dave (chris meyers #1 fan)

Many people over centuries have wondered why and how dreams happen. Psychologists are constantly divided on whether or not they mean anything at all, with some saying that dreams can reflect a person’s deepest fears or desires.

Regardless of what some nerds with fancy titles say, none of them had every considered asking the question that Chris and Andrew (mostly the latter) had on their mind regarding dreams in their shared body:

“How do we dream now that we’re, y’know, literally together? Like, when we fall asleep, do you just… watch me sleep?” Andrew asked. They’d been tossing and turning in their bed for at least 5 hours, and Andrew’s phone screen from the bedside table lit up from a text notification. 4 am. Chris groaned and a yawn echoed through every crevice of Andrew’s brain.

“God, I wish,” Chris muttered, “Andrew, darling, I am going to kill you if you don’t keep your mouth shut and try harder to silence your mind. Please go to sleep and we will find out.”

Had Andrew been thinking straight, he may have questioned Chris on why he seemed so eager for the opportunity to watch him sleep, but he could feel their consciousnesses slipping each time he blinked. Not to mention how pet name that Chris used on him made him feel like he was a smitten teenager again; warm and comfortable and finally safe.

The questioning could wait until they've woken up, if Andrew remembers it.

“Mhm, fine, alright… g’night, angel,” was the last thing Andrew managed to speak (with a smug smirk) as Chris used the last of their remaining energy to move his arm just enough for him to be able to interlace their fingers weakly yet firmly.

---

The darkness faded as if it had been pulled into itself, and Chris felt... weak. He felt sick. He felt wrong. Something was wrong, and he was so cold...

... He could breathe now, though he still found it difficult. Why? Where was he? He lifted his head to look, and was met with the sight of a very familiar room.

He was in Desiderium Asylum. He remembered his room. He remembered this whole place very well. He remembered the medications that did nothing but weaken him and made him easier to torture. He remembered the smiling figure that he came to know well. He almost pitied them.

He could hear the Call of the Well in the courtyard. He could always hear it. It called to him like a siren. He had to learn it's melody. He noticed only now that he'd left his room and had been sluggishly making his way to the courtyard again when he took a step and fell a floor down.

'Ouch...' Chris thought, though he'd noticed his lack of pain. “What?... How am… how am I-” Chris muttered as he looked at what he could see of his pitch black body.

He failed. He failed Andrew. This was his fault… Andrew was likely to come looking for him, and what would he think of him now?! He left his best friend behind. He would never be able to amend this mistake. He couldn’t tell if the water from his ‘face’ was his tears or well water… was there even a difference?

‘Fuck… I-I have to get out of h-here. There is a well, so there’s an exit,’ Chris whined as he dragged himself towards a wall to pull himself up with what little strength he had. Shit, he forgot how dizzy he would get. ‘I… have a feeling that I may be able to escape… I can sense another well.’

As he turned around, he found himself at the front entrance. He remembered being not so politely pushed through them when being admitted. He would've fought back, had he been able to. He stepped through the opened doors without question and allowed this new call to guide him towards the next well. He felt… hazy? His mind felt scattered. He hardly remembered where he’d just been 10 minutes ago, let alone if time worked the same anyone.

He’d begun mumbling something in his stupor, though he had hardly half a mind to understand himself anymore. Finally, something had managed to cut through the fog that clouded his mind, just like it always had. His head shot up at a familiar voice speaking his name; “C-Chris?!”

“Andrew?! Andrew!”

“Chris! Are you-” Andrew was cut off by the impact of the solid black shadow figure practically throwing himself at him in a weak yet desperate embrace. He’d hit his head against the ground beneath him, though it didn’t seem to hurt… at all.

For a moment, they lay there in a rather uncomfortable position in damp grass as their tears drenched it further. Andrew eventually shifted them both to prop himself up against the brick well and pull Chris into his lap into a much more comfortable position. Said shadow figure immediately leaned into him

“You know,” Andrew sniffled, “something about all this feels… I dunno… off?”

Chris moved to look up at Andrew, still clinging to him as though his existence depended on it. With no distinguishing features, though, it was a little difficult to tell if Chris had turned to look at him or if he’d turned to look away from him…

“I’m looking at you, Andrew,” Chris spoke with a giggle, as if reading his mind. Andrew moved away from him slightly, chuckling nervously as Chris seemed… saddened by the gesture? He wasn’t sure what gave the impression of sadness, though he could feel the other’s heart ache slightly, somehow.

“H-How did you…”

Just as Chris had began saying something, a realization hit Andrew as he swore he heard something like a… mourning dove?

---

Andrew and Chris gasped as they woke up, jolting upright as their blanket fell from their shoulders. Both their hands instinctively reached for their chest to calm their racing heart, with Andrew’s being slightly slower to react and ending up on top of Chris’s as a result. Seemingly instinctively, Chris yanked his hand away with a pained yelp from inside his mind. “G-get… get away f-from me! No… nonono- I- don’t want t-to-”

It took Andrew a while to understand why Chris’s half of his body seemed to retreat every time he attempted to console him. ‘Ah,’ he thought once he'd woken up enough to comprehend words, ‘so, this is what a PTSD episode is like.’

... Sometimes, Andrew had a habit to think or say things that he would regret not long afterwards.

Chris’s memories flashed through his mind, and he witnessed it all from Chris’s perspective. He saw every awful, painful thing those ‘doctors’ did to Chris in the real world. There were no blocks in these visions, nor creepy armor stands.

