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George tried not to linger too much outside the entrance to Dream’s tent, but it was hard not to.
Somewhere, Sapnap was digging a hole. Somewhere, snow and ice were being sent flying with every scoop. Somewhere, right here, actually, on the other side of a thin piece of fabric, Dream was sick and probably, like, dying. And George was so, so cold.
Going to Antarctica was probably a horrible idea, but George had been the one out of the three of them anyway that was the most on board. He thought, probably, it was the freedom of it. The freedom to be able to travel, and the freedom to be able to do it with the most important people in the world. London had felt like a prison, in the end, and traveling without Dream on one side and Sapnap on the other had felt like nothing more than a brief reprise. He wanted to touch every inch of the Earth, and he wanted to do it with the knowledge that, at the end, he could climb back up on his favorite stool at their kitchen counter. So, Antarctica. What was that, if not a laugh in the face of two years waiting?
But now they were here. And Dream was sick. And George had been cold for days, and he was sort of getting sick of it. He wanted to go home. He longed for the Florida sort of winter that Dream had always told him about. Mild. Hoodies over baggy shorts. No fucking snow. He was sort of getting sick of everyone else too. He wanted it to be him and Dream, and Sapnap not too far out of arms’ reach either. He was tired of being looked at. His skin burnt, when it wasn’t already with cold, with the feeling of way too many eyes.
Somewhere, someone was calling to film. Another dumb fuck clip of the same dumb fuck hole – which, honestly, George had been really excited by before the adrenaline wore off and he couldn’t stop thinking about Dream. Dig. Dream. Dig. Dream. Slack off and think about how cold you are. Dream. Dig. Dream. Dig. Dream. That was what the inside of George’s head looked like. In between the life’s not out to get you song that they play in CSGO. He had been missing his computer, too, to what felt like an inappropriate degree.
Another call to film. George’s boots were firmly stuck in the frozen plane before Dream’s tent. He wondered, passively, if Dream had tuberculosis. Getting tuberculosis seemed like the sort of thing that would happen to Dream. He was, George thought, kind of like a newborn baby. Perfectly suited to the sort of diseases that belonged most prominently to Victorian orphans in his mind.
George did not go to film. He looked over his shoulder, a motion that probably looked unnecessarily suspicious, and he ducked into Dream’s tent. That part, at least, was easy. Fluid. Like he was supposed to be there.
George crouched a little, just inside. He looked at Dream. Yeah, he thought that he probably was.
Dream looked up and, even through the hazy orange light of the tent, George could see the way his bleary eyes found him. Dream blinked, twice, and then his face cracked into a smile. “Hey,” he said, voice a little scratchy.
“Hi.” George lingered, as he often did. He tried not to shiver. His face burned a little. His hands were red and raw. Dream was, like, dying, and George was cold. “Are you dead?” he asked.
“Yeah, totally,” Dream said, voice still hoarse and sort of muffled, the same way that he had always sounded over Discord when he was sick. Despite everything, George still felt a tiny bit of warmth, deep in his chest where the Antarctic cold couldn’t permeate, at that recognition. “Jimmy is going to get the bodybag now.”
“Do you think he really brought bodybags?” George asked, dropping the bit immediately. “That’s so, like, morbid.”
Dream started to respond, but he was cut off with a new coughing fit. George felt his brain buffer, his body half stepping towards Dream in a motion that felt like a stutter. He didn’t know what to do in a normal situation, let alone in Antarctica. When everything was weird and upside down – literally.
But Dream stopped coughing in just a few seconds. The world was not ending, and nobody was going to end up in a Mr. Beast branded bodybag. And Dream was still watching him. That same way he had been, ever since that day when George had first stepped foot on his – their – driveway, like he couldn’t quite believe that he was there.
“You don’t have to just stand by the doorway,” Dream said, groggy. “You can come in.”
George finally stepped closer, settling onto the floor of the tent next to where Dream was curled up in a thick sleeping bag. George, who had slept in an identical bag the night before, knew that it wasn’t as cozy as it looked.
“Are you feeling any better?” George asked softly, once he had found a comfortable position. He could feel the cold permeating through the ground, even through his snowpants.
“No,” Dream said. His cheek was pressed against his pillow in a way that made his face look all warped. “I think I feel worse, actually.”
