Reuse, Reduce, Recycle
‘I can't keep using these.’
Tommy's gauze split and stretched the more he fidgeted with them. Their white threads hung loosely off his forearms and were begging to be replaced by crisp, intact cotton. The same gauze that was to come from his so-called donor. The same man, if Tommy felt kind enough to describe him as human, was to give him.
Maybe Dream might bring him clean gauze for once instead of holding the boy at knifepoint to reuse Dream's old, crinkled ones. Ones that were once white, then smeared with the brown color of dried blood and other fluids Tommy didn't want to think about.
It's “good for the environment,” Dream mused.
‘It's absolutely fucking disgusting,’ Tommy thought. Unsanitary as it was to have nothing to clean himself with, infections were so quick to spread into his body. The little plot of land he was stuck in had dangers in every corner, like rabid wolves and monsters lurking nearby, which kept him up at night.
It was not as if Tommy could sleep in the first place, though he desperately wanted to now. Between cold breezes making their way into his tent, the gnawing knot in his empty belly, and no Tubbo to run about and laugh the night away with, nights as dark as these made him wait for daytime. At least, until Dream arrived in waking hours, as he usually does. It did not take long for Tommy to set his eyes on the sun peeking out of the horizon and for the boy to notice a green-cloaked figure advancing towards his tent.
Or, Tommy had the not-uncommon occurrences of Dream's rare nightly interactions. Of him swinging by and doing much more than saying “hello.”
When he did remember Dream's night visits, Tommy ceaselessly waited for Dream to arrive. Sometimes, Dream did visit at night. Sometimes not. Either way, Dream never made Tommy wait too long.
For all the man's visiting habits, seeing Dream at night was a perplexity that confused Tommy to no end. Did Dream have too much free time, as he didn't exactly have a home? Did he not sleep? Is Dream afraid of his dreams and has nightmares, all serving as reminders of all his wrongdoings?
‘Or... Dream loses his sleep to see me…?’ The thought alone brought layers of uncertainty that Tommy didn't feel like peeling away.
Why would Dream come all this way from wherever he came from to see Tommy and pick on him? It could not be because Dream enjoyed sacrificing his time to waste on Tommy. If anything, Tommy felt like he burdened Dream, as much as he liked pestering him, and the latter's insults usually hit too close to home.
'No, that’s absurd. Like hell he cares about me.’
When he visits at night, Dream always takes the liberty of ruining Tommy’s hard-earned things. Armor, weapons, food, the works. A kind of routine he implemented: Dream lit a spark, set off a batch of TNT inches away from Tommy's things in some hole, and they disintegrated to dust. Tommy had nothing to do but watch his accomplishments of the day vanish.
Tommy didn't understand - it was more probable for Dream to visit him at night to destroy his things, preventing the boy from making any progress of escaping the forest. It made sense for Dream to do it at night but during the day? Dream exploded the possessions that Tommy recently earned, and then Tommy would get more later. Dream justified the destruction of Tommy’s things when he proclaimed, “I want you to make smart choices on the things you collect and keep. So don't keep important things since I'll destroy them, anyway.”
'I should throw the bandages he gives me in the pit and see if he likes that.’ Tommy thought and ripped a grass blade to cast it into the air - some semblance of control.
He could do that. He really could throw his bandages in the holes dug by Dream if he had the death wish of Dream’s axe blade stuck in his chest. There was not much Tommy could do, either accepting Dream’s crusty gauze or getting smacked until he complied.
He got up from the patch of cold, water-speckled grass, unbothered to dry himself off as he walked away to sit on the makeshift bed in his tent. Tonight, whether Dream comes unexpectedly or not, Tommy figured he'd feel the same way: troubled from this forced reclusion. If Dream came now, he would soon push and shove Tommy around until he molded Tommy into whatever Dream wished. If he didn’t come tonight, Dream was to carry out those acts in the burning daylight.
Tommy preferred the latter, as he could precisely see Dream's unsettling movements. There was one guarantee: Dream would be the only person to come and visit him. He was the only one who bothered to travel all this way.
'Maybe he does lose sleep to see me.’ The thought, previously distressing and now comforting, tended to wounds of isolation no gauze can shield.
