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George smiles a mechanical smile, teeth aching behind closed lips at the sickeningly sweet feeling that comes from texting Dream, and his fingers move on autopilot, hitting keys like the letters mean nothing. Somehow, he types out a coherent message through the vertigo, some bullshit half-joke, and Dream responds with LMAO.
George exhales forcibly through his nose, and his chest constricts because of it. He inhales sharply, then exhales again, testing how long he can go until his stomach caves in and there’s no breath left to breathe and his eyes go unfocused. He blinks, coughs, and allows London air to fill his lungs again. It hurts in a way that breathing usually doesn’t.
Dream, he types, and gets answered with a single question mark before he finishes typing and deleting a second message. He types it again, changes a few words, and deletes it. He types it again. He adds an emoji, the one with crazy, tilted eyes and its tongue sticking out. He deletes the emoji, replacing it with the very first emoji on the list – a smile with emotionless eyes that he likes quite a bit. He deletes the entire thing.
He knows Dream is watching him do this. He imagines his entire existence as three gray dots, daunting and unreliable. He imagines Dream tightening his grip on his phone, rolling his eyes. Him and Dream have the same phone. George wonders if it looks smaller in Dream’s hands than it does in his. He wonders if it feels any lighter.
George, Dream says simply, beneath the unanswered question mark.
It’s not his original message, but George sends, I don’t want to be sad anymore, anyway.
Dream calls him. George declines, only to immediately text again. I don’t want to talk.
Are you okay though?
Fine. Just thinking.
George types his message again. Deletes it. Dream doesn’t ask what he’s thinking about, or why he’s sad, or if there’s anything he can do to help. He knows what George is thinking about, knows why he’s sad, and if flying half their friends to London didn’t cheer him up, neither of them know what will. George wonders if Dream feels as helpless as he does.
Sorry, George says, and then he starts crying. I’m so fucking sorry.
Dream calls him again. George pulls back from how closely he’d been looking at the screen, trying to make sense of the letters D, R, E, A, and M through unrelenting tears. He lets it ring, but Dream hangs up before it gets to his voicemail.
Answer the fucking phone, he texts, then calls again.
George is shaking when he selects green, and he swears he hears Dream’s voice before the call even accepts.
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Dream–”
“George,” Dream breathes, and George coughs a mangled sob into the phone without meaning to. “Why are you talking like that? Why– are you crying?”
“No,” George says, and it’s supposed to be a joke, not a lie, because it sounds more like ‘bo,’ with how quickly he’s made himself congested, and there’s not a soul in the world who would believe it.
Softly, but quickly, refusing to let a second of silence pass between them, Dream tells him, “You’re scaring me.”
“I don’t wanna talk, Dream,” George reminds him. “I know you like… words… but I don’t wanna make sense of any of this right now,”
“George,” Dream says, tense.
“Yell at me about expressing emotions tomorrow. I can’t– I won’t do it tonight.”
Dream continues to talk without pausing to breathe, and George finally starts to realize how he’s scaring him. He thinks he would feel guilty, if he could feel anything but pins and needles.
“You did, though. You told me you’re sad and you answered the phone, I’m proud of you–”
George physically recoils. When he scrunches his nose, heat spreads across taut skin.
“–I’m proud of you, George,” he repeats. “And I love you.”
“I didn’t edit the video,” he tells him. His bedroom door is open, and in the hall he can see the light shining from his computer. It makes everything blue. “I didn’t even try.”
“That’s okay,” Dream says, and it sounds so much like a promise even though George knows that what it is is a lie. “That’s fine. That doesn’t make me love you any less.”
“You don’t have to do that,” The hot bile that bubbles in George’s stomach feels like a warning, threatening to shoot up his throat and out of his mouth to stop him from ruining everything by speaking.
“Do what?”
“Talk to me like I’m–” George pauses, another attempt at getting himself to shut up. He presses the hand not holding his phone to his lips, knuckles trembling, but nothing happens and his throat burns. “Like I’m gonna hurt myself, or something.”
And there it is: silence. George swallows the sick feeling.
He pulls the phone from his ear, watching the seconds on the call add up for a while before he puts Dream on speaker and sets the phone carefully on his bed.
Exactly 4 minutes, then it’s 4 minutes and 1 second before George can admire the sanity of an even number. He thinks about all the dumb shit Dream has to put up with. He thinks about Twitter. He thinks about Dream yelling. He thinks about Dream crying. He thinks about Dream’s mum, then he thinks about his own.
“Dream–”
“Don’t hang up.”
“...Okay.”
“You know my–”
“I know,” George interrupts, even though it’s rude, because he can’t bear to hear Dream say it. “I know. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Don’t hang up,” he repeats softly.
“I won’t.”
George thinks – pathetically, narcissistically – that he is hurting himself. He wants to scream and come clean and tell Dream that he hasn’t eaten a meal with actual nutritional value in days, or that he has seven unheard voicemails from his sister that he can’t open because she knows too much about the way he thinks, or that he’s more than lonely, but he doesn't.
