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It was different in every home.
Some parents would sing their children a lullaby. For others, it was a simple ‘goodnight’, an easy ‘sweet dreams’, a casual ‘I love you.’ Maybe a hug so tight that there was no other place in the world which was safer, maybe a kiss on the forehead to scare away the nightmares.
As a kid, George didn’t drag his parents into his room every night, begging them to check under the bed for monsters and then the cupboard. He didn’t ask to be read a bedtime story, whisked into a new world and met the knights and dragons, talking dogs and singing cats that came to life every time the sun went down. His ma did read to him, every single night, but there was no ‘once upon a time,’ when he tried to settle into his bed or a ‘and they lived happily ever after,’ as the lights went out.
Instead his ma read to him about flowers, a new one every night as he listened to their ridiculously long scientific name, the climate they grew best in and which queen or princess decorated their castles with that particular bloom. His ma had a book, it was the same one every night, the cloth cover starting to fray and the pages yellow and dog-eared. But just like every good story heard a thousand times, George had a favourite part of the night.
“What do lil-acks mean?” He asked, bobbing up and down in his spot as his ma’s quiet laughter filled the air.
“Ly-lacks,” she corrected, one hand smoothing out the page, “Well it depends on the colour.”
“Is there a blue one? I can see blue.”
“Joy and tranquility,” she read out loud, noticing confusion taking over his features, “Like a quiet happiness. Mornings before the sun rises.”
“No one’s awake before the sun,” George frowned, “That’s bedtime.”
“Your soulmates might,” she said and the mere mention of the word drew his attention to the intricate tattoos on his mother’s wrist, yellow flowers intertwining around each other.
“Ma, tell me your soulmates again,” He asked this every night and his parent had yet to refuse him. She smiled softly, rolling up her sleeves to reveal more flowers and from the unique twirl and shapes of the petal, George could count three different flowers on her arm alone.
“This one is your uncle,” she whispered, fingers tracing around white flower, “Do you remember what flower this is?”
“Magnolia,” he answered quickly, “P-perservarance?”
“Per-ser-ver-ance,” His ma enunciated each syllable carefully, “He’ll always be there for me. We’ll always be family.”
She then moved onto a longer stem of flowers with smaller, yellow buds, “This is your father-”
“Lavender.”
“Devotion and calmness,” She nodded, “This flower has a special smell, it puts people to rest and lets them forget about the troubles in this world.”
George watched her hesitate, like she always did, when she moved to the last flower, shrivelled and grey, dead and withered.
“Say hi to your godmother,” she continued, “She was my best friend.”
Poppies, flowers of remembrance and strength, he recited silently, deciding against speaking up.
Soulmates, romantic or platonic, your perfect match or broken shard that brings light, were marked and etched on your skin the moment you met them like tattoos. It would start off as a seed, slowly growing with every second you spent with them and flourishing into vibrant blooms the closer you became. But they could wilt, with every second they were closer to leaving you behind in the world, every step they took towards death.
He looked at his bare skin, unblemished and plain and then his ma’s mismatched boutique of a story.
One day, he told himself.
~
“Guys, I’m not gonna change my handle to a WasTaken,” George grinned to the face cam as his avatar fell still and the donation disappeared from his second monitor, “That’s a terrible idea.”
“You can’t keep lying to our fans George,” Dream’s voice echoed through his headset and he rolled his eyes, “We all know you’re the biggest Dream simp there is.”
He rolled his eyes, fingers quickly taking over his IJKL keys as a zombie appeared behind him. He and Dream were showing off broken plugins to their viewers, Sapnap sitting beside him, not bothered to turn on his own PC to join.
“Wrong, Georgie’s changing it to Nappitus,” Chat went crazy when Sapnap entered the camera range, appearing on stream, “I’m the obvious favourite.”
He hummed, turning a bit to ask the other to turn on the fan. Stupid Florida , he thought to himself. He knew the state would be warm, he had expected to be so after years of listening to Dream complain, but the city of rain couldn’t have possibly prepared him for this torture.
