"What're you doing?"

Dream snapped his head up, only to see George staring at him with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms. Admittedly, sitting at the kitchen table with pictures scattered everywhere like he was conducting a ritual was a bad look. The lit candle in the middle of the table (which he somehow hadn't burnt himself on) probably didn't help. Neither did the dim lighting everywhere else in the apartment. In fact, nothing around him was a good sign.

"Don't worry about it," Dream said.

That apparently wasn't the correct answer, because the perplexed expression on George's face didn't fade.

"... Interesting," George said, taking a seat across from him. He picked up one of the pictures. "Oh, are these the photos Sapnap sent? You could've just told me instead of being all cryptic about it."

"Where's the fun in that?" Dream chuckled when George rolled his eyes and picked up two pictures. "I'm trying to decide which ones I should frame."

"Didn't you buy, like, twenty frames?"

"Yeah, but I only have enough space for three."

"Then why'd you buy so many?"

"Well, I didn't measure out every available spot in my apartment before buying picture frames. And you were the one who said this was a good deal on frames, so..."

George scoffed, yet his lips curved into a fond smile nonetheless. He started sifting through the pile of pictures on the table. "I can't believe you sometimes. Have you decided on any so far?"

"Nope."

"I mean..." George handed him a picture with a close-up on Sapnap's toes. "This is a masterpiece."

Dream wrinkled his nose and set it face-down on the table, laughing. "Why'd I print that?"

George shook his head but continued sifting through the pictures.

Among the pictures, a selfie he and Sapnap had taken at the Minecraft convention stood out. Sapnap held both his phone and the sapling figurine while Dream waved at the camera. They wore bright grins on their faces.

In another picture, half of Sapnap's head took up the lower left corner of the picture. On the other three-quarters of the picture, Dream flinched away from a pan on the stove while George looked like he was mid-shout, his arm blurred as if he were about to push Dream out of the way. Patches, who had witnessed that entire scene and wanted nothing to do with it, was a blur of white and brown on the ground. Sapnap seemed completely unperturbed.

"Hey, what about this?" George said before handing Dream another picture.

Dream had to smile.

It was their final picture together in Dream's apartment. The three of them were squeezed together, Dream in the middle having thrown his arms around his friends' shoulders. Their smiles were warm, their eyes were bright. Even if the picture had only been from a week and a couple days ago, Dream couldn't help but feel nostalgia swelling in his chest.

"Yeah, I like that one. How about these two?" Dream asked, sliding the other two pictures across the table to George.

George flipped through each picture, then handed them back to him with a smile he couldn't bite back. "They look fine."

Later when Dream caught George staring at the pictures he had framed and hung around the apartment with a goofy grin on his face, Dream would only smile.

*

"Why do you want me to pick out a chair again?"

"Just do it, George."

George rolled his eyes but continued scrolling through catalogues of gaming chairs.

It had been a sleepy Sunday morning before Dream called George into his room and talked him into sitting down at his computer to look through a variety of chairs. After several blocked attempts of George trying to exit out of the gaming chair category, he eventually got the message.

"I don't know," George said, "all of these look fine. Why can't you pick one yourself?"

Dream, who had been standing behind the chair with his arms resting on the top of the chair, set his head on top of his arms. "It's important. Just pick one."

"What I don't like any of these?"

"Then we'll find one you do like. Keep looking."

After another couple minutes of scrolling through several pages of chairs, George finally clicked on one.

"Which color?" Dream asked.

George's eyebrows furrowed, and he hovered the cursor over the different arrangements of color. "I don't know. Why don't you choose?"

"This isn't for me, idiot."

"Then why're you buying the chair?"

"Just choose a color already."

"Ugh, fine." George cycled through the different color choices again and landed on the black chair with dark blue accents. "Here. Happy now?"

Dream chuckled. "Yeah, I am. Was that so hard?"

"Actually, it was. I'm colorblind?"

Dream's chuckles died along with any sense of pride he had. His heart dropped so far he could almost hear it hit the floor. And honestly, if the floor could swallow him up right now, he wouldn't be opposed to it.

George froze, then whirled around in his seat with wide eyes (making Dream lose his balance in the process, but he refused to acknowledge that). "Oh my god, I never told you."

Dream's mouth moved, but no words came out. He strained his throat to speak. "I... sorry."

"You look like you want to die right now."

"I kind of do, yeah."

There was a suffocating moment of silence before George swung back around to the computer screen and burst out laughing.

"Wha—George!" Dream called, his own laughter starting to pick up despite the heat rushing to his cheeks.

"I can't, your face was just—" George cut himself off with more laughter, his wings curving in around him. His face wasn't visible, but Dream was certain he was close to the brink of crying from laughter.

