Work Text:
Warmth lowers itself onto Dream’s skin as a sunbeam falls freely through the bare branches of a tree. It tickles him gently, and the feeling is almost strange. Not in the weird sense, just unexpected; it’d been years since he had felt this kind of sunlight during the earlier days of February.
But it is odd, the whole thing—the sudden vanishing of clouded skies and rough winds after nearly a week of rain seems to cause a shift in the universe itself. Without being dramatic, that’s Dream’s way of saying that the sun has given him a sort of divine chance, the same that has caused him to be like this today: resting beneath a blue sky, beside a tree, atop the comfortable green bed made of grass blades… and, of course, the strangest thing of them all, the chance to revel in the way George’s fingers run through his hair, slowly. The touch is soft and gentle, dreamlike, but it burns his skin more than what an hour beneath the sun does.
George’s hand stops then, as if knowing Dream’s mind is beginning to fall through a rabbit hole of endless thinking. “Are you alive?” he asks, his voice quickly replaced by a quiet laugh.
“Yeah,” he responds simply, his eyes blinking tiredly. He just now begins to realize how caught his mind has been, somewhere between the blue color behind two white clouds colliding above, and a conversation from weeks ago he can’t leave behind.
“Okay, just checking.” George pauses, and although he’s stopped moving his fingers, his hand stays lightly on Dream’s head, and he doesn’t make an attempt to get Dream's head off his lap. “Felt like you had stopped breathing,” he jokes.
Dream can feel how his thorax expands and compresses every time he speaks. It's rare whenever he gets to be this close to him. The thought makes him stop breathing, too self-conscious about their proximity. “I’m here,” he tries. “It’s—it's the sun, it feels good. I could stay here forever.”
“Hm, that’s just not possible,” George begins, using his falsely serious tone. “Biologically, you’d have to poop eventually. I wouldn’t let you poop while you’re lying on me. And what if we got hungry? This grass looks nasty.”
“That's true,” Dream agrees. Still, he wonders about a life full of this, of fingers tangled in his dark blond curls, and a peace brought by George's close company. Of warmth and freckles and saturated skies with the whitest clouds.
George doesn’t say anything. Silence falls over them and, for a second, Dream entertains the idea of his friend wondering the same scenario, yearning over more moments of sunlight under a tree and laughter after dumb jokes.
Instead, George stirs suddenly, resuming the movement his hand had on Dream’s hair. He clears his throat. “Your hair is soft,” he says quietly. There’s no time to look up and see the way he mouths the words because he breathes in quickly and looks away. “Like a dog’s, I guess,” he adds immediately. “And you smell like one too, you desperately need a shower.”
“Okay, fine.” Like a dog, Dream tries to nuzzle George’s chest, not quite thinking much about how it’ll affect the rate of his heartbeats. “Give me a bath, then, like a dog,” he attempts to immerse himself in the joke, breathing out his unnecessary nervousness.
“Ugh, get away from me,” George complains gutturally, his hands grabbing Dream’s shoulders in an effort to push him back. Yet he mirrors Dream’s smile, as he usually does even when their jokes teeter at the edge of something else. “You fucking wish.”
Before Dream can say anything, he sees George reach for something beside him—he’d left his beanie on the grass a while ago when they first came here to rest. He’s thinking to complain about it when George puts it on, but the view of dark brown curls falling to rest on his forehead promptly shuts him up.
He swallows. “Thought I smelled bad?” he quips to deter the turbulence that rattles within his blood vessels.
“Whatever, you can have it.” George rolls his eyes, tossing him back the beanie. “I need to go,” he adds, getting up from the grass. The sun hits his back once he is standing, the specks of radiance contrasting with the disheveled honey-brown of his hair. He looks ethereal like this. “I’m ending my shift a bit late today, is that okay? They want us to put up some silly love day decorations for next week.”
Dream blinks, distracted. He’s brought it up, finally: love day, Valentine’s. Not in any suggestive way, of course, but as a reminder that it’s right around the corner. The last time George had mentioned the word love was weeks ago, during a conversation he began in a drunken stupor right after the last firework had turned into mere gunpowder remnants polluting the night sky. New Year, happy, he’d said with a hiccup, before voicing how he wanted someone to love.
