Archive of Our Own ^omega

George wakes with a big body still wrapped around him. Normally, he’d find this cloying and unnecessary. He’d also normally not have bothered to stay over, so the fact that he finds it… nice, comes as a surprise.

The arms around him keep him warm, a constant battle against the air con of Florida. Blazing hot outside, freezing inside—there’s no winning in Florida. He thought that the last time he lived here, too, but the time and distance from it all erased that part from his memory.

Lots of things are coming back to him now that he’s returned. Sure, he was last in Florida when he was thirteen, but the parts that stuck with him for ages, the parts that made Orlando home, those etched themselves into his DNA. He’s thinking, of course, about Dream.

Dream’s never far from his mind. His only and best friend for the four years George’s family lived in Orlando, the biggest tragedy of George’s life was losing touch with Dream.

He knows his real name, he checks Twitter and Facebook for him every month or so, has done since the websites gained popularity, but there are never any hits. Never any accurate hits. The name Clay is common enough.

George blames Dream’s dad’s work in cyber security that a social media account never pops up, but he’s still disappointed. 

When he stepped off the plane yesterday, into the humid air of his new home, his thoughts were already with Dream—wondering if he’ll ever see him again, if his family even still lives here. Is it too much to knock on their front door and ask after Dream? Surely that’s too—that’s too much, right?

For a time, though, that house was basically his house. He knows the creaky stair and the way the sun shines through the window in Dream’s childhood bedroom; he watched Dream’s dad install the doggy door, trying it out as soon as his back was turned with Dream’s encouragement.

Dream’s parents were a second set of parents to him. They treated him like a fifth kid, surely it wouldn’t be too much to knock on the door. Once he gets himself settled, finds a flat, furnishes it, gets everything set up… there’s so much to do. But, yeah, once he’s settled, he’ll figure out a way to find out if Dream’s family is still here.

He didn’t… okay, he didn’t move to Orlando for Dream. That would be… that’s ridiculous. But, it’s Dream around the corner of his mind that makes him think so fondly of Orlando. When the opportunity arose with work, well, the idea excited him. He jumped on it. His boss figured out his visa situation and George wrapped up his life in England and came over.

Even if he can’t find Dream here, he still has Sapnap.

Finding out Sapnap lives in Orlando shocked George, the fact that he left his childhood best friend to the swampy, Disneyfied town only to discover another best friend online who lives in the same place? It felt like fate.

Sapnap’s great. Loud, annoying, brash, annoying, funny, annoying—he’s real in a way that makes George be real, too. After he dropped his shit off in the hotel, it’s Sapnap’s house he headed for first thing.

It wasn’t a party for George, but the timing lined up nicely and Sapnap’s full to the brim house certainly did shot after shot in his honor, in the way that young men who’ll look for any reason to drink do.

He’s not even hungover, either. The party last night was dark, loud, a lot of Sapnap’s friends kept handing him drink after drink that he turned and handed off to someone else—he doesn’t drink. He still appreciates them trying to welcome him, though, he sees the gesture for what it was.

George didn’t expect to pull on his first night in Florida. That’s wasn’t his intention.

Hot breath lands on his neck and George feels it when his bedfellow wakes. The mouth on his skin turns to a tongue lovingly caressing the mole he knows he has there. Shivers run from his neck to the tips of his fingers. There’s something about this guy, something different about him. They spoke briefly at the party, normal pleasantries. George was surprised to hear that he’s friends with Sapnap. They exchanged embarrassing stories about their mutual friend and—they just clicked. Immediately.

When this guy asked him if he wanted to leave with him, George said yes. He didn’t even think about it, his mouth said yes before the question registered in his brain. Shy smile, green eyes, dark auburn curls, broad shoulders, George took his huge hand and let himself be led to his car, only pausing for a pointed look at Sapnap to let him know where he was going. 

They listened to music in the car for the seven minutes it took to get from Sapnap’s house to this apartment and then George followed him upstairs and kissed him against the door to the apartment.

He never even got his name.

This isn’t like him. 

“Good morning,” the guy says, his hips cradling George’s begin to rock the tiniest amount. He’s hard. He’s been hard. George didn’t think much of it, they’re men, after all. It’s normal.

But now, the hardness stirs him. George turns over in the embrace. Their dicks brush, drag of skin achingly good. George got the best head of his entire life last night and now he wants to return the favor, wants to make this man melt in revenge for revolutionizing George’s world. He tilts forward, captures those plump lips in a sweet kiss, at odds with the way he grinds his dick against the other, and then pulls back.

It’s cold in the air where the covers fall off of his shoulders as he moves to straddle his bedfellow, but it’s not the frigid air that’s causing goose pimples to rise on his forearms. It’s the look of pure lust in those eyes, the promises George already knows he will deliver on.

George reaches down and places a delicate kiss to the space where his shoulder meets his neck, a sensitive spot he found last night. He covers his own hickey, licks at it possessively, the sound of mewling spurning him on. 

When he’s satisfied with his work there, George lets his lips fall further down the broad chest. A sprinkle of chest hair tickles his nose while he kisses his way lower and lower. Soft belly, sharp hip bones, George wonders what magic is in this pale skin to make it so… so charged. 

He’d thought maybe it was just the initial sexual attraction last night that made it so hot, but no. Here, in the morning light, it’s just as powerful. Arguably, more, as George learns the spots that make those sounds escape a pinched mouth.

He chances a look up to see hooded eyes staring down at him, intense and erotic, and George gulps. He watches while he lets his hand find a hip for purchase, climbing down his body and making his intentions known.

“Okay?” George asks, nosing at the pubic hair above his thick cock. He needs permission, but he also—he wants to hear it. He wants to hear this exquisite human admit he wants George’s mouth. He may not know it, but George doesn’t do this very often. He doesn’t—he prefers receiving more than giving. 

Is that selfish? Maybe, but he doesn’t care. He likes what he likes. But something about the hitched breaths and the trembling skin under his touch—he wants to watch this guy fall apart. He wants to cause it.

“Please,” he hears and George smirks. Oh, this poor soul, he’s going to wreck him. He lets the head hit his tongue, meets his gaze from under his lashes, and he knows how he looks. He looks good like this.

He takes the head completely into his mouth and sucks. Shaking fingers find their way into his hair and George doesn’t mind, in fact, he finds he likes it. He swishes his tongue around the head, teasingly, and then takes more in.

“God, fuck,” comes breathy from the bedfellow. George lets more of his dick into his mouth, loving the weight of it, the stretch of his lips. It’s warm and a touch salty and, fuck, George wants more of it. He wants it to split him open, wants to bounce on it while its owner watches with his hands bound to the headboard, wants to lie perfectly still while his partner does all the work.

It’s never been like this for George. Ever.

When he can feel him getting close, George backs off. A little torture never hurt anyone, and he enjoys the whining and squirming under his hips, the desperation to get off, to have George let him get off. “Please, please, let me—” falls off those cherry lips, wrecked from the way his own teeth bit at them. 

God, he looks good. He’s so beautiful it hurts. 

George’s hands slip down muscular thighs, lightly massaging them while his partner gets himself together, steps away from the edge far enough for George to continue. His tip is almost purple and slimy with George’s spit and, fuck, it’s so inviting he almost takes it back in before remembering.

“Please, why are you stopp—let me come. Please, baby, please, I’ll be good, I’ll—” George smiles deviously down at him, high on the power he has over this man. His hands continue their path, exploring powerful legs. George wants to see him in shorts, wants to memorize the way his legs look in the morning light, the way his knobbly knees—

Something under his fingers stops him short. It’s something out of place, a texture George wasn’t expecting. He fumbles down to examine it, he wants to learn every millimeter of this dude.

