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Dream heard his phone alarm chime and opened his eyes. He hadn’t meant to doze off but Aleister never gave notice when he wanted to do these things; it was always some text message at one AM: meet me at the church. Dream had complained once about needing at least a little notice when Aleister got into the mood to drag him into his occult arts nonsense and wound up having to sit through an impromptu lesson on unpredictable alignments and other mumbo jumbo that went over his head immediately. Dream just liked to complain but at least it was always fun to watch Aleister get worked up.
Besides, Dream reminded himself with a bitter pang, he would probably have his nights unbothered again very soon. He stretched out the crick in his neck from sleeping sitting up on the floor; he could see the stars through a hole in the roof and stared up at them for a few moments. This wasn’t the pristine church from all those old promos; that had just been a set, a…Dream closed his eyes and tried to remember Aleister’s exact words. A simulacrum of the truth. Dream had been bitterly disappointed the first time Aleister had brought him there but he understood now. Power hiding itself away behind its broken exterior.
The dilapidated church was always the exact same level of shabby every time he’d been there, the fallen board in the corner always hanging at the same angle, the peeling paint never flaking off all the way. He wondered if Aleister had something to do with that or if it was something inherent to the place, if that was why Aleister had chosen it as his refuge. He knew the air outside felt like walking through soup but there was always a chill in the air here once you stepped through the open doorway. It raised the hair on his arms when he dwelled on it too much, got his heart pumping. But again, Aleister Black had that effect on him in general without any outside help, so he could never be sure if it was the man or the place.
Dream gazed at Aleister, letting out a deep, appreciative breath. He was still stretched out naked on the pentagram he’d painstakingly scrawled on the floor by candlelight while Dream had watched earlier in the night, and at least getting hauled out of bed at all hours to trek through swamps by starlight had the side benefit of getting to watch Aleister work. Dream gave himself a nice long moment to appreciate the view and then crept forward; Aleister had been down in the trance for a long time now, at just the cusp of it being dangerous. Time to call him back.
Dream stroked just fingertips along the outline of the tattoo on Aleister’s left calf; he had to go slow with this, no matter how much his pumped up blood urged him on otherwise. They’d worked out a system and Dream had fine tuned it a little more each time. The few times Aleister had done this trance with less…inspired spotters he’d told Dream he’d used pain as the physical sensation to pull him back; Dream smiled as he remembered that conversation. Well, does it have to be pain?
No? I suppose not. And the heat that had spread all through him as understanding replaced the confusion in Aleister’s eyes at the question.
Dream knew he shouldn’t complain. This was well worth missing a night’s sleep for.
Dream kissed up his thigh, forcing his lips to just brush against Aleister’s skin. He made his slow way upward, keeping his eyes locked on Aleister’s face to watch for any hint of a reaction. It was normal to have a slow start but Dream always felt a little twinge of worry anyway.
He made the same slow progress along Aleister’s hip and across to his lower stomach, the soft hairs tickling at his lips. It took some effort but he fought the temptation to head south again; he’d made that mistake once, rushing things because the moment got the better of him and while Aleister had woken up just fine he’d had a mild spell hangover for the better part of the day. He hadn’t complained – from what Aleister had told him this ritual used to knock him on his ass on the regular when he’d tried it the old way – but Dream demanded nothing less than perfection from himself. He could learn patience.
He felt Aleister’s breathing shift just the slightest bit. “There you are,” he said out loud, deeply satisfied with himself. He licked up Aleister’s treasure trail, grinning when that brought out another soft, hitched breath. Dream stretched on top of him; he was wearing a silk shirt and leather pants, which was hell in this weather but the texture did a lot of work for him before it was time for full skin contact later. He kissed Aleister very lightly on the lips, then started deliberately kissing down his neck, tracing each inked line with his tongue. Aleister sighed and Dream tongued the hollow of his throat, watching his eyes move under his closed lids.
After a few more minutes of slow working over Dream stripped off the shirt, trailing one hand down Aleister’s chest as he did so. He bent down to kiss him again, feeling another twinge of satisfaction when Aleister faintly chased the kiss. He pulled back and felt a shiver run down his back.
Aleister opened his eyes but the spell was still on him; instead of pale blue a deep, black nothingness stared back at Velveteen Dream. Like looking over the edge of a pit, or at a satelitte picture of space zoomed out so there were no stars to break up the black. Aleister would do promos about the darkness that lived in his head, or how once people peeled back his surface they inevitably fled, and Dream had never realized until they started doing this how maddeningly literal he’d been about that. Something lurking deep in that darkness tried to force Dream to look away. Expected him to.
Dream made sure to hold the gaze, the skin on his arms prickling up in waves and his nails digging into the rotting floorboard. There was a sudden malevolence in the air so sharp Dream could almost taste it but he would not look away.
After a slow count to twenty Dream leaned forward and kissed him again. “Yes, yes, very spooky. All the way back now.” Aleister’s eyes drifted closed again; the thick malice polluting the air suddenly released its grip. Dream saw Aleister’s hand’s twitch and picked it up, kissing his palm. He shed the rest of his clothes and went back to work.
***
Dream liked the quiet afterward, sitting there watching Aleister breathe as their sweat cooled in the unnaturally chilled air. He would never say that out loud, of course. Let Aleister keep thinking he was at least a little put out by all this, no matter how untrue it was.
“Why do you never flinch away?” Aleister said, his voice thick. “From the void?”
Dream ran his tongue over his lips. Because there is no part of you I don’t want to touch. “Oh, you know how it is,” he said, keeping his tone light. “A little darkness just makes my light all the brighter.”
Dream missed the time when Aleister didn’t immediately see through him. Or at least he liked to flatter himself there had ever been such a time. “Why have you never asked what it is?”
Dream ran through as series of flippant answers, not finding one that felt right. “Because whatever lives in your head makes no difference to me.” Aleister rarely looked at Dream like he didn’t know what to make of him anymore, too much water had flowed under the bridge of that, but the raw moments in the dark right after they’d done this strange thing always reminded Dream how much he liked it. “I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
Aleister’s lips tipped up, and Dream marveled sometimes how all of the concentrated darkness in the universe could never make him flinch but Aleister looking at him like this made him need to look away every time. “No. You’re not.”
“What is this all for, anyway?” Dream said, desperate to change the subject. “You’ve never said.”
Aleister stretched out on the pentagram. “It gives me perspective,” he finally said, seeming like he was choosing his words. “A way to touch something much larger than myself.” He shook his head, not seeming satisfied. “It’s hard to explain,” he said after a few seconds of silence.
“So who’s going to help you with it now that you’ve been kicked upstairs?” Dream asked, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice that he hadn’t been chosen too.
“I expect this will be the last time I’m able to for a very long time.”
“You have my number. And I’ll be up there too before you know it.”
Aleister shook his head. “I may be very different by then. You may be very different.” His fingers curled around Dream’s wrist.
Dream swallowed the argument he’d been about to make and let himself be pulled down to lay next to him again. It was never worth arguing with Aleister Black, what the man said and what he really wanted were rarely the same thing. At some point his phone would ring or he would get a text message: I need you. Meet me there. It would happen. Velveteen Dream had always got his way, especially when it came to Aleister Black.
He could almost taste the moment his patience was finally rewarded.