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It’s nine in the morning when Dream goes to his audition screen test.
The role he’s auditioning for is an incredible opportunity to further his career; the character is the main protagonist of a television show for one of the biggest networks in the industry. Every actor Dream knows is practically foaming at the mouth to be cast.
There’s just one problem: George.
For the short time Dream has been in Hollywood, he already knows more about the young actor than he’d like. Twenty-four, moved from England, and an absolute sweetheart — at least, to the media. Off-camera, George is an absolute menace, always picking on and insulting Dream.
Dream and George see each other at nearly every audition, competing for the same few roles. This audition is no exception — except this time, they’ve luckily auditioned for two different characters.
Unluckily, the two characters are also lovers.
“Fuck you,” says Dream. He taps a foot impatiently on the soundstage floor. “I hate this. I hate it here.”
“You think you hate this?” George scoffs. “Try being me.”
“Are you two done,” the director complains, leaning back in her chair. “Can we go? Can we start now?”
George turns to the director and smiles sweetly. Dream rolls his eyes. “We’re all good.”
“Yep.” Dream grits his teeth. “All good.”
The slate is clapped down in front of the camera, and the director shouts an exasperated action.
It takes a few seconds for Dream to work himself up to deliver the first line. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and forces himself into character, trying his very hardest to pretend that anyone other than George is waiting for the scene to begin.
“I love you,” Dream says. He thinks it sounds unconvincing. “You know that, right?”
“I know. You tell me every day.”
George looks into his eyes with an expression of something artificially sweet. It’s much too uncomfortable for Dream’s taste, but as much as he’d like to, Dream doesn’t crack — he’d rather die than let George ruin his integrity as an actor.
“I need to,” Dream says. “How else are you supposed to know?”
“I have my ways.” George clicks his tongue and cocks his head to the side, like he’s scrutinizing Dream, like he knows the scene is making him twitch angrily on the inside.
But Dream shakes it off, and he forces out: “Do you love me?”
George laughs. “What do you think?”
“I think you do. I think you like me, I think you love me, but you’re too afraid to admit it,” Dream replies.
“You think you know me so well.” George averts his gaze. Bites his lip in deep thought.
Dream frowns. “I’ve known you for years,” he tries. “What’s holding you back?”
George doesn’t reply. Rather, he furrows his eyebrows and stares at Dream with an intensity that crackles between the two of them, invisible.
“Cut!” the director shouts, getting up out of her chair.
Dream shudders, trying to shake off the scene. George sighs dramatically loud and runs a hand through his hair.
The director claps down her hands, one on each of their shoulders. “You guys,” he breathes, “have chemistry.”
George recoils, cringing, and at the same time he and Dream say, “Chemistry?”
Dream gapes. “With him?” He jerks a thumb in George’s direction.
George swats his hand away. “I kind of thought that scene was… bad.”
“I can do better,” Dream pipes up. “Partner me with someone else and I’ll do better.”
“What is —”
“That’s all we need from you today,” the director interrupts. “We’ll call you with our decision by next week.”
“Great,” Dream says loudly.
“Great,” George repeats.
Dream shoots him a glare. George glares right back.
Dream gets the call when he’s sleeping in on a Sunday morning.
He rolls around in bed, rudely awakened by the sound of his incessantly vibrating phone. The cotton sheets rustle as he blindly grasps at his nightstand. Dream finally grabs hold of his phone and he rubs his eyes blearily, the bright screen hitting him in the face.
He reads the caller ID. His eyes widen, his body jolts awake, and he hurriedly presses the bright green accept button.
Dream clears his throat, voice raspy from sleep. “Hello?”
“Hi there, is this Dream?”
“Yes.” It comes out squeaky. He winces at the sound and tries again. “Yes.”
“Great. We wanted to let you know that you got the role. Congratulations!”
Dream mutes his microphone to shout a celebratory cheer. His voice goes hoarse, and it’s loud enough to wake up the neighbours, but Dream frankly doesn’t care. He deserves a bit of celebration, after all: his initial audition was packed full of other tall, dirty blond-haired guys, and beating them out for the role is an accomplishment worth yelling for.
Dream clears his throat and presses unmute.
“Hello?”
“Thank you so much,” he says, his grin audible through the call. “I’m excited to work with you guys.”
“We’re glad,” says the voice through the phone, and Dream is glad too.
