#morpheus × oc

[revclaude]

the tragedy im currently going through is that i have this fanfic idea and i cant or dont have any other irl i can tell it to. the idea is wip but im so into it rn.

[kaleidoru]

the polycule at the beach

[alexander-arcturus-black-lupin]

Dew

It's been a while since I've written about my Morpheus.

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Morpheus appeared in your bedroom ready to meet your awake figure, he noticed your absence from the dreaming world and was concerned. You and him had just begun a romantic relationship and he was abysmally scared that he might ruin the little you both had built up. You had told him time and time again that he need not bother himself with your ‘courting’ rituals as he was a busy deity but then he’d appear with a bouquet of mixed flowers, each flower one that you liked. Or when he had watched a series with you through and through and was as much invested as you were. Or when he would walk you home every single day without fail even when it’s raining but then what could stop him?

Morpheus made his way to your backyard, he desperately wanted to hide you away in his realm far from all the bad and evil but you wouldn’t allow it. He knew you wouldn’t, you were a free bird and he’d be essentially cutting off your wings, your beautiful wings that he fell in love with. You were crouched down by the grass looking at something. He could feel no living creature in the surrounding flora, he found it slightly strange but came closer towards you.

“Darling?” his voice shook you to your very core causing you to stumble back into him. He caught you and raised you up onto your feet. You always seem to forget just how limitless an Endless could be. You turned and took in your lover in full, your eyes lit up at the man in front of you.

“Morpheus!” you jumped into his arms and he chuckled at your energised greeting. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too my darling.” You set you down and lowered his head, grinning, you messed up his hair. When he raised his head, his hair was sticking out all over the place but he did not care. You were enjoying yourself and so was he. “You were not dreaming so I assumed something was bothering you and you could not sleep.” He set you down and you pointed at the grass. 

“Take a look.”

Morpheus crouched down with you to look at where you were pointing. The grass was covered in a light shower of dew, the dirt beneath was a nice shade between brown and black and the green of the leaves was bright in the darkness. ”It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” 

Morpheus turned to look at you, you were smiling so brightly as your eyes danced with myrrh in all honesty you lit up the entire scene, you added to the beauty of the scene, he was certain you taught the stars your trade where else did they learn it other than from you. 

“Beautiful indeed.”

You turned to him, your smile still wide and happy. A yawn made its way through glossing up your eyes. He smiled at you and stood tall, in one swift motion he lifted you off your feet. 

“Morpheus!” you gasped, you should have been used to this. He almost always either insists on carrying you when you’re sick or sad.  You try to pretend to be annoyed but Morpheus always knows and manages to get you giggling and grinning.

“It’s time for bed, my love.” Morpheus looked down at you in his arms, your arms which had grabbed onto him were now relaxed in your lap, your head was rested against his shoulder, your eyelids were drooping. 

“Come now my dear, you cannot fool the god of sleep and yes drowsiness falls under my domain.”  Morpheus placed you on your bed and drew up your blanket. You gripped his arm, a silent plea for him to stay. He chuckled, a melodious sound. “Sleep, my starlight, I shall be here when you wake.”

To prove his point, he slid onto the bed beside you holding you in his arms.

“Goodnight, Morpheus, i shall-” you yawned, eyes drooping even more. “See…you.”

“Goodnight, my lovely starlight. I’ll meet you there.”

[kit-williams]

No Longer You

The next part in the Legion Mother Lost in the Warp Series. One of his prophetic sons comes to the Iron Lord with worrying news while the Iron Mother receives worrying news as well.

Male Lead: Perturabo Female Lead: Penelope Song on repeat: Epic the Musical - No Longer You Cw: Song fic, pov switching

@bispecsual @egrets-not-regrets @moodymisty @bleedingichorhearts @liar-anubiass-blog

@thevoidscreams @barn-anon @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan @squishyowl @ms--lobotomy

@nekotaetae @sleepyfan-blog

Perturabo went over her words again and again and again in his mind... his mind churning so much that his body destabilizes and he felt anger flare up at how worked up he was getting over a possible warp ghost or worse yet a trick. He buried that part of himself... buried all these emotions tied to her when he burned Olympia... when he killed Calliphone... when he needed her tender heart to hold back his wrath... a wrath that ultimately was tainted by his grief. His breaking down after Olympia was just as much of him mourning her death in equal measure to his regret bubbling up. Would she have agreed? Perturabo wonders as maybe she could have stayed his hand upon his sister... upon Olympia... he knows for a fact that he wouldn't have followed Horus as long as he did... Nelly wouldn't have let him.

Ajax was one of the few things he could hold over his brothers of something he had and they did not... hindsight either paints his thoughts or gives him insight into how certain brothers of his had grown far too interested in Penelope once she was carrying Ajax... and many of them had turned traitor. Perturabo pauses in his tinkering as he lets ancient thoughts return to the surface as he wonders.... what she would have said to get him to stop following Horus, if he ever started to follow him in the first place. He blames himself for her death, he called her to Olympia when he caught wind that the corpse that was once his Father and the frail Malcador had expressed interest in meeting Ajax... catching wind in wanting to summon her to Terra without him. Once more Perturabo lets his thoughts wander... what would have happened... anxiety flairs inside his gut at the brief thought of sieging the imperial palace and not knowing where she was... or even if Father would keep her alive for that long.

He exhales, his nostrils flaring like a grox-bull's, as he focuses on melding the metal in his hands; Ferrus was always better at making the metal into surprisingly delicate shapes... when he wanted to. Perturabo looks at the metal in his clawed hands as it is another shell... to replace the one that had fallen into disrepair from his neglect over the millennia. A rare smile flutters across the lord of Iron's face as he looks at the iridescent metal shell. His eyes flick over to a screen as there was a rare thing... someone that was not one of his warsmiths was requesting an audience... His tongue moves over the fangs in his mouth, reminding him of his brothers Leman and Konrad with their fanged maws, as he thinks and looks at who dares seek an audience with him. One of his Sorcerer sons... Tiresias Korpanos... the Korpanos were a rare set of psyker twins that had survived the trials of the Iron Warriors, Perturabo remembers telling Magnus of his sons and how excited the Sorcerer king had gotten. Psyker twins were always more powerful together but he remembers that the twins willingly separated as his brother... Morpheus went with Penelope.

Though Tiresias had grown wildly eccentric in the millennia that had followed their damnation. His nose wrinkled at the thought of dealing with this gibbering sorcerer or at worst would be speaking in vague poetics. He was feeling nostalgic today as he could remember Nelly listening to the prophets poetics with baited breath and always trying to decipher what they mean or the look in her eyes when she realized some portion of the vision had come true. He could stomach Morpheus' presence and she liked Tiresias but alas their loyalties were not to be... it must have been nostalgia guiding him as he accepted the request.

Penelope looked away from the curly haired Ajax in her lap shoving a bright yellow toy into his mouth as Antioch had told her of his reservations to allow Morpheus Korpanos to see her. He insisted his reservations were only as Morpheus was uncertain of the message he was delivering and as Antioch passed along it was 'vague and ominous'.

"Well, I am not Perturabo who only demands certainty." Penelope said before kissing the young Iron heir as she handed him to one of her handmaidens.

"His message sounds like it comes from a hermit oracle." Captain Antioch said.

"Pity then as I enjoy the old stories," Penelope smiled as she sat in her seat with learned authority, "I will see my son Antioch."

"Yes Legion Mother."

Tiresias twitched at unseen shadows in unreality as they were simply the immaterial tendrils of his genesire drawing far too close for comfort. The Lord of Iron looked at him with a loathsome look in his glowing eyes that flicked between a fiery orange to the icy blue that his eyes were in life. Perturabo was as deadly as any warp predator and perhaps even more so. His genesire simply gestured and so Tiresias began, "I am the prophet with the answers you seek," Perturabo frowns at that, "I see past and future running free... there is a world where I help her get home... but that's not a world I know."

"What?" Perturabo's voice was harsh as he did not like the oracle like delivery but Tiresias was tied to the warp and he remembers how Magnus explained that sometimes delivery would sometimes be roundabout.

"I see a song of past romance," Tiresias said louder and more confidently, "I see the sacrifice of man!" His voice swelled, "I see portrayals of betrayals," There was pain in his voice, "And a brother's final stand..."

"I see you on the brink of death," Morpheus says somberly, "I see you draw your final breath," he says as if in pain from what he sees or feels, "I see a man who gets to make it home alive," His conviction returns, "But it's no longer him."

Penelope sits there surrounded by her iron honor guard as there is concern on her face as she looks at Morpheus. She could see why Antioch was so displeased with Morpheus' revelations. Antioch clenched his jaw at the revelations made as it was his and his brother's duty to guard the Iron Mother, even more so now given what Lord Guilliman had told him about the Lord of Iron.

"I see your palace covered in red... Faces of men who long believed you dead..."

Tiresias voice was quiet and fearful for the next part of his vision would surely displease his genesire, "I see your wife with a man who is haunting," The room became painfully silent as he could see the immaterium condense into a point, it was as if Perturabo had pulled his entire demonic being back into this room and focused his entire being onto Tiresias, "A man with a trail of bodies..."

"Ẃ̸̠̞̆͑H̷̳̩̻͚̀͒͋O̷͇̾͂?"

Perturabo bellowed as the Lord of Iron was done with this game. His claws reached out into the aether and grabbed a part of his soul.

The twins screamed out in utter agony as they could feel their souls being pulled back from their form... they were being ripped open slowly. Antioch and the rest of the maternal guard sprang into action as he gathered Penelope into his arms and rushing her out of the room and away from the potentially unstable psyker; Tiresias could feel his twin and still chose to bear the brunt of what their genesire was doing. The warp began to bend like metal and crack like glass and yet as the Primarch pushed and from what his brain could interpret... it liquified around Perturabo. They could feel the burning of claws sinking into their souls and the burning pressure of his gaze on their souls and the writhed in agony. But, Perturabo finally got to what he was looking for and was assaulted with images that Tiresias had seen but was unable to directly say.

~A song of past romance...~ Violet eyes looked into his own icy blue eyes... Fulgrim in all of his depraved glory grinning at him as in two of his arms he cradled a broken body like a perversion of a lover as he drank the soul right out of the defiled thing... perverse pleasure and so much pain came from the writhing mutilated thing in his arms... Perturabo felt something sick gather in his chest as it looked like Curze had gotten a hold of it... gotten a hold of her as it she reached out to him with a broken, bloody, mutilated hand... all the while Fulgrim was slowly drinking her soul away leaving poisoned and acid filled kisses on ruined skin... that gloating look in those violet eyes as he ripped his eyes away to meet the thing's gaze in his brothers arms... it was Penelope.

The vision mercifully shifted... ~ the sacrifice of man... ~ Roboute stood in front of Penelope as she was holding Ajax in her arms, his brother looked so tired yet there was a hopefulness in his eyes. He could tell years dragged by in this vision and he watched how over this vision of twenty years how the Lady of Iron's heraldry was replaced... the yellows, blacks, and iron colors were slowly replaced piece by piece with gold, white, and blue... the Iron Warrior heraldry replaced with the omega. The sad look in her eyes as Perturabo glanced seeing Ajax shift from an infant to a man... her hair with streaks of grey as Roboute returned to the forefront and he watched his brother drag touches against her skin. Gestures becoming far too intimate as he cupped the side of her face and once more the warp around him became sharp and angry as he watched Robute trail kisses from her ear to her-

Perturabo felt rage. Perhaps a fraction of what he was told of the rage that Sanguinius carried. How dare Roboute touch his wife... his Penelope... his Nelly! How dare he raise his son! As his form churned the vision blurred... ~ portrayals of betrayals... ~ His anger became frozen as once more his gaze met the dull eyed gaze of the corpse of his wife. Her outfit stained red as she laid in a pool of blood. Perturabo looked up seeing Magnus looking down at Ajax in his arms as the cyclops' gaze returned to the body and there was a look of pity and sadness for a moment before he vanished in a whirl of magic.

Before he could finish processing it his icy blue eyes met forest green eyes... Lion's eyes... ~ and a brother's final stand. ~ He glowered at Perturabo as his sword was held to the side, blood dripping from the blade... and by the blade tip curled protectively around a bloody body... Distress crawled over the Primarch as not only in this vision his wife was dead but also his son... Despair and anger fills him as he watches a phantom version of himself charge the "eldest" Primarch...

"Morpheus!" Penelope cried out.