Dream sighed and hid his face behind his hands despite the chuckles bubbling from his own mouth. He waited until George's laughter died down to say, "I can't believe you. Why'd you never tell me?"

"I mean, you've never really asked," George said, leaning back into the chair. His wings unfurled, and he swung the seat towards Dream the tiniest bit. "And before you start throwing stuff in front of me and asking me what color they are, I'm red-green colorblind."

"Wait, so..." Dream furrowed his eyebrows and moved beside George. He extended a hand to type, then moved the mouse to click on an image of two spectrums, one showing typical colors and the other showing how they would appear to someone with red-green colorblindness. "Is this accurate?"

"I guess so."

"Then..." Dream glanced down at his green hoodie then back at the website.

Oh.

Oh no.

"Wait, you see my hoodie as piss yellow? What the hell?"

George's laughter kicked back up, and Dream, again, wanted to disappear into a hole thinking of how many uncoordinated outfits he must've worn over the months they had known each other.

But George was laughing, right? He laughed without a care for anyone else's opinion. That made everything alright.

So Dream laughed along, and the two shared a moment of raucous, uncaring laughter.

*

"Wait, Dream," George called, looking up over his plate of dinner. "Why'd you order that chair?"

Dream only laughed.

*

Dream had been fiddling with this list for far longer than he would've liked.

Cursed Minecraft. He would start off with that. That was a video people couldn't resist from sharing with others to share the suffering with. But if he was being honest with himself, the list of content he wanted to include was overwhelmingly underwhelming.

"Dream."

Dream blinked and swiveled his chair around, only to see George leaning against the doorway with a raised eyebrow. "Oh. Hey."

"I've been standing here for ten minutes and you didn't notice me the entire time."

"Wow, you want me to notice you?"

"Not like—" George huffed when Dream laughed. "Not in that way, you idiot. Why do you always have to make it weird? I could tell you weren't asleep, so I wanted to see what you were up to."

Ugh. Dream had forgotten that was a thing. He didn't want to explain so late at night.

But there was something about the genuine concern on his face that made the words die in Dream's throat. There was complete trust, complete openness in his stance that urged Dream to say what was on his mind but never pressured.

It was easy talking to George. Dream appreciated that more than anything.

"I was thinking of making a cursed Minecraft video where I do stuff that would make people mad," Dream said, gesturing for George to stand next to him. "I have this list of stuff so far, but it doesn't seem like enough for a video."

George hummed as he read through the list. "You could definitely use some more content, yeah."

Dream sighed. "And this is with Sapnap's ideas, too. But he was kind of in a rush, so..."

"You're gonna kill a pet for this video? I need to tell Patches to watch out," George mused. "These are good ideas, though. Trapdoors as a door, convoluted way of accessing a farm, planting melons without dirt next to it..."

"That last one was Sapnap's idea, actually."

"Nevermind, it's a terrible idea."

"George," Dream said, chuckling.

George laughed but continued to read down the list. "I don't really know what else you're looking for. I guess since you already have a farm, you could stomp on it a couple times. You can use the wrong tools for the wrong blocks, too, but I don't think that'll give the video much more length than you already have."

Huh. How had he missed that? Dream added those to the list.

"It would be kind of funny if you had an idea with, I don't know, the beds in the Nether or End?" George shrugged. "I'm just thinking out loud, though."

Dream wasn't quite sure what to do with that idea either. Having a bed just straight up explode, while funny to watch when unexpected, would definitely be expected when the title of the video was related to cursed Minecraft. He noted it down anyway.

"I think what you have so far is good, though. If you expand on it enough, that should be good for a full-length video."

Compliments were nice. Compliments from George were even better.

"Thanks," Dream said. He turned to smile at George. "Really, thanks."

For pushing him to start this. For saving his life every day. For interfering with fate. For everything.

George offered him a warm, fond smile back. "No problem."

All of that went unsaid. Dream just hoped it didn't go unknown.

*

"Can you not follow basic directions?"

"You already know the answer to that, George. Now shut up and help me assemble this chair."

George grinned as he tossed a bolt at Dream.

Dream rolled his eyes but chuckled, leaning back to retrieve the bolt. "You're such an idiot."

By the time the chair had arrived, Dream had forgotten he had ordered it in the first place. The knowledge he had forgotten also included the fact he needed to assemble it rather than it coming in one piece. He wasn't sure what was more trouble: assembling this or having to haul an entire chair all the way up from the ground floor.

After twenty minutes of squabbling and minimum effort work, they had managed to assemble the bottom half of the chair. They had delegated tasks somewhere between that, and now Dream was flipping through an instruction booklet while George fiddled with various screws.