He saw and felt the drowsiness from the medications the doctors prescribed Chris. He saw that smiling figure watching him. He saw Chris stumbling around the hall at night like a zombie and approaching the courtyard before being dragged back to his room. He couldn’t do anything but comply; the medications made him too weak to fight back.

The memory of what happened in The Fixing Room made Andrew sick to his stomach… he’d be lucky if he could even eat breakfast today, or any meal for that matter.

Then, there was the memory of Chris, beaten, bloodied, and drenched with water, stumbling through the sewers while barely alive for who knows how long.

The last memory he’d been forced to view was at the bottom of the empty well, the same one he found that he now realized were Chris’s bones at the bottom of. This memory was one that he knew would be shown to him, though he really wished with all his strength that somehow, their shared brain would just skip this one.

Chris was alone, wet, cold, and fatally injured at the bottom of the well. Every breath he took sent shocks like lightning through his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning from the inside, and nobody was awake to find or help him. They couldn’t hear his pneumatic wheezing, nor his weak pleas for help. He died cold and alone, drowning to death from the inside.

Chris froze to death, and his final thoughts before he lost consciousness and woke up as something new were of Andrew.

Chris had been whimpering and mumbling phrases in the back of his mind, though the visions had completely drowned out the noise of his voice.

“Andrew! Andrew, s-say something, please…” Chris pleaded, sniffling as his hand feverishly wiped tears away from their eyes until they’d become red and swollen.

“Chris…” Andrew sobbed, pulling the blanket up to their face and burying them in it, “holy shit.”

Chris’s voice broke at how sad Andrew was. “You saw the flashbacks of…” Chris trailed off as Andrew nodded, mumbling a ‘mhm’ as he reached across his waist and held the other tightly. The embrace was tight enough that it was as if he wanted to fully merge with Chris.

Their mind went fuzzy and blank with that simple action. The feeling in their heart felt like some combination of primal fear and want.

The noise Chris made from somewhere in his mind was one he had never before heard his boyfriend make. Not even back in the good old days over calls. It sounded like the high-pitched squeak of a dog toy.

“Dude,” Andrew sniffled, “I- holy shit. I... I'm sorry, nobody deserves to go through that. Especially not you.”

“I- wha- huh?” Chris stammered as he came back to his senses and chuckled nervously, “i- honestly do not know what you just said... sorry. It is a little distracting when you are holding onto my half like I am your lifeline.”

“You are!” Andrew wailed, louder than he expected himself to and quicker than he could prevent. “I- fuck, that’s embarrassing. I didn’t mean to… uh… make that noise.”

There was a heavy silence between the two of them, broken only by Chris’s soft exhale and the complicated mixture of emotion between the two of them that resulted in Andrew sounding like a man who had just been beaten half to death.

“Have I told you how lucky I am to have met you, Andrew?” Chris spoke, tone low and drenched with adoration. That specific tone seemed to cure Andrew’s heartache in an instant and was replaced with the aching sensation of want.

“Uh, yeah, bud,” the man laughed, “you haven’t stopped, actually.” After a brief pause to think, Andrew commented; “h-hey wait- you rascal! Little shit! Don’t shift the focus onto me!”

“Huh?!”

“This conversation was about you, not me! Let’s talk about you. You are amazing, you know? You’re so smart, so kind, and just perfect in every way I’m not."

"W-well, I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit-" Chris interrupted, though Andrew didn't falter. The man had always been determined, and Chris admired him for it.

"You, Christopher Meyers, drive me crazy. Everyone who’s ever made you feel like you don’t deserve the world can-” Andrew’s rambling was cut short by a yawn, and he wondered what time it was as he reached for his phone.

6:28 am. It had only been about 2 and a half hours?!

"Do you understand what you're doing to me right now?" Chris sighed fondly, as though he'd been holding his breath the entire time Andrew spoke. The ache of want in their chest had become noticeably more intense.

“I do, actually, and I- it's..." Andrew trailed off as the butterflies in his chest suffocated him. "God, this is so corny of me, but... I wish I could, y'know... kiss you right now. Like, a-actually kiss you. You- it's... I'll just- uh- stop talking," he continued quietly, almost murmuring as he raised his hand to his chest to calm his rapidly beating heart.

“Maybe…” Chris spoke “maybe we… uh- still can?”

“What!!”

Chris paused as he moved their right arm, raising his hand to Andrew’s face and hovered his fingertips over the man’s lips, as if the hesitation was taking all his energy to maintain.

“Oh! right,” Chris’s hand was pulled away, “so, it seemed like the me from your nightmare was actually me. I was experiencing a memory of mine that was somehow sort of… I do not have the correct words…” Chris trailed off, deep in thought as he gestured with his hand.

“Pre… something dream? Predictive? No- that’s not it-” Andrew suggested, “also, what?! Wait… what happened with you in the dream was- that was literally you?! Like, ‘present day Chris’ you?!”

Chris laughed, “yes, it was. I guess that's what happens when you have two people in one body. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that the setting of the nightmare seemed to be a combination of both of our memories.”

“So...” Andrew yawned loudly, shifting to lay a little more comfortably on his side, “what’s that have to do with my… uh- ‘request’?”

Chris audibly smirked as he spoke, “we should get back to sleep, you’re- we’re still tired, it seems.”

“Hm… you don’t seem that tired,” Andrew commented smugly as yawned again, “y’sure you don’t just want to appear in my next dream?”

Chris didn’t reply.

“You sly dog. Alright, see you there?”