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7 days until George’s birthday.
The first gift shows up at the front door, and with an annoyed grunt escaping his lungs as he hops down the flight of stairs, George is the one welcoming it. He stares at the delivery woman holding the bouquet of flowers in one hand and a clipboard in the other, eagerly urging the latter forward for him to sign and relieve her of her duties. At least the ones that require her to stand and wait at their front door, he assumes.
So he does; George takes the pen lodged between her fingers and signs off on the form and takes the bouquet from her before she can even say another word—if hurriedly rushing through whatever mantra she’s required to say by the delivery company even counts. Still, he thanks her and shuts the door with the force of someone who had clearly lost a bet with Sapnap.
He sets the particularly fancy bundle down on a side table in their vestibule and scans it for a card of some sort. No one who lives here is someone George would pin as someone who loves flowers, so he figures it could be a thank-you gift or a celebration from a family member that’s just sent out for whatever that celebration may be; he’s not entirely sure how many people actually do that sort of thing, but he remembers distantly, when he was much younger, his mother had sent out cards and gift baskets to their relatives for Valentine’s Day. He didn’t understand then, and frankly he wouldn’t understand now, but to each their own, he supposes.
There is a card, though, he finds, and it’s stuck in the soil at the very bottom and surrounded by all of the thick leaves and stems sprouting from beneath. He carefully plucks it out from between them and dusts the remaining dirt off of it; the handwriting is neat, but it distinctly lacks character. It doesn’t feel like human handwriting, but there’s a shakiness to it that has George ruling out the possibility of any sort of machinery being involved in the print.
It’s an odd sort of thing to notice, but he frowns and focuses this time on the actual message, which…there isn’t one, really. He notes that it’s addressed to him specifically, because the name George is printed in thin but large letters directly in the center. Just below, smaller and clearly more loosely written but still just as strangely inhumane as the other handwriting, are two words and nothing more.
Με αγάπη.
He has no idea what they mean or what emotions they’re supposed to be delivering unto him, but he does recognize the familiarity of the symbols—letters?—from the immeasurably short period of time that Sapnap had re-devoted himself to studying Greek. He gave up faster than he started, but George recalls the hefty amount of money spent on textbooks and online courses.
Turning the card over and over in his fingers, George hunts Sapnap down (it’s not hard—he’s rarely anywhere other than his room when they’re not traveling for content).
“What does this say?” George asks in lieu of a greeting once Sapnap swings open the door. He shoves the card forward into his face and tries not to laugh at the way he recoils unnaturally as if stung by an abnormally large bee.
“Jesus,” Sapnap grumbles, though he snatches the card from George’s grasp without missing a beat. He looks tired, sort of; if his room is anything to go by, George figures it’s probably jarring to have to read such small writing while being flash-banged by the hallway lightings. “Uh,” he says after a prolonged moment in which George can only assume Sapnap is trying his damnedest to make out the words within the ink through blue-light-stained pupils. “It says… George?”
George pauses, because the idiocy of Sapnap’s hardly-confident statement stalls him. “What?” He hisses in the next second, prying the card back from Sapnap and shuffling halfway through his doorway. “Not that part, you idiot,” he scoffs and drags the line of his thumbnail just beneath the Greek script, “this part.”
“Oh,” Sapnap says. He huffs a clearly exaggerated breath from his nostrils and steps back a little, giving George a look that conveys the annoyance he’s not speaking into the world. It’s probably habitual when he takes a moment to adjust the baseball cap on his head—Vans logo printed right across the center—before he’s squinting down at the card in George’s hand again. “Oh, it’s—oh.”
“Oh?” George echoes. There’s an edge to his voice, the kind that says, I don’t like that you know something I don’t.
Sapnap clears his throat in a stilted sort of way. “It says, with love.”
Simple. Generic. Boring.
