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Strings used to hate going to bed. He'd do everything it took to stay awake, ignoring the piercing, throbbing pains in his skull just for one more hour away from the inevitable nightmares.
That was before he started dreaming of you.
You didn't have a name. Not one that he knew of. But in that first dream, he'd met you in a bar. You had been dancing on a table, and fell off and into his arms. There was some sort of force between the two of you, something that pulled him in without mercy. You were the Reveler, a new addiction for him. You inspired new songs.
It was strange. For meeting you in a dream, you felt so real. He felt the ghost of your touch, your kisses, long after he woke. On some level, he thought maybe he should feel perturbed by the physicality of it all. He could even still taste you.
His songs fell on deaf ears. Whenever he dreamed you up, there was no need to sing to you. You were the music. You bent the reality of sound to your every movement, and he was helpless under your hands.
He was in love.
There were times he would sink into sleep to find the nightmares, even still, but they would be interrupted in a shower of noise as his Reveler cut through the thick cloud of self-fear and disgust. You would comfort him, and now he didn't fear the darkness in his own head. There was only you.
There was never any time to talk. Anytime he would try to ask you questions, your face would cinch in that weird way humans do when they try not to cry. Then the dream would end. And for all your face was the one that seized up like that, Strings would wake up with his own face leaking, his own mangled soul aching.
That was another odd piece of it. Whether it was the absence of the dreams or something else, his soul was stabilizing. His brushes with self harm in the past had made it clear he couldn't die, but that was before. He thought about the dreams often at work, about what would happen if he just never woke up. Would he be with you forever? Or would you disappear with him? The thought of it hurt. Even if you didn't disappear, what would you say to him if he did that?
He couldn't bear to hurt you like that. You'd never say it, but he could feel that you loved him. He could feel it in the way you'd cling to him. The way you'd say his name.
Tonight, he thought he would try something new. He'd been working on ways to control his dreamspace. Surely, if he could control the dreams, he could find some way to get answers out of you. Even something small. Anything.
At worst, perhaps he could make things interesting for you.
It was the bar where you met. The lights were low. It was empty. The curtains were drawn. Wine red to match the dark cherrywood of the bar and tables. White candles in the center of a table. Two chairs and a bottle of wine. Strings felt like he was being cheesy about it, but he squashed his self doubt as best he could, waiting for you to appear.
The candle flickered out, fully melted down to the table. Wax dribbled lazily onto the floor. Strings slapped what was left of the candle, sending it flying to the window, splashing wax across the curtains where it solidified. Strings gripped the table, the wood creaking. He took deep breaths.
He heard an unfamiliar voice in the back. He realized he'd never gone into the kitchen before. He hadn't been expecting it to open into your empty bedroom. He looked behind him, but the door now led into just a simple hallway.
He felt your hands on his shoulders. Cold. But you weren't there. He called to you, looked down the hallway. He felt your breath in his ear.
"Please don't look for me." You said.
He stopped, leaning against the wall. His eyes stung and his voice cracked. "Rev."
"Promise you won't look for me."
"Can't you tell me why?" He pleaded.
He knew your face was cinched up. He couldn't see it, but he knew. "It's better this way."
He wanted to believe you. You needed him to believe you...
"I can't, Rev. I need to know."
There was a pause.
"One more night." You swallowed your emotions. "One more night. I promise I'll quit running away. I just need one more night, Strings."
You were there. Right there in front of him. You were visibly trying to control your face, hold back tears.
Something felt final about this. Strings wondered if he'd made a mistake. He took you into his arms, kissed your forehead. You fit to him in a way that no one else ever had. His soul said this felt like home-- and now he wondered if he was throwing it away for some kind of closure he didn't know if he really needed.
I have you, there's no reason for closure. It raced through his mind, over and over again. He pulled back to look at you. He could see it in your eyes. Tomorrow you would ask for one more night, too. This wasn't his last chance.
He smiled at you, kissed away a tear. "One more night." He agreed.
There were so many things he didn't know how to reconcile in his head. He was tired of waking up on a wet pillow, but he was terrified of this truth, whatever it was.
Part of him knew, and it filled him with a hollow, aching cold in the pit of his soul.
That's where that truth lay. His soul was healing... but that only confirmed it.
He'd been reading up on it. The relationship between soulbonds and death.
He wanted to be wrong. He needed to be wrong.
You were too real to be locked up in his head, dead or alive. He couldn't handle it anymore. He needed to see you.
Just as he thought before, you didn't mention the night before. It was as if it hadn't happened, except for the mark of his bite on your shoulder.
He wanted to let it go, but part of him was angry. He felt greedy for needing to know.
He swallowed his anger and self-disgust and tried to focus on what he had. You were still the Reveler, bending his every thought into a song he couldn't get out of his head. You were magic itself, and the way you fit to his body made him feel like nothing could ever be wrong.
