Chapter Text
Limbs shift against his torso, hair brushes his neck and collarbones, breath warms the coldest parts of his body with tenderness he’s only felt from a distance — and Dream is absolutely positive he’s still sleeping.
He toys with fuzzy blankets with his fingers and watches the room blur into focus. His eyes feel sore, pried open all last night by the fear of losing the dozing body in his arms. There are only a few memories of what that was like — reaching and tugging at sleeves and wrists, hoping they stayed in place, trying not to think about what it would be like to wake up and let them go.
Dream has held George all night, all through the rise and fall of the silver moon and the alignments of the stars. A million things have happened between now and then — he’s taken thousands of breaths and his heart has beat on and the world has kept spinning in that sickening everlasting way that it always does. Change, slow and steady, has crept up with the dawn, turning blue to yellow and black to pink — and yet George still lies here, his hands curled into Dream’s sweater and his face buried warmly in his shoulder, fast asleep.
Holy fuck. Yeah. It’s a lot.
Maybe he’s not sure how to handle it — so, rather, he doesn’t.
Dream lets the morning chill his bones in the way only the palest shades of sunlight can do. It’s the pre-breakfast parts of the day that he loves the most, when the sun is still rising and the stars fade from the sky like ripples dissipating into water; it’s these parts of the day that he’s happiest to share with George. He steers his mind away from the dangerous precipice of longing that breaks into a chasm below him, thinking only of what he has right now.
His arms shift beneath George’s shirt. It’s guilty, and he sways back towards the edge. Hopeless. It feels criminally wrong to touch him like this.
Even so, he doesn’t let go.
Maybe, if Dream is lucky, he’ll get to lie here forever. Instead, he just hopes the next minute or hour — or however long it’ll be until George inevitably wakes — feels close enough to that.
He rubs a hand up and down George’s back and relishes in the way he breathes. It’s a funny thing to be in love with the way somebody breathes, the gentle rise and fall of their lungs, the way each inhale feels like a question and each exhale answers it. If answering was as easy as breathing, Dream would have his answers already. Instead, he wonders if it’s okay to love like this, wonders without refuge or end.
It’s lonely, sort of. And scary. Much like anything and everything is when George is there to share it with.
Dream is alright to share it, though. Holding that weight on his own would be worse.
Fingers grasp at his neck, sleepy and wanting. Dream blinks down at his boy, dark-haired and angel-eyed and heaven sent in the god-forsaken sappiest of ways, and contemplates waking him.
He exhales, wonders what question he’s answering, and shakes George’s shoulders. Lying to himself any longer would be unwise.
“George—?”
The warmth floods from his shoulder as George’s head lifts, and Dream lets it go with only a touch of bitterness. He’s not sure what to think as he watches him stir, mumble something unintelligible and rub his eyes. A minute passes. Two minutes. Brown irises blink sleepily up at him.
Dream blinks back.
George, in his arms, on his couch, is awake. Finally.
Home has never felt closer or farther away.
“O-oh,” he says quietly, a realisation, “good— good morning, Dream.”
Dream allows his gaze to wander delicately over George’s body, curled around his own in shameful intimacy. He guides his own arms slowly to a standstill, forcing them to stop moving and touching and feeling, and meets amber-tinted eyes at last.
“Good morning,” he forces out. The words splinter and poke at his chest. Every single combination of letters feels wrong, at this moment, and he can’t fathom how he’s going to speak without wanting to throw everything up.
“I—” George starts, and stops. “I’m sorry, I think, for— for last night. I wasn’t thinking.”
But he doesn’t pull away.
“You don’t,” Dream hears himself say, “you don’t need to be sorry. It’s fine, I’m fine.” Are you?
George roams his face with soft eyes. The morning light drinks him up, and he’s breathtaking in an inexplicable way, caught between sunbeams and shadows where the dawn is just beginning to settle. The English language has no words to describe what he does to Dream, his lips parted in gentle curiosity, his tongue caught between his teeth, holding back broken words that could be a confession or a death wish.
“How did you sleep?” he asks simply.
His voice sounds so pretty, and Dream is lost for words.
“Alright,” he settles on. “Not too bad, I think.”
And of course George has to smile in that adorably lovesick way, because he knows what he does to Dream, and it kills them both. “That’s good. I think I— slept better than normal.”
“Wonder why,” Dream says stupidly. He regrets it a second later. Think before you speak, oh my god.
George’s eyes flick down, then up.
“You know,” he says, “you are very comfortable.”
“And you’re clingy,” Dream grins, despite himself. A terrifyingly warm memory of small wrists and hands and skin on skin ignites the trail of gasoline in his mind.