“Oh.” George rubbed at his hands, trying to warm them up. “I want to go home. It’s too cold here.”
“Yeah.” Dream took a wheezy breath. “Me too.”
Dream sat up a little bit more, turning to face George better. “Here. Give me your hands.”
“What?” George said but, even as he did, he automatically did what Dream asked. His hands, even gloved, looked small in Dream’s. “Woah,” he said. “You’re warm.”
“Yeah.” Dream smiled, just a little bit. He looked sleepy, and George wondered if he should leave him to sleep. “It’s the fever. Is it helping?”
“Helping what?” George asked, letting Dream’s hands consume his. Letting Dream rub them between his, the same way that George had been doing himself only moments earlier.
“Helping your hands get warm,” Dream said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Oh.” George felt warm, warmer, starting deep in his chest. “Yeah, it’s helping.”
–
Everything smelled of pine, something that Dream probably would have enjoyed more if his nose wasn’t burning.
“Couldn’t we have paid Manager Ken to do this?” George grumbled next to him, barely an inch of skin visible.
It was one of those rare nights when it got cold cold, a chill that seemed worse for its novelty than anything else. Both of them were in their usual – hoodie, sweats – but accented with a hat, gloves, scarfs. Like that really evened things out. Pulled down over George’s curls, an extra cat beanie that had been dug out of the back seat of Dream’s car.
Well, George had a hat, gloves, and scarf. Dream could imagine his gloves sitting abandoned on the kitchen counter back home. Probably being sniffed at by Patches and Naomi and being pissed all over by Milo.
“What?” Dream said. His voice left a soft puff of white in the air before them. “You don’t want to pick your own Christmas tree? It’s, like, like you don’t even have the Christmas spirit, George.”
George scrunched up his face like he was trying to scowl at Dream, but his eyes shined bright. “I’m too cold to have any type of spirit.”
Dream automatically slipped his arm around George’s shoulders. Just for a moment, while they were alone. And George leaned in, automatic too. They had had years at this point, and it still sort of shocked Dream every time at how well he fit in that space.
“We’re wasting time,” George said, although he didn’t make any attempt to move. “We could have a tree and be going back home by now.”
Finally, they got moving, up and down the lines of trees. Dream remembered, when he had first moved to Florida, George had snowboots. Ones that he wore back in London to get to the grocery store when he was in desperate need of food but the snow still hadn’t melted. Dream imagined them sitting, now, gathering dust in the closet at home. Sometimes, he worried that George might miss the colder winters. Maybe he was a bit of a bad person, that the way George bulked at even this lighter cold sent a spark of relief up from his chest. Take that, London. Fuck ass city.
“What are you thinking about?” George asked, peering up at Dream’s face. “You look, like, weird.”
Dream did not say that he was imagining George’s home town imploding. He said – “I forgot my gloves. My hands are cold.”
George looked down at Dream’s hands, and the feeling of his gaze tracing up and down his long fingers, lingering on his scarred knuckle, made Dream shiver from something that had nothing at all to do with the cold. “You’re such an idiot,” he said, but his voice was fond and warm and glowing.
They kept looking for a tree. Every few strides, they would stop, and they would try to decide if one was the right size. They wanted big. Big enough to fill the stairway and make their whole house feel festive and exciting. Two Dreams tall, maybe. Dream tried not to worry about how they were going to get a tree that big home.
“This one’s nice.” George stopped to rest his hand carefully on the branch of a tall, wide pine. It made Dream’s heart beat a bit quicker, how he seemed to gently pet the tree in a way identical to how his hand would brush against Patches’ tiny head back at home.
Home. Dream was reminded again of his gloves left discarded on the counter a thirty minute drive away. He rubbed his hands together, trying to warm his icy fingers, as George poked around the tree, making the occasional observation. This one is really big. This one is a particularly nice shade of green. Why are the needles so long? Wait, no, I like it. It’s…nice.
George turned back to Dream, dark eyes wide and deep. The string lights hanging in between the trees sent sparks of brightness gently dancing across his face. He frowned a little. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Dream balked automatically. “Why would something be wrong with me? I’m just waiting for you to make up your mind about the tree.” Still. His hands, wrapped together, attempting to rub warmth back into his fingers. Friction, something like that. It probably wasn’t true, but it just felt like his cold hands pressed together were making them even colder.