But, damn it, was reusing Dream’s gauze concerning. What the hell brought Dream to think it was such a good idea? Was it to humiliate him? No - he would insult him, sure. But the man threw jabs whenever Tommy called him names, taunted him, or made jokes about Dream to Dream. Right in front of his face - or, more correctly, right in front of his mask. But the man never humiliated him.
Regardless, Dream needed to care for his so-called “friend” more. It will not be long until Tommy will need to have an arm amputated, and with no one else around, Dream would be his anesthesia-less surgeon. Leaving the boy to cry out to the empty forest and trees slowly engraved with bleeding smiles. Dream reaping what he sowed from the nasty wound covers.
No one would come for Tommy at his highest and last moment of need. Until he's left with exposed bone and the starving maggots of the earth eat contentedly at his flesh. Not one server member would go, “Where's Tommy,” and instead inquire, “Who's Tommy?” They would hold no funeral or anything of the sort.
‘It's like he wants me to die slowly and surely. Why can't he get me in one go?’ Tommy wondered and placed a tightened hand over his now-exposed wound.
He knew the wound would eventually infect him from accumulated grime and weakened immunity. Though it's merely scabbing, thanks to the so-called “environmentally-friendly” gauze given by Dream, it seemed as if the wounds themselves anticipated to swell into painful bumps on his arms. Interrupting both his skin and any ideas of successful healing.
One thing interrupted Tommy's thoughts to a halt: the rustle of Dream’s boots on grass, drawing closer to his tent.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Tommy's mind suddenly brought the gauze dangling off his arm to his attention. What's the use of having them cascade like that if Dream will remove and replace them with similar ones?
In a hurry, Tommy unwound the brown and white wrapping on his arm to stuff them sloppily into his pocket. He felt the walls of his throat constrict into “what could be”s of Dream’s incoming treatment - whether he'd be more of the slacking side to Tommy this time or not. As much as he wanted to keep making his worries something of the mind, Tommy didn't have enough time to do so; those worries were to cement in seconds.
Or, more like face straight at the boy, standing at the bedside entrance of his tent.
“Good evening, Tommy.”
Oh, great. If Dream's early appearance wasn't enough, he seemed excited about whatever he was planning on doing tonight, given the eager notes of his voice.
‘This can go wrong or plain terrible.’
Tommy’s head raised from the sight of his arms and exchanged it to look at the masked figure. He felt his face slacken as he managed to croak, “Yeah, hi, Dream,” and the boy’s voice told Dream everything he had to know about Tommy.
“Have you tried sleeping, or did you stare at the grass this entire time?"
‘The second one.’ Tommy's mind instantly spoke.
“Neither.” Tommy stood up from the tattered blanket and peeled a corner of the thick fabric away from his knee. When Dream turned and walked away, grasping his netherite axe closely behind his back, Tommy felt his spine roll from varying waves of fear. It was the boy's cue to follow Dream to wherever he led him. And follow him, he did; Tommy's feet scuttled towards Dream’s path without any intention to stop.
The path was like any that Dream made him do: a “walk of shame." The last time Dream used the phrase improperly, it was enough for Tommy to tell the other off for using it wrong. However, Dream responded by using a threat with the right words and positioning his axe, resulting in Tommy adding Dream’s created meaning of the phrase to Tommy’s mental dictionary.
Dream brought Tommy near a small, muddy pond, and a withered tree kept the water source company.
“Okay, are you ready?”
“N-”
“Good, because I can care less if you are.”
From nearby, Tommy crossed his legs on the wet grass, and the dew droplets of water kissed his ankles. Dream retrieved his shovel from his bag to dig a hole into the earth in a flash.
The boy sucked in a breath. “You’re going at this pretty quickly, Dream.”
“Yeah, because I want to get to the good part quicker.”
Tommy stared down at the pit and mentally sighed. “Just because it's ‘good’ to you doesn't mean it's good for me.”
“Oh, whatever. I know it's your favorite part of your day, too.”
“It’s… not.”
Dream laughed. “Tommy, you're being ridiculous,” Dream pierced his shovel into the dirt with a force that made Tommy’s muscles jolt. “Now, get your stuff out.”
