Chapter 6 #2
Later that evening, he stretched out on his spring and straw mattress., the iron cot squealing as he tried to find a position that didn’t hurt. His overstrained muscles vehemently protested the lack of softness to rest on. As he draped his arm over his eyes, he groaned dramatically.
A soft laugh issued from the bed beside his. “You keep scrunching your face up and rolling around like a dog trying to get comfortable,” Swift pointed out as if it had escaped Elliot’s notice.
“Yes well,” Elliot muttered. How he mustered the energy to do even that much was a mystery.
Two damned weeks of far more rigorous and prolonged activity than he’d endured his entire life was taking its toll, and there was no end in sight.
Was this supposed to get easier? “My kingdom for a larger bed.”
“Do you actually have one of those?”
Elliot peeked out from under his arm and caught sight of seafoam eyes watching him. “A larger bed or a kingdom?”
Swift’s mouth curved with amusement. “A kingdom, you dolt.”
Elliot laughed, moving his arm beneath his head to prop it up. “Would I be here if I did?”
“You do act like the ruler of a small nation sometimes. The way you push back against the colonel’s orders, I shouldn’t like to be in your position when you do.”
Elliot winced at the reminder. His distaste for authority kept getting him into trouble.
The first few days he hadn’t wanted to use horror at all.
Colonel Cooper had known he was holding back and imposed gruelling physical activity designed to cow Elliot.
It wore him down but didn’t stop him from pushing at boundaries.
The low voices of the others in the long room having their own conversations before lights out provided enough privacy that Elliot felt confident no one else was listening, and he admitted, “I’ve never been one to conform to rules.
My mouth fires before I can think better of it.
At least my father will be glad of the military’s attempt to break me of the habit. ”
“Oh, I don’t know, you don’t seem so easily broken to me.
” That came with a cheeky grin. Elliot bit back his own in response, rolling his eyes instead.
Swift was remarkably attractive, but Elliot’s mind—and at least two other parts he could think of—were occupied with someone else entirely.
It was unfair when he couldn’t do a thing about it.
He needed to halt the lingering feelings he had for Warren.
Even if he was prone to falling in love easily.
Even if he was most of the way there by the time they parted in the skyscraper shadows of early morning.
They never lasted, these passions he found himself absorbed in.
If he put his mind to actively ending it, his willpower would prevail.
Obsessing over Warren would only end in heartbreak. Hadn’t he had enough of those?
Elliot shifted and flopped his arm back over his face, wriggling once more to get comfortable. “Yes, be that as it may, broken or not, I am rather in need of sleep. Not all of us are eighteen.”
“Nineteen,” Swift corrected firmly, with the rigid sense of injustice only the young retained when someone guessed their age too low.
“My deepest apologies, how could I possibly have failed to guess at that extra year? You’re correct, it does show terribly. Just as the many, many years I have on you must.”
Swift snorted and Elliot heard the squealing springs that signaled him moving about on his own bed. “I can’t possibly be convinced that you’re any older than twenty-five.”
Elliot grinned lazily. “You’ve got me there. Exactly that and I feel every day of it and thirty more.”
“All right, all right. Get some rest, Stone. I’ll leave you be. I’ve got to write back to my little sister anyway. It’s her birthday next week. She’ll be twelve.”
“Wish her a wonderful birthday for me, then,” Elliot sleepily mumbled.
Swift’s soft chuckle was the last thing Elliot heard as he nodded off.
* * *
ALL-ENCOMPASSING BLACK STRETCHED out in every direction.
Labored breaths heaved all around Elliot.
There was a moment of confusion when he couldn’t tell whose dream he was in.
Then the shelling started. Explosions burst around him, lighting up the moonless night in white lightning flashes.
Guns fired deafening shots. Bullets tore up the earth.
Smoke drifted over moss and dirt and horrible rivers of gore and blood.
Amid the chaos, Warren knelt stock-still, staring with anguished eyes at a lifeless body on the ground before him.
Elliot had a policy—a well-established and essential policy—do not interfere with the dreams of those he hadn’t received waking consent from.
It was deeply unjust and overly intimate to appear in someone’s mind uninvited.
And if they remembered the next morning it could be terribly complicated. He had a policy , and yet…
The anguish transforming Warren’s face was a hook and reel dragging Elliot forward.
