Her small shoulders shook with a chuckle, arms falling from his neck to encircle his waist as a small groan hummed in her chest at his mention of their insufferable ‘time machine’. “Do we have to? Maybe the forest elves will take pity on us and put that impossible piece of shit together. I mean, they make shoes, so… why not tents? And don’t try to tell me there aren’t forest elves if there’s a fuckin’ Sandman. Don’t even try.”
If it wasn’t already clear, Scarlet was positively giddy on glee and high on life. Perhaps it could have been attributed to the mountain air and its thinner oxygen as a result of the altitude, or her decided lack of sleep following that strange nightmare. More than likely, though, it was the harmoniously married couple of music and nature, and the single most important person with whom she’d want to share the experience. Scarlet couldn’t imagine any differently; no more than a few eventful weeks into her, and she couldn’t filter Alair out of her thoughts and plans. It was like he had, in a strange and impossible way, always been there. Before she’d even known him in this lifetime.

Pressing her cheek to his chest, the subtle and steady rhythm of his heart like a lullaby in her ear, the redhead was reluctant to release him and admit he was right about their need for firewood. As evening approached, the air would only grow gradually cooler, and her long, thick hair could easily remain touched with dampness well into the night (it was no wonder she’d packed her hair dryer on impulse). “Oh, don’t act like you don’t get cold. You might have more insulation on your bones than I do, but I saw the way you shivered, crawling out of that fucking arctic lake.” She prodded his chest with her index finger, resigning to turn and let one if her hands fall along the small of his back and rest at his hip as she turned to face the same direction he did. “Come on, then. Let’s find some firewood while we let the magical forest elves… well, do their magic.”

Dropping her hand from his hip, she found his palm instead, lacing her fingers between his as they started across the field. When Alair failed to communicate his sudden intent to stop, and Scarlet stepped forward without the Sandman at her side, she near lost her footing, stumbling backward into his shoulder with a sight of displeasure. “You get stuck in quick sand or something?” She teased flatly, turning to see what—or, as it turned out, whom—had suddenly captured the Sandman’s full attention as Alair pulled her flush against his side.

Before she knew it, Scarlet was sharing her Sandman (reluctantly, mind you) with a young man; and a natural red-head, at that. Kind of on the nerdy side, but she wasn’t about to judge Alair on his choice of friends. Even the ones who unabashedly sported a joint, way out in the open. Although, to be fair, that probably wouldn’t be the last one either of them saw before the weekend was over… Events such as this tended to draw in that sort of crowd.

“Nothing wrong with geeky or smart. You already know Cas is a closet-nerd; I didn’t buy the fuckin’ Super Nintendo and Mario Kart.” Lips stretching into an amused grin that dimpled her cheeks, she held out a hand to Keeler and shook his warmly. “Nice to meet you, Keeler. Just be sure you do yourself a favor and hide the goods when security comes snooping around.” Judging by the already relaxed pace of the set up, however, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find security just as ‘touched’ with substance, if not moreso, than the kids they were supposed to bust. That was just the way these things tended to swing.

Waving goodbye to the endearingly nerdy young man, Scarlet resumed her pace next to Alair as they made their way back to the campsite. “How dare you not tell me I’m not the only redhead in your life. And a natural one, at that!” She smirked, mock exasperation filling her voice. “Maybe I’ll swim with you again when my heart mends from this atrocity. Or when you make me a s’more. Hey, what can I say; my feelings are bought off pretty easily.” Laughing she grabbed the Sandman by his sweater, halting him temporarily to brush her lips quickly against his in a kiss. “Seriously, though: it’s gonna take a lot of fucking convincing to get me back in that ice-lake. I’m not well equipped for cold-temperatures.” A thought that only made her feel all the more ridiculous for failing to take the change in mountain temperature into consideration, and forgetting to pack a sweater. Alair would have to fight her to get his own warm pullover back from her, now.

The very idea summoned another wave of chuckles to spill from his lips, and he squeezed Scarlet’s hand playfully as they picked their way back through the thicker, less well worn section of the trail. Alair had not known Keeler terribly long, but the two had become fast (if somewhat unlikely) friends. The gangly young man with the curly red hair looked half his age and operated on an intelligence and wisdom greater than the most world-weary of mortal men; it was a combination rarely encountered. The Sandman had taken an immediate liking to the strange and questionable methods of Keeler, more than partially due to the unconventional common ground they shared—after all, dreams were not quite so different from hallucinations, including the young man’s use of alternative substances to enhance the senses he already possessed. Alair had felt so at ease with the natural redhead that it had not taken long for him to disclose his identity as Sleep (a fact that Keeler likely only half-remembered at any given moment since). In fact, it had perhaps been his quickest revelation until his introduction to Scarlet.

“I don’t think I’m ready to brave the lake again either,” he admitted as they crested the small hill that hid their campsite from view. As they pushed through the trees to break the clearing, Alair had to laugh at the sight that greeted them—a small but decidedly chaotic scene, with a fire whose orange embers had turned to lifeless gray ash and blown from their hearth, a splay of damp blankets and towels, and, of course, the pile of hastily discarded tent poles and tarpaulin. “Looks like the time machine couldn’t even put itself together,” he declared, letting go of Scarlet’s hand to toss aside the blankets and towels. He frowned down at the pile, but his blue eyes twinkled mirthfully. “No time like the present?” he suggested facetiously, lifting one shoulder in a half shrug before collecting all the poles in a single pile. “What do you say?”

He reached over with one of the longer cylinders and bopped her on the shoulder, lowering himself to his knees in front of the deflated tent pieces. When she reluctantly joined him (courtesy of him grabbing her arm and forcing her to the ground next to him), they made some progress relatively quickly—until their valiant attempt collapsed in on itself, inspiring another round of curses and laughter in quick succession.

“Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “Firewood time. Let’s give this fucker time to think about what it’s done.”

Alair combed the area around the campsite for dry fallen logs, stumbling across a few hearty contenders that he carried back two at a time to stack next to the ring of containing stones. When they had a suitable pile to last them at least until the following night, he shifted his attention back to the impossible tent and groaned melodramatically. “This time for sure,” he declared, determination furrowing his brow. They set about wrestling its uncooperative materials until they finally bent to their iron wills, and as Scarlet placed the last pole to secure it firmly in place, the distant sound of familiar chords reached them on the breeze.

“Shit,” the Sandman said, combing his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t realize it was five fucking o’clock already.” He looked to Scarlet, pulling her into a proud embrace. They may have missed the first of Caspar’s songs (did it really count as ‘missing’ if you could technically still hear it?), but at least they had snapped their time machine into submission. “I’m starving. What are you up for? Festival food? We might be able to catch the tail end of Cas’s act.” He planted a kiss on her head. “Or we could stay here. Roast some weenies. Gloat over that fucking tent.”

Apparently all weirdness and uncanny occurrences had their limits, for there was no miracle where their pile of tangled, partially bent and raged-upon tent parts sat, just where they’d left them. Scarlet heaved a sigh greater than the task before them, shoulders sagging at the unwelcome sight. “Do we have to?” She didn’t even bother trying to disguise the whine in her voice, planning her feet defiantly where they were while Alair wandered over to the hateful mess of plastic, metal and tarpaulin. “I mean, is roughing it under the stars really so bad? If it gets a little chilly, I’ve got you for warmth, and you’ve got… me to steal your warmth.” 

Her mouth twisted to the side in a cheeky little smirk as the Sandman grabbed her arm and hauled him down to the ground with him, earning him a soft groan. “Fine, fine. Let’s just get this done so we’re not late for Caspar’s set. I’m still not convinced the guy’s gonna be like a fucking deer in the headlights when he sees the amount of people out there…” It wasn’t as easy as Geoff put it; sure, Cas had Marissa now, to whom Scarlet couldn’t really compare, in the same way that her musical roommate couldn’t compare with her musical soul mate. But that didn’t mean she didn’t still care; it didn’t mean she didn’t still worry.

What it did mean was that they had to get this piece of shit of a tent up so that she wouldn’t have a reason to worry later on. Working together, the task was far more efficient, where Alair could work out things upon which she’d given up, and vice versa. But just when it appeared to be a job not-so-tiresomely done…
“Alair.” The redhead seethed, glaring daggers at the dilapidated piece of shit tent before them. “Alair, I think I’m going to need anger management. ASAP.”

So the young woman did the best thing that she could think of to cool her temper and walked away; not for long, just in the time it took the Sandman to arrange logs around the fire. When she returned, her cheeks were considerably paler than her hair (where they’d practically matched the shade ten minutes before), and instead of a thin-lipped scowl she ventured a smile. “Once more. For good measure.” She agreed, turning her attention to the tent; or, rather, the pieces of the tent. “One more time, and if it doesn’t work, then after I tear my hair out and have a temper tantrum, I’ll make the sleeping bags and blankets extra cozy, ‘cause that’s all we’re gonna have.”

