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Dream made him furious ; made his skin crawl all over and his head buzz with annoyance. Dream made his tongue heavy and his heart pound unnaturally and George shouldn’t have been thinking about him that way. Not about large hands that would paint him violent pinks and blues, not about light, fluffy hair that would tickle his neck while plump lips peppered him with kisses. Not about Dream kissing him anywhere because Dream made him furious.
George’s knuckles paled to the same marshmallow white of the pillow he was latched onto, clinging on like it was the very thing keeping him from floating away. A loud groan tumbled past his lips. His cheeks stung with radiant heat and he briefly wondered how that hadn't managed to set his sheets alight. The fleeting thought almost tugged a smile onto his otherwise upset face.
Umber eyes bore holes into the wall directly in his line of sight. Dream was behind that wall, probably sleeping peacefully with his stupid perfect self and his stupid perfect hair that fell stupidly and perfectly over his stupid perfect eyes.
George liked to think that Dream coming out to him was the catalyst behind his own fraying sexuality, though he would never admit that the straight strings attached to him were severing long before then. Now he felt as if those threads he once held onto so confidently were wrapped around his oesophagus, pulling tighter with every breath he took. They tugged him every which way, catching on shaking fingers and trying desperately to keep him upright, vertical, straight. Because he was straight. He had to be straight.
He was straight and then Dream planted a seed inside his mind that opened up the possibility of other sexual orientations and now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. About holding hands with a guy, about kissing a guy, about doing all of it with Dream .
He cursed the blonde under his breath.
George didn’t know a lot. He didn't know how to explain the bright, boiling sizzling in his muscles and he found that he kinda didn't want to find out. However he knew it made him want to hide away. It made him want to disappear forever, or peel back his skin and pluck the feeling straight out of his veins, and he wasn't entirely sure which was the better option. He wanted to stop feeling guilty about it most of all; wanted to stop feeling like a fraud when he told himself he was straight.
It wasn’t that he was homophobic, it was just that he could never do that… lifestyle. It wasn’t for him. He'd only ever seen himself with girls, images flashing around his mind in a pink tint. However, as he laid on his bed desperately gripping his pillow, his brain supplied images of him and the blonde in that same shade, and it made everything worse. To add onto it all the two were so close now, and living in the same house. He wanted to scream thinking about how terrible the whole situation was.
George was once overjoyed, in love with living, breathing and seeing his best friends everyday. Now he felt differently. Now it would be easier to avoid the blonde if he was back in England. It would be easier to surround himself with stuck up, homophobic british pricks to rid himself of these thoughts.
George didn’t know a lot but he knew not to think about how he felt, instead choosing to remain the person everybody knew him to be. He didn’t want to be someone that people couldn’t recognise. He didn’t want to be another statistic, or a cliche, or a queer person that took a little longer to figure themselves out. He didn’t want to change. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from feeling different. He’d be someone nobody knew; his father, his friends.
His mother .
George didn’t want to become someone that his mother didn’t know. He thought that if he held on to everything he was before it all happened, that he could still hold on to a piece of her. He wanted to preserve himself in order to preserve his memories with her, the precious timesakes locked in his mind; the only ones he had and would ever have. He wanted to be her boy, her perfect prince who shined brighter than the sun. He didn’t want to lose those moments, the ones when his eyes would light up looking at hers and his laugh would echo through the walls of their home. George didn’t want to lose those moments the same way he’d lost her.
She was, and always would be , his moon and stars. He adored everything about her: from her love for everyone to her pure soul to the way she spread kindness to everyone, even those who didn’t deserve it. Upon thinking about her, he realised she may have even understood and helped him with whatever was happening to him, because she knew him. She knew him.
He didn’t want to become someone else because then she wouldn’t know him.
Angels fly until their wings tear at the seams and they fall. George liked to think that she was up there calmly resting her own wings, fluffy and white like their childhood cat, Cosmo. He wondered if the two crossed paths again up there and were watching him now.
The thoughts lulled a tense body into a state of relaxation, and his eyelashes finally kissed his cheeks as consciousness loosened its grip on his mind.
Maybe she could still know him.
