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It is a flit of blue that catches his attention first—royal, deep, and well-kept, shimmering at the edges of his vision. Just a flicker before it disappears behind a marble column, but Dream’s heart leaps up into his throat anyway. He would know that cloak anywhere.
He swallows the last of his drink. Even the bitter burn of alcohol doesn’t mask the lightning-spark that rises, unbidden, in his chest—a thrill he hadn’t experienced since he set foot in sparkling ballroom only hours past. He brings his hand up to his mask—adjusts it briefly, until it feels secure over his features—and quietly and unobtrusively as possible, slips through the ballroom and after him .
“I hardly expected to find you here,” Dream says distastefully.
He watches the rise of George’s shoulders as he takes a breath before he turns, straightening from where he had been leaning against the balcony railing. His cloak swirls around his feet at the motion. There is a cold calm to his eyes—an electric charge that sparks like lightning.
“This is exactly where you would expect to find me,” he says lowly. “What is it you always call me? A spoiled brat unfit for the dirt and dust of adventure?”
Dream shrugs. “Variations on that theme, yes. But I was commenting on the event—is this not exclusive to prestigious adventurers?”
George’s mouth twists into something unpleasant. In the open night of the balcony, the golden light of the ballroom spills over him, casting shadows over the dips and valleys of his features.
“You know my capabilities better than I,” he says, not without irony.
“I suppose I do,” Dream says softly. The wind rustles between them and he lets it hang, the implication; George is soft, spoiled. He doesn’t belong.
It’s untrue, of course—at least, mostly. George may be the bastard son of some far-off king, but Dream has experienced his power first hand, has tasted his lightning between bloody teeth and bruises. No, it is his arrogance that irritates Dream—the cool gaze George settles on others, beckoning and charming them in one, the proud tilt of his chin, the curve of his mouth. Even now, Dream can see it.
Thunder roils.
“I was invited,” George says shortly. “I don’t think the same is true of you. Did I ask you to follow me here and insult my standing? It’s a wonder our colleagues choose to interact with you at all.”
Dream grins at it. He takes a step forward, casually—George, not willing to be outdone, follows suit. And again, and again, until their shoulders press together, locked against each other in an impossible impasse. Dream leans forward until his lips brush over the shell of George’s ear, like a facsimile of intimacy—a parody of affection. It is a stark contrast to the warmth of their shoulders, pressing hot together like a brand—and George shivers and Dream sucks in a quiet inhale, steeling himself, biting back the shudder that quivers from his head to his toes.
“I’d advise you,” he breathes, “not to upset me. When the day comes that you must ask for help, I’m afraid I’m the only one who can.”
George says, softly, “And you? When that day comes for you, who will you ask?”
“You presume I would find myself in that situation to begin with,” Dream murmurs. “You, on the other hand…”
“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” George says. His tone has turned dangerous. “I’m starting to think you came to me merely to pick a fight, Dream. Why did you seek me out?”
Dream shrugs. He turns to meet George’s gaze. “I was bored,” he says lowly. A gust of wind swirls around them—rustles George’s hair, tears at his cloak.
The corner of George’s mouth curls into an arrogant smile. “What do you want me to do about it, then?”
As if he doesn’t know. As if they haven’t played this same charade out over and over, time and time again. Dream grins despite himself.
“Oh,” he says, “I think you know.”
George lifts an eyebrow. “I thought I was inferior to you. Why would I know?” And before Dream can deign to answer, he continues, coyly: “What do you want from me, Dream?”
“I think you should shut up,” Dream says, and crosses the breath between them to kiss him.
The next time he sees George, they are in the ruins of an abandoned town, months and miles from that golden ballroom. Dream had been hired to recover a stolen artifact; George had been hired to steal it in the first place.
Dream puts his hands in his pockets and smiles, razor-thing and uncompromising. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“You’ve been tracking me for weeks,” George says flatly. He flexes his fingers experimentally and sparks of blue lightning spurt to life around his fist, crackling between his fingertips. Satisfied, he dismisses it with a wave of his hand. “Did you know it was me? When you accepted the job.”
