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This was probably a mistake.
But it was too late to worry about good ideas and bad ideas. George was already here, and he couldn’t take that back without some semblance of repercussions. It wasn’t like he had a good alternative, anyway.
He was a little bit stuck. And he wasn’t even quite there yet. Admittedly, he was hiding in the bathroom, lying to the knock from the other side of the door that he was still getting changed.
He was not still getting changed. He was sitting on the floor worrying about the outcome.
The issue was that George was doomed to share a bed with Karl. And he knew himself—he knew himself—and he should’ve known that this was a bad idea.
At face value, it wasn’t a very big deal to share a bed with friends. Hell, George had shared a bed with both Dream and Sapnap before, and it wasn’t a big deal. They just set a pillow between their bodies and told each other to keep to their respective side of the bed; and they always did. They’d never had any issues, and it was fine, and it was doable.
This was not doable. Because this was Karl, and there was always more to it when it was Karl. At least, there was more to it when it was Karl and George.
There were two things at the front of George’s head right then.
One, Karl was touchy. And while he knew how to respect George’s boundaries, and he was more touchy with Dream and Sapnap, and George knew it wasn’t anything romantic (Dream and Sapnap were literally dating, Karl wasn’t trying to get in the middle of that). Karl was, simply put, a touchy person—and George was okay with that.
But he didn’t think that sharing a bed with Karl would go the same way it did with Dream or Sapnap or anyone else for that exact reason. Because Karl wouldn’t ask for a pillow between their arms, and George was too nervous to put that idea out there himself.
So they just wouldn’t have one. Unless Karl proved to be unpredictable, but he was never unpredictable. He was just Karl.
The other thing, sitting right alongside the first, was far more nerve-inducing. George could hear his heartbeat echo in his ears.
Two, George had a very unfortunate crush on Karl.
He’d told himself not to fall in love with his friend. He’d told himself that it would only go poorly, and it was, and he could barely look at someone he was meant to be close with because he couldn’t help but see all the little things about him that were meant to go unnoticed.
Like the messy freckles, or the unkempt bangs, or the creases beside his eyes when he smiled. Or how his voice sounded different when he was excited, or how his teeth were whiter than the average person’s, or how he bounced on his toes when he was happy and picked at his nail polish when he was nervous.
George was whipped. And he refused to tell Dream or Sapnap or anyone because he knew they’d say the exact same thing, and he really, really didn’t need to hear it from anyone besides himself.
And because of Karl’s nature (something that George really liked about him, in all honesty) and because of George’s silly crush, the two of them sharing a bed was a mistake. Probably.
But George promised himself that it was going to be okay. Even when he was counting the beats in deep breaths alone on the bathroom floor, it was going to be okay. At the very least, it couldn’t go as bad as he saw it going in his head.
Hopefully.
It was still enough to get George up off the cold tile floor. And he stared at himself in the mirror for a moment, cheeks tinted pink and hair slightly messy. But he looked fine—presentable enough for a nearly empty bedroom—so he gathered his clothes from the floor and held them tight between his arms, bare feet light against the tile as he stepped out of the bathroom.
The hallway was dark. A low light spilled out from underneath the bedroom door, and George followed it, heartbeat in his ears and on his neck and in his gut, and he tried not to think about how worried he was over something so trivial.
It’s going to be okay.
He found Karl sitting on one side of the bed, and George figured that meant he’d claimed it. Not like he minded—he had no preference in regards to what side of the bed he slept on—and if anything, he was grateful to find Karl distracted and on his phone rather than watching George closely enough to catch his shaking breaths.
He dropped his clothes in the corner of the room, wandering towards the bed on unstable legs. He pretended that his lower body wasn’t made of jelly, and he acted more composed than he was, his motions toward Karl and the mattress he was on top of catching the boy’s well-divided attention.
“Ready for bed?” Karl asked, obvious.
George tried to smile. He knew it was shaky, and he could feel his pulse beneath the skin of his cheeks, but it was manageable. Barely.
“Yeah,” he answered, simple and single-worded to keep the quiver out of his tone.
Karl turned his phone off, dropping it with a clatter against the nightstand beside him. And he looked up at George expectantly, fingers curled beneath the top of the sheets, shifting them slowly out of his way so he could slip his legs under.
He kept watching George. And George kept watching Karl, watching him get under the covers without lying down, an arm stretched toward the light. He blinked, grey eyes staring, and George’s hands coiled into fists at his sides.
