What if...? || Markhyuck

-56-

[march 2021]

[donghyuck]

Minhyung's dreams were different. He used to have nightmares very often about Luke and sometimes from the juvie times. It all started with the death of Mark's grandmother. The first time he saw a dead body in a coffin and it was a body that belonged to someone close to him. From that day on, he rarely had nights without nightmares. Under the influence of drugs, boy was able to sleep all night in the institution. After Luke died, the medications stopped helping.

Our first nights together were really hard from what I remember. Minhyung would often wake up in sweat and breathe heavily, like running a marathon. Sometimes boy's susceptibility to the others touch was too strong to give me any prospect of comforting him by bodily closeness. We were just next to each other, keeping a distance and waiting for nightmarish sensations to go away. Such state of things lasted for months and only stopped when Minhyung started telling me what he had dreamed of. Only then exhausting dreams started slowly to diminish and nights became more pleasant. So I was completely unprepared when Minhyung's scream broke me from today's sleep. I jumped out of bed expecting the worst-case scenario but it turned out that we were in no danger. Boy in panicky state was sitting on the bed with head tucked between knees, hair in hands, breathing loudly.

"What's going on, baby?" I asked, a bit shocked, moving cautiously towards Minhyung. There was no way for me to assess his current needs after such a long time without similar experiences. I ran hand slowly down Mark's fingers tangled in hair. He didn't reject my touch so I concluded that it's still fine for me to do it. I moved hand to boy's back and started massaging it slowly, waiting patiently for any feedback.

"I don't know," he chocked out in a voice that indicated the boy was probably crying. I couldn't say it with 100% certainty because I'd never seen Minhyung cry in my life. I suspected he wasn't even capable of that. Yes, he was sometimes visibly moved or affected but never cried in the fullest sense of the word.

"What did you dream of?" I asked quietly, still gently rubbing his back with open palm. In response, Mark just shook head from side to side, rocking slightly back and forth.

"I don't remember," he panted as if something was still giving him a lot of pain. Even in that state, I knew boy was lying. I began to wonder how terrible Minhyung's dream must have been if he refused to share it with me. I sighed softly, wrapping arms around him gently.

"It will pass," I whispered in his ear, hugging boy tightly against chest. "It always passes, remember?" I muttered kissing Minhyung on the temple. Boy's body began to slowly relax.

"Oh god, how terrible it was," he moaned as if today's nightmare had ability to physically hurt, causing real pain. I felt Minhyung's hands dropping slowly down from hair and then hugging my waist tightly.

"It's over," I said reassuringly, stroking the back of the boy's head. "I'm with you," assured, trying to put us in a position that would allow returning to interrupted sleep.

"You can't leave me Hyuck," Minhyung muttered sleepily after a few minutes, when was already lying on my chest. "Not that way..." whispered again as I began to slowly comb his hair.

I didn't know to what extent his words were conscious and to what just triggered by exhaustion, but they worried me. I rarely have nightmares myself, nor have I ever experienced their shocking effects. Even if dreams woke me up in the middle of the night, they immediately blurred and their content ceased to be palpable after several dozen seconds - I could go back to sleep. Minhyung's dreams were different, however. From what he declared, they were characterized by incredible reality and the plot didn't blur after recovering. It stayed with him for a long time, if not forever. Therefore, I tried to support boy as much as possible when he needed me, although it wasn't easy. It's hard to aid someone in a situation you don't understand.