Chapter Text
A sour taste rides up Dream’s tongue. It’s bitter. Unfamiliar.
He should swallow it down, shove it to the back of his throat and disregard it.
But it’s hard.
It’s hard when the person who he’s given thought to, who Dream has guiltily wished would come back, turns the corner and stands before him, meeting him with just a trace of an innocent grin and almost terrified eyes, clad in tennis shoes and a sweatshirt.
She looks the same, really.
Brunette hair peeks through the hat she wears, with blonde drawn throughout it, brighter near the ends. It’s much, much shorter now. It used to be long. Dream remembers it long. She’s got more freckles, and for just a second, Dream allows himself to wonder if Elytra’s cheeks will sprout tiny freckles. Only a few scatter near her nose now, but as she gets older, maybe they’d bloom, maybe more time in the sun would do her well, if she’d like it.
“Hi,” the woman in front of him smiles nervously, her eyes lacking comfort and rather drenching with fear.
Dream hates greetings. With anyone. They’re too nerve-racking, too repulsing as he looks at the other person’s hands and their feet, their jittery toes, and how they wiggle inside their shoes. Their mouths and how they twitch awkwardly when the wrong word has been said.
First meetings never go well.
Reunions are worse.
Unexpected reunions are hell.
“Hello,” Dream croaks with a dry throat and a splitting chest.
He reaches his hand out, and she takes it gingerly until they meet skin to skin, moist nerves into a seeping, clear failure of confidence.
“I’m so sorry they called me,” she says, to the point. Dream is glad because he doesn’t want to be here long. “I thought maybe something had happened to you. Wasn’t sure what—or why anything was going on. But I just,” she whispers as her hands close together, intertwining fingers to reveal how small she must feel. “I came quick, just in case.”
The sleeves of her hoodie are drenched. They’re muddy, and Dream doesn’t ask why, but he suspects it’s from the weather, when the downpour occurred.
Her hat comes off next, and she uses her wet sleeves to push her hair back. Dream watches. He blinks as he shakes his head, eyes squinting in notorious shame.
“I should have been here faster. I don’t know why you were called.” Then he watches her face change, and in an urgently hoarse whisper, he adds, “I’m sorry.”
“Mess up with the hospital paperwork, I think?” She turns to look down the hall, both of them soon stepping out of the way when a couple of doctors need to pass. “That’s what they were explaining to me.”
A whirr of a sound reflects past the tip of his tongue to confirm he understands. “I think, yeah. That’s still—I don’t get it. I got upset with them. They kept trying to apologize on behalf of the state, maybe compensation, but I told them not to bother. Fuck that, you know?”
She chuckles lightly and nods.
“No bad blood, no funny feelings.”
Dream doesn’t know how to take the reminder they had said to each other in the hospital, crushing hands and knuckles as they held each other and completed decisions. It’s funny now, Dream thinks, those feelings. Staring at her, seeing the resemblance of his daughter within tiny things, cheek fat and smile and the squinting of their eyes.
“None.” Dream shoves his hands into his pockets. “Did you see my mom?”
She nods as she takes a big breath in. “I did! Yeah. Um,” she turns and jabs her thumb in the opposite direction. “I think your friends were there, too. One of them had hurt his eye, but...” Dream stops listening, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s sure the rest is small talk.
George. She’s talking about George.
“I hadn’t known you were here—in the city, I mean,” Dream says.
“I’m not. I came to visit my dad. We happened to be near.”
A delicate moment doesn’t feel fair at a time like this, but it arrives.
“I didn’t want to go in. I just saw her from a distance, but—she’s beautiful, Clay,” she says faintly, a blink of a smile trying not to jump too high. “You’ve raised a very beautiful girl.”
He has.
He truly has.
“Thank you,” his voice coats with a thickening agent, lemon and honey. His arms cover with goosebumps as he looks at her. Her smile thins this time, but he still takes it as warm and natural, a speck of hope within an endless ocean. He feels grateful to hear such words, and he doesn’t realize it until he croaks upon clearing his throat. “Thank you. Really. Thanks.”
The air calms around them, minus the repulsive sounds of the beeping coming from down the hallway. Dream keeps turning toward it, tilting his head from one direction to the other, hoping to find the source. The longer he waits, the more eager he becomes. To see Elytra, to be sure his daughter is secure and in his arms, warm and far from any sort of danger, no longer scared of the unfamiliar faces around her.
Dream doesn’t like this.
“Do you know if they’ll let me back?”
She takes a breath and releases the steady grip of her own two hands. A break of tension, a rip of strings that have been stuck around her. “They should. I can show you where they led me originally.”
Dream follows.
The two of them leave muddy tracks on white tile, trudge a path of heavy and undefinable emotion down a quiet hallway toward where he supposes Elytra must be.
He’s nervous. More nervous than he thinks he’s ever been before, his knuckles pressing aggressively together as though he’s stopping himself from attempting to grip on something. But he should. Grip onto something. Maybe the loopholes of his jeans or the wadded, bunched material at the end of his shirt, the coat sleeve he could pinch with his nails until they bend.
A doctor meets them at the front glass, and Dream is quick to give his identification, sliding it across solid wood until he watches with unblinking green eyes, hopeful for a brief exchange of words.
Next to him, he hears shifting, and he’s reminded that he isn’t alone.
It’s hard to decide sometimes. What’s good, and what’s bad, what he shouldn’t do, and what is best for everyone around him.
He swallows. And this time, it's not bitterness that guides down the path of his throat—it’s an unshakable fear at his heart, a tug on his lungs, a punch at his sternum, all telling him to do it.
Because it is his decision to make. He is brave enough to ask, to voice out what he means, what he wants to say, despite his thoughts on his own growth recently.
So he does. He squints his eyes accordingly and turns on his hip.
“Would you like to see her?” He asks, small and notably nervous.
The face he knows in front of him changes. It eases, guides to a more sincere sort of smile. She sighs through her nose and takes a larger breath through parted lips.
“Thank you,” she whispers, like she’s honored he has asked. “But it’s okay. I will go.”
Dream studies her for a moment.
He asks for himself. “You’re sure?”
He’ll regret it later if he doesn’t, when he’s home, feeding Elytra something sweet—he’ll regret not double checking if she wants to meet her, hold her, greet her for the first time in two years. It’s not her place, and maybe it’s not his to ask, but Dream knows it’ll keep him up at night, and he’ll doubt himself, and he’ll knead his cheek onto George’s shoulder in rough sobs asking if he should have done more.
George will hold him, tell him it’s okay to break like this over such thoughts.
But Dream won’t let matters get to that point. Not when he can change it before it happens.
Tired eyes blink in front of him, and a hand places over Dream’s crossed forearms.
“I’m sure,” she nods, heaving an inaudible sigh as she nods again. “You should go, though. She needs you.”
Then Dream’s bottom lip trembles. It wobbles, threatening to tighten against his teeth as he inhales a sticky breath. For a moment, his hands don’t even feel like his own. He squeezes them and almost loses himself to a reckless sob as he gently steps into a hug.
“Thank you,” Dream whispers in a soothing voice.
She pulls away and clutches her fingers to Dream’s shoulders. Her eyes shift from his face to his cheeks and then to his chest, where it is eye level for her. Then she’s closing her eyes, and Dream thinks she must be convincing herself of something.
It’s only fair for him to wish her well at this moment.
“Stay well,” he says, and when his tongue completes her name, it sounds more and more distant than the times he’s said it before.
He watches her leave through double glass doors, and he watches her sleeved fists press to her eyes like she’s hurting.
Through it all, he hurts, too. He does the same — he presses the heel of his palms against the aching that kicks behind his eyes. He paws at it, scrapes mud unknowingly onto the underside of his eye as he follows a nurse blindly through the hallways.
“Your mother was here a moment ago. Would you like for her to join you?” The man asks Dream, looks at him while he dresses himself up in pain, shows his vulnerability in the middle of vanilla walls, white flooring, navy-and-maroon-colored blocks scattered.
“You couldn’t have sent her back earlier?!” He spits as his hand flies from his face. His voice has become lower, scarier now that he sounds torn to pieces, ripped to shreds. Dream doesn’t exactly know what he is supposed to feel. He still regrets having his phone on Do Not Disturb. “Sorry. I mean—She’s my mom. My daughter would’ve been happy to see her. Wouldn’t’ve liked to be alone back there.”
