Chapter Text
It was a genius plan in Dream’s opinion. He’d struggled to get himself to glitch through the layer of bedrock, risking suffocation for this. And this, hopefully, would work in his favor. With a grin, he looks out onto the flat bedrock surface, listening to the George, Bad, and Sapnap grumble about how he was being annoying and that he should step through already and accept his defeat.
He rolled his eyes.
Honestly, those four should know better by now.
Well, it wasn’t as if they didn’t have reason to be confident. They’ve gotten extremely lucky up until this point with crazy good armor and close calls (thought the close calls were a thing that happened pretty regularly.) But to even entertain the thought that he would be obedient and step out like that?
Hah.
Dream could hear their taunts from his communicator, and he answers back with easy commentary, busy as he builds the second nether portal. He can already imagine the faces of disbelief that would paint his friends faces with his latest 9000 IQ stunt, as they’ve taken to calling these sorts of moments.
“I’ll come out,” Dream ‘concedes’ with a huff. “Just make sure that you’re nowhere near the portal.”
“Okay, of course,” Bad replies, sarcasm tinting his words. “Like, we’re not actually anywhere near the portals. You can come out.” And as if he couldn’t make it more obvious- “No, we’re like 500 blocks away.”
Dream, finally done with the last minute construction, almost barks a laugh at the obvious lie. Really, what could he do but call the man out on it?
“You’re probably right next to it.” Bad’s laugh is smothered, but still audible.
“N-no, we’re not.”
“You’re probably- you’re probably literally standing next to it.”
Digging out a flint and steel from his pockets, he lights the portal. The fire turning from red to a swirling, mesmerizing purple. Listening to them trying to convince him, it takes almost all he has to hold in the laugh as he says “okay… I’m coming out.”
The clinking of armor on the other side gives him the image of four figures, standing in front of a useless portal, waiting fruitlessly for him to step through as they ready their weapons. It’s entirely too amusing, really.
“I’m gonna come out~”
He steps out into sand.
“We are so far away, it’s crazy how far we are-”Bad tries once more, and yeah. It really is crazy how far away they probably are from him. The beauty of unrealized double meanings- unrivaled in its hilarity. With a laugh, he starts walking towards some random spiders.
He pulls up his coordinates, with a victorious smirk, cutting off whatever else the four were going to say next.
“I’m at 1450, -20.”
For a single moment, there’s silence on both ends of the line. A slight rustle as one of them probably raised their communicators to check just where they stood.
“Wait, there’s no way,” Bad says in disbelief, and Dream has seen his confused face enough to know he was probably squinting down at the numbers that definitely didn’t match the ones Dream had just freely given. Dream laughs, knowing the realization would hit in 3…
Another rustle.
2…
And then came the panic.
1.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sapnap says. “He’s actually in the Overworld!”
The jumble of voices as they rush to check the compasses they all held.
“Track him, track him, track him!” Sapnap urges.
“Wait, what? He’s like 800 blocks away!”
“How?”
“How did he get that far?”
“Did he build another portal?”
“He had to have.”
“You said -20?”
“Yeah-”
Waving off the shouting and confused questions, Dream decides to finally speak up, tapering off in his laughter.
“I’m ready to fight. Come and fight me.” Dream smirks. “I’m ready to fight you.”
“That’s like 800 blocks away,” Bad repeats once more, exhaustion coloring his voice as the realization of what they had to do hit him. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yeah, come fight me.” He swings his diamond axe around with vigor. “Come fight me, I’ll be waiting.”
The other four react accordingly, voices one on top of the other as they start making their way towards him, but Bad, like the dad of the group, speaks over them.
“So then, what else could he have gotten that he could kill us?” Silence as the other three hunters pause to think, because that was the question wasn’t it. They'd all gained enchanted armor, while Dream had been mostly busy in the nether with barely enough time to really obtain much in the way of weaponry and armor like theirs. “Is there anything he could have?”
“One thing,” Dream can’t help but answer. “Confidence.”
“Confidence?” Bad scoffs playfully. “Okay-“
“Ohh.” And the sass in Sapnaps response really just makes it all the better honestly.
