Chapter Text
When consciousness returns to George, he feels as if he fought hard for it. Sleep kept him deep in its clutches and his mind rises slowly bit by bit until—eyes still closed, he’s aware of the world.
And something is desperately wrong.
The unmistakable feeling of dry grass beneath his cheek alerts George to the incriminating fact that he’s not where he’s supposed to be.
London, Orlando, wherever he’s meant to be—it’s not lying in a field of grass. Adrenaline spikes through his body and his brain dissipates the fog in seconds, like the feeling of sleeping through an alarm the day of an important event.
He rolls over and the sun beams directly into his eyes, another factor out of place. Did someone kidnap him and leave him to die? Is this like Breaking Bad? His heart pounds loudly in his ears.
He sits up. A moan sounds from his right and he jumps to his feet, grass up to his hips. There’s a person lying five feet from him. He doesn’t recognize them from the back of their head, immobile as he was only seconds ago. Quickly he realizes there are multiple people lying around him in the tall grass.
There’s something not right about this—there’s lots of things not right about this, to be sure—but the very universe feels wrong, somehow.
Who are these people? What is he doing here? What happened—wasn’t he supposed to be playing MCC?
The sun is square.
He’s in a field with people as far as the eye can see and the sun is square.
A man stands thirty meters from him, the only other person standing up. George doesn’t know him, doesn’t recognize him, broad shoulders and auburn colored hair; he has the look of a person assessing a situation. George can’t make out his eyes from this far away, but this stranger glances around him, taking in where they are and George—George trusts him the second their gazes meet.
He’s never seen a stranger’s face melt upon seeing his for the first time, and it’s odd to see it now. His stomach turns over, fighting with his heart for the most pressing issue, and he knows.
That’s Dream.
And the universe said you are not alone.
He’s standing in a field of grass, with bodies around him, a square sun, and that’s his best friend. That’s his best friend, who’s supposed to be on the other side of the world from him.
“Dream?” he asks, voice too quiet to project the thirty meters. He says it for himself, the way he always calls out to him when he’s scared, or in trouble, or lonely. It’s a reassurance as much as a question. This world around him doesn’t make sense, but Dream does.
“George!” Dream shouts, layers and layers to his name, the way only Dream can say it. The body closest to him starts to stir, the person rousing into consciousness. Evidence that these bodies are just sleeping starts to pile up and he hears more voices whispering, moaning, shock and horror in their tones where George can’t make out words.
He’s off, stepping over wayward arms and legs, missing long hair by a centimeter—he doesn’t know these bodies, doesn’t care, he needs Dream.
Dream doesn’t wait, he rushes over as well, with more care to the people around them. George spots him searching over them, like he’s trying to place them. “Dream!” George calls again, and throws himself bodily into his friend’s arms. Nothing bad can happen to him if Dream is there to protect him. The panic in his chest eases, though it doesn’t entirely disappear. He’s just so happy to not be alone dealing with whatever this is.
For too long, he’s been alone.
Dream’s arms are strong, his chest tight with muscle but soft where George meets him. He doesn’t smell like anything and George focuses instead on the way his short sleeve shirt allows their skin to touch, the way his curly hair tickles at George’s neck, how he’s the perfect height to place his head on George’s.
“Where are we?” George asks, refusing to let him go. “What happened? How did we—”
“I don’t know, George,” Dream says, pulling back from the hug. He doesn’t let George go, just pushes him slightly back so he can keep investigating around them.
“Who are these people?” George continues, despite the fact Dream knows exactly the same things he does.
“Well,” Dream answers, eyes stuck on one thing. George turns to try to spot what he’s seeing and he gasps. “That’s Sapnap.”
Holy fuck.
Sapnap’s sitting up roughly fifteen meters away, as more and more heads start to pop up out of the grass like sunflowers, except instead of happy flowers, their faces are all etched in familiarity and horror.
Captain Sparklez. Wilbur. Philza. Hannah Rose. TapL.
