Hanahaki || DNF Fanfiction/AU

The One Where We Time Skip

It had been shortly over a year since Dream had coughed up his first flower. He still had the blossom in his room, as he had been advised by his mother to press it using some books to preserve it. He'd washed the blood off (which had proved to be slightly more difficult since the blood had dried) and pressed it between a Harry Potter book for a few days before hanging it in a pictire frame on his bedroom wall.

Dream often stared at the flattened blue rose, making up in his head what he thought his soulmate would look like. This time he imagined a short boy with chocolate brown hair and bright blue eyes. Then Dream realized that he wanted him to be more diverse than that and made his left eye a deep brown. His favorite color would, obviously, be delft blue, and he'd wear it on a T-shirt or hoodie every day with blue jeans and grey tennis shoes. The hoodie would have his name on it, courtesy of a special store in town that would print you a hoodie of your favorite color and name on your 16th birthday. His name would start with a G, Dream decided, and didn't want to get any more specific than that.

Dream looked down and realized that he'd been sketching the boy as he imagined him. He had soft features and messy short hair, and a very cute smile. Dream smiled back at it, and decided to color the image he'd made. He leaned back in his chair to get his colored pencils, accidentally falling backwards in the process.

"Shit- ow," he muttered, sitting up. He stood and picked the leather office chair up off the floor and put it back, grabbing his box of colored pencils in the process.

Dream had always been somewhat of an artist. He wasn't the best at coloring- he always preferred to sketch people instead. He'd often sketch characters from his favorite shows or movies and hang them on his wall, shortly after tearing them down when he found a new favorite. He'd never color them, as he could never get the highlights or shading right. He was never able to find a consistent light source for the drawing.

This time, strangely enough, he was able to. He started with a light tan for the skin, adding a pinkish glow to the boy's cheeks and nose. He then shaded in the hair, adding strands of darker and lighter browns after he'd gotten the base color down. Then he picked out the closest color to delft blue he had, filling in the hoodie as well. He then added shading to it by pressing down harder with the pencil. He then colored his eyes; the left one was a bright Robin's Egg Blue, while the other was a deep mahogany brown. He hesitated for a second before shading the eyes as well, using a white ink pen to add highlights to them.

Dream sat back in his chair and looked down at his work. It was unhealthy to get his hopes up, but... He really hoped that his soulmate looked at least a small bit like this.

Dream stood up and took the paper with him, trotting over to the wall to the right of his bed. He took down a drawing of Clarke from The 100, placing the image he'd just drawn in its place. He glanced down at Clarke and set that image down on his nightstand. He'd find somewhere else to put it.

Plopped down on his bed, Dream stared up at the bot he'd made. Was this what he actually looked like? Dream couldn't express how much he wanted him to. It was like he made some fictional character that he wanted to suddenly... pop out of the paper and become real. He stared at the image for a good minute, memorizing the features slowly, before sighing and turning away. He wasn't sure what he was expecting.

-----

The next day at school, it was mandatory that they wear masks. There was this atrange sickness going around the area, and masks were supposed to help prevent the spread. Dream decorated a few white ones with two dots and a wide smile on it, which he liked a lot. It was simple yet nice.

When he got to school, he took note of his friends' mask decorations. Skeppy had a teal-colored mask with a big smile and tongue sticking out of the side, colored red. Sapnap had drawn a big ball of fire on his. Ant had drawn a cat face (no surprise there), and Velvet had drawn a Minecraft cake. Ant and Velvet liked to play Minecraft together, so that wasn't a big surprise.