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“Just say you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you!” he said with softness in his voice. “I’m doing this because I care about you, George. Being the king only puts you in danger. Don’t go and pretend like you care about it, anyway, you never cared about power.”
He was right; George didn’t care about making crucial decisions, ruling over the people of the server, controlling them. What he’d wanted was to be closer to Dream. He’d wanted to bask in the blonde’s lopsided smile, forever capture the glowing look on his face as he watched George sit happily on the golden throne.
George missed the time when he’d been clueless.
The praising words and gestures were fabrications, threads in the giant tapestry Dream was weaving for himself so delicately. He couldn’t tell you exactly when it started. But one day the brunette woke up and realized it was never personal; that Dream’s only goal was to manipulate and exploit. Connected by strings like a puppet and dangling helplessly for Dream’s use, he could be danced around or cut loose, whichever served Dream’s interests better. Whichever benefitted him and his plans.
George was pathetic, and he knew it. He watched Dream’s figure travel across the server, while he built walls and bombed cities, or while he walked in silence by the sea. He followed the short waves of Dream’s hair as they whipped around in the wind. He drowned in the green of Dream’s eyes, imagining how they’d look if he could see their true color. He watched the lean muscles of Dream’s arms and back as he strung arrows in his bow.
In serene captivation, he watched Dream. In this moment, he desperately clung to the view of Dream’s profile, highlighted softly by the setting sun while he stared down at the ruins of L’manburg. His eyes were cold and calculated, so different from the loving gaze George remembered. What if he’d been imagining it the whole time, and it all was some twisted joke to further his omnipotent control? George, after all, was just another person on the server, another pawn he could use for power. He wondered if he’d ever been anything more.
Every day the brunette sat in the ruins of his little house, eating mushroom soup in solitude as war raged on far away. He would hear explosions and see the glaring flash of fireworks, but none of it mattered much. Nations rose and fell over and over again while he isolated himself from the violence. You could say he was weak, but he was also tired, exhausted by the cycle of battle and politics and manipulation. When would it end?
Sapnap came to visit him sometimes. He had fire in his eyes, and he tried to pull George out of his mushroom hole and shove a sword in his hand, but George saw that he was tired too. There was pain in his chest that weighed down on him the same as George. In that way he understood him, in a way that Karl and Quackity never could.
George felt in his gut that it all linked back to Dream. The slow deterioration of the server, the numbness and madness that somehow coexisted, the deep longing for something he could never reach.
He felt miles away, when really he was only a few steps from the towering man. Dream stood tall and impenetrable on the hill, eyes fixed on the pit that used to be a country. George was crouched behind a bush, having rushed to hide as he collected berries and heard Dream’s footsteps climbing up to the forest. He watched silently, observing his mysterious frame, daring to guess at what thoughts crossed his mind.
Months ago, he would have walked up next to Dream, leaned on his arm as they watched the sunset together. They’d talk about random things and giggle as they drifted off to sleep by each other’s side. The warm feeling of certainty he found from those memories was foreign now, a false reality that could never be. He needed to move on and accept it.
But maybe there was a purpose for all of this. All of his lies and deceit. Perhaps the end goal was something George could comprehend. He knew it was wishful thinking, but hope was rare and enticing.
Words climbed up to his throat, and he almost called out to Dream, but he clamped the thought down. Instead, George followed his looming figure as he tread away from the hillside.
What was he thinking? Spying on the most powerful person on the server for no discernable reason was not exactly his best idea yet. But something had tugged on his heart when Dream turned away. He felt restless and useless and desperate to figure the man out.
Following his path parallel to him in the forest, George tried to remain as inconspicuous as he could. He chugged an invisibility potion, just to be sure, and emptied his hands of any glowing items that could be traced. They reached the coast of the sea, and George hesitated. It would be difficult to follow him in the water. But, bubbling potion already down his throat, he had to commit. He needed to do this.
George caught a dolphin and followed Dream under the dark waves. The only light came from molten spots of lava at the bottom of the ocean and the soft white haze of the moon. As they continued on the journey, George got increasingly nervous at the distance Dream was travelling. The water changed quickly from a comfortable cool temperature to almost unbearably cold. It bit at his skin like sharp teeth, and when he surfaced to catch his breath, his body ached. Reevaluating his decisions, George wondered whether this venture of curiosity was worth its risks.
