Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“D’you ever wonder where the skeletons come from?” George asks one night, looking up from their campfire. The shadows swallow the edges of his face.

Dream frowns, shaking his head. He’s never really thought about anything relating to a ‘before they got here.’ It’s too difficult to conceptualize. And thinking about it opens up the door to too many other questions that he doesn’t know how to answer. Like how they got here. Or how he knows about what they’re meant to do.

He knows what he has to do. His quest is instinctual. It was written into his blood. That’s not to say he knew everything when he arrived; the details about the quest itself were muddled. They’d spent countless hours with the librarian and the cleric, pouring over ancient texts in languages he didn’t understand. Sometimes, if he really concentrated, he could remember scattered information. A name of a particular beast, for example, or a vision of an enormous structure rising from an ocean of lava. But most of what he knows was taught to him by villagers and through life experience.

The facts he were certain of were as follows: he knew one day he didn’t exist. And the next day, somehow, he did, fully formed. He knew his name. He knew George arrived the moment he did. And he knew he needed to kill a dragon.

“I just wonder… where we came from. Who came before us, I mean. It’s obvious that the villagers… they’re not quite like us.” Dream hums his agreement, his eyes flicking up to watch the moon rise in the sky above them. They’d hastily constructed a dirt shack as night fell and had forgotten a roof, but it was better this way. “Maybe the skeletons… I dunno, it’s silly.”

George slumps backwards, letting his head tilt upwards. The moonlight is strong enough to illuminate his whole face in a pale glow. The lines of his frown and underneath his eyes are exaggerated by the contrast. He looks to be several steps past tired, teetering on the edge of total exhaustion. His hands are clasped over his knees, which are tucked under his chin. A child dealing with nightmares on his own.

The fire separates them by what feels like miles. They sit opposite of each other, Dream watching George, George watching… nothing. His thoughts, maybe. The silence is broken only by the crackling and popping of the fire. Occasionally, Dream will poke at it with a stick, encouraging the coals to glow brighter, to give the comfort that he cannot.

“Are you… do you feel guilty? About killing them?” Dream asks. George’s head swivels towards him. He twists his mouth up and looks to the side.

“No. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I know they’re not…” He clears his throat, clearly weighing his words carefully, piecing together what he actually wants to say. “Even if they were, you know, our dead ancestors--” and George laughs, wrestling with how absurd that sentence feels now that it’s occupying the air between them “--they’re not quite… them. They’re something else. Messed up, somehow. It doesn’t take the awfulness out of it, of course, but it’s different from killing someone… innocent, I guess.”

“All about survival,” Dream mutters, a flash of anger coming on so strongly and then evaporating as soon as he puts words to it. He hates it. Hates this world. Hates how confusing it is, how it doesn’t seem to follow any rules. Hates how they’re burdened with some enormous task. Hates being special.

That’s not entirely true. Of course he wants to be a hero. He wants to save the world, slay a dragon, be heralded for years to come, have his name in some ancient scrolls that some kid’ll have to read thousands of years in the future. But that want doesn’t soften the bitterness. Or how unfair it is, to be barely an adult with so much pressure on him. To have it in his destiny. To have everything written out for him, forced to mindlessly obey something beyond his comprehension.

And he doesn't hate everything. He thanks whatever’s out there that he could have George by his side. If Dream were alone, he would have failed by now. George, ever an unwavering, loyal companion, willing to follow Dream anywhere. He’s a hero, too. Braver than him, if Dream’s being honest with himself, which, these days, is rarely.

The darkness is starting to melt. The sky is getting lighter and lighter. George moves to sit up, grabbing his rucksack and a bucket of water and pouring it over the coals. Steam and smoke rise into the air. Dream inhales deeply, letting the rich, burnt scent coat his nose and throat. He used to think that there were others. Other humans like him and George. When they first arrived, he sent smoke signals for days. Nobody came. When Dream gave up, that’s when they decided to leave and try a new approach. That’s when, in an incredible stroke of luck, they’d happened upon the village.

George climbs the wall, searching for monsters, before giving Dream a thumbs up. Dream grabs his shovel and takes a chunk out of the dirt, throwing it carelessly behind him until there’s enough space for them to climb out. He wriggles through it and jumps to his feet, running through his mental checklist for the nth time as he waits for George.

They need to find diamonds. The cleric had told him that before they’d embarked on their journey. They needed to be well-protected when they were in other dimensions. There were different monsters there, more horrifying than the ones they’d been evading all this time. Ones made of fire that could burn you to a crisp from hundreds of feet away, ones that were overgrown pig-like creatures with tusks that could skewer you, skeletons with swords instead of bows that would make your limbs disintegrate before your eyes. An image of George decaying in his arms flashes before his eyes. He rubs at them, hard, wonders if removing them would help, knowing that removing them would do nothing but inconvenience them. Do worse things than inconvenience them. This fact doesn’t stop Dream from rubbing them a bit too harshly with his knuckles.

Before them is empty grasslands. It’s quiet, save for the whooshing of the wind through the grass, the occasional oink of a pig or moo of a cow. George charges up ahead, chasing down some of the wild animals, slashing at them with his sword. Dream keeps one eye on his friend, the other on searching for openings in the ground that may lead to caves. He should be cross-eyed at this point, considering how much time he spends trying to focus on two things at once. It’s not a bad thing to care for his friend’s well-being. Dream’s not quite sure why he’s defending his own actions. There’s no one to judge him, save himself.

They walk for about an hour without spotting anything promising. Dream is starting to consider alternate plans when George shouts, “Dream! Up here!” Dream breaks out in a run. George is standing on the edge of a ravine, pointing down. “I reckon that’s our best way underground, don’t you think?” The ravine yawns before them, stretching down to nearly bedrock. In the center, right below their feet, is about a pond’s worth of water.

Dream nods, his face splitting into a grin. “See you down there!” he calls as he jumps off the side, angling his body so he would enter the pool of water. He hits the water with a massive splash, sending waves slapping against the smooth stone walls. For a moment, he’s submerged completely. He forces his eyes open. There’s a storm of bubbles moving towards the surface. He kicks up, fighting against his armor that feels far heavier than it did before he fell, until first his fingertips break the surface, and then his head, and he gasps for breath, water exploding upwards. “All good!” he yells. George yells something unintelligible back.

He swims to the edge and stands up, water rushing out of his armor, moving towards a sunny patch. There’s no chance that he’ll dry off sufficiently, but it doesn’t matter. He much prefers doing something a little stupid and ending up dripping wet to doing things the safe way, the slow way, the boring way.

George follows not long after. He’s under the water for too long and Dream is about to dive in after him when he surfaces, spitting water everywhere, laughing in the way he does when he gets a little too close to real danger. After he pulls himself out of the water, he fixes Dream with a pretend-stern glare.

“I’ll never get used to you doing that, honestly,” George mutters darkly, water dripping down his temple from his soaked hair. “Warn me a little before you jump off a cliff.” Dream finds himself staring, his mouth dry. “Hello? Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“Right.” Dream shakes himself, blinking hard. “Sorry, almost worried about you for a second.”

George rolls his eyes and chuckles. “Good one." He gives Dream a real serious look this time, his voice becoming more delicate. "You do too much of that, you know.”

Dream ignores him. He hates when George is right. “You try and find some iron, I’ll hack out a little safe place for us.”

“Alright.” George starts walking to the left, scanning the wall for nuggets of iron. Dream raises his pickaxe and chips away at the stone, ears pricked for any signs of danger, always careful to know where George is at all times. Total separation equals certain death. And as much as George gets on his nerves, Dream still loves him.

Two hours later, he’s constructed something that will keep them moderately safe. It’s a bit ugly, but functional. There’s a poorly-constructed wooden door as an entrance to a cobblestone house sticking out of the wall. Torches shine light on the handful of furnaces and chests. He’s switching between melting down sand to make glass and constructing ladders for when they later want to climb out of here when George opens the door.

Dream gets to his feet immediately. “How did it go? D’you need help?”

“Good! I didn’t see any monsters, which was great. I’ve got enough for two sets of tools for us and almost enough for a complete set of armor. We’ll have to see what it melts down to.” He’s already kneeling before the furnaces, shoving in as many nuggets as will fit. “Some more coal, too. I think we’ll have to go into the cave systems to find diamonds, though.”

“Nice.” Dream sits back down, his heartbeat returning to almost-normal. It's a beat too fast whenever he's next to George. “We can do that tonight. Or tomorrow. We should probably get some sleep.” George nods his agreement, still fiddling with the furnaces. He leans back a moment later, a grin overtaking his face.

“Glass? Dude, what do you need glass for?” George asks, a chuckle in his voice. Dream sighs, but his stupid, treacherous face betrays him by smiling back at his friend.

“Thought it would be a nice touch. Apparently it was stupid, forgive me.” George is hiccuping with laughter now, and Dream has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from joining in.

“You’re so weird.”

“You’re cute,” Dream says, because it’s true.

George’s eyes fly open. He opens and closes his mouth much like a fish. There’s a silence bordering on awkward for about thirty seconds, and then George swallows audibly and asks, “Okay, so what’s our plan again?”

