Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When he drove away from the house thirty minutes ago, Dream didn’t exactly mean to end up here. He’s at a lake pretty close to where they live, an inland body of water not quite large enough for a pontoon boat, though some fuckers try to bring those out here. They wind up looking like a yacht parked in a puddle. Fucking idiots. 

He throws a rock into the lake just to watch the way it ruins the surface.

All he ever does is ruin things.

Angrier now, he picks up another rock and throws it even further. He doesn’t stop there. This time, he finds a heavier rock—bigger and hefty—and chucks it as far as his Minecraft playing arms will send it—not nearly as far as he thought it would go, he’ll admit—but the way it crashes mightily into the middle of the lake brings a warm satisfaction that he’s been missing.

If he’s going to fuck everything up, he means to fuck it up entirely. Never let it be said that Dream hasn’t burned the whole bitch down and salted the earth behind him when he decides to fuck something up.

There aren’t enough rocks for this. He needs to go a few rounds with Sapnap’s punching bag. He’s never reasonable or stable when he gets this angry, acting first and regretting it later. This has the same flavor to it, but that doesn't mean he’s able to control it. He wants the world to burn. He wants to make the world burn because of her. 

How could she say that to him? How could she?

An hour ago he was on top of the world. An hour ago he was happy in his lane, thriving and making content, and now it’s like a meteor came down and blew it all into hot shards.

He had made a throwaway joke about his crush on Spider-Man. The new pictures from the set of the new film had started showing up online and Dream made some stupid quip about wanting Spider-Man to bend him over in that suit and show him a good time. It was going to be a great TikTok, something funny and short that his audience would gobble up.

It’s a joke he’s made before to his friends, one that never fails to get a groan of annoyance from Sapnap and a knowing smirk from George. The way her face had fallen took him by surprise.

Yeah, but you’re not gay, she had said. It wasn’t just what she said, but the dismissive way she delivered the line, like this was a point they agreed on long ago. She had said it like it was more of an umbrella—that he isn’t attracted to men at all. 

No, he thinks, he’s not gay. He’s always maintained that he’s not gay. That’s factually correct. 

Yeah, but I’m not straight, he’d said back, trying to inflict a little humor into it to deflate this growing unease in his chest. This isn’t news. She shouldn’t do that mini frown she does when she’s displeased about something. Usually that look makes him perk up, makes him rethink the last few sentences and see where he went wrong and course correct. She’s not hard to read once you get to know her expressions.

Yes, you are, Clay, she had said, patting him on the leg. You’re obviously straight.

Then the confusion had set in. Did she really not know? How had she missed that? It’s not like he’d been subtle about it. The fucking internet at large had made him come out about four times by now. He knows she’d been following him online for a long time, long enough to make cheating jokes that he pretended to think were funny just to not rock the boat.

He’d already sensed he was walking through quicksand. Like in Sands of Time, he needed a clear path or he’d sink. So, very, very carefully, he’d said, I’m not straight, though. Like, there are some dudes I’m attracted to.

She shook her head and smiled at him like he was a child. That was for attention. You’re not gay. You don’t like men, Clay. I think I would know.

Her hand had curled inward to his thigh, rising higher. He was caught off guard by her advance. Did she think now was the time to—

Dream pushed her hand away then. How exactly would she know that he’s straight? How does she think she knows his mind better than he does? Does he need to suck a dick to—

She didn’t like that he rebuffed her. She didn’t like that he argued with her. She suddenly seemed to not like many things about him. She raised her voice. Dream raised his voice. She yelled. He yelled. And suddenly he was storming out of the house with just his car keys.

How has this issue not come up before? Has he really just not mentioned it in all this time? Has he never—

No, he’d never mentioned when he found another man attractive. He hadn’t spoken up when he spotted a man who makes his stomach feel fluttery. He’s only spoken about game stats when he talked about his football teams, not their other attributes. He—how did this happen?

How did his own girlfriend not believe that he’s queer? Antis online are one thing—they’re always looking to invalidate him and call him a liar. Many queer people in the community have denied him or called him a queerbaiter. Dream’s used to that. He just wasn’t expecting to hear that rhetoric from someone who’s supposed to love him. 

She loves him, right?

A battle of tangling emotions takes place inside him—the contenders strong, burning white hot, and all demanding dominance. He can’t name them all, but he counts disappointment, naiveté, melancholy, irritation, and frustration, with rage coming out as the clear winner. 

He hates feeling like this.

The lake is calm again, but he is not. 

Overhead, a bird calls out to its mate. A frog croaks in the brush beside him. And to his left, a brown spider spins a web so intricate that it cuts out the legs beneath Dream’s anger until all he can do is stare at it in awe. 

The web looks fragile, the threads tiny, but he knows they’re stronger than they appear. He watches the spider spin its web for a long moment, watches how the spider continues ever onward, the silk trailing behind it in its wake. Spindly legs connect the threads to the rest of the web. 

Has he ever studied a spider this closely before? Has he ever just sat and watched nature take place like this, watched a set of instincts play out before him?

Oh, to be a spider carefully making its new home without a worry in the world. This spider has never disappointed anyone. This spider has never been so egregiously misunderstood. This spider has—well, Dream suddenly remembers, the female spiders might eat their male counterparts after mating. So, maybe it could be worse.

A hoarse laugh escapes him now, the kind that makes him sound like he’s insane. Maybe he is. Maybe he is, indeed.

He stares so long at the spider that his eyes cross. He imagines the spider as the one that bit Peter Parker. He wonders, not for the first time, what would happen to him if he were bitten by a radioactive spider. If he was like Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man and he shot webs out of his wrists—what kind of web would he build for himself?

Dream snorts in self-deprecation. His life is one big, tangled spiderweb—one he’s been weaving so long that he doesn’t even remember how he got here. He’s on the absolute edge of his own web, the outskirts, and when he looks inward toward the middle of it all, he’s too far away to see it clearly.

There are so many things he hasn’t wanted to think about. There are so many—it’s been easier to just not. It’s—his brain has been holding things back for so long, a dam close to bursting for ages now. 

This fight with his girlfriend disturbed the web, pulled a thread loose until the outside interference made that dormant part of Dream wake up with a scream in his throat. He can’t settle it back again. He can’t keep scuttling around the outside of the web, making it ever bigger. He has to get to the middle. He deserves to rest in the middle.

He’s been making his way through life with his spider silk behind him and now his web is fucked. It’s too late to go back to sleep. It’s too late to put his head back in the sand.

Yeah, but you’re not gay, is all it took. The aftershocks of that statement rock him. Are still rocking him.

He can’t believe how misunderstood he is. 

Chapter Text

It starts like this. 

There is a boy in his first grade class with the prettiest eyes Dream has ever seen. He’s not Dream yet, but somehow he’s always been Dream. Just like he’s not queer yet, but he’s always been queer.

The boy has pretty eyes, and the girl that sits beside him has really shiny hair, and he likes looking at both of them equally.

In fifth grade, he finds a group of friends who will play video games with him. He won’t discover Minecraft until the next year, but for now, he’ll play XBox with his friends. 

There’s a new boy down the block from his house, close enough he can walk over there and knock on the door and ask him to hang out. There’s something otherworldly when his friend says yes, something that doesn’t happen when his other friends agree.

They like to play superheroes, like most kids do. Dream loves Spider-Man and his friend loves the Green Arrow, and together they fight crime and save the world over and over again. He never gets sick of their games, and he’s always knee shaking nervous when he knocks on that front door.

He figures out through the year that it’s not normal to feel that way. Other boys are talking about girls like that, getting excited when they hang around them, and so Dream tells himself he couldn’t feel like that.

He only feels that way about girls now.

In middle school, things get worse. They move. He hates his life. He stops wanting to go to school. He starts living his entire life online. He falls deeply in love with Minecraft, and then it’s not such a lonely life. He has a Sapnap now, after all. 

It’s around then that he learns that to be gay is to be a bad thing. Online, his friends and foes accuse each other of being gay like it’s a death sentence. He hears conversations in his real life world that back up this claim—adults in his sphere mad that men in Massachusetts can marry each other. Dream asks how that would affect his screaming uncle here in Florida, who has been married to his aunt for ten years, but no one can give him a real answer. No one likes a smart ass, they say.

Around Christmas, his mother won’t talk to the neighbor’s college age son when he walks from his car into the house because his boyfriend is in the passenger seat. Dream has known this boy for ages, had been babysat by him up until a few years ago when he was old enough to be left alone with his siblings. He sends a weak wave from the driveway.

In high school, things get even worse. His libido finally wakes up and takes an interest in the world, right when he wants nothing to do with it. He doesn’t want to go to school. His parents call the police on him when he doesn’t go one too many times, and all he learns from that is that his parents won’t hesitate to turn him in if he steps out of line.

He keeps his porn searches set only to female. It’s enough for him. 

It’s not too long after his parents finally wise up and let him finish his high school degree online, while also getting multiple certificates he can use to make money, that he meets his first girlfriend.

Finding a girl that he’s interested in—and more importantly—is interested back, is the highlight of the year. He meets her through Minecraft because all the best things in his life have come from Minecraft. It seems perfect to Dream. It makes sense in his head. He was just waiting all this time for Minecraft to give him this girlfriend.

If he had thought that having a female partner would keep his mind from wandering to broad shoulders and deep voices, he was wrong. He’s happy with this girlfriend, at first. He enjoys having someone to talk to, someone to act out his sexual urges with. As time goes on, the relationship deteriorates. 

His friendships online thrive, though. He finds kinship with George. He lets Bad take him under his wing, this older guy who makes money—money!—doing YouTube. He starts coding things for Skeppy’s channel, and he gets paid for it. He hangs out with Red and Ant and Awesamdude and—

They’re their own kind of family. 

And then the internet starts to shift. The tone changes. The vulgarity of slurs starts to be met with disapproval. People start speaking up when the language gets bad. 

Ant and Red come out and say that they’re in love with each other, and Dream is mad at them at first. He has to stay offline for a week to untangle the knot of feelings at home in his stomach. 

They’re not from Florida. They’re not surrounded on all sides by the same loud opinion. They were lucky to find each other, to find solace in each other, and Dream lets Bad verbally kick his ass hard enough for his own head to fall out.

They’re still Ant and Red.

He still likes to play with Ant. He still can’t help laughing at Red’s overly sexual jokes. With time, Dream gets over himself. He doesn’t let himself think of the kinds of things people in Dream’s real life would say about his two gay friends, two people he’s come to really care about. He doesn’t want to hear those things said about people he loves. In Dream’s heart of hearts, he knows those things apply to himself.

He really doesn’t want to hear those things said about him.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly who the first boy Dream had a crush on was. Or what constitutes a crush. Does it have to have a sexual edge to be a proper crush? There are different criteria and different categories for all this, various levels down into Dante’s Inferno. 

The elementary boy was an innocent crush, easily brushed aside in the grand scheme of things. With enough erosion of time, Dream could tell himself it was nothing, just a boy who was his first best friend. Best friends are special, after all. 

But if the elementary boy was an innocent crush, then he can’t pull that same excuse with Spider-Man. 

If anyone ever cares to ask Dream, there’s only one superhero worth talking about.

It’s common, growing up as he did, for boys to play superheros and brag about their favorites, to have endless debates about who would win—Iron Man or Batman. The answer, to Dream at least, is obvious. 

Spider-Man.

He’s everything. He’s funny. Strong. Adaptable. And Dream used to love that he was young, because when Dream was young—as young as Spider-Man, even younger—it was awful to hear that you’d only be worth something when you’re older. When you’ve completed high school. When you’ve gotten your college degree. 

Dream never cared about those things, and he certainly doesn’t now. Life is what you make of it, and that’s something that he learned a long time ago, something that he sees reflected in Spider-Man.

Sometimes, when life gives you a super power, it’s your responsibility to use that new talent to make the world a better place. Or, if not that, then to at least make your mark on it.

And Dream was always going to make his mark on the world. One way or another.

So, yes, he’s a Spider-Man stan, and he’s not ashamed of it. He saw the Andrew Garfield movies when he was a kid and he just—

Who could be cooler than Spider-Man?

When the Avengers came out and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man got his own movie—Dream lined up with everyone else to go see it. He wasn’t disappointed.

It’s not just the actor playing him, Dream had decided after a lot of thought. It’s the essence of him—the way he cracks jokes when he’s in pain, the way he doesn’t let people see his vulnerability. Dream wants to be like that. Anyone can be Spider-Man. Anyone can be beneath the mask. He resonates with that idea, so when the character of Dream starts to take off—maybe he grasps too hard to the mask.

He can’t help it, though. A part of him will always want to be like Spider-Man.

And yet—

And yet part of him wants something else from Spider-Man. The tight suit, the flexibility, the strength, even the humor—it’s not until he’s well into his twenties that he can admit he had a crush on Spider-Man.

Back in the safety of his own mental web, Dream follows the silken thread in front of him, wandering further down its path. At this rate, it’s going to take forever to get to the center of this behemoth. He’s not sure what he expects to find, but he wouldn’t have thought it starts here, with a superhero discussion in 2021.

“Superman is obviously the best, though,” Sapnap is saying, like this is something they all agree on and not the stupidest opinion ever. “I mean, objectively. Come on. There’s not even a contest—”

“All it takes is the tiniest amount of Kryptonite and he’s cooked,” Dream points out. He loves a good argument, one that doesn’t have a definitive right answer. Obviously, Dream’s answer is the correct one, but there’s not a formula to prove it.

Two other friends in the call make cases for other heroes that Dream doesn’t give two shits about. He runs around the parkour course, making himself make every jump or he has to start over. They have MCC in the morning, and there’s not a chance in the world that he’s going to sleep.

Over the sounds of his friends arguing, Dream hears George yawn. There’s a crinkling of a wrapper like he’s finally throwing away his McDonald’s bag. Did he eat enough? Dream’s constantly worried that George is going to whittle away to nothing.

“What about you, George?” he asks, ignoring everybody else. He’s not unaware of the influence he has over his friends, even here. They listen to him when he speaks, though in calls like this, he finds it easy to get swallowed up in their chaos. He usually prefers to listen and vibe with them, to interject when needed, but otherwise let it ride.

“I dunno,” George says, around another yawn. Dream worries that he kept George awake too long last night. They have a four hour long stream tomorrow. It might be time to hit the hay. “I guess, like, Aquaman is kinda cool. I’d like to breathe underwater and, like, talk to fish.”

“Talk to your sushi before you eat it, you mean?” Sapnap asks. 

“Yeah, I’d order them right into my net,” George says, clearly just taking the piss. “But only the delicious ones.”

“Aquaman is lame,” someone says in the call. Dream has no idea who it is and he doesn’t care to look. It’s someone he doesn’t know well, though. Someone whose voice he doesn’t immediately recognize. It’s not unusual for people to join this VC that he isn’t familiar with. Usually, it’s actually a good thing. It’s a big reason he’s met so many new people for content creation, made friends with them.

George yawns again, less subtly this time, and Dream decides it’s time to take the call to another Discord, a private one.

He doesn’t bother saying goodnight or goodbye, just drags George with him. With so much going on, it’s not like their absence will grind the party to a halt.

“Are you tired?” Dream asks, sending George an iMessage game request. They do this sometimes, just talk while they play stupid games. Dream will even keep parkouring on the course in between turns. He needs to be limber before tomorrow.

“Kinda,” George says, which is basically an enthusiastic yes. He’s not usually the one to admit that he needs sleep. They’re both clingy, and that’s part of what makes them work so well, even across the ocean.

“You ready for tomorrow?” Dream asks. He makes a few more jumps on the course while he waits for George to respond both to his question and the game of pool he sent.

“More ready than you,” George says. “We’re going to kick your ass tomorrow.”

“Yeah, alright,” Dream says, and then laughs rudely. “Aquaman isn’t lame, by the way. I mean, there are cooler superheroes, but, like, it tracks that you like him.”

“Wow, I’m so thrilled to have your validation, Dream,” George says, heavily sarcastic. 

Dream snorts his amusement. He can’t help it. “You’re welcome, Georgie. I’m happy to help. Now, if you wanted to stan the best superhero, it would obviously have to be Spider-Man.”

“We get it, Dream, you like Spider-Man,” George says, long-suffering. 

“I can’t help that he’s the goat,” Dream says, like this makes sense. It does, in Dream and George speak. “He’s just, like, epic.”

“Yeah, okay, okay,” George says, indulgent and amused. “It’s just kinda funny how you—no, nevermind.”

“Wait, what?” Dream is concentrating on an expert level jump so he misses the nuance of George’s hard turn in the conversation. He lets his avatar fall into the void and waits. “What, George?”

“Nothing, nothing,” George says in that way that irritates Dream sometimes. Why would he start to say something and then change his mind? Does he think Dream can’t handle it? What does George have against Spider-Man? They’ve watched the Tom Holland Spider-Man together before in Discord, and George liked it. What exactly is his problem?

“No, say it,” Dream says, more of a command than he meant for it to be, but whatever. If George is going to be annoying, then Dream gets to be annoying right back. That’s part of their deal.

“You just—the way you talk about Spider-Man sometimes is…” George trails the word out, stretching it fine, “…a little sus.”

“Sus?” Dream repeats, incredulous. “Sus? What is this, Among Us? Are you going to vent?”

“It’s sus!” George insists. “You’re, like, obsessed with Spider-Man. You won’t even entertain the idea that another hero might be better, you—”

“Because they’re not,” Dream can’t help but say. And maybe that’s proving George’s point. He doesn’t care. He knows what he’s about. Sorry he has good taste and class and, like, knows a good thing when he sees it. That’s why he’s so good at making videos.

“You’re, like, into him,” George says. Not in a homophobic way, though neither of them are strangers to throwing around accusations of the other being gay. That’s just growing up online in the 21st century. They’re both trying to be better about that, especially now that they have an audience and, like, know people who are gay. So many of their fans are turning out to be some form of queer, and Dream loves to see that. He loves to know that he’s a safe place for them to land.

But that doesn’t mean Dream likes—he’s not—Spider-Man is just cool, okay? Everyone agrees. There’s a reason it’s a franchise that’s been made and re-made so many times in so few years. And, no, Dream doesn’t care about some bullshit that Sony and Marvel both have rights to the character, that’s stupid. Spider-Man is just relatable. Everyone can agree on that.

“I’m not into him,” Dream says, but he can already tell he’s waited too long to say something. 

“What, do you have a little crush on Spider-Man, Dream?” George jumps on the opportunity, gleeful. “Do you want to be him, or do you want to be inside him?”

“What?” Dream says, scandalized. “What the fuck, George?” Sometimes he takes these things too far, just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks—bigger and bigger things. Unfortunately, sometimes they do stick. Sometimes they leave craters in the wall behind them.

“Tell me,” George says, demanding. “You can admit it. You’re the one always bringing him up.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Or, maybe you want him to be inside you?” George says, a smugness in his tone that Dream doesn’t care for. He doesn’t understand how this conversation turned so quickly. 

“What are you—fuck, George, are you—Why are you being like this?”

“I’m just helping you come to a realization,” George says, all high and mighty. “You could be thanking me. Some people have to pay therapists for this insight, you know.”

“You’re insane,” Dream says, starting to get pissed off for real. His heart is beating so hard in his chest and he has no idea why. He feels caught out, like he’s been accused of something he didn’t do. On this end of all the speed run cheating shit, he’s sensitive to it.

He doesn’t like being made to feel like this by someone who’s not supposed to ever make him feel like this. George is his best friend. He’s—He doesn’t have to put up with this.

Dream hangs up while George is still laughing.

He has to get up early for MCC. He has to stream and put on a more energetic version of his usual personality, all while balancing performing well. If he doesn’t perform well, he’ll wallow in it for days. The hate online will swell up again, and—he can deal with that. He just doesn’t want to have to.

Usually talking with George helps with this kind of thinking, helps settle him down into his own skin. He’s a grounding force, even from another country. But tonight? Whatever that was… it’s messing Dream’s head up even more.

He tosses and turns in his bed, so much so that Patches refuses to sleep on his covers in her usual spot, leaving him for greener pastures the second time he accidentally kicks her. He watches her go, her tail held high in the air, a loud yowl of disapproval when he finally hit her limit. He can’t even keep his cat around.

At some point, Dream slips into an uneasy slumber. The images he sees in his subconscious make little sense to him—more sensations than anything else. He’s there with—with Spider-Man. In the dream, it doesn’t feel weird, just a normal thing. He has the mask on and everything. Dream’s mask is nowhere to be found and when he looks around, he’s naked.

And then things get kinda freaky with Spider-Man, and Dream wakes up, gasping, and strangely hard.

Fuck.

It’s just morning wood. This happens all the time. It has nothing to do with—

He’s going to kill George.

It’s his worst performance in MCC to date.

The foreground of Dream’s life doesn’t change much—he makes videos, primarily. He makes kick ass videos, and he gets better and better at editing them, learning how to work the system to the best of his ability, and also himself. He learns how to make himself more efficient, a better editor and storyteller. 

Moreover, he makes himself a better Minecraft player. The more hunters he adds to the Manhunts, the better he has to get. He trolls the Reddit logs of tricks and glitches that he can exploit. He practices different scenarios with his brother, traps and combat practice in different biomes and with different items.

His subscriber count goes up. The scrutiny he’s under goes up. His bank account’s bottom line goes up.

And all that is good. Great, even. He’s making friends in various different parts of the internet, playing games outside of his comfort zone with people he never thought he’d be talking to. It’s crazy and cool and fun and—okay, sometimes it’s a little scary. He’s not the best at socializing and he always feels like he’s doing it wrong.

