So, finally got around to exploring and explaining that 'the team gets thrown into a world made from one of Flambae's wet dreams' idea:
It starts with the team hanging out at a bar after work again, when someone notices a person nearby acting weird, but they mostly write it off, because this is their world, weird is basically background noise, and also it’s a bar. People act weird in bars.
Then the weird person makes two people seemingly disappear. At that point the Z-team actually steps in, assuming they’re dealing with some kind of villain. Which is fair. If somebody starts making civilians vanish in public, “villain” is not a wild conclusion. Unfortunately, the truth is a lot stranger and much more annoying. This person isn’t really a villain, at least not on purpose. They’re some kind of well intentioned eldritch entity who can create pocket dimensions based on people’s thoughts, feelings, memories, and hidden truths. Their whole thing is bringing people together, forcing honesty, revealing what’s buried, all of that deeply invasive cosmic therapy nonsense.
The entity thinks they're helping.
They are not helping in a way any normal person would define as helping.
The entity ends up focusing on Flambae, and the whole group gets thrown into a pocket dimension built from his psyche. Which would already be humiliating enough, because Flambae is Flambae and the inside of his head is not exactly a calm minimalist office. But the world doesn’t just pull from his general subconscious, it seems to use the dream he had the night before as its foundation.
And the dream he had the night before was a wet dream ….. about Robert. Specifically, it was inspired by a movie he and Prism had watched earlier that day, some lavish desert kingdom fantasy thing, and his brain apparently ran with that in the most incriminating possible direction. So now everyone is trapped in this ornate, powerful desert kingdom where Flambae is the beloved, desired king, surrounded by people who admire him, want him, obey him, and generally feed into the most obvious parts of his ego. And Robert is there as the newest concubine brought into the royal household. Which is already bad.
Robert cannot change out of the clothes the world assigned him, nobody can. Everyone is locked into the clothing and presentation of whatever role the dimension gave them, which means Robert is stuck in these skimpy, elaborate concubine clothes. He's mortified at first, obviously, because it’s one thing to suspect someone is into you and another thing entirely to be forcibly dressed by their dream logic in front of all your coworkers.
Everyone assumes the premise is exactly what it looks like. Flambae had a fantasy where he was the great, beloved desert king and Robert was his new concubine who needed to be “broken in,” so clearly the fantasy must be about Robert being made submissive, worshipful, obedient, all that. Robert assumes that. The others assume that too. It seems like the obvious read.
That’s the thing they slowly realize. Robert was never meant to be submissive in the dream. Other than the clothes and the title, his role is actually one of the most in-character ones in the entire world. He’s sharp, difficult, unimpressed, argumentative, and constantly pushing back. He does not melt for the king. He does not kneel just because Flambae says so. He does not start drooling over him like everyone else in the fantasy kingdom. That’s the part Flambae likes. The actual fantasy is not 'Robert submits', the actual fantasy is 'Robert refuses to submit.'
Flambae doesn’t want Robert broken down into someone easier. He wants Robert exactly as irritating, stubborn, dry, and impossible as he is. He likes the back and forth. He likes that Robert fights him. He likes that Robert looks at all the royal grandeur and all the power and all the obvious seduction bait and still acts like Flambae is the most annoying man alive. The world is not rewarding Robert for playing along. It is rewarding him for being a problem.
Which makes the whole thing so much more embarrassing for Flambae, because “I had a wet dream where Robert was my submissive fantasy concubine” would already be bad, but at least that would be simple. Instead, the truth is much more personal. His subconscious looked at Robert and went, no, keep him like that. Keep the teeth. Keep the attitude. Keep the part where he doesn’t let me get away with anything.
At first, the whole world seems very tailored to Flambae’s usual ego. He’s the king, he’s adored, he’s wanted, he’s powerful, he’s the center of everything. Everyone’s roles are influenced by how he sees them, or how some deeper part of him understands them. Some people get roles that are obviously flattering, some get ones that are more surface-level or embarrassing, and some get roles that show Flambae’s opinions of them are more complicated than anyone expected. Prism, for example, ends up with something important and genuinely suited to her, because Flambae thinks very highly of her and knows her well. Someone like Waterboy gets something more embarrassing and more based on surface impressions, because Flambae doesn’t know him as deeply and doesn’t exactly hold him in the same kind of respect, but even there, there are unexpectedly decent pieces to it.