Finally, their fourth time around, it stood. Not only did it stand, but it didn’t topple over, and Scarlet could have wept with the joy of their hard-earned success. “About fucking time.” Leaning into Alair’s shoulder, she snaked an arm around his waist, feeling considerably lighter with the weight of this arduous endeavor off of her shoulders. “But we’re late for Caspar’s set! Come on, we can grab some overpriced festival food. I don’t want to fucking look at that tent until we have to sleep in it.” Swinging around to face him, the young woman stood on her toes, brushing her dark-haired companion’s lips with a triumphant kiss before she caught his hand and hauled him down the subtle crest of the infrequently trodden path. The music was already a layer in the atmosphere, rustling the leaves on the trees in the absence of any gale or breeze, the familiar vibrations of Caspar’s favourite electric moving more than just the crowd.

And was it ever a crowd; the field wasn’t even packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people yet, but there was no mistaking the number of bodies spanning yards and yards across from the main stage. A staggered series of lights lining pivoting at either side of the stage painted the field and the bodies occupying it in psychedelic kaleidoscope patterns, and at the center of it all—face projected on large screens at either side of the main stage—was Caspar Brighton, with more vibrant a presence than Scarlet had ever witnessed.

He was better than fine; he was fucking amazing.

“Guess he doesn’t need his auxiliary support system, after all.” Scarlet smiled, squeezing Alair’s palm. “Geoff is always fucking right about everything.”

He was happy. And that was perhaps the most dreamlike—the most unbelievable, the most unanticipated—thing of all.

The reverberating guitar riffs shot through the early evening twilight like swift arrows through the trees. As they breached the junction between hardly-trodden path and paved recreational trail, the dense greenery gave way to a wall of rich sound that enveloped the pair like a dear embrace following a long absence. They could hear the cheers and whistles of the dense audience even above Caspar’s characteristic musical progressions, and it coaxed forth another smile to the Sandman’s lips. He and Geoff had been right in their reasoning; regardless of where the lanky guitarist’s motivation and confidence had come from—some innate connection to his talent, as Alair theorized, or the repairman’s reassurance that it was his newfound support system in Marissa—the performance was raging on as though the man had never housed a worry in the world.

Alair returned Scarlet’s squeeze of his hand as they wove their way through the crowd, pausing at the back as Caspar’s song grew to its climax. “Geoff is always right about everything?” he retorted with a laugh, leaning in to be heard as his lips playfully brushed the tip of her ear. “What about me being right about everything too?” He nudged her side, then pulled her back to him by the hand when the momentum of his gesture threatened to separate them. “He’s doing pretty fucking well. That bastard,” he commented, his blue eyes shining playfully with the affectionate and ultimately good-natured insult. The song came to a dramatic end, and the crowd’s cheers brought a bright smile to Caspar’s projected face on the screens flanking the stage. Alair nodded at him as though he could be seen, then turned back to Scarlet.

“Food?” he asked, nudging her in the direction of the vendor tents to the side of the lawn. Smoke from large portable grills filtered upwards on the light breeze, billowing in soft, wood-scented clouds towards a clear sky whose western canvas was swathed in the mountain sunset’s orange and pink. They wandered down the aisle, dodging half-drunk patrons sloshing booze from red Solo cups as they hurried back to their friends, at last settling in the shortest line of a green and white striped awning.

“What even is this?” Alair asked Scarlet with a chuckle, digging a fist full of dollar bills from his jeans pocket and straightening them into a neater pile. “Oh,” he said, watching as the women in front of them in line walked away, “cheeseburgers. At this rate I’m going to need at least fifty of those. My stomach’s growling loud enough to drown out Cas’s bassline.”

He placed his order, waited for Scarlet’s, and handed the man his cash in exchange for an overpriced and slightly overcooked meal that probably tasted every bit as delightfully greasy as festival food should. “There’s some empty tables over there,” Alair suggested with a gesture, balancing his soda in the crook of his arm as they took their place to the side of the stage just behind the stacks. With the loudest of the sound projected in the opposite direction, they had a less filtered experience of Caspar’s band, and they could watch the musician’s backs as they prowled across the stage. The audience, too, was in view, too distracted by the spectacle and lights before them to notice the couple staring back with mouths full of terribly-good food.

“Hey, look,” Alair said between mouthfuls, nodding towards the clearing behind the stage’s back structure. A young man stood with his back to them, a violin tucked under his chin. “Suppose that’s the fancy-ass violin prodigy dude? I’m surprised he can hear himself well enough to tune back there while Cas is playing. Keeler’s got him cranked.”

Not too long ago, Caspar Brighton had been the most phenomenal musician that the young woman had known. His melodies had haunted her from the very first day he’d played for her, their apartment had been perpetually flooded with his cadences and crescendos, his riffs and sweet descants when he played over the radio. She was easily his biggest fan, never missing a show or even a practice, hanging on every note, ever phrase, every word of every song. She’d truly thought him the best of the best, to the point where there’d been a time when she’d have challenged anyone who thought they could top his musical styling. 
And, at an event like this, she’d have been his biggest cheer leader. But things were different now…

He was good; that hadn’t changed. Scarlet might have toyed with his destiny a bit, but his talents were all his own, and she was proud of him. In a way, this music fest almost felt like the bittersweet ending of a chapter; where Caspar’s wings were finally spread to their full capacity, and Scarlet had—albeit, through biased measures—found a new favourite musician. After all, music touched you in almost all the same places as did love. And she had found her musical connection, all entwined with a cosmic and eternal love, with Alair.
“Yeah.” Scarlet said at last, leaning into Alair’s shoulder as she looked on at Caspar, spotting Marissa in the crowd without an ounce of jealousy. “He is fucking amazing.”

In all the excitement of this weekend escapade, Scarlet had nearly forgotten that it had been hours since she’d last eaten, and it wasn’t until her dark-haired companion expressed his impatience for sustenance that she recognized the sharp pain in the pit of her own stomach. “Oh. Right. Eating should happen at some time, I suppose.”
Since Cas appeared to be tying up the loose ends of his set, she let Alair lead her to the overpriced food vendors. When a guy was hungry, he was willing to pay just about anything for a bite to eat. “You know, we could have just brought some of the food we packed. Like those bags of chips or some fruit; do you have any idea how much they’ll charge you for a fucking cheeseburger at these things?”

Well, if Alair didn’t know, then he found out soon enough when he realized how much it came to, for a couple of burgers and drinks. “Do I get to say I told you so?” Scarlet joked, as they made their way over to a table. The two of them sat down just in time to watch Caspar’s band pack up, making room for the next act. “Okay, so if he asks: we were both here the whole time, and heard the whole thing. Got it?” She chuckled, knowing full well that her roommate would never hold it against them if they happened to miss a couple (or most) of his songs, but there was no negating that this was a big deal for the musician. The biggest venue, with the biggest audience… If push came to shove, she could easily tell him that the extra thousand cheers throughout his entire set would easily making up for her missing voice.

Alice was just polishing off the last of her burger (once again, practically inhaling it; apparently she’d been hungrier than she’d thought) when the Sandman spoke up and pointed to the next act setting up on stage; a young man, dressed smartly but with enough flair to suggest he wasn’t stuffy, was doing sound checks with a violin tucked under his chin. “Huh. Maybe.” Giving a shrug of her shoulders, she bunched up the napkin and pulled her legs up, stretching them out across the picnic table’s bench. “I mean, prodigy or not, I’m not really into violin. Maybe we could go see if we can find Cas, and…”

Scarlet’s words trailed off, just seconds after this Danil Aleksei was introduced, and he began to play. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she wasn’t a fan of the violin, but this… This was different. The man accomplished with the violin what Alair could do on the guitar, taking the instrument to heights that it shouldn’t even be possible for it to see. The stage disappeared, and all that was left was the young man and his instrument, captivating and conquering the audience with a melody that was in its entirety upbeat, suspenseful, and hauntingly languid. It wasn’t music; it was magic.

“…fuck.” The redhead breathed, raking her fingers through her crimson locks. “Okay, I think I’m officially converted. That guy has fucking earned the title of prodigy.” Playfully nudging Alair with her elbow, she then added, in an equally cheeky tone, “You should snag a spot in the spotlight at some point this weekend; between this guy and Caspar, I’d say you’ve got some solid competition, Magic Man. Maybe you should show them up.”

The Sandman may not have been able to dream on his own, but the warmth and closeness of Scarlet in his arms was bliss better than any sensation produced of slumber. She coaxed from deep within his battered soul a tendril of healing fire he’d long thought extinguished; she brought forth a euphoria in which he could forever bury his doubts and his troubles, drowning them in what was rightfully his and theirs—hard-won happiness, a deep, long sought contentedness that life so often kept from his grasp. And what was more was that it was real—she was real—and that made their togetherness all the sweeter. Scarlet was his one and only dream, the only one he ever wished to know.

As Caspar’s act drew to a close and the lanky guitarist took his final bows, Alair broke from his temporary stupor and squeezed his companion’s shoulder with affection. He had already finished his two cheeseburgers (and probably could have downed two more) but there was still a pile of fries in the paper basket; he reached around her shoulder, popping one in his mouth before holding another before her lips in playful offering. “Got it,” he said upon swallowing, crumpling his napkin in a heap and clutching it in his fist. “We were here the whole time. I mean, technically we heard the first part of his set, right?” He chuckled. “He’d probably buy it if we said we wanted to experience the sound in a more natural setting. Keeler would back us up.”

