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“Can I ask you a question?”
“No,” George deadpans. He’s got his legs resting above a chair and he’s tired from streaming and working all day, and the last thing he wants to do is to entertain a question that Dream is asking, because it’ll then turn into an hour long discussion and George is drained.
“Fine,” Dream exhales dramatically in his ear. Silence follows, although George knows his friend better than anyone, and he knows that he won’t give up that easily.
True enough, Dream asks again after a few minutes: “Come on, George. Just one question,” he says softly. “Please?”
“Ugh, fine,” George scoffs, unable to resist his friend. It’s not like he has anything else to do, anyways. “What’s your stupid question?”
George prepares himself for something stupid, like if he should reply to someone he shouldn’t reply to or something overly dramatic like should he say something about whatever drama’s surrounding them currently
But nothing like the question that Dream asks him, which is: “Are you, like, dating anyone?”
The inquiry came out of nowhere, at least to George. They haven’t really talked about dating or relationships in a long time—so long that he can’t even remember the last time they did, so this sudden interest is a surprise to George.
“Um,” he hesitates, trying to keep his shock under wraps. It’s a bit awkward, trying to seriously consider answering honestly, so he decides to joke around a bit.
“Yeah, I have,” George says.
George can hear a gasp of surprise from Dream’s end. “What? Really? Who?” Dream asks in rapid sequence, the disbelief almost dripping from his voice.
“Your mum, actually,” he retorts. “You’re gonna be my stepson, congrats, now you can call me Daddy.”
Dream scoffs and says, “Fuck off.” He laughs and pauses, and then: “No, but seriously—no one?”
George starts to pick on the dry skin around his nails, and he says, “I spend all my dumb time with you. If I were dating someone I feel like you’d know, idiot.”
George immediately gnaws on his lower lip as soon as he finishes his sentence. Because it’s true—there’s literally no one. It’s not as if he’s trying, but he also thinks that dating when a few thousand people ship you and your online best friend together would complicate a few things down the line.
“So, like, are you looking or…?” Dream inquires. His voice, George notices, goes up in pitch, and his breath is loud and fast in his ear. “Not that I’d mind or anything, but like—I don’t know,” he exhales, “are you at least getting laid or something?”
“What?” George answers, scandalized and obviously defensive. “Am I—,” he can only scoff, unable to even think of an answer to Dream’s question.
“Oh, come on, George,” Dream teases. “Don’t tell me you haven’t at least thought about dating, especially now that you live alone.”
“Why, are you getting…?” George asks. He clears his throat to shake off the slight wobble of nerves in his voice.
Dream chuckles. “Um…no, that’d be stupid. I’m stuck inside my house, so dating is out of the realm of possibilities here.”
The thought of Dream dating other people makes him shudder, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he says, “Why’d you ask, then? Is Sapnap?” George says, before Dream cuts him off.
“No, Nick is— I don’t know what he does when he leaves the house. But, like. I dunno, I feel like maybe you’ve been exploring and stuff or maybe you’d like to and you’re just choosing to spend your time with me or something.”
“Oh my god, no?” George laughs. “What are you even saying?”
Dream’s voice starts to grow louder now, and he says, “I don’t know. I figured, like, maybe you’d want to see people and like, with the shipping stuff…”
“What?” George asks. “No, I don’t really see myself dating someone anytime soon.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Dream exhales loudly—almost too loud, as if a weight was lifted off his chest and got transferred to George’s, because now it’s him who’s having a bit of trouble breathing.
“Okay, good. That’s—not even, like...” Dream trails.
The slight fuzziness of the call slowly makes its way inside George’s veins, his stomach fluttering. “Not even what?”
Dream coughs again. “I don’t know, like. Have you ever thought about us? Maybe? Like, has it crossed your mind at least once?”
The smile on George’s face drops slowly. “What—like, us, dating? Together?”
“Yeah,” Dream exhales. “Like—like DNF. Whether that’s something you’ve thought of before.”
George does his best to calm his heart before answering: “I don’t know. Have you?” he asks back.
“I—uh, well,” Dream stalls, and George withers. “Yeah, I have, honestly.”
And as if George is speeding down a hill, his stomach flops weirdly at Dream’s answer.
He chuckles softly, almost as if he’s brushing it off. “Really? When?” George asks. He involuntarily grips on his hair as he feels his cheeks heat up with all the blood rushing to his head.
“Yesterday? A few months ago? It wasn’t just—I’ve thought about it more than once,” Dream confesses.
“And?” George prods. He doesn’t have a penchant for honesty as much, and yet he finds himself seeking it out like a moth to a flame.
“And, I dunno. That’s why I’m asking you. If you’ve ever…have you?” Dream asks.
There is a lump in George’s throat, and he swallows to keep it in while saying, “Um, maybe. Yes, I guess?” he says.
“You guess?”