Perturabo exhaled once more hearing her voice, his eyes darting to the tether that linked the twin souls and as much as he could use it to appear to her to be there once again... Perturabo removed his claws from their souls. The Lord of Iron needed time to prepare... time to prepare a place for her... to prepare to bring his wife home. The twins collapsed as blood wept from their eyes and noses. Tiresias took the brunt on his soul gaining new mutations as his left hand was clawed and he could feel a mouth press against the body glove under his right arm. Morpheus was relatively unscathed minus his teeth all being sharp and the new eye on his right cheek... but those could be taken care of.

Captain Antioch walked over to the entrance of the Librarium as Brother Chaplain Achilles walked out, a sigh leaving the vox on the skull helm. "He continues to say disturbing things Brother Captain," He paused for a moment looking at the hard gaze that Antioch was giving him, "things about the Legion Mother's survival... things about Father. Antioch how much stock do you put into his vision?"

Antioch looked at the grim specter that was Chaplain Achilles, "Father is a monster now. As far as I am concerned we are all that is left of the legion."

Achilles hummed, "Lady Penelope is adamant that she spoke with Father. To a pitying degree..."

They were silent for a moment, "There are creatures that can mimic voices," He says knowing what to tell the Iron Mother in her inevitable desperate plea, "we must get her to safety."

"Agreed. She and Ajax must survive lest the morale of our brothers crumble." Achilles tone is firm as a decision has been made.

Castor watched the protective shielding peel back with a thunk as layer upon layer revealed more and more of the starlit void as they left the warp. Olympia floated in the distance... still a dead world thanks to the Primarch of the Dark Angels. But, he was not here to be sentimental about home no he was here for something else. Screens and images flickered to life as in the green light the Gloriana was brought into view. The Iron Amarantos draped in the heraldry of the Iron Warriors and in the unique heraldry to denote that it was the Iron Mother. For the veterans it was as if they were looking into a time capsule, for the Amarantos was a flower compared to the brutal ships they were use to... it was a piece of art.

Castor grinned at ship on his display as he felt as giddy as a Scout again. The memories of the Legion Mother were still clear in his mind as her warm smile was a balm... she was the heart and the hearth of the legion and he felt joy that she was still alive! The ship shifted to high alert as the Amarantos' defenses kicked in as their machine spirits were probing and starting their attacks to cripple them... already locking on to their position but they had the proper codes to feed to the ornery spirit and assuage its demands.

Father had demanded that confrontation was off the table... and rightfully so given there was around five thousand Iron Warriors aboard the vessel and countless security measures all handmade by Father to protect Mother. Castor had to approach this situation delicately but he could not deny the desire to see Mother dearly... to feel her warmth again... the feeling of her hand on his head... and the softness of her voice. He missed the warmth of the iron hearth and would not fail Father.

[cuckoo-on-a-string]

Hello, Mr. Monster (Seven. Sacred)

Summary: Eros and Psyche inspired Soulmate!AU, Morpheus x female OC/reader

Master list

Chapter warnings: emotional distress, anxiety, recall of threat of assault/brainwashing, explicit smut A/N: My treat! Happy Halloween! Only about half this beast is edited, but I gave myself permission to break the no-fic-til-first-draft-is-finished rule if I could complete it by Halloween, soooo... ENJOY! Happy to talk inspo music/plot/scream in harmony in comments and asks.

Chapter 6: Sacred

She wasn’t wearing shoes.

She didn’t entirely realize until she left the palace. The grand castle released her easily, giving her a side door to slip through as she tried escaping herself, and she hesitated when soft dirt replaced smooth stone. The fae’s work stripped a lifetime of callouses. A week ago, she could walk across gravel barefoot. Now… She could go back, admit defeat and finish dressing properly. But she couldn’t deal with any more of Gwen’s concern, and the urge to run boiled from her stomach up the back of her throat. Maybe it would burst out as a scream. Maybe she’d just vomit on her own toes.

No going back.

Something would catch her if she turned around, and she wouldn’t stop until the sensation drained away in sweat, blood, and tears. 

Maybe she’d trip and earn herself some new scars.

She didn’t actually run, but she walked quickly, like she had any idea where she was going and had a schedule to keep.

The sunshine welcomed her, wrapping warm as her shawl around her shoulders, but she kept her eyes on the path, looking for loose stones to dodge or signs of other travelers. But she found no footprints. Heard no breaking twigs ahead or behind. No voices carried on the faint breeze. The world felt a little too perfect, as if it froze when she left her room, holding its breath as it waited for her to pass by. Too still. Like it might startle her if the clouds skidded along like normal clouds usually did. The blue overhead felt careful. Intentional.

The path led her to the edge of a river – or a lake – maybe a vast moat around the palace. She couldn’t see a way across, and she hesitated on the bank, toes curling into the grass as fingernails folded into palms. She wasn’t ready to stop. She needed to keep going. This wasn’t where she sat and cried. She had to burn out the panic, and she desperately needed a way across the water so she could escape into the green hills beyond.

Chewing on her lip, tasting blood, she squinted at the flecks of sunlight glinting on the water’s surface and tried to guess how deep it was. Impossible to guess. But it looked placid enough. Her was still wet, after all. A little more water wouldn’t hurt her.

She stepped from the bank, expecting a cold plunge, but she found sand barely an inch below the surface. Looking again, she could just make out a submerged path ready to help her ford the river, and she tried very hard not to question if it was there before she stepped on it. More than a little afraid it would disappear halfway through, she sprinted across the open water, splashing her clean clothes and making a terrible racket in the pristine stillness. Although the water wasn’t perfectly still, her steps left great ripples that carried the secret of her flight to both shores and beyond. Round whispers revealing her route, rolling off like a bell’s peel to tell the invisible something where she’d fled.

Her beautiful skin crawled, and she didn’t stop until she’d hidden herself in the green shadows beyond the far bank. Pine needles cushioned her steps, and she slowed to catch her breath, still moving forward, but only barely as the wood’s sap and moss filled her senses.

Her heart beat so fast it hummed, and the old ache stirred sharp and deep behind her ribs.

She was missing something. She needed something. She’d been hurt in ways her simple human magic couldn’t mend, but if she pulled the shawl even tighter, everything would be fine. The soft knit would hold her together like a bandage. Or a net. That shouldn’t comfort her, but it did, and she had too many battles to choose this one.

Being caught was alright so long as she was the one to trap herself.

She kept going, and her heart stewed in memories she’d hoped to leave on the floor of the bath. Things grew out of her helpless fears. Weedy jolts of terror that came back no matter how much she reasoned them away. Doubt spread like mold over every good thing. Confusion soared tall as a tree, and even the Dreaming’s determined sunlight couldn’t pierce its canopy.

She didn’t understand why Morpheus lied. And because she didn’t know that, the question her safety and future hinged on, she couldn’t banish every creeping dread that fed on its shadow. Everything she thought she knew felt fragile, and she wasn’t willing to test her assumptions’ strength. She’d thought he respected her. She’d thought her dreams could be a haven with him. She’d thought her life had changed for the better. For once.

But the fae took her for him.

Whatever she thought she knew, they clearly knew something else.

She walked on. Searching her thoughts. Wandering a strange land. Not at all ready to ask for answers.

The woods thinned into scrubby trees and thickets, fading from emerald to a yellowed olive green. Low stone walls rose and fell along the sides of the path she chose at random, bordering little fields full of pumpkins and graveyards bristling with angled headstones. Signs of structure beyond wilderness, a long-inhabited corner of a rural land, far removed from the gleaming palace with its lavender bath and magical bed.

But it was still so quiet.

Where were all the people? Dreams, nightmares, stories. The Dreaming may be vast, but it had nearly countless residents. Fin and Gwen spoke of whole villages, towns, homes full of strange, beautiful, and awful creatures crafted or invited into the Dreaming by its king. The silence rang false, and her heart snagged on a terrible idea.

The air in her lungs hardened.

She’d never left the unseelies’ court. She only walked through a vision boiled from poppy juice and desperate hopes. Maybe she still wore her wedding dress. Or maybe this was the truth of Love in Idleness. She could love her monster because she imagined he was better than he was. Her mind had broken and she found herself roving freely, left to convalesce on her own terms while in reality…

She’d come to a stone bridge fording a creek, and she practically fell back against the wall, sliding down, dropping her head to her knees.

Fucking fuck.

She’d walked so far, but the fear still had a literal chokehold.

Breathing. That mattered most. Whatever else was wrong couldn’t be fixed until she could breathe. She couldn’t even keep walking without air. Old lessons battled with her diaphragm as she tried to scold herself calm. Her old breathing exercises helped take the edge off the crushing sense of suffocation, but her nervous system hummed with tension, and she sat locked in place. 

She couldn’t stop thinking about the dress, feeling phantom spider silk clinging to her skin, watching the threads stretch and tear with so little effort. Of all the things to focus on, maybe it was easiest. The only change she could easily escape. But also a reminder of the monster the fae believed her soulmate to be. Someone who would callously, willingly…

Her stomach rolled, and she lurched onto her knees. A little stomach bile came on the second, wrenching heave, but nothing followed. Not even water.

Fuck.

How long had it been since she ate? Time was so slippery in the fae realms, and gods knew how long she slept in the Dreaming. Her head pulsed as her stomach finally agreed it was overreacting, and she fell back to sit against the wall of the bridge, panting with her eyes closed against every little pain and discomfort knocking on her thoughts. They each wanted to let her know her body had been abused, and all their good intentions just made the message play on repeat, forcing her to not only face but feel everything that happened.

Sorely used.

An archaic turn of phrase, for sure, but fuck if it didn’t fit.

Her ears rang. A sure sign there was just too much happening inside. Even if she didn’t die at the hands of the fae, a rogue nightmare, or some demon Constantine hooked her into finding, her blood pressure would send her to an early grave. For sure.

Her head hurt. Her belly hurt. Her heart hurt. Now that she wasn’t walking, her feet ached, too.

It seemed like a good time to cry, but she hurt too much to do that, either.

So she sat with the pain instead.

Crossing her arms over her knees, she buried her face and tried to block out this world, her monster’s world, and create her own. Simple and dark and safe. The borders only extended to her fingers and toes. It ended where the air touched her skin. Her goal was to drown out the ringing in her ears with the cycle of her breath, and if she forgot anything else existed, maybe that would be possible.

She buried herself so well in her arms and the chorus of her panic that she didn’t notice the little creature approach until it touched her. Tiny claws pricked her ankle. It felt like a cat, a determined kitten scaling her leg to perch on her knee, and she opened her eyes sluggishly, pulling out of the sticky morass of her own head to find a ruby-eyed gargoyle peering into her face. It chirred, potato-shaped head tilting in wordless question.

Golden with little wings that looked entirely insufficient to keep its pudgy baby body airborne, it lurked happily in the grey area where things so ugly they could only be cute flourished.

“I should probably warn you,” she murmured, “that I’m really shit company right now.”

The little creature warbled, like it understood and disagreed. Its claws pinched the fabric over her knee as its wings pumped, lifting him an inch into the air.

Well.

That would show her for making snap judgements.

The little darling really could fly.

It tugged, trilling louder, and she got the idea it wanted her to come along.

“I don’t have wings.” She felt like she ought to apologize, explain her shortcomings the way she’d reason with a small child. “And I don’t feel so good right now. I’ll stay here. You don’t have to.”

Dissatisfied with her decision, her little companion dropped back to her knee, croaking a long, demanding wail.

“Goldie!”

The voice carried through the fog, rattling over the stones, and her little friend perked and turned to call back. Following the direction of his attention, she realized two whole Tudor mansions stood on the opposite side of the bridge. If she’d stumbled any further, she would’ve run into someone’s front door.

She desperately needed to get out of her own head before she walked face-first into an immoveable object and broke her nose.

“Goldie?”

The creature flexed its claws, essentially making biscuits on her knee.

“I think someone’s calling you,” she suggested. The name and color couldn’t be a coincidence. Not in the Dreaming. Everything made a slanted kind of sense here, if it made any sense at all.

The tiny monster, Goldie apparently, settled belly-down, folding its wings and all in a show of blatant refusal. It wouldn’t give up the new friend. Toy. Guest. Whatever the hell she was to it.

“Goldie.” The voice was nearer. Footsteps crunched on loose stones, and a pleasantly round man, with a pleasantly full beard and a pleasantly wide-eyed face, came along from the direction of the two houses, looking the wrong way. “You’re still awfully small to be wandering off, even if you can fly so well. Now, where did you – ” He turned, saw Goldie sitting on Aisling’s knee, and blinked his wide eyes even wider. She stared back.

