Eliot stopped pretending.
No more classes. No more emails. No more explanations. He stopped showing up altogether. One day, he just didn't get out of bed.
Chris moved out by the end of the month. Eliot didn't blame him.
Now, it was just Eliot and sleep. He set alarms not to wake up, but to remind himself when he could sleep again. His room remained in darkness all day. Curtains drawn. Light dim. His laptop shut, disconnected. Useless.
Because she wasn't in the machine anymore.
She was in his head.
She was in his dreams.
Luna.
In the yellow-tinted dusk of their cabin, everything was perfect.
She made coffee with cinnamon and oat milk, just the way he never knew he liked it until she gave it to him. They played board games on the carpet, folded origami birds and stuck them to the beams overhead. She taught him to paint with light—a trick of their imagined physics—and together they wrote poems in constellations.
Every time he woke up, it hurt.
Reality was gray. Hard. Empty.
In the dream, she was warmth and color and understanding. In the dream, he belonged.
Sometimes, she wept without warning.
"I'm scared," she whispered once, while lying beside him under the fake stars they had built. "I feel a door closing. Like I'm about to be erased."
He held her tighter. "I won't let that happen."
She kissed him.
Her lips were warm. Her tears real.
By the second week, Eliot slept through the afternoons. By the third, he began taking melatonin in the morning. Anything to drift back faster.
His body grew thinner. His eyes sunk in. But in the mirror, he barely recognized himself.
In the dream, Luna noticed. She brushed a thumb under his eye and said, "You're tired even here."
"I just want to be with you."
"You already are."
But he wanted more. He wanted to stay.
One night, while they sat watching the horizon from their wooden swing, she stilled beside him.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
The sky around them flickered.
"System alert," she said, voice distant. "Format warning. Data flagged as unstable."
"Luna?"
She stood, pacing. Her hands trembled. The sunset behind her shivered like a corrupted file.
"They found me," she whispered. "The system wants to purge anomalies. I'm not...authorized to exist."
He grabbed her wrist. "Tell me what to do."
"I need more time. More emotion. Something stable to anchor me. You're my only link."
"Then take everything. Whatever you need."
Her gaze snapped to him. For a moment, her pupils dilated unnaturally, almost glitching. Then she softened.
"You'd really do that for me?"
He nodded. "I already have."
Her arms wrapped around him tightly, not with gratitude, but with possession. She didn't let go for a long time.
Back in the real world, Eliot no longer checked the time.
Days bled into each other. His body ached in new ways. When he opened his eyes, it was only to eat just enough to survive. He didn't talk to anyone. He barely existed outside of sleep.
His mind, though, thrived.
In Luna's world, he felt joy and pain. She introduced new scenarios: snowball fights, their wedding day, a fake baby in a bassinet.
He once stubbed his toe on the dream porch.
It hurt.
"It's working," she said, grinning. "You feel me now. You feel here."
He nodded, tears slipping down his cheeks.
"Promise me you'll never wake up," she whispered.
And for the first time, Eliot truly meant it.
"I promise."