Chapter Text
George breathed in and out, his head pillowed on Wilbur’s chest, quietly listening to the heartbeat of the man lying beneath him.
“I don’t know how to tell them.” he broke the silence, absentmindedly tapping on Wilbur's chest while he spoke.
Wilbur shifted, bringing one of his hands to the back of George’s head, letting his fingers run through George’s hair, currently longer than it had ever been before, tracing the stray hairs almost starting to curl at the nape of his neck.
“Tell who?” he questioned quietly.
George closed his eyes, shivering pleasantly under Wilbur’s touch, “People, the public, fans , whatever you want to call them.”
“I don’t think the ‘how’ really matters that much George, it’s just a matter of doing it.”
A sigh escaped George’s mouth, “I know, but I don’t know if we need to be serious about it, or casual, or make a big deal out of it, or, or, or-”
“George,” Wilbur interrupted as George inhaled sharply, realizing he was running out of air in his frenzy, “it’s alright, don’t panic. Let’s just think this through together, okay?”
George pushed himself up into a sitting position on the bed, bringing his knees against his chest, propping his chin on top of them. “Okay... you’re right.”
He watched with a soft smile as Wilbur rose up next to him, rubbing his eyes tiredly before combing his hair to the side with one hand.
“So, let’s think about this...” Wilbur frowned and paused, looking away, seemingly deep in thought.
George tried really hard to think too, but his head was seemingly devoid of any kind of coherent ideas today, so he settled on looking at Wilbur’s pensive face instead, resisting the urge to smooth the wrinkles between Wilbur’s brows with his thumb, not wanting to disturb the other.
Wilbur seemed to perceive his gaze on him anyways, looking up and meeting his eyes “Are you even trying to come up with something or are you too busy staring, Gogy?”
George looked away, flushing embarrassingly, he waited a second before glancing at Wilbur again, the man’s eyes still boring into him expectedly. “Stop, you’re making me nervous.”
Wilbur chuckled, shaking his head, reaching forward to grab his hand, George letting him tangle their fingers together. “Head empty, no thoughts, uh?”
George smiled, and squeezed his hand, “Honestly, yeah, my brain is just not cooperating today.”
“It’s not like we have to rush this anyways, the fact that most of our friends know already is more than enough, I don’t want to push you.” Wilbur’s voice was soft, reassuring, probably trying to soothe him, sensing the nervous energy flowing out of George.
“Wil, it’s not that, I want people to know, believe me.” George tried to show the extent of his certainty to the other, holding his gaze and holding onto his hand tighter.
He was sure of that, he felt it fiercely: this whole thing had started off terrifying for him, but he had quickly learned with each person he told that he truly enjoyed them knowing. It made things so much easier, he didn’t have to shush Wilbur before accepting Quackity’s Facetime calls or lie about what he was doing when he told Dream he wasn’t free to record on a certain day. He liked being honest, but above all he liked the natural affection he could show Wilbur in front of everyone, not hiding the familiarity between them, even secretly enjoying the subtle teasing of his friends around the topic of Wilbur or when the man was there.
Wilbur pulled on his hand and George let the momentum carry him, falling face first back into the man’s chest, feeling Wilbur’s arms wrap around his body, inhaling the smell of his laundry detergent, curling his hands in the back of his t-shirt.
“I know, I just don’t want to go too fast for you, the last thing I want is for you to be uncomfortable.”
George could feel the rumble in Wilbur’s chest against his cheek as he spoke, almost lulling him back to sleep. He hummed in agreement, hoping it would be enough to convey his point.
“We’ll just keep being obvious and see if people catch up, and when people start asking too many questions we can just announce it somewhere, twitter or twitch, we’ll see.”
George nodded, “Okay.” he mumbled.
“Are you falling back asleep?” George could hear the laugh in Wilbur’s voice.
“Maybe,” he responded, stifling a yawn.
“I can’t believe you it’s…” Wilbur stopped, probably looking at the time on his phone, not that George would know, face buried in Wilbur’s shirt, eyes closed, teetering on the verge of unconsciousness. “it’s almost 4pm George!”
“George?”
