Who: Ford and Blake What: Dreams of the nebulous kind. Where: Dreamland. When: Backdated to fuzzy Fairy Tale dreamland plot. Warnings/Rating: None.
The dream was indistinct, a quiet blur of warm color that resolved slowly into concrete shapes in a wash, like a splash of water dragging paint down a canvas. It started out as the abstract idea of a home, and then it became one. The window streamed in thin gray light, and there was something strange about the atmosphere. It was lived in, certainly - the leather couch had the imprints of long wear, the TV was on. The bookshelf was full, mostly of poets from the early part of the 20th century, and the books in it were haphazardly arranged, some laying atop the others and some stacked neatly, untouched. The floor was old hardwood, and the pillows scattered across the floor spoke to someone sitting there, reading, maybe.
But something was wrong, as well. The place had a little of the feel of a museum, like the miscellaneous spray of misplaced cushions and the out of sync books had been left there for much longer than their positions would suggest. The kitchen smelled like nothing, and the room was too cool. The pictures on the wall had gathered dust at the tops of their frames, and the picture on the plasma tv had burned echoes and shadows into the screen, which persisted even as the image flickered, muted, a newscaster telling the day’s stories.
The only human figure was in the window, on the small seat. He was slightly curled into himself. He looked like dead leaf, skeletal and delicate, as if his bones might break were he to actually stand up. His hair was thin and fraying. His arms were folded around each other, hands clasping his elbows, and he was looking out the window at nothing. There was fog outside, through which the light filtered. The door to the apartment was firmly locked.
There didn’t seem to be sound there in the way that sound should exist, but he must have heard footfalls, because he lifted his head and turned it to see who had come into this quiet space. “Hey,” he said, on sighting his visitor. And on sighting him, he smiled a little, and something clicked into place, and he didn’t look gaunt or tired or delicate anymore, the transformation as immediate and abrupt as turning on a switch when he knew he wasn’t alone. You could have woven a rope to climb on out of that slick, strong, dark hair, and he had shiny black eyes like the highwaymen in old ballads. “Come to wake me up?”
Ford didn’t belong in the museum. His boots were too heavy and his thin sleeveless had holes in it where the seams were starting to give; all that pale skin and dark curl didn’t belong in a place quite so quiet or so dark. Ford was strongly reminded of special libraries with deep corners and stern guardians, and he kept glancing around, thinking that any moment someone would show themselves and tell him to get out before he broke something. No one did, and as he progressed through the watercolor rooms, his weight creaking on the hardwood, creaking without sound, he grew more bold, until finally he dared touch the edges of cupboard doors and bookspines.
He was so startled to see actual movement that he stopped short entirely. Ford’s head tipped delicately to one side, a fraction of an inch, and a heavy riot of dark curls in a ratty nest of neglect fell over each other in a way more confusion than charm. He didn’t speak, and the sound around him seemed to focus as he searched for noise to fill his silence: the beat of his heart, the expansion of his ribs under his lungs. The air around him only accentuated a total lack of voice.
Ford stared for a little while at the person on the windowseat. He wasn’t sure he had seen what he had seen, aging in reverse, fragility into strength. Ford was the kind of young man to doubt what he had seen, and accept surface as real. He took one step forward, stopped, and then spoke. Are you asleep? His mouth did not move. His voice made no sound. He spoke clearly and perfectly, thought actualizing with absolutely no effort. It was a dream.
Blake didn't even notice, testament to the reality of it. One thing flowed into the next, and everything made it's own kind of dream-sense. "That's what the witch told me," he said. He seemed tired though his appearance screamed vitality, and he slid off the seat, unfolding with an unnatural blossoming out of limbs on joints with too many points of articulation. "Come on," he said, taking him by the hand. It was a strangely chaste move, paper dry palm against Ford's. "You should try the door," he said, tugging on his hand to lead him to it. "I couldn't open it. Maybe because I can't wake up, I don't know."
The door seemed as ordinary as could be, solid wood with a brass handle. There was no keyhole, no sign of a lock, and Blake merely waited, expectantly, for Ford to try.
Ford blinked and looked expressly confused at the mention of the word witch. He was accustomed to lacking entirely in speech, and most of it was made up in his face and the way his eyes moved, clear as words. The moment that he accepted the strangeness as just strange, and let it pass as something outside his understanding, his expression cleared. Maybe he hadn’t heard it right, maybe it was some joke he wasn’t meant to get. He let the strangeness go and focused.