“No, god. This is weird. But, like…more than once as well, maybe,” he breathes. “Like when they rejected my visa, I—maybe I…dabbled, or whatever,” his voice gives away a slight smile that’s forming on his lips.
“Like—like marriage?” Dream quips. “I mean, we’ve talked about it before,” he says while lightly laughing.
They have. A month ago, they have, the thought relatively fresh in his mind. The embassy email had left him immobile for a few days and it made him seriously consider the option of marriage with his best friend.
George rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but as a meme, you know? Like, we’ve obviously got a certain…”
“Connection?” Chemistry? History?
“Yeah,” he agrees. “And I just thought that maybe my visa would be, I don’t know, expedited or something.”
“Expedited?” Dream chuckles loosely. “What, like they’d start googling our names and they’d see our fanarts and would be like, ‘oh, hey, look. People draw them sucking tongue, they must be dating for real,’ like,” his laughter turns to a full blown wheeze now. “Yeah, maybe. I can see it. But…” Dream trails.
The uncertainty in Dream’s tone digs a shallow pit in George’s gut. “But what?”
Dream’s nervous mannerisms are evidently showing—a thing George has grown fond of over the years—from quiet, rapid tapping of his desk to his excessive throat clearing. “Have you ever thought about whether—like, of us, but not as a meme?”
George awkwardly chuckles, like how he always does when deflecting questions like this. He feels the need to provide some relief to the tension, a brief interlude in an otherwise stuffy environment.
“No, I hate you actually,” he jokes.
Dream huffs. “No, you don’t.”
“No, I really do,” he says, but he takes it back. “Fine, whatever, I don’t hate you.”
“Just answer the question, George, I won’t get, like, offended or whatever.”
“What was the question again?” George stalls.
Dream exhales exasperatedly. “You know, George, stop being annoying,” Dream says, his patience wearing thin.
George laughs, knowing he’s pushed Dream’s buttons far enough to get him pissed. It’s his favorite thing to do—if only to deflect any awkwardness that’s grown in the span of a few minutes.
“I mean,” George starts, “yeah, I have. Not as a meme.”
“Really?”
George feels stupid, nodding even if Dream isn’t there to see him, but he nods anyway. “Yeah, once or twice. Once when my mum asked me and maybe another time when… you know.”
“I know,” Dream says, knowing exactly what George is alluding to, the need to say anything erased. “Huh, that’s—it’s interesting.”
George scoffs. “Interesting? Really? Why is it interesting?”
“I don’t know, I mean, would you like—be open to, like, maybe…?” Dream asks, his voice growing quiet with each word.
“I have,” he answers. “I mean, we already know each other and like, I’m gonna be there soon, so that would be. I don’t know, ideal or something. But…”
Dream’s breath hitches. “But?”
George is left silent after that. He thinks, are they really talking about this? Now? When they’re a thousand miles apart, sleepless and probably lonely and horny and alone?
“Honestly?” George starts, voice lacking any semblance of confidence. “I think we’re both not at the place to be—like,’ he licks his lips, “Maybe we should table this discussion until we’re at, like, at a more appropriate venue.”
Dream coughs, “Appropriate venue?”
“Yeah,” George says. “Maybe, like, once I get there and we’ve had a few months to settle down and get used to being together. Physically. In Florida, I mean, not like—yeah.”
Dream hums. It’s rare that George renders Dream speechless with his words, and sometimes it’s frightening, how Dream—always talking, always having an opinion—suddenly goes silent. Like it’s a bad omen.
George talks again. “Dream?”
A beat, then: “Okay,” Dream finally says. “Sure, maybe in like, a few months. A year, if we’re unlucky.”
“It wouldn’t be a year,” George confidently says. “Maybe like, on your birthday. I might be there already,” he adds, hopeful. “And then maybe we can talk about whether…” he trails.
The familiar warmth of Dream’s laugh fills his ears, and it’s like he can breathe freely again, almost as if he’s been holding his breath the entire time Dream was quiet.
“Seven months, then,” Dream says. “Can’t wait.”
George stretches his limbs and cracks his knuckles, feeling a lot more relaxed now that they’ve moved on from the topic. Somehow, it made him more exhausted than streaming a few hours ago.
“So…uh,” Dream says after a while. “It started raining,” he casually says.
George giggles. “Really? We’re gonna talk about the weather?”
“Yeah, why not?” Dream says. “I mean, what else do you wanna talk about?”
“No, no. The weather is good. It’s drizzling here,” George tells Dream. “A bit chilly but I can put a hoodie on.”
He spots his smile hoodie; the one he bought that’s too big on him. Dream’s hoodie, he called it once. George grabs it and hastily puts it on. “There, I’m wearing a hoodie.”
He smiles: the big kind, the one where his cheeks hurt, where he bites a tiny bit of his tongue in between his teeth. He’s happy.
And then the familiar sound of someone joining the call plays.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?”
The two of them just laugh. “Nothing,” Dream tells Sapnap. “Just talking about the weather and stuff.”