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King’s time as a ruler rises and falls like the sun.
“I wasn’t— I wasn’t— I didn’t actually mean that I didn’t care about anything,” Dream reaches out to George with weak arms, stuttering with helpless syllables crashing into one another.
His concern for his lover is overlooked as George steps back, voice low, “Why did you say it then?”
Sapnap, their best friend, Dream’s brother, is standing by George with his sword drawn and stance poised, ready to jump at his brother and attack him the moment it falls necessary. Dream stares at what once was with an empty mind and fluid fingers, spaces between his digits webbed with silk string snapped down the middle and cascading down the chill air.
“Listen— listen—” he pleads, fingers trembling to steady the cobwebs of broken adoration that plagued his delicate palms, “the reason I'm even saying that George should step down as king is because I care about him.”
“I’m literally right here—” George yells at him incredulously, words sounding foreign as they chip and crack with the beginnings of a sandpaper throat, “I’m right here!”
“George, shh, shh. Shh,” Dream consoles, trying to step forward again and reach for him, but Sapnap steps in between them and doesn’t allow Dream to further hurt the brunet.
His mind feeds him with dark twisted words, yelling hatred for his lover in his melting brain, “All you care about is yourself!”
They’re all packed together on the prime path, thick shoes flat on sturdy oak and a crowd of guards surrounding them. They all look at George with pitiful, sunken eyes behind their onyx helmets and purple-hued weaponry. The stares are almost too much, burning holes into every crevice of his body and tearing him limb from limb under weeping gaze, almost like predator to prey.
A bout of dizziness swipes across George’s eyes and he gets the vaguest feeling of nostalgia with all the combined glares— d eja vu. His lithe fingers raise themselves into his view and he curls them experimentally.
Dream hates you.
“I love you, George,” Dream says, trying to push past Sapnap and embrace his lover, but the ebony-haired man doesn't relent his shielding and grunts as he pushes against him.
He’s lying.
“You’re lying,” George scoffs, pulling Sapnap back towards him by a hard grip on the shoulders and peeking at Dream from over his brother’s shoulder, “don’t come near me.”
“No! No, I swear I’m not!” Dream is helpless and tries to convey so through his porcelain second face, but can’t, “Sapnap, move, please, I need to talk to him.”
Sapnap goes to push Dream, but mistakenly gives him an opening as Dream does it first, moving him out of the way with a harsh shove and grabbing George by his pale wrist, “Please— let me just—” Dream pulls him to his chest and cradles the back of his head gently.
Tan fingers slide upwards from George’s nape and snatch the golden crown right off of his head. George cries out in shock and pulls back with a face of betrayal, above him his lover holds his own gift to him with sorrowful, dropped shoulders.
“You are sick, what is—” George’s eyes flit over to the crown in Dream’s hold and his words fall short on his tongue. His heavy breathing labours and he continues quietly, “wrong with you…?”
His reflection is blurred together, past recognition, his face is a swirl of brown and white, his features aren’t the right proportions and he’s surrounded by a fuzzy outline. He snatches the crown back and his eyes widen in horror as the world seems to stop around him, eyes fixated on his muddled reflection.
“What... “ he turns the crown over in his hands and snaps his head up to see Dream looking down at him with that daunting mask, “Why can’t I see myself?”
“Are you okay, George?” Dream gently pulls him back into his chest and rubs his back comfortingly. The older man rips himself from the hold and backs up with petrified eyes, bumping into Sapnap behind him who catches him and asks the same question.
“No, wait, this— this isn’t right… Where’s the…”
The world around him is off, buildings have disappeared as if they weren’t there to begin with, and the obsidian wall that surrounded L’Manburg had dissipated as the nation stands proud.
Wait, how did he know there was supposed to be an obsidian wall?
“No,” George scrambles out of Sapnap’s hold and shakes his head, “Where is he?”
“Who?” Dream asks gently.
“XD, where is he? I know he’s here.”
Dream speaks softly, like he’s consoling a child, “Who? George, get some rest, please—”
“Stop fucking lying to me! I’m not dumb, I know I’m dreaming, where is he?” George seethes, head whipping around to meet the deity in question but is met with nothing but concerned faces etched onto each guard.
“You’re confusing me, George,” his lover— ex-lover— approaches him, “Let’s go home and we can—” and George slaps him right across the face.
“Don’t. Tell me where he is or I end this dream myself.” George threatens, pulling Dream’s sword from its sheath and holding it up to his own neck, “Where the fuck is he?”
The fake world plunges into deep silence, dark threads of ellipses stretched across a loom and crafting the dream with as much accuracy as could be mustered, but ultimately failing as golden carvings can’t meet brown eyes with linear outlines of a former king.
The leaves stop rustling, and everyone falls still, save for George’s rapidly rising and falling chest. Mulberry creeps up his veins and his eyes fill with rage, ready to plunge the sword into his neck.
A voice speaks up from behind him, “George, put that down.”
George does so without second thought, blade clattering to the floor as he turns to face XD, “Get me out of here, please, I don’t want to be here.”
XD obeys immediately, and the world that was meticulously crafted by the god’s hand falls apart like shards of glass. This new world forms around them, and George watches as languid strings build up from their feet and reach upwards toward the heavens, careful in their movements and slowly forming strips of reality.