Except with George and Sapnap. He can’t do it wrong with George and Sapnap; they’re too much a part of him. And they’re right there with him on this crazy journey. Even after a petty fight, they’re all in a call the next day like nothing happened. It’s great.

So, that’s the foreground of his life: content and contentment. 

In the background, the question that George raised remains. He turns it over and over, usually at night when he’s hung up with George and he’s on his own to sleep. The question never really fades away. It’s ever present because it was George who posed the question, and now Dream’s greatest escape from reality also houses this question that he can’t answer, but he also can’t keep ignoring.

Is he into Spider-Man?

It sounds… it sounds so beyond stupid when he thinks it like that—in words he would say out loud. He can’t bring himself to actually, like, ask out loud. He can’t even get his mouth to form the letters of the question.

This is Florida. He’s surrounded by—

He just isn’t gay. He’s not—he doesn’t like men. He definitely doesn’t like men in spandex and tight pants that show off their bulge and ass. That’s—no. Absolutely not.

And then his nighttime brain betrays him, sending him visions of Spider-Man with different people under the mask: Andrew Garfield, of course. Tom Holland, yes, yes, makes sense, sure. But then—Shawn Mendes, which seems weird, but he kinda looks like Tom Holland, and he’s famous, so it makes sense that he’s in Dream’s, like, periphery. Right?

Then one night, Spider-Man is George, and Dream wakes up with glizzy all over his stomach and a new determination that he has to lock this the fuck down.

He thinks, rather erroneously as it turns out, that maybe if he just gets it all out, that it’ll leave him alone. Dream looks up attractive men and stares at them. He compares Ryan Gosling to Ryan Reynolds and neither of them do anything for him. He tries to imagine kissing them and—nope.

No, that’s too much.

There are too many variables hanging out at once for that. His anxiety about his face for one, the voices of his parents talking about how disgusting gay people are, for another. Oh, they don’t say those words, but it’s all in the tone. He hears his mother talk about their gay neighbor the same way she talks about the moldy bread his dad left out on his desk.

He’s not stupid. He can read what they aren’t saying.

He knows what they would say about…

He’s saved from thinking about it by an incoming call from George. He doesn’t think about the flutter in his heart when he sees the name, or the way what was missing before is suddenly there. There’s no time for self-reflection like that. Besides, it’s George. He’s always just been George. 

They plan a video and complain about their friends, all normal parts of their ongoing conversations, but George is carrying the weight of it all.

He’s not shy about addressing it, either.

“What’s wrong with you?” George asks in his caustic George way, which means he cares but doesn’t want you to think he cares.

“Nothing,” Dream says. If he’s lucky, he can convince George to let it go. It’s not like George is one for deep, emotional conversations. He’ll probably let it go.

Please let it go.

“Fine, but if you sigh one more time, I don’t care about a world-wide virus, I’m coming over there to kick your ass,” George says. “And I’m coughing on you while I do it.”

“George,” Dream says, gasping out a laugh. “You’re such an idiot.”

“And you’re stupid,” George says. “Whatever. Let’s just play Bedwars.”

They blow up beds and each other for hours until Dream doesn’t remember what made him sad to begin with.

It must not have been that important.

The nightmares continue, marring his sleep. He starts avoiding going to bed altogether, using George’s snores when his friend finally succumbs as background noise when he edits his videos. 

He’s never had dreams like these before—dreams that are so pleasurable that they circle back around to painful. He wakes up hard, no matter if he jerks off before he finally goes to sleep. Fragmented images of flat, hairy chests and beard burns haunt him everywhere he goes. The worst nightmares are the ones where he’s so happy he could burst, when the body tucked in against his chest is obviously male and obviously precious to him.

He wakes up with tears in his eyes more than once. It’s embarrassing. He doesn’t even want Patches to catch him like this. He has to stop sleep calling with George because he’s worried about what he’ll say in his sleep.

It gnaws at him, the guilt of keeping something from George, the need to talk about it with someone else. He’s never kept any secrets from George, not really. Even though he’s still not entirely sure, he finds himself wanting to—needing to—confide in someone.

He almost says something to Sapnap first, but he’s from Texas. Not that that, like, negates him being a good person, but—but he just can’t bring himself to say it yet.

When Red and Ant had come out, George had taken it the best, like he does anything else that’s not really his business. He made a bad joke and then rolled with it.

Despite the way Dream’s hands shake with nerves, he knows if he doesn’t rip the bandage off now, he’ll chicken out and it’ll be another long, miserable while until he gathers the courage again.

He’s safe with George.

“Remember that time you told me I was being sus about Spider-Man?” Dream asks, the second George picks up the call. Nothing is ever off limits in conversations with George. They’ve talked about things that Dream would rather die than let anyone else know. He told George about losing his virginity, about how he had to google the anatomy of vaginas because he did not understand what was going on down there, about the first time he made his ex-girlfriend actually orgasm. 

There are no limits. Dream should be able to say this too.

“Which time?” George asks, just to be a dick.

“Well, you only said it to me once,” Dream says, trying to stamp down on his heart beating so wildly. 

“Oh, I must have just thought it a whole bunch of times,” George says, and then laughs at himself like he thinks he’s so fucking funny.

“Shut up, you’re so annoying,” Dream says, but he can hear his own amusement in his voice. Something about George’s laughter cuts the tension. “I’m trying to tell you something here.”

He swallows thickly. Here goes nothing—

“You’re gay for Spider-Man,” George says, all matter-of-fact.

Dream freezes. That’s not exactly it. “I’m not—I’m not gay, okay? I’m not—I still like—”

“Dream, calm down,” George says, but he’s not hanging up the phone in disgust or anything. “I remember all the gross things you said about women before, too. Don’t worry. I know you aren’t gay.”

Dream opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He closes it again, a lump forming in his throat. Why is this so hard to hear? Why is this kindness so hard for him?

“You can like both,” George says quietly when Dream doesn’t speak. He’s a man that gets quiet when he’s being serious, not just in volume. He shrinks into himself when he shows his vulnerability. “Dream, it’s okay to like both, alright? No one is going to be mad at you for, like, being into whatever you’re into.”

“I—” His voice croaks.

“Except maybe if you’re a furry,” George says with some much needed levity. “I’d still be your friend, but c’mon, like, you’re not making it easy for me.”

Dream finds his voice. “I’m not a furry!”

“So, it’s not the animal thing, but a suit thing?” George asks, laughing. “Spider-Man’s suit is what does it for you? Maybe the mask he uses to cover his face?”

“Shut up,” Dream says, but he’s smiling so hard that tears are prickling in his eyes.

“I’m just trying to understand.” George tsks in his ear, fake disappointment. 

Dream will take anything that isn’t rejection. He never dreamed it would be like this. “You’re making fun of me.”

“I can multitask,” George says proudly. “Don’t try to pin me down. I’m a free spirit, Dream.”

 Dream feels lighter when they finally hang up later that night. He didn’t even say the words himself. He and George know each other so well that he could guess. Dream isn’t worried about anyone else guessing. George is special like that. After that conversation, Dream knows just how special George really is. He’s such a good friend.

As he lays himself down to sleep, the weight on his chest lessens. Someone knows. It’s not a burden he has to carry alone any longer.

No nightmares plague him that night, which Dream takes to be a good sign. His unconscious mind can only work so long to get him to acknowledge things. He spends the day turning over the entire conversation with George from last night, how seen he felt. He can’t just only tell George—what if George says something to Sapnap, presuming he also knows?

They talk to each other. Dream knows they do. He loves that they have their own friendship outside of him, even if it bites him in the ass sometimes when they band together against him.

He has to tell Nick, too.

Now that it’s out there with George, it’s easier to say it to Sapnap for some reason. Some reason, like the reason that it wasn’t Sapnap he saw covered in spandex in several very memorable dreams. He doesn’t want to see Nick like—just no.

That’s his brother.

They live together. They don’t have secrets. When the police come to the front door for that month’s swatting, it’s Nick who has to answer. Things like that really bind you together. 

So, when they’re eating the rare meal together in the kitchen that evening, Dream’s able to just say it.

“Hey, by the way,” he says, clearing his throat. “I, uh, I don’t, like, hate men.”

Sapnap pauses, and then looks up at him with the most confused look on his face. “Did I think you did?” he asks, like he’s truly asking Dream if this was something he expressed in the past and had forgotten.

“No, like—not in a—” He swallows a bite of steak and licks his lips. Anything to distract himself. “Like, I might, uh, be into some… certain men. In a non-friendly way.” Spider-Men, to be accurate.

“Oh,” Nick says. He tilts his head sideways and looks at Dream closer, like maybe there’s a sign on his body that they’d both previously overlooked saying Manliker.

Such a sign still hasn’t presented itself.

“That’s… cool,” Sapnap says. He takes a bite of the steak Dream made him, and yeah, maybe Dream was buttering him up a bit, but he didn’t realize that at the time. He just thought he was doing something nice. But now, even he thinks this was some kind of bribe to still be Dream’s friend, or—god, how is he so stupid?

He’s an adult. He’s in his twenties. He’s a millionaire. And he’s still this stupid? How does anyone take him seriously.

“No, bro, it’s—” Nick says, reaching out to wipe his mouth with a napkin. “That’s cool with me. I don’t give a shit about who you—You’re not in love with George are you?” His eyes squint over at Dream suspiciously, like Dream’s trying to pull something over on him.

“What? No,” Dream says, holding his hands up like he’s got nothing to hide. He doesn’t. Not really. A few sexual fantasies that were—okay, he didn’t actively think of them, they were, like, presented to him in his brain. Against his will. 

He’s kind of a victim, when you think about it.

“So, this Dreamnotfound stuff isn’t, like, you know?” Sapnap asks, as eloquent as he is tall. 

“No, shit,” Dream says. “It’s—It’s worse than that.”

Sapnap’s eyes grow three sizes. “Oh? Well, do tell. Don’t leave me hanging, brother.”

“It wasn’t George,” Dream insists. As embarrassing as this is about to be, anything is better than Sapnap thinking George was his sexual awakening to men. “It wasn’t. It was—fuck. It was actually Spider-Man.”

And then Sapnap fucking loses it.

Things don’t change so wildly that Dream regrets anything. His bros still treat him the same. With the acceptance that some men do it for him, Dream finds himself with a new appreciation for the male form. He can’t pin down what his exact type is—because there are slender body types that catch his eye, but then he’ll find his gaze following a certain player for OU, even when that player is nowhere near the ball. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Dream feels his confidence rise. There’s something empowering about his fandom. So many of the names and profile pictures he recognizes have a myriad of flags in their bios and outspoken tweets about queer acceptance. He starts to think, hey, maybe he can share in some of that acceptance too.

He leans into the DNF jokes. He knows his friendship with George is different, maybe he’s always known that, but one thing it has always been is safe.

He feels safe here, too. 

Online, he lets himself explore what it would mean to be attracted to men. 

Until he’s ruthlessly attacked for it, dragged all across the internet and pulled onto streams in order to defend himself. They’re calling him a queerbaiter, no better than those Supernatural dudes. They’re calling him an opportunist, and in the circles of hell of Twitter that he only ever goes to in order to protect his family, they’re calling him by his government name.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He should have known better. He should have kept this to himself. It’s no one’s business but his own. He had stupidly thought that all those kids online—his fans—maybe they would understand him. 

He had forgotten about the rest of the internet.

He reads death threats in his DMs like the morning paper. He sees his parents’ names, his little sister’s name, his address, every school he’s ever attended. The people online who hate him are sick, sick, sick… He can’t imagine how people can do this, how they can make someone feel so bad about themselves, how they can push and push and hope to trip you over the edge.

Their voices are loud. Their death threats are potent. He forwards the scariest ones to his FBI contact, and then he deletes them, blocks the senders, and hopes to god he’ll forget about them eventually.

He’s not allowed to be bicurious, he supposes. He’s not allowed to seep out of the lines of the box they’ve carved him into. Just like he’s not allowed to grow from past mistakes or learn from his peers and fans. Once you’re labeled something online, that’s it. Forever.

And the internet labeled him straight. How dare he fucking disturb their status quo?

His parents don’t ask about it, but he knows they’re curious. His sister tells him over text, stuck at dinner while they both obviously talk around it.

He feels sick. He doesn’t leave his bed. He doesn’t get online. He doesn’t do much of anything except feel like shit.

But time moves on. Someone else has a worse day online, and then everything fades back into the background. He doesn’t do anything drastic. He doesn’t put any flags by his proudly displayed pronouns on his Twitter bio. He doesn’t make any more tweets joking about his own sexuality. Somehow, that feels taken from him, like it’s no longer his to do with what he wants.

He imagines himself sliding his sexuality into a hidden file on his PC and keeping it there out of sight, ignoring any mention of it. There’s nothing that appeases his audience like a Manhunt, so a Manhunt he delivers.

He’s right.

His sexuality is old news again. Lesson learned.

They’re building the new house. Or, remodeling the new house. There’s room for him and Sapnap and George and all of their friends to come and stay. Dream has this vision of stream rooms and extra setups and having his friends drop in and stay for a while without missing out on their work.

It’s all he can think about while he’s stuck isolated at his current house. He’s terrified that someone will steal his face reveal, that some schmuck with bad intentions and a hateful heart will snap a picture of him through the windows and sell it online.

He’s afraid he’s going to have to lie. Again. He hates lying.

But, that’s all that can happen for now. They’re stuck in a holding pattern until the government gives George his visa and he can come live here in the house Dream’s building for him.

Then it’ll all be worth it—the three of them together and whichever of their friends drop in on occasion.

And, to be fair, it’s not like Dream minds staying inside too much. He really doesn’t. He likes being inside, likes being a homebody and not having to worry about what he looks like, how short his hair is, if he’s shaved today. He doesn’t mind being faceless, except that he doesn’t want anyone else to own a piece of his face before he’s ready to give it out to the world.

Sapnap can know, of course. He’d let George, too, at this point. But George just gets it. George is on board with not knowing what Dream looks like until the visa comes through—until he moves here.

Dream doesn’t think about the implications of that too hard or he’ll go even more insane than he’s already gone. 

He’s gotten pretty good at not thinking about things he doesn’t want to think about.

It’s not often that he feels the need to get outside, but—but Spider-Man: No Way Home is coming out and… and Dream can’t just not go see it. He’s seen every Spider-Man movie in theaters since he was a little kid! It doesn’t sit right with him. He doesn’t—

“So, just go see it,” George tells him. Dream is ready to lash out, to argue, but it occurs to him belatedly that George is the only person who really gets it. He stops.

“Should I?” he asks, hating how small his voice sounds. He’s not someone who asks for permission. With George, he’s usually the one in charge. It’s Dream doing the majority of the research for the visa, contacting lawyers and spiraling down reddit threads. In games, it’s Dream coming up with the strats and George goofing off, only listening long enough to argue with him, but eventually complying.

All this to say, he’s not used to getting George’s permission for something. He’s not used to feeling like he needs it, somehow. Like, he has the decision taken out of his hands, and it feels nice.

“Yeah, Dream,” George says. He sounds distracted, but Dream counts that as a good thing. He doesn’t want the full weight of George’s attention like this. “Go see your stupid movie. Go drool over Spider-Man’s tight pants or whatever.”

“George…” he complains, throwing his head down into his hands and rubbing at his beard. He really needs to shave this thing.

“Are you rich or not, Dream?” George asks with amusement in his voice. “Just pretend you’re renting the theater out for, like, a birthday party or something. Or wear a hat and a mask, like, just do it. No one will know.”

“Do you really think I should?” He hates that he has to ask again. George is going to hate that he asked again. He’s already given his judgment, but—but Dream needs this.

“Dream,” George says, voice quieter now. “You haven’t left the house in way too long. You should go. This is—this means something to you. Just go. Don’t think about it. Me and Sapnap will stream or something and cover you. Distract the peons, or whatever.”

“Really?” Dream asks. Excitement starts to swell in his chest. He actually might do this.

It’s starting to feel real.

He doesn’t get any snacks at the movie theater. For one, he has no intention of taking off his face mask anytime, not even for a second and not even in the darkness of the theater. There’s risks and there’s risks, and he’s not about to make it easy on anyone. 

He bought the ticket online. He picked it up at the little kiosk outside the theater so he doesn’t have to speak to a single human. He scans that same ticket while a teenager guards the entrance to the theater, head tucked down looking at a stream. Dream catches a quick glimpse out of curiosity to see that it’s George.

He smiles to himself, but doesn’t linger.

The movie—well, Dream hasn’t had a religious experience ever, but this comes damn close. When Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield show up, it’s—it’s like seeing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

He stares at the three Spider-Mans, and it finally really hits him—he’s not straight. He’s queer. He’s attracted to men. He can’t deny it any longer. He can’t tiptoe around it or pretend it’s not happening. He won’t allow the world to steal it back from him. This is for him, not anyone else.

While the movie plays on, Dream retreats inside himself, his mind moving furiously. All the times he’s let his eyes linger too long on another guy. It’s—he’s okay with it. The shame that licked his heels before has been beaten back into an acceptable range.

His friends are fine with it. He’s no longer going to let the guilt win. He’s no longer going to feel ashamed at himself for finding someone hot. He can’t help it, and he’s tired of trying to!

Fuck what his parents say. He has more money than them now. He isn’t reliant on their goodwill or the roof of their house or anything.

This is who he is, and they need to learn to live with that.

And especially fuck what the internet says. His error was worrying what they thought in the first place, even his fans. He shouldn’t have let them silence him. He should have just left enough hints that the people who don’t get it just never actually get it. He should have kept it private.

He won’t let the internet dictate what he’s allowed to be. Not ever again. This is it. This is him. Get the fuck over it.

He’s queer. He’s always been queer.

The movie ends too soon for Dream. He’s pulling his phone out to text George before the end credit scene, buzzing on a high that he couldn’t describe in a million years.

He doesn’t even know if George is done streaming, but he doesn’t care. He’s typing out an essay as fast as his fingers can type, determined that he needs to get all of his feelings out in this discord DM right this second before they slip away. George needs to know. George needs to keep record of this. George is heavily invested in Dream’s love of Spider-Man at this point, it’s—it’s only right that Dream tell him everything.

The DM sends, and then Dream sits there a second and just watches the credits pour down the screen. 

I’m glad you went, is all George replies. He’s still parked in the “Live Live Live” channel of their shared streaming Discord, so Dream doesn’t take it personally. In fact, he’s pleased that George paused long enough to read his entire essay and still respond, all while he’s streaming.

It’s a good night.

Chapter Text

Dream looks out over the lake, small ripples where the bugs land briefly on the water. He’s sweating, but it’s so inconsequential when these memories are coming back to him.

He remembers that night in that movie theater. He remembers that epiphany, how happy he was to finally have that part of himself revealed. He never felt like a label defined him, but that acceptance of his queerness felt monumental. It had felt life changing.

So how could he lock it away again?

Has he really repressed this shit so deeply? What else is in there? What else is he missing?

Well, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Dream sighs and leans out over the railing to peer down into the water below. There’s a big mouth bass sitting there staring up at him. It doesn’t feel real. This fish stares at him mockingly, as if to throw it in his face that he has no net to catch it with.

Ungraciously, Dream thinks that the fish rather looks like his girlfriend’s face when he mentioned he wasn’t straight. He chuckles to himself, knowing he can never share that thought aloud, but it’s funny all the same. 

He really can’t believe she—actually, no, he can’t believe himself. He can’t believe he lost sight of his true self. How had he let that happen?

Why is he acting like he hadn't struggled with this for years, finally to reach a place he was comfortable with? Yes, he’s queer, but he likes women too. He had taken a chance on her—on trying something with a cute girl who liked him enough to pursue him. He thought it could grow, his feelings for her. That’s how it works, isn’t it? You meet someone, find you have chemistry, and then get to know one another.

He did that. He got to know her. He had thought that she knew him too, that one of the fundamental building blocks that make him up would be… if not celebrated, then acceptable. 

Now, he knows better.

Well, he’s learned that he’s always going to be queer. He’s always been queer, just as he’ll always be queer. And anyone who can’t understand that can’t understand him.

There’s still something mysterious in the middle of this web, dark and obfuscated, protected by his own brain working against him. What could he be protecting himself from? What other truths are hiding from him? What else is he missing? He can’t keep the feeling like he forgot to turn off the stove from creeping down his back. 

Ever so slowly, Dream takes another step down the path, determined to uncover that truth at the center of the universe. If he had to pinpoint the moment it all changed, well, Dream doesn’t think he could come up with one moment. Much like boiling lobster, the changes were so subtle and came on so slowly, that he didn’t feel it until he was cooked.

That being said, without the shackles locking his brain down, a few moments do stick out.

It’s one thing to be queer, a man-liker, not straight—it’s another thing to act on it.

For a long while, Dream was able to tell himself it was fine because he just wouldn’t act on anything. No one could know what was happening inside his head unless he told them. Isn’t that both a brilliant marvel of the human condition and also a cage of its own?

Did he really pull that off, though? 

Another part of their fight comes to him. She had cocked her head at him, nostrils flaring, and said, You’ve never even been physical with a man, like that was the line. Like queerness is about action and not feelings, not about him at a fundamental level.

And now those words float around him like he’s in a comic book, and he thinks, yes I have.

A trickle of memories starts, slow at first, and then cascading down until they threaten to drown him.

But the thing about the spider is that the sun always comes out to dry the rain away. 

