Archive of Our Own ^beta

riz gukgak has never had much occasion to dream.

for others, sleep takes them with a soft kiss on the cheek. for riz, it was more akin to getting hit by a freight train. when he did try and go to sleep at a normal time, he would lie awake for hours just willing himself to sleep, frequently distracted by replaying one specific part of an interaction he couldn’t figure out, or a part of a daydream, or one particularly vexing clue that didn’t fit into the larger plot of a mystery, until exhaustion took over. in the morning he would wake to the blaring of his alarm, with no memories of what his sleeping mind had come up with.

it was possible that a combination of less coffee, an extended period of time of waking up naturally, and a consistent amount of sleep on the right side of eight hours would fix this, but it was also possible that riz had just been built this way. as a child, riz had all manner of problems with sleeping. he had hated naps. he had been okay with bedtime, liked the ritual of brushing his teeth and putting on pajamas and such, but struggled with the actual going to sleep part. now, riz often chose to ignore the rituals of bedtime entirely to avoid the guilt of disobeying them when he inevitably got out of bed to write down one more clue in his notes app, or one more cup of decaf coffee, or even to simply pace around his bedroom in a futile attempt to tire himself out.

all of this is to say that when riz falls into a deep sleep somewhere around 11:30 on a monday night, he is understandably extremely unnerved when he opens his eyes to a dream. he reflexively sits up, the covers falling off the side of the bed as he cranes his head to look around.

his room is… wrong.

it’s his room, unmistakably, but everything is twisted, just left of what it should be. the space that he’s spent so long inhabiting now seems to hum with something unfamiliar. the walls are both closer and farther away than they should be, the proportions vague and changing every time he looks away. the biggest and most alarming change is the light streaming through his window. it’s an unfamiliar color, and it paints the room in a pale violet, uncannily similar to the predawn blue that riz often wakes to.

riz gets the urge to lift his hand up and watch the shadow it casts on the far wall, an old habit he had used to entertain himself when he was a child. he stares at his palm, solid and substantial against the formless atmosphere, and tentatively lifts it. the light acts in a way light shouldn’t, and wraps around his palm like he’s cut through a dense mist, and it’s relievingly cool against his skin, like a pillow flipped over to the cold side.

riz blinks a couple times as he suddenly notices the absence of light next to his palm. it’s a nebulous and rich galaxy purple, swirling for a moment before taking shape into a figure standing next to his bed, a purple-skinned humanoid with hair the color of starlight floating weightlessly around them.

kassandra smiles a hidden smile at him and says,

“hello riz.”

riz sits up more feeling a little sheepish at facing a god in his pajamas. kassandra seems unperturbed by riz’s attire, at least. riz suddenly realizes they’re waiting for a greeting back, and stumbles through one, saying,

“kassandra, hello. what brings you to um. wherever we are that looks like my room.”

kassandra looks around the room. where they cast their gaze, the room meets it like a soundwave, rippling and devolving into something undefined before slowly returning to its normal shape when kassandra looks away. thankfully, riz’s body does not do the same when they look at him and say,

“we’re in your dreams.”

kassandra lifts a hand and gestures to the way the light still sticks to riz’s hand. kassandra waits a moment, and, keeping eye contact with riz, and pushes their hand forward so that the space between their palm and riz’s is less than an inch. the light mist reacts much the same way to kassandra’s presence as the rest of the room had, pulsing and collapsing inward, but doesn’t shift itself to cling to kassandra. kassandra’s palm retreats, and they place it in their lap. riz blinks as the chair from the corner now sits occupied in front of him. he sighs, electing to ignore it for the sake of not offending a god.

kassandra leans the slightest bit forward, and the chair creaks with their weight, which almost sends riz into a series of internal questions about how weight works when you’re an intangible being in an intangible space. before he can though, kassandra says,

“and i came to apologize.”

riz raises his eyebrows in what goes beyond shock. a god. wanted to apologize. to him. riz must be- okay, well, he knows he’s dreaming, but maybe he’s just normal dreaming. his voice croaks as he asks,

“what- why? what for?”

kassandra cocks their head as if they can’t fathom why riz would be confused at a god apologizing to him, and says,

“when i was the nightmare king, i and my minions ruined your life. kalina was indirectly responsible for your father’s death. i sent a… how did you describe them? a creepy little skeleton boy? to kidnap you, and then taunt you about your deepest insecurities and fears. you deserve an apology, riz.”

riz feels like the light streaming in through the window, intangible and heavy. he parts his lips as if something to say will magically appear on the tip of his tongue, but closes them. he shakes his head in confusion, waits an indeterminate amount of time before saying,

“i- thank you.”

kassandra’s hidden smile widens, revealing dimples. it’s perplexing, to see such a mortal trait make its home on a god’s face. it’s almost similar to how riz felt looking at baron. baron had been so fearsome not because of his inhumanness, but how he fell just short of it. baron was something undefinable that tried to take the shape of something with a definition, and kassandra is the same. but instead of feeling scared, riz just feels the hum of the room seep into him, and a certain kinship.

riz, with his perfectly respectable human wardrobe, and his claws filed down to a dull point, and how hissing, after so many years of curbing the impulse, had felt unfamiliar, understands. riz isn’t undefinable, he’s just a goblin, but he knows what it’s like to be something decidedly not human in a human world.

kassandra abruptly stands up, and the chair is swiftly returned to its rightful place in the corner. they back up, and say,

“well, i’ll let you get back to your dreaming then.”

riz blinks, tiredness starting to overtake him, and gives a sleepy but happy smile as he says,

“it’s alright, i don’t really dream anyway.”

kassandra suddenly forms again where they had started to warp at the edges. the tiredness recedes, and the part of riz that knows he’s going to have to take a sleeping pill to get that same feeling again groans. they cross their arms, a disconcerting mirror of kristen in a way that still brings a bit of fondness to riz’s chest, and say,

“wait. you don’t dream?”

riz goes to rub the sleep from his eyes before he remembers that his body is a manifestation in his own mind, and then he stops that train of thought before it can run him over. he slowly puts his hand down, and answers,

“not really no. if i do, i don’t remember it.”

kassandra stalls a second, thinking. as they take tentative steps towards him, they say,

“would you- i could fix that? maybe?”

riz’s eyes widen. the irony of a previous nightmare king offering to give him dreams is not lost on him, but still, something in him spikes in excitement, dreams! he tries to keep the eagerness out of his voice as he asks,

“really? you could give me dreams? like, not nightmare dreams?”

kassandra looks down at their palms, and assuredly nods,

“i mean, probably some nightmares eventually, that’s kind of the downside of dreams. and i couldn’t make it work tonight, prophetic or divine dreams like this generally takes a lot of brainpower and you’re going to be all tapped out. but yeah, i think i could probably give you dreams.”

riz swallows down the part of him that’s whispering that this is a bad idea, that his body didn’t give him dreams for a reason, probably, and says,

“that would be great, thanks. do i just- how?”

kassandra outstretches a hand, and in a sort of inverse of reality, the light sticks to their hand and the rest of the area darkens in shadow. riz cautiously outstretches his own. a now familiar rhythmic hum exudes from the place where he and kassandra’s palms touch each other, and riz feels it overtake him, the darkness spreading from the area beyond enveloping his senses. the last thing he sees is kassandra’s eyes, pale violet, and stony with concentration.

when riz wakes up in bed, for real this time, he stares down at his palms.

he can still feel them buzzing.

_____

riz goes through the next day in a sort of haze.

the half-hour before breakfast riz usually uses to go over his cases or look for new ones is instead spent staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. he takes himself in, the dark green circles under his eyes, the faded swath of freckles across his nose, his disheveled mop of curls he usually hides under his hat. he takes a good long look at his hands, runs a thumb across the pale green scars there.

riz knows something is different. he feels like an incomplete circuit, like his veins have been drained of blood and replaced with copper wire. but he looks the same as he had yesterday.

school is fine. rogue classes had stopped being hard somewhere around november of freshman year and were now a level of easy that riz often snuck out of them, less to get the extra credit and more to stop his brain from atrophying. one of these consistently overlaps with adaine’s study hall, and she usually joins him in the library.

studying with adaine is a stable ritual in an otherwise hectic life, and riz has yet to tell her how much he treasures it, but only because he gets the sense she already knows. they rarely talk, unlike the other bad kids’, most of adaine and riz’s study sessions are filled with actual studying. it’s quiet in the library, the only sounds are adaine’s color-coded highlighters going across her notes, the scritching of riz’s pen, and the white noise of the rain outside.

at a certain point adaine lets out a small sigh, and absentmindedly chews on the end of her pencil. riz looks up from his blank graph paper (he doesn’t know why, but trigonometry vexes him like no other subject. he usually does it with fabian, who frustratingly excels in it, but riz knows the rain will mean fabian’s practice schedule will be out of whack, and he doesn’t want to bet on getting to study with him before riz’s test on thursday.) he sets his pen down when he sees her face, screwed up in concentration.

adaine doesn’t often get frustrated while studying. despite her disastrous entrance exam to hudol, adaine quite excels at test prep. riz knows from the many hours of doing just this that she loves taking notes, ravenously going through her text books at a speed unparalleled by anyone else riz knows.

tests, however, are different. riz doesn’t get it the way he effortlessly gets other things about adaine, but she’s explained to him that something about the severity of the moment, the idea that she’ll run out of time or somehow forget the material or be caught cheating (even though she’s not cheating) consumes her till she suddenly looks up at the clock and there are five minutes to go and she’s written nothing down. but after almost an entire school year of various workarounds, mainly the program jawbone had set up so students with anxiety could take tests during lunch and a concoction of therapy and anxiety meds, riz rarely sees adaine so vexed as she is now.

riz hears another frustrated sigh, decides enough is enough, and asks,

“what’s up with you?”

adaine lifts her head up, seemingly surprised at riz’s words. she lowers the pencil from her mouth, and then quickly looks down again, answers,

“nothing, really. i just,” she tucks a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her face behind her ear, “my final is soon, and my divination teacher says i can’t take it apart from anyone.”

riz crosses his arms,

“that’s not fair.”

adaine shrugs, and someone who didn’t know her as well would say she was unaffected, but riz can see the pencil whipping in between her knuckles in a nervous habit riz could never quite get the hang of.

the bell rings, suddenly, and adaine starts packing up her things. while riz is doing the same, she lingers, even though she should get to class, and says,

“i know. but i can’t really do anything about it.”

riz stuffs his binder into his backpack, and turns to her,

“try and get some sleep at least.”

she gets that younger sibling mischief in her eyes that warms riz’s heart as much as it strikes fear in it, and as she’s walking out the library door, she turns around to call out,

“hypocrite!”

_____

riz doesn’t know why he thought he’d have a better time getting to sleep after he got blessed by a god.

that, he thinks, would have been too easy.

instead he tosses and turns for the better part of two hours. every time he seems just on the edge of slumber, his brain will focus in on the uncomfortable crease in his sheets, or an unfamiliar noise will startle him, or he’ll become aware of the nonsense whispers in the back of his brain and edge back into consciousness. around one he gives up on trying to sleep natural, and takes a fantasy z-quil. fantasy z-quil doesn’t make dosages for goblins, and so riz either has to take the human dosage, which always leaves him drowsy the next day, or the halfling one, which doesn’t work quite as well.

the drugs make it so that he can almost feel how he slips into sleep, and riz can’t tell if the deep galaxy purple mist that creeps in on the edges of his eyesight when he closes them is a result of the hallucinogenic properties of chronic sleep deprivation, the fantasy z-quil, or something else.

riz less realizes he’s dreaming and more settles into it. his senses are dulled, his ears hearing mostly the steady reverb of his own blood pumping through his ears, his sense of smell only picking up a faint bergamot, and his usually painfully honed sense of touch feels only that light mist, the way it weaves in and out of his fingers. it takes a second for his vision to come, and it slowly does, ever that purple mist at the edges.

he’s… at school.

riz tries not to be disappointed, he spends a majority of his time at school, and so the idea that it would feature in his dreams isn’t preposterous, but this also means that it’s not new or novel.

except, riz notices as he takes in the hallway he’s in, it is.

it's both more and less concrete than his room was last night. riz can see that things end before his line of sight does, the minimal light not stretching where in real life, the hallway goes on.

instead, there's that same dream energy, purple and violet and navy blue, the night sky concentrated and stretched and pulled over itself over and over again. riz knows that he shouldn't be seeing this, that to a natural dreamer, it would be hidden, but he can't help but love it. he likes hidden things.

he slowly spins around to take it all in, and the sound of his feet hitting the linoleum echoing, a sudden and startlingly real sound against an environment clearly fabricated from an imperfect memory. he takes a tentative step towards the lockers, which are normally a bright red, but are now a muted burgundy in the darkness. when he raises his hand to press his fingertips to the metal, he has the sneaking suspicion that it wasn't so real before he did so. but, nevertheless, the metal is cool and grounding, and riz presses his forehead against it too.

a laugh cuts through the stillness, and it takes a second for riz to realize it's his own, that his lips are stretched into a wide smile almost involuntarily. was this what he had been missing out on his entire life? and he didn't even know to miss it?

riz turns around, pressing his back to the lockers, suddenly at a loss for… what exactly to do. dreams usually had plots, didn't they? he looks around for a minute, or an hour, or however time works in dreams, he doesn't know. and then he does what he does best; he finds a mystery.

there's something wrong with the doors and windows.

he doesn't expect them to be the same as real life, of course. but they're distinctly wrong in a way that's foreign to him. it's not the now familiar nebulous colors of the edges of dreams, or what adaine has described to him as his larger consciousness from the one time they got bored at a sleepover and she decided to poke around in there. it's not even what aguefort would actually look like in the dark, he can't see the spots the parking lot lights are supposed to illuminate.

what he sees instead is a hollow blackness.

he hesitantly walks towards the double doors that in real life, lead out to the side parking lot. he presses his face up against the glass, looking for the barest hint of anything shifting, and illusive shape in the darkness. he doesn’t see anything, but what he feels is a different story.

nothing physically happens (or since he’s in his own subconscious, or the dream plane or something, nothing manifests in a way that seems physical). but the feeling in the pit of his chest is something he vaguely recognizes.

riz’s primary weapon is a gun. he’s a rogue, he shoots from the shadows and is gone before anyone can land a hit on him. but riz’s secondary weapon is the sword of shadows. if it had been adaine or gorgug or fabian’s sword, and they had been rogues, this wouldn’t have been an issue. but riz is small, and so a shortsword for someone of a medium size is more akin to a greatsword on him, which is not very conducive to his combat style. all this meant that every sunday over the last summer, at nine am, he would go over to seacaster manor to spar with fabian.

riz had both loved and hated it. fabian, for all his bravado, was actually a pretty good swordsman, even if he sometimes fell prone to the trap of showing off instead of actually teaching. these were the moments that riz could take advantage of, use his roguish dexterity to get a hit in, one fabian could barely block, and they would end up locked in a parry. they would stay like that, a determination haunted by all the times they had done this out of a practice situation. it would be whole minutes, sometimes, before one of them was willing to let up.

the sword of shadows isn't by his side. there is no battle surging around him, there's not even a true enemy to face. but he looks out the windows, looks at that blackness so deep and yet so empty, and he feels an echo of those fights with fabian, locked in opposition and unwilling to falter. whatever electricity that runs through his veins that was looking for a home this morning has found it in this.

he raises a clawed hand to the glass, wondering how much pressure it would take to break it. whether he wants to.

he’s pulled out of the impulse by a light flickering at the end of the hallway, neon electric blue and hints of white in a beautiful compliment to the purples just behind it, and a defiant contrast to the black outside. it lights a fond spark in riz’s chest,

adaine.

he purposefully strides towards it, the familiar buzz of clues in the back of his head,

adaine’s magic, light, darkness, aguefort at night, side parking lot, what is this dream about?

he cranes his neck up to take a closer look, and the fluorescent ceiling light beams down on him, coating him in the electric blue he associates with her (non oracle oriented) magic. when he closes his eyes, he can still see the negative of the outline of it. he presses his palms to the sockets of his eyes to get rid of it, and when he opens them again, a sense of vertigo washes over him as a door that he knows is there in the material plane but had never been past is suddenly across from him.

it’s the only door he’s seen here not completely darkened by the hollow blackness. through the plane of bulletproof glass, he can see a classroom. the windows on the far wall are again, obscured by that hollow blackness, but this time, it feels different. it still strikes that chord of hollowness in riz’s chest, but in a way that feels pressing. or rather, he sees as tiny cracks start to spiderweb out at those windows, and smoky tendrils of it start snaking their way through, reaching.

riz eyes their path, takes in the rest of the classroom, a teacher’s desk at the center front and student desks in rows the way they seldom were at aguefort, and sat at one of them is a girl in a hudol prep uniform, a curtain of wavy blonde hair obscuring her face. the fluorescent ceiling light, now behind him, flickers again, and while the light doesn’t completely reach her, and she doesn’t seem to notice it, it’s enough for riz to feel that same recognition.

adaine abernant sits at that desk.

not adaine o’shaughnessy, as she’s now socially (and soon to be legally) known. this adaine is distinctly the timid girl he met on that first day of freshman year, pressed school uniform and hair frizzy in the way riz knows only happens when adaine tries to brush her hair through. the jacket of many things that riz knows is never far from the real adaine is nowhere to be found, though, he thinks, he might just not be able to see it from his position behind the door.

he eyes the tendrils, now all the way down the wall where they began, and now snaking their way through the metal legs of desks along the ugly burgundy carpet that plagues the classrooms at aguefort, and towards freshman adaine. he looks down at his hands, willing whatever happened with the lockers earlier to repeat itself, and closes his fist around the doorknob.

he opens the door with too much force, too tactile and loud and too real.

riz can feel the fear in this room so acutely, and for a second, riz is back in all the times in middle and elementary school he tucked away in the far corner with the rest of his class, out of eyeline from the door with all the lights off. he remembers how the doorknob would rattle, and riz’s senses would be hyper heightened in fear in the few seconds before he heard footsteps retreating, even though he knew that the hand on the other side of the door was the hand of the principal, and not a monster. but then he’s back in the open doorway of the classroom, and if there’s a monster on the other side of the door, then it’s him.

adaine doesn’t look up as riz takes soft steps towards her. as he approaches, he can see better the way his mind has blurred the adaine of now and the adaine of freshman year. he can see a bit of that blackness reflected in her glasses, and he watches as she quickly puts the tip of each finger to her thumb, a coping mechanism jawbone had taught her.

there’s a test in front of her, and this is when riz gets it. he’s worried about adaine’s anxiety, the blackness is mental illness or something, his mind isn’t very original when coming up with metaphors.

is my subconscious that uncreative?

there’s no source of light in the room, just the flickering blue one out in the hallway, so riz shouldn’t cast much of a shadow when he steps in front of the desk. and he doesn’t.

the places that should be darkened aren’t as they should be. riz blinks, scans the rest of the room, and realizes with a start that his darkvision hasn’t been working, and that the only place that darkness is illuminated in those familiar blue greys, is where his body blocks the dim light from the hallway, and spills onto adaine.

he cautiously shifts his position, his shadow following his movements. adaine still doesn’t seem to notice, but when it envelops adaine’s hand, her hand rapidly speeds up before slowing to a stop. riz spreads out his fingers, before curling them in an approximation of holding hands. adaine stalls, and then rubs a thumb over where riz’s first knuckle would be.

and then she rapidly stops, as one of those tendrils of blackness creeps into riz’s shadow, reclaiming it. it’s mere millimeters from the tips of adaine’s fingers, when riz acts without thinking and steals it back, his hand reaching out to make contact with adaine’s.

lightning flashes outside the window then, neon electric blue and white at the edges. rain starts to hit the windows, and thunder rumbles in the distance. when he looks back from the windows, adaine is staring up at him, her jacket now snug around her shoulders, and the only remnant of freshman adaine is her hair, still frizzy and stubbornly escaping from where it’s tucked behind her ears

her eyebrows scrunch in confusion as she says,

“riz? you’re not in this class.”

riz squeezes where their fingers interlock, a comforting gesture. her hands are another thing in this space that feels too real, everything else slightly wispy and muddled and the point where their hands meet a bright electric sensation.

adaine looks up at riz, waiting for a response. riz shrugs, deciding to play along,

“you shouldn’t be either, it’s the middle of the night. why would you be taking a test when it’s dark outside?”

adaine turns her head towards the windows, which now have rain pounding against them. for a split second before they conglomerate, the droplets of rain have a slight purple sheen to them, and then they quickly turn into rivulets racing down the panes of glass. with riz’s hand in adaine’s, the darkness is gone without a trace, and what remains is a perfect storm.

adaine turns back and meets riz’s eyes. her expression is one of soft inquisitiveness, like she’s trying to piece together every part of him into something that makes sense. riz recognizes the expression, even with adaine’s elven features and his own vastly different ones, from the mirror this morning.

thunder booms outside the windows, and then lightning in quick succession. riz can feel both run through him, and into adaine, who gasps. riz watches as her eyes flicker a hint of electric blue, and suddenly her hand is no longer in his, and the desk is empty.

riz shakes his head in annoyance, and turns around to walk back through the door he came from, and finds it shut. he huffs, annoyed,

dreams don’t make any sense.

his hand reaches out and touches the metal doorknob, and the last remnant of adaine, static electricity that makes him shiver, shocks him. but he doesn’t pull his hand away, just smiles, and walks through the door.

another boom of thunder makes him open his eyes.

_____

three months ago, riz had never stepped foot in the theatre. three months ago, riz’s trigonometry study sessions were done with the familiar background noise of his own room, and the headache that accompanied trying to do trigonomotry alone. and a week ago, they were done with the sound of the river outside fabian’s bedroom window, sans headache. today, music thrums from the speakers in the corners, something with a driving beat that gets amplified by the dance team’s steps matching it.

riz props one leg up on the empty seat in front of him, resting his notebook on his leg, before realizing that gives him a perfect view of the stage, and pivoting to prop his leg up on the armrest to his side instead.

studying while waiting for fabian to be done with dance practice is… not ideal.

when fabian had joined the dance team and managed to do it three months into the semester, riz had been beyond happy for him. all of the bad kids had been. and he still is, it’s just-

fabian exudes a certain gravitas in everything he does. bill seacaster had put so much intimidation into every movement that people had no choice but to cower before him, and fabian follows just shy of his footsteps. fabian walks with all the strength and competence his father had, but coupled with his mother’s easy elven grace, and a hint of cathilda’s roguish edge. all this with his, infuriating at times, need to be looked at makes it hard, obviously, to resist looking at him.

the blank graph paper on his lap taunts him. he taps the eraser on the end of his mechanical pencil on it a couple times, before closing his eyes.

i am not going to get distracted. i am going to get at least a c on this test.

the same stretch of music, the bridge, repeats again, the team has most likely run through the parts of the routine they’d already learned and instead go over the parts they were iffy on. riz’s ears involuntarily swivel to the points of movement, the dance team’s sneakers making soft squeaking sounds against the stage, the sound fabian’s coat sleeves make swishing against his legs where it’s probably tied against his waist, two forearms (one of them fabian’s, riz knows from the way the familiar way he moves, and the way the old stage slightly shifts under his weight) interlocking over and over again.

