Chapter Text
Nicholas had grown accustomed to feeling unsafe in his home setting. It happened so frequently he wouldn’t bat an eye when it happened. It started when he was young.
Ms. Cox had been burdened with financial trouble before Nicholas was born. When he was a baby and young child, she would have boyfriends who could help take care of both of them financially. Most of the early ones were kind and cared about Nicholas, but it was when he turned 5 did the not-so-safe environment begin.
Mathew was the man that installed the trauma responses he had been forced to develop. He wasn’t physically abusive, or mentally, but he did things that made little Nic scared. The only reason Nicholas’ mother kept him around was because his accounting job paid well and he willingly paid for the expenses of food, clothes and rent. His mother wasn’t the best mother, but she tried. Sure, she wasn’t very kind and rarely showed genuine affection, but she would never purposely hurt her son.
The relationship had started off right, but spiraled into something that scarred Nicholas mentally. He never shared a room with his mother, she didn’t want him to witness anything sexual as a child. One of her best moments that Nicholas willingly gave her credit for.
Nicholas used to sleep fine. Nothing could wake him up easily, until one night a door was slammed so hard it shook him awake. The yelling had kept him awake for hours. That pattern started repeating once a month. The door slamming would shake him awake. Them once every two weeks. Then every week. Soon just the yelling would wake him. Then every four days. Then every other day, until it was every night. Every. Single. Torturing. Night.
Poor 6 year-old Nicholas would be woken up by anything as simple as closing a door slightly too rough, or the glow of a light from underneath his door. When his mother finally broke it off with Mathew, 8 and a half year old Nicholas thought his torture was over. But it wasn’t.
Nicholas was now an extremely light sleeper. The tiniest change of light volume in a room could wake him up. The rustling of a curtain could jolt him awake. He usually woke up multiple times in the night, and he slept like that until he started working, and eventually training with Coach Joe. Work was tiring, both physically and mentally. So it was a surprise for 12 year old Nicholas to pass out cold after a grueling day of work. He thought maybe his body was getting used to being ‘safe’, and he could finally sleep normally.
Until one morning after a night of uninterrupted sleep, Nicholas’ mother said something about him sleeping with his eyes open. Apparently she had walked into his room to check if he was asleep after his day of work, and witnessed him dead asleep… but with his eyes open. At first she thought he was awake, but she couldn’t get him to respond to her calling out to him from the doorway. This pattern of eyes open deep sleep was how he, for the past two years, had slept in deep sleep. Otherwise, he would be forced back into ‘smallest shift = awake’ sleep.
Nicholas had learned what triggered the different sleep patterns he had. If he was so tired mentally and/or physically or felt safe in the environment he was sleeping in, he would sleep deeply with his eyes open. If he felt unsafe or wasn’t tired, he would be woken up by the slightest things.
He had given up trying to break out of these patterns. He couldn’t. They were subconscious things he had no control over.
The only person who had seen these patterns was his mother.
… until he went to Kings Row.