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When Dream was younger, he was obsessed with stars. He would wish on each and every one - would hope for that one right family to take him in, to adopt him immediately because couldn’t they see how much he wanted it, how hard he tried? The stars would twinkle back at him in silence, would watch over each house he joined - adults always said to keep their secrets, but he knew the stars wouldn’t tell. His wishes waned over the years, though every once in a while, if he wished hard enough, if it wasn’t too big an ask, the stars would gift him with the singular thing he wanted; one day, he would get that family he’d wanted so badly.
Stories were the next fixation, once he grew out of wanting a family. He ate each story up like it was candy, growing his collection, fiction or otherwise, tales of clean homes and loving parents - because some people had two, sometimes even more - adding to his hoard with greedy hands and a full stomach. It was the only sustenance he needed, he thought, keeping him small and round when he shouldn’t be. Stories were in his blood, words slotting in his mind. He handed them out like little treasures, gifted to each younger kid he came across, weaving his own new ones of gentle hands and kind eyes, became the stories to protect each of them. The roles he slipped into fit like a glove, cozy around him, a protective layer from the outside. No longer was he bright like a star, but hidden as if he were a tale lost to time.
Dream was nearly 18 when he first met the boy.
It wasn’t for long, a mere passing, stumbling into each other. He’d apologized - he wasn’t paying attention, was still looking at his phone even as the automatic response fell from his lips - sparing a glance when he got no reply. The boy was brunette, at least Dream thought he was, the barest bit of what might’ve been blonde peeking out from underneath, the brown now registering as dirt caked onto his head, hair tangled and messy. His clothes were gross too, the only semi-new thing about him being his shoes, though just barely, clearly worn and slightly yellowed. He figured the kid was around 12 - maybe younger, he was small - eyes shifting around, agitated, but not yet running off. Dream’s first thought was homeless, though turning slightly he could see what looked to be a man with folders frantically looking around. He was easy to clock, remembering his time drifting around.
They must’ve stopped for food in the mall, though from the looks of it, the boy probably couldn't stomach the greasy shit the man had bought. He decided to hold the other half of his bread out to the kid - he’d been getting up to toss the remnants of his meal anyway, might as well feed a kid and reduce waste right? - glancing back at the man when he hesitated to take it, a signal that he wouldn’t have much time to decide. The indecision didn’t last long, though he gave him a look before bolting. It was one of recognition; Dream thought he might’ve seen the boy before too.
The itch to know their story brought a hand up to hold his head.
A year later, he saw him again.
His new friend Nick - ‘Sapnap’, he insisted on - had canceled their studying plans, leaving Dream with a migraine at their public library, head resting on the table and phone in his lap. He could’ve been resting at home, tucked away beneath his comforter with some Advil and warm tea. Instead, he was stuck at the library - not really stuck, but he wasn’t going to leave right after getting settled - unwilling to move until the migraine ebbed enough for him to feel like moving.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, unable to stop focusing on the thumping of his heart in his ears, loud, too loud. Since moving for college, his headaches had gotten worse - a supposed predisposition to them revealed as he got older, the doctor said - leaving him fumbling on the days they decided to pop up. Recently, they were a daily occurrence, but today, it was brutal. Instead of an ache that would go away after a while, this was like someone took a whole ass sledgehammer to his temples, a force crushing his skull and pressing behind his eyes. He was debating calling someone to bring him home, when suddenly; it stopped.
With no more pain to weigh him down, Dream lifted his head, rubbing at his eyes only to come face to face with the boy. They blinked at each other, the boy tilting his head, neither speaking. He didn’t know how long the boy had been there, wasn’t sure he really cared either, only glad he’d let him rest his head for whatever amount of time he was waiting.
“So. Something more than bread this time?” he asked, half-joking, noting how much better the boy looked, blonde curls on full display, if not a bit greasy still.
Dream was given a scathing look, then a nod, arms crossed the entire walk to the library's cafe. He wasn’t surprised at how guarded he was - it was only a year since a feral-looking kid bumped into him, a year's worth of drifting through homes if what he assumed was correct - glancing at every window, every door, staying on the balls of his feet. He pointed to what he wanted, watching, waiting for a reaction, but Dream rambled about his favorite cafe food, his classes, his migraine to top all migraines. The boy only relaxed - if one could call it that - when they were back at the little corner table he had snagged, bag holding their spot. Settling down into the cushioned seats, he watched him slowly unwind. His eyes didn’t leave him unless it was to check the exits, as if they’d disappear if he didn’t take note of them, analyzing him in a way, like there was something hidden in his face.
He brushed it off as the kid being traumatized, looking for anger; somewhere deep inside, he knew it was something else.
“I’m Dream, since we didn’t introduce ourselves last time.”
“Tommy,” was the short reply, though his eyes were still searching, attention turned solely on his cinnabon once he seemed satisfied with what he found.
