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His heart is pounding in his chest. A steady, frantic drumbeat loud in Todd’s ears. A stark contrast against the forest around him, eerily quiet and blank save for the sound of the ground softly shifting underneath his boots with each step. Moonlight peeks through the trees, just enough for Todd to see through the darkness and trudge on forwards, away from—from—
Todd finds a sizeable bush and crouches behind its cover, catching his breath. He should be running, he should be getting away, he should stand up and keep going deeper into the forest, but something is off. He shuts his eyes and tries to go through the facts. Todd has a satchel full of gold, three arrows left in his quiver, and the nagging, inexplicable feeling that something is very, very wrong.
Somewhere behind him, a faint rustle.
Slowly, Todd pulls an arrow from his quiver, setting it against his bow. Only three shots. He’ll have to make this count.
A twig snaps.
And another. And another. And...another.
One after the other, cumbersome and obvious.
Todd is just about to wonder how bad a single person could be at stealth when he hears whoever it is trip over a tree root, something he knows because the man actually says, not very quietly “Ow, stupid tree root!” Who the hell is this guy?
Todd stands, bow drawn and pointed at the man. “Not another step.”
“Oh, shit,” the man says. From here, Todd can only see a dark form shrouded by the shadow of a tree. He starts talking again, words fast and bright. “Don’t shoot! Been shot with an arrow already before. Twice. Didn’t like it very much.”
For some reason, Todd feels the beginnings of a headache. “Step forward, slowly.”
“But,” the man says slowly, bizarrely starting to sound like he’s enjoying this. “You just said earlier not to take another step.”
“Well.” Todd says. “I’m saying now to step forward. Slowly.”
“Alright, but please don’t shoot. The first time you tried to kill me was difficult enough.”
“The first...what? What are you—”
The man comes out of the shadows with slow, careful steps, moonlight catching in his auburn hair. He’s dressed in a shepherd’s cloak, staff in one hand, and an odd part of Todd’s brain thinks that the colors, drab and dark, don’t suit him at all. But the thing that really catches Todd’s attention are his eyes. Bright, even in the ink of night, looking right at Todd, searching and curious and kind.
“I didn’t pick the clothes, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the man says, swishing his cloak about. “Yours look amazing, though. Very dashing. I called you an action hero once, but now you’re really looking the part. Nice hood, by the way.” The man’s eyes widen, then he smiles, as thinking something ridiculously clever that Todd isn’t privy to. “Hood, bow and arrow, sack that has got to be filled with stolen money. Solved it.”
“You talk too much.” Todd says. If Todd hadn’t said anything, he’s pretty sure the man would have no problem carrying the conversation solely on his own. “You always—”
The faint twinge in the back of Todd’s head thrums stronger. The dregs of a headache surging forward, buzzing and painful. He hisses and lowers his bow and arrow, one hand reaching for his head. What was Todd saying?
Without an arrow pointed at him, the man shuffles closer, eyeing Todd worriedly. His hands move, as if to touch him, “Todd?”
Todd steps back. His hand goes back to hold the arrow, and the man puts his hands up and away from Todd. “How do you know my name?”
The man is silent for a moment, bright eyes dimming for a second, now soft and sad. His expression stirs something in Todd’s mind, something too far away, too muddled for Todd to understand.
“Well, that’s my question answered. The story restarted you too,” the man sighs. “Which means it’ll wipe your mind clean every time. Which means—”
“What?” Todd tries to interrupt him, but the man just keeps talking under his breath, picking up speed. He starts pacing, his head ducked, hands gesturing, and Todd can hear snippets of what he says. Something about dreams and stories and Todd. “Hey, answer me! How do you know my name? Who are you? Why—why are you following me?”
The man stops in his tracks, looking at Todd with a gaze that’s too gentle for a stranger.
“I know your name because I know you. You’re my best friend. And I’m not following you,” the man smiles, and Todd wonders why his smile isn’t brighter, why Todd thinks it should be, why this train of thought is making the thing in his head scratch against the walls of his skull. “I just found you. I always will.”
“How can you—I’ve never even met you, I don’t know who you are. I—” The buzz in his head turns blinding. Todd groans, dropping his bow completely to double over and hold his head in his hands. “Fuck.”
“Todd!” The pain is burning Todd’s mind inside out, and he almost misses how the man crouches down next to him, a hand placed carefully on Todd’s back. The man starts mumbling something about ‘attacks’ and how this is ‘impossible’ and Todd can’t piece any of it together, too busy focusing on the weight of the man’s hand rubbing his shoulder. “Breathe. It’s okay, just breathe.”
Todd shudders, trying to follow, trying to breathe, but the air is different now. Thinner. Filled with static, as if lightning is about to hit.
Todd wrenches his eyes open, about to warn the man, but instead watches the landscape, bewildered. Around them, the trees farthest away blur and then disappear, moving closer and closer. The fabric of the sky begins shrinking, as if being eaten away by nothingness. The moon is flickering like a candle in the wind, and Todd knows—though he doesn’t know how he knows—that it’ll soon be gone.