“Okay that’s it, you’re going down mister.”
Dream looks up at the sky with another laugh. God help him, these bunch are just so entertaining. What would he do without them? He waits, listening to the background commentary as they sprint their way over. Soon enough, he hears-
“Ooh, there’s a portal! I see it, I see it.”
He zones out the rest of the probably hilarious commentary they continue to provide. He can check back later in the recordings if he wants to. For now, he looks around him, trying to see if he could spot the ragtag bunch.
And there they are in all their glory, running straight for him like maniacs, jumping into the river between them in a desperate attempt to reach him faster.
“Nevermind, I-I don’t want to fight anymore,” Dream says, walking backwards into the portal. “I don’t want to fight anymore!” he repeats, voice raising an octave.
He listens to them screaming at him as the teleportation magic work its charm. Strangely though, it isn’t working nearly as fast as normal, and Dream can feel actual panic rising in him as they close in on him- but now Dream isn’t sure whether he’s panicking at them, or panicking at the suddenly malfunctioning portal. Maybe making a portal on top of nether was a bad idea after all.
“Wait guys-“
Dream’s pretty sure something must have shown on his face despite the mask because all of a sudden Bad, Sapnap and George are speeding up- his best friends since however many years ago. He can’t blame Antfrost for not realizing that whatever was happening was now real- he hasn’t hunted with them long enough to realize the switch.
Before he teleports, a hand lands on his arms and-
They fall.
Dream wakes up to the strange taste and feeling of grass in his mouth. It’s not exactly the ideal way to wake up, though it’s not the first time it’s happened. The Manhunts last days after all, and if he doesn’t have a bed, well. You don’t need a bed to sleep.
With a slightly practiced routine, Dream pushes himself up, strangely sore, and spits out the earthy greenery invading his lips. But the feeling of arms sliding down and off him register, and in a half a second, he’s standing up right, staring down at the people who he calls his best friends. His best friends who look just as worse for the wear as he feels.
“What- what the fuck?”
As sudden as a dam cracking under pressure, the memories wash over him. The playful looks as they chased him turning to confusion, then horror. The sinking feeling in his gut when the teleportation doesn’t work as it’s supposed to, and the nausea that slammed into him when they started falling (falling? Why falling? They were supposed to land-)
The distant memories of a bedrock floor.
And oh fuck. Did Dream break the server? His own server? By trying to put a portal on top of the Nether, a place which shouldn’t have existed at all?
George, Sapnap, Bad. Why weren’t they waking up? They should have woken up already. Are they... are they even breathing?
“George? Pandas?” he tries, going to kneel next to them and giving them a soft, too soft pat on the cheek. “Bad?” His voice cracks, but he couldn’t care less because his friends are-
“Dream?” a groggy voice interrupts his spiraling panic. “Dream, what the hell is going on.”
Before another question could be asked, Sapnap is tackled back into the grass, groaning at the sudden loss of breath. “What the fuck?” Sapnap opens his eyes at the feeling of warm tears trailing down his neck. More awake, he puts a hand on the green hood of Dream’s sweater, twitching at the feeling of the other shaking.
“Dream,” Sapnap whispers, dragging the both of them up into a seated position. “Dream, why are you crying? Wait, shit, are you okay? What do I- Bad’s usually the guy to go for this, I don’t-“
Sapnap wraps his arms around him, and Dream practically crawls into his lap.
“I- I thought you-“
“Hey no, look, I’m fine, okay?” In a moment of indecision, he pushes Dream’s head against his chest. “You could, you can hear my heartbeat, right? I’m fine. I’m alive. Besides, if I died, I’m pretty sure I would have respawned anyways.”
Dream wants to tell him that not all worlds allowed for respawning. That if you died in some servers, all they left were bodies. That he had no idea where they were or if they could leave because he was too busy wondering if he’d just killed the people he’d come to consider family. Instead, he takes this moment of reprieve to listen to the steady, if slightly elevated thumping in Sapnap’s chest.