The nurse is patient with his words, with his mouth and attitude. Dream would tell him, truly, if he had the time, about the entire situation, just so he could know why he’s upset. But it’s pointless.
It’s so, so pointless.
“I understand, Sir. But, she’s not on the Emergency Contact list. She can access the room with you present,” he says with a polite smile.
Thanks, Dream would say. Instead, he closes his eyes. My mom isn’t on the list, but the woman who hasn’t seen my child in two years is, even though she has no rights signed to her.
It makes sense.
It makes no sense.
“I’ll get her soon.”
Dream scoffs when he sees Elytra.
Beautiful.
Hair messily drawn out of the pigtails he had done it in. He shakes his head playfully as he walks toward the crib. She stands instantly, shocked at his presence, and his hands reach out to hold her, to touch her skin like he’s been desperate to.
“What on earth happened to your hair?” He whispers teasingly as he lifts her, a mess of limbs kicking to his chest the moment her body crowds his.
He tries not to tear up at the relief, but this is his child, and relief is an honor right now. So he closes his eyes and exhales into the cool air of the private hospital room. He clears his throat, keeps them still, and then pulls back to brush over her cheek.
“Hi honey,” he murmurs.
Her exhaustion is obvious. She thumbs over Dream’s cheek and mutters, “mud,” and Dream hardly catches it before she says, “Sap,” and “Georgie,” and “owie,” through the babbling of other words.
“Are you hurting?” He numbs a little at the mention, at the thought of her being hurt. “Owie? Got hurt? Can you show me?”
But she lies her cheek onto Dream’s shoulder instead and rubs her hand down his back, shaking her head a couple times.
“No.” She’s almost too tired to speak. “Georgie.”
His palm cups the back of her head, and he frowns at the wall, bending down to collect her shoes on the chair. They must’ve taken them off to place her in the crib earlier.
There’s a nurse right outside the room waiting for him, probably ready to guide him toward the exit, the front desk, or somewhere to talk, but all Dream wants to do is sit with his daughter, and hold her, re-familiarize himself with her.
His fingertips are feather light over her shirt, and he brushes up and down in careful gestures as he hums.
“Yeah?” He asks. “Did George get hurt?”
Elytra has always been just as comforting as Dream, her gentle hands enough to nurse someone at peace. Tough smile and stubborn, but body weak enough to give in to touch. He loves how similar they always have been, how they always can be when it is just the two of them, embracing in something warm and protective.
She whispers sadly. “Yeah. Bump ‘s head.”
Dream is already out of the door amidst her conversation. He holds her wet coat and her shoes in a plastic bag, and keeps his eyes squinting down the hallway in search of the correct door to follow as soon as he realizes the nurse is no longer there.
“He’s okay,” Dream says, although completely unsure. Dream tells her anyway. “We’ll see him in a minute. George is okay.”
The vague sound of a sob against his shoulder startles him, and he makes the sudden decision to keep talking.
“And—and we’ll go home, yeah? You wanna?” He asks as he makes eye contact with the nurse. The woman smiles and raises her chin and instantly steps his way. Dream sighs with his whole body, eager and more eager and desperate to get home. “And your grandma is here, too. She’s waiting for us. Sapnap, too.”
Elytra is a simple shape against Dream’s chest, and he holds her nearer to him while the nurse talks.
She talks a lot about what happened, what Dream should do when he gets home, and she does it all in this very fine voice of earnestness, like she is trying to drag Dream from his place of worry and lean him down to where he needs to be. Maybe it’s her job to prevent nervous reactions and speak to him in tones of static that reverberate between his ears. Maybe he should just accept it.
After a while, he nods, forces a decorative smile and watches the nurse splay a hand over his daughter’s back.
“She’s been kind to us tonight. You’re lucky to have such a sweet girl.”
It’s just a compliment. Something parents say to other parents. Adults to other adults. Nurses to Dream, a single parent with gooey thoughts stuck to his brain about whether he deserves what he’s got.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
And then he’s gone. Faster than he even remembers getting to the hospital.
✩
Dream eats soup in the kitchen with all the lights on, goosebumps clinging so unfavorably to his skin as the broth burns his lip. He glues his back to the chair and orders himself to think about the entire day.
It's hard not to.
And despite being alone in the kitchen, where it's much, much easier to think, Dream wishes he wasn't. He wishes it were lively in here, which is why he thinks he's got the lights all the way on, even the ones on near the pool, protruding a faint glow underneath the level of the water.
He'd swim if stepping too far away from Elytra's bedroom didn't scare him to death. She's sleeping in there for a change, and as much as Dream would have liked to have her in his bedroom, he wanted to give her a good night full of rest. He knows he won't sleep much tonight, shaken by disruptive thoughts and angry jitters at his bones. It's unfair now, as he closes his eyes and thinks about soaking his body into the pool, disappearing past water, coming up with his hair stuck against his forehead and coming up with an eager breath for his lungs to take hold of. It's unfair how shitty the day has been.
So he eats his soup, burns his mouth a little more, and expects the low roar of his stomach every time he sighs at himself.
It's past one when he wakes against the couch to rough knuckles against his cheek.
George's touch has always been more than a charming glow upon Dream's skin, more than a low lit flame. It's something that could drag him to the depths of the earth, something that could encourage Dream to take his wings apart and walk on bare feet across hot sand until heat cleaves too hard to him, until he could feel the true effects of a burn.
But George has never approached Dream without a remedy strapped to his body.
George could break Dream with his right hand and heal him with his left. All in the same touch.
Hands cradle Dream's cheeks. I'll let you wilt me, George.
Glimpsing at him upon waking up is rewarding. It's relieving. Dream hasn't exactly seen him since they’d returned from the hospital. George was quick to sneak away into his bedroom, despite the little whimpers of Elytra asking for him. Dream could only promise her that he wae, again, e. Again—empty wordsSeeing him now is different.
George is still beautiful, still has an array of freckles at the collarbone on his left side. Dream spots it best when he wears these loose t-shirts. Albeit buying packs of new ones, he goes for the thin, old ones. It's just something about him. But he's scarred. There's barely a bandage over his eyebrow bone, and dried blood dresses itself around white gauze.
Dream frowns with half-closed eyes.
George beats him to the start of a conversation. "You cannot be comfortable."
He's on his knees beside the couch, Dream realizes not much later, leaning with his elbow on the armrest, cheek stretching with his fist.
From this angle, Dream can look up at him and see how crooked and silly his smile looks, how genuine his features are. He stares for a moment, looking through his tired gaze to find what he'd like to see: just the blissfulness of George's grin.
George raises his eyebrows and shows his teeth when he hums and smiles again. "Hmm?"
Dream sinks further into the couch, the back of his head now flat against the cushions.
"I'm fine," Dream whispers through a sigh before opening his eyes and lifting his hand to George's forehead. He's careful with the brush of his thumb, but he shifts around the bandage and pouts. "You're not though."
Dream watches George breathe through his nose as he bends further down. He catches Dream's knuckles with his own rough ones, and through an uneasy breath, George sculpts their fingers together.
“I am okay.”
Dream smiles tiredly.
“You seem to always be okay these days,” he tells him. “So admirable.”
A hint of honey drains down his cheeks, color floating away as he turns to be in Dream’s line of vision. He makes a sound similar to a scoff as he cups a hand over Dream’s cheek. His eyes seem to quiver, like they’re nervous, and then they close. They open again, and he allows himself to look over Dream’s face.
Then he leans forward and kisses Dream.
Faint enough to take his breath momentarily.
Dream would like to say something. Or draw him back in, loop his fingers into the waistband of George’s pajama bottoms so he can tug him onto his lap and kiss him stupidly. But he’s tired, and it’s useless when it’s this late, when his bones don’t move quick enough.
“Can I walk you to bed?” George asks with a brush over his cheekbone.
Dream is flustered. “You can—uh, I, um. Can you kiss me again?”
George doesn’t falter. “Course.”
And he does.
If he hears the thundering of Dream’s pulse when he hauls him up and when he places his fingers across Dream’s heart, he says nothing. Maybe it doesn’t bother him, maybe this is why Dream asked him if he liked storms all that time ago. For this tender moment, for George to touch him like this, for George to kiss him like this, for George to care for him like this.