“The story’s changing,” the man says, eyes glinting with fascination. He pats Todd’s shoulder. “Won’t have to worry about your head, anymore. It’ll be over soon.”
There’s a million things Todd wants to say, a million things he wants to ask, just there in his mind, bubbling alongside the pain and confusion and building fear. But the only thing he manages to get out is, “Nothing you say makes any sense.”
“Oh, I rarely ever do,” the man smiles. “See you soon, Todd.”
Before Todd can ask anything else, the static around them gets stronger, engulfing everything in its wake before shutting off completely and—
-
The fire in front of Todd crackles into the night. A welcome warmth in the cold air. He flits his gaze to the sky for a moment, looking at the clouds as they wisp along under the stars, under the moon. He idly plucks the strings of the lute in his hands, finding a slow, simple tune. Words swim in his head, lyrics trying to be song, but slipping past his fingers before he can make sense of them. Tonight, tonight. Tomorrow, tomorrow.. Tomorrow, he’ll get his due.
That’s when he hears the clanking.
Todd puts his lute down, turning his head to the forest where the sound is coming from, getting louder and louder. It’s as if somebody is clanking pots and pans in the middle of nowhere, or perhaps wearing armor and doing a really shitty job at existing in it.
He gets his answer when the clanking falls out of the bushes and into the dirt of the clearing.
Todd stands, grabbing the lute and holding it as a weapon. The clanking is a man lying face down in the ground, muttering lowly, trying to get up but failing because he’s dressed in knight’s armor and not looking to be much of a fan of it.
“What the hell,” Todd says. He uses his foot to nudge the knight.
The knight swats an arm out blindly.
“Uh,” Todd says. The guy is a knight, and Todd is—some sort of enemy of the crown. A tug in his mind is telling him to run, but another pull is telling him to stay. “Who are you?”
The knight rolls onto his back and says words that are completely muffled by the helmet he’s wearing.
“What?”
More muffled words, paired with some gesturing now, which don’t help at all, really.
“You’re going to have to speak up.”
The knight’s hands fall to the ground, exasperated, before going up to wrench the helmet right off.
“I said,” the knight sits up, clanking slightly along the way. “That I’m getting awful tired of forests and moonlight. I suppose she likes it, and I must admit that it’s rather dramatic and a good place as any to set a story, but would it kill to have some variety?”
Todd blinks, not really knowing where to start with all of that. None of that made a single ounce of sense, but he’s more confused at the knight’s face looking at him expectantly.
Todd’s got the oddest feeling that he’s done this before.
“You seem—” Todd says. “—familiar.”
“Well, I should hope so,” the knight grins. He sits up further and scooches closer to Todd. “This is the third story, if I’m still counting right, and by this point I really hope I’m jostling your memory. You can put that down, you know,” he gestures to the lute Todd is still holding like a baseball bat....what the hell is a baseball bat? “I’m not in any position to attack you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to?” Todd focuses on what he did managed to understand in the barrage of words. “Or try and arrest me?”
“I’m sure it seems like it,” the knight blinks up at him. “You said I’m familiar. Now, humor me here, and think really, really hard as to why that might be.”
“I—” Todd starts, but he thinks nonetheless, spurred on by the same feeling that made him stay here instead of dashing into the trees. He looks at the knight, and Todd is sure that he’s never seen this guy in his entire life, but there’s a wall in his memories. He knows tonight, he knows tomorrow, but he there’s a solid barrier beyond that that he tries to push—
Todd drops the lute, gasping in pain.
“Let me guess, excruciating headache?” The knight says as Todd drops to sit on the ground, feeling dizzy all of a sudden.
“Gee, how’d you know?” Todd asks, voice dripping with sarcasm, as if how he’s holding his head in his hands isn’t a glaring neon sign. Or—some kind of sign. Does neon exist in this story? It’s the wrong question to even think to himself, because it’s followed by another stab in Todd’s head so bad that he forgets what he was even—
“It happens every time,” the knight says sympathetically. He’s close enough now that he can lay a hand on Todd’s back, and this has happened before, Todd knows it, he just doesn’t know how. “At first I thought you were having attacks, but that’s not it. The pain is your mind making progress.”
“What are you even talking about?” Todd lifts his head just to look at the knight skeptically.
“You’re getting better at remembering,” he tells Todd, and every word he says after is a like a hammer coming down on a nail wedged in Todd’s skull. “You haven’t tried to kill me since that first time when you were a knight and I was very inconveniently a dragon, and our conversations are getting longer so I’m taking that to mean some of this is sticking around in your head, now the tricky bit is getting you to remember everything and have it stick around hopefully permanently—”
“Stop,” Todd gasps. “Talking. Please, stop talking.”
“I’m sorry,” the knight says, squeezing Todd’s shoulder. “I know it hurts, but I need you with me. You need to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Me. You. The case.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Todd says helplessly.