(his hypersensitivity to his allies, his friends, fabian in particular even, is useful in combat. there have been a million times where for whatever reason riz hasn’t been able to look in the direction he’s needed to. blood or various other substances getting in the eyes is common in melee, and hiding means he has to duck behind things obscuring his line of sight. being able to recognize where kristen is by the sound of her wooden staff hitting the ground as she sprints, where gorgug is by the sound of heavy metal coming from the tinny speakers of his headphones, fabian by the way he shifts constantly, bouncing on the balls of his feet, or the way he does that move where he twirls his sword in his hands, gentle hands against polished metal, how he always takes a breath before an attack and exhales on the strike.)

his ability to do this is good, in those circumstances. but now, there isn’t any danger, just his trigonometry prep still blank on his lap and he can’t fucking focus on anything but the goddamn song, the way it hums and pulses, and fabian and his partner dancing and-

riz gives up on his trigonometry. if his brain doesn’t want to focus, he’s not going to be able to magically make it. at least, he doesn’t think so. he could probably save up for one of those intelligence boost potions ficus sells if he really wanted to, but that’s ethically ambiguous at best and cheating at worst. he’ll just have to wait to study in an environment that’s less… distracting.

before he can even really register it, he’s tilted his head to look at the stage, taking in the haphazard and slightly discombobulated way the dance team is positioned before the music restarts again, half of them taking a moment to stretch, the other half talking in low tones so that the teacher overseeing them doesn’t hear and scold them. fabian himself is doing both, stretching his calves while talking animatedly to the girl who must be his partner in this part of the dance. he smiles at a joke she makes, something riz could probably hear if he strained but resigns himself to not care enough to.

the music starts up again and this time riz watches.

fabian and his partner look at each other for a second, side by side, paralleled. fabian extends an arm at one beat, his partner matching at the next, their hands meeting. the singer slides down on a note and they slide towards each other in tandem, their met hands shifting up in a sort of predator handshake. they lock eyes.

it’s all technical, riz knows this. it’s a piece of art arranged to tell a story through movement, that’s the entire point of dance. the emotion of it all is from the adrenaline, the euphoria of exercise. but fabian has this focused look, and it’s one riz remembers from when they would do this, albeit with the barrier of swords between them. fabian and the girl have no barriers.

the girl falters, and her forearm gets caught up in fabian’s as he tries to turn and transition into the next set of moves, which seems to be one where they circle each other backward.

fabian brushes it off good naturedly, makes a quip and laughs, in a way that a couple of years ago might have been at her expense, but this year is assuredly with her. the girl ducks her head, a small blush across her nose as she laughs, again, a beat too late.

the music repeats again, the same chord progression worming its way into riz. a chord of sympathy, or perhaps solidarity thrums through riz in company, he remembers that feeling. riz doesn’t even have the romantic feelings this girl does and he’s still done the same more times than he can count. gods save a person under fabian aramais seacaster’s full attention. mistakes under those conditions are inevitable.

fabian and the girl do the move a couple more times, finally getting it right on the third try. when they do, the person controlling the music, in celebration or in carelessness, doesn’t repeat the bit, and instead lets it go on. some of the dance team, including fabian and his partner, forego the actually practiced moves as the song continues on to uncharted territory, and instead wildly thrash like riz has often seen in the mosh pit at fig’s concerts (from backstage, of course. riz would rather go to hell again than be dragged into one of the sig fig’s concert’s mosh pits) when the bridge ends and the beat drops. fabian has the same wild grin he had in kei lemenura, and riz finds himself quirking a small smile at the sight of it.

fabian catches his eye then, and riz quickly schools his expression into one of quiet concentration. fabian starts to bound over, and riz frantically averts his gaze to look for his abandoned graph paper. he finds it on the concrete floor, curses his carelessness, and bends down to pick it up. when he looks back up, inexpertly stuffing his (yet again blank) graph paper into his binder and then his binder into his messenger bag, fabian is climbing over the last theatre seat, despite the far off voice of the dance team captain telling him,

“c’mon man, use the stairs on the side! the theatre kids will ritually sacrifice you to some weird bard god if you fuck up their seats!”

fabian gives riz a conspiratorial smile before looking back at the dance captain, and riz awkwardly hugs his messenger bag to his chest. fabian cups a hand to amplify his voice as he shouts back at them,

“i’d like to see them try!”

he turns back to riz. riz feels a little nauseous for some reason, possibly from the fact that he had been so discombobulated this morning that he had rushed out the door to catch the bus with only a granola bar for breakfast. fabian looks riz up and down before saying,

“ok so the deal is, practice is running a bit slow. but i think,” he turns his head quizically to the dance team captain, who rolls their eyes and gives fabian a thumbs up, and fabian beams, “i can leave early.”

riz casts a glance towards fabian’s partner, who he finds staring at fabian, brows furrowed in confusion before she gets a funny look on her face, like she’s just realized something, and then looks away. riz looks up at fabian, and says, trying to put an air of confidence and nonchalance into his voice but probably failing,

“you really don’t have to. i can figure it out on my own if you want to stay.”

fabian shakes his head,

“it’s not a problem, the ball.”

riz quirks a smile and ducks his head at the nickname, before saying,

“ok then. do you want to go to the library-” fabian shakes his head decidedly, having not gone to the library all freshman year (with the exception of adaine returning watches and wards) and decided halfway through sophomore that he would avoid it the rest of his high school career, “of course. not the library. you can’t let your jock reputation suffer by being seen in the library-”

fabian cuts him off,

“it’s not my,” he does air quotes, “jock reputation”

fabian puts his hands down and defiantly crosses his arms against his chest, “it’s just… the principle.”

riz rolls his eyes fondly,

“okay, well i guess your principles and i will study in the cafeteria.”

they spend most of the walk there in relative silence, with the only real sound being the ones of his shoes on the floor, which become closer to the ones present in his dream last night as the floor changes from the concrete of the theatre to the linoleum of the cafeteria. riz almost misses when they pass by the divination classroom, empty now, but with watery sunlight flooding in through too familiar windows. the door, unlike his dream, is propped open. riz stops in his tracks.

fabian, beside riz, cranes his head three stooges like to peer into the classroom, which is incredibly unnecessary as he’s already more than a head taller than riz and could just look straight over him. he seems in the process of figuring out why this classroom is vexing riz so much, automatically starting to square up to fight some invisible threat, when riz, somewhat stilted, asks,

“you had health with adaine after her final today, right? did she tell you how it went?”

fabian, satisfied that there’s not going to be a fight but still on edge from how riz is acting, responds,

“she said it could have gone better, but she seemed in an alright mood. if it went badly, she didn’t seem all that torn up about it, which i guess is a bit weird, for adaine.”

riz nods, not taking his eyes off the empty classroom,

“did she say why? she was in a good mood, i mean. like, a good breakfast, or she studied really well, or something?”

fabian thinks for a second, and then shrugs,

“she said she slept really well last night. are you okay? you’re acting kind of weird. did you get enough sleep last night?”

fabian says the last part with a laugh in his voice that riz has a sneaking suspicion is more of a disarming technique than anything he actually finds funny. riz tries to inhabit a casualness he doesn’t really feel, turning to fabian and says, higher pitched than normal,

“yeah, actually. i slept fine. you?”

fabian stares down at him. riz knows that lying to him won’t pan out, and he’ll likely find out sooner or later (and with friday’s upcoming sleepover, definitely sooner) but the idea of telling him about his dreams leaves a sour taste in riz’s mouth. the last time the concept of sleep and fabian had shared a space in his mind had been leviathan, which, for a vast variety of reasons, is a night riz would much rather leave alone in a dark corner of his mind. locked in a chest. with the key at the bottom of the ocean.

riz sighs, taking one last look at the classroom he’s never stepped foot in, at least in the waking world, and tells fabian,

“it doesn’t matter.”

and when fabian gives him a soft and reassuring smile back, he tries very hard to make himself believe it.

_____

riz is starting to wonder if his mind isn’t creative enough to think of new places to dream.

tonight, he can feel even more intimately the fall into his subconscious, his body getting more and more used to going to bed on a regular schedule. it’s almost nice, or it would be, if he didn’t settle in and open his eyes to the familiar space of his office.

it’s the same as it was the last time he was here. the heavy stillness that occupies the office is offset by an analog clock hung to the right of the door where he had appeared. the ticking of it is a comfort right now, even if it sometimes becomes an annoyance if he’s in a particular mood. dream riz is apparently no better at organizing in a way that looks aesthetically pleasing than awake riz is, because the file boxes that litter the floor of the office in the waking world are still present in the dream. his desk, a bulky utilitarian style thing that was popular three decades ago, sits in front of the only thing that is different.

riz feels it before he sees it.

the trail of hair at the nape of his neck stands on end, brushing uncomfortably against his collar. his ears twitch slightly, trying to zero in on any sounds of breathing, and sometimes, when it’s as quiet as it is now, a heartbeat. his muscles tense, waiting for the smallest sign of movement, perfectly poised to pounce away.

he casts his eyes over the room, his pupils growing wide as they adjust to the dark. the room slowly lightens, the planes and shadows of the furniture taking on colors just slightly off from their real world components. the steel grey of the file cabinets take on an iridescent hue, the dark wood of the desk turns the same gnarled grey-purple of the trees in sylvaire, and the windows, which should be alight with the never ceasing lights of downtown elmville, stay an oppressive black.

something turns and clicks in riz’s stomach like turning the safety off a gun. his hand goes to his side, where his father’s arcubus usually rests heavily against his thigh, but it closes around empty air.

oh, a suit but no weapons? what internal logic does that even follow?

and then he hears the click of an actual gun.

he spins around quickly, about to drop under the cover of the desk before he sees the gun’s handler, a goblin man just the slightest bit taller than him. his father, pok gukgak, is stony faced and backlit by a burning white gold light, with the slightest wisps of violet at the edges, trying to seep in.

riz freezes in his tracks, wide eyed. his father says, in the same voice riz had heard in hell, low and commanding,

“tell me who you are, where we are, and how you got me here.”

riz, mindful of the gun fixed on him, raises his hands in a surrender motion. his fight or flight response is in full swing, and his heart is pounding despite the knowledge that getting shot here wouldn't actually harm him, and perhaps wouldn't even hurt.

“i’m riz gukgak, we’re at my office but um- i guess not really? just in a weird recreation of my office? and i don't know why you're here.”

the dream version of his father doesn't lower the gun, just stares at riz with a hint of turmoil on his face that riz wouldn't be able to recognize if he didn't see it in the mirror from time to time. it brings with it an old an old pang of grief.

his father narrows his eyes, and says with something in his voice that tells riz he’s not entirely convinced,

“you're not my son.”

riz reels back at that. for a second, a shade of anger looms over him like a shadow, why the hell would he dream this? does he hate himself that much?

riz throws down his hands, halfway through saying,

“i am-”

when the gun goes off.

he’s been shot before, of course. he knows the pain of the ripped flesh and the one of the dull pounding of the cartilage it hits, blood vessels overworking and flooding the wound with an emerald green. but all around it is also an odd new sensation. the falling feeling he has when slipping into sleep but compounded into a nauseating vertigo. he brings his right hand to touch clawed fingers to the bullethole. when they come away and riz looks down at his fingers in the grey light, they're shimmering metallic, the iridescence of dreams without any of the pigment. it eerily reminds riz of one of those old noir movies.

he looks up at the dream version of his father and says, shocked,

“did you just shoot me?”

his dad holds for a beat, his eyes frantically looking from riz’s face to his shoulder where the wound is. riz is about to open his mouth to say… something, he doesn't know, when pok very quickly clicks the safety back on, places the gun on the desk, and rushes riz, putting one clawed hand, slightly bigger than riz’s still, on the bullet wound to staunch the bleeding.

“oh my god, kid, i’m so sorry. i didn't think it was you because i didn't know you were a-”

riz interrupts him, his heart beating faster as the reality of the fact that he just dreamed getting shot by his dead father sets in. he says, low and a bit breathy from the pain,

“i hate this. why did i ask for this. this is so f-”

he stops himself in time. pok’s brows furrow and then clear,

“i just shot you, you swearing is not the thing anyone is going to be mad about.”

riz swallows down a lump in his throat. this isn’t his father, it’s just a dream, he knows that. but the dream’s hand is solid and slightly cold at the fingertips because his subconscious has remembered that pok had had bad circulation just like riz does. a wave of grief comes over him, as it has on and off for the last seven years, and probably always will.

pok, by some means of dream logic, produces a first aid kit. the second the disinfectant wipe hits riz’s skin, a wave of pain almost more immense than when he was shot comes over him. riz can feel all of it, the tiny droplets of hydrogen peroxide, and the tiny fibers of the wipe itself, itchy and cold and burning and too real.

riz winces, closes his eyes and then opens them again, and as soon as he does, the dream seems to… slip, slightly. the sensation of the wipe instantly fades out, as does the feeling of the metal desk he had leaned against in his panic. soon all he can feel is his own body, his heartbeat racing and his head thumping to match. in tandem with the loss of sensation, riz watches as the familiar purple mist that lays heavy at the edges of the space closes in, obscuring the walls and making the room smaller. it looses some of it’s saturation, too, the same as riz’s blood did when he looked down, turning a dull and slightly metallic color.

the only thing riz can really still feel is his father’s hand, grounding against his shoulder. and then how the wound almost lurches, the bleeding starting to clot at a fast rate. pok pulls his hand away suddenly, confusion evident on his face as he stares at the blood on it. it cuts through the dim light that pok emits, rivulets of soft purple where it runs in the lines of his palms. pok gets a look on his face riz can’t parse, before putting his hand back to further staunch the bleeding. riz, remembering the countless books on dreams he had gone through when researching the nightmare king, grits his teeth and asks,

“how is this supposed to be cathartic?”

pok looks between his hands staunching the bleeding on riz’s shoulder and the first aid kit, biting his lip the same way riz does when he’s thinking about something. he seems only half focused on the question as he answers in a very unfulfilling way,

“i’m not the one to ask, you’re the one running the show here.”

riz huffs in annoyance. his father, in a quick series of movements, grabs some antiseptic, some tweezers, and a roll of bandages from the first aid kit. riz stiffens.

“what are you doing?”

pok smiles a suave smile and responds, calm as he would be if this were a regular chat,

“don’t tense your shoulder like that. we’re going to have a very casual conversation where you catch me up on whatever else is new in your life, and i’m going to take the bullet out.”

riz’s eyes widen,

“you are not taking the bullet out-”

pok, quick as he arranged the supplies, goes in with the tweezers, and asks,

“so, girlfriend, boyfriend, still thinking it’s not going to happen, or?”

riz, in another wave of pain more nauseating and dizzying than anything he’s ever felt in the waking world, gives up on being any semblance of composed in front of a dream version of his father that just shot him, and cries out in pain. pok winces in sympathy, and says,

“it honestly is better if you try to focus on something else.”

riz spends a couple seconds focusing on trying to wake up that ultimately prove fruitless.

and maybe it’s the way the room gets more and more claustrophobic as the mist diminishes and the walls close in. maybe it’s the way that riz knows the night is passing so much faster than he can even comprehend, that that’s how dreams work (not that anything else about how dreams are supposed to work seems to have permeated) but each passing moment feels like it’s sludging along like a dying heartbeat. maybe it’s the way his father is digging in his shoulder, his bottom lip trapped between his teeth showing the care and focus he’s putting into the action. but something in riz breaks, and he decides, fuck it.

he deliriously gets out,

“i don’t really know, dad-”

at the same moment the metal tweezers close around the bullet and it clatters to the stone floor. pok, in a practiced but hurried manuever, pours antiseptic in the wound, resulting in another bout of vertigo, and then wraps the junction of his shoulder and arm with bandages. the blood from pok’s hands that stains them is the pale violet of the light in dreams.

pok, slowing down once the first layer of bandages is on, raises an eyebrow,

“you don’t know?”

riz flushes, though he doesn’t quite know why. the corners of pok’s lips quirk up just a bit as he notices this, though he doesn’t say anything else. riz opens his mouth then closes it again, trying to come up with an explanation. whether it’s for himself or his dad, he doesn’t know either.

“i- i mean. nothing has changed, really?”

his dad hums in response, not meeting riz’s eyes, before probing,

“odd sentence to phrase like a question, kid.”

riz bristles and responds, more confident,

“nothing has changed. kristen is a wreck and tracker hasn’t even left yet, and every time ayda has to spend the weekend in leviathan fig mopes, and i… i haven’t felt that,”

riz feels his stomach drop, maybe the nausea coming back as he continues,

“i don’t know that i want to, if that’s what love is like.”

pok pauses in his methodical wrapping of riz’s wounds. he takes a breath in, looks at riz with such emotion on his face that it takes riz aback. pok breathes out then, a sad thing, and says,

“kiddo… if you don’t feel that, that’s fine. but don’t cut yourself off from it cuz it might hurt, or be- embarrassing,”

pok raises his voice the slightest bit at riz leaning in to interject,

“it hurts regardless. it doesn’t have to be romantic, or sexual. are you telling me that if adaine left you wouldn’t be a wreck?”

riz grumbles, not meeting pok’s eyes. pok waits patiently for riz to respond,

“of course i’d be a wreck. but i wouldn’t, like, hide away all weekend in a blanket.”

pok grins, his eyes twinkling with flecks of white-gold that riz can’t remember if he had when he was alive, which is a kick in the teeth in an already fragile emotional moment. this is so normal. or, well, not normal, but normal for them.

(riz faintly wonders if in some far off parallel universe, the ones ayda and adaine go on about in the wee hours of sleepovers, a riz who didn’t lose his dad is sitting right here, legs unthinkingly swinging off the edge of a beat up desk, and the lights of downtown elmville illuminating his dad’s face, a five o’clock shadow and smile lines where there aren’t any on his own dad’s, and if they’re having a conversation like this one.)

it’s so intimately easy to forget that his dad won’t be there when he wakes up.

that he’s not even here now.

pok laughs a small laugh, and plays with the edge of the bandage he’s holding absentmindedly as he responds,

“probably. but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t feel it. everyone... gods this is cheesy. everyone loves differently, riz. in all ways. it’s confusing and…”

pok sighs and averts his eyes then, tries to school his face into a neutral expression and resumes wrapping riz’s shoulder,

“i wish i could help you figure it out.”

this is the type of advice riz has been wanting for the past six years, and it brings more grief than clarity, and all he can say in return is a badly hidden, choked up,

“yeah. me too.”

pok nods, wrapping another loop of bandage slightly too tight, tying it off. he offers a hand to help riz to get off the desk, only slightly bigger than his own, but with no pale scars across them.

and for the millionth time, riz knows it’s not his dad. he knows this is some corner of his subconscious, the scared little eighth grader with a beat up briefcase terrified because he can’t seem to feel anything right, but pok’s aura sizzles like the lamp he had on his desk when riz was little, and he smells like tobacco and aftershave. and the pit of riz’s chest, for the first time in so long, feels warm instead of hungry.

riz takes his father’s palm in his grip, and wraps the arm that isn’t bandaged around pok’s neck, pulling him into a hug riz hasn’t really felt in six years, and never will again.

riz’s forehead rests in the hollow of pok’s shoulder, and he holds back a wave of emotion because he doesn’t know if it’s nausea or grief or something else, and he can’t deal with whatever it is right now. pok’s hand splays out and rubs soothing circles across the planes of riz’s back, and he says, almost as if riz isn’t meant to hear it,

“oh, kiddo.”

riz feels the sizzling of pok’s aura then, burning it’s way inwards, the place where he rests his forehead rapidly disappearing till he’s left with only his empty hands.

the office seems colder.

_____

when riz wakes up, it’s not yet dawn, and he feels like death warmed over.

his room is dark, and the neon numbers of his alarm clock read 4:55. riz rubs a hand over his face and tries not to immediately lie back and scream into his pillow. there’s no way he can get back to sleep quick enough for it to be worth it.

he swings his legs over the side of his bed, and pads over to the bathroom. he takes himself in as he brushes his teeth. the harsh lights certainly don’t do him any favors, but he definitely looks like he feels. his dark circles, which had somewhat lessened over the course of the last few days, are back in full, a dark and sallow sage green. his curls look messy and unkempt, the left side of them smushed and disfigured, dried while sleeping. riz sighs, and flips the hood of his sweatshirt above his head.

he slowly makes his way to the kitchen, careful not to make any loud sounds, and avoiding the parts of the floor that creak under weight. he tries to be as quiet as he can, even committing the cardinal sin (or so the rest of the bad kids say) of pouring milk before cereal as to lessen the noise. he almost makes it through, triumphantly heading to the bar stools and kitchen island that function as a dining table, and then he trips on an empty coffee mug left in the middle of the floor.

he steadies himself in time, but the spoon in his right hand clatters to the ground louder than any shatter spell fig could cast. his mom, across the room on the couch, shoots up from her sleeping position, a spiral notebook half open laid across her chest falling to the ground next to her. riz freezes.

who the hell left a coffee mug in the middle of the kitchen floor?

riz takes a quick glance down, it’s a misshapen burnt ochre color mug with a chipped glaze around the lip that kristen had made in a pottery class over the summer that makes whatever you’re drinking taste like burnt plastic. no one but riz uses it, because no one but riz drinks coffee strong enough to hide it.

sklonda, having taken a couple of seconds to get her bearings, whips her head towards riz and squints, her glasses lost somewhere in the pile of notes around her.