He walks to the bathroom with his eyes closed. It’s a miracle – or muscle memory – that he doesn’t crash into a wall, but his phone feels heavy in his left hand and beneath his eyelids he sees himself typing and un-typing the same message over and over.
He stops walking, turns to the left, and reaches the arm holding his phone forward. Dream doesn’t question the sound of George blindly placing it on the counter. He doesn’t say anything at all. George’s fingers roam, trace the rim of the bathroom sink, and he opens his eyes.
He blinks numbly at his reflection, avoiding his face. In a short sleeved t-shirt and shorts, George can see that his skin is in-tact, and he can’t remember the last time he caught sight of his own blood. He sighs, and doesn’t tell Dream that he’s hurting himself, because it no longer feels like he is.
He doesn’t tell Dream that he has the exact number of followers he’s lost in the last month committed to memory, unless the number has changed in the last – he glances at the ongoing call, and his vision swims but he still makes it out – 8 minutes and 14 seconds.
“Still there?” Dream calls, and George finds that all he can manage is a hum. “Did you move? Where are you?”
George turns, takes a few steps, and kicks the lid of the toilet seat down so he can collapse onto it. It barely folds beneath the weight of him anymore.
“Bathroom.”
“Thought so,” Dream responds, and if George didn’t know any better, he’d say he sounds proud. “Your voice sounds echo-y.”
“Good job,” George tells him, a little sincerely.
“What are you doing in there?”
“I don’t know,” George scoffs, wiggling his foot beneath the bath mat, flipping a corner, and soothing it back out. “What do people do in the bathroom, Dream?”
“Tons of things,” Dream doesn’t laugh, but he plays along and his voice sounds lighter. “Not too many that I think you’d be willing to do while on the phone with me, though,”
“Willing?”
This time he does laugh – breathy and panicked in a way that reminds George of a particular late night in June, funnily enough – and doesn’t say much else.
“‘Have you ever thought about kissing your best friend?’,” George quotes and, expectantly, Dream splutters.
"What?”
“Nothing, you just laughed like– never mind.”
“Why do you always analyze the way I laugh?”
“I analyze a lot of things that you do,” George says thoughtlessly, or thoughtfully. He’s thinking hard, just not about the right things. He no longer feels like he’s on the verge of being sick, so he spouts nonsense freely. “The way you talk, the way you laugh, the things you love, the way you protect them… It’s the only way I know you.”
Silence overcomes them. Once again, George would feel regret if he could.
He stands, and for a few long moments, there’s nothing but TV static behind his eyes. He sways, and hopes that he’ll fall but he doesn’t, and when he opens his eyes the dizziness has subsided, so he takes his phone and leaves the bathroom.
“Going somewhere?”
“Now look who’s analyzing,”
“I’m pretending I’m with you.”
George stops walking. He’s only a couple steps from the bathroom, and the darkness of the hall is daunting, but he’s frozen.
“I wish I was, George.”
George wipes his nose with his wrist. “When did I start crying again?”
At the sound of Dream’s broken, sympathetic laughter, George slides down the wall onto the floor. His phone rests on his bouncing thigh, and if it makes noise ruffling against the fabric of his shorts, Dream doesn’t say.
“Where are you now?”
“Nowhere,” It’s dark. It’s blue. His computer is on. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
George thinks about Sapnap. He thinks about Quackity, Tina, and Karl. He thinks about drinking and kissing and bleeding ears. He thinks about the outside of an airport. He tries to think about the inside, about boarding gates and TSA, but he can’t remember it very well.
“I don’t feel any better,” he admits. Even though he’s known it for a while, he hasn’t said it, in fear it would hurt someone’s feelings. “I feel so–”
George hears Dream take a breath.
“–alone, which is different from lonely, I guess. I think I still felt that way when everyone was here, and I’m worried I–”
George’s own breath catches. He swallows and counts a few breaths. “S-Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Dream is crying quietly. Not quietly enough that George doesn’t notice. “Want me to count for you?”
“No,” George tugs at a loose thread on his sock, collecting himself. The fabric starts to unravel. “It’s fine.”
George knows that he’s not alone, but knowing is different from feeling.
Dream prompts him to continue. “You’re worried…?”
“Yeah,” The thread gets caught, so George wraps it around his finger and tugs hard. His sock makes a ripping sound.
“About what?”
“What if I get to Florida and I still don’t feel better?”
What if I never do?
The question is rightfully heavy. Dream shifts, probably in his bed.
“I’ve been looking for therapists,” he says quietly, almost guiltily.
For a moment, George feels disoriented in panic, and the glowing red button on his phone screen makes his entire line of sight hazy. He thinks about hanging up.
“For you,” Dream clarifies, much to George’s horror. “I haven’t done anything but browse and make a few lists, and obviously I’d never force you to do something you don’t want to, but I thought… When we talked, before Sap flew over, and you said you didn’t want to commit to anything in the UK that would make it hard to leave, I– I– I started looking for therapists in Orlando, nearby. Maybe not just for you, but I– I wasn’t gonna tell you unless–”
“Dream,” George chokes. “Slow down.”
