Work Text:
The problem is that Dream— tense and wary, dedicated to a very specific persona, and bad at networking— just has too many strikes against him to get away with being difficult to work with on top of it.
If not in the eyes of the Secretary of Victor Affairs, then in the eyes of the film crews. They’re already working around constraints, with him, and the supervillain routine might not be real but it does get Capitolites a little nervous. It’s not real fear, obviously, they’d never let him do anything really scary, but it does mean that being a bitch to the cameramen comes off wrong.
But George— willing to flex on his persona if it works better for a scene, knows the names of half the sound techs’ kids, beautiful and delicate and most crucially nonthreatening— can be a total fucking bitch to work with if he wants to be. So he is.
They have a system, or something like it, for when they’re under the ring lights and buzzing air conditioning of a Capitol film studio. Not a complicated one. Two taps to ask you okay, do you need a minute; one tap back to say yes please, too much; two for nope, go ahead. When it’s bad enough he needs to ask, the answer is almost always one.
So George asks for water, bitches whenever anything is cramping. He says the blocking isn’t working, can they figure out something else. He says his makeup is getting in his eyes. They can’t ask for breaks or time to breathe, and Dream can’t ask for anything else either, so George demands it for both of them and the film crew will put up or they will shut up.
It’s a team effort as much as Dream and Sapnap’s Games were, the two of them on the same side. It’s kind of nice, still having that.
Not that George needs the assurance, or anything.
In the early days after Dream’s victory several of their sponsors had privacy concerns, and so the microphone in Dream’s mask does not stream 24/7. Not that someone from the management team isn’t listening, but it doesn’t go out to the public. It cuts out sometimes— when he’s discussing mentoring strategy, when he’s talking over marketing with Punz, when he’s talking to sponsors, when he’s in the studio filming. They leave it on when he talks to George, that’s the kind of content fans pay for, but cut the feed when he’s with a client.
And, of course, they cut out when he’s throwing up. There’s already discourse on the victor gossip boards for, god is it really the third time? about whether it’s irresponsible for Dream to have the abs he does— you can’t get that cut without being severely dehydrated, it’s promoting harmful messages, or some fucking bullshit. Can’t have your victor canceled for promoting eating disorders on stream.
“So is this, like, a thing?” says Punz, who’s been waiting outside the bathroom. At least Sapnap’s out, he and Dream have spent the last week pointedly not speaking to each other and hearing his take on Punz’s take on this would just be exhausting.
“It’s not a thing,” says Dream.
George keeps his eyes closed. Breathes, gentle and even, not that they’re paying any attention. If Dream only listens to his stylist, that’s fine. He’s not even listening. He doesn’t even care.
“Look, if it’s a thing I need to know. So I can keep an eye on your electrolyte balance, if nothing else. It’s my job, don’t make it harder.”
“It’s not a thing.”
“Uh-huh,” says Punz. “...rinse out your mouth and don’t brush your teeth when you’re done if you’re gonna keep doing that, it’s bad for the enamel. And I’m not holding your hair back.”
The video’s teasing a face reveal, but it isn’t one; they’re choosing takes and angles to keep Dream’s face entirely out of frame. George half-suspects Punz has bullied the crew into actually destroying the extra footage rather than just not using it. Not that he asks. Not that Punz would answer if he did.
They’re using a different mask, one without a microphone, that attaches with ribbons and not elastic; it’s not meant to stay on, it’s meant to be attractive when it comes off. It’ll be in focus later, when it’s sitting smile-up on the mattress, George’s fingers twitching prettily above it while Dream fucks him. But before he takes it off George pauses— if they do keep the take this’ll be on camera, but in the corner, almost in the dark, hard to see if you aren’t looking for it, and nobody will know what it means— and leaves two taps on Dream’s hip. Are you okay? Is this okay? Do you need to slow down?
I’m a bitch to work with. Everyone knows I’m a bitch to work with. I’ll be a bitch to work with. I’ll say the blocking isn’t working. I’ll ask for water. I’ll say something’s cramping. It doesn’t have to mean shit to them. If you need a minute you can have it. Just say the word.
Two taps back. You’re fine. Go ahead. George reaches up behind Dream’s head, and he tugs, and the knot unravels and the mask comes off in his hand.
The mask doesn’t come off much these days. Sometimes when they’re alone, but more often not even then. This, Dream’s face, the soft fuzz on his jaw, the crooked curve of his nose, how he chews on the inside of his mouth when he’s bored and the way he won’t meet anyone’s eyes, is supposed to be private. Even clients don’t get to see it. It’s supposed to be for George, it’s supposed to fucking mean something that he knows about that, and—
And he isn’t thinking about this. He can be a bitch to work with, but there are limits.
