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Dream’s feet thud against the floor, his mother downstairs shouting at him to slow down. There’s few occasions for him to be this riled up, few occasions like today. Today the important occasion has now passed, 2:05 pm on August 13th. Dream has officially been alive for 16 years, and his skin will now show marks from his soulmate.
He throws his bedroom door open, door handle banging against the wall, and grins wide into the dark room. Dream doesn’t wait for the light to fully turn on, already making a dash for his desk. Earlier in the week, he had already set out the perfect pen to write on skin: dark ink, plenty of power to stain skin. He glances down at the list of pickup lines he wrote for himself, and clicks his pen a few times for luck.
This is to be the first thing his soulmate sees from him, and he wants it to be perfect. Dream writes out carefully in his blocky handwriting a simple Hello! I just turned 16, how are you? :) letting it stand bold against his skin. He falls back into the chair, watching as the wet ink dries.
Today Dream turns 16, and he writes to his soulmate for the first time.
Nothing.
He blinks slowly, watching the clock tick up to 2:07. There are plenty of reasons for a delayed response, it’s recommended to give it a day before deciding you’re the older soulmate. Dream opens discord, where Sapnap had promised to wait for news.
The call rings softly in his ears, in time with the blood pounding in his skull. Dream had worked this moment up his entire life, eager to talk to the person he’s fated to love. His gaze snaps up as he watches the call connect, Sapnap’s icon changing to active.
“Hey, Dream,” Sapnap starts hesitantly. He speaks slowly, as if deliberately choosing each word. “Anything interesting happen?”
“No,” he mutters, and pulls his legs up onto the chair. “Nothing.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responds, his voice unusually soft. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Dream shakes his head, and grits out a “not really” when he remembers that Sapnap can’t see him.
“Wanna play Minecraft then?” Sapnap offers an olive branch in Dream’s swirling mind. Playing required him to focus on the game, focus on his hand movements and the way the blocks shift on the screen. Dream doesn’t bother answering, knowing Sapnap would take the silence as him accepting.
Minecraft was a routine for the two friends; a way to unwind at the end of the day. Dream switches out of discord and opens Minecraft, choosing a server he and Sapnap used. It had a grand total of seven ugly houses littering the surface, all within a hundred blocks of spawn. The server was affectionately dubbed “H E L L #36,” not creative but consistent. Every casual server was HELL, numbered for posterity.
dreamxd joined the game
“Any inclinations?” Sapnap asks, his voice pretentious as he over enunciates the word.
“Thinking 36 today,” he says, still holding his thumb on the space bar. “Want to kill some shit.”
sapnap joined the game
They switch to creative almost immediately, building an awful arena with patches of completely different blocks. Dream stands and watches as Sapnap builds the walls, switching from endstone to redstone ore to obsidian to dark oak to sponge as he towers up into the ugliest build Dream has had the misfortune of seeing. After the arena gets enclosed, they suit themselves up, armor and tools, alongside a box of spawn eggs. Then it’s time for survival mode again; the boys taking turns spawning a shit ton of every hostile mob in the game.
Sapnap cackles as he sprints, head down as he spam clicks the ground. A line of llamas spawn where he’s been, and Dream wheezes alongside him. “WHAT?” he shouts. “WHAT!”
“Llamas! Hostile if provoked,” Sapnap clicks the last Llama, sitting on the back. “Provoke them dude!” Dream shifts between the bow and crossbow, checking the enchants. He holds the crossbow in his hand and quietly types out a command to give it Multishot. The line of Llamas had begun to migrate, with Sapnap still on the original llama, watching Dream’s avatar. Dream loads an arrow, holding it at Sapnap.
“DIE!” he shouts, watching as three arrows fly and each hitting Llamas. He reloads it as quickly as possible, before shooting the one Sapnap was on again. He wheezes, Sapnap’s frantic protesting to not kill Clarrisa. “I want that llama dead, motherfucker,” he chants out, voice rising as his grin widens.