Dream ticks things off with his fingers as he speaks, trying to push down his disappointment. George has never been good at expressing affection, anyway. It doesn't mean anything. The more stubborn parts of his brain insists that it does. He drowns them out with the sound of his own voice. “Get armor and tools for both of us, find diamonds, figure out how we’re supposed to cross into another dimension -- I have the books in my rucksack, maybe we can go over them before going to sleep -- get ‘powder,’ I don’t really know what that means, come back, and then use the ‘powder’ combined with ‘eyes’ to find… the entrance to the other-other dimension.” It sounds so far-fetched and insane as he speaks, but George is nodding eagerly as though any of that makes sense. Dream lets out a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping forward.

“I have a book we can take notes in. To make sense of everything, I mean.”

“You’re sweet.” It makes sense to say what he’s thinking, right? He returns to the topic at hand before he can worry about what George is thinking. “This feels so hopeless sometimes. I mean, how are we supposed to know what to do? The books are written with letters I can’t even read. It’s so stupid to try.” Dream closes his eyes and clenches his hands into fists. They’re asking him so much, too much, and he doesn’t even know who they are, and he wants to do it, he really does, but he doesn’t see how any of this would work. He closes his eyes and sees the purple glow of endermen’s eyes. What does that have to do with anything? Even his visions are useless.

He feels a gentle hand on his shoulder and hesitantly opens an eye. George is there, holding one of the books that shimmers with otherworldly magic in an unnatural way, his face open, eyebrows creased together like he asked a question that Dream didn’t quite catch. “Why don’t you rest for a bit while I read?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Dream mumbles, trying to sit up. George’s hand is firm as he pushes him back down.

“I’m serious. I got this. You should sleep; you haven’t in awhile, and you know what happens if you don’t.” Dream shudders as he remembers the way those awful demons flew down from the sky, their claws ripping at his back, blood splattering against his face as George screamed. Phantoms, his brain supplies. “You’re such an idiot, Dream. Go to bed.”

Dream nods. George passes him a blanket from their supplies. “I probably won’t even sleep. Too riled up.”

“Sure.” George is already flicking through the text. Dream closes his eyes and lies down on his side.

When he opens his eyes again, George is on his stomach, head propped up with his hands, the same book before him. His nose is scrunched up with concentration as he taps at a certain word, mouthing something Dream can’t quite make out. “George?”

His friend looks up. “Oh, you’re finally awake. Nice. I think I got somewhere with this. There’s these… drawings? That keep showing up? Around the word powder, I mean. It looks like… some sort of beast, almost smoke with eyes. And weird little sticks attached to their bodies. I think, whatever that is, that’s related to the powder. Maybe that’s where we get the powder from.”

Dream rolls over to lie beside George and glances at the page. The symbols that mean ‘powder’ are circled with red ink -- that was one of the few words the cleric was able to recognize immediately -- and there are diagrams, smaller than his thumbprint, in the margins. Little menacing clouds with eyes.

“You’re a genius,” Dream breathes out, and George perks up immediately, his smile radiant. “I love you.” The three words roll off of his tongue effortlessly. He feels them constantly, says them constantly. Why shouldn’t he?

“I’m a genius? Really?”

“Yes, really, you idiot.” George snickers at the contradiction, but Dream is too captivated by the revelation to correct himself or start a teasing war. Now they just need to find this monster, this specific one, and then they’ll have another piece to the puzzle. “You’re brilliant.”

“I’m getting whiplash from how you’re going back and forth about my intelligence,” George says dryly, but he’s preening as he speaks. “I’m gonna go take a nap real quick and then we can go exploring.”

“‘Kay,” Dream says, eyes fixated on the pages as he flips through the book, looking for more diagrams that he may have missed.

It’s late afternoon when they start to go underground. Dream had lost interest in the book after a while, frustrated by the lack of new discoveries, and he went out and found more iron to make enough armor for both of them to be completely protected. Dream leans against the doorway as George messes with the straps on his shield.

“It’s heavy,” he complains, lifting his right arm up and down with ease. Dream rolls his eyes.

“Drama queen. Let’s go.” He brandishes his sword in one hand and a torch in another as he drops down a ledge into the darkness, George hot on his heels.

The cave winds slowly deeper and deeper underground. They pass by some exposed iron but decide to come back for it later on the way home. It’s eerily silent. No wind is down here to create haunting echoes, no monsters stand guard in the dark passageways. It’s… odd, to say the least. Almost like the universe is looking out for them. Asking for forgiveness after forcing this task upon them. Dream considers apologizing but thinks better of it. This world doesn’t care about them.

There’s a bubbling and then a crack, and Dream takes a step back, whipping out his sword in a fluid motion, his other arm searching for George. George is beside him, his shield lowered, an almost-wry smile on his face. “I think that’s lava, Dream.”

“Oh.” He feels a bit foolish for reacting so strongly and lowers his sword. “Where’s it coming from?”

George listens for a moment longer before pointing his chin forward. “This way, I think. Maybe to the left a bit.”

They continue to walk side-by-side, ears trained on the noise. There’s a sharp drop in incline, and Dream hops down first to help George carefully navigate it before patching it up with dirt and cobble so they have a quick escape route.

There’s bright light before them, patches of red and orange dancing on the ceiling above. Dream darts forward to find a sea of lava stretching on for a good distance. The heat is intense, hitting him in waves until he wants to discard his armor. He’s already sweating.

George has a bucket of water out. “We could bridge across with this?” He dumps it and they watch as the lava hardens instantly, turning from red to dark purple. Some lava remains around the edges, but they can at least cross to the center this way.

“Be careful.” Redundant, but he needs to say it. He needs George to be safe. Dream takes a few wary steps forward, expecting the ground to burn through his boots, but it seems to be safe. He narrows his eyes, searching for the tell-tale light blue.

“I think I see some!” George calls out, his eyes on the ceiling. Dream looks up; he’s right. There’s two shimmering from the ceiling. George pulls out a few rocks to stand on to get closer and delicately carves out space until they fall onto the floor. There’s four in total.

“Swords? Or a pickaxe, d’you think?” George asks, his eyes wide as he stares at the precious objects. Dream is too busy staring at him, the way the diamonds look reflected in his friend’s dark brown eyes. He tears his gaze away to consider the obsidian they’ve created. And then gets down low, trailing his fingers across the surface, his mind whirring, pieces clicking into their places. It’s warm on his fingertips. “Dream?”

“Make a pickaxe, would you? I think…” He closes his eyes to concentrate and remembers a vision he used to have all the time in the beginning of his quest. An enormous purple doorway. The portal to the first dimension, born of solid fire. This must be it. He traces patterns on the obsidian until George wordlessly passes him the pick. Dream gets to his feet, holds the pickaxe above his head, and strikes down with all the force he can muster.

It takes longer than he’d like to admit, but he eventually gathers enough to make a portal. He doesn’t know where the dimensions come from. The number just feels right. George wandered off not too long ago, but he shouldn’t be too far away. He places the last of the obsidian and dusts off his hands. It’s… a bit terrifying, if he’s being honest. Especially if he’s wrong and he wasted all of that effort for nothing.

“George!” he yells out, cupping his mouth with a hand. “I think I’ve got it!” He hears George shout something in response and then the sound of footsteps slapping against stone. George comes around the corner, sweaty and out of breath, his helmet askew. He skids to a halt at the sight of the unfinished portal, his eyes going round.

“Woah.” He puts a hand against the portal, his mouth forming a perfect ‘o.’ He turns and looks at Dream. His face is covered in a sheen of sweat illuminated by the lava. “You’re so smart.” His voice is careful with the compliment, like it’ll break if he doesn’t say it right.

Dream doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t. Instead, he strikes flint against iron, trying to form sparks for the base of a fire. The first few tries yield nothing. Dream is thinking about sacrificing some of his pride by asking George to do it when a shower of sparks fly up and ignite when they land on the obsidian.

Except they don’t ignite. There’s no flames. At least, they’re not traditional flames, the orange and red kind of his world. They’re purple. They spread and fill in the portal, becoming less flame-like and more shimmery. Less like fire and more like… a doorway. Purple sparks fizzle in the air. There is a beckoning sound, a promising sound, asking them to enter. Warning them not to.

His mouth drops open. George’s jaw is slack, too. There’s a moment where both of them process their awe. Then George turns to face him, his face ecstatic. “It’s real,” he says, and that’s obviously redundant and Dream doesn’t care. They’re doing something. They’re on the right track. He pulls George into a hug and buries his face in his friend’s shoulder, smiling against the cool metal of his chestplate. George’s arms loop around his back, and he’s laughing, and this feels so natural, and Dream wants to spend forever in this moment.

But he can’t. They haven’t won yet. And it’s selfish, so selfish, he’s so selfish and he separates himself from George.

“Should we step through?” Dream asks, suddenly desperate to move on. George’s face falls. He chews at his lip and Dream doesn’t stare, he doesn’t, he’s just making sure his friend’s okay, and why does he feel like his thoughts are slipping away from him, like his brain isn’t under his control anymore?

“Are you sure? What if… what if we can’t get back? We should send something through as a trial, see if we can pull it back, you know?” George has already pulled out some spider’s string and is tying it in a knot around a stone sword. Dream watches as he throws it through the portal, convinced that it’ll go through the shimmery door and end up smacking against the wall. There’s no other dimensions. There is nothing else. He’s a delusion-riddled fool.