“Dirk Gently,” the knight—Dirk—says. If Todd thought his head hurt before, it’s nothing compared to hearing Dirk’s name feels like. There’s a flash of yellow in Todd’s mind, garish and blinding, before he shakes it away. “I wasn’t able to say, last time. Ooh, do you think repetition will help with your memory keeping details? Dirk Gently. My name is Dirk Gently. Dirk Gently, best friend, holistic detective, all around marvelous person, Dirk Ge—”
“Do you shut up? Ever?” Todd grits his teeth.
Dirk’s resulting grin, goofy and mischievous, is answer enough. “Almost never. You love it, though.”
He does. But he shouldn’t. Because he doesn’t know Dirk. Or because he does, but there’s something clouding his mind, a thick fog over what he wants to know and what he can think of without feeling pain.
“Drat,” Dirk says. Todd opens his eyes, not even realizing when he’d shut them, and looks at Dirk. Dirk has his head tilted to sky, looking at the constellation of stars blinking out one by one. The air is thinner now. Filled with static like—Todd should be afraid. The part of his mind that doesn’t hurt tells him to be, but the part that does reminds him that this has happened before and that he just can’t— “I guess she doesn’t like this story very much. Shame, I didn’t even figure out what this one was.”
“Why do you say things like—like you’re just saying things?” Todd says.
“Good to know it’s really still you in there,” Dirk grins. Then he claps his hands together. “Oh. Ohhhhh, I think I’ve got it.”
“Got what?” Todd says. In front of them, the crackling fire has frozen in motion.
“The story,” Dirk tells him. “Might I ask you what your name is?”
“My—” There’s a story in Todd’s head, pushing itself forward. It’s a story that wants, stubbornly, to be followed. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, an end, and most importantly, rules for how this all goes. So Todd says “I can’t tell you. You have to guess.”
“Solved it,” Dirk says, looking very pleased with himself. “See you on the other side, Todd.”
“How do you know my—”
-
Sunlight streams through the canopy, speckling the forest in blotches of golden light. Todd stalks through the shrubbery, walking just out of sight from the well worn path. There’s a low growl in his throat that wants to break loose. The urge to snarl and devour and destroy. To lie, and lie, and lie. He’s had a lot of practice with that, he thinks. Todd shakes his head, willing the thought away. That’s not important, something is telling him. Stick to the story. Just stick to the story.
There is a man walking on the path. He wears a red hood. He holds a basket in his hands.
Todd walks out of the cover of the trees.
The man turns around, looks at Todd, and doesn’t bat an eye at the hulking black wolf staring him down. He smiles, chipper. “Hello, you!”
“Where are you going?” Todd asks, words clumsy through his bared teeth.
“Oh, just taking a stroll. Lovely day out, isn’t it? I was beginning to miss the look of morning. Thought we’d never get enough of stories that happen at night.”
A familiar ache begins to bloom in Todd’s mind. Stick to the story. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” he growls.
The man smiles, impish. “I’ve never been one to play by the rules.”
Todd can’t ignore it. His thoughts are fighting each other. The story is trying to stay on the surface, but something else is trying to push its way forth. Something that says this keeps on happening. Something that says they need to get out of here. Something that doesn’t find any of this forest or this sun or this story familiar at all, that the closest thing he has to a home to call is in the color of this man’s eyes.
“Why do I feel like I know you?” Todd steps forward, nosing at the man’s hand.
“Because you do,” The man crouches down. He puts a gentle hand on Todd’s snout. “Try? For me? What do you know?”
“I’m—I’m supposed to tell you to pick flowers. For your grandmother.”
“While the flowers are lovely, I do have to admit I don’t have a grandmother.” The man pauses for a moment. “Or maybe I do, but I suppose she’d be dead by now. Unless she’s immortal, which would be very interesting.”
“I’m supposed to lie to you,” Todd grits out. The pain in his head feels like an icepick carving away at a wall that shouldn’t be there.
The man smiles, stroking his hand over Todd’s head. “You’re well past that.”
The wall chips. A name comes through.
“Dirk,” he says.
The man blinks. He takes Todd’s head in both his hands. “Todd? Is that you? All of you?”
Todd shakes his head. Memories. He’s trying to concentrate on his memories and why he doesn’t have any. Why he only has a script in his head his heart is telling him not to follow. He says, “Dirk Gently. That’s your name. Why do I know your name?”
“Okay, well, not completely Todd, but it’s progress.”
Brief moments of the last few stories come into view. A dark cloak. A suit of armor. Todd looks down. “You’re in a dress.”
“Yes, of course that’s what you notice.” Dirk rolls his eyes, standing. He grabs the skirt of the dress and swishes it around. “Not really my thing, but I suppose it’s nice, don’t you think?” He pauses, then faces Todd. “We’re getting off topic. Come on, Todd Brotzman, there must be more in that furry head of yours.”
