The Memory Of A Dream

⚠️ Content Warnings: obsession, stalking, kidnapping, sedation/drugging, captivity, coercive dynamics, psychological manipulation, fear, unhealthy attachment, emotional dependency, and dark romance themes.

🚫 This is dark fiction and does not endorse, romanticize, justify, or encourage these behaviors in real life. 🚫 No practical instructions, methods, or actionable details related to harmful acts will be included. 🚫 This work is transformative fanfiction created for non-commercial entertainment purposes only. 🔞 18+ only. MDNI.

⚠️ Disclaimer: This is a reader-insert dark fiction story written in second person using “you/your” as a narrative device to place the audience inside a fictional role. The use of second person does not imply, represent, or reflect the reader’s real desires, actions, beliefs, fantasies, or intentions. This work includes a fictionalized version of a real public figure within a fictional dark romance framework. The portrayal is entirely fictional and should not be interpreted as a representation of the real person’s actual personality, relationships, private life, experiences, or behavior. This story explores obsession, distorted attachment, and unhealthy dynamics through fiction. Its purpose is narrative exploration, not endorsement.

Prologue: The Man in the Trunk

You never thought you would do something illegal. Not really, or at least that’s what you believed, because people always say things.

You stare at a photo for too long, repeat something stupid under your breath, laugh to yourself because it doesn’t mean anything. Because there’s a safe distance between desire and action. Between looking at a screen at three in the morning and crossing a line you can’t come back from.

There’s a particular kind of math to obsession that nobody explains when it starts. Nobody tells you the first step doesn’t feel like a step. It feels like staying still. Like doing nothing. Like simply opening another tab, saving another image, listening again to that interview where he speaks slowly and looks down before answering, that gesture of his so peculiar, so distinctly his, that someone on the internet catalogued and named and turned into a gif that circulates as proof of something nobody quite knows how to name.

Adoration. Hunger. The difference doesn’t matter at three in the morning. And you know it. You knew it then. You know it now, your hands on the steering wheel, the dark road opening in front of you like a mouth.

He is so painfully handsome it should be illegal, you said once.

Quietly. Almost laughing. As if it didn’t matter. And maybe that’s where it all started.

Not with a plan. Not with a decision. Just with a small, ridiculous, poisonous idea lodged somewhere in your head as if it meant nothing. Like seeds that fall into cracks in concrete and nobody notices until they’ve already lifted the pavement.

There should be an exact moment. A clear scene, a before and after, something that explains how you go from being a normal, functional, invisible person to being this. But there isn’t. There were months. There was a slow accumulation of small things that separately meant nothing. The video you watched twelve times in one rainy afternoon. The afternoon you spent reading everything anyone had ever written about him, old interviews, press articles, comments from people who had seen him in a theatre in London and described the experience as if they had touched something sacred. The day you calculated, without meaning to calculate it, how many flight hours separated you from the city where he would be that week.

Just calculating it. Nothing more. That’s what you told yourself. That’s what you always tell yourself. You can still regret it, you tell yourself now. You can still turn around. You can still open the trunk, call emergency services, invent an impossible explanation and accept that your life ended before it became something worse.

You think about that phone call. You build it in detail while driving, as if the exercise itself could save you from something.

Hello, yes, I’m calling because there’s a person in the trunk of my car. No, they’re not hurt. Well, asleep. Well, not exactly asleep. Yes, I understand that’s a problem. Yes. Yes. I understand.

The problem with imagining that phone call is that in no version does it end well for you, and you know it. You’ve known many things tonight that you pretend not to know. But you don’t turn around.

You keep driving.

The road is almost empty at this hour. One or two trucks in the opposite lane, headlights like huge blind eyes looking at you for a second before disappearing. The wet asphalt reflects the lights in a way that, another time, you would have thought beautiful. Now it only confirms that you can see clearly. That you’re not going to drift. That your reflexes work.

That worries you a little, if you’re being honest.