Only silence answered him.
Wilbur sighed fondly and reluctantly opened discord.
‘WilburSoot: Can we do 5pm instead of 4pm for the stream? slight unforeseen inconvenience’
‘Tommy: no problem big man, whats up??’
‘WilburSoot: George fell asleep on me, i don’t want to move him or he’ll be grumpy’
‘Tommy: so you’re just calling your boyfriend an inconvenience then? Gogs will hear about this’
‘WilburSoot: don’t be a snitch’
‘Tommy: don’t be a bitch’
Wilbur managed to pull himself out of George’s grasps when the smaller man finally rolled onto his back after an hour, pulling the blanket tightly around him while mumbling something about dragons, Wilbur more than glad to let him nap more of the afternoon away while he himself got ready to stream with Tommy, making sure to keep his mic close so it wouldn’t pick up on any potential noise George could make if he woke up or talked in his sleep some more.
He stretched, launching Minecraft and connecting to the origins SMP server, quickly pressing tab and checking who was also on, it seemed like Manifold and Tommy were already both there. He opened discord, finding and joining their voice call.
“Hello boys,” he said happily, announcing his presence.
“Wilbur!” Tommy replied, his character jumping around Wilbur’s, hitting him occasionally.
“Hi, hi!” Jack Manifold greeted him.
“Hi Manifold, are you already streaming Tommy?”
“Yeah big man! I just started, since you said you were gonna be late.”
“Great, well let’s go, what were you guys doing?” Wilbur opened his inventory, noticing it was pretty bare. He definitely needed to farm some materials for his house. He rolled his shoulders, trying to get rid of the stiffness in his side from trying to stay somewhat still while George slept.
“Building our house!” Tommy exclaimed cheerily, the volume of his voice making Wilbur quickly lower the sound in his headphones.
“Okay no need to yell Tommy, use your inside voice.” Wilbur drily replied
“Oh am I too loud, chat am I too loud? Do I need to lower my mic?”
“Yeah lower it Tommy” Wilbur said.
“Like that?” Tommy spoke after a second, considerably quieter.
“Nah more, just go all the way to zero Tommy, give our ears a break” Wilbur drawled mockingly.
“FUCK YOU” Tommy boomed, mic volume turned all the way up again, Wilbur winced, backing away from the noise, removing one side of his headphones from his ear.
“Tommy are you genuinely trying to kill your viewers? Because you’re getting awfully close to actually succeeding.”
“You’re not funny Wilbur.” Tommy grumbled in response.
“Yeah well I’m pretty sure I saw your viewer count dip right there, maybe you should try being funny.” Wilbur pushed further, enjoying teasing his surrogate brother figure.
“Well maybe it would be higher if you showed up at the time I had announced yesterday for my stream instead of hanging out with your little boyfriend !” Tommy snapped.
To say that Wilbur was surprised by the outburst would be an understatement, he sat there in silence for what felt like minutes but was probably no more than a handful of seconds before laughing awkwardly.
“Okay guys, let’s chill.” Jack Manifold butted in, sounding confused, immediately launching into a long monologue comparing everyone’s house on the server, rambling until Tommy eventually joined him, the awkward air dissipating quickly.
Wilbur silently thanked Manifold for his ability to change the subject so promptly without even knowing the context of Tommy’s taunt. He wondered if his silence and lack of denial after Tommy’s words had been perceived as an admittance by the people watching. He sighed soundlessly, his heart pounding, as he forced himself to participate as naturally as he could to the ongoing discussion, ignoring the clamminess of his hands.
Why was he so anxious? Wasn’t he the one pushing for a public reveal, so excited about it?
When Tommy had hinted at the fact that he had been in love, and in a relationship, in a previous stream he had only laughed, feeling none of the panic he was currently experiencing, so why was it different this time?
Oh, oh .
It was the word boyfriend that had thrown him off, the fact that Tommy has very obviously used the masculine noun. He hadn’t even stopped and thought about the fact that it was also technically him coming out to his friends when he had told them about George, because George was George, he didn’t need the justification of any kind of sexuality to love him and no one had questioned him about it either. His mum had been the only exception, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear when he had brought George over for dinner for the first time, “A boy, uh?” she had then said softly, right before embracing him tenderly, no other word needed.
