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It is just past midnight when Dream builds the courage to open his messages with George again. He has been waiting, glancing eagerly toward violent red at the bottom of his screen, waiting for the guilt to eat quicker at his insides, to rip and to shred him apart before he can even click on the name.
The uncomfortable stir in his belly comes only as soon as he’s opened the messages.
They are clear. Written right across his screen, lowercase letters. No photo, no playful gif to go along like George prefers to send. No emoji to keep the mood up.
George 10:45pm
maybe later dream
don’t feel like hanging out right now
sorry
Dream has never minded these messages from George.
Back when George was in England, they’d come at all times of the day, and Dream would lean back against his chair, send a little, talk later then, message, only clicking his tongue to himself in disappointment. It was unfortunate to be without him, to play games on his own, to rest in the bitter silence without the hum of George’s fan in the crowdedness of his room back home. It was boring. Brutal, even. But Dream dealt with it, and he never begged or prodded into George’s life other than a few times, playfully encouraging him to get online—pressuring him about how there was nothing better to do.
Dream has shown up plenty of times at Sapnap’s door, knocking in a few taps to ask about dinner, or to wonder why he hasn’t replied in eight hours. But George’s presence was more than delicate.
At only five days in Florida, Dream had seen quite a few of these messages, and not a single one had made him worried enough to bother his peace.
It is fragile, the air that rotates the house, and the conversation that comes and goes.
These days of confident silence from his friend become insufferable when an arrow through the heart punctures yet another tear into Dream’s muscles. There is not enough feeling inside him to figure out what is causing this, and it is heartbreaking to wait, to poke a foot into the grass and hope George sprouts from the dirt.
He is not there, and Dream supposes he will not be coming soon.
So he rests.
Alone.
And he touches the bump of his jaw and the swell of his mouth and he curses the thought of wishing George would be here, pinching skin between his fingers and gritting his teeth as he laughs about Dream’s eyelashes and his freckles, giggling about being together.
Dream remembers lying in bed with Sapnap for the first time, the way his stomach rolled and the way he had butterflies, the way they kicked each other’s shins, because they hardly believed it was real. All of it. Any of it.
He wonders, for only a second, if George would rest his head against his chest, or if he’d kick Dream’s shin and complain about cold sheets and the smell of unwashed clothes. Would he pinpoint every wrong detail? Would he lie still?
The adjustment period of moving is a bitch.
But Dream gives George space, and he dies a little as he thinks about George back in England. Even just a few rooms away, he feels over an ocean apart again. And it takes the breath out of Dream to think so negatively.
The warmth of Dream’s bottom lip is sensational as he rubs a wet thumb against it. He doesn’t want to rid whatever guilt floods him as he traces. He doesn’t want it to stop because it is remembrance, he thinks, of what he desires, of what plagues to be there. A body. Another thumb.
It should not hurt this bad, but Dream is near desperate to fill the gaping hole inside him, the one that drains his blood and empties him against his bed and his floor.
It should not hurt like this, because if he is hurting, then George must hurt too.
And so he tries again.
His effort is relentless, but it pulls from the confidence of his peace of mind, lying in that desolation of his core.
He tries and does not quit, because the care in which he recedes on George is placid. Time has not once been on their side for all these years, and he curses it now with angry teeth, wanting to rid every poor thought that has George held back. Dream wants to heal, and mend, and break down every voice he hears when he stands outside of George’s door on the evening of his next free Saturday.
His hand is quiet against the wood, but he wishes it louder, wishes it assurance as he watches the light flood into the dark room.
It is not refreshing to finally see him. More than anything, it hurts.
“I’m tired, Dream,” George says eventually, shaken by the version of himself Dream has not seen yet. “I’m sorry. I’m going to go to sleep now. You can text me, though.”
And Dream cannot reply because his mouth is heavy with regret, and his feet are steel into his hardwoods, and he is slit down the middle with George’s knife, tongue, and teeth.
He does not text him, and they do not speak for two more days.
It is in front of the mirror when George reaches out to Dream.
It is by mouth.
He starts in a pattern of eyes, when Dream accidentally steps through the door and catches him with a toothbrush poked right between his lips.
“Oh!” Dream exclaims. This is not your bathroom, George. “Sorry, I didn’t know you—Uh, sorry. I just,” he jumps quickly to prevent George from leaving. He cannot, he will not, lose such an opportunity. “I’m making, uh, pot—”
George dribbles toothpaste out of his mouth. “You’re making pot?”
