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narwhalandchill · 2 months

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okok so ya know that post i mentioned i was writing on some of the harbinger related leaks that cropped up recently and then mobile fucked me over by publishing the post early by gaslighting me with a "post" button that Clearly read "save" (draft) so i deleted it but managed to rescue the text that was there and promised to finish it and post it later and then its been 12 years anyway? yeah right 😭 Oh well.

BUT. finally. might as well do the thing now in honor of childes bday at the very least KJWJKWDJK. sorry it took this long lmao

jsyk these leaks predate our current natlan beta datamines and some of the questionable story leaks floating around so like, natlan plot wise they dont have shit to do w em there & not bringing up any that ive seen. but ya

(so . attempt 2: recent lazzo VA character direction leaks for the harbingers mostly in relation to childes role in the overall plot. bit ranty and gets Long but idek what yall expected. + ig just potential long term plot implications from these leaks given its the harbingers beware)

aka: mostly concerning the faction stuff + pulcinellas directions for now . if u havent seen em uhhhh

basically tldr: according to (and assuming its not outdated) some information accessed by leakers recently originally provided for the VAs applying to voice the harbingers in lazzo, the group is allegedly split between two factions of "conservatives" and "radicals" . like thats the first thing

now as to what those labels rly mean ppl were overall speculating that it might be sth along the lines of. conservatives as the tsaritsa loyalists who stand united and for the organization and her majestys goals above all (OR alternatively just like. a more cautious take on How to approach the toppling celestia deal) VS those whose true ambitions, loyalty and methods they are willing to turn to are more of a wild card situation . and their allegiances are equally volatile in turn . & i will say imo the radicals are also most likely much less of an united group compared to the conservatives given uhhhhhhh. well you will see

so conservatives are: capitano, columbina, pulcinella, sandrone

radicals are: dottore, arle (see the "radicals might not like each other that much"), pantalone

pierro is neutral, childe is unknown/undecided according to the leaks HOWEVER. his positioning next to the radicals in the shot of lazzo with the harbingers standing around signoras coffin split along those same faction lines found in the leaks may indeed suggest something Interesting regarding his penultimate choice . if it Indeed is intended to be meaningful that he as an "unknown" just happened to take That side of the coffin alongside the 3 confirmed radicals according to this info . like how Curious

And i just. okay okay i have to be Honest theres like. SUCH a toxic childish taking-fandom-grievances-too-seriously part to me eyeing the possibility of ajax turning out to be a radical thats just like. dawei lets this happen and i WILL be the WORLDS most obnoxious fucking bitch about it bc . Listen

i. Have. ALWAYS. thought it obvious as FUCK . that a guy whose ambition WILL NOT stop until it is the very WORLD that lies defeated at his feet. will NEVER be satiated by what the fatui can offer him . like if he really is a radical. i can CONFIDENTLY state that i saw that shit coming in TWENTY FUCKING TWENTY and that Every single doubter owes me So much fucking money 💀💀💀💀💀💀 jkjk but. Duuuude. ever since this faction stuff dropped.... i cant stop thinking abt it

like i just. cannot stand the way its been turned into this . INDOMITABLE 100% factual absolute Truth that CANNOT be challenged. in the fandom. that childe is a tsaritsa fanboy loyalist devout worshipper who couldnt even fuckimg FATHOM leaving his allegiance to her behind . when its been . SPELLED OUT to yall in his fucking profile SINCE 1.1 .

bc like. Listen up. Repeat after me. ik its scary and new after 4 years of Exclusively hearing takes where like childe would rather spontaneously combust to the beat of snezhnayas national anthem while begging for repentance than ever stop taking orders from uhhhh a god. Who he definitely worships devoutly as a god despite 0 evidence on any religious piety on his part Trust (like. ive. Always thought his voiceline for her has been the opposite? its very much. Not how youd speak of divinity. his regard for her is Personal and relates to the tsaritsa as an individual, not a god inherently deserving of worship)

like ik this is a big thing and scary but just. Say the words with me here. It only stings once .deep breaths. okay 1 2 3

"But becoming Tartaglia was far from his end goal. To someone who sought to conquer the world, this was but a tiny step in his journey."

YUP.

BECOMING TARTAGLIA. BECOMING A HARBINGER. SWEARING AN OATH OF LOYALTY TO THE TSARITSA. A TINY. STEP. A TINY FUCKING STEP. AND HES BEEN AWARE OF IT BEING LIKE THIS THE ENTIRE TIME.

THIS HAS BEEN TEXT FOUND IN GAME THERE FOR NEARLY FOUR FUCKING YEARS NOW . AND PPL STILL THINK AJAX ISNT CAPABLE OF SURPASSING AND ABANDONING THE TSARITSA THE SECOND THE BENEFITS THEY OFFER HIM FALL SHORT OF THE EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF HIS POWER AND AMBITION AND WHAT IT TAKES TO SATIATE HIM .

like im SORRY contrary to maybe popular belief and despite my persistent frustrations w this fandoms approach to ajax sometimes i Do in fact feel actively mean and unreasonably harsh calling 97% of childe "fans" functionally illiterate or at the very least intentionally obtuse to the point its beyond fucking parody in how ridiculous it gets but like. if THIS isnt what a complete and utter failure of basic reading comprehension is I DONT KNOW WHAT IS . like. DUDE 😭😭😭😭😭😭 what IS IT with these people its like genuinely fucking incomprehensible to me how CRITICAL shit about his character like this goes COMPLETELY ignored as if it hasnt been established since Day fucking one its unreal . Unreal 💀

and like. i get bitchy and snappy abt it i know its not the best look always but man its sth thats genuinely upsetting to me too bc . THIS is the fucking dude thats possessed me for the last 4 years THIS is what i love about him his potential to surpass Every Single Boundary that he has begun his journey confided within. that he will transcend it all and surpass his own limits with sheer fucking willpower over and over again until even the few he truly idolized and respected like the tsaritsa and capitano are suddenly so distant and irrelevant compared to the heights He has reached out for in his hunger....... its so peak like THIS is whats had me in a death grip for all this time

and like. for THAT guy that mr childe ajax tartaglia the REAL thing to barely even. Exist. in the minds of such a majority of the fandom its just fucking crushing sometimes. like i wanna appreciate all this abt him man i wanna share all my brainrot abt him and how this dude consumes my every waking thought but then borderline every single comment i see and popular take on him is just oh my pookie wookie babie girl would Never be able to betray tsaritsa ever etc etc etc and just.... Sigh

anyway overshare over sorry for that. yeah my ADHD makes me irrationally attached to my hyperfixations its kinda cringe .

do catch me kissing this man on the mouth Immediately the second his ambition surpasses the fatui and he goes beast mode fr fr on Everyone tho 🥰🥰 dyke license lost forever but itll be worth it

also real talk im like fairly convinced at least like 78% of the omgggg hes forever loyal to the tsaritsa gang are mostly like stuck in this mindset of like. omgggg hed Never Betray Her bc he doesnt like those who break promises uwu and its like. since when did the possibility of ajax outgrowing the stage where the fatui offer him anything worthwhile automatically equate to him betraying her wholesale and completely dropping any and all respect he had for her or sth. like yeah i do agree to an extent that it could end up p uncharacteristic (at least w/o proper plot setup or reasoning) for him to pull off like a complete disney twist villain backstab out of nowhere there but??? thats not rly whats going to automatically happen either???

(nvm that like a considerable portion of these same ppl were prolly writing "omgg ajax my poor victim MUST betray the evil tsaritsa" fics in 1.1 when everyone had the idea in their heads that he hates his job and is only doing it bc his family is held hostage and is also 17 bc of certified english localization moment. but i digress this is just unreasonably petty and im being a loser by not letting this shit go 2 this day💀💀)

bc like. if you ask me. the Interesting thing abt ajax and the possibility of being a radical IS that if hes going to refuse to follow an order or step out of line to follow his own path however it goes. its Not going to be personal. its not gonna be this big dramatic edgelord turncoat villainous moment to him. itll be straightforward. matter of fact. easy as breathing. because if he has moved past each and every benefit the fatui can even fathom offering him. its only natural that he progresses beyond them. thats just how his unquenchable ambition Works. how his black hole of a never-ending desire to devour and crush all in his path operates. its not personal. its not something you can change. its inevitable. he is a force of nature when it comes to the drive burning at the core of his soul.

like i Really dont think hes ever going to backstab the tsaritsa in some dirty play fashion??? if anything its only fitting that hes going to look her In the eye and go. oh my bad. i dont think our agreement serving a mutual benefit really holds ground anymore. apologies. like ofc its going to be something he handles while staying true to the person hes been all this time. kind of a bad guy and perfectly willing to own up to it. selfish and arrogant and with his sights set steadfast on a goal No one will get him to sway from.

and then he elopes with the narwh-------------- yes kill me

basically i just. dont get this whole perceived and persistent incompatibility between the idea of. ajax being a radical (whatever that ends up meaning in the story. IF these lazzo materials remain accurate) yet remaing the same guy we know and love. like guys. ARLE. is a radical. and has all but directly confessed to considering the survival of the house her greatest priority over any loyalty to the fatui and her majesty. yet she STILL regards her with respect and continues to fulfill her duties as a harbinger as expected for the time being. despite her full awareness of this loyalty being on shakier ground and surely making contingencies on the side for the future for When she sees it is time for her organization to sever the ties to the tsaritsa.

like Thats what i mean when i say its always been completely reasonable and even predictable to me that ajax would outgrow the fatui and how that has jack shit to do with his character suddenly doing some wild 180 in order to do so. and why this potentially significant visual alignment he has with the radicals in lazzo isnt surprising at all. bc if it doesnt fundamentally change who arle is (and doesnt make her a dottore fan) that she is ultimately someone whose loyalty to the organization comes second to her house. why would childe be any different lmao.

but like yes if he turns out to be a radical i will be soooooo obnoxious over it jkwjkawdjkwajkwdakjwdjkwdjkdwjk bc like im NOT lying this has been one of the Clearest trajectories ive expected from his arc All This Time . no matter which form it might eventually take in terms of. is it him and His growth initiating the split. or is it a betrayal from or a loss of faith in the tsaritsa herself that kickstarts it. if its canon? yeah i Saw that shit coming and you should all be scared of who ill become if dawei proves me right Again ill be the Worst

Phew that sure went way overboard but yes radical ajax advocacy group in here 100% . and overall even tho i mostly care abt him i Do think this faction split is inherently v fucking interesting and ajax being unknown is just. i wonder if itll end up being significant at some critical moment that his faction leanings are unknown slash undefined at the moment............... where the scales are about to tip and its by his hand that some key moment gets its turning point......... hmmmmmmm

(also its just. before these leaks we got "columbina is conservative" as an out of context statement Before the faction stuff and its still so fucking funny bc ppl were just like. wow i cant believe shes homophobic)

now. pulcinella time

so among the VA direction cards that leaked was his. and like if u didnt see them urself (not gonna post any here. hoyo lawyers love striking Any hoyo copyrighted media in all posts that have leaks in em even if its not an actual leak which this is lol) the setup is basically. theres a few overall notes on each of the harbingers like age, demeanor, characterization and then 3 sample lines of dialogue as well as notes further elaborating when & why this is being said and with what sort of vibe.

and his are. Well. you know how i started this post out being like on god dawei if you go and fatten my ego any further by Specifically vindicating me myself and i & the kinda things id prefer in genshins story and childes role going forward . Personally????

Anyway funny thing as it happens. IF (and admittedly thats a major if.) this VA direction doc from pulcinella holds up. and there isnt like a hidden scheming menacing side to him that wasnt brought up in the lazzo files. in that case . it sure is looking like pulcinella is just. a bit over the top in public but privately genuinely an overworked well-meaning pragmatic guy who deeply cares for and is truly protective of those important to him. INCLUDING. yes you know who and his family. NOTHING in the doc whatsoever implying anything sinister to it. nor wrt pulcinellas character overall.

and i just. nothing personal to scara fans yall are cool and ur guy is too i just simply. Cannot. guys can you IMAGINE being so much of an edgelord cynical embarrassment puppetfailure that ur own mommy issues make you physically incapable of Not assuming the worst of pulcinella caring for childes family leading to YEARS of ppl being CONVINCED hes gonna be this major fucking villain for ajax in the snezhnaya arc i . LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(my scara liker indulgence Ends the second hat guy speaks shit abt My man if you havent noticed. yeah WHO called who naive and stupid???)

like. if the Plot twist in the snezhnaya arc is setting pulcinella up to be this ominous figure that has ulterior motives w childes family and him overall????? only for him to be just. genuinely well-intentioned. oh my fucking god PLEASE let it happen PLEASE bc the entire concept of that whole plotline existing without said plot twist is just soooooo bland and fucking boring to me lol subverting it is just chef kiss

& sure this leak is. very limited in scope it doesnt automatically eliminate pulcinella manipulating childe and/or limiting what information he gets and all. and i genuinely have made my peace with the probable existence of this plot thread w arles SQ already before this whole thing happened but MAN ill be SO fucking happy if this means they might abandon/subvert it altogether like. let him just have a nice supportive mentor figure in his life in the fatui man 😭😭😭

pulcinella if u really just are a nice person ultimately. you TRULY are my goat o777 saving my man from bland family-is-hostage-waa storylines i have Such respect

anyway u could say its not possible for pulcinella to be like. fully a good guy since arles SQ already showcased him being unreliable w information regarding arle but honestly. i kinda disagree. bc like Especially with the faction thing in mind its not unreasonable at all in my eyes that given the Facts of what peruere did. that pulcinella despite not being this scheming schemer brainwashing ajax or whatever. would Genuinely hold a very negative opinion of arlecchino. and convey that to childe. bc like. pulcinella as stated above is in the conservative side of the harbingers. and arlecchino to the outside eyes rly did like. murder a harbinger and her own "mother" and siblings of the house. like do we even know that the harbingers are Aware of how crucabena ran her hunger games death tournament situation to begin with? and Why peruere killed her????

like. if we assume pulcinella doesnt know those things. and that crucabena in all likelihood was if nothing else then presumably a harbinger that was very loyal to the tsaritsa and very consistent. then from that position. of COURSE. youd consider arle a complete downgrade in terms of reliability . she IS a wild card she IS not someone a careful politician like pulcinella would regard highly At All. So like. i dont think when he gives childe the impression that arle is batshit insane and tells him of her (VERY REAL) murderous deeds. i dont think that would automatically equate to pulcinella Knowingly lying and misleading ajax . bc it seems fairly reasonable that pulcinella just genuinely thinks that lowly of her and thus would OBVIOUSLY want his protege not to involve himself with such people.

