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Sandman/Morpheus x reader

Warnings: self-harm, self-deprecating thoughts, loneliness, heavy angst, hurt and comfort, a bit of smut if you squint, canon divergence

Pt. 1/2

Once more to see you

You’re alone. Have been for quite sometime, which is surprisingly painful.

You weren’t created to feel like this, to be with someone. To feel their presence, get used to it, familiar with it. To know their body, their soul, every capillary, every vein, hill and valley, every inch of pale white, smooth skin, every speck of cosmic dust that creates it.

You weren’t supposed to fall in love, like some mere mortal. As an angel, wonderful, powerful almost omnipotent being you didn’t think you were even capable of such lowly, primal act. Feelings. Feeling feelings.

But you did love. You did fall. It was short lived, tempestuous, hurried and oh God so fulfilling. And now, almost a century afterwards you still remembered that fondly.

The feverish touches, whispers, stolen glances. His dark gaze on your back, slender fingers on your calves, knees, tights, between them and then on your stomach, your arms, neck and cheeks. His touch all over you leaving burning hot phantasmal smudges. The high that came with him, when the both of you finished entangled in sheets, sweaty, gasping for air, tired but unfathomably happy in his chambers.

His sweet smile, and his weight on you.

You remember every little shudder that shook his body when you kissed his neck. And every excited twist of stomach when he kissed yours.

You remember the furrow of his brows, and the soft silk of his hair under your palm.

And you remember how his bony fingers flipped pages of old books, carefully with reverence as if those were living breathing things. And then on your nape and back to your spine, with the same carefulness and adoration. You remember how he would read to you next to a burning heath.

You liked it. You liked him, with his dark, unruly hair and abyssal irises. His slender figure and the fact that sometimes, when he thought no one was watching, he’d hunch a bit forward, easing his almost perpetually straight back.

You liked his deep voice when he whispered sweet nothings into your ear, as the two of you would seat in his study. He would work, and you’d sit in his lap. Sometimes you would look over his shoulder to see what he was creating, a dream, or perhaps a nightmare? Sometimes you would trace his prominent cheekbones, other times the bridge of his nose. Or you would just sit there, quietly humming, content to just be near him, surrounded with the comfort of his arms, to breath in his heavy, rich scent.

That, you thought, was love. Those little stares, touches, gestures. The feverish highs, and calm, long evenings.

You had never experienced something so purely good, morally debauched as love. And if someone asked you what love actually was, you don’t think you would be able to describe it despite your nigh omnipotence.

You try to describe it to yourself now, as you dip your toes into black sand, your wrists already buried deep in it.

Love is like a summer rain coming on the hottest day of the year, a breath after being underwater for too long, wind in your hair, between you feathers when you fly under a cloudless sky, soft rays of sun on your face. Intoxicating while you had it but also inspiring fear at a mear thought of loosing it. Something that if left alone, untrained and uncontrolled for too long could turn into a nightmarish, grotesque caricature of itself.

With love there came joy, unbridled happiness, contentment, sense of safety. You discovered that with the waking of one feeling a whole plethora of others flooded you like water after breaking the damn.

Sometimes you’d get mad at him. Sometimes, he’d make you sad. But that was also good. It was good to feel something after centuries of feeling nothing. Besides, after your every quarrel, he would seek you out and transform those bad feelings into some much more welcomed ones. So, love what is it, really? It’s everything one could ever feel. A rainbow spectrum of emotions merged into one steady beam of light. Soft touch in the dark abyss of numbness. And more. To you it is so much more.

He was The Lord of Dreams. You called him Morpheus, just because you thought it funny. He thought it funny too.

He created dreams, sometimes nightmares. He was immortal, ubiquitous, powerful. He was gentle, but also cruel at times. He gave hope and then he took it away. He was the darkest hour of the night. Scary, impenetrable but also soothing and comforting. He was just. And creative.

Yes, you liked the creativity most out of all of his numerous and at times contradicting qualities.

Because when he made things, you could see a little spark in his eyes, like a childish delight or a flick of a candle, so small, so feeble that one could almost overlook it. But not you. Just because you’ve spent hours studying his features, his face dusted with a grimace of concentration, his lips pulled to the side, drops of sweat forming on his forehead, when he tried too hard for too long to make something new, his prominent cheekbones, jutted out chin, just to see the glimmer of passion mixed with delight, when his project came to completion. You saw that youthful spark every time it appeared and with time you started to adore it. You started to love it. To love him.

You two met some time after Lucifer Morningstar’s rebellion. You had some business to take care of in the Dreaming Realm, now you couldn’t even remember what the inquiry was because all of your thoughts remained transfixed on and occupied by the lord of this realm.

Even now.

Back then he was already a powerful, knowledgeable being. He could do things you could never dream of. But he remained humble and dutiful. And nice, and sweet and carrying.

Looking back you couldn’t blame yourself for falling for him.

For as many centuries as you could count the two of you remained together. Arm to arm, the embodiment of all dreams and nightmares, the nightwalker and his glorious, shimmering angel, soldier of the light, walking the path of your never ending lives together. Inseparable lovers, you could see the both of you entangled with each other for eternity.

It only made sense. The balance you maintained between each other, the love you had for him, it only seemed natural for you to keep being the light to his darkness, the complimentary part of his very being and vice versa.

But then he disappeared.

Without a word, he vanished like a raindrop vanishes into sea. No one knew what had happened to him. Some assumed he just grew weary of his duties. Some waited for his return, until they got bored with waiting and went their separate ways into the waking world or someplace else. You didn’t care.

Lucienne was the only one left, and you couldn’t be more thankful. At least one of his companions shared your faith in him.

She didn’t say much, which was far more than you managed to muster. At first, after the first two decades of Morpheus’ absence, when you came outside of the sandstone gate, to sit and wait for him, she checked out on you. She asked you questions, told you about the changes in the realm, shared her concerns with you. But as you continued silent, transfixed on the horizon, submerged in your anticipation, her visits became to occur less frequent and more far between until she stopped coming altogether.

Obviously you were too enraptured in staying on a look out of his tall figure to notice that.

Motionless, in a sea of black sand you became more a keen to the reliefs behind you rather than a living being, so you couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk to a breathing statue.