Dream's shovel qualified as a weapon to Tommy, and it did not seem as lesser of a threat as a knife. Tommy keenly slid his bag off his shoulders to set it down and open it, moving carefully to appease Dream.
“I found…” Tommy threw several black rocks into the pit, “coal."
A mocking chortle. “Coal? That's it?” Tommy saw his achievement as unworthy of a couple of laughs, especially given his restricted circumstances in a remote location. Plus, Tommy felt as if Dream could see through the boy’s bag. The other's questioning sounded more like statements than queries.
“Yeah.”
Dream pushed, “Are you… Proud of yourself?” From those words alone, Tommy heard the smirk on Dream's face behind his facial obstruction.
“Not really…I could've done better.”
“Hm. Yeah, you could've. But you didn't.”
“I didn’t ‘cause you were gonna explode anything else to bits, anyway.”
A much too-long pause from Dream unnerved Tommy. Dream set his shovel back into his bag, and his voice held a feign of innocence. “Oh, I was? What makes you think that?”
Dream misled Tommy’s one-tracked, survival-moded mind into a far location.
‘What? Is he not blowing my stuff up this time?’ In thought of whether Dream has grown more empathetic to Tommy, the boy tried to swallow an unremovable lump of stress in his throat.
Tommy’s head lifted from its sight on the coal, several feet below ground level, and looked upwards at Dream. “You always do. The second I put my things in the hole, you blow it up shortly after. What's so different this time?”
'What do you want to do with me?’
“Well, I mean, the coal is right there. We can let it sit for a while. It's not like it's waiting for anything.”
“What are you getting at, Dream?” The boy was perplexed: why did Dream want to keep his coal in the pit rather than explode it as he typically would? He was enthusiastic about speeding up his “favorite” process, so why was he stalling it instead?
“I wanna spend more time with you. I can blow it up later. But, believe me, I bet that coal was putting a hefty weight on your back.”
“What, you think four pieces of coal hurts me?”
In a composed response, and the heightened nervousness in Tommy staring at Dream’s still and standing body, Dream countered, “Yeah. I do. It’s too much to have on yourself, at least for you. It’s not like you have any use for coal other than playing and juggling with them. Besides, you’re not in the best condition to carry anything. You’re weak like a fly buzzing and showing off its small and harmless nature. You need energy, food, and water. I haven’t even mentioned the lack of bandages on your arms. What did you even do to them? Did you eat them or something?” Dream waited not for a response, reaching into his bag to take a brown bundle out. “Whatever, I brought bandages and some food. First, give me your arms.” Dream untied the bundle’s bow with nimble fingers and hummed a tune Tommy did not believe not one bit.
“Dream..." Tommy asked meekly, face downcast to focus on the bared wounds of his arm than Dream’s hidden annoyance, “Do you have, uh-”
Dream immediately interjected, “Use your words and stop stuttering. Do I have what?”
But how was Tommy supposed to explain to Dream that he requires clean gauze without Dream taunting him about it? Without him continuously urging Tommy to use his old bandages, as he always does?
“I- fuck- Dream- my arms need bandages. Like, actual bandages that are clean.”
And there it was: Dream's slight upturn of his chin, seemingly looking off into the trees. Tommy didn't have to turn his head sideways to figure out that hidden behind his mask, Dream's eyes and a sinister grin peered to one location: condescendingly downwards, towards Tommy, as Dream always did.
“Oh, come on, Tommy! I'm trying to raise your pain tolerance the smallest bit. Then you wouldn't be bleeding so easily and suffer in pain all the time, kinda like your heart,” he snickered breathily and sat his bundle behind his boots, “See what I said there? ‘Cause, you know, you're a bleeding heart? You whine about this and cry about that. But, maybe you won't need any more bandages if I give you mine and you keep them. And I mean actually keeping them.” Dream ducked towards Tommy's hips and patted a hand to the pocket of Tommy’s shorts. He shoved his hand inside to withdraw the old, wrinkled gauze.