After a long ride, they finally approached an acacia island with a giant mountain that reached over the clouds. It looked deserted, but Dream got out of his boat and walked onto the mossy green earth with purpose. George slipped out of the water and dried off, shivering with exhaustion. He took shelter in a nearby cave, for once taking his eye off of Dream. The trip had taken a lot of his strength, and to be honest, willpower. He considered camping here for the night and exploring the place in the morning.
George almost entertained the idea until he spotted a wall of obsidian at the back of the cave. It could have easily blended into the inky shadows of the night. He walked over and touched his palm to the surface, feeling the cold smoothness of the pure obsidian stone. He’d found...something. Whatever Dream was hiding here had to be important.
There was a clicking sound and a sudden shift, causing George to jump, and suddenly the wall slid open, revealing a dark hall. The floor was purely blackstone, the walls a pattern of dark purple and black, barely illuminated by a single glowstone in the center. George chewed his lip, knowing he was in too deep, but petrified at what he was going to find in this obsidian chamber.
Whatever it was, he had to know. He was here to find out, wasn’t he? To unlock a new piece of the puzzle that was Dream?
Carefully, he stepped through the wall. He took a few tentative steps forward, expecting Dream to pop out in front of him and lunge. But there was only silence.
His eye caught on something shining in the corner. George focused on it until his vision adjusted. It was...a bucket?
A bucket of water, he realized as he stepped closer. Inside it, a small brown fish swam around frantically.
What the fuck. It was Beckerson.
The short feeling of joy quickly passed when he looked around the rest of the room. The Axe of Peace was framed on the wall, and at the end of the room, boxed in dramatic holding cases, were a pair of disks. The famous disks that seemed to drive the server to war and bloodshed.
George heard the soft sound of a sheep behind him. At the other end of the room, tied to a fence, was a blue sheep. George vaguely recognized it as Friend, which he dimly remembered was connected to Wilbur somehow.
Pacing through the hallway, George found several more items and a few empty frames, as if they were being saved to hold something. What was this? Some place to keep the treasures of the server? The cherished items and pets that Dream could use for more control? George felt like he was visiting hell. This couldn’t be real life, it had to be some cruel kind of nightmare.
“Hello, Georgie.”
George whipped around to see the tall man only meters away from him, staring down at him attentively. The shorter man glanced down at himself, realizing too late that his invisibility potion had run out. He shuddered, backing up until he felt the coolness of the wall which, to his despair, had closed behind him.
“Do you like my little bunker? I’ve been keeping a few things down here. For safekeeping, of course.” His voice was calm. Too calm. He had to have known George was following him, the whole time.
“Bunker? What the hell is this, Dream?” George responded, sounding more confident than he felt. He struggled to keep eye contact with the blonde, who only grew taller as he stalked closer to George.
“I think you know, George.”
He stopped advancing when their chests were only inches apart. The smaller man felt defenseless and vulnerable, cornered by Dream’s broad shoulders as he backed him against the obsidian. His eyes glinted with an indiscernible emotion. He wore no mask, and the scar splitting his eyebrow was open for George to see.
Dream seemed to notice his eye movements. “Do you remember when I got this scar? You helped stitch it up for me. I remember you were running around like an idiot, looking for bandages.”
George gulped. He remembered, but he refused to acknowledge the fact. His cheeks heated, recalling the soft heat of Dream’s skin under his care, the mesmerizing tension when their eyes had met.
Dream braced his hands to the wall on either side of George, caging him in.
“There was so much blood that day. Even I bled my fair share, but you healed me, George. You were always good at that.”
George turned his head to look away, but Dream grabbed his jaw and forced him to meet his eyes again. His eyes roamed all over the brunette’s face, jade-green irises studying each curve and slope of skin like a feather-light touch. George squeezed his eyelids shut, resisting the urge to squirm under Dream’s gaze. He felt something cold and sharp on his jaw, and his eyes shot open when it sliced, creating a clean cut under his cheek. The shorter let out a quiet, pained sound at the sting, and reached up to touch his jaw, but his wrists were caught and pulled away before he had the chance. Soon, his hands were pinned next to his head, and Dream was leaning down to press his lips to the blood seeping out of the cut. He kissed George’s pale skin, licking the blood off his jawline and trailing stained kisses down his neck. George gasped, and tried to wriggle out of Dream’s grasp. It was to no avail, as Dream locked both slender wrists with one hand above his head, using the other to hold the brunette’s waist.
