the gold room

“I forgot you were there,” he admits, rubbing his burning eyes. He doesn’t even know how long he’d been staring at his monitor, or how long it’s been since he last blinked. “How long have you been there?”

George laughs in a muted sort of way, like he’s trying not to be too loud. “Couple hours. You should sleep.”

“What time is it?” Dream yawns, eyes flickering down to the corner of his monitor. July 20, 3:26am. “Oh.”

George laughs again, soft and close to his mic. “Sapnap left, like, an hour ago. Did you even notice?”

“Not really.” He reaches sideways for his water bottle. “Why are you still here? Isn’t it almost nine in the morning?”

Something moves on George’s end, scraping across his desk. “I’m not tired.”

“Really?” Dream asks skeptically. “You can go sleep, you know.”

“I know,” George says simply, and then nothing else.

“I’m going to keep working,” Dream tells him. “I want to get this out by tomorrow. Today, technically.”

“I know,” George says again.

Dream shrugs. “Okay.”

George scoffs. “Okay,” he repeats, deepening his voice to mimic Dream’s. “Okay.”

Dream rolls his eyes, skimming over the footage he has left to edit. “Okay.”

George’s chair creaks slightly. Dream can hear him shifting into what he assumes to be a more comfortable position. He yawns into the mic.

“Go to sleep,” Dream tells him offhandedly.

“Mm.” A pen clicks in the background. “No.”

Dream sighs. “Okay, well. Be quiet then, I need to focus.”

George doesn’t reply, and Dream goes back to concentrating on the video. Occasionally, he’ll hear a quiet huff of air from the other end, or the click of George’s nail against his phone screen. It doesn’t bother him; he likes the company. It feels like he’s being held accountable to finish.

4:16 am.

4:57 am.

5:23 am.

“Dream?”

Dream pauses. “Yeah?”

“Go to sleep.”

“No.”

George sighs. “Okay.”

5:46 am.

“Drink water.” George’s voice cuts through the quiet. “I haven’t heard you drink anything since, like, three hours ago.”

Dream obliges.

6:27 am.

George muted almost half-an-hour ago. Dream’s pretty sure he’s asleep by now.

6:59am.

He finishes and saves the file under the name 3 hunters FR and begins to rewatch it. The noises all blur together, all the colors sliding into meaningless shapes scattered across his stream. No matter how hard he tries to concentrate, he can’t make out more than a sentence that’s being said.

Sometime, around seven-thirty-in-the-morning, he lays his head down on the hard wooden desk and falls asleep.

–

Dream wakes up to the feeling of a keyboard against his cheek.

The room is hot, stuffy with Florida humidity, and dark in the blurry corners of his tired vision. He’s sure he’s strained his eyes by spending the night hunched in front of his P.C. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep but by the soreness in his lower back he imagines it’s been quite a while.

He blinks the thick feeling of exhaustion from the corners of his eyes and raises his head. Gingerly, he touches the indents of keys on his cheeks, little square pockmarks marring the otherwise smooth skin. Or – it should be smooth.

There’s a rough layer of facial hair over his cheek, long enough to be a few days worth of growth. He frowns, recalling shaving the day before.

Slowly, he sits up, wincing at the crick in his neck. His back pops when he rolls his shoulders back. The motion freezes midway through as he looks around the room, at unfamiliar dark walls and a rumpled bed in the corner on a frame he doesn’t recognize.

This isn’t his house.

It’s like his heart stops dead in his chest, cold washing over him in a tidal wave of horrified realization.

This isn’t his house.

He’s standing before he even realizes what’s going on. He’s standing, blinking through a headrush as he staggers backwards away from the computer until his back collides with the far wall, head smacking against something hard and plastic. He whirls around, hands raised to cover his face.

It’s his name. Dream.

Dream, surrounded by a red YouTube icon in glowing L.E.D plastic. It’s hung on the dark grey wall, beside a Guinness World Record and a red football flag. He doesn’t need to touch it to realize the room is entirely soundproofed, from floor to ceiling. It looks like some sort of streaming room, like the type he’s talked about wanting for months now. The thought causes his stomach to drop, and he rushes over to the computer, wiggling the mouse desperately until the screen lights up.

The camera isn’t on. The webcam is covered by a thick strip of duct tape. There’s no indication that he’s somehow live, somehow being filmed or streamed without his knowledge. If there are cameras hung around the room, he doesn’t see them.

His heart feels like it’s racing out of his chest, itching against his ribs in feverent desperation to escape. The corners of the room are too dark, the soundproofing good enough that he thinks he would be able to scream without much noise penetrating.

This has to be a dream.

He pinches himself. He pinches himself harder. It leaves a pink mark on his arm, bright against the pale skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, wrinkling up his whole face in concentration, and pinches himself one more time. When he opens them, nothing has changed. He’s still in the dark room, and his name is still up on the wall. And this still isn’t his house.

This has to be a dream.

When he was a kid, he used to have such realistic nightmares that he never wanted to sleep again. He cried to his mother about it once, asking her how to make it stop, and she’d told him the one thing your brain can’t get right is your fingers. You always have too many or not enough. That’s when you’ll know it’s not real, and nothing can hurt you.

He’d learned that once you recognize that glitch in the system, it was something you could hold on to, something grounding that helps you realize this is all in my head and if it’s all in your head, then you can control it. Everything you can fabricate can be controlled. Every narrative can shift.

He counts;

One–

It feels like he’s breathing in smoke, like he’s choking on the darkness leaking out of the walls. He reaches for his phone, where it should be in his pocket, but –

Two–

But these aren’t his clothes either.

Three–

So this has to be a dream.

Four–

Right?

He’d fallen asleep in shorts and a hoodie. He knows that. Now, he’s in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and his phone is nowhere to be found.

Five–

“Dream?”

Somebody is calling his name outside the room. He rushes to the door, hands shaking as he turns the lock. He doesn’t know what’s out there. He doesn’t know how it knows his name. This has to be a nightmare, but it feels so real.

Six–

“Dream?” The doorknob rattles. The voice sounds almost familiar. Almost . “Why’s the door locked? Are you awake?”

Dream claps a hand over his mouth to muffle his breathing even though he knows the soundproofing is enough that whoever or whatever is out there wouldn’t be able to hear it. Slowly, he backs away. His body feels weird, like it’s made of slowly melting ice, unstable and crumbling. His back meets the wall and he tries to sink into it. He tries to imagine the sound proofing warping around his body, swallowing him with teeth bared, taking him back to reality, but nothing happens and the wall stays a wall.

“Are you okay?” comes the disembodied voice. It drips with quiet concern in a way so uncannily familiar that Dream feels the hairs on his arms stick up. “Dream?”

Seven–

He squeezes his eyes shut and begs the voice to go away.

For a moment, it seems like it works,

There’s a moment of silence, then he hears footsteps heading away, back down the hallway in the opposite direction of the room. Dream opens his eyes and wraps his arms around his knees like he’s trying to hold his body together, like all his limbs are about to fall off.

Eight–

His heart feels like it’s about to explode, but the voice seems like it’s gone. It seems like he’s alone again, at least for the time being.

And then he hears footsteps opposite him, where a door he hadn’t noticed –that he’s half certain had just spawned in– is. The handle jiggles, and then clicks as it unlocks.

Nine–

He curls into himself, digging his nails into his bicep until he feels something wet leak out around them.

Ten.

“Dream?”

The world stops.

George is staring at him, only it’s not George. It’s something wearing his skin, but the framework that it’s stretched over is all wrong. He looks human. He looks fine , but it’s like he’s drawn from memory. His hair is too long, his body broader than Dream could ever make out over a camera. He’s tanner than he should be, rosier too. He looks ruffled, as if having just rolled out of bed, as if he’s entirely at home wherever this place is. At his side, dangling carelessly between two fingers is one of the shiny glass water bottles Dream remembers placing an order for last week. In the other, is a little bronze key.

“What’s going on?” Not George rubs a hand over his eyes. He looks confused. “Were you sleepwalking or something?”

“What?”

Not George blinks, a little crease appearing in the smooth skin between his brows. “Huh?”

“Is this a fucking joke?” Dream whips his head around, staring into each high corner of the room, as if he’d missed some sort of camera on his first sweep on the face. He covers his face instinctively, pressing his palms to his cheeks like a child and peering out between his fingers. “Are you – am I being filmed? Is this for a video? Why are you here?”

Not George stares at him, mouth half open.

His heart is pounding against his ribs so hard he’s certain it’ll snap them. He’s certain his chest is going to collapse into itself if he doesn’t pull himself together soon. He’s going to have a heart attack, or a panic attack, or both.

Wake up, he begs. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

“You aren’t being filmed,” Not George says, confused. He looks worried. “Nobody is recording you. What do you mean why am I here? Are you okay?”

Dream presses his face into his knees and tries to breathe.

This can’t be real.

“Dream –” he hears Not George set the water bottle on the desk. The glass clicks against the edge of the keyboard. Dream wonders how easily it would break, how sharp the pieces would be if he needed to defend himself from this creature wearing the skin of his friend.

This can’t be real.

“Are you okay?” Not George lowers himself to the floor, kneeling down on the carpet. He reaches out. Dream presses himself further against the wall and prays that the ground will open up and swallow him. He digs his nails into the soft pads of his hands and begs his body to wake up. Slowly, George retracts his hand, frowning. He sits back, crossing his legs in front of himself.

“What the fuck?” Dream whispers. “What the fuck?”

“What happened?” Not George asks carefully. Dream stares at his mouth, searching for some sort of disconnect between the shape and the words, a little but of unreality to latch onto. It feels too real. “Oh my God. Are you bleeding?” He makes to grab at his arm. Dream lurches into the farthest point of the corner, where the narrow walls push uncomfortably against his shoulder blades and he’s half hidden by the corner of his desk.

Trapped.

“I’m fine,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know who or what he’s trying to convince. “I’m fine, I just need to wake up. I was just trying to wake up.”

Wake up.

“What?” He can hear the tremor in Not George’s voice now. “Dream, you’re scaring me. What’s going on? If this is a – a bit, it’s not fucking funny.”

Dream’s heart is beating so hard that he’s sure it’ll bruise and break against his bones. He touches his own neck, seeking out the hammering pulse and fixating on it. He tries to steady it. He tries to breathe, but Not George is still right there. He’s so close to him, and he looks so worried.

Dream presses his thumb into his thigh. One. He does the same with his pointer finger. Two. Middle. Three.

“Tell me what’s going on or I’m calling an ambulance,” Not George announces, breaking his concentration. “I’m serious, Dream.”

“I’m fine, ” Dream snaps. “I’m not fucking crazy. I’m fine!” He wants to hammer the words into his skull, make him realize that this is all a dream, that he’s part of it. He needs whatever this figment of his imagination is to understand that he isn’t the crazy one. “I need to wake up. Where the fuck am I?”

There’s a little flash of something over Not George’s face. It darkens it, like a shadow cast over familiar features just slightly distorted. He looks a little bit brighter, a little more colorful as if somebody had adjusted the saturation on his camera to make his cheeks a little pinker and his eyes a little brighter. His hair is longer and fluffier than Dream’s ever seen it, but he’s still so horribly, deceptively George.

“You aren’t asleep,” Not George says slowly. His shoulders are tense. “What do you think you’re dreaming about?” He reaches forward. Dream turns away, raising a hand over his face to protect.

“I’m taking your temperature,” Not George murmurs. His voice shakes a little. “That’s all. I’m just taking your temperature. Look at me, Dreamie.”

Dreamie.

“Dreamie?” he repeats, taken aback.

He hears George move back, his course of action apparently abandoned. “Yeah?”

“What the hell?” He laughs quietly at the sheer ridiculousness of whatever his mind has conjured up. Dreamie. “Oh my God, I need to get home.”

“What–”

“This is so weird.” He laughs again, dropping his head into his hands. The panic gives way to hysteria, cracked ice over freezing water beneath. “Oh my God. Oh my God , I need to wake up.”

It’s just a dream. He’s starting to not believe it.

“Do you know where you are?” Not George asks after a moment. His brow furrows. “Do you know who I am?”

Dream looks around at the unfamiliar space. “You’re George. I don’t know where this – ” he gestures around “ – is.”

“I am George,” Not George confirms. He sounds relieved. “Do you know who you are?”

“Dream,” Dream tells him. “Clay. Where am I?”

“Dream,” Not George confirms, exhaling. “Clay. You’re at the house. Do you know our address?”

Dream tells him. He watches his face screw up with a mix of confusion and concern. “That’s right,” Dream says. Anxiety rises in his throat. He wants to scream it all out. “Isn’t it? It’s right.”

Not George stares at him. “No, what? Are you – are you on something?”

“What?” Dream laughs with the shock of it. “ On something? I’ve never even been drunk!”

“What?” Not George looks half out of his mind. His hair is a mess from where he’s been running his hands through it. His lower lip is chewed raw. Dream can swear he sees blood on it.

“We need to get help,” George announces. The anxiety oozes from his voice and drips on the carpet. It makes the whole room go a little bit darker. “Maybe it’s just stress. Or – something. I’m going to call your mum and let her know what’s going on.”

“I should never have given you my mom’s number,” Dream says, leaning back against the wall. He presses his nails into his arm again. This is in his head. Nothing that Not George does is real. It’s fine. It’s fine.

But what if it isn’t? some deceptive part of his mind wonders. What if it isn’t all in your head?

Not George looks up at him, phone already out of his pocket. The blue light shines up against his face. It all looks so real. “It’s not even the same number , Dream. She had to change it, like, a million times.”

“Why?”

Not George stares at him, thumb raised above the keypad, and mouth half open. “Okay. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but we need to go to hospital.”

“Why do you sound so different?” Dream asks, receding panic giving way to the ability to observe how relaxed his accent seems. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. I can’t. ”

Not George sighs exasperatedly. For a moment, Dream can almost believe it’s really him. “Ask questions later. Why can’t you?”

“They’re, like, full . And –” Dream gestures to his face. Not George’s eyes widen.

“Dream,” he says slowly. “What year is it?”

“Twenty-twenty.”

A beat.

Not George sits back. He sets his phone down. For a moment, he seems like he doesn’t even breathe. He just watches Dream, face screwed up in slowly emerging realization. Dream stares back at him, searching for something that he can cling onto – a glitch in his features to prove to himself this really is a dream.

He’s losing faith.

“How old are you?” Not George asks carefully.

“Twenty,” Dream tells him, suddenly horribly unsure of everything about himself. He doesn’t know anything anymore. “I’m twenty.”

Not George’s hand creeps to the side, reaching out towards his phone. Dream lunges forward and grabs it before he can. He flips it over, clicking it on.

July 20.

The date is right.

Thursday.

Dream frowns. That’s wrong. It’s meant to be Monday. He’s certain that it’s Monday.

“What year is it?” he asks abruptly, head shooting up to look at Not George. “What year is it?”

Not George is locked in on him, eyes narrowed. “Twenty twenty-three?”

The phone screen goes black. Dream lets his hand fall to rest on top of his thigh. He stares at the carpet.

Twenty twenty-three.

“Dream?”

It feels like his mind is going a million miles a moment, like white water rapids slamming against rocks and shoreline, chasing itself in circles to try and make sense of it all. These thoughts are going too fast for him to try and make sense of any of them. The phone is warm in his hand. Not George is still watching him. He’s still uncanny.

“Dream,” Not George says again, more carefully this time. “Can I have that back?”

Silently, he hands him the phone. Where their fingers brush, Not George’s skin feels terribly real, terribly warm. But it can’t be.

“Listen,” he says, voice firm. “I think we need to go to hospital. You’re scaring me.”

You aren’t real, Dream wants to tell him. You’re not real. You’re just in my mind.

Slowly, he feels himself shake his head. The movement feels detached and foreign. “I just need to wake up.” His voice comes out smaller than he’d intended. “All I need to do is wake up.”

“Maybe a doctor could help with that?” He’s talking to him the same way somebody would talk to a frightened child. “A doctor could wake you up.”

“I’m not crazy,” Dream whispers. Not George hasn’t said it, but he can feel the implication strung somewhere between the way he watches him and the softness with which he speaks. He rips his gaze away from the carpet threads, forcing himself to meet his eyes. They’re so much darker in person. “I’m not.”

Not George shakes his head, looking away. “I don’t think you are,” he tells him, and it sounds honest. “But we should be safe. It would be worth it to go.”

“My face –” Dream starts to protest.

“Don’t worry about your face. Or the pandemic. It’s all over now.” His voice is unbearable. It’s honey, dripping golden all around him. Dream clings onto it, seeking some vantage point from which he can see everything about this that can’t possibly be real. The George from his time would never speak to him like that.

“Over?”

“Over,” George confirms. “In a good way.”

“Are we in Florida?” Dream asks. “We are, right?”

“Yeah,” Not George answers. “We’re in Florida.”

“So why are you here?”

A beat.

“I moved.” His eyes are still fixed on Dream, as if studying him. He feels torn open.

“When?”

A shrug. “Nine months ago.”

“And it’s twenty twenty-three,” Dream says.

Not George nods. “Yeah. And you – you’re from twenty-twenty. You’re twenty years old.” .

“Yeah,” Dream says. He runs his thumbnail against the side of his pointer finger. One and two. “I’m not crazy. I’m not – delusional . I know you probably – you probably think I am but it’s not – it’s – I can’t explain it but I’m not. I’m not. If I’m not dreaming then I can’t explain what happened but I’m not crazy.”

To his surprise, Not George just exhales heavily and looks out towards the door from which he’d emerged. It leads through a large bathroom. “Okay,” he says simply. “Tell me what happened?”

There’s a ring on his left hand, to the left of his pointer finger. He doesn’t think anything of it. Three and four.

“I was editing,” Dream tells him. “It was the – the Manhunt. Three hunters finale rematch. I wanted to get it out the next day – the sixth – and I fell asleep at my desk and I woke up here. It’s exactly three years in the future.”

Not George glances down at his phone, typing something in. Dream leans forward.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

There’s a moment of silence, and then Not George shakes his head disbelievingly. “The date is right,” he says slowly, turning his phone to show Dream the description of a video. “You uploaded the Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters finale rematch video exactly three years ago today. July 20, 2020. Fuck , Dream.”

“I told you.” He’s getting agitated. The room feels too hot and too small and Not George is so uncanny. Something in his eyes is scary, unreal in ways that feel natural as the air Dream breathes. He can’t describe it; he just wants to run from it. Something about the way he watches him makes him feel hunted.

“I know, I know.” Not George’s voice softens. He exhales. “Okay.”

“Do you believe me?” Dream asks. He’s halfway to desperation.

“Do you promise that you’re telling me the truth?” Not George asks. His hands are clasped together in his lap, right thumb running over his left knuckles.

Dream nods. His throat feels tight. “Yeah.”

A pause.

“Okay,” This George says again. He rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, alright.”

“Really?” For the first time, it feels like he can really, truly breathe.

This George nods. His lips press together into a thin white line. “I think so. I don’t – understand what’s going on, but I’m trying to believe you. I think.”

Dream laughs. It sounds raw and unfamiliar. “I’ll take that.”

“So –” This George tucks his arms around his abdomen. He still looks uncertain. Dream’s still half sure he’s just humoring him. “Where’s this Dream? My – our Dream?”

“I don’t know,” Dream admits, puzzled. It’s weird to hear his name coming out of This George’s mouth. It’s weirder to know he’s not talking about him — the real him. “Maybe he’s in my time?”

It’s like the whole room freezes, like sudden winter has struck and frosted over all signs of life.

“Really?” This George asks. His voice is briefly careful, briefly measured, but when he speaks again the foundation falls away to reveal rickety scaffolding. It shakes with every breath he takes. “Well – how do I get him back then? He can’t stay there.”

Dream frowns. “I’m more focused on getting myself back. I want to go home.”

“Well, I’m sure he wants to come home too.” His tone is sharp. “You’re both – displaced, if what you’re saying is true.”

“Where am I?” Dream asks, disregarding the if and looking around the room again. “This is some sort of office?”

This George nods. “Yours.”

“And you live here too?”

This George nods again. “And Sapnap. You remember him?”

Dream scoffs. “Obviously. What? How could I not remember him?”

“I was just checking.” This George frowns. “It’s not like things are all that normal right now. Do you want to get up off the ground? Can’t be comfortable.”

“Wait –” Dream frowns, just now processing what had been said. “Nick lives here? Since when?”

“For, like, two years. Get up,” This George tells him firmly, pushing himself into standing. It’s only then that Dream notices that he’s shaking. “We need to – we should talk before we do anything.”

Dream stands. His head spins when he stands. He reminds himself to take a deep breath, to adjust to the new gravity of whatever body he’s in. Quietly, he follows George back towards the door he’d come through, into a large, overly ornate bathroom.

“Whose bathroom is this?” he asks, even though he has a pretty clear idea.

The George’s forehead wrinkles as he turns to him. “Yours. Obviously. It’s connected to your office.”

“It’s huge,” Dream comments, looking around in wonder. There are two towels, both hanging beside each sink. One is blue, and the other is green. There’s a toothbrush on both. “It’s epic. Is the bath custom?”

“It is,” This George agrees. “You designed it so you’d actually fit.”

“Really?” Dream glances sideways at him.

“Yeah.” This George watches him intently. “We designed almost everything.”

“Huh.”

“Huh,” This George echoes. He steps in front of Dream when he makes for the door leading out into what he’d assume is another room, perhaps a bedroom. “Stay in here.”

“Why?” Dream asks, but he takes a step back.

This George’s eyes lock in on his arm. “You’re still bleeding. Let me see.” He grabs at his arm, fingers closing into the skin. Dream jolts away.

“It’s nothing.”

This George drops his hand, retracting it back into his body and rubbing his own wrist. “There are bandaids at the back of the left drawer on your sink,” he says, and he sounds hurt beneath the surprise. Dream tries to ignore it.

It can’t be real, he reminds himself, but every moment that passes makes his resolution shakier and shakier.

