Chapter Text
When the god of dreams falls asleep the night after Wilbur dies, he hopes that he will not wake up. Not to die. He won’t be afforded that luxury, he knows. Just to sleep and linger with a gentle taste of limbo on his tongue.
He takes the crown off his head, golden and interwoven with jewels and delicate strands of silver lace, and buries it in the dirt beneath a tree. He can feel the earth seeping under his fingernails. He is the ruling prince of nothing. He is nothing.
He does not love his nothing-kingdom. He does not love this place. He does not think he has the energy to ever love anything again.
The tree looks tall, sturdy. He chose this place on purpose, a massive lush forest of towering oaks. He is deep in the woods. People will not find him here, not for a while. Seeking out a tiny, mundane village and making a cottage there holds no appeal, and he certainly will not go back home. The sky is grey and thick with clouds. It looks like rain; it usually does.
He closes his eyes and prays for a dreamless sleep.
For the first few centuries, he is plagued by nightmares. Of burning villages, people running and screaming, brutal killings and wars and starvations and droughts. This does not bother him so much. He is never involved, always standing a few feet away, looking in.
The people in his dreams never see him, the blank-faced observer watching on with dead eyes as the world tries its hardest to kill them. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, time and time again. He doesn’t look away.
It’s a peculiar ability, to dream lucidly. To be real and not real. A side effect of his curse, he supposes.
He dreams about Wilbur, sometimes. His smile. His awkward laugh. The unintelligible nonsense he’d wax poetic about, the redheaded girl he was always panicking over. Did he get to see her, one last time? Would he have liked to? Probably not. Wilbur had always wanted a dramatic death, a flashy end to his theatrical regime. He had stuck a flag in the sand and declared himself king of the fields and forests and everything he could see from the top of the hill. Built an empire, a legacy. His legacy, his kingdom. Wilbur had always said he’d write himself dying tragically at the end of the story, and become a god amongst men.
The god of dreams had been drawn to this. Identified the ambitious demigod at a young age, fed him the wine of the gods and took him home to the mountains. Son of a mortal and the goddess of death.
Maybe, from that, they should’ve known he was to die. It was fate.
The god of dreams has never been a fan of fate. Fate revels in its cruel irony. Him to wander through sleep for a millennia, Wilbur to die in a grand spectacle.
It didn’t have to be that way, he supposes. He could’ve stopped Wilbur. He tried to, tried to tell him that provoking Quackity, the god of prosperity, would not end well for him. Leave him be. He would handle the insults and blows at his honor without Wilbur’s help. Demigods should not go to battle for a god’s honor, certainly not at home.
Wilbur was cocky. He was always cocky.
He said it would go well.
He said he would be fine.
A funny thing, mortality. A being can have but one single way to die, one single weakness, and still manage to be shot in the heel in the prime of their lives. He’s always found this strange. Any way a being can die, they will. But he cannot, and so he will not.
Most of the time, as he sleeps, he wishes he could.
Sometimes he dreams that he is running through the trees, branches snagging at his robes, silver blood trickling down his arms. He reaches the clearing. Quackity smiles at him. Look what you have done. And there is Wilbur, amidst the grass in a field of blue flowers, celestial blade shoved cleanly through his heart.
Wilbur bleeds red.
The god of dreams hates the color red.
Still, he bends down, takes Wilbur’s dying body in his arm and rocks him back and forth. He does not cry. He does not speak. He watches with numbed horror, gaze transfixed on Wilbur’s eyes as they flutter open and shut. There are words on the tip of Wilbur’s tongue, he knows. It wouldn’t surprise him if Wilbur has a monologue memorized for the case of his death. He wonders if it’s what Wilbur expected. He wonders if he is afraid.
“You can live without me,” Wilbur says finally, his voice weak.
He swallows dryly. His chest becomes so tight that it feels like he cannot breathe. Like he is the one who is dying. There is a hard, quick pulse in his throat, and something cracks inside of him.
“I don’t want to,” he croaks out. The dam breaks and he is crying. He has never cried before, not this millennia or the last or the one before that. Water streams down his face. It feels almost like choking, like someone is ripping sobs out of his body. He is heaving, wailing, desperately clutching Wilbur. His hands are shaking.
Wilbur dies.
Quackity smiles.
It occurs to him, sometimes, that logically he could control his dreams. He doesn’t have to see these things if he doesn’t want to, to spend his eternal sleep remembering this. But what would he see, instead of this? He cannot think of anything he would like to see, anything he would like to do.
There is nothing. Nothing good in this world. Might as well not expend the energy trying to pick his poisons.
Centuries pass. He flits in and out of dreams and nightmares. Every few decades something wakes him up. He leaves his spot at the forest, takes a look at the way the villages have transformed, the cities spiraling up around him. Flawless architecture, technology like never before. Surpassing even the greatest civilizations he’d lived amongst, back when life still seemed colorful. Almost as if humanity still believed it could achieve godhood if it only tried a little harder.
He doesn’t know why they’d want to. He looks around. It’s always raining. And then he finds his tree again and falls back asleep.
Sometimes he still sees Wilbur, telling him that everything will be alright- lying. Mostly he dreams of blank, empty fields, rainy skies and desolation. Everything is grey, neither dark nor light, neither good nor bad. He neither enjoys his sleep nor hates it. The light has dulled. There is nothing real in this world. At the start he would kill things, burn forests and towns to the ground. It’s only a dream.
He got bored of that eventually. No real point- no real point to anything.
He is back in the clearing. The sky is grey. The ground is blue and red. Quackity is smiling, and Wilbur is sobbing, and the sword is impaled through his chest in place of Wilbur’s, and he thinks with the slightest ounce of happiness that maybe, finally, he will die.
Instead, he wakes up.
Shoots up, rather. He is not in the forest any longer. He is in something soft, comfortable- a bed- and there are tubes taped to his arms and bright, flashing lights and white walls and severe, shining silvers. The room is silent, save for a dull humming noise that he can’t place.
There is a chair beside him, a man in strange clothes watching him anxiously. When their eyes meet, the man’s face lights up in a smile.
The god of dreams sinks back into bed and prays for sleep, if only to experience death for a few moments longer.
This is not how Dream expected his morning to go, honestly.
It’s sunrise. The sky is pink and orange, a few clouds hanging low in the sky, golden glow washing over the campus. He walks quietly, music playing softly through his headphones, gazing around the park and taking in the skies. Say what you will about England- he certainly has his hesitations about moving here- but the sunrises are gorgeous.
Sapnap and Karl would like to see this. Dream almost sends them a picture of the sky, before it occurs to him that it’s probably almost one in the morning back home. He lets them sleep.
It’s alright. Better to just look up and try to absorb the colors than be distracted by his phone or thoughts about are they alright and why did I decide to go to college here alone and I miss you.
The sun rises slowly. It’s such a fleeting moment. To photograph it and preserve it would be to destroy what Dream finds beautiful about it. And then what reason would there be for him to go out on his walk tomorrow, if he could just see the skies through a pixelated file?
Dream walks, nodding his head lightly to the beat. It’s going to be a nice day, he can tell. Clear skies and no homework. Fall is agreeable here.
