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“Merry Christmas, idiot.”
Dream blinked, bleary-eyed and disorientated. There were arms wrapped loosely around his waist, another body beside his own. If this wasn’t some cruel trick of fate, it seemed that it was Christmas morning, and George was in his bed.
He was burying his face in Dream’s neck, lashes and lips brushing the skin with such tantalising warmth Dream thought he might cry. Soft hair tickled the underside of Dream’s jaw, he could feel his heartbeat in his throat, and George was in his bed.
He wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened this time—though he guessed it was something to do with their Christmas movie marathon they’d had the night prior, and their reluctance to move afterwards. Regardless, he definitely wasn’t complaining.
“G’morning,” Dream murmured back, voice slightly slurred and still hazy with sleep—he hoped it was enough to disguise the way his thoughts were running rampant, working themselves up into a frenzy that could only be calmed by holding the man in his arms tighter. And so he did, much to George's apparent annoyance.
“What are you doing?" He mumbled, attempting to wriggle free from Dream's grasp, and finding he was incapable of moving more than a few inches. He groaned, long, exaggerated, and laced with feigned irritation, "You're squishing me."
"Not my fault you're so squishable."
"What does that even mean?" The words were spoken grumpily, but Dream could feel George's smile against his neck.
"Y’know when something’s so adorable that you just need to squeeze it? That’s you.”
George scoffed, though made no further attempts to escape Dream’s clutches, instead relaxing against his chest.
He wasn’t sure if it was the feeling of George curled up against him, or how their proximity meant that he could feel another heartbeat alongside his own. It may have just been the domesticity that came with being entangled with the person you cherished most, of them being the first thing you see when you open your eyes, their gentle breathing the first thing you hear, the faded scent of their cologne the first thing you smell — the very scent that would be preserved on the pillows that you shared, the pillows themselves having borne witness to late-night lovesick giggles and glances that yesterday’s darkness didn’t quite conceal.
Whatever the reasoning may have been, Dream was overcome with the inexplicable urge to press his lips to the top of George’s head. And, well, tender mornings like these were certainly not known for providing much impulse control.
Dream found himself lingering for even longer than he had originally intended, unwilling to create something as unnecessary as distance between the two of them. That was, at least, until he was interrupted, “Are you sniffing my hair?”
“No,” Dream replied defensively, and was met with a disappointed silence. It only took a few seconds for him to cave, “So what if I was?”
“I literally didn’t even shower yesterday, it's probably all gross.”
“It’s not, for the record.” Dream pressed a kiss to the top of George’s head, with the utterly transparent excuse of doing it just to prove his point. There must have been something intoxicating in the smell of George’s mint shampoo, because Dream found his mouth moving before he could stop it, words falling unbidden from his lips in a stream of far-too-obvious infatuation, “Even if it was, I wouldn’t mind.”
“You’re so weird,” George laughed, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. He squeezed Dream’s waist, and they were pressed so close together that his eyelashes tickled Dream’s neck every time he blinked.
“Go shower then, idiot.”
“Don’t want to go yet,” George mumbled, not needing to explain why.
Moments like these, in which they felt a mere whisper away from more, brought out the most vibrant shades of their shared obsession. Shots of neon devotion raced through their blood, far too bright for either of them to ignore, so bright, in fact, that half the world had apparently noticed too. They hadn’t talked about it yet, but they both knew they would eventually. For now, their silent promise of when rather than if was enough, until the time was right.
“What did you get me for Christmas?” George asked, sounding vaguely uninterested in a way that said he already knew he wasn’t going to get an answer. It was honestly adorable that he wanted to continue their conversation, perhaps just to hear Dream’s voice again—exactly the type of thing Dream wouldn’t let George know he was aware of, then unwittingly spill to tens of thousands of people in a bathtub Twitter space several weeks later.
Dream sighed, hesitating in a way that suggested he was carefully choosing his next words, as though he was deliberating spilling a dangerous secret. He tilted his head downwards, so that he could speak directly into George’s ear, and George leaned into the contact, eager to catch every last syllable. He paused for a moment longer, simply letting his breath fan over George’s skin, whilst also fighting down the—admittedly very strong—childish part of himself that wanted nothing more than to whisper this dick.
George huffed and kicked Dream’s ankle, “Just tell me what you got me.”
“No.”
The arms around his waist relinquished almost immediately, as though they had been burned, and the look of betrayal on George’s face—no matter how exaggerated—was near enough to shatter Dream’s resolve.
“You’ll find out in a couple of hours,” he added quickly, barely able to resist the urge to scoop George back into his arms and promise him every last star in the sky, and then some.
“Then why not just tell me now?” George grumbled, pouting such that he somehow looked like a grumpy cat yet also more kissable than any other man that had ever lived. Dream supposed that might have just been because he loved him more than toddlers on the beach love sandcastles and seashells, though he could never be too sure.
“Because that ruins the surprise, obviously? Did you never have Christmas as a child?” Dream flicked his forehead gently, doing something, anything, to stop himself from pressing his lips to it instead.
“No, I just spawned on Earth seven years ago, ready made to mod plugins and play Minecraft with you.”
“Wow, just for me?”
“Yeah,” his voice was tender, breakable, “Just for you.”
One of George’s hands rested beneath his face, a barrier between his skin and the soft pillow beneath it. His other hand had—whether subconsciously or not, Dream was unsure—moved back to its previous position, resting on the slight dip of Dream’s waist. It radiated warmth and provided indescribable comfort, and he wanted nothing more than to feel those fingertips directly against his skin, rather than through the thin fabric barrier they currently resided over.
The last remnants of sleep had long since left him, and daylight was beginning to pour through the gap in the curtains. So, there really wasn’t anything he could say that would excuse how he not-so-subtly shifted his shirt upwards so that the hem resided just below the line of his ribs, placing his hand over George’s to ensure it remained in place. Yet, high on the rush of early-morning domesticity, he did it anyway.
George rolled his eyes, a fond smile tugging at the corner of his lips, before his eyebrows raised and his lips parted soundlessly. There was a moment's pause, before, “You’re wearing my shirt.”
Dream looked down, more to break their intense eye contact and hide his burning cheeks than to actually confirm the truth of the statement.
“Huh,” Dream said, his hand balling into a fist, squeezing, and stretching out again to avoid awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck like he so wished to, “I mean, you did buy it, like, four sizes too big.”
“Two sizes, actually—”
“Go shower, loser,” Dream laughed, gazing at George with probably embarrassing amounts of fondness as he moved reluctantly away and out of the bed. Dream knew that at some point in the future he’d be able to follow George into the ensuite without question, and it was times like these that he envied his future self to a ridiculous extent. But, for now, he was more than content to have mornings like this, safe in the knowledge that in a matter of minutes they’d be opening presents and holding each other by the fire.
George stretched his arms over his head, before retrieving his phone from the nightstand and scooping his hoodie from where it had been previously discarded on the floor. He left the room with a smug smile tossed over his shoulder, and it wasn’t until Dream could hear the water running that he remembered George hadn’t been wearing a hoodie yesterday, and realised that his own favourite sweater was now locked on the other side of the bathroom door.