Chapter Text
It wasn’t a secret that George had trouble calling his friends by their real names. He didn’t really know why it was such a big deal to him. Dream was Dream, Sapnap was Sapnap, Bad was Bad, and so on.
It shifted a little, and at the same time not at all, after getting to know Quackity. He insisted on George using the two interchangeably, especially after he met up with Karl. Alex had strong-armed him into referring to him by name off stream, threatening the leaking of embarrassing screenshots. Even then, the name Quackity came before Alex in his mind, just in case something slipped out on stream. It wouldn’t be as big a deal if he did the same with Sapnap or, god forbid, Dream, but for some reason he used the fans’ reaction to justify saying Quackity first.
Naturally, things changed after the long-awaited visit to Florida.
Sapnap is the one waiting for him in baggage claim at the airport. George spots him from a distance, right out of customs, wearing the blue hoodie he said he would be. George beelines towards him. His bags could wait on the conveyor.
He’s looking at his phone as George half-walks, half-runs in his direction. He looks up to scan the area, shifting on his feet. George could see Sapnap’s eyes pass right over him, then snap back when his brain caught up with his eyes.
Sapnap’s eyes go wide. Shoving his phone into his pocket, he begins weaving his way through the crowd. George isn’t nearly as patient. He starts not-so-gently shoving people aside as he makes his way towards one of his best friends. His best friend is making his way towards him in real life for the first time.
They don’t bother to slow down. With a huff of air, they collide with a hug for the first time ever. George laughs, high and breathless, as Sapnap clings to him in one of the tightest hugs he’s ever had.
“Sapnap,” George gasps into the other’s ear. “Hi.”
“Hi, George,” he says, voice muffled in George’s shoulder. Sapnap draws back from the hug with a grin, eyes scanning his face. George chooses not to comment on the glassy shine in green-grey eyes. “Call me Nick.”
George must have made a face at that to match the almost-disgust he felt. Sapnap laughs again, and George can feel the vibrations where Sapnap still has an arm around his shoulders. He scowls.
“C’mon, dude. You’ve gotta get used to it now. Can’t have anyone tackling us because you get lost at the store and try yelling ‘Sapnap’ or ‘Dream’ of all things.”
“Alright, alright,” George grimaces. Was this really going to be their first conversation face-to-face? “... Nick.”
“See! That wasn’t hard, was it? Now where are your bags? Clay’s probably bouncing off the walls by now.”
George barely keeps himself relaxed at the mention of Dream’s name. It was one thing meeting Sapnap, the younger brother he’d never had. He’d never been nervous about meeting him for the first time. It was another thing entirely to meet Dream .
Dream, who he’d spent so much time with. Dream, who he shares a career and a life with. Dream, who had been near tears when George and Sapnap had gently talked him out of waiting inside the airport, had instead agreed to sit nearby in the car waiting for the pair of them. Dream, who-
“George? Bags?” Sapnap elbows him in the ribs. George snaps out of his thoughts.
“Uhh, baggage claim four,” George recalls, stepping backwards slightly as he scanned the huge room. “Over there.”
Sapnap blinked. “You haven’t got them yet?”
“Not yet,” George says sheepishly, brushing a hand through the floppy hair on his forehead.
Sapnap rolls his eyes, lightly shoving at George’s shoulder. “Understandable. You’d want to see me first,” he teases gently.
George just shoves back at Sapnap with a smile.
In all of his jetlagged, freshly-off-a-nine-hour-flight glory, George bullies Sapnap into towing the two big suitcases he’d brought onto the plane. Sapnap caves quicker than George had anticipated with only cursory protest. He still had his carry-on backpack, containing his phone and laptop, which digs into his shoulders a little painfully.
He’d brought almost his entire wardrobe with him, which included old hype beast street clothes and shoes. Visiting Florida means that he’d be going out to the parks and doing all the tourist things eventually, and he’d need to wear clothes other than sweats and a t-shirt, and a hoodie from his own merch store.
The two cases rattle on the concrete as Sapnap pulls them both along. George is almost thankful for it, and the way the noise makes it almost impossible to think. With his exhaustion, and steadily increasing tension with every step they take, it was good not to think.