You just knew you had to wait. Morpheus had left you alone in his realm before. Sometimes for days, weeks, maybe a month or two. He always advised you about his excursions, but he was the Dream of The Endless, so it was nothing binding, rather a court gesture from him to you. Maybe he thought that whatever he had to deal with would be much simpler than it had turned out to be, and he had to take some extra time to complete his tasks. Nevertheless, you were sure, he was coming back. You had to be, because he wouldn’t just disappear like that, abandon you. He loved you so, as much as you loved him. That’s what he had told you. And you chose to believe him, because what is love if not the faith we’re able to put into others?

And so you waited. And waited. And waited until his realm started to turn sour, decay. Until his palace crumbled brick by brick, and his gardens dried up. Until the rivers run dry, books turned to dust and you were left alone in a barren wasteland.

Decades went by. And you came to the realization that Morpheus wasn’t coming back. The harsh truth hit you like a tsunami.

You never thought that loosing the one you loved so much would hurt equally as intense. The pain of your loss, fervent and spicy at first, now dissolved into something much more tame yet at the same time durable and constant. You grew familiar with it, as if you’d developed some sort of sick attachment to it and now you weren’t sure you’d be able to let it all go. It was as if the Pain became your new companion and filled the void Morpheus had left behind. It’s presence reminded you of him, of how he was. It appeared, no, awakened within you with every breath you took and settled in your chest, it’s weight almost palpable, almost welcomed, almost warm, like the weight of a domesticated feline.

You tried not to think about it.

The all-consuming, gaping hole in your chest.

But it is an undeniable fact that you are alone.

And he is gone. Well not gone, gone.

Ludicrous, to thing of something like that happening.

It’s not like he can die. It’s just physically, spiritually, empirically impossible.

So if he’s not dead, it can only mean that he is somewhere out there. Roaming the endless realms of universe. Just not this one. This one he had abandoned, seemingly without a second thought, and you along with it.

Morpheus is gone as in out of your life.

The thought sits heavy in your bones. Fills you up and swells painfully, spreads across your body like a tumor.

It’s too hard to even move. Your head feels as is someone was constantly hitting it with a hammer from the inside, trying to split your skull. And your limbs are heavier than led. You don’t mind the numbness, it’s not much different from what you experienced whilst living beside your brothers and sisters in Heaven. Ugh, but the headache is making your time here completely unbearable.

You met Zeus once. You met his daughter, Athena. A stoic grey-eyed beauty. You liked her. Not because she was anything special, you met countless gods like her before, but because of her family. Athena formed a part of a bizarre mosaic that was the Pantheon. One of the most debauched, incestuous and overall animalistic ensemble of gods you have ever seen. And she fitted there like a sour thumb. Swore virgin amongst serial sex-maniacs, a lighthouse of knowledge amongst the sea of ignorance. An outsider in her own family. And she wore it like a medal.

Yes, they were something else, a strange bunch for sure, those Olympians. But they could tell one hell of a story, if they were in a mood to do so, of course. And Athena was always in the mood. Once she’d told you about how she was born. How her father swallowed his previous wife, Metis, while pregnant with the little goddess, and how she, Athena, crawled her way out from her mothers cold body, and up her fathers spine all the way to his head. How she banged and screamed at his thick skull until he could take it no more and asked the god Hephaestus to split his head open. Then she took the opportunity and jumped out, fully clothed, with a warrior’s armor on and claimed her rightful title of the goddess of war and wisdom. Back then you laughed at the tale, that’s how bizarre it felt to you. But now, with the constant hammering inside your skull you begin to wonder if it really was that improbable to give birth out of your brain.

What would happen if you’d split you skull open right here and now? Would a tiny master of dreams jump out of you? Or would you just fall to the sand, cold and limp? Which would be best for you?

Your whole body trembles, but not because of the cold. You cannot feel it.

At this point, going back to the realm of your God should sound more appealing then laying here, half-buried in the black sand, with the humongous gate at your back, and yet you somehow find more excuses to stay. It’s not like anyone will notice you being absent. They haven’t so far, and, honestly? No wonder. You’re not anyone special out there. Your not powerful, or specially unique. You’re just you.

In here, the Dreaming Realm, you were once special. You were his one and only, his little light, his dove, his love. Now it’s only the sign of the times, the remnant in your memories, nothing more. Yet, you sink your nails into those crumbs of feelings you have left and try to raise something, anything out of them.

All you get is a hoarse, reedy scream and a trail of bitter tears.

Maybe if you could die, this whole thing, the solitary existence void of his warmth could be slightly more bearable. You would welcome the sweet release of death with pleasure. Once, she came knocking on the doors of the Dreaming Realm, you thought maybe summoned by your desperate thoughts, but no, she was only looking for her brother. When you stared at her, silently pleading with your eyes she looked at you, considered your figure. You knew what she saw. A pathetic shell of an angel. A sandstone statue of a broken lover. You saw the pity in her obsidian, timeless eyes, maybe something more. You didn’t read much into that. And for a minute you had thought she might fulfill your wish, end your suffering, out of respect for her brother, or maybe out of sympathy for you. But she just shook her head, a little bit apologetic, a little bit sorrowful.

‘Your time hasn’t come yet.’ She’d told you, and she vanished. You were alone once again, wallowing at the wind. It was the first voice you have heard in years. It had brought you no solace.

But the pain dulls down with time. Your screams become fewer and further apart. You no longer cry. There is nothing left inside you.

Laying under the gray, unchanging sky you revert back to the emotionless angel you were centuries ago. It should feel god, right. Instead it’s just awful and frighteningly empty.

If you could go to sleep, you would. Maybe then, in the realm of fantasies, dreams and will-o’-the-wisps he would come to you. Clad in black, tall, silver-eyed. Maybe that would ease your suffering, even if just by a fraction, even if just for a moment that would slip away from your grasp and vanish in eons of your existence like the grains of sand in your palms moved by the wind. But you couldn’t. You never did.

So you just lay in the sand, let it’s grains roll over you, pile around your body, burry you in their black folds. You feel them between your fingers, your toes, they settle on your wings with a delightful coarseness, burning like thousands of acidic droplets on your sensitive feathers.

You’re useless like that. Perhaps, that pathetic uselessness, that weakness and powerlessness was what drove Morpheus away from you? After all, his existence had a purpose, he had a purpose. The King of Dreams, that was a title that held much weight to it. And not without reason. If it wasn’t for him, for his dreams and nightmares, the mortal realm would fall into perdition. Not only it, the whole universe could combust, after all, humans weren’t the only ones who needed sleep. Whilst you, well you, just existed, vegetated. Before him you did nothing that noteworthy. And after him, now, you fell even more from your grace. Only during your time together your gray life took in some colors. He was the one that gave your life purpose. With him, you finally started living, seeing other worlds, reading ancient texts, designing dreams with him, meeting other entities, different from angels on so many wonderful levels. God damnit, he was the one who introduced you to the Olympians! But maybe that was the case? Maybe someone so wonderful, so knowledgeable, so powerful and over all above you, eons of light years ahead of you in every aspect that matters, grew weary of entertaining someone as shallow and inconsequential as you?