“riz? what time is it?”

riz looks down at his watch, making sure to hold his cereal bowl steady,

“five a.m. you can go back to bed, i can be quiet.”

sklonda rustles through her papers to find her glasses, blinking a couple of times as her eyes adjust. she finally registers the question then, and shakes her head,

“i’m alright, kiddo,” she zeroes in on riz’s cereal bowl, “do we have more fantasy lucky charms?”

riz nods, finally taking a look down at his bowl. he tilts his head. all the marshmallows are purple horseshoes.

i already helped solve the mystery of an ancient goddess this spring. i’m not dealing with this right now.

he looks back up at his mom, who is trying to squeeze past him to get to the cabinet where riz had put away the fantasy lucky charms. riz steps to the side, setting his bowl on the counter. he hops onto a barstool, and his feet nearly touch the floor. his mom hands him a clean spoon with the tired focus of someone who’s not really awake yet.

they eat in silence for an untense couple of minutes. sklonda’s bowl has a distinct variety of marshmallows. riz passive aggressively eats all his so he doesn’t have to look at them. sklonda views the violent nature of how he’s wielding his spoon with a raised eyebrow, and probes,

“you haven’t slept this badly in a couple days. you doing alright?”

riz very pointedly does not convey any emotion on his face, which isn’t hard for him, but for some reason, sklonda sees right through. she gives him more focus, leaning across the kitchen island to knock his hood down and ruffle his hair. riz rolls his eyes, and says,

“i’m fine,” he pulls his hood back up and mumbles, “just bad dreams.”

sklonda blinks slightly, a reaction no one riz (and maybe pok, once upon a time) could catch. her voice is the one that parents do when they’re trying to hide that they’re concerned about something you’ve said as she replies,

“i didn’t know you dreamt.”

riz lifts another bite of fantasy lucky charms to his mouth, prolonging the silence after the question. when sklonda doesn’t continue, he responds,

“i usually don’t.”

sklonda nods her head, her brow slightly furrowed. her fingers drum absentmindedly on the countertop, and she taps her spoon against her bowl a couple of times in thought. the room starts to brighten slightly as the sun peaks over the horizon, and the kitchen is lit by that blue grey that riz hasn’t seen in its true form in awhile, having woken up about a half hour after this for the last couple days. he looks up at sklonda, noticing that she also has the sage green dark circles under her eyes that riz sports, making them perfect lookalikes.

riz swallows another bite, and then continues,

“do you dream? or,” he looks down at his near empty bowl, “did dad?”

sklonda pauses with her spoon halfway to her lips. she lowers it, and says, hesitant and careful,

“not really, hon. i think maybe once or twice in my entire life, it’s not very common for goblins.”

riz nods, still not meeting his mom’s eyes. something in his stomach turns at knowing that yet again, he’s not like his parents. and this time he meant to be.

he takes the last bite of his cereal, and sklonda goes on,

“as for your dad…” sklonda takes a breath, “i don’t think so. if he did, he certainly didn’t tell me about it.” she stares him down with obviously fake disinterest, and after a moment asks, “what have you been dreaming about?”

riz shrugs dispassionately, not wanting to let on the enormity of the weirdness that his dreams entail. he slides off the barstool, and brings his bowl to the sink. the metal clanks in a normal and refreshing way, the opposite of the tweezers from his dream.

“i don’t know mom, normal stuff. adaine, school…” he adds, mumbling so that maybe his mom won’t hear him, “dad, last night.”

his back is to sklonda, but he can almost hear her sigh. he can barely hear her come up behind him with the sound of the running water of the tap. she lays a tentative hand in the same place dream pok had, and rubs the same soothing circles, the effect somewhat dampened by the thick fabric of his hoodie. he leans into her touch a little bit. she leans forward, her other hand comes around to place her own bowl in the sink, betraying her expression. her face dons a sad nostalgic smile that she often has in moments like these. going on seven years means that the poignant moments of extreme sorrow are few and far between, more often than not missing pok entails a slight shadow on the day’s events quickly rectified by a good long talk. she seems at ease with the situation, probably chalking it up to a bout of grief with odd side effects.

“i don’t have class this afternoon, if you want to go visit him.”

riz grabs a dishrag to dry his bowl, again not meeting sklonda’s eyes as he answers,

“yeah, that would… that would be nice.”

_____

it’s completely normal to analyze where to sit down so your friends will sit down in the spots you think they will,

riz thinks, as he stands awkwardly a yard away from the table. two years and he still treats friendship like a game of fantasy stratego. actually, scratch that, he knows all the rules of fantasy stratego. friendship is an infinitely less navigable situation.

it’s finally stopped raining, and bright sunlight streams in through the abundant windows and doors (added as a tactical decision, as to not repeat a certain corn incident). it’s one of those suspiciously hot days, the air smells of rain lifting from the pavement, and at the edges of it, pale green prairie grass shoots up towards the sky, which seems to go on as far as the eye can see. this is the spring of riz’s childhood, and it brings a special feeling to his chest, round and dizzying and unnameable. this was the spring he had met last year, suddenly, after three months locked in a cell, the one he had missed so desperately.

adaine comes up behind him then, her lunchbox swinging lazily in her hand. riz looks down at the chicken burger drenched in hot sauce in a futile attempt to make it less dry on his styrofoam lunch plate and grimaces. he wishes he could bring his lunch from home. adaine doesn’t continue on to the lunch table, but waits next to him. she narrows her eyes at the lunch table, and slightly leans into riz’s space to say,

“sit in the second seat from the right on the far side.”

riz looks up at her and sees traces of white retreating from her eyes. he bites his lip, waits for a beat, and says,

“that is a gross misuse of your oracle abilities-”

adaine gets a sly smirk on her face as she interrupts,

“thank you.”

riz rolls his eyes fondly. adaine starts towards the table, and sits on the far right far side. as she unpacks her lunch onto an unfolded paper napkin, she explains,

“fig will sit on the left end because she likes how the sun feels on her back. gorgug will sit either in between ragh and fig, or in between kristen and fig, but tracker is here today, so kristen will sit next to them, and ragh will sit across. fabian will sit next to ragh on the near end because the light will hit his good side. so that means,” she points to the left end, “fig,” she gestures from that end to the other, to the four seats across from them, “gorgug, ragh, fabian, empty.” she points to the right end, “also empty.” she unnecessarily leans over riz to point at the two seats next to them, “kristen on the far left, tracker next to her.”

riz furrows his brow, resting his chin on his palm. he turns to adaine and asks,

“but, wouldn’t kristen and gorgug’s position be more advantageous if gorgug was on our side, next to tracker?”

adaine pauses infinitesimally in the opening of the tupperware that houses her pb&j, doesn’t meet riz’s eyes, and says,

“yeah, but then ragh would be across from kristen, because fabian always sits across from you.”

riz’s stomach flips a little, probably from the overwhelming smell of hot sauce. he looks down at his tray, wrinkling his nose. maybe he’ll stick to the tater tots today.

the table shakes as ragh and tracker slide up to it at what riz can estimate is about fifty miles an hour, their shoes squeaking against the linoleum, tracker fully vaulting themself across the tabletop to sit down across from ragh. (in the exact spots adaine said they would. riz looks at her out of the corner of his eye. she smirks at him and steals a tater tot.) ragh, out of breath, looks at riz and asks,

“dude, you’ve got insane perception, who got here first?”

tracker leans back, their arms crossed against their chest, winded in a way that looks effortlessly cool. they turn to riz, and point to the table,

“i should get like, half a second off because i had to go farther-”

ragh interrupts,

“dude, you’re a werewolf, your dex is off the fucking wall, it doesn’t count,” he smiles at riz, wide and toothy, “c’mon the ball, you know i beat them by miles.”

riz pops another tater tot, ragh and tracker looking on in anticipation. if riz was naturally inclined to smiling, he wouldn’t be able to fight a grin right now. he swallows, and looks at the doors, as to make sure they don’t get the idea that he likes being the referee and assign him the role permanently, and says,

“without taking time off for the table vaulting-” ragh starts to cheer and tracker groans, “tracker still won.”

ragh immediately begins protesting, and tracker claps and throws their hands in the air,

“werewolf supremacy, baby! you can’t beat us!”

ragh grumbles, and starts to settle down and pull out his lunch. he sets a thermos down, and then leans slightly across the table and narrows his eyes at tracker,

“i’m gonna beat you before i graduate, o’shaughnessy.”

tracker takes a swig of their water bottle that had previously been clipped to their belt loop along with their keys, grins a feral grin, and responds,

“theoretically, you could, but also,” they point at their chest, “i don’t have to be here. i could just not come back till next year.”

kristen throws a leg over the seat of the table, using tracker’s shoulder as a grounding point, and sets her tray down.

“and you wouldn’t miss me? i see how it is.”

tracker slings an arm around their girlfriend and kisses her on the cheek. kristen smiles, her dimples showing.

the hairs on the back of riz’s neck stand on end then, and his hands, normally cold and stiff, feel like they’ve just been awoken by a shock of static electricity. he gets the urge to do something with them, nervous and excited energy suddenly coursing through him.

tracker looks at him, taking their arm back from its short lived home around kristen’s shoulders. they have a worried expression on their face, and their voice is low as to not alarm kristen, who is now talking to ragh, and fig, who takes her place at the left end.

“you okay, riz?”

riz gives a hazy smile and a nod. his heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest, but he’s not going to tell his friend’s girlfriend that. tracker narrows their eyes, and after a second, they seem to figure something out, pulling one of their rings off their fingers. they hand it to him, it’s the color of gunmetal but probably something like tin or iron. it’s got a groove in the center with tiny metal ball bearings trapped inside. riz pushes them around, it’s soothing. he looks up at them,

“why-”

they just shake their head from side to side, still talking slightly softer,

“don’t mention it. i have too many rings anyway.”

riz tries to casually look at their hands. they have seven on currently, so he supposes it isn’t a great loss, and if it gets riz through the lunch hour, he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. when he looks back up, tracker has joined ragh, fig, and kristen’s conversation, and gorgug now sits in his predicted place. the only person still missing is-

“what are we talking about?”

fabian goes around the side of the bench and slides over rather than do what everybody else does and do it one foot at a time. whether this is him trying to be graceful, or a holdover from the disastrous attempts to jump on these same tables from the first day of freshman year, riz doesn’t know.

fabian looks into riz’s eyes, and riz realizes he’s waiting on him for an answer. he frantically goes through the past thirty seconds trying to put together the snatches of conversation he heard in the background. thankfully, ragh saves him, explaining,

“ok, so, bruce springsteen. what’s your favorite song?”

fabian takes a bite of his lettuce wrap, seems thinks about it for a second, and then says, faux casually,

“maybe, ‘walk like a man’?”

people don’t actually look to the left when they lie. it’s a common misconception, but there’s no one way to catch someone who’s not telling the truth. some when they lie, will go way in the other direction of how bad liars are shown on t.v and be too confident. others will have physical tells, riz knows that he blushes, and so does kristen. adaine says things slightly faster than normal, riz does that too. gorgug is the opposite, he says things slightly slower. good liars, however, will say a lie ingrained in truth, as casually as possible. you’re more likely to analyze someone’s words and demeanor in a more emotionally volatile situation. fig is an exceptional liar, and fabian, while sometimes going overboard can do it when he really wants.

why try this hard to make your friends believe your favorite bruce springsteen song is ‘walk like a man’? that’s not even a popular one.

riz himself is not a very good liar. he relies more on not being seen at all than talking his way out of a situation. but he is a detective. and he knows how to get information without setting people on edge. so in the next couple moments, he does three things. he leans across the table and steals one of fabian’s veggie straws, so that the attention will be on his hands and not his face, he places his elbows on the table because a loosened posture makes people more inclined to trust you in an informal setting, and he says,

“i thought it was the streets one?”

because not knowing that it’s called backstreets will make the question seem more innocuous.

fabian’s eye widens and his jaw tightens slightly. he makes a face at riz that he can’t decipher. probably something along the lines of “really? you’re going to press this issue?”. riz raises one eyebrow and fabian quickly looks down again at his lunch.

fabian shrugs and picks at his lettuce wrap, looks up at the rest of the group and says,

“i can’t choose. why are we talking about our favorite bruce springsteen songs? and why has no one asked riz? his is really embarrassing.”

fabian smiles ruefully at riz. riz rolls his eyes,

“there’s nothing embarrassing about liking the second most popular song in a discography.”

fig puts her combat boot clad feet on the table and answers,

“we were just talking about how a lot of his songs have common themes. riz, ‘i’m on fire’ wouldn’t be embarrassing if it was literally anyone else’s favorite.”

a giant blue hand appears and picks fig’s feet off the table. the noise in the cafeteria goes down to a murmur for a second and then rises to its normal level. fig looks affronted and throws a crumpled up sheet of lined paper at adaine,

“did you seriously just use a fifth level spell to get me to take my feet off the table?”

adaine is in the process of folding her napkin back up, her lunch finished. she takes a sip from her juice box, and then answers,

“i didn’t do any damage, and last time i tried suggestion you used a bardic and beat the save.”

fig narrows her eyes, and responds,

“glyph of warding with a spell glyph that stored levitate.”

adaine starts digging through her lunch box, and says,

“i didn’t stock it, and i think that would make everyone’s lunch levitate. also, how do you know about glyph of warding? are you sneaking out to wizard classes now?”

fig smiles, propping her chin up on her palm, her elbows resting on the table. she blushes when she realizes people are looking at her, and says,

“ayda was talking about it.”

adaine uses mage hand to send fig an extra juice box. fig stabs into it with the little plastic straw with too much bloodlust for one p.m on a thursday afternoon.

the bad kids continue to chatter, but riz is soon distracted by a buzz from his crystal in his pocket. with a quick check to make sure there are no lunch monitors behind him, he takes it out. it’s a text message from his mother: another woman from my class asked to switch study guides before my final saturday evening, but she can only meet up tonight. is it okay if we reschedule cravencroft for tomorrow afternoon / saturday morning?

riz’s chest tightens and he fiddles with the ring again. cravencroft was like therapy without the discomfort of your therapist being half your friends’ pseudo dad. he had a lot to tell his father that he couldn't tell anyone else, and the idea of waiting till the weekend is not optimal if the week continues the way it’s going.

his crystal buzzes again, a text from fabian. riz steals a glance at him, and fabian grins and winks his slow one eyes blink at him. the text reads: who are you texting?

riz rolls his eyes. if adaine’s destiny wasn't knowing everyone's fate, fabian would give her a run for her money in terms of being nosy. riz texts back: who do you think i know well enough to text in the middle of school that isn't in this room? it’s just my mom shifting plans from after school to friday afternoon or saturday.

fabian texts back immediately: so you won't be at the sleepover?

riz pauses, the fiddling with his ring speeding up. he had forgotten. if he doesn't go see his dad this afternoon, he'd have to miss the sleepover or wait till next week. on the other hand, missing the sleepover would give him a little more time to make more headway on figuring out his dreams. riz responds: i guess not.

riz nearly puts his crystal away, but sees fabian typing something out. to riz's right, adaine is trying very hard to seem uninterested in whatever riz is doing on his crystal while still engaging with fig. riz's crystal lights up again: is it an activity or do you just need a ride someplace?

riz looks suspiciously at fabian. he stares him down as he texts back: why?

fabian doesn't seem to notice riz staring at him, and he quickly sends back: well, if it's just that you need a ride this afternoon i don’t have plans. i could take you.

riz waits nearly a minute, typing and retyping his message. he knows fabian can see him, and so it's a useless endeavor to try and seem casual, but riz still has to try. he ends up with a simple: it’s cravencroft. is that alright?

riz can feels fabian's posture shift from the way the plastic of the lunch tables also do under his weight, but he can't do anything other than wait and stare down at his screen. looking to gage fabian’s response would be futile most times, and riz is most certainly not brave enough for it to be an option right now.

he gets a message back about thirty seconds later: of course. should we meet at 3:00 in the parking lot?

riz looks at fabian. he has the hand he's not holding his crystal in on the back of his neck the way he does when he’s nervous and doesn't want to show it. the sun hits his elbow and its absence cuts across his face, like the stark shadows of an oil painting. adaine was right, the light does hit his good side when he sits there.

riz sends a final message back before joining in with the rests of the bad kids conversation: sounds perfect, thanks.

(he doesn't see fabian's return message, sent two minutes later: always, the ball.)

_____

the three days of rain have finally lifted from the pavement by the time school gets out, and riz exits the front doors to the fresh scent of impending summer. fabian is waiting there, half leaning on the bike rack, early afternoon sun painting his white curls gold and glinting off his earrings.

sometimes riz wonders if fabian just refuses to go places where he won’t look like the main character in an indie coming of age film, but if that were true, he wouldn’t spend so much time by riz’s side.

fabian is having a conversation with the hangman in his head, as evidenced by the vast amounts of smoke coming from the hangman’s grill, and the periodic revving of the engine. the hangman, as much as a bike can look discontent, does, and he somehow stares riz down without a proper set of eyes. fabian, oblivious to this, catches sight of riz and smiles wide. his face shifts just slightly at the same time the hangman revs his engine and backs slightly up, scaring a group of freshmen.

riz bounds his way down the steps, eager to get out of the crowd. he dashes under a group of gashbat players hanging out on the concrete divider, and jumps over the joined hands of two girls on the dance team to finally land at the base of the steps. he dodges a couple of the previously mentioned freshmen who are now looking backward in paranoia, and finally ends up near the bike rack.

fabian hands him a helmet and says, dryly,

“and you accuse me of,” fabian does air quotes, “unnecessarily dramatic stunts.”

riz takes the helmet and holds it under his arm for the time being. he responds, matter of factly,

“i use my twenty dex and the ten levels of the class specialized in sneaking around to avoid the after school rush. you try and surf a motorcycle while trying to fight a giant rock monster next to a pit of acid, and then you ride it into fire.”

fabian rolls his eye, and mounts the motorcycle with practiced grace. he puts his helmet (an insistence from cathilda) with the same amount of flourish and ease, though he quickly arranges his hair so a few choice coils escape and frame his face. he leans his elbows on the handlebars and retorts,

“says the same person who slid down a two-story ladder on a briefcase that same fight.”

riz shakes his head and takes off his hat to stuff in the large locked glovebox on the side of the hangman next to his briefcase. he smiles fondly, he remembers fabian’s face as he slid down that ladder, mouth slightly open in awe. rogues are meant to hide in shadows, to not draw attention to themselves, and most times riz feels comfortable in that. the darkness feels like a comfortable home he can retreat to when things get tough. but sometimes…

sometimes riz wonders what it would be like if he pushed the limits a little bit more.

riz realizes fabian is looking up at him, his single eye fixated on riz’s own, his lips slightly parted as if he’s about to say something else. fabian seems to realize that riz is seeing him look at him, and blinks, suddenly, then averts his gaze.

riz stands there for a second, with half a mind to shake fabian by the shoulders and scream, what is going on! before he pushes the impulse down. he takes the helmet out from under his arm, inexpertly shoving it on his head and adjusting the straps in a move that he’s sure looks a lot less practiced than fabian’s, even though he himself spends a fair amount of time on this motorcycle.

he eyes the hangman, trying to gage whether or not he’s in a good enough mood to not protest riz riding on him today.

“hey hangman.”

the hangman grumbles and sparks shoot from his grill as he responds,

“ball…”

fabian rubs a thumb over one of the handlebars the way one would casually rub a dog’s head. he turns back towards riz and asks,

“all good to go?”

riz nods emphatically. fabian revs the engine, the hangman having apparently been cajoled into accepting riz (for now). riz swings a leg over to settle in on the back. he plants his feet on the footholds, and goes to hold onto fabian’s waist, and-

except he hesitates.

it’s odd, he’s done this a thousand times before. but, there are handholds on the side. why had he never held on to those before? why had he never noticed them? why notice them now?

his hands are hovering a centimeter over fabian’s waist, and riz has a memory of being very young, and watching some kids program when the power had gone out, and the tv had clicked off, static still sizzling on the surface. and he had reached a tiny clawed hand up, and let it rest for just a second, the smallest distance away. he was young enough that he didn’t know what a power outage was, so all he was left with was a sense of confusion, and a desperate longing to touch what he knew he shouldn’t.

fabian turns to face him, one eyebrow raised and a laugh in his voice, and says,

“i promise i will not let the hangman throw you off of him, alright the ball?”

riz laughs and it catches in his throat. he tries to think about what he looks like right now, his face flushed a slight emerald, hands splayed out and hesitantly reaching for something right within his grasp, with no explanation in sight.

eventually, riz just swallows whatever he might have said, and nods. he closes his eyes and encircles his arms around fabian’s waist, hands clasping together the way they have a thousand times.

fabian takes off, and riz’s hands immediately press against his stomach from the momentum. riz opens his eyes to look behind him in an attempt to halt whatever thoughts these are in their tracks, and sees the hangman leave skid marks in the parking lot as they tear out of it and onto the historic highway that heads west.

the wind is a welcome relief, late may not yet hot enough to stave off the bite of it at high speeds. the wind resistance is a grounding presence, making riz spend most of his energy on just staying on. they ride like this for an amount of time that riz wouldn’t be able to tell anyone if his life was on the line, just the crumbling and deteriorating blacktop roads that no one maintenances, the prairie looming in at the edges of it, and the vision of the forest preserve in the distance.

they eventually come to a stop a couple hundred feet in front of a large iron fence with open gates framed by box elder trees that sway in the wind. they make dancing patterns of dappled sunlight on the gravel path. the river has split off and a creek runs around the edge of the property, making a natural fence where riz knows from experience various geese like to visit. even the hangman seems to quiet his growling and sputtering in a moment of tentative unsaid peace. it’s so beautiful it’s awkward.

riz hops off, wiping his sweaty palms off on his pants. fabian dismounts as well, leaving the hangman to zip around the circular gravel driveway, prompting said geese to fly up and take off. it’s hotter here than it is downtown by the river, and riz takes his helmet off to keep it at bay a little. the gravel crunches under his feet, kicking up some dust.

riz turns to fabian, who seems to see something riz doesn’t, his eye wide and his face still. riz whips his head around to look behind him, expecting a ghoul or a ghost or the creepy innkeeper with the unicycle, but there’s just the picturesque cemetery, same as always. riz looks back at fabian, who blinks, and says, “you um- the hangman has your hat. and briefcase, also.”

riz’s hands immediately go to his head, where sure enough, there’s no brim of his newsboy cap to unthinkingly adjust. he can hear the hangman in the distance, as well as the angry quacks of many geese. fabian grimaces. whether it’s in sympathy for the geese or the hangman, riz doesn’t know.

after about a minute of awkward silence, the hangman comes up the drive again, his paint job not insignificantly chipped in certain places. the sparks coming from the grill have grown into dull embers, and they burn a hole in the knees of fabian’s pants when the hangman rams into them. fabian responds to whatever the hangman is saying out loud, telling him,

“yes, well hangman, that’s why i, personally, don’t antagonize geese,” hangman rams into fabian’s knees slightly less gentle than he previously had, obviously saying something that fabian responds to with an exasperated, “we’re not making them our sworn enemy, they’ve got environmental protections against that sort of thing.”

riz assesses the situation and comes to the conclusion that it’s unlikely hangman will let him near enough to grab his hat and case. he sighs, and starts to sneak away towards the entrance. he passes through the gates before reminding himself that fabian is also his ride back, unless he wants to stay at the cemetery till dark. he’s somewhat out of earshot from them, but he can still see fabian, now on his knees in front of the hangman, talking animatedly, every so often gesturing towards the creek. riz feels warm, it may be better that his hat is as of the present moment unavailable. last summer he got nearly got heatstroke more times than he could count.

riz cups his hands around his mouth and yells,

“i’ll be about an hour!”

fabian looks up startled, apparently unaware of how far riz had gotten away. he raises his hand in a thumbs-up and then goes back to his conversation with the hangman.

