Don’t Wear It Out.

When they are satisfied with his placement, the priests perform the summoning ceremony, then leave as soon as the energy in the air begins to change. Dream debates whether he wants to close his eyes or face the horror of his death head on. He ultimately decides to face his fate with eyes wide open. It isn’t long before the smell of brimstone and fire fills his nostrils and soon the candles flicker rapidly as blackened smoke begins to fill the room. 

When Dream comes face to face with the monster that means to kill him, he’s struck by how beautiful the creature is. The demon wears the skin of a man, and a well dressed one at that. He’s tall and clean shaven, with straw-blond hair that is cropped in a modern manner that Dream has only seen on visitors who’d passed through his village on their way to the city. The suit he wears is modern too, white and sleek and well-fitting. Atop his face sits a pair of glasses, with lenses so dark they obscure his eyes entirely. 

When his gaze lands on Dream, his lips pull back into a menacing, almost feral looking smile. Dream feels very much like the sacrifice he is at this moment, a helpless lamb laid out to be feasted upon by a hungry lion — a lion who is very much stalking towards his trapped prey. He seems to cross the room in just a few wide strides, and then he is face to face with Dream. 

“Well, well, well,” the demon says, raking his gaze down Dream's flimsily covered body. “Aren’t you just the prettiest sacrifice I’ve seen in the last century.”

Dream cannot help but stare himself. The demon is even more beautiful up close, and still manages to stand a head taller than him, even with Dream propped on the table. He leans down after a moment, as if to whisper a secret into Dream's ear. 

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” the demon purrs. Dream shudders as the demon’s tongue flicks out to lick at the shell of his ear. He remembers how his mother had told him that demons were lustful creatures, that they were known to ravish their victims while they killed them, some even going so far as to desecrate the corpses. She had never mentioned that the demons themselves would inspire lust in a human though. But perhaps this situation was just unique to Dream. 

“I am Dream,” Dream answers, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. The demon's mouth is still close to his ear, so Dream clearly hears the sharp intake of breath, followed shortly by a chuckle full of warm breath that causes Dream’s entire body to jolt. It's cold in the summoning room, but this demon is warm, and Dream is struck by a sudden desire to touch, to test and see for himself just how hot this creature’s temperature runs. 

“Yes, you are a dream indeed,” the demon tells him, pressing one final kiss to Dream's ear before he steps back to take in the look of Dream once more. Even though Dream cannot see his eyes, the rest of the demon’s expression is clear. He's leering and Dream cannot help but feel self conscious as the demon's gaze sweeps hungrily all over his body. Dream’s robe is thin and short, barely long enough to cover the tops of his knees. He feels as though he may as well be naked already. 

“Oh we're going to have so much fun, little Dream,” the demon says with a grin, before he takes a dagger with a long, straight blade out from within his suit jacket. It gleans in the lowlight of the candle and Dream shudders when he sees it. He knows the next part of the ritual well. The protection ritual for the village requires demon magic and human blood. Dream had been chosen because he’d been born on the night of a lunar eclipse. He doesn’t think it necessarily makes his blood any more magical, but the village had always sent sacrifices born on the eclipse, and the protection had always held, so here he was. 

As the demon approaches him, Dream’s breath hitches in both anticipation and dread. He decides to bare his throat to the demon, giving him easy access to the vein he’d heard produces the most blood. He’d read too that a cut to the throat was the quickest way to death. Perhaps if he makes it easy for the demon, his death will be quick and mostly painless. 

He tries not to think of what the demon will do with his body once Dream is long gone. 

“I am ready,” Dream declares, hoping he doesn’t look too frightened. “Take all the blood you need from me for the ritual.”

“Oh aren’t you lovely,” the demon replies, running the flat of the blade along Dream’s neck. Dream stills his breathing entirely, afraid to move. Then, suddenly the blade is gone.

“But I don’t need blood from here,” the demon says, grabbing Dream by the wrist. “This will do just fine,” he adds, right before he cuts a straight line across Dream’s palm.

