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It’s only been a week since George left, and Dream is already going irrevocably crazy.
George’s room is different—from the walls to the ceiling, to the floor, to the bed. Dream isn’t sure what he’s doing in his bed. Deep down, it feels wrong. He’s unwelcome here, as far as he knows.
It didn’t stop him. That never stops him, which is what brought him to this predicament.
He turns around and digs his nose into George’s pillow. It still smells like him, somehow. Is it a weird thing to memorize, your best friend’s smell? Dream isn’t sure, but he couldn’t help it—he had nothing else to hold on to.
George smells of coconut and freshly cut grass. It’s pleasant, and it lingers in the hallway every time he gets out of the shower—his hair ruffled, his cheeks blotchy, his eyes red. Dream’s seen it a couple of times. Unintentionally, of course, but enthralling regardless.
Right now, he misses it. The house is empty. George and Sapnap both left him again—went to North Carolina to record Banter, taking their warm presence away from the sturdy mansion in the Floridian suburbs, depriving it of light and childish fights and joyous laughter.
Dream misses them both, of course. But his heart misses George the most.
And so here he is, sulking in his best friend’s bed, his cat judging him from the floor, wondering if he’s finally lost his goddamn mind. She witnesses the pining every single day without complaints. Her patience is of steel, and Dream feels a little sorry for her. He’s just miserably in love, and his poor cat is to deal with the consequences.
Dream opens his eyes and takes in George’s space. It feels weird to be here. Deep down, he wonders what George would think if he were to find him like this, trying to drown in his presence, smelling his pillow and swimming in his blankets, picturing him by his side like a distorted ghost.
Dream thinks he would call him a freak and pack his suitcases and move out. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t move out, but the freak part is canon. Definitely. Dream’s stomach churns and his heart aches, so at the end of the day, he doesn’t care how pathetic he sounds, he needs George here. In any form.
Being in love with your best friend isn’t an easy task—especially if the best friend in question is George. George, who’s unmistakably pretty and funny like no one else. Who swallows down his true feelings, busying himself with pointless defense mechanisms, barriers that Dream can break past within a minute, like a highly trained hacker coming face to face with a weak-ass firewall.
He’s a coder, after all. Thanks to George. Jesus Christ.
George is unpredictable like an earthquake, and destructive all the same. He could obliterate Dream’s soul if given the chance. He could tear him apart piece by piece, and Dream would welcome it, because Dream welcomes anything that implies George will learn a little more about him.
He’d welcome the attention, the closeness, the intimacy. He’d let George do anything he wants with him, uncaring of how dangerous it is. Not after all these years. He’s like a book, open for George to read and navigate through the pages, to bury his nose in and take, take, take everything it will give him.
He wraps an arm around George’s pillow and brings it closer to his chest, trying his best to pretend it’s a warm, slim body, rather than a bag of feathers. He turns to his side and closes his eyes, imagining what it would really feel like, if this even comes close to it.
God, he’s embarrassed.
It’s not the first time he does this. Whenever George leaves, Dream sneaks into his room every day—even though there’s no one to hide from—and lays on his bed. Alone, for several minutes, like he’s hoping something will change if he spends enough time here. Like his best friend will materialize by his side and love him back, if he wishes it hard enough.
He always looks at the ceiling, too. He’s made it his mission to memorize every stain, every pattern, every square foot of this room. He wants to learn it well enough so that he can map it out inside his brain, and pretend he’s here when George is, only a few doors down the hall from Dream’s own bedroom, yet somehow farther away than he is now, three states up the East coast.
Dream wants to feel like he knows it, like he’s entitled to it. He wants to learn this space in all the ways he can’t learn George—top to bottom, inside and out, down to the bone. He thinks, maybe, that his heart would sting a little less every time he walks past the entrance and has to stop himself from coming in without a warning.
He sighs deeply and reaches into his back pocket to grab his phone. His mind is dangerous when let loose. He’s never sure where it might end, and so he tries to busy it himself, guide it towards safe paths before it takes control and makes him do things he’s not ready for.
He opens Twitter. This is a double-edged sword, he knows. His timeline isn’t exactly DNF-friendly right now. Or, well, it’s too DNF-friendly, given the actual state of things. Like how they’re definitely not dating, and not in love with each other, and not mutually obsessed and missing the other until it stings their bones and soul and they need to hop on a plane before dying from loneliness.