bc like thats the other thing. its not just arle. in pulcinellas VA notes and the line he has on ajax there. its very clear that he is actively trying to keep him away and shield him from ALL the harbingers . as he still has to mature and grow into someone who will have a chance at gaining their respect proper on his own. so like. if pulcinella thinks its best for ajax to remain away EVEN from the harbingers he himself considers GOOD to NEUTRAL influences and reliable colleagues. of COURSE hed make Extra sure that ajax is staying away from the knave whom pulcinella Actively considers a shitty fit for the job and an unreliable flight risk of a harbinger 💀💀💀💀

(nvm the way arle actively BOTH confirms pulcinellas distrust to be justified by saying the tsaritsa isnt a priority to her and the house is AND actively admits that he prefers other people believe misleading shit about her. so like fym pulcinella thinking the worst of her is surprising)

so like is pulcinellas pov of her at best Highly biased and lacking critical context on Why she merked so many of her sibs and crucabena??? and thus served as an inherently misleading insight on her character when he conveyed it to ajax??? absolutely. but i also dont think hes necessarily lying at all when it comes to perceiving arle in such a negative way so its less. oh i want ajax to remain in the dark forever so he is easy 2 manipulate. more just. thats his Opinion dude and ofc he wants his protege to follow in his stead and not get any poor influences from people like her. it still makes for interesting development & possible tension that childe Is questioning his views on things by making his own judgements about arle but. ya know. its not black and white.

but yeaaaa to be clear me vastly preferring the possibility of scara just being a cringelord unreliable narrator and this whole pulcinella-is-masterminding-dubious-things getting subverted & hes just a guy is just a personal thing lmao. this is pretty old material and far from all-encompassing in terms of Who hoyo wants pulcinellas character to be and all the layers he might hide. im just really 👁️👁️👁️ at the way this particular description of his character seems to be giving off vibes that they in fact Arent actually going all the way into the ulterior motives bad bad ajax watch out pulcinella and its just. listen theres way more interesting shit for ajax to be doing in the endgame plot than some generic plot like that!!!!!!!11! sorry!!!1 so id 1000% want it this way instead lmao

but we shall see where it goes. at the very least if this desc of pulcinella holds Any ground at all then it does disqualify the most extreme version of hes just basically evil manipulator mastermind so like. im already super happy with that lmao

but ya . sorry this took me forever to actually finish jwjkwdjkawjkwd these leaks r kinda old news by now rip .

#man.................................. when will i ever learn to say things in a concise manner abt this man................#imagine the post output i could have. The consistency . yet JWJKJKWDAJKWDJKWDJKWDKJWKJWA #oh also. capitanos sample dialogue from the same group was like. metal as shit i Cannot wait for him in natlan #columbinas desc was the kind where its like. hmmm. depending on VA direction it will be hit or miss for me personally i expect #but if they handle that energy well she will definitely be a Presence for sure #Also i Will say. even if itd put pulcinella in a way more morally questionable and grey light 100% . i STILL think #that even w him and the harbingers Aware of crucabenas antics . it mightve been sth hed consider a means to an end situation #where pulcinella would STILL regard crucabena as the more reliable and better harbinger despite the fuck em kids parental style #bc as Long as she was unquestionably loyal and reliable. hed prefer her as the knave over peruere who very Clearly already demonstrated #her willingness to 'bite the hand that feeds' so to speak. EVEN if the HotH was a dystopian shitshow. so like #idt even pulcinella knowing at least some of the truth abt the house under crucabenas leadership would necessarily just #stop seeing arle in negative light. but like him being aware of it would def make him more morally grey. in an interesting way but ya #i mean he has to tolerate dottore being in the organization. tolerating crucabena as long as she brought results rly isnt a stretch yaknow #even if he despised her methods overall. so theres that too.#genshin #rambles #childeposting

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diorcities · 11 months

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an essay on dreams

pairing: haechan (donghyuck) x reader, jeno x reader. genre: angst, smut, fantasy ya. hyudior's halloween stories. content: morally grey characters, slow burn, heavy plot. smut flashes (blowjob, missionary.) riding, fingering (fem receiving), oral sex (fem receiving), mating press, missionary, manhandling, slight handjob. sandman references. prose w poetry. wc: 20k, (but bear w me, it is worth it)

there is a dream you always dream of.

where you fall, infinitely. towards the void, towards space, towards the immensity of the ocean. you don't know. you never know, because you never reach the bottom. that dream you always dream about, about falling without knowing what awaits you is more recurrent than you would like to admit; it scares you more than you'd like to admit. but the most disturbing thing is that the hands that keep you suspended, those who prevent you from falling into the void are the ones that throw you in the first place.

a stranger. a friend. a lover. an enemy.

yet, it was intriguing.

your body shakes off its lethargy and you soon realize that you've been dozing off for a while when you're supposed to study. you find yourself slightly disoriented even though it's still 2 a.m., as if a whole lifetime has passed between the now and a couple of minutes ago; the sensation takes a little bit to wash off when your mouth stretches into an involuntary yawn, too potent to resist your exhaustion. every one of you is in the same dire state.

you embarked on what was meant to be a night of tranquil study, a forlorn endeavor to conquer an all-nighter. yet, at this moment, renjun reclines against jaemin's sturdy shoulder who nods over his notes, struggling to keep his eyes open. chenle has long departed for some ethereal realm where souls find solace while their earthly vessels rest. even there, he's not alone, jisung's always present sporadically responding too fatigued to discern that chenle's not with him, but in the cosmos.

“i was waiting for you” he mumbles at one point, getting no response from his murmuring partner.

and him. why is he here, among all the past nights? scattered on the sofa with no signs of being tired, walks his eyes along the lines of the book before his gaze falls on you and catches you sneaking a glance at him. you clear your throat feeling a rush of energy and turn your attention to the heavy tome on your lap, but the letters change places due to fatigue, and one more second looking at it will cause a migraine. so, you close the heavy book that almost threatens to wake up renjun who startles next to you but remains dreaming peacefully, now with jaemin laying his head on his, as you can no longer hear the meaningless conversation that jisung and chenle are having a few moments ago.

“i think it's just you and me,” you say, seeing how his way of responding to you is by pulling his head to the side, as if he knows something you don’t know yet.

the haze that has fallen on your eyes barely allows you to see his features clearly, but there's no need for that; messy honeycomb hair that he brushes every now and then, delicate hands that surely caress like a lover, brown sugar eyes that now are still on you “why don't you go to sleep?” he asks, and his voice sounds soft and slippery like a warm feeling that drips through your mind. “i can't,” you hear yourself say.

“why?”

he looks really interested. but why does he care so much? it's him who disappears at the moment when everyone else is asleep and appears days later, leaning against the brick wall of the university on any given cold morning, smoking a cigarette with the rest as if he had never left. as if you're the only one who's noticed he wasn't there.

“why don't you go to sleep?” you replicate, and you feel your heart beat slower. “besides, will you be able to study tomorrow with us, anyway?”

he just shrugs his shoulders, “why?”.

where will he go, when he's not around, when you didn't know each other, years ago? will he go to his place? will he tour the city because he has insomnia, like you? because he has nightmares, like you?

“because you'll be behind with us and we'll have to help you keep up.”

“is that so terrible?” he asks now with a composed tone, and due to deprivation, you can't turn back time so you haven't been so insensitive. “sorry,” you apologize, “i'm irritated by this test, that's why i must stay awake,” you finally confess, but is it the truth? doesn't wanting to know if he's going to leave that time have anything to do with the desire of not want to go to bed?

“everyone's asleep,” he points out. but you. the words burn in your tongue when he speaks again, “there's no point in studying while being tired.”

“i'm not tired.” but he knows you're lying, and your cheeks burn at the thought of him knowing that. you are, in the way your eyes stay closed longer than necessary when you blink, startling when an apex of desolate darkness comes and tries to lurks you in., you're too busy trying to soothe the dizzy spell to notice that he has come closer to you.

“go to sleep, star.”

“maybe if you... sleep with me.” donghyuck laughs briefly, shaking his head slightly, and you simply stay there, unable to look away, because one of the strands of his soft hair has moved slightly out of place, and you fight the urge to run your fingers between them. he doesn't lose his composure for a second, even though his cheeks are flushed. “would that be a good dream?”

“ask me tomorrow.”

your eyes close and open heavily, feeling the thick fog of sleep take possession of your mind while his figure seems to change the further you lose the battle. “i'll stay a few more minutes” you grumble in disadvantage of this weird sensation taking over your body, feeling his face being swallowed by the darkness that envelops you, casting shadows over his delicate, angular features. “now, yn.”

“i'm afraid i'll have nightmares about letters changing places if i do,” you say in an exhale.

he raises the corners of his lips, “i'll keep them away.”

his voice vibrates and passes through you in waves, resonating and expanding within you, injecting a silky sedative into your bloodstream. you are not in control of your body. the calming effect that his voice has is hard to battle, letting your head pull back and your arms fall inert on either side of your body, feeling the weight of the book slip like liquid out of your lap, feeling that every second you spend unsuccessfully in regaining control of your body is another second that slips from your fingers until it becomes an unstoppable retreat.

no matter how hard you strive to resist, slumber proves an unyielding force, and gradually, you sink deeper into morpheus domain. your body offers no resistance, your consciousness scatters throughout the boundless universe, wandering towards the endless expanse of the cosmos as the battle, both unfair and treacherous, dissipates.

as the world blurs, he's looking at you. it's his docile and magnanimous voice resounding in every bone that makes your voyage to the gloomy stars less terrible. and as you go there, you were looking at him.

time passes differently on the rem. you don't know how to explain it. it's hard to put into words. there is no activity at instance, only unconsciousness. nothing. and then... the entire universe formed with one pulse. time shrinks and cracks like a wormhole, and you're passing right through it.

your screams are barely a muffled sound in the immense darkness that rushes past you. your lungs fill with frigid air, and each frightened exhalation feels like a stab. fear tightens your stomach as you plummet through the hole. this is the moment when you remember a forgotten detail; it's just a nightmare, despite your emotions being real, despite feeling the terror emanating from your body.

there's always a mist clouding your dreams. something you dread when you close your eyes and find yourself alone for a moment in that darkness. thick, volatile, arcane. a piece of a starless sky, which weaves its own mantle that extinguishes sunlight. it smells like a thunderstorm, like the dark part of the moon. and yet, the terrors that fright the long nights are easily dissolve in liquid twilight when golden threads intervene, transforming the matter into a meteor shower.

and you're falling once again, into the stars. no. you're floating among them.

you are dreaming.

was this a fragment that belonged to the ether before it got lost in the darkness? was it yours? the matter becomes so thin that your unconscious body can pass through it. stranded in the endless void between the stars. but now everything glows.

a cozy bedroom. a café opened at midnight. a party. a city at night. a meadow. a black hole. a beach.

all happening, in the same fraction of time.

the wheat your fingers touch. the rock music that envelops your body not so different from the one that comes out of a jukebox at midnight while you dance slowly. your feet buried in the sand.

your gaze lowers to your feet before looking at the expanse of sea. little by little the sounds come back, and you're listening to the seagulls over the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.

“are you going to stand there?” chenle startles you as he passes by your side, smiling so openly while he walks away toward the shore, that makes you smile too.

your eyes water from looking straight at him, waiting for an answer, and you find yourself thinking what to say, when someone else does it. “no,” jisung answers with a light laugh.

a sense of unease settles in your stomach. you slice your head for memories of how you ended up in that place when all of a sudden you remember that you haven't woken up yet.

you keep dreaming, but why this dream? where are the others?

why do you seem to be an intruder in your own dream?

“chenle, where are w-…?” your words are cut off. you cut them yourself. your voice…. sounds different; it echoes through space before returning to you in waves, until all that's left is the sound of your pulse pumping behind your ears.

you witness something unusual. jisung and chenle watch you. their faces reveal nothing, frozen in a neutral expression. all of humanity torn from their jovial faces and leaving only a shell that shows no emotion whatsoever.

a thunder strikes the sky, and jisung's face transforms. “what are you doing here?” you hesitate before speaking because you remember how your voice sounded a few moments ago; just like how his sounds like now. “i don't like this dream.” you ask, and everything is unsettling for you. a smile disfigures the boy's pale face, “i do.”

within that inner space, the corner of the universe residing within you, something stirs.

you've never been able to dream. and he often slumbers eternally when you're conscious, only to awaken for fleeting moments, like the ones when you do dream, to play with them. a riddle of ivory and hair as dark as night, celestial as a sculpted statue, perfectly chiseled, with skin as pale as lunar dust, as frigid as thee. you refer to him as nightmare.

nightmare, like the ones that torment you in the long nights. like the monsters that inhabit your head. nightmare, like this one.

you don't know anything about it, only that it dwells in you. in the immensity of your nightmares. he. who is so wary of the touch of morpheus that takes you out of the rem, where you wake up, breathing erratically.

it's still dark. the room is darkened and you feel that someone is lurking in it. wrap its hands around you, feeling your heart skip a beat as the fear crawls inside, failing to escape the dreaming. “it's me, star. it's donghyuck, it's donghyuck,” his voice tinted with sedative calmness even though you sense your own desperation in it.

you feel his fingers in your hair, as if he can untangle the bad dreams from your head, while his voice continues to feel serene, having an effect on your runaway pulse. you allow yourself to be influenced. it's always this needs to find warmth even in a place on fire. letting your guard down even when your gut says something is wrong, that he feels wrong. “you can't have good dreams.” your breath gets stuck in your throat when you hear his nocturnal voice, “he'll make sure of that.”

your body sits up, and a thud rumble causes jisung to stir in his sleep. the dim light of a forgotten lamp reveals his features in deep sleep. chenle sobs beside you, in trouble. the world becomes silent as his mouth opens but nothing comes out of it, and suddenly his chest becomes still.

jisung mutters something when you're halfway from chenle. you don't hear it until he repeats it, this time more pressing, “wake— up.” your eyes travel to the boy, breathless at jisung's twisted features in a grimace of anguish.

