behind the streams | dnf

six | escape

GEORGE

Anger is an incredible thing. It comes up unpredictable, it comes up quick, it can twist anyone's benevolence into something dangerous.

It rises out of my slackened jaw as I listen to him disregard Dream's problems to dust. Stirring me out of an appalled paralysis even as the untouched part of me pleads that Sapnap doesn't know, he never has, he doesn't understand and it's not his fault.

And then it consumes that as well. And words, awful words, are rising up and dragging me along with it. 

"Complications," I repeat, and it sounds ridiculous. "That's sugar-coating it."

He hesitates.

"Okay?" I check with half-hearted consideration. "You asked for it."

"Get on with it already," he mutters, and it rubs me the wrong way as the anger climbs higher.

"What you don't know," I bite. "You don't know half of what I do." The words hurt and it feels wrong, so wrong, to say them.

And then I remember his scorn, the disdain in his voice and suddenly the regret burns away.

"You don't know how bad it's been," I continue. Anger, it makes wrong seem right. 

Leaning back in my chair, I grit my teeth and seethe. "You talk about both of us like that. Like we're overreacting, when you don't even know." The silence fuels me in a twisted, ugly way. "You don't even know. Dream never told you."

His voice is quiet and for a moment I almost, almost falter. "Told me what?"

My gaze bores into the opposing wall as I make sure to let my words last. "What the past months have really done to him. What they've actually been like."

He's silent. I don't expect anything more.

"But he didn't tell you that, did he?" I continue as the pain begins to curl. "No. No, he just told you the simplistics. Social media's an arse, the hate's bad and all, but do you know any more than that?"

"I don't," he snaps with a briskness I don't expect. "I fucking don't. Stop rubbing it in."

I let out a huff of a breath. "What were you saying earlier then? He's just streaming? Just a stream, that's his job, complaining about how I wasn't interesting enough for your viewers?"

There's an audible fume from the other end. "Well, I didn't know anything," he lashes with painful mockery of my own words.

"Any of this," he adds, and I'm not sure if it's accidental but his words end on a waver.

I break. Slightly. A vulnerability I've seen so barely, a number of times I can count with one hand and still have some leftover.

I force myself back together.

"I was texting him during your live," I mutter, maintaining an edge but allowing a lower inflection. "Just to make sure he was going to be okay. For a stream. It wasn't even what he used to do. Can you imagine how bad it's been, that I needed to do that?"

He doesn't respond but I know I've struck something.

Fury forks into bitter recollection. "Absolute hell." My eyes close and shut out the night, the night that looms outside halfway curtained windows, signifying how I should be asleep several hours by now. The night, resembling so many previous, the nights that've become a safe space for countless calls, texts, unimaginable moments of weakness as he voiced confessions that no one could know, they mustn't.