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Cross doesn’t rush towards consciousness so much as he limps. Slowly. With some longing glances back at sleep. The emergency alarm for the fire station isn’t blasting into the side of his skull to wake him up, meaning he’s either got the day off or at least another few blissful moments of unconsciousness left before he absolutely has to get up and face the day. He tries to roll over onto his side to get more comfortable, but it feels like his bones have been filled with lead. After struggling for a bit, Cross manages to toss one of his arms over himself, but not much else. The motion pulls tightly at his wrist and sharp pain shots up into his arm.
“Oh-” Someone exclaims somewhere off to his right. “Cross ----- don’t pull ----- can’t -----.” It sounds like they’re speaking to him from underwater. Someone, presumably the owner of the voice, grabs his wrist and gently sets it back at his side. The distinct feeling of bone on bone tells him that it’s another skeleton.
Cross tries to turn towards the voice, but only manages to drop his head back onto his shoulder. Luckily, the pillow keeping him propped up prevents him from slumping off the side of the bed.
Cross slowly opens his eye sockets to try and orient himself. It feels like his skull has been dragged through wet cement, which ended up drying while his sockets were closed and now they’re just about impossible to open again. He doesn’t remember if he’s ever been this exhausted before.
Once he manages to get his sockets open and his eye lights have mostly settled in his skull, he realizes he can’t actually see much beyond a beam of soft white light. He blinks once, which takes less of a momentous effort than opening his eyes did. Twice, which is even easier. The white light becomes noticeably brighter, but his vision doesn’t become any clearer. Am I dead? Cross thinks, not nearly as alarmed about this as he thought he would be.
He thinks about moving his arm up to cover his eye sockets, but thinks better of it after remembering the sharp tug at his wrist from earlier. After another few seconds of staring at the light, Cross’s sockets start to water. Awful pain sears its way through the back of his skull and into his spine. He groans low in his throat, which comes out as kind of a whimpery sound, like a kicked dog.
Suddenly, a big dark orb appears above him, leaving only a soft halo of light around the edges. It’s beautiful, Cross thinks, as he exhales a grateful sigh of relief.
“Not supposed ----- awake ----- go ----- sleep,” says the orb, which Cross belatedly realizes is probably the silhouette of the person who touched him earlier. A blissfully cool hand covers the span of Cross’s sockets, effectively blocking out the rest of the light. “Go to sleep,” they say, the command pressed quietly into the side of Cross’s skull.
Fuck. I’m totally dead. But Cross really doesn’t feel like arguing with death or God or whatever. He’s asleep before he can register the soft skeleton kiss pressed to the top of his skull.
When Cross wakes up next, he’s so hot that it feels like his bones are burning from the inside out.
He’s in a house that’s on fire. Just a typical Tuesday. He’s doing a final sweep for the dog the homeowners said was probably still inside. He treads as carefully as he can in his heavy gear, and keeps a clear line of sight on the stairs in case things go south. The house seems sturdy for now, as far as burning buildings go, but there’s no reason to invite trouble.
As he makes his way down the hallway, a shock of white fur grabs his attention. He carefully shuffles into what he assumes is one of the children’s rooms to investigate—it’s closer to the heart of the flame, with popping and rumbles like a thunderstorm. With how unpredictable some animals are in fire conditions…Cross is really hoping that poor dog isn’t in there. Once he draws nearer, he lets out a sigh of relief when he realizes what he saw was just a stuffed animal. Maybe one of the others has already found him. Cross tries to assure himself.
As he turns around to leave, he hears a loud crack above and ahead of him, and looks up just in time to see the doorframe snap and collapse, bringing down the rest of the wall with it. The flame swallows up whatever remains, embers flaring up in a shower of bright lights.
There goes that exit.
No big deal. Cross thinks as he carefully makes his way over one of the other interior walls. This one leads back to the hall on the side opposite the source of the fire, so it should be relatively stable, for now. He’ll just break out with his axe. Even if he’s by himself, it should only take a minute or two to get the end of the hall and make his way down the stairs.
He gets in two good whacks in before a loud boom startles him. A second later, fire surges through the floor of the bedroom. Shit. It must have spread on the downstairs level. The floors aren’t gonna be reliable for long. Cross scrambles to get to the edge of the room, where the walls can lend some safety if they don’t collapse, but the fire is closing in on him fast.
Cross feels his breathing pick up as he looks around frantically for a new escape route. He spots a window on the other side of the room, which he quickly stumbles towards. It’s gonna hurt to jump from the second story, but he’s run out of better options.
He’s nearly there when he hears another crack far too close. He doesn’t have time to sprint towards his only exit before his foot plunges through the splintering floor. Cross scrabbles desperately along the burning floorboards to grab on to anything in reach, slowing himself for a moment, and then he’s falling falling falling.
