Work Text:
“ Oh, Tommy~ ”
Dream cooed, even his own voice serving as venom to his tongue. He tugged his feet back and forth across the snow, leaving obvious prints in the once perfect bleached white— not completely perfect, though. Tommy had already been here (proved by the drying scarlet creating a lighter pink as it mixed with the frozen ice)— snow.
The man waltzed along the edge of the trees, just narrowly avoiding the roots so as to not trip. He allowed his fingers to grace a thick tree, bark twisting in every which direction only to come to a perfectly minuscule point thousands of feet above. Dream paid no mind, however, instead choosing to let the tips of his fingers— raw with a lack of nail— scrape along the bark.
(There was nothing to satiate his mind when Quackity came, no area of his body that wasn’t safe from the man’s axe. The only thing he left to rot were his nails, and he chewed them to smithereens to gain back some semblance of control within himself whether it be physically or mentally.
Not even his teeth were spared by the duck hybrid, golden tooth glimmering in the light of the lava.)
Dream let his tongue trace over his own missing tooth, ripped out of his mouth with no precision or care at all. He continued dousing the bark with his hand. The skin colliding with the wood created an almost record-scratch like sound, and when Dream pulled his hand away, his fingers were coated in a thin layer of blood. The man smiled to himself, grinning at the way his skin shouted at him as if it were on fire. He paid it to no mind either, choosing instead to lap the blood up with his tongue. He smacked his lips together, the metal tasting heavenly compared to the potatoes he’d been cursed with for months.
His grin came to a halt. “Tommy…”
As Dream rounded the corner of the tree, he could spot a tuft of blond hair poking from beside the snow. Next to it lay a dried puddle of mudd, snow and scarlet dug into a soup into the ground as if it had been clawed at incessantly (as if the owner was in pain.
And of course he was, how could he not be? Tommy had been without Dream for so long, it was only a matter of time before all his hard work would have been undone. The man yearned to re-do his teachings, to confide in the boy and build their trust back.
(You can’t build back whatever they had. It was a futile battle, destined to fail and destined to end with no winners, only two losers. They both chose to ignore this fact.))
Dream let his boot graze the roots. He dragged his head around the corner, like a predator stalking its prey. The prey in question was quivering beneath his gaze, both from the cold and from unbridled fear. It was insatiably satisfying, and Dream wanted more.
That’s when he struck.
“Gotcha.”
Tommy cried out as his hair was yanked back against the tree, clammy hands coming up to grasp at his ripping locks to relieve his scalp of the crippling pain.
Burn, burn, burn, it burns!
Tommy yanked, pulled, cried at the hands holding on to him, dragging him into a small clearing just a few feet away. He was unceremoniously tossed to the floor, sword kicked aside and pieces of his hair licked beneath the snow. His breath came out in puffs, the cold creating clouds of his fucking panic attack.
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
Tommy scrambled back, trying to regain some semblance of footing before Dream came back down with his boot on the boy’s chest, knocking into his ribs. The younger blond cried out, voice tearing with roars of his cries, yet no one was around to hear it except Dream and himself.
(Phil perked up at the echo miles out into the tundra. He gathered his feathers together behind him and listened to potentially catch the sound again, but the scream did not return a second time. He rested back into his chair, unaware of the echoing cries shriveled into oblivion by a boot in the center of a boy’s chest.)
Crack.
Tommy went limp against the snow.