No, that’s just Dream. Only Dream.
He sighs again and decides to be self-destructive, for once. For twice. For the millionth time in his life. He scrolls, stopping to watch the clips of George from his most recent streams with the boys in Karl’s house. Of George laughing with people that aren’t him, George trying to kiss someone that isn’t him, George being called ‘darling’ by someone that isn’t him and smiling, all shy and wonderful, in that way that sends Dream into cardiac arrest.
He wishes he could be brave enough to tell George how he feels but he’s not. Honestly, he’s not sure he’ll ever be. He loves George way too much, and when he uncaps the lid that contains his real thoughts, they will come rushing out and crash against everything they can find.
Dream has long since lost the ability to control himself, to be measured and careful and to toe the line and test the waters. The joking tone has worn out, and now he fears that if he so much as opens his mouth, his heart will thaw and drip down his chin and make a mess on the floor, and George will be the one left to clean it up.
He can’t do that to George. He can’t put him in that place—not when he’s finally here, in America, within arm’s reach. Dream would rather jump off the roof than ruin their dynamic, even if that means that he’ll cry himself to sleep every single night, wishing he was there next to him to soothe his wounds with small hands and careful fingers.
Dream hitches himself higher in the bed. He must’ve stopped paying attention to his own brain, because as it turns out, he’s actually scrolling his fanart timeline. See now, this could be considered dangerous territory. It’s not harmless whatsoever, but it doesn’t have to be a problem unless Dream makes it a problem.
The issue is… Dream always makes it a problem. Every time. Every single time. He’s like a little kid in a supermarket, sneaking off to the candy aisle and bringing something with him, then nagging his mother to buy it until she caves and gives him what he wants.
Except it’s not a supermarket, it’s just Twitter. And it’s not candy, it’s romantic fanart of him and his best friend. And he doesn’t have a mother. He’s a spoiled kid who’s given a twenty and will go around liking hugs and kisses and soft words and stabbing himself in the stomach with every single one.
Then again, it’s a gray area, because he knows George is aware of the fanart. It’s not like breaking into his bedroom every time he leaves the house, or like petting his hair when he falls asleep on their couch, or like staring at him from across crowded rooms and disguising himself between the people.
No, this is public. It’s all a big joke to him, sure, but he doesn’t need to know how fast Dream’s heart beats every time he comes across a domestic depiction of them sharing breakfast and a hug and a bed. He doesn’t need the details. In Dream’s book, this is allowed.
He clicks on the #dreamfanart tag and starts scrolling. His heart floods with warmth as colorful representations of him and his friends fly around his mind and make his lips curl up slightly. It’s one of the good things about being public figures—it doesn’t matter how much he misses his friends, they’ll always be together in these little fan-made scenarios, the ones he can dive and immerse himself into whenever he wants.
He decides to put off his misery for a while (he makes this decision with his nose still buried deep in George’s pillow, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the thought that counts). His smile widens when he comes across cute drawings of the Dream Team, of Patches, or even himself, alone, clad in his Sooners hoodie and his trademark cat beanie, claiming to be tiny.
The fanart is a whole separate world to him. His friends know this. Sapnap’s teased him for it plenty of times, especially when they lived alone, but Dream simply can’t be bothered. It’s sad, but at least with George, this is all he has. This and pathetically walking into his closet, wondering how many of his hoodies would be big enough for Dream to steal.
George likes big clothes. Everyone knows that. Dream, more than anyone, knows that, and it drives him fucking insane. Then again, everything George does drives him fucking insane, but his fashion choices are undoubtedly towards the top of the list. Which he hates, because how could he possibly get away from George’s clothes?
Actually, no. Don’t answer that.
Point is, George walks around the house in his big hoodies and his big shirts and his big everything hiding that wonderful body of his, and if Dream is being honest, he doesn’t know which one he’d rather see.
More than once, George has mistaken one of Dream’s hoodies for his own. Dream isn’t sure where he gets them from, but the shrug George gives him every time he asks tells him that it’s probably none of his business. It’s not like Dream will tell him he can’t wear them, anyway, so he lets it happen.
