Chapter Text
Sapnap’s burning the eggs. They’re on stream in the kitchen of their new house, just minutes ago arguing about who would be a better cook, and Sapnap’s already burning the eggs. This provides all the evidence George needs to confirm Sapnap is the worst cook in the house. Including Patches. She’s never burnt the eggs, after all.
“You’re burning them, idiot,” George says helpfully, his chef hat falling into his eyes for the tenth time already. He gets to play judge today since this is his idea and his stream, and he already knows how he’ll rule against Sapnap.
“No I’m not,” Sapnap argues, but George can tell by his voice that he’s arguing for the sake of arguing. He congratulates himself on this observation when Sapnap immediately removes the egg pan from the heat.
“Well, you are,” Dream points out from the other side of the kitchen, barely in frame for the stream, like he’s still self-conscious about his face. The internet’s opinion is in: it’s a good face. George concurs and so do several media outlets. After years of snapchats and blurry facetimes, he’s able to admit Dream’s got a good face. It’s very… pleasant.
As the best cook of the three of them, Dream’s job is the pancakes. American style. Now those George has big plans for.
“No I wasn’t,” Sapnap doubles down even as the burning smell drifts across the kitchen, pungent in George’s nose.
“Well, then why did you take them off the stove?” Dream asks, logically. George doesn’t hide his amusement, grinning conspiratorially at the camera to let chat in on the joke. None of them are close enough to read their audience’s comments, it’s all one big blur to George, he can only guess what they’re saying.
“Shut up,” Sapnap slaps the pan back on the burner, but twists the dial to a lower heat. George makes a note to not eat more of those than he needs to for the stream. Bare fucking minimum.
The idea came to him yesterday afternoon. Their sleep schedules, always fucked up, synced perfectly yesterday for the first time since George moved in two months ago. At first it was the jet lag, then Sapnap stayed up too late on stream with Punz, then Dream’s insomnia reared its ugly head while he worked himself too hard, until they had mere hours for all three of them to enjoy together.
They spent the entire day together, watching movies, wrestling over the remote, and ordering a huge amount of food to be delivered. This is why he came to Florida, to be close to these two idiots. Dream started in again on them not ordering as much food and then Sapnap pointed out that only Dream really knows how to cook and they can’t expect Dream’s mum to come over everyday and cook for them, and then Dream said that he should stop being lazy. He should at least be able to make breakfast, that’s easy enough.
And suddenly inspiration struck George. “Let’s do that cooking stream tomorrow,” George had said, Dream’s suggestion of breakfast foods sticking in his brain, nothing so hard they can’t mess around, nothing that needs a lot of focus or attention. “We already have eggs and like the stuff for pancakes, right? Let’s just make those on stream.”
“We can see who’s a better cook,” Sapnap’s eyes had lit up. “Me or you, Georgie. I mean, obviously it’s me, though.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” George had thought of Sapnap, first thing in the morning, looking hopeful that Dream will wake up and make him something to eat before giving up and taking a power bar. It’s always so sad, like one of those puppy adoption ads.
“Well, I can be the judge,” Dream offered and George nixed that idea.
“It’ll be my stream. I’ll be the judge. We can face off another time, Sap. I want Dream to make the pancakes since he feels so strongly about mine.”
“You mean your crepes?”
“They’re pancakes, idiot,” George argued for the thousandth time. They’ll still be arguing about this when the world ends.
“The only cake I want to eat is yours,” Dream had said and both Sapnap and George booed him, laughing hysterically and falling all over themselves. Dream says these things with no hesitation, the effect worse than it’s been all these years online—George blushing and Dream all proud of himself like a peacock, tail bright and bold.
They didn’t wake up in the morning, but they all woke up within ten minutes of each other, and that’s good enough for George. He strong armed Sapnap into borrowing his camera for a second angle and then asked Dream to help him get everything set up to stream. George can do it, has done it before on his own, but Dream’s so much faster at it and eager to assist if George just tells him how great he is at it, praises him. He’s a pretty simple man at the end of the day, and George has his number. Between the two of them, they were ready to stream in an hour. A new record for George.