“No!” Dream says, his voice much frailer than he imagined. “Chicken. Pot Pie or whatever it’s called. Do you want some?”
They haven’t had too much opportunity to eat together. Dream’s left plates by his door, and whispered words at the dark wood to let him know it’s there, but most meals George has eaten alone. Sleeping schedules haven’t quite lined up with George’s arrival, so Dream has listened to the footsteps in the early mornings when George has taken over the kitchen.
Only the slightest shrug goes past the muscles at George’s neck.
Sure, it says. George nods thereafter and grins, and for the slightest moment, Dream savors the surge in his chest. Hope is fearless as it covers the expanse from one collarbone to the next. He prays for this reaction to lock in place.
“Why are you in my bathroom?” He asks quietly. Because he must know why now is George’s breakthrough, why here is his sanctuary to breathe. His choices are drying out Dream’s mouth, and he is turning them into his own thoughts.
You are here for me, Dream considers. You are here because you missed me.
Solid proof is never written, but it is honorably spoken in gestures and in the curl of George’s fingers at the white granite countertops as he holds on and spits into the sink or as the browns of his eyes find Dream’s with careful, slow flutters to a close.
“You have two sinks,” George mutters slowly, begging for Dream to read him, to let him in. “You don’t need both to yourself, do you?”
And then he is gone, leaving behind the purple-handled toothbrush crooked on Dream’s spare sink.
The morning’s weather comes as a surprise, its lonely depth of a chill crawling beneath half-opened windows and into their home. It moves selfishly quick and wraps around Dream’s neck to halt any sort of breath he dares to take around George. When the swell of his bottom lip parts, the crisp air clamps him shut and lumbers him backward into the cupboards to observe. Only to observe.
Because now it is his turn to be silent.
It is his turn to wait, to watch with sore teeth as his friend fries eggs into a stainless steel pan at seven in the morning. It is his turn to leave hope to rot, to place adoration in such a careless, open place of his chest.
George has taken over Dream. His home, his head, his sink. It is the house shoes that really get to him, that wedge into the center of his head, that make him want to splatter onto the floor in a mess of nothing but old memories and screaming veins of what could have been.
They are much too large over George’s socked-feet, but he keeps his heels hanging off the back in compromise. He wears them like he has no other choice, like he is too scared to go all the way in. It is too deep. Too dark in the coffin. Dream keeps his eyes on the backs of his feet and thinks about how he’d fix them.
Push their feet together until George’s heels weren’t destroying the backs of his shoes. Bump bone to bone until bone becomes bone.
What are you scared of, George?
Is it me?
Is it us?
“We have non-stick pans for that, you know,” Dream says instead, unintentionally knocking the house shoes as he stands beside George. “Not supposed to fry like that on these, dumbass.”
The low chuckle beside him is almost rewarding.
Dream stares downward because he has to. It is impossible to avoid when George slips both feet into Dream’s house shoes. In—he has gone in. George’s grin covers weakly across his face when he rubs a cheek on his own shoulder, shrugging in such shy innocence as he laughs.
“That’d explain the fact that I can’t get these eggs up,” George replies.
Dream hits their shoulders together. “Hand me the spatula.”
As soon as he fails, Dream pulls the pan off the heat, and George lulls his head to the side until it touches Dream’s upper arm. From here, warm laughter sickens them both.
“Okay, it’s fine. Whatever. We’ll toss that out. Look, I think you ruined it, but we’ll try the non-stick one.” Dream is already crouched down when George digs a thumb into his shoulder. It feels good.
God. How can he feel this good, such a quiet piece of him into such loud skin at Dream’s neck?
“No, I don’t care. It’s fine. I don’t want to make it anymore,” George says.
And Dream expects the change, but he does not expect his cheeks to burn over the curled hand at his nape. The chill of George’s two fingers excites him, tugs him with demand from that unsettling feeling he’s been snug underneath, and lands him right on top the moment those nails draw against him. By having these thoughts of being touched by George, he’s allowed himself to douse in the significance of what could be, whether hands, or body, or mind.
To feel and to have are two separate narratives.
George’s thumb eases to Dream’s jugular, and he presses the pad to a racing pulse. He could push, Dream thinks, push and then push until he stops me from breathing, until I empty underneath him, until he finally has me. You could have me like this, George.