When Dream eventually released George’s neck from his eager mouth, George was whimpering, gone completely limp in Dream’s arms. Their lips finally connected, and he melted into the taller man, allowing himself to be wrapped in strong arms and devoured. Dream pressed into him hungrily, freeing George’s wrists and making more bruises across the canvas of his skin. George wrapped his arms around Dream’s neck, running his hands through the dirty blonde waves of his hair and pulling on them, drowning in the guttural sound the action incited from Dream. He felt large hands dig into his hip bones painfully, and scratched at the other’s back in response, pulling at the collar of his shirt.
It was a violent back-and-forth, a game of giving and taking that fed both of their desires. George felt nothing but bliss when Dream grabbed his thighs and hooked them around his waist, trapping George between him and the hard wall of obsidian. The blonde attacked his collarbone, biting and sucking and sending George into an oblivion he never knew existed. He was barely aware of the pathetic sounds he was making, head tipped back in euphoria with his hands thread into the strands of hair at the back of Dream’s neck. His jaw was bleeding again, and the red liquid smeared across his throat, mixing with the red ichor from Dream’s bitten lip.
“Dream,” he whined almost desperately, needing more, more of Dream, high on the feeling.
The blonde pulled away, panting, and watched George. He knew he was wrecked, his hair in disarray and eyes barely focusing. Dream looked satisfied at the sight, something possessive in the way he gripped his waist.
“Please,” George breathed. Dream grinned, and his face was suddenly cunning. His eyes were heavy lidded but sharp, lips curved in a menacing smile. George trembled, feeling unhinged but secure in the arms of the towering man. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this wasn’t real, that this was not the Dream that he wanted. Nevertheless, in this moment all he desired was to worship the man like a god.
Dream reached to pull something out of a pouch at his hip, but George barely noticed the movement. Abruptly, something cold and hard was pressed against George’s lips.
“Drink,” Dream said. It wasn’t a request.
George opened his mouth and a bitter liquid was poured down his throat. Dream watched in fascination as he tipped the bottle back, emptying its contents.
George coughed lightly after swallowing the last gulp. He looked at Dream with confusion. “A- A potion of poison?”
“I couldn’t let you get away with trying to trick me, George.”
George’s eyes grew heavy and an uncomfortable tingling feeling started spreading to his limbs. “It hurts.”
“It won’t last long, I promise. You know I’d never truly hurt you.”
His head was cloudy and heavy, his arms and legs were numb, and his skin was slick with sweat as the poison spread. It weakened him down to his last shred of health, and Dream supported his weight, carrying him away from the harsh obsidian wall.
“Fuck you. You’re going to kill me...” his words were slurred, almost unintelligible.
Dream smiled. “I’d bring you back.”
George had little mind power left to try and dissect what he could possibly mean by that. White spots danced in his vision like stars, and the poison reached each end of his body, numbing his nerves and filling him with moonlight. The metallic taste of love lingered on his tongue, and he sank into deep waves and ripples, dissolving into an unconscious abyss.
Dream carried George’s motionless form out of the obsidian chamber, hugging him close to his chest. He was placed in the crook of a tree beside a lava lake, and each of his items were burned in the sweltering pool. Soon after, he was alone, marked with purple and red and the white glow of the moon.
He’d been used and discarded, and had revelled in the ecstasy of it.
Everything he cared about was gone now. George dreamed of honey smiles, freckles, and warm hands that eased his pain. When he slept, it all returned in vivid sunlight.
When he eventually woke up, he was plagued by the reality of his situation. Stranded and alone with no items, he was left to his thoughts as he started again from the bottom up. He wondered why Dream allowed him to be led there, how he’d known he would follow in the first place. He replayed the kissing and bleeding in his head and searched for a purpose for any of it.
What could Dream possibly gain from driving him insane like that?
George had nothing to offer. He was sure Dream didn’t care about him, especially after that night. So was it really just a game, and George was something fun to toy with?
“Fuck you,” George said out loud. “What am I meant to do now?”
He could almost hear Dream’s amused chuckle.