Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dream hates this, he decided. He hates this a lot. He’s scared as he sits in the corner of the room, eyes blown wide in fear (not that it matters since his mask is hiding all his expressions) and stares at Quackity who seems to be doing nothing but his job.

“I DON’T CARE ANYMORE ABOUT THE BOOK! I don’t give a crap about the fucking book anymore. You understand me?! I don’t give a shit, I’ve lost interest in that thing!” Quackity yells at him, each and every word that spills out of his mouth seems to be coated with venom.

He wants this to stop. He hates this. He hates being yelled at. He just wants to scream at the top of his lungs, to tell them to stop, to tell him to stop, but he can’t. He has to stay in tune with his character, his role he had been given at the beginning. It’s just roleplay, he tells himself, nothing of this is real. It’s okay, Dream. It’s okay.

Except nothing is okay.

“I’m swinging this thing around, and one hit and you’re done. Do you want me to do that, Dream? You know what? Let’s play a little game!” is the last thing Dream hears before he sees Quackity raising the axe, the axe that he has grown so familiar with, and slashing down. The torture scenes are not shown on streams, just as Dream won’t actually get hit, but he was still scared as he begged him to stop;

“Please, please, please... stop, stop, STOP!” He screams in pain, even though the axe is barely touching him. The screams sound real, too real if he has to be honest, or maybe they are real? Yeah, because his fear is real, he is scared of Quackity. But it’s all just roleplay, he has no reason to be afraid, everything’s going to be okay. That’s what everyone always tells him.

“We need a villain for our story.”

“I don’t think anyone wants to volunteer as villain.”

“Yeah, they will get a lot of hate, I doubt anyone wants that.”

Dream hears them discuss the distribution of roles, if no one wants to play the villain then he can, right? Everyone will be happy to have that weight taken off of them, so he slowly raises his hand.

“I-I can play the villain if no one else wants to.” He shakily says and he sees them, he sees their faces light up in happiness and relief and that made a smile appear on his own face.

“Dream! Thank you so much!”

“Really? Thank god!”

“It’s just roleplay anyway, it’s gonna be fine.”

It’sjustroleplayIt’sjustroleplayIt’sjustroleplayIt’sjustroleplayIt’sjustroleplayIt’sjusroleplay

Nothing of this is real.

Quackity suddenly steps away, stretching himself, causing cracks of bones to resound in the room. It isn’t the crack of bones you hear when the bones actually break into two, but the sound of surviving another exhausting day.

“Alright, that was really good! You can go home!” Dream hears someone say and then he watches Quackity leaving the cell as if nothing happened, a lazy smile on his face.

He can leave now. It’s over. He can go home. But he doesn’t. Instead, he crawls into the gap between the obsidian wall and the chest and takes off the stupid white mask that makes breathing so much harder. He lifts his knees to his chest and buries his face into his arms that are a form of pillow on his knees.

It’s just roleplay. Everyone has told him that it’s just roleplay and that the shouldn’t take it too seriously, shouldn’t take the words thrown at his head too seriously. It’s just roleplay, it’s just something based on a script.

But if this is all really just roleplay... why is no one checking up on him? Why is no one there to see if the words didn’t actually hurt him. Why is he treated like an actual prisoner?  Tears start to prick in the corner of his eyes, sobs escape his quivering lips and his breath quickens before he eventually breaks down completely.

Maybe it isn’t just roleplay. Maybe there is more to this than his eyes can see. Maybe everyone does hate him and this is their way of showing it. Yeah, that must be right, that must be-

“Dream?” He flinches. A familiar voice reached his ears, a voice he hasn’t heard in a while.

“W-Warden.” He answers hesitantly, every word can lead to a punishment. Every sound he makes can lead to a punishment.

Dream tries to scramble further away when he hears the warden kneel down, but it was to no avail, the wall behind him prevents him from doing so. He said something wrong again, he’s getting punished now, he’s-

“Dream, can you look at me, please?” The voice is soft, gentle and the tone is questioning, it isn’t a demand. When he realizes that, he slowly looks up, only to be met with eyes that remind him of his own ones, just a tad darker. Those pair of eyes feel familiar, they feel safe.