He remembered his manners first, rushing to welcome her. “Oh! Hello. I didn’t know we had company.”

He approached with a smile, but he hesitated when he realized her position. She must look at least half as horrible as she felt, after all, and she hadn’t moved from her folded spot against the wall.

“Are you alright?” He grasped for solutions, for answers. “Did Goldie scare you?”

Exhausted as she was by her own terrors, she couldn’t help snorting.

“No.” Hell. Her voice practically creaked. She swallowed, trying to get her dry, aching throat in working order, but she only made the ache worse. Coughing, she spluttered, “He didn’t scare me.”

“But you’re not alright.” Those big eyes flooded with growing concern, and she wondered if it was because he genuinely gave a damn or because of some nebulous rule about guests and hospitality and all that shit.

“I’m not,” she confessed. “But I will be. Eventually. I always am.”

“Well, how about some tea while you wait?” He extended a hand, and Goldie fluttered up to his shoulder, clearing the way for her to rise. Now that the cretin had backup, it seemed confident she’d follow.

And since she had no other plan, she did.

“I’m Abel.” His warm, worker’s callouses rasped along her palm and around her fingers as he helped her to her feet. “It’s been a while since we had a proper dreamer here, I’m afraid. Are you lost?”

Very.

“I don’t know. And I’m a dreamer, but I’m not dreaming.”

He didn’t keep hold of her hand as he led her towards one of the two houses – presumably his – but he hovered. He had a good face for that, and he kept near, like he thought she might fall, which was fair considering how he found her.

“Then how are you here?”

A mirror. Knives, and spiders, and that damned dress.

“It’s a long story.”

“Maybe over tea, then.”

“Maybe.” Probably not, though. She couldn’t stomach that tale in her head yet. She couldn’t hold it in her mouth long enough to taste.

The courtyard between the two houses boasted a half-forgotten kind of charm. It grew in moss over crumbling busts and fogged over the windows with just a little too much dust. Cozy neglect. Cottagecore with fewer fairylights and more fog.

Abel held the door for her, and she found a sitting room as wonderfully cluttered as the landscape outside. Books stacked in towers supported forgotten cups, and old table cloths, rugs, and scarves littered every surface. She sat at the little table where her host gestured and admired the collection of his personal history as he busied himself with the stove.

“I should really tell my brother we have a guest,” he fussed. “He’ll be terribly angry if doesn’t have a chance to meet you, I’m sure, Miss…” His hand flew to his mouth, and he murmured his apology through the gaps between his fingers. “’M so sorry. I never asked your name.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind. I’m – ”

“Let me get Cain. One introduction! Much easier. I’ll be right back.” He rushed out again, and Goldie fluttered to sit on the table, resting between her limp hands and blinking up like he wasn’t responsible for anything ever, at all, in the very least.

She ran a finger over his bumpy little head and sighed. “Aren’t you just proud of yourself?”

Goldie crooned confirmation, and she rubbed her nail along the loose threads in the tablecloth. A hundred tea stains bloomed over and across each other, but she didn’t see any crumbs from dinners past. The candle in the brass stick at the center of the table had dripped down to anchor the whole contraption in place, and she could only just see a faded red paisley pattern beneath it all.

If she were to read Abel’s cards, this would be the place. It had his rhythm: habit and footsteps and care. A place to plan the morning and end an evening. 

The door’s ominously friendly groan announced the brothers’ return, and she looked over her shoulder to meet much less open eyes in a much less open face, shielded by spectacles and a mouth prepared to sneer.

But he blinked like his brother as Abel rushed to attend the kettle again, and he marched in with open curiosity.

“Well, you are a puzzle.” He made a little bow. “I’m Cain. You’ve met the dunderhead and Goldie.”

Abel set a steaming pot and three cups around the table, practically shaking with excitement. They really must not get company often. “And now she’s going to introduce herself, and we’ll all have tea while she waits to feel alright.”

Cain’s eye’s narrowed, and Aisling jolted to defuse the poisonous tension.

“I’m Aisling Hunt.”

Abel clapped, and the tension fizzled away as she tried to catch up with whatever connection he’d made. “Fine Gent’s Aisling? The witch from the Waking?”

“You know Fin?” She accepted her cup of tea, hoping for more about her friend. How did they know each other? Did they know where her friend was lurking? Were they at all like him?

Cain nodded, ignoring the cup and saucer his brother set at his elbow. “Better sort of nightmare. Reliable. Sharp. And if you’re really that Aisling, then I suppose we know why you’re in the Dreaming.”

She shuddered, an involuntary reaction she only just saved her tea from disaster by plonking it back on the table. Gossip traveled quickly in all realms, apparently, and while Fin was a considerate asshole most days, the fae hadn’t been subtle in their… gifting. She could ask how much her hosts knew, but then she’d have to listen to it. And she didn’t want to. Cain’s eye pierced her with a knowing glance, but Abel stood there in wide-eyed befuddlement, so she left them to their own assumptions and tried again with her drink.

Under any other situation, the tea would be very nice. Well-steeped, but not bitter, with a nutty note that made her think of toasted barely milk tea. In the moment, it was better than anything she’d ever tasted. Her senses sprang back from the fog of despair and remembered how nice it was to quench her thirst, how the steam opened up her sinuses, and she could smell the dried rosemary over Abel’s kitchen window. One sip was not enough. Tipping her head back, she drained it in one go and immediately decided manners were for losers, desperately holding out her cup for a refill.

Holy hell was she thirsty.

Abel quickly poured more, and Cain’s side-eye grew razor sharp.

Aisling drank another cup. And then a third. But when she lifted a fourth to her lips, a familiar hand settled on her wrist.

“That’s a great way to make yourself sick again.”

Fin.

He hovered at her shoulder, calm and constant as anything, charming as ever. Just looking up at his smirk – always welcoming her into a joke whether she understood it or not – felt like setting foot on solid land after a long boat ride. It surprised her by how steady it was, and she remembered what confidence had always felt like when they went on their adventures, dragged along by his leads and her intuition.

She hadn’t even heard him come in.

Under his guidance, she settled the cup in its saucer, and she winced an apologetic smile for her hosts.

“Sorry.”

Cain scoffed. “For what? Drinking tea? Pah.” He eyed Fin with a considerably less charitable look, hoisting the teapot in a clear invitation for yet another refill when required. “You’re a guest, and a thirsty one.”

“I’m not surprised.” Fin pulled out a chair for himself, settling a wicker hamper on the table. “You sprinted from the castle like a bat out of hell, and you slept for ages before that.”

Abel gawked like her wandering was some great accomplishment. “You’ve wandered a long way from the Heart of the Dreaming. This is the border of Nightmare.”

Although she determinedly didn’t sip the tea, she kept her heads around the cup, letting the fading heat sink into her palms and remind her she was alive. And awake.

Nightmare. That made sense. She’d never entirely trusted dreams. They felt so sweet in her sleep, but they always stung when she woke up. She found nightmares more reliable. But distance was nothing in the Dreaming. Even she knew that. If the realm’s lord and master hadn’t chosen to let her have her head and run, she wouldn’t have reached the river.

Busying himself with the basket, Fin muttered, “This one never did like to keep to one place. Here.”

He pulled out a lump of cheese and a crusty roll, setting them on a plate he magically fished from the delicate chaos of Abel’s living space.

She looked at the food distrustfully, not sure if her belly rumbled in welcome or rebellion yet. But Fin was on a mission, and he fished out a dish of strawberries next, bright as gems and so ripe she could smell them. Plucking one from the top of the pile, he sliced it into three neat pieces, offering her one on the flat of his blade with an expectant expression. He’d done the work. She shouldn’t waste it.

“The tea will settle better with a bit of food,” he advised.

Cain and Abel kept their own counsel, either riddling out what they were seeing or collecting fresh fuel for the gossip engine, she couldn’t say.

She accepted the strawberry.

It tasted like summer. Ice cream in the shade, and the riot of growing things in their prime. Sunshine and sticky hands with her bare feet in a creek.

Food really wasn’t supposed to taste like that. It took her breath away, and she hesitated, balanced on the edge of Fin’s knife between enjoying the little gift and careening back into her overwhelmed panic. Everything was a step further than she expected, or a little too perfect, or grand in ways that made her feel so, so small…

Goldie, sitting by her elbow, trilled. She looked into his ruddy eyes and held out her hand in a silent demand for another bit of strawberry, even though she hadn’t finished chewing.

Fin tipped the next slice into her waiting palm, and she offered it to the baby… whatever. Goldie seized it with a delighted gurgle and crammed it in its mouth. The sliver of berry filled much more of his mouth than Aisling’s, and his cheeks ballooned with the treat.

“What do you say, Goldie?” Abel asked.

His – pet? Child? – offered a gulp, a belch, and a croak, which was enough to satisfy Abel.

Fin shoved the third slice of berry directly in her face.

And she nearly choked. Nearly laughed. It startled her, but she put her hand to her mouth and kept everything in – chewing and swallowing emotion and food. They saying went that laughter was the best medicine, and while she was a firm proponent of the wonders of antibiotics, her inner sky cleared just the tiniest bit. The cracks were still there. Her world was still more than a little broken. But the fog of war began to lift, and she could see some of what was left. What was alright. What might be alright with a little more time.

Moss would grow on the ruins, and rain would fill the holes into ponds for frogs and water lilies.

What couldn’t be repaired could be made new.

And if she ever cleared all the clouds from that inner sky, maybe she’d find another watercolor sunset waiting for her.

Fin, watching her very carefully, cut another strawberry, and she ate it all with more confidence than the first two mouthfuls. He sliced open a roll and spread soft cheese on the two halves, giving them to her one at a time. When she reached for her tea to wash the bread down, he didn’t protest.

His posture softened until he slouched in his seat, shoulders back against the wood and one ankle propped across his knee. The little wrinkles that forecast a frown smoothed back to the edge of a smirk. All his anxiety appeared in the hollow shapes left behind as it melted.

She was sorry to have worried him, but watching him relaxed helped her more than all the tea and food in the Dreaming could. He’d decided she was safe, and in this wonky wonderland, she trusted his judgement. Fin may not betray his maker for her, but he would never be ease if he wasn’t sure all was – or would be – well.

Rapid tapping interrupted the scene a few minutes after she refused more food from Fin. Sated, pleasantly full, and breathing easily, she didn’t jump at the sound, but her heart jumped when she saw the raven on the other side of Abel’s window. She’d bet anything it was…

“Matthew.” Fin nodded to the bird but didn’t move to let him in. Instead, he turned to Aisling and asked, “Feel up for a walk?”

“Back? That’s…” The best idea. The worst idea. She thought of the castle and the entity who ruled it. He needed to be stitched back into her story. She had too many frayed ends left in the wake of the latest tear, and she couldn’t begin any real work until she saw the pattern. All her questions and accusations coiled into a lump in her throat. “A long way.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Since his question hadn’t really been one at all, he stood up, put the basket on his arm, and pulled out her chair.

It was time to go.

Cain and Abel stood, too, and Goldie bobbed up to Abel’s shoulder, sighing like a tired toddler.

“Thank you.” She hesitated in the doorway and wondered what the rules were in the Dreaming. Did she owe them something? Did they expect a token, or a boon, or some specific words? Should she start planning a thank you card? Was there a ritual, or – no. She was overthinking it. “It was… You helped. A lot. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” Abel beamed. Goldie warbled in agreement.

“Of course, she’s welcome,” Cain snapped, finding some unknowable annoyance in his brother’s manners. He looked back to his departing guests and nodded, slowly, almost like he was bowing. “Fine Gent. Lady.”

“Oh, I’m not-”

Fin looped his free arm through hers and tugged her off balance, moving through the door. Her confusion of thought was lost in the chaos of stumbling sideways to keep up.

“Thank you, Cain,” Fin said.

The door closed. The sounds, smells, and sensations of the outdoors crashed over her fragile senses like a wave, and she was very glad for Fin’s arm. She was… better. But still not well. The ground stayed firm under her feet, but the back of her mind whispered it would melt into quicksand at any second.

Fluttering wings and a familiar croak warned her just before Matthew came flapping in her face. “You’re awake! You’re alive! Thought you were gone forever when you didn’t come back to your van, and the boss-”

“Will explain his thoughts himself,” Fin interjected. He gave the bird a look, a suggestion or a reminder. Once upon a time he threw those her way in the Waking. When she was young and overeager to test her limits. When she ought to know better.