It had surprised Dream, obviously; George wasn’t one to say things like that, not even when drinking. A bit guiltily, he had let him continue his rambling, a hope growing and setting off one last imaginary firework inside his chest. George had looked him in the eyes while he said he’d try dating again. His nerve impulses weren’t quick enough to do anything because soon after the words had settled in the New Year’s air, George leaned towards Dream and plainly decided to puke on him. The conversation was over as soon as it began, though it had never died in Dream’s mind.
“Uh, sure,” Dream responds. “Just send me a text, I’ll pick you up whenever you need. And…” he trails off, unsure of what he really wanted to say, or maybe unsure of if it was a good idea to mention. Valentine’s, please let me be with you. The sun came out today after long weeks, maybe this is the divine chance. He breathes in slowly, almost painfully.
“I really need to go,” George repeats, oblivious to Dream’s internal turmoil.
♡♡
Like an afterthought, his desired conversation evaporates into nothing but a seemingly impossible wish. He focuses on midterms and tries to ignore the way his dreams morph into long and almost tangible sequences of lava, drowning, and fireworks in the night sky. He’s sometimes lucid enough to feel the burning in his skin, not quite scorching or sufficiently distracting to avoid feeling the hot liquid pouring into his body, entering his lungs and expanding the tissue before it all explodes. In other sequences, he fails to breathe for other reasons: mostly fireworks, white and yellow, the same as New Year’s, and George’s face. They’re both a little blurry, both too intense for him to see the thunder striking him in a second, or to listen to the rain patting the soil where his body lies.
It’s confusing, and although they’re simply dreams he blames on academic stress, a feeling stays within him even when he’s awake. It unsettles him whenever he’s silent, attacking his mind with a relentless need to do something. An abstract idea sketches itself in his mind and embeds itself in every corner of his brain. It’s impossible to ignore, and he’s sure it’s killing him.
Then, concretely, and not in a rational fashion at all, the idea finally takes form: he’s in the car one afternoon, driving towards the cafe to pick George up from work, thinking about every second ticking by and inching closer to a particular day circled on the calendar, too distracted to realize he has skipped the exit he was supposed to take. He ends up somewhere new, and the wheels turn over unknown territory before slowing to a stop.
The burning comes back, the lava and the fireworks all at once, as if his dream has gotten the ability to modify reality and turn him insane.
He’s attacked with that same relentless need to do something, and the idea takes form.
A bell above him chimes when his hand pushes the door.
♡♡
P.S., P.S., P.S. …
The cafe seems busier than usual tonight, so it’s good that George’s shift ended about fifteen minutes ago. During the six months he’s worked here, asking Dream for rides back to their shared apartment, Dream has only been late once. Well, twice, counting today.
Dream hates being late. Listening to George’s stressed chatter about work has become an important part of his routine, and he loves that he can always be the one to calm him down after particularly strenuous days. Being late only adds to George’s mood, so he worries and avoids it as much as he can, even if Sapnap teases him about it.
But today is different. There’s not enough space in his mind to care about being late. He breathes in, trying to get through an unequivocally altered mental state, trying to calm down while counting the cute red paper hearts that hang behind the windows of the cafe.
His hand has already turned clammy as it closes tightly around the steering wheel, and his leg is beginning to cramp from how hard he’s still stepping on the brake, even though he parked the car about three minutes ago. The seat beside him is occupied by the worst idea he’s ever had, and a quick glance fills him with a ruthless type of embarrassment that makes him want to grab the small bouquet and toss it in the nearest garbage can.
For George, says the little beige piece of thick paper that the lady at the flower shop tied to a ribbon holding together the arranged white and blue flowers Dream’d decided to buy. She’d given him a marker, its ink black and bold and way too noticeable even in the darkness of the car. He holds his breath long enough for his heart rate to slow, ignoring the lightheadedness. The paper makes it too real, so he folds it carefully in half. For George is no longer visible. P.S. I love you is finally out of view.
