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For all the fights and events in their past, George wasn’t sure where he really stood with this one. He knew Dream, he knew that his partner struggled and he knew he had issues with his self worth. He knew that they argued over so many things over the years to the point it was practically part of their love language and that it had dragged them into more than a few dangerous situations.
George knew that.
This fight felt different. He and Dream had been arguing the logistics of a mission and it ended up spiraling down to the terms of what they honestly believed for one another. What they prioritized in the missions. If the success was worth it.
It was always worth it. They both knew that. It was the point of what they were.
Agents that were meant to support and protect the peace. They were defenders and they were to sacrifice themselves for the greater good without a shadow of doubt in their minds. Dream was the one that believed it to a fault. He was the one that would drive himself over the brink and it drove George insane.
He honestly couldn’t even remember when the fight turned from their normal disagreement to something heated. When their words shifted from the hypotheticals of missions and their work to targeted points against each other. Like they were both staring down the barrel of a gun with no way to claw themselves back out from the brink. It was insanity and there was no way for either of them to save themselves when they were standing against the cliff like this.
“If you weren’t such an idiot all the time we wouldn’t be having this fight!”
“If I’m so much of an idiot then maybe you shouldn’t have picked me to be your partner!”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have!”
He’d been too caught in the moment to catch the error in his words. His mind still locked on their work and thinking the logistics of the two of them in the field together. If George had to choose between the mission and Dream because he knew he would always choose Dream.
He’d missed how Dream had flinched in the fight. How he had turned sharper and his anger fell quiet. How he had pushed against him more with remarks like daggers to his heart. George had fired back in equal heat. He’d pushed. He’d pushed harder. Harder.
Dream left.
Signing himself to a solo mission and leaving from the info room. He didn’t say a word to the rest of them and George let him go with a message telling him not to be stupid waiting for Dream to see in his phone.
Later that night he’d gotten a text that simply said ‘I’m sorry’ and he’d been too angry to make himself look into it. He’d been too mad to calm down and read it. Not ready to talk. Not ready to bring the fight back to a head when Dream was the one that had walked away to begin with. With a simple text back of ‘Don’t’ his phone went silent.
That was days ago now.
He hadn’t seen his partner since their fight.
The time to cool off had been needed. He needed the bite of all the words to settle in his mind. He needed the time to understand what he was saying and what Dream had said in turn. How the both of them had pushed to this point. It was just the waiting game to see which of them was going to break and apologize first. The text didn’t count. He knew that Dream had time to think in the same way he did. They both said things that they didn’t mean, George knew that. He knew Dream knew that too. But he knew Dream and he knew how important giving him space was.
He wasn’t going to go to him until he was ready.
There’d be no point in pushing him into talking until he was ready. If he was still so angry he wouldn’t even look at him then George didn’t want to risk what frayed edges might be left of what they were.
The other members of the team came by to him one by one. All of them saying they’d walked by Dream’s room and heard absolutely nothing from inside. Part of him wondered if his partner was even staying in the dorms because of the fight. If he was that eager and pressured for his own space that he would avoid him to that degree.
The thought was like a thorn in his chest.
Sapnap came over to stay with him. The two of them talking and keeping his thoughts from lingering back to his missing partner that was always staying by his side. Day after day the two of them worked off each other. Even turning to the point where Sapnap tried to convince him to get angry at Dream for staying away for so long. George couldn’t follow it. He couldn’t do it. Not when he worried for how their fight had sounded. How Dream might be thinking of it. How he might need more time and he had no right to take that from him.
A week went by.
George had barely slept anymore. His phone always in his hand and their missions taken without Dream with them. He thought that it might change when they were assigned together but they simply weren’t. He wanted to ask their oversight why they were keeping them apart, if Dream had asked for it. He didn’t want them involved if it was something else. He didn’t want them to know they were having issues.
He waited.
