By the time Dream got a grip on himself and everything collapsing on him, it was one in the morning. He had been kicked from Munchy for inactivity and his body had somehow made its way onto his bed, but that had only barely registered. His mind was static, whatever thoughts he had drifting aimlessly through space, just high enough he couldn't pull any of them together to make a coherent thought.

A car passed by just next to the apartment. In the distance, an insect chirped. The night was overwhelmingly, oppressively still.

Dream looked out the window, only to be met with pitch darkness.

The world still moved on. Despite it all, the world still turned and time still ticked by, with or without him.

God. He needed to stop wasting what time he had left.

But everything felt off, not so far off-center he could identify what was wrong but slightly to the left. The atmosphere felt all wrong, like an imitation of itself. He was frozen on his bed with his heart pounding in his chest. It was cold, it was cold, it was so cold—

"George," Dream called quietly. His voice was raspy, dry, and the name on his tongue was undeserving of such a voice. "George."

There was silence, then a soft knock on the door.

"Dream?" came an even softer voice. "I don't mean to intrude. Would you like me to come in?"

Dream opened his mouth, but the words caught on his throat and clotted against themselves. They piled up like cars on a highway, and each one that got tangled in the mess pushed Dream closer and closer to the edge of the precipice.

He supposed the silence was enough of a confirmation, as the door creaked open and George stepped in.

He took a couple more steps into the room before taking a seat next to Dream on the bed. "Patches is sleeping on the living room chair right now, if you'd like to look."

Dream shook his head but smiled at the thought of Patches curled up into a ball. His thoughts were obscured under a hazy cloud.

There was a moment when George paused to look him up and down, his eyebrows furrowed in worry. His gaze moved back to meet Dream's eyes. "Are you alright, Dream? You seem a little tense for it being one in the morning."

Dream hesitated before nodding.

"Well, that's bullshit. I'm assuming you don't want to talk about it?"

Fuck. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about it; his throat was too choked up to speak. But to be fair, what would he even say after everything that had crashed down on him?

Then George reached out to take his hand, and Dream's busy mind finally shut down.

The hand was a warm comfort. It wrapped around his own hand like a blanket, entangling with his fingers. But his heart—instead of twisting or jumping like it had with his previous crushes—only warmed with a fuzzy feeling unfamiliar to him. He struggled to rein in the urge to get closer, to get more warmth. George was already iffy when it came to physical contact; he shouldn't push it.

Then Dream looked up, only to find George smiling at him, not in that teasing, sarcastic smile he shot him when Dream tripped over the stupidest thing, but in the way a best friend would shoot their friend when watching them ramble about something they're excited about. In the way a friend looked at another friend when they're too busy entrenched in their passion to notice. In the way a partner would look at their dumbass partner in crime doing literally anything.

Love. That was love. What kind of love, Dream couldn't decipher just yet, but there was love in that gaze, and Dream melted underneath it.

"George," Dream called softly, the thorns in his throat receding.

And George must've felt it, too, because his smile grew just a bit gentler.

"Dream," George called back. "Let's go to sleep, okay? We can talk about it in the morning if you'd like."

His brain was on pause, but he could unpause it later when George wasn't looking at him like that. Dream flopped back onto his bed, his arm sticking up from George still holding onto it.

But just before Dream could let himself let go, George lied down next to him, keeping their hands intertwined. His wings fell gently over him like a blanket, his eyes fluttered shut, and Dream didn't think he had ever seen such an angel of a person.

Heh. Literally. It took everything he had in him to not start laughing at his own joke.

"Hey, Dream," George said, his eyes still shut. "Remember when you almost died in your sleep like an idiot?"

Dream cracked a smile at that. "I hate that I have to ask which time."

"The first time."

"The first time?"

"Yeah."

Of course Dream remembered that. He had never seen George so worried.

"Yeah, I do," Dream chuckled. His laughter died away as he filed through memories of the last couple of weeks, the last couple of months even. "I haven't almost died in a while, huh? Makes your job a lot easier."

George stilled, opened his eyes for just a tic, and looked Dream up and down. "Yeah. You haven't."

There it was, that expression he had when he was remembering something or thinking too hard. Dream frowned at that and asked, "What're you thinking, George?"

"We both know I never think. Go to sleep, you idiot." George left him with a soft kick to the leg before shutting his eyes.