The fanart is a very accurate depiction of this habit. It’s always George and his cute-ass sweater paws, George with fabric all the way down to his mid-thigh, George drowning in clothes at least two sizes too big for him, making him look even smaller than he actually is. And he is, to be clear. He’s tiny. Pocket-sized.
So, yeah, Dream is in love with him and George has no clue.
They’ve never talked about it, despite what Dream’s slip-ups during midnight podcasts and lonely Twitter spaces might hint towards. Dream is too scared to make the first move, and he’s positive George doesn’t really see him in that light, or he would’ve noticed already. Something would’ve happened.
Well. Things have happened. Small things. The kind you don’t know whether to address or not—unsure of their true meaning. The kind that call for a few seconds of heavy silence, brutally murdered by a fit of laughter that stings Dream’s heart like unforgiving thorns, and make him wonder how the fuck they ended up here in the first place.
Take the fanart. Dream and George talk a lot, about a wide variety of things, but they haven’t talked about the fanart. Not really. It’s one of those things that sit at the back of Dream’s head like a warning. Like a plant, more like. He can see it growing around his brain, threatening to wrinkle it like candy paper, yet he can’t help but keep on watering it every day, like clockwork.
George has sent him fanart. It became a habit. It started when he was in London, actually, bored and probably sleep-addled, with nothing better to do than fuck with his best friend’s head. Allegedly, it started as a meme. That’s what George calls it, at least—a meme. A joke. A bit. Anything but real.
Dream sometimes wonders if it’s true, because it truly was harmless, at first. It was funny representations of themselves, of Sapnap, Patches… even Skeppy would make an appearance, every once in a while. Sometimes, though—not too often—some poorly disguised romantic action would go through. Something they wouldn’t do, something they wouldn’t mention.
Dream let it happen, because what else could he do? They both knew it was there. George must’ve known it was there—the hand-holding, the kisses on the cheek, even cuddling or touching in a way that’s a bit too intimate to be considered platonic. Here the issue lies—the lines in which ‘platonic’ is contained are so unfathomably blurred that Dream feels like he’s losing his goddamn mind every time he even thinks about it.
Sometimes, he thinks he’s being hopeful, setting himself up for disappointment. Which is why he doesn’t ask—he can’t ask. Ignoring it is hurtful, yes, but it’s much, much safer. What if he told George how he feels and George said he doesn’t feel the same? What if he realized how long Dream’s been pining for him and pushing the line further and further into his lane, hopeful for something George never even thought of giving him?
Dream can imagine it already. He thinks George would laugh, at first. He thinks he would ask Dream if he’s messing with him. He would then beg Dream to be messing with him. Dream would be standing there, with his bleeding heart in his palm, handing it out to George with a hole in his chest, and George would just… look. Look and wonder when the fuck everything went downhill and how Dream managed to fuck it up so badly and—
No. He can’t. It’s too risky.
George pushes back, sometimes. It’s all part of the bit, he says. Not with words, but Dream reads it between the lines, like a knife between his teeth. He knows this because he was the one to fuck it up. Dream was the one who changed things, the first time he sent George fanart of them kissing. On the lips. Yeah, it wasn’t very platonic best friend-y of him.
In his defense, it was an accident. An inconvenience, if you will. It sounds terrible, he knows, but it really was unintentional. He wanted to kill himself right after. Not literally, but… quite. You see, it was a comic. With several slides—enough that they weren’t contained within the confines of one tweet, and Dream, well… he simply didn’t realize that.
It was fanfiction, of sorts. In the drawing, they were bickering over who could scare or startle the other more times, just for funsies. Pretty normal platonic behavior. Nothing bad. It consisted of five scenes, and here’s where the issue lies, for the artist had no choice but to split it into two tweets.
The first one included drawings of George catching Dream off-guard in a hallway, clinging to his shoulders and pulling him backwards, leaving him wide-eyed and a little breathless. It was funny. Then, there was Dream bursting into George’s room with a frying pan, hitting it repeatedly and screaming at the top of his lungs, causing George to fall off the mattress. Even funnier. Finally, George again, pouring water on his head from behind as he slept peacefully on their couch with Patches on his chest. Hilarious. Hysterical, even.