For George, whose shift has been over for about twenty minutes but isn’t standing by the sidewalk waiting for Dream like he usually does. And then, well, it is absurd to think Dream spent the last five minutes containing an unnatural amount of panic when George was in view. It isn't that difficult to spot him. There, smiling behind a cup of coffee he shortly lowers onto a table he’s sharing with someone.
Dream releases his breath all at once, waiting to see if his body will just give out and faint, though it never happens. He’s left to stay awake and watch the scene unfold, both surprising and terrifying. Someone with curly hair, unruly and chaotic and dazzling with the way it catches the light in gold and coppery sections. She is smiling too, stretching out her hand to give him her phone.
It’s idiotic how Dream never expected something like this to happen. He was too focused on his own hope, supposing that he was the only option back when George had mentioned he wanted someone to love. Dream assumed it meant him, and now George is typing something on a girl’s phone, and Dream is sitting in his car beside some stupid flowers, and George is smiling, and maybe Dream was too late.
He waits there, incapable of doing anything else but wait until George finally taps at the car window for Dream to unlock the car. It’s hard to believe anything that unfolded before his eyes was actually real, but George has the same smile plastered on his face, the one he does when he’s trying to hide exactly how happy he is, the one he was doing back inside the cafe.
And then George is greeting him, and everything tilts back to reality when Dream realizes the chance to hide his pathetic flowers is gone. Still, he hurries to throw them somewhere at the back of the car. He smiles, biting his tongue, and acting normal. “Hey.”
“You got flowers,” George teases immediately.
“It’s, yeah, I guess. Just—uh, a guy from class. Nothing special, I guess.”
“You guess,” George echoes, clearly amused by the ordeal, though he doesn’t say anything after. Dream overthinks his reaction—of course he’s indifferent, of course he wasn’t talking about him on New Year's, of course Dream was wrong.
“So,” George begins after the bout of silence, “speaking of guessing, you’ll never guess what happened just now,” he announces, turning his head towards Dream. “I was working and at some point, this girl comes in and orders two coffees but the person who was supposed to meet with her never makes it, right, and then you are late and she overhears me complaining about you being late. So she invites me to sit with her and—” he pauses, suddenly. “Dream, are you listening?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, turning the steering wheel before picking up speed again. “I’m also driving, sorry I can’t give you my full attention right now, George,” he blurts sharply without thinking.
He knows he has fucked up even before George huffs. “Okay, tough day for you or are you being a bitch just because?”
“No, sorry, I—” Dream lets out a harsh breath. “I’m just tired, sorry. And sorry about being late too. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Actually, I mean, usually, I’d be a bit annoyed about you being late, but I wouldn’t have met her if you’d been here early, so.”
“So.” Dream repeats right after, his body feels like an automatic machine. He was too late. He spares a glance towards his friend, tries to imitate at least a fraction of his smile before he says, “That’s awesome, George.”
♡♡
It’s obviously not awesome, at all.
George doesn’t bring her up again, and Dream doesn’t dare to ask why he’s made that choice, although he has some ideas. Nonetheless, he knows there’s a reason why George spends the next days using his phone as though he were a teenager with an excessive social media addiction. Sometimes, he sees him lying on the couch, kicking his legs and occasionally throwing a giggle at whatever’s on his phone. Sometimes he shows Sapnap, and seeing both of them laugh at the screen is a particular image he never imagined would cause him so much anguish. Stupid, pointless anguish.
In fact, he thinks he’d rather swallow lava and feel his lungs burst than whatever this situation has turned to, but that’s just him being foolishly dramatic. He reprimands himself, strives to act like Sapnap, who seems exceedingly happy for George—though that might also be Dream being dramatic too, since all he can do is be somewhat nonchalant.
Somewhat nonchalant as in crying himself to sleep, of course. Although it is embarrassing, Dream doesn’t find it all that concerning. He knows he’ll get over it soon enough. After all, he’s gotten over George turning him down for Valentine’s two times before, and although back then was a joke, maybe they prepared him for the occasion.
Except, maybe not prepared him enough; it is a couple of days later when he’s outside the cafe waiting for George, and his assertion about him feeling better disappears instantly the moment he looks past the ugly paper hearts. He even made sure to be here earlier in an attempt to avoid this, but it seems as if he’s made it just in time to see George give her one of those simple paper roses his mother had taught them to make years ago when they were merely thirteen.
