Chapter Text
PART I. AWAKE
In his defence, Soonyoung doesn’t steal the sedative. Not exactly.
“I borrowed a prototype from Jihoon,” Soonyoung beams, “to base a sedative on. Everything else comes direct from yours truly.” He brandishes the beaker as he explains, the liquid inside a cloudy swirl. Crouched in front of Soonyoung’s work bench, Junhui’s gaze flits from side to side as he follows the beaker’s movements, catlike and attentive. There’s a faint grin on Junhui’s face, a diluted replica of Soonyoung’s. Expression unchanging, Junhui asks–
“When are you letting Jihoonie know you used his prototypes?”
Minghao snorts, the sound lost to Junhui’s sharp, shrill laugh. Chan only notices from where he stands next to Minghao, Minghao’s back turned from the others to sketch idly on the closest available paper, already entertaining labyrinth ideas around the lines of a tic-tac-toe game he’d started with Junhui twenty minutes earlier.
Unfazed, Soonyoung doesn’t waver. “My policy is to beg forgiveness, not permission.”
Minghao snorts again, but Chan isn’t paying attention anymore, almost transfixed by the way Junhui lunges for the beaker, dancing away from Soonyoung’s range to twirl around in the centre of the room, Junhui’s entire body centred around the beaker, tilting it this way and that, apparently still charmed by the opaque liquid. Soonyoung lets him, drifting to coo at Minghao’s initial labyrinth instead, manifested onto a clean sheet of paper while Chan looked away.
“–And anyway, what Jihoon-ah doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Soonyoung concludes.
Crossing out a curved route, Minghao sketches in an intersection instead, eight different possibilities spiralling from the tip of his pen. Lips pursed, Minghao seems more amused than anything.
“Are we bribing our chemist with results from this test run? You’re chasing some high stakes, hyung."
Junhui cheers, “High stakes, high glory!”
“That’s not how the saying goes,” Chan says, before directing a question back at Soonyoung. “This is safe, right?”
“Channie doubting my skills…” Soonyoung shakes his head, face scrunched together and pouty, still larger than life.
Then, serious again: “Of course. I wouldn’t risk you guys. You know that. I already tried it on myself earlier.”
Chan narrows his eyes, choosing not to address Soonyoung’s casual disregard of protocol. Nobody should dream alone. At best, Soonyoung’s bravado is impressive and more than a little comforting, boasting a track record to justify his recklessness. Right now, all Chan feels is unnerved.
“If you already know it works, what are we testing out?”
Soonyoung’s entire face brightens. Minghao whistles, focused on Soonyoung again. Somewhere to Chan’s left, he thinks he hears Junhui sing, syllables light and blurred together in Mandarin, unthinking in a way Junhui’s yet to manage in Korean: Sleep again, dream again, dream as safe as life–
Chan doesn’t parse the rest.
“Jihoon-ah’s been messing round with drawing out the REM stage,” Soonyoung begins. “It’s pretty sick, actually. You’d be fucked trying to wake up miscalculating on this – so you could draw extractions out for ages, go as far in as you need, for as long as you need.”
“We don’t want to stretch jobs across an entire dream session.” Chan still thinks about it, though.
As quick on the uptake as he is attentive to details, Minghao’s voice is quiet but steady–
“We’re building a dream within a dream.”
Junhui’s eyes are wide. He lifts the beaker back to eye level. Chan hadn’t even realised he’d slipped it into his pocket, and Chan frowns.
A dream within a dream. It’s not impossible, theoretically, but not even Jihoon’s figured out how to stabilise single-layered dreams without any misfires, rare as they are. Whether or not Jihoon’s been working on it, only Soonyoung would swim out farther than the safety net of the tried and tested.
But where Minghao is attentive, Chan is practical. It is, after all, what he’s here for.
“Jihoon-hyung would have sent us samples if he thought the substances were stable for client consumption.”
“We’re kickstarting the process.”
When Chan levels a stare at Soonyoung, Soonyoung eyes him back, seemingly guileless. Soonyoung really believes he’s got the numbers ready. Soonyoung has never led them wrong before.
Chan is practical, but he is also loyal.
“What specs are we running here?”
Soonyoung turns around, heading back to his work bench to grab some paperwork, and Chan moves to follow. Just before he does, Minghao lifts two pieces of paper where he’s drawn a two-tiered labyrinth across both pages, tic-tac-toe match on one page seamlessly incorporated into the maze. There’s are characters Chan can’t read written next to the tic-tac-toe labyrinth.
