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The world isn’t fair.
George knows this to be true. Knows it more than anyone else—the world simply isn’t fair. He knew it when he had to crawl out of a burning house and into the arms of a man who did nothing but turn him into a child soldier. He knew it when he watched a kid just like him seemingly disappear from his faction—off he’d gone, “the winged kid” they called him, off to a better life. Any life outside of this was a better life, they’d all thought it then, but now? Now things were different.
George knew the world wasn’t fair when he held the “winged kid” in his arms in the middle of a forest, watched him bleed out onto leaves and flower petals stained red with what little was left of him and knew that the corpse in his arms had died long before this day. And hadn’t he, too? Hadn’t they all died once before? All that they had, all that was left, all that roamed the Earth and carried out orders—they are the walking dead. And if you could argue that there’s any form of life inside of them, inside of him, then George will insist that whatever life he supposedly had died the day the light filtered out of Dream’s eyes.
When the blond died, he’d taken every inch of George with him. Dream promised forever, in this life or the next, and he’s damn well holding true to his word because even though he isn’t here anymore, George is still tethered to his side. The world isn’t fucking fair—not to anyone, but especially not to them.
It seems that every single time George reflects on his life, he just finds more and more things to be bitter about. He spent his whole life wanting to be more than this—more than a soldier, more than a trained recruit, more than a puppet, more than a vessel. He wanted love, he’d just wanted to mean something, to be something more than this. Dream walked into his life, taught him how to love the best he could, and George had put all of his faith in him—that this was the start of his new life. This was the turning point.
When Dream told him that to love and to manipulate were symbiotic, told him that he wasn’t sure how to be normal, how to heal, how to become a man better than the one Phil broke into a thousand pieces and tossed to the wind, it never phased George. They were the same. George looked into Dream’s eyes and saw a six-year-old knelt in singed grass that didn’t understand the concept of mortality, yet knew he’d just lost everything. George looked into Dream’s eyes and saw a mirror. He saw himself, reaching. Always reaching.
He saw Dream reach back every time.
So that’s why. Why he never gave up, why he was willing to bear the worst hurricanes, drown in the depths of Hell only to climb to his feet and drag Dream back up with him. He was willing to bear the worst of the worst if it meant keeping Dream at his side because for the first time ever, he had something he was willing to fight to keep. He had something he was afraid to lose.
And he’d lost it. He’d lost him.
He’d lost it all.
Grief is something George had never needed to deal with before. He’d heard about it, learned about it, knew of it because it was something he caused. George brought grief with every body he tallied to his own mental score, but he’d never been exposed to it until now. He’d lost his parents, he’d lost everything he cared about, but it’d been such a far off ache that it never phased him beyond a sense of dissociation. It felt like a life he’d never lived, because he hardly remembered it at all. Their faces weren’t human, they were expressions woven by constellations that reflected his own perception of himself. He looked at the stars and saw their faces, because it was what he felt he was supposed to do.
Grieving, he’s now learning, is a dual-edged sword. Now that he knows the pain he inflicted, he’d take it all back in a heartbeat. He’s grieving Dream, and all of the lives he’s taken in tow. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to go through. There are days where swimming down and facing the encompassing void is all he ever wants. There are days where he gazes at the stars and sees Dream, and he wonders how close he really is to him. He feels utterly and entirely empty, alone, void of life as it is—if he really concentrates, he almost feels like Dream truly is beside him. But he’s not.
He’s bitter. He hates it, hates to admit that others happiness makes him feel the most vile jealous hatred, but it’s true. George can’t walk down the street and see two people holding hands without getting the urge to ask them why they dare flaunt the one thing that’s forever out of George’s grasp right in front of him. He’s never cared for money, fame, attention, validation—all he’s ever wanted was love. All he’s ever wanted was Dream. All he’s ever wanted was moments where they could be them, be safe, be together without thousands of eyes on them at all times waiting for the perfect moment to strip it all away.
They had only planned to overthrow Phil in the first place for the sheer purpose of wanting to live together without the past. Without fear. Without dirty laundry. They just wanted to take their lives into their own hands for the first time ever, and it’d ended with a separation so permanent that George still wakes up screaming most nights, clutching at the empty space where he wishes a person would be.
His therapist tells him to memorialize Dream in his mind. To make it seem like he’s still here until he’s ready to accept that he isn’t. George thinks it’s stupid at first, until he realized that that’s exactly what he’s been doing. He can’t help it. He sees a green waistcoat in a clothing store and buys it just to hang it in Dream’s closet, almost like he’s waiting for the blond to wake him up out of this nightmare holding it in his hands with that stupid playful smirk and ask where it came from. He knows it won’t happen. But pretending is easier than living right now, and it’s all he can do to get by.
His therapist says “all things in moderation”—that this, too, could be harmful if it gets too far. If George becomes detached from reality entirely and fools himself into a hysteric delusion that Dream is still here, that it’s counter-productive, dangerous and harmful. George knows he’s already too far gone when the first thought that enters his mind is that a single reality where he truly believes Dream is still alive and breathing beats any reality where he moves on from him and begins to forget his memory entirely. A delusion doesn’t sound so bad if it keeps Dream bound to him just a little bit longer.