Christmas 2020. Dream doesn’t even remember how it started, but he knows how it escalated. A three way argument breaks out, and they feed off of each other’s energies until a triple dog dare—like he’s back on the playground—has Dream inputting his credit card information into OnlyFans, and suddenly he’s sharing his screen.

Belle Delphine’s highly coveted sex tape is… underwhelming, to say the least. It’s funny. They turn it into a meme, making quips over the screen when she’s grinding on some big teddy bear. The video is so ridiculous and so not-horny that it’s underwhelming.

Still, it makes for a good story to tell. They laugh at each other and argue about who was the most excited about it. George runs a bit into the ground about Sapnap getting a boner, except that Sapnap—rightly—explains that he would have just said if he had a boner, and then Dream’s two best friends overuse the word ‘boner’ until it doesn’t feel like a real word any longer.

It’s a good Christmas. If they can’t all be together, then this is a fun way to spend time. It’s a memory, whether good or bad, and one that Dream feels comfortable enough to eventually tell on stream.

What he doesn’t say, though, is that it’s not the last time something similar happens.

The thing about stuff like this, is that the farther in you creep, the easier it is to trod that same path again, to go a little farther, high on your own daring. 

He calls George one night when he knows he’s not busy to talk about streaming stuff, to share the DSMP storylines he’d discussed with some of the others earlier. Dream is excited and wants to run them past George, who has a way of validating Dream’s enthusiasm, of hyping him up even more.

Sometimes things don’t feel real until he’s told George.

George declines the call. Dream pauses, frowns, and then calls again. When George denies him again, Dream sends a DM to ask what he’s doing. George usually picks up even when he’s taking a shit. Dream wishes he wouldn’t pick up when he’s taking a shit, but that’s where they are.

This time, when he calls, he knows that he’s sufficiently annoyed George into answering. 

“Dream,” he says, annoyed indeed.

“Why didn’t you pick up before?” Dream asks, equally aggravated.

“I’m watching something I knew you wouldn’t want to watch,” George says, all cagey and mysterious. That’s a statement he can’t help but bite.

“What is it?” he demands. “Show me. Share your screen.”

“Dream,” George says and then sighs. 

“I want to see it.”

There’s a pregnant pause. Dream can feel George weighing the decision. He knows if he pushes right now, George will fall on the other side of things. He’s stubborn like that.

“Fine, but I warned you, idiot.” George clicks around and then Dream’s computer lights up with his screen, and it takes an entire ten seconds for his brain to take in what he’s seeing.

“Oh,” Dream says, stupidly.

George huffs an amused laugh. It’s the kind that means he’s laughing at Dream and not with him, but Dream kinda thinks he’s earned that one.

Porn.

George was watching porn, and now somehow Dream is watching it too. George presses play, and the bodies start undulating again. It’s just a man plowing into a naked woman with her heeled feet behind her head, like this is towards the end of the final show, like maybe Dream interrupted at a really key moment.

“Are you happy now, Dream?” George asks, cruelly. Unfortunately for George, it’s not enough to make Dream hang up in embarrassment.

“I mean, yeah,” Dream says, shaky to his own ears. He’s trying desperately to play it off, to make this not weird. “Why are you being weird?” There’s the play. Make George feel like the one who’s being weird. “We’ve shared our screens with porn before. Why’d you make, like, such a big deal out of—this is nothing, George.”

He can hear George lean back in his chair, the little creak giving him away. Dream holds his breath, listening hard for any other tells. Would he be able to hear if George’s hand was on his dick? Would he—

“You know what?” George says, sounding more like himself. “I guess you’re right, Dream.”

“Music to my ears,” Dream says, trying to ignore the way the on-screen woman’s moans have turned into angry grunts. She has sweat pouring down her forehead, which is making her makeup run. All he can see of the man is his lower back flexing while his hips push in and out. It’s a good angle to watch the woman throw her head back in ecstasy.

Dream feels himself harden. He’s not all the way there, not from just this—but he’s interested.

And then George gives a forced exhale—not even a moan—and suddenly Dream’s reminded that he’s not watching this alone. His best friend is here intruding. Actually, Dream’s the intruder. He’s the one who invaded George’s space and made room for himself. He interrupted George’s alone time.

George is probably hard right now. Probably waiting for Dream to lose interest and leave him alone so he can finish. 

“She’s hot,” Dream says instead of making a promise to talk to George later and hanging up. 

George snorts. “She’s okay.”

“You don’t think she’s hot?” Dream asks. His hand sneaks down to rest on his hardness. He’s not doing anything with it, just pressing down lightly, enough to get some relief. He wouldn’t—he’s not touching himself. Not with George on the phone with him. That’s too far.

“If you don’t think she’s hot why are you even—” 

“Ugh, fine,” George interrupts, all huffy breaths. He moves the time stamp backwards to an earlier part of the video. “This is the part I like. She might not be hot, but… just watch.”

Dream watches. Dream—

Fuck.

He’s never seen a head artist before, but this woman is truly gifted. “Holy shit,” he says under his breath.

“Yeah,” George says, knowingly. 

The dick on screen is thick, meaty, the kind that other men like to pretend they have. It looks like it would hurt any orifice it went into, but this woman gasps after it like it has the cure to cancer inside it. 

It’s easy to tell that this isn’t just for show. It is, it’s recorded and distributed after all, but it’s more than that. This is like watching professional sports—it’s watching an expert do the thing they’re most passionate about in the world.

“She’s really taking that dick, huh,” Dream says, pressing his hand down onto his cock. 

“Yeah,” George says, breathless. 

He sounds—he sounds out of it. Dream’s ears perk up, and he lets his focus shift from the hot as sin blowjob happening on screen to the way George breathes into his ear. When he really concentrates, Dream can hear him. He can hear the way his hand is sliding over skin, the padded thwap thwap thwap in time with the woman on screen, and—holy fuck.

If George is going to keep going, then surely he won’t mind if Dream…

His dick feels so good in his hand, better than usual when he does this alone. He makes sure to make a comment about the video every once in a while, but he’s only listening for George now. George holds his focus entirely—his little sounds and pants. 

There’s a thrill to this, of it being wrong or dirty or… or taboo. He’s not supposed to be getting off with his friend, and he’s certainly not supposed to be getting off with his male friend. 

He wants George to turn on his camera and let Dream see him like this. He wants to know what he looks like all sweaty and flushed. Dream wants to see the head of his dick poking out of his grip. He wants—It’s only to compare techniques.

Dream wants to know how he does it differently than George. That’s all. He’s just curious. It’s normal to be curious, to compare yourself to other men. That’s, like, a biological thing, right? To see how you rank in comparison to the competition, of which females will choose to mate with you?

He’s sure he’s read something about that. 

“Watch this part,” George says some time later, his voice low and shaky, a neediness in it that doesn’t sound too far off from when he’s begging Dream to help him in game. 

That doesn’t help Dream’s predicament. 

On screen, the woman is getting skull fucked now and appearing to enjoy it. The camera zooms in on her throat and the dick stuffing her can be seen through the skin. It’s the way she moans and begs for more that makes it as hot as it is.

The guy holds her by the throat, pulls out, and then comes all over her face. George’s breaths crescendo and then stop abruptly, like he’s choking back the sounds of his pleasure—the sounds that Dream now wants to hear more than anything else in the entire world—and then, knowing that George is actively coming right now, Dream twists his wrist and orgasms too.

There’s no time to think about it because the next day they blow up L’Manburg.

They don’t talk about it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen again. 

Dream knows when George is sleeping. They have their sleep schedules synced so well that he has a pretty good idea of when George is passed the fuck out and when he’s awake. It’s Dream who’s the problem with the synchronization. Dream’s the one who tends to go go go until he passes out for eighteen hours, but the go go go part usually coincides with a video edit, and George isn’t with him for that, anyway. 

All his senses tell him that George should be awake. Except that George isn’t answering any form of communication, which makes Dream uneasy. He calls every ten minutes while coding a new plugin to keep his mind occupied.

Finally, George’s Discord light turns green. 

“Where were you?” Dream asks the second George finally picks up.

“Dream, chill,” George says, the echo of his voice prominent to Dream. He’s not in his flat. It sounds like when he’s at the train station on the times he’s ridden the train out to Brighton to meet up with some content creators.

“Are you on the train?” he asks in the same way he would ask if he was high or drunk. Why wouldn’t he have told Dream he was going somewhere?

“I’m just getting off,” George says, and then inexplicably sniggers to himself.

“What does that mean?” Dream asks, meaning George laughing at his own double entendre. 

“Just—”  George says, sounding tired and like he’s losing patience. “Wait a second.”

Dream waits impatiently. His foot taps under his desk, the repetitive noise the only thing soothing him right now. Not even George’s uneven breaths from walking away from the train station are working.

“Can you talk now?” Dream asks.

“No,” George says. “But I can hang up and call you back when—”

“No,” Dream says, shooting that down immediately. He’d rather listen to George huff and puff the two blocks back to his flat than sit here in silence, wondering if George would even pick up again this time.

George hums in answer, and then the breathing picks up, like he’s walking faster. Dream appreciates that he at least is putting in an effort.

“Why can’t you just tell me where you were?” he asks before he means to say anything at all. He can hear George scrambling at the door with his key and then the loud swing of the door opening. Even though he hasn’t seen it, Dream knows there’s a flight of stairs right inside the door. He also knows George likes to take them two at a time.

“Do you want to switch to your PC?” Dream asks, because he can’t help himself. George not answering doesn’t ease his nerves any. If anything, it makes him more nervous.

“No, I don’t,” George says, and then Dream hears a thud of his body hitting his mattress. “Too tired.”

“Why are you—” Dream doesn’t finish the question. This isn’t the block of time where George should be tired. He should be wide awake. 

“Where were you?” he asks, making an effort to keep the accusation out of his voice this time. As much as he wants to know everything, he’s aware that George doesn’t actually owe him anything. George doesn’t have to give his account of where he is at all times.

“Out with a friend,” George says.

Now he was out with a friend? Dream’s stomach sinks. “I didn’t know you were going out to see a friend. Who was it?” He names a few of George’s university friends in turn, asking which of those guys it was.

“Not them,” George answers, hiding a yawn poorly.

“Then who?” Dream asks. He’s frustrated, but he can’t let that show. George will shut down, and then Dream will have to wait weeks for him to calm down enough to bridge the gap again.

“A friend you don’t know about,” George ends up saying. “A special friend.”

“Oh,” Dream says. He takes a sharp breath. Now the remark from earlier makes sense. Unease or something close to it churns in his stomach. “Were you safe? Did she know who you are? Do we need to—”

“Dream,” George says, tone laced with his own brand of frustration. “It’s fine, okay? Just an old friend from before all this. It’s fine.”

“What did you do?” Dream hears himself ask. Someday, his mouth is going to separate entirely from his body. 

 “Just got my dick sucked,” George says, low and all the more vulgar for it. Something twinges in Dream’s abdomen. It’s been a while since the last time he got off, even longer since the last time he got his dick sucked.

“What was it like?” His mouth gets away from him again, like one of those dogs with suds on them running out of the bath. “Let me live vicariously, dude.”

George hums, and Dream can hear him getting comfortable in his bed. “You know.”

“I don’t know, George,” Dream says right away, no time for thought. He’s all raw instincts set on a razor’s edge. “I mean, just tell me.”

“Well,” George says, pitching his voice even lower. “This particular friend of mine, like, really loves sucking dick, you know?”

Dream can’t remember how to breathe.

“This friend, like, begged me to come over,” George continues. “I said no a few times, actually. I knew you’d want to—but this friend was persistent.”

“You chose getting your dick sucked over me?” Dream asks, aware of how jealous he sounds. He’s aware how crazy of a question that is, that he’s coming across like a crazy envious idiot, but he can’t help it.

“I’ve chosen you so many times over—” George stops himself mid-sentence to yawn.

Has he really, Dream wonders. Has he really chosen to hang out with Dream in call rather than go out and hook up with someone?

“Good,” Dream hears himself say. “I mean, like, what else did she do?”

“My friend was down so bad for it,” George says with that easy laugh he does. “I walked in and, like, two seconds later my dick was in a mouth.”

“Was it good?” Dream asks. He doesn’t like how breathless he sounds, like he’s on the edge of his seat. His dick presses up into his briefs, entirely against his will. It’s their little secret, him and his dick. He doesn’t have to tell George.

“You can turn something on,” George says with meaning. His voice is getting weaker like it does when he’s falling asleep. “I don’t mind, but stay with me.”

“Turn what on?” Dream asks, a bit incredulous. How is he supposed to watch a show right now? He needs to get his fist around his dick in about two seconds flat or he’s going to pass out.

“Dream, you know,” George says. “Turn on that video you liked. The one with the blowjob. You can live vicariously through that guy, instead.”

Oh. Oh, holy shit. George wants him to put on porn and listen to him jack off.

“You don’t want me to hang up?” Dream asks, a buzz of excitement that he can’t wrap his head around fluttering in his chest. It’s close to the same feeling when he pushes upload on a YouTube video he knows is going to do well. 

“No, don’t hang up.” George’s breathing changes to sound like it does when he’s asleep.

Dream’s too worked up now to consider sleeping. With George’s idea stuck in his head, he pulls up that video on PornHub that they watched last time. He remembers liking that one. Apparently, George remembers too. He keeps the audio low so he doesn’t disturb George and he grabs the lotion from his desk.

George isn’t on his PC, so there’s no need to share his screen. It’s weirder like this, with only one of them watching the video, but it’s not weird enough to make Dream stop. He’s rock hard, leaking with want. It’s been way too fucking long since he’s had anyone touch him besides his own hands. Fuck. Something about it being George adds to everything, makes it more intense. While he watches the video, he can’t help but imagine George walking into some run down flat in London where the regular people their age who aren’t streaming millionaires live, dropping trou, and a mouth catching him as his dick springs out.

His dick would be smaller, Dream decides. Smaller than his, at least. He’d be shorter and probably thinner too, but that’s not a bad thing. Not for the first time does Dream wonder what it would feel like in his hand, in his mouth. 

He can’t help the way these thoughts occur to him while he’s hard and straining. Everyone agrees that sex thoughts can’t be helped, right? Like, no one can be held responsible for the thoughts they have while they’re masturbating. 

The first pump of his hand down his dick makes him moan. He tries to keep it quiet, tries not to disturb George too much. He wants to let him sleep, but it’s—fuck, it’s so hot to think that he’s working himself to orgasm, and George is just there listening. He’s not distracted by his own pleasure because he’s not even watching. All he can hear is Dream.

Dream has always wanted all of George’s attention on him.

His arm strains as it keeps moving, but this isn’t the first time he’s pushed through that pain. He knows what’s waiting at the end of this will be worth it all. George hums in his ear, and Dream can’t keep a moan from squeezing out. 

“Fuck,” Dream whispers because he can’t just keep it in any longer. 

He slows down his strokes, wanting this to last a bit longer. He’s watching the video, but not taking it in at all. He can see the dick and the woman’s mouth eagerly moving over it, but all his attention is focused in his ears. He’s listening for George, despite trying not to disturb him.

“This woman is almost as desperate as my friend was,” he says, bitchy and judgmental. “Fucking needy slut for it.”

On the upstroke, Dream plays with his head a bit, spreading the precome out. Fuck, it feels good. 

“You’re that needy,” George points out. “Need to come that bad, Dream?”

He can barely breathe, but he manages to say, “Yeah. Yeah, I—”

“Harder or you’re never going to come, Dream,” George says, all practicality like someone trying to hurry him up so he can sleep. And something about that tone makes Dream teeter over the edge, like he’s an afterthought or an inconvenience. Normally, that would spin Dream into a menty b in regards to George, whose attention and good regard he needs all the time, but this? 

In this context, Dream hears himself whine and then jerk himself harder. He needs more lotion, but he doesn’t want to stop. He’s so close. He just needs one last push and—

“Just come, Dream,” George says, less unaffected. 

Dream shoots ropes over his hand, one after another, breathing like he’s twenty miles in on his bike. The orgasm rips out of him, almost painfully so, more powerful than any he’s experienced in a long time. His chest rises and falls quickly—too quickly—his breaths fighting their way out of him. 

“Finally,” George says, like this was all so inconvenient for him. “Now we can go to sleep.”

Dream wipes himself down while the adrenaline crashes. He hadn’t been tired before, but, well, they should probably keep their schedules synced, right?

“Let me go to my room, then.”

After this second time, something clicks in Dream’s brain. He could do this again. There are plenty of people who—

There’s Omegle and other adult sites. It’s not wrong or immoral to find someone willing to touch themselves while he does the same, as long as they’re all adults and consenting. People have been doing this since the dawn of the internet. He’s not special. Not about this, at least. 

It’s an outlet that he didn’t have before.

Dream comes to really like the thrill of getting off with someone on call. It’s not always George. In fact, once he starts exploring properly, he starts finding that there are women around the world that are interested in something similar, even without knowing what his face looks like.

He never makes any promises he can’t keep, and his compliments are always true. He finds partners willing to indulge with him, women who like the way he talks to them when he’s touching himself. 

Always women. He—well, he just wouldn’t be comfortable with any man besides George. Men are terrible. There’s half a moment when he starts to click on the looking for men option—just out of curiosity—and then he remembers his sister and his female friends complaining about how awful men can be on these sites, how they send dick pics first and ask questions never. He doesn’t want it to be like that. That’s too much. He just wants what he knows. He’s comfortable with George, but that’s because they’ve known each other a long time.

He sticks to the women and tries his best not to act like those horror stories from his female acquaintances. He gets plenty of action. It’s not even a big deal.

It’s never quite the same as it is with George, but that had to be because it was the first time, right? He discovered this with George, so that’s always going to be the best. Epic, even.

He considers trying to manipulate events to make it happen with George again, to hear those satisfied sounds that his best friend makes. But something stops him from going through with it.

Dream doesn’t want to bother George with this. George is wrapped up in so many other areas of Dream’s life—his work as well as his personal life—Dream doesn’t want to be a burden on George. He doesn’t want to ask for something and be turned down, even if it is George. Especially if it’s George.

Deep down, he knows he wouldn’t take George’s rejection well. It would ruin everything they’ve built. He would ruin everything they’ve built together. So he won’t ask for more than George can give. He can spread his neediness around for others to pick up the slack.

He won’t ruin everything.

He won’t.

He doesn’t leave it there. This Dream, the current iteration of himself who’s just gone through a fight with his girlfriend, he knows there’s more. His brain keeps lying to him, keeps trying to obfuscate the facts, to hide things. It’s really starting to piss him off. 

He tethers himself to that anger because it’s better to be angry than to be ignorant. Anger is a response to a stressor. Ignorance is just dumb.

He won’t be ignorant any longer.

He needs to know what else he’s hiding from himself.

He reaches down inside himself and he yanks the truth free.

Halloween sucks without George. If he didn’t have Sapnap, though, he’d have already fallen into an inescapable pit of depression. 

Sapnap makes him do fun things. It’s Sapnap who ordered a million costumes for them to try on—ones that would hide his face. It’s Sapnap who insists they take stupid pictures and post them online. After the first few pictures, Dream gets into it. His face is hidden. He likes how much taller he looks than Sapnap. They get goofy with it, holding hands and having Nick jump on his back.

It’s fun.

They’re missing George like a phantom limb, but manage to have a good time. Hopefully, if all goes well, they’ll have him with them this time next year. No more Halloweens without George. No more George birthdays across the ocean. It’ll be all DreamTeam all the time.

Soon.

Later that evening, when he puts his headset on at his computer to talk to George, he realizes he’s still wearing one of the Squidgame masks. It feels more like a bandanna than a mask, so he had forgotten about it.

“Ow, shit,” he says when George picks up. His hair got caught in the mask and the headset.

“What’s wrong with you?” George asks. They don’t really believe in polite greetings here. If there are no greetings or goodbyes, then they can just pretend they’re having one big, long conversation and not a series of them. It’s almost like George is already here, living his life beside Dream. 

At least that’s how Dream sees it. Who knows how George will see it.

“Happy birthday,” Dream says sweetly. It’s not time yet here in Florida, but it’s George’s birthday in George’s timezone and that’s important. He likes to be the first to acknowledge it.

“Yes,” George says. “But it’s not my birthday for you yet.”

“Okay, but it is for you,” Dream says. 

“No, I—that’s not what I meant to—Happy Halloween, Dream,” George says. He sounds nervous, now that Dream’s listening. 

“Yeah, you’ve already said that today,” Dream says, confused. “What’s going on? Why are you being all weird? Is this a crisis? Are you having a mid-twenties crisis right now? Because I—”

“Dream, shut up,” George says, and now that sounds like him. 

“Fine.”

“You guys done with your photo shoot?” George asks. He’s been weird about the photo shoot, but it wasn’t Dream’s idea in the first place so he’s directed that passive-aggressiveness to Sapnap where it belongs.

“Yeah, we’re done. Nick’s looking through them to find the best ones and then we’ll post them. The fans are gonna love it.”

George snorts. “Do you think I should take some of my own?”

Dream pauses. There’s something in the way he said that, something he can’t put his finger on but strikes him as odd. George loves a silly outfit, Dream knows. George loves to buy a themed outfit for a stream—the chef outfit for his cooking stream, a coach outfit for MCC one time. But he doesn’t buy Halloween costumes unless he’s going somewhere.

How does he have them now? Them? Costumes? How many is he planning on—

“Or, maybe I can just show you?” George suggests, all mysterious and with a touch of nerves. Dream is so confused. He’s, like, well past confused, but intrigued.

