Only in Dreams

[Cassius Lestrange]

In reality, Cash slept in a ball, anxious and tangled in blankets. It had taken him practically forever to even fall asleep in the first place - he was going to hate himself in the morning, as he always did when he fell asleep. Now he was completely unconscious, but not very contentedly so, still twisting and turning occasionally.

In his head, he sat on the rug of the dorm room. It was unnaturally bright, making everything seem good to Cash. Nothing could go wrong here. He wasn't entirely sure why this contented him so, but it did anyways.

Mr. Figgberry and Chace were both out, doing whatever it was they did during the day. Cash hummed to himself for a minute, a tune he had heard only once in the real world.

He wasn't surprised to see Eli appear, but he felt like he ought to have been. There was a sense of trouble that even his subconscious noticed. He ignored it.

"You haven't been here for a while," Cash said softly, "You really should come by more often."

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli's things were still where he had left them. His trunk at the foot of the bed, his scarf tossed carelessly onto the pillow, his books stacked on his nightstand. It was nice that his things were all still there. He couldn't afford to buy any more books, and he had the vague feeling that he would need them in the future.

And there was Cash. Right where Eli had left him. He smiled and dropped down onto the floor next to his best friend, reaching out his hand to attempt to grab Cash's. "Sorry 'bout that," he said with a small smile, glancing over his shoulder at his bed. "My violin is still here, isn't it?"

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

• Cash held Eli's hand and smiled. "Yeah," he said, "Right where you left it. If anyone tries to move it I'm going to hide it under my bed." He had gotten very possessive of the violin lately, and became very twitchy whenever one of their other roommates went near Eli's stuff.
  
  He gave Eli's hand a squeeze and sighed. "Things are out of balance," he said, "They're just... off." Even in the calm of this dorm room he knew it. It was better with Eli, of course - but the wrong he was vaguely aware of was still there. He wanted to fix it.
  
  But he couldn't. Not yet.

  

[Eli Swan]

Holding hands felt nice. They hadn't done this in a while; it was hard, when anyone could be watching at any point in time. This time was different, though; they were alone here, Eli knew, for as long as they wanted to be. Or as long as they had, one of the two. The time was predetermined, and neither of them knew exactly when it would end.

Cash was comfortable. Eli burrowed his head against Cash's shoulder, an action made a little ridiculous by the fact that Eli was now taller than Cash, but nevermind that. "I'm sorry things are off," he mumbled, half-sleepy. "I wish I could fix them, but I don't think I can. I don't know where I am."

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

• One of Cash's favorite things about being with Eli was the casual cuddles - even though in the regular world they could be a bit nerve-wracking, such things were always more good than bad. Here, where they didn't have to worry or leap apart at the slightest noise, it was just as lovely.
  
  "I'm going to find you," Cash said, "I don't know how, but I'm going to find you and bring you back. I need you here." He was determined. Cash had never pulled off a rescue mission in his life, had never even attempted one, but he would do it if he had to - all he needed was to find out where Eli had gone.

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli looked up at Cash, his head tilted slightly. Cash's words seemed odd to him; distant, somehow.

"That's nice," he said, a bit hollowly, as the room grew a tad darker. "But I don't think you will."

A shadow seemed to pass over the window; it could have been a bird flying by, or it could have been a cloud over the sun, or it could have been anything at all. You hold my hand, but do you really need me? Eli thought as he looked down at their intertwined hands, and wondered where the thought had come from. It was all well and good for Cassius to keep his violin, but how long would he keep it? How quickly would he move on?

"I'll be thinking about you," he said, but even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. He'd already forgotten the first boy he'd ever loved; dreams were the only place that he remembered.

OOC: Shamelessly stolen from Norah Jones' Thinking About You

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

• He had known something bad was coming. He knew it now - the calmness in his mind was leaving, being replaced by the consistent anxiety that he knew he would feel when he got up in the morning.
  
  "Okay," Cash said, glancing around. Something or someone was coming - or he was just being paranoid. That happened sometimes, but not as often in dreams as it did in the real world. He swore that the unnatural brightness of the room was starting to leave. No. No, no, no.
  
  He wasn't ready for it to end yet.
  
  "Weird question - Eli, you're not dead? Right?" He felt like if Eli was dead he would just know, somehow - and if Eli was dead, would he have even been there?
  
  Cash felt like he had to ask anyways. Just in case. He wasn't sure what he would do if there wasn't any chance for a heroic rescue, if there would never be any answers - just the endless limbo as they all grew up and took their NEWTs and moved on but Eli was just in their memories, permanently sixteen and waiting to tell Cash something on New Year's.

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli felt as though he were fading. Were that possible? Could he have just been fading out of existence? It depended on whose dream this was, really, and Eli realized now that it wasn't his. It was Cash's dream, and nothing that had happened here had really happened.

"I'm not dead," he answered with a frown. "I can't die. I'm just part of your imagination."