George helps him into bed, keeps his hands on Dream’s hips as they slip him underneath the covers.
The bedroom is dark, and George points out how this is how he should sleep, as opposed to the bright lights of the living room. Dream snickers at him and tugs him down into the bed, burying his nose into the warmth of George’s chest, where he knows it’s safe.
“I’m so thankful you’re here, George,” Dream says on the edge of sleep, eyes already closed as he focuses on the fingers twisting through his hair. “So glad you’ve moved in.”
“Yeah?” George whispers. “You have no idea.”
“It’s amazing. ‘S like...”
George’s hand slips up Dream’s shirt to rub back and forth over the large patch of his skin, and Dream injects his own thoughts with a rasped moan.
The sound of George’s murmuring giggles is enough to draw a blush out of Dream.
“Stop. Don’t laugh at me. It feels good.”
“Feels that good?” George playfully jabs at him. “Do you want me to rub your back?”
Dream moans even louder this time, purposely to get the point through. George smacks him.
While taking his shirt off and lying flat on his stomach, Dream turns his cheek and finds George’s slight smile. They squint at each other, and that’s when Dream sees it. The simplicity of George’s tired blush and his honey-soaked mouth.
“Why are you so good to me?” Dream asks him quietly.
George blinks. “Because.”
Because. Just because.
Dream realizes this is where George would say, because I love you.
He also realizes that he is in love with George.
✩
The hospital is much different without fear riding down Dream’s back. It’s not so sullen or gray when that awful taste isn’t stuck to his tongue. Still strangely vague in a way that makes him want to float down until he’s far underneath the tiles, but at least he’s not holding his breath up in his lungs like he had been last night. At least he’s not scared.
He signs some papers and fixes the emergency contact lists that Elytra has, double checking some of the insurance plans since he’s gotten them renewed. He adds his mom, his dad, and George and Sapnap, just in case. The pen shakes in his hand while he writes, but he hands it back to the woman in front of him, who smiles as she tries to give him another apology on behalf of everyone in the hospital. Everyone. Staff. Administration. Sure. Dream shakes it off.
The smell of lemon creeps into the soles of his feet, yellow in his throat and stuck in his nose unfaithfully as he sits in his car.
He reeks of the hospital. A reminder of a poor memory.
It’s past three in the afternoon when he drives home, and three-fifteen when his mother calls, curious to know about how he’s doing. Dream is honest with her. He tells her about his sleep and how Elytra is. She asks about George, and while Dream stalls, she catches on to his hesitation and drops it. Her next question revolves around the unexpected visitor, but at Dream’s silence again, she drops it.
“Just let me know if you’re not okay, okay?” She asks softly, her voice gentle through the phone.
Dream nods as his foot pushes onto the accelerator. “Okay.”
At home, Sapnap has all the lights off.
He’s got the blankets taped over the doors in the living room to cover up more of the afternoon sunshine.
A movie plays on the television.
“Holy shit, Sap,” Dream whispers as he spots him on the couch, drowning in the darkness of a usually bright room.
His shorts ride up on his thighs and the light of his phone paints across his face, giving him a simple glow. To his right, and flat on the couch, Elytra looks completely and utterly passed out. Dream snorts at the sight of her. In front of them, the movie still plays loud.
“This is,” Dream says lightly as he walks toward the blankets that are already falling. “Sapnap, this is going to ruin the paint. Idiot.”
He says it carelessly, with no ill intent behind his voice, but he’s kind of upset about the thought of this tape against the walls.
Over on the couch, Sapnap shrugs.
“It was that or pushpins,” he says, tossing the blanket from his shoulders. “I figured you wouldn’t want holes in your wall. Right?”
Dream glares. “Of course not.”
Something changes in Sapnap’s face, and Dream realizes it must be his own voice, his own mouthful of bitterness, squeezing through his taut lips as he groans. Sapnap is lucky he gets it, he’s lucky he has the energy to take Dream’s frustrated face and make it his own humor to laugh at. He’s lucky Dream likes him. Because if it were anyone else, Dream would have thrown up his middle finger, maybe cursed them out for trying to peel paint from the walls of their home.
But it’s just Sapnap.
His best friend, who goes through just as much as he does, who went through the trouble of setting up a fort of pillows and blankets in the living room, just so Elytra could have a dark space to watch a movie in.
Sapnap, Dream thinks. The man who cares from the roots of his body and not from the surface of his skin.
“When’d she fall asleep?” He asks quietly, not even realizing he was interrupting Sapnap. “Oh—sorry. What?”
Sapnap shakes his hand as he yawns, to excuse Dream. “It’s fine. I was just sayin’ that we made some lunch earlier, if you want some.”
Dream turns his head toward the kitchen and nods.
He can’t resist bending down toward Elytra, though. Sapnap reaches out to smack his arm.
“Don’t wake her!”
Dream frowns.
“She’s sleepy,” Sapnap whispers as he stoops forward and tucks the blanket closer to her chin. “You’re going to wake her the second you get near her.”
“Do you even know how hard it is to not pick her up every time I look at her?” Dream groans.
Glaring through him, Sapnap laughs. “Try.”
Dream rolls his eyes and tells Sapnap to enjoy the damn movie and instead goes to eat bites of whatever lunch has been left in the kitchen. He does it quietly for a while, letting peach mango juice stain his lips as he scrolls through Twitter, the sound of the movie loud in the background.
The day still feels vacant to him. Still sort of out of reach.
He’s been thinking of Elytra’s first few months, and how loneliness haunted him, but how her safety was the only thing that kept him safe, how streaming felt like too much of a chore to complete.
There are tweets dated to bad times.
Dream @Dream
no streams this month. kind of needing a break. hope everyone understands<3
Replies had come in instant, fresh and courteous words of encouragement, giving Dream a pat on the back for his efforts lately, wishing him well, promising him that everything he is doing is okay for himself. Which—he knows. He knew, but he hated it so much, between telling George and Sapnap and Karl and Quackity and Bad and so many others. He just needed a bit of time to himself.
Time to differentiate between life and love and family and friendship and understanding that a father and a streamer and a friend is all the same guy wearing the same shirt, with the same hair that greases up, and the same tongue that swears a little too much. He was still him.
He recalls early memories, and he thinks about how things could have gone.
Would Sapnap have come to Florida sooner?
Would he have managed a long road trip through puddles of wet asphalt just to ease Dream’s weak body and the tired knots of his brain?
Dream doesn’t want to think that they’d feel sorry for him, that they’d take it easy on him, or play his game with lighter fingers, but he can’t help but wonder if their days would still be this full of uneasiness with phlegm all locked up in their chests.
Behind him, Sapnap closes his hands tightly around Dream’s neck. He pretends to break it as he makes a cracking sound. Dream shuts his eyes when Sapnap rests his chin atop of his head.
“You good?” Sapnap asks gingerly.
Dream tilts his chin up and grins at him through a haze of warmth.
“I feel like a man in love, Sapnap.” Dream admits firmly.
A thumb presses into Dream’s cheek, digging into his nerve. Dream doesn’t swat him away. He just melts back into Sapnap’s chest and his waist with a whimpering sigh.
“Not going to lie to you, man, I think you are.” Sapnap levels the creasing line between Dream’s forehead and stares at him with a hint of a genuine smile. It looks defeated when Dream widens his eyes to take a better look, but it’s just honest. Sapnap has taken his skin off to show his veracity. “You look like you’re in love.”
Dream guides himself into a wondrous hum as his eyes flutter shut.
“Yeah?” He asks, exchanging shy grins with his friend. “How so?”
“You’ve got the eyes that say it. Nice and quiet. Always curious for him. Thoughtful. You’ve been wearing warmer clothes lately, and I think it’s because you want to be ready to hold him. That kind of stuff, you know?” Sapnap looks away after he speaks.
The color on Dream’s cheeks darken, turning him to a bleeding fruit.
It’s so funny how Sapnap can look at him and see these things, while all Dream can do is think of them.
He’s been writing the book as Sapnap reads it.
“Yeah,” Dream whispers carefully. “I think I have been.”
“It’s good on you, though,” Sapnap tells him, “makes you look all clean and formal and warm and—good. Bright, or something.”
Dream smirks. “Or something?”
“You look cute.”
“Thank you, Sap.”