Sapnap shrieks, the high pitched cry that always surprises Dream. “NO!”
Llama was shot by dreamwastaken
“What?” Dream mutters. “Since when does that show in chat?”
“It was tamed, you idiot!” Sapnap shouts. “Fuck you!”
Dream clicks on a llama, seeing red hearts after a moment. “Kill this one,” he says. “Let’s test it.”
All of the anger Sapnap had had about the llama Clarrisa disappeared as quickly as a diamond axe appeared in his hand. “I’ll kill the llama,” Sapnap grins, “then you!”
Dream wheezes, falling forward on the desk at Sapnap’s avatar. “Kill me, then!” he encourages. “Kill me!” he wheezes again, and he tilts his head dramatically even though Sapnap can’t see him.
“DIE!” echoes in his ears as Sapnap closes in, axe in hand. “DIE!” he repeats.
Dream grins as the death screen pops up, sagging in the chair with his hand on his heart. He glances down as he falls, staring at the writing on his arm. The quiet blanket of the room rips away, and for a moment he feels cold; a bucket of ice water poured on his head.
“Sapnap,” Dream whispers, staring at the words appearing on his arm.
“Yeah?” Sapnap mutters, unaware of the development. “What?”
“They’re writing right now.”
“Let’s go!” Sapnap cheers, voice cracking as he shouts. Dream listens to him cheer, smiling as the writing forms under his greeting. “Read me it, read me it!”
Dreams smile falters. The words are decidedly not romantic, and definitely not something to be remembered. Not in the slightest. “It just says ‘write me when youre legal.’”
“What?”
“Hold on, I’m asking how old they are,” Dream says, and Sapnap hums a response. They both sit, waiting for the response. “18, but almost 19,” he relays.
“Thats,” Sapnap pauses, thinking over the math. “Essentially a three year age gap. She’s got a point.”
“I’m gonna write ‘ can we at least get to know each other?’” Dream pauses to finish writing. “I shouldn’t have to be a legal adult just to talk to someone, right?”
“I don’t know, dude. She’s probably done with her first year of college, and you’re a sophomore in highschool? Waiting for you both to be legal adults makes sense.”
Dream gapes at the words forming on his arm. “ Yeah, does your mum want to talk to mine first? xx’. Why is that so aggressively british? ”
“British?” Sapnap shrieks, and laughs. “Your soulmate’s british?”
“This motherfucker,” he complains, grabbing the pen tightly in his hand. ‘ I want to talk to you.’
You’re not legal comes sprawling on his other arm seconds later. Dream responds immediately, shooting back Not even just getting to know each other?
The next response stops him, since his soulmate decided to write I’d like to get to know a legal adult since one day you’ll be sucking my dick in black pen on his hand.
Dream stares at it, the implications of the words refusing to sink in. Not even in the explicit implication- just the confirmation of something that he had never given much thought to. “Sapnap,” he starts, staring still at the words on his hand. “Would you like to know the sentence that just informed me that my soulmate is a guy?”
“Of course I would.”
“I’d like to get to know a legal adult since one day you’ll be sucking my dick.”
Sapnap howls, fist slamming against his desk. Dream can hear every static-y cackle from his mic, and he sits and waits for Sapnap to collect himself. “I like him a lot,” Sapnap says finally, voice faintly hysterical. “Like, a lot.”
“He just apologized for writing that.”
“No shit, he probably realized that you didn’t respond as quickly as you were. Probably figured it threw you off.”
Dream scratches out a you’re fine, good point underneath the apology. The response is instant, a simple ok. talk to me when you’re an adult.
“Sapnap, what do I do now?” He stares at their conversation, only a few minutes of talking that managed to derail his plans. Not that he’d consider himself a romantic, but he’d wanted to flirt, to press, to do his best to fluster his soulmate. “I don’t even know his name!”