It’s then the voices start—everyone talks over each other. People stand, panic, there are a couple people crying. George spots Tina huddled close to Foolish who has an arm around her like he’s trying to calm her down. There are several faces George doesn’t recognize, older adults with soft bellies and pale skin. They’re in the minority, though.
“George,” a voice calls from the ground next to them, scratchy but the same as it’s been for a decade. Badboyhalo uses George’s leg to pull himself up and then to drag George into a hug, his body trembling in fear, grip tight with the same desperation to not be alone.
“Bad,” George says, thankful to have another friend here. Selfishly thankful.
Bad repeats the same questions George had asked, the same questions floating freely around the Plains Biome now, and there’s no mistaking that’s what this is—square sun, iridescent feel in the air, like the rainbow shininess on the inside of an oyster, there’s no mistaking this for the real world. Their world.
Only a few trees dot the horizon and George’s hope sinks. The voices are rising in anger and fear until George can no longer block them out while looking around. Bad’s moved on to gripping at Sam and Ant, as if touching them is enough to prove they’re really there. George lets his shoulder rest against Dream’s much higher one, like a guiding light grounding him to this reality.
Wilbur’s up and talking hurriedly with Tommy and Shubble. Philza looks rattled and he’s gone extremely pale. Tubbo stands behind him, sheltered in his shadow while they all grasp at straws.
“We’re going to need wood,” Dream says, matter-of-fact, and George finds himself nodding before he can think about it. Because of course they need wood. This is Minecraft and the first thing you do is get wood. You punch a tree.
“Not many trees in a Plains Biome,” George points out, keeping an eye on Sapnap as he makes his way over to them, dragging Tina, Foolish, and Punz in his wake. “Not enough for this many people, anyway.”
“We conserve,” Dream says in response. George catches sight of his adam’s apple when Dream lifts his face up to examine the sun, one strong arm rising to block the worst of the rays from his eyes. “We need to get moving. It’s already noon.”
“Fuck,” George agrees.
“Bad,” Dreams calls out to their friend who whips around in shock. Oh, Bad didn’t recognize Dream. None of them will. None except Sapnap. “Bad, you Ant and—” Dream takes in how Tina is clinging to Foolish in fear and George watches him re-think his plan— “Punz go start punching trees. Don’t make any crafting tables, we’re going to need as much wood as we can get.”
George watches Bad take a minuscule step towards Dream, like he’s another thing he needs to touch to believe and then stop himself. All of them know to respond to Dream’s voice when it’s like this: Director Dream, Team Leader Dream, Captain Dream.
He nods and takes off, pausing only long enough for Dream to say, “Be very careful, one of you is on lookout duty at all times.” Ant and Punz share a look and George knows they’ll work it out between themselves, Dream picked a great group to go, steady heads and powerful players.
But not everyone, aside from the Munchy MC server, has learned to trust Dream when he’s like this. George sees Tommy turn his head their direction, a smile of realization falling across his features when he figures out who George is standing beside.
“…and how did this even happen?” someone’s yelling, their voice overpowering. George takes a while to place it. Michael McChill, turning not-so-chill. There’s a person beside him trying to calm him down, and George doesn’t recognize anything about them at all. Maybe they’re faceless like Dream, or from a subsection of Minecraft he doesn’t watch. “What are we all doing here, man? I’m not—I wasn’t—what the fuck!”
“Do you think any of us know, man?” Pete says, drawing George’s attention to him. “We’re fucked.”
“Was it like… the coding?” a woman asks, and she seems comfortable with those around her, other people George doesn’t necessarily know. He should be better at recognizing other creators and… they’re all creators, aren’t they? He squints around at everybody—Charlie Slimecicle, his MCC teammate, and yeah, there’s Sam and Dream… Sapnap’s team is here too: Zeus, and Sneeg, and a woman whose voice seems to match Gumi’s where she’s talking soothingly to Jojo.
“It’s everybody from MCC,” George says in a breath to Dream. His eyebrows raise up and George prides himself on figuring it out before him.
“Okay so that answers who,” Dream says, keeping his voice soft enough for just George to hear. “But not why.”
