💜HomieSexual💙. Josuyasu Oneshot Collection.

💜 Tactile 💙

Josuke is having a nightmare.

He knows that much, at least. Sometimes he is caught in the grip of his unconscious, pulled down into the impossible depths of dreams that leave him screaming himself into reality or swept away by the tides of fear until he wakes trembling in the grip of his blankets, too frightened or horrified to scream. Those are easy to wake from, even when he carries the shadows of their effect forward into the bright of the day; the simple fact of opening his eyes to a world different than that of his sleeping self is a relief enough to undo whatever lingering effect the lack of sleep may have on his psyche.

This one is different. Josuke knows this is a dream, knew it almost as soon as it began; he doesn't know if it's the vivid color painting the familiar lines of his world to pastels and inverted negatives, or if it's the fast-forward speed of his actions, or the odd, fuzzy quality to the voices he's hearing, as if his head is underwater. Maybe he just realized he was dreaming from the beginning, maybe he never made it far enough into sleep to be caught up in the pace of whatever his unconscious presents to him. It doesn't matter. Enough that he knows this is a dream, that he can see all the signs that promise that this isn't reality even as his world crumbles around him, as enemy close in on him from all sides.

It should be a comfort. On some level it is, Josuke thinks; maybe all this would be worse if he didn't realize what was happening, if he couldn't feel the feverish loop of his mind replaying over and over and over again, running him through the same span time and again. But he can't wake himself either, can't break free from the illusion that is his reality, at least at the moment, and that illusion is painted in blood, in splashes of red the more vivid for the soft-focus background, in screams that tear the more raw from Josuke's throat for sounding like they're coming through cotton. Josuke is trapped, replaying the same moment time and again: Okuyasu flying backwards, blood arcing out into a stain to stand with brutal clarity against the orange-pink skyline before he falls with slow-motion grace to lie still and utterly, agonizingly motionless against the ground. Josuke's legs are stuck, they won't move, every time he takes a step forward it's like dragging himself through congealing honey: and all he can see is Okuyasu's blood seeping into the ground to stain it a black that looks purple in the dream-palette of Josuke's awareness. Josuke can't reach him, can't touch him, Crazy Diamond is straining but Okuyasu is out of range; and then his fingers catch at Okuyasu's ankle, and his skin meets a cold like ice, and he's thrown back to the start of it, standing on a sidewalk while his heart pounds a drumbeat of doom in his chest.

Josuke has no idea how long he's been trapped. A dream, certainly, an invention and a terror separate and distinct from reality, with no force to overwrite the clean clarity of the waking world; and yet his heart pounds with the same adrenaline-soaked terror, his lungs ache from the same full-throated scream, his fingers clench with the same desperate tension. He can't wake himself up, he can't break free of the loop: all he can do is keep replaying it, keep watching Okuyasu fall backwards into a vision of pink, purple, yellow and blue and orange, an infinite span of soft-focus colors while that blood stays clear, scarlet-bright against the shifting sky as it spills Okuyasu's life out of Josuke's reality. Josuke is panting, shaking, trembling through the whole of his body with rising pain, across his chest where he can't breathe and at his arms from his straining reach and in his legs from his desperate, thwarted movement; and still he can't reach, still he can't make it in time. Okuyasu is falling, Okuyasu is bleeding, Okuyasu is--

There's some sound, a harsh drag of air like a strangled shout, and Josuke jerks awake. His eyes come open, his shoulders tense, and it's just as he's blinking his vision back into focus that he realizes it was the sound of his own sleep-strangled protest that pulled him to consciousness. His heart is racing doubletime in his chest, pounding like it's trying to break itself free from the cage of his ribs, and every part of him hurts, with far more immediate clarity than it did in his dream. His shoulders, his hands, his chest and legs and feet and head, all are aching with a vivid clarity that demands his attention and pulls a whimper from his throat; but there's a relief even to the pain, just for the gap it puts between the present moment and the frantic hallucination he has been trapped in for the last eternity.