George took a step back around the tree, moving himself firmly into Dream’s personal space. That Dream didn’t react to. It’s yours too, isn’t it? A glance up, a twisting smile, and Dream’s bare hands were wrapped in George’s gloved ones. The same motions that Dream had been futilely trying for himself. The soft feel of fuzzy fabric against his skin, the gentle pressure of George’s fingers, solid and careful. With Patches, with the pine tree. With Dream.
“That helps, I guess.” Dream’s face, despite the cold air blowing lazy circles around them, felt hot. “I don’t even need gloves, really. If you’ll just warm my hands for me.”
George scoffed. “You're so stupid.” The fondest phrase in the word, when it fell from his mouth.
Dream relaxed into the touch as his hands began to feel less like ice cubes and more like real hands. The taste of pine rested on his tongue as he took a deep breath, glancing behind George. “Let's get this tree home, yeah?”
–
Unlike finding a tree, hanging the lights outside was a group project.
Dream’s sister had invited herself over for dinner and then refused to leave – two years and counting – and even Sapnap had been pulled from hour ten thousand of playing Valorant on stream to help. Dream’s shoulders ached from dragging heavy boxes down from the shelves in the garage – stuff for the tree, lights, all of the blow up figures, that one green tub with the gay sex elves peeking out of the top – and their entire entranceway had become increasingly unnavigable, even before his sister pulled into their drive way with take out sushi ordered on Dream’s credit card. It was all just a little bit overwhelming, the sort of thing that made Dream want to disappear into his office to edit or cuddle with Patches. The sort of thing that made him want to have a little bit of time alone or, at least, alone with George.
The part when they decorated the tree was quick, if not easy. Dream, seeing as he was the tallest in their group, was inevitably assigned the role of putting the ornaments that other people handed him onto the upper branches of the tree. Lights, plastic balls, tiny figures and glittery shapes.
“Here,” George said, passing him a minion ornament. For just a second, their fingers brushed, and Dream was pretty sure that it was on purpose based on the shit eating way that George’s mouth curled ever so slightly at either side as he stepped back to grab the next from the boxes. Regardless, Dream felt his cheeks still burn hot, even as his sister handed him an ornament featuring the framed picture of Patches with an overly dramatic eye roll.
“Don’t be a brat,” he said, and her green eyes flashed towards his.
“Well, don’t be gross, then,” was her easy reply.
“Don’t be homophobic.” Despite the joke, Dream’s voice bounced over the word.
She raised an eyebrow, performative if not much else. “Is that what it is, then?” He didn’t answer. His sister handed him another ornament. This one was one that he had taken from their parents’ house, a childhood favorite.
By the time they were done with the tree and most of the inside, Sapnap was on the verge of abandoning them again to the valo gods or whatever the hell else it was that he did all day – what? Dream wasn’t his fucking dad.
“We can do the rest of it tomorrow,” he said, leaning against the counter as George set up the elves on one of the cabinets, standing precariously on a step stool. Dream was lurking just a bit too close to George, ready to grab him if he leaned too far one way or took an uneven step. “It’s, like, late. It’s probably nearly George’s bedtime by now.”
“What?” George said absently, reaching to the side as Dream’s hand hovered just behind his back. Dream tried to ignore the way that his skin buzzed. Not the fucking time.
“Because you’re so fucking old,” Sapnap said, but his heart wasn’t in even that. “Ugh, my shoulders, like, hurt.”
“Your shoulders hurt?” Dream said, voice high and dramatic and aghast. “I was the one having to reach up to hang everything!”
Finally, George got the elves in a position he approved of and he stepped back down from the ladder, right into Dream’s ready hand. Both of them stiffened, just a little bit, as Dream’s hand found that spot where it fit perfectly.
“I can’t take this.” Sapnap stood up properly, stretching slightly. “Goodnight. Good luck, if you finish.”
“He definitely just doesn't want to go outside,” George observed, voice low, as Sapnap walked down the hallway.
“Definitely,” Dream agreed. “We probably should though.”
George sighed. Somewhere back behind them, Dream’s sister chirped at Patches, and Patches meowed back. “Probably,” he said, echoing Dream’s echo.
