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“Hey,” Dream whispers, leaning against the bathroom door’s frame. One of his hands is in his hair, fidgeting with his loose curls carelessly. “You’re sure you don’t mind sharing, right?”
George sighs, his eyes rolling back inside his skull in what he attempts to pass off as irritation, even if he knows Dream will see right through him and recognize the fondness for what it is.
“If I minded, we would’ve booked a hotel.” George blinks at Dream slowly, studying the discordant mess of emotions that appear to cross his mind in turns. He’s cute like this, dangerously so, when he’s at a loss for words with his brow furrowed and lips parted as if searching for anything to say. As if he’s flustered.
“Okay,” Dream says finally, plainly. “I’m going to shower.”
He slips inside the ensuite bathroom and closes the door so quickly that George thinks his heart may as well be beating through a megaphone, he can imagine the erratic thudding so vividly that something within him aches to burst through and stop him from hiding away behind a locked door, to face this sooner rather than later.
Patience, George reminds himself. Dream can only spend so long in a shower. He’ll be forced to come back out and face him soon enough.
He’s nervous. George knows he is, because he felt the same just days ago, dancing around one another in San Diego and standing too close but never close enough. There were too many crowds, too many friends always around, too many pairs of eyes constantly following their every move. The tension between the two of them went unspoken because any chance they could’ve had alone to discuss it was fleeting and far between.
San Diego burned.
George couldn’t help but feel a little suffocated by it all, moving across the entire world at long last and then, before even having a chance to settle in, traveling across the country to meet thousands of fans and dozens more friends and—then Dream left.
Just as quickly as they’d begun learning all the intricacies of existing in the same space, they were separated again. Dream stayed in California while George and Sapnap went home, and those brief few days of distance were pure agony. George supposes that after all their years of waiting he should be an expert on coping with time spent apart, but the opposite proved to be true.
George didn’t know what it was to truly miss Dream before this week, so he agreed without hesitation when Sapnap’s family offered up their guest room so that he and Dream wouldn’t need to book a hotel. The thought of wasting any hours in separate hotel rooms that they could be spending together is mortifying. George knew he was being clingy but couldn’t find it within himself to care when the prospect of sharing a room was being dangled before his eyes.
Dream is more apologetic about his own desire for closeness, like he’s still afraid he’s somehow crossing a line whenever he puts an arm around George’s shoulders or a hand on the small of his back. Sometimes George catches him hesitating, shaky hands hovering close enough to touch but just barely holding back, and charitably pretends not to notice.
George decided the second he set foot in Texas that any hesitation needed to be left in San Diego.
The clock fixed to the wall above the king-size bed ticks obnoxiously loud, George can’t seem to tune out the metronomic reminder of every second that passes after he hears the water stop running and knows Dream could come out at any moment.
When the door finally slips back open George makes his most concentrated effort not to stare, to ignore the fact that Dream has apparently decided to forgo a shirt and is wearing only sweatpants. His hair looks darker when it’s damp, curlier too, and George’s hands shake with longing to run his fingers through it. Dream doesn’t even make eye contact, moving quickly across the room to shove his clothes back into his suitcase and George very consciously glues his gaze down to his phone screen instead of risking being caught with lingering eyes when he turns back around.
“I thought you were asleep,” Dream blurts out abruptly just as George feels the mattress dip and he sits down on the edge of it. “Your eyes looked like they were closed, I mean.”
George lifts his phone up from where it was semi-covered by the duvet, grinning when Dream hums in understanding.
“Who are you talking to?”
George can’t understand why Dream is still sitting on the edge of the bed like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to get comfortable. There’s more than enough space for them to lie side by side without any risk of touching, even if that was what either of them wanted.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” George taunts, narrowing his eyes when Dream only scoffs.
“Well, I would like to know. That’s why I asked.” Dream shifts a bit closer, still tentative, and George almost laughs out loud at how ridiculously slowly he seems to be prepared to take this. George wonders if its possible Dream still isn’t sure they’re on the same page.
“Why don’t you come look, then?”
George waves his phone around, carefully keeping his screen turned away from Dream’s line of sight and raising his eyebrows in a challenge.
He already knows Dream won’t be able to resist.
Sure enough, Dream quickly lies back to peer over George’s shoulder, short laughter falling from his lips when he notices he’s just scrolling Twitter, not even actually talking to anyone.
“Nosy,” George scolds sarcastically, clicking his tongue but dropping his eyes back to his screen to lean slightly closer, pressing his shoulder against Dream’s and hoping he won’t shift away. He doesn’t.
“You tricked me,” Dream complains. George can feel his eyes following the lazy movement of his fingers as he closes Twitter and locks his phone, dropping it onto the bed beside him, satisfied now that he’s succeeded in his mission of convincing Dream to come closer.
“I just wanted you to stop being weird,” George retorts, quiet and to the point.
“How was I being weird?” Dream’s voice pitches higher in his incredulity, though George can detect sincere fear behind his overblown reaction.
“You do this thing—” George rolls onto his side to face him, and Dream’s eyes widen, bewildered. “You hover. It’s kind of—”
George stops himself before he says something too honest, something Dream may not be prepared to hear yet. He’s ready to say everything, stop holding back, but he doesn’t want to push his luck.