Except Dream is anything but glad when he shows up to his meeting with all the big television executives and sees the cast. Or more specifically, George.
“You’re joking,” Dream deadpans as he walks into the conference room. “Why are you here?”
“I could say the same for you,” George snarks, swivelling in his chair. “You’re late. We were waiting for you. Everyone left to get their coffee.” He points a subtle finger out the window to the office bullpen. Business executives crowd around a frazzled-looking office assistant balancing three trays of Starbucks coffee.
Dream plops himself down in a chair as far as possible from George’s. “I can’t believe you were cast too.”
George wrinkles his nose. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, then shakes his head. “It’s because we have chemistry. Or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Dream echoes.
George is, putting it simply, annoying. To Dream, he’s a terror to work with, he’s sassy both on and off camera, and he’s not above making snide comments out of the blue.
Whatever the director interprets as chemistry is in truth sizzling anger, crackling and popping in the air.
The executives soon file back into the conference room, and Dream listens to them drone on and on about the show’s shooting schedule and how these two “fresh, attractive young actors will bring a new set of viewers to the network”. They’ll appeal to the demographic of young teens while being mature enough for millennials.
Or something like that. Dream isn’t really listening. He stares down at his lap and picks at the stitching on his hoodie sleeve. The meeting isn’t relevant to him in the slightest.
There’s muttering and delicate deliberation being passed back and forth across the large table. Dream snaps out of his thoughts — then snaps his head up.
Across the table, George is suppressing a yawn and aimlessly twirling a pen around in his fingers. He looks bored out of his mind, practically shrivelling into his seat — until his eyes glance up and meet Dream’s. George frowns a little and sits a little straighter in his chair.
Dream looks away. There’s no need to make an excuse, luckily — the sound of agreements and shuffling papers is distracting enough. A thick stack is slid in front of him, edges crisp and paper slightly warm, like it just came out of the printer. Dream reads the contract, once, twice, three times before he settles the pen on the bolded lines that decorate the last page.
He peeks across the table again. George is chewing at the inside of his cheek, eyes narrowed as he hovers his own pen over the paper. Looking almost unsure of himself, he tightens his grip, rests the tip of the pen on the paper, and then quickly scribbles down his signature. As soon as he’s done, George shoves the stack of papers away from him towards the centre of the table.
Dream frowns and stares down at his own paper. Signing the contract guarantees him the role and locks him into at least a few seasons of filming. Filming as his character, filming on set every day at the crack of dawn, filming romantic scenes with George. For a brief moment, Dream wants to deny the offer — but when is the next time he’s going to get a role like this?
Is he really going to let George stop him from his goals?
Dream shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. He presses the pen into the paper so hard, it nearly makes a hole — and signs. His signature is messily scrawled onto the page with black ink.
As they’re leaving the office building, stuck in the elevator together, Dream decides to speak up. “I guess we’re working together now.”
The elevator hums, and so does George. “I suppose we are.” The doors slide open, and as George steps out first, he adds, “Looking forward to it.”
The table read starts at twelve in the afternoon, but the clock reads eleven-thirty.
If there’s one thing about Dream that he knows about himself, it’s that he’s petty. George’s comment a few weeks ago about him being late to their meeting stuck with him for days. So he’s early for once, and the meeting room is completely empty.
The room is set up with three long tables organized into a boxy U shape. Plastic folding chairs are placed around the outer edge. In front of each seat, there’s a cardstock nameplate with the names of each actor and their respective character. Dream wanders around, looking for his name. When he finds it, his eyes quickly glance over at the other nameplates nearby.
Unfortunately, his seat is directly next to George.
Dream wanders back outside and peeks his head out the door. The hallway is completely empty and silent, save for the sound of a buzzing air conditioner. Stepping back inside, Dream picks up George’s name plate and scrutinizes it, as if his eyes are lying to him. But they’re telling the truth, and George’s name is there in neatly printed black text.
Dream walks across the room to the other side of the table, and he reads the names of the actors there. None of them are George, and frankly, that’s good enough for him. He picks up another nameplate and is about to switch them out for each other when —
“What are you doing?”
He whips around. George is standing in the doorway, a tote bag slung across one shoulder.
“Nothing,” Dream lies. He sets the nameplate back down and walks around the tables to sit in his seat.
Silently watching, Dream sees George stroll around, searching for his own name. When his back is turned, Dream subtly places George’s nameplate back where he found it, right next to his own.