Before he woke up, you smiled at him. "Thank you" was all you said.
Something was different today. It started with the feeling of you next to him on his bed when he woke up.
"Call in today." You said.
Strings paused for the longest time, trying to figure out if he had actually heard your voice while awake or if he was still asleep.
You laughed. When he got up and left the bedroom, he thought he could see a glimpse of you sitting on his kitchen counter. He called his boss and made something up. He must have sounded pretty bad, the boss didn't ask many questions. Just gave a very emphatic "hope you feel better soon." and it was over. Strings sat there for a while with the phone in his hand, staring into space.
The clinking of metal on ceramic startled him. Hot tea with the perfect amount of sugar in it, sitting on the counter next to where he'd glimpsed you. Any other day, he'd have thought he did it himself in his wake up haze. The peppermint he would taste on your breath in dreams-- another thing you'd gotten him hooked on. It helped the headaches, not that he had them often anymore. "Is it hot enough?" You whispered.
Strings wondered how many cups of tea you'd made him that he hadn't questioned.
He took the cup and sat down at his computer desk. His browser was already up, and a location was typed in.
He took a sip of the tea. You pressed up behind him, lacing your arms down over his chest, leaning your head on his shoulder. He could feel your hair against his temple and he shivered.
"Remember where we met?" You asked.
"Is that it?" He gestured to the screen with the mug.
"No... but it's close. I worked there a long time ago. I used to walk from there to home."
"I take it I shouldn't just pop into your house."
"Not a good idea, but you're going to be scaring the hell out of people either way. Would you rather scare a child and a single mother or a bartender who can tell you where you need to go?"
"The bartender knows...?"
"My best friend. My adopted little sibling. They're called Shay, and they're not scared of monsters anyway. Just... don't date them please."
"I don't need anyone but you."
There was a pause.
"I need to ask something." He finally said, closing the browser.
He took the silence as permission to go on.
"Are you going to disappear when this is done? Will you still be in my dreams?"
There was a tiny laugh. "I don't know. I was hoping you would."
"I don't know if I wanna go through with this, Rev. Too much to lose."
"I won't go anywhere by choice. Not without you."
Strings was silent.
The bar was empty, but there was an unfamiliar voice coming from the kitchen. Just as before, Strings entered. This time, there was just a kitchen and a scrawny and scrambled person. They looked up at him, did a double take, and then looked around. "Did Mossy send you?"
"Who's Mossy?" He asked.
"I'll take that as a no." They said, wiped their hands off on their apron before offering for a handshake. "I'm Shay. How did you get in here with the doors locked?"
A brief explanation of how he got there only led to more questions. Shay was the inquisitive type, but they way they eyed him made him a little wary.
"Okay, so... why did you come across the country to my bar, then? You said you can only go to places you've been before, and I've never seen you around here."
That part was harder to explain.
"I had a dream about someone who worked here."
Shay's face froze in an uncomfortable smile.
"Someone I'm looking for, who I was told you could help me find."
Shay looked away. There was a pause, and then they got up and went behind the bar. They seemed to weigh their options before grabbing two bottles.
"Stick with me. Got any cash on you?"
"No?"
"Okay... I guess I'll put it on your tab." It was obviously not a statement Shay was addressing to Strings.
"What?"
"Don't worry about it." There was a pause. "Let's run some errands, and I'll do my part for you."
Strings and Shay talked as they went. He told stories of how he fell in love with the Reveler in his dreams. Shay told stories of staying up all night, talking about everything and nothing on the phone, about all the times you kinkshamed them and how Shay secretly thought it was hilarious even though they always acted indignant.
"You know... When we met, we didn't get along. I thought it was because I'm loud and weird... but once we got to know each other..." Shay held their breath. "I'm still grieving, too. It's been years, but... it still hurts to lose someone that big in your life. I lost the one positive influence I had. And after it was all said and done, the most depressing part of it all was that there was no family there to do the paperwork. I had to do it."
The errands were obvious enough. Shay had Strings pick out some flowers. Shay bought a small stuffed creature, trying not to cry when they said it was your favorite animal.
The location you gave him wasn't a house.
He'd known that. He'd thought maybe it would be easier to accept.
Shay and Strings had been walking down the road, cars passing. They got some nasty looks, but now Strings couldn't be bothered to care.
He stopped in his tracks when Shay diverged from the road. His vision narrowed to a point where a small wooden cross was planted just down the bank to the left of the road.
Shay stood next to it and looked up at him. They rested their hand on it, and looked down at it, but not before Strings saw their face scrunch up. He walked, but his legs were numb.
And at that moment he wanted nothing more than to hear your voice.