They keep the take.
In the beginning— not just the early days of Dream’s victory but the very beginning, in the months before Dream’s games, when they were still inventing an image for themselves, when George was only a few years into being a victor— they’d had sex just for the joy of it. It was precious and private and special, not a transaction not an act not for anyone but themselves, only the two of them and the pleasure of having a body and using it.
Dream had been sweet, once. He’d never been gentle but he’d been sweet. Back then he was already vicious and arena-hungry but he was also endlessly curious, interested in everything. Sex with him was fun, fun the way running and sparring are fun, the way dancing used to be fun. It was hands and mouths on each other’s skin, keeping each other up all night, and that was all it had to be. George had wanted to be there for it. George had kept himself sober and tethered to his body, just so he could be there for it.
At the time, two years into being a victor and thinking that was as tired as he could get, it felt like waking up. Dream’s hands were callused from holding swords and axes and flails and felt nothing like any Capitol socialite’s, and under them George had thought, oh. Oh. This is supposed to be fun. This could be fun again. Dream’s muscles hadn’t been for show, then, and running your hands down them didn’t mean gosh, you’re so strong and scary. It had just meant I love you.
They’d loved each other once. They had.
George is a little bit high tonight— just a little, not so much it turns him sideways and leaves him not remembering how to work his own limbs, but enough to make him floaty and detached. It’s on his own terms, this way, so he won’t zone right out as soon as he’s touched. Totally responsible drug use, his stylist signed off on it and everything, Dream and Sapnap can leave the fuck off.
They’ve put Dream in that stupid leotard they always do: skintight black, sleeveless so you can see the freckles on his shoulders and the bulk of his arms, with cutouts that show off the V-shaped crease at his hips. George, draped in barely-there silver-blue mesh, spends the evening hanging off his arm and smiling like he couldn’t imagine doing anything else, socializing well enough for both of them.
That’s the trick. When you highlight Dream’s muscles, when you put a mask on him so no one can see his face, his silence looks edgy and aloof. It’s just George who knows that he’s shy.
Well, George and Punz and the management team, but same difference. Certainly it’s not obvious to anyone else here, he thinks, as a microphone is shoved towards Dream’s face.
“Do you have plans for your face reveal?” asks the woman behind it, and George doesn’t wince, but it’s a deliberate sort of not wincing.
Dream’s been putting off the face reveal for years now. He was going to do it at the crowning, and then at the end of the tour, and at a dozen other milestones between then and now— but there’s always more that can be milked out of being a mystery, or so Dream keeps saying to Punz, who never argues the point. Don’t end it yet.
Now, his arm tightens around George’s waist. George prepares for the same nothing answer about soon, prepares to smile and brush it off and change the subject so nobody has to commit to a date when Dream will take the mask off, and reveal a pretty face that is not Dream’s because instead it’ll be a surgically-constructed replica of all the fanart.
Instead Dream’s fingers dig into his side as he says, all seriousness, “I’m thinking I’ll face reveal at our wedding, actually.”
“What fucking wedding,” says George when they’re back at their room that night. The cameras aren’t running and they’re in pajamas but even here the mask is on. “We aren’t engaged, Dream, were you going to propose at some point?”
“What, do you want me to propose?” Like that’s the point. “Treat you like a princess? Make some big— some big showy event out of it?”
“Oh my god, you’re actually an idiot. I want you to tell me before you announce in public we’re getting married!”
“That was for the viewers,” Dream says, “it doesn’t, like— mean anything.”
Which leaves them with what, exactly? Negotiating sponsorships, talking over branding with stylists? When the treasury secretary wants George to play sex toy? When a rich girl with a rape fantasy wants Dream to play supervillain? What about their lives isn’t for the microphone? Is that actually the part he wants to say means anything?
Maybe it is. What fucking ever. “Sure,” George says, and bites back the rest, leaves it at that.
Dieting isn’t really George’s thing— they’ve already got meal plans, someone else has done the thinking about it, and George is high enough often enough that he doesn’t even really notice when he’s hungry anymore so why bother. Like, what’s even the point? Dream, though, Dream gets so fucking obsessive about it. It’s not even like they want it from him, they’ll have to cut it from the stream every time he gets going like this. Can’t have your victors promoting eating disorders!