Harmless. And so Dream sent it.
Only then, when he went back to Twitter from his Messages app, did he realize his mistake. His gut-wrenching, life-threatening, horrible, and unfixable mistake.
The second part had two more scenes. The first one was almost okay. It was George sleeping in his own bed, sunlight creeping through the windows, and a very sleepy, very shirtless Dream throwing himself on top of him to wake him up. George’s cheeks were rosy, hair ruffled and contributing to the epitome of domesticity the slide was portraying. It was fine. It was acceptable, at the very least.
And then. Oh, then. The last one. Dream was making breakfast, he’d guess. It definitely looks like scrambled eggs and bacon. That’s not the main focus, though. No, it’s small, tiny, pocket-sized George drowning in Dream’s Sooners jersey, arms wrapped around the taller man’s middle, stealing a kiss from his lips and melting into his mouth like the eggs into the now neglected frying pan.
So. Dream isn’t going to sit here and pretend he didn’t find it cute as fuck, because, well, he’s in love with George. We’ve been over that. That’s not the point, though. The point is, that adorable drawing was now sitting in George’s DMs like a burning red love confession, that might as well be paired with a text that said ‘hi I’m in love with u would you please kiss me’. And that’s simply unacceptable.
Dream’s world didn’t even have enough time to crumble in on itself and crush him under the debris, because when he went back to delete the message, apologize, and announce his up-and-coming fall from the face of the Earth, George had already replied to him.
George
😊❤️
And that’s the story of how Dream had to live on nothing but two emojis for an entire week. He thought that maybe, hopefully, George didn’t notice there was a second part either. Maybe he was too lazy to scroll down, or didn’t even bother opening the post in detail. The original tweet didn’t say ‘Part 1/2’ after all, so it would make sense for George to assume that it was it. Nothing else to see here. Just besties doing bestie stuff.
Of course, that was really naïve of Dream to think, because the entire Universe is against him. All hopes of his and George’s relationship remaining unstirred fled out the window on a very fine Saturday morning, the next time George sent Dream fanart. DNF fanart, to be more specific. Which had never happened before.
Now, it wasn’t a kiss. Dream wouldn’t be here, had it been a kiss. He’d be six feet under after suffering a heart attack and banging his head against his desk. Repeatedly. He’s fine, though. He’s very normal about his very long, all-consuming infatuation with his best friend that the internet keeps calling him out on. Very normal.
No, this wasn’t a kiss, but it did wake up the butterflies in his stomach all the same, like a blaring alarm announcing a tornado in the middle of June, threatening to shake the ground Dream walks on and making him fall, fall, fall. It was like a rising tide, and then like a tsunami, the more he looked at it and kept noticing all these details that placed him farther and farther away from the unwavering bubble of platonic love George wraps them in.
George was laying on the floor, in the drawing. The Sooners poster on the wall would hint towards it being Dream’s room they were in, yet the quartz figurine on the bedside table would disagree. The exposed argument could only have one possible outcome. It was a shared room. Theirs. That was Dream’s first clue.
Now, Dream knew George wasn’t as observant. He was more shallow when it came to this. He rarely opened the image, let alone zoomed in, so it wouldn’t have surprised Dream if the little detail had gone completely unnoticed by him. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing. Oh, no. It got way worse, really quick.
On top of George, there was Dream. Sitting on his thighs, legs on either side of his hips, smirking down at him with red flowers blooming all across his face—exertion, a blush, lust. They were fully clothed, though, thank God. Dream tried really hard to convince himself that the hoodie George was wearing was his, and not another stolen piece from Dream’s own closet, but either way, there wasn’t much skin being shown. That alone is a win in his book.
Wait. It gets worse. Dream wasn’t just sitting on his best friend (in a very platonic manner, in his opinion. In his very trustworthy, very unbiased opinion). No, he was straight up pinning him down to the floor. Long fingers around wrists, small hands clenched into fists. George smiled. Dream remembers every last brush, could trace it from memory alone. George’s smile was perfect in that drawing—his beauty and his innate brightness captured wonderfully.