Morpheus is everything. The Dream of Endless, the power that compels every living being to sleep and to dream. He’s the tidal wave that forces them to think that pushes them forward. He is the architect of every hidden desire, the maker of needs. He moves the worlds forward and could stop them on a whim, with one thought. He can destroy and build. Create and turn to dust. He’s the deepest, most silent, darkest hour of the night. He’s the stars in the sky and everything hidden in the shadows beneath them. He is the heat born in the underbelly of a dying star. A cold scream of it’s disappearance. He is the beginning and the end, the shining beacon of your existence, and the existence of millions of others. He is the one maintaining status quo, the one upholding the right order of things. Morpheus is beautiful, powerful. With galaxies trapped in his eyes, he sees and he knows. Morpheus is a god. And you are just nothing. A spec of dust in the grand scheme of things. The emptiness that is left behind you. The lift of your chest when you breath, the breath you draw while you live, and nothing else. You’re the empty dried plain of beach left during outflow. A scorched desert on which nothing will ever grow. You don’t create, you don’t destroy. You don’t see. You just watch. There is no one relying on you, counting on your success because it has no impact on anyone, least to say the millions he manages to influence. He shines with the light of a thousand stars, while you bask in his glory. Well, you basked in his glory, while you could. Now there is no one to guide you through life, make it have a purpose, like he did. So you’re not only the shadow that follows his magnificent figure, you’re a shadow of your former self. A whimsy caricature of an angel – a pathetic, winged human.

That trail of thoughts, always present in the back of your mind, tired you the most out of all the derogatory ideas you mustered across the decades. Surely because this one was the closest to the truth.

You have so much time to spend alone with your thoughts, they too begin to feel real. Unlike your sweet, furry companion – Pain – they are relentless, sleepless, cut-throat butchers.

You all sit together, only one visible to the naked eye, in the sand, and there is a static, constant chatter surrounding you. The Pain warms your chest, purrs delightfully, the Thoughts jab at you with Their poisonous tongues. They feed on your flesh, hungry for more despair.

After years and years of torment you think you’ve finally lost your mind. A century of perpetually fueled despair would do that, even to an almost perfect mind. You no longer scream, only mutter to yourself, pretending you’re talking to him. You imagine his slim figure beside you and you tell him all the things you could if he was. With time, it’s no longer a play-pretend, a role you put on to ease your mind but a need. You know he’s not there, you can’t see him neither can you hear him but you hope that your quiet monologues might compel Morpheus to reappear. You’re so alone you wish that Lucienne would break her consistent stride of silence and come down to you. You don’t know if you would speak to her then, but you’re sure you would appreciate it more than at the beginning.

It appears to you that what you thought you accomplished before, the blessed state of emotionless-ness was just a ruse. A lie you created to block the awry of sentiments tearing at your soul. You soon start to understand what Death had meant when she said it wasn’t your time yet, why she looked so sorrowful saying that. The anticipation, pressure of your corrupted passion is slowly but surely killing you. Truly, you are going to die the most painful death. Of a heartbreak.

And when it all begins to feel like too much, all the loneliness, the pain, anxiousness, tiredness, despair, all of it bubbles up in you and erupts from deep within you, the only way it can. You throat burns, scarred with the acidic taste of your laugh. It’s lava, it’s liquid ice, it’s pure delirium. You head snaps abruptly as you throw it back to look straight into the gray sky. Your first movement in decades sounds warily like twigs snapping under one’s shoes. The action sends thousands of icy needles of pain down your spine. You laugh on, despite the crushing pain in your chest, your back, your limbs. At the top of you turned out eyes you can make out the faint shape of the gate. The reliefs glance at you with their dead eyes. They look so small now.

Dark sand erupts around you, scatters to the wind, runs away from you as if it was scared of what you might do next. But it has nothing to worry about. You’re quite rusty after a century of perfectly maintained stealth. All you can do at first is to flap you wings around and topple to the ground, down on your face. Finally after decades and decades of laying down you free yourself of your sandy, self-proclaimed prison and you roll down the dune. You laugh all the way down, maniacal, out of your mind. And for a second, you’re nothing more that a tangled mess of arms hitting blind, legs kicking and wings flapping. You scream, you laugh, you toss around like a fish fresh out of water, and it’s the most you’ve ever mustered out of yourself in ages. Never before have you felt this unbridled rage, this unhinged fervent hate. Your fists hit the sand and it erupts once more. And then again and again, all while tearing at your throat. The hits land powerful, your strong, that is one redeeming quality in your possession. If you’d only wanted you could crush those soulless, sandstone reliefs behind you. Scratch whit your nails along the furrows of stylus and erase them from existence. You could tear at the wall with your bare hands, break off piece by piece, and you wouldn’t even break a sweat. But there is nothing under your fisted palms but the damned, black sand. And it’s more than capable of taking on your anger than the bright wall, much closer than it.

So you hit it, bite at it, snarl with your nostrils flared and it gets everywhere, under your clothes, those wide-opened nostrils, blood-shut eyes and mouth, opened agape when a wheezy hyena-like sniggers come out of it.

The giggles have a metallic aftertaste, they feel like sandpaper scraping the soft insides of your throat, yet you cannot, will not seize them. The laughter goes on. It’s yours. Forever will be. No one can hear you in this dried wasteland. The Pain and the Thoughts, they don’t care. For once they’re all silent, for one glorious moment your mind is your own. Everything here, every breath of wind, every grain of sand, every throaty wheeze you muster is now yours. You are the master of this black desert.

Morpheus isn’t coming back and you hate him for it. You hate yourself for hating him. You hate this newfound kingdom.

You burn with unseen light, a hellish fire that swallows your insides. But you know that for an average viewer, if only one could appear, you’re just a tormented woman pulling at her hair. There’s nothing special about this breakdown, mortals face much worse. Yet for you it is special, it’s beautiful in it’s tragedy. Your hurt finally audible to the world, not in whispers and hushed words, but in screamed, intangible yaps, like a war cry of a wounded beast.