_____

the walk to his father’s grave is long, as it’s near the back of the property, where trees from the forest preserve start to creep in. when riz finally gets there, the shade from the large black locust trees that loom over the fence is a relief, and he sits down on the memorial bench of someone else. his father’s grave is about a yard away, a dark stone that’s starting to wear at the edges.

riz as always, starts with,

“hi dad.”

pok, as always, doesn’t answer.

it’s still nice to know that he can hear him, of course. that changed everything, knowing that the annoying statement of, i’m sure he’s watching over you, was true to some extent. riz doesn’t know if he’d feel that great if pok was watching him at every moment, but the grave is the perfect middle, like a voicemail. riz doesn’t have to tell pok anything he doesn’t want to, but he knows pok will hear everything that he does choose to share.

riz fiddles with his new ring again, which is rapidly becoming a habit. not really knowing how to sink in gradually to something like this, riz just goes all in and says,

“i keep having weird dreams.”

he pauses, even if he doesn’t really need to. he waits a few moments and then continues,

“i- kassandra asked if i wanted them, and i said that i did, and i do, but…” riz sighs, looking off into the forest beyond the fence, “i think i fucked something up. they aren’t-” riz’s voice is small and laced with shame, “i know they aren’t right. something is going on, and i know i should try and fix it. but i’m the one who asked for it, and it’s not like they’re all that bad! or, well.”

riz thinks of last night’s dream, the violent vertigo, and the blood, and the way he had woken up like he hadn’t slept at all. he pauses, and then keeps talking,

“some of them have been bad. but there are good parts, too, and i don’t want…” riz crosses his arms in front of his chest and looks down, “i don’t want to lose those.”

he can practically feel the judgment seething from the grave from across the planes. riz protests,

“if the worst ever gets worse, i’ll find a way to get in touch with kassandra.”

riz nods then, decisively. he drums his fingers on the iron arm of the bench, the sound of his claws hitting the metal filling the silence. he says quietly then, something he didn’t plan to say,

“i actually had a dream about you.”

he can almost imagine his father’s eyebrows raising and him responding, about me? surely you have something more interesting to fill your head than your dear old dad, kid.

riz smiles something sad and defeated, and says,

“yeah, it um. well, it wasn’t great in the beginning, but it was good to talk to you, even if it wasn’t really you.”

riz takes a deep breath, trying to bring himself to seem more upbeat.

“adaine did pretty well on her final, she thinks. they wouldn’t let her take it separately, which jawbone is really mad about. he’s gonna take it to gilear, and we’ll see what happens after that. gorgug and fig have booked a lot of graduation parties they’re going to sneak us into-” riz freezes, “where none of us will ingest any alcohol or otherwise recreational mind-altering substances, of course.”

nice save there, he thinks, sarcastically.

“ragh and tracker are leaving in a couple of weeks. we’re trying to ignore it, but it’s weird. gorgug and kristen and fabian especially are taking it pretty hard, but…”

riz’s chest feels tight. he knows he’s leaving stuff untouched. he could talk about a million other things. he could talk about how everyone is so busy, adaine and aelwyn with each other, understandably, but still. that fig spends every free moment with ayda, that she never comes over when gortholax does anymore. that gorgug is basically an honorary seven maiden now, that he even skipped out on the last sleepover to go to theirs. that kristen and tracker reserve every weekend for preparation and study of galicaea, and the rest trying to soak in as much of each other that they can. that his mom is too tired trying to balance making ends meet and school that riz barely sees her. that the only person who seems to actively try to make time for him is fabian, and how he knows something is going on with him, but-

but talking about it makes it all real, makes it a thousand different clues scattered around his office, and if he talks about it then riz won’t be able to resist the urge to go and solve it, and if this is as good as he’s going to get? if it’s fabian giving him rides to places, and bi-weekly study sessions with adaine, and parties he’d much rather stay home from with fig and gorgug, and sitting next to kristen at lunch? then that’s the best he’s ever had, and he’s not going to go fuck it all up by saying it’s not enough.

“but i’m sure they’ll pull through. ragh and tracker say they’ll send letters, kristen is excited about that, she keeps trying to get me to watch fantasy pride & prejudice so i’ll,” riz does air quotes, “appropriately understand how romantic it is.”

riz rolls his eyes. he thinks gorgug’s satellite phone is plenty romantic, based on the fact that it lets you talk to your romantic partner, and not have to wait weeks in between messages.

riz kicks the dirt under his feet, and then says,

“mom would probably tell me to say hi, by the way. she was going to take me, so, she probably would’ve told you herself, but then she got tied up with something, so i came alone.”

riz remembers fabian then, and checks his watch. he only has five minutes left.

“i don’t want to keep my ride waiting, so, i’ve got to go. i’ll probably come to see you with mom before school ends,” he stands up from the bench, “good talk. bye, dad.”

he’s almost out of the range of where he knows his father can hear him when he turns around, and, not quite knowing why, he says,

“fabian gave me the ride, by the way. maybe i’ll- i don’t know. maybe over the summer, i’ll ask ayda if she can plane shift all of us, so you can meet everyone. you probably wouldn’t like him right away, but he um. mom tells me he grows on you.”

there's a laugh in his chest, inexplicably, as if some part of him he can't quite reach has just remembered an inside joke. and then he walks away.

_____

fabian is waiting for him when he gets back to the entrance. riz is somewhat surprised by his presence, he had expected fabian to leave and come back to get him. but he’s clearly not left, comfortably sprawled out on a bench, head tilted up towards the just starting to set sun, his eye closed and music blaring from the speakers of his wireless earbuds. riz listens for a second. it’s bruce springsteen’s ‘i’m on fire’. riz crooks a smile, and shakes fabian on the shoulder.

fabian opens his eye and almost falls off the bench, but catches himself by the arm of it, does a weird forty-five-degree angle backflip turnout thing, and then lands shakily on his feet. his chest, in riz’s direct line of sight, is heaving in surprise. riz immediately looks up to fabian’s face, whereupon registering that the person who startled him is riz, morphs into one of frustration.

“the ball, you could have just blocked the sun or something. you startled me.”

riz nods, and keeps his eyes locked on fabian’s. his mouth is suddenly dry as he says,

“i will… do that next time.”

fabian nods and runs a hand through his hair. there’s a moment of tense silence, and then riz remembers something,

“did you… you didn’t wait for me, did you?”

fabian opens his mouth and closes it a couple times, looking anywhere but riz’s face.

“of course not, no, i went and got- i went and got… a smoothie. on the hangman.”

riz looks around. there aren’t any garbage cans at the front of the cemetery, and fabian’s hands are conspicuously lacking a smoothie cup. as well as the fact that fantasy jamba juice is all the way downtown, forty-five minutes away. riz crosses his arms over his chest, and raises an eyebrow,

“what kind of smoothie?”

fabian pauses for a second, and then answers,

“red... fruit.”

riz bites his lip to keep from laughing, and mentally takes back everything he ever said about fabian being a passable liar. riz takes a second to make sure his voice won’t betray him as he asks,

“apple?”

fabian nods quickly, looking somewhat relieved that riz thought of a red fruit, and not realizing that apple smoothies don’t exist. fabian quickly adds,

“i forgot the name. you know you do that, sometimes, like the name of something really simple is just gone because you’ve been thinking too hard-”

riz uncrosses his arms and puts his palms up, gesturing for fabian to stop, and he interrupts,

“you got an apple smoothie?”

fabian may or may not realize his mistake here, because a panicked look comes over him and he adds,

“and banana.”

riz looks at him incredulously.

why won’t he just admit he waited for me?

the hangman pulls up next to riz suddenly, speaking out loud,

“he is lying, ball.”

fabian sputters and protests, his brows pinched,

“no i’m- why would you say that, hangman, when we clearly did go get smoothies, remember, at the juice shop, with the smoothies, you know, the smoothies-”

the hangman interrupts,

“he did not permit me to chase any geese, and he ingested no juice.”

fabian goes silent, instead opting to stare daggers down at his bike. riz stands silent, crossing his arms again, a hint of a smile on his face.

eventually, fabian sighs, and turns to riz. he runs a hand through his hair, and stares down at the ground for a couple seconds. his shoes are covered in dust from the gravel, and the areas of bare skin where the iron bench left marks are still a bit red, and his nails have a bit of oil and ash on them from the hangman, he looks so genuinely and unabashedly fabian, and yet everything about his posture is so anachronistically hesitant. he finally looks up at riz and opens his mouth,

“i was lying about the juice.”

riz blinks, processing, and then says back, a laugh in his voice,

“i know, fabian.”

and for the life of him, he can’t figure out why he feels disappointed.

_____

riz leaves his window open that night, the sharp scent of spring at night settling over the room. the room is blissfully cool, it not being late enough in the year for the heat of the day to stick around long after dark. the sky isn’t cloudless, but there are beautiful pockets of clearness, and riz can almost see the stars beyond the light pollution of his downtown elmville. every once in a while he hears the rushing sound of a train, and it makes his head beautifully silent.

riz gets to sleep better than he has in weeks, the twenty minutes he spends in bed before he does slip under peaceful. there are things to think about, he knows, secrets and problems invisible all around him, charged electric in the air. like a hot day in a string of cool ones, it’s a sort of peace that inevitably ends in ruin. but it’s a relief while it lasts.

riz inhales deeply in the familiar comfort of his room, and exhales somewhere else. before he can even open his eyes he doesn’t get a single second of pretense, the familiar panicked feeling he’s had in every dream overtaking him. except now it’s his whole body, his limbs seem to burn and freeze at the same time, his hands instinctively curl into a position where a swipe from his claws will do the most damage, and he knows his body is perfectly safe in his room, but his soul has the conviction that he is in danger the same way the bugs stop humming and the birds stop singing and all the fish try desperately to swim upriver in the silent hours before a tornado strikes. it’s something primal and intrinsic, and riz knows that the safe course of action right now, even if this feeling is just his body reacting to the unnatural way he’s dreaming, even if this is how a nightmare feels to everyone, is keep his eyes closed, and try to wake up.

riz has never been the type to try and stick to what’s safe. he opens his eyes.

he doesn’t have to search for some minuscule thing that’s wrong. he gazes at a landscape marred by darkness, a bright green field with odd pathways lit by something nonexistent, light purple fog settled over the grass, and other areas that seem too black for even dreams, midnight purple wisps coming off the edges where it meets the light. they mix in some beautiful and abhorrent way, two things with a core of similarity evolved into something unrecognizably different. when riz can take his eyes off of it, and convince his body to get over his fear response and move, goddammit- he finally notices where he’s supposed to be.

he stands in the aguefort bloodrush field.

riz has been here a lot, knows the view from the bleachers and the nosebleeds intimately. the bad kids make sure at least one of them go to every game so that gorgug and fabian always have a face to find in the crowd. riz is the only one without an extracurricular or a cosmic destiny, so it’s usually him. but he hasn’t seen the field from this point of view since the fight with daybreak, since-

looking at this field was different, for fabian and gorgug. every confident step, every goal and every pass, every win was spitting on the grave of a dead man, a resounding and triumphant, look at us now.

but riz, as much as he had done well in that fight, hates any reminder of it. daybreak was bad down to his bones. he would have mercilessly struck riz down in a second if he had gotten the chance. but the lack of empathy, the disregard of emotion, only the cold conviction that daybreak needed to die and he was the only one who was going to do it. the anticlimactic click of the gun, the silencer making sure the sound didn’t linger, the blood splatter across riz’s face that he didn’t notice till he got home and looked in the mirror, and worst of all how good it felt at the time, how right.

riz remembers his mom’s face when he walked into the office in the middle of the afternoon in the fourth grade. he remembers being locked in jail and seeing people who he had known since he was a toddler sneer at him. he remembers baron getting in his face and saying, everyone will find someone else and you will be left behind. the fight with biz, even, his barely concealed disgust as he had treated the closest person riz had to a sister like a shiny toy he could put his greasy fingers on, the rage as he shot those fingers off one by one.

the moment riz had gone home and looked in the mirror was the worst moment in his life.

the field is still and silent, no roaring crowds, no crackling of the intercom, the scoreboard in the distance is black and unlit. signs of nature are obsolete as well, there are no cicadas humming from the nearby prairie, no rushing wind sweeps the grass under riz’s feet, and the moon, which has to be lighting the places that do have light, is obscured by clouds that seem to lie in wait for something.

riz is at a loss of what to do, the chasms of darkness make no moves yet, just seem to taunt him with a sly smile. like they know something riz doesn’t, shining a flashlight in his eyes after they’ve made him go blind. he scans the field, there has to be something he’s missing.

the intercom crackles to life then, blasting a low abyssal hum. riz flinches, his hands halfway to his ears to drown out the noise before he stops himself as he realizes deafening himself before what’s looking to be some sort of combat is not, in fact, a smart idea.

the scoreboard flickers on, revealing a neon purple 1:00. it’s the only true light, and where its rays hit, both the light purple mist that lingers on the ground and the spots of darkness twist and scramble to get away, and reveals the meticulously cut green grass. in one such place, the middle of the field, where the quarterback and receivers are, an impossible reach for any light source from that angle, a more dense area of fog quickly dissipates, revealing the silhouette of a man. riz’s breath catches in his throat.

of course this one would be about fabian.

the purple light turns his white curls a shade of pale lavender, a color that should be lost against the backdrop of the sky, a mirage of thousands of other purples, but manages to catch riz’s attention anyway. fabian isn’t in his gear, his helmet nowhere to be seen, and no protective pads on any of his joints. there are bits of mist that stick to him still, obscuring some of his outfit. it gives fabian a soft ethereal look, unsuited to the space he currently resides in.

fabian looks up then, and riz can see that there’s something wrong with his eye, the same mist that lingers on his clothes lingers over it as well. fabian slowly moves his head from one side of the field to the other though, scanning the way he does in a game. he passes over the scarred landscape like he’s looking at a regular field, no panic or fear apparent in his posture. it’s only when he sees riz that anything in his demeanor changes. they lock eyes, and even with the distance, riz can see a spark of recognition in fabian’s eye.

and it’s then, of course, that the proverbial tornado touches down.

the timer clicks down from 1:00 to :59, and the midnight purple wisps of smoke that have been just barely restrained to the edges of the chasms of darkness suddenly spring forward, starting to overtake the mist. riz wouldn’t have thought it possible for mist to be able to be ripped apart, to be able to describe something so intangible as being murdered, but the way it ravages it without provocation, the sick joy it seems to emulate… there’s no other description.

riz’s stomach lurches as he looks at it, nausea bubbling up and his senses wildly swinging between hyperreal and painful and faded and dizzying. it’s all he can do to not fall to his knees, but the dark purple smoke crawls ever towards him, slowly and surely eating away at the ground.

riz’s head swims, his mouth tastes of something bitter. his vision tunnels, a burning sensation overtaking most of his vision so he has no choice but to close his eyes. he can’t bear it anymore, and collapses, scooting backward to avoid the encroaching smoke.

his back hits something shockingly cold then, and when he opens his eyes to try and roll over to escape it, he sees that he’s at the edge of the dream, purple and blue swirling galaxy energy that hums, the same note as the speakers. but it’s different, a little, like the note on the loudspeakers has been so warped and distorted that the original, a buzzing warmth that worms his way into the pit of riz’s chest, is near unrecognizable. riz’s head sharpens by the slightest bit, and he’s able to take a deep breath, and the air he breathes in is again that perfect spring at night. riz can see concentrated tendrils of that air, twisting and ephemeral, loosely in the shape of swirling colors, wrap around him, and for a moment riz panics, thinking it’s going to try to suck him in, but it just holds tight for a moment. riz takes another deep breath, and digs his fingers into the ground, where-

there is no ground. riz can feel the mist as a solid, as his hand goes through it, the individual molecules, the malleability of them. it’s the grass of the bloodrush field, and then it’s the cool tile in their kitchen riz lies on when he needs a shock to the system, and then it’s his sheets. he pushes down on… whatever it is, and pulls himself to standing.

his senses seem to have evened out to decently higher than normal levels, although not so sensitive that even the act of breathing is painful. he refuses to look at the clock, he only has a couple seconds to think of a plan, and he doesn’t need to waste them by panicking.

he scans the space in front of him, taking count of the six large and growing dark chasms. he sees fabian on the other side. the mist is still over his eye, presumably shielding him from danger, but between the noise and the everpresent sense of dread in the air, he definitely knows something is wrong. riz squints, his darkvision for some reason acting up, it ending way before it should, the way it had when he had dreamt about adaine, but he can almost sense fabian’s posture, primed and ready for a fight, but at a loss without a target.

it dawns on riz then, what he has to do. they’re on a bloodrush field, and they’ve got to get off of it. riz has to be the target.

riz takes one last longing look back at the edge of the dream. takes another look at the 300 foot stretch in front of him. and then takes off running.

the ground, which should be muddy and soft, seems to harden and freeze under riz’s feet, making his journey that bit easier. the purples mist sticks to his feet as he lifts them, and they sink into his skin, flooding riz’s system with adrenaline. it almost makes up for the ruins behind him which, he knows are there from the feeling of it rather than having looked back. the darkness envelops more of the field, and riz feels a phantom bruise spread across his ribs.

he has the tiny sliver of land still left between the first two symmetrical chasms in his sights, only a foot or two wide and a couple yards long. he crosses the threshold, surrounded by darkness on three sides, a shrinking peninsula of mist. he makes it one yard, and then two, all the while the strip gets thinner and thinner. riz can feel the purple smoke biting at his heels as he runs, feels the bits of mist that lag being snatched away like having his fingernails ripped off. riz reaches the mist again with just barely a sliver of bridge left, and riz looks back and watches with growing horror as the two symmetrical chasms meet each other, clashing and rising up like crosswaves in the ocean.

he doesn’t wait a second before taking off again. there’s no space in the middle of the next two chasms, and riz can only see a hint of the mist on the other side. he doesn’t have time to hesitate, if that second chasm grows any further out, it’s going to swallow fabian before he can even know to move. he bolts to the left, and like an animal sensing movement, the chasm grows towards the pole that the inverted lights rest upon.

but they’re not fast enough. riz uses his arm to grab on to the giant metal pole, using his momentum to lift his feet up and throw himself across the area the darkness has swallowed. he doesn’t have time to question either, just angles his body diagonally and prays,

please be soft,

at the ground, and then, when the balls of his feet land in soft and yielding dirt, he uses the momentum to roll forward, his right shoulder hitting the ground with a dull ache that means he really should’ve listened to gorthalax about how a shoulder break is not something kristen can heal. but he pops back up, and with his dominant hand, reaches down into the mist, with a shaky faith. he has to dig for longer than he’d like, his heartrate skyrocketing as he watches the chasm creep closer and closer with riz’s arm sunk down to the shoulder in what could very well be air.

he’s just about to give up, the tips of his claws starting to burn as the darkness draws closer, when he looks up, and sees fabian, only a couple of yards ahead. he can see him much better now, the mist around him is thinner than it is on riz, his outfit unobscured behind it, like the mist is just a single draping of gossamer he could brush off if he only noticed it was there. only fabian’s eye is completely covered, but fabian looks down at him, and riz can see the smallest amount of tension ebb out of his shoulders.

riz allows himself to wait another second before he finally decides enough is enough, that he’s gonna die, or least get lost in the astral, if he stakes his life on this stupid half thought out plan, and pulls his hand up to start to take off running again.

but it’s heavy. he looks down, there’s the distinct shape of a bloodrush ball, the white lacing snug in between his fingers. riz’s heart feels like it’s beating in his throat.

riz has never been proficient in athletics. it never came naturally to him. he was raised to be a rogue, it was in his blood and bones and soul. but rogues are not a melee class, they don’t go out into the middle of the battlefield and make three attacks, they don’t jump in front of people to take a hit for them. rogues aren’t healing classes either, they don’t glow with holy light and raise the should have been dead up to being as healthy as they’ve ever been in their lives. rogues aren’t spellcasters, or at least most of them aren’t, they don’t wipe out ten straight enemies from a lucky chain lightning, they don’t have the shortcuts of detect magic and comprehend languages.

rogues shoot from the shadows and clear a room before anyone can make a sound, they tell if people are lying from a quirk of an eyebrow, they’re the last ones standing because while everyone else was out being brave, rogues hide, and disengage, and dash. rogues do quiet, indispensable work, and riz gukgak was raised to translate that into the word love.

all of this is to say, riz has never been the knight in shining armor. he’s not even allowed half-plate. riz is not the one who rushes across a landscape collapsing in on itself with a barely formed plan. riz is not the one who anyone counts on to save them.

but just this once.

riz pours all he can into a single look,

please.

and he puts the ball under his arm, and sprints for the third chasm.

riz can’t afford to look back, so he strains his ears, trying desperately to block out the loudspeakers, listening for the sound of fabian running behind him. for a few agonizing moments, there’s nothing but silence. but then riz hears the rhythmic sound of the sneakers of dunking against the ground, and relief floods his body.

riz can hear fabian gaining on him, so he frantically speeds up, he can’t let fabian get the ball before they’re off the field. riz has the thin strip of mist beyond the third chasm, and it seems to reach for him, parts of it pushing back against the dark purple edges of the darkness. but despite the mist’s effort, it still looks like an impossible jump, and the sides aren’t an option. riz is drawing closer and closer, fifteen feet to go, ten feet to go, five feet to go.

he looks up as he crosses the last few feet, the scoreboard on the other side flashing a bright :12. his foot reaches the edge, and the leather erodes, the mist protecting it evaporating with a low dissonant hum. and for the first time in riz’s life, he hasn’t got a plan. and just before pushing off, a small and quiet thought enters his head.

i’m not gonna make it.

well. the best-proven way to wake yourself up from a dream is to fall long distances.

as soon as riz is over the chasm proper, he feels more pain than he’s felt in a long time. the humming coming from the loudspeakers grows, the air above the chasm pulsing with it, ringing in riz’s mind like the aftermath of a bomb that’s just gone off. his skin feels too tight, like his whole body is an infected wound. he goes limp in the air, velocity the only thing keeping him moving forward. if he’s hitting the ground, he’s not doing it with any form. he closes his eyes.

and then he opens them again, as his velocity doesn’t slow. he doesn’t fall, and as he watches, he’s surrounded by a white gold glow. riz looks down at himself, trying to determine the source, and finds his vest, the gold embroidery of angel wings outstretched from his back to curl around his stomach, glittering from the magic, the temporary ability to fly for forty feet. the pain is still immobilizing and the chasm remains below him, and as he crosses over the middle he can see swirls of deep deep purple reach up, and joining the smoke are thousands of dark purple fingers.

he hits the ground and rolls, but not the way he had before. his shoulder again takes the brunt, the pain sharp this time, if riz had to a hazard a guess, dislocated. he stops rolling only a few feet from the end of the field, his breath knocked out of him and his head pounding more and more with each second.

riz hears a crash from behind him, and sees fabian, askew on the ground. fabian props himself up on his arms and then eyes riz’s chest. riz looks down. the bloodrush ball is still cradled to it.

the edge of the chasm reaches for fabian, still a few feet out of reach. riz’s head pounds as it gains more ground, and he sees stars at the edges of his vision. the pit of his stomach turns, and he doubts how much of him will be left when the last of the mist gets eaten up. he stares at fabian, who’s blurry now, and narrows his eyes.

riz spits his next words, unsure if fabian can even hear him.