“You’re so bad,” he scowled as Dream shot him off a tree with his trademark crossbow and he could hear the other’s laugh from next door. He shivered at the sound, even if he had been living with the other two for a bit over a year now and the blond’s laugh was still as menacing as when they first met.
The door rang and he heard Bad call them away from their monitors for pizza and George groaned in relief. Sapnap quickly raised to his feet, promising him a plate and left.
“Thank god, I’m starving.” George stretched his arms, leaning away from the keyboard, “Screw the two of you, I’m a Bad simp now. GeorgeBoyHalo.”
“You don’t mean that,” Dream chuckled, throwing roses at him in-game, “I’m paying for the pizza anyways.”
“I’m stealing your olives by the way,” A slice was placed before him and Sapnap made himself comfortable on the other’s bed.
“What about me? I’m hungry too,” The blond whined.
“Then suffer. I’m not touching pizza with fruit on it,”
“Don’t start, you’re the one who dunked a new yorker into carbonated melon milk,”
“Science. I’ve since then learned from my mistakes.”
“Dream, do you have any wood- Sapnap, don’t get food on my bed,” He shook his head, “Idiots, chat, I’m living with idiots.”
~
He had heathers, purple-pink according to anyone else but him, that wrapped around his back and etched themselves on his throat. They were long stems, small, flowering buds covering his chest where he assumed his rib-cage to be. Marigolds, small and bright puffs of yellow covered his wrists like bracelets, a few scattered on his thigh and a single one on his right cheek, facing his ears. Chrysanthemums, large bundles of petals were scattered around his body, one to the right of his arm, one on his lower back and a small one decorating his left hand.
He loved them.
He couldn’t see them in their full beauty, he never would, but he didn’t need to. Everyone else in the world whose lens let them see every colour under the sun could, they could see them blossoming and vibrant. He knew there were people like Dream who viewed soulmates as private, hiding them under long sleeves and protecting the fragile flowers from everything harsh and cruel.
But if you hid the flowers from the darkness, you left it in darkness. The flower would be sheltered from something as warm as the sun, as kind as the rain, colourful petals not being able to attract the attention of bees. What was the point if not to show them off? If there’s anything his ma had taught him, it was to hold pride- through every chapter of his book, of every bloom etched on his skin.
Pride, in the flowers that he so carefully looked after, in the people who changed his life, in a love that he wasn’t scared to show the world.
~
Before the fourteenth of July, George’s skin lay bare and unblemished, except for three seeds on his middle back, wrist and chest. That’s how it had been for years and it didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. They were his soulmates, they were bound to meet it, and it was simply a matter of when.
Love is simply the seeds you plant in your heart, his ma would say when he grew impatient, you have to feed it, take care of it and then watch it grow.
So he learned to wait. Wait like a farmer in the trying winters, a gardener with a freshly potted seed. He would shed light on it, stir the soil and make the heavens cry but he knew he would have to play the long game. He would ignore the quiet yearning of each of the seeds, as painful as it was, ignore how they felt at peace when he was playing bed wars with Sapnap, coding with Dream or letting Bad fuss over him.
He remembered it all changing on the fourteenth. He remembered starting the day with a foreboding feeling lingering in his stomach but he had dismissed it as excitement and surreal because Dream was coming to the UK.
Dream was coming to the UK for a meme, in the middle of a pandemic, to have pizza with someone way out of his league and George was so ready for it.
He remembered when he first saw Dream too, standing next to Wilbur and looking out of the place. His hair was darker than he expected it to be, taller than he was hoping for and he had long sleeves on. There weren’t any fireworks, no sudden epiphany, no butterflies trying to escape. There was only Dream, Wilbur and pizza that wasn’t even that good.
“And you teased me for the terrible haircut,” George scoffed, “You’re an idiot.”
Dream turned, face breaking into a big smile, almost a little breathless.
“Yo.”
“Yo yourself.” He grumbled as large hands wrapped around him fleetingly. It was weird to hear his voice with no static to follow, no muffling of the mic, no delay and an immediate response. It was weird that he was here, standing in front of him under the rare London sun.
“That it’s finally just me and you, and you and me,” Wilbur sang in greeting with a playful air, “Just us, and your friend Steve.”