A patch of red in the park catches him off guard. He could have sworn those flowers weren’t blooming yesterday- but there they are, gorgeous red pansies encircling the base of the tree, a giant patch of vibrant red amidst the pastels that surround him. He diverts his path, walking towards the flower garden.
There’s something lying in the flowers. A- oh, god- he takes a step back, eyes widening. That’s a hand, a human hand sticking out of the ground. But- that’s ridiculous.
The more he thinks about it, the more his panic recedes. He chuckles. Some kid just put it there to be stupid. So Dream reaches down and pulls the plastic hand out of the dirt.
It’s not a plastic hand.
It’s warm, and someone’s arm comes out with it, and then Dream is digging furiously, lifting the man out of his shallow grave of dirt and flowers. He isn’t- he isn’t dead, he doesn’t think he is.
Dream shakes him. His head rolls to the side. He looks young- probably Dream’s age, and his skin is stained with life and color and a persisting grayish undertone. Dark hair, long eyelashes. He’s beautiful in his death.
He can feel the fluttering under his fingers against the man’s throat. He’s alive.
This isn’t how Dream expected his morning to go. But here he is, sitting in the hospital room listening to the heart rate monitor beep rhythmically. There’s nothing wrong with him, medically, the doctors had said. He was in scarily good health, just inexplicably unconscious and buried in the park.
They’d monitor him until he woke up, make sure he was alright, the doctors had said. There wasn’t much they could do except wait and hope, they said.
The nurses had told him to go home, but he won’t.
Dream found this guy. He has to see him to wake up. He wants him to live.
The god of dreams does not fall back asleep. This bed is comfortable- fabric has gotten much better since he last slept in a bed- and he sinks into the sheets and pillows. He knows he is not still asleep.
Mild curiosity is what gets him to open his eyes again and see the man still sitting there, smiling.
“You’re awake!” He hesitates. “Sorry, I guess you don’t know me. But I, uh, found you in the park and brought you here. You were unconscious, so… anyways, you don’t have to say anything. But the doctors said you’re fine.” He’s rambling.
“Where… am I?” The god asks finally. The words are heavy on his tongue and he can feel the gears in his mind whirring to process this new language. He doesn’t understand the sounds that fall out of his mouth.
“The hospital,” and he doesn’t know what that means, but images are falling into place in his mind. Hospital, hospice, a modern medical center where the sick are taken. This man thought he was sick.
“Hospital where?” He repeats. The words come more easily.
“London. We’re near the University of London, where I found you.”
He rolls over. He doesn’t think he’s moved that far. The man probably found him where he slept, freaked out, and moved him all the way here. The god of dreams has never been woken on purpose before, never had someone find him and move him and try to help him.
Humans are stupid. This man looks tired- he’s been waiting in the hospital for a while- and he’s just spent a chunk of his little time here trying to save the life of someone who is quite literally immortal.
“Are you a student here? I haven’t seen you around, it’s a big school though. Um, did something happen to you? Are you safe? I didn’t tell the doctors how I found you, but it was really freaky. Should I call the police?” He continues, oblivious to the god’s disinterest. He’s wringing his hands together and it’s beginning to be annoying.
He shifts. The light is on him now. His hair is blond.
“No.”
Another hesitation. “Do you want me to leave?”
“I,” he begins, speaking through exhaustion, “do not care what you do. In any way. At all,” he adds.
“Okay, okay, I get it. I don’t know you, you don’t know me. I just wanted to offer. I’m cool with leaving, and I hope you’ll be okay. I’m Dream,” he says, extending a hand before dropping it when he sees the other isn’t going to take it.
Dream. Fate is not kind to him.
“Why did you bring me here?” He snaps. Already he can feel the familiar bubbling of irritation. He’s supposed to be asleep. He’s supposed to- supposed to not have to deal with this anymore, these stupid people and their stupid, short lives. He doesn’t want to be here. He wasn’t supposed to wake up.
“You were unconscious,” Dream repeats. “And I wanted to be sure you were alright.”
That almost makes him want to laugh, deliriously. Alright. As if he could- as if anyone could ever be, after living all of this. He wants so desperately to hate this man, to curse him with nightmares like he did the others who woke him, to walk away and go back to sleep and return to grey fields and the sound of Wilbur’s death.
It’s the sincerity in Dream’s voice that gets him, the way his eyes are shining and he’s still fidgeting below the chair and smiling up at him, nervously, earnestly, despite the dark circles under his eyes.
He just wanted to help. He didn’t know he’d stumbled upon a god. It isn’t his fault.
“Thank you,” he offers, and tries to make it sound genuine. “I don’t remember what happened. So thank you for finding me.”
Dream exhales and smiles wider, his body visibly relaxing. “Cool. Of course. So, uh, do you go here? To the University of London?”
“I’m new in the area,” The god decides upon as a response.
“This is my first year too,” Dream says. “I’m from Florida.”
“Long way to travel,” the god guesses.
“Yeah. My friends from highschool were supposed to come with me, but they’re staying back home. I like it here though! Where are you from, London? You’ve got the accent.”
He laughs awkwardly. “Okay.” He tries to take note of Dream’s accent versus his own voice, the way his mind must have adapted to the sounds of the area. Should have clued him in earlier that Dream was a foreigner. He doesn’t even know what Florida is. Best guess he’s too tired from his sleep to perceive anything properly. This might be a problem.
“Do you know where your dorm is?”
“No.”
“I can show you around campus, if you want?” Dream offers. “When you get discharged, I mean. Want me to give you my number?”
The god of dreams considers this. He doesn’t know what half the things Dream is talking about are. He should just leave. Just go back to sleep. He’s a god, there’s nothing for him in this meaningless, fleeting place.There’s nothing he can do here that will matter. There is nothing Dream can do here that will matter against the sheer size of eternity.
And yet. He looks around this room, this strange weird place that’s so different from everything he’s ever known. Sees Dream smiling at him expectantly, anxiously, so full of joy and stupid mortal hope.
And, fuck. It can’t hurt to stick around for a while. If only just for a few days. To see how the world’s changed, he tells himself.
“Yes.”
When he figures out what a phone is, later, after talking with several confused-sounding students, the first thing he does is type in the numbers hastily scrawled on the paper and waits to hear Dream’s voice.
He looks at the handwriting while the phone rings. It’s messy, with a smiley face drawn at the end of the number.
Fitting, if not mildly amusing.
“Hello?” Dream says, sounding groggy. It must be late; the skies are dark.
“Hello.”
“You called!” He sounds much more awake than before. “They released you? You’re alright?”
“Yes. I’m calling to inform you that I’ve decided to stay here, in… London. I would like to see you again and I’ll need help adapting to the area.”
“Cool, so-”
“Additionally, I thought I would let you know that I don’t really know what’s going on, as I’ve been asleep for centuries.” After a moment, he adds, “I’m a god.”
“…What.”
Dream slides a cup across the table. The god of dreams looks down suspiciously at the brown liquid, steaming slightly, white things Dream called ‘marshmallows’ floating around. He takes a tentative sip.
He can feel Dream watching him excitedly. “It’s good,” he nods. “Really- really very sweet. Why is it so sweet?”
Dream laughs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Didn’t they have sugar in- where are you from, exactly?”