“you couldn’t have been a gashbat player?”

and then he scrambles to his feet, and limps to the edge. fabian tackles him from the side, riz’s bruised ribs meaning he stiffens in pain. but he doesn’t go down, lets fabian push him a couple feet till his heel is millimeters from the out of bounds line. beyond fabian, the mist surrenders to the purple smoke, and the darkness crawls its way towards them, faster and faster as it swallows the landscape in its path. the sky above them reminds riz of being under a comforter, the clouds looming low and taking up the entirety of the sky.

fabian’s hands go for the ball cradled in riz’s, just a second before he can reach it, riz drops it. it absorbs into the mist upon impact, and the mist ripples like water around it. fabian freezes. riz takes one last look into fabian’s eye, large and panicked. he opens his mouth as if to say something, and even with the darkness threatening to consume them at any moment, there’s a part of riz that really wants to know what it is. but he doesn’t let him.

riz takes a step back past the out of bounds line. and then, quick as lightning, he reaches for fabian’s outstretched hands, grabs on tight to them, and pulls fabian past the line too, towards him.

the effect that happens when riz touches fabian isn’t thematic. there’s no ripple that waves out, no implosion, no light comes through the clouds and dawns on them. it’s simple. one second the darkness is there, barrelling its way towards them and destroying everything in its path, the air humming with a discordant melody and vibrating at a frequency that makes riz want to crawl out of his own skin. and the next, it’s all gone.

the sky is still cloudy, but it's less suffocating, and the moonlight shines down on the field, finally a source for the now abundant light purple mist that lays low on the field, which is now more passive, no longer swirling and defensive. the bright lights that illuminate the field are just that, bright lights. the air smells like it does before a storm, charged and full of life, and riz takes a deep breath in.

his body still hurts, but there's such a palpable feeling of relief, that riz’s face breaks out in a slightly feral grin. one last rush of adrenaline flows through his body, and he throws his arms around fabian and pulls him into a hug. fabian feels so real under him, riz can feel his strong shoulders and the last knob of his spine at the base of his neck. riz's face is just under his collarbone, above his heart, and riz can hear it beating wildly under his skin, a grounding rhythm.

fabian's hands slowly move from the position they had been smushed into, snaking around his shoulders and locking behind his back. he leans down so that riz's forehead reaches the hollow of his shoulder, and riz can smell the soap he uses, mandarin orange and ginger.

as they stand there hugging, riz has the revelation that he and fabian don't really touch each other that often, and have only hugged two or three times. touches are often necessary in combat, but their classes mean that effect is dampened, if fabian has any touch range spells, he hasn't used them on riz, and riz has no cause to touch fabian in combat. which leaves all other times, pats on the back, and playful shoves, and the inadvertent lack of personal space that often comes with friendship. but he and fabian don't really do that. adaine ruffles riz's hair and gorgug hoists riz up on his shoulders and fig will often cross her arms and rest her chin on the top of his head. and riz guesses that fabian does do that, but... every time fabian has brushed his fingers handing him something or picked him up to put him on the hangman has been different, more significant somehow. every touch between him and fabian has been a moment.

or felt like one.

riz can feel that whatever that darkness was can no longer touch him here. and yet, all of a sudden, he feels so very scared. he gets the feeling that if he pulls back to look at fabian’s face, that lightning will strike again, and signal the start of a whole new storm.

fabian says something then, soft enough that his voice cracks,

“are you… something happened? what- i’m very confused.”

riz swallows.

so am i.

fabian's grip around his shoulders shifts, and riz winces, his shoulder sending shooting pain down his entire arm. fabian breaks the hug, immediately, careful not to nudge his shoulder again. as he pulls back, riz can see that the purple mist clouding fabian's sight is gone now, leaving fabian the truth to see.

fabian's expression changes into one of increasing horror and worry as he looks riz up and down. riz looks down and takes himself in as well, cataloging injuries. the shoulder is the most obvious, set at an uncanny angle with a bruise that's already starting to turn purple running up riz's neck. there's the ribs next, thankfully none feel broken, but they throb in a way that riz knows from experience means his torso will be black and blue for weeks. the sliver of skin between his socks and pants hem seems to be drained of all blood, a pallid sage green. when riz lifts his foot to touch it, it's stiff and unyielding. and most worrying, he can't feel it. the last wound is on his face, a rash, emerald scratches across his cheek where he had rolled in the grass.

fabian’s open mouth finally forms words,

“you don't look so good, the ball.”

fabian tentatively reaches a hand to the wound on his face, light enough that it almost feels like nothing. riz's breath hitches in his throat. he feels the touch reverberate throughout his body, and sees the veins in fabian's hand light up, red and bronze and silver. the magic settles some of the worse injuries, riz now able to breath without his ribs rioting, and he can feel blood return to his ankles, albeit weakly. riz can feel the rash across his cheek scar over.

fabian keeps his hand on riz's face. riz looks up at him. the moonlight suits him, his skin glows and refracts it, like he's covered in a thousand invisible shards of broken mirrors. his curls look even more lavender up close, and the fabric of his shirt ripples like water. everything about him is so reminiscent of a dream, harsh neon shadows and soft diffused highlights. but where he's touching riz hums, not the hum of the edge of the dream, and not the hum of the darkness, and not the hum of riz’s thoughts zipping around in his head too fast for riz to catch any of them. this hum is something nestled in his sternum, silent till it's suddenly not, till it breaks out of riz's chest and wracks his body with an all-consuming pang of-

riz doesn't know. but it's too real to be from a dream, and it's too mortal to be something from kassandra.

fabian cocks his head slightly, staring down at him with quiet concern. he seems to choose his next words carefully, something he never used to do around riz.

“what's… something bad was happening. is it still happening, or-”

fabian pauses, and riz can feel tears streaming down his own face, with the answer to why they're there unreachable on the tip of his tongue. fabian continues, compassion and panic and frustration compounding into something heartbreakingly tender,

“riz, please tell me what's wrong.”

riz laughs a watery laugh, and answers, his voice wrecked,

“i don't- everything. nothing. everything is better than it’s ever been, but i keep having these dreams, and they're terrifying till they're like this, and then they're so fucking unreal and so amazing, and they keep getting worse and better. and then i wake up and the real world stays the same but it feels like one wrong step and it's all gonna collapse like a house of cards. and i can't tell anyone! because i want adaine to be happy but sometimes aelwyn will look at me and it's like i’m back at that house party, because i want gorgug and fig to be successful but i hate that i never see them, because i want ragh and tracker to succeed on their mission but i know how much it's gonna wreck us, and how it's gonna break kristen, and i’m not gonna know how to comfort her, because i don't know if what i feel is the same as what she feels, if it's supposed to feel like that,”

riz takes a deep breath, presses his hands to his eyes, because he's about to jump over another chasm and he doesn't know what's on the other side,

“if it's supposed to feel like this, i don't know, i don't know, sometimes you touch me and it's…”

fabian is looking down at him, open and earnest and wide-eyed and his hand is still on riz's face, and the hum that's been plaguing him doubles, half making a home in every part of him, his bones and his skin and the rush of his blood in his veins, and the other to the single point where they're touching, and riz suddenly notices the distance between their faces is not that large, and fabian is already leaning down from the hug, and it would take literally nothing to just-

riz takes a deep breath. dread joins the hum, cold like heat breaking in the middle of the night, the kind that makes you shiver in your bed, and pull the covers over you after you've kicked them all off.

oh gods.

riz says it before he can push it back down, before he can explain it away, because as bad is it is to know, he's riz gukgak.

he’s supposed to like hidden things.

“i want to kiss you so badly, and i can't make sense of it, i don't- fabian i don't know what i’m supposed to do.”

fabian's face is a perfect picture of shock, and then changes, shifting like the sun coming in and out from behind the clouds. his thumb that rests on riz’s cheekbone stays there, unchanging, and there’s something unknowable in his voice as he says,

“riz-”

and it's in this moment riz remembers that he’s dreaming.

it's so easy to forget, after the sense of the grass under his feet, hard and solid, after the feeling of almost dying over that chasm, the pain on his skin unprecedented, after the perfect replica of a thumb on his cheekbone.

riz shuts his eyes, and puts a hand on fabian's chest. his body has the conviction that the feeling is real, that the hard muscle and soft t-shirt fabric under his hand isn’t some dredged up memory from a sleepover months ago but an alive and sentient breathing person, fabian, and his mind has to fight against the notion. he pushes the dream away at the same time he steps back, his feet digging into the turf. and mostly to himself, because fabian is not here, he says,

“and none of it even matters because it's not real.”

and when his hand disconnects from fabian's chest, he wakes up on his bedroom floor, his body aching. there’s a crack in his bedframe, and the blankets are strewn around him, kicked off.

he touches a hand to his cheek. the skin there is rough.

_____

riz thinks he does a passable job at hiding the inexplicable bruises that bloom across his torso and up around his shoulder at school the next day. or at least he does till second period world history, when kristen sits down at the desk next to him two minutes after the bell rings, looks at the high collared shirt he’d chosen today, leans over and loudly whispers,

“what the fuck happened to you?”

a few of their classmates side-eye them, but the teacher’s back is to the class as he drones on for the third day in a row about the war intricacies of the war between sylvaire and highcourt in thirteen something something. riz hasn’t listened in weeks, but he feigns deep interest in the board. kristen doesn’t let up, and takes one of her many pins off her backpack and throws it at him. it hits riz’s glasses and knocks them off his face, onto the floor. riz shoots her a dirty look, and slides out of his seat to grab them.

how did she even do that? she has a negative bonus to hit.

just as he finds his glasses, he feels another pin bounce off of his back. he whips around, and sees kristen underneath her desk as well.

“i’m getting my glasses! this was not an invitation to initiate a conversation!”

kristen rolls her eyes and hits him with another pin for no reason. riz catches it in the air, and whispers,

“i’m keeping this.”

kristen gestures to the expanse of pins that decorate her jean jacket,

“fine by me. do you want to go to the roof?”

the carpet under riz’s skin is abrasive and rubs painfully against the area that last night had felt bloodless, and now feels like pins and needles. he goes to shake his head no at kristen, but he bumps his head on the bottom of the desk, jolting it. he and kristen both freeze, but there’s no pause in the teacher’s lesson. he whispers at kristen,

“no! i’m not sneaking off to hang out on the roof with you the day before finals.”

kristen narrows her eyes, and her nose wrinkles the way it does when she's frustrated, and she says, less in a whisper and more of a low tone,

“meet me on the roof or i’ll tell the entire g.s.a you were lying about liking tori amos.”

riz looks at her incredulously,

“i’m not even in the g.s.a! and i’m not lying, why would i lie about liking tori amos?”

kristen stares him down,

“i’m the vice president and they’ll believe me. i’ll tell them you hated ‘tear in your hand’”

riz puts his glasses on, and is about to say something anger before he bites it back, and finally responds,

“if i go with you will you stop making extremely non-threatening threats?”

kristen nods.

riz rolls his eyes and debates letting kristen get caught. it would be incredibly easy. with no guidance, kristen’s stealth is abysmal. but she’d get detention, and probably drag him down with her, and riz knows from the few times he’s had detention with kristen is that it leads to about five consecutive more detentions.

“fine. ask to go the bathroom, you’re not going to be able to sneak out.”

kristen’s face breaks out in a grin, and she gives him an enthusiastic thumbs up. she crawls out from under the desk, producing a pen from her jacket that she holds up triumphantly, as if half the class couldn’t hear them talking. she interrupts the teacher, who turns around for the first time as kristen asks,

“can i go to the restroom?”

the teacher sighs and looks back at where they are in the board, and then the clock on the wall. she puts her hands on her hips and says,

“be quick, we’ve got a lot to cover.”

kristen nods, and gathers up all her materials. the teacher, turned back to the board, doesn’t notice.

riz sneaks out unseen just before the door closes behind kristen, all of his stuff in tow as well.

if i fail this final, i’m never telling her i like a song again.

it’s no problem at all for riz to sneak past the hall monitors, but the roof is only accessible by a broken second floor window and the old fire escape they haven’t taken down yet. the stoners who use the fire escape to get to the roof have replaced the duct tape that holds the plastic to stop the window with sticky tack, lessening the noise and chance of getting caught.

the fire escape is rusted, red paint flaking off as riz climbs it. it’s cooler now than it was this morning, but still a refreshing coolness. riz looks up at the sky, which is filled with large white cumulonimbus clouds, and beyond that a brilliant blue. when he looks down again to make sure he has his footing, he catches sight of the bloodrush field, empty at the moment. he feels that tell-tale pang again and quickly looks away.

there’s no breeze, even as riz climbs higher and higher. eventually, he sees kristen, swinging her legs off the edge. riz hauls himself up next to her, startling her.

“second coming of helio riz, you scared me. i could have died.”

riz takes a couple of seconds to catch his breath, his chest feels tight, and he has a suspicion it’s not from the exercise. he scoots closer to kristen, and then says,

“then don’t invite someone with plus nine to stealth to a rooftop.”

kristen lightly bumps her shoulder against riz’s, and riz can’t help grimace in pain. kristen must see it out of the corner of her eye, because she immediately whips her head towards riz’s shoulder, and when she sees a little bit of bruise poking out from his collar, she puts a tentative hand on it, and it glows with the same purple light that’s at the edge of his dreams.

the wounds, already lessened by waking up, are now all but gone, color flooding into his ankles and the bruises along his torso retreating, like flowers closing after sunset. any frustration riz had felt towards kristen melts out of him, leaving bare the truth, which is a deep tiredness. riz tilts his head towards kristen’s shoulder and rests it there, looking out at the landscape.

he’s not looking at her, but he knows kristen is biting her lip in worry just before she asks, hesitant,

“if something were really wrong, i’d know, right? you’d tell me?”

riz thinks for a second. it’d be the perfect time to tell her, to explain everything about kassandra and the weird darkness. but there’s still some part of him, deep down, that wants this to be a secret. to be his, and only his. kristen is a saint and adaine is the oracle and fig is an archdevil and gorgug’s in a famous band and fabian-

and riz has dreams.

he nods, and they’re quiet for a few minutes. it’s out of the norm for them to be like this, riz and kristen’s friendship has always been based in their opposite personalities, kristen’s wildness versus riz’s responsibility. it’s a rare moment that they just enjoy each other’s company, with nothing else to it.

eventually, riz speaks up.

“if i ask you something, do you promise not to read into it?”

kristen makes a noncommittal hum, and riz elbows her. she looks down at him and smiles, teases,

“what! i can’t help where my mind might linger.”

riz lifts his head off kristen's shoulder, and pulls his knees in front of his chest to rest his chin on them. he doesn’t look her in the eyes as he asks,

“how did you know you liked tracker?” and before she can misread the question, he elaborates, “like, like liked her. not just as a friend.”

kristen’s posture shifts, some gravel spilling over the lip of the roof and falling to the pavement three stories below. she leans back on her hands, and there’s a long silence before she speaks, her voice hesitant and a hint of wistful,

“i knew something was different before i knew exactly what it was. i met them and it just felt… really right, you know? but at the same time, really really off putting, like i had my life on track and suddenly someone just threw a wrench. and they kissed me, and i wasn’t ready at all, and it… you know, it was a first kiss, so it wasn’t like,” kristen does air quotes, “good.” she puts them down, “but it literally just felt like they had hit me in the back of the head with a crowbar, but like. not really in a bad way. i was nowhere near the level of acceptance i needed to be at for it to feel good, but i remember thinking like, oh my god, i’ve never felt like this in my life.”

riz nods, his stomach sinking. he picks up some gravel and siphons it through his hands, coating his hands in dust. he finally looks back at kristen then, who is now completely on her back, her red hair spilling out around her, and her hands behind her head, like they’re cloudgazing on some sunny hill and not on top of a roof. she’s got a soft smile on her face, like she’s not all the way here.

riz looks back out at the view, and asks,

“but how did you know. and that quickly, as well.”

kristen hums noncommittally,

“i didn’t. i just went one day at a time, and figured, if it was a phase, or if i was making it up for attention, or any of the other reasons my parents told me why gay people exist, i’d figure it out eventually. but i didn’t want to be miserable while waiting for that.”

riz whips his head around to look at kristen, confounded. kristen raises her eyebrows and props herself up, giving a little shove to riz, and probing,

“what?”

riz shakes his head slowly,

“i know you came back from the dead twice, but i think the biggest miracle in your life is that we’re friends.”

kristen throws her head back and laughs, and for the first time today, riz finally has the energy to crack a smile.

and all is quiet for a second, before riz gazes out again at the horizon, some nauseous feeling building in his stomach as he looks at the giant never-ending sky. he doesn’t meet kristen eyes as he asks,

“and tracker was okay with that?”

riz can hear her shrug, as she answers,

“tracker loves me. and they didn’t love me then, but sometimes i think you can just tell.”

riz rolls his eyes fondly, and he claps his hands together to get rid of some of the dust that coats them. kristen bolts up with surprise, and then gives him an affronted look as she realizes the source of the noise. riz smiles.

maybe the roof wasn’t such a bad idea.

_____

adaine shoots riz another suspicious glance from across their study table.

riz barely has any study materials in front of him, just a pencil in one hand that he’s rhythmically tapping against the table, and an already filled out homework sheet. adaine herself has more than made up for this by covering the table with her vast array of textbooks and spiral notebooks, along with several sheets of loose leaf scrawled over with her jagged handwriting, none of which relate to each other.

riz has no clue what she’s actually studying for, or pretending to study for, as she’s been on the same page for ten minutes, continually pausing to glance up at riz and- well. study him. riz looks down at his homework sheet, double-checking for the tenth time that the standard length of hemp rope is in fact fifty feet. he hears adaine put her textbook down, and he lifts his head up in time to hear her say,

“say it.”

she crosses her arms around her chest, and while her tone is frustrated, riz knows it comes from a place of concern. when riz’s face remains blank, her expression becomes pointed, and she elaborates,

“you’ve been doing that worksheet for half an hour, and it’s a freshmen level worksheet. so unless a mind-flayer scrambled your brain in the three days since we’ve last studied together, you have something else on your mind. and if you didn’t want me to know it, you would be a lot better at hiding it.”

riz keeps quiet, and adaine softens a bit, lowers her voice,

“you can tell me anything riz, you know that.”

riz looks around the area to make sure there’s no one else listening. this area is usually pretty barren around this time of day, and today is no exception. this corner of the library is for long-term research projects, and access is only granted to those with the correct passes. however, apparently being the elven oracle counts as a long-term research project. the shelves that surround them on two sides have books coated in dust and bound in actual leather. the idea that someone would miraculously be here on today of all days is idiotic, but riz can barely admit this to himself, much less a total stranger.

he rests his hands on the table, trying to practice whipping the pencil between his fingers. he tries to sound casual as he asks,

“you... don’t like people.”

she leans slightly forward, the expression on her face concerned,

“riz, is that was this is about? of course i like you. people like you, you’re likeable.”

riz shakes his head, blushing,

“no, i mean, that’s nice to know, thank you, but i mean that you don’t um- you don’t like people.”

adaine’s chair squeaks as she leans back and stands up straighter.

“oh. yeah, no i um- i don’t. or haven’t.”

riz nods. his hands feel clammy. his friendship with adaine has always been different than his friendship with kristen. he and adaine have built their closeness on a foundation of being similar. they’re both intellectual, preferring to go the research route before jumping into something. they’re both goal oriented, both driven, once they get on a task they do not stop until that task is finished, or one of them passes out from exhaustion. and, possibly the biggest point of connection, both baffled by their peers’ obsession with sex and romance.

and it had all been unspoken, this alliance. riz feels like he’s breaking it now, as he says,

“how do you- how do you know? the difference, i mean. what’s friendship and what’s… not.”

adaine flinches a bit at how do you know? but takes a deep breath, and pauses for a couple of seconds. she responds hesitantly,

“okay so, in the books and movies. there’s always this scene, where two characters are having a normal time, and usually they’re laughing, or they’re having an emotional conversation, and then suddenly they trail off, and they just look at each other, and then some simple musical theme comes in, and you can just feel, in that moment how much they want each other. and people talk about that moment all the time, where everything slows and the blood rushes to your head and you just realize that you want more. and i’ve never felt that. i very much don’t want more. the part before is way more appealling.”

riz takes off his hat and runs his hands through his hair, before resting his elbows on the table and propping his head up by his palms.