It feels weird going through the drawer, like he’s snooping around somewhere he has no business being in. He tries not to pay too much attention to the contents, but he can’t help but notice a small pink lip something at the bottom of the drawer. He can feel This George watching him, and the weight of his eyes are unfamiliar and strange. He seems like he’s walking on eggshells. Dream thinks that makes both of them.

The band aids are tucked away at the very back, just like This George said. The box is crumpled and bent in on itself, as if it had caved in beneath the burden of its own weight, though Dream knows it must’ve just gotten caught on the top of the drawer. It’s a simpler explanation.

“You keep staring at me,” Dream observes as he pulls out the white-wrapper.

This George frowns. “I’m kind of weirded out,” he says.

“But you believe me?” He winces as he tugs up the corner that had stuck prematurely to his skin, yanking at the fine hairs.

“I guess.” He leans back against the counter of the other sink. The blue of his shirt is almost the same color as the towel.“It’s unbelievable, but I guess I believe it.”

“Yeah?” Dream leans back against the sink, crumpling the wrapper in his hand and tossing it up in the air.

“You’ve calmed down,” This George comments. He tilts his head.

Dream shrugs. “It’s just a dream.”

It’s just a dream, he tries to affirm to himself.

“Right,” This George says skeptically.

Right?

“You’re sure you don’t want to go to a doctor?” he asks uncertainly.

Dream nods. He taps each of his ten fingers against his leg. He counts every one, and then he does it all again. “It’s fine.”

For a moment, he thinks he believes it.

“It’s really not,” This George says passively.

“I thought you believed me.” It’s more accusatory than he’d meant it. The calibration on this body is all different.

“I said I guess, ” This George reminds him. “But I also think we should consider – other possibilities.”

Dream shakes his head slowly. “I’m not crazy.”

“We don’t need to go over this again.” This George sounds tired. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

He laughs quietly. It’s hash and strange and unfamiliar. “Yeah, you do.”

“Just –” This George steps in front of him as he tries to head towards the closed door again. “ Dream . Look at it from my perspective. What is going on with you? It’s – you’re coming to me on a – random day and telling me you’re three years younger than you are, you have no memory of anything, and you think you’re, what? Having a nightmare? What am I supposed to think? That everything’s fine?” The crescendo of frustration falls away. Fear sticks up like the ribs of a starving animal beneath it.

Dream moves back. “You’re supposed to trust me!”

You’ve always trusted me sticks like teeth in his throat.

“I do,” This George says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I think you’re living what you think you’re living. But, like, how do you prove it? You can’t. There could be something seriously wrong, Dream. Like — like, I don’t know, a fucking stroke or a brain bleed or something.”

He sounds scared, Dream realizes, in a way he’s never heard him sound before. It makes him feel guilty and strange and uncomfortable in a tight, choking way that slithers beneath the skin of the stranger he’s wearing. Still, he shakes his head.

“I don’t want to see a doctor.”

This George sits heavily down on the edge of the large bathtub and drops his head into his hands. Dream just stands there.

“Convince me,” This George says. “Go ahead. Convince me that this is happening.”

Dream sits on the floor across from him, back against the wall. “I don’t know how.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

A beat.

“I don’t know,” Dream admits. “I don’t know what’s happening. But I’m not crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” This George says quietly. He doesn’t meet his eyes. “I would just rather you go to hospital and get a check-up so we know you aren’t, like, dying .”

Dream hesitates.

“Please,” George breathes. Unreal, impossibly dark eyes stare up at him. They sink through his flesh and bones into somewhere deeper. “Dream.”

He looks away.

“I don’t want to.”

George makes a small noise somewhere between frustration and worry. He steps back.

“You can –” Dream clears his throat. “Do whatever you want though. Take my temperature or whatever. I just don’t want to go to the hospital.”

George pauses for a moment, as if thinking. “Sit down.”

Dream looks around for a moment, before opting to sit on the rim of the bathtub. He watches as George tugs open the drawer of the other sink – one with a blue towel hanging beside it – and rifles around until he pulls out a white ear thermometer.

“I almost forgot we had this,” he says, turning back around and extending the device out to Dream. “You can do it.”

Dream takes it. The plastic is cold against the inside of his ear. The beep is too loud.

“98.7,” he reads, glancing up at George. “It’s normal.”

George makes a meaningless gesture towards him. “Other one.”

“It’ll also be normal,” Dream says, frowning. Nonetheless, he does.

“So you don’t have a fever.” George takes the thermometer when Dream holds it back out to him. “How do you even check for a concussion? Does your head hurt at all?”

He has a pounding headache. “No.”

George frowns. “Yeah, it does. Is it like an actual pain? Like you hit it?”

“No,” Dream repeats.

“So you don’t have a concussion.”

Dream nods. “Yeah.”

“Or a fever.”

Dream nods again. “Obviously”

“So,” George says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Twenty-twenty, huh?”

Dream nods. “Twenty-twenty.”

“God.” It’s a bitter sort of laugh, strangled and torn in his throat. He runs a hand over his face. Dream notices that it’s shaking, a movement so small that he’s unsure of how he caught it in the first place.

“God,” Dream echoes. He looks away towards the floor and imagines shapes in the tiles, bugs and patterns that don’t exist. He tries to will any of them to life, still desperate to prove that all this is the dreamt-up result of overactive imagination and stress. But the tiles remain tiles, and George is still here.

“Do you have questions?” George asks.

“Huh?” Dream looks over at him. “Oh. I don’t know. A lot, but I can’t think of them. You said we live with Nick?”

George nods. “Yeah.”

“Patches?”

He nods again. “She’s probably wandering around.”

“So am I supposed to, like, roleplay as this Dream?” Dream asks. “I’m supposed to act like nothing has changed?”

George shrugs. He seems to tense a bit at the question. “I guess. Just be – normal.”

“Normal,” Dream repeats. “Right.”

“Right,” George says loudly, pushing his hair back away from his face. “Are you hungry? I was going to make breakfast. You usually do, but I thought maybe it’s better if I do it.”

Dream’s not sure what else to do but nod.

“Okay,” he agrees. “Breakfast sounds good.”

George is already halfway out the door as if desperate to escape. “Do you want to come down?” he asks, looking over his shoulder. “Or I can just bring you some.”

Dream shrugs. “I’ll come down in a minute. I want to brush my teeth. Is there –” he looks around. “Do I have a spare toothbrush or something?”

George frowns. “Dream, that’s your toothbrush. You’re allowed to use it.”

The hesitancy must’ve shown on his face, because George sighs.

“There’s an extra in the cabinet,” he says. “You can meet me downstairs whenever. You’ll find the kitchen.”

He leaves with all the grace of somebody being chased by wolves. Dream wonders if that should worry him, or if he’s what George is running from.

For a long moment, Dream sits frozen in the silence. He listens until there’s nothing left to listen to anymore, and still he doesn’t move.

Somewhere out in the direction George had left in, there’s a soft squeak . It’s a sound that immediately piques his interest, that awakens some sort of knowing deep-seated in his chest. He uproots his feet from the tile and steps towards the door.

“Patches?” he calls, raising his voice to a higher octave. “Patches?”

A quiet meow, and the soft sound of footsteps heading towards him. The cat emerges around the corner of the bathroom door, tail swishing behind her. She pauses when she sees Dream, blinking slowly at him, and then sitting down by the door and beginning to lick down her chest.

Dream feels his heart clench in his chest. He kneels. The floor is cold against his knees, even through the sweatpants. “Hi,” he murmurs, holding his hand out for her to sniff. “You’ve gotten so big, baby.”

She stares at him with round amber eyes, almost apprehensive.

“You know me,” Dream whispers. “You recognize me.”

Briefly, he’s unsure of which me he means.

Patches noses at the tips of his fingers. She regards him warily, her little body unusually tense.

“Hi,” Dream coos, softening his voice in an attempt to placate her. “It’s good to see you.”

All at once her mouth draws back to show pink gums and sharp white teeth. The tabby fur on her back sticks up like a shock has run through her, and she hisses . Dream recoils back, drawing his hand into his chest. A sick feeling rises in his stomach.

Patches stares at him. Slowly, her hackles fall, and she flops down on her side to resume her grooming. Dream falls back from his knees and sits, leaning against the side of the bathtub.

She knows something’s wrong.

“Wake up,” he breathes to himself, closing his eyes and imagining himself back in that small, dark room he’d fallen asleep in the night before. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”

There’s a crash from downstairs and then resounding laughter following the noise. The noise – completely alien yet somehow horribly, dreadfully familiar – rips him out of his head. Wake up . His eyes open to the same tan tiles and ornate bathtub, and no Patches. His knees still press into the grout between tiles uncomfortably, the grainy texture somehow able to be felt through the fabric of his sweatpants.

Wake up.

He stands.

Wake up.

He walks over the sink, keeping his eyes down on the floor.

Wake up.

He looks at his reflection.

Wake up.

He stares at himself – at this body – in the mirror. He takes it up and down, the sunburn on the right shoulder, just visible where the shirt’s neckline fails to cover it. This skin is far paler than what he’s used to, whiter than he’s been in years. He turns to the side. He moves his arms and watches the ones in the mirror move in sync. He pinches himself, and watches as the hands with all ten fingers pull at the salmon t-shirt and the skin beneath.

There’s a chain around his neck, falling just below his collar. It’s not tight, but it feels suffocating. His hands shake when he undoes the clasp and drops it in a snake-like coil on the counter.

He pokes at the face. That’s the only part he can somewhat recognize. He touches his nose, tracing the sloped bridge down to his lips. He smiles and watches the skin stretch beneath a light layer of facial hair that feels familiar but wrong at the same time. His teeth are brighter now than they used to be. He runs his tongue over them, feeling the smooth shiny surfaces.

It’s like what he imagines walking on the moon must be like. The gravity of this body is all different, though it’s not terribly unfamiliar in itself. It feels like how he felt as a kid when he was growing so fast he didn’t have the time to adjust to his centre of balance before it changed again. It’s like pants shrunk in the wash, tight and ill-fitting yet familiar in some uncomfortable way. He recognizes the moles on his neck but he has a scar on his knuckle that he doesn’t remember being there. There are new sprays of freckles over his shoulders in the absence of a pattern he was familiar with. He’s homesick for them.

“Wake up,” he whispers into the mirror, just to watch the way these lips and teeth shape the words. “It’s twenty-twenty.”

Nothing changes.

He’d starting to realize that none of it will.

–

It takes him a few minutes of searching before he finds the spare toothbrush. It’s shoveled into the back of the cabinet George had directed him to, behind half-empty travel size shampoos and conditioners, and a few folded towels. When he brushes his teeth, he realizes it’s the same toothpaste as he uses at home, and the familiar mint taste is comforting. He does everything he can not to look in the mirror anymore than he has to.

Stepping back into the office is like stepping into a nightmare. The chair is shoved out from the desk, nearly in the centre of the room from where he’d bolted out of it. The water bottle George had brought in is still sitting there, untouched. The sweat drips down the side and pools around the base. It’ll leave a ring in the wood, but Dream doesn’t care enough to move it

From down the long hallway, he can hear what he assumes to be the refrigerator opening. It seems to bounce off the high ceilings, echoing around a large space. Somewhere down the stairs, he hears George whistling for Patches, and that queasy feeling of anxiety fills his stomach. He sees her emerge from beneath a glass coffee table. When he steps into the white light streaming through high living room windows onto the top platform of the stairs, he stops dead in his tracks.

It’s huge, but that’s not what stuns him.

Sapnap is there, sitting casually in a tall chair at a large white island. He looks different to how Dream recalls, though he can’t see too well from how far away he is. He’s older, of course, but he’s also fitter, and his hair is longer than Dream’s seen in a very long time. It curls around his ears under a black hat, sticking up like little horns on the sides of his head. Off camera, it’s more ginger than Dream would have expected. And he’s laughing at something George must’ve said, because George looks ridiculously pleased with himself as he turns back to a pan of eggs.

Dream starts down the stairs. It feels like moving through water. The moment his foot touches the ground, Patches bolts back out towards the living room and under the sofa.

There’s undeniable tension in George’s shoulders, but Sapnap looks relaxed. He seems at-home, like he belongs here, like he’s used to sitting in this grandiose kitchen in a rumpled t-shirt and baggy basketball shorts. If he didn’t look so comfortable, he’d appear out of place.

And then Sapnap looks up, and catches Dream’s eye from where he stands in the entryway, and he grins like he’s used to seeing him around.

“Morning, Dream,” is all he says, before taking a sip of the half-empty glass of water in front of him.

George turns quickly at that, tracking his eyes up and down Dream. They’re piercing, dark and gleaming under the white kitchen lights. They roll through his whole body like a thunderstorm.

“I made you eggs and some toast,” George says after a moment, turning back to the stove and gesturing at a plate to his left.

“Oh.” Dream blinks down at it. It’s exactly how he likes it, just slightly overcooked with salt and pepper, and toast that isn’t quite done yet. “Thanks.”

“ Please make me some,” Sapnap complains from the island. Dream sits down beside him, keeping his arms tucked tight to his body as if trying to shrink into the chair itself. “George, please . I’m being so nice.”

George tilts his head, directing his gaze to Dream. “Should I?” he asks, “Does he deserve to be fed?”

“You’re talking about him like he’s an animal,” Dream scoffs, rolling his eyes. He hopes his voice comes out normal. He hopes it doesn’t give away the tightness in his throat and the ache in his sinuses at seeing two of his closest friends together in a house that apparently they own.

George sighs loudly, eyes narrowing. Dream wants to sink into the floor.

“Fine, ” he says, turning back to the stove. “I guess he gets to eat.”

Sapnap cheers quietly from beside him, turning to look at him with a wide smile, and Dream feels like he’s about to burst with a bittersweet mix of elation at the stupid expression on his face and the grief that this is all in his head. He grins back, and it feels like he has too many teeth. He feels like a lazily made doll of a person who doesn’t exist, and everything slightly off.

“Did Ken reply?” Sapnap asks, knocking his knee against the side of Dream’s stool.

Dream stares at him. “Oh. Uh – I don’t know.”

“He did,” George says quickly, glancing over his shoulder. “He’s looking into travel stuff.”

Dream narrows his eyes, tilting his head at George questioningly. He just shakes his head quickly and turns back to crack another egg into the sizzling pan.

“Cool,” Sapnap says. “George, I’m hungry! Hurry up.”

“Shut up,” George tells him, not sparing him a glance. “This is mine .”

Sapnap’s mouth falls open incredulously. “ Seriously?” he complains. “You said you’d make me food!”

“I was lying,” George says cheerfully, sitting down across from Dream. His smile drops just slightly as he surveys him. As Sapnap starts speaking, George cuts him off. “Oh my God, you moron. Check the stupid pan.”

The stool screeches against the tile as Sapnap stands. His footsteps echo, but the kitchen doesn’t seem as massive with all of them here. It’s like it was made for them.

“We don’t have clean plates,” Sapnap says, opening the cabinets. “Dream, we need to get more plates. I’m going to have to eat out a stupid bowl now.”

“We have plates,” George tells him, widening his eyes in exasperation. “They’re being washed.”

“I know ,” Sapnap snaps. “But we should get more anyway. If we had more, I wouldn’t have to eat my fucking eggs out of a bowl like a – like an idiot .”

It’s surreal watching them, Dream thinks. It’s surreal to see them in the same space, their argument swallowing up all the space around them. There’s a fire to George’s eyes as he throws back some dry quip about well, maybe if you did anything around here – and the little smirk hiding at the corner of his mouth has a different tune here than it ever did over a camera.

And Sapnap is everything Dream’s always known. When he looks long enough, watching him stick his legs out under the table and push George’s stool as far away from the island as he can manage, he can almost believe this is normal. His constant presence throughout Dream’s life has just shifted in front of him, as opposed to online. He tries not to look too long, or else it makes him feel like he’s drowning in it.

“You aren’t hungry?” George asks out of what seems like nowhere. He gestures with his fork to the plate.

Dream looks down at his own distorted reflection trapped in the top of the untouched fork. “Not really,” he says. “I have a headache.”

“Go upstairs,” George tells him, frowning. “Go lie down. I’ll bring you tylenol.”

Dream takes the out gratefully, shooting him a wobbly smile as he stands. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” A frown tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Sure.”

His gaze follows Dream the whole way up the stairs.

–

He finds the bedroom through the door in the bathroom, the one that George had blocked him from going through prior.

It looks like his bedroom at home – fairly barren, plain, with personal belongings scattered around. Some are propped up against walls, resting on dressers, or bedside tables. Some he recognizes and some he doesn’t.

There are things that he knows must belong to this him; a decorative football helmet, little figurines of his blob icon, minecraft socks strewn beside the bed, sweatshirts with his avatar hanging on in the ridiculously large closet, folded in the hamper. There’s a cat bed in the corner of the room, with Patches’ name embroidered on the side. Thinking of her makes his chest hurt.

And there are things that he doesn’t recognize as potentially being his as well; a globe sitting on a box by the closet, a monitor up against the wall, a white board to his right. His scrawling handwriting fills it and, in the corner, there’s a small :] and :) drawn respectively in blue and yellow marker. Next to it a note in handwriting that isn’t his reads remember to buy more wet food for Patches!

The bed is unmade. He sits down on the rumpled sheets, crossing his legs in front of him. He waits, and he’s not sure what for.

The answer comes moments later, in the form of a knock at the door.

“Yeah?” Dream calls out.

“I brought you toast,” George tells him, poking his head through. “Might be easier on your stomach. You need to eat if you want to take anything for the headache.”

Quietly, Dream accepts the plate. It’s warm against his hands.

“I think you must have a lot more questions after that,” George says slowly, poised awkwardly in the doorway like a parent about to deliver a lecture. “I wanted to try and answer them. If you want.”

“Sure,” Dream says carefully. It feels like they’re both walking on eggshells. “You should close the door.”

George shuts it. The lock clicks behind him.

“How the hell did we afford this house?” Dream asks before he can even sit.

“YouTube,” George says. “Streaming. Merch. Brand deals. Mostly you.”

It’s not the biggest surprise; he’s always had faith that they’d succeed. But he hadn’t predicted just how successful they’d need to live here.

“We’re still doing that?” It makes his throat tighten. “Is that why we live together?”

George doesn’t quite look at him. “Yeah. I guess.”

“So, we’re, like, really successful?” Dream confirms, because he can’t quite believe it..

George nods, smiling a little as if recalling a fond memory. “More than any of us could have anticipated.”

“Really?” Dream breathes. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to them. He’s always had faith, he’s always had a plan, he’s always known how to put one-hundred-percent of himself into something, but it’s still unimaginable to think that they’d ever been so – comfortable.

“Yeah,” George tells him, voice soft. “Do you want to –” He gestures to the nightstand, where a phone is charging. “That’s yours. You can see for yourself.”

Dream leans over and grabs it. He pauses, looking to George for permission. It feels weird. Technically, this is his phone, but it’s also really not. It feels voyeuristic to sift through these personal things. He hesitates.

“Open YouTube,” George prompts softly.

The phone unlocks when he holds it up to his face. It opens to blue.

George leans forwards, reaching for his hand as if to grab the phone. “Don’t –” he starts, before realizing what he’s doing and allowing the motion to die halfway through. Dream moves away from him slightly, putting distance between them. George’s hands fold uselessly in his own lap, tangled in each other.

“Close out of Twitter,” he says, clearing his throat. “YouTube, Dream.”

Dutifully, Dream closes the app. He feels George watching him.

Slowly, he types his own name into the search bar. Beneath it, the search option dream face reveal pops up. It’s not a shock; he’d figured it had finally happened from the way George had been talking about the hospital, and by George being here, but it still sends a rippling shock down his spine. He presses the enter key.

It takes a minute to process, the wheel at the top of the tab rotating incessantly for a moment before the familiar bright green image loads in, and the words beneath it.

31.6M subscribers.

There’s silence. He feels George watching him, studying his reaction. He turns to look at him.

“Is that right?” he asks. “Thirty-one million?”

George nods. His eyes are dark enough to drown in. “Yeah.”

“Can I see yours?”

He nods again.

GeorgeNotFound.

The screen loads in.

10.4M subscribers.

George laughs awkwardly. “It’s not – it’s not quite as impressive.”

Dream shakes his head slowly. “No, it’s –” he takes a breath. “Wow.”

“Wow,” George echoes. He leans back when Dream clicks open the channel.

There’s one thumbnail that catches his eye, amidst the red hoodies and brightly colored backgrounds, with George’s face mid-laugh in every one. It’s darker, but with a bright red arrow pointing towards a blurred face. I Met Dream In Real Life, the title reads.

“You made a video out of it?” Dream asks, looking over at him in surprise.

George doesn’t meet his eye, but he shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Is there one from when I met Nick?”

He shakes his head.

“Why?”

“You were faceless,” George tells him. “He couldn’t have vlogged it.”

“Oh.” Dream stares down at the thumbnail, at the videos surrounding it, at the gaps between uploads. He wonders what slowed production so much. “Can I watch it?”

A pause.

“Sure.” George’s voice sounds strange now, just slightly off to the point of discomfort. “Go ahead. I’m gonna – I need to feed Patches. You can watch.” The bed frame creaks as he stands. The door closes too loudly when he leaves.

Dream hesitates for a moment, a heavy and sick feeling in his stomach as he stares at the thumbnail. He can’t place where the dread comes from, just that it’s there. Still, after a moment, he clicks on it.

The video opens with a shot of George outside, squinting and shining in the sun. Okay, he says, so I’m just sitting here, waiting for Dream to show up. Sapnap went to go get him. It’s all happening right now!

Dream pauses the video. He skims his mouse along the grey bar at the bottom, looking at frame after frame, trying to gain an idea of what to expect. He presses play again, leaning back against the wall as George’s voice fills the space around him. Dream scoffs quietly at his narration voice, the sort of forced way about the words, and the way his expressions don’t line up with the tone at all.

