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George moved to Orlando when he was seven years old.
Moving across the ocean in the middle of July, to a city that’s sickly humid and sticky isn’t something anyone wants to do, let alone a young kid. It had been for his dad’s job, and George had been as furious as a seven-year-old could be, complaining that he has friends in London and that his dad was ruining his life.
Still, George watched the furniture in his childhood home get packed down, and boxes accumulate throughout the rooms. His stuffed toys got packed away too, except for the shark he got from Ikea that’s almost as big as him. His mum tells him he should’ve packed it, that it’s too big and it’s going to get dirty, but George was insistent that he absolutely needed it for the flight.
When he landed in Florida, he was exhausted. At seven years old he’s old enough to understand what’s going on, but young enough to not be forced into doing anything. At most, his parents make him pull his own suitcase through the airport, while his parents do all the adult things.
He falls asleep in the car, the hum of the engine as they go down the freeway rocking him to sleep. It’s late at night in Orlando, even later in England, and the exhaustion from travelling knocks George out quickly. Soft snores echo throughout the car and when the car pulls into the driveway of the Airbnb they’re staying in for the night, his mum carries George to bed.
They leave early in the morning, sleep still in George’s eyes when he gets hauled back into the car. The drive to their new neighbourhood—their new home—is so short that barely three songs play on the radio. American houses are so different, George thinks as he looks out the window at the house. It’s two stories, detached from the houses next to it, and exact replicas can be seen scattered down the street. It’s so unlike British housing, so like American housing.
George is doing nothing to help his parents except get in the way when they’re unpacking. He stands in the room that he’s chosen as his own and watches on as his dad swears under his breath as he builds furniture. He can’t do much, he unpacks his toys onto his bookcase that was built earlier and shifts the dinosaur so it isn’t squished up against the white panels.
“Georgie!” He hears his mum calls from downstairs, “Come down here, sweetheart.”
He runs downstairs, his sock-clad feet hitting hardwood stairs and he almost slips on his way. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees his mum standing in the doorway, another lady—she’s blonde and older, probably the same age as his mum—standing with her and a little boy with matching golden hair is with her.
“This is Sandy,” George’s mum says, coaxing him closer to her to say hello, “and her son Clayton. He’s a few years younger than you.”
George waves, all words suddenly missing from his vocabulary. He can’t stop looking at the little boy hidden behind the other lady’s legs, how his big green eyes look at George in what can only be described as an immense curiosity. He waves back, his hand smaller than George’s, but infinitely more tanner. Probably from all the time spent in the Florida sun, such a contrast from George’s pale arm.
“You can call me Dream,” the boy says softly, and George immediately giggles. “What? It’s what my brother calls me!” He’s huffing, arms across his chest like he’s defending the nickname.
George, in truth, wasn’t even phased by the unconventional nickname, instead, he says, “No, you sound funny.” He steps towards Dream as he hears his mum scold him from behind, but he doesn’t pay attention to her. The small boy in front of him has captured his attention, so much so that George has decided in this moment, that Dream is going to be his best friend forever.
“You sound funny,” he retaliates, a smile on his face and a glint in his eye, and then he asks, “Where are you from?”
“London,” George says, and all he gets is a confused stare in response so he follows it up with, “It’s in England.”
Dream then points to his own house, the one across the street from George’s. It looks almost identical to George’s, with the same facade on the front, the same perfectly manicured lawn. America is weird, George thinks, but he also decides he likes it here at the same moment.
“I’m five!” Dream says suddenly, a burst of confidence coming to him it seems. “How old are you?”
“Seven,” George replies, and then he’s filled with an overwhelming feeling of sadness. “We won’t be in the same grade at school.” It’s a ridiculous thought, George knows he’ll make plenty of friends but there’s something about Dream that hooks him in, line and sinker.
“That’s okay,” Dream says, entirely way too reassuringly for a five-year-old. There’s a smile on his face that lights up his eyes, little dimples in his cheeks as well. “My best friend is in the grade below me, and we’re still best friends! His name is Nick!”
That quelled any worries George had. There was something about Dream that made George want to be around him forever. He has so many friends in England but even Wilbur, his absolute best friend in the entire world who he’s known for years, has never had George feeling like this.
They spend every moment they possibly can together.
They catch the same bus to school and they sit together. Dream always lets George have the window seat, even if he’s the one to get on the bus early. At first, their bus rides would consist of chatter—about their day, if they’ve done their homework, whether the other wants to come over this afternoon—but it soon evolved to sharing wired headphones, as George plays music on his first iPod.
It’s nice, the silence between them. It’s comfortable and safe, and George feels butterflies in his stomach as their fingers brush against each other when he’s handing Dream a headphone.
Sometimes, Dream will come home with George too after school. He never asks but he doesn’t have to, if George is completely honest. Dream doesn’t say why, and George doesn’t pry either, they walk from the bus stop on the left side of the road, and go straight to the backyard
George is ten now, Dream is seven. It’s only been a few years, but neither of them remembers a time when the other wasn’t around. They’re each other’s best friend, forever.