“so you’ve- you’ve never wanted to touch anyone, more. or felt like touching one specific person was different somehow, even though it really shouldn’t be-”

riz stops, abruptly. adaine is shaking her head, wide-eyed at him. he looks down at his hands, and says, in a tone that’s supposed to be humorous but is maybe just sad,

“i don’t suppose you’ve ever wanted to… kiss. anyone.”

adaine doesn’t say anything to that.

riz nods, softly, his eyes glazed over as he realizes that one of the few stable things he knew about himself is gone.

riz had never ever gotten it before. in middle school, kids would gather in hushed groups to whisper and giggle about their crushes. every once in awhile riz would find notes on the ground when looking for clues, scrawled in ballpoint pen ripped off loose leaf paper, do you like me, check yes or no. the guys would stand on one side of the gym at dances and the girls would stand on the other, and no one would dance. during homecoming people would come up to riz and nervously ask, hey, are you going with adaine? and riz would roll his eyes and tell them to ask her themselves, and he was always searching, alone in the dark, for the elusive reason and the feeling to go along with it.

and now that he’s found it, all he wants to do is go back.

i really wish i’d stuck to not dreaming.

adaine is still looking at him, her face doing all the asking necessary but she still says it out loud,

“do you want to… touch? or um,” adaine tries to hide her wrinkled nose, “kiss? someone?”

riz swallows, avoiding adaine’s gaze as he responds,

“...it doesn’t matter.”

adaine tilts her head, about to say something, when suddenly her eyes go white.

riz has been present for many of adaine's visions, and after one too many times waking up in the nurses office, adaine had sent them all a group text saying, unless i’m dying, just leave me be. it’s still unnerving to watch, even her posture, her way of holding herself changes when having a vision. riz knows that adaine is the oracle, the oracle is adaine, they are the same person. but when adaine does this, there's still a part of his hind brain that thinks his best friend is across from him, possessed.

so mostly, riz just checks his crystal, or goes through clues in his mind. and it's just by sheer dumb luck that riz is too caught off guard this time to look away, because what's happening here is not one of adaine's normal visions.

because normally when adaine gets visions, she just stays in whatever position she was previously in. riz has seen her hang from the aerobics course in gym class perfectly still for five minutes, he's seen her on the back of the hangman even, back when fig would drive him sometimes. but this time, she goes limp, and crashes to the floor.

riz is on the ground next to her instantly, and he watches with horror as black and purple tendrils snake their way into the usual white of adaine's eyes. he places two fingers on her pulse point, which beats strong. his heart beats in tandem, and as he stares into the vacant eyes of the closest thing he has to a sister, he realizes he has no idea how to save her.

so he grabs her hand.

riz gukgak has spent the majority of his life fighting sleep. it’s hated him since he was a baby, when he’d wake up in his crib and quietly try and sneak through the bars. it’s hated him since he was a toddler, when he’d lie awake and make shadow puppets in his lonely room. it’s hated him since he was a child, when he would wait every night for his dad to come home and tuck him in. it hates him now, when he wakes up bloody and beaten and bruised. and riz has tried everything, tried cutting out blue light for a whole weekend once, tried eating dinner at four, tried white noise and earplugs, tried lavender herb packets under his pillow, tried going to bed at eight pm and midnight and three am, tried benadryl and z-quil and melatonin, and the little gummies shaped like stars and moons. he’s tried it all, desperate and exhausted with emerald-rimmed eyes, and still after all this time, hopeful that this time, it will work. and it never ever does.

until kassandra. until now.

no one remembers the second they fall asleep. no one remembers the inbetween, the vast space that spans from eyes closed and firmly in your bed to dreaming.

but riz can feel it as it takes him now.

_____

for the first time ever, the first thing riz tries to do when he falls asleep is wake up.

before he even opens his eyes he tries pinching himself, and then he tries holding his breath. unfortunately, there are no cliffs to jump off of.after a few moments, he reluctantly accepts his fate. whatever is affecting adaine has got to be here as well, and this time, he’s not running.

he opens his eyes to pitch blackness that even his darkvision can’t penetrate, which means it has to be magical, but from the only slightly unnerved feeling riz is getting from it, can’t be the same darkness that had left him a wreck last night.

the rest of his senses tell him where he is, the smell of fresh prairie grass fills the air, and he can feel it rustle when he walks through it. he can hear cicadas buzzing all around him, and in the distance, the sound of running water from the creek that runs north of aguefort. it has the perfect atmosphere of an early summer day, which is what throws him off.

it’s not unusual for the prairie at night to be as dark as this, sometimes moonless and cloudy nights mean you can’t see the stars, and out in the country, city lights are sometimes too far to see. riz had spent many nights over the past summer out at fig’s old house while sklonda and sandralynn had ‘girls night’, where the only source of light was the highway, and past two am, which he and fig often stayed up till, the only cars were the occasional trucker. but the bugs on those nights had been katydids and crickets. cicadas hum during the day.

he hears a rustle, and turns around. a big ball of blue flame streaks through the dark, a high pitched whine breaking the picturesque soundscape, illuminating the tips of cattails and wild rye. riz just barely throws himself out of the way, and in doing so runs straight into adaine.

the edges of her glow with white light, crackles of electric blue branching out like lightning. she looks more shocked to see him than riz has ever seen her in her life, and she pushes him down as another blue fireball comes screaming over their heads. she screams at him as they wait for it to pass,

“how the hell are you here?”

riz watches the fireball, and he sees it hit- something.

it’s indescribable, like every facet of holy dream energy was stripped of light, stowed away for a millenia, and made up into some uncanny semblance of a person. their proportions are the stuff of nightmares, and their features are masked by shadow, as if to perpetuate the concept that the scariest thing is what you can only imagine.

it’s undoubtedly the thing that’s been plaguing riz for the past three nights, and yet the only fear riz feels is natural, the reaction of a mortal seeing something that should’ve died a long time ago. adaine’s grip on his shoulder tightens, and she takes a shaky breath, leaning to riz to tell him,

“it’s not really here. this is the future. we might have weeks before whatever this is comes to pass. it might never.”

riz feels as if he’s had the breath knocked out of him as he asks,

“what?”

adaine slings an arm around him to guide him back from the thing, which stalks a few feet forward as well. riz swallows. adaine continues to speak in a low and monotone voice,

“this is just a vision. it’s not happening.”

riz freezes.

no. no no no this can’t be- i’m just dreaming. i accidently took a melatonin instead of an iron supplement this morning, i can’t be-

riz starts to feel the hair on the back of his neck raise. the thing in the vision stalks past them, towards some invisible target. adaine must notice the look on his face, because her face twists in stony anger,

“riz. what aren’t you telling me.”

riz starts to feel the point where adaine’s hands touch his shoulder crackle with static. adaine takes her hands off and stares down at them, then whips her head up to look at riz again, her expression unchanging.

“riz-”

riz’s ears swivel as the source feeling that sweeps over his body finally reveals itself.

snake-like smoky tendrils slither through the grass, and one curls around adaine’s ankle. it latches on like a leech, and adaine shuts her eyes, grimacing in pain. riz acts on impulse, reaching into his jacket in the hope that the mist will be there, and as he puts his hand in the pocket he can feel it, the mist darkening till it’s sharp, and he pulls the sword of shadows out. riz doesn’t have time to be surprised, just slams it down on the tendril, which dissolves around adaine’s ankle but leaves pale bloodless skin behind.

riz grabs adaine’s arm and slings it around his shoulder, wincing where it aches, and closes his eyes. he tries to block out his other senses, listening for an area where the grass only rustles from the wind. his stomach drops as he realizes they’re surrounded.

adaine takes a shaky breath, and says,

“riz, i love you. i love you so much. but if you don’t start talking soon, i’m gonna finger of death you, and then i’ll have kristen revivify you, and then i’ll kill you again-”

guilt worms its way into riz’s a voice as he spins them around in a circle, surveying the perimeter for more shadow tendrils,

“did you have a dream about taking a test in the dark on tuesday night?”

adaine stills, making riz’s turnaround incomplete and leaving them back to back. riz hears something break through the soil to the side of them and doesn’t think twice before swinging down on it. that hum from last night’s dream compresses and amplifies, and adaine lifts her hands to her ears. she shouts,

“how do you know that, riz!”

riz hears more shadows slithering, some breaking through the soil, even more twisting on the wind. his chest heaves, and he steps in front of adaine to cut them down before they can reach them. adaine curses, and after a couple seconds, throws up an abjurative ward.

riz turns back, and sees wispy dark purple fingers break through the dirt and latch onto adaine’s shoes.

it’s a split second. adaine’s expression is that of shock and terror, her mouth slightly parted and her eyes wide. riz knows that part of that is for him, his impossible situation and impossible knowledge. the fingers crawl higher, one long nail scraping her ankle and drawing red blood. the tendrils suck it up, and gain a purple sheen to them. adaine looks pale and sick, like she might faint at any moment.

and everything comes together in riz’s mind like a perfect storm. the dreams that he could see the edge of, his body’s reaction to kristen yesterday, the mist that clings to his hand now that has the potential to be anything, anything he wants.

he has no time to say it, but he has to trust it all the same.

he reaches out and grabs adaine’s hands, which she readily takes. the shadow fingers crawl up to grab at her ankle, but riz doesn’t let up, and eventually they let go, leaving long scratches down adaine’s ankle that drain of blood immediately. adaine stumbles into riz, bumping up against his chest, and he looks up at her, his sister, his best friend. he manages to croak out,

“adaine?”

she’s unfocused on him, head whipping around, trying to scan for any more shadow tendrils. riz can feel them, about six inches from the back of his shoes. but she answers,

“yeah?”

riz swallows down anything else he might have wanted to say, lets go of adaine’s hands, and lets his hands hover over her shoulders for just a second. and then he pushes her down, where she lands on her back in the mist that’s gathered around his feet with a broken,

“you gotta wake up.”

and the last look she gives him before she sinks down into it is realization, as she sees the lingering magic on riz’s fingers;

a shimmering galaxy purple.

riz feels like something’s been untimely ripped from him as soon as adaine sinks back into the waking world, a wave of nausea compounding into a piercing headache. he nearly falls to his knees with it, and maybe would if he wasn’t sure that he would die if he didn’t start running.

his entire body aches as he sprints through invisible fields, the weeds with thorns ripping into his skin and thousands of claws and serpents and fingers coming out of nowhere to grab at him. he’s tired, he realizes. he remembers kassandra’s words from a few nights ago, divine and prophetic dreams take a lot of brain power. he laughs a broken laugh. he’d certainly learned that lesson the hard way. his feet make crunching sounds as he steps on old dead grass that the new has grown over, a testament to how much power he has left, he can’t even soften his own footsteps.

he runs for what feels like hours, till he’s shaking, till he slams into black wall. the edge of adaine’s visions are only for adaine, it seems. he turns around.

it’s like a scene from a movie, with only the pale glow from riz’s hands to see by, and the dark purple highlights that curl and take form again, the present version of the entity from earlier. their limbs are all slightly too long, and nothing takes a set shape, blurred at the edges like they don’y have anything distinct enough to hold onto anymore. their face, which riz can see for the first time, is gnarled like the trees in nightmare forest, but it shifts as well, into different expressions, like a constantly rotating mask.

they don’t attack him.

instead they wait, and stalk slowly towards him, basking in the cicada’s hum, and as riz listens, turns it excruciating. the cicadas now scream a discordant sound, like the loudspeakers at the football field. but this time, no attempt at music plays. the cicada’s speak,

“riz gukgak, do you think you deserve all this?”

it’s nauseating, like every syllable is a death rattle. riz’s jaw goes tight, and he grips the sword of shadows tightly,

“leave my friends alone. they’ve done nothing wrong.”

the thing laughs, and the sound goes against everything good he’s ever heard, broken like insect wings ripped into shreds, and they say,

“nothing wrong? nothing wrong?!” the things gets up in riz’s face, and he barely has the courage to not look away. “you and your friends, look how you’ve ruined me!”

and this is it. riz has been killed by a pit fiend, has been killed by a woman his father loved, and now he’s going to do it a third time.

alone.

i’m not gonna wake up from this.

the thing, the nightmare, pulls back, some semblance of a sick smile on their face. a rattle starts low in their throat,

“i will ruin you, like you and your friends ruined me, riz.”

riz takes a deep breath, fully expecting it to be his last, and holds his sword high above his head.

and riz can suddenly feel the shadows, the good ones, the ones he’s called home for the past ten levels, envelop him. and just before it covers his eyes, he sees the sky rip all the darkness out, returning to a cloudy blue horizon. the nightmare looks back just in time for a purple flash to blind it, and flinches in what riz, if he had thought it possible, would have called fear.

he wakes up on the ground, cuts and bruises dotting his previously well healed skin. kristen stands over him, adaine looking worried behind her.

kristen’s hands grip his shoulders and she shakes them,

“if something were really wrong i’d tell you my ass, riz.”

she grips his shoulders tightly, their magic swirling together beautifully, riz’s own lilac dawn hues and kristen’s twilight galaxy ones meeting in the middle for a perfect amalgam of witchcraft, and nighttime, and secrets, and hands. it floods riz’s body with energy, for the first time in days.

when it’s done, kristen slumps back on the floor, rubs her temples, and says,

“let’s go kill a nightmare, i guess!”

_____

they don’t have time to track down the others. riz and kristen can both feel the nightmare’s presence, lingering, seeping up through the planes.

kristen texts the group chat on their way to the field: battle in north field. ur not gonna make it in time, so come watch us die i guess lol.

adaine finds this less than amusing, and her and kristen break out into a small argument as they’re cutting through the tallest bits of grass, where even the tops of their heads are obscured.

riz uses this brief period of time to open up his messages and send a separate text to fabian. he sees one unread one, from 12:42 yesterday afternoon.

always, the ball.

riz nearly stops in his tracks as another clue clicks into place.

i went into adaine’s dream tuesday night and saved her from the nightmare. i am capable of going into other people’s dreams.

the blood rushes to riz’s face, making his head swim. the rest of the sounds around him drown out, kristen and adaine’s argument reduced to a low static sound and the wind and rustling of the grass erased completely, and all riz can hear is his own heart beating wildly in his chest, his own blood rushing through his ears, and his panicked breathing.

i told the real life fabian aramais seacaster that i wanted to kiss him.

he watches adaine and kristen pass him by, and he can hear the ground under his feet ripple almost imperceptibly with the nightmare’s imminent arrival.

he just doesn’t have the time.

he closes his eyes, takes a grounding breath, and pushes the panic away. he pointedly ignores the last message, and from some part of him that still has some hope for a friendship after this, if he survives at all,

(the part of him that remembers that fabian hadn’t pulled away from riz’s hands even without the context of why riz had reached for them, the part of him that remembers that the emotion in fabian’s voice as he said his name, his real name, was decidedly not anger, or pity, or disgust. the part of him that remembers fabian’s hand cupping his jaw, a thumb on his cheekbone, unwaveringly steady even in the face of riz’s confession. the part of him that collects clues without bias, without the stubborn notion, i am not the kind of person fabian aramais seacaster falls for, the part of him so deeply buried that riz can’t even bear to say it, even in his own head, a hidden and unnamed, maybe.)

he sends a simple, if eye-rollingly cliche: if i don’t die in the next five minutes, we should talk.

the field, when they get there, if quiet and still. the cicadas are nowhere to be found, which riz is grateful for, the nightmare’s voice still reverberating in the back of his mind. the large cumulonimbus clouds that were pure white earlier now hang heavy and low with rain, but the sun still shines down, casting the three of them in an odd blend of shadows and gold. late may prairie grass is just starting to turn it's proper color. it's a beautiful day, and it’s uncanny to think of it as the same unholy setting that was adaine’s vision.

the area that riz had run through in the vision, the dead grass from last year starts to fill up with black smoke, and then deep dark purple. riz sees his crystal light up with a text just before he puts it away:

what? i am on my way.

riz stares at it. and the only thought he lets himself have about that is that he'd like for fabian to see him kill this thing. and then he shuts his crystal down, and shoves it in one of his vest pockets.

riz has a couple seconds to get a weapon ready, and he reaches for his arcubus holstered to his side. but as he’s just about to click the safety off, he stops. and then he holsters his gun, and unsheathes the sword of shadows. it shines with an unfamiliar sheen as he holds it up to the sun, and riz takes a finger and wipes the surface of it. it comes away slightly wet, and the water runs into the scars across riz’s palms, turning them a light purple. a few small wounds heal up, and riz sends a small thank you up to kassandra. and then he crouches down, and disappears into the grass.

(he’s still a rogue, after all. that’s never changing.)

the smoke writhes and twists, eventually coming together into the horrifying shape riz now knows as the nightmare.

riz knows all too well the symptoms of exhaustion. no matter the caffiene, or the cold water you dunk your head in, or the fresh air of the open windows, there comes a point where you start to lose it. you can be of the soundest mind in the world, and it doesn’t matter. after two or three days awake, you start hallucinating. these hallucinations are often miniscule at first, little things you barely notice. you look down at your hands and as you clench your fingers, they seem smaller. the things in the corners of your eyes warp, but when you look right at them return to their normal shape. this is your sign, that unless you go to bed right now, everything is about to get a whole lot worse.

riz doesn’t remember the days where it gets a whole lot worse. but that’s almost better than the other option, the things you see when you finally break down, and go to bed.

for someone who’s able to fall asleep normally, falling asleep after multiple days awake is as easy as closing their eyes. but riz is not someone who can fall asleep normally. and for riz, the hours trying to fall asleep after multiple all nighters are some of the most harrowing ones of his life. it’s a constant and torturous cycle, every time his heart slows and his breathing evens out, he gets a feeling. the same shiver, the same hair stood on end at the nape of his neck, the same turn of the stomach. the same base prey feeling, something is watching you, that baron had exuded. that the nightmare king had, and now, the nightmare does. and most nights, he would turn over, put his pillow over his head till he finally succumbed. but some nights, he would open his eyes.

and what he would always see was some indescribable darkness, twisted and bleeding into reality, without a face but half formed into a presence. when he was little, he would scream. when he got older, he would sit up, and press his palms into his closed eyes until he could open them and see only the floating colorful marks bouncing around his field of vision.

this being is that form, but finally accomplished of it’s goal, parts of it reminiscent of human. they seem to do their best approximation of a smile, bits of rotten starlight stuck between their teeth.

riz watches as they shorten their torso to get down to kristen’s level, hum their dissonant hum, and goes to say something. the same fearful defiance as when he would turn over and put the pillow over his head fills him, and everything in his body refuses the premise of this thing having anything to say.

so riz stalks through the prairie, careful not to step on any of the dry dead grass littered on the ground, creeps up behind the nightmare, and slashes at their back.

black shroud that seems less like an article of clothing and more like an outer skin cuts away, and the wounds fill with dark purple blood. they whip around, screaming something that sounds like it’s been through one of fig’s talkboxes too many times, like even their pain is distorted and inverted. but riz is already gone, hidden again under the grass.

they spin in place, and where the tips of their fingers brush against the top of the grass, it rots down to the root, turning black and gnarled. they talk for the first time in the waking world then, still low and jarring, but unnervingly, a hint of mortal,

“where are you riz gukgak?”

riz’s gut turns, and he has the conviction suddenly that something very bad is about to happen.

suddenly the leftover dregs of darkness still nestled in the grass lift, and for a second, they’re almost pretty, little pockets of night in the bright afternoon. and then they spread, like an invasive moss, into the atmosphere, and riz is in pitch black.

there are times he hates being right.

the number one rule in adventuring is ‘don’t split the party’ for a reason. a sense of your allies is essential, and riz has never felt that more acutely as he does now, hiding in the prairie grass, straining his ears and hoping beyond hope that the nightmare doesn’t find any of them. his fingers dig into the topsoil, and riz is almost surprised to find himself in the waking world, with no mist gathered circling around his fingers. he is well and truly in the dark.

riz gets a temporary moment of reprieve as adaine raises her hand in the sky, her hands sparking electric blue. her face is illuminated in rage, and riz can’t help but crack hidden smile. the sky itself comes to meet her hand, raw elemental magic mixed with the practiced chaos of her own. she rips it from its home and twirls it in her hand, like a gashbat player gearing up for a pitch, and then she throws it, this large blue and white fireball, and it hits the nightmare square in the chest.

the nightmare screeches something wholly unmortal, and the lightning shoots through their veins, illuminating enlarged capillaries and organs so malformed they don’t seem to have a purpose anymore. the lightning begins to fade, burning out with one last crackle into the veins in the nightmare’s hands, which stop past the knuckles.

for a second, the landscape is again plunged into unnatural darkness, and it seems to hum with animosity, an unspoken, you won’t get away with that. and then again, light breaks through.

kristen’s magic is so different than riz’s, he thinks as he watches. the sky lights up like a photo developed on expired film, light leaks streaking in and the darkness corroding the edges, desperate to corrupt it. there’s no view of what should be the school and the rest of the field beyond the darkness, so all that all of them see is kristen, her red hair glowing as if under a halo from her sterling silver question mark staff raised above it, and her and the nightmare’s magic roiling together behind her, engaged in their own war.

kristen has a grave look on her face as she takes a deep breath, and charges towards the nightmare.

her hair whips behind her as she runs, and her boots hit the ground with a repetitive thud, like her steps are their own blows. she stops five feet from the now illuminated nightmare, skidding, uprooted prairie grass surrounding her feet. her eyes turn from the hazel of the land she was born in to a burning purple, her pupils almost lost in the color, and she bares her teeth at the monster. a poignant realization comes over riz,

i do that.

and then kristen slams her staff down, her magic scorching the earth in a circle around her. the air warps, seeming to pull at everything at the core of them, and riz has to struggle to hold onto the small new wisp of magic nestled in his chest as kristen uses four charges on the staff of doubt to cast banishment.

wisps off the entity come off, but they stay rooted to the ground, riz can feel their tendrils thrum in the earth underneath his feet. his eyes are useless, even at their most dilated, but the rest of him can sense the nightmare, the feeling of dread in the air, the scuttling of little bugs under the earth made to rot in their home, a taste of iron on the tip of his tongue. riz wouldn’t have thought that anything about being a goblin could be divine, but what he feels right now, the mixture of his new abilities and his old ones, feels holy to the core.

