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George is drunk. His face is warm, tongue slow, fingers clumsy. He's still got a grip on his words and his feet, but both seem to jump out ahead of him without his intent.
It's a good job the night is winding down. Tina left for her hotel a while ago, Karl and Sapnap are softly bickering about something, lego pieces rattling in a box. George feels sleepy, tipped sideways on the sofa, watching friends who feel like mirages.
"Hey George-meister," Karl says, his own face bright with a glow of whatever shots they'd taken. "Off my bed, yeah?"
George looks at the sofa for a confused moment before realising. "Uh," he says. "Yeah."
"How drunk is he?" says a voice.
A familiar one, warm, golden. It's tinny through the speaker of Sapnap's phone.
"Not," Sapnap says. "We're not drunk, we're… absolutely tabled, mate."
He says this last with an affected British accent that is so bad it takes George a moment to figure out that's what he's doing. George groans.
"Don't throw up," Karl says.
George shoots him a roll of his eyes and heaves himself up off the couch. His body feels like lead, and the coordination it takes to stand is more than he'd been expecting. "I'm going to bed," George says.
"Night George," says the phone-voice.
George smiles. Usually he tries to rein those in because far too many people have pointed them out at this point. But tonight, like his legs and his words, his smiles are happening without his say-so.
"Goodnight," George says. "Sweet dreams, Dream."
Everyone else yells their goodnights to each other and George laughs at the way his words sound, dreams dream. Sapnap is on the floor, hanging up the phone after a night of laughter, and Karl has flung himself onto the couch. They haven't been here before, but George still doesn't feel too weird about letting them figure themselves out. Sapnap knows where his room is, Karl is welcome to the couch. It's not like he needs to do anything else.
His own bed feels like a thousand miles away. Further even than Dream who had hung out with them from the other end of the phone as they got steadily more and more drunk. They'd shared what they could, but George had been aware the whole time of that missing piece, a presence only in voice that should have been more.
He wanted more.
He lands face down into his own pillow and fishes his phone out of his pocket. Dream answers when he calls, after only two short bursts of the tone.
"George?" he says, edged with concern. "Are you okay?"
"I needed to say goodnight," George says. Obviously. Why would Dream even ask? They always say goodnight.
"We did," Dream says. He sounds lighter, almost amused. "Like, ten seconds ago."
The walk to his bedroom had surely taken more time than that. And anyway, it didn't count.
"No," George says. "We didn't."
There's a huff on the other end, an amused chuckle in that gilded tone he's so used to. Does it usually sound so far away?
"Anyway," George says, his phone warm against his cheek. "I'm here, talk to me."
Dream takes this request and acquiesces. He very rarely denies George things when he asks for them and George kind of loves that. He shouldn't, probably, but he's too drunk to care.
"Did you have a good time?"
George considers. He considers the heady joy of having his friends here after so long of feeling alone, he considers the raucous laughter, the friendly fights, the playful roughhousing. Even when he's annoyed with them he wouldn't trade having them here for anything.
"Yeah," he says. "I did."
There's a tinge somewhere on the end of his sentence, his words falling away to a distance.
"But?" Dream prompts.
"I wish…" George sighs, his own warm, alcohol-tinged breath rebounding back off his pillow. He gives in, the drinks making his inhibitions fold where they become water-logged. There's something to blame it on, he doesn't have to keep such a tight hold. "I wish you were here too."
Dream doesn't respond with words at first, just a short cut-off hum followed by a deep inhalation. "There?" he says, eventually. "In your bed?"
George's face already felt warm from the shots but now he's positively scorching. He presses fingers to his lips to stop an offer from tumbling out. He forces himself to change the subject, but finds the new one isn't much better.
"I kissed Karl tonight," he says.
"George," Dream says and George can hear the smile. He only gets to hear smiles, he never gets to see them. "Are you trying to make me jealous?"
"Is it working?"
There's a giddy little flip in his stomach. They talk like this, they joke, but something about his walls being knocked down makes this feel different.
"Yes," Dream says.
It's plain, unhidden, as Dream so often is and George struggles to be.
"I meant in my bed," George says, because he's dropped his hand to curl fingers in his shirt. He rolls onto his back, staring at the expanse of his ceiling while flecks of colour dance in the corner of his vision. "I wish you were— yeah."
"Would you kiss me, too?"
Maybe it's unfair of Dream to ask him when he's so obviously compromised, but George doesn't mind. It's kind of nice, actually, to not have the effort of his own filters in place, to reach inside of himself and find the words there for the taking.
"Yes," he says, easier than he's ever confessed anything.
