Archive of Our Own

The first time it happens, Lucas blames a failed spell.

It’s an easy enough assumption to make — he’s been elbow-deep in dusty grimoires all week, parsing through pre-Eustassian dream magic like it’s a dead language he’s half-fluent in. Half of his study is unreadable now, cloaked in floating glyphs and discarded runes that haven’t dissolved properly. There’s a static hum beneath his skin, the aftertaste of too much ancient magic lingering behind his teeth. So when sleep takes him — sharp, sudden, and absolute — he doesn’t resist.

What he doesn’t expect is this:

A white stone balcony. Moonlight bleeding like water across polished marble. And Ijekiel Alpheus standing at the edge of it, bathed in silver, as if someone carved him from light.

Lucas freezes.

It has to be a dream. Obviously. No amount of conscious summoning would ever make him appear like this — backlit and soft-edged, hair loose around his shoulders, sleeves rolled to the forearms in that way that makes Lucas’s thoughts dangerously incoherent. His expression is distant, unreadable, eyes half-lidded as he stares out into the stars.

He looks… tired.

And something in Lucas’s chest — something ancient and volatile — twitches.

Figures. He works with subconscious energy for one week and his brain decides to get sentimental. He rolls his eyes and leans against the opposite end of the railing, arms crossed.

“This is a new low,” he mutters. “My dreams are getting prettier and more judgmental.”

Ijekiel turns slowly at the sound of his voice, and — for a moment — his eyes soften.

“Oh. You again.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

There’s a flicker of amusement — barely there — but it vanishes behind practiced indifference. “Don’t act surprised,” Ijekiel says, turning back to the stars. “You’ve been showing up here every night this week.”

Lucas frowns. “That’s impossible.”

“Tell that to your subconscious.”

This is where Lucas should start testing the boundaries of the dream — poke holes in the illusion, manipulate the magic, do something. But instead, he’s distracted. Ijekiel’s voice sounds too real. Not the polished cadence he wears like armor in court, but something softer, stripped down.

And that throws him.

Dreams aren’t supposed to feel like this. There’s no surreal logic, no abrupt transitions, no sense of hazy unreality. The air here is cool, crisp. The breeze lifts Ijekiel’s hair just so. Lucas could almost reach out, just to—

No. No, absolutely not.

He huffs and drops into one of the stone chairs by the balcony edge. “Well, if you’re just a projection, my brain’s been unusually generous with the detail.”

Ijekiel doesn’t look at him. “Or maybe I’m the one dreaming you.”

Lucas snorts. “That’s not how dreams work.”

“And you’re the expert?”

“I am the expert.”

Silence laps between them again, but it isn’t sharp — it’s soft, slow. Heavy in a way that makes Lucas suddenly aware of how close they are. Of how quiet the world is beyond them.

He should wake up. This isn’t productive. This isn’t anything.

But instead, he says, “Why would your brain conjure me, of all people?”

And Ijekiel — without turning — replies, “Maybe because you never leave me alone.”

Lucas’s throat goes dry.

It’s meant to be a joke. Probably. Maybe. But Ijekiel’s voice is too quiet, too raw. Lucas tries to scoff, to brush it off, but the sound catches on something in his chest and refuses to come out.

Instead, he lets the silence stretch again. A brittle, humming thing.

After a while, Ijekiel sits beside him, close enough their knees almost brush. He doesn’t say anything, just exhales slowly, like he’s shedding a weight.

Lucas doesn’t move away.

They sit like that, shoulder to shoulder, staring out at a sky full of false stars, and for the first time in weeks, Lucas’s magic settles. His mind goes still.

Maybe it’s the dream. Maybe it’s the spell. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

But Lucas — cocky, guarded, sharp-tongued Lucas — lets himself stay.

Because if it’s just a dream, then it doesn’t matter.

If it’s just a dream, then he can be quiet. He can be close.

And Ijekiel — whoever he is here — won’t know.

He’ll never know.

Lucas does not look at Ijekiel during the royal council meeting.

Not even when  he speaks up with a voice as calm and practiced as ever, polished to perfection like a blade hidden in velvet. Not when their shoulders nearly brush as they pass parchment down the line. Not even when their eyes meet, briefly, over the rim of a goblet.

He doesn’t look. But he feels him.

It’s annoying.

Lucas hates the way his magic pulses in Ijekiel’s presence now — restless, aware. He hates how last night’s dream clings to him like silk, soft and impossible to shake. The dream where Ijekiel leaned too close, hand warm against his jaw, words nothing but breath between them.

It’s just a dream. Just old magic. A fluke.

That's all.

So why, then, does Ijekiel glance at him like he knows?

Like he’s seen him.

Lucas scowls. The wine in his goblet boils.

The balcony again.

The moon is full, too bright, casting shadows sharp enough to cut. Lucas leans against the doorframe and watches Ijekiel — already there, already waiting.

He looks the same: elegant, unflappable, infuriatingly composed. Except now there’s a flicker of something else around him. Curiosity, maybe. Resignation.

“Back again,” Ijekiel says, not turning. “You’re persistent.”

Lucas snorts, stepping closer. “You’re the one loitering in my subconscious.”

“I assumed it was my subconscious.”

There’s a beat of quiet.

Lucas smirks. “What a tragedy. Stuck with me in your dreams.”

Ijekiel turns this time. His eyes are unreadable. “And yet… you’re not leaving.”

Lucas shrugs, like it doesn’t mean anything. Like it’s not strange that they found each other again here, in these vivid, fragile places carved from moonlight and silence.

“What would be the point?” he mutters. “None of it’s real.”

“Exactly,” Ijekiel replies softly. “So we can say what we want.”

That hangs in the air between them.

They don’t speak again for a long time. Lucas crosses the space between them and leans his back against the railing, shoulder to shoulder with the man he’s told himself he dislikes. Their fingers don’t touch, but they could.

And that almost is dangerous.

The palace library is too quiet.

Lucas flips through a grimoire without reading it. His thoughts spiral — back to the balcony, to Ijekiel’s voice in the dark. ‘ We can say what we want.’

He hasn’t spoken to him today. Not really. Just a clipped nod in passing, a muttered insult that didn’t land quite right. Ijekiel had only smiled, soft for some reason.

Lucas had turned away too fast.

He doesn’t know what’s worse — the dreams or the way they bleed into daylight. How everything Ijekiel says now feels like it might be double-layered, part of something they don’t understand yet.

And the worst part?

Lucas is starting to look forward to falling asleep.

They don’t meet on the balcony this time.

It’s a garden now — some place Lucas knows doesn’t exist in the palace, all pale lilac trees and glowing fireflies. He arrives already expecting to see him.

And there he is.

Sitting beneath a tree, fingers brushing petals off his sleeve. Ijekiel doesn’t startle when Lucas appears, doesn’t ask why. He just looks up with a tired smile.

“I thought you wouldn’t come.”

Lucas scoffs, settling beside him. “What, and miss your riveting small talk?”

Ijekiel chuckles, low and warm. “You dream me charming, apparently.”

Lucas doesn’t answer. He’s too aware of how close they’re sitting. Too aware of the soft way Ijekiel is looking at him now, eyes full of a tenderness he hasn’t earned.

“I must be losing it,” Lucas mutters.

“Hmm?”

He gestures vaguely. “Letting myself enjoy this.”

Ijekiel hums in agreement, but he doesn’t move away.

Neither of them do.

The morning sunlight filters through the eastern spires of the palace, scattering golden shards across the polished marble halls. Lucas doesn’t notice.

He’s too busy scowling at Ijekiel.

“I said,” Ijekiel repeats, annoyingly calm as always, “the correspondence was meant to be addressed to Count Alzen, not his son. The latter hasn’t officially inherited the estate.”

Lucas flicks his fingers, letting the parchment roll itself shut and vanish into smoke. “Count Alzen’s already half-dead. Why not get used to the new heir?”

“Because law exists for a reason.”

Lucas yawns. “You’re so fun in the morning.”

They stand too close again. It’s becoming a pattern — some magnetism neither of them acknowledges, but neither of them pulls away from either.

Lucas’s eyes drop, just for a moment, to Ijekiel’s lips as he speaks. A bad habit.

He blames the dreams.

Blames the way Ijekiel looks in them — unguarded, unburdened by duty. There, he laughs more. Talks more. Lets himself be soft in ways Lucas has never seen when the sun is up.

But in the real world, Ijekiel is polished edges and court etiquette. Every word tempered like a blade. Still beautiful. Still maddening.

“You didn’t sleep well,” Ijekiel says suddenly, cutting into his thoughts. “You look—”

“Careful,” Lucas says, voice low. “If you say ‘tired,’ I might combust the entire west wing.”

“I was going to say ‘haunted,’ actually.”

Lucas stares at him. For too long. Until it becomes something else. Until it starts to feel like the dreams again.

Then he blinks, scoffs, and disappears in a shimmer of magic before Ijekiel can respond.

The world shifts.

Moonlight again. Softer this time. The scent of something warm hangs in the air — cinnamon or clove, like the lingering trace of winter tea.

Lucas steps onto the dream terrace, and there he is.

Ijekiel sits on the railing now, long legs stretched in front of him, shirt undone at the collar like he’s let the formality go. Like he’s waiting.

“You’re late,” Ijekiel says without looking up.

Lucas leans against the opposite column, arms crossed. “You’re imaginary. You don’t get to be demanding.”

“Ah,” Ijekiel murmurs, “so it’s that kind of night.”

They fall into the rhythm easily now. Like the dream has rules they both understand instinctively: no names, no confessions, no acknowledgment of reality.

Just this.

Lucas conjures a bottle of wine without effort. Pours two glasses. Floats one over.

Ijekiel takes it without question. Their fingers don’t touch, but they both feel it anyway.

“Hard day?” Ijekiel asks.

Lucas downs his drink in one gulp. “Always.”

“You really are worse when you’ve been sulking in the library too long.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “That’s a bold statement coming from a figment of my imagination.”

“Maybe your subconscious just knows you too well.”

That earns a real laugh. Quiet. Sharp around the edges.

They fall into silence again. Not uncomfortable, but close. Tense. There’s a tightrope stretched between them and neither is willing to shift the balance yet.

Then Ijekiel say, quietly, almost to himself, “I don’t know why I keep dreaming of you.”

Lucas doesn’t move. His pulse stutters. “Same.”

Their eyes meet.

The distance between them is thin enough to shatter.

The wind picks up slightly — enough to make Ijekiel’s hair shift, enough to carry the scent of wine and winter spices between them.

Lucas is the first to look away.

Because if he doesn’t, he’ll say something stupid. Like ‘ Stay longer this time ’ or ‘ You look like this on purpose, don’t you?’

Instead, he smirks — an old, practiced mask — and says, “You should try dreaming of something more useful. A stack of paperwork, maybe. Or Princess Athanasia’s new puppy.”

Ijekiel lets out a sound between a laugh and a sigh. “And yet, here you are. Again.”

The silence after that is thinner. Lucas doesn’t know who crosses the space first, only that when he glances up again, Ijekiel is closer. Still not touching. But close enough that their knees nearly brush. The warmth of him seeps through the night air like a pulse.

“I suppose it’s easier this way,” Ijekiel murmurs, gaze lingering on Lucas’s mouth for a second too long. “No politics. No court.”

“No Princess,” Lucas echoes, without thinking.

That gets Ijekiel’s attention. He tilts his head, brows arching just slightly. “Jealous?”

Lucas clicks his tongue. “Please. I’m above petty mortal things like jealousy.”

“Mm,” Ijekiel hums. “Is that what this is? Mortality?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas answers honestly. “But you’re here. And I keep letting you stay.”

And Ijekiel — damn him — just smiles. Not cruel or coy, but genuine. Like he understands something Lucas hasn’t quite said yet.

“You don’t let me,” he says softly. “You want me to.”

It’s not a confession.

But it’s closer than Lucas has ever let anyone get.

And he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t push it further. He just steps back, conjures another bottle with a flick of his fingers, and tosses it into Ijekiel’s lap like he’s trying to change the subject.

Ijekiel laughs. It’s too fond.

Morning comes.

Lucas jerks awake in the middle of a spell diagram, ink dried on his sleeve, parchment creased under his cheek. The headache is sharp and immediate — too many late nights, too many half-formed glyphs still unraveling in his head.

He sits up slowly, blinking into the grey light seeping through the tower windows. His pulse is too quick. His palms are warm.

He tells himself it’s the residual magic. Just indulgence. Just… something safe.

He doesn’t think about the way Ijekiel’s shirt had come undone at the throat. Doesn’t think about the taste of imagined wine, or the way the moonlight had made Ijekiel’s lashes look too soft.

He definitely doesn’t think about the fact that for the first time in weeks, he’d slept through the night.

Instead, he scowls, throws a paperweight at the nearest pile of books, and says out loud to no one, “Stupid. Waste of time.”

The palace gardens are too bright when he gets there.

Lucas doesn’t like mornings to begin with, and he definitely doesn’t like mornings that involve public appearances, but Athanasia had insisted. Something about keeping up appearances. Something about the spring court luncheon. Something about him not hermiting himself into the tower like a feral cat with too many books.

He’d ignored most of it, until she threatened to hide his grimoires.

So here he is. Pretending the sunlight doesn’t burn his skin. Pretending the wine at the luncheon isn’t lukewarm. Pretending he didn’t just spend three nights in a row conjuring wine for Ijekiel Alpheus in his dreams.

Not real, he reminds himself. Not real. 

"Sir Lucas."

The voice is too familiar.

Lucas doesn’t flinch. He simply turns, slow and indifferent, to find Ijekiel standing in the garden path, silver in the sun, dressed in court whites and too many damned buttons.

Lucas’s gaze flicks to the open collar.

No. No, he’s imagining that. Dream-bleed.

“Alpheus,” he says evenly.

Ijekiel’s smile is polite. Too polite. The kind reserved for nobles he’s forced to acknowledge.

Lucas hates that smile.

“You’re out early today,” Ijekiel says, hands behind his back like the perfect heir he is. “I was starting to think the tower had eaten you.”

“I was threatened,” Lucas replies dryly. “Apparently neglecting the court for weeks is impolite.”

“Shocking.”

They stand there for a moment too long — pretending it’s normal. Pretending that one of them don’t dream the other with the kind of casual intimacy that would make half the nobility faint.

Lucas wants to say something. ‘ You looked at me like you knew me. You said you wanted me there. You waited.’

Instead he says, “Still trailing after the princess?”

Ijekiel’s expression flickers. Barely. But Lucas sees it — something tired, something worn.

“She’s busy today.”

Lucas raises a brow. “So you thought you’d come loiter in the garden?”

“And you thought you’d socialize?”

A beat.

Then, absurdly, they both snort. A huff of real amusement from Ijekiel, a low laugh from Lucas. For a second, the edges of formality fray.

For a second, they’re almost those versions of themselves again. The ones that sit too close on the dream terrace. The ones that say things they shouldn’t.

But then a servant passes by, and the spell breaks.

Ijekiel’s back straightens. “Well. Enjoy the rest of your morning, Sir Lucas.”

Lucas watches him turn away. Watches the way the sun hits the back of his neck, the faint flush at his ears.

“Hey.”

Ijekiel glances back.

Lucas says nothing for a moment.

Then: “You… sleep well lately?”

A pause.

Ijekiel’s smile this time is strange. Gentle. Knowing.

“I’ve been dreaming,” he says.

And then he walks away.

Lucas stands there for a long time after, heart kicking once — hard — in his chest.

The terrace returns again.

This time, it’s raining.

Not the kind that soaks. The kind that murmurs. That makes everything glow — stone slick and silver, the world muffled under the hush of water. The air smells like wet cedar and wine.

Lucas steps into the dream without hesitation now. Like slipping into a second skin.

Ijekiel is already there, sprawled on the cushioned bench beneath the overhang. He’s barefoot. Shirt open at the throat again. One hand behind his head, the other twirling a stemless glass between his fingers.

He doesn’t look up when Lucas appears.

“You’re in my dream again,” he murmurs. “I must be losing my mind.”

Lucas snorts. “You’re one to talk. You’re the one who keeps summoning me.”

Ijekiel hums, lazy. “You always think you’re in control, don’t you?”

That pulls a smile from him, wry and sharp. “Control is boring.”

They sit in silence for a while.

The kind of silence that wraps around your spine and holds you too close.

Lucas conjures a throw blanket without thinking. Ijekiel glances up as it lands on the bench beside him.

“You nesting now?” he teases, one eyebrow raised.

Lucas shrugs and crosses to the edge of the terrace, palms braced on the slick marble. “Cold,” he says. “And maybe I like you shivering a little.”

“I didn’t realize this was a seduction.”

Lucas looks over his shoulder, lips curving. “It’s not.”

“Shame,” Ijekiel replies softly. Then, after a beat: “But it’s tempting.”

The air shifts.

It always does, at a certain point. When the game goes from banter to something else. Something slower. Thicker.

Ijekiel pats the seat next to him without looking. “Come sit. You’re making me feel lonely.”

Lucas hesitates.

This is the part where he always hesitates. Where the line between dream and desire pulls taut.

But he goes.

He sits, close enough that their knees brush, and when Ijekiel turns his head — just slightly — his breath ghosts across Lucas’s cheek.

“I keep thinking,” Ijekiel says, voice low, “that I should stop this.”

Lucas doesn't ask what he means. He doesn’t need to.

“But then I see you again and…” Ijekiel trails off. “You’re easier, here.”

Lucas scoffs. “I’m never easy.”

Ijekiel smiles. “No. But you’re honest. In ways you aren’t in the waking world.”

Lucas’s fingers twitch.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches out, takes the wine glass from Ijekiel’s hand, and downs it without comment.

The flicker of challenge in Ijekiel’s eyes is unmistakable.

“You’re braver in dreams, too,” he murmurs.

Lucas leans in, just enough for his breath to warm the corner of Ijekiel’s jaw.

“No consequences,” he says, voice rough.

And for a moment — just one — they’re dangerously close. Not touching. But suspended in that razor-thin space where everything becomes possible.

Then Ijekiel moves.

Not away. Just enough to let the tension breathe.

He turns to face Lucas fully, knees brushing his. His gaze is steady. Curious.

“Do you ever wonder,” he says, “if the other you dreams of me, too?”

Lucas’s mouth parts. Then closes again.

The dream shifts. The rain softens to mist.

“No,” he says. Too fast. Too sure. “You’re just my mind being inconvenient.”

Ijekiel watches him for a long moment.

Then: “That’s a shame.”

Lucas doesn’t reply.

He just conjures another glass of wine, drinks it down in silence, and tries not to look at Ijekiel’s mouth.

Lucas avoids eye contact.

It’s easier that way, especially when Ijekiel passes him in the hallway like nothing’s happened. Like they hadn’t sat shoulder to shoulder last night in a dream world carved out of shared desire and dangerous comfort.

Like Lucas hadn’t nearly kissed him.

Lucas’s fingers twitch as he clutches the edge of the report he’s not really reading. Emperor Claude drones on in the council chamber, but none of it sticks. Not when Ijekiel is sitting across the room with that unreadable expression and the occasional twitch of his brows — like he’s distracted too.

Lucas tells himself it’s another coincidence.

Because if he lets himself believe — even for a moment — that Ijekiel is dreaming of him, with him…

“You’re awfully quiet today,” Athanasia remarks beside him, peering up from her own notes.

Lucas grunts. “And you’re not?”

She tilts her head. “You’re fidgeting. That’s weird.”

“I don’t fidget.”

She gives him a look. The kind that says don’t lie to me, I know you. He shifts in his seat, adjusting his sleeves with more force than necessary.

Athanasia leans in. “You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?”

Lucas goes very, very still.

“I— what?”

“Ijekiel,” she whispers, smug. “You get like this whenever he’s around.”

Lucas scoffs. “You’re imagining things.”

“I’m observant, actually.”

He doesn't answer.

Because if he opens his mouth, something real might slip out.

The terrace again, but this time the sky’s painted in dusky rose and burnt gold, the edge of a sunset suspended in time.

Lucas steps into it like he’s been summoned.

Ijekiel is barefoot, and this time he’s laid out on a plush settee, a book forgotten on his chest. His shirt’s only half-buttoned. He doesn’t even look surprised.

“Missed you,” he says, soft. Simple.

Lucas pauses. “You’re getting clingy.”

“Mm. You like it.”

Lucas doesn’t argue. Instead, he lets the dream pull him in. The warmth here seeps through his bones, replacing the cold guilt of the real world. In dreams, he doesn’t have to pretend he doesn’t want this.

Want him.

He sits at Ijekiel’s feet, casually, like this is normal. Like he hasn’t spent the day biting his tongue to keep from staring.

Ijekiel opens one eye. “Rough day?”

Lucas hums. “Reality’s loud.”

Ijekiel shifts up slightly and pats the seat beside him. “Then stay here a while.”

And Lucas does.

They sit shoulder to shoulder again, the way they always seem to drift together in this space. This version of them — unguarded, unbothered — feels absurdly natural.

“You ever wish we could just stay here?” Ijekiel murmurs.

Lucas doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

The silence is an agreement.

Eventually, Ijekiel turns toward him, chin tilted, expression curious.

“What do you see me as?” he asks.

Lucas blinks. “What kind of question is that?”

“I mean in the real world,” Ijekiel clarifies. “You act like I annoy you.”

“You do.”

“But you don’t here.”

Lucas exhales. The dream is warm enough that he’s dizzy with it.

“Here, you’re mine,” he says before he can stop himself.

The words hang between them, heavier than they should be.

Ijekiel’s eyes darken. He shifts, slowly — closing the space between them just slightly.

“Yours,” he echoes, lips parting.

Lucas doesn’t kiss him. Can’t. But his hand comes up, brushing the edge of Ijekiel’s jaw with the ghost of a touch.

In the dream, it feels like the whole world holds its breath.

Lucas’s fingers linger near Ijekiel’s jaw, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his skin but not quite touching. Not yet. He can hear his own pulse thrumming behind his ears — too loud for a dream, too real.

Ijekiel doesn’t move away.

In fact, he leans into the space between them, just a breath. Just enough.

“You’re bold tonight,” he murmurs, low and smooth, like velvet on skin. “Did something happen in the waking world? Am I just a comforting fantasy now?”

Lucas huffs a laugh, dry. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Ijekiel’s eyes narrow, amused. “You conjure me in silk shirts and low sunsets. You bring wine. You sit close. That’s intentional, Lucas.”

Lucas’s gaze flicks downward — at Ijekiel’s throat, at the sharp line of collarbone exposed beneath the undone buttons. “Maybe I’m just consistent.”

“Consistently repressed.”

Lucas arches a brow. “Says the man lounging like a damn painting.”

Ijekiel grins then, slow and infuriatingly soft. “If I’m a figment, you’re the one dressing me.”

“You’re not real.”

Ijekiel tilts his head. “No?”

“Just another trick of my brain. The result of— whatever magical feedback I messed with,” Lucas says quickly, as if the explanation will keep the moment from cracking open too wide.

But the words feel thin. Hollow. He knows it. And so does Ijekiel.

“Funny,” Ijekiel says, quiet now, eyes searching. “Because sometimes I think you’re the dream.”

Lucas stills.

For one unbearable heartbeat, they both forget the rules.

Then Ijekiel shifts again, drawing one leg up beneath him. His knee brushes Lucas’s thigh — just enough to jolt awareness back into his skin.

“Touch me,” Ijekiel says. Not a command. Not even a request. Just… an invitation.

Lucas doesn’t move.

But his fingers, still suspended near Ijekiel’s jaw, tremble. And then — carefully, deliberately — he closes the distance.

His hand cups the curve of Ijekiel’s cheek, palm warm against dream-warmed skin.

Ijekiel closes his eyes. Leans into it. “This doesn’t feel fake.”

“It’s a dream,” Lucas says, voice barely a whisper.

“Then let me keep dreaming,” Ijekiel replies.

Their foreheads brush.

A held breath. A charged silence.

Lucas doesn’t pull away. Here, he can linger. In dreams, no one wakes up alone.

Lucas wakes up with his heart in his throat.

The ceiling above him is painfully plain. Pale stone, too bright with the early morning sun slanting in through the tower window. No moonlight. No scent of spice. No Ijekiel.

He drags a hand over his face and exhales, slow and shaky.

It takes longer than he’d like to admit for the ache in his chest to settle.

For a moment, he stays still. Lets the silence crawl back in around him like armor. Lets the dream dissolve into the edges of his memory, blurry and too-soft and dangerous. Then, reluctantly, he swings his legs over the side of the bed.

His fingers brush his mouth.

It wasn’t a kiss. But gods — it had almost been.

And worse: he had wanted it.

Lucas curses under his breath. Not because he dreamed of Ijekiel again. No, that much he's come to expect — every time he sleeps, the bastard is there like clockwork, lounging in moonlight and saying just enough to get under his skin.

No, the real problem is that it’s getting harder to leave him there.

He moves through his morning rituals like he’s moving underwater. Wash. Robes. Coffee. Nothing tastes right.

His notes are still scattered across his desk from the night before — open books on ancient spellweaving, parchment scribbled with half-deciphered dream sigils. All of it looks meaningless now. Too neat. Too small for what he’s feeling.

Because Lucas had felt him. The warmth of Ijekiel’s skin. The weight of his presence. That almost-touch, that nearly-confession.

He flips a page too hard. Paper tears.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Dreams weren’t supposed to have gravity.

