Work Text:
“I think I made you in a dream once,” my king said suddenly one afternoon.
Lying in the gardens, resting on one of the black porcelain benches, I saw a lilac sky with clouds such a dark pink they were nearly crimson. Wind carried blossoms away from the tree above us.
They didn’t quite act like normal blossoms. They spun a little longer, bobbing like gravity was a suggestion; white with a little black center that would almost resemble a cartoonish eye if you looked at it straight-on. Everything in his world was a beautiful oddity, and it changed to suit me the longer I was here.
My love was infecting him,/
My love was altering the palace of his mind./
At times we would pass a tree that, for example, suddenly smelled exactly like the dryer of clean clothes from my childhood.
On this day, we were positioned under what we’d affectionately started calling the eyeballossom tree. I’d always thought they smelled like Jasmine. But something milder, like it’d been steeped in the slightly humid air.
My head was on his lap when he said it.
“I think I made you in a dream once.”
I considered it. It was hard to tell when Deiran was being metaphorical. Despite how literal some of the things in his world were, Deiran still loved to play with metaphors like toys made of words.
“Care to explain, love?” I asked, turning so I could make out the sharpest angles of his face above mine. The wind licked at his hair like the pages of a book fluttering.
“Do you think you would know if I was your creator?” he asked in reply.
I sat up then, losing the warmth of his lap under me but finding it again with his face so close. His beautiful face. A porcelain statue with red eyes that bore the power of an absolute god.
His gaze was something terrifying at first. Mortal minds couldn’t comprehend that sort of power. Most lost their minds. I didn’t, and I think it was his love that prevented it from happening. The faith I poured in him was that of a lover, not a disciple. I had faith that he would never tear reality so far as to harm me. Everything he did was for me. I was his queen.
His lips were relaxed, revealing a peak of the sharp teeth behind his beautiful mask. Lips soft like petals. He was easy to quiet with a kiss, would never deny one for his queen.
“It sounds like,” I whispered against his lips. “You need me to misbehave.”
The corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk. “You’re absolutely correct, my dear. Not even my mind would fight me like you do.”
“You know, where I come from, what you said might have been a very sweet compliment.”
“What I might have said where? Which are you referring to, dearest?” he whispered with a coy smile.
“I think I made you in a dream once,” I said it slow, powered by the breath we shared. It sat luxuriously between us.
His hand came up to press into my back, holding me to his chest. I continued my poetry.
“I think I saw you in my dreams./
I think that somewhere beyond consciousness our souls knew each other.”
I reshaped his reality with my words.
“Let me imagine that you meant it in the most beautiful way./
I think you are so perfect a creature that you must be unreal./
I think you render my life a dream.”
What other word was there for beauty like this? A dream.
The mad king sighed lovingly, melting a little before abruptly closing the distance between our lips with a searing heat; already breathless, jubilant. “If you are my creation,” he huffed between kisses, “you are the greatest act of self-love in the universe.” His hand came up into my hair and cradled me as the kiss deepened, turning sideways, lips dampening with syrupy sweetness. “My angel. My queen. You have the most wonderful mind in any reality.”
He gasped when I bit down on his lip, a sound that tumbled into a raspy chuckle.
I licked his lip as a little apology and glanced between his mouth and his eyes- dazed a lovely valentine’s pink.
I smiled. “I love you too, my king.”