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Dreams never die.
They’d cling to Taehyung’s eyelashes while he was awake and sneak into his whispers when he was talking with the shadows of the night.
The world was an awful place, and so reality was nothing but a dream.
As Taehyung lay sleeping, he could feel Hoseok’s hands around his waist, his chest pressed to his back, his warm breath on his nape. It was so comfortable, that Taehyung couldn’t help but laugh.
He had forgotten how laughing was supposed to feel like, so he just screamed. He screamed and screamed until tears broke out and he called them tears of laughter, tears of happiness, because Hoseok was with him and he was laughing or crying or screaming too, but it was beautiful, it was real, Hoseok was real and alive, and Taehyung had never wanted anything else.
It had been almost two months since that night in which Hoseok had called him from two alleys down the road from their home and started laughing in his ear in the receiver.
The only thing he said was, “Taehyung. I’m dying.”
And then he laughed. He laughed and laughed so much that by the time Taehyung reached him, he was still laughing hysterically, blood bubbling out of his mouth and mingling with the sweet sounds of his laughter.
“He stabbed me,” he was saying, shaking with giggles or pain or spasms, Taehyung had no idea, “he fucking stabbed me and took my money, he stabbed me, he fucking-”
Taehyung held Hoseok as he laughed and cursed and faded into his arms. He tried to cover his wound from his stomach, the cuts so deep that they tore his insides to shreds. Hoseok didn’t feel anything. Taehyung envied him greatly, for he was walking through the nine circles of hell all at once and they didn’t seem to end anytime soon.
He bit his lip and tore his tee and wrapped it around Hoseok to stop the blood from taking his life away with it as it gushed out of his stomach. Someone had called an ambulance, but by the time it had arrived, it was already too late.
Taehyung hadn’t even realized he was crying until Hoseok reached a blood-covered hand up to his face to wipe his tears. “Please don’t cry,” he said, still laughing. “The world is nothing but a joke and death is fucking hilarious. Please smile, my love.”
And Taehyung tried. He really did try to force a smile as he watched Hoseok slipping out of existence, his eyes rolling to the back of his head until only the whites were showing, coughing blood and broken dreams and the promise of a dark future that Taehyung would spend clutching the pieces of his shattered heart to his chest, pretending that it was still beating and keeping him alive.
Hoseok laughed and laughed and laughed with blood and pain and spasms until his heart had stopped beating and the ghosts of his laughter were growing louder and louder and hungrier and more ferocious and cruel.
And something inside Taehyung snapped.
He started laughing.
It was a joke. A big fucking joke. Hoseok wasn’t dead, he couldn’t possibly be. He was laughing, he was living, he was a dream came true and dreams never die.
So he shut his ears to the doctor’s voice that told him his lover was gone, shut his eyes to that soulless carcass that was a trick of his imagination, soaked in blood when the real Hoseok would be bathed only in light and hope and softness.
How could he be dead, when Taehyung felt him against his body whenever he was sleeping? How could he not be living when Taehyung saw him in his dreams, smiling and running and joking and living.
Dreams were eternal. Undying. Hoseok was a dream, so he was alive.
Taehyung felt his heartbeats, his breath, his warmth in the moments between sleeping and waking, and it made him so drunk with happiness that he couldn’t help but laugh and laugh and laugh even though it was painful and wrong and a silent scream to the gods he never believed in.
Taehyung decided that he never wanted to be awake again, that if Hoseok was a dream, he’d spend his life sleeping and dreaming of him and making it a wonderful reality in which only smiles and laughter were allowed.
When he saw a crying teenager one night walking on the street, his own beautiful reality shook. It made Hoseok sad, and Hoseok must never be sad.
Taahyung punched the boy in the face before he could even realize he was moving, a blow powerful enough to send him sprawling on the ground.
“You bastard!” he shouted, straddling him and clutching the front of his tee in his fists to drag him to a sitting position so their faces would be close enough for Taehyung to stare directly in his sad, forbidden soul. “Why aren’t you laughing?” he screamed and the boy only cried harder. “No! Like this you idiot!” Taehyung threw his head back and let out a few horrible cackles that would make the mountains shiver with the pain in them.
He didn’t remember what happened afterwards, for he felt a hand snagging hold of the neckline of his tee and ripping him from the boy and everything became a blur because why aren’t they laughing?! Hoseok wouldn’t want this, so everyone must laugh and laugh and laugh and this is wrong and fucked up and laughter is missing and the world is ending please don’t break my dream, it’s all I have left-
And so he was dragged a few days later in a huge room with funny looking people, their expression all serious and their questions too hard to answer, and so he laughed in their faces, for him and Hoseok and everyone in the room, because he could just feel that they wanted to laugh deep inside, they just didn’t know how or they had forgotten it when Hoseok became only his to dream about, so he showed them how to do it, showed them how to laugh and laugh and ignore the questions and the world when the only real thing were his dreams, pulsating with life and Hoseok.
Even the shackles on his wrists were funny, cold and clankng and biting into his skin and leaving red marks that were so pretty, almost as pretty as Hoseok’s lips and the bruises they left on his skin with hs teeth.
They made some tests on him, and Taehyung just couldn’t understand why they weren’t laughing, even though he showed them how to, so he just had to close his eyes and laugh more and more for every person he met so he could pretend there were more people laughing with him.
“Look what they’re doing to me!” Taehyung shouted, wide-eyed and grinning, rocking back and forth on the floor, nails scratching at his face until blood beaded his cheeks. “They think I’m mad! They think you’re dead! They think I’m just seeing things!” He let his head fall back and barked a laugh loud enough to make the ceiling fall on them all. “Are they fucking blind?! They’re not laughing they’re not laughing they’re not laughing-”
He went on and on and on until the world blurred and Hoseok came to hug his head to his chest and place kisses all over his bleeding face and tell him that everything was all right.
When they forced pills down his throat and dressed him with a white shirt with the sleeves so long and funny that they tied them to his back, he laughed some more and watched Hoseok dancing behind their backs.
A straitjacket, it was named. It became his favorite clothing item, for Hoseok looked at him and smiled, and so Taehyung laughed more and more and more until he passed out from happiness.
When he woke up, everything was white. The room, his clothes, his dreams, his future. Taehyung felt Hoseok’s hand brushing away a strand of his hair and he heard him laughing.
He tried to laugh too, he tried so hard he almost fainted, but only tears came out. And sobs. Or maybe laughter, rough and harsh and broken, but who could tell the difference anymore? Who knew what laughter really sounded like if they didn’t have Hoseok to set an example for them all? What meaning did it have when the reason for it was nothing but a dream?
But at least he had the dream. He had Hoseok. And for as long as he had him, everything in the world would be all right. He just needed to laugh until his voice was gone and his sobs would become giggles and his tears would dry in the hopes of dreaming and never waking up again.
The whiteness from all around him was almost as blinding as Hoseok’s smile.
And then, he realized. Taehyung was inside Hoseok’s smile, and so he needed to keep laughing for the boy, to keep his dream alive and content and real.