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Something was wrong.
Cale was dreaming, surely, having gone to sleep in his bed back in the Super Rock Villa. His ears had been ringing as he followed his children’s demands for him to sleep off the worsening migraine. And now he was… in front of a vaguely familiar set of doors. In his pyjamas. Under his bare feet, plush maroon carpet kept some of the chill from reaching him, softer and richer even than the Henituse mansion’s soft furnishings.
He knocked.
The doors may not have been completely familiar, but the footsteps behind them certainly were—uncharacteristically uneven and hesitant as they were. The person that answered the door certainly was.
“… Cale?” Tired blue eyes peered down at him, framed by a wan face and unfamiliarly long blond hair. They blinked at each other in shock.
“You look old,” Cale snarked to cover up his disconcertment, “the insomnia’s getting to you. What will Roan do with such a dull Sun?”
Alberu—this strange, drained version of him—merely stood aside to let him in, something unreadable in his expression that made the hairs on Cale’s arms stand on end. “You… what are you doing here?”
“Dreaming.” Though he wasn’t so sure about that anymore, even if his vision seemed to swim with hyper-realistic detail as his more nightmarish dreams tended to. Cale stopped in the centre of the room, turning slowly to examine its layout. The weight of Alberu’s stare never faltered.
The prince let out a quiet sigh that Cale didn’t hear, “I think I might be too.”
“Hm.” Cale frowned at the display cabinet behind his desk, where a small stack of golden plaques was draped with some shiny black material on the shelf at eye level. “Is that my hair ribbon?”
Alberu swiftly blocked his view, but he took little notice. One hand came up to pull his low ponytail over his shoulder absentmindedly, and he examined one end of the black ribbon tying up the red strands. Yes, they were the same. “Why this of all things?”
The dream fog was messing with his thoughts, not relinquishing control over the scene in the face of all the lucid dreaming tactics he knew. The only control he had here was over himself. This particular dream was not a nightmare even if it was hyper-realistic, from the carpet between his toes to the slight chill that now rose in the office made bedroom. It felt almost as if he were awake, if not for the disconnect between his mind and body—sometimes he felt like that when he was awake, but that was a different issue altogether that Cale would continue to ignore until it came crumbling down.
A cold hand landed on his shoulder, its tremors obvious through the thin silk of Cale’s night shirt.
“Hm? Your Highness?”
The prince’s face contorted into that indecipherable expression once more. Cale frowned.
“Alberu? Is something wrong? Just tell me what I should do to help.” It was a dream, after all. He may as well offer. “Whatever you want, I’ll make it happen—unf?” He grunted at the sudden hug, squirming awkwardly until Alberu made a displeased noise into his hair and tightened his grip.
“Just stay, Cale Henituse.”
“I-”
“Please.”
Cale shivered at the soft breath of a word. He frowned. It felt wrong for a prince—Alberu, specifically, of such self-pride even in his self-hate—to beg. But maybe the lore of this dream, whatever it was, had stretched him thin and worn.
“Okay. I’m not going anywhere.” Alberu’s lips brushed against the shell of his ear once again, and for some reason Cale’s mind conjured an image of the smallest, most tragic smile ever. He sighed, bringing his hands up to the prince’s broad back. “See? I’m here.”
“You are.”
Well, yes, they had established that. If one of them wasn’t, it would be Alberu anyway—this was Cale’s dream, after all.
“Come on, let’s get you to sleep.” He went to pull away, but Alberu made a low, wounded noise. Fine. He’d done this before, swaying his blacked-out teammates to disguise their slow shuffle toward the closest cot. They were stubborn and clingy when drunk, passing out almost instantly once horizontal.
Alberu’s ability to function through sleep deprivation was impressive, even by Cale’s standards, but the swaying movement worked just the same. He moved one hand up to the base of Alberu’s head, playing with the long blond strands there and starting up a soothing pat with his other.
He wasn’t good at comforting people, not by a long shot. That didn’t mean he shouldn’t try.
After a few long moments, the tension flooded out of Alberu in a drawn-out sigh. Cale relaxed his shoulders too.
He felt the side of his right knee hit the bedframe, giving a non-committal hum to distract Alberu from their movement.
“Sit here. I’ll get you a change of clothes.” Cale turned him to face the room and bent forward. Noting the bed at his back, Alberu huffed and sat down, letting his hands drop to his lap.