“I’d never do you like that,” Dream said solemnly, lips tight as eyes locked with the taller Brit.
“Aw, you fucking liar.” Wilbur was smiling, “Now go pay for us you stinking American.”
“Yes sir- George your arms!”
All eyes were on his arms where ink etched itself onto his skin as stems stretching out from under his t-shirt and twisting to small blooms. Flowers , he thought as he stumbled a bit, soulmate .
“W-What colour?”
“Purple-” “There’s a few white ones.”
Heathers , he thought, his eyes falling on Dream, purple for admiration. White for protection.
“Why are they growing so fast?” He heard Dream ask.
“Don’t worry about it, the same thing happened to me when I met Niki and Phil for the first time,” Wilbur put a hand on his back, “It’s just deprivation. The flowers grow every second you’re physically close to them right?” George nodded, “There were these Medieval herbalists who found a way to torture flowers. They left the plants in total darkness and when they came back a few days later with only a candlelight, the plants would start growing so fast you could hear it. Your flowers are just making up for the lost time.”
“Plant abuse? The tree huggers are quaking.” Dream murmured, “You okay, dude?”
“I can’t believe you just said that out loud.” George snapped, “Yeah, I think I’m okay.”
They moved into the restaurant, taking a seat and continued as if nothing had happened.
“I don’t recognise this flower,” Dream spoke up when Wilbur left to go to the bathroom and reluctantly rolled up his sleeves to reveal his own moving ink taking the shape of small bundles of delicate petals, “You?”
It’s a quiet acceptance, no grandiose gestures that made a big deal out of it, no zeppelins in the sky to scream it to the world, no bungee jumping off the Eiffel tower. This, this was something they both already knew and there was no need to acknowledge it. The flowers didn’t change anything but tie the knot between them tighter as they set sail.
George liked to think they would have found each other, lost at sea, even if they weren’t bounded by fate.
“Aster. Devotion and wisdom,” He smiled fondly, “Greek mythology says that those flowers came from the tears of the god of stars.”
Dream grinned back at him, kicking his leg under the table, “Flower nerd.”
“To think you used to be so cute.”
~
“I don’t know what the fu-” His eyes fell on the swear jar that lay innocently on the kitchen counter, looking like it was patiently waiting to be filled, “Bad is going to kill you two.”
Dream and Sapnap jumped, quickly scrambling to cover the pile of what seemed to be ripped tissues behind them. What looked like ketchup, covered the table with colourful words and drawings of what he presumed to be genitals. Surrounding them were boxes and cans which George didn’t even know they owned, structured to look like a fort. They looked at each other, nodding in a silent agreement and then turned to him with matching grins.
“He can’t.” The blond stared at him, “I’m a disney princess now.”
“W-what-”
“Bad wouldn’t kill Elsa, now would he?” Sapnap shook his head solemnly, “Disney would do something worse than copyright him.”
“I-just because he turned off the internet, doesn’t mean you do this.”
“Freeze,” Dream grabbed a bunch of the ripped tissue and threw it at his face, “Begone thy lover of mine. Stray far from my icy heart.”
“I’m going to walk away,” he murmured, ruffling his own hair to get rid of any tissue stuck in it, “I was here only for water.”
He reached for a high shelf, grabbing a glass and turning on the tap, patiently watching it fill up.
“Still not getting better?” Sapnap asked as he gulped down the water, “Do you need anything else man?”
For the last few weeks he had been mostly designated to bed rest: insatiable throat, lethargy dragging down his limbs and constant dizziness. He shook his head, mumbling a good luck under his breath as he stumbled through the hallway and into his room. He paused when he passed Bad’s room, door wide open to reveal the other playing with Rat.
“Bad, when you walk into the kitchen, I want you to remember that we shouldn’t stab our friends.”