George looks at him so fondly that Dream thinks he must be looking in a mirror. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he breathes.
“And you like that?”
He thinks of the way they share body heat, the tangle of their limbs in gentle pursuit of one another’s affection. Thin legs press into his sides, the tops of his thighs. It’s euphoric in a way that stings like sunburnt skin in hot water.
George’s hips shift against his body, and the urge to touch them grows irresistible.
He likes it.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Dream,” George says, his voice trailing into a soft, melodic hum. “I didn’t forget what you said last night, you know?”
There’s too much of everything for last night to be discernible, but Dream still feels all the air evaporate from his lungs. He allows himself a moment before responding; one-mississippi, two-mississippi, three-mississippi, four. At five, he opens his mouth.
“What part do you mean?”
George giggles, and Dream feels like he knows something he’s not saying. He ruffles the brunet’s hair and prays that it won’t be his downfall. “George—”
“All of it,” he murmurs. His hands won’t stay still, and each curious inching of his fingers across Dream’s shoulders draws closer and closer to territory they shouldn’t be in.
It’s nerve-racking for absolutely no reason at all, and he finds that for a second he can’t look at George. Half thought-out nicknames and hands under shirts — he really has been such an idiot, hasn’t he?
Do you want me to kiss you?
Oh, god, he definitely has.
“Why would you have to do that,” George mimics Dream’s sentence from last night sleepily, his eyes bright brown and curious and a tiny bit amused, “baby?”
“Okay, shut up—” His heart spikes. There are times where you shouldn’t take things too far. “Shut up, I don’t know why I said that either. Idiot.”
“‘S alright,” he props himself further up against Dream’s chest, “kind of cute, maybe.”
“Why are you—” Dream aches with beautiful, affectionate fullness. “You can’t call me cute, dumbass. Not after all this. That’s not very—” Platonic of you. You’re not very good at making me fall out of love.
George’s tongue traces over his lip. “And you— you can’t call me baby.”
He breathes out something akin to a laugh, and lets his hands move themselves to George’s waist, lets them circle into his hipbones where an inch or so of skin sits in plain view under the scrunched fabric of his t-shirt. He really doesn’t want to be like this, ruin everything, sit in the wreckage knowing he could’ve stopped it.
But it feels good to touch him. Dream keeps on.
“And you,” he teases, “can’t tell me you think I’m about to kiss you. Baby.”
George falters, and Dream regrets everything all at once for one heartbreaking second. Life is dangerous when you dangle between rejection and acceptance. Life is terrifying when you don’t know which will come first.
He leans in before Dream can fall.
“You,” George murmurs into the gap connecting their lips, the gap separating them. They’re too close now to act as if they aren’t. “Said that I’m killing you.”
This is way too much. “Maybe—” Way too much to feed into. “Maybe you are.” Way too much to say into the inch dividing us.
“I am?”
His voice is a whisper. Desire laps at the innermost corners of Dream’s desperate mind, and he watches as platonic fades into something he doesn’t know what to call.
All he can say is, “It’s okay.”
George thumbs at his shoulders, at creases in his skin. His hands are flowers, water, clouds that split the sky, blistering flames in a hungry fire. “Dream,” he exhales, and it hurts, so fucking badly.
This should’ve ended by now, and that hurts more.
He doesn’t even realise that he’s trembling. George’s thighs are warm on his lap, and his face is close enough to yearn for it, and it’s the worst, most beautiful thing he thinks he’s ever seen or felt.
“I think,” Dream continues, and he doesn’t know if he screams it or says it so quietly that it’s inaudible. “I think I have to have you.”
He could kiss George right now. Suddenly, Dream understands what he meant.
“What do you mean, have me?”
“I don’t know,” he confesses, “I just want you.”
The fire crackles on. Dream’s mouth tastes metallic.
George’s next words burn.
“Have me,” he whispers.
Before Dream can take him, he pulls him in by the collar and gives himself up, and suddenly nothing matters at all, if it ever did in the first place.
Their lips press firmly together, and Dream is so fucking screwed.
George kisses like heaven, messy and burning blue, gentle and commanding with each slight part of his lips. Dream swallows him whole, his shoulders pressing tight at George’s warm skin as he wraps his arms around his chest and kisses like it’s his first and last. He pulls at soft lips with the edges of his teeth, shivering and golden and beautiful in the peach-coloured morning, his fingers pressing longingly into every bit of George that he can touch.
He doesn’t falter. He can’t make himself stop.