That your reflexes work. That everything works. That there’s nothing broken in you that explains this from the outside.

Your hands are steady on the wheel.

That’s the most terrifying part. They’re not shaking. They’re not sweating. They don’t look like the hands of a woman who just destroyed everything she once believed she knew about herself.

You look at them for a moment, just a moment, before returning your eyes to the road. Normal hands. Normal fingers. The same hands that made coffee this morning, signed paperwork at work last week, sent your mother a message on Tuesday saying you were fine, that everything was fine, that she shouldn’t worry.

She isn’t worried. That’s the strange thing.

Nobody is worried. That’s part of how you got here too. Invisibility has practical uses.

You think about that. About how many times you wanted to be seen and couldn’t. How many times you took up space in a room and nobody registered it. You’re good at that, at passing through without leaving marks, existing in a way that doesn’t inconvenience anyone because it doesn’t interrupt anyone either. A presence so soft it’s almost not a presence.

Until tonight. Tonight you interrupt. There’s a body in the trunk of your car. He isn’t dead.

You repeat that to yourself as if it were absolution. As if the distance between what you did and the worst thing you could have done were enough to build something resembling innocence. He isn’t dead. He isn’t hurt, not really, not in a way that matters. He was breathing when you settled him into place. You checked his pulse with two fingers against his neck, with what care you had learned to do that, and it was steady. Regular. The calm rhythm of someone who is simply asleep.

You checked three times. Not because you didn’t trust what your fingers felt. Because you needed the contact.

Three times your fingers against that warm, constant pulse, and all three times something in your chest loosened a little, something tight that had been tight for hours and that can be named in ways you would rather not name.

Just asleep.

Enough not to scream. Enough not to fight. Enough for you to reach the place before the world puts itself back together and he realizes he’s no longer in his.

You think about how he’s going to feel when he wakes up. You’ve thought about it many times, abstractly, in that hazy place where thoughts exist without consequences. But now it’s concrete. Now it has weight.

First there’ll be disorientation, that second of harmless confusion before the body registers that something is wrong. Then the cold, or the heat, or the texture of whatever is beneath him. Then darkness or light, depending on what time you arrive. Then his hands searching for something familiar and finding restraint.

Then he’ll understand. And you’ll be there when he does.

That’s new.

That’s what separates tonight from all the years before. You were always the person on the other side. The one who watches. The one who waits. The one who exists on the edge of something that never quite becomes real.

Tonight you’re the person in the room.

Tonight, when he understands, his eyes are going to find something. They’re going to find you. It’s not just any body.

That’s the problem.

If it were any man, maybe this would be simpler. More brutal. More unforgivable in an ordinary way, the way unforgivable things usually are, without nuance, without the strange extra layer of something that almost resembles logic.

But it isn’t.

That complicates everything in a way you still don’t fully understand, even though you’ve spent miles trying.

It’s him.

Tom Sturridge.

The name sounds different in your head than it does out loud. Out loud it’s just a name, two words, the kind of combination of syllables that could belong to anyone. In your head it has weight. It has history. It carries the density of years of accumulated attention, of hours you added somewhere inside yourself without meaning to.

Or meaning to.

You’re not sure of the difference anymore.

The man thousands of people look at from a distance believing they adore him in a harmless way. The man whose face appears in interviews, red carpets, stolen photographs, edited videos set to sad songs and comments saying exactly the same thing you thought too many times.

How beautiful. How impossible. How unfair.

That last word always felt the most honest to you. Unfairness. As if someone’s beauty were a personal debt.

As if existing that way, with that face, that voice, that way of moving through the world with the apparent discomfort of someone who doesn’t quite know what to do with what he creates in people, were something owed to the world.

Something owed to you. You know it. You know how absurd it sounds. You think it anyway. You’ve been thinking it for years and nothing has changed, and that tells you something about yourself too, something you chose not to hear.

I didn’t want to hurt him. That’s the lie you like best. You settle it carefully inside yourself, as if you could still save something. As if kidnapping someone weren’t already a form of violence.

