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He's on the beach again. Making the Corinthian, again . Nobody had arrived to disturb him just yet, and the silence of his surroundings was starting to become noticeable.
He's seen it in Lucienne's eyes, when he returned for the skull some time ago. There were no words exchanged, of course, but a knowing kind of stare was talking in her place regardless. If anything was true about the King of Dreams, it was that he would neither let go of his realm, nor his masterpiece, easily.
He did come back for it a bit sooner than expected. Too soon, some might even say. When he gave Lucienne the little mess of bones for safekeeping and strolled back to the throne room with no more nightmares to chase around, it seemed that, after more than a hundred years, he would be able to take a breath of relief and go back to the realm that dearly missed his presence. That was the idea, at least. Bring his Arcana home, dead or alive, and continue his eternal existence like nothing particularly horrible happened.
Except for the sole fact that, in the end, something horrible did happen. Quite a few horrible things. He left the Dreaming to get him back home and returned, a century later, with a dusty skull and his chest empty as an open cage.
That night, in the throne room and with Matthew chattering by his side, he opened the Corinthian’s book and read, in silence, for what seemed like days.
Mervyn strayed into the room at some point, abandoning the place as soon as he realized his master was not to be disturbed. Lucienne visited more frequently, asking him if there was anything he needed; ever observant as she was, she didn’t comment much on either his choice of literature nor the perplexion with which he’d read through his creation’s every step. Dream was thankful for that.
Chapters piled up one on top of the other but, days after, when the book had been finally abandoned on his table, there were still no answers he desperately sought. Hundreds of hours spent between those pages and yet, no matter how many times he’d go through the book and study every sentence, he still couldn’t piece together the fatal flaw in his own making. In the months that followed, the questions, ever so constant, were still hanging in the air. His bouts of obsessive wonder became uncontrolled, like rabid dogs off a leash, tearing up the flesh and bones. And the more time passed, the more he was driven to it, towards the locked door behind which the last piece of his worst nightmare laid, motionless, in silence.
Morpheus pushes the thought to a far back of his mind, and tries to focus, once again, on work.
Corinthian is beautiful.
It feels preposterous to either think or say out loud, to be so smitten with a face crafted from sand by your own doing, but he’s never been anything if not honest to the point of malice. Back when Corinthian was just an idea, a beautiful face was the first thing Morpheus imagined of him. Every part of his body, from the delicate bones on the inside of his head to the allure with which he would lead dreamers to ruin, was beautiful. Morpheus vaguely remembers entire nights spent crafting every lock of sunlight-colored hair, assembling and disassembling lean muscles and fragile skin, planning everything in immaculate detail. Forgetful of humans and the time that passed, he crafted and crafted and fixed and tweaked until there was nothing left to change. Perfection.
If he was a human, he would be a sculptor, and the nightmare before him would be a David of his own.
Even after all the misfortune, he cannot forget the fervor with which he made him that first time. Careful hands assemble sand into shapes and angles, devoted like a lover; whatever disdain Morpheus kept over his disobedience now seems small as a single grain of sand. Perhaps his pride would be his own undoing. Perhaps the Dreaming just didn’t feel complete. Perhaps he got attached, as humans would say, but Morpheus doesn’t like that word. It feels like a foreign object in his mouth.
He's just about to turn fine sand into fingertips, when a full-bodied movement breaks the calm of his surroundings.
Corinthian is shivering.
Taken aback, the only thing Morpheus can do is stare, thinking he must have hallucinated, but he didn't - within a few silent moments that pass between them, a gasp leaves his creature’s mouth and the teeth that make his eyes chatter and slip open, looking, seemingly, right up at his master’s face.
"Dream…-”
Morpheus looks back, but remains silent.
“Dream”.
He sounds like it hurts him. A bony, half-unfinished hand is reaching out to grab at his clothes and Morpheus is right there, no longer out of his reach. Fragmented memories storm through the nightmare’s mind, pain and confusion and all the anger he didn’t yet get to take out on anyone and he is rendered frozen, struggling to understand what move he should be making. Dream’s fingertips are on his shoulder, foreign. He can’t guess if he’s trying to push him away or keep him from falling, and the latter seems much more appealing than he would ever like to admit.
“Corinthian”.
His nightmare’s expression seems to relax, ever so slowly. The tension in his shoulders is not so prominent now, and Morpheus pushes down the urge to caress over the flawless skin under his hands. The moment stretches on where neither of them knows what to say or how to react to the other’s presence, before Dream gathers back what he had of his composure and continues to work on assembling back his body.
Strange. His creations neither sleep nor wake until he allows them so, yet this one, this one, always steps outside of the order. A black cat in a snowy field. One couldn’t impose rules on him if they tried, but Morpheus, the fool, would always try regardless.
Corinthian is surprisingly pliant - every so often his eyes close in a tight frown, freezing breath forced out of his lungs at the feeling of his organs assembling and taking shape. His master, in turn, is touching his cold skin just a tad bit longer than necessary, an illusion of pitiful comfort that’s somehow supposed to make the agony disappear. They enter a kind of routine, back and forth with brief glances and shaking hands, and Morpheus is just getting used to the way his nightmare’s gaze melts into his skin…
"...You'll erase it".
If he could touch the tone of his voice, it would recoil in pain; if the King of Dreams could wrap a hand around the invisible string of words between them, he would feel it trembling, shivering helplessly like the rest of him.
You’ll erase it.
Oh, how much it sounds like cruelty.