He catches sight of the irregularity, and his stomach turns over.

Huh.

It’s a scar. It’s a scar shaped like a fishing hook, the kind Dream’s dad owned and let Dream and George fight over who would get to hook the worm onto it when he cast his line. It’s the kind of scar that’s raised, angry, and violent.

It’s the kind of scar that George knows. That George caused.

That’s George’s scar.

Which means… 

This is George’s Dream.

Heart beating so hard in his chest that he thinks it might bounce right out, George pushes back onto his haunches. The guy—Dream—looks down in confusion, reaches out for him, straining for George to continue, to keep going, to—

Those eyes. He sees him now in the shape of his face, how the youthful face of his childhood best friend would evolve into this—square jaw prickled with hair, prominent Adam’s apple now littered with bite marks from George’s teeth, body as big as his feet always promised he would be. 

How could George not know? How could George not know him the second their eyes met last night? How could he not know the way Dream’s hand felt in his? It’s not the size, though that’s changed, but he should have know the tenderness, the care, the love that Dream always put in every touch he granted to George, the calluses from playing outdoors disappeared, but the nails are shaped the same. How did George not know?

He takes Dream in—now that he knows, now that he’s aware, he lets his eyes feast on him. God, he’s breathtaking. He’s the most beautiful man George has ever seen, let alone touched. George places the tenderest of kisses to the scar, a silent apology a decade later. 

Dream’s breathing hitches and he opens his legs wider, an invitation or a plea or some holy combination of both. George takes it, he can’t not take it, he’s been searching for this man the second he left him in Florida the first time.

George crawls between Dream’s legs, lets his stomach brush against his dick while he climbs up the long torso, placing kisses along soft skin as he goes. There’s a new scar on his abdomen, one George hasn’t seen but recognizes, an appendectomy scar. He lets that part of Dream get a second kiss, a silent prayer of gratefulness that he’s a survivor, that he’s still here, that they found their way back to each other. 

Up and up and up, George slides until their noses are millimeters apart. Their breath is bad, but George doesn’t care about a stupid detail like that, not when he’s this close. 

“Dream,” George says, a nervous smile breaking out over his face. He hopes this isn’t one sided, he hopes his memories of Dream are well founded, that he cares as much about—

“George?” Dream’s eyes widen in shock and something George wants to label awe. “George, is that—are you—”

“Dream,” he says again and then closes the distance between them to kiss pink lips. Dream only hesitates for the briefest of moments, and then his mouth falls open, his tongue meeting George’s just like they met in that park all those years ago. Fingers slide into George’s hair and tug, earning a moan from George. Dream takes the opportunity to lick further inside, pushing George over until he’s on his back.

“I was going to finish you,” George whines, torn between wanting to kiss Dream forever and wanting to make him come beneath his tongue. “You took such good care of me last night, I wanted to—”

“That was before I knew it was you,” Dream whispers over to him. “We are going to talk about this after, right?” Concern laces those gorgeous eyes when Dream leans back to take him in, the same way George imagines he looked when he worshiped his way up Dream’s body earlier. “You’re not just going to disappear on me again?”

“I didn’t want to disappear in the first place,” George tells him, the most honest statement he’s ever made in his entire life. “I’m never leaving you behind again. At least, as long as you—if that’s what—”

“That’s what I want, too,” Dream tells him, bending lower to place a few more hickeys around George’s nipples. He’s obsessed, he spent countless moments playing with them last night and now he’s back and George doesn’t hate it. “Never letting you leave me.”

“Dream,” George says as Dream’s mouth closes around his nipple again, sending shocks down to his hard cock. His hips thrust helplessly against Dream’s bulk, he’s too big to give any and George is pinned into the bed, can only take what Dream decides to give him. “Dream, I missed you.”

Dream’s breath stutters while his tongue swirls around the tip of George’s hardened nipple. “Not as much as I missed you.”

“Impossible,” George whispers, more for himself than for Dream.

“Let me fuck you,” Dream begs, punctuating the sentence with gentle kisses across George’s collar bones. “Please, god, I need to have you so badly.”

“Yes,” George agrees. He’d probably agree to anything if it means he gets Dream’s dick—he’d give a kidney, a lung. “Yeah, I’d—yeah, please.”

“Fuck, baby, you’re so beautiful. How’d you turn out to be so beautiful?”

The praise warms George’s freezing skin along with Dream’s body heat, he’s burning embers now. “Are you saying I was ugly before?”

Dream huffs a quiet laugh against George’s right shoulder and then leaves him entirely to scramble through his nightstand drawer. “You weren’t ugly before, but you… you know.”

Whatever he’s looking for isn’t on top, he moves shit around in the drawer and George squirms, missing his touch already. “I know? I don’t know anything, you idiot.”

“I was eleven when you left,” Dream tells him, holding up a packet of condoms and lube triumphantly. “We both look completely different.”

“Forgive me for not recognizing you,” George says, hiding his sincerity behind snark. “You’re not exactly eleven any—”

“Eleven inches,” Dream says, delight at his own joke lighting his face up. It’s not less beautiful than Dream in rapturous lust, but it’s a different kind of beautiful. George loves it just the same.

“Shut up,” George rolls his eyes half heartedly. “I literally know that isn’t true.”

“And you’re not thirteen anymore. You don’t have that awful buzz cut anymore and, hey, you got those braces off, huh?” Dream’s teasing voice matches his teasing fingers, moving down George’s flanks and meeting at his balls. He looks at George for permission, eyebrows lifted, and George remembers then that he was in the middle of the world’s best sex before they got derailed.

They need to get back to the railing. 

He nods, tongue caught between his teeth while he spreads his legs for Dream.

“You don’t get to tease me about my braces,” George tells him so that everything else he wants to say doesn’t spill off his treacherous tongue, how he’s missed Dream, how he longed for him, how he felt like a piece of himself was missing for years. He leans back onto humor, their humor.

“You were cute in your braces,” Dream says while his fingers duck to George’s taint, cold with lube, and find his hole.

He gasps, he can’t help it.

It’s been—it’s been so long since he’s done this. It’s been so long since he’s trusted anyone with this.

A finger pokes in and George wills himself to relax, his hands braced on Dream’s freckle flecked shoulders. 

“Fuck, you’re so tight, George. Have you ever—”

“Not often,” George answers as Dream’s finger goes all the way in. They stare across at each other and George thinks how perfect this feels, how right. How funny that he’d trip off the plane and fall onto Dream’s dick. He spares a thought for fate or destiny or some other bullshit he doesn’t want to piss off when it’s working in his favor.

One finger turns to two, to three, while Dream preps him lovingly. At three fingers it starts to feel good, starts to turn from painful into pleasure and George gets impatient. He’s had that dick in his mouth and now he wants—he wants it. It’s his now.

“Dream, give it to me,” he says, ignoring the echo from years past of him demanding any manner of things—the remote, the controller, Dream’s mom’s baking. The thing is, though, Dream never says no. Dream always gives it to him.

This isn’t any different.

The fingers slip out of his hole and a condom wrapped dick knocks at his entrance. George lets his legs lift, pulling his knees up, knowing the angle will be better like this. Dream takes his time, pushing past the initial stretch slowly. George closes his eyes, but he can feel Dream’s attention on him, looking for signs of pain.

“You can give me more,” George says, shifting his hips down to ask for more with his body as well as his mouth. “I can take it.”