I had to marry Dream, to get a Green Card –

He laughs at that, shaking his head. It’s a dumb joke that he’s heard before, back in that late-night call where George had complained about how difficult the visa process can be and how it would be so much easier if you just married me or something. Obviously we’d, like, divorce after if you want but – I dunno. It would be easier than this shit. Skeppy had laughed and dm’d George something that Dream never saw, but it made him breathe out through his nose and mutter shut up . The subject had been temporarily dropped after that.

The video cuts from George in his office to George somewhere else, somewhere with pink-ish, low-lighting. He’s holding his phone up in front of the camera, eyes fixed to it. Hello?

Dream swallows as he hears his own voice burst out from the speakers, bright and disbelieving and buzzing with excitement. Are you memeing? Are you memeing me? he says. Oh my God, yes! Are you sure you don’t want to wait to see me in person?

His stomach drops.

I’m ready! George says. I’ve got my camera set up, I’m all ready to go.

I’m going to look in the mirror and make sure I don’t look trash, Vlog Dream says. I’ll be right back. He leaves, and Dream is left alone with Vlog George, and it feels like he shouldn’t be.

There’s something about the vlog, about watching it, that feels voyeuristic. It feels like he’s not allowed to see it, like he’s peering through the windows of a house not made for him, despite it being made of him. Vlog George is beaming and nervous in a way that Dream doesn’t think he’s ever seen before, all bright eyes and wide smile. Dream can’t quite tell, but it almost looks like he’s shaking.

Oh my God! Vlog George laughs. This is so weird! It doesn’t feel real.

Even watching it, it doesn’t feel real. It feels like they’ve hired actors to play both of them and Dream is watching the performance, but it doesn’t feel like something that can be faked. He can tell just by the way they talk that they’ve gotten closer in the last few years, which doesn’t come as a shock. It’s nice. It’s nice to know that they’re all still around and still in it together.

Vlog George ends the call. The video transitions back to him in his office. Dream wonders if it’s just down the hall. He makes a mental note to ask This George about it when he returns. He glances towards the closed bedroom door. If he returns.

He sits through the airport montage, shots of luggage and food and, eventually, a first class seat on a plane. The excitement is palpable. It feels warm. He’s not sure how else to describe it. When Sapnap appears, Dream smiles. It’s still a shock to see him like this, all grown up but still uncannily Nick. It’s the same feeling that Dream gets when he looks in the mirror. He wonders if it has to do with how long they’ve known each other.

You nervous? Sapnap asks. You ready? You want me to go and get him? Soft music plays over his voice.

Dream? Sapnap calls. Clay? He’s here. I brought him. You excited?

Shoes come into the frame. Dream listens to his own voice speak from just out of it. I am – A laugh – very nervous.

It’s a big day, Sapnap says. An exciting day.

I need a minute, he hears himself say. His shoes squeak against the floor.

Take your time, Sapnap tells him. This is big stuff. He’s going to be living here, forever.

Forever. Dream drops his chin onto his knees. He remembers half-joking about the logistics of George moving just days prior to whatever the hell this is happening. Forever.

The scene changes to outside again, the glare of the sun painted over the camera lens. George is waiting out by the car – a car far nicer than Dream has ever owned before – squinting out against the light and fidgeting in a way that clearly gives away his nerves. Dream wonders how desperate they must’ve become during the pandemic for the vlog to be this dramatic.

Is he coming from in there? George asks as the camera pans towards two massive gates. Over his voice, music begins to play – a song that Dream doesn’t recognize.

He watches himself emerge from behind the gates, a tall, dark figure in the daylight. He watches Vlog George’s face split into the biggest smile he’s ever seen, laughter bursting from him like he can’t contain it.

No way, he hears himself say. Oh my God.

It’s so bright, I can’t even see, Vlog George says, raising a hand to shield his eyes. You’re like – you’re like a god with the sun behind you.

The music swells when they hug. Dream tucks his own arms around his waist and pulls in on himself. It’s a strange thing to feel so left out of something that’s happened to you. He wishes he could remember this. He wishes he was here for it. Part of him still doesn’t believe any of this is real, but another hopes that it is and that it truly is an inevitable future that one day he will experience. It seems wonderful.

The door swings open. He pauses the video to a frame of George pointing out into the living room, towards a glass coffee table under which sits Patches.

“Hey,” he says, looking up as George re-enters the room.

“Are you done watching?” George asks, hesitating just behind the doorway.

Dream shrugs. “Almost. You’re about to meet Patches.”

“Oh.” George gestures into the room. “Do you mind?”

Dream shakes his head. “I’ll finish it later.”

George nods slowly, eyes flickering around the room. “So,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “What did you think?”

“So,” Dream echoes. “That was – that was cool. I liked your editing. We all seemed –” he takes a breath. “We all seemed very happy.”

George nods. “Happy,” he repeats, and there’s something strange about the way he says it. “Yeah. It was a lot, but it was really good.”

It’s awkward. It’s like there’s a layer of glass held between them, bulletproof and tinted just enough that he can see the weight on George’s shoulders but can’t make out quite what it is.

“What’s it been like living together?” Dream asks. “Good?”

George nods again. “Really good. We’re – good at coexisting, I guess. But we’ve been traveling a lot so, honestly I think we’ve been gone more than we’ve been home. Or close to the same amount of time. I dunno exactly.”

“Traveling?” Dream frowns. “For what?”

He shrugs. “Everything. Twitchcon, Vidcon, other work. Sapnap and I have a podcast with Karl in North Carolina. Sapnap has stuff in L.A. We went to Antarctica with Jimmy – Mr. Beast.”

“We what?” Dream stares at him.

George laughs, reaching over to grab one of the pillows and hold it against his chest. “Yeah,” he says, dropping his chin on top of it. It dents the black pillowcase. “It was awful. You were really sick. I got sick after. We were all dying, but it was cool. Like another planet.”

“There’s a video?” Dream asks. “Right?”

“Yeah.” His eyes flicker towards the computer, where the frozen image of recommended videos and the title of the vlog still remain. “You can watch it later.”

Dream nods slowly. “Okay,” he says, looking around the room just to have something to do. “Yeah, I will. I will.”

“Anything else you want to know?” George asks carefully. Dream can feel him watching, eyes sharp and intent. “I don’t know how to speedrun three years of – IRL lore, I guess.”

“Am I seeing someone?” Dream asks before he can think too much of it. “Like – I don’t know. That’s a – that’s a weird question but there was makeup in the drawer. Do I have a girlfriend?”

And George laughs.

It’s not exactly humorous. It’s sort of surprised and caught off guard, like Dream had told some horribly offensive joke just for the shock value. Dream stares at him, unsure of what exactly is happening. He waits awkwardly while George’s laughter peters out into a long, drawn out sigh. His hands are white-knuckled where they wrap around the pillow he’s holding against his chest.

“Do I?” Dream reiterates. “I’m not – George.” He swallows, a wave of horror hitting him. “I have a ring. Am I fucking married?’

“No!” George assures quickly, cutting him off part way through the final word. “No, you aren’t fucking married, Dream. You’re –” he hesitates, abruptly cutting himself off.

“What?”

It’s then that he notices that George looks very uncomfortable. He shifts, setting the pillow aside. “Dream,” he says carefully. “You don’t have a girlfriend. You don’t have a — a wife. It’s —”

Dream narrows his eyes. He can feel his heart climb up into his throat.

“ Dream ,” George says again, and it looks like he’s choking on something. He doesn’t quite meet his eye, but he takes out his phone. “Hold on.”

Dream waits. A decade passes. George holds out the phone, and his hand is shaking.

It’s a picture. That’s the first thing that Dream notices. The second, is that it’s of them.

It’s them, standing in front of some fancy hotel mirror with lights around the edges. George is positioned in front of him, head tilted back and one hand on his jaw. He’s beaming, eyes crinkles at the edges, sharp profile on display. One of Dream’s arms is around his waist, pushed up beneath his hoodie to show a painfully large strip of his pale stomach, while the other is holding the phone. He’s gazing down at George with a smile that looks foreign to him, with teeth too sharp and too white.

It all slides into place. All at once, everything makes sense; the way George watches him, his tone of voice, how comfortable he seems with reaching for his hand or touching his arms, the socks by the bed far too small to be his. It all makes sense in some horrible, twisted way.

All at once, he feels like he’s about to be sick.

This can’t be real.

“What?”

George doesn’t look at him. “Yeah.” His voice comes out raw, like it was skinned on its ascent up his throat. “Dream–”

“No.” He shakes his head, “No, what –? You’re fucking with me.”

“Dream–” he starts again. “Listen, I know –”

“How long were you going to keep that from me?”

“I wasn’t keeping it ,” George rebuts. “What was I supposed to say? When was I supposed to tell you? I thought –” he pauses. Restarts. “I thought maybe the vlog, the – everything – would be enough for you to realize. My clothes are literally in your laundry basket right now. We have fucking DNF towels. That was your idea, just so you know.”

Dream stares at him. “That’s – you have to be lying.”

He knows he’s not. It’s evident in every part of their lives.

George’s lips press into a thin white line. He stares somewhere past Dream’s shoulder. After a moment, he speaks.

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“So you just didn’t?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, I guess so. It’s a big deal.”

That’s when Dream decides that this must be a nightmare. No matter how real it feels, it just can’t be.

“No,” he says slowly. “No. There’s no way.”

“Dream–”

Dream shakes his head. “I mean, we joke about it. Our friends joke about it, but I’m not – I don’t care if you’re gay or something, but I’m –”

“Dream!” George speaks over him. His lips are pulled tight, throat bobbing up and down as he swallows.

Dream freezes, halfway up from the bed. His lungs feel like they’re collapsing in on themselves. He can’t breathe around the mass in his chest.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” George tells him. His hands are knotted in the silk pillowcase, knuckles pushing white through the skin. “Not this.”

And Dream knows. That’s the worst of it.

“I need to –” he gestures towards the bathroom. “Sorry.”

George stands. “Yeah,” he says, voice just a hair too loud. Dream can see his mouth trembling. “No, I get it. I get it.”

“Yeah,” Dream repeats, stepping backwards towards the bathroom. “Right.”

George leaves quickly and without another word. Dream bolts into the bathroom. He shuts the door behind him, pressing back into the wood like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. His hands are shaking, white knuckled into fists and his nails are surely ripping his palms to shreds.

One. Two. Three.

The door in the bedroom closes as George leaves.

Four. Five. Six. Seven.

He catches the blue towel in the corner of his eye, bright against the earth tones of the bathroom. It makes his stomach turn.

Eight. Nine.

Two towels. Two toothbrushes. There’s a pair of shoes beside the other door that Dream hadn’t seen before. They look far too small to be his.

Ten.

There’s a horrible thought that crosses his mind, shooting through like a bullet. He walks over to the mirror and strips his shirt off. The lack of fabric against his skin is freeing, like he can breathe better without it restricting his lungs, at least in the moments before he looks up from the pile of fabric on the tile.

There are hickies all up and down his chest, blooming blues and purples against pale skin. They’re all below his collarbones, placed with the intent of keeping hidden behind a shirt collar. Little secrets spread up and down this stranger’s skin.

When he undresses fully, it’s like a shot to the chest to see those same bite marks all across his thighs, up into the inner parts that begin to be marred with body hair. There are the indents of teeth in his haunches and, if he had the means to compare, he’s sure George’s would fit like a glove to them. It feels violating , uncomfortable and weird in a way that makes him want to crawl out of his skin and sink into the grout between tiles, never to be seen again.

He wants it off of him.

It takes him a moment to figure out how to work the shower, which way makes it hotter and which makes it colder. He’s submerged beneath the spray well before the temperature is right, first shivering and then turning red beneath it as he tries to find the right spot between the two. He stares down at this body and everything covering it.

The more he examines himself and all his surroundings, the more he realizes how innately entwined this body and George seem to be. There’s only one of each product in the shower, all half-empty. There are finger marks pressed into the bar of soap, too small to be his, besides ones that fit him perfectly. Even as he cleans himself, it feels like he can’t get George off his skin.

He turns the water up to near boiling. He watches himself go red and imagines the skin blistering and peeling and every mark being gone, and then he blinks and it’s all still there.

He needs to wake up.

He pinches himself again, pushes down on the tender marks on his thighs and neck like the shock of it will pull him out of his insane dream, but it doesn’t. He doesn’t know why it doesn’t. Everything feels so real , but it can’t be. He counts his fingers again, all ten, and then counts ten again. Maybe he needs to see a doctor. Maybe he should have taken George up on his insistence they go to a hospital. Maybe he’s going fucking crazy after all.

He sits down on the floor of the shower and watches water spiral down the drain. He imagines it blocks, imagines the water rises until it floods the room and covers his head. He imagines he drowns in it. Dream lays down on the hard floor. It presses painfully against his shoulder blades, and the water splatters into his face so he has to squeeze his eyes shut to protect them, and he just thinks.

The image George showed him is seared into his mind, carved behind his eyelids so when light shines through all he can see is the outline of his own face, his own hand beneath George’s ridden-up shirt, pressed flat to his stomach. All he can see is George’s smile, his hand against his jaw. He touches his own cheek and wonders how it would feel with a smaller, softer hand. He presses his palm into his stomach, over mulberry markings sucked into his skin, just to know what the skin must’ve felt like to George when he’d —

Stop.

The perverted image of dark hair going down on him fills his unwilling mind. Terrible heat floods his stomach, blood rushing down, down, down, and –

Dream sits up. He yanks the valve to the side, pulling it as cold as it can possibly go. The water hits him like bullets, making his skin feel tight and stretched around his bones. He wants to move but he forces himself to sit, frozen, under the spray. Don’t think about it, he orders himself. Stop fucking thinking about it.

It, he repeats to himself. Him.

Him.

The blood rush subsides, but he can’t bring himself to move still. The heat is gone from him, but it’s been replaced by some horrible mix of shame and confusion. The thought of George did it, and it shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t have, because Dream doesn’t like him like that. Dream doesn’t even know if he likes men like that, so why would the thought be arousing?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore, just that the freezing water is starting to burn his skin. It’s funny how something so cold can feel so much like fire.

Dream doesn’t know how long he sits there. When he blinks himself back out of liminal space his fingers and toes are turning purple with the cold. He shuts off the water and continues to sit for a moment longer. He takes the green towel – he can only assume that one is his – and dries off. His hands are shaking, and he’s not sure if it’s from the cold or something else. He puts on the clothes he’d woken up in, unwilling to find George and ask which part of the closet is his and which is Dream’s.

This time, when he enters the bedroom, it’s like he’s seeing it through entirely different eyes.

There are sweatpants clearly too short for him in the hamper, emblazoned with 404 on the left leg. Beneath it, a pair of light blue jeans far too big to be George’s. And there’s a polaroid camera on a shoe box on the ground and a stack of pictures beside it. There’s a photo propped up against the wall, but the glare of the sun off the shiny finish obscures it. Two passports, one on top of the other, sit off on the floor beside the box.

His chest is unreasonably tight with the unrelenting understanding that everything that isn’t recognizably his is probably George’s. Hell, everything is probably theirs , plural. It all melts together, pieces of both of them tangled in an inseparable knot.

They share this room.

This is their room. Their belongings are scattered across their bedroom, their house, their lives.

He imagines the Discord call when he gets home. He can practically hear George – real George – laughing about it, saying how dumb it is when he tells him about this crazy dream he’d had, the familiar tone somewhere between amusement and mocking. He clings to the sound and remembers that he’ll hear it again soon. Nightmare or something else, whatever this is can't last forever.

Right?

–

He doesn’t leave the bedroom.

He doesn’t seek anybody out, or anything. He just sits. He watches videos filled with his laughter and his jokes, in an editing style uncannily like his but better. At least he gets better at something. He checks the views, the comments. He searches his name, scanning across words like canceled, ugly, music for some reason, manhunt, face reveal, faceless, gay . He searches George’s, and then Sapnap’s.

It’s like stumbling across a whole new world, like he’s woken up in some sort of wonderland where he has too-many-million views and too-many-million subscribers, and too much attention on him. But this is what he’d been striving for, right? This – this – is what he’d meant when he’d promised George and Sapnap success and offered a place by his side.

I’m gonna blow up, he’d told George, as simple as that. Come with me.

He’d hesitated, of course. Dream had known he’d had more questions than he could hope to ask, and more doubts that Dream could hope to quench. Still, after a moment, he’d sighed. Right, he’d said. Okay, yeah. Why not?

Dream could have given him a billion reasons as to why not . Instead, he’d gone back to reading, and they’d lapsed back into silence.

Something in his chest twists with the memory; he misses his George. He misses his Sapnap, and his Patches. He misses his house, his bed, his sheets. He misses the smell of his own clothes, and the goal of what he – this version of him – has now. But more than anything, he misses himself.

He hates the feeling of wearing this skin. He doesn’t mind the body when he catches it in the reflective black of his computer screen, or the mirror when he uses the bathroom – he’s quite happy with how it looks – but it isn’t him . It feels like a poorly made skin suit that’ll tear any minute. He doesn’t know what will spill out when the seams finally give way. He hates the sound of this voice in videos, the way it softens and twists around words. It’s changed in ways he’s not sure how to comprehend. It’s not any lower than it was, but the way he speaks is strange. It’s like a language he never learned but innately understands, and it’s at its strongest when he hears himself speak to George.

He’s never heard himself laugh like that before. He’s never heard George laugh like that either.

George’s giggles, George’s smile, George’s clothes in the hamper, his teeth in Dream’s thigh. It’s unmistakable. It’s undeniable. The truth scorches, raises blisters along his arms, peels skin from his neck. It’s painful and it’s disgusting, and he can’t look away.

He thinks back to the shower, back to the fleeting mental image he’s managed to conjure. He dismisses it when he feels himself grow warm again, twinging uncomfortably in his sweatpants. It’s all wrong. Everything is.

It’s nearly dark outside when somebody knocks on his door.

“Yeah?” He glances up from the laptop. “It’s unlocked.”

The door swings open. George stares at him from within the dark hall. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Dream says. He closes his computer. “What’s going on?”

“I needed to grab some stuff,” George says casually, though his eyes are sharp as they examine him. “I’ll be out in a minute. There’s food downstairs. You should come down and eat.”

“I will.” He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until food was mentioned. “What is it?”

George shrugs. “Just pizza. You alright?”

“Yeah,” Dream tells him. “It’s — weird. It’s weird.”

“Yeah,” George repeats slowly. “It’s weird.”

Dream frowns. George’s eyes narrow.

“You sure?” he prompts softly, that spun-sugar voice that makes Dream want to crawl out of this skin and slither beneath the bed. He hesitates.

“For the sake of, like, being normal or whatever, can I ask something?”

George looks surprised. “Yeah?”

“Are we –” Dream lowers his voice “– out?”

George’s face tenses, just slightly. “Not publically,” he says carefully. “We don’t think we’ll ever announce it but someday we’ll be more – more open about it. All our friends know.”

“Oh.” Dream adds that to the list of things to remember. “Why not?”

George shrugs. “We didn’t want to be. It would be a lot of thoughts from a lot of people.” He hesitates. “You’re out though.”

Cold shock drips through his veins. He tries to reckon with it. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does, or maybe it isn’t really surprise that he’s feeling. It’s more violation , like George has thrust clawed hands into his chest cavity and pulled out something beating and red, and the whole world is looking at it. He wants to reach for it, pull it back, keep it safe and private until he figures out exactly what it is and if he wants to keep it.

“What?” He clears his throat and tries not to let his gaping chest stain the sheets. “As – as what?”

George shrugs again, and doesn’t meet his eyes. “Not straight,” he says quietly, barely above a whisper. “That’s all.”

“Oh.”

Because it’s not like he’s never thought about it before. It’s not like there haven’t been nights spent plagued by it, all these weird feelings and wants that he’s slowly come to be aware of. It’s not like it’s impossible, but hearing it –

“It’s okay,” George tells him softly, and Dream isn’t entirely sure which part he’s referring to.

“Yeah.” Dream clears his throat and the breath sticks there, choking him. He can’t name the tightness in his chest. “When?”

“April,” George tells him. “April last year.”

“How’d it go?”

George picks at his nail. He smoothes out his hoodie. He looks out the window at the clear blue sky, then he looks back. Dream waits. He holds his breath and watches George rattle the answer around his mouth like a mint.

“People came ‘round.”

“Came around?” Dream echoes.

George starts to speak, and then cuts himself off. His hands are knotted in the black fabric. “Dream,” he says, so gently that it sounds out of place. “They came around. That’s what matters.”

“Why aren’t you telling me what that means?” Dream presses, and hot panic bubbles in his stomach at something in his tone. “It’s about me, so why aren’t you telling me?”

George’s jaw sets. Dream doesn’t remember his body language ever being so telling before. He hesitates for a moment before speaking. “People were cruel – you know how people are. But things work out in the end, and it’s all okay now.”

Dream inhales deeply, and sits with the words for a moment. This isn’t real obviously , yet they feel so tailored for him, so soft and genuine, like they’re reaching through this unconsciousness to assure him of something that isn’t even, and will never be, real.

“Oh.”

George nods awkwardly. “Yeah.”

“Things work out in the end,” Dream repeats, like an affirmation.

George studies him. “They do, you know,” he says, as if sensing that Dream doesn’t fully believe it. “That’s why we are where we are.”

“Does my mom know?” He can’t imagine how that went.

George nods wordlessly.

“Was it — is she okay with it?”

George nods again. Dream thinks his whole body melts as the fear drains away.

“Who knows?” Dream asks. “Like, a list.”

George thinks for a moment. He looks at home among the white sheets. Dream has to remind himself that it’s because he is. Of both of them, Dream is the only stranger in this bedroom.

“Both our families,” he says slowly, looking up at the ceiling as he recalls. “Sapnap, obviously. Sylvee and Hannah. Punz. Tommy. Bad and Skeppy. Everyone, sort of. We didn’t, like, announce it to them. We just stopped hiding it. They all figured it out on their own.”

“But the fans don’t know.”

George shakes his head. “Not explicitly.”