“If I had, I wouldn’t have accepted it,” Dream says pleasantly. He has no need to show off—George knows, intimately, the feeling of being beaten at Dream’s hand. “It’s not as if I want to be around you .”
George hums, unconvinced. “Last we met, you were pretty eager to be, ah— near me, if I recall properly. But please—go on.”
Dream waves his hand dismissively. In an effort to steer the conversation back on track, he says, “Do you have it with you?”
“You’ll have to enlighten me,” George says, “as to what you mean. I’m afraid I don’t understand. Is this not just a reunion between two friends?”
Dream says, “You know what I mean.”
“You’re no fun,” George sighs. “Very well. As a matter of fact, I do have it with me.” He fishes in a small pouch at his hip and pulls out a small silver compass by its chain. “This is what you’re looking for, I presume?”
“You’d presume correctly,” Dream says. “You’re feeling confident today, then?”
“No need,” George says lazily. “You’re no danger. Are you planning to fight me for it?”
“I’m afraid I’d hurt your feelings,” Dream retorts. “It’d be a shame to crush an ego as large and unsubstantiated as yours. I think it might be a great wonder of the world. ”
“Please ,” George snorts. “If my count is right, we’re tied. Power isn’t limited merely to the battlefield, Dream—you’d know that if you had more than just wind whistling in one ear and out the other.”
“Ha ha,” Dream says sarcastically. He reaches his arm out—summons his battleaxe, in a burst of wind, to his hand. “Because I have magic breeze powers. You’re so funny I think I could cry.”
“The wind heralds the storm,” George deadpans and draws his sword from his sheath. He swings it once, twice, experimentally, and then, satisfied, says, “Is now a good time to get your ass kicked?”
“I could say the same to you,” Dream says coolly.
Across the street, he meets George’s gaze in silent agreement. A breath passes between them, and then another; George lifts his palm—his fingers curl inwards, pinky, ring, middle, index. Come.
It’s all Dream needs. In an instant, he leaps forward—shifts , folds curtains of the wind around him until he is the gale, the swirling wind that rushes forward, unseen. He crosses the space between them in a heartbeat—and he knows, can feel the skip of George’s heart as he slides out of the wind and back into his body, axe sweeping towards George’s throat—and George ducks, sword sailing solidly towards Dream’s ankles.
And Dream bursts into wind, twisting up, a hairs breadth before the blade clears the air where his ankles had been just seconds before. He twists back into his body and plunges down—George barely manages to roll out of the way—splitting cobbled streets instead of flesh. He sidesteps a swing of George’s sword—yanks his axe out of the stones with the motion—and vaults back, dodging another. A flick of Dream’s wrist; a gust of wind ramming at George’s knees.
He stumbles.
Dream lunges forward.
It is as the arc of his axe swings solidly towards George’s heart that George looks up—the edges of his lips curling up in a way that means he knows something Dream does not—and his eyes flash blue. Light, brilliant, electric blue.
Dream sucks in a breath—dissolves into the wind, scatters , as fast as he can, more instinct than rational thought. And though he has no corporeal form, though he is little but a consciousness adrift in the breeze bound together by sheer will alone, he still feels it—the blinding blaze that burns through him, white-hot and metallic on his tongue, as lightning slams into him, cracking the street below. It frays at his edges; Dream forcefully binds himself back together.
“Dirty trick,” he whispers in George’s ear—a rustle of wind more than words, really, traveling down the curve of the breeze like an echo chamber: dirty trick, dirty trick, dirty trick.
“Pot,” George retorts, “kettle.”
Fair enough. Dream pops out of the wind—leaps back, dodging a slash of George’s sword, heels skidding across the cracked cobbles. A burst of wind at the soles of his boots; Dream launches himself forward, axe raised—and George parries with confidence, albeit without strength.
His sword skitters out of his hand and onto the street. George lunges to the side before Dream’s axe can split his head open.
“Oh George,” Dream taunts. He sweeps his axe to the side—George rolls back, dodging it deftly, and scrambles to a crouch.
