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It starts when George moves in with them.
Sure, Dream had known George barely knew how to scramble eggs before they’d jumped through all the hoops to get him a visa, but he didn’t realise just how little he knew in the kitchen until he was faced with it. Georges somehow burned microwaved oatmeal, the acrid smell of burning food and the high-pitched whine of the fire alarm filling his ears. So Dream takes over breakfast duty indefinitely, and George is banned from the kitchen.
Dream has never prided himself on being a fantastic cook, but he knows enough. Their breakfast starts simple - fried eggs and crispy bacon and enough salt he can feel his mom’s worried sigh in his mind. George takes the first bite, soft egg yolk coating brown chewy strips of cured meat, and audibly moans at the taste.
“ So much better than microwaved porridge,” he praises, a grin from ear to ear as he mops up more egg yolk with an eye of bacon. He lifts it to his mouth, managing to get a drip of yolk on his chin as he bites down. Garbled around the food and chewing, he thanks Dream, bacon filling out his cheeks akin to a chipmunk.
Dream stares at George, happy and well-fed, grease on his fingers and coating his lips, and feels a part of his heart soar. “You’re welcome,” he says.
His own plate goes cold as he watches.
Dream branches out from simple breakfasts to slow-cooked dinners. It happens slowly, over the course of a few weeks and fewer failed oatmeal attempts. While he cooks breakfast, pancakes laced with bubbly edges, and hums along to the sounds of upbeat mood booster music, he follows a recipe for pulled pork. With the best barbeque sauce he could find, and the nicest shoulder roast the butcher had, he fills the kitchen with the smell of onion and chicken stock and bay leaves and thyme and caramel.
When George makes his way into the kitchen, he grumbles, voice gravelled from sleep, “Smells good in here.” Dream looks up from his position over the island counter at George. His left-hand rubs at the sleep in his eyes, the pink imprint of a hand still fading from his cheek from deep rest, while the other scratches at his stomach. The hand on his stomach pushes the blue cotton fabric of his shirt higher and higher, exposing the skin there. Beneath the smattering of dark hair between the waistband of his boxers and his navel, Dream’s eyes glue to the soft flesh he’s noticed growing softer since he started cooking breakfast for them both. He swallows against the lump in his throat, flails his tongue, dry and thick, in his mouth before finding the words.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, acknowledging George’s words, eyes unmoving from the roundness growing at George’s hips. He wonders what it would be like to feel it in his hands, wonders how he would have to press to feel his hip bones beneath the pillowed flesh.
George comes closer, hands retreating from their actions to lean against the island counter. He stretches his neck, looking into the crockpot to examine the contents. From the angle in front of Dream, he watches the neckline of George’s shirt hang, a clear shot through neck to hemline. He watches the way the pudge on his waist pools against the kitchen counter, hot flesh against cool marble.
“Pulled pork?” George’s voice fills his senses. “I hope you’re planning to make coleslaw too,” he ribs at Dream. He had no plans to. Burrito bowls called to him, with leafy greens and lighter carbs to help even it out.
“Of course,” he, instead, says. “What kind of cook do you take me for?”
He makes the dressing from scratch and covers the slaw in too much of it.
On a rainy Sunday, they sit in front of the television, the morning news droning on about how wet the week is going to be. Dream’s ankles are crossed, his feet on the coffee table in front of him. Dream has his phone in one hand, mindlessly scrolling through emails and missed messages. His forearm rests on George’s feet, pooled in his lap. Dream’s other hand holds George’s closest ankle, no plan or pattern of movement, just holding. George sprawls across the couch, a second bowl of cheerios cradled against his chest. His cheeks are fuller than they used to be, and his biceps fill out the sleeves of his t-shirts more.
“Dream?” George speaks up, voice quiet and vulnerable in the quiet hum of the morning. Dream looks up, an affirming noise vibrating through his chest. George looks to the bowl, lifts a spoon cradling soggy cheerios, and lets them fall into the bowl again, milk drops splattering against the sides of the bowl. “I’m feeling kind of homesick,” George murmurs, flexing his toes in Dream’s lap, embarrassment turning into a pink glow on his rounding cheeks. “Can we have a Sunday roast tonight?”
Dream pulls his feet from the table and reaches towards George. He pulls the bowl from his grasp and sets it on the light oak in front of him. He turns to George, pulling his hands up to hover in the air before slotting himself in the bowl’s place, wrapping his arms around George’s midsection, filled with cheerios and comfort and safety and love .
