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It starts, as all small, seemingly-meaningless things do, at Bad's house.
At first, they’re all doing fine. It’s their weekly session of MarioKart and they’re on the last lap of the round — Bad is winning easily, his character gliding through the course as if its vehicle’s wheels have wings while George, lacking the fighting spirit that seems to possess the rest of them whenever the game starts, but also not a terrible player, maintains his position as third. Dream and Sapnap, however, let their competitive spirit overrun as they battle it out for fourth place.
“Dream!” Sapnap yelps as his character slips on a bright yellow banana peel that Dream had mindlessly flung earlier in the game. His character, stunned still, can only watch as Dream’s speeds by.
Dream cackles as his ranking on screen changes from fifth to fourth, swerving to obtain a mystery box of items.
“Oh, George,” he sings, excitement building up in his throat, “I’m coming to get you!”
The dice rolls. The mystery item he’s gotten are speed-boost mushrooms.
Grinning, he presses on the button to utilise them. His character speeds up, dashing past George’s in a single instant, and he lets out a loud, victorious whoop.
A large, red shell, hurtling at high speeds from behind him, crashes into his character, effectively knocking him back and stunning him.
Calmly, George’s character overtakes his.
“Not so fast, Dreamie-poo,” George says, smugness laced in his words, and Dream ignores how the nickname makes shivers ripple down his spine.
“And…” Bad drags out the vowel in anticipation, “yes!” His Nintendo Switch controller flops against his wrist as he throws his hands in the air. “That’s how you win a MarioKart match, you muffinheads!”
George is the next to finish, the infuriating smirk dabbling across his face never leaving.
Sulkily, Dream crosses the finish line as well, Sapnap racing behind him only seconds after.
“It’s not fair,” Sapnap whines, “Bad wins these all the time because this is his Switch. He gets tons of practice while we don’t.”
George laughs. “Stop being a baby , Sapnap. You’re just bad at the game.”
Dream sighs out a chuckle as he slumps against George on the couch. The contact makes his side tingle and his chest fuzzy, but he pays it no mind. George goes still beside him.
This is what friends do, Dream reassures himself, for no particular reason.
“Yeah,” he adds, contributing to George’s earlier statement. Sapnap shoots him a betrayed glance from where he’s standing on an armchair, having gotten too into the game to really mind his surroundings. “I mean, slipping on a banana peel? C’mon, Sapnap. That’s the dumbest way to go.”
Sapnap huffs. "The screen's too small. How do you expect anyone to be able to see anything on this?"
The screen, in fact, is not too small, since the game is being projected onto Bad’s huge television screen. Dream rolls his eyes.
"You're just making excuses now," Bad chimes in, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Glee dances a playful jiggle in his irises. "Don't be a sore loser."
Sapnap's eyes widen in indignance. "I am not being a so–"
He cuts off as his eyes fall on something that seems to be dangling over George and Dream's heads, and the grin that spreads over his face is menacingly promising.
Dream, interest piqued, looks up.
A little plant hangs from the ceiling, bright green held together by a red ribbon, and Dream, with dread sinking low in his stomach, realises.
"Oh." George says.
"Oh." Dream echoes. His face is warm.
"Look who's under the mistletoe," Sapnap cheers, eyes so evil that Dream can barely distinguish the little tints of blue within the black.
George is bright red. His cheeks are puffed out and his eyes are wide, and he's moving away from Dream faster than Dream can blink.
"Who–" He splutters, "Who put that there?!"
Dream, feeling at a weird loss without George's body heat against his, just looks upon the unfolding situation with a numb sort of amusement. His mind is blank, words dying in his throat as he struggles to find things to say.
"I think it was my mom," Bad puts in, a sheepish smile on his face. "I don't think she meant anything by it."
Dream's lips are moving before he can even think about it.
"Why, Georgie," he teases, and a new, foreign emotion shoots up in his chest at how flustered his best friend gets, "don't you want to give me a little smooch?"
George squirms. Embarrassment is highlighted in his every jerky movement, from the dropping of his jaw to the sheer disbelief glinting in his eyes, and Dream derives a strange sort of satisfaction from how he's the cause of it.
