He Who Controls the Flame (001 fanfic)

Chapter Eighteen- Dream Walking

Throwing this out for funsies: If anyones good at making book covers, I'm begging for a new one for hwctf, I'm broke, so it'd have to be out of the goodness of your heart, but I'd love to see new ideas and maybe change the cover cause I want something with more pazazz 😫✋
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming:

I waned in and out of sleep, watching tiny dust filaments fly through the air. I tried not to keep my eyes open, not wanting to wander into the world of the dreaming because dreaming meant blue eyes and golden hair and a pensive gaze that I had no interest in seeing. I had enough of him in the waking world. Too much, if I was being completely honest. I wished more than anything that I could just take a walk and clear my head...but alas, that was impossible for two reasons. The first, being I was practically captive in this place, and the second, well...my ankle was healing, but it wasn't healed. I was still immobile.

I was currently on the couch downstairs. It was midday now, or at least I assumed it was, I hadn't really been checking the time. I hadn't checked the time since before I fell asleep last night. Hadn't done much of anything since Peter had told me everything.

Well...maybe not everything. I still had loads of questions about his past, my father and him, his power, but he had told me what mattered. Had told me that it wasn't his idea to beat me. He never wanted to hurt me. Meaning the image I had construed of him in my mind, all villainous and morally bad no longer held true.

Which meant...this really fucked things up.

Like, for example, thinking he'd been the one to flash the green light on the whole "beat me to a pulp" thing was a major turn off and helped to keep me away from him, like some kind of leash, tugging me back whenever those blue eyes got a little too magnetic. But now...now the leash was snipped. Hell, there was no more leash. There was nothing holding me back from his pull now.

Lost in my reverie, I hadn't noticed the brown thing moving towards me on the couch, thinking at first it was speck of dust. It was not, evidently, a speck of dust.

A high-pitched shriek escaped my lips as I realized a spider was crawling just an inch away from my nose. It was a big thing, about the size of a marble, with skinny little legs and beady, dark eyes.

"Oh fuck no." I shot up, scrambling off the couch and falling right onto my ass. I scooched as far away as I could before standing, not even caring that my ankle was throbbing from all the movement.

I pressed a hand to my forehead, watching the thing still right where my face had been. I shuddered.

"Oh Jesus, I can't even kill you can I?" I muttered, massaging my temples. I had made a pact when I was twelve, after watching a nature documentary on the importance of insects on Earth Day, that I would never kill another bug again. And here I was...eighteen and still holding to it.

"Fucking nature documentary." I chewed down on my lower lip, wondering how on earth I'd hobble to the kitchen, grab a glass, and swipe the thing in there, and take it outside, all on one foot. Not to mention, I'd probably hyperventilate during the process and drop something or accidentally put the spider on me and lose it in my hair or drop it somewhere and never feel safe again in the cabin knowing it was lurking somewhere in the shadows...

"What are you doing?" a raspy voice asked. I looked up from my spot pressed against the glass doors of the backyard, to the staircase, where Peter was. For once, he did not look put together. Sure, he was still drop dead gorgeous, but he didn't look orderly.

His hair was a mess of golden curls atop his head, one side pressed closer to his temples than the other, as if he had been sleeping on it. He was wearing the same clothes as last night, though his button down was wrinkled, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and half-untucked.