Tears roll down your face in a salty cascade as your mouth widens and widens in a strange, grotesque grin. And with every torsion, with every forced spasm of your midriff you feel lighter and lighter. It is as if with your laugh-scream all the bad emotions, all the toxic thoughts and doubts are expelled from your system, till there is nothing left in you and your feverishly hot forehead hits the sand. You burry you face in it, seeking refuge in its cold embrace.

The grains climb up you nose and fill your mouth. They smell like him. Everything in this realm smells like him. You don’t hate it. Now you’re too tired to do so. You just lay, face down breathing in the faint smell of a rainy summer night.

And then it hits you. This newborn creature, not an angel or winged human, but you-you, the one in the sand. You are a beast. An animalistic creature hell-bent on clinging to the past, to what you’ve lost. But it doesn’t bother you either, the realization, as well as the scent, is welcomed with relief. Because with it comes a discovery of something you thought you would never witness in your entire life again. A light feeling, small, but warm and bright spec of dust, deep inside of your gut. It doesn’t scorch you like the flame of rage before did, it’s delicate, feeble. It seems that the smallest breath of air could smother it, but no. You know better than to suspect something foolish like that. After all, it’s love, and not just any love. It’s the adoration, the stolen glances, times passed together, soft touches you shared with your one and only. Morpheus. Your love for him managed to survive. It’s a different type of love, the wild, savage unkept love that you once feared. The one that blooms into monstrosity when left alone. But up-close, when you finally witness it, you conclude that it’s not grotesque at all. Rather, powerful, smelted from faculty much durable and unrelenting that your usual beam of light. It’s the prism that splits the spectrum.

Maybe it’s foolish to cling to this, but somehow, knowing that your still capable of nurturing that feeling, that love, makes you feel more like you. Like all of those decades you spent half buried in sand, weren’t for nothing. The love you feel proves to you that you stood, still stand, for something, that you’re defending your beliefs. Against the universe, Death, the Pain and Thoughts, the reliefs, some other, greater power, perhaps even Morpheus himself. It doesn’t matter, because you realize you still have a purpose. Waiting for him, as you intended at the very beginning. And if achieving that, seeing him once again before you perish alongside this universe, means standing in the sand for a whole eternity, so be it. The love that runs through you, warms your body, flows in your veins, pumps air into your lungs, is worth it.

It’s not killing you. It’s keeping you alive.

Inflow comes, water covers the desert and you’re once more welcomed with sea in your mind’s eye. Soft air surrounds you, and you feel peaceful once more. The atmosphere somehow vibrates with a sense of safety. With that, your whole body relaxes, it’s like a warm embrace from a lover, the feeling of your emotions coming back. The anger you witnessed picking up inside of you a moment ago fades, as if the waves of the pliant sea of tranquility washed it off.

But it’s just a calm before the real storm.

First, you feel his presence. Nothing more than a slight tingle at a back of your spine, more of a primal precaution of your body alerting you of a bigger, stronger predator at presence.

You know this feeling and the excitement that comes with it all too well. You understand what’s happening even before the wind currents change their ways, before his feet struck the earth and the sand on which he stands pours over with a melodic murmur, before the rich fragrance of a rainy, summer night hits your receptors.

You longed for this for so many years. Everything in you has been waiting for this moment. You imagined it countless times. And yet, when all of it is happening in real time and not in the theatre of your consciousness, when a big, cold hand is being softly pressed between your shoulder blades and when a shadow creeps over you, to announce the whisper that follows, hushed in that low, hypnotic voice, some kind of barrier thaws in you.

You don’t hear the whisper, it’s overrun by your heavy breathing. What is this feeling? A new one for sure, but what in the seven rings of hell… Can you move? No, surely not. Perhaps… You manage to whip your head around. And your faced with him.

His pale face, marked with clear signs of exhaustion appears inches from yours. Your gaze considers it, timeless, eternal, unchanged. A beautiful sculpture carved in ivory. You see those navy, mischievous eyes, now warm and glistening with something… relief? Thankfulness? You see those galaxies trapped underneath that human-like exterior, those eons of accumulated memories, knowledge, the sheer power that sleeps in him. But what takes you is this wet softness of this powerful gaze. He’s not looking at you like he should, from a high horse, as an Endless, the ruler of the desert you had the guts, the aspiration, to claim as yours. Instead there is this flicker in his eyes, and no it’s not a lone star, it’s the little flame you remember from the evenings spent in the castle’s study.

Then you consider the thin, long bridge of his nose, as you already know, slightly curled to the side, and after that you’re compelled to swipe your eyes over his perfect, pearly-white skin; blue and red capillaries hidden beneath it, but invisible to the naked eye, down to his lips. Those are the lips you had been wishing you could kiss, so close to you, still moving forward, set on a crash course with yours.

His dark hair flops in the wind. Were they always so dark? Like coal. No, darker than that. Like a moonless, starless night. Gods, he’s beautiful.

His eyes are a little bigger that what you remember, contrary to his lips that seem to be smaller(or is he just pressing them into a thin line?) less full than before he had left. But by gods, if he isn’t the most perfect being you had ever seen. Even now, with dark circles under his eyes, tears in them, he shines with an internal starlight.

His lips open once again and you finally hear it. That sweet honeyed voice, one you would follow down into the fiery pits of Hell if he only wished you to do so. It rumbles through you, shakes your body with a long-forgotten pleasure.

‘Angel. My sweet angel. My love.’

His hands are on your arms now, they twist you until your sitting up, facing him. Those same arms wrap themselves around you, his head dips into you hair, his breath fans the crook of your neck. You feel him everywhere. His presence hits you like a tidal wave. Crushes you, forcefully pushes you off the shore, right into a rocky lagoon. Suddenly you’re forced to admit that the sea in your mind, is nothing but a small pond compared to the grandiose ocean of Morpheus’ existence. It drowns you now. His scent clogs your airways, his cold body makes you shiver, or again, is it really from cold? His lean arms, snug but not harsh against you smother you. It’s just too much, too soon.

‘You waited for me, my love. My, I’ve missed you so. You cannot even imagine the torment…’

Now his slender fingers comb through your hair. You’re drowning. It’s the thaw, the goddamn broken dam in your mind.

‘A century in that prison, without you. Death would be a better faith than that.’

He’s so close to you. You can no longer breath through you nose and so labored breaths are starting to come out of your slotted mouth.