George groans, loud and drawn-out in his frustration with this endeavor. Great, he maybe knows what the writing on the card means now, but it’s nothing notable. An easy phrase that’s jotted at the bottom of every single card on display in stores because it’s perfect for every occasion. No one is sending a bouquet of flowers without love, that’s for sure.
The only remaining mystery is such: why Greek? He could rationalize it being meant for Sapnap, the obvious choice in terms of understanding the Greek language at least a little more than either Dream or George, but the name on the card is George and he’s George, not Sapnap (thankfully). The—what were they again? Ah, right—red camellias sitting at their front door definitely, unfortunately, confusingly belong to him.
“This is annoying,” he whinges in the same second he remembers Sapnap’s lingering gaze and physical presence. “I don’t want to deal with this.”
“Uh, a gift?”
“From some mystery man,” George adds miserably. “I don’t want to play Clue just to figure out who sent me a—a bouquet of flowers that I don’t even want.”
Sapnap reacts in a strange way to George’s words, but it’s only skin-deep and he chalks it up to the remaining lethargy. “Maybe it’ll be fun?” He suggests, though his throat wobbles and that is uncertainty if George has ever heard it (and he has, a great deal of times).
With a rough moan of agony, George crumples the card in the palm of his hand and shoves himself back out of Sapnap’s doorway. “I’m sure it’ll be a blast,” he gripes, and the door shuts with a pointed click behind him.
※ ※ ※
6 days until George’s birthday.
The second time a bouquet of flowers is waiting for him at the front door in the hands of a delivery boy who very obviously does not want to be there, George is more surprised than he feels he truly should be. He signs the form, thanks the boy in a mumbled way where he’s unsure of whether he actually heard it or not, and shuts the door once the bouquet is safely inside the vestibule.
He sets it down next to the other bouquet, more carefully potted and decorated than it had been when he first received it.
White lilies, George muses, plucking another one of those small, paper cards from the soil. His name is printed in that same thin, mechanical ink, though the writing scribbled beneath is different this time around—it’s still Greek, he realizes with a sort of frustrated edge stirring in his gut, but the formation of the language is distinctly different. Even he, with his painfully little knowledge of the Greek alphabet, can tell that much.
It reads, Τώρα και για πάντα.
Fingertips linger on the edges of petals before George is trudging up the stairs and knocking on Sapnap’s door yet again.
“Is this,” Sapnap starts, chin poking upward in a strikingly Sapnap-esque way, “going to be, like, a daily thing? I got stuff to do, man.”
“Playing Valorant doesn’t count as stuff to do,” George snarks. He holds the card out toward Sapnap, who takes it begrudgingly and stares down at the text.
After a moment of silence, in which Sapnap’s incessant chewing on his bottom lip becomes louder than the whirring of his PC on the other side of the room, George itches his wrist.
“So?”
Sapnap snorts a little as he turns the card over in his hand. “In reference to time, I think,” he says. His thumb fiddles with the edge of the card, folding over a thick dog ear at the corner. “Something like now and forever.”
George repeats, baffled, “Now and forever?” He scrunches his nose and makes an angry sort of noise that emits from the bottom of his throat. Sapnap yelps a half-grunt as George pushes past him and makes a guest of himself atop his duvet. “This is starting to sound like some sort of secret admirer. That’s not a good thing, by the way,” he adds.
“What, so you think some crazy fan doxxed us and is sending you bouquets of flowers to declare their undying love for you?” Sapnap scoffs once he’s plopped himself down into his gaming chair, spinning it around to face George.
“No,” George says. “Maybe? Yes? I don’t know.” He drags the palm of his hand across his face and presses redness into the skin until it just barely burns. “It’s only been a day and I’m already tired of it.”
“I think you’re trying way too hard.”
“Wonderful help,” George mocks, “thank you, Sapnap.”
“Listen,” Sapnap exaggerates the word in both tone and with a pointed roll of his eyes, “it’s just flowers. It’s not hurting you and frankly, I’m not affected by this. If you want me to keep helping you translate your Greek love letters, that’s fine, but don’t turn me into your personal therapist.”