“Explicitly?” Dream clarifies. “So, we haven’t told them but they – we haven’t hidden it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

George laughs awkwardly. “Were you worried we were?”

Dream shrugs. He doesn’t know how to respond. In any case, he doesn’t know what the truth even is.

George stands. “I just need clothes and a charger,” he tells him, turning away. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“George?”

George turns and looks up at him, widening his eyes slightly. He cocks his head, and the dark hair spills forward over his forehead. He needs a haircut, Dream thinks to himself. “What?” he asks.

Dream shrugs, and there’s a tightness surrounding his chest. “You look different,” he says softly. It’s the only thing he can think of. “I was looking at old stuff. It’s – it’s really weird.”

“Different than how I looked three years ago?” George says, laughing uncomfortably. The white phone charger is wound tight around his hand like he’s intending to cut off circulation. “Yeah, I hope so. Unless it’s in a bad way.”

Dream finds himself shaking his head before he’d even thought of doing it. “No,” he says. “You look – you look good, man. Bro.”

The smile seems forced. “Thanks. I’m gonna – you should eat and then get some rest. Whatever’s left is yours. We saved some for you.”

“Okay.” Dream steps back awkwardly, looking around. “My clothes – I was going to sleep soon.”

“In the closet,” George gestures towards the offshoot of the room. “You’ll know what’s yours and what’s mine.”

“Right,” he says, looking in the direction George had pointed. “Cool.”

“Cool,” George echoes, forehead still creased. “Okay. See you later?”

Dream nods wordlessly. And then, again, he’s alone.

But this time, he doesn’t want to be. The silence is unnerving, the flicker of shadows through his windows against the walls are crowds of people all staring at the mix of clothing in the hamper, the too-small socks and too-short pants, the two nightstands, the passports in the corner. The ceiling leers down at him. Don’t you know? it says. Don’t you know all that I’ve seen here? He isn’t lying. I saw how you got those marks.

Dream touches his neck, pulling at the collar like he’s trying to untangle himself from a noose. He’s exhausted and too high strung to sleep, starving but sick at the thought of eating. He makes do with staring pointlessly at the wall for a minute, but then gets bored of the nothingness of it.

Leaving the room feels like stepping off the edge of the world. It felt safe in there, just enough familiarity in his own messy style of organization and the pillows with the exact firmness he prefers, but he needs out of it. It began to feel like a cage.

There’s an office down the hall, a few rooms down from his own. The door is closed. Dream hesitates for a moment, peering around at the rooms it’s connected to. The moment he sees posters on the wall, he knows it’s Sapnap, and relief floods him. He knows he’s seeking out familiarity and he can’t find it in George, or even Patches, but he can in Sapnap. It’s been that way since they were kids.

He knocks, two heavy beats of his fist against the thick door.

Silence.

He knocks again.

“Hold on –” Sapnap’s voice is muffled. A chair creaks. “It’s unlocked,” he calls. “Come in.”

Dream pushes the door open. It’s heavy. “Hey,” he says casually.

Sapnap looks up at him, pulling off his headset. Over the top of his head, Dream can see a game of Valorant queued on screen. “What’s up?”

He’s ruffled, for once not wearing a hat. Instead, his hair is sticking up and out around his face. It’s funny how all of their hair has gotten longer as they’ve gotten older.

It strikes him, then, that he’s younger than Sapnap.

“Nothing.” Dream shrugs. “I was just bored.”

“Oh.” Sapnap yawns, covering his mouth with his fist. “George asleep?”

Dream glances backwards down the dark hall. “Yeah,” he guesses, and tries to make it sound certain. “Can I watch?”

Sapnap shrugs and gestures him in.

His room is less barren than George’s, Dream notices. It looks lived in, with clothes spilling out of the laundry basket, bed messy and unmade. There’s a plate on his bedside table and anime posters on the walls. Something in Dream’s chest pinches as he recalls a day or two before the switch Sapnap had tried to convince him to watch some dumb anime with him. Dream had told him maybe once I’m done editing. He wonders if he ever did.

Dream sits cross-legged on the floor behind him, adjusting to see the screen unobscured over his shoulder. “Cool,” he says.

“Cool,” Sapnap echoes, turning back to the game. “It’s a bunch of randos. If they recognize me, you should come talk. We can troll the fuck out of them.”

Dream laughs, familiar warmth buzzing through his chest. For a moment, it almost feels okay.

Chapter 2: the sky on fire

Chapter Text

Dream can’t sleep.

The stress of the day has left him exhausted to the point of his vision blurring and hands shaking, but he can’t sleep. He changes the sheets on the bed – Sapnap had told him where the extras are kept before he’d left upwards of an hour ago, tacking on an ew, gross as he does, and Dream thinks he has a very different perception of what’s been happening to need a sheet change than what the truth is.

He doesn’t want to sleep in the bed. It feels weird and wrong to do so, like he’s in a space far too intimate. Everything about this house, and this room in particular, gives him an acute and unshakeable feeling of being a voyeur, a pervert shuffling through things he was meant to see. Two hours pass while he lays on top of the covers and stares at the ceiling, stares at his phone, stares at his computer screen, stares at the pages of a book on his bedside. The spine isn’t broken yet, and he feels reluctant to be the one who cracks it. After all, it’s not his.

He wants his mom.

It’s a childish thing. It’s a strange, infant instinct that presses against his chest and makes his stomach flip with the type of anxiety that says something’s missing . He wants his mom to hug him and rub his back and tell him that it’s okay and they’ll sort this out somehow. He wants to smell her perfume, the same scent she’s used his whole life. Nothing else is stable here, but he trusts that she will be. Or maybe he’s just a fool.

But it’s well past midnight and she would be asleep by now, despite the cars in the garage that he knows he could take if need be. She would be asleep, his sister would be asleep, he guesses that George would be as well, and Sapnap kicked him out with an I’m so tired so he probably is too. And Dream doesn’t want to wake anybody up and create more disturbance than he already has so he attempts to content himself with pacing the sizable room like an animal in a cage instead.

After another hour, he caves.

It takes six rings for his mom to pick up. When she does, it’s evident by the raspiness of her voice that she’s been sleeping. “Clay?”

Dream closes his eyes, coming to a standstill in the centre of the room. “Hi,” he breathes around the sudden lump in his throat. “Hey, mom.”

“Honey, are you okay?”

She can’t see it, but he nods. “Yeah. I just –” he scrounges around for an excuse. He should have planned for this. “I needed something from my room. For a video. Can I – can I come over and get it?”

He doesn’t think she can tell it’s a lie.

“Clay, it’s nearly dawn.”

“I know,” he says quickly. “Sorry. I’m – sorry, I just need to go over there. And I wanted to – I wanted to see you. I’ll be quick.”

A pause. He hears sheets shifting around her. “Okay,” she says after a moment. “Drive safely, and don’t ring the doorbell. Your sister’s asleep, and she needs to be up early to meet friends tomorrow. Just message me when you get here.”

His sister. He stumbles around the thought. She’s in her mid-teens now, doing whatever the hell you’re supposed to do at that age – he doesn’t know. Even three years ago she was more popular than he’d ever been as a kid, likable and funny in a way that came naturally to her and never did to him. He tries to imagine what she looks like now, if her long blonde hair has only gotten longer or if she’d finally cut it like she’d been thinking of doing. He wonders if it’s darkened with age, much like his own or if it’ll take a few more years.

He ends the call shortly after that, muttering out a quiet I’ll see you soon before doing so. Hesitantly, he opens the door out into the hall. He’s almost certain they have a car, but he isn’t entirely sure if it’s his specifically or, for any matter, where the keys are.

The house settles with a quiet groan. The hallways stretch into shadowed doorways, cold and dark. Dream presses his hand along the wall until he feels a light switch and then thinks better of turning it on. Instead, he shines his phone light down the marble flight of stairs. His bare feet stick against the cold stone.

There are keys hanging by the garage door. Dream hesitates to take them. It feels like thievery, like he’s a robber broken into this magnificent house and having his way with whatever’s inside. Nonetheless, he does. The metal is cold and the edges are smooth against his palm.

White flights flash as he unlocked the car from the garage door. He doesn’t bother to look at the model — he’s never known anything about cars and he’s a bit scared to — but he can tell by the interior that it’s nicer than anything he’s owned before. The chair is moved back enough to fit him, he notes, so it must be his after all.

He doesn’t recognize the road they live on. It’s secluded, a far cry from the quiet yet active street he knows from his time. The road leading to them is gravely and bumpy, surrounded by trees that he worries an animal will leap from, scared by the noise, at any given moment. The place is unrecognizable until he reaches the main street.

He drives in silence.

—

It takes nearly thirty minutes to get to his mom’s house. It should have taken less, but he’d pulled over on the side of the road to gawk at the shiny new construction where his favorite restaurant once sat. The once small, square building has been replaced by high-tech silver and glass with a sign declaring legal practice on the front. One of the windows is still unfinished, tapped over with a large plastic bag. The world kept moving, and he’s just been dropped in the middle of it. It feels like an alien planet. He’d never known that just three years could make all the difference in the world.

Though maybe he should have known sooner.

He pulls into his mom’s driveway and prays she hasn’t fallen asleep in the time it took for him to drive open. He texts her and holds his breath. When the door opens, Dream feels his heart stutter to a stop.

“Mom?”

She looks older than she used to but not by much. Salt-and-pepper streaks through her temple, and thin new wrinkles forming over her forehead. She still has his eyes; green and downturned at the corners. “Honey,” she says in that voice he’s known his whole life. “What’s going on?”

It’s in that moment that he debates telling her everything. It’s in that moment that all of his already weakened resolve almost crumbles, and him with it. He wants to sit on the step and lean his head on her shoulder, tell her how exhausted and confused and scared he is by everything. He wonders if she’d believe him, or if she’d think like George and beg him to go to a hospital.

He wonders if she still wears the same perfume. Three weeks before the swap, he’d bought her a new bottle for her birthday.

“Clay?” Her brow furrows. She pulls her purple robe tighter around her shoulders. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

He shakes his head. “No.” His throat feels scratched raw. “No. No, I just – needed something. For the video. Can I go up to my room?”

“Of course.” She looks him up and down. “What is it?

Dream just shrugs. “I’m gonna go check,” he dodges. “I’ll be — I’ll be quick.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass. “I can help you look,” she offers. “I don’t know if whatever you’re looking for will be there. Remember? We’re turning it into a guest room, a lot is probably boxed up.”

Dream freezes at the base of the stairs. “Oh,” he says, keeping his voice steady. “I forgot.”

“Well —” She looks up towards the landing. “Just be quiet. Your sister’s sleeping.”

“I will,” he assures quickly. “I will, I will.”

“And, Honey —”

Dream pauses three steps up. “Yeah?”

She frowns, mouth pressed into a pale line. “You’re sure everything’s okay?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. He feels the burn in his sinuses before it reaches his eyes. “Everything’s great.”

Being in this house is the closest he’s felt since the switch to being home even though, in his time, he hasn’t lived here for a few years. He knows it like the back of his hand still; how the sixth step from the bottom squeaks in the centre, the little pull in the carpet from where his mom had snagged her heel and ripped it up from its glue. They’ve fixed the railing where the paint had begun to peel, and he thinks the walls are freshly painted. The faint stains of the marker drawings of his childhood are no longer visible just above the trim at the landing.

The house still smells the same.

It’s sort of woody, and fresh like laundry detergent and soap. There’s a constant scent of food that fills the place — always changing but always recognizable as his mom’s cooking. The bedroom downstairs sits perpetually abandoned, a guest room they’ve talked about renovating for a few years now — longer, here — but never got around to doing. He’d seen it when he’d stepped inside. In his time, his little sister had taken to calling it the junk room . He wonders if she still does.

Her room sits one away from his, separated by a bathroom they’ve squabbled over sharing since she was old enough to get ready on her own. He peers inside, not flipping on the light but instead squinting against the dark to make out an array of products on the counter, hazy glass bottles of skincare and a small bag he thinks is probably makeup. He wonders when she started wearing it.

Her door is shut. His is cracked open. Behind it, he can see boxes against the walls and hesitates a moment before he steps inside.

It’s different. It’s more cluttered with boxes but less filled by him . He’d never really decorated, but there had been a few things on the walls — taped up poems, torn out pages of his dad’s sport magazines that displayed his favorite football players, a hook for jackets, a shelf packed with Percy Jackson books. The walls are empty now, and he knows it’s impossible, because he hasn’t grown since he was eighteen, but he feels taller now than he used to be. The ceiling feels closer but the marks on the doorway have long since been painted over and he can’t determine anything anymore.

Four days before the swap, he’d eaten dinner with his mom and sister. They’d asked about work, about his plans, about Sapnap and George. His sister asked what his next video was and he’d told her, and she’d told him you should show it to me early, and he’d said absolutely not.

They’d talked like everything was normal, like nothing world-altering would happen in the next few days. He can’t remember if he told his mom he loved her before he left, or if he’d hugged his sister for longer than a few seconds. He wonders if that was the last time he’d ever see them like that, at that age, that disposition. His sister is tall now. She’ll be taller than their mom soon. Here, she might be.

And if nothing ever changes, he won’t have watched her grow. He’ll have missed out on three years of her life. Important ages, important steps. It makes him feel sick to think about.

The bed doesn’t creak the same when he sits. The frame is new. The pillows feel different. He doesn’t find the relief he was searching for in them.

He heads back downstairs, casting one last look at the room behind him.

“Sorry for waking you up,” he says as he reaches the bottom of the stairs where his mother stands, eyes closed and leaning back against the wall.

She shakes her head, tutting quietly as she steps away. She holds out her arms. “Oh, it’s okay. I’m just happy to see you — you’ve been so busy.”

Dream sinks into her. “Yeah,” he breathes, letting himself feel small.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks curiously.

Dream closes his eyes. “No,” he whispers. “It’s whatever though.”

She pulls back. All at once, Dream feels like a child left sitting alone. He misses the smell of her perfume, even though she isn’t wearing any. The phantom scent lingers around him. He wants to beg her to hold him again.

“I’ll see you,” he says, a lump in his throat. “Love you.”

“I love you too,” she tells him, smiling. “Give my best to George and Nick. You should bring them next time, I’ll make lunch.” She laughs. “Come when it’s light out next time, sweetheart.”

“I will,” he promises, entirely unsure if he’ll keep it or not. “I will.”

—

The sun is rising when he drives past his old house on his way back to the other one. It’s well out of the way, but he’s aching for the familiar chipped paint on the white door, the windows he’s learned to keep covered. The rooms always feel too big but simultaneously too small for just him.

He parks curbside across from it and just looks. The door has been repainted, a robin’s egg blue instead of white, and the siding is all different. – or maybe it’s just the lighting. The windows are wide open for the summer night air, thin white curtains fluttering inside. From where he sits, he can hear a baby crying from within. Colorful flowers have been planted outside where once there was nothing but dying grass.

New life.

He wants the old so much more. He wants cramped walls and empty rooms and dying grass and oceans and everything, good and bad — the amazing and the horrible — that came with it. He wants the unmade bed and the half-assed soundproofing of his real house. He wants a cat who recognizes him. He wants to recognize himself.

He feels trapped here. It’s a claustrophobic feeling that rises in his throat and chokes him until he’s blue in the face. But at the same time, it’s like he’s seeing the world in colors he’s never been able to before, and part of him is scared for when it finally fades back to normal. He’s going to go home one day. That’s something he’s sure of, is desperate for. But there’s something deep in his stomach that longs for a life like this; the success, the money, the house, his friends living with him, George in America, George in their house, George in –

Stop, he tells himself, and pretends that the thoughts stop there.

—

He doesn’t remember getting home, nor does he remember falling asleep, but by the time he wakes up the sun is already well past its midpoint in the sky, and somebody is knocking on his door.

Sleepily, Dream raises his head. For a moment, his heart rate picks up as he takes in still-unfamiliar surroundings. For a moment, he’s scared by it but then he remembers everything , and the jolt feels like a bullet through his stomach. The morning light shines differently across the walls than it does at home. The sheets are softer against his skin. The bed is too big, and his heart sinks through to the deepest part of him.

Part of him had expected the old again. Part of him had been anticipating waking up slouched over his keyboard, face shaven and neck aching in a dark and quiet house. Here, he hears Sapnap’s music from down the hall, and the quiet rapping at his door.

“What?” he calls, rubbing his eyes. He can’t remember if he’d locked it last night.

“Dream?” George’s voice cuts through the remaining sleep clinging to his brain. “Is that you?”

Dream hesitates, unsure of what he’s asking. “Yeah?”

“Can I come in?” The handle jiggles, clicking open.

“Yeah,” Dream says again, pushing himself out of bed and running a hand through his hair in an attempt to make it halfway decent. It’s long. He’d forgotten.

The door opens. George steps through, closing it behind him. He looks ruffled, like he’s also just got out of bed. The white shirt he’s wearing is ruffled, and it drowns him. “How’d you sleep?” he asks.

Dream shrugs. “I dunno. I’m still tired.”

George squints at him, and then his face drops incrementally. “Oh.”

Dream feels seen-through. “What?”

“You’re –” he gestures vaguely towards him. “You’re still – whatever. Young.”

“You can tell just by looking at me?” Dream asks curiously. He wants to cover himself, even though he’s fully dressed.

George shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Oh.”

George frowns at him, eyes shifting to his throat, exposed by the dark grey undershirt he’s wearing. “You took off the chain.” He sounds hurt.

“Yeah.” Dream rubs at his neck, as if trying to create a barrier between his skin and George’s eyes. “Yesterday.”

“Oh.” George frowns. “I didn’t notice. Guess I haven’t been paying attention.”

“Yeah,” Dream says again, awkward. “Guess not. There’s been – a lot going on.”

George’s laugh is dry. “Yeah.”

They’ve never felt like this before. Dream wouldn’t know how to put the feeling into words if he tried. It’s a mix of over and under-familiarity, the quiet sense of I know you better than I know myself that emanates from George and the innate knowledge that neither of them know this version of each other at all.

They feel like friends, but all the warmth is only deja vu.

“You went out last night. Where’d you go?” George asks. It’s not accusatory, just curious.

Dream frowns. “To my mom’s. I wanted to see her, and to see – to see what’s changed since I’ve been whatever. ”

“Huh.” George doesn’t move from the doorway. “Cool. Well, you left the garage open.”

“Sorry.”

George waves a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Sapnap was just complaining. He wants to watch a movie.”

Dream hesitates. Being around them sounds exhausting, but he knows he’d better get used to it. “What movie?”

George shrugs. “Dunno. He’s making popcorn and ordering pizza.”

“Okay,” Dream gives in after a beat. “Cool.”

“Cool,” George repeats. He steps backwards towards the door. “I’ll – see you downstairs. He’ll just call whenever the food arrives.”

Dream nods, standing. He felt awkward sitting, like a child waiting to be scolded by his parents. George looks up at him, all dark and narrowed eyes.

“You’re staring at me.”

He has been. He hadn’t even realized. Dream reactively looks down to the floor, at his bare feet against the wood. “That’s a big shirt,” he observes.

George holds his arms out a bit from his body, glancing down at it like he’s just realized. “Yeah,” he says awkwardly. “It’s yours.”

“You usually wear my shirts?”

George shrugs, crossing his arms almost self consciously. “Sometimes,” he says. “I mean, we share almost everything.”

Dream grimaces. “Oh.”

George scoffs, and it sounds a little hurt. “No need to act disgusted by it.”

Dream frowns, a little offended that dream-George would think that. “I’m not. Obviously I don’t care if you’re, like, gay or whatever.”

He shivers, thinking back to the shower. It doesn’t mean anything.

George pushes a hand through his hair. “Great,” he says dryly. “I’m glad I have my boyfriend’s approval.”

Dream winces at that. “Sure,” he says, and looks away.

A pause.

“I can wear my own shirt,” George offers, something in his voice careful and muted. “Since it bothers you so much.”

Dream considers the offer, but it’s not like it really matters and the hassle is unnecessary. “No,” he decides. “It’s fine. Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay.” He still seems unsure. Dream hates how he can’t seem to navigate any of this correctly. It makes him feel big and clumsy, an oversized wreck in a china shop. He wants to say something and comes up blank.

George inhales, glancing backwards towards the door. “I’m gonna go,” he says, taking another step back. “Do you need anything?”

Dream shakes his head.

“Okay.” A beat. “Let me know, yeah?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“Come eat when the food gets here,” George tells him. It sounds like he’s giving him no other option. “And watch the movie. Shouldn’t be more than, like, ten minutes until pizza arrives.”

“Okay,” Dream says, looking everywhere but at him. “I will, I will.”

“Okay,” George echoes, and closes the door behind him.

Ten minutes later, all spent staring at the shut door, Dream’s phone buzzes with a message from Sapnap letting him know that food has arrived. When he heads downstairs, Sapnap excitedly begins telling him about the movie he’s chosen, and George isn’t there – something apocalyptic that’s unrealistic enough not to be scary but has good enough jumpscares to feel something. Dream goes to get water as he explains, fumbling around the cabinets as he searches for a glass until Sapnap asks dude, why are you acting like you don’t know where we keep shit? and points to the one above the switch for the garbage disposal.

George comes down stairs around 7pm, twenty minutes after the pizza arrives, which is long enough for Sapnap to start complaining about it. When he does, he’s wearing a different shirt. Dream tries not to act like he notices, but he can tell from the tension across George’s back that he knows he has.

They have a theater. Dream feels like nothing can surprise him anymore until he sees it. He remembers Sapnap talking about wanting one years ago, back when they were kids, because once he’d seen a show where the characters had a home theater. He wonders if that’s the reason why they built it. It’s a large, dark room with a projector casting white across the wall and rows of thick black chairs in front of it.

They sit next to each other, Dream sandwiched in the middle with his plate on his lap. Sapnap reiterates the movie information for George, who rolls his eyes when he reads the plot analysis out loud and Sapnap balls up his napkin and throws it over Dream’s head. It lands in his water and they all start laughing. George plucks out the soggy paper and drops it on the floor with a wet squelch, even as Sapnap tells him ew, don’t!

