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George hates flowers. He hates the way they look, the way the smell, but most importantly, he hates the way just the mention of them can be enough to force the contents of his stomach shooting up his throat, the way tiny thorns bristle in his lungs, and the way he struggles to breathe around merciless amounts of petals.
He also hates Dream, so much that he doesn’t hate him. It’s a horrible dance, threading between love and hate like his life depends on it—well, it does. He wants to hate Dream and how he makes him feel like the only person in the entire world, how George feels loved and important and like he can do anything when Dream is with him. He wants to hate him so desperately, but his fingers slip through empty air and he can’t grasp the feeling tight enough. He falls flat in love instead.
The taste of blood is strong in his mouth today, coupled poorly with a burning down the back of his throat. George grimaces as his phone flashes at the arrival of a notification, but his heart betrays him when Dream’s name reflects in bright letters across the screen; he hates it. Truly, he despises how easy it is for Dream to have him undone.
Moving on instinct, his fingers find a way to start a call. The line clicks on the opposite side when Dream picks up.
“George,” he greets, awfully fond. His voice is soft and mushy, another thing that George adds to the list of things he hates—he doesn’t, really.
“Sorry,” George starts, swallowing a buildup of blood, “I didn’t check your message. I thought I’d just call instead. What’s up?”
“Actually, I wanted to check in with you,” Dream says, tone growing ever softer. “You’ve just been kinda...distant lately, I guess. I’m glad you even decided to call me at all.”
“Is that so…? Sorry, I guess I’ve just been a bit out of it lately.” It feels wrong to lie, especially to Dream, but what was George supposed to say? There was no way he would be confessing right then and there—not in a million years. He wasn’t ready, even if the flowers in his lungs urged him to just spit it out already.
“It’s okay!” Dream picks up the atmosphere and easily molds it back into their usual one; it’s mesmerizing, almost, how well he can lead their conversations. “I just wanted to make sure,” he clarifies. “You’re my best friend, George! Can’t have you being all down in the dumps.”
And it’s gone again, for a moment. George falters, his hands trembling over his computer keyboard. He squints, desperately holding back the urge to vomit up a handful of flowers and blood onto his desk. “I,” he chokes out, “I have to go, I’m sorry,” and ends the call. His feet carry him to the bathroom before he even realizes, head hanging limply over the bowl of the toilet. Lines of tears mixed with the dripping red down his chin as droplets fell into the water below, petals swirling around each other. They seemed to mock him, beautiful and painful all the same.
Red anemones, a display of anticipation and fragility, but more importantly, forsaken love. George figures the last one is more fitting in his case. Not that he wants to think about it too much, anyway.
Another flower pushes its way out, this time scraping the walls of his throat with a scratchy stem. He holds it between shaky fingers. The blood stains his fingertips and blots the petals and stems with darker reds, but he’s amazed by how beautiful it manages to be, even after squeezing out of his lungs. He doesn’t get much time to savor the beauty before he’s coughing out another.
It’s horrible, the dryness he feels and the metallic taste engulfing his mouth, but none of it compares to his guilt. The guilt of lying to Dream, probably worrying him to. The guilt of having fallen in love with his best friend in the first place. Just how stupid is he?
George doesn’t know how long he sat there by the toilet, puking out too many flowers to count and flushing them down the toilet an impossible amount of times, but it doesn’t matter when he pushes himself to his knees, just barely able to stand. His body is wracked with exhaustion and pain, but he wills himself to wobble out of the bathroom and carry himself far enough to collapse on his bed and take out his phone. Of course, Dream had messaged him.
Dream: George? Everything ok? You left abruptly.
George: I’m fine. Just food poisoning or something.
Dream: Food poisoning? What the hell did you eat? lol.
George: Dunno, lol. Nothing too bad, hopefully.
George grimaces. Food poisoning would probably hurt less than this, less than the guilt eating away at him from the inside. If those flowers wouldn’t kill him, the guilt likely would. It feels like it would.
Dream: Take care of yourself then. It would be upsetting if my favorite Gogy got too sick to record with me. ;)
He feels the urge to vomit rush back at him in full force. It’s unfair; it should be over. It’s not.
His fingers hover over the letters, typing, “You’re too much,” and then deleting and retyping, “Stop it,” before it’s deleted again. He types and retypes over and over, searching for anything to say, but comes up blank. He doesn’t know, George doesn’t know what to say to that. He wants to shut it all out and stop thinking, but his mind screams to say something and not leave Dream in the dark.