“Look! It’s me, Sam, Sammy! Not the warden.” The gentle voice of Sam coos. Yes, it was Sam’s voice, not the warden’s.  He hasn’t seen Sam for a while now, he realizes.

When he feels a warm hand touch his cheek, he leans into the touch almost immediately. And then he feels the hand leave and he whines at the loss until he suddenly feels strong arms wrap around him as he gets lifted off the ground and placed on the other’s lap. The arms tighten around his waist and he gets pulled into Sam’s chest, his face buried in the junction of neck and shoulder.

Dream doesn’t even realize at first what this gesture means until he does. It’s a hug. It’s warm. And it makes him grasp onto Sam’s hoodie as he suddenly starts to cry again, heart-wrenching sobs leave his mouth unwillingly. He doesn’t understand why he is crying. Sam checked up on him, that is what he wanted, so why? He can’t stop himself from letting those emotions overtake him as he keeps crying and crying. Tears sliding down his cheeks in an endless fountain.

He feels a hand rubbing circles into his back and another hand patting his head in a rhythmic pattern while Sam rocked them both forward and backward, he continues to cry his heart out. Sam seems to be whispering soothing nothingnesses into his ear but he couldn’t pick them up, too concentrated on inhaling and exhaling correctly, to stop himself from passing out any second with the lack of oxygen he gets with his quickened breathing.

What felt like hours, soon comes to a stop as the room grows quiet, the only thing that can be heard is the same-paced breathing of the two individuals in the cell.  Dream listens to Sam‘s heartbeat, while he calms himself down to match Sam’s breathing as well. He tries to stay awake but his eyelids keep closing and the soft humming of Sam doesn’t make things any easier.

He feels his eyes shut closed as his mind slowly but surely slips away from consciousness, feeling tiredness engulfing him, his brain, until he finally passes out, breath even and slow.

Chapter Text

Sam hasn’t been on the SMP for a while, he took a short vacation and decided to travel around, to travel to different servers and explore the world. His character in the roleplay wasn’t particularly necessary during that period of time and he has always watched the lore streams live on twitch. Twitter has kept him pretty updated as well.

He noticed pretty early that Dream’s acting skills increased drastically every time a prison scene was played. It increased so quickly that it suddenly seemed to be too good, too real, for it to be just acting. He is aware that Dream is an amazing actor, but the screams of agony and the pleads for Quackity to stop sounded way too realistic and it made Sam feel uneasy.

During his trip, he was just as any other average viewer; He had no idea what happened behind the scenes. Maybe it truly was just acting and Dream was laughing as soon as the cameras turned off, but maybe it was... different.

With the worry that slowly but gradually bloomed inside of him, he decided to return back to the DreamSMP.

And now there he is; he pulls down the lever that was connected to the dispensers on the ceiling of the prison, causing the lava to slowly depart, revealing a stone path that connects the cell to the mainland of the prison.

Quackity quickly makes his way towards the little room and orders him to pull the lever once more, soon the red-orange liquid blocks Sam’s view, preventing him from seeing what happens behind closed doors.

Some times passes and he is able to hear the raised voice of the man that had entered the cell just a few minutes prior. It is loud enough to pass through the lava but the words themselves got swallowed and landed on deaf ears.

Sam gets lost in his thoughts for a second, he has seen the script, he knows what happens but he is anxious, worried for the dirty-blonde man that volunteered to be put into prison. He fiddles with his fingers and then he jumps at the sudden raise of voice, a voice that didn’t belong to Quackity.

“Please, please, please... stop, stop, STOP!”

And there it is, the pleads resound in the entire prison, the words are clear and easily understandable. The shaky voice that begs the man to stop doing whatever he is doing, the voice that trembles in fear, the voice Sam has heard so often through the screen are now audible to him in person.

It sounds too real, too genuine. It makes Sam’s fatherly (or brotherly?) instincts kick in, it makes him want to protect the person who makes those heartbreaking sounds. The voice had seemed to increase in volume after every spoken word, until the building grows quiet, dead silent.

And then he jumps at the sudden voice that comes out of the boxes that are installed into the corners of every room.

“Alright, that was really good! You can go home!”