“You don’t have to share personal information, but you can still do stuff,” Sapnap pointed out. “Like, there’s nothing stopping you from telling him every time you shit.”
Dream considers that for a second. “What if he tells me to fuck off?”
“Not like he can stop you,” he says. “What’s he going to do, never look at his skin again?”
“He could!” Dream half-shouts, the possibility lodging into his brain. “I don’t want to make him hate me.”
“I think it could be endearing,” Sapnap mutters. “You’re sharing your bowel movements with him one day, then the next you’re sharing your lives together.”
“Whatever,” Dream shoots back, face red. He’s itching to move on now that his soulmate slammed the metaphorical door in his face. “Didn’t Bad want to try something on his server?”
Later that night, Dream will take a picture of each sentence written out on his arms. The list of pickup lines on his desk get thrown out, and the words on his arm erased. It’s a wonder his soulmate hasn’t gotten rid of them yet, and Dream tries not to resent him for making him be the one to erase their first conversation.
This was supposed to be an emotional conversation, tearful confessions of shared desires.
Instead he got the word dick scrawled in black pen on his arm.
Change is frequent- Dream revels in it. He wants to be better, be bigger, be known. Pushing aside all the soulmate shit will be fine. He’s got good friends as is, and Bad’s only finding more coders that work strangely well with him and Nick. He’ll be fine. Dream will be fine.
Things change when George enters the equation. Him and Dream immediately hit it off, agreeing on the practicality of Java and HTML. He doesn’t even notice him becoming a constant until Sapnap mentions them talking without Dream there.
They’re becoming a unit, and Dream gets excited about mundane things on the server again. George fits into a role he didn’t even notice, filling silences and making quick remarks that he hadn’t even considered. Him and Sapnap bicker incessantly, playful comments that leave Dream wheezing.
George is simply cool. Dream loves listening to him talk, and he manages to pick up on his mannerisms easily. He almost feels bad when the first thing out of his mouth is a shocked “Wait, you’re old?” after George mentioned being almost 20.
He doesn’t let himself connect any dots, doesn’t indulge the voice that points out that George is the right age, that George mentioned being short with his younger soulmate. Dream will not risk being wrong, even if he subconsciously keeps putting off writing to his soulmate once he hits 18.
Dream has always wanted to become a content creator. And now? He thinks he could do it. Garner some of his own fans, collab with Bad, and go from there. Him, George, and Sapnap make for an excellent trio and their dynamic could definitely garner fans. They’d work well with clips, many of their one liners making sense without context. With George, he could code anything they wanted for unique minecraft videos. He’s ready for it.
A year later and he’s pulling the pillow over his head, and stares at the Youtube comment: This guy needs to shut the fuck up and never post again LOL. He stares at the four likes it got, then clicks on the profile of leviackima69. There’s an oversaturated profile picture of some anime guy, and no subscribers, no videos. Dream clicks off of the profile and back to his own video.
It was doing alright, and all of his friends had reassured him that it was good. It would be- he had done his research. He had studied youtube’s algorithm. He was going to blow up. He had his friends beside him.
He stares at his blank arms, and takes a shuddering breath. A simple blue pen, the best he’d found for writing on skin, sat on his desk taunting him. There’s the scrap of paper that Dream uses to write to his soulmate, words that will never be written on skin, the lazy scrawl of when he wrote ‘some nights i wonder where you are’ above the phrase ‘what if you’re not him? I won’t know what to do.’
Dream uncaps the pen, and presses the tip against his wrist. Hello, he writes. Then, under it, I’ve been legal for a while now. Just wanted to understand myself before trying to understand you, if that makes sense. Something very big is about to happen to me, and I wanted to reach out before that. Can I get your name?
He panics the second he writes the last sentence, and half scrambles to erase it with a wet cloth. He’s got it held over his arm, water dripping on the fresh ink when the response shows up.
A messy scrawl, the same as all those years ago.
Hello, my name is George :]
Dream forgets how to breathe.
