#@ david thank u for reminding me this has needles and stuff lol

[loftyexecutor]

somnium vidisse se dicat in extremis orbis terrarum - 1

Chapter; 1 Rating; T+ WC; 1772 TWs; medical things, needles Pairing; AddElsAin [transform] AU; modern/dreamsharing scifi Summary; Being the best in the industry had its perks. Herrscher's name was known far and wide, work offers coming in left and right, extort this, extort that. But that still didn't stop his boyfriend from getting too tangled up in one of his dreams and switching places with the shade in his head. The shade that he had offered to extort ages ago. Fuck, this is a mess. Notes; its 2020 and this year pushed me to do some things im not proud of. like another els fic. o7 the title loosely translates to ‘the dreamer at the edge of the world’. edgy~~ AO3 LINK

Opening his eyes after hours of being hooked up to an ADSSU always felt like coming up for a breath after diving. The cotton feeling at the back on his tongue and the pounding headache developing behind his eyes did nothing to make the process any easier, no matter how often he delved into the craft.

Waving off the help of the hired technician and physician, he thumbed off the adhesive connecting him to the vitals reading machine and pulled the needle of the IV out of his arm none too gently. He handed it off to the physician, palm up because he had manners, who proceeded to disconnect and throw it out, doing his job of sterilizing the unit for the next use.

By now, his arm looked like an avid drug user’s, and he felt like one as well, with the somnicin levels in his blood well over the recommended dose. Thankfully, that would fix itself within the next hour, and so would, he hoped, the headache.

Next to himself, he could see Herrsch giving the equipment and technicians similar treatment, rolling his shoulders. Herrsch looked over, giving him a smile. Asshole, he never dealt with headaches.

Dox, at one point, joked about him having nothing in that pretty head of his, back before they’d dreamed together. Oh, how wrong he had been, how vast the worlds in Herrsch’s head were.

The dreamer of their latest job was waking up as well, the only person in the room to let himself be treated and checked. 

Dox pulled out his phone from the pocket of his jeans, noting an absence in notifications, but a missed call.

“Immo called,” he mused, thumbing the lock screen away. “Gonna ring back.”

Herrsch gave a nod, eyes tracking him as he got up, shook off the drugs making him drowsy and made his way to the corner of the room to call. Instead, he focused on the dreamer, when all the equipment was removed and the man rubbed at his temples.

The man noticed him, offering a wobbly smile. Extraction jobs always left the subject the most rattled, though they helped in the long run. He couldn’t speak from his own experience, not like anyone has ever run an extraction on him. He wasn’t sure if it were possible at this point anymore.

A thing to ponder later. 

The low hum in the room ceased as the technician powered the ADSSU down, all screens of connected computers and machines fading to black and leaving the room in only the dim light from the overhead lamps.

He looked over to Dox just in time to see his face blanch, brows knitting themselves together like they never expected to be apart again. Herrsch’s followed suit. Not much could phase Dox to that degree.

“You’re fucking with me,” he forced out, barely above a whisper. “Please say you’re fucking with me.”

Whatever he heard obviously didn’t indicate Immo was fucking with him. Herrsch didn’t think he could get any paler with his complexion, but he was proved wrong when Dox turned the same shade as the wall behind him.

“I— We’ll be— We’ll get the earliest flight, fuck, okay. Don’t… don’t go to sleep.” Dox pulled the phone away from his ear to check the clock. “It’ll be like— three? Four? Hours. Fuck, don’t go to sleep. Please.” A pause. “There are Monsters in the pantry. I don’t care if you drink all of them, please just don’t go to sleep.” Another pause. “Yeah. Yeah.”

The call ended with Dox’s arm going slack, falling down to his side, Immo’s photo bright on the screen before it turned itself off. 

Before Herrsch could open his mouth, utter a single sound, Dox turned to him and pointed with his chin towards the door. Obediently, Herrsch nodded, standing from the dream chair and leading the way. He had to hold the door open for Dox, who couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

As soon as it was closed, he turned to him, hand in his hair, and raked his fingers through the long strands in an attempt to calm him. “What was that about?”

Dox opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, leaned into his touch, closed it again, and let out the shakiest breath Herrsch had heard outside of a panic attack. “Immo…” he whispered, barely audible. “He… He dreamed himself too deep and— somehow, he ended up switching places with Conwell.”

Panic seized Herrsch’s chest, squeezing until he felt he couldn’t breathe.

“So, that was…”

“Mm-hm.”

“Can you get us the earliest flight back?” 

Dox just nodded, already on it, tapping away at his phone with shaky fingers. Herrsch squeezed him against his side for one short moment before rushing back into the room to grab their bags.

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Herrsch’s jeep screeched as they parked, tire tracks blooming on their driveway, and the engine wasn’t even fully off before Dox was wrestling with his seatbelt and jumping out of the car.