Not to leave Sapnap out, George asked him to go to the store for more ingredients and maybe a couple frozen pizzas for dinner so they won’t have to cook again. Yeah, they already have eggs because Dream’s a freak who refuses to eat anything else and he buys them in like truly staggering amounts, but they also needed things like syrup for the pancakes and powdered sugar. Maybe some apple juice.
Now, here they are, Sapnap’s burning the eggs and Dream’s teasing him and George has one eye on the chat and the other on the fire extinguisher and he’s bursting at the seams with happiness. His best friends are buffoons, the stupidest mother fuckers on the planet, and he would only say so under duress, but he’s very fond of them.
Like he can sense it, Dream chooses that moment to look up and he smiles at George, a small thing that softens his eyes with affection. He does that sometimes, reads George like a billboard. To everyone else on the planet, George is an obscure medieval text written by half blind monks in candlelight. He likes being unknowable, unpredictable.
George doesn’t meet his eyes for long, the chat’s already spamming hearts and he can’t stand being so seen by them, caught wrong footed. The stream continues and George lets his two friends bicker for the camera, joining in when he can emotionally devastate one or both of them.
Sapnap is suggesting using hot sauce on his eggs under the impression that the sauce will hide the burn taste when George’s phone rings.
Frowning, George knows it can only be one person since the other person who’s call goes through Do Not Disturb—which he always uses while streaming—is staring right at him, curiosity burning on his face. There are two people who can best his Do Not Disturb, only two.
He stares down at the phone, a sense of foreboding fills him.
“Go take that, George, we’ll entertain your stream.”
Grateful for the permission, and sending a look of thanks to Dream, George leaves the kitchen to answer the call.
“Mum?” He asks, stomach dropping. She never calls unscheduled. Not to say they don’t talk, because they do every couple of weeks, but she always texts him first to let him know when she’s planning on calling. Between time zones and his crazy sleep schedule, it’s nice of her. An unprompted phone call in the middle of a stream makes George think it’s an emergency.
His heartbeat speeds up. What bad news is he about to hear?
“George,” his mum greets him, voice bright. Too bright. “Hi, honey, how are you?”
“Mum, it’s late for you,” he checks his phone for the time and does the mental math to calculate it’s way past her bedtime. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing to worry about, nothing to worr—” she stops herself abruptly and George can’t read her tone and it throws him off balance. He’s always been able to read her, always knows how she’s feeling. “I was wondering, though, if I could come stay with you for a week or so.”
And now he knows something is wrong because his mother doesn’t make any impulsive plans and she definitely wouldn’t call him at this time of night to ask to come to another country to see him. Not when he’s only been gone two months. They went longer without seeing each other when he lived an hour away by train.
“Mum, is everything okay?” a stupid question, really. He hates that he has to ask the next one, “No one’s dead, are they?”
“Of course not, ‘course not,” she says and though it does reassure him, it does nothing for the anxiety building in his chest. “Can’t a mother want to come see her son? I just want to come on a quick holiday.”
Now he doesn’t believe that for a second, but he also can’t deny her request. If something’s going on and she needs him, he’ll be there in a heartbeat. Without questioning her further, he says yes.
“Great, thank you, honey. I just bought a ticket, so—”
“When are you coming?” George asks, running a hand through his hair. It’s getting long again and Dream’s made some heavy handed hints that he needs a haircut, but he has no idea where to go in this new country. A problem for another time.
“Is tomorrow too soon?” she asks and now he’s sure there’s something wrong. Is she running from someone?
“Mum, are you safe? What’s going on? Why are you—”
“Is tomorrow okay, George?” she asks again, too politely. God, maybe whoever is after her is listening in right now.
“Yeah, sure, Mum.”
“Oh, perfect!” She’s too bright, too plastic. He can’t put his finger on it and it’ll drive him crazy until she’s in front of him and he can get it out of her. She’s acting like he’s some long distance relative she’s begging to stay with, not her son.
They’re close. Not as close as they used to be when he was growing up, sure. But closer than he is with his dad. They’ve never talked to each other like this. He doesn’t like it.
A thread of a memory stirs up and he pulls on it until the thought unravels. She’s talking like the time her mother died. George was young then, too young to understand where Grandma went, but he remembers his mother’s robotic facade. Surrounded by extended family, burdened by the funeral arrangements that she put together on her own, she hid herself behind this android version of herself, too accommodating to everyone else, too afraid to ruffle any feathers and show her grief. George hated it as a kid and he hates it now.