“Brotzman? That’s—” Todd remembers a window. He remembers Dirk breaking into his apartment through that window. He remembers flits and flashes of his life, struggling to be seen past a voice reading once upon a time. “—My name. That’s my name.”
“It is,” Dirk nods, eyes widening “Your name is Todd Brotzman. You’re thirty four years old, you live in Seattle, you don’t like tea but you know how to make it for me, you hate my taste in music, and I hate yours, but we both agree on Fleetwood Mac, which is a relief, because that really might’ve been a dealbreaker, you know—”
“I—” Todd remembers the agency. Todd remembers Farah telling them about a prospective client. Todd remembers being at a hospital with Dirk. Todd remembers talking to a worried nurse—
“You’re my best friend and my wonderful assistant and we’re working a case right now and—” Dirk’s hesitates, and Todd can see the desperation in his eyes. Todd’s always been able to read him. “—I can’t do this on my own. I need your help. I need you to remember.”
Todd remembers Dirk. The happy sound of Dirk’s laughter. The dazzling smiles he’d smile. The well worn ache in his chest when Todd looks at Dirk for too long uninterrupted. The determined set of Dirk’s shoulders after he says he’s solved the case, Todd, he knows what’s happening, they just have to talk to her, just have to tell her to wake everybody u—
Pain. Searing pain in his skull. Todd falls to his belly, puts his paws over his snout, and starts whining.
Todd feels a hand patting his head. Dirk says, “Okay, in hindsight, I figure all that information might have been a tad overwhelming.”
“You think!?” Todd snarls, raising his head. Dirk puts his hands up and at least looks apologetic. “My head is killing me. There’s—”
Todd remembers. Wake everybody up.
“This isn’t real, is it?” Todd says slowly. He stands, trying his best to ignore the pain. He looks around them. The forest that once looked so real now looks like off, like somebody had taken a picture of a forest and dropped them into it. The clouds above them move in starts and stops. A bee flies past and Todd can’t hear its buzzing. A world made out of images strung together just not quite right.
Dirk nods. “You and I are, but the rest? Absolutely not.”
“What’s happening? What is this?”
“It’s a dream.” Dirk tells him. “Like that movie you showed me, Conception.”
“That’s not—whatever,” Todd shakes his head. “How did we get here?”
“We’re on a case, remember?”
The story in his head is pushing at all his memories. Whatever he hasn’t seen, it pushes back under the surface. Todd feels like he’s under water, and the story is pushing him down deeper after he got his first breath of air.. The story feels almost petulant about this. The story wants another go. “I can’t remember the case, Dirk.”
“It was actually quite simple, you see—” Dirk raises a hand, ready to gesticulate wildly, no doubt, but he stops. The basket he was holding is gone. Todd blinks, and looks at the sky. It’s no longer blue, instead a wide expanse of static. “Bugger. I don’t think she likes it when we figure things out.”
“No,” Todd backs away. He starts pacing, a familiar chill filling his gut. “No, it’s restarting. Whatever this is, it’s falling apart again.”
“Todd,” Dirk falls to his knees again. He holds Todd’s face in his hands. “Don’t panic. I’ll find you. Or you’ll find me.”
“It’ll restart me again,” Todd says. There is fear in his heart, thrumming with feelings that are lost in a fog. I can’t lose him, he thinks, devoid of context. What is Todd missing here? “I’ll forget.”
Dirk smiles, reassuring, and Todd feels his heart steady, like it always does. “And I’ll be right there to make you remember again.”
The last thought Todd has before the dream blinks out is that not even this, not even a seemingly infinite dream, could ever make him really forget who Dirk Gently is—
-
This time, the story says in Todd’s head, don’t go off script. Its voice sounds sulky against the crash of the waves above him, the thunderstorm above the water. He doesn’t know what it means, though. What he does know is that he shouldn’t be this close to the surface. His father always told him it was dangerous, but there’s a ship in the water. It thrashes along with the waves, teetering dangerously from side to side as water buffets it in different directions.
On the edge of the ship, there is a man. He holds onto the railing and looks up at the dark clouds, at the rain coming down in sheets. Then he looks down to the ocean, gaze searching.
Todd breaks past the surface to get a closer look, to see those bright eyes a little closer. The man spots him, and he grins.
The man climbs over the railing and jumps into the violent waters.
It’s too fast for Todd to tell him not to. His body falls into the water, and Todd can see him try to stay afloat when a large wave pushes him under. Another wave, again and again, keeping the man submerged no matter how hard he tries to stay afloat. Todd swears, dives into the water, and searches. He finds the man, kicking his legs in vain, bubbles escaping from the man’s mouth as he runs out of breath, and Todd swims to him as fast as his tail can take him.
When Todd takes the man’s body in his arms, he isn’t kicking anymore. Panic starts to pool in Todd’s chest as he swims to the shore, pulling a limp body along with him. The air is cold when he breaks past the surface, when he lays the man’s body of the beach.
The man’s body is unmoving and too still, laying in the sand. Todd grabs ahold of the man’s shirt and pulls him up. “Wake up,” he pleads. “Come on, wake up!”