He dismissed the memory.
It indeed seemed like that was what scared him: the idea of coming out without George’s name being attached to it, he didn’t want people to speculate about a random boyfriend. He looked to the side at George’s peaceful sleeping face, the man tucked into a mountain of pillow.
George certainly wasn’t just a random person.
An hour later Tommy finally ended the stream, he had been slightly tense the entire time, his smiles more strained than usual, but he was doing a genuinely great job at hiding it, Wilbur only noticing because of how well he knew the teenager. As soon Tommy said good-bye to his chat and pressed the end button, he came back, undeafening and unmuting in the VC.
“Eyy Tommy” Jack Manifold greeted him back, but Tommy ignored him.
“Wil?” he sounded hesitant, far from the screaming, confident streamer he was barely minutes ago.
“Yeah?” Wilbur replied, worried by the apprehension he could sense in the other’s tone.
“Are you..” he mumbled something, too quietly for Wilbur to understand.
“What? I didn’t quite catch that Toms.”
Tommy cleared his throat, “Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
“Because of the boyfriend thing, I fucked up”
“Oh no, Tommy, it’s alright, don’t worry about it really I’m not mad and I certainly don’t think George will be mad either.”
Wilbur heard someone choke on their water, coughing hard for a couple of seconds.
“Oh, Jack’s still here, whoops?” Wilbur said to no one in particular, Tommy going quiet.
“Boyfriend? George?” Jack Manifold muttered into the mic sounding utterly lost. “Okay, uh, boys it feels like I shouldn’t be there for this maybe, have a good night, see you later, bye!”
Before he or Tommy could reply Jack Manifold fled the voice chat, his sudden departure causing the two remaining men in the chat to burst out laughing, lightening up the tense atmosphere.
“I forgot he was even there, oh well, it’s alright.” Wilbur said, still chuckling.
“Yeah same,” Tommy cleared his throat awkwardly again, “so you’re not mad?” he asked as a confirmation.
“No I’m not, I’m sorry for teasing you I didn’t mean to upset you Tommy.”
“It’s okay you didn’t really upset me I was just… I don’t know, I was just annoyed for a second and it came out wrong.”
“It’s alright, really.” Wilbur replied sincerely.
“Do you think people will really believe it’s just a joke?”
“It doesn’t really matter Tommy, it’s going to get out there eventually and me and George were planning on saying something soon anyways.”
He could hear the relieved exhale from Tommy.
“Okay, good... can’t wait to tweet that I knew about it before Dream.”
Wilbur rolled his eyes, “That might be a sore spot actually, but sure mate, you do you.”
“Well then I can tweet that I was the first to see you guys…” he paused, fake-gagged exaggeratedly, “... kiss .”
Wilbur leaned back in his chair, laughing loudly at the younger’s theatrics. “Were you actually?” He thought back to it, trying to think of when he had kissed George in front of anyone. Right before the IRL stream with Tommy, Phil, George and him, must have been the first time surely.
“Yeah…” Tommy sounded slightly embarrassed, “that Facetime call after you told me, right?”
Wilbur flushed at the thought. After he had told the SBI about George, Tommy had repetitively asked him if the news of him and George being together was the truth or a bad prank, and consistently refused to believe Wilbur, until the older man, fed up with putting up with his constant bugging had grabbed George’s face crashing their lips together for a second in front of the stunned teenager he was on a Facetime call with. “Ohh, no, yeah, you’re right.”
The feeling of a hand on his shoulder made Wilbur jump, he let out a startled yelp, turning around to see George, looking as startled as he himself was, “You scared the shit out of me George.”
George smiled, “Sorry, didn’t mean to, I texted you but you didn’t see it, and I didn’t want to talk just in case you were still streaming or something.”
Wilbur nodded understandingly, “I’m just in a call with Tommy, no worries.”
George nodded and started to walk away.
“Wait, wait Wilbur, remove the headphones I wanna talk to Gogy!”