And it is a confession. Whispered into the quiet dark of his room as he hears Karl and Sapnap speaking in low voices on the other side of the wall, too quiet to pick out what they're saying, just the mingled melody of their cadence. Karl isn't on the couch, and George will never mention that again. In exchange, they won't bring up that they could hear him too. Even though they must know who he's talking to.
"Would it be better?"
George closes his eyes against the multicoloured flares. They dance behind his eyelids for a second before stilling. He thinks about Karl taking his face between his hands, the laugh that came before, short and sharp, the way Karl probably expected him to pull away, how George thought he probably would too only to not at the last minute. It was brief, barely a thing, but enough to send them all into laughter and a quick did that really just happen? out of Dream on the phone.
He thinks about Dream's palms cupping his cheeks, how the laugh would die in George's throat to have him that close. He thinks about Dream leaning in, finding it hard to put Karl's same ridiculous smile, the obvious joke, over Dream's earnest expression.
Instead, all he sees is blank, because what little he has to go on with regards to Dream's face isn't enough to fill it in. It isn't enough, he thinks, he needs to know what that looks like.
Oh god.
"Maybe," George says. "I don't know. Would it?"
"Oh I know it would," Dream says.
What George finds so fascinating is the lack of hesitation. Dream hasn't had a single drop to drink and yet all of these things spill out of him as if on water. Has he always been like this? Have these words been simply shimmering beneath the surface? Are they so connected that the alcohol in George's bloodstream has loosened the grip on Dream's thoughts as well?
They've been nudged up against this so many times. Ebbed and flowed, out and back in again. So many times, inching that line further and further back until George isn't sure where it is anymore. It would be so easy, to tip over it, to let his loose tongue and heavy limbs send him flying over top.
Why not. Why not give in to the freefall, take a step and let himself plummet down, down to where he's sure Dream will catch him.
"Maybe when I get there," George says.
They talk about when a lot. It used to be if, a question not an eventuality, but it was answered a long time ago.
"Oh," Dream says.
Yes, Dream, George thinks, step into the fall with me.
It can't be a great height. They aren't all that far away from the bottom except by physical distance. Once that's resolved then— George shivers with the thought.
"Do you want to?" George asks. And he's asking about more than the kiss, more than a silly competition with Karl about who can kiss him better.
George would know the answer to that one without the need for evidence. He wants it though, kind of desperately.
"I—" Dream starts. It's unlike him to run out of words. George so often finds himself with the right ones but Dream can nearly always find them. But every so often, when it really matters, when the emotion gets tangled up in Dream's throat, he falters.
But George has words today. They aren't imprisoned like they usually are because a shot or two of something strong has slicked the lock and set them free.
"I do," George continues, because he can. "When I'm in Florida I think we should— you know?"
Okay, so maybe they're not all the right words, and maybe Dream is going to have to do a little work to fill in the gaps. But Dream will understand, he always does.
"You're drunk, George."
"But that means I can say it," George says. "I can't, usually. Always mean it though."
"George," Dream says.
There's a sound on the other end, the click of a door.
"Are you in your room?" George asks.
Dream hums. "Getting in bed."
"Early for you."
"I wanna be in bed with you," Dream says. "I mean— no. You know what, I mean exactly that."
There is something magical, that they can be on two ends of the same world, an ocean apart, and yet still be so close. Because George feels him, just for a moment, that they are in reach of something if he'll only extend his hand. Fall.
"When I'm in Florida," George says.
When, when, when. They've said it about trips to the beach and visits to restaurants, to games they'll play and streams they'll do. He's said it about so many things, but never this. Never the short step to a long drop, his stomach whooshing, Dream's arms ready to steady him.
He's drunk. Blessedly so, because it gives him the courage to say what he says next, barrelling in without waiting for Dream to answer.
"I want to try," George says.
"Try?" Dream asks. George imagines him on his bed, an arm under his head, fingers in his own hair. He wants to slip his fingers in besides, twine them together with his hair and his hand, pull just enough to bare Dream's throat to be kissed.
It isn't anywhere near the most he's imagined.
"Us," George says.
Dream could be here, because George can hear every inhale, every shaking breath that stems from Dream's lips.
"You say that now," Dream says. "But—"
"No," George says. "Look. I get it, I'm an idiot and I'm drunk and I should probably have waited to tell you this some other time. But, I'm not going to. I'm shit at this stuff. Like, Karl and Sapnap are in the room next door, you know, like they just did that and I don't know how to. So, when I say I want to try it isn't something I made up because I'm drunk, it's a thing I've carried around and can only now get out because being drunk got me out of my own way."
"Sapnap and Karl are next door?"
So much for never bringing it up.
"That's what you took away from what I said?" George says.
Dream makes a noise, indefinable, probably a laugh. "You're right," he says. "You are an idiot."