The two of them dragged the plastic bins with the outside stuff through the front door, bringing them to rest in the front lawn. The sun had set and, save a few scattered stars, the bulk of the light illuminating their yard came from the small lamp hanging alongside the door and the orangey-yellow wave coming through the blinds in the closest window where Dream’s sister had left the lights on.
It was weird. The darkness. The way that it felt like he was standing in the biggest space in the world, and that also the darkness was pressing right against Dream’s arms and brushing over the unruly hair on the top of his head. Claustrophobic, and like he was alone in the middle of the ocean. A million eyes he couldn’t see. Nothing at all.
“What are you thinking about?” George’s voice came from his side, breaking the spell. An old echo. Dream could see Sav’s car, as his eyes adjusted to the light, parked over in the driveway at an odd angle. He was always telling her that she still had to park like a normal person, even in his driveway, and she was always staring back like he had spoken, suddenly, in a language that she didn’t know.
“Parking,” Dream said. He turned back to the plastic bins. “We should get the lights up.”
They were mostly quiet, the two of them, as they put up the lights. It wasn’t anything super fancy; some thrown over a few bushes, wrapped around the other light post (the light bulb had burnt out a few weeks ago and none of them had bothered yet to replace it), hung up around the front door. Slowly, as they went, the yard began to become aglow. When Dream caught George’s gaze and swallowed, the inside of his mouth and the air he inhaled tasted of stars. Smokey. He thought that one of their neighbors must have been burning something.
“Do you want to get the minion up now, at least?” Dream asked, once their supply of lights had been emptied. “I don’t know if I’m up for the rest.”
“You don’t even care about me,” George said, conversationally. And then – “Yes.”
They unpacked the minion and scrambled to try to get it into a vaguely upright position while Dream filled it with air. A clumsy, ungraceful performance, but it ended up upright with both of them still alive and intact in front of it, so Dream haphazardly filed it as a success.
They both watched it, and George tucked his hands into either curled up elbow, shivering slightly.
“It’s not even cold,” Dream said. “How are you cold?” It’s okay; yeah, you can skin me and use it to make a coat. The sort of thing that he wouldn’t say, and honestly weren’t the words that he was thinking, either, but they hit more or less the same sentiment.
“My hands are cold, idiot,” George protested. “From being out in the winter decorating your stupid house for a stupid holiday.”
George was being silly. Dream was indignant anyway. “It’s not my house. It’s our house. And, like, Sapnap’s, I guess.” He reached for George’s hands, bringing him ever so slightly closer. “Here, then. Idiot.”
He held George’s soft, small hands in his own, and he brought them up to his face. George let him, wrists malleable, his eyes wide and curious as he peered at Dream’s face that way that he so often did. Just on the edge of a smile. The moment where Dream could just see it in his eyes, because he knew him, and he knew every way that George’s face moved.
Dream rubbed George’s hands between his, blowing on them with the warm cloud of his breath “Does this help?”
“Dream!” George yelped. “You’re going to get, like, your spit and germs all over me.”
But George didn’t move, didn’t pull away. He let Dream hold his hands, and, once they were warm, press a kiss to the smooth skin stretched across the bumps of his knuckles.
“You’re an idiot,” he mumbled again and, when Dream looked up, his cheeks had flushed pink. Maybe from the cold, but Dream didn’t think so.
–
It was Christmas morning, and they were both still in bed.
It was the first time that George had been home for Christmas in, well, surely years, at this point. Okay, well, that was a little bit confusing, actually. George had been home as in London the last couple holidays. His mother there to meet him at the airport and spending cold dark evenings in their old kitchen – increasingly cramped, it seemed, ever since he had moved – endlessly annoying his sister. It had been awhile since he was home as in Florida. Orlando. The big green house he lived in with his two best friends. Yeah. That home.
It was different, in ways that he didn’t remember from the first time. Louder. Brighter. Bigger. And a little bit exhausting. He thought that it had probably been exhausting the first time around, too, and he just hadn’t remembered, because he knew that even now there was still a picture of him passed out on the couch, surrounded by the remnants of Christmas, on Dream’s phone. Everything was an ordeal. In a way, George loved it. He had always loved people and energy and Christmas decorations thrown on every empty surface you could hope to find. Christmas in Orlando felt like your skin buzzing and buzzing and buzzing.