At first, he was visibly surprised that Blake reached out for him, his fingers closing compulsively and then pulling shortly away before they closed once more. His expression migrated to pleased. He didn’t seek any further intimacy nor appeared to expect more. The bright blue eyes redirected at the door. He nodded agreement, and then stepped slightly forward, aligning his body forward to precede Blake to the solid oak barrier. He put his hand out against the wood and then shoved at it, experimental. Then he pulled at the handle.
Whatever Ford had done worked. The door swung open onto thin air, and a long drop. There was no floor immediately beyond the doorway, but when one peered out, there the floor was, stories below.
It became apparent that they were standing inside a room in miniature, a room which opened out onto a house built for giants. The door through which they were looking was set high on the wall. The drop to the ground would feel like a thousand miles of falling were they to take the plunge, and the chair on the other side of the hallway looked like it could fit a hundred of them both comfortably on its plush seat.
The mysterious house was cheerful enough. It looked more lived in than the museum behind, sun soaked and attractively furnished in light hardwoods and antiques. Just in sight from their tiny doorway was a stair leading down to the dimness of the first floor.
Blake jumped out, without warning, his hand still clasped around Ford's. And, as things were in dreams, he suddenly stood in the hall, just the height he ought to be to be in regular proportion to the house, and he turned around. The wall from which they had come was decorated with dozens of miniatures in shadowboxes, tiny rooms with perfect tiny furnishings and perfect tiny signs of life, a glass of milk on the table here, a spilled bottle of whiskey on the floor there. They were arranged in gradations of color, light on the left moving into dark on the right. They had come from far to the left side. The little door inside the shadowbox of the apartment was still ajar.
Blake didn't let go of Ford's hand. "I think I might never wake up again," he said, conversationally. "I like it here. Come on. Let's go downstairs."
Ford tried to pull back. Before he understood the dimensions of the room, Ford thought the door was just empty air, and he’d had many dreams of stepping out, foot waiting for pavement and meeting empty air instead. (He thought of it just then, it’s a dream, and a second later, forgot once more.) He hauled back on Blake’s hand, but it was far too late, and Blake dragged him forward. Ford opened his mouth to scream, waited for that terrified emptiness in his stomach, but it never came. He tripped over his feet and only just caught himself from falling over in the foreign hallway.
Ford’s hand was caught tight, and he made no attempt to escape a second time. The blue eyes stared into Blake’s, fear melting into vague distrust. He spoke once more without speaking. Why would you like it here? There’s nowhere to go. Just boxes. He looked around, dark curls heavy around his sharp features. The dream, with its tiny apartments and its big/small, it was not a place for Ford. Everything about him was too sharp, too pale, too thick with the need to survive. None of that was furniture, milk or whiskey.
Blake didn't let go of Ford's hand. He liked having it to hang onto. Things felt mixed up in this dream, and he'd been asleep so long with no door out. It was good to feel grounded, to touch someone that felt alive. There were shades here, but they weren't the same, and he didn't like to see them. "But they're mine," he protested. "I like them. They're what I have." Where the rest of the house felt warm enough, but still dream-like, there was a pulsating twist of raw emotion and reality hovering over those little boxes, vivid and meticulously crafted from memory. Blake pointed to one low on the wall, a classroom scene. "They're all perfect. Just the way they were, exactly. They don't ever change, and they all stay right here." He looked them over with briefly anxious eyes, but, yes, they were all still there. "What do you mean, nowhere to go?" Blake asked. He looked up at Ford with a vulnerability that was nothing like the drunken, smirking, unapologetic mess who'd crashed in his apartment. "I can't get out anyway. I can't wake up. But I can go into any of these. Or downstairs. Or outside." Blake swallowed, and nodded. "I'm not scared of not waking up," he said, voice gone thick and quiet.
You’re asleep? Ford asked, but it wasn’t a question he really needed an answer to. Ford wasn’t the kind of man that thought things through, sought to solve them. He was not a man for puzzles, and he had a tendency to let people live their own lives even if it cost him a great deal of curiosity. Part of it was discipline; speech was such a trial that he had to hold his tongue ten times more often than he really wanted to, and after a while he’d gotten used to not asking questions out loud. He just thought them, and here, it appeared, thought was action.
Sensing that Blake didn’t want to release his fingers, Ford shuffled forward and leaned in, examining one of the tiny little rooms. They rose the hair on the back of his neck, and even under the thick curls Ford felt cold. They’re lonely. I mean there’s nowhere to go if you want to leave. Leave and not come back. That doesn’t freak you out? Ford straightened up in a long spine, curving back and flexing his shoulders, trying to work out the cold still prickling somewhere behind his ears. He caught the look on Blake’s face and immediately shut his mouth, so abruptly that his teeth clicked. Remorse shadowed his face, expressive and immediate. Sorry.