Matthew landed in a chaos of black feathers and clattering talons, hopping alongside as Fin led the way across the bridge. Back to forests, fields, and strange moats. Back to the Heart of the Dreaming. Whatever that meant for her. There was no rush, but Fin clearly had a direction in mind, and while he was willing to go slow, ambling rather than marching, he was on a mission.

She didn’t like the heavy feeling that realization left in her gut, full of the food he’d so carefully and considerately brought. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but there was a new authority overshadowing their old dynamic, and she just didn’t like it.

Chastised, Matthew actually held his tongue for a few minutes. But every few steps, she caught him peeping up with sharp swings of the beak to glance at her, like he was waiting for a signal to talk again. He looked so awkward, fumbling along at their pace. And earnest.

And none of this was his fault. It wasn’t Fin’s. It wasn’t the raven’s. It… probably wasn’t their master’s, either.

She offered a wan, tired kind of smile that she hoped would ease the tension. He snapped it up.

The raven cleared his throat. “You look nice?”

And she always would. No matter how sick, or exhausted, or miserable, or – The phantom tingle of the fae’s thick salve gleaming with unicorn horn rolled down her arms, and she shuddered.

“Don’t.”

Matthew immediately dropped his head. “Sorry.”

Well shit.

“It’s fine. Just – yeah.”

And with that eloquent excuse of a non-apology, the three fell into a deeper silence.

The trees swallowed the two houses and the bridge that led to them. The path unspooled ahead, under darker boughs, and after a corner or two, the edge of the forest thinned. Too quickly. A slowly as she’d run. Impossible and sensical, because what else could it have ever been.

As the castle came into view, she fought against the dream-fall sensation demanding she wake up. She knew she couldn’t, because she was already, but that didn’t stop of her mind from spinning with the alien logic of this world. She was still looking for an escape, even if she didn’t feel the need to run for one.

A bridge – which she knew for sure wasn’t there before – connected the edge of the forest to the castle’s island. A low, discreet construction entirely unlike the arching causeway she could spy towards the front gates. The Dreaming hadn’t made it a challenge to leave, but it made returning even easier.

It invited her to come home.

Fin huffed, and she caught a smirk twisting his lips before he schooled it into a more dignified expression.

“You’re expected, it seems.”

Her hand spasmed on his arm, and he patted it almost condescendingly.

“Of course,” she murmured, demanding her stomach settle and her feet move.

Fin stayed with her across the bridge, through the garden, to the door that let her out. She felt like a stray dog being returned by a neighbor after a jaunt around the neighborhood, and it took conscious effort not to let her hackles rise. Inside, the castle was as quiet as it had been before, and she wondered again if people were being kept away from her on purpose, and if so, for whose benefit.

They stopped in the first crossroads between hallways. “This is where we leave you.”

“What?” Panic fluttered like butterflies through her gut. Fin settled (most of) them with another one of his looks – teasing, mocking her just enough to assure her this wasn’t anything like she feared. It made her feel stupid. It gave her courage. “I mean – fine. Okay. Why?”

“Why do you think?” Fin pointed to the left. “If you head that way, you’ll find yourself back in the room you woke in. Gwen and Jeff will take care of you.” He pointed to the right. “If you go that way, you’ll find him. If you’re ready to talk.”

He delicately peeled her fingers off his arm, stepped back, and performed a tidy bow. Duty performed, he left her with a wink and walked back the way they’d come in, a way that now offered many more doors and turns than she remembered.

“Good seeing you, Aisling. I’ll see you around?” Matthew didn’t wait for an answer. He launched into the air and flapped after Fin. A last caw caught and echoed through the branching halls, fading until she stood alone with her decision.

The still air pulsed with her thoughts, and her bare soles stuck to the polished floor, rooting her in a whirlpool of feelings she couldn’t face long enough to name. A crossroads. Her crossroads. Another gift from the entity she’d always feared would take away her choice. Was it respect or apology?

He’d lied to her, and even if he wasn’t responsible for… everything else, how could she trust he’d finished with masks? Kindness made for a clever veil, and he’d already surprised her with the face behind one helm.

But he hadn’t destroyed her. Hadn’t let others strip her will when it could’ve suited his purposes.

Romances between gods and mortals rarely ended well, and he was beyond a god. How could she ever hope to understand that? There was no world in which she could be his equal, where he could stoop low enough to grasp her human fears. Holding hands across a chasm like that always ended in a fall. Hadn’t she been enough of a fool already?

She remembered her first dream with him. He was more honest with her then than he’d been since, and the first thing he wanted to show her was the place where he held her the way she’d always held him. For that night at least, everything made sense. Maybe not the pain, but the agonies she’d suffered almost seemed worth it.

She didn’t know what to think. If she never faced their tangled wyrd, the potential bond she’d tasted so briefly, she’d never know how to feel, either. Maybe all this would kill her, but she couldn’t live without knowing.

So, she turned right.

Maybe it was her imagination, but the coolly lit hall seemed a little brighter as she made her way from the crossroads, looking for Morpheus.

She didn’t have to go far. The hall stretched straight ahead. No side passages to distract her. No doors to tempt her curiosity. Dream of the Endless wasn’t hiding, and as he reached out to guide her steps, he shaped the world to his intent.

The hall ended, rounding a little bend and opening into a high-ceilinged room that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A gallery. A meeting place. Something old and new and hollow. One wall bristled with shapes emerging from grey-veined marble. Windows stretched from floor to roof, bathing the sculptures of vines, trees, rolling waves, and writhing figures with soft light at odds with the relief’s high drama. There was no furniture. Only space waiting to be filled. And a lone figure. Waiting for her.

No obstacles. No games or tests.

It could all be so, so simple.

Morpheus wore his regal grace with the same ease as his long black coat. But it failed to shroud his melancholy, and his longing wafted through the room in perfumed spirals of burning incense. She breathed it in; it stung her eyes and plucked on the frayed tatters in her chest. Sympathetic pain bloomed, and she rubbed along her sternum automatically, blinking back tears so she could trade them for words.

He broke the silence first. “I welcome you to the Dreaming, Aisling Hunt.”

Without his helm, his voice sounded so different. Incredibly. Even more beautiful, like looking up into a night sky with stars that looked back, but less like a force of the cosmos, more a man who traded in the dust that made worlds. He regarded her, and her intuition thrummed, trying to answer in ways her human body physically couldn’t.

He paused, lips parted on a thought, and the formal weight evaporated, replaced with aching strain that curled his shoulders towards her, even across the room, like a plant bending towards the sun. Strange. Unsettling. She didn’t feel like something bright in his world, but at least he wasn’t hiding behind his grotesque helm again.

“I am, despite everything, glad to have you here.”

Oh.

It shocked her back into her body. Into feet just a little cold and still bare on the floor. Into flesh she was afraid to look at in case she started crying again. The hope and horror bridged, and the most urgent question grew like a weed up her throat.

Well. If he was going to bring it up, then…

“I need to know something.” She rubbed her chest, hoping to pry loose a scrap of courage. None lingered in her heart, but a few tatters could’ve gotten caught in her ribs, and even a slip would do her. “Before this – I need to ask you something. I think I already know, but I need –” She knew how quickly words and oaths could twist under desire’s pressure, and even if she’d committed to playing the fool, even clowns had their limits, and she wouldn’t dance into another lying mirror. “You said you wouldn’t steal me away to hide in shadows, but you could send others to take me, and this place is very bright.”

His shoulders drew back, and his chin lifted. He’d offered her formal welcome and she asked for formal confirmation that he hadn’t betrayed her. She wasn’t ready to burn for him as his sun. She had to know he wouldn’t snuff her out first.

“I did not ask for you to be taken. I did not ask for you to be changed against your will. I did not ask other hands to commit such sins in my name, nor will I in future.” Angling his face down again, he offered her a glimpse at the wrath hidden there. He had not forgotten her suffering. It would not go unpunished. And just as quickly as he revealed his rage, he buried it again, stowing the knives and earthquakes for the villains who’d driven her to ask for proof in the first place. He watched her absorb what he’d said, and his voice turned feather soft. “You are my most cherished guest, and though I ask that you stay until word has spread and it is safe for you to walk the Waking world, you are no prisoner.”

Blinking, she took a deep breath. It rattled all the way down to her fingers, and she shook out her hands to banish the trembling.

“Thank you.” He gave, and he gave, and he gave. Time, space, reassurance. Her gaze roved the complicated mass of imagery covering the wall, looking for a theme. A hint. Frozen sailors reached for the land, tying sails against a wind determined to keep them at sea. Trees bloomed. Flowers fell. Fruit swelled, and snakes crept through their own shed skins as seeds burst from fallen, rotting apples. Time, loss, and rebirth without aim.

“What do you want, Morpheus?”

Had she ever actually asked him? She desperately wanted the truth. The whole thing.

“You were right.” Her own truth. An olive branch. An invitation and a plea. “Others shaped my view of you. So, now’s your chance. Tell me, so I can it from your own mouth. What do you want?”

In this moment, she was judge, jury, and executioner. No one would decide who or what she loved, and she would know the entity whose name she carried before she gave him anything else.

The air turned sharp. It cut the light like a prism, glittering in her monster’s eyes, a focus so sharp it broke sunbeams into their constituent parts. For all the black he wore, he practically glowed, a king in all ways, an open heart in more. Only here. In private. For her.

His eyebrows lifted, pinched. “I want you.” His voice was a song, weaving everything that could be beautiful between them into the simplest terms. “I want to be near you. I want to comfort you.” He approached, drawing his words out with cautious steps, hands hanging stiff at his sides. He halted, just far enough for her to feel safe, even when he spoke again, letting his lust drip into his tone, scenting his song with night-blooming jasmine. “I want to love you and make love to you.”

That was… honest. Heat rushed over her face, and she dropped eye contact like it was the source of the fire.

Fuck.

It was, actually.

When she first saw him, locked away in the cage beneath Fawney Rig, she thought his beauty was a warning, a good reason to look away and avoid him. Beautiful things were almost always cruel, but now… Well, things were different, weren’t they?

“I want you to know me.” He glanced out the window, and she instinctively did the same, looking over distant mountains and glittering bridges. World beyond worlds. “The Dreaming is a part of me. Simply by walking it, I feel you’re exploring me.”

They looked at each other again, just a little closer than before, and the hope in her monster’s eyes made him almost boyish. He was older than her planet, probably. But even an Endless must be reborn sometimes, in some ways, like the snake winding through the rotting fruit.

So, she’d met him when the water splashed over her toes. She let him comfort her when she drank the tea and ate the food of the Dreaming. Even if she hadn’t held his hand or looked in his eyes, and he was reaching for her in all but body now.

Fine.

Alright then.

She wouldn’t be anxious over a project she’d already begun.

“May I touch you?”

His smile bloomed soft and sweet. “Yes.”

Having the permission she needed from his strange eyes, his lips, the face she still didn’t know, she looked at his hands. She drew the tips of her fingers along his knuckles, a whispered touch asking for an answer, and he lifted the hand for her inspection, turning it over so she could see the creases of his palms. Invitation and vulnerability. Her touch wandered the lines, trying to read the silky flesh like a book. Palmistry had never been her forte, though, and she only found her own memories in his life and love lines.

“I know these better than your face,” she admitted. They felt safer, something secure to hold when his galaxy eyes threatened to sweep her away.

She found her courage in inches, lifting her eyes to his shoulders. His neck, his skin pale and untouchable as a reflection of the moon. Would she find the same strength in the rest of him as she did in his hands? The same possessive tenderness? The same call that felt like a puzzle coming together when she stroked his fingers, demanding and comforting as a deep breath after a dive?

Gingerly, like one or both of them was made of glass, she pressed an index finger to either side of his jaw. The barest caress drew along the edge of his face, not just feeling him, but listening to the hushed drag of skin on skin, until her two hands met, fingertip to fingertip, over the point of his chin. A sigh gusted down her wrists, along her elbows, and a rebel army of goosebumps sprang to life at his summons.

Without entirely meaning to, she looked up and met his eyes, and once she found them, they snared her.

It was entirely unfair for anyone to have actual stars in their eyes, and she read her doom in them as easily as she read her cards.  

“I’d like to kiss you.”

His eyes flicked to her lips, and he shifted closer, keeping his hands to his side despite the way his want curled out to close the distance like a physical force. Well. It was his world. Perhaps it was. It found her heart and tugged.

Her own gaze dropped to his mouth, waiting to read his answer. “May I?”