God, who died?
He talked to Neve the other day, she has finals coming up so she said she wouldn’t be as available. Not that he and his sister talk every day, but they keep in touch. She likes to send him pictures of people she catches wearing Dream Team merch. It’s not Neve, is it? Please don’t let anything have happened to Neve.
“I’ll forward you the details, hmm? Can you pick me up from the airport, or…”
“I can’t drive, Mum,” he reminds her, “but I’ll get Dream or Sapnap to help me pick you up.”
“Oh, you don’t need to bother them. I can order an uber.”
George shakes his head even though she can’t see him. Dream would know he was shaking his head were they on a call like this. Dream knows everything he does by sound alone. “It’s not a problem, Mum. We’ll come get you. There’s a gate in the neighborhood anyway. The uber won’t be able to get to the house.”
The gate was the only thing Dream insisted they have at the new house. With plans of a face reveal on the horizon and George added to the house and guaranteed to drum up more attention, neither Sapnap nor George fought him on it. Security gets more important the more their Youtube and twitch numbers go up. Sapnap had a stalker late last year, and they couldn’t even talk about it online because that would just encourage more people to do the same thing, get their fave to talk about them, give them attention. Between online doxxing and the daily death threats, they went the extra mile for a home where they would feel safe.
“Okay, okay,” his mum says, the cracks in her armor more noticeable now, “well then I’ll see you soon. I’ll text you when I land.”
“Alright,” George says, unsure what else there is say, but “be safe.”
“Cheers, hon.”
The call disconnects and George stares at his phone until it goes black. A two minute phone call and now his entire week is wrecked. They didn’t have any scheduled plans, George told Quackity he’d be on his stream in a couple days, but he can always cancel or re-schedule if he needs to. Quackity will understand.
His mother is coming here. He doesn’t know what to to think. She’s hiding something and he doesn’t like it. He’s less convinced someone died the longer he thinks about it. If something happened to his sister or dad, then he’d need to go to England rather than the other way around, right? Like, they’d have to have the funeral there. It would really make no sense for his mother to fly to him here, rather than recall him back to her.
He still sends a quick check in text to Neve, keeping it vague and light so as not to distract her from her finals.
Slightly comforted, George takes a deep breath and taps back into his streaming personality. There’s time to think about this later. Now he needs to go entertain 230,000 people. No pressure, though.
Stepping back into the kitchen, he’s glad to see there’s no evidence of fire. It’s a low threshold, but you never know with Sapnap. He managed to almost drown himself in the bath the other day.
“Everything okay?” Dream asks quietly when he notices him. Maybe he sees it in George’s eyes, maybe he senses it in that way he has of reading him entirely, every thought and feeling bare to him and making George lash out like a cornered cat. Maybe it’s something more obvious than that, he doesn’t know. But Dream sends him a look, a promise that they’ll talk later, reassurance that he’s got his back, and George nods.
“George!” Sapnap also picks up on George’s strangeness and is better at smoothing things over for the chat. George appreciates him. Sapnap’s really come a long way in front of the camera and he shines. “Come look at my eggs. Actually, try them. I think they’re ready.” He takes a fork and stabs some eggs, holding it up to George’s mouth like he’s feeding a baby.
George looks down cross eyed at the grossest eggs he’s ever seen in his life. He raises a hand to block the fork from getting even close to his lips, “Did you smother them in hot sauce?”
Dream huffs a laugh behind him, “He thinks it’ll disguise the taste.”
“That’s not true at all,” Sapnap whines in protest, “just a small flavor enhancer.”
“Small? There’s more hot sauce than egg on that fork, idiot.”
He gets through the rest of the stream, judging Sapnap’s eggs to be “foul” when he finally chokes them down. The three of them end up mukbanging Dream’s pancakes and answering fan questions. The pancakes are amazing. George and Sapnap make Dream promise on stream to make them more often. Dream doesn’t promise every day, won’t promise that, but he gives in on “special occasions” and with a quick glance at Sapnap, George can already tell their definitions of “special occasions” are going to differ vastly from Dream’s. He looks forward to ganging up on Dream with Sapnap if the result is these pancakes.
