Mark My Words || DNF Soulmate AU

Chapter 53

A cell phone goes off in the middle of the night, and George wakes up annoyed and confused.

One hand escaping the covers to seek the intrusive noise snipping his ties with slumber ring by ring, George eventually finds it after a whole lot of aggressive patting near his bed stand.

He doesn't bother to check the caller before accepting the call, placing the phone to his ear and collapsing back into bed, "What?"

Already falling back asleep, George doesn't even hear what the person's next few words are as the phone starts to slip out of his hand. He's halfway back into his REM cycle when he hears his name.

"...George?"

Startling back awake and re-gripping his phone, George struggles to push himself up to a sitting position, yawning heavily as he rubs his eyes, "Dream. What do you want."

"George, I'm so sorry," comes Dream's profuse apologies, "I swear I wouldn't have woken you up if it wasn't anything major. It's just that..."

"What," George drags out his syllables into a long whine as his head tilts tiredly to the side, "This better be good."

"I dropped glass all over the kitchen floor-"

Snapping awake in an instant, George presses the phone closer to his ear, "You what? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine! I'm fine," Dream replies in a hurry, sensing the panic in George's voice, "It's just really dark and I don't have shoes, so..."

"Dream, you idiot," George says as he jumps out of bed and practically flies down the stairs in a fit of worry, "Listen. I'm gonna grab shoes, and I'll find you in the kitchen. Hanging up now."

Racing to the front door, George turns on the light and waits for his eyes to adjust as he catches his breath and shakes off the last remaining clouds of fatigue. When he at last finds his shoes messily strewn on the ground with all the rest of the bunch, he pulls them on at record speed and dashes toward the kitchen, turning on his phone flashlight as he runs.

"George? Hi," Dream calls as George's footsteps and the scanning flashlight approach, "Sorry for waking you up."

"It's fine. What were you even trying to do?" George asks as he shines the flashlight onto the floor, illuminating Dream's bare feet amidst shards of broken glass and tiny fractals shattered like crystals on the floor.

"Needed water," Dream explains, "I couldn't see the counter and so I sort of just dropped the glass in mid-air and it shattered."

"Okay... fine," not quite free from worry, George doesn't waste time lecturing Dream, "Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna grab you a chair, and I'll get your shoes. Then you'll sit on the chair, clean the glass off your feet, and put the shoes on. Sounds good?"

How his mind is able to come up with all this so quickly is beyond George, especially since he was just ripped away from his sleep minutes ago. He suspects the worry and adrenaline have something to do with it.

"Yes. Thank you so much George, I don't even know what I'd do without you," Dream proclaims gratefully, and George acknowledges him with a "sure" before setting the plan into action.

He swivels his flashlight the other way and searches for the kitchen light, noting that it's probably safer to work with glass when he has visibility. Trying not to step on any glass or kick shards around, he tiptoes through the gridded kitchen tiles and finds a finger pressed against the switch, "Turning the lights on, it'll be bright."

With that warning and a click, the kitchen flashes at the intensity of a thousand suns. Even though he had to adjust at the door light previously, George still recoils from the brightness. It's slightly painful to open them fully, but George blinks a couple of times and sees that Dream doesn't look to be much better, one hand partially covering his face as he struggles to look up from the floor.