The thought alone of the high-as-a-kite roadie was enough to draw more laughter from his lips. He draped his arm over Scarlet’s shoulder, eyes scanning the sky as it slowly began to darken. The western horizon, though jagged and obscured by distant mountaintops and hillcrests blanketed with tall trees, was painted in bright splotches of peach and orange, a blazing fanfare of color that provided a disproportionately picturesque backdrop to the towering, industrial festival stage. Caspar had concluded his first performance in brilliance of music and nature alike, and judging from the reaction of the crowd as the band had taken their exit, he would not be perturbed that Scarlet and Alair had not been physically present for the first half of the set.

Lost in thoughts of the opening act, the Sandman was not prepared for the sound that suddenly filled the evening air—the soft, tender voice of a violin sliced through the impending night as though it were both beckoning and fighting the darkness at once. Intrigued, Alair straightened his posture and leaned into Scarlet, who was just as transfixed by the unexpected performance as he. Despite the unconventionality of his repertoire, there was something about this young man’s playing that was the result of mastery beyond his years, and the contradiction struck the Sandman as strangely—profoundly—mournful.

“Me, in the spotlight?” he replied as the audience cheered the violinist’s final number. He turned to her and quirked a brow, then leaned in to steal a quick kiss on her lips before his playful smirk could betray him. “I don’t want to make everyone feel bad about themselves. That wouldn’t be very considerate at all! Especially considering our dear Caspar’s newfound confidence, yeah?” He grinned, rising to his feet and gathering their trash to deposit in the nearby bin. “So what’s next, alpha?” he inquired, planting a hand insistently on his hip while the other arm snaked its way around her slender waist. “Another dip in the lake?”

Alair’s typical display of inflated ego made Scarlet laugh, and the redhead extended her hand to lightly whack him in the arm. “Oh, get over yourself, Magic Man. I think Mr. Violin up there could take you on in a music-off.” And by the sound of the crowd cheering, and the standing ovation that they guy got at the end of his very first song, she was willing to bet that the Sandman could have met his match; guitar to violin. Secretly, she pitied anyone else who’d happen too play after the guy was finished his set; and here she’d thought no one could live up to the great and popular Caspar Brighton… This Danil Alexei had already effectively stolen the night.

For that reason alone, Scarlet wouldn’t have let Alair step onto that stage, even if he’d wanted to. Not because his music was not phenomenal, or could not rival that of the violinist’s, but because when the man she loved did take the stage, she didn’t want anyone or anything to draw away from him. It was the same care she had always taken with Caspar, when scoring him gigs; never suggesting he take an opening act if the main band would overshadow him. It had built his confidence, and now he had no trouble captivating any audience.
But with Alair, it was different… and, perhaps, part of her idealization was borne of selfish motives. Not only did she want Alair to be the best, to sound the best and to shine the brightest, but she wanted him to be the only star in the sky—and to shine for her alone.

“Come on, let’s head out before the acts just keep getting better and we get increasingly insecure; I’m just hoping that Caspar wasn’t around to hear that guy. Because if he did, then I really hope Marissa has a few clues as to how to boost the poor boy’s ego. To, like, you level of arrogance.” She was only joking at that last bit, a teasing smirk playing on her lips as she leaned into him. “Come on. Let’s get back to see if our time machine is still standing; I’m willing to bet that son of a bitch collapsed in on itself again.”

Scarlet pressed into Alair’s side and gave his waist a squeeze, before her hand found his and they were once again linked by the fingers, her small hand encircling his own as the two of them made their way from the rowdy and excited crowd, the lights and the sounds of the main stage. Returning to the relative solitude of the woods was always a welcome and coveted feeling, even when expecting to be caught up in the excitement of a gathering of bands. Even gregarious extraverts such as Scarlet and Alair (the latter moreso than the former, however) needed their solitude, their privacy, and their time alone together. No doubt Marissa and Caspar would be taking some time away from the fans and other bands, before the night was through… Something upon which the redhead didn’t particularly want to dwell, because it was Caspar, and he was like her brother, and it just felt weird.

To her (and likely, Alair’s) great relief, the tent was still standing by the time they got back to their little secluded campsite. It drew a smile on Scarlet’s face as she turned towards Alair, slipping her hand out of his to plant both firmly on his shoulders, standing on the balls of her feet to add an inch or so to her height. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Back in that lake, where it’s likely colder now than it was before?” 

The breeze had subsided, but with night quickly approaching, the atmosphere of the site had already grown significantly cooler. Scarlet had to suppress a shiver, as the mountain cold tried to pick its way through the fabric of the sweater she’d stolen (er… “borrowed”) from Alair. “You know, if you just wanted to see me in my bikini… all you need to do is ask, Magic Man.” A familiar, teasing smirk tugged her lips to one side, before she pressed them to Alair’s, in a kiss that was light but lingering. “…but only if you agree to keep me warm. It’s only just gotten dark, and I’ve already got goosebumps.” She turned her attention briefly to her legs, partially exposed from her capris shorts just below the knee, where the skin had pulled tight and tiny bumps had risen.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm, alpha.” Alair, his affections newly ignited by the blissful privacy in the surrounding woods, clasped his hands at the small of Scarlet’s back and pulled away from their embrace just enough to bring his lips to her ear. “You know, I could keep you warm in less than your bikini,” he whispered devilishly, burying his face playfully in her neck. Pointedly ignoring any protests, he squeezed her tighter and lifted her feet from the ground, swinging her gently around to stand at the rocky barrier that fenced in their hours-dead fire. “But in the meantime,” he went on, raising his voice to a facetious shout in the freeing void of their mountain isolation, “we should revive the fire. We’ll still probably need blankets, though.”

He tossed several medium-sized logs from the stockpile they’d gathered earlier into the remaining ashes, then arranged them into a pyramid around the smaller kindling. Before long, red-orange flames licked the sides of the dry wood and stretched in bright bursts towards the blackening sky. As the sun continued its retreat, so too did their mild temperatures; even Alair, who had dressed for the occasion and sat close now to the campfire, could feel goose bumps on the skin of his arms. And if Sleep was feeling the chill, then Scarlet had likely already turned to living ice.

“Get over here before you freeze, alpha,” the Sandman called good-naturedly, extending an arm as she slid in next to him. He wrapped his hand around her shoulder and pulled her close, reaching with his free limb to help arrange the blanket over their laps. As if in approval, the fire crackled loudly, sending a flare of yellow sparks spiraling upward towards the emerging stars. Alair chuckled. From their distance, the pulsating rhythm of the festival’s evening session was just audible enough to seem dreamlike, a surreal synthetic soundtrack to an otherwise organic scene. But it was precisely that juxtaposition that revealed their reality, and he sighed softly, more content than he had been in recent memory.

Scarlet’s hair shone a brilliant vermillion in the glow of the fire, and it was several moments before he realized he was staring—and smiling like a fool—at the young woman who was nestled into his side. “Hey,” he said, a little more softly than he intended. When she turned to look at him, he pressed his lips, still upturned in a crooked grin, to hers. “Feeling any warmer yet?”

“Yeah?” She murmured right back, a top canines pulling at her lower lip in a way that was unintentionally cheeky. “I hold you to that challenge, Sandman.”
A laugh erupted from her constricted lungs as he spun her around, and she inhaled an exaggerated gulp of air when he let go to set her back upon her feet. “Fire?” Her blue eyes cast their disproving glance at the dying put, and she arched an eyebrow at her ambitious companion. “I mean, I may be cold, but do we really need that with something as hot as me around?”

Scarlet stuck her tongue out and snickered, jovial and teasing, and tossed a log playfully in Sleep’s direction before taking it upon herself to contribute to the task at hand. Graciously, starting a fire wasn’t as beyond her realm of capabilities of pitching a tent (she still maintained the piece of shit was as complicated as a fucking time machine, and nothing anyone said could change her mind), and it wasn’t long before her shivering knees were pressed against the coarse denim of Alair’s jeans, and her torso tucked into the secure encirclement of his warm arms. The thick, woolen blanket arranged over their laps staved off the evening chill that made her regret wearing shorts after sundown, but when the wind shifted directions, it carried away the faintest mist of their breaths to mingle with the mountain air.