Flashes of his mum played behind his eyelids while his limbs flailed, cotton sheets stuck to his sweat coated skin. His eyes flashed open and he jolted his neck to the side to look blearily at the analog clock on his nightstand, tears clinging onto dusted eyelashes and staining rosy cheeks. He’d only slept for an hour. Half-heartedly, he wiped the shine from his face and shoved all-too-warm covers off of him. Without thinking, he padded across his room, out the door and right into Dream’s.
The brunet slumped down on the opposite side of the bed.
“George?”
George couldn’t do anything but let out a pathetic sob. He curled in on himself like a cat, and Dream would have cooed if the boy wasn’t crying in his bed at five o’clock in the fucking morning.
“Hey hey hey, what’s up? Nightmare?” Dream placed a gentle hand on the brunet’s side and kept it firm besides a small thumb movement, hoping to ground George enough to talk about whatever he was going through. George wanted to pull away, but the warmth and gentle caress of his thumb burned safety into his shaking body.
“She was- she- she was right in front of me- I,” he hiccuped, trying to get the words out. It was scary, the way she looked at him, it made his heart lurch. She’d looked at him how one looks through a window, as if she hadn’t recognised the person in front of her. As if she didn’t know the person in front of her.
“Your mom? Was it bad?” Dream stated, calm, like he could read George like a book. George thought he wrote in invisible ink to everyone, but it seemed to stand out bright and bold to Dream.
He nodded his head and tried to breathe properly. He wrung his hands and chewed at splitting skin on his lip.
“Kinda– she um, just she was right there, like I could feel her. It seemed so real.” The dream kept replaying in his mind . “I miss her so fucking much but she’d be so disappointed in me right now.” He felt a dark spot opening up under him and wanted to crawl straight into it, wanted to be swallowed whole and never given back, never put back onto soft soil or feel the radiant warmth of sun rays. He didn’t didn’t deserve the love the earth gave him when he had these feelings in his chest for guys, specifically his best friend.
“George, why do you think that? You’re amazing, I’m sure she’d be the proudest.” Dream being warmth when there was no sun was something George definitely did not deserve either.
“Dream, she looked as if she saw right through me, like she didn’t even know who I was, like she was disappointed in who I am,” everything was all so overwhelming, like he was looking through a glazed window “like she knows what I’m thinking. And she’s right, she doesn’t know me, I don’t want to know me, I’m,” Gay? Bi? He shook his head at the unnerving feelings that came with labelling what he felt “I don’t know.”
He thought at that moment that maybe he didn’t know her as well as he thought. Maybe she didn’t know him either. Maybe they didn’t know each other at all.
“George, it was just a dream, it wasn’t real.” He gave George’s knee a little squeeze. He didn’t know how to comfort the brunette from something like this, it wasn’t often that the boy even opened up about himself, let alone his mother. But the blonde who was tired and slow, brain still laced with sleep tried anyway. It was what he did; even if George wasn’t making any sense.
“No! You don’t get it!” To be quite frank, George didn’t know if he really got it himself. Dream was being lovely and he was being an idiot because he was obsessing over his mum who wasn’t even alive to see him grow. “She knows,” It was stupid because really she couldn’t know and George didn’t really believe in the angel stuff but the dream came the night he was thinking about it all and that freaked him out. “she knows I’m having these thoughts about people that I shouldn’t be, that I’ve been thinking about guys like that,” His tongue was moving faster than his brain and he regretted the words he said before he even got them out “it's all wrong and god, she knows and she hates me for it.”
Time seemed to still as they soaked in words sprung from a hateful tongue.
Dream was quick to withdraw his hand, his heart shattering in George’s icy hands. George wished his very existence had never come across Dream, he was hurting the boy and in turn, the boy was hurting him.
“ Ouch.” Dream said, cutting through the silence, and the blade stung deep in the olders chest. Simultaneously, Dream wondered how the fuck he’d missed that George was homophobic. He wondered how they’d gone this long with playful- what Dream thought was gonna be something- flirting.
“Dream, fuck, that’s not, it’s not, that is not what I meant.” Umber eyes stared up at Dream’s, a cold flame present behind them despite that darkness of an early morning keeping the sun at bay.