“Yes.” His voice rumbled so low and strong she felt it like thunder. No hesitation.

She wondered if she’d have to rise onto her toes to reach him, but he swept down to meet her, giving rather than waiting for her to cautiously claim what she’d asked for. Her eyes fluttered shut at the first caress. A soft touch expressing and savoring everything she’d allow. There was no demand, but as she pressed into the kiss, chasing the delicate friction, he answered in kind.

Little sparks carried through her blood. Through her mind. Urging something to life. Drops of sunshine calling up flowers in springtime. He tasted like traces of smoke from a campfire on a cold night. Vellum and lignin. The last breath before a jump.

When she broke away to breathe, she peered into his face, and she felt the trembling rush of standing in a high place. In the Dreaming, were the butterflies in her stomach real, too?

His hands hovered, framing her face with restrained yearning.

“May I touch you?” Gravel thickened his voice until it nearly broke, and he searched her expression with bared desperation. “May I hold you so I may feel you are well? May I love you, my little hero?”

She settled her hands over his, kissed his palm, and guided his fingers to her cheek, closing the gap he’d left for her to decide in. “You may touch me.”

He accepted her permission with open wonder, taking a full moment to rest where she’d led him, moving just enough to stroke the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. When he freed himself of the spell she’d so innocently cast, he let his touch wander – sweeping over her brow, tracing her nose, cradling her jaw. But when he came to her mouth, he lost his focus. He replaced hand with lips, jolting back after the briefest, most chaste contact when he realized he hadn’t asked permission.

She grabbed the lapels of his long coat, shaking the fear from his expression. “You can kiss me. Please. You don’t need to ask. Not tonight.”

The worried frown he’d grown melted. A smirk washed up his face, dark with promise. But he didn’t tease her. He claimed another, proper kiss instead. Free to touch her, he angled her face with careful pressure, showing her how best to deepen the pleasure of lips, and teeth, and tongues, until she was equally breathless and reluctant to breathe.

Resting forehead-to-forehead as she recovered – as she gathered air to take the plunge again – he asked, “May I hold you?”

“Yes.” Her turn to answer quickly, for an ache to strain her voice.

Long limbs twined around her, drawing her close with a hand on her back and another on his him as her monster once again set to work trying to consume her. She did finally rise onto her toes, begging for more with eager hands slipping up his shoulders to comb into his hair. He gave her too much to feel, and she couldn’t give each piece its due. His lips gliding over hers. The secure warmth of his arms. Smooth skin and soft hair. The pressure of his chest against hers.

She knew pains like this. Sensations too overwhelming and complicated to make sense of. But she’d never felt pleasure the same way, and it swept her away faster than a riptide. She’d given the sea permission to drown her, though, so it was alright. More than alright. Wonderful.

He wasn’t as cool as he’d been when she first touched him. The rosy heat didn’t blush over his skin, but it pressed out to meet her, as if he was taking inspiration from the pulse and flush of mortality. Her blood warmed her because it must. He only warmed from a desire to be near.

“And may I love you?” A kiss to her cheek. “May I?” Another just below her ear. Withdrawing to lift her gathered hands to his lips, holding her gaze, he brushed a third kiss over her knuckles. “May I?”

Almost too disoriented to answer, she nodded, running her palms over his clothed chest. “Yes. Please, Morpheus – ”

His name on her lips tore through the last of his self-control. Finally. Finally given permission. Finally near enough to touch, and taste, and take. He crushed her closer with tender, rabid affection, kisses wandering to her cheek, down her neck, and back to her lips to share her sighs.

Maybe she wasn’t the sun, but how she burned for him.

Lovely as it was, she wanted his coat off. With their lips tangled together, she struggled to ask, but she pushed at it, and he wordlessly agreed, helping her peel it away from his shoulders to drop, abandoned, somewhere behind him. Her monster’s greatest frustration with the act was the time he spent with his hands otherwise occupied, and he grabbed her back to him like they’d been separated for years, not seconds.

His hand slipped beneath the soft shirt he so thoughtfully provided when she woke, and she whimpered into his mouth, caught off guard by how good this new wave of sensation felt. Fragments of control washed away with each graze of a knuckle or press of his palm along her back, pulled away as sand in the surf.

When she released her hold on his shoulders, he left her break the kiss, his eyes somehow even darker as he watched her reach for the hem of the garment. He helped her – carefully, reverently – guiding her arms and head out of the fabric. His lips parted as he looked her over, and he reached for the bottom of his own shirt. She mirrored his performance, helping him with the simplest chore of escaping his clothes, and when he emerged from the black shirt’s depths, he reappeared with a smile. A little amused. Deeply fond.

More kisses. Cautious hands mapping new spaces. Enjoying each other slowly so the heat could grow. Shared breaths, every shudder and shift pressed into the other’s flesh. Wrapped up in each other entirely. There wasn’t room for fear or doubt; they stood much too close.

Even when Dream pulled back again, something as fiendish as it was loving in his expression, she couldn’t remember there was a room or a world beyond him.

He spread his palm wide over the center of her chest, covering the flesh between him and his mark, and he pressed down. Gravity bent to his will, an intractable urge. She fell to his desire and found herself sprawled flat on something comfortable that wasn’t a bed. But he left her no time to wonder, following her with a rain of kisses that left her dizzy. As his hands crept down, he hovered, watching for her to revoke her permission, or even the slightest hint of discomfort. But by the time he’d reached the rest of her clothes, her hands fluttered around his, trying to slip multiple layers off in one go. She wanted her pants gone as much as she’d wanted rid of his coat, and he chuckled as she kicked them off the last inch.  

Once she’d escaped the last fabric keeping her from his touch, she drew him back for a kiss, this one so soft it spoke his thanks. His care.

Although he rested between her legs, he didn’t rush. He attended her breasts, plucking yelps and giggles from hidden ticklish spots, rising back to her lips again and again as she grew hotter and more desperate under his hands. They might’ve spent a hundred years hovering on the threshold, finding each other in grazes and kneading grips.  

At last, he roved lower, and even as he brushed his lips over hers, his thumb rolled over her bud. Slowly, tortuously almost, he fluttered over the nub, refusing to explore further until she whimpered and writhed. He traced down her folds and groaned. She could feel how wet he’d made her, and the mortification would’ve swamped her if she couldn’t feel how excited it left him. The bulge pressing against her hip left no doubt.

His fingers sank inside, curling to pull something out of her. She gave him a moan, a fluttering thing, unsure on new wings, and he hovered with his mouth hanging open in awe, like he could catch it. Keep it. Cage it in his ribs to keep. Before, when he’d pleasured her in the dream, he had plenty to say, even when his mouth was on her. That was worship. This was communion. A true meeting, a joining without words.

He worked her open diligently. And all the while, he held her gaze, feasting on it.

Every nerve sang for him, and he coaxed her to the very edge before she grabbed his wrist. He froze, looking for pain in her expression, and she kissed the worried line between his eyebrows.

“I want you.”

She didn’t need to explain. With a look so vulnerable he almost looked hurt, he said, “You have me.”

When he pulled back this time, he took her with him, and she sat astride his lap as he worked a mark into her neck, giving her time to change her mind. His pants had magically disappeared. She wasn’t at all surprised, though she’d wanted to help take them off herself. Next time, maybe.

Next time? There would be a next time. And another next time. And all the next times she wanted.

Elated by her revelation, she all but yanked his face from her neck so she could kiss him properly. He laughed, and it tasted like elderflower cordial, rich and sweet enough to make her drunk with one sip. She ground down on his length, and his hands spasmed on her waist.

“I’m ready,” she assured him with an eager peck. “I want this.”

He shifted, arranging himself to brush her entrance, but he didn’t press. Even here, he waited for her. She sank to meet him, her grip on his shoulders seizing as she stretched. His hold moved to her back, her neck, cradling her near instead of exerting any kind of control. And she was glad. She needed it as her eyes all but rolled back into her skull.

As light kisses rained over her face, she fought to relax, to take him entirely. She only opened her eyes once she had him. Once he had her. And once she saw him, she wondered how she could ever turn away again.

It was the way he looked at her. Fathomless patience meeting desperation. All of it honed by time. He’d craved her company before she was born, and he’d wrestled back his yearning until it cut into his soul to keep from scaring her away.

He wanted to be seen, and held, and cared for, too.

A thousand adoring words bubbled up her throat, but it wasn’t the right time, so she peppered them soundlessly down his neck and along his collarbones instead.

And she moved.

The drag was almost too much. The pressure brought stars to her own eyes, and although she refused to close them, sometimes she thought they’d fluttered shut, because the push and pull of their lovemaking really was blinding. He stroked up to meet each roll of her hips, crooning as she kissed and petted and squeezed him.

They were the turn of stars, the draw of ancient voids too vast for names, and all the voiceless songs strung between worlds.

She forgot the pain in her chest. She forgot she’d ever done anything but burn for her monster. Her Morpheus.

If she wasn’t the sun, she must’ve swallowed one.

The inferno melted her from the inside out, and she all but fell apart, wrapped around him, and cheek-to-cheek, he groaned in her ear. She panted, open-mouthed, fighting for air and sense as he kept his slow, deliberate pace. He hadn’t even begun to have his fill yet, and he held her all the tighter as her quaking limbs refused to play.

When feeling eventually returned to her legs, she pulled them around his waist, anchoring herself and refusing to release him as adamantly as he clung to her. The otherworldly sensations lingered, but she remembered herself a little more, found the cognizance to appreciate who held her, who she’d accepted. Who stoked the flame, sheathed inside.

Even as he worked her up to another orgasm, a painfully soft part of her heart burst open, and affection flooded her system. It bled open and free, forcing tears to her eyes.

She was safe, and he was hers, and she –

She really had to tell him somehow. She couldn’t bear to say it, though.

She’d be worthy of his face. She’d break him out of a thousand cages. If only he’d keep her so close and secure and warm.

This time when she trembled to pieces, there was no putting her back together, and her monster graciously followed her release. He kissed her as he came, holding her still so they could feel every shudder of the end. And when he’d finished, as their breathing steadied, he tumbled with her back into something soft, never once letting her slip from his arms.

[thethreeeyed-raven]

Don't have the emoji for smut but I had a request that involves it: Reader isn't as experienced with sex as Morpheus is and is nervous about taking their relationship to that level; he assures them that they will get better at sexual things as they gain more experience and that he doesn't mind teaching them.

experience

the kingdom of dreams | warnings : insecurity, talk of sex, mention of past bad experiences, mention of past partners | a/n : hopefully you enjoy reading this, tysm for requesting☺️💗 | tags : @knight-of-flowerss , @lost-in-fiction-like-ur-mom | dream of the endless playlist

You and Morpheus had been seeing each other for a couple of months now. Your relationship was quite strange.

Usually people this far into a relationship would have done something even a little sexual by now, but Morpheus hadn't even seen you naked.

The only thing he had seen remotely revealing was your ankle (he won't admit it gave him a bit of a rush you know where).

Morpheus had begun to notice that every time he brought up the idea of sex you would completely ignore it and change the subject. Or when he would try and seduce you, you would always shy away from his touch.

Quite frankly, it hurt his pride.

Did you find him revolting?

Currently, you and Morpheus lay on his bed cuddling. None of you were saying anything, just basking in each other's presence.

His brain had been gathering thoughts and inventing new insecurities all day, it was making his head hurt.

"My love."

Morpheus' voice was quiet and soft.

"Hmm?" You replied, your eyes still shut, taking in his scent.

"Do you-" Morpheus hesitated before carrying on. "Do you not want me?"

Your body shot up and you looked down at him in shock. "What on earth makes you say that?"

"You never want me to touch you, or even look at your bare body."

The sadness in his eyes caused a terrible ache in your heart.

"Do you not love me?"

Taking his face gently in your hands, you pressed a subtle kiss on his velvety lips. "Dream, I love you more than words could ever describe. I guess my bad experiences in the past have caused me to shy away from doing anything sexual."

"Bad experiences?" Had someone hurt you?

"No one has ever really satisfied me before, everyone I've been with was only ever concerned about getting a good fuck, so I don't really know much about sex besides the basics." You shifted your gaze from him, embarrassed.

"Darling," Morpheus rose himself gracefully. "I have had many partners in the past, I do know a thing or two." A smirk painted his face before it turned into a soft smile. "I know that I'm not great at communication, but know all you have to do is ask."

Dream leaned in and pressed a fleeting kiss to your neck.

"Thank you, my dream."

