Dream

“Something on your mind, short stack?”

Sighing softly as Tamora’s voice pulled him away from his musing, Felix smiled as he rolled onto his stomach, the short, eight-bit grass tickling his skin as he settled his chin onto his folded hands. Taking a moment to just look at her, to once again memorize the face he already knew so well, it was with a shrug that he tried to reassure her nothing was wrong.

“Just a lot of nothin’ to think about, I guess,” Felix added after a moment, the look in his wife’s eyes making it clear that she expected more than just a non-committal movement from him. “Me being silly and trying to overthink something that doesn’t really matter.” Throwing in a smile as he finished his vague explanation, Felix hoped Tamora would just let the issue be, that she would actually drop it for once instead of insisting they continue until she had the facts she wanted. While his arguments and reasoning made perfect sense in his own mind, he knew just how crazy he would sound if he were to say them out loud, and a visit with the psychiatric that had been programmed into Hero’s Duty was the last thing he wanted his wife thinking he needed.  

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” Tamora pointed out as she pushed herself upward, supporting her weight on her elbows so she could get a better look at him. Glancing around the hill to make sure no one else was in their general vicinity, she half rolled, half scooted over so her side was pressed against his, one arm flung over his shoulders as she waited for him to speak. Frowning when he said nothing, she verbalized what she thought had been a silent invitation, wondering if he had just ignored it or if he was truly that oblivious to his surroundings. “You want to talk?”

“You’ll probably think I’m a bit cuckoo, like Litwak’s Nana,” Felix replied, stealing one of the arcade owner’s favorite phrases as he did so, “but I can’t help but sometimes think that this is all just a dream.”  

“What’s a dream,” she asked, poking at his ribs when he refused to elaborate, her expression amused as he laughed and wiggled away from her touch. She wasn’t worried; just interested in what was going on in her handyman’s mind more than anything else. “Do you mean this,” she added, waving at their surroundings. “Isn’t that kind the point, short stack? That we’re in one of the character’s heads?” She hadn’t truly been paying attention to the game Felix had pulled her into after work, nor had she been listening when the automatic backstory had played across the screen above them, but she had managed to pick that much up on her own.

“No,” Felix said slowly, shaking his head as he motioned toward the two of them, “I meant, well, us.”

“Really?” Felix didn’t need to see the look on her face to know what it was; he had already become used to the blank expression that would cross it every time he said something like that, the only indicator of her mood the twitch of her brow as she listened.

“Yes,” Felix confirmed, though his cheeks had gone red. “Sometimes I can’t help but feel like everything since Ralph went Turbo has been nothing more than one big dream. That one day I’ll wake up and none of it will have ever happened. Ralph will still be living in the dump, we’d have never met and helped Vanellope…” Pausing for a moment to turn so he was directly facing her, Felix cupped Tamora’s face with his free hand, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheek as he finished speaking his greatest fear. “Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll wake up and discover that I never met you.”

“Felix…”

“It just seems like everything is perfect, you know,” Felix continued, his eyes searching hers for some sort of answer as he continued to ramble on about the fear that had been nagging him for so long. “I have the best job in the world, the most wonderful friends anybody could ask for, and the most amazing gal by my side. It seems exactly like something my mind would make up for me after eating one too many pies.”

“Felix, I-“

“And the players have been getting better, at both of our games,” Felix cut in, taking his hand away from her cheek so that he could wave at the space around them, “and our game jumps have been going exactly as planned, and there’s been no major trouble since we got rid of Turbo! Things have been perfect, but almost too perfect, Tammy. How can it all be this great if it isn’t a dream? How ca-“

Pulling him into a kiss, Tamora laughed as his familiar goofy grin appeared on his face, an excited calm coming over him as his heart began to pound and his mind went blank. Tugging on his arm and rolling at the same time, Tamora repositioned them so that he was half lying on her, his cheek pressed against her chest as she hugged him.

“You know what, Fix-it,” she teased, pushing off his hat so she could run her fingers through his hair, “I think you’re right; you’ve been eating one too many pies before bed and listening to one too many ghost stories when we visit the kids. You were programmed into the job, our jumps have been going so well because you’re the one in charge of making sure they do, of course the kids are going to get better when they get tired of dying, and everyone is too afraid of me and Wreck-It to even think about causing trouble. Besides, if you were to wake up right now, if this conversation was just taking place in your overly large noggin, I would still be there.”

“How could you know,” he responded softly, pressing his cheek as hard against her chest as was comfortable. “If even I can’t tell, how could you possibly say something like that?”

“Because I just know,” Tamora replied, shifting uncomfortable under him. Taking a few minutes to collect her thoughts, her face flushed red as she noticed Felix watching her, waiting for the evidence she had that their lives were real. “I know,” she finally continued, pursing her lips as she looked away, her face only become darker as she forced herself to answer, “because two people can’t have the same dream, and this,” she paused to motion to him, her hand returning to his hair once she had finished, “is mine, too.”

“Really,” Felix asked slowly, a wide grin spreading across his face at his wife’s confession. “You mean it?”

“Mod, I’m going to need to punch a wall to feel like a Marine again after this,” Tamora grumbled, “but yeah. I mean it.”

“Dream or no dream,” Felix responded, craning his neck so he could kiss the underside of her jaw,  “I love you, Tammy Jean.”

“Love you too, short stack. Love you too.”

Despite his wife’s words, occasionally, Felix couldn’t help but feel as if things were going too well to be true. Whenever that happened, he just forced himself to shrug and hope that, if they weren’t, he never woke up so his dream would never end.  

As far as he was concerned, it never did.