A silence stretches between them, and Dream eats away at it. He doesn’t welcome these pauses between them that make him feel uncomfortable. He’s growing, like stems and blooming flowers. Rain is in his home now, rather than just outside, and he’s growing and learning and understanding how to be comfortable with more people, with his friends, and it feels extraordinary for this garden to grow in his home.
He wants more of it.
More unharmed growth.
“You know he’s blaming himself.”
Dream swivels in his chair until he can turn his brows into a frown, until he can almost look through Sapnap.
“George is?” He asks, and waits for the nod he knows is coming. When he gets it, Dream locks his eyes shut.
Sapnap sticks his hands into his pockets. “He was fine this morning, but he left a little into the movie we were watching. We didn’t talk much about it, but I can just—I can tell, you know? It’s George.”
It is.
It’s George.
Dream’s head bobs up and down as he replays the previous night. George in his bed, the look on his face as he sealed the two of their mouths in a fine line, as he covered Dream’s cheeks and his forehead and then his shoulders in the promise of a kiss. The boy who he assumed was okay, who he had said, “you seem to always be okay these days,” to.
Maybe it hurt him a little, when Dream had said it.
“I’ll talk to him.” Dream stands from the chair and grips his arm onto Sapnap’s shoulder. “Will you come get me if Elytra wakes?”
Sapnap grins, teeth and everything, a bit of a burning, red-kissed blush on his cheeks too.
“Course,” he says. “We’ll just be watching movies, though. Come join us when you’re done talking?”
He uses a bit of inflection in his voice when he says the last word. And Dream squints at him to be playful. He’s funny, Dream thinks.
The walk to George’s bedroom is a lot longer than it should be. Under his feet, the wood is rougher, and his legs drag like he’s got anchors attached to them, weighing him down. It’s not nerves that hold him weary, but anticipation.
He knocks.
George calls from inside, his voice tangled in a breath as it sits behind the door. Dream waits with locked knees, clearing his throat and clutching his own chest, swaying a little as his lip slips back and forth between the sharpest tooth in his mouth.
The flooring in George’s room is much softer than the hallway. As is the air. It’s all easier on his eyes, much simpler, a lighter pressure hitting against his chest.
“Hi,” Dream whispers as he shuts the door behind him.
George has his headset on, and he’s looking at cars on the internet.
“Looking at buying a Ferrari?” Dream teases as he steps behind him, hands dropping to George’s shoulders.
It’s a touch that is common. A feeling he knows for himself. It’ll take a spread of his hand to get to the edge of George’s shoulders. And then he’ll squeeze. Because he knows these shoulders. He’s traced this boy enough to draw an entire map over him without even looking.
“You never know,” George giggles as his shoulders tighten and raise.
Fingers sink into muscle, right between George’s neck and his shoulder, and Dream whispers, “relax,” at George’s ear as he waits for the muscle to do the same.
George drops his shoulders and sighs, and Dream presses even further into his skin, feeling the muscle that twitches underneath his warmed fingertips. He croons at the satisfaction of George’s body relaxing, his muscles loosening under a single touch.
“How do you know how to do that?” George looks up at him.
Dream thinks of making a joke, but he knows there’s more to this. There’s a conversation to come, questions to ask, things to bring up. So he pushes his thumbs up George’s nape and then massages underneath his ears.
“I went to physical therapy for a bit.”
“Oh,” George hums, letting go of his mouse to reach back for Dream’s hands.
It always is good, when George touches him. It roughs him up, makes his heart grow four times as big, pulls his skin tighter against his bones, helps him breathe easier. This is what’s made him fall in love with George. How simple and bigger he feels from touch alone.
Dream sighs when George’s hands graze up his forearms.
A cooler breeze over his already cold skin. It’s like ice in the house, and he wants to stick his nose into the pillows.
“Can I sit?” Dream asks, not knowing where he is going.
He never really knows. He wants to just go and go and follow whatever pulls him in which direction.
“Sit where?” George asks.
Dream looks at the bed. He looks back to the chair George is sitting in.
It’s at the same time that the idea crosses both of their minds.
“Get up—”
“—No!”
“George!” Dream pouts at him. “George. George, wait. Come on. We can. Hold on. Get up.”
Spluttering over his laughter, George holds his hands up in confusion. “What’d I just say?”
Dream stands to the side, holding his fingers together, interlaced with his nails forming crescents against thin skin. A frown is easy to play on his mouth, but he strums it harder, giving George his best pout. “I just wanted you to sit on my lap.”
George blinks.
“Well, when you put it like that.” George’s smirk is half-written into that of a shy grin, and Dream wants to touch his mouth to it. “I thought you just wanted to take my seat, you little asshole.”
Something about his mouth causes Dream to chuckle under his breath and to himself. It’s more of something Dream would say, and hearing it from George makes Dream’s tummy go pink and purple, sticky and sweet, honey and gold.
George reaches for him, places his hesitant fingers on Dream’s hip while he looks up into Dream’s eyes. And as Dream looks down, he can see that through the wet eyes and the hot wax of brown behind his lids, there are angry thoughts in George’s head, and Dream wants to burn them away, melt them down even further.
“Come on then,” George stands as he spins Dream on his hips, sitting him down in the chair. He parts his legs, the dark grey of soft sweatpants tightening around his thighs the moment he sits. “Come on, come on, come on.”
Dream loves when he does this. Gets a little lost in words. Repeats himself to fill silence like he’s painting walls with thick paint. Painting Dream’s cheeks with warm hands, painting his mouth with warm lips, painting the ground with warm feet. He loves how real he can get, with the lines between his fingers, how the grip will tighten at certain joints, how his hips will flex around Dream’s body and how Dream will touch to soothe.
His skin is new.
And maybe he replaces it each time he touches Dream, each time he lays a hand under Dream’s jaw, and each time their chests press together in lackadaisical praise.
Dream likes new. Likes buying new things, treating them well, taking good care of them.
It’s the same with George, he thinks. Especially when his hands tend to feel this fresh and make him feel so different.
“You like this?” Dream smoothes his thumb at the center of George’s belly, and as he breathes in, he’s able to touch the surface of his flesh, his own palm rising and falling along with the inhales and the exhales from George.
He whispers close to George’s nose, breath fluttering over his skin like a blanket.
The both of them look closer, foreheads closing in to one another as they stare at George’s stomach, as Dream stretches his shirt more than it already has been stretched. He won’t care. The damn thing has been through hell already.
Together they watch Dream touch his skin, and George blushes easily, a clean strike of rose over his smooth skin as he bumps his nose with Dream, all trying to catch his eyes again.
He’s quieter this time when he looks up.
“I do,” he whispers, blinking fast enough to make Dream wonder. He grips Dream’s neck, stretching his thumb up his carotid. “It’s nice. You’re warm.”
Good.
This is what Dream hoped for. What Sapnap told him. He’s been wearing warm clothes lately, so he can be ready to hold him.
So, he holds him, pulls him a little tight to his chest, sucks on the exposed skin of George’s neck with a hand still wedged between their chests.
“Turn around,” Dream tells him. “Let’s play something together.”
George follows. His shirt falls back to its original position, and he turns until his back smooths over Dream’s chest. The skin on his neck is still a little wet, but they both leave it. George scoots far back, and Dream timidly reaches around his front as he pushes them toward the desk.
The position is a little awkward, but George curls himself between Dream’s spread legs, and then hikes his heel up on the desk. His socks are bright orange. Dream gets another Merch idea.
“Open Minecraft,” Dream bends down to George’s level and whispers at the top of his head. His voice is half-muffled in the mess of George’s hair, pressed from his headset. Dream sticks his hand in and ruffles it up.
“Yeah?” George tilts to the right to see him. “How come?”
“Uh,” Dream shrugs. “Because I said.”
“Oh.” George makes a face of realization. “Right. ‘cause you said. My bad, I forgot.”
The silly smile on Dream’s face is enough to make George giggle.
“Just playing,” George pinches Dream’s chin. “I’m just kidding.”
Dream glares. “Little asshole.”
George cocks an eyebrow up at him, licks his lips and glances only for a moment at Dream’s mouth.
“Right.”
Their voices are quiet in George’s bedroom, the silence haunting them as the sun dips further and further behind the trees and the clouds just outside the window.
Dream controls the keyboard. George controls the mouse.