"What?" George retorts, "The fuck?"
"You're an idiot if you think I'm not entirely fixated on the fact that you said you wanted to try us, George. Of course I am. I just needed… like, a fucking minute. To, you know, make sure I'm not dreaming."
George's smile comes too quickly, joy giving him a headrush as he curls his body over on the bed, bringing his knees up as if he's holding a precious, delicate secret close against his chest, shielded with his entire being.
"You're not dreaming" he says.
He's in the freefall. Tumbling over and over without a care because he knows there's a soft landing waiting for him.
"Do you mean it?" Dream asks. And it occurs to George that he's hesitant too, he's not catching George, he's falling too. They're doing it together. "I mean, will you still mean it in the morning?"
"Yes," George says. Certain, never more sure of anything.
"Tell me then," Dream says.
"What?"
"Tell me tomorrow. When you're sober."
George presses fingers to his lips again. He isn't holding anything back this time, just feeling his warm skin, the way his breath moves in and out. He can do this. He's said it once now, he can say it again.
He means it, more to the point. Maybe if you'd asked him before the drinks he'd have fed you some bullshit about not really knowing, too scared to make the leap, but he knows. And Dream knows. And Dream is falling too.
"I will," George says.
"That you want to kiss me?" Dream prompts. "That you want to try?"
"Yes," George says. "Both. All of it."
Then he's giggling, giddy and heady, the pure rushing possibility of it all. His body is still so tired, arms and legs tangled together, in the middle of his lonely mattress, Dream an ocean away. But there's hope, bright sparking, following him off the edge of a glorious dive.
"Okay," Dream says. "Okay, tomorrow then."
"But—" George starts.
"Yes?"
"You'll stay now, right?"
Dream says his name, swift and soft. "George," he whispers, low and right into George's ear. He could almost be here. Almost. "I'm not going anywhere."
George lays the phone by his head , switching to speaker so the sounds of Dream's breathing can mix with his own. He lets his eyes close, fingers curled lax into his palm. The world is tipped askew, dizziness overcoming, the sensation of a rocking boat.
The ocean takes him, waves gentle, almost asleep.
"George," Dream says one more time, just before George slips below the surface.
"Hm?"
"Are Sapnap and Karl really sharing a bed right now?"
George laughs.
-
George wakes on top of his bed to a dry mouth, a dead phone battery, and too-bright light filtering in through his curtains.
He takes a moment to gather himself, to stitch the pieces of the previous night into a shape he recognises. The party, kissing Karl, Sapnap's voice quiet through his wall. And then Dream, each sentence painted out for him to relive over and George finds a smile on his face, a fizzle in his veins.
"Tell me tomorrow," Dream had said.
George plugs his phone in while he drags his aching body up and into the shower. He doesn't think about what he'll say while he scrubs his hangover off him, doesn't think about it while brushing his teeth and combing his hair and grabbing an apple from the bowl.
He doesn't think about it at all until he's back in his bedroom, the room on the other side of his wall still silent with its sleeping inhabitants. His phone has enough charge that he can turn it on, stare at his screen.
A little mental math tells him Dream will be asleep, but waking him would be warranted, George thinks.
He still doesn't know what he'll say, if he's even capable of saying it without the aid of a few drinks. But he wants to, he has to hope that even if he can't manage it that maybe calling will be enough.
"Hello?" Dream answers.
And god, the sleepy, deep pitch of his voice makes George dizzier than his hangover.
"Hi," George says.
Bedsheets rustle, George imagines him turning over. Is he in pyjamas? A t-shirt? Does he have his bare chest exposed to the hush of his room? George wants to ask, but can't seem to find the words.
"You don't sound half as bad as I expected," Dream says.
"You thought I'd be puking and shit?" George says. "Nah. I'm tougher than that."
"You are," Dream agrees.
There's a beat. George knows it's his cue, that this is the moment he needs to talk but the lock is back around his words, dried out and rusted shut.
"Did you call just to check in?" Dream asks.
He's giving him an out. He's saying that if George wants to brush off this call as a reset, that things can go back to the way they were before George spilled his guts. He can pretend he never said any of it.
But he doesn't want to. He's on the ledge, one foot hovering over empty air.
"Actually," George says, "I just wanted to say…"
"Say what?" Dream hums.
He leans.
He steps.
He falls.
"That I meant it. That I— When I get to Florida. I want to kiss you. I want to... Dream, I want to try us."
George is spiralling in the air, head over feet.
"That's—" Dream says, falling right beside him. "Me too, George. So much. I want to try too."
"Okay," George says, the air in his lungs, wind rushing, heart beating, extending a hand and grasping Dream so tightly as they hit terminal velocity. "Let's try."