ᴛʀɪɢɢᴇʀ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ ɪɴ ᴏᴘᴇɴɪɴɢ ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ'ꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ
:]
george isn't sure how long he has been awake for.
he isn't sure when he fell asleep, either.
it's dark outside so, regardless of the time frame, he has slept at a bad time, but even despite his rest he feels tired. at this point, george is starting to wonder if he knows what tired actually is, or if all of his emotions are so messed up that what he's feeling isn't tiredness at all but rather something much deeper than surface-level exhaustion.
sometimes he hardly sleeps, sometimes he sleeps too much, sometimes he gets just as much sleep as online articles suggest for a male of his age.
the tiredness never goes away.
george pulls himself into a sitting position and it takes much more effort than it should, his body feeling weighed down for more reasons than one. or maybe the weight is in his mind. same difference.
everything in him screams at him to lie back down and rest. his muscles ache and his head rings and his mind is overflowing. he refuses the craving as he shifts, kicking his legs off the side of the bed and settling his feet on the floor. the cold air of his room brushes against his bare ankles and the brit folds over himself to tug the bottom of his joggers back down over his legs. sue his sleep movements for ruffling up his clothes and making them set wrong.
george looks around his dark room, eyes skittering over the space. if it was left up to him, he imagines his room would've been bare and barren and, to the outside world, it would've looked quite sad. much like his room in england. however, dream and sapnap had decorated his room before he arrived, so it's all organised and his shelves are full of life and memories. all the stuff he had in boxes back in england, his friends clearly decided deserved to be on display when they unpacked george's belongings before he arrived.
the most decorations he had back in london were the ones left up from his birthday steam, which sat hanging about for long over a year. he liked the colour in his bland kitchen but he had to take it down when the fans began pointing out how worrying it really is that he never took it down.
his room, and the house he now lives in, is completely different.
it feels homely and that thought brings him some modicum of comfort but the feeling doesn't seep through him or warm his heart, it just sits over him for a brief moment before fading like any other sense of goodness in his life.
george is hungry and, even though the thought of hauling himself out of bed and across the house to feed himself feels impossible, he tells himself he has to do it. if he doesn't eat soon, his body will give in and he'll start feeling sick, and then he'll feel too sick to eat and it'll be an endless downward spiral until he's so lightheaded that he has to force something into his system.
so he stands on shaky legs, his feet embracing the cold of the floor beneath him even through his socks, and shuffles across his room and out into the hallway. the house seems dark but there is a distant light shining from down the hall.
george is drawn to it much like he's drawn to those futile flashes of brightness he feels in place of happiness, and he wonders if that craving for something other than darkness is what leads so many people to the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel.
his feet slip slightly on the polished floors as he stalks down the hall and he barely holds back the urge to take a few running steps and let himself slide the last of the distance. maybe in a past life he would've indulged, but he doesn't have the energy for that now.
he's too tired.
george pauses at the entryway to the kitchen, eyes widening at the scene before him.
the light flowing down the hallways is half-casted by the lamp in the lounge, the soft golden glow glimmering through the doorways and into the surrounding rooms. the rest of the light is radiating from a set of candles sitting on the kitchen table, splayed out over the marble with plates of food on either side.
he shouldn't have followed the light.
sapnap is sitting at one plate of food, cutlery yet to be touched, and dream is standing a mere few feet away at the counter closest to the sink, pouring two glasses of wine until he looks back over his shoulder to see george standing there.
"oh, hey george," he greets with an easy smile, screwing the cap back onto the wine and blindly discarding it on the counter behind him, close to the wall. "i thought you were asleep."
"i was," george replies, unintentionally void of emotion. he hopes that they don't notice the emptiness in the lacking lilt of his voice.
his eyes dart when he notices the quiet hum of music, gaze landing on the coffee table in the lounge. two phones sit discarded on the wood, left out of the kitchen, and one of them is playing slow, almost-classical music.
holy shit, they're having a date.
george's eyes are drawn back by dream's voice. "do you want some?" he offers, gesturing to the pans on the hob, still half-full with food which george assumes dream has spent a while cooking. unless sapnap and dream cooked together - he wouldn't label them as the type to bond over homecooked food but he also didn't suspect them to be the couple who listen to classical music and had dinner dates in the kitchen. "there's loads spare."
"pull up a seat," sapnap prompts. of course, all the seats are always at the counter. george knows it's a figure of speech, but it doesn't make him feel any less awkward.
what are the odds he stumbles in, bleary-eyed, while his two best friends are trying to have a romantic date in their kitchen? maybe the odds are high, if they do this often but, judging from the amount of effort they've put into it, he doubts this is a regular occurrence.
and now they're inviting him to join their date, because they evidently feel like they should. they live together, after all, and george knows they would never want him to feel like a third wheel in the house.
still, he can't imagine anything more embarrassing than sitting in on their date out of pity. perhaps they aren't pitying him, but rather requesting the company of their friend because they love him, even if it isn't romantic, but that makes no difference to his thoughts on the situation.
"no it's okay, i'm not really hungry," he lies, inching over to the fridge. "i just came down for a drink," he excuses, taking a bottle of water out of the door before gently pushing it shut. he could grab himself a snack, he knows that, but there's no way his friends would let him walk away with a measly packet of crisps when there's a perfectly untouched meal left on the stove.
"you can join us anyway," dream offers, but his kind words feel stale when he carries only two glasses of wine to the counter, passing one to sapnap. again, george knows they would happily give him a glass, but it's the unintended meaning behind it all. two glasses, two plates, two boys, one date. george isn't meant to be here.
"i'm still exhausted so i'm just gonna go back to sleep." it's not true. there's no chance he will sleep again now, but his friends seem to accept the excuse as they nod and bid him farewell. dream comments that george can help himself to leftovers when he wakes up again and the brunette distantly thanks him as he heads back down the hallway with a bottle of water in his hand and a pit of hunger in his stomach.
there are tears in his eyes before he reaches his bedroom door but he wipes them away before they can spill. he has no right to cry. he has no reason to be sad.
[:
i love you all
-kit