“Oh Dream,” he says, and his eyes flash blue. But Dream has learned his lesson—he pulls himself into the breeze and speeds forward. Before George can even think to dodge, Dream is already yanking him up by the collar and slamming him against the wall of a crumbling building, the blade of his axe pressed to his throat.
They are close enough that Dream can feel George’s breath—warm, despite the raging tempest they have created, and stuttered—against his face. His heart against Dream’s sleeve, rabbit-quick and desperate.
“Don’t try the lightning again,” Dream warns. “I’ll slit your throat faster than you can call it down.”
“You won’t,” George says, daringly. He leans forward as far as he is able, closer to the edge—a dribble of blood trickles down his pale throat and disappears under the clasp of his cloak. And the confidence gives Dream pause—he parts his lips, unsure, and George gives him a look , lazy arrogance and baiting all at once.
And—Dream hates that look. He is the breeze and the wind and the gale and he sweeps across the land as he wants, but that look pulls him back and says: look. Look. Don’t you want?
Against his better judgment—or maybe, for his better judgment, he lowers his axe—lets it fade away into the wind. And George rolls his eyes as if saying, what are you waiting for, idiot? And Dream says, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” George says as if it should be obvious—and maybe it is, because as long as they have been enemies they have also known each other intimately, the meaning between each blink, each breath, and the heartbeats in between—and he leans forward himself, and kisses Dream firmly.
It burns. Dream has kissed George before but even now, it burns sweet and hot through him, slipping impossibly out of his hands, like the first storm after a long drought. Dream chases after it, reaching for that unreachable sensation, even as his fingers close around a cool weight.
Dream breaks from the kiss first. In his haste, his grip on George has slackened and now George shakes himself free, striding towards his fallen sword.
“Round two, then?” He inquires, with no small amount of smug satisfaction.
“No need,” Dream says. He turns his hand so George can see the small silver case, nestled securely in his palm—the compass, with its chain curled loosely around it. “I have what I came for.”
He sees it, the moment the realization hits. “You stole it from me. When we were—”
Dream grins. “See ya,” he says—salutes lazily with two fingers, and steps backward, into the howling wind. As he leaves, he extends his senses just enough to brush a breeze across George’s cheek, gloating and reassuring at once, as if to say: It isn’t over .
In the end, he tells his client he had failed.
“You hired me too late,” he says. “The thief had it melted down for silver just hours before you reached me. A shame, but not one I could have knowingly prevented.”
The client says, impatiently, “And the thief? What of them?”
“Adequately punished,” Dream says.
Outside the client’s mansion, when he is sure no one is looking, he draws the compass from his pocket. The silver case is cold in the palm of his hand—Dream pops it open with a flick of his thumb. Behind the glass, the little needle quivers steadily north.
Why had he kept it? It feels like a nonsensical decision. Dream considers it for a moment—follows the line that connects him and George in his head like the bends of a well-trod path. Each breath of the imagined road-dust is a familiar ache in his lungs.
Again, he thinks of it: George, under his hands—his dark eyes turning blue and bright. The electric crackle of his skin. And the taste of his name on Dream’s tongue is bitter and sweet in equal measure, something hated and revered at once.
It becomes impossible not to think about it—the fabric of George’s cloak bunched in his hands as Dream pressed him against the wall, the warmth of his skin, the beat of his heart. The lightning rage that had sparked blue in his eyes. In the cool morning, in the sweltering heat of the afternoon, in the dark of night, it plagues him. In rain, in sun, it follows him.
It’s stupid. It’s not as if they hadn’t kissed before. But Dream thinks, what are we? And he thinks of George, on the balcony, saying, what do you want from me? And he thinks, I want—
What he wants is an impossibility. Something that cannot exist, not yet—because Dream had slipped the compass from George’s pocket when he kissed him, because Dream had gone one way and George had gone the other. Still, he thinks, I want, I want, I want.
The wind has no laws, no axioms to bind it, but Dream thinks if it did, it would be this: the wind is always reaching—extending its hand out, straining to grasp something unseen. It wanders and it tumbles and it stretches, yearning, aching, towards that incorporeal thing.