“How the hell did I not realise that you actually hate who I am?” The question didn’t seem to be aimed at George, mumbled under breaths with a tone that could make George’s ears bleed. Dream sounded hurt, the kind that came from deep in your gut, that gave you heat rashes with the intensity of it. It was laced with confusion and betrayal. The brunet ached to never hear that again, to never be the cause of that tone again. “How have I let you live with me when you have a problem with people who like the same sex?” The sarcasm-laced fire building in Dream’s chest crawled out of his mouth with every word. George felt the heat licking at his brain, that question was definitely aimed at him.
“I don’t! I swear, Dream. I support you and I think you’re super valid and a really, really great guy.” Guilt latched itself onto each word and dripped from his mouth in thick, glistening strands. Dream shook his head as if he was trying to fight the words off, stopping them from travelling to his brain.
“Fuck you, George. Get out.”
“What?”
“What, you don’t understand me now? Get the fuck out of my room!”
The next few days were torturous. Dream scratched at the back of his scalp until it went raw and scabbed over and George ripped all the skin off his lips until crimson was left splattered over ivory teeth. Dream and George slipped out of their rooms only once they’d heard the thud of the others’ door shut. It was stupid and they both knew that, but George wasn’t one for confrontation and Dream really didn’t know how to kick your what seemed to be homophobic best friend— could he still call him that? —out of your house.
Patches was the thing to break their unhealthy time apart. The two had bickered over her before, trying to win her over and see who’s room she’d sleep in. So when the cat padded her way into their hallway between their doors, George thought he could quickly sneak out and yank her in.
Dream, apparently, had the same idea. When their doors creaked open and they both clicked at Patches, emerald met enstatite.
They only stared at one another, a silence falling between them so dense it would hurt to walk into. They both looked rough, George’s white t-shirt had splatters of scarlet on it and Dream’s hair– which was usually maintained very well –was messed up and oily.
The brunet felt like he couldn’t breathe, as if his lungs had holes in them and let all the air out that he consumed.
They stood there in their door frames, stances mirrored, for what felt like hours. Dream felt as if this very interaction was stripping years off his life.
“Please,” George whimpered, a cry for a chance of forgiveness. “Can we talk? Seriously, I need to make sure you know that what I said was not what I meant.”
If George was a flower, then the silence and look of hatred shot from green was all his petals being plucked from him.
Dream wanted to bite back with a venomous tongue, make the brunet’s skin burn even if it was only half the flame he felt. He hated that he wanted George to hurt so he replied with a short and firm, ‘fine.’
The blond led George into the kitchen after he swooped Patches into his arms. He whispered sweet things to her and George followed from a safe distance, not wanting to step on toes more than he already had.
Dream made Patches’ food so carefully, warm hands creating it with love. The same hands he’d fallen into so many times before; hands that sculpted him back to perfection, hands that were safety. George briefly wondered if those hands would ever catch him again.
“So?” It was sour and Dream didn’t spare a glance at him, only looking to where the feline was eating her food comfortably, oblivious to her owners talking.
“Look, I’m really sorry bout’ what I said. I didn’t mean it like that.” Dream didn’t look convinced, grounding his teeth and locking his jaw. He seemed to calculate his next words in his head, cogs turning methodically, almost being heard in the otherwise silence of the dim kitchen.
“Didn’t sound like it.”
“I’m serious. I don’t care who you’re into it’s just that,”
“It’s just what George, huh? It’s just that if I ever come home with a guy you’ll look disgusted and disappear for a couple days? It’s just that you’ll hate me on the other side of my wall?” Dream was facing him now-- Patches had long scurried off as if she’d known the bubble of tension was going to burst.
“No! No, no, no. It’s not like that. Fuck! Oh my god. What, do you want me to just completely lay out my feelings to you, tell you exactly what’s going on in my mind just to get the point across that I’m not homophobic and I don’t hate you?”
George was never a feelings guy, which was promptly the reason - apart from the dream - that the two had ended up in this situation in the first place. Either way, George was never good at feelings, or talking about feelings, which is why it felt so absurd to even voice it. He thought maybe he should put more effort into doing so.
Dream, in any other situation, would have stopped it here because he knows George, knows that it makes him uneasy and knows that it’s difficult for him, but this wasn’t just any other situation. Without batting an eye, he replied, unmistakable fury under his tongue.
“Yeah! Actually, that would be really fucking useful!”
If George wasn’t shaking with anger he may have flinched at how loud they’d both gotten. Flames licked at his cheeks and made his blood boil.