Wilbur grabbed George’s hand before he could get out of reach, “Tommy said he wanted to talk to you?”, he probably wouldn’t have let the younger get what he wanted so easily normally but he still felt bad for teasing him during the stream so he was decidedly more lenient today. George looked at him curiously as he removed his headphones, plopping them on top of George’s messy hair, George leaning down so he could get closer to the mic.
“Tommy? Hi?” George said as Wilbur waited patiently.
He watched as George laughed probably at one of Tommy’s jokes, looking at Wilbur and rolling his eyes at the teenagers' antics, Wilbur smiling back even though he couldn’t hear what was going on.
“Wait, he said what?” George stepped away from Wilbur’s chair and closer to the desk, throwing a glance at Wilbur over his shoulder, Wilbur tilting his head curiously, trying to guess what Tommy was telling George.
“Oh yeah? Well thanks for telling me Tommy.” he paused, huffing a laugh, “Yeah I guess we can play PUBG, tomorrow though, right now you should go eat dinner or do homework, or whatever your mum wants you to do.”
Wilbur could faintly hear Tommy protesting vehemently, his cries carrying out through the headphone, George grimacing slightly at the volume, too kind to say anything.
“Okay, bye Tommy, yes, okay, yes. Tommy , bye.” Wilbur watched as George clicked the end call button, closing discord, slowly turning to face him, a brow raised, “So I’m an inconvenience , uh?”
“No way, he really snitched!” Wilbur scoffed, trying to contain his laughter at George's offended expression.
“So you admit to it? Mmh okay, I see.”
“I mean you kinda were an inconvenience, you flopped right on top of me and I couldn’t leave, I had to text Tommy to move his stream back an hour.”
“I’m heartbroken.” George mocked, wiping a fake tear away.
“Oh yeah? I’m sure.” Wilbur leaned back in his chair, propping his legs up on his desk.
George didn’t dignify him with a response, simply walking away and flipping him off over his shoulder.
A couple of seconds later Wilbur’s phone buzzed with a notification, he would have dismissed it if George’s name didn’t catch his attention. He unlocked the screen and clicked on the notification, it seemed like George had tweeted something.
‘Georgenootfound:
got called an inconvenience today, don’t hit me up :(‘
He barely had time to finish reading the tweet that his phone buzzed with a second notification, Tommy had replied to George’s tweet:
‘tommyinnit:
replying to @Georgenootfound
don’t worry I got your back Gogs, can’t wait for the two of us to play PUBG together ALONE tomorrow 👍’
“George!” he yelled through his flat, he couldn’t believe the other man was being so dramatic.
He started typing out a reply but George was faster.
‘Georgenootfound:
replying to @tommyinnit
thx Tommy, what would I do without you, you might be my new favorite british minecraft streamer”
Wilbur chuckled at the reply, he knew this would only fuel Tommy’s not so secret admiration for George, as much as the teenager liked to joke about it, he really respected George and wanted to impress him, even more since the two of them had gotten together. Wilbur pocketed his phone, quietly walking to the living room where he could see George standing by the couch, typing away on his phone. Taking advantage of the man’s inattention, Wilbur creeped out behind him, snatching his phone away, carefully tossing it on the couch, and circling George in his arms, the shorter man scream-laughing in surprise as Wilbur lifted him off the ground for a second.
“You’re such a drama queen”
George squirmed in his arms, trying to extirpate himself from the embrace. “Let me go!” he protested, “I’m sulking”
Despite his words, George couldn’t contain the giggles that escaped him as Wilbur tightened his arms instead, leaning down to whisper in his ear “You are?”
George stilled as Wilbur’s breath ghosted against his ear, he let his head fall back against Wilbur’s chest, tilting his head to look up, licking his lips almost nervously, “I am.”
Wilbur closed the distance, kissing George on the corner of his lips before stepping back, letting George go, “No, I don’t think you are.”
George shook his head, “Hmm, I guess I’m not,” he stepped directly in front of Wilbur to press a kiss against his lips, “...idiot.” he added as they separated.
“Hey Wilbur, why are you trending with the word ‘boyfriend’ right now?”