He blinks up at him. The eyes of a goner staring ruin in the face.
“You destroy my pan,” he starts, teasing him because how could he not when George is in his shoes like this, when his hand is across his neck like this. “And then you tell me you don’t even want to fix your mistake?” His voice drops lower. “George.”
“Whatever. We’ll order something. Can’t we?” George avoids his eyes.
Of course they can. He would do anything George asked. “Too early.”
“Liar.”
Dream smirks. “Let’s go back to bed.”
He’s not watching his steps now. And there is no part of him that cares enough to, not when the heartbeat in George’s fingers can be felt against the underside of his own jaw. It elates him, makes him feel safe, and breaks his knees further into the ground where he kneels.
He would stay there if George asked him to.
These slow blinks he receives are unfaithful. Having hands knotted into his hair the moment they are before one another—it is unfairness, certainly written by George’s hand, the shakiness of his fragile fingers, written purely into Dream’s throat and onto his dry tongue.
Dream should not close his eyes, but George convinces him with the faint hum of his mouth and with the caress of his fingers that loop into the bone behind his ears.
He follows. Because it is trust that George presses into his skin.
“Your hair is dirty,” George whispers as he pulls Dream’s cheek to his belly. “Absolutely filthy. We should wash it.”
Foolishly, Dream whimpers into George’s shirt, and holds his breath only a second after. He stays quiet, finding his nose further into George’s waist until the echo of laughter begins, until he is lost behind his closed eyes, until the stars have long taken him.
They have spoken of this before.
About the water falling between their skin, about washing each other down with the honey of their hands. It has always been somewhere in their dirty, playful text messages and their honest phone calls, but never has it been here in Dream’s palms or slipping down George’s collarbones with soap suds.
Dream holds the wash rag in his left hand and waits for George to raise his chin toward the ceiling.
When he does, Dream bites his tongue and presses, turning water to wine as he suffers the glance at George’s mouth. He stares, painfully, at every twitch of an expression that changes on George’s face, and holds his breath when the spread of fingers splay across his belly. They are not cold. Or warm. But they sear so far into his flesh that it hurts.
By now, Dream’s hair has been washed.
George spent delicate moments winding his fingers through the tough lengths of his ends, wringing out shampoo and insisting he leave the conditioner on for longer than Dream has ever before.
“Your hair is long, Dream,” he said. “This’ll make it soft.”
“Says who?”
George had given him a look. “Me.”
“Whenever I use it, my hair just gets greasy quicker. I hate it, it’s bullshit.”
And George laughed at him, both hands locked behind Dream’s head, arms stiff and straight. Dream thought, for just a moment in that space, about kissing the inside of George’s wrist.
It would’ve whispered a promise. He would have sealed honesty to his skin.
“Probably because you’re using too much.” He opened the bottle and peeked over Dream’s shoulder. “All you need is a tiny, tiny bit.”
“Okay, fine. Just chill. Do it already.”
And Dream lulled his head into George’s hands, sunk further into those nails that lathered conditioner into his scalp. He held his breath from then and almost until now, when the tips of George’s fingers pressed into delicate skin.
He breathes out against George’s ear when his cheek rests against Dream’s shoulder.
It is new for them to have such a close embrace and to touch this intimately. Dream has never wanted to climb inside of a man as bad as he has with George, as bad as he has wanted to right now.
Often, they spoke of being this close. Of what eyes would look like and what skin would feel like from such solid angles, but never had Dream imagined it would be here, in this shower, where he’d be able to feel. Proximity thinner than a light breath.
The curve at George’s hip, the dip toward his back, Dream thinks it is all astonishing, and he goes numb the second he relishes against silk.
“You can touch me too,” Dream says under his breath, begging against such a distant plea.
Please touch me, his mouth will say, opening compliantly the moment George lifts a cold, shaky thumb.
This is guidance, and Dream is just shy of buckling onto the shower floor to kiss George’s feet, to climb through withered parts of him in order to find where he belongs.
George responds, mouthing at the curve of Dream’s shoulder.
Gently, so gently, he rests his teeth, and the insides of Dream’s thighs go red in hopelessness of a caress. George bites down, fleeing Dream of his thoughts for the millisecond he can see. “I know. You can touch me, too. It’s all right.”
Soon, the breath on George’s lips sits between Dream’s collarbones, and when his mouth surpasses into unknown, intimate places across Dream’s chest, he giggles.
