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“Stand on my feet.”
George blinks up at Dream, standing a few feet away against the dimly lit kitchen counter. His half drunk glass of water balances precariously on the ledge behind him. He’s watching George intently, head tilted slightly to the side
“Stand on your feet?” George repeats, as if he’d misheard.
Dream nods. “Yeah.”
“Why?” George asks, narrowing his eyes.
Dream looks backwards towards the stairs, where the faint sound of Sapnap’s music drifts down and out into the wide open living room. He glances back towards George, grinning. His white teeth flash in the dim light. George wants to step forward and reach out to touch them.
“Do it,” Dream tells him again, pushing himself away from the counter. He kicks at George’s foot lightly. “Trust me.”
George hesitates. “Tell me what for first.”
Dream shrugs. “We’re dancing.”
“We’re dancing?” George repeats skeptically. “We can’t dance.”
“Stand on my feet!” Dream says again, laughing. It’s a brilliant sound. “Stop being an idiot and just do it.”
“To Sapnap’s music?”
Dream widens his eyes. They shine gold in the dim kitchen light. “What’s wrong with that? I want to.”
With a sigh, George gives in. He was never not going to, and Dream must've known that.
“Fine,” he says, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. “Let me – let me stand on your feet.”
Dream beams at him. He holds out a hand. George takes it. His palm is warm and soft, still slightly slippery from a lotion he’d applied a few minutes prior. The faint scent of coconut drifts from it.
“Is that from the hotel?” George asks. “In Chile?”
Dream thinks for a moment, tilting his head up towards the ceiling. The living room light catches the curve of his jaw. “I think so,” he says after a moment.
“It’s nice.” George carefully steps his left foot on top of Dream’s. He feels it flex beneath his weight. “That okay? I don’t want to hurt you.”
Dream shakes his head, looping one arm around his back and splaying his hand out between his shoulder blades. “Doesn’t hurt,” he assures. “It’s just weird. It’s a weird feeling.”
George grins. “It is kinda weird. It’s–” he sways backwards as Dream moves. “Dream!”
“I’ve got you!” Dream laughs, tugging him closer. “Trust me!”
“You’re going to let me die ,” George breathes in horror, regaining his balance. “I’m literally going to – to crack my head open on the counter and die.”
“Don’t say that,” Dream scolds. “I’m not going to let you die, idiot.”
“You are,” George insists, scowling. He can feel the smile creeping up behind it, growing warmer and warmer until he can’t hide it. “You’re going to let go of me and I’m going to get a concussion.”
Without warning, Dream tugs him in tighter. George’s face collides with his chest, forehead knocking against his collarbones. One hand finds his while the other wraps snuggly around his waist.
“What are you doing?” George laughs, tilting his head back to look up at him. “Ow! You, like, smacked my forehead. You're actually going to give me a concussion!”
Dream kisses him right between the brows. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes, grinning. “I’m just keeping you steady. Not letting you fall.”
George sinks into him, dropping his head against his chest. They’re not moving much; Dream’s just waying side to side, not even attempting to lift his feet but instead rocking back and forth to the faint rhythm of the music. George can feel him breathing, the slow rise and fall of his chest and the heartbeat underneath it. The hand not wrapped around his waist is still swallowing George’s left, held out to the side as if they were going to waltz, if either of them knew how.
Somewhere above them, so faint that George can’t make out anything but the rumbling bass, Sapnap’s music is still playing.
“When we get married,” Dream says out of nowhere. His voice vibrates through George’s brain, pleasantly warm and dripping gold. “Are we going to have a first dance?”
When, when, when, when.
“I dunno,” George says, closing his eyes and feeling himself move side to side. Heat floods his body. “We can just do this.”
He can hear Dream smile. “You like it?”
George breathes him in. “Yeah.”
Dream giggles. George can hear his heartbeat pick up. “I told you.”
“Shut up,” George says. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did,” Dream insists softly. “You’re just an idiot.”
“Shut up,” George says again. “I’m listening to your heartbeat.”
Dream falls silent. George hears him swallow. After a moment, he asks, “what does it sound like?”
George hums. “Like a heart.”
“No way.”
The kitchen is silent. George raises his head. “The music stopped.”
A beat. He feels Dream move.
“Oh,” Dream says. “It did. That’s okay.”
“What would our first dance be to?” George asks.
Dream shrugs. “I dunno. We have plenty of time to think.”
“Shame,” George sighs. “Heatwaves.”