Dream: Too far? Sorry.
George: It’s ok. That’s my fault, I got distracted.
Dream: Still feeling sick?
George: Something like that.
Dream: Well, seriously, feel better. You should probably go to sleep, get some rest. You know?
George: Yeah, probably. Thanks.
Dream: No problem, Georgie! :)
George: :]
He’s thankful that Dream doesn’t respond to that. Relief washes over the Brit, if only for a split second. He wishes he could reach out and hold onto that feeling, but it’s gone as soon as it appears. The tightness in his throat remains in its wake and George swallows his own saliva about a billion times in a futile attempt to loosen it. Unsurprisingly, it does nothing.
The quiet of his room is lonely. The cold air settles onto his skin like a blanket, sending a shiver down his spine. George sits up weakly and tugs the covers over himself as if it could protect him from anything, from his feelings. Hatred stills on the tip of his tongue as tears well up in his eyes again. George has gone through this so many times. Too many.
The dam breaks, sending wretched sobs from the base of his throat and out his swollen lips. He tries to bite back the sounds, hold every stray piece of himself in place, but he can’t; he shatters for Dream and it's so easy that he thinks maybe he’s been broken from the start.
※ ※ ※
George finds himself in the hospital waiting room one day. Dates are mere numbers and months mere words. He’s uncertain of how long has passed or if time has passed at all, but the tightness in his chest is a clear sign of the coiling stems rooted in his lungs. They’ve grown, which is a clear enough message that time has indeed been passing as usual.
A type of usual he’s thrown away in favor of these emotions.
His name is called and he stands, wearily, following the nurse into the office. He sits inside blinding white walls, alone, in silence, for however long before a doctor waltzes in.
“George?” The man asks.
George nods. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Great.”
It’s all a blur, honestly, the entire checkup. He asks and answers, then suddenly he’s standing outside in front of the entrance. The wind rustles through his jacket and George pulls it closer against his body as he heads down the sidewalk. His feet carry him all the way home, through harsh cold and numbing pain. It comes as a shock, even to him, when he only has to stop a few times to spit up full flowers and toss them into whatever shrubbery he could find along the way.
By now he was coughing them up regularly; it was a schedule, almost. George couldn’t bring himself to throw away all of them either, so he took to potting them around his house instead. Vases lined the windowsills and practically every other flat surface in sight; red petals drip color down into the clear water below.
He collapses on his bed before he even realizes it, exhaustion seeping into every inch of his body. He doesn’t bother taking off his overcoat or his shoes, instead opting to ignore the flaring pain crawling up his throat as he pulls his phone from his pocket. The screen is too bright at first and George winces, squinting, before he lowers it. There’s a multitude of messages that dip past the bottom of the screen, but he can’t bring himself to read any of them. It feels like just yesterday he was chatting with Dream, but it also feels like forever. Some part of him, left deep and buried, misses his best friend—the man he loves.
Navigating to his contact shouldn’t be so hard when he only has about five people in there anyway, but he clicks about tiredly until the call is going and his screen darkens. It rings a few times, low and quiet, before the slight click signals that someone has picked up.
“Oh my god, George?”
George blinks, rubbing away the physical manifestation of his tiredness from his eyes. “Sapnap?” He croaks, his voice sounding raw, scratchy, and overused. It’s not, really.
“Dude,” Sapnap’s voice is just quieter than screaming and George slinks back into the sheets he’s pulled over himself, “where the hell have you been? You’ve been ignoring us—everyone—for like a month!”
A month? That doesn’t sound right, he reasons with himself. It’s...it has to have been only a few days. There’s no way.
“I’m sorry,” the Brit says instead, because he knows Sapnap won’t take his bullshit as an excuse.
“Are you okay?” Sapnap’s tone suddenly drops, low and concerned. Through the tinny speaker of his phone he sounds, somewhat, if George reaches hard enough, like Dream.
The flowers pour out of him, coughing and hacking out petals and blood onto the mattress under him. He has half a mind to pull himself up at the very least, but George’s limbs will only do that much. He struggles to force himself away from the call and into the bathroom this time.
“George? George, fuck, what’s happening? Please, George, are you alright? Answer me so I know you’re okay, please.”
“I’m,” George chokes out, “fine.” He’s not, he knows that well enough, but if he hisses the words out through the pain he can at least try and convince Sapnap—convince himself.
