratches on his shoulders and arms. And this time, I couldn’t shrug it off as clumsiness. I knew what he was hiding, and it terrified me. It terrified me to think that my best friend had been suffering for so long.” Minho’s voice was hardly a breath of air on his tongue now. Newt’s cheeks had been wet with tears for a few minutes now.
“I asked him—I pleaded with him to tell me what was going on, but the stubborn shank still tried to play it off. Said he just fell really badly, down the stairs. There weren’t any stairs in his house. I told him that, and he shut me out again. We went to bed, but I made a note to tell my parents when they got back the next day, to do something, cause my best friend was in pain and it was killing me to see him like that. I was old enough to know what it was. But I didn’t know enough, and my imagination began to terrify me.” Newt had lifted his legs to hug them against his chest. Minho took another very deep breath before continuing.
“That night, he had a nightmare. It was horrible. I woke up to him screaming, thrashing, crying. My parents had been gone that night, and I was petrified. I had no idea what to do. I tried to wake him up, to get him out of his head, but he kept screaming for me to stop touching him. I burst into tears, pleading with him. I held his head and hugged him as best as I could and finally, after probably a solid thirty minutes, he woke up. He woke up and he burst into tears again, but this time, we just held each other. I was crying, he was crying, we just curled up on the bed together and woke up puffy-eyed and exhausted. Thomas broke down that morning, and told me everything,” Minho trailed off, not knowing if even he could stomach the words he was about to say. Newt sucked in a breath, holding it tightly. Minho closed his eyes again and let a tear trail down his face.
“His father had been abusing him since he was 10. It didn’t start off bad, just small things like yelling and threatening, but he was 12 when he got hit for the first time. And from then on, it never stopped. It just got worse. He told me that his father had almost knocked him unconscious. He locked himself in the bathroom and fell asleep there, one of his mother’s metal hair pins in his hands as a weapon. It was a regular routine. A normal night in his life. That’s why he asked to sleep at my house that night, and so many others; so he didn’t have to face his father again,” Minho said, each word harder to get out than the last. Newt had his eyes shut tightly. The blond still hadn’t said anything.
“From that moment on I knew I loved him like a brother. And that I would do anything to protect him. So, the next morning, I let him sleep some more and I told my parents, who had finally come back, everything. Sometimes I felt guilty for telling them, but it helped. They took him in, we pressed charges. Thomas lived there for another year before we were able to get him and his mom away. His father left, abandoning them and taking their money. Thomas and his mother were left with little money, but he was gone and that was what mattered. But then the nightmares started again. Thomas thought that things would get better after the man was out of his life, but he got these vivid dreams — exactly what he had gone through, down to the words. He said it was like watching his life over and over again, being forced to relive all that pain. I quickly picked up on how to calm him down, and I was at his side every night, holding his hand and letting him cry into my shoulder. And slowly, painfully slowly, he got better. High school passed and things got easier, the nightmares got fewer and farther apart, and for a while, the both of us forgot it had ever happened. Hell, it hasn’t been nearly as bad since. There were periods, yes, where it got bad for a bit after a particularly stressful week for him, but he was so strong. He just pushed right through it, keeping his grades up, keeping his head up. I was so proud of him, so in awe. He’s so strong. Finally, we got out of the damn town and came to college together. The first night we moved in here, before you and Fry and Gal got here, we slept in different rooms. Thomas had his first nightmare in almost 2 years that night, and from then on, he asked to share a room with me. He couldn’t bear to be alone.” Minho let out a huge breath after he finished. Newt was breathing unevenly, choking a bit on his tears. He was biting his lip to keep from sobbing.
Minho let his friend lean into his shoulder, closing his eyes against the tears that ran down his own face as Newt cried into his arm. After a minute or two, he told Newt that he was going to go sleep in the armchair to keep an eye on Thomas. Newt asked if he could sleep on the bean bag.
“I want to be there for him, I want him to know that I care about him so bloody much,” Newt sniffled. Minho told the brit he understood and the two walked out together to see Thomas sound asleep on the couch, his body curled into a ball and his hands tucked together in front of his face. Minho pulled the blanket up a bit higher on the sleeping boy, and pretended not to see as Newt pressed a light kiss to the top of Thomas’s head. He was suddenly very glad Newt knew — maybe Newt would be able to give Thomas the comfort of a loving relationship that he never got before. His life had been a world of pain and suffering, and if Newt could perhaps show him that there was love in the world, then Minho would die happily.
Minho grabbed another two blankets from the cabinet and tossed one to Newt, who curled under it on the bean bag in the corner. Minho collapsed into the armchair, tucking his feet under the blanket and resting his head on the back. He glanced one more time at Thomas, making sure he was okay before letting the fatigue overcome him.