The man doesn’t stir.
There’s a story in Todd’s mind floundering as he starts to feel more and more fear as each second passes. Todd can’t lose this man. He doesn’t know why, but he can’t. It would be the worst possible outcome. This man is everything to Todd. He’s what makes Todd happy, annoyed, angry. He’s what makes Todd better.
“Wake up, you asshole!” Todd yells, shaking the man.
The man’s eyelashes flutter open, before he starts coughing up saltwater violently. Todd lets him go, ignoring the voice in his head that’s telling him to leave, leave, leave, instead following the voice in his chest telling him to stay, always. The man takes great, gulping breaths of air, before looking up, gazing at Todd with nothing short of wonderment and awe.
“You saved my life,” the man smiles.
Seeing the man’s smile infuriates Todd. All his anguish seconds ago fizzes out into rage. “Why the fuck did you jump!?”
The man shrugs. “I saw you. I had to get to you.”
“In the middle of a thunderstorm? In the ocean? Do you not get how dangerous that is? How stupid?” Is this guy for real? God, he always does this. He always just jumps into danger without fucking thinking. The voice in Todd’s head is trying to calm him down, but it’s a lost cause. The only thing Todd can think about is how worried he was, how stupid Dirk was being, how—
Todd blinks. In his mind, along with faint thrums of pain, are flashes of Dirk running headfirst into danger. Dirk bringing an actual knife to a gunfight. Dirk crossing the road when the light is still red. Todd grabs Dirk by the shirt again, trying to commit all of Dirk to memory that won’t wash away with every restart.
He can’t lose him.
Dirk Gently is his best friend.
Dirk Gently is his best friend who Todd is in love with.
How did he ever forget?
“Dirk,” he says, the word sounding more a gasp than a name.
“Of course you scolding me is what makes you remember.” Dirk rolls his eyes.
“You’re Dirk and I’m—” Todd looks down. He has a tail. A bright green scaly tail. “—Holy shit, I’m a mermaid.”
“Merman,” Dirk corrects. He looks ponderous for a second. “Or is mermaid gender neutral?”
“This is a dream,” Todd says. The last dream in his memories is blurry, like somebody tried to erase it off a blackboard but was in too much of a hurry to get it done properly.
“It is,” Dirk nods. “Still, unreality aside, thank you for saving me. I don’t think drowning in a dream would be very enjoyable.”
Todd lets go of Dirk to punch him in the shoulder.
“Ow!” Dirk schooches back, holding his shoulder and looking very offended. “What was that for?”
“For jumping into the goddamn ocean in a thunderstorm!” Todd hisses.
“I wouldn’t have died! Probably!”
“Probably!?”
The thunder in the sky booms, but in fits and starts. One bolt of lightning comes down and takes a chunk of the sky along with it, now a gaping expanse of nothingness above them.
Dirk gestures at the sky. “Oh, look what you’ve done, you’ve angered the dream.”
“Seriously?” Todd looks at the sky, raising his arms in frustration. “Can’t you give us more than a few minutes?”
“Maybe in the next dream we should try whispering.” Dirk suggests as the ocean starts to recede, as the sand starts to eat itself away around them. “Perhaps it doesn’t like it when we yell.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Todd says, holding onto Dirk’s shirt. Todd doesn’t want to let go.
“It does. A little.” Dirk says. He places his hand on Todd’s own. “See you in the next one, Todd.”
“I’m getting tired of this,” Todd says, honesty getting the better of him. “I don’t want to keep forgetting you.”
“I don’t like it either,” Dirk smiles, eyes gentle, like the ocean in the eye of a storm. “But I won’t leave you alone.”
Todd doesn’t get the chance to tell Dirk that he knows, that he trusts Dirk more than anything in this world, because the dream flits them out of existence for the nth time and
-
Todd opens his eyes and something is different. For one thing, his head is hurting right off the bat, but in exchange for that pain is the clear, undeniable knowledge that this was a dream. Todd gets out of the bed he’s in and looks at his hands. He can remember this is a dream, he can remember who he is, and he can remember—Dirk.
He has to find Dirk.
Todd takes stock of the cottage. It’s dusty and old and the window by the door shows moonlight filtering through the clouds. Out past the cottage, there is a garden, and in the garden there is a shuffling lump crouched in the ground that looks to be suspiciously Dirk shaped.
That’s where Todd finds Dirk. Among the vegetables, digging them up and pulling them out of the ground.
“Hello, good sir,” Dirk waves hello with a handful of lettuce. “How are you doing on this lovely night?”
“Better actually,” Todd crouches down. “My head hurts but I can remember now. Mostly.”
“Wonderful!” Dirk tosses the lettuce over his shoulder. “Certainly speeds things up, and time does seem to be of the essence, going by our last story.” Dirk looks at the garden, pensive “Speaking of stories, have you any idea which one has anything to do with somebody digging up foliage?”
“It’s lettuce, Dirk. This is Rapunzel.”
