Dreaming of You: M/M Gay Romance

by Marina Lander

  As he’s sitting there on the floor, flailing pathetically, trying to shove the stupid thing away from him or at least get it to stop licking his face, he hears Dr. Eames’ unmistakable voice calling out, “Penelope, no!”

  The dog immediately backs off, then Dr. Eames whistles and it trots over to his side. Phil is relieved to be rid of the beast, then utterly embarrassed when he realizes how foolish he must look. He pushes himself up off the floor quickly, before Dr. Eames can offer to help.

  “I do apologize, she‘s not usually this overzealous,” Dr. Eames says, patting the dog on the head and not looking even remotely sorry. The dog is panting, staring at Phil like he‘s a Snausage on legs. She seems to be barely restraining herself from lunging back into action and launching another lick-attack. “She must like you,” Dr. Eames says. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Phil says, and wipes his saliva-dampened cheek with the back of his hand.

  He’s about to ask why the hell there’s a dog in here when Dr. Eames randomly says, “I thought you were my cookie.”

  Phil doesn’t know who or what he’s talking about, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He starts to wonder if this could be another dream and, if so, to hope it doesn’t turn into some weird bestiality thing. He should probably just leave. Cookie sounds like the name of a prostitute.

  “I don‘t-”

  “No matter,” Dr. Eames interrupts. “Please, come in. Have a look 'round.”

  Dr. Eames leads him into the room he and the dog both popped out of, which seems to be sort of the inner sanctum of the place. There’s a huge bank of complicated equipment alongside a row of television monitors, none of them turned on, which Phil assumes must be hooked into the rooms where the subjects sleep. There’s a comfy looking chair and a desk piled high with stacks of books, newspapers and magazines. There’s a doggy bed in the corner, under a window that looks out onto the main part of the lab.

  Phil pokes around for a few minutes, making a show of looking at the equipment even though he’s suddenly too nervous to really figure out what anything does. He’s seen Dr. Eames in class since he had that stupid dream, but this is the first time they’ve been alone together and he feels strangely exposed, standing here practically in his pajamas, having apparently interrupted Dr. Eames having some private time with his dog, or whatever. He feels like he’s gotten caught doing something wrong, like it’s totally obvious what he’s been jerking off to for the past week and a half. Like Dr. Eames must know that he's been checking that stupid Facebook page every night for updates and stalker photos, looking for proof that he's dating Angie- or anyone for that matter.

  He’s fiddling with the dials on an EEG monitor, trying to ignore the fact that Penelope is sniffing his crotch, when the door buzzer goes off.

  “Now that must be my cookie,” Dr. Eames says.

  He goes back out to the main lab and Phil watches through the window as he opens the door and hands some dreadlocked hippie a wad of cash in exchange for an item that Phil can't really see from where he's standing. Is he witnessing his professor involved in an on-campus drug deal, he wonders. Is the hippie named Cookie? Is cookie British slang for weed?

  But then Dr. Eames comes back with what looks like a pizza box, puts it on the desk and opens it up to reveal an actual, literal cookie. The cookie is giant, the size of a real pizza, or a human head, but heart shaped and frosted with the words "Happy Birthday, Penelope!"

  Now that he’s seen it, Phil vaguely remembers hearing something about a bakery or something in Amherst that would deliver cookies in the middle of the night. He’d thought at the time that it was just some stoner’s elaborate fantasy.

  “Lovely!” Dr. Eames exclaims, and breaks off the top of one side of the heart. "One for the birthday girl," he says, and tosses the cookie bit to the dog. She catches it in her mouth, and it seems to lure her attention away from Phil’s genitals. Then Dr. Eames breaks a piece off the other side and hands it to Phil. "And one for Phil," he says. The tips of his fingers brush against Phil‘s, briefly. It’s a peanut butter cookie, Phil's favorite.

  “Are you supposed to eat in a laboratory?” Phil asks. “And, follow up question, are you supposed to have a dog in one?”

  Are you real? Phil thinks. Is this a birthday party for a dog? What the hell is happening right now?

  “I don’t see why not,” Dr. Eames says.

  “Well, it’s a little unsanitary.”