“Wait what- what did those muffins do? George- wait, don’t walk away from me-”
~
George stepped out of the shower, feeling just as bad as when he entered, and wrapped a towel around his waist. His knees were weak, wobbling to the point that he could barely stand and it hurt to keep his eyes open. He swayed as he barely managed to slip on his boxers, side to side, his body’s heat rising to levels he couldn’t handle and he leaned against the sink. He looked up, trying to look through the condensation that fogged up the mirror and scowled at his appearance. Skin pale, dark eyebags and cracked lips. His eyes fell, going down as he spotted something on his chest.
White flowers. Small, little blooms that George didn’t recognise at all. They were a void of any other colour or shade, just a vibrant, solid white. They weren’t only on his chest, they were scattered around his arms and legs. A new soulmate? How? He hadn’t been out in weeks, surely he would have noticed? He looked closer and something in him snapped.
He fell onto the cold bathroom floor, the dizziness in his head tripling tenfold and his hands shaking uncontrollably.
Wilted. Wilted petals, wilted leaves and wilted flowers.
The giant chrysanthemum on his chest was fraying grey on the edges, whole marigolds shriveled and dry and unflattering streaks of dark brown in his bouquets of heathers. He tried to grab hold of something so he could pull himself together but he couldn’t, not with one question running through his head.
How?
The withering of flowers meant your soulmates were slowly dying but the others seemed fine. He had seen them that morning, each of them fitter than himself, laughing around as if there was nothing wrong.
He needed to tell them, tell them now, and he frantically crawled to the door, accidentally pushing bottles of shampoo and soap off and onto the floor. The door was locked and his hands were shaking too bad to undo it so he opted for banging on the door. But his knees gave in and he collapsed to the ground, the blood in his veins running too fast for the rest of his body to catch up. He felt light-headed, he felt faint and then he plunged.
He plunged into a quiet darkness, falling once again onto the bathroom floor.
~
“Sir, I have some bad news.” A pen furiously scribbled something ineligible and a lady with a sweet face and clean bun looked at him with an almost mournful expression, “You have a serious condition called albinism.”
“W-what?” His head is still dizzy from his examination, “Sorry can you say that again, bright lights.”
The doctor offers a hurried apology, twisting a knob behind her desk which dimmed the lights and he sighed in relief.
“Albinism.”
“I-isn’t that for white hair and pale skin? Lack of melatonin, right?” He asked confused, a pool of dread growing in his stomach, “Don’t you have to be born with it?”
“Human albinism, yes but we’re talking about your soulmate markings,” She explained kindly, “Sir, are you aware that plants need to be green to survive. If not, they can’t photosynthesize and won’t be able to make the food they need to live.”
“I don’t see how this is related, doctor.”
“You’ll find that in the world, plants can have albinism, meaning they can't survive on their own.” Her eyes fell on the small white blooms on his neck, “So instead they absorb needed nutrients from surrounding plants.”
“N-no. You’re not saying that-”
“It’s a rare disease, sir. Not enough people have caught it and lived for there to be sufficient research,” She said softly, pushing forward a jar of candy, “What we do know is that the disease allows for a correlation between the patient’s health and the state of their soulmate markings-” His face was one of horror, “There is no harm done to your soulmates, be assured. But to yourself? We can’t guarantee full recovery. From the few people who have survived, they all had to wait for the albino flowers to die out once there is no more energy to absorb- once all your markings have withered. It’s simply a matter if you can handle the symptoms until they do.”
He didn’t feel anything, fear stinging him like a scorpion, and now his entire body felt like it was paralysed. His hands trembled as he touched one of the white blooms, wishing he could rip them off his skin.
“A-and there’s no cure?”
She bit her lip, hesitating before she shook her head, “Sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do.”
Rip them out, he wanted to scream at her, rip them out. Fix it, fix it now before he- he died.
But he knew why they couldn’t. Even if you ripped a flower out of the ground, it’s roots would remain in the soil and bloom stronger than before.
~
Bad drove him home and he refused to speak. He forced a silence between them, letting walls rise so he could keep them out and let himself drown in his own dread. The other knew and no doubt he would tell the others but he would ignore them. As they pulled up into the parking place designated to their condo, George pushed the door wide open and charged out.
