Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tommy sprinted across the bare obsidian, the no-man’s land between prisoner and warden now between alive and dead.

He was something like the prison he would die in, if he had time to think about it, something like alive and something like dead. Vines crawling up the walls some representation of the life that struggled on unrepentant.

He had intended this, though, and the lava didn't. He had plotted and schemed with Tubbo to get Dream and Punz and him alone in the ruins (they were fairly normal, actually, if a little declawed, but it was not what it was and Tommy hated change enough to see that as an innate negative; he'd known too many ruins not to expect the whole world to fall away, eventually), but now all he wanted was to find some way to tell him to call it off. Call it off. Like the nuclear bomb rachetting towards the prison-that-wasn't at incredible speeds was just one of Techno's dogs. And even those weren't easily gotten to stop fighting; they were trained by the best warrior on the server, after all, and rarely got brought away from that little arctic house (or commune? Did it count as a commune?) for peaceful reasons.

His brain was spinning out of control as he struggled desperately to climb up the fucking walls, do something to get him out of here.

It was the same as back on that tower, wasn't it? He'd thought he wanted to die. He'd thought that he understood death and all of its costs. He'd thought that all of those heavy, heavy costs would be worth it (maybe he still did). But the boy inside of him—the boy that was almost a wild animal with all his rabid desire for life, god, life!—was desperate to survive. But he had accounted for that. There was no way for Dream or Punz to get out of the prison quickly enough. There was no place for them to run that would not be destroyed or irradiated to all hell by the blast. There was no place for Tommy to run. No place to hide.

"I'm sorry!" he shouted back to Dream, left angry and bewildered and angrier because of his confusion.

There was a part of him that still trembled at the idea of Dream being angry, some latent instinct from the weeks he had spent in exile, but the rest of him just ached with guilt. He was afraid, sure, but he wasn't afraid. He had no right to be. He had engineering this whole situation—with Tubbo's help with the literal engineering—and now he was—what was it?—reaping what he'd sown. He could've been a farmer, in another life. He could've been anything he could possibly imagine (he would be nothing, now). And it wasn't the first time either of them had lost their so-called last life, he knew. The only problem was that, this time, there would be no coming back from it. Only Punz and Dream knew the secrets of the Revive Book. They would both be dying in the explosion. Tommy would be stuck in Limbo, and not only that, but stuck with them, until the end of eternity.

In any normal world with any normal men, that would have been the end of things. You can't build back what has been irradiated so utterly—not without some scrap of life left, and he'd made sure that that would not be possible. They would all be gone. Forever.

But, here, a god, smiling, laughed.

Tommy's vision went white. His whole body was alight with pain for one awful, terrible moment.

And then it broke, and he was left in Pandora's main cell with a wall of lava in front of him. His vision was lower than usual—oh wait. He was sitting—well, crouching? His proprioception gave the image of a snake, coiled up and ready to strike, but he was pretty sure that couldn't be literal. The lava crackled. Purple liquid dripped languidly from the crying obsidian above him. He looked up to avoid it, and found that he was already under one of the regular obsidian blocks and his limbs were carefully arranged to not be within range of the dripping.

Speaking of, his limbs? Were... not normal. First of all, he was wearing a prison uniform, which he probably should've realized earlier. His proportions were similar, but his feet were covered in new scars. So were his arms. Shit—was he missing a finger? His middle finger on his left hand was cut off just above the first knuckle so he couldn't even attempt to flip someone off with that hand (which actually wasn't quite as bad as it could've been, since he was right-handed). His nails had blood caked under them, and seemed much more jagged and shorter than usual.

He didn't have a mirror to try to look at other changes, obviously, so he put his hands up to his face to try to feel the texture, suddenly horrified that there might be a giant deformity on his face that he couldn't see—why what he looked like was the main concern when he'd just been caught in a nuclear explosion and had woken up in a prison cell in what almost seemed like a completely new body other than the paleness of his skin (but even that looked grayer than usual, like he hadn't seen the sun in months) he couldn't explain—but nothing seemed inhumanly out of place. But he had stubble on his cheeks and chin, when he usually kept it clean-shaven—he couldn't grow a full enough beard to own it and look like a real manly man, so other than a short experiment that everyone he knew had thoroughly made fun of him for, he'd kept it baby-smooth. While his hands continued to trace the contours of his jaw and cheeks, he did notice that he felt very bony. He was usually skinny, but he'd eaten more regularly since exile, and even then he didn't remember ever being this sharp. Seriously, his cheekbones jutted out of his cheeks. He must look like a starvation victim.

Pistons clicked somewhere.

