Chapter Text
“Goodnight!” he heard Seungmin say when he passed him on his way to his own bedroom.
“Night,” Minho said.
“Don’t stay up too late, Hyung,” Seungmin said.
“I won’t,” Minho said.
He felt a tension in the air, like he knew Seungmin wanted to say something else to him but chose not to. Seungmin was always too good at noticing things. But Minho was adamant to keep his issues to himself, especially in this situation. Or at the least, the details to himself.
The first time it happened he had laughed it off. He even planned to tell the others about it when he saw them in the studio or at breakfast, but it ended up slipping his mind once he got into the zone of practice.
The second time he figured he was just thinking about how weird it was which made it happen again. But it was after the second time that he felt tired.
The third time he got frustrated. He even took his frustration out on the other members a little without meaning to. He couldn’t help it; he was too irritable that day. Hyunjin had been playful with him, the cameras were even running too, and Minho had snapped at him. He’d immediately felt guilty and tried to play it off but after he had a moment to collect himself, he asked the manager in private to ask the editors to cut what had happened because he had been so rude. He’d even apologized to Hyunjin and ended up buying him an ice cream to make up for it.
“What happened?” Chan had asked.
Minho glanced his way. Maybe he should tell him. Three days and already what he’d thought was a joke was becoming so much more difficult to explain. Now, Minho felt a rush of embarrassment wash over him. He glanced over the others set off in the corner of the practice room.
“I’m just really tired I think,” Minho had said.
“You should go home early tonight,” Chan had said.
Minho looked at the leader with a raised eyebrow. Chan chuckled.
“Worth a shot…but seriously, you should try to get some extra sleep to reset yourself. Even a nap would be good,” Chan had said.
“Yeah, I’ll try.”
But trying hadn’t done much. Naps worked the best. Short sleeps he could get by without any trouble. But if it was a full night…
Minho kind of felt like he was a piece of ripped tissue roughly stitched back together. He’d make it if he didn’t do anything crazy. But asking for a craze-less life as an idol is impossible. And everyone still was treating his ripped tissue body like a piece of concrete.
Here, now, at two months since the first night, Minho had forgotten how things used to be. Minho allowed the bitter drench of exhaustion to surround him. He had forgotten what feeling fully rested felt like, almost.
Back at the third week mark Changbin had carefully asked him about it.
“Hyung, are you not getting any sleep?”
Minho was about to tell him no, to tell him he was fine, but something in the way Changbin looked at him with a stare that told Minho he knew he was lying before the words even came out of his mouth told him such words would be useless.
But Minho wasn’t really lying either.
“I’m sleeping.”
“You’re acting like you haven’t,” Changbin said.
“I am. I swear I am. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Minho shrugged. The part of his brain that had wanted to tell them what was going on had long been shut down by embarrassment. He tried to play off the conversation nonchalantly. He tried to play off all their concern. He could figure this out without everyone knowing everything.
Changbin didn’t seem to want to push him too far with it.
“Why don’t you ask a doctor for medicine to help you sleep?” Changbin asked.
Minho had nodded. He’d talk with the manager about getting an appointment soon.
“You’ve been so grumpy lately,” Changbin had said with a laugh. “More than your usual self.”
Minho had chuckled dryly.
The fourth week Minho caved and spoke with his manager about getting in to see a doctor. When the doctor had asked him what was going on Minho had replied, “Weird dreams.”
He had been prescribed sleeping pills that were supposed to knock him out. They did their job. Minho fell asleep quickly when he took them, but he still woke up with the lack of rest he’d had for the last month. He still woke up with a struggle to look around, a feeling of them knowing what the madness in his head was going on. He couldn’t bare it.
A month and a half in, Minho simply was angry. He’d wake up with a deep-rooted anger that lingered in the worst kind of way. He tried not to show it anymore.
He did his best to recover his exhaustion throughout the day with naps and thankfully his body had somehow gone into an emergency adaptation and had gotten used to his chaotic naps that gave his mind limited relief.