He must have sensed that something is not quite right, because he pulls back a little, not as much as to loose any physical contact with you, but enough to crane his neck and look you in the eyes. The dark, abyssal blue shines with millions of stars, thousands of constellations you thought you’d never see again. There is a soft, but slightly concerned smile stretching his lips.

Fates, how beautiful one can be?

‘My love?’

You still cannot believe it. Your senses must be deceiving you because there is no reason for which Morpheus should be here. He’s gone, can’t they remember? You know it, why won’t they accept it? Is this just another desperate attempt of your slipping mind at easing you in your delirium? Creating a consoling scenario in which Dream comes back to your rescue?

Surely it can’t be. You hear him (his voice is delicate like soft velvet agains your skin and strong like a heartbeat of a church bell ), you can feel him ( his hand now pressed to your cheek, cupping one side of your face, thumb drafting circles against your skin), you can smell him (that god forsaken fragrance you adore so much, a little damp but full of life). All of it indicates that, yes, this is real. Morpheus is real and reunited with you.

And suddenly you know what the feeling is.

Fear.

You don’t fear him, gods no. Neither do you fear anything that surrounds his presence. You could never. It’s something deeper, more profound, not even concerning the external forces at game. It’s within you. It is you. That is what you fear. Your insanity, now on full display, consuming you like a worm eats at an apple. In your loneliness you’ve finally reached the state in which your delirium has taken full control over your mind and there is no way to tell what is real and what is fake. You need help, alone you cannot face this final and fatal flaw in the design.

Is Morpheus real? Or did you just made him up for yourself?

After all you’ve concluded beforehand, the second option is much more probable.

He would never come back to a lowly worm such as yourself.

So a hallucination it is.

You claw first and then push at the figment of your imagination. His impeccable black coat feels dangerously real under your palms. The sheer matter of dreams. You should not be scared of it, but the reality of it’s touch forces a nightmarish howl out of your throat.

‘No! Leave me alone, you demon!’

Once again you fall to the hoarse sand, it’s familiarity almost soothing. But you scram forward, clawing at the space before you, slithering far away from the torment that is the illusion of your lover.

The ground falls underneath your weight, rolls over you and buries your body in it’s infinite folds. Kicking at it desperately you manage to crawl a few meters before a strong pair of hands catches you and pulls you up. They’re trembling when they pull you towards a rapidly rising chest and force you to nuzzle into the dark, summer-drenched-in-rain smelling material. You’ve never felt him tremble.

He talks to you, tries to calm your never ending protests with his soft, almost pleading voice, but it’s for nothing. You’re still strong, and with a mighty strain of your arms you manage to free yourself once more, shrieking a painful ‘no’. Landing on your arse you’re faced with Morpheus’ twisted physiognomy. His face, usually motionless as if it was carved in marble, now shadowed with an overwhelmed, disoriented expression. His frame towers over you, and suddenly he appears to be sixty feet tall.

‘Dove, please… It’s me.’

His voice rattles in your skull, deep and melodic like the song of the night. Oh, how you love it’s rhythm, the timbre, the quiet, hushed words that roll of his tongue.

How good is your mind to recreate that perfect, soothing tone.

You cannot listen to it, out of fear you might fall for your own ruse, and so you raise your hands up to your ears and dig in with nails, just to silence the apparition’s soft murmurs.

‘Go away!’

Opening his mouth once again, it appears that he’s going to try and say something to you, but words fail him, which gives you a small window to yap again. But not at him, there is no use to yell at a figment of your imagination. You scream the only name, the only thing that comes to your mind. The only phrase that can save you, pull you by your bootstraps out of this hellish hallucination. The only other person present in this wasteland.

‘Lucienne!’

The bellow is so powerful, it sets the apparition back a few steps and resonates along the air around you. Sand shakes underneath you. The make-belief Morpheus staggers in his stand. He looks hurt, as if the word had physically cut him. As if your screams, directed not at him, but someone completely different, had got to him more than any other phrase you’ve mustered. Not moving an inch forward he extends a shaky hand towards you.

His pale fingers are long, his wrist slender and even while shaking uncontrollably they maintain a mystic, timeless grace in them. That is a beautiful, skillful hand of an artist.

All forces in heaven and earth, they cannot stop your heart from beating faster at this gorgeous sight.

You feel sick, your stomach dropping and bile rising up to your throat. You stare at this stunning mirage in terror.

‘Sweetheart’ He pleads, which scares you even more. Morpheus never pleads.

And with yet another bellow of protest, you’re on your hoarse way back to the gates, screaming the only thing that has proven to be effective in the battle against this nightmare come true.

The fear swallows you whole until there is nothing left of you by that hollow cry for help.

‘Lucienne!’

The name takes root in you.

‘Lucienne!’

It’s stalks climb up your throat, like Athena making her way to her father’s skull.

‘Lucienne!’

Sharp thorns of pain dig into the soft tissue of your esophagus.

You don’t birth a goddess. There is no miraculous conception, no preternatural act of creation. The only thing clawing it’s way out of you is the horrified scream.

You feel the monstrosity’s gaze burning into your back as you crawl away. Strangely familiar, weirdly reassuring, as if you’d known this stare for a while.

Morpheus used to gaze at you like that from time to time. And he would know when you noticed. Then he’d remark on something, anything actually, just to make you think he wasn’t gaping at you. This always managed to raise a giggle out of you. Make you feel this pleasant warmth in your underbelly. But this Morpheus stays silent, the quiet almost painful in it’s presence.

Your arms burn, strained with a physical challenge they hadn’t had to face in almost a century, your legs gave out some time ago, now they drag behind you, useless, only weighting you down. Your wings are numb, unable to lift themselves, least to say you. They also drag, leaving deep bruises in the sand, but the motion is much more painful than that with your legs. But most of all, the pain gathered in your chest, the one your own, physically unharmed heart is responsible for, is the greatest ache of them all. It’s as if someone had pierced you with a white-hot prong. There is nothing in this world you’d like to do more than to turn around and let yourself embrace the apparition begging you. Loose yourself in the insanity and ease the pain. To feel him once more, even if that would urge your mind to make the final step towards the spiral of insanity you’ve been slowly crawling towards. But you can’t. Like you couldn’t sleep before. You know that you cannot let yourself completely let go of the reins. Somehow, you’re convinced that finally loosing your mind would be the ultimate humiliation, slander cast upon you, blemish to your name. You’re too proud for that. The agony you’re facing is unbearable. Truly, death by a broken heart is the most cruel of them all.