He shoved himself back even tighter into the wall, some instinct telling him to cower and make himself small. Make himself less of a target. Shut up, brain, he told himself, feeling irritation rise. He was supposed to be better than this now! Dream still scared him, sure, but Dream wasn't here. Still, he couldn't make his body move, as the lava slowly receded, revealing—

Wait, what? It was... him. Tommyinnit. Some... clone of him was standing there on the other side of the lava dividing the main cell that he was put in for some reason and the entrance that connected to the rest of the prison. That was his face. His hair. His body. His clothes. But not—not quite his smile. It was different in some subtle way: harder, tighter, more smirk than toothy grin. Chills ran down his spine despite the lava heating the obsidian all around him when he realized who—what it was. Some horrible amalgamation with his appearance and Dream's—sheer aura. It—

No! He couldn't go through this, not for a whole afterlife! He'd thought he feared dying there before the nuke hit, and now all of his fears had come true in the worst ways. And there was still so much potential for things to, as they always seemed to on this server and especially to him, get worse. What was nightmare-Dream going to do to him wearing his face? Was this all to taunt him for that weird vision he'd had of Dream's past? He didn't want to know any of that! He didn't want to have to see his greatest enemy, the man he'd struggled against since the very beginning, playing and laughing with his friends, being happy and normal and human. He could have died without knowing that, and things would have... not been good, but would've gone to plan, at the very least!

Dream-Tommy flicked a lever and stepped onto the platform to take him over to the cell. Tommy's heart pounded in his ears. Usually his nightmares of Dream include the destruction of his possessions, especially the important ones: Tubbo's address, the discs, Ghostbur's blue. Sometimes his friends, too. He'd had one particularly awful nightmare every night for nearly a week, of Dream saying, 'put your items in the hole, Tommy', like he always did; but in that terror, he didn't have anything—his hands and inventory were completely empty. So Wilbur would walk up behind him—the old Wilbur, with the dark undereyes and greasy hair he'd had in Pogtopia and that awful, cigarette smoke-infested coat—with the same desperate smile he'd had when he talked about pressing the button and ending it all, and he wouldn't say a word. He'd just jump into the pit, looking to all the world like he was willing (but Tommy saw the way his hands trembled where he held them behind his back and Tommy saw how Dream was making him do it even if neither of them actually said or did anything to each other—he saw it all, but no one else did) and then everything would blow up. Tommy always woke up drenched in sweat (and if he pulled Wilbur's old coat into bed with him to snuggle with when his sheets were too cold and wet, well, no one saw that either, did they?).

He had nightmares every single night now. Most in Logstedshire, some in Pogtopia, some in L'Manberg—recently, an increasing number in Pandora's Vault. None of them had featured Dream wearing his face. So he was in Limbo, and for some fucking reason, his subconscious had decided on this. Great.

"Dream?" he said, when the platform got close enough for him to be heard when he spoke at a reasonable volume. That was quieter than he normally spoke, but, well. This was Dream he was talking to, and he was very aware that he was the lesser in their power dynamic right now, as much as he hated it.

Besides, his throat felt kind of raw, like he was sick or hadn't spoken in a long time. That must be why his voice sounded different than usual, too.

"Wait, who are you?" Dream asked.

Tommy frowned. "What? Are you going crazy, man? Because if you are, I'm not responsible for it this time. Forget what I said before. This, big D—this is on you."

His—Dream’s brow furrowed. "You—Tommy?”

"Yeah?" This had to be a joke, right? Or some kind of weird manipulation trick they only taught in the advanced classes at Villian School? "Don't tell me you hit your head or something."

"I think hitting my head is the least of my worries," Dream pointed out. "considering you blew me up with—how did you even do that? TNT minecarts?"

"A nuclear bomb, actually."

"What?"

Tommy just sighed. “Don’t ask.”

Huh. That’s a weird expression to see on his own face: the eyes have all of the intensity of Dream’s when he’s trying to figure out a problem—Tommy can practically see the thoughts spinning around his brain.

“So,” he says. “Ever been in Limbo before?”

Dream shakes his head, and a dash of arrogant warmth curled in Tommy’s heart—here, finally, was a place he understood better than Dream did; Dream was a necromancer, but there were some things you could only truly comprehend by experiencing them yourself, drawing their darkness into yourself and letting them split you apart and remake you.

And—gods—only Dream. Only Dream would study death by making his… friend? Research partner? Whatever—die over and over again, but never dare to go under himself. Bitch.

He scowls. “You seemed real fucking curious about it when you killed me.”

“And now you’ve—now you’ve killed me,” Dream says. The word ‘killed’ comes out foreign on his tongue. “So we’re even.”