Oh.
He is shy here.
“I’m all wet,” George pouts, burying soaked skin into more.
“Yeah,” Dream tells him. “You are. Was that—Is that supposed to be, like, a sex joke?”
For a moment, George rolls his tongue back into his cheek, and Dream cannot help the desire to stare. It is inside him, that gut-wrenching need to look at George.
“No,” George grumbles as he pokes into Dream’s side. “It’s not. I mean, my dick is wet, but no. Shut up, idiot. Just, just get me out of here. Let’s get out of here. I want to touch you,” he says.
Properly, comes next. Properly, he says.
“You can’t say dick and touch in the same sentence, George,” Dream chuckles at the eyes that immediately roll.
“I’ll leave you in here,” George scratches down his core, digging his nails playfully into his abdomen. “Have it your way. I, truthfully, do not care.”
“Uh, huh. Sure.”
“Go on.”
It takes a singular look. A raise of an eyebrow. Two chuckles and a peony chest of warmth before George follows him out of the shower with a groan.
The way he lugs his tongue over white teeth is something phenomenal, Dream decides as he wraps the tan of his towel around gooseflesh and as he laps a finger down the jaw that speaks to him. His breath stays locked inside of him as he dries George off and as he soaks the floor because such moments are so unreal that Dream dares not to ruin it with the hoarseness of his own lungs.
But George encourages him, as he always has, twisting strands of hair to squeeze water out, laying sopping towels against Dream’s damp skin. It is something they do together, like they are taking turns and healing and breathing on the same gap of air underwater.
Against sheets, they are a mess.
And granted, Dream does not mind the mess. He wants everything that comes with being a mess and becoming a mess with George. It is endless, and it is beautiful, but it is also stiff and the wires inside him are not crossing to where he’d like them to, and he fears that George’s patience will burn him out soon.
Their hands do not intertwine correctly. Neither knuckles nor fingertips.
Dream holds both of George’s thin wrists in one of his hands and attempts to cross their fingers together. With their chests near, and their thighs meeting, nothing seizes the passion inside Dream’s body. Nothing pulls him into the calmness he desires to be in. He is nervous, and the tense ankle on his own proves to show it, too.
But in all this time and with all this effort, Dream has proven his ability to never quit. He turns, pulling George’s back to his chest.
“I thought you were meant to be good at this kind of thing,” George says to him, leaning back to whisper into that quiet bone under his jaw.
Dream stills in fear of losing. Maybe George, maybe the warmth, the body, the man that has appeared. He laughs, and draws a free hand up the column of George’s spine, familiar patterns of his breath battering Dream’s skin the longer he touches.
This may be enough. This may be that sliver of hope that controls him, that encourages him to bite George’s insides, that tells him to take, and try, and descend.
“How could I be any good?” He asks, taking the lobe of George’s ear between his teeth, holding it sharply as he whispers, “I’ve never held you like this before. Never at all, anyway.”
The openness they lie in is sealing itself underneath their own sky, and Dream wishes now, more than ever, that he winds up the control in his hands and keeps it open. It is soothing here, against George. And Dream’s nose burns mellowly with his throat as he leans closer, as he attempts for better angles and better positioning.
George must think he is silly all over. The way Dream asks for his palms and rests them flat against George’s belly, the way he nuzzles into the back of his head for warmth, catching hair onto the rough edges of his cuticles when he tries to touch.
This is far from perfect, but it feels good. And Dream has only ever wanted good.
There has been so much time Dream has wished for these moments. The quiet. Skin against skin. Kneecap to femoral pulse.
It is a gift.
“Your heart is beating so fast,” George tells him. “I can feel it through my back.”
And he is not wrong.
“Do you blame it?” He asks, chuckling nervously.
George hums, and when Dream chokes on the lack of response, he speaks once more. “Let me feel yours.”
He rests the front of his palm over George’s chest, dragging it with the encouragement of the other’s colder fingers up and until they press not between the breastbone but at the base of his throat.
Almost pulling back, Dream falters.
“Feel here instead,” George says. “Tell me what it says.”
The exceeding burn of laughter tickles Dream's tongue, and he buries his nose into George’s hair to hide away. It is an awful angle, he thinks, but even from the terrible angle, Dream knows his grin has taken his body. It has flooded down his arms and has warmed the tips of his fingers that guide him back to where George’s heartbeat lies.