“Everywhere. The last place I resided permanently was Essex- England, is what you call it now. So here. I don’t know how long ago. I remember there were forests everywhere, small villages and churches. None of any of this… stuff you have now. Life was short and violent. We warred often.”
Dream’s eyes are shining with interest. He adds that to his notes. The god didn’t know what exactly he expected by revealing his identity, but it was not to be interrogated about the minute details of the lives he’d led.
“That must have been, what, the sixth, seventh century? God, that’s so cool,” Dream says. “Wait, wait, did you ever see Egypt? The pyramids? I had an Egyptian mythology phase. Please tell me you were there.”
“For a while, yes. They had a name for me there. I was their god.”
“You know, you… you never told me your name.” Dream says, almost hesitantly. Like he is afraid this will anger the god.
“I am ageless. Timeless. If I ever had a name, it is long washed away,” he says, almost regretfully. He wishes he could say more. Dream speaks of all these marvelous things he should have seen, but he cannot find it in himself to remember. He doesn’t want to tell Dream that life was, for the most part, brief and terrible. There was no glory where the god went.
“What do I call you, then?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you wish.”
Dream cracks a smile, snorts to himself. “Okay. I’ll call you George, then.”
George nods. George . A funny name.
“So, you- you were in England, and you’ve been alive since- since literally the beginning of time. You could know everything , you could be the answer to so many unsolved historical mysteries- do you know why they built Stonehenge? Was King Arthur real? Do demons exist too?”
“Yes, sort of, no.”
“Okay, uh-” he cuts himself off. Probably he’s just noticed the tired look in George’s eyes and his obvious disinterest in the conversation. George didn’t want to say anything. Dream seemed excited.
“You probably don’t want to talk about it,” Dream says after a moment. “That’s okay. Since my friends- aren’t here, I don’t have a roommate. You can stay in the extra bed if you want. I can take you around campus and help you get into classes.”
“That sounds good,” George agrees. He’s not really listening, more so looking around the dorm and trying to take it in. The walls are white, the floor is shiny wood. The furniture is familiar and yet not, there are bright colors everywhere and things tacked onto the walls and stacks and stacks of books.
“What’s that?” George points to a painting of a young, blond woman. “Did you paint it?” He tilts his head. The details are incredible, it’s like the girl is standing right there in the room with them. He’d almost be impressed-
“That’s a picture of my sister.”
“A… picture?”
“You… don’t know what photographs are.” Dream says slowly. “Of course you don’t. Last time you were awake even momentarily was the 1800s.”
“I don’t know what any of this stuff is,” George snaps. “This is why I didn’t want you to wake me up. I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Oh. I can help you, though. I don’t mind. A photograph is, like, an image created by capturing light. So you use a camera, and you point it at something and press a button, and it remembers the way the light goes so it can recreate that image whenever you want to look at it. Preserves it. Does that make sense?”
“No.” He’s still studying the photograph. “You didn’t make it, a machine did. Yours is a world dominated mostly by technology, more advanced than I’ve seen. You have little devices and they work with computing instead of cogs and wires. Have I gathered that correctly?”
“If you don’t mind me asking- why are you here? You seem… pretty adamant that you didn’t want to wake up. Why haven’t you left?”
“I don’t know,” George lies.
“But you left the other times you woke up, after a few hours, you said.”
“I don’t know why,” he repeats, less confidently. “You barely know me and it’s very late. You need to go to bed and rest.”
“You don’t?”
George smiles humorlessly. “I’m not one of your kind.”
They don’t speak the rest of the night. George explores the dorm, turning things on and off. Flicking the light switch and twisting the faucets and watching the water fall down from the shower head. Presses his ear to the radiator. Walks from room to room, running his hand along every surface he finds, eating from Dream’s fridge- how is it cold- and lying in the carpet, fibers in his fingers. There was nothing this soft in his kingdom.
Dream finds him fixated with his face a few inches in front of the TV the next morning, watching what George has determined is a show for children. Colorful figures dance across the screen, illuminating his face with light and filling the room with sound. It enraptures him.
“I know you’re standing there.”
“Yeah,” Dream agrees. “I don’t know how to explain television. Don’t ask.”
“What am I seeing?”
“That’s, uh, Sesame Street.” Dream says wisely.
“I have never in my life seen anything like the things you have here. Not even at home in the mountains. I want to… I was thinking about what you asked me last night,” he turns away from the screen, picking his words carefully. “I haven’t been the nicest to you. I’m sorry. I’m here because I want to see what the world is like. What humanity has done with the thousand or so years I left it.”
“I’ll show you whatever you want,” Dream agrees. “It’s Sunday. I don’t have any classes today- but, you said mountains? I know you don’t want to talk about this but you have to tell me if the Greeks got anything right.”
“They worshipped their ideas of us, like the others did. Athens, I remember. That was…” he trails off. One of the last times the world felt colorful, he wants to say. One of the last times he looked at what fate had laid out for him and felt excited to explore it.
“You’re being very nonchalant about this. Mostly,” George says. “When I have revealed myself previously I was worshipped and taken to temples to be waited on hand and foot. I at least thought you would be startled. Or require proof.”
“I was obsessed with Percy Jackson,” Dream says, mostly to himself. “This is like my childhood dream come true.”
“Glad to help. I’m not usually in the business of good dreams.”
“Thank you, your grace,” Dream teases. “Can I get you anything? Some grapes, maybe?” His eyes are twinkling. George has the fleeting feeling that Dream is insinuating something else. He elects to ignore it.
“Usually it was human sacrifice,” George deadpans. “I don’t know why they did that. I don’t know why you’d take a life so short as that and fling it willingly at the feet of a god who will never remember you or care about what you’ve done. It always seemed a waste. The love they had for us. We laughed at them. Watched as they fell to plague and flood and famine.”
“You didn’t love your followers? Your kingdom?”
“Forever is too large for any one thing to matter. I have seen entire civilizations die out slowly. Your life, the beauty, it leaves you drop by drop and then you die when you have nothing more to give.”
“What’s wrong with that? Caring? If those people really believed that giving themself to worship and devotion would fulfill them, and it did, then it doesn’t matter if it was real or not. Doesn’t matter if there was a point.”
“There wasn’t,” George says shortly. “Very few things are. I could kill you right now. I am sure it would devastate your sister. Cause your family unimaginable pain. Do you think the universe cares about any of that?”
“Kill me if you want. I’ve lived a nice life,” Dream shrugs. “But then I wouldn’t be able to show you a movie theater, and the next time you woke up humanity would be wiped out by global warming and you would never, ever get to see Mean Girls. A real tragedy on your part.”
“You’re not afraid to die?”
“Wouldn’t do any good, would it?”
“Okay,” George concedes. “Go take me to see something around here then. Show me how beautiful and worth-living-in your world is. I’m sure you’ve got something in mind.”
“Yep,” Dream agrees. “It’s sunny today. I was going to drive down to some shitty fast food place and eat lunch at the beach. You’re welcome to join me, unless you have any godly business to attend to.”
George rolls his eyes, but can’t shake the lingering sense of amusement. “You’re in luck. Schedule’s all clear today. And every day. For the rest of this planet’s natural life.”