Dream snaps the case shut. He tucks it back into his pocket—somewhere he can reach, easily. Something to grasp. Something to hold.
In the next town over, Dream buys a horse for the road—the wind has an unfortunate habit of carrying his memories off on the breeze without him when he blends into it too long—and he has a long journey to make in a short amount of time.
As he counts his coins out for the seller, Dream’s gaze snags on a flyer. Trying to make conversation, he says, “There’s a ghoul around here?”
The seller casts a disinterested glance at the piece of paper. “Aye,” he says, “but it shouldn’t be a problem. We hired someone to take care of it already—he seemed like the competent type. If not, his cloak might at least blind the damn thing.” He laughs at his own joke.
Dream’s hand seizes around his bag of coins. He says, “Blue? Kind of—sparkly? Short, dark, vaguely pretty with magic lightning powers?”
“Aye,” the seller says, again. “You know him, then?”
“Sort of,” Dream says vaguely, having forgotten completely about the horse. “Is he still around?”
“Sure,” the seller says. “He should be back soon, actually. If you go to the town hall and wait for a while you’ll probably be able to intercept him when he collects his pay.”
Dream hesitates. The job is nothing special, and it might be months before his path crosses with George’s again. If nothing else, he should at least give the compass to someone, to pass along.
But: their last parting had ended sourly for George. And it worries at Dream, the proximity, the wanting , wearing his ribs raw, eroding the bone from the inside-out. The wind is always reaching—the wind can never really grasp what it wants, and hold it.
It is this impulse that wins out, in the end.
He shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says. And before he can stop himself, he says, “if you see him, can you pass a message along for me?”
The seller shrugs. “Why not?”
“Tell him,” Dream says—he takes a breath. “Tell him I wished him sweet dreams.”
The road is a long one; he will meet George again on it someday, he thinks. It is only a matter of time.
His next job takes him to Crownspoint Valley to protect a merchant along his route. It’s dull work, but one that pays well enough to be worth it. Dream spends the majority of the journey batting rats away from the precious cargo and encouraging cool breezes to wipe the sweat off their brows.
The night before they’re set to climb out of the valley, they travel longer than they should. Dream ends up making the fire in the dark.
As he works, his mind drifts. It is a sweet, pleasant night—a rare autumn warmth before winter’s descent. He wonders if George is outside to experience it. The thought is not a rare one. How ironic, he thinks, bemused, that he carries the power of the wind yet cannot blow the thought of George from his mind.
It’s not a particularly troubling observation. Dream lets it carry him down its usual avenues to sleep. In the morning, he packs their camp up and continues onward.
Trouble strikes just before noon. The merchant walks by the dark opening of a cave and Dream barely has time to think, that is almost unfairly ominous, before a green blur hurtles out of the darkness.
Dream bursts forward—wraps an arm around the merchant, yanks him aside, just enough to dodge their assailant; and he barely has time to catch his breath before another blur of motion—a head, Dream realizes belatedly—shoots out of the cave, snapping its teeth eagerly at them. Dream sweeps his arm out—rebuffs it with a burst of wind—and shoves the merchant aside, to what he hopes is safety.
Snakes, he thinks, through the haze of adrenaline. He can handle snakes, even if they’re horribly fast. Dream calls his axe to his hand. Another burst of wind at his back, pressing him forward—Dream swings.
The blade arcs true. The head rolls limply off and settles at his feet.
“Snakes,” Dream mutters to himself, slightly out of breath. “I can handle snakes.” To the merchant sobbing helplessly on the floor, he says, louder (and what he hopes is soothingly), “It’s okay! It’s—really, it’s okay, I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”
The merchant doesn’t deign to answer. Dream moves to turn—to seek the second snake out and behead it in much the same fashion as the first, but something catches his eye.
The body of the first snake twitches. And then again, shuddering, rising. Dream’s mouth goes dry. It makes a horrible, wet, fleshy noise and, from the bleeding maw where the head had been, something green and scaly—two somethings, Dream realizes with impending horror—burst forward like a terrible flower in bloom.