As he turned away, Cale pretended not to notice the sharp slash of desperation in that exhausted expression, nor the way the prince’s touch had hesitated as if he had fought himself to be able to let go.
Alberu’s wardrobe was set out much the same as it was in reality, though it was depressingly void of the variety of colour it had in Cale’s memory. What was it with the restrictive palette? Red, gold, white and black were the only colours that he could see, and two of those were Roan’s national colours. There was only one shade of red to be seen—a vibrant, bloody kind.
Cale ran his fingers along the pyjama section and pulled a set from the shelf at random, raising a judgmental brow at his selection. “Who knew Roan’s beacon of light had a secret cute streak?”
The set was finely threaded black cotton patterned with gold coins that wore various cartoonish expressions much like the emojis of his previous world, and an embroidered white phrase on the breast pocket that read, World’s No.1 Piggy Bank.
He shook his head, dropping it on the bed next to Alberu, who kept his expression studiously mild, and knelt to take off Alberu’s slippers. “Do me a favour and finish off the rest yourself.”
“What a considerate dongsaeng I have.”
“Hm.” It was a subpar attempt at sounding normal, but Cale let it slide. He set the slippers neatly by the bedside table and headed to the bathroom for a face towel. The water ran, and that was another strange thing about this dream—that it ran clear and realistic, obeying the laws of gravity and fluid mechanics. He took one of the rolled-up towels and ran it under warm water, wringing out the excess before heading back to the bedroom.
The prince was mostly changed, though the coin pyjama shirt was still mostly unbuttoned. Cale held up the towel in a wordless question. Alberu nodded but didn’t move his hands.
“Seriously? You’re—how old are you?”
“Thirty.”
Cale grimaced. “These five years really haven’t been kind on you, have they, hyung? Thirty, and can’t even wipe your own face.”
“Young master Silver Shield cares for everyone except his hyung… ah, how mean.” He spluttered when the wet cloth thwacked him in the face, peeling it off his face gingerly. “If only they knew their hero was so heartless.”
“Good to know you’re feeling a bit better now. I know you’ve probably magicked yourself clean but wipe your face anyway. It’ll get some of that glibness off you, surely. Then go to sleep.”
“Only if you’ll lie down with me. Just until I fall asleep.” Cale rolled his eyes and Alberu smiled, knowing he’d won.
After Cale had dropped the towel in the sink, he came back to the sight of Alberu’s curled up figure, back facing the room. Like this, if he ignored the hip-length wavy blond hair that spread out in a halo around his head, Alberu looked as he did when Cale was awake. He looked real. “At least tie your hair up, Your Sleepy Highness.”
“Do it for me.”
Cale scoffed quietly but slipped under the sheets. He combed his fingers through the long strands gently, the way he did for On or Lily when asked and separated them into three sections. A sudden wash of brown ran down the blond, fascinating in that there was no change in the silken texture even though Cale expected to feel some magical ripple at such close proximity.
They lay there silently, Cale shifting every now and them in discomfort. No matter how soft the bed was, plaiting someone’s hair while one arm was trapped under his one body was bound to be an uncomfortable experience.
“Hyung,” he murmured once he got about a third of the way down the plait, “you know you can tell me what’s going on. If you don’t want to tell me, tell your Cale.”
Alberu’s back quivered.
“I’ve done a lot for you already, haven’t I? You’ve always been shameless about dragging me into more, why bother stopping now?” Cale quipped. “Hey, watch it—”
Alberu flipped himself over to face Cale suddenly, who barely managed to keep his hold on the prince’s hip-length hair. His brown eyes burned with emotion, hands coming up to grip Cale’s shoulders. “Did you mind?”
“Eh?” Cale blinked, face slack in surprise.
“Did you mind it? Should I give you more holidays? You don’t even know how to take breaks when you get them, fool.”
“Well. I should clean things up for my own slacker life, right? Face away, Your Highness, our Shining Sun is blinding me while I do his hair.”
He finished off the braid as he addressed the other points. “I take breaks whenever I get them, obviously. More breaks? What failure of a strategy tutor did you have to suggest holidays during battle? And obviously I do know how to take breaks. What do you think I’m doing now? Dreaming. Sleeping. That’s a break.”
Cale frowned at the complete braid, casting his gaze around for something to tie it up. He transferred the plait to his right hand and pulled the black ribbon from his own ponytail, finishing off Alberu’s hair with a simple bow.