And so all you want right now is to get away from all this. To finally find some peace and calm. But you haven’t moved a muscle in almost a century, your body isn’t used to such effort and soon all your strength is starting to leave you.

You fall, now completely drained, face down into the sand beneath you. With one hand trapped under your weight and the other clawing at the grains in a last ditch effort to take you away, your vision starts to blur. Dark mist appears in the corner of your eye and before you can do anything, scream or babble something that would save you, it overtakes you.

Now darkness is all that surrounds you.

You wake up in a darken room. With heavy curtains drawn over high windows. Rays of gray light are still shining through the cracks and you hear the wind howling outside. But you feel warm, tucked under a soft but still thick fabrics.

That’s what you see when you crack one eye open. When you do the same with the other one, you’re faced with a faded canopy, once maybe beautiful and rich, now dusted and bearing the signs of times passed. There are holes in the impeccable embroidery. Golden threads coming out of the material. Once vibrant silhouettes of gods and nymphs animals and all that is between those kinds circling a man with dark main and silvery shining eyes, all but him dancing, upholding enormous garlands of flowers, now faded on the bulged, loosely held cloth.

You can’t help but feel those two shiny orbs glaring at you, staring right through your physical shell, right into your soul.

It’s unnerving, sweat-provoking and so you avert your own gaze to the side, knowing that it’s only just embroidery despite the chill creeping up your spine.

Your eyes fall to the side, not far away from where you were looking seconds ago and through a sheer mist of sleep still covering your eyes you see a blurred out room.

Door, made out of dark wood, slightly off their hinges.

Marble floor covered in small pieces of debris and scratches as if someone tried to remove the bigger chunks.

A vanity table with it’s mirror so dirty it cannot reflect anything that is behind you. You can faintly make out your own silhouette however in it’s dark surface. And right in it’s upper corner you see a spider tangling it’s web around a broken ornament.

Then there are the pillars, one each on the four corner of the bed, dangerously bowing down on you like disproportionate twigs of a weeping willow.

Everything around you feels somehow crooked, old and rusty, not quite right. Although you seem to know this room it is somehow different. Old and dusted, bitten by the tooth of time.

You can’t help but wonder if you too are covered in the dust, faded and shredded like the canopy over you.

You must be, because although you seem to be quite familiar with this room, you’ve been here before, you do not remember how you got here.

What’s more you can feel the tiredness burrowed deep in your muscles, sleep lingering heavy on your eyelids, the smoaky mist of rest laying down on you like a weighted blanket. It is as if you have just been awoken from a deep century-long sleep. And there is this throbbing, exhausting pain right in the center of your skull.

You must’ve slept for too long. But why did no one wake you up? Yes. That seems to be a good question. Where is everybody?

You turn over, eager to see the rest of the room. But you discover that you’re unable to do so, because your hand, the one on the side where the window is, seems to be locked into an embrace. A dark, hunched over figure seems to be clasping at it, with the both of its lean arms and hugging it close, almost desperately to it’s chest. Unable to turn to the side, you crane your neck, a little bit curious, a little bit scared, because you have no idea whose steady breath could be warming your palm. It’s kind of enticing to feel the figure’s rise and fall of chest, because there is something familiar, calming in that motion. There is also this soft, a bit ticklish sensation of something warm and wet softly sliding down your skin, cooling it a little it it’s path.

Slowly spreading fingers that seemed to be plastered over that chest, you’re able to feel a steady quiet heartbeat. And you know the rhythm, you’ve listened to it, tried feeling it through skin and through cloth numerous times before.

And before you tare your gaze away from your own palm trapped between the dark folds of the silhouette, before you look up, and before your eyes and just to the dim light of the room, you know.

And suddenly it all comes back to you. The memories of sand and the Pain and the Thoughts. Of your long time friends. They flood you instantaneously. Rage like a tidal wave from deep within you and swallow the peace you seemed to have gained through your sleep. The heavy roaring forces a surprised gasp out of your lungs and you feel yourself rising on the bed.

The panic that engulfs you is monumental, larger than anything you’ve felt so far.

Because the hands holding yours feel real. Their softness and roughness, slenderness of their fingers. And it takes almost a Herculean effort to force your hand out of them. Even more so when the darkened silhouette before you raises it’s head and you see those marvelous shining eyes you’ve seen before on the tapestry. The eyes you’ve seen a hundred times before. When you’re finally faced with the darker-than-night hair framing the pale face of his. When you see it’s wet with tears.

You look down, at the hand you managed to free, now idly resting against the covers and see that the weird, warm, ticklish feeling from before were those tears slowly dripping down your wrist.

Then your gaze rises up to that gorgeous face once again. It’s sad. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before, haunted with some dark shadow that you cannot see past, but know it’s there.

He doesn’t make a move. He just stares at you, frozen in the position you had left him in, only his eyes flickering all over your face looking for something. Needy and eager to find that… that recognition you so desperately want to feel.

And the stare is longing; full of deep desire, one you could describe as, if only under other circumstances, loving. But all it does for you is fill you with more dread.

Panic rises like bile in your throat.

Is he really there? Your love, is he really the one sitting beside this bed, looking at you with eyes filled with hurt, or is it just another trick of your mind? You cannot tell and it’s the greatest torture you can think of. Because there is nothing in this world you could ever want more than to leap over the bed and lean on his strong figure. But if he’s not real then what is all of this?

Your eyes well up with the frustration you’ve been feeling. You start to shake, raise your hands up to your face in a futile attempt to hide yourself from him, and then there it is, his first move. As if conjured back to his senses, by the wetness that’s steadily overflowing from you, he leans over and gathers you in his arms.

And they are warm. And strong. And oversaturated with that blessed smell. And oh gods you want to believe it. You want to believe it’s him.

Inhaling that sweet smell, nuzzling into the itchy cover of his coat you let out a sob. It’s soft and pathetic, but lord knows how tired you are, lord knows how you need that respite.

And so you let go. Seemingly for the final time, you let yourself loose. And you lose your way in the labor y the of doubts, of pains and worries. And you cry, but not like you have ever cried before. Because those tears coming from you aren’t helpless, pleading for death or for the end. They are the last ditch effort at hope. A cry for the truth and a signal of your surrender.

Lost in your own cry you feel one of his hands slowly peeling off your arms and softly resting on the top of your head. His touch is most gentle when he slides his palm down your hair, picks it up and then again and again. Even though his slender fingers snarl in the unruly mess of your hair littered with tangles, it never feels unpleasant or painful. He’s patient with untangling them and coming back to his task. It’s languid and slow, something you’ve missed very much in the past years. And even though you’re still not so sure about legitimacy of this whole affair, now your much calmer, and much more willing to believe.