“Fuck,” Dream falls over himself to feed more into George. He’s big. George knew that, felt the same stretch when his lips took him in, this shouldn’t be a surprise. And still. 

Dream pushes in until their hips are flush and then, George opens his eyes. There he is. Dream looks lovingly back at George, and it hits George that they’re in this together. Not just the sex, but everything else. Dream feels this, too, this connection, this zing of electricity down the metaphysical tether that formed when they were kids.

They belong like this.

Dream places sweet kisses to George’s cheeks while his hips move the tiniest amount, testing the waters. It still hurts, but George hides his wince because he wants it. He wants Dream’s pain like he wants Dream’s pleasure. 

He just wants him.

Anyway he can get him. 

With George’s permission, Dream starts to move harder, to pull out farther and push in with more force, choke sobs of pleasure out of George that he didn’t know he was capable of making. He’d be embarrassed with anyone else, but he’s safe with Dream. 

His head falls back and Dream’s mouth finds his neck, maps out all the love bites he left when he was just a warm body. His tongue laves over them, and George imagines he puts real love behind the gesture now, because this is going somewhere, isn’t it?

He never imagined this with his Dream. He never thought Dream would grow up like this—hot, burly, into men—and falling together like this, skipping awkward months or years of dancing around each other, wondering what if— 

Can they really be this lucky?

Dream’s dick pounds hard into him and George loves how it feels, can imagine doing this all the time, can imagine arriving home from a date night or from a long day at the office and knowing he has this to look forward to—

Yeah, he could get used to this.

With a sigh and another kiss to his nipple—Dream’s obsessed—the angle changes and Dream’s cockhead hits George’s prostate and he sees fucking stars.

He doesn’t black out, but it’s close. He’s never felt an orgasm like this, like it clamped around his heart and throat and cut off all life support systems and re-routed them to work through Dream.

A grunt and two strokes later, and Dream comes as well.

For a mad second, they just stare at each other, breaths in sync—fast, loud, heavy.

“Fuck,” George says and Dream nods in agreement, throwing himself over onto the other side of the bed to recover. 

And then, they lie in silence for a long moment. George’s imagination runs away with him—Dream, just like this, every night. Dream at the party, talking intelligently bout things, Dream as a friend of Sapnap’s, already fitting into George’s new life here in Orlando.

Things couldn’t be better. 

Maybe this is the universe’s way of apologizing for their abrupt end in their boyhood.

Maybe not.

“Fuck, George,” Dream says, hand obscuring his face where it’s perched on the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t supposed to—you weren’t supposed to be, like, perfect. I was just going to pick someone up, someone already, like, pre-vouched for because you’re Nick’s friend and have some fun, get out of my head a little, and now I’m practically imagining our wedding colors. Like, what the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Dream.”

“I can’t—” Dream takes a deep shuddering breath while George holds his, wondering if this is where the house of cards falls apart. He should have known it was too good to be true. “I can’t do this with you now. I just—”

“That’s okay,” George says, the spirit of politeness possessing him and turning his voice into some robot’s. “You don’t have to—this is like… I didn’t come into this expecting anything from you, Dream.”

“I want to,” Dream lets his hand fall from his face and turns that sharp gaze on George again. “That’s the thing. I want to, like, so badly.”

“But…” George says as the back of his eyes prickle.

“But I just got out of a really shitty relationship and I’m not—” he looks away again and George’s eyes aren’t the only ones overly wet. There’s something heartbreaking about his face like this. It reminds George of how he looked at ten when his family had to put their dog down. Dream took it the hardest of everyone in the family and only George could get him to smile. “I’m not able to give you everything. Not now. I’m too—it’s like I shattered and I’m still picking up the shards, you know?”

“It’s okay to be a bit broken, Dream,” George says and takes the chance to run his fingers through Dream’s hair. He’s always liked that, though George was rarely the person to do it. He revels in it now, the way the strands part easily beneath his fingers, soft to the touch. 

“I know. I know that. I do,” Dream says and George thinks he’s doing the thing where he overly agrees because he wants to know so desperately. He’s not fooling George. “But it only ended two weeks ago, George. And by the end it was… awful. Just awful. The way she made me feel about myself, the way she—I want to be able to give you the version of me I’m proud of.”

“I don’t care about that,” George says, fingers tight in Dream’s hair. “I just want you. If you need time, or space, or whatever, that’s fine. Just… just don’t disappear.”

“I won’t. I can’t. Not from you.”

“Can we be friends at least?” George asks because he can’t not have Dream in his life, not now that he’s finally found him again. 

“Of course we can, fuck, of course, George. I never wanted to not be friends with you, your family just moved away so quickly. It was like one day you were there and the next you were gone.”

“You guys went on vacation and the first day you were gone my dad’s company laid him off, our visas got snatched away. We had to move back. Mum stayed behind a bit to get the house together, but, Dad wanted us to start school at our new school as soon as possible.”

“I really missed you,” Dream says.

“I missed you, too. I spent ages searching for you online. You never made a Facebook or a Twitter or—”

“I have a Twitter, just not under my own name,” Dream tells him. “It’s under my gamer tag.”

“Which is…?”

“Dreamwastaken,” Dream says with a goofy smile on his face. “Your name for me.”

“You’re ridiculous,” George says but oh how the pleasure burns in his heart. Dream chose his name for everything, his name. He likes that. 

“Ridiculous about you,” Dream places a soft kiss against George’s mouth and he melts.

“If we can’t do this, then you can’t stay stuff like that,” George points out, trying and failing to sound strict. “And you definitely can’t kiss me.”

“That starts when this conversation is over,” Dream says decidedly. “And it’s not over yet.”

“Well,” George says, feeling brave. There are things he never got to say the first time, things that belong in this bedroom and not in a friendship. For once, George has the unique ability to say what he needs to say in the exact right time to say it. “Then if we can still do this for a short while then I want to tell you—”

“Tell me what, baby?”

He gathers every iota of courage he’s ever possessed and uses it up at all at once: “You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, Dream. You were always a cute kid, but fuck, you’re… you’re exquisite. If we can never have this again, like, if it doesn’t work out—”

“Shut up, it’ll work out.”

“If it doesn’t work out, then you need to know how beautiful you are, how lovely,” he caresses Dream’s face gently with his hand, memorizing the way their skin feels together like this. “Your lips are so soft and you make me feel—fuck, you make me feel crazy but in the best way. I’ve never—it’s never been like this. Ever. With relationships or random hook ups, never. Just you. In a category of your own.”

“Yeah,” Dream says thickly. “It’s the same for me, too. There’s everyone else. And then there’s you.”

“Okay, glad I got to tell you.”

“I’m glad I got to hear it,” Dream bumps the end of his nose against George’s and it drags a smile out of him. “Best friends again?”

“Is Sapnap going to be mad?”

“He’ll get over it,” Dream’s confidence is infectious. So many things about him are, he has a way of invading George. “Or he won’t.”

“We can just be three way best friends,” George compromises. “How did you meet him anyway? You never said last night.”

Pink colors Dream’s cheeks and George is obsessed with him. “Minecraft.”

“No way,” George bursts out, giggling.

“It’s true. I’m a nerd,” Dream says and there’s something off about it, in his tone. There’s a hint of sharp steel in his voice, like he’s choosing to say it first before it can be used against him. George hates that. “We met on Minecraft.”