"No!" Mortification runs deep in that one word, and Dream can't help but laugh. "What makes you think–"
"Alright, lovebirds," Sapnap claps once and Dream wheezes as he turns to face him. George looks as if he's about to slap the headband-wearing man. "Leave your disgusting flirting for later." Sapnap's face scrunches up as he mimes feeling sick, and everyone laughs. "It's time for a MarioKart rematch!"
Dream drowns out his two other friends as they debate on whether Sapnap will actually win this time or not, instead looking expectantly at George.
His cheeks are still dusted with a light pink, the colour contrasting sharply against his light skin. (Dream will privately admit that he doesn't look bad with it, like this, betraying more emotion than his usual palette of boredom, confusion and mind-numbing happiness.) The discomfort in his eyes is prevalent, and his gaze darts from the mistletoe to his previous seat beside Dream, and back to the mistletoe.
"Just ignore it," Dream finds himself saying, and his hands are almost moving of their own accord when they pat down the spot next to him. "It's just another Christmas decoration, that's all."
George looks at him dubiously, but moves and plops right back onto the couch. Their hands, resting on the cushion as they wait for Bad and Sapnap to set up the game, almost touch.
He shifts slightly, for reasons even he can't find himself, brushing their skin against each other's, and George jumps as if he's been shocked, jerking his head to face him.
The spot on Dream's hand tingles.
"What?" He asks, ignoring the loud, fast tapping of his heart against his chest, and his eyes fall on George's own dark, chocolate-like ones, and his gaze trails down past his nose, over his cheeks, onto his lips, and Dream thinks about mistletoes and Christmas kisses, and–
How would it feel? To kiss George?
George's lips part as he speaks. They look soft. "Choose your character, idiot."
"Oh." Is all Dream says, and he tears his eyes away to look back at the screen.
Sapnap lives on the top floor of a tall apartment complex. Red bricks line the walls of the building, a pattern that sticks out among the rest of the buildings nearby.
Dream isn’t any stranger to this apartment complex — he can’t count the number of times he’s had to walk into the lobby and take the elevator all the way up, what with Sapnap inviting him over more often than he really should.
On this day, in particular, they are going to study.
George is coming too, of course. His area of expertise just so happens to be Dream and Sapnap’s weakest subject -- Math. Dream won’t say he’s terrible at it, of course. He does decently.
But that’s the thing, really. His nature won’t let him be satisfied with just decent, he strives to be the best at everything he does, and his studies aren’t exceptions to that.
Sapnap, though. Sapnap’s horrible at Math.
With all that being said, Dream’s currently in the lobby of the apartment complex, waiting as patiently as he can for the elevator to descend from where it had last been left. (It’s just his luck that it’s the top floor.)
“Dream,” he hears, and then he turns.
George walks in, his right arm holding two thick textbooks close to his chest, while a backpack is slung over his left shoulder.
Dream is suddenly aware of how empty the lobby is, how alone the both of them are.
“Hi!” He says, and allows the smile pushing at his cheeks to fully form.
There’s a fluttering in his chest, accompanied by the strong desire to just… do something, anything, really. The thought of being alone with George is enough to send his heart thudding a hundred beats per second, enough to make his palms clam up and enough to make his cheeks grow hot.
It’s strange. Really strange. This overwhelming urge to run away, to sprint into the open air where everything is cool and fresh and George-less has never really hit until recently, and more specifically, the last MarioKart session at Bad’s place.
The mistletoe, he thinks, and a curious sort of want crawls unsteadily in his chest.
“Early for once, I see,” he says instead, and shoves whatever stupid emotions cartwheeling in his heart aside.
George snorts. "Shut up."
Dream meets his eyes, and they both grin.
Everyone knows George has a thing about being late to events. Dream thinks it's because of how fucked up his sleep schedule is. Sometimes he receives texts at four in the morning about some dumb meme George's seen on the internet, accompanied by a few stupid tweets on the timeline that George finds funny enough to screenshot, and though Dream won't trade those mindless moments for the world, he does wish the other man would get a better sleep schedule.
The elevator dings. They step in.
Dream reaches to press the button that'll take them to the top floor, but George is reaching for it too, and then their wrists bump, and Dream thinks he's burning.
"Sorry," he murmurs, backing away into a corner of the elevator, and George shoots him with a weird look that he winces at.
