Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 6 - sexual content warning

The transition from dreamstate to waking reality had always been an intensely disorienting experience for Jake, for as far back as he could recall. It had only worsened over the past four years of what could dubiously be called his life, with nightmares taking uncontested front stage in bizarre and unhinged pantomimes.

The only exception to the unfailing rule of his nightmares had emerged two weeks ago. He knew the exact night, too, when the shift had occurred, but it had not been a cause for celebration or relief.

It was merely a change to a different flavour of the same thing; instead of unsettling and horrific dreamscapes jolting him awake with a racing heart and silent screaming dying on his lips, it was the agonizing feeling of every cell in his body calling out desperately for the return of unconsciousness so that they could re-experience the brief and illusory reprieve that these new dreams had granted.

He had simply traded one intolerable desire for another - the frantic need to be freed from his nightmares for the hollow emptiness that came from never wanting to be woken from his dreams.

It was in this state that he found himself now, consciousness suddenly making itself known even as the gossamer threads of the dream that he had woken from still wove themselves tightly around his body and the motel bed that he lay in. Although now awake, he kept his eyes closed; to open them would mean a finite end to the addictive hypnosis that his subconscious had been weaving. An almost silent moan fell from his lips as he lay suspended in this discomfiting limbo, his brow furrowing in an expression akin to pain as his hands tightened into fists that burrowed deep into the bedsheets and grabbed handfuls of the fabric that was damp from his sweat.

He could feel his brain's emotional centers swirling in a wash of erratic firing as he entwined his fingers with a strength that bordered on violence into the cool moisture of the sheets, feeling the fabric cut into his skin in a perversely pleasurable way. The force of the sensation was a dismal return on investment towards the pressure that he was craving, but it was better than nothing, and so he gave all of his strength to it as his fingers went white from circulation loss.

This state of being was something that he had no awareness that he had lost until it came back with a savage vengeance two weeks prior - hiding around the corner of absolutely every single thought and action that he'd experienced since. When he had told her that his ability to focus on his tasks had become 'difficult' as the mirage of her took up permanent residence superimposed upon every waking moment, he had not given the experience descriptive justice. Nor had he even considered broaching the actual truth of it with her; he wasn't certain that there would ever be a way to address any of it without sounding desperate and fixated. Because in truth, he was both of those things. In staggering amounts.

Admittedly, he had never been very good at discussing this topic at all with anyone ever, always finding it easier to wait for them to bring it up - if indeed they ever did. Despite this, however, he had not been entirely unsuccessful in this realm in this past, far from it in fact. But it had always been initiated by the other person and had, by virtue of his relationship status for the six years after the last person to show interest, been limited to only two others. One being his now ex fiancée, and the other being... well, his half sister.

Which had been entirely his fault.

For as long as he could remember, he had been completely unable to parse emotional subtext in the written words of others. So unless that subtext was explicitly and painfully made context, he had a long and established history of being completely oblivious to hints, flirting, and advances of any kind in written form. Admittedly, his track record of picking up on signals of any kind, be they written or otherwise, was also abysmal, but he possessed a particular kind of stupid for the text variety.