All because George didn't trust that Dream wouldn't somehow cut his hand in half with one of the tools. Great.

(Not like that fear wasn't unfounded. Dream was the first to admit that.)

"What's the next step?" George asked.

Dream furrowed his eyebrows as he squinted at the drawing and instructions in the book. "I think they want us to put the back of the chair on next. Use the longer screws."

"What do you mean, longer screws?"

"Second-longest."

George stopped to examine the various screws he had laid out in front of him before picking up the second-longest screw. "And I need two of these?"

"Yeah, two. It should be pretty obvious where they go."

"It is," George said before screwing the back of the chair in place. Then he smiled that certain smile that reminded Dream of moonlight and late nights coding, the one that silenced Dream into listening. "Did I ever tell you about my computer?"

Computer? George had said he worked with coding, but he hadn't said anything about the hardware itself.

"Nothing about the computer, no," Dream said.

"My old computer's hard drive was dying, but I didn't want to move all my files over to a new one. So my best friend just straight up built me a new computer." George laughed softly, fondly. "It took him some time, of course. I wonder if this is along the same lines of what he was doing."

Dream hummed in response, flipping the page to preview the next step. "Did you use that computer a lot?"

"Of course I did. And it ran pretty well until... you know. But I'll never forget that." George's gaze dropped to the screwdriver in his hands. He repeated quieter, "I'll never forget that."

They shared a moment of silence, not awkward but not quite amicable either. Just silence.

George looked up. "What's the next step?"

Dream began dictating the next step to him, and they left it at that. Dream didn't know what else to do with that information.

*

"What do you mean the chair's for me?"

Dream raised an eyebrow. "I mean, nobody else lives in this apartment. I was getting tired of one of us always having to stand when we're at my computer, so I just got another chair for you."

George's gaze darted between Dream and the chair before finally landing on Dream. "I'm fine with standing, you know. You didn't need to."

"I know I didn't need to. I wanted to."

"Why? I'm not even human."

Neither flinched at that, not anymore. It wasn't something to flinch at; it was just reality, and neither could keep denying it.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt, though. It felt like a bullet, at least to Dream.

Dream frowned. "You're my friend. Isn't that enough?"

"Do you just... regularly buy chairs for your friends?"

Dream opened his mouth to respond before noticing the smirk that threatened to breach George's face. "That's literally such a bad joke. That wasn't even funny."

"You're smiling, aren't you?"

"No."

George laughed when Dream covered his mouth with his hand, and Dream dropped the hand to laugh along.

God, this was so ridiculous. George was so ridiculous. The joke hadn't been funny enough to even register as a joke immediately, yet Dream found himself laughing like George was the best comedian on Earth. If his taste in humor had declined since he had met George, he wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.

"But seriously," George said, a warm smile on his lips. "Thanks, Dream. You don't need to do any of this, but thanks anyway. I really appreciate it."

Dream rolled his eyes but couldn't hold back the smile on his own face. "You're such an idiot. It's just a chair."

George gave him a hum in response, and Dream suspected he didn't truly believe that. To be fair, neither did Dream. "I still appreciate it," he said.

Dream turned away, covering his mouth with a hand.

Seeing his friends smile was worth more than anything. He was sure of that.

Huh.

He had been thinking that a lot recently, hadn't he?

*

It had hit Dream one late weekday night.

There were two chairs in his bedroom at one computer, two cups of water on the table in front of them right now, two sets of leftovers they had packed up together, two pairs of silverware that needed to be washed, and more pairs he was sure he could point out if he tried hard enough. If somebody had walked in right now, they would assume two people lived in the apartment.

Dream looked up from his place on the left end of the couch.

George was curled up on the other end of the couch, his gaze focused on some obscure dystopian fiction book Dream had forgotten he had. Occasionally, his facial expression would shift: a wrinkled nose, furrowed eyebrows, blank face, and—Dream's personal favorite—a tiny smile and giggle. His wings were curved around him, creating his own bubble of space. He looked at peace.

Patches had climbed up onto the middle cushion of the couch some time ago. It lasted only a couple minutes before surrendering to sleep, splayed over on its side. Neither Dream nor George had moved in fear of disturbing it.

If Dream listened closely, he could hear light rain pattering against the side of the building and onto the roads. The engine of a car driving by would grow faster, reach the highest point of its pitch, then disappear into nothing.

The whole scene felt awfully domestic, as if they were truly just two roommates living life together. Dream couldn't pin when exactly their lives had become so intertwined, but he would be lying if he said he hated it.

No. This was lovely, actually.

Dream tapped his phone on again and scrolled through his social media feed, admiring the atmosphere around him.