Archive of Our Own

It had been a loooooong day in the pixie dream world; one Professor Garrett Brimble, tuckered out from running around and doing manic pixie bidding, settled into a macaron cushion at a peppermint table. He picked up a sugar-water-filled daffodil teacup to peer into it, letting out a fatigued sigh. He wanted a cup of tea.

 At his side, a few of the pixies had followed. They took to the Professor as naturally as they did to children, and treated him no differently. It was likely that they still viewed him as a child, albeit, a tall one– he had played here in his youth, after all, and though the pixies were hardly ones for sentimentality, they had grown accustomed to his presence, as he had to theirs. Even so, it had been a while since he had just sat in the dreamscape and... dreamt.

"Haven't you got any fun dreams these days, Bumble?" A pixie chirped, hovering near his head. "It's all books, paperwork, inkwells with you-- and even worse...!"

The pixie fixed little hands on their hips. "--money!" 

There was a collective groan throughout the fluttering on-lookers-- the collective struggle to understand what mortals found so appealing about dirty, yucky money . Why not trade in candy instead? Much more fun. They posited this to him, and amongst each other, for maybe the hundredth time... However, he did not have the energy today to explain economics to them, and so he took a tired, instinctive sip of the teacup he had been holding– only to abruptly sputter sugar water into his mustache. He set it down afterwards, running a white-gloved hand back through his black and graying, slicked hair, then adjusting his monocle, and cleared his throat.

"My friends, " He started, spritely, "I've spent so much time here, eventually I'll dream of Lydha Lran and make another dreamscape entirely, within a dreamscape. How do you like that? You'll all make friends with your dream selves-- my dream yourselves, that is."

This caused quite a buzz. 

"Not possible! Is it?"

"Well, I'd like to meet your dream myself, if I do say so! And I do! Me, this dreamself!"

"What if we're already someone's dreamself? What then?"

Buzz, buzz. He leaned back, hands folded on his lap, successfully evading a deeper probe into what dreams he might be having, closing his eyes.

Truthfully, he didn't really dream anymore. He used to. Furthermore, it was dangerous to dream here-- dangerously embarrassing, that was, but at the present moment, he didn't see any harm in just trying to remember what it was he used to dream about. Such thoughts had a nasty habit of appearing in Lydha Lran , however and his eyes shot open when he remembered just what had plagued him all those years ago-- but as two slender hands slid over his shoulders, he knew it was too late to recall it.

The voice behind him was that of an achingly familiar half-elezen, a pretty swordsman he had befriended once upon a time-- the voice was reserved, serious, dignified:

"Garrett Brimble, dreaming of me? " Arms slid around his neck, latching on, chin poised on top of his head. "Oh, that is embarrassing…" There was no hint of amusement in his voice– in fact, it neared genuine sympathy.

Brimble straightened, looking up at the figure that the dreamscape had conjured. "Ah! Captain! Yes-- though, I find I might be thinking of-- you specifically, the dreamself of the real you, and not the-- you that-- er, that is, I think--" He scrambled to clarify. Then, more softly: “Etienne, it’s good to see you.” Simple.

Etienne let go, crossing over to sit down on a licorice bench just across from the inventor. He was wearing his Maelstrom uniform casually, collar undone, coat draped over his shoulders rather than on properly. He was a sleight thing, fair-skinned and freckled, with soft blond hair and dark eyes. He had a porcelain likeness, doll-like if not for the fact that he was a company man.

The Captain replied, "We haven’t spoken in some time. The real me, that is. The real we ?”

“Just ‘me’. Er– just you. I’m the real me, you’re not the real you,” Garrett said, starting to feel a headache coming on.

“Right.”

Brimble sighed, resigned again, lifting his hands up in defeat. "We– we haven’t spoken in a long time because you’re– he’s – fuck it, you’re angry with me."

Etienne’s foot bounced, a shiny, manicured boot with a high heel. His arms were crossed. “You don’t know that. It’s quite literally been turns, and–” He tilted his head. His hair caught the light in the dreamscape in such a way that made Garrett’s heart leap into his throat. “-- I was quite enamored with you, was I not?”

The Professor stood, and crossed over to sit down beside him on the bench. He sat forward, threading his fingers together as he hung his head, somewhat. Their knees touched.

“You were, yes. I broke it off with you on a flight to Thanalan–”

”My flight to Thanalan,” Etienne corrected, lightly, “On my ship, which I was gracious enough to let you board. You didn’t even wait until we had landed, you broke it off with me right as soon as we took off in Coerthas.”

“Is– is this really my fantasy, right now? You, tearing me down?” Brimble grumbled, annoyed– with himself, mostly.

“I didn’t get the chance to. Maybe that really is your fantasy– uhm, closure,” Etienne said. He was frightfully stern, but when it came to Garrett, he was soft, understanding. Patient, for love. It was one of the things that the Professor had found so attractive about him– the simple fact that Etienne loved him enough to forego some of his guardedness. “Maybe I really will tear into you, in real life… but I would really doubt that the real Captain Barrel would let that stop him from loving you again.”

The Professor sat back, yet another sigh pulling through his lungs. He didn’t want Etienne to love him again. He had hardly wanted him to in the first place, but it had happened, and he had taken advantage of it. It was something he felt bad about.

Well, not that bad. He put his arm around him, slowly, side-eyeing the apparition, as if he was asking the dream itself for permission. Etienne watched, and eased into his arm, a near desperateness in it. The Professor felt his face heat up, a warmth that went to his ears– that desperation was always so very cute, and it had been irresponsible of him back then to pry it out of him, but so very worth it.

“You are much prettier outside of the snow,” The Professor commented, lightly, a slight veer from the subject matter. “It’s too bad that we never ventured out of Coerthas much, those days.”

“I suppose. I never thought of it much.”

There was something painfully Ishgardian about that response, something Brimble only smiled over. “There are worse people to get stranded with, on a cave excursion… meeting you was certainly interesting.”

Etienne finally smirked, a little. “I daresay you liked the cold, that day.”

The Professor pulled him closer. “It was keeping warm, that I liked.”

He leaned in for a kiss. Even though this Etienne was only his fantasy, he reacted much the way that his real-life counterpart had, accepting the Professor’s affections eagerly. The halfborn had loved him, truly, and had so wished to love a man that would love him in return; a wish that Brimble could not fulfill.

Even knowing this, he lowered the elezen against the length of the bench, and reached up to pull away at his tie.