He follows Dream out of the dorm, out of the brick building and onto the pavement. The ground is hard and black, asphalt, and giant, hulking machines are lined up between white painted lines. George spins, taking in the skyline. He hadn’t really looked at it when he had walked here last night, more focused on getting to Dream.
But there are buildings everywhere, giant and towering far above the trees, which are lined in neat rows in the grass. Everything is organized, clean, pristine. He tilts his head as far back as he can, staring up at the detailed facade and ornate trim. It’s no Athenian temple, no Egyptian pyramid, no Roman palace. And yet it carries with it a sense of majesty that he’d noticed in every piece of Dream’s life.
The photographs, the moving picture screen, the on-off lights and the cellphones and god, does Dream ever think about that? How much he’s living amongst that never existed only a brief while ago?
It probably doesn’t feel brief to him. He probably can’t even conceptualize a world where everything that matters is gone. No one ever can.
George can. He wonders what became of Wilbur’s kingdom. Wonders how it became this place that it is now.
“George? Come on, get in?” Dream calls. One of the machines is open, door extending outwards to reveal two seats, Dream in one and the other empty.
He climbs in cautiously, feeling the leather of the seat. The door slides closed, automatically, and a screen clicks on. Cold air filters quietly through vents in the ceiling. Dream pulls a lever, puts his hand on some wheel. Twists around to look out the back- window, there’s a window there- and then they’re moving.
“What… is this?” George breathes. The machine accelerates and they’re speeding down the streets, buildings and trees blurring out the window.
“My car. Got it cheap secondhand. It’s, uh, it’s the main way we get around. That’s what the roads are for, cars. Like whatever you had, horse-pulled carts or something.”
“Those were only really for people of status,” George amends quietly. There’s a rushing in his head. He can’t tear his eyes away from the windows, watching the world speed by. He’s never moved this fast before. It’s… exciting, it’s almost enough to excite him.
Dream seems to be controlling the machine with the wheel. George watches how his eyes dart around the streets, how the muscles in his arms flex when he turns the car. He’s been driving it for years, he assumes. All these people are just brought up knowing how to do this, whether they’re rich or poor.
Maybe it’s not excitement. It’s fascination.
He desperately wants to know how these things work. How these people live their lives, how these massive cities were constructed and these miracles of advancement were made.
George doesn’t believe in miracles. He’s seen enough kingdoms to know this one, and all it’s marvelous machines, will fall and be forgotten. There’s no real point in any of this, of even trying to live in the world again.
The window rolls down. Dream is speaking to a metal box about “burgers”.
Doesn’t matter if there was a point, Dream’s voice says.
They make it to Dream’s beach, eventually. It’s rocky, and the waves are crashing against the shore. At least this much hasn’t changed. Dream sets them up near a tree, and George lets himself be moved and sat onto a blanket. Dream passes George a red box with a smiley face on it, clearly trying to hold back a laugh.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a happy meal. There’s a really terrible kids’ cheeseburger in there and some really not-terrible French fries. This is an important human ritual.” His eyes crinkle when he laughs.
“You’re an idiot,” George says, and takes a bite.
Immediately he spits it out, and Dream nearly falls over laughing. “You have to- you have to take the paper off of it first, oh my god,” he wheezes out. “How am I the idiot one here, you don’t eat the packaging -”
George scowls at him. “How was I supposed to know that?”
“Sorry, your grace, has this cheeseburger offended you? Do you need me to help you peel the very obvious plastic packaging off it?”
He shoves the box at Dream, a smile dancing around his lips. “You do it then. Apparently I don’t even know how food works nowadays. In my day we would eat out of wooden bowls and fresh meat was the highest delicacy.”
“This is not exactly that. Just try it.”
George does. It’s some kind of meat- from a cow, probably- seasoned and with bright yellow cheese melted over it. He doesn’t even know how to describe what he’s tasting, and eats the entire thing in less than two minutes.
Dream watches. His eyes are smiling. “Yeah?”
George nods. “Yeah. But I’ll have you know,” he wipes his mouth on a napkin, in a dignified way, “that I haven’t eaten in a thousand years and I was very hungry. Is this really the best humanity has to offer?”
“Not even close,” he passes George the box of… French fries.
Salty. “What strange things you people have managed to do with potatoes,” George muses. “And what careless use of salt and flavoring.”
“It’s all mass-manufactured. Corporations and stuff. The average American eats like a hundred fifty pounds of sugar a year. God, I have so much to explain to you. Have you ever had soda?”
And then there’s a colorful can being pushed into his hands, the top cracked open. George accepts it- he can smell all of the, he doesn’t even know, chemicals coming off of it- and meets Dream’s eyes.
Dream smiles.
George allows himself to smile back.
From that moment on, George is open to trying pretty much anything. And he wants to, that’s the part that surprises him. He wants to go to all the ‘fast food restaurants’ and try all the weird colorful foods in the pantry and watch all the movies and just do everything.
Dream shows him how to sign into Netflix. George probably binges half the catalogue with no breaks until Dream drags him somewhere else. They play video games, go to movie theatres and bookstores and slowly George becomes accustomed to the internet. God only knows he doesn’t understand it, but there is so much information right at his fingertips.
He researches England, mostly. His country- Wilbur’s country- has such a rich and bloody and fascinating history. Sometimes he wishes he had seen it. Sometimes Dream asks him if he saw some historical event and George has to say no and is filled with such an unfamiliar wistful longing, that he had missed all of these things.
Dream, his friends, all the people George had met at the University of London- they hadn’t seen it either, but it was different for them. These are events George could feasibly have seen if he was just looking.
It makes him feel a sick, uneasy kind of something. These stupid, fleeting moments. There are lifetimes he will never witness.
Does it even really matter? All those people are dead now. All those civilizations are gone . They’ll always be gone. Even the near-immortal does not stay. Dream said the glaciers were melting. Humanity itself will be gone forever soon too. And then it really will just be George, George and his dreams. There is absolutely no point to anything he does here. It wouldn’t even matter if he killed everyone in the building.
It’s stupid is what it is.
George gets a fake ID and signs up for every modern and ancient history class the University of London has to offer.
It amuses him, somewhat, how little they know about some things. How much they do know, far more than he expected. How people have devoted themselves so completely to remembering the past. He’s in the campus library- quickly becoming one of his favorite places- holding a photocopy of a page from a little girl’s journal. More accurately, characters carved into a slab of stone.
The historians can’t read it, of course. It’s a dead language. But George looks at her words and reads them and then reads them again. He wonders if she would have wanted them to be seen.
Dream mails his American friend a birthday present one day. Some way or another George finds himself conned into celebrating his own birthday. November first, the middle of autumn, Dream decrees, when all the trees are prettiest.
They make a sloppily-decorated cake. George makes a mess of the kitchen and Dream doubles over wheezing when George drops the batter. They make it again, flicking flour at each other and giggling. People from university come over to their dorm, someone brings beer, the music gets too loud and there are people he doesn’t even know here and it’s… it’s the same feeling of something .
“You’re drinking?” Dream asks.
“This is my sixth,” George spins the half-empty beer bottle in his fingers. “Gods don’t get drunk like you do. This is nothing compared to the revels we used to have in the mountains. Wilbur and I, we would-”
He takes another long sip quickly. “This is shitty alcohol.”