George raids Boomer, who’s playing something stupid with Punz, and waves good bye to chat, feeling his face fall the moment he clicks End Stream and confirms it’s over.
He heaves a sigh.
“So what was that about?” Sapnap asks, scraping the eggs into the bin. No matter how much he argued, they are inedible. Even the raccoons who are obsessed with their rubbish aren’t going to touch these things.
Dream picks up their plates and washes them off before putting them in the dishwasher, the machine needs a bit of help with viscous substances like syrup. George takes the forks and hands them over, his fingers grazing Dream’s. One day he’ll get used to these casual touches.
Dream, keeper of the George Lore, asks, “Was it your mom?” since he knows that only his mum would be able to get through his Do Not Disturb. Well, besides Dream.
George nods. He’s not sure how to tell them she’s coming to visit. He didn’t even think to ask their permission before saying she could come, but what was he supposed to do?
“What’d she want?”
“She was acting really strange, actually.”
Dream straightens up, alert, all at once. “Is she okay?”
George shrugs, “I don’t think anyone died, but um… She did ask if she can come visit.”
“Sweet,” Sapnap slings the egg pan into the sink, hoping Dream will start cleaning it. “My hot wife is finally coming to see me.”
“Shut up,” George snaps, and Sapnap’s hands come up defensively like George threw a punch at him. Admittedly, it’s out of character for George. He and Sapnap like to mess around and give each other shit, up to and including mum jokes, but under these circumstances, George can’t take it. He’s too worried and his nerves are worn thin.
“When is she coming?” Dream asks, raising a hand to cover Sapnap’s mouth because he never learned to stop while he’s ahead. It’s not enough, though, George can already hear the smart ass remark he would say if allowed. It rings around in his ears.
“Um, tomorrow?” George means for it to be a fact, but it comes out like a question. He didn’t ask permission and feels like shit about it. This is their home, too. “Which reminds me, can one of you help me pick her up from the airport?”
Dream stares at him, searching, while the suds in the sink pile higher. “Yeah, sure.” Like it’s easy for him.
George feels the need to explain more, “I just—something’s wrong, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was acting so weird. Like—”
“She doesn’t normally call like that,” Dream remarks and of course Dream knows that. He’s been there when George had to hang up with Dream to take his mother’s scheduled call, he knows how she operates.
“Exactly,” George says, giving up on appearing like he’s helping clean and sitting at the breakfast bar, “and then she asked to come visit for a week, like tomorrow. She never does that. She hasn’t been on a holiday in…. Way too long, I guess.”
“And you’ve only just got here,” Sapnap points out, now pushing the pancake batter mixing bowl towards Dream at the sink.
“Yeah,” he places both elbows on the counter and puts his head in his hands, “like I said, it’s strange.”
“Well, I for one look forward to meeting her,” Dream says, giving in and scrubbing the egg pan. Sapnap smirks and George watches it happen. “I’ll drive you tomorrow.”
George pulls up his phone to see if she emailed the details to him yet, filtering out the sounds of washing dishes. He breathes a sigh of relief at Neve’s answering text on his lock screen saying she’s fine, just swamped.
Mum already emailed him. He forwards it to Dream without thinking, he’ll need to know for logistics. Dream knows how long it’ll take to get to the airport, and how traffic will effect their route. George has no concept of how far away it is because on his ride from the airport Sapnap took the long way to make Dream jealous, playing loud rap songs while they flew down the highway, minutes passing in seconds because they were enjoying their time together.
Dream hands the wet pan over to Sapnap who caves at the look on Dream’s face and grabs a towel to dry it. The three of them fall into a comfortable silence, not unusual after a high energy stream like the one they just did. George spends the time watching his friends, dismantling the streaming equipment, and worrying about his mum.
Sapnap drifts off to his room when the kitchen is back in order, taking his spare camera with him. George thanks him for its use, but otherwise, the mood of the evening is very relaxed. Dream looks like he wants to leave, too, so it surprises George when he suggests they watch a movie.
“You’re going to be in your head anyway,” he reasons, “might as well not pretend to work.”
“I streamed,” George says following Dream into the living room, “that’s working.”