He sinks into his chair, head in his hands, and laughs once — bitter and quiet.

“Get a grip,” he tells himself. “It’s not real. He’s not real.”

But still, he can’t help it.

Lucas closes his eyes again.

And wonders if Ijekiel is dreaming, too.

The sky is darker this time. Not quite night — more like the hush before a storm, clouds tinged violet, stars flickering faint behind a veil of shadow.

Lucas arrives barefoot.

It takes him a moment to notice. The marble underfoot is cool and smooth, grounding in a way nothing else feels lately. He curls his toes against it and breathes in.

No scent tonight. No spice, no sugar. Just air, clean and damp like rain waiting to fall.

Ijekiel is already there, of course. Always is.

He’s seated on the edge of a chaise that wasn’t there in previous dreams — like the dream itself is evolving with them, quietly attuned to the intimacy they won’t admit. He looks tired. Not rumpled, not disheveled. Just… softened. Like something in him’s unraveling at the seams.

“You didn’t come last night,” he says, voice low.

Lucas crosses the terrace slowly. “Didn’t sleep.”

Ijekiel’s gaze flicks up. Holds. “I missed you.”

Lucas’s breath catches. He masks it with a smirk. “Well. You’re the one who’s imaginary. Can’t miss me if you don’t exist.”

A small smile ghosts across Ijekiel’s lips. “Maybe I’m real, and you’re the dream.”

“Gods forbid,” Lucas mutters, but it’s too soft to sting.

He joins him — close this time. Not touching, but near enough to feel the warmth between them. He studies Ijekiel’s profile: the faint crease between his brows, the way his lashes cast shadows when he looks down.

Lucas has never wanted to trace someone’s silhouette before.

“I think about you,” Ijekiel says quietly.

Lucas’s chest tightens.

“In the day. When I’m awake.” His thumb brushes along the curve of the chaise. “Isn’t that strange?”

“Yes,” Lucas says, barely audible.

And then — because this is a dream, and honesty is allowed to live here — he adds, “Me too.”

Ijekiel doesn’t smile. Doesn’t joke, not this time.

Instead, he reaches over, slowly, like he’s afraid of spooking something delicate.

His fingers graze Lucas’s wrist. A whisper of contact, no more than that.

Lucas flinches. Not from discomfort, but because it feels real.

He doesn’t pull away.

“I want to know what you’re like in the real world,” Ijekiel murmurs. “I want to see if your laugh sounds the same.”

Lucas almost tells him. Almost says, you do know me. But he doesn’t. 

Instead, he says, “You’d probably hate me.”

Ijekiel huffs a quiet breath of amusement. “I already hate you,” he says. “And I still want to stay.”

The tension sharpens like string pulled too tight. They’re leaning in now, not quite touching, breaths mingling.

Lucas can see the flecks of gold in Ijekiel’s eyes.

Lucas closes his eyes and whispers, “Then stay.”

And Ijekiel does.

The silence that follows isn’t awkward — it’s weighted. Dense with all the things they aren’t saying.

Ijekiel shifts, fingers still brushing Lucas’s wrist, barely-there contact that burns hotter than it should. Like a tether.

“I tried to make you disappear,” he says after a moment. His voice is quiet, confessional.

Lucas tilts his head. “Didn’t work?”

“No.” Ijekiel exhales through his nose, a faint laugh with no joy in it. “I tried to will you away. Told myself you were just my mind playing tricks. A leftover shadow from the day. But you kept coming back.”

Lucas hums. “Stubborn. Figures.”

Ijekiel looks at him again. And this time, there’s something raw behind his gaze. Not the polished charm the world sees. This is softer. Bare.

“Do you ever think,” he begins, “if you met me in real life, you’d be disappointed?”

Lucas freezes. The question shouldn’t sting. Not in a dream.

But it does.

He swallows, tongue thick behind his teeth. “No.”

Ijekiel blinks.

“I think I’d be worse,” Lucas adds. “Colder. Ruder. Probably wouldn’t talk to you at all.”

The smile Ijekiel gives him is faint, but it reaches his eyes. “You already don’t talk much here.”

Lucas snorts. “And yet you never shut up.”

A soft laugh spills between them, breaking the tension just enough.

Then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, Ijekiel leans his head on Lucas’s shoulder.

Lucas doesn’t move. His entire body is holding still like a spell is about to break.

The warmth of Ijekiel’s hair against his neck. The weight of his head. It shouldn’t feel real.

It shouldn’t.

But Lucas’s heartbeat is loud in his ears.

“You smell like ink,” Ijekiel murmurs. “And starlight.”

Lucas huffs. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does here.”

He’s right. It does. In this impossible space where nothing is real and everything feels too much.

Lucas turns his head just enough to rest his cheek against silver hair. The contact is soft. Intimate. Dangerous.

“We’re going to wake up eventually,” he says into the hush.

“I know.”

“And forget all of this.”

“No,” Ijekiel says, barely above a whisper. “I never forget.”

The wind picks up around them, rustling the dream-world’s leaves like they’ve said too much. Like the magic is listening.

Lucas closes his eyes.

And lets the moment last.

He feels Ijekiel fully take his hand, looking down at his palm. He hums softly, questioningly.

“You had that mark on your palm a few nights ago,” Lucas opens his eyes, “I saw it. In the dream, when we were first having that imagined wine. Then again, in the sunlight.”

He watches Ijekiel, the moonlight casting on him like it belonged there. Like it only exists to make him look better than he already did.

Ijekiel takes a breath, “I wonder how my dream conjured up something I haven’t even seen yet in real life.”

Lucas thinks. And hopes.

Lucas shouldn’t be this distracted.

The tome in front of him is a rare pre-Crescent grimoire, a gift from the Emperor’s private collection, bound in aged leather and sealed with fading warding glyphs. It’s the kind of material he’d normally spend hours dissecting.

But his eyes don’t move. His mind doesn’t turn.

He’s still thinking about the warmth of Ijekiel’s head against his shoulder. The phantom feel of his hand holding his.

A dream. A vivid, ridiculous dream that shouldn't cling so tightly to his senses hours after waking. And yet it does. The scent of cinnamon, the ache of something unsaid, the ghost of contact that lingers just under his skin.

Lucas slams the book shut, the echo sharp against the library’s silence.

He gets up, shoves a hand through his hair. The dream isn’t real. Ijekiel isn’t real — not like that. In the waking world, they barely interact. Polite nods, formal meetings, brief brushes at public functions. Ijekiel is the golden heir. The chosen one. Too good to be real. Too bright.

Lucas, on the other hand, is the shadow in the Emperor’s service. A relic of ancient magic. Too strange. Too dangerous. He doesn’t do softness.

Except…

Except when he sleeps.

Footsteps echo from down the corridor. Light. Familiar. He knows that cadence.

Lucas doesn’t look up, but he doesn’t need to.

“Sir Lucas.”

He turns the page slowly, pretending to read. “Alpheus.”

Ijekiel stands on the other side of the table. Not dream-Ijekiel, lounging in moonlight and teasing like it’s second nature. This one is buttoned-up, polite. Controlled.

Still beautiful.

“You’ve been missing from council,” Ijekiel says.

Lucas shrugs. “Been reading.”

“Clearly.” Ijekiel’s smile is diplomatic, but Lucas catches the flicker of something else in his eyes. Wariness? Curiosity? Something in between.

“You came all this way to deliver that?”

“No,” Ijekiel replies. “I came because your wards are leaking.”

Lucas glances up now, genuinely surprised. “What?”

“The protective enchantments you placed on the Western Wing.” Ijekiel crosses his arms, voice even. “There’s been magical bleed since yesterday. The scholars are worried.”

Since yesterday.

Lucas stiffens.

That was the night of that dream.

He covers it smoothly, gestures toward the staircase. “Show me.”

They walk side by side down the hallway, the silence between them tight. Ijekiel walks with purpose, posture rigid in a way Lucas recognizes from his own attempts to seem unbothered.

Lucas flicks his fingers as they approach the warded area, summoning the spell-thread into visibility. Sure enough, the lines are faintly flickering — frayed at the edges like something’s feeding on them.

His frown deepens.

“Did you cast anything recently?” Ijekiel asks. “Something experimental?”

Lucas’s jaw ticks. “Nothing that should’ve caused this.”

He doesn’t mention the dream magic. Doesn’t mention the ritual he’d only half-finished before exhaustion took him. The spell that might have cracked something open.

The silence stretches.

Ijekiel shifts closer, examining the threads with narrowed eyes. “This pattern…” He trails off, lifting a hand to trace a glyph mid-air. “It’s dream-related.”

Lucas says nothing.

“You know something.” Ijekiel’s tone is sharper now, not accusing, but pressing. Like he can feel the secrecy bleeding through Lucas’s magic.

Lucas keeps his face blank. “If I did, I’d fix it.”

They’re close now. Closer than they should be. Ijekiel’s shoulder almost brushes his. In the dream, that closeness felt charged. Safe.

Here, it’s volatile.

“I had strange dreams last night,” Ijekiel says quietly, like an afterthought. “Vivid.”

Lucas’s stomach flips.

He says nothing. Doesn’t even blink.

Ijekiel glances at him sidelong. “And the night before that. And before.”

Lucas finally meets his eyes. “So?”

“They’re always the same,” Ijekiel says, his voice a murmur. “Same place. Same person.”

Lucas’s breath hitches just barely. Enough that Ijekiel notices.

He turns away, fingers tightening at his side.

“You really should fix this ward,” Ijekiel says, tone crisp again. “If the bleed continues, it might affect others.”

Then, without waiting, he walks away.

Lucas stands there a moment longer, the taste of Ijekiel’s words lingering on his tongue.

Same person.

He swallows hard.

And doesn’t say a word.

The sky is ink-blue this time, flecked with starlight like gold dust spilled across velvet. The air is warm. Heavy. The kind of heat that settles low in the spine and doesn’t quite lift.

Lucas blinks awake in the dream already walking — barefoot, steps soundless against smooth stone. The terrace is gone. In its place, a garden blooms, strange and too-perfect. Moonflowers curl open with each breath of the wind. The scent is dizzying. Almost sweet.

And there — just ahead — on a low stone bench under a flowering tree, sits Ijekiel.

He looks up as if he’s been waiting.

“You took your time,” he says, voice low, warm.

Lucas doesn’t answer. Just studies him. He’s dressed softer here — no jacket, sleeves rolled, collar open. Like the version of him that belongs only in the dreams.

“You didn’t come last night,” Ijekiel adds, quieter now. “I thought maybe you were done imagining me.”

Lucas sits beside him, not touching but close. “That’s optimistic of you. Thinking I control these dreams.”

Ijekiel turns his head. “You don’t?”

Lucas scoffs, glancing away. “You think I’d conjure you?”

A beat. Then:

“Yes,” Ijekiel says simply.

Lucas’s heart stutters.

“Because if you didn’t,” Ijekiel continues, voice low and serious, “then it would mean I’m the one dreaming you. And I don’t want to believe that either.”

It’s too honest. Too raw. Lucas doesn’t breathe.

A breeze stirs. A petal lands on Ijekiel’s shoulder. Lucas reaches without thinking — fingers brushing over the soft linen of Ijekiel’s shirt to pluck it off.

His hand lingers. Warm through the fabric. Too warm.

Ijekiel turns toward him slowly, gaze tracing his face. “You do that a lot in these dreams,” he murmurs. “Touch me like it matters. Like it’s okay.”

Lucas doesn’t pull away.

“It’s a dream,” he says, voice rough.

“So?” Ijekiel leans in, close enough now that Lucas can see the reflection of moonlight in his eyes. “If it’s just a dream, then what are you afraid of?”

Lucas’s mouth is dry. “Not afraid.”

Ijekiel’s gaze drops to his lips. “Liar.”

He doesn’t close the distance. Doesn’t dare.

But he shifts closer, thigh brushing Lucas’s. Deliberate. The contact burns through the layers of illusion like fire through paper.

They both feel it. The give of restraint. The drag of want.

Lucas exhales shakily. “If you’re not real…”

“Then none of it matters.” Ijekiel’s hand brushes against Lucas’s now, knuckles to knuckles, not quite holding. “Nothing is holding us back here.”

Lucas turns his head. Eyes meet. Hold.

And maybe it’s that — the permission. The pretense. The quiet understanding that here, in this shared unreality, they don’t have to be who they are outside. They don’t have to pretend they don’t notice each other. Don’t want.

Lucas curls his fingers, lightly, around Ijekiel’s.

Their hands stay like that. Not moving. Just holding.

Nothing more.

But it’s more than enough to make Lucas ache.

The dream holds.

It doesn’t shift this time. Doesn’t scatter at the edges like they’ve grown used to. It lingers — longer than usual, thicker, heavier. Like it doesn’t want to end.

Like it’s waiting.

Lucas exhales slowly. Their fingers are still loosely twined, and neither of them has moved, though every inch between them feels felt. The garden’s air is warm. Humid. Distantly, something chirps from the trees.

“It’s strange,” Ijekiel says, voice barely above a whisper. “You feel real.”

Lucas turns his head slightly, studying the curve of Ijekiel’s jaw, the tension in his throat as he swallows.

“So do you,” Lucas admits, before he can stop himself. “Too real.”

Ijekiel tilts his head, unreadable. “Do you ever wish it was real?”

A heartbeat skips. Maybe two.

Lucas tries to shrug it off. “That’s a dangerous thought.”

“But not a lie.”

They’re close again — closer than they were a moment ago, or maybe the dream pulled them together while they weren’t looking. Lucas can feel the heat radiating off Ijekiel’s body now, a phantom warmth that doesn’t belong to a dream. His thumb brushes along Ijekiel’s hand. Slowly. Thoughtlessly.

“I don’t dream like this,” Ijekiel murmurs. “Not of anyone else.”

Lucas closes his eyes. That — that — is the kind of thing that should be ignored, dismissed, laughed off. But here? He doesn’t need to pretend.

“Me either,” he says quietly.

They sit in silence again, but it’s changed. Something raw crackles between them now, unspoken and greedy.

Lucas looks down. Their hands are still clasped, palms pressing now, his thumb still drawing idle lines across Ijekiel’s skin.

“You’re always too perfect in these dreams,” Lucas mutters. “Too… sharp.”

Ijekiel huffs a soft laugh. “And you’re always more honest than I expect.”

Lucas glances up. Their faces are close — closer now than they’ve ever been in the waking world. Ijekiel is watching him, gaze dark, quiet. His lips parted like he’s holding back words or breath or both.

Lucas’s fingers trail upward, lightly, along Ijekiel’s wrist. Just enough to feel the imagined pulse there.

Ijekiel exhales shakily. “If I lean in…”

Lucas’s throat tightens. He doesn’t move away. “This isn’t real.”

“Exactly.” Ijekiel’s voice dips. “So let me.”

Lucas doesn’t answer.

But he tilts his chin ever so slightly.

Enough for permission.

Ijekiel leans in — not to kiss him, not quite — but to press their foreheads together. Their breath tangles. Their eyes flutter shut.

The contact is maddening in its restraint.

“I hate waking up,” Ijekiel whispers.

Lucas feels it like a knife.

“Me too,” he says, brokenly.

Neither of them moves. Neither of them dares.

And then the sky starts to pale. Morning bleeding in like guilt.

But this time, when the dream crumbles—

They don’t let go right away.

The palace halls are colder now.

Not because of the weather — but because he’s there.

In uniform. Composed. Conversing politely with a courtier outside the strategy room like nothing’s changed — like he isn’t unraveling Lucas’s sleep every night with those steady hands and soft, secret smiles.

Lucas watches from the end of the corridor. His jaw is tight. His hands stay buried in his pockets so no one sees the way they tremble.

It’s easier to pretend.

It’s always easier to pretend.

They run into each other properly later.

A hallway just outside the upper archives — quiet, tucked away. Ijekiel rounds the corner, arms full of ledgers and scrolls, his head ducked in thought. He nearly crashes into Lucas.

The books jostle. Lucas catches the top one before it falls. Their fingers almost touch.

Their eyes do.

For a moment, it’s like the dream — like the air pulls taut between them, too much static, too much heat. The memory of phantom closeness stings across Lucas’s skin.

Ijekiel clears his throat and takes a careful step back.

“Thank you,” he says.

Lucas hums noncommittally, handing over the book.

“Studying palace budget reports for fun now?” he drawls, trying too hard to sound unaffected.

“Some of us enjoy understanding how the empire functions,” Ijekiel replies smoothly, as if it doesn’t feel like the ground just shifted beneath them.

There’s a beat. A silence just a little too long. And Lucas, against his better judgment, lingers.

He shouldn’t.

He doesn’t look away.

Neither does Ijekiel.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Ijekiel says at last, quiet.

Lucas arches an eyebrow. “Worried about me?”

A pause. A flicker of something unreadable behind Ijekiel’s gaze.

“Worried you’ll set the tower on fire again,” he says instead.

Lucas smirks. “One time.”

He walks off before he can say anything stupid. Before he can reach out. Before he can ask: Do you see me in your sleep, too?

He doesn’t look back.

But gods, he wants to.

The dream begins with rain.

Not the cold kind. Not violent.

It falls like silk, gentle and golden, turning the garden into something mythic — wet leaves glistening, moonlight fracturing through the trees like broken promises. The air smells of something green and ancient, soaked in memory.

Lucas steps into it soundlessly.

The bench is still there beneath the glowing tree, and so is he.

Ijekiel is already drenched. Shirt translucent and clinging, hair darkened to gray, plastered against his neck. He doesn’t notice the rain. Or he doesn’t care. His eyes are on Lucas from the moment he appears, unflinching. A thread pulled taut.

Lucas doesn’t speak. He can’t. His throat is dry even in the rain.

He walks toward the bench. Slower than usual. There’s something dangerous about the space between them tonight, something thin and brittle, like if they breathe too deeply it’ll all collapse.

He sits.

Ijekiel doesn’t look away.

There’s no wine this time. No teasing. No distance to retreat behind.

The silence is tight. Like a held breath stretched too long.

Lucas’s fingers brush the edge of the bench, wet wood rough beneath his skin.

“You keep coming back,” Ijekiel says, barely audible over the rain.

Lucas shrugs. “It’s my dream.”

Ijekiel doesn’t smile. “You’re lying.”

Lucas finally looks at him. The curve of his jaw. The wet lashes. The tension coiled in his posture like he’s holding something back with both hands. Something that wants to break free.

“What do you think this is, then?” Lucas asks, voice low.

“I don’t know,” Ijekiel says. “But I know it’s not just a dream.”

Lucas laughs, hollow. “Then you’re not real.”

“I don’t care.”

The words hit like a spell. Hot. Sharp. Lucas’s breath catches.

Ijekiel turns, then — fully. No more careful sideways glances. His hand comes up and brushes a strand of wet hair from Lucas’s face, fingers trailing down his jaw in a touch so careful it feels reverent.

Lucas flinches.

Not away.

Just… inward.

The tremor runs down his spine.

“I wake up,” Ijekiel whispers, “and I spend the whole day trying not to remember how it feels.”

Lucas can’t look at him. He stares at the ground. “You should stop coming here.”

“I can’t.”

And then: “Do you want me to?”

It’s not fair, the way he asks. The way it hurts.

Lucas’s voice cracks when he replies. “I don’t know.”

That’s a lie.

He knows.

He wants Ijekiel like fire. Like ruin. Like something carved into bone and sealed in blood. He wants to touch him, taste him, keep him — but this isn’t real.

And if he gives in, even a little, he’ll forget how to let go.

“You keep looking at me like that,” Ijekiel says. “Like you want something you don’t think you deserve.”

Lucas breathes in rain and magic and longing. “I don’t.”

Another silence.

Then Ijekiel’s hand finds his again. Wet fingers threading together, grounding.

“I won’t kiss you,” he says quietly.

Lucas looks up.

Ijekiel’s eyes burn. “Because I know I’ll wake up. And this never happened.”

Lucas’s chest aches.

They sit like that for what feels like forever — touching, aching, unspoken words turning to steam in the rain.

No kiss.

But a thousand almosts.

A hundred ways they fall apart and come back together without ever crossing that last, fatal line.

Morning breaks almost too slowly.

Lucas wakes with the ghost of a touch still imprinted on his palm, his skin buzzing with the memory of Ijekiel’s hand in his, the rain, the ache.

His throat is dry. His body hums like it’s still inside that dream — like he never really left.

He doesn’t move for a long time. Just stares at the ceiling of his chambers, sheets tangled around his legs, the scent of magic clinging to the air like sweat. His fingers twitch against the linen.

It’s worse, now.

The wanting.

The dreams used to be occasional, something he could shrug off. Now they’re a pattern. A rhythm. A need. He lets it happen.

Because in the waking world, Lucas is composed. Controlled. Cold, even.

But inside the dream?

He’s not.

And neither is Ijekiel.

He drags himself out of bed and pulls on his uniform with sharp, deliberate movements. The collar feels too tight. The air too heavy.

The mirror doesn’t help — his eyes look darker than usual, expression taut. Lips flushed. He scrubs a hand through his hair.

Pathetic.

The day is painfully mundane. Bureaucrats drone. Nobles make requests he’ll never grant. Claude wants a progress report on the imperial barrier.

He gives it. Briefly. Efficiently.

No one notices the shift in him. They never do.

Except—

Except when he crosses paths with him.

Ijekiel’s voice filters through the corridor before Lucas even sees him — soft-spoken, respectful, speaking with one of the palace aides. Lucas pauses. Breath caught in his throat.

He should leave.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he waits.

Ijekiel turns the corner — and stops short.

It’s brief. A flicker of surprise, immediately masked.

“Sir Lucas,” he says politely.

Lucas nods once. His voice comes out hoarse. “Alpheus.”

They stare at each other too long.

There’s nothing inappropriate about the moment — nothing scandalous. But something simmers beneath it. A hum of barely restrained awareness.

Ijekiel’s gaze flickers to his mouth. Just for a second.

Lucas’s hands clench at his sides. He remembers the rain. The heat of skin. The press of fingers.

He wonders: is it happening to him too?

Or is Lucas losing his mind alone?

He doesn’t ask.

Instead, he says — cool, detached, utterly false: “Long day?”

Ijekiel smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Always.”

And Lucas wants to shake him. To pull at the veneer until it breaks. Until Ijekiel says it. Admits that he remembers the dreams. That he feels it too.

But he doesn’t.

Later that night, Lucas doesn’t even try to fight it.

He lies down early.

Lets the magic pull him under.

And hopes—

Hopes—

He’ll find him waiting again.

The dream unfolds slowly this time.

Like the dream itself knows they’re teetering on the edge of something irreversible.

Lucas opens his eyes to dusk — warm and heavy, bleeding lavender and amber across the sky. He’s barefoot on cool stone, the wind brushing soft against his skin. The world smells like rain just passed and something sweet blooming just out of reach.

And Ijekiel is already there.

He always is.

Sitting on the edge of a low fountain. He looks relaxed — dangerously so. Like temptation carved out of moonlight.

Lucas steps closer, and the tension wraps around them instantly.

No greetings tonight. No sarcasm. Just awareness.

Ijekiel lifts his gaze, slow. And for a moment — just a moment — he looks wrecked. Eyes dark, mouth parted like he’s been waiting too long.

Lucas doesn’t speak. He can’t.

So he sits beside him, leaving the space between them just wide enough to ache.

The silence is thick, pulling tight with every heartbeat.

Ijekiel says, without looking at him, “You’re late.”

Lucas’s voice is low. Rough. “You always say that.”

“Maybe because I always miss you.”

It slips out too easily.

Lucas flinches. Not visibly — but inside, he shakes. His pulse stutters. His mouth parts — but he doesn’t answer.

Because that wasn’t what figments said. That wasn’t what hallucinations did.

He almost believes him.

Almost.

Instead, he shifts closer. Barely. Until their knees brush.

Ijekiel doesn’t pull away.

In fact — he leans in too.

Their forearms touch next. A slow, maddening slide. Heat sears through the contact. Lucas feels the breath stutter in his own lungs, but he doesn’t stop it. Doesn’t want to.

Ijekiel turns to face him.

Eyes bright. Almost hungry.

“You feel it too,” he says. Not a question.

Lucas exhales through his nose. “It’s a dream.”

Ijekiel leans closer. The air buzzes between them.

“Then what’s the harm in indulging it?”

Lucas’s restraint frays.

He lifts his hand slowly. Hovers it just beside Ijekiel’s cheek. Doesn’t touch. Just — waits.

Ijekiel shifts forward, and they’re inches apart now. His voice drops, honey-smooth. “I won’t disappear if you touch me.”

“You’re not real,” Lucas whispers, but he doesn’t believe it anymore.

“Neither are you. Not here.”

Lucas’s fingers trace the curve of Ijekiel’s jaw.

And the moment he makes contact, it burns.

Not literally. But it feels like the dam shatters. Like the tension that’s been building for nights finally has somewhere to go.

Ijekiel leans into the touch, eyes fluttering shut. His breath catches, and when he opens them again, there’s something raw in his expression.

Lucas pulls his hand back—but only to rest it on Ijekiel’s knee instead.

“You keep showing up,” he murmurs.

“So do you.”

And then, like gravity has made the decision for them, they lean in until their foreheads touch.

The tension coils tight — hot and dangerous and desperate.

“Do you ever wake up wishing you didn’t?” Lucas asks, voice rougher than it should be.