Dream laughs at that, bright and ringing through the dimly lit kitchen. Living room light pours over them. “No,” he giggles. “Not Heatwaves. Have you ever, like, actually read the lyrics? It’s not a happy song.”
George shakes his head. “Well, what about Mask?”
“No,” Dream says again. “Whatever it is, you’re not allowed to pick.” He kisses his forehead.
“Just write one for when we get married,” George tells him, frowning. “A – custom wedding song.”
When, his brain echoes. When, when, when, when.
Dream giggles, ducking his head down so his cheek brushes George’s ear. “I wouldn’t want to hear myself at my wedding.”
George leans his head against his chest. Dream adjusts his grip, wrapping his arms securely around George’s back and resting his chin on the top of his head. For a moment, George is content with the silence, content with the innate, warm smell of Dream and the quiet huff of his breathing.
“I’m not hurting your feet, am I?” George asks into his t-shirt.
“No.” Dream buries his nose in his hair. “You’re so light.”
George closes his eyes. He traces patterns down the back of Dream’s shirt, first writing their names, and then drawing the shape of a cat face. Dream giggles.
“You drawing Patches?” he asks. “I can feel it.”
“Yeah,” George tells him. “What’s this? Tell me if you feel this.” He draws a shape, large enough to fill the whole of Dream’s back.
Dream laughs. “It’s a penis, you idiot. I could have guessed that before you even started drawing to be fair. You’re predictable.”
“You just know me so well, don’t you?” George says snidely, peering up at him. “You just love to brag about it.”
“I do.” Dream’s tone is soft and earnest, a hint of a smile peaking through like sunlight over rooftops. “We’re just so in sync. BB.”
George scoffs. “You’re an idiot. We’re not even dancing.”
“I don’t know how to dance,” Dream tells him, frowning. “You don’t either.”
“Try,” George insists. “Left foot, then right foot.”
Dream laughs. “Okay,” he caves. “Alright, fine. Fine.”
“Go,” George tells him impatiently. Where their chests are pressed together, he can feel them both beginning to sweat. He’s warm, nearly to an uncomfortable level, but Dream is soft and giving beneath him and he wouldn’t pull away if somebody offered him the world.
Jerkily, Dream lifts his left foot, stepping forwards. George clings onto him as gravity pulls him back. Just as he regains balance, Dream steps forward with his other foot, then brings his left to it in a sort of sloppily butchered box step and George feels himself tilt back again as Dream wobbles. He laughs when George shakes his head against his chest.
“This was a terrible idea.”
“It was your idea!” Dream points out, words torn with giggles. “You have nobody to blame but yourself.”
“I’m never to blame,” George huffs. “I’m right about everything.”
Dream scoffs and kisses the top of his head. “I’m sure you are.”
“I am ,” George insists. “I am.”
“I know,” Dream says simply. The smile seeps through the words and paints them blue. “You’re very smart.”
George nods, pleased. “I am,” he confirms softly. “The smartest.”
Dream hums. “The smartest,” he repeats, resting his cheek on the top of George’s head.
They sway there for a moment, no longer attempting any sort of step, rather content with just existing pressed against each other. Dream sways them side to side, slight rocking motions as completely absent of rhythm or purpose. George lets himself be lulled by the movement, closing his eyes and letting his cheek rest against the centre of Dream’s chest.
“I love you,” Dream whispers out of nowhere. “You know that?”
George nods. His throat feels constricted. Dream’s arms are warm around him, keeping him steady; not letting him fall.
He thinks of the hard kitchen tile, and sharp edges out of the counters around them. He thinks of going crashing into them, concussing himself or blacking out against the cold floor. But Dream said he won’t let that happen, and George thinks that he doesn’t know how not to trust him anymore.
“Your heart gets faster when you say that,” George observes. “Just so you know.”
Dream hums. “Does it?”
“Yeah.” He tightens his hold around Dream’s waist, tapping the precious rhythm against the small of his back. “Like that.”
“Like that,” Dream repeats. He hunches down slightly, resting his chin against George’s shoulder. “I’m going to think of something. Tell me if it gets faster.”
George listens. He closes his eyes. He waits.
“So?” Dream asks.
“It got faster,” George informs him. He looks up. “Why’d it get faster?”
“Guess.”
George makes a face. “Tell me.”
“I was thinking about you,” Dream says simply. “Kissing me.”
“Huh.” George pulls back, tipping his head away so he can see Dream’s face. “Is that so?”
“Yeah.” He holds his gaze.
