With no more vials to keep him awake, Gideon was once again presented with the options of narcolepsy (familiar, annoying) or cocaine (functionally poison, slightly gauche). He had walked out of the Society’s house without fulfilling the entirety of his contract—completing only six months of an intended year—and decided, well, fuck it, I suppose, choosing the realms over reality. Choosing dreams over life for the very first time.
He paid visits to Parisa when he felt like pushing his finger into a bruise of nostalgia, a generous and therefore defensible form of self-harm. On some occasions, Max joined him as usual. Max had a life, though, now. Perhaps because Nico and then Gideon had been so unavailable to him for over two years, Max had been forced to pick up new hobbies, which included a girlfriend who was genuinely very nice. She made dinner at their Manhattan apartment one night, which Gideon groggily attended for just long enough to personally witness the evidence that Max, at least, was happy. He was sad, obviously, but he was also fine, and in another act of masochistic generosity, Gideon realized that Max had better things to do with his life than wander around aimlessly with his saddest friend. Someday, maybe, Max would decide to organize a revolution or start a band, and then he was welcome to wake Gideon if he wanted.
Until then, Gideon was content to stay asleep.
He knew that Nico would not approve of this behavior. Or maybe he would? Nico had always wanted Gideon to be, quote, safe, so perhaps this was close enough. Gideon’s identity seemed sufficiently secure. He no longer saw or heard from the so-called Accountant. His mother was no longer a threat. The Society didn’t seem interested in pursuing him. Nothing was coming for him, nothing was chasing him, nobody was waiting for him. If he seemed depressed about it, well, so what? Lots of people were depressed. Pain didn’t make Gideon special. It never had before.
He was wandering the realms as usual, pacing the shoreline of someone else’s beach, watching the yawn of the tide. He’d be a blur in someone else’s dream, most likely. A figment of their imagination, cobbled together by their mind’s rationality and forgotten by the time they woke. It was a nice dream, soothing. Gideon had never been to the beach in real life, not like this. It had mostly been the backwater town he was raised in and the illusions of other people’s consciousness. He didn’t actually know what it felt like for waves to lap at his ankles, but he imagined it to be nice. Friendly. Like the dimple on a dauntless smile.
He blinked then, realizing he’d been staring so long he must have conjured a mirage. A shadow came over him in the sand, the feathered edge of a falcon’s wing, and Gideon looked up, feeling his heart hammer at first with disbelief, then gradual capitulation.
Nico plopped down beside him with a sigh, kicking at the sand.
“This is very strange of you, Sandman,” Nico said with a yawn, squinting at the horizon. “Where are we? Looks like my abuela’s house.”
There was no way Gideon could know that. He had never been to Cuba, not in real life, not even in his dreams. His heart pumped faster, too fast. It was a struggle to find his voice. “Nicolás. Cómo estás?”
“Ah, bien, más o menos. Ça va?”
“Oui, ça va.” Gideon’s mouth was dry and Nico’s was curled up in expectation, like he was still waiting for the punch line, the joke. Gideon tried to gauge what version of Nico this might have been, what kind of dream he must be having. Was this young Nico, from when they’d first met? His hair was longer, the way it had been the last time Gideon had seen him in life, so maybe, possibly, was this Nico from the later few months—was it the version of Nico who had already known the cautious interior of Gideon’s stupid heart?
“Tu me manques,” Gideon whispered, uncertain who he was talking to or whether Nico would even react. If this was a memory, then Nico would just reply as he always had, with a carelessness that would injure Gideon as exquisitely as it would heal him. I miss you, I miss you too, as simple as that. Not a matter of devotion. Just simple, uncomplicated fact.
Nico’s smile broadened. “I should fucking hope so,” he said, which was neither expected nor wholly upsetting, and then Nico rose to his feet, holding a hand out for Gideon’s. “What do you think? Should we swim?”
They had never been in the ocean together before. Not in any dream that Gideon remembered. Not in any lifetime he’d actually lived.
“Nicky.” Gideon swallowed. “Is this…?”
“Real?” Nico shrugged. “Dunno. I never made a talisman, did you?”
“No.” You were always my talisman. “Could it be real, though? Dalton said—”
Gideon trailed off, wondering now. Someone had killed Dalton—Gideon had seen the body himself—so Dalton couldn’t have done it, couldn’t have brought Nico back to life. Unless …
The Society itself had said outright that they tracked the magic of their members. Dalton had said the library could re-create them, manufacture some regenerative quality of their souls. But was that ever true? Was it possible, or—
Was this just a dream?
“No way of knowing,” Nico said with that shimmering quality he had. The hyperactivity that Gideon both envied and adored. That heedless necessity to move on to the next thing as rapidly as he could, like Nico had somehow always known that he was running out of time.
“Is this actually possible?” Gideon asked.
Nico made a face that meant maybe, I don’t know, I’m bored. “Does it matter?”
A valid question. Either yes, it mattered very much, or no, it didn’t matter at all, and also nothing really mattered, and who was to say what was actually real aside from the beat of his heart in his chest?
What was reality for a man who did the impossible—who was impossibility itself?
“Think big, Gideon, think infinite,” Nico advised with a wink, looking smug. As if he’d made a point, which in Nico’s mind he probably had.
But no, no. Having and losing. It would hurt so much more this way. It would be so much more precious, fine, but the pain would be the price for having loved.
“Infinity doesn’t exist,” Gideon argued hoarsely. Nico had said it once. Infinity is false, it’s a false conception. What is reality, Sandman, compared to us? “We could count the grains of sand if we really wanted to.”
“Okay, so let’s do it. Unless you’re busy doing something else?”
Nico’s brow arched with prompting and Gideon, wretched and helpless—Gideon, little motherfuck that he was, a true idiot prince—wanted nothing more than to sink to his knees and kiss Nico’s feet. He wanted to buy Nico’s groceries, to write Nico poetry, to sing Nico the songs of his people in terrible Spanish and passable French. He wanted midnights in Brooklyn, golden hour in a galley kitchen, coffee with cream. He wanted to wait forever and also he wanted to do all of it now, right now, because who knew when the dream would end, or if this was actually Gideon’s death, or if the whole thing had always been Gideon’s dream, or if anything was ever real? Reality was nothing. He wanted to build Nico a statue in the sand, carve his stupid name into the trees.
He restrained himself, though, because Nico would never let him live it down, not ever. Not in this world or the next. So instead, Gideon said, “I’m hungry,” and Nico said, “I’ll cook,” and just like that everything was perfect, or maybe it was fake, but who could tell the difference? They had no proof and it was too late to make some now. This, Gideon realized, was what came from chronic procrastination. A dumb ending for the dumbest boy in school.
But by then the carne was braising, the distant bark of a Chihuahua floating in from outside their four walls, and drowsily, Gideon thought, the sand can be counted. Which doesn’t mean that you have to.
But it also doesn’t mean that you can’t.