And, from behind that, where the rest of the body had disappeared into the darkness of the cave, something stirs—a step so heavy the earth beneath Dream’s feet quivers and shakes. And the second snake lifts up and so does the first, and from the darkness emerge five, six, seven more, all red-eyed and scaly, snapping viciously at their small party.
And—as it nears the light of day, Dream realizes the true shape of his enemy. The thick, ropy thing he had separated from the head had not been a body. It had been a neck.
And as the monster lumbers out from its resting place, Dream says, hysterically, “You didn’t pay me to fight a hydra.”
The merchant, predictably, does not respond. Dream hardly has time to dwell on his paycheck, in any case—two of the heads crash towards. He dodges.
A cold feeling curls in the bottom of his gut. Had he used the last of his matches last night, to start the fire? Even if he hadn’t, would he have the time to create a fire big enough to cauterize an entire hydra head?
Fuck, Dream thinks, white-hot with panic. If it had just been him, he could have handled it—could have improvised or, at the very least, swept himself into the wind and gone to get a proper fire. But the merchant is a liability—the merchant and his cargo, because Dream won’t get paid if the cargo is damaged—and he has no choice.
A head lunges towards him—Dream sidesteps, but another snaps at his arm and bites, grasps his forearm in its sharp teeth, and has only broken skin when Dream slices it clean through the neck with the axe in his other hand, decapitating it.
It is a stupid move—Dream knows this, but it lets him pry the disembodied head and all its teeth off his arm. And it hurts, white-hot and blinding, the pain throbbing through his arm even as blood soaks through the fabric of his shirt and jacket, but Dream grits his teeth. He has a job to do.
He lets the axe dissolve back into the wind and runs, pulling the merchant limply along with his good hand as he does. And he feels it before he sees it, the shift in the winds at his back—Dream drops the merchant and spins, sweeping his hand out. A gale bursts forth at his command, just barely buffeting the attack.
It isn’t enough. Another head—because there are eleven, now, all pricked-up and eager for blood now that it’s been drawn, hurtles towards them. Dream blocks that one—yet another’s teeth graze the skin of his stomach before he can sidestep. The hydra takes another lumbering step forward.
It’s hopeless. It’s over. Dream can’t possibly move them both fast enough to escape, and he has no method of defeating a hydra. If he’d been prepared, maybe, but the journey was supposed to be safe, easy—an escort job, not a mission to defeat a beast of literal legend.
It is one or the other; Dream will die trying to save the merchant from the hydra, or he will save himself and leave the merchant to die. And—Dream is no hero, but the thought of the latter is bitter at the back of his throat.
He doesn’t want to die, either.
Around him, the wind howls—the hydra rears back its heads. Something leaps to Dream’s throat—a feeling, more than a thought, and he doesn’t know who he’s asking, but he thinks, desperately: PLEASE. PLEASE.
The compass in his pocket grows warm.
the wind has no axioms no laws no constants to bind it but dream thinks that if it did it is always reaching extending its hand out straining to grasp something unseen it wanders and it tumbles and it stretches yearns aches fingers brushing against something incorporeal something that cannot be held something that cannot be attained but
the wind has always heralded the storm
and
Dream closes his eyes and reaches—
—and George reaches right back and grips his hand.
The world explodes in a shower of blue sparks. The wind howls, so strong even Dream cannot part it—he falls back, shielding his eyes from the swirling dust. When the storm settles, George is there, goggles drawn over his eyes, lightning crackling between his fists.
“You’re late,” Dream says, and if his voice comes out higher and breathier than he means, he chalks it up to adrenaline.
“My bad,” George says dryly. He dodges an attack swiftly, and then another. “I was deciding if I wanted to keep you alive or not.”
Dream smiles so hard his cheeks hurt. “What’s the verdict, then?”
“I think it should be rather obvious, dumbass,” George says, rolling his eyes.
Dream says. “Just kill the thing already, idiot.”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Oh my god.” When George doesn't deign to respond, Dream says, exasperated, “We’re literally magic. That’s—your lightning is magic. My wind is magic. Shut the fuck up.”
