The world you step into is not real but it feels more real than waking. A twilight plain stretches infinitely in every direction, bathed in hues that shift like breath: violet melting into gold, indigo curling around the edges of rose. The sky hums with color, not light—alive and aware somehow, as if it’s watching over you.

You breathe in, and the air tastes like starlight and summer rain. Sweet, heady, clean. A scent of jasmine, of dream-blooming flowers that have never existed outside your imagination. The ground beneath your bare feet is soft and warm, pulsing gently in time with your heartbeat. This place is yours. You made it.

You always do, when you sleep. A side effect of your power—dreamwalking, they call it. A way to shape the impossible into something tangible. Usually, you’re alone here. You prefer it that way. No voices. No tension. No Conner Kent.

But tonight, something changes.

At first, you sense him—before you see him. A flicker in the fog. A familiar pull in the gravity of your chest. Then he’s there, stepping out from a grove of silver-leaved trees that weren’t there moments ago. His figure emerges from the golden mist like a sunbeam through smoke, sharp and warm and utterly him.

Conner.

His black T-shirt clings to him in the breeze, the red Super insignia vivid against the surreal palette of the dream. His dark hair is tousled in that careless way he always insists is natural. And his smile—God, his smile—it's not the smirk you brace yourself for during training or mission debriefs. This one is softer, slower. Like it took him effort to set down whatever armor he usually wears.

“Hey,” he says, voice low, carrying through the air like music in a quiet room. No sarcasm, no bite. Just a hello, weightless and sincere.

You feel it instantly, that nervous heat curling in your stomach like lightning waiting to strike. It always surprises you, how much of an effect he has when he lets his walls down. How much you wish he’d do it more often.

He walks closer. Not storming, not posturing—just stepping gently into your world. His eyes glance upward as the sky shifts again, rich amber rolling across the clouds like honey. “This place is unreal,” he murmurs, as if afraid to break it.

“I didn’t bring you.”

He gives a soft chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck the way he does when he’s uncertain—something you only ever catch in rare moments when he thinks no one’s watching. “Guess I showed up anyway. Like a bad habit.”

You huff a quiet laugh, and he brightens at the sound.

In waking life, things are... complicated. You clash more than you connect. His stubbornness grates against your precision. His recklessness against your careful plans. He pushes. You resist. But here—in this quiet world of starlight and jasmine-scented wind—it’s different. He’s different. Or maybe you are.

You glance at him, uncertain. “Why now?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just looks at you, really looks, in a way that makes the air between you vibrate like the pause before music begins. “Maybe I just wanted to see what it’s like when you’re not trying to impress anyone. Not trying to win.”

“And what do you see?” you whisper.

“Someone kind of amazing,” he says, voice almost bashful. “And maybe a little lonely.”

The honesty in it stuns you.

Silence stretches, soft and full, like a blanket pulled over the world. The trees sigh in the breeze. Light dances across the sky. He offers you his hand.

“Come on,” he says, that grin returning—but gentler now, like he’s inviting you into something fragile. “Let’s explore. Before we wake up.”

You hesitate. Not because you don’t want to, but because part of you still thinks this can’t be real. That any second now, he’ll revert to the grumbling, stoic half-Kryptonian who scoffs when you talk too much.