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The dreamscape is fantastical and strange. As the solid feeling of Mike’s body pressed against his side fades out, a new feeling begins waxing in. Familiar and cold. Right now, the word is unreachable.
Pac is blinking muzzily at the scene. He watches the characters dispassionately as they perform for him. From here, it looks fake. Did that happen, he thinks. It feels like it happened. But if it did, does it matter? It’s happening again.
That’s Cell, probably. They’re kissing. They love each other, probably. But he does love Cellbit, and even so it doesn’t matter. Because he’s watching it all the same.
And Cell wants to hurt him.
And he does. So his knife—achingly familiar, heavy, worn wood—makes an appearance. The ceiling flickers. Though he didn’t see the blade move, it’s hilt-deep in his stomach and it’s being twisted. He feels the nauseating burst of pain as if it were his own—though, he supposes distantly, it is—and his knees buckle.
And Cellbit loves him. He slides the blade out slow, and Pac’s back is arching like it feels good. Blood is seeping out of the wound and wetting his shirt, pants, the floor. Endless. The knife disappears. The floor disappears. The window disappears. He wasn’t aware there was one but now it’s gone, and sound filters in. Light.
He’s groaning, something high pitched and strangled. Cell’s fingers are pushing into the fluttering wound as his breaths come faster.
It all just hurts to remember.
He can feel Cell’s fingers hooked inside him. The burn of his insides as he writhes. He thrusts a few times and it feels like he’s going to die. His guts pulse around Cell’s fingers, hot, and he can feel it as they spasm.
He fucks Pac like he loves him. Because he does.
Pac remembers the first time they met. The thing that had stuck out the most was that he was twitchy and jumped at every little sound. The door closing, a coffee mug being placed on the shitty fold-out table. He’d flinch when someone in the circle went to speak and he’d lick his lips and sigh nervously about five times before he went to.
He was beautiful, too. Mike rolled his eyes playfully whenever Pac talked about him, those first few months.
It had all been so simple. But then again, they were both young and hopelessly stupid. And now, they’re too old for this. Blood sliding all over Cell’s fingers. It’s here, he remembers something key. None of it happened. There was feverish wishing and there was daydreaming and there was crying, but it didn’t happen like this.
“If you called me, you know I’d pick up,” he says, to no one. The characters ignore him, too caught up in it. “I still love you. You have to know that.”
He wants to wake up. He doesn’t want to watch this anymore. The dream is going fuzzy at the edges. He can feel Mike’s body again, warm and real.
“I know you love me,” he whispers. Blood is pooling across the floor from his body; it reaches the tips of his shoes and soaks into them. He wants to stop thinking about it. He wants to wake up. He wants Cell to do something bad to him again and—
And nothing. The thought slips from him like blood. He wakes.
Full awareness hits him. He can feel every part of his body. He wiggles his fingers a little. Huffs a breath. It almost sounds like a sob, but he doesn’t feel sad. He feels nothing. He lays there in the dark, staring at the empty ceiling for what feels like hours.
Eventually, Mike’s slow, steady breathing is interrupted. He snuffles, and Pac holds his breath, waiting. But Mike knows him like he knows himself, and blinks awake.
“What’s wrong,” he murmurs instantly. Pac lets it sit for a minute, mulling it over. The hum of the fish tank across the room, omnipresent, soothes his mind.
“Nothing,” he lies, utterly unconvincing. Mike hums.
“…Love you,” he mumbles into Pac’s armpit, “it’s okay. It wasn’t real.”
And well. It wasn’t. That’s the crux of the issue. But he nods minutely anyway.