“College,” Dream shrugs.
“You’re not drinking,” George points out.
“I just don’t.” Maybe this alcohol is stronger than he thought it was. His cheeks feel flushed. Dream is standing tall, steady- the god of dreams doesn’t know how he feels about being so much smaller than this mortal. He doesn’t hate it.
“Come on, we have to get the cake. Come on!” And he’s dragging George through the unexpectedly large crowd, shoving him towards his seat. “This - this is a very important human tradition.”
“Like McDonalds?” He raises an eyebrow. His hand burns where Dream has grabbed it.
“No, no, this is a real one.”
Dream flicks off the lights, a fair few people gather around. And the singing starts, the off-key warbling happy birthday to you, and someone is carrying out their shitty cake and it’s on fire, candles stuck in the frosting and lighting up the room.
He turns to Dream, a twinge of panic in his voice. “What do I- what am I supposed to do with this?”
“Blow the candles out and make a wish.”
“…Why?”
“Just do it, idiot,” Dream elbows him.
George does, and he wishes at that moment that he could really live this life. A stupid university student who could really get drunk and go to parties and marvel over ancient history he’d never seen and sing stupid songs on his stupid friends’ birthdays and live his stupid meaningless life without knowing that everyone would forget him and everything he loved would be gone. To be one year older and have that mean something.
“You alright?”
He tears his gaze away from the wall, blinking. His eyes are wet. Dream pushes something into his hands. It’s another candle, this one made of metal, and it’s glowing and burning and it’s like holding sparks in his hands. Like holding a firework in his hands, his mind supplies, even though he doesn’t know that word.
“What… what have you given me?”
“It’s a sparkler!” Dream says. “They’re cool, come on!” He waves it a little to demonstrate, sticking it in the table. “Probably not safe, but who cares.”
“You’re an idiot,” George informs him, and takes it into his hand. Moves it back and forth and oh. It sparkles, crackling, and he can feel it burning in his hands. His face lights up. His mouth moves involuntarily into a wide, awed smile and it crackles.
“How does this- how does this work?” He laughs. “I don’t- I don’t understand.”
Dream shrugs. “Hell if I know. They’re just cool.”
“Yeah,” George nods quickly, twirling it. “Yeah, it’s cool.” He watches in fascination as it goes, bright and warm and light. It’s incredible, he imagines it must be like watching magic. Dream stays by his side all night, talking softly into his ear. And when the night is over and the people are gone and the candles have all burnt out, his face almost hurts from smiling.
He becomes a full time university student, after that. Bullshits his way through conversations with people, studies and explores campus and does all the things Dream informs him are the “college experience”.
Maybe it’s the novelty of it all. Trains and planes and subways. Gas stations and skittles and cheeseburgers. Escalators. Elevators. Dream spent an entire day fending off George’s questions about elevators. Once he found the elevator in their building he rode it over and over, up and down, pushing all the buttons and holding the door open for everyone.
And the music too, the websites and television. It’s like when George visited Rome for the first time but more, somehow. Like experiencing the world through the eyes of a child who’d only just been born.
It’s fascinating. And even the little things he’d seen thousands of times already, like leaves falling from the trees, warm sun on a cold windy day. He wakes up to the sun and a smile. It’s hard not to. There’s so much infectious joy in Dream’s life, his sunrise runs and back-corner coffee shops and endearingly untidy living room. He feels almost bursting with need to see everything.
He has to do it all. He has to learn it all. He has to watch every moment of this futile world before it’s all gone, before he loses it like he lost-
“I want to learn how to code. Where do I sign up for computer science?”
“What?” Dream looks up. “Why do you want to do that? I mean, I’m sure you could, but that might be a little ambitious for someone who’s been aware of the internet for less than two months. Wait, don’t tell me you’re trying to impress that compsci major in our history class. The blonde one- Niki.”
“I like blondes. But I am almost offended you’d suggest I hold such mortal motivations. I am well versed in sleeping with humans. You don’t need to learn computer programming to do it.”
“Right, just your pretty privilege,” Dream teases.
“Shut up, idiot. And anyways, you manage to do it… Code stuff! I mean code stuff. I want to see how computers work.” George insists.
“Okay,” Dream agrees. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to be an insult or not, but I’m gonna ignore it. Let me show you some basics first.”
George smiles. He notices that he smiles a lot more now. He learns some basic computer terminology, plays around with beginner coding apps. It feels almost hopeful. An unusual feeling of something.
There is the world at his fingertips, and then there is Dream.
There was Wilbur first.
George doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to, why would he? He has the dorm to himself at night, listening to music on a low volume and practicing running code. It’s a language, coding, and once that occurs to him he picks it up almost instantly.
He hears Dream rolling around his sleep, sometimes. Sometimes, he walks by Dream’s bed and just watches him sleep. It’s such a human thing to do. George has seen so many sleeping men and women. Dream could be anyone. George could be anywhere. Any time.
He makes sure Dream has happy dreams. Maybe Dream notices, maybe he doesn’t. Sometimes Dream confesses to George how lonely and anxious he was coming to university an ocean away from his home and his friends. His childhood friends Karl and Sapnap were supposed to come with him, before they decided to get married and stay in America. Dream wasn’t expecting to go alone.
So George takes note of that. In his sleep, Dream sees his friends, sees their happy memories together. He hopes he’s helping him, in some little way. George wonders if Dream wishes he were them. If that’s really why he’s here. George would leave if Dream told him to. He wants so desperately and with such an indescribable force for Dream to be happy. It’s the coiling pit in his stomach when Dream seems upset. He’s just a stupid human. He shouldn’t have to be sad. He hasn’t yet seen the things George has.
Sometimes it rains. England is a rainy country. Sometimes George looks out the window and all he sees are the blank grey fields, red grass and nothingness. George hates the rain.
All it does is serve to remind him that no matter how many pretty colors he paints on top of it, the canvas is always dull and lifeless. The water will wash away all the colors. And it will just be George, alone in a world of lifeless apathy.
Dream tries to comfort him on these days, sometimes, when George is curled under a blanket on the sofa staring blankly at the television.
“Is there anything I can do to make it better?” Dream says.
“No.” The thought is almost laughable.
“Okay,” Dream agrees quietly. “I’ll just sit here with you then. We don’t have to talk. I know I haven’t known you very long- you haven’t known me very long, not considering who you are. But if you need it, I will do anything for you to make it better.” He sounds almost hurt. Like he is hurting for George, with him.
“Wilbur said that, once.”
“I don’t know what you’re dealing with, but whatever it is… you have all the time in the world. Everything is going to be alright.”
“Wilbur said that once, too.”
“Can I…” Dream hesitates, shifting himself so he’s facing George. “Can I ask who Wilbur is- was? You mention him a lot.”
“He was my best friend. We lived together for centuries, establishing his kingdom. He was probably the inspiration for maybe half of the King Arthur myths. And then he died. It was my fault.” George states.
“I’m sure you did everything you could,” Dream offers.
“He was a demigod. He went after Quackity because he was- dishonoring me, Wilbur said. Only gods can kill demigods. Demigods can’t kill gods. I didn’t try hard enough to stop him from going, and so he went. And so he died.”