He doesn’t recognise this new place, but he likes it. It’s quiet and green, bushes and vines and trees clouding around him like mist. The floor is fresh and made of soft grass, thick and comfortable as XD brings them both to sit upon it at the base of a dark oak tree. He likes it here. He can hear the faraway chirps of birds and streams of water.
XD carefully pulls George’s back to his chest, bracketing his legs with his own and cages him in the hold with firm arms that wrap around his middle. George feels slightly uncomfortable to say the least, but allows the deity to hold him like he’s precious, he’s missed feeling loved.
“I saved you.” XD says and kisses behind George’s ear.
“You put me there to begin with. How is that saving me?”
“I didn't.” XD rubs George’s side, “You were having a bad dream, I heard you call me and came to save you.”
“Oh.”
You wouldn’t be anything without him.
“I’d be helpless if it weren’t for you,” George smiles, hearing that same voice in his head which only appears in his dreams. XD looks incredibly pleased with the sentence and tugs George as close as he can.
“I suppose that’s true,” XD gives George a smile of his own, “When you wake up, where would you like to go?”
George ponders as immortal lips drag on his cheek, placing a loving peck on the highest point of his cheekbone. Exactly where Dream used to kiss him. He sighs and falls back, getting comfortable against XD’s chest, “I want to see Sapnap.”
“What…?” XD whispers, sympathetic, “George, don’t you remember?”
“You know my memory has been getting bad.” George frowns, looking up at XD who looks almost worried to tell him, “What is it? Tell me, please.”
“You and Sapnap aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.”
What? George remembers Sapnap promising to stick with him throughout everything, and George remembers talking to him before he last went to bed. Well… He thinks he does.
“Wait, huh? But we… we were talking before I went to sleep.”
XD is confused, “No? You went to sleep alone.”
XD’s words trigger the recollection of that memory, and he suddenly remembers falling asleep in his little house, curled sadly in his sheets as he tries to hide from the cold weather. There was an empty mug beside him, and his pillow was soft and bearing a sinking head, dipping eyes and sheets encompassing his shivering body.
“I… Oh, I did.” George mutters, “Sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s okay,” XD smiles again, “Do you want to sleep here so that you wake up somewhere guarded? For me to keep you safe rather than having to call me again?”
George nods as he turns in the god’s hold, eyes drooping as he pushes his head into velvety green robes, two hands gently assuring him with delicate and slow rubs, “Yeah.”
“Sleep, then.” XD commands, and George’s head falls lax against his chest.
George is small in his immortal grasp, ever so breakable, ever so fragile. A poor muddled mind hid in the confines of tousled mahogany hair, melting into piles of uncertainty and forged memories. XD pulls his fingers from George’s mind and watches the careful sleep unravel before him.
Carefully he ties strings of doom in his gold-laced fingers and wraps them oh so carefully around the dimensions of the poor mortal's head, spinning silk thread with power-ridden digits and closing around George’s sleeping figure.
Influences of reality bind in ropes from XD’s crafting hands, seeping dangerous carmine into the human’s brain, nightmare growing familiar with every nook and cranny George has to offer and delving deep into igniting a scene worse than before.
As George furrows his gentle eyebrows and seems uncomfortable in his slumber, XD watches the new dream form with an omnipresent view, watching George stand lonely outside of the prison, realise something is off and call for him.
George knows that only XD can help him, only XD can free him from this endless loop of torture, dragged through hell and pulling himself back out to be met with a god’s hand ready to pull him up.
George wakes in his hold, and with a smile XD greets, “I saved you,” and kisses George’s cheek right where he knows Dream used to kiss him.
He loves him how he wants to be loved, and saves him after causing him internal turmoil, he puts him through the worst just to say that he’ll bring him to the best. And George trusts him, George offers a blind hand and sweet smiles, he offers building love and blooming dependency. He depends on XD, he wants to be with him when in danger, he wants to be saved by him, he trusts him.
How naive, XD thinks to himself, cherishing the angel in his hold. His smile grows, revelling in the trust the brunet hands him with open palms and readable eyes, soulful iris’ and pleads for a love he once felt.
George is so comfortable laying against his chest like this, remnants of a dream plaguing his half-awake eyes. The smile that the brunet provides is so pure, so genuine that XD wants to claim it as his own, to make George forget everyone and only remember him, to love him the way he loved Dream.
With jealousy-fuelled ambition on the tips of his fingers, he injects them into the man who’s staring up at him, grinning.
Tell me you’re glad I’m here to save you, XD discreetly plants in George’s mind.
“I’m so glad that you’re here to save me,” George smiles, under the influence that his thoughts are his own, that his bad dreams are his own, under the influence that XD will save him from all the terrors he manages to get stuck in, to free him from all of his bad dreams.
“I’ll always save you, George.”
And he’ll put George through an even fiery hell, an even hotter inferno that’s blazing with more memories and stabbing betrayals as the naive human crumbles his trust with anyone else and directs the pure certainty for XD, he’ll drag George across burning hot coals and blind eyes just to douse him in cool waters of relief and say, I saved you, just to earn his love.
“Thank you, XD.”
The deity places a saccharine kiss into George’s hair, “Of course.”