#desire yelling into the void: STOP PLAYING CANDY CRUSH AND GO HAVE MESSED UP SEX YOU WORTHLESS THINGS

[cuubism]

@prismaluv I promised an actual eon ago that I would write something for Dream and Desire, and here it is, though I fear I haven't landed exactly where you were aiming for...

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It has come to Dream’s attention that something is… wrong… in the Threshold.

It is not usually for him to take note of his siblings’ affairs. Particularly when said sibling is Desire. He would sooner let them wallow; perhaps it would teach them a lesson. But the malady, or irritation or scheme or whatever it may be is now seeping into the Dreaming, and so Dream must determine if it is intentional or not and what, depending on the answer, he must do about it.

The Threshold naturally shares a border with the Dreaming, for, to Dream’s chagrin, dreams and desires do find common or contested ground in love and ambition and other feelings besides. And those desirous dreams have been sickened. Corrupted. Dreamers see their lovers’ ravening maws and wake nauseous from what should have been visions of lovemaking; children’s songs curdle mockingly in their ears as light expands beyond joy beyond pain beyond burning. These dreams are not serving their purpose and Dream must put a stop to it.

“Sibling,” he calls, and receives no reply, but the Threshold allows him in, when he steps from the border of his realm into Desire’s.

The long pathways of Desire’s body are empty as ever. A mockery of blood vessels pumping nothing. Dream walks the known paths, alert in the silence, past the lungs with no breath, to the heart with no beating.

He steps into the curving chambers of that heart, the center of Desire’s power in the Threshold. His steps echo on the hard walls.

“Mmm,” comes Desire’s voice, slurred with malaise, echoing from deeper within, “come to gloat, have you, brother?”

“I have come to determine your purpose in poisoning my realm,” Dream says, following their voice. “I warned you not to toy with me again.”

Desire lets out a disgusted sigh. “Not everything I do is about you.”

“Recent events would suggest otherwise.” Dream finally reaches the central atrium of the Threshold’s heart. Desire is sprawled out on a chaise lounge, head pillowed on their arm. Their eyes are closed, their clothes wrinkled and ill-fitting, their hair lank. They appear to be wearing Despair’s ripped and stained jumper. Dream frowns.

“Go awayyyyy,” Desire complains. “Leave me to my misery.”

“What afflicts you?” Dream asks, standing over them. “Or are you simply experiencing remorse for your crimes, at long last?”

“‘Afflicts’,” Desire mutters, mockingly. “I am being persecuted and abused. Abandoned. Wasting away in apathy.”

Dream sits delicately on the arm of a chair by their side. If there truly is something wrong, and Desire is not just being melodramatic, or trying to annoy him, then they must take action. He will not allow the Dreaming to be harmed. “I fail to see how it could be persecution and abandonment at once.”

“Have you not seen them, Dream?” Desire complains, finally cracking one bleary golden eye open to look up at him.

“Seen whom?” Dream asks, with what he thinks is admirable patience.

“The people! Nobody wants anything. Not in a way that matters. Oh, it’s too easy. It’s too easy to take shortcuts. They don’t understand desire anymore.” Desire clutches their heart dramatically.

“I have not the faintest clue what you are talking about,” Dream says.

“I am a starving and bottomless mouth,” Desire tells him, looking up at him with both shining eyes now. “See, my teeth.” They bare their teeth at him. Their incisors are very sharp.

“I am aware of this.”

“And they think they can feed me with tiny little candies like a yapping chihuahua that’ll finally shut up. They’re poisoning me. They’re starving me. They’re glutting themselves on whatever makes the brain chemmies go weeweeweeweewoo for a second and look— look.” They drag down the hem of Despair’s jumper, peel back a layer of skin. Under it is not flesh, nor blood, but void, an expanding, hungry, agonized void. Dream stares into it, alarmed.

Desire lets their ‘skin’ snap back into place. “What does it even mean, Dream?” they ask rhetorically. “Nothing. It is all fleeting. Nothing deep about it. No one yearns, Dream. No one YEARNS!”