“Don’t think it works like that.”

Dream’s still smiling—Tommy wants to wipe that fucking look off his face. Never mind that it’s still actually his face. “How does it work, then?”

And Tommy—

Something dark beckons in his mind. It’d be a novelty, at least—call him a narcissist, but he’s always been curious. And if they’re dead anyway? It’s not like any of this was ever going to be good, so he might as well make it worse. He doesn’t really intend to go all the way with it, just mess with his enemy a little bit.

“Well, if you really want it to be even,” His smile feels as cruel as Dream’s had been back then (was this what it had felt like?), watching him intently even as he scrambles to his feet. “we have to—you know what I’m going to do, right?”

Dream scoffs. Like it’s a joke—like Tommy isn’t deadly serious. If it was just a flight of fancy before, Dream’s absolute refusal to take him seriously stokes it into a fire of pure determination. “What? You’re not—that’s not happening, Tommy.”

“Funny,” Tommy says while sauntering up to the barrier that separates them. “I don’t remember you ever giving me a choice.”

“Don’t act like—” Dream shivers as Tommy runs a finger down from the hollow behind his earlobe along his jaw. “Don’t act like you didn’t beg for it.”

His gentle touch turns into a grab. He can feel Dream’s teeth and the bones of his chin under his jabbing fingertips.

Dream shuts his mouth.

It wasn’t—he feels the need to specify, even if only to himself, that it wasn’t like that. He’d been stuck in a prison cell with his greatest nightmare, and then he’d killed him and he’d gone to hell and come back. Wasn’t he supposed to come back wrong? Wasn’t dying supposed to take a toll on a person? In all the stories he knew, people that came back from the dead brought a piece of hell with them. They turned angry, avenging angels ready to rip the world apart in retribution. Wilbur did, but he was angry before.

But Tommy had died and come back and still the only devil he could name was there in that cell with him, asking stupid questions about his personal hellscape: who he’d met—because even in Tommy’s death, he was far from the most important person in Dream’s mind—how long it had lasted compared to the real world—fuck you, this is so much more than a multiplication problem! (and it felt plenty real to him, while he was in it)—what it had felt like.

Everything had felt like too much, and he hadn’t wanted to be touched. He kept startling at the cries of the guardians that kept Dream from digging out. The feeling of his own shirt on his skin made him want to vomit.

He’d stumbled, the cell dipping and swaying around him like rough water, and almost went face-first into the lava.

Dream caught him.

His hand on his arm was warm and steady and didn’t hurt like everything else did, and he didn’t have the strength to fight it. He didn’t even have the strength to stand; he sank to his knees and put his hand high on Dream’s thigh. ‘I want to hate you,’ he said like a plea, and Dream understood what he meant. Just like Tommy understood what ‘tell me what it felt like’ meant. There were two Dreams, Tommy knew: the one he pretended to be, all cold rationality and mastermind plans, and the one that hid behind the mask. That version of Dream was passionately furious, passionately everything. That version of Dream had broke him down to nothing in Exile, had sent him to the top of that cobblestone tower with explosions and lies.

If Dream had been kinder to him, he knew he might’ve stayed.

‘Sam won’t hear you if you scream,’ Dream said, and it was both threat and permission. Then he unzipped his pants.

It wasn’t long before Dream fulfilled his promise, bending Tommy over the chest and slamming into him until he shrieked for him to ‘stop—please stop, you’re hurting me—you’re a rapist, Dream, you—god—you wanted to add that to your list?—stop, stop, stop—'

But he bucked his hips back onto Dream’s dick every time, and when Dream paused, his ‘stop’s turned into ‘please, Dream, more’.

Sam never said anything about it, if he did hear.

Dream didn’t either.

“Get over the barrier and get on your knees,” Tommy says in the present, letting go of Dream’s chin.

He obeys, and Tommy looks down at his own blue-gray eyes, wide and expectant. Is this what Dream saw? But Dream now isn’t as scared as Tommy then was, he can tell. He thinks he knows what’s going on. He thinks that, since Tommy said that he was going to make things even, that they’re going to be exactly even, in action only.

Of course Tommy remembers every detail of what Dream did to him that day (he’s jerked off to the memory often enough, in the privacy of his own bed, alone so no one could hear the way he moaned his personal nightmare’s name in ecstasy). He can replicate the actions exactly, if he wants to. But it’s the feeling he wants to repeat. The feeling of being entirely out of his depth, of being prey in the jaws of powers beyond his comprehension, of begging for it to stop and not meaning it but not knowing if Dream knew he didn’t mean it or if he just didn’t care. He never saw Dream helpless before. He wants to see it now.