The red veil coating his cheeks was also perfect. It was accurate, at least, which can only mean it was perfect, because George is perfect. Dream hadn’t seen George in person yet, when George sent that fanart (seeing George in person is a completely different matter, by the way. Dream doesn’t feel ready to talk about it yet without turning into a babbling mess. And it’s been months). He didn’t have to see him, though. He’s always known, always admired it, even craved it.
George’s beauty. Distant and foreign like a star, and just as unknown.
Floating in the air of the room, next to Dream’s beanie-free head, there was a dialogue bubble. ‘Ha. I won.’ it read. Dream then thought George had misclicked or something. Not only did he send Dream DNF fanart, but one where he lost to him and ended up completely immobilized on their bedroom floor? No. Something was off. Sapnap had hacked him or something. There was no way.
And yet. And yet Dream kept looking. He’s not sure it was a good judgment call, because despite the suggestive nature of the position they were portrayed in, he still tried to convince himself it was platonic art. Somehow. Very confusing and misleading platonic art, that looked nothing like the stuff George used to send him, but still. Platonic DNF. Chaotic best friends. Just two homies, pinning each other to the floor. #NoHomo.
He was almost there, and that’s when he saw it—the final blow that sealed the unavoidable reality.
boyfriends are fighting smh @Dream__Fanart #dnffanart
There’s only so much George can ignore, only so much he can look past. The man deserves some credit. He can be shallow, but he’s not blind, and the caption very clearly said… the B word. It was established, then, that it was in fact not platonic art. George knew that. He must have. Not friends, not homies. Boyfriends. Dating. Sharing a room. Pinning each other to the floor as a result of what Dream is sure was some kind of homoerotic competition. Sure.
Dream thinks something in him broke that day—like that little thing in your brain that makes it work properly. Close to properly, in his case, given that his brain was already built differently by default. Had it not been, the fanart George sent him would’ve done the trick. It was cute, though. That was an undeniable fact, so there’s nothing wrong with pointing it out. It might’ve been the reason why George sent it in the first place. No ulterior motive, just cuteness.
By that point, Dream had put up a wall that isolated the side of his brain screaming at him to look at the tags. George isn’t mentioned, it told him. It doesn’t say @GeorgeNootFound, or #gnffanart. He was scrolling through the DNF— No. Dream refused to give that side of his brain a chance to speak. He simply could not deal with it at the time.
The line with fanart has been very blurry ever since, which is why Dream stopped shying away from baring his chest and letting his feelings run rampant whenever he logged into that account. He and George kept sending each other fanart until George got to America, and Dream was never asked for any explanations on his likes and replies. He could be himself, and it was allowed. George’s silence allowed him.
After George got home, though, there have been more… incidents, how Dream likes to call them. It’s odd, because he is a talker. With everything in his life, he likes to discuss. He’s the type of man who’ll lay everything on the table, out in the open, and encourage a long conversation regarding feelings, thoughts, opinions, and anything deemed necessary at the time. Which makes the whole situation with George all the more confusing, because George is, well… the exact fucking opposite.
Dream would like to think, however, that his share is fulfilled. If George ever felt like Dream does, he would only have to look Dream’s way to realize his feelings are pretty much reciprocated. So Dream waits, and he waits, and he waits, but nothing ever happens. Nothing big or worth acknowledging. Nothing that makes a noise when it explodes, or that causes the world to teeter to the side, messing his balance. Nothing Earth-shattering.
Until that day comes, if it ever does, he doesn’t have many options. He can only miss his best friend in silence, hug his pillow like it’s his waist, take in the lingering smell his shampoo leaves whenever he isn’t around, like luring Dream in, like begging him to stay. He can only admire the slim body drowning in big, stolen hoodies, and pray that one day, they don’t have to separate the mine from the yours, but rather share an ours. He can only wish for that future to be just around the corner, while he tries to suffocate his feelings under the softness of his best friend’s sheets.
He can only miss, and pray, and wait. He’ll let Patches judge him as he makes his best effort to leave an indentation in the shape of himself on George’s mattress. Maybe, that way, when he’s finally home, he’ll go looking for Dream to fill it.
On Saturday, Dream wants to commit a murder. He’s not sure how, though. He’ll have to figure out the logistics of getting rid of a whole ass star for his own comfort. The sun doesn’t seem all that important, anyway. They could go without it. Right now, Dream would deem his beauty sleep way more vital for the world’s wellbeing.