“No, I’m not judging you, Jesus Christ,” George says wondering if this is the type of shit he has to be careful about. If this ex-girlfriend used to say mean things about Dream’s passions. He never wants to be lumped in a category with her. He’ll be careful in the future to avoid that, maybe research how he can help later. “It’s just that I met Sapnap on Minecraft. Like, where have you been that I haven’t run into you online?”

“You did?” The wariness morphs back into delight, into the camaraderie that’s always been present in their interactions, even when George didn’t know Dream was Dream. 

“How do you think I know the name Sapnap? Don’t most people call him Nick?”

“You’d be surprised,” Dream says. “They hear me call him that and then it just kinda sticks in their brains. He’s very Sapnap-shaped, don’t you think?”

“I have a hard time calling him Nick, yeah.”

“So we have a mutual best friend,” Dream points out, “and you’re back in Orlando. What are you doing here?”

“I live here now,” George says, pretty sure they touched on this last night but then again Dream didn’t realize he’d be this invested when they were flirting heavily in the dark room. “I officially moved yesterday. Got my visa and everything.”

“You moved?” Dream’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. 

“Yeah, I’m supposed to start looking for flats today, actually. Sapnap was going to—”

“Move in here,” Dream says and it comes out like a demand. His eyes soften in apology and he continues, “I mean if you want. There’s an extra room I was going to use to find a roommate anyway, maybe wait for Sapnap to get out of that hell hole and move in, I dunno. But it’s yours if you want it.”

“It’s not going to be too much?” George asks, understandably worried with the sexual tension still choking them even after it’s been fed multiple times. His head’s telling him in five part harmony that this is a bad idea. “Like, having me here and knowing we can’t do this anymore?”

“I want you as close as I can get you,” Dream admits. “And when I am ready, it’ll be, you know, easier if you’re already here. We can get to know each other as friends again this way, instead of like awkward coffee meets ups or whatever adults do these days.”

“I hate coffee,” George says and Dream laughs. 

“Yeah, me too, actually.” 

“So, roommates?” George asks, scrutinizing Dream’s face for any sign of trepidation or being nice disease. He doesn’t want to impose, even if he’s welcome. 

“Roommates,” Dream agrees, and like an actual idiot, reaches his hand out for George to shake.

Of course George shakes it.

“Sapnap wants to go get breakfast,” Dream announces when he looks at his phone. There’s a growing distance between them, or rather, the line solidifying in front of them, right down the middle of the bed. George lets it go, tries not to make it worse like how weeding the garden sometimes just makes the weeds come back harder. “You wanna come?”

“Did he invite me?” George asks, looking around the room for where his pants wound up last night. Whether he wants it or not, they have to get up at some point. If anything, he has to go get his things from the hotel. He needs a shower badly. Beyond badly. 

“I think he assumed you were with me, yeah,” Dream says back.

“He saw us leave together,” George admits. “I caught his eye, made sure he knew where I was, but that doesn’t mean he thinks we were like going off to hook up, necessarily.”

“I was holding your hand,” Dream says lightly, wiggling his fingers up at George like maybe he forgot what they looked like. He certainly hasn’t forgotten what they feel like. George reaches over and bats at them, until Dream puts his hand down again. They share a breathless laugh. “He probably assumed.”

“Well, then maybe it’s for the best we meet up with him, show him the score.”

“You want to tell him?”

“You can tell him whatever you want,” George says kindly. He means it. He’s letting Dream call the shots here. If it were up to George, he wouldn’t be leaving this bed for ages, instead of casually discussing moving into the bedroom on the other side of the wall. “You can tell him what you’re comfortable with, Dream. I’ll back you up.”

“I don’t want—I want to tell him we knew each other. Before.”

“Okay,” George says easily. He finally spots his clothes and slips out of bed to gather them. “I’m going to shower before we leave.”

“Wait, can you—” Dream’s eyes are desperate, almost panicked, and George aches for him. He turns around, not caring that he’s naked. It’s cold in the air con, but he’s about to step into a hot shower. 

“What is it?” George asks when Dream doesn’t continue. He already misses the intimacy of this room, knows he’ll have a hard time stepping back in here. He’ll likely avoid it at all costs when he lives here.

“It starts when you get out of the shower,” Dream says, drawing his boundary in the ground below them. George sucks in a breath even though he shouldn’t be surprised and nods.

“I guess it makes sense to start our best friendship again when I don’t have your precum on my stomach,” George laughs and if it’s a bit forced, well neither of them say anything. 

“Yeah, that makes sense. It’s… easiest,” Dream says but he won’t look away from George, almost like he’s mourning him. 

“Okay,” George says because he isn’t sure what else to say. “Best friends isn’t a bad deal, Dream. I’m happy with best friends.”

Dream’s nose scrunches up and his face fights off emotion and George thinks he should retreat into the bathroom, give him space. But the part of his heart that belongs to Dream, the part that’s always belonged to him, won’t let him. He walks over to the bed and leans down. “One more kiss?”

Their lips meet and it’s a very different kiss from before.

George washes their mixed tears off his face in the shower.

Lunch with Sapnap is strange. Neither George nor Dream are hungover while Sapnap visibly is—dark eye bags, greasy hair, the whole ordeal. George learns at lunch that Dream doesn’t drink at all. 

“Then what were you drinking last night?” George asks because he knew Dream wasn’t drunk, but he did have a red solo cup in hand the entire night.

“Kool aid,” Dream admits, rubbing the back of his neck and looking bashful. He’s so cute George wants to die. 

“You always liked Kool aid,” George remembers. “Fruit punch. But your favorite was when you mixed it with—”

“—Sprite,” Dream finishes for him, pleased that George remembers. George feels like he remembers everything. More and more is coming back to him, too. 

“Oh, you two are, like, actually serious,” Sapnap says, breaking the moment between them. The Waffle House is loud around them, a family of four behind them with their two toddlers screaming, an old man hard of hearing yelling down the antique land line, a group of four teenage girls gossiping shrilly on the other side of the restaurant. 

All George can hear is Dream’s little huff of a laugh.

“Best friends for years,” George tells Sapnap without looking away from Dream. He can’t help it. He may not be allowed to kiss him anymore but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to every second.

“George lived a couple houses over,” Dream leans back and takes a deep sip of his water. George has never liked the taste of Florida tap water, but Dream’s never known anything different. “We got into all kinds of trouble.”

“George got into trouble?” Sapnap asks with a truly unnecessary amount of disbelief. “George is like the most polite person I’ve ever—”

“Polite?!” Dream gasps, eyes laughing as much as his mouth.

“Well, not to people who know him,” Sapnap says, with a sideways nod of his head, “not to us.”

He likes that. He likes knowing Dream and Sapnap are on the same level, the same tier of ‘best friend,’ the boy who shaped him and the boy who let him shape himself. Both of them were so important to making him who he is today.

“I don’t know if I should be more mad you think I wouldn’t get in trouble or mad you think I would…” George says after a second, glancing between his two best friends. 

“How come you never talked about him?” Sapnap asks and George catches a flash of pain in Dream’s expression. He hides it with another sip of water.

“What do you mean? You’re the one who didn’t talk about him. I did,” George insists because sometimes it felt like he wouldn’t shut up about him. He knew other people found it annoying. People have told him flat out before to stop talking about his old friend but George always liked that Sapnap never did. 

“No, you didn’t. I would have remembered if you were talking about someone named Dream. Or even Clay.”

“Ew,” George says, “I never called him Clay. I hate that.”

“Thanks, George,” Dream says with a roll of his eyes, but the earlier disappointment is gone. 