Ijekiel’s answer is quiet. Immediate.

“Every time.”

Silence blooms again.

Lucas thinks if he doesn’t kiss him now, he’ll break in half.

Ijekiel pulls his hand into his lap, fingers interlacing deliberately.

Their palms press tight.

Intimate. Honest.

They sit there, breathing each other in like a confession.

And then—

Lucas shifts.

A slow, deliberate lean forward. His nose brushes Ijekiel’s, light as a promise.

And this time, neither of them pulls back.

The kiss doesn’t come gently.

It crashes — quietly, breathlessly, as if every moment leading to this has unraveled in a single heartbeat. Their mouths meet, slow at first, like they’re still unsure, still testing the lines they’re about to cross.

Then it deepens.

Lucas moves his hand from Ijekiel’s lap to his jaw again, fingers curling, anchoring. Ijekiel sighs into him, his other hand slipping up to Lucas’s chest, pulling him closer, closer. The kiss grows hotter, messier, desperate in its control.

This isn’t chaste.

This is longing spilling over.

Ijekiel tilts his head, mouth parting more. Lucas groans — quiet and low — as Ijekiel’s tongue brushes against his, teasing, coaxing. They devour each other in the way only dreams allow. In the way they’d never allow themselves in waking life.

Lucas pushes him gently back, guiding Ijekiel down onto the marble bench like they’ve done this a hundred times.

He hasn’t.

But it feels like he should have.

Ijekiel’s hands tangle in Lucas’s hair, nails scraping lightly against his scalp as he pulls him back down, chasing another kiss. One hand slips beneath Lucas’s shirt, fingers trailing heat along bare skin.

Lucas shudders. His breath stutters.

“You shouldn’t be able to feel this real,” he mutters into Ijekiel’s mouth.

“You shouldn’t taste this good,” Ijekiel breathes back.

Lucas’s shirt slides off his shoulder. Ijekiel’s fingers fumble at the buttons of his own, undoing them with a rushed kind of grace. Lucas watches — entranced — as pale skin is revealed, inch by inch, bathed in soft moonlight and the gold glow of not-quite-sunset.

He leans down, kisses the newly exposed skin, just below Ijekiel’s collarbone.

Ijekiel trembles.

“Lucas—” It’s whispered. A plea or a warning. Maybe both.

Lucas only hums in response, pressing another kiss to his throat, trailing warmth and want along skin that shouldn’t exist in the real world — but feels more vivid than anything he’s ever touched.

Then—

The air shivers.

The dream begins to pull.

Lucas tenses. No.

No, not now.

Ijekiel’s eyes fly open, wide and startled. “No—”

Lucas clings to him, burying his face against Ijekiel’s neck. “Stay.”

Ijekiel’s arms tighten around him. “I’m trying.”

But it’s no use.

Their world unravels — faint light first, then sound, then the feel of skin-on-skin until all that remains is the ghost of a breathless kiss, and the echo of each other’s name whispered into nothing.

Lucas wakes up in the dark.

Sheets tangled. Skin flushed. Throat dry. His pants wet.

And every inch of him aching for something he can’t admit he needs.

“Fuck.” The word slips out harsh and low, echoing in the stillness of his chambers.

He sits up, dragging a hand through his hair. The sheets fall away, and the cold air hits his sweat-damp skin. His heart’s still pounding like he’s run halfway across the empire, and his chest aches like something’s been torn open.

The dream still clings to him — phantom lips on his throat, fingers in his hair, the weight of Ijekiel’s body beneath his.

Lucas swings his legs over the bed, steadying himself with a long exhale. His magic hums under his skin, erratic, untethered. Like it’s reacting to something. Like it knows.

But it can’t.

He won’t let it.

He stands, stalks across the room, and splashes cold water from the washbasin onto his face. The mirror doesn’t lie. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes wild, pupils blown too wide. He looks wrecked.

For a dream.

A fucking dream.

And worse — it’s him . Ijekiel Alpheus.

Golden boy. Too kind. Too perfect. Too much.

Lucas braces both palms against the edge of the basin and stares down into the water like it might give him answers. But it only reflects his scowl.

Maybe it’s guilt. Or loneliness. Or buried desire leaking out in the safest place possible.

He drags a hand down his face, still breathing too hard, and pushes himself out of bed.

The palace feels colder today. Or maybe it’s just him.

He washes the sweat off his skin like it might rinse away the ghost of Ijekiel’s mouth.

It doesn’t.

By late morning, the halls are full — servants rushing with linens, ministers murmuring politics he doesn’t care about. Lucas lets it all blur. He’s halfway to the greenhouse before he even realizes where his feet are carrying him. Some part of him must be looking for stillness.

He rounds a sunlit corridor.

And there he is.

Standing near the entrance to the gardens, one hand tucked behind his back as he listens to a knight speak. He’s laughing. Laughing — soft, warm, open in a way that Lucas has never seen in dreams.

And that’s the problem. He’s real.

Real — and so terribly not the Ijekiel from his imagination, and yet somehow exactly him.

Lucas freezes.

Because in the dream, that mouth had parted beneath his own. Had whispered his name with a tremor. Had—

Ijekiel turns, and their eyes meet.

The world narrows.

Sunlight pools between them. There’s too much air in Lucas’s lungs, too little room in his chest. His brain still feels singed from sleep and his body too aware of every place they hadn’t touched yet.

Ijekiel’s expression falters just for a second. Suddenly, his face turns red, and quickly — he looks away.

Lucas watches the movement, startled by the flicker of emotion, the too-fast shift of his gaze, like a reflex. Like recognition.

But that’s impossible. Isn’t it?

He moves closer before he can talk himself out of it. Slow, measured steps. Not toward him, exactly — just enough to pass by, to test a theory he’s not ready to name.

“Alpheus,” he says smoothly, like he’s greeting any other noble son, not the man who had been pulling at his clothes in a dream just hours ago.

Ijekiel nods without looking at him, the tips of his ears still pink. “Sir Lucas.”

His voice is steady, but it lacks its usual polish. The cadence stumbles, like he’s bracing himself for something. For him.

Lucas could ignore it. Should ignore it.

But instead, he slows beside him, lets the silence stretch just a beat too long. Close enough to see the tension in Ijekiel’s jaw. Close enough to see his knuckles go white where they grip the folds of his coat.

He says nothing.

Does nothing.

But he watches Ijekiel squirm under the weight of it.

And somewhere inside himself — he hopes . Hopes that this could be the same man in his dreams. The same man he’s held. The same man he’s touched. The same man he’s kissed.

But he shut his thoughts before it could go dangerously close to blurring the lines between his dreams and reality. 

Because they can’t be the same.

Because if they are—

Then everything he’s done in those dreams, everything he’s said, everything he’s felt, starts to matter in ways he’s not ready to face. Not here. Not with Ijekiel standing a mere breath away, cheeks still flushed and gaze flicking downward, as if he’s seen too much too.

Lucas exhales slowly. He takes a step back.

Just one.

“Try to get some rest, Alpheus,” he says, voice neutral and distant.

And then he’s gone, cloak trailing behind him as he slips into the shadowed corridor, pulse hammering in his throat like a secret.

Behind him, Ijekiel doesn’t call out.

But Lucas doesn’t miss the way he turns halfway, like he wants to.

Like he almost did.

The air greets him like breath caught between parted lips — humid, aching, starved.

Lucas doesn’t remember stepping into the dream. He only knows he’s here because his heartbeat shifts. Because the taste of Ijekiel is already on his tongue, phantom-like, addictive. And because when he lifts his gaze, he sees him.

Standing in the center of a room he doesn’t remember creating. All pale marble and deep velvet, soaked in moonlight. The kind of dream that’s built for indulgence, for surrender.

Ijekiel is barefoot, shirt hanging open, hair a soft silver mess like he’s run his hands through it over and over again. He looks like want personified — cheeks flushed, chest rising fast, eyes burning like he’s already mid-fantasy.

Lucas doesn’t think.

He moves.

Crosses the space between them in strides that feel like falling, grips Ijekiel by the waist and drags him in. Their mouths meet like they’ve done this before — too many times to count and never enough. Lucas kisses him deep, tongue greedy, teeth biting at his lower lip until Ijekiel gasps into him.

Ijekiel shoves back with equal hunger, hands curling into Lucas’s shirt like he needs something to hold onto — like he might drown if he lets go.

“Lucas,” he breathes, voice raw. “You always come just when I think I’ve imagined you.”

“I am imagined,” Lucas replies, his voice low, half-mocking, half-choked. “You’re the one who keeps showing up.”

Ijekiel shudders at the way he says it. At the truth neither of them wants to confront.

Lucas doesn’t let him answer.

Lips meet, fast and brutal, all teeth and heat and breathless desperation. There’s no space for teasing now. No banter. Only want — raw and consuming. Lucas pushes him back into the cushions, kissing him deep and unforgiving, like he’s trying to crawl inside his skin.

Ijekiel gasps into it, hands in Lucas’s hair, legs already parting without shame. It’s messy, fevered — like they’re trying to make up for every second they didn’t do this. Lucas tugs his shirt off roughly, mouth never leaving his. His hands splay over Ijekiel’s chest, sliding down, memorizing.

“I want to remember this,” Lucas mutters against his throat. “I want to wake up aching.”

“You always do,” Ijekiel breathes.

Lucas growls.

Pants come off. Shirts tossed aside. Ijekiel’s thighs wrap around his hips as Lucas presses in close, rutting against him, slow and heavy through layers of heat. Their erections slide together, slick with need, and Ijekiel moans — high and needy, back arching. His skin is flushed, mouth bitten red. Lucas can’t look away.

“Turn over,” he murmurs, voice dark.

Ijekiel obeys.

He sprawls across the velvet, spine curved in submission, ass lifted and bare, thighs trembling. Lucas runs a hand down his back, possessive, reverent. He presses a kiss between his shoulder blades. Another lower, and lower, until Ijekiel is gasping, clutching the sheets.

“Please,” Ijekiel whispers. “I can’t— Lucas, please—”

Magic coats Lucas’s fingers as he prepares him, stretching him open with a gentleness that doesn’t match the way his body shakes. Ijekiel presses back onto them, greedy and breathless.

“Fuck,” Lucas hisses. “You’re perfect.”

When he finally pushes in — slow, deep, devastating — Ijekiel sobs.

There’s no resistance. Just heat. Slick, tight, home.

Lucas sets a rhythm that makes the bed creak beneath them, hard and relentless, hips snapping into Ijekiel over and over again. Their bodies slap together, sweat beading, breath tangled. Ijekiel moans loud and desperate, his fingers twisted in the sheets, mouth open in wordless pleasure.

“I dreamed of this,” Lucas pants, voice low and ragged, buried deep inside him, his hips trembling with restraint even as he drives forward again. “During the day. So many times. Didn’t think — fuck — I’d ever have you like this.”

Underneath him, Ijekiel’s fingers twist tighter into the sheets. His back arches, drawing Lucas impossibly deeper. His breath stutters.

“You don’t,” he chokes out. “Not really.”

Lucas stills for a second. The air between them goes taut.

And then — he leans down, mouth brushing against the nape of Ijekiel’s neck, the words coming out softer. Raw.

“Then let me pretend.”

Ijekiel lets out a sound — half broken, half surrender. His body presses back against Lucas like he’s begging to be taken again. And Lucas moves. With purpose. With reverence. With a quiet fury.

Each thrust becomes a plea. A lie they both want to believe. A dream they refuse to wake from.

Lucas wraps an arm around Ijekiel’s waist and pulls him up, chest to back, one hand flat over his heart like he’s trying to hold something in place. Like if he grips tightly enough, it won’t slip through his fingers.

Their mouths find each other again — over shoulders, over skin slick with sweat. No kisses, not anymore. Just open mouths and shallow breaths and the taste of everything they’ve denied themselves.

Morning comes cruel.

Lucas stirs in tangled sheets, the taste of sweat and salt still on his lips, throat dry like he’s been screaming into pillows. He doesn’t open his eyes at first — doesn’t want to.

His body aches. His hips throb with phantom pressure. Every nerve feels like it’s been strung too tight and left humming.

He doesn’t need to look down to know.

His release stains the sheets. Sticky. Shameful. A testament.

Lucas breathes through clenched teeth. Rolls to the edge of the bed and presses his hands into his face like he can scrub the memory off his skin.

But it’s there. Etched in. Burned into the inside of his eyelids.

Ijekiel’s flushed face. The sounds he made. The way he begged — Please, Lucas, please —

Lucas growls under his breath and drags himself up. The room is too bright. Too cold. Too real.

And nothing, not the wash of cold water, not the layers of magic he pulls tight over his own body like armor, can make the feeling go away.

Later, after too many hours pretending he didn’t wake up undone, he wanders the palace halls like they aren’t haunted with memory.

Then, he spots him. Ijekiel in the rose garden. Alone. Reading something he doesn’t seem to be focusing on. Sunlight catches in his hair, makes it glint white. Too real. Too much like the dream.

Lucas freezes.

He can’t not look.

Ijekiel shifts slightly, adjusting the page as his fingers, slender and familiar, brush the edge of the book like he’s trying not to tremble.

His jaw is tight. Cheeks flushed with the heat of the day — or something else.

Lucas feels the moment Ijekiel notices him.

A breath catches. His eyes lift.

Their gazes lock.

Ijekiel’s expression falters just for a second. Suddenly, his face turns red, and quickly — he looks away.

Lucas watches him, eyes narrowed slightly. Every movement, every breath Ijekiel takes, rings too close to what he remembers from the dream. Not the dream, he reminds himself. A dream. His dream.

Still, he can’t unsee the image of Ijekiel bare and arching under him, can’t unhear the way he moaned his name like a secret, can’t unfeel the phantom weight of his hips in his hands.

He shifts uncomfortably. His pants are too tight. His mouth is too dry. The sun is too bright.

“Something on your mind?” he asks, voice low, casual in that particular way he uses to keep things from shattering.

Ijekiel startles slightly. “No,” he says too quickly. “Nothing.”

Lucas’s lips twitch, not quite a smile.

Ijekiel clears his throat and fidgets with the edge of the book. “What are you doing here?”

“Walking,” Lucas says. A lie. He doesn’t know why he’s here. Doesn’t know what he was hoping to find. “Didn’t expect to see you.”

“You always say that.”

“Do I?” he murmurs, stepping a little closer. The air between them is tight, humming with something unspeakable. Unseen.

Ijekiel doesn’t move away.

Lucas lets his gaze linger. On the way a drop of sweat trails down the line of Ijekiel’s neck. On the faint tremble in his fingers. On the pink still lingering on his cheeks, like he’s remembering something too.

He wonders, not for the first time, what if.

But he doesn’t say anything else.

He just watches.

Waits.

And then, too careful, too calculated, he turns.

Walks away.

Because if he doesn’t—

If he stays—

He might forget which version of Ijekiel he’s looking at.

The dream wraps around Lucas like heat, like memory, like a secret that tastes too good to give up.

No warning this time. No slow descent into sleep. One blink and he’s back in that velvet-dark room, cloaked in candlelight and shadows.

And Ijekiel is already there.

Waiting.

Wearing nothing but a loosely tied robe that clings to his waist like sin, silver hair ruffled and a mess. His chest rises and falls too fast. Eyes locked on Lucas like he’s been standing there for hours. Waiting for him to come back.

Lucas doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to.

He walks forward. One step. Two.

Ijekiel exhales shakily. “You came.”

Lucas stops in front of him, tilting his head. “So did you.”

Their eyes lock, the space between them buzzing, unbearable.

Lucas lifts a hand slowly, brushing a knuckle along the slope of Ijekiel’s cheekbone. His skin is warm. Too warm.

“You look like you’ve been thinking about me,” he says softly.

“I have.”

Lucas’s chest pulls tight.

Ijekiel swallows, voice barely a whisper. “I missed you.”

Lucas drags his thumb along Ijekiel’s bottom lip. “You saw me earlier.”

“That wasn’t—” Ijekiel breaks off. His breath hitches. “It wasn’t like this.”

Something inside Lucas snaps.

He surges forward, catches Ijekiel’s mouth in a kiss so fierce it borders on cruel. Their teeth clash. Their breaths mingle. And Ijekiel moans into it, hands rising to clutch at Lucas’s shoulders, pulling him in like he’s afraid he’ll vanish.

Lucas pushes him back against the edge of the bed, devouring his mouth. Ijekiel’s robe falls open, loose silk pooling at his sides. Lucas shoves it down with one hand, exposing skin that glows under candlelight.

“Touch me,” Ijekiel whispers, desperate.

Lucas doesn’t wait.

He palms Ijekiel’s cock, hard and already leaking against his stomach. Ijekiel arches into the touch with a choked sound, hips grinding into his hand like he’s starving for it.

“Like this?” Lucas murmurs against his throat, trailing his tongue down the line of his neck.

“Yes please, yes—”

He lays Ijekiel down slowly, reverently, kissing his way down, mouthing at his collarbone, his chest, his stomach. Ijekiel gasps, hands threading into Lucas’s hair, tugging, grounding himself.

Lucas takes his time.

And then, with his fingers slick and his breath heavy — he prepares him again, just enough. Ijekiel’s thighs tremble around him, eyes glassy with need.

“Now,” Ijekiel begs, voice wrecked. “Lucas, please, now—”

Lucas doesn’t make him beg again.

He enters in one long, deep thrust. Ijekiel shatters beneath him, a sound torn from his throat that makes Lucas groan, makes him press deeper, hips flush.

It’s rough. It’s fast. It’s desperate, a rhythm that’s half lust, half terror. Like they can’t waste even a second pretending they don’t want this more than anything else in the world.

Lucas pins Ijekiel’s hands above his head, driving into him with every ounce of restraint worn thin. Ijekiel writhes beneath him, mouth open, moaning shamelessly, begging for more.

“You feel—” Lucas gasps, “so good. Fuck— Ijekiel—”

“Don’t stop,” Ijekiel pleads, barely coherent. “Don’t stop— don’t—”

Lucas kisses him hard to shut him up, to taste every word he won’t get to hear when the sun rises.

Their bodies move in perfect rhythm, sweat slicking their skin, heat building between them fast and fierce. And when Ijekiel comes — crying out Lucas’s name like it’s the only word he knows — Lucas follows right after, buried so deep inside him it feels like breaking.

He collapses onto him, panting. Shaking.

For a long moment, they just breathe. Quiet. Tangled. Realer than they should be.

Lucas presses a kiss to Ijekiel’s temple. Soft. Almost reverent.

They don’t move.

Not for minutes. Maybe longer.

Lucas lies half on top of Ijekiel, chest pressed to his back, arm draped across his waist like a shield. He can still feel the tremble in Ijekiel’s body, the aftershocks of what they just did. His breath hitches every so often — like he’s still catching up to himself, still floating somewhere between pleasure and disbelief.

Lucas presses a kiss to his nape. Then another, just beneath his ear. Slow. Thoughtful.

“I didn’t think,” Lucas murmurs, voice low, “that dreams could feel this real.”

Ijekiel swallows. Doesn’t answer.

His hand reaches back blindly, fingers finding Lucas’s. Twining. Holding.

The room is silent except for their breath. The rise and fall of their chests. The soft shift of satin sheets.

Lucas buries his nose in Ijekiel’s hair. He smells warm. Like skin. Like night. Like something sacred.

“This doesn’t feel like a dream,” Ijekiel says, finally — quiet, hoarse. “It never does.”

Lucas freezes. Just for a moment.

But he doesn’t ask. 

Because if he lets himself believe — if either of them lets themselves believe — it’ll break the illusion. Shatter it into something too painful to name.

So instead, Lucas shifts, slipping out of him carefully, gently. Ijekiel winces a little, still sensitive, thighs sore. Lucas presses an apology into the hollow of his spine, kisses him slow, like an offering.

Then he pulls him close again, onto his side this time. Facing each other. Bare and open and vulnerable in a way neither of them ever dares to be when awake.

Ijekiel’s lashes are damp. His lips swollen.

Lucas touches his face like it’ll fade if he blinks too fast. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

A flush rises in Ijekiel’s cheeks. He scoffs, almost embarrassed. “It’s a dream. You’re seeing what you want to see.”

“I’ve never wanted anything more.”

Their foreheads touch. Their fingers stay linked.

No one says anything after that.

Because here, in this dream, they can lie to themselves. They can pretend it doesn’t matter. That it’s not real.

But their bodies remember.

Their hearts ache in tandem.

And even in sleep, neither of them dares to let go.

Lucas doesn’t wake so much as he falls out of the dream like something dropped him back into his body, sudden and unkind.

The first thing he registers is the ache. Between his legs, in his chest, in the way his skin feels too tight around him. His sheets are a mess again — sticking to his back with sweat, damp in all the places that still remember Ijekiel’s touch. His breath stutters out of him like he hasn’t caught it yet.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

His hands are still clenched in the sheets like he’s trying to hold something that isn’t there.

It takes him an hour to get up. Another to pull himself together enough to leave his rooms. But the dream won’t let go — his body still remembers. His mouth still remembers. Everything in him is haunted by it.

It’s almost noon by the time he passes through the palace corridors, avoiding anyone who might talk too long. He needs air. He needs distance.

What he doesn’t need — what he isn’t ready for — is to run into Ijekiel.

And yet—

There he is.

Standing in the greenhouse corridor, fingertips brushing the edge of a sun-warmed orchid, silver hair catching in the breeze from the enchanted windows. He’s alone. He’s not supposed to be here. Neither is Lucas.

But fate, it seems, has a cruel sense of humor.

Lucas stops in his tracks.

Because he can’t not look.

He can’t not see what he just dreamed about — what he just did. His mouth goes dry. His stomach twists. Ijekiel turns, startled by the sound of approaching footsteps — and freezes when their eyes meet.

For a second, neither of them says anything.

And then something flickers across Ijekiel’s face.

Not recognition.

Not exactly.

But heat. A flash of it. Faint. Confused.

Like his body remembers something his mind doesn’t.

Lucas swallows hard. The silence between them stretches, taut and breathless.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” Ijekiel says at last, a small, careful smile.

“I haven’t,” Lucas replies too quickly. His voice is hoarse.

Ijekiel’s gaze dips. To his mouth. To his throat. He blinks, as if trying to shake something off. His cheeks color slightly.

Lucas’s hands curl into fists at his sides.

Because he’s imagining him flushed and bare again. Bent over that velvet. Arching into him. Whispering his name.

And it’s not stopping.

It’s getting worse.

“Did you need something?” Ijekiel asks, voice soft but steady now, his usual mask slipping back into place.

Lucas opens his mouth. Then shuts it again. He doesn’t trust what will come out.

“No,” he says eventually, and it comes out low. Rough. “Just passing through.”

And then he leaves.

Because if he stays, he might reach out. He might touch. He might whisper something that doesn’t belong to this world.

He shouldn’t care this much.

Shouldn’t notice how Ijekiel’s voice shook slightly when their eyes met. Shouldn’t remember the heat of his skin so vividly. Shouldn’t still feel him — pressed against his chest, gasping, pleading — when it never really happened.

It didn’t happen.

Except his body remembers.

And his heart… can’t forget.

That night, Lucas stares at the ceiling for hours, jaw clenched, wards buzzing faintly at the edges of his consciousness.

Lucas doesn’t dream the next night.

He doesn’t let himself.

Because the line between dreaming and waking is starting to disappear — and if it fades completely, he’s not sure he’ll be able to come back.

Not when Ijekiel looks at him with those same eyes.

Not when it feels too real to ignore.

Not when the truth he’s most afraid of is the one his heart already knows.

He wards his room with a spell so old and intricate that it takes him nearly an hour to cast. Something about layered mind-barriers and magical interference — just enough to keep him grounded. Just enough to keep sleep shallow.

And when he lies down, it’s stiff. Awkward. His body is tired. His soul is exhausted.

But still — he stays awake.

Because the last dream hadn’t just been desire.

It had been too much.

Too close.

He had felt everything — too clearly. The weight of Ijekiel’s hips, the sound of his voice cracking beneath him, the way his back arched like he was begging to be taken. Not dreamed. Taken.

It hadn’t felt imaginary.

And that’s the danger.

Because the more it happens, the harder it is to separate it from the waking world. The more he sees Ijekiel — walking, smiling, unaware — the more haunted Lucas becomes. The dream clings to him like scent on skin, impossible to wash off.

He dreams again the second night, despite the wards. A faint flicker of lips brushing his, a whisper of a moan — but nothing more. It fades before it can build.

Lucas wakes in a cold sweat, trembling.

He needs to stop.

So the third night, he pushes further. Deep sleep wards. Memory buffers. Even a purification charm Athy once teased him for knowing.

The bed feels like a coffin.

Still, he stays.

Eyes open. Muscles tense. Heart pounding like something is hunting him from the inside.

He misses him.

Gods, he misses him. In a way that terrifies him.

Not just the sex. Not the dream-body, the moans, the sounds.

Him.

The Ijekiel in his dreams. The one who always touches him like he means it. Who lets him see the desperation in his eyes. Who whispers please like Lucas is the only one who can hear it.

Lucas buries his face into the pillow and clenches his jaw.

It’s not real. It can’t be. He knows that.

But the ache doesn’t stop just because he wants it to.

And when he sees Ijekiel again in the halls, in the library, in the quiet minutes between palace duties—

He looks at him and wonders:

Do you miss me too?

Even if you don’t know why?