To become a man of such slow touch almost scares him. Indirect reach into George’s heart, into commitment. He wants it, more than anything, but he’s never soothed his hands with this much fragility. He’s never been this careful.
Now, they speak with a tongue so dry and weary that it is painful to think of times that weren’t like this.
“It says that,” Dream whispers, pressing further against the back of George’s head. Beat after beat after beat, the sound hammers against his cheek and his jaw, and he fades off into silence as the breath hides in the gaps of his mouth. “I don’t know. It’s—there’s a lot of sound here. I hear myself and you and it’s loud.”
“We should make it shut up.”
George will end him here. Surely.
Turning around to hide desire in Dream’s eyes, George sighs.
He is beautiful like this, the rough patch of his chin growing back after his last shave. Dream hadn’t watched him, but had seen the remnants of shaving cream slung over the opposite sink in his bathroom.
It is George’s now. Toothbrush, razor, shaving cream.
Dream hardly knows what he means, though, and he cradles George’s face to prove the edge of his nerves.
“How?”
A scoff leaves George’s mouth. “Again. You’re meant to be good at this stuff. Have you not thought about this?”
He stares. “About what? Kissing you?”
“Yes.”
The gaze he has on George suddenly goes dull, and it is then when he understands what the dry thumb against his mouth really feels like, accompanied by the cry of a pulse underneath it. He would die to live in a moment like this, as George pulls and dips into the inside of his lip.
Red worries George’s face and pulls his eyelashes shut every couple of seconds, and Dream thinks that a blush on George’s face this strong might just ruin him soon.
“Your mouth is so warm,” George whispers low, lifting a few fingers to Dream’s ear. “Your whole face, it’s all just warm.”
So Dream falls further into his palm. With the tip of his nose rubbing against George’s middle finger and his jaw scraping against his wrist, he chuckles low. “You can’t just say things like that.”
George does not listen to him, and instead, when Dream first kisses the knuckles in front of his face, he looks for more, pushing between the parted lips of Dream’s mouth.
It is easy for Dream to understand what he wants, for him to understand that this taste they are getting from each other means more than what it presents itself as. Dream kisses against knuckles and in between his fingers, and the very tips that have already been inside his own mouth.
“More,” George says to Dream, but it is not long until Dream realizes they are both whispering the word under their breath, right into the space between each other.
More. That is their word. It belongs to them. They chew and spit and devour it.
Their hands are not only unstable, but they are learning, and Dream echoes every touch that George leaves against his body. Everything must go together.
He kisses again, and again, until the entirety of George’s palm has been stained. Surely, he would pour out if Dream’s teeth were sharp enough.
And when their mouths finally come together, Dream cannot breathe.
He fears it.
It becomes an effort to breathe, and George ensures they are fine with a coax against his abdomen, with a tongue inside his mouth, a breath under his eye. He regards him tenderly before his thigh crosses over Dream’s.
They are not good at it. Dream does not want them to be good at it because it is new, and new things have never started off good. He is sure that George feels the same.
So when bodies become one, and when George’s hesitance to lie flatter becomes clear, Dream allows for his hands to ease until he lulls the very whimper off his mouth, until he becomes what must be boneless on top of him. Dream has never touched such a weightless thing on top of himself before, but he traces and he breathes into it and he pleads for this sensation to sink against him forever.
The roughs of his palms hold the back of George’s thighs and lace upward until he can push George’s lower back into his own waist, and there, it is much more comfortable.
It is nerve-wracking to have him this close, to inhale every breath, every sound George is mewling his direction, but he will not burn without George on top of him. He will break open and sink with him before he gets up.
Below, their ankles twist together, and Dream turns his head to the side to look at the way their bodies have woven. How George responds is unbearably rewarding. He looks, too, and silently deems a quiet roll of a hum at Dream’s chin. He knocks their bones together, getting inside him once more, like he had with the house shoes and the sinks, squirming his way further into Dream.
Dream can hear George’s mind filling lazily with similar thoughts. Disbelief of their skin atop this bed, and it is honorable to live at this level.
They kiss again, but this time, Dream drinks his determination and swallows the roots of George’s hesitation, and he destroys it.
All the silence empties between their mouths. The unopened messages, the replies that Dream wishes he could understand better than not. Dream knows this now.
To want, to have, to love George is not easy, but it is much harder in silence.
And they have passed the stillness between them. The narrowness has cleared.