Calm down, idiot, he thinks, and watches as the numbers signifying the floors they've passed steadily rise up.
George rests his back against the elevator right beside him, and he finds a sort of familiarity in the way they stand together, on the same side as they always have been, backs turned against the world and the backs of their palms just barely knocking against each other.
The elevator's ascention up to Sapnap's floor is slow. It's been like this since the first time Dream had stepped foot in it, and he's never really minded until now.
The air is almost stifling. Dream desperately tries to keep his thoughts away from the shorter man beside him, away from the way said shorter man's fingers tap a gentle beat on the textbooks, away from the way those brown, curled bangs fall over that pale forehead and away from the way he wants to shift closer, nudge their sides together and sink into the usual comfort of their physical contact.
His eyes wander, and when they glance upwards, his heart drops.
An oddly familiar plant dangles from the top of the elevator, and Dream's thrown back into Bad's living room, just days ago, when he'd looked up at this exact same plant and had this exact same reaction, felt something curl hot and tight in the crevices of his chest and felt the urge to k–
"Not another one," George grumbles beside him, and Dream swallows, something sharp and heavy and cold dropping into his gut.
"But wouldn't it be funny?" Dream tries, his natural instincts to make everything a joke, it'll be fine if you just treat it like a joke surfacing, "if we actually–"
He turns, tilts his head down to look at George, and his mouth dries. The words evaporate from his tongue.
George's eyes are dark, a vividly rich brown that seems to encompass oceans and oceans of emotions, and among the swirling mess of surprise and mild irritation and something else he can't discern, he thinks he finds the words would you want to? and what if we did? and his heart trips.
He's trapped, he thinks, trapped in the way George looks at him, in the way George's lashes dance a pretty dance when George blinks, in the way they seem to gravitate to each other, like George is the earth and he is the moon that orbits around him, like George is one pole of a magnet and he is another, always moving, always attracting, and–
The elevator dings. They don't move.
"Am I…" A suggestive voice travels into his ears, and Dream snaps to it. It's Sapnap, looking like a vindictive chicken with the way his hands are placed on his hips. "Interrupting something?"
"No!" George says, faster than Dream can think to respond, and scurries out of the elevator. The tips of his ears are red.
Dream feels reality, cold and almost cruel, drip down his neck like a bucket of iced water.
"No…" He murmurs, lightheaded, and stumbles out after George.
It snowballs, as all small, seemingly-meaningless things do, after another day at Bad's house.
Sapnap's apartment complex is in the opposite direction of where George and Dream are going, so they bid him farewell as soon as they step out onto the cement pavement.
It's quite late — the streets are empty and the air is quiet, bringing out the stillness of the night and the solitude of the dark.
George breathes out a chalky cloud of water vapour, shoving his hands into his coat pockets, and Dream doesn't feel the cold or the solitude.
"It's getting really chilly, huh?" Dream says quietly. The words bubble from his lips, warm and comfortable.
George huffs, in that half-exasperated, half-fond way he always does, and Dream feels heat bloom in the middle of his chest. "No shit, smartass. It's winter."
"Yeah, but," Dream shrugs, "it's getting really cold. Colder than normal winters."
George sighs. His skin looks even paler in the low lights. Pretty, Dream thinks, then feels his heart fizz and shoves the thought away for later.
"Probably has something to do with global warming, or something." George supplies, throwing Dream a sideways glance that sends emotions rolling around in his stomach.
"Or something," Dream snickers, and the bus stop he's heading for comes into view.
George bumps him with his shoulder. Dream's caught off guard, only for a moment, before he returns the gesture.
"I'm too tired to think of the intricacies, okay?" The brunette protests, "all the MarioKart wore me out."
Dream raises his eyebrows. "It's just MarioKart. Why are you so tired?” They’ve both stared at a screen for far longer periods of time and at far lower proximity -- the heavy eyelids and muddled brain are not foreign sensations.
George smiles, and his eyes turn to the moon hanging, all curves and sharp edges, in the sky.
“Dealing with you guys always makes me tired, I guess,” he laughs, and sparks erupt beneath Dream’s skin, “you are always such a handful.”
They reach the bus stop, and Dream feels something small yet heavy in him drop with the realisation that the day – their time together – ends here.