“You tried your best. It isn’t your fault,” Dream says urgently. “Please don’t keep blaming yourself for something that happened a thousand years ago.”
George considers this scene, the juxtaposition of Dream’s frantic mortal optimism against George’s informed wisdom. A thousand years is a long time for Dream. A week is a long time for Dream. He probably thinks George will waste his life mourning. As if George has any life to waste.
He doesn’t really know how to respond to this information.
“It was unwise of me to allow the killable into the world of immortals,” George settles on. “To let him be caught up in my petty feud with Quackity. He’d waited millennia to get his revenge on me. Millennia to find the thing that would hurt me the most by taking. It doesn’t really hurt anymore. Everything is taken eventually.”
“Do you… want to talk about it?” Dream tries, clearly out of his element here.
A moment passes. George thinks.
“I… humiliated him, you could say. I didn’t show up to Quackity’s crowning ceremony. I was asleep. I slept through the ceremony that depended on Quackity having his supporter. Eret- he’s like, who you would think of as God. Head of the pantheon. He crowned me the ruling prince instead after Quackity’s shame. I stole his crown, and I didn’t care. I still don’t. He couldn’t blame Eret. He thought it was some conspiracy because Eret liked me and let me build a temple for Wilbur. So he killed Wilbur in front of me.”
“And that’s… why you went to sleep. Why you hate everything-”
“I don’t hate everything.” George interrupts. “That would imply I have any energy left to put any sort of caring into this world. Positive or negative.” He gestures to the window. “It’s all just grey.”
“Bullshit,” Dream says. “You like it here. You like me. That’s something, and something positive at that.”
“I like it here,” George concedes. “I really do, actually, and it’s surprised me. But, Dream, you have to understand- and I don’t expect you too. I am older than this planet is. Life is cruel and violent and meaningless. All of these terrible things, what you consider national tragedies, the eventual death of your race even- it doesn’t matter. It’s so small. This here is small. This is nothing. It isn’t real.”
Dream goes quiet for a moment. George hears him swallow. His eyes are shining. “I don’t think that’s true,” Dream says softly. “I think that I feel happy here, and that’s enough to make it real. Our feelings are real, and the people we touch are real. And, and… you know, I’ve really enjoyed this time we’ve had together. And that’s enough for me.”
“That doesn’t change anything. That doesn’t affect anything.”
“No, but, just because life is big and cruel and meaningless doesn’t mean we can’t find meaning there anyway. You have to do it yourself, George. You have to focus on the good instead of the past. Find little things to enjoy.”
“You wouldn’t feel that way if you were like me. Doomed to sleep through centuries of death and war and to know that none of the people you meet will mean anything in the grand scheme of things. And to never, ever be able to die.”
“Ever think that you’re the one who doesn’t understand?” Dream snaps.
Is he crying?
George stares at him, eyes dead. He doesn’t feel anything in this moment. It might be concerning if he hadn’t spent centuries like this. There is nothing in his heart. He is empty. Dream cries.
“We do die, George. We’re not fucking stupid. We know that our lives don’t matter. You’ll never have to think about yourself dying, how terrifying that would be. You’ll never know how it feels to stand at your sister’s funeral as a man who will die, amidst a dozen other people who know they will die. How horrible and raw that moment feels. You’ll never understand how it is to have no choice but to find meaning in everything. I don’t get you. And you don’t get us.”
“I guess I don’t,” George agrees, and bites his lip to keep from saying but I wish I did.
He wishes he understood what it was to be a mortal. He wishes he could share Dream’s positivity, his absolute insistence that every little thing they do have some meaning in it. His morning runs rain or shine, the coffee he brings his teachers every morning, the time he’s devoted to teaching a god about computers.
Dream is right, George doesn’t get it. He wants to get it. The way Dream looks at the world. The way people do.
It’s another fascination thing, just something more as well. He wants to learn. He wants to know everything. He wants to pretend to be a person, a mortal person who will die, just for a little while.
“You never mentioned she was dead.”
“You never mentioned Wilbur was dead.”
George nods and shifts closer to Dream. They lean against each other in silence. He pulls the blanket closer around them and goes back to the television.
George Wilson officially puts his name down on class registers. He is twenty-one. He used to live in a suburb of London before coming to the university. He wanted to stay close to his family. Majoring in computer science and minoring in history. He lives with his blond American roommate and drinks a lot of coffee and goes to everyone’s parties and consumes an abnormal amount of alcohol. People know him. People like him.
People tell George Wilson, jokingly, that they don’t know how he got into university. He doesn’t know where Russia is, or how to use a stove. He’s never had a hotdog before. He thinks chocolate has too much sugar. He seems completely unfamiliar with every normal little thing. He wanders the school with a wide-eyed fascination of someone new to this earth.
George Wilson laughs with them. He doesn’t talk about himself much, but he listens to everyone.
George the god of dreams tries to forget his old name. He is George Wilson. He is a university student. And it works, honestly, and he wasn’t expecting it to. Human life is inconvenient and filled with waiting for things to be over. Strange rituals that he can’t wrap his head around.
And he loves it. If he just lets himself be caught up in who he is now, he almost doesn’t remember what he is. He almost feels joy.
Dream seems to pick up on this. They don’t talk about Wilbur, or Dream’s sister, or that argument that ended with both of them falling asleep on the sofa. Dream crying, George inexplicably upset.
It was the first time George had fallen asleep in the human way and woken up the next morning to sunlight filtering through the blinds and the alarm on Dream’s phone buzzing in his ear. He’s surprised at how refreshed it makes him feel.
George sleeps in the other bed from then on. If Dream and George fall asleep huddled together on the sofa sometimes, each other’s heartbeats in their ears, with a shitty movie playing in the background, well. It isn’t discussed, how George slowly picks up on little things. Starts brushing his teeth (is horrified by the minty taste, to Dream’s amusement) and eating cereal for breakfast.
It’s exciting.
The things Dream shows him, the things he learns. The bits and pieces of Dream’s painfully human world views that seem to infect George. Dream sees the world through rose-colored glasses, and George can’t help but borrow them.
It’s a good life, at the University of London. The god of dreams never imagined he’d be saying that.
Humans seem to have an obsession with health, dieting and exercising. He supposes that hasn’t changed much. Everything in Dream’s fridge is labeled organic and 10% less sugar and non GMO (Dream had told George on no uncertain terms to not look up GMOs. George read the explanation, closed his phone, and stared at the wall for a good fifteen minutes). Dream makes George go with him to the campus gym sometimes. Godhood has never come with superior form- why would it be needed? Mostly he watches Dream. He can appreciate his dedication to perfecting his body. He can appreciate how much it’s worked.
It isn’t odd. Besides, George knows that Dream must think he’s beautiful too. He doesn’t know why humans place such a taboo on simply noticing these things.
“I wish I could die,” George says. They’re sitting on the sofa, huddled together with hot chocolate. The shutters rattle, rain coming down in torrents. “Niki said she got in a car crash and almost died when she was younger. I wish I could.”
Dream tightens his grip on George’s arm.
“Don’t fucking say that,” Dream says. He never swears.
“I know you don’t understand. I know I don’t understand. I know suicide is considered a disease in your culture. I think if I could die, I would. Not now. But I would, eventually. I want to know what it’s like.”
