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Dream finds the Corinthian on the shores of the Dreaming, with his bare toes buried in the black sand and his gaze fixed firmly on his own hands. He does not look up as Dream approaches, though the Endless sees the curl of his shoulders become that much more pronounced, sees the line of his mouth become just a little thinner.
Something is wrong. Dream knows this because the Corinthian is one of his creations and Dream can feel the tremor of discontent like a string being plucked, if he pays close enough attention. But he also knows because he knows the Corinthian – he has seen his nightmare pull away once before, has seen him hide his hurt until it festered and destroyed him.
More than anything, Dream does not want to see that happen again.
He aims to ask, as soon as he gets close enough to speak, but a glint of light catches on something in the Corinthian’s hand and pulls his attention. As he draws nearer, he sees the nightmare has his ring cradled in the palm of his hand, the blue gem glittering in the sunlight.
He does not look pleased by it at all. Odd.
“Is it not to your liking?” Dream asks, though he doubts that is the case. The ring is a perfect copy of its previous iteration, crafted nearly as carefully as the Corinthian himself.
The nightmare shakes his head, and, almost instinctively, he curls his fingers around the ring. “It’s fine,” he says, and perhaps he realizes he says it a little too quickly, a little too urgently, because he winces and shakes his head before Dream can even begin to speak again. “I was just… thinking,” he adds. “It’s nothing, my lord. Nothing’s wrong.”
Dream elects to ignore the last part of that statement and the blatant lie it came wrapped in. “And of what were you thinking?”
The nightmare’s jaw clenches briefly, and then he sighs, far more dejectedly, Dream thinks, than this conversation warrants. “I tried so hard to get rid of this damn thing,” the Corinthian says, something cold staining his voice, and suddenly Dream is focused. "So many times. And I could never… I could never." He turns the ring over in his hand, the blue stone catching the light, before sliding it back on to his finger. "I was never strong enough. I'm still not, apparently. That’s what I was thinking about."
Dream frowns, hesitating before he speaks. “Do you wish me to take it away?” he asks, and the Corinthian laughs suddenly, wetly – like a scream, like a sob.
“Yes,” he says, and Dream thinks that he has never heard a single word drip with quite so much bitter denial.
In another lifetime, he might have simply complied. He might have questioned the nature of the sharp sorrow that had burrowed itself under his nightmare’s skin in the privacy of his own mind, but he would not have pressed. But now? Now, so soon after reforming that skin himself, inch by perfect, golden inch?
“Corinthian,” Dream murmurs, and the nightmare flinches at the sound of his voice, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat abruptly.
“I know, okay?” He turns to face Dream, though he keeps his gaze lowered, fixed on the sand beneath their feet. “I know. It shouldn’t matter. It’s just… it’s just pretty at this point, right? Aesthetic, or whatever. I know it doesn’t mean anything, I know, and I should just be fucking grateful that I’m here – and I am!” He jerks his head up, and Dream sees himself reflected in the dark lenses of the nightmare’s glasses. “I am, I swear it. I just–”
“Corinthian.”
The nightmare snaps his mouth shut with an audible sound, takes half a step back before he catches himself. He is one line of tension, from head to toe, a chaotic mix of fear and sorrow and bitter, biting resentment, and Dream does not understand. This time, he is fairly certain, he has done nothing to earn the Corinthian’s ire – and yet, here they are.
Dream closes the gap between them, and, before the nightmare can stumble back again, he catches him by the wrist and drags his hand out of the pocket out of his coat, ignoring the quiet, stuttered, “My lord,” the Corinthian offers up. Instead, he takes the nightmare’s hand in his own, turning it so that the ring is visible to them both.
“Do you not recall why I marked you in this way?” Dream asks, voice low, and the Corinthian looks away once more. “My nightmare, did I not weave that memory back into your mind?”
The Corinthian makes that sound again, that sharp, wet sob, and Dream aches, somewhere in his chest. It pains him, seeing his nightmare in such distress. “Little one,” he tries again, and this time tears drip from under the Corinthian’s glasses, leaving red streaks as they roll down his face. “Tell me. Plainly, please. Why are you troubled?”
With the hand that is not cradling the Corinthian’s, Dream reaches up, brushing a blood-red tear away with his thumb. He feels the way the nightmare leans into his touch, desperate and instinctive, and the ache in his chest blooms into something fiery and fanged. This hurt is not new. The Corinthian carried it in the Waking, when he was running from his master, and he has carried it since Dream remade him – and like this, gored open, raw and wounded, he wants nothing more than to be comforted by the same hands that tore him apart and stitched him back together again.
