Chapter Text
When he drove away from the house thirty minutes ago, Dream didn’t exactly mean to end up here. He’s at a lake pretty close to where they live, an inland body of water not quite large enough for a pontoon boat, though some fuckers try to bring those out here. They wind up looking like a yacht parked in a puddle. Fucking idiots.
He throws a rock into the lake just to watch the way it ruins the surface.
All he ever does is ruin things.
Angrier now, he picks up another rock and throws it even further. He doesn’t stop there. This time, he finds a heavier rock—bigger and hefty—and chucks it as far as his Minecraft playing arms will send it—not nearly as far as he thought it would go, he’ll admit—but the way it crashes mightily into the middle of the lake brings a warm satisfaction that he’s been missing.
If he’s going to fuck everything up, he means to fuck it up entirely. Never let it be said that Dream hasn’t burned the whole bitch down and salted the earth behind him when he decides to fuck something up.
There aren’t enough rocks for this. He needs to go a few rounds with Sapnap’s punching bag. He’s never reasonable or stable when he gets this angry, acting first and regretting it later. This has the same flavor to it, but that doesn't mean he’s able to control it. He wants the world to burn. He wants to make the world burn because of her.
How could she say that to him? How could she?
An hour ago he was on top of the world. An hour ago he was happy in his lane, thriving and making content, and now it’s like a meteor came down and blew it all into hot shards.
He had made a throwaway joke about his crush on Spider-Man. The new pictures from the set of the new film had started showing up online and Dream made some stupid quip about wanting Spider-Man to bend him over in that suit and show him a good time. It was going to be a great TikTok, something funny and short that his audience would gobble up.
It’s a joke he’s made before to his friends, one that never fails to get a groan of annoyance from Sapnap and a knowing smirk from George. The way her face had fallen took him by surprise.
Yeah, but you’re not gay, she had said. It wasn’t just what she said, but the dismissive way she delivered the line, like this was a point they agreed on long ago. She had said it like it was more of an umbrella—that he isn’t attracted to men at all.
No, he thinks, he’s not gay. He’s always maintained that he’s not gay. That’s factually correct.
Yeah, but I’m not straight, he’d said back, trying to inflict a little humor into it to deflate this growing unease in his chest. This isn’t news. She shouldn’t do that mini frown she does when she’s displeased about something. Usually that look makes him perk up, makes him rethink the last few sentences and see where he went wrong and course correct. She’s not hard to read once you get to know her expressions.
Yes, you are, Clay, she had said, patting him on the leg. You’re obviously straight.
Then the confusion had set in. Did she really not know? How had she missed that? It’s not like he’d been subtle about it. The fucking internet at large had made him come out about four times by now. He knows she’d been following him online for a long time, long enough to make cheating jokes that he pretended to think were funny just to not rock the boat.
He’d already sensed he was walking through quicksand. Like in Sands of Time, he needed a clear path or he’d sink. So, very, very carefully, he’d said, I’m not straight, though. Like, there are some dudes I’m attracted to.
She shook her head and smiled at him like he was a child. That was for attention. You’re not gay. You don’t like men, Clay. I think I would know.
Her hand had curled inward to his thigh, rising higher. He was caught off guard by her advance. Did she think now was the time to—
Dream pushed her hand away then. How exactly would she know that he’s straight? How does she think she knows his mind better than he does? Does he need to suck a dick to—
She didn’t like that he rebuffed her. She didn’t like that he argued with her. She suddenly seemed to not like many things about him. She raised her voice. Dream raised his voice. She yelled. He yelled. And suddenly he was storming out of the house with just his car keys.
How has this issue not come up before? Has he really just not mentioned it in all this time? Has he never—
No, he’d never mentioned when he found another man attractive. He hadn’t spoken up when he spotted a man who makes his stomach feel fluttery. He’s only spoken about game stats when he talked about his football teams, not their other attributes. He—how did this happen?
How did his own girlfriend not believe that he’s queer? Antis online are one thing—they’re always looking to invalidate him and call him a liar. Many queer people in the community have denied him or called him a queerbaiter. Dream’s used to that. He just wasn’t expecting to hear that rhetoric from someone who’s supposed to love him.
She loves him, right?
A battle of tangling emotions takes place inside him—the contenders strong, burning white hot, and all demanding dominance. He can’t name them all, but he counts disappointment, naiveté, melancholy, irritation, and frustration, with rage coming out as the clear winner.
He hates feeling like this.
The lake is calm again, but he is not.
Overhead, a bird calls out to its mate. A frog croaks in the brush beside him. And to his left, a brown spider spins a web so intricate that it cuts out the legs beneath Dream’s anger until all he can do is stare at it in awe.
The web looks fragile, the threads tiny, but he knows they’re stronger than they appear. He watches the spider spin its web for a long moment, watches how the spider continues ever onward, the silk trailing behind it in its wake. Spindly legs connect the threads to the rest of the web.
Has he ever studied a spider this closely before? Has he ever just sat and watched nature take place like this, watched a set of instincts play out before him?
Oh, to be a spider carefully making its new home without a worry in the world. This spider has never disappointed anyone. This spider has never been so egregiously misunderstood. This spider has—well, Dream suddenly remembers, the female spiders might eat their male counterparts after mating. So, maybe it could be worse.
A hoarse laugh escapes him now, the kind that makes him sound like he’s insane. Maybe he is. Maybe he is, indeed.
He stares so long at the spider that his eyes cross. He imagines the spider as the one that bit Peter Parker. He wonders, not for the first time, what would happen to him if he were bitten by a radioactive spider. If he was like Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man and he shot webs out of his wrists—what kind of web would he build for himself?
Dream snorts in self-deprecation. His life is one big, tangled spiderweb—one he’s been weaving so long that he doesn’t even remember how he got here. He’s on the absolute edge of his own web, the outskirts, and when he looks inward toward the middle of it all, he’s too far away to see it clearly.
There are so many things he hasn’t wanted to think about. There are so many—it’s been easier to just not. It’s—his brain has been holding things back for so long, a dam close to bursting for ages now.
This fight with his girlfriend disturbed the web, pulled a thread loose until the outside interference made that dormant part of Dream wake up with a scream in his throat. He can’t settle it back again. He can’t keep scuttling around the outside of the web, making it ever bigger. He has to get to the middle. He deserves to rest in the middle.
He’s been making his way through life with his spider silk behind him and now his web is fucked. It’s too late to go back to sleep. It’s too late to put his head back in the sand.
Yeah, but you’re not gay, is all it took. The aftershocks of that statement rock him. Are still rocking him.
He can’t believe how misunderstood he is.