A red paper rose. Dream doesn’t precisely know what he’s doing, but he turns the ignition and exits the place before even thinking about it. A fucking paper rose, really. It’s five to four pm and George’s end of shift. He gave her a rose, two days before Valentine’s. Surely he can get another ride back home. He doesn’t need Dream.
He swallows his regret the moment he’s back home, turning off his phone for good measure. It feels instantly weird, though, coming back without George. Every room is silent, the TV isn’t on. Sapnap isn’t going to be home until a couple of hours more. Despite him staying here alone countless times before, the place feels empty this time, everything feels strange.
Dream feels his stomach turn.
He starts sweating when the rain comes and avoids any thoughts as he flinches underneath the stream of cold water in the shower.
His hair is still wet by the time he hears keys jingle behind the door. Sapnap appears first, visibly sighing with relief upon seeing Dream just before his face morphs into worry again. Behind him is George frighteningly stoic, with his face blank and his wet baby blue sweatshirt.
Staying hidden in his room would’ve been a better idea than waiting in the living room, Dream realizes. Maybe staying in the bathtub would’ve been good too. But now he’s standing awkwardly, arms at his sides, careful to breathe slowly or avoid moving at all.
“What the hell, Dream?” Sapnap breaks the silence, his head tilted in genuine concern.
“I fell asleep,” he tries, though he intonates the end with hesitation.
“No, you didn’t,” Sapnap continues. George’s silence is seriously freaking Dream out. “I was still home when you left to pick him up, what happened?”
Dream stiffens. “Okay, no—” His shoulders slump, defeated. “Sapnap, you’re not helping.”
“Helping what?” George steps in, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m curious, ‘cause last time you said you’d tell me whenever you couldn’t make it, maybe a ‘hey, I changed my mind, don’t expect me!’ you know, like a normal fucking person!”
“A normal fucking person? Is me always doing you favors, helping you with anything something a normal fucking person would do?”
“Guys.”
“No, what does that even mean?" George ignores Sapnap, raising his voice to make sure he's being heard. "You’re my friend, you’ve told me so many times it’s no problem.”
“Maybe it’s a problem now.” Dream shrugs ironically. “So you can ask someone else to do everything for you, it shouldn’t be too hard now, right?”
“What?” George frowns. “What’s up with you lately? You’re acting weird.”
“I’m tired of you, that’s what.”
“Hey.” Sapnap. “Stop, shut the fuck up right now, both of you. Dream, just leave, please. You can talk later.”
“Fine, I was done, either way.”
“Oh, you’re done what? Being a bitch?”
♡♡
So far, George’s year hasn’t been much of what he expected.
He started the year puking on his best friend, failing his first midterm, living with a chronic headache and too many people ordering extra syrupy lattes on Wednesday afternoons.
And then he met Ellie, by chance. He was enthralled with the idea of finally meeting someone, of something finally happening. She’d talk about art classes and painting techniques and hear him talk about his friends and annoying coding projects. She’d visit him during his shifts and order black coffee, two dollars for the cash register and three for the tips jar.
He’s never known to name his feelings, but he sort of knew he’d settle with calling Ellie his friend over anything else from the start—she’s cute, of course, but the dynamic he has with her is something he wouldn’t have thought to rush. Of course, when Ellie texted him one day that she had a Valentine's day date with the cutest girl from her textile studio class, he knew there wouldn’t be the need to rush anything at all.
Strangely, the disappointment never came; he was happy with the idea of having her only as a friend, but still wondered what past George, who was desperately looking for something right when the year began, would’ve thought about this. Why was he relieved Ellie wasn’t available?
He’d even helped her with her date, teaching her how to fold paper into a rose, saying it’d be more impressive seeing as though both love artsy stuff. Ellie had kept making the same mistakes Dream always did the first time his mum had taught them both to do the roses, years ago.
“You’re really close with him, aren’t you?” she had asked while folding the paper the wrong way, again. She did this thing of twisting her mouth at points when she was hyper-focused. Funny, it reminded him of Dream’s efforts of building a gingerbread house a couple of months ago, the one he had ruined with extra icing and gumdrops just so he could get his attention.
