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Etiolate: to cause to become weakened or sickly; drain of color or vigor
He wishes he could say he didn’t know how it felt, wished it could stay as a plot twist in a book, or a view from afar, just out of reach from feeling.
Death, he means. Death, with its vicious sickle, but kind face, luring those too-good into his arms, ready to pull and break and mend. And to leave destruction in its wake.
He wished he didn’t know how it felt. He wished, wished, and wished for some miracle of time rewinding backward to happen, for some kind of switch, because holy hell would he have taken that beautiful boy’s place.
He asks who deserves this? The bearer, plagued with fatigue and immense pain, or the watchers, those always nearby but not close enough, viewing their love dwindle and fade.
He wished he didn’t know how it felt. He was never the bearer, instead the watcher, but he felt those phantom pains run up his feet, to his spine, crawling up his neck to make its home in darkness under eyes and drained tear ducts.
Beautiful, beautiful boy. Wonderful, beautiful boy. Stars, moon, sun. Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, little Pluto, damn throw the whole fucking universe in there. That was him. That was him, his beautiful, beautiful boy.
He thinks maybe he did something to deserve this. He wasn’t good, charitable enough. Maybe he had averted his eyes to someone who needed his help and now he was the one begging, pleading for someone to look, to see, to just fucking get him out.
He wished he didn’t know how it felt. A healthy, lean body diminished, cheekbones hollow and skin too pale, snow its only rival. Fingers who were already boney, but now an entirely different definition of the word.
He wished, he wished, he wished he didn’t know. That he could rewind, could somehow warn and prepare for the future. But no, he’s stuck here. He’s stuck in this forsaken timeline no one should have to live in.
A ring decorates his finger. It’s a simple band, with illustrations of a tree swirled around it. It decorates his finger, but it also is a reminder- of not enough time, not enough of anything.
They didn’t get a normal wedding. He had been sick for a while, thinking it was just from too much junk food, too many nights lying awake. He had insisted he was fine, no, he didn’t need to go to the hospital. It would pass, it would be fine.
Until eventually Dream had convinced him, to just go, if not to satisfy himself, then to make the worry leave the blond’s shoulders.
It was hours before he received the call at 12:03 am. He was awake, worried because he was supposed to have let him know he was done, that nothing was wrong, that he would just take some medicine and everything would pass.
No, that’s not what happened. Instead, his ears met pain, so much pain that one could emit. The sympathetic doctor had taken over since his beautiful boy was crying, too hard and fast to be able to speak. It was Kidney Cancer…stage 4, already. He had lived through that, for fucking months, not knowing, never suspecting his own cells to turn on him.
But they did, with an unearthly vengeance. It seemed like his body had finally realized something was wrong because the day after he could barely stand without cried curses.
He wished he didn’t know how it felt, but he does. He saw him wither. New, special treatments which were supposed to cure him were his downfall. Because of course, he was in that small, tiny, little percentage of risk. He was, and it broke him from the inside.
Every day was littered with carry-on bags of extra clothes, hospital food, pain killers, and movies. Something to distract, to bring normalcy into a torn life.
George was declining, on a steep downward slope with no barrier insight. February 5th, they were both on the bed, watching some movie they didn’t care about (it all became background noise after a while). The brunet had lifted up the blond’s hand, tracing over old scars, knuckles, and veins, tracing over a spot on his ring finger.
Soft lips moved against his neck as the brunet spoke, “I want to marry you.”
On the edge of sleep, Dream’s eyes opened, no longer under the influence of the sandman.
“You…want to marry me?”
George looked down, continuing to softly touch calloused, kind hands. “I do, I’ve wanted to for a while.”
His heart made a joyous leap to his throat. After so much despair, hearing that sentence made him gulp down tears. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to ask you. I…was going to do it, but then…everything happened. Fuck, I love you so much, George. You’re my soulmate in every iteration of the word. I adore you with all my spirit and soul. You are my life and it would be my biggest honor to marry you.”