As he neared, Elliot recognized the crumpled bloodied form on the damp earth as his own.
A lump lodged in his throat. Warren was cradling the corpse’s head, murmuring indecipherable words that hurt to hear.
Guilt propelled Elliot farther. He wasn’t even certain why he felt miserable, he hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about.
This wasn’t his dream. It wasn’t his fault.
The flushed, wounded sensation in his chest remained, and he was compelled to act.
Two more steps placed him directly in front of his own body. A shiver trembled down his spine. “Warren.”
He made no response. Elliot cleared his throat and reached down, palm sliding over the curve of a perfectly shaven jaw, tilting Warren’s face.
Stubbornly, Warren refused to follow the physical directive and look up, his subconscious resisting.
“Warren, it’s Elliot. Look at me. I’m not dead.
I’m right here. All you need to do is see. ”
Blinking hard, Warren’s long lashes stuck wetly together. A single teardrop trickled from each wide eye, cascading over cold cheeks. One pooled against Elliot’s thumb.
The noise around them ground suddenly to a halt. Elliot’s heart froze. Then Warren’s gaze fixated on him, and his heart took off a thousand times faster.
Brow furrowing, Warren blinked again. The night around them brightened as his gaze sharpened.
Elliot forced his own attention to reshaping the dream.
He whisked away the bodies and war-ravaged soil, then replaced them with unblemished grass, a clear summer night, a bright full moon and a swath of glittering stars shimmering above instead of artillery fire flashing. A warm breeze ruffled their hair.
“Elliot,” Warren whispered, choked, disbelieving. “But you’re dead.” He looked down, as if expecting to find the body. His eyes widened with surprise when he didn’t, and his bow-shaped lips pressed together. Trembled.
“I’m all right. As are you.” Elliot stroked his thumb over the soft skin of Warren’s cheek.
Warren’s confused gaze lifted from Elliot’s shiny black shoes and met his own once more. “I don’t understand. I saw you shot. Saw them all shot.”
A sharp pain lodged below Elliot’s ribs. “I expect you did, but I’ve the great pleasure of informing you none of it was real. You’re dreaming, love.”
Warren seemed to process that for a moment, wetting his lips. Memories darted to the forefront of Elliot’s thoughts, an urgent yearning he stuffed down. He was already intruding here; he wouldn’t do that.
“So…I’m dreaming you? You’re not real?” Warren asked, attempting to solve a puzzle Elliot hadn’t yet given him all of the pieces to.
“You’re dreaming, and I am real. If you’ll recall, I informed you I had secrets. This is one.”
“But how are you here?”
Elliot lifted a shoulder and offered a nervous smile.
He finally noticed he was looming over Warren and moved to sit beside him instead.
Warren didn’t match Elliot’s relaxed pose with his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, instead he huddled with his arms wrapped around his knees, still visibly shaking off the effects of his terror.
“I haven’t the faintest how it happens. How does any of it, really?
The magic? I go to sleep as anyone might.
Then I open my eyes and find myself in a dream not my own.
Quite honestly if it was my own, I’d likely die of shock. ”
“Why?”
“Oh. I've never experienced a dream of my own. I always appear in another’s. Most often, people I—” Elliot cut himself off, face heating.
Why couldn’t he still his tongue? It kept getting him in trouble.
Lord knew seeing Warren around camp in his too-snug uniform hadn’t done Elliot any favors, but he was supposed to have been forgetting about Warren, not nursing a growing tenderness.
Not getting so attached he invaded the man’s dreams. What happened to willpower?
“People you what?”
“Uh…care for. People I'm close to. Generally speaking.”
“Oh.” Color spotted Warren's cheeks. His rigid hold on his knees loosened. “And now you’re here.”
Elliot’s own face must be scarlet—it burned enough. He cleared his throat to buy time. “Now I'm here, yes.”
Warren studied him, lips pushed out thoughtfully. “When you say c—”
“While we’re on the subject of dreams and entering another person’s,” Elliot hastily cut off that line of questioning, embarrassed quite enough for one night.
“I must apologize. I wouldn’t usually interfere without permission, but you were…
” He shook his head softly. “I couldn’t walk away from you like that. Not when I could offer assistance.”
Warren’s smile was indulgent in a way Elliot wasn’t sure he deserved. “I'm glad you didn’t. What didja mean, walk away? Where would you go?”