Dream smiled at the kick and settled into the bed.

He would be kind to himself. He would allow himself this one moment of relaxation before hell broke loose.

And so Dream drifted to sleep, his mind finally rested for once in his life.

*

Morning didn't come easy.

Dream lifted his head, blinking the bleariness from his vision away. His hand had separated from George's overnight, but George still sat beside him in the bed, humming as he pet Patches (who had most likely come in the bedroom demanding food. Prick). He tried not to feel too disappointed at the loss of contact. It was for the best anyway.

Then everything from the day before came crashing down on him.

"Good morning," George said. He lifted Patches into his arms. "Patches, it's morning. Scratch the shit out of your owner like a good kitty, will you?"

Patches gave him one last look before leaping out of George's arms and strolling out of the room. Seemed she was sick of both of them.

Dream chuckled at that despite the knotting in his stomach.

This was a good life, having George by his side. Dream had a partner now, both in his career ambitions and life in general, and he liked to think George liked the arrangement just as much as he did. There was someone to laugh with, someone to eat with, someone to celebrate with. Life wasn't lonely.

But he owed George more than that. If George had given his role as a guardian angel his all, Dream should give his all to help George reconcile with his past.

Even if that meant disturbing the peace they shared right now. Even if that meant turning the foundations of their friendship on its head.

(Not to mention his realization last night. That was being thrown straight out the window. That would never work out.)

"Hey," Dream called. "Are you open to talking about... well, you?"

And George didn't flinch away. He blinked but turned to face Dream. "What do you want to know?"

Well, the best place to start was someplace simple.

"I'm gonna list out some names. Tell me if you recognize them," Dream said. With that, he reached over to his phone on the nightstand (when had he moved it to charge his phone?) and scrolled through his Twitter DMs. "... Steven."

"No."

"Belinda."

"No."

"Joe."

"Joe mama."

Dream lowered his phone at that and wheezed, prompting laughter from George. "You're so ridiculous. How about Alyssa?"

The laughter died away. The smile slipped off George's face, and he looked away, staring off into the distance.

"George. Who was Alyssa?"

"I'm not sure what information I can tell you," George said. "We met through mutual friends a couple years before I died. We played Minecraft together a lot. We did meet up once after I graduated with a bunch of our other friends, though."

"Was she a close friend?"

"Of course. Like a sister. I remember, um..." George trailed off, his eyes flickering to the floor. "I don't think I'm the sort of person people would go to for help. But I remember sitting in the TeamSpeak lobby and hearing her join the call, and we'd just greet each other before doing our work in silence."

"Like every night?"

"Most nights during a busy season, yeah. I, um..." He rubbed his thumbs against each other, picking at his fingernails. "I regret—I used to regret a lot of things. I can think about my past life clearly now and I can appreciate it for what it was, but not saying goodbye to Alyssa—that's one... that's one thing I'd say I regret a lot."

Dream frowned. Had George ever been quite this nervous? "George, that's not your fault."

George set his hands down and huffed. "I know it's not. I still just wish I got the chance to say goodbye. Or just that she got the chance to say goodbye to me. That would be... nice, I suppose."

"Nice?" Dream chuckled.

George grinned at that. "Listen, I can't think of another word for it right now."

"Okay, okay." Dream scrolled down his Twitter DMs. "How about Punz?"

"Would it be cursed to say he's my bro?"

"It would, but go ahead anyway."

"Well, alright." The smile slipped off George's face again. "Um... I don't quite know where to start. We met through mutual friends on MCPvP—you know MCPvP. After we became friends, we talked a lot about life in general. He had a job he didn't like, I had a job I didn't like, it was easy to commiserate over that."

Dream nodded along as George kept speaking, tapping on Punz's profile.

"Eventually, we both got out of our jobs," George said, chuckling a little at that. "We celebrated together over Discord video call. We got drunk on champagne together. I think that's the only time I shelled out the money to buy champagne. But, uh..." He looked back down at his fingers. "I hope he's doing well—I reckon he's doing well. Punz has a good head on his shoulders."

"A hundred forty-five thousand followers on Twitter," Dream said, holding up his phone.

A grin blossomed on George's face, and he laughed. "Of course he does. I told you he has a good head on his shoulders. I knew he could do it. I'm—I'm..."

"Proud?"

"... Proud."