But it was a solid ten or fifteen minutes before she so much as took notice. As Alair’s attention was captured by the amber of her locks against the firelight, Scarlet’s had been seized by the crimson, vermillion and fuchsia of the sunset over the dark spikes of treetops. For someone with a circadian rhythm as skewed and abused as the redhead’s, this was nothing new; the brilliance of the colours and this composition of nature’s finest artwork, however, was another story. “You don’t really see this in the city, do you?” She murmured to the Sandman without taking her eyes from the sky. “Not like this, with all the pollution… I’ve seen endless sunsets. But nothing compares to this, does it…”

Alair didn’t respond right away, and she assumed that he was just as entranced with the majesty of pink and orange clouds as she was. When he finally ventured to break the silence again with a single quiet word, she should—by now—have expected it to be the foot in the door for another kiss.
“Warmer?” Scarlet meditated on the word for a moment, the corner of her mouth slowly curling upwards as the answer began to form. “Well… the air’s cooled off quite a bit. This fire is shooting all of its heat skyward, the blanket only covers part of my legs, and the sweater you gave me is getting all damp from the humidity…” She pouted and ran her fingers over one of the sleeves in emphasis. The pout wasn’t long-lived, surrendering to a coy smile as she reached with one hand to slip her fingers around the back of his neck, pulling him dangerously close for the whisper of a kiss. “I dunno, Magic Man. I’m not as warm as I’d like to be…”

He laughed at her proclamation that she wasn’t as warm as she wanted to be, but the chuckle was more mischievous than amused. The sound transitioned to a playful growl in his throat as he closed the small distance between their lips, his teasingly forceful kiss functioning as a method of distraction for the fact that he was pulling her not so subtly towards him. In one swift movement, he had one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulder, his eyes sparkling with mirth as he tipped her backwards from their seat and lowered her to the carpet of green grass. With his knees still hooked over the log-turned-bench, he propped himself up on an elbow at her side and leaned down to plant several gentle kisses along her neck.

The wool blanket, which had tangled around Scarlet’s feet in the rapid and unconventional descent backwards from their previous position, fluttered against the wind’s breath. Alair rocked forward to grab it, pulling it back down over their prostrate forms before relinquishing its control to the redhead. “I can think of a few methods to generate heat in a setting like this,” he murmured, rolling to his side to face her. Beneath the cover of the wool, the Sandman’s roaming hands brushed against the skin where her shirt met denim, his fingers slipping beneath the fabric to cradle her slender waist. “It starts here…” he said breathily, quirking a brow before disappearing beneath the blanket to press his lips above her bellybutton.

His kisses trailed upward, one hand gradually easing up her shirt as he ascended until it reached her shoulders. With a grin, he repositioned himself so that he straddled her legs, tugging her upright so that he could pull her shirt—and the cardigan of his she’d borrowed—free of her limbs. Greedily, he once again found her lips with his, and he propped himself over her with one hand while the other tangled itself in her wild locks.

“Feeling warmer yet, alpha?” he breathed, taking her lower lip gently between his teeth. “Or do we need to keep fiddling with the thermostat?” As he spoke, he lifted one of her hands to the buttons on his own sweater, which quickly came unfastened and discarded along with the previous clothing. They fumbled together in an uncoordinated mess of hands and fingers to pull his t-shirt over his head as well, and soon their torsos were pressed against one another’s in the chill of the young night. The crisp air caressed his bare skin with a tenderness to accompany Scarlet’s feisty heat, and with the mattress of soft, dewy grass beneath them, Alair felt positively alive.

"Yeah?" The word escaped her in a breath, and her eyes--mirthful and ambitious as Alair's--twinkled with mischief at his suggestions pertaining to 'generating heat'. All of which, quite obviously, had nothing to do with starting a fire. "Then you'd better enlighten me, Magic Man, because this grass is..."
Whatever pseudo-complaint her snarky mind had been considering was lost to an abrupt intake of breath, incited by the firm warmth of Alair's fingers beneath the cloth on her body, and punctuated with a kiss near her navel that prompted a soft sigh. Perhaps he could tell, or perhaps not, but the redhead could already feel her blood spike a few degrees higher.

It was all so painfully familiar, and in the best of ways. Instead of her aged apartment, they were graced with the isolated expanse of nature; instead of the ratty, second-hand (or third, or fourth-hand) sofa from the 80s, they had the grass and soil. But the kisses along her upper body, the way her skin and the blood beneath it climbed in degrees in the absence of the T-shirt and cardigan, and all the more when Alair's firm abdominal muscles met the marginally softer give of her torso were all the same, if not a little more powerful, more exciting and--after being interrupted that first time--far more desired. While, had life been fairer, this should have been an encore, it was the postponed moment that the two of them deserved.

After all, in all technicality, it had been... what? A couple centuries, a millennium, since (in one incarnation or another) they had found the opportunity to give themselves over to one another completely?

Scarlet's hands greedily sought to tangle in Sleep's dark locks as soon as they had finished with his shirt, when their lips met in a feisty kiss; a grin played on her mouth in response to his question. "Hey, Sandman; I'm an Aries, remember? Fire sign?" Her eyebrow spiked upward to punctuate the reminder. "And this grass is still fucking chilly. Do you know what it takes to really keep a fire sign warm? Because..." Her lips trailed to his ear, planting a trail of kisses along his jaw on their way. "I'd be more than happy to show you."

Tugging gently on his earlobe with her teeth, one of the young woman's hands trailed from the back of Alair's neck to her own midback, where--with expert dexterity and fine motor skills--she tugged free the knot at the back of her damp bikini top, and, subsequently, the shoddy tie at the back of her neck. The damp piece of negligent material fell away like a useless leaf on the wind, and with nothing between their upper halves, Scarlet propped herself onto an elbow and closed the distance between them. "If you're gonna keep me warm, like you promised," she murmured, her words interrupted only by the hungry kisses she pressed to his lips, "Then there can't be anything between us. Nothing. You catch my drift?" And, just in case he didn't, she trailed sly fingers down his chest and over his hips, until they came into contact with the cool metal of his jeans' zipper.

Scarlet and their mutual desire had coaxed from his senses an intense awareness that, for the first time in more ages than he cared to recall, succeeded in making him feel simultaneously human and preternatural. He could feel the humming existence of humanity’s collective unconscious—the ubiquitous vibration of a million dazzling dreamscapes—as surely as he could feel the redhead’s charged kisses against his neck. Yet never before had he felt so grounded, so utterly rooted in the flesh and blood and bones that he called his own and that Scarlet, too, was claiming now. The magic she detected in him was mirrored perfectly in her, and together they were a part of a vast, mystical scheme of nature greater even than the surrounding mountains could contend.

His laughter bubbled from his lips like audible lighthearted kisses, but the expression in his bright blue eyes gave away the desire that lurked beneath their playful banter. “I think I catch your drift,” he responded huskily, trailing his fingertips down the length of her arm until his palm overlaid the fingers that hovered at his zipper. As if to confirm, he briefly pressed her hand against the length of toothed metal before deftly unfastening the button at the waistband and leaving her to complete the task. “I might need a little help, too, if you don’t mind…” he breathed into her ear, following her example and taking her earlobe gently in his teeth. He gave it a small bite before his hands wandered down and over her chest, at last settling on each of her hips.

“Nothing between us,” he reiterated, his hungry smile lopsided. Hooking a finger in each of her jeans’ belt loops, he pulled her hips aggressively closer. There was no hesitation in the way her buttons and zips lost their hold at the mercy of his eager hands, and before long their denim garments had been discarded, unneeded, alongside the sweaters thrown in the underbrush. Even their coveted wool blanket had worked its way from their fiery bodies and lay forgotten in the dewy grass, a puddle of crumpled fabric in the flickering shadows of their moving forms. Alair grabbed one of its corners and tossed it over the emerald lawn, grasping Scarlet by the shoulders to roll playfully over one another until their bodies lay atop its soft plaid.

The familiarity of their united bodies, free at last of the restraints of clothing, outdated sofas, and unannounced guests, resonated in the Sandman’s bones like the chords of their first musical experience together in Geoff’s quaint shop. It was time now for the long-awaited duet of a different kind, a pas de deux of primal desire and ancient love, the tempo of their adoration synchronized with their pounding heartbeats and the colossal movement of the earth.

Alair, his dark hair tousled and blue eyes glistening in the firelight, reached up to place two fingers tenderly on Scarlet’s lips. Affection and mischief flitted in quick succession across his face, and he pressed a kiss to his own digits in a gesture reminiscent of a shared moment on the playground in the rain…

Scarlet had never been so grounded in a moment before; nothing felt so natural as to rid her body of its last bit of clothing, or to discover her soul mate’s beneath his, the two of them void of shame or self-consciousness. The chuckle that shook her shoulders as they rolled onto the woolen blanket was light and childlike, with none of that characteristic snark or irony, something that surprised even her own, familiar ears. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to her that Alair wasn't just an anchor to her in her dreams, warding off the daggers of her own harsh subconscious mind, but he was a pillar to the very earth upon which she tread, a weight that kept her floating away into uncertainty.

Alair had been her distant past. If she had things her way, he’d also be her future. But, at the very least, he was her now. And nothing was going to interrupt this here and now; not this time.

Pressing a kiss to the two fingers that touched her lips, the fiery redhead’s cheeks tinted with their own inner fire, that warmth that spread through her body and reached places that no campfire or blanket could. Places that, mentally, emotionally, physically—even spiritually—only Alair could touch.
And at that, she reached to cup his face in the palm of her hand and seize his mouth in a slow but yearning kiss. This was their moment, their night, and there was no rush.