The bloody gauze gets chucked straight into Tommy's lap. Tommy’s slim fingers brushed against the threads, and he remembered how impatient he was to stash it away. No wonder Dream discovered that Tommy tried to rid the gauze, as he caught the gauze’s several fibers hanging limp off Tommy’s pocket.
Tommy shook his head and the thoughts gently, completely unconvinced at Dream’s reasoning. He stood up with a head looking up towards Dream, the gauze held in a shaky palm, to reply, “No, I’m quite sure it doesn’t raise my pain tolerance at all; it’s just… gross. I can’t use them.”
Dream made a small step forward. “Sit back down, Tommy.”
“I don’t want-”
"Sit." He took another step towards the boy, and Dream moved a hand to grasp his axe’s handle. Tommy’s legs briskly crossed back into the wet grass.
The man’s head lowered to observe Tommy, and Dream quietly breathed a “thank you.” Tommy wanted to tell him to finish the job if Dream hated him so much. But Dream dispassionately continued, “Refusing to use my bandages is disrespectful. You’re not respecting me, my gifts, the time I put in for you, or my willingness to visit you when no one else does. I come all this way for you to stuff my gifts away and pretend they don’t exist? You’d rather let your wounds be infected?”
Tommy regretted saying anything and felt at fault for making Dream break into another speech. “No, Dream, I-”
“No, Tommy. You don’t get it. It hurts me that you’re treating your friend like that. But, if you’re going to be like that, be like that. Get hurt some more, then. So go ahead, for all I care. Use leaves or grass to cover your wounds since you don’t care about your health or what I give you. I heard vines are a good substitution for bandages, too.”
A sharp inhale, and the boy’s arms began to shake the more his eyes kept on the gauze in his hand. “I-I’m just asking for-"
“You’re lucky I’m even giving you anything in the first place. You keep complaining, but I give you gift after gift. I pay no mind to your retorts, but you fuss over using things I don’t use myself anymore. What does that make you, you who’s denying help?”
Tommy’s hand clenched tensely around the gauze. “I’ll use the bandages you’ll give me,” he caved in, “I will.”
“Thank you, Tommy. See? That wasn’t so hard.” Dream’s voice lilted softly, and his anger subsided as quickly as it first simmered. He sat down beside Tommy and lifted a hand in the air. It dropped on one of Tommy’s thighs, and Dream’s thumb rubbed into the smooth interior.
A corner of the boy’s lips curled. Tommy's nervous system was too weak to distinguish whether his lips twitched upward or downward. Unlike the expected strangeness of his mind, swinging swiftly like a pendulum, his sanity held and extended as far as it could. Opposite displacements.
Tommy's inner equilibrium was momentarily re-met from Tommy’s remembering of his moral priorities. Of meeting Tubbo again. Of awaiting happier days with his one and true best friend. His mind would return to the swinging loop towards opposing maxims of control and to the person who brought him swinging that way.
“...This time, okay? Open for me.”
'He was talking to me?’
Tommy’s eyes darted to Dream’s careful hand, which wrapped a less bloody gauze on the boy’s arm. “Could you repeat that?”
“I said I’m feeding you while tending to your wounds this time. So open your mouth.”
Tommy wanted to vomit, but what was there to expel? His desiring digestive organs feasted at one another as Tommy stared blankly at the steak in Dream’s opened pouch.
“Can't I feed myself?”
Dream ran a thumb across Tommy’s extended palm as he covered Tommy's arm with his other hand. “Hm, no. Your hands are occupied and busy right now.”
“But Dream,” Tommy sighed, “that’s weird.”
When finished bundling Tommy’s arm up, Dream mindlessly drew circles with a finger on the newly applied gauze on Tommy’s arms. There was no surprise to Tommy that it was tinted brown with the man’s dried blood. “It’s not weird, Tommy. I’m just taking care of you. It’s not like it’s inherently sexual or anything.”
“Sexual or not, it’s weird. I didn’t do that with Tubbo; friends don’t do that, and especially not us. We aren’t friends.”