Together, they fall into a ravine after Dream tries jumping a block and while George looks the wrong way. Laughter floats in their space and the sound of George is too kind for this chair.
Dream kisses the top of his head.
“Talk to me,” he whispers as they respawn.
When George spins the mouse, he stiffens, clearly startled at Dream’s sudden discussion. He follows it up with a sigh, and releases his shaky arm, too stretched for too long, and sinks back into Dream’s embrace. Against him, George feels much heavier, like he’s allowing himself to soak into his bones a bit. It’s good. It’s really good.
George touches the fabric of Dream’s shirt, collides the side of his head with Dream’s chest.
“I feel guilty,” George says slowly, admitting with a breath that seems too hard to push out. Dream says nothing and only touches down his shoulder. His eyes round with tiresome grief, and Dream watches as he whispers, “just feel responsible.”
“Why, baby?” Dream keeps his mouth on the top of George’s head as he asks.
Sealing them together like this makes him feel like he’s closer to George, like he can hear him better, his voice a softer song inside his head. His words are even now that they’re touching, now that Dream’s arms encircle George’s waist, now that their thighs are close and now that their hearts make friends together.
Their limbs are heavy over each other’s. But it’s much more real like this.
He sighs. “Because you asked me to take care of her, and we ended up in a hospital. I told you not to call Ely’s mother when you were contemplating it, and the hospital did it for you. Just… responsible.”
Dream drags his hand up George’s chest until it flattens over his heart. It thumps in steady beats, bare skin to bare skin.
“Do you also blame Sapnap?” Dream asks gently, lifting George’s hand to place over his. George follows his lead.
“Of course I don’t,” he murmurs.
“Then your blaming is empty. If you blame yourself, then you must blame Sapnap. He was there. And then you must blame me, because I agreed on letting you go.” Dream feels George tightens his fingers over his own hand, clutching on like he wants him to stop. So Dream hears him, listens to him like he knows him this well, and he stops.
“Why would you say that?” George asks, grunting faintly, frustration simmering underneath the knot in his throat.
When Dream takes the tip of George’s ear between his teeth, George loosens all of his muscles and lets go of that weight in his bones. He clicks his tongue and sticks his hand up his shirt to find Dream’s fingers, lacing them together like he’s a new, sudden-growing weed in the garden.
“Because it’s kind of true,” Dream shrugs.
A delicate sigh.
“You know,” Dream adds, although still unsure if he should take his steps forward. “Elytra was so worried about you. I went in there, expecting her to be excited to see me, and all she was talking about was—” Dream kisses his temple, near his torn eyebrow. “Georgie.” A kiss. “Georgie.” A kiss. “Georgie.”
A stutter of air echoes out of his nose, and he clutches hard onto Dream’s hand.
“She’s okay. Cared more about your eyebrow than she did about anything else. She’s kind of strong, you know,” he whispers. “Like me, right?”
George coughs to clear the threat in his throat. When he looks at Dream, he finds eyes that gleam back at him. A palm cups against Dream’s face. This time it carries much more heat than Dream knows. “Like you. Yeah. Just like you.”
Dream tilts his head up and stretches.
“And as far as her mom—yeah, George,” he laughs a little. “It was weird. Fucking weird. But it happened. And it went fine. She told me I was raising a beautiful girl. She and I have no bad feelings. Just.”
He shrugs.
He doesn’t really know what to say next. He fades for a moment, thinks back to how he felt, how strange it was, but how real it was. To be there, to be appreciated for what he’s gone through. To watch her come and then go—again. Kindly, like she’s done before. Painfully.
“A kid,” George says slowly. “You just had a kid.”
Blinking carefully, Dream sighs. Yeah.
“I did.”
“And it’s been hard. But good. Yeah?” George soothes him, running tired fingers over the hair on Dream’s arms. “So good. You’ve been so good.”
The way George can make Dream’s skin scrape off his bones. It’s unbelievable how good he makes him feel. Safe and placid.
“George,” Dream says as he closes his eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I appreciate every moment with you, you know?” He asks, Minecraft completely being forgotten in the background as they hold each other tight. “The times I find you in the kitchen past three in the morning, or when I get to hold you like this. Taking you to the beach, eating fuckin’ ribs with you. That all feels so rich to me. But watching you interact with Elytra, with my daughter, it’s a feeling I cannot describe. Not at all. Makes me kind of want to love on you a lot more than I already do.”
Even if there’s nothing more to say, Dream sees the eager tension underneath George’s chest. There’s more George wants to say, technically, tears he could shed, maybe insults he might commit to. Dream isn’t too sure, but George rubs his hand over Dream’s knee and eases him, nudges him with his forehead and his nose until they’re kissing, until they’re melting at the same temperature and putting themselves back together again. Dream’s mouth falls open, and George’s fingers are easily glued to the back of Dream’s neck.
They heat up, skin dampening only after a few moments of wet mouths against each other. Crooked moans like whispered breaths in hollowness, desperate and kind—and it’s only fair to call it akin to lust.
It’s hot, but Dream has always thought George was hot.
He is in love with George.
“You’re so good, my love. Never blame yourself.” Dream tears his mouth away from George, hovering over his pulse, getting vibrations and screams against his pink and damp lips. He pulls away because if he kisses George any longer, he’ll fuck him in this chair, and it’ll break. It’ll break and George will be grumpy that they didn’t move to the bed, and then they’ll play the blame game again—this time with more attitude and sarcasm and an overwhelming abundance of kissing. Again.
George sits with both legs hanging off the chair again, his front to Dream’s front, hands cradling Dream’s face.
It’s that break-heal power. Dream lets him have it.
“You let me be good.”
“I know,” Dream tells him, allowing his honesty to become transparent, and then he laughs. “I’m so in love with you, George.”
The chair shifts slightly because of George’s nervous knee. Or maybe Dream’s nervous knee. It’s one of their nervous knees, or both. In front of him, George blinks once, twice, three times until his lips twitch into that of a smile, fingers itching to deepen into Dream’s skin.
It starts with his thumbs. Both of his thumbs perch underneath Dream’s candid and luminous eyes, sweating from staying open too long. It starts there, George caresses at tired skin underneath, where it proves Dream’s lack of sleep. Then it’s the pads of his fingers that are locked behind his jaw that George presses into, like he’s squeezing against Dream’s face—trying to see if the words are real or not.
“Love is just that. Me finding you in all those places. Me getting to see you like this, with Elytra. Me getting to understand parts of you I hadn’t been able to understand before. I feel like a man in love, George,” Dream breathes so helplessly as he watches George dip closer toward him. “And I’m not asking you to start a family with me. But I’m also not holding that back from you.”
George takes his hands and rakes his fingers through Dream’s hair.
He bumps their noses together.
Dream loves when he does that.
“I loved Elytra the moment I saw her,” George tells him, delivering his honest words like they’ve been held behind a wall of so much pain. “And she’s part of you, so how could I not?”
There’s a four second pause.
One second. George’s fingers push against Dream’s skin.
Two seconds. His thumb under Dream’s eye.
Three seconds. Another bump of their noses.
At four seconds, a wavering breath exhales from between George’s lips.
“How could I not,” he says, “because I love you.”
The chair turns to stone where they sit. And Dream wishes it would rather become a grassy hill covered in flowers, and raining with sunshine. But he sits on a block of stone with George, wanting to tear at his chest because he loves him.
And this is hard.
It’s not so easy to love, but it’s easy to hold, and to touch George. It’s easy to give him the simple glimmer of his own eye that he bleeds into George, and it’s easy to kiss the corner of George’s mouth that turns low after George speaks.
He arches toward Dream, and Dream holds him tighter, feeling that rush of dark reds and faint oranges and baby-light yellows down the center of his chest as soon as their hearts link, as soon as the patterns familiarize themselves with each other.
“Tell me that again,” Dream asks him because he wants to feel giddy and crack the stone underneath them. “Please. I just—I just need to hear you say that again.”
George doesn’t hesitate. “I love you, D,” he whispers as he drops his hands and crushes his cheek to Dream’s, letting his mouth meet the shell of his ear. “Thank you.”
Dream is breathless. “For what?”
“For loving me back.”
✩
It’s hot for ten in the morning. There’s a lot of direct sun in their backyard, flecks of it hidden by a couple of scattered trees, but most of it sears the concrete around the pool, which burns their toes as they step near the water.
