Chapter Text
By the time Dan was 17 he had been married 397 times. Not in real life (he wasn’t part of some crazy cult), but in his dreams. His first dream had occurred when he was 7. Although he could not remember very clearly what happened in the dream, he had a little drawing of it that he had colored in school the following day, which his mother had hung on the fridge thinking it was quite funny. This drawing was now pasted into the front of his dream diary that he had begun when he was nine, when the dreams began to pick up their pace. After his first time being betrothed when he was 7, Dan didn’t have the marriage dream until he was 9. When he woke the next morning and went downstairs for breakfast, it was, he noticedhis dream looked very similar to the picture he colored when he was 7, still hanging on the fridge. And then he had the dream again. So he picked up a notebook and wrote it down. And then it happened again and he wrote about it again. It happened over and over, sometimes he was getting married 2, even 3 times a week. Other times, he would go weeks without the dreams. Then, one night, they would return, clear as ever. He never told anyone about them, they were sort of special to just him.
The picture he had colored when he was 7 was a picture of Dan, a messy suit on his stick-figure body and a bright red bow-tie around his neck. And next to Dan was the pastor, a chubby man with angel wings and pokey beard scruff. Then, there was Dan’s spouse to be. They stood across from the suited Dan. They were not gendered. Never in a dream had Dan ever been able to determine quite whom he was marrying. In this particular photo, the lucky lady/man had what seemed to be a raven for a head, and their body was what Dan has interpreted as a boring plain white wedding dress.
Then, of course, there was the unforgettable melody. Every time, just as the dream ended, the view of the dream would zoom away, as if it had all been a movie and the camera was hung by a wire, floating across the difference. And the melody would begin, the song he had heard somewhere once and now haunted him in his dreams.
As Dan got older, the dreams began to change. Only little changes, barely noticeable, but every time they altered, Dan would wake up and jot down the change in his dream diary. For example, when he was 10, he finally got to the point in the dream where he kissed the bride.when he was 10, he figured out that he was not marrying a person with a raven head, the person just had inky black hair. When he was 11, he realised that the bride was not wearing a wedding dress at all, they were just incredibly pale. When Dan was 12, the dream continued on as Dan and his beloved walked down the aisle hand in hand. On Dan’s 13 and ¼ birthday, Dan experienced his first ever wet dream when the dream went even further.
Though Dan went on to date people, he never really loves any of them. If primary school was rough, secondary school is hell. And Dan is sad. A levels roll around and Dan sleeps more and more. Sometimes, just so that he will have that special dream where there is some unknown person who loves him. Someone who doesn’t hate everything about him.
One of the only things that keeps him going is the thought that maybe one day he’ll find that person after all.