Even if Dream’s in his body.

Even if he has no fucking clue what he’s doing. He’s never had sex with anyone but Dream—and isn’t that a fucking tragedy? He’s never had to take charge, and even though he wants it—wants so badly to take what he wants from Dream and punish him for all he’s done to him—he’s unsure.

Dream sees his hesitation and smiles. “You don’t know what you want, do you?”

“Shut up,” Tommy growls, and—wow—it’s so easy to sound menacing with Dream’s voice, isn’t it? “Take your clothes off.”

“Why?”

He leaps at him, and even in a prisoner’s body, he still holds his own body down.

“If you’re not going to fucking listen to me, I guess I’m gonna have to make you,” Tommy says, pinning Dream to the floor. “Keep your legs open, or I’ll—you don’t want to know. So listen to me. Fucker.”

The confusion in Dream’s face lasts—perfectly—all the way until Tommy raises his hand and slaps it down onto his cunt.

Dream yelps, but his legs stay open. When Tommy rubs his palm over the new red mark, he pushes his hips up to press into Tommy’s hand.

Tommy laughs a little. “You whore. You love this, don’t you? Say ‘thank you’.”

Dream mumbles something that could be ‘thank you’ or ‘fuck you’, he can’t tell.

So he slaps him again, harder.

“Fuck! Thank you!”

He rubs in slow circles, relishing the slick between his fingers. He’s never really liked being touched there by anyone but himself, and part of the punishment was supposed to be the wrongness of the body (he’d been grateful when Dream fucked him in the ass, even though it hurt more; it felt like he’d been seen). But it seems like Dream likes it. Like his body likes it—

He cuts that thought, and the vague spike of betrayal that comes with it, off.

“You get ten, bitch. Stay still and be good for me, and count and thank me after every one, and it’ll be over before you know it.” He winks, and the way Dream nods and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, only tempts him further.

His hand comes down again, just as hard as before.

“Three! Uh, thank you?” Dream says. He’s already panting, and his face is red with excitement or humiliation—or both.

Tommy grins. “You know how to count, don’t you? It doesn’t start with three."

Dream’s jaw tenses just the way he always does when something feels unfair. Tommy adjusts the crotch of the prison jumpsuit.

God, he can’t decide what he wants more: to hold Dream’s legs up and beat him until he’s sobbing and his flesh is stained purple and red like crushed fruit, or to rip his own clothes off and figure out what sex with a dick feels like. He wants to see that red on Dream’s face spread to every part of him. He wants to run his tongue over his chest and taste the sweat.

He'll have time for everything he wants. He just has to be patient.

He spanks Dream again.

“One! Thank you.” Dream still says ‘thank you’ awkwardly—which is fine. Tommy has plenty of time to break him, after all.

He slips two fingers between Dream’s folds and circles his clit languidly. Like honey dripping down. He knows what his own body likes, after all. Dream rewards him with a slow exhale. His legs are still open, doing what Tommy said like a good boy, but he’s relaxing into his touch—like he doesn’t know what’s coming, or like he wants it to catch him by surprise.

The next slap is even harder, Tommy’s fantasies urging him on recklessly.

Dream gasps with it. “Two, thank you, sir!”

Now, that sends a rush of warmth right to Tommy’s cock. “Oh, you’re calling me ‘sir’ now? I didn’t even hit you that hard.”

“Must—must be my arms. They’re strong—stronger than yours,” Dream explains through shaking breaths, hands twitching on his thighs like he wants to rub himself to ease the ache. “And your body’s soft. It feels more pain than I do.”

Tommy hums. “Reddens up pretty nicely, too, doesn’t it? Look—”

Dream does, and inhales sharply, smiling. He’s pleased with it, with what Tommy’s body looks like when Dream’s hands have hurt it. Tommy’s too pleased himself to be mad about that.

“You said you’re stronger than me,” he says while Dream’s eyes are still wandering around his pussy and thighs, red crescents on them where his nails bit into them. “So why are you the one on your back, counting your licks? Why didn’t you ever do this to me?”

“Do you want me to?” Dream asks.

Something between panic and rage strikes Tommy, makes his head buzz with lightning. It feels like a slap, and so he takes it out on Dream, who fucking whines his count, gratitude, and that damn honorific that makes being patient and waiting until he’s done what he said he’d done so much harder. He’d heard people talk about ‘blue balls’ before, but he’d never felt them himself before now, obviously.

With this newly-heightened desire to get it over with established, Tommy hits Dream twice more, harder and faster, the two so close together that he can’t count the first in time before the second comes. And Dream, to his credit, takes it like a champ.