The beaming rays breaking through the window are still noticeable, even with his eyes closed. He sees the outline of his lids like a white line, and presses them even harder in a really poor attempt at falling back into slumber. He’s ridiculously unsuccessful, like he is with many other things in his life, more so recently. So, reluctant to let it get the best of him, he turns around so he’s not facing the window anymore.
Bam. Problem solved.
One would think, at least.
Unfortunately, he faces a much bigger issue on the other side. At first, he thinks he’s hallucinating. He retrieves his hands from where they were buried under the pillow, and rubs his eyes repeatedly, trying to make out a clearer image of what’s in front of him. Make it vanish, more like. Not like the sun, though, he doesn’t want to murder it—he’s just really, really confused.
“Morning, sleeping beauty.”
Dream legitimately jumps. He bolts awake and sits up, blinking rapidly to get used to the light. His head turns in all directions, a confused frown settling on his lips as he tries to make some sense of what just happened. He can feel his skin pulled taut over his cheeks, likely displaying red marks in the shape of the wrinkles of his pillow. Or…
George’s pillow.
Oh.
Oh, no.
“Hi, Dream,” George calls again from the side, and this time, when Dream turns to face him, he comes to the mortifying realization that he’s not hallucinating, and his best friend is pretty much real, and he’s looking at him, flashing a warm smile, daring look amused. “Why are you in my bed, Dreamie?”
For the second time in twenty-three years of life, Dream tries to come up with a plan to fall off the face of the Earth with just a few moments’ notice. Curiously enough, both were related to George. He thinks of that common phrase he often comes across on Twitter, about how if he had a nickel for each time… Whatever. It doesn’t matter. He’s half-asleep still. George is looking at him.
What did he say?
Oh, right.
“Uh…” Dream starts—gapes like a fish, more like—as his rational thinking faculties slowly make their way back to him. “I’m— What? No.” He shakes his head, and looks around again. Despite his best wishes, this is, undoubtedly, George’s bedroom. Which can only mean he fell asleep during his last visit. Last night, that is, when he and George were talking on the phone, discussing how Dream would pick him up from the— “Oh. Oh, shit, I fell asleep, I’m so sorry,” he rushes to say, unburying his long legs from the mess of sheets, dizzily turning to look at George better. “I was supposed to pick you up, right? I’m so—”
“It’s okay.” George is just smiling. He looks soft, a light blush at the top of his cheeks, cradling his sweet browns with the delicacy they demand. He looks sweet, like sugar and chocolate and cotton candy, and Dream thinks he’s like a fluffy, white cloud, and only wants to throw himself into him and bask in his softness. Which is so unfathomably beyond the matter at hand… “I wanna know why you’re in my bed, though.”
Dream thinks embarrassment is about to become one of the rarest causes of death a Floridian man has ever had to endure. He’ll be on the news. He might even be featured in the new edition of Dumb Ways To Die, if that game even exists anymore. “I— fell asleep, I guess.” That’s a nice try.
George thinks so, too. He sits on the edge of the bed and leans closer to him, lowering his voice like he’s trying to coax a secret out of a child. “That much is obvious,” he whispers, his accent curled around his words wonderfully, making it harder and harder for Dream to snap out of his state of hypnosis. He hates it when people say George’s accent is fading away. He’s obsessed with George’s accent. He’s obsessed with George. “But it doesn’t explain what you were doing here in the first place, does it?”
Dream swallows thickly, throat closed up with feeling. He tries to clear it, regaining consciousness slowly, like an hourglass being filled grain by grain. Except his brain might as well be buried in the sand now, absolutely deprived of light and with no connection to his senses. He leans back down and puts his arm over his eyes, hoping it will somehow make him invisible. “Are you mad?” he asks, shy, small.
George giggles. “‘M not mad, Dream.” He keeps saying his name. Dream isn’t sure why, but he loves it. He likes how it sounds in George’s lips, so musical, all-encompassing. He’d hear his own name on repeat for the rest of his life as long as George is the one uttering it, so softly, like a prayer. A small hand settles on Dream’s diaphragm, causing his breath to hitch in his love-filled lungs. “But I do wanna know. So… will you tell me?”