As if choosing him, following him, waiting, studying him for so long and with such attention that you could describe his verbal tics, the particular cadence with which he pauses before answering a question that makes him uncomfortable, the way his hands search for something to hold when he’s nervous—as if all of that didn’t say more about you than any confession could.

You didn’t want to hurt him. You wanted him to see you. That was all. You repeat it to yourself.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

As if repetition could make it smaller, more manageable, more like something a sane person might have felt. You were never going to do it.

Not really.

There’s a version of this story that ends differently, that always ended differently, years of a different version where you were someone who felt things intensely and didn’t act on them because that’s what functional people do.

That version existed. It was real. You were that person for a long time. But time does strange things to desires that have nowhere to go. It compresses them. Concentrates them. Makes them dense as stone.

He could walk past you on a street, sign something without remembering your face, smile with that perfect politeness famous men learn in order to survive other people’s devotion.

He could look at you and not see you. That’s the unspoken contract. You don’t sign it. Nobody explains it. But it exists:

You look at him.

He doesn’t look at you. And that’s fine. That’s correct. That’s the structure that keeps everything in place.

You broke it.

That’s what keeps turning somewhere behind your eyes while you drive. Not fear of punishment, not yet.

That will come later and you know it and you calculated it with the same coldness you calculated everything else.

What won’t stop is this: You broke the contract.

You crossed over. The person you thought you were, the one who watched from a distance and settled and sublimated and functioned, wasn’t the whole story.

There was something underneath. This. You.

You thought, with a clarity that feels almost offensive given the circumstances, about all the times you came close without reaching this point.

The first time you were in the same city as him, three years ago, and convinced yourself that simply existing in the same space was enough.

It was. For a while it was.

You walked the same streets without knowing if you stepped where he had stepped and it felt sufficient.

Then it wasn’t. Nobody explains escalation either. How obsession redraws the map every time you cross a threshold. How what once felt unthinkable becomes merely uncomfortable, and then understandable, and then inevitable. At no point is there an alarm.

At no point does the world stop and tell you: Here. This is where you should have stopped. There was a moment, you think, maybe six months ago, when this was still only thought.

Hypothetical planning.

The kind of control fantasy people have and never execute because reality is complicated and risks are real and most people—the overwhelming majority—live and die with their obsessions intact and private.

You are not most people. You understand that now with a precision that hurts a little.

The part that hurts most, the part you still don’t know how to name, isn’t fear. It’s something closer to relief.

Something warm and terrible that’s been settled in your chest for hours as if it has the right to be there.

Finally. Finally you did something real.

Now only one question remains, the one you haven’t been able to remove from your head since you closed the trunk.

What are you going to do when he opens his eyes? What is he going to see first? The room? The restraints? You? Or the truth?

You stop at that last one.

The truth.

As if there were only one. As if what he’s going to see when he opens his eyes could be described simply. He’s going to see you, yes. But he’s also going to see something you’ve spent years looking at without fully recognizing: the shape desire takes when it has nowhere left to hide.

Because it’s one thing to be desired from a distance. There’s almost an aesthetic to that. A distance that makes it tolerable for the object of desire. To know you’re being watched without being touched. To know you’re loved by people who will never be in the same room.

It’s abstract. Manageable.

Famous people learn to metabolize it, you assume, to turn it into something compartmentalized, something you can leave in the car before going home.

It’s another thing entirely to wake up and discover someone turned that desire into a cage.

That the distance that made it tolerable disappeared. That the person on the other side of the screen has hands and a car and a room prepared and a plan that has been under construction for months.

You wonder if fear will come first or anger. If he’ll negotiate or scream. If he’ll recognize you, if your face means anything in the catalogue of people he’s met, or if you’ll be entirely new to him, a problem without context, a danger without history.

You wonder if that’s going to hurt.

Probably.

