Chapter Text
Sunday morning, Kenny had woken up early, and after a shower, had been caught up in his reflection again. Tugging at his lips to get every angle of his odd new teeth and shining his phone flash light in his mouth to get an even better look.
He sighed. It was frustrating to deal with, but not worth dying again to try and get something better. Dying hurt more than an achy mouth, Kenny decided.
—
The chime of Kyle’s alarm woke him up like it did every day. Silence filled the room after he clicked the “dismiss” option on his phone. As his ears adjusted to the quiet, he heard noise from the living room. Cooking, and TV. Kenny was awake.
After checking his phone notifications for a few minutes, and doing his daily check-in on his mobile games, and maybe scrolling on TikTok for 20 minutes, Kyle finally willed himself to get out of bed. Stretching, tossing a shirt on, and making his way into the living room.
Kenny was making breakfast for them: eggs and toast. Yum.
“Mornin’,” The blonde spoke.
Kyle squinted to adjust his eyes to the light and waved. “Morning.”
He shuffled over to Kenny and hummed contently, sliding his arms around the other man’s waist and resting his head on his shoulder. Kenny was warm. He smelled good too, like, mm, honey. And a little like sweat, but the scents mixed well. Kyle felt his eyes drift shut.
“I love you, dude.” He murmured.
“I love you too.”
…
That’s not Kenny’s voice.
Kyle raised his head to see the other man’s face, and his features became a swirling amalgamation that Kyle couldn’t recognize. Eyes changing shape and color by the millisecond, nose morphing shapes and mouth changing position and how his lips sat. Freckles, moles, scars, piercings, and hair all moved around, like Kyle suddenly couldn’t remember what he looked like. Nothing was quite identifiable. Who was this?
A loud and familiar chime filled Kyle’s ears.
His heart sank momentarily before he could finally really open his eyes. Engulfed in the darkness of his room, safe and quiet.
He had to just sit there for a moment and recoup from that strange dream. There was a lot to unpack. He and Kenny were… dating, maybe? And Kenny’s face was all weird, and so was his voice. Kyle’s mild interest in psychology took over. What could this dream mean?
He swiped his phone open and Googled:
Dating childhood friend in dream meaning
He willed his eyes away from the AI response, and scrolled down to an old Quora thread from around 6 years ago.
Why am I having recurring dreams about dating my childhood best friend?
He skimmed the page and a few words stood out to him in the responses: Nostalgia, longing for connection, and deep-seeded feelings.
Huh.
He fell into a rabbit hole of Quora and Reddit threads talking about dream meanings after that, and once he finally emerged from the scrolling, he felt like he had little to no explanation of what the fuck his dream was about.
He sighed, feeling a bit dejected, before throwing a shirt on and shuffling out of his bedroom like he did in the dream. This time, Kenny was eating cereal on the couch and watching How It’s Made.
“Mornin’!”
He smiled and spoke with his mouth full. Yeah, that was the real Kenny.
“Morning,” Kyle smiled back, just slightly less. He made his way over to the kitchen and poured himself some coffee that Kenny had made earlier, and decided to make himself a bagel for breakfast.
He sat beside Kenny on the couch and scrolled on his phone while having breakfast.
“You ever find out what happened to your truck?” He asked abruptly, making Kenny choke on his cereal momentarily.
The blonde sputtered a bit, then set his bowl down on the coffee table.
“I uh, haven’t really left the house ‘r anything.”
“I was thinking, and like, what if it was stolen?” Kyle looked up from his phone and locked eyes with Kenny.
“Well, I think I would’ve noticed if it was stolen,”
Kyle shrugged. “Just a thought.”
Breakfast was silent after that.
—
Kenny worked on Sundays, but since his truck was out of commission, he borrowed Kyle’s car. Not that he planned on going anywhere that day anyway.
Kyle spent most of the day playing The Sims 4 on his computer and watching trashy reality TV. This was how he spent most of his Sundays, but today he needed more stimuli to keep from any thoughts forming regarding his dream. It wasn’t working.
Thoughts would flood through his mind, remembering how natural it felt to hold Kenny by his waist. How warm he felt and how safe he was to say that he loved him. No “No homo” needed. They loved each other.
But on the flip side, who even was that in his dream? Was it really Kenny? Why was his face so unrecognizable? During his research, Kyle had found out about lucid dreaming. He’d known a little about it before, just being conscious that you’re dreaming whilst still in the dream. Maybe he could find a way to induce a dream and become lucid in it. Could he do that? How long would it take? Too long, probably. He could probably just talk to Kenny about it anyway, right? Maybe this was all connected to how Kenny had been staring at himself in the mirror yesterday. Kyle was overthinking this.
He’ll just talk to Kenny when he gets home.
—
Kenny worked three jobs, despite not needing to. One of the jobs was to help fund Karen going into college, one was so he could pay his half of the rent with Kyle, and the last job was a trainee in a physics lab, his main job. Sunday mornings he took a half shift at the local gas station. (His job for Karen.)
It wasn’t hard to forget about his new face when he was at work. Kenny would always go into a sort of zone when he was working, causing him to tune out the world.
That is until his break.
Kenny sighed and smoke poured out of his mouth, floating up and away with the cool spring breeze. He took another drag off his cigarette and gently exhaled the smoke. It was a routine. Usually he’d be on his phone as well during his break, but today he couldn’t. His mind was too filled with whatever his dream was about last night.
Kenny had drifted to sleep quickly the night before, but tossed and turned for hours. Once he finally got to sleep, he had a weird dream about Kyle. It was fuzzy in his memory, but it was in some weird future where he and Kyle were together, married maybe, and he was making breakfast, and Kyle came up and hugged him from behind, and after they exchanged good mornings, Kyle gave him a horrified look. And then he woke up. It was weird, for sure.
He checked the time, and it was 11:47. Break time’s over.
Back to the grind.
But Kenny would tell Kyle about his dream after work. Maybe he’d have a better understanding of what it all meant.