George stares for a moment, incredulous. “I’m not making you my therapist,” he demurs. “I have every right to complain about this! It’s annoying.”
Sapnap laughs as if George isn’t entirely frustrated and wants to pull his hair out. “Seriously,” he says, jabbing a finger at him through the air, “it’s not gonna kill you to accept some flowers from a secret admirer.”
“Famous last words,” George grumbles. He fists the fabric of the duvet and leans back into it. It’s nice, and he thinks he’ll order a new one for his own bed.
“George. Don’t be a bitch.”
“I’m not—” And he stops himself, because something clicks. The clockwork in his brain lurches into motion again, circling Sapnap’s expression with bright red marker. “Oh. You know something.”
“What?” Sapnap scoffs, but he instinctively reaches for the brim of his cap. A tell—George knows this best, because Sapnap is always pawning his troubles off on George, though thankfully Dream is smarter than to believe that. “I don’t know shit, Georgie.”
“You do!” George squawks, and he almost scrambles to his feet before he realizes he can’t snatch Sapnap by the collar of his shirt or his shoulders from the angle his spine is arching. “You—you complete idiot! What do you know?”
Sapnap insists, “Nothing!” He’s still rubbing his thumb and forefinger together between the rough curve of the brim, though. One arm is slung comfortably—though George thinks it looks rather uncomfortable—over the back of his chair and Sapnap’s look is entirely unconvincing.
He definitely knows something.
“Okay,” George concedes with the smallest amount of hesitation. “Fine.” He huffs out a breath, pulls himself to his feet, and makes a show of patting the mostly-nonexistent dust off of himself. “I’ll just ask Dream.”
In a single motion, Sapnap is wrestling his body out of the gaming chair and George is beelining to the door. He swings it shut behind him as he exits, yanks at the knob until Sapnap accepts defeat, and then deflates as the adrenaline dissipates.
“Pussy!” Sapnap shouts from inside the room, and George only winces, scoffs, and lingers.
※ ※ ※
5 days until George’s birthday.
He asks Dream—of course he asks Dream. He said he’d ask Dream, so that’s just what George does. He asks him.
The answer he gets is nothing short of vague and lacking, much like Dream’s presence the past week or so. George shouldn’t be bitter about it, but he is, and he doesn’t think he should feel bad about…well, feeling bad. Apparently solo opportunities that require him to be across the country are more important than spending Halloween (and George’s birthday, presumably. He’s more upset about that, though he won’t say it) with his supposed best friends.
Ugh.
George stares at the blinding screen of his phone a moment longer, running his eyes across the words over and over again until the focus blurs. The details aren’t there and the gist of the uneventful conversation is just that Dream doesn’t know and he’s sorry, but he’s busy. George gets it, really, he does, but it doesn’t…make it less lonely.
He has Sapnap, obviously, and this horrid new game of Guess Who with whatever local flower shop is supplying their vestibule with a lovely array of flora. It doesn’t replace Dream. Nothing ever does and nothing ever will.
Speaking of, however, George lets his arm drop onto his bed and he squints to find patterns in the ceiling that aren’t quite there. They were daffodils today, accompanied by a new phrase: Καλή τύχη.
When he asked Sapnap, he had told him it meant good luck. A vexing message this time around, and it had only solidified George’s determination to file a restraining order against this person at best or murder them at worst.
It feels like a challenge—a nod toward yes, this is a game and you’re playing right into it. George doesn’t like that one bit, nor does he want to play into anything. However, he also doesn’t want to lose. He’s not normally one for competitions or the like, but this entire thing is quite literally rigged against him and he’ll be damned if he’s to be humiliated by someone like this.
So, he plays along.
He plays along because he’s angry and frustrated and Sapnap knows something he doesn’t and Dream is hundreds, thousands of miles away from him all over again and he can’t handle being alone with himself for a single second longer.
Thus, George opts to obsess—maybe obsess is a bit much, but he considers it regardless—over the flowers and their sender.