She met his eyes, blue gazing upon bluer, and the only warning the Sandman got was the subtle curl of the corners of her mouth before she shifted her position, straddling his hips and looking down upon him with the starry sky above her before he comment.

“Alair…” His name on her breath, carried on the breeze, appealed to her ears more than the thrum and hum of music in the distance. With her elbows on either side of his head, a cascade of thick, crimson tresses tumbling from either side of her shoulders, she fixed her eyes on his, fixed her lips on his and murmured on voiceless fricatives: “I love you.”

It needn’t be spoken; the truth, the sentiment, was all around them, such that it was part of them. But the words slipped past her lips without a thought. Like everything else in the moment, they had orchestrated themselves, no thought required, because it reached beyond thought. There was no hesitation, no contemplation, no uncertainty when Scarlet—inexperienced even as she was—slid her hands from the sides of his face, trailed them feather-light down his chest and secured them just below his waist. No hesitation, no contemplation, no uncertainty when, with great care, she adjusted her own position on his hips. And no second-guessing when, with a steadying inhale, she straightened her spine, and began to move.

And that was the moment when she became glaringly aware of how intimately she and Alair already knew one another.

This wasn’t difficult or awkward because, Scarlet realized, it was nothing new. She’d known this body, this person, this very soul for centuries. Millennia. That this might have been Maryana Aleksei’s first meaningful intimate encounter was irrelevant; in a past life, long since lost on her, she had held Alair like this before. She had moved with him, in sync in this sacred dance (because how could you not divine the mirror movements of someone you’d known and loved for so long?) many times before, perhaps even under the canopy of trees and stars. Scarlet knew him, knew how to touch him, knew how to be touched in spite of all of the hands that had ever hurt her.
For the first time in her current life, she knew—really, truly knew—what it meant to love, and to be loved.

Counting her breaths, thoughtfully measured, the redhead felt her posture give way to the energy throbbing in her core and spreading throughout her limbs. Catching herself on her elbows, she pressed her forehead to Alair’s shoulder, giving herself over more and more with every sway of their rhythm. She could feel his pulse in tandem with her own through their feverish skin, could hear their vitality in the music on the air, and she gave way to it, eyelids fluttering closed and lips slightly parted.
There was no fear in getting lost. Not when she knew she was in the right hands to guide her back to where she needed to be.

It was no secret to either of them that they had shared moments like this before, lost in the current of time and buried beneath grief too dark and too thick to allow their light to shine through. And as their breathing grew heavier, their touches more insistent, their kisses hungrier, the dark-haired Sandman could feel the black residue of former loss melting away, dissolving the cold fortress his mind had constructed against the painful glow of happier memories. Like golden rays of sunlight piercing through dense clouds after the threat of rain had passed, the recollections of former togetherness shone in to illuminate the shadowed recesses of details long forgotten.

The gleam in her eyes, the warmth and tenderness of her caresses, the soft curve of her body beneath his palms—the shock of bright crimson hair may have been new, but the life force behind Scarlet’s vibrant blue eyes was precisely the same as the one his own soul had bonded with all those millennia ago. They were cut from the same cloth, she and the Sandman. She was his dreams when he had none for himself; he was the rock upon which she found stability in a life that too often trembled. She, the cause and the reason alike that he pushed through his depression; he, the dark stranger constant that followed her across centuries. Their relationship was one to shatter the mountains upon which they moved. They—she—was the reason he knew atoms contained galaxies.

The cushion of grass beneath the hastily spread blanket gave softly beneath their shifting weight, and the warmth of the crackling fire combined with the chill of the night’s breath made him crave her closeness all the more. He hummed with pleasure when their bodies met bare, and his breath caught in his throat as the redhead pressed his shoulders to the ground and positioned herself atop his prostrate form.

Whoever said the wisdom of the universe lay in the imagination had never experienced ecstasy as exceptional as what reality presented them with now. Alair reveled in the sensation, his eyes aflame with azure as brightly as his cheeks were painted rose, feeling an electric relief that calmed him as much as it excited him. He gazed lovingly upwards as she established her rhythm, and they rocked together while the emerging stars looked on through the web of intersecting branches above.

Deftly he trailed his fingers up her arms until he grasped the sides of her shoulders. In one swift movement he sat quickly upright, flipping her to her back with a hand cradling the small of her neck as he lowered her to the ground in turn. With the other arm supporting the weight of his torso, he leaned in to her neck, exploring the tender skin along her jaw with tongue and kisses until he found her lips again, all the while moving steadily with the tempo of their shared pulse. Their synchronized bodies glistened in the shifting firelight, the cold of the evening forgotten completely in favor of the charged heat they shared. It was passion sustained in tandem, adoration made manifest in simple action—a new memory they were forging together, swaying to the beat of a joined existence meant to be.

The words came from his lips in a slurred murmur as his mouth brushed her ear. “I love you,” he heard himself say, eyes half closed as he bowed his head into her vermillion tresses. Her scent was as intoxicating as her body, and he breathed in her unique perfume with a faint moan, euphoria temporarily seizing control of his limbs as their improvised dance escalated in friction and fervor.

Though confident and established to have Sleep beneath her, drinking in the depths of those azure eyes as they clouded with desire and satisfaction at their synchronized rhythm, the fiery redhead made no move to resist when she suddenly found herself beneath him. The blanket met her glistening skin, with the gleam of the starry sky almost indistinguishable from the sparkle of Alair's vivid eyes, and--needless to say--she had no reason to complain of the cold anymore.
The heat of his body warmed and invigorated her, every inch of contact infusing her with electricity as striking as her lover's irises. Scarlet lost herself, along with her composure and her control, to the powerful spell of the kisses he planted along her jaw. And she lost herself further to their shared tempo, one that set her senses alight with passion more than the percussion of the most soul-consuming music she'd ever heard.

The Aries-born, the fire sign, had found the flame that she craved, the flame to sate her desire, and it was all a matter of reaching it, letting it consume every inch of her being--and taking Alair down with her.

Sighs unbidden escaped the young woman's parted lips and she arched her back to meet him chest to chest, hooking a single hand around the back of his neck while the other gathered a fistful of blanket on some unconscious impulse. But when the pressure climbed, and her feverish skin grew warmer as that flame burned hotter, nothing sufficed but the warmth of Alair's skin, gleaming with a lustrous sheen, beneath her hands, against her chest, against the taut muscles of calves and curled toes. She stole kisses from his mouth and along his neck, leaving tiny impressions of her teeth when she felt herself get carried away. And when their tempo hit just the right note at times, in tandem with the rhythm of her energy and her pulse and her frantic inhales, the dull half-moons of her fingernails--mercifully short--left their own impressions along his shoulder blades and at the back of his neck. All completely unintentional (at least, that was what she would say if ever asked), and certainly with no apology, but nonetheless a palpable indication of how he made her feel.

And she preferred to show, rather than tell.

"Alair..." Scarlet breathed his name into his ear in a subtle hum of ecstasy, hot breath tickling his neck with the quickening of their conjoined pace, not realizing until she'd spoken that she hadn't anything of substance or consequence to say in that moment, but that her voice betrayed only what was consuming her, body and mind--which was, of course, the Sandman himself. Her chest heaved with increasingly heavy intakes and exhales of breath. Her dull fingernails relinquished their loving assault on his shoulder blades in favor of her palms pressing against his pectorals, where they appeared happy to come to rest. 

Don't stop, she wanted to tell him, but wasn't sure her tongue could articulate a two-word sentence. Though pressed against the soft give of blanket and grass, she felt like she was climbing higher, higher with every movement they shared and every breath she took, and she didn't want it to stop, didn't want it to end until that fire consumed her--consumed the both of them--completely, and there was nothing left but to come back down to Earth.

The trick was not to look down. It was age-old, straightforward advice born of logic and reason, meant to obliterate the fear of falling for those trembling high above solid ground. But for Alair, the exhilaration of the view was what kept him going. He might once have been hurtling towards a dangerous end, but with Scarlet, he felt as though he were flying. She was a set of fiery wings spread wide against the wind, scooping him from his descent to soar in the golden glow of the sun. Together they rode the spiraling updraft until the world fell away, too small to distinguish its features; they existed as one mystical entity amongst the clouds and the stars, forgoing a landing altogether in favor of dancing amidst the glittering firmament.

As their heaving chests met, Alair released a sigh, burying his face into her shoulder as her nails bit lovingly into the skin of his back. More, her prying fingers seemed to say, and coupled with the longing gleam in her blue eyes as she met his gaze, he began a gradual, glorious accelerando. The cadence of their escalating velocity raised the experience to yet another level, a previously undiscovered dimension that had every inch of his body quaking to satisfy a deep-rooted ache, a need, a craving so acute that it formed on his lips in a husky, yearning whisper: “Scarlet…”

And all at once came the release, the bursting of floodgates so long closed that it was all he could do to contain the relief of his blissful anguish in a long, loaded sigh. Pleasure inundated his veins as though ecstasy were the only substance coursing through his vascular system, detonating in an explosion of accumulated emotion that left his nerves and thoughts simmering with the same euphoric heat.