Sapnap falls into their group, one hand on George’s shoulder and the other on Dream’s, almost like they’re one entity. “You guys okay?”
“Yeah,” George says with a side look to Dream who’s turned around to watch over Bad and the group he sent out to collect wood. “We’re fine. How about you?”
“I’m freaking the fuck out, man, but I’m okay,” Sapnap says but even with his usual wording, the tone doesn’t slip into panic. They’re all three of them on the same page—deal with this pressing issue and then process the feelings afterward. George keeps an ear on the conversations around him and, fuck, they need to start moving before the sun sets.
“Alright,” Dream says, mostly to himself. George lets the familiar cadence of the word soothe him. “Time to get moving. We need shelter and food, in that order.”
George nods and it’s only then that he starts wondering how things work here. Bad, Ant, and Punz went off to gather wood, but how are they going to bring it back? Will the game mechanics work the same way here? Can he just walk to up to a tree and punch it until it poofs into a usable log? That’s not how it works in the real world. He loses ten seconds to debating the physics, wondering how much force he’d need to punch a real world tree until it cracked, and then re-focuses himself.
They’ve got to have an inventory, right? Or, what about hearts? A hunger bar? How are they supposed to—he finds the belt mid-thought. Around his hips, beneath his wrinkled black t-shirt he was wearing in the real world, a silver belt rests, kind of melted into his skin. He holds his shirt up with his teeth while he examines it.
When he presses down on part of it, a compartment opens. Curious, George pokes a finger inside and there are slots, all currently empty. So they do have an inventory, but he’s unsure how it works. Checking around the rest of the belt he finds another section that looks like it does something. He can’t explain it, but it’s like watching old cartoons like Scooby-Doo and the background has a detail in sharper animation, and then a few frames later a trap door opens and the character falls through. It’s like that.
George pushes down on it and a flap opens. Beneath it is a mini-keyboard. He presses a few buttons experimentally and the letters appear to the right of his keyboard, still on the belt—a chat function.
<GeorgeNotFound>: Dream sucks
Dream catches on and checks himself, there’s a silver belt on him as well. Dream’s chat function is on the opposite side from George’s, like they took his right-handedness into account. The keys are tiny and George isn’t sure Dream’s big dumb fingers are even going to be able to hit one button at a time.
Knowing it’s a long shot, George types in the command to give himself op. Sure enough, nothing happens. He tries all the commands he can think of, anything to give them an edge, or answers, or—it doesn’t matter. The screen tells him he’s entered something invalid and he lets the idea go. He had to try once, right?
George glances up and Dream stares out again towards Bad, now a tiny dot in the distance by the closest grove of trees. Dream looks back at George and then scours the ground around their feet. Grass, dirt, more minute detail than George is used to seeing in Minecraft. There are teeny flowers, the kind he sees back home in English fields.
“Ah,” Dream says and when George looks over, he’s grabbing at a different sort of flower. It’s blue, George can tell that much, blocky and an obvious air of importance to it, like George’s mind can tell this is interactable. It’s like playing a video game and seeing the option to interact with an object on the screen and knowing it’s important. Dream picks the flower up, about the size of two fists together, opens his inventory and—poof.
The flower disappears, presumably into the belt.
“Can you see it in there?” George asks. Sapnap’s watching, too, now, his face hawkish. Out of the corner of his eye, George catches Sapnap playing with his own belt.
“Yeah,” Dream tells them, eyes a little unfocused like he’s seeing something they aren’t. His fingers hesitate at the opening and then, as he reaches them in, the blue flower appears again.
“Here,” Dream says, handing the flower off to George while he turns to look over where Bad and company went. George takes it and practices placing it in his own inventory. Just like with Dream’s, the flower poofs out of existence when he moves with the intent to place it there. It’s a Cornflower, his inventory tells him.
“There are hearts, too,” Sapnap says when George pops the Cornflower back and out then in again, several times to make sure it works. “On the other side, between the inventory and chat.”