"Driving home from a new job. Fell asleep at the wheel." Shay looked up and blinked away a tear. "They say it was so quick... couldn't have even had time to be in pain. Must have been instant." Shay bit their lip. "I... kind of always hoped Rev never woke up, didn't suffer." They smiled, and a small sob escaped as they looked at Strings. "I guess I was right?"
They bent down and kissed the top of the cross. There was a long moment where nothing moved. Shay lay down a full bottle of alcohol. "I brought your favorite. And this little guy. I know it's not exactly practical... but I don't care." Shay set the stuffed animal at the base of the cross. "You know I always do stupid shit like this. That's why I needed you so much." They wiped their face off and got up. "But I'm gonna keep doing my best for you. So you don't have to worry. I still wanna be like you when I grow up."
Shay stepped away and took a deep breath. "I'm... gonna go stand over there. Give you some privacy. Sorry."
Strings tried to say it was fine, but his words were trapped. Even though he didn't need to breathe to survive, he couldn't force himself to do so. He felt enclosed and he understood now that this closure was not what he'd wanted. He'd come here knowing he wouldn't be wrong, stupidly needing to be proven wrong when he knew it was impossible.
He moved forward as if he wasn't inhabiting his own body, and he braced himself on the little cross. It was sturdier than it looked. Shay must take good care of it.
He choked on his breath and went to his knees, and it came out in ragged sobs.
Visions filled his mind of you. Of what could have been. Meeting you in a million ways, living happily with you. Having a child with you. All of those potential futures dashed in a moment. And here he was with his damned proof, for what it was worth.
He rested his brow on it. It felt warm against him.
Finally he found his words. "I don't know what to do now."
The silence was palpable.
"Please say something. I can't take the quiet."
He felt a hand on his back, but when he looked back, he saw it was just Shay.
"I'm sorry, but there's one more thing I need to show you."
Strings looked back to the cross. He rubbed his thumb across your name etched in the wood. He finally laid the flowers down and got up.
He almost asked for more time. But, he mused, he could come back any time he wanted to.
Shay explained there was something in the bar that they needed to show him. Strings offered to get them there quicker, and Shay was all-too quick to accept. The walk, though not too long, wasn't exactly worth doing twice.
When they popped into the bar, Shay took a second to get their bearings before they grabbed Strings by his sleeve and tugged him after them.
"Where are we going?" He asked.
"Remember how I said I had to do all the paperwork and stuff?"
"Yeah?"
"I couldn't afford much. Had to crowdfund most of it."
Strings didn't know where they were going with this.
"I have a request." They said finally, kneeling at a locker.
Strings didn't like where this was going. "What request?"
Shay messed up on the combination of the locker twice before finally getting it right. They waited until the locker was open to bother responding. "Monsters, when they die, have their dust scattered on something special to them. Right?"
Strings looked into the locker. A small, simple urn sat there. The only thing in the locker.
"Do you always keep that there?"
"Would it be creepy if I said I brought it with me everywhere?" Shay asked. "Sometimes I forget it here when I go home."
Strings held his face in his hands.
"I wanted to be haunted." Shay explained. "But... You might treat it better than I did. If you want it."
Take it please.
Strings offered out his hands, and Shay hurried to hand it over. There was an awkward moment as they both just stood there. Shay waved to the door and looked at the floor. "I know this wasn't exactly the best way to meet someone, but I don't have many friends who know Rev the way you and I do... In fact, it's kinda just me anymore." There was a pause. "What I'm trying to say... I guess..." Shay looked up. "Don't be a stranger. You're welcome anytime." Their chin quivered. "Tell Rev hi for me. If you can."
Strings smiled. For some reason he felt like he should ruffle their hair, but he resisted. "I will. Take care, okay?"
"Yessir." Shay saluted in a way that was obviously meant to be comical. This time Strings allowed himself to tousle their hair. While they fixed it up and complained, Strings mercifully disappeared.
In his bedroom with a what he was slowly realizing was a fancy jar full of ashes, Strings sat down hard on his bed and stared at the urn in his hands.
"For what it's worth, the flowers were pretty."
Strings' head whipped around.
There you were, just like in the dreams.
"So... do you get stronger closer to this?" Strings nodded at the urn.
"I don't think so." You said, coming closer. You knelt in front of him, looking up at him.
He set the urn down on the bedside table.
"I think... I just needed to be closer to you."
He reached out, and this time, he could feel you.
"I only ever had one wish..." You said, leaning into his touch. "I wanted to be there for you, the way I was supposed to. I wanted to take the pain away."
He pulled you into his arms, took a deep breath of the scent of you. "And I just wanted to be with you."
He felt like he was going to fall asleep. You lay down with him, cuddled up to his neck.
"Will you be here when I wake up?" He asked.
"If you wake up."