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Shoot outs had always been dangerous. Every day of their lives had been dangerous from the moment they committed themselves to what they were doing.
Leading a mob had never been safe. There was never a question about that. There was never a debate. It was kill or be killed. It was violence against heartache and revenge against precision. Emotions against logic. A heart or the barrel of a gun.
All of them knew it. Each and every one of them. It was nothing new to them. Nothing special. Nothing unique. They’d been in hundreds of fire fights by this point. Leading it together as a family.
Sapnap, the fighter of the group with Punz right by his side. They were the muscle. They were the ones who led the teams to take down their targets or hunt down payments that were overdue from the people who owed them. They were the ones who ensured the marks of their territory and dealt out the protection their clients paid them for. They were smart and dangerous and more than powerful.
Puffy was their reason. She was the one who vet their plans and ensured they had medical care whenever they came home from a fight that got a little bit too close. She made sure them and the rest of the men they called their army were safe. She made sure their plans never got too unreasonable. She was their balance in the sea of rage that most people noted the Dreamon Army to run.
George, the one who kept the books and made sure the operations ran as they should.with Karl right as his side to help him. They worked in such close tandem to each other that it was hard to keep the work apart. Their difference was weapon. Karl, kind unless pushed, only fought if it was necessary. He kept his work to the functions of their shadows instead of the fighting of it. Quackity was their front runner. The person who held the fronts of their business with so much charisma and charm the law could never catch him as long as the others all did their job. His weapon was word and word alone. He could defend himself if needed but he kept his imagine in the light and his back turned to their shadows more commonly than not.
George on the other hand held no such reservations.
He was the one who was so calculating and dangerous when their enemies attempted to rise up or harm them he would simply unfurl them on the arms of their fronts while their business in shadows collapsed in on itself by a word of Dream.
Dream, who led it all. Who came up with the plans that kept them all safe and acted in a fight as well as in an argument. Dream, who was just as fast with a blade and gun as he was with his tongue. Who ensured their business deals and kept their fronts running as well as their shadows strong. He led dangerously but he was unmatched.
Their men respected them. It wasn’t fear that kept their people together like their enemies or opponents. It was respect and loyalty.
They called their mob a family. They treated each other as such. The bonds between them all in the leadership made the example and their people followed.
Sapnap and Dream made their brotherly bond more than known. Touch one and you would have the other shattering your door into splinters to carve a pound of flesh as penance. The bickering that turned between familial and friendly between Sapnap and George. Their bantering drawing Dream into the middle more often than not for him to diffuse even though they got him to break and play along with them.
The love that Dream and George made clear with the bands that rested on their fingers. Simple black and silver but more than enough to promise each other to one another. More than enough to mark their bond to anyone who tried to cross them. The danger of ever harming the other was cut off with little more than a glare before one of the other members, leadership or not, would handle the threat.
One insult during a meeting meant death would kiss whoever’s mouth it had passed. One time there had been a meeting with a potential ally who decided to remark ill of Dream in front of the leadership as a whole. They’d ended up with George pinning them to their chair with his switchblade pressing into the hollow of his throat and scraping along his skin so close it could be called a shave if the tone of the situation hadn’t been so tense. It ended with George holding his head back by his hair and listing off the atrocities Dream had committed with an ever growing smirk that made it clear he knew the man he was speaking of would protect him no matter the cost. It ended with George sitting back on Dream’s desk with his husband staring at him with danger and lust in his eyes ordering the deal broken and intentions watched. It ended with the final witness of the room seeing hands unbuttoning the vests and dress collars of each other’s tops.
They fought well when they were protecting each other. When they were ensuring they both made it out of the fight in order to wrap around one another and call themselves at home simply by being in their arms.
They’d been seen in fights before. Suits torn open and dress collars undone. Panting and pressed back to back with the smell of gunpowder and filth gluing to their skin like the blood that trailed from too near misses. Guns molded to their hands and pressing against the metal rings on their fingers.
They fought together. They breathed together. They laughed together at the end.
But not this time.
Rain poured from the sky like the heavens herself were weeping for the scene on the cobbled streets. It was dark. Almost too dark to see aside from the burning oil fire that was lit from the shattered print shops loading stocks or the broken gas lanterns that lined the street. Smog and gunpowder mixed with the scent of blood and rain in the air until it grew too thick to bleed but that wasn’t the reason for the hitching breaths that echoed off the stone of the ground.
Shootouts and firefights had always been dangerous. Always been lethal. It was nothing new to people who had fought their way to the top of the criminal underground. It was nothing new to the family that spent their life living off shadows and casting ones themselves that stretched so far to hell it made even the devil afraid.
Danger had never scared any of them before.
It scared them now.
