The Fowl Estate, August 15th
The raven-haired young man tossed and turned in the midst of sleep; his pale skin sweating against the silken sheets that he grasped at with his carefully-manicured hands, his eyes clenched shut with such force that one wondered if they had been clamped. As he moved, rolling over to his side, pulling aside a sheet and revealing his bare chest – not muscular, but lithe and skinny – and he groaned.
Within his dream, Artemis was floating across an ocean of sensations. There was no light, and no dark, rather, a void, and in it he sat. He had no sense of touch or taste or smell; everything that could be perceived was absent. This was how the nightmares usually went. He'd been having them more and more since he had died and returned to life. This was how it was, being a creature without a body.
Time stretched on forever, in the absence of external stimuli. He found himself recounting memories to himself. But even they faded, like lights bleaching the color from a painting. He thought of happier times – this nightmare had gone on forever, it seemed, before he arrived upon the memory.
It was strange, one of his happiest memories being one in which he had nearly died. It certainly said something about the quality of his life – but that was besides the point. He was there, and he remembered it clearly. A gorilla cage. He was held there, head cradled on Holly's lap, and had just barely awoken – the pain of the concussion (and worse injuries) he had sustained bearing down on him, but fading quickly.
The next moment was one which had left an indelible mark. He saw the tears in her eyes, like crystalline jewels, dripping down, but a smile, an unbelievably happy smile, was drawn across her face. A smile of supreme relief; he had not died. And then, without thinking about the consequences, she leaned over and kissed him.
The kiss had only lasted a second, but in the void, a second is meaningless. That second stretched out into an eternity, and in that eternity, he was happy.
And then, something new happened. The dream shifted. It was over, the nightmare. Instead, he found himself sitting on his bed, in Fowl manor, but during a different time. It was spring outside, and somewhere in his mind he knew it was winter were he sat. But across from him, sitting on the windowsill, was Holly. She was dressed in the dark green LEP retrieval jumpsuit, her helmet held under her arm, her crew-cut, auburn-colored hair perfectly framing her features. Her hazel eyes were warm. As he watched her, he realized that he was naked, in this dream. But far from the usual nudity dreams, he was comfortable. As if he was supposed to be.
As he watched, Holly stood up from her perch, taking off her wings and letting them drop to the floor with a small 'thud'. He watched as she approached, reaching behind her back and pulling down a hidden zipper, then allowing the jumpsuit to fall from her shoulders to the floor. Though he knew that in real life, she wore a one-piece beneath it, to provide padding for the wings and as an extra layer of protection, in this dream, she was naked.
He inhaled sharply, both in the dream and laying upon the bed, and his imaginations provided him with such joys. Her breasts were small, but both those and her rear were perky, her frame lithe, like a gymnast's. She approached him, naked, and though he adored her body, he was captivated by her eyes. He had been mesmerized by magic before, but this was something else. She stepped closer, slowly, as if she was a cat approaching a stranger. From his vantage point, she was on eye level with him, and within a moment that took an eternity, she was standing inches away from him.
Artemis raised a single hand. She took it in hers, cupping it to her face, first, and then she moved it, allowing it to grace the soft, smooth skin of her breast. Then, with her other hand, she caressed his face. Her mismatched, blue-and-hazel eyes bored into him, and he felt like he was being laid bare.
She slowly, cautiously, moved her hand from over his to stroke his manhood; and, as if waiting for this, it stood tall and firm. Then, she reached down, to her own mound, rubbing there for an instant, and pulling away with a thin dribble of liquid. Then, she moved, first one knee, then the other, straddling him, reaching down, and guiding his shaft into her waiting passage. The sensation was electric. She inhaled deeply, looking down and closing her eyes, and for a second, even though it was simply a dream, he worried for her safety. But after that moment passed, she looked up, opening her eyes and looking deep into his, a smile crossing her face.
She began moving, up and down, slowly at first, breathing in a rhythm, matching each stroke to a breath. Artemis found his spare hand groping her bare hip, and drawing her closer to him with each stroke. She leaned forward, drawing him into a deep kiss, moving faster and faster.
He felt his own body beginning to betray him. Not yet, he remembered thinking. Speed was mounting, and as it did, the friction was becoming too much. It was an unbearable pleasure. As she moved, she moaned softly, her whisper goading him deeper into the passion of the moment. He was so close, so very close. But so was she. Her breaths were coming closer and closer to one another, her moans growing louder and louder. They were going to finish together. They were going to-
Artemis jerked awake from his slumber, his eyes wide and manic. He looked about the room, not sure if he feared or hoped someone else was there. He was, however, not shocked to see he was alone. He got up, and realized that he had a painfully stiff erection. He sighed. Being physically nineteen years old was a pain, he knew. It wasn't as bad as when he was fourteen or fifteen – gods, those years had been a nightmare – but it was still annoying to wake up with an itch to scratch.