“Show me,” he says, and it comes out a command. 

George’s camera turns on, but he’s not sitting at his chair. His chair is empty, the room dark like it only is in their late night Snapchats. Dream’s eyes strain trying to take it all in.

“Where are you?” Dream asks, sitting even closer to the screen.

“I’m here, idiot,” George says from off camera. 

“Well, let me see your costume,” Dream tells him. “Why are you being all mysterious?”

“It’s called showmanship, Dream. Ever heard of it?”

“I’ve heard of stupidity,” Dream says, “when you got diagnosed.”

“Shut up, nimrod,” George says, but he’s laughing. “Okay, are you ready?”

“George…” Dream says, drawing out his name. This is so dumb, but Dream’s excited to see it now. Sometimes George really surprises him. That’s one of the things that makes their friendship so fun—George isn’t predictable. 

George lets one finger dangle into the frame from the top. “Can you tell what I am yet, Dream?” The finger is blurry and not anywhere near in focus, but Dream’s more amused than anything else.

“Sexy nurse,” Dream guesses. “No, wait, sexy doctor.”

George’s laugh might wake up the neighborhood. The fabric over his finger is red, which tells Dream absolutely nothing, but it’s fun to throw out ridiculous guesses.

“Sexy firefighter?” Dream says, just to keep him laughing. “Sexy librarian?” 

“Dream, it’s not—why do you keep guessing sexy things?” George says between gasps for air.

“Those are really common costumes?” Dream says, playing dumb. “I’m being inclusive? And now you’re canceled, George.”

“No, don’t cancel me,” George whines. 

“Then show me your costume,” Dream says.

“Alright, fine,” George says. “Fine. I’ll do it. I’m doing it.”

Two more fingers dangle into frame. Dream groans. “George!”

“Fine, fine,” he says, and then trips over the chair while he steps fully into frame and—and Dream loses all the breath in his body.

He can’t breathe. He can’t—holy fuck. 

Holy fucking shit.

“Dream?” George asks, a note of self-consciousness in his tone.

“George,” he gasps out. He can’t say more than that, can’t take his eyes off of the red and blue with black lines. The fabric clings tightly to his lithe body, highlighting parts of George that Dream has only thought about. 

Without higher thought, his fingers find the print screen button. He clicks it a few times, knowing that he has to preserve this. He—he needs to see this every day of his life. Or maybe never again. It can only be one of those two extremes.

“It’s more comfortable than I had thought,” George remarks like he’s talking about a car he’s thinking about purchasing and not the superhero costume he bought and wore just to needle Dream. 

Is that the plan? To get under Dream’s skin? Because it’s working. 

“Do you like it?” George asks when Dream hasn’t said anything for far too long. 

His mouth is dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He’s not sure, but his heart might be beating the fastest any human heart has ever beat. He’d have to look it up, but he thinks he might have a shot at it.

“Dream?” George asks, a hint of unease coloring his tone. No, he can’t be self-conscious about this. He can’t—

“Yeah, I’m—I’m here,” he manages to say around a tongue that doesn’t want to work.

“I know you’re there, idiot,” George says, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t have the mask on and that only makes it hotter. It’s George. It’s very obviously George with his face uncovered, but that body he’s showing off is new. It’s new to Dream. He had no idea…

“You dressed up as Spider-Man, George?” Dream asks, begging his stupid body to behave and work with him here. “Are you finally admitting he’s the best superhero?”

“Of course not,” George says, like Dream is an idiot. It’s common enough to set Dream a little at ease. “I’m just giving you a special treat. That’s all.”

“Two of my favorite things together,” Dream says, appreciatively. His thoughts are spinning so fast they’re tripping over each other, but the one thing he can’t ignore is that this was George’s idea. He did this on his own. Of his own volition. 

Dream is supposed to look, he tells himself. He’s supposed to be affected. In whatever long con game he’s playing with George—and make no mistake, this is part of their game—George has dealt a big gambit. 

He’s one of two people who knows what Spider-Man means to Dream. No, he wasn’t party to Dream’s unconscious images of the man behind that mask, or the ways in which that body can make his own feel good, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what Spider-Man represents to Dream.

He knows what he’s doing.

“Should I take some pictures in this, Dream?” George asks. Dream can’t read his tone since all the blood is traveling very quickly to his dick.

“Yes, absolutely,” Dream says, pushing the print screen button again, like he needed the reminder. 

“I wish I had someone here to, like, take the pictures,” George says.

Dream almost whines. He wants to be there so badly. He wants to teleport to London, to George’s flat specifically. He wouldn’t go anywhere else or see anything else, just—just George. George dressed up as Spider-Man with no visible lines where his briefs would be. 

Holy fuck.

He’s not wearing underwear.

“I would take them,” Dream says after a too long minute. “I could figure out your best angles.”

“Yes,” George says, “and you’d have no ulterior motives at all.”

“None whatsoever,” Dream says, and then rearranges his dick inside his sweatpants where it’s starting to get uncomfortable. 

“You’re so brave, Dream. You’re so nice to volunteer to take my picture,” George says. “It’s too bad I have to do this alone.”

Dream watches as George pulls his phone up and takes a few pictures of himself from a high angle. It’s not doing him justice. Dream doesn’t need to see those pictures to know. 

“Need a better system,” George says, mostly to himself. Dream can tell the difference now. He watches with bated breath as George plays with the settings on his phone, and then sets his phone up on the desk under the stream camera and poses. “How was that one, Dream?” he asks.

Dream clears his throat. “Great. Yeah, I—it was good.”

George smirks, and it goes right to Dream’s stomach, flipping it over and over. His hands come back to the desk and he sets up for another picture at a slightly different angle. Dream watches with his jaw on the floor when George drops into a Spider-Man pose, wobbling as he does it and laughing at himself. It doesn’t keep it from being the hottest thing Dream has ever—

“That’s a good one,” Dream manages to say. “Very, um. Very Spider-Man-like.”

“Yeah?” George asks, standing back up. The fabric bunches around his crotch and Dream stares unashamedly. “I think I’m starting to get his, like, essence.”

George does another pose with his back—his ass, his big juicy ass—to the camera and looking over his shoulder like a classic superhero pose. Unfortunately for Dream, George’s starting to grow in confidence, walking around the flat where the camera will pick him up. He walks back to what Dream calls the height check door and then back to the PC. Yeah, his ass looks—

Dream gives up. He pulls his dick out of his pants. He’s not touching it more than that, just—just letting it breathe. 

“You’re torturing me,” he says when George does a turn that shows off his ass again.

“I just wanted you to be part of my Halloween photo shoot,” George says, fake confused and innocent. 

“I feel…” Dream pauses and considers the right word. It doesn’t materialize in his head, so he lamely finishes with, “included.”

“Good,” George says, turning to face the camera head on now. 

He can’t touch himself to only George. He can’t. He can’t just— There’s a line and he can’t cross it. He’s not touching himself right now. He’s just—he’s re-arranging his dick. Again. He—he’s just stifled in these sweatpants. He’s—fuck.

This is torture. “I have to—”

“I found something you might be interested in,” George says, cutting Dream’s escape attempt off. He walks back to his PC and sits down, and then his camera turns off and he starts sharing his screen.

Dream has the world’s worst whiplash. His dick aches, but he’s determined not to touch it more than he has, but he really needs to go to his bedroom, or really just get off this call.

“What did you find?” Dream forces himself to ask, to show interest in what George is talking about. He’s cosplaying a normal person while George is dressed like that. 

“You’ll see,” George says, and then types something too quick on his incognito tab. Dream can’t concentrate on following what he’s doing. He closes his eyes for a moment—George’s form in the Spider-Man suit superimposed behind his eyelids. Fuck, he’s going to be seeing that forever. 

He’s not mad about it.

“Here,” George says.

Dream’s eyes snap open and he—he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing at first.

“George, what?”

George does a little half giggle half snort thing. Dream can tell he’s nervous, but that makes him all the more endearing.

“It’s—you know,” George says, while the forms onscreen start to become clear to Dream. It’s porn. It’s another porn video, but this time there are three actors onscreen and one of them is dressed in a skin tight Spider-Man suit. It’s not the cheap, ugly kind, either. They obviously sprung for a high quality suit.

“How are they not getting sued by Marvel?” Dream asks, awed.

“Shut up and just watch, Dream,” George says. 

Dream watches the video for the next little while, his hand snaking around his erection. He’s allowed to now, since George isn’t the only thing here. There’s porn now. They’re back on equal footing, back to precedent where this has happened before. Dream knows the rules again.

He doesn’t want to come too soon though. He doesn’t want George to know how keyed up he was, and part of him just wants to see more of this video. He isn’t sure how much of it he’ll catch if he comes too fast. He’s not even sure if George is, um, partaking as well. 

“Be right back,” George says.

Dream doesn’t respond. He’s watching Spider-Man get hard through his suit while a woman with long talony nails and a slender guy with poofy hair both rub at his crotch with their hands. Fuck, Dream squirms in his seat. The two not in costume start making out over the bulge and Dream aches.

“Okay, I’m back,” George says, breathless like he was hurrying. “Had to take that off. There’s no—I’m back.”

Is he naked? Did he put clothes back on after? Did he put boxers on? Dream knows he prefers to sleep in those. 

“Where did you find this?” Dream asks because if he doesn’t ask this question, then he’s going to ask if George is naked, and he really can’t afford to think about that.

“On Reddit.” George’s lotion makes a loud sound, and then Dream knows that he’s participating. He’s getting himself wet. He’s—

Dream’s thighs are quivering. He hasn’t been touching himself. He’s been holding off, trying to figure out what’s happening in this entire situation. Part of him is hoping for permission, as stupid as that is. He whines pathetically in frustration.

“Watch this part,” George says, bringing Dream’s attention back to the video. Clearly he’s watched this already. Did he think about Dream while he was watching this? He had to have at some point in order to decide to make Dream watch it too.

In the video, the twink guy has found a hidden panel in the suit and opened it up to release Spider-Man’s throbbing, veiny dick. Dream, to his horror, feels himself drooling. Fuck, that’s a good dick. He doesn’t—he can’t—

What is wrong with him?

The twink jerks the dick a few times and then kneels in front of it, the woman meeting him there. They argue with horrible acting about who gets to suck him first while Dream’s going insane. He’s actually going insane. This is so hot. He clenches the base of his dick while the two actors start making out over the Spider-Man dick, including it in their sloppy kiss, running their mouths up and down the shaft and kissing over the head. Dream can’t fucking stand it. 

“That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever—” He breathes painfully, like someone is pressing down on his chest. Maybe he’s dead and it’s CPR. Either way, he no longer has control over his hands. He gives himself a few jerks watching this blowjob, George’s quiet sounds of pleasure mixed in, and he comes so hard that he passes out for a moment.

“Dream? Dr-Eam,” George is saying when he finally comes back to himself. “Dream, are you alive?”

“I’m alive,” he says. “Unless this is death, in which case I hope no one ever learns how I died.”

“I hope I get your money and your channel,” George says, laughing. “I’m in the will, right?”

“I’m making a new will,” Dream declares. “I’ve giving all my money to Marvel.”

“Well, hey, now,” George says, laughing along. “Let’s not be too hasty.”

“Hasty,” Dream repeats, the word sounding funny to him.

“Hasty pastey,” George adds, nonsensically. 

They sit there while their breathing calms down. Dream rummages in his desk drawer for the Lysol wipes he thankfully decided to keep in here. You never know when those puppies will come in handy.

“Fuck, I got—I got come on my keyboard,” George says in that voice he does when he’s complaining, all world-weary and like no one has ever had it as bad as him.

Dream snorts. “Mine seems to have just gotten all over myself.”

George’s silence takes on a different energy. He makes a little sound that Dream can interpret. “Really?”

Dream looks down at his chest where the come is sticking to his shirt and blanches. “Yeah. At least I can just hose off. It’ll be harder to get that shit off your keyboard.”

“Can I see?”

“See what?” Dream asks, mind already working to figure out how to clean all this up. The screenshare stops, but he doesn’t pay it any attention. He makes a mental note to get George to send that video to him later, for research. Yeah, research. Sure.

“Can I see?” George asks again, all pleading and insistent. He hasn’t specified what he wants to see, so it takes an extra beat for Dream to realize what he’s asking for.

He wants to see the come on Dream’s shirt? On his chest?

“Snapchat,” Dream answers, pulling up his phone. He won’t let George have that ammunition, but he’ll let him see. George is such a troll, he’s likely to send his own come covered picture the next time Dream’s streaming just to watch him squirm and have to stumble over himself in explanation to their fans.

The asshole.

Dream takes a blurry picture, fixes his shaking hands, and takes a better picture to send. He’s careful to make sure his face isn’t included, and then he sends it.

“Holy shit, Dream,” George says. “You came a lot.”

“Shut up,” Dream says, self-conscious. Why did he even send that to George? He didn’t even question it, just sent the picture the second George asked. Fuck, he’s such a simp. 

“I mean, I knew you had a thing for Spider-Man, but this is—”

“Shut up, George,” Dream says through his laughter. “You’re such a little shit.”

“Ah, but I’m the one who found this holy grail for you, man,” George says. “You could be thanking me. I’m already sending it to you.”

“Fuck,” Dream says. The cleanup is moving from a pressing need to an urgent, urgent red alert. “I can’t believe you got me a gift for your birthday.”

George snorts. “What can I say? I’m a giver.”

It’s Dream’s turn to laugh condescendingly. Sure. Alright.

Dream can’t deny he’s interested in the give of the Spider-Man suit against George’s lithe body. 

It’s a good thing he got those screenshots.

At the lake, Dream shakes. He lifts his hands up to eye level and watches them tremble before him. How could he—he didn’t forget. Not really. But he pushed that shit down so hard and so far, that it wasn’t ever going to see the light of day again.

Why had he pushed it down? They didn’t do anything wrong, technically. George had been so—so sensual. He’d planned that. He’d bought the Spider-Man costume and he’d already found the video that he clearly had planned to show Dream.

It’s just sex! It was just, like, jerking off together like he’s done with a lot of people a lot of times! Why would it be different with George? Why would he have forgotten it?

Why did it feel dangerous enough to him that he repressed it?

It wasn’t the last time, either…

After the face reveal, the false allegations hit like a plane crash. The setback with Dream’s reputation online—if he’s calling it anything, it’s something along those lines—affects more than just Dream. Thousands of fans leave in droves, taking their subs with them and their Twitter follows. As more leave, Dream loses steam for all the plans he had for content.

Now, only a few weeks after what was supposed to be the best months of his life, he can’t find it in himself to do anything like what he was planning. 

Until Christmas.

He goes to Antarctica because Mr. Beast practically forced him. He almost died, but it’ll be worth it to tell the grandkids someday.

Christmas, though. Christmas has a special meaning for Dream, not only for his family, but also the fandom. He knows the fans who did stay, the ones who saw through the bullshit and were able to think for themselves—those fans deserve something nice. Those fans deserve something for sticking around, for putting up with the vitriolic hate that Dream knows they get all the time.

Dream Team Christmas is the best idea he’s had in a while. In a burst of creative energy and excitement, Dream calls both his best friends on Discord to plan out the most epic Dream Team Stream Train that there ever was. No, he doesn’t do it in person, that doesn’t even occur to him. He sees that both of them are online and he simply takes his chance.

George and Nick agree so quickly that it’s funny. The three of them start shooting out ideas and calling dibs on whose channel gets what idea. Sapnap wants to make cookies. George wants to decorate gingerbread houses. And Dream just wants to shower his friends in presents. Lucky for him, he finds a way to make it work within the constraints of a stream.

It’s on.

He’s not prepared, however, for Hurricane George. He opens his presents, and when the Spider-Man plushie lands in his hands—he can’t help the full body laughter that comes out. George doesn’t help, his little giggles egging Dream on. The idea of all that’s come from Dream’s little crush on Spider-Man… the strange circumstances they’ve shared because of it—he can’t help it. It is funny. The audience won’t get it, but Dream doesn’t need them to.

This is just for him and George.

When the camera isn’t on them, in the brief break when they cut the stream to prepare for the next one, George leans into Dream and whispers, “Now you can fulfill all your fantasies, you sick freak.”

“You’re so stupid,” he manages to say back, quiet enough to not be overheard by their friends. Hopefully. He doesn’t want to have to explain the context.

George leaves him with a knowing look and then hops up to help Sylvee move the tripod to an ideal position to capture the cookie making extravaganza.

They get goofy with these streams. Dream feels like he’s on top of the world. He has the two best friends anyone has ever had in the entire world. He has a group of people who actually like his content, who have been waiting for years to celebrate his friendship. They’re just as happy as he is to have all three of them together for this holiday.

He lets loose. 

His mouth makes jokes that his body won’t cash. He teases George about where his mouth should go as payback for the Spider-Man plushie, but with one withering look, Dream knows this isn’t the end of it.

That’s one thing about playing this game with George. There’s no winning or losing, there’s only another round. There’s only escalation. There’s only walking the tightrope to see who will fall off first.

Unfortunately, the thrill of the game keeps Dream too interested to give up or give in. Because that’s the only way to ever really end the game.

Disinterest.

He’s certainly not disinterested when they’re dancing around the kitchen, making fun of each other, leaning over the other unnecessarily. Dream isn’t disinterested when he makes George cut out his hand in dough, when he chooses deliberately to sit beside him at the breakfast bar, when he leans in close to examine his hideous gingerbread house.
 
Dream is not disinterested when the cameras finally cut off and they separate into their rooms, hauling the most interesting gifts into their caves to add to their hoards. Dream watches carefully as George selects his chocolates to take tonight. In answer, he waits until George turns back to stare at him before he picks up the Spider-Man toy. He tucks it under his arm while his heart slams around inside his ribs.

When he meets George’s eyes, taking every inch of bravery he’s ever had, he finds them dark. There’s a matching smirk growing across his face.

Dream spreads out his gifts on his bed, already knowing it’s going to take forever for him to put them away, let alone the ones outside. His mom will probably get onto him about it in a week when they get back from spending the holiday at his parents’ house.

Oh yeah, he’s bringing George to Christmas. Nick has a flight early tomorrow to make it back to Houston for a few days, but George? He’s coming home with Dream.

Why does that feel more important than anything else that’s happened?

He doesn’t want to examine that thought, and so he turns his mind to the Spider-Man. George just had to go there, didn’t he? Dream smiles to himself, still amused. He let him get away with it, too. What exactly was he going to say? That George chose their very public stream to tease him about his boycrush on Spider-Man?

It was pretty epic, though, he has to admit. He turns the stupid thing over in his hand. It’s not very big and it’s not—it’s not the real Spider-Man. Or, well, it’s the cartoony version which doesn’t really do it for Dream. Not the way George intended for it to. Dream isn’t Sapnap. Anime and cartoons don’t get his motor running, but—as he turns it over again in his hand…

The thing is… it’s cheap. This is the kind of slop they throw together for cheap in China and then sell for pennies of what they should be paying their workers. Dream understands things like that now that he owns a t-shirt company. It’s already coming apart at the seams. For a heartbeat, Dream is upset. This was a gift from George, he doesn’t want it to break. He’s not nearly as sentimental as George, but he still likes it because it made George so happy to give it to him. 

The seam on the back is broken, little fluffs of cotton are poking out. He doesn’t know how to sew. How the hell is he supposed to fix this?

Can he fix this?

He rubs at the seam a little, thinking—who even knows. He just likes the texture. Under his forefinger, more cotton comes spilling out and that’s when the worst idea comes crashing out.

It’s the kind of idea that he knows is a bad one. It’s such a bad idea. He hears himself laugh hollowly into the room because as much as he knows it’s a bad idea, and he really shouldn’t be doing it—he already knows he’s going to.

Fuck. He might have known the second he opened this gift up what was going to happen. Did George know? When he picked this up at Target and he giggled like a mad man in the aisle alone staring at it, knowing what it would do to force Dream to open it on camera—did he know how this would play out?

Somehow, Dream thinks he might have known. He must have.

He planned this, somehow, that gremlin. 

And so Dream goes about setting up this stupid, terrible fucking idea, with arms that don’t quite feel like they belong to him and skin that feels too tight.

He rips the seam open. He crosses the room in a few steps and throws open his nightstand drawer. Under the new box of tissues and a broken phone charger he forgot to throw out, Dream finds what he’s looking for. He lays the fleshlight on his bed and then stares down at it for a long moment.

It’s for the meme. All guys do weird sexual shit for the meme, right? There was that time they watched Belle Delphine’s only fans porn on Christmas. This isn’t that different.

His bottle of lube stares at him from the nightstand. He can almost feel the weight of its judgment, but that’s not enough to stop Dream. The idea is too strong, too compelling. He’s starting to get chubbed up just from the excitement about it.

Or maybe it’s because of how wrong it is. Kinda taboo. Kinda risky. Kinda—that’s all part of it. There’s a small chance—tiny—that one of his friends comes and knocks on his door and catches him. 

He’d simply die if that happened, but he can’t ignore the thrill it sends down his spine.

Spider-Man sits on his bed, ass up, spread seam looking at him like a dare. 

“What the fuck am I doing?” he asks no one, and no one answers.

Careful fingers push the fleshlight into the seam. He can’t fit it so he has to take the fleshlight back out and then pull out some of the stuffing, cheap shit that he’ll find Patches trying to eat if he’s not careful. With less stuffing, the fleshlight goes in. He has to angle it so the tube fits entirely inside the material and still his dick will poke out the other end.