George frowns a little when he sees where his seat is, but he settles into his chair with no complaints. It’s uncomfortable sitting next to him after nearly getting caught, so Dream angles his legs away from him slightly and doesn’t dare to speak first.
Soon after, the director, producers, screenwriters, and other cast members shuffle into the room. They chatter amongst themselves quietly. Dream flips through his script and highlights his lines in neon green.
Once everyone has found their seats, the cameras start rolling and the table read begins. Dream reads his lines with vigour, doing his best to capture his interpretation of the character. His fellow cast members do the same, and the producers take turns reading out the stage directions. It’s mostly uneventful, at first — until the script gets to a scene with just Dream and George.
Not wanting to seem unprofessional, Dream stares determinedly down at the papers in front of him. He desperately pretends that it’s not George’s name on the nameplate in front of him, not George’s voice replying to each of his lines, not George’s body sitting mere inches away from him.
It doesn’t work.
Dream sits in front of a massive mirror for his hair and makeup test.
Bright white lights illuminate his face. He looks different, he thinks — concealer covers his dark circles and blemishes, his eyebrows are more filled in, and bronzed powder makes his cheekbones more defined. His wavy hair has been sprayed and combed into what the hair stylist described as “effortlessly messy chic”. When Dream tilts his head in the mirror and tries hard not to smudge his foundation, he nearly doesn’t recognize his reflection.
George sits in the makeup chair next to him. Artists swarm around him, delicately tapping powder onto his face and brushing away the excess. When they break away, inspecting their work, Dream can get a better look of George’s reflection in the mirror.
He looks different too. George’s eyes are bolder, the scar on his eyebrow is filled in with pencil, and his hair is meticulously styled to hang slightly over his forehead.
One of the makeup artists sighs happily and rests their hands on the back of George’s chair, staring into the mirror. “Looks good?”
“Yeah,” says George, nodding. “Looks good.”
“Awesome. We’ll just have to see how it looks under the studio lights later,” they murmur, tapping their long fingernails against the chair’s soft faux leather. “You know, you two look so nice next to each other.”
Dream cranes his neck forward. “Us?”
“Of course,” the makeup artist says. They collect the plethora of makeup brushes on the table in front of the mirror, tucking them into their apron. “I think the casting director did a wonderful job.”
“Oh,” Dream sounds. “Why?”
The makeup artist laughs. “I just think you compliment each other. Kind of like… two sides of the same coin.”
“Right,” George says. “Thank you.”
The makeup artist leaves to wash the brushes in the back, and as soon as they’re out of earshot, Dream blurts out, “Makeup feels… weird.”
“You’ve never worn makeup for work before?” George asks accusingly. “How?”
“No, I have, and this looks good.” Dream examines his eyebrows in the mirror. “I don’t know. I’m just not used to it yet. It’s different,” he adds, “a good different.”
“Do you think I look like a good different?” George bats his eyelashes mockingly.
“Fuck off,” Dream dismisses. “You’re the worst. I’ll spray you with water or something and wash off all your makeup before they get to see it on camera.”
George scoffs and crosses his arms in his chair. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“I might.”
“You can try,” George counters, “but my makeup is waterproof.”
Dream narrows his eyes. “Fuck off,” he repeats, and swivels his chair ever so slightly away from George.
The makeup artist’s words hang in the air between them, hovering over their heads like a dark rain cloud. Dream doesn’t comment on it.
Filming takes place on a soundstage constructed to look like a studio apartment.
Filming also goes very, very badly.
“Cut!” the director shouts, rubbing her hand on her face. “You two are delivering your lines, but I’m just not feeling the emotion. You’re supposed to be flirty, not miserable.”
“Sorry,” Dream says. It’s his fault, at least partially. Filming with George has proven to be much more uncomfortable than expected. It was much easier during the audition, Dream thinks, when they didn’t have to spend so much time together.
“What happened to all the chemistry? The tension between you two?” The director sighs and waves a hand of dismissal. “Take a five minute break, and then we’ll come back and try again.”
Dream takes a swig of water and plops down in his chair. “That sucked ass.”
“What? The scene?” George asks, slipping into his own chair.
“No, your acting,” Dream retorts. “Yes, the scene,” he groans. “I don’t know why I’m having so much trouble.”