Dream tells everyone to wear shoes, he’s always told them to wear shoes outside. Especially when it’s as hot as today is, when the red on their cheeks will blotch from sunburns and not from a blush.
A smile fastens across Dream’s mouth as he stands. Elytra tries to wiggle from his grasp, her covered feet stretching toward the ground in anticipation.
He holds her for one last second before he calls out to Sapnap, whose head arises from the water, eyes drifting around until he settles on Dream.
Dream’s toes press into the tile at the door frame, and he hesitantly watches as Sapnap’s chin rests on the ledge of the pool.
“Come here, ladybug,” he holds his wet arms out, and Elytra—dressed in a bright red swimsuit—stands at Dream’s feet. Her bucket hat is lopsided by now, and Dream encourages her with a gentle touch to her shoulders.
A touch lands on his own shoulders, but Dream doesn’t look away from Elytra until Sapnap has both hands on her.
Then he relaxes.
His palms press to his hips and he takes a hard breath, holding it between his lungs and his nerves, letting it all rattle somewhere within him. He doesn’t release it until George places his steady hand over Dream’s chest and whispers, “you ready?”
“No.”
George’s chin rests against Dream’s body, and his hand smoothes over his heart as though he’s easing it, simplifying all the angry voices and grumpy faces his heart is pulling right about now.
“No,” Dream says again as he watches Elytra’s hat fall off. He should’ve tightened it a bit more. “But I am. You know?”
“I know.”
He probably doesn’t know. But Dream appreciates his sounds of agreement.
Dream stalls for a minute, grimacing at the floor as George tangles their fingers together. He makes an effort by standing in front of Dream, by getting him to look at him. “They’ll take it well. You know they will. You want this, just think about what you want.”
He’s right. Dream knows he is, but the thought isn’t as pleasant as he’s making it sound.
“What if I just... don’t,” Dream can’t look at George. It’s too hard. “Like, I could just avoid it, probably.”
It’s said with an airy, low, boisterous laugh. Dream doesn’t mean any harm. But then, louder than anything he’s ever heard before, George scoffs. He does it quietly, but it’s the realization, the meaning, the softness of it that is so loud.
He’s already done this before—avoided it. Been too scared to tell people about Elytra. About his child, his life, the things he’s held back for so long. He’s done it to George, to Sapnap.
“Sorry,” Dream croaks out. “I didn’t mean that.”
Because he doesn’t.
George nods against his shoulder, body heat spreading across Dream’s skin. “I know. We try to get out of the things we’re nervous about. I get it.”
“Yeah but. That was a little fucked up for me to say.”
“Shut up,” George urges, like hearing Dream say it is too defeating and too tiring and too heartbreaking. So, he takes a breath with him, decorates his ear with the little phrase of, “you want this. Right?”
Awkwardly, but so confidently, Dream twists his hands and fastens them around George. “I do. I so do.”
It’s the smile on George’s face and the low breath of relief that calms Dream. He doesn’t need to tell George about how he practically stayed up all night, pondering on ideas of how to word this—what he’s going to say when his back sweats against his chair and when they pick up. George doesn’t need that weight on his body, doesn’t need that stress down his throat.
“Karl is a fool for kids. And Quackity,” George hums. “You know he’s going to support you. I don’t know if he likes kids, but it’s not really about that. It’s about how much he admires you. In character, and in everything you do. He respects you. It’ll go well.”
Ahead of them, Sapnap sits Elytra up on the ledge, and Dream nearly calls out to him, telling him to put water down so her legs don’t get too hot, but he’s already two steps ahead. Dream eases, and he looks back to George, regards him for a few seconds. Three long ones, blinking and blinking to take in the genuine look on his face.
“Thank you,” Dream says, unwinding his body from George. “Thank you.”
“Always.”
Dream steps away from the back door, away from George, feeling the sensation of stinging up his back. He and George give each other a nod of approval as Dream leads himself to his bedroom.
“Just shoot me a text?” George leans his hand against the glass door, resting his cheek against his own skin. “When you’re ready to have me bring her in.”
Dream smiles.
It’s all he can give.
George’s thumb is up in the air, and he’s got a grin sewn from ear to ear. “You’ve got this.”
He’s prickling with an unsettling amount of nerves, but this is the moment that Dream’s been waiting for.
It’s something he wants so badly. To talk about the things he’s kept underneath him, the things he’s held in the palms of his hands for so long. He wants to tell Karl and tell Quackity, and listen to rusting laughter spilling over their columns of trust and love and honesty. He wants to hold nothing back, wants to appear honest and real.
As he sips his water and as he feels it drip down the back of his throat, he can’t help but wish it had all gone differently from the start.
This could’ve been him two years ago. Telling his friends that he was expecting a baby, that he was unsure about names. Maybe they would have laughed a little about the name Elytra, repeated it over days, in different sentences, trying it out.
He’s already had this discussion with George over breakfast this morning.
“Things wouldn’t be the same,” George had told him with milk dripping from the corner of his mouth. “That’s just—I don’t know. I think that’s just how life works. I’m not saying everything happens for a reason, but, you can’t wish things were different.”
And Dream, who had reached over and stuck his clean thumb into the side of George’s mouth to clean it, shrugged. “I feel like you’ve said those words before. That you wished things were different.”
“I probably have. I’ve wished things were different. But if they actually were, then we wouldn’t be sharing the same milk on your stupid hand.”
Dream smacked a smile onto his face and had caved; he agreed.
“Dream,” Quackity enters the call with a giggle, something sweet to give the line. Dream appreciates it at the first sound. “How are you, man?”
Karl is there, at a distance away, and he mutters about getting a blanket, something about his room being a little too cold today.
It’s hot in Florida, though, so all Dream can do is chuckle.
Maybe it’s just Karl’s bedroom.
“I’m okay!” Dream forces a smile from his chest and sighs into his palms as he relaxes against his seat.
“Good, good,” Karl says, lingering with a yawn as he comes closer. “You’ve got a video idea? Or something?”
The way he talks is so kind, and Dream knows Karl would get along with Elytra so well. He’d smile at her, be so careful like Sapnap is, soft touches and a constant, “oops” flying around whenever Elytra bounces from one thing to the other.
“Uh, no. No.” Dream pauses. “I—There’s something I want to talk to you both about.”
A pause.
“Okay,” Karl mutters. “Anything.”
“Anything, yeah. You know that,” Quackity adds.
Karl, so kind and always there for when Dream needs someone to grip on, and Quackity, a strong, protective soul Dream knows will always be ready to catch him. Two people that have explicitly expressed how much Dream means to them.
“Thank you,” Dream croaks before clutching his frail fingers across the spread of his throat. “This is kind of hard. Like, really hard. But I keep thinking of asking you two to come visit, and I want it to feel good. Like, so good. You guys, Sap, and George. And uh, there’s just something I kept from them for—for a long time, and I have spent so long regretting it. And I just don’t want to do that with you guys for any longer.”
They say nothing. Noises buzz through the headset, a light hum. Dream takes it as encouragement to continue.
“I don’t want to say I fucked up, because George would probably elbow me, but it wasn’t a good thing that I did—trying to keep this to myself, when I could’ve had support from all of you this entire time,” Dream emits a sound, a harder exhale in order to keep himself from tearing up. “But, I have a daughter. And she’s two. Well, she’s almost three, but, uh. I—She—It’s been rough, and I apologize, for not coming to talk to you about this, when you two are my friends. I apologize. And I’m sorry for not expressing what I should have, for holding—”
“Dream, Dream,” Quackity interrupts with an apology. “Hold on.”
And Dream freezes. He holds his breath.
“Yeah?”
There’s rustling over the call, and Dream assumes Quackity must shift in his seat. Karl still says nothing.
“First of all,” he clears his throat. “Congratulations. On the baby. That’s pretty incredible.”
Laughter eases up into Dream’s mouth, and he chokes on its effort to get out of him. It’s all hot and sweet under his tongue, and he spits it out with a breath of relief.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah.” Karl’s tone melts Dream even further. “Wow. Congrats. You’ve been a dad for over two years? How is it?”
Dream laughs even more now, like he’s unsure of where all the rougher words are.
