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“Is One Direction higher or lower than Justin Bieber?”
The call crackles. “Higher,” Dream answers, voice a low rasp.
George hums, clicking higher. An x-ed out circle appears on his screen, and an ad starts playing. “Wrong,” he says. “I thought you liked One Direction.”
“You know I do. We sang Night Changes together, remember?” Dream starts humming the song. The sound travels through his headphones and all around him, encasing him in soft vibrations and rumbling tones.
Nights like these are always the best – the ones where he can relax and chill out and act like he has no responsibilities. Their alt audience is small today, barely breaking twenty thousand, and they’re so calm. It’s like they're feeling the late night slump with them. Like they’re stuck in the hours between and are floating through the limbo, all half-lidded eyes and scratchy voices. It doesn’t matter that it’s really the middle of the day and there’s cars honking outside – it is George and Dream’s night, so it’s their night, too.
“Your ad’s over,” Dream tells him. George shakes his mouse, starts clicking options absently. The midday sun shines through his blinds, painting rays of light over his fingers and wrists and heavy eyes. He’s glad he chose not to do a facecam tonight. The chat doesn’t need to see him like this, not when they can already hear the sleep invading his voice.
It’s almost noon, and he really shouldn’t be up this late. He should’ve gone to bed hours ago, but then he checked Twitter, saw everyone begging for an alt stream, and he just couldn’t say no to them. So he booted up his computer, called Dream, and started streaming. Hours have passed since, full of muffled words and run-on sentences. Dream’s just as tired as him, but he won’t be the first to cave – he never is. He’s too competitive.
“George,” Dream sings out. “Are you still with me?”
George sits up straighter. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, blinking post-yawn tears out of his eyes. “I’m still here.”
“Chat thought you finally passed out,” Dream tells him. On its surface, it sounds like a tease, but George knows him better than that. He can hear the gentle concern, the worry laced between inflects and pauses. Dream has always worn his heart on his sleeve, but it’s nights like this where George feels he holds it in his hands, spread open in offering.
Nights are risky, and sleep deprivation only amplifies it.
They’ve long passed blurring vision and coherent sentences. They stopped reading chat ages ago, and quit responding to it even earlier than that. On the rare occasion George actually stops and reads it, he doesn’t see any messages. He doesn't see people cursing his name or yelling at him for wasting their time. He only sees love, and support, and the repeated idea that the chat is third-wheeling. George doesn’t think they’re right, but they’re not wrong, either.
“Haven’t fallen asleep yet. What about you, Dream? How are you feeling?”
“Wide awake,” Dream says, quiet and muffled.
George clicks out of The Higher Lower Game, opens Slither.io instead. “Are you in bed?” he asks, dragging his snake across the screen lazily. It grows, bit by bit, until a much larger snake comes and bumps it, sending yellow-blue dots flying.
“I am,” Dream answers.
George clicks play again, and says, “Let me see.”
Night time, forever making fools of them all.
George does not slip up often, and especially not while on stream. The closest he gets is during Jackbox, when the games are full of pandering and mom jokes. He prefers to keep those words to himself, held in close, where no one can see or hear or judge. He does not speak them into an empty bedroom when he should be asleep, in front of an audience of twenty thousand and climbing. In front of Dream himself.
George hears the inhale on the other side of the call, then a dull click. His phone buzzes once, and he picks it up even as another snake cuts him off and ends his game. He clicks open the message and sees Dream. Blond hair, messy on his pillow. Tired eyes, squinted against the flash that has lit his face white and soft. George can see the freckles sprawled across his cheeks, pressed into his skin like stars in the sky. His lips look flushed, and bitten, and partly hidden by fur.
“Is that Patches?” he asks, still staring at his phone, even as Slither.io’s Game Over looms over him. When he sees Dream, all sprawled hair and sleepy eyes, it’s easy to forget there’s a stream going on at all.
“Mhm,” Dream hums, and George feels that familiar heat dance over his skin, pressing in close like a much-needed hug. “She misses Cat.”
George laughs. “She’s never met Cat.”
“Well, she misses him anyway,” Dream says. There’s silence, then: “Chat thinks I’m projecting onto her.”
George shifts in his seat. “Are you?”
Dream’s voice is close in his ears, like he’s right beside George. “Maybe,” he answers. Shivers run all the way up George’s spine and through his bones, bouncing and echoing until he is made of feeling only.
Nights are risky.
Nights are dangerous.
The later they stay up, the more George’s control slips, and the worse Dream’s mouth becomes. The thing about Dream is that he pushes, and normally it’s okay. Normally George can handle it. But not at night, not when the fans are ignored and Dream’s voice is rough and his words are mostly slurred. Even when there’s only twenty thousand people watching, he still puts on a show, and sometimes it gets to the point where George doesn’t know if it’s a show at all. It feels real.
For the most part, they are the same off screen as they are on. They are quick, and flirty, and love-coded. But night time changes things, turns half-hearted jabs into sleepy confessions, unassuming in nature but lethal when touched, like a blade. George holds one end, Dream holds the other, and they both wait for it to fall, to slip, to stab. Into one, through the other – it doesn’t matter who bleeds first. Where one goes, the other follows, and right now George feels himself being tugged along. But there’s a lead in his own hand, too, coaxing and pulling and sending them both into that place they only ever reach during late night calls and early morning alt streams.
The fans always love these late night streams for the same reason why George hates them. Their friendship opens for the screen as George himself implodes, trapped by tea-kettle laughs and muffled words and maybes.
“You’ve been on that Game Over screen for three minutes now,” Dream reminds. “It’s late.”
“It is,” George says, and clicks off his phone. He starts playing Slither.io again, even as Dream sighs in his ear.
“We’re gonna get out of sync,” Dream tells him, close and private. George’s hand freezes on his mouse. Another snake comes over and kills him, and he still does not move.
“Not if we go to sleep right now.” Is this conceding? George does not know, but the fuzzy feeling in his head forces him not to care. He doesn’t know if it’s caused by the lack of sleep or Dream or some terrible combination of both. He only knows that it holds him tight, trapping him like a fly in a web, keeping him close and powerless amid total destruction.
Dream laughs, all breath. “Right now?”
“Why not?”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not?” George says again, and closes the tab for Slither.io. “Bye, everyone! Thanks for hanging out with Dream and I.” With a click, the stream is over, and the tab is closed entirely.
“Twitter’s gonna have a field day with that,” Dream says, sounding like he’s smiling.
“Probably,” George confirms, switching off the lights on his keyboard.
“Are you really going to sleep right now?”
“Are you?” he asks back, and exits the Discord call. He’s halfway to his bed when his phone rings in his hand, lit up with the word Dream. He answers the Facetime and sees Dream looking at him, dim and hidden.
“You hung up on me,” he says, pouting.
George crawls into bed, pulls the covers right to his shoulders. “I was gonna call back.”
A smile appears on Dream’s lips, white teeth glinting in the dark. “I knew it,” he whispers, like it’s some secret, like George doesn’t fall asleep with him after every late night stream.
Night time makes George foolish, and selfish, and soft to the touch. Night time makes him lay in bed with his phone by his ear, listening to even breathing and gentle snores. Night time makes him feel in love, and feel loved back.
“Goodnight, George,” Dream says, and it sounds like so much more. It sounds like peace, and happiness, and friendship that isn’t friendship.
“Goodnight,” he murmurs back, and lets himself fall into a long-delayed sleep. Phone in hand, solid breaths in his ear – a boy on the brink of implosion.