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George’s week began more sour than warm tangy lemonade on a cold and rainy summer day. Countless assignments were returned to him with poor grades and entire paragraphs of feedback on how he could improve in the future. No matter how far he’d shove them into his locker, he could still feel the harsh indents of ink he knew to be red atop his tests and quizzes that read grades so low he’d rather they never see the light of day. George’s programming in his coding class would never work no matter how many issues he’d correct, and he knew his partner was becoming concerned if he’d be able to hold his weight in the upcoming robotics competition. Hell, on the day of his English speech in front of the whole class, he’d stepped in a puddle on the way to school and shot water all the way up his pants.
Needless to say, George was exhausted come Friday afternoon and needed a pick-me-up more than ever.
“George!”
It was after lunch at the lockers when George was grabbing notebooks and binders for the second half of his day’s classes. He relied on written labels on all the spines to differentiate between his materials rather than colors.
“George!”
“Oh my God,” George grumbled to himself, turning towards the lockers to his right. “What do you want, Sapnap?”
Sapnap, George’s friend for as long as he’d been attending the school, was bouncing back and forth on his feet with a shiny smile. He noticeably was holding no school materials despite the bell ringing for the next class in two minutes, instead just his black and green basketball jersey.
“Hi George,” Sapnap laughed, borderline a giggle at his friend’s annoyance. “Do you want to come to the gym with me?”
“Why would I want to do that?” George countered, narrowing his eyes as he leaned against his open locker door.
“Barnes said I could skip class and practice for the game tonight. A couple guys on the team are going to practice with me, but you need to be there for my moral support,” Sapnap explained casually, forehead nodding in the direction of the gym. “You can sit on the stairs or something.”
“… Are you serious?” George raised both eyebrows with an exasperated sigh.
“Yeah—”
“Don’t lie to me. You’re just skipping class because you don’t want to sit between Karl and Big Q.”
Sapnap jumped about ten feet in the air, “What?!”
George had half a mind to hold back a smile as he watched his shorter friend hastily whip around surveying the hordes of students in search for the aforementioned two boys. It was never a secret to George that his best friend had a crush on two different people at the exact same time. Sapnap never even needed to say it out loud to him; you just kind of know these sorts of things. Well, George felt like he always knew.
“You— you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sapnap hissed, stepping closer to harshly whisper. “Just shut up and come to the gym with me, idiot.”
“Once again, why would I want to do that, idiot?” George repeated, glancing at the clock. Just over a minute left.
“Because…” the brunet looked around the locker bay as he blindly fished for reason.
“Exactly,” the taller of the two spoke as a matter-of-factly, turning to slam his locker door shut. He gathered his books beneath his arm and folded a hoodie over his forearm. “Besides, I can’t skip class. I can’t get this dumb code to work, and all it’s supposed to do is make this gross little white semen-looking blob thing I drew hop over the screen.”
Suddenly, Sapnap’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. He grabbed George’s wrist.
“You need coding help? I know somebody on the team who is really good at it,” he grinned mischievously. “He’ll be at practice.”
“Yeah, and you all will be practicing,” George replied simply, turning away to leave the locker bay.
“No!” Sapnap nearly shouted, immediately stepping in the way of his friend’s path. Accidentally drawing attention to the two, he quietly repeated his protest; “No. Dream doesn’t need to practice. He’s already really good. He’s just going to be in there because he has a free period.”
“… Dream?!” George repeated with a bark of incredulous laughter. “That’s his real name?”
The starry light in Sapnap’s eyes was snuffed out immediately. “No, dickhead. Just bring your damn homework or something.”
As no surprise to anybody, George ended up following Sapnap to the gym. By now both boys knew they’d follow each other anywhere no matter what.
It was loud and rambunctious in the gymnasium as shoes squeaked, ball bounces echoed across the walls, and several boys shouted and grunted in their small matches up and down the shiny court. Sapnap was quick on his feet and could easily duck underneath arms of his teammates, and because of him his teammates would regularly score. George took pride in his friend for his athletic talent and knew his future would be filled with athletics scholarships from universities all over the country.
