Mary
A sound, something in Welsh, and Owen seemed to *Pounce* Like a cat attracted to a laser pointer. The warm hands— hands, definitely hands, only forming into fingers upon contacting the back of Uriel's unnaturally solid ear. They lean into the touch, head tilting toward, long, while hair covering their eyes, until—

A sound. Owen freezes, and the mental equivalent of tv static spews from the corners of the dream-land, bearing down on the pair for the briefest of moments. 

"Are you... Alright?" Uriel's pale hand wraps around Owen's wrist, pulling the hand frozen in their hair out between the both of them. The cool feeling of mist against Owen's fingers remains, though; rather than coming from Uriel's hair, it instead comes from the light, dancing touch of their index against the back of his wrist.

They pause, waiting for something— the noise to resume again, perhaps— before letting go, their arm falling limply back to their side. 

Owen seemed— well, he only solidified when Uriel was looking at him, otherwise fading into the same mist creeping in from the boundaries of the dream— different. Their face turned towards the sky, looking for what might've caused such a change, and their eyes light up in awe. 

It's the same color as it was before, purples and blues bleeding into each other like colors dyed in an ever-moving, whirling pond. The clumps of galaxies and nebulas pulse with color, lighting up in tune with Owen's heartbeat. 

"*It's beautiful, isn't it?*" 

It's a quiet sentiment. They don't know if it's spoken out loud or intuitively understood, either from nature of the shared dream or the transfixed, breathless expression blooming on Uriel's face. 

It really was beautiful. And it was all Owen.
Wai
The centre of the world was his wrist, Owen thought, the one held so gently between the two blurs of shapes and colours and emotions that lay beneath the living sky. And then, the cool touch vanished from his skin and he was as confused as they were.

Their query, to which he had a thousand answers and none, passed through his head and vanished as he hung in the air like a question himself, floating, feeling. A thought flickered to the slumbering mass curled up on the forgotten tile, ever-present even if asleep. *But asleep..* It and he were wrapped still in a misty lullaby, cool dew resting peacefully on the exhausted mess, in his own palms that were so strangely fearless here.

Uriel saw something, in the expanse behind him; it took him a moment to look himself, his body moving through deep space like the lazy waves of sound emanating from a sweet song a world away.

What he saw when he turned was.. *Overwhelming.*

His heartbeat, and all that pulsed within it, laid bare across the sky, colossal and all-surrounding; galaxies and novas and Milky Ways splashed across their lines of sight, overlapping and fading in and out and *Existing* In ways he knew that his leaden tongue couldn't sing in a thousand attempts (but, oh, would he try). 

What solace, then that Uriel could see it too- what terror, that Uriel could see it too! What a thing to bear witness to, the worlds beneath his ribs, his flesh, his skull spread bare across the heavens. And yet, what a small part, that mortified and exhilarated him so, but a fragment of something that he knew without thinking was so much bigger. 

Owen felt so small beneath it, insignificant, devoured by stars. He would have loved to curl away from it, to bury his head in the cool dew and sink desperately shifting fingers into the buzzing earth, but-

...

*It is?*
*You think?*

A glance at Uriel, transfixed by the madness stretched above them, and a pang of something utterly incomprehensible. *Beautiful..* Beauty, in feeling so small and swallowed up, in the colours that danced when his shaking hand reached back for Uriel's, molten fingers fumbling to tangle themselves into theirs, cool and solid.

*"Gah, it is,"* He replied, despite himself. A squeeze: *It scares me, it grips me, it makes me bolder than ever and twice as unsure..*

Owen bit himself back, more than enough slipped through his teeth and his hands for one night. All the stars were out... Aside from it all, what simple, sweet wonder.
Mary
There was something decidedly different about Owen lacing his fingers between theirs, Uriel realized. 

It wasn't the first time they'd held hands with someone— or even the first time they'd held Owen's hand, that one memory of their ice-cold hands clinging onto the nearest bit of *Someone* Bubbling up to the forefront of their mind. No, something was different this time, and they couldn't figure out what or why so. Perhaps the hazy, dream world had something to do with it; the boundaries between "Uriel" And "Everything else" Blending, bleeding together like the brightest drops of dye to a spool of un-colored, pristine yarn. 

*Or, perhaps, it's just that no one's ever reached for your hand first.*

The thought is loud— too loud, loud and clear enough to warrant a look around to check if the thoughts rattling in Uriel's head hadn't escaped their confines of their mind and spilled into the grand expanse of lawn and stars splayed underneath them. 

It was one thing to have someone accept their hand. It was another thing entirely for a tentative, nervous hand to pull on their pinky in a silent plead, seeking permission before lacing their hands together. It was the difference between being tolerated and being actively sought out, presented with the gift of the warm, shaking hand in theirs. The gift of someone's company, the gift of being *Wanted*, the gift of trust in Uriel with delicate, fragile fingers and a heart full of feelings. 

"Thank you." Uriel mutters in soft, low French, but it's understood by Owen regardless; the meaning of the words traveling through their hands against his, racing through their skin and leaping into the lucid parts of Owen's brain.

A head rests on Owen's shoulder, Uriel's neck tilting to lean against the warm, now-solid mass of shoulder sitting next to them. Platitudes of *Thank you* Whispered quietly and softly against his shirt, the repeated phrase spilling out from their lips like the quiet babbling of a brook.

What they were thanking Owen for, Uriel didn't— or couldn't— understand. Perhaps it was for everything and anything, with each time the phrase found itself spoken in hushed French thanking the boy sitting by their side for something different.
Wai
The part of Owen that thought was at a loss here, and the part that knew things anyway reeled in its revelations. Whispers and earthquakes had switched in significance; the sky's impossible magnitude was nothing against the feeling of Uriel's cheek against his shoulder, the words and all the things that couldn't be words rushing over him in brilliant rivers.

*Couldn't they see what they did to the sky..*

Rooted in place once again by the cool hand in his, the boy unsure of his place lit gently on the violet dew. Sinking into the grass, Owen leaned his head closer to Uriel's; his cheek pressed softly into the clouds that still waved lightly around their face. 

He remained quiet as they murmured. Be it because he was confused, or because he wasn't, or that he was still transfixed by the whirling stars, little more than a low hum escaped him; his chest rumbled with the air around him, that odd haze still conflating sound and otherwise into strange lilting waves.

He was unsure of how long they remained like that; it could have been minutes, hours, days, ages contained in slowing breaths and sluggish blinks and quiet sounds that meant the world. 

The nebulas blinked and breathed with him, with *Them*, dancing behind his eyelids as they peacefully slowed and glazed over.