He had long come to some strange realization that this was his new reality. He was angry at his brain for doing this to him. He was angry at his group members for being peppy and having energy without having to plaster on a fake smile and pretend everything was okay. He was angry with his doctor telling him to give the sleeping pills time and for his body to adjust. Angry at him for telling Minho to take it easy as if not knowing what his career was and how the little precious sleep he had gotten before was necessary for him as an entertainer. He was angry when his body started to fight him and felt weak when he pushed it. More than anything he was angry at his own dreaming.
So, what if at six weeks Minho had started actively fighting sleep at night? He gave up on the pills and relied on his naps instead. Over the next couple of weeks Minho would be the last up in the dorm and the first awake. If the others started giving him a little extra space and the makeup Noonas used a little more makeup to hide his dark shadows under his eyes, they didn’t comment directly. He’d pulled away. He’d been finding the camera less. He’d been barely interactive to a point on confusion. Stays were the one’s making comments. Chan had finally found him after a live he’d been in where he’d barely interacted. Stays had commented he looked ill.
“You need to sleep Minho,” Chan said.
“I will,” Minho said.
“Are you taking the meds the doctor prescribed you?”
Minho glared slightly.
“Yes,” Minho lied.
Chan sighed.
“Minho, if you’d just talk to us about it maybe we could help you,” Chan said.
“You can’t…I…”
Minho knew he’d sound mad. They’d think he was mad. His embarrassment was like an ever-present weighted blanket wrapping him up. His feelings and desires all a muddled mess of confusion. They had only gotten worse; they had only gotten more confusing.
Minho and Chan had both sat in silence for a while before Chan sighed again which signaled to Minho that he could leave now. Minho got up to leave when Chan spoke.
“We just want you to feel better, Minho.”
Minho had tried his hardest to make it look like he was doing better after that. He faked energy with caffeine. He tried to participate more energetically. His jitters translated as playfulness. It worked. In some ways he was able to go back to a glimmer of normalcy. He laughed with the members and his dancing improved for the first time in months. He could make it work. He was an idol, acting was just a part of the job, right? The naps were still his saving grace. Limited spurts of sleep with an alarm waking him before he was in too deep.
However, plans only work so long, and caffeine makes you crash. Minho could not account for a very concerned Felix turning off the alarm Minho had set to wake from his nap. So instead, he woke up groggy, exhausted, and broken.
Minho immediately felt tears rushing down his face. He pulled the couch pillow in tight toward himself letting out a cry. Felix rushed over from the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Minho and rubbed his back.
“Minho, it’s okay! It’s okay!” Felix said.
“Why am I here?” Minho asked.
“Why?” Felix asked confused. He pulled back to look at Minho who had tears rushing down his face.
“I wake up here when I should be there. I wake up there knowing it’s not real, but I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to leave,” Minho said broken between his crying.
Felix’s face was scrunched up in concern and he wrapped Minho back up in a hug and kept rubbing his back like he was a little child. Minho felt like he was gasping. How could he explain? How could he make them understand?
“It was just a bad dream, Hyung! It was just a nightmare,” Felix repeated in his ear. “You’re here, you’re home,” Felix said.
But he wasn’t, Minho thought. How could he explain? How could he tell them it wasn’t a nightmare that kept him from sleeping?
“What’s going on?” a soft voice asked.
“Jisung, it’s okay. Minho-Hyung just woke from a bad dream,” Felix said.
Minho couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t let him see his face like this.
“You okay, baby?”
Minho felt his stomach clench and twist with the question. He had to glance and see him. The one person he didn’t think he could bare to see at this moment. There he was though, the same, but painfully different.
How could he let them in, knowing everything would unravel? How could he laugh about it now when it was no longer a funny joke of a dream? How could he make them understand that he stayed awake because every time he slept, he wanted to wake up less and less? How could he make them understand that he stayed awake because he loved them this way, but he also hated them for keeping him here now? How he loved being here, being this Minho, with this life and this dream, but that this dream…
Minho felt a fresh wave of tears rush down his face as he clung again onto Felix while watching Jisung’s face fall into a look of concern
How could they understand that while he slept, it was a paradise?