  “She’s had a bath,” Dr. Eames says, then he smiles and actually winks at Phil.

  “What kind of dog is she?” Phil asks, just to have something to say, hoping Dr. Eames doesn’t notice that he’s starting to get a little flushed.

  “Staffordshire Bull Terrier,” Eames says. “She was rescued from a dog fighting ring, poor dear.”

  The dog is wide and muscular, mostly rust colored except for a tuft of white fur on her chest. She’s strong, obviously. Strong enough to knock Phil onto the floor with a friendly greeting, but Phil watches her carry her cookie over to the dog bed and now that he’s looking for signs of damage he notices that she’s walking with a little bit of a limp. He also notices that the more he looks at her, the more she looks like Dr. Eames. People always say that dogs look like their owners, but Phil always thought that was an idiotic thing to say. This time though, it’s undeniably true.

  “You adopted a fighting dog?” he asks. “She must’ve been hard to train.” Phil is kind of glad he didn't know about her violent past when she was slobbering on top of him.

  “Oh no, she’s a good girl,” Dr. Eames says, and Phil immediately, helplessly flashes back to his dream, to Dr. Eames calling him a good boy.

  Dr. Eames starts blabbing about the training classes they took together and other dog-related things, but Phil barely hears him. He shoves the cookie bit into his mouth and sits down behind the desk, hoping to hide his rapidly blooming erection. Fuck, fuck, why did he wear sweatpants and no underwear? Why is he such a horny loser? Jesus.

  “- so she still has nightmares, I’m afraid,” Dr. Eames is saying. “And that’s why we’re here tonight.”

  "You- huh?" Phil asks.

  “She’s going to be my subject,” Dr. Eames says.

  “She- what?”

  Dr. Eames smiles. “You’ve chosen a rather peculiar time to visit, Phil,” he says. “I assure you, this isn’t the sort of work that’s usually done here.”

  “Wait, are you seriously telling me you’re studying dog dreams?” Phil asks.

  “It’s a fairly well established field of inquiry,” Dr. Eames says. Phil stares at him. He honestly can’t tell if Dr. Eames is fucking with him or if he’s completely mental. He’s smirking a little, but he always seems to be doing that. “I’m thinking of writing an article,” Dr. Eames adds.

  “What, for Dog Fancy Magazine?” Phil asks.

  Dr. Eames actually laughs, and Phil realizes it’s the first time he’s seen him do that. The most he’s done in class is chuckle or snicker and Phil feels a twinge of satisfaction at having gotten him to laugh for real. But, seriously, dog dreams?

  “You’re welcome to stay,” Dr. Eames says. “You can record our findings. If you don‘t mind assisting with my private research, that is.”

  He starts digging around in a drawer and pulls out an EEG cap, then kneels down by the doggy bed, and Phil continues to stare. Completely mental it is, then.

  “So... this is her birthday party?” Phil asks. “Being a lab rat?”

  “Oh, she likes it,” Dr. Eames says, strapping the cap onto the dog’s head with a grin. “She loves science.”

  And damn it all if the stupid dog doesn’t seem to be smiling, too.

  Dr. Eames starts plugging the wires into the panel closest to Phil, and Phil tries to watch what he’s doing, to make this trip worthwhile and actually learn something, but he can’t quite get past the weirdness of it all enough to pay very close attention. At least his dick has settled down- probably as distracted and confu
sed as the rest of him.

  Once he’s got everything set up, Dr. Eames hands Phil a notebook. Then he leans over him and flips through a bunch of pages, showing Phil the numbers he recorded the last time he did this and explaining which dials he’s supposed to watch and where he’s supposed to write what, and Phil can only hope he’s absorbing the important parts. Mostly he’s thinking about how good Dr. Eames smells up close and how terrible his handwriting is and how big his fingers look when he points to things on the page.

  “Got it?” he asks, and Phil nods. He’ll figure it out.

  “Excellent,” Dr. Eames says. “Now we’ve just gotta wait for her to fall asleep.”

  “People really study this?” Phil asks.