“Isn’t the Rapunzel the one with the long hair and the lizard?”
“Yeah, I don’t think this is the Disney version.” Todd shakes his head, wincing at the pain and the echoes of the story demanding attention. He looks at Dirk, who is inspecting a few leaves of lettuce. “How come you could always remember? Without any of the pain?”
“Easy. I can’t feel the universe here.” Dirk says, waving a leaf of lettuce around. “I had quite the headache in the first dream, but the disconnect between the universe and I was a clear indicator of something being wrong, so my memories always came back to me. The story in my head is there but it’s not as loud, I suppose?”
“Mine is. Loud. And whiny.”
“Ah, well, perils of this mind being seven years old.”
“Seven? What?” The pain in Todd’s head feels like a tug, like a small hand trying to pull him into the candy aisle of the grocery store. All the dots are swimming behind his eyes, waiting to be connected. “Dirk, what’s the case? I can’t remember the case.”
“Oh, right, I don’t think I ever got around to telling you about it!” Dirk grins, clapping his hands together, an expression Todd knows too well. “Well, a few days ago, our client, a nurse, Trish Powell, called us. She’d heard of the agency through a friend of hers, the one who came in about that confusing thing with the goldfish heist, remember? She asked us to investigate the hospital she does shifts at. In the past week, there’ve been an abnormally high number of people falling into comas. She called us in when nurses and other staff started going under as well.”
The tug on Todd’s mind grows petulant, but he swats it away. “What was causing it?”
“Who was causing it.” Dirk says, glint of having solved it in his eyes. “We found her quite quickly, really. Her name is Nicole Cruz, she’s seven years old, she broke her leg trying to ride her bike and now is confined at the hospital feeling very, very bored about it. She also has the uncanny talent of building dreams inside people’s minds and unintentionally trapping them inside those dreams.”
“And we’re trapped in one right now.”
“Yes. That certainly is an issue.” Dirk says, looking quite put out about it. “I don’t think she’s doing it on purpose. She’s too young to understand how real or powerful her abilities are. We were just about to talk to her, tell her to wake everybody up, but—”
“But she put us in a dream before we could.”
“Yes and no. We did get around to talking to her, but when we brought up her dream thing she well, wanted to show us. She was very excited about it.”
“Great,” Todd sighs, grabbing a rock from the ground and throwing it at the cottage. It was the wrong move, because the cottage shatters like a pane of glass to reveal crawling static behind it.“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
“Ah, well, so much for staying in this dream for longer.” Dirk shrugs as he stands, because he has the self preservation instincts of a too confident chicken with a penchant for crossing roads.
“The dreams are getting less stable,” Todd scrambles to stand. The static drips to the ground in liquid puddles. “We need to get out of here. We need to wake up.”
Dirk rocks on his feet, looking a bit shifty now. “Indeed we do.”
“Any ideas?” Todd asks
“Not a single clue,” Dirk says, voice guilty.
“What?” Todd turns to Dirk. “You’ve been aware this whole time, and nothing?”
“I wasn’t focused on getting out!”
“What else was there to focus on?”
“You,” he says, his words soft all of the sudden. “I could remember, but you couldn’t, and on the off chance that that meant leaving you behind, I—” Dirk stops his sentences, and Todd wants desperately to hear the rest of it. He continues with. “I needed you with me.”
“Okay,” Dirk’s words cause Todd’s heart to ache in unbelievable ways. He grabs Dirk’s hand and squeezes it because what the hell, his best friend is upset, and this isn’t really real anyway. “Okay. I’m with you, now. Two heads are better than one.” He tells Dirk. “Do you have any, like, leads? Hunches?”
Dirk backs away from the static, threatening to surround them both completely. “I’m afraid that’s just the problem. Like I said, I can’t feel the universe in my dreams. I’m quite literally flying blind. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Todd turns to look at Dirk. In Dirk’s eyes, there’s something like fear that he’s trying to hide behind bravado, and Todd is sure the same is true in his own gaze. But Todd can’t find it in himself to feel hopeless. Not when Dirk is here. “We can do this. We just have to solve the case.”
Dirk smiles, “And we’re ever so good at that.”
As the dream consumes them, the last thing Todd feels is Dirk’s fingers interwoven with his own—
-
The forest around Todd is unlike any he’s ever seen before, dream or not. The flowers are whimsical pinks and rainbows, the trees look like they’re painted with watercolors, and the sky looks like blue cotton candy. It’s also huge. Everything towers over Todd like eccentric monoliths.
Speaking of eccentric monoliths.
“Todd! There you are!” Dirk says, strolling into Todd’s vision like a giant. From where Todd can see, Dirk is dressed all dapper, complete with a waistcoat and a tophat.
“Why the hell are you so tall?” Todd squints up at Dirk. Dirk is as tall as two ladders stacked one on top of the other.
“I’m afraid it’s you who’s on the small side,” Dirk crouches down to Todd’s height, a goofy smile held back only by Dirk biting his lip. Dirk pats Todd on the head. “Aren’t you looking cuddly.”