Dream's gaze flittered from George's hunched back to his still fingers to his dullen eyes. "You never told him that, did you?"

George's entire body seemed to still, and Dream couldn't help but think he looked closer to a statue than he did an angel. "No, I didn't."

There was nothing more to say about that. Dream moved on and said, "How about Callahan?"

George lightened up at that. "Callahan! He was an idiot."

"Like you?"

"I hate you." George continued even through Dream's chuckles. "But yeah. We were something like coworkers on Munchy when we first met since we were both developers, even though he later became an admin and I didn't. We never stopped being coworkers, but we became better friends over the years. Though I never heard him talk until we met up, the same meet-up after I graduated."

"How does that even happen?"

"I'm not sure, actually. I do, um..." George laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. "I do wish I could've done more for him before I died. I was the lead developer on Munchy, but I never trained anybody to fill my position. Because, you know, I never planned to leave so early."

Dream frowned as another uncomfortable silence fell over them. "Yeah. You didn't plan that. Is that—"

"If you know about those three, then you probably know about Ponk." The words streamed out of George's mouth like a waterfall, tripping over each other on their way out. "I suppose I should talk about Ponk next. Again, we met online. You've probably noticed by now that I never left my house."

"Heh, yeah."

The attempt to lighten the mood with laughter went unnoticed, and George's words were still frantic, almost frenzied. There was a new energy behind his voice, like a bus speeding straight into a wall, all its passengers screaming with the brakes. "We both lived in the UK, so meeting up was easy for us. We went to Winter Wonderland—you know Winter Wonderland—together every year. We went to Nando's a lot together, too, especially while I was in university. We did a lot of stuff together actually. It was like—I don't know. I don't know a lot of things anymore."

There was a stale silence after that, the kind of silence that would've been a death sentence to any conversation that wasn't this one and between any people who weren't Dream and George.

"How about Bad?" Dream asked quietly.

George raised an eyebrow, and if Dream hadn't spent enough time around him, he would think George was genuinely confused. "Bad? That's an adjective."

"You know who I'm talking about."

"I don't."

"If I know everyone else, why wouldn't I know Bad?"

"Stop it, Dream."

Those words were enough to put the conversation to a screeching halt. A pit of guilt burrowed in Dream's stomach as George turned away from him, every muscle in his body clenched and tense. His wings were raised almost like a shield against all the judgement of the world.

(But there was no judgement. There never had been.)

"Sorry," Dream murmured.

A moment passed before George let his wings fall to the side and his shoulders relaxed. He turned back to Dream with a blank face. "Don't be. It's not your fault. I just don't want you to think differently of me."

Think differently. What could have happened to instigate that response?

Then a whiny, elongated meow came from the kitchen, and the tension in the room burst like a balloon as they chuckled.

"Did you not feed Patches?" Dream asked, getting up from the bed.

George shrugged. "I only woke up a little bit before you did. I didn't have time before you woke up."

"Alright, alright. Get up, you boomer."

George huffed at that but took the hand Dream had offered him to pull himself off the bed.

As Dream poured food into Patches's food plate and George poured out stale water from her water bowl, Dream couldn't help but feel this was where he wanted to be forever.

Yet his heart sank as George cooed at Patches from the sink.

There was something George was guarding with all his might, guarding it even more protectively than he did Dream during his clumsiest stages of life. It was locked behind a wall of chains and a lock with no visible key, and George was intent on keeping its location a secret.

The only thing that would erode those chains was time. And fuck, Dream was never the best at waiting.

*

"It's raining again," Dream said.

There was a cloudy mist in George's eyes as he nodded to that. "Yeah. It is."

*

"Wanna play chess?"

Dream looked up from the program on his computer, only to see George standing in his doorway with a chess set in hand. He furrowed his eyebrows. "You sure? I'm pretty decent at chess."

George rolled his eyes. "You sure don't look it."

"No, really."

"According to who, yourself? As if that's a reliable source in the slightest."

"Fine, then," Dream huffed, getting up from his seat. Somewhere in his head, he knew George was purposefully riling him up, but his reputation as a chess master in elementary school was at stake. How could the program be more important than that? "I'll just have to show you then."

And later if Dream kicked his ass in six consecutive chess matches, George would deny every moment of it.

