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The sky outside is dark.
It’s dark most of the time, these days. Punz is beginning to worry about it, especially when the clouds turn heavy and red-tinged and crackle faintly with green lightning. That only tends to happen when Dream’s temper is getting out of hand, but since that’s becoming a more common thread, so too are the storms.
He twitches the curtain closed. He doesn’t think anyone would be this far out, but he doesn’t want to risk someone coming past and dropping in on him. He’s not sure Dream would move fast enough to hide.
Back through to the workroom, where Dream is sat at the desk with papers spread and three now-empty mugs of poppy tea that Punz keeps trying to tell him can not be drunk in these quantities without killing him. But Dream rarely listens, and Punz is used to that, too.
His shitty bun is coming loose. Punz can tell it’s bothering him by the occasional growl and tug at a fallen strand, so he crosses the room lightly, announces his presence with a sigh, and gently gathers the fallen hair back. Undoes the bun, reties it. A little neater. Dream barely flinches, which would seem dismissive to anyone else, but Punz takes it as a compliment. If anyone else so much as looked at him after the prison, he thinks Dream would jump into murder-defence mode.
Not with Punz. Never with Punz, who curls a hand gently over Dream’s shoulder.
“How long since you slept?” He asks quietly. The last mug of tea is only just empty, so he’ll be getting up soon anyway, when the pain gets too overwhelming to focus.
“Don’t know,” Dream scoots a pack of papers a little closer and snaps open the band, “What day is it?”
“Wrong answer,” Punz replies, “Thursday.”
“Ngh. Four days, give or take. I think it was Sunday. Might have been Saturday.”
“You still need to sleep, Dream. We’re gonna run out of poppies.”
“We’re not gonna run out of poppies.”
“We will, eventually, run out of poppies.”
“If we run out, you’ll buy more.”
He will. They both know it. Poppies might not grow on the shitty, scrubby soil and rock of the mountain they’ve settled in, but they grow back by L’Manhole, and Punz knows that Niki sells the seeds.
“It’ll take a couple of days to get there and back, though.” Punz brushes his thumb back and forth over the base of Dream’s neck. The knob of bone is concerning. He’s not eating enough, not sleeping enough, but he hasn’t for months. Any mortal man would be dead by now.
“Better set off, then.” Dream replies absently, turning a page.
“Alright, I guess,” Punz pulls his hand back, “See you later.”
“Wait-” Dream whips around, paper abandoned. Punz sees him wince. It’s horrible, how his body can barely contain him anymore. It’s a terrible combination of failing mortality and the slow absorption of divine power. He’s dying, but immortal.
“Yeah?” Punz pauses, half reaching for his chestplate. He has no intention to leave, and yes, they both know it.
“Don’t- don’t. Don’t go. Actually. We have enough poppies.”
Punz lets his hand drop.
“We will eventually run out of poppies.” He says.
“Okay, yeah, okay, but- but we’re not out of poppies yet.” Dream rebukes. It sounds uncertain.
“Dream,” This isn’t teasing. It’s gentle. It’s so abominably gentle and soft and sweet. Dream winces.
“You still need to sleep. And you need to sleep now, it’s not helping your head, it’s not helping your body.”
“I’m running out of time to get all this shit together,” Dream replies with just the essence of the bite he should, “I don’t have time to sleep. If I don’t get this together, I can’t pay you.”
“Drop the fuckin’ pretense,” Punz shakes his head, makes his way back toward Dream, “You know fine well I don’t- I don’t give a shit if you pay me or not.”
(Okay, that hurts, he likes getting paid. He does give a shit. It’s just not… all the shits.)
“That- in the vault, you know that was just for show. Nobody’d risk making an enemy of everyone they’ve ever loved just for money.”
“Everyone hates me, you don’t have to remind me.” Dream turns back to his paperwork. Punz huffs, drags his chair back a good foot so Dream can’t lean on the table and scoots into the gap as Dream yelps in surprise. He kneels, folds his arms over Dream’s thighs and looks up into the mask. He can barely see through the darkened lenses, but he can just about make out the shape of Dream’s eyes on his.