“Yeah,” he had answered, simply.
He knew Dream was acting weird, obviously—his friend was the prime example of an emotionally transparent person. Ignoring it seemed appropriate, at least back then, George thinks, perhaps because he was scared of him being the reason for his weird mood shift. In the end, he ends up being right about that suspicion.
In the end, it’s too late to impede the explosion. He should’ve guessed Dream was simply pissed when he wasn’t there to pick him up, but his mind runs him through brick walls of fatalist thoughts every minute Dream doesn’t show up. He thinks of the worst: imagines a call on his phone, sees a hospital in his mind, and his throat hurts no matter how hard he tries to swallow back the lump of sorrow. Turns out hiding those emotions isn’t that easy, and so he finds himself chewing on a piece of bread Ellie insisted he ate to “lift his spirits.”
It sort of helps, at least during the time it takes Sapnap to pick him up, when he’s told Dream isn’t answering his messages or calls either. Sapnap reassures him, but it doesn’t help that he accidentally mentions that Dream had left the house to go get him at the usual hour.
Sapnap holds his hand on the way home, and George just can’t believe something like this is affecting him that much.
The emotions turn when he arrives at their apartment, and Dream is standing there, saying nothing. His relief burns quickly before his chest begins to hurt. Not bad, but just enough for his own body to write out the words in his mind.
Dream did this, on purpose. He’d left him and didn’t care to answer his phone.
Sapnap talks, Dream talks, but everything sounds muffled to George.
It doesn’t end well. He keeps thinking about how his year hasn’t gone quite as he imagined, but the phrase itself is starting to lose some sense—what exactly did he imagine, what is it that he expected?
The day before Valentine’s, George remains hidden in his room, hoping to avoid any encounter with Dream. He can’t be mad, although he wishes. Instead, he chats with Ellie until the sun loses strength and disappears through the horizon. They talk about date outfits, even if she says he has peculiar choices with which she doesn’t necessarily agree. George takes offense, jokingly. During their prolonged, comfortable silences, he fights the urge to tell her about Dream, not wanting to sour her night.
Even after she says goodnight, George keeps thinking about how excited she seemed about her date, with her jittery voice, big, shiny green eyes, and her countless plans for any occasion that might pop up, including an escape scheme that she prayed wouldn’t have to use.
George sighs into the darkness of his room, maybe he should have a nightlight, just for nights like these. Or maybe he should’ve tried harder to find a date for today. But with who? The only person who has ever asked him is Dream, and even then, it has never been serious. Imagining a date with Dream isn’t difficult, actually, if only because they’ve technically been on dates since they’ve gone out just the two of them many times before. But in that pretence, he’s also been on plenty of dates with Sapnap. Sapnap would never ask him to be his Valentine, though, nor is he interested. Wait—is he interested in Dream asking? No, probably not seriously. He turns to his side, uncovering himself from the suddenly-too-heavy blanket. Despite everything, it is kind of weird not having Dream ask him this year.
Perhaps George is simply missing a routine.
♡♡
The sun filters easily through the window panels. George has forgotten to draw the blinds since all he’s known for the last few days has been rain, clouds, and the soulless grey colour of the sky.
He knows it’s late when he finds that everything is unusually quiet, weird for the Friday mornings he’s grown used to. Usually, Sapnap runs late for his early Friday class, and the sound of the blender preparing a smoothie blares loudly for consecutive seconds right before Dream opens his door with a frown, most of the time complaining about it waking him up from his ridiculous 15-hour sleep sessions.
Everything is unusually quiet, but the TV is on, playing some sports channel that only Sapnap and Dream occasionally watch. He approaches the living room, supposing someone must’ve forgotten to turn it off late at night.
It’s not the remote he ends up finding on the couch, but Dream. Dream, with his eyes squeezed shut, hands grasping a yellow blanket as if it were his lifeline. His body is shivering, George realizes, not stopping to premeditate as he lowers himself to Dream’s level.
Dream’s shoulder is tense, even more after George places his hand to shake him, gently, a little unsure. He didn’t see any of him yesterday; he hasn’t dared to see his face ever since they argued.