Cross lands on the first floor of the house feet first. He hears a sickening crack that reverberates through his entire left leg and into his spine and it hurts. He collapses onto his back and can’t convince his feet to so much as twitch. Something at the base of his skull feels jaggedly off. He knows he cracked his head on the floor. He can’t even feel that pain past the searing agony in his leg.
He’s screaming. Screaming so hard that his throat seems to burn right along with the rest of him. He can’t hear himself over the roar of the fire. No one can hear him.
Panic flutters in his chest. He’s gotta get out of here or he’s going to die, but he can’t move. He’s stuck, laying on his back staring at the house that’s coming down around him.
He needs to get out of here. He needs to see…
He needs to see…
…who does he need to see?
The scene around him suddenly warps, pieces of the memory melting and fading until nothing is left except inky blackness. An icy cold feeling sinks deep into his bones and forces him to go completely lax.
It feels like he’s floating, like he’s on a big inflatable bed in the middle of the ocean. He manages to force his sockets open, surprised to see the orb and its accompanying halo of light there to greet him.
“Shh. You’re okay now. I’ve got you. You’re okay. You’re okay,” the orb says, each repetition of the phrase lulling Cross further and further. The hands that he thought were cool earlier now feel warm as they caress either side of his skull.
By the time his sockets fully slip shut, he finds that he really does feel okay.
“Ugh.”
The first thing Cross becomes aware of when he wakes up is his morning breath. Sure, sometimes he’s too lazy to brush his teeth before bed, but it’s never been this bad.
When he opens his sockets, he’s startled to find that he’s not at home or at the fire station, but in a room he doesn’t recognize. He sits up quickly, tugging painfully at the IV that’s rooted directly into the bone near his wrist. Looking at it makes him feel queasy, so he opts to glance around the room he’s in instead.
The room, which Cross quickly realizes is a hospital room, is fairly large. An empty bed to the left of him tells him that it’s usually meant to house two people, but no one else seems to be using it right now.
There’s a duffel bag tossed haphazardly onto a chair that looks like it can be converted into a second bed for guests. There’s a t-shirt thrown over the backrest that looks at least three sizes too small for him and a pair of boots sitting at the base of the chair that Cross doesn’t recognize.
The blinds are shut, but the bright sunshine bleeding through the cracks tells him that it’s probably late in the morning or early in the afternoon.
Once he gets his bearings, Cross starts inspecting himself from head to toe. He moves his head and neck, which both move fine, although the back of his head feels like it got smacked with a crowbar. He rotates his shoulders, elbows, and wrists, avoiding looking too closely at where the IV goes into his ulna. He’s sore, but everything seems to still be functional. Nothing is numb, tingling, or refusing to respond…nothing but his left leg, that is, which feels stiff and awkward when he tries to shift in place.
Without any preamble, Cross tosses the blanket that covers his lower half off to the side. Cross inhales sharply as he takes in the giant, offensively purple cast on his left leg. It runs from the top of his femur all the way down to his toes. “Well, shit,” Cross half whispers, reaching down to trace along the upper part of the cast. The cast itself is completely bare except for a poorly drawn dick and a little cartoon sun drawn near his knee, most likely Killer’s doing.
Cross desperately searches his recent memory to see if it will provide any insight into how he’s ended up here, but he doesn’t remember anything after getting called into the fire station that morning. He’s still staring dumbfounded at his leg when the most gorgeous skeleton he’s ever seen walks into his room with an iced coffee in hand.
“Oh,” he exclaims, “You’re awake!” The skeleton nearly drops the cup of coffee he’s holding as he rushes to find a place to set it down, eventually setting it on the side table for the empty patient bed. He rushes over to the edge of Cross’s bed, nearly tripping over himself in his obvious excitement.
“Are you okay? How are you feeling, sweetheart?” The other skeleton places his hand gently over Cross’s. Cross flushes at the attention, but doesn’t pull away. He wouldn’t want to be rude.
“Um,” Cross says after the pretty skeleton starts to get a worried look on his face. “I’ve been better,” he finally says, giving a meaningful glance down towards his leg.
Pretty Skeleton laughs at that, moving his free hand so it’s politely positioned in front of his teeth. “Yeah, I suppose that’s fair. Are you still in any pain?”
Cross pauses, mulling the question over. “I feel sore I suppose, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Oh thank goodness. I’m so glad the nurses were able to get your pain levels under control. I think you were pretty out of it earlier, but you were doing all kinds of thrashing around. You really scared me!” The pretty skeleton gets a sort of teary look to his sockets and Cross is terrified that he might start crying. Thankfully, he seems to get himself under control pretty quickly. He gives Cross’s hand a quick squeeze before pulling back to settle in the chair placed at his bedside.
“Um,” Cross starts, once the other monster has settled, “Would you mind telling me how I got here?”
“You don’t remember?” Pretty Skeleton asks, noticeably surprised.