“God, this is so stupid.” But he’s already getting the lube out and spreading it inside the fleshlight and then giving himself a few strokes. He feels stupid with his clothes still on, so he places the toy back on his bed and quickly steps out of his shirt and pants. His debates internally on if he should keep his briefs on before deciding that’s really the stupidest thing he’s worried about this entire time, so he kicks those off too and aims towards his laundry basket. 

Front or back? Does he want to stare at the little cartoon eyes, or…

Back, definitely. 

It doesn’t feel any differently than when he otherwise uses his fleshlight. Of course it doesn’t. It’s not some completely different thing. But there is something to be said about how wrong it is, how crazy and wild and—and if anyone knew he was doing this, they’d think he was dirty and—

He gets even harder.

His phone pings on the other side of the bed. He’s pretty sure he put his phone on DND, so that means there’s only one person it could be. To his humiliation, a moan rises up out of him. Spider-Man is one thing. He cannot be thinking about George when—

The phone pings again. George is getting impatient. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

If Dream doesn’t answer, would he—would he come down here and knock on the door? Would he demand a response? Would he catch Dream like this, balls deep in the Spider-Man plushie George bought him and think he’s gross? 

The phone pings again and then it lights up. George is calling him. Well, fuck, the rational part of Dream knows that if he doesn’t pick up, George absolutely will come down here. He doesn’t want that to actually happen, as fun as it is to think about it.

He scrambles over the bed to grab his call.

“Why were you ignoring me?” George says as soon as the call connects.

“I was busy,” Dream says, hating how breathy it comes out. His dick is still stuck in the fleshlight inside the Spider-Man toy. Like, he straight up looks like he’s fucking this Spider-Man plushie and it’s making him crazy.

“Busy doing what?” George asks, bitchy and annoyed. They’ve gone over this before. Just because Dream gives him more attention than anyone else doesn’t mean he’s actually entitled to Dream whenever he wants him!

“None of your—nothing,” Dream says, starting to get a little desperate. He wants to keep moving. He’s past the point of stopping. If he actually tried to stop right now it would hurt. It would be painful. His balls would be bluer than the ass he’s humping.

“It’s something,” George says. When he gets something in his head, he won’t let it go. He doesn’t like a mystery. He hates to be kept out of something, and usually Dream would just give in and would voluntarily tell George whatever he asked about.

But this?

Absolutely not.

“Nothing. I’m hanging up now,” Dream says, determined to do just that. Objective accomplished. George knows he’s not dead. That should be enough.

“No, don’t hang up!” George cries. He has this way about him, this voice that he can do that Dream falls for every single time. It’s a pleading thing, several parts vulnerable and a few parts pathetic. It’s like the cry of a newborn kitten.

Dream’s dick gives a twitch and he hates himself a little bit.

“What do you want, George?” he hears himself asking, soft and desperate. 

He can’t do this. He can’t do this with George here talking to him, but it’s like his hips are disconnected from his brain. Against his will, his hips start moving again, that squelching sound too loud for the room. He holds his breath while he waits to see how George responds.

“What’s that sound?” George asks. 

Dream freezes.

He always forgets that they’re both like this—both attuned to each others’ sounds, used to picking up on the smallest inconsistencies and putting together a picture of what the other’s doing. Dream used to be able to tell when George walked around his flat, when he closed a cabinet door in his kitchen.

George is the same. He knows the squeaks of Dram’s chair. He knows the different sighs Dream gives and how much he can push up against them and if Dream is likely to move.

“No, really, Dream,” George says. He sounds more alert now, more like his usual self. Unfortunately, that has the effect of making Dream want to push harder and faster. “What is that?”

His hips—treacherous things—start up without his permission. The squelching sound is back, quieter than before. He’s hoping George will let it go. He holds his fingers over the mouthpiece of his phone to keep the sound from coming through, but he’s too desperate. He can’t stop, not when he’s so fucking close.

“Are you doing what I think you’re doing, Dream?” George asks, deep. There’s a color of judgment and disgust in the question, but also interest. Dream takes hold of the interest and grabs on tight.

“I don’t—I can’t—” He can’t form words, apparently. 

“You had to run away from us, back to your room, sequester yourself away, and for what?” George asks. He’s not hanging up. “To go touch yourself? You were so pent up you had to go beat off?”

“George,” he says. Sometimes that’s the only word that will come out. 

George isn’t hanging up. He isn’t telling Dream to stop. He hasn’t ended the conversation. Dream takes that as permission. If George continues to stay on the call knowing what Dream is doing, that’s on him. He might not know the exact details of it all, but he knows.

“You answered the phone,” George says, a sense of wonder bleeding through. “You’re jerking off, and when I called, you answered.”

“You would have knocked on the door,” Dream points out. His hips maintain the perfect rhythm. He’s not pushing himself to come quickly, just enjoying the feel of the wet fleshlight while he has George’s voice in his ear. If he closes his eyes, it’s almost like—

“I bet you would have liked that, you freak,” George says. The tone isn’t nearly as harsh as the words. It almost makes Dream whimper. 

“No,” Dream denies. “Didn’t want you to—to see this.”

“See what?” George asks. “You jerking it? You think you’re the first man to ever stroke his dick? I’ve literally heard you before, you idiot.”

Dream stays silent. 

“Unless, there’s something else…” George says. He trails off while the sound of Dream’s dick squelching in the fleshlight is loud enough to almost cover up Dream’s rabbiting heart. 

Please don’t let him ask more questions. Please let him leave it there.

“What’s different, Dream?” George asks, an authority behind his voice that Dream can’t ignore. He doesn’t automatically answer, but he can’t ignore it, either. 

“Stop,” Dream says, pitifully. They both know he doesn’t really mean it.

“What are you doing?” George asks again. “How naughty are you being?”

“George, just—”

“Tell me, Dream,” George says. “Don’t make me come down there and find out. If I have to come down there…”

“Fleshlight,” Dream says, answering the question.

“You’re fucking a fleshlight?” George asks. Dream’s too in his own feels to gauge George’s tone. There’s something he can only touch but not grasp. 

“Put it in the Spider-Man you gave me,” Dream admits.

George moans into the phone and Dream almost comes. “Fuck, really?”

“George,” Dream says, warning.

“You’re fucking Spider-Man, Dream?” George asks. “God, that’s so hot. Holy fuck. Show me.”

“No,” Dream says. 

“Dream, please, I want to see,” George whines.

“George…”

“Snapchat it to me,” George says, which isn’t the worst idea. “I bet it’s—I mean, fuck, I want to—Dream, please.”

He’s so close, is the thing. With George talking desperately in his ear, he’s ratcheting up closer to the end. This close to orgasm, he can’t be held accountable for what he’s saying. He can’t be judged for the way he immediately switches over to Snapchat to record his dick fucking into the blue ass of this Spider-Man. He gives George a show, stroking at different speeds and ending on pistoning. Fuck, it feels good. Fuck, it’s crazy that George is about to see this—that he’s about to hear George see this. 

That’s so hot. He’s so so close.

This is dangerous, but he’s too into it to care.

He sends the video.

He pulls the phone back up to his ear to listen. He slows down enough to be able to hear the stifled gasp George lets out. He moans. George moans and Dream mirrors it.

“Are you close?” George asks, just above a whisper and deep. The pitch is so low that it almost travels down Dream’s spine right to his cock.

“Yeah,” he manages to say. It’s hard. Words are too much when he’s balancing the phone and the fleshlight and—

“Then, I think you should come, Dream,” George says. “I think you should fill him up. Fuck him good, Dream. He needs it. He—”

Dream’s vision whites out as he comes maybe the hardest he’s ever come in his entire life. 

In his ear, he hears George’s breaths speed up, small grunts filling his ears until Dream can tell the exact moment George comes too. It’s wild that he knows, but he does. They’ve done this enough that Dream knows.

He did that. He made George come.

Another aftershock orgasm hits him at the thought. Holy fuck.

They sit in companionable silence for a long moment. Dream’s dick starts to feel uncomfortable where it’s still sitting in this fleshlight. He came inside this plushie—his come is mixed into the cotton of the little Spider-Man and the shame of it starts to creep into his consciousness.

Uh-oh.

Just when he’s about to say something, to comment on the situation, to try to return them to some semblance of normal, George speaks. “Goodnight, Dream.”

And then he hangs up.

Dream gasps as the memories finish pouring over him. He’d forgotten how often he—

Dream had let himself believe that what he did with George wasn’t a big deal. Part of him still believes it’s not. It’s stuck inside his brain on a setting that he can’t turn off until he factory resets.

Because while his brain thinks it means nothing, his heart knows otherwise. 

He wasn’t going around having esex with Sapnap, or with any of his other male friends. For the briefest of moments, Dream imagines what it would be like to have esex with Bad, and he almost hurls. He loves Bad, just—not like that. He loves Sapnap, but not like that. He’s not attracted to either of them.

Not like he is to George.

His brain had locked this down tight, and for a brief, wondrous moment, Dream thinks that’s all it was hiding in the deep dark. It was just his sexual attraction to George that he’d buried deep in order to keep their friendship first and foremost as the most important thing.

He was wrong.

Because that still doesn’t answer the question of why he couldn’t even think about it. He’s known—the internet at large has known—for some time that Dream has a fascination with George that can’t be explained platonically.

It’s not a surprise that he’s attracted to George, not really. 

It’s the other thing that’s so terrifying.

The thing hiding in the dark.

Chapter Text

This part—

Dream almost gives up.

He wants to stand up from this place, brush his ass of dirt, and drive himself home. He’d pretend he wasn’t mad anymore, refuse to talk again about the fight they had earlier. He’d bottle it back up, stuff it down beside the message crying out for help, and he wouldn’t look back.

He almost does.

Something stops him.

He’s gripping the railing on this dock with a white knuckled fist. When he looks down at his hands, there’s something carved into the wood beside his left thumb. He lets go only to brush it off for a better look, and when he finally makes out the shape, he wishes he hadn’t.

It’s a wonky heart. The sides are uneven because whoever carved it here used a knife of some sort. Probably a swiss army knife, but knowing these fishmongers, it could have been anything. Maybe even a hook.

It grasps him. That little heart etches itself behind Dream’s eyes, and when he tries to leave, tries to close his eyes and count to ten and then move—all he can see is that little heart.

George comes here. 

This is George’s lake.

Is this George’s heart?

Probably not, Dream tells himself. George isn’t the type to carve things into structures that other people could find. He doesn’t deface public property, even if Dream thinks it would be funny, even if Sapnap were to goad him.

So, this probably isn’t George’s heart.

Dream’s fingers move on their own, wily bastards, and he watches himself caress the carving. Because, he thinks, what if? What if it’s George’s heart? What then?

Why does Dream suddenly care so much?

Why does that feel so monumental?

You’ve never kissed a guy or had feelings for one, she had said, throwing the accusation at him. He hadn’t remembered at the time, but that’s not the truth.

That’s not the truth at all, as it turns out.

Another round of memories assault him, and this time they aren’t as passive as water falling onto him. These memories are like rocks, pelting him, punishment for forgetting in the first place. These memories rear up and demand to be felt, and all Dream can do is go along for the ride.

There’s no beginning to this. There’s no beginning except maybe the day he first met George. Maybe the day he first talked to George. But maybe it was after that, one of those random days where things slipped out of Dream’s control. One day, they were best friends, and the next day, Dream can’t imagine his life without George.

He’s never had anyone like that in his life. Sapnap comes close, but he’s—he’s a brother. He’s another brother as dear as his own, a lifeline and a shield, but he doesn’t make Dream’s life meaningful. He doesn’t make Dream’s heart beat faster. 

There are moments sprinkled along their entire timeline. Even before George knew what Dream looked like, even before Dream knew what George looked like. There’s just something different about George, some way that he slips under Dream’s guard.

He can no longer deny the sexual attraction, that the things they’ve done over the years aren’t normal between friends. He’s done such a great job forgetting those things that now that they’re stirred up, he can’t help but wander farther down that path.

If it was just sex stuff, he wouldn’t have this feeling that he’s missing something. He wouldn’t have this—this—fuck, this yearning in his heart.

He remembers rushing to clock out from his job at Apple to jump on a call with George and play Minecraft. He remembers the tedious process of teaching himself to code, of asking George to check his work and provide insight. Dream isn’t a great learner—he knows that about himself—but he respected George’s opinion and his knowledge. He let George teach him.

When they worked together on the Munchy server, Dream didn’t know he could click with someone so well and so fast. It had quite literally never happened before. Even with Sapnap he’d had some growing pains while they figured out each other’s boundaries. There was that short, miserable week where Sapnap blocked him before they worked out their issues.

With George? Nothing like that. Becoming friends with George was like jumping into the cold ocean water, only to discover that when you get back onto the boat, you’re freezing. So you jump back into the water, and this time it’s warm, and you wonder how you ever thought this was cold. It’s welcoming.

He’s the first person Dream wants to call with good news, bad news, mediocre news, anything. He’s always the first opinion Dream seeks about anything—business ventures, video ideas, people he wants to hang out with. Sometimes he feels like he filters the world through George.

He’s emotionally dependent on George. That’s becoming extremely obvious.

When George is finally set to fly permanently to America, it’s like every Christmas of Dream’s entire life, past and present, all converging at once. He’s the happiest he’s ever been and by far the most stressed out he’s ever been. It’s a turbulent time, but well worth it.

George will be here. He’s coming to America. Their lives are finally going to start. 

Dream has never been so nervous in his entire life. Even earlier, when he was filming his face reveal, he hadn’t felt like this. The whole world will see that, will see his face and make their judgments. Dream isn’t stupid, he knows the people who already hate him are only going to hate him more.

The face reveal is a public thing, meant for consumption whether good or bad. This, right here, tapping his toes in nerves while he watches George and Sapnap’s locations get closer and closer to him? This is for them. This is private, even if it’s being filmed.

He remembers meeting his first Minecraft girlfriend, so many years ago, and how nervous he was before they actually met. This is nothing like that. There’s a security in George that he never had in her—George is safe.

George isn’t going to turn around and fly right back to London. They FaceTimed. George knows what he looks like, even if that was before Dream got stuck with this horrendous haircut.

All of this, he knows, but he can’t stop himself from being nervous.

They’re here.

Dream watches Sapnap’s figure walk closer until he opens the door and finds Dream. “You nervous?”

“Shut up,” Dream says, and then laughs at himself. Why is he so nervous? This is his best friend he’s about to meet! He’s already invested money and time in staying here—he had an opinion about the streaming office and bathroom set up. He’s been on Discord tours of the whole place. 

“Well damn,” Sapnap says, and leans back against the door. He put his phone down, though Dream has no idea if he’s recording. “I think you might be more nervous than him. And I thought that guy was being a little bitch.”

“Nick,” Dream chastises. He might be sick. 

“Dream, bro, he’s excited to see you,” Sapnap says, taking a turn for the serious. 

They might talk more, it’s all a bit of a blur to Dream, and then all of a sudden, he’s waiting twenty seconds for Sapnap to get back to George before he joins them.

When he walks outside—

There he is.

There aren’t many moments in Dream’s life where he knows he’s in the middle of something special. That usually comes in the aftermath—after the first Manhunt video, he knew he could tweak things and make it even better, but the fans responded like nothing else. When he dueled Technoblade and lost, he hadn’t given himself time to think about everything—he had focused on training. It wasn’t until he saw the numbers afterward that he knew how special it had been. 

But this? Seeing George with a small hand up to protect his eyes from the morning sun? The way the mist of a humid Florida day meets with the rays of sunshine curling around George in worship?

He looks—

Dream has never seen a more beautiful person in his life. It makes his heart slam into his stomach, makes his fingers shake, makes everything inside him go topsy turvy. 

Dream doesn’t believe in angels or ghosts or anything he can’t see, but this? There’s an angel on his driveway. The most gorgeous creature he’s ever seen is standing on his driveway looking ridiculously happy to see him. Did he die?

And then he blinks, and it’s George standing there. His best friend.

He can’t be blamed if he’s slow on the uptake when George makes a fake kissy noise. 

Whatever that was earlier calms down inside Dream. He’s able to push it away and let it go back to sleep while he celebrates George’s homecoming with his best friends.

He doesn’t think about how he didn’t react this way when he met Sapnap for the first time. He doesn’t think about how George’s skin felt under his fingers. He doesn’t think about how perfectly he would fit in Dream’s arms. He doesn’t think about the way George looks at him, like he’s a miracle.

He’s just George.

A nuclear bomb goes off a week after he face reveals. With his friends all under the same roof, it’s a bit easier to bear. Dream can’t keep himself from poring over everything online, on seeing staunch fans of his abruptly turn about face and hate him. It’s heartbreaking. It’s horrible to be seen as a one dimensional version of himself, that people could really believe he would do the things they’re accusing him of doing.

He spends one night lying awake and staring at the ceiling, only to bring his phone up and start raking through the tweets again. What little sleep he gets is poor and unsatisfying. The meetings lined up the next day don’t go very well for more than one reason.

The next night finds George stealing his phone and pushing him into the bed at their AirBnb.

“You look like a zombie,” George tells him in that forthright way that he has. Dream doesn’t doubt it. Not if George says it. “Get some sleep, and if I’m satisfied with your sleep, maybe you can have your phone back in the morning.”

“George…” Dream says, torn between being grateful for this and annoyed because he’s a grown man and he doesn’t need to be babied.

“Dream,” George says.

Dream takes a deep breath and nods. It seems he’s landed on acceptance. “I need music, though. To sleep, I mean.”

“Then relax, and I’ll be your DJ,” George says. 

George’s taste in music is notoriously different from Dream’s, which he usually likes. George’s music taste runs to pump up streaming music or weirdly intimate, string heavy deep lyricism songs that Dream had only managed to wrangle out of him one time. There’s no telling what George’s idea of DJing his vulnerable best friend to sleep will mean.

But with him here, perched on the edge of the bed, Dream finally feels a bit better. It’s probably the lack of sleep the night before that has him falling into a deep slumber so quickly and easily and not the comforting fingers that slipped into his hair.

When the next day comes, there’s an angel snoring on the other side of the bed. His halo is the morning sunlight filtering in through the window, and his wings are his long arms wrapped around Dream’s torso.

Surely, this must be heaven.

He’d already had memories of their first Christmas together come at him, but now a new vision materializes. He’d left the Spider-Man plushie incident firmly in the horny esex category, even though it leaked into IRL, but…

But now Dream realizes there’s more to that story. There’s more to that than he wanted to acknowledge—more than fucking into a fleshlight with his best friend on the line listening. What could be worse than that? What about the situation could make him more vulnerable than that?

His stomach sinks with dread.

The morning after the Christmas streams—after the Spider-Man plushie—the kitchen is still a complete disaster. Dream maneuvers around dried dough and abandoned baking pans in order to grab breakfast. He takes a low carb yogurt and eats it with a bottled water all while trying to ignore what happened last night.

When he hears footsteps on the stairs, Dream freezes.

This is it.

He doesn’t turn around, but he knows it’s George. It has to be. Sapnap left hours ago for the airport, with only a text to the group chat that he made it onto the plane okay.

“Merry Christmas,” George says, though he doesn’t look at Dream sitting at the breakfast bar. Too late, Dream realizes he chose the exact same spot he was sitting at yesterday during the stream. The tripod is still standing where they left it, the remnants of their good time yesterday spread out around him.

It’s Christmas Eve.

“Merry Christmas,” Dream responds, torn between how good it feels to finally get to say that in person and how awkward it is to see George in person after—

George snorts, an ugly amused thing. He has the fridge open, but he turns around to send a lecherous smirk at Dream. 

“Shut up,” Dream says, deciding to grab the bull by its horns. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine,” George says, giving in way too easily. “We won’t talk about it.”

“George,” Dream whines. He’s done this song and dance before. He knows what it sounds like when George is playing with him.

“We won’t talk about how you fucked Spider-Man last night.”

Dream screams with a closed mouth and rests his head down on the counter, letting it fall just hard enough that it hurts. He deserves it.

“We won’t talk about how you—”

“George, for the love of god,” Dream pleads.

“We won’t talk about how—” George is laughing. 

George is beside himself with how chuffed he is. Dream wants to strangle him. “Jesus Christ.”

“It’s his birthday, you know,” George says, slamming the fridge in emphasis. 

“Tomorrow is his birthday,” Dream says because he can’t help himself. He likes to be correct. He likes to be accurate. Precision has to mean something, you know?

“Do you also love Jesus Christ?” George asks, like some pantomime of those Mormons that used to come to their door trying to convert them when Dream was a kid. “Clearly not as much as Spider-Man. That’s a special kind of love. A love between a man and—”

“George, I swear to god,” Dream says. He hits his head against the counter again, like that might make the conversation end sooner.

“Cut me a break, I have to get all this out now,” George says, like that makes any sense. “I can’t bring this up in front of your family. I want them to like me.”

He’s joking, obviously. But there’s something telling in those words. Dream lifts his head and looks at George, surprised at how easy it is. He had thought he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eyes all day long.

George has one of Dream’s yogurts in his hand, the unrepentant food stealer. He’ll regret it when he tastes that it’s low carb, so Dream doesn’t bother saying anything about that and changing the subject. Instead, he studies him. His shoulders are curved inward and there are bags under his eyes like he didn’t sleep well either.

They’re a bright eyed bunch.

“They’ll like you,” Dream says, figuring out at the last second what’s bothering George. “Of course they’ll like you. That’s not even up for questioning.”

