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“It’s nice.”
Bad turns away from the ruins of the Banquet Room at the sound of Dream’s voice, an uneasy smile already finding its way onto his face. “Dream!” He greets, and steadies the younger man, whose impeccable sense of balance and fluent movement has been impaired by the red winding vines that creep around his limbs. Bad has tried to gently pull them off multiple times, scolding the Egg halfheartedly for getting Dream so trapped, but Dream insists he likes them, insists they keep him warm.
Who is Bad to resist one of the new comforts Dream has? Uneasy, but ultimately just pleased to have a friend around, he lets the vines be, and they grow every day.
(The Egg likes Dream. The Egg likes Dream almost as much as it likes Skeppy.)
Dream sidles up to him now, leaning into his touch just a little, and Bad carefully extracts his hand from the vines that instantly slide themselves around his wrists, feeling inexplicably guilty for doing so.
“What’s nice?” He asks with a laugh. “The room? It’s seen better days. We had a fancy li’l banquet in here. I wish you could’ve made it. I think you would’ve liked it a lot.”
Dream offers him an empty smile - not empty, Bad corrects his thoughts, but empty of the life his smiles used to hold. They’re full, now, not like they had been when he’d first broken out of prison with the Egg’s help, full of red and happiness and adoration, and- well, Bad tells himself, it’s better than empty and hollow, right? That’s gotta count for something.
“Not the room,” Dream chuckles, and a vine twines around his neck and into his hair, making a home for itself there, “just- it’s really- really nice. Belonging again. Being… a big happy family. One big, big happy family with the Egg.”
He pauses, tilting his head curiously. Bad isn’t sure how he feels about the idea of the Egg speaking to other Eggpire members - jealous, maybe? Left out? Unsettled, by the notion of an all-seeing voice whispering in his friend’s ear?
(Is that how Puffy feels looking at him? He wonders sometimes, but this thought is always quashed.)
“Right,” Bad agrees, doing his best to keep his own voice peppy, “right, exactly! It’s nice, right? We’re… taking power, we’re making sure our friends join us, we’re… a big happy family, just like you said. I bet you wish you’d joined sooner, right?”
Dream releases a breathy, happy little laugh that reminds Bad of manhunts and past memories crumbling to dust. “I do,” he says, and- there’s a tendril of red vine slipping through the gap in his teeth, looping around itself and Dream’s tooth possessively, and Bad has to fight the urge to check his own teeth for the same, “I really do. Everything is so much easier. Everything is… I don’t know. Cosy. Everything is quiet.”
“You like the quiet, huh?”
“I do,” Dream repeats. “I like… well. I like the quiet, but I like hearing it… talk. I like hearing it talk to me.”
Bad swallows, tries not to ask questions he doesn’t want the answer to like don’t you miss when it didn’t? and is this really what you want? Because those are silly questions, really. That’s what he tells himself. The Egg makes everyone happy - Bad thinks of the members of the Eggpire, thinks of Ant and Punz and Ponk and Hannah and Skeppy, knows that even though they don’t smile too much anymore, that they must be happy.
(He’s happy, isn’t he? He’s happy.)
So instead of questioning and risking upsetting the Egg, Bad chuckles, reaching out with amicable affection and only a little wary nervousness, trying to break off the little vine wriggling free and pushing past his friend’s lips. “You got a little somethin’, just there-”
The moment he touches the tendril, Dream’s hands shoot out and grab his wrist.
“It’s okay.” Dream insists, eyes wide, hollow. “It’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Bad’s brows furrow, dull horror creeping up inside of him (or is it a vine? Is he like Dream, his body a vessel for vines and roots of their Egg?). “No, no no, I’m not trying to do anything!” He says, trying for a smile. “Look, there’s just-um, there’s just a bit of Egg on your teeth! I’m just gonna cut it off, and then-”
“No.” Dream’s voice rises, cracks tremulously. “Bad, leave it.”