*

Dream [19:33] new video soon

Dream [19:33] when the hell are you gonna upload yours
Sapnap [19:34] itll happen naturally dw king

Dream [19:34] flattery wont get you far sapnap

Dream [19:34] but it does get you somewhere so lmk when you upload
Sapnap [19:34] xD

Dream [19:34] stop using my own emojis against me

*

The sky was beautiful tonight.

With experience from the first video and George's help programming, recording and editing the second video went by much quicker and smoother. Dream was on his YouTube channel page waiting for the video to render when George spoke after an hour of silence.

"You've made two of these cursed Minecraft videos so far," George said. "How many more do you think you'll do next?"

Nobody had asked him that before. And that unleashed the Pandora's Box of creativity Dream had kept hidden in his head for so long.

"I'm not sure about cursed Minecraft, but I do want to do more of them." Dream took a deep breath, pausing to let his mouth catch up with his thoughts. But his thoughts were running wild, finally free after years of captivity. He needed to wrangle them quick before they could escape. "There's this series I want to do—it's Unsolved Mystery. It's lowkey based off Buzzfeed Unsolved, except I look at mysteries in Minecraft. I've been working with some people online to see if we could recreate Pewdiepie's world seed. I've mentioned that to you, right? Surely I've mentioned it to you."

The look on George's face told him he had never, in fact, mentioned it to him, but he kept going, the stars in the night sky glittering so brightly he could almost, just almost touch them.

"The next step after that is—god, I don't fucking know, I guess challenges with coded plug-ins. Speedrunning Minecraft is simple enough, but what if there's someone hunting you down while you do it? What if you use Xray the entire time and can't turn it off? What if item drops are multiplied exponentially each time you break a block? Fuck, George, there's so much I've wanted to do for so long, and I'm just now getting around to it. What if I never—"

"Don't finish that thought."

The thoughts in his head froze. Dream's gaze shifted from the thousands of stars in the night sky to the infinite number of stars in George's eyes.

"You're beautiful," George laughed, his chuckles so quiet Dream had to strain his ear to hear them. "Your ideas, everything you have inside that head of yours—it's all so beautiful to me."

Dream grinned and sat a little straighter at that; it was an automatic response at this point. "Does that mean you'll finally say you love me?"

"No."

And it hurt, but Dream kept going. "You can call me beautiful but you won't say you love me?"

"Absolutely."

"Oh, come on now."

George's laughter softened into a fit of giggles, then when they faded away, he looked up at Dream with all the warmth in the world in his gaze. "You're gonna do great things, Dream. You really can do anything you set your mind to."

Dream opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. George continued speaking.

"I used to make YouTube videos, you know that. A lot of my friends were, actually. But I was never really as passionate as you are about it. I mean, I loved it, don't get me wrong. But..." He smiled. "You know? There's a lot of people who aren't as passionate, as creative as you."

His heart was blooming too much. This was too much after what had happened that morning. Warmth was building behind his eyes.

"Even if I stole my title format from other Minecraft YouTubers?" Dream chuckled.

George smiled. "Even if you stole your title format from other Minecraft YouTubers."

They fell into another silence as they watched the video finish uploading.

*

Dream [23:43] hey

Dream [23:43] i love you

Dream [23:43] you idiot

Sapnap [23:45] i always knew you loved me

Sapnap [23:45] waiting for my kiss muah

Dream [23:45] no
Dream [23:45] but seriously

Dream [23:45] i appreciate you so much

Dream [23:45] so so much.

Dream [23:45] never forget that, ok?

Sapnap [23:45] dream

Sapnap [23:45] youre my best friend in the whole world

Sapnap [23:45] ily2 you idiot

Sapnap [23:45] im watching a movie with my sister dont make me cry

Dream [23:45] <3

*

Dream [00:12] hi mom
Dream [00:12] daily reminder that i love you

Dream [00:12] dont ask me why im still up

Dream [00:12] tell everyone else i love them too

Dream [00:12] can i visit tomorrow?

Mom [09:33] Clay! What did I tell you about staying up too late?

Mom [09:33] And of course you can, sweetie.

Mom [09:33] Mom loves you too!

Mom [09:33] You're always welcome back home <3

Mom [09:33] Your little sister says she won't let you back in if you don't bring food but ignore her, I'll let you back in >:)

Dream [09:34] thanks mom

Dream [09:34] tell her shes a rat <3