George gives him a weak smile, like he’s trying to be brave for Dream. “Oh, I know they will,” he says, puffing himself up. “Your mother, in particular, has always liked me.”

Underneath the bravado, Dream can sense his anxiety. He doesn’t let the content of his statements distract him from how George is nervous to meet his family.

“I’m not kidding, George. They already love you. I’ve been talking about you for years. They know how important you are.” He takes the last bite of his yogurt and stands up. He can’t be still when he says this. “Teasing me, making fun of me, that’s—they’re used to that. Just be yourself.”

George almost says something sarcastic. Dream can practically feel it in the air. So, he’s surprised when George clamps his mouth down.

They sit in a comfortable moment of silence together. Dream leans back against the counter, giving himself permission to look at George. To really look at him. His shoulders have relaxed the tiniest amount. He’s not smiling, but he’s not unhappy. There’s a seriousness about him that Dream isn’t used to, that he finds uncanny, almost. George isn’t one to brood or linger on the bad times. He’s the person who Dream goes to when he wants to forget about things, to just dive into having fun. George is the person who can get him outside of his own head.

To find that friend in the opposite problem, it’s strange.

“You think so?” George finally says. It’s flat, barely intoned as a question.

“I know so,” he says, and then walks closer to him. “Why is this bothering you so badly?”

“I don’t—” George shrugs instead of finishing the statement. Maybe he didn’t want to lie to Dream. 

Dream reaches over and puts a hand on George’s shoulder. “They’re going to love you, George.” 

Not to be annoying or anything, but Dream is right. He usually is. His family welcomes George openly, already primed to like him and letting his British humor and his cosplay as a polite young man win them the rest of the way.

Dream sits in his family’s kitchen, the same cinnamon and pine smells from his childhood swirling around his head. This is Christmas with his family, and for the first time since he was a very little kid, it feels completely right.

Of course George should be here. He should be sitting here next to Dream, yes of course, of course.

And when there are presents for George under the tree too, Dream almost cries from happiness. He lets George’s hand brush up against his own on the couch.

His heart has never felt so full.

Moments like this are more frequent than Dream realized—these moments that highlight their closeness, sprinkled between everything like weeds popping up in the cracks in sidewalks.

Life finds a way.

Dream has gotten really good at tuning out the DNF of it all. He’s grateful to how the curiosity around the two of them as a pair has brought eyes to their videos. In many ways, he knows he’s smart for leaning into it. He’s not ashamed to be shipped with George, especially not when he knows how everybody online loves him. Who wouldn’t want to be associated with that? 

He doesn’t let himself actually think about it, though. Some days, when the internet is loud and the fanart of DNF is everywhere, he gets in his own head. There’s something in him that needs the world to know they’re separate, that they aren’t together, the truth of it all.

George isn’t like that. He’s never been like that, never cared what the world thinks of it. Not really. He keeps his personal business personal, even with his friends. He’s only mentioned a few girls he was interested in over the years and Dream only knows about one girlfriend that didn’t last long anyway.

If it were up to George, they wouldn’t acknowledge their ship online at all. Although, Dream knows to his bones that George loves the attention he gets from Dream. They don’t talk about it, but it’s there. It’s something that Dream struggles with. He doesn’t know how to curtail his behavior, to calibrate it to be normal. He’s either too intense or too flat, and he can’t find a happy medium.

There’s friction between them, blooming in the No Man’s Land that they’ve maintained since George moved here. Neither of them really know how to address it, but the consequences go like this: they don’t talk like they used to. There are no sleep calls. There are no sleepovers. Once they settle into the routine of living together, all under the large roof of the house the fans call the dransion, things stagnate between them.

They still see each other. They still care about each other; that hasn’t changed. That’s not what he means.

That thing in their relationship that makes it special—it feels like it’s under scrutiny. 

Dream’s behavior doesn’t change online, not with his extracurricular activities. It’s hard to find available women around town to date or sleep with. 

He expands his search. When they go abroad, he makes a dating profile. There are successes and there are failures that leak out to the fans. The good ones, though, those fans shut those rumors down. Dream is appreciative.

Sometimes the women he talks to online push for more, they want exclusivity. They want him to introduce them to the internet at large as his girlfriend. That idea kinda makes Dream want to puke.

For one, the internet is already horrible enough to him. How would they treat a significant other of Dream’s? It’s always cool to shit on old Dream online, and any girlfriend of Dream’s would be seen as an extension of him. For better or worse.

That’s the main line he sticks to. He wants his privacy. He doesn’t want anything serious. He’s always made that obvious to every person he talks to, it’s one of his rules. So, when they start hinting, he knows it’s time to break it off and switch out to someone else.

There’s another reason why he won’t commit to any of these girls, one he won’t admit out loud or even to himself, except on his lowest days.

That reason is upstairs, closed up in his office, streaming to a live audience and playing some indie game to the fascination of thousands of people. And Dream isn’t talking about Sapnap.

The girls he talks with—they don’t understand his relationship with George. They’ll ask probing questions, and Dream will feed them the party line. They’re just friends. Close friends. There’s nothing going on there. But those sentences, while factually correct, always have the taste of a lie.

Because when Dream walks into the kitchen and finds George already there in a ratty t-shirt and thin shorts, gulping apple juice straight from the bottle, his heart bottoms out.

No one makes his heart race like George. None of those girls have ever come close to meaning as much as his best friend. None of those girls understand him like George, know how to read him like George, can get him out of his own head. Dream knows he’s a stubborn bastard. He’s been that way since birth. He knows that he’s like a train, once he gets going on something, it’s near impossible to get him to stop or slow down or, god forbid, turn around.

 George can do it.

The thing stopping him from trying to commit to any of these girls is—it’s George. It’s comparing them to George. It’s—fuck, okay, this is from the depths of his soul, but it’s keeping himself available just in case George ever wants to…

Fuck, he’s so stupid. George doesn’t want him. 

So, Dream plays out this same dance every time and always comes to the same conclusion. George doesn’t want him, and there’s no point in Dream bringing it up and making everything awkward.

He doesn’t say anything at all.

They never truly drift apart, but the strings tying them together are frayed at the ends.

And Dream doesn’t know how he can fix that.

Dream watches a family of ducks swim across the lake. He wonders if George has seen these same ducks. He’d love them. If he were here, he’d point at them and tell Dream no less than five times that there are ducks, all with that joyful wonder at the world. 

Maybe that’s his favorite thing about George—the way he looks at the world, expecting to be awed. When you look at the world that way, it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. Confirmation bias, or whatever. All Dream knows is that it’s the opposite for him. He’s a learned optimist, someone who had to study the craft and choose to be that way. Which makes him all the more fascinated by George.

What else is Dream missing? He’s on the right track. He’s—he’s confronting that he has romantic feelings for George, not just—not just sexual. It’s hard to even think those thoughts since they’ve been bound so tightly for so long.

He has feelings for George. He’s half expecting a lightning bolt to come out of nowhere and strike him down.

“I have feelings for George,” Dream confesses to the wind. The breeze kicks up and sends a thrill of relief from the humid weather. Dream imagines his words drifting away from him, going back into the universe.

He takes an unsteady breath and lets his head fall, his elbows propped up on the railing.

That wonky heart stares back at him.

A sense that he’s still bereft of something important strikes him like that lightning bolt never did. What else is he missing?

A memory emerges out from the murky depths. Dream can tell he’s made it to the middle of this web. The epicenter. 

If he goes through with this memory, the knowledge will be on the other side. He won’t be able to ignore it any longer.

With the carved heart burning behind his eyelids, Dream goes all in. If this has something more to do with George, he has to know. He’s never been able to back away from something with George—not a challenge, not someone else showing too much attention to George, not George showing too much attention to someone besides Dream, not the way George looks or sounds or acts or facts about George. 

He’s always craved everything to do with George—the good and the bad, the ugly and the gilded. If it’s available to him, Dream wants it. If it’s not available to him, Dream will steal it.

He’s jealous with George. 

He steps forward into the memory.

It all comes rushing back.

It’s a random night. His birthday, actually. They filmed a video for Sapnap’s channel earlier and his Grammy called to sing him happy birthday. There are vague plans over the next few days to celebrate, but tonight, he’s still in a call with George after the recording. Sapnap left a while ago to stream Valo, but Dream hadn’t wanted to leave the call. And neither had George.

They talk about everything and nothing. It’s just like months ago—years ago now—when they were separated by an ocean. Dream lets both his walls and his filter down. They talk about his birthday plans, how they’re not the type to get each other gifts unless the perfect one falls into their laps, about how George has already tackled this age and that Dream feels he can do anything better than George, so twenty-five should be a breeze.

George makes a quip about Sapnap taking twenty-five years to edit the video they just recorded, which is ironic coming from him, but Dream lets that go for right now because they’re having a good time, and he doesn’t want to fight. 

“I hope he doesn’t cut out my jokes,” Dream says, lazy and stretched. He’s still in his office, the fan going and Patches curled up at his feet. She likes to take turns between his office and George’s office, but since his allergy to the cats has been acting up more and more, George keeps his door shut more often. Thus, Dream gets more Patchy time. 

That closed door. Dream can’t think about it too much or he’ll get sad. It’s another symptom of this growing thing that Dream can’t fix.

“What do you mean ‘jokes’?” George asks. “You only made one joke, just, like, twelve hundred times or something. Like, we get it. You want to get Spider-Man kissed.”

Dream sighs heavily. “No one understands me.” He puts on a woe-is-me air that he knows will annoy George. 

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t understand you as well as I do,” George says, and there’s an edge in the current liable to drag Dream out to sea. 

He waits a minute to see if George will explain, or say something else, or change the subject. Anything. And then he says, “What does that mean?” 

“You repeat things if you want to talk about them,” George says after a minute. “You’ll say it like it’s a joke, but it isn’t always.”

This George is a rare one. This is the George that confronted Sapnap about their friendship with maturity and emotional intelligence. He wasn’t like this at university. He wasn’t like this even two years ago. But now? George can be the most baby man on the planet, but he can also whip out this side of himself, the kind that hits the nail on the head.

It makes Dream nervous that he sees more than Dream wants him to see.

George waits for Dream to speak, giving him space in a way that doesn’t feel like pressure or expectant. He’s probably the only person in the world that Dream can just be at ease with, except maybe Sapnap or Callahan to a lesser degree. But always George.

“It’s just some—I dunno, you’re right.” Dream hates that he wants to confess this. He feels like a little kid again, just discovering how cool Spider-Man is. He remembers watching that old Spider-Man movie, the one with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. He didn’t even know the actors’ names then, he only knew that scene. That iconic scene in the rain. “It’s stupid.”

“No, say it,” George says, a lackluster command like he’ll let it go if Dream asks.

“I don’t—it’s stupid. It really is,” Dream admits both to himself and George. “You’ll—you’ll think it’s stupid.”

“I probably will think it’s stupid, yeah,” George says, forthright, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell me. You think my stuff is stupid all the time.”

Dream hesitates. George already keeps so many of his secrets, what’s one more? 

He gives in, no longer fighting it. “I just got it in my head, like, so long ago that it’s the most romantic kind of kiss, you know? Like, it’s iconic. You can’t—you can’t have someone kiss you like that and not know that they really mean it.”

George doesn’t say anything. At his feet, Dream feels Patches purring while she butts her head up against him. His heart pounds wildly in his throat.

Why hasn’t he said anything? Dream’s starting to get in his own head now. Did he say something wrong? Did he put his foot in his mouth again? He should have kept this to himself. That was a deep cut into Dream’s psyche. Maybe he shouldn’t have shared that. They aren’t—George wasn’t ready to hear that.

He was probably expecting it to be some stupid Spider-Man joke, or for Dream to make a reference to how MJ’s tits look in that scene. He wasn’t—he probably wasn’t expecting for Dream to talk about romance. About—about love.

Dream likes to avoid that subject altogether, and now he’s remembering why. George still isn’t saying anything. Dream squirms in his chair, unable to bear it.

“Are you—” Dream says right as George says, “Meet me in the movie theater room,” like he’d come to some conclusion that Dream wasn't party to.

George doesn’t wait, doesn’t confirm that Dream heard him even though they were talking over each other. He just hangs up. Dream panics a moment, running the sounds back through his mind to make sure he heard correctly, that he didn’t—

The movie theater room. It’s a weird place to meet. For all that they loved the idea of the room when they were renovating the house, it doesn’t get much use. Dream waits a long moment, counting his breaths in fours—in four, hold four, out four, before slowly rolling his chair backwards and disrupting Patches.

He stands, stretches, and then puts his PC to sleep. Why would George possibly want to meet him in the movie theater room? What’s in there that Dream doesn’t know about? Why would he say that in response to one of the last of Dream’s long held secrets—the fantasy that’s too sweet to have shared with anyone, worse for its innocence, almost. 

The world pitches to the side as he stumbles, tripping over Patches. She yowls at him, unaccepting of his apologies. 

When he opens the door to the movie theater, George isn’t there to greet him. “Hello?” he calls out, feeling kinda stupid. “George?”

No answer. He walks further into the room, the door slowly closing behind him. The room is dark with just the night lights running around the periphery of the room. Dream fiddles with the popcorn machine, wondering when the last time they even used the thing was.

He had plans for this room. He had ideas that all his friends would come here—stay for long periods of time—friends that he thought cared more for him than they ended up revealing. They would have watched marathons in here, entire anime series for Sapnap. 

His phone buzzes in his hand. Curious, and with nothing else holding his attention but morose thoughts, he reads the text waiting for him.

Sit down and look at the screen

It’s George. Of course it’s George. 

“What is this?” he asks out loud. This is stupid. He knows George can hear him. Is he pulling a prank, or… or what is this? “This is stupid, George.”

His phone buzzes again. With a huffy breath, he reads the text. Just do it, idiot

“You’re the idiot,” Dream says to the empty room. Now he has it confirmed that George is listening. Butterflies and lightning bugs dance in his stomach, though he’s determined not to let George know about those—about the way his tummy is fluttering and how his chest is tight.

He doesn’t like surprises. He doesn’t like letting go of control of a situation, but he trusts George. He trusts George like he doesn’t trust anyone else.

The leather of the couch crunches under his legs, cool to the touch. 

Before he hears him, he just knows. He knows George is there, behind him. It’s like the energy in the room has grounded in him, and if Dream reaches out, he’ll get the shock of his life. Something about the moment stills his mouth. He doesn’t look over, doesn’t even try. He keeps track of George by feel alone, something staggering on his chest that won’t allow him to speak.

Soft hands—dainty hands—find his neck and curl up into his hair. George has never touched him like this. Not in the real world. Not outside of Dream’s nighttime fantasies. With the lights low like this, the otherworldly feel in this little used room, the whole thing starts to take on a dream-like effect. Is he even awake? Is he asleep? Who’s to say? What does it all mean?

The hands pull on his hair and he allows his neck to follow, to be guided. George smells like he always does—like laundry detergent and deodorant and something spicy that Dream has never been able to pinpoint. A swell of comfort washes over him and he lets his head fall back, sure that George won’t let him hurt himself, won’t let him down.

He doesn’t know what to expect, except that in his deepest heart of hearts, he does.

His head lolls backwards, and his eyes close tightly, and then—

And then!

The softest lips Dream has ever felt brush against his. At this angle, he can feel George’s breaths against his skin, George’s stubbly chin scratching against his nose. He’s never been close like this to anyone. It’s not just the kiss, but—but the intimacy is overwhelming.

Dream’s heart skips four beats and then comes back rabbiting harder than ever. This is—everything.

George presses his lips in harder, more sure, like he isn’t afraid Dream is going to jump back and hate him. With George, he’s always testing his boundaries and seeing what they can get away with. This time, it’s more. Of course it’s more. It’s George pushing harder, opening his mouth enough to nibble on Dream’s lower lip, to ask for entrance, and Dream, despite the horrible angle, opening willingly. 

He’s never been kissed like this. He’s never felt—

After another too short moment, George reaches down and holds his hands over Dream’s eyes—long enough for Dream to get the hint. He’s not supposed to see this. This is another one of those things they won’t talk about, but will haunt Dream. For a brief minute, Dream’s resentful about this—another thing he can’t have, another thing he can’t—

Then the fear follows, the same boogeyman that’s been following him around for years, whispering in his ear. The fear arrives in style and Dream’s pounding heart takes on a new meaning.

George gives him one last kiss on his lips, and then another one his chin, and then he’s gone.

Dream doesn’t open his eyes.

It’s his birthday, and George has just given him the greatest gift in the entire world. But, god, Dream almost wishes he hadn’t. 

Because Dream was right. The Spider-Man kiss is just about the most romantic thing two people can do. 

That was the most romantic moment of Dream’s entire life.

He’s fucking terrified because some part of him knows what this means. Some part of him knows there’s no coming back from this, no sticking the genie back in the lamp.

George hadn’t meant it.

But Dream had.

When he gets back to his office some time later, Dream finally lets that girl who’s been sliding into his DMs know he’s interested.

It doesn’t take long. This girl lives not too far. She’s perfect, way too hot for him and understands his job without wanting to make him change.

Good, because he can only change so much. 

In under a week of reconnecting, they’re official.

“Oh, so you’re, like, together?” Sapnap asks after Dream sees his girlfriend out. She has plans with her parents in the morning, otherwise she would have stayed. “Like, actually?”

Dream doesn’t let his best friend’s shock deter him. Sometimes it takes Nick a beat to catch up and see the vision. It’ll be fine. He’ll get on board.

“Yeah, Nick. We’re—I’m excited.” Dream shifts around. “I’m happy.”

“Alright,” Sapnap says, still with a weird look on his face. After a moment, it melts into his real smile. “I’m happy for you if you’re happy. If this is what you actually want, bro.”

“It is,” Dream says, and he means it. The touch of defensiveness comes out harsh, but he ignores it and repeats himself. “It is, Nick.”

“It’s just that you—well, no, nevermind,” Sapnap says, shaking his head. “I stand by what I said. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

In lieu of talking about it more, they throw themselves dramatically onto the couches and watch a show together while gossiping about the Hispanic streamers. They always have the wildest things going on.

George finds his way to the lounge a bit later and joins right in. It’s the first time Dream has seen him in person since—

He’s not thinking about that.

“Dream’s gonna invite the new girlfriend,” Sapnap says, talking about their really belated birthday plans. “Steakhouse downtown. You know, the good one, not the shit one.”

George’s eyes flash over to Dream, an unreadable expression in them.

The earth shakes below Dream’s body.

George’s mouth is pressed tight. There’s a stretched moment where Dream can’t speak, can’t breathe, can only look at George who won’t look away from him.

His foot taps against the floor and then George breaks the horrendous moment and says, “Well I’m not paying for him since it’s not his actual birthday,” which causes an argument to arise between Sapnap and George that Dream doesn’t have to participate in. 

He lets out a breath.

The dinner is awkward, but it happens. By dessert, things are smooth between the four of them. George talks to Dream’s girlfriend, charming her with quips about the restaurant, the people around them, stories about Dream that only a best friend would know.

Sapnap joins in, like he’s been waiting for an excuse to show off about all his Dream trivia knowledge, and Dream can barely get a word in edgewise.

When the waitress brings out Dream’s birthday treat—the candle lit and flickering wildly while strangers that Dream doesn’t know sing him Happy Birthday—he meets George’s eyes for the first time all night. He knows George didn’t do this, wouldn’t have done this. George knows Dream would hate this.

His new girlfriend, on the other hand… 

“Did you enjoy your birthday, baby?” she asks when he pays for dinner. 

George’s chair makes a loud sound when he pushes back from the table. Dream doesn’t look over, but it takes everything in him not to. He knows what he did on his actual birthday.

“I did,” he says, pleased to find it’s not even a lie.

Having a girlfriend again feels good. He remembers why he likes having a girlfriend. Now that he has money, it’s even better. He does like to spoil the people he cares about.

She doesn’t spend all her free time at his house, but she’s always down to hang out. Dream watches more movies and shows than he has in ages. She takes his lack of pop culture knowledge of movies as a personal slight, all in good fun, and then takes it upon herself to educate him.

There are other obvious positive benefits too, of course. He enjoys having someone else in the bed, having someone to share sexual intimacy with. And if in his dreams, the mouth kissing him is softer and warmer, an unshaved chin pressing into the bridge of his nose, so much better than anything else he’s ever felt… Well, it’s easy to not talk about that in the light of day when he wakes up to someone else in his bed.

He likes her. He does.

He feels proud when he pulls up to his parents’ house for family dinner and he gets to bring his shiny new girlfriend. She’s young and hot, and he likes the way she fits in with his family. She knows the right things to say, the cultural norms that make up the South. She helps his mother with the dishes after dinner, and she offers to paint his little sister’s nails.

He spends so much time with her that he doesn’t have extra time to wallow or brood or any of the other things he used to do. She laughs at his jokes. She lets him explain niche things about his work. She talks him into self-care things that he ends up really liking.

He should have gotten a girlfriend a long time ago.

There’s no room to consider anything else. She respects his friendships with Nick and George, likes them even. Dream keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never does.

He lets himself fall further into delusion. 

He can do this. He’s doing this. It’s going well. 

He really had thought it was, too. Until today. Until a few hours ago. Until it really hit him full force—she doesn’t know who he is.

She knows his Spider-Man, but not his Peter Parker.

She’s not his Mary Jane, she’s—

There’s only one Mary Jane, and that’s what his brain has been trying to tell him all day. He knows who his Mary Jane is. He knows his Mary Jane would laugh at the name, but would preen. He knows that George—

It’s George.