“chenle, wake up.” your hands shake it, but there's no answer. there's nothing. he's not breathing. “chenle,” you say more urgently, slapping his face a couple of times, “you need to breathe.” your face moves closer to his chest to try to feel his heartbeat; you don't like the revelation at all. “chenle, now!” jisung frets under your attempts to awaken chenle; his murmurs begin to become more frequent and yours more desperate.

“it's just a dream.”

jisung keeps repeating «wake up», and you start to get impatient. in one last attempt, you shift your attention to him. your hands hesitate, suspended in the path it takes you to reach his shoulders, before you do, taking a breath of air. “wake up, now!”

chenle takes a long breath of oxygen behind you, sitting up in the sleeping bag almost as jisung's eyes widen in stupefaction. you feel your head lighter, forcing you to rest your weight on your elbows while catching your breath.

“what the hell was that?” chenle asks in a hoarse voice, casting a glance at jisung before you.

you deny shortly. “you stopped breathing.”

“i know… i was— drowning,” he mentions with a shallow tone.

“what were you dreaming?” you hear yourself asking even though you don't want to know the answer.

his eyes pull away from his friend to answer you. “a beach.”

( ✶ )

donghyuck has disappeared, as usual. and you can't come to the conclusion whether that's bad or good. but it is inevitable to go around the courtyard in search of his presence. try to find him in the cafeteria with the others, or in the library where you thought he would be with jaemin that day. but it is useless, and trying to contact him is even more so. you know you shouldn't worry too much about his absence; donghyuck always comes back. even when it takes days or weeks. and feeling that you would expect it all that time does not end up seeming hopeful or pathetic. because he just doesn't care. he makes no excuses. he gives no explanation. he just appears, as if only one day had passed, as if you had said goodbye yesterday.

and every time, the lapses in which he disappears become larger. at first, it was days; he always came with an excuse about being busy. then weeks. and so on, the lapses will grow wider, until you forget his features. until you forget him.

“don't think too hard, bug.” his voice takes you out of the planet of thoughts, but his eyes remain on the book in his hand, “it's no use.” then his gaze lands on you, and it feels like he can see through you.

“what are we searching for?” jaemin lets you change the subject and focus on the stall. “art project,” he absentmindedly informs, “my teacher wants us to investigate not-so-ordinary things.”

“thats why we're in the fantasy section?” renjun arrives unexpectedly and joins in the casual chat while leaving a pile of books on the shelf where jaemin had left his attention.

“urban fantasy, little bird,” jaemin corrects under the shared chuckles of you and renjun. “troubles with sleeping?” he asks, taking notice of the books renjun had had in his possession just minutes ago.

“per usual. is either i finish my midterms or my midterms finishes me.” he pats his shoulder before taking a seat at the study table designated by the science student committee to chat during breaks.

“nightmares?” jaemin inquires before renjun shakes his head and scares away his words with his hand in a relaxed gesture. “cute, but no.”

your countenance shadows by thoughts entangling as they form, “drowning?” the word escapes from your subconscious before you can stop your mouth and renjun looks at you strangely. “dreaming apnea.”

“you found that in your little search?” jaemin praises with a smug smile that causes renjun to roll his eyes. “are you having dreaming apnea?” he wonders looking at you.

you shake your head. “i—” no. just your taciturn nightmare, until that night. of all of them the one where he was there, and you dreamed. a few seconds of glory before falling down the hole that always waits below, “see you at the red door.” jaemin and renjun say goodbye to you smiling slightly before watching you walk away from the study table towards the exit.

you can't tell them about chenle yet. not without knowing what it means. your mind is fragmented in the fateful night moment when his heart stopped beating and the moment before your nightmare triggered a metamorphosis.

a sharp pain goes through your head just thinking about it. all those dreams, could they be yours? you find yourself trying to calm the drill that slices your brain at the little hint of dreaming when you hear their voices.

“... finds out.”

“... she's not...”

they abruptly shut up as if they feel like you're listening.

jisung's gaze looks sterner than usual when chenle speaks, “d'you think you're safer?”

“no.” his voice is barely a whisper.

chenle sighs audibly, “we can make mistakes, just… don't kill me in one of those.”

jisung laughs.

“it never turned into a nightmare before...”

his words keep echoing in your head for a long time later.

( ✶ )

“an essay on dreams.”

“you must be kidding!” renjun exclaims, throwing his head back to show his annoyance.

“what does that mean anyway?” jisung asks with his mouth full of popcorn, “like, to prove your point you'll fall asleep in front of everyone?” chenle laughs at the other end of the couch.

“hear me out for a second.”

“oh, not again,” replies chenle.

jaemin ignores chenle to answer the confused boy, “i'm doing research about the rem.”

“so dreams and nightmares, then,” mutters renjun.

“the spectrum.”

everyone looks at him, dumbfounded. “how does our brain process dreams? why can't we remember some? is there a fragmented consciousness?...”

you feel donghyuck gaze on you, and when you return it, you discover that he is looking at you strangely. “entertained?”

“very,” you say, feeling the word slide down your tongue and leave a strange aftertaste. you've been feeling weird this week. it's been a few days since you eavesdropped on chenle and jisung, and you don't know how to feel about it. you haven't talked about it; you've kept your distance while the waters calm down. in the meantime, dreaming and having mental lapses in identical proportions are taking your mind lately. dreams that now belong to you. dreams that you can't seem to have enough of. you wake up from them and spend the whole day waiting to go back to bed and dream. this time, what?

a terrace in milan. night walks in new york. a piano in a london theater.

your eyes close under the premise of rem and a thousand and one dreams, but you find yourself unable to fall asleep as you feel commotion in the small living room where everyone is asleep.

but donghyuck.

the bewilderment crawls into your skin, “what…?” but donghyuck presses a finger over his mouth. silence.

your eyes sweep the place, travel to chenle; his chest rises and falls.

another rumble is heard.

“where's renjun?” you question without making a sound.

kitchen.

you get there before him because he has to cross the entire room to catch up with you when you've already changed rooms. the lights are off, and yet the silvery light that trickles through the window is extinguished when it stumbles upon his stretched figure.

even when everything is dark, you can feel his gaze.

“going somewhere?”

you feel him smile. “this late?” your eyes squint to see in more detail. you feel donghyuck get closer. renjun's voice sounds different when he speaks, “i like the night better.”

renjun opens the door, and the light coming in from the moon reveals his closed eyes.

donghyuck gets in the way when you make a pretense of going to renjun. “he's asleep—” you intervene, watching him debate. renjun disappears through the door he has opened before going into the long night “i'll go.”

what he did. what he did to you. the words he said when you thought you were out of the nightmare; you start to think that all of this is happening because of him.

he can see it in the way you look at him.

“i'll bring him back, yn,” he says before letting you go with slight reluctance. his dark eyes are the last thing you see before he disappears in pursuit of renjun.

your breath condenses in your throat as you turn around and hit jisung's sleepy figure squarely. “where are they going?”

you find yourself in the dilemma of whether or not to tell him, when in the end your bad judgment wins out “donghyuck… he, renjun, he's…”

“sleepwalking.” jaemin's yawns as he passes the two of you to close the door. you both stare at him in surprise before he stiffens slightly and speaks, “one of the terrors of the rem spectrum.”

“terrors?”

“nightmares.”

chenle enters the kitchen scratching his stomach, “well, that doesn't sound silly anymore.”

“shouldn't we go after him?” you ask, “what if he gets hurt?” you add after watching jaemin shakes his head.

“donghyuck's with him,” jaemin persuades.

“and magically we should relax?” chenle says incredulously under the eldest's gaze.

after a few long seconds where everyone waits for an elaborate answer, jaemin takes a breath of air and lets out “yes.” with nothing else before heading to the leaving room.

“wait a fucking minute.” chenle goes after him, and consequently, jisung and you too. “that's it? are we leaving the safety of our friend to someone we see every forty days?” he utters without a hint of sleep, watching jaemin shrug his shoulders, “what if he's a werewolf?”

“oh, my god.”

“we're in the middle of halloween, he might as well just be reaching out to us to become one of his kind.”

“okay, kid, enough tv before going to bed.” jaemin lets go, shaking off the chenle's grip, “you too,” he adds, looking at jisung.

due to chenle's heavy gaze, reluctant to give his arm to twist, jaemin snorts, “he's not a fucking werewolf.”

“vampire?”

“no.”

“why do you trust him?” jaemin is surprised at the contrast between his conversation and yours, but when he responds, you feel like he's grateful that you asked.

“i have sleep paralysis.”

“at first i thought it was because of having to work at that bar so i could pay rent and college...” he remains silent and lets himself be swallowed up by his mind going at a thousand revolutions.

“but they turned longer and longer, until i couldn't close my eyes without the fear that i'd be imprisoned in my own body again.”

“he offered to wake me up when that happened. he stayed in my place for a few nights and helped me.”

“did you dream about him?” everyone looks at jisung before jaemin shakes his head.

“why would i dream about him?” chenle adds under his breath before deciding it was good time go back to sleep.

“i mean, has anyone ever?” jisung goes behind him, answering in low volume, leaving you with his words causing swirls in your head.

“have you?” jisung looks over his shoulder at your face, but is only met with a neutral gaze that doesn't reveal the dead-end labyrinths that build up every time you try to reveal a moon phase of donghyuck. “no.” when he's everywhere.

when he knew jaemin for longer and never appeared in his dreams. nor chenle or jisung. no one has ever dreamed of him, and you couldn't dream before that night.

monday comes by, and so tuesday. all at once, the sounds come back to you until they become a swarm from which you have no escape, pulling out of your small universe. the night continues its constant rhythm, forcing you to stay agile, waiting tables in a bar on some forgotten street.

“still don't know why we come here all the time,” chenle says, taking a sip from this beer the moment you left it in front of him as his gaze swept the seedy place where you work half a shift. you smile unapologetically as you leave another one in front of jisung. “cheaper beers,” he answers for you, “and jaemin and yn work here.”

“what's up with the frown?” jaemin's voice blends in with the rest of the chatter, coming in your direction with a sad grimace on his face, mockingly. chenle rolls his eyes, “i'm just saying that we might as well get out of here drunk or dead.”

“it's not that bad, lele,” jisung tries to appease unsuccessfully when chenle scoffs in response. “say that when we get matching stabs in our way out,” he adds with sulkiness.

jaemin clicks his tongue, “stabs are friday's special, don't worry about it today, little prince.”

“ha,ha.”

jaemin stops smiling to adress you, “hey, can you take out the trash?”

your steps guide you towards the door designated for staff, and the voices of the group fade into the distance, swallowed by the sea of souls in that overcrowded establishment. it's quite a challenge to navigate among swaying bodies and avoid the occasional vomit stains; a typical night at the red door. frankly, you have no idea how you ended up there, in that dim corner of the city's harbor, where the majority of the clientele appears to be a curious mix of fishermen and shady characters.

before braving the cold night outside, you cast one final look at the group, attempting to soothe chenle's mood as the icy wind lashes at your face.

a chill envelops the outside, causing the nearest souls to huddle indoors, even though it's bursting at the seams. your breath escapes in ethereal clouds as you step through the door; a single bulb intermittently lights the desolate alley. it flickers in a constant dance of light and darkness, and it's not until the third flicker that you realize you're not alone. three silhouettes wrap themselves in the cold of the night as you put the bags in the bin. it's the midst of october, and the city seems trapped in an endless cycle of rain and snow. the fishermen seek refuge inside that cozy bar before the first light of dawn breaks, prepared for their maritime journey.

they seem to have a pleasant conversation as you redo the march toward the cozy interior of the seedy bar when his laughter reaches you with the wind.

“tell me, sleepwalker.” his voice, so different from the one he uses with you, is the embodiment of the dark side of the moon, deep as the endless night. “there's a price for our knowledge, my dream,” whispers one of them, his companions barely whisper to each other with a seductive tone, appearing indifferent to the shadowy nuance with which donghyuck addresses them as if they were accustomed to hearing him that way, and you are the only one taken aback by witnessing it for the first time.

the bulb flickers and plunges you into darkness as they continue talking. in one flash, you see his broad back turning towards you. another flicker, and the features of his companions start to emerge as if they are being shaped in the dark time it takes for the bulb to light up the alley once more. your breath freezes in your throat.

“good dreaming, perhaps?” you find yourself considering that the entities he converses with might not be entirely of this world, and that donghyuck is not perturbed, but rather accustomed to their presence.

“doesn't work like that,” he replies with a hint of humor under the fog that causes his voice in you. “you've done it before,” appeals the other one starting to look more like a woman with each dark flicker. you see donghyuck leaning toward her, and it's impossible to discern when he turns his back to you. you feel the seconds pass with two beats of your heart, as donghyuck regains his composure, and the figure releases a laugh that indicates donghyuck's actions have affected her. your mind undergoes a revolution, not knowing what he has done, filling your head with ideas you don't want to let affect you.

a can blocks your path, disrupting the piercing silence of the alley as you struggle to increase the distance between him and you, while simultaneously shortening the one separating you from the door. suddenly, a dizziness envelops you as his eyes meet yours.

your elusive figure slips back into the bar after having listened to their entire conversation, having gone unnoticed by their radar. donghyuck turns his gaze back to the two women, consumed by dreams, appearing more like specters than humans due to the time they've spent traversing the dream realm. completely stripped of amusement when his eyes lock onto them, one of the women dares to speak, “look at you, so far from home. chasing a myth.”