Dirk patting his head makes Todd realize just what is on his head. Two long, fluffy white ears. Todd looks down at his paws. He turns around to see a white fluffy tail. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Alice in Wonderland!” Dirk says, scooping Todd up into his arms and completely ignoring Todd’s squawk of indignation. “You should be happy neither of us is Alice, or else we’d have to worry about beheadings.”
“Mad Hatter at least suits you,” Todd grumbles as Dirk starts walking into the candy colored forest. “Why am I the rabbit?”
“Aren’t you always worried about being late for things? A leftover from your days working in customer service, I assume,” Dirk keeps petting Todd’s head, and Todd wants to tell him to stop because it’s undignified, but a louder part of his brain just tells Todd that this feels nice, no matter how weird it is.
“Where are we going?” Todd asks. Dirk seems to be strolling into the wilderness with confidence, which either means he knows something or that he’s pretending to know something.
“I’ve noticed something.” Dirk says. “The dreams always collapse after we go off the script of the story. Or, er, more off script than regular improvisation can allow for. So!” Dirk lifts Todd up to look at him and Todd feels his horrible little rabbit feet dangle in the air. Todd is so getting back at Dirk for this. “I’m looking for a tea party, of sorts. It should be around here somewhere
“It feels like a script. Nicole in my head, trying to get me to continue with the story.” Her voice is more muddled now that Todd can remember who he is, but he can still feel it. The whining voice of a child who wants to play for a bit longer.
“Exactly.” Dirk touches his finger to Todd’s nose but pulls away before Todd can bite him for it. “She just wants the story to continue, and when it becomes clear that it can’t, because we’re bickering, usually, she changes the story. Oh, here we are.”
In front of them, there is a clearing in the forest. In the center, a long table filled with ornate teacups and platters, brightly colored sugar delights, and two chairs on either end. Dirk places Todd on the table and absentmindedly scratches Todd behind the head. Todd swats his hand away.
“Okay, I know you’re enjoying me being a rabbit, but you better quit it—
Dirk puts his thinking face on, completely ignoring Todd’s complaints. “What I can’t figure out is what her end goal is here.”
“End goal?” Todd asks, feeling his ears go up in curiosity.
“What does she want?” He says. “I keep solving all the stories, so it can’t be that.”
Todd rolls his eyes. Typical Dirk. “You’re not supposed to solve bedtime stories.”
Wait.
“Well what on earth are you supposed to—”
Bedtime stories aren’t for solving.
“That’s it!” Todd hops up into Dirk’s arms.
“What’s it?” Dirk looks at Todd, awe in his eyes, like he always does when Todd figures something out. His eyes flit back to the table and widen, though. “Uh! Todd!”
Todd turns to see the treats on the table begin to melt into globs of black. The chairs are beginning to sink into to the ground and the cotton candy sky is unspooling its thread.
“You’re not supposed to solve bedtime stories,” Todd says quickly. On the off chance that he forgets again, Dirk will remember, and then they can get out. “That’s the thing. You keep thinking about it like a puzzle, when we’re supposed to be thinking of the dreams for what they are. Stories. Stories meant for kids.”
“I don’t—” Dirk still looks confused, and the dream is disintegrating around them.
“Kids don’t want to solve stories,” Todd tells Dirk. “What they want from stories is the happily ever after.”
The sky begins to thunder. A voice cuts through the static, ringing through their minds or through the entire dreamscape itself. I’ll make the next one easy the voice thunders.I made it just for you two.
Before Todd can wonder what that means, Dirk holds him to his chest, almost protectively, and the dream shuts off.
-
Todd recognizes the story immediately. Cinderella was one of those movies Amanda would watch over and over again as a little kid to fall asleep, and she would always make Todd sit through the whole thing with her. He’d joked that he memorized the film more than Amanda did, because she always fell asleep right around at the scene Todd is inhabiting now. The ball. Todd stands in the ballroom, bowing at every impeccably dressed but eerily faceless women who come to curtsy at him, but his eyes are at the balcony at the far end of the room.
It’s time for him to come.
Todd is waiting for him.
When Dirk arrives, he’s wandering around the balcony aimlessly, dressed in a fine blue suit that shimmers in the moonlight. Todd follows his cue and walks past the crowd of lifeless dream puppets and takes his hand.
Dirk turns, surprised, but smiles when he sees Todd.
“It seems you’ve found me this time,” Dirk says.
“I figured I’d follow the script, this time,” Todd tells him. Around them, the orchestral waltz music begins. Todd doesn’t want this dream to collapse, so he gently pulls Dirk to the ballroom.
“Dance with me?” Todd says, willing his voice not to falter or crack. It’s just a dream. They just need to get out of here.
Dirk’s grip on his hand tightens. In Dirk’s gaze, something goes sad and Todd wants nothing more but to wipe that sadness away. “Of course.”