Dream’s chest and cheeks and neck are on fire as he kisses George again and again, and George tips his head back and presses himself further towards Dream between tiny, gasped-out breaths. His tongue leaps at the entrance to Dream’s mouth, and the room caves in on the both of them. George tastes like the essence of life, bleeding into the hands that cup his cheeks and trail over his body, and when a whine escapes his red-bruised lips and he kisses Dream harder, Dream thinks he might have just died and gone to heaven already.
That’s all you, George. Everything about you is fucking beautiful.
When Dream pulls away, he’s panting for breath. His eyes flutter open and closed like nervous butterflies, the same kind that dance and shudder in his stomach, glittery and fairy-like but not nearly as much as George is.
George is wide-eyed as he looks up at him.
They look at each other, and spare barely a second before their mouths are locked together.
And this time Dream kisses him like he means it, confesses every honeyed, drunken word without speaking a single one as he breathes out every last piece of himself into the gap between George’s lips. He wants this to keep going if it means he dies from it, if he forces the air from his chest and lungs and replaces it with the boy he’s spent years running from. He feels guilty for pushing it away, guilty for yanking the feeling towards him all of a sudden, but George is here.
George is right here. In his arms, against his lips. Dream is kissing him.
Dream is beautifully, tenderly in love with him.
Their hands slide down and lock together, mouths tangled, exploring each other and mapping out lips and bodies and minds like hopeless constellations. They’re silver and gold, sun and moon, everything Dream falls asleep thinking about and everything he wakes up to. He thinks, as he kisses George weakly and prays that he won’t pass out from the adrenaline rush, that he could tie this back to every single event in his life and everything he’s yet to experience.
His heart flickers. He feels amber and turquoise and gold.
George is perfect.
“Dr-Dream,” he shudders as they slip apart and back together, “Fuck, fuck.”
“You’re perfect,” he whispers, sliding his tongue over George’s bottom lip, watching as his eyes squeeze shut and his cheeks turn merciful pink. “Have I told you?”
George’s hands force themselves up to pry at his cheeks. “Please,” his voice trembles, “tell me again.”
“You’re so fucking—” Their noses brush together. Dream tastes honey. “Perfect, g-god.”
Coral-coloured lips press at his cheeks, at the sides of his mouth, all over his red-painted face. It’s easy to memorize the way they look after years of watching them speak through a camera, and Dream’s blissful mind draws pictures of ivory teeth and rose-coloured flesh and all he can come up with is angel.
“George,” he whispers. His voice sounds rough. He doesn’t know what to say.
George places a hundred desperate kisses to each one of his freckles, and with eyes that trace his face and speak of unheard longing, he looks into Dream’s own. They look at each other like it’s the first time they ever have, and Dream knows George is seeing him in a way nobody else ever will.
“Dream,” he whispers, “h-hey, hi.”
“You’re okay?” Dream manages to say, though he doesn’t know how he gets the words out.
His chest heaves. Breathless. “I’m okay,” he promises. His cheeks bloom with cherry-blossom warmth, and Dream can’t look away.
He pulls George deep, deep into an embrace, and locks his arms around him in a way that feels endless. Brown locks slip down past his face and beneath his chin. George presses his lips to his collarbone with hitched breath and kisses one more soft promise into his skin.
“George,” he says again, and he has to hope that once he starts speaking it doesn’t all spill out of him. “I’m in love with you.”
He knows what the press of dark hair into his chest means, what the shaky breath that tears from George’s lungs is trying to tell him.
“Believe me,” he whispers.
“I do,” George muffles. “I love you.”
His heart soars. Skybound and hopeless and in love, Dream wants to kiss him over and over and over.
Instead, he just places his palms over George’s back, letting him breathe once more. Let it be. Just for a moment. Let him feel.
This is all he needs.
He can’t think of a single person he’s loved quite like this, so he doesn’t try.
“Baby,” he says, “do you want to go back to sleep?”
“Just... lie with me, something,” comes the response, sleepy and comfortable and loving, “for a little bit.”
“Alright,” Dream says fondly. He thinks he might start crying if he’s not careful. “I’ll lie with you for as long as you want, George.”
George lifts his head, hair messy and lips bitten red, and his eyes shine in a way that makes Dream want to give him the galaxies. He’s smiling, the soft curve of his mouth a gift to Dream and only Dream.
“Always?” he asks softly, a plea for a promise, an inhale he draws in and holds until he gets the answer.
Dream exhales. It feels like living, and he places a kiss to George’s forehead as he responds.
He may not have everything, but he’s holding the world in his hands.
“Always,” he whispers, “and forever.”