Dream’s gaze hardens. “Don’t do it until I’m dead. Don’t do it until there’s no one left who would care about you.”
“Eret would miss me,” George says. “He probably does already.”
“Then don’t fucking do it.”
“Why are you being like this? You know it’s not the same for me as it is for you. Is this how your sister died? She wanted to see what it was like too?”
“No! You can’t just say that. Jesus!” He snaps. His voice sounds on the verge of breaking.
“Jesus isn’t real.”
“Just… don’t talk about that, okay? I don’t want to lose you. You of all people should understand what it’s like.” It’s a low move, and Dream knows it.
“You literally, physically cannot lose me,” George breathes. “It’s just curiosity. That’s all.”
Dream’s eyes are shining with emotion. George feels it too, the overwhelming surges of feeling and the tightness in his gut telling him he’s fucked up somehow, he’s hurt Dream, he needs to fix it.
He racks his brain, trying to think of what Dream wants. Dream’s breath is heavy. Pretty privilege.
His face is close to Dream’s, still gripping each others’ arms. His eyes rake over Dream’s body, his golden hair, his jawline, the tension etched into his body, muscles straining slightly. George puts his hand on the back of Dream’s neck and pulls him down to eye level. Something unfamiliar flashes over Dream’s face and George kisses him. Tries to, at least.
Dream turns his head away, pushes George back into the cushions.
“You don’t want me?” George asks, inexplicably hurt. He’s rarely been turned down.
Dream looks almost wistful. He signs, settling back into the sofa, decidedly several feet away from George. “Not like this.”
They don’t talk about that, either.
Dream takes him to an amusement park, a week or so into December. It’s a bit of a drive from their dorm, and Dream refuses to explain what they’re doing. “It’s, you know, for rollercoasters. The park is closed but the owner’s son lets people ride stuff every once in a while. Hasn’t rained in a while, so the tracks are dry, and it’s not cold enough to get deadly frostbite. Nothing to worry about!”
“Dream,” George says. “ Dream,” his eyes are glued out the window. He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. Dream drives through a gateway, parks in the parking lot and greets the other students standing by their cars.
“Tommy here yet?” Dream asks.
“He’s back somewhere by the new coaster,” One of the guys says. “With his cronies. You know. That’s what we’re gonna do first. Took you guys long enough to get here. Wilson holding you up?” He laughs.
“Dream’s a slow driver,” George says. The guy laughs again.
As the group walks to find Tommy- the park owner’s son, he assumes, he’s heard people talking about him around campus before, and the descendant of the university founder- George looks around the park in awe. Bright colors and strange, hulking metal skeletons with vibrant paint. He follows them, lagging behind as he spins around and stares at all the buildings. It’s decorated like an old carnival, sort of, stands and buildings and merry-go-rounds. They follow a wooden path decorated with signs and clearly made to look like a movie set, winding off the main pathways.
“Are we going towards… that?” George points at that nightmarish looking thing. It’s the tallest thing he’s ever seen, a suspended railroad track held up by a mountain of crisscrossing wood and metal supports. Chipped paint decorates it and there’s a platform at the top they could reasonably be going towards.
It’s taller than anything he’s ever seen before. The track loops and swerves and makes hills on giant inclines. Rollercoaster, his mind whispers.
“Yep,” Dream says. “Best ride in the park. “We can do the other boring stuff later. Gotta start the day off right. Plus you never know when Tommy’ll decide to just throw us out.”
“What?”
There’s a cart, sort of, on the platform, at the start of the track. Silver railings divide the platform into neat lines. A boy-Tommy- sits behind a glass panel, lounging in a spinning chair surrounded by buttons and levers, two other boys behind him. They look like teenagers, certainly not old enough to be the university students they apparently are. To be… what, operating this thing?
“You’re the famous roommate?” Tommy calls, pointing at George. There’s an odd familiarity about him, and George can feel his mind subconsciously trying to piece together the details of his face.
“You’re the rich kid?” George calls back, shaking the feeling.
Tommy snorts. “Yeah, okay. Fuck off. Alright, lads, I’m in charge. Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at allllll times, or else you’ll probably fucking die. Then I’d have a lawsuit on my hands. I’m riding first seat with Ranboo.”
The tall kid in the booth elbows him. “I thought I was going to operate it.”
Dream tugs on George’s sleeve as the teens bicker. “Come on, get in.”
George surveys the track. They’re going to ride on this thing, he’s out together, held down by a single bar over their laps and a few spoiled teenagers running the whole thing. And this is something they just do . Frequently, apparently, according to Dream’s accounts of the summer he spent in London before classes began.
He slides into the cracked padded seat next to Dream cautiously, pulling the bar down. “Aren’t you… is this what you guys do for fun?”
“Yeah! I mean, it’s more fun during the summer when it’s warmer out and there are more people here and it’s not just Tommy who’s in charge of everything, but you know. This is something everyone has to experience. You included. Before, you know, the eventual collapse of society and destruction of all that there is except for our own misery.” He lowers his voice and raises his eyebrows.
“I feel like you’re mocking me,” George protests. “I don’t sound like that.”
“No? Oh, I’m George, I’m physically incapable of doing anything just because I won’t be able to do it later.”
“Oh, I’m Dream, I think goddamn Minecraft is the peak of human advancements,” George shoots back, high-pitched, no anger in his voice.
“You’re so stupid,” Dream says.
“I am literally a god. Idiot.” George is met with more wheezing. “I-”
He’s cut off by the ride shuddering to life. His head is thrown back against the seat as the machinery begins chugging, the chains clanking loudly. This feels like maybe the most unsafe thing George has ever seen anyone do. The thing actually creaks, groaning and clacking it’s way upwards. There’s a buzzing around him, people chattering at pointing around expectantly.
George looks over the edge, watches the park get smaller and smaller. He can kind of see their car. It looks like an ant. The incline isn’t stopping and George feels almost a twinge of nervousness, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He’s hypnotized by the sound of the gears clicking as the park fades away.
He manages to tear his gaze away, feeling the speed of the incline start to slow. Dream is looking over at him, huge smile on his face. “Get ready for this. I promise you’ve never felt anything like this before.”
“Aren’t you scared you’ll die? Like, you could actually literally die from this so easily.”
“Yeah, we know!” Dream’s grin stretches wider. “That’s why it’s fun. A little touch of death every once in a while never hurt anyone.”
“This won’t work on me thought, I can’t die-”
Everything is silent. George’s eyes widen and his heart speeds up and there’s a single click of a gear being released and he is falling. Plummeting towards the ground at breakneck speed. All he can hear is the cacophony of ear-splitting screams from all around him and the fall is getting faster and George has no time to register that he’s screaming too, screaming like it’s his last moment alive. His fingers dig into the armrest.
The cart jerks to the left right before they crash, careening around the track. Everything blurs around George, shapes and colors melting into nothingness as everything rushes past at breakneck speed.
Everything is loud. Everything is quiet. He can hear the blood rushing in his ears. The world bleeds together into mush as they hurtle along. George lets himself be dragged along. The cart yanks him over hills and upside-down, his head spinning as his hand finds Dream’s desperately.