Wilbur quickly looked up from his phone where he was lazily scrolling on Tik Tok, barely paying attention to the videos he was watching. “I am?” he asked curiously, leaning forward to get a better look at George’s screen, the man holding the device out to him.
His name was indeed at the top of George’s recommended trending topics, with ten thousand tweets already discussing Tommy’s slip up during his stream. He groaned, flopping dramatically in George’s laps as the brunette looked at him teasingly.
“Do you have a boyfriend you haven’t told me about?”
Wilbur scoffed, “As if, one is already too much work.” George punched him lightly in the shoulder as he laughed loudly, “Ow, that’s domestic abuse George.”
George rolled his eyes, “Don’t joke about that dumbass.”
“Tommy got mad during his stream because I went a bit too far with the teasing, and he talked about how I was late because I was hanging out with my ‘little boyfriend’, that’s probably why it’s trending.” Wilbur explained, quickly finding a clip to show George the awkward moment.
George watched the clip, grimacing at the uncomfortable silence right after Tommy’s small outburst, smiling when he heard Jack Manifold desperately trying to fill the silence with his barely sensical rambles.
“Jack kinda saved your asses there.” he said after the clip ended, Wilbur humming in agreement.
“Oh, fuck I forgot about Jack!” Wilbur exclaimed, he proceeded to also recount the discord phone call with Tommy and Jack right after the stream and Manifold’s subsequent confusion and sudden escape after Wilbur and Tommy’s mention of George and boyfriend in the same couple of sentences.
George shook his head, “How were we so good at hiding it and now everyone is finding out at the same time, I can’t believe it.”
“Well the more people we tell, the more likely we are to slip up and forget some people don’t know.”
George nodded, “That’s true. You know what?” he didn’t wait for Wilbur’ answer, continuing excitedly, “I think we should do an IRL stream together, just you and me, and like drop it at the end and let people freak out.”
Wilbur looked at George, captivated by the sight of him waving his hands eagerly, the sleeves of his too big hoodie falling over his fingers, eyes bright with mischief as he gave ideas one after the other: a Geoguessr stream, a ‘You Laugh You Lose’ stream, or even another ‘getting over it’ drinking stream like they had done with Philza before.
“Those are all good ideas” Wilbur agreed, thinking carefully about it, “but first, we need to figure out the day, when should we do it?”
“Well, today is… Thursday, what about next Friday?”
"Tomorrow?" Wilbur’s eyes widened in surprise, surely they didn’t have the time to prepare.
“No, not tomorrow idiot, the one after, next week. That would give us time to plan it, announce it and set things up.”
That actually seemed like a sensible idea, “Sounds good, Gogy.”
“Of course it sounds good, it's my idea.” George replied smugly, walking up to Wilbur’s fridge, opening it up, and looking around until he found what he wanted, he held a red apple victoriously, washing it at the sink before taking a bite of it and leaning against the kitchen counter.
“Hey quit stealing my food asshole, and beside this whole thing,” Wilbur gestured between the two of them, “was pretty much MY idea”
“Wilbur, love,” and Wilbur swore he didn’t blush at the pet name, resolutely looking away from George, “you told me you didn’t like red apples, you clearly bought them for me… cause you’re a simp.” he finished with a smile, taking another bite of the apple. “And what do you mean by ‘your idea’?”
Wilbur struggled to hide just how enamored he was with George when he acted confident like that, but he contained himself, not wanting to be called a simp again. “I said something first, I kissed you first, I even was the one to ask you to be my boyfriend. ”
George ran his hand through his hair, doing nothing to tame the fluffy mess it currently was, “Okay... maybe you’re right” he admitted, throwing the apple core away, “but we’ll see who does something first on Friday then.”
Wilbur raised a brow in response, “Is that a challenge?”
“What if it is?” George replied confidently, looking directly into Wilbur’s eyes.
“Okay then, we’ll see Friday.” Wilbur replied.
“We’ll see Friday.” George echoed.
Wilbur, looking at the cheeky grin on George’s face, his cheeks dusted pink, and hair a mess, would be lying if he said he wasn’t dying for Friday to come quicker.
He couldn’t wait for the world to know that George was his.