“George,” Sapnap starts, “turn on your fucking camera. Now.” At that, the younger man turns on his own, the screen of George’s phone flickering for a second to adjust the brightness of the room behind him. His face is painted in worry, eyebrows creased and lips folded neatly into a frown. George almost laughs, but another coughing gag stops him.
He does as he’s told, even if he doesn’t want to; George knows Sapnap is stubborn to a fault and he won’t let it go if the older man doesn’t turn on his camera, so he does just that. He turns it on and keeps it face up on the bed, showing the pale white ceiling of his bedroom. That’s not what Sapnap wants, but he can’t prop it up or hold it up by himself with hands so shaky and blood dripping down his chin.
“George,” Sapnap says.
“I know,” George interrupts. “I know. Stop, I—I can’t right now. I can’t.”
“What the hell is going on? Please talk to me.”
Through another small fit of coughs, George picks up a bright red petal between his fingers and hesitantly moves his hand above his phone. “This is going on, Sapnap. I’m fucking—it won’t stop and it fucking hurts.”
Sapnap only looks more confused. “A petal? George, what does a fucking flower have to do with—?”
“I’m in love with Dream,” he blurts. The silence that follows is heavy and drags out another few flowers from his lungs.
“Oh,” is all Sapnap can manage.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why—why are you apologizing? You don’t need to apologize for that, George.”
“I do,” George murmurs pitifully, “because my love for him is what’s causing all of this. I don’t want to love him anymore, but I can’t stop and I just—I don’t know, Sapnap, I don’t know anything anymore.”
“George, you have to explain this, I don’t understand.”
George inhales shakily and drags his bottom lip under his teeth. “I’m dying,” he confesses. “I think. I’m tired all the time, I can’t remember the days passing anymore, I can’t even remember the last time I ate. All I can ever think about is throwing up these stupid flowers and the burning pain in my throat and lungs.” He pulls his hands up near his chest, clutching tightly at his wrist with one hand. “I sleep all the time. More than usual. I think I’ve slept through whole days now. I wake up in the middle of the night in coughing fits, throwing up blood all over myself as petals fall out of my mouth. I’m dying, Sapnap, I—I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying,” Sapnap says firmly after George finishes, but his words are shaking. “Have you gone to the hospital?”
“I just went today,” George mumbles, “but I don’t...remember much. I think he said something about having a week or so left.”
“A week? No, no, no, George, that’s not possible.” Sapnap takes a hand through his hair, the camera shaking as he paces around. “What the hell do you do, then? Are you just—can you not ever be in love if you want to live, then?”
The Brit squeezes his eyes shut and thinks for a moment, pulling back what bits and pieces he remembers the doctor telling him. “Um,” he says, “I think he said it’s a rare disease. Hana-something or other.”
“Hanahaki?” Sapnap offers. “The fucking fictional disease?”
“Feels real as shit.”
“George.”
“Sorry, ‘m not doing well.” George carefully rubs his fingers up and down his wrist. “Um, I guess so. I mean, what else could it be? I’m coughing up fucking flowers from my lungs, that’s...that’s what that is, isn’t it?”
“So, what?” Sapnap grits his teeth. “You either die or Dream returns your feelings?”
“Yeah, that sounds right. But, uh, there’s a third option.”
“Surgery.”
“Yeah,” George breathes. “It’s—it’s scary, but...I would live, probably. But I’d never—”
“—be able to love again,” the Texan finishes. “I know, we’ve read about a dozen of these scenarios before. Fuck, George, how the hell did you...how did it come to this?”
George laughs weakly. He hasn’t laughed in a long, long time. “I don’t know. Sorry.”
Sapnap is adamant on scolding him for his apologies. “Don’t be, dude, seriously. It’s not your fault.”
“It is, sort of. I fell in love with him.”
“You can’t control that sort of thing.”
“I wish I could. I could’ve tried harder.”
“To what?” Sapnap raises an eyebrow. “Hate him?”
“Maybe,” George offers bitterly. “Then I wouldn't be dying, now, would I?”
Sapnap falls into silence and George wants to apologize again, but he doesn’t—he can’t, really. The coughing starts again and his hands are stained with all the blood he’s choking out of himself. Every inhale burns more than the last as he spits out petals onto the bed sheets. Sapnap does his best to try and soothe him over the phone, but it’s not enough and they both know it. It’s never enough.
George just wants to fall asleep again and forget all of the pain.
※ ※ ※
Dream: I heard you talked to Sapnap. Did I do something wrong? I miss you.
Dream: I’m sorry.