Dream thinks that things are best when it’s all three of them.

There are these sorts of moments, fleeting yet consistent, where everything feels good . There are moments, like these, where Dream thinks that he’s finally found a spot where he belongs, where he’d be content with staying forever. In his world, he’s sure this will happen eventually, but it might be temporary and he’s certain it won’t be a house this grand. They’ll meet one day, in his world, but he’s never put much thought into them living together.

It’s almost enough for him to forget about everything to do with George, and the way he’d looked in Dream’s shirts. The first shot of the movie is bathed in blue light and Dream keeps his eyes to himself, ignoring the movement out of the corner of his gaze as George absentmindedly rubs at his throat, hand dipping beneath the collar and drawing out a thin gold chain which he wraps around his finger. He looks sideways towards Dream, briefly meeting his eye, then drops the jewelry back beneath his shirt. Dream can’t help but wonder if there’s any sort of significance to the necklace, and he thinks he knows the answer.

You took off the chain.

It’s still sitting on the bathroom counter right where he’d left it. The metal will be cold by now, no longer heated by his skin like it was before he’d discarded it. He doesn’t wear jewelry. He doesn’t even know if he’d know how to put it back on.

But there’s no point in thinking about it. Part of him is still clinging to the hope that he’ll wake up tomorrow and be home – his home – again. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he’s decided to give it five days. If nothing changes after five days, then he needs to start trying to adjust. This is only day two, but it feels like it’s been a thousand years.

There’s a sudden roar as one of the creatures on screen jumps jolts to life, wrapped in white wires in some sort of lab – Dream hasn’t been paying attention. George starts, reaching seemingly instinctively for his arm, and Dream recoils into himself without meaning to, pulling his arm away. He throws a haphazard glance at Sapnap to see if he’d noticed, but his eyes are fixed on the screen, popcorn frozen halfway to his mouth.

George shrinks back, crossing his arms over his chest and sinking back into the large chair. He looks small amidst all the fabric. Ten minutes later, he leaves without a word.

Sapnap looks sideways at Dream, crushing the popcorn between his teeth. He raises his eyebrows, the expression caught somewhere between expectation and curiosity, before turning his attention back to the TV. Dream stays frozen to his seat.

On the screen in front of him, a building goes up in flames. The sound of screaming fills his ears and he wonders if they can turn down the volume. Before he can ask, Sapnap offers him the bowl of popcorn, knocking it against his elbow. Dream hesitates, unsure if he’s really allowed, and then grabs a handful.

Sapnap glances over at him. “This movie kinda sucks,” he says.

“Yeah,” Dream agrees. He hasn’t really been paying attention, but it’s loud.

“I kinda like it,” Sapnap tells him.

Dream laughs. “Me too.” It’s a nice distraction.

With that, Sapnap turns back to the screen. The orange lights reflect off the tip of his sharp nose and snare like a fox trap in his beard. Dream’s still unfamiliar with this new version of the boy he grew up with, but he recognizes him the most when he smiles at a stupid joke the lead makes.

He leans over, elbowing Sapnap in the arm until he passes the bowl of popcorn over and balances it between the arms of the oversized chairs. He laughs when Sapnap mimics a crying woman hysterically on the screen over something he’d missed, face scrunched up and cheeks red with the effort of reaching a scratchy falsetto, and he slaps his arm away when he jokingly yawns and stretches, sticking it into Dream’s personal space with a sideways grin.

It’s good. It feels weirdly natural.

–

Dream lingers behind when the movie finishes.

Sapnap bids him a passing goodnight and leaves the popcorn bowl in his now empty chair, declaring that because Dream was the last to eat out of it, then he should be the one to take it to the kitchen. Dream doesn’t care enough to argue. His mind is in a million places at once as he walks down the hall out to the dark kitchen. Somewhere upstairs he can hear Sapnap singing off key to some song he doesn’t recognize. He stares up at the hallway lined with their rooms, watching the light beneath Sapnap’s door flicker as he passes it.

“Dream?”

Dream whirls around.

George stares at him, half-hidden in the dark. He’s holding a glass of water. “It’s just me,” he says, voice softening.

“Just you,” Dream says, stepping back to put space between them. “Yeah, just normal you, who I see around all the time, right?”

“Oh, well.” George’s forehead wrinkles. “I didn’t mean to startle you. How was the movie?”

Dream shrugs, squinting at him. His eyes look red, but maybe it’s a trick of the light — or the absence of. Maybe he’s staring too hard. He looks away. “It was okay.”

“Cool,” George says, glancing down at his feet. “Patches is in my room, if you want her.”

“Are you okay?” Dream asks abruptly, cutting his last word in half.

George seems surprised by that. “Yeah?”

“You sure?” He wonders if he’s overstepping.

It’s like he can see the walls build themselves up in real time, eclipsing the frown that tugs at the corner of George’s mouth. His voice goes flat. “Yeah.”

There are things better left untested, and he thinks George’s resolve is one of them. He doesn’t ask again, but he gestures to the kitchen behind him. “Can I go get Patches? I just need to put this in the sink first.”

“I’ll wait.”

He steps aside to let Dream pass, even though there was plenty of space already. Dream hears his back hit the wall, like he’s pressing himself as far away from him as possible, like he’s afraid to get too close after Dream had yanked his arm away during the movie. His handprint is still seared into Dream’s flesh, the feeling of it like a phantom limb. It had seemed so natural to George to reach out like that, like he does it all the time. He probably does.

The water overflows the rim of the bowl and waterfalls loudly into the sink. He shuts off the tap and leaves it to soak. The oil from the popcorn shines in small bubbles off the top of the water.

They don’t talk as they ascend the staircase to the upstairs hall. Dream keeps his eyes down, locked in on the patterns of the stone flooring. If he stares long enough, he thinks he can see faces in it, swirling around beneath his feet.

George’s room is small. It’s small and barren and rather unimpressive. He has an empty laundry basket in the corner and a still-packed suitcase beside it. In it, Dream sees pieces of what he can only guess to be his own merch, all designs that he does not recognize.

“I guess she left,” George says from the doorway. “She was here before I went to get water. Look –” He walks over and lifts his pillow, where there’s a ring of white and brown cat hair stuck to it. “What an idiot. She’s trying to kill me.”

Dream awws softly. “She likes you.”

“She wants me dead . I hate her.” George drops the pillow back down, flipping it onto the clean side before he does. It hits the sheets with a thwack. He leans down and smacks it, leaving a handprint in the centre.

“She does that to me too,” Dream tells him, smiling at the thought, though it’s very nearly a memory. “Like, sleep on the pillow. It just means she likes hanging out with you.”

George makes a face. “She should hang out somewhere that won’t make my eyes hurt.”

“Huh?”

George pauses, midway through picking up that glass that he’d previously discarded on the crowded night stand. “Oh,” he says, like he’s just realized something. “I forgot that you don’t know. That’s so weird.”

Dream stares at him. “What?”

“I’m allergic to her,” George tells him. He grins at the surprised look Dream is certain must be plastered over his face. “Isn’t that epic? She’s trying to kill me.”

“ What? You literally have a cat at home,” Dream points out. “How are you allergic?”

George shrugs. “In England? Yeah, my mum has the cat but, like, I dunno. Maybe American cats are different.”

“Well, how bad is it?”

He shrugs again. “My eyes get itchy.”

“So you’re not dying,” Dream says, raising an eyebrow. “You’re just being a – a drama queen.”

George scoffs, rolling his eyes.

It’s at that moment that Dream spots his computer, turned to face the wall beside his bed. The screen flickers on with the sound of a Discord notification, casting warm light over the white paint. He tilts his head, stepping sideways to see it better. George traces his line of sight and reaches over to shut it, but not before Dream catches a glimpse of the smiling face of the body he’s wearing on the screen, with George beaming beside him. Hands close around his neck, squeezing tight against the sides of it. It’s a frame that’s wedged into his brain like shrapnel, that’s buried itself deep in his grey matter.

He wishes he could remember meeting George. It seemed like it was the happiest day of his life.

“She might be in the laundry room,” George tells him, tone suddenly much different. “She likes the wash.”

Dream tears his eyes away from the now evenly lit wall. He nods. “Okay.”

George’s gaze flickers behind him out towards the door, like it’s a suggestion. “Okay.”

Against his better judgment, he hesitates. “Were you crying?” he asks. “Earlier, before I saw you in the kitchen.”

“No.” It’s too fast. “Just allergies.”

There’s more he wants to say, but he isn’t sure what exactly. For a moment, he just stands there, hands hanging limply at his sides. He feels like a fool, too big and too stupid for anything but hurting others just by existing. George pointedly avoids looking at him. His hands are cradled within each other in front of his body and his mouth is drawn tight. He was crying just fifteen minutes ago, watching a first meeting that Dream never experienced.

“Okay,” Dream says, after a million years have passed and he’s grown old and grey. “Sorry.”

George shrugs, looking out towards the window like he wants to dive out of it. The dawn catches a gold chain half hidden beneath his white collar. It shines distractingly across the white line of his throat. “Whatever,” he says. “Go find Patches.”

“Okay,” Dream repeats dumbly, looking away. He steps backwards out, hitting his shoulder against the sharp edge of the doorframe and he winces. George takes half a step towards him. His arm twitches, as if wanting to reach out, but he doesn't.

“Laundry room,” George reminds him quietly, voice suddenly rough at the edges, like somebody has taken sandpaper to it. “If not, then under the stairs. You’ve seen the little room.”

“Right,” Dream says, looking down the hall behind him. “Do you want me to close the –”

George shakes his head, cutting him off before he finishes. “Go find her.” He sounds tired. “Goodnight, see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight,” Dream says, more a thoughtless echo than an actual response. For some reason, he half expects George to call for him as he leaves.

He doesn’t.

–

Dream feels haunted.

He feels trapped and like he can’t escape. Everywhere he looks, George is splashed all over. The laundry in the corner, the products in the shower, his phantom voice echoing around the halls, his plates in the kitchen, his things abandoned on the second night stand. He’s constant, a state of being that Dream is unwillingly living in. He’s been eaten alive by everything that he knows and everything he doesn’t – all the gaps of history in his scattered memories.

He googles Georgenotfound 2020 in the middle of the night, shamefully tucked under the covers. It’s a taste of familiarity. He’s all angles and short hair and chapped lips, sitting in a large black chair in front of the white bed that was only ever made when they were filming.

He watches old videos. Sapnap’s voice is squeakier. It breaks more often, and he never shows his face. George’s voice is softer, thinner. He looks boy-ish, small and angular and pale in a way that Dream never paid attention to back in his time. It’s striking next to photos of him now.

He’s quieter on camera too. He used to worry about bothering his mum or waking up the cat when it would sleep in his room. Now, three years later, they live in a mansion – Dream doesn’t know how else to describe it – with soundproofing on all their office walls. Nobody needs to worry about noise anymore, but Dream wonders if he’s still quiet when Patches is asleep.

There’s a lot he never noticed before. There’s a lot he wishes he could unsee.

The truth is written in all the small things; quiet laughs, the slight change in George’s tone when he speaks to Dream, all these little details Dream has never bothered to pick up on – things he doesn’t think he’d ever notice if he wasn’t being forced to confront them head-on.

You don’t know if he liked you then, he reminds himself. You don’t know anything about him. He’s not your George.

But it lingers. It’s a pervasive thought, stuck in the back of his mind like a thumbtack. He feels like he’s studying something, like he’s trying to learn the reason behind each of George’s expressions. He’s trying to look through him and coming up blank. He’s trying to hold light in the palms of his hands.

It’s like he doesn’t know him at all anymore. It’s like he knows far, far too much.

Tell me you love me, he used to joke back in his time. Come on, just say it. Tell me you love me.

You should marry me, George used to say, days before the switch. A visa is so hard to get. Just marry me and get me a Green Card.

He knows too much, and he’s never been more clueless in all his life. He can’t find it in himself to vocalize, to even believe his own thoughts as if he’s the unreliable narrator of a story he’d never intended to be a part of.

Tell me you love me, he’d said.

No. He can’t remember if George’s voice had shaken when he’d replied, or if his tone had soured. You’re being an idiot.

How am I the idiot?

It’s something like guilt. It feels something like being swallowed alive. The teeth close around him. How long has it been?

He first remembers George bringing up a visa marriage earlier that year, a few months before the switch. If anything happened beforehand, he can’t recall it. This version of them started dating – he doesn’t know. He’d never asked.

It strikes him then, that there’s a lot he hasn’t asked. It strikes him then, that he is not the only person affected by any of this, that this George has lost something by his being here. The spots where George’s fingers had grazed his arm while reaching for it burn .

He’d been crying up in his room. Dream knows it, somewhere deep in his stomach that churns and aches. He knows it was because of him, both the presence and the lack of. He’s never seen George cry before. He’s never even heard it, or heard stories about it.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he does what he always does when he doesn’t know what to do, and he calls Bad. Maybe, like his mother, he’s the same in every universe.

It takes five rings for Bad to answer. Dream counts all five on his fingers, lowering each as the sound rockets through his head.

“Hello?” He sounds awake, not like Dream’s mom had when he’d called her the night prior. From the quality of the mic, it’s clear he’s at his computer.

Dream breathes in the sound of his voice. “Hi,” he says, trying to keep himself steady. “Do you have a minute?”

“Yeah?” Something is set down. “What is it?”

“This is a weird — a weird question but I need you to tell me.”

Bad’s voice crackles through the headphones. “Yeah?”

“Am I —” he swallows. The words stick in his mouth like caramel, and they don’t taste half as sweet “— in love with George?”

A beat.

“I’d assume so.” He sounds amused, if not a little puzzled. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” A pause. “Is he in love with me?”

“Are you okay?” Bad asks, confusion growing. “What’s going on? Did you guys fight?”

“No,” Dream says quickly. “No, it’s not —”

Bad gasps. “Oh my Goodness – Dream!”

“What?” Dream asks, confused.

“Are you proposing?”

“What?” Dream lowers his voice, looking around as if fearing somebody else had heard. “What?”

“Dream.” Bad says his name sternly, the same way he always has. “Are you thinking about proposing?”

Dream’s head is spinning a million miles an hour. He sits down on the edge of the bed and hears the frame creaking beneath him. “No,” he says and, for the briefest of moments, he doesn’t believe himself. He wonders if the other him – the him from this world – had said something before the switch that had inspired this type of reaction. He wonders if, somewhere in the depth of his closet, there’s a velvet box hidden amongst socks. He thinks about getting married, and then he thinks about marrying George .

Up until just then, he’s only ever imagined high church windows and a black suit and a white dress. Up until just then, he’s never wondered if he’s been planning for the wrong thing. He stares down at his hands.

“What’s going on?” Bad asks, sounding utterly confused. “Are you okay?”.

“Bad–” he grits his teeth. “Please just answer the question.”

“What was the question?”

Dream looks up at the ceiling. He takes a deep breath. “Is George in love with me?”

“What happened?” Bad asks again.

“Nothing,” Dream insists, rubbing his forehead. “No, Bad. We’re fine. I just need you to tell me yes or no.”

“Oh, you know he loves you,” Bad tells him, voice softening. “Whatever’s going on, you should talk to him about it. You know he’d do anything for you.”

The air rushes out of his lungs. “Really?”

“Dream!” The concern picks up a notch. “What’s going on with you? Of course he would, you muffinhead!”

Dream presses past. “Okay, so – do you – do you know how long he’s been like that? In – in love with me?”

“Uh.” He can hear Bad thinking, wheels turning in his head. “Why don’t you just ask him?”

Dream swallows. “It’s not that simple.” His voice comes out very small. “Do you know?”

“No.” A beat. “I could guess but – why isn’t it that simple?”

“It just isn’t.” His voice comes out frost-bitten. He hadn’t intended for it to and the guilt swarms him like flies, feasting on the raw parts. “Sorry. It just isn’t. I can’t explain. What’s your – what’s your guess?”

A pause.

“Talk to him,” Bad says plainly. “Dream, he will talk to you. If you’re worried about something or if something happened, you can talk to him.” He hesitates. “But you aren’t proposing. That’s what you said?”

Dream laughs. It’s not humorous, more an excuse to let tension release in the heavy breath. “I’m not.”

Is this version of them really at a place where Bad feels the need to ask? The thought makes his heart feel tight and stuck, wedged between his ribs and pinching painfully.

“Okay,” Bad says, still sounding confused. “Just double checking. Maybe wait a little longer before you start thinking about that.”

Dream groans. This conversation, knowing that this is a world where him proposing is a viable option, is making his head hurt. “Please stop.”

Surprisingly, Bad does. “Okay,” he says simply. “Go talk to him.”

“Now?” Dream checks the time in the upper corner of his laptop. 3:36am. “He’s probably sleeping.”

A beat. Dream can hear him typing from the other side, fingers clicking against the keyboard. “No, he’s active on Discord.”

Dream’s stomach flips. “Oh.”

“Talk to him, you muffinhead,” Bad says again, more insistently. “You’re being – a muffinhead.”

“A muffinhead,” Dream repeats thoughtlessly, rubbing his eyes. “Fuck. Fuck. Fine.”

“Language,” Bad chides without any meaning behind it, like it’s a reflex. “He’s awake. Go do it.”

Dream’s heart rate picks up, thudding against the inside of his ribs like it wants to get out. He wonders where it would go if it did.

Just down the hall , part of him says. Follow it.

“Should I?” he asks.

“You shouldn’t go to sleep upset,” Bad tells him. “Isn’t that something people always say you shouldn’t do?”

Dream frowns. “How should I know?” He wonders if they’ve ever mentioned it before.

Bad just sighs.

“Okay,” Dream gives in. He can’t tell if he’s done so due to Bad’s pressure or if there’s just a part of him desperate to do so anyways. “Thanks, Bad. Love you.”

“Aw,” Bad replies, voice softening. “I love you too.”

Dream hangs up. For a long moment, he sits in the quiet dark as his screen blinks to black. For a long moment, he feels like he’s made of marble, something solid and heavy that cannot be moved, and then he stands. He regards the door with hesitation, like he’s scared of what’s lying on the other side of it. In a way, he is. Then, he crosses the room and steps out into the dark hall.

George’s light is off. No noise seeps beneath the heavy door. Maybe Bad was wrong. Maybe he’d just fallen asleep with his laptop or his phone on and that’s why it showed him being online. Maybe it’s safer for Dream to head back and not risk waking him, or maybe he’s just trying to claw at the last remaining reasons to slip away and hide again.

He knocks.

Silence.

He knocks again.

“It’s unlocked.” The voice is muffled and disinterested. Dream almost turns away right then. Every part of his brain is screaming at him to, like his fight or flight has kicked in and chosen to run. He can’t outrun this. It would be like trying to outrun his own shadow.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake,” Dream says awkwardly, pushing the door open.

George shuts his laptop. He’s barely visible in the dark. “Well, I am.”

“It’s late,” Dream says.

“Yeah,” George agrees. He sets the computer aside and flicks on a lamplight. “I haven’t been sleeping lately.”

“Oh.”

George smiles up at him. It looks tired. “Why are you just standing there? You can come in, you know.”

Dream hesitates. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Okay.” George gestures to the bed. “You can sit.”

Dream sits. George moves over to make room for him. In another life, he doesn’t, and they let their shoulders touch – maybe they even welcome it.

“What do you want to know?” George asks, picking off cat hair from the sheets.

Dream hesitates. “How’d we get together? You and your Dream?”

George looks up at him, his expression not quite one of surprise. “How’d we get together?” he repeats. “Wasn’t really anything special.”

“It wasn’t?”

He shrugs. “Not really.”

“Can you tell me?” Dream presses. He doesn’t want to think too hard about why he wants to know.

George sighs. “There’s not much to tell. We talked about it, like, more than a year ago. We just decided to wait until we were living together for anything to — start.” A beat. “We don’t really have, like, an anniversary but if we did it would be late December. Near Christmas.”

“December,” Dream repeats. “But you moved in October?”

George nods.

“So —” he pauses. “Why not then?”

“I dunno.” He picks at his sock, pulling a tuft of cat hair off of it. “We needed time. Why are you awake?”

Dream just shrugs. “I wasn’t tired. I feel like – I haven’t really talked to you. I wanted – I wanted to.”

George’s face softens. “Oh.”

“Were you crying earlier?” Dream asks softly. “Out in the kitchen?”

George’s eyes fall to the sheets. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “But it doesn’t matter.”

It feels like Dream’s bones are aching, like the hurt and guilt has burrowed so deep that it’s infected his marrow like a disease. He doesn’t quite know what to say, so he says nothing.

“Are you alright?” George asks, squinting at him. “It’s a – it’s a lot.”

Dream shrugs. He resents the question. He hates George’s care for him, swaddling and warm like a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and he hates that he doesn’t know how to give that same type of care back. He hates Bad’s words, hanging over him like a cloud above his head.

You know he loves you.

Dream stares down at his hands, resting on his thighs. His fingers curl upwards like the legs of a dead spider – useless. He counts each one of them, from one to ten, because he needs to be grounded right now. He needs to keep his head on his shoulders, even though it feels like the whole world is spinning while he stands still.

George’s eyes are still locked on him, too dark, too worried, too caring. He doesn’t think he’s ever been looked at like that before. “Dream?”

“Yeah,” Dream says. His voice sounds out of place, too rough and too big. “It’s a lot. Like you said, it’s just a lot.”

“Okay.” A beat. “Maybe you should get some rest.”

“I don’t want to.” Dream feels like a child, pouting and petulant, and George feels so much older than he is.

“Dream.”

Dream shuts up. His heart pounds in his chest. The walls of the room shake with it, dust falling from the ceiling. George watches him, his hands folded in his lap. He’s tracing his right fingers over the back of his left hand, some type of self-soothing motion.

“Get some rest,” George tells him, quieter. “It’s, like, quarter-till-four.”