George finds it easily, right where Sapnap pointed it out. His hunger bar and hearts are full. But the hearts, they’re— “Hardcore hearts.”
“Yeah,” Sapnap says, frown taking over his entire face. He has a mouth built for laughter, for teasing and playing around. Sapnap’s serious face scares George almost more than their situation.
Dream’s elbow comes out to meet George’s, a line of comfort George is sure he’ll need again in the future. It’s strange to feel so known by someone he’s essentially just meeting. For Dream to know when he needs comfort and how to give it to him so handily, George can’t bear to think about it. He’s not sure he’s equipped to reciprocate that knowledge because he hasn’t known Dream like this, out in a physical space. He wants to be able to do that for him, too. One day. If they can ever make it home from here. If there even is a way home.
“—and how the fuck are we supposed to get home?!” someone’s yelling again, the voices too upset to ignore any longer while they figure shit out.
Foolish and Tina are sitting in the grass on Dream’s other side, quietly talking and visibly calmer. George looks around at the group and tries to make out where most of the noise is coming from.
“—kind of fucking magic, bro, how the fuck am I supposed to know?”
“Okay,” Dream says loudly and almost every head turns to look at him. Several scoff and turn back to their conversations, but the majority connect the dots and, just for a second, the idea of what Dream looks like answers a question they’ve all pretended they haven’t asked, that answer holds their attention. “Okay, there’s no time to argue about why we’re here, or even how,” he says and they’re listening. Of course they’re listening. “We need to focus on surviving for now.”
“We don’t even know where we are, mate,” comes a British voice from the amorphous blob of people. He can’t find the face that’s talking quickly enough, but George thinks might be Seapeekay, though he wouldn’t bet his life savings on it.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dream asks, his hands set on his hips in a way that reminds George of some superhero of old. Superman, maybe, with a jawline like that. “George figured it out already. Plains Biome. I figure—”
“A Plains Biome?” Tommy shouts, now that’s a voice George recognizes. He’s standing beside Phil and Wilbur still, lanky and hunched in on himself in a way that reminds George that he’s still unspeakably young. “Like in Minecraft?”
“Square sun,” George says, pointing upwards like they might have forgotten where the sun is. “Blocky flowers,” he holds up the Cornflower for evidence and dramatically lets it poof back into his inventory on the shiny belt in front of their eyes while he has everyone’s attention. “Inventory, chat function, hardcore hearts.”
“Hardcore?” Tubbo speaks up, asking what most of their faces want to ask.
“Yeah,” Dream confirms, “press the middle part of your belt and you’ll see them. I have no idea how, like, taking damage works yet, but I’d like to not find out as long as I can.”
“I could punch you, bro,” Sapnap offers quietly, a small comment that breaks the tension in Dream’s shoulders.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group seems to find their belts simultaneously. George finds it strange that the belt doesn’t hurt, but it’s melded into him. There’s no way to take it off and it doesn’t cause pain or anything. It feels like a natural part of him, like it’s always been there, resting just above his hips.
Which begs the question, are they really here in their real bodies? Is this all in their heads? Is George just, like, dreaming or something? He’s had dreams about Dream before, sure, but he never fills in his face. Not like this. A quick pinch and a spike of pain tells him he’s not dreaming.
But, that only gives rise to more questions. A lot of questions, but Dream’s right. They need to focus on survival first. There’ll be time to ask those questions and debate when they’re safe from Zombies and Creepers.
George doesn’t want to meet a Creeper here.
“Like I was saying,” Dream addresses everyone again, “we need to prioritize survival. Even while we’ve been talking the sun’s moved. We don’t—we don’t have time to do anything except get a couple tools and mine somewhere safe, right?”
“We’ve all played Minecraft,” Philza speaks up, a couple heads turning in his direction now. “We know what to do. Dream’s right. We’ve got to get safe tonight and we’ll figure the rest out later.”
“Tools,” HBomb says, eyes studying the terrain around them. George bets he’s noticed the same issue—lack of wood. “Not a lot of trees here.”