“I can’t do it,” George whispers between quiet sobs. “I don’t want to die, but I...I can’t.” His hands tremble as they grip the rim of the bucket he holds between his thighs. The monitor stares a hole into him, green rings blinking every so often from the private call Sapnap and Dream are sharing at the moment. George knows he can join at any time—they would probably be thrilled to see him, hear him—but he’s unsure. It’s hard to breathe, let alone speak. Even the words he says to himself burn across his chest and pour liquid magma down his throat.
His tears trail salty tracks down his cheeks and he brings his hands up, tentatively, to wipe them away. Even gravity is working against him; the weight of the Brit’s arms feels heavier than life itself.
Sapnap: You should join.
George: I can’t.
Sapnap: So you’re just going to die?
George: Don’t. Don’t do this. Please.
Sapnap: George. Face fucking reality. He’s your only chance at living and not losing your ability to love.
George: You think I don’t know that? You think I want to be in this situation? I know, Sapnap. I fucking know that. You don’t understand how hard this is for me.
Sapnap: So this shit is harder than just escaping through death? Aren’t you going to think about how that would make him feel—how that would make me feel?
George: Stop.
Sapnap: George, you’re my best friend. You’re Dream’s best friend. Don’t leave us to deal with this alone.
George falters, sniffling and biting back sobs hard enough to draw blood from his bottom lip. It’s a taste he’s grown far too familiar with. Slowly, carefully, he continues.
George: Would you be able to fall in love with me?
Sapnap: What?
George: If you were in Dream’s shoes, would you be able to fall in love with me?
Sapnap: I’m not Dream. It’s not a matter of if I would be able to or not, it’s a matter of if he already is or not.
George: Has he talked to you?
His eyes flick upward and watch the colorful green rings around Dream and Sapnap’s icons light up and fade away again.
Sapnap: I would’ve told you if he had. Your life is more improtant to me than some stupid bro code.
George: Okay. Sorry.
Sapnap: It’s okay, George. It’s not your fault.
It is, George wants to say, but he keeps that to himself. He shuts off his phone, breath evening out now that he’s calmed down a bit. Talking with Sapnap eases his nerves, if only for a while. It’s nice to have a moment where his whole body doesn’t feel like it’s on fire. It doesn’t last long as his phone begins to vibrate in his hand and he looks up to notice that Sapnap and Dream have moved out of the voice chat and onto whatever.
He knows what Dream is doing, at the very least.
“Hello?” The screen of his phone darkens as George hits the green button, indicating the start of a call.
“Oh my god,” Dream says from the other end, “you answered.” He sounds impossibly soft and careful, as if he could startle George into hanging up. Maybe he could.
George feels a pant of guilt in his chest. “I did,” he returns simply. The Brit clears his throat as best as possible, but the sandpaper-like feeling remains. His voice sounds unlike himself, dry no matter how much water he drinks. Dream scoffs on the other end, sounding half-offended and half-relieved; George hadn’t realized how much he missed hearing that, even the simple breaths he caught from the other side of the line. He misses Dream, every inch of him.
“Did I do something?” The blond asks suddenly.
“What?” George freezes when he begins to feel the burn. The familiar burn he fucking hates, the one that is awful and horrible and every other sick word he can think of to describe it. His hands tighten around the bucket in his lap, ready to spill his guts into it when necessary. “How could—no, Dream, you...didn’t do anything. It was me.”
“What?” Dream echoes. “George, you didn’t do anything. At least, I don’t think you did. Are you alright?”
He pauses, furrowing his brow. “No,” he answers honestly, because he’s so tired of lying to Dream. It hurts to lie to Dream and George thinks it might hurt more to lie to him than the disease itself. “I’m not, Dream, I—I’m not, I’m scared, I don’t know what to do.” His hands tremble, flowers flooding into his throat and he begins to cough violently, spitting and gagging through the stems and petals. He cries, everything falling apart all at once.
“Hey, hey, George. Hey, don’t cry,” Dream attempts to soothe, his voice flowing over George like a blanket of honey. He wants to wrap himself up in it, but part of him refuses and keeps himself tangled in the guilt. “What’s going on? Can you tell me, please?”
“I can’t,” George whispers furiously, through coughing and spitting. “I can’t because it’s my fault, if I tell you then you’ll just—” He stills, inhaling a breath. “You’ll hate me,” he finishes after a moment.
The Brit can almost hear the way Dream’s face contorts into confusion and disbelief. “I could never hate you, George.”
“You will.”
