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Hal jumped from his deep sleep, as he heard screams echoing throughout the room. He was startled, something was wrong, his heart was racing like never before. He was scared as he started feeling the pressure of anxiety in his heart. Did someone break into their home? Is someone getting murdered outside their building? Nobody knows.
Until, the screams started again. This time, Hallen saw that they came from his boyfriend’s mouth, who was sleeping quite heavily next to him in the double bed.
“Bro?” He whispered, while shaking Jonathan’s body, who slept on his side facing away from Hallen “Are you alright?”
He was unresponsive, but his behavior wasn’t strange. Jonathan was, however, a drug abuser. Unlike Hal who would daily smoke pot as a way to unwind and help him with his anxiety, Jonathan was a heavy drug user. He took ecstasy, speed, crack, and even recently started experimenting with LSD. This is what is happening right now; the cowboy is experiencing night terrors caused by the acid consumption, and it didn’t look pretty at all. The poor man was screaming in his sleep, as, what someone could assume, were only the most terrifying nightmares haunting his mind. No, he wasn’t alright.
“It’s okay, bro, I am here for you.” The skater still wasn’t sure what was exactly going on with his boyfriend, but he wanted to comfort him. Hallen was scared, he never saw anything like this happen before. Not even on TV, and he sure did see a lot of things on TV. He felt a bit of relief knowing where the screams of horror were coming from, but at the same time, he felt extremely scared for Jonathan’s state, as he didn’t want anything to happen to him, or worse, lose him. Hal didn’t know a first thing about being a doctor, he never learned first aid, nor does he know anyone who could help.
He was struggling. A small voice inside his head told him he should pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1, but another small voice, somehow only a tiny bit louder than the first, told him not to. It said that this could all be nothing, and that he kept the emergency responders from responding to people who actually needed help. That voice was his anxiety; or his fear that he is a constant bother to people. He doesn’t want to hurt people or make them angry by asking for help with things he should know how to deal with. The skater knew he should know what to do, he sold so many different drugs to the teens on parties and raves, that he can’t even keep track of what he sold all, but somehow, despite all this, he couldn’t even think of what drug this could even be. Was it even a drug? And not some childhood trauma Jonathan unlocked in his dreams? He did manage to mention to Hallen once about his bad relationship with his biological father, but he wasn’t sure.
“NO, NO, NO, LEAVE ME ALONE!” The cowboy yelled out at the top of his lungs in his sleep. He was a fighter, despite the fear being clear in his voice, he wasn’t giving up in the fight.
Hallen wanted to help Jonathan, to make him feel about what he was going through, but he couldn't think of anything. Is he supposed to inject salt water in his tongue or something? Better not risk it and end up killing his boyfriend.
No, Hal did one thing Jonathan always does when he felt anxious, something that always helped Hal as his lungs felt like they were closing down. He caressed Jonathan, as he sat on the bed mattress, and leaned his back on the wooden board above their heads.
He grabbed Jonathan and pulled the cowboy in his lap. Luckily, Jonathan wasn’t a big man. He was shorter than Hal was, and a lot lighter, considering he was really skinny; a twink, as someone call him. The skater hugged his tiny boyfriend, as he started slowly shaking and caressing his cheek.
“It’s okay, bro. I am here now. You’re safe, don’t worry.” Hal started humming a lullaby his mother used to sing to him when he was just a little boy. It was this old English lullaby all the others there knew. He thought, maybe it would help him calm down, or even make his terrors feel less like a terror, and rather transform it into a nice dream.
Jonathan might be a fucked up person, but he's shown Hal love and attention not a lot of people had patience to. He made Hal feel loved when he felt like there was no hope for him to ever be loved. And he will always value that in his relationship with Jon, regardless if their relationship lasted for only a few months, or they ended up spending the rest of their hours on this God’s green Earth.
All that’s left now it to wait. Wait and pray that Jonathan would wake up fine from his night’s rest and not choke on his own tongue from some extreme drug trip.
After about 8 minutes of no terrors, and with a calming, quiet tune being hummed, Hal fell asleep sitting down, with Jonathan in his lap. He was tired too, smoking weed does that to you.
The entire night has passed with no more sleep terrors from Jonathan, and both of them were still in those godly uncomfortable positions Hal has set up to keep Jonathan comforted.
As the little cowboy opened his eyes, to get up from his bed and start his day, he noticed that he was wrapped in Hal’s arms.