He feels sick again.
“I’m doing everything in my power to make this move perfect for you, George. I want you to be happy here, with m– with us, but if you’re not… like… completely okay, I wanted to make sure I’d have options for you, so you’d know that I still– y’know– have you, and I wouldn't want you to feel like it was your fault if the move doesn't magically solve all your problems.”
Realistically, George knows he’s put a senseless amount of hope into Florida. Into Sapnap, who proved to be a temporary fix despite his best efforts, and into Dream.
“I don’t want to be sad with you,” He nearly whines, feeling desperately sad anyway. Just so sad. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“George,” Dream makes a watery sound from the back of his throat, “That’s a ridiculous thing to ask of yourself.”
“You– Florida is everything that I want,” It’s all any of them have ever wanted, for as long as they can remember. “If that doesn’t make me happy, surely I’m broken.”
“What if the roles were reversed?”
George sniffles. His foot is bare, he realizes, and his sock is discarded on the carpet. The tip of his pointer finger is turning purple from how tight the thin black thread is still wound.
“What?”
“What if, after you got here, I told you I was depressed. Would you think I was broken, or that it had anything to do with you or Sapnap or Florida?”
George doesn’t answer, but it’s successful nonetheless. He understands. Resigned, he asks, “Do you really think I’m depressed? Like actually?”
Two years ago, George would've said he rarely ever got sad, let alone depressed, but that doesn't feel true anymore. It makes him feel a little bit like a failure, if he's honest with himself.
Dream is quiet for a long time. Maybe the longest time since the call started. George unwraps his finger and watches his skin change colors in the dark. He thinks he can feel the blood pumping.
“I’m not an expert,” is what Dream settles on.
“I know that,” George sighs. “Can you please just answer anyway?”
“Knowing you, I think you would want me to tell you ‘no,’ but considering what I’ve said, I think you know that’s not my answer.”
“So... yes?”
“...Yeah,” Dream shifts again, and when he continues, he sounds louder, closer. “I think you might be a little depressed, George.”
George expects this. There’s a question that’s been stuck in his head for a while, though.
What do I have to be depressed about?
It’s always there, never leaving, and for a moment, he thinks about asking Dream. His body aches, though, and he remembers that he’s sitting on the floor. The carpet makes his legs itch. He might pass out.
Maybe he’ll write it down, he thinks, half sarcastically, and ask it to his therapist later.
He yawns. “How did you make me do all this talking, Dream?”
Dream smiles, George is certain. “All I made you do was stay on the phone so I knew you were okay. You did the talking all on your own.”
George tosses his other sock off and positions himself so his back is flat on the ground.
“You suck.”
“You’ll be great at therapy.”
“I’m… sprawled out in the middle of the hallway right now," He mumbles, like he's defying the notion that he'd be good at anything, in this state. "I’m going to sleep here.”
Dream sucks his teeth. “Is there anything I can say to get you to bed?”
George bends his knees, then stretches them out again. “Excuse me?”
“Idiot,” He scoffs, rephrasing, “Is there anything I can say that will encourage you to stand up and walk to your bed, so you can go to sleep comfortably?”
“No.”
“C’mon,”
“No.”
“Fine,” George squirms, already uncomfortable as Dream’s voice grows teasing. “But this shit isn’t gonna fly in Florida. I will carry you. Bridal style. That’s a threat.”
“Would you actually do that?”
“I would do anything for you,” Dream answers quickly, and George is breathless for the umpteenth time tonight. He wipes his face, and his hands are wet.
He thinks he should feel guilty, and this time, he does.
Dream must bet on this, because he adds, “Can you do something for me?”
“You fucking–” George huffs. He inhales sharply, then tosses his body into a sitting position with great effort. “You manipulated me.”
With a hand on the wall for balance, he pushes himself up on shaking legs.
“If I was there, I would carry you,” Dream assures. “But, just for a little while longer, I need you to do it yourself, okay?”
A little while longer. George holds onto that.
He slips his phone into his pocket as he walks, and at Dream’s muffled request, he counts his steps between grumbled complaints until he’s face-first in a comforter that needs washing. Small victories.
“I’m so proud of you.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I am, though.”
“I don’t care.”
George is helpless to sleep. He always has been, ever since he was a kid, and Dream’s voice can only jolt him awake so many times before he succumbs to it.
“...George?”
“Mmph,”
He laughs. “Do you mind if I stay on call?”
“‘F course not,” George whispers into the softness beneath him. He's on his stomach, one leg bent so his body curls slightly on one side and fingers draped over his phone speakers, so they vibrate softly when Dream speaks.
“Let me know when you wake up, okay? I’ll buy you breakfast. We can– We can eat the same thing. Remember when we used to do that, so it felt like we were sitting together?”
George hums.
He opens his mouth to speak, but his brain is far too hazy for words. He leaves his mouth open, breathing in gulps as if inhaling Dream, and as he slips out of touch, he hears his soft declaration of, “I really, really love you,” followed by, “Just a little bit longer, Georgie. I promise.”