Dream inhales sharply and tries to jerk his arm back as the pain of the cut hits him, but the demon is stronger than him, and so his arm remains immobile. Blood flows freely down his hand and onto the altar, and then suddenly there is a bowl beneath his wrist, gathering the liquid. When it is filled to the brim, the demon begins to chant in a language that Dream does not know. He finally releases Dream’s wrist, and Dream presses the sleeve of the robe to his still injured hand, not knowing why he’s even trying to stop the bleeding. 

All at once the room is shrouded in a bright light, and then the chanting from the demon stops when it disappears. Dream looks around and sees that the summoning room is now bathed in a scarlet glow, a light he is intimately familiar with. It is the magic of the barrier that sits over his village, and Dream knows right away that the ritual has been successful.

“That’s it?” Dream asks, incredulous. All that magic for so little blood? There is still more seeping into the sleeve of his robe. 

“That’s it,” the demon replies with a sly grin, then adds, “I never needed a whole human body to perform the protection ritual, just a little bit of blood. Not my fault your people misunderstood my instructions.”  

“Then where have the other sacrifices gone?” Dream asks. Could he still walk out of this alive? Start over, go home, could he still—?

“Oh I still killed them,” the demon laughs as he wipes his blade down with a cloth before putting it back in his jacket. “But that was mostly for fun.”

“You,” Dream gasps, and for the first that is truly afraid. “Is that what you plan to do to me?” If it was, why pretend to let Dream live at all? Were his mother’s stories true then? Was the demon going to merely play with him and then kill him? Did his sacrifice mean nothing at all?

“Well, that depends,” the demon says, shocking Dream out of his terrifying thoughts. 

“On what?” Dream all but demands. 

“On whether you’d prefer to die, or ride my cock,” the demon tells him bluntly, the leer now returning to his face. “And if you’re especially good at it, I could make you immortal too. Would you like that sweetheart?” he asks, leaning in close and licking his lips, once again reminding Dream of a predator. “How would you like to be a demon’s cock warmer until the end of time?”

“I—” Dream swallows as a litany of filthy images rush through his mind. He'd been ordered to keep his body pure his entire life for the purposes of the ritual, but his mind was an entirely different story. He'd consumed plenty of erotic literature, mainly snuck in to him by his sibling Desire, and so he wasn’t naive to what the demon was offering him. But everything he’d read had been about pleasure between humans. Would it be different between a human and a demon? What if the demon didn’t even have the same anatomy as a human’s? Would it hurt more than—

“Chop chop, honey,” the demon says, snapping his fingers in Dream’s face, breaking the man out of his reverie. “Fuck or die, what’s it going to be?”

Dream swallows hard, then makes his decision. He wants to live, he realizes. Desperately so. He hasn't lived for himself his entire life and he — he wants to decide something for himself, for once. He drops his sacrificial robe, lets the cloth fall just past his shoulders, exposing his neck and chest to the cold air. The demon’s tongue darts out to swipe at his top lip once more, and he looks even hungrier now. 

“Take it all off,” the demon commands. Dream does, tossing the bloodied robe to the floor. Before he can look up at the demon once more, he finds himself suddenly pushed onto his back on the cold marble, the demon's entire body now pressing down on top of him. He claims Dream’s mouth in a hungry kiss, and Dream moans at just how warm the creature feels on top of him. 

“You can call me Corinthian,” the demon tells him right before he bites down on Dream’s collarbone. “I’d be very pleased to hear you to scream it as many times as you like while I’m fucking you.”

Before Dream can reply, the demon brings his injured palm to his lips, licking at the open wound. Dream gasps as his blood smears across the Corinthian’s face, making him look even more like a wild beast. Dream belatedly realizes the action has stopped the pain in his hand, and when the blond drops it, Dream realizes the wound has closed.

“How—” Dream starts to ask, but his lips are claimed once more by the demon’s mouth. Dream thinks there must be something wrong with him to find it so arousing that he’s kissing a creature whose mouth is filled with his own blood. When the Corinthian’s tongue pushes for entry, Dream’s lips part easily, and the taste of his own blood mixed with the demon’s saliva makes him dizzy. 

Dream writhes eagerly beneath the Corinthian body, the roughness of the man’s clothing an exquisite friction against his naked skin. Then suddenly, the clothing seems to melt off all at once from the demon’s body, leaving him bare. Dream gasps as he feels the demon’s cock, his very human shaped cock, press eagerly into his thigh.