“what would morpheus think if he sees you?” donghyuck nods in acknowledgment. both figures smile, mirroring each other in a shared consciousness. he remains silent as each passing second takes a toll on the women, now reduced to little more than shadows and uncertainty. their eyes narrow once again as donghyuck addresses them, “ask him yourselves. you're now, awakened.” his voice, brimming with power, issues a gentle reprimand for their roundabout approach. donghyuck watches them dissolve into the cold night, carried away by the wind to their ensnared bodies in the dreaming, before he figures out what to do with you. his eyes trace back to the spot where you vanished before he follows your trail within.

the darkness envelops the surroundings, weaving a perfect nest for nightmares and terrors. he can hear them, his dreams and nightmares, those dark and eager thoughts yearning to break free from his mind, craving to run wild in the world. his eyes catch the faint golden threads that barely endure; the realm of sweet dreams clings as a fragile inhabitant in that place overrun by nightmares. he sees your figure moving through the crowd, approaching the group of boys who seem to have stepped out of a fairy tale to which you feel you don't quite belong, always yearning to reach the sun and bask in its warmth, despite being destined to settle for shadows and cold. feeling confined and punished by the terrors, yet perceiving a spark in your eyes capable of kindling your own fire if that's what you need to stay warm.

a sturdy arm intercepts the space between your body and that of the group. your eyes follow the limb until they meet a face weathered by the storm, bloodshot eyes, and a repulsive smile. “another round of beer for this table, darling,” he grumbles. his companions cheer as you nod hesitantly, getting ready to go for the drinks, but the arm hasn't budged an inch. “what's wrong? i saw you smiling at that group over there. is there no smile for me?” the beer-stained breath wafts into your nostrils, reminding you to be cautious. the men exchange glances at your lack of reaction, allowing the arm that holds you captive to linger another second with them. you exhale and resume your walk when a jolt rocks your world, and a hand lands on your rear unceremoniously. “give us a smile!” unrestrained chaos erupts due to the man's audacious move, taking you by surprise. laughter erupts at their table as you break free from his grasp with force, the motion propelling you forward until you collide with a solid surface.

you gasp for breath, determined to untangle yourself from the arms that envelop you and keep you captive when your eyes meet donghyuck's gentle gaze before it shifts behind you. you see his eyes cloud over, and you recall the encounter with those specters from a moment ago, prompting you to break free from his grip and put as much distance between him and you as allowed, escaping to the boys who talk about dreams and nightmares.

thanks to jaemin's discoveries from his essay, everyone is more aware of the spectrum, as he often calls it. how nightmares influence sleepers, causing terrors such as apnoea, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, and sleepwalking; all the things that have been affecting you these past nights.

apnoea. the decease of holding your breath while diving in the ocean of dreaming. sleep paralysis. being conscious while being in the ether. nightmares. darkness that slips into your dreams and turns golden threads into liquid shadows. narcolepsy. the state of the consciousness that gets trapped in the ether. insomnia. inability to enter the dream spectrum, unwelcome.

“...morpheus and the dreamcatcher. how morpheus loved his dreams so much he turned them real.” you hear as you come closer.

“finally,” jaemin greets you before you realize he's talking to someone else. donghyuck has appeared behind you after you left him with those guys; his gaze has darkened. “shall we leave?”

“wait a minute.” chenle's voice interrupts donghyuck's, “is he coming?”

“why wouldn't he?” jaemin replies.

chenle scoffs graceless, “i don't know, jaems, maybe for the fact that all of this is happening when he's around,” he points out, sweeping his glare for approval, “besides, where the fuck is renjun, huh? bet he killed him and…”

“he, what?” renjun arrives without prior notice and places his hand on chenle's shoulder, who startles at the unexpected arrival of the boy. “ren!” jisung hugs the eldest under chenle's gaze.

“oh my god, tell me i'm not the only one who thinks this is a bad idea.”

“you've been thinking bad ideas since we arrived,” mocks jisung.

“whatever.”

your eyes take record of him, as much to everything. how chenle has big blue bags under his eyes, how jisung yawns every now and then, how jaemin seems barely here with you while renjun tries to pretend to be calm while he hasn't stopped fidgeting around.

nothing is said for a long time, but the aura remains the same, kneading the words and connecting them, failing to stay awake in class, being in a complete state of abstinence, being physically but absent. they being unable to sleep without the fear of facing their worst nightmares again, growing with each hopeless exhale, taking more space, becoming more ferocious, annihilating any iota of good dreaming.

“hey.” you blink repeatedly under jaemin's concerned gaze and offer him a reassuring smile before your gaze meets donghyuck's.

and how he looks more tired than ever.

with his bright eyes completely dull, distant expressions and a mind working at high speed behind his gaze lost somewhere in the universe that inhabits his head. he, has been having bad dreams? what will he dream of? what will his taste like? more worrying, how did he do it? making you neglect your duties for the simple fact of making you dream of outer space.

“it's dawning,” you comment, “we should probably get going.”

time fades away as they gather their belongings and venture into the dark night. your mind gets lost in a sea of thoughts before you remember that you've forgotten something, and you quickly retrace your steps back to the bar. you follow your steps automatically to the staff door, and your eyes find the piece of cloth on the coat rack. you take it in your hands, ready to return to your friends, when something catches your attention. the service door is slightly ajar, maybe due to the cold wind, maybe due to unknown hands.

your fingers brush against the doorknob to close it, but in a final breath, you decide to step out into the alley, guided by a hunch.

a thick, dark fog swirls on the wet ground of the alley, while the light bulb in your heart flickers to the rhythm of the sharp whistles in the air. the light reveals their figures, and darkness envelops them as you hear the sounds they make. the light shows the glint of their blades, while the darkness makes you feel more than hear the steel cutting through skin. the light reveals their sinister self-inflicted smiles, and darkness enshrouds them once again.

the dark mist rises and condenses in the spot behind them, taking shape, molding a pair of shoulders draped in black garments, hair as dark as the night, and two eyes that gaze at you with depth. you hear his vicious laughter resonating within you.

( ✶ )

another night descends upon all, and each one tries to find sleep. however, you find yourself willing to stay awake, trying to keep yourself at bay from the clutches of morpheus. you toss and turn on the sofa unable to find rest and choose to remain in the room's dimness.

the memories of that night haunt your thoughts, like persistent shadows refusing to fade. the images of what happened seem to replay in your mind again and again, giving you no respite.

as you're immersed in your thoughts, you sense chenle stirring in his dreams; the dreaming heads of everyone scattered in jaemin's small room like stars, and it all seems to happen again. it feels like an eternity has passed since they were all like this, every laugh, every conversation, every shared look and gesture of camaraderie among them, whose only concern was passing exams. but it's only been two weeks. two weeks without him.

your eyes begin to close unexpectedly. “enough,” you demand from the boy hidden in the shadows. “i'm not doing anything, star.” his eyes look like daydream pools when he looks at you, “you're just tired.”

you struggle against the lethargy that fills your body, reluctant to close your eyes after what you've seen, after witnessing what the darkness conceals. dreams, on the other side of the room, so far out of your reach. nightmares, your recurring companion when you shut your eyes. his tattooed on your subconscious, brimming with ruthless coldness against the specters, ingrained in the alley where the men cut off their own smiles.

“they were evil.” his voice yanks you from your reverie, “they use human bodies to wander through worlds while they sleep,” calm and warm, explains. your gaze darts toward renjun, sleeping. “yes,” he responds as though he'd anticipated your query. “you should’ve come sooner,” you reproach. donghyuck remains reticent as you unload your grievances upon him and allows you to vent until you feel hollow inside, while everything whirls around him. “i couldn't.”

“why?”

the words burn at the tip of your tongue, despite knowing the answer. despite having seen the lines of reality blur and worlds collapse. you can't decide whether to feel fear or relief; you can’t trust him anymore.

you leave donghyuck with the word in his mouth, rolling over on the couch. whatever half-truth he wants to tell you, you don't want to hear it.

it's faster that time. dreams don't put up resistance when you insert yourself into them. and again, you dream the same thing.

the sand you feel between your fingers as real as in the city, with jaemin. in the meadow, with renjun. in a black hole, alone.

you always resort to the same fragment of dream. and even though you stay out of it, the sleep is disturbed. it mutates.

“are you going to stand there?” chenle passes by your side, smiling so bright, completely ignoring what you see.

your eyes go to the expanse of sea behind them, which now rises in a wave until it blends with the blue of the sky; a sand island caught in the middle. the sounds of seagulls reverberate in the sky until you realize that it is not them but dolphins, using the clouds as waves.

“no,” jisung answers with a light laugh.

“don't make me drown this time,” chenle jokes, and you wonder.

is this chenle's dream or jisung's dream? or perhaps, something in between?

a thunderclap rumbles in every nerve joint at the same time as it does in the ground, forming the wake of the lightning in fingers that protrude from the sand and form rings that touch the sea. your eyes close dejectedly. it's the beginning of the denouement. no matter how you decide to appear, the result is always the same.

“it's a vortex.” you are startled to hear his well-known voice behind you, before you finally see him. his face… almost lights up even though it's shadowed with concern. but there's no doubt he could be containing a sun within. “it's bringing the walls down, so the dream glitches.”

“are you dreaming this too?”

you see the flutter of a strange smile that brightens up his face more, “i'm not dreaming, neither are you.” donghyuck scans the surroundings before taking note of you taking note of him. “this is chenle's dream,” he explains, “and jisung's,” he finally adds.

“they're both dreaming the same dream because of the vortex.”

“what's a vortex?”

“a sleep phenomenon,” he says, meditating. “what happens if it brings the walls down?”

a few seconds pass when your heart stops beating in the wake of his response, “the dreaming will collapse.” and that'll mean there will be no barrier between what is real and what is ethereal, so dreams will run free. and nightmares.

“their whole nature is dangerous. vortex cannot dream so they enters other's people,” donghyuck explains to you, “by doing this, the lines between dreams blurries, and two people dream about each other.” but it's impossible to look at him for long when you have secrets in your eyes. “it must be eradicated.”

“i thought people could dream about other people.”

“chenle is not dreaming about jisung, he is dreaming with jisung,” he remarks, “they're both consciously dreaming together because jisung is causing it.”

your eyes turn to donghyuck. “jisung is the vortex?”

he nods while something heavy settles in your stomach. it all makes sense now. all the inexplicable. everything out of the ordinary. their conversation. the day at the library where chenle was worried that someone would find out. all this time you thought they were talking about you, but they were actually talking about him. they were afraid of him.

what is he?

“what if you're wrong?” you question, wanting to get as far away from him as possible.

“i'm not.” his voice is tinged with regret, as if he were aware that you know he must do something irremediable, at any cost. “i have the entire collective unconscious.”

dreams. conveyed by threads to the planet of dreams, a labyrinth of interwoven strands that shape the entirety of existence, a web spun from something finer than mere dust. exquisitely delicate, suspended in the ethereal air, poised to glide through your fingers and move with the grace of otherworldly tendrils. able to knot and twine, whirl, and stretch, yet they remain unbroken, eternally binding the rem.

some of them are thinner or more delicate. they are malleable. vulnerable. easily influenced if pulled in the right way. they are susceptible to corruption.

sorrow settles on his countenance, “i need to protect the dreaming.”

“by eradicating him. that's your answer for all?”

restlessness. distrust. both emotions intertwine, and you can only sense the unfamiliar essence of something fluttering within you, exploring this place and awakening once more.

“star…,” donghyuck appeals, but you're deep enough. “if he's not dreaming he's not a threat.” you try to convince him back, but his eyes shun yours as if they might cast a spell on him against his will. “don't do this to me.”

“asking you a favor?”

as the sun sinks below the horizon, so does chenle and jisung. a glow casts shadows on his angular features, his eyes encapsulating the sunset as he responds, “because you already know the answer.”

nightmare contorts and twists its form. donghyuck senses that something is amiss when he sees your features contort with what appears to be annoyance and fear. he tries to reach you, but the ground beneath his feet trembles, and before he knows it, the earth beneath your feet splits open, a boulder begins to collapse into the sea that now wets your feet.

his hands reach out to you desperately, you feel them almost touching, keeping you suspended from the abysm.

“let go.” donghyuck's eyes are covered with astonishment, “the dream is collapsing itself.” your voice manages to sound convincing over the sound of the raging sea swallowing the rock. he denies, and you discover that it's not distrust that moves him to keep you in the dream with him, it's panic. “i can protect them, but i can't protect you if you let go.”

for the first time you see hesitation cloud his eyes. uncertainty. wherever you're going, he can't. and it terrifies him.

you were there before. often. “i'll be fine,” you nod, and the movement causes your cheeks to soak wet. “it's just a dream.”

you manage to dispel the uncertainty just a little. enough for him to grant. “you'll have to wake him up,” he informs. his gaze shifts to your clasped hands before you can nod, and your heart prepares under your ribs for the imminent moment of your dream. you see him hesitate. something clouding his mind.

his lips part but you notice the words freeze in his throat; resignation tinges his features as if he is giving up something, before letting you go.

you are reduced to nothing before you expand again and your lungs begin to fill with air. your body only has a few seconds to adjust to the change of states before you go towards the sleeping figure of chenle.

his chest rises and falls, and your pulse resets in relief. wake him up is easier this time. his sleepy eyes open before closing again. the rem state restarting into a new sleep cycle. you're pleased with it before heading to the other dreamer but he's gone.

you look for him in the dark room, before you give up and your body unconsciously heads towards donghyuck's. “donghyuck,” you call him as your hands carefully shake him.

his hair is wet. “hyuck, wake up.” fear grips your insides and begins to climb up your spine when you see him arising.

your face get soaked, feeling his body tense up when you wrap your arms around him, feeling you self-aware of it before you sense his hand resting awkwardly on your back.

your body still has the memory of the night gone by. you must separate yourself from him to make sure that he is the real donghyuck, and not one of the tricks of your mind; when you look at him, his gaze melts into yours. and you have no doubt left.

your close without you being able to help it, “no more nightmares,” he pronounces watching you nod; the world is already cruel as it is.

you're too tired to fight the tiredness, so you let yourself be deposited on the still warm surface of his sleeping bag. “don’t be afraid of me,” he whispers, and you think he's longing for it.

your hands meet his face blindly. donghyuck holds his breath the moment your fingers brush his lips.

sleep gains more ground, and your hands slide out of his face unwillingly, before he takes them between his.

“star…” he calls, but there's no answer from you.

the seconds go by more slowly, and you have to wait forever to feel his lashes tickling your cheeks. your lips being brushed softly. register in your memory.

you find donghyuck's slightly frozen gaze crumbling when a smile betrays you. “it'd be a good dream,” you say with your voice muffled in his embrace. you sense him nuzzling into you. “if i sleep with you?” he asks, surprising you for even remembering it.

the vortex, the sleepwalkers, his secrets, and your nightmares. all of them can wait, because everything takes a back seat that night. you no longer fear the dark, because you have known his eyes, and you can only feel warmth. an old worship.

“alright, then.”

