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The house is quiet. Too quiet.
Patches has always enjoyed her quiet time, of course, especially after the past few months where it seems like noise follows her everywhere she goes. Noise, always accompanied by at least one pair of hands trying to keep her in place for pets or cuddles or attention and sometimes she’s happy to oblige, but sometimes she just wants some quiet.
This is too much quiet, though. This reminds her of the quiet of before , when it had just been her and her boy–Dream–talking to his screen. He used to talk to her a lot then, usually when the screen was dark. He would tell her about his people, about George and Sapnap and how much he missed them. She knew Sapnap, because he was there sometimes. He would sit with her on the couch and watch TV, dangling a toy in front of him that she pretended to be interested in because it always seemed to make him happy. Dream liked that Sapnap was there, so Patches learned to like it as well. Besides, she was still left alone, for the most part, still allowed to roam around the house that seemed to keep growing and changing (could houses do that?) mostly undisturbed.
Then someone else came, and quiet was a thing of the past.
She’d learned very quickly that the someone else was George, Dream’s boy from the screen, and George had brought with him all sorts of noise and action like Patches had never experienced in her life. She hated it. But she could never bring herself to hate George.
Whereas Sapnap would sit with her lazily on the couch, or Dream would speak softly to her in the dark of night, George would scoop her up and carry her around wherever he went: his room, his other room with the screen, the kitchen, Dream’s room, the couch. He spoke to her too, but while Dream tended to ramble, like he was speaking his thoughts out loud and she just so happened to be in the room, George spoke to her like he expected her to respond, and she always tried her best to live up to his expectations.
But George isn’t here now.
Sometimes he’ll lose track of time and Patches will wander from room to room until she finds him, rubbing against his ankles as a reminder that she’s there too, and he always pats his thighs in invitation for her to sit with him if she wants. But no matter how far she walks, no matter how many doors she paws at, George is nowhere to be found.
Dream is in his office, whenever she checks there, and he’s good company too, but he usually lets her come and go as she pleases, without much more than an acknowledgement of her presence. She used to not mind that, prefer it, even, but she’s grown so used to George’s enthusiastic greetings and eager affection that it’s not long before she’s making another lap of the house, hoping that if she calls loud enough George will emerge from his hiding place and scoop her up for cuddles.
The house is big, and her legs are small, and it’s really a lot of work running up and down all those stairs. Patches figures if there’s one place George is bound to turn up eventually, it’s his office. He’d even made a little bed in there for her, underneath his desk right next to the warm box that she’s not supposed to touch. Right now, the box isn’t warm. She needs George to come back and make it warm again.
With a sigh, she closes her eyes and settles into her little space there to wait. Surely by the time she takes a nap he’ll come looking for her again.
It’s not George, but Dream who ends up waking her. He’s never been a quiet walker, and she can recognize his clomping footsteps before he’s even in the room. She peeks an eye open in time to be blinded by a flash of light and she shares her disapproval with a hiss in his direction.
“Sorry Patchy,” Dream coos, kneeling down beside her and bringing a hand up to scratch her head. “You just look so cute under there, I needed to show George.”
That gets her attention. Surely this means Dream knows where George is and can tell him to come back, that he needs to turn on the warm box under his desk and sneak her scraps of his lunch and teach her about the things he’s doing on his screen.
She tries asking, but Dream just scoops her up himself.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I don’t think I’ve fed you yet today.” He hasn’t now that Patches thinks about it, but that is far from her most pressing concern at the moment. If they find George, they can all eat together. Surely that makes more sense. But Dream doesn’t seem to understand that and, well, once she has a bowl of her favorite salmon in front of her, everything else feels a little less important.
–
It’s been a long time now, and George is still missing. So is Sapnap, now that she thinks about it, but there used to be a time where she could go days without seeing Sapnap anyways, so she doesn’t think too much of it. George is always there. And now he isn’t. Patches doesn’t like that.
Dream doesn’t seem nearly as concerned as she is, as he goes about his days the same way as he usually would, if a bit more quiet than normal without the other humans around to talk to. She sits with him in his office sometimes, and it's a bit boring without George explaining his every action as he works, but Patches always loves spending time with her human–her first human.
Dream has always been so sweet to her, feeding her and giving her deceptively gentle pets with his very big hands and sleeping with her when the outside is loud and scary. He’s still the one she would go to in an emergency, Dream has proven to her that he can fix any problem.
She wonders why he can’t fix this one.
Patches doesn’t know how many sleeps it’s been since she last saw George, last heard his voice, last felt his hands–much smaller than Dream’s, she always notes–scratch the back of her neck in the way he knows she likes.
When Dream starts talking, she recognizes the tone as one that always leads to the most boring listening sessions. She can never hear the other side of the conversation, and the words never sound interesting, and Dream never sounds nearly as happy as he used to when it was George on the other side of the call. So instead of sticking around, she pads down the hall to her favorite place for a nap.