George slides his hands up his back, until he feels the soft movement of his shoulder blades beneath skin. “Just kissing?”
“Just anything,” Dream murmurs, leaning back down to him. “We’ve had no time to ourselves. We've been so busy.”
“I know,” George says mournfully. “We have now though.”
Dream kisses the side of his neck, breath hot against it. “We do,” he agrees. “We have now.”
“We also have tomorrow,” George points out. The words come out breathy as Dream’s stubble scrapes the tender parts of his neck, nearing the centre of his throat. He tips his head back. Dream’s arms wrap more securely around his waist, engulfing him.
“And the day after,” Dream murmurs into him. “And after that.”
George breathes out shakily, letting a small noise slip past his lips as Dream nips gently at his throat, teeth closing around the gold chain with a soft metallic sound. “Dream.”
Dream pauses, and then presses the side of his face into George’s neck. “Shh,” he says, the chain still hooked on his lip; George can feel by the way it pulls and rubs his skin. “I’m listening to your heart.”
“Oh?” George threads a head through his hair. “What does it sound like?”
Dream giggles. “Like a heart. Like a pulse.”
“Idiot,” George murmurs affectionately.
“It’s fast,” Dream tells him. “Gets faster when I do this–”
He kisses the side of George’s neck again, pinching the skin between his canines lightly. George’s breath shivers through his lungs. He’s sure Dream can feel it as it staggers through his chest.
“You’re like a vampire,” George tells him.. “You’re obsessed with my neck.”
Dream pulls back, looking down at him. This close, George can see new freckles blossoming like a flower field over his nose and cheeks, the healthy glow of sun and contentedness spilling through him. The scar above his eye is faint now. George can only see it if he’s searching.
“I’m obsessed with you,” Dream corrects, bending down to kiss him on the mouth. He tastes like toothpaste.
“Yeah,” George says proudly. “You are. Exactly my design.”
Dream laughs at that, bright and ringing. “Your design?”
“My design.” George nods mock seriously. “You fell into my trap. I’ve got you exactly where I want you.”
Dream shakes his head. George can’t see, but he would bet money on him rolling his eyes as well. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, smile still shining through. “This was all your master plan.”
“Yeah,” George tells him, keeping his face impassive. “It was.”
Dream laughs again, in that way that’s rounded at the corners and sweetened like a spoon of honey, all golden and soft and bright. It’s a laugh that’s reserved exclusively for these types of moments, all tucked away and private, when it’s just them, and their shadows on the white kitchen floor.
“All this time.” he jokes. “It’s been your plan all these years.”
All these years. Sometimes, George wishes he knew the half of it. He wishes he knew about the secret flame he’d nursed in silence for years, feeding it with hope and daydreams of some future where distance closed and everything he’d been scared to let himself want would end up in the palms of his hands. He doesn’t think he’ll ever tell Dream though. He doesn’t really see a reason to.
All these years, he wants to say nonetheless. Not a plan, just a desire.
“You ever think about how one day we’ll have spent the majority of our lives together?” George asks instead, because he’s not sure what else to say. It just sort of comes out.
He feels Dream’s breath catch. “Now I am.”
“Weird.” George yawns, like he doesn't think about it every day. He wonders if Dream can feel his heartbeat through his ribs, if the sound echoes into his own chest and floods it like electricity through water.
“Yeah.” He can hear the gears in Dream’s head turning. He stays quiet to let him think.
All these years, echoes in his head. It works its way through his skull like some kind of invasive species, latching on to the grey matter and making a home there. He thinks loving Dream has changed the structure of his biology, like whatever subsection of his brain that created the capability to love has grown so large that it’s swallowed everything else. It’s a blackhole with a hungry mouth. These last several months have been the first time in three-and-a-half years that it’s been properly fed.
Upstairs, a toilet flushes. George looks up towards the ceiling. Somewhere in the living room, Patches is scratching at the couch. They’ve spent months trying to break her of the habit, but it’s never worked. Dream had been the one to finally throw his hands up and declare it her newest and very expensive scratching post.
“Can I say something?” Dream asks quietly. “I think it sounds dumb.”
“Yeah?” George mouths at his collarbone through his t-shirt, pressing kisses along the line of it.
“I think,” Dream says slowly. “I’ve been in love with you my whole life.”
George’s heart pauses in his chest. He’s sure Dream can feel it. He’s sure the whole world has paused with it. “That’s impossible,” he replies, and it trembles up his spine.