“Clever trick, right?” the Corinthian chuckles into his mouth. “Next time, I’ll let you pull them off me yourself.” 

“You—ah,ah,” Dream moans as the Corinthian wraps a hand around his cock. “You seem to be a creature of many talents,” he finishes, panting as the demon strokes and teases him. 

“If you were impressed by that,” the blond grins, “then you’ll really like this.” The Corinthian mutters something under his breath, and suddenly the hand around Dream’s cock is wet. Dream curses.

“Like that, sweetheart?” the Corinthian croons, knowing full well what the answer will be. 

“Yes,” Dream moans, arching his back and thrusting his hips eagerly into the demon’s hand. “Please—gods—I—”

“Yeah?” the Corinthian replies, his smirk wicked as his hand stops moving, right before it leaves Dream’s cock completely. Dream whines and thrusts his hips upwards, trying and failing to regain that delicious friction.

“Why—” he starts but then the Corinthian shushes him with a finger on his lips.

“We’re just getting started, little Dream,” is all the warning Dream gets from the demon before he feels a finger press insistently at his entrance. 

Dream tries to wriggle himself away from the foreign sensation, but the Corinthian uses his free arm to pin his hips down.

“Ah, ah,” the Corinthian chides him gently. “There’s nowhere for you to go darling.”

“It feels weird,” Dream grumbles.

“It won’t for long,” the Corinthian promises.

He’s right. The Corinthian eventually gets one finger inside him, and it doesn’t take him long to find the bundle of nerves Dream had only previously read about in stories. The pleasure that washes over him is indescribable. Dream now knows why so many have chased the pleasures of sex at great personal cost; anything that felt this good could easily become an addiction. 

The Corinthian teases Dream’s hole the same way that he did his cock, bringing him right to the precipice of pleasure and stopping just short of Dream’s release. He does it again with a second finger, and by the third finger, Dream thinks the demon means to torture him forever like this, witholding Dream’s pleasure just out reach until the end of time. The Corinthian’s fingers suddenly withdraw all at once from inside him, and then the demon is nudging Dream up into a sitting position. It’s at that moment that Dream remembers the Corinthian had wanted him to perform a certain task. 

“Up you go, sweetheart,” the Corinthian says, moving to lie down on the same spot where Dream had previously been. Dream climbs into the demon’s lap and positions himself right at the tip, breathing slowly and deeply, before he starts to nudge the Corinthian’s cock inside him. 

The stretch burns, and Dream feels tears prickle at the corner of his eyes as his body struggles to adjust to something larger than three fingers inside of him. Every inch that breaches inside him makes Dream feel as though all the air has left his body. He feels so full, so hot, so overwhelmed, that he doesn’t know what to do, other than push through the discomfort. He’d made his choice at the beginning of this. He’d read in his books that this was supposed to hurt at first. He can do this. He will do this. 

After what feels like an eternity, Dream’s hips finally go flush against the Corinthian’s, and he exhales sharply as he tries to adjust himself. The Corinthian barely gives him a moment to breathe, before he thrusts up without warning into Dream. 

Dream screams and sees stars flash behind his eyes. The Corinthian sets a brutal rhythm beneath him, and Dream cannot do much at first besides take it and brace himself on the demon’s chest. The discomfort soon gives way to pleasure, and it isn’t long before Dream finds himself moving in time with the Corinthian thrusts, seeking his own pleasure on the demon’s cock. 

“Fuck you’re so tight, little Dream,” the Corinthian pants as he speeds up his pace beneath him. “Oh, yes, I’m absolutely keeping you.”

Dream yelps as the demon hits that bundle of nerves inside him. He's here again, at the precipice of pleasure, he can feel it. Dream lifts his hips up slightly higher than before and then slams them down forcefully, drawing a guttural moan from the creature beneath him.

“Corinthian,” Dream moans as the demon's cock hits that sensitive spot again. He moves his hips faster, desperately trying to hit that spot as many times as he can manage. “Corinthian!"

“Touch yourself,” the Corinthian commands, sounding just as out of breath as Dream feels, “and tell me again who you belong to.”