It doesn’t, there are, there is, and he isn’t. The sword is visible one moment and gone the next. George tugs once, twice, three times, and then the sword re-emerges. He grabs it and then drops it immediately with a yelp. It clatters to the ground. There’s an awful scent in the air. Dream frowns at him. “Hot,” George says, which is an understatement, judging by how his skin is blistering. The burn is in the shape of the hilt. Dream kicks the sword into the lava and drops to his knees besides George, grabbing his hand at the wrist, careful to avoid the injury. He brings it close to his eyes as though studying it will make it disappear.

“Here.” He scoops up some of the leftover water from their bucket and rinses George’s hands with it. His friend flinches, sucking in his lower lip and screwing up his eyes. “Sorry. We don’t have ice or anything, that’s the thing that’ll make it better. Maybe a bandage would help? Or some food?”

George waves away his concern, wincing as he does so. Dream hides a smile, not wanting to seem insensitive. “S’alright, not too bad. I can handle it.” After a pause, he adds, “Dream, it’s okay. You can let go now.”

Dream recoils as though he was the one who was burned, flushing immediately. He can blame his redness on their proximity to the lava if George notices. Not… not like he needs to hide anything from George, anyway. Does he? Doesn’t he? “Sorry. Sorry, I was just…” Worried? Overreacting? Overwhelmed? Right now, everything feels too much, too much, the feelings he has in his chest for this other man that he’s known for years, they’re too much. He’s had them for years and they still drag him under, still make him feel like he doesn’t know how to breathe.

“Aw, you actually care about me, how sweet.” George’s voice is dripping with something fake. He turns away, but not before offering Dream a quick grin over his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s keep looking for the good stuff.”

Dream raises his eyebrows. “The good stuff?” The tension is bleeding out of his shoulders. George is okay. They’re okay. Everything’s okay. There’s meaning to what they’re doing. He nearly feels dizzy with relief. He can handle internal confusion. External confusion is a different matter.

He’s practically skipping as they explore. There have been very few monsters thus far. They get a little further underground and find that a pair of skeletons and a pair of zombies are waiting for them. George has his bow in his hands, an arrow at the ready, and takes out one of the zombies before ducking behind Dream. Dream runs forward and slices upwards in an arc, splitting a skeleton in two before it can reach for an arrow. The other is faster and shoots an arrow into his calf. He feels the blood trickle down his leg, but no pain. George is deflecting the other zombie away, dodging to avoid its rotting teeth. Dream’s so focused on his partner that he doesn’t notice the skeleton nocking another arrow and aiming it right for his throat.

“Dream!” George shouts, and they’re looking at each other, how stupid, there are bigger things to worry about, more time-sensitive things to worry about, and the arrow whizzes as Dream throws his shield up and closes his eyes. There’s a pock as the arrow lodges itself in the wood. He scrambles forward and knocks the bow out of the skeleton’s hands with his shield -- hands, do they even have hands? Dream hasn’t really looked at them too closely before -- before slicing through its torso. It collapses into a pile of bones and dust.

He whirls around, ready to defend George, only to find the other zombie completely butchered, separated into four parts. There’s blood all over his friend’s arms, but it’s dark brown, not bright red, not human. George wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and the muddy color streaks down his temples.

George tuts. “Dream, you’ve got an arrow sticking out of you. You idiot.” Idiot never sounds how it means in George’s mouth. It’s too soft, too low, too round. It’s lighter than an insult. If Dream were stupid and wishful, he’d call it a term of endearment.

He sets his jaw. He refuses to be stupid.

Chapter Text

Dream is acting weird.

The closer they get to their goal, the more twitchy he gets. Twitchy isn't the right word, but it's the best George can come up with. They continued to search for diamonds last night after their run-in with the monsters and they’d found five more, as well as some gold. George had celebrated after every discovery, but Dream had hardly blinked. His gaze was somehow both sharp and unfocused at the same time. He jumped at noises that normally wouldn’t affect him in the slightest. He kept drawing George close whenever he drifted more than five feet away.

It should be annoying, how Dream didn’t (and still doesn’t) seem to trust him with taking care of himself, but it isn’t. Well, it is a little. The actual annoying part is that George finds it cute.

Dream makes two diamond swords from their riches. George marvels at how the light reflects off of the blue blade. “I don’t even want to use this. It feels too fancy.”

“Only you would say something like that, George.”

They’ve boxed themselves in this little lava pit for the night. It’s hot, the disgusting kind of hot that makes his skin feel like it’s melting. He’s sweating in places where sweat should not exist. It is, to say the least, uncomfortable. To say the most, it’s unbearable.

“It’s hot as balls in here.”

“You won’t notice the heat when you’re asleep,” Dream mutters, turning over. He had a blanket draped over his shoulders. What the actual fuck. Dream can’t possibly be human.

“Seriously, Dream, I feel like I need to take off more clothes, but I don’t have any more clothes to take off.” Except for his shirt. And shorts, but the shorts would stay on, thank you very much. He glances over at Dream. He’s still wearing all of his clothes. And the stupid blanket. Inhuman.

Dream turns back over and opens an eye. Then, in a flat tone, he says, “You can take your shirt off. I don’t care.”

George’s heart kicks up into his throat and hides in the base of his mouth. He has to push the words around it. “You don’t?” His voice cracks embarrassingly in the middle of that sentence.

Dream’s notoriously shy. He hates being shirtless and makes a point of looking away when George gets dressed or undressed. When they’d first met, he’d been even more extreme about how body-conscious he was; he had a smiley-face mask that he wore for almost a year until a pillager ripped it off of his face in the middle of the battle. It was a bit pointless to put the mask back on after that.

That was the moment George realized that his little, tiny, itsy-bitsy thing for Dream was actually a full-blown, out-of-control, life-changing… thing. Crush? Infatuation? Something that escaped words, whatever it was. He’d been stomping on it and trying to change its shape ever since. It's even more stubborn than Dream. And that's saying a lot.

Yeah, Dream is unfortunately hot. To make matters worse, George had already fallen for his personality, so it’s not like he could pretend that he preferred someone… who didn’t look like Dream. It was hard to picture what other humans must have looked like, seeing as the only people they’d ever met were each other. Dream as a whole was too much for his heart to handle.

Speaking of hot -- “Just do it, I don’t care, whatever gets you to sleep,” Dream mumbles, closing his eyes once more. George swallows, his heart retreating slightly to lodge itself in the center of his windpipe, and he grabs the back of his t-shirt and pulls. It’s sticking to his back. Gross, his sweat must have completely soaked through. He pulls again and it rides up, getting stuck on his spine, and he groans because this is so frustrating, he should’ve been asleep hours ago, and he yanks and it comes off, the damp fabric now dangling in his hand. He thinks he hears a snicker, but when he turns, Dream's head is turned away.

George pinches his shirt at the corner, wrinkling his nose with disgust, and throws it next to what he hopes is his own rucksack. He grabs a blanket and lays it beneath him, trying to get as comfortable as possible.

He lies back down and faces Dream, putting a hand underneath his head and leaving the other dangling in the space between them. This is the only time he lets himself think about what he wants. He thinks about closing the distance and brushing his calloused fingers against Dream’s cheek, speaking in gentle tones about how proud he is. Dream tries to downplay his feelings, keep them under lock and key, but George knows him, he knows every crack in his composure, every wobble to his lip. He knows the pressure is killing him. He knows that Dream is meant to do the impossible. Not even the impossible -- something that no one else can even imagine. He knows that he can help, but ultimately, it falls on his friend. His friend, who enjoys watching parrots dance from jungle trees, who laughs with all of his chest, who’s a person, just a normal person, who sleeps with his mouth hanging open, and that should be unattractive, shouldn’t it?

George has a feeling that no other person, even if they did exist, would come close to Dream. They wouldn’t have his kindness, his recklessness, his dedication to doing the right thing, his smile. Even if he didn’t know Dream, he has a feeling that he’d always be chasing after some imitation of him, always striving, never satisfied. He likes to think that their link goes beyond time and space, beyond dimensions, beyond universes. There is a string holding them together through every portal. The string cannot be broken.

He falls asleep with one hand outstretched. The wanting is eternal. It comes in waves.

When he wakes up again, Dream is already dressed and ready to go. He’s flipping through a book again, his shoulders slumped forward. George blinks lazily, stretching out each limb like they have all the time in the world. At least, he thinks they do; Dream’s never mentioned a time limit before. There’s a little urgency, but nothing imminent. A little urgency can wait for a good stretch.

Dream looks up at him, mouth open as though he’s about to say something, but instead he snaps it shut and averts his gaze. “Somebody’s forgotten something.”

George blinks before remembering that his bare chest is currently on display. He flushes, hoping the redness won’t spread down his neck to his bare chest, because that would be a new level of embarrassment. “I have no idea how you slept with a blanket on. I’m seriously melting,” he says as he pulls on a new shirt.

Dream shrugs. “Sorry, guess I’m cool and you’re not.”

“Shut up,” George groans as he pulls on his shirt, not meaning it at all. “I hate you.” He means that even less. I love you, I love him, I love Dream. It’s bubbling beneath his skin, behind his eyelids, above his teeth, under his tongue, everywhere, but he doesn’t know how to eke it out, doesn’t know if Dream means it the way he does, and he means it totally, completely, overwhelmingly so.

