Dream felt, frankly, disgusting when he woke up. His breath tasted stale and vaguely of last nights pizza; he could feel where sweat had dried over the days, adhering his clothes to his body and his greasy hair to his forehead. He hadn't noticed it as it happened.

But it was all worthwhile because George had stayed. George was there, peacefully asleep, right where Dream had left him the evening before. He looked something like a dream that Dream had had many a time in the nights before this. Hazy in the morning light, lines blurred and features warmed with restfulness. George's lashes feathered kindly over the swell of his cheeks; they were long, dark and wonderfully curled. How Dream hadn't noticed them more before, he wasn't certain.

His lips were softly pouted open from where his cheek was pressed tight to Dream's pillow, a dusty pink in colour and vaguely chapped from where he'd been breathing huffed little breaths through his mouth. His hair was nothing short of a bird's nest atop his head, mussed and sprouting in every which way. He had the ghost of lines pressed into his skin from the folds of fabric beneath but Dream found he rather liked the way the long-sleep lines looked. 

George looked nothing short of painfully handsome, as much as Dream desperately pushed such a thought to the base of his heart. To think like that would be to risk all that he had with George.

But, as George slowly and, frankly, gracelessly came to wakefulness, Dream wondered whether George would ever have it in mind and heart to have those thoughts about him. Whether George had ever taken a moment, in the short time they'd been together in England or even possibly in the many video calls that followed, to simply take in Dream for all that he was. Whether George ever watched and wondered whether, if he were to take Dream's cheek into hand, he'd be able to feel the way it flushed beneath his fingers.

Dream felt the shadow of self hatred shroud those thought's entirely, assuring him that George could never and would never see him in such a light. Especially not after the pitiful state in which he'd seen Dream fall involuntarily into shortly after he'd arrived.

"Good morning." George spoke as soon as the words reached him, stretching out long before curling back close to where Dream had had him before. He rather liked the warmth that radiated from Dream's sun-kissed skin.

"Morning." Dream managed, voice hoarse and wobbling. It was in that moment that he realised the way his head ached and eyes itched. 

George was slow to open his eyes, perfectly content to stay in that bed for days because at least then he new that Dream was alive. He knew, however, that he really ought to make the effort to pull Dream from this room, even if it was just far enough and just long enough to get him clean.

"How are you feeling?" He began, reaching stiff fingers to rub the bleary sleep from his eyes. Either he didn't notice or simply didn't care that his hand almost brushed the tip of Dream's nose in the process.

"Disgusting." Dream answered honestly and it was all George could do to smile.

"I'll go run a bath." He yawned, sitting up. It took Dream a long second to realise what he'd said.

"Wait, George," And then Dream's hand was around George's wrist. It was a soft, gentle grip and easily escapable, just enough pressure for George to stop and look back. "You don't have to, I can do it myself."

George smiled, carefully prying himself free just enough to to place his hand in Dream's instead. He squeezed it once, soft and gentle. "I know."

And, with that, George slipped from his grasp and the room. It wasn't long before he heard the sound of water running. Nor was it long before he pushed himself up on trembling arms, heady with nausea. Though still cold and hollow, he felt warmer than before and certainly more moveable.

By the time he'd pried himself from his bed and onto weakened legs, stumbling to pick up the first set of clean clothes that he could find, George had finished running the bath. Dream made his way over heavily, never wanting to waste George's time or effort. George smiled, ever kind, when Dream reached the bathroom and carefully pulled the hoodie from over Dream's arm.

At Dream's confused look, George decided to explain. "My mum would always put my hoodie in the tumble drier before I wore it when I had a bad day - it makes it warm and soft." The memory was something George held close to his heart. Dream nodded, watching as George walked from the room with his green hoodie held delicately, as though it were something endlessly precious.

As much as Dream forbid himself from thinking about it, what he and George had going wasn't friends. It hadn't been since that tense moment beneath the streetlights of a London road whose name had long since left Dream, steps away from his hotel, when they'd gotten so very painfully close to finally closing that gap between them. 

They'd stared wordlessly, neither wanting to be the one to end the day with a goodbye, illuminated only by the warm yellow of the lamp above. Dream wasn't even all that certain of what had happened, wanting not to dwell on it for fear of losing what little sanity he had left. Somebody had glanced, eyes flickering down, and then someone had leant - that's the extent of what Dream had let himself remember. It had ended with the barest graze of lips, the clicking creak of a door opening and then a quick, flushed goodbye. 

The next day, they acted as though nothing had happened. The only indication Dream had that it wasn't some cruel memory of a fantasy was the underlying tension that now sat comfortably along their shoulders.

So Dream was equally very surprised and not really that surprised at all when George returned to the bathroom, finally having the courtesy to look nervous and bashful. He wasn't exactly sure how to word his offer, still not certain at all of the extent of Dream's own feelings for him nor how something like this may effect the fragile mental state that he was in. He attempted instead to communicate what he wished to say wordlessly.

What George attempted to extend to Dream was kind and warm and chaste. It was shy and so terrifyingly intimate that Dream really didn't blame his friend (could they really call each other that anymore?) for not being able to say the words. He instead nodded softly, cheeks a wonderful cherry red, and waited for George to turn away.