Probably that’s the moment when everything you built in your head over the years collides with what he actually is—not the image, not the recorded voice, not the version that exists in carefully edited twenty-minute interviews, but the man made of flesh and fear and confusion who will be on the other side of this.

And you, who spent years believing you knew every gesture, every inflection in his voice, every way he lowered his gaze before answering a question that was too personal, realize something absurd when the road darkens in front of you.

You know nothing about him. Nothing real. Nothing that matters. You know his public surface with pathological precision. You know what he chose to show and what cameras captured when he didn’t mean them to.

You know secondhand anecdotes and statements filtered through publicists and the collective interpretation of millions of people projecting onto him whatever they needed to project.

You know him the way you know a painting: You can describe every brushstroke, but you know nothing about the brush. You don’t know whether he sleeps on one side or the other. You don’t know if he has nightmares. You don’t know what actually makes him laugh—not that smile you learned to recognize as the polite smile, but the other one, if it exists, if one day you’ll ever be close enough to see it. You don’t know if he’ll be able to forgive you. You don’t know if you care whether he can.

That’s the most honest thought you’ve had all night.

And still you keep going.

The road narrows. The city lights remain behind like a broken promise. The road ahead is dark and you know it by heart. You’ve driven it enough times over the past months as part of something you used to call planning and now have to call by its real name.

Preparation.

There’s something almost ritualistic about that. About the difference between words. Planning is what anyone does before a trip, before a project, before something normal. Preparation carries different weight. Preparation implies that what comes next requires readiness.

That it isn’t only logistics.

That something can go wrong in ways that go beyond the map. You know it. You’ve known it for months. Your hands remain steady.

He hasn’t moved.

You register that in a way that is no longer entirely conscious, that particular silence from the trunk becoming part of the noise of the night, part of the rhythm of all this.

Every time there’s a sharp turn, every time the car gives slightly against uneven asphalt, there’s a second of involuntary attention.

You listen.

Nothing.

You keep driving.

Every time nothing answers from behind you, that terrible relief returns for a moment. Finally you did something real.

You keep driving toward the only possible ending to a story that began, without you realizing it, the first time you said quietly, almost laughing, as if it didn’t matter: He is so painfully handsome it should be illegal. You should have stayed with that thought. You should have let it remain only that.

A small sentence. An idea without consequences. A safe distance between what is felt and what is done.

But you didn’t.

Now he’s in your trunk, and soon he’s going to open his eyes. And you, finally, are going to exist for him.

Reader’s Choice

Before you reach the place you prepared, you pass a police station. The lights are on. For one second, the world gives you a way out. A normal door. A legal door. A door that still belongs to the person you were before tonight.

But he is in the trunk.

Not dead. Not safe. Not yours.

Not yet.

So tell me…

What do you do before he wakes up?

A. You accelerate. You don’t look back.

You have already made your choice.

There is no confession. No hesitation. No last-minute mercy.

By the time he opens his eyes, something in you has gone cold.

When he wakes up: He stays terrifyingly calm. As if he understands immediately that fear will not save him from you.

B. You slow down without meaning to.

Your foot hovers over the brake.

For one second, you almost become someone else. Someone who could still stop. Someone who could still say: I did something terrible, but I stopped before it became worse.

But you don’t.

By the time he opens his eyes, guilt is already sitting between you.

When he wakes up: He tries to manipulate you. Not because he is cruel. Because he sees the crack in you. And he knows cracks can become doors.

C. You watch the building disappear in the rearview mirror.

You don’t stop. But you look. You keep looking until the lights vanish behind you, and something inside you understands that this is the last time the world will feel simple.

You are not only driving away from the police station. You are driving away from yourself.

When he wakes up: He says your name. And that is worse than screaming. Because you wanted him to see you. You never thought about what it would do to you if he did.

Your choice defines how much of you can still be called innocent. And how he will understand you when he opens his eyes.