“Hey,” he murmurs, still afraid to wake him up. His friend’s face contorts following a groan. “What happened?” It’s useless to ask if he’s okay, obviously. George guesses that asking what happened is also sort of pointless—he’s known Dream for long enough to be well acquainted with Dream’s shit immune system, and his tendency of getting sick every other month.
Dream breathes in, though just by the sharp intake and the sound he makes, George can tell it’s painful. “Just my death.”
“Do you need anything? Have you had water? Do—” he pauses, making sure to level his voice to a more laid-back tone. “Headache?”
“Everything.” Dream rubs his eyes. “Everything hurts.”
George’s palm rests on Dream’s forehead. It reminds him of last week, their bodies underneath the sun and his fingers threading through soft tufts of golden brown. Except, this time his skin is unquestionably warmer than what is normal, and it’s wet to the touch. George half-feigns disgust about the sweat; he doesn’t care as much as he cares about making Dream react.
But Dream doesn’t smile or call out a witty remark. It’s probably because he’s, well, very clearly battling whatever his body is putting him through, yet it makes George immerse himself in the memory of their argument. Was Dream mad at him still? Was he supposed to be?
His phone buzzes from where he left it on the floor beside the couch. He spares a glance at Dream, feeling sick too, for a second, not knowing exactly why.
“Your phone is ringing,” he says coldly. Despite how weak he seems; his arm grips the side of the couch to help himself get up.
George picks up the phone, quickly moving towards the kitchen to busy himself filling a glass of water. It’s just Ellie, calling for one last-minute pre-date anxiety. He tries his best to calm her down, but any comment he makes is just repetitive and mostly unhelpful. He decides to tell her about Dream; not about the other day, but about him being sick. The way he says it is as a fact, so it surprises him when Ellie laughs and tells him she’s sure he’ll enjoy taking care of him. Whatever it may mean, he laughs it off before saying goodbye.
♡♡
Dream’s puking is undeniably worse than Sapnap’s last hangover, which was monumental. Although George wishes he could walk away and wait until everything is over; there’s no clear direction of what to do in this situation, and he thinks he has legitimately lost his mind when he kneels beside Dream to hold some of the hair that fell to his forehead. He can’t do much else, except grimace every time he feels Dream’s body shaking and folding whenever he hurls everything from the depths of his stomach.
Silence arrives after endless minutes, right after a couple of seconds of coughing. Still, Deam’s fingers refuse to stop holding onto the sides of the toilet, and the tears coming out of his eyes don’t stop.
George puts the lid down and flushes before pulling a few squares of toilet paper for Dream. “Hey, how do you feel?” he asks sympathetically, helping him move to rest his back on the tiled wall. “Hopefully better, yeah?”
“I’m sorry,” Dream rasps, head lowered, eyes covered by his shaking hand.
“It’s okay, don’t worry.” He smiles at him. “You still stink of vomit though, so I think a shower would be a good idea. I think you’ll feel better, too.”
Dream shakes his head. “I can’t even feel my legs. I’ll just sleep here on the floor, it’s fine.”
“Dream,” George says, exasperated. “You’ll rest all you want after this, you’ll feel better!” he repeats.
“Floor is comfy.”
“Dream.”
“George?”
“Fine. Let’s make a deal—” George gets up, stretching a hand towards the shower handle. “And you can’t say no, by the way. I’ll put warm water for a bath and you can relax there for a bit. You can sleep and get clean, it’s like a hack.”
The idea seems fun—he keeps making fun of Dream as he rummages through the bath drawer with a vast collection of essential oils, bath bombs, and face masks, settling for dropping a few drops of one that smells like lavender—but then he’s helping Dream stand up and just now realizes baths with clothing on are rather unorthodox.
He helps him undress, at least partially, avoiding staring for too long and thinking too much about the way Dream flinches every time George’s cold hands touch his skin.
George sits atop the laundry basket, and his own body feels liberated the moment he sees Dream relax when surrounded by the warm water. The sound of Dream’s intake of breath caresses the walls before he submerges.
One, two, three… George grows worried at fifteen, even if it’s a relatively short time to be underneath the water. Still, his hands dip into water to pull Dream out.