It starts small.

A spell miscast by half a syllable. A book slammed shut harder than necessary. A too-long pause when someone calls his name.

He tells himself it’s nothing. He’s just tired. There’s always another crisis at the palace, another noble to keep an eye on. But Athy narrows her eyes when she sees him flinch at nothing. Claude watches him too long after a council meeting. Even Anastacius, who only came to visit his brother and happened to see him, comments dryly, “You look like you’ve been digging up corpses in your sleep, wizard.”

Lucas rolls his eyes. Makes a joke. Moves on.

But his fingers shake a little when he casts. His temper shortens. His sarcasm gets sharper — cutting, defensive, cruel in ways he never intended.

He dreams in pieces now.

Not of Ijekiel.

Not fully.

But of warmth. Of weight. Of hands clutching his robe. Of a voice that sounds like his but echoes from far away.

Sometimes he wakes up gasping. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all.

He sees Ijekiel in the corridors, in the distance, sometimes closer. Always too close. Always too real. The same eyes. The same voice.

And Lucas—

Lucas starts to avoid him.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to notice.

But he lingers behind when he knows Ijekiel’s passing. He takes longer routes. Pretends to be occupied. Skips meals where they might share a table.

He tells himself it’s better this way.

He can’t afford to look at him.

Because when he does — when their eyes lock, even for a breath—

It’s like being struck.

The dreams flood back, sharp and fast. He sees the curve of Ijekiel’s spine beneath his hands. The flush of his skin. The way he moaned when Lucas whispered his name.

He sees want. And it hurts.

Because it’s not real. It can’t be real.

And yet—

His heart races.

His palms sweat.

He stumbles on words he never stumbles on.

And it’s only getting worse.

By the end of the week, he can barely stand still. Magic clings to him like static, tense and volatile. His shields spark at random. Even his wards flicker — glitching in odd places like his own mind is pushing against them, trying to break through.

Because he wants it.

Because he misses him.

Because every night he spends awake, every night he spends fighting sleep, is a night he doesn’t get to see Ijekiel again — even if it’s just a dream. Even if it’s just pretend.

And Lucas, who has never been afraid of want, finds himself standing in the quiet of the palace gardens, gripping a tree so hard his knuckles go white.

Wanting something he can’t have.

Wanting someone who doesn’t even know what they’ve shared.

And it’s driving him mad.

He exhales shakily, squeezing his eyes shut.

He needs to do something. Anything. Before he unravels completely.

Before the line snaps.

Before he goes back to that dream just to feel sane again.

It’s easy to avoid Ijekiel if he really tries.

Or it should be.

But Lucas keeps catching glimpses of him anyway — across courtyards, through archways, seated with advisors or walking with nobles. It’s never direct. Never long. But it’s enough.

And it’s starting to unnerve him.

Because Ijekiel doesn’t look untouched either.

Not anymore.

There’s something worn about him now. Not exhausted, not quite — but thinned at the edges. His composure, still impeccable, seems strained in places. Like he’s holding himself upright with sheer force of habit. Like a painting starting to peel beneath the gloss.

Lucas notices things others wouldn’t.

The way his smiles linger too long, then vanish all at once. The stiffness in his shoulders, like he’s constantly bracing. The far-off look in his eyes when he thinks no one’s watching — like he’s listening for something that never comes.

He looks… frayed.

Lucas notices it in glimpses, never meaning to look, never wanting to care. But his eyes find him anyway — like they’re trained, like they’ve been chasing something for nights without rest.

Ijekiel still moves like himself. Still speaks like a duke should — measured, confident, effortlessly kind. But there’s a pause now. A hesitation before he smiles. A delay in his words, like he’s remembering the lines too late.

Once, across the corridor from the palace library, their eyes meet.

Only for a moment.

But it’s long enough to make Lucas’s breath catch.

Because there’s something behind Ijekiel’s gaze that wasn’t there before. A flicker. A question. Something lost.

And for a moment — just a breath — Lucas thinks he looks scared.

He doesn’t let himself dwell on it.

He doesn’t let himself wonder.

Because wondering means wanting, and wanting means believing, and he can’t afford that. Not now. Not after nights of forcing himself awake, of shaking and cursing and trying not to remember how Ijekiel’s voice cracked when he begged for more.

He sees him again in the gardens days later, leaning on the marble railing, staring into space like something’s missing.

Lucas turns away before he can think too hard about it.

But that night, the wards don’t hold.

He sleeps.

And the dream comes for him anyway.

It doesn’t welcome him this time.

It drags him in like a riptide.

Lucas doesn’t remember closing his eyes. Doesn’t remember the moment the waking world slipped from under him. All he knows is that the ground beneath him is too soft — carpeted in midnight blue. The air too thick — humming with magic. The scent of moonlight and sweat and memory coils around his lungs before he can brace for it.

And when he looks up—

Ijekiel is there.

Standing with his back to him, arms folded tightly across his chest, shoulders rigid. His silhouette is outlined in cold silver where the moonlight cuts through tall arched windows. The room around them is unfamiliar — half-dream, half-memory. Grand and echoing. It feels like a ballroom drained of music. A cathedral stripped of faith.

Lucas’s breath catches.

He knows immediately that something’s wrong.

He approaches carefully. Not like usual — when he’s pulled toward Ijekiel with unthinking hunger. No, this time he walks like he’s approaching a ledge. Like one wrong move might send everything crumbling.

“Ijekiel,” he says, softly.

Ijekiel doesn’t turn.

His voice is quiet when he finally speaks, and somehow that hurts more than if he’d shouted.

“You disappeared.”

Lucas opens his mouth, but Ijekiel continues, tone steady even as it trembles at the edges.

“Seven nights. I waited here. For you. And you weren’t there.”

Lucas closes his eyes for a second. The guilt sinks fast and sharp.

“I didn’t mean to disappear,” Lucas says, barely above a whisper. “I thought — if I stopped coming, maybe the dreams would stop, too.”

Ijekiel still doesn’t turn. “So you ran.”

Lucas swallows. “I needed to know I could live without them.”

“And can you?” Ijekiel asks, and finally — finally — he looks over his shoulder. His expression isn’t angry. It’s worse. It’s hollow. Like something inside him burned out slowly, one dreamless night at a time.

Lucas can’t answer.

Because the truth is carved into the circles beneath his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the ache that settled into his bones and never left. No amount of spells or wards could make him forget the absence. The coldness of a bed meant for two. The silence where Ijekiel’s voice should’ve been.

“I thought you were gone. Forever.” Ijekiel says, and Lucas’s heart stutters.

“What?”

“I thought something had happened. You never said goodbye. You just… vanished. One night you were holding me like you meant it, and the next —  nothing.” He turns fully now, arms falling to his sides. “Do you know what it’s like to wait in a dream that doesn’t come?”

Lucas doesn’t speak.

Because he does. He knows. He’s felt it, too — on the third night, the fourth, when even shallow sleep cracked at the edges and he still didn’t dream. He knew what he was avoiding, but he hadn’t expected the way it would hollow him out.

“I didn’t know how real this was,” he says, struggling to find the right words. “I thought I was imagining it. You. All of it.”

“And now?”

Lucas looks at him. At the hurt in his eyes. The trembling in his hands.

“Now I don’t think I ever had that kind of imagination.”

Ijekiel breathes in sharply. He looks away, blinking fast, as if the weight of Lucas’s words makes him unsteady.

Lucas steps forward, just a little. Not close enough to touch. But enough that Ijekiel can feel the warmth of him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Lucas says. “I was scared.”

“So was I,” Ijekiel says, voice low. “Every night. And I hated it. Hated how much I needed to see you. Hated waking up empty. Hated how — how much it started to mean.”

Lucas’s breath catches.

There it is. The truth they’ve both been circling for weeks. Not spoken in moans or half-sighed pleas, not buried under the illusion of lust. Meaning. Longing. The kind that cuts deeper than touch.

Ijekiel presses his hand to his chest like it aches. “I can’t tell anyone about this. Not a soul. Not even myself, when I’m awake. I’m terrified I’m going mad.”

“You’re not,” Lucas says, stepping forward again. “You’re not mad. This is real. Or as real as it can be.”

Ijekiel lifts his eyes. “Then why did you leave?”

Lucas answers without hesitation.

“Because it felt too real.”

And that makes Ijekiel falter.

His shoulders slump. His breath shakes. The fire in his eyes dims just a little, enough for something softer to break through.

“I don’t know what this is,” he says quietly. “But when you weren’t here, it felt like I lost something I never had the right to want.”

Lucas’s hand twitches at his side.

He wants to hold him. Wrap his arms around Ijekiel and ground them both. But he doesn’t reach out. The air between them is still trembling.

“Don’t go again,” Ijekiel whispers. “Please.”

Lucas’s heart cracks clean in half.

“I won’t,” he says.

He means it.

And when he finally reaches for Ijekiel — when his fingers close around his wrist, gently, like a promise — he feels the way Ijekiel exhales all at once. Like he’d been holding that breath for seven nights straight.

They don’t touch more than that.

But when Ijekiel finally leans in and rests his forehead against Lucas’s shoulder — silent, shaking, vulnerable — Lucas holds him like an anchor. Like this time, he won’t let him drift.

And in the stillness of that quiet dream, with no hunger or heat or desperate moans to cloud them, Lucas thinks:

He’s doomed. To have a dream be this realistic, be so human . He doesn’t know what to do. He knows the dangers, knows the possibility of him never wanting to wake up just to stay with this Ijekiel — his Ijekiel — and thinks, that maybe, this was what the spell — whatever it is — wanted from the start.

And yet, he indulges. 

He indulges because he’s already too far gone.

Because the moment Ijekiel lets out that quiet, broken breath against his shoulder — the one that sounds like relief twisted with pain — Lucas knows he’s been made a fool. Knows that his silence, his absence, his denial, none of it spared him. None of it protected Ijekiel either. They both bled through the nights in different ways.

Lucas’s fingers curl gently into the fabric at Ijekiel’s back, grounding himself in the warmth, the weight, the realness of it.

“This isn’t fair,” he murmurs, more to himself than anything.

Ijekiel doesn’t move. But Lucas feels the tension coil in his spine again. Feels the shift in breath. That instinct to pull away — to brace.

So Lucas says, softer this time, “Not you. This. Us. Like this.”

There’s a pause. And then, finally, Ijekiel speaks.

“I know.”

Lucas’s eyes fall shut. For a moment, there’s nothing but the silence between them. It stretches long, like a chasm, like a thread that could snap if either of them breathes wrong.

And then Ijekiel shifts.

Just enough to press his temple to Lucas’s neck, like the weight of standing upright is too much now. Like seven nights of waiting have eroded his pride.

“I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter,” he says, voice raw. “That you weren’t real. That I could wake up and move on.”

Lucas swallows. His pulse jumps where Ijekiel’s breath brushes his skin.

“And?” he asks, quietly.

Ijekiel lets out a bitter, trembling laugh. “I started hating myself for hoping. For missing you. I told myself it was a delusion, but then I’d come back here, and it still hurt. Even without you.”

Lucas’s hand moves, slowly, to the back of Ijekiel’s head. His fingers slide into gold-streaked hair, threading carefully, reverently.

“I felt it too,” he says. “And I hated myself. For not being strong enough to ignore it. For thinking about you all day like some stupid lovesick fool. Even when I was awake.”

At that, Ijekiel finally pulls back enough to meet his eyes.

And Lucas wishes he hadn’t.

Because the way he’s looking at him now — shattered and searching, angry and afraid — it’s too much. It makes Lucas ache in places he didn’t know he had.

“You don’t get to say that,” Ijekiel says, low. “Not when you’re the one who left.”

Lucas doesn’t flinch. He takes the words, lets them land, lets them sink.

“You’re right,” he says. “I left. I was afraid of what it meant if you were real.”

“And now you’re not?” Ijekiel demands.

Lucas’s mouth twitches, bitter at the edges. “I’m still afraid. But I think I’d rather be afraid with you than keep pretending I don’t care.”

Ijekiel’s breath hitches.

And this time, when his shaking, uncertain hand reaches out, Lucas meets it halfway. Fingers lacing, palms pressing, like a truce that’s barely holding together.

For a long moment, they just stand like that.

Hands clasped.

Breaths mingling.

Hearts pounding out a rhythm too fragile to name.

Then, Ijekiel speaks again, voice almost breaking. “I thought I was going mad.”

Lucas shakes his head, murmurs, “You weren’t.”

“I thought I dreamed you into being.”

Lucas leans in, forehead nearly brushing his. “So did I.”

Ijekiel’s lips part, just slightly.

But neither of them move closer.

Lucas just holds Ijekiel’s hand tighter. Stares at him like he’s the last star in a dark sky.

The silence stretches again — but this one feels different. Not empty, not cold. It’s heavy with things unsaid, soaked through with longing so thick it hums like a spell beneath their skin.

Lucas watches the way Ijekiel’s lashes lower. The way his lips part and close again, like he wants to speak but doesn’t trust the shape of the words. Like he’s afraid that if he breathes wrong, Lucas will vanish again.

So Lucas says it first.

“I won’t disappear.”

A flicker of doubt crosses Ijekiel’s face, but he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t say liar even if it’s written in the twitch of his jaw, the tremble in his fingers. He just stays there, grounded by touch, by breath, by the kind of closeness that doesn’t need skin on skin to feel intimate.

“I don’t trust you,” Ijekiel whispers. “Not yet.”

Lucas nods. “I don’t blame you.”

“But I want to.”

That — gods, that nearly undoes him.

Lucas feels it in his throat, the way those four words slide beneath his ribs and crack something open. The desire in them. The need. Not lust, not craving — but something far more dangerous. Hope.

He wants to kiss him. Wants to hold his face in his hands and say, then trust me now, let me show you, let me be real.

But instead, Lucas just brushes his thumb along the back of Ijekiel’s hand. Feels the pulse there. Quick. Frantic. Alive.

“Then let me earn it,” he says.

Ijekiel breathes out shakily. “How?”

“Stay here. With me. Talk to me. Look at me like this again tomorrow.”

“What if you don’t come back?”

Lucas’s mouth tightens. “Then I give you permission to hate me.”

“I already do,” Ijekiel says, but his voice is soft. Pained. “I hate you so much it feels like love.”

Lucas flinches visibly, sharply. The words hit him like a blow, and for a second, he can’t breathe.

Ijekiel notices. His gaze softens. Regret flickers there, but he doesn’t take it back.

And Lucas doesn’t ask him to.

Because maybe it’s true. Maybe they’ve built this thing between them out of resentment and desire and everything too dangerous to say aloud. But that doesn’t make it less real.

“I don’t want to hate you,” Ijekiel adds after a moment. “I just don’t know what else to do with all of this.”

Lucas exhales through his nose. “Then let’s start with… not hating. Just for tonight.”

Ijekiel’s brow furrows. “You make it sound like we have time.”

“Do we?”

“I don’t know. Every time I wake up, I wonder if this will be the last.”

Lucas feels that truth settle heavy on his shoulders.

They don’t know what this magic is. Don’t know what rules govern it. Don’t know if there’s a thread they’ll one day follow too far, only for it to snap.

But right now, they’re here.

They’re together.

And maybe that’s enough.

Lucas finally lets go of Ijekiel’s hand — but only to raise it, slowly, to his cheek. He waits. Gives Ijekiel every chance to step away.

He doesn’t.

When Lucas’s fingers graze his skin, Ijekiel leans into the touch like he’s starved for it. Like he’s been cold for nights and only just found the fire again.

“Tomorrow,” Lucas murmurs, thumb brushing the curve of Ijekiel’s cheekbone. “Let me see you tomorrow.”

“You’d better,” Ijekiel breathes, eyes closing.

They stay like that.

No kisses. No frantic hands. Just two boys in a dream too vivid to be fantasy. Two boys trying not to drown in a feeling they can’t name yet.

And in the hush that follows — fragile, sacred — Lucas realizes:

He’s no longer afraid of wanting.

He’s afraid of waking up.

The morning sunlight feels cruel.

Lucas wakes with a jolt, heart pounding like he’s surfaced from deep water. The warmth of Ijekiel’s forehead against his shoulder still lingers on his skin. His chest aches — not from exhaustion, but from something sharper. Something like missing.

He scrubs a hand down his face and doesn’t bother with magic to clear the bags under his eyes. 

The palace is already humming by the time he arrives. Nobles milling about like overdressed ants. His presence, as usual, cuts through them like a blade. People glance, bow, quickly step aside. He doesn’t care.

He’s not looking for them.

He doesn’t mean to look for Ijekiel.

But he does.

And when he sees him standing near one of the gallery arches, speaking quietly to a minister, Lucas stops walking altogether.

Something in his chest stutters.

A quiet, inexplicable ache.

Ijekiel is dressed sharply, every line of his uniform perfect, composed. Silver hair tucked neatly behind his ear. The picture of grace and clarity, just like always. There is no reason for Lucas’s gaze to linger. No reason for his breath to catch.

And yet he watches as Ijekiel tilts his head, listening. Then he does something — small, almost imperceptible. His hand comes up, brushing his wrist, thumb dragging slowly across the seam of his sleeve.

Lucas’s mouth goes dry.

He’s seen that gesture before. Felt it. In a world carved from magic and sleep. The way Ijekiel touches his wrist when he’s trying not to speak. When words tremble behind his teeth.

Lucas tears his gaze away like it burns.

It’s not the same, he tells himself.

It can’t be.

But the rest of the day passes like smoke. Conversations blur. Court is suffocating. And every time he catches a flicker of silver across the hall, his body reacts before his mind can reason with it. Heat pools in his stomach, sharp and disorienting. Like muscle memory without memory.

It’s worse when they pass in the corridor.

Brief. Silent.

Ijekiel offers a polite nod — nothing more.

But something in his eyes lingers. A hesitation. A flicker of something like recognition, but too brief, too vague to name.

Lucas says nothing.

Neither does Ijekiel.

They walk past each other like strangers.

But something pulls in the silence between them. Like the ghost of a dream.

And Lucas — who’s lived through centuries, through wars, through storms — has no defense for it.

The dream doesn’t rush to meet him this time.

It comes soft, slow, like the hush of snowfall on quiet stone. Lucas lands in it like a breath held too long. The sky above is indigo, starless. The ground beneath him is soft again, but the setting has shifted — no grand halls or cathedral arches tonight. Just an open balcony, the edge of some imagined palace, overlooking a garden that doesn’t exist in the real world.

And Ijekiel is there, sitting on the ledge.

He’s bathed in moonlight. Loose white shirt open at the throat, hair windswept like he’s been waiting here for a while. His bare feet dangle over the side, and there’s a stillness to him that’s new. Not cold. Not distant.

Just quiet.

Lucas approaches without speaking, and when Ijekiel turns, he smiles — small and soft, with something unspeakably sad behind it.

“You came,” he says.

“Of course I did,” Lucas murmurs. “I told you I would.”

Ijekiel nods. He looks down at his hands, then back out toward the garden, where flowers bloom in colors that don’t have names. The silence stretches, but not uncomfortably.

“I saw you today,” he says at last. “In the real world.”

Lucas’s throat tightens.

“I know.”

“I wasn’t sure at first,” Ijekiel admits. “But then you stopped walking. Just for a second. And I thought — maybe.”

Lucas sinks down beside him, leaving space between them. “You didn’t say anything.”

Ijekiel laughs softly, but it’s not a happy sound. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hello, do you remember the way I kissed you in my sleep?’”

Lucas’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t smile. It hurts, how much he wants to.

“I wanted to speak to you,” Ijekiel says, almost to himself. “But it felt… wrong. The real you— he’s different.”

Lucas tilts his head. “Different how?”

“You’re quieter,” Ijekiel says. “Colder. Untouchable.” His voice softens further. “In the dreams, you look at me like I’m something you want. In the real world, I don’t think you even see me.”

Lucas breathes in sharply.

“That’s not true.”

Ijekiel finally turns to him, eyes catching the moonlight. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”

Lucas exhales. He doesn’t know how to answer that without admitting how fragile this all feels.

“You seemed… far away,” he says instead. “Like you were someone else.”

Ijekiel nods, accepting that. “Maybe I am. Maybe this isn’t real enough to make me brave.”

“I think it’s real enough to make us both cowards,” Lucas murmurs.

They sit in silence again. The wind curls gently through the garden, rustling petals that shimmer in impossible hues.

“I don’t know how to talk to you out there,” Ijekiel says, voice so soft it’s almost a confession. “This version of you… I don’t think he’d want me.”

Lucas looks over. “Why would you think that?”

Ijekiel shrugs one shoulder. “He’s powerful. Respected. Distant. And I’m just… the son of a duke with too many expectations and not enough sleep.”

Lucas lets the silence settle again, lets it press against his ribs. And then—

“I saw you today, too,” he says.

Ijekiel glances over.

“You touched your wrist. The same way you do here, when you’re nervous.” Lucas’s voice drops, almost a whisper. “I noticed.”

Ijekiel stares at him for a long time. There’s something in his expression — hope, maybe. Or the fear of it.

“Lucas,” he says quietly, “I don’t want this to stay just a dream.”

Lucas swallows.

And finally, finally, he reaches out. Just a brush of fingers, tracing the back of Ijekiel’s hand. Not a kiss. Not a confession.

But it’s enough.

“I don’t either,” he says.

And the way Ijekiel closes his eyes, just for a second — like the touch is enough to fill his lungs again — makes Lucas think that maybe they’re both just waiting for the moment they stop dreaming.

Ijekiel’s hand doesn’t move at first.

It just stays beneath Lucas’s fingers — warm, alive, real in a way that still makes Lucas’s chest ache. He watches the rise and fall of Ijekiel’s breath, the way his lashes tremble as though he’s afraid to open his eyes and find it all vanished again.

But it doesn’t vanish.

Lucas doesn’t pull away.

And that seems to be all the permission Ijekiel needs.

His fingers turn slowly under Lucas’s, until their palms meet. The touch is tentative. Reverent. Not like the last two times — when their need had been sharp-edged and breathless, devouring each other like the dream might collapse if they didn’t.

This is slower. Hungrier in a different way.

It’s want, not need. It’s please stay instead of don’t leave again.

Ijekiel’s thumb brushes the inside of Lucas’s wrist — one slow arc, like he’s memorizing the shape of him. His eyes open, and the look he gives Lucas is so open, so unbearably tender, that Lucas forgets how to breathe.

“I missed you,” Ijekiel whispers.

Lucas leans in before he can stop himself. Their foreheads touch, the air between them charged with the kind of intimacy that feels more dangerous than fire.

“I know,” Lucas breathes. “I missed you, too.”

And when their mouths meet, it’s nothing like the other kisses. No gasping desperation. No wild rush. Just lips brushing, mouths parting slowly, like they’re learning each other all over again.

Lucas cups Ijekiel’s face with both hands. His thumbs stroke gently over flushed cheekbones, and Ijekiel leans into it like he’s starving for affection. Like this dream, this version of Lucas, is the only place he ever gets touched like this.

Lucas kisses him again — softer this time. Slower. He feels Ijekiel’s breath catch, feels the way his hands rise to grasp at Lucas’s shirt, trembling slightly as they pull him closer.

And then they’re lying back against the warm stone of the balcony, bathed in moonlight. The air thick with scent of dream-flowers and the faint, clean sweetness of Ijekiel’s skin.

Lucas undresses him carefully. One button at a time. Each touch a question.

Is this okay?

Are you still with me?

Do you feel this, too?

And Ijekiel — he answers in sighs. In the way his hips arch under Lucas’s hands. In the way he whispers Lucas’s name like it’s the only word he remembers.

Their bodies slide together, warm and slow. No urgency. No fear. Just the deep, aching rhythm of trust. Lucas presses kisses to every new inch of skin he uncovers. Jaw, throat, collarbone, the dip just beneath Ijekiel’s ribs.

And when he’s inside him — slow, careful, with one hand pressed tight to Ijekiel’s heart and the other laced with his fingers — Lucas thinks:

This is what I was scared of.

Not the magic.

Not the dreams.

This.

The way it feels like the world narrows to a single breath. A single heartbeat.

Ijekiel gasps his name. Arching, clinging. His back bowed to the moonlight, eyes shining wet.

Lucas kisses his temple. His cheek. His mouth. Every part of him he can reach.

“I’m here,” he whispers between thrusts, the words spilling like a vow. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

And when Ijekiel comes with a soft cry swallowed against Lucas’s shoulder, shivering through it — Lucas follows close behind, burying his face in the curve of Ijekiel’s neck.

They stay like that for a long time. Tangled. Warm. Bare skin pressed to bare skin.

Lucas strokes a hand slowly down Ijekiel’s spine, and Ijekiel lets out a breath that sounds like a prayer.

No words pass between them for a while. They don’t need them. Their bodies say everything.

I missed you.

I’m sorry.

I’m yours.

And in the quiet that follows, with the stars overhead and the scent of magic curling around them, Lucas closes his eyes and thinks—

Please let him remember me when he wakes.

Morning arrives too harshly.

Lucas wakes with the memory of Ijekiel’s skin still on his fingertips, the curve of his smile pressed like a kiss behind his ribs. The tenderness of last night still clings to him like a second skin, too soft, too fragile, something dream-thin that might tear if he moves too fast.

But it wasn’t just a dream.

He knows that now. He knows it the way his hands know the shape of Ijekiel’s waist. The way his chest still aches — not from longing, but from having. From being held. From holding back nothing for once.