Sapnap had fallen quiet at his side. He’d always been good at picking up when George needed to talk, and when he didn’t. George has been incredibly lucky to have the younger in his life.
“There’s the car,” Sapnap points quietly across the car park. George spots it almost immediately, after all of the photos of it he’s seen. It’s a car George had heard a lot about.
The car is Dream’s. Dream is inside that car, mere meters away. From four thousand miles, to across a car park. George swallows. His footsteps speed up, and he draws ahead of Sapnap.
A car door opens.
George feels as if his feet have been glued to the ground. A tall blonde tumbles out of the back seat. The rest of the world blurs.
Dream has a hand on the car to stabilise himself. His head cranes round, and George could see the way his eyes grow wide and his face crumples .
George wills his legs to move. One moment, he is forcing his legs to step forward. The next, his face is buried in the centre of a warm chest. His arms wrap around Dream’s ribs, and arms encircle his shoulders in turn.
“George,” Dream murmurs into his hair. His voice is tight, choked.
“Hi, loser.”
Dream laughs. It's a little wet, but George's eyes are too. They’re warm, stinging. He refuses to let a tear fall. He’ll never hear the end of it if he does. At least they can’t see his eyes, with his face in Dream’s hoodie. He can feel the way Dream’s chest rises and falls, can feel the laughter seep into his own skin instead of just hearing through headphones. Dream’s warm breath dances across his scalp, and George shivers under the heat of the Florida sun.
He blinks, dazed, into Dream’s shirt.
“That's the first thing you say to me in person?” Dream asks, and his voice couldn’t be anything other than fond.
“Yes. You’re dumb”
It feels a little like his body had been filled with honey. Heart beating heavily to pump blood through the thickness of whatever was in his throat, in his heart. Whatever was stinging his eyes. Slow to bring his arms down from around Dream’s ribs, his limbs are sticky with it. They come to rest around Dream’s waist, fingers at the small of his back. He hopes, fleetingly, that it would be enough to keep Dream close to him.
George’s shoulders are being held tight. One hand is rubbing circles into his shoulder, the other spread across his back. He’s held tight, and breathes Dream in. He reminds George of the seaside town he used to visit every summer with his family: the sea, the sky, and grassy cliffs.
Everything melts away, then. The ache of his back and shoulders dissipates almost instantly. Any planes overhead pass unheard. The world may continue outside of them, but George’s life pauses in the moment.
He isn’t sure how long they stand there for, before he feels Dream let out an especially shaky breath into his hair. George leans back slightly, opening his eyes to examine Dream’s face.
He’s crying. Dream’s eyelashes are clumped together, the skin around his eyes damp. Reddened green eyes meet brown, before Dream tugs George back into his chest. Something pulls inside George’s chest, and it must show on his face as Dream clears his throat, face back in George’s hair. As slow as he can, George rubs a hand up and down Dream’s back.
“You alright?” George’s voice is quiet, little more than a hum.
“Ye- yeah. It’s just… It’s just a lot. Shit. Sorry.”
George lightly pinches Dream’s waist. “Don’t apologize. It’s fine.”
“I’m crying all over you after seeing you for five seconds,” Dream deadpans.
George snorts out a laugh. “I don’t mind.” He runs his hand up Dream's back again, yawning into his hoodie.
Dream must have heard it, felt it, because he pulls back, but not far. “You’re tired, come on.” His eyelashes are still jewelled with tears. He smiles despite that. His eyes crinkle, and George can’t think of anything more beautiful than Dream smiling, red-cheeked, under blue skies. “Sit down, give me your backpack.”
George shrugs his shoulders, letting the backpack slip off. He catches it with a hand as it falls, wrenching his already sore shoulders. It takes a great deal of willpower to step away from Dream, dropping his bag at the back of the car.
The exhaustion had well and truly caught up with him, he thinks, trying to keep the world around him in focus. Dream guides him into the back seat with a hand still on his shoulder.
“Did you sleep on the flight?” Dream asks him softly, leaning down in the doorway to keep eye contact. “How was it?”