Dream shrugs. “ I guess. I think I was always looking for you though. In everything.”
When he was in London, summer heat blazing through his un-air conditioned flat, every ray of sunlight across every wall was Dream. The skylight in his mum’s house cast squares across the floor. He’d send pictures of his shadow to their group chat in hopes of getting on in return. He never did, but when the evenings stretched long across the pavement outside, he could almost imagine what it would have looked like. He would try and picture it next to his own, one amorphous shape on the white concrete, but he never got it quite right.
Dream was a word he’d hear in the shops, in classes, over the dinner table as his mum told him about a nightmare she’d had the previous night. The word always sits differently on the tongue when it’s not spoken as a name. George doesn’t know how to pronounce it any other way.
I looked for you in the sun, George wants to tell him. I found you there as well.
“Really?” he says instead.
Dream sways them side-to-side absentmindedly. George wonders if he knows that the Earth has stopped rotating. “I think so. Sounds dumb.”
“No,” George tells him. “Doesn’t sound dumb.”
“It kinda is.”
“No,” George says again, cheek flattened against Dream’s chest. His heart is beating quickly. He spends a moment memorizing the rhythm. “I think I feel like that.”
Faster.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Faster.
“Oh.” Dream sounds puzzled. His arms slacken just slightly around George’s waist. “Okay.”
Faster.
“I’m tired,” George informs him. “Walk to the couch.”
Steady.
“It’s pretty late,” Dream murmurs. His voice is sugar. It coats the kitchen in blinding white. “Hold on to me.”
George tightens his arm around his waist. “I am.”
Slower.
“I know,” Dream tells him, amused. “You’re a koala.”
“I’m a koala,” George confirms. “We’re like that scene in Lord of the Rings where the – the tree guys are carrying the hobbits.”
Dream laughs. “What?”
“Whatever,” George says begrudgingly. “Shut up. Move, idiot.”
“ The tree guys, ” Dream repeats to himself, shaking his head. Slowly, he lifts one foot. George shifts his weight to the other side to let him step forwards. Together, in some odd conglomeration of limbs, they make their way out towards the living room.
“You’re so unsteady,” George mumbles when they sway, unsteady on the same two points of contact. “You’re going to make me fall.”
“I’m not,” Dream assures him. “I’m not going to. You could get off me though. That would make it easier.”
“I could get you off?”
Dream scoffs. His breath comes out in a hot puff over the top of George’s head. “I thought you were tired.”
“Never too tired for that,” George tells him, shrugging as best as their position allows. “Your heart sped up at that. Like a lot.”
“Obviously,” Dream says, pained. “You’re horrible. Are you going to let go or what?”
George shakes his head stubbornly. “No. This works.”
It barely works. He steps backwards as Dream steps forward, keeping the bottom of his foot pressed against the top of Dream’s. It’s a ridiculous method, every motion threatening to offset their precarious balance and send them careening through the glass coffee table. But Dream said he wasn’t going to let him fall and George would trust him with his life, so they’re fine.
“Let go,” Dream tells him gently, releasing his arms from around George’s waist as they safely and intactly reach the couch. “We can’t sit if you’re like this.”
“Like what?” George says, frowning. “Yes, we can.”
Dream makes a face, wiggling out of his grip. Cold air hits George’s sweaty chest in his absence and sends spikes of goosebumps up his arms. “We’re all gross now. I’m, like, sticky. ”
“We could get stickier,” George points out, grinning. It’s a proposition. “I could get you off like you said.”
Dream hums, dropping down onto the grey fabric. It bends under him. George flops down beside him, resting his head against his shoulder. “You could,” Dream says, arching an eyebrow. He bumps their knees together.
“I could,” George says contemplatively, drawing it out for no reason. He wonders how fast Dream’s heart is beating now. He wants to know, wants to feel the physical effects caused by just the notion of it.
Dream rolls his eyes, smile ever growing. “You’re an idiot,” he murmurs, reaching over and tilting George’s face up towards him. “You know what you’re doing to me.”
“You’re a bigger one,” George murmurs, and kisses him. “Yeah, I do.” He reaches out with one hand until he feels the elastic waistband of Dream’s shorts and begins to pull at them. His other, he presses against Dream’s chest.
Fast.
“You like my heartbeat,” Dream breathes into his mouth. The words get cut short when George nips at his bottom lip.
Faster.
George smiles against his teeth. “I like all of you,” he whispers. “Every part.”
Behind them, across the tall white walls, their shadows intertwine.