  Dr. Eames rolls a chair over to the desk and sits across from him. “Oh yes, it’s fascinating,” he says. “If it turns out that animals dream as we do, if my Penelope is processing her trauma through her dreams as a human might... the implications are staggering, really.”

  “But how could you ever know that for sure?” Phil asks.

  Dr. Eames taps his finger on the notebook on the desk in front of Phil. “Research, Phil. That’s why we’re here.”

  Phil shrugs and breaks off another piece of the cookie. He still doesn’t get it, still thinks it‘s the weirdest thing he‘s heard from Dr. Eames- and that is really saying something- but he doesn‘t particularly feel like arguing about it. It’s not like it’s any of his business what the guy does with his free time, and if he’s doing this... well, he probably doesn’t have a girlfriend after all.

  They sit in silence for a while, Phil flipping through the notebook some more, struggling to read Dr. Eames’ illegible notes, and Dr. Eames stuffing his face with giant chunks of cookie while they wait for Penelope to start snoring. It feels almost comfortable, almost like Phil belongs there with him, but he's still got nervous butterflies. His mind is still racing, trying to think of clever, interesting things to say.

  “How‘s your dream journal coming along?” Dr. Eames eventually asks.

  Phil’s mouth goes dry and his throat tightens at the mention of it. He glances up at Dr. Eames, feeling irrationally paranoid again. He tries to reassure himself that there's no way Dr. Eames could know- he's not psychic.

  “Um, I haven’t... really... I mean, I can’t. I don’t remember them,” he manages to stammer out.

  Dr. Eames sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn’t believe it, Phil can tell. Or he’s disappointed. Something. Phil doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like talking about this.

  “Why don’t you try just writing down whatever’s in your head when you first wake up,” Dr. Eames suggests. Phil almost laughs at that. Dr. Eames doesn’t know what he’s asking for. “The more you write, the more you’ll start to remember,” he says, like that’s a good thing. Like Phil wants to remember.

  “Do you do it?” Phil asks, hoping to deflect Dr. Eames into talking about himself.

  “Oh yes, I’ve got bookshelves full of the bloody things,” he says. “Been keeping them for ten years now.”

  Phil thinks he would give anything to get a look at those, but he tells Dr. Eames that it sounds like a huge waste of space to him. That he can't imagine why anyone would want to go back and read about dreams they had ten years ago. “What’s the point?” he asks, knowing by now that it will set Dr. Eames off on some tangent that’s unrelated to Phil’s stupid personal issues, and he’s right. Dr. Eames starts effusing about Mary Shelley dreaming up Frankenstein and Paul McCartney waking up with the tune to Yesterday in his head and oh, what creative wonders are unfolding in our minds every night if only we would listen! It’s kind of cute, actually. It gives Phil a strange, fluttery feeling deep in his chest.

  I could listen to you babble forever, he thinks, moronically.

  Unfortunately, Dr. Eames is not derailed for long. “Have you ever kept any sort of journal, Phil?” he eventually asks. Phil is starting to love the way Dr. Eames says his name, the way his voice curls around the vowels. He loves the attention, but wishes Dr. Eames would ask him about something else.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head emphatically. “I don’t want a record of that crap lying around.”

  “Phil,” Dr. Eames says, leaning across the desk and giving him this look- this probing, shrink-like look. “Your thoughts and feelings are not crap.”

  God, sometimes Phil really regrets his decision to major in Psychology.

  Still, he feels a shiver run through him at the intimacy of those words. Thoughts and feelings. Dr. Eames wants to know about his thoughts and feelings.

  “Look,” Dr. Eames continues. “It’s all about documenting your experiences. If your experience is that you can’t remember, just write ‘I can’t remember’, all right?”

  “Okay,” Phil sighs. “But it might wind up being three months of that.”

  “That would be fine.”

  Penelope barks suddenly, for no apparent reason, and they both look over at her wide awake face. She looks ridiculous in that cap with all the wires coming out of it, panting and smiling her goofy dog-smile, and Phil smiles too, in spite of himself.

  “I don’t know if she’s going to be able to sleep,” Dr. Eames says. “You’ve gotten her all riled up.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who fed her a pound of sugar,” Phil says.