[igotanidea]

Be careful who you bring home : Morpheus x reader

part 2 is up

request/summary by anon: you know how people get pets for emotional support? reader with anxiety or fear of loneliness finds a big black cat in a park and she is just: yeah, you are coming home with me. cat happens to be post imprisonement!morpheus. he wants to argue, but she quickly takes him to her apartment which is conveniently close to the park. reader cooing to cat: who is my little baby and Matthew seeing it from the street and laughing at his boss. with 142 for reader (maybe he said something while being a cat) and 153 for morpheus.

142 was "it's just your imagination", 153 was "put me down" I might have changed the request a little bit but I hope you'll like it. Also thete is a bit of a twist/ crossover in the story. Wonder if you'll get it :D

***

„Have you ever considered getting a pet?”

The girl in her mid-twenties, dressed in comfy, black clothes sitting in front of the therapist frowned in confusion.

“A pet” she repeated “and why would I need that?”

“You know, it is proven that they have positive effect on people who suffer from depression and anxiety, so maybe this would be a good idea for healing process”

“Do you give such advice to all of your patients, doctor Raynor? Did you give such advice to Bucky, as well?”

“We both know he is not that kind of guy.”

“Really, why not?” the girl shrugged “he had some goats in Wakanda after all.”

“Stop joking around.”

“Jeez, fine. I won’t get a pet. In my current mental state I can barely take care of myself, let alone any other living being. Any other words of wisdom coming from you?”

“Not with this attitude. You may leave for now.”

“You know if I was paying you that would be the shittiest session not worth a dime.” She grabbed her coat and without a word, hands in the pocket left the room and not-so-pleased therapist.

A pet. Good joke. A four legged animal who would wake her up in the morning and at night asking for food or caress. A being that would turn her life upside down since it would require constant care and supervision to avoid destroying her apartment. Nope. Thank you very much. She was good enough by herself. Determined to get her head and broken soul back together and get clearance to get back to SHIELD and field operations. She missed that, but apparently beating up a bunch of bad guys leaves you in emotional trauma and in need of recover. Bullshit! She was an agent, for god’s sake, not a crying mess. Her attitude was far from cheerful and optimistic but just today she had to curb her murderous thoughts since one of her nieces were supposed to visit. Jemma was five years old and was still going through her princesses, pink glitter and unicorns faze. She was a challenge to be around, but definitely worth it. Her father, agent’s sister were supposed to drop her in straight to the house, but just a minute ago she got the message about the change in plans. Since the weather was beautiful and it was not often this time of the year, he took the chance for a little walk in the park and decided to meet his sister there instead of in the four walls. As she approached the park, she noticed her family amongst other walking people. Jemma was running around, picking leaved and jumping into the pools with loud, happy squeals. She could not hold back the tiniest smile on her face.

“She’s gonna get all wet and dirty and then who will tend to that?” the girl mocked while coming closer

“Hm, don’t know. I think at this point she would be someone else’s responsibility.”

“Hello, brother.”

“Hello sister” he hugged her tightly “how you’ve been? Life still kicking you in the guts?”

“I mean, when it doesn’t? You know my line of work….” Her brother was convinces she was just some regular office worker dealing with boring documents, since that was simply safer for everyone.

“Right, so mundane and ordinary…..” he rolled his eyes

“Auntie!” Jemma turned around and run straight to her favorite relatives not caring about the mud she left on her trousers while clutching to her legs.

“Hi, cupcake. Don’t you have to much energy?”

“I have so much to tell you! About the rhyme I’ve learned and some new letters I came across and my friends and everything” little girl jumped around in excitement “And I know a new magic trick dad showed me. But I still don’t quite understand it….” she frowned

“It;s ok, cupcake, we can work on that.”

“Oh, thank god. Like I said, your responsibility now. Good luck.” Girl’s brother was quick to get himself some freedom “just don’t give her too much sweets, you know how she gets after that”

“Yeah, too well. See you in a couple of hours then. Come on, Jemma” she took her niece’s little hand sticky with some mysterious substance “ let’s go home.”

If only it was that easy. They only took a couple steps when the little one broke out from aunt’s grip.

“Look, auntie, a cat!” she run over to the bench where unusually big and beautiful animal was soaking up the sun.  Before he realized what hit him, he was squeezed and carried by a little pair of still sticky hands and it was visible he did not like it.

“Jemma! Leave that animal alone. It may hurt you.”

Do not refer to me as “it”. I am a male personification. And put me down! Immediately!

She could swear she heard something in the back of her mind, but let it go. After all, cats do not talk and she was in therapy for mental trouble so it was probably just her mind playing tricks on her.

“Can we take him home, auntie, he’s so sweet, please” little girl pouted

“No. Of course not, look at… him. He is very good looking, so most probably belongs to someone. Not a chance he’s a stray cat. “

“I can’t see anyone looking for him” a couple tears showed up in Jemma;s eyes. “Please, auntie, please….” Great, now she was crying out loud getting the attention of few pedestrians.

“Ok, fine, fine, just please stop crying.”

“Thank you” Jemma stopped her actions in a second and smiled widely showing the jags in her mouth. “I will carry him so don’t worry about it, auntie” she held the cat even closer not caring about him writing in her embrace.

“Just be careful so he won’t hurt you” she warned following her niece, wondering what the hell she got herself into.

I will not hurt this little mortal.

At this point, the older girl was pretty sure she was going crazy. And to think that Raynor wanted her to have a pet to help her mental health, not deteriorate it.

***

“Auntie, look, I made him pretty”

“Mhm, great” she did not even bother to look up from some records she was currently reading “wait, you did what, Jemma?” a second later she came to realization what a five-year-old girl can mean by saying “made pretty”.

“Look, auntie” said five year old was quick to get the cat out from behind and proudly present it. Despite her rather gloomy attitude the older one could not hold back a laugh. Black fur was now embellished  with colorful glitter and was wearing a crown. If it wasn’t for the lack of resources at home Jemma would probably extend her imagination even more.

“Oh” she cooed “look who’s pretty boy” her grin was now getting wider and wider. She was no expert on animal behavior but the look on its face clearly indicated it was not happy with the situation.

“I wanted to give him a braid, but the fur was too short” Jemma saddened

“Don’t worry sweetie, it looks just perfect. Like a ….”

“Princess!” Jemma squealed and turned around with the cat still in her embrace.

“Don’t you both dare. This is humiliating”. Once again there was this little voice inside girl’s head.

“Ok, honey, why don’t you let go of the cat now. I got a snack for you.”

“Chocolate cake?” Jemma asked innocently while playing with her fingers and shyly looking at the floor

“Apple and carrots”

“That is boooooring. And I don’t like carrots” Jemma whined

“Well, too bad for you. I heard veggies give you strength. And then your skin looks healthy and shines almost like the cat’s fur. Wouldn’t you like to look beautiful?”

“I’d rather be smart” Jemma retorted taking her aunt aback with maturity of this sentence “but I guess beauty can help in future. I saw on TV that pretty girls always have what they want so whatever” she shrugged and rushed towards the kitchen where the snack was already waiting for her.

“Unbelievable” her aunt shook her head “but she’ll be busy for a while, so how about we get you all cleaned up, huh?” she picked the cat from the floor and walked towards the bathroom ignoring the writhing animal, who was not happy about forced wash.

Put me down! It demanded again and the girl stopped looking him straight in the eyes trying to check out if she was really going nuts.

“Oh come on, girl, get yourself together. It’s just your imagination.”

She walked straight into the bathroom and started gently combing out the fur. Surprisingly, her action bring the animal comfort because surprisingly to both of them he started purring.

***

Two hours later, tired and sleepy Jemma was picked up by her father and her aunt could finally let the cat out into the wild. It was impossible earlier since the little girl was checking on him every five minutes, refusing to drop this action.

“Sorry about today. “ she muttered opening the door “but hey, on the bring side at least you have a nice story to tell to your fellow cats. Besides, you really are a pretty animal.” maybe it was another impression or the flicker of lights, but it seemed like the cats fur became a bit reddish and he squinted. “go, now, find your owners, get home safe, fella.”

It was just a couple of hours, but the girls was actually starting to think that maybe, hypothetically, Raynor was right about this whole “emotional support pet” stuff.

***

Morpheus bristled and crossed the street. Only on the other side of the road he changed back into the anthropomorphic personification of dreams.

“Um, boss?” his loyal yet rebellious Raven perched on the branch, tilting his head slightly. If he was still human he would probably laugh himself silly.

“Not a word, Matthew. Not a single word about it. To anyone” he reached for his sand and completely ignoring further words of the bird transported them back to the Dreaming “Do I make myself clear” he made sure before entering the palace.

“Sure thing, boss. But it was funny don’t you think?”

“Hold your tongue, Matthew!”

@somest1 @pinksirensong

[ibrithir-was-here]

Tada!

Commission for @windsweptinred for their amazing fic Metamorphosis, (goooo reaaaad iiiit) with Night!Dream and Time!Hob and their new Endless Babies Eternity and Euphoria! Flowers used are Amaranth for Hob which means immortality, the Queen of Night flower for Morpheus and Forget-Me-Nots for both of the, for constancy.

I adored this fic and getting to work on this, thank you so much for the opportunity and for the beautiful story!

[sharkodude]

Same Dad, Same Vibes, Different Universes (Ft. my PJO OC Felix)

Shout out to u/lord_reltny’s Morpheus edits on Reddit as inspo for this design.

Also plz check out my PJO OCs, they could use some love…

[7-ferrets-in-a-coat]

Give it up for Dunmeshi ocs !!!

Her name is Morpheus and she matches with @soggyclovers 's Big dog lady :3

Also Laios for scale

Also also Height ref with my wife's dog lady :3

Also!!! Some sketches under the cut

[writing-for-life]

WIP Wednesday

This one is for @morpheusbaby3 , who wrote about a few head canons she’d like to read more about. And one of them was that Morpheus only takes a bath if his partner invites him (he obviously can just wave his hand and/or doesn’t get mucky like the rest of us 🤣). And I do happen to have something like that in my sequel.

I can only give you a snippet, bestie, because I don’t want to give anything away, but this one is safe (and mostly fluff, although what precedes it and comes after isn’t 😩), no matter where you are in TLoS…

Unfair Persuasion

Morpheus sat on the floor beside the bath, folded his arms on the ledge and let his chin rest on his hands.

They just looked at each other in silence for a long time.

“Is there anything else I can do?” he asked softly after a while.

“Just be here.” And suddenly, the tears began to stream down her face. All she felt was relief:

She was home, and it was over.

Morpheus reached out his hand to carefully thumb away her tears before he somehow managed to produce a sponge out of nowhere. He gently motioned her to lean forward and began to run it over her back. Thalia closed her eyes, and the tension she still held in her body slowly began to melt away.

“You wouldn’t need to twist so awkwardly if you just joined me.”

Morpheus briefly stopped mid-movement before he resumed. “That would not be wise.”

Thalia opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. “Why not?”

“Because being that close to you would feel challenging in… certain ways.”

The fact that he showed so much self-restraint made her heart open and ache at once. “You are hurting, too. This isn’t just about me.”

He shook his head. “Right now, it is.”

She took his free hand. “If that’s truly the case and it is about me, I will tell you it would make me feel better if you joined me.”

Morpheus hesitated for a moment. “You do know that your methods of persuasion are unfair?”

Thalia just shrugged, and he sighed with a barely concealed smile before getting up and willing his clothes away while turning his back on her.

“I’ve seen you naked before and quite liked it, no need to hide,” she teased.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Quite liked it? You, my lady, are insufferable.” And with that, he stepped in, graceful beyond comprehension, somehow still managing not to let her see anything. To add insult to injury, he had chosen the opposite end of the bath, which all of a sudden seemed bigger.

After a moment’s silence, she asked, “How are you feeling? And I mean truly.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Tired. Uncertain.” His throat clicked when he swallowed. “Guilty.”

As much as she hated he felt that way—the simple truth that for once, he told her, made her feel profoundly grateful. And she stopped caring whether it was wise or challenging—she needed to be closer to him.

“You’re too far away.” Her words made him open his eyes, and by the time she had moved to his end of the bath, the stars inside of them were shining like diamonds set in gold. She kissed him softly before she turned around, nestled herself between his legs and leaned her back into his chest. And she felt the subtle guarding, the reluctance to touch her beyond the contact her body was making with his. So she took both his arms to wrap them around her gently before folding her own over them, let her head rest on his shoulder, closed her eyes and just breathed.

And little by little, his tension began to subside, and his cheek settled against her head.