Sam hastily grabs the lever and pulls it down quickly. Once the lava has stopped flowing down from the ceiling, Quackity steps onto the path and walks towards the direction Sam is in, passing him with his hands in his pockets and a laid-back smile on his face.

“Good job today, Quackity!” Sam shouts, when the shorter man passes him, who freezes for a second before he looks back at Sam and smiles “Thank you, you too.”

And then he leaves.

And it bothers Sam.

Did every single prison scene end like this, when he wasn’t there? Did Quackity just leave whenever he got the permission to do so? Did he not even bother sparing a single glance towards the actor who plays the prisoner so well that one might think that the fear was real?

Has no one ever thought that the fear was genuine?

Dream hasn’t left the cell yet, Sam notes. He turns his head towards the dark chamber that hangs in the middle of the way bigger room which was filled with lava. The heat is unbearable, the space hardly available in the small cell with the rough obsidian walls. The prison scenes are usually cut short. No one wants to spend a long time in that room under those circumstances.

When he takes a look into the cell, he doesn’t see the person that is supposed to be there. Did Dream leave while he got lost in his thoughts? No way, right?

And then he hears the quiet sobs that probably aren’t for his ears to hear. His feet guide him towards the sound, towards the person who makes those, he doesn’t even realize when he stands inside the cramped room in front of a man, a man whose current position makes him look so much smaller than Sam has had him in his memories.

The sight is a heartbreaking one, breaking his heart that had already been broken into hundreds of pieces by the faint sobs that are still leaving the mouth of the person in front of him.

“Dream.” he says as gentle as possible but it doesn’t seem to come across that way, because Dream flinches slightly and answers oh so shakily.

“W-Warden.” Sam frowns. He has never liked being called ‘warden’, ever since the prison has been built by him, specifically for the roleplay.

He kneels down slowly, trying his hardest to not scare the poor man any further. “Dream, can you look at me, please?” Sam asks with the same voice as before and smiled when his eyes met Dream’s.

“Look! It’s me, Sam, Sammy! Not the warden.” It might be cringe to some people that he calls himself ‘Sammy’ but to his defense; Dream was the first person to ever call him ‘Sammy’ when they were younger.

When the shorter didn’t respond, he carefully reaches forward and cups Dream’s face in his right hand. Sam feels his heart ache at the whine that left the younger man’s lips when he pulled away and he swiftly grabs Dream and pulls him onto his lap.

He carefully wraps his arms around Dream’s torso, engulfing the younger in a hug. He doesn’t pull away when Dream grasped his hoodie firmly, he doesn’t pull away when he felt his piece of clothing getting damped with tears, he will never pull away when Dream’s quiet sobs filled the silence once more.

When he noticed that the dirty-blond man didn’t plan to calm down any time soon, he starts to rub small circles into the boy’s back and pats his head softly, while rocking them both back and forth.

‘It’s okay’, ‘let it all out’ and ‘I’m here’ is what he whispers soothingly, although he doubts that Dream is even listening, he continues.

He continued until Dream’s erratic breathing matches his own one, slow and even. The grip on his hoodie has also loosened.

“Dream?” He asks in a whisper but doesn’t get a response. Sam lets out a long sigh, more than glad to see that the younger must have fallen asleep.

Crying surely is an exhausting activity.

Chapter Text

A few minutes pass and Sam decides to leave the prison, grabbing Dream by his thighs and standing up, the younger’s legs dangling on both sides of his body while he slowly leaves the cell.

He walks and walks until he steps out of the portal that leads one into and out of the prison. When the cool wind of the starry night hits his face, loud noises of chatters and cheers ring in his ears and he soon establishes that those voices belong to none other than Quackity and some other people who eagerly waited for the stream to end.

Who are those ‘other people’? Well from Sam’s observation, ‘other people’ are Sapnap, Karl, Bad and surprisingly George. He also notes that none of the minors of the server are gathered in front of the prison, probably because Quackity’s lore streams are always scheduled late at night.

Sam frowns, so many people made the effort to leave their houses and to wait in front of the big building to celebrate another successful stream, to praise Quackity for his skills and yet no one bothered to actually go in and check on Dream.

Is this how every single stream ended during the time Sam had been absent?