( ✶ )

renjun plops down on the study table full of papers and coffee, turning cold. jaemin looks away from the book for a few seconds before going back into his reading as chenle is startled by the clatter of the tomes falling against the wood, casting a furtive glance at the boy before continuing to sleep and jisung appears running through the halls as he arrives late for the afternoon of study. everything goes back on track, but something's missing. he's missing.

you navigate oceans of time and hourglasses, listening to conversations that you don't feel like being part of, admiring the perfect picture that makes up their figures trying to solve puzzles and mini-games, once plagued by terrors, forgotten in the back of their minds. because dreams last, nightmares don't.

“what are we looking for, exactly?” a deja vú sentation even though you remember it. back in the library, jaemin is too busy gazing at the bookshelf to pay attention of you staring at him before pronouncing with certain doubt. “the dreamcatcher.”

jaemin looks at you with some amusement, “having bad dreams again?” you shake your head absently under his gaze. “having any.”

where did your nightmares go?

the nightmare sorter possesses a dark and mysterious power. what were once comforting and pleasant dreams for chenle were transformed into terrifying nightmares. for him, his safe haven was always a dream of the infinite sea, where calm waves and the endless horizon filled him with peace. but irony loomed over his mind, as his worst nightmare involved precisely what he loves the most: facing his own death amidst the waters, a victim of the depths that once provided him solace.

in jaemin's dream, his greatest desire has always been to be everywhere, to experience every corner of the world and absorb every possible experience. but the nightmare sorter toyed with his wish and paralysis became his worst enemy, and being trapped in one place tormented him.

after discovering that jisung had been breaking down sleep barriers to dream about his best friend, he barely spends time with any of you. chenle hasn't dreamed of drowning anymore, but the cost of that is mourning jisung's absence. and you can't help but feel responsible for that.

as these dreams turn into nightmares, you realize that space, in its vastness and mystery, has become the recurring theme of your nighttime fears. you didn't know you loved space so much until your nightmares of falling into the void turned into a journey among the stars.

what was his? vanishing? losing track of time? has he ever tell you?

you're afraid to know the answer. you extend the time of acknowledgment and ignore it as you grab your things in a hurry, hearing jaemin's short good luck when you go out in search of him.

you fear that he has vanished again. you fear having to wait another eternity. you fear that everything will go bad. as your pulse ticks an hourglass in countdown, you try to recompose your runaway heart, hoping that so will time, slipping through your fingers. eternity has always been cruel to you, so do knowledge. time is never enough and you've taken so long, so long to realize it, that you're afraid it's too late.

you've always known where to find him.

you lose the memory of how you end up in front of him, and you're aware that the time you've taken hasn't been kind to him.

“you came.” maybe, just maybe you knew all along because he was calling.

“i know.” but not in the sense of always knowing what the other person has said. to recognize a spoken fact. to gain knowledge. no. to know. you now do.

how the cosmos is his most precious asset. the thing for his entire existence.

“let me look out for you.”

“my narcolepsy...,” he appeals. now you can see him. you've always been able to see him for what he really is and that terrifies him.

the night of the vortex, he was afraid of being trapped in the ether. he was afraid you wouldn't wake him up. the nights he refused to sleep because the threat of being trapped in the rem kept him awake. hasn't he had a rest without fear?

“i know, and i still want to.”

he shakes his head. you terrifies him, and the more he immerses himself in you, the harder it will be to do what he has to do. dreams..., dreams are his most precious asset. the cosmos is what he most desires. there are a hundred million dreamers whose dreams he must collect, for they are as fragile as a crystal sphere, and on him depends the balance of the ethereal world, and that balance has been cracking since he began to let his guard down, for you.

yet he's so selfish, that now he sees you barely here with him, inside your head before turning around his bed and landing your eyes on his dark onyx, fixed on you. “go to sleep,” you say to him in a whisper, “i'll keep them away.”

even though it is dark, you see a flash of a smile. “what if i take too long?” he asks, closing his eyes as he faces the ceiling, as if he could see the moon from there. his hand stops feeling his heartbeat under his ribs, dropping it to the side of his body, inches from yours. “i'll bring you back.” to me.

“how will you know where to find me?”

even though it is dark, he can sense your smile.

“i'll always know where to find you.”

he doesn't say anything for a while, and for a moment you think he has already gone. his body suffers a small involuntary spasm as if struggling to stay awake for a few more minutes, before he rolls towards you and his breath combs loose strands of your hair. “come with me,” he says in a sleepy voice. you manage not to look restless when his fingers brush caresses on yours. your senses beat with the same intensity as your heart, and you fear that he can hear them by being so close. “where?” you wonder, stargazing at his eyes, “to my dreams.”

his words remain suspended longer in your head, resonating until they imitate your pulse, until they expand and get under your skin. a mist settles over your mind, and his voice reciting that invitation is diluted as a sedative effect that does not take long to take effect. there is no point in fighting morpheus. it feels like falling down an abyss and your fingers are squeezed harder between donghyuck's by inertia. you're falling, and falling.

at first, you only feel the beginning of everything. you feel your heartbeats, you feel your fingers, you feel the place where you are; you are aware of yourself. your eyes record the world unfolding before you, evolving as you become more conscious, like a thinking being, and you know you are in the ether. more than knowledge, you can feel it.

and before you can register it, you plunge into the abyss. like layers, you see worlds and spirals passing in a blur before your eyes. your voice sounds strange as an involuntary sound of awe escapes you, gazing at the hundreds of thousands of golden lights adorning the realm. the existence of the whole being a stark contrast to what you usually see when you fall. so many dreams, so many people coexisting in one place, that you'll never manage to grasp or take them all in.

you feel it before you can see it. your body stops falling and remains suspended, and as donghyuck's face shines through the mist, you think: «not a stranger. friend, lover, enemy.» holding your hands, preventing you from continuing to fall. “let me tell you a story,” he finally say, his raspy voice resonating among the realm, “about the great fall.” seconds pass, or maybe an entire eternity, where his gaze reveals nothing, but you fear that yours might show something: betrayal, before his hands release you from yours without reconsideration, and this time you fall...

towards his dreams.

when you find yourself in that place, you feel as ancient as the stars themselves, and a profound comprehension of everything dawns upon you.

in the realm of divinity, there resided a god whose face remained under a veil. you fear that such beauty is only seen by worthy souls. a being so mighty, yet lonely, who found solace amidst the clouds, weaving worlds, weaving dreams. this god had a love for his dreams so profound that he willed them into existence. two catchers, gatherers of the essence, were crafted to shape the rem, threading benevolent dreams into the very fabric of each slumbering mind. and thus, the cosmos came to life.

you watch the universe unfold before your eyes, creating itself, evolving on the fly, revealing a story, and you're almost certain you can hear donghyuck narrating it.

the dreamcatchers executed their duties and responsibilities with unwavering devotion, protecting the dream world of their creator. the very essence of dreaming hinged on their meticulous craftsmanship, with golden dreams as their finest creations. yet, a peculiar injustice prevailed: they could bestow dreams upon others but were forbidden from experiencing their own. this rule kindled a deep dissatisfaction in the elder of the two. it gazed upon the world from its lofty cloud, bestowing dreams with jealousy, and in secret, it harbored a desire to reshape its reality.

its face, beautiful and eternal, reflects discontent. shrouded in jealousy, the dreamcatcher laments feeling such emotions. it senses the injustice every time it's compelled to bestow good dreams and envies the dreamers whose fate is to protect. its visage grows more withered as it lets these emotions swirl within, losing its luster as they grow to poison its soul. its once delicate hands, which once found solace in crafting shimmering desires, now clench into fists when it departs the serene realm and ventures into the unknown, into the vast universe still destined to expand. and it creates.

however, the dreams it planted in their minds transformed into something else, something it couldn't contain within. they turned dark, malevolent and seeped out of its mind into the universe. morpheus soon noticed that something was amiss. the dreamers had been plagued by dreams whose trail was as dark as the nighttime mist. he called them nightmares.

the dreamcatcher pleaded for its forgiveness, but as a great god, mighty and solitary, morpheus could only sympathize with the dreamers. he banished the dreamcatcher from the dream world, the very dream it had once loved with all its heart. thus, unable to create golden conjectures, unable to dream, and forever plagued by its own creations as punishment for what it had done, the dreamcatcher fell, and fell…

towards the void, towards space, towards the immensity of the ocean.

there is a single door in front of you, and behind it, a bright haze seizes your eyes. your fingers brush against the cold knob before you pass through it. covering your eyes in reflex when a bright light scans you before everything returns to normal, and suddenly you are in a café, at night.

the lights are dim and warm, bathing the space where two dancing figures live. it is then that you hear the soft melody; familiar at the behest, as if you had worshipped it in another lifetime. they do not realize that you are there, observing in detail, because the boy looks singularly like someone whose features you never tend to forget.

“that's my favorite song,” you hear your voice say, but your lips remain sealed. “i know,” he answered, his voice muffled by your hair, and you could recognize that voice anywhere, in any version. “it reminds me of you,” you speak again, through the great hall. a version of yourself, close on the spectrum. you watch her look up until she meets donghyuck's and you hear him ask your other version: “what other things remind you of me?” with curiosity. “brown. and chocolate,” you said.

“mhmm...” the scene blurs. it overlaps with another one that occurred later that night. you keep hearing your voice but now you don't see yourself, you're seeing through. he's so close now, you can sense his warmth colliding against your body as colliding stars. “a teddy bear and a museum.” your eyes close when you feel him pushing inside, filling you with him, drinking his moans that he slowly lets out against your lips. “wood and trees. sunsets and sunny days.” your foreheads presses together when he spread your legs and bring them to his waist, rocking in and out in brief strokes, as his features contort into an struggled frown. “fuck... i'm so close,” he whines biting his lips that you kiss right away.

“milk and pearls. a field of grass and sunflowers, and horses running free.”

you sought his gaze, “so am i”.

your whole world shakes and you are short of breath when you are squeezed and spit elsewhere. you're in a cozy hall, but you're not alone. even agitated and dazed, you can hear it. the sounds he accompanies with guttural exhalations that cause your breathing to get stuck in your throat.

it is revealed before you his body scattered on the sofa, with his head pulled back while his wet and swollen mouth lets out gasps that you want to taste on your tongue. completely vulnerable, at the mercy of someone kneeling in front of him, tasting him. “what other things you can do with that mouth?” he whispers to you, now looking at you from above as his cock twitch in your grip. he rolls his eyes and lolls his head back when you bob down to the base of his girth, and back to the tip, circling the sensitive zone with your tongue. he exhales a chuckle, “fu—ck, star.”

star. as in you. this dream, this particular dream doesn't feel like the others. the others looked real, a piece of collective memory of something greater. a collection that crossed barriers and universes to meet in one place: his head. but why don't you have access to it? why is this the first time you have witnessed them? and is this dream his, or is it yours? before you can take registration you are wrapped in an ethereal mantle, turned into nothingness and returning materially elsewhere.

a party.

you see a version of yourself being dragged by donghyuck away from a boy with puppy eyes and someone else whose gaze shine so brightly that he seems to contain the starry night of that evening in his eyes. “i can find my way out on my own, cretin,” you hear you hissed at him, trying to get rid of him to no avail. “you are a jerk. i want you to know that.” you kept ranting as he led you both to the exit, “you bumbling buffoon, always have to mess things up. how i hate you,” you blurted out, seeing that they were past the exit.

“the exit is that…”

“shut the fuck up,” it seems like a deja vú now, when his eyes finally look at you, becoming a witness and not a watcher anymore. “what is going o...?” you say, before he interrupts you, “what were you doing kissing mark?” he asks, fuming.

your laughter fill the air but it doesn't feel like you “you don't tell me what to do, idiot,” you finally say. “do what you want,” he muttered, his face coming dangerously close to yours, a contest of who murdered the other with a stare began. “but do it out of my damn party,” he whispered. his breath tickling your cheeks.

“you're like this because i kissed mark instead of you?” the boy looks at you with surprise and concern in his eyes, staring at you eternally as you're now in control of your body. “w-what?” stutter, before you grab him by the neck and bring him closer to you, joining your lips with his.

the scene evaporates, and their bodies swirl like thick haze spilling into a dark room, where your bodies lay, intertwine. donghyuck's lips devours your mouth fervently with hungry kisses. wanting to appease a long-held desire. wanting to stop a flood of suppressed emotions. his movements becoming erratic, clumsy, desperate. trying to melt into each other, trying to kiss everywhere, touch everywhere. his hips thrusting into your hips in an unexpected movement. feeling his erection against your belly.

your hands run through his chest, shoulders, and neck, until getting into his dark hair, hearing a moan die in your half-open mouth. his body hovers over yours, legs wrapping around his waist as a flame burning in your chest, numbing your common sense, letting yourself be carried away by desire.

“say my name,” you whisper in his ear, “please.”

he towers over you, in all its glory, flexing the muscles that jump under his smooth cinnamon skin. looking at you affectionately with his brown orbs, you can't help but soften you as your hand goes to his cheek, urgent. “yn,” he pronounces.

his voice has always caused you to have mixed feelings, but this time something was missing. it wasn't his voice. it was him. someone else's donghyuck. of some version of you that you wish you could be. better, kinder, less broken.

his lips deposit a kiss on your wrist. brown locks tickling you in instances before wrapping you in his warm gaze, full of cherish that in some inexplicable way has traveled through entire cosmos and has been shared, passed and given to each one of them, to look at you the way they looked at you in every parallels. but you can't stay with him.

“i promised him i'd find him.”

“who?”

