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It's fascinating, really, the way Arthur’s mind works. Sometimes George imagines cracking it open, peering inside, just for a second. He’d see, then, if it’s chaos, thousands of random facts whirling around, just waiting to be called to the forefront. If, on the contrary, it’s all meticulously organised, compartmentalised in labelled boxes from which Arthur draws at the right moment.
Somewhere in there, that goes without saying, George would find himself. Maybe as a file, nested within a folder, within another folder. Or maybe as a drawer in which one would expect to find socks, not a whole lot of George.
And George, the real one, is not that sure he’d look, rummage through whatever it is that has his name on it. He’s not even sure he needs to in the first place, because there are times at which Arthur just tells, no filter whatsoever.
Like when he calls him “Georgie”, a soft tone in his voice he does nothing to hide, and George can never quite figure out if it’s just a whim of Arthur’s, or if there’s more behind it.
“The one where you can see me and Georgie do videos together,” Arthur says once, on the Useless Hotline, when Max asks which channel he wants featured in the description. No hesitation. As though that fact alone could make any reaction video worth watching.
There’s got to be something in Arthur’s head - a mechanism, a weighing scale - that decides when he’s “Georgie” to him.
If there is, George reasons, he has no interest in unravelling it. He’d rather be taken by surprise, scoff and laugh it off, a little disbelieving, a little amused. Endeared, too, perhaps.
Or maybe there’s no reason at all, and he’s “Georgie” just because Arthur wants to call him that, just because he can. Maybe it’s just Arthur being Arthur, calling things as he sees them.
Either way, George doesn’t mind it all that much. He doesn’t mind it at all, really, because Arthur knows him and prides himself in that, almost just as much as it makes George feel good to know Arthur inside and out.
It’s why, when they all sit down to play Fibbage - him, Arthur, the other Arthur, and Isaac - George figures he can write something witty, something clever. Arthur will get it, he’s sure. He’ll appreciate it, vote for it even.
And like clockwork, like water boiling at a hundred degrees and freezing again at zero, Arthur does, properly giggling, all high-pitched and manic.
George loves him, unreservedly, wholeheartedly, which would be scary if Arthur didn’t love him back.
He does, though. Blatant, unapologetic, for the whole world to see.
He tells him so, too, every so often.
In front of their friends when they’ve all had a couple of pints; when his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are hazy with the warmth of the alcohol. He’ll throw an arm around George’s shoulders and just state it, like it’s the most obvious thing, like he can hardly keep it back, in vino veritas or whatever cliché that is. And nobody will bat an eye, because it’s George and Arthur.
And again, on the tail end of one of the videos they record together. “I love animals and I love you,” Arthur says, an irrefutable, unquestionable fact; an axiom that needs no proof so one had better just roll with it.
And once more, far from home, riding tuk-tuks through the humid night of Sri Lanka, when George is so overwhelmingly relieved that they’re all safe, all together again, that he needs to touch and prod and feel flesh to really believe it.
So later, after all the cameras are off, Arthur slips into his room and hugs him again, those three little words whispered against George’s neck, muffled by the fabric of George’s shirt, drowned in the loud thumping of George’s heart, beating in London’s rhythm just for a second.
They’re just two out of the billions of people under the vast sky, then.
And George thinks that there must be at least someone else who’s saying the exact same words at the exact same time, like in that scene from “Amélie” but sweeter, gentler. He wants to tell Arthur, but he finds he can’t quite speak yet, everything his mouth could ever mold being an “I love you too”. It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, George reflects, that he feels the buzz of it, all warm and pleasant, so distinct from that of the bugs behind the mosquito net, linger in his limbs long after the moment has passed.
It doesn’t matter that it’s the same sensation he has when Arthur catches on to the fact that George has just called him his best friend, on camera. Arthur smiles, surprised, as if he doesn’t expect it, as if he doesn’t already know, and says he’ll treasure that moment forever.
It’s just that, when it comes to George, Arthur always either says things like he really means them or like he doesn’t mean them at all. No half measures. It doesn’t seem to bother him that he’s giving away so much, feeding it to a world that will dismember it, try to encage it without realising it’s too immense, all-encompassing.
They’re different in that, because George needs them all to know that they’ll never experience Arthur in the way he can. That they’re just scraping the surface of what they are together.
And George can look at him, from across the table, and tell he’s letting himself be baited into whatever trap they’re setting up for him - always one, two steps ahead. He’ll let the others laugh at his naivety, and George will be the only other one to know, and it’ll feel wrong and right at the same moment. He won’t say, though; just look at Arthur when he’s not looking back, keep looking until he does.
He wonders what Arthur sees, then. George is convinced that there is a version of himself that only exists in Arthur’s world. One that is beautiful and good, a separate, different entity that he’ll never be.
But Arthur mixes the two, at times.
He must do, because there’s no other explanation for the confidence with which he says that he wouldn’t be jealous if his hypothetical partner thought George fit, since he is. For the way he adds, matter-of-factly, that he’d feel proud of it in a way, as if he were showing George off. There can be no other rationale behind the fact that, in a ranking, he’d put George at the top, his favourite person.
Or maybe there can be, but it’s too terrifying to think about, like most of the things Arthur says and does when George is involved.
Because George is too harsh with himself. He critiques and doubts, whereas Arthur is so supportive, so nice. He worries about George even when he and Max prank call him, reproach tinting the softness of his tone that George can perceive even through the phone speaker. He tells George that he’s handsome, that he’s funny, that he’s a good person.
George wonders, too, if Arthur isn’t simply trying to convince the world that George is exactly how he sees him; if he’s trying to convince George, as well, that he has him figured out.
He could, if he wanted. He’d defend his case like the biggest YouTube scandals in court, passionate and brilliant like he always is.
It’s fascinating, really, the way Arthur’s mind works. So often, George wants to crack it open, take a good look inside, find whatever it is that has his name on it and meticulously dissect it. But even more than curiosity, it’s selfishness. Because if he opened the box, George would finally understand whether there’s more - some more George-through-Arthur’s-eyes that’s kept stored in a safe, locked away, just for Arthur.
There can’t be, though, because Arthur would never have that George stay suspended, alive and dead at the same time, at least in potential, like Schrödinger’s cat.
He wouldn’t set it free, either, if it meant that he’d be like a butterfly leaving the cocoon of Arthur’s mind, destined to die in a day. Life, to Arthur, is worth more than freedom.
“I’d want us to be jellyfish in a world with no threats,” Arthur tells him one time he’s drunk, his head resting on George’s shoulder. And George doesn’t laugh because he is drunk too, and he loves Arthur, and would love him just as much if he was a jellyfish, if they both were, adrift in a world without danger.
They would live forever, then. Together, forever.