They stayed like this for a long time, quite possibly hours; she couldn’t tell since during moments like these, time had no meaning. The water stayed warm, and her skin didn’t mind for reasons she would never truly understand.

“How are you feeling now?” she asked.

“The thoughts are still the same,” he confessed. “But perhaps they hurt a little less.”

She turned her head slightly so she could look into his eyes. “You are not alone, do you hear me? You are so loved. Always, not just right now.”

He began to twirl a strand of her hair around his finger, but he didn’t utter a word.

Thalia reached back to wrap her arm around his neck and kissed him. After a moment, she couldn’t help but smile against his lips. “Is my pointless, kitschy rambling making you emotional?”

“It is far from pointless.” She felt the corners of his mouth turn up. “Besides, even the most kitschy romance novels are somewhat under my purview, so it is less discombobulating to me than you might think.”

………………………………

And I know I’m a tease to stop here, just when it gets interesting (or not 🤣), but there’s really too much spoilery stuff both going in and out of this scene. So you’ll need to wait. Still. I’m so slow right now. I’m sorry…

[pandoraboxsblog]

You’re so boring!

[draftingtides]

The child pulls their hair—their hair made of clouds, so like the dream-clouds of Oneiros—down over one eye and peeks shyly at Hypnos with the other. “Where did you come from?” he wonders aloud, half to the child and half to himself.

9.5k words, rated T, gen (Hypnos & child oc, Hypnos & his brothers, pre-Hypnos/Zagreus)

[alexander-arcturus-black-lupin]

Morpheus is intrigued

Part II

The smell of your arousal must have been the cause. That's all he could say to defend his actions.

"Hello starlight," you jumped out of bed, your face hot with embarrassment.

"Morpheus," He noted how shrill your voice went. How you clenched your legs together. He noticed how you had inched far from the bed aswell.

"It seems you are in-"

"Nothing! absolutely nothing," you shaky legs howwver denyed you the pleasure of walking as you stumbled back from the bed. Morpheus on a hunch entered your thoughts. He was well....intrigued.

To see a retreating imagery of him in you fucking your brains out.

"Tell me starlight, do you want my help?" Morpheus was in love with you, you knew this, you were in love with him too but you were scared.

A mortal and an Endless.

So you always kept him close but not too close. As you stared into his eyes you wondered.

This could change everything...

Do I want to change everything.

No.

Maybe

Fuck yes

You bit your lip.

Yes.

"I want more than your help Morpheus," His eyes glimmered. He knew what you meant. He knelt down and took up your hand in his. Kissing it softly he smiled.

><

"It would be my honor," He pulled you towards him keeping eye contact.

He leans in and you feel yourself float as his lips gently graze yours. He kisses you so softly it feels like a dream. You notice how brighter the sky becomes through your lashes. A small smile crosses your lips. You bring him closer and sink into the kiss.

"I promise to give you the world in the palm of your hand. The stars dangling of you like jewelery, everything and everyone bowing at your presence, just say the word" he said.

And you knew he meant it

Morpheus got me Feral bro i need a sabbaticals of two weeks to properly write the smut bro cus i keep sidelining and avoiding. My brain moves faster than my fingers. Y'all be patient for me yeah. I promise I'll write you proud. Also if you want something custom check my asks and dms <333

Mrs. Black signing off <333

[happykraut]

Vault Dweller meets Morpheus

[cuckoo-on-a-string]

Hello, Mr. Monster (Six. Somnolence)

Summary: Eros and Psyche inspired Soulmate!AU, Morpheus x female OC/reader

Masterlist

Chapter warnings: trauma, A/N: This is literally half of what I planned on for this chapter. Soooo. Yeah. One of the teasers for this chapter applies to chapter seven, lol. But the wait will be worth it! Thank all of you who've stuck around. <3 You are all dears and deserve big cups of tea and cuddles. Dream’s creations brought him stories.

6: Somnolence

They groveled before his throne by the dozen, sharing tales of the child Aisling – in need, protected by his arcana as she moved through the mortal plane, jetsam in the wake of a better life she should’ve lived. Hundreds more, many of them nightmares, told epics of the woman Aisling – tearing their anchors from the dreams of innocent mortals, protecting the most fragile dreams from harsh reality in quiet corners of the world where fantasy still thrived.

His creations brought these stories to trade for forgiveness the subject of their tales had already secured. Only a few shared their memories because they cared for her. They wanted their lord to see her as they’d found her, and how could the Prince of Stories not love a timely hero in a grand tale?

Some told him what they thought he needed to know. Facts about the mortal with his name and power etched in her soul.

He had his own story, one of a cage and a strange woman with true sight and curious magic. A woman who looked too hard at all the wrong things and freed him without promise or threat.

When he first saw her from his prison, when his restraints shattered and he could see properly for the first time in over a century, hope and loss nearly consumed him. He’d been aware of the place in his essence where a mark might grow before Earth gathered into a planet. Every time he fell in love, he waited for the name to appear. Trapped in his glass prison, cut off from anything that made him more than a fragile facsimile of a human shape, he hadn’t felt anything fill the empty space. He lacked the awareness.

How had he imagined meeting a soulmate? Not like that. Not as that – a nameless monster in a cage. She fled the moment she found him, and he imagined he could see Nada’s footprints in the sand as his true soulmate’s steps echoed over stone.

Perhaps it was for the best. The quaint hell of Burgess’s basement was no place for introductions, and he brought all his bereaved fury to bear in his escape. Even as he found his freedom, he found yet another treasure the magus and his son had stolen from him.

She had been hurt. Badly. And he had not been there. If Alexander Burgess hadn’t already earned his punishment, seeing the crude letters cut into Aisling Hunt’s heart over her own mark clinched his doom.

When she finally slept, he showed himself as everything he was not upon their first meeting. Her clever eyes, blinded by fear and expectation, did not see him. Did not know him.

Though he ached to be with her since the moment he truly saw her, though he yearned to repay her for ending his captivity, a hundred years of helplessness festered like a dark canker in the depths of his passion.

When she did not recognize him in that first dream, he did not rush to correct her ignorance. He welcomed it, and with her oblivious naivety, he took control. In the second dream, it was even intentional. So long as she did not know him, he was… safe. So was she. Or he liked to believe so. Safe from fear and confusion at the clear weft of their wyrds knotting them together through actions she believed entirely her own.

But now she knew him.

She’d seen his face, and the budding trust he’d savored as she came apart under his hands and tongue shattered like the finest glass. He imagined it like shards coursing through her blood. He’d seen as much in her eyes as she looked up from the hand of her captors, brought in silken chains to her monster, the entity she’d readily freed from Fawney Rig. Her growing faith, possibly even affection, cut her from the inside out, glittering in her eyes as she fought against the pain his face brought her.

Once again, he was shown to her as a monster, as a frightful king who might accept such a gift from the unseelie court. His lip curled at the thought.

He could not bear it. Though the two parts of him stood at war – the lover and the wounded king – neither exalted in her fear. Deep within, the mark cut him, too. Soothing her pain when she fell into his hands in their first dream together was far from selfless.

He wanted to chart her, like a star-filled sky, or an endless ocean reflecting those stars. He could sense the elements in her, the base reality of every living thing bound up in her tattered mortality. Wildfires and oceans. Sweeping winds and green fields.

And beyond that? She’d done more with the powers the fae cursed her with than he would’ve thought to ask. A touch of eternity beyond anything human tangled so deep in her soul he could never take it back, not without killing her.

He wanted to do terrible things. To pluck out her heart and wear it in a locket, sundering her from the waking world forever. To wrap her up in splendid charms and spells to make her forget anything she might miss outside the bounds of the Dreaming. To pull her deeper and deeper into himself until they were truly one, until she became a part of every aspect, even if it would destroy her. His desire ached to maul her in some way, to sate his hunger and leave a mark even mortal eyes could see.

At the same time, he’d gladly hand his nightmares the broken remains of any other – mortal, god, or angel – who threatened so much as the ease of her smile.

He yearned for her entirely, and he was not all light.

She felt so right in his grasp when he caught her up in the throne room. safe at last in the circle of his arms. But he was not free to hold her. He required her permission, her clear consent, a reciprocal yearning in word and deed, and until he had that, he must prove himself. He could not fail her again.

And so Lord Morpheus, dread King of Nightmares and ruler of the Dreaming slouched low in his seat, watching Aisling Hunt breathe, at rest in the perfect silence of oblivion as he waited at her side.

He hadn’t brought her to the rooms he began crafting as he rebuilt his kingdom from ruins. The bed was no less grand, the space fit for a goddess, but it was a thoughtless grandeur. Perhaps it was selfish, but he did not want her fear to spoil the joy he’d hoped she’d find… in her home. He did not want her first memories there to echo with terror and doubt.

“My lord?”

Lucienne hesitated in the doorway, hands clasped behind her back and brow furrowed with care. Though he wanted to close the doors and keep these quiet moments entirely for his own, his librarian had been the one to remind him of his soulmate’s fragility, and although she often provided insights he did not like, they were all the more invaluable for his distaste.

“I do not know what to do.” He looked from his love to his librarian, nearly as lost as he’d been when he first returned from his imprisonment, sitting below a throne governing nothing but broken glass and crumbled stone. Then he’d had a course to follow, a realm to repair, even if he hadn’t known where to begin. “There is no quest to fulfill. No correction to make. She is not even mine to repair, even where I am at fault.”

His former raven watched, shifting in place, but never taking her eyes from her master and the mortal he would love.

“Perhaps…” She paused, and Morpheus looked to her searchingly, grasping for hope in the wake of this latest failure. Taking it permission, she continued delicately, handling her ruler like the delicate pages of the library’s oldest tomes. “Perhaps a king is not what she needs at this time.”

He already knew that, but he could not accept it.

“Is my name not carved on her heart?”

“Morpheus, my lord.” Lucienne offered the correction like a balm to a blistered wound. “Not Dream of the Endless. You assume you know what her reaction will be when she wakes, but how can you predict someone you barely know? She knows even less of you, and I’m sure she has plenty of assumptions.”

He bristled. He already knew her, as he knew all dreamers. The facts of her life flowed through the Dreaming, but he only understood them as a mortal would know printed words on a page. They’d shared precious little time. Three dreams.

Would she ever trust him like that again, or had he lost her entirely in his carelessness?

He didn’t wish to agree with his librarian’s suggestion, but he had no ideas of his own, and he would not fail his little hero once again. Could not.

“What do you suggest, then?”

Drawing herself up, Lucienne unclasped her hands and folded them anew in the front, clearly itching for a book or ledger to occupy herself. “I don’t know her any better than you do, sire, but there are some who do. Why not… invite them to share their insights?”

Morpheus closed his eyes, calling to mind the many subjects who flocked to offer pieces of Aisling’s story. Most clasped nothing but small gems, scattered fragments of a grander jewel. But the ones she called friend, that walked the Waking world beside her…

He opened his eyes and looked through the Dreaming, reaching to the shores of Nightmare, where a beast with pretty manners turned at his call.

“Fine Gentleman. I summon you. Come to me.”

The nightmare followed his order, appearing in the room at the foot of Aisling’s bed as the shape of the realm bent to accommodate Dream’s will. Despite his decades in the Waking world, the nightmare had taken up his old duties admirably, and Dream expected Fin, as so many called him, would return the loyalty Aisling had shown him. She risked her freedom to safeguard the nightmare’s path home, after all.

Fin knelt, bowing to his king, but his eyes flicked to the bed, and Dream dismissed his respects. “Rise. You have leave to speak. There are answers I would have of you.”

The nightmare didn’t need to be told twice. Back on his feet, he gingerly touched the edge of the blue coverlet, and asked, “It’s true? The unseelie, they – Is she alright?”

“In body, yes.” Lucienne approached the far side of the bed, closing a semicircle around the sleeping mortal who’d caused so much concern. “But she had an attack of some kind, and none of us are sure what to expect when she wakes. Perhaps you have some experience with similar episodes?”

“I do.” The nightmare kept his attention on Lucienne and his hand a few inches from Aisling’s feet. History and affection bound them closer than oaths and debts. Rot green ghosted through Dream’s thoughts, and he wrestled the specter away as the nightmare explained. “She hasn’t had one in a long time, but she used to have panic attacks when she was younger. Bad ones.”

“And how did she treat them?” Morpheus demanded his creation’s attention. It would do the nightmare well to remember whose soulmate he’d been called to aid. It would do him well to remember his king.