Dream sighs, unwilling to leave when this feels the closest he’s been with George since the switch. He can’t describe it, but he’d just missed his friend

He’s not your friend, a little voice in the back of his head reminds him. This version of him is more than that.

“Can I just stay here?” Dream asks, trying to swallow the thought back. It goes down like swallowing your own teeth. “For ten more minutes?”

For a moment, George looks surprised by the request, but then his face softens. “Yeah,” he says. “Do you want to lay down?”

Dream isn’t sure if that’s the answer he’d wanted to hear. He doesn’t know what he wants at this point, but he knows above all else that he doesn’t want to be alone. He just nods and George moves over quietly, and Dream finds a space beside him and lays down. It feels like walking on crushed eggshells, like all the damage is done and they’re just trying to live despite it.

It’s then that he realizes George moved over onto the left side. He can’t recall ever mentioning anything about preferring the right, but he supposes it makes sense that he wouldn’t have to. It stabs through his heart like a dagger, how George knows all these little pieces of him. Some of them seem like things he hasn’t even learned about himself.

The bed creaks as George lays down. His weight draws a dent in the mattress. Dream feels pulled into it, like a sinkhole or something magnetic. He stares at the blank wall and listens to George breathe. It feels like time crawls, wounded and bloodied, dragging its haunches heavily behind it. He listens to the wind in the trees. He wonders why they chose to live in a forest.

He hears George roll over. When he looks backwards, he’s staring at the ceiling, eyes reflective like those of an owl, watching the light shift across the white paint. Dream mirrors him, folding his hands over his stomach and looking up at the where the shadows converge towards the corners of the square room.

George glances sideways at him, as if checking to see that he’s still there. As if expecting him not to be. His arms are tucked around his midsection, thumbs rubbing against his own ribs in that same self-soothing motion as before.

“I’m sorry,” Dream whispers, watching him.

“Why?” George asks.

“Because you miss him,” Dream says. “Because you’re sad.”

George’s eyes soften. “It’s not your fault,” he assures, voice so delicate Dream feels like he could break it if he’s not careful, as if it were the hollow bones of a baby bird or a particularly thin olive branch extended out to him. “You just want to get home too.”

“You’re already home,” Dream points out softly. “This is your house.”

George rolls onto his side, the sharp line of his shoulder cutting through the night light outside their window. “I guess,” he says, and nothing more.

Dream feels like there’s a smoking gun laying beside him on the sheets. Once again, he becomes horrifyingly aware that the skin he’s wearing isn’t really his, just his to parade around in like a borrowed t-shirt. He’s a ghost filling the body of somebody who means so much to George, and he’s unable to play the part that he can tell George wishes he would.

He’s trying to be somebody he’s not, and George is trying to be okay with it. They’re both just actors, and they both know it.

“He’ll come back.” George’s voice breaks at the edges.

Dream rolls over to face him.

“He will,” George says again, jaw set. “I know he will.”

Sometimes, in moments like these, Dream thinks he’s trying to. He thinks that future-him is buried alive somewhere beneath his skin, trying to brute force his way out of the ground and reach out to George. Sometimes, in moments like these, with George’s stubbornness painted all over his face and his eyes shining in the dark, it’s like he almost wins.

Because George’s hand, pale and soft, is laying beside his face, thumb and pointer finger rubbing together absent-mindedly, and that future-Dream in now-Dream’s chest wants to burst through and take it. Or maybe, Dream fears, maybe it’s not his future reaching through. Maybe it’s just him. Maybe he’s misattributing the feeling because he’s scared of how big it is.

“You should tell me about him,” Dream says quietly. “I feel like – I feel like I don’t know him at all.”

George’s gaze flickers up. “He’s just you.”

Dream shakes his head. “He’s a whole different person.”

George sighs. It echoes around the cold corners of the room. “He’s just like you, but more. I don’t know how to describe it.” He squints at Dream, as if evaluating him. “I think he’s happier.”

Dream closes his eyes.

“He’s just as much of an idiot,” George tells him, and Dream can hear him smiling. “Maybe more. It’s weird to be, like, looking at your – his face and not talking to him. Is it weird for you to see me?”

Dream raises one shoulder. “Not really. I think you look different enough that I can, like, separate you from my – my time’s George. Same with Nick.”

George nods solemnly, then grins. “He got grosser. His hair is worse.”

“That’s so mean!” Dream scolds, laughing. He pushes himself up, leaning sideways against the wall. “He wears more hats now though. And more, like, anime merch. Tell me more about – about everything. When did you apply for the visa?”

George swallows, eyes flickering up to the wall. “Late November, I think. Twenty-twenty-one. It got accepted in September.”

“It got denied,” Dream says quietly. “That’s what you said in the video. Why?”

“Issues with the paperwork.”

“Oh.” Dream frowns.

George looks over at him. “I never saw you at twenty,” he says out of the blue. “I was thinking about it. You said that me and Sapnap look different. I don’t know if you do.”

“I never took many pictures,” Dream admits quietly. “But you could ask Nick. He saw me.”

George makes a face. “I’m not asking him. That’s weird.”

“It’s not weird,” Dream disagrees. “He’d probably just lie though. He’d say I was, like, four feet tall and had pink hair.”

“Yeah,” George agrees, but he looks thoughtful.

Dream sighs. “Yeah.”

A beat.

“I feel like I look so different,” George tells him. “I was – I was looking at old pictures my mum sent from around my birthday. I feel like I don’t look the same at all.”

“I don’t think it’s that drastic,” Dream tells him. “But I told you already that you do look different.”

“I know,” George says quietly. “Maybe I just feel different.”

Dream watches him pull the blanket higher up over his shoulders. “I know you posted that vlog, but what did you think when we FaceTimed? Was it – what did you actually think? Seeing me for the first time.”

George shrugs. “I thought you were perfect.”

He says it so casually. Dream feels like he’s choking on the way his voice wraps around each word.

“I’m not perfect.”

“I know,” George says, simple as that. “But I think you are.”

“Why?” Dream whispers. “But why? ”

George looks over at him out of the corner of his eye. “Just take the compliment.”

Maybe he should. Maybe he should just change the subject.

“So,” he says, clearing his throat. “If I go back –”

George cuts him off. “ When ,” he corrects quickly. “You will.”

Slowly, Dream nods. “ When,” he repeats, even though he only half believes it. “When I go back, I won’t see you for almost three years.”

“Two-and-a-half,” George says, nodding. His tone switches to one dripping with fake optimism. “It’ll fly by.”

“Will it?” Dream asks curiously.

A beat.

“No.” He laughs. It tastes bitter, like unripe fruit. “It’ll feel like infinity. Infinity years.”

“What was it like? I know that — I watched some stuff about Nick going to London. It seemed like it was hard on everyone.”

George shrugs. “Yeah, it was. You just get through it though. Everybody said it would be worth the wait.”

Dream watches him. “Is it?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Get some rest, Dream.”

Dream rolls over, facing the opposite wall. He draws his arms inward towards his body, wrapping them around himself. He hears George do the same. He sits with the silence, and he aches. It’s something deep in the back of his throat, stuck sideways in his airway like a pill turned to the side. He can’t quite swallow it.

This isn’t his body. This isn’t his body, or his house, or his George, but there's a dark and horrible want for it all to be. He needs to get home. More than anything he wants to get home, to see his sister and his mom and his cat, to breathe in the comforting familiarity of the much smaller house – one where he knows where they keep their water glasses. Still, the thought of leaving this place behind has begun to sting like a thousand hornets. The venom is running through his blood. It feels like fear, and he’s not quite sure what he’s afraid of.

The answer is behind him, curled up on a mattress the size of the world.

He speaks into the nothingness. “George?”

Fabric shifts as he sits up. “Yeah?”

“I talked to Bad earlier.” He feels like he’s being suffocated, like the ceiling is caving down on him.

“Did you?” George sounds curious. “What about?”

Dream squeezes his eyes shut. It feels like he can’t inhale all the way. On the wall, in the faint window light, he can see the shadow of his body painted on the wall like it belongs there, welded into George’s smaller one behind him.“I was watching a bunch of old videos from – from my time, and I was wondering something. I needed to ask him something.”

Silence. He can hear George waiting behind him.

He can’t roll over. He can’t look at him. He can’t even look at his shadow. The fear of an answer he already knows all the words to rises like sick in his throat, burning and joking and nauseating. He stares down at his hands, dangling limply off the side of the bed. He counts each unmoving finger, trying to find something grounding in them, trying to hold himself to reality.

One. Two. Three.

Dream takes a deep breath and chokes on it. His lungs fill with smoke. “I asked him if you were in love with me.”

Four. Five. Six.

He rolls over.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

George frowns, tilting his head. The window light catches his dark hair and colors it silver. “Huh.”

Ten.

“Are you?” Dream asks. Bad’s words press heavily into his chest.

Oh, you know he loves you.

George doesn’t speak.

You know he’d do anything for you.

“Your Dream,” Dream clarifies just to fill the silence. “Are you in love with him?”

George scoffs and it rattles through his lungs. “Those are two different things.”

“Do you love him?” he repeats, holding his breath.

A beat.

“Yeah.”

Dream shivers. “Are you in love with him?”

Another pause. This time for longer.

“Yeah,” George says again. He picks at his nail.

The weight of the confirmation drops like a building onto his chest. He hears his lungs pop , but the way George says it is almost easy. It’s the only thing that is.

“Do you–” Dream hesitates, wondering if he’s pushing it too far. His heart is going to break through his chest, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. It’s going to stain the sheets. They’ll never get the red out, no matter how hard they try. “How long?”

He’s never wanted to know something less. He’s never needed to know something so desperately.

George shifts beside him. His discomfort fills the room, floor to ceiling, door to window. Dream can’t help but choke on it. He was taught to get close to the ground in the event of a fire, where the oxygen will be cleaner. He wants to hide under the bed until it all goes away.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Dream frowns. “Matters to me.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” George repeats with a finality. “Who cares?”

“I do.”

George shrugs, and crosses his legs. “You don’t need to know.”

“Why not?” His heart races in his chest.

George sighs. “Because you don’t. Idiot. It’s late. Go to sleep.”

“I can’t imagine him as you,” Dream confesses, sitting up to face him. “I just can’t see it. He’s not – I don’t think we’ll ever be – this . What you – what you and your Dream have. I don’t think either of us are like that. I don’t even know for certain if I’m — whatever .”

Whatever.

George’s eyes flicker to the ceiling, hands clasped in his lap. For a moment, he looks like some great religious carving, gaze cast upwards to heavens out of reach. For a moment, Dream wants to grovel at his feet and sing reverence and beg him to tell him how everything, unconditionally, will work out in the end, but he can’t ask George to lie to him like that. Neither of them really know anything.

“You’d be surprised,” George tells him after a minute. “Sometimes things just sort themselves out.”

Dream swallows, shaking his head. “Not for me.”

George’s mouth purses into a tight, thin line. He doesn’t respond.

“I want to go home,” Dream tells him.

“I know.” George stares at the bedsheets. “This is really weird. It’s like I’m talking to you – him – but I’m not. But I am”

Dream takes a deep breath. “How do I make it easier?” he asks. “When I do go home. How do I make it easier for us? All of us, not just you and me, but with work and everything else.”

George shakes his head, reaching sideways for the glass water bottle sitting on the nightstand. “I don’t know. I think – things happen because they have to happen that way, you know? What if you change one thing and suddenly the whole future is different?”

“Butterfly effect,” Dream says quietly, thinking about it. How maybe he’ll forget to feed Patches one morning and the next thing he knows, his whole career falls through and none of this ever comes to be. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” George echoes, like he’s realizing something. “Yeah. Butterfly effect.”

Maybe I’ll spill water on the table and you won’t love me anymore, Dream thinks. Maybe I’ll open a window and you won’t want to live with me, or maybe I’ll sleep too long one day and this house will never have been built.

“I want to go home,” he says again.

George looks over at him. He takes a sip of water. “Yeah?”

“I want to go home,” Dream repeats, louder, like he can click his heels three times and wake up in 2020 again. “I want to go back to my life.”

“I want you to go home too,” George tells him, forehead wrinkling. “Not because I want you gone, but–”

“– You want your me back,” Dream finishes, painfully knowing. “Yeah.”

George sets the water bottle back on the nightstand. “Yep,” he confirms, popping the P . “But also, it’s like — it’s not meant to be like this for you. You’ve got your own me, in your time.”

“Really?” Dream clings on to every word. “Do you think he’s waiting for me?”

George nods. “Yeah.”

“But you can’t know that.” Even as he says it, Dream knows how stupid it sounds. Of course he knows; he’s the only one who can.

George doesn’t respond. Dream watches his eyes flicker up to the spiderweb in the corner of the room, collecting dust and turning black in the shadows. He watches him breathe, the way the light shifts across his shoulders as they rise and fall with his chest.

“Is he actually?” Dream whispers, and he’s terrified of the answer. He’s not sure he’ll believe it when he hears it. “Is he actually waiting for me?”

George’s eyes shift to him, momentarily piercing his skin like a hook at the end of a line. Dream feels like Atlas, like he’s holding up planets by meeting them for the briefest of seconds before they slide away again. George stares at the window over his head like he’s searching for rapture in the wide blue sky.

“He is.”

Dream closes his eyes. He squeezes them shut until his forehead wrinkles and his nose scrunches up. For a moment, he can feel the rectangular shapes of a keyboard against his cheek, and then he opens them again and he’s sitting in George’s – and George’s Dream’s – bedroom again, and the whiteboard still reads 2023, and there’s still a scar on his knuckle.

“Dream?” George watches him with narrowed eyes.

“Where did I get this?” Dream asks, holding out his hand. “Here?”

George reaches out to him, and then freezes. There’s a moment where he looks up at Dream in expectation of his reaction, as if predicting him pulling away before the thought had even crossed his mind. When he doesn’t, George gently takes it. His fingertips draw against the underside of his palm, dragging it lightly towards him.

“This?” he asks, brushing a thumb over the slightly pinker skin.

Dream nods.

“I asked you about it once,” George tells him, smiling as he recalls. “I can’t – I can’t actually see it because it’s pink but –” he shrugs. “I could always feel it. It’s rough.”

“Can’t see it?”

George looks up at him with a sort of tired expression. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Colorblind. He doesn’t know how he’d forgotten. “So, what happened?” he asks softly. “What did I say?”

George lifts his hand closer to his face, brows furrowing as he searches. “Your hands get dry. The skin just cracked too many times. I carry – whenever we travel, I make you bring a – a mini hand lotion. Like the type from hotels. Do you want some?”

Silently, Dream nods.

George sits back, reaching behind the lamp on the bedside table. He pulls out a small purple tube, emblazoned with a bouquet on the front. “It’s lavender,” he says, unscrewing the cap. “We took it from an Airbnb in LA. Smell.”

Dream leans in to smell it. “It’s nice,” he says. It surprises him that he likes it; he’s never worn anything that smells like flowers before. “I like it.”

“Give me your hand,” George says. “Let me.”

He doesn’t know who he’d be to resist.

George’s hands are small. They’re small and they’re gentle and they’re soft. His whole fist wraps around two of Dream’s fingers, engulfing them in smooth and pale skin. There’s a freckle on the back of one of them. Dream wonders if it’s always been there and he’s just never noticed before. He wonders if they go all the way up his arms, spinning constellations against his back, or if they stop at his biceps.

“There,” George says, patting the back of his hand. “You should keep this on your side. I don’t really use it.” He offers the lotion tube, now oily with its own product.

Dream takes it. “Thanks,” he says quietly. “Thank you.”

“You have a scar above your eye, you know,” George tells him as he settles back against the wall. “The left one.”

“I know,” Dream says, touching his own face to feel the slight divot in skin. “What happened?”

George looks sideways at him. “You sleepwalked – sleptwalked? – at TwitchCon and hit your head. It was crazy. There was, like, blood everywhere.”

“Sleepwalked,” Dream says. “Really? Are there pictures?”

George shrugs. “They’d be on your phone. Check Snapchat.”

Dream reaches half-heartedly for his phone. When it proves itself out of reach, he sighs. “Whatever. I’ll check tomorrow.”

George laughs softly, shaking his head. “You sound so much like you sometimes. Like him.”

Dream wants to apologize again. It feels like he’s appropriating a space he’s not meant to fill. Instead, he just breathes. Beside him, George does the same.

“Are you scared?” Dream asks into the darkness. His voice echoes.

George shifts beside him. “Yeah.”

He sighs. “Me too.”

“What about?”

You.

“Not going home,” Dream tells him. “I don’t want to be stuck here forever. I want – I miss my life. It’s so – it’s good here. It’s great, but I haven’t – it’s not what I thought it would be. And I haven’t earned it.”

He hears George roll over. “You have,” he says. Dream can tell his frowning by the way he speaks. “This is your life.”

“But I’m missing so much,” Dream whispers. “I’ve missed so much.”

George doesn’t reply.

“What are you scared of?” Dream asks.

Silence.

“George?”

“Nothing,” he says.

Dream frowns. “Nothing?”

“Yeah.” A hand brushes against his elbow. “I’m not scared of anything. I was lying then.”

“You’re lying now .” Dream turns over to face him. It feels like falling off the edge of a building straight into the centre of the universe.

His George is something familiar and safe. This George – sleepy eyes and long wavy hair, newfound freckles across the bridge of his familiar, sharp nose, skin flushed and tanned – is like a man ripped open, all his softness and vulnerability spilling out red across the sheets. He’s everything dangerous for Dream and, still, Dream reaches through the universe and touches his arm.

“What are you scared of?” Dream repeats. He feels his pulse beating under soft skin. It feels heightened, despite how tired he appears.

George shrugs. His Adam’s apple jumps. “I dunno.”

“Yeah, you do.”

He closes his eyes like he’s falling asleep. “Mm. Not important.”

Dream nudges him. “Tell me,” he pries. “I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of.”

“You already did,” George points out, blinking up at him. “Idiot.”

Dream laughs softly. He should roll over. He should resume staring at the shadows dancing across the ceiling. He should look away.

“There’s more,” he tells George. “There’s a lot more.”

That gets his attention.

“Yeah?”

Dream stares at him. “Tell me first.”

“Creepers.” George nods.

“Creepers?” Dream repeats, lost.

“I’m scared of Creepers,” George tells him seriously, but he doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Like in Minecraft. What are you afraid of?”

Dream scoffs. “You know that’s not what I was asking.”

“Then what were you asking?”

Dream hesitates. George watches him intently, dark gaze stripping him from the skin to bone. “What are you scared of?” he asks again, voice shaking on the offbeat. “Here.”

“Here?” George licks his lips. “Nothing.”

“Tell me the truth,” Dream whispers. “Please.”

George stares at him. He’s barely breathing, shoulders so tense that it looks like he’s undergone rigor mortis. Dream watches him. He doesn’t feel like he has the strength to look away.

“I can tell you,” George whispers. “But you have to act like I didn’t say it.”

“I will,” Dream promises. “What is it?”

A pause.

“Everything.”

Dream feels his breath catch in his throat. “Why are you scared of everything?”

“I want him back,” George tells him, as if the words are being torn out of his throat with wolf’s teeth. “I’m worried that he won’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Dream breathes, suddenly acutely aware that he is not, in fact, George’s Dream , and suddenly struck by how much he wishes he were. “I want him to come back too.”

George rolls over. He draws his arms in around himself and stares at the ceiling. Dream can’t bring himself to look away. He wants to press, but he doesn’t think he has the right to. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to reach in and ask for when all he’s done is take and take and take and take and take and –

“I’m scared of everything too,” he says instead. “I just want to go home.”

“You will.” It’s softly reassuring, uncertain yet strong-willed.

“I’m scared of going home,” Dream tells him. His voice breaks. “What if it changes everything? What if –”

George looks sideways at him, eyes narrowing in question.

“The butterfly effect,” Dream says quietly. It’s enough.

George sits up. He stares down at Dream for a long moment, searching through him as if shuffling through a deck of cards. Dream wonders what he’s looking for. He wonders if he finds it.

“I don’t think it matters.”

Dream frowns. “Huh?”

George shrugs. “Nothing is going to change. It’s not like we’d know if they did anyways. I won’t – exist when you go back. If you remember it, then nothing will change. If you don’t, then we won’t know if anything does.”

And Dream doesn’t know how to tell him the monstrous fear rising inside him. He doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s scared of going home – to his time – and leaving the screen door open to get fresh air and having his whole life shift. He can’t tell him how he’s afraid that he forgets to water the plant sitting in the corner of his office and maybe, just maybe, his George won’t love him anymore, how he’s terrified that he’ll end up alone in the end of all things, because perhaps he forgot to put a sticky note on the fridge to remind him to buy apples.

But he doesn’t need to.

He doesn’t need to because George reads his mind and touches his face. He brushes his hair away, and it feels like he’s passing the world through his fingertips. It feels like all the warmth in the universe is buzzing through his skin. Dream swears it burns. He swears that it prickles, like needlepoint or electricity, and that gold chain around his neck is burning in the soft light, and –

“I’m not going to leave,” George tells him. “Me and Sapnap. We won’t. No matter what.”

“Okay,” Dream whispers. He trusts him. “Don’t.”

“I won’t,” George promises. “I don’t think the universe decides anything anyways.”

Dream frowns. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

Dream swallows. “What do you believe in then?”

George shrugs. “Me,” he says simply. “What else is there?”

“Okay.” Dream exhales. “I think I believe in you too.”

George just smiles.

Dream sits up. He moves closer. George’s eyes flicker down.

He’s tempting fate. He’s tempting his own sanity, leading it to a breaking point. The question is poised between his teeth. Desperate curiosity slithers along his shoulders egging him on.

“You love me?” Dream whispers.

George’s eyes are half-lidded. “Yeah.”

Dream hesitates. His canine cuts through the soft flesh of the forbidden fruit, and George watches him. He bites down. Sweetness explodes along the edges of his tongue. He swallows, and –

“Are you in love with me?” he asks, and holds his breath. “Him, at twenty.”