George perched himself on the end of the bathtub, vigilantly watching the wall in order to give Dream his privacy. At two tentative taps to the back of his hand, he turned back around to face Dream's back. Despite their childish nervousness at Dream's state of undress, the silence that lingered was neither tense nor suffocating.

George rolled up his hoodie sleeves and placed shaking hands onto Dream's broad shoulders, pushing ever softly until he could softly cup water in hand and pour it over dirty blond hair. Once it was all adequately soaked, he slow pushed Dream back up into sitting and reached for the shampoos, picking out a scent he'd distinctly remembered from the very first time he'd been in Dream's arms. He worked deft fingers through Dream's hair in long, gentle movements, carefully lathering it completely and massaging against Dream's scalp.

Dream's head grew heavy in his hands, relaxing with every little circle of George's thumbs behind each ear. "You don't have to tell me anything," George began "but I'm here to listen, Dream." With that, he softly pressed Dream back down to wash out the shampoo. "Whatever it is, I'm here to listen."

It was so utterly odd to have George in this manner. Dream could handle the stutter in his heart, the burn in his lungs, when the George he was with was the George the world got to see. The George that screamed much too loud and much too often; that spoke as much with his hands as he did his mouth; that brushed off his blasé remarks easily with a scoff or a roll of his eyes and that was, honestly, rather crass in all that he said and did. That George? With that George, Dream could pretend he wasn't entirely enraptured.

But this George? This George stole everything that Dream had once known, all of his inhibitions, and cast them to the wind.

This George was polite and quiet and calm. This George, Dream could never guess what was going on behind his eyes and below his throat. This George was caring and warm and so very confident in his advances; was easily open and trusting of Dream; always seemed to simply know what Dream needed and when he needed it. 

This George was very nearly a new person entirely.

This George was for Dream's eyes and ears only, though he didn't know that yet.

"I'm sorry, George." Dream choked, focussing on the way George's fingers worked the conditioner through his hair. "I'm so sorry." George cupped his hands into the water and let it run down over Dream's head, making sure to tilt is back so that no conditioner would get into his eyes.

"What are you sorry for?" He asked, continuing to rinse Dream's hair through.

"This." Dream said weakly. "For ruining your time here because I can't even control my own head." George shook his head. 

"You haven't ruined my time here, Dream. Nothing could ruin my time here as long as you're still with me." He spoke softly. "And it's okay to have feelings, I'm not going to get mad at you for something you can't control." It was silent for a moment. George reached for a body-wash that branded itself as smelling of cinnamon and sandalwood. "What about what you're feeling do you feel out of control of?"

"Everything." Dream managed to push the pained and lost noise down and back into his lungs. "Sometimes I just feel.. empty and sad for no reason. It makes it hard to breathe or eat or do anything. Nothing I do or try to do is enough." He sighed, shuddering as George firmly rubbed the soap into his shoulders and down his back. Dream brought his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.

"It's like... I'm never enough. I always could have tried harder or done- been better." George's thumb pressed into a particularly stiff knot in Dream's spine causing him to hiss softly. "But every time I try harder it just... doesn't work and I end up feeling like this again." After working the knot from Dream's back, George's hands grazed up and over his shoulders to his chest. "And it gets in the way of everything because I don't know how to stop feeling like this."

"Because you're overly critical of yourself. You set this standard for everything that you do that not even a superhuman could hope to meet." George began. "But that's not your fault, you've always been like it." He carefully passed the body-wash to Dream after deciding that he really shouldn't go any lower than where his hands were already resting on Dream's stomach.

"You need to lower the bar, Dream, or you'll burn out." Despite his words, George's voice was impossibly kind and gentle "And it's going to take time to learn that you're allowed to make mistakes but I know you and I know that you can do anything that you set your mind to." George shifted to crouch beside the bath, patiently waiting until he caught Dream's gaze.  "And I hope you know that there will always be people here for you. That I will always be here for you."

The silence this time was taught with that same tension from beneath that streetlight all that time ago. Dream stared, brows knit and lip pulled beneath a row of white teeth. George waited patiently, the only indication of his nerves being in the way he flexed his fingers over the edge of the bathtub.

"I love you, George"

The words had been said before, a hundred times or more, but they meant something different now. They were stronger, more raw and more truthful. George couldn't describe the ways in which they were different - the subtle inflections in Dream's hoarse tone - but he would forever know that they were there. That they were so painfully clear, it was all that George could do to rock onto his knees and lean over the edge of the bath.

He placed a warm, water-wrinkled hand to Dream's cheek, almost shivering at the way the pads of his fingers heated with Dream's flush. There was no stranger leaving the hotel to interrupt them. No sense of the danger of being caught, of having interpreted the others' advances wrong. There was no excuse, nothing to stop them.

It wasn't how either of them had ever thought it would be - George's lips were still vaguely chapped whereas Dream's were wet from washing - and yet neither could imagine it being any different, nor any better. It was warm and chaste and slow, the careful drag of lips on lips as they finally, finally, addressed that which they'd ignored for far too long.

"I love you too."

----------------------------------------

2.2k words

part two of the last shot :]

Requests are open!!

Yours, Dandy