Chapter Text
George
There had been a time in his life when George didn't know what a financial advisor was. Now, at thirty five, he's had to deal with one on a regular basis for years.
Shay, his latest, does have some things going for him. He isn't an old guy in a suit for a start, but in fact in his mid twenties, he isn't afraid to take risks, even when George is naturally hesitant, and he is now telling George he's done such a good job that he might not even be needed anymore.
"Honestly, you could retire," Shay says.
"From what?"
George has to laugh, but it comes out hollow, echoing in his spacious, modern London apartment. A far cry from the small one he'd started in. Another thing Shay has going for him is that every investment idea he'd brought George's way, has paid off.
"From life," Shay says. "You could never make any more investments again and live comfortably off the portfolio you have."
Shay says things like portfolio and high risk, high reward and George sometimes wants to go back to a time before he knew what that all meant. He does understand what he's saying now, though. That George has enough money to do whatever he wants.
What he doesn't know, what he hasn't known for a very long time, is what he wants to do with that freedom. George learned a long time ago not to plan for the future, not to want anything grand. He takes everything as it comes, lives his life in the small confines of what he has without aiming for more, shoves down the memories of a time when he'd thought his life would turn out differently.
"Great," George says.
"But, uh, if you wanted to explore some other prospects I could send over some packets."
"That's alright," George tells him. "You're not out of a job though. Keep stuff ticking over for me, yeah?"
Shay hums, a pleased sound. George probably doesn't need to retain him on the full price that George pays but he will anyway. Shay's been good to him.
"So, what will you do?" Shay says.
George lets out a long, drawn out sigh. The walls of his flat are stark white, one wall lit up by the idle screen of his projector, London sprawling beneath his window, streetlight lined streets snaking across and around each other.
It's beautiful, but he's seen it before.
"Travel?" Shay says, as if reading his mind.
"Where would I even go?"
George heaves himself up from his deep, gray couch and pads across the large open-plan space to where his double-wide fridge gleams in shiny black.
He has a cleaner come twice a week to keep it this pristine, to wipe any trace of his actual living here away. George is ceasing to exist in his own house, not a mark of him left anywhere.
"Weren't you going to America once?"
Before George knew what a financial advisor was, he probably wouldn't have assumed they needed access to your entire life. But, it turns out, having once applied for a US residency visa is something you need to disclose when dealing with international investments. So, Shay knows the kind of stuff George tries to forget.
"Once," George says.
He opens his fancy fridge and finds what he's looking for. A glass bottle with a smoothie made by the person that drops off his meals each week.
He's long past an age where he can order takeaway for every meal and not suffer the consequences, but the desire to cook for himself hadn't materialized as people said it would. Still, as Shay has noted, he has the kind of money that means he doesn't need to do anything he doesn't want to.
The smoothie is heavy on the raspberries, a little too tart, but he takes a few mouthfuls anyway.
"You know you can still go again," Shay says. "You weren't actually denied the visa, technically."
"I thought you just did money," George says. "Or have you branched out into life coaching? Immigration policy?"
"If I had it would cost you extra."
"If 'go to America' is the extent of your advice, your prices can't be that high."
Shay snorts sarcastically. "Fine," he says. "Do what you want with your millions. Stay in London forever and never go anywhere."
"I go places," George says.
"Since Andrew?" Shay says.
At the mention of his ex, George makes an unhappy noise. It's a little too on the nose to suggest that George has been a shut-in since Andrew left, but if he's really honest with himself, all the places he went and things he did when they were together had been driven by pure inertia. George following along wherever he was dragged until Andrew finally decided that it wasn't enough.
You aren't living, George, Andrew said, parting words that echoed in George's sparse hallway, an artificial house plant silently waving. You're just existing, and I'm sick of waiting for that to change. It won't.
There had been other things, too. Things that George has folded and slipped in between the pages of memory where he does not go. He's good at that, always has been. If George doesn't want a thought he simply doesn't entertain it.
One day, perhaps when he's old enough that his resolve shifts like sands beneath his feet, the far recesses of his willpower will burst open, spilling it all out for him to trip upon. One day, he won't be able to run from it.
"I'm fine," George says. "Why are you so invested in me spending the money you helped me make? Shouldn't you be all about me saving?
"Purely selfish reasons," Shay says. "The more money you spend, the less money you have. The less money you have, the more investments you need to make. The more investments you make, the more money I make."
"At least you're honest," George says.
"Go to America," Shay repeats.
"I can't."
"You can, actually. Give me one reason why not."