“It’s not about you, okay? It’s me! It’s about me! Me and how I think I might be fucking queer and that scares me ok!” His heart jumped out of his chest at the accidental admission but the frustration that ran through his veins kept the words coming.
“It’s scary and the dream I had terrified me, I don’t want anyone to look at me ever, especially her, I don’t want her to not know me, Dream, do you get that?” Everything was going so quick, he couldn’t hear anything but his own blood pumping in his ears “Do you get that I don’t want to be someone my dead mother wouldn’t know?”
His chest heaved, arms slung down by his sides. Angry tears burst from conflicted eyes. He hadn’t realised he’d even started crying until his body wracked with sobs.
“George.” The brunet didn’t even have to look up to know there was a pity pout sat on the boy's face. He felt like shit, just having dumped all that out after it had eroded at his organs for the past few days. He felt weak and vulnerable and he hated that because it earned him the look on Dream’s face; he hated that look.
“George,” His voice had closed in on him and he briefly saw arms that reached out to him before they encircled his shivering body.
George crumbled at the touch, his knees buckled, and tears flowed quicker, but Dream was there. He was there to slowly settle him on the cold tiles in the middle of their kitchen at midnight. He was there to support George’s crash. After everything, Dream and his hands were still there to catch him.
“You’re okay, I’ve got you.”
Now it wasn’t as if all the anger in Dream’s body had withered away at the vulnerability and sharing of fears from George, but the blonde was content in knowing that his best friend - who he could happily still call that - wasn’t homophobic, at least not to anyone else but himself.
So he was gentle. He had let the brunet dig his fingernails into petal-thin skin, let his chin get tickled by hair from a boy that sobbed into his chest, let the umber eyes shed waterfalls into his cotton shirt like a snake coming out of its skin.
Only when George had been reduced to hiccups did the blonde disrupt the still water they both drowned in. He wanted to bring George back to the surface to breathe. It was in his nature; to save people, especially George.
“Why didn’t you tell me, George?”
George felt as the water filled up his lungs and bubbles poured out of his mouth, trying and failing to wrap his lips around syllables and a tongue to flick out letters. He grabbed onto Dream’s bicep as if he could pull him to the top, drag him out of the ocean like a fish caught in a net.
“Because it was about you,” the brunet mumbled into damp cotton.
“What?”
George thought that if they were really doing the whole truth thing tonight, he may as well go ahead and tell Dream the whole story. He pulled back from the comfort and looked up at Dream; cadmium eyes swirled with confusion.
“It sounds so fucking stupid, but when you told me you weren’t straight I- thought about it like all the time.”
He breathed, tried to stay calm to make sure his words were put together- something he should’ve done those nights ago which got them here in the first place.
“Then I had that stupid dream that made all the thoughts I was having even worse, and god I’m so sorry for what I said. It's just the things I was feeling about, uh, nevermind.” George’s eyes flicked towards Dream’s face quickly to see if he’d caught his near confession. He thought he saw something flash in the green, but Dream didn’t say anything, so he continued.
“I just, I feel so uncertain about myself. Like, do you ever feel like a fraud? I don’t know, I feel like when I say I’m not into guys I’m lying because I’ve never wanted to be anything other than straight, so I felt gross and not like me– and that’s hard for me.”
Dream didn’t think George had ever been this open with him before; it was weird but refreshing. He didn’t dare move a muscle in fear of startling the brunet back into silence.
“I don’t know how to explain it. I guess you wouldn’t really get it because your mum's like– alive or whatever, but I just don’t wanna change from the person she knew. The dream felt so real though, and I worry that maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”
A deep frown with eyes to match, sat on a soft face and for another day, Dream was at a loss for what to say. Swirls of emerald looked at George with so much guilt; wrapped the word sorry in pretty ribbons.
George shook his head. “Dream, don't look at me like that.”
“I feel horrible. I’m literally a horrible human being oh my god.”
George could tell, it radiated off his body in unpleasant tones, bled into his yellow aura and turned it into a murky grey. He frowned.
“No, don’t feel horrible. I was horrible and stupid and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
The suns’ rays wrapped around his fingers, cradled them gently and set a soft glow upon them even in the dark, bitter hour.
“Internalised homophobia, George. That’s what’s “wrong” with you, but you just admitted out loud that you might be kinda into guys, which is fucking huge George! I’m proud of you, and what you’re feeling is perfectly normal. I should’ve known better than to jump to the conclusion that you’re homophobic, that was shitty for me to do.”