“You are safe,” Dream promises, and those three words make his nightmare tremble. “This is not a fault, Corinthian. Not a flaw. I only want to understand.”
The Corinthian draws in a shuddering breath, and then, after a moment, he sighs. “I remember,” he says, his quiet tone almost petulant. “Of course I remember. It… that’s why it’s wrong, now.” He pauses, and then, like all the fight has gone out of him, his shoulders sag, and he leans hard into Dream’s touch. “He was your masterpiece. Your favorite. That’s why you marked him.”
Oh. Oh. The pieces fall into place, and the picture turns so clear so quickly that Dream wonders how he couldn’t see it before.
It’s not that the Corinthian has forgotten – it’s that he does not understand.
“Do you think I did not craft you just as carefully?” Dream asks, gently tipping the nightmare’s chin up. “That I did not form you with my own hands, with my will, exactly as I wished you to be?”
“But I’m not–”
“You are not his mistakes,” Dream interrupts, gently. “You are not his flaws, his pettiness – just as you are not my own oversights. My own failings. You are more than that, little one. More than your memory. You are my masterpiece. My little dream. How could I not favor you?”
The Corinthian’s glasses dissolve away into sand at the pull of his will, but before the nightmare can pull away, Dream drags his thumb gently over the Corinthian’s cheek, smearing blood over skin. It’s enough to have the nightmare hesitate, to have him linger – to have him stay so Dream can lean up and press his lips over so gently to the nightmare’s forehead. The gesture makes the Corinthian start, makes a sound tumble out of his throat, timid and tremulous – makes his lips part as he turns his face into Dream’s palm, making the kiss he presses there in return open-mouthed and breathy.
“The ring is still my mark,” Dream murmurs. “My claim. You are wanted, Corinthian, and you are mine. Never doubt that.”
A hitching breath, and then, ever so softly, “I’m sorry, my lord.”
Sorry, like his uncertainties were his own fault, his own burden to bear – and not Dream’s. “Oh, my little nightmare.” Carefully, Dream turns the Corinthian’s face, and this time, the kiss is pressed to one of his ocular mouths. Salt and copper spill over his tongue as the last of the nightmare’s tears tumble over, and he clutches at Dream, fingers curling tightly in his lord’s cloak.
“Tell me,” Dream says after a moment, turning to drag his lips over the curve of the Corinthian’s cheek. “Tell me so that I know you understand. That you are wanted. That you are favored. That you are marked as mine.”
Dream hears the hitch in the Corinthian’s breath at the same time he feels the jerk of his hips, both involuntary, both telling. And before the nightmare can think to apologize again, Dream kisses him, hard, drags him forward so that the hardness he felt in the Corinthian’s pants presses firmly up against his hip.
The Corinthian moans into his mouth as need pours off him in waves, desperate and heady. It is not want, flimsy and easily satisfied – no, this is bone-deep and blood-thick, need like starvation, like desert-driven thirst. The Corinthian’s need demands satisfaction, even if the nightmare himself would never think to, would never dream to.
“Tell me,” Dream commands, and the words spill from the nightmare’s lips.
“I’m wanted,” he gasps, and Dream rewards him with a surge of pleasure straight to his core, something that makes him shudder and choke and grind desperately against his lord. He whines when it is not enough, when the friction only stokes the fire higher instead of offering any amount of relief. “Fuck. Please, I need–”
“Tell me, and I will give you what you need, little nightmare.”
The Corinthian keens, high and tight, as Dream presses a biting kiss to his jaw. “I’m– ah, fuck, fuck, I’m favored.” He trails off again, squirming as he rolls his hips. His fingers claw at Dream’s chest, eager and wild, and Dream thinks of how he might be, spread out on sheets as dark as the night sky, golden hair splayed out underneath him like a halo.
He wonders if it would heighten this desperation, make it sweeter, make it taste like red wine and roses instead of copper and seawater.
He drags kisses up the cut of the Corinthian’s jaw, humming softly as the nightmare trembles. He’s about to prompt, to encourage those last few words, and then the Corinthian sucks in a breath and blurts them, hurried and nearly stuttered:
“And I’m yours, I’m yours, I’ve always been yours, I–”
And the nightmare sobs as he comes, his words trailing off into broken, choked-off gasps. Dream holds him through it, holds him close, strokes the back of his neck gently while he shakes and shivers and comes undone – and continues to shake, even after the last waves of pleasure have receded.
“You are mine,” Dream murmurs, pressing the words into the nightmare’s skin like the softest brand, and the Corinthian lets out a soft, ragged sigh against his neck. “Oh, little one, you could never be anything else.”