And it would be hard hearing anything less in return. So he says nothing at all.

“Hey, at least you’re hot.” George squeaks. Does Dream--? “And I love you, too.” He swallows a scowl and feels his cheeks heat up even more. Stupid traitor cheeks. Stupid traitor body, loving Dream even when he’s being an irritating piece of shit. “How’s your burn doing?”

Oh. He’d forgotten about it. George holds his right hand in front of his face. It doesn’t look… fantastic, if he’s being honest, but he’s seen worse. The palm of his hand is still bright red. It fades to yellow in the middle, bubbling up slightly. He makes a face. That’s gross. It’s almost skin-color in the center, where the bubble rises the highest. He feels the urge to pop it.

“Don’t,” Dream whispers, reading his thoughts. He reaches a hand forward before curling his fingers back. “Can I--?”

“Yeah,” George says, nodding. Dream carefully entwines his fingers around his wrist and brings George’s hand close to his eyes.

“It’ll take time, but I think it’ll heal. Maybe you’ll get a sick scar or something.” Dream is smiling, but his green eyes aren’t crinkling at the corners the way they’re supposed to. He drops George’s hand and turns away. His guilt squeezes all the air out of the room. “I’m--”

“Don’t say it, Dream.”

“--sorry. What?” Dream throws up his hands and whirls back around, his mouth set in a snarl. George backs up before he realizes that he’s moving, not used to having this anger directed at him. Or, at least, in his physical direction. He doubts Dream is actually pissed off at him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’ve been roped into this without ever being asked, I’m sorry that I need you to do this, whatever this is. It’s not fair and it’s fucked up and I--” he cuts himself off, and that’s when George notices he’s crying, and something shifts and clicks into place inside his chest. Dream screws up his face and turns away once more.

There is a heavy, heavy silence. There are no words of comfort strong enough, no empathy understanding enough to make Dream feel better. George has witnessed this before. Dream just needs time to recover. And then he’ll get back up. He always does.

“Dream,” George says, voice barely above a whisper. “It’s okay. I promise.”

“Sorry.” Dream chokes out a wet-sounding laugh. He wipes away the tears roughly with the back of his hand. “Didn’t mean to take it out on you. I’m sorry.”

“If I hear you say sorry one more time, I’ll stick my hand into lava.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Dream’s laughing again, and George joins in, relief coming off of him in waves so strong he’s sure his friend can feel them.

“Shall we step through this terrifying portal?” George gestures in the direction of the doorway, which has been making ominous noises towards them since they created it. That definitely contributed to his inability to sleep, now that he thinks about it.

Dream grins. “Give me a second to get my composure back, would you?”

“No,” George says, staying right by his side. Where he belongs.

“You’re so annoying.”

They chat about meaningless things for almost an hour, George trying to keep his friend’s ever-anxious mind at bay. Dream starts to jiggle his leg restlessly about halfway into the conversation. Once George decides that he's calmed down enough, he stands up and throws Dream’s rucksack at him. They suit up again and prepare their weapons.

“Ready?” Dream asks. George nods. He should feel nervous. And he does, a little. But he’s mostly calm. He feels invincible with Dream by his side.

They step through.

One moment, they’re in a musty cave, and the next, George’s feet are sinking into the ground, his head swimming from the onslaught of sudden, oppressive heat.

He’s never seen anything like this before. The ground is squishy, but it’s harder than sand. They’re on an island of the stuff, floating above a lake of lava that stretches on for as far as he can see. Above them are more platforms of the weird red rocks. He spots a waterfall of lava cascading down from the sky. Or maybe it’s the ceiling, since there’s no sun or clouds here, wherever here is.

“Where are we?”

“The Nether.” Dream glances around, his eyes narrowed. George is about to ask how he knows that, but bites his tongue when he gets a proper look at his friend’s face. Dream has the pinched, annoyed expression that he wears when he knows something because of his weird savior-of-the-universe situation. “We need to look for a certain structure.”

“That’s helpful.”

There’s an oink from behind them, and George screams because there is a pig standing on two legs maybe a foot away. Half of its skull and various other bones poke through its body. Its ribcage is entirely exposed, its organs visible, unmoving. The rest of it seems… normal? Alive, at least. Pink and fleshy and piglike. It holds a golden sword and stares at them. Bile rises in the back of George’s throat. It smells putrid.

Dream has his sword in front of the beast’s throat. It doesn’t react. It blinks slowly, its gaze fixed on a point just above their heads, before it wanders off, stepping directly into lava and traversing it as though it were a stream of water.

“Let’s move. We shouldn’t stay here.” Dream walks briskly away from the lava lake. George stares at the remaining pig-zombie creatures, trying to intimidate them with his eyes. He knows he doesn’t look intimidating, given his small stature, but maybe he can manifest it. They ignore him.

They trek across land, staying as far away from lava as they can manage. Which isn’t nearly far enough. Dream hops from platform to platform effortlessly, looking like a proper adventurer. George swears that his eyebrows have been singed off. Dream shrugs when he complains about that and responds, “You’d still look good, even with no eyebrows,” and George clamps his mouth shut, the emotions in his chest swirling and liquefying before traveling to his heart, making his chest feel impossibly warm and gooey and gross.

“Look.” Dream points across the lava lake. George squints his eyes.

“At what?”

“Follow my finger.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder,” Dream says through laughter. “Do you see that weird pillar thing? Sticking out of the lake? It’s hard to see.”

George really squints this time and can make out what looks to be a wall of the same squishy red stone jutting up from the lava. Maybe it’s a bit darker, it’s hard to tell. “It just looks more of… whatever it is we’re standing on. What is this, anyway?”

Dream shrugs. “Does it matter? Anyway, I don’t think it’s made of that. I think it’s something else. I want to check it out.”

“How are we going to get there?”

George wishes he hadn’t asked.

Dream’s idea of transporting them across a very dangerous lake is to construct a narrow path across it. It’s the most idiotic thing he’s ever heard.

“It’s the only way.” Dream has his arms crossed, the only indication that he’s even slightly annoyed.

“It’s a stupid way. There has to be another plan. One that doesn’t involve us potentially getting turned into monster pig food.”

“Can you think of anything else?” Dream raises an eyebrow, his nose scrunched up, and that shouldn’t be cute. It’s patronizing to think he’s cute when he’s angry, but George hasn’t figured out how to turn his brain off yet, so he’s stuck with that mortifying thought.

George bites at his lip. “No,” he admits. “But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He looks so sincere, his hands clasped together like he’s begging George to believe him. It’s impossible to say no to him. George scowls at how easily he’s won over and starts digging up the weird rocks to use as a part of this hare-brained scheme. Dream pumps a fist with excitement at his unspoken agreement.

They make it three quarters of the way across with nothing horrible happening. The lava’s perpetual hissing and popping is driving George a bit mad. He’s dripping with sweat, both from the heat and nerves. One wrong move and… well, his right hand will be the least of his worries.

He hears a high-pitched wailing sound. His heart stutters before righting itself. George glances over at Dream, who is busy throwing down more dirt and rocks for them to walk on. “You good?”

“Never better,” he grunts, focused on the task at hand. George frowns -- he didn’t think that was Dream in the first place, but he wanted to double check -- and looks up.

“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes. He’s staring up at… something that he wishes didn’t exist. A massive albino squid, perhaps? Massive doesn’t even begin to describe its size. It’s at least the size of a house. Something about it makes his lungs constrict. George’s body is screaming at him to run, but there’s nowhere to go, and besides, he would never leave Dream. Especially not at a time like this.

It screams and then spits. An enormous, steaming projectile leaves its mouth. George’s eyes go wide. “Dream, get down!” He holds up his shield and braces himself. The ghost-squid-thing misses, its explosive landing about ten feet in front of them. Their dirt path, their only exit, becomes debris that flies high into the hair before being swallowed by the lava.

George pulls out his bow, his fingers shaking as he lines up an arrow. He aims carefully. Luckily, the ghost is so large that it’s hard to miss. When the arrow pierces its skin, it lets out a sound that is half-scream, half-sob. It spits another fireball, opening its eyes. Its fury can be felt even from the incredible distance between them. George deflects the fireball with his shield and stumbles backwards. It lands in the lava. The explosion sends waves of boiling rock in every direction. Dream throws out an arm and grabs him around the waist, his grip firm, his mouth practically brushing George’s ear and now is a terrible, terrible time for him to be doing that, because George needs all of his wits about him to fight and Dream can take away 99% of them just by looking at him in a certain way. Dream releases him to return to path-making at incredible speeds. Breathing in deeply, George clears his head.

He fires off another arrow, and the ghost screams one last time before dissolving into ash. A white gem falls from the sky, sparkles in the light, and lands in the lava. Gone.

“Please build faster,” George begs, scanning the sky for more horrifying monsters. “I hate it here, I really do.”

It’s not too much longer until they’re staring up at the pillar. Dream was right; it’s not stone, but brick, darker red than what the ground is made out of. Dream starts breaking bits and pieces off. “We can use it to climb up.”

“Wish we had a ladder, that would be faster.”

“Can’t always get what you want.” George doesn’t need any more reminders about that.