And sometimes, in the split-second before full waking, he wonders if Ijekiel reach for him too.

The ache is gentler this time. But it doesn’t hurt less.

He sees Ijekiel again before lunch.

In the garden courtyard, where sun-dappled vines creep over white columns and the breeze smells of lavender and history. Ijekiel’s standing beneath a wisteria arch, poring over a document with the Head of Foreign Trade. He’s composed. Polite. Back straight, voice even. Just another young noble serving the Empire with quiet grace.

But Lucas sees it.

The way Ijekiel’s fingers curl against the paper. The quick, involuntary glance he casts over his shoulder, as though expecting — hoping — someone is behind him.

Their eyes meet.

Just for a second.

And Lucas stops breathing.

Because there it is — that flicker. That flash of heat and recognition and you were in my arms last night and I don’t know what to do with that.

Ijekiel’s composure doesn’t break. Not really. But Lucas sees the way his throat moves as he swallows. Sees the way his lashes dip, the slightest falter of breath. A ripple. Barely perceptible to anyone else. But not to Lucas.

Because he remembers how Ijekiel breathes when he’s flustered. When he’s touched. When he’s loved.

He turns away a second later, back to his work. But his shoulders are too stiff. His movements too careful. Lucas watches as Ijekiel murmurs something to the official and gestures to be excused.

Evening settles in slowly, like a secret.

The sky has gone lavender at the edges, shadows stretching long across the courtyard as lanterns flicker to life along the ivy-covered archways. The air is cooler now, brushed with the scent of moss and warm stone still holding the memory of the sun.

Lucas waits by the eastern stairwell, half-lost in the hush of fading light.

Footsteps. Then — him.

Ijekiel rounds the corner and pauses when he sees him, steps slowing just slightly. He doesn’t speak right away.

“You’re out late,” Lucas says.

Ijekiel stops beside him. Doesn’t meet his gaze at first.

“So are you,” he murmurs.

There’s a pause.

The kind that crackles.

Lucas watches as Ijekiel’s gaze drifts to the cobblestones, the worn patterns etched into the ground by years of footsteps. As if the answer to something might be written there. As if he’s still caught between two versions of reality, and not entirely sure which one he’s stepped into.

“You seem…” Lucas tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “Tired.”

That earns a soft, ironic breath. Almost a laugh. “Do I?”

“You didn’t look like this in my dreams,” Lucas says, before he can stop himself.

The words fall like dusk — quiet, unassuming, but impossible to ignore.

Ijekiel’s breath hitches. His lips part, but no sound comes. He stares ahead, unreadable. Still.

Lucas curses himself, silent.

But then — softly, almost too quiet to hear — Ijekiel says,

“You didn’t either.”

Lucas goes still.

The silence between them thickens. Heavy with things unspoken. The breeze carries the scent of night flowers and warm earth, and somewhere nearby, a lantern hums softly as the flame dances behind its glass.

A thread stretches between them. Tense. Fragile. Real.

Lucas shifts. “I meant… hypothetically.”

Ijekiel’s lips twitch — just a little. “Sure.”

Not confirmation.

But not denial either.

They fall into silence again. Not awkward.

Just charged.

Ijekiel leans back against the stone beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touch. His hands are clasped too tightly in front of him, like he’s afraid they might move on their own.

Lucas glances down. The same hands. The way his right thumb rubs over his knuckle when he’s thinking. Just like—

“You do that when you’re nervous,” Lucas says, before thinking.

Ijekiel glances at him, brows lifting. “Do I?”

Lucas nods. “You did. I mean— I noticed.”

Ijekiel really looks at him then. And for a moment, he isn’t guarded. Isn’t unreadable. Just… bare.

Something flickers in his eyes — something fragile and unspoken that nearly breaks through.

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” he murmurs. “Lately.”

Lucas swallows. “Me neither.”

They don’t say why.

They don’t need to.

They stand like that for a while — shoulders not quite touching, hearts just slightly out of sync. Lanternlight plays along the stone. The sky deepens into velvet.

And maybe it’s nothing.

But when Ijekiel turns toward him — just barely, like he’s searching for something he’s not sure he’s allowed to reach for, Lucas almost leans in.

Almost.

But he doesn’t.

The silence between them feels full now. Weighted with everything they shared only hours ago beneath a different sky. A sky that wasn’t quite real but not quite false, either.

Lucas draws in a breath. Lets it out.

He doesn’t move. But he doesn’t pull away, either.

And Ijekiel doesn’t push.

“I should go,” he says eventually, voice low, measured.

Lucas nods, even though the words twist something in his chest. “You’ve got work.”

“So do you.”

But neither of them moves.

The breeze tugs gently at Ijekiel’s hair. Lucas watches the way the lantern light softens its edges — turning it gold, like it still remembers his hands. And he aches with that memory.

He aches with knowing.

But the world is not the dream.

Not yet.

So he says, “Don’t stay up too late.”

And Ijekiel looks at him. Really looks at him. Like the words mean more than they should. Like maybe, deep down, he wants them to.

“I’ll try,” he says.

Then he walks away.

Lucas stays long after his footsteps fade, staring at the place where Ijekiel had stood, his heart thudding unsteadily in his chest.

This is going to break me, he thinks.

And he’s never sounded more certain.

That night, he falls asleep.

And when the dream comes, it’s waiting.

The balcony again.

Same stars. Same impossible garden.

But this time, Ijekiel isn’t sitting.

He’s standing at the edge, hands braced on the stone, eyes cast toward the horizon.

Lucas doesn’t speak. He walks forward slowly, quietly, until he’s just close enough to see the tension in Ijekiel’s shoulders. The restless shift of his stance.

Like he’s been waiting again.

Like he’s not sure he should be.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Ijekiel says, not turning.

Lucas’s chest tightens. “I always come.”

“I know. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted you to.”

That hurts. More than it should. But Lucas understands it. He feels it.

Still, his voice stays quiet. “Because it makes the real world harder?”

Ijekiel finally turns. His expression is unreadable — calm, but brittle around the edges. “Because it makes it feel like I’m living two lives. And I don’t know which one is real anymore.”

Lucas exhales, stepping closer. “They both are. In different ways.”

Ijekiel doesn’t respond right away. Just studies him — eyes lingering on his face, his hands, his mouth. Every inch like he’s trying to match memory to presence.

“Then tell me something,” Ijekiel says. “Something the real you would never say.”

Lucas blinks. “Why?”

“Because I want to believe this version of you is the one who means it.”

Lucas hesitates. The words crawl up his throat, fragile and raw and real in a way nothing else in his life ever feels.

“I think about you,” he says finally. “When I’m awake. More than I should.”

Ijekiel closes his eyes.

And smiles.

It’s faint. Pained. Beautiful.

“Me too,” he whispers. “Gods, me too.”

Lucas steps into his space then. Close enough to feel the warmth of his skin, the way his breath stirs the air between them.

And he touches him.

Not like before. Not hungry or aching.

Just a hand on his cheek. A brush of thumb across his skin.

“You asked what the real me would never say,” Lucas murmurs. “But maybe… maybe that version just hasn’t figured out how to say it yet.”

Ijekiel opens his eyes.

And in them is everything Lucas saw that morning. Every flicker of confusion, of yearning. Of hope.

“I’ll wait,” Ijekiel says, voice barely more than air. “Until he does.”

Lucas leans in, heart beating wild.

And this time, when they kiss, it’s slow again. Careful.

But it’s not hesitant.

It’s a promise.

A thread pulled tight across dreams and waking.

A tether.

And neither of them lets go.

The sunlight feels too sharp. It’s always too sharp lately.

It cuts across the obsidian table in the council chamber, throws long, accusing shadows across Ijekiel’s profile — nose slightly wrinkled, lower lip pressed in concentration as he scans the documents laid out before him. His pen hovers. Wavers. Drops a line where none should be.

Lucas watches him falter, eyes narrowing, but says nothing.

He can feel the slip before Ijekiel realizes it — when the duke’s gaze hardens, and a diplomat clears their throat too loudly. Ijekiel stiffens. Then speaks, composed and polished again, but Lucas sees the tremor in his fingers as he turns the page.

He remembers it.

Or at least, something about it.

His gaze lingers on Ijekiel’s cheek, just for a moment. The one he touched in a world that shouldn't exist.

Lucas doesn’t sit in on council meetings for pleasure. They’re a political formality, something to keep the court comfortable, like a performance with too many actors and not enough script. But he’s here today. Watching. Listening. Dissecting every twitch of Ijekiel’s expression.

He’s being obvious, he knows.

And worse — he doesn’t care.

It’s not just the dream. It’s the aftermath. The taste of it, sour and sweet, like fruit left out too long. He hasn’t stopped thinking about it since. The way Ijekiel trembled when he whispered his name. The way he said, “Don’t stop.”

Lucas isn’t used to being haunted.

When the meeting adjourns, Ijekiel is the first to rise, his chair scraping softly against the polished floor. His smile is practiced, gentle as ever, but Lucas sees the mask slip for half a second when their eyes meet.

A pause.

Too long.

Too tense.

Lucas tilts his head lazily. “You seemed distracted today.”

Ijekiel’s mouth opens, then closes. He hesitates. “Noticed that, did you?”

“I notice everything,” Lucas replies, voice low. “Especially when someone forgets how to read numbers.”

Ijekiel laughs, but it’s brittle. “You should try daydreaming sometime. Might soften those sharp edges of yours.”

Lucas steps closer, just enough to feel the tension spike. “I’ve had enough dreams for a while.”

Ijekiel goes still.

He doesn’t look away. Doesn’t even blink. But Lucas can feel the moment he tenses. That ripple of unease that passes between them like a spark waiting for something to catch.

Someone clears their throat. Loudly.

Athy. Of course.

She’s leaning against the doorway like a bored cat, arms crossed, watching them both with that infuriating glint in her eyes. “You two sure are talking close. Anything interesting happening I should know about?”

Lucas smiles without showing teeth. “Diplomacy.”

Athy’s brows lift. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

Ijekiel clears his throat, too fast. “Princess, don’t misunderstand.”

Lucas doesn’t look at him. He keeps his gaze on Athanasia, waiting for her to drop the act.

She shrugs and pushes off the wall. “Whatever you say, Your Grace. Just make sure no one’s dreaming with their eyes open.” She hums a little tune as she walks off, too pleased with herself.

Lucas finally turns his head.

Ijekiel is staring at the floor. The curve of his jaw is taut.

Lucas wants to say something sharp. Or cruel. Or kind. He doesn’t know anymore.

Instead, he brushes past him with a quiet, “You should be more careful.”

He doesn’t wait for a response.

The dreams don’t stop.

They only grow sharper.

Two nights in a row, Lucas drifts under, expecting silence — maybe darkness, maybe nothing at all. But Ijekiel is there. Always.

Not quite meeting his eyes. Not quite touching him.

The first night, they sit beside each other on an endless stretch of crumbling palace corridors, stars leaking through cracked stone ceilings. Ijekiel says nothing. Lucas doesn’t speak either. But their hands rest too close. Close enough that their knuckles brush.

He can feel the heat of him. Can feel the silence like a scream in his ears.

He doesn’t reach for him.

Not like he used to.

He watches Ijekiel beside him, lit in that soft, impossible moonlight — shoulders loose, expression unreadable. So near, and yet he feels worlds away.

And maybe that’s because Lucas stopped coming. Maybe that’s because Lucas made the dream a desert for a week and left Ijekiel stranded inside it.

He doesn’t know how to ask for closeness anymore. Doesn’t think he deserves to.

It used to be easier. Reaching for him. Touching his wrist. Pressing into him like it was allowed. Like it didn’t matter. But it does now.

It matters so much that Lucas can’t trust his hands anymore. Not with the silence of those seven nights still echoing between them. Not when forgiveness feels like something too soft to ask for.

So he keeps still and pretends the ache in his fingers isn’t a want he has no right to answer.

On the second night, they argue.

Lucas doesn’t remember about what. Maybe it doesn’t matter. He says something cruel, something meant to push Ijekiel away. But Ijekiel steps forward instead, grabs his wrist.

His voice breaks when he says, “Why are you always running from me here? When you don’t even know what I remember?”

And Lucas — he almost answers. Almost admits that he does know. That he remembers too much. That it’s not just dreams anymore, it’s bleeding into him like a poison.

But he wakes before he can say anything.

He wakes with Ijekiel’s hand still phantom-warm around his wrist. With the sting of words he never said.

He doesn’t see Ijekiel again until after that, in the real world.

Not because he’s avoiding him. No. Lucas doesn’t avoid people. He simply has better things to do than linger near the Duke of the Obvious and the Unspoken.

Still, when he rounds the corner of the palace’s eastern wing and nearly walks into him again, it feels deliberate. Or maybe just cursed.

There’s a beat of silence.

Ijekiel opens his mouth like he might say something, then closes it. The same dance as always lately. A flicker of expression crosses his face — uncertainty, guilt, something Lucas refuses to name.

Lucas sighs and leans against the marble pillar like he’s bored, not bothered. “Are you stalking me?”

“Would that even work on you?”

Lucas lifts a brow. “Try it and see.”

Another silence. Stiff. Charged.

Ijekiel looks at him too long. There’s something in his gaze that wasn’t there before. Not just recognition, but fear of recognition. Like if he says too much, it’ll break whatever fragile understanding is left between them.

Lucas tilts his head. “You’ve been quiet.”

“So have you.”

Lucas’s voice lowers. “Maybe I have nothing to say.”

Ijekiel swallows. He takes a step closer. “Do you… remember anything from that night?”

Lucas doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. But his heart claws against his ribs like it’s trying to escape.

He gives nothing away. “Which night would that be?”

A flicker of pain in Ijekiel’s expression. He tries to cover it with a tight smile. “I suppose I dreamed it, then.”

Lucas narrows his eyes. He could lie. He should. But the words don’t come.

Instead, he asks, “Do you want it to be a dream?”

Ijekiel looks at him like he’s been caught in a trap.

And still, no one says it. Not outright.

Not I touched you like I wanted you for years.

Not I kissed you like I was dying and you were the only thing I believed in.

Not You said my name like it meant something.

Too much unsaid. Too much remembered.

Lucas lets the silence stretch until it cuts.

“Maybe you should get more sleep,” he says at last, tone flat.

Ijekiel straightens, the soft curve of his mouth going rigid. “Maybe you should stop haunting my dreams.”

Lucas doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe.

He should stop. Should bite his tounge. But the ache is louder than reason.

With his voice barely above a whisper, he replies, “I’m not the one who begs in them.”

He turns on his heel and walks away before Ijekiel can say another word.

There’s no beginning to this dream.

Just the moment it’s already happening.

Lucas is sitting on the edge of something — a low wall, a balcony, maybe just an illusion of one — and Ijekiel is beside him, their shoulders brushing. The world around them is half-formed, soft at the edges like wet paint. Dim twilight, a sky that can’t decide on stars.

Neither of them speaks.

Ijekiel’s hand is resting beside Lucas’s. Not quite touching. Not quite apart. Just close enough that when Lucas shifts ever so slightly, their pinkies brush.

It’s nothing.

It’s everything.

He doesn’t know how long they sit there like that, but eventually, Ijekiel leans into him. Not dramatically. Not even intentionally, maybe. Just — leans. A slight tilt of weight and warmth, his head against Lucas’s shoulder, like his body has grown tired of the silence and made the decision for him.

Lucas doesn’t breathe.

Then he does. Slow, careful. One arm comes up, as if moved by some thread deeper than conscious thought, and he pulls Ijekiel in. Holds him. Gentle at first, unsure. Then tighter, like something inside him recognizes this feeling and clings to it.

There’s no kiss. No confession.

Only closeness. Shared gravity.

And silence, still.

Lucas closes his eyes.

Lucas doesn't wake so much as surface — like being dragged up through molasses, clinging to heat that isn’t his anymore. The pillow still smells faintly of cedar and something sweeter underneath, like wine. His hand tightens against the empty space beside him, even though he knows.

He knows.

It was just a dream.

(But it wasn’t, was it?)

He sits up slowly, blinking blearily into the dim morning light filtering through the high windows of the tower. It’s quiet. Too quiet. No rustling of sheets beside him. No familiar weight curled into his side. No soft exhale against his throat.

Lucas exhales sharply and pushes a hand through his hair. The tower hums around him with old magic, steady and silent. He’s been here all night. He knows he hasn’t left. Not physically. And yet—

His magic thrums uncomfortably beneath his skin, like something restless. Like something touched.

He mutters a spell under his breath, fingers weaving through the air with ease of habit. A divination. A trace.

Nothing should happen.

Something does.

The air flickers. Magic trembles — responds — not just to him, but as if echoing something shared. Another presence. Faint. Distant. Golden like late afternoon sun, warm like breath on bare skin.

Lucas stares at the lingering shimmer of the spell.

That’s not how dreams work.

He thinks back to the way Ijekiel’s hands had felt — real, too real — how his voice had cracked when he said Lucas’s name. How it hadn’t faded with the morning.

A dream can’t echo back.

Lucas sits up with a breath that tastes like iron. Rubs a hand down his face. It’s just the magic — just his own subconscious, conjuring up someone he sees far too often these days. The golden boy with kind eyes and a voice like disappointment. Nothing more.

But his fingers twitch like they remember. His chest aches like he’s lost something.

He gets up. Paces the room once. Twice.

It’s not real, he thinks. They’re just dreams. They're just dreams . He repeats it like a ritual.

And yet.

And yet.

What if they aren’t?

The thought is a whisper he shouldn’t entertain. It coils around his logic like a vine and squeezes, too stubborn to be shaken loose. What if he’s not dreaming alone? What if those glances in the waking world — those flickers of recognition in Ijekiel’s eyes — aren’t coincidence?

What if he remembers, too?

Lucas stops pacing. Looks at his hands.

He’s studied magic older than kingdoms. Magic that slips between worlds, threads memory through time like beads on a string, and ties souls with silk and blood.

But no — no, it doesn’t make sense.

Except it does. Too much.

He exhales sharply and turns from the window. He needs to know. Not just guess. Not just wonder. He needs certainty.

But he also needs distance.

Because if it’s real…

Then he’s already in too deep.

Lucas doesn’t go looking for him.

He tells himself that more than once as he strides down the inner palace corridor, robes shifting like ink in motion, magic thrumming low and unsettled beneath his skin.

But he still finds him.

Midmorning light filters through the high windows of the southern wing, slanting gold across the stone floor. There’s a hush in the air — courtiers already filtered off to their respective duties, guards standing quietly at attention. And there, near the arched window that overlooks the sun-drenched gardens, stands Ijekiel.

He’s alone.

For once.

Lucas stops. He doesn’t mean to, but his feet betray him.

Ijekiel’s back is to him, one hand resting lightly on the sill. His head is tilted just slightly, like he’s thinking. Like he’s listening to something only he can hear. The curve of his neck, the way his fingers drum absentmindedly against the marble — Lucas knows that posture now. He’s traced it in the dark. He’s memorized it with his hands.

The silence stretches.

Lucas could leave. He should leave. Turn around and vanish into a shadow like he always does. But his body won’t move.

And then Ijekiel speaks.

“You’re staring again.”

Lucas doesn’t respond right away. He steps forward slowly, every inch of movement deliberate. Controlled. Like if he moves too quickly, the world might shatter at the edges.

“I was wondering,” he says, voice low, “if you always sigh like that when you think no one’s watching.”

Ijekiel turns to look at him. His expression is unreadable — calm, yes, but frayed at the edges. There are shadows beneath his eyes. His lips part, then close again.

Then, “I thought about what you said. That I didn’t look like myself.”

Lucas exhales through his nose. “You didn’t. You still don’t.”

There’s a pause.

Then Ijekiel asks, softly, “Do I look like someone you dream about?”

Lucas’s breath stumbles. His brain short-circuits, scrambling for something cutting, dismissive, safe.

“Yes,” he says instead.

It’s a whisper. A thread.

Ijekiel doesn’t look away.

Neither does Lucas.

And for the first time, the silence between them feels like something new. Not a wall. But a door.

They don’t talk about it.

Not really.

After that hallway encounter, Lucas expects things to shift — expects awkward distance, sharper silences. But instead, something else happens.

They orbit closer.

Subtly. Gradually. Like the gravity between them has changed.

Lucas catches Ijekiel looking at him across the council chamber once, twice, always when he thinks Lucas isn’t paying attention. Their gazes hold a second too long during policy debates. Hands brush when passing documents. And every time, the air thickens, just slightly. Just enough.

Lucas doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

A name. A confession. A crack in the façade.

Instead, he gets a moment in the royal library — quiet, empty, sun pooling in the alcoves like gold spilled across old stone. Ijekiel is there first, seated at one of the long tables, poring over some volume on diplomatic histories.

He looks up as Lucas enters.

Their eyes meet.

Lucas doesn’t stop. He just moves toward the nearest shelf, feigning interest in a book he’s already read twice. He feels Ijekiel watching him, even after he turns his back.

A beat passes.

Then another.

Then, “Lucas.”

It’s soft. Careful.

Lucas turns slowly. “Yes?”

Ijekiel’s gaze flickers down, then up again. His jaw works, like he’s about to say something that doesn’t want to be said.

“I—” A pause. “Never mind.”

Lucas tilts his head. “Practicing speeches?”

Ijekiel huffs a quiet breath. “I was going to ask if you’ve been… sleeping better.”

Lucas’s heart stutters. Just once.

He keeps his face blank. “And why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know,” Ijekiel says. “Maybe you just seem different lately.”

Lucas narrows his eyes. “Do I?”

Ijekiel nods, almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

Lucas wants to say something cruel. Something to derail the moment. But his mouth is dry. His magic stirs beneath his skin, restless.

“You should go back to your reading,” he says instead.

Ijekiel doesn’t argue.

But Lucas feels his gaze long after he’s turned away.

Later that evening, Athanasia corners him.

“You’ve been weird.”

Lucas raises a brow. “I’m always weird.”

“Weirder.”

She leans against the doorframe to his study, arms crossed, expression curious and too perceptive by half. “And so has Ijekiel.”

Lucas flips a page in his grimoire without looking up. “How fascinating.”

Athanasia doesn’t move. “You’re not fighting anymore.”

“We weren’t fighting.”

“No, but you’re not avoiding him either.”

Lucas glances up. “Are you spying on me?”

She grins. “Always.”

He sighs. “Go away.”

“Make me.”

He waves a hand, and a spell launches harmlessly into the air above her head with a pop of violet light.

Athanasia doesn’t flinch. Just watches him a moment longer, smile fading slightly.

“Whatever this is,” she says, softer now, “you’re acting like it’s going to break you.”

Lucas says nothing.

He doesn’t have to.

Because it already is.

It’s almost funny.

The number of times Lucas has bent reality to his will. Broken ancient spells like string between fingers. Unraveled curses older than the Empire itself. And yet now, in the privacy of his room, he’s hunched over his desk, sketching a tracing glyph onto a coin like a boy scribbling in a diary.

He tells himself it’s for clarity. For sanity.

But really, it’s for hope.

He turns the coin over once more, his thumb brushing the faint shimmer of magic now nestled into the engraving — a rune that reacts to proximity. If this coin leaves this plane of consciousness and returns, still marked, still humming…

Then the dream is more than imagination.

Then Ijekiel is real.

Lucas doesn’t cast anything else. No spell to guide it. Just the mark. Just the possibility. He tucks the coin into his pocket before he sleeps.

It’s raining.

Not the violent kind. Not the kind that drowns.

No, this is a slow, silver kind of storm. Gentle in its fall, but heavy in the way it presses against the skin. The kind of rain that feels like memory.

Lucas stands beneath a carved stone arch, the dream-world already spinning around him like it knows he doesn’t want to be here but came anyway. There’s a garden blooming below with lavender and ivy, vines curling like handwriting across marble railings.

And under the veil of rain, not far ahead—

Ijekiel.

He’s leaning against a low wall at the edge of the garden path, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair damp and curling in the humidity. His expression is unreadable, the way it always is at first. Caught somewhere between composure and longing.

Lucas steps forward slowly, the stone slick beneath his boots.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Ijekiel says.

“I’m here now.”

“You’re late,” Ijekiel replies, gaze flicking up. “I started pacing.”

Lucas huffs. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re late.”

“I had to find something first,” Lucas says, slipping his hand into his robe.

Ijekiel watches him. “If this is the part where you dramatically produce a flower or a knife, I’m going to be disappointed.”

Lucas smirks. “It’s worse.”

He pulls the coin from his pocket. Turns it once between his fingers. Holds it out in his palm — open, casual, like it doesn’t matter.

But his heartbeat says otherwise.

Ijekiel raises an eyebrow. “A gift?”

“A test.”

“Should I be flattered or offended?”

“I’m leaving it to your imagination.”

Ijekiel takes a slow step closer. The rain slicks against his cheekbones, clings to his collar. Up close, he looks flushed, but not from the weather. Not from the dream.

He holds out his hand. Lucas places the coin in it.

Their fingers brush. Brief. Unavoidable.

But it leaves something behind.

Ijekiel’s thumb skims the rune etched into the coin’s edge. He doesn’t recognize it. Of course he doesn’t.

But he doesn’t let go.

“I don’t know what this is,” he says quietly.

“You don’t have to,” Lucas murmurs. “Just keep it.”

Ijekiel studies him for a long moment. The rain falls quietly around them.