“George, wait- let’s talk about this first,” Bad tried to start but he left him behind. He took the elevator, closing it in Bad’s face and maybe he should feel guilty but he didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking right now, just trusting his feet to walk down a familiar route until he was in front of a specific door. He dug through his pockets quickly, as if being outside any longer would lead to huge peril, and when he finally got the door open, he was greeted by the other two.
“No.” He pushed past them without letting them speak, tugging away when Dream tried to grab hold of his hand. When he reached his room, he slammed it behind him and locked it tight. He sank to the ground, tears starting to poor out as he ignored the desperate knocking on his door.
Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.
He raised his head, staring straight into his reflection, and he wanted to scream. The cursed, white flowers were in plain sight on his neck, marking him as next on death’s list. His hands scratch at them, as if they were mere face paint that would come off if he tried hard enough but it was useless.
He didn’t come out of his room after that.
~
Maybe he should have been more scared.
There were some mornings when he could barely move his limbs and was suffocating under blankets too heavy, too warm. Lights flashing a brightness that sent dark circles swarming his sight, the deafening heartbeat of the city pounding in his ears and the sun burning a little warmer. Everything around him seemed to live a bit more, dancing around him almost mockingly as he laid in the darkness, letting it consume him shard by shard, piece by piece.
But the thought of falling asleep and waking up to nothing didn’t do anything to him anymore.
~
It was a different person each day. Every morning, one of his roommates would knock on his door, fruitlessly trying to convince him to leave his room and eat something proper. It usually ended in them frustrated when George’s silence greeted them back and they were forced to put the plate of food or glass of water outside his door. It was a system that he thought worked just fine even though it left him craving for more each night when he went to bed, something more than the fitting darkness of his room.
It took a week and a half, ten days, before Bad grew tired of his bullshit and quite literally broke down his door.
“What the hell Bad?” He screeched, indignant.
“Don’t what the muffin me!” Bad growled, “I’m the one trying to help my idiot of a best friend.”
“You can’t break my door-”
“Then don’t lock your door next time!” Bad didn't back down and placed what looked like scrambled eggs and toast violently in front of him, “Or I’ll make Dream carry you out and let Sapnap record it.”
George grabbed hold of his blankets, wrapping himself in them, and grumbled as Bad tried to pull them off him.
“Don’t go into a burrito- the sheets are dirty.” The elder won against his weaker constitution, “George you can’t keep doing this.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” He snapped back, “Bad, just leave.”
“No.”
Why didn’t he understand? There was no point. There was no point in trying to do anything, not when he was too drained to stand, when it hurt to breathe, when walls started to feel like a cage rather than a haven. He was so tired all the time now and he just couldn’t muster the will to try when it was futile like trying to kindle flames with damp wood. His sight was blurry, cheeks sticky, and he could taste salt in his mouth. Bad gently pulled him closer, letting George rest his forehead on his chest.
“You’re allowed to be sad.” He knew.
“B-but George, you can’t let this destroy you like this.” He knew.
“No one’s asking you to say you’re okay and w-we can’t promise you will be.” He knew.
“I-we know you’re better than this. The markings, the flowers- they’re just ink of one ending,” Bad held him tighter, “Let this ending die, George. Then take the ink and write your own ending.”
Let this ending die.
“And you know what’s so great about flowers? Give them time and they’ll grow back.”
He shouldn’t be allowed to do this, George thought, to be allowed to hope for him. But he did and a part of him lets himself believe, let himself trust that there will be a tomorrow, that there will be a next year where he could open his eyes and breathe.
“O-ok.”
“And you have to remember- wait what.”
“I said okay, I’ll try.”
George looked down at the wilting flowers on his wrists, more specifically the marigolds and looked back at Bad with a wobbly smile.
Marigolds. Hope and bravery.
He remembered his ma saying people of marigolds looked for little things in their lives to make the world more beautiful. They were the manifestation of the sun’s tears, raining down and blooming into fourteen petals of vibrant yellow. Herb of the sun, people would whisper, healing small cuts and stings with a kindness unimaginable by most.
“Step by step. We’ll go at your pace.” Bad smiled back and a silence fell between them. George looked past the other’s shoulders to where his door should be, instead revealing the hallway he hadn’t properly seen in a week.