“Stay here with me,” George pleads as soon as Dream moves. One inch, and George’s eyes follow. Two, and he is begging him not to leave.
It hurts.
The glossy sin of his eyes is devastating. Dream coats his cheek with a tired thumb, dirty hope spreading over his skin. Around them, the thick of the air pours back into their mouths.
Dream sighs.
“I love you,” he murmurs, threatening another thirty, forty, fifty words from the back of his throat. He wants to go on, retreat, or drown. He wants George’s nails that are resting on his chest to bury in and rip him open.
Closing his eyes, George sighs. He grips tighter, just as Dream has been begging for, but the moment that Dream parts his lips in a soft cry, George pulls away.
And relief comes.
“Don’t go.” George trembles.
He doesn’t. Dream lies still, and he holds George as the sun laughs through the day and gives way to the moon. And when night draws even closer, when they lose crumbs of snacks beneath their tired limbs and their soft sheets, George vacates complacency and delivers everything Dream has been needing.
It comes as a kiss above his upper lip, softer, plenty warmer than anything given all day. Short. Quick.
A praise is under that frail tongue that Dream has had the pleasure of touching, too, and he would reach again if the look in George’s eyes did not mesmerize him.
“You love me too,” Dream says for him, falling out of breath when George collides with his chest.
“Shut up,” George grumbles, clenching at the end of his shirt. He is begging for Dream to say more. He does not want him to shut up.
Dream can feel his heart climbing his throat. It is there. It is ready to leave him dead, empty, alone, but so incredibly warm and content.
“Please, George,” he whispers thickly, bringing their cheeks together, parting his mouth open to kiss the edges he’s touched. “Tell me.”
“But you know already.”
“I don’t care.” Dream barely hears himself as he speaks, as George kisses him, as their skin rubs raw. “The shoes, the sink, the hesitation, just—I need you to…”
George pleads he stops. In the silent demand of his mouth, he draws Dream even closer. Under warmer, softer blankets, they are corkscrewed into their worth. And Dream’s heart has not quieted since earlier, but George holds it in careful hands.
He is shy. The fire inside his cheeks tells Dream this much.
“I am just a man in love, Dream,” he tells him. “That’s it. You know that already.”
The confession opens a gate, floods into Dream’s chest until he can breathe again, breaks not only ribs but shreds muscle and pierces vessels until it makes him feel alive.
He doesn’t realize until George’s hands have reached his cheeks that something has changed.
“You’re crying,” George whispered. “What’s happened?”
But Dream cannot answer him.
George’s leg, although secured between Dream’s thighs, trembles, and it is only then when the realization of the dimmed lights come into play. Darkness has been surrounding them, but Dream has been holding onto George, staring moonlight in the face, and he wishes now that more lights could fill the room.
It is astonishing how much George can feel against Dream. The thick tears that slow at his cheekbones, the twitch of muscle above his mouth. He eases colder hands to cradle Dream’s face until he has cried enough to speak again.
Not once does he interrupt. Because he knows. He understands that such a sensation is overwhelming—to hold another man, to fall into love and grasp it all in ten fingers.
“What the fuck?” Dream whispers in the slight voice crack he’s got in his throat. “Don’t even talk about this. I’m not crying. Shut up.”
George lifts a lip to grin, digging a hand into the depth of Dream’s finally dried hair. It is flat, but it has been pressed against the bed all day. No one blames him.
“I noticed nothing.” George cranes his head up and kisses him on the mouth. And there, Dream sinks further into his chest. “You all right, though?”
“Just overwhelmed, I guess.” He bites the tip of George’s finger that brushes over his nose and then glances up to look at him. His back rests against the headboard, and Dream feels smaller as he sighs. “You’re here, George. I can’t—Sometimes that’s hard to process. But you’re here and I have you. Right here.”
Their hands burn when George squeezes their knuckles tight. It is a sign of peace, of understanding. It is comfort.
“I want you as bad as you want me,” George whispers to him, and somehow, somehow, that seems almost impossible. “Let me have you. Let me take care of you. I will love you.”
He nearly tells him how wrong he is, how much larger his own heart is, but he swallows back the words and trusts himself to know that George understands.
The grip tightens, and Dream disappears into every touch George seals against him.
They will speak more of what exactly desire can conquer and what it leaves out, and rather what feelings are heightening others. But now, as Dream lies wrapped in the safety of George’s embrace, it is enough.
It is always enough.