George sets the smoothie bottle down on the marble counter with a click. He looks out at the sterile home he's built, the life that happened by accident, and for the first time in a long time, lets the door creak open on long-forgotten wants.
There was a house, once. His first investment, he realizes. One that wouldn't be as cold or lonely as this. One that would have been—
He squeezes his eyes shut.
"George?" Shay prompts.
"People don't just fly to America," George says, finally.
"Sure they do."
"Not unless they're having, like, a midlife crisis or something."
"So," Shay laughs. "Have a midlife crisis."
"I'm thirty-five."
"Is that too young?"
George shakes his head even though Shay can't see him. "Yes it bloody well is."
"Do it anyway."
George isn't middle-aged, but he is old enough that Shay's youthful exuberance feels like wishful thinking.
George doesn't want to explain to Shay all the reasons why what he's suggesting is impossible. He certainly doesn't want to tell him that, for George, the idea that he should drop his entire life and move to America is a notion that has never been all that far away.
He's thought about it many times. A year after he put paid to his visa application he thought about starting again, two years after, five. Those first few months when people asked him over and over what happened, George had struggled to find an answer, to summon up a suitable explanation for his still being where he'd always been. When Andrew left he nearly booked a ticket then and there but every time the thought crossed his mind he discarded it almost as quickly.
People had stopped recognising him in public, he'd packed up his old life into one box and stowed it in the back of his wardrobe where he didn't have to look at it, and gotten on with the business of doing whatever it took to move on.
"Goodbye, Shay," George says, firmly.
Unlike so many that have gone before him, Shay lets it drop without further question.
When the phone call is over, George is forced into silence once again. He likes being alone, his own company is one that has never let him down, but he'd be lying if he said that sometimes he wished he had someone to share his home with.
Andrew was all wrong for the job. He was the product of George coming to terms with an aspect of himself that he might have faced earlier if given the chance, but a poor target for it. They'd never clicked. Not like George had thought was possible once upon a time. Andrew wanted a different kind of person on his arm and while George tried to be that person for a while, he ultimately reverted to type.
When the shine of his old life wore off, when people stopped finding old accomplishments impressive, and the anecdotes of Being An Influencer became nothing more than dinner party gossip, Andrew had drifted away, toward something better.
And George hadn't even minded. He'd known why Andrew was there, hadn't really cared that it was superficial beneath it all because at the end of the day, he wasn't what George wanted. None of it was. What George wanted was in a box, in a wardrobe, in an alternate universe he could no longer reach.
George gulps down a few more mouthfuls of smoothie, draining the bottle and stacking in the dishwasher. And then, he doesn't know what to do.
Along with financial advisors, there had once been a time when George didn't know what boredom was.
George can't believe, standing in the engulfing quiet of his monotonous life, that he had once bemoaned his lack of things to do when a whole array was spread out before him. He'd thought he knew what boredom was, but now, with no job, no social life, not much of anything at all, George truly knows what it is to be bored.
Which is probably why he can't be blamed for making his way to his bedroom, sliding the mirrored door of his wardrobe aside, and peering into its depth.
I'll just have a look, he thinks. It's been so long since he thought about this box, black and cream striped, rectangular with a hinged lid where it used to contain shoes. He's not sure he still owns that particular pair of trainers, but he's carted the box around with him all these years.
What harm could it do to just look. Shay mentioning America has surfaced a lot of memories that he intends to shove back down once again but that he may as well indulge for a few moments more.
George sets the box down in the middle of his bed. The soft blue of his duvet dips around the hard edges of it, sagging under the weight of the things that it holds. George takes a breath.
It isn't that he hates that part of his life. Or that he misses it. It feels like it belongs to someone else, that it was a few years of glorious, mad, unexpected fortune that set him up for the rest of his life, but it was fleeting. A flash in the pan.
That box feels like it contains the remnants of things that once were but that can never be again. That shouldn't be again, regardless of what Shay says.
He opens the lid.
The first object he's confronted with is a hard drive. On its own, the graphite grey unit isn't that intimidating, but coupled with everything George knows that it holds, the sight of it makes a breath catch in his throat.
It's only videos. His, other people's. He remembers the weeks he spent collating it, after Dream went dark, after his channel was erased and George had to seek out reuploads to get his hands on the memories.
They're still on the internet, probably. Nothing really dies out there. But George hasn't searched for that name in years.
It's not just deleted videos. It's everything from his old computer, unreleased clips, screenshots of video calls, the faces of his friends over and over. It took George two years to clear it all out, two years for those friendships to fade.