It must be the awkward situation he’s in, the one that makes his heart flutter, going abnormally fast. The water is not too hot, so he knows he can’t blame it on suffocation.
Dream looks at him quizzically. Droplets scurry from the ends of his hair, now a darker brown, to the skin of his shoulders before they become part of the water again. Some of them remain clung onto his skin, or along the length of his eyelashes. The light fails to reach the bathtub completely, and so George is left staring at the faint speckles that shine in his eyes, a contrast with the dimness.
“Don’t drown yourself, idiot,” he says, though it sounds merely a whisper. George wraps his arms around himself, hiding his hands as he gets fidgety. Should he leave? God, he doesn’t want to.
It’s definitely an option now. Just a while ago he was dealing with Dream puking his entire soul into the toilet, leaving would’ve made him a bad friend. Leaving now would make him a normal friend. He should want to leave.
“So…” Dream breathes, a ripple in water following after he moves slightly.
“So?”
“Are you… gonna stay?”
He shouldn’t want to stay. “Do you want me to leave?” he tries to ask offendedly, shifting to a tone that will maybe let him think a little clearer.
“No.” Comes instantly. “I mean—do whatever you want, I don’t mind.”
“Fine.” He really should want to leave. “I’ll stay, I guess,” he says instead, like a fucking idiot. And like a fucking idiot, he continues, “pass me the shampoo.”
“What?”
He swallows back his own surprise. “If you want me to stay then I have to be doing something, otherwise it’ll get boring,” he reasons, wondering whether what he’s saying even makes sense. “Let me help.”
Dream buys it. Turning towards the shampoo holder to reach for a clear bottle with a red label. George receives it, turning it to read strawberry and mint. He’s unable to contain his smile.
“Come on, don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not! It just makes sense now. I always wondered what your hair smelled like, strawberry checks out.”
Dream snorts. “You think lots about what I smell like?”
God, did he actually think a lot about what he smelled like? Strawberry-scented things did always have a particularly interesting smell, after all. Plus, he’s just naturally nosy. “Stop,” George says, squeezing the half-empty bottle into his hand. “I was just curious.”
“Sure…”
“I’m just—I’ll, yeah,” George informs, meeting Dream’s hair with a gentle touch. He hears himself swallow saliva, which is somehow more embarrassing than washing your friend’s hair.
Dream seems not to care, though. He begins to slow his blinking until eventually, his eyes fall shut. It’s all quiet except for the sound of foam every time George rakes his fingers through shampooed hair. The weirdness dies down quickly—he doesn’t realize he went back to normal breathing until his hands are at the back of Dream’s neck, and the smell of strawberry has clung to the secluded walls.
George looks up toward the narrow window. How long had they been here? He can barely tell, but the warm yellow melting into brighter orange is somewhat of an indication. “I’ve spent all my day in this bathroom,” he whispers, again not really knowing why he feels the need to keep his voice low. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he scoffs, pulling the showerhead to wash off the shampoo.
“Sorry.” Dream tilts his head, getting closer to the stream of water. “I never asked what happened to your date.”
“My date?”
Dream bites his nail, looking away. “The girl from the cafe?” he says, hesitant.
George laughs breathily. “Ellie is just a new friend I made, she was never my date,” he clarifies, missing Dream’s ridiculously confused frown. “Actually, I never got a date.”
“What?”
“I know,” he replies, as if they’re both reacting with an exact sentiment. “But it’s fine because you got sick and you clearly need me, so whatever.”
♡♡
George has been acting progressively weird ever since Dream got sick.
It starts with simple unusual actions like helping him with baths, taking his temperature, getting him soup, and making sure he’s drinking enough water for a quick recovery. Dream is not complaining, of course, he just finds it odd, as if he had fallen through the floors and landed in a new dimension where the George he knows is someone who carefully changes the wet towel from his forehead every time it gets too warm.
At some point, Dream confronts him, more or less, after George makes a comment about him always getting sick. It gets him thinking because it is true: he has gotten sick many times before, times when George’s cooperation consisted in not pestering him with dumb comments.
“It’s the first time you care, though,” Dream replies, keeping his tone with genuine interest.
