When Sunday dreams, it is always the same. The world hushes itself into silence, as though bracing for the final gasp before a name is called and the script of reality buckles and reforms around it. Your name, the only one he’s ever believed worthy of worship.

You lie against him, head on his chest.. He wonders what you dream of. An altar shattered? A prayer long forgotten? The bitter taste of impossible love?

Beneath you, his heartbeat is steady, a practiced metronome. But it’s your heartbeat he listens for. It’s flawed. It’s the most sacred sound he knows. He listens to it like a starving thing.

Tracing the line of your wrist with a finger, he memorizes the heat and the pulse. Then, reverently, he lifts your hand and presses his mouth to the place where the skin is thinnest. Not your lips, no. Those are for mercy. Your wrist is for ruin.

“I could crush you,” he whispers, not in cruelty, not in warning, but as a truth written long ago. He could shatter your trust. Watch you fall apart piece by piece, whispering his name in place of every god you’ve ever known.

And yet, he doesn’t. Because he is kind. Because you are weak. Because pain this exquisite should never be rushed. He would rather cage it and adore it. Stroke its wings and call it love. He would rather hold you forever than ever let you break alone.

“My god,” he calls you when you’re asleep, breath soft against his collar. “My universe.”

You believed him. You always have.

Because Sunday never raised his voice. Never snapped. He looked at you like he had been sent. A gentle angel assigned to cradle your loneliness, to bear witness to every fracture in your soul. You were the scripture he recited with reverence.

So when he said the others didn’t understand you, you agreed. When he told you they distracted you, you nodded. You listened.

You let yourself be wrapped in him until no one could reach you. You said it was love, but you knew better. It was guilt. Because how could you not give yourself to someone who gave you everything?

He remembered all your versions. The flinching one, the sensitive one, the one who cried at songs.

So you practiced. You trained your voice until it cracked. Sang until the mirror no longer showed someone worth keeping. All to prove you were worth standing beside him. On the stage. In the world. In his heart. If you couldn’t match him, you’d die trying.

That’s the part he never saw.

You, lying awake at night, wondering if he would love someone better. You, tracing your throat, wondering if it would hurt. You, imagining the note your voice would break on. The last breath you would give to him.

He dreams of the stage often.

Alien eyes watching. You, draped in radiance, trembling lips parted, on the edge of tears. You are always most beautiful when you’re trying not to fall apart. And he, flawless in white, sings harmony to your melody. He’s already decided that day will be his last.

Not in a scene. Not in spectacle. Quietly, after. A single flower laid at your feet. A heart stopped at your crescendo. His final gift.

He calls it love. Maybe it is.

The dream ends the way it always does: you in his arms, unmoving. He thinks he’s saved you. Until he sees your hands.

Cold.

And then he remembers. You wanted to go first. You thought that’s what love meant. Making room for someone better. Sacrificing yourself to make the one you loved lighter. You didn’t think he would ever let go. So you made it easier.

He wakes choking on the pain.

Your hand is still warm. Still here. He presses his face to where your heart was and listens again. The rhythm of it reminds him that this is not the ending.

Yet.

You stir, still drowsy. “Mmm...again?”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“What happened this time?”

He doesn’t speak right away. He only presses his mouth against your wrist and lets his lips linger. “You were singing. It was…beautiful. Too beautiful.”