“Well, it’s not my family,” George says over the phone, speaker on and comfortably picking up every movement Dream makes on the other end. He’s happy enough Dream has some free time to chat on the phone at all lately, especially now. “I asked. It was a strange conversation.”
Dream snorts—it sounds a little rough, but George figures he’s feeling the effects of work—and George bites down on his lip. “It’s a strange situation,” he replies lightly. “You said it’s been going daily, right? Maybe whoever it is had them sent in advance. I mean, your birthday is coming up soon, so maybe there’s going to be some sort of special surprise at the end of the week.”
George turns over onto his side, staring at the way his duvet swallows up the edges of his phone case. “That makes sense,” he frowns despite that, “but wouldn’t they want to make it known? That they’re the one doing this big birthday surprise?”
“Who knows,” Dream laughs.
“Sapnap, apparently.”
“Really?” He doesn’t sound… surprised, but something softer. George reaches down to scratch at his wrist.
“Well, he didn’t say that,” George notes. “I sort of assumed. He—he seemed to, though! It’s irritating. I’m wracking my brain all day every day about this whole thing and he just—he just gets to know.”
Dream hums, a comforting sound. George feels himself relax a little, melt down into the sheets. “Isn’t it supposed to be fun to have a bit of mystery? A bit of a surprise?” He asks.
George scoffs. “Don’t start talking like you know something, too,” he pokes, gentle but partially serious nonetheless. He’s not a hater of surprises or the like, but this is an entirely different situation; it’s unfair from top to bottom and he can only hope the payout is worth it and not some huge, dangerous fuck up that leaves all of them miserable.
“I’m just saying.”
“Talk to me,” George states, short and simple. He can almost hear the comical way Dream’s eyebrows would rise and fall, his lips twisting as if unsure of what expression he should make in response to that.
“I am talking to you,” Dream settles on after a beat of silence.
George huffs, airy. It lacks any real negativity. “Tell me about your day,” he says. “Tell me about all the videos you’ve been recording and content you’ve been hoarding while you’re partying in Las Vegas.”
He can hear the way Dream’s nose scrunches as he speaks. “It’s tiring,” he replies, as if obvious. It should be, but George likes hearing his voice. “I mean, it’s fun, don’t get me wrong,” Dream continues, and George imagines his hands flying this way and that way as he goes on, “but it’s exhausting. And I miss you and Sap.”
“Mostly me though, right?”
Dream draws out a breath, feigning deep thought. “Mostly you,” he agrees in the quiet.
※ ※ ※
4 days until George’s birthday.
Pink chrysanthemums arrive today, though when George pulls the leaves up to check for a card in the soil, he’s left empty-handed.
(Sapnap watches him, in worried disgust, pull out the entire tub of strawberry ice cream and retreat to his room with it.)
※ ※ ※
3 days until George’s birthday.
It’s funny, sort of, because George is starting to wait by the door like a dog. He paces back and forth by the vestibule, just around noon, when the bouquets have always shown up.
When today’s delivery does show up, George is pouncing on the employee before they even ring the doorbell. He signs, thanks them in too much of a hurry to ever be considered normal behavior, and then sets the flowers down beside all the others. He has begun to tend to them, kind of; it’s mostly just watering and rearranging the bundles to look nicer where they’re sat by the front door, but he counts it as a win on his part even if Sapnap doesn’t.
They’re globe amaranths—deep purples, light pinks, and pure whites.
The paper card is stuck upright in the soil again today, though its usual beige color is replaced with a beet-like maroon. The ink on the paper is darker, too, and overall larger than any of the previous ones.
George plucks it out and runs the pad of his thumb over the front. It reads, Συγγνώμη. He rushes upstairs to Sapnap.
“Fuck,” Sapnap hisses the second he scans the card. George barely has time to react to whatever that reaction can possibly mean, but he knows better than to assume it’s anything good. “Fuck, George, I told him—I told him not to—!”