He wants to know who taught Dream to take punishment so nicely. If it’s not an innate quality of his to be a masochistic slut, that is.

He rubs Dream’s clit again, a little faster this time but still in gentle little circles. Dream rolls his hips into his fingers. As Tommy keeps going, he starts practically humping his hand, squirming under his ministrations.

“Ah—ah—ah,” he chides, his fingers pausing. “I told you to stay still, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t—” Dream starts, and Tommy removes his hand entirely, wiping the wetness on his pants.

He knows he’s not being fair, that he really only told Dream to keep his legs open, which he did. He did his damn best to obey, and he’s still going to get punished. That’s the fun part.

“Don’t fucking argue with me.” His tone is cold despite the bouncing energy inside of him. “Just hold your cunt open for me. You don’t have to hold your legs to obey me, right?”

“But I didn’t disobey you!” Dream protests, though Tommy notes with a secret pleasure that he’s doing exactly what he just told him to do, holding his labia open so his clit stands out like a perfect little target. He looks stupid, doing that and trying to argue that he doesn’t deserve to be punished. If he didn’t want it, he wouldn’t be making it so easy, would he? “You didn’t say anything about moving while—while you touched me. You didn’t tell me that rule, you—you bitch!”

“And now you’re fucking swearing at me? And disobeying me again?” Tommy looks over at Dream’s clothes—his own clothes? Whatever. The prison uniform didn’t have a belt, or even shoes for that matter. But he wore one. “I thought it was implied. If you were really as smart as they say you are, you—well. I guess you fucking want me to hurt you. You—you really are a whore.”

He grabs the belt, loops it, and winds it back over his shoulder.

“We’re starting over from the beginning,” he warns, because he does have enough mercy to not make Dream get the count wrong again and have to take another on top of the extra ten he’s ‘earned’. “Hold yourself open wide so I don’t get your fingers.”

He swings, and Dream screams.

His legs are trembling already, and Tommy’s pretty sure he might get more slaps than the ten, anyway. But they stay open for now.

“One,” Dream gets out, glaring at his tormentor. “Thank you, sir.”

“Good boy,” Tommy says. Dream shivers, though he doesn’t move an inch. “Huh. You like that? You like me calling you a good boy?”

Dream doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t shake his head either.

The belt comes down again, just as hard. Dream bites his lip to keep from crying out again. A tear slips down his cheek.

“Two—two, sir.” His voice is choked. “Thank you, sir.”

God, his clit is so red. Tommy runs his fingers over it; it might burn like fire to Dream at this point, but it’s still wet as a lake. Especially when Tommy’s finger dips into his vagina and draws out more slick.

Dream tightens around it.

He should feel guilty for being so sadistic, for teasing Dream just so whipping him hurt more, or for whipping him in general. He wouldn’t do this to anyone else—but then, he wouldn’t want this with anyone else. Dream’s special to him, always has been. There’s nothing like a good villian to test what the hero’s truly capable of, after all.

He pulls his hand away, and just as quickly strikes again with the belt.

Dream lets out a beautiful strangled sound, choking on his own sob of pain. His hips are pushed up, leaning into the blows—his body’s ready for another, but Tommy waits for him to give the count before hitting him again.

“Four, sir,” he sobs out. “I’m sorry, sir.”

He doesn’t even seem to recognize what he’s said wrong for a moment.

“That’s not what you say,” Tommy says, his voice almost earnestly disappointed. He knows Dream can take so much more. He sees his body, sees the way it fucking begs for more every time he beats him. It’s his body after all, and he’s just as much of a masochist as he is a sadist. Still he’s in the mood to play nice—or maybe just in the mood to get this done so he can fuck Dream—so he only says, “That one doesn’t count.”

“You can be so good for me,” he adds, a touch more softly than he intends. “Just seven more.”

“I can’t,” Dream confesses. Prime, he sounds—desperate. “Please, sir, I can’t—anything, anything else, please.”

Tommy watches Dream’s legs tremble, his shoulders heave, the tears dripping down off of his chin in a persistent drizzle. His—beautiful—spring green eyes are fixated on the belt in Tommy’s hands. Not his face. That pisses him off, for some reason; he can’t help but picture George and Sapnap, joking and laughing with Dream in those halyon days before (before he ruined it—before Tommy and Dream ruined each other). They would never have hurt Dream like this. Dream would never be so helpless, so perfect for them.

His voice is suddenly gentle when he instructs, “Turn over, then. You’re still getting the seven, but you can close your legs if you want. And you don’t have to count.” Remembering Dream’s reaction to praise earlier, he adds, somewhat awkwardly, “You’re doing great, Dream. Just relax, bro. Just be a good boy for me.”