George sniffs. “Words hurt, Dream.” Still, he sweeps his arms out—and Dream cannot see the flash of his eyes, but he can imagine it, blue and sharp in the dark of the storm. From the vault of the sky, a bolt of lightning crashes down into one of the hydra’s many faces. The earth trembles where it lands and Dream’s bones rattle in his body.
The hydra does not fall. Its faces do not burn.
George’s sure step stutters and he launches himself backward, just in time to dodge the gnash of one set of teeth.
“Dream,” he says, lowly, and his voice quivers with something Dream cannot identify—fear, maybe? He turns slightly, just enough that Dream can see the expression that crosses his face.
Ah , Dream thinks, half-exasperated. It’s rage.
“It didn’t work,” George explodes. “What do you want me to do! It didn’t—I have fucking lightning powers, not fire! You should have foreseen this! A hydra, Dream, really?”
“Heavens , you’re annoying,” Dream mutters. He staggers to his feet, flexing his wrist experimentally. Louder: “You can make fire, dumbass. Just—do your stupid thing again but on a tree or something.”
“Or something? ”
“I don’t know how your magic works!”
George huffs but dashes forward obligingly—he sweeps a nearby branch of the ground. As his fingers curl around the wood, lightning crackles to life around them, searing into the wood until it bursts into flame. When the next hydra head snaps at him, George lops it off easily with his sword and thrusts the burning stick into its bleeding maw.
Dream says, “I want to fight things too.”
“You’re bleeding out!”
“It’s fine!”
“It’s literally not!” George dodges another head. Behead, cauterize, repeat. It’s not a complicated process, Dream thinks sourly. He could do it, even if he was bleeding out. Which he isn’t, so it’s a moot point anyway.
He tries again. “I—”
“Just sit down,” George says. His gaze softens and he unclasps his cloak, letting the soft fabric settle over Dream’s legs with a flourish. “I’ve got this.”
At night, after the hydra is dead and Dream is no longer in danger of bleeding out, George sits down next to him by the fire and yawns, firelight pooling into something gold in his dark eyes.
“Long day,” he says sleepily and stretches his legs out. His knee bumps into Dream’s briefly at the motion. Something grows warm in Dream’s chest at the touch and he closes his eyes—savors the sun after the storm between his ribs, the honey that lies sweet and heavy on his tongue.
“I thought I should return this,” he says after a long while, fishing the silver compass out of his pocket.
George laughs. “I don’t need it anymore. That job has long sailed, Dream.”
Dream’s name in George’s mouth is fond and soft and happy. Dream presses the compass into George’s palm—lets the curl of his fingers linger against George, who takes a soft breath.
Maybe it’s the night that emboldens him, or the fire, or the warmth—Dream has always been impulsive, has always gone where the wind has taken him, but now he considers his words carefully, determined to get it right.
“It’s a promise,” he says slowly. “The day I stole it—you took something of mine, too.”
George regards him with a soft smile. “Oh?”
“I gave it to you,” Dream amends nervously, thumb rubbing at the compass’s silver casing. “My heart. I know we….our interactions haven’t been the most, you know, romance inducing—except for the kissing, but that’s like—it’s just. Yeah. I think I’d like to try something new if you’re amenable to it.”
George laughs again and he takes the compass, setting it down easily between them before reaching, again, and threading his fingers in Dreams. Something swells in Dream’s chest, euphoric, and he squeezes George’s hand right back.
“My heart,” George says. “I could lend it to you, for a while. If you’re amenable to it.”
“Yeah,” Dream says, a little stunned. “Yeah. I—I am. Amenable.” He takes a breath and says, “Can I kiss you?”
“Yeah,” George smiles. And Dream disentangles their fingers to put his palm to George’s cheek and kisses him softly, unsure.
It’s uncharted territory, but the storm has blown over; the skies are clear. The road between them stretches infinitely into the distance. Between the press of their legs, the needle of the silver compass settles ever north. Dream roots himself in George’s hand and does not let go.