“Mirror,” Junhui supplies helpfully, “but it’s okay. Minghao won’t leave you lost.”
There’s a conversation Chan overheard, once, that Chan still doesn’t entirely understand. Sleep again, dream again, dream as safe as life. He doesn’t entirely understand the extent of what Junhui is trying to say now.
But Junhui is correct – Minghao is a good architect, reliable.
Chan would trust all of them unconditionally. Does trust all of them unconditionally.
Junhui’s stare trails after Chan even after he catches up to Soonyoung.
PART II. ASLEEP
I HAVE BUILT for you a rain palace
of alabaster columns and rock crystal
so that a thousand mirrors
tell me how you change in beauty
– Yvan Goll, The Rain Palace
At the heart of Minghao’s labyrinth is a bustling city centre, fruit stands and street vendors cluttering the pavement as people move past. Chan takes note of languages the people converse in, Mandarin and Korean and fleeting English intertwined into a pidgin that feels comfortable, if not comprehensible. There are no cars.
“Oh! Thank you.”
Junhui is eating what looks like lamb skewers when he wanders back between Minghao and Chan. He offers one to Chan, who sighs before opening his mouth. Junhui smiles when he feeds Chan, grin wide and untroubled, all teeth.
Still, Minghao’s eyes are alert, turning a street corner to lead them up an apartment building, doors swinging open for them without a key. The entrance mat is neatly trimmed, fabric shimmering as Junhui steps in after Minghao, colours changing subtly but surely, stately green to homey brown. What Minghao’s labyrinths lack in authenticity, he compensates for with the overwhelming familiarity of safety.
“Almost there,” Minghao mumbles. “I left it on the fourth floor.”
Chan almost asks, Left what?, but Minghao has started up a flight of stairs before Chan can decide himself if he wants to ask. “We’re going, going, going.” Junhui traipses after him, skewers vanished from sight despite the lack of a trash can in the entry hall.
The fourth floor is a dilapidated dance studio that Chan doesn’t recognise but Junhui does, complaint at Minghao’s only building stairs into the building stilling mid-sentence. Not addressing anyone in particular, Junhui says, “Long time no see.” He isn’t smiling anymore. Chan’s fingers curl towards his palm, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Yeah.”
Minghao turns towards the only window in the room. Chan glimpses Minghao’s back, reflected from floor-length mirrors. There is no barre to split their silhouettes in half.
Draping himself across Minghao’s shoulders, Junhui mumbles, “Channie? Can you set things up? It’s all in my backpack.” Junhui’s more than capable of doing it himself. Junhui is not barred from anything, when Minghao is the dreamer.
Fishing what he needs from Junhui’s backpack, Chan pretends not to listen to Junhui humming, tuneless and gentle.
Chan sets up the PASIV.
“–Xiao Hao. Minghao. Hao Hao?”
Junhui leans over Minghao, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the studio. He prods Minghao’s forehead. Minghao flicks his hand away. “Quit bothering the guy with our needles,” Chan says. But that felt needlessly harsh, even if it wasn’t really – Junhui only ever means well, even when it doesn’t feel like it. So Chan adds, “Myungho-hyung. Seriously, what’s wrong?”
Minghao is squinting at the PASIV kits on his lap, before he sets both on either side of him. There’s another box left on his lap, a switch for the explosive Chan can’t see but knows is placed beneath the floorboards. Collapsing the floor they’re on seemed a straightforward enough way of kicking all three of them back at the same time, if not the most sensible.
“I’m alright,” Minghao argues, still staring at the switch on his lap. Then he looks up, over Junhui’s shoulder to face Chan properly. No longer fiddling with the PASIV needles, his shoulders are loose, his expression relaxed. Junhui nods once, twice, before beckoning Chan closer as he sits himself on the floor.
Leaning in further, Junhui is looking at Chan when he whispers by Minghao’s ear, deliberately so Chan can hear.
“Don’t be nervous. If we kiss in a dream Channie’s not supposed to tell, it’s only polite. Chan’s really a good kid, you know–”
“Junhui,” Minghao interrupts. His expression is doing something complicated, mouth caught in a frown and eyes dancing with something akin to affection. Minghao sighs. “… We’re working.”
Delighted, Junhui’s voice returns to normal volume.