Other than Dream, who was there one day and gone the next, George's friendships had just withered away rather than simply imploding. With Dream gone, George had found it difficult to continue and he'd let his relationships die on the vine.
While everyone else picked themselves up, carried on, George limped along for six months without his best friend but ultimately gave it up. He'd stayed friends with the others for as long as he could after that, but five thousand miles and his own stubbornness were enough to put paid to it after a while.
"Not today," George says, to the emptiness of his room, to the harddrive, to all the memories threatening to choke him.
He sets the harddrive aside. Underneath there's a folded shirt, plastic figurines, slips of paper he can't unfold for fear of what might be inside. There's a rubber bracelet, a lanyard, and right in the bottom, fallen on its side, is a pink quartz elephant.
Once upon a time he'd have rolled his eyes at anyone saying this thing was meaningful. It was just a meme, at the end of the day. But curling his fingers around the cool surface, the dips and valleys of its carving biting into his skin, it's familiar enough and strange enough to feel dangerous.
He can't say why it's that stupid elephant that causes it. If you ask him tomorrow what lights the fire under him enough to scroll through his phone contacts for a number he hasn't used in years, he might not have pointed to the tiny pink figure still gripped in his fist.
Whatever it is, George is pressing the call button, timezone math coming back to him as if it's something he's been carrying with him. Like a part of his mental workings previously earmarked for it has always been dedicated to knowing what time it is halfway around the world.
"Hello?" The voice on the other end sounds just as surprised as George is. A part of him thought the number wouldn't even work. "George?"
"Hi," George says. "Hello Sapnap."
The old intonation of his name rolls off George's tongue. His lips popping on the P in a way that sounded endearing when he was young but now feels alien and exaggerated.
"George holy shit."
"George?" Says a voice in the background. George recognises it. Karl. "Our George? Mr. Notfound?"
He hasn't been called that in a while. He isn't crying, he's not. He squeezes his fingers until the quartz bites into his palm and tries to keep his voice even.
"Long time no speak," he manages.
"Yeah you can say that again. Fuck." Sapnap seems just as shell-shocked by this whole thing as George. "Are you… is everything alright?"
"Everything is cool," George says. "I was just clearing out some old stuff and found an old hard drive. Thought I'd see how you were."
He doesn't have to tell him about his spiraling. Doesn't have to explain how the quiet clean of his own house is driving him to distraction. He doesn't have to give voice to a rising panic in his chest, the empty years stretching out in front of him, regrets piling up in his throat.
"We're good," Sapnap says. George wonders who he means by we these days.
There's a gap in the conversation then. George used to be better at this. Filling silences on a crackly phone line used to be his specialty.
"Did you…" Sapnap starts. There's a shuffling on his end, George isn't sure what it is. "Did you need something?"
The panic in George's chest won't go away. His walls are closing in. "No," he says. "Not really. I don't think."
"Oh," Sapnap laughs. "Well, if you don't mind me saying George this is kinda weird."
"It is," George agrees. "Fucking weird. I can go."
"That's not what I'm saying," Sapnap says. "Just… you called me out of nowhere. Are you sure you're okay?"
The elephant drops from his shaking hand, hitting the side of the box with a clatter that echoes around his desolate home.
And then that's it. The elephant, Sapnap's voice, or Shay's call. Maybe he is having a midlife crisis at thirty five because what comes out of his mouth next is, "Actually, I'm thinking of coming to America."
"Whoa," Sapnap says. "Cool."
"Yeah. So I thought I might drop in on you."
"Well, where are you going?" Sapnap asks.
George shuts his eyes. Behind his lids he expects darkness but what he finds is a mess of rushing indecision, crazy impulses climbing the walls.
"Dunno," George says. "Where are you?"
"North Carolina," Sapnap says.
He shouldn't be surprised that things have changed in ten years. George isn't even sure how it all played out for him after Dream left.
Sapnap was still in the house for a while, but he's pretty sure Dream wasn't. George just got papers to sign when they sold it, wrote his name on the line and tried to stem the anger and bile that rose up when he did.
"Is it nice there this time of year?"
"It's okay," Sapnap says.
"I know this is a bit sudden," George says, to Sapnap but also to himself. "But how would you be fixed for… you know, if I came to visit?"
"We… yeah. We could do that."
Sapnap sounds just as confused as George is. But it's happening now, he's said it, and the idea is out there.
Scary as it is, it's also the first time in a while that he's felt any kind of desire for change. He's sick of the silence, sick of being alone. He once had a life waiting for him on the other side of an ocean and while he knows that it's gone, it doesn't mean he can't go seek what might be left.