However, George couldn’t say the same for himself at that point. He sat on the floor of the low-rise stands with his legs propped up overtop the seats in front of him, notebook and calculator in his lap and a pencil spinning between his fingers. Math equation after math equation never quite turned out the way it should’ve according to the textbook splayed open at his side, numerous pages dog-eared and creased from misuse at the bottom of his backpack. Discouragement was eating at him in the form of a rude little voice at the back of his head.
“Do you need help?” a new voice spoke in his direction from the left.
George glanced up from the textbook with an annoyed expression, though it immediately dropped with a hitch in his breath as his eyes fell upon a dirty blond boy standing next to him expectantly. Fireworks exploded across his peripherals, for the boy donned in a dark green hoodie, basketball shorts, and Nikes was stunning. The hint of stubble lined his strong jawline, fading up towards faint freckles that dotted tan skin and framed clover green eyes. The corners of his lips were pulled into a small friendly smile, and when their eyes met George’s mouth ran drier than a desert.
“Uh,” George replied smartly.
The boy, one of tall stature, strong build, and a gorgeous face looked over towards the court and loosely pointed an index finger towards the players on the floor. “Sap said he had a friend in here who needed help with coding, so I just thought…”
“Sapnap?” George asked, glancing at his brunet friend as he just about dunked the basketball on one of his teammates’s heads. “So you’re Dream?”
“Yeah,” he replied, turning back to George. His gaze was soft yet intense, and George immediately had to look away to break the eye contact before he let out any embarrassing noises. “What’s your name?”
“George,” he replied, looking anywhere but at his handsome new companion.
“…Okay. George,” Dream confirmed, and George didn’t even have to look at him to know he was smiling. “So what are you stuck on?”
“Shouldn’t you be practicing with them?” George tried with a firm clearing of his throat, turning to his side opposite to Dream to pull on the grey hoodie over his head. He didn’t swipe the hood down from overtop his dark hair, figuring it be the best way to cover his quickly reddening ears.
“I think they’re doing fine,” Dream replied, scooting closer to pick up the disheveled textbook from the seating floor.
The distance between the two boys, though a reasonable length, felt way too close for George. He wasn’t sure if he felt hot either from his own embarrassment at his immediate infatuation for the basketball player or it was just crazy intense body heat coming off of him.
Makes sense, George thought. He’s… crazy.
“Oh, I did this at home before,” Dream spoke aloud after a moment of reading. “It takes a while to do. I get why you’re stuck.”
“I’m not stuck,” George immediately denied, crossing his arms defiantly. “I’m just… taking my time to read everything.”
A laugh, one more beautiful than a hundred angels singing in harmony, cut the sound of echoing basketballs and squeaky shoes on the streaky shiny floor and danced right into George’s ear and out the other. A small blush flushed over the tops of his cheeks as George turned slightly to peak out from beneath his hood. Dream’s head was thrown back as laughter shook his broad shoulders and sunlight from the gymnasium windows glinted off his perfect white teeth. The same rays of light carved out his silhouette in an array of colors directly into George’s retinas, and his breath swiftly faded from his lungs as a God-like aura surrounded the boy next to him.
“You don’t like asking for help, huh?” Dream turned to him, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. George gulped. “You know, you’re kind of funny.”
“Oh really?” the brunet tried for a weak smile back through the pounding heartbeat roaring in his ears.
“It’s easy once you grasp a couple basic things. Did you run an IRE?” Dream asked, full attention on George and George only.
George’s attention, too, was completely on Dream, though so much that he didn’t even reply.
“You know… a program to detect coding errors?”
Snapping back to the real world with a full-body jolt, George cleared his throat again. “Yes! Yes, I did do that. There’s just… a lot of shit in there.”