“You!” Dream cries, placing a hand on his cock and stroking himself desperately. “Corinthian, I am yours I'm—!” 

Dream screams as his orgasm rips through him, his cock spilling between their bodies. The Corinthian growls and then Dream is suddenly on his back once more, the marble no longer cool but hot against his back as the demon thrusts greedily inside him. Dream cannot do anything but helplessly whine and clutch at the Corinthian’s shoulders, the pleasure soon giving way to an overstimulated pain. 

The Corinthian roars as he comes inside Dream, his come wet and hot as it fills his insides. Between one blink and the next, Dream is no longer in the summoning room, but in a dimly lit bedroom, his back now pressed against silk soft sheets and pillows.

The Corinthian's cock is still inside him. And still hard.

The admission hangs heavy in the room between them. Dream knows those words are the truth, even if the Corinthian could lie through his primary mouth, his ocular mouths were as much a window to the nightmare’s soul as any human’s eyes would be. The only difference was that these windows could speak. 

The Corinthian stares at his creator defiantly, refusing to elaborate further, and Dream has half a mind to use his still limited power to force nightmare to divulge the rest of his hidden truths.

But something in the Corinthian’s gaze stops him, stops Dream from reacting too quickly to the clear taunt the nightmare has given him. There is something fractured in the Corinthian’s scowl, something vulnerable hidden behind the snarl of teeth and tongue and blood in the nightmare’s ocular mouths.

Dream stares, and then finally, he sees. 

“My little dream—” he starts.

“Don’t!” the Corinthian snaps, his eye-teeth clattering angrily as Dream takes another step closer to him. The Corinthian moves to step back, but Dream, having already recovered his powers now that Rose Walker was awake and focused on her brother instead, forces the nightmare to stand still with a single flick of his wrist.  

“Did you truly believe I did not care?” Dream asks, taking another step forward as the Corinthian struggles underneath his invisible bonds. “That I did not notice every time you left my realm for the Waking? That it did not feel like some part of me had been cut out when you disappeared?”

“Shut up!” the Corinthian cries, blood-red tears spilling from the corners of his ocular mouths. Dream stares intently at them. He had forgotten he had given the nightmare the ability to cry. “You don’t give a fuck about any of it. You don’t give a fuck about me.”

“But I do, little nightmare,” Dream insists, his voice booming in the otherwise silent presentation room. “I care very deeply for all my creations, but especially you.”

“Liar!” the Corinthian screams, when Dream is but mere inches from his face. “You care for nothing but your rules and your function,” the nightmare growls, his breath hot and furious on Dream’s skin. Dream closes his eyes briefly and inhales the scent of the Corinthains’ breath, his very human breath, cultivated over a century of being allowed to roam free in the Waking World with no consequences.

It is exquisite, Dream thinks, how deep the mimicry of humanity went. How badly the nightmare wanted to become something he thought was worthy of Dream’s love. It was a shame the Corinthian had misunderstood his creator’s motivations so deeply. But that was why Dream was here now. To correct all of their past wrongs against one another.  

“But you are part of my function, Corinthian,” Dream says, finally opening his eyes and staring directly into the Corinthian’s open, gaping mouths. “You are my masterpiece, my greatest accomplishment,” he continues, reaching a hand to cup at the Corinthian’s cheek. The Corinthian flinches but otherwise does not move.

“You stand here,” Dream continues, dropping his gaze to take in the rest of the nightmare’s face. The Corinthian truly was the most beautiful thing Dream had ever made. “Having defied me, having corrupted not one, but hundreds of dreamers, more than any of my creations could have even hoped to achieve.” Dream gestures to the crowd, still trapped in their sweet dreams of murder and pain and death. “And you still believe I could not love you?”

“I—” the Corinthian stutters, but Dream shushes him with a single finger to the nightmare’s lips. 

“My little nightmare,” Dream whispers, leaning in close enough that the Corinthian’s ocular mouths could snap at Dream’s skin if he were not careful. “Were it any other dream, any other nightmare, that sought to defy me so,” he continues. “Any other creation of mine, I would have unmade them at the first offense.”