⏳ Choose fast before the obsession chooses for you. 🖤 Then reblog and let more people pick their obsession. 🔪✨

⚠️ Potential content warnings: obsession, stalking, kidnapping, drugging/sedation, captivity, coercive dynamics, psychological manipulation, fear, unhealthy attachment, and dark romance themes.

🚫 This is dark fiction, not endorsement. 🚫 These actions are not condoned, romanticized, or encouraged in real life. 🚫 No practical details or instructions will be provided. 🚫 This work is made for transformative, non-commercial fan entertainment only.

🔞 18+ only. MDNI.

⚠️ Disclaimer: This is a reader-insert dark fiction story, meaning the narrative is written in second person and uses “you/your” to place the reader inside the fictional role. It does not describe or imply the real reader’s actual desires, actions, beliefs, or intentions. If you choose the RPF route, this story will involve a fictionalized version of a real public figure within a dark romance framework. Nothing in it should be taken as a reflection, implication, or representation of the actual person, their real life, personality, relationships, or private experiences. ⚠️ If you choose the Dream of the Endless route, this will be an unofficial fanwork inspired by existing fictional characters and worlds. I do not own Dream, The Sandman, or any related canon, characters, names, settings, or intellectual property. All rights belong to their respective creators and rights holders.

Reader’s Route — An Interactive Dark Romance Fanfic

You have a very dangerous idea.

At first, it is harmless.

You have loved someone from a distance for far too long. Someone you were never supposed to touch. Someone who was never meant to belong to you.

One impossible chance. One locked room. One obsession that crosses the line between fantasy and crime.

You only wanted to be seen.

Now he has no choice but to look.

But first…

You choose who wakes up in your private hell.

Route A: Tom Sturridge

A real person dark romance.

Fame. Obsession. Guilt. A fan who knows too much. An actor who wakes up trapped, furious, and forced to face the woman who turned admiration into captivity.

This route is more psychological, uncomfortable, intimate, and dangerous because he is human.

This is not a love story about meeting your celebrity crush. This is a story about what happens when obsession stops being private.

Route B: Dream of the Endless

A gothic dark romance.

Devotion. Power. Madness. A mortal woman who tries to cage the King of Dreams.

But Dream is not really a man.

Not entirely.

He has worn the shape of one. He has spoken with a man’s voice. He has been desired like one.

But he is older than flesh, older than mercy, older than the fragile human rules you think you have broken.

And still, he wakes up bound, silent, and terrifyingly calm — as if the cage may not belong only to him.

This route is darker, more mythic, and more dangerous because he is not human.

Same premise. Different obsession. Different monster. Different consequences.

Every chapter will end with a choice. The winning option decides what happens next.

So…

Choose carefully.

There’s still time to vote on the interactive fanfic idea. 😎

If you want to be part of the chaos, reblog the post and vote before the poll closes 👀 and help me turn this into a proper democracy-powered disaster ❤️

the color signatures of various elements when ignited

Pride flags Ao3 skins! :D

Happy pride month everyone!

Code, instructions on how to install them and previews HERE 

The specific flags are separated in various chapters, and there are quite a few more than those shown in this tumblr post! (I had to cut down the previews or the post would have been SO LONG). 

Of course I couldn’t make THEM ALL they are so many, and I had technical problems for flags with more than 6 colors and I still haven’t found a way to handle chevrons….

The ones I’ve made (you’ll find them all in the link above) are these: the Rainbow Flag, the Trans Flag, the NonBinary Flag, the Agender Flag, the Bigender Flag, the Genderfluid Flag, the Genderqueer Flag, the Greygender Flag, the Lesbian Flag, the Gay Man Flag, the Pansexual Flag, the Bisexual Flag, the Aromantic Flag, the Asexual Flag and the Polysexual Flag. 

The header, the menu and the footer all have flags in it. 

The buttons have flags when you hover them 

The tags are colored by type (relationships, characters and freeform) each having a different flag color!

Each flag was made to work decently well both on light mode and dark mode (reversi).

Have fun!