Predator (DWT x OC)

86

He's gone when I wake up, and I'm silently thankful for the small mercies I'm still afforded, as I pad down the hallway barefoot. The walls are lined by heavy beams, made of solid spruce stained a rich, dark colour, cream plaster walls interspacing them. It's light and airy and silent.

I find my way down the corridor, into the living room and kitchen, the floor to ceiling windows that open the side of the house to the world. 

We're in the mountains, nestled on the side of a steep side of rock. The windows open to sloping mountains, glinting a sort of golden yellow under the sun, coated in fluffy snow. They cascade around us, patches of lime grass sprouting in smooth lawns in sporadic places, decorated with a confetti of pale purple flowers, delicate heads bending to sweep along the grass. It's like a painting. 

I tear my eyes away from the view. There's a patterned rug in the centre of the living room, and the light tanned couch looks slept on, a grey blanket thrown haphazardly on the cushions. The kitchen is small, quaint, and a black wood heater is tucked in the corner, next to the bookcases that stretch to the pitched roof, stacked neatly and perfectly with rows and rows of navy books, gold lettering and hard cover spines. 

I continue exploring. There's a bathroom, connected to Dream's- well mine and Dream's bedroom, a little study that's strewn with papers, and a storage room out the back, a sort of shed with iron shelving that holds locked chests. 

The doors aren't locked, and it's this that makes me feel even more trapped, because despite every opportunity and every single chance, I will not run. I can't. Dream knows, telling me clear as day with the unlocked doors and unwatched exits. 

He's letting me make my choice, because he knows there really always has been only one, the one for my family, the one I committed to yesterday. There is no other option. There is no other way. 

My clothes smell like smoke and sweat so I head back to the bedroom, pulling my shirt up over my head and kicking my pants off my ankles, rifling through his drawers for clothes. All the clothes I left behind at his house are now neatly folded in one half of the cabinet, and it's so eerily ominous of how confident he was. How much he knew. How trapped I have always been. 

I change quickly, a pair of grey tracksuit pants and a dark green T-shirt that has a hole in the hem, tucking my hair into a little ponytail that sticks out from the back of my neck like a strange tuft. The rug in his room, a shaggy cream one, is soft underneath my feet. 

The door clatters open loudly, and I freeze up on the spot. 

"Rosie?" Dream calls out, and I almost choke on my own spit. 

"I'm here!" It comes out much more strangled than I wanted it to. When he sticks his head in the doorway, there's a blood splatter on his chin.

"What is on your face?" I grimace, looking at him.

"Work." He shrugs, and I decide I don't really want to pursue what exactly that entails any further, so I keep my mouth shut. "Have you had a chance to look around yet?"

"Uh yeah, I saw everything." I answer stiffly, and it's painful, the stilted conversations and rod-straight spine, the thickness in the air between us, the stifling tension. 

Unfortunately for me, Dream's not the type to let anything just lie there to be left alone. 

"You're going to have to get used to this Rosie, I'm not tip toeing in my own house because you can't swallow your bullshit."

It's so harsh, especially coming from him, that it almost stings. Almost. 

But not quite. 

"We'd have gotten off on a better foot if you didn't drug me for no reason." I snap.