The air that filled his lungs after that spell of prolonged rapture felt like a drink of fresh mountain water on a parched tongue, easing the transition from the sublime high to the hazy, dreamlike aftermath that rendered him awed and panting. Pressing his lips firmly to the redhead’s, he kissed her slowly and deeply, easing himself to his side as one hand brushed away a lock of bright hair from her glistening forehead. The outspoken Sandman felt no compulsion to disrupt the moment with speech; instead, he gazed at her lovingly, the azure of his eyes sparkling with his unspoken and undeniable affection. His fingertips slowly traced the contour of her jaw to the outline of her clavicle, trailing down her chest to rest lazily across her abdomen.

At last, with the breeze sending murmurs through the thick forest canopy, he drew breath for words of his own, donning a lopsided smile that spelled nothing but mischief. “Well,” he said raspily, leaning down to rest his forehead against her temple, “are you warm enough now?”

Scarlet wanted more; Alair gave her more, without the plea ever passing her lips, and the rhythm built from a steady and safe sway to something hungrier and full of yearning, a crescendo that sought a peak, a climax. That was the moment when the fiery redhead relinquished whatever tendrils of control clung to her composure like a lifeline, severing every thread of doubt or insecurity that held her back, and gave way to the deluge of ecstasy that filled her heart, filled her veins and activated every neuron in her skin, and then some. At that peak, she forgot how to inhale; and, on the decline, she remembered in a rush, and drew air slowly into her lungs like she was learning to breathe for the first time.

Once the electricity dissipated, diffusing through her skin and back into the earth from which it was born, her fingers eased their desperate grip on Alair's shoulders and fell away from his form, her knuckles brushing the soft fibres of the woolen blanket beneath them. Bathed in starlight, perspiration and beatific exhaustion, Scarlet's blue eyes--for the first time in a very long time--regarded the celestial bodies overhead with indifference. She didn't need them to divine her fate and fortune; not when everything surrounding her, everything this moment was made of, reassured her that this was precisely where she needed to be,

And that Alair was--and, in a sense, always had been--part of it.

Averting her gaze from the sky, the Aries-born young woman followed the path of Sleep's hand with her eyes in lazy satisfaction, resting one of her own atop of it when it came to rest on the flat of her abdomen. "Mmmm... for now," came her sly answer, the corner of her mouth quirking upward to match the mirth in his own smile. She brushed Alair's cheek gingerly with the back of her knuckles, taking curious note of the red chafes and scrapes at his neck and collarbone. Naturally, she first leaned towards concern, until she remembered not only how quickly he healed, but that their origins could serve as interesting conversation starters. Her wicked streak, for that reason, coaxed her not to mention them, for now.

"But, if we lie out here for too long, we're eventually going to freeze our asses off," she mentioned casually. "So unless you're raring to go all night, I suggest a sleeping bag, in the tent. I, ah... might have forgotten to pack two." Nothing about her mischievous expression or that sly flicker in her pale eyes suggested that she had unintentionally forgotten anything. "What? I think we can swing it; I don't take up a lot of space, and I'm flexible. Anyway, we fit together just fine." In cheeky emphasis of the remark, she turned on her side and pressed her body into his, front to front, pliant skin conforming neatly to his musculature.

“Are you raring to go all night long?” the Sandman returned, propping himself up with his elbow to look at her. He quirked a brow and tucked his lower lip playfully behind his top teeth. “Because you know I am.” He sat up by tucking his knees beneath his chest, then rose to his feet to face the campfire. With his skin still glistening, he stood before the flames, watching as the kindling shifted and sent a burst of red-orange sparks soaring upwards toward the stars.

“I’m the fucking Sandman, Scarlet, I don’t even need to sleep,” he said, planting his hands on his hips. He turned around to face her, wearing nothing but a broad, mirthful grin whose sentiment was echoed in his blue eyes. The small half-moon scratches along his collarbone and shoulder blades were all but invisible in the dense darkness of the mountain night, but he nevertheless wore them with pride—a quality that he certainly did not lack in general, given his unabashed nakedness and easy posture. Their passionate consummation was something absolutely sacred, something to be revered, and the intimacy they now shared as a result made him all the more comfortable in Scarlet’s presence.

He chuckled once again, extending both hands for Scarlet. He pulled her to her feet with a little too much enthusiasm, and he carried her momentum forward into a loving—and this time vertical—embrace. She was right; they fit together without a trace of imperfection, both corporeally and spiritually. “Let’s go see about that sleeping bag, then,” he said, his voice muffled somewhat by her thick hair. If he harbored any resentment about the “forgotten” item, he failed to show it. In fact, he looked downright amused as he led her hand-in-hand to their tricky time machine, unzipping the door flap in two quick gestures.

Releasing her hand, he leaned down, fished a pair of boxer shorts from his backpack, and slid them over his hips along with a pair of plaid pajama pants. Leaving her to whatever dressing she might want to do in turn, he slipped into the tent, relieved to find that it was somewhat warmer within its vinyl walls than the chilly outdoor night just beyond.

“Hurry up!” he called teasingly, patting the unzipped sleeping bag like an impatient child until she joined him. He cozied up to her immediately, tossing the other side over them both before wrapping one arm around her stomach and pulling her tightly against his bare chest. “Can you zip us up?” he asked, giggling despite himself. “I can’t reach.”

And yet, he didn't sleep, although he'd pass the nights with her. The paradox of his seemingly unlimited supply of energy gave her a headache to consider, and in response to his staged hubris, Scarlet only wrinkled her nose.

"And who says I need sleep, Magic Man?" She countered, sitting up to take his hands. A startled laugh tore from her lungs--still breathless from their engagement in physical activity--when he pulled her close to his chest, meeting his striking eyes with her own, and rivaling his mirth and challenge. "You're talking to someone who hasn't had a normal circadian rhythm since I was, like, thirteen." As a final, tantalizing embellishment, she stood on her toes and trailed her hands to his hips, as her lips trailed to his ear to murmur: "Just wait 'til we're home and not so at risk of being caught with our pants down. I'll show you a thing or two about pulling all-nighters, Sandman." And this time, she'd make damn sure to lock the fucking door.

Tugging gently on his ear with her teeth, Scarlet laughed and took his hand, unabashedly treading the solitary campground wearing nothing but joy and contentment on her way to the duffle bag she'd packed for the two of them. Feeling, frankly, overheated and still glistening with a light sheen of perspiration, she hastily came to the conclusion that a pair of underwear and a loose, ribbed tank-top would do. Especially considering how the temperature escalated again, once her lithe form was pressed against Alair's bare chest again.

"Just so you know, we're both going to wake up suffocating from mutual body heat," she warned him with a chuckle, reaching behind her to zip the sleeping bag up to their shoulders. Lips still mildly swollen from their fervent kisses and eyes half-lidded with a fatigue to which she refused to admit, the corner of her mouth twitched into a grin. "But, y'know... need to shed a few layers to cool off, then by all means. That's cool, too."

The fiery redhead wasn't even aware of the depth of her own weariness, however. Between getting up so early, followed by an event-packed day, and with such a finale as she and Alair had shared... She was, truthfully, spent, with nothing left to give. And not five minutes after her eyes closed, she plunged into a deep, contented and--mercifully--dreamless sleep.

The unforgiving aspect about camping was that nature never allowed you to sleep in. By 4am, the birds were awake and alive, and through the thin shelter of their tent, bright, striking sunrise made no attempt to hide.
One leg hooked over Alair's hip, with her forehead pressed into his shoulder, Scarlet gave up the battle of pretending to be asleep and finally stirred, feeling stiff and hot but, oddly, refreshed and rested. "Hey," she prodded the groggy Sandman in the shoulder, then planted a kiss on his temple when the first nag failed to rouse him. "'He who does not sleep': let's get the day started. I'm about ready to go wreak havoc on song sparrows, and am in desperate need of coffee. Or something resembling caffeine."

As the Sandman, the preternatural human embodiment of Sleep, there was no sensation of falling into slumber’s clutches; he could sleep at will, triggering the change as easily as blinking his eyes closed. So he waited until he sensed Scarlet’s slow descent, smiling tenderly against her hair as her body relaxed into his. This was what life was all about—the utter loving surrender of one heart to another, the wholehearted trust to display personal vulnerabilities while knowing beyond any doubt that their counterpart was there to protect and to cherish, not to harm or to judge. Alair may have seemed a stranger to insecurity, but in truth his cheeky arrogance was largely an act. Confidence was not equate with fearlessness, after all. And after centuries of repeatedly finding and losing the one piece of his life that made him whole, apprehension was a very real plague.

His sleep, as ever, was dreamless. And though his body did not need the rest after so relatively little expenditure, it nevertheless refreshed him. The streaming rays of a cheerful sunrise heralded the arrival of morning, announced to the remainder of the world by the chatter of happy birds. He was vaguely aware of Scarlet moving against him, but until she spoke he remained still.