I don't want you to go, he finds himself thinking, as his eyes trace the shape of George's jaw and locks on the contrast between his milky skin and his black cotton coat.
“So,” he starts instead, and tries not to think about how nice George’s eyebrows are, how adorable the bump of his nose looks, “bye, then.”
George checks his watch. “I’m not in a hurry or anything,” he says slowly, and hope sprouts like a sunflower in Dream’s chest, “I think I can stay and wait with you for a bit.”
Dream’s heart should not swell as much as it does with that information. “Cool.”
They take their seats on the cool metal of the bench under the shelter of the bus stop, and Dream lets out a low hiss.
“My ass is cold,” he complains, and George throws him a look that’s mixed with amusement and disbelief.
“What’s wrong with you?” He laughs, the corners of his mouth turning up in that pretty, cheerful way that Dream adores, the whites of his teeth flashing with the parting of his lips, lips that Dream hasn’t been able to stop thinking about since that day under the mistletoe at Bad’s house two weeks ago, lips that Dream wants to capture with his, mold against his own, and-
It’s suddenly not as cold anymore.
Dream turns away and fixes his eyes on the little orange-yellow lights of the lamp posts in the distance, on the way they dot the darkness and stand out like little stars against the night sky.
Feeling the sudden urge to move, to make an action that will take his mind off… whatever that was, he tilts his head back and focuses on the little light dangling from the bus stop shelter. It’s dim and flickering, and a little moth flutters energetically around it.
And then he catches sight of it, and he really can’t escape this, can he?
It’s that plant again, the stupid, green-red mistletoe that plagues his dreams and haunts his every waking moment, whispering sweet, deadly promises of the touch of George’s lips and the pressure of George’s mouth against his, and he-
“Why do we keep running into these?” George says, almost a whine, and Dream’s eyes glue back onto him.
The cold air brushes against his neck, raising the little hairs scattered over his skin and making him shiver.
“Maybe…” he starts, hoarse, and George looks so enticing even beneath the ugly fluorescent light that the words leave his mouth without his permission. “Maybe it’s a sign."
And he means it. Can feel it in the deep of his bones and the abyss of his soul, wants it from the bottom of his heart and yearns for it from the depths of his mind.
They move. Dream doesn’t know who does it first -- could’ve been him, could’ve been George, but they’re moving and George is drawing closer and closer and closer, as if there is no closeness that will ever be enough, and this close, Dream can count the fading freckles on the ivory of George’s skin, can trace each arc of George’s eyelashes, and Dream wonders if his lips will be as soft as he’s imagined them to be, if the kiss will be gentle or demanding, if George will cup his cheeks or run his hands over the back of his head, if George will pull him down for another and another and another-
George’s warm breath ghosts over his lips, and then it’s gone.
George pulls back, so sharply it’s as if Dream’s burned him, and Dream can only watch, stunned to a stillness that’s never washed over him before.
“I’m-” George stands up, staggers back, and Dream doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know anything except the hurt wrapping around his chest like thorny vines, doesn’t know anything except the pounding of his heart in his head.
Did he not want to? He thinks, and something cold and slimy swallows his heart, caging it and choking the breath from his lungs. Was it too much? Have I been misreading? Was it all just me?
And then George turns and runs, his footsteps fast and heavy against the concrete pavement, and Dream is alone.
Oh, he thinks, and everything turns numb.
Christmas comes, bringing with it snow and decorations and hearty parties.
It’s George’s turn to host a Christmas party, this year, and though he grumbles and sighs and protests, he keeps to the tradition and holds the gathering in his small apartment.
Dream is at the party, of course, despite the weights on his chest that never seem to leave, despite how each fleeting look at George sends him spiralling back down the memory, the sting of rejection, the prickling of being abandoned, because George is his friend at the end of it, no matter what his traitorous heart tries to say.
Said party is over now, and the apartment is much quieter and much less lively than it had been when the party had just started. Dream watches as Sapnap yawns, pushes his arms into the air and stands.
“I think it’s my time to go,” he says, throwing Dream and George a tired, sleepy look as he gathers his things. “You coming, Dream?”
Dream stands and opens his mouth, about to agree, but George beats him to it.
“No!” The brunette says abruptly, and Dream’s heart lurches.