Todd doesn’t know how to dance the waltz, but it seems Dirk does. Todd places his other hand on Dirk’s shoulder and let’s him lead, following each of Dirk’s steps with an ease that feels more like the dream leading his moves than himself. Better then. Gives him time to think about important things, like how Dirk is looking at him, how Dirk’s hand feels holding Todd’s own, how—
How this is only a dream. How there are hundreds of dream puppets watching their every move. How the notes of the music seem to be eyes hovering around them, egging them on.
“Do you remember what you said?” Dirk asks softly. “In the last story?”
“Yeah. We need a happily ever after.”
“So how do we go about getting a happily ever after here?”
“Cinderella,” Todd says, a cold and nervous feeling starting grow from inside of him. “Pretty obvious.”
Dirk’s hand shifts on his shoulder, clenching and unclenching. “Do you think it should be exactly like the story? Do I have to, well, run away before it’s midnight?”
“I think the story adapts but, uh,” Todd coughs. “It’s a love story.”
“That it is.” Dirk looks away for a second. “True love’s kiss, and all that.”
“Look, if you want, we can wait for another story. An easier one.” Todd says quickly. Now that he remembers, he remembers how often he’s wondered how this would go, if it would ever go like this. This isn’t one of the scenarios he’s imagined.
“That’s not—” Dirk looks to him. “I don’t think we should risk it.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I just don’t want to force you into this.”
“You aren’t” Dirk says quickly. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Todd’s heart shatters a bit at that. Like a dream, he only finds the thrum of static behind it. “Of course.”
“But I just want to go on the record that it, er, would mean something. For me. It doesn’t have to for you, of course, but I thought it’d be best to be honest.” Dirk mumbles, faltering in his steps of the waltz.
“Wait.” Todd was only half listening because of his heartbreak and all that, but the words are starting to trickle into his brain. “What are you saying, Dirk.”
“I’m—” Dirk takes a deep breath.“I’m saying I spent all of these stories looking for you because I couldn’t bear to leave you behind. I’m saying I need you with me, want you with me in any capacity you’d allow. If there’s one thing that’s real in this story, it’s my feelings for you, and I just—wanted to let you know. Before we do this.”
“Do you want to know how I kept remembering you?” Todd says, feeling that part of him that always calls brave take the wheel.
Dirk tilts his head. “Because I was quite the productive nuisance?”
“Well, yeah, that, but also because—” Todd closes his eyes for a moment and wills himself to keep going, because this might just be a dream, but what he’s about to say is one of the realest things he can think of. “The stories kept pushing you back but it couldn't. Not all of it. Because how I feel about you it’s—it’s too big, too much of my entire goddamn life to hide away. It kept trying to make me forget but whenever I saw you, I knew there was something more, because I—”
When Todd looks back up at Dirk, Dirk is smiling. It’s the same smile that makes him remember each and every time. The same smile not even dozens of dreams could truly erase from his mind. “Are you trying to say what I think you’re trying to say, Todd Brotzman.”
“I’m saying this,” Todd says, and decides to throw words away entirely.
He raises a hand to cup Dirk’s face, and nearly goes breathless when Dirk tilts his head into his touch. Todd leans up, shuts his eyes, and slowly presses his lips to Dirk’s. The kiss is soft. Unsure at the edges before he feels Dirk relax, before he feels Dirk’s lips moving against his own. Vaguely, Todd can feel the the air become sharp. He can hear static building all around them, but he couldn’t give a goddamn about any of that right now. The only thing that matters right now is Dirk, is how his Dirk’s hands feel on Todd’s waist, how soft Dirk’s lips are, how gentle this kiss is, how this might be a dream but this moment feels like one of the realest Todd’s ever experienced.
The static builds and builds and Todd doesn’t notice any of it. He loses himself in Dirk’s hold and knows that whatever happens will happen.
Now, this moment, is theirs and theirs alone.
-
Todd wakes up.
It feels like waking up from a nap that lasted three weeks. His eyes feel heavy, his head is swimming, and even after blinking a few times, he can’t quite place where he is. There’s a pillow under his head and hands threading through his hair, but putting a picture together is difficult. The only thing he can recognize is—
“Dirk,” he says. Dirk is above him, with Todd’s head in his lap.
“Todd,” Dirk smiles at him worriedly.
“Is this real?” Todd sluggishly raises a hand, grasping for something. It finds Dirk’s other hand, and Dirk squeezes his fingers.
“Absolutely,” Dirk nods. His eyebrows furrow. “Do you—Well. How much do you remember?”
Todd remembers stories upon stories. Todd remembers following his heart instead of his mind. Todd remembers Dirk coming to find him each and every time. He says, “Everything.”
“And that’s good?” Dirk asks, and Todd wants to get rid of any doubt he might still have.
“Yeah,” he says. With the small amount of strength he has, Todd tightens his hold on Dirk’s hand. Solid. Real. Here. No more dreams, just a reality Todd can’t wait to live out. “Yeah, it is.”