He wasn't the real Eli, he realized as he pulled his hand out of Cash's. He wanted very much to be, but he couldn't make himself real; this was just a dream, just one of Cash's dreams, and he was just a figment of Cash's imagination. Real Eli could have been anywhere, alive or dead. As it was, their time was limited; Eli would vanish again come morning time.

"Sorry," he added lamely, knowing that it was not enough.

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

• "I'm asleep," Cash said, "You don't really -" exist. Was that rude? He wasn't sure, but it made him fairly sad - when he got up, he would be there and Eli wouldn't.
  
  He probably wouldn't even remember this.
  
  "It's okay," he said, sighing and slouching. "We're in my head, anyways." He just didn't want to wake up. Even if they were talking about how he probably wasn't going to find Eli, and if this wasn't going to fix anything - at least it was something.
  
  Even if it was in his head.
  
  The room was starting to look more normal. Cash stifled a yawn. "I think we broke something," he said, glancing around.

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli looked around the room, trying to imagine what Cash was seeing. It was Cash's dream; whatever he was seeing was the reality. Eli couldn't have told the difference, really, but he thought he knew what was going on anyway.

"No, it's not broken," he said, shaking his head. "This is how it always is. This is how it is now, anyway."

Eli stood up, walking away from Cash and looking over the things on his bed. "It's nice that you'll keep the violin. I miss my violin."

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

• Cash didn't think that he understood what Eli meant. The dreamworld was supposed to look better than the regular one. The more normal it looked, the more alarmed he felt. But Cash decided to ignore that for now.
  
  He watched Eli walk around and shrugged. "I figured you'd want me to keep it," he said, "And now if. When you come back, it'll still be here."
  
  He may have thought that Eli was dead, in real life. But here in his head it was very hard to think like that.

  

[Eli Swan]

"Do you think I'll come back?" Eli asked, without inflicting any sort of tone on it at all. It was not a hopeful sentiment, or an ominous one; only a plain and simple question. Not Eli's question, really; it was Cash's question, sent through Eli's mouth. The room, the pile of things, the entire world, was really just Cash.

"Perhaps I'm dead," he reflected, opening one of the books on his nightstand. "Or perhaps I ran away. Joined the carnival, or went to France. Perhaps I've already forgotten all about you." The last felt rather too sharp on his tongue, and Eli bit his lower lip a moment. Shutting the book, he turned back to Cash and asked again, "Do you think I'll be back?"

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

• The options, when laid out before him, seemed very grim. Especially when they came from Eli - or, well, the incarnation of Eli his mind had created. Cash thought for a moment before answering.
  
  "I think you're dead," he said, "Because I don't believe that you'd leave me or our friends." The fact that people actually thought Eli had just left was something that vexed Cash. They weren't even looking for him.
  
  "I'm hoping you'll be back. I mean, I think you're dead, but I haven't accepted it yet. I don't think I'll be able to." Wasn't that why he kept sending his letters?

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli frowned when Cash laid out his reasoning, even though it made sense, at least on some levels. "You're right," he admitted. "I probably wouldn't do that."

He wished he could have told Cash what had happened. The problem was, he didn't know what had happened. The knowledge was there, somewhere, part of this weird collective consciousness that was part Cash's subconscious and part remenant of Eli. It was there, but it was locked; Eli knew that he ought to know what had happened and where he was now, and that he did know, but couldn't access that information.

"I should probably go soon," he added remorsefully, walking back out to the center of the room. He had the urge to go and touch Cash, to stare at him, to soak up every bit of him he could, for when he woke up--but that was foolish. This wasn't Eli's dream, after all; it was Cash's dream, and if anyone were going to remember it, it wouldn't be Eli.

Even so, he couldn't just not say goodbye. He leaned in to kiss Cash's cheek, then hugged him around the neck, as he used to. Funny, at the beginning of the schoolyear, Eli had practically been hanging around Cash's neck when he did this, but he was so much taller now that the whole dynamic had changed. He had to tilt his head at an awkward angle in order to rest it on Cash's shoulder, but he did it anyway. There was no telling when they'd see each other again.

A second into the hug, Eli's eyes opened. Something had occurred to him--something that seemed like a piece of whatever mystery was lying behind those locked doors in his mind. "I'm lost," he said, half-realization and half desperately trying to convey this to Cash before he left. "Cash, I'm lost and I can't come back."

And those were the last words Eli got in before the dream took him away.

  

[Cassius Lestrange]

january challenge day 23! the line is from Clash of Kings. let's hope i didn't eff up how dialogue tags work with representing number of lines >>

• 'Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.' But that was not quite right - Cash was not lost, he was stuck. And he was not even sure what lost meant, but he could not ask - or properly say goodbye - before Eli vanished.
  
  Cash was alone for a moment before he woke up. Sunlight was leaking into the dorm room through the windows, and for a moment Cash wondered if people would leave him alone if he pretended to be dead.
  
  Lost.
  
  That was - an interesting development. But, Cash thought, probably not true. After all, how did one even get lost?
  
  He kept it to himself for the rest of the day. Later, he would decide to get drunk off his ass in the Room of Requirement - and come to a bit of a conclusion as far as his feelings for Eli went.