“Plains Biome,” George repeats.
“I sent Bad, Ant, and Punz out to collect the closest trees,” Dream tells them. “I hope they figure the inventory out, though.”
“Punz will,” Sapnap says with surety. George knows he wouldn’t say it that confidently where Punz could hear him, but he’ll say it where everyone else will.
“We need to move somewhere else,” HBomb says, echoing George’s thoughts. “Especially since we’re going to need food sometime soon, too.”
<GeorgeNotFound>: Bad come back
Three dots grow larger on the horizon as they make their way back. George heaves a sigh of relief to see all three of them, and he can feel Dream’s too. HBomb and Philza start discourse on how many sets of tools to make and how much wood to conserve. George tunes that out, trusting that they’ll make the right call. They’ll be somewhere with more wood soon enough. There’s a hill at the edge of his render distance that looks promising.
Sapnap adds to the debate and several other voices, calling back and forth while George watches Bad re-appear beside him. Punz and Ant don’t look winded.
“You okay?” Dream asks, “you didn’t use too much of your sprint, did you?”
“I killed a pig,” Punz announces with pride, managing not to answer Dream’s question.
“With your fist, bro?” Sapnap asks, sounding skeptical. “No shot.”
“You just punched it to death?” George hears Foolish speak up for the first time, almost having forgotten about him in his silence. Tina’s face is clear of tears but it’s obvious she’s still upset from the way she clings to his arm. George makes a note to talk to her when they get somewhere safe.
“Yeah, I just—” Punz punches his arm out, kinda lamely. “And after ten taps it keeled over and three raw pork chops appeared.”
“We figured out the inventory,” Bad says, excitedly, “you have to—”
“We did, too,” Sapnap tells him before he can go on an unnecessarily long explanation on something they already know.
“Well, did you know if you just walk over something it’ll appear in your inventory?” Bad asks, annoyance in his voice at being cut off.
“How much wood did you get, Bad?” Dream asks, masterfully derailing the argument sure to break out. “We’ve been figuring out what to use it for to be the most efficient.”
“32 logs,” he says, and then pulls them out to lay them on the ground.
“One crafting bench,” Dream says aloud for everyone to hear. “And we’ll need to share it. I wonder how we—” he zones out, eyes unfocused while he concentrates, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. One hand rests on his belt, the other on the dropped logs.
A crafting bench appears in front of Dream and no one is more surprised than him. “Oh, okay, well that answers that question.”
“No it doesn’t,” George murmurs because it’s so like Dream to figure something out and then think everybody else must have it, too. Louder, he says, “Walk us through how you did it, Dream.”
Dream searches George’s face and must find what he’s looking for because he starts explaining, “You have to touch your belt and think what you want. I had the wood in my inventory and I wanted to turn one log into planks, and then it did. Then I thought about how I wanted a crafting bench and it just kinda smushed together and appeared in my inventory.”
“Okay, so we figured out crafting,” HBomb says with a nod to Dream. “What else have we got?”
“George clearly figured out chat,” Hannah pipes up, the flap open on her chat function to show the keyboard.
<Hannahxxrose>: George is dumb
“Hey,” George says in protest. She shrugs it off.
“If you press down on your hearts it shows F3 mode,” Captain Sparklez says out to everyone and George observes everyone test it out. Things are flying in the chat now, as they all make sure they can use it. George sees their coords in F3 and—
“We should probably leave a sign here or something, right?” George asks Dream quietly. “If we’re leaving, I mean. What if we need to know where spawn is?”
“Smart,” Dream says, “I was thinking the same thing. If it’s hardcore, then, it’s unlikely we’ll re-spawn if we… you know.”
“Do a Philza,” George says somberly. Dream huffs a laugh and turns serious again just as quick.
George lets Dream bring the idea to the table while he keeps an eye on the square sun. If he were playing this seed, he’d already be on his merry way, but with forty people to corral, it’s more difficult to get everyone on board.