unfortunately, all of this serves as evidence of the fruitlessness of kristen’s spell. the light starts to fade, and the nightmare remains. they laugh that inverted laugh again, and say, too bitter to be anything other than mortal,

“you cannot banish me that easily, kristen applebees. this plane is as much my home as it is yours,”

the wounds on their back split farther open as they lean down to be face to face with her, revealing dark purple veins that pulse with no particular heartbeat. they reach out with one tendril, which concentrates into a smooth skinned dark purple hand for just a second, even while the edges of it fight against its new position. the hand grips kristen's chin roughly, and kristen’s freckled and tan face starts to drain of blood as the nightmare continues,

“you and i are born of the space between the stars, the mystery and horrible possibility that lies,” they smile their uncanny and bitter smile, and the edges of them lick at kristen’s fading light, “in the darkness. there is a pit of vast emptiness, endless loneliness, in both of us. the only difference between you and me, sainted one, is that it loves you. and you love it back.”

riz sees red blood spill out of kristen's lips, with an inhuman sheen. she still stares defiantly at the nightmare, and tries to croak something out. she chokes on her own blood instead, and the entity laughs. they crane their neck around, calling out like an animal mimicking a human voice in the forest, just left of mortal,

“and you, little oathless one… you may not have started out like me, but here we are, in the same place.” their fingers dig into the hollows of kristen’s cheek, crescent moon nail imprints spreading like spiderweb cracks across her smooth skin. “with your friends’ lives in our hands.”

kristen closes her eyes, and with some stroke of luck, looks straight at riz. there are tears streaming down her face and the smile that her lips quite literally crack is a haunted one.

she looks scared.

the nightmare retreats from kristen, who drops to her knees, but doesn't hit the ground, instead digging her fingers into the earth and spitting blood, which disappears quickly, the light coming off from her staff only illuminating half a foot out.

the entity seems to notice the direction kristen had looked in, and scans for riz in the impossible dark. they creep up to only a few feet from riz, and their scent is sharp, like winter trees and moss. their voice is faux casual in the same lilting way that kalina’s was, and the thought that they probably knew each other enters riz’s mind and sticks as they say,

“you stole my title, you know.”

their faux casual demeanor twists into a sneer,

“i want it back.”

riz feels a wave of nausea come over him, the implications of what the nightmare has just said settling. the nightmare’s presence in the waking world feels so inherently wrong, in a way that’s different from the way they exist in the dreaming world. there, at least, they felt out of place in a setting already fathomless. when the walls expand and retract before your eyes and otherworldly mist coats every surface, it’s not hard to place it’s nemesis, a dark and amorphous being. but here, the air buzzes with the potential of the coming storm, and the heat hangs heavy in the air along with it, waiting for it to break. to place this nightmare, this entity, with some sort of origin, with some sort of home on this plane feels sacreligious.

riz swallows down his nausea. he goes to scan the battlefield, quickly realizing that much of it is obscured in darkness. but kristen’s light, fast fading as it is, illuminates the nightmare’s face, twisted as it scans the darkness. riz can still feel them, in his ears, a soft shuddersome hum, and under his feet, a quiet rumble, and from the tips of his fingers, a burning rash that spreads up his hands. he would know where to find this thing blind.

the expanse between the dying light and riz’s current position is too far for riz to cross, so he unholsters the arcubus. the metal is cool under his fingers, rough but well treated. it’s so distinctly man-made and modern that it gives riz a funny feeling about using it against such an ancient creature. but he clicks the safety off anyway, a sound that echoes and makes the nightmare crack it’s head towards riz’s position. riz rolls out from the tufts off grass he was hidden in, no light illuminating the small clearing he’s now positioned in. he pulls the trigger.

the bullet glows a similar blue to adaine’s lightning, but with a more turquoise tint. when it hits the nightmare’s chest, the neon light begins to run through their veins, but stops only a couple inches out, and retreats back towards the source.

the nightmare makes a sound, something slightly pained that may supposed to be a laugh but riz cannot in good conscience call one. the weak light that still cuts through is diminished by the cloud of dirt that rises when riz pushes his foot out to retreat from the clearing, finding a slightly new tuft of grass to obscure himself in.

riz watches from across the battlefield as kristen’s dim light is corroded when the nightmare’s tendrils lash out. the nightmare digs them in, and they act like claws, splitting open the sides of kristen’s neck. the darkness bleeds into the purple like ink in water, slowly starting to turn kristen’s magic from it’s vibrant color to dark gray. the purple, like the light behind her had previously, makes a valiant effort to resist, holding its own against the effect, but kristen, already weak, grows even more frail.

riz hears a crack of thunder, and lightning penetrates the dimness. it lights adaine in electric blue and white, and the shadows that dance on the planes of her face give her a grave look. she smiles a rueful and vengeful smile, as the lightning pools in her hand, and she shapes it into a ball without a glance down, competence radiating from every practiced move. riz can hear her foot drag on the ground as she pulls back, and then with another crack of thunder, hurls the lightning ball at the nightmare paladin.

riz can feel his blood pumping in his body, fast and delirious as the charge in the air from the coming storm as he thinks,

wreck house, adaine.

once again, the ball of lightning hits the entity square in the chest. the organs illuminated shrivel this time, and when the lightning reaches their knees, they bow a little bit. but the nightmare grits their teeth and stands tall, refusing to fall.

when the electricity that courses through the nightmares veins runs its course and burns out, the area is again plunged into pitch black, kristen’s light having faded.

which is why riz can only dare to guess what happens when he hears kristen cry out. he zeroes in on the sound, his ears swiveling. her feet slide on the ground, uprooted prairie grass rustling under her feet, but he hears no sign of her hitting the ground, and had heard no sound of the nightmare moving to deal a blow to her. but riz can smell iron on the wind, and the slightest whiff of hemlock.

it’s then that kristen casts a spell that riz hasn’t seen before. it's a blinding silver, like a beam of moonlight cut through the clouds in the middle of the day but weaponized. it illuminates kristen, and she looks, for lack of a poeticism, even worse than she has six seconds previously. her face is gaunt, dark purple running through her veins and the rest of her skin pale. there’s a sheen of sweat over her whole body, not the kind typical of the dog days of late spring, but that of a feverish child. her lips are nearly blue, and her fingers are the same.

she should have healed herself.

riz thinks, as he watches the nightmare flick out again to caress her chin. the purple veins turn even more saturated as the last remaining color in kristen's usually rosy complexion drains. her eyelids droop, and riz can see the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. she looks like a plague victim, but as her knees give way, she uses the last of her strength to spit red blood at their hand that’s cupping her face, and spit out,

“kass could love you too, if you let them. that's where we’re different.”

and the purple light burns into the middle like a dying star, before vanishing entirely, and for the first real time since this combat started, there’s darkness without a promise to its end.

riz forces himself to focus beyond the immediate worry for kristen. he has to think logically.

there are two things he knows. number one, they are now without a real healer. riz only has one charge of lay on hands, which means that the one time he uses it has to be the only time. if he spends his time trying to heal kristen the old-fashioned way, that’s time better spent trying to down this thing. if kristen goes down again after that, riz can only help her so much. riz’s stomach twists as he realizes it’s better to let her stay down for a bit. number two, riz is the only one who knows where this thing is in the darkness. all of this leads to a conclusion, bestowed upon him like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

the nightmare needs to die in the next twelve seconds.

and riz needs to do it.

riz feels the weight of his new knowledge on his shoulders as he nods to himself, quick and divisive. this, at the very least, is a revelation he can handle.

he clicks the safety on his gun, and holsters it again. it makes a sound as loud as if it had gone off in the relative silence of the moment. riz can hear bones cracking, breaking and reseting, as the nightmare turns, their feet remaining unmoving on the ground but the tips of their fingers crumbling the rotted prairie grass around them. they’re some thirty five feet away from him.

riz swallows as he realizes that after this, there’s no chance he won’t be just cut down, or just shy of it. he pushes the fear from his mind. he goes from head to shoulders tensing every muscle, leaning into his instincts. he digs his feet into the ground, and it makes a divot in the dirt. he takes a deep, grounding breath. and he springs into action.

no one can see him in the darkness, but riz has the suspicion that no one would be able to see him in the midafternoon sun. switchgrass whips at his face and hands, most likely leaving long emerald streaks that will scar. he reaches the clearing where kristen is, and with a heavy heart, leaps at the nightmare instead.

he wraps one forearm around the nightmare’s neck. the pain is unlike riz has felt before, the pain of the entity’s tendrils nothing compared to this. his sleeve burns away, and against his skin is a blinding sensation, an impossible mix of the frozen burn of the vast expanse of space and the stiff numbness of hemlock poisoning. he grits his teeth against the pain, and with the momentum he has from hanging from the entity’s neck, uses his feet like a pendulum, kicking them in the back of where there should be knees, hoping that his weight is enough to give him an opening.

the nightmare keels in half, a scream more out of rage then pain nearly deafening riz. riz gasps in relief as he lets his arm let go of the creature’s neck. he falls from his position, and while his one arm hangs uselessly by his side, his other holds the sword of shadows. he grips it with an iron fist, and angles it down with perfect form. the tip of the blade digs into the junction of neck and shoulder, and midnight purple clotted blood rushes in. the scream the nightmare lets out next is most certainly one of pain.

riz’s feet hit the ground with a resounding thump, and, knowing he won’t have enough time to hide, shouts out to adaine, wherever she is,

“i don’t want to tell you what to do but i-” riz takes a breath, looking at the nightmare slowly turning around to face riz, the only sign that the darkness of them and the darkness of the atmosphere aren’t the same the difference in texture, “i think can kill this thing. don’t waste your last third level, get the darkness down.”

adaine, in what must be a moment of forgetfulness cries out to riz in return,

“it’s your fucking arch-nemesis, i’m taking cues from you.”

riz doesn’t have time to react to that as he hears the nightmare’s rotted tendrils deep in the earth shifting, dislodging the roots of the prairie grass that had previously been undisturbed for generations. and that’s all the warning he gets that the nightmare is facing him till he feels their claws dig into his shoulder. riz’s shoulder wound seems to riot in his body at this, every wound he’s ever had there flaring up like a vengeful ghost. the icy burn and the stiff numbness flood his veins, and riz takes a choked breath, stopping just short of screaming. there’s no light to see by, but riz knows that the skin around his shoulder is blooming sage.

the nightmare keeps their claws in riz’s shoulder, and leans in, so that there’s only a couple centimeters between their cheeks. it’s an intimate position, and it brings bile to the back of riz’s throat. he can catch a flash of teeth, light purple as riz’s own magic but corroded with dark rot, as the nightmare smirks, and taunts,

“you think you’re special? you think you’re the first paladin who was promised all their dreams laid out in front of them? the first one who was miraculously worthy? you think you were the first mistake?”

the nightmare pulls back, and their face looks for a second almost startlingly mortal, the starlight of their teeth moved to the roots of their hair at the temple of their head, and the swirling purple flattens and turns to mattelike skin, the same desaturated purple that their hands had been. most glaringly, their eyes are eerily reminiscent of riz and kristen’s magic, a misty dark galaxy purple. they spit their next words bitterly,

“little oathless one… you were not the first mistake they have made, and by whatever their cursed name is now, i guarantee you won’t be the last.”

and any feelings riz might have about that are dashed by the nightmare’s sudden twist back into nightmarishness, their face returning to the vague dark shadows and horrifying expression that they had donned for all the time riz had known them.

he hears adaine streaking through the grass, rotted bluestem and switchgrass breaking off where she brushes into them. he can hear her breathing too, sharp intakes of breath as her feet hit the ground, a technique he had taught her to help avoid getting found. she comes to a stop suddenly, breaking her movement, to cast dispel magic.

riz whips his head back, straining against the nightmare’s grip to watch. adaine holds her orb aloft, and the darkness leeches from the sky, streaks of grey clouds and blue sky suddenly visible above riz’s head. all the shadows shoot into the orb, and swirl there like a dark night concentrated and trapped. the prairie around them is visible, and riz can see the rotted and broken off tips of the grass littered everywhere, and in the nightmare’s surprise, they loosen their grip.

riz rips his shoulder from their claws, and with a glance to the nightmare’s own shoulder, notices they sport twin wounds. but theirs drips with dark purple clotted blood, and riz’s remains bloodless, a dichotomy that everything in riz says should be reversed. he pushes any sentiment about that down.

in the light, riz can see kristen in the distance, her head tilted back as blood runs from the corners of her lips, one hand digging into the dirt like she had tried to hoist herself back up and the other clutching her chest as the poison makes its way through her organs. riz’s gaze finds her eyes, but they’re closed, eyelashes fluttering in unconsciousness.

riz takes off running, arcing around the nightmare in a semi-circle, adaine doing the same. riz meets her eyes then, as they spin in tandem like a looming tornado. she nods at him. riz puts power in one of his feet and lifts off, twisting his body in the air with his sword. the entity is looking up at him with a solemn expression on their face, and-

they’re right, to call him oathless. when kassandra came to his dream on monday, he took no vows. he wasn’t given any task, he wasn’t asked to defend his friends’ dreams, to take a beating every time he closes his eyes and watch as his magic gets devoured in the process. there’s no righteous fight that he’s called to when he wakes up in the morning, no sword in his hands named justice, his has always been of shadows. he has no holy duty to protect anything, he could do what rogues do best, what he has always done best, shoot from the shadows and avoid the hits. any devotion he has to kassandra is new, a small thing growing in the pit of his chest, and the magic that accompanies it is untethered. but riz has been defending, and fighting, and protecting, and he has had devotion in the pit of his chest for as long as he remembers, but not to kassandra. not for any god.

riz brings the sword of shadows down just as the sun dips behind the clouds, making the light that hits him silver. this is for riz’s home, this is riz’s for riz’s family. the sword hits one singular ray of watery light, and glows bright as he swings it sideways into their chest.

it cuts in with a sickening sound, their chest collapsing in like an old decayed wasps nest. from the wound glows a light purple light, and it leaks out of their eyes, and their ears, and the lines of their shadowy vague palms, like one final reminder that they were not always this, and it comes out of their mouth as they scream. and they scream, and they scream, and they scream, and eventually, the scream sounds hauntingly like relief. and when the light fades, the shadows sink into the ground, leaving only the rotted outline of them in the grass.

riz has no time to celebrate, or mourn, much less search deep within the recesses of his heart to figure out which he might want to do. he takes off in the direction of kristen, he can hear adaine not far behind him. he doesn’t make it in time to stop the next sputtering coughing fit sprouting from kristen’s chest, red blood blooming out from her mouth, making a gruesome pattern. in a moment of panic, some mixture of his goblin senses and just the way his brain functions mix, and any sound is lost but the beat of her heart, beating slower and slower. riz skids, the knees of his pants now covered in dirt and grass stains as he stops next to kristen. adaine stands above him, a hand on his shoulder.

he places his hands on her chest, and he can feel kristen’s magic beating under her skin and how his responds to it. purple light spreads from inbetween his fingers, and riz can see the veins in her arms turn from sickly black purple, to shining with that light, to their normal green and blue.

some of the color returns to her face, and her eyes open, revealing the burning galaxy purple of her- of their magic. and the storm breaks.

the rain comes pouring down, plastering kristen’s hair to her forehead, and soaking her clothes in an instant. still riz can tell that she’s crying by the look on her face, and in an insight that often eludes riz, he can see the enormity of the moment, what she sees in his eyes, the same burning galaxy purple, her god, her god who made a hallow of her friend. and in an act uncharacteristic of kristen, she says nothing, just wraps her arms around him.

adaine puts a hand on his shoulder then, and riz breaks away from the hug to look up at her. she tilts her head, gesturing to his left. riz turns his head.

fig, gorgug, and fabian stand there, all drenched in rain and silent, their faces shocked. riz immediately darts his gaze away from fabian. fig slowly walks up to kristen, laying a hand on her, and red light runs up kristen’s veins, and color returns to her extremities, and warm firelight floods through her body, the only sign of harm a few freshly healed scars on her neck that would likely fade. fig breaks her concentration on kristen to stare riz down with barely guarded excitement, and her voice is high as she asks,

“did you just divine smite that thing?”

riz’s eyes widen.

“no?”

everyone stares at him unamused. there’s a tense silence before fabian speaks up, and in a move that’s probably more suspicious than not, riz doesn’t break his gaze from fig to listen.

“i think you owe everyone a little bit of an explanation, the ball.”

riz can feel the hand on his shoulder still a second, and then relax again, as adaine repeats,

“i couldn’t agree more. but can we get out of the rain?”

_____

“wait, wait, wait- you woke up for three straight nights after getting beat up in your dreams feeling like shit, after you had made a deal with a god, and didn’t think to look into that at all?”

adaine says, curled into an overstuffed armchair at mordred. she’s holding a cup off hot cocoa like the rest of them, and the glow of the fireplace dances across her face, which currently has an expression riz can loosely classify as, why are you so fucking stupid.

the bad kids had all piled into the hangvan some five or six hours ago, and had taken their time unwinding from the battle, riz refusing to say anything till everyone was ‘fully in the headspace to listen’. the criteria for this was extremely arbitrary and mostly an excuse to put it off as long as he could, but vaguely included everyone being as fully healed as they could be without a long rest (which riz tried to argue for, but was met with a resounding no from adaine, who knew exactly what would most likely entail if riz were to fall asleep), dressed in dry clothes, and equipped with an appropriately calming hot drink. but eventually, he got through most of the sequence of events, and is now being subjected to the bad kids’ scattered line of questioning.

riz shifts awkwardly, and doesn’t meet adaine’s gaze. he stares down at the mug of chamomile tea in his hands, and the warmth from the mug warms them as well. he says, mostly into his mug,

“it’s not that i didn’t know something was wrong, it’s just… i don’t know, i thought it was a me problem. it’s not as if we were overdue for a major threat to the student body.”

fig pokes his side with a socked foot, her leg outstretched from where she’s positioned, stretched out like a cat directly in front of the fireplace. she adjusts her cardigan, an oversized crocheted bright blue wool thing borrowed from her girlfriend, so that the sleeves cover her hand where she rests her palm at it as she asks,

“ok, so, we’re coming back to the fact that you think problems only you have aren’t important, but like. it wasn’t just a you problem. you dreamwalked into adaine’s dreams, like, six times.”

adaine corrects from her position in the chair,

“literally only twice. and one of them was a vision.”

fig swats a hand at adaine across the room, and makes a face at her. adaine makes a face back. they stare at each other for a moment too long, and riz has the sinking suspicion that if he doesn’t answer they’re going to start throwing random objects at each other. riz takes a glance at kristen, who is looking between the two in obvious glee.

(kristen loves it when people start throwing things at each other. jawbone says it’s the repressed impulse to roughouse from childhood. riz privately thinks it’s the unhinged bloodlust all the bad kids share, but the girls especially.)

riz goes to raise a hand to the back of his neck, and very suspiciously slams it down halfway there, as he realizes where the mannerism came from. his face heats up in a way he hopes he can blame on the fire. it’s like he can feel fabian’s presence, all while banishing him from even the corner of his eye.

(he had left out, in his explanation, a few details about whose dreams he went into, and while adaine volunteered her own experiences, fabian had not. riz had kept stealing glances at him where he was sprawled out on the couch, but fabian was never looking at him, hiz gaze fixed on the ceiling and expression blank but waiting. riz’s stomach had twisted at every point of possible interest, expecting fabian offer up his side of the story, or question him, or pull him away from the group and demand the real explanation he had been asking for. but he had just laid there, unmoving, silent, with a poorly acted dissaffected affect he hadn’t had since leviathan with everyone else, and end of freshman year with riz.)

fighting to keep his composure, riz clears his throat, still not meeting anyones eyes as he says,

“i didn’t exactly know i was dreamwalking. i wouldn’t have kept that from you. if i knew what it would lead too… i’m sorry i put you guys at risk.”

fig shifts, laying a hand on his shoulder and hoisting herself up with him as an anchor point. she snakes an arm around him and lays her head on his shoulder where her hand had been, and her horns poke his neck a bit. riz is filled with a warm feeling, one of fig’s bardics, coursing through him. he smiles a small smile, tilting his head to rest on top of hers, horns be damned.

he glances up when he hears gorgug start to talk,

“but... you were at risk.”

riz blinks, and responds,

“but-”

fig shoves the side of her body into his, narrowly missing his carotid artery with her horns, and protests,

“no buts.”

kristen speaks for the first time in awhile then, propped up against the side of adaine’s chair with gorgug’s sweatshirt on. even healed up to full, she looks tired in a way she hadn’t in her post battle euphoria, dark circles under her eyes and her lips set in a hard line. riz can’t discern the emotion on her face, but as she speaks, he realizes that it’s guilt.

“i just- why didn’t you tell us, riz?”

riz feels a pang of guilt in turn, and the blush already growing across his face blooms even more, turning his whole body more lime than emerald. he drums his fingers on the side of his cup, and takes a sip to calm himself down.