Dream fucking giggles. “Bro. Only you would say ‘bro’ while you’re—spanking someone.”

Before Tommy’s brain can catch up to why this is a bad idea, he snaps back, “It’s not as easy as it looks. It’s not like I’ve been able to practice.”

“What, Tubbo never let you slap him around?” Dream rolls his eyes, then—as if he’d just realized they were there—wiped away the last tears remaining on his cheeks. “I know you idiots had something going on—”

“We didn’t,” Tommy says, more sharply than he means to. “There’s not really a whole lot of time for experimenting when there’s wars and political conflicts and shit happening all the time. We weren’t all running around in the woods with our friends. Some of us had shit to do.”

“Like what? Blowing up my stuff?”

They’ve had this fight before. They’re always having this fight. But, looking down at Dream fully nude on his back with his legs still spread, his vulva red with the impact of Tommy’s hand and belt, it strikes him as ridiculous, and he just has to laugh. Dream laughs too, once he’s figured out the joke. He sobers up quick, though.

“So does that mean,” he says slowly. “that you’d never—like, that time in the prison… that was your first time? Ever?”

Tommy looks away. “And that’s that genius-level IQ at work, isn’t it.”

The half-joke comes out flat.

“I’m sorry.”

“Really?” Tommy asks, just as he did before. Before he visited, before Dream killed him and revived him and split him open over a chest, Dream had apologized, but back then, he hadn’t given a satisfactory answer—just a vague ‘for everything I did to you’.

“Not because you haven’t had a lot of sex or whatever,” he clarifies quickly. “Your chronic case of not-getting-any-bitches-itis is your own fault. Just—I’m sorry that your first time was. Like that.”

“Like what, Dream?” Tommy wants to be accusatory, but he’s just tired.

“Like an asshole raping you in a prison cell,” Dream replies. His voice is very quiet.

“You didn’t—I did like it, you know. I’m not even trying to be, like—'no, I’m a big man and strong and powerful so I can’t get raped’, ‘cause men get raped too. I know that. But you didn’t do anything I didn’t ask for.”

“Could you have told me if I did?”

Tommy doesn’t answer for a long moment, and Dream gives up. But he doesn’t roll over onto his back like Tommy told him to. He still just lays there, fingers drumming absently on his knees.

“You don’t have to go easy on me,” he says. “I know what this is about. I know you want revenge for everything I’ve done to you. You can—I won’t stop you.”

What the fuck is wrong with him, that doing this feels worse when Dream is offering? He’s just brought about the end of the world, or close to it, and he’s about to hatefuck his greatest enemy into the floor of a prison cell, and he’s—having second thoughts? Bit too late, innit. He’s not even hard anymore.

Dream notices that, too:

“Or do you want,” he says, staring at Tommy’s crotch and smiling a little. “me to take care of that?”

“You still need your seven.”

“You can—” Tommy can’t help but hear the way Dream’s carefully contructing his sentences to avoid saying he wants anything in specific. He can help but not think about the implications of that, though. “If you’d like me to, I can, uh, suck you off while you spank me.”

Tommy wants to tell Dream off for trying to shift the balance of power back in his direction,, but that actually—doesn’t sound like a bad idea. The physical sensations might help keep him excited and he thinks he’ll still like Dream being in pain. They both need something thoughtless and reckless and breathless, like so described more by what it’s not. They need to be broken down into nothing. And he’s always wondered what getting a blowjob feels like. And if Dream’s offering…

(Maybe he actually wants this. Maybe he actually wants Tommy.)

“What are you waiting for, then?” he asks, forcing confidence, dominance back into his tone—it’s a futile mask, but then that’s always been their thing, hasn’t it? “Get on your knees.”

Dream is obedient as he’s been this whole time, pulling himself onto his knees with only a wince and opening his mouth expectantly. They’ve never kissed, Tommy realizes suddenly. They’ve fucked, but he’s never had Dream’s lips on his. This is the closest they’ve ever gotten.

He stops thinking as soon as Dream’s warm, wet mouth is on his cock. This—damn. It feels even better than he’d imagined. Dream isn’t moving, yet; Tommy’s dick just rests on his tongue. He wants to snap an order to ‘get on with it, fucking tease’ but before he says anything, he realizes what Dream is doing. He’s waiting for Tommy to do what he’s wanted this whole time, to make the first move and take his enemy-turned-toy by surprise.

He can do that.