Dream waits for George to sit in his favorite spot and then drapes the OU blanket George commandeered as his own over his lap. They watch enough movies in this room to have a set routine. Maybe that wouldn’t appeal to anyone else, but George likes the predictability of it. He likes knowing that he’ll sit on the left side of the couch, snuggled under the OU blanket, and Dream will sit on the right side of the couch, close enough to hit him but far enough that they aren’t touching all the time.
When Sapnap joins, he likes to sit in the arm chair, legs pumped out in front of him with a forest green blanket and Patches triumphantly in his lap. She prefers to sit in the armchair and while Sapnap thinks it’s because she likes him more than Dream and George, Dream tells George in confidence that she just likes the chair and Sapnap is in her way. It makes him giggle, but they let Sapnap think he’s winning the war on Patches.
George catches her in his own room often enough to know that she likes him. There’s a patch of sunlight between 10:00am and 12:00pm that lights up his bed, and around those hours Patches makes herself comfortable there, whether George is asleep or not. He’s woken up several times now to fur in his face.
He doesn’t hate it.
“Anything in particular you want to watch?” Dream asks, remote in hand and Netflix up on the television. They usually start with Netflix and if nothing jumps out at them, they’ll switch to one of the other streaming services. Between Dream and Sapnap, they have a subscription to every single one. The perks of being millionaires in their twenties.
“No horror,” George says unnecessarily.
“No shit,” Dream switches on some dumb teen show and they both fall into the stupid story line.
Dream’s good at this—taking care of people. In their conversation before the stream, Dream talked about the prep work he was going to get done with Callahan this evening for a stream, and a call he wanted to make to HBomb about lore, so George knows this is for him. Dream sacrificed his time to support George in the way that makes him the most comfortable—a quiet room where they don’t talk and George doesn’t feel watched, but also doesn’t feel alone.
He’ll never be able to find the words. When he thinks about why he spent so long trying to come to Florida, when he had to explain to his parents, to his uni friends, to even his British Youtube friends why visiting wasn’t enough, that he needed to live here for real, it’s this: it’s being known so thoroughly, that his friends can give him what he needs without him asking, and vice versa. It’s a warm blanket supporting an American football team he cares nothing for but indisputably belongs to him. It’s a soft touch against his foot, their cat greeting him as a household member. It’s a shared shampoo bottle in the hallway bathroom, his hair the same floral scent as Sapnap’s. It’s ignoring the dialogue of the show playing to listen to Dream’s breathing beside him and feeling better for it.
Thoughts like these are dangerous, that Dream might care about him as much as he cares about Dream. He gives himself to the count of sixty to think them, and then he puts them nicely back in their box. Dream doesn’t belong to him, as much as he feels like he belongs to Dream.
He’s careful with Dream. He made rules for himself long before his plane touched down, rules set to save himself from heartbreak, to preserve his lifestyle, and hold fast to the best friendships he’s ever had. He sacrificed too much to make it to Florida, to throw his hat in the same ring as Sapnap and Dream, to mess everything up with unrequited feelings.
He needs his box, the place he stores everything up so he doesn’t have to think about it, so he doesn’t let those things disrupt his day to day life. And these thoughts of how Dream cares for him, well, that train of thought is barreling off the track, inviting catastrophe.
The first rule is, he doesn’t let Dream in his room. Not in a mean or rude way, merely a boundary. He never explicitly says this to Dream, but he holds himself to it. If he were to have Dream spend a significant amount of time in there, George would never want him to leave, he might beg him to stay, and that’s a problem. So George seeks Dream out in his office. That’s where he spends most of his time anyway. They spend a lot of time there together, like George always thought they would. Lately, they’ve been playing each other Tik Toks and messing around on Twitter, challenging each other to find the most depraved tweets and daring each other to press like. It’s fun.
George has only been in Dream’s room a handful of times, usually at Dream’s behest when he’s tired of sitting in his chair. And George never overstays his welcome. He always leaves, doesn’t want to get too comfortable there, start thinking he’s more welcome than he is.
Sapnap likes to joke that he never wonders if he’s dreaming that George lives with them now, because George leaves his shit everywhere—his dirty socks on the coffee table in the living room, water glasses on the kitchen counter he doesn’t put away because he’s just going to be thirsty again in an hour and need more water, a used towel on the floor in the bathroom he shares with Sapnap, half a banana in the car once.
He doesn’t bring anything but himself and his phone into Dream’s room. He doesn’t leave evidence.
