Work Text:
Dream is sitting in a corner, trying to silence the noise coming from across the room. The other kids are playing a game, it’s really loud and he’s struggling to process it. He keeps having to move further away, as they just seem to keep following him each time he moves, attracted to his aura. It’s frustrating, but he can't tell them to go away, so he just deals with it.
“Hey, are you okay!?” Someone sits in front of him, alone, which is weird, because usually when this happens, he’s getting swarmed by tons of other children, not just one person. The other person taps the side of his skull, before pointing at Dream. Oh, wait, right, he still has his hands over his ears. He slowly takes his hands away.
“Sorry, it’s loud.”
The other nods, looking over at the group and then back at Dream with a small smile, “It is. The teacher said to take you outside, let’s go.” They reach for his hand, and he takes it, although he’s very confused right now. He doesn’t know the other, not personally. Dream doesn’t think he’s spoken to them before, but he recognizes them- They sit in the back with all the drawing stuff.
They go and sit outside; it’s much quieter, although now it’s kind of cold. Dream watches as the other takes out some chalk, splits it in half, and gives it to him. “We can draw and go back when they’re not loud. My great-great grandpa used to do that before he turned into a frog.” Dream blinks in confusion, but accepts the chalk.
He looks down at the ground, drawing a simple scene. His 7-year-old brain wasn’t very good at drawing, but he tried his best. He started with a stick figure, smiling and holding hands with a smaller stick figure, his brother, Nightmare! If only Nightmare was in his class, but he was in a different class for smart people. Apparently, the people in his class are mean though, so sometimes their dad talks to him about changing into his class.
Dream draws a sun, also smiling, above the two stick figures, before annotating it. ’me and nite.’ Apparently, he was spelling his brother’s name wrong, but he didn’t really know how to spell it right, because their dad never showed him (being busy with performing and all), and his brother was very often not at home with them.
He’d been in hospital on and off for a bit now, partially because bullying left him with horrible injuries, but he’d also gotten pretty sick. The doctors said he’d be fine, but just feel a little bad for a bit.
He misses Nightmare, he wants to hang out more, like when they were much younger and it was just the two of them, but he gets it. He doesn’t want to make his twin feel sicker. Dream looks over at his accomplice’s drawing, eyes widening. It was a really cool-looking bird, wow! He couldn’t even draw birds!
“That’s a cool bird!” The other looks up with a wide smile. “It’s my magical demon prince OC! He fights bad guys and everyone likes him a lot, oh! And his name is shadow!” Dream listened, enjoying the way the other skeleton seemed so happy, so genuinely happy, and not just feeling that way because of his aura. He was interested in something and shared that interest with him!
“I can make you one too- um, did you tell me your name?” Dream freezes up, shaking his head, and he puts down the chalk. Right, his dad told him about this, introducing himself! He’s really bad at friends, really, people just go to him when they don’t feel like being sad anymore. He’d been practicing talking all night!
He points to himself, “My name is Dream,” then he points at his new friend, “what’s your name? Would you like to become my friend?” Perfect! He did it! Just like his dad told him to. He was getting a lot better at the whole introduction thing. He used to just not tell people his name, so this is a big improvement.
The other smiles, copying Dream. He points at himself, “My name is Ink,” then points at Dream “I would like to be your friend, Dream!” Both skeletons nervously smile at each other, and then Ink starts drawing a new bird creature, all whilst both of them take turns asking and answering questions.
“When’s your birthday?”
“December 21st, what about yours?”
“April 15th. What is your favourite color? Mine is blue.”
“I like yellow- mm, but I like orange too- I like orange-yellow. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, My mom can’t have kids, she adopted me. What about you?”
“I have a twin, his name is Nightmare, he’s in the cool class, but the people in his class are really mean.” Ink frowns, temporarily stopping his drawing to respond. “Well they should stop being so mean! I don’t like mean people.”
Ink looks up at him, nervously smiling again, “My mom says not to say you ‘hate’ people, because ‘hate’ is a really strong and bad word. Don’t tell her I said it! She’ll get really mad at me if you do.” Dream nods, silently agreeing to Ink’s terms as he continues the drawing.
“Let’s see, do you have any other friends?”
“I have some friends, but they don’t talk to me a lot. Nightmare is my friend, and you’re my friend, so I guess I do have friends. What about you?”
“I have this really cool friend, his name is Blue. He once broke a window in my house and we turned into a slide, but then his parents picked him up and they were really upset, so we glued the window back together. My mom changed it anyways, but I ended up supergluing my hand to my face by accident, and she had to take me to the hospital, but it was fine! They were worried about my hand and more about the glue I ate.”
Ink talks a lot, Dream has kind of stopped listening for the most part, just watching him draw. It was fun, honestly, for some reason. He was very easily entertained.
“I should introduce you to him! He really likes making new friends, he’ll definitely like you- then we can play pretend with all of our bird OCs!” Ink seemed really excited, Dream tried to reciprocate it. He internally was extremely excited at the prospect of spending time with his new friend, but he always struggled with expressing intense emotions. He just smiles and nods.
The door opens from behind them, the teacher calls them to come back inside, claiming the other kids were done with their game, and they’d resume their normal lesson. Dream looked down at the ground, he sat really far away from Ink. They wouldn’t be able to talk until school was over, it was really upsetting.
That’s what he thought, up until he suddenly felt a paper airplane hit him in the back of his head. Dream turns around, to face Ink, who has his arm out and very clearly sent the plane to him. He gestures for the other to open it, so he does just that.
My mom is going to pick me up late, do you want to meet Blue after school?
There are a few spelling mistakes, but he just about makes out the message. He takes out a small piece of paper from his notebook, trying to write neatly so Ink can make out his message. He quietly asks the person behind him to give it to Ink, starting the chain of people passing back the one note. Luckily, nobody told on either of them.
Dream smiles at Ink, he’s so excited.