And then—

“I hope this isn’t your way of flirting,” he says. “Because it’s clumsy.”

Lucas exhales, almost a laugh. “It’s not.”

“Shame. I was almost impressed.”

Lucas tilts his head. “You want me to flirt with you?”

“I want something,” Ijekiel admits, voice softer now. “But I haven’t decided if it’s more of you… or less.”

Lucas’s heart stutters.

He could retreat. Could cover it all in snark or sarcasm or shadow.

Instead, he kept silent.

Lucas doesn’t move. Doesn’t dare.

Ijekiel looks down at the coin again, like it’s heavier now. Like it means something more than it did when it first passed between them.

“You’re dangerous,” he says quietly.

Lucas smiles. “I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

“And yet you keep showing up here,” Ijekiel says. “Like I won’t let you ruin me.”

“Maybe I already have.”

The silence stretches.

The rain wraps around them like a spell.

And still, neither of them walks away.

Lucas wakes with his breath caught halfway in his throat.

The first thing he does is reach for the coin.

His hand finds only fabric.

He searches the folds of his robe. Then the bed. Then the floor.

Nothing.

He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t allow himself to. Not yet.

Instead, he moves through the morning like a man walking across thin ice. Composed. Unbothered. Until he reaches his study.

He checks the desk.

Nothing.

The drawer.

Empty.

The coin is gone.

Which means—

Which means it’s not just a dream anymore.

He doesn’t let the thought settle. Not fully. Because if he accepts it, if he names it, it becomes something that can break him.

Instead, he dresses with mechanical efficiency. Black robes. Silver thread at the collar. Something grounded. Cold. He casts a light concealment charm on the bags beneath his eyes, though he leaves the edges of exhaustion intact. He doesn’t want to bother.

He sees Ijekiel again in the afternoon.

It’s in the corridor leading to the northern library — quiet, lined with tall windows and creeping sunbeams. Ijekiel’s alone for once, scrolling through a stack of reports and murmuring notes under his breath.

Lucas watches him from a distance.

He notices everything.

The slight tremor in his hand when he adjusts the paper. The way his thumb keeps circling the inside of his palm — over and over, like a memory trying to resurface. And the glint of something small and silver tucked just inside the breast of his coat.

It’s not confirmation.

But it’s not nothing.

Lucas steps forward.

He doesn’t clear his throat or call his name, just lets his presence stretch forward like a shadow across the marble. When Ijekiel looks up, his reaction is telling.

Not surprised. Not annoyed. Just… watchful.

“Reading state expenditure breakdowns for pleasure?” Lucas asks, voice mild.

“Are you stalking me?” Ijekiel replies, not missing a beat.

“Maybe.”

That earns him a flicker of a smile. Brief. Reflexive. Then gone.

Lucas gestures to the papers. “Any good?”

“They’re budget summaries,” Ijekiel says. “So no.”

“Tragic.”

They stand in silence for a beat too long.

Lucas’s eyes drift to Ijekiel’s chest again, just for a second. That glint of silver.

The coin. His coin.

Lucas doesn’t reach for it. Doesn’t call attention to it. Instead, he says, very carefully, “You look tired.”

Ijekiel’s eyes flick to him. “So do you.”

Lucas shrugs. “Must be something in the water.”

“Or the dreams,” Ijekiel says without thinking.

The silence that follows is sudden. Sharp. Cracks like lightning across calm sky.

Ijekiel doesn’t correct himself.

He doesn’t blush or look away.

Lucas steps closer. Not close enough to touch. But enough.

“Strange thing to say,” he murmurs.

Ijekiel holds his gaze. “Isn’t it?”

Another silence. This one tighter. Louder.

And still, neither of them says what they’re thinking.

Lucas lets the moment pass like he always does. Because if he reaches for it too soon, he’s afraid he’ll ruin it. Or worse, he’ll find out it’s real.

So he steps back.

And smiles like a knife.

“Sweet dreams, Alpheus.”

Then he turns, and walks away.

He doesn’t go far.

He rounds the next corridor and keeps walking until he’s tucked behind one of the western wings, where the air is cooler and the stone quieter. Alone. Finally.

He presses a hand to his chest like he can still feel the echo of Ijekiel’s voice. “Or the dreams.”

He didn’t mean to say it. That was obvious. And yet, he hadn’t taken it back.

Lucas leans back against the wall, tilting his head up toward the high-vaulted ceiling. A long, shuddering exhale leaves him.

It’s not just longing anymore. Not just ache. It’s recognition.

He closes his eyes.

The coin. The pauses. The flickers. The look in Ijekiel’s eyes like he’s waiting for something neither of them will say.

And now this.

“Dreams.”

Lucas is a rational man. He’s lived too long, seen too much, to believe in coincidence. And yet— what other answer is there?

He wants to laugh. Or burn something. Or kiss him until the question breaks.

Instead, he breathes.

He’ll go to sleep tonight. And he’ll stop pretending.

The dream is already awake when he arrives.

It takes shape around him like memory wrapped in magic — soft moonlight, the scent of wildflowers, the hush of wind over ancient stone. Lucas doesn’t need to walk far. He finds Ijekiel standing at the edge of a low terrace, half-lit by stars, looking out over a garden that doesn't exist anywhere but here.

He's barefoot. Sleeves rolled to the elbows. Hair loose and faintly curled at the ends like he’s run his hands through it too many times. There’s something still about him, like the world is holding its breath.

Lucas approaches in silence. Stops just beside him. Close, but not touching.

Ijekiel doesn’t look surprised.

“You’re here,” he says.

Lucas nods. “You expected me?”

“I hoped.”

They don’t speak again for a long moment. The quiet stretches — not cold, not empty. Just full. Heavy with everything they haven’t said.

Lucas turns slightly, studies the line of Ijekiel’s profile. The softness in his mouth. The weariness under his eyes.

Then, quietly: “What would you do if I told you this was real?”

Ijekiel’s answer is almost immediate. “I’d say it feels too much like it not to be.”

Lucas’s breath stutters. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t honesty like that. Raw. Plain.

He lifts a hand slowly and brushes his knuckles against the inside of Ijekiel’s wrist. A test. A question.

Ijekiel doesn’t pull away. He turns his palm upward instead.

Lets him hold it.

Their fingers twine slowly, like they’ve done it a hundred times. Like they’ll never be allowed to do it again.

“If you’re not real,” Lucas whispers, “then my mind’s crueler than I thought.”

Ijekiel leans in. Not to kiss. Just to press their foreheads together, gentle as breath.

“Then let me be cruel with you,” he murmurs.

Lucas almost laughs. But it breaks in his throat. Because in that moment, this doesn’t feel like a lie. It doesn’t feel like fantasy.

It feels like the only place either of them can breathe.

They stay like that for a long time.

Foreheads touching. Fingers interlaced. Breathing each other in like they’re trying to memorize the rhythm. Like they’re afraid even this — this stillness, this silence — might slip away if they blink too hard.

Lucas is the first to move.

He shifts back only slightly, just enough to look at Ijekiel’s face again. To take him in. He studies the long line of his lashes, the faint flush of pink on his cheeks, the furrow in his brow that softens when Lucas brushes a thumb across it.

“You always look like you’re waiting for the dream to end,” Lucas says quietly.

Ijekiel’s smile is crooked. Sad. “That’s not true. Do you?”

“No,” Lucas says, and it surprises even him. “Not tonight.”

That earns him a look. Not a surprised one — more like… grateful. Tired.

“You always seem more real here than you do out there,” Ijekiel murmurs.

Lucas huffs a breath through his nose. “That’s because here, I get to touch you.”

And he does — he proves it, dragging his knuckles softly down the side of Ijekiel’s neck, trailing them to his collarbone. Ijekiel doesn’t flinch. His eyes flutter shut, just for a moment.

The gesture is tender. Lingering. Almost reverent.

The dream folds around them, slow and warm, like it knows they’re not ready for more. Like it’s waiting, too.

Lucas leans against the stone railing, still holding Ijekiel’s hand. Ijekiel leans with him. Their shoulders brush. Their thighs press together. Every point of contact is soft. Real.

“I don’t know what this is,” Ijekiel says after a while, his voice small. “But I don’t want it to stop.”

Lucas turns his head. He watches him for a long moment — watches the way his gaze flickers like he’s afraid of being seen.

And then, gently, Lucas replies, “Then we won’t let it.”

No one says it’s a promise. But it feels like one.

They stay like that until the stars dim and the edge of the dream begins to blur, like mist unraveling at the seams.

Lucas wakes to silence.

No dramatic startle. No gasp. Just the slow, reluctant return of the world beyond moonlight and skin.

His eyes open to the same ceiling he’s stared at for years — high-vaulted, too ornate, the color of bone left out too long in the sun. His body aches in quiet places. His chest, worst of all.

He doesn’t move for a while.

There’s a warmth in his palms that doesn’t belong to this world. A ghost of a shape — narrow wrist, steady heartbeat, a thumb brushing soft circles against his skin. And Ijekiel’s voice.

“I don’t want it to stop.”

It hadn’t been a plea. Not quite. But it had left a mark anyway.

Lucas exhales, sharp. Rises.

Goes about his morning routine with practiced ease — clean clothes, summoned tea, a breeze charm to take the weight out of the room. But there’s something brittle beneath it. A sliver of tension under his ribs he can’t shake loose.

Because something’s different now. Something’s tipping.

It’s not the intimacy, he’s used to that by now. Used to the way Ijekiel’s hands find him without hesitation in dreams, the way they touch like they’re memorizing each other. Used to the quiet that follows — not silence, but understanding.

No, what unsettles him now is the fact that Ijekiel had said it like he knew.

Not just the usual dream-logic softness. Not some half-imagined line conjured from Lucas’s wants. It had sounded like someone speaking through a seam in the veil. Someone aware.

It’s dangerous to think that way.

He knows that.

It’s too easy to fall into the idea that the Ijekiel in those dreams might be the real Ijekiel. That what they say, what they feel, might not be crafted from Lucas’s mind, but from something shared.

But then again, Lucas hasn’t had a dream this consistent since he was a boy. Not one that returned night after night, tethered to the same voice. The same gaze. The same impossible comfort.

And his Ijekiel feels too real. Too sharp around the edges. Too specific in the way he speaks, the way he waits, the way his fingers twitch when he doesn’t know what to say.

That’s not the kind of thing your imagination gets right. Not over and over.

He finishes his tea without tasting it.

Crosses the room and pulls open the balcony doors, letting the early air bite at his skin.

Ijekiel had said, “I don’t want it to stop.”

Lucas closes his eyes.

He finds him again by accident.

Or so he tells himself.

It’s mid-afternoon, sun carving long slanted lines across the stone corridors, dust motes caught like spells in the light. Lucas rounds a quiet corner and sees him, half-shadowed in the hall that leads to the west reading wing, leaning against a pillar, flipping through documents with that same tight focus that says he’s pretending not to be tired.

He doesn’t look up when Lucas stops a few paces away.

Not at first.

Lucas lingers, arms crossed. Voice casual. “You're not going to find the meaning of life in a grain tariff report.”

Ijekiel startles. Just slightly. Then, without looking, “Not with that attitude.”

Lucas smirks. “So you’re an optimist now.”

Ijekiel turns to him then, eyes tired but dry with amusement. “Only during tax season.”

A beat of silence.

Lucas looks at him properly, really looks. The way the light hits his cheekbone, the looseness of his cravat, the shadow under his eyes that mirrors the one Lucas has refused to magic away. Something about it aches in his chest.

So he says, lightly, “Do I seem different to you?”

Ijekiel blinks. “What?”

“In general,” Lucas says, pretending not to care. “I’ve heard I’m hard to get to know.”

Ijekiel raises an eyebrow. “From who?”

Lucas shrugs. “Everyone. No one. A very talkative houseplant.”

A ghost of a laugh escapes Ijekiel’s lips. “I suppose you can be… guarded.”

Lucas nods slowly. Then tilts his head. “But what if I wasn’t?”

Ijekiel hesitates. “You… mean now?”

Lucas gestures vaguely between them. “Consider this a rare moment of vulnerability. Don’t waste it.”

The silence that follows is thin and strange. Not cold. Just tentative. Like the air between them is testing how much truth it can carry before it cracks.

Ijekiel turns fully to him now. His voice is quieter when he says, “You don’t seem as guarded right now.”

Lucas doesn’t smile, but his eyes soften. “Maybe I don’t want to be. Not with you.”

That catches Ijekiel off-guard. Lucas sees it, the blink, the small inhale, the way his fingers pause at the edge of the page like they forgot their next step.

“You’re different too, you know,” Lucas says, as if it’s nothing. “When you’re not reciting budget projections like they’re gospel.”

That earns him a lopsided smile. Tired, but real. “You mean when I’m not working myself into a grave?”

“Something like that.”

Another pause. Then Ijekiel, more tentative this time, asks, “Why are you being like this?”

Lucas leans a shoulder against the wall beside him. “Like what?”

“…Nice.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m nice?”

“...Relatively.”

“I suppose I could stop,” Lucas says. “Would that make you feel safer?”

“No,” Ijekiel says. “Just… surprised.”

Lucas breathes in deep through his nose and looks at the light stretching between them on the floor. Then, a little quieter:

“You said I’m hard to know. So I thought maybe you should know me.”

Ijekiel’s eyes widen slightly.

He doesn’t answer.

But he doesn’t look away either.

And for a few seconds, they just stand there in the hush of something too quiet to name. The world doesn’t shift. The air doesn’t buzz. No one kisses anyone. But Lucas feels something in his chest pull, tight and aching and almost tender.

“You’ll get bored of me if I get too charming,” Lucas adds, because he needs to say something.

Ijekiel exhales a laugh. “I think the danger of that is… low.”

Lucas nods once. “Good.”

He watches the flicker of expression on Ijekiel’s face, the shift between confusion and something warmer. And he stays. Because this feels like something worth staying for.

“You said I’m hard to know,” he murmurs again, quieter this time. “So maybe you should ask.”

Ijekiel’s eyes flick to him, uncertain. “Ask what?”

“Anything.”

Lucas shrugs, leaning against the wall again, just close enough that their arms might brush if they both dared to move.

“People are always guessing what I mean. Might as well give someone the chance to get it right.”

Ijekiel frowns slightly, as if weighing the offer. “This isn’t some elaborate setup for a joke, is it?”

Lucas smirks. “If it were, I’d make you walk into it harder.”

Ijekiel huffs, and that’s enough to loosen something. He shifts, turns his body toward Lucas more fully, the stack of papers now a forgotten weight under his arm.

“All right,” he says, careful. “What’s your favorite time of day?”

Lucas lifts an eyebrow. “That’s the best you could come up with?”

“You said anything.”

“Fair,” Lucas concedes. Then: “Dawn.”

Ijekiel blinks. “Seriously?”

Lucas nods. “It’s quiet. Everyone else is still asleep. There’s power in stillness.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I would’ve guessed midnight.”

Lucas tilts his head. “You’re thinking of someone else.”

Ijekiel’s lips twitch. “Maybe.”

Another pause. Softer now. Lucas can feel it shifting — subtle, but there. Less tension. More space for something gentle.

He shifts just slightly closer. “What about you?”

Ijekiel considers. “Twilight, I think. The hour between.”

Lucas hums. “How poetic of you.”

“I have layers.”

Lucas glances at him sidelong. “That’s what you said in a—”

He cuts himself off too fast.

Ijekiel turns. “In a what?”

Lucas covers smoothly. “—a poem. I read it. You’d like it.”

It’s a terrible save, and Ijekiel clearly doesn’t buy it. But he lets it slide. Maybe out of politeness. Maybe because he doesn’t want to tug the thread too hard.

Lucas clears his throat. “You’re not what I expected.”

Ijekiel blinks. “What did you expect?”

“A stuffed-shirt noble with no sense of humor.”

“I’m wounded.”

“You’ll live,” Lucas replies. “Probably. Unless the grain tariffs bore you to death first.”

Ijekiel laughs again, softer this time. “That’s what you think. But numbers have a particular talent for murder.”

Lucas hums. “I’ve always suspected.”

There’s a pause. Another one of those soft silences that feels less like absence and more like space being made. Lucas glances over, taking in the curve of Ijekiel’s smile, the tilt of his head as he rests back against the pillar. And then — before he can talk himself out of it — he says:

“You should see me at dawn sometime.”

Ijekiel turns his head slowly. “Should I?”

Lucas shrugs, but it’s not flippant. “If you really want to know me. That’s when I’m the most honest. Or the most tired. The difference is thin.”

He doesn’t know why he says it. Why he offers something so quiet, so real. Maybe it’s Ijekiel’s voice. Maybe it’s the way he’s listening, like the answer matters.

Ijekiel doesn’t answer right away. He just watches him.

And then, gently; “I think I’d like that.”

Lucas’s heart trips over itself.

He schools his expression. Shrugs again. “Bring tea. I’m unbearable without caffeine.”

“I’ll bring strong tea,” Ijekiel says. “And stronger sarcasm.”

A pause.

Then: “You’re still not easy to read, you know.”

Lucas turns his head, eyes catching the light just so. “Good. If I were easy, you’d have figured me out years ago.”

“I’m trying,” Ijekiel says quietly.

That—

Lucas doesn’t have a retort for that.

His gaze softens. And for one dangerous second, he thinks about reaching out. Just brushing their fingers together. Just once. Just enough.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he steps back—just half a pace, just enough to breathe again. “Don’t stop, then.”

Ijekiel’s brows knit. “Stop what?”

“Trying.”

He doesn’t wait for the answer. Doesn’t need to.

Because when he glances back over his shoulder as he walks away, Ijekiel is still watching him.

And this time, he lets him.

The dream is quiet again.

Cool marble beneath their feet. Starlight caught in the folds of shadow. The air carries the soft scent of something green — wild mint, crushed basil, fresh rain on stone.

Lucas finds himself in the same terrace garden, edged by ivy-draped columns and a sky too dark to be real. There’s a bench this time, and Ijekiel is already sitting on it, arms resting loosely on his knees, head tilted back toward the stars.

He doesn’t turn as Lucas approaches. Just says, without looking, “You came.”

Lucas answers, “You sound surprised.”

“I’m not.” Ijekiel exhales. “Just… glad.”

Lucas sits beside him, close but not quite touching. Their shoulders hover in the space where gravity nearly wins.

For a moment, neither speaks.

And then, softly — like it’s something he’s not supposed to say but has held in too long — Ijekiel murmurs, “I saw him again today.”

Lucas stills. “Who?”

“You.” A beat. “The real you.”

He doesn’t mean me, Lucas thinks. Not me me . Not the version of me sitting beside him right now.

But it still lands like a blade between his ribs.

Ijekiel’s voice is quiet. Thoughtful. “He was… warmer than usual. Not soft, exactly. But softer. A little teasing. A little tired. It caught me off guard.”

Lucas swallows. “Did you like it?”

“I think so.” Ijekiel smiles faintly. “I didn’t think he knew how to be gentle.”

Lucas shifts, something too sharp in his chest. “He does. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”

“I believe that,” Ijekiel says. “I just wish he believed it too.”

Lucas doesn’t know what to say to that. He wants to say he’s trying. He wants to say he wants you to see him. He wants to say you’re closer than you think.

But he can’t.

So he says, “You talk about him like he’s a different person.”

“Sometimes it feels that way.” Ijekiel leans back on his palms, eyes half-lidded beneath the moonlight. “He looks at me, and I can’t tell if he’s seeing me, or just trying to figure me out.”

Lucas’s voice comes out low. “He sees you.”

Ijekiel turns his head slowly. “Do you?”

Lucas looks at him. At the shadows beneath his eyes. The wind-tousled hair. The way his mouth tilts when he’s fighting a smile. The quiet strength of him. The ache that’s always just beneath the surface.

“Yes,” he says. “I do.”

Ijekiel looks down. His voice turns quiet again. “You feel more real than he does sometimes.”

Lucas’s throat tightens. “Maybe you know him better than you think.”

“I want to,” Ijekiel whispers.

Lucas almost reaches for him.

Almost.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he murmurs, “He’s trying.”

And that earns him the smallest, softest smile.

“I know,” Ijekiel says.

They sit in silence again, shoulder to shoulder, not touching but close enough to want.

And in the stillness, Lucas thinks:

You’re getting to know me after all.

Lucas looks for Ijekiel that morning. Consciously.

And when he hears his voice threading through the quiet of the palace library, his feet move before he thinks to stop them.

He rounds the corner just in time to see Ijekiel speaking with a young noblewoman. She’s smiling. Laughing at something he said. Too bright. Too close.

Lucas doesn’t recognize the curl in his chest at first. It’s not anger. Not quite.

But when she touches Ijekiel’s arm — light, familiar — something cold coils beneath his ribs.

Ijekiel catches sight of him then. His smile falters, eyes flicking over like a reflex. Not startled. Not caught. Just aware.

Their gazes lock.

Lucas raises a brow, saunters forward without a word, and inserts himself into the space like he belongs there.

“Discussing tax reform?” he drawls. “Or are the archives doubling as a matchmaking agency now?”

The woman startles, chuckles awkwardly. Ijekiel’s mouth tugs into a line — half frown, half amusement.

“She was asking about trade routes,” he says.

Lucas hums, glancing at the documents in her hands without really seeing them. “Charming subject.”

There’s an awkward pause. The woman murmurs an excuse and leaves, steps echoing down the hall.

Lucas doesn’t watch her go.

Ijekiel crosses his arms. “That was unnecessary.”

Lucas shrugs. “She wasn’t saying anything worth listening to.”

“Neither are you, half the time.”

Lucas grins. “And yet you keep listening.”

A long beat.

Then, quieter: “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“That thing where you act like you’re just here to tease me,” Ijekiel says. “But your eyes say something else.”

Lucas stills.

That lands too close.

So he shifts. Lightens his tone. “I like teasing you.”

“You also keep… showing up.”

Lucas tilts his head. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” Ijekiel says quickly. Too quickly. “Just… surprises me.”

Lucas watches him for a moment.

Then, softer, “You said I’m different.”

Ijekiel’s expression flickers. “I did.”

“Still think that?”

He hesitates. “You’re… more careful. Not cold. But like there’s always a part of you that’s holding back.”

Lucas leans a shoulder against the nearest shelf, folding his arms. “Maybe I am. But maybe I’m trying not to.”

The look Ijekiel gives him then is quiet. Careful. But not dismissive. Not distant. Just… uncertain.

Hopeful, maybe.

Lucas lowers his voice. “What if I said I wanted you to know me?”

Ijekiel doesn’t blink. “I’d ask why.”

Lucas looks away. “Because maybe there’s a part of me that wants to be seen.”

It’s too much. He knows it the second it leaves his mouth. But Ijekiel doesn’t mock him for it. Doesn’t recoil.

He just says, gently, “Then let me.”

Lucas meets his gaze again.

“I’m trying,” he says, softer than he means to.

And for once, he doesn’t follow it with a joke.

They stand in the quiet that follows. No flirting. No baiting. Just space, and the growing weight of something tender between them.

Lucas breaks it first. Not with distance but with one last glance, one last truth he lets slip through his teeth before it can kill him to hold it:

“She was looking at you like she knew what she wanted,” he says, nodding toward the noblewoman’s retreating back. “Do you like that?”

Ijekiel frowns, surprised. “I don’t even know her name.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“I don’t like people who want something from me,” Ijekiel says. Then, softer: “I like when someone sees me.”

Lucas swallows.

“I see you,” he says.

It feels like a thread snapping in his chest when he says it. Like something he can’t take back.

But Ijekiel doesn’t look away. There's something vulnerable in his eyes. Unsure. But still, there's joy.

He nods.

“I know,” he says.

Later that day, he sees Ijekiel again.

Not by design, of course. Lucas doesn’t plan these encounters. Not consciously. But the palace is a web of moments waiting to be tangled in, and lately, Ijekiel seems to thread through all of them.

This time, it’s in the long corridor outside the imperial conservatory — sunlight dappling through glass, the scent of citrus and roses blooming in the air. A familiar noblewoman walks away in a rustle of silk and pleasantries, and Ijekiel remains behind, flipping through the schedule she’d handed him. He looks distracted. Thoughtful. One foot tapping absently against the floor as he reads.

Lucas doesn't call his name. Just walks up beside him and stops, close enough to be felt.

“Tell me she wasn’t proposing another flower-naming ceremony.”

Ijekiel glances over. “She was, actually. For her dog.”

Lucas blinks. “Her dog.”

“She claims he was named after a forgotten hero of the Empire.”

Lucas hums. “A national tragedy.”

Ijekiel’s lips twitch. “You’re in a good mood today.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “Am I?”

“I mean,” Ijekiel says, gaze returning to the paper, “you haven’t insulted my handwriting or called me tragically overworked. I’m taking it as a win.”

Lucas leans slightly closer, as if inspecting the document. “It is tragically neat, if that counts.”

A soft huff of laughter. It blooms between them, effortless.

Ijekiel turns the page, his shoulder brushing Lucas’s in the motion. He doesn’t pull away.

“You’re less sharp lately,” he says after a beat. “In a good way.”

Lucas arches a brow. “Careful. Any more compliments and I’ll start thinking you like me.”

A pause. Then Ijekiel looks up, eyes unreadable.

“Maybe I do.”

Lucas stills.

It’s a joke. It has to be a joke. But there’s something in Ijekiel’s voice — soft, even, edged with a careful kind of honesty — that hits like a pin through paper. Too light to bleed. But impossible to ignore.