Dream laughed. “What on Earth are you talking about, Tommy? I think it’s your hunger speaking and making you say random things. Come on, open up,” Dream ripped a piece of steak, and as Tommy was about to open his mouth to clap back, Dream shoved the piece into Tommy’s mouth. His body took over his mind, and Tommy chewed instantly the second his tongue tasted burnt meat. Dream cheerfully spoke, “I mean... We're always talking to each other, aren’t we? If we weren't friends, like you said, we wouldn't be talking to each other all the time.”
Tommy swallowed. “B-But, this isn't just any conv-” Dream inserted another chunk of steak to silence Tommy.
“Ah, but you're always so responsive to me, just like friends are. You laugh at my jokes and play around with me. Don’t pretend I don’t see that pretty smile forming on your face when I approach you here. Me doing something as small as walking towards you is the solace to your loneliness. If you didn't enjoy my company, you would have thrown yourself into the nearest lava pit. Or, killed me. But, Tommy, you're still here. You're alive. And so am I,” Dream played with fingers between Tommy's tangled curls as he sweetly went on, “No one should ever be alone. Especially not you, m’kay? So, if you can drink from the little pond right here to wash down the food, it’d make me very happy. Don’t want you choking on anything.” Dream's voice was a gentle hum. One that almost reassured Tommy.
Almost. When Tommy swallowed the chewed meat, it felt as if the clumps wedged in his throat. They had nowhere to move and were nuisances to drown away.
Tommy stared down at the pool of muddy water near his feet and made sure to be careful in choosing his succeeding words. His voice lowered into a weak mumble. “Would've been nice if you gave me clean water, and not,” he gestured to the water with a flimsy hand, “this.”
Dream barked a laugh. “Oh, Tommy, you always worry about the smallest things! It's cute. You know I care about you. The pond here is the best I can do for now. Believe me. I know you deserve the best, for the best, from the best.” Dream's touch of his hair never tightened, and the stillness of Dream’s cold fingertips on his scalp tingled Tommy's skin into goosebumps. “I'm not even asking for a thank you for it. Funny, maybe you should be more grateful that I'm not asking you to thank me for the water.”
Tommy gripped his arm harder at Dream's hypocrisy. He didn't want to lap at the water or even look at the murky cesspool - there must've been several insects and critters that must have dipped their grimy bodies in the water.
But, damn it, was he bloody thirsty. And his only friend here was caution, not Dream.
“It's just… the water is thick and dirty.”
A sigh came from Dream. “If your other friends, if you can call them that, saw you right now, Tommy? They wouldn't have given you water at all. I would call your friends terrible, but that would include me. I’ve been so helpful, and your so-called friends are straight-up selfish. They'd probably tell you to find some yourself or tag a high price for a half-full water bucket.”
‘More like half empty,’ Tommy corrected silently and shut his eyes.
“Oh!” Dream pretended to fumble around in his bag, an arm moving in a pseudo-frantic search for something. When he found a covered bucket of water, Dream held it up and falsely joyed, “I found this! Isn't that great? Clean and fresh water.” Tommy’s head jerked upward and fixed his gaze on the object in Dream’s hand.
‘Holy shit. I haven't seen clean water in too long. Like too many fucking years, and it's so clear.’
Tommy scrambled from the patch of grass towards Dream’s boots and pulled himself into a kneel. “Wait, hold on, big man, w-what do you- what's this about-”
“Well, I do want you alive and well. And that you are. I mean, look at you,” Dream set the bucket down, and a finger pointed to the wooden splinters stuck on the back of Tommy’s calves, which the boy never noticed sticking out. “You're alive! It's a wonder the elements haven't eaten you away. Truly, it's astonishing.”
A breath left Tommy’s lips as it twisted into a lazy smirk: a breath of reluctance. “You sound like you're complaining.”
The man laughed and disarmingly raised his hands. “You sound like you don't believe me.”
“And what if I don't?” Though Tommy's response was light-hearted, Dream’s pause to respond to the little exchange was far from minimal.
Dream darkly muttered loud enough for Tommy to hear, “Well… Then you don’t.” The man retrieved his shovel from his bag again, and Tommy’s eyes widened.
“Wait, Dream, you already dug a hole for my things.”
“This isn’t for your ‘things,’ Tommy.”
‘What?’
Tommy tried to diffuse their sudden tension with short, forced laughter and stared at the shovel in Dream’s hands. “You like digging holes on your off time, huh?”