In response, George curled closer, nose buried into Dream’s neck, fingers gripping the blond’s sleepshirt. Dream could tell he had gotten tired, muscles too sluggish to respond, but he knew that George reciprocated. He knew it like he knew how to breathe.
February 14th, the day of love, was when they decided to get married. It was a small affair, only close family and friends were invited. They wanted to have some fun with it- they placed a veil on George’s head, Dream wore a comical Minecraft creeper costume with a bowtie, and they played rap music as George was wheeled down the hospital hallway.
They wanted it to be lively, to feel ludicrous. They didn’t want to say why (because their world now felt ridiculous like they were in a nightmare they couldn’t wake up from, so maybe if they brought some of that silliness to ‘real life’ maybe everything would be okay).
Dream had stood under a make-shift archway of white balloons and fake vines. Sapnap was beside him, wearing his panda-onesie because of the “memories” and that he wanted to “add to the crack that is this wedding.”
He’s not ashamed to say that tears marked their way down his cheeks as George was situated in front of him. He was still in his blue, flower-patterned hospital gown. Even then, he was still his beautiful, beautiful boy. Yet, somehow, his allure was stronger that day. His cheeks looked fuller, his grin was wide, and his whole being seemed to glow.
They whispered their vows into each other’s ears, much to the despair of the others attending. Later, Dream would be asked why, why were their vows hushed when their love was so loud?
A sad smile would pull at the blond’s features as he shook his head, saying that he was promised to secrecy.
The why was because George had felt exposed, laid bare to hospital workers, machines, and the tumors that riddled his body. He felt exposed, so he wanted this one thing to be murmured, to be secret- only for Dream to hear. That their words would be a piece of art that was only displayed for their eyes.
The ring was now his remembrance. Sometimes he would take it off, only to inspect the design. The design of the tree that had roots that faded away into the edges of the ring. The tree that meant they would love each other for life and the roots that were supposed to connote how deep the love was between significant others.
Instead, it reminded him of the fleetingness of life. That the roots that held his life together were now rotten, poisoned by the soil around it. How the tree that graced it would live longer than its bearer.
Almost three months. Three measly months between his diagnosis and destruction. They were only married for one of those months.
Only one. One month when he had dozens ahead of him.
One, one, one, one fucking one. One and then the ring he had put onto a thin finger on a silly Valentine’s day was now on a necklace that he never took off.
He passed away on a Sunday at 10:27 am. Dream wished he could say his beautiful boy’s final hours were strong, but they weren’t. The pain had gotten too much and had overtaken his every thought. George had decided it was his time and had asked the doctors to help him, so they did.
It was long- the time it takes to die. Death had decided to let Dream’s boy feel its curse grace his veins a little longer, saying that it was only a tiny bit of time compared to eternity.
But Death didn’t understand what it meant to be mortal, to feel that licking pain that encased not just a physical body, but a soul. Dream wished he could scream and try to make Death understand that they didn’t have eternity, that a blink for him was a lifetime for a mortal.
In the end, his efforts to plead with Death were for naught. George suffered, from the beginning to the end. Dream wished he could have switched places, that he would no longer have to watch with agony. But he was mortal, so he couldn’t switch shit. So, instead, he kept his eyes open and committed his love’s pain to memory (he still gets nightmares sometimes, but at least George didn’t have to suffer alone).
So, he’s gone and Dream is stuck. Years passed by like they were seconds and decades. He was now older than George would ever be. Every day something reminds him of his beautiful boy.
He was loved, so overwhelmingly loved.
He still wished that some celestial being that he didn’t believe in would save him, would bring back his own being he worshipped that was too good to leave so soon.
Nothing happened. No one from above heard his pleas. No one except the shadows in the corner of his room and mind.
He wished, pleaded, and begged that he didn't know how it felt, but he does, and no amount of begging could bring him back.