“Do you really think I’m that much of an asshole?”
“Maybe I do. You’re such an asshole, Dream, I hate you.”
Dream pauses. “You don’t,” he says.
“I don’t,” George agrees. “I don’t hate you, that’s my fucking—that’s the problem, Dream. You’re killing me.”
“George, I don’t understand—I’m killing you?”
The older man’s shoulders shake as he lets out another sob. His knuckles turn white around the rim of the bucket, holding fast as if it were his lifeline. “I hate you.”
“George—”
“But I do hate you, Dream. I hate you so much that I can’t hate you. I hate that I can’t hate you,” George spills, breaking through every wall he’s put up until now. “I hate how you seem to know me like the back of your own hands. I hate how pushy you are and how affectionate you get. I hate how you make me so vulnerable, that you make me question everything I’ve known my entire life. I hate all of it, but I—I can’t hate it. I can’t hate it because I...love all of it. I love—I love you, Dream. And I hate it. I hate loving you.”
The call goes quiet after George presses his lips together and leans back against his chair. His chest still hurts, though part of him feels lighter for letting all of that out. A few petals push their way out of his mouth, this time smaller than before. Dream’s silence is deafening, but the brunet waits, impatiently, for an answer despite his urge to flee.
“I—” Dream starts slowly and George’s heart is hammering in his chest, “you love me, George?”
The brunet swallows any hesitation he has left. “I—I do. I love you, Dream. I love you so much that it hurts—it hurts so much.” Silently, he wonders if Dream really understands the weight of those words.
“Fuck, George.”
“You—you don’t have to reply. I—”
“What? No, no—George, oh my god.” Surprisingly, Dream doesn’t sound disgusted. He doesn’t sound angry, disappointed, or anything similar either. He sounds...relieved. George can practically feel the relief radiating off him, seeping into his own heart. “You’re such an idiot,” he says, and it sounds like it’s been layered in years of fondness and longing. “I love you too, George, you seriously are so...dense. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”
George can breathe again, air rushing into his lungs in one small gasp, his grip loosening on the bucket while his cheeks burn red like the anemones inside. “You do?” He asks, doubt leaking off every corner of the words. “You’re not lying? Like, actually?”
“I’m not lying!” Dream laughs and it’s like music to the Brit’s ears. “Did you, uh, really mean all that? Fuck, I mean, you totally did, you wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry, George, did I really fuck you up that bad?”
“You did,” George answers firmly, though the corners of his lips are pulling up way too hard for comfort. The stems rooted in his lungs seem to be retracting, shriveling up and dying and disappearing into the thin air and filling him with a sense of newfound appreciation for Dream, for life itself. “But it’s okay,” he continues, “because I don’t think I hate you anymore.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yup. ‘Cause now I’m not dying, I think. You might be helping me live now.”
“That almost sounds like a proposal,” the younger quips.
“This doesn’t feel real. I’m going to wake up in the morning and the stupid flowers are going to be back, aren’t they?”
“Flowers? What? Well, Georgie, I promise this is real. Not how I’d expect this to go, honestly, but...about as real as it can get.”
George hums quietly, shifting the bucket onto the side of his desk; it reeks, rightfully, and he’ll have to clean it up later, but for now he leans forward and holds out his phone, lightly tapping on the camera. “Hi,” he says.
Dream huffs a laugh before following suit. “Hi,” he replies and George is overjoyed to see that Dream’s smile is just as wide as his own. “You’re cute.”
“You’re handsome.”
“So you’re gonna flirt with me more now?” Dream raises a brow.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” George returns with a smug grin. It easily morphs into affectionate when Dream shifts and rests his head in the palm of his hand.
“You look exhausted.”
“I am, a little. Don’t wanna wake up, though.”
“George, I promise this is real.”
“That sounds like something a fake Dream would say. Oh, sweep me away into your precious little dreamland, Prince Dreamie,” he sing-songs. The blond rolls his eyes, but the way his eyes crinkle at the corners gives him away.
“You’re dumb. Why do I even like you?”
“Because you’re dumber.”
“Okay, fine, fair.”
“Can you say it again?”
Dream leans over to the side a bit more, just barely out of the camera view. “Say what?”
“That you love me,” George breathes. He loves the way Dream’s cheeks go pink; has he always blushed like that whenever they flirted, even as a joke? Was it ever really just a joke?
“I love you, George.”
George feels the giggle bubble up his chest and out his throat. “I think you’re actually going to kill me this time,” he whispers.