“Didn’t sleep.” George answers. “It was loud. And I couldn’t.”
“George…” Dream’s face breaks out into a smile, contradicting the tone that he likely meant to be scolding.. “Sleep in the car on the way home.”
George smiles helplessly, even through a yawn. He scoots across to the other side of the car, behind the driver's seat, and slumps into the car door. It takes a long moment before he remembers to put his seatbelt on, struggling to clip it blindly in a foreign car. He feels the car bounce as Sapnap hefts a suitcase into the boot, seatbelt finally clicking.
“Yeah. On the way home,” he murmurs, just to himself.
He falls asleep before they even start the engine.
George is shaken awake what feels like five seconds later. Awareness comes back slowly. The warm hand shaking his knee, and then the crick in his neck. The sound of creaking leather, and the far-away noise of keys jangling.
“ ‘re we there?” George mumbles into the car door, lifting his head. He slowly fights his way out of sleep’s embrace, blinking heavily. Sapnap is kneeling in the passenger's seat, leaning between the front seats, watching him with an expression that George is too tired to decipher.
The driver’s seat is empty, the car door left open.
“Yep. Up you get,” Sapnap says easily. He spins around and opens his own door, climbing out of the car now that George is awake. The door shuts behind him with a slam, leaving George alone in the car.
Yawning widely, George stretches his limbs as best he can within the confines of the car, and briefly contemplates not getting out at all. Sure, he hadn’t been out of a confined space for more than an hour in the past twelve hours, but it would be worth it if he could fall back into unconsciousness.
In the end, the knowledge that these are his best friends and finally he’s with them wins out over his sleep-heavy eyelids. He slowly pushes open the car door, and blinks at the bright Florida sunlight.
The car had slowly been heating up without the AC powered by the engine, leaving George almost sweating.. The humidity of the air makes it almost hard to breathe, George more used to colder, dirtier London air.. That, combined with memories of Dream talking about his AC, finally spurs George to get out of the car and make his way inside.
He stands slowly on sleep-weak legs, a hand on the burning exterior of the car to keep him steady. Giving his legs time to wake up, he looks up to take in the house for the first time.
It looks like the American suburbia dream that every middle-age-woman aspires to , is the first thought through his head. With a large front garden and white picket fence, complete with a porch, he really can’t think of anything else. Sapnap and Dream had discussed the pros and cons of different houses, and settled upon this one. George already knew how many bedrooms (five) and bathrooms (four) it had.
Dream is in the doorway when he looks up. He’s watching George fumble around like a baby deer, but he's too tired to be embarrassed about it.
“I was coming to see if you’d actually woken up,” Dream says. “Aren’t you excited to see the house? To spend time with us?”
George glares, squinting in the sun. “Shut up.”
“Come on, now. That's not something that you should be saying to the person keeping a roof over your head.” He pushes off the doorframe, turning to move further into the house when George slowly makes his way up the driveway. Dream looks disapprovingly over his shoulder. “Mind the step.”
George trips over the step to the porch anyway.. Dream lets out a huff, steadying him with a hand on his arm. He toes off his shoes, kicking them over to the messy pile that contained Dream’s ancient, ratty Nike’s, and a much cleaner pair that George knew to be Sapnap’s.
He pauses, for a minute. In his sleep-addled brain, seeing their shoes together for the first time warms something inside his chest.
He’s being tugged through the house a second later, head spinning. Dream apparently got impatient with him staring at shoes. The hand on his arm burns. His attention narrows, drawn to that single point of contact. George wants to feel annoyed, he really does, but he can only blink slowly as Dream pushes him down into a seat.
“Sapnap and I have moved your cases to your room,” Dream tells him, stepping backwards and watching George sink into the couch with a little too much amusement. “Do you want anything? Water? A snack?”
George just hums leaning back onto the sofa and pressing his hands down. It’s soft, much softer than the car door or the plane seat. George would be half tempted to just close his eyes again, if not for the electric current thrumming under his skin keeping his heart pounding.