Eventually, they reach the entrance. Dream marks off the exit with a torch and some stone. The inside resembles the outside, mostly; all dark red bricks. There are windows without glass, brick fences, and staircases leading to second floors. It’s elaborate, if monochrome. George wonders who designed it. The pig-people, perhaps? When they were alive?

They walk side-by-side, swords out, treading carefully. The architecture feels maze-like, sprawling with rooms that look identical, staircases that lead to nowhere. Dream comes across a chest full of obsidian, diamonds, and horse armor. Bizarre. Could humans have made this? What was it made for?

A harsh sound, almost like metal grating on metal, pulls him out of his thoughts and into a defensive stance. Dream holds a finger over his lips and motions for him to follow his lead. George mouths ‘unnecessary’ at his backside.

They’re staring at a group of about three monsters made of smoke, flame, and golden rods that encircle their bodies. Their yellow eyes are narrowed, menacing. There’s a metal box in the center of the room that appears to be glowing.

One monster floats above their head and summons fireballs. George bats each of them away and slashes at it with his sword. It evades the first strike, but he catches its body on the second. Is there even anything to cut? It makes a disgruntled sound before redoubling its efforts. Dream is handling the other two quite nicely.

George uses his sword to deflect another fireball before stabbing clean through the smoke monster. It howls before disintegrating, leaving behind one of its glowing rods. George grabs it; it’s warm and heavy in his hand. He sticks it in his backpack. Dream runs back to him, holding two more of the same rods.

“I think these are the powder monsters.”

“Let’s go, George.” George follows suit, but stops when a fireball careens over his shoulder and ignites the wall that he was just facing.

There’s three more monsters. Before their very eyes, smoke seeps out of the box. It coalesces into golden flames that solidify to form a fourth. All four are bristling, smoke rolling from their bodies.

“Blaze,” Dream says, his eyes going wide. “That’s what they’re called. I remember now.”

“Cool! Can we focus, please?” George yells, slashing in a wide arc with his sword. The hand holding his shield aches. The smoke is in his lungs. His arm brushes against one of the rods and it burns. His skin sizzles. He cries out and flinches away.

Dream charges forward. He skewers one of the monsters, the muscles in his arms jumping with the effort, and George isn’t paying careful attention to that at all, especially not when his life is in danger, that would be foolish of him. Dream throws the monster’s body against the wall before it can dissolve. He slashes a vertical line down the middle of another, and it wails as it falls apart. George slices through the third’s torso, twirling the point of his sword, and it collapses mid-air. Dream obliterates the fourth one as George gathers up four more rods.

Using the diamond pickaxe, they smash the sinister-looking box into pieces. “I don’t want to see any more of those creatures ever again,” Dream says through gritted teeth, and George can’t agree more. There's a nasty-looking gash on his arm, but other than that, they're both relatively unharmed. “Let’s go home.”

George wants to say something sappy and gross, something along the lines of, I’m already home, but Dream would think that he’s joking around. He could play it off as a joke, laugh about it, pretend his cheeks are pink from the heat.

He wonders, sometimes, if everything Dream says is a joke. Given the frequency of his comments, that must be the case. He says something nice practically every day. But… George fumbles with his own thoughts. He wants the compliments to mean something. Surely not all of them are attempts at humor? There’s the occasional throwaway comment about his appearance, and those are obviously disingenious, but Dream is complimentary about his skills with a bow, about his cooking, about his, well, everything. And how can George take all of that seriously? Dream is the spectacular one. The one who’s meant to do big things. The hero chosen by the universe. George is… average. A randomly selected companion. He could be anyone.

Besides, jokes are meant to be funny.

Chapter Text

The sun is barely visible over the horizon when they climb out of the ravine once and for all, a little more beat up and a lot more knowledgeable than when they entered. They spent about four days on a seemingly endless cycle of walk, eat, sleep, repeat.

On the fifth day, Dream sits straight up in bed, body trembling from a nightmare he could no longer remember. They had taken shelter above the treeline for the night. George is sound asleep, somehow undisturbed by his friend’s wild thrashing and heavy breathing.

His fingers still shaking, he climbs down the tree to walk about, knowing that there’s no way he could fall asleep after… Dream can’t remember anymore. It had felt like his brain was splitting into pieces. Immense pain. Someone shining an enormous light directly in his eyes. Wake up.

Dream glances around to make sure he didn’t get too far away from George. At that very moment, he locks eyes with an enderman. It starts shaking the moment he does so. He sighs. “Can I have one day?” he asks the sky. The sky doesn’t respond. That had never worked in the past, but hey, he’s an optimist. Maybe one day the universe will talk to him. He has some choice words to tell it.

He pulls out his sword and holds it in front of him. Foolishly, he’d forgotten his shield back with the rest of his gear. That’s what he gets for hoping that something will go right, Dream supposes. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The enderman unhinges his jaw. Dream curses and gets into a crouch. Unfortunately, they’re in the middle of a forest; ordinarily, he could hop into some water and scare the enderman away. He’s never really had a reason to fight one before. Too dangerous. Too unpredictable.

There’s a poof and it’s no longer in front of him. He can hear it screaming faintly and he whips around. It’s charging at him from his left, arms outstretched. Dream swipes his sword at its legs and it topples over, gnashing its teeth and continuing to make that awful screeching noise.

“Would you kindly shut up,” Dream grumbles as he slices it in two. It goes silent and still. “Oh, cool, I thought the timing might be off on that joke. Thanks.” Its body sinks into the earth, leaving behind only its two eyes. He plucks one off the ground and wrinkles his nose. It’s squishy and gross and enormous, nearly the size of his fist.

He looks at the eyes. The one in his hand blinks at him, and he hates that and nearly drops it on his foot before his quick reflexes kick in. Eyes should not be able to do that when no longer in their owner’s heads.

And then he has an idea. It’s a little mean, but it’s too funny to pass up. He snickers, tucks the eyes under his arm, and returns to his hideout with George. His friend didn’t stir at all. He gently puts the eyes in his rucksack and lays on his bed, trying to convince his body to go back to sleep while knowing that he’s fighting a losing battle.

About an hour later, George sits up and yawns with his whole body. He says something that could mean ‘Good morning,’ but it’s all vowels and no consonants, so Dream’s not sure.

“Good morning. How’d you sleep?”

“Alright. How about you?”

They talk over breakfast, Dream jiggling his leg under the table the whole while. He’s never been good with the lead up to a prank. Too eager to spoil the surprise. He manages to hold his tongue enough so that George doesn’t get suspicious. Or maybe George can tell that he has something planned and doesn’t care. That’s another possibility.

The perfect moment comes to him when they’re crossing a desert. George had ended up several paces ahead of Dream, as he ran ahead early on thinking that he had seen a village on the horizon. “Can you toss me a water flask?” he asks, his cheeks red from the heat. Hopefully he didn’t get a sunburn.

“Sure.” Dream grabs an eye and throws it with all his might at George. George’s eyes go wide as the eye… doesn’t splatter gross eyeball jelly all over his front. Instead, it shatters, like how glass would if thrown at that speed. Little purple flecks cover George’s torso.

“Dream, what the fu--” Dream feels like he’s stuck deep underwater and the pressure will squeeze out all of his blood, all of his organs, all of his everything, and the pain is too much to bear, and then the next thing he knows, he’s sitting on top of George, who is now flat on the ground. “I’ll say it again. Dream, what the fuck?”

Dream grabs another eye out of his rucksack. “I have no idea. I thought it would be a gross prank or something, I had no idea these things could make you teleport.” This must be the source of the endermen’s ability.

Powder… eyes…

“George, I think I have an idea.”

“Hold that thought and pass me an eye. Also, get off of me, you big lump.”

“George--”

“Come on, you had your fun with it, now it’s my turn.” Dream gets up and reluctantly passes him an eye. George stands up. He grins like a madman and throws it. It flies in a clean arc and lands about fifty feet away.

“Good throw.”

George is turning back to respond. And then he isn’t anymore. He’s exactly where the eye landed, doubled over in pain. “Holy shit, that hurts! But that’s so cool!”

When Dream catches up to him, he fills George in on his hypothesis. “I think these are the eyes that we need to worry about. Endermen’s eyes. If we combine them with the blaze powder, I think we’ll be able to find our way to the dragon.” His brain is buzzing as half-formed thoughts whirl in and out.

“Too bad they literally never show up, even at night,” George points out. Dream lets out a frustrated groan. He’s right, unfortunately. He’s so close to his goal he can practically taste it, and now he has to wait even though every part of his body, even his eyelashes, is begging him to get it over with.

“This is so annoying,” Dream complains, sitting down next to a cactus. He swears when one of the spines brushes against his forearm. George does a terrible job of stifling a laugh.

“Yeah. There’s nothing to do.”

“Well.” Dream has an idea, but it’s a bit silly and a bit too much fun. He shakes his head. It’s hard to switch back and forth from ‘Dream, potential hero of the universe’ and ‘Dream who is a person with every day wants, needs, and desires,’ one of those wants being ‘fun for the sake of having fun.’ He’s allowed to have fun. It’s only human. “I have an idea. And it’s not a chore.”

“You have my undivided attention and support.” George is sitting up like someone’s stuck a stick to his spine. Dream chuckles.

“Eager much?” George splutters and Dream holds up his hands. “Okay, okay… It’s a game. How about you hide in the woods and I try to find you? I give you… what, like two minutes to escape and then I come after you?”