“Of course,” Dream whispers into the fabric of George’s hoodie.
It’s becoming a thing , he realises. Cooking for George isn’t just a safety and survival choice anymore.
When George sees the meal Dream makes, without fail, he sits up straighter, excited and grateful and happy . When he eats, he glows with an aura of yellow and sunshine and daisies that bloom on his shoulders. He lets out little grunts and groans of pleasure at each bite, flavour exploding on his tongue, filling the room and Dream’s ears like a hug. George is quiet, content, and satiated afterwards - warm and soft and sleepy. When he rests on the couch afterwards, his tummy, full from Dream’s food and love and affection, spills over the lip on the waistband of his basketball shorts, hidden beneath the shirt that progressively shrinks over his frame as the weeks go by.
It scares him when he realises what he’s doing - showing his love and his desire to protect and make sure George is comfortable and safe and loved by feeding him - it’s not intentional , but he’s willing to reap the benefits anyway.
George is streaming when he decides to indulge. He’s on his second channel, Geoguessr taking up most of his main monitor, Streamlabs running on the second monitor offset to the right. His camera is off, allowing him to curl comfortably, his knees tucked up on the chair and chin resting on them. His shorts have fallen up his legs, exposing the thickness there, spread further by his shins pressed against the underside of them. As Dream approaches George at his desk, he looks up, confusion on his face. George holds up a finger, signalling for Dream to stay wait a moment, before he moves his mouse and clicks a few times on his second monitor. His hands pull the headphones from his ears, his hair shaped to the strap across the top of his head.
“What’s up?” he asks, looking up at Dream with eyes alight with trust and adoration. Dream returns it, looking through thick lashes.
“Can I join in?” he asks, voice soft. His right-hand reaches for George without permission, coming to caress the skin of his jaw, thumb feeling the stubble, plump skin, and pin-prick scars that line his cheeks. George leans into it, his smile soft, outlined lips of chapped and bitten red, as his head tilts and eyes close.
“Okay,” he answers, barely audible through the quiet static of the fans on his PC. Were Dream not so hardwired to the sound of George’s voice by now, he might’ve missed it.
“Let me sit?” Dream requests. He wants to sit, for George to sit in his lap. He wants to pull him close and feel the way his soft flesh moves beneath his hands, feel the way it spills over his pants, feel the way his thighs spill over Dream’s own.
George seems taken aback, though. He blinks, nervous, and withdraws from Dream’s touch. A shameful flush covers his cheeks. George slouches in his seat, wrapping an arm around himself to hold his bicep and thumb at the skin there.
“I-I don’t want to break you,” George fights, words nervous and definitive all at once. Dream sighs a thing filled with love and disappointment and adoration.
“You’re an idiot,” he tells George, affection dripping from his words like the molasses he wants to spoon-feed George. “Let me sit on you, then,” he asks this time.
George is hesitant at this, but less so than the idea of sitting on Dream himself. He rotates his chair to face Dream, dropping his feet from the edge of the chair to let his thighs lay flat against the leather. His thighs spill to the sides of the chair and seam together in the centre. He unravels his arms, spreading them wide in anticipation for 6’6” of lanky limbs and boney elbows and hips to find themselves in his lap.
Dream dives in. He rests on his knees, bracketing George’s body in the chair, his butt cushioned on the pillowy softness of George’s thighs. Dream can feel the plumpness of George’s stomach where it spreads along the long leanness of his own. Dream burrows his face in George’s neck, as close as he can get, and lets the softness on George’s angular jaw press against his lips, a kiss pressed to the dark stubble there that makes it look sharper of an angle than it is.
George’s arms wrap around Dream to lock him into place, returning to his Geoguessr game, long since knocked out for inactivity. Dream feels safe here, surrounded by warmth and soft and the slivers of skin on skin. He stays quiet there, mouthing affections and compliments in between hints into his nestled position against George’s jaw.
“Sorry, guys,” George says when he unmutes to the stream. “Patches is crazy cuddly right now,” he covers, letting one hand run up and down the length of Dream’s back over the thick fabric of his hoodie. Dream burrows closer at the words, his long arms stretched far behind the chair where they rest around George’s shoulders, all gangly limbs from the soft embrace of George.
And later, when they retire to bed, Dream cuddles into George, pressing adoring kisses to the plush and pliant flesh of George’s abdomen and thighs, sucking bruises into the body he has filled with love and comfort and protection.