“Why are you being so nice about this, I hurt you.” Dream squeezed his hands as a gentle reminder that he has always been his person, they’ve always been there for each other and he doesn’t plan on going anywhere any time soon.
“Because I’ve been in your spot before. Not with the mom things, or the internalised homophobia thing, but I was scared. Just like you. Man– I would shit myself at the thought of telling people in case they turned out to be some horrible human being. But you, someone who glows as bright as the fucking moon deserves to have nice things. And maybe your mom wasn’t who you thought but love,—”
The word caught George’s attention immediately, his eyes shot up to meet Dream’s.
“I, sorry I didn’t mean t–”
George didn’t know a lot, but he knew that if you asked the George from a week ago if he’d ever pull a certain blonde onto his lips by the collar of his shirt under the dark green glow of the oven clock at silly o’clock in the morning, he’d probably laugh in your face; but here he was. He carded his fingers through soft blonde locks and caressed cheekbones with shaking marble. Dream’s lips were smooth in contrast to George’s split ones but they kissed so softly that if George’s lips didn’t burn with the sun's warmth from the blonde’s, he would’ve thought he was kissing clouds.
“Holy shit.” A single strand of silver kept them connected until Dream breathed too hard and it broke. “Holy shit, George.”
“What?”
A smile broke out onto Dream’s face, goofy and familiar, “My mom is going to be very confused.”
“ What?” George looked at him quizzically.
“I told her about us, like that I liked you or whatever, and about how we act and stuff. Then I told her about our fight.”
“You told your mum?”
“Yeah, sorry. I hope that’s okay. I just needed someone to talk to.”
“Yeah, yeah that’s okay Dream, just don’t tell anyone else. God, you’re such an idiot.”
George’s hand stroked blonde hair softly, and their lips met again before Dream had time to respond.
They kissed deeper, longer, hungrier.
George didn’t know a lot, but he knew he liked this. He really liked this; the way hands and tongues and lips burnt bonds into each other. It was fast and gentle, like rolling waves, and George could surf on them all day. Dream broke their kiss first, breathing against a pale neck before peppering it with kisses.
Years of affection and wanting to be exactly here crawled up his throat and Dream couldn’t help but clamp his teeth around marshmallow. A pretty sound slipped from between mauve lips and Dream dropped his head to George’s shoulder, panting.
“George, you deserve everything. You deserve good. If this makes you feel good, if you think this is good, take it. Don’t let your fears of her not liking this take away what makes you feel good.”
His voice was coated in honey and George nearly drowned in it, feeling like he couldn’t breathe with the way it filled his lungs.
“Yeah, yeah I think this is good, really good.” He whispered back, almost afraid of what that would mean for him in the future.
“Good.” Smiles connected once more.
George was sat outside on the porch a couple days later, enjoying the feeling of a new freedom that fluttered in his chest. Though he was still confused about who he was, he knew he liked Dream and that was the only important thing to him at that moment.
The light breeze blew his hair this way and that and his mind swirled with it, mimicking it’s motion as it swung from one thought to another. He heard Dream, his boyfriend, talking on the phone faintly inside but he wasn’t focused on that.
He thought about what the blond said, about taking the good. He thought about his mum and who he remembered her as; who she was in his dream. Something tasted bitter on his tongue but Dream was there, next to him, with a cup of tea just how he likes it, sugary and light.
“Hey, love.”
“Hi, and thanks for this.” He smiled as he gestured to the cup, steam billowing out of it.
He smiled as they sat together, and George was certain that smile of his was sweeter than his tea. “Course.”
They soaked in the sun, quiet but comfortable, hands laced together on Dream’s thigh. George thought that even if his mum would hate him, he wouldn’t give this up because of her.
“Hey Dream?” the blonde hummed and looked at him, the sun glittered in his hair, lighting it up like a halo. He was an angel, his angel.
“I don’t have that gross fraud feeling in my gut anymore when I think about calling you my boyfriend. This, us, is good and you make me feel good so, I think that if my mum was still alive I’d tell her about you too.”
And George really didn’t know a lot, but he knew that the bright smile that showcased sharp ivory and small dimples was something he was already falling in love with.