He stared, too. Blankly.
“George?” Karl prompted, slightly concerned if anything, and it snapped George back to reality.
He shook his head, running a hand through his messy hair. And he stepped forward, reaching for the bedsheets.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Just tired.”
That was a lie. George felt wide awake right then, caffeinated by his own raging nerves and how heavy they were beneath his skin.
“It’s alright,” Karl reassured, and George knew he meant it. “I’m pretty tired, too.”
George climbed into the bed, only slightly hesitant. Slipped his legs in under the sheets as if that wouldn’t heighten his nerves, looking toward Karl with a careful smile. They sat beside each other for a buzzing moment, and the silence felt deafening until the radiator kicked back in.
George figured he was thankful for it. It made him hear his heartbeat a little less loudly.
“Am I good to turn the light off?” Karl checked, and George nodded immediately.
“Yeah.”
Flickered, the light turned off. And the room was bathed in darkness, leaving George to blink quickly as if that would make him register the world around him any faster. He could hear the sheets rustling beside him, and he could feel them pulling against his body, so he settled into a lying position next to Karl before it could get any more obvious.
He faced the wall.
But he could still feel Karl’s presence behind him. Could hear his soft breath, could feel the warmth of his body heat, could know that he was there under the covers. He was present, and he was still, and he was there.
A part of George wished to be grateful. He wished to be giddy, elated by desirable proximity. He’d always liked sharing space with Karl, and this was no different; they were close, Karl was near him, and he liked that.
But he was still so nervous. It was for all the same reasons he was pleased.
Karl was present. And he was there. And they were close. He liked it just as much as he hated it, and it made his breath unstable to the audible level, and it made his legs curl up toward his chest when he could feel where the blood rushed through his veins.
He could feel everything. It was a little intimidating.
His fingers shook against his palms, his breath quivered, and the world was too quiet. Karl was the only thing he knew in the whole room, and he hated Dream and Sapnap for putting them in this situation, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and turn to dust.
The radiator stopped humming. George’s first instinct was to hold his breath.
Hindsight was 20/20, and George realized that he was going to have to breathe eventually. But it was already held in his lungs, waiting to escape without patience, and he could feel his sternum going tight around his ribs because he needed to breathe.
It was a rush. He figured it could be quiet enough—even when Karl’s breaths sounded so loud behind him—and he tried not to worry about the way his exhales shook.
He curled his fingertips in against his palms. They scratched, light but present.
“You okay?” Karl whispered from behind him, and George jolted slightly in his startle.
Karl laughed. It was light and easy, barely any louder than his breath; if laughter could whisper, it would sound like this.
“Sorry,” Karl murmured, just as quiet as before, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
George bit his lip. He almost tried to play it off as if he was asleep, but he even he had enough common sense to see how stupid of an idea that was—it would never work. So he didn’t bother.
Instead, he said the only thing he could think of.
“It’s alright.”
It was not alright. Decidedly, that was not Karl’s fault, so George didn’t count himself as a liar.
“Sorry,” Karl whispered again, purposeless, “but are you okay? You seem tense.”
I am tense, George figured. But why would I tell you that?
“I’m fine,” and he’d count himself as a liar now, “really.”
It was quiet for a moment. George thought that was the end of it, and he let himself breathe again, shaky in spite of how much he wished it wasn’t.
But Karl did not figure that was the end of it.
“Can you turn around?” he asked, genuine and curious. “I can’t hear you well.”
George tensed further, if that was even possible. And his fists clenched tight—tight enough for nails to dig into palms—and for a moment, he considered saying no. He thought about saying how it was fine like this, and if they were talking then they can’t sleep, and what was even the point of that?
But George knew that he was too antsy to sleep. And he could act like that was the plan, and he could act like shutting his eyes would get him there, but he knew it wouldn’t.
So he turned. Slowly, with rustling sheets and turning hands, he turned to face Karl. And it was still too dark to see, though his eyes had begun to adjust; he could scarcely make out the features on his friend’s face, but maybe that was only because he already knew what was there.
“Hi,” Karl whispered, and even if George couldn’t see his smile, he knew it was there.
“Hi,” he responded, quiet.
The word fell onto the pillow beneath his head. And he shifted his hands up to rest next to his ear, gentle and unsure.
“You sure you’re alright?”
George was once again faced with an opportunity for the truth. And he once again chose to lie, small and pale white.
“Yeah,” he whispered back, brows furrowing invisibly. “Why do you keep asking?”