“my donghyuck.”

how much time passes, in which you are nothing and everything? in which you see yourself in all your versions, while you vanish like sea foam and slip between his consciousness.

crossing the limbo that inhabits the cosmos in its search, you find the blurred line that separates this world. just a fragile and brittle barrier that houses the dense core of nightmares, containing the thick essence of terrors trapped, far, far away from his dreaming. nightmares from all places, collected from all the sleepers trapped in the one place he thought they'd be out of the reach of the dreamers, in his little ether, having to carry them, for how long?

there is no way to see through it. your breath condenses in the air between as the black mist lashes against the barrier, before stirring until it petrifies again due to the low temperatures. darkness and shadow reigning at the touch of your fingers, its eerie dance a mimicry of something unsettling, moving strangely, as if imitating…

“a black hole.”

your dream. your nightmare. your taciturn lover.

converted in front of you into what you fear most, having self-consciousness to be able to see within, taking your deepest fears and making them its own. the tick essence moves when you touch the barrier. it contracts against itself before evaporating and vanishing into nothing, forming a wormhole where you can see through donghyuck standing on the other side.

your body reacts on its own.

your hands sting when they impact against the cold frozen glass that eats the skin of your palms. “donghyuck.” it's too cold there. your breath condenses in front of you when you call his name, the awakening of knowledge when you notice it comes from the other side. cold, vast, arid. “donghyuck!” the shadow retracts, the haze disperses, and you know it's him. however, it gives in immediately and the dark essence regains strength. it has a will of its own, and you're terrified to know that it has more power than you think. a glorious creation out of control, impossible to contain.

you despair with every passing second and your efforts are futile. breaking the glass is not possible. You're afraid you're not really there. unable to alter the ethereal world, you are just a projection in the space.

your mind races at a thousand revolutions, quickly grasping what that means. you look into the darkness, and the darkness seems to look back at you, before it seems to call you to it, and you respond by becoming more than dust.

your senses stretch and intertwine in a spiral that lulls you into semi-unconsciousness as you stir in your dreams. present, not present. materially, fleetingly. all. nothing. before the icy touch on your arm pulls you out of the planet of dreams. you blink adjusting your sight just to watch a small figure at the foot of your bed.

“mommy.” it takes a while to get used to the environment, completely dizzy and confused, pulling you out of your slumber almost immediately and shooting your body upright the moment you sense him whimpering. “jisoo, sweetheart...” how do you know his name? how are you so certain that you know him, taking him in your arms and comforting him as if you were made created solely for that purpose. to protect him. “i dreamt bad things,” he confesses, rubbing his eyes as you bring him with you under the covers.

you remain silent, stroking his back and hair, lost in your head. with the feeling that you're forgetting something. you look over your shoulder and only find the space next to you empty. your lips leave a small kiss on the crown of his head. “don't worry, love.”

jisoo stands still in your arms as his words linger in your head, echoing in every recessed corner of your soul, gnawing at your insides, and you can't help but feel devastated. you want, you fervently desire to take his nightmares out of him, take them with you, carry them on you. you could use your own soul as a shield, if it meant he never knew that sorrow. “what was your nightmare about, darling?” you whisper in his ear, promising to seek for it in every corner of the cosmos, until it is reduced to little less than nothing.

his little deer eyes glow in the dark like two shiny stars, bright. his sweet little voice speaks, and all your nerve endings tighten so tightly that it hurts when he pronounces, “about you.”

the room fades away, and you're unsure if it's by your will or that of the terrors. someone screams in the distance as your eyes remain closed, reluctant to look further, all the while sensing that your fear is no longer yours but belongs to it. how can it know? how is it so aware? the space grows cold, and you huddle against it to keep its cold fingers at bay, but it envelops you in its arms, and grief and despair settle in your stomach as it takes you with it. it smells of night, of a sky stripped of stars, of endless darkness. you feel a certain comfort, a certain familiarity. the screams cease when you discover it was you in the beginning, now reduced to barely audible sobs that find solace as it shushes you.

the mist solidifies, and you sense the change as your face now presses against a soft yet firm surface, feeling the weight of their arms supporting you. nightmare carries you with it, and your terrors dissipate. you hear a snort followed by a chuckle as you feel your arms wrapping around him, tighter. “tired of screaming, sweetheart? too bad, i'd rather hear them some other time.” their voice is like a liquid storm, like the nocturnal wind. it resembles nothing you've heard before; a night in wakefulness, but above all, it's not like his.

“there's a great feast here, don't you think?” he asks, feeling him permeate everywhere but holding you close to make sure you stay with him. when you look at him, vague memories start to take shape in your mind, like fragments of a forgotten dream. an uncomfortable feeling envelops you, and recognition grows, crystallizing into a solid image. you've seen this figure before, in the alley, amidst darkness and shadows. you vividly remember what he did to those men, the terror that emanated from him. “time to wake up.”

you're on the verge of letting him take you along, on the verge of allowing yourself to wake up.

“no!” your voice comes out stronger than you expect, causing the nightmare to recoil and look at you with subtle surprise. his hair sways unrealistically like the waves of a sea entirely of the cosmos, and his head tilts back as he listens to you. “he won't mind. he's trapped.” it would be so easy to just leave, to leave him at the mercy of the night terrors. but you can't be surprised when you shake your head, and he shrugs, showing indifference, “your loss.” and vanishes.

the mist stirs as though it greets your return with eager delight. you willingly descend into the unruly tempest, offering yourself as sacrificial allure. donghyuck missed a crucial chapter in the tale. of how the nightmares rebelled against the nightmare sorter, an unceasing thirst for its very essence, an unrelenting, perpetual duty to purvey dreams stolen with a reluctant hand from dreamers, bereft of alternatives. all in the relentless pursuit of quelling its own terrors, to appease its nightmares and prevent them from consuming it.

the swirl of bad dreams roars around you, making your way through the indomitable, self-aware blackness. a creature created out of darkness. no vestiges of giving truce and claiming their new trophy. your trophy. a gold mine compared to the rest. golden dreams as its bearer. you can almost feel the hunger of your peers, awake. you can almost feel your own. the sensations that come back like poison clouding your judgment. it hovers over you almost imposible to see the light, calling you from the depths.

inside the matter is different. your body barely manages to stay on land, even your hair moves like the waves of a dark wave. above, high above your head, you observe his body disturbingly still, and your feet stop skimming the ground to close the space between both.

he casts a golden light almost extinguished. he sleeps where dreams run awake.

“hyuck.” his face seems to have aged a thousand years. your hands brush against his dull and lifeless features, and you are afraid that you are late. “hyuck, wake up.” the dark scenery reveals itself ecstatic, and a tingle rises up your spine as it falls into the realization of what it meant. “no.” it is too late. you've taken too long to find him, and nightmares have claimed him as theirs.

you have broken your promise.

he now belongs to us.

they have overpowered you. they've beaten you in numbers. that being who mocks you cannot be right. it's not; that conscious darkness belongs to you.

“i made you.”

“we are more.”

“no, you're not,” you reply with mockery, “you are what i tell you to be.” the voices fall silent, and the scent they emit clouds your sense of smell. disappointment. sadness. mourning. fear. “you're not here.”

the darkness disperses into a scream that echoes to the ends of the realm as you feel the warm wake of donghyuck's hand perching on yours. his fingers tangle in yours, just as his presence. his breath hits the hidden place on your neck when you hug him for an eternity. inmersed in each other.

“is this where you go, when you're asleep?” you inquire, helping him to get up. “i need to stay here as long as i'm need to,” he explains, too distracted to let go of your hand.

“you shouldn't have entered here,” he adds, reproachfully.

“why did you?”

“i have duties,” he says with an uncommon tone. mortified. hopeless. imprinting a wild emotion, he enunciates every word with them, “i have dreams to take care of.”

“and who takes care of you?”

“i'm fine.” but he's not. when his eyes close to your touch, and his eyebrows gather in a restrained emotion pressing his cheek against your palm for more contact you know he's not. “i made a promise.”

“so did i.” as his gaze spills into yours, his lips burn for saying that he has been looking for you all over the universe. in all parallels. that he would never have dared to enter the tangle of nightmares if he had not believed you were inside it. that you weren't the only one who fell that instance, lost now in the eternal realm, because he followed you. but he keeps it to himself, and instead, he lets himself be carried away by the cooing of your touch, by the softness of your voice, telling him to go home.

as the ethereal shroud unfurls from around you, you're unsure whether mere hours have passed or an entire eternity. you feel the world spin, and it takes a significant effort to pry your eyes open. despite having slept, you're weary as if a thief has stolen your sleep. “the effect will linger for a bit,” you hear his drowsy voice instructing, pulling you from your reverie. how long were you inside his mind? how many days have passed since you went to sleep?

“don't dwell on it too much. it's better not to know.” your eyes open slowly, reinvigorated by his voice rousing you from slumber. it's then that you notice his fingers tracing through the strands of your hair.

the line that once stood wavering is now too blurred to tell when it was crossed, an eternity ago, as you inhale the comforting scent of home that emanates from his body, cradling yours. “how did you do it?” you hear yourself ask, too exhausted to feel intrusive. the dream you now cradle like a relic, forged by his golden threads, turning the darkness into something less than a place where the stars would shine brighter. you sense his chest vibrate as he makes a brief sound in his throat, a sign that he is listening despite being more in the realm of dreams than there with you. “i've known you since i was born.”

he watches you with a multitude of suppressed emotions as you ascend his body and hover above him, your hair cascading like the nightly cloak that always envelops him when he's lost in his dreams. his gaze weaves stars and conjectures as he forms two crescents while smiling with weariness, and longing clouds your judgment.

“how did you know where to find me?” he asks.

as though the constellations themselves had liquefied, trickling into his gaze, your responds “i've known it since i was born.”

your lips spill your essence onto his in a cautious yet passionate encounter. the world recedes, and all at once, the kiss assumes the flavors of countless others, a collective memory. and yet, his lips are the only ones you've been craving all along. your heart beats with a more deliberate cadence, mirroring the unhurried rhythm of the universe as his hands echo the gentle contours of your face feeling his lips parting slightly upon yours, each kiss becoming deeper, each kiss becoming eternal. your mouths unite in the obscurity, an unceasing communion, causing time to unravel and elongate until the boundary between you and him becomes an indistinct, boundless continuum.

donghyuck deposits you back into the comfort of his bed, descending on you until his body is mated to yours. lips and teeth taste your mouth. the elixir of liquid stars savored on your tongue. you cling to his body completely drunk on his longing-flavored kisses. hands tangling in his hair pulling him closer to you, mouths merging in a metamorphosis of tongues and gasps, willing to safeguard each other's sigh rather than break the kiss for air.

his tresses tickle your cheeks, his eyelashes caress your cheekbones and his hands have not left your face. you fear you are being devoured with each kiss deposited on your lips, with the taste of his tongue on yours. you fear that you could become nothing.

you feel his body melt over yours. a gasp leaves his lips extinguished in your mouth as your hands venture down his broad shoulders and arms, firm yet delicate. you hold your breath as his body moves over yours, taking your hands in his above your head as his hips sink against yours. he presses down, rocking against you in an involuntary motion while still kissing you. “star.” his voice wreaks havoc on you, causing a pit to appear in your belly, pushing you down.

clothes begin to get in the way and become scarce. his fingers leave trails wherever he roams, your chest, your belly, until they hover around your legs, touching the inside of your thighs as he drinks your moans from your mouth, bristling your skin. feeling his silky chiseled body move over you, mingling with yours, permeating every corner of you with his presence.

your breath catches as you hear him growl as he rolls onto the bed, pulling away from you. your body burns in the places where he no longer touches you, your lips burn in protest against his.

“what is it?” his shortness of breath mingles with the anguish that assails you when he doesn't speak to you.

meditative, lost, tormented. he's never only in one place. he's everywhere. scattered in other heads, aware of all of them. in vigil. and sometimes, they don't leave him alone, unable to get rid of them, destined always to carry the conscience of dreams, and so, nightmares.

as a struggle takes place in the universe where he's conscious, your hands cradle his face and for an instant, “focus on me.” he hides like a moon phase in the hidden place of your neck, drawing you to him like an anchor that keeps him with you, pulling you onto his lap, you end up sitting in each other's embrace. “hyuck, stay with me.” until his worries become as small as an applesauce that you can push away from his shoulder.

until he finds his way back to you.

and so his mouth.

entangled. a jumble of gasps and glances that seem to repeat each other's name. a religion founded on his lips pressing against your collarbone and his fingers burying themselves in your waist. sucking the bristling skin of his shoulders, the soft skin of his neck, the sweet and comforting scent of his lips, drinking in the other's panting as his length presses against the hot zone of your core. lifting you above him as you feel him venture beneath you, as you feel his fingers wrap around your girth and guide it to brush against you, as you feel yourself spreading up, giving him room as you lower yourself onto it all the way to the base.

both of you furrow your brows at the pleasurable sensation. sensing his member fit snugly wrapped around your silky walls. the hole tingles from you and you bite your lip, feeling full and blissful as donghyuck's hand presses into your belly. you arch involuntarily pushing back your hips. and consequently, moving forth over his lap.

a hiss departs from his lips before his features relax and a pant follows your name that you taste from his mouth open.

the sounds emerge and fill the room. the touch of your bodies mixes with the gasps. the stars in the sky mingle with the stars in your eyes, and your mouths speak each other's name between kisses until the vast infinity remembers you. little moans and whimpers that you bite from his mouth, that die in yours. precious, like him. tinged with adoration, with need. your body vibrates and enjoys his beneath you, burying itself with each thrust of your hips, stealing your breath as his find yours first, touching the sweet spot inside that give their purpose when your head tilts back and it is impossible to keep your eyes on his daydream eyes.

the firmness of his erection presses against your walls as you rock back and forth, stiff but so soft it slides out before your fingers guide it back into you. you revel in his face fading into the raw pleasure that splices his body. pink lips and bitten a thousand and one times by your mouth. silent guttural sounds you've been deprived of for an eternity.

enernity. eternity.

the world is shrinking. it ends. it resurfaces in the same way that your exhalations soak your mouths. in which your hands are lost in his silky hair and his in your intimacy. suffering a spasm when his graceful fingers begin to trace circles in the swelling of your clitoris, and his warm tongue wraps around one of your erect nipples.

no needs for words. there isn't a language yet invented that can encapsulate the feeling the way your mouths do, nor another way to talk than your eyes, gazing at each other.

you comb his hair, untangling dreams from his head, drugged in the delight of his touch to the beat of your hips riding him. the silky sounds of your dilated pussy coating his cock, ramming completely enraptured by the sensation generated by the liquid sound of your ecstasy sliding and lubricating his length, feeling it hit the soft wall inside you when you go down completely and begin to ride him with short strokes that he controls with his hands on your waist.

you try to suppress the unconscious sounds you let out every time he sinks into you at his pick-up pace accompanied by the liquid splash of your crotch lubricating his cock. donghyuck notices the struggle that blurs your gaze just by looking at you. “keep doing like that, precious,” he exhales and your hands go to his on your waist, suddenly dazed by his mere voice. “mm-hm, like that.” his voice cuts off at the end of the sentence into a strangled vowel when your insides squeeze around him in a spasm.

you squeal and hold tighter on his hands sensing your whole insides glow. “baby.” the hole in your belly expands and shot euphoria through your bloodstream, and donghyuck holds you closer, til you can hear his heartbeat, or is it yours? a desperate sound leaves your mouth parted open as your legs go numb and your mind spreads in the space. and his grip becomes tighter, “h-hyuck.” your body jolts back and forth along his length buried in your walls and a tingle bathes your limbs. and as the sensation expands towards the edge of the universe, and the stars spills into you as he lets out your name caught between one last exhausted moan, and you fall, asleep.

and it happens. all at once. at the same time.

the memories you've been deprived of as punishment. to be completely alone in the vast infinity, now filled with extracts of essence collected from different places from a shared conscious of you, in all alternate universes with his presence. feeling completely comforted that there are other stories, where everything is simpler, where love prevails in most of them. where there are a thousand and one scenarios where you and donghyuck always manage to find each other.

this piece of consciousness that was long stripped of you, as if morpheus knew that leaving you alone with your own nightmares wouldn't punish enough, he also took away your memories with donghyuck. he let you forget him and distrust him, and you couldn't conceive which part of the punishment was worse: to be the one who forgets, or to be the one who is forgotten.

it takes you a while to get used to the uncovering of memories from a collective memory. as you are now aware of everything around you. and yet, the dilemma of whether it's a dream or a reality still remains.