George has always hated painting. It’s messy and it stinks, makes your eyes water and your head spin if you’re exposed to the fumes for too long. He hated it precisely until smelling paint became the same as coming home; he imagined himself laying on Dream’s chest and breathing in and smelling faint cologne hidden under layers of acrylic color. Hated it until all he craved were paint-splattered hands combing through his hair while lips pressed against his forehead and whispered sweet nothings.
Every single fucking day he wonders what could have been.
He runs himself in circles asking himself if Dream ever had a gap in his teeth growing up. If he was the type of kid who whistled through his teeth when he laughed, trying to justify if Phil would get him braces for a few more “picture perfect handsome” points if Dream ever did have a gap—which he has decided is too cute to simply not agree with—and wondered how that dentist appointment had gone down.
He wastes his time wondering if Dream prefers cooking or baking—what his favorite meals are. Wonders if he prefers breakfast, lunch, or dinner. What dishes he knew how to cook. His favorite restaurants. Wonders if they’d been able to trade places at the end, what Dream would be doing now. What hobbies he would’ve picked up.
Would he like to sketch with charcoal? Would he still paint? Would he begin to read? Would he try his hand at acting? Watching movies? Would he try to sing, like George has?
George, the man with broken lungs and a smoking problem, had taken up singing after Dream’s death because it’s one of the only socially acceptable ways to yell and scream and label it “productive”. He likes heavier music; death metal, heavy rock, punk, emo, screamo, you name it—he’s a lyrical man, needs something he can relate to. He never had the education to be able to put his own feelings into words, so when lyrics do it for him, it spares him some time. His therapist even agrees (one of the rare things that they both solidly agree on as being 100% healthy as a coping skill) and enjoys being handed the slightly wrinkled pieces of loose-leaf paper that George brings to their sessions with lyrics scrawled messily down in black ink.
Niki loves music too, he learns on one of their first times hanging out. She tells him all of her favorite songs and he just shrugs—her music is far lighter in genre and tone than even the lightest things he’s ever liked. Yet she still gives him a list of her favorites scrawled on a coffeehouse napkin one afternoon and the way big bright eyes gaze at him as she smiles happily, as if she’d aided his healing somehow with a simple list on a napkin tells him that he’s decidedly an awful person if he doesn’t at least try to listen to some of them.
There’s one that stands out in particular. Not because he’s heard it before (or that he thinks that he’ll like it based on the name—he’s really not sure why Niki would put a song like this on the list, but he supposes she just doesn’t know), but because of the title.
“In Case You Don’t Live Forever” by someone named Ben Platt.
And, because George likes to torture himself, he listens to it first. He isn’t disappointed.
He expects to be angry. He expects to be bitter. He expects to hate it, hate Niki for recommending it, hate everything that comes with the heinous reminder that the man he loves is dead and isn’t able to come back, yet this song encapsulates something that eases that rage. It’s the first thing that’s tried to douse the flames rather than fan them and be successful.
It’s the first time George has cried since Dream has died. He screams, yells, throws things, wakes up shrieking and hyperventilating, but he’s been too angry and numb to cry until this very moment. The words simultaneously feel like everything he wants to tell Dream, yet at the same time, he hears Dream’s voice laced in every syllable. He’s never felt so sure that if there was one thing that Dream wants George to know, it’s this.
He doesn’t know how Niki knew. Maybe she didn’t at all. But the song she gives him makes him finally come undone—the clinging to Dream, the anger, the regret, the remorse, the “what-if”’s, the desperate need to trade places and be the one laying cold and stiff in a forest finally, for a moment, leaves him entirely. He’s left with nothing but reality.
For once, it isn’t so scary.
He still has Dream, in little ways. He lives in his (shitty) apartment. He wears his jacket to bed and every time he goes out in public. He finishes Dream’s unfinished artworks whenever he finds them. He has Dream’s finished art, the full artist’s vision stares back at him as he theorizes how Dream comes up with the things that he did when he painted. He has Dream’s dying words, both verbally and on paper. He kept the note. He always had. Of course he had.
And now he has a song. A song that if Dream were still here, that if Dream could somehow comfort him from his own death, he’d sing to George. A song that if George could do any single thing in his life, he’d sing to Dream. These words are so utterly and wholly them, and it’s the first and only thing to bring George back to Earth from where he’d been living in a realm of rage held high in the sky, surrounding himself with walls and making bricks to try to craft a staircase to reach Dream somehow, wherever he might be.
This song finally allows him to stop. To rest. To let go, just for a moment. Through the tears, through the words, through the piano’s melody, through it all, George begins to heal.
In case you don’t live forever, let me tell you now
I love you more than you’ll ever wrap your head around
In case you don’t live forever, let me tell you the truth
I’m everything that I am, because of you