“Like good shit? Or bad shit?” Dream asked further, a smirk toying on his lips.
“Both. Double shit.”
Dream laughed again, and this time George had no choice but to laugh with him. Sunshine was made just for him, for infectious happiness and sweet warmth were all that this boy was made of.
“That’s a lot of shit,” Dream replied with a crystal clear chuckle that ricocheted all around inside George’s skull like a rogue bouncy ball. “You know, clearing that shit up would be easy if you didn’t have so much shit in there in the first place.’
“Stop,” George laughed, reaching over to gently push at Dream’s shoulder. He swallowed, for the muscle beneath the green hoodie was firm. “If you’re so smart, stop talking and show me how to do it already.”
“Oh?” the dirty blond raised an eyebrow teasingly. “Well, if you wanted to go somewhere more private you could’ve just said that, George.”
Immediately closing his mouth, George’s brown eyes grew to the size of saucers as his eyebrows flew into his hairline. “W-what do you mean?”
“We’re in the gym, not the computer room. We can’t code out here,” Dream looked at him through his eyelashes, and after a beat of tense silence did he bust out laughing again. “You really are funny.”
“God…” George sighed, hands going up to cover his face as he turned away towards the court again. He smiled into his moistening palms as Dream laughed away between flipping through pages in the textbook.
It was a little while later when a couple basketball players on the team called up to Dream in the stands to join them on the court. Dream had been busy sitting right next to George explaining coding concepts, scribbling down formulas, and flicking the pencil back and forth between the two. The two gradually sat closer and closer during their little study session, and at the point of all the attention being brought on the pair were they sitting so close they’d brush shoulders if one simply breathed too deeply.
“I guess I have to go,” Dream sighed dramatically, closing the notebook in his lap with the pencil sitting in the spine.
“Fine then. Leave,” George replied with faux snarky energy. “I didn’t want you here anyway.”
“Oh, you wanted me here?” Dream quickly replied with a teasing glint in his summertime green eyes, and when George’s mocha irises met his was he shoved to the side with a short laugh.
“That’s not what I said,” he quipped, gently taking the notebook from Dream and setting it off to the side. As soon as his hands were free, a black caseless iPhone was dropped into his lap.
“Put your number in my phone and text yourself. You can text me whenever you have more problems,” Dream explained, and as he stood he reached to pull off his hoodie.
If George stared a little too long as Dream revealed new strong tan skin around his basketball jersey, that was George’s business only.
“Okay idiot,” he replied instead, tearing his eyes away from the free show in front of him.
After typing in his phone number and sending a simple D in the chat, George handed the phone back up to Dream. Their fingers brushed in the transaction and George swore he saw sparks fly.
“You should come to the game tonight. Both me and Sap are playing,” Dream informed him as he tucked his phone into the pocket of his hoodie before throwing it over a broad shoulder.
“Should I?” George teased this time, and it brought back the warm smile on his companion’s already heated skin. “I thought I had coding homework to do.”
“Oh come on. I think you’ve got this one down already,” the dirty blond replied confidently, stepping down a few seat steps towards the court. “You had a really good teacher, you know.”
“Maybe I’ll come,” George sat up straighter, closing the textbook in his lap to hug it close to his chest. “If I do, you better win.”
“Oh Georgie,” Dream tried, smirking when George made a face at the sudden nickname. “I know I’ll win, because you’ll be my little cheerleader.”
The basketball player turned to leave just as an immediate tidal wave of rosy red blush seeped over George’s cheeks. With wide eyes did his gaze follow Dream down the stadium stairs (his black and green jersey had a number 99 on it below DREAM written in bold white capital letters) towards the locker room to stow away his hoodie, and when the door shut he looked on the court to see Sapnap staring up at him with an amused gaze and crossed arms.
“Oh fuck off,” George glared, a futile attempt to save himself from embarrassment at being caught.
Simply put, he was down bad for the dirty blond basketball player who knew a thing or two about computer coding. He really was a dream.