“I’ll try not to let it go to my head,” Lucas murmurs, gaze dropping to the document again to buy himself a second of breath.

“You’re terrible at deflection,” Ijekiel says, quiet.

Lucas glances up. “And you’re terrible at pretending you don’t notice.”

Their eyes lock. Just for a moment. Not long enough for anyone else to care. But too long for Lucas’s heartbeat to stay steady.

He clears his throat and shifts his weight like it means something. “So. Did the dog-hero get a date for his ceremony?”

“End of next week,” Ijekiel replies. “You’ll be thrilled to know you’re on the invitation list.”

Lucas groans. “I’ll set myself on fire.”

“You say that every time.”

“One day I might mean it.”

Ijekiel smiles. “You never do.”

It’s too familiar. Too easy. The kind of banter that belongs to people who know each other’s edges. People who’ve touched, and looked, and ached too much in dreams they still pretend aren’t real.

“I like when you’re like this,” Ijekiel says suddenly.

Lucas blinks. “Like what?”

“Less guarded. Still insufferable, obviously, but…” He trails off, expression turning thoughtful. “More human.”

Lucas smirks. “You’re calling me inhuman now?”

“No. Just unusually good at pretending you don’t feel anything.”

Lucas tilts his head, eyes narrowing in a mock glare. “And you’re unusually good at pretending you don’t notice.”

Ijekiel laughs softly, and the sound is warm — like morning sun catching on frost, like something Lucas wants to memorize even though he shouldn’t.

“Alright,” Lucas says, shifting just slightly closer, lowering his voice, “if you’re so curious about my very human self, ask something.”

Ijekiel glances at him, eyebrow raised. “Again?”

“You said I’m hard to know,” Lucas says, tone light. 

Ijekiel hums, eyes flicking to the sunlight pooling across the tile. “Fine. Favorite season?”

“Winter,” Lucas answers without hesitation. “Everyone’s quiet. Even the magic settles.”

Ijekiel hums. “You’d like stillness.”

Lucas glances at him. “You?”

“Spring,” Ijekiel replies. “Everything’s waking up. There’s promise in the air.”

Lucas doesn’t respond right away.

He just looks at him.

Something about that answer does something strange to his chest.

“Promise,” he repeats, voice softer. “You’re more of an idealist than you let on.”

Ijekiel shrugs, a little self-conscious. “You asked.”

“Mm.” Lucas looks down. Then, almost absently: “Favorite color?”

“That’s your next question?”

“Don’t judge me.”

Ijekiel shakes his head, smiling. “Pale blue. Like the sky before it storms.”

Lucas watches him for a long beat. “I would’ve guessed silver.”

“You’re projecting.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one who dreams of impossible gardens.”

Ijekiel freezes, just slightly.

Lucas doesn’t take it back. Doesn’t soften the blow.

And maybe it wasn’t a blow at all, because after a moment, Ijekiel just says, quiet, “How do you know that?”

Lucas says nothing.

But the silence is answer enough.

They fall quiet for a beat. The world narrows around them — just light and shadow, soft footfalls echoing down distant corridors, the low murmur of courtly noise behind closed doors.

“Okay,” Ijekiel says, trying to nudge the conversation back. “Your turn.”

Lucas lifts an eyebrow. “You’re giving me another question?”

“No. I’m asking one.”

Lucas nods once. “Go on.”

“What did you want to be? Before all of this.”

Lucas blinks. “Before what?”

“The court. The Empire. The responsibilities.”

Lucas looks at him, startled. No one ever asks him that.

Not even in dreams.

“Honestly?” he says after a moment.

Ijekiel just nods.

Lucas exhales, long and slow. “A cartographer.”

That earns a blink. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “When I was a kid, I liked drawing lines across paper. Making sense of places I’d never seen. It felt like control.”

Ijekiel smiles softly. “You don’t strike me as someone who likes to color inside the lines.”

Lucas shrugs. “I don’t. But I wanted to know where they were.”

A beat.

“That’s… oddly poetic,” Ijekiel says.

“I’m full of surprises.”

“I know,” Ijekiel murmurs, so low it almost doesn’t reach him. “I’m starting to realize that.”

They fall into silence again. But it’s not sharp or awkward. It’s soft, slow, like the hush between two breaths.

Lucas lets it sit.

Lets it settle.

And for the first time in too long, he thinks: maybe he could let someone know him like this. Little by little. Carefully. Without burning for it.

Then — quietly, almost like it doesn’t matter — he says, “Ask me something else.”

And Ijekiel does.

The dream comes gently this time.

No plunge, no riptide. Just the slow warmth of color bleeding into sky. The hush of pre-dawn air, cool against his skin.

Lucas exhales before he even opens his eyes.

There’s the balcony again, familiar now in the way a memory becomes muscle-deep. The garden below glows faintly, kissed by the hint of sunrise. Blues and violets giving way to a bloom of gold along the horizon. Light spills across pale stone and climbs the columns like a slow-breathing thing.

And then—

He turns, and Ijekiel is there.

Leaning against the balustrade, one arm draped casually along the edge, the other cradling a steaming cup of something floral and faintly sweet. He’s in a loose silk shirt — ivory, open at the collar, catching the dawn in soft glints. His hair is tousled like he’s just woken up, or never slept at all. Barefoot.

He doesn’t speak right away.

Just lifts the cup to his lips, eyes half-lidded, watching the sky shift color.

Lucas walks forward, hands tucked into his pockets. Slow. Steady. Like a man approaching something sacred.

“You look like you stepped out of a very expensive painting,” he says. Just like he always does.

Ijekiel huffs, low and dry. “You’re the one who makes the dream.”

“Mm. That’s debatable.”

Lucas leans against the railing beside him. Not touching. But close enough to feel the heat of his shoulder. He lets his gaze drift over Ijekiel’s face — calm, but marked by the same tiredness Lucas saw earlier that day. The one he couldn’t name aloud.

Ijekiel doesn’t look at him. Just lifts the cup to his lips again, slow and careful. But something shifts in the quiet between them. A ripple, almost imperceptible.

Lucas’s gaze drifts out toward the dream-garden, to the wisteria arch bathed in gold.

“The wisteria in the western wing always blooms too early,” he says. Lightly. Thoughtlessly. Like he’s talking to himself. “Even when it shouldn’t. I used to think it was because the sun hit it first.”

Ijekiel turns toward him then, frowning faintly. “How would you know that?”

Lucas doesn’t answer right away. His expression stays cool and unreadable, but his fingers curl slightly against the railing.

“I notice things.” His tone is soft, edged with something close to evasive.

A beat passes.

“That’s… specific,” Ijekiel says, quieter now. Careful. Not suspicious, exactly. But wondering. Like something in him is trying to connect dots he doesn’t want to admit are there.

Lucas glances at him, sidelong. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

Ijekiel’s mouth quirks. “I’m not. Just trying to keep up.”

Lucas hums, and the corner of his lip lifts. “Good.” His gaze lingers on Ijekiel a second too long. “I’d hate to outpace you in your own dream.”

And just like that, the tension loosens. Shifts. Slides back into something familiar, something warm.

They sit in silence for a moment. The dream-breeze curls through the air, rustling phantom leaves. Everything smells faintly of jasmine.

Ijekiel speaks first. Quiet. “You were different today too.”

Lucas hums. “You noticed.”

“I always notice. You were softer then, again,” Ijekiel says. Then adds, with a hint of amusement, “Relatively.”

Lucas glances at him sidelong. “And here I thought I was always charming.”

Ijekiel snorts. “That’s not the word I’d use.”

Lucas smiles faintly. Then lets the quiet return. Lets it breathe.

“I wanted to say more,” he says eventually, voice low. “In the corridor.”

“I know.”

“But—”

“I didn’t want you to,” Ijekiel interrupts gently.

Lucas blinks. “No?”

“Not there. Not like that.” He sips his drink again, then lowers it. “I’m already holding too many things I don’t understand. I didn’t want your honesty to be one of them.”

Lucas doesn’t reply immediately. Just watches the sky shift further — roses now, blush pinks streaking across indigo.

“You asked if I liked you,” Ijekiel says after a long beat. “You were joking. I wasn’t.”

Lucas turns his head. Just slightly. “I know.”

“And it’s complicated.”

“I know that too.”

“I don’t want to fall in love with a version of you that only exists in my head.”

Lucas’s throat tightens. “Who says I’m not real?”

Ijekiel looks at him then.

There’s no banter in his gaze now. No smile. Just something open. Raw. Beautiful.

“I’m trying not to hope,” he says. “I keep thinking I’m being delusional. But you said something, earlier. Said I was the one who dreams of impossible gardens. And I don’t know what kind of gardens you were talking about— unless you meant,” He gestures his hand to the garden below, “This. In this place. In the dreams.”

Lucas freezes.

Not visibly. Not in any way Ijekiel would notice. But inside, there’s a sudden, impossible stillness. Like something delicate and dangerous has just been set on the table between them, and neither of them dares breathe wrong in case it shatters.

“I did say that,” Lucas murmurs.

His voice is calm. Careful. But something sparks behind his ribs.

Ijekiel doesn’t look at him this time. His gaze is fixed on the garden, on the dew-slick petals of dream-flowers that can’t exist anywhere else. The vines climbing in impossible shapes. The wildness beneath the order. A place stitched together from imagination and memory.

“And how would you know that?” Ijekiel asks, quiet. “That I dream of places like this?”

Lucas says nothing.

He thinks of all the nights Ijekiel stood in those gardens before he arrived. Alone. Watching the sky. Waiting for someone he didn’t know was real.

He thinks of jasmine. Of wisteria. Of hands that tremble before they reach for his.

And still, he says nothing.

Because it’s too soon. Because Ijekiel isn’t asking him. Not really. He’s asking the dream. The figment. The imagined man he keeps returning to because he doesn’t know the truth.

Not yet.

Lucas turns his face to the horizon. The light touches his cheekbone. Warms his eyelids. He exhales, soft and slow.

“I must’ve guessed,” he says.

And even that lie is too close to the truth.

Ijekiel nods. But he doesn’t look convinced.

A silence blooms between them. Heavy with not-quite-knowing.

Lucas speaks again, just above a whisper. “If this is your dream, and I’m just a shape in it… what would you want me to say?”

Ijekiel’s breath catches.

It’s not a trick. Not a dare. Just… curiosity. A quiet, aching thing.

Ijekiel’s voice is steadier than Lucas expects when he replies. “I’d want you to say that you care.”

Lucas swallows. The answer is simple. Devastating.

He glances down at his hands. “What if I do?”

Another silence. More fragile this time. But not broken.

“You shouldn’t,” Ijekiel says, after a moment. Not unkindly. “Dreams aren’t meant to keep us.”

Lucas turns to him, and their eyes meet again.

“I’m not trying to be kept,” he says. “I’m just trying to stay.”

Ijekiel closes his eyes for a long moment, like the words hurt.

But when he opens them again, he doesn’t look away.

The light shifts. A breeze passes. The scent of jasmine rises again, stronger this time, as if the dream itself is reacting and softening around them. Leaning in.

Ijekiel sets his cup down on the railing with a faint clink. Then — slowly, almost absently — he shifts closer. Not touching. Just… leaning. Enough for their arms to brush. For their knees to meet.

He doesn’t say anything else.

Neither does Lucas.

But the silence between them changes shape. Turns softer. More willing.

And Lucas thinks:

He’s reaching. Even if he doesn’t know who he’s reaching for yet.

And for now — just for this breath, this sliver of dawn — it’s enough.

He sees Ijekiel again in the corridor outside the eastern archives.

The air smells faintly of parchment and polish, sunlight filtering through latticed glass, casting golden lines across the stone. Ijekiel’s alone this time, flipping through a slim stack of reports with his usual quiet focus. He looks tired, but functional. The way someone does when they’ve learned to carry exhaustion like a second skin.

Lucas slows when he sees him. Pauses just outside the threshold.

He could keep walking. Could turn around, disappear, leave Ijekiel to his peace.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he crosses the threshold and lets his steps be heard.

Ijekiel glances up at the sound. His eyes meet Lucas’s — steady, neutral, a flicker of something unreadable there, too fast to catch.

“Lucas,” he says, tone measured but not cold.

Lucas nods. “Didn’t realize you were back here.”

“I could say the same.”

Lucas leans casually against the stone wall beside him, arms crossed. “Did you chase off that poor intern again with your ruthless obsession for accuracy?”

Ijekiel sighs. “He labeled the continent’s western coastline as ‘miscellaneous landmass.’”

Lucas whistles. “Tragic.”

A small smile twitches at Ijekiel’s mouth. “I spared him this time.”

“How merciful.”

The silence that follows isn’t awkward. Just… tentative. Like two people hovering near something too soft to speak aloud.

Lucas shifts slightly, gaze sliding sideways. “You looked tired earlier. At the meeting.”

Ijekiel doesn’t deny it. Just says, “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“Anything worth sharing?”

A pause.

Then, softer, “Not unless you have the secret to untangling eight noble family feuds before the fiscal deadline.”

Lucas considers. “Set the palace on fire?”

Another ghost of a smile. “Tempting.”

The silence stretches again.

Lucas studies the way Ijekiel’s hand curls around the edge of the page. Not trembling. Just precise. Like always. But his thumb traces slow circles near the corner. Over and over. Thoughtlessly.

And it’s that — that makes Lucas’s chest tighten.

Because he’s seen it before.

Not just here. Not just now.

In another place.

Where the sky bruised blue before dawn. Where their voices had gone soft and uncertain. Where Ijekiel said I’m trying not to hope.

Lucas looks away. His throat feels tight.

He says, lightly, “You ever get the feeling a conversation’s trying to happen, but neither person knows where to start?”

Ijekiel looks at him. Quiet. Cautious. “More often than I’d like.”

Lucas meets his gaze.

And he doesn’t say, You do that with your hand in the dreams, too. He doesn’t say, I know what your voice sounds like just before sunrise.

Instead, he says, “We should walk.”

Ijekiel tilts his head. “Now?”

Lucas shrugs. “Unless you have more interns to terrorize.”

That earns a soft huff. And then, Ijekiel nods.

“Alright.”

And Lucas, strangely, finds himself exhaling something he hadn’t realized he was holding.

They walk slowly.

No destination. No rush. Just the long marble corridor that loops around the outer courtyard, sunlight dappled through tall windows, footsteps quiet against polished stone.

Lucas doesn’t speak first. He lets the silence stretch. It wasn't uncomfortable exactly, just present.

It’s Ijekiel who eventually breaks it. “You usually disappear after two sentences, back then.”

Lucas quirks a brow. “Am I being uncharacteristically sociable?”

“Suspiciously.”

Lucas hums. “Maybe I’m trying to reform my image.”

Ijekiel glances at him sidelong. “That would require caring what people think.”

“I never said it was a successful reformation.”

A breath of a laugh. It’s quiet, but real. Lucas hears it, tucks it somewhere in the hollow of his ribs like a keepsake.

They pass a row of sunlit alcoves. The air smells like warmed citrus and old marble.

“Do you always work this hard?” Lucas asks.

Ijekiel lifts a shoulder. “Better than letting everything fall apart.”

Lucas scoffs. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.”

Ijekiel glances at him again. “Is that your professional opinion?”

“As a chronic overachiever who doesn’t know how to rest?” Lucas raises an eyebrow. “Yes.”

Something flickers in Ijekiel’s expression. A question, maybe. Or recognition.

“I guess you would know,” he says quietly. “About pretending not to be tired.”

Lucas doesn’t answer that. Doesn’t need to.

They walk a little further before Ijekiel speaks again.

“You don’t have to stay.”

Lucas blinks. “What?”

Ijekiel keeps his gaze forward. “You don’t owe me a conversation.”

Lucas slows, just enough to glance over. “Is that your way of saying you don’t want one?”

“ No ,” Ijekiel says — too quickly, too honest.

Lucas stops walking.

So does Ijekiel.

They face each other now. Not quite close, not quite distant. The space between them is narrow enough for heat to pass through it, for breath to be felt.

Lucas tilts his head. “Then why say it?”

Ijekiel looks down for a moment, then back up. “Because I don’t know what this is.”

Lucas’s throat tightens. “Neither do I.”

Another pause.

And then, very softly — “But I don’t want it to stop.”

Ijekiel’s eyes widen just slightly.

Lucas lets the moment hang. Doesn’t take it back.

“I mean,” he says, a touch drier, “if you do want it to stop, I can go back to ignoring you entirely. I’ve had years of practice.”

That gets a real laugh. Warm. Low. It cracks something open.

“You’re not as hard to talk to as I thought you’d be,” Ijekiel says, voice quieter again.

Lucas lifts an eyebrow. “So I’ve been told.”

Ijekiel hesitates.

Then, gently: “I think I’m starting to like this version of you.”

Lucas doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t smile.

He just looks at him.

“Then I’ll try to keep showing up.”

They don’t speak again for a long time. Just keep walking — side by side, steps matching, silence curling around them like soft light.

And if their hands brush once — accidental, fleeting, nothing either of them acknowledges aloud — neither pulls away.

No wind tonight. No shifting skies or dripping moonlight. Just the quiet of a dream that feels like it’s trying not to wake them. Lucas arrives on the familiar balcony with the sky still streaked in pearl gray, as though the world itself is holding its breath.

Ijekiel is already there.

Not leaning against the railing this time. Just standing in the center of the balcony, sleeves rolled, hair messily tucked behind one ear, brows faintly drawn like he’s been thinking too hard about something he won’t say.

He turns at the sound of footsteps.

His eyes soften the moment they find Lucas.

“Hey,” he says. Just that. Simple. Warm. Like it means more than it should.

Lucas doesn’t speak at first. He just walks toward him with slow, measured steps until they’re close enough that Ijekiel’s presence wraps around him like scent, like temperature. Like gravity.

There’s a cup of tea on the ledge, cooling. Ijekiel’s hand brushes against Lucas’s arm as he reaches to steady it, fingers lingering a second longer than necessary.

He doesn’t pull back.

Lucas’s breath hitches.

They don’t talk much. Not at first. The silence tonight isn’t awkward. It’s gentle. Mutual. Like both of them are afraid to touch it too loudly in case it shatters.

But then, fingers again. Ijekiel’s.

Lifting to fix the edge of Lucas’s collar where it’s gone a little askew. A small thing. Delicate. His knuckles graze Lucas’s throat.

Lucas goes still.

He doesn’t mean to, but he leans in. Just barely. A tilt, an inhale toward the comfort, the familiarity, the ache of being wanted this quietly.

Ijekiel notices. He always does.

But he doesn’t say anything. Just smooths the collar down and lets his hand drop slowly away, eyes never leaving Lucas’s.

It would be so easy, Lucas thinks.

So easy to say it.

To confess what he’s known in his gut for days now. That this isn’t just a dream. That this version of Ijekiel — the one who touches him like he’s something worth holding, who watches him like the sky might fall if he looks away — isn’t imaginary.

But he doesn’t.

Because if he says it, it changes everything.

And he’s not ready. Not yet.

Because what if Ijekiel doesn’t believe him?

What if he does?

What if the dream stops?

What if he loses him, before he ever really had him?

Lucas shifts back, just a fraction. His shoulder no longer brushing Ijekiel’s. His hands stay at his sides.

He lets the silence stay.

Because that’s easier than shattering it.

Because even now, even when he’s almost certain, deep down, that the dream is more than a dream — he’s still stalling.

Because it’s safer to live inside the wanting than risk what comes after.

Because Ijekiel doesn’t know yet. Not really. And Lucas—

Lucas wants him to figure it out first.

He wants him to say it first.

Because if Lucas does, he’s not sure he’ll survive what follows.

The silence stretches. Not cold, just heavy. Soft at the edges, like wool soaked in moonlight.

Lucas shifts his weight against the railing, eyes trailing over Ijekiel’s profile. He thinks he could map this version of him by memory now: the slope of his neck, the dip between his brows when he’s thinking too hard, the way his lower lip presses in when he’s trying not to say something.

Ijekiel exhales slowly. “You always look at me like that.”

Lucas arches a brow. “Like what?”

“Like I’m already halfway gone.”

Lucas doesn’t answer. His hands curl slightly around the stone ledge. It’s not true, and it is. He looks at him like that because part of him still expects to wake up any second. Still expects this to vanish.

Ijekiel shifts closer, just enough that their shoulders touch again. Just enough that the warmth returns.

“Do you ever think about what this would be like,” he says, voice quiet, “if we met like this in real life?”

Lucas swallows.

He hates how the question punches straight into the center of him. Softly. Cleanly. No blood, but the bruise is instant.

He lets out a dry breath. “If we did, you wouldn’t like me.”

“That’s not true.”

“You said it yourself. I’m different.”

Ijekiel looks at him then, fully. “You’re guarded. Not different.”

Lucas laughs under his breath. “Semantics.”

“You’re not impossible,” Ijekiel says. “You just act like no one should bother trying.”

Lucas turns toward him, something wry curving his mouth. “And yet here you are.”

Ijekiel’s expression shifts and softens, then sharpens. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Here I am.”

It happens gently.

Ijekiel reaches forward and takes Lucas’s hand — not with urgency, not with desperation. Just wraps his fingers around his and holds it between them.

Lucas doesn’t pull away.

He stares at their joined hands. The warmth. The shape. The quiet familiarity.

“This version of you,” Ijekiel says, “lets me see you.”

Lucas’s voice is rough when he asks, “And the other?”

Ijekiel considers. “I don’t know yet. But I want to.”

Lucas looks at him. 

And slowly, carefully, he lifts their joined hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of Ijekiel’s fingers. One breath. One brush of lips. No more.

Ijekiel closes his eyes.

And leans forward.

Their foreheads touch. It’s not a kiss. Not quite. But it’s more than an accident. It’s deliberate. Tender. The space between them folds in until even the air feels like it’s holding its breath.

Lucas lets his hand drift to the back of Ijekiel’s neck, fingers sliding into soft hair. He feels the way Ijekiel shivers. Hears the hitch of breath.

“I keep wondering what this is. I don’t know, I don’t understand,” Ijekiel whispers.

Lucas exhales, low. “Neither do I.”

“But I want to keep it.”

Lucas closes his eyes, leaning in just a little more. Their noses bump. Their mouths hover.

“Then hold onto it,” he says. “While it’s still ours.”

And for now — for just this breathless, breaking moment — they don’t need anything else.

The morning doesn’t surprise him anymore.

There’s no startled gasp, no frantic search for the fading edges of a dream. Lucas wakes slowly, steadily, like surfacing from a warm current he never wanted to leave.

He lies still in bed, the sheets tangled around his hips, the memory of Ijekiel’s hand still lingering on his. Not like a ghost. Not like a dream.

Like something real.

Because it is. He knows that now. He’s known it for a while.

There’s no logical theory left to shield him, no clever spellwork or halfhearted excuse. The dreams are shared. The feelings are real. And the ache in his chest every time Ijekiel looks at him with almost in his eyes, that’s real, too.

Lucas exhales through his nose and presses the heel of his hand to his forehead.

He should tell him.

He’s known it for days — weeks, maybe. That he should tell Ijekiel that it’s not just his imagination conjuring these nights between them. That it’s not just fantasy or longing or a cruel trick of magic. That he’s real. That they’re real.

But every time he gets close, something holds him back.

Not fear. Not exactly.

It’s that quiet thing between them. That not yet.

Because if he tells him, then... then there’s no turning away from what comes next.

He sighs.

Gets up.

Dresses without magic this time, letting the chill of the floor bite at his bare feet as he pulls on his shirt, slow and methodical. Every motion feels heavy with meaning, like preparing for a battle he hasn’t named yet.

Because today he’s going to see him again.

And he’ll stay longer. Speak more softly. Let himself be seen.

Because if he can’t say it yet, then he can at least make Ijekiel feel it.

He looks for him, again.

His steps drift toward the eastern wing, through the arched hall where ivy creeps over sunlit windows, past the familiar stretch of white marble and polished glass. His hand brushes the column at the turn without thinking, the way it always does in dreams.

And there he is.

Ijekiel stands by the window, head bowed slightly over an open book, strands of sunlight tangled in his hair. He’s reading something dense, by the furrow in his brow. His coat is slung carelessly over the windowsill beside him. He’s wearing his uniform; tight, so formal, so restrained. 

Lucas watches for a moment, then walks up beside him — close, but not too close.

“Stealing sunlight again?” he says, voice low and amused.

Ijekiel doesn’t startle. He looks up, calm, almost expecting him.

“You always show up when I do,” he murmurs.

Lucas tilts his head. “Maybe you’re just predictable.”

Ijekiel hums. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Lucas leans in a little, enough to brush his shoulder as he peers at the book. “Depends. What are we reading?”

Ijekiel’s hand lifts — his right, the one that always runs warm in dreams — and presses lightly against Lucas’s arm, nudging him out of his personal space without thinking. “Something you’d probably burn.”

Lucas doesn’t pull away.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Magical ethics,” Ijekiel replies dryly.

Lucas makes a show of wincing. “Ah. Yes. Dangerous territory.”

“Remind me again,” Ijekiel says, glancing sidelong, “how many times have you rewritten the academy curriculum?”

“Only twice,” Lucas answers. “But they were better off both times.”