"Like I said, some witch showed up and told me so." Blake stared straight ahead. "Yeah, I'm asleep. Someone should come and wake me up, I guess, but I don't know who'd bother." He felt tired, even in the dream, which didn't seem at all fair. Ford's silent presence, talking in his head, made it feel less like a wasteland, though, less empty.
He protested, though, all the same. "They're not empty," he said. "Well...they are empty, but they don't feel empty." It was like seeing a film or reading a book that one couldn't really explain, having an experience that meant nothing to anyone but him. He couldn't put into words why the miniatures mattered to him, what made them comforting. Familiarity, perhaps, even in the darkest of them all, all the way to the right and covered over with a roughly hewn wooden board. "And I can't ever leave anyway," he said, and let go of Ford's hand at last, "So what does it matter?" His usual bravura and the cursing were suspiciously absent, as if all his hard edges had been sanded down by sleep. "It's fine," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's fine. Look, I like it here. I don't need to leave. Even if I could leave, I wouldn't want to. It's safe, and nothing's going anywhere. Right?" He seemed to see Ford for the first time, then. He didn't look as polished anymore as he had when Ford first arrived, somewhere between the hale and healthful shine and the tired doll reflected in the window pane. "Haven't you ever wanted to stay somewhere because everything else was like a wasteland outside?"
Ford looked just the same, pale as formica and as roughly drawn. The thick dark curls made him look both confused and exotic, large loops of them over extremely blue eyes, but there was nothing of innocence there. Ford had strength, solidity. He was a rock in a stream, and things moved around him, not through. What fragility he had, he kept it shored up inside where nothing could break it down. Even his weaknesses were strong. Ford was a survivor, and he was stubborn hard-work and a refusal to give in. The emptiness of the dream freaked him, but he wasn’t afraid. Ford now knew fear, and it wasn’t this weird patchwork. Fear was mortality.
If you’re sleeping, then you wake up, and then you leave, Ford said, denying Blake’s assurances about never going anywhere. He didn’t pursue Blake’s hand, but watched him carefully and refused to draw back. Blake’s long stare made him shift awkwardly on his feet, but he did not change, either in form or thought. Ford brushed at the thin cotton over his stomach, ribbed and unstitching at the hem from too many washings. No. I’ve never stayed anywhere different on the inside than everything else on the outside. Eventually... things come in. Again he spoke without sound, and his fingers came up to rub over his generous lower lip, awkward but determined.
"Can't," Blake said, seemingly unaware that they'd already covered the topic. "The witch said I can't leave. You could stay, though," he said, the idea obviously occurring to him even as he was speaking, and he turned to fully face Ford. He let his gaze linger on his lower lip for a long moment, which he liked, and he remembered liking when he met him (and that had been...? He couldn't remember). He moved closer to him, limbs slow and heavy in the way they so often were in dreams. "You could stay as long as you want," he said. "Nothing's coming in. There's nothing out there." He picked at the unraveling seam of Ford's shirt, which felt strangely real in that unreal place. "Just me."
Ford lingered on the edge of uncertainty for a little while. It seemed long to him but really it was short, only a few seconds of hesitation. Ford knew what it looked like when someone admired him, and it seemed to him like the lights dimmed for just a little bit, which he liked, because Ford was convinced that people in general only really liked him with the light was low and it was too loud to hear anything he said. That was the kind of place that he expected Blake to be, and so it was, here, now, also what he expected. Ford’s dreams were fluid and simple; compact, isolated places like this confused him. He didn’t want to leave Blake here alone, but he also wasn’t prepared to stay forever. Eventually he decided, and he curved an arm around Blake’s so that the hollow of his elbow curled around Blake’s bicep. For a little while, I can stay. But then you have to wake up. I’ll show you. He had absolutely no idea how he would do that, but he was confident.
Blake liked the easy warmth of Ford's presence and the lowering of the light. Here was something he understood, something that reflected the world outside the way it was, rather than all the things it wasn't, like a funhouse mirror. "Going to lead me on out like Peter Pan? Third star to the right, straight on 'til morning?" His crooked mouth was curved wry, and they weren't words he would have said when he was awake. But nothing here was the same as it was outside. Ford, maybe, wasn't the same either, but it was hard to tell, except through those words that kept landing in his head like stones dropped into a still pond. He liked Ford's confidence, because he liked anyone who was confident. Confident people rarely asked questions, and they also didn't ask for too much.