George doesn’t look at him, but there’s an apology written in the furrow of his brows and the way he drags in a breath through his teeth. “I need to talk to him about something.”
Sapnap raises a suspicious, interested eyebrow. “O...kay.”
“Bye, then,” their friend shrugs, slings his bag over his back and leaves the apartment, hurling a “thanks for the gifts and shit!” over his shoulder before the door shuts.
The apartment is quiet, George's eyes almost setting fire to where they're fixated on Dream's hoodie, and Dream comes to an absentminded realisation.
They’re alone now.
Bad had left just an hour ago, babbling stories about how Skeppy had called him, claiming an “emergency”, and Dream had just shared a knowing look with the rest as they nodded and pretended to fall for his excuses. (Bad is a very terrible liar.)
Dream hasn’t been alone with George since that night under the bus stop, hasn’t had a one-on-one conversation with him since that shaky “I'm–” and the hasty retreat of George’s footsteps in his ear. He’s made sure of it, actually, always insisted on having Sapnap as a buffer in between them so his mind wouldn’t flash back to how alone he’d felt, sitting on that bench with adrenaline still racing through his veins and thoughts tangling together in his brain, wouldn’t flash back to the graceful flutter of George’s lashes under the fluorescent light, wouldn’t flash back to the pink of his upper lip and the swell of his lower–
“Hi,” George says, softly.
Dream stamps down on the bitterness twisting, like poison ivy, around his heart. “Hi.”
“I–” George’s gaze flits to the floor. “I feel like we haven’t been talking much, lately.”
Pain stabs at his chest. “Yeah.”
George breathes in and hesitates, and that little inhale – betraying the awkwardness, the frayed bond between them – that he sucks in hurts Dream more than any of his other words could.
“Listen,” George says, his hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck, “about that night–”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Dream blurts, and it’s for a completely selfish reason — he doesn't think he'll be able to handle it if George says the words to his face. Knowing it is enough, he thinks, as shame sears across his cheeks and incinerates his heart. “I know what I did was dumb. You didn’t want that and I– I get it.”
George is quiet for a moment, and he looks unfairly, achingly good in the warm glow of his living room lights, in the woolly, smiley-face patterned sweater Dream had gotten him for Christmas, tousled brown hair bouncing slightly against his forehead, and Dream really needs to stop thinking about him like this, doesn’t he?
“Where are you getting those ideas from?” George interrupts. His eyes hold affection, a tender kind of emotion that Dream likes to think, sometimes, is only directed at him, only reserved for him, and yearning kindles in his chest.
“But you-” He thinks back to the bus stop, the cold, the loneliness he’d felt as soon as George left, the tar-like, sinking feeling of rejection, and among the layers of feelings and thoughts, confusion is the most prevalent. “You just ran away, why–”
George shuffles closer, and Dream goes silent.
Those eyes, dark chocolate and home-like, burn.
“I’ve been thinking,” George says, his voice a sweet, intoxicating honey that trickles into Dream’s chest, “and…”
They’re so close that their toes are almost touching. George’s palms are clasped together, clearly holding something between them, and when he opens his hands, Dream swears his heart stops.
A little mistletoe, fresh and small, rests in the middle of George’s left palm.
“Maybe it is a sign.” He finishes, his gaze lifting endearingly to interlock with Dream’s.
Dream’s eyes widen, and suddenly George’s lips are against his, soft and perfect and everything he’s ever wished for, and then he’s kissing back, relishing in the pressure and the way the weight of the sky seems to melt off his chest with this one movement, and Dream swears he’s soaring.
To kiss George, he thinks furiously, his mind on overdrive as the taste of George's kiss surges over his senses like a tidal wave, this is what it's like to kiss George .
They pull apart, chests heaving and lips tingling, and when George’s eyes search his, Dream thinks he sees is this okay? and are we okay? and he’s almost breathless.
Dream breathes in, deep and shaky. George's eyes glitter as they stare into his, and Dream can't help but think about how pretty he is, like someone had stolen the stars and moons from the sky and sprinkled them into those rich, brown irises, like constellations upon constellations reside in his simple gaze.
“Yeah,” he says, and his chest is so full it’s bursting. “It really was a sign.”
George smiles, uninhibited and free, and Dream laughs as their breaths intermingle, leaning down to melt against his mouth once more.