Then it hit him.
“You broke my door.”
Bad buried his face in his hands and groaned, “I know.”
~
“You know that I don’t believe in soulmates right?”
Dream was tapping away at his computer, working on a code he had been struggling with for the last few hours. George sat across from him, looking rightfully offended.
“No I did not- why?”
“I mean they’re nice, don’t get me wrong,” Dream looked up from his screen, “But I don’t like being told who I should be forced to sit with at lunch.”
“Extreme.”
“George, I think- no, I know that if we lived in another universe where we didn’t haven’t these markings, I would still be a youtuber, I would still have adopted Patches, we would have become friends- best friends and become idiots who play block games on the internet.”
He felt his fingers automatically running along the shrivelled heathers on the side of his waist.
Heathers. Good luck and independence.
It would be just like Dream to flick his finger at fate and break from its chains. It would be just like him to shatter fate into a million shards of chance, dancing carelessly through life and leaving it up to a roll of a dice, a flip of a coin or a fold of cards.
“Okay.” George stretched his back, “And you’re telling me this because?”
“I don’t think you should let fate decide whether or not you should give in,” Dream pushed a glass of water towards him with a playful grin, “You’re an independent woman after all.”
“And here I thought we were having a moment.”
“You want me to kiss you better?”
“Please just shut up.”
~
He leaned back on his chair, watching minecraft load up. From the other room, he heard Sapnap give the call that he was going to start streaming and he opened up twitch on his own monitor. He had been offline for three weeks but Bad had finally deemed him well enough to finally join recordings or stream. He noticed that Sapnap had his face cam on when his page loaded, a surprise since the younger usually tried to avoid showing his face.
“Hey guys.” Sapnap waved a bit awkwardly, “ Missed y'all. Promise me with a chill stream?”
The chat whizzed by, a flurry of ‘hello’ and ‘ily’, and he couldn’t help but feel fond.
“Georgie has risen from the dead, about time to. Say hi.”
“Hel-lo. Don’t forget to follow twitch.tv/georgenotfoun-” If he weren’t laughing at how fast Sapnap muted him, he would have winced at the hoarseness of his voice. Chat went out of control, it became almost impossible to read and he clicked the option to hide chat.
“You’re an idiot,” the other hissed, “This is why we can’t take you anywhere. I might have to put it on sub-only later, guys.”
They played bedwars, George trying his very hardest not to strain his throat every single time the other knocked him into the void but failed miserably. He missed this, tapping against the keyboard, screaming at Sapnap when he was an idiot and being so good at minecraft.
“Hey Sapnap, this is a personal question (don’t feel the need to answer!) and chat please don’t attack me.” Sapnap read out loud, “But why are some of your soulmate markings dead? Did something happen?”
That turned his good mood sour very quickly. He muted, not trusting himself to say the right words, to change the topic subtly. It was his fault after all, his own deteriorating health leading to the wilting of his soulmates’ markings for him. He had at some point been so close to death, a few blooms had died and even if the others assured him that they didn’t care, guilt drowned him.
“I was wondering when someone would ask, I just wanted to show them off I guess,” Sapnap hummed, continuing his gameplay, “Wait that sounds wrong- I meant, my soulmate is going through something pretty bad right now and chat, y’all know I’m losing in the war against words.” Sapnap grinned at the camera, “But they’re still here fighting and this is my way of saying that I’m proud of them and that I’ll be by their side every step of the way.”
Chrysanthemums. Loyalty and devotion.
George remembered having a giant bloom on his chest and even thought it was mostly withered up and dry, it didn’t die. There were still streaks of white and yellow, standing strong in a swarm of greys and browns.
George wondered when all his friends became sappy little shits but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
~
One morning, he woke up feeling lighter than he had in a month.
One morning, he woke up to a single marigold blooming in an ocean of the shrivelled vines.
One morning, he woke up to a long stem of heather with almost a hundred small buds running across a field of withering grey.
One morning, he woke up to a thousand petals, small chrysanthemum, decorating the barren sea on his back.
One morning, he woke up and breathed.