“I talked about my friend all the time, I—”

“Fuck,” Sapnap says, snapping his finger and shaking his head in disbelief. “You did, but, you idiot, you never used a name. I used to think he was, like, dead or something.”

“You thought I was dead?” Dream bursts out laughing. It’s not funny, it really isn’t, but the three of them share in contagious laughter until a waitress leans over the counter, unamused, and takes their orders. 

He slips into living with Dream like putting on an old coat, the kind with a hidden twenty pound note in the pocket. 

The things that made them wonderful friends before are still there, and the things that they bring with them into adulthood mesh well together. Dream’s a bit of a compulsive cleaner. He’s one of those weirdos that calms down by cleaning the kitchen thoroughly. They don’t really cook, either of them, maybe eggs every once in a while, but the kitchen stays spotless and George knows he contributes nothing to this.

Dream helps moves George’s stuff from the hotel into the apartment. Sapnap tears himself away from his awful friends to help at the tail end and then joins them for pizza. He gave more loud opinions than he carried baggage, but George didn’t really expect him to do much. It’s more of a housewarming for both of them, anyway.

George’s PC will need a new desk, but the room is big enough to accommodate that without feeling like the walls are shrinking in on him. And he has his own bathroom. He wouldn’t mind sharing with Dream, but watching him emerge from the shower in nothing but a towel would be hard for George’s patience, so it works out better this way.

They take a special trip to Ikea the next day to pick up a desk and comfortable chair and George watches in fascination as couples around them on this busy Saturday morning argue with one another; one couple has a full out screaming match. Dream catches his eye and they both try to keep their laughter inside, unable to imagine being that messy in public. 

It’s Dream that spots the perfect desk and George likes it well enough. They get out of there quickly, lucky that it fits perfectly in the bed of Dream’s dad’s borrowed truck. They didn’t find any chairs that felt right so George elects to look online later, read reviews carefully. 
 
“You can try mine out if you want,” Dream tells him while he drives confidently down the highway, and George thumbs down the amazon site opened to gaming chairs. “I remember where I got it, so if you like it we can just get one of those.”

George doesn’t remember what Dream’s chair looks like—he hasn’t been back in his room since the night they met for the second time. The chair was… not the most pressing thing on his mind then. He both loves and hates little reminders like this, the way just Dream mentioning his chair brings George back to that night, the way it felt between them, the heat, the electricity sparking everywhere they touched.

He clears his throat and locks his phone. “I’d like that,” he manages to say and then watches the miles disappear beneath the tires of the truck. “Thanks for doing this, by the way.”

“Of course,” Dream says, chancing a look over at him, sincerity bleeding out of every pore of his body. Like, yeah, of course he would help George, this is what he’s supposed to do, this is what they do for each other—help. George nods, meeting the smile with one of his own, and then turns away again. 

He wishes he could reach a hand over and grab Dream’s, but that’s not what they’re doing here. 

A week after George moves in, he hears a knock on the door. Dream’s down at the coffee shop on the ground floor of the building with his laptop. They’ve learned that they distract each other while they both try to work in the apartment and so they’ve been trading off going downstairs, George only buys apple juice and sits lonely at a table for hours. He doesn’t like it, but those happen to be his most productive days.

He has no idea what Dream actually does, but he spends hours down in the coffee shop so George doesn’t question it.

The knock sounds again and then he hears a woman’s voice shout, “I know you’re in there, Clay! Answer the door.”

Uh oh. A rock sinks in George’s gut. Dream hasn’t spoken much about the ex-girlfriend since their first and only talk about her, but it was enough even then to give him a bad feeling. A couple comments from Sapnap solidified this opinion and now he wants blood.

He sends a quick text to Dream, telling him what’s going on and to stay downstairs. George will take care of this.

“Clay! Answer.” Pound. “The.” Pound. “Goddamn.” Pound. “Door.” Pound.

Oh, hell no.

George puts on his best British smile and whips the door open. “Can I help you, lady?”

She’s short. Like laughably short, especially compared to Dream’s size. Her face is painted up and her hair is straight. She looks nice enough. If George didn’t know the stories and didn’t hear her screaming beyond the door, he wouldn’t think anything negative about her at all. 

But he knows better.

“Where is—”

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but this is extremely rude. I’ve been on a work call. I don’t know who you’re trying to find, but I’ve never seen you before in my life. If you want to talk to Calvin so bad, why don’t you try calling him, yeah?”

He starts to close the door and a red nailed hand stops him. 

“I know Clay lives here,” she says, eyes sharpening into slits. There’s no feeling behind those eyes, they’re hard. Well, George can be scary, too. 

“Lady, I don’t know anyone named Clay. I’ve lived here for seven months,” he says, putting on the performance of his life. He’ll do anything to protect Dream. “You must have the wrong apartment number or something.”

“I talked to—well, someone, and they said he moved here,” she says and George gets the feeling she’s about to ask to speak to his manager from her tone and the way her other arm has come to rest on her hip. The real world doesn’t work like that.

“Well, someone lied. And I don’t give a shit,” George says, trying to wrestle the door back out of her tight grip. “So leave or I’m going to call the police.”

“I know he’s in there,” she says again, trying to peek past George into the living area. George’s body takes up most of the space so he knows she can’t see anything. And even if she did, Dream told him he bought all new furniture. She won’t be able to see anything and trace it back to him. 

“What, did he steal drugs from you? Because that’s not my fucking problem and I don’t fucking care. You’ve overstayed your welcome. I’m calling the police. Fuck off!” he manages to take the door back from her and slams it satisfyingly in her face. He does phone the police, puts it on speaker phone and everything so she’ll hear him through the door. He’s not dumb, he knows there’s no way she’s left yet.

“911 what’s your emergency?” asks the voice when the call connects.

“Yes, I have some woman on my doorstep who won’t leave? I don’t know her and she keeps trying to come inside my apartment. I think she might be on drugs, and—”

“Address?”

George rattles off the address he recently memorized while updating all his important paperwork. While he does, he chances opening the door again to see if she’s still there.

She’s not.

He maneuvers over to his texts and, ignoring Dream’s millions of questions, lets him know she’s gone from the doorway, but to be careful a little longer. 

“She’s gone,” he says to the 911 operator, “I guess you don’t need to send anyone out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ll call again if she comes back dangerous.”

“Okay, stay safe,” the operator says and cuts the call. George looks down at his phone and frowns. He doesn’t like this situation at all. 

With a brief thought, George runs into Dream’s room to glance out the window—he has a perfect view of the front of the apartment building and George waits to see the back of the ex’s head. It takes several moments and another three texts from Dream freaking out before he sees her walk away. She looks up at the building and George puts his phone to his ear and lets her see him. Let her think he’s still on the phone with the police, he doesn’t give a shit. 

It works though. She scampers off with a pout on her face and George finally takes a deep breath in relief.
 
He dials Dream right away. 

“George!” Dream answers, breath harsh down the line.

“It’s safe, you can come back up, now,” George tells him. 

“What the fuck,” Dream says, frantic, “What happened?”

“Just come upstairs and we’ll talk there. Don’t want to air your dirty laundry everywhere.” He looks down at Dream’s bed, memories playing over in his head and suddenly he needs to leave this room. 

Neither of them feel like cooking dinner that night, and neither of them wanted to go out to a restaurant. George calls Sapnap, explains the bare bones, and makes him bring sub sandwiches over. The three of them lounge around on the sofa and watch some throw away television show none of them really care about. 

Dream sits close to him on their couch, close enough for their knees to brush. Hidden behind his sweat pants, George thinks of his scar—the same one George caused, the one that made him realize who he was.