In a way, he missed London. The quiet parts. The small parts, when everything smelled like cinnamon and the light came from candles and not much else. When he felt small and close and it was less buzzing so much as it was just warm. The deep sort of warm, that started in his chest and extended all the way to the tips of his nose and his fingers.
But this was the quiet. Just him and Dream, and the tiny bit of sunlight peeking around Dream’s blackout curtains.
Their sleep schedules had been back in sync recently, the way that they always ended up when there were other things going on that required them to be awake at mostly the same times. When they were in sync, Dream tended to be the one who woke up first. But today, it was George.
His eyes opened, and the first thought that fell into his brain was oh! It’s Christmas. The automatic sort of thought that your mind clung to before it was quite ready to turn on all the way, the result of thinking and thinking and thinking about something. George had understood, more so, the chaos of a giant lead up to Christmas, the melody that clung ironically to Sapnap’s lips, upon coming to Orlando. It had felt like a weeks-long dramatic lead up.
And now he was here. On the day. In bed.
As George’s brain booted up properly, he became deeply re-aware of two things. One, Dream was in bed next to him. Snoring, to George’s delight, just a little bit, as he laid mostly on his back, tilted ever so slightly towards the center of the bed, and towards George. Two, he – George – was fucking cold.
Dream didn’t keep enough blankets on his bed, something that sometimes deeply annoyed George. He loved his thin sheets and his freezing cold air conditioning and, worst of all, kicking all of the blankets to the floor in his sleep when he became hot overnight because he hated George and he wanted George to die. So this wasn’t an unusual state. George often woke up in Dream’s bed, freezing his fucking ass off, and left to crawl out of bed and hurry to his own bedroom to try to find warmer clothes.
But this time, worst of all, was the way that Dream’s freezing cold feet twisted against his legs.
“Oh my god.” George’s voice was groggy, still not all the way awake and his throat filled with gross stuff that made it hard to get the words out around. He pushed at Dream’s arm, not particularly forceful because, again, half asleep. “Dream. Move your fucking feet.”
Dream’s eyes fluttered, just a little bit, flickers of green and white and black. “What?”
“You’re cold!” George’s voice went a little high, pressed against the top of his mouth and filling his ears. “It’s Christmas and you’re trying to make me freeze to death. That’s messed up.”
George could see the way, still half asleep, that Dream’s face twisted into something familiar. The way his jaw pushed slightly forward, the way that his lips pressed together and his eyes got all squinty and happy. A face that made George’s heart beat faster. A face that said trouble.
Because, suddenly, not only were Dream’s feet still pressed against George’s legs, but his freezing cold hands were all over his neck, his shoulders, his jaw.
“Dream!” George groaned, twisting away from him. “You’re such a freak! Stop.”
“I thought you loved it when our skin touched,” Dream said innocently, like his, like, soul wasn’t filled with mischief and evil. “I thought you wanted us to melt into one person.”
“Not anymore,” George said, pulling Dream’s limp hands away even though his fingers barely stretched all the way around his wrists. “You’re gross and cold and I hate you.”
“You can’t say that; it’s Christmas.” Dream’s voice was still a bit sleepy as he relaxed into the pillows, his hands still tangled up in George. “Where’s your Christmas spirit? You’re supposed to be, like, full of love.”
“I don’t think that’s a requirement.” George tried his best to wrap his hands better around Dream’s, despite the size difference. A scramble of trying to cover up knuckles and fingers and the lined across of Dream’s palm, while Dream was thoroughly unhelpful. “Oh my god, stop moving! I’m trying to do a nice thing.”
Dream let his hands go lax again, and George was finally able to cover them the way that he had wanted to, mostly, anyway. Rubbing up and down, trying to make enough friction.
“What are you doing?” Dream asked, voice small and quiet. Like he had felt the same closeness that George had. The same feeling of candlelight and cinnamon.
“Warming your hands,” George said. “If you’re going to touch me, your hands have to be warmer. It’s Christmas.” The same phrase echoed, even if it didn’t mean anything much at all.
Dream let George warm his hands up, even though Dream wasn’t the sort to care much if his hands were warm or not. Well, that’s not true. George had never thought himself to be the type of person that particularly loved hand holding. But it felt like they were always finding themselves in situations like this. He knew the imprint of Dream’s fingers the same way that he knew his own.
Once Dream’s hands were warm, they found George’s jaw, his cheek, and it was easy from there.