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Late night turns early morning with Dream behind the wheel.
George sits in the passenger seat, knees to his chest and heart in his throat, and enjoys the ride for everything it is. Occasionally, he turns (to his left, which is weird) to watch the sun rise over Dream’s skin.
His gaze is the only part of him that feels firm; his jaw is slackened, face soft, and Dream is relaxed, too, but the edges of his face are still sharply defined. George tries, and fails, to memorize it, the shape of the stubble that trails from his ear to his chin.
The sky washes Dream’s face pink, and George makes a mental note to ask Dream to take him on a drive with his colorblind glasses sometime. He packed them carefully just a few weeks ago, even though he hasn’t worn them since the first time. He thinks, maybe, this scene could look as warm as it feels, if he was wearing them, but he settles on imagining it through Dream’s eyes for now.
The sun does him well, kissing his skin. Welcome to Florida, she says to George. I’ve missed you, to Dream. The depths of his ever–controversial hair color begin to unravel, and George resists the urge to run his fingers through strands of brown and gold; they’ve got time for that.
Before him, Dream squints, wrinkling the top of his nose bridge.
They’ve been driving for hours now — maybe 2 — and they pulled back into the neighborhood a few minutes ago. George quiets, not much to point out or read aloud or gawk at within these gates, and he doesn’t question it when Dream drives past the house he knows to be theirs, or when he drives through the same roundabout for the third time, wincing as he turns.
George rests his chin on his knee. “How’s your shoulder?”
Dream flinches a little at his sudden voice, and his lips curve into something soft when he sees that George notices. “It’s fine, Georgie.”
“Are you sure?”
He nods once. “How are your legs?”
George huffs out a laugh at the question, and lets his fingers trail over a few light burns beneath the hair on his calf. “Fine. No worse than the mosquito bite.”
“Yeah,” Dream scoffs, but there’s not an ounce of regret in the sound. “I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”
“Okay,” George agrees. Tomorrow, Dream will ask him, and he won’t have to call.
A familiar beat catches his attention. It’s catchy, vibey — George bops his head to it before the lyrics roll in.
“This is the song from your Snapchat,” he realizes. My flight just landed but the airport’s closed. I got a car that drives itself, though. “Did you do that on purpose, by the way?”
“Mmhm,” Dream mumbles. He sounds tired. Looks it too, George notices dizzily.
“Do you just have, like, a readily available playlist of songs that remind you of me, or…?”
Dream raises his eyebrows and spares George a glance, teeth on display. “Spotify recommended it. It just happened to fit, so I thought I’d tease the fans a little.”
“Yeah, the fans,” George huffs. Let’s not wait until the weekend. “I barely made it within the weekend. You hate me. You wanted me to suffer.”
Dream turns sharply to him, thick brows furrowed. His eyes soften in real time. “No, I wanted you to be safe. No use in camping the airport or tracking flights if you were ‘already here,’” he explains, air quotes. Then, “I’m sorry. I didn’t even know you saw it, or like, noticed.”
“Of course I saw it,” George tells him, incredulous and fond. Wanna fall into you deeper. “And noticed.”
They’re bopping their heads in-sync now, a much calmer rhythm than he and Sapnap had earlier, rocking in their seats to “One Kiss,” by Dua Lipa. It’s different. He and Dream will have their energetic moments, too, but this is nice. They’re both too exhausted right now, but they have tomorrow.
This time, Dream presses lightly on the break as they approach the house. His wide shoulders are dropped, blinks slower and longer now.
“Tired?” George asks when the car rolls to a stop. He frowns a little when the car puts itself in park automatically, no gear shift for Dream’s palm to swallow.
“Yeah,” Dream says into a yawn. His head falls back against the seat, and it lulls to the right almost on instinct so he can blink drowsily at George. He looks pretty. The song fades out, and into something George doesn’t recognize. “Like what you see?”
George purses his lips, face warming against his will. He gives his best attempt at a blank stare, but the breath in his voice gives him away. “One more time around and I’ll tell you.”
“George—”
“Please,” is all it takes, pathetically. “I don’t wanna go to sleep yet.”
He probably won’t, tonight. He thinks he’ll go straight into editing the vlog, while it’s fresh, like Dream always says, so it can be done by the time he wakes up. What he means when he says this is, “I want to be with you a little longer.”
Dream doesn’t concede verbally, but the car starts to move forward again, long fingers tapping along the wheel to the timing of the unknown melody.
It’s nice to know that the leverage he holds over Dream is still there, George thinks, because he’s getting a taste of it now, and he hates it (he doesn’t).