So, naturally, some of the team gets pissed at Flambae, because from their perspective, they’ve been dragged into his brain and assigned symbolic little costumes based on what he thinks of them. That’s a nightmare. Nobody wants to find out they occupy the role of “guy Flambae has reduced to three traits and a funny hat.” There’s a lot of initial anger, embarrassment, and resentment, especially because Flambae himself is just as horrified and defensive as everyone else. He didn’t choose this. He didn’t invite them in. He didn’t ask for his inner life to become a hostile vacation destination.
And that’s where the fic starts shifting. Because the more time they spend there, the clearer it becomes that these roles are not clean, conscious opinions. They’re not a ranked list of how Flambae sees everyone. The world pulls from his subconscious too, from instinct, guilt, insecurity, admiration, resentment, fear, attraction, all of it mixed together. Some of what the world reveals is unfair. Some of it is shockingly accurate. Some of it exposes things Flambae didn’t even know he thought. So, the team starts off angry at him, but eventually they have to reckon with the fact that this is also happening to him.
Because at first, the kingdom looks like one big monument to Flambae’s ego, then the cracks start showing. The fantasy kingdom isn’t just about him thinking he’s hot and powerful, although it is absolutely also about that, because let’s be serious. It’s also about how badly he wants to be respected. How much being a hero matters to him. How proud he is of having the chance to do good. How afraid he is of screwing it up. How scared he is that his anger will get the better of him again, that he’ll lose control, that he’ll hurt people, that no matter how hard he tries, he’ll always be one bad moment away from becoming the worst version of himself.
And all of that gets dragged out in front of people who, in his experience, do not need much material or excuse to make fun of someone.
So Flambae is stuck in this horrible position where everyone has seen the horny Robert fantasy, yes, and that is humiliating, but then they also start seeing the real stuff underneath it. His fear, his pride, his guilt, his family issues. The parts of himself he covers with swagger because if he acts like nothing matters, nobody can use it against him. Except now everything matters and the entire palace is snitching.
Meanwhile Robert has his own whole mess going on. At first he’s embarrassed by the clothes, the role, and the fact that Flambae was blatantly lusting after him hard enough for it to become reality. But Robert is Robert, so after the first wave of humiliation, he settles pretty quickly into 'this might as well happen'. He realizes the world is not actually trying to make him act submissive and is instead letting him be himself. It’s just making him be himself while dressed like Flambae’s subconscious has never once heard of shame.
Which means Robert starts adapting. He figures out that pushing back against Flambae is not breaking the dream, tt’s part of the dream. Arguing with him moves things forward. Challenging him opens doors. Refusing to be impressed makes the world hum like it’s pleased. Everyone else slowly has to deal with the fact that Robert being a pain in Flambae’s ass is not a glitch in the fantasy. It IS the fantasy.
That is much harder for Robert to dismiss than the simple version would’ve been. If Flambae just wanted some fantasy doll version of him, Robert could be disgusted, insulted, and move on. But he doesn’t. Flambae wants him as himself, difficult, sharp, exhausted, mean when cornered, stubborn as hell. He wants the Robert who fights back. And Robert does not know what to do with that.
The group is trying to find a way out the whole time, obviously. At first they treat it like a villain trap. Find the bad guy, break the mechanism, escape the dimension, go home, pretend none of this happened except for the parts they can use to torment Flambae forever. But the longer they’re trapped, the more they realize the pocket dimension works by narrative rules. The only way out is to play through the story it's built. Except even that isn’t enough. Because the entity didn’t create this world just for them to act out a horny desert kingdom plot and leave. The whole point is hidden truths being revealed. Flambae’s truths are the foundation, because the world is built from his psyche, but they are not the only truths that matter. His exposure becomes the catalyst for other people having to admit things too. Things about themselves, each other, the team, what they want, what they’re scared of, what they’ve been pretending not to notice.
So it starts as everyone trapped in Flambae’s fantasy, but it slowly becomes everyone trapped in a truth machine.