Because you too can sense him tremble. You too can feel the tears, twins to your own, still falling down his face. Can hear his small voice muttering something you can’t really make out but understand its sorrowful, almost apologetic tone.

And you know that this is something your mind could never forge, even if it had fell into the abyss for a thousands of years. Because in your mind, he could never break down beside you like this. Embrace you like this and cry alongside you. He is the strongest, most benevolent force of nature in the universe. You’ve never seen him cry. And yet, there he is. Curled around you, kneeling on the covers, sobbing with his face snug to your neck, arms embracing your shaking form, he himself shaking as well.

And this is what you needed. His closeness. His vulnerability and softness.

With his embrace you fell something you’ve never felt in your play-pretends. It’s a notion of fullness, of a final piece falling into its place, completing you and restoring your broken self to its wholeness.

It’s a feeling like no other, unmistakable and unable to be forged. A feeling you could only feel in his presence.

As his hands caress you it seems like a small furnace appears in your chest and grows larger and larger until it’s warmth fills every corner of your body. Your fingers and toes and ears and nose. It comes as a surprise to you to discover how numb and cold-soaked they all were.

But not any longer. Because he is here. Close and real. Tangible beneath your fingers in his own sorrow-stricken composure.

And right there and then, all your doubts and fears fall off of you. You shed them away, like an elk that molts it’s fur for the spring.

Finally with that you’re able to breath once again. Your able to move. You welcome the rain soaked summer into your lungs, the warm hunched over frame into your arms and with a concluding shake of your lower lip, your ready to speak.

‘Morpheus?’

The voice that comes out of your mouth in no matter resemble the shreaky scream, or a groggy rumble you’ve heard yourself exclaiming so many times. It’s soft and small and delicate. Like snows thawing right at end of the season foretelling the prelude to spring. It’s a question, but also an affirmation. Without even thinking about it you’ve put your whole hope, anticipation into it and with that soft note it’s an undeniable declaration of love.

Poetic in its syllables, melodic in its tone.

This name rolls off your tongue so perfectly, so naturally that you cannot help the soft swell of your heart even at the sound of it.

And he shakes, even more so than before. And then, from the tangled of your hair you can hear a soft laugh. Or is it another wave of tears?

But then he presses a soft open-mouth kiss onto your neck. His soft lips tear through the courts in of your tangled sweat soaked hair and you feel their delicate, slightly wet touch. Then his breath fans over the quickly cooling patch of skin and it is not like the thaws of early spring in you but like the season in full swing. Like watching a garden suddenly bloom, cover itself with explosion of colors, birthing vibrant flower buds that unravel rapidly and unstoppably right before your own eyes.

Happiness prickles on your skin and you cannot help but crane your neck to give him more access.

He laughs softly to himself when he pushes his nose to the spot where he kissed you, his voice deep and rich in its sound like honey.

‘It is me, my sweet angel.’

Oh and that voice! You rejoice in its depth on the sweet dark resonance it was she’s you over with. You feel you could melt under the heat with which he pronounces your name. That is more than enough for you to bring forth an immense pleasure, just those six words and you see yourself in your mind’s eye soaring through the skies once more, higher and higher up to your own personal heaven. He is your heaven your undoing, the light in the darkness and when you embrace him, when the covers fall from your lower body and you press yourself to him, you reach a cosmic completion in calm. But it seems that it is not enough to sate his own hunger for you.

Proceeding to haul you up and onto his lap, he presses himself as close as he can to your body in the way that even with the both of you half-sitting your lens tangle with his, your robes drape over his dark dress up and he surrounds you with his magnanimous frame. He’s beneath you, looms over you, embraces you from the back and presses you to his front. The rise and fall of his chest dictates your own respiration and suddenly you don’t feel like just an angel, but a part of a much greater beast. But it doesn’t smother you like the small touch from him did before, in the desert. It is welcomed, needed. You’ve missed it, the sensation of belonging.

His moves are fluid and strong, similar to the currents of a mountain creek.

The cool your tired senses, wash off the unpleasantries of the century past.

His palms climb up the column of your spine and cup your neck with reverence. Fingers of one of his hands slither over the base of your skull and hold it gently taking the ordeal of upholding your head from your soar shoulders. You lean on him. Supporting yourself in his strong arms is a relief like no other. You could soak in that cozy silence for eternity but he feels strongly otherwise because dipping his head into your collarbones, he starts to murmur. His whisper is so different from the constant buzz of Pain and Thoughts. Much less vexing.

‘So long. Too long my angel. But I’m going to make it up for you my queen. My sweet, sweet creature.’

And every word is followed by a soft kiss, falling onto your heated skin, soothing it like aloe.

With his touch, with his words, with his smell, everything else disappears into a dark fold of your memories. There is no more sand weighting down on your wings. They are free to gently sway behind you as he threaders his fingers with the soft feathers. There is no more burden pressing down on your chest, now there are only his lips, leaving a burning trail across your bridge.

And with time, with every press of lips, he becomes more courageous, daring in his actions. What started as soft, almost pious kisses turns into hungry laps. His teeth graze your soft skin when he deviates from the straight path of your sternum to the soft insides of your breasts.

There is something needy in the way he touches you. Possessive in the way he how he kneads your feathers, grazes your skin, bites and nips at your still covered breasts. He’s like a traveler stuck in the desert finally finding oasis.

‘My Lord…’

‘Do not. You know what to call me, angel.’

‘M-Mor… Morpheus!’

‘Good. Yes.’

Sheer material of your robes dampens with every kitten lick of his tongue. You push your chest out, squeeze your upper arms to your sides, to allow him an easier access. Soon it seems there is nothing separating your pebbled nipples from his hungry mouth.

Delighted with that discovery you hum and mirror the moves of his hand with your own fingers. They comb through the dark mane, from his forehead, right up to the top of his head and when they reach their destination, you grab a handful of hair. The silky touch of his hair, however pleasant is nothing compared to the sound he makes at that.

A moan mixed with a whine. Sign of delight, sound of pure sin. And the sensation washes over you with rigor.

You guide your hand back, away from your chest, and he follows. Obedient. Good. So good for you.

His eyes rise and suddenly, even though you’re the one on top, shivers run down your spine because when his abyssal gaze falls on you feel as if he was the one looking down on you.