“Mm. ‘S embarrassing.” Dream thinks he would actually kill someone if George asked him in that tone. He loses all sense of himself, wanders bright paths in heaven each time it curls into his ears, like a melody. He lowers his arm slowly, and finds George’s loving eyes already on his. He feels his heart stop for a full second, and the hand on his stomach stutters, like it can feel it, too. Like George can feel it, too.
“Tell me anyway.” Without breaking the contact, George lays on his side next to Dream. His curled lips don’t fall, and his eyes keep diving into Dream’s like he’s doing a detailed read of his soul as they speak. Only then does Dream dare look closely at him. His hair is ruffled and damp, like the collar of his shirt, meaning he just got out of the shower. It’s been a while, then, since he and Sapnap got home. It’s been a while since he found his best friend in his bed. “I wanna know.”
Dream swallows again as a million questions slow dance with the grains of sand that cloud his judgment. Why didn’t you wake me up? Were you watching me? How long have you been here for? “I missed you,” he says, his brain cells way too distracted with trivialities to keep the words contained any longer. They’ve been rotting under his tongue for the past week, and it was about time they went out for a walk and took his honor with them. “It smells like you here.”
Dream didn’t think it was possible for George to shine any brighter. He beams, and suddenly the sun doesn’t seem that terrible. That’s the issue, though—there are two of them in Dream’s life. How is he supposed to deal with it? “It smells like me?” George echoes as the soft pink on his cheeks turns crimson, reminding Dream of strawberries and red roses. It’s a coincidence that those happen to be his favorite. “What do I smell like?”
“Coconut. And grass. It’s your shampoo, I think, it’s—” Dream cuts himself off, choking on the end of his sentence. George’s eyes burn holes through his skull, melting his insides and causing them to pour out, making a puddle of himself in the bed. Without a care for it, George scoots a little closer. “Sorry.”
George shakes his head, tapping Dream’s chest with the fingers that are still sprawled across his front. “Don’t apologize.” His smile is drenched in syrup, ivory teeth digging into his lower lip as his soft words tumble past the threshold of his mouth. Dream would like to steal them himself, let them swim on his own tongue, find out if they taste just as sweet as they sound. George’s hand finds his hair next, slim digits carding through his curls and pulling softly, addictive like everything else he does. “‘S cute.”
“Is it?” Dream drawls out. He looks mesmerized as he stares at George, jaw slack in awe at his effortless beauty, how precious he looks in the mornings after being on a plane and getting stood-up by his best friend at the airport. Dream’s eyes jump from one part of his face to the other, unable to choose something to focus on. How could he? His blush is so soft and delicate, like a watercolor painting. His freckles float around in it, tracing pretty constellations and ancient words and even Dream’s name, when he stares long enough. His eyes are deep enough for anyone to get lost in them, carrying twenty-six years worth of secrets and knowledge, ghosts of tears and a joyous glimmer. Dream could look at him for hours and he’d never get tired. He’d be greedy. He’d always want more, more, more.
“Have you slept here every night?” George asks then, letting his busy hand drip down the side of Dream’s face. The electricity of his touch brings Dream back to life, and it’s almost impossible for him to keep his eyes open, even with such a view before them. He becomes pliant to it, acquiescent, and a charged sigh escapes his lips without a warning, dying in the heated air that fills George’s bedroom.
Dream almost wants to lie to him, with the reaction he’s getting. Yes, he wants to say, and I’d stay even longer, if you’d let me. When he opens his eyes again and reads the illusion in George’s, he feels his heart shatter into a million pieces. He wishes he had. “No,” he admits, and his best friend’s careful fingers stutter against his temple. “But I did come every day. Kept it warm for you.”
“Oh, Dream,” he coos, then clicks his tongue teasingly. His palm is fully cupping Dream’s jaw now, and he can’t help but lean into the touch like it’s his life-source, like he needs it to keep on breathing. It’s pretty ironic, really, since getting the air going is becoming more and more difficult with each passing second, with each soft word that falls from George’s lips. “How nice of you.”
George thumbs at Dream’s cheek next. Dream feels his breath crashing against his skin, only then realizing how close he’s gotten to him. The golden speckles in George’s eyes seem even more enthralling from this distance, curled around his long lashes and glowing even when he blinks, with the delicacy of an angel.