George frowns, thinking hard. “How will you know what direction I go in? What if we get separated? Also, what woods?”

“Well, let’s walk until we find some. And… I’ll watch you leave. So I know where to go. And if we want to stop playing, we can have a word that we can yell out so we know to stop. Like, if you say, ‘Stop,’ I’ll assume you want me to let you win, which I won’t, but if you say…”

“Carrot,” George offers. Dream raises an eyebrow and he shrugs. “First thing I thought of that I wouldn’t be inclined to say normally.”

“Alright, if you say ‘carrot,’ then I know to stop chasing you.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They scale the side of a desert mountain and spot a birch forest in the distance. The moment the ground beneath them turns from sand to grass, George takes off at a full sprint and calls out over his shoulder, “Later, loser! Game starts now!”

Dream laughs. “Cheater!” He starts counting the seconds. 1… 2… 3…

118… 119… 120. He runs in the same direction. He can track his friend’s movements from the way the grass is flattened or the unnatural, abrupt ending of foliage that should continue out farther. Dream approaches a trunk of a tree and jumps up, grabbing onto a branch and swinging himself onto it until he’s at the very top.

He spots a flash of silver straight ahead, moving between the trees with purpose. Dream grins and climbs back down. He jogs as quietly as he can, avoiding branches or piles of dead leaves, keeping his target in mind.

It’s the most fun he’s had in ages. The first time since they left the village that he’s allowed himself to relax a bit. Goof off with George. Feel things properly. Let off steam. It’s only human, after all.

There’s a snapping of a branch from in front of him, a quiet curse. Dream focuses and carefully sneaks around a tree. A glimpse of silver armor. Heavy breathing.

He runs forward, and George screams, high-pitched and giddy and nervous. Dream’s got his sword out as a way to corral George, preventing him from getting too far to the left or the right. They’re panting, running out of breath. Branches slice across his face, but he doesn’t care. The hot blood of competition is roaring in his ears. He wants to win.

Dream is running nearly alongside George. “Get away from me!” George howls, laughing through his sentence. Dream sticks out a foot and hooks it around George’s leg. George goes flying, arms thrown out in front of him, and he sprawls out on the forest floor. Dream grins, knowing he’s won, and holds his sword to George’s throat, moving forward to have one leg on either side of his friend’s torso. The point of the blade is right at his friend’s chin, forcing him to keep his head tilted up.

“Oh, George!” he says, drawing out George’s name, the final ‘e’ teasing. George’s throat is bobbing, sweat dripping down his forehead, coalescing at a spot above his cupid’s bow. Dream finds himself licking his lips.

“That was good. I didn’t see you there until it was too late.” George’s words are light, almost stolen by the wind. Dream swallows, his throat suddenly thick, his body heavy. He lifts a leg and lets George get up, offering a hand.

George’s hand is warm and fits perfectly in his own. How cliché. How stupid. Dream pulls with more force than is necessary, and George pops up, and they’re in an almost-hug, and Dream wraps his arms around him without thinking. He just wants to be human and stupid and unimportant for a little bit. Is that too much to ask?

“What’s all this about?” George asks, but he doesn’t pull away. He’s a bit stiff, but he’s resting his chin on Dream’s shoulder, so he can’t be upset about the hug. Right?

“I’m… a little stressed out, honestly. Needed a hug.”

“Yeah. I get it.” George has to look up so far to make eye contact. If he were to stand on his toes, his face would be so close… “Want to talk about it?”

“I’m… not sure what to say. How to put it.”

“That’s alright. I’ll listen as you figure it out.”

Dream thinks for a long, long time. Trying to put words to everything he’s feeling is a daunting task. But he’s never balked at a challenge before.

“I dream about a farm sometimes,” he says eventually. And George listens like he said he would. He’s so good, so patient, so kind, so everything, and Dream wants to give him the world. “With potatoes and carrots and wheat and radishes and whatever else we want. We…” He stumbles for a moment because George is looking at him like he’s precious when he most certainly is not, he’s only a person. “We tend to the plants when the sunrises and eat soup we made ourselves and raise animals. Cows, pigs, chickens, the works. We have horses and they don’t need armor because they’re safe. We’re safe. We forget how to make swords. We have a house that looks over the ocean.”

George hums appreciatively. Dream watches as his friend closes his eyes. The tension melts off of his face, his cheeks relaxed, his smile small but certain. “That sounds nice. I’d like that.”

“Yeah.” Reality should be crashing down every minute, sucking him back into its cruel undertow, but for now, Dream wants to stay here, in this moment, his fingers not quite brushing George’s. What would he do if he reached out? Would he care? Would he return the gesture? Does it matter? “That’s… what I want. A regular life.”

There’s a moment where Dream can only hear the trees swaying in the wind. Them George asks, “Do you really?” A scrunch forms between his eyebrows as he speaks. Dream looks down, caught off-guard. “I mean. Can you even picture a life where you’re not going on adventures? That doesn’t sound very… you.”

His first instinct is to be offended, but he thinks for a moment, and George is right. “True.” The thrill of adrenaline, of fighting, of challenging himself, of pushing himself up to his limits and then a little beyond that, it’s too good to give up. “But… I don’t know. It would be nice to have had a choice.”

“Right.” George chews on his lower lip, clearly thinking hard. “Maybe after all of this, you can have both.”

Dream nods. George understands. “Yeah. That’s what I’d like. Exactly.”

They spend all night walking around the forest. They find three endermen in a group, each clutching bits of grass and dirt. Dream stares at each of them in turn. They bristle immediately, jaws hanging open, ready to tear him to shreds. Dream beats them to it.

George has two eyes stored in his rucksack the next morning. They play their made-up hunting game again. This time, Dream is the one being hunted down. George tackles him around the middle and sends them both sprawling. They cook more food. They relax, take a nap, read the same books they’ve read a million times, talk about nothing and everything at the same time.

The next night, they find another three eyes. The night after that, they’re unlucky and only find one, bringing their total up to six. “How do we know how many to get?” George asks one night as they scan their surroundings for bright, purple eyes.

Dream shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess whenever it feels right.”

They get five the following night and another two when they venture into a cave to gather more resources. “Okay, I think that’s good, and even if it isn’t enough, we can get more later. Let’s go.”

Dream tinkers with the rods and the eyes until he produces something that glows with a soft, eerie light. He stares at it. It stares back at him. He’s thankful it doesn’t blink. “Okay, what am I supposed to do with this?”

George is lying on his stomach, arms folded underneath his head. He glances up and shrugs. “I don’t know. Chuck it. That worked pretty well last time.”

He does so. The motion feels natural, almost like he’s done this a million times before. It doesn’t fall to the ground like the regular eye. Instead, it spins for a moment before floating into the air to the south. It hangs there, suspended, and then falls from the sky.

“Huh. I guess follow it?”

“Naptime first,” George suggests. “You look like you’re about to pass out. Give yourself a break. Have you eaten?”

Dream shakes his head. George springs to his feet and pulls out some bread and meat. He makes a sandwich and offers it to his friend. Dream smiles. George is too good to him. George is too good for him.

They leave in the afternoon, following the direction of the eye. When the moon starts to rise, Dream throws another one. It points in pretty much the same direction. If he squints, maybe it’s more south-east than south. They set up a little hideout on a cliffside and tell each other goodnight.

Sleeping is no easy task. He tries, but he can’t get comfortable. His brain won’t shut off. He keeps picturing endermen opening their jaws wide enough to chomp his head off, battering him with their too-long limbs. He’s falling off of a cliff into lava. George is coming after him with a sword and stabs right through his chestplate, laughing triumphantly as he does so. Blood pools in Dream’s mouth and trickles out the side. He squeezes his eyes shut. The images don’t go away.

“Dude, come on,” George mumbles. “You’ll wear a hole into the ground with your flopping about.”

“Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep,” Dream says through gritted teeth. His frustration must be tangible because George doesn’t come up with a snarky retort. Instead, he shuffles closer.

“Here.” George wraps his arms around Dream’s torso and draws him flush against his chest. Dream sucks in a surprised breath. “You can’t wriggle around this way. Now shut up and go to sleep. Goodnight.” George’s breath evens out almost immediately. Lucky bastard.

Dream thinks he’ll be too hyper-aware to fall asleep like this. But the pressure against his chest is warm and comforting, and he’s slipping away before he knows it.

When he blinks his eyes open again, it’s to the delicious smells of cooked meat. He sits up and finds George tending to coals, cooking some leftover beef and chicken. Dream relaxes. “Oh, that’s a good idea, thank you.”

“Of course.”

It’s another long day’s journey, most of it spent paddling in homemade boats over the ocean and throwing the weird eyes. One of the eyes breaks, leaving them with twelve. They take a rest stop when they reach a small island with a birch forest; Dream spends the entire ‘break’ pacing. George nearly throttles him when he won’t calm down, but he can’t help it. They’re approaching the most important moment of his life, the moment he’s been waiting for his entire life, and he’s supposed to be chill right now? No way.

He throws another eye once George is ready. It disappears. “What?”

“It’s behind you.” George darts behind him and scoops it off the ground, cradling it gently. “We must have walked too far.”

