Author's Notes: I'm finally done with the spring semester. The wait for this chapter was a very long one, and I apologize. After this, there will be one more chapter (or an epilogue, I guess you could say). Please enjoy and thanks for reading.
Nightmares in adulthood are often associated with outside stressors or exist concurrently with another mental disorder. Ken just wishes they would stop.
Oneirophobia
10.
Laughter suits Daisuke best, Ken decides.
Daisuke laughs a lot whenever he is around Ken, but he mostly does it while they're playing soccer together. His laughter is not that born of scorn or superiority, but of genuine enjoyment in being lost to the athleticism of a friendly game. Even when Ken is losing, which is always temporary in any event, Ken never takes Daisuke's laughter the wrong way.
Two years before Ken is supposed to finally come to terms with his sexuality, he watches Hikari break up with Daisuke after a stressful relationship defined by the pair's mutual deceit, Hikari's disinterest, Daisuke's frustrated smiles, Ken's whitening knuckles under the table, and best friends' phone calls going back and forth at all hours of the night. In the aftermath, at three o'clock in the morning, Ken's cell phone—set to vibrate, not to ring aloud—lights up and makes an unmistakable mooing sound. Ken answers groggily and Daisuke sounds devastated.
They agree to play soccer. At three in the morning. Ken doesn't mind because Daisuke will feel better in the end. They meet in the park where they always play together, Daisuke with the soccer ball and Ken with an umbrella and set of plastic ponchos because it's pouring. Daisuke protests, but Ken forces a hot pink poncho over his head anyway and swears they won't play any more than three games with ten goals apiece. The first person to ten goals wins.
Without proper footwear, they slip and slide around the field as it grows slick with the sort of mud that doesn't stick to anything. Most goals are scored because of the mud: the defender suddenly becomes a goalkeeper who flounders helplessly around in the box, unable to find enough traction to block the ball as it sails past. Daisuke laughs the entire time and Ken feels happy.
Eventually—three games later—two boys covered in mud and soaked straight to the bone collapse together beneath the aluminum spectator stands. The umbrella is open above them and the curved handle is shared by one dark and one pale hand. Ken wipes the tears from Daisuke's cheeks that could be confused with raindrops. Daisuke smiles.
Ken knows that he is dreaming at this point. He also knows that things are going to turn out terribly, that this dream is going to become a nightmare. He grimaces when he understands.
"Is something wrong?" Daisuke asks. He looks feverish: his eyes are glittery with rain-tears and sickness, and his cheeks are flushed and hot.
"I don't want things to fall apart again," Ken whispers and places his forehead against his best friend's. "Please."
He knows that Daisuke is going to die because of the fever. Daisuke is going to pass out within a few minutes because stress and the weather have significantly weakened his immune system. Pretty soon Ken will be sitting in a hospital waiting room and it will be all Hikari's fault. She is to blame. Ken is still afraid of her influence over Daisuke, even though those days have long since elapsed in reality. Hikari makes Daisuke sick, Daisuke dies at too young an age, and then Ken grieves and slits his arm from elbow to wrist. Picture-perfect suicide. What a tragedy.But that hasn't happened yet; Ken has to sit here and wait for Daisuke to pass out and put the finale in motion. Ken is unable to change anything.
His dreams do this sometimes: they let him know that nothing is real and that lucidity cannot provide any great insight. Knowledge is worthless, but helplessness remains a fact.
"I'm dreaming," Ken says. His hands are as pale as paper and the blue lines of his veins show up distinctly. He turns his free hand over, marveling at the realness that once fooled his mind. "I'm dreaming. This isn't real."
Daisuke smiles and tilts his head, guiltlessly nudging his nose into the crook between Ken's jaw and neck. "I might be too," he says. His delirious flirtation is shameless.
In any other dream, Ken would enjoy this. He would enjoy this a lot. But he knows that Daisuke is going to start expectorating greasy phlegm pretty soon. "I want to wake up," he says. He moves away from Daisuke, who pursues him undeterred. "I don't want to do this!"
"Ichijouji . . ." For a moment Daisuke sounds distant and concerned, but then he replies as though Ken had said something completely different: "You won't hurt me like Hikari did, will you? I trust you."
"Please let me wake up." Ken shuts his eyes and doesn't try to stop a set of lips from smiling against his damp neck. Curious teeth begin to nibble on the skin, warming it in a way that Ken can feel but realizes isn't real. As soon as Daisuke says his name again, the nightmare will pick up speed.
A peculiar creaking noise interrupts the music that rain and their breaths collaborate to create. Ken ignores it and digs his heels into the mud puddle they're sitting in, discovers he can't breathe, and then kisses Daisuke anyway because he wants to and the dream lets him. He hears the creaking noise again, louder this time, and identifies it as metallic: metal rubbing against metal. This noise upsets his expectations for the dream, but he doesn't care. He pulls Daisuke closer and tastes his bottom lip and sheds rain-tears too.
His subconscious surprises him by making the aluminum stands collapse all at once, just like that, crushing them like gnats. The story of his life. What a tragedy.
