Jack got up blinking, unsure where he was. The person in bed--he looked down--was still asleep. Right, the guy. Small as Jack and wanting to be fucked by the person Jack looked like. He still had a childish face, and Jack suspected they'd gone to his parent's house. Perhaps they were out of town, he thought as he pulled on his clothes. Perhaps Jack had been the first in this bed. The boy was still asleep when Jack found his way out.
It was still dark out, and the early morning sort of cold that he liked. Jack decided to walk the half-mile to the little café he'd found last week. His hands were shoved in his jacket pockets as he walked, wind ruffling and replacing his hair.
He'd dreamt about him again.
Jack struggled to remember the dream, but it was fading with every step he took. Light hair. Light hair and slender body and a smile that Jack couldn't quite remember. Jack always felt that if he thought for long enough he'd get it, but it was like trying to hold mist, the fairy fog surrounding and chilling Jack just as the boy surrounded him now. Insubstantial.
Jack dreamed about him often now, and the boy was always clear and real in the dreams. If only he could remember--!
It was ridiculous to be this obsessed with a figment of his imagination, and Jack knew it. Ridiculous, to be so enamored of a laughing face that flickered in and out of focus when he tried to pin it down.
Jack's coffee was bitter and he sipped at it with a grimace. Last night the boy had been dancing. Dancing with Jack? One time he'd been mud-streaked and carrying a rugby ball. And his body was perfect like only dream boys are, perfect for Jack, exactly the boy he wanted, but all that Jack could think was, he's much too small. He'll be hurt. And, more powerfully, I want to protect him.
He'd wondered, for a while, if he was going mad. Did other people get jealous of rugby balls? The day after that dream, Jack had hated rugby. He wanted to be the boy's only adrenaline rush. His only passion.
Was Jack going mental? His boy--and Jack was fiercely of the opinion that the boy was his--couldn't exist. His boy would probably disappear as suddenly as he had arrived, and Jack really was mental because he didn't want the boy to go.
Jack woke Annabelle up sometimes with breakfast and asked her what she'd dreamed. He listened to her babble about elephants and Jack in a top hat and dancing sofas attentively, but when she asked him he could only shrug.
Then the dreams stopped coming. Jack pined for a face he couldn't remember and a voice he never heard, a sad-faced angel Jack didn't know the name of. He began to dream of normal things, boring things. Hallways and flying and things he turned into elaborate stories for Annabelle.
Jack began to forget. He still missed dream-boy sometimes, but with his first day at Eton approaching, his boy faded fast.
On the first day of classes, Jack was utterly terrified. he exaggerated his makeup, extra black a shield to hide behind. Jack couldn't pay attention in church that morning. "You walk not alone," father something or other said, and Jack remembered his boy. The boy who did walk with him after all, in front of him in the halls, leading the clearly schizophrenic Jack to his first class. Who sat in front of him and
and hummed.
Jack started, banging his knee. The boy didn't turn around, but Jack knew, he knew that he was real! He was real? Jack had never heard him before, had never seen even the back of his head so clearly, for all that he recognised it. It wasn't another person. Not a hallucination. This boy, this boy called Driscoll when the roll was called, who didn't turn around and had an arse to die for--this was him. Dream-boy Driscoll, who--had a rugby pin on his bag holy fuck this was him. Jack felt like fainting, which would not have been entirely unreasonable since dreams weren't supposed to come to life and sit in front of you in class.
The boy turned around, and Jack's heart stopped. "I'm Avery," he said, giving a smile Jack had seen a thousand times in his sleep, eyes the colour that were already Jack's favourite. His heart began to beat again, thumping painfully.
Avery.
Everything fell into place with the name, puzzle pieces snapping together and the mist dream-boy had been solidifying into Avery. "I think I knew that," Jack said, smiling back. "My name is Jack."
The next morning, Jack called Annabelle seconds after he got up. "Hey, princess," he started, biting his lip to keep from grinning. "Guess who dreamt about an angel?"