If his friendship with George left a visible scar on his body, the relationship with his ex left them all over his spirit. He sees that now, sees the way Dream cowers when loud sounds come through the wall in the neighboring apartment. Banging pans cause him to curl defensively into himself.

It wasn’t physical. He doesn’t think. Sapnap says she never physically hurt him, but reading between the lines, he puts together that she wasn’t above scare tactics. Having her show up at their apartment and demand to be let in, well, that does nothing to reassure him.

It breaks his heart in new ways every time he thinks about it. And he can’t stop thinking about it. He understands why Dream couldn’t jump straight into a relationship with him. He understands the hesitation, even with someone who feels as right as they feel to each other. It’s about trusting himself again, trusting his instincts and learning to allow himself to like the things he likes without shame.

She must have hated him playing video games.

Dream plays Minecraft—he knew that, he did. What he didn’t know was that Dream streams Minecraft to thousands of people about once or twice a week. They love him. He’s a pretty popular guy and his chat is constantly buzzing, moving too quickly to read individual messages, one big blob of enthusiasm. 

The first time George discovered Dream streaming, walked in to offer him his half of the pizza, Dream looked like George was about to tell him to jump off a cliff.

Instead, he smiles when he catches on to what’s happening, and leaves the pizza on the desk next to Dream’s mouse.

His hands itch to find him, to pull up Twitch on his phone and scroll until he finds him and just—watch. Just take him in. He won’t, though. It’s a breach of trust, he hasn’t been given permission to do that and while he’s dying to know, he lets it be.

Instead, he pulls up one of his old coding projects from Uni and starts tweaking it. If he wants it, Dream can use it. It’s just sitting here on his hard drive gathering metaphorical cobwebs. Might as well put it to good use.

The look on Dream’s face later when he offers the plug-in defies definition. He’s confused, and then surprised, awed, and grateful, and excited, and all of those things and more. 

“Really?” he asks, like maybe George misspoke. “You’re giving me—you made this?”

George feels Dream’s presence over his shoulder, squinting down at his screen to take in all the details. He has a heavy presence, weighted. George always knows when he’s close. “Yeah, if you want it,” George tells him, trying and failing to be cool about this. “I made it a while ago, but if you’re streaming and bored with that, you could always—”

“George!” Dream says, shaking his gaming chair, the same model as Dream’s, until George laughs with him. “George, this is great, are you kidding me?”

“Why would I be kidding you?”

“You really will let me have this?” Dream asks and George thinks he might have walked into another battle wound from the ex.

“I have more, too, if you want to look at those,” he offers. And he means it. Anything of his, Dream can have. “I made a bunch in my coding class in Uni. And if there’s something you want specifically, well, I can probably mess around and see what I can—”

Dream’s arms come around him, chair and all, and his mouth is a hair’s breath from George’s ear when he excitedly asks, “You’ll code them for me?”

“I can try,” George says and hopes he isn’t setting them up for failure if Dream’s ideas are too lofty. “I mean, I’ll do what I can.”

“I have so many ideas,” Dream says and, yeah, he does. They talk for hours about coding, about Dream’s speed running and how to maximize his time, about gaming in general. Dream taught himself the beginnings of code, and George teaches him more and more, eager to show him everything he knows.

They have fun with it.

Dream streams and George quickly gets access to everything, he slots himself into the role of wizard behind the scenes and keeps everything running smoothly. Dream’s happier, he can tell. Chat can tell. He peeks into their conversations, finds Dream’s chunk of the internet, and inserts himself there too.

Even they can tell he’s better.

Dream’s happiness brings George happiness.

It isn’t long before Dream drags him into streaming with him. They make a pretty good team. 

When George has been in Orlando for two months, the two happiest months of his life, Dream’s mum finally brow beats Dream into coming over for dinner. They live on the other side of the city, nestled neatly in the suburbs right where George left them years ago. The house apparently has gone through some renovations, but it’s still sitting in the same neighborhood despite the hurricanes year after year.

“You’ll come, right?” Dream asks, more like he’s confirming than asking.

“Do you want me to?” George fiddles with his thumbs, feeling unsure. 

Dream’s hand comes over and lifts George’s off, keeping him from picking at his skin, a bad habit formed in sixth form. He does this more, little touches like this that add up to mean more. And yet—there’s been no further conversations. They’re still best friends and nothing more than roommates. 

“Yeah, I think they’d like to see you,” Dream explains. “We always wondered what happened, you know? They’ll be happy to see you. Mom especially, she had a soft spot for you.”

“And you want me there?” George asks, he lets Dream’s fingers slide between his own and they feel comfortable there. Right.

“Yeah, I do,” Dream squeezes lightly and then lets go and that’s the end of the conversation. 

The front door is green now. It used to be brown when they were kids. An obvious change, a stark reminder that he won’t find a family trapped in time inside. He wonders if he should knock. Once upon a time, he’d charge straight in, sure of his welcome and Dream’s name ready to scream up the stairs for his attention.

This door is green, but it isn’t an invitation to go in.

“Did I tell you that—” George cuts himself off because he remembers the story he’s about to tell references their night together. He’s thinking of lying in some man’s arms and figuring out how he can go about finding his old best friend. 

“Tell me what?” Dream asks, hovering on the front stoop like he, too, is intimidated about entering.

“Nevermind,” George shakes his head and offers a smile. “Things we don’t talk about.”

Dream snorts, but his smile is genuine. “Tell me anyway.”

On his own head, be it. “When we woke up, that morning,” no need to specify which morning. That’s the morning to them. “Before I knew it was you, I—”

“What? Tell me.”

“You were holding me and I was thinking of this house,” George looks over at him to see a gobsmacked look on his face. “I was wondering if it would be too weird if I ubered here and knocked on the door to see if you still lived here. I wanted to see you so badly—”

“George.”

The door flies open and a teenage girl looks testily out at them. World’s worst timing. “You look like my brother,” she says and George realizes with a pang in his chest that this is Baby Chloe. “But you can’t be my brother because he ran away from home.”

“Chloe, I’m sorry,” Dream says, head hung. George looks between them and realizes in this moment that he’s missed something. Miscalculated.

“We haven’t seen you in forever, Clay,” she says and George can see her trying to keep it together, to keep up her too-cool attitude. It’s not working. Her lower lip wobbles.

“I’ll explain everything,” he tells her, stepping forward to her. She blocks him with the door.

“I had to watch your stupid streams to know you were still alive,” she hisses and slams the door in his face. Yikes.

“Uh, sorry about her,” Dream says to George after a speechless moment.

He doesn’t know what to say. He settles for a half smile, hoping it’s reassuring.

“Should we go in?” Dream asks, taking a deep breath, steeling himself. “She’ll have reported we’re here already.”

“Are you sure?” George asks, “because we can turn right around and go home if you want.”

Dream shoots him a grateful smile, a soft thing crooked in its sincerity. “Nah, I haven’t seen them in forever and I miss them.”

“Why haven’t you seen them?” George wonders because it took them like twenty minutes at most to get here. Dream borrowed his dad’s truck for Ikea, why wouldn’t he have seen them?

Instead of answering, Dream opens the door and walks inside, one hand reaching back for George. He ignores the voice in his head saying he shouldn’t, and takes Dream’s larger hand in his. He squeezes it for strength and lets Dream lead him through the familiar foyer and into the kitchen where everyone is gathered. Rounding the corner, Dream drops his hand and George doesn’t let the gesture throw him off. 