The noises must have gotten too loud because Dream raises his head slightly and lets out a sound of discomfort. A little panicky, Sam quickly decides to carry Dream with one arm (quite a strong man ngl) and with the other he presses the younger’s head back into his neck, shushing him calmly and telling him to go back to sleep. He heaves a sigh of relief when Dream snuggles back into his arms.

The longer he listens to the on-going conversation, the more he feels a raging anger build inside of him, scarily close to spilling over and snapping at every single one of them but he manages to swallow it down and proceeds to turn around the corner, facing the direction his base is located at.

He walks slowly, trying to avoid attracting any attention towards him and Dream but his attempt fails when Sapnap suddenly came running towards them.

"Yo, Sam!” The ravenette greets, hand waving from left to right, causing the taller of the two to stop in his tracks. Sam really tries to not glare at him, it’s just quite hard right now. Sapnap’s gaze falls onto the boy that he is carrying and holding close;

“Is Dream okay?” The shorter man asked worryingly (?), loud enough for everyone else to turn their heads into their direction.

Did he do that on purpose?!

And suddenly the entire group walked towards them, repeating Sapnap’s question again and again and it really starts to annoy Sam beyond a level he can’t even explain.

People only start (pretend?) to care when one person cares first.

“He’s...” Sam starts his sentence but decides against his prior plan of replying. “It’s none of your business.” He answers annoyed and glares down at the people that were much shorter than him.

He sees the surprised expressions on their faces, gasps of disbelief leave their lips but Sam doesn’t care and continues to walk towards his base, his arm that was wrapped around Dream protectively loosens slightly as soon as he gains distance from the small group. He had probably tightened his grip subconsciously when they approached the duo.

Shouts of protest can be heard behind him but he pays them no mind, rather than that, he notices how none of the five people bothers to run after them, to check if Dream is actually okay even though Sam pushed them away. If they really cared they would keep insisting on asking instead of just letting him leave with Dream.

The shouts grew more quiet the further he walked and when he couldn’t hear them anymore, he heaves another sigh. He has sighed a lot in just a single day.

He knows that they are probably just too excited to be in their right mind and he can’t even bring himself to actually dislike them; Sam knows three of them for years and he knows that the other two people are incredibly caring and kind humans as well but he can’t help but be a little upset at them.

The way to his base isn’t the shortest to ever exist but when he arrived, he quickly presses a button and steps into the room with the walls that he had grown comfortable with. With large strides and Dream in his arms, he makes his way towards his bedroom. As soon as he located the bed, he gently places Dream’s sleeping body onto it and tucks him in.

Sam stares at Dream’s face and it doesn’t take a genius to see that the dirty-blond man had been crying, the red puffy eyes are giving it away (even when they are closed). He lets out a sigh, he doesn’t know how often he had already sighed today, definitely more than three times.

He was about to go to his couch and just sleep there before he feels a tug on his sleeve, accompanied by a soft whisper.

“Don’t leave, Sammy.”

Dream sounds hoarse and if the swollen eyes weren’t enough to give away that he had cried then the voice surely was the cherry on top. His heart clenched at the nickname, god, Dream hasn’t called him ‘Sammy’ in so long! And who was he to deny such a request?

He swiftly grabs a nearby chair and places it next to the bed before he sits on it comfortably (well as comfortable as a chair can be).

He feels like a father, being overly protective of his son who was just three years younger than himself. His expression morphs into one that displayed utterly disgust, although there is no one to witness it.

No, he isn’t a dad, not a father. Just the word alone makes him feel like an old man and he is barely 24 years old. Who do you think he was? Philza? No way. He quickly shakes his head; A big brother, yea that sounds a hundred times better, he is just a big brother who is a little bit protective over his little brother.

Not a father.

Never.

He glances down and notices the small smile on Dream’s face, causing him to crack a smile as well. A little brother.

"Goodnight, Dreamie.”

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As you probably already noticed, this work is currently on-hold, I think? I am currently working on a new story and I already planned for a while to just use this one as a one-shot book, one-shots that are loosely connected and all happen in this “actor-universe”. Updates won’t happen often probably but maybe sometimes.

This story never really had a certain plot anyway, it could have just ended with the first two chapters. I hope I’ll see you in my next work, though, if I ever get it out

Take care!