“I like it when you’re here, and I put things in the holes to make you the victim of what I do to them. Don’t think I forgot about destroying your coal into smithereens.”
‘Wow. Weirdly stated, but honest.’ Tommy stared down at the somewhat shallow hole Dream made beside the boy.
“So what’s the, uh. Next trick up your sleeve, Dream?”
“Something like this.” Dream shoved his shovel back into his bag and grabbed the water bucket.
“Wait, are you-”
“Am I… What, Tommy?” Dream opened the bucket’s cover, and he tilted the water bucket towards the pit. A splash of water streams out.
“No- ugh, it's gonna be dirty, Dream, I don't-”
Dream poured the rest of the water. He dropped his dark tone by cutting Tommy off with a nasal voice, “Oh, no, my water is gonna have minerals that I desperately need because Tubbo doesn't bother to visit me and bring me food! Please, don't give me water that is literally good for me!”
Tommy’s face turned into a tight grimace. “Minerals? Really, Dream? Fucking minerals? So you're saying forget that it's unfiltered and, well, obviously very dirty-"
"‘Very dirty’?” Dream crouched beside Tommy to dip a finger into the small basin of water he just created. “So it's as dirty as, say, this one?” As Dream's head nodded towards the larger pond of murky water, Tommy’s fists clenched tightly, and a defeated sigh left his mouth.
His voice shook and rose a sliver in volume. “You don't- shit- you- fucking- Christ, man, you don't just do something like that to someone thirsty. You don't. It's fucking torture- I can’t- Fuck, you’re a monster, Dr-”
Dream didn't take that rebuttal so kindly. His voice flattened into a rigid monotone. “Okay, yeah, sure I am. Do monsters give people choices, or is the monster the one who throws his own choice and freedom away? You could've just listened to what I said and followed along, but no, you ungratefully complained instead. You punished yourself, Tommy. You made me put the water here instead of just drinking from the pond like any other regular human would in desperation. And now you have to drink previously-clean, now-dirtied water straight from the ground. Lapping at it like a dog. And it's all your fault. It's like you want to be humiliated. Do you want to be Tommy? Because I can arrange that for you. All for you, like all the other things I do for you, all perfectly crafted for ‘the best.’”
“You have to understand that this isn’t how you treat anyone. I get I’m exiled, but-”
“Oh, no, Tommy. No. You don’t get it at all. I give you bandages, and you whine. I feed you, and you nag. I give you a large water source, and you complain. I offer clean water, and what do you do? Take it upon yourself to make me dirty it. Now hurry up and drink the water. It’s getting dirtier by the second.”
Tommy could only peer at the water before him, oh-so-kindly wasted away by Dream. “Look, man. Please don’t make me do this. Seriously, this is so fucked up.”
“Don’t be shy. I won’t judge you. Go on,” Dream’s fingers threaded Tommy’s tangled curls as his voice silked, “I know you're thirsty. I’m sure your throat feels stuck with the steak in there.”
‘If he didn’t throw the water into the hole, I would have gladly drunk from the bucket. What the hell is wrong with- SHIT!’ Tommy’s thought was interrupted when the second Dream roughly yanked his hair backward.
“I have to do everything for you, Tommy. Come on, a sip of water. You can do it.”
Dream’s patronizing tone barely registered in Tommy’s mind, but the feeling of a push on the back of his head into the small water hole did. His pores awakened with cold water, and it sent his nerves into overdrive.
Tommy wanted to cough so badly. He needed air, not contaminated water. But the clumpy, soil particle-filled water was all he could swallow, nearly filling his lungs and making him feel as if he inhaled muddy fire and his nose burned the might of a thousand suns. Tommy couldn’t turn his head this or that side, or Dream would push his head further into the water basin for a considerably longer minute. All for a “sip of water.”
Tommy felt like his life spun from the pressure of Dream’s hold on him, and the man who pressed himself over and against Tommy’s body began to undo the button of Tommy’s shorts. It compelled the boy to try to cry into thick water, yet not one sound escaped from Tommy.