“Just because I don’t have to sleep doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” he murmured groggily as she shoved him awake, wrinkling his nose and burying his face in his pillow against the assault of bright morning light. It was all for show, however, and Scarlet knew that very well; he rolled over complacently and smiled up at her, his dark hair matted to his forehead and sticking out in all directions. “I should have known the reason for the rush would be coffee,” he said sleepily, chuckling. He reached out and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her in close for a lazy kiss despite any protests.

Stifling a yawn, he sat up on the crook of his elbow and rubbed his eyes with his fists. “We’ll need to start the fire up again,” he said. “The percolator should be in the bag.” He reached his arms high above his head, stretching as he prepared to crawl from the tent and back into the open air. The breeze had already warmed considerably since the previous night, but against his bare torso it was still somewhat chilly. Suppressing a shiver, he picked up the forgotten blanket from the grass and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape while he resurrected the fire.

Positioning an old metal grate left over from the abandoned campground’s heyday above the flames, he took the retrieved percolator from Scarlet and placed it atop the dusty iron. “Please tell me you were better at packing thermoses than sleeping bags,” he told her impishly, shrugging away his guilt in favor of a hopeful smile. "Because I'm pretty sure I forgot them on the counter by the sink."

This was how you knew something was right. Or, more specifically, when you knew someone was right.

Zipping down the sleeping bag to free their constricted bodies from its warm confines, Scarlet was the first out of the tent, and the first to break the morning with a whisper on the cusp of profanity when the early morning air clung to her skin, damp from humidity and the closeness of Alair's body all night long. Stepping outside in nothing but a flimsy tank top and underwear printed with some generic sultry phrase on the back might not have been the wisest move; if she hadn't been awake before, she sure as hell was not. "Fuck it's cold," the redhead whined, contrary to Alair's quiet observation pertaining to the rise in temperature. "Why do you get to hog the blanket, huh?"

Shaking her head, she returned to the duffel bag to retrieve the thermoses and premium coffee grinds (like hell she'd drink that instant, even when it came to camping) along with the percolator and handed the latter to the Sandman. "Pfft. Did I remember to pack thermoses? Remember who you're talking to, Magic Man," she chuckled, setting the two silver containers aside next to the fire pit. "I might forget sleeping bags, but when it comes to coffee, I am fully prepared. And... damn, do I need it."

Pressing her fingers into her temple, she leaned against Alair's shoulder, fighting off the threatening pulse of a headache. Up too late and up too early, two days in a row... After a while, it began to takes its toll, especially now that her nights were more restful and fulfilling in terms of sleep and she was falling into a slightly more human circadian rhythm. Her body had gone from straddling the fence of barely functional, slumber-deprived state, to downright spoiled and relishing in longer, deeper rest.

It had been a while since her last nightmare, as well, not including that fateful night when she'd relived memories that hadn't really belonged to her. Alair wasn't only her soulmate: he was an all-encompassing cure, for so many aliments she'd suffered, some which she hadn't even realized had been a problem until his presence had evoked such radical change in her life--and, judging by how Caspar was moving on from her, it couldn't have happened at a better time.

"So, like... you can magically dull pain, put people to sleep... Where's your ability to wake people up, Magic Man?" She gave Alair's shoulder a playful shove and kissed his cheek, stifling a yawn against the back of her hand as she watched the percolator do its magic with heavy-lidded eyes. "Because that would be pretty fucking handy right about now... I don't know if I can stay awake long enough for that coffee to brew. Maybe I should throw myself back into that cold-as-hell-frozen-over lake."

“That’s the problem with sleep,” he drawled, quirking a brow and stifling yet another yawn of his own. “The more you get, the more you want. And also the less you get, the more you want. Basically, I’m in high demand.” A self-important grin lit up his features, and a hearty laugh shook his shoulders at the ridiculousness of how he sounded. “Clearly I need to work on the ‘waking up’ part. You just can’t get enough of me, can you?” The jibe came with a teasingly suggestive sidelong glance, and he braced himself for the impact of a playful fist. He draped his arm around her shoulders affectionately, repositioning the blanket as he moved.

Despite their physical proximity, he suppressed a shiver as the percolator began its cycle, watching as the steam mingled with the campfire’s white-gray clouds and spiraled upwards into the bright sky. Soon enough, the enticing aroma of strong brewing coffee filled the air as potently as the smoke. Though like aspirin, alcohol, and most other chemical substances meant to alter the human experience, caffeine had little to no real effect on the Sandman; nevertheless, he found himself just as much a slave to the morning ritual of java consumption as the red-haired woman at his side. Despite his occasional indulgence in a Venetian café-au-lame (as Scarlet so lovingly put it), the bitter flavor of plain, strong coffee was what he preferred, if only because its startling taste was enough to refocus his thoughts. Now, though, he associated it so strongly with the redhead he doubted he could ever separate the two again.

The subtle, bubbling hiss from the silvery, hourglass-shaped percolator indicated the eagerly anticipated beverage was ready for consumption. Using his discarded t-shirt as a makeshift potholder against the hot handle, he lifted the device from the old trivet and used his thumb to tip back the cover. “Here,” he said, filling both thermoses to the brim before returning it to the flames. “Hopefully that’s hot enough for you. Our warming up method doesn’t, uh, work so well on coffee.” He tossed her a wink and nudged her with his elbow, sloshing his own thermos over the rim in the process. Scowling, he took a sip, doing his best to play it cool at the outrageous temperature.

“I should throw you into that fucking lake for how hot you make me take my coffee,” he teased, his face contorting into a melodramatic grimace as the liquid burned its way down his throat. He gave in to it quickly, however, and soon even Sleep was raring to start the day. He may not have possessed the power to make someone else more alert, but he clearly had no difficulty in shaking the residue of slumber from his own bones. “Cas is headlining tonight, right? Do you remember what time he goes on?” He dug through their shared duffel bag and pulled out a fresh set of clothes, fully aware of the festival's—and Caspar Brighton's—musical schedule. A flicker of excitement pulsed through his chest. Tonight was the night for his own turn in the spotlight, and he'd be damned if he let Scarlet find out his intentions beforehand.

"Technically, if you're gonna parallel yourself with the actual act of sleeping, then I've hated you for a hell of a long time." Scarlet remarked, her face deadpan for a handful a seconds. The façade was shattered, predictably, by a wide smirk and a quirked eyebrow. "But... I guess I'm happy I didn't actually kill you. Y'know, by poisoning you with human pharmaceuticals that don't even have a freaking effect on you. And in my dreams, at that." 

Giving his shoulder a light and playful shove for good measure, she happily accepted the steaming thermos of merciful, smoky caffeine, not hesitating for even a second before allowing the scalding liquid to slide down her throat. The dull throb in her temples eased almost instantaneously the mild drug working its way through her bloodstream like an internal salve. Slowly, but surely, her senses began to come alive with the golden-hued morning. 

Settling beneath the blanket next to her preternatural companion, she arched an eyebrow at his comment that very nearly made her choke on her beverage with a laugh. "What can I say?" The cheeky young woman drawled at his exaggerated grimace, resting a suggestive hand upon his thigh. "I like my coffee as hot as I like my sex." Planting a kiss on his cheek (and knowing full well that was not a statement he would not care to refute), she stood and made for the tent again. Already, she was missing that inner fire that Alair had ignited at her very core the night before, in the face of the cool morning air on this mountain. No borrowed cardigan or woolen blanket could compare.

"Cas is on at 8PM, last I checked," she called, sifting through piles of unkempt clean clothes. Realistically, she was going to be cold regardless of what clothed her skin, and in the end she settled for the jeans she'd worn the day before and a fitted blue T-shirt--and Alair's sweater tucked under her arm, when she emerged, just in the even that she decided she needed it. "Which means he's probably gonna start preparing at, like, 5. This is the guy's biggest gig... I'll be damned if he wasn't stressing about it all night. Marissa had better remember to prompt him to take his meds if it looks like he's gonna have a full-blown panic attack..." In spite of the distance that established between the, Scarlet couldn't not worry. Cas had been there for her a long while, until just recently; a part of her would always care. Not the same way she cared about Alair, but their relationship had little impact on the sibling-like bond between her and her roommate.

Knocking back the rest of her still-scalding coffee in just a few mouthfuls, Scarlet ran a brush through her unruly crimson locks in an attempt to look somewhat presentable. Her usual eyeliner and light foundation wasn't an option where there wasn't a mirror to apply it; she had to rely on intuition (and Alair) to assume she at least looked presentable. "Come on, Magic Man, let's get moving; I think they're doing pancakes and waffles down where the vendors are set up. I don't even care how much it costs, because pancakes sound fucking amazing right about now."

Relinquishing his hold on Scarlet, he poured a bottle of water on to what was left of the fire. It hissed its protest, and he chuckled. “Worked up an appetite last night, did you, alpha?” he teased, threading his fingers through hers and giving her hand an affectionate squeeze. With his opposite hand he brought the thermos to his lips, taking a tentative sip as they set off towards the festival grounds. “Maybe it’s good we’re letting someone else cook. At least at home you’d only burn down the apartment building. Here, it’s an entire national park. Kind of a bigger deal.” He nudged her mischievously as they walked, keeping tight hold of her hand so as to avoid another playful smack (since her other hand, thankfully, clutched her own container of coffee).