He was glad that he hadn't finished – he had had a few wet dreams in the past, but none quite like that. Usually they weren't so… vivid. And they were almost never linked to his nightmares. And… he looked around, and chided himself foolishly. No one could read his thoughts. But he had never dreamed of Holly and himself.
He got up, as the erection began to subside, and wandered over, through the open door and into his private bathroom. There, he poured himself a glass of water from a waiting crystal jug, and drank it in one steady gulp. Composure restored, he began to analyze himself.
On the one hand, it was hardly surprising that he was thinking of Holly in that way. She was an attractive female, he rationalized. And he had known her for such a length of time. Her appearance in the dream was probably because it was her that was responsible for him being brought back to life. She had saved his DNA, in the form of a kiss of his own, and that had allowed him to be cloned. She freed him from the nightmare that was his former reality, and it made sense that his subconscious had linked that to the dream.
But the sex, on the other hand… he poured himself a second glass and downed it. No, the sex had just been the dream. Sex and life were linked, he rationalized, it was probably meaningless to ascribe deeper meaning to a dream. He and Holly were, and would always be, just friends, and he had made peace with that almost three years ago.
Haven, Under the Earth's Surface, Simultaneously.
Holly Short jerked awake from a dream that had shaken her to her very core. Not, of course, that it had been an unpleasant one. No, far from it, it had been so deeply pleasurable that it worried her. Holly was wearing a tank-top of sim-cotton, now soaked with sweat, over a pair of overlarge, men's boxers. So sue her. They were comfortable. It beat sleeping in whatever lingerie that the Haven department stores were trying (and failing) to convince single women that they needed to be sleeping in, every night. She got up, looking around her apartment, not sure whether she was hoping someone would be there, or fearing the possibility.
She recalled the dream clearly, as it had not begun to fade, and wondered what was wrong with her. She had known him since before he was even a pubescent! For her to think of him like that was… and he was a Mud-Man! The layers of the perversion that had snuck into her head like so many dwarves tunneling into a mound of clay was almost sickening!
But… she reached down with a single hand, sliding it underneath the elastic band of the boxers to feel her slit. Feeling the evidence and withdrawing her hand with a sigh, she realized that whether it was wrong or not, it had most certainly aroused her. She hadn't felt like that in years.
I need to get out of the apartment more, she thought. She had been going between her job and her house without a care for her social life for decades now. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone out for drinks – other than that a couple times with Trouble, and though he had been a gentleman, she'd let him down gently. She just wasn't looking for a relationship. And it had been true.
Leaning back against the pillows on her futon, she thought about it more. She was clearly not thinking straight. She tried to go back to sleep, while sleep was still fresh on her mind, but something had been awakened that did not want to go back to bed. At least, not without a fight.
Holly reached down, under the elastic waistband again, and found her aching, aroused clitoris more than ready for some action. She began rubbing it, gently at first, but finding that it needed more and more stimulus, rubbed harder and harder. Within seconds, she found herself on the brink of an orgasm. Her mind wandered far and wide, back to the dream. She bit into her pillow, rolling so that her arm was beneath her body, her hips bucking against her hand, as she thought of the kiss. Of him holding her close. Of his cock, deep within her, thrusting with each breath, faster and faster. Her spare hand groped at one of her breasts, in a pale imitation of what he had done in the dream.
She was so close, and finally, she felt it. The sweet release, burning within. As she came, her mouth opened into a low, mewling groan as she rolled back over, spent. She removed her hand and looked at it, dripping with fluid.
What the fuck is wrong with me? She asked herself, closing her eyes. When morning came, she swore that she would never think of this again.
The Fowl Estate, at the same time
Artemis stroked with increasing frequency as he drew nearer and nearer to orgasm. The thoughts of the dream had proven impossible to contain, as did the nearly-unlimited appetite his hormones provided. Normally, when felt this urge, he contained it or, at the very least, contained his thoughts to more worthwhile thinks other than simply intercourse. But this was not normal. He found himself moaning as he moved his hand, faster and faster, his precum dripping from the tip, thinking of the dream. Of her. Of Holly. Within seconds, he came, emptying his load onto himself, releasing more with each wave of the orgasm.
He looked at the evidence on his hand, breathing unsteadily and attempting to regain his composure. He had known her since he was a child! She would never view him as anything but. And she shouldn't have to.
Wiping it away with a handful of tissues from his bedside table and tossing it into the wastebin, he rolled over and drifted off to sleep.
What the fuck is wrong with me? He thought, and as he drifted off to sleep again, he swore that, come morning, he would put all thoughts of this from his head and never think of it again.