“Clay!” his mother is the first to greet him. She’s still all blond hair, big smile, eye wrinkles and comforting warmth.

“Hi, Mom,” he says and hugs her while George ignores the other four pairs of eyes wondering who he is. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“Clay, how are you, son?” Dream’s dad asks when his mom releases him. “Truck treat you right when you used her?”

Dream hugs him, too, more back slapping than the gentle embrace of his mother. “Yeah, yeah, I actually—” he looks over at George and George can already see the life returning to him, he barely realized something intrinsic to Dream was missing until he sees it come back to him. “I needed it for George’s stuff.”

“George?” Nancy asks, finally finding George’s gaze from where he’s been hanging back behind Dream. The siblings already sitting at the table start whispering amongst themselves, and oh boy, it’s awkward. It’s awkward. “Not our George?”

Well, he’s in it now. “Hi, Nancy.”

The room dissolves into chaos. Whatever strange tension existed here dissipates in the wake of Dream’s revelation about his guest. Dream’s family falls onto him, hugging, questioning, expressing how happy they are he’s here. It’s… joyful. George falls with them and it’s like not a day passed; he’s still welcome here, wanted here. 

Nancy tells him how much he’s grown, how handsome he is. Dream blushes as heavily as George when she says it, but no one seems to notice. Dream’s dad, Michael, claps him on the back and George tells him he went fishing in Uni and almost drowned to death.

Dinner is easy. There’s more than enough, even for a surprise guest. They eat lasagna and George almost weeps because he’s missed Nancy’s cooking. Dream’s siblings are all grown up and it’s fucking weird. George, at the same age as Dream’s sister, used to watch them, used to throw them around and play all manner of things. Now they’re grown. Even Chloe, the baby, must be in high school. Jesus fucking wept.

After a dinner of answer questions about his life up until now, sidestepping the full truth on how he found Dream again in Orlando, George joins Dream’s brother for a nostalgic turn on the N64. They play MarioKart for a while, no mercy rules, much like they did as kids. 

He loses and he’s surprisingly okay with that. 

Back down in the kitchen, George finds Dream engaged in a serious talk with Chloe. He doesn’t approach, he can tell by their body language that Dream is begging for forgiveness. 

“He really missed you,” Nancy says, catching him off guard. She has a rag thrown over her shoulder and she looks like the exact same woman from his childhood. He’s so fond of her.

“I really missed him, too. You guys as well.”

“I mean, he’d hate for me to say it,” she says, mischievous grin spread across her face. “But he pined for you. It made the whole house miserable for a good three years.”

He feels his face heat up and he can’t even pinpoint why. Dream was eleven when he left, he didn’t—he couldn’t have had those kinds of feelings for him. Not then. Not like he might now. 

“I looked for him everywhere,” George doesn’t know why he’s telling her. “Online, I mean.”

“Has he told you much about her?” Nancy asks, changing the subject. 

George shakes his head, lets his hand rest on the counter and stares down at his fingers. “Sapnap’s told me things. And I, uh, I did meet her once.”

“You did?” Nancy’s eyes grow big the same way her son’s do when he’s shocked.

“She came to the apartment looking for him,” he tells her, unwilling to lie about something like this. Something healing happened in this house tonight, and not just George returning here, something between Dream and the family he’s always been close to. “I had to call the police to get her to leave.”

“Oh, George,” Nancy says and then he feels warm hands on his arms and he turns to her. “Thank you. Thank you for looking out for him.”

He’s trembling under her touch but he thinks she might be, too. “I’ll always—of course I—”

“I know, honey,” she says and then he’s swept into a hug. She smells the same, the same perfume that smells like flowers. He’s never been good at identifying flowers beyond roses, but he thinks if he ever figures out what flower this scent goes with, well, they might be his favorite.

“We’ve been so worried,” she speaks in an undercurrent, tossing a secret to him. “The way she isolated him, that girl wouldn’t let him talk to us, wouldn’t let him come home. I—I’m not a violent person but I’d like to meet her in a back alley, if you catch what I mean.”

George smiles weakly, she’s the very definition of a lion protecting her cubs. Even when her lion cub is twice as big as her.

“He broke up with her on his own,” George explains and he’s proud of Dream. He’s proud that he got out of a bad situation, that he found the strength to toss her loose. 

“He did,” Nancy says with a nod like she’s reminding herself. 

“He’s—” George hesitates to continue, wondering how far is too far. “He’s still picking himself up,” he ends up saying. With a glance over at Dream, he sees him in a tight hold with his little sister. “He might be for a while.”

She nods again, stepping back and patting George’s chest. Her eyes take him in like she’s seeing that little boy she knew superimposed over the man he’s become. “He’ll have you, though. Right?”

“And you,” he says quickly. “But, yeah, of course he’ll have me.” 

“Good,” she says, looking at him with a watery smile. “Then he’s in excellent hands.”

Once the flood gate opens to his family, they’re constantly over at the house for dinner. Dream invites himself over every other day, dragging a George who doesn’t put up any kind of fight against it. He loves Dream’s family. 

Nancy teaches him how to make that lasagna, the recipe he’s dreamed about for ages. Michael drives him to the local elementary school on a weekend to practice driving in the empty car park.

Parking lot. They call them parking lots here, which makes way less sense than a car park. 

George nervously learns to drive at the same time as Chloe and the family ribs him good-naturedly about learning something at the same time as baby Chloe. He doesn’t mind, though. He likes that all the attention isn’t on him while he learns. Michael has an endless well of patience that he didn’t pass on to his children and under his tutelage, George learns. 

When they aren’t with Dream’s family, they split their time between hanging out with Sapnap and streaming. George finds odd hours to get his work done, glad he rarely has to go into the office, and when he does he spends the entire time texting Dream and wishing he was sitting on their sofa. 

A co-worker asks him for drinks and George gets the vibe they’re asking for more than that, and he feels no guilt when he tells them he’s seeing someone. It’s a lie, but it doesn’t feel like it.

Things with Dream feel like… they aren’t together. They aren’t.

But they come as a matched set these days. Sapnap invites one of them over and expects to see them both. They make decisions together. Dream won’t buy a coffee table without running it past George. Sure, that could be put down to being roommates, but it’s not. 

They say goodnight in the late evening and George feels wrong to leave Dream at his door, to walk into the cold, darkness of his own bedroom. He’s cold no matter how many blankets he cocoons himself under.

Only Dream’s warmth would make him feel better.

And then Dream gets sick. He’s a real baby about it, too. George finds him in the kitchen with his duvet wrapped around his shoulders, looking miserable and lackluster. He coughs wetly and George herds him back to bed.

A quick phone call to Nancy, and he doles out medicine from Dream’s bathroom and hands him a thermos of hot tea while he waits for the chicken soup he ordered to arrive. He finds a thermometer in Dream’s stash of medicine and fusses with him to get an accurate reading. He has to google what the number means in Celsius. He doesn’t like the results. 

They ride out the cold over the next couple of days. Nancy brings her homemade chicken soup and a big box of vitamin C tablets for both of them to take. She swears it’ll keep George from getting sick. Who is he to argue?

Slowly but surely, Dream recovers and they watch show after show in the living room, staying up late and tangling their legs together on the sofa. Dream’s neediness doesn’t bother George. In fact, he finds that he likes being needed. He likes that Dream turns to him to ask for things, trust in his eyes, and he likes the small thanks he receives when he fulfills his requests. 