While the Magician and the Moon snaked their way through the dewy forest in search of a sweet breakfast, the sleepy-eyed festival crowd already in attendance milled about the vendor square unaware that two new preternatural presences had joined them at sunrise. They were too distracted (and likely too hung over, from the looks of a good many squinting patrons and uneven gaits) to take notice of the fresh shock of cold on the breeze, or the way the atmosphere suddenly buzzed with renewed excitement. It was business as usual, it seemed, and the unusual pair wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Death strolled hand-in-hand with Life through the thickening throng of attendees, weaving among them as though they belonged to their ranks. With his icy skin pressed tightly to her warm palm, he squeezed his beloved’s fingers and nodded to their left. “Belgian waffles,” Amrial stated simply, his baritone at once soft and hard but his tone unmistakably eager. He smiled down at her, the saccharine sweet aroma of maple syrup and cooking oil overtaking his olfactory senses. “Shall we get in line?” he suggested, arching a brow. “I’m hungry.”

It was perhaps no coincidence that Sleep’s stately elder brother had chosen to queue at a vendor near the edge of the gathering. He sensed Alair’s approach before he caught sight of him, and he looked to Roesaleine with a wink, knowing she had likely detected him too. And sure enough, the awaited couple emerged through the trees as if on cue, strolling obliviously towards them.

Alair, meanwhile, was too absorbed in Scarlet to notice the familiar change in the air as they neared their destination. It wasn’t until he locked eyes with the stormy cobalt of Amrial’s stare that he recognized the man and woman who stood not fifteen paces before them, and the expressions they wore indicated this encounter was no accident.

“My brother,” Alair said to Scarlet, startled. He faltered for a moment with surprise, then cleared his throat as they stepped up.

“Hello,” Amrial greeted with a smile, gaze shifting to the red-haired young woman at his brother’s side. “It’s nice to see you again. We were about to get some waffles, would you care to join us?”

"So what if I did work up an appetite?" Scarlet challenged right back, lifting her chin to make it clear she walked without an ounce of shame. "Don't pretend like I'm the only one who's a little exhausted and in some need of sugar and quick carbs. Hey, what's with this? You prepping to get pancakes or build a fucking snowman?" She tugged playfully at the scarf before he took her hand, and the cheap shot at her hazardous cooking habits drew her eyes into narrow slits. Predictably, she looked as though she might whack him one, before realizing her only free hand was occupied. "...you are so asking for it, Sandman," came her vague warning, carried on a low monotone. "When I decide exactly what 'it' is."

Certainly, it was no accident that Life and Death were walking the campgrounds of this annual music festival in their corporeal manifestations, but the event was coincidentally appropriate for the former, whose very essence was so intertwined with music that they were not mutually exclusive. Roesaleine was thrilled to attend a festival celebrating music, and even moreso that she attended it with her true love at her side, her other half that completed her soul as much as he completed the cycle of existence.

Clad in dark denim jeans and a crew neck sweater, her long, ebony tresses pulled back in a high ponytail, she and Amrial looked like any other chic couple crowding around the vendors. The only reason they might have stood out at all was for the fact that clearly weren't battling hangovers, like the majority of attendees surrounding them.
"Waffles sound fantastic," she smiled and squeezed her beloved's hand in turn, just in time for that mutual sixth sense that opened Roesaleine's eyes to her surroundings. She acknowledged Amrial's wink with a broad smile, and it wasn't long before her prismatic eyes fell on a familiar dark-haired sandman, and his crimson-haired companion.

Scarlet couldn't understand why Alair had halted in his steps so hastily, like a deer caught in the headlights, and cast him a look of concern. "You okay, there, Magic Man?" She asked, at the same time that he uttered the words: my brother.
Neither of them had time to react before Life and Death stepped out of the line for waffles and approached them.

"Uh... hi," Scarlet eyed Amrial and his lady uneasily, recalling the events that had taken place the last time this duo had shown up. As a result, she squeezed Alair's hand tighter, in case he had any thoughts of storming off again. "We sort of had the same idea...the waffles, I mean..."

"Then join us, both of you." Roesaleine piped up, her smile reaching miles as she looked from Alair to Scarlet. "It's wonderful to see you again, Scarlet. You look well. Come, if we're quick, we can reclaim our place in line!"

• • • • • • _____________

• • • • • • Mariana.

• • • • • _____________

• • • • • • _____________

• • • • • • The basement was dark, damp. Golden sunlight filtered through the cracks in the cellar door, the warm promise of its day reaching into the dank shadows with its garish fingers in a futile attempt to coax forth the gloom it housed in the recesses of its stone walls. Out of its reach, the Sandman lay on the earthen floor, the deathly pallor of his face evident even in the dense blackness.

• • • • • • “Amrial,” he murmured, his voice hardly stronger than a whisper. His fist found Death’s shirt sleeve, and he gripped the threadbare fabric until his knuckles whitened a shade paler. “Just let me go, Amrial, I beg of you…let me die!”

• • • • • • “Alair, brother.” His tone was calm, his words steady, but behind that wall of characteristic stoicism rang the deep-rooted pain of sympathy. He knelt at the Sandman’s side, his outer expression unreadable. With his own icy hand, Amrial pried away Sleep’s fingers and draped his brother’s arm across his prostrate torso. “Brother, you cannot,” was all he said.

• • • • • • A wave of fury passed over the Sandman. “I must!” he cried, sitting up with a grimace. Amrial forced him back down with a colder, stronger hand. “Do you not understand? You haven’t the right, you haven’t my permission—”

• • • • • • “Alair,” said Death patiently, “if I required permission to perform my duty, do you think I would exist at all?” Amrial smiled softly, his stormy gray eyes filled with equal parts sympathy and remorse. “We must maintain our balance. You know this. It is as much a part of you as it is a part of me, and each of us plays our role in the equation. I cannot allow you to die, brother.”

• • • • • • The Sandman writhed in pain, clenching his eyes closed as the nausea of fear and blood loss crept ever closer. His white shirt was stained a deep crimson, and the cloth stuck to the jagged abdominal wound beneath the weight of saturated blood. Amrial reached over, effortlessly tearing the linen to expose the fresh gash.

• • • • • • “I tried, Amrial,” Alair said hoarsely, his eyes remaining closed.

• • • • • • “I know.”

• • • • • • “No,” he insisted, looking up with such fervor in his blue eyes that Death had to pause, startled. “You do not know. I tried to follow your rules. I obeyed every one of them for the sake of equilibrium. You disregarded all of it. Do you not see?” Alair lifted his neck, his brow furrowed deeply. There was a feverish glow in his azure glare. “My life for her life. The balance is maintained, and yet you refuse to honor my decision. It is you who has stopped me, betrayed me, betrayed Mariana. It is you who murdered her, and will continue to murder her, over and over, all for your own selfish validation. I cannot forgive that.”

• • • • • _____________

• • • • • • _____________

• • • • • • Amrial tended to Alair’s tragically self-inflicted injury with methodical precision, saying nothing for a long while. “We have given you a chance, my brother, and you know that,” he responded at last, weariness creeping into his tight syllables. “We have done more than what was required of us. We have agreed to perpetuate her soul, her essence—do you not see the sacrifices we have made for you already? And you, with your insolence, you are to repay us with your childish refusal to accept what cannot be undone? I task you to reassess which of us is the selfish one, brother.” As if to punctuate his point, he pressed a steaming cloth to Sleep’s wound. “Are you prepared, Alair?” he asked quietly then. “Are you prepared for what lies ahead? Are you prepared to love her?” His question rang in the empty cellar like a funeral chime, and the azure-eyed Sandman looked away in pain. “Because I fear for you, my brother. I fear that the heartbreak will destroy you over and over again until there is nothing left of you. You wanted this, to mend the tragedy, and yet I cannot help but think…I cannot help but think you have promised yourself to an eternity of sorrow, with the wound opening afresh every time before it can heal. You must let it heal, Alair.”

• • • • • _____________

• • • • • • _____________

• • • • • • “I am ready for anything, Amrial,” rasped Sleep furiously, struggling against his brother’s iron hand as it restrained him against the floor. “I know what I promised. I know what I sacrificed for it. I gave away a piece of myself to spare her, a piece that I cannot get back even now, when all has failed.” He sighed suddenly, wilting, moisture brimming in his half-closed eyes. His strength, his desire to fight, his very vitality was lost with the hope of his beloved’s safety, lost in the face of an eternity spent in her absence. “I thought…I thought I could fix this, brother. I thought we could fix this,” he croaked, a sob catching in his throat.

• • • • • • “We nearly did,” returned Amrial quietly, his words hardly more than a whisper. “We nearly did.”

• • • • • _____________

• • • • • • _____________

• • • • • • Because you are you, and forever will I be yours.

• • • • • _____________

• • • • “Been in love, Scarlet?” he remembered slurring, settling deeper into the couch cushions. “I have. It’s sort of great, you know? A rush. The best fucking drug…Better than absinthe. Better than whatever-the-fuck else. It’s a high, alpha. A high.”