“dream?” you ask him, so close to his face you can see his moles forming a little constellation. your little constellation.

“dreamlike.”

you bet his dreams taste exquisite but his lips taste more so.

( ✶ )

you feel it before you can hear it. the change in matter that floats around you. join in total alertness, while you continue your work as if you don't notice the way your hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. humming a stray song while trying to sharpen what your subconscious tells you to pay attention to, but only a fraction of a second has passed, and the intruder is gone again.

he's been coming for three nights now. at first, you felt something detach from your chest, the absence where it once was now with a hole that threatened to eat itself. a silky, cold sensation that slips away into the starless night. you can't help but think it's due to a collateral action after donghyuck showed you the dreaming, and stole you from his embrace that never failed to rip you from morpheus, so you could rest on his instead.

your steps take you back to the cozy room and to the tangle of legs and sheets in which you had managed to emerge victorious a few hours ago. something flutters in your chest as you watch him sleep peacefully, oblivious to the anguish that grips your insides as you imagine this same scenario without you. sleeping, trapped in the ether. you're not capable of aging, you doubt that you're not eternal, but time has always been your rival. and while he sleeps, time narrows, expands, moves.

all this time he's been away, he's only been asleep. and you don't find anything sadder than that, you don't find any comfort in knowing it either. because without him, the cosmos protector, dreams run wild. affordable, manipulable, fragile. tender, like the soft skin exposed by his sweatpants, golden as his touch. tempting, like his wet mouth, part open. vulnerable, such as the area behind his ears.

all this time, you were looking out for his dreams.

your lips sit on the warm skin of his stomach and it takes all your willpower not to venture out, just far enough away to go up to his chest and caress his collarbones. kisses deposited in the valley of his neck until you reach his cheeks.

“wake up.” the room stay still. you hold your breath.

before your eyes register the awakening. slowly coming out of the ether, his eyelashes fluttering with the laziness of someone who is still drowsy. you leave a chaste kiss on his cheeks, suddenly pink-tinged and find yourself doubting whether he's able to stay aware of what's going on with his body when he's lost somewhere else.

it takes seconds for him to recover from his trip to the stars, where he receives everything you give him: water, in case he gets thirsty, a half-finished sandwich and headache pills. you look at him with urgency as the sandwich is finished and you can't find his movements so endearing, especially when he grabs you by the cheeks and his lips leave a tender kiss on your mouth.

his body returns to the cozy nest that the sheets form with you. he kisses you urgently, eyes darkening at the sight of you, out of breath because, you had spent so much time fearing darkness when now it only reminds you of him. “how's the dreaming?,” you ask, cradling his face. “so fucking long,” he mutters before you're kissed again.

your body is trapped underneath his and you can't help but melt with every caress his fingers leave as he settles between your legs while slowly kissing you. lips splitting in a moan to make room for his silky tongue sliding into your needy mouth. your senses are wriggled in a bundle of sensations that explode after a long time without him. your skin crawls. and he slides his fingers along your stomach.

you're embarrassed that he knows how much you've missed him. how ecstatic you are just for a few kisses because you've been without them for a fraction of eternity. he suppresses a curse when you feel so silky, “so wet.” fingers smoothly sliding down your folds as his lips drift off to your exposed neck. your mouth opens in a silent gasp as you feel his digits move in circles in the swollen area of your pussy.

a sweet sensation forms there where he touches. you're out of breath. a smile forming in your lips that he tastes later with this mouth. your feelings are wired at the destructive kiss, melting you entirely. you couldn't resist the moans, coming from your mouth as a prayer that only he could fulfill. as your body twirled from his touch, wanting more.

“hyuck.” your stomach feels on fire. your whole body buzzes to his fingers slowly stimulating your clit. “keep saying my name like that.” your body arches involuntarily as you feel the embers come down to your crotch and slide into your legs, completely devastated.

dying moans as dying stars. needy. eager. your hands fisted in his chest while his fingers venture dangerously down before feeling them inserting inside.

his fingers expanding you as he adjusts them within your walls release a pleasant sensation that makes your eyes roll behind your eyelids. “so tight, star.” a hiss assails you when you feel your skin tingling the moment he starts to pump his digits in you, “i can't wait to fuck you.”

he exhales when your fingers travel to your clit. hands now touching while his are inside you. the brief touches of your skins cause a shiver to run through your entire body. his voice is ten times darker than before, deep and filled with raw desire, “feels good?” fingers curling gently while constantly stroking your sensitive wall. “too— good.”

you missed him. you missed him an entire lifetime. as his fingers wreak havoc on you and his voice tells you how pretty you are, your whole body reacts in electricity, shooting on your bloodstream, reaching your belly. “you take my fingers so well, mhm?” donghyuck feels the waves on his fingers still moving inside while you pass your high.

he lets out a hearty laugh when your fingers travel to his body, needily removing his clothes. you don't really care that he knows how much you crave him. how much your body calls his name. how much it hurts you to want him inside. he rejoices to see you undress him and take off your pajamas and panties yourself, how willing you are for him to fuck you.

he spreads your legs and enjoys the sight of your swollen and flushed pussy soaking his fingers.

you hear him moaning under his breath, “i want to taste you, baby. fuck, i need it so bad.” his words wreak havoc on your lower belly, and you find yourself squeezing nothing; you want it too.

he devours you completely, and your breath is choppy only with his mouth working miracles on your already sensitive folds. his breath hits the right area that makes your eyes close tightly, and exhale with difficulty, “you taste so good after i fingered you.” his tongue moves over the hard skin of your clit and you swear you're about to combust.

your hands tangle in his hair as the lashes of his tongue take your breath away. his warm breath flushes all over your skin as he opens his mouth and starts sucking gently. your throat feels pasty when a moan reverberates in your chest as you feel a sharp tingle in your belly. “shit,” you pant, feeling your stomach tighten and your whole body sinking into the mattress. senses going numb to donghyuck humming in delight against your skin before he feels your body convulse slightly, and quickly using his warm palm to keep your legs from closing when a sharp sensation rip you apart. “take it. take me.”

a strangled sound comes out of your mouth before you feel your body sink into violent spasms. the raw desire injected into your bloodstream is too much for you to process in one go, leaving you completely light and inebriated, tense and contorted under his heavy gaze, drinking the sight of your naked body still suffering the aftermath of his acts on you.

something glows behind his dilated pupils when you recover your blurry sight. watching him hovering over you, you looked in his eyes, two dark orbs, consumed entirely by the pupil; a black hole that you wouldn't mind falling into.

a guttural grunt escapes his lips as he feels your fingers curl around his wet girth. you stifle a gasp as you feel it hard. hands moving up and down, stroking his dick as exerting pressure. feeling his delicate cock warm and soft, you gently stimulate it. donghyuck's head falls forward, and you bite your lip, delighting in the sight of his blushing penis, glistening with precum pearls.

“say that you want me,” he utters, “that i'm yours.”

words get stuck in your throat, you feel a rush of ecstasy when you guide him in, watching him being affected by you when he slides fully. “we belong to each other.”

you can only let yourself be carried away by the uncontrolled sensation caused by his cock deliciously entering inside. a sweet burn takes your breath away as you feel him so thick, settling inside you, pressing against your aroused walls. a tremor shakes your legs when he stands still for you to adjust around him; his lips are part open absorbing the way your nerves clenched around him, your fingers squeeze around the tender skin of his arms when you feel him push inward.

you feel so overwhelmed that your legs don't respond to your stimuli, completely, irrevocably, eagerly at his will.

a deep moan escapes from his lips. “you feel good,” he whispers as you feel him starting to thrust you. a hiss assails you, still sore from his fingers, “i'll be gentle.”

his mouth leaves moist kisses on yours half-open, unable to generate a single coherent thought other than the arcane pleasure that welcomes you every time you feel him sliding in and out, steady. sharply. “so good for me.” he adds in a moan, a hidden feeling of belonging while passionately pounding you: «just for me». “soaking my dick so g-good, taking me so good— oh,” he murmurs, twitching his face, “always wet and tight no matter how much i fuck you, huh?” he breathes heavily against you open mouth before he traps your lower lip in his teeth.

his tongue enters your mouth and makes you feel all the voracious desire he has to make you his, imprinted in his kisses, in the way his fingers bury themselves in your soft skin while his girth is buried into you over and over, leaving you breathless.

your voice, clouded by the euphoria that is unleashed in your stomach, can barely hiss with a deep groan “f-feels good.” your cheeks are wet, eyes under the haze of tears of pleasure that involuntarily shake you when he pushes against your intimacy. your eyes open only to take record of him, looking so hauntingly beautiful. holy. eyes clouded by the simmering desire in his dilated pupils as he admires you take his cock, letting out all these emotions he feels at the same time in moans and grunts that delight your ears every time he sinks into you.

“mine.”

“always—, my yn.”

a pride catches you knowing that you are his.

a demolished feeling shaking your body under his heavy gaze when he wraps his arm under your thighs and brings them to your ribs. your whole self fixed in the way he fucks you deeper. “o-oh shit,” you shudder. ��you're d-doing so good.” he hovers over you with an exhale, “soaking wet for me,” pressing you against the mattress, his dick hammers your cunt sharply, causing your eyes to slam shut. your drenched pussy accompanies his thrusts with the lascivious sound of your arousal coating his girth every time it goes in and out. feeling his warm breath in your ear as he slams his pelvis rhythmically into you, taking exhales with each thrust. “oh— fuck.” it feels so good. he feels so good. you're a whole mess of thoughts, speechless. a jumble of gasping and sobbing and yet the only thing that comes from your mouth is his name in your shaky voice.

“you're making me feel so— good calling my name.” donghyuck opens his mouth to let out a wild growl that causes your legs to tremble. his eyes are two pools that take you to the abyss. blushing with labored breathing, your neck burns when you are aware that it is because of you. feeling your swollen pussy throbbing with sharp pleasure, which tears your belly at him constantly hitting every nerve in you.

his expert moves shift your body with ease. he puts you in different positions that cause screams in you. completely carried away by the crushing of his pelvis pounding you, rough and raw. “hyuck!” a pant of surprise assails you at the simple thought of him shifting you in a heartbeat before your thoughts get messy and lose the thread when you sense the warm feeling of him inside you again, stretching you with smoothness every time. arching your back as a silent moan burns in your throat.

you want him closer. you want him to shatter you.

your fingers tangle in his hair as you feel his hands hug your waist. your legs roll up slightly at his hips, pelvis suspended inches from the mattress. you roll your eyes when you feel him still erect slipping inside you and pressing his tip against a weird but delicious angle. you're completely numb. your fingers go to the base of his penis, wetting your fingers with the creamy ring that formed the constant hammering on you. staying in the same position when you feel him insert it all the way in, the rubbing of your fingers sending shivers down your spine.

“just like that, baby,” you whisper under your breath as donghyuck penetrates you again and again, slowly, passionately, hissing under the pressure of your fingers wrapped around his circumference. “fucking me so g-good.” you feel his body buzz with each powerful stroke. every second he takes between thrusts, feeling it the pleasure runs through his length.

his mouth lets out a beautiful strangled growl. so possessed, so bewitched. the purest ecstasy fluttering in his eyes as he sees the point where your bodies meet. you're imprisoned under his heavy gaze drinking the sight of your naked body still suffering the aftermath of his actions on you while sharply stroking his dick in and out, watching your tits bouncing with each move.

“so gorgeous. you're so gorgeous.”

moans died and were reborn into stars twinkling in your vision, leaving in their wake your broken body as donghyuck turned up the intensity. his movements rougher by having more stability, bending you until your thighs touch his hips and your head lolls back into the mattress.

“let me fuck you right, star” his unwrapping thrusts drove you to edge of your sanity. a silky-smooth feeling filling your mind, the melody of your voices, a feeling of delight took root in your abdomen, tightening, wanting to be released from you.

you clenched and grithe your teeth. your walls pulsating each time he comes in and out, steady, consistent while you're a mess of tears and sighs. “hold it, love,” he coaxes, and no matter how tired you were, it wouldn't be enough. there was no end to your satisfaction when it comes to him. you'd burn your body to keep him warm if he asks you to.

his deep thrusts feel delicious. a tingling runs through you and embalms your body with a numbing sensation. the space absorbed your essence as your stomach tightened and your back arched into a frenzy. flushed, he rocks his cock back and forth into you as he puts pressure on the grip that holds your legs spread when you try to pull away because you feel a lot, everything, like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. letting out a whimper when you're overpowered by him.