That night, he and Sapnap watched movies loud on their TV. He hadn’t really cared about the plot but he was still stuck in his own head to the point that the sound of his phone ringing nearly jumped him out of his skin. His heart catching in his throat the second he saw the name on the caller ID.
“George?”
“It’s Dream.”
He didn’t know what to say. All this time and all this thought and he couldn’t make his mouth move.
“Are you going to answer it?”
He should. He knew that. He knew that he needed to. That it was only right for him to answer and listen to whatever it was Dream was going to say but he didn’t think they were going to be doing this over a phone call. He thought they were going to be in person and despite how his thoughts screamed at him to answer the call and face whatever consequence he earned.
He didn’t move.
His phone stopped ringing. The mark coming up that the caller was leaving a voicemail. His heart sank low in his chest.
“You’ve been waiting for that. You going to call him back?”
He should.
“I’ll listen to his voicemail first.”
Sapnap nodded. Neither of them focusing on the movie still playing out on the screen and instead waiting for the alert from George’s phone.
It took nearly three minutes. The limit of their phones. He swallowed so hard he thought his tongue went with it.
“Yeah, good luck with that. Hopefully Dream’s done being a dick.”
Sapnap was standing.
“Where are you going?”
“To get icecream and water. If you’re going to get your heart tangled and shattered then I’m going to be a good friend about it. And if you and Dream are going to make up I will leave and you will have a treat waiting for the both of you to share.”
He seemed so smug with himself as he walked out of the room to the little kitchen area. He took a breath that didn’t feel like it filled his lungs enough. Bracing for all the things that he might hear. All the hate and anger and the end of everything he thought he had because of the fight. George lifted the phone to his ear with a shake of his hand. Forcing himself to accept whatever he was going to hear because it was only fair. He escalated the fight. He knew he’d hurt Dream. He deserved it.
The voicemail started. He barely heard Dream. Incoherent parts of speech and his stomach dropped at the idea that Dream hadn’t even meant to call him. That he was with someone else and the ragged sounds of breathing on the other end drove another knife into him. That he and Dream were well and truly done if–
“G’rge?..”
He froze. Dream’s voice but slurred and still quiet. Like the phone wasn’t near his face. And then George heard the apology.
“Wont h’ve t’worry…”
Anxiety clawed at his heart.
“Gon’go..”
Dream didn’t drink. He knew he wasn’t drunk. He couldn’t think of another reason he would sound like this.
“Know we’re fight’ng…s’rry….didn’ mean t’call…sorry…”
He was already standing.
“L’ve you Goggy….byebye…”
But the voicemail didn’t end.
He heard the thump of what was probably where Dream tried to end the call but he missed the button. George listened with his heart racing in his chest at the sounds of silence beyond the ragged breathing. How heavy it was and how strained it came.
“Sapnap!”
He heard the breathing slowing down. He heard it trailing off.
“What?”
The voicemail ended.
George tried to call Dream back.
He got his shoes on.
Dream didn’t answer.
Sapnap stared at him like he was insane.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to go. Right now. Dream’s in trouble.”
The tone of his voice must have told Sapnap not to argue. He saw the alarm that washed across his friend’s face before the operations of their missions took over. How quickly the both of them were out the door and rushing for Dream’s room in the barracks.
They didn’t know that he was even there but it was at least someplace for them to start looking for him before they would be forced to check the system for what safe houses were being used and make their guess on which one Dream might be hiding out in. George knew that he had made mistakes. He knew that he had done wrong in the fight but he didn’t think things would get to this point.
He knew how Dream was.
He hated himself for missing the signs before.
George’s feet thundered against the floor of their barracks halls. Rushing until the key was in his hand and the door was in sight. Until he was forcing the lock to unlatch and nearly tearing the door from its hinges to get inside.
He half expected it to be empty.
He saw Dream’s feet behind the edge of his bed.
“Fuck me.”