Now when it was real with a ball of lead sitting in Dream’s stomach. When his breathing hitched and his skin turned so pale it rivaled the first fall of snow in winter. When his eyes glassed and held focus about as well as a hummingbird distracted by fresh nectar. When blood spilt from his lips as he gagged around clots and imaginary chokes. When, despite all the pressure George put against his wound, the blood kept spilling and Dream’s flesh kept feeling colder.
It wasn’t just the rain that caused the streaks of water on their faces. The men of the fight had heard the shot that took their leader. They’d watched him stumble. They’d seen George turn to grab onto his shoulders. His vest and shirt had done nothing to protect him. They’d seen him fall to his knees when they rushed forward to defend. They’d seen the rest of the family turn to hold his ranks.
They defended them while they worked to protect the man that brought them all together in the first place. The one that made their home. The one that gave them a family worth saving.
Dream spluttered on the ground. Puffy was working through a medical kit but George was terrified it wasn’t going to be enough. It felt like nothing would be enough.
“Stay with me, Dream. Stay with me.”
It was all he could do to keep his husband’s eyes open and on him. He kept trailing away and even though he knew it wasn’t his fault it was still ripping his heart to shreds in his chest. The blood that was pooling under his body was enough to make him feel sick even before he felt it soaking into the knees of his pants. His breaths were shallow and ragged. They were spacing out. He wasn’t breathing enough.
He wasn’t breathing enough.
“Come on. Don’t do this to me. Stay with me, Dream, come on.”
Sapnap’s jacket was balled up beneath his head for a pillow. The rain didn’t help their appearances. It only made them look worse. It made them look pitiful. Puffy pushed his hands away to get access to the wound.
Dream’s eyes started to close.
“No—”
He grabbed onto his face before he could do anything else. His muscles were slack in his hands but he shook him as much as he could without fear of hurting him more. Cupping his love’s face had always been one of his favorite things to do but now that he was doing it like this it made George feel sick to his stomach and tied around in knots.
“Don’t do this to me. Stay awake. Do you hear me? Awake, Dream. I need you awake.”
He could see the pain lashing through his eyes. He could see his mouth working to form words for him and his eyebrow’s pinch like he was trying to focus to force himself to do it.
The only thing that came up was blood bubbling thick and clotted through his throat and past his lips.
“You can do this. You aren’t giving up on me.”
He heard Sapnap gag but there wasn’t time to look because Dream was lurching on the ground and his breathing wheezed sharply. He could see his eyes unfocus fully before his body seemed to drop limp against the stone.
George felt his heart attempt to tear itself from his chest.
“No.”
He reached for Dream’s pulse.
“No—”
There was still a beat. Weak and faltering but still there. Dream’s eyes were lidded. His green looked darker and dimmer than it should be. It looked like it matched the storm clouds above them.
He barely heard the screechings of the car tires over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. He did notice, however, when hands tried to pull him away from Dream.
Fighting was instinct by that point. Every ounce of his being demanded beyond anything else that he stay at Dream’s side and not leave him. Each part of him screaming and raving that the moment he left his side would be the moment he never see him again.
George couldn’t handle that. He needed Dream. He loved him too much not to. He loved him too much to never see him again. To lose him like this. Without a proper goodbye or a final kiss.
But the one pulling him away was Karl. He was telling him to breathe. He was telling him to stop and listen. That Puffy had pulled the bullet out. That they were going to take him to a hospital and that they needed him to move to try to save his life.
He felt like he fell into autopilot. Like he wasn’t fully in his body but was rather just a spectator as he watched Dream be loaded into the backseat of the car by Sapnap and Punz and was ushered in to sit with him while they got in to drive to the nearest hospital with the rest of the gang hot on their heels.
He watched Dream be whisked away by doctors who knew them and their power. He watched them rush to save the life of the man they paid for protection from the other mongrels that had done this.
It was only while sitting in the waiting room for any kind of news on his husband that George realized he held the weight of the gang on his shoulders now. That he was the one responsible for what was going to happen to all of their men and their movements going forward.
It was suffocating. He felt like a drowning man. One whose air was lying on a bed rooms away fighting for his life.
He felt his gun digging into his ribs in the holster around his chest.
He felt the boiling anger at coming so close to losing him. The fear of watching him struggle through shock to stay conscious and fighting to speak what he very much worried were going to be last words.
It made him sick.
But Dream would be okay.
He had to be okay.
If he wasn’t then George was going to ensure that the rest of the world never forgot it. That the band on his finger meant something even after a part.
That he sent the guilty to Dream for him to have his revenge when they met in hell.
And when he was done he would join him there. Shadows and fire to fight the devil himself and take another throne to call each other King and worship the love they build on the fire of sin in the underbelly of their world.
Dream would be fine. He’d survive this.
And George would survive it with him.
Just like he would die with him if he didn’t.