The thermometer beeps. “I told you not to talk while you do this,” George says, checking the numbers. “Look at you, no more fever. That explains while you’re being annoying.”
“George.”
George sighs. “I do care, Dream. I’ve always cared.” He stares at him, so earnestly that it leaves Dream more confused. “Maybe this one time I wanted to help you more, I don’t know.”
Dream is always grateful for it. He feels better after that talk, because George seems like George again. But then, one morning and with no apparent reason, George transforms into this awfully awkward mess every time he is near. He drops a glass of water once when Dream greets him, and stops spending as much time with him as he used to. He’s only been sick for four days, but suddenly facing a lack of his company after getting used to being with him almost all the time hits him almost as hard as whatever extreme type of food poisoning he guesses he got.
Whenever George does give him company, he gets weirdly silent and, most often than not, stares at Dream for long seconds.
“George, is everything okay?” he asks him while they watch a movie at night.
Dream’s voice startles him, but he recovers quickly after drawing in a quick breath. “Yeah,” he says, unconvincingly. “Still getting over the trauma of seeing your vomit, but I’m good.”
“Oh, shut up.” Dream smiles, more about listening to George’s witted comments again than the actual comment.
“I’m just saying. I’ll ask for financial compensation after you’re fully recovered.”
“I feel good already, but whatever. Don’t think I forgot about you puking on me on New Year’s, so this was the payback.”
“I wish I could remember more of that night,” George mumbles. “I could answer so many things.”
“But are you okay, seriously? You’ve been acting differently.”
George turns his head in his direction. He’s silent for a while, lost in a pool of thoughts that Dream can’t seem to reach. “So, uh—” he begins, “whatever happened to your Valentine’s date? The guy of the flowers.”
It’s time for Dream to stay quiet. He’d forgotten about that, honestly, Valentine’s Day had passed him by with no importance other than stomach cramps and high fevers. Had he lied to George about a date? He can’t remember. “Uh… yeah, no. I canceled the night before, when I started feeling like shit,” he lies.
“Sorry, that sucks,” George says, tapping his fingers against his thigh. “Were you, like, excited to go out with him?”
“Yes, I had a plan, well—I had somewhat of a plan, but.” He shrugs. “What about you? I can’t believe nothing happened with the girl you met at the cafe; she seems sweet.”
“She is. But she likes someone else and I—” George pauses, casting a gaze around the living room. “I think like someone else too,” he whispers, but Dream is sufficiently close to him to hear it.
He looks pale even before he’s finishing saying it. Abruptly, George rises from his seat with a mumbled excuse about needing to go to sleep.
Dream follows quickly, dazzled about whatever his friend just said. He needed to know. “George, talk to me,” he pleads, catching up to him outside his room.
“You said that you loved me.” George turns around, nearly colliding with Dream because of the lack of warning. It still feels like a collision happens when he says the words.
Dream shakes his head, more out of panic than actual denial. “When—”
“The flowers on your bookshelf.”
“George, listen—it was a stupid plan, okay?" All Dream can think about is every moment that has led to this one. He hates himself for the flowers, for his feelings, and for everything else that has taken away the normalcy of the dynamic he had with George for such a long time. "You don’t have to say anything. I should’ve thrown them out a while ago.”
“Did you mean it?”
“I thought I made it obvious," Dream breathes, holding back his exasperation. George takes a step forward. "All this time I do these things for you that I don't—"
Dream stops talking when he feels George's hand graze his jaw, the other placed at the back of his neck. It goes so slowly before he levels to kiss him, when time picks up speed and all he's ever known is the rush of nonsense floating around every place that surrounds him. It's the violence of thunder and the gentle taps of rain, the warmth of a sunny afternoon in February, or the image of two clouds colliding before a saturated blue sky.
He laughs breathily into George's neck, waiting for the oxygen to return him to normal life. "I'm sick, you idiot," he says, but doesn't move away from George's touch.
“I don’t care.” He can feel George's smile on his shoulder. “You should've given me the flowers.”
"I'll give you flowers next year if you agree to be my Valentine."
George laughs, leaning in close once again. Against his lips, he says, "I'll think about it."