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."
"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.
Eventually, George prompts him.
"Why did you lie?"
George watches Dream open his mouth and hope springs up inside him like a match to a flame. He feels the heat on the back of his tongue and the thump of his heartbeat as anticipation grows and grows.
Please, please, please, please, please, please.
And George watches in silenced horror as nothing comes out, and Dream closes his mouth a second later.
Nothing.
The flames disappear like they had never been there.
Dream couldn't even bother to come up with an excuse this time.
The tears that start running down George's face tickle, but he's never felt further away from laughing.
It's so stupid that he's crying. So incredibly weak and dramatic and disgusting to manifest his emotions into physical dimensions. George hates every moment, and smears his cheeks with his palms until they're numb and he can't feel anything.
He can't tell what Dream does the entire time he cries, and he doesn't even want to know.
"George, don't-" Dream reaches forward a hand then drops it limply when he sees the way George fiercely turns to refuse his contact, "I want to tell- you might never- I don't-"
He restarts his sentence so many times that George feels his heart soften despite the circumstances. Clearly Dream is extremely nervous, clearly something about the matter bothers him too, clearly George's sadness is not without reason.
He wipes away the last of the unstoppable tears and breathes.
"Dream," George interrupts his nervous stammering, "Do you remember why you lied to me?"
Dream winces a little at the memory, and George doesn't let the little pinch in his heart bother him. He's fine now, he's done being emotional. George is strong and he will push through.
He finds that he's a lot calmer now that he's let out some of his emotions. The outburst has made him stoic, rebuilt his walls and kept him behind the fortified defense. George will lead them through this, he'll get them there.
At the sight of Dream's hesitant nod, George nods with him and enunciates slowly, "Because I was going to tell you something."
He tries to imitate the stance of an outsider. George was never involved in this situation, he shares a name with one of the main characters of the conflict is all. George never laid his entire heart out on a platter only to have it shut down and handed back to him, never let the moon torture him with memories until he practically bled tears, never sewed it all up inside again and pretended he was fine.
That doesn't sound like George at all.
George is awesome and strong and George has got this.
"Yes, I remember," Dream tries not to let his uneven breathing affect his words, "You wanted to tell me that we were..."
"We were soulmates, yes," the painful and mortifying experience flashes through George's entire soul until he has to roll his fingers into fists to not cringe physically.
George is strong, George has got this.
"And you told me that you already had a soulmate, so I wouldn't pursue the subject matter further," George narrates neutrally, his knuckles turning white against his sides, "Then proceeded to invite me to your house."
Dream nods like he's admitting to having committed murder.
"Do you see how that might confuse someone?" George raises his eyebrows and looks at Dream like a kindergarten teacher trying to educate his least-accomplished student, "We call that 'sending mixed signals.'"
"Yes."
Is he trying to be humorous? Is George using humor as a coping mechanism? Is this funny at all? George can't think.
"Good," George nods his head in an exaggerated motion, as if he really was trying to applaud Dream for his every minimal effort of a reply, "And do you see how we can resolve this now in our current positions?"
No answer from Dream, George smiles like it doesn't feel like a gash on his face.
"Dream, you're better than this. How do you think we should take care of this situation?"
The lack of reply doesn't bother George because George is strong and can get through this.
"This is a little difficult for some people," George sighs, "But the correct answer is you tell me what is going on and why you've behaved like this whenever we breach the topic of soulmates and soulmarks."
"Don't treat me like a child, George."
George bites his lip and refuses to feel anything.
"Then don't treat me like one either, Dream," George throws back, because he is strong and does not care.
You have no right to be angry, George feels wronged, to be chastised all of a sudden, None.
The other side of George argues back, And you have no right to pressure him into anything he doesn't want to do.
George is strong and he doesn't care.
George will be the bigger person.
That's why he lets Dream go, having gained nothing and having lost every little crumb of his self-respect and dignity.
"Dream, fine." George doesn't try to be their therapist. He is once again Dream's tired friend. He gives the customary offer, "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to tell me. I shouldn't have tried to force you to talk. Whatever it is, I hope you figure it out. I'll always be here to help."
He is very aware of the fact that he is trying to gaslight himself into believing his own words, but he chooses to ignore it.
Dream doesn't even seem to hear him, staring at a corner of the room as his eyes signify vacancy. George is exhausted, he wants to leave. There's no reason for him to continue piling logic onto Dream like how he wouldn't attempt to romance a tree.
He starts shifting himself to the edge of the bed.
"George, it's not you," Dream says all of a sudden, interrupting George's motion halfway, "It's just..."
And George, ever gullible and hopeful and lovesick, turns and waits because he thinks this is it. He thinks he's finally gotten an unresponsive, malfunctioning code to work, and he needs to know every piece of information it relinquishes.
"Just...?" George has to urge Dream again, he feels the warping nature of time and the circular motion of history and feels an unpleasant sensation deep in his stomach.
Dream opens his mouth and George already knows he can't do it. Can't divulge in whatever it is that's bogging him down, can't resolve their problems, can't give George what he wants.
George curses himself for hoping, and turns away to leave.
"I didn't mean for it to go like this," Dream starts, "I thought it'd all be fine."
"Then what did you mean for it to go like?" George has let go already. The draft has been written, never to be revised. All that follows is no longer relevant to anything important. He can get through this.
"I didn't know you paid so much attention to this. To everything." Dream murmurs, almost like he's talking to himself and trying to come to terms with what George has said to him, "I thought you'd forget."