“Maybe it’s your acting,” George quips. He leans back into his chair and chews thoughtfully on an apple slice from the craft service table.
“Maybe it’s you,” Dream counters, taking another sip of water.
George scoffs. “What, Dream? Do I make you nervous? Do I make you mess up your lines?”
Dream scrunches up his face. “What the fuck — no,” he protests. “That’s not it at all, what the fuck?”
“What else would it be, then?”
“I told you,” Dream insists, “it’s your acting. It’s terrible. It pulls me out of the scene completely.”
George rolls his eyes. “If you think my acting is bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“I’ve seen it all, try me.”
Across the set, the director shouts, “That’s it!”
Dream whips around. The director’s face looks the happiest it’s been all day. She bounces towards them with an unseen vigour, eyes bright and movements energetic.
“What’s it?” Dream asks, confused.
“That’s it,” the director says, breathless, “that’s the energy I want from you two. Channel your flirting out of character,” she gestures with her hands, “into character.”
Dream blinks.
“I hate him,” George blurts.
“That’s not — we’re not flirting,” Dream stammers.
“Whatever you want to call it,” the director calms, “take whatever you have going on here and put it into your characters. We’ll start up again in two minutes.”
Dream watches, mouth agape, as the director strides back over to the lighting rig to speak with the crew.
“What the hell was she talking about?” Dream shrills. “What was that?”
George ticks up an eyebrow. “It was our supposed chemistry.”
“She’s ridiculous,” Dream says dismissively.
“She kind of has a point,” George suggests.
Dream curls up his lip, scrunches his nose. “What? How?”
A pause. “Nevermind.”
“No, what? Tell me,” Dream presses.
George sighs and shakes his head, looking at the ground. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, mouth screwed up in discontent, and Dream can nearly see the cogs turning in his head, until:
“How are we supposed to play our characters well if we can’t even act like we like each other?”
Dream takes a moment to ponder. The director has a point, in a way; they are on set, after all. Dream has a job to do.
“Fine,” he relents, “I’ll try it.”
When Dream and George both return to their spot markers and get ready for another take, Dream begrudgingly delivers his lines and reacts to the advances of George’s character with more banter.
He speaks with confidence; George replies with a teasing lilt. It’s a push-and-pull between their two characters, and their lines slot into place. Annoyance and discontent morphs into teasing remarks until they’re no longer recognizable.
If George was right, Dream doesn’t admit it.
Filming is moving along well, and Dream is getting more and more used to filming with George as his co-star. They aren’t friendly, exactly — they still deliver the occasional quip or rude remark — but things between them have simmered down dramatically.
Until Dream is scheduled to kiss George for the first time at four in the afternoon.
Or, as Dream likes to see it, Dream’s character is scheduled to kiss George’s character for the first time at four in the afternoon.
“I don’t want to do this,” he groans, hands over his eyes.
“You signed up for this,” George points out. “We both knew this was coming.”
“I know,” Dream whines, “but I haven’t mentally prepared myself.”
“What is there to mentally prepare yourself for?”
“You know what,” Dream snaps. He watches as the crew fiddles with the lighting and camera angles for their big kiss.
This scene takes place in a real park, completely cleared out of civilians for filming. Trees sway in the gentle wind, crew members discuss their instructions with hushed chatter. It’s the dead of night, Dream realizes, when he looks up and sees the moon winking at them from above.
“I don’t understand the big deal,” George says. “It’s acting. It’s not real. We’re… different with each other off camera, so why does it matter if we kiss?”
He’s right, though Dream won’t admit it. Stage kisses are normal. Common, even — and Dream has had his fair share of them.
So what’s there to stress about?
“It shouldn’t matter,” Dream replies, thinking out loud. “Because it’s our characters. Not us.”
“Exactly,” George says.
When the scene begins, Dream looks into George’s eyes and does his best to look completely and utterly enamoured. It’s easier acting with George now, delving into their lines and seeing each interaction as one between their characters rather than their real life selves, but Dream’s nervousness over their stage kiss casts dark shadows and hangs heavy above his mind.
“I love you,” Dream confesses. “You know that, right?”
George smiles wistfully. “Of course I know. You tell me every day.”
This time, they hold their eye contact strong. Dream looks into George’s eyes and sees admiration, sees tenderness, sees something yearning within, and he thinks that George’s acting is so good that it almost looks real.