He’d met Dream and Sapnap. Hugged Dream and Sapnap, had Dream half crying in his hair. Is sitting in the house that Dream and Sapnap share, purchased with his own presence in mind.
Huh.
George takes the moment of quiet, likely one of the only ones he’d have for a while, to examine the space he’d found himself in. He’d seen the house many times, whether through a facetime tour or in the background of a snapchat, but that didn’t compare to actually being in the room. Feeling the cool air from the AC, and hearing Sapnap and Dream talking in the kitchen.
Feeling his tired mind slowly start processing things again instead of just letting thoughts flow through, he blinks slowly. He stretches out his limbs, legs straight and arms up in the air, flexes his fingers in that way that Dream always compares to a cat. Straightening up, he twists his back, satisfied by the cracks in his spine as he sinks back into the heavenly cushions at his back.
He looks over his shoulder as Sapnap returns to the sofas, energy drink in one hand and water in the other. He places the water on the coffee table in the centre of the room with a look towards George.
“This is yours,” he says, face serious. “Don’t spill it.”
“I was holding glasses before you were even born. Shut up,” He shoots back, a forearm over his eyes.
Dream follows Sapnap a second later with one of his fancy, reusable glass bottles dangling between his fingers. He flops down on the sofa across from George, sprawling gracefully with an arm dangling to the floor.
“I’m going to go shower,” Sapnap tells them, gesturing with his Monster can. “Don’t have crazy wild sex without me.”
“You know we’d wait for you if we could,” Dream retorts lazily. He tilts his head back into the sofa armrest to look at Sapnap with a raised eyebrow.
“You’re an asshole, Clay,” Sapnap snorts. He strides out of the room, and George hears him run up the stairs a few seconds later.
“Clay,” George raises his head to look between Dream and the door with a raised eyebrow. mocks a second later. “ Clay ,” he mocks.
“That's me.”
“So weird. Clay. Clay .” George makes a face, scrunching his nose. “No.”
Dream gasps, a hand rising to his chest. “You’re saying my name is weird? That's so rude, George!” His faux-offended expression breaks as soon as George shoots him a look, eyes sparkling as he grins.
“Yes. Your name is weird. You’re weird.”
“Do you hate me? Is that it?”
“Of course not!” George flails an arm as he pulls himself upright using the sofa arm with no small amount of effort.
The other sits up himself then, legs swinging off the sofa and onto the ground as he turns. He claps his hands together, and fixes George with a stare. “Then why won’t you say it?” Dream challenges.
“I can! I just don’t want to. It's weird.”
“Using my name is weird?”
“Yes! It is when I’ve been calling you Dream for six years,” George narrows his eyes, staring across the room. He could barely distinguish Dream’s figure from the sofa, seeing it all as one blur, but it’s the sentiment that counts.
George feels something, at the prospect of calling Dream by his name. He’d spent so long calling him Dream that he can’t fathom casually referring to Dream as Clay. He could only cringe whenever Twitch chat demanded it of him. Hearing Dream’s family in the background of calls and, more recently, Sapnap, calling him anything other than Dream gave him something akin to whiplash.
“Well you can’t call me Dream in public,” Dream shifts, relaxing backwards and kicking his feet back up onto the sofa. “Either people are going to recognise us, or just going to think I have a super fucking weird name.”
“That's offensive to people who are actually named Dream.”
“You’re such an idiot. It's literally my gamer tag, of course I’m going to think it's weird as a name.”
“Well as it's your gamertag, and I am a gamer friend, that's what I call you. If it's really that much of a problem, I just won’t say your name in public unless I really need to. And then I’ll call you by.. Clay.” George’s face scrunches up again. “See? Isn’t that so weird?”
“It is a little weird,” Dream admits grudgingly. “But if you called me that regularly instead of just as a meme then it wouldn’t be.”
George tilts his head, as if thinking. “Nope. It would still be weird.”
“Alright then, try it,” Dream sighs, exasperated. “No calling me Dream for the rest of the night.”
“Or what?” George raises an eyebrow. He’s too stubborn to back down from a challenge immediately, and Dream knows it.
“If you do, then you have to pay when we order food.” Not a bad punishment per say, the knowledge that he lost would be worse.