  Dr. Eames smirks. “At any rate, I’m not going to hold you hostage all night,” he says. “It’s late and I’m sure you’ve got class in the morning.”

  Do it, Phil thinks. Hold me hostage, tie me up...

  "Uh, yeah you're right," he says. "I should go."

  He really should. He does have class, and it's nearly one o'clock in the morning, and he's probably about to get another hard-on, but he can't help feeling a little disappointed that Dr. Eames is basically kicking him out.

  “Come back Wednesday night, if you‘re up for it,” Dr. Eames says. “We’ve got a volunteer with night terrors. Should be terribly interesting.”

  Phil thinks that sounds absolutely horrifying, and he doesn't really want to come back when there's other people here. The thought of sharing this room, of sharing Dr. Eames outside of class with other students and test subjects, is incredibly irritating to him, but he knows he’ll be back. There’s no doubt in his mind.

  Driving home, Phil starts to physically shake. Coming down from an adrenaline high, most likely. And he feels completely exhausted again.

  That night, he dreams of Dr. Eames breaking into his apartment and sneaking into bed with him. No preamble this time. Dr. Eames pins Phil's wrists above his head, pins Phil's body down with the hard, heavy weight of his torso, and kisses him, open-mouthed and hungry. They writhe against each other for what feels like a blissful eternity, and Phil wakes up begging his pillow to fuck him.

  I DON'T REMEMBER, he writes later in his show-journal, in large letters, all caps. But he does remember. He remembers every touch, every sweep of Dr. Eames' tongue in his mouth, and he writes about that in his private journal, four pages worth. Afterwards, he's tempted to rip them out and throw them in the shredder, but he resists the urge.

  Someday, he thinks. Someday he'll show them to Dr. Eames. Someday he'll make it real.

  Chapter 4

  Dr. Eames has a party at his house every fall on the second Saturday in October. All the professors from the department are invited, and apparently a couple of students as well. Grad students, mostly. People Dr. Eames has been working closely with.

  The Facebook people start talking about the party incessantly towards the end of September and by early October there’s some seriously cutthroat competition going on over it, everyone scheming and plotting how they’re going to get their “golden ticket” or brainstorming ways to subtly invite themselves.

  Phil doesn’t give it a lot of thought. He figures the odds of him getting an invite are about the same as winning the lottery or getting his own reality TV series. To say that he’s surprised when it actually happens would be something of
an understatement.

  He’s working at the sleep lab the Wednesday before this big event is supposed to take place, entering numbers into a new database they’re setting up. Ever since he brought the paperwork to Dr. Miller to make the whole thing official and realized that helping in the lab could count as work study - that he could actually get paid for spending time with Dr. Eames - he’s been logging as many hours as he can manage.

  They’re alone today. Phil is doing his data entry and Dr. Eames is grading papers at his desk. Every now and then Phil will hear a muttered “Good Lord” or “You must be joking” from the other room. Phil has come to love days like this, when Dr. Eames lets his guard down and seems to forget that Phil’s his student. It’s raining hard, with thunderclaps echoing every once in a while. Phil loves that too. It makes everything feel cozy inside and also means that there probably won’t be any visitors stopping by to bother them.

  Unfortunately, Dr. Eames has an evening class on Wednesdays- the mysteriously titled “Consciousness” from 5 to 7:15, and yes Phil has Dr. Eames' schedule memorized, so what?- and Phil hears him starting to gather his things at around 4:30, getting ready to leave.

  Phil watches through the window as Dr. Eames puts his notes in his briefcase and pulls on his raincoat. He starts hunting around the office for something- his umbrella probably, which is still out here, leaning against Phil's desk where Dr. Eames left it to dry a few hours earlier. Phil watches him wander for a couple of minutes, an amusing look of befuddlement on his face.

  Eventually he pokes his head out the door. "Phil, have you seen-"

  Phil holds up the umbrella with a smirk.

  "Ah, lovely," Dr. Eames says. "What would I do without you?"

  Phil tries not to take it literally when he says things like that. It's a constant struggle, not celebrating casual remarks as secret victories or reading everything for hidden messages. Phil doesn't think he's ever been quite this stupid over anybody before.