Work Text:
These days, Megumi spends more time asleep than awake.
The school stopped sending cars. No one expects him to answer the phone.
Shoko’s prescribed him—small white tablets in an orange bottle, refilled before he has to ask. They’re meant to help him sleep. Meant to stop the dreams.
He’s supposed to take them after dinner.
Megumi wants to dream a little more. So he doesn’t.
Because his dreams are kind. Softer than the world he wakes up in. In his dreams, he isn’t ashamed of wanting. He kisses his lovers everywhere — the tense line of Yuji’s shoulders, pressing his mouth there until the tightness melts; Nobara’s furrowed brow, smoothing it with slow, stubborn affection. Shoulders. Necks. The long lines of their spines. Mapping the faint scars across Yuji’s knuckles, the constant warmth of his skin. The healed marks on Nobara’s arms and thighs, the places she never bothered to hide.
Loving. Loving. Loving.
He knows this isn’t sustainable. Knows what deterioration looks like.
He just doesn’t consider himself worth the intervention.
His dreams are warmer than the apartment will ever be. The rooms are hollow in a way that only answers when he breaks down again — over a handprint on the bathroom mirror, too large to be his, pressed into the fog years ago and never fully wiped away. Over the smell of antiseptic and cheap detergent that clings to old clothes. Over a crumpled jacket shoved into the back of his closet, dried flowers crushed in the pocket. When he tries to brush them away they collapse into dust and brittle stems.
Once, on the sidewalk outside his building, he overheard a couple complaining about the dead dog buried in the yard, and the real estate agent telling them "Two months and it'll be nothing but bone, good fertilizer—"
He threw up in the gutter. Then he went upstairs and locked the door.
He remembers screaming and noise complaints.
And nothing.
But in dreams, the flowers never rot. In dreams, Yuuji takes them a kisses the bridge of his nose, Nobara presses them between book pages and refuses to admit they’re ugly. In dreams, Yuji washes his hair and Nobara complains that he never uses conditioner.
It isn’t delusion, he tells himself. This is simply the least harmful version of reality.
So Megumi sleeps. Sleeps. Sleeps.
One pill. Two. Three.
Shallow sleep. Heavy sleep. Dreaming.
Flowers. Kisses. Lovers.
Dust. Rust. Honey. Skin.
In his dreams, the people he loves are alive.
He was never meant to outlive them.