“What?” George narrows his eyes. The panic sets in slowly, but it’s suffocating. Beads of sweat gather across his skin, cold and demanding of something he can’t offer. Nor can he place. “Sap—Sapnap, what the hell are you freaking out about?”
He notices the way Sapnap’s hands tremble as he crunches the paper card in his hand and shoves it forcefully into the pocket of his shorts. “It,” he starts, and stops again; Sapnap refuses to meet George’s gaze for a moment, and George can feel his heartbeat in the base of his throat. “It’s Dream,” he finishes, sounding more than breathless.
George stalls. “What?” He asks, a devastated hissing noise.
Sapnap scrambles for details. “He—he told me about this—about this grand gesture,” he says exasperatedly. “Told me it was a good idea and that it would be, like, fun and whatever. I said it was a bad idea because it was stupid and I figured you would—well, you did think it was annoying and frustrating and you were on edge this whole time!”
“So—so, what, you knew it was Dream this whole time? Why is he—what’s the point of all the flowers?”
He’s turning around before George gets an answer, frantically snatching his phone off the side of his desk and tapping whatever nonsense against the screen. George can only follow after him like a lost animal because he’s still in the dark about all of this—well, aside from who was sending him all of these pretty bouquets—and Sapnap isn’t even bothering to explain further.
“We have to go,” Sapnap says in the same second George reaches for his shoulder to demand answers. “I got—I got one way tickets to Vegas, so—so we need to start packing.” His eyes are shaky in the same way his hands are where they’re clutched around his phone. “Now.”
※ ※ ※
2 days until George’s birthday.
George had brought nothing but a backpack—one he hasn’t used in about a year or so. He stuffed as many outfits as it could hold before it was fit to burst and left it at that. Sapnap, on the other hand, packed a regular suitcase. It frustrated George a little, only because he’s been anxious and nervous and felt like throwing up all the time since last night.
He seemed to look just about as shitty as he feels, because when they got situated next to each other on the flight, Sapnap lightly clapped him on the shoulder and told him he’ll survive.
George occupied the five hours of airtime by staring out the window and looping songs much too loud in his earbuds until they finally, finally landed in Las Vegas.
It’s an achingly familiar process of booking a hotel and getting as settled as possible in such a short amount of time. The only difference now is that Sapnap calls an Uber and has the driver take them to a hospital.
The one Dream’s at, specifically.
George’s anxiety is at an all-time high during the whole check-in process—he honestly barely remembers it, because Sapnap did most of that for him and now, standing in the doorway of the hospital room, he’s looking at Dream. Dream, who’s hooked up to machinery and accompanied by the rhythmic, haunting melody of a heart monitor.
“Oh god,” he whispers, hushed and full of a hurt that he can barely put a name to.
“George?”
George winces as Dream shifts a little in the pale sheets of the bed, his eyes searching for the source of the familiar voice. “Hi, Dream,” he says, and offers a small wave and smile.
Dream silently beckons him closer, and George obliges in the same second Sapnap peeks into the room and follows suit. “Hey, Dream,” he says, adding a very graceful, “you bitch,” at the end of it.
Dream only laughs. He does his best not to shake or tremble too much and disturb the machinery keeping dutiful watch over his vitals. “Hi guys,” he replies, nice and soft. It’s a similar tone George always hears, but it sounds oddly foreign at this moment.
There are chairs in the room that Sapnap takes to pulling up next to the bed. He sits down in one and then gestures for George to take the other; he does.
“You’re an idiot,” George says firstly, before even allowing Dream to fill the silence with any sort of excuse or explanation. He almost, almost doesn’t want to hear it; he’s still anxious and nervous and worried and fucking terrified.
“I know,” Dream says, sighing.
“And fucking stupid,” Sapnap adds, oh so helpfully.