It is like a rapid switch between his demeanor from seconds before and without any notice his submission ends.

Hunger shines in his eyes, pupils blown wide, obscuring any trace of color his irises might have and he rises above you. But there is also something different, sharper in that stare. A glint of composure in those turbid, dark pools. His face freezes in an unreadable frown. He’s a predator, towering over his prey. You try to stand as well and try to chase his lips but he moves out of your reach. One gesture of his slender hand and you’re set in place. Is that a new play he concocted? If yes, then you don’t like it one bit.

‘You did not call my name before.’

Now it’s your turn to frown, seeing as you have no idea what he’s talking about.

‘Before the gates.’

He explains.

Instantly, you understand.

And there it is again. The sharp pain deep in the pit of your stomach. Shame fills you and you hang your head low, away from his piercing eyes, the judging stare he tasks you with. Because it is shameful to loose your composure like that before him. To disregard him like you did then and try to get away from him. And no matter how you think about it, hurtful for him. What he must’ve felt when you treated him like that? You could not imagine, out of fear that tears might once again resurface. With ice filling your veins, you try to respond, voice quieter than even you could expect, trembling with the emotions you try to hide. Your tongue defies you and there is nothing coming out of your patted lips. No excuse, no lie not truth you can muster. ‘I should punish you for that.’ His voice is thick. You cannot see his face, as your own gaze steers clear from looking up. Your eyes drill into your hands folded on your lap, desperate to find some sort of explanation for him, one that could clear the disappointment you’re sure to hear resonating in his words.

‘If a punishment is what might redeem me in your eyes, my lord, then so be it, I will gladly accept my…’

You start to say but he interrupts you by putting his hands on the both sides of your head. His palms cover your ears and for a second all you hear is your own blood pumping. Thenars of his hands softly push at your jaw and you have no choice but to lift your head up.

Your eyes meet his – big, dark, shining with the incandescent glow of Pleiades, blue like ocean during storm – and to your surprise you discover that there’s no disappointment or scold hidden in those magnificent irises. On the contrary. From the subtle pull of the lines around them and the slight rise of his brows and the red wetness in their waterline you can only deduct a deep sense of hopelessness, twin to your own. His lips quiver when he speaks. ‘I will not punish you. I have no desire, no need to… I just…’ The rest of the sentence seemingly clogs his throat and he gurgles unnaturally as if he truly was being suffocated. His face contorts in a strange mixture of desperation and despair.

Sighing heavily he once again dips his head into your hair, gathers you into a tight embrace, as if this gesture could somehow convey all the emotions that lingered in him. Despite his ineptitude in voicing his feelings, you understand. Truly, you do. Because you know and understand him. You’ve spent so much time with him that now, even after a century of severance, his emotions are your own, his feelings, the states of mind he witnesses, witch he goes through during the passing hours of a day, his moods, the swings there of. It all floats through you with a steady current of a raging river. One raise of a brow, one furrow, one smirk or grimace. It’s enough for you to read him. Like a sweet resonance of souls, you feel him, and from what you’ve gathered over the years you did spend with him, he feels you as well.

But there are some things that even this near psychic connection simply isn’t able to convey. And for now, this tension between, the situation you both found yourselves in, seems to be one such a case. It is simply impossible to just guess or let the other one assume what was the driving force between your actions. You need to talk. You, as well as he. And Morpheus seems to understand this too, seeing as he picks up the topic again, even before you can start to explain yourself to him. ‘I just want to know… why?’ He pushes his hands into your cheeks, craning his head and a swarm of unruly, dark hair falls over his forehead; in all your life you had never seen someone as maddeningly beautiful as he is at this moment. This desperate charm is what finally compelled you to speak. Your only hope is that he understands what comes next out of your mouth. ‘I feared, my lord, that you were not who I thought you to be.’ Hopeful eyes meet his, almost pleading the Dream lord for a moment of comprehension. He however, does not und we stand, because his immaculate brows pull together forming a deep, confused groove on his forehead. You have no other choice, but to continue. ‘I thought…’ your words tremble on your lips with a fearful shake. ‘I thought I was going mad with loneliness, and you, Morpheus, were just…’ you catch a breath, you have to, because those sounds your making choke you as you exclaim them. It’s such a painful, shameful, arduous task, the confrontation, that you start to think that it was better to sit in the sand, silent and unbothered by any consequences neither of your or his actions. ‘I though you were a mirage.’ For a moment there is nothing, just pure silence and the darkness seeping from your clenched eyelids. You shut them as soon as you uttered your last words, expecting mockery or cruelty from your lord, for finally he can see you for what you truly are – an useless, stupid angel, to weak to even survive on their own without suffering a mental strain. You know that now he’s going to dispose of you, not having any use for such a redundant creature. So yes, you pull away, and close your eyes shut, to stretch this moment, savor the quickly passing final moments in which you are together. But then he speaks, his deep, somnolent voice breaks the silence and it is as if someone had just cut the joke that’s been hindering your every move for the past century. ‘I see... I see now, that in my absence I have caused you more harm than I could ever inflict on you in presence. For that I am sorry, my sweet angel. I truly am. Please, stay assured, that I fully intend on recompensing you for your lost time.’ His slender hand combs through your hair. It’s a gentle movement that has a calming almost medicinal effect on you. Slowly opening your eyes, you see, yes you see his angular face, riddled with those familiar capillaries, with shadows framing his prominent cheekbones and the highlights of them. You see his face in full, alight with some sort of adoring look plastered to it. And the thin lips curved slightly upwards I that feline smile you love so much. His mane sways softly over his forehead, akin to a sovereign being and not a simple mop of hair. Once more you see him how he is and how he has been. Your lord. Your Morpheus. Your Dream. ‘I assure you, my love, you will not regret keeping your loyalty, for I have the sweetest of rewards for you.’ New wind pick up in you rings with your next breath and it is not the desert wind that tosses around the grains of sand outside the gates. It is a familiar soft breeze that fills the sails of your happiness, that makes you soar high in the sky. ‘Morpheus, my love.’ He laughs softly, quiet, summer rain prominent in the sound of his voice. And as he bends down, to offer a delicate kiss on your forehead, you laugh as well. Soft, and deep the laugh no longer hurts. It is like a balm that cools your scorched skin. You feel him softly pushing you down, back onto the bed, and as the two of you submerge yourselves into the sheets, you know. You are no longer alone.

#the sandman #morpheus #morpheus x reader #angel reader #Dream #luciene #dream of the endless #death of the endless