Sometimes I remember what I said to you (about you sucking my dick) and lose sleep, but I never wanted to rush you. Are you doing alright?
He holds a shaky hand over his wrist. George is a nice name. I’ve got a friend named that, so this might be awkward if you’ve got a friend named Clay who goes by Dream (me btw)
Dream doesn’t know what he wants as a response. It’s definitely not his phone lighting up with George’s contact picture.
“Dream?” George asks, voice shaky over the phone. “Is it you?”
“Yes,” he says, “it’s me.” Dream inhales, a deep shudder he feels with his entire being. He stumbles backwards, collapsing against a chair as he presses his phone into his ear. The pressure is slightly too much, the metal digging into his ear. He doesn’t care.
“We are so fucking stupid,” George mutters into the silence, and Dream nods a silent agreement. A dick forms on his arm. “Can you see my drawing?”
“This is a sweet moment,” Dream says, leaning his head on his shoulder. “Glad I’ve finally figured out who my soulmate is, and all that. Glad he’s drawn a fucking dick on my arm.”
George pauses in his drawing. “I could draw it on your face.”
“I could draw during a face cam stream,” Dream grins, ideas forming in his head. “Holy shit. I could do whatever I wanted and you wouldn’t even notice until too late.”
“I told you you’d be sucking my dick one day,” George gasps. “I don’t know how to apologize for that. That still haunts me.”
“It’s how I came out to Sapnap,” Dream offers, smiling at the memory. George makes a quiet questioning noise, so Dream relays the story. “It is a good memory, if that makes you feel better.”
“It does,” George says. “When I realized that I said that to a child I panicked.”
“To be fair, I was 16.”
“To be fair,” George mimics, “I was a legal adult and you were a minor. That’s technically illegal.”
“We’re soulmates though!”
Whatever quick retort George had been planning falls short as both boys actually process the situation. Dream’s face flushes as he stares at the dick on his arm, willing his mind not to go to worse places.
“What does that mean, being my soulmate?”
“You just will be my soulmate.”
“And then what happens?” George asks.
“Nothing,” Dream frowns. “We can’t do much long distance.”
“Yeah, we could,” George argues.
Dream pulls his phone back to stare at the screen, watching the numbers tick up as they remain on call. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Phone sex,” George deadpans. “Discord sexting. Minecraft chat sexting.”
He wheezes at his bluntness, almost dropping his phone as he shudders with laughter. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Depends,” George shoots back. “Are the socks on?”
“Ok, Sapnap,” Dream fires back. “Yeah, I’d sext the homies. What about it?”
There’s a sigh. “Can we not bring Sapnap up right now?” George asks.
Dream watches as George switches to facetime, and turns his camera on as well. “Good idea.”
George’s face floods his screen, and Dream tries not to let his mouth drop at the sight of him. They video call semi-regularly, both preferring seeing each other’s reactions if off stream, but it still jars him each time George answers with his beautifully dopey smile.
“Hello,” George says, grinning into the camera. He’s got the fucking red hoodie on, and Dream narrows his eyes at the sight. “Fancy a chat?”
He blinks at the exaggerated accent. “We’re soulmates, George. Like actual soulmates.”
George’s face softens, and Dream beams at him. “Soulmates!”
“Soulmates,” Dream repeats.
George looks away from the camera, and Dream watches as a few small hearts forms by the dick. It’s a nice touch, he supposes. “Soulmates,” George says again. “Why did you wait so long to write again?”
The tone shift is jarring, and Dream winces. “Part of it was the youtube thing, I wanted to be something first. Prove my maturity and capability. Part of it was you.”
“Was I too harsh?”
“No, like you before knowing we were soulmates,” Dream takes a deep breath. “I was always so fascinated with you? I guess? And like, I don’t know, you fit so easily into my life and I wanted to keep you there, so like, I guess I was worried. Worried that my soulmate wouldn’t be better than you. How could they be?”