“So you’d say yes if we weren’t?”
Minghao settles on his frown. Junhui reaches up a presses fingers at the corners of Minghao’s mouth, trying to manoeuvre a smile out of Minghao.
“No pouts! It ages you prematurely.”
Moving Junhui’s fingers from his face, Minghao lets their hands sit tangled on his thigh. Hunched forward to maintain the contact, Junhui doesn’t let go.
Chan has never quite been able to work out what it is with Minghao and Junhui, what they are. They rounded out Soonyoung’s team together, after Chan joined, though Soonyoung claims he knew Junhui long before. All Chan gets to witness is their aftermath, Minghao allowing Junhui to roughhouse in his mind as if it made no difference whether they were asleep or awake.
“Stay with Junnie,” Minghao reminds him.
Chan is point man. Minghao builds the dreams, but it’s Chan who makes sure every dream sees itself through to success. And Junhui – Junhui doesn’t need to be here for a trial run, exactly but – Junhui keeps him safe. Nothing in Minghao’s dreams ever tries to hurt Junhui. Junhui keeps Chan safe.
When Chan settles on the floor at Minghao’s other side, Junhui beams and offers a hand.
“You can hold my hand, too! I’m super strong, you know.” Chan knows. He doesn’t hold Junhui’s hand.
“Jun-hyung. Respect my freedom to hate this right now.”
He’s smiling as he says it, though, so Junhui laughs and drops his hand, head following suit to tip against Minghao’s shoulder. Junhui and Chan offer Minghao an arm for Minghao to send them through. A dream within a dream.
“Safe as life,” Minghao says, soft. Chan recognises the song though Minghao isn’t singing.
Eyes shut, Junhui adds, “A song to make sure you come back.”
“That’s for you.” Minghao corrects. “Both of you.”
Junhui always tries to beat the sedative by falling asleep naturally first. He’s yet to succeed, but Chan can never begrudge every time Junhui tries. There is something distinctly not annoying about Junhui drawling words together deliberately as if he’s dozing off, when the smile on his face always, always giving him away.
“ ‘Course I gotta… Minghao gets lonely easily… have to finish fast and come back…”
Chan could say, I’m a little lonely right now, because he is. But he doesn’t.
There are a lot of things Chan doesn’t find annoying in dreams that he normally would dislike. Minghao’s shoulder, pressing slightly against his own where Junhui’s weight is tilting Minghao’s centre of gravity to the side, is one of those things. But there’s no time to dissect, not that Chan feels particularly inclined to.
As the prick registers in his arm, Chan’s already drifting away.
When dream extraction first found its way into crime, extraction teams didn’t test the length of dreaming so much as they tested their ability to shorten the time spent dreaming wherever possible. In and out without waking clients in the middle of a job.
Thus, when the trial dream experiment fails, there was no way for Soonyoung to immediately realise. A deeper sedative allows for deeper dreaming. This much is true. The failure lies in miscalculating precisely how long the deepened dream lasts. How big of a kick it takes to pull someone out.
Soonyoung’s math, strictly speaking, was not incorrect. It was incomplete.
Awake and almost alone in a dance studio, Minghao is thinking of almost kissing someone.
Inside the studio it’s quiet. The last time Minghao was here, really here, he hadn’t danced either. Some things are doomed to remain constant. Once Junhui and Chan slipped off into another dream, Minghao had slowly eased them all to lie down. Exhibit A: Landscape of canned sardines, instalment piece. They’re both leaning more heavily against Minghao this way, but it’s more comfortable like this.
Minghao closes his eyes, feeling intensely awake. But even now, it’s Junhui’s weight pressing against Minghao that Minghao feels most, more noticeable than Chan’s. Or perhaps just more known.
Breathing in, Minghao can’t smell Junhui’s shampoo – Minghao’s, really, because Junhui could never be bothered buying his own – but he never can, in dreams.
And like this, Minghao’s thoughts drift back to Junhui. They usually do.
Minghao is no longer thinking of kissing anyone, almost or at all.
SOONYOUNG:
Two hours. This’ll send you off for two hours.
CHAN:
Time dilation multiplier?
SOONYOUNG:
No change. Not in the first dream.
CHAN:
Second?
SOONYOUNG:
Multiply by […], I think.
MINGHAO:
No. You need to know –
JUNHUI:
– It’s not Soonyoungie’s fault. [Pause] How can we know if we don’t try?