If it was anyone else, he’d be annoyed. But somehow with Dream, he can’t be. He knows the battle Dream’s fought to be able to ask for what he wants, the trust he’s placing in George to reach for things he wouldn’t dare ask his ex. The few stories he gets wind of from before—well, George might join Nancy in that back alley. It turns out that appendectomy scar almost was Dream’s cause of death because someone didn’t take his pain seriously. 

George orders dinner. He cleans up after, knowing Dream likes the kitchen to be pristine. He tidies Dream’s room, throwing away his snotty kleenex. He does everything he can think to do.

“Will you read to me?” Dream asks, voice small but sturdier than it’s been in days. He’s on the mend and George has a hunch he’s been prolonging things, but he doesn’t say anything, too happy that he’s comfortable doing so.

“What do you want me to read?” George asks, standing up from the sofa. He turns off the TV, paused on the Netflix main menu. It’s just as well, they’ve run out of interesting looking things to watch. 

“I have some books from when I was younger in my room. Did you ever read Percy Jackson?” Dream lets George haul him to his feet, his larger frame somehow looking small under the blanket he stole from George’s bed earlier.

Without question, George follows him into his room. There, in a crate under his desk, George finds a set of books and Dream eagerly hands him one. “Start with this one.”

“Start?” George laughs into the room. Dream only has the lamp on his nightstand on and it bathes the room in a soft glow. He hasn’t seen it like this since— 

Dream snuggles under his covers, throwing George’s blanket onto his gaming chair so George will have it when he needs to go to sleep. Hesitantly, George scrambles onto the bed. He sits up, back to the headboard, and lets Dream snuggle against him, curly head resting on his thigh. He folds the book open and he reads.

George maintains that if Dream didn’t want him to play with his hair, he shouldn’t have placed his head in such a way that George’s hand can naturally fall onto it. Absent-mindedly, he traces his fingers through the curls, so much darker than they were when they were kids. 

At the end of the first chapter, voice already slightly hoarse, George tugs lightly on them. Dream shuffles in his nest and glances up at him, questioningly. George says quietly into the intimacy of the room, “Your hair.”

“What about it?” Dream asks, a hint of defensiveness that George hopes one day will always be absent when he speaks to George. He’ll get there. He’ll earn it. One day.

“It’s so much darker than it used to be,” George plays with the curls and up close, in the light of the lamp, they’re almost ginger. He doesn’t make the comparison aloud. “Where’d the blond go?”

Dream noses into the thickest part of George’s thigh, hiding his face when he replies, “I don’t have you dragging me around outside looking for frogs anymore, do I?”

“We could find frogs in Minecraft now,” George says. Dream’s back shakes with a round of coughing and George moves his hand down to rub until it calms. Dream’s skin is warm, but not feverish, even through his shirt. That same pull that lives constantly between them yanks a little harder. George’s hand slides off his back and grasps at the book. He turns the page and starts the next chapter. 

His voice barely wavers.

There’s a stare heavier than an elephant on him when he wakes. He doesn’t open his eyes, not yet, still fighting back up into consciousness. The stare lingers, but it’s not harmful. The smell of the sheets below him tells him it’s safe.

George didn’t mean to fall asleep in here last night. He really didn’t. He pops one eye open.

Dream’s lying on the same pillow, the sunshine falling through the window behind him casting a halo around his curls. They finally look blond again like this. George doesn’t hide his smile, not when an angel is smiling back like that. Like he’s happy to see him.

“Hi,” George says, voice croaking across the centimeters to Dream. There’s no guilt on his face, he doesn’t even pretend to not be staring. George likes that, but that doesn’t mean he’s not self-conscious. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, I just—” Dream swallows and George tracks the movement of his Adam’s apple. “I’m so in love with you.”

He’s never been shot before, thank god, but he imagines it must feel something like this, like his insides are going to bleed out like an oil spill. Like it’ll take decades for him to recover from this. His heart rabbiting in his chest, he says, “Dream.”

“No, I am. I—You’re perfect,” a hand comes up to caress George’s face. “You’re everything.”

George does his best to look Dream in the eyes, to push his heart down and listen with his brain. He can’t allow them to get caught up, not if—not if Dream isn’t completely there. He’ll never recover, then. No matter how many Greenpeace workers they send, no matter how much Dawn he scrubs into the mess. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

“I have to be,” Dream says, voice so brittle George wants to gather him close, protect him. “I can’t lose this. I don’t want to waste another second without this.”

“No, Dream, that’s—” he reaches out with his legs, pulling Dream closer to him, tangling them together. “I’m not going anywhere whether you can give me more or not.”

Dream shakes his head and swallows again. His eyes are kind when he says, “I’m ready. This between us… it’s real. It’s realer than anything and I want it, you know?” The balm of honesty between them, the way Dream’s looking at him—George’s heart aches in his chest. Dream’s so brave, after everything he’s gone through, so strong, resilient. “I think—I think I deserve it. I certainly want it and want it enough, want you enough.”

Right then, George makes a silent promise to himself, to Dream. He promises to be patient, to be kind to Dream. He promises to not be envious or, or boastful—he’s not going to make their relationship something to be put under a microscope for anyone else, it’s theirs.

He’s Dream’s. All at once, it’s imperative he tells him so: “I’ve been yours. I’ve always been yours. Since we were kids,” Dream’s hands migrate up to George’s cheeks and he looks as vulnerable as George feels. George turns his head and kisses his palm, as softly as a butterfly’s wings. “Say the word and it’s official.”

Dream’s smile takes over his entire face, a new one, one George hasn’t encountered before. It’s like the last vestiges of his ex’s claws have finally left. He nudges George’s nose with his own, and then with eyes so amused and in love, says, “Word,” and giggles right into his face.

“You’re so dumb.” George laughs in joy, in completion, in the satisfaction of things falling into place.

“I’m sick,” Dream argues, attempting to look poorly again, and failing. His eyes are too bright and the smile won’t shed off his face. His heart pounds wildly against George’s chest, keeping time with his own. 

“And dumb,” George says, but he can’t make himself put anything but affection on the words.

“Yeah, but you like—” Dream scrunches his nose up, he’s devastatingly cute. “You love me.”

“Yeah,” George says, because it’s a truth he’s felt so long in the core of himself that he’s ready for it to be known, ready for Dream to come to terms with the amount of feelings George has in store for him. If Dream says he’s ready, George will take him at his word.

He’ll give him everything, least of all his love.

He takes small umbrage that Dream’s face turns to surprise. He hates that Dream doesn’t know, wouldn’t know, can’t know, because George hasn’t told him with words. But, fuck, he’s told him every other way imaginable, hasn’t he? Dream should know George loves him. Instead, Dream has the gall to say, “You’re not going to—you do?” like George’s love isn’t a constant like the speed of light in a vacuum.

“Yeah,” he says, placing his hand on Dream’s, holding onto his own face. He needs him to hear this. “Of course I do. I’ve loved you as long as I’ve known you. And now I’m—I’m in love with you. Of course I am.”

“I loved you then, too. And I—I love you now.”

They spend the morning in bed talking. Neither of them push for more, just light kisses that have more meaning than entire past relationships of George’s. They linger, both too happy to get up and face the day. 

They’ve earned this.

Tomorrow George will get Dream to tell him more about his toxic ex, he’ll work to figure out triggers and how he can help Dream without making things worse. He’ll tell Dream about his own experiences, discovering his sexuality at uni, the trials and tribulations of coming out to his family. 

Both of them have baggage and things aren’t magically okay because they’re in love.

But it’s a start.

The world is a little better place with love in it.