Ijekiel laughs under his breath. And there it is again. The thing that has no name between them. The way they settle into each other’s rhythm too easily. The way Lucas shifts his weight against the stone, his arm brushing Ijekiel’s again. The way Ijekiel doesn’t step back.

Their elbows touch. Briefly.

Lucas doesn’t move. Neither does Ijekiel.

It feels… lived in.

Like muscle memory. Like they’ve stood like this before. Not in this hall, not with sunlight and uniforms and unspoken rules binding their mouths shut — but in the quiet of dreams, under moonlight, with no need for permission.

“Are you always this close with your political rivals?” Ijekiel asks, still not looking directly at him.

Lucas smirks. “Only the ones I sleep with.”

The silence that follows is sharp-edged.

But Ijekiel doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t call him out. He just lets the words sit there, like a glass half-full of something they both refuse to name.

After a breath, he says, voice low, “You should be more careful.”

Lucas turns his head, finally meeting his eyes.

“I’m tired of being careful,” he murmurs.

And Ijekiel doesn’t say anything. 

Just looks at him. Long. Quiet. His gaze slips from Lucas’s mouth back to his eyes, as if he’s caught himself staring. As if some part of him is waiting for Lucas to close the space between them, like he has before. Like he might again.

But Lucas doesn’t.

Instead, he leans a little more against the windowsill, and his sleeve brushes Ijekiel’s again. It’s not a kiss. Not a confession.

But it’s familiar.

Like they’re two pages of the same book, pressed close but not yet turned.

“I like you better when you’re not trying to be impressive,” Lucas says after a beat.

Ijekiel exhales a laugh. “That’s dangerous praise.”

“Then consider me dangerous.”

And for a second, just one heartbeat, they stand there with the sunlight caught between their hands, with the memory of skin and silence clinging to the air.

Neither of them names it.

But both of them know.

The dream begins in silence.

Not the vast, empty kind. But a silence that hums with closeness.

Lucas finds himself seated beneath the long shadows of twilight, on that now-familiar balcony, the horizon smeared in shades of lavender and honey. The garden below glows faintly, flickering like candlelight trapped in dew. It feels like the world is holding its breath.

And Ijekiel is there.

Not leaning. Not lounging. Just sitting beside him. Close. Their shoulders brush every so often, like gravity keeps tugging them together in small, accidental ways.

They don’t speak at first.

Lucas lets the quiet settle into his bones. Ijekiel is tracing something in the air with his fingertip idly, absentmindedly. A pattern that disappears as soon as it’s drawn.

Then he says, softly, “Your magic always tastes like lightning. Even here.”

Lucas tilts his head, wary. “You think dreams have taste?”

Ijekiel huffs. “Don’t mock me.”

Lucas’s mouth quirks, but he doesn’t argue.

Instead, he watches Ijekiel’s hand. The way his fingers curl when he’s thinking. The crease between his brows. The faint scar on the side of his knuckle from a fencing match three years ago — one Lucas hadn’t thought he noticed.

But he remembers it now.

Ijekiel shifts to face him slightly. The corner of his knee brushes Lucas’s. He doesn’t pull back.

“You said something the other day,” he murmurs. “In the corridor. About people guessing what you mean.”

Lucas’s throat tightens. “I remember.”

“It sounded like you.” Ijekiel’s voice drops. “Here.”

Lucas looks away. Toward the horizon. “Maybe that means I’m consistent.”

“No,” Ijekiel says. “It means you’re familiar.”

Lucas doesn’t breathe for a beat.

Ijekiel shifts again, drawing his legs up onto the bench beside them, curling closer. His fingers reach out and hesitate, but then settle lightly on Lucas’s wrist. Not holding. Just there. Anchoring.

“I used to think this was all me,” Ijekiel says. “My imagination.”

Lucas’s gaze flicks to him, sharp. But Ijekiel isn’t looking back. He’s watching their hands.

“But the way you speak,” he continues, quietly. “The things you remember. You said the palace wisteria always blooms too early in the western wing.”

Lucas blinks. Slowly. “It does.”

“But I didn’t know that,” Ijekiel whispers. “Not until I saw it myself, two days ago.”

Lucas’s heartbeat stumbles.

“You said it there first,” Ijekiel murmurs, voice barely air. “Before I ever noticed it. Before I even walked that wing this spring.”

Lucas doesn’t answer.

He can’t.

Ijekiel finally looks up, eyes searching his face.

“This isn’t just a dream, is it?”

Silence stretches between them. The kind that isn’t empty — but too full. Full of questions. Of confessions. Of everything neither of them has dared to say.

Lucas opens his mouth. Closes it.

And Ijekiel doesn’t press.

Instead, he leans forward and rests his forehead lightly against Lucas’s shoulder.

“I don’t need you to say it,” he says, voice barely audible. “Not yet.”

Lucas exhales shakily. He lets his hand fall to Ijekiel’s back, his palm splayed over silk and warmth and heartbeat.

And in that hush — where magic curls like breath between them, where their bodies learn each other again without words — he thinks:

Soon.

Not yet.

But soon.

The morning sunlight is muted.

Filtered through sheer curtains and softened by the quiet that only comes after a vivid dream. Lucas wakes slowly, blinking up at the ceiling, his body still humming with something he can’t name — something tender, lingering. He doesn’t allow himself to dwell in it too long.

He dresses without flourish.

By the time he’s gliding through the east wing corridors, the court is already stirring. Servants whisper. Officials pace. Lucas pays them no mind.

He finds Ijekiel in the inner courtyard. Sitting on a stone bench beneath one of the fruit trees, long fingers curled around a half-finished cup of tea. There’s a file balanced on one knee, a pen tucked behind one ear. His jacket is folded beside him, forgotten.

Lucas slows.

It feels like walking into one of their dreams. The light, the quiet, the scent of citrus in the air. The soft way Ijekiel’s mouth moves as he reads silently to himself.

And Lucas knows it’s real this time. The heat of the ground beneath his feet. The pulse in his wrist. The aching want that tightens behind his ribs.

Still, he approaches like he always does.

Casual. Smooth. Close.

“You’re making the bench look too comfortable,” he says, stepping into Ijekiel’s periphery.

Ijekiel looks up, surprised, but not startled. A flicker of something passes through his eyes. Something like recognition. Or maybe déjà vu.

“Maybe it is,” he says, shifting slightly to make room. “You’re welcome to sit, if you promise not to mock my posture.”

Lucas hums as he settles beside him, one leg crossed neatly over the other. Their knees almost touch.

“I’d never mock your posture. Just your personality.”

“That’s generous.”

They lapse into silence for a moment. It’s not awkward. Just… suspended. Like a breath that hasn’t yet decided whether to stay in the lungs or leave.

Lucas leans back against the bench. Lets his elbow brush Ijekiel’s arm, deliberate and natural in the same breath.

He doesn’t think twice about it.

He doesn’t realize he touches him like that. He doesn’t realize that he shifts closer when Ijekiel laughs. He doesn’t realize his fingers trail briefly across the edge of Ijekiel’s sleeve when he reaches for the cup beside him.

It’s easy. Natural.

The kind of closeness that shouldn’t feel so familiar, but does.

He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until Ijekiel goes very still.

Like a person cataloguing a memory as it forms.

Lucas tilts his head, pretending not to notice. “You’re not going to scold me for invading your personal space?”

Ijekiel glances at him, eyes a little too sharp. “You do that often.”

Lucas smirks. “Hard to believe I’m not more popular.”

Another silence. But this one is laced with something else now. Something shifting.

“I had a strange thought earlier,” Ijekiel says after a beat. His voice is quiet. Measured. “About how familiarity works.”

Lucas arches a brow. “Sounds dangerous.”

“Mm.” Ijekiel doesn’t smile. “Sometimes, you meet someone and feel like you’ve known them forever. Even if you don’t. Even if you shouldn’t.”

Lucas’s throat tightens. But he doesn’t look away. “That ever happen to you?”

“Yes,” Ijekiel says simply. Then: “Lately.”

There’s weight in the word. A direction. A gravity.

Lucas nods, gaze slipping forward, out toward the trellises wrapped in bloom. “Maybe you’re getting sentimental.”

“Maybe I’m forgetting something I should remember.”

That makes Lucas look at him again. 

Ijekiel’s fingers are still curled around his cup, but his other hand rests on his thigh — half-relaxed, half-curled. Close enough that Lucas could reach over and brush their pinkies together.

He doesn’t.

But he wants to.

So instead, he lets his shoulder lean just slightly into Ijekiel’s. The press of skin through fabric. Small. Real.

Ijekiel doesn’t move away.

After a moment, he speaks again. “You ever dream something so often it starts to feel like memory?”

Lucas breathes in, slow. Controlled.

“Maybe.”

Another beat.

Their shoulders stay touching. Their hands don’t.

And Lucas tells himself he’s being cautious. That it’s better this way. That there’s no harm in letting Ijekiel wonder a little longer, just until Lucas figures out how to say it without breaking whatever fragile truth they’ve built between them.

But the ache beneath his ribs says otherwise.

Because Ijekiel’s eyes are too knowing. And the way he leans back into Lucas — just enough to be felt — isn’t casual anymore.

The dream comes, but not the way it usually does.

It takes longer this time, settling over Lucas like fog instead of flame. There’s no sharp pull into memory, no aching transition of light or scent. Just a slow unraveling of the real world until all that’s left is stillness.

When he opens his eyes, he’s standing on the balcony again.

Only, it’s empty.

The garden below glows with the usual soft magic. The sky is streaked with lavender and pearl, the colors of a dream-world pretending it’s dawn. But there’s no steam curling from a cup left behind. No quiet footsteps padding toward him from the shadows of the palace. No breath drawn beside his own.

Just quiet.

And Lucas waits.

Leaning against the stone balustrade with his arms folded and his jaw tight, eyes fixed on the horizon as if Ijekiel might rise with the sun. Like he might just appear again, barefoot and sleepy-eyed, the same way he always has.

Minutes stretch long in the half-light.

He doesn’t come.

Lucas exhales slowly. Closes his eyes. Waits longer.

Nothing.

The dream holds stable, structured, real in all the ways that matter. The garden doesn’t fade. The air doesn’t warp. The dream hasn’t collapsed.

He’s just alone.

Lucas shifts his weight. Looks down at his hands. There’s still ink on his fingers, he must’ve fallen asleep reading again. That same page on interrupted enchantments. The one with the half-formed spell that he almost tried before exhaustion claimed him.

He rubs his thumb against his palm, but the smudge doesn’t lift.

Ijekiel isn’t coming.

And the ache that blooms in his chest — quiet and slow and deeper than he expects — feels almost worse than waking.

Because this is the first time he’s been here and Ijekiel hasn’t.

It shouldn’t matter.

It shouldn’t mean anything.

But the absence feels deliberate.

Like something is missing, not just forgotten.

Lucas stays.

Longer than he should.

He sits down on the edge of the balcony, elbows on his knees, watching the garden. Hoping. Wondering.

The dream doesn’t end.

It lingers.

And maybe that’s the part that hurts the most — that it doesn’t break. Doesn’t dissolve. It just stays… empty.

Like it’s waiting, too.

The light is thin when Lucas wakes.

No color. No warmth. Just pale, watery gray bleeding through the curtains like a held breath gone cold.

And the ache hits immediately.

Not in his chest. Not in his limbs.

But in the space beside him that’s still dream-warm, still echoing with silence.

Because Ijekiel didn’t come.

The dream had been there — the balcony, the garden, the stretch of dawn sky waiting to turn gold — but Lucas had stood alone. For the first time in weeks, it had felt empty. Like a stage missing its scene partner. Like something was wrong and the world hadn’t caught up to it yet.

He throws the covers back before his mind can even start making excuses.

Something happened.

He doesn’t bother with his usual routine. No magic to tidy his hair. No fresh-pressed coat. Just movement. Just urgency. His boots echo too sharply in the quiet halls. He doesn’t care. Anyone who looks at him gets nothing but frost.

It’s not panic.

Lucas doesn’t panic.

But the tightness beneath his ribs says otherwise.

He finds Ijekiel in the records hall.

Tucked away at a long table near the window, sleeves rolled, hair falling slightly over one eye. There are reports in front of him that are unsorted and half-annotated, stained with ink — and a barely-touched cup of tea off to the side.

But it’s not the clutter that makes Lucas still in the doorway.

It’s Ijekiel himself.

He looks—

Exhausted.

His posture is tight. His eyes are rimmed in a gray too deep to be from just reading. And his fingers tremble, though only faintly, but enough to be noticed.

He didn’t sleep.

Lucas swallows the knot in his throat and steps forward, quieter this time. He’s not sure what expression is on his face, only that it doesn’t feel like his usual one.

“You’re starting to make me look well-rested,” he says dryly, coming to stand beside the desk.

Ijekiel looks up, blinking like he didn’t realize anyone else had entered.

His smile is automatic. Polite. Strained. “Morning.”

Lucas studies him. “Late night?”

“Something like that,” Ijekiel says, reaching for his tea. He doesn’t drink it. Just holds the cup, fingers tight around the handle. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Lucas doesn’t let anything show.

Not the stab of unease. Not the too-loud question forming at the back of his mind: Why not? Why weren’t you there?

Instead, he leans a little closer, bracing one hand casually on the table. “Paperwork-induced insomnia. A noble classic.”

Ijekiel huffs softly, but it lacks heat. “If only it were that romantic.”

There’s something off. Something in the way he’s holding himself — braced. Like his body’s present, but his mind is still drifting somewhere it can’t explain.

Lucas doesn’t press.

But he doesn’t back off either.

“I hope you’re not planning to stay buried here all day,” he says, lightly. “The archivist might adopt you.”

“I wouldn’t be the worst stray,” Ijekiel murmurs, finally taking a sip. He winces at the cold.

Lucas watches him quietly. Watches the way his mouth tightens after the tea. The way his eyes flicker with something unspoken.

And it settles, low and sharp, behind Lucas’s ribs:

He felt it, too.

Even if he doesn’t know what he felt.

Even if he doesn’t understand what was missing.

Lucas nods toward the window. “There’s sun today. Come breathe some of it in.”

Ijekiel blinks, surprised.

“I’ll even let you insult my posture,” Lucas adds.

And when Ijekiel hesitates just for a second before pushing back his chair and following him into the light, Lucas tells himself he’s imagining the way their steps fall into rhythm.

But it’s easier than wondering why he wasn't there. 

When they arrive to the conservatory gardens, it's quieter than usual.

Morning light filters in through the glass dome above, softened by condensation, casting slow-moving reflections onto the tiled floor. The air is thick with the scent of lemon balm and early-blooming lilies, and beneath it all, something else. Something quiet and unspoken. The kind of tension that presses just beneath the skin.

Lucas walks ahead, not far, letting his footsteps echo a little. Ijekiel follows. Close, but not close enough to touch.

Neither of them speaks until they’ve stepped past the trellises and into one of the smaller alcoves — just wide enough for a bench and some wild ivy curling through the cracks in the stone.

Lucas doesn’t sit.

He leans against the curve of the wall, hands in his pockets, like he needs the cold press of stone to keep him tethered.

Ijekiel watches him for a moment. Then folds his arms across his chest, tilting his head slightly.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” he says, voice soft.

Lucas hums. “I noticed.”

“I stayed awake on purpose.”

That makes Lucas look at him.

Ijekiel doesn’t look away. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

Lucas’s jaw tightens. “What do you mean?”

“I wanted to see how… real you are,” Ijekiel says, quietly. “If I didn’t go, if I didn’t sleep— would you come find me?”

A silence stretches between them.

And then—

“You did.”

Lucas’s breath catches, not audibly, but he feels it. Like his chest folds in on itself.

Guilt twists under his ribs. Heavy. Familiar.

Because he remembers the way he avoided the dreams. Stayed up. Cast spells. Warded himself into silence. He remembers the nights Ijekiel waited alone.

He remembers the confrontation. That dream in the great hall, where Ijekiel stood beneath a shattered skylight and whispered “Seven nights.”

Seven nights of being left behind.

And now, he’s done the same. Stayed away. But not to run. To test.

To know.

And Lucas came running.

“Was it worth it?” Lucas asks, voice low. “Your experiment.”

“I don’t know,” Ijekiel says. “I think it hurt more than I expected.”

Lucas closes his eyes.

And Ijekiel, quieter still, adds, “But it helped, too.”

Lucas lifts his gaze again.

Because there’s something in Ijekiel’s expression that’s no longer confusion. Not quite fear. Not disbelief.

Recognition.

The silence settles like dew between them — light, and impossible to ignore.

Ijekiel looks down at his hands. Then up again. His voice is careful. Almost like he doesn’t want to ask, but can’t not. And then, softly, he says, “It’s not just dreams, is it?”

Lucas stills.

Not visibly, but entirely.

No one moves like he does — controlled, deliberate. But Ijekiel has learned how to see the difference between stillness and hesitation. And Lucas hesitates now.

Just long enough for the truth to rise.

Ijekiel’s voice lowers. “It’s been you. All this time.”

Lucas doesn’t answer immediately. He watches the way the ivy coils up the wall beside them. The way light filters through the conservatory glass.

As if searching for an easier version of this moment.

There isn’t one.

So when he finally speaks, it’s quiet. Even. Careful.

“Yes.”

One word. That’s all it takes.

Ijekiel breathes in. Not sharply. Just… like someone finally allowed to exhale.

He reaches into his coat pocket.

And pulls out a small coin.

Lucas blinks.

He knows it instantly. A coin, traced with a glyph that Lucas engraved. A mark, insignificant to everyone but them.

“I’ve been carrying this,” Ijekiel says. “Since you gave it to me in a dream.”

He holds it out between two fingers. Not accusing. Not demanding. Just offering it back.

“I thought it was just… a trick my mind played. A symbol or something. I even laughed, once, thinking— well, of course dream-you would hand me something like a mark. A token.”

Lucas swallows.

“You never gave this to me in waking life,” Ijekiel continues, voice steady. “But I had it. One morning, I woke up and it was there. Real.”

He steps closer.

The coin glints in his palm, delicate as a secret.

“That’s when I started suspecting.”

Lucas doesn’t reach for it. Not yet.

He looks at him, at the faint circles under his eyes. At the tension in his fingers. At the quiet storm held carefully behind every word.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Lucas admits. “Or when.”

“You didn’t have to,” Ijekiel says. “Not really. You already did. Every time you touched me like I mattered. Every time you looked at me like I was real.” He laughs lightly, almost to himself, “I admit, it took me longer than I should have to realize it.”

Lucas doesn’t move right away.

The coin glints between them like it holds more weight than gold ever could. A dream made real. A truth neither of them can deny anymore. Lucas’s hand hovers, then closes slowly over Ijekiel’s fingers instead of the coin.

Not just a grab.

Not just a reach.

He holds.

Their hands fit strangely well together.

He used to touch like it didn’t matter much.

In dreams, it was easy and thoughtless. Safe. A place to spend the ache, to borrow the shape of comfort without consequence.

But now, now Ijekiel’s hand is warm in his own. Now the weight of skin against skin isn’t escape, but arrival. Not fantasy.

Lucas can feel the pulse in his palm, the way Ijekiel’s thumb presses just slightly into his knuckle. He’s not imagining it. He’s not alone here.

And maybe that’s why he hesitates. Why he doesn’t pull him closer like before.

Because touching him like that, like he used to, would be something else now. Would mean something else.

He can’t take like that anymore.

Not now. Not when every moment between them is real.

“I was afraid,” Lucas murmurs. His thumb brushes the side of Ijekiel’s hand once, twice. Like he doesn’t know how to stop. “If you knew. If I’d told you. I thought that it would change everything. I was afraid you’d walk away, or become more distant and guarded, in the dreams.”

Ijekiel’s gaze doesn’t falter.

“If you had told me sooner,” he says, voice low but steady, “I might have doubted it. Or denied it. I would’ve thought it was some elaborate projection. A lie my mind wanted to hear.”

Lucas swallows.

“But now,” Ijekiel continues, “I think I always knew. Somewhere. I just didn’t want to lose what we had by asking the wrong question.”

Lucas huffs softly, almost bitter. “You sound like me.”

Ijekiel’s hand is still in his. Still warm. Still there.

“I learned from the best,” he says.

Lucas finally lets go. Not abruptly. Not as if he’s retreating. Just… slowly. As if the act of releasing means something on its own. He turns the coin over in his palm, watching the light shift against its worn edges.

“I didn’t make it with magic,” he says quietly. “The coin.”

Ijekiel glances sideways.

“It wasn’t some enchanted object. Just a thought. Just— proof.” Lucas leans back slightly against the bench. “I needed to know if the dream would hold it. If it could cross over.”

“And it did,” Ijekiel says.

Lucas nods.

“I held it in my hand the next morning,” Ijekiel murmurs. “I stared at it for so long. Trying to convince myself it was something I dropped, or picked up. Some stupid trick of the palace. But… I remembered your face when you gave it to me.”

Lucas doesn’t speak. His throat’s too tight for it.

So they sit in the hush that follows. The air between them soft, suspended, made sacred by the weight of everything finally named.

Ijekiel leans forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers threading together loosely.

He doesn’t reach again.

But Lucas feels it anyway — that closeness. The echo of countless nights and shared silences. And it startles him, how easily this moment mirrors those dreams. The intimacy of presence. Of choosing to stay.

“You didn’t lose me,” Ijekiel says, eyes forward. “Just so you know.”

Lucas turns his head, slow. “You say that now.”

“I mean it now.”

Another silence. Then—

Lucas leans forward too. Not quite touching, not quite inviting. But there’s a thread between them again. Tangled. Sure.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says, softer than he means to.

Ijekiel glances at him. “Is that a promise?”

“No,” Lucas says. But there’s the ghost of a smile on his lips. “It’s a threat.”

And Ijekiel — tired, sleepless, real — laughs for the first time that morning. Quiet, under his breath, like the sound is made only for Lucas to hear.

They sit like that a little longer.

Fingers not touching.

Breaths unconsciously matched.

And for now, it’s enough.

The dream comes without struggle.

No riptide. No unraveling. Just stillness.

Lucas opens his eyes to dawn. Not like before, not the bleeding skies of imagined places or the twisted half-memories of old cathedrals. This dream is different.

It’s simple.

A quiet hill, just beyond the edge of a palace that doesn’t exist. The sky overhead is soft blue streaked with rose, and the breeze carries the scent of something green and blooming.

And Ijekiel is already there.

Not waiting. Just present. Sitting in the grass, one knee drawn to his chest, hair tousled by the wind. He turns when Lucas appears but doesn’t rise. Doesn’t speak.

He just smiles.

Small. Gentle. Familiar.

Lucas walks over and sits beside him without a word. The grass bends beneath them like it’s real. The warmth between their arms is steady. Tangible.

Lucas swallows.

“I wasn’t sure we’d ever meet here again. Now that we know.”

“Me either,” Ijekiel says. Then, softer, “But… I hoped.”

They sit like that for a long time. Shoulders brushing. Fingers resting in the grass — almost touching, but not quite.

“I kept thinking this would vanish,” Lucas says, not looking at him. “That knowing would break whatever held it together.”

“And yet here we are,” Ijekiel murmurs.

Lucas exhales through his nose, dry. “That’s what worries me.”

That earns him a sidelong glance. Not mocking. Not confused. Just… watchful.

Ijekiel doesn’t press. He never does.

But he shifts, just slightly, and their shoulders brush again. The touch is light. Casual, maybe. But it lingers. Warms.

Lucas doesn’t move away.

“You’re quiet,” Ijekiel says eventually.

“So are you.”

A ghost of a smile. “Maybe I’m afraid to speak too loudly. In case it breaks.”

Lucas considers that. Then reaches out — not with ceremony, but without hesitation — and lets his fingers touch the edge of Ijekiel’s sleeve. A gesture without weight.

Or maybe too much of it.

“I don’t think this is the part that breaks,” he says.

Not us. Not you. Just this. The soft edge of whatever it is they’re becoming.

Ijekiel watches his hand, but doesn’t pull away.

“Then what is?”

Lucas doesn’t answer.

Not because he doesn’t know.

Ijekiel doesn’t ask again.

The silence between them isn’t empty. It’s full. Of glances, of memory, of all the words they’ve already said without speaking.

The grass shifts in the breeze. The light grows warmer. Lucas tilts his head back and closes his eyes.

Not to escape it.

But to stay a little longer.

Lucas turns his hand, slowly, in the space between them, and Ijekiel meets it. Their fingers link without hesitation. Like a truth already lived.

It’s the smallest thing.

And when the light grows too soft — when the breeze thins and the dream begins to fade — they don’t let go.

They just hold on.

Lucas wakes with the scent of grass clinging on his skin.

His eyes open to warm morning light, pale gold spilling across tangled sheets. The room is quiet. Real.

And Ijekiel is beside him.

Still asleep. One arm flung across the mattress, hair curled against the pillow, breathing slow and even. There’s a crease in his cheek from where it pressed into Lucas’s shoulder. His fingers, loosely tangled in Lucas’s shirt, twitch faintly. Like they’re still dreaming.

Lucas exhales, slow.

Careful.

Then turns, just enough to rest his hand over Ijekiel’s, gentle and sure.

No spell hums in the air. No proof is needed.

Just this.

The weight of a body beside his. The warmth of skin. The steadiness of waking up to someone who stayed.

And for the first time in a long time, Lucas doesn’t want to go anywhere.

He just stays.

Eyes closed.

Fingers curled.

And thinks—

Finally.