“everyone was doing so well. everyone was so happy, and successful, and relieved that the quest was over, and i didn’t want-” riz sighs, says the next part small and quiet, “i didn’t want to ruin everything.”

when riz looks up, he looks to fabian, unthinkingly. and for the first time since they left that field, fabian is looking back at him. his expression has a shade of kristen's, his mouth set in a grim line. but his eye looks down at riz, understanding, with something else as well. and he doesn't say anything, doesn't even message him, just keeps riz's gaze, a fraction of their moment in the dream, where everything that had been big and disastrous was suddenly still.

riz remembers his text to fabian, and it echoes in the back of his mind now,

we should talk.

fabian does speak then, something behind his voice that has been there for months but riz has never noticed. he can't say what it is, but it makes his fast heart beat calm down in a way it hasn't since he woke up this morning,

“well, it would have ruined everything if you had died, the ball.”

riz laughs a breathy laugh, and watches as gorgug looks up to try and get fabian's attention, a soft,

“c’mon.”

at fabian's supposed jab. but fabian takes a second to break eye contact with riz, and when fabian does crane his head down to look down at gorgug, and schools his face into something appropriate for the situation, gorgug's changes as well, a slight furrow of the brows in confusion. gorgug shakes his softly, and turns to riz,

“fabian… could be nicer,” gorgug says pointedly, and fabian cracks a smile, “but he's not… he's not wrong, you know.”

adaine buts in,

“you're the closest thing i have to a brother, riz. almost nothing you could ever do would ruin that. and speaking as someone who's sister tried to murder her multiple times, having hard-core sleeping problems doesn't even come close.”

riz smiles, and teases,

“well, if i ever get pushed into the middle of a fight between a god and an ex-follower of theirs again, i won’t try and handle it on my own.”

kristen groans from the floor, having given up on her relatively normal sitting position and instead having apparently chosen to lay on the hardwood. face down. everyone looks at her as she props herself up with her elbows, resting her face in her palms as she says, muffled,

“i don’t know how i didn’t see it!”

riz twists his face into what he hopes resembles sympathy, and tries vaguely to comfort her, his voice stilted as he says,

“i mean, i also didn’t see it, and it was happening to me.”

kristen shakes her head,

“no, i mean kassandra. i didn’t notice that my god, who i am-” kristen glances over at riz, and then corrects, “sorry, was, the only follower of, had gone radio silent? i’m a saint, i was a chosen one, and i’m an idiot-”

riz interrupts,

“radio silent? kassandra hasn’t been talking to you?”

kristen rolls onto her side to look at riz easily, her expression dumbfounded,

“wait, riz. you know kass wouldn’t abandon you like that, right? or you weren’t planning to follow them if you didn’t?”

riz stills. he honestly hadn’t thought about it. he didn’t exactly have long term plans when he had struck down the nightmare with a smite. he had just used the resources he had at his disposal while they were available, without any conviction that they always would be. he had become a paladin on accident, took two levels unwillingly, and now, at the end of it all, has to grapple with the idea most people in his position grapple with months before this moment.

do i want to be a paladin?

riz clears his throat, embarrassed,

“i don’t really know? maybe?”

kristen looks at him in obvious shock, her mouth opened in a perfect ‘o’ shape. gorgug looks to the left of him to meet fig’s eyes. adaine rests her palm on her eyes and sighs. fabian’s expression is that of pained, exhausted, sympathy, and he shakes his head, turning to look back pensively at the ceiling while saying,

“we have got to get you some standards.”

riz dislodges himself from fig, gesturing wildly with his hands as he shouts,

“i didn’t exactly want to question the motives of a god! normal people do not question the motives of a god!”

kristen shouts over him,

“i’ve rescinded my previous statement, you are no longer my favorite, always question the motives of gods, especially when choosing a possible patron-” riz crawls over to shove kristen, who shrieks as she falls off her side to land on her back on the floor, a mere three or four inches “-you’ve harmed me! my own friend! This is a mortal wound, fuck, i’m dying, you have to lay-on-hands me.”

riz rolls his eyes,

“you already took all my lay-on-hands, you know, when you were dealt the actual mortal wound?”

kristen quiets down and smiles.

“thank you for that.”

riz ducks his head,

“fig had revivify, you would have been fine.”

kristen gives him a look, and reaches her hand, palm up, for riz to take hold. riz reaches back, and where their hands meet, a warm vibration runs through him, giving him goosebumps. it settles in the pit of his chest, joining the small bundle of livewire nerves riz now knows to call his magic. kristen gives the same secret smile that kassandra had given him at the start of all this, and says,

“no, thank you for this. it’s- you know. it’s nice to have company.”

it’s a moment that echoes the one a couple of hours ago, the special recognition that riz had seen in kristen now reversed. riz’s divine sense buzzes with kinship, feeling the same livewire nerves in the pit of kristen’s chest across from him.

adaine hangs upside down from her chair, breaking the heaviness of the room. she taps kristen on the shoulder,

“so we’re fine with the fact that a third of the party’s god is gone without a trace?”

kristen blinks, and frantically explains,

“oh, no way, kass is fine. now. or will be- you know, it’s kind of complicated? they were able to talk to me when i went down.”

kristen drops riz’s hand, instead using it to help maneuver herself into a criss-cross-applesauce position,

“basically, kass took the brunt of the nightmare’s offense. if they were a leech on you, they were a parasite on them. they had no way to reach us, they were spending their time trying to keep the entity from the waking world.”

riz feels a weight off his shoulders at the knowledge that in this, the nightmare was wrong.

we aren’t the same. my god doesn’t hate me. my god doesn’t hate me. my god doesn’t hate me-

riz looks up nervously, one last question on the tip of his tongue,

“did they say anything about me?”

kristen smirks, and her eyes turn mischievous. her nose scrunches up in joy, and her hair bounces when she shakes her head up and down. she looks the perfect picture of kassandra right now, a god turned mortal. she answers him with a laugh in her voice,

“they said they’d see you in your dreams.”

_____

riz’s sleeping problems are not magically fixed by his friends, or the new dream magic humming in the pit his chest. but riz sleeps easier that night than he has in a long time.

even after multiple nights, he still doesn’t know what to call it when he opens his eyes to a dream. it’s his bedroom again, though he fell asleep in the living room at mordred. and for the first time since that first dream with kassandra, there’s no unholy hum, no oppressive blackness looming somewhere, no reaction from his magic that whispers, fight. the only reaction from his magic is that same kinship that resulted from kristen, but scattered throughout the room like diffused light.

speaking of, riz can immediately recognize the mist that hangs around every surface, a significant increase from the first dream. he dips his hand into it, his fingers searching the molecules. it feels like sticking your hands into seafoam, bubbles tickling against the skin, and when he pulls it out, his skin seems fresh. in his palm rests a small metal ring with ball bearings spinning in the groove inset in it. he smiles.

i’m getting good at this.

riz sees a shadow block the invisible light source that illuminates his hand, and he nearly jumps, before realizing that it’s a dark indigo, and the silhouette of hair floats weightlessly. he turns around as kassandra says,

“you are getting good at that. you’re a fast learner.”

kassandra looks as worse for wear as a god can look. some of their hair that usually mirrors the night sky is missing it’s wondrous luster, and their hands, which usually emit a soft light purple light, are just normal hands. most noticeably are the dark circles under their eyes, their color same weak dark purple their magic had been when they had just been reborn. they give riz that hidden smile, but it’s a tired one.

riz feels a guilty vindication in the fact that gods can get tired.

kassandra sighs, and sits down in the same oak chair that they had sat in the first time, and riz suddenly realizes that the space has nowhere to sit. it’s vague and formless, the mist only conveying odd shapes in the general idea of furniture. he feels a little awkward standing, so he reaches behind him. the mist greats him, that tingly seafoam feeling overtaking his hands till he closes his fingers around solid oak wood, the arm of a chair. he drags it behind him, and though it should make a scraping noise against supposedly wooden floors, the noise resounding from it is only a soft swishing, like socks in the morning when you pad through the hallway to get cereal.

he sits down in the wooden chair. and watches kassandra across from him. they sigh, and rest their hands in their lap. they look dejected and guilty as they speak,

“i’ll be honest, we don’t have the time i’d like. you’ve spent the last three nights using all your own energy and some of mine to fight off my…” kassandra winces, “mistake. the battle weakened both of us, and you need actual natural rest. if you’d like, we can discuss the intricacies of the situation at a later date. but i want to make two things clear.”

riz nods, nerves coiling in his gut. he has the conviction then that his magic is about to be untimely ripped from the deepest part of him, that kassandra is about to say he doesn’t deserve it, that he’ll wake up to kristen’s disappointment and the rest of the bad kids’ pity and nothing to show for it. and suddenly, unbidden, a revelation comes, and he knows the answer to kristen’s question.

i really do want to be a paladin.

kassandra continues,

“as much as i hate to greet you with another apology for my actions, you cannot even fathom how sorry i am that i did this to you. my intentions were pure, but they put you through,”

kassandra sighs, taking one hand and rubbing it against their eye the way riz does when he’s tired. it brings a grief and awe unparalelled to see himself mirrored in a god, in his-

riz pushes the hope from his mind. it’s no use now.

kassandra continues,

“well, i believe you’ve been to hell, so worse than hell.”

they lean forward in their chair, and their hand on their thigh moves to their knee, closer to where riz is but not quite reaching out. their eyes are sympathetic, and shine with indigo tears. their words are fast as they say,

“my intention was honest, i wanted to give you dreams. i never meant to send you on a holy crusade against my last paladin, i never meant to make you my paladin at all, and most of all, i never meant anyone any harm.”

kassandra’s gaze catches riz’s, his expression guarded, his mouth in a hard line and his eyes steely. he keeps nodding his head, afraid that any words he speak will betray his sadness and come out choked. kassandra’s expression shifts then, from the frantic look of someone desperate to apologize to a softer, more introspective one. they continue, slower,

“the second… you’ve already taken two levels with me. you’ve felt my power coursing through you, with a killing blow and with a healing touch, and i can feel,”

kassandra becomes a bit overwhelmed with emotion, glancing down and not meeting riz’s gaze, and it’s such a mortal gesture that riz almost forgets himself and offers a hand out to comfort them, but thinks the better of it at the last second.

“i can feel how dear it is to you. so the second is something you need to clear up, because as much as i think i might know the answer, i cannot let you continue on like this without your word. paladins are supposed to live by vows, and without one, your magic will burn through you. so, i need to ask,”

kassandra takes a deep breath, and glances up at riz again. even with the human wounds, the depleted magic clearly casting a pall on their appearance and emotional state, they look in this moment the true picture of a god, soft diffused mist gathering to make a halo behind their weightless galaxy hair, their words echoing in a way the room in the waking world would never support, the illusion shattering for a second as the full expanse of the astral hears their offer,

“riz gukgak, would you like to be my paladin?”

riz’s heart nearly stops in surprise, and then returns ferociously, he can hear it in his eardrums, almost drowning out every other sound. and riz can feel himself root in the illusion, the room becoming more real, more tangible, adapting to handle the pure weight of the emotion he’s letting out. his bedroom truly emerges, his bed behind him, normal white sheets now with that familiar light purple sheen, his desk in the corner, his lamp on and flickering to the beat of his heart. even the floor takes shape, he can feel the woodgrain under his socks where they meet the ground. it’s almost dizzying in the most euphoric way.

that is not what i expected them to say.

riz takes a sharp intake of breath, calming himself down before he looks up, meets kassandra’s gaze, the gaze of a god, a god who’s asked him to defend the world in their name, his new god.

and lets all of that bloom in him as he offers out a hand,

“shake on it?”

kassandra’s face blooms in light, and their teeth are bright white starlight. they stare down and riz’s hand and laugh a breathy laugh, joy apparent in their eyes as they say, under their breath,

“not even a week in, and yet, you truly live up to your title.”

riz’s face breaks out in a twin smile, and he leans forward to ask,

“i have a title?”

kassandra just smiles that hidden smile again, and takes riz’s hand in their own. riz feels the livewire nerve of his magic that had previously been so overwhelming smooth itself out. the knots unfurl, any hesitance or fear lessened in an instant. riz can feel wooziness come over him, and he as he slips backwards into blissful, dreamless sleep, he hears kassandra’s last words, whispered close to his ear,

“you didn’t think hand in the darkness was a metaphor, did you?”

_____

riz can feel that time has elapsed from when he falls into that darkness to when he awakes with a start, frantically shooting up from the living room floor. the hardwood is uncomfortable against his back, and there are sage sleep marks on his arm where he’s rested it underneath the pillow. he pushes off the exponential number of quilts laid over him, and his fingers instinctively go to fiddle with the tassels at the end. the collar of his t-shirt, a purple tye-dye lent to him by kristen, is slightly damp at the nape of his neck.

he has all the tell-tale characteristics of a long night’s rest, but a quick glance around the room tells him that the night hasn’t yet given way to dawn.

his friends are sprawled out around him, his darkvision casting them in various shades of light blue and grey. directly to his right is kristen, her red hair is plastered across her face in a way riz knows will cut in and leave marks tomorrow. her mouth is open, and she’s snoring softly, one strand of hair comically blowing up and down with her breathing. riz cups her chin, closing her mouth, and brushes the strand of hair to the side. on the other side of him is gorgug, and in his arms fig. gorgug takes up as little of space possible, his knees curled up almost to his chest, his head resting on the corner of the pillow he and fig share. fig, by comparison, takes up as much room as tieflingly possible, all her limbs askew and splayed out. two blankets cover her, one diagonal on her top half, for her to wrap around her arms, and the other a thin large square one that covers both her and gorgug. adaine is laid pretty normally on the couch, hair pulled up with a scrunchie to keep out of her face while sleeping. her face is serene and unworried, and it brings a fond ache to see that he recognizes the expression, as it increasingly shows up when all the bad kids are together.

the only one conspicuously missing, riz notices, is fabian. a sense of dread settles over riz, making his stomach turn and sweat break out across his brow. he takes care to search every corner of the room from his vantage point, focusing in on the shadows large enough to possibly hide a 5’10 half elf. he comes up empty, and sighs.

you could just go back to sleep.

riz lets out a small laugh at the idea. yes, he, riz gukgak, will avoid something by going to sleep. paladin of dreams or not, that will never be him.

he pushes the blankets completely off of him, and stands up. with a better view of the area, riz can pinpoint fabian’s previous sleeping spot, his sheet left crumpled on the reclining armchair that had previously been occupied by adaine. that rules out the possibility that he left all together, which riz can’t decide if he feels relieved or worried about. riz strains his ears, and can hear the low rumble the hangman emits when sleeping coming from the front driveway, which eliminates the possibility that fabian had simply gone out for a ride. a breeze hits him then tousling his curls, and riz looks to the very obvious back porch door standing wide open.

riz takes a glance back to the sleeping pile of his friends, and a pang of guilt and sorrow goes through him as he realizes that no matter what happens, the bad kids will never feel the same as this again. he steps over kristen, careful not to step on the vast amounts of her hair spilling out on the pillow, and then makes his way to the back door.

the night is cool as he steps out, and the entire world is slightly misty from the aftermath of the storm. the old wood of the porch creaks under his weight, a loud sound that riz cringes at. he takes a couple steps to reach the edge of the porch, and rests his forearms on the railing, staring out at the vast green field beyond the manor.

a couple dozen yards out is fabian, sitting in the grass staring up at the sky.

even if he literally never speaks to me after this, i’m never feeling bad for thinking that he deliberately picks coming of age movie type spaces to inhabit ever again.

but riz’s body still reacts to fabian’s presence, a blush blooming across his cheeks and butterflies joining the nervous dread in his stomach. riz goes to push it down, a habit he didn’t realize that he had, and then stops, sighing. it’s not like there’s much point in denying anything now. riz wipes his sweaty palms on his pajama pant legs, thin white and grey cotton pinstripe ones that adaine currently wears the matching top to. they clash ridiculously with the purple t-shirt riz is also sporting. something dark in him jeers at the idea that someone like fabian would ever have a moment that ended with anything good with someone in this outfit, here in this picturesque atmosphere, at this time of night. riz makes a face, and does push that one down.

after a couple shameful moments spent staring at fabian, he gathers up the courage to walk down the porch steps. the dew from the grass instantly soaks through his socks. he takes another second, but doesn’t let himself ponder anything but the scene in front of him, the night sky he’s devoted to and the prairie grass that raised him and fabian in the middle of it all. it’s such an enormous mess of feelings that he can’t even begin to comprehend, and so he silently pads towards fabian, and sits down in the grass next to him.

fabian doesn’t look at him, just looks hauntedly up at the waxing crescent moon. riz pulls up grass. they sit there, two teenagers who may or may not be in love, in silence.

till riz breaks it,

“you left the back door open.”

fabian closes his eyes at the sound of riz’s voice. his expression is half pained, half resigned as he responds,

“i know.”

riz looks at him confused, and then turns his head back to the door.

“i think i would have found you eventually regardless, you didn’t have to make it that easy.”

fabian huffs, still not turning to face riz, waiting a moment before he says again,

“i know.”

riz feels frustration bubble up in his chest, why does fabian have to make this so hard. could he not let riz down in peace? must he have his whole bullshit cinematic moment? seeing as it’s riz’s heart he’s about to break, he could at least have the decency to look at him while he does it. riz defiantly tears his gaze away from fabian’s side profile, and stares up at the sky with him instead.

riz’s next words are bitter,

“you know, bard really was a perfect multiclass for you,” out of the corner of his eye, riz can see fabian’s brow begin to furrow in confusion, but he doesn’t let fabian get anything out before he continues, “you’re great at dancing around a topic.”

fabian sighs, and he says in return,

“what do you want me to say, riz? i don’t know what happened. i know i dreamt a whole bunch of stuff, and i don’t know how much of it really happened and how much was my own head. i know i woke up level eleven, and i don’t know why or what i did to get there. i know you know nearly everything, because you always do-”

riz interrupts, leaning back on his hands, trying not to let emotion cloud his voice,

“we were on the bloodrush field. and the nightmare was eating away at the energy it was made of, and there were these huge chasms of darkness. i didn’t exactly like the idea of either of us falling into them, so i knew i needed to get you off of the field. but you couldn’t see any of the darkness, there was mist over your eyes. but you could see me. so i ran, and i figured you’d try and get the ball from me. and it worked.”

riz pauses, seeing if this will satisfy fabian. fabian looks down, his expression guarded in a way that reveals everything and nothing at the same time. it’s very clear that this is not the part fabian wants to hear. riz’s breath hitches in his chest as he says,

“and then everything after that…”

riz trails off, closing his eyes. his next words are so quiet and broken he has a fleeting worry that fabian won’t be able to hear them,

“i meant what i said earlier, fabian. i don’t want to ruin us if i don’t have to. please don’t make me-”

riz opens his eyes halfway through to stare at fabian. fabian is already looking back at him, a soft and resigned expression on his face. even in the tense moment, his instincts are going wild, suddenly able to be felt after who knows how long they’ve been repressed, and it’s everything to not reach a clawed hand to fabian’s face and watch it shift like it did in the dream, however real that might have been.

fabian quirks a smile,

“i protest the idea that i could ever make you do anything, the ball.”

fabian breaks eye contact, and starts to pick himself up off the ground. fabian’s hair catches the moonlight, the light casting long shadows where it’s stopped by the hills and valleys of his face, his nose and brow and curve of his lips. the mist clings to his lower half, even the tips of his fingers turning vague as he skims the top of it. he looks like a dream, and riz would pinch himself if he didn’t know that dreams are never this kind.

and maybe it’s the setting, the picturesque liminal space they seem to be in, where morning isn’t yet here but night’s on it’s way out. maybe it’s fabian’s solemn understanding. maybe it’s the part of the nightmare that is in him after all. but all of it hums in tandem, a single note, rejects all riz just said, and says in rebuttal,

ruin everything.

and so riz stands up as well, and before he can think it through, says,

“call me riz.”

fabian turns back around and raises his eyebrows, but riz continues before he can say anything yet again, and he speeds up his words so he doesn’t accidentally think about them before they’re out of his mouth,

“you called me riz, in the dream- that was real, right?”

fabian stammers a bit, half formed sentences spilling out before he finally says,

“well, seeing as you said you wanted to kiss me in that dream, i’m not completely trusting of any sort of defining ‘real’ or ‘not real’-”

fabian must see the expression on riz’s face rapidly shift, because his eye widens with the confirmation that that happened. and then he must realize that the expression on riz’s face is pure panic, because he starts up again,

“that was uncalled for, i’m sorry, the ball- riz, i mean-”

riz fights against all self-preservation, all critical thought, all rationality. he listens to the instinct that has been pushed aside and ignored and misunderstood for too long, and lifts a hand to fabian’s face. his thumb rests solidly on fabian’s cheekbones, smooth skin against hypersensitive fingertips. fabian quiets, the only word on his lips a soft and unsaid, oh.

riz has been told his entire life that a first kiss is the moment where it all comes together, where the cacophony of emotion that swirls inside you stills and every outward sound swells into perfect harmony. but he and fabian are still half a foot apart, and as much as riz would like to kiss fabian, he just knows that, like they have been about every other facet of romance riz has every experienced, they’re wrong. because that moment is this one.

they stay there a long while before riz opens his mouth to say something, and it’s another long while before he lands on,

“i meant the other thing too, i just,” riz resists the urge to look away, “i’ve never felt anything like the way i feel right now for- um. for anyone. but you.”

fabian seems to have lost the ability to talk, but after a second of waiting, he blurts out,

“i love you. i’m in love with you, to be precise.”

riz blinks, and fabian says softly,

“you don’t have to feel the same, it’s just- i’ve spent more time than i’ve wanted to trying to hide it, and i’d really like to stop now, if that’s alright with you.”

riz can’t quiet the whirlwind of thoughts in his brain, so he just speaks over them, plucking the first thought that comes to his brain, unbidden,

“apple smoothie…”

fabian hides a smile and shakes his head in embarrassment and shame,

“i really did think it was less suspicious at the time-”

riz interrupts, breathless,

“you um- you waited for me.”

fabian seems to catch onto the double meaning of what riz is saying, slowly nodding in the affirmative.

“yes, for an hour. it really wasn’t that hard.”

riz swallows, and lets himself cast his eyes down quickly before looking back up at fabian and saying, hesitant with a grey shade of shame,

“could you- do you think you could maybe do it again? i know- i mean i know i want this, i just don’t know exactly what to call it. i still don’t know if the way that i feel is the same as kristen, or if i’m a little bit like adaine, i just know that i really- whatever this is, i want it. if you can just wait for a definition.”

fabian’s next words are on the tip of his tongue, and he barely waits for riz to finish his sentence before he answers,

“yes, i can do that.”

riz takes in a sharp breath,

“really?”

a playful smile spreads across fabian’s face, easy as the fading moonlight. riz is rolling his eyes before fabian even opens his mouth to tease him,

“well- define definition.”

riz runs the thumb on fabian’s cheek across his cheekbone, and any playfulness melts off of his face, replaced by the pure love riz had seen in that dream, and thought too good to be true. the katydids and cicadas trail off in their song, and the birds start chirping, and the whole sky is the last dregs of that brilliant pale blue before dawn. riz takes a half step towards fabian, and he can hear his breath hitch. fabian’s hand comes around to rest on the base of riz’s neck, warm and grounding and perfectly real. riz shakes his head softly, gets on his tippy toes, and just as fabian’s lashes start to flutter, riz whispers under his breath,

“the act of making something clear.”

and just as fabian is about to pull back and ask for clarification, riz pulls him back in, and kisses him.

and dawn breaks.

riz gukgak has never had much occasion to dream, but he thinks he’s gonna like it.