CHAN:
We’re not waiting out the whole time.
SOONYOUNG:
‘Course not! Myungho can kick you all up if he gets bored. So long as we get a measure for dream duration.
JUNHUI:
Ah, Myungho is really dedicated–he’ll sit the whole time patiently.
MINGHAO:
Why would you say it like that–
CHAN:
I’ll keep time, then. …
[…]
“Where is this?”
Not even footfalls sound here, Chan’s shadow melting into black marble, mirrored columns rising from the flooring into a glass domed ceiling. Minghao has constructed them a city of marble reflected on glass, light refracted against endless mirrors. An illusion of infinity.
“Wherever you think is probably correct.” Junhui is quieter when nobody else is around. Less subdued as it is a conscious act of restraint. “Minghao’s usually less bothered by where than what.” The arm’s width of space between them stretches out in every direction, distance mirroring distance. When Chan stops walking, Junhui pauses.
“Usually,” Chan says. “Like in the dance studio?”
Junhui hums, maybe answering him, maybe not. The song is the same as always, but the quiet changes the melody, transposing it into something solemn and secret. Then Junhui smiles, wide enough his eyes crescent closed. His mouth remains closed.
“I’m not going to talk about that.”
Still smiling, Junhui starts walking again. When Chan stops focusing on the mirrors, he swears he sees himself reflected twice, his own body visible from the periphery where Junhui’s should be. He blinks, glancing back at the mirror, and Junhui’s reflection is his own, if a little further from Chan’s than it was before.
“In any case,” Junhui continues, “we should look for a swimming pool.”
A distraction. Chan accepts it.
“Swimming pool?”
“Because he doesn’t like loud noises? I don’t see Hao Hao ruining somewhere this pretty for a kick.”
The mirrors reflect the two of them, lying on wood flooring in a dance studio one foot down the road to ruin already. Junhui turns to walk backwards, facing Chan. The mirrors clear.
“Just a dream, isn’t it. You can build dreams again.”
“Ah,” Junhui allows, “so should you do things just because you know you can?”
Cracks spiderweb the mirrors, feigning shattering. But Junhui still looks unbothered, so it isn’t real.
“Don’t be difficult, Jun.”
“Am I?”
And suddenly he isn’t Junhui anymore. Minghao watches him, wearing Junhui’s smile and Chan’s voice.
Soonyoung says, Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but this isn’t imitation anymore, Minghao’s face shifting into Chan’s, Soonyoung’s, Junhui’s, even Jihoon’s. Junhui is humming that song again, but it’s eclipsed by the rise and fall of other voices. Junhui is good at this, at being people he isn’t. Chan trusts him but is only now realising how little he knows Junhui at all, despite that, or maybe even because of that trust.
“Chan.”
Chan looks at Junhui, just Junhui again. Junhui has stopped smiling.
“Sorry,” Junhui mumbles. “I thought– maybe you don’t like mirrors –or quiet, so I –I thought I could distract you.”
“Don’t do that,” Chan breathes. “I–don’t.”
Junhui bites his lip. “Okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else. Once again, Chan’s left feeling guilty in a way he can’t entirely justify. Junhui’s shoulders, tense and drawn together, a tripwire of tension Chan’s habitually learned to step around. Chan breathes in.
“What type of swimming pools does Myungho-hyung like,” he finally says.
“All swimming pools are okay. He’s only put it somewhere secret so we have something to find until it’s time to go.”
Junhui’s arm lifts, as if to tug Chan along by the sleeve, but the touch never reaches. Hand moving up, Junhui’s fingers tap along to the tune he’s started humming again, soundless keys to an imagined piano. Chan follows the melody in his head anyway, makes it through three measures of music before even the words Chan knows he should recognise escape him. Junhui is singing faster and softer than he is used to.
Maybe it’s Chan that is falling out of time. But it’s Chan’s job to keep things together, and anyway, Junhui is probably trying to block him out right now intentionally. Chan wouldn’t be surprised. Junhui dislikes anything resembling conflict.
“You are unbelievable,” Chan says aloud, but he curls his fingers around Junhui’s wrist as he walks. Junhui doesn’t respond, but the melody in Chan’s head and the melody Junhui’s humming gradually match each other in time.
Eventually, Chan stops being able to parse where Junhui’s voice ends and his own memory of the music begins. Forty two measures through, now. The mirrors reflect only what they should.
They keep walking.