“You seem nervous,” Karl explained. “And you’ve been acting weird all night, too.”
George’s brows furrowed deeper, but he knew that Karl still couldn’t see it. He wasn’t sure what weird meant, and he couldn’t place himself acting strange at any point during the night.
Maybe nerves had been acting funny with him.
“Weird?” he prodded anyway, confusion hinted throughout his tone.
“Well…” Karl started, and the sheets rustled, “like this,” he offered. “Nervous. Antsy.”
George blinked, lashes flicking over the pillowcase with a quiet sound. “Oh.”
Karl seemed to wait for something. Silence sat between them, friendly yet uncomfortable, and George figured he could’ve cut the tension with a knife.
It made his skin crawl a bit.
“Did you not want to share a bed with me?” Karl asked, somehow quieter than he was before, and George hated how subtly disappointed he sounded between the lines.
But the answer was complicated. It wasn’t that George didn’t want to share a bed with Karl, but he knew that it was difficult. It was harder than it had to be. The only thing was he didn’t know how to admit that.
He swallowed.
“Well—” he started, anxious, but he didn’t know where the thought was meant to go. “It’s not that I didn’t want to! But…” he breathed, uneasy, hesitant, “I guess I am nervous.”
So he admitted it.
Maybe it wasn’t so hard.
“About what?”
George pressed his lips into a thin line, and he told the truth. “Sharing a bed with you.”
“But I don’t want you to be nervous around me,” Karl whispered.
I don’t want to be nervous around you, either.
“I try not to be.”
And he really did.
But Karl didn’t say anything. He only breathed, soft and without hesitance, distilled by a quiet hum when the radiator came back on. George was hesitant, even when there was nothing to be hesitant for, and he figured he was waiting for something he couldn’t know.
He told Karl that he was nervous around him. He figured that the moon did things to people, and he let the raw admittance sit stagnant in the air.
“George,” Karl muttered, shifting slightly. George hummed softly to beckon the rest of his thought out through tight lips. “I think I’m nervous, too.”
George’s breath hitched in his throat.
“Yeah?” he whispered, questioning.
“Yeah.”
And he swallowed thickly. Nervous—perhaps more so than Karl was—he prodded. “Why are you nervous?”
Karl said it like it was easy. “You.”
So George held his breath again. And he thought, silently, that it couldn’t have been for the same reasons. That Karl was nervous about something completely unrelated, and that he didn’t feel the same way, and that he—
Karl was nervous about him. Around him.
“Can I…”
He wasn’t sure what was meant to follow the start of the question. Karl finished it for him, perhaps a better thing than George could’ve thought of himself.
“Kiss me,” Karl huffed, all but begging. “Please.”
So George kissed him.
The space between them closed with a soft rustle against sheets, and their lips met, quiet and in the dark. George knew that he was guessing where Karl’s mouth was, but he hit close enough for it to feel okay, and their hands tangled in each other’s hair and George held tight enough to smell Karl’s shampoo off his skin later.
Karl’s lips were soft; somehow, they were softer than they looked. George didn’t think he’d ever get enough of it, so he kissed Karl like he meant it, with intent, and he took all the little breathy things from him until there was nothing left to swallow.
He figured that Karl was kissing back with the same meaning. And that he, too, could live in this push and pull forever, with their lips moving softly against each other and the world dulling to a hum around their bodies.
Their feet knocked together under the covers. George was the one to break away, confessions blossomed on his tongue.
“I like you, like, a lot, Karl,” he whispered, truthful and unhidden, everything out in front of him.
It stained the white bedsheets red. George could feel Karl’s smile when their lips were still so close.
“I like you too, George,” he murmured back, all breath on George’s lips.
Ever a creature of hesitance, George began to stumble.
What if Karl doesn’t mean it the same way he does? What if Karl didn’t ask for George to kiss him because he likes him like that? What if he’s reading everything wrong?
He told himself it was foolish to worry. He worried anyway.
“No, but—” he started, nervous and open, and he figured that Karl could tell.
He figured that because Karl interrupted him.
“Yes, I know,” he whispered back, laughter on his lips with close enough proximity to stain the space between George’s, “I like you like that, too.”
George thinks he might be dreaming. Rather than pinching himself, he asks the only question on his mind.
“Then will you kiss me again?”
Wordlessly, Karl does. It was soft, and tender, and perfect; just as the first one was.
This had not been a mistake.