“Honey… What’s going on…?” Jonathan asked, as he was struggling to break from his lover’s arms. His back hurt as he tried to, after it was bent in a rather uncomfortable position for the duration of the entire night. He moved and struggled like a fish on the land, until he started hitting Hal.
“Oh!?” He got started by the slap to the face and he let go of Jonathan and moved an inch back. “Agh!” He could feel every fiber of his neck hurt, as he has just spent the entire night sleeping with such bad posture. He put his hand on it to massage it, and ease the pain a little. “Bro, you’re alive!”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Jonathan sat up as soon as Hal let go “Why are we sleeping like refugees, darling?”
“Bro… You’re alive…” He said it again, as he let go of his neck and hugged Jonathan. A tear started coming out of his eyes as he did. His voice breaking, as the thoughts of losing Jonathan finally ended after a long night. Finally, he felt relieved knowing that his loved one is going to be okay. For now, at least.
“Course I am! Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Bro…” Hal let go of him and moved back. At this point, it was clear to Jonathan that Hal is actually crying out of happiness that he is apparently alive.
“Honey… what happened last night…?” He was starting to get worried, as Hal kept him in the dark
The skater wiped away his tear and finally said “Bro, you had nightmares all night… You were screaming at the top of your lungs.” He said. “It was like someone was stabbing you. I was so scared for you. I thought you were dying.”
“I had what?” Jonathan was confused. He barely remembers of his dreams.
“Nightmares? You don’t remember them?”
“I do remember something… but I wasn’t getting stabbed…” Jonathan said as he was thinking harder about the dream
“What was it, bro?”
“It was, God it was…” And as he tried harder to remember, he finally unlocked the trauma that he dreamt of. It wasn’t a made up dream, it was a memory. A memory of the trauma he experienced as a child. His eyes started to tear up, as he stood there stunned. He couldn’t move, frozen in place.
“No, don’t cry!” Hal said and he quickly pulled him in for a hug “It’s okay, you don’t have you tell me if it makes you sad. I get it.”
Jonathan sniffed as to prevent making a huge mess. He accepted Hal’s hug and dug his head deeper into the skater’s chest. For a moment, he felt extremely unsafe, as his mind went to a darkest place there is. “I don’t want to remember this.”
Hal rubbed his back in an attempt to comfort his boyfriend. “No, it’s okay. I understand. You shouldn’t tell me.” Hal quickly thought of something to change a topic with, in an attempt to stop Jonathan from thinking of something that was clearly traumatic for him. “Did I ever tell you about what happened to Roland on Tuesday?”
Jonathan moved away from the hug as the emotional state of his mind changed, now to a curious state. “What happened? God, I hate that stupid…” He tried to think of an insult “… kangaroo.” Roland wasn’t very fond of Jonathan. He’d always find a different way to insult Roland, no matter how minor it actually was. “Did he die? I hate him.”
“You saw him last night, you know he didn’t die.” Hal said, and soon after chuckled, as his face formed a stupid, childish grin “Shelly called him a penderoh,” he tried to say pendejo, but he wasn’t fluent and struggled speaking Spanish, “and he didn’t know what it meant.” Hal startled giggling like a high school girl sharing a rumor.
“What an idiot. Even I know what pendejo means and I’m a crackhead!”
“Bro, stop it. You aren’t a crackhead. You’re my cute little boyfriend…”
“Aww, shucks…” Jonathan got flustered, as his cheeks turned pink.
Hal gave him a kiss on the forehead, and proceeded to get off the bed and put his pants on. “What do you want for breakfast? Beans on toast again?”
As Hal was doing neck exercises to relax its muscles, Jonathan took his trusty cowboy hat that stood next to the bed and put it on his head “I don’t know. I got some extra money. What if we hit a diner and had some waffles instead? I feel like eating something sweet.”
“If you insist, diner waffles it is.” Hal said as he put on a shirt, and approached Jonathan “But we are going to have to talk about your drug problem during breakfast. Please. I just think we can both grow together and help you abandon that…”
“But I don’t have a dru-“
“Honestly, I think they’re making your nightmares worse, bro.”
“Fine, I guess we can talk about it and all…”
“Thank you, bro.” Hal kiss Jonathan’s lips “Let’s get going before the rush hour so we don’t bother the nice lady at the diner.”