Dream doesn’t think there’s a better word to describe George than ethereal. If he had to guess, he’d say he was born from a star, raised by the gods themselves, and sent to cross paths with him when he was just a teen, needing guidance and permanency—two things George provided without even being asked.
“George,” Dream whispers, just because. His eyelids feel heavy, and hands shake from holding back for so long. He turns to be more comfortable on his side, mirroring George’s position.
“Dream,” he echoes, even lower, and leans in closer. Dream couldn’t describe or explain the feeling that overcomes him, even if he tried. It feels like a dream, sometimes, how much he loves George. It feels so surreal he thinks he must have made it up. No one in his right mind should be able to carry love like this—so open, so all-consuming, so golden. Dream’s love for George was etched onto his heart like a tattoo, and all his memories will live forever in the ink—black, ingrained, and permanent. “You look like you want to say something.”
Dream finally finds it in himself to smile back. He doesn’t know what does the trick—if it’s George’s thumb drifting closer and closer towards his lips, George’s eyes taking a dive into his green, or the entirety of the situation they’re in, George in the same bed as him, daylight drowning the room in yellow, asking him to let go. With that caged down courage he’s been mustering for the past seven years, Dream’s hand finds George’s waist and pulls him in closer.
With the way their friendship has bloomed, it was never hard for Dream to believe he and George were somehow made for each other. Not even in a romantic way—they just were. Like two pieces of a puzzle, chasing each other like the moon chases the sun, and lets it get away just barely, every single day. Once in a while, though, they collide.
Once in a while, they eclipse.
“I missed you,” Dream says, and in George’s smile, he reads his next words. You already said that, George wants to say. Dream moves closer until their noses bump, and for a moment—for a fleeting moment—he lets the silence drown them. His heartbeat is so loud he can hear it, synced up with George’s, drumming against his jaw. “And you’re my best friend.” Dream’s hand slips under George’s shirt, skin burning under his touch like igneous rock. “And I’m really, really in love with you.”
George kisses him first.
Dream barely has any time to react before he’s melting into it, chasing the taste of the words he swam in, collecting droplets of chocolate and burning them onto his sharp tongue. George’s curious hand gets lost in blond hair again, tangling and pulling as fingers dig into his scalp, pressing and pressing and pressing until they almost reach his brain. He’s kissing George so deeply yet so sweetly, taking the time to map the inside of his mouth like he’s been doing with his room, like he plans to do with his body.
He’s kissing George, and it’s Earth-shattering. His hand crawls higher up his back, nails digging into his skin and pressing him closer, wanting him to merge into his body. His brain is an endless mantra of words he doesn’t know, like a long-lost dialect he inherited by accident. Although he’s not sure he knows any words, at the moment. The mere existence of the English language seems pointless when he has George’s name to hold onto. It’s all he ever needs.
George breaks apart with a sigh, and Dream sees him run his tongue across his lips, pursuing the imprint he made a concerted effort to leave. He’ll do everything in his power to be as addictive to George as George is to him, to always leave him wanting more, more, more. He wants George in all the craziness he finds in himself—in the greediness, in the deeply-rooted pining and the insatiable craving of contact and love that only his best friend can fulfill.
He steals a last kiss from George’s lips before bringing their foreheads together, a pair of ragged breaths tinting the air with yellow, gold. “Dream,” George mumbles once more. Soft, musical, all-encompassing. Dream loves himself a little more on days like this, when he gets to peek into George’s mind, if only for a moment, and see himself through his eyes. No matter how venomous he feels, his name on George’s lips will always feel like a healing flower.
The world stopped spinning, sometime in the last few minutes. The sand isn’t falling anymore, and the hands of every single clock have halted their movement. It felt like this, whenever George was back in London. It’s one of the reasons why time zones never really mattered. He doesn’t need any signs to know that time is going by. He can measure it perfectly if he listens close enough for the echo of George’s pounding heart.
As long as it keeps on beating, he has nothing to worry about. They can outlive every star if they put their minds to it. Until his last breath permeates the air, Dream will try and try every day to never stop learning him, until he knows him from heart—top to bottom, inside and out, and down to the bone.