They talked for what could’ve been hours, probably only one in retrospect, though he didn’t check his phone even once to know, almost afraid the boy - Tommy - would be gone by the time he looked back up. Instead, he spoke just as much as Tommy watched, getting minimal information through their little dance. One moment he would be gaining ground, then he’d get turned around into a rant about Sapnap, or the (color)blind dork in his class, dumping a good portion of his life into the child's lap before catching himself and weaseling things out of the kid instead. It didn’t get him far, but it was enough, knowing he had some form of roof over his head - one of the ‘okay’ houses, he’d said, a place he could fade into the background and rest - and then he’d tangled Dream back into his stories. It was always the stories, and he took in Tommy’s with a greedy mind, needing to know, to understand, become.
“Do you remember me,” Tommy asked out of nowhere, eyes wide as if he’d never thought of it before.
“I- Yeah, I mentioned our first meeting earlier, remember?”
And maybe Tommy just had memory loss - he seemed like the type to fling himself off something and get brain damage - but the expression he held made it seem like it went far beyond a shitty memory. He nodded, returning abruptly to the debate about if Dream ‘gets no bitches’.
In the end, their visit didn’t last long; it never would, could never be long enough to pick apart what made him shy away, what made him stare at the world with his back against the wall, as if he were a wounded gazelle to a lion.
“Thanks for the bread,” and it sounded like an ages old acknowledgement, another too-long goodbye.
“You have nothing to thank me for,” he said a second time.
His headache came back on the walk home, stumbling into his apartment with the worry he’d never recover. Sapnap would come home, and it would fade.
Another year passed, and he thought he’d see the kid again; he’d miss him by a month in the next year to come, would miss the way his soul cries and heart sings, would miss the reunion of a lifetime.
Instead, he would meet a man with pink hair and sad eyes, would follow him like a duckling whenever seen in public - this is despite the headaches, despite the pained look he’s given.
In time, he remembered pieces; bumble wings, secluded rivers, a sorrowful God destined to destroy the world, Thomas. His felt like it was exploding, like something was breaking his skull from the inside out - and maybe it was, maybe he was dying on the floor of Techno’s guestroom - a pain that continued until he passed out, brought back to the smell of soup. Techno had taken care of him, The Blood God, a foreign part of him supplied, and he slipped easily into the world of Gods; he claimed it was easy, learned his own stories and playing into them, it could never be so simple. He held onto the memory of Tommy once it got clearer, their true first meeting, not unsimilar to the one in this life.
Dream - or the him of the past, though the thought twisted his mind around in circles - met Tommy- Thomas just after a famine spread through the country. Sure, the crops were growing back, the people had more than a piece of bread a week - or was it worse, he couldn’t remember - but the new food was being hoarded, and he’d felt himself drawn to a small village. The farmers wished for seeds, and he’d granted it. Later, he took the loaf of bread gifted back to him on a small stone altar, tiny hands helping their parent lift it and light candles, granted another wish with it; a boy was starving among a dead village, XD would not let him die too.
He was met with suspicion first, then a hand snatching the bread away, the boy curling around it angrily. But he didn’t move, watched and waited until the boy took a few bites, reassured he wasn't in any danger, that he’d heard his wish. And of course, there was a question of payment. He’d said ‘whether in this life or another, you owe me nothing,’ and it was the truth, airy and floral among their breath, a promise in a sense. They’d parted ways, a new cloak wrapped around Thomas’s shoulders, the God hoping one of the small towns would welcome him in - he couldn’t have known the horrors, was blind even in his own brutal end.
Now, he wondered how a Godling boy had managed to live for so long alone, why one was stuck forever in place, yet forever moving. Dream didn’t have the answer; XD didn’t either.
Dream didn’t get headaches anymore.
Later, he would see his two old friends and understand, could align the name Theseus - all Techno had given him to work with - together with a blonde he knew, watching him hanging off the man's back. Theseus, the one story he did not know - he couldn’t ask, could never ask that of man who’d rebuilt himself after tragedy - yet still knew the tale intimately. In only a few seconds, he was spotted, the boy flinging himself across the park's courtyard, everything coming together in a few words from the God, Tommy rambling on once realizing Dream, for the most part, remembered him. Chaos was a good word to describe his experience, skipping through millennia of stories from the two, getting dragged around through his new home, a light to both of them that was missing. And it’s nice, listening to the stories of himself, resting with his head against a window and his eyes closed, knowing Tommy is more than willing to carry the conversation himself. When he left, he promised to return, to grant the next wish Tommy could come up with by the time they meet again.
He dragged himself home after Tommy conked out, midnight long gone, driving the hour back to his apartment with Sapnap next to the college, seeing the man passed out in a beanbag, head lolled back and mouth open in a snore. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised by the flames dancing above his head.
Dream decided to deal with it later.