Mark My Words || DNF Soulmate AU

Chapter 36

George wishes Dream would say something.

In the time he waits, he keeps his head bowed and stares at the stupid band-aid still covering his wrist.

What even is its purpose anymore?

Dream knows what his soulmark looks like, and George gets distracted by soulmarks anyway.

He has half a mind to just tear it off completely.

George imagines the scene. In a flash and the sting of the rip, the circle and its colors and lines are finally exposed in Dream's presence. The rush of air on a patch of skin that never sees the light of day, the unveiling of a mark that's supposed to be worn like a medal, and the person who was supposed to match it. What will he do then?

"George."

George takes a deep breath.

Here we go.

"I wasn't-"

He doesn't need to finish the sentence, George knows.

"You fucking liar," George interrupts as he sinks a nail into the fingerpad of his thumb, "You fucking liar."

He doesn't even know how he manages to force out a few humorless laughs as he tosses out the words, sadness and disappointment ricocheting within him as he focuses on the sting of his nail against skin.

George really thought it would have all ended there, that Dream would have been honest for once and relieve them of whatever miserable tension kept them so emotionally distant at times.

Of course he was wrong.

He turns to stare at the space between his and Dream's desk, and lets the thoughts boiling in the back of his head spill over, "No one else lived in this house besides you and Patches when I came here. No one outside of your immediate family had even stepped into this house regularly before I arrived."

Days of thought and unconsciously noticed details, and George rambles on with the result, "Nothing suggests that another person had been in this house. There are no clothes that belong to anyone else, no equipment that this person leaves behind, no snacks in the kitchen that reflect anyone's tastes other than your own."

The thought of the dried mango pushes itself back into his mind, and George vehemently shoves it back now. He feels like he'll throw up, but he needs to get through the monologue.

"Besides the guest room I sleep in and your room, none of the other rooms are even properly furnished, and none of the other floors have any scraping or markings from chairs or furniture movement. There's no sign of any trash or mess they've left behind," every word shoots out like a bullet, quick and precise as George lists all the evidence he's picked up on since living in Dream's house.

"You have all your spare keys in the house, there are no other shoes besides your own, there are no pictures or decor that suggest someone else's presence in this house. It's all you, Dream. Every little bit of this house is you, and you only," George goes quiet a little at the end, letting the words sink fully between them. He feels helplessness weighing him down as Dream's silence slices little cuts into his heart.

"I know you, Dream," George goes on, every single thought he's had regarding the topic coming together and pouring out onto the words he's speaking, "And I know you'd never hide the fact that you had found your soulmate from Sapnap and me. If you truly started dating a few years ago, we would have been the first to know about it. We would have cheered the loudest, and you know that."

George shifts his eyes to Dream's computer and regards it in solemn silence.

"In the six years we've known each other, you've never missed out on more than two hours of calls before you'd join and talk to us," the resurfacing memory almost brings a wistful smile to George's face, before it turns bitter and he represses it, "And the time we spent together only increased as the years passed."