He is dead terrified. The world is falling and spinning and crashing into pieces and his body is pinned into the cart only by the force of the freezing wind. The cart falls away from underneath him.
George’s last thought before he gives into the screaming terror is I am going to die.
He is going to die.
He has never been this scared in his life.
The skies are clear. All that surrounds him is blank and empty and beautiful. It’s euphoric. He has conquered death. Adrenaline consumes him, bleeding out of his veins and into the sky. He is god of all that surrounds him. He is falling to his death.
It stops as quickly as it began, the cart slowing to a stop at the platform they boarded on. It feels almost like he’s still moving, whole body shaking. Slowly, he manages to loosen his death grip on Dream’s hand and stand, legs wobbling.
George floats off the platform, drifting away in his own realm. He can faintly hear the others in the group talking with each other, but not really. His mind is quiet. There is nothing.
“Fun, right?” Dream says. His hair is messed up and falling over his face, green eyes twinkling. He’d never noticed how green they are, shining with exhilaration. The splattering of freckles across his nose.
George is panting, laughing deliriously. “You could say that.”
“Better than, like, gladiator fights?”
That’s enough to crash George’s train, if only for a moment. He was never going to die. He’s a god. But he had felt mortal, in that moment. Like there was nothing, no crushing weight of eternity on his shoulders, only his rampaging emotions and the reassuring grasp of Dream’s hand.
“Maybe. You didn’t… you didn’t say that it would feel like that, dying.”
“Nah, that’s not what dying feels like. That’s what it feels like to be alive.”
George smiles, really smiles.
And for a few minutes, he understands.
The little touches come easily to them after that. George finds him noticing the brush of his fingers against Dream’s more, the space they occupy and the space between them. They live in harmony, in their dorm.
George the god of dreams feels content.
More time passes, coding and learning to write Minecraft plugins with Dream. Participating in his classes, hanging out around campus. He meets so many people, and listens to them, and refrains from telling them about their inevitable deaths. He finds that this restraint makes him infinitely more popular.
Not in the way that he was when he would lay down in Greek temples and have all his whims carried out on a silver platter, but in a way that feels more real. And any time the other students bring up George, they have to bring up Dream too. That’s the way it is. George and Dream. Dream and George.
They celebrate Christmas together. Dream hangs up all the cards people mail him above their table, Karl and Sapnap’s card dead center. They look happy, in love. Dream and George exchange simple gifts, make cookies and watch Christmas cartoons.
The folder lies on the table, a collection of the most vivid historical experiences George can remember, most of them from Athens about how his kind fit in with Greek mythology. He thought Dream would like those most (after looking up who Percy Jackson was).
Warm in George’s hand is a little pink quartz elephant. Dream had said it just felt like something George would want.
What do you even get a god for Christmas? George has never had a little pink elephant before, and he decides he will never let go of it. Even when Dream, London, the University is gone. He’ll hold onto it.
New Year’s Eve, Dream says, is a very important day for humans. They throw a rager on the beach and everyone gets nearly blackout drunk. George and Dream sneak away, to a section of the beach untouched by crazed twentysomethings, sitting in the dirt and feeling the sand between their fingers and the cool ocean breeze in their hair.
The muted roar of music floats around them, the dull pulsing of the baseline. Dream has his watch out, glancing at the time every few seconds.
The air is cold. The stars twinkle between scattered clouds, and few ships light up along the horizon.
“Three… two… one…” Dream counts. “Happy new year!” They finish together, ignoring the whooping and screaming from the rest of the party. George digs his empty beer bottle into the sand.
“I like that you do this,” he says. “Fill your years with milestones. Celebrate the days passing instead of mourning them.”
“I like it too,” Dream agrees. “There are gonna be fireworks in just a sec.”
Almost on cue, the sky lights up. George remembers his ‘birthday’, the sparkler, the unfamiliar word. A silent missile shoots up into the sky, exploding with a deafening bang. The sky cracks with color, bursting with light as it shimmers and cascades down into the sea. The people at the party are cheering again.
George watches on in awe as more fireworks explode, shattering into sparks that illuminate the sky with color. The reflections shimmer onto the sky, shining back onto their own faces. His skin glows red, green, yellow. Flashing lights, glittering and dazzling. He has no words. What could he even say?
Then it is gone, the sky clouded with smoke trails. A final golden firework goes up, tumbling down to the water. Smoldering ashes and the grey remains of what was once beautiful as the night fades back into darkness. Out with a bang, how most things go.
But that’s not really true here. He can still hear the music, the cheering, see the fireworks reflected in Dream’s eyes. Dream catches his gaze, snagging onto it and refusing to let go. He sees the world in Dream’s eyes, the oceans splattered across his cheeks.
“I should have taken a picture of it,” George breathes out. The air is thick. Dream doesn’t break his chokehold on George’s gaze. They’re nearly touching, the way they’re sitting.
“Why?”
“So I could look back and see it again.”
“There are some things you aren’t meant to see again.” Dream’s voice is low. George’s eyes flick to Dream’s lips. To the fleeting, fragile beauty of this moment. The waves lap at the shore, steady as ever.
George kisses Dream’s cheek, featherlight, dangerously close to his lips. Dream is shaking, slightly.
“George,” he whispers, voice laced heavy with restraint. “Tell me you aren’t just doing this because you think you have to, or, or… just tell me you want this, please say you actually want this.”
Oh.
George is an idiot.
“I want this,” he confirms, not daring to rise above a whisper in fear of crashing this delicate high he’s riding. Dream’s hand reaches out to cup George’s face, thumb running along his lips. George’s eyes flutter shut. “ Please.”
Dream kisses him gently, almost afraid, and pulls away too soon, resting their foreheads together. “I think I love you.” A gasp escapes George.
He’s afraid to open his eyes, lashes heavy. He’d sworn he would never love again- he wasn’t expecting the swell of happiness that blooms in his chest. He can feel it again, the tightness building in his chest. The indescribable feeling of something.
“I think I could love you,” George says, voice hoarse. “Kiss me again, idiot.”
Dream murmurs, “As you wish,” and complies.
It’s rougher this time, more desperate now that the line between them has been obliterated. George forgets himself, faces slotting together perfectly, his jaw slackening. His hand is tangled in Dream’s hair, tugging him closer, urging him deeper.
It feels almost as if all of eternity passes in one single moment. Dream’s hand is bruising on George’s jaw, fingers grasping at his shirt. The roar of the party subsides. Everything subsides.
They break away for only a moment, Dream breathing roughly. George lets out a jagged pant, unsure why his heart is racing. His lips feel chapped. He pulls Dream back to him, letting Dream’s tongue slip into his mouth.
George is on fire, his lungs burning up rapidly as it spreads through his body. He is sure he should be choking up blood by now, staining Dream’s teeth silver. He kisses him again, and again, like the earth is dying and this is their only goodbye. The sky breaks into a thousand tiny diamonds, landing amongst the sand.
He kisses Dream until the sun rises, fire in George’s body breaching containment of the skies, washing everything in an orange glow, until they are both too tired to speak. George falls asleep wrapped in Dream’s arms, being held like he is a thing to be cherished. The fire is not burning but sizzling gently, a low heat that floods his mind. George feels safe.
George the god of dreams feels happy.