Mark My Words || DNF Soulmate AU

Chapter 36

"Unless you horribly neglected your soulmate and never spent time with them, that'd never be possible. All it takes is someone you want to see happy, and then that's all you can ever devote your time to," George doesn't even know if he's digging too far with how long he's been talking, but he can't stop.

All the bottled thoughts and emotions are clawing their way up his throat and he can't keep them down anymore. It's analysis, it's intellectual thought, it's a logical progression of evidence that George has collected, almost like figuring out a bug in coding, and this is the one thing George is good at. He's been working and thinking like mad, but even he doesn't expect how many words he blurts out.

He feels like he might cry, he hopes he won't.

This is just like coding, George thinks to himself, You get frustrated, but you don't cry.

"You wouldn't treat your soulmate like that," George says, a little emptily, "You're the type of person to give love until you physically can't anymore. You'd want to experience every single gross relationship cliche there ever was to exist, you'd attempt every stupid romantic gesture, you'd try so hard to prove yourself."

George hates how much he understands the sort of person Dream is, and how much none of what he's been doing makes any sense at all. It's supposed to be easy, reading the sort of honest and straightforward mannerisms of Dream, but now all George can think about is the number of hoops he's had to jump through to get practically nowhere.

Where did he go wrong with this particular piece of code? At which point did things stop making sense?

"You clearly haven't been doing that to your soulmate, because you've been applying a watered-down version of that onto me," George picks at his sleeves distractedly, running his thumb along the hem and stitches, "You take all that affection with nowhere to go and suddenly I'm the prime target. I'm a little reserved, a little shy, fun to tease, easy to flirt with. And you find that I'm actually really great best friend material, and suddenly I'm in your inner circle."

George shrugs, "The rest is history, is it not? I'm here, I've seen your face, I've cuddled with you, and no one else has. You'd never allow me this much physical contact if there was someone else. You're much too loyal and rule-abiding to have a soulmate and still allow our little ship to sail. I'm sure you would have made me stay at a hotel if you had a soulmate and I came here to visit you alone."

George finally turns back to Dream and looks at him with mild resentment, "And here I am. Calling you out for being a liar."

He neglects to mention the confusion and frustration that all led to the moment. Dream doesn't need to know, he just has to respond to what George has said and explain what's happening. Simple.

As George waits, he prays the sheen of liquid layering over his eyes isn't that visible, and doubly begs them not to accumulate and fall into actual tears.

It's all analysis, it's all logical, there's no need for emotions.

George focuses on managing his tears and tries to ignore the lack of response from Dream.

Say something, he thinks desperately, This is not helping with the crying.

"I'm sorry," comes Dream's quiet reply as George tries to blink as slowly as possible to avoid disturbing the unshed tears, "I didn't... It was never to cause you harm."

And that's all the quiet confirmation George gets for weeks of theories shooting through his brain and taking chunks of his sanity like ants working on bread crumbs. George waits, almost expecting more to come, for Dream to also open his gates and flood him with what he's been keeping to himself for so long.