He’d planned on spanking Dream with his bare hand, but he’s still got the belt in his hands. He never put it down. He might as well put it to use. The dominance he’d nurtured before has snuck its way back into his mind, urging him to have Dream begging for mercy again; he doesn’t need to feel bad, not now. It’s not like Dream wouldn’t do the same, in his place.

He’s still looking up through Tommy’s blue-gray eyes, the very picture of submission.

The belt slashes down, striking Dream hard. He swings forward like a limp doll with the sudden momentum, sliding all the way down to push his nose into curly pubic hair. Overwhelmed by sensation, Tommy’s hand finds his hair and yanks him back. Dream’s eyes are blown wide.

So Tommy does it again.

Dream’s little sound of pain is swallowed by the grip of his lips on Tommy’s dick, but the vibrations are—god. He’s getting hard again, filling Dream’s mouth even more. As much as Tommy hates to admit it, Dream’s got a great cock, and he’s having a great time taking it for a test drive.

Dream gags the next time.

Tommy can’t control himself anymore. The rhythm dissolves into chaos: he’s constantly pulling Dream’s hair, occasionally yanking hard enough that he feels hairs come loose between his fingers—hey, it’s not his hair anymore, right?—but his strikes with the belt are random. He’s fucking into Dream’s eager, flawless mouth without giving him even the barest chance to adjust. They’re both moaning, though he feels Dream’s more than he hears them. His eyes are closed, and he’s picturing Dream in his own body in front of him, getting fucked like the goddamn toy he is. He could put a collar and leash on him, just to choke him even more. To pull him in more directions.

Dying had felt like all of the pieces of his soul were torn away from each other. He wants to make Dream feel the same way, but stay alive after it; he’ll never have the revival process to put him back together.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

The seven spankings are over far too fast, but Tommy shoves Dream back anyway—before he can pull back on his own. His red mouth is still open slightly and his eyes are still wide, confused but trusting. More trusting than Tommy has ever deserved or expected.

He’s struck with a burst of inspiration and strips down completely, taking off Dream’s prison uniform and handing it to him. “Put this under you when you bend over. I want to fuck you with your ass up and your face shoved into your fucking prison uniform.”

The stone’s hitting, like, three birds: it’ll protect Dream’s forearms and face from the hard obsidian (he’s okay with Dream’s knees getting bruised, but he doesn’t want him hurt in ways he doesn’t allow), the mental image of Dream getting his face pushed into the sweaty prison uniform is hot as hell, and it means that Tommy isn’t wearing that same uniform anymore. He’s really struck gold with this one.

Dream turns, with a smile over his shoulder as he holds up the pants of the uniform, turning them inside out so he can see the little wet spot from Tommy’s dick leaking precum. He folds the clothes carefully so the crotch is at the top of the pile, and then lets his spine relax, putting his nose directly into the spot. Tommy swallows hard.

He has to get his dick in Dream immediately, but—“Wait, can you—Open yourself up for me, Dream.”

Dream complies, working first one finger into his… vagina. Huh. Well, that works too. Tommy just didn’t expect that, given his own thing with not liking to be touched there. But sure, probably would be faster. Leave it to Dream to only care about practicality even while he’s getting fucked. Tommy admires his prettily reddened ass and pussy while Dream works; hindsight tells him that he should have spanked his holes directly, so that they’d be even more puffy and sensitive when he fucks into them. It’s fine. He can play nice.

He opens himself up quickly, and when he pulls his fingers out, they’re visibly shining with liquid. Tommy takes that as his cue, stepping up to Dream’s rear and guiding his erect cock into his vagina.

He moans immediately upon feeling it tight and warm and wet around him, like Dream’s mouth but so much sweeter.

“Good, huh?” Dream teases.

“Shut up,” Tommy growls, then hesitates. “You ready?”

He expected Dream to sass him, but all he gets is an apparently-sincere, “Yes, sir.”

Guess it’s time.

He fucks into Dream at a rhythm as steady as his face-fucking was chaotic—if that was taking Dream apart, this is putting him back together in a way Tommy likes better.

His pace is steady, but with every thrust he sinks deeper and deeper into Dream until he thinks he must be diving right into the core of him, his hips slapping against Dream's pink ass. He's breathing hard, and so is Dream. The smell of sex and want fills the air thickly, so thick you could cut it with a knife. In some other world, he'd be killing Dream; in this one, he's fucking him. The vulnerability is the same, but in this one, he's almost feeling soft on Dream. Imagine that. Tommy back in Logstedshire is fighting this situation and the feelings brought on by tooth and nail, with all the hate and desperation he'd known, so heavy, so dark that it blocks out all light, all possibility of anything being different. He probably would’ve let Dream fuck him, but only because he would’ve stopped fighting by that point. Tommy in Pogtopia and before it is smugly refusing. He hadn't even realized then that he could want something like this, someone like this. Tommy in Pandora is all pain and desperation of a different kind. Tommy now is just warm against Dream. Warm against warm, instead of the fire and ice they'd been before. Heat had transferred from one to the other, and they were at equilibrium, joined as one perfect body.