It’s George at the middle of the web. It’s George that he’s kept protected, kept safe. It’s George he’s coveted and twisted to fit around. 

It’s always been George, before it was even Dream.

Chapter Text

Dream’s shaking knees give out and he falls to the ground.

These are the truths that he’s tried to deny about himself:

He’s always been Dream, even before he was Dream. He’s always been queer, even before he was queer. And he’s always been in love with George, even before he was in love with George.

His heart is racing inside his chest, his pulse pounding in his neck and his fingers. He feels like he’s going to fly apart in a thousand directions, like his love and his everything else are too big for his skin. 

How can one man keep all this inside?

And this is George’s lake. He doesn’t own it or anything, but it’s no less George’s to Dream. How did he not notice that this was the safe space he came running to when he fled his own house. Everything is George. Every safe harbor is George. Every secret he wants to share with George.

It’s obvious now that the web was never just a web. Much the same as cobwebs stick, this aching terror took hold of him and wrapped itself around him. It wrapped itself around George.

Why has he let this fear hold him back? He’s so scared. In a stupid move, he looks behind himself like a monster should be there ready to devour him. There’s nothing but the woods, though Dream has seen enough horror movies to know that means the opposite of safety.

Why. Why is he so frightened of this? Of George? George is his safe space, but also his biggest fear.

There are so many things he’s done that would terrify anyone else. He’s so brave in so many capacities, but not with this. He’s recorded an album and performed on stage. He’s streamed to over a hundred thousand people at the same time. He’s created new technology from the comfort of his own home when he could have just stuck to making the same generic YouTube videos.

He didn’t let his parents dictate his life when it had to do with his education or opportunity. He didn’t go to college even when the whole family pushed. He knew what he wanted to do, and he pursued it relentlessly. 

He’s always known he wanted George. So, why didn’t he reach for what he really wanted?

Why didn’t he have the strength of conviction to lock George down?

Now that the scales have fallen from his eyes, he knows why. Now that he’s not hiding those thoughts away in the back of his head, it’s obvious. It’s as simple as this: he’s scared.

All those other things were in his own control, one way or another.

George could say no. George could be disgusted with him. George could decide at any moment to pack his bags and go home to London and take Dream’s entire heart with him. 

If he did that now—

It’s hurting Dream more to live this in between life. He thinks—no, he knows—that even if George rejected him now, he would be okay.

He would be able to keep going, and they could even work together, after a time. But the not knowing is going to kill Dream.

Dream has to consider if he’s more scared of the possible rejection, or more scared of never knowing. 

He’s always been someone who has to know.

He can’t sit here anymore. His legs are falling asleep. Dream stands up, ignoring the sweat dripping down every line of his body. He needs to move, to put his limbs in motion while he thinks every angle of his burgeoning plan through.

And he turns to start walking around the lake, and there he is.

George.

George in his little fisherman hat and one of his fishing shirts their fans sent to the P.O. Box. His tackle box is in his right hand and his pole in the left. He looks just as startled to see Dream here.

Something relaxes deep inside Dream.

“Dream,” George says, like they had planned to meet here. The sun shines lovingly on his face, like even it can’t help but be enamored by this man. His lips are stained like raspberries, the way they get in the late summer when you can pick them off the bush and eat them. His skin is glowing, even under the hat, in proof that he’s been loved by the sun as long as he’s been loved by Dream.

“You are so beautiful,” Dream says. 

George smile-laughs, the one that’s absolutely stunning and rarer for it. “What?”

“Sorry,” Dream says. He’s not sorry because it’s true, he’s just sorry that it took George aback. Dream shakes his head. He wasn’t ready to see George yet; he hasn’t ironed out the details. He feels like he got to the End without a crossbow and a water bucket.

“What are you doing here?” George asks, looking behind him to see if he had brought any stuff. Or any people.

“Got mad and stormed out of the house like a teenager,” Dream says. “Drove around for a while and ended up here, I guess.”

George tilts his head at Dream. “Did Milo shit in your bed again?” he asks, one side of his mouth curled upward. 

Dream wants to laugh. He wants to play into the banter. He wants to downplay the fight with her because if he does that—with George—that makes it the truth. It’s a superpower that George has, this ability to re-write history.

He can’t take that out, though. Not now.

Dream stares hard at George. He could stare at him for the rest of time. Until those big brown eyes have laugh lines around them—proof to Dream, that he’s lived a happy life. He could watch him go salt and pepper, track the new grays as evidence of the time the earth has allowed him to spend with George. He could watch him shrink and his fingers gnarl with arthritis. Dream would put the worms on his hooks, then, so he could still do the things he loves.

“Can I put the worm on your hook?” 

George’s face twists with confusion. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Dream wonders what he’s reading off of Dream. 

“My spot is over here.” George tears his eyes off of Dream and walks around him, shoulder brushing Dream just barely, but enough to light him up.

Dream pivots to watch George walk for just a moment. He’s ethereal. Has he always been this breathtaking? Short answer, yes.

George settles his things on the dock that Dream found earlier. He sets down his tackle box and rests the pole against the railing on the side of the dock, all with the practiced moves of someone who’s done this many times before.

He looks at home here, in this spot.

“This really is your spot,” Dream says, feeling an ache deep inside him that he doesn’t understand.

“Yup,” George says.

Dream starts to wonder if he’s overstepped, if he’s actually not welcome here. That’s what the ache is—the possibility of being unwanted. The possibility of being unwanted by George.

He takes a deep, steady breath. George would tell him if he wanted to be alone. George wouldn’t have led him to his spot if he didn’t mean it. George could have laughed off Dream’s request about the worm.

He may not be wanted, but he’s not unwanted. 

Dream can live in that gray area.

Observing him closely, Dream watches George ready everything. When he gets to the hook, he chooses one for some indiscernible reason to Dream, and then knots it onto the end of the string. He makes it look easy. 

“Take a worm out,” George says, a comfortable authority in his tone that he doesn’t usually take with Dream unless he knows he knows more. He used to use this voice when Dream was way less competent at coding. It’s like seeing an old friend. Dream hides his smile while he fumbles with the white grocery bag holding the worms.

The box is cheap blue plastic. It looks like a badly recycled Cool Whip container. He sneaks a look at George while he pulls the top off—he’s biting his lip while he concentrates on the rod. His hands are moving quickly, without hesitancy. Oh, Dream realizes. He really knows what he’s doing here. Without Dream really understanding, this has become something George takes seriously. 

Dream turns back to the dirt. The surface looks misleading—flat and undisturbed until he disrupts it with his too big fingers.

Another thing he’s ruined.

He grabs a wriggling worm and holds it up. “Got it,” he announces. “Now what?”

“Give me two seconds,” George says, moving the fishing pole like an expert. He brings out a knife from his pocket and cuts the excess line, and Dream finds himself inexplicably turned on. 

He’s a wound—healing and sensitive for it. For the first time in ages, Dream is allowed to look, to want, to feel. He’s allowing himself to do all those things. He’s still scared, but he feels free with it, like a wild animal that recovered from an injury in a sanctuary, finally returned to the wild.

The worm squirms in Dream’s hand. He lets it lie flat in his palm, until it writhes enough to make a run for it. George’s hand, so much smaller than his own, cups his hand from below. He takes the worm from Dream’s dirty palm and threads it like a needle onto the hook, careful to show what he’s doing to Dream. 

It doesn’t look too hard, though delicate. Dream memorizes the steps with the concentration of someone who is going to be tested later. He knows he will be, and he intends to pass with flying colors. 

“Do you want to learn how to cast, too?” George asks softly. He’s turned his body now so that he can see Dream even while he reels the line in until the bobber hits the tip of the pole.

“No, that’s okay,” Dream says. “I just want to watch you do it. You’re the goat, so.”

That makes George’s eyes crinkle again. Dream expects him to respond with something funny, a little joke acknowledging he’s the best. 

It never comes. Instead, he casts out his line like an old pro, and then they settle into a comfortable silence.

Crickets chirp and birds sing, giving the scene a background that Dream thinks is almost too idyllic. He has no idea how long he watches George fish. There are bright moments of activity where George reels in a bass, delighted at himself. He keeps opening the cooler to look at it again, demanding Dream do the same. It’s awfully cute. George, not the bass.

Dream doesn’t feel the need to check his phone. He’s not wondering what’s going on online. He doesn’t want to see if his girlfriend has reached out. He doesn’t need the internet to make things more complicated for himself. It’s given him so much but taken so much away with the same token. 

He needs to figure out what he’s going to do on his own this time, without outside influence. Well, George will have a say. He trusts George’s opinion more anyway.

The third time Dream puts the worm on the hook, he doesn’t even need to check that he’s done it right. He breathes deeply in focus, and when he’s finished, he looks up to find George standing awfully close and staring at him. 

He doesn’t say thank you, but it’s there in the line of his shoulders, in the way he looks down when he smiles shyly. This time, Dream doesn’t step back to where he was before. He stands on George’s right side, the pole in his left hand, and he tries to see what George sees.

He tries to feel what George feels, the breeze on their faces, tickling the string on George’s hat. He smells faintly of bug spray and sun screen, and Dream wants to step even closer and see if he can catch the hint of his vanilla shampoo underneath it.

“I’m done,” George announces some time later. The sun has reached beyond the golden point and is halfway into the lake, leaving everything in muted blues. Lightning bugs streak across the grass behind Dream. He’s been trying to count how many, but keeps losing track when George moves in a new way.

“Done?” Dream repeats as a question. Part of him feels like he could spend forever here in this moment. Part of him feels like he wants that more than anything.

A hint of disappointment rises up inside him.

Isn’t that an answer in and of itself?

He’s just himself here, with George. This is Dream at his most basic self—quiet, just living in the moment. He’s not flashing money around or technology, there’s nothing else about this moment but himself.

And George let him stay the whole time.

George closes his tackle box and smiles over at Dream. “Ready to go?”

The question isn’t one he’s prepared for. He isn’t ready to leave this bubble. He isn’t ready to have to go back to making decisions. He enjoyed this peaceful time with George. He wants that peace forever.

“No, I’m not ready even a little bit,” Dream says, trying to catch his breath. He needs to say something. Do something. Every atom inside his body is screaming that he needs to tell George everything, to be understood by the person who best understands him.

If he doesn’t do this now, he worries he never will.

George’s brow furrows. He wears all his emotions on his face to those who know how to interpret them. Dream takes a halting step forward. He has no idea what’s going to come out of his mouth. There’s no plan, no speech, nothing but his heart. With shaking fingers, he takes George’s hand in his own. 

“I enjoyed this,” Dream says.

“Okay,” George says back, confusion marring his face. “I did too. I guess you can come again if you continue this good behavior.”

Dream wants to roll his eyes, but everything about this moment has him frozen. He can’t get the words out. George’s hand slips out from between his own and Dream can’t breathe. He’s always letting George slip away from him.

Before he can say something, George asks, “Now are you ready to go?”

“No,” Dream says simply. 

“What? Really?” George asks, keeping it light. “You don’t want to go home?”

Dream can’t return the surface level tone. He takes a huge, shuttering breath and says honestly, “Part of me just kinda wants to stay here forever actually.”

“What? Why?” George’s toe nudges the tackle box at his feet. He hasn’t moved to gather his equipment. He’s turned to listen to Dream, like he can sense something important is coming.

“Because you’re here, and you’re happy, and that makes—that makes sense to me.”

George’s gaze turns electric. His head tilts. “Dream, what are you talking about?”

Turning to look the other direction, the last rays of the sun are dancing on the surface of the lake. Like this, Dream can see all the bugs dotting the surface. Crickets go crazy chirping from the grass. He doesn’t want to leave. He can’t leave this spot until George knows. He doesn’t want another long stretch of time to lose sight of this again. Not again. “Do you want to know what we fought about?” he finally asks, his pulse racing in his neck.

“You and…” George trails off from behind Dream.

“Yeah.” He drums his fingers on the wonky heart he discovered earlier.

Dream turns back around to see George standing with his hip cocked out. “The reason you’re out here and being all weird?”

“Yeah,” Dream says, unable to hide his amusement even with the nerves taking up his entire body.

“Tell me.” It’s an order, one Dream appreciates. He wants to tell George, but it’s easier when it’s a command, almost like it’s out of his hands.

He takes a step closer. “She thinks I’m straight. She—she argued with me over it. She—” The words fight to come out, falling in fits and starts. He hear the shake in his voice and wonders if George will catch it, if he’ll—

“Dream,” George says softly. Of course he caught on. He catches everything. “You’re not straight.”

“I know!” Dream says, throwing his arms up in the air in frustation—with himself, his girlfriend, everything except George. “I’m not questioning if I’m straight; I know I’m not. I’m just like—how could she think that? How could she—I’m not straight, George.”

“I know. We’ve already had several versions of this conversation.” He laughs. It’s not unkind. George’s eyes are big and full of understanding. Dream forgets sometimes with how loud and fun he is, that George is incredibly kind at his core. “I’m kinda the one who told you you aren’t…”

Dream groans. He should have known that George would bring that up, that he would remind Dream that he clocked him long before anyone else. A thrill roars through him—George has always seen him. George has always known him. There’s something about George that knows how to deal with Dream, and always has.

What else has George seen about Dream and just not shared because he knows it wouldn’t go over well with Dream? What else has he picked up and kept tightly to himself? 

Dream rubs his eyes with the butt of his hands until sparkles light up behind his eyelids, and then he looks directly at George to ask the question that’s been on the tip of his tongue since he first saw him pull up. “And when were you going to tell me that I’m in love with you?”

Those crickets won’t let up. Dream stands with his heart in his hand, slimy and wriggly just like the worms he strung onto that hook earlier. It’s much the same thing.

“Pretty sure that part’s not my responsibility, actually,” George eventually says. He’s not looking at Dream, but out at the water.

“George.” Dream can’t take this anymore. He wants it all out there. He wants to shoot his shot. He wants to go home with George and really go home with George.

“What do you want me to say?” George asks, voice shaking. “You’re in love with me and— Dream, you don’t want to be.”

“That’s not—”

George lets out a muted scream of frustration that turns into a laugh. Dream isn’t sure which sound is worse. “Well, you don’t act like you want to be in love with me.”

“I can’t help that I am,” he says weakly.

George snorts. “You’re doing everything you can not to be. Not really my problem, bro.”

“Bro,” Dream repeats. It’s just—it’s funny in the context of this conversation. Not really a ‘bro’ type of conversation, but that’s George for you. He’s always surprising Dream, always making him laugh.

George catches his amusement and with a sparkle in his eye, says, “Dude,” which serves to make Dream laugh again.

This could be it. If he wanted, Dream could let it go here and George would let him. They would never talk about this again. The confession lobbed here would go to die just like that kiss in the movie room, just like a hundred thousand other small moments that they haven’t brought up.

He could let it go.

But he can’t.

“Is it just me?” Dream whispers, like if he says it at regular volume he’d scare George off for good. His odds are bad either way.

“That’s in love with me?” George asks, purposefully obtuse. “‘Course not. Lots of people are in love with me, idiot. Just look online.”

“George…” he begs. He steps closer, closing the distance between them because George can’t ignore him if he’s right there. 

“Dream,” George echoes. He’s so fucking stubborn and obstinate.

“Tell me it’s not just me,” Dream says, standing close enough to feel George’s breath on his cheek. His eyes are huge and scared and frustrated, but nothing tells Dream he needs to back down.

“Do you think it’s just you?” George counters.

That’s not a question he’s had time to think about. Everything has gone so fast today—from figuring out his own feelings until George showed up like an angel of the lord right where Dream needs him—he hasn’t had time to think about George’s portion of the equation.

Does George return those feelings? Does George—

He dressed up like Spider-Man to fulfill one of Dream’s biggest fantasies. He gave Dream the kiss he’s been dreaming of for years. He didn’t let someone else have that with Dream—he jumped on the chance, and it—it lived up to the hype.

“I think,” Dream starts, millions of scenes flashing behind his eyes. “I think maybe?”

“Maybe?” George repeats, unimpressed. “Try again.”

“No, then,” Dream says, nodding. A lump materializes in his throat so thick that he’s going to choke trying to breathe around it. He deflates faster than a popped balloon.

How could he think George would return those feelings? How could he even hope? He’s stupid. He’s always known he’s stupid, but this is a new level of it. This is why he needed time between his own revelation before bringing this up with George. He needed time to reconcile his own feelings with George’s lack of them.

He blinks the tears out of his eyes. He can’t—he won’t make George feel bad about this.

“Shut up, you stupid idiot,” George says, stepping close to Dream again, not letting the distance grow. “I have no idea how you come to the stupidest conclusions sometimes. I swear to god.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Dream pleads.

“I’m going to make fun of you when you’re this wrong,” George says, eyes blazing up at Dream, reflecting the last of the sunshine outward. God, he’s so beautiful. 

“Wait, what?”

“You’re wrong,” George says in the same tone he always does when he gets to tell Dream he’s wrong—almost proud. But then his voice changes, like a morning glory opening up—soft and vulnerable and all the prettier for it. “It’s not just you.”

“Oh,” Dream says, like someone shot him in the chest. Or like an elephant sat right down on it.

“But, Dream, this isn’t, like, new, you know?” George says. “It’s been this way for— like, just because we—it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“Doesn’t mean anything?” Dream asks, outraged. George is playing with his emotions like a yo-yo, up and down. Maybe he’ll walk the dog next. “George, it means everything. What are you talking about?”

“This isn’t new!” George says. “You’ve felt this way a long time. I’ve felt this way—I mean, it’s not new. Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed, George. What are you talking about?”

“Just because you’re finally on the same page with your own feelings—”

“And yours!”

“—doesn’t mean anything is going to change. Do you understand? I’ve been—this isn’t new information to me. Every tiny step forward with you is met with, like, ten bajillion steps backwards.”

“That’s not—” Dream starts, but he realizes George isn’t wrong. That’s exactly what it’s looked like from the outside.

“If you had taken ten minutes to think any time in the last five years, you would know what we are to each other,” George says. “But you didn’t want to do that. Even when it’s staring you in the face, it’s—Dream, you’ve never actually wanted to be in love with me. Do you know how much that hurts?”

“George,” Dream says.

“It would be, like, fine if I could have just dealt with all this on my own. But no, you let me kiss you like—you let me give you the most romantic kiss you can even, like, fathom, and then two weeks later I’m at a dinner meeting your new girlfriend. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“I’m so sorry,” Dream says, choking on it.

“No, you’re not,” George says, scoffing. “You weren’t. I’ve let you re-frame and discount every thing that’s happened between us because I know how you are. I know you’re terrified. I know you’re—I have to tell myself you don’t mean to hurt me, but it does, Dream. It hurts every single time. So, I don’t know what you want out of this. The feelings aren’t new. You’re still in a relationship with someone else. What do you think is going to be different this time?”

“This time I know,” Dream says. “This time I can’t ignore it anymore.”

“And how is that going to last when the internet starts speculating again? How is that going to last or hold up when your family—”

Dream gasps. George has a point. He hasn’t thought that far ahead. He hasn’t thought through every step like he usually does before he makes a move. He hasn’t—

But this isn’t like the times before. George is wrong about that. He can’t put this particular cat back in that stuffy bag. He won’t go back to surface level, easily disturbed by a rock thrown at the lake.

“That’s what I thought,” George says when Dream doesn’t respond right away.

“No, shut up, I’m thinking,” Dream says. 

There are no stars out on a night like tonight—not this close to a metropolis with light pollution and shit. He’s more used to seeing planes in the sky than stars. He used to look up at the sky and wish one of those planes was bringing his best friend to him.

He still catches himself wishing that sometimes.

“If I weren’t scared…” Dream begins, “if I weren’t… is there any shot?”

“Dream,” George says, repeating that frustrated sound from before.

“Okay, but I’m being serious,” Dream says before George can start yelling again. “Do you want to try? Are you in this? Because I’ll break up with her. I’ll break up with her right now and be yours.” 

“You really think you aren’t mine and I’m not yours?” George asks. “Just because you’ve been sleeping with someone else doesn’t make you not mine.” He might as well reach into Dream’s chest and crush his heart with his bare fist.

“But I’m not here to be your latest fixation,” George continues. “If you’re here and we’re doing this, then you’re here and we’re doing this. You don’t get to get tired of me. You know what I mean.” 

That’s what he’s scared of, Dream realizes. All this posturing and resisting and that’s it—George is scared, too. He can say whatever he wants about Dream being scared, but George is just as terrified. In the entire time Dream has known him, he’s had one girlfriend way back in the day. He’s not someone with a good record for relationships, and now Dream is figuring out why.

George had said this wasn’t new. It’s dawning on Dream now that he really means that—he’s felt that way for a long time. Longer than Dream had thought.

“I know what you mean,” Dream tells him. 

George isn’t scared of Dream loving him; he’s scared of Dream leaving him behind anyway. 

“Will you ever get tired of me, Dream?” 

God, he’s breathtaking. How can he think Dream would ever get sick of him? How could he think he’s even in the same category as anyone else, as any other fleeting sexual attraction? Dream’s been in love with him even longer than he imagined, too. There hasn’t been anyone else to compare him to because no one else has evoked the same feelings that George has. Not the girlfriend, not any of the other girls he messed around with online. He’s George. He’s special.

“I haven’t yet, have I?” Dream asks, forcing George to come to the same realization. “Sometimes, I think I’ve tried,” he admits.  

“And if we don’t—if nothing else comes of this?” George asks. 