“It’s something I’ve noticed,” George paraphrases, and he mimics something he’s seen Dream do countless times, reaches for his shoulder but then stops just shy of touching and balls his hand into a fist instead. “You’re allowed to touch me, you know.”
“I know I’m allowed to,” Dream sighs, his voice dropping in pitch. He sits up a bit, and George mourns the loss of contact when their shoulders are no longer pressed together.
“I just don’t know if you want me to,” Dream continues, “I’m worried that it’ll be—I don’t know. Too much, too soon. I feel like I’m going to blink and suddenly find out I dreamt all of this, and you’re still in London, and I was an idiot for thinking I’d ever have this.”
“This?” George can’t help the way the corners of his lips upturn just barely, knowing that Dream will flush and huff in embarrassment, even if George thinks he’s being incredibly clear about his own intentions. “As in this specifically? Being in bed with me?”
“I hate you.” Dream buries his head in the crook of George’s neck suddenly, collapsing into his side and breathing out a softened laugh against his skin.
“I just don’t think that’s true,” George teases, reaching to thread his fingers through Dream’s mess of curls, satiating his eagerness to do so earlier. Dream hums in contentment as soon as he does, and George is grateful his face is so pointedly turned away, because he knows the beaming smile on his face would say everything a thousand words never could.
“Are you fucking with me?” Dream whispers suddenly, his voice still muffled against George’s neck, and George’s hands freeze.
“What?”
“Sorry,” Dream instantly seems to shrink back away from him, curling in on himself and lifting his head to make sheepish eye contact, the perfect picture of a deer caught in the headlights. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry. I just, I don’t know. I read this wrong, I thought maybe you were teasing me so much because you could tell what I wanted and you’re, like, driving me crazy on purpose.”
“Dream,” George rushes to stop him before he pulls away any further, before he talks himself into a crisis like George knows probably better than anyone he’s so capable of doing. “I’m not. Fucking with you, that is. Do you know how badly I missed you this week?”
“You—really?” Dream’s eyes light up so instantaneously that George bites the inside of his cheek to physically prevent himself from blurting out the most incoherently desperate declaration of love imaginable, so overcome by how beautiful Dream is like this—hopeful and incandescent and his. “George, I missed you so fucking much, I thought I was going to die.”
“Me too,” George laughs, resuming his massage of Dream’s scalp in an effort to soothe his clearly persistent nerves. “I felt so dumb, I didn’t want to say anything to Sapnap because he’d just laugh at me. But it’s like, it felt like such a waste spending any time without you, now that we have the option to.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Dream’s eyes drop from George’s for just a moment, and George swears he must be staring at his lips before he hastily looks back up, and George can’t help but raise his eyebrows.
“Speaking of things it feels like a waste not to be doing,” George starts, carefully watching Dream’s face to make sure he’s not reading him incorrectly, smiling when he can tell from rapid blinks and the way he nervously licks his lips that he hasn’t.
“Can you please just kiss me already?”
George had expected at least another few seconds of panic, for Dream to continue his pattern of adorable helplessness and that he’d probably still need George to lean in first before believing he wasn’t just teasing. Instead, Dream is as impatient as George has felt since San Diego.
Dream connects their lips without wasting a single second, without hesitation, without needing to be asked twice. The actual press of his lips is gentle, achingly so, chaste and careful and George’s heart sings when he reciprocates and Dream quickly readjusts them both, his cold fingers cupping George’s chin and shifting so he’s lying above him. The second kiss is slower, deeper, George pulls Dream closer and licks into his mouth when he gasps lightly at the tug to his hoodie. Dream seems perfectly content to let George take the lead, smiling with their mouths still pressed together and rubbing his thumb slowly against George’s jawline as if he just can’t get enough of the feeling of his skin beneath his fingertips.
After minutes, maybe longer, George pulls back to take a deep breath and Dream chases him without hesitation, pressing a short and final—not final, George thinks, far from it—peck to his lips greedily, a smug grin quickly appearing as soon as he opens his eyes and notices how painfully wide George’s own endeared smile is.
“No more hesitating,” George says, twisting a dishevelled lock of Dream’s hair around his finger and staring openly at his lips this time, already eagerly anticipating feeling them back against his own. “And no more time apart. Seriously. I’m coming with you everywhere from now on. Boyfriend privileges.”
Dream blinks in surprise, doe-eyed amazement returning to his features as if he’s somehow still doubting whether or not this is real.
“Boyfriend?” The open-mouthed smile Dream doesn’t even try to disguise gives away how much he loves the shape of the word in his own voice, how excited he is to keep saying it.
“Obviously.” George grins, shaking his head fondly. “We can figure out everything else later, but I know that much. I know I want to be yours, if you’ll be mine.”
George thinks it’s possibly the cheesiest thing he’s ever said. Dream looks at him like he hung the stars.
“George,” Dream whines, almost breathless. “You already know I will, George.”
“Yeah,” George hums, biting his lip to suppress a laugh when Dream blushes furiously. “You’re not very subtle.”
“Shut up.” Dream kisses him again after complaining, not allowing him a chance to retort.
George doesn’t think he’s ever been happier to let him have the last word.