"Good—god, you're perfect, Dream," he manages to breathe out over the sound of their bodies squishing and slapping against each other. 

Dream moans into his prison uniform.

It's almost religious. Tommy feels the same way now that he always did when he was praying at the Church of Prime: reverent and triumphant at the same time, getting exactly what he was owed. Feeling safe on holy land. Dream's body is holy even in its desecration, and Tommy wants to curl up in his insides and be spared from any harm. They say suffering feels religious if you do it right, but suffering only ever felt like suffering to him. Safety is what is sacred. The safety of tradition and loved ones powerful by his side, protecting him in a way no one really has since he was a child—that’s what Tommy reveres. And, even though he really shouldn’t, he feels safe now.

They both pour over the edge of orgasm instead of crashing suddenly, their pleasure building and cresting, leaving their limbs twitching and their minds softened with bliss. Tommy pulls out, and collapses onto Dream, who rolls onto his back and puts his arms around him in a gentle hug. It's not a confining sort of hold; Tommy could break out if he wanted to, but he doesn't want to. He wants to stay here, soft and formless and held into physical shape only by the arms of another, their sweat and other fluids blending together like paint on their skin.

"You okay?" Dream asks, and Tommy nods into his chest. He's holding Dream down with his weight, he realizes, but he doesn't seem to want to move any more than he does, so he doesn't feel any pressure to get off.

"Good," he mumbles.

"What?"

He raises his head to talk into the air instead of Dream's body--as much as he feels like it should, his voice can't be absorbed via osmosis through the pores of Dream's skin. "Good. That was good, Dream. Really good."

He can't think of any better words than 'good', at the moment.

Dream chuckles. "All fucked-out, aren't you? Don't worry. I've got you."

All of the boys in Tommy's head hate that. Tommy just nuzzles closer into Dream, letting that perfect warmth blanket him as he rubs a hand over his back.

It takes a few minutes, maybe (but you can't prove it, there are no clocks in the cell) for Tommy to remember that he's a person and look up again. He rolls both of them so they're both on their sides, and asks, "You—you liked it?"

It's more vulnerable than he'd ever allow himself to be if he was in his right mind, so he's still a little out of it, but Dream just smiles.

"Tommy," he says. "You just—I haven't felt that good in a long time. Maybe ever. You were perfect."

"So were you," Tommy murmurs.

Dream blushes, and Tommy thinks that's pretty perfect too.

"And who knew," he jokes. "we just had to be in the wrong bodies first. And dead," he adds. "Uh, sorry about that, by the way."

Dream's looking away from him now, and it sparks a bit of unease in Tommy, which is only further flared by the words he says next: "Hold your apologies. We're not really dead."

"What?"

"And not because it's Limbo and maybe that’s not technically dead all the way—we’re not in Limbo. I'm, uh. I'm immortal."

"What the fuck," Tommy says blankly, although it probably makes about as much sense as anything else in this mindfuck of a world. "Wait, so why were you begging for me not to kill you then? Back at the end of the disc fight, before they took you to prison."

"I didn't really know what would happen. I wasn't even that sure I was immortal," Dream explains. "I just know that—you know how XD has my face? So it's actually—like—part of me? That split off when the server got made? So because it’s part of me, it protects me. It won’t let me die. I don’t know if—I don’t know very much about it, honestly. It was one of the things Punz and I were trying to figure out—”

“So I’m here because your immortality fucking—spread to me? And the prison itself?” That made—well, it actually made no sense whatsoever, but it was the only possible explanation for why he’s here too, and Dream nods with an impressed smile, so he must’ve been thinking something similar (that warms Tommy more than he’s willing to admit). “So where’s Punz?”

“Punz—” Dream stops. “They… were always looking forward. I think they would’ve chosen to move on, to find more to explore wherever comes after this, for all of them. I don’t think they’d be content to die, but if there was something more—”

“But we’re always looking back, you’re saying?” It comes out dry, but Tommy’s not sure he could argue otherwise if he had to try. That was what the whole argument before the nuke hit was, after all; both of them looking back at an idyllic past they’d thought was gone forever, ruined by their respective enemy. “Well, we’re here. What do you want to do?”

“Right now?” Dream laughed. “Nothing.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Live, I guess.”