They backtrack through the desert. George throws the eye again. It doesn’t go up this time; it goes straight down before shattering into pieces. They stare at the shards, momentarily dumbfounded. George takes out his shovel. “I guess let’s go down?”

Dream starts digging. And digging. And digging. He starts doubting George’s idea when he can hear lava, but less than thirty seconds after the thought crosses his mind, his pickaxe takes out a chunk of gray bricks.

“Woah. George, I think we’ve found something.” George jumps over from his ledge to investigate.

“I think you’re right.” They lift the stone brick to expose an empty pocket of space. Dream jumps down first, George close behind.

They’re in a room deep underground. Dream feels like he’s been here before. It’s composed of gray stone bricks. Windows with iron bars point to more stone and dirt instead of an open sky. Stairs lead up to a square-shaped hole. He moves closer to get a better look.

The hole leads to a pool of lava. Its borders are made of this strangely porous, yellow stone. There are intricate green designs on the top. There’s an open hole inset for each of the twelve, save one, which has an enderman’s eye instead. Its golden flecks shine in the light.

Dream knows what he has to do.

“Can I have the eyes, George? All of them?” George digs around in his bag and passes them over, watching eagerly. Dream carefully inserts an eye to each of the decorated stones. They have exactly enough. Each time he does so, there’s a chime, almost like the portal -- he knows that’s what this must be, the portal to the other dimension -- is reassuring him. He’s doing the right thing.

When he places the last one, there’s a boom so loud he can feel it in his teeth. Dream covers his ears and then risks peering over the edge.

It looks like the night sky, but even darker. Smoke rises from the center. If the Nether portal felt like a beckoning, this one feels like it’s pulling him in, like it threw a lead around his center of gravity and wants him, no, needs him to cross over. He needs to enter the portal. Right now.

He’s about to step through when George grabs him by the arm and pulls him back. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t we prepare a bit?”

Dream feels dizzy, black dots forming at the edges of his vision. “What?”

George frowns and waves a hand in front of his face. “Are you feeling okay? You look pale.”

“I’m great. I’m good. Come on, let’s go, we’re wasting time.”

George stares at him. Dream starts to get nervous from how deeply George was studying him. What if he sees something he doesn’t like? The moment he starts to squirm, George narrows his eyes, his grip on Dream’s arm tightening. “No.”

“What?” Dream twists his arm out of George’s grip so he can grab his friend by the shoulders. “Come on! We’re finally here! Let’s do this!”

“How many arrows do you have? Does your sword need to be repaired? What about your shield? Have you eaten enough?” Dream pursues his lips, a shock of embarrassment zipping through him. He shakes his head no, wincing as he does so. “That’s what I thought. Let’s spend the night here getting ready. And then we can go once you’re well-rested.”

Dream groans, but he sets his stuff down and slumps against the wall. He has a very hard time saying no to George, especially when he’s making a lot of sense.

They spend hours preparing for the unknown. His heart races the whole time. He keeps sneaking glances of the portal, knowing that it’s almost time, the moment he’s been waiting for is finally upon him. Nearly.

George makes an actual bed that night and forces Dream into it. “Where will you sleep?” Dream asks. George shrugs.

“I don’t know. I’ll use a blanket or something. It’s worked in the past.”

Dream pats the end of the bed. When George raises an eyebrow, he sticks out his bottom lip. “Please?”

“Why do you want me in your bed so badly?” Okay, fair point, it sounds weird when George puts it like that. His mind scrambles for a good explanation and decides that honesty is always the best policy. Or at least partial honesty.

“I slept really well the last time you were with me,” he admits. The back of his neck is on fire. At least George is no better; his eyes are a little wide, his cheeks dark red. “I thought… if we did it again, maybe I’ll be well-rested.”

There’s a long pause. George finally breaks it by saying, “Fine.” He climbs into bed and holds out his arms, rolling his eyes as he does so. “So needy. What a needy little champion of the universe.”

“Hey, don’t jinx me.” Dream sits down on the edge, trying to position himself so he won’t accidentally stab George in the eye or something ridiculous. His heart is doing flips in his stomach. Sharing a bed like this may be scarier than the dragon. He settles down and backs up until his back is snug against George’s chest.

“Needy, needy champion.” George encircles him with his arms and nuzzles the back of Dream’s neck. If he doesn’t stop complimenting him (albeit in a rather roundabout, insulting way), Dream’s going to do something stupid. Like flip over and kiss him until he can’t breathe. Would that be the worst thing in the world? “Night night.”

“Yeah.” Dream’s voice is embarrassingly raspy. “Goodnight.”

As he closes his eyes, he thinks about the dragon. Killing it as George cheers him on. Presenting him with the spoils. Hugging him and never letting go. They’ll be free. They can be whoever they want to be after he finishes this. Dream hopes George won’t decide to leave.

He opens his eyes. He’s floating in the middle of an ocean. It’s pitch black and silent, even darker than the portal to the dragon. The night sky has no stars. Dream frantically paddles, looking for land, but he’s alone. There’s nothing there. He lies on his back, feeling hopeless, wondering if drowning is worth it, when something tugs on his arm.

George is paddling beside him, his brown hair nearly jet-black from the water and the darkness. His smile is the only source of light. “George?”

“I’m your life raft, silly. Come on, hold onto me.” Dream throws his arms around George’s neck. Somehow, they don’t sink. George leans in close, entangling their legs under the water, and they should be going under, but they’re not. George tucks some of Dream’s hair behind his ear. “Come on, Dream. Do it. I want you to.”

George’s lips are parted, an invitation. Dream leans in; he can practically taste the saltwater on his friend’s lips. George wants him to. George wants him, too.

A wave pulls them under before he can close the infinitesimally small gap. George is thrown away, his hands outstretched, and then he’s gone. The dark waters had swallowed him whole.

Dream tries to scream, but only bubbles come out.

Chapter Text

They had prepared everything the night before. All that’s left is to step through. They climb the steps, their bags packed, ready to go. Dream feels sick from the excitement and nerves that are swirling together in the pit of his stomach.

George offers a hand. His fingers are trembling slightly. Dream pretends that he doesn’t notice. Though how could he not? He notices everything about George. It’s hard not to. He stands out. “Together?”

Dream nods and grabs on. He never wants to let go. How much reassurance can he reasonably exude from holding his friend’s hand? He hopes it’s enough. “On three.”

“One,” George says, his voice remarkably steady. He sounds like a hero.

“Two.”

“Three!” is shouted at the same time. Dream squeezes George’s hand as they step through the portal.

And they are free falling.

*

It’s dark.

For a moment, Dream thinks he’s asleep again, and George is back, he’s drowning again in that terrible, stormy ocean, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He raises his sword; there’s no resistance as it glides through the air. Air. They’re on land. Not the normal type of land, that’s for sure, but it’s a start.

Dream somehow ends up back-to-back with George. They’re standing on yellow, porous stone, identical to what their portal was made out of without the decorations. Where are they? This isn’t like the Nether. It’s cold. Not freezing in the way that the Nether was boiling, but it’s not comfortable, either. And it’s incredibly dark. There are no stars; only an empty void of black above them. He runs about fifteen feet to his left before stopping at an edge that drops off into… more nothingness.

“Dream, when I said I wanted to visit a nice island, this isn’t what I meant!” George yells. Dream laughs, feeling a bit frantic as he does so. Should he be laughing? Does he have time? George runs back to him, still chuckling. He stops, his face falling as he notices what Dream has already seen, already come to terms with.

Their portal has disappeared. Dream waits for the fear to rise in his throat like bile, but it never comes. Instead, he feels scarily calm. Like someone scooped out the emotion before he even got the chance to feel it.

George’s knuckles have gone white from how tightly he grips his sword. “Well,” he says, voice tight. He’s smiling. How is he smiling? “This is it, huh?”

There’s a boom similar to when Dream lit the portal, and then the dragon appears, perched about fifty feet away. She -- his brain supplies the pronoun, it knows, the prophecy singing in his ears -- whips her tail and screams. The soundwaves nearly knock him flat. Purple sparks fly from her mouth, the same ones that surround their Nether portal, the same ones that were released from the endermen eyes, and scatter across the ground. Dream instinctively knows to dodge. His hand is clamped tightly around George’s wrist. Now he’s starting to feel terrified -- not for himself, he knows what he needs to do -- but for George. How will he know what to do? What if… he falters, hating the thought as soon as it forms. What if he’s not strong enough and George is stranded here? He knows that the portal will only return once the dragon is slain. He’s growing tired of knowing these unspoken things.

George.

He’s running beside Dream, matching his pace, his bow under his arm, arrows poking out of his sack. The outline of the burn is still visible on the palm of his outstretched hand. He looks so determined. His jawline is much sharper than it was when they first met. He’s beautiful.

He can handle himself. Sure, Dream is the one who’s meant to kill the dragon. But George isn’t incapable, either. He’s killed thousands of monsters and saved Dream countless times. If it comes down to it, he can finish the job.

Dream doesn’t want it to come to that. He doesn’t want George to have to risk his life. It’s his burden to bear.

He loves him so much it hurts. He doesn’t remember when he started to love George. Perhaps it was from the very first moment he met him. It feels like it’s always been there, fluttering between his ribs, begging to be let out, to hold George, to tell him how important he is to Dream. Occasionally, Dream smuggles it out in teasing words or fleeting actions. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

It’s tired of hiding. And frankly, so is he.