Dream huffs. “I know,” he insists, not meeting either of their eyes. He’s stiff where he’s sat and his bottom lip is gnawed bright red. “It’s just…I’ve been sick for a while and I—I didn’t want to worry you guys. The—the flowers I was sending,” he looks down at his lap, cheeks turning a similar color to his lips, “I was matching them with the ones I’d been coughing up recently. It—it’s sort of dumb now that I’m saying it aloud, but when I was thinking it through, it felt…sentimental? I dunno.”
Sapnap’s brow furrows. “That’s what you were doing?” He’s angry, if the whites of his knuckles are anything to judge by, but George and Dream both know it’s not out of malice, but rather concern . “What is that, like, a—a stomach condition?”
“No,” Dream says, then he backs himself up, “well, kind of? I actually, uh, I hadn’t heard of this sickness before, so,” he laughs nervously, “yeah. Um, it’s called Hanahaki Disease.”
“Like—” George pauses, confusing twisting at his core— “like unrequited love…?”
Dream giggles that familiar dry and awkward giggle of his. “Uh, yeah,” he says, nodding, “that’s the one.”
※ ※ ※
1 day until George’s birthday.
He visits Dream again. Obviously.
George is sitting at his bedside, fingers tapping gently along the top of Dream’s leg where it’s positioned beneath the white bedsheet. It’s dark aside from the fluorescent lighting and the world outside of Dream’s window is blanketed in the shadows of the night. He does his best not to frown despite the circumstances. Hanahaki Disease, he remembers from yesterday. The lovesick disease, or whatever the slang term for it had been; George only recalls hearing of it a good few times and never once did he think it would be something any of them would suffer from.
His eyes fall over Dream’s features and he finds them to be looking back at him. Soft, fond, entirely unveiled for his liking.
Oh, it hits him all in a second.
Oh.
This is George’s fault.
“I’m sorry,” he rushes out, and before he even realizes it he’s sitting upright, hands flailing every which way. “I—I had no idea, and I got so worried when Sapnap was panicking before and I—”
“George,” Dream laughs. He laughs again like this isn’t a life or death situation. It fucking hurts. “It’s okay, I didn’t expect you to know. That was kinda the point.” He smiles, sheepish, with his fingers rubbing against the thick tape on his arm. “Sorry for…all of this.”
“Sorry?” George repeats, spluttering. He’s flabbergasted. “You—Dream, you have nothing to be sorry about.”
Dream hums and it sounds sort of hollow. He leans back in the hospital bed. “I love you,” he says. Plain and simple.
George stares. He gives it a moment to register in his brain, but he knows this. The last few seconds have proven as much, or maybe it’s been their whole friendship that’s proof. He suppresses a shiver that spreads through his body.
“I love you too,” he blurts out after a beat of silence. The way Dream’s face shifts and stretches is nothing short of funny, but none of this situation calls for either of them to burst into laughter and George doesn’t exactly find his best friend on death’s doorstep a particularly suited time to laugh at his stupid expression anyway. “Don’t say anything, because I know you’re going to, like,” he exhales, a sort of frustrated noise that’s laced with affection regardless, “say that I don’t have to say that, or whatever, but I do. And I mean it, and I’m sorry, and I wish I would’ve realized this earlier because you—”
And Dream wheezes, a light and airy noise that George has missed; he hasn’t heard him laugh like that in forever. “George,” he says, and it’s drawn out and sweet and George thinks it would taste like strawberry candy, “god, we are…stupid.”
“Mostly me,” George scoffs.
“Mostly you,” Dream agrees, running his tongue along his bottom lip. The smile on his face stretches end to end and he reaches down to interlock their fingers.
George meets him halfway.
“It’s midnight,” he notes.
“Is it?” George blinks and scans the wall for the clock; it is indeed midnight. “Oh.”
“Happy birthday,” Dream offers with a giggle.
“Ugh,” George rolls his eyes, but he plays with Dream’s hand in his own, “it would’ve been a better birthday without a death scare,” he teases gently.
“I’ll remember that for next year,” Dream quips back.
“You’d better.”