“Hard,” he says through a whimper. “Amazing. Fun. Difficult. Hard. An experience. It’s, uh, it’s an experience. I love her with my entire heart. She makes me feel whole.”
“I think you might get me to cry right now,” Karl says softly. “What the hell.”
“I can’t stop picturing you as a dad,” Quackity chuckles. “Do you, like, have those little baby spoons in your house?”
Dream smiles. He pulls out his phone to text George.
Now, he writes.
George sends back a selfie of him in the water. give me five mins :) im swimming
Dream wants to kiss him. Cute, he texts back.
“I do, yeah,” he tells Quackity.
“And did you baby proof your house?” Karl asks.
“What about bedtime? Do you make her go to bed at a certain time?”
Dream furrows his eyebrows at the question, his face warming up. “She’s two, Quackity. Not eleven.”
“Are you protective?”
“Ask Sapnap. I got upset with him because he made her breakfast one morning. I woke up and couldn’t find her.”
The two of them chuckle.
“You just sound like a young dad, unsure of things, taking on daily life with a baby,” Karl says with a giggle. “I’m proud of you.”
Dream swoons.
He sits in a cloud of silence, all misty and quiet at his desk, as he appreciates their words. Even if they cannot see his smile, he lets it be heard that he’s got one attached to his mouth. And then he continues. He tells them about Elytra, her birth mother. He tells them about just a few days ago when they had met again, and how Dream had been taken on an absolute whirl of a ride. He tells them about his bad days and his good days, about the timeless space between them. And then he tells them about George. Their lack of noise is almost deafening.
It’s an incredulous amount of giggles. More praise.
Dream’s smile upturns on his face, because he tells them that George isn’t exactly his boyfriend, but he’s really, really in love with him and he can’t stop kissing him and thinking about him with Elytra ruins him to all ends.
They laugh and talk about how they want to come to Florida, and Dream wastes no time in searching for flights.
A knock at the door comes just moments later.
“Oh,” Dream mutters, craning his neck to the side. “Do you guys want to meet her? I told George to bring her in. I can turn on my camera.”
Squinting in a particular nervousness, Dream waits.
He’s restless, but it’s just his eagerness and his uncertainty that are catching up to him.
“We’d love to.”
Dream practically deflates at the words, his jaw slackening and his smile becoming more genuine.
The rest of the call passes like a blur, a memory that settles faintly into the back of Dream’s head. It feels all warm in his belly, right across the middle as he introduces Elytra to his friends and as he sits back to listen to the conversation advance from light jokes to deep talks and long stories.
George sits next to Dream, and their hands stay locked together as they scoot closer and closer. Elytra messes with George’s hair, knots her tiny fingers into it, and yanks relentlessly until Dream has to scold her and distract her with some things on his desk.
“Listen, pal,” Quackity says as he comes closer to the camera. “Be nice to George.”
He grins playfully, and George mimics it, bringing Elytra to his chest, urging her to rest against his shoulder. She curls a fist against the place over his heart and rubs back and forth in the same way she does with Dream when she’s sleepy. Everyone admires her, silently watching the two of them interact, but everyone also knows that Dream’s got the biggest eyes on them.
“Baby,” Dream whispers as he bends down to kiss her head. “You tired?”
“No, I’m okay,” George bends his neck back to tease.
Dream wraps a blanket around them both, bringing Elytra her own, before he’s pinching the top part of George’s ear between two blunt nails. “Not you, idiot!”
They stay this way for a while, and Dream listens to the louder voices go soft regarding the sleeping child in the room. He supposes the sun and all the swimming must have made her this way.
There’s a pin of worry inside him, and he almost asks George if he should take her from him, if he should go put her in her crib so they can talk without worrying about being too loud, but it’s the smiles and the honey-sweet voices that convince him to change his mind.
It’s good.
Like this, it’s good.
Sapnap joins them moments later, and Dream thinks that it’s all just really good.
✩
Night closes in faster than Dream predicts, the sun draining from the sky, leaving the ends of a sunset hanging near the clouds for just a few moments. It fades quickly, and it leaves Dream in the dark, reminiscing about how warm his day had really been.
He puts Elytra to bed by nine, and by ten, he’s replying to fans on Twitter.
By eleven, he’s eating leftovers in the kitchen—cold steak, cut up into small pieces. He can’t be bothered to heat it up.
The back door is slightly ajar, and Dream holds a piece of sneak between his teeth as he steps toward it, tip-toeing on curious feet as he peeks around the drawn curtains.
Next to the ledge of the pool sits George, shoulders slouched in lazy posture as he draws swirls with his fingers. The light is on, and the water projects a glow into the backyard, as though the sun were still there.
Dream thinks he looks beautiful sitting alone. But he smiles sadly as he opens the door and as he walks toward him.
Above them, the stars cry, spreading an entire field of light. It may be dark out, but there’s so much light.
In the stars, in the pool, in the smile George gives Dream as he notices his approaching body.
“You’re still up?” Dream asks as he pulls up a chair. He doesn’t really feel like getting his feet wet right now.
George’s head tilts to the side. He shrugs. “Yeah. I’m not too tired yet. Didn’t want to get in bed or anything.”
Dream hums to acknowledge him.
Below him, George shifts. He pulls his leg from the pool and then lets it rest on the ledge. Water drips and drips and drips from his skin and Dream watches as George’s face lights up. He latches onto Dream’s shin, icy fingers onto a clothed leg.
“Will you swim with me?” George asks.
Suddenly, Dream feels like getting his feet wet.
“Of course. Let me change.” He pushes the chair back, already leaning away from George to head inside, but George grips harder onto his leg. “What?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“Don’t.” George releases his grip on Dream’s leg and then sits back on his palms. “Just. Get in like this.”
“With my jeans? And my thick shirt?” Dream mutters like he’s already answering his own question.
Looking down at George like this makes him laugh, because he can see the annoyed grin all twisted and upside-down on his face. George rolls his eyes, and he gives Dream a raised eyebrow. An obvious look. A confident look.
“Take them off,” he huffs, standing to his feet until he’s eye level with Dream.
“We are not swimming naked with Sapnap a few feet away.”
George spins in a circle and reaches for Dream to steady himself. Something about stability, Dream thinks. Then he groans and frowns, a lazy, half-pleased smile as he laughs under his breath.
“You’re no fun!” He says. “He’s asleep! And that’s not what I meant, anyway. Just like this. Watch me.”
Watch you. I can watch you, George.
Dream thinks he could burn his veins if he paid any more attention to them, the way they’re all hot and the way his chest is near vibrating as his eyes scan from George’s hands to the way he lifts his shirt over his head.
He takes his time undressing himself, and Dream doesn’t take his eyes off of George. Not even for a second, not even when the airplanes over their home are loud enough to want to distract him. It’s easy to want to lose himself in George’s gaze, the deepening pit of brown, and the secrecy of love grinding within them.
Before he knows it, George is wrapping his thin arms around his waist and his wide-eyes are blinking at Dream.
“Your turn,” he smirks. “If you still want to swim.”
Dream parts his lips, only now realizing that they’re a bit spit-slick from how much he’s been licking at them.
“Uh, fuck yeah. Yeah, absolutely.”
And then he’s down to his boxers, and they’re stepping into the water together, hand-in-hand, chests full of air as they bubble in the same fragile laughter.
It’s a lot warmer now that their bodies are closer, now that Dream’s hand loops around to the small of George’s back, crawling up his spine until it rests at the wet tips of his hair.
Their moment of time in the water could last forever if Dream asked the clocks to stop. He could whisper softly, or beg on his knees, or just hope that with George, everything will slow, and then slow even further.
George tells Dream how proud he is of him, that he got through the day—that he went through an entire conversation with their friends. Dream’s fingers grip harder onto George, and he tells him how thankful he is that George was there, is here. Now.
They stay quiet, shiver a few times when the wind blows droplets of water and stretches them past the dips in their collarbones.
Anxiety edges over Dream, flops into the water, and sinks.
He watches it.
George brings their foreheads together at the sudden relaxation that passes Dream’s face.
“Can I tell you something?” George whispers as his nails scratch up Dream’s forearms.
It raises goosebumps, along with the low breath he sends between them. There’s such little room between their faces, and Dream would think they were dancing in this water, hands all eager on each other’s bodies, skin close and touch relaxed, yet firm.
Dream hums, so George tightens that eager grip, and he smiles.