“Do we want to check around and see if there are any villages around here?” Illumina is the one to say, and he’s right. A Plains Biome is very likely to have a village, or even two. Speed runners like Illumina and Dream and Punz are likely to know these statistics and, yeah, a village could be really helpful, but—
“Eventually,” Dream responds, a thoughtful look on his face. George is still getting used to seeing real expressions from him, pulling information from something other than the rise and fall of his voice and reading between the lines of his texts. “It seems stupid not to, but we should get geared up first.”
“I’ll volunteer to go,” Illumina says, face set. He reminds George of some warrior of old, a gladiator or berserker.
Dream lets HBomb craft a simple set of tools with the wood, several picks for eventually mining and then, leaving behind a simple sign that reads “Spawn lol” because somebody thought letting Tommy make the sign was a good idea, they head off towards the hill in the distance, dotted with trees.
Everybody sticks close. Dream, with a simple stone ax, the only one they bothered to make for now after mining down a couple blocks, stays at the back of the herd while Philza and HBomb lead the way, whispering to each other about mob farms and other things with Pete that George can’t quite hear from his position, not that he tries.
The idea is that Dream will protect the rear from mobs sneaking up on them, no one knows how wolves or foxes will act in this world and no one wants to be taken by surprise. George reminds himself that wolves and foxes don’t spawn in Plains Biomes, but the paranoia won’t leave him alone once F1NN5TER brings up the topic. Wolves do spawn in Forest Biomes, though, and the harder George thinks about it, the more likely the hill they’re headed towards is part of a Forest Biome. If they move quickly enough, surely nothing will happen. Surely.
Sapnap and George spend the majority of the journey dragging Dream along by the scruff of his gray t-shirt while he obsessively checks behind him. His ax never drops and neither does his guard.
Punz, Wilbur, Jojo, and Captain Puffy are elected to chase after any animal mobs they can turn into meat—pigs, cows, chicken—they’re going to need a lot of meat in order to feed everyone. Tina, Sam, and Sniff volunteer to punch grass as they walk and pick up seeds with the hopes that maybe at one point they’ll have a working farm. There’s no telling how long they’ll be stuck here, if there’s even a way out, but George would rather they be over-prepared than starving.
They stop at the few trees they pass on their way, grabbing those as well, no sense in missing materials. George notes the sun’s presence and as it sinks slowly to the horizon, so does his stomach. They need to hurry up.
Finn hustles along right before Dream in their train, heels hanging from his hand. George spares him a glance. It seems they all appeared here in the outfit they were wearing when they, what, passed out? George remembers that much. George doesn’t envy Finn the heels or the maid outfit, fake tits adhered to his chest in a way George has no concept of. They’re just, like, there. He’s careful not to stare, but praises his past self for the black t-shirt and gray sweats. It’s one less thing for him to worry about.
George hides his mixed feelings seeing the biome blur from Plains into Forest when they reach the mountain—the wolves give him pause, sure, but there are plenty of trees and, unless he’s mistaken, a river nearby. It’s too late to explore now, but he’d bet good money there’s a river flowing on the other side of this mountain. He catches Sapnap looking curiously that way, too, and raises one shoulder before pulling out his wood pick to do his part.
Between Dream, Phil, HBomb, Punz, and Grian, they figure out how big to make the hole they mine into. None of them want to fall into a cave so the plan in the immediate future is to mine out a nice size bunker for themselves, taking any coal and iron, while another group arranges furnaces and cooks the meat they’ve acquired so far.
George is down two hunger bars, and he’s sure those running after mobs are lower. They’ll get first priority of food since they brought it in. George is in the first group, using his upgraded stone pick to mine away at the mountain in front of him. It’s strange. He’s obviously never mined anything in real life, he’s barely been in a real life cave, but the mechanics of Minecraft save them here. He can hit the wall as lightly as he wants, as long as it’s with the pick. After the requisite amount of hits, the block disappears. He stares at it long enough that he can make out where the blocks actually are. They’re more subtle than the game they normally play, but they’re there.