Ford understood the reference in one--not always a guarantee when the people around him seemed to prefer fairy tales in books rather than Disney movies found on cheap cable--and grinned. I could do that. I don’t know the way, but we should try. This was another decision, as he didn’t attempt to encourage Blake but simply began moving, choosing a direction along the gallery of tiny lightboxes. He kept his arm just behind Blake’s, pulling him gently along with him in the mere expectation of his cooperation. I’m always rescuing you from things, Ford commented, sounding pleased with himself. Lately there hadn’t been anybody around that needed his help, except for maybe Sam, who Ford thought could handle himself if he had to.
Blake followed. He had nothing with which to protest it. He liked the house, its familiarity and safety, but if Ford knew another place, he would go there. "I get the feeling you like rescuing lost causes," Blake said with a sharp little laugh, sticking close to Ford. That did seem right. Picking up drunk guys with no intention of taking advantage of them? Seriously, who did that? Only someone with a lot invested in the idea of rescuing people. Blake knew what that was like, to be invested in an idea of yourself. If Ford saw himself as a rescuer, he couldn't be who he was if there was no one to rescue. It made perfect sense.
No, Ford admitted, solemnly. I like it but I don’t do it much. Too fucked up to be helping other people. He was dead serious, and yet still able to look at Blake and flash him an unmistakable smile. Ford could smile in that way and yet still talk of deep, dark things, things that went under blue veins and thick curls. But I can give you a hand up, you know? If I’m standing. And I am, right now. He swept his free hand down to indicate his boots, old worn things they were, and then up to indicate where they were standing--which was at the junction of two halls, perfectly perpendicular to one another. They could go ahead, or they could go left, and they could go right. All three destinations led on into white fluorescent forever, with no apparent difference between the three.
Blake laughed. "You? I can't believe it." Everybody, in Blake's experience, was some level of fucked up. That went without saying. But Ford didn't seem the type, too placid for that shit. "Whoever said I needed a hand up?" Blake said, with dark amusement, and he didn't let go of Ford.
The hallways onto nowhere were a little...unnerving. Blake didn't like them very much. He liked the familiar house behind him, still there when he turned around to check. The blank nothing ahead felt familiar too, but in another way. "Left," he said, unthinking. That blank void gave him a sudden, desperate need to have a destination, to be going somewhere. It made the nothing feel like a place when there was a direction to walk in.
Ford wasn’t placid. He was internal. Everything was going on inside, because he just couldn’t babble the way other people could babble. Here, in this place, it was all speech, the silent kind that was meaning inside meaning and all thoughts being obvious because Ford wanted them to be obvious, and the dream allowed it. Ford didn’t think he was all that deep, really. He thought he was stupid and boring because he was told that he was stupid and boring, and he had no reason to think otherwise.
Everybody needs a hand up sometimes. Ford’s statement was full of the certainty that no one could survive forever standing. You had to learn to pick your ass up sometimes. It was a charitable thought, not that he knew it. He turned left because Blake said he wanted to go left, and Ford rarely had a path to follow. The hallway began to narrow. It was not abrupt, but time here did not move as it should, and the walls were close against their shoulders. Ford stopped, uncomfortable. What’s left?
Blake didn't like being boxed in. The feeling was claustrophobic to say the least, and he felt more and more uncomfortable as the walls grew closer and closer. "I don't know," he said, trying to mask his growing panic. Around them, the void seemed to be dimming, its limitless, unidentifiable source of light going out slow, like the lights in a theatre. If they were stuck here, in this too quiet, too close space in the dark, Blake didn’t know what he would do. Ford’s presence suddenly not enough to comfort and make the place seem safe, and, behind them, the house had disappeared. “Don’t let go of me,” he said, with a severity that made it seem life or death.
Ford didn’t like the closing walls either. He was not one of those people that was frightened of small spaces especially, though he did prefer the ability to move, he liked his space to spread out so if he wanted to leave the door was clearly outlined. Tiny places were cheap and made only for eight hours in a bed, not living. Ford kept his hand in Blake’s, but it soon didn’t matter what he was doing, because the dream began to come apart, and as it did, it took away everything but sensation. The sight of the hallway dissolved only into that sense of compact claustrophobia, a pressing of thin air on the senses and the delicate curves of the ear, and Ford’s fingers curling against Blake’s became cold skin and grinding bones. Then those sensations were gone, and new ones replaced them. The feel of gravel scraping the skin. The first blush after a kiss. The ecstatically pleasant feeling of a long stretch after a solid sleep. A harsh, tingling steam burn. A drop of warm sunshine on a chilled spine.
Then, finally, the sudden, stomach-churning drop of a long, long fall.