This feels significant to him, that Dream won’t wake up in the middle of the night, see his discarded hoodie and think George is disrupting his space. Or that George will bombard him in the safety of his room like he feels entitled to it, like he doesn’t respect Dream’s space. George knows he can be too much, and he doesn’t ever want Dream to have to tell him that to his face, to tell him he’s not welcome.
George would rather die.
Maybe it’s crazy, but in George’s mind, if he doesn’t leave a trace, the line between them is still intact. He knows what the line means to him, it’s the status quo. What he doesn’t know is if Dream has his own line. He surely doesn’t seem to. He touches George as much as Sapnap, clasps him on the back when he laughs, pulls astray eyelashes off his cheeks, leans over him to watch the Tik Tok on George’s phone.
He invites him into his room effortlessly, and lets him leave whenever. He doesn’t cross the threshold of George’s room, but he adds things George seems to favor to their weekly grocery list. Even things George doesn’t say out loud that he likes, he just knows, pays attention.
And then he constantly asks George his thoughts. Dream consults George on almost everything, loves to hear his opinion even if he doesn’t agree. Half of their dynamic is arguing back and forth and George isn’t sure which one of them enjoys it more. George likes bickering with Dream more than he likes small talk with strangers on dating apps, more than he likes dark clubs with half drunk wandering hands, more than he likes flirty DMs from instagram models.
And that’s what’s truly dangerous.
Back in the box, back in the box, back in the box. As much as an ocean can fit in a box. George slams the lid.
The show moves to the second episode without him even noticing. Dream’s barely paying attention, eyes on his phone. Probably Twitter. Suddenly he’s tired.
“Want that pizza now?” George stands up, needing something to do to corral these thoughts. He doesn’t normally have a problem keeping them under wraps. Something about this phone call, the not knowing, leaves him adrift.
“Sounds good to me,” Dream agrees easily, pausing the show like either one of them are invested in it. He’s courteous like that. “Want company?”
Company for what? To push the pre-heat button, wait ten minutes, put the pizza in, wait another fifteen minutes? “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Dream turns the show off completely now. George couldn’t tell you the name of it if a gun was to his head.
In the kitchen, George pushes the button and then plops himself on the counter next to the sink. Dream reaches for the cabinet behind him, his long arm passing close to George’s head and his hips a hair’s breath from George’s knees. He fidgets slightly while Dream gets two water glasses down. The air returns to George’s body when Dream moves away, opening the fridge for the brita filter. He fills up both glasses, juggling them with his bear paw hands, and George doesn’t admit he’s impressed. Such a stupid thing to be impressed by, but it’s just one in thousands of impressive things about Dream.
“Here,” Dream hands one of the glasses over to George. He takes a sip, the water too cold for his teeth. He sets it on the counter next to him to let it warm up a bit before he downs the rest of it.
“Thanks,” George says. “Can you get the pizzas out of the freezer while you’re up?”
Dream busies himself on pizza prep. This wasn’t George’s intention when he accepted company but Dream can’t help himself and George likes it anyway. Two pizzas, sans wrapping, sit on the counter next to George, waiting for the oven’s confirmation it’s ready to cook, and Dream tackles the now clean dishwasher, unloading everything from their earlier stream in an efficient manner.
George watches silently, leaning out of the way when Dream reaches for that same cabinet again. He could move, he tells himself, but he was here first. He staked his claim on this counter top and it’s not his fault Dream keeps invading his space. He drinks his water slowly.
“It’ll be strange having my mum here,” George says. Dream pauses the smallest bit before he continues putting the utensils back in their organized drawer.
“I mean, she hasn’t seen much of this side of my life,” George picks at his nail while the forks make a tink-tink sound as they rejoin the herd.
Dream closes the drawer with his hip and turns to look at George. “Your online life? Your life in Florida?”
“I mean like Youtube,” George says, “Streaming. She doesn’t get it.”
“You never talked about her much,” Dream says, a slow pitch to George that he can choose to hit or let pass him by. This is his way of saying he’s willing to listen. But he’s not pushing.
George pulls harder on the skin around his nail until it bleeds. “We used to be really close.”
