I knew it was a dream the moment the lights stayed soft and the air felt warmer than the real apartment.
We were still on the same bed, but the careful distance from earlier had disappeared. Wen Xiao was facing me this time. Her eyes were half-lidded, the same way they had looked when she admitted what she thought about while touching herself. The memory of her words (“the bathroom” and “the night I was in rut”) sat heavy between us and made my pulse jump.
Neither of us spoke for a while. Then she reached out and brushed her fingers along my wrist, testing. When I did not pull away she moved closer. The kiss that followed was slower than the ones in the shower, deeper, like she had all the time in the world. I let her push me onto my back. Her mouth traveled down my neck, over the place she had marked before, and lower.
Clothes vanished the way they always did in dreams. Her hands were warm and sure. When she settled between my thighs and finally pushed inside me I arched against her with a broken sound I would never make while awake. She kept her eyes on my face the entire time, watching every reaction, adjusting her rhythm whenever my breath hitched. The pleasure built fast and sharp. I came with my fingers twisted in her hair, thighs locked around her waist, the dream version of her name caught in my throat.
Afterward she stayed inside me for a few extra seconds, forehead resting against mine, before carefully pulling away. She sat up on the edge of the bed like she was about to leave.
I did not think.
I reached out, caught her wrist, and pulled her back down.
“Lets sleep a little longer,” I murmured against her hair, wrapping both arms around her and settling her face against my chest. She made a small sound of surprise but did not fight it. Her weight sank into me, warm and solid, and for a moment everything felt quiet and perfect.
Then the bed started to shake.
The tremor was small at first, like someone had bumped the frame. It grew stronger. The mattress tilted. I opened my eyes and saw the edge of a cliff where the wall should have been. The bedroom simply ended in open air and a long drop into nothing.
“Wen-”
The bed gave way.
We fell.
Wind rushed past my ears. My stomach dropped. I still had my arms locked around her, and in the middle of the freefall I felt her face press harder into my chest, mouth open, the exact motion of motorboating vibrating against my skin. The sensation was so vivid and so absurd that a shocked sound left me even as the ground rushed closer.
I woke up with a jolt.
Real arms were around me. Real weight was on my chest. Real breath was warm against the front of my sleep shirt. For one confused second the dream and the morning overlapped completely.
Then I looked down.
I kicked her off the bed so hard she hit the floor with a heavy thud.
She groaned from the ground. I sat up, heart still racing from both the dream and the very real sensation of her face against me, and pointed an accusing finger at her.
“What were you doing?!”
“Surviving!” she wheezed. “You pulled me in! I told you to stop!”
“I was asleep!”
“I noticed!”
I grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at her head. She blocked it but stayed on the floor, looking like she was reevaluating every life choice that had led to this moment.
After a few seconds she cleared her throat and asked, far too calmly, “So. Nightmare?”
I scowled at the opposite wall, still trying to push the dream images out of my head. The falling. The motorboating sensation. The way I had pulled her back down and told her to sleep longer. My face was already starting to burn.
“I was sleeping on the bed,” I muttered. “Then the bed fell off a cliff.”
Wen Xiao was quiet for a moment.
“Well,” she said carefully, “that is fine. But you said ‘lets sleep a little longer.’ Who exactly were you telling that to?”
My brain short-circuited.
The dream replayed in perfect clarity: me pulling her in, my own voice saying those exact words against her hair, the soft weight of her settling against my chest. There was no safe answer. There was especially no safe answer that did not involve admitting I had been dreaming something extremely specific about her.
“It was… my giant plushie,” I heard myself say. “Haha. Yes. The big one. I talk to it sometimes. In my sleep. Very normal.”
“You do not own a giant plushie,” she said.
“I do. It is under the bed.”
“There is nothing under the bed except dust and one lost sock.”
“Then it is in the closet.”
“Linling.”
“What?”
“You pulled me in and told me to sleep longer.”
I could feel the red climbing all the way to my ears. The more she pushed, the more the dream threatened to spill out of my mouth in the worst possible way. I needed an exit. Immediately.
I stood up so fast the remaining pillows tumbled off the bed.
“I am going to brush my teeth,” I announced to the room at large. “And then I am going to shower. And then I am going to forget this entire conversation ever happened.”
“That is not how conversations work.”
“It is how this one works.”
I stepped over her still-prone form, refused to look down at her suspicious face, and walked straight into the bathroom. I locked the door with more force than necessary and leaned against it, heart pounding, face burning, the phantom sensation of her mouth against my chest still far too clear.
From the other side of the door I heard her voice, dry and far too knowing.
“The plushie story needs work, Linling.”
I turned on the shower so I would not have to hear whatever she said next.
The water was cold. I stayed under it until the heat finally left my face and the last traces of the dream cliff had washed away.
Mostly.