When his pick reaches the end of its durability, George concedes. He spots everyone else at the same point as him and, without speaking, they put mining down for the night. They need more wood to make more tools if they’re going to continue tomorrow.
Someone lights up the cavern with torches and George lets Grian and Scar figure out the skylight thing so they can tell when it’s morning. He wanders over to a cranny beside the wall he’d been mining earlier and plops himself down. Seconds later, Dream joins him. They silently watch Grian and Scar debate the skylight, preventing Creepers from falling into it while they’re sleeping. Eventually, they come to the conclusion that they should skip the skylight in the ceiling and not take the risk at all.
Dream whispers that someone should stay up and keep an eye out, which is kind of dumb, because they all know they’re safe in here.
“Are you really sure, George?” Dream asks when George brings this point up. “We don’t know anything about this world. Things aren’t completely consistent across the game. Like, why are there flowers I can put in my inventory and flowers I can’t?” he pulls out a handful of the tiny flowers from the meadows straight from his trouser pocket. George didn’t see him grab those.
“I guess you have a point,” George says. If Dream keeps breaking and replacing blocks to look out, it should be fine. And he’d never do anything to risk the safety of the others. Never.
“I also, well—” Dream starts and stops, keeping an eye on the movement of people around them settling in. There’s a wall of furnaces cooking meat and three iron ingots they were lucky enough to find.
“What?” George asks, elbowing him to spit it out. He likes that he can do that now.
A half smile runs over Dream’s face and George takes it in, treasures it. He looks bashful and George hears in the sigh of breath, his big clue, that Dream is going to say something he thinks is controversial. “Aren’t you curious?”
“Curious?” George asks, catching onto what Dream’s talking about. “About the Zombies?”
“Yeah, I mean,” he rubs a hand over his neck and George wonders if it’s hurting him with how he’s been straining to see every which direction since they woke up, constantly on alert. “I want to know what we’re up against, you know? I’ve been playing this game for practically my whole life, and while this is terrifying and I hate how many things are, like, up in the air—”
“You still think it’s cool,” George finishes for him.
“I mean, don’t you?” Dream asks, eyes huge in the semi-dark. There’s a torch just off to their left that Tina placed for them, looking a bit more herself with something to do. The fire bounces nicely against Dream’s face. He has good bone structure, George admits in the privacy of his own head. He likes the kindness built into the foundation of his face. “At least a little bit?”
“A little bit,” George concedes. “But not enough to stay here. Like, if there’s a portal back to reality, I’m the first through it.”
“Even if it means leaving me?” Dreams asks, looking down at the ground between his legs, his fingers playing with one of the tiny blue flowers where his hands lie under his knees.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” George hits him with his shoulder. “What are you even talking about?”
“The visa, George,” Dream hits back. “Here at least I have you with me. Back there—”
“—it’s a work in progress, Dream. It’s not a never. And our chances of living are much higher out there.”
“Hey guys,” Sapnap says, plopping down to George’s right. Suddenly he’s warmer, between his two favorite people in the world.
“Hey,” he offers back. “Are they set up?”
Sapnap looks back towards the wall of furnaces that he’d been helping with. Ironic, to George, since there’s nothing he loves to do better than steal things out of George’s furnaces. They’re all making sacrifices today. “Yeah, nothing to do but wait for them to cook and then dole them out.”
“How’s Punz?” Dream asks, a worried lilt to his voice. Punz’ hunger bar is the lowest of everyone since he spent so much time chasing after mobs and killing them. He’s sitting in a group of Bad, Gumi, Foolish, and Sam, and he looks visibly exhausted. They still don’t know how these things work, how running low on health or sprint truly affect them and George’s terrified they’re close to finding out.
“It’s miraculous he didn’t lose any health, to be honest,” Sapnap says, shaking his head in fondness, “the idiot.”
“It’s a good thing there wasn’t any parkour to do or he’d have lost some to fall damage,” Dream says. And then, in his self-critical tone of voice George hates so much, “We should have been more careful about not sprinting.”