Even without the warm box next to her, her spot under George’s desk is cozy and familiar and reminds her of late nights in here with her best friend. She’s found herself napping in here often, whenever Dream is too busy or too boring to hang out with. She’s given up hope that George is going to magically appear, but sitting in this room she can pretend that George is here, that he just went to the bathroom and will be right back and she’s going to hop onto his lap and walk over his keyboard and he’s going to laugh and scold her but he’d never, never make her leave.
Patches is woken from her nap, again, by the heavy sound of Dream’s footsteps thudding towards her. He’s speaking softly to someone, but she can’t quite make out the words just yet. She perks up her ears as he approaches, straining to hear a second voice, hoping that her wish for George’s return had finally come true.
“Every time I can’t find her she’s in here,” Dream is saying when he pokes his head in the door. He’s alone, from what Patches can tell, and she makes no attempt to hide her disappointment as she sinks back into the soft blanket George had lovingly arranged for her.
“Of course she is. I’m her favorite. She misses me.”
That voice. Patches knows that voice.
George! she calls, perking up once more. She still can’t see him, but the voice gets louder as Dream approaches and she recognizes the sound coming from the device in his hand.
“She does miss you, I think,” Dream agrees. He sits on the ground and Patches wastes no time in approaching, in making sure that George knows she’s there, that she does miss him, and maybe she can convince him to come back.
“Is that her?” phone-George gasps when she hops onto Dream’s lap. “Hi Patchington!”
George! Come back! I miss you!
“Do you miss me Patches? Is that why you like my office?”
Of course I miss you, I just said that! George is silly sometimes like that, where he’ll just repeat things she’s already said. It’s endearing, though; Patches thinks of it as just another funny thing George does.
“Meow! Mrow mow!” That’s another silly George thing, sometimes he just makes noises at her, as if she’s supposed to respond. Usually she just laughs at him, but he never seems to mind.
“How are you enjoying–” Dream begins, but George cuts him off quickly.
“Excuse me, Dream, but Patches and I are having an important conversation here,” he scolds. “Aren’t we, Patchy?”
You’re just being silly, she corrects, because she really doesn’t know what could be so important about the sounds George is making, but she would never tell him to stop. She loves all of the silly George things. He’s the silliest human she knows. But I miss you, and that’s important.
“See, Dream? Now move the camera, I want to see her.”
“You’re such an idiot,” Dream laughs, but he adjusts the phone in his hand so that Patches can see the moving picture on the screen that she immediately recognizes.
George!
“Do you think she even recognizes me?”
Of course I do, silly! You’re George!
“Hmmm, I dunno,” Dream replies, like she hadn’t said anything. “You’re all…tan, and freckly. You might look too different to her.”
Now Dream’s the one being silly, if he really thinks George looks that different. He’s on a screen of course, so he looks small. Smaller than Patches, even, like this, though she knows he hasn’t actually been shrunk down. She’s seen people on this screen before, and they’re always normal-sized again next time she sees them off the screen, so it must just be an illusion or something that makes him look small.
Other than that, he’s just George. Maybe a bit brighter, more relaxed and glowing, like whatever he’s been doing while he’s been gone has made him happy. Patches likes that, she likes when George is happy, as long as he comes back home to be happy with her.
“Freckly, right,” George scoffs. “I meant if she knows what FaceTime is, idiot. Like, would she even know I’m talking to her?”
Of course I know! I would know you anywhere!
“She knows your voice,” Dream points out, the most helpful thing he’s said in this entire conversation, Patches thinks. “She knew your voice even before she met you. Probably why she loved you so quickly.”
“Is that true, Patches? Do you really know my voice?”
Yes! Of course I do!
“See? She’s responding to you!”
“I miss you Patches! I’ll be home soon!” George promises, and Patches thinks it's the best news she’s ever heard. George isn’t gone for good, he’ll come back and turn on the warm box for her and feed her from his plate and nap with her on the couch and teach her all about his work on the screen and give her all the cuddles she could ever want and more.
“Home,” Dream smiles, absentmindedly running a hand through Patches' fur. “I like when you call it home.”
“Well it is my home now, isn’t it? I always get to come home to you.”
And me too! Patches adds, and both humans laugh at her.
“My little family,” George smiles, the pink on his cheeks making him look even happier than before. Patches likes to think she contributed to that.
“I love you,” Dream murmurs, and Patches knows he’s talking to George, but he presses a kiss to the top of her head anyways.
“Simp,” George replies, and Patches has learned that that must be his way of saying I love you back. “I’ll see you both soon, okay?”
Soon. Patches can wait for soon, she thinks. She and Dream can wait together, like they always do. And then George will be back, and everything will be perfect again.