“Then, we figure it out,” Dream says. “We figure out how to be friends. We can’t not be in each other’s lives. Having you as my best friend would still be, like, more than enough.”

George is looking out at the lake when he speaks next. “It was going to be enough for me, yeah.”

His heart understands before his brain. George already knew how they felt, and yet he was going to just ignore all that, ignore how great they could be together just in order to keep Dream from freaking out. He was going to watch Dream be unhappy with someone else rather than say anything. “You were going to just watch me…”

“If you were happy, and that’s really what you wanted? Yeah,” George says. Dream feels an overwhelming sense of his love—how deep it goes, how much this man feels for him.

It’s more than just—

This is real love. This is what it’s like being loved by George. 

“Don’t do that,” Dream says, the words coming out at a price. “Don’t ever—don’t choose to make me happy over yourself. Not ever. I don’t want you making sacrifices or shit like that.”

“That’s stupid,” George says back hotly. “How was I supposed to know you weren’t happy? How was I supposed to, like, pick and choose when you’re happy? I wasn’t going to, like, tell you that you were being an idiot. I wasn’t going to force you to choose me. I’m not stupid, Dream. I knew you weren’t ready. I know I scared you in the movie room.”

“You did,” Dream admits. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“You scare me too, you know,” George says. Dream had already come to that conclusion, but it’s nice to hear. “But you’re also the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Can we try?” Dream asks, his heart in his throat. “George, baby, can we at least try? Say we can.”

“Are you going to run again? Because Dream, I can’t keep—I can’t chase after you. I’m not going to force you to want to be with me. I can’t watch you run away and pretend there’s nothing here.”

“George, I swear on Patches, I’m not going to run again. If you say yes, then I’m yours. One hundred percent. For as long as you’ll have me.”

“Tell me properly,” George says. “Tell me how you—tell me.”

And even with so little words, Dream knows what he wants. Dream knows what he needs to hear from Dream.

“I’m in love with you,” Dream says. It’s the easiest thing he’s ever said in his life.

“Then, I’m in.”

The world tilts in a new and inviting way. The breeze off the lake feels cool against his sweaty skin. He takes one last deep breath of the muggy air.

“Okay,” Dream says. “Then I have a conversation I need to have with someone elsle before I can… before I can talk to you further about this.”

“Alright,” George says, blinking. “See you back at home?”

“Maybe take the long route?”

“Maybe track down the fire extinguisher,” George says, eyes crinkling. “Or a bulletproof vest.”

Dream watches him trek back to his car—pole in one hand and tackle box balanced on his cooler in the other. He doesn’t stop watching until George’s taillights disappear.

She’s there at the house when he gets back. Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she be?

There’s a pinched smile on her face that he can’t get over. Now that his eyes are clear, he sees it for what it is.

“We need to talk,” he says.

The smile falls.

When he hears the garage open, his heartbeat picks up. He wonders how long that has been happening—his body reacting to George being close. He wonders how long it’ll keep happening. Something tells him it’ll be forever.

He really hopes it’ll be forever.

Dream tries not to look like he’s just been waiting by the door for George when he walks in from the garage. He’s sure he fails, but who cares? 

George loves him.

He walks in and drops his keys into the bowl where they go. Even with the sun screen, his nose is slightly pink. It makes Dream want to kiss it. But everything makes Dream want to kiss him.

George freezes like he can sense Dream, and then he looks over and they lock eyes. For a long moment, neither of them speak. Dream lets himself take George in—he looks over every line of him. The fishing hat stays in the car, but the depression on his hair remains. His shirt has wrinkles in it now, and Dream spots the dirt stain where one of his fish made a break for it. 

He’s beautiful.

“You’re beautiful,” Dream says, not for the first time today. It breaks the moment, cutting the tension. 

George gives him the softest smile in his arsenal. He sets the cooler down at his feet as he stares hard at Dream.

“Am I?” he asks. 

Dream stands and walks closer, looking for any sign from George that he shouldn’t. He senses no sign. The distance between them halves. When he’s one step away, he watches George’s guard drop.

Dream’s big hands find George’s waist, and he squeezes, wanting to feel the solidity of him. He needs to know he’s here. He needs to know he’s wanted here.

“You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” Dream whispers into his ear. He doesn’t want anyone else to hear this. This isn’t for show. This isn’t for the internet. This is for George. This is their lives, their shared life.

“Dream,” George whispers and lets his head fall to Dream’s shoulder.

“I want you so badly,” Dream says, determined to do it right this time. His confessions slip off his tongue easily. “I want you in every way, George. I want you in my bed. I want you beside me all the time. I want your name to be said in the same breath as mine.”
 
“It already is,” George points out, but he steps even closer until their bodies are touching along every line.

“I want the world to know you’re mine and I’m yours,” Dream continues. “I want to—to grow old with you.”

George heaves a sob into Dream’s shoulder, surprising him. Smaller arms come around Dream and pull him tight.

“She’s gone?” George asks, meaning seeping in his tone that Dream only catches half of.

“She’s gone. We’re not—I’m done with her. It’s over,” Dream says, feeling more free than he’s ever felt, even right after the face reveal. “I want you and no one else. I’m not—I’m still scared, George. I’m terrified, but—but I’m more scared of, like, not having you. I’m more scared of losing you or watching you walk out of my life because you’re done with me.”

“I’ll never be done with you, you idiot,” George says into Dream’s shoulder. “I can’t. You’re—you’re written into my bones or something.”

“Your boner?” Dream can’t help but ask, making George’s sobs mix with laughter. “I’d write my name on your boner.”

“You can,” George says, and pulls back enough to look at Dream. His eyes are red and puffy, but fuck if he’s not even more beautiful for it. Those are tears of want—tears of want for Dream, for their life together. For them.

He’s not sure how long they stand there, just holding each other. Time has to pass, but it has that timeless feeling he always gets with George, like the whole world could be collapsing, but he wouldn’t notice because he’s paying attention to George. The tears dry up. Dream memorizes the feel of George in his arms, commits it to the back of his eyelids so anytime he needs to pull up the sensory memory he can.

They break apart only long enough for George to deal with the fish and for Dream to use the bathroom and wash his hands. Even the few minutes these two tasks take is too long away from George.

The web is gone, left behind in remnants on the shore of George’s lake. Dream smiles to himself, knowing that he’s won the lottery of life. Not for his money or fame, but because of the man waiting in the kitchen for him with Dream’s heart tucked up next to his own.

No more confusion. No more hiding things from himself. 

When he drags George into his bedroom upstairs, it’s because he doesn’t know if all the residue of the ex-girlfriend is gone from his own room. He wants a space that hasn’t been tarnished by anything else. He wants to have this with George where no one else has ventured.

George doesn’t protest when Dream leads him up the stairs.

When they close the door behind them, they’re locking everything else out. The world doesn’t belong here. There’s no room for other opinions, for self-consciousness, for doubt.

This room is for love. For just him and George.

George throws his shirt off, like it’s what he’d normally do when he returned to his room. He throws the thing towards his dirty clothes hamper, missing by a few inches, and then he turns around at Dream and spreads his arms wide open. It’s like a little kid starting a game of tag: come and get me.

Tag, you’re it, Dream thinks, and then he strips himself of his own shirt. He doesn’t want anything standing between them—not clothes, not miscommunication, nothing.

It’s George who pulls Dream into his embrace, their chests touching skin to skin. God, even this is—this is so much better than anything else. Holding George close to his heart, feeling the softness of his bare skin under his fingers, it’s overwhelming. If he thinks about it too much, he could cry.

He doesn’t want tears here.

George pushes them backward, until the back of Dream’s knees hit his unmade bed. He takes the hint, sitting, and allowing George to sink onto his lap. He’s never done anything like this with another man. He likes the weight in his lap, likes the way he can feel George’s ass on his dick. 

George leans forward and offers his mouth. Dream takes it for the gift it is, humming into his mouth in contentment. It’s a sweet kiss, soft and velvety, like they’re feeling each other out. Dream wants to compare it to coming home, but it’s deeper than that. George has been his home for so long, his touchstone, his home base. 

Kissing George is like picking up a loved one from the airport and taking them back home—hearing about their trip, reveling in being together again, their presence filling up the car and later the house until things feel right again.

Things haven’t felt right for Dream since that night in the movie room, since the last time he felt George’s mouth on his. He wasn’t ready then, but he is now.

“This isn’t a Spider-Man kiss,” Dream pulls back to say, “but it’s nice.”

George laughs—oh god, Dream loves it when he laughs—and says, “That was a once in a lifetime offer.” His pupils are blown out, his lips pink.

“No,” Dream protests, playing along. He grabs George harder around the hips to hold him in his lap. “Not once in a lifetime.”

“Once a year, then,” George counters. Dream looks at him, really looks at him, and he loves what he sees—the lightest wrinkles around his eyes, proof that he’s been smiling. George should only ever be smiling.

“Well, we wouldn’t want it to go stale,” Dream says, like George’s counter was reasonable.

“Maybe on Halloween,” George says. “It’s your turn to dress up as Spider-Man, though.”

“No,” Dream protests again. “I have to see you in that suit again, George. I—you have no idea what that does to me.”

George throws his head back and laughs—joyful and full. He’s so goddamn beautiful. “I think I have some idea,” he finally says, grinding down onto Dream’s dick until it hardens all the way. “How many screenshots did you take on your PC that time I dressed up for you?”

Dream feels his face heating up. “I don’t even remember that.”

“Stop lying,” George says, delighted. His eyes are glistening with triumph. “I know you took screenshots. I know you. Tell me how many.”

“Several thousand,” Dream admits. It’s humbling to be known. George has always known Dream, even before he was George.

“Did you jerk off to them?” George asks, looking invested in the answer. He grinds again, pushing their chests closer together. George’s scant chest hair tickles Dream’s nipples, except it’s not tickling. It just feels good.

He groans. “Yeah, okay?”

“Good,” George says, smug. “That was the point.”

“You’re going to kill me,” Dream says. He’s not mad about it, though. He’d be okay going out like this.

“Not before I finally get to feel you on my dick, though,” George says. “Get to it, please.”

“How do you want me?” Dream asks, ignoring the rising anxiety coming from that place that he banished from this room. No doubts. No shadowy elephant graveyard where his negative thoughts congregate.

It’s like George can read even that in Dream—like now that he’s invited into Dream’s everything, he can take one magnanimous look and see at the root of the problems. “Hey,” he says, dropping the playful persona. “We don’t need to rush. I know this is—that it’s new. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

“You’re always overwhelming,” Dream says. “But it’s not a bad thing. I’ve just—I’ve never done anything like this.”

“Not with anyone?” All wide eyed innocence. 

“Not with anyone with a dick,” Dream clarifies. “And not anyone who matters like you do.”

“Then I can teach you,” George says. “We’re good at teaching each other.”

The rising storm in Dream’s chest calms. George is right. They are good at teaching each other. George knows how to teach him, how to make him not feel dumb, how to put things in terms that Dream will understand. Knowing that, Dream asks, “Will there be a test?”

“Of course there’ll be a test,” George says and rolls his eyes, and fuck—this is why they work. This is why Dream loves him. They can twist and turn from serious to joking and then back to serious again. There’s no one else who can keep pace like this. “But I’ll be your tutor.”

“Well, you are older and more experienced,” Dream says. 

“We can start with something easy,” George says. He has that look in his eye that he’s about to scream yolo and jump off a cliff. “Let me suck you off.”

The gasp Dream lets out is involuntary.

“You like that idea?” George teases, slipping off of Dream’s lap and down to the floor in front of him. He gazes at the bulge pushing out of Dream’s shorts. “Seems like you do.”

“But how is this teaching me?” Dream asks, because don’t get it wrong, he wants it so badly. He wants George’s mouth around him, but he wants to participate too. He wants to learn to be good for George.

“You’re observing first,” George says like Dream is stupid. It makes a laugh bark out of Dream because it’s so quintessentially George. “Pay attention to what feels nice and then you can just do that on me later.”

When he puts it like that, it’s—that makes sense. 

Confident hands pull at Dream’s shorts and underwear until they’re out of the way. George lets out a wistful sigh, which almost makes Dream laugh. He’s never had someone else stare at his dick like this, taking it in, learning it. He remembers George being like this about his face—forcing him to Facetime over and over before he moved in that week between getting the visa and flying out—how George just wanted to stare at him and watch him talk. 

Finally, George takes him in hand, giving him a stroke like he wants to memorize how Dream feels in his hand. It knocks the breath out of him and when it returns, he feels like a steam train barreling down the tracks.

A tongue slides over his cock head, teasing at first. Dream moans, and George takes that as a challenge. He licks up and down the shaft, no millimeter untouched, sending tendrils of pleasure up his dick. It’s not enough—too light to make him come, but it’s so George. 

George’s mouth is something else. He’s always known George’s mouth would be unreal because he’s such a fan of everything else about it. Its words, its smile, the way he licks his lips, the bite he does when he’s concentrating. To feel that on his dick is to see the face of god. 

Dream’s dick finds its way into that too big mouth, the way he’s seen in his dreams thousands of times. George is good at this, though even if he weren’t, just knowing it’s George would be enough for Dream. This isn’t just sex, it’s—it more than that. 

And then, George takes the whole thing down his throat and swallows.

“Holy shit,” Dream says. His fingers curl into George’s hair on their own. The course curls feel good when he tugs, pulling George off him long enough for both of them to catch their breath. “I can only handle so much, sweetheart.”

“Want you,” George says. His hands are anchored on Dream’s thighs, his cheek resting on the left while he stares at Dream’s dick, looking for permission to keep going. “Please, let me—come on.”

“I want this to last, George,” Dream says, trying not to let it come out as a whine. He’s never felt this good before in his life. He’s had a healthy sex life in the past, but this is—

“We have forever to go slow,” George says petulantly. “I’ve wanted this forever. Just let me have it.”

He stares down at George, letting the promise of forever ring between his ears until he’s dizzy with it. George is right. They do have forever, until the end of days.

He can let George have this.

“Alright,” Dream agrees. “Your way.” He eases up on George’s hair, but can’t make himself let go all the way.

George perks up, smirking like he got one over on Dream, and then resumes blowing Dream’s mind. His tongue swirls around. He hums deep in his throat. This isn’t going to last long, but that’s no longer Dream’s goal. He just wants to come. He wants George to make him come.

And then he is, coming that is. It sneaks up on him in a back alley and hits him over the head. His hips push up, chasing the tight warmth of George’s mouth, and he shoots his load down George’s throat.

He physically can’t look at George. He has to throw an arm over his eyes and lean back on the bed until he’s lying down in order to recover himself. He’s never had it feel like that. It’s—it’s just George.

Between his legs, George uses his thighs to hoist himself up to his feet. “Stupid floor,” he mumbles. “My knees are killing me. Remind me not to do it that way again.”

And Dream knows that he will. That even without trying, he’s locking that information away into his George database just like which type of soup he likes when he’s sick, and he’ll remember. 

“Come here,” Dream says, using his legs to awkwardly pull George down until he lands on Dream’s chest and sprawls across him. He likes the way it feels to have George lying on him—post orgasm and skin sticky with sweat. George’s scruffy face scratches at Dream’s pec when he nuzzles his skin, and it’s—it’s honestly perfect.

“Your turn,” Dream says, taking another deep breath for both oxygen reasons and also to gather his courage.

“Padawan,” George says, coughs, and then laughs. He struggles out of his pants, but not in a way where Dream can see him. He wants to see him.

“I’m not calling you master,” Dream remarks.

“Yeah, good, please don’t,” George says. “That would be so weird.”

Dream feels him hard against his leg. He waits for the feeling of it being strange to come, ready to overcome it, but—it never comes. It never feels wrong or strange or different. It feels right in a way that makes him want to cry for missing out on this for so long.

He wants George to use him to get off. He wants to make George feel good. He wants to take his time later and learn George’s entire body. He wants to find all its secrets and commit them to memory. 

George grunts and pushes his hips up against Dream harder, enough that Dream considers that he should probably offer to return the favor. Just as he’s about to bring it up, George gives another sound that travels right to Dream’s spent cock.

“Wanna come like this,” George says on top of Dream. He crawls up his body so they can kiss, rubbing his dick against Dream’s thigh. It’s perfect. He lets George take charge of the kiss, take what he needs from Dream. He gives back the same energy that George pours into Dream, moving his thigh so George has something to give him friction.

“You’re so beautiful,” Dream says, meaning it more than anything else he’s ever said in his life. “George, you have to come. I have to see it.”

George’s eyes burn hotter than a campfire—his kindling is lust and want and this juggernaut of love that they have for each other.

“Come, baby,” Dream says, reaching down to squeeze at George’s ass, to encourage him to move faster and just because he loves the feel of it.

George cries out and comes. Ropes of glizzy spill out of him and in between them, and George works himself through the aftershocks, coming to a final rest on Dream’s chest, in Dream’s embrace. 

It’s everything all at once—it’s the definitive proof of George’s masculinity, his dick and balls, sure, but the shape of him—the hair on his chest and his jaw. It’s the sharp jut of his hip bones and the hair on his legs, the breadth of his shoulders. He’s a man.

And then it’s more than just George’s body’s gender—more than his dick that excites Dream. It’s not about the end result of orgasms. It’s about the journey together, about the intimacy of knowing George could do this with just about anyone, but he wants to do it with Dream. He only wants to do it with Dream, wants to let Dream see the love in his chocolate eyes, the trust, the yearning, the mirror. 

He wants to disappear into George.

He’s in love with him.

“I’m not certain of much,” Dream says quietly into the room. His fingers dance along the patch of skin on George’s arm where he’s tucked up into Dream’s chest. “But there’s one thing I do know.”

He’s half expecting George to make a joke, and he’s pleasantly surprised when he doesn’t. “What’s that?”

“That you are the love of my life,” he says and then takes a deep breath. “I think I could love someone else, if you ever—if you can’t anymore. But when I’m on my deathbed, like, it’s you I’m going to be thinking about, you know?”

“Dream,” George says with an ache in his voice.

“I’m giving you an out,” he says. “If you need it. I—I think part of me needs to give it to you.”

“So you know when I don’t take it, when I choose you, you’ll know I’m here because I want to be,” George says, reading Dream’s mind the way only he can do.

“So that if you decided I’m too much, that you can’t—I’d be okay,” Dream says. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to say, but he needs George to have this. He needs himself to have this. “I wouldn’t die. I’d—I wouldn’t do anything stupid. I love you, and that’s not going anywhere, but I’m not holding you captive here.”

“Stop,” George says. He lifts himself off of Dream’s chest to put both hands on Dream’s cheeks, bringing their noses together. “You’ve said it. I have my out. I’m not taking it. So, shut up.”

“Alright,” Dream says.

“If you change your mind…” George begins and then trails off like the emotions are getting the best of him. “After this, if you—please don’t change your mind, Dream. I can’t—I can’t be brave like you. I don’t want to move on and love someone else. I’d only ever want you, anyway.”

“George.”

“So please stop talking about that,” George begs. “Now that I’ve had you, I can’t—it would have been okay if I never had you like this, if I never knew what it could be like. But not anymore. There’s no coming back from this.”

“I only want to move forward,” Dream says.

“W,” George says. 

Dream chuckles, he can’t help it. “W,” he agrees.

The next morning, Dream wakes up with George’s hair blocking his breathing. It’s fine, though. He needs the smell of George’s hair more than he needs oxygen anyway.

He could get used to this.

He wakes George up carefully, cajoling noises and pets along his ribs until more than just his mind wakes up. After his first practice exam of oral sex, George lets him drag him down to the kitchen to share breakfast and apple juice.

It’s the first day of the rest of his life. He can’t stop smiling. He’s never been this happy in his life, holding George’s hand at the kitchen counter while he uses his other to sip his juice. 

He simply can never go back. He doesn’t want to go back.

W.

“I’m going to tell my parents,” Dream announces to George. “About us. About me.”

“Are you sure?” George asks. It’s not an accusation or a hidden ultimatum, but his worry for Dream manifesting. How nice to be worried about. 

“I’m sure about you,” Dream says. He brings their joined hands up to his mouth to place a kiss on his fingers. He can’t wait to be able to do that all the time. He’s going to abuse the privilege. All those idiots online in love with George can get fucked. He’s Dream’s.

“They’re your family. What if it doesn’t go the way you want it to go?” George asks, squeezing Dream’s fingers.

He loves that they’re coming up with their own language.

George knows about the passive aggressive comments in Dream’s family. He’s heard a few of them over the years. He knows how Dream hates that his family treats his queerness like it’s a character flaw, but they love him anyway—like it’s mixed in with his ADHD and his autism and all the other things that are wrong about him. Just one more thing to overlook in Dream, despite how he’s been successful because of those things.

“Then they’re going to have to accept that you’re my family now.”

“Dream.”

“You’re my future, George. I’m not jeopardizing that again, and I’m not hiding it.”

The smile he receives is blinding to the point that Dream can’t see anything else for the rest of the day.

It takes a week. A week of carefully removing all traces of her from the house, a deep clean by the nice ladies who he pays handsomely to come by. It’s a week of sleeping in George’s bed, George’s arms, avoiding the outside world and getting to know this side of George, the side where he’s openly affectionate.

And after that week, Dream drives them to his parents house with his fingers tangled up in George’s, tethering them into one unit. The way they’re meant to be.

He doesn’t knock on the door, but he lets them in and finds his family in the kitchen, still holding George’s hand.

“Mom, Dad, meet my boyfriend, George.”