Cross shakes his head.
“I suppose that’s understandable, you hit your head pretty hard after all,” Pretty Skeleton muses, “Well, to make a long story short, three days ago you fell about 15 feet from the second floor of a house. They had a gas stove in their kitchen, which happened to be right under the room you were in. It exploded and the floor caved in. You fell feet-first and landed directly on your left leg. You broke it in three different places.”
Cross cringes internally. He’s broken bones before, but they could typically be healed within one or two days, tops. Less, if there’s a competent healer around. Being unconscious for three days is…bad.
“Even with magic, the bone is going to take a few weeks to heal and set,” Pretty Skeleton continues, “Thankfully, you ended up falling right next to Nightmare and he was able to pull you out in one piece. It’s honestly a miracle you didn’t fall directly on top of him.”
“Huh,” Cross says, “Well, this sucks.”
“That’s the absolute understatement of the century. I’m not going to be able to get laid for weeks!” Pretty Skeleton bemoans, tossing his hands in the air with a dramatic flourish. He glances sidelong at Cross, like he’s supposed to be in on a joke and this is his cue to laugh.
Cross flushes deeply, confused about the connection between his leg being broken and this guy getting laid. Maybe…he’s some kind of specialized bone nurse, and he’s been too busy to go home…?
“So, uh… One last question,” Cross says, interrupting the other skeleton’s melodramatics, “Do you work here or something? Or have we met before? You seem oddly familiar.”
Pretty Skeleton gets an adorably puzzled look on his face, “You don’t…remember me?”
“No,” says Cross, feeling guilty, especially after how nice the other skeleton was to him. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”
Pretty Skeleton’s ever-present grin shatters, struggling for a second before it pulls down into a sharp frown. He looks absolutely devastated.
“Cross,” he says the name carefully, like it’s made of glass. “I’m your husband. We’re married, sweetheart.” He’s holding his hand up to show Cross a simple golden wedding band on his ring finger.
Cross can do nothing to prevent the laugh that bubbles its way out of his chest, the volume of it startling both himself and the monster next to him. “Oh my god, that’s rich,” he says between giggles. As if someone so beautiful would ever give him the time of day. “Who set this up? Was it Killer? I bet it was Killer.”
Pretty skeleton’s eye lights narrow to nearly invisible pinpricks. “Cross, I’m not-” the other skeleton starts, before standing up suddenly to go dig through his duffle bag on the other side of the room.
By the time pretty skeleton seems to have found what he’s looking for, Cross’s giggle fit has mostly subsided. He stomps back across the room to thrust something shiny into Cross’s face. It’s another ring. “Take it,” he insists.
Cross does. It’s a simple silver band that has two thin lines spanning the edges of the ring. “Uh…” Cross says, glancing up at pretty skeleton nervously. This is going a little far.
“They took off your ring while they were setting your leg and putting it in a cast. Look inside. There’s an inscription. Read it,” he demands, towering over Cross from the side of the bed.
Cross grabs the ring between his pointer finger and thumb to inspect it, tilting it carefully until he can find what he’s look for. My love, says the inscription.
“Put it on,” the other skeleton commands, some of the earlier anger easing from his tone of voice.
Cross’s hands shake as he slips the ring onto his ring finger. It fits like an absolute dream.
But he’s not married.
“This isn’t funny,” Cross says quietly. There’s a shakiness to his voice that he can’t quite suppress.
“I agree,” the other skeleton says, quietly, “This isn’t funny at all.” He pulls off his own ring then, and hands it to Cross. “Read that one, too.”
Cross tilts the ring between his fingers until he can read what’s inside. My light, it says. A wave of strong familiarity washes over him. Something about the light glinting off this ring…it seems like something he’s seen a million times before.
Memories start to come back in bits and pieces; little half-impressions that flicker by before he can grasp them. He remembers feeling shy when someone grabbed his hand during a bad romantic comedy that made him cry, flustered when he got his first kiss sitting on a park bench in the middle of winter, overjoyed when he wakes up cuddled next to someone after they decided to stay the night, and so deliriously happy when he stands barefoot on a sandy beach as a silver band gets gently placed on his finger. The same silver band he’s wearing right now.
Cross groans, leaning forward to clutch at his skull, the memories flooding in faster than he can process them. He keeps the golden band gripped tightly in his fist.
“You came up with the inscriptions. You remember, don’t you?” The other skeleton lets out a desperate little sob between words that nearly breaks Cross’s soul in half. “I proposed on the beach. You’d never been before. You were so excited to see the ocean that you didn’t even notice I had gotten down on one knee.” Another sob. Cross’s eyes are burning sympathetically, and he isn’t sure if it’s from him or the other skeleton. “You came up with the inscriptions on the drive home. It was nighttime. You were looking at the stars and you said that my eyes reminded you of starlight.”