He has no willpower, now that he's seen Dream. Maybe he never did, but it grows harder to pretend with every stolen glance. The expanse of his best friend’s body calls to him: his neck, littered with freckles and stubble and goosebumps where the AC is blasting, his Adam’s apple as it bobs with bubbling emotion, and his hands, boney and pale against gold jewelry.
George needs to touch him.
He writhes beneath the seatbelt, legs folding, and thoughtlessly extends his arm. Then, as careful as he treats most things, George brushes his pointer finger beneath Dream’s lashes.
“Wha—” Dream shudders, blinking. “What the fu—”
The car swerves a little.
“George!” He’s laughing, and it’s beautiful. “I’m driving!”
“You have really long eyelashes,” George comments, and they flutter over his finger in response.
“You’re— You’re gonna blind me. We’ll hit a kid or something, stop—”
“Isn’t this car supposed to have autopilot?”
“You’re gonna get us killed,” Dream exhales a breathy laugh — not quite what it used to be when he had broken lungs, but something fuller now. The car slows to a stop in the middle of the empty street. Their street: the sky, the trees, the stoplights and road signs are all for them, and them alone, tonight.
Dream makes a show of removing his hands from the wheel, waving them exasperatedly.
George just shakes his head at the accusation, admiring it all.
“Don’t you know we’re invincible right now, Dream?” He clicks the buckle by his hip, and the seatbelt frees him so he can lean fully over the center console. Gently, he traces a finger along Dream’s shoulder. “Nothing can hurt us.”
Dream’s mouth is stuck open, lips agape and jaw set as he just breathes. Breathes in George’s space. Breathes in George’s air. “Nothing?”
Nothing. They ran through fucking celebratory fireworks, tripping and stumbling and wrestling all around their too-big house like 8-year-old boys, and they’re fine. George’s legs could completely scab over by tomorrow morning and they still would not cause him an ounce of pain.
“What if I go on Twitter? Read what the ‘anti’s have to say? What if I tweet my address and let them—”
“Dream,” George interrupts, because he knows. He knows he’s been trying not to think about it, and he knows he’s been failing. If George could, he would kill them. “You’re an idiot. First of all, that’s our address. Second of all, I would protect us. I would protect you,”
That earns him another laugh — lovely, George thinks. Each time it happens, the sound gets closer to looking like it belongs to his mouth. “How, George? You’re so—”
“Don’t say twiggy.”
“I was going to say ‘stupid.’”
“I’m not stupid,” George says, and Dream makes a face that says he knows. “I’m on top of the world.”
“Yeah?” Dream hums, and his eyes are rimmed red. The first time George saw this, it was the same instance as everyone else, only minutes before, as the final edit for Dream’s face reveal video played on the living room TV. He’d cried then, too sniffly to hide, but this time he keeps his emotions level at his waterline. Dream’s voice, on the other hand, wavers as he continues, “I hope you stay there forever.”
Dream shakes his head when he talks, shrugs his shoulders and raises his brows. He’s very expressive, in a silly, awkward sort of way, like he’s never been a person before, even in private. George loves it, and he loves it more than he thought he would that the entire world gets to experience this with him — their entire world.
“I think I might.”
They don’t get everything though, and George loves that more. Dream opens his mouth, then closes it, and George feels assured that nobody else will ever get a moment like this with him.
“George,” he breathes, pushing the word from his lips like a prayer the way he always has. Has his face always melted like this when he says it? “George, I—”
“Dream,” George says, pulling, and their hands meet in the space between the seats. George doesn’t reach for more, but his palm rests flush against Dream’s knuckles. “It’s okay. I know. I love you, too.”
“It almost feels like too much,” Dream chokes, voice going nasally. George hardens his expression, silently willing him not to cry lest they drown in Sapnap’s car.
“I know,” he agrees, a moment later, in an equally sacred whisper. “Almost, but it never is, Clay.”
You have always been a lot, he thinks. You have never been too much.
Dream's laugh is watery this time, lips licked to match the sound. “‘Clay.’”
“Fuck off. I was trying to be, like, wholesome,” George joins him in laughter, and he can’t pretend the sounds of their delirious, overwhelming joy don’t blend together beautifully as he slides his hand from Dream’s back to settle in his seat again. “Take me home, idiot. That’s your name now.”
“Whatever you want, George,” Dream shrugs, shifting in his own seat. He glances at himself in the rear-view mirror and wipes his eyes with the tips of his fingers. It feels like more than it is, or maybe, it’s more than it feels like — George isn’t sure. “Whatever you want.”