And –

“Yes,” George breathes. “That’s the problem.”

“I think —” Dream chokes. “I think I want to kiss you.”

And George’s face crumples. There’s a moment where Dream wishes he could suck the words back into himself, but then George reaches up, and he touches his face with soft, caring hands, and he pulls his head down. Dream goes willingly. He can’t breathe.

George’s lips press against his forehead. And he says, mumbling against clammy skin, “this isn’t how it’s supposed to be for you.”

Dream falters. “How’s it supposed to be?”

“Different.” George sits back. His eyes are wet, shining in the window light. “Just different. Everything is different.”

Dream tries to understand. He tries to remember that everything George knows dwarfs even his own knowledge of himself. He tries not to feel hurt by it.

“How much do you miss him?” Dream asks quietly.

George rubs his sleeve across his face. “Like a limb.”

“I’m not –” Dream hesitates. His chest aches, like somebody has dug claws into the delicate framework of his heart. “I’m not trying to be a replacement.”

“I know,” George tells him. He sounds exhausted. “Neither am I.”

“Is that why you won’t kiss me?”

George looks up at him. “I dunno. You’re not – you and my Dream are separate. It would feel –” he cuts himself off, shrugging. His eyes gleam in the soft light. “I – love – I love you because you’re him, but I don’t – I can’t explain it.”

And Dream understands, as much as he resents it. He’s not George’s Dream. He never will be, even if he stays here for a hundred years. In his world, he will grow to be him. In this one, he won’t. Somewhere, he feels relief. He doesn’t know if he wants to be George’s Dream. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to entertain the part of himself that does.

“Can I hug you?” he asks.

George looks out towards the window and nods. Dream can see his chin tremble just slightly as he raises an arm. Dream hesitates for a moment before leaning into him. He’s warm and angular, but still soft. There’s something uncannily familiar about him, the way he smells and the way he feels. It’s something he can’t quite place, but it feels safe.

“I’ve never hugged you before,” Dream whispers into his shoulder. “I’m not going to be able to for another two-and-a-half years.”

George lets out a quiet, muffled sound into his shoulder. It’s something like a sob. “I know.” Then; “I hate how much you feel like him.”

Dream squeezes his eyes shut, trying to blink back to burning. “I hate it too,” he whispers. “I want to be me again.”

“You’re always you.” George rubs his back. “Just like I’m always me.”

“I’m not your Dream,” he reminds him, like he’d somehow forgotten. George’s body tenses against his.

“Yes you are,” he murmurs. “You always are.”

“Please don’t say that,” Dream whispers. “It makes me feel guilty.”

“Why?” George pulls back.

It strikes him when he breaks the embrace; he smells like Dream’s toothpaste, the same one he uses back home. He wonders if he just switched over when he moved. He wonders if that change felt natural, or if he misses whatever type he used to use.

“Why would it make you feel guilty?” George asks again, soft.

Dream can hardly look at him, but he forces himself to. “Because that means my George is waiting for me.”

George’s gaze softens, all summer sunlight and cashmere and the warmth of his hand as he reaches out to take Dream’s. “He can wait,” he assures. “It won’t kill him.”

“Two-and-a-half years,” Dream whispers. His eyes burn. “I won’t see him for two-and-a-half years if I go home.”

He doesn’t know when when became if.

“I survived two-and-a-half years,” George points out. “My Dream did too.”

“You said it was miserable,” Dream says.

George shrugs. “Yeah. And we got through it. There are plenty of miserable things.”

“I don’t want to be one of them.” The thought makes him feel caged in, claustrophobic of a reality that he’s not even sure exists.

George’s eyes soften. “You’ve never been one of them.”

“I’m gonna see you in the future,” Dream promises him. He isn’t certain, but he thinks he might be crying now.

George heaves in a deep, shaking breath. Dream watches his Adam’s apple jump as he swallows, the shadow of it “Say hi to me from the past.”

“I will,” Dream breathes. “Say hi to me from the future.”

George nods. His smile is stretched. “Yeah,” he says. “I will.”

Tell him I’m sorry , Dream wants to say. For what, I’m not sure.

Instead, he just lays down. George mirrors him, turning on his side to watch him think. Dream doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the intensity of his gaze. A camera has never done it justice. It feels like it’s gutting him, ripping through his body and leaving a chemtrail in its path.

“You should sleep,” George says softly. “It’s –” he checks his phone. The light is harsh and bright . “Almost five-in-the-morning.”

Dream rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. He takes a deep breath. “I just – it’s so weird. I can’t stop thinking about the –” he pauses, thinking through his words. “I keep thinking about the future. But like, twenty-twenty me’s future. If it’ll be the same as this or – different.”

“Butterfly effect?” George asks, as if recalling his words from previously.

Dream nods. “I like it here,” he whispers. “I could – I could maybe see myself growing into it, but what if none of it happens?”

George’s face softens. “If you want it to happen, it will.”

“You don’t know that.”

George shrugs. “I know you. You’re always going to get what you want.”

Pressure builds in Dream’s skull, behind his eyes, behind the tip of his nose. “I don’t know what I want.” He knows that George understands what he means. It feels like a confession.

George nods slowly. “That’s okay.”

“Bad says I’m in love with you.”

In the corner of his vision, he sees George smile. “Does he?”

Dream hums in confirmation, staring at the ceiling. “Is he? Your me?”

“Yeah.” It’s confident.

“He’s told you?” Dream asks, rolling over to face him.

“Yeah,” he repeats, scanning Dream’s face as if searching for a reaction.

A pause. Dream’s stomach twists and flips, just like it’s been doing since the moment the switch happens.

“Is he happy?”

Something in George’s expression shifts, but Dream doesn’t know this version of him well enough to determine what. Slowly, he nods.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “He is.”

“And you’re happy?”

Again, he nods. “With him.”

“Can you —” Dream hesitates. He feels like he’s about to cry again. He’s not sure how to say it, so he just wraps his own arms around himself. Realization flickers over George’s face.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Come here.”

George’s arms lock in around him, a type of comforting warmth that washes away any residual stains of shame clinging to his skin. Dream can’t quite make the tension leave his body despite it. The position he’s in, being held like this and held like this by a man — by George — is new and unnatural to him. But it feels like George knows how to navigate him as if by second nature. He rests his chin on the top of Dream’s head and Dream stares out away from him at the window.

“In your life,” George says quietly, jaw rustling Dream’s hair as he speaks. “You don’t need to wait for me, yeah?”

Dream frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t put your life on hold.” He feels George adjust himself slightly behind him. “You can do the face reveal and everything without me there. It’s not – it wasn’t good to be trapped inside for so long.”

Dream closes his eyes. He feels himself unwillingly relax as George speaks. “Well, maybe in my world the visa won’t get denied. Maybe I won’t have to wait.”

George laughs softly. “Yeah,” he breathes, almost hopeful. “Maybe.”

Their voices peter off into silence. He feels George’s arms grow lax and soft around him, his breathing even. It feels like hours that feel like seconds pass, though he knows it couldn’t have been more than forty-five minutes. Eventually Dream becomes certain he’s asleep. Eventually Dream begins to feel himself slip gently into the soft embrace of rest as well.

He wants to stay awake here, to savor the feeling of this quiet moment while something deep in his chest knows that in the morning it’ll all be harder to face. He just feels George breathe for a while, savoring the feeling of being cared for in a way that he’s never quite felt cared for before. It’s different from his mother hugging him, or Bad’s reassuring tone. He still doesn’t want to think too deeply about it, but there’s a part of him that understands it.

I’m not your Dream, he’d said.

Yes you are, George had told him. You always are.

He’d known it then, stronger than he’s known anything else since the day the switch had happened; George is right. This isn’t a fantasy or a nightmare or some weird twist in reality. It’s just them. They’re just them, as they’ve been and as they’ll be forever. The idea still fits uncomfortably, like a pair of pants Dream hasn’t quite grown into yet but keeps with the knowledge that one day he will.

It’s terrifying, but it’s safe.

And in the morning, he’s going to think differently. He’ll wake up like this, probably still tangled up in George’s embrace, and he’ll feel that fluttery, dizzying panic and he’ll tell himself that it meant nothing , this world means nothing , and he’ll know he’s lying somewhere so far down in his stomach that it lays amongst the shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean, and he’ll just have to grow into it.

What are you scared of?

Everything, George said, like he was ashamed of it. Dream wishes that he’d told him that it makes two of them.

But for now, he’s not scared. Tomorrow is for being scared. He has the rest of his life to be scared. Right now, he feels safe and he feels sleepy and warm and, peacefully, he drifts off to sleep.

–

Something buzzes to his left.

Dream groans, squeezing his eyes shut as if to somehow block out the noise. Something buzzes again and the last grasps of sleep leave him. Slowly, he raises his head and reaches for his phone. It takes a moment for him to process the position he’d fallen asleep in; upright, slumped over at a desk. His neck and lower back ache, and he can feel the textured shape of a keyboard against his cheek.

“Fuck,“ he groans, sitting up and reaching for his forehead instinctually, as if to push hair out of his face. He pauses, feeling the short strands cropped close to his skull. For some reason, he’d expected it to be longer but he can’t place why.

“What the fuck?” He looks around the small room, cringing at the tightness in his lower back and neck. His monitor is dark in front of him, reflecting his face back at him. He wiggles the mouse and light floods back into the screen, bringing up the video file he’d been working on the previous night. He must’ve fallen asleep watching it.

Somewhere outside the door, Patches meows. Dream stands, his legs aching and stiff. He feels like he’s getting old and the thought makes him laugh as he steps out into the hallway and looks around.

“Patches?“ he calls into the hall, raising his voice into a soft falsetto. He whistles, and listens for her soft meow. “Where’d you go?”

He walks through the empty house, pushing open first the bathroom door, and then his bedroom. He stares into the quiet dark for a long moment, seeking something in its depth, but whatever he’s searching for never comes. He shuts the door as Patches rounds the corner, coming to his voice and headbutting his legs.

“Hi,” Dream coos, bending down to pet her. “You hungry? Did I feed you last night? I did, right?”

Patches just purrs, struggling a little as he picks her up and heads towards the kitchen. After a moment, she submits and allows herself to be held, tail flicking back and forth against Dream’s side in a steady rhythm.

The open blinds send rays of mid-afternoon light through the kitchen. It catches on the uneven white paint of the cabinets, making the whole kitchen nearly blinding. He squints against the brightness, stepping into the sunlight to look out at the quiet street. Outside, a butterfly knocks once against the glass.

It’s blue. Dream stares at it, watching nearly holographic wings beat desperately as it pulls itself away from the window and slightly backwards into the yellowing lawn in search of a flower. In his arms, Patches squirms, her pupils swallowing her irises as she watches it. Dream kisses the top of her head and lets her drop down onto the couch, kicking a feathery cat toy left abandoned on the carpet from a few days prior towards the open mouth of the kitchen. When he looks back, he can’t see the butterfly anymore.

He closes the blinds more fully, just to be safe, and decides to make eggs. He fills up two glasses of water by accident, pulls two plates from the cupboard as well. He must be distracted, but he leaves the extra one out, still empty, and watches it as he eats like it’ll fill itself or do a cartwheel, or like somebody will walk in and deposit the leftover eggs and sausage from the pan onto the white porcelain and thank him for making them breakfast.

But the house is empty, and it has been for a while now.

Under the table, Patches rubs against his leg. Her teeth press against his calf. He picks her up and lets her walk along the small table as he eats, pausing every now and again to sniff at his plate and lick at a small piece of egg and end of a sausage that he’d pushed off to the side just for her.

It feels like something’s missing. He can’t quite place what.

It feels like he’s moving through a dream. It feels like all his furniture has been shifted a little to the side so he bumps into things clumsily as he walks. His sink doesn’t have a garbage disposal but for some reason he’d thought it had. The ice machine on his fridge is still broken but he could have sworn it used to work. He leaves his dish in the sink when he’s done instead of putting it in the dishwasher. Patches sits at his feet and observes him move around with wide, unblinking eyes.

“I’ll do it later,” he tells her.

She just stares at him.

There’s a wave of deja vu that hits him as he brushes his teeth. Something like nostalgia, like the feeling of missing a thing but you can’t remember what it was.

Maybe it’s in the smell of his toothpaste.

He tries to ignore it, but it’s hard to ignore the acute and strange feeling of missing something that doesn’t exist. As if he wants to go back to a dream he can no longer remember. He’s grasping at smoke, trying to find hints of it in the steam of his shower or the way the sun falls through his blinds. He feels like he’s chasing ghosts.

On the bathroom counter, his phone buzzes again. He towels himself off and checks. The screen is as foggy as the bathroom mirror.

Did you finish editing? Sapnap asks. Aren’t we recording today?

Dream frowns. He must’ve forgotten. Yeah, he replies. Now?

Hurry up, is all Sapnap says.

Dream sets his phone back down with a soft click against the counter. He reaches for his lotion behind it, turning the bottle over his hands for a moment. It’s unscented. For some reason, in the back of his mind, he thought it was something floral even though he’s never worn florals before.

He’s not entirely sure how he’s meant to film anything, if he’s being honest. He feels out of his body, even as he looks at it in the mirror. It’s the strangest sensation, almost like walking on the moon. He tries to ignore it, dressing quickly, and shaking out his wet hair like a dog. Water droplets splatter across the mirror and distort his face slightly.

Sapnap texts him three more times over the next ten minutes. He ignores all of them, even as he sits down in his office and starts the process of uploading the Manhunt he’d edited the previous night. When it’s done, he opens Discord where he can see Sapnap already in a call with George. He clicks into it.

George’s voice cuts abruptly through the mic. “– you stupid bitch –”

“Dream!” Sapnap interrupts, tone bright with laughter and excitement, “Dude, what took you so long? George thought you weren’t coming!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Dream apologizes, scooting his chair closer into his desk. “I overslept. Sorry.”

“You should be,” George says, slightly scolding, but Dream can hear him smiling. “We were waiting for you, idiot.”

And there it is. Like puzzle pieces falling into place, there it is.

He feels whole.

Chapter 3: the gold light falling backward through the glass of every room

Chapter Text

George wakes up with a start.

Light creeps in through the curtains, skirting through the thin strip where the fabric parts to allow gold to fall in a line across the bed. Somewhere down the hallway, Patches is crying faintly, her meows high-pitched and incessant. George closes his eyes and rolls onto his stomach, trying to block out the noise.

The other side of the bed is untouched, cold where he stretches his leg out and fills the space. He raises his head, frowning, and looks over the other bedside table. Dream’s phone isn’t there. His water bottle is gone. George sits up, looking around. Immediately, an implacable wave of fear washes over him.

“Dream?” He looks around, then back at the ruffled pillows and folded back blankets, evidence that he was once there and is no longer.

A rush of ungrounded familiarity fills him. He can’t place why. It feels different than every other morning, but with a tilting and dizzying sense of deja vu. It makes his stomach tighten uncomfortably. His body feels tense and strange, like he’s bracing for a car crash.

George stands slowly, still half-asleep and clumsy with it. It clings to his limbs like a casing, making him feel stiff and weird as he navigates himself around the clothes spilling out of the hamper and the corner of the bed. He runs a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face, and steps out into the hallway.

“Dream?” he calls out into the quiet house.

The house still feels asleep. There’s no noise except that of his feet as he follows the sound of Patches crying to Dream’s office door. He nudges her aside with his foot, apologizing as he does, and jiggles the handle. It swings open.

Dream is asleep at his desk, head bowed down against his keyboard. The monitor has long since gone black. He’s slumped forward in a way that looks uncomfortable and unnatural, but somehow he manages to look at peace despite it. George stands in the doorway for a moment longer, taking in the sight. Then, he crosses over and gently rubs his shoulder.

“Dreamie,” he murmurs. “Wake up.”

For some reason anxiety claws at the walls of his stomach.

Dream stirs, raising his head with a small groan. He drops his face back onto the keyboard, but one of his hands snakes up to cover George’s. His skin is warm and dry. “Mm.”

“Get up,” George tells him softly. He can hear his own voice dripping with fondness. “You can’t be comfortable. Get up.”

“What time is it?” Dream asks. His voice is raspy and thin with sleep.

He drapes his arms around Dream’s shoulder, kissing the side of his head. He lets himself be relieved, though he can’t find a reason why he’d need to feel that way at all. “Almost noon.”

“Oh.” He deflates, not raising his head. “Ten more minutes.”

George laughs. “Come to bed,” he says quietly. “You’re gonna mess up your neck like that.”

Slowly, Dream sits up. He swivels his chair around, looking up at George with blurry eyes. “Hi,” he breathes.

Something pinches in George’s chest. He can’t place why. “Hi,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss him. Dream tilts his face up to meet him. He tastes like morning, like something slightly sour and stale, and George drinks it in.

“When did you leave bed?” George murmurs, drawing back. “I thought you were done for the night.”

Dream just yawns, burying his face in the back of the chair. When he raises it, George laughs softly at the indents of keyboard squares on his cheeks. He takes his face between his hands, smoothing a thumb over the textured pockmarks beneath his stubble. Dream closes his eyes, smiling softly as George inspects them.

“Do I look like an idiot?” Dream asks when George draws back.

George nods. “Yeah,” he teases. “You’ve got, like, squares all over your face now.”

Dream laughs, reaching up to touch his own cheeks. “Fuck, I do . I don’t even know when I fell asleep, what the hell?”

“Patches was crying outside,” George tells him, running a hand through his hair and pushing it out of his face. “Surprised she didn’t wake you up. I could hear her all the way from our room.”

Dream glances towards the door curiously. “Oh,” he says. “Well, she’s gone now.”

“Yeah.” George gently tugs his hair, turning his face back towards him. “She hates you now. You ignored her.”

“She does.” Dream sighs dramatically, gazing up at him. “Do you hate me now too?”

George beams, leaning down to kiss him again. “Yes,” he mumbles against his mouth. “Do you want breakfast?”

Dream reaches up to cup his face. “Mm,” he says, smiling. “Only if you make it.”

George just rolls his eyes and straightens up. “Come on, idiot,” he tells him, gesturing towards the door. “Let’s go eat.”

–

The kitchen is washed gold in the afternoon light.

Dream mumbles something about the brightness as George leads him down the stairs, hand in hand. When he looks back, his face is all scrunched up, squinting to shield his eyes from the sun as if he’s unused to it.

He slumps down at the island while George pulls open the fridge. It’s sparsely stocked. They haven’t had a big grocery trip for a while now, what with traveling and everything else. He observes the shelves for a moment before turning back to Dream.

“Eggs?” he asks.

Dream nods, putting his head down on the marble. “Thank you.”

George frowns. “Go lie down.”

Dream looks up at him. “Huh?”

“Go lie down.” He gestures towards the couch, cold air of the open fridge blowing against his back. “I’ll bring you food.”

Without further prompting, Dream slouches over the couch and sprawls out, grabbing a dark grey blanket from off the floor and covering himself. George watches him for a moment too long, like he might just disappear if he looks away.

There’s something unshakable inside him, clinging like soot to his lungs. Even as he cracks eggs into a bowl, he keeps glancing up at Dream like he’s making sure he’s still there. He’s not sure why. The eggs sizzle when they hit the pan, a hot bit of organic olive oil popping and hitting his wrist as they do, leaving a little red dot right above the bone. He winces and tries to focus more on cooking than on Dream.

It feels like he’s moving through a dream. Everything feels tilted and off, but in a way that he can’t quite place. Nothing has changed, but it feels like coming back home after a long time traveling even though he knows he’s adjusted to the environment since the last time they’ve been gone. It’s almost freeing, but he doesn't know what he’s been freed from.

He removes half the eggs to keep them just a bit undercooked – the way he likes them – and keeps the other half in the pan to let them overcook – the way Dream does. After a moment, he slides half his plate back in the pan to add to Dream’s. He’s not very hungry anyways. His stomach is full of that strange knotted feeling, that weird mix of having something back and having something gone. It feels like he’s missing something, but he can’t place what. He’s worried for whatever it is that he’s forgotten, and snippets of what must’ve been a dream keep flooding back to him but only in brief flashes of unplaceable feelings.

He puts a piece of whole grain bread in the toaster and sets it to pop up just a bit undercooked before turning back to the eggs. In the time he’d had his back turned, they’ve begun to burn.

He plates them regardless, wrinkling his nose at the faint smell of smoke, and waits for Dream’s toast to pop up out of the toaster. When it does, he brings the two plates to the couch, lightly kicking at the cushions as he passes so Dream sits up.

“Thank you,” Dream says, rubbing his eyes as George holds out the plate to him.

George sits beside him, at the other end of his long legs. “Do you want to go back to sleep after you eat?” he asks.

Dream raises an eyebrow. “Do you?”

George shrugs. “I could. Just wondering since you slept so weird. What time did you leave?”

“I don’t even know.” Dream yawns, piling a forkful of eggs onto the toast. “Maybe, like, six or something? I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep so I went to answer emails.”

George shakes his head fondly. “So you wouldn’t sleep but you still fell asleep at your desk?”

“I mean, yeah.” He takes a bite of the toast, covering his mouth with the back of his hand as he eats. “I dunno why. Just wasn’t tired until then.”

“Huh.”

They eat in silence for a few minutes. Dream eats like he’s starving. George tries to recall if they’d eaten early the prior night and comes up blank. He’s not sure, but either way he isn’t hungry. His stomach is still in knots and he can’t explain why. Instead, he settles for observing Dream as he eats and letting his own plate grow cold on his lap.

“Why are you staring at me?” Dream asks, fork paused halfway to his mouth. His eyes are narrowed.

George shrugs. “Nothing,” he says simply, not looking away. “I’m like – I dunno. I think I had a weird dream or something. I can’t remember it though.”

“Really?” Dream sets the fork down with a quiet tap against the glass plate. “That’s weird.”

“Yeah.” George frowns. It seems to flit right in front of his fingertips like a bird, or a butterfly. They brush the delicate wings as it pulls out of reach. “I dunno. I just woke up feeling, like, weird. ”

Dream tilts his head. “Was it, like, a nightmare or something?