“I need to tell you,” Dream says. “How else are you supposed to know?”
George tilts his head to the side and gives a wry smile. “I have my ways.”
“Do you love me?” Dream asks desperately.
George laughs. “What do you think?”
Dream narrows his eyes. “I think you do. I think you like me, I think you love me, but you’re too afraid to admit it.”
George shakes his head. “You think you know me so well,” he whispers.
“I’ve known you for years,” Dream rasps, voice cracking on the last word. “What’s holding you back?”
And then George breathes, “This,” and he surges forward to capture Dream’s lips in a kiss.
George is warm, and he’s gentle, and he buzzes under Dream’s touch like he’s charged with raw electricity.
There’s something beyond just acting between them this time, something that electrifies the air with harsh strikes of lightning. The invisible storm that thunders above them pours heavy; warm raindrops splatter hard, washing away the lines between real life and the scene.
George pulls back much too quickly, and Dream almost misses the feeling of kissing George. But the air remains energized, reverberating off of Dream’s thumping heart, and Dream thinks, fuck, because he was more than okay with kissing George for the scene.
Because he liked it.
He shouldn’t have liked it, Dream knows this much. He shouldn’t have enjoyed kissing George, the same George who calls him an asshole, the same George who he makes fun of in between scenes, the same George who he despises.
But that George is also the one who he has supposed chemistry with, the one who makes Dream feel electrified from the inside out, the one who makes long days on set just a little more bearable with his teasing remarks.
Dream’s head starts to feel hazy, blurred, humming with raw energy coursing out of every cell of his body, and it spins. His mind reels, still caught up in the emotions of the scene, like he’s still stuck inside the fictional world created by writers and directors and producers alike.
And as cloudy thoughts and blurred images begin to clear, Dream can see George’s eyes, lips, skin shimmering under the brightness of the stage lights. A new thought fades slowly into his mind.
Perhaps their supposed chemistry is real.
The director shouts, “Cut! That was incredible. Really great job to both of you. Let’s reset and we’ll take it up again from the top.”
Dream gulps. “How many more takes do we need?”
“I don’t know. Twenty to thirty, maybe more,” the director replies. “That was really good. Let’s try to keep that up for the rest of the takes.”
Filming goes on. Dream hopes that after twenty to thirty kisses, the static that clouds the air between them will dissipate. The initial buzz of a new kiss will be gone.
But after exactly thirty-three kisses, the buzz is still there. Dream wishes the director needed forty.
“Tilt your head a little to the left… No, too far, go back — perfect,” the photographer instructs.
In front of a black backdrop, Dream holds his shoulders back, arm muscles flexed, and jaw squared. He feels a little ridiculous posing so strangely in front of a camera, but the photographer had said something about a “power pose” to look intimidating for the camera. A laugh bubbles up in his throat with each click of the lens shutter, but he bites it back.
The photographer mutters to himself, scrolling through the shots on his laptop. “Let’s get the couple shots done now. Can someone get George?”
“I’m right here,” George speaks up. Dream can see him step up from the shadows in the corner of the studio.
“Okay, stand right there on the blue mark for me?” The photographer points to the floor, marked with blue duct tape to shape an X. Conveniently, it’s placed right next to Dream.
George shuffles over and stands a few inches off of his mark, but he’s still so close that Dream can feel the energy radiating off of him. His back faces Dream, standing stiffly.
“Uh, a little closer,” the photographer says.
George takes a tiny step back. “Like this?”
“Closer.”
He takes another step back, and George is in front of Dream, pressed up against him, bodies fitting together like a puzzle that Dream didn’t know existed. Under thin cotton tees, Dream feels his skin hum and fizz with energy.
Dream feels his muscles tense. George is standing stiffly in place, refusing to move. The easy comfort that Dream had felt around George while working is long gone, replaced with something that feels electrifying. He stares down at the back of George’s head and finds that he’s close enough to smell the shampoo he uses.
“Loosen up a little,” the photographer says. “You play a couple, right? You need to look comfortable with each other for these pictures.” His phone rings in his pocket, and when the photographer sees who’s calling, he sighs. “Hold that pose — I need to speak with someone.”
“We look kind of weird,” Dream whispers, low enough so that only George can hear it.
George laughs. “These poses are ridiculous. You looked so weird when you were posing by yourself earlier.”
Dream half-laughs, half-scoffs. “You’re going to have to pose weird, too.”