"Forget?" George repeats, like he isn't sure if he heard correctly, "I'd forget?"
"Yes," Dream confirms, "That's why I thought it'd be safe to invite you over."
"You thought I'd forget," George says incredulously, "In what sort of a fucking clueless dickhead universe are you living in?"
"What?" Dream has the audacity to sound insulted. George has the audacity to not give a shit.
"You said earlier that it wasn't me who was at fault. Well, Dream, I hope you know that it sure feels like me," George snaps his neck around to glower at Dream, "It feels like I've done something to make you so opposed to the idea of even considering us as soulmates. It must be why you are so eager to avoid the topic, right? Because I'm just so completely unappealing and awkward that you can't bear to picture the horrific picture of us being an actual couple. I'm only supposed to be some sort of an amusement for you until you get with the real deal, and to think I would dream of being soulmates with you! 'It's not you, it's me.' If it's not me, then why am I the only one who cries and suffers and loses sleep while you wag a finger and I come paddling in your direction? It's not me, Dream, but it sure feels like it."
Dream must want to say something, but George is over it. The rage that's exploding out of him in tortured confessions feels like vomit, and somehow George feels worse now that he's gotten the first part over with. He keeps going.
"Shut the hell up and listen, Dream. You thought I was going to forget? I thought we were going to be soulmates. I thought you were the person I had looked forward to every single time I looked at my soulmark and wondered. I thought you were the person who would fill the growing gap inside of me that screamed my insecurities out loud. I thought you were the person who finally wanted me," George rants, anger rising inside him with every single word as venomous rage stings through him like poison. He feels nothing else over the overpowering nausea of fury, and George has never felt so in control of an outburst.
"I thought we were soulmates. I was gonna tell you that you were going to be the love of my life, that we were meant to be and that the stars wrote our story. I was gonna tell you that it all makes sense now, that I've always noticed you more than anyone else, that I somehow always found it in myself to care about you even in our beginning stages of friendship. I thought we were a textbook example of how soulmarks work. I was going to give you everything. And you thought I would forget?" George's throat hurts, having talked for so long and said so much and yet still raising his voice to speak even more.
George has never hated so much in his entire life, and he hates so much it hurts.
"I'd ruin everything if I told you."
"And you haven't already ruined everything?" George is practically shaking in disbelief at the person he thought he knew, "Do you feel nothing?"
George can't let Dream talk again, he cuts in before Dream can say anything else, "Do you feel nothing at my complete and utter humiliation? Do you feel nothing for any of the times we've hugged and I let myself fall a little? Do you feel nothing for the weeks we've spent completing each other's presence? Do you feel nothing?"
Dream is silent.
George has started hating silences.
He turns around and sits back onto the bed, grabbing Dream's collar by the fistful and tugging it harshly in his direction. Dream jerks forward in surprise and George wishes he'd choke. George pulls until Dream is leaning his weight forward onto his hands and they're at eye-level.
George isn't sure what he wanted to do when he yanked Dream closer in a fit of emotions. But it's only when he does that he notices the gloss coating over Dream's eyes like a delicate and translucent film. Somehow, that snuffs out every last flame coursing through George's veins, and a beat and a half later, he sits heavily onto the bed from the kneeling position before.
In their proximity, George traces his eyes over the face of the person he's in love with, the face that he had only gotten to see a few weeks prior. The face that holds everything George had exhausted himself to study.
Suddenly everything feels so in vain.
Starry freckles, greenish-grayish eyes, crisp brows, pink lips, artfully messy hair, and not one bit of it will be George's. What has he been trying to accomplish this entire time?
And then all George is left with is so much sadness he doesn't know what to do with any of it.
"Dream," George begins.
He sighs and lets the exhale drag on.
He doesn't finish the sentence.
Instead, he loosens the grip on Dream's shirt and uses his other hand to gently cup his face, sliding his fingers over smooth skin and holding him gingerly. George half-expects Dream to crumble into dust in his grasp.
He doesn't. He stays and stares and for once doesn't back off.
And so George doesn't either.
He leans in slowly, letting his unfocusing eyes guide him as he nears Dream's face.
Stop me now, George thinks, Shove me away like you've always had.
He's getting closer, he can count the little freckles on Dream's face, note the places they merge together, and the separate ones sprinkled on the outskirts.
Isn't it all a joke to you? Is this funny? Aren't I pathetic?
The edges of Dream's mouth jut out a little above the skin, the creases in his lips coming into focus as George inches closer.
Stop me. Don't let me get closer. I'm wanting too much, and you'd never want this, would you?
George dips his fingers into sinking skin and holds Dream still. He pauses centimeters before they touch and waits.
For once, the silence is telling.
George closes his eyes and lands on smooth skin, pressing gentle lips onto the corner of Dream's mouth. He folds a little bit of his soul into the contact and seals it away into someone he would never have, then parts with a slow kiss.
George is trembling all over.
He pushes forward until he's wrapped Dream in a hug and his chin rests on his shoulder. He can't bear to look at Dream, and doesn't want to see his reaction.
Something just ended with that kiss, George just doesn't know what.
He lets out a shaky breath and whispers, "And I suppose that means nothing to you either."
Then George cries until he shakes because everything hurts, because he isn't strong, because he doesn't have a soulmate, and because he cares so much about someone who will never understand.
---
Kang's Note: ...sorry :(
thankyouforreadingcanttalkforlonggottastartrunningbutihopeyouhaveagooddayiappreciateyoudontbesadpleaseiloveyouseeyou.