Sapnap went ignored in favor of getting to Dream’s side. To turn him from his half twisted position to be fully laying on his back. His eyes were closed. A flush spreading through his face and down his neck and George could barely see his chest moving. His fingers found his pulse only to meet with a beat that was far too erratic to match the breathing he could see.
His skin was too hot.
“Sapnap, call medical.”
They needed help. Dream needed help. His terror climbed up his throat like acid. His wrists were clean. He didn’t see bottles of anything. He didn’t see anything.
Dream had struggled before. He knew from their talks in the past that his partner had trouble with knowing where he was meant to stand. What he was meant to be and what worth he held with the rest of them. He knew that Dream had trouble with believing he was allowed to be part of them. They had run into too many issues in the past for the team because of it. He thought they had moved past all of it but the voicemail replayed in his head and it followed too sharply by the turning point of their fight.
How exactly he had phrased things.
He knew what he’d been meaning, he didn’t think Dream did.
“I’m sorry,” his voice was shaking. He heard Sapnap calling for help. “Dreamie, wake up.”
His hands ghosted over his body. Searching him and practically begging to find something. He didn’t know how to help Dream if he was overdosing on something and had hidden the evidence. He didn’t know how to protect him if he was sick and his body was simply betraying him. If the thought of it wasn’t enough to make George ill himself. He thought of how he’d struggled to sleep. He knew how self destructing Dream could be and if he had been having issues he should have assumed his lover would as well.
His hand brushed the hollow of his hip. Dream arced away from him.
Without another moment of hesitation, George pulled Dream’s shirt away. Shifting the waist of his pants to get a better look and seeing the gauze pad taped to the spot.
“I’m sorry.”
Dream wasn’t lucid. He wasn’t sure he was conscious at all but it felt wrong to say nothing.
George pulled the covering away to see stitches in a clean line. The wound red and raw and puffed instead of sealing. Oozing and leaking fluid with lines spreading out around it. Infected. Very badly infected.
Dream trembled. Swallowing a few times before his eyes were fluttering and George could see how far gone he already was. His hands found his face. He guided him to look. For their eyes to meet so Dream could see him. So Dream would know that he was here.
“I’m here, Dreamie. You’re not going anywhere. I don’t want you to.”
He didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t expect for tears to well and slip down his face. Dream tried to talk but he couldn’t make out anything that he tried to say. The words too jumbled and too soft and then his eyes were slipping closed again and George felt the world caving in around them. He didn’t want this. He never meant for this to happen.
“The wound looks old— What?!” Sapnap looked gutted. He looked furious. “What do you mean he was shot last week on mission?!”
He’d texted Dream when he left for his solo mission not to be stupid. Their fight had started about the mission. He’d called Dream an idiot. That they shouldn’t be partners because of it. Dream had been hurt. Dream had been shot. Dream had been alone. He’d texted him and George had told him—
He was going to be sick.
“How long until they get here?”
He checked Dream’s pulse again. He was barely hanging on. He could feel how his heart was trying to compensate for the rest of his body and he knew that without help he wasn’t going to last for much longer.
To get into this condition, Dream had to have known. He had to have known it was getting infected and he hadn’t cared for it or stopped it. He hadn’t reached out. He’d left himself trapped in this room and he let it get to this point. George was going to yell at him. He was going to curse him out for how stupid he was. He was going to scream at him for scaring him like this. He was going to kiss him for staying alive.
God, he needed Dream to stay alive.
“Seven minutes.”
“Tell them that’s not good enough.”
He knew that Dream had issues. He knew that he struggled and he hadn’t put it together fast enough. He was just as guilty for this as Dream was. If he could take the hurt he’d caused then he would. He would do anything to save him. He just wanted to save him.
George put his forehead to Dream’s.
“I’m sorry.”
He whispered it. He saw Dream’s eyes try to open. He saw him fail.
“I love you.” It felt like the most important thing. “I’m still with you. I’ll always be with you.”
He needed Dream to know.
“Just hold on.”