“But I get to laugh at you for now, right?”
“You’re so stupid, George,” Dream says, rolling his eyes.
He feels George wriggle his shoulders in front of him. “Why’d they have to make us stand so close?”
“I don’t know,” Dream replies. “We’re the main couple, I guess.”
George sighs. “I know.”
Dream bites his bottom lip and casts his gaze towards the floor. “It’s like you said. We do it all for the show, right?”
“Yeah,” George whispers back. “It’s acting.”
When the photographer comes back, George presses up closer against Dream and drapes an arm against his chest. The contact sends sparks up Dream’s spine; his head spins.
But it’s not real, Dream thinks bitterly, no matter how much he desperately wishes it was. It’s their characters. They’re doing it for the camera.
“So how did you both get cast?”
“It was a very interesting process,” Dream answers. “We did our individual auditions first, then callbacks, and finally a screen test with each other.”
They’re doing a quick interview with some Hollywood celebrity news company in the back lot of set. In the chair beside him, George nods in agreement.
“How is it, playing a couple together? Will we see any on screen kisses this season?” The interviewer asks, waggling her eyebrows.
“It’s… interesting,” George chimes. “No spoilers.”
“I’m told you have a lot of chemistry together on the show,” she says.
Dream laughs awkwardly. “We’ve been told the same. Everyone in the cast and crew is excited for you guys to see.”
The interviewer quickly checks her notes, then glances back up. “Are you two close in real life? Have you gotten closer since filming?”
“Uh,” Dream sounds. “I — I think we have. George?”
George furrows his eyebrows. “We’ve definitely become closer during shooting more… intense scenes, I think.”
“Yeah,” Dream says, “and I — I think we’re much more comfortable with each other than before. I really admire George. As an actor. It’s been interesting working together.”
Dream doesn’t look over, but he can feel George shifting in his chair and fiddling with the buttons on his blazer. Had he said something wrong?
“How nice,” the interviewer says. “George?”
He coughs. “Yeah, I agree. What Dream said.”
Dream feels sick to his stomach when he inhales and feels that the air has turned foggy, muddled with unspoken words and silent thoughts. Whatever George has running through his head is unknown, and sourly, Dream hopes that it doesn’t stay that way.
At least, not forever.
Shooting ends soon after, and when the director shouts “that’s a wrap” on season one, the cast and crew break into a round of applause and happy tears. It’s bittersweet — happy that they’ve completed their project, yet sad that filming won’t resume until a year later, if their show even gets picked up for another season.
Dream rounds the hallway coming out of wardrobe when he comes across George walking out of hair and makeup.
“Hi,” Dream says, and he clears his throat. “I was just saying goodbye to the stylists.” He points backwards with his thumb.
“Me too,” George replies. “I mean, I was saying goodbye to the makeup artists.”
There’s a pause in the conversation. Dream picks at his nails and watches George shift between his two feet.
“I had —” Dream starts, at the same time that George says, “Are you —”
They cut each other off. “Oh, you go first,” George offers.
Dream gulps. “I had fun filming together. Thanks for being my co-star.” Dream means it genuinely. Stupidly, he waters the sentiment down when he shoots George an awkward thumbs up.
George laughs forcedly, but he replies with: “Thank you, you too.”
“No problem,” Dream says. “Did you… want to ask me something, George?”
“Yes, actually.” George rocks back and forth on his heels. “Are you coming to the wrap party tonight?”
“I think I’m obligated to stop by,” Dream jokes. It falls flat. “Since I’m the lead. And all that.”
“Right,” George says, nodding. “I’ll see you there.”
The party is held in a mansion located somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. Inside, the house is set up with neon strobe lights and booming music played by a DJ sat in the middle of the living room. It takes Dream a moment to get acquainted with his surroundings, walking deeper into the house and past tables of food and alcohol. An unfamiliar girl offers Dream a drink — he declines.
It’s overwhelmingly busy inside, air thick with sweat and the smell of liquor. Dream would bother to stay, show his face around for politeness’ sake, but he figures everyone is far too drunk to even remember if he shows up.
Somehow, he finds himself wandering up, up, up onto a balcony somewhere on the second floor. A cool breeze, common on summer nights like these, caresses his face as he sighs and looks over his surroundings. Far off in the distance sits the Hollywood sign, letters bright white amongst the darkness of the hills.