There’s also this deeply uncanny element where some people who were not brought into the world with them still appear inside it as NPCs, like Chase or Blazer. They look like people they know, or people Flambae knows, or people connected to the emotions the world is pulling from, but they’re not really them. They’re dream versions, filtered through Flambae’s perception, memory, fear, desire, or guilt. So interacting with them feels wrong. They’re familiar, but off. They say things that might be meaningful, but it’s hard to know whether that meaning comes from the real person or from Flambae’s idea of them.
Which is creepy, honestly.
Around the halfway point, Robert and Flambae do start up a physical relationship. The tension is there, the world keeps putting them in charged situations, and eventually they both stop pretending this is only happening because of the dream. But that still doesn’t get them out. Everyone probably thinks, great, finally, the king and the concubine did the obvious thing, can we leave now? But no. Because acting on the attraction is not the same thing as being honest.
Flambae still hasn’t admitted what he actually feels.
Robert still hasn’t admitted what he actually wants.
The physical part is almost easier for both of them. It gives them something to do with the tension without having to say the dangerous part out loud. They can blame the world, the roles, the absurdity of the situation, the fact that they were already trapped in a horny dream kingdom. They can tell themselves it’s just convenience, curiosity, stress relief, whatever. Anything but the truth.
But the dimension does not care about their excuses. The real emotional meat is that Flambae’s attraction to Robert starts off looking shallow and physical because, well, Robert is dressed like that and the whole situation is ridiculous. But over time it becomes obvious that his feelings run much deeper. He respects Robert. He trusts Robert’s judgment more than he wants to admit. He wants Robert’s attention specifically because Robert doesn’t hand it over easily. He wants Robert to see him, not the performance, not the ego, not the king fantasy, but him.
And Robert, unfortunately, sees too much. Robert starts realizing that underneath all the royal nonsense, underneath the lust and arrogance and showboating, Flambae’s fantasy is not actually about having power over him. It’s about being challenged by someone he wants badly enough to be honest with. It’s about wanting someone who doesn’t worship him, doesn’t fear him, doesn’t let him hide behind the act. It’s about wanting Robert to choose him without being softened into someone else first. That is the part that gets under Robert’s skin. Because Robert knows how to deal with being wanted. He knows how to deal with being annoyed. He knows how to deal with someone being attracted to him in an inconvenient way. What he does not know how to deal with is someone wanting him specifically because he is hard to deal with. Someone looking at all his sharp edges and going, yes, that. Keep that.
So the eventual breakthrough can’t just be them sleeping together or acting out the dream’s main story. The real breaking point has to be honesty. Flambae has to admit, probably in front of people, because the universe hates him personally, that Robert was never meant to be broken into submission. That he doesn’t want an obedient version of Robert. He wants the real one. The one who fights. The one who calls him out. The one who makes him work for every inch. The one person in the fantasy kingdom who was never supposed to fall at his feet.
And Robert has to admit that he knew, on some level. That he felt the difference. That once he realized the world wasn’t asking him to become less himself, it got a lot harder to pretend he hated being wanted that way.
The whole fic is basically a horny farce that slowly turns into emotional exposure horror. It starts with the team trying to stop a seeming villain at a bar and ends up with them trapped in Flambae’s subconscious sex palace slash group therapy labyrinth. Everyone gets embarrassed. Everyone gets mad. Everyone learns things they did not consent to learning. Flambae has the worst week of his life because his private thoughts have become a tourist attraction. Robert spends way too much time in tiny concubine clothes and somehow comes out of it with more dignity than anyone expected.
And the eldritch entity is still there, thinking they did a good job, because from their perspective, hidden truths were revealed, relationships changed, people understood each other better, and everyone came out more honest than before. They don't fully understand why everyone is so upset about the part where they kidnapped them into a psychic dream dimension. They're like, "yes, yes, mortal boundaries, very sad, but did the truth not bloom beautifully?"
No. Bad entity. Put the emotional scalpel down.
Overall, the big shift in this fic is that everyone goes in thinking the most embarrassing truth is that Flambae had a wet dream about Robert. Then they slowly realize the dream is only embarrassing because it leads to the actual truth: Flambae doesn’t just want Robert physically. He wants Robert as himself, difficult and combative and unimpressed, because Robert is one of the only people who makes him feel seen instead of admired. And Robert, who starts off horrified that he’s been cast as Flambae’s concubine, has to deal with the much worse realization that the role isn’t asking him to become some submissive fantasy version of himself. It’s asking him to be exactly who he is.