The front door opened to reveal Queen, with hair askew and a look of an old woman plastered on her youthful face. Just by looking, Dox knew— he knew it wasn’t a joke, wasn’t a ploy to get them to come early, but he had to— he had to check for himself.

Ducking under her arm was no problem even given their heights. He knew their house like the back of his hand, found Immo in the living room, sitting cross legged on the floor with an Xbox controller in his hand and some game on the screen. He was obviously losing, if his annoyed expression was any way of knowing, and even that blasted the alarm sirens in his brain. 

Immo was good at video games.

Empty energy drink cans littered the floor around him, ten, fifteen, twenty-six. Jesus Christ.

“H-hey,” he said, pulling Immo’s — Conwell’s — attention away from the screen. There were bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in days instead of hours. 

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Immo’s mouth said, and Dox focused on that for some reason, the way his lips moved, the words they shaped, sounding for all the world like nothing Immo would ever say. 

Herrsch and Queen talked in the hallway, but he couldn’t make out about what, rooted to the spot. Tears welled in his eyes because — fuck! — he knew what it was like, getting tricked by a shade in a dream and not wake up for days. His legs didn’t feel like his as he crossed the carpet in the living room, offering Conwell one of his hands to pull him up. 

The smile he got as a reward bordered the uncanny valley. Conwell didn’t know how to move Immo’s body like Immo, instead looking like a passable double. For one single, terrifying instant, Dox was worried it was him that was stuck in a dream, one that was imminent for crumbling.

“C’mon,” he choked, refusing to let Conwell see him cry, “Let’s tuck you in.”

Dox lead Conwell downstairs, only stopping to tell Herrsch and Queen that they’d be in the lab, that he’d— keep Conwell stable until Herrsch figured out a way to do an extraction right. Just wake me up when you need me. I’ll keep the dream stable.

Herrsch nodded, his immaculately schooled features betraying all his worry and fears, if only to Dox. It wasn’t a good look on him.

The lab was dark, quiet save the ever-running ventilation keeping the basement breathable. Dox’s fingers found the lightswitch and he went through the motions of turning the ADSSU and all its equipment on, watching with blank eyes at the flat lines and numbers.

“Sit down,” he said, then added a soft, “please.”

Conwell obliged. Dox knew it wasn’t his fault. Logically, he knew Conwell didn’t like this either. He had already had his life, and becoming a dream shade attached to a memento Immo got his hands on and practically possessing the boy wasn’t for the purpose of stealing his body. It didn’t mean Dox wasn’t mad. It didn’t mean he wasn’t considering messaging the board of Dreamers to standardize checks on mementos.

Which is why he tried his hardest not to look at his face, the unnatural, fake smile on his boyfriend’s lips, as he held Conwell’s arm above the elbow. His hand shook, but as soon as he had opened a fresh needle and attached it to the drip of the IV, it stopped. 

He located the vein he knew by heart now, wiping the area with an alcohol wipe and puncturing the skin until he was sure the needle wouldn’t come loose. A strip of medical tape to hold it in place never hurt anyone, either.

He attached the vitals machine with similar detachedness, but didn’t let the IV drip just yet.

“Herrsch,” he called up the stairs, and it was only moments before he appeared, that knowing look on his face. He placed a hand on Dox’s cheek. He cradled it, because it couldn’t be called anything else, and led him to one of the other dream chairs. 

Conwell averted his eyes as Herrsch leaned down, placed a kiss on Dox’s forehead. It had been different to watch such interactions in dreams, through Immo’s eyes. Now he felt like nothing but a voyeur. 

The IV was attached to Dox’s arm for the second time that day, and so were the vitals, and Herrsch turned the IV on immediately, watching the somnicin make its way to Dox’s arm. He felt terrible about the dosage, but there was no way Dox was staying asleep if he didn’t up it.

Dox didn’t make a single comment on it, however, just looked at Herrsch with determination that screamed ‘I’ll do my best.’

Herrsch knew why Dox wanted to do this. Herrsch’s name held more power in the industry, and he was better at talking to people, if only marginally. Dox’s dreams weren’t stable, not most of the time, but in the first layer, it would be more than enough to hold them both for the few hours Herrsch had to think of something. 

Dox’s eyes fluttered closed and the vitals machine evened out as he fell asleep, the tenseness falling off his features momentarily. Herrsch moved to Conwell, turning his IV on as well.

“Don’t do anything shady,” Herrsch warned, looking straight into Conwell’s eyes.

Conwell laughed, voice Immo’s but not like Immo. He wasn’t so stupid to try anything, and even if neither Dox nor Herrsch believed it, he cared about Immo as well.

And he knew a threat when he heard one.