“It’s honestly kind of funny how into it you get,” George says, in the middle of a long, rambly aside from Dream about macros and bulking cycles and Punz, and other things George literally could not bring himself to give a shit about if he tried.
“Don’t start.” Behind the mask he’s glaring, you can hear it.
Punz gets to say shit about it, George doesn’t say. What he says is, “I wasn’t saying anything, god.”
Dream’s neck and jaw are so tense, even behind the mask, that George can see the tendons standing out. “Look, I actually care what I put in my body, even if you clearly don’t.”
“And how is caring about what does and doesn’t go in your body working out for you?”
There’s three solid seconds of dead fucking silence.
“I’m going,” says George, “to bed.”
He stands up, heads upstairs. Dream doesn’t join him. George doesn’t wish he would, because he is asleep, and not wishing for anything.
George thinks he might start coming here a lot with friends. It’s a good place to think, and an even better place to avoid thinking. That it’s a popular spot for clandestine dates is a side benefit; that he and Q will almost certainly be photographed on their way out, smiley and hanging off each other with wet hair and blown-dark eyes, is also a side benefit. That hitting their relationship in its picture-perfect public image might be the only way to get through to Dream anymore isn’t even worth considering.
They put something in the water that makes the whole place smell like lotuses. It’s like stepping into a dream, everything low and warm and hazy; here in the warmth of the tepidarium it feels like being cradled, whole-body and general, without having to handle the specific rasp of skin on skin. He was actually for-real sober walking here— Sapnap’s been on his ass about mixing depressants lately, although he’ll drop it in a week— but between the heat and whatever’s in the vapor George is already pleasantly lightheaded.
“Whoa,” Quackity whispers; it echoes off the tiled walls, whoa, whoa, whoa. “...my head feels so fucking weird.”
So fucking weird. So fucking weird. “Yeah,” says George. “That’s like, the point.” The point. The point. The point.
“Do you want,” and Quackity’s arms are open but he’s not moving, waiting for George to either come to him or not.
If District 1 makes luxuries of its tributes, and it does, then it stands to reason that District 10 makes meat. Even with that Quackity’s a sweetheart, still. Enjoy it while it lasts, part of George thinks, curling up in those arms, you’ll be as hollow as me someday. Then, at himself: You’re an idiot. That’s a stupid thing to think.
Q’s voice is nice, though. And his hands are nice. Being dizzy like this, being held while he’s dizzy like this— a little by Q, but mostly by the water— is nice; George actually wants to be here for this. Time stretches out, languorous and slow, in the warmth. You could float in it.
It’s not until they’re leaving, Quackity laughing and dark-eyed and beautiful, that George remembers the original point of this date at all. He wonders, briefly, spitefully, what Dream would say to that if he found out about it.
It’s the middle of the night, and they aren’t in a studio. They’re home, in the victors’ village of District 1. After all these years they still share a bed. It’s almost a joke— they lie on opposite edges, George can pass out anywhere but Dream hasn’t been able to sleep with anyone touching him since year two— except for how it isn’t at all funny.
Neither of them are asleep tonight. Across a foot of mattress Dream shifts and fidgets. George is so fucking tired of this.
He sits up, and Dream turns to look at him; George rolls him over the rest of the way, so he’s on his back in the middle of the bed where neither of them sleep anymore, George straddling his hips. The mask is off; Dream doesn’t wear it to sleep, it’s on the nightstand, smile down.
This is supposed to be fun. George had wanted to be here for this, once. This could, he thinks, be fun again; it could. They’d loved each other once. They could love each other again.
Two taps on the shoulder. Do you want to?
Dream glances at the mask, then back up at George. Two taps on his side. Go ahead.
So he goes ahead, leans down to kiss him. Runs his thumb along Dream’s jaw— still the one he fell in love with, however long that lasts. Even now, Dream’s hands are calloused: from holding swords, holding axes, holding flails. They feel nothing like any Capitol socialite’s.
And as they fall to George’s hips, run along his sides and up to his chest, all George can think of is ring lights and buzzing AC. His fingers twitch, prettily for nonexistent cameras, as Dream fucks him in a dark room.
By the next day the clip is the first thing on the DNF boards.
George laughs until he chokes, until he makes himself gag on it and ends up throwing up into the sink, thick mucus and bitter bile. It’s disgusting and clogs the drain and it tastes awful and leaves him with his eyes watering, standing with his arms braced against the counter.
Spit drips down his chin, like he’s just had his face fucked. There’s nothing else in his stomach.