The other skeleton falls to his knees beside Cross’s bed. He grabs Cross’s wrists, drawing them away from his skull. His hands are small and smooth compared to Cross’s, which are riddled with a constantly changing pattern of knicks and cuts. It all feels so familiar, but he can’t make himself remember.
“Who even says something like that?” The other skeleton continues, looking up at him from where he’s kneeling on the ground. “I told you that I loved you more than anything and you veered into oncoming traffic and nearly crashed the car. Please, Cross. Remember me.”
Cross leans over the side of the bed and tugs at the skeleton’s hands until he stands back up. He takes one of his hands from Cross to swipe at his teary eye sockets.
“I think,” Cross says hoarsely, “I think I almost died.”
The skeleton lets out a quiet hiccupping sob, but doesn’t say anything more. He’s listening.
“When I was laying on the floor in the middle of that house, I don’t think I really cared about dying that much,” Cross continues.
His leg is broken and it hurts and he’s screaming and he’s so scared.
The skeleton beside him lets out an absolutely heartbroken wail, and Cross realizes exactly what he’s said. “No, no, no! Not like that! I definitely didn’t want to die! I would certainly prefer not to, if at all possible,” Cross squeezes the other skeleton’s hand in a way that he desperately hopes is reassuring.
He’s gotta get out or he’s going to die, but he can’t move. He’s stuck, laying on his back staring in horror at the house that’s falling apart around him.
The other skeleton sniffles once, before squeezing back fiercely. Cross tries not to wince. “What I mean is that I cared more about how I wouldn’t be able to see someone again, than about the fact that I was dying.” Cross’s head pounds in time with his soul. He feels like burying his face in the nearest pillow and sleeping for at least another day, but he’s sure he’s on the verge of something.
He needs to get out of here. He needs to see-
“And I think…I feel like you were the person I needed to see.”
He’s dying. He needs to get to someone. Someone he loves more than anything. He needs to get to-
“Dream! You’re Dream! I remember!” Cross says, spine suddenly going ramrod straight. Cross barely has any time to correct his entire worldview, because holy shit, he’s married, before Dream dives directly into Cross’s ribcage and flips him onto his back.
Cross lets out a pained wheeze, as he takes on Dream’s full weight. Dream is gripping him so tightly that he’s pretty sure he can feel his ribs bruising underneath his crushing hold and he might need to extend his hospital stay, but that’s okay. Everything’s okay. How could it not be? He remembers, he’s married to Dream.
Dream sobs openly into the crook of his shoulder, while Cross tries and fails to hold back his own tears. Cross rubs soothingly at Dream’s shoulder blades like this is any other stressful day, and Dream leans into him with a shuddering sigh.
“You scared me!” Dream eventually gets out through hiccupping sobs. “You’ve scared me so much this week, Cross! I’m so-” Dream sits up in Cross’s lap to glare down at him, “I’m just so mad at you! Don’t. Do. That. Again.” Dream snaps, punctuating each word with a sharp poke directly into the front of his sternum.
“I’m sorry.” Cross says, cupping one of his hands against the side of Dream’s face. He brushes off some of the fresh tears that have spilled over his sockets with his thumb. “I’m so sorry, Dream. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Dream leans into it, closing his eye sockets for a moment. They stay like that for another moment, until Dream waves him off to scrub at his sockets with the back of his hands. Dream still has tears streaked across his cheeks, but at least he’s not actively crying anymore. “I know,” Dream sniffles, “Just try to be more careful next time. I can’t lose you, Cross.”
“I don’t want to lose you either. I don’t want to live in a world without you in it.”
Dream ducks his head, glancing shyly past Cross and towards the corner of the room, “That’s not fair! You can’t just say stuff like that. It makes it so hard to be mad at you.”
“I dunno about that,” Cross smirks, “What’s that saying? All is fair in love and war. John Lyly wrote that, I believe.”
“Wait, so you mean to tell me that you can remember some old, dead writer from 1600 or whatever, but not your own husband?” Dream huffs, placing his hands on his hips.
“Hey! John Lyly is an important figure in lit- Oh, I almost forgot.” Cross sits up suddenly, nearly knocking his skull into Dream’s as he does so. “I think this is yours.” Cross holds out the palm of his hand, offering Dream his ring back.
Dream laughs, not bothering to cover his mouth like he usually does. “Would you mind putting it on for me?” he asks, offering his hand to Cross, palm down.
“Of course, my light,” Cross takes Dream’s hand in his own and places the ring on his finger. It goes on easy. Cross admires his handiwork for a moment, before pressing a kiss to the top of Dream’s knuckles.
When Cross glances back up towards Dream, who’s still planted firmly in his lap, he’s wearing the sweetest smile Cross has ever seen. He looks absolutely radiant, like he’s glowing from the inside out.
“Thank you, my love.”
“Anytime.”