"I will erase… what, little dream?"
"My memory".
They’re at the same level when the King of Dreams halts, fingertips hovering over a freshly sculpted clavicle. Corinthian's voice, a weak, defiant thing, stings right at the center with that question and Morpheus does not know if he should even bother with an answer. Never in his previous work has a nightmare woken midway to defy him, so he never felt much need to cater to their wonders. But this is his masterpiece talking, after all. He's never been much like the rest.
"And you wouldn't prefer it?"
"You never bothered much with what I prefer".
His shoulders fall into barely noticeable tension. Another one, right in the center. A raw feeling settles into his bones and it’s starting to get distressing, but Dream amuses his half-unconscious nightmare a little more.
"Let's say I did. What would you have preferred then, little dream?"
The Corinthian's expression remains a blank slate. Occasionally, a slight frown breaks through as his master molds and refines his ribcage; he is looking, Dream can only guess, right at his eyes. He wouldn't be content looking nowhere else.
"I would like to ask, while I can still think of a question".
"Go on".
"Why do you hate me?"
His hands can't ever work on him uninterrupted, it seems.
For now, they're frozen in place, around his neck. Dream doesn't know what expression he's making; the sting of his nightmare's words reaches to the depths he didn't know he had.
"...I do not hate you".
"You do. You made me like I am. You-" his voice dies down, an interruption, and he has to focus on catching his breath. It might be the exhaustion, or the pain of being incomplete, might be both, but it doesn't really matter. When he frowns and shuts his eyelids, Morpheus' lips tremble all the same.
"...you made me, and you hate me as I am".
There is that ache in his hands again, and he has no doubt as to what he would do if the two of them were mere humans and not the Endless and his nightmare - he would cling to his shoulders and not think of letting go, he would hold him until Corinthian forgot every ounce of rage and bitterness he hoarded like piles of gold buried in his flesh. All Dream can do, instead, is speak.
"I don't. What I did was make you flawed, make you poorly. You've had too much of a rebel inside you".
"I wanted to live, Morpheus".
"And I could not let you do so while consuming them like you did".
"You wanted… a nightmare. A nightmare is what I was…"
"Not in the way this realm needed you to be".
"Not in the way you wanted me to be".
He bites down on his tongue, doesn't utter an enough like he should've when he first saw him move. Dream's hands are before his face, instinctively wishing to put him back to sleep, but before him, Corinthian doesn't so much as flinch. There's sand between his fingertips, sand seeping slowly from the skin of him, half-made, exhausted; but he doesn't move away from the deadly touch. He doesn’t back down, looking stubbornly, intently, at Dream, even as his expression twists and an agonized cry is forced out of his lungs.
The sound pierces his ears. He can’t go on with this.
When he stops, Corinthian is rendered breathless.
If he had made him to have eyes, Morpheus would not be able to look at them for long.
"Again… you seem scared. What are you scared of, Dream?".
"I am not… scared".
“So… I struck a chord. What are you, then, if not a coward?”
“Corinthian-”
The words are cut off, dying in his throat, when his nightmare’s lips press against his own.
First is a feeling of momentary dread, much like it always did in the face of something unexpected. Breath hitching, body freezing in one place; but the hands that were supposed to push him away remain limp and useless at his side.
Next is a tingle that feels pleasant, in the same way as laughter caught between his teeth, the same way as relief of being back home. A hand made from bones and ashes caresses his pristine skin, and it’s a defense broken, a white flag, a battle concluded with the king on his knees.
There was no sense in resisting this need anymore. For the first time in a century, maybe since he saw Jessamy come to save him, Morpheus feels a surge of life swim up from within his chest.
He clings onto it like a human child would to a toy, hands reaching to hold on either side of Corinthian’s face and keeping him there, letting him take what he wishes and Corinthian does, mouth prodding and moving and hugging his own. A moan tears from deep within his throat and Dream is, again, here to catch him before he falls; he mutters sweet nothings against his master’s lips, almost pained and brimming with devotion.
When the kiss is returned it's tender, it's desperate, just a bit curious, he's never done this before; his movements are fine and guide Corinthian’s own, a half-undone mess dripping with despair, until they've held onto each other so tightly their hands went numb and felt, it seems, everything.
When they part, with a gentle fall of his tired body against Dream's own, his nightmare is, as usual, the first to speak.
"...Do I have a right to beg, Morpheus?"
"Let's pretend you do, little dream. What would you beg for?"
He leans his head against his king's shoulder, and shudders like a wounded animal. Dream feels a heavy tug on his insides again; the impossibly strong need to touch, to hold onto him until his thin lips stretch into a smile and that confident croon he heard so long ago makes way to his ears once again.
He doesn’t do it. Instead, he places a thin, hesitant hand at his nightmare’s back, feels the shivers and the bones of his spine, a life half-coursing through a half-lifeless body that still has a long way to go before completion. Morpheus caresses, almost apologetically, and that touch wrings out a whispered answer quicker than anything.
"If you don't kill me… don't erase this. I want… to remember it".
It feels honest. It feels like many things, like a plea and an apology and a confession and he nods in agreement at last, finding himself, perhaps for the first time, unable to clash with his nightmare's words.
A hand, slow and heavy, reaches to his forehead, and with the first seconds of tugging at his consciousness, Corinthian’s eyes start to slip shut.
"Sleep now, little dream… you'll live again, soon".
When the body turns heavy and he’s alone once again, Morpheus’ knees sink into the sand below.
His lips are still, stubbornly, burning.