George crosses his arms. “And if I win?”
“I don’t know, I’ll buy you one thing that you want? From any store, as long as it's a physical store and not online,” Dream suggests with a shrug. “All you really need is the satisfaction anyway.”
“Fine,” George agrees grudgingly, huffing. But you’re going to lose.”
Dream glares. “Fine.”
“Fine!”
They fall into silence for a few minutes, both in their own separate worlds. George just stares at the ceiling. It’s been an overwhelming day, and at he just wants to sleep more than anything. He’s nearly slipped away, when he hears a familiar skittering across wooden floors.
George sits up straight with a gasp. He may not know that exact sound, but he knows what it means. Crawling to the other side of the sofa, he peeks over the armrest with wide eyes.
“Patches! Dr- Its Patches!”
Dream looks up too, and rolls off the sofa to his feet. The movement is smooth and quick. George looks away quickly as Dream stands from the squat he landed in. He fixes his eyes on the cat— Dream was right, she is small — in the doorway.
“Oh, right! George, meet Patches.” He changes his voice then, high and squeaky. The voice for pets and babies, and occasionally for teasing. “Patches, look! It’s George! Come say hi, baby.”
George would never admit the pure shock that shot through his body at that word before realisation sets in a second later.
He makes his way over slowly, crouching carefully beside Dream. He offers out a hand, back of his palm upwards, hand as still as he can hold it.
Patches crouches low to the floor, ears pointed at him, on high alert. Paw by paw, she creeps closer with careful steps. She raises her head as she sniffs his fingers, careful not to make contact. George barely breathes.
Patches pushes her head into George’s palm. His heart stops.
A second passes and she runs just as quickly as she appeared. She darts past George into the sitting room, settling onto the back of the couch that Dream had just vacated.
“Oh my god,” George breathes, raising the hand to his face. “She touched me!”
“She did!” When George looks over, Dream is tucking his phone into his pocket.
“Did you just take a picture?”
“For Twitter, when we tell them. Like the one I posted with Sapnap,” Dream explains. “I had to track her down and have Sapnap hold her in place for that, but she came up to you naturally!”
George’s eyes widen. He cares a disproportionate amount about being in Patches’ good books. “She likes me!”
“She likes you!” Dream cheers, getting to his feet. “She has good taste. It took days for her to stop hiding when Sapnap moved in.”
“I’m above Sapnap in Patches eyes, in the only way that matters,” George grins widely, looking up at Dream. He smiles back just as wide. George wills the blush away from his cheeks.
By the time Sapnap re-joins them, with dripping hair and a towel draped around his neck, they’d fallen back into old patterns of banter. Talking about nothing and everything at the same time, scrolling through their phones. Dream on twitter and George on TikTok.
While they’d done it a thousand times before, George found it better than ever. The difference, being four feet apart instead of four thousand miles, warms him right down to his toes. He still can’t quite wrap his head around it.
Sapnap flops down onto the single chair, propping up his feet on the pouffe. Or ottoman, as Sapnap yelled at him when he made the mistake of using the British term months ago. Dream and George’s conversation had reached an end, both of them a little too tired for the thought to keep it going while concentrating on something else.
“What are we doing?” Sapnap asks, head tipped back as he stares at the ceiling.
Dream doesn’t raise his eyes from his phone screen. “Chilling,” He replies simply.
Sapnap groans. “Are we just going to sit here in silence? Really? George is finally here and we sit on separate seats in silence.”
“Well, it's not like we’d be doing anything different if he wasn’t here,” Dream points out needlessly.
“Exactly!”
“What do you want us to do?” Dream lifts an eyebrow. “It’s too late to go out, and even if it wasn't, George has been half asleep all day.”
George glares clearly at Dream from across the room. “Fuck off.”
“Can we eat?” Sapnap asks in a whine, eyes pleading. “I’m hungry. We don’t have to go out for food or anything.”
“What's stopping you from getting an apple like you usually do?”
“Clay, I’m trying to be domestic . We can eat together! Cook together!”
“I just want to sleep,” George mutters. “This is torture.”
