Helium ( DNF )

Animal

"I didn't say all those things to make you do it," Dream says helplessly. "I didn't—in the kitchen—touch you to make you—"

"I know." George's hands loosen their grip on his shirt, and his eyes open to watch them uncurl. Quieter than before, he repeats, "I know."

Dream's heart pounds. Even though George has yet to meet his eye again, there is nothing angry in the brittle air between them. He slowly leans against the shared wall with distance from George's side, passing a glance over his suspended fingers, while George stares like he can see through bone.

"Are you... alright?"

George's hands drop to his sides blankly.

"Obviously you're not," Dream corrects himself. "I'm not. But I need to know where your head is."

George sighs heavily, palms moving to brace the wall on either side of him. Shadows from lampposts draw down the back of his neck.

Dream's gaze drifts forward to the stretch of parking spaces before them. His own words tossed out of him between the walls of his therapist's office echo back.

"What if I still make the wrong choices, after everything? What if I'm the one who messes it up?"

Hours over summer of readying himself for their September trip didn't prepare him for a modicum of this; George reaching back, George pulling first, George's lips on his. The freshly burned knowledge of the shape of his mouth and the softness it gives roars loud between his ears. He's committed time and time again to being content with wherever they are, whatever George gives him, but the rich hope coursing from his chest clings to the memory with force.

He's never been kissed in a way that means everything and nothing at all. Any time he's tacked his lips to someone warm or they've guided his breath away, the connected kiss was embedded with a promise, an obligation for something beyond it, like he negotiated part of himself away by giving in.

Yet George kissed him with simplicity, with presence. They shared the same heartbeat for a full, fleeting, meaningless moment.

Nobody has ever been there with him before.

Dream's hands are simmering as his eyes drop down to the painted parking lines. Nerves rattle in his chest, pinpricks and bumps rising across his forearms. He hopes and he worries, until he hears a reply push past George's teeth.

"I can't believe I did that."

He doesn't think or move. He doesn't like the edge he hears; resounding possibility flipped upside down.

Disbelief, disbelief. "What do you mean?" Dream's head turns to stare, and George says nothing. "George, what does that mean?"

"Sapnap can't know," George dismisses hurriedly. "If we fight then he'll know, and I can't have him know."

"Is—is that what you're worried about right now?" His eyes search George's face rapidly. "About him?"

George floats a hand to brace his abdomen. "Dream," he warns.

"Why are you thinking about him after what just happened?" he pleads, voice raw. "How can you think about anything else after—"

"Stop it," George snaps. The bite in his tone loosens as it rings out; he exhales unsteadily. "Please, just stop. I told you I can't do this. We can't fight."

Dream recoils and his thoughts come with him. Not like this, not like this, his head resounds. Anything but this. His attempt to keep the bitterness in his gut from rushing to his mouth fails, and his jaw slackens.