The moment he released his plait, Alberu turned over once more. This time, he propped himself up on his hands and knees over Cale’s prone form. “Damn it, Cale Henituse. You make me-”
“Want?” He smiled slightly as Alberu huffed in agreement. “Good. I thought you would have grown sick of me by now.”
“No!” The word bit its way out of the prince’s throat, stricken with horror. “Never. Gods, Cale, you have no clue.”
“I suppose five years from now you’ll have convinced me. I look forward to it,” he commented drily, contrasting with the gentle, inquisitive brush of his fingers over Alberu’s cheekbone.
They’d only started dating maybe a month ago, soon after his second migraine spell—as a result of it, in fact. Cale’s people had been looking for a solution, but Cage put an end to it when she’d walked in with a pitying expression and a wave of her hand. This was a side effect from one of their people’s deals in the future. She refused to share more specifics, but cursed out the God of Death with every breath that she wasn’t using to explain the general cause.
Alberu laughed helplessly, ever so miserable he was, and dropped his body weight to blanket Cale. “I love you. I really, really, do.”
Because it was a dream, Cale hugged him close once again and sighed, “The fool you are. I love you too.”
Even if you look at me like I am a fate set in stone that you wish would shatter to dust.
No sooner had he said it before warm, chapped lips pressed against his own. A muffled sound escaped his mouth, swallowed greedily by Alberu as if the man had long been starved. Maybe he had been.
This kiss was unlike the chaste pecks he’d had on occasion, or the playful yet heated intertwining he and his Alberu had shared only thrice. This kiss was longing and regret and guilt. This kiss was grief and desperation and mourning.
Desperate.
Cale was connecting dots they had both been happy to leave disconnected.
“Alberu,” he gasped in the next short reprieve. His face was wet.
“Cale,” Alberu said. His voice cracked on the single syllable, “Cale, Cale, Cale. Fuck. I love you. Don’t leave me. I love you.”
This wasn’t his Alberu. He wasn’t the Cale that was being called so desperately. But they were the same, weren’t they?
Cale cradled the prince’s face in his hands, wiping away his tears with a wry smile. “You’re an ugly crier. Tell the older me I said he fucked up and to get his shit together.”
Alberu rolled off him and sniffled into his stupid coin patterned sleeve.
Oh. I’m not helping. That last part of his earlier observation only now settled in. He shifted uncomfortably. So he died, then. That was… huh. Cale opened his mouth—
“I hate him.”
“Oh.” He shut his mouth again at the prince’s irate words. “My older self?”
The snarl that tore across what he could see of Alberu’s face was answer enough.
“Will I keep turning up?”
Alberu twisted his lips a self-mocking grimace. “You’ll be with me until the day I die.”
“Oh.” That… what had he done? He propped himself up on his elbows when the prince uncovered his eyes, staring down at him with complicated thoughts.
“You’ve figured it out again, haven’t you?” Alberu murmured hoarsely at the ceiling.
“I… what?”
Again? Cale wanted to ask, but the question answered itself. Migraines. Long naps to recover. Forgotten dreams. Again.
“No?” A tired brown gaze met his, cold dismissal welling between them like tears. An equally cold hand came up to cup his cheek. “It doesn’t make much difference, either way. Wake up, Cale Henituse, and forget again.”
“Your Highness—”
Alberu’s eyes drooped, already half asleep as he murmured, “You are the only person who could ever make me wish I were a prince again.”
The hand on his cheek slowly dropped down on his chest, and he looked so terribly broken in that moment Cale had to bite down on the sudden need to demand the God of Death let him stay. He couldn’t. This was not his time. This was not his Alberu.
They looked at each other for a long while, the slow sounds of their breathing clearly lulling them both deeper into sleep’s grasp. In the empty-minded, melancholic stupor, Cale gave in to the lesser of his urges—he shuffled closer on his elbows and bent his head down.
He wakes up before their lips can brush.
“Good morning, young master.”
Cale grumbles, curling away from the blinding sun in his eyes. “Go away.”
“I have breakfast for you. You’ve slept a while.”
Something pokes at his memory. It’s hazy, a distant sense of resignation and regret. “Ugh. I was… dreaming.”
“Oh? Does the young master wish to share?”
He frowns, pushing himself up on his elbows. His hair falls in loose tangles around his shoulders; he's probably lost his hair ribbon to the hungry void of his bedsheets.
“I don’t remember it.” Cale presses a hand to his heart subconsciously as it pangs, and a thought wells in his mind unbidden. I don’t remember you.