"Okay," George says. "Okay. So, I'll visit."
"Just like that?" Sapnap says.
The irony isn't lost on either of them. That once upon a time George coming to America had felt impossible, a long wait followed by an immediate stop. And here he is doing it like it's nothing.
It's not nothing.
"Just like that," George says.
"And this is all because of a hard drive?" Sapnap asks. "What the fuck was on there?"
"It's not," George. "I'm— huh. I guess I'm having a midlife crisis."
"I don't think it's a midlife crisis if you're only thirty five."
"Sure it is," George says. "I'm buying a sports car next."
"You can drive now?"
George's laugh bursts out of him. A part of him wants to say I didn't think you'd remember that, or maybe why is that something that stuck with you?, but he doesn't. "No," he says instead. "No, I still can't drive. No one taught me."
And then his laughter dies, remembering.
"Then a sports car would be even crazier than usual," Sapnap says.
"That's the plan."
It's strange feeling out the old back-and-forth. Like sitting in the groove of an old chair you long since vacated. It's not quite right, both of them have grown past the old shape of it, but there's the memory of it. The knowledge of what it was resurfacing, not lost, just temporarily ignored.
"Well, text me when you've got the details sorted," Sapnap says.
"You're good with any time?"
Sapnap hums. "Yeah, we'll make it work around your job or whatever."
"Don't exactly… yeah," George says. "Thanks. I guess I don't even know what you're up to these days."
"Same old, same old," Sapnap says. "Kind of."
"Streaming?" George asks. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised by that. Sapnap was still doing it the last time he'd had a mind to check in but that had been a while ago.
"Yeah," Sapnap says. "Still riding the wave til it gives out. Hasn't yet."
"No it's good," George says. "Sorry I wasn't— It's cool. That you are."
"The new kids are wild," Sapnap says. "Nothing like we were."
"I don't think anything is like we were," George says. He regrets it immediately, because it comes out all wistful and longing.
He's not still pining for his old life. He's not. There is nothing left to salvage.
"You should come on stream when you get here," Sapnap says. "It would be epic. People would freak the fuck out."
"I don't know," George says. "I'm not sure anyone still remembers me."
"Are you kidding?" Sapnap asks. "I get sick of hearing about you guys."
You guys. This time, George knows exactly who Sapnap is referring to.
"Maybe," George says. He can't handle much more than that.
The sensible thing would be to clarify his visit as just that, a mad whim he'd concocted from a box of memorabilia of a life he's no longer living. A frivolity. But instead he leaves the possibility on the table, an open door he could walk through if he wanted.
He's got dangerous ideas of what would happen if he did, though.
When they hang up, the thick silence of his house feels less like a hollow ringing of his empty life, and more like the quiet expectation before a storm. A low buzz has started, somewhere deep within him, with no telling what the crescendo will be.
He packs everything back into the shoebox, neatly stacking it all side by side and placing it back in his wardrobe. Save for the elephant, which he props up on his bedside table. It's kind of like a promise to himself, to see this through. A visual reminder of the thing he's set in motion.
Next is the tickets. He toys around looking for deals the way that he used to but somewhere between trawling the deals pages and adding up hotel packages he thinks, fuck it. He did this once, tried to think of the best way to do it, the most sensible. He towed the line and filled in the forms and waited, fucking waited, until it all blew up in front of him.
It's crossed his mind before, to wonder what would have happened if he'd thrown caution to the wind then. If he'd let go of his obsession with a permanent stay and just, gone, been there. If he'd been by Dream's side when everything—
He might not have made any difference at all. But it still plagues him. He still wonders.
He buys a first class ticket and a fancy hotel. He spends the money that Shay helped him make and sends him an email with a screenshot of the booking screen.
I'm going, he says. Happy?
I am, Shay fires back almost instantly. But more importantly, are you?
Having his financial advisor be the best friend he's got is a little weird. But at least George gets a steady stream of platonic wisdom amongst his monetary endeavors.
Since he's on his computer already, it doesn't take much effort to move over to Twitter.
I'm sick of hearing about you guys, Sapnap had said. People remember him? It's been ten years and a million different accounts since then but George's hands type in his old username and password by muscle memory alone.
He half expects it to have been deactivated, but it's all still there. His stupid profile picture, old words from the person he was all those years ago. Accounts he'd responded to have been deleted, a black hole where his friend used to be, but his are still there. A time capsule to the past.
I'm going to America he writes, and although he isn't simply picking up where he left off, for a few seconds, he can pretend that he is.