“But you,” Dream says, raising his eyes back up to the Corinthian’s. “Your transgressions I have let slide. Because I thought—no—I’d hoped—that you would see things as I see them. That the Waking World is full of nothing but suffering and agony, and that is why I am here, and why you are here as well. To give respite. To make them confront their unconscious thoughts and desires. I serve them, not because I love them, but because I am part of them, as you are. As we have always been.”

“So what,” the Corinthian snaps, clearly agitated at Dream’s lecturing of duty and responsibility. “You wanted to teach me a lesson? So that I could be a better cog in your machine?”

“I wanted you to understand,” Dream replies, sighing. “To know what I know. That there are none, here in the Dreaming, or in the Waking, who could be your peer, or equal. You have always been singular, Corinthian, and that is because I love you. It has never been a secret that I love you. Do not pretend that you have never known, even on that night you thought you could sneak away from me, and lure me to give chase.” 

Something splinters in the Corinthian’s facade. Dream watches as shock, then agony, and finally sorrow, dawns upon the nightmare’s features in a twisted array of realization. Dream had never denied his favorite nightmare a single thing, not now, and not then, when the Corinthian had first tried to run and forge a path for himself. Dream had let him go, hoping that one day, his love would come back to him.

Instead, the Corinthian had trapped Dream in a cage of glass and iron, and left his creator to rot.

“Y-you,” the Corinthian gasps, his falsely mortal body reaching for air it does not need. “All this time, you knew and you let me—”

Dream nods. “I did, my nightmare,” he confirms, then leans to place a kiss on the Corinthian’s left ocular mouth. The eye whines beneath his lips, and Dream shushes it gently. “It was out of love that I let you go. Only love that kept me hoping you would learn the lessons I wished for you to know. I had such high hopes for you.”

The Corinthian crumples to the floor, his body wracked with sorrow, guilt and regret. Dream follows his creation to the floor, wrapping his arms around him. The Corinthian clings tight to his creator, in a manner that he has not since Dream first breathed life into his body. It is a comfort that both of them have sorely missed. 

“Dream—my lord—I”

“Shhh,” Dream coos, placing a light kiss to the Corinthian’s other ocular mouth, before he finally moves his lips to brush against the Corinthian’s primary mouth. “I have you, my beloved. I’m here.”

“I—I’m not sorry,” the Corinthian says, still defiant as ever. Dream huffs, charmed and no longer angry with him. “But I—”

“I know,” Dream interrupts, placing a kiss to the top of the Corinthian’s head, before tucking the nightmare underneath his chin, like a parent comforting a child. “My beautiful nightmare, I know. You are a hungry thing, and I created you poorly. I will not be so careless with you next time.”

“Next—?” the Corinthian’s head shoots up suddenly and horror dawns across his features as he realizes what’s about to happen to him. “Dream—no! I—Mmph!”

Dream silences the Corinthian’s mouth with his own, their lips crushed together as the nightmare struggles in his creator’s grasp. It is futile to struggle, the Corinthian knows. Still, the nightmare’s eye teeth snap and hiss and yowl as the Corinthian’s body slowly dissolves into sand. 

Dream holds onto the Corinthian for the entirety of his unmaking. Forces himself to intimately feel each and every fiber of the nightmare’s essence as he strips the Cornthian apart, piece by jagged piece. Until all that is left for him to kiss is a skull, with three small sets of teeth. 

“Next time,” Dream whispers, his lips ghosting over the top of the empty vessel that once held his greatest joy, “you will not be so flawed, and petty, little dream. And I will make sure you always know the depths of my love. You will never know an existence without it ever again.”

Dream tucks the Corinthian’s skull into his jacket, and allows himself a quiet moment to mourn. Then he faces the room full of serial killers, of humans who had deluded themselves in their self-importance, and he sees then, the Corinthian’s cries for love and validation in all their faces.

It is a cheap copy. 

They do not deserve to share in the Corinthian’s aspirations, his desires, his dreams.

So Dream takes them away. He lifts the shadow of the fantasies they have placed over their minds, forces them to confront the pain and suffering they have inflicted as a result of their monstrous desires, their unforgivable sins. He watches as their faces contort with horror, as they all flee simultaneously into the night, some to their deaths, and others desperately clawing to find a way to right the wrongs of their atrocities.