George coos at the camera, a dramatic noise that makes Dream laugh. “How sweet, you liked me before knowing we were soulmates.”
There’s a pause, and Dream fidgets with his hoodie strings.
“I guess I may have liked you too,” George offers. “More recently, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” George confirms. “You had said some shit about how we were going to blow up together, and I just thought to myself ‘I'd follow him anywhere.’ I dunno, I realized a few things right then.”
“I seem to remember your response that night being ‘sure, I guess,’ you idiot,” Dream mutters, as he blinks back tears. George isn’t even looking at him, but he smiles ruefully at his face on screen. More hearts form on his arm, and Dream’s heart pangs at the drawings. George isn’t even saying anything, the bastard, just sending hearts as if they’re nothing, as if Dream hasn’t spent the last few years trying to convince himself they weren’t soulmates.
George looks up, and their eyes meet. Dream feels the tear sliding down his cheek, and he lets it stay. “Dream?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Dream confesses, heart warm. “I’m just really happy right now.”
He stares at George’s face on the screen, watching as his eyes dart between his game and the chat. The black sharpie sat dangerously in his hand, and he smiles to himself. George is winding down the stream, thanking the last few subs as Quackity and Karl continued whatever dumb bit they were doing. He’s waiting, waiting for the perfect moment to start drawing.
Then it happens.
George accidentally opens up an entire can of worms, and Quackity and Karl zero in on it immediately. He listens as George gets roasted for his british-ness, and uncaps the marker. Dream shakily draws a capital L on his forehead.
The stream has a delay, so he stares eagerly waiting for it to sync. George is staring fondly at the camera, a deadpan stare like he’s on The Office at the other two’s antics. Dream grins, there couldn’t have been any posing that worked better. A thick black line forms on his forehead, and George’s face doesn’t even drop. It’s not till a few seconds past, and by then the L is fully formed, that George catches himself in streamlabs and he reacts.
George disappears in a second, immediately shutting down his face cam. By now, both Quackity and Karl noticed the drawing and are howling in the background. Dream smugly caps the marker. It’s not like George can react much, without giving too much away.
“Georgie,” Quackity calls out. “What was that?”
“Gogy took an L!” Karl cackles.
“Gogy took an L!” Quackity repeats. They both giggle in the back of the stream, and Dream watches the frozen minecraft background. George still hadn’t returned.
“Fucking sharpie!” George shouts. “Why sharpie!”
This sends Quackity and Karl into another fit of laughter, and Dream’s phone lights up with a text from George. DREAM WTF is all it says, and Dream double taps it to like it.
“I’m going to end the stream here,” George says. “Sorry for this being abrupt, but someone doesn’t have basic human decency.”
“Gogy’s soulmate is a stan,” Karl coos, his voice annoyingly high pitched. “Manifesting the soulmate drawing a dick on stream one day?”
Quackity snorts, and drops into his Obama impression. “Manifesting Gogy’s twitch password.”
“Manifesting Gogy’s phone number!”
“Michelle, Gogy’s soulmate is going to leak Gogy’s di-”
George seemingly mutes them both, as Quackity gets abruptly cut off. There’s a deep sigh, and George flicks his camera on again. “Guys, I am not having a good time.” Dream wheezes at the sight. The L remains pristine, despite the red skin around it. Under it, there’s a new fuck off in George’s handwriting. “I sent a response back, don’t worry about it,” he deadpans, finger gesturing to the fuck off.
“And I think this is understandable, but I am going to end the stream now, raiding Foolish, alright? Bye guys!”
The incoming call from George a few minutes later is not a surprise. Dream answers with glee.
It’s a year or so before George can even try to get back at him, and when he does he manages to get Property of GOGY!! written before Dream notices. Rather than turning off the face cam, Dream merely grins. The fans know by now, so there’s no danger. He laughs out a simple “Yeah, true,” before continuing his stream.