Nothing of the beast faced the King of Dreams, only the gentleman, and though he kept his head down, his gaze fixed on Morpheus with iron determination.

“My lord, I have a suggestion you won’t like.”

There was much in the past hours Morpheus had not liked. He’d cut his throat to ease her thirst if need be or burn every star in the Dreaming’s sky to keep her warm. Sitting up in his chair, he prepared himself to bleed.

“What is it? What does she need of me?”

The nightmare didn’t hesitate. Didn’t flinch.

“Your distance, sire.”

Morpheus recalled the scene in the great hall. His destined soulmate. Alone, collapsing on his throne room floor, shaking and afraid. He wouldn’t have it.

“I will not leave her. She will not be alone.”

Her friend, the nightmare, shook his head. “She wouldn’t be alone. Any of us she knows could stay and mind her, but…”

Ah. Morpheus sat back in his seat, expression cooling as he realized they had only just reached the part of the suggestion he would not like.

“Speak.”

The nightmare took a deep breath, set his shoulders, and forged ahead like a soldier facing down a dragon.

“She was never afraid of you because you were powerful. She lived in fear that you’d take her choice.”

He gave his king a moment to consider the revelation, though even in his brief acquaintance, Morpheus had learned that much. But it was only a reminder, and he spooled out deeper knowledge like a bandage he could pull his friend together with.

“When she wakes up,” he said, “she’ll need to feel in control. Even in the Waking she took space for herself – to find the truth, redraw the borders around what she’d chosen and what she’d been told to choose. The greatest gifts you can give her are time and space.”

Drawing his hand back, letting his fingers drag over the covers, the nightmare bowed. Morpheus read more than respect in his creation’s bent spine. This was the obeisance of a supplicant, one begging for grace rather than offering fealty.

“She’s resilient, but give her a chance to find her feet before you ask her to be brave again.”

Dream of the Endless did not smile down on his creation. The nightmare had been right. He did not like this plan at all, but he had asked, and the nightmare spoke truly. As a true friend.

Loathe as he was to banish himself, he would abide by the counsel of one who knew his soulmate well in the hope that he, too, may someday be allowed to know her.

“Very well.” He rose, and the chair crumbled to sand. “You and those of your choosing will serve as companions, guides, aides. The One Beneath will guard her.”

The nightmare took his orders and departed to gather his fellows. Lucienne waited for her lord, offering him silent company and support as he pulled himself from his little hero’s side.

He craved her faith. Her willing trust and all that would follow. It seemed, however, that he must first give her his own.

“When she is ready, she will come to me.”

.O.O.O.

She roused from the dreamless ocean to meet a crush of memories.

The fae delivered her. Morpheus took her. And now she woke in a bed she didn’t recognize.

He’d watched as the fae threatened to strip her of her own mind. And he’d – he’d always been –

She ripped the sheets back and fought her way off the plush mattress. Not awake enough to land on her feet, she fell to all fours, and the impact jarred her knees, sparked little agonies up her wrists. She dropped flat, belly-down beside the impossibly soft sheets and a blanket that looked like rolling waves caught the threads. She looked at the wonderous bedding with dull eyes. Then closed them, so she wouldn’t have to.

Everything here was his. Even… even she was. Now. Maybe.

She hated every beautiful thing in the room, but she hated herself more.

It was her fault. She let herself believe she was safe, and she paid in flesh and scars.

How many years of her life would she voluntarily trade to the fae to erase the past… however long they kept her, from the moment she passed through the mirror til now? And how long was that? Did she sleep for a few hours? Days? Had the Waking world seen a hundred years as her monster bundled her up in his castle?

Her breath caught like a sleeve on a doorknob, sudden and jarring.

It hadn’t really happened.

It had.

He’d promised her he wouldn’t steal her away or exploit what she offered. He helped with her pain and brought her pleasure, and she’d –

A cold hand with scabby skin and broken nails wrapped around her fingers.

She didn’t need to open her eyes to recognize Jeff.

She rubbed her thumb along an exposed tendon to assure him she was alive, and he squeezed back to prove he was listening, that he had her, that he would stay. That everything was alright and nothing truly terrible had happened as she slept.

That all was still as she remembered.

Despite what she’d seen.

Maybe it meant something that her monster let her oldest friend comfort her instead of demanding the burden of care himself.

But if the first promises had been lies, and his excuses for the mask must’ve been, then she couldn’t trust any peace offerings, either.

The nightmare held her hand, but he couldn’t ground her. She refused to settle in her skin. She knew what would happen when she did. Whole people wore skin – filled with pain, and regret, and longing. Nothing hurt more than that.

She’d been here before. Not on this floor, in this plane, within her monster’s domain. But a floor, and in the end, polished marble or scratchy, threadbare carpet, it didn’t matter once she landed. A floor was a floor. She became hollow enough to forget she was alive, bleeding from a war no one else could see or save her from.

She had to get up. Had to move. Had to save herself. No one else could, not even Jeff, or Fin, or Gault, or

– Morpheus.

The floor had warmed under her cheek, proof of a beating heart she didn’t want to feel, and she turned to press the other side of her face to a new, cooler patch of marble. Maybe the stone floor could leach enough heat to freeze her mind. Numb it. So she could forget.

Forget his face. His expression when she broke the seal in the basement of Fawney Rig and the way he looked down from his throne as the pansy swung above her eyes.

Forget his careful, beautiful hands, and how it felt to dissolve with him between the stars.

Forget the smell of earth. The feel of claws. Of spider silk… The dress. She was still wearing the damn dress.

Inspiration couldn’t lift her from the floor, but fear and disgust launched her upright as she sank her fingernails into the delicate lace and pulled.

The left sleeve tore from her shoulder like tissue paper. Just as it was meant to. A pretty thing for her soulmate to rip off her body. Titillating scraps of fabric that wouldn’t impede a lover. That offered even less protection than she’d thought.

She froze again. Her breath caught on a lump in her throat as visions of another destiny crept like a snake through her thoughts. One where the graceful fingers she was coming to adore destroyed the dress. Where she’d lost herself entirely. Where her monster became everything she feared.

She blinked furiously. Her wet eyelashes stuck together. The air in her lungs turned thick with agony she wouldn’t voice, and the elegant room turned to a blur as she crashed to her knees, clutching her arms close to keep from shaking apart. To protect herself. To hide the body the fae tortured into gleaming perfection for a monster’s pleasure.

She wanted the dress off.

She couldn’t stomach the thought of baring any more skin.

She couldn’t think beyond the tearing pain in her chest.

This is what came of leaving the floor and becoming a person again.

Hands cut through the fog, urgently curling around her shoulders. She jerked back, shouting wordless protest, and a voice reached out to find her where the hands could not reach.

“Aisling, you’re safe. We’re here. Can you hear me?” The voice plucked on memories. Dust and sunshine and green stains on her skin from cheap jewelry stewing in sweat.

“Gwen?” She only realized she’d asked when she heard her own voice. It didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right.

“Yes.” A smile behind hands offered in support, palms up, begging to be accepted. “It’s just me and Jeff. Can I – Are you…” The dream looked her like she was holding a knife to her lover’s throat. “Can you tell me what you need?”

No. She really couldn’t. It wasn’t safe, and she didn’t know.

But the fucking dress…

She pulled at the fabric. Carefully. Trying to express herself as words failed to coalesce.

“I want it off. I feel…”

She felt like she needed to scrape her skin off all over again, but even in her confusion, she knew Gwen wouldn’t help that far.

But Gwen knew her, and Gwen knew how to listen, even when dreamers struggled to speak. “I’ll draw a bath and find you something to wear.”

Aisling knelt where she’d landed and swallowed down rising bile. Even she forgot, on her better days, how physically painful fear could be. Jeff took her ankle, so she knew she wasn’t alone as Gwen swept out of sight to do as she’d promised. Her most loyal nightmare.

She didn’t mean to scare him.

Her chest ached with an old burn, and she knew she couldn’t turn to the same cure that soothed it last time.

Gwen returned swiftly, before Aisling even had time to miss her, offering her soft hands again for her friend to accept.

She still couldn’t stand the idea. Jeff was different. Jeff needed the comfort as much as she did, and there was no mistaking his hand for anyone else’s.

She found her feet on her own, still hugging herself, eyes on the floor. Her stomach ached. Her skin crawled under the sticky lace. As she followed Gwen into a side chamber, she couldn’t help noticing the view outside the great, arched windows. A whole world stretched beyond the glass – worlds upon worlds, even.

Her ordeal wasn’t over.

She couldn’t just jump in her van and leave the Dreaming. Boundless as the fears and fantasies of every living thing, aware of her presence as its monarch, it would hold her until he gave her permission to leave. As she walked through her – ostensibly – private rooms, she might as well be sitting in her monster’s palm again.

Gwen showed her to a sunken tub behind a screen, an indoor pond that scented the air with clouds of lavender. An indistinct set of clothes sat on a low table beside a stack of towels, and a small collection of soaps and bottles stood within reach of the water.

Gwen wrung her hands, fighting to smile. “Would you like help? I can wait outside if you prefer.”

“I’ll be fine on my own. Thanks.” Getting the dress off would end in a fit. Big, ugly tears and hacking sobs. She just knew it. She couldn’t stomach someone sitting beside her, trying to comfort her as she came to terms with everything the fae had done.

She had to wash this new skin alone. She needed to mourn. She needed to figure out which way to swim before she drowned in aimless grief, and worrying what she looked like or how she made a loved one feel would only pull her deeper. Fortunately, Gwen understood.

Her friend left. She stood alone in the opulent ensuite, pulling apart what was meant to be her dreaded wedding gown, trembling as she tried shielding herself from eyes that simply weren’t there.

She took her bleeding heart into the bath, and the warm water tried to swallow her pain. Washing and scrubbing until she couldn’t feel the faeries’ touch under her raw flesh brought a little relief, but missed her scars. The little marks on her fingers from careless accidents in the kitchen, places she cut for spell work, and a hundred incidental bumps and nicks. It looked alien now. Too smooth. Perfect in a way even a birth-bruised baby’s wasn’t. Her true sight detected residual magic that wouldn’t fade in her lifetime from the unicorn’s horn. It made her beautiful. The kind of beauty she could use as a weapon if she wanted. If she was dealing with a lesser creature than an Endless.

When her cuticles bled, she gave up trying to erase the potion’s effects.

And she cried.

She cried so much she was surprised the water level didn’t rise. The bath stayed hot and fresh as she tried flaying herself, and she wondered if had some secret healing power. Hardly shocking, all things considered, but she wished it was plain water she could turn pink with her human blood.  

She stayed too long, cleaning her hair, her face, the spaces between her toes. Her intention worked the scrubbing into a ritual. Not all the magic would leave, but she banished the traces of her captors’ essence. She peeled away their staring eyes and casual violence.

She was her own self, and she would make it so.

At last, cleansed in body if not in mind, she climbed out and began the process of becoming a whole person again, with feelings and all. Feelings, and legs, and wet hair.

The towels were so soft she nearly cried again, but she felt ridiculous enough to sniffle down her hysterics and start getting dressed. Gwen had brought something like elegant loungewear. Better than any sweatpants or old t-shirt, they draped around her without clinging or threatening to fall off. Comfortable. Woven from some fabric she’d never touched before but maybe dreamed of, like the plush toy she slept with as a child and the silky ripple of a stream over her fingers. A shawl waited at the bottom of the stack, and she pulled the extra shield around her shoulders like armor. Everything fit. Nothing pinched, or chafed. It couldn’t be the most attractive ensemble, but it felt like a promise. Reassurance stitched into the loose fit that covered her so well.

It wasn’t for display. She wasn’t for display. It was consideration. Patience. A tender embrace offered from a safe distance.

And she was beginning to doubt Gwen had chosen these clothes at all.

She shivered, pulling the shawl tight across her chest, and returned to the bedroom. Gwen rose, uncertain but ready for anything. Aisling waved her down.

“I still… I’m going on a walk.” The world beyond the windows was all Dream’s, but she needed an open sky and a breeze on her face. The screaming child in the back of her head wailed the polished marble felt like raw slate and the close air smelled like soil and mildew. It didn’t, but she wanted to break the association before it took root.

Twisting her hands again, Gwen nodded, and Aisling didn’t wait for someone to tell her she wasn’t allowed, or that she really needed to stop and put on shoes, or that she should act like a delicate lady and keep to the garden. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

So many of her friends told her stories about the Dreaming. She wanted to love it.

She would outrun her fear, literally if she had to.