“h-hyuck, p-please. i'm cumming.”

you're so close, a thousand emotions going through your mind. feeling him reaching out your spot, over and over, causing an explosion of suppressed pleasure. feeling the mixture of both arousal causing damp sounds every time he hammers you, joining your breathy moans in the steamy air between your bodies. “i want to cum with you.” his body tenses and your body shake, “tell me when, love.” you make a fist the sheets in your hands, arching your back closer to him. “f-fuck!” your eyes close tightly and your pasty throat let out a scream, legs closing around his hips as his thick grith grinds inside you until he brakes suddenly and his cock twitch wrapped by your walls before it starts to pulsate erratically along your nerves.

his mouth leaves a trail of bites and kisses down your stomach until it goes up your chest. he stays still inside you until you stop pulsating around his cock coated in your arousal, and then, he slides out before he pumps it back and forth a few times more. your body jolts and vibrates as he finishes covering your body with marks from his lips. his hands tangle behind your waist, drawing you towards him, leaving your legs to fall sore around his waist.

you feel his cum slide along to his cock when he pulls it out. breath bathing your face when you join your foreheads and catch your breath. delighting in the full sensation left by your bodies together, intertwined, merged into each other. a gentle caress brushes your tummy when he draws circles with his thumb. pressing a kiss on your shoulder as he drift down. mouth replacing hands, caresses turning into kisses. you sense him fixed on your intimacy before he lifts from the bed.

“hyuck.”

“right here, star.” you feel coming back again, a slight touch in your body, and him disappearing again. you don't know how much time has passed till you come back to your senses, in a bathtub, drunk and sleepy. “tired?” he says, suddenly blushing. “mhm.” your eyes close involuntarily, but you open them again when you feel his mouth pressing against yours. “sorry,” you say hesitantly, taking notice of his messy hair traced by your fingers and his neck marked by your mouth. he kisses you softly, exhaling when he feels your hands on his nape, bringing him closer. “aren't you coming?”

“i wish i could…” but he's been asleep for so long. his life paused while he was away. you can't expect him to leave his life aside just so you can have waking moments with him. “don't think that.”

you laugh.

“think, what?”

“that i want to be somewhere else but with you when i'm awake.” you deny.

“i love being with you while you sleep,” you assure him, “you don't owe me anything.”

“jisung is out there.” he murmurs. “would you be okay for a few hours?” he wants to know.

you don't know if you have to tell him about nightmare. he's never posed a real threat, but not having him with you can't mean anything good. you've been cautious, hoping that next time he'll stay longer, allow you to put him back in the empty place of the small cosmos where he belongs, but he remains just as cautious, and his ephemeral visits only bring with them the promise of being able to consume golden dreams.

golden dreams that you've been watching while their wearer is vulnerable.

your fingers run their moles over the golden skin of his face, gliding down to his neck where the constellation continues. you nod absentmindedly, soothing yourself with his now bright eyes. “something's wrong?”

his eyes are worried, and you see him watching you more closely to find out what's troubling you. “it's just... it must be tiring. lonely,” you correct later, “i wish i could give you dreams like you do with me because... it must feel lonely.”

his lips curl up with fondness. “it doesn't.” he muses. “i get to see the dreams of other dreamers, i can see the dreams of every version of me, and when i do, i don't feel so alone, because you are always there, with me.”

where you put this grief, this guilt, where there is a room to contain it.

you can't. there isn't.

“be careful.”

you watch him disappear through the bathroom door, his essence slowly fading into the light air as you sink your head under the water to chase away the evil thoughts swirling around your head.

warm water numbs your muscles stiff with worry. everything becomes silent underwater. even your head. as the seconds of oxygen run out, your mind clears.

jaemin has been studying rem for months now, if there's anyone who knows about this besides donghyuck it's him. you'll ask him about nightmare. there won't be need to involve donghyuck into this.

there a shift in the water, you sense a subtle change in the warm water wrapping you. your hands take a foothold on the slippery ceramic of the tub to get out underwater. eyes opening in a strange instinct, encountering nothing but darkness staying still above you, before it attacks you. panic takes hold as a viscous substance infiltrates your nostrils, constricting your airways in a suffocating grip. a coiling serpent of fear, constricting your muscles as it winds its way down your throat.

but just as it seems that darkness might claim you, the sensation of drowning vanishes. you burst forth from beneath the water's surface, gasping for breath, your chest heaving with the urgency of survival. your wide eyes search the water's depths, yet all you find is the undisturbed and tranquil surface, bearing no trace of the harrowing struggle that unfolded below.

you feel trapped in a whirlwind of emotions as you watch everything unfold automatically. your body moves on its own, as if it's disconnected from your consciousness. consternation consumes you from within, and you know jisung must be dreaming again, blurring the lines between reality and nightmares. and now donghyuck goes straight to it. your steps quicken, resonating like the racing pulse under your ribs as you glide through the bookstore's corridors.

no one pays attention to you; they’re either asleep in their table or too busy to watch the girl almost running as she turns in a corner. you come across jaemin standing in front of chenle’s sleeping figure at the table. his eyes dart away as if they've detected your presence, and a smile forms on his face. however, your eyes fail to see it because they travel towards the creature beside him, eclipsing the dim light of the bookstore with its smile. you feel ancestral panic inject into your bloodstream when you realize jaemin can see it too, “oh, this is jeno.” all the blood migrates from your face, and his smile widens further.

you see him take a few steps, closing the gap between you without being able to do anything about it, frozen in anticipation. his hand reaches out to you. “a pleasure,” he says in a husky voice. he's here. really, physically. “you shouldn't be here...” you whisper, causing his eyebrows to shoot up, showing his surprise. his hand rests on his chest, “i'm just helping a friend with his nightmare problem.”

his countenance exudes a sense of contentment, while yours surrenders abruptly to the bitter taste of defeat. you watch as he takes his place, engaged in casual conversation with jaemin, a scenario that strains your credulity. jeno assumes the mantle of an ordinary young man, laughter and jests flowing freely, a potent elixir of mirth that might, under different circumstances, have coaxed laughter from your lips if it weren't for the incessant pounding of your heart, staying alert to his movements. when his hands move suddenly, but only to pick up a pencil. when his body makes an unexpected movement, but only to settle into his seat. your breath oscillates in agony, measured in agonizing intervals just before jaemin goes for a book and leave you both alone.

a chuckle ripples through his chest as you guide him toward a desolate corner. “one of my dreams,” you hear him jest.

“stay away from him.”

“don't let jealousy cloud your judgment, my dearest,” he coos, his hand daring to cradle his chin, only to meet your swift rebuff and unyielding gaze. “i'm deadly serious, you... should not be here,” you insist, observing as he takes a contemplative pause, morphing his countenance into an unsettling neutrality that sends involuntary shivers down your spine. yet, the sight of his sardonic grin strangely lulls your unease.

“i've missed you as well... drinking dreams together…, being inside you.”

he takes your silence as embarrassment. fangs peeking through his lips, yet a hint of annoyance flickers in his nighttime eyes when he discerns the truth behind your silence. “doesn't work that way, mastermind," he intones, emphasizing each syllable as he gently taps his index finger against your forehead.

“what are you?”

“a thought, an invention, a dream.” he recites, coming closer. your steps take you away from him, a shadow stirs in his gaze, like a crow's wings, sending shivers down your spine. “are you afraid of me now, after all i've done?”

your brow furrows and his wicked grin widens even more. “why?” you ask confused by his intentions. you can't believe that someone wickedly evil has been saving you on several occasions.

“i owe you,” he simply say, “thanks to you, i exist. and... thanks to you, i am free.”

“i can do whatever i want,” he says with sly enthusiasm.

“you killed those men.” your voice sounds raspy and pasty when you speak. and he finds it, delightful.

he spills joy tinted in every word when he pronounces, “you did.”

the ground beneath you quivers beneath the gravity of his revelation, an undeniable truth crashing over you. “of course not.” but a sliver of doubt lingers in your mind. could you? would you? his enigmatic gaze descends to floor as if he could feel it too.

when his eyes find yours again, a fierce struggle unfolds within their depths. “or maybe someone else did.”

you get his implication,“he wouldn’t do something like that.”

a smile as sharp as a knife. “oh, you have no idea what things he’d willing to do to protect his little dreams.”

the ground quakes once more, and this time, you're certain it's not your doing.

“enough,” you declare, although you can't decide what you mean.

“i'm not doing anything, darling,” the subtle roll of his eyes doesn't escape your notice, yet your attention remains firmly planted on the floor. confusion knits your brow as you observe a puddle encroaching on the soles of your shoes.

your gaze traces the meandering path, eventually leading to the study table. chenle’s name becomes lodged in your throat as a deafening shatter assaults your ears; the shelves flanking both jeno and you teeter precariously. the library is about to collapse.

jeno's hands spring out toward you reflexively, but you deftly evade them and instead utter, “chenle.” there's a hint of reluctance in jeno's response before he resigns himself to approach the slumbering boy.

books start to tumble to the floor as the crowd erupts into collective hysteria. this isn't a dream. it's happening again. water splashes as you approach the table where jeno is trying to wake chenle with limited success. “this doesn't look good at all.”

another crash rends the air as the earth cracks, and the world shudders when a rocky spire erupts from the ground, puncturing the vaulted library ceiling. debris begins to rain down. “you don't expect me to carry him, do you?” he asks rhetorically. “never, you're not strong enough.” a few seconds pass before your words have an impact. “okay, fine. mastermind.”

the water begins to rise, creeping up their knees and weaving its way through the books, meandering around the crystal spires jutting from all sides. the place starts to fold in on itself, morphing as it seeks an escape amidst the chaos and hysteria. the water climbs higher and higher along their limbs as the ceiling crumbles, revealing a sky filled with meteorites.

“keep moving, darling.” you hear jeno’s voice under your bewilderment. “this is…” not chenle’s dream. something morphed. this is his dream, but also yours.

not dreams. nightmares. they are taking possession while people dream.

“jeno.” your voice trembles more than you'd like. all those people, in the same state as chenle despite making a thousand attempts to wake him, remain ensnared in the realm as their dreams turn to nightmares and escape from the ether into reality.

your eyes dart to him when you receive no response, but you're met with the cruel revelation that he's gone. you sweep hastily in all directions in his search as you call his name, almost in desperation, too absorbed in the panic that paralyzes you that you barely register the marble figure sinking into the depths. the water reaches your chest, and it's only now that you came across the fact that you've long since ceased to touch solid ground.

you take a breath before submerging yourself, swimming down as the ever-widening expanse separates you further. his frozen, pale hand stretches toward yours, unable to make contact, sinking alongside chenle. a sharp pain explodes in your chest as you look at each other, his face trapped in eternal agony, as he vanishes into the depths, until only chenle and you remain, drifting in the endless expanse of the cerulean sea.

your lungs rebel, their desperate gasps clinging to the dwindling reserves of oxygen, while your outstretched fingers ache as if they could grasp the very essence of chenle. fiercely holding onto that lifeline, you initiate your ascent as your body falters beneath the relentless depths.

the world swirls in a dizzying frenzy. first, the embrace of the ocean's frigid depths envelopes you while your outstretched fingers ache as they grasp chenle, then the warmth of another's taking hold of you. in this tumultuous surge, you sense your very being's resistance against the relentless sea, as it compels you to expel the intruding water, your throat erupting in a violent symphony of coughs.

gradually, your ears resurface, attuned to the cacophony of a world that had been submerged in silence. amidst the crackling sounds of your awakening senses, chenle's cough reaches you.

you're too catatonic to initially register his presence, warming your insides, but once your being recognizes his, you wrap your arms around him and meld into him. donghyuck embraces you, and you blur your own fear of losing him with his. after an eternity passes during which it seems like you both don’t want to break each other's embrace, you become aware of the world falling apart.

“i thought i'd lost you,” you sob. your hands cradle his warm face, and his eyes tightly shut. you see his celestial countenance marred by fears as the stone where he placed your bodies begins to tremble. “jisung... what happened with him?” you ask.

his eyes finally open, wet with lament. “he's not doing this, star.” confusion roots itself in your stomach as a sensation tightens in your chest. “it's you.”

“the nightmares…,” he mentions while you find yourself slowly denying. an unwanted feeling winds through you, a presence you refuse to acknowledge. as he talks, as he accuses you for actions you cannot truly comprehend, delving into your consciousness that unravels your misguided decisions, compelling you to confront the uncomfortable truth unfolding before you. “you took them from me.”

despair creeps in, “so you could sleep.”

“so you could free them.”

you couldn't carry out such an act. it wasn't for that reason that you did it, yet you’re the only one who refuses to believe it. his shoulders slump under the weight of defeat, and you, you've lost your voice; all the things you’ve done, all the things you could’ve done, dancing in the space.

he seizes your daze to hold you tighter, and you feel it. every sensation that assails him with each rapid heartbeat. reluctance. fear. love. resignation. “i've been searching for you since you fell, my star,” his voice is tinged with sorrow, and you hear him sob. “i fell for you.”

boulders start to tumble into the deluge. the ground beneath you quakes as it crumbles away. “he vanished me from the dreaming until i was worthy once more. until i found the nightmare sorter.” your arms hang limp, feeling defeat coursing through your veins. every part of you burning. your heart breaking in tandem with the world while his arms continue to embrace you.

a sob overtakes you, “sorry for taking too long, my star. i would have loved to spend an eternity with you.”

“we're bond forever. our souls come from the same star. i'll find you again, in another universe, in other lifetime. and i promise i'll find you sooner next time.”

you look at him with nothing left inside you, consumed by betrayal, unwilling to do anything because your heart is broken. his dreams are his most precious possession, and he would do anything for them, just as you would do anything for him. “i love you.” he shatters when you shake your head. no, you don't.

you feel your body move under his influence, his eyes closing, unwilling to look. “look at me.” his face contorts in agony as he does as you ask.

the words burn on your tongue, “i would never have done this to you.” your feet slip off the ledge, and you make no attempt to hold onto anything.

the voracious pain in your chest tightens as you fall, numbed by the spreading malaise within you. not sensing at first the shift in the substance around you; how it becomes denser. your body shivers from the cold touch, so different from his warm hands. this time, he doesn't laugh, but you know it's him, enveloping you in his midnight cloak. you've been descending for a time without end with the ocean as your downfall.

but you never reach the bottom. he transforms your being like his, nighttime mist that dissipates into the darkness.

you are startled awake from your reverie. it feels like you've been dozing for a lifetime. in a dream you always dream of.

where you fall, infinitely. towards the void, towards space, towards the immensity of the ocean. you don't know. you never know, because you never reach the bottom. pushed by a stranger. a friend. a lover. an enemy. a lost boy.

his gaze falls on you and catches you sneaking a glance at him; a lot of time has passed. “i think it's just you and me,” you say, his eyes as dark as two black holes capable of devouring entire stars, with secrets yearning to escape as if he knows something you don’t know yet.

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