Dream, with nothing left to clean in this sparkling kitchen, comes closer to him. He takes George’s hand in his own, eyebrows furrowed in concern at the blood. “Why’d you do that?” He moves George’s arm under the faucet and lets the water drip down on it, cleaning it. Then he looks under the sink, for reasons revealed to George only when he pops back up with a first aid kit.
“What happened?” Dream asks as he pulls out a band-aid from the kit. It’s red and boxy, reminding him of the med kits in Fortnite.
“I dunno, just pulled too hard. It’s stupid.”
“No, idiot. I mean with your mom,” Dream pulls George’s finger to his chest and sets the band-aid carefully on his finger. George’s heart beats fast in his chest and he doesn’t know why, “You said you used to be close?”
He pulls his covered finger out of Dream’s grasp, unable to let himself linger. Dream doesn’t move away, his body between George’s knees, his collar bones at eye level. “I’m not sure what happened.” He looks up, the concern hasn’t left Dream’s face yet. He raises one shoulder in a half shrug, “One day she was like super Mum, you know? Our house was the cool house to go to. We had the best snacks, she knew all my friends’ names, she helped us on the hard levels of those old PC games.”
“The Harry Potter one?” Dream asks softly.
“Yeah, and others. I think she used to like games, but my memory is fuzzy.”
The oven beeps and Dream shoves the pizzas in. George has a strange vision of him feeding pizzas to Jabba the Hutt like that and the thought is so strange and out of place that it makes him want to laugh.
“So when did that change?” Dream closes the oven door, sets a timer, and comes right back to where he was standing before.
George thinks about the question for a while. The truth is, he’s not really sure. In the way that little kids do, he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about his parents’ motivations or anything—their wants, desires, fears, what drives them. His mum loved him and his sister, that much he’s never questioned.
“I suppose it was an age thing? Like a growing up thing,” he says to Dream. “In that way that teenagers pull away from their parents.”
Dream nods along and George continues, “I started getting really into Minecraft, learning to code, the technical things that can be hard for people to follow. Mum definitely couldn’t follow that stuff and,” how to put this into words, “it’s like she didn’t even try?”
He takes one last sip of his water, finishing the glass, and says, “Which was different than how she used to be. Like, whatever weird little kid hobby I got into, she would throw herself into it too and we’d figure it out together. We used to build these crazy Lego builds, you have no idea.”
Dream smiles sweetly at him and George can’t stand to see that look for him. He plows on, “Like, I’m sure looking back on it she spent hundreds of pounds on Lego shit we didn’t need. I think I heard my parents fighting about it once or twice, but she didn’t let it stop her.”
“You were a spoiled little princess,” Dream laughs easy at him.
He rolls his eyes, “Hey, I wasn’t as bad as my sister. Neve had so many clothes and Barbies, it was ridiculous.”
“Okay, Mr. Hypebeast,” Dream teases with an eye roll of his own.
“Shut up,” George swings his foot out to kick Dream, aim purposefully bad. “Anyway, once I grew up a bit it was like she pulled away, no longer had time for my hobbies. By the time I went to Uni, we only really saw each other at dinner. Even now, when we talk, it’s like superficial stuff, you know?”
“That’s sad,” Dream says and, yeah, George thinks so too. Dream stayed closed to his mum. She’s over all the time, bringing home made food, desserts, little decorative touches that make this house feel like a home. George adores her.
“So it’s weird she wants to come, right?” George asks, failing to make sense of this.
“She’s your mom. Maybe something’s going on, but she’s reaching out to you. That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah,” George agrees, trying in vain to cling to Dream’s optimism. “She didn’t want me to move here, you know.”
“Really?” Now that he thinks about it, George might not have mentioned that to Dream in fear that he would put too much weight on his mother’s words and talk him out of it. “Too far away?”
“And she doesn’t know you,” George says, bitter because he tried so many times in that year after Uni when he lived with his parents to get them to see how much he liked streaming, making Youtube videos with his friends, impacting people’s lives and trying to give credit to Dream’s vision, to see what he sees in Dream, how special he is, “Or Sapnap. She wasn’t a fan of me moving in with total strangers.”
“Well, after this we won’t be strangers anymore.”
That’s a terrifying thought. And also hypocritical of George when all he wanted for so long was for her to know him, see him, and a big part of him is Dream. And Sapnap.
He barely tastes his pizza.