“I want to have more kids with you one day.”
The words hang in the air, float on a thread, echo around him. Dream hardly knows if he’s heard him right, definitely doesn’t know how to interpret what he’s hearing. George has told him plenty about his desires as a father, his wishes to be good to children, his wants and his plans and his hopes. But this sounds so intimate out of his mouth.
“I know that...” George kind of backtracks, “Elytra is one child, and I don’t even know if you’d want more, but, I’d like to adopt a son one day. She could have a brother. You know?”
Dream doesn’t want to interrupt him. He can’t. Not when there’s a storm caught in his throat. Not when George is whispering this—this confession in front of him. Dream might want to say something about how, one kid is already a lot. But he loves Elytra. He’d love for her to have a brother. Or a sister. Another sibling.
“In the future,” George continues as he knots his fingers through Dream’s hair. “You know?”
He keeps saying: you know, like he’s hoping Dream won’t disagree. But how could he ever?
Anything you do, I will do.
“I will marry you,” Dream says as his arms sculpt around George’s body.
George laughs weakly in response to Dream’s sudden words. The color on his cheeks is hard to make out in the dark, but the glow of the pool makes it so pretty.
Dream lifts his hand to trace his fingers over George’s reddening cheekbones.
“Is that your way of proposing to me?” George asks, replacing his smile with a playfully shocked expression. “If it’s a promise, then those usually come with a ring, you know.”
You know.
I know, George.
Dream separates himself from George’s body, slipping away from the warmth and drowning in a shiver as he goes to the water’s edge. He grabs a rock, rounded and dented, sharp on one edge.
“Here.” He asks George to close his eyes a little too late, but George still does it, anyway. His lids flutter shut, and his teeth come out as he smiles, and Dream gets to watch his shy smile grow and then grow again as his palm hovers over the water. “Let me try this again,” he says as he lets the rock drop into the soft skin of George’s palm. “George. I will marry you one day.”
“You will,” George whispers as he opens his eyes again, inspecting the rock between nervous fingertips. “And you wanna know what I think?”
“Yes,” Dream sighs as he pulls him back against his body. “I do. Tell me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
George takes a moment.
He sighs through his nose and attempts to clutch onto a familiar part of Dream, where his shirt usually is, but there’s just skin. So instead, his palm goes flat, and he places the rock over Dream’s heart, and it sits between his palm and Dream’s chest.
Dream watches. He never wants to stop watching him.
“I think there’s no one I’ve been more proud of in my life. And it’s an honor, Dream, it’s such an honor to be in love with you. And to know you’re in love with me, too.”
He’s kissed George plenty by now.
But this is different.
George loves touching Dream. Touching his fingers to his cheeks and his chin, kissing down the trail of his ear to his jaw, lighting him in cold flames, covering him in scarlet warmth and thickened blues.
But this time, Dream barely touches their mouths together, licks a single line of praise and hopelessness between George’s lips, scraping on the edge of his teeth as he does so. George crumbles underneath him, and Dream can never get enough of the way he shatters like this, turning into dust as his eyes squint so hard.
He kisses him lightly, lips too taut for George to enjoy it. But it’s the point he’s trying to get across.
With shivering hands and a rock pressed to Dream’s chest, George’s nails start to scratch. And Dream loves it. He chuckles, and he knows. God, he knows George and what he wants, but that’s the point. A life without teasing George is so pointless.
“You’re the most annoying man I’ve ever met,” George says as he turns his cheek, letting Dream’s lips hit his skin. Dream has no issue. He kisses from cheek to jaw, all his sharp lines and the thickened skin underneath, by his chin. “Oh, come on. Please.”
Dream chuckles. “We’re not.”
We’re not having sex in this pool, is what he means to say, but George gets it.
“That’s not even what I was suggesting!” George defends himself. Then he frowns, and he guides Dream’s mouth back to his. “Just kiss me properly!”
And then Dream does. With a hand tightly on George’s cheek, and fingers curled at his hip, Dream kisses him lazily.
Like George wants.
Because he is so, so weak for him.
It takes George about thirty seconds before he’s patting Dream across the chest and calling it off for the both of them, claiming that any longer would have them both whimpering a little too loud into each other’s mouths.
They shove each other all the way to Dream’s bedroom, dripping on the floor and failing to keep their laughter held behind their chattering teeth.
Dream shivers as his legs drip onto the floor, and George is groaning at him, already digging through the drawers in order to find them both warm clothes. While he does, Dream busies himself in the bathroom to grab some towels.
They’re so cold when they touch again, despite being covered in sweaters and sweatpants and fuzzy socks, and Dream wishes they were a little less clothed, just so he could feel George’s skin press to his again. He likes it that way.
Blankets rise to their chins, and Dream looks at George silently, letting breathless huffs pant out of his mouth as he reaches for his hands, and as he sticks his fingers up along George’s navel.
“I should check on Elytra once more,” Dream says to George as soon as his eyes grow heavy. “Before we fall asleep.”
George scoots closer, and Dream doesn’t complain when George’s knee knocks against his. Cuddling is so difficult sometimes. His shoulders ache, his hands go numb, their knees are constantly bumping. But the benefits are endless, and he relishes in the feeling of having George this close, feeling his skin burn within this proximity.
“Would you, uh, would it be okay if I checked in on her?” George asks him, spreading Dream’s fingers far enough to slot his own between.
Dream blinks. “You want to?”
George sits up a little and looks down at the hair that covers Dream’s forehead, still damp and stuck against his skin.
“Absolutely.”
“Then, of course,” Dream nods nervously, a sheepish smile already wide over his mouth. “Yeah. George, yes.”
Then George is standing, and he’s looking over at the bed with his fingers pointed at Dream. One of his fists is closed, but he still attempts to point.
“Don’t move,” he says, nodding as he steals a blanket from the bed. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.”
Dream isn’t sure how long he lies there, rubbing his fingers over his belly, thinking about George and about Elytra, and about the family he’s growing here. He thinks about Sapnap, and his parents, and his friends. As he waits, his breathing deepens, and he turns onto his side, staring patiently at the door, waiting for it to open and reveal the one person who outshines the thoughts he has circulating in his head.
His eyes close.
And then they open.
George presses his weight into the bed, and Dream takes a relieving breath.
“You took a while,” he whispers, his bleary eyes blinking at the water cups in his hands. “What took you so long?”
He doesn’t mean to sound overwhelmed, but he’s not sure if he had fallen asleep for one minute, or five, or ten. So, he asks. He sits up and takes the water cup and presses it to his lips.
“I know you like to make sure everything in the house is okay, so I double checked the locks,” he says as he watches Dream take a sip. “We left the pool light on, so I turned that off. And I wiped down the water we dripped in the hallway so no one slips in the morning.”
Dream drops his head to George’s shoulder, his smile easing into his skin. “I love you.”
Against his head, he feels George’s fingers deepening against the roots, pressing against his scalp as he runs them back and forth. “I know.” Then he leans forward and gets into Dream’s space and whispers, “I love you.”
“And Elytra?” Dream asks. “How was she?”
George takes the water from Dream’s hands and sets it on the bedside table.
“Sleeping so comfortably,” he nods. “Like a little angel.”
Dream sinks back into the bed, tugging George down with him. He doesn’t seem as tired as Dream, but Dream wants him close. He wants him everywhere near him right now.
It’s easy for George to see it too, Dream imagines, because he pulls himself nearer, nosing into Dream’s neck as soon as their legs intertwine.
“You know, she’s going to grow up so beautiful. She looks a lot like you when she sleeps,” George whispers and trails a finger along Dream’s jaw. He touches Dream’s nose. “Right here.”
“Yeah?”
George hums. “Yeah. And here,” George touches the edges of Dream’s smile. “She’s going to grow up to be smart, too.”
Dream sort of snickers at that one, tilting his face more toward George as he blinks at him.
“I don’t doubt it,” he whispers. “She’s going to have you around.”
“Oh, is she?” George whispers back. Delicate, positive.
Dream shrugs this time, finding George’s eyes through the clearing space between them. “If you want.”
He says it kindly, through that confidence he knows has been sprouting inside of him for so long.
“Well, I’ve got my rock, haven’t I?” George presses it between their interlaced palms.
Dream sighs lovingly. “You’ve got your rock.”