“What the hell is with this massive headache?”
Sapnap looked up to see George sitting up with a hand to his head, face scrunched in obvious pain and his goggles skewed towards the left. He was so obviously disoriented that Sapnap couldn’t help but snort.
“Stop laughing at my pain Snapmap.”
“I told you to stop calling me that-“
“Snapmap, Snapmap, Snapmap. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ll-“
“Can you muffins quiet down?” Bad interrupts their very important (childish) argument, yawning and stretching out. “I have a migraine- please.” And like scolded children, they do as he asks, though they don’t hesitate to stick their tongues out at each other in playful spite.
After a moment spent in silence, Bad finally blinks with awareness at Sapnap and George and-
“Oh muffins.” George looks at Bad, then follows his eyes to-
“Dream?”
Sapnap remembers just who he had in his arms, and slowly unraveled them, giving way to Dream, whose mask had fallen off at some point, teary-eyed and asleep. With gentle hands, he strokes the Blonde’s hair back. He’d almost forgotten Dream had decided to grow his hair out long enough to tie it into a small bun.
“What happened to him?” George asks, forgetting about the petty argument. “Is he alright?”
Bad, who quickly made his way over to the blonde, reaches out a hand to press against his neck with a quiet sigh of relief, before trailing his way up to wipe at a stray tear and up to his forehead. Sapnap, still as a rock, whispers quietly.
“Is he okay?”
“Don’t worry you muffins. He’s perfectly fine.” George huffs in relief before standing and making his way over to the rest of his friends, and Sapnap relaxes, tension leaving his shoulders. He resumes stroking through wavy blonde strands. “It looks like he’s exhausted, but with enough rest, he’ll be alright.”
“Okay. Right, that’s great. But do any of you know where we are?” George asks voice unusually quiet.
Bad and Sapnap share a look with each other, then down at the figure sleeping in the latter’s lap, and then at George. It’s clear none of them have a single clue as to what happened, and the only one that may have some sort of explanation is currently dead to the world, snoring softly away in Sapnap's lap.
“Right, we could hash this out later, you muffin heads.” Bad looks up at the rapidly darkening sky. “Let’s go back to the basics for now. We’re in the middle of a forest with no way out and it’s almost night. That means mobs, and that means we’re going to need some sort of shelter.”
“I can go get some wood and dirt. We’re in a forest, and it’ll be a quick shelter anyways,” George says, making his way to a nearby tree. “Sapnap, go find some coal to make some torches. We don’t need mobs spawning on us.” For a minute, the other looks ready to argue about being told what to do, but both of them turn to Dream, watching him shuffle uncomfortably in his sleep.
He sighs.
“I’ll go and try to find some wool too.”
Bad nods to both of them, smiling.
“I’ll keep an eye on this muffin here, and make sure he stays safe. We can’t afford to get sick right now after all.” With that, Sapnap turns Dream over to Bad, resting the blondes head in the hybrid’s lap. With a groan, he stretches his legs and arms out.
“Wow, Bad, what a slacker,” Sapnap laughs suddenly. “Not doing anything and using Dream as an excuse?”
“What? No! Of course not Sapnap-“
George catches on with a snicker.
“BadBoyHalo, how could you? Treating us like we're your little bitches.” George covered his mouth dramatically. “How evil could you get?”
“Oh my goodness, language!”
They both guffaw as they go their separate ways to get the items needed, leaving Bad to splutter while trying not to wake Dream up.
“You! You- you muffin heads!”
He shakes his head in mock despair and turns on his communicator to listen to their idle humming as they work.
In complete honesty, he can’t help but feel grateful to the two, because Bad knows what they’re doing. Joking as if nothing was wrong and allowing him a sense of normalcy in the confusion. He appreciates it, really- if not for the crude ways they delivered it.
With a sigh, he positions both himself and Dream more comfortably, resting his hand in the younger man’s forehead- an easy way to monitor him- while keeping an eye out for any mobs nearby. The future might be looking a little bleak at the moment, but he was sure they’d get through it, whatever this was.
Bad is sure of it.