Things are different now than they were just ten months ago. Memories of the casting process and the scenes that Dream shot are all a jumbled blur — up until his first stage kiss with George. In a twisted way, it feels like he’s been painting a watercolour that’s been marred by thundering rain, forcing Dream to reframe and reconsider everything he’s done so far.
The glass door behind him slides open.
“Hello,” George says, stepping up beside him. “Can I stand here?”
“Go ahead,” Dream replies. He looks down at George’s hands, holding a glass filled with clear liquid. Ticking up an eyebrow, he asks, “Is that vodka?”
“No, just water.” George swirls the cup around. “I’m not a big drinker.”
“Me neither,” Dream says. He breathes in the night air, but it still feels stuffy. “It’s the end of an era, George,” he adds, after a moment.
“What kind of era?”
“Season one. Our show.” Dream fiddles with his shirt sleeves. “I can’t believe it’s already over.”
From the corner of his eye, George gives a small smile. “It went by fast, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, it did,” Dream says, a little nostalgic. “We went from… saying fuck you at auditions to saying fuck you on set.”
George smiles and shakes his head. “Why did we do that?”
“Heh,” Dream sounds, “I don’t know. I guess I was just… fed up of you making fun of me.”
“Making fun of you?” George frowns. “I thought you were making fun of me.”
“I made fun of you because you hated me.”
“You hated me first,” George points out, “and more. You said fuck you first. And you tried moving my seat at the table read. And you insulted my acting.”
“Fair,” Dream says, grinning. “I saw you at so many auditions before, I guess I just… saw you as a competitor.”
“We just hated each other for stupid reasons,” George concludes.
Crickets chirp in dry bushes. Thumping bass coming from the house reverberates off of the night air, and the stars seem to twinkle along to the beat. It’s all muffled by thickening clouds and foggy air.
“I’m sorry, George,” Dream blurts.
“For what?”
“For being a dick. You didn’t deserve it.”
George laughs and looks down at his fingers, gripping the railing. “I’m sorry too,” he says. “We were both dicks.”
“You more than me,” Dream quips.
George laughs, and Dream has been around him long enough, has heard it echoing around the set so often, that he knows this time, it’s real. It’s not for the show, not for their characters. It’s for them: Dream and George.
Sighing, George sets his cup down on the floor. He leans against the railing and looks at the view over the Hollywood Hills. “I… was actually wondering something.”
“Yeah?” Dream says, turning his head to face him. George looks pretty like this, Dream thinks, face lit up by the soft lights coming from inside.
“Did you mean it? During the interview?”
Whatever memories Dream had are long washed away. “I don’t remember what I said.”
“You said, you admire me as an actor and that you feel more comfortable with me. Did you mean it, or… was it just for the camera?” George says slowly, staring at Dream right in the eye.
For a moment, Dream doesn’t answer. He takes a deep breath and blinks hard, deciding what to say next. And then:
“I did mean it,” he confesses. “It can be… hard to tell the difference sometimes. Between work and real life.”
“It can be,” George says. “Sometimes the stuff that we do, even though we’re following a script and doing fifty different takes, it just feels real. Sometimes on set I feel like I’m doing what George would do instead of my character.”
“Getting into your character that much does that to a person,” Dream sighs. “I would know.”
“Know what?”
George asks like it’s the simplest thing in the world. He asks because he doesn’t know how much Dream wants to reach out right now and hold him, kiss him for real this time. No cameras, no studio lights, no one else watching. Just the two of them.
He looks down at his toes. “Nevermind.”
George tilts his head. “Dream?”
And then he’s right beside him, faces mere inches away from each other. From here, Dream can see the star-shaped freckles that dust George’s cheeks, his long eyelashes that frame treacherously deep brown eyes.
The air turns impossibly fuzzier.
Dream licks his lips. “George.”
They lean in at the same time, lips gently pressing together, and Dream feels his mouth go numb with electricity. He cups George’s cheek with one hand, steadies himself on the balcony railing with the other — George tangles his fingers in the hair at the base of Dream’s neck.
It feels like lightning, it feels like raw power coursing through Dream’s veins, and most importantly, it feels real.
Dream pulls back, breathless and lips glossy. He asks, just to make sure, “That wasn’t for the show, right?”
“No,” George breathes, and Dream can see the truthfulness in his eyes, the smallest of smiles playing across his lips, “that was for us.”