“Well, next time we get sucked into Minecraft, we’ll keep that in mind,” George says, more tease than bite. The way Dream’s shoulders relax the tiniest amount tells George his words landed. “He’ll be fine.”
The three of them stare over at Punz. Even if his hunger bar gets critical, he has all ten hearts to go before he’d die. And they could always chuck it to him raw. But someone pointed out how much better and more efficient it would be to cook the food in the time they’d need to wait out the night anyway. George can’t remember who, too many people talking.
“He gets the first Pork Chop, right?” George asks, more confirming than asking. He’d been part of the conversation. Quiet, but present. It was George who helped with the math of how much everyone would get to last the night, writing some figures in the dirt of the cave floor by torchlight.
“Yeah, possibly two depending on how much it heals. If we’re truly following Hardcore, this should help, but…” Sapnap trails off and George thinks back to Dream’s point about not being sure about how everything works, that they can’t just rely on knowledge of the game without testing everything. They need to play this super safe.
“Dream wants to keep a look out,” George announces and Dream’s head drops back onto the wall.
“Bro, why?” Sapnap asks but he’s quicker to understand, eager to take his turn. George can feel the restless energy pouring off of him and sends him off to make a staircase on the side of the wall facing the open Overworld and break one block so he can see out.
“Come get me after a few hours,” Dream tells him, serious voice activated. George knows Sapnap would only disobey that voice if it was for Dream’s own good. For now, he agrees easily.
On the other side of the cavern, InTheLittleWood—George always forgets his real name and he’s too afraid to ask at this point—takes the first piece of meat out of the furnace. He can’t really get a good look from this far away but George watches closely to make sure he takes it to Punz.
He does, and George feels himself relax. Punz sits up with Gumi’s help and stares at the Pork Chop, opening his mouth with a shrug and going for it. His mouth connects to the meat and then it pops out of existence and his face is noticeably healthier.
“Huh,” George says. So they don’t even really… put it in their mouths? He thinks about the hunger bar and how it translates to his physical body and… “I don’t feel any actual hunger.”
“What do you mean?” Dream asks.
“My hunger bar is down, sure, but I’m not like dying for a Big Mac right now.” George stares across the way as InTheLittleWood hands out pork chops to the other hunters: Puffy, Wilbur, and Jojo who all copy Punz and their pork chops disappear when they bring them up to their mouths. It’s odd and tweaks something primal inside George, he doesn’t like seeing it. “I’m also not thirsty.”
“Me neither,” Dream says after a pause. He’s watching the scene closely, too. “We’ve been here for hours and we’ve been exercising. You would think we’d be thirsty.”
“There’s no bar for thirst in Minecraft,” George says around a yawn that sneaks up on him.
“There’s no bar for sleep, either,” Dream responds with a look George can’t name. One day he’ll know all Dream’s expressions.
“But there are beds,” George argues. He’d kill for one of those right now, actually.
“That’s true,” Dream says and then shudders. “Do you think there are Phantoms here?”
“Fuck, I hope not.”
They sit in companionable silence for a long moment, the same kind they live with in call together for hours at a time. Even without speaking, their presence soothes the other. George is unsurprised but still happy to find this translates even better into the “real” world, the physical world. Dream’s arm lightly touching his own is the only thing holding him together right now.
“Who needs a bed in Minecraft when you’ve got a friend, huh?” Dream says with a pull at the corner of his mouth. This is Dream trying to lighten the mood, trying to cheer George up. He knows exactly what Dream’s doing, but he’s also not immune. Dream pats his thigh and says, “Go on, lay down. Nothing to do now but wait.”
“What about you?” George asks, starting to lie down anyway. He’s tired, but his mind won’t turn off. In the real world, this is the type of night where he wouldn’t sleep, where he would turn on his PC and see who’s online and just join a VC until his mind shuts down.
“I’m good like this,” Dream mutters, hand reaching out to land on George’s shoulder. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk all this out in the morning.”
And with that, feeling as safe as he can under the circumstances and Dream’s arm, George lets his head snuggle into Dream’s covered thigh and tries to sleep.