“Not everyone.” Punz reminds him, “Not me. And the rest of them- one day, one day they’ll see the truth. They’ll understand you like I do.”
“Nobody understands me like you do.” Dream scoffs. Punz swallows. It is the closest to reciprocation he thinks he’ll ever get.
“Almost like I do, then.” His voice comes out too soft. He can’t bring himself to harden it. “I chose you long ago, Dream. You know I’m yours until the end, no matter what. So- so don’t- so fucking sleep. Because I don’t want or need that end to come any sooner because you can’t fucking chill out enough to rest.”
There is a long pause. There are often long pauses with Dream, Punz finds. He does not know why or how he ended up here, head over heels for the world’s biggest villain, but he doesn’t think he regrets it. It’s stupid. It’s pointless. Dream doesn’t have enough humanity left within him to love, and Punz knows it, but…
He stays. He chose this, and he refuses to go back on that choice.
A sigh breaks the silence, hissing against the inside of the mask. Dream’s head droops, and Punz reaches up, slow and gentle. His hand finds the buckle at the back, and he flicks it, holds, watches Dream’s eyes through the lenses. He gets a slow blink, like a cat showing trust, so he opens the buckle and takes the mask gently, sets it on the table behind him.
Dream looks like shit. Between the scars from prison that seem to unheal every few weeks, the bags under his eyes, and the flicker-shift between the green of Dream’s eyes and the ender of XD’s, it adds up to just… a mess. But it’s a mess that Punz has tied himself to, and he’s just as gentle when he cups Dream’s cheek, thumbs over the deep blue-purple under his left eye. It is a surprise when Dream leans into the warm touch. Even when Punz touches him, he doesn’t acknowledge it, never leans in, never reciprocates.
But he leans it. He acknowledges it. He reciprocates, a shaking hand coming up to curl over Punz’s own.
“I’m so tired.” It sounds broken. It sounds- it sounds almost like he used to, before this all happened, before it all broke down. Punz misses him.
“Go to sleep then, idiot.” It comes out like a term of endearment. Dream’s breath shakes.
“I don’t think I can stand up, honestly.”
“If I carry you, will you go to bed?”
Dream sighs, but nods against Punz’s palm, and they wait a few more seconds before Dream’s hand drops and Punz takes that as the most he’s going to get. He pulls his hand away and pushes to his feet so that he can duck and scoop Dream up from the chair, something somewhere between bridal style and a sack of potatoes. It makes Dream laugh, and that in turn makes warmth bubble in Punz’s chest. He does not get to hear Dream laugh often, even if it is now broken and rough.
There’s only one bedroom in this hideout, but they only sleep one at a time anyway. One sleeps, the other is on watch, if they’re home. And usually it’s only Punz that sleeps.
Still, Punz sets Dream down among the blankets, and when he goes to step back, bony fingers wrap around his wrist.
“Stay.”
His heart turns over and flutters. He opens his mouth to try and explain that he’ll stay on watch, and instead what comes out is,
“Okay.”
Dream scoots over. The bed isn’t huge, a slightly wide single, and there’s not enough room for them both comfortably but Punz has been asked to stay, and so he will stay.
It breaks his heart over and over again when Dream curls into his side, presses his forehead to Punz’s shoulder and takes the tiniest handful of Punz’s shirt. He’s not laid out over him, but he is laid with him, safe between the solidity of the wall and the warmth of Punz’s body.
Punz knows that he chose the losing side. He knows he chose a future that will never be his. He knows he chose a heart that cannot love him back. But it’s what he chose, it’s what he continues to choose. It’s not that there’s no way back, it’s that he doesn’t want it. He loves Dream. He should hate that, hate that he loves Dream with everything he has, but he doesn’t. It’s a strange feeling, really.
It hurts. But in moments like this, as Dream falls asleep beside him, there is nothing more perfect, no life he could ever have wanted differently. Maybe that makes him a fool.
He falls asleep.