Work Text:
a faint dream flickers into view.
it always does.
underwater, it is dark. it’s not even blue, just gloomy. dim shades of dark and darker.
it takes both of them a while to reach the bottom. so long he’s not even sure how long he’s been drifting.
at that bottom of the ocean, there is soft, pillowy sand. it might be white. it is the finest sand wifies has ever felt.
he falls into it slowly, the impact dulled by the lull of the waves above.
as his back hits the ground, there is a stream of bubbles that leave his mouth.
and he makes eye contact with hummer.
hummer’s suit is billowing around him. his tie is loosening from his neck, floating upward in the current.
under the waves, wifies licks his lips nervously. even bound under the threat of drowning, there’s a sort of warmth starting to form in his belly.
the glow from hummer's eyes illuminates a small area around them, and he smiles, white teeth flickering dangerously.
wifies smiles back.
there is a thrill that makes its way from wifies’s lower spine into his chest, and it burrows in, comfortable.
in his dream, it is this shared smile that starts it all. it begins to slide back into place.
hummer teasingly grips his ankle, his metal fingers cold and they shock another bubble of air from wifies’s lips.
he tugs him closer, and maybe, above water, wifies would’ve let out a squeal, or some other undignified sound. instead, he’s silent, waiting. a tension begins to build behind his ribs. he might need to breathe. he wouldn't know.
as he is yanked toward hummer, they forget, momentarily, about what they’re looking for, and maybe, what wifies had wanted the whole time. not just searching for the leviathan, but for some deeper connection.
that buzz between them. the spark.
it becomes less about the oxygen leaving their lungs, and more about the gap between their lips. about wifies hand reaching up to hummer’s collarbone, exposed beneath his collar.
about the impossible warmth there. about the blue light, washing across them both, because hummer’s red light doesn’t penetrate these depths. his skin has a strange, gossamer feeling to it- something tilted and off kilter and strange- it all collides instantaneously.
suddenly, he’s not even thinking about it anymore, because everything has narrowed down, pinpoint vision, into hummer’s fists in his collar, his lips pressing- and- fuck, it’s that familiar pressure that causes him to bolt upright-
“no,” wifies lets out the beginning of a soft wail, the weight of the world pouring in around him.
he is entirely soaked. gasping. alone. it is his cold sweat alone in the pale night, in the bed. a ragged breath tears its way from his lungs, and he cries.
wifies cries, raw hot tears, shoving the bunched red sheets away from his burning skin.
he presses his bare feet to the cold wood floor, and he cries until his tear tracks sting his face, threatening to carve a path into the soft skin of his cheeks.
there is something, he thinks, so entirely cruel, about this.
this blank slate he has in his mind of who hummer was, before he lost him.
but i knew you, he protests in his mind, i know i did. you were here, and real, and your skin was hot, and your lips tasted like sea salt.
you were real.