This is said in a despairing wail. Cautiously, Dream pets their hair.

“You crave deep and abiding wants and there is a glut of trivialities and distractions,” he summarizes, and they nod, teary. “Would it appease you if I removed all memory of mobile phones from the face of the earth?”

It doesn’t appease them, but it does make them laugh. Desire laughs, choked and teary, clutching at his hand. “God, I forgot that you’re actually funny when you’re not trying to be.”

It is strange, after all that has transpired, to have what could be considered a civil conversation. Dream still does not forgive them for anything they have done, and perhaps never will, but he sees, for a moment, a much younger year, when they were, in a fashion, friends.

“Many deep desires live in dreams now, for they have little hope of fulfillment,” he says. “But these small morsels, candies as you say, these are not dreamt of, except perhaps in nightmares of eternal wasting. It is still what dwells deepest in the heart that drives dreaming.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I matter?” Desire bites, and Dream simply says—

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Desire seems genuinely disturbed; perhaps they really did think he came to revel in their misery. Perhaps Dream did. But one of his siblings struggling in their duty can only have ill effects on his dreamers, and on their waking selves besides. Dream would be incredibly remiss in not addressing it. Or so he tells himself is his reasoning.

“I do believe there are still fierce desires in this world, though perhaps they have become buried. Usurped,” he says. “Disconnected from the body which is, as I understand it, their rightful home. Though addressing this is not something with which I can aid you.”

The body of living creatures is far outside Dream’s purview, and not something he well understands, except as it manifests in dreams—of hope of change, of twisted horror, of curling heat. And even then, it is far from him.

“I can’t believe you’re giving me advice and it’s not just telling me to go fuck myself,” Desire says faintly. Dream begins to protest, but they continue, “Not that you’d ever use those words, Your Highness.”

“It serves no one if one of our realms is in disarray,” says Dream, and if there is a sharp point to it, a reminder of exactly the damage Desire had so carelessly wrought in Dream’s realm, all the better. “I cannot assist you in managing it, only offer the perspective of dreams. If it proves good counsel, then I will be glad.”

“If it proves good counsel,” Desire mutters. “Fuck you, you superior prick.”

But it is not as sharp and cutting as it might once have been.

Dream abruptly realizes his hand is still touching their hair, and removes himself. He stands, arranging his cloak around him.

“Well,” says Desire, craning their neck back to look up at him upside down, “you must be right on one count. Lingering about here is doing no good.” They stretch, arms above their head, spine cracking. “I suppose I will go stalk the outside world and see if I can’t stoke their desires from ember to inferno.”

“I am certain you can, if you feel that will achieve your aims,” Dream says. Desire’s ability to draw out human wants and push their pursuit is not in question, their mere presence in a space accomplishes that. Whether that will turn their charges away from passing, unsatisfying trinkets and to deeper pleasures is another matter. “Meanwhile, please withdraw your malaise from the borders of my realm. The small children are being hypnotized by dreams of meaningless drivel and it displeases me.”

“Should’ve known you wouldn’t like YouTube,” Desire sighs. They maneuver themselves to sitting in a slanted, tired lean. For a moment, the silence lingers, stretched between them like syrup.

Finally, growing uncomfortable but stiffening his spine, Dream says, “If you are not going to imminently fall apart and cause havoc, then I will take my leave.”

“I love how much you care,” says Desire, sarcastically. Then, tilting their head, “You do care. Just a little bit. Don’t you?”

Dream does not respond to this.

“You could have simply disentangled all your little dreams from my realm and instead you came to check on me,” they say, with glee, and Dream glares. And Desire, apparently sensing a fight, subsides.

“Always lovely when you come around, dear brother,” they say, reclining back against their chaise lounge, eyes glittering despite the neglected state of their form. “Do come again.”

“If you remedy your affairs, then I will not have to,” says Dream curtly, and steps backwards into the Dreaming.

Desire does so love to press buttons at moments when they have almost reached an accord. Desire, once his most loved sibling. Those days are gone now, and Dream does not see them coming back.