George shrugs. “I woke up and it was like – like deja vu or whatever. I dunno. I think it was something with you maybe. I don’t know.”

“Me?” Dream looks surprised. “Aw, you dream about me?”

George rolls his eyes, poking at his plate. “You’re an idiot.”

Dream’s eyes narrow at his reaction. “Was it bad?’

“I don’t know,” George tells him, trying to recall. “It’s not even, like, memories. It’s just feelings, I guess.”

“Bad ones?”

He shrugs again, and looks back to his untouched plate. “Complicated ones.”

“Oh.” He can hear Dream’s frown. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s whatever.”

Dream doesn’t reply after that. He just continues to eat, eyes occasionally flickering up to George as if checking on him. George tries not to keep staring, but he feels like the moment he looks away he’ll be plunged back into whatever dream-scape he’d been stuck in before, and Dream won’t be there.

That’s what it was, right? He tries to remember. He’s dreamt of something and Dream wasn’t there.

He wishes he could remember. He wishes it had left more traces than just his tight chest and anxious heart. He wishes he had memories of whatever had happened in it because maybe it would be easier to look past, to disprove. But this feels suffocating.

Dream stands, picking up George’s barely touched plate. “Do you want me to save this?” he asks.

George shakes his head. “I’m not hungry.”

Dream frowns. “You feel okay?”

George just shrugs. “Yeah,” he lies because he’s not sure what he’d be able to say otherwise. The lingering edges of whatever dream he must’ve had cling to his ankles like a ball and chain. It makes him feel heavy and strange and the weight comes and goes. It hits him now, watching Dream walk away. He gets up and follows him.

“I can’t believe you’re real sometimes,” he admits, watching Dream rinse off the dishes. Dream pauses, looking up at him.

“Huh?”

George shrugs, pulling himself up onto the island and resting his feet on one of the surrounding stools. “It’s just weird. Like, I’ve known you so long but I’ve only known you like this for, what? Nine months? Isn’t that weird?”

Dream shrugs, turning his attention back to the sink. “I guess.”

“I never knew you when you were younger,” George says thoughtfully. “I’ve seen all your baby pictures and whatever. Remember when your mum brought out the huge box of them all at Christmas?” He waits for Dream to smile at the memory. “I’ve never seen you older than that though. Like, twenty or twenty-one.”

“Yeah,” Dream says, laughing awkwardly. “I was never – I was never one for taking, like, selfies or anything,”

George grins. “Now you do.”

“Yeah.” The dishes are set against the metal bowl of the sink with a clink. “Just not then.”

“You should’ve,” George says thoughtfully. “It’s not fair that you’ve, like, seen me get older and I haven’t seen you.”

Dream glances over at him as he dries his hands on the blue checkered towel. “I guess.” He pauses. “We have, like, the rest of our lives for that now though.”

His words flood George with warmth, something light and airy floating through his veins, filtering through his body the same way the sunlight fills the kitchen. He nods, feeling himself beaming at the words. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We have forever.”

“Not forever,” Dream argues lightly. “Like, maybe sixty years.”

George raises his shoulders. “Basically forever.”

Sixty years. The thought leaves him breathless.

“Can we go back to bed?” Dream asks.

George nods, sliding off the countertop. “Yeah.”

At that moment, there’s a clang against glass. George jumps at the noise, looking over to see Patches on the counter, standing with her paws against the window. Her ears are perked up, her whole body on high alert. He hurries over to her to see a butterfly perched delicately on the siding on the other side of the window.

“What?” Dream asks, crossing over. “Oh-” He laughs, leaning down to scoop Patches up and set her back on the floor, kneeling beside her as he does. “You’re a little hunter,” he coos. “Look at you! You wanted to get the butterfly!”

George stares out the window a moment longer, watching the steady pulses of its wings. It almost glimmers in the sunlight, gold catching and clinging to its wings as it rests against the siding as if it needs a moment to catch its breath before taking off again. He nudges Dream’s knee with his foot.

“What color is that?” George asks, still watching. “I can’t tell if it’s yellow or green.”

Dream stands, Patches cradled like a baby in his arms. She squirms slightly, trying to free herself, but her body becomes still when she sees the butterfly, eyes going big and black. Dream smiles, glancing towards George. “Green,” he says.

Green.

—

They’re laying in bed when it starts to crack.

“I keep thinking,” George starts.

Dream‘s face is pressed into the side of his neck. “Really?” he teases. His scruff itches the skin there.

“Shut up,” George scoffs. “I keep thinking about, like, the start of all this. Like, around the pandemic, you know?”

Dream raises his head. “Why?”

George shrugs. “I dunno why,” he says, and there’s a pit in his stomach. “Probably doesn’t matter.”

“Is that what you dreamt about?” Dream asks, his breath hot.

“I dunno,” George says again. “I just keep thinking.”

Dream hums quietly. “About what?”

“I don’t even know,” George tells him honestly. His thoughts are a spool of thread unraveling out and getting knotted in itself. He pulls himself a little closer to Dream and clings on to the feeling of him breathing. “I just dreamt that things were different, I think.”

“How different?”

He hesitates, reluctant to say the quiet part out loud. “I think I dreamt that you didn’t love me anymore. But like, you weren’t you.”

He feels Dream tense up. “Really?”

“Yeah.” George presses his face into Dream’s hair. The motion feels familiar, not because they’d held each other like this before – they have – but in some deeper way. It’s weird and nearly off-putting and he can’t quite understand it. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” Dream murmurs. “You know I do. And I am me.”

George nods. He keeps his face hidden in Dream’s hair. Dream can’t see his face at the position they’re in, but it makes him feel more shielded to keep it hidden. “Yeah,” he confirms. “I don’t know. It’s dumb.”

“Yeah.” Dream kisses the side of his neck. “It is dumb. You aren’t, but it is.”

George closes his eyes and tries to calm the lingering weight tied around his chest. He feels like it’s dragging him down to the seafloor. No matter how he tries to breathe past it, it keeps stalling in his throat. He feels like he’s suffocating on the sharp edges.

“George?” Dream looks up at him. “What’s wrong?”

George shakes his head, keeping his face shielded by Dream’s poof of hair. “Nothing.”

Dream sits up. The crown of his head bumps against George’s nose as he does. He winces at the feeling and Dream frowns. “Sorry.”

George wipes his eyes.

“Hey.” Soft hands creep over his thighs. “What’s wrong?”

George shakes his head. Shame bubbles up in his chest, mixed alongside guilt to create something entirely overwhelming. “Nothing.” He looks away, looking for an exit. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I just –” His voice breaks. “I don’t know.”

“Try and explain it,” Dream murmurs. “Georgie—”

“There’s just this feeling –” he presses a palm to his chest, as if to illustrate where. “And it’s – it’s like something’s missing from me and it’s just empty but it’s not – I’m not, like, sad . It’s – I dunno.”

Dream stares at him, confused.

“It’s like something’s left,” he tries to explain. “And it’s like – I’m happy it’s gone but it’s still gone. And then there’s this other feeling that’s like something’s back. Like two things were, like, traded. Like in Minecraft.”

Dream laughs softly at that, tense and still not quite understanding. “Like in Minecraft,” he repeats under his breath, shaking his head. “Okay, so trading with villagers.”

George nods. “Yeah,” he says seriously. “Like trading with villagers.”

Dream takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he repeats. “Okay. So – do you – can you think about anything that was traded or swapped or whatever? Do you think you dreamt about something?”

“Probably whatever stupid dream I had,” George mumbles, wiping his eyes again for good measure. “It’s literally so dumb. It literally doesn’t even matter.”

Dream’s still watching him, frowning. George’s heart sinks as he realizes he isn’t getting away with this any time soon.

“It’s like—” he chokes. “Maybe you were gone. Or something.”

“Gone?” Dream repeats. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

He shrugs. “I’ve had dreams like that before. Like, for months after you arrived I would dream that you’ve never come and you were still in England. Like that? Those types of dreams?”

George shakes his head. “Like — gone. It feels like — maybe you didn’t even exist.”

“Well,” Dream says, reaching out to touch his face. “I exist. I’m never going anywhere. So, there.”

George takes in the moment, closing his eyes and feeling Dream’s hands against his cheeks. They’re warm. They’re solid. He isn’t made of mist or clouds or something temporary. He’s here. He exists. Whatever thing he’d dreamt of is gone, far out of reach of their waking life.

George smiles, wrapping his arms around his neck and pulling them both down. “You wouldn’t be able to get rid of me anyways,” he says. “I’d be like a – like a – like a leech. So, there.”

“Like a disease,” Dream teases, rolling off him. “You’re like a disease.”

George laughs at that. It feels like some do the tension leaves him, like Dream’s taken his arms and forcibly brushed it off of it. “You’re an idiot.”

Dream kisses him. “Not as big of one as you.”

George just rolls his eyes. Dream lays unmoving next to him, their shoulders pressed together. The whole room is bright with afternoon sun. George can see the mountains of their shadows against the wall.

“I wish I’d met you when I was younger,” he says quietly, eyes fixed on the way Dream’s chest moves as he breathes, emblazoned in black against the white paint. “I wish I’d just packed my shit and left before the pandemic.”

Dream scoffs. “No, you don’t.”

“Yeah.” George turns on his side to face him. He’s not sure why he’s thinking of this. “I do.”

Dream watches him. “I didn’t even know I wasn’t straight. Not really.”

George shrugs, propping himself up and gazing down into Dream’s face, at his bright eyes and long lashes. He reaches down and fiddles with the gold chain around his neck. The metal is warm from his skin. “That’s fine,” he says. “That would have been fine.”

“Really?” Dream looks doubtful.

George nods. He leans down and kisses him. “Yeah,” he breathes as he pulls back. “You didn’t need to know.”

“Maybe it would have been faster,” Dream says thoughtfully. “Like, if you were there in front of me then maybe I would have figured it out sooner.”

George settles onto his chest, resting his head above his heart. “Maybe,” he echoes. He counts the beats.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Dream kisses the side of his head. “Maybe,” he repeats. “But maybe things worked out how they did for a reason.”

Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.

George doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think there’s rhyme or reason to anything. It’s just them, at the end of it. Them and random chance, some sort of RNG that caused the pandemic and the visa to be denied at first. It’s just them in the centre of it all.

Ten.

George just shrugs and Dream holds him a little bit tighter.

It feels, for a moment, like whatever it is that George is missing, that he’s worried for is pushing up through Dream’s skin. It’s like it’s reaching out through his body, from somewhere deeper than his bones, pressing up as if to whisper I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

George reaches back. He kisses Dream’s jaw, his cheeks, his nose, his earlobe. He tries to send the message back into the marrow.

I know, he tries to tell it. I know, and I’m here with you. I’m here too.

Dream’s arms snake up around his waist, pressing their bodies together. His hands rub circles on George’s back, and he’s here. And they’re here.

Together.

Notes:

"You said Tell me about your books, your visions made
of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is
the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you
there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar
cube… We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back."
Snow and Dirty Rain: Richard Siken.
thank you so much for reading !! this has been in my head for so long and i'm super happy to finally be able to post it :] I hope you enjoyed <33
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klemonn on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 06:36PM UTC

this fic changed the trajectory of my life oh my god this was beautiful WeepingEmoji you are such a skilled writer!! i’m so emotional over this right now thank you for sharing this masterpiece

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1. wooowriter on Chapter 1 Fri 11 Aug 2023 01:29AM UTC
  
  thank YOU so much for reading and for commenting, i'm so glad you liked it <33
  
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froggyrights on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 06:38PM UTC

Are you okay with suibaiting in your ao3 comments because I feel like I want to rip my heart out of my chest. this is so so evil you are incredible

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1. wooowriter on Chapter 1 Fri 11 Aug 2023 01:28AM UTC
  
  IM SORRY thank you so much for reading <33
  
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tippysleeps on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 06:46PM UTC

ojhhhhhhhh my fucking god holy shit

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Hail on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 09:45PM UTC

I think this just broke me. I feel just like George, not... sad, not exactly. Just a bit empty, like something is missing. I was so engrossed in the story and then it was over and now I don't know what to do with myself. It's like my heart just went through so much and everything changed but at the same time nothing has.
Your writing is beautiful, this whole fic is wonderfully crafted, I loved it. Bookmarking it cause I know I'm gonna want to read it again.

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The_Crow_Constellation on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 10:15PM UTC

when Dream took the chain off I had to take a break to anxiously pace around my room. that had No business being as devastating as it was

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sophiesensation on Chapter 1 Wed 19 Jul 2023 06:27AM UTC

ok the irony of George telling Dream the pandemic is over in 2023 while in the actual 2023 Dream has Covid. maybe their reality is kinder than ours.
"Dream stares down at the thumbnail, at the videos surrounding it, at the gaps between uploads. He wonders what slowed production so much."
lol Dream you should see what it's like now
going unsaid here are all the bumps along the way - he didn't get 31 million by being uncontroversial, after all. and I wonder what he'd think if he knew about Quackity and that whole situation, and how he's barely doing any Minecraft stuff anymore. and of course there's George's visa problems and depression as well.
"Over his voice, music begins to play – a song that Dream doesn’t recognize."
oh god 💀
I love George's summary of Antarctica as "it was awful," lol. I feel like that's one of those things you can tell wild stories about when you're old but living through it sucked.
Dream thinking the makeup is a girl's is so cute.
oh man, 2020 Dream, having to face some big news about his sexuality, and feeling violated by George's marks on him. This is so well-written but it's painful. the mixture of arousal and shame.
"How'd it go?" oh god
"Of both of them, Dream is the only stranger in this bedroom." 😭
Dream calling George "bro" oh no 💀💀💀 that hit me right in the feels
I love Dream finding comfort in Sapnap as the only really familiar thing there. I feel so sad for him, and also for George, who got his loving boyfriend replaced by his old platonic dude bro friend who still has some internalized homophobia to work through.

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rojascura on Chapter 1 Wed 19 Jul 2023 12:39PM UTC

Oh my god I'm going to fucking die. poor dream, poor george, poor little patches. And him taking the chain off without realising it's significance 😵💫😵💫😵💫

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RavioliHailstorm on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Aug 2023 04:27AM UTC

I don't know how I can even begin to describe the way that I feel while reading this. The familiarity of the words that Dream and George said in the meetup vlog? The small hints of what was coming when Dream noticed the slowdown in uploads during 2021 and 2022 as the irl Dream and George were devastated and demotivated when their meetup kept getting delayed? The sudden reveal that not only is he LGBTQ+ but is also with George when the last thing he remembers is believing they would only ever be just friends (and not recognizing the significance of "Heat Waves")? Every detail feels so tangible, so methodically placed, and just so real. It's absolutely raw, touching, breathtaking, so HUMAN, outstanding.

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dnflovebot on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Aug 2023 05:32AM UTC

tears are streaming down my face holy shit 😭😭 you are evil i love this so much

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theirsweater on Chapter 1 Mon 11 Sep 2023 08:28PM UTC

this is such a unique take on the bodyswap! i love that its expanding such a long time and seeing dream come into terms with his identity & future and im so excited to read the next chapters and see him grow. also, the panic at the beginning was such a cool take too! i usually have seen the bodyswap happening when sleeping in bed, so him falling asleep at the desk makes the whole experience more frightening and disorienting. also the internalized homophobia depiction is so real and human like gosh!!!

Last Edited Mon 11 Sep 2023 08:29PM UTC

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itsmyraushithead on Chapter 1 Mon 06 Nov 2023 05:00AM UTC

fuck, holy shit i fe
el as though this changed me 😭 whenever dream mentions “going back to his world” or “missing his george” i cry like omfg you’re amazing

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tippysleeps on Chapter 2 Tue 18 Jul 2023 07:10PM UTC

goooooood fucking god

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The_Crow_Constellation on Chapter 2 Tue 18 Jul 2023 10:43PM UTC

hey so. I've never cried because of a fic but this chapter takes that award. congrats ig?

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sophiesensation on Chapter 2 Wed 19 Jul 2023 01:30PM UTC

okay where is George sleeping. did you kick him out of his own bedroom DREAM
I continue to feel really bad for George here 😭 Dream taking off the chain was so painful!
"He wishes he could remember meeting George. It seemed like it was the happiest day of his life."
😭😭😭
ah the Late December Theory, lol. Dream should watch the Christmas stream.
okay so like for the rest of the chapter I am just crying steadily like. eyes leaking all over the place
"You can do the face reveal and everything without me there." something in me is like NO THAT'S WRONG, THAT'S THE WRONG WAY. I think because like - Dream gets so much hate and pushback from the face reveal, and I want George to be there so he can revel in the feeling of having George there and forget about everything else.
"and he’ll know he’s lying somewhere so far down in his stomach that it lays amongst the shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean,"
this is gorgeous
the blue butterfly puts me in mind of Life Is Strange, the video game. I remember that came out around the same time as Until Dawn and both games used the butterfly effect idea heavily. "This action will have consequences." someone should make a dnf video game.
aww he missed George 😭 I hope future George has his Dream back.

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Sassarcastic on Chapter 2 Thu 20 Jul 2023 02:52PM UTC

made me tear up ngl

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where_are_you on Chapter 2 Tue 25 Jul 2023 06:11AM UTC

i'm crying actual tears this is so devastating in the best way. I'm in awe of how well you captured the despair of mourning the past and the actual horror of the situation for both of them, it's so so so well written. I literally felt the emotions myself. It definitely also tapped into the melancholy of nostalgia and wanting things to stay the same even though you're grilowing up and ugh i could wax poetic about this for pages and pages.
"Dream swallows. “What do you believe in then?”
George shrugs. “Me,” he says simply. “What else is there?”"
big fucking mood george that's so relatable, i'm gonna think about this line for years. i'm so excited to read the last chapter you have no idea

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AMooingMushroom on Chapter 2 Fri 04 Aug 2023 11:03AM UTC

Gods above I’m crying.
I can’t pin point when it started but it’s 4am and I just want to hug you and thank you for writing something that really touched my heart.

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1. wooowriter on Chapter 2 Sun 27 Aug 2023 07:52PM UTC
  
  we are hugging right now
  
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dnflovebot on Chapter 2 Fri 18 Aug 2023 06:28AM UTC

how dare you (compliment)

Last Edited Fri 18 Aug 2023 06:28AM UTC

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RavioliHailstorm on Chapter 2 Fri 18 Aug 2023 06:53AM UTC

OH MY GODDDDDDD THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!!!! The painful realization that Dream has missed three whole years, the painful realization that he has no idea what it feels like for George to love him yet, the painful realization that he must wait almost three years to finally hug him and love him... there's so much pain but it makes me happy in a strange way, if that makes sense??? And then Dream doesn't fully remember everything from the future when he wakes up in the past again, but then he finally has the sensation that he is missing something: a sensation which will snowball into him confronting all of his fears and insecurities and his feelings. Mind-blowingly good!!

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algraya on Chapter 2 Fri 15 Dec 2023 05:10AM UTC

i am actually going to cry this is legitimately driving me insane. god. the way you write—i have no words. none. i could try, i could certainly try, but i don’t know if they’d fully express the way i wanted to cry in such a good and such a bad, horrible way, the way i slammed my phone down and paced and rambled to myself after dream asked bad if he loved george, the way what he went through will haunt dream and maybe haunt george, searching for a younger dream who still doesn’t know what will happen and an older george who knows so much but can’t give him the exact answer he needs—i’m. no words. those words aren’t enough.
i hope one day i can write like you. i hope one day i can write something that makes someone feel a semblance of the indescribable way i felt reading this—like the universe touched my soul and spilled saturn into it, deep blue like aquamarine and deeply, deeply wrong in the way that’s you can’t figure out, in the way that makes you want to crawl into a ball. i hope one day i can write and make someone want to cry and laugh and have indescribable, unextinguishable feelings like the way i did. you write the universe is whispering to you.
can’t wait to read the final chapter. <3

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Work Header

the gold room

wooowriter

Summary:

Notes:

Chapter 1: the lawn drowned

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: the sky on fire

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: the gold light falling backward through the glass of every room

Chapter Text

Notes:

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klemonn on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 06:36PM UTC

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wooowriter on Chapter 1 Fri 11 Aug 2023 01:29AM UTC

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froggyrights on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 06:38PM UTC

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wooowriter on Chapter 1 Fri 11 Aug 2023 01:28AM UTC

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tippysleeps on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 06:46PM UTC

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Hail on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 09:45PM UTC

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The_Crow_Constellation on Chapter 1 Tue 18 Jul 2023 10:15PM UTC

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sophiesensation on Chapter 1 Wed 19 Jul 2023 06:27AM UTC

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rojascura on Chapter 1 Wed 19 Jul 2023 12:39PM UTC

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RavioliHailstorm on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Aug 2023 04:27AM UTC

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dnflovebot on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Aug 2023 05:32AM UTC

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theirsweater on Chapter 1 Mon 11 Sep 2023 08:28PM UTC

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itsmyraushithead on Chapter 1 Mon 06 Nov 2023 05:00AM UTC

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tippysleeps on Chapter 2 Tue 18 Jul 2023 07:10PM UTC

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The_Crow_Constellation on Chapter 2 Tue 18 Jul 2023 10:43PM UTC

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sophiesensation on Chapter 2 Wed 19 Jul 2023 01:30PM UTC

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Sassarcastic on Chapter 2 Thu 20 Jul 2023 02:52PM UTC

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where_are_you on Chapter 2 Tue 25 Jul 2023 06:11AM UTC

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AMooingMushroom on Chapter 2 Fri 04 Aug 2023 11:03AM UTC

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wooowriter on Chapter 2 Sun 27 Aug 2023 07:52PM UTC

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dnflovebot on Chapter 2 Fri 18 Aug 2023 06:28AM UTC

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RavioliHailstorm on Chapter 2 Fri 18 Aug 2023 06:53AM UTC

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algraya on Chapter 2 Fri 15 Dec 2023 05:10AM UTC

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