“If we let you sleep then you’ll be tired by noon and we won’t be able to do anything,” Dream says disapprovingly.
George groaned. “Drea- uh... ” He freezes. Backtracks.
He needs a word. Any word. Dream will never let him hear the end of it if he loses not even an hour after they made the bet.
“Dearest, let me sleep.”
What .
Dream blinks. Sapnap sits up, eyes wide. George lays back and prepares for the worst.
That was all his brain could spit out? Really?
Humiliation prickles down his spine and settles heavy in his stomach. Fuck, that was weird wasn’t it? Covering his eyes with a forearm, all he can do is wait for the inevitable response. He hopes it doesn’t end up with him back on a plane to the UK.
Dream bursts out laughing. Properly wheezing, bending over. The embarrassment fades, and he turns away to hide the reluctant, reflexive smile in response to Dream’ laughter. It’s good to hear it echo around the room instead of static through headphones. Yet another reminder that there’s a place for him in this house, in their lives, and George is left floundering.
“What? George, WHAT?” Dream cackles, struggling for air, one hand thumping the sofa. The other is around his ribs. George wonders if that's what he always looks like when he laughs, or if he moves differently when he giggles. He throws himself backwards against the cushions.
Patches leaps off the back cushions and darts out of the room. She must’ve been startled by the noise and the movement, on edge with a new person in the house. George watches her go, faintly disappointed, before turning to Dream with as much of a dirty look as he could muster. The momentary distraction couldn’t get George out of this situation.
“I didn’t call you Dream,” He points out, half proud of himself, half wanting to dig his own grave. He couldn’t do anything but double down, really. At least his voice remained steady.
“Sure, okay,” Dream chuckles, tilting his head backwards to catch George’s eye. “I’ll let that slide just for the recovery.”
“What the fuck is this?” Sapnap demands, crossing his legs under him. “Guys?”
“I bet George he couldn’t not call me Dream. Apparently that was his solution.”
George had slept for about an hour in over two days. So he wasn’t overly surprised with what his sleep-deprived brain decided to spit out.
“Bet you liked it more though,” He retorts.
Dream freezes in place, head slowly turning. He stares across the room, green-gold meeting brown. And he flushes bright red.
George rarely got to see Dream embarrassed. He’d heard it many times, and been able to see it through text. Seeing Dream bright-faced in the golden light through the huge windows, hair glowing around his face a little like a halo. And something George said had done that. He looked away sharply, over to Sapnap.
George swallows. He really was too tired to deal with this.
“George, what the hell?” Sapnap laughs. “You actually killed him.”
A faint smirk crosses George’s face. “Maybe I should keep doing it then,” he muses, looking at Dream out of the corner of his eye. He’s looking for a reaction more than anything. Could he make Dream go more red? Red enough for him to see the colour through his protanopia? “You said I couldn’t call you Dream, right?”
Dream only releases a strangled noise from the back of his throat. He brings his hands up to his face, hiding his blush.
“You’re such an idiot.” George can hear his smile behind his hands.
“Alright then, dear. Thank you for your input.”
“Oh my god.”
Sapnap had been watching them both with an eyebrow raised and crossed arms the whole time. That, more than anything else, finally brings heat to George’s own cheeks.
“Well that isn’t sus at all,” he declares, slapping his hands on his thighs. “Whatever. I’m hungry, so we’re cooking beef. And by we, I mean Dream and I. George, you can slice the vegetables or something. Set the table.”
Dream still hides behind his hands. “Do we get a say in this?” His voice is muffled.
“Absolutely not. Come on, losers.”
Sapnap leaps to his feet then, sliding over the arm of the chair instead of just walking around it like a regular human. There really was no getting out of something when Sapnap decided to be stubborn. If they didn’t aquise, he’d just get whiny. And while it did not persuade George in any way, it got annoying . And Sapnap knew it.
Dream and George exchange an exasperated look through the gaps in Dream’s fingers. Both of them still glowed with a blush, but got to their feet all the same.
“Come on,” Dream takes George by the shoulders and guides him into the kitchen. George finds it all too easy to let him.