“Dream-”
“No, no, no, no, no no no no,” Dream staggers back, eyes wide, bloodshot, gasping for breath. In his rattling breaths, Bad, horrified, pretends he can’t hear the slither of red tendrils. “I like it there, I like the Egg, it’s part of me, I let it inside. It wanted a place to live. It needed a place to stay safe.”
Bad’s horror reaches a fever pitch. “What?”
“It needed a home. It wanted a family.” Safe enough away that Bad can’t touch him, Dream’s arms fall, wrap around himself. He blinks at Bad earnestly, and his veins are redder than they should be, and oh, oh, Bad thinks, the Egg is there, he’s staring at the Egg, in Dream’s hair and crawling out of his mouth and pulsing through his bloodstream, and Dream looks so sincere and genuine and it hurts, “I did too. And- You know- It promised me we’d make one together. I just had to let it in.”
Bad staggers forwards towards his old friend like he’s had his strings cut. Everything feels false, everything rings in his ears. “Dream,” he tries, vainly, “hey, hey. It’s okay- just listen a sec.”
“And you’re trying to- what? Take that away?” Dream lets out a shuddering, twisted breath, a frightened rabbit, a twitchy deer in the headlights. “You’re trying to take it away from me, you want to- I don’t know. Keep it to yourself. You want to separate us.”
Dream is backing away from him now in vain, eyes stained with betrayal, and the vines are everywhere - for the first time, Bad finds them turned against him, snagging roots growing cords to pull him back, tendrils and clumps reaching out to pull Dream away. Thicker vines snake out from his friend’s clothes - Bad isn’t sure whether to sob or gasp at the sight of the one curling tightly around Dream’s neck, possessive, surely too tight to breathe comfortably. Dream grasps at the vines like they’re lifeboats, and Bad raises his hands in universal surrender, heart heavy, because he knows there’s nothing he can do; hopes, deep, deep down, that this is good for Dream. That this is good for all of them.
(He trusts the Egg, the little voice in the back of his mind tells him. He does.)
“I won’t separate you!” Bad promises, words rushed, soft. “It’s okay! I was just- I was just curious, that’s all! I’m not gonna do anything, I promise.”
Dream sinks to his knees like he’s dropped dead - Bad, for a horrifying moment, thinks he has. But the younger brings his hands to his cheeks, buries his face in them, huddled close and small to the ground. He looks thirteen again, crying his eyes out after getting Sapnap hurt, and Bad feels the world around him hot and cruel.
When did things get so messy?
“Dream?” He asks, quiet. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. But it’s okay now. You can- You like the Egg, right? I like the Egg too! We both like it, see? It’s okay!”
Dream lifts his gaze, and Bad recoils. Dream’s eyes are completely crowded with vines.
“I love the Egg,” the younger rasps, and for a moment, it doesn’t sound like it’s Dream speaking; sounds like something speaking though Dream, sounds like something borrowing, sharing, Dream’s vocal chords, “don’t you love it too, Bad?”
Bad snatches in desperate, stunned breaths. It feels like he’s breathing in Egg spores. “I do,” he says, as brightly as he can, heart throwing itself against his ribcage, “I do. You know I do.”
Dream’s body twists, brings itself into a standing position. Something red is running from Dream’s eye: Bad can’t tell if it’s a vine or if it’s blood.
“I love the Egg.” It’s Dream again, he knows: the soft lisp and emphasis in his voice is so familiar to Bad that it feels like home. Used to feel like home. Now, it feels like an empty server. “Thank you for showing it to me, Bad. I feel happy now.”
“...You were happy before the Egg, right?” Bad tries.
Dream’s empty red gaze doesn’t blink.
“I feel happy now,” he repeats, words small.
And then he’s gone, slipping into the distance with vines slithering after him, and Bad’s voice fails him when he tries to call out for him.
All of a sudden, he needs out of this room.
Don’t you love it too, Bad?
You were happy before the Egg, right?
Bad’s skin crawls.
When he sucks in a breath of fresh air on the surface, he ignores the squirming of vines deep inside him, and tries to pretend he knows the answer to the questions in his mind.