A muffled voice from above murmured, “Oh, here, Tommy, you’re in good hands.” Before Tommy knew it, he felt a firm hand wrap around his member and a thumb circle at his tip. The boy clenched his jaw and shut his eyes as tight as he could, and Dream pushed Tommy’s head further into the little cavity of water the faster he stroked. “Feels good?”
‘He…’
Tommy’s body writhed in a strange amalgamation of pressure. The pressure of endlessly gulping nasty water when Tommy wished for air. The introduction of possible death. The pressure of Dream as he rested atop Tommy’s back. It was not his entire weight, but Dream did place enough force onto his hand to keep Tommy’s head underwater. On the brink of death. The pressure of his stomach as Dream tightly fondled and rubbed his fingertips all around his cock. Of preferring death.
More murmurs from Dream translated into a garble, and the man hastened his pumping of Tommy's cock. “You’re almost there, Tommy. Drink more. You're doing good. I’m helping you. I hope this feels good.”
What Tommy felt wasn't "good"; he felt hopelessness. He felt acquainted with hopelessness.
Dream’s fingers finally released from his grip on Tommy’s cock, his body left Tommy’s back, and his other hand in Tommy’s hair gently pulled him backward into the air. Oxygen. Tommy sputtered as his lungs tried to chase after all the world’s clean air.
‘A disgusting…’
Dream’s wet nails gently dragged along Tommy’s equally wet scalp, a gesture that soothed Tommy's hurting awareness to a small extent. “Thank you, Tommy. Thank you for that. Next time, listen to me, okay? It’s easier for both of us. I hate wasting precious water…” After a pause, Dream added with a tight tone full of restriction and lack of entirety, “And seeing you like that. I had to do it to make you feel better about drinking the water if you know what I mean by ‘it.’”
Tommy’s eyes and chest felt like they were about to melt away any time soon. He didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to face Dream, not to his gauze, nor the water Dream poured, and he sure as hell didn’t want to look down at his penis.
‘No shame…’
Dream pulled Tommy’s underwear and shorts back up, buttoning and zipping up the boy’s fly. “This was a lesson, Tommy. See how it's more difficult when you try to resist me? I’m glad you can come to terms with me. You’re better like this anyway.” Dream stood up and slowly walked to his bag, bringing a red object in his left hand and his bow on the other. The blurry, green figure slowly swayed to the waterless hole: the pit with nothing but Tommy’s coal. The very pit Dream promised to return to when all was said and done.
“Dream,” Tommy coughed and tried to find stability by holding onto the grass.
“Step back, Tommy. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
‘It was what you did, it’s all you know how to do to me.’’
“Y-You-”
“Tommy,” Dream shifted the aim of his bow from the TNT placed on the ground beside Tommy and towards Tommy, “Please. Step back. I don’t want to yell or shoot at you, not after our shared moment.”
‘It can all end now.’
Tommy's body shifted not an inch. “I can’t-” Tommy broke into a fit of coughs, beat at his chest with a flat palm, and Dream had nothing to respond with. The man stood ahead of the boy to shield him and urged Tommy with a hand to duck down behind his legs. Dream retook aim toward the TNT, and the release of his arrow swished into the dynamite in a hissing sound.
Dream pocketed his bow, and he turned to look down at Tommy. Once Tommy’s ears rang at the destruction of his coal, the boy’s senses returned to their normal functions, and noticed the broken chunks of dirt and cobblestone surrounding the two. Dream brushed some stone dust off his green cloak and netherite armor before he stashed his bow away. His words held no layer of anger but the same soft pretense he used earlier. “You need to listen to me more often, Tommy. You're not gonna die, not by drowning nor TNT or from starvation. You're not dying any time soon. Under me, it won’t happen. Like I said, you're in good hands.”
Tommy stared at the black powder amidst the rubble and tried not to think so much of the thick, wet warmth smearing his underwear. He hung his head and raspily coughed, “I know that.”
“Today was a good night, Tommy. You handled it well, better than most nights,” Dream crouched to meet Tommy's face level and began to rub a hand at the boy's back, “I could've done worse.”
Tommy opened his eyes to stare vacantly at Dream's white mask, and it completed his sunken expression. “I know. Thank you.”