Chapter Text
The pups are voracious eaters; always pushing and grabbing and playfully gnashing in one another’s faces when meal time comes around. They’re not neat about it, either. At the end of a feeding, their hands are caked with blood they don’t bother trying to lick off and there’s always bits of stuff stuck between their teeth that they lazily pick at with sharpened phalanges.
It’s enough to make Dream grateful for his desensitivity to gore. Otherwise, he’d find his own stomach churning when the pups ripped into a particularly large catch and started tearing it up from the inside.
Maybe that’s why Dream never noticed Horror’s problem. After all, he was always the first one to start cleaning himself off before cutely nuzzling the others to initiate a grooming session when the pickings were left clean.
(They’re so cute like that - sleepy and mumbling as they turn their grabby hands on each other, cleaning and cuddling…)
It’d make sense. It’d make sense that Dream wouldn’t notice that not all the blood dripping down Horror’s chin those times was from the food, wouldn’t notice the gaps in his grin or the small winces when his shivermates helped clean him off.
It doesn’t stop the deep freeze, the sudden chill in his bones Dream feels when he catches sight of Horror’s bloody mouth as he gnaws mindlessly on a bone of some long dead creature.
A rib, maybe.
He’s frozen for a second, watching as the pup stares sightlessly into the dark abyss of the trench as he works on the bone, heedless of the grinding of his teeth against it. The blood mixes with black saliva, coating the improvised chew toy and Horror’s small hands. It mixes into the sand beneath him, creating a sludge-like puddle denser than the water that surrounds them.
Dream doesn’t think to ask where he found it; there’s plenty of stray bones littered all over the trench that lay forgotten once they’d been stripped of their meat and marrow. Instead, his first thought is to pry it out of Horror’s hands.
Which is. A bad idea.
Horror growls, his face contorting to feral possessiveness as he bites down harder on the rib in his possession. His teeth make a cracking noise as he breaks them on it. Dream shudders at the sound.
“Horror!” He gasps, attempting to sound more chastising than horrified. “Let it go!”
The small pup doesn’t let the bone go. Instead, he darts past Dream further into the inky blackness, down towards the bottommost part of the cavern where the rest of the bones lay around, picked over by the occasional crab.
It’s a graveyard down there, darker than black. The darkness is part of what makes it dangerous; it’d be easy for a pup to hurt themselves on any manner of sharp bones or rocks down there with no guiding light.
Dream follows after with zero hesitation, using his advantage of both experience and size to quickly overwhelm Horror with only a few strong swishes of his tail. He grabs the pup around the ribs, arms only cinching tighter when Horror starts to wiggle and growl aggressively.
Horror’s tail, already thick with muscle from good eating and regular use, slaps against Dream. If there were any air this deep underwater, it surely would’ve been knocked straight out of him.
Under normal circumstances, Dream would never be so… forceful with one of the pups. They’re adverse to his friendly advances on the best of days and downright hostile on the worst. At Nightmare’s advice, Dream had been attempting to give them space while they played and tussled with one another.
But this was no normal circumstance.
Dream feels sick at the thought of Horror hurting himself. His chest aches to recall the sight of Horror’s unaware gaze as he’d done it.
He shushes the pup in his arms as he returns to the more elevated section of the trench they dwell in, towards where the rough and winding caves are. He needs something to wipe away the blood, not confident about cleaning the pup like a shivermate would. It’s also more likely Horror would accept his assistance if one of his actual shivermates were there to calm him down.
Dream finds Dust first, lounging in Nightmare’s library on one of the cushions his brother had dragged in from a shipwreck. There are many more similar comfortable pillows strewn around the room, likely from all the pups’ roughhousing.
It smells like them in here, which seems to reach Horror in his half-feral state. He goes mostly limp in Dream’s arms, tail still even as his rib cage expands and deflates quickly - a common self soothing motion for skeleton hybrids.
“Shh,” Dream shushes one last time, rocking the pup back and forth.
Dust perks up immediately at the sight of them, cautiously watching for a second before ambling closer. Dream lets him wordlessly pry Horror out of his arms and drag him over to a pillow. Despite knowing it’s for the best, Dream still misses the weight of the warm little pup in his arms.
As Horror makes himself comfortable amongst the cushions, Dream slowly approaches the two to try and explain himself.
“He was hurting himself,” Dream says softly.
Dust strokes the uninjured side of Horror’s skull and shrugs. He lays himself down next to his shivermate, giving his back to Dream.
Dream hesitates again, feeling spectacularly unwelcome. Both Dust and Cross have a way of making him feel that way. But he pushes through, knowing Horror needs his help right now. Or, at least out of some desperation to convince the pups of that.
“He was chewing on a bone, damaging his teeth…” Dream continues, “does he do that often?”
After a moment of silence, Dream prepares to speak up again, but Dust surprises him by turning over to look at him.
“he’s teething,” Dust mumbles, “‘s normal.”
… Teething?
Dream casts a doubtful look at Horror, whose once full grin is now littered with holes.
The pup must notice Dream’s confusion or just be used to his general lack of knowledge on shark pups.
“his teeth keep coming in again, so he has to knock the other ones loose or it hurts,” Dust explains, somewhat reluctantly. Then, he turns back over and starts the arduous task of cleaning Horror from the aftermath of his apparent teething.
Still floating by the entrance to the library, Dream watches.
“Do… do all of you teethe?”
Dust sighs, “no. just him.”
Horror’s crooked, scraggly teeth suddenly make a lot more sense to Dream. He’s one frightful looking pup, with his large red eye, broken skull and cramped grin. But Dream had never thought to consider how much a grin like that might hurt, especially if it were constantly reassembling itself…
“You said it hurts?”
Dream cautiously drifts closer, peeking over Dust to see Horror sleepily responding to Dust’s grooming with small nudges of his own. His soul swells with gentle fondness.
“yeah,” Dust says between grooming Horror.
“I can… I can help, if you’d like - he’d like. If you’d both like. I have healing magic.”
Dust pauses for a moment to consider Dream’s offer before slowly looking over his shoulder.
The pup grunts and reaches over to grasp Dream’s hand, slightly glowing green from the magic he’s prepared. It surprises Dream, but when Dust hums his assent at the warm magic, it makes sense.
“... okay.”
He’d been making sure Dream was telling the truth. Some part of Dream is hurt by the blatant distrust, the other is used to it.
Dream ignores his own feelings and sets a hand on Horror’s small cheekbone, running a thumb over his chin. He smiles when Horror sighs, his sockets slipping shut as he leans into the touch.
“If he… if any of you are hurting, you can come to me, alright?”
Dust stares at Horror’s face as Dream continues to soothe the pain.
“....okay.”
And that’s all Dream could hope for.