*

If George were the dragon, he’d be scared of Dream. The way he’s running about with real purpose, his strides steady, his sword a natural extension of his arm should strike fear into his enemies’ hearts. He fires arrows as though he can control them with his eyes.

“The crystals,” Dream says, eyeing the tops of the obsidian pillars as if they insulted him personally. They glow and tremble and sway, beams of light connecting them and the dragon. “We need to destroy them.”

George pulls up his bow, squeezes an eye shut, fires. There’s a distant explosion. The dragon screams in pain. Dream turns to look at him, his grin toothy and genuine and beautiful. It makes George’s heart stop for a moment. “Nice one, George!”

If they survive this, George promises himself, he’ll tell Dream about everything. He’ll tell him he loves him. He’ll spill everything, lay his heart bare. He has a feeling that nothing can drive them apart. Not when they’ll have saved the world.

He nocks another arrow, aims, fires.

*

Dream takes out the last crystal. He’s practically shaking from how powerful he feels. He’s full of energy. It feels limitless. At this moment, he’s convinced that the dragon stands no chance against him.

The dragon cries out and takes a sharp dive, aiming for the portal-like area in the center, a pillar of bedrock. That must be where the portal reforms. She rests there for a moment, beating her wings. He approaches from the back, taking care to avoid her tail. George watches from a distance, keeping his head down.

She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Dream is taking out chunks of flesh from the base of her tail. Her blood spills out over the stone, splattering Dream’s face, his armor, his sword. It’s not brown like zombie blood, but not red like human’s, either. It’s black and sticky.

He thinks about the stream with George, pictures himself running in, cleansing himself, ripping off his armor because he doesn’t need it anymore. He attacks with renewed vigor.

She takes off into the sky, her blood flowing freely from her wounds, covering the ground with inky black. Dream wonders if she knows what her destiny is. If she knows that she has to die. For a moment, a hand wraps around his heart and squeezes. What if she’s been told a different story? What if it’s not destiny after all?

George’s scream brings him back to reality.

*

George was staying out of the way as best he could. Killing the dragon is Dream’s responsibility. He would do his best to help, but ultimately, it was his friend’s task to accomplish. Not his burden. His goal.

It is hard to stay out of the way when a dragon is barreling toward him, wings flush against its body, purple eyes locked on him.

He screams and tries to back up, but there’s nowhere to go. The island drops off into an infinite black void behind him. The dragon turns swiftly, avoiding a head-on collision. But it flaps its wings as it turns back towards Dream, and the leathery edge catches him square in the chest and sends him soaring into the air.

Time slows down.

The island looks so small from this height. The pillars are blots on the surface, the island a pale yellow oval. The endermen are little specks. He can’t even see Dream. He doesn’t look for the dragon, he doesn’t care about it, he wants to see Dream.

He’s going to die. He knows it. He has to; there’s no surviving a fall like this. Dying doesn’t sound so bad now that it’s staring him down. The impact will hurt, sure, but only for a fraction of a second. And there’s no reason to be afraid of what comes after. It’s only nothingness, after all. It’s tolerable because it won’t be felt.

His heart twists, thinking about Dream surviving in the world without him, but he takes a deep breath as he reaches the height of his ascent. Dream is capable. He’ll find a new friend. He’ll find someone else to love. The universe will take care of him.

Does it know that the universe is kind? A voice. His brain must be imagining things to comfort him in his final moments. It’s doing a terrible job.

His chest constricts. He made a promise and he wants to keep it. But how? He’s already hurtling back towards the ground. Dream can’t stop gravity. He can’t stop the tides. He can’t outsmart nature.

The ground rushes towards him. George closes his eyes.

*

“GEORGE!” His throat is raw from the scream, but he doesn’t care. He ignores the dragon, ignores the endermen. Focuses on George.

His eyes are closed, his face almost relaxed except for his mouth, which is twisted up in anticipation of the impact. If someone were to stop time at this moment, they’d think he was floating instead of falling to his death.

Dream throws down water, the only thing that could potentially cushion George’s fall. It forms a mediocre puddle on the stone. Is it enough? It has to be. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it isn’t. Dream closes his eyes and begs. He can’t bear to watch the inevitable. Please. Please. Someone, anyone, if you’re really out there, please. I love him. Take pity. I can’t lose him.

There’s a splash. George lies prone, ripples of water moving back and forth.

*

The dragon has perched again, watching with beady eyes. Dream hurls choked curses at her, barely able to speak through the tears that clog his throat. They gather in the corners of his eyes and threaten to spill over down his cheeks. This isn’t right. George is supposed to be here with him. He drops to his knees and leans in close, his ear to George’s mouth.

He holds his breath, an impressive feat considering how close he is to sobbing.

Faintly, he can hear George breathe in. And then out. And then in again. It’s all the confirmation that he has time to wait for. Dream will come back. He just needs to take care of something first.

This time, as the beast recovers, he aims for the head.

*

George opens his eyes. He’s cold. No, not cold. Wet. Why is he wet? Across from him, Dream is slicing a clean arc across the dragon’s throat. Black liquid sprays out as the dragon feebly tries to escape, but it’s no use. It’s too weak. Dream already has his sword raised.

The dragon’s head falls to the ground with a horrible squelching sound. Its body twitches before collapsing, limbs bent at all the wrong angles. Blood pools on the ground.

Everything is still.

*

This moment isn’t how he pictured it. Dream thought his victory would feel like a victory. Like the gods would descend and paint his likeness in the stars. No one sings his virtues. There are no trumpets. When the dragon is defeated, the first thing he thinks about is how hard it’ll be to get all of the blood off of his body. The next thing he thinks about is George.

He runs away from the dragon, back towards his friend. As he passes by them, the endermen all get down on the ground and kneel, heads bowed, eyes closed. Dream blinks at them, mouth open. He waves at them, feeling rather flustered by the unexpected gesture. “Um, thank you! Thanks, guys!”

He stops before his friend and closes his eyes. George had been breathing only minutes ago, but what if that had been before his body had shut down? Would Dream have to carry his body home? Was he all alone? Forever? “George? Can you hear me? Please don’t be dead.”

There’s a hand on his cheek. His eyes shoot open. George is smiling, his face pinched with the effort, but he’s still smiling. “So needy, wanting me to stay alive. Of course I would.” George says, his voice quiet and hoarse. A tear falls from Dream’s eye and down onto his friend’s forehead. He covers George’s hand with his own. “You did it.”

Dream squeezes George’s hand. “We did it.”

George makes a face, his tongue poking out from between his teeth. “Eh. You did most of the legwork.” He places his other palm against the ground and moves to sit up. Every single part of his body screams as he does so. George bites down on his lip so hard he can taste blood, trying not to show how badly it hurts. Otherwise, Dream will start to blame himself all over again, and now is not the time for that.

He has no idea how he survived that fall. The universe must have taken pity on him. Must have known its hero would be devastated without his companion. Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?

“Dream?”

“Yeah?”

He made a promise. He keeps his promises. You are not alone. The voice is back, it’s roaring in his ears, or perhaps that’s the sound of his blood, does it matter, it doesn’t, nothing matters more than Dream right now. “I love you.”

Dream lets their foreheads press together, lets their noses touch, lets himself feel so much. “Yeah?”

George swallows and nods. “Yeah. I really do.” His thumb is shakily moving back and forth across Dream’s cheek. He somehow managed to not get blood on his face when he killed the dragon. Not that George would care either way. “You’re a hero.”

“So are you,” Dream says. George rolls his eyes but stops once Dream captures his hand and laces their fingers together. His other hand rests on George’s cheek, and George isn’t in his body anymore, he’s floating away. Wait. George blinks, forcing himself to focus. He won’t let himself be won over so easily.

The words are embarrassingly breathy, but he gets them out anyway. He has a point to prove, after all. “Take the compliment, you idiot.”

Dream kisses him instead.

*

Some things change after their return. Others don’t.

Almost all of the monsters still go after them without mercy. Danger follows them everywhere they go, especially because Dream still makes stupid, risky decisions. But they build a house, too, with a garden and farm. George builds the fences by hand and Dream presses a kiss to his temple as he admires his beloved’s handiwork.

They’ve earned the begrudging respect of the endermen. When Dream passes by them after the sun has set, or when he’s traveling through caves, they bow stiffly, eyes narrowed. He makes sure to always bow in return. They disregard George, but on the rare occasion where he accidentally makes eye contact with one, they tend to disappear. George doesn’t mind; he prefers being ignored to being killed.

There’s more to do. There’s something still humming in Dream’s ears, urging him to go exploring, to find new challenges, and to conquer them. He likes the menial chores of farming and weeding and taking care of the animals, but he likes being on the move, too. There’s more to the other dimensions that he wants to discover. There are things lurking in the ocean that he wants to see. The village needs his protection. And George accompanies him on every adventure. That’s always been true.

The difference from before is after their journeys, when night falls, they return to their little house in the mountains. Watch the sun dip below the snowy caps as they stir bowls of potato and chicken stew. Scatter seeds for the chickens to enjoy and buff their horses’ armor. They climb into bed and wrap themselves around each other, drinking up the other’s presence, never wanting to let go.

The love comes in waves. It is always high tide.