Just before George is about to start high school, his dad drops a bombshell.
Soon, plane tickets are purchased, and his house is beginning to get packed up again. He whines as he packs his things, his books, his games, his stuffed animals. This isn’t fair, he thinks, kicking the dust bunnies he finds in his room now the furniture is dissipating, I moved once, why do I have to move again?
His dad’s job’s bringing him back to London. Their parents say the move to America was always going to be temporary, but it doesn’t stop the kicking and screaming from him and his sister. “I don’t want to leave!” he had cried, foot slamming onto the ground in a futile attempt to cause an earthquake.
His dad sighed and told him he was sorry, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. It’s a part of growing up. George’s rebuttal was that he was a kid, that those rules shouldn’t apply to him and all his dad had done was look at him with a sorry look on his face, and told him that the move was inevitable and he was sorry.
Dream had cried, because of course, he had. They’re thirteen and eleven now, they’ve almost known each other for half their little lives.
The pair of them stand in the backyard of George’s house the day they’re leaving, clinging to each other as their lives depend on it. The swingset they’ve sat at so many times is gone, sold to the family with a little girl down the road. George cries too, tears stain the white of Dream’s t-shirt, creases forming from how tight George is holding onto him. He wonders, briefly, if he held on tight enough, their bodies would fuse together and Dream would be forced to come with him all the way to England.
“Dream, sweetheart, they need to go soon,” Dream’s mum calls from the kitchen, but Dream doesn’t move. He stays holding onto George, and George’s arms stay clinging to Dream.
“We’ll stay best friends forever right?” Dream asks. His voice is soft, fragile, like a gust of wind would break it into a million pieces to fall into the grass. George has to stop himself from laughing, from calling Dream stupid.
Instead, as he pulls apart from Dream, he says, “Of course we will be.” And he crosses his heart because George doesn’t want to live in a world where Dream isn’t his best friend. He will do everything he can, and he knows Dream would too, to stay best friends.
And it’s confirmed when Dream beams at George, his smile rivals the sun with how bright and pretty it is. He holds George’s hand in one, crosses his heart with the other and says, “Hope to die.”
It’s hard, to keep a friendship when you live across the world from them. It's even harder when you're so, so young.
George’s parents don’t let him have social media when he’s in his early teens. They tell him it’s dangerous, and that they would rather he wait until he’s older. He understands though, because at least they let him have a phone though.
But texting Dream becomes so expensive. He’s too young to get a job to pay for it himself, so he gets in trouble for how much his phone bill is, and soon, the only form of contact George has with Dream is severed.
As a substitute, they email back and forth for a little bit. George laughs and thinks it’s funny, the long paragraphs sent instantly between the two of them. They tell each other about their days, what they’ve been up to, how strange it is that they don’t see each other anymore. They concoct plans to convince their parents to go on holidays, whether it’s Dream’s to London or George’s back to Florida, they have no idea, but it’s a foolproof plan in both of their minds.
Timezones make it the most difficult at first. Dream is getting out of school when George is having dinner, and he’s finished his homework when George is going to bed. George wakes up when Dream is still asleep, and when Dream wakes up, George is already at school. Eventually, George only remembers to send an email on Monday, and then Dream will reply on Thursday, but George will be so busy that he forgets to send another one until the following week.
When George starts his GCSEs, he’s so busy that they stop altogether.
When George is twenty-six, he goes to France.
TwitchCon is being held in Paris this year, and Wilbur had begged and begged George until he succumbed to his words and agreed to go. George mostly decides to go because Paris isn’t far from London, after all, and it’s during the summer it’s the perfect holiday.
George complains the entire walk through the station about being tired because Wilbur had somehow convinced him that taking the 7 am train would be a good idea. Wilbur, instead of enabling George, pushes him into the train carriage and says, “Sleep on the train then, mate!”
So he does. He puts his AirPods in his ears and sticks his tongue out at Wilbur before putting music on and leaning against the glass. It reminds him of when he was a kid when he’d listen to music with Dream on the bus to school. How George was perpetually tired even as an eleven-year-old and how he would almost fall asleep on the bus ride home, how he would trust Dream to wake him up at their stop.
They drop their stuff off in the Airbnb and then make a beeline for the convention centre to pick up their tags. It’s packed with people, everyone is walking in the opposite directions and it gets so messy that George is terrified he’s going to lose Wilbur and then be crushed by the sea of people.
Wilbur’s noticed quickly though, and George is stuck taking photos of him and fans for a while. He doesn’t mind though, he doesn’t have much else to do until his stomach begins to rumble so loud that Wilbur hears it and laughs mid-photo. “Are you hungry, mate?” he asks.
George sheepishly nods his head, and hands the young girl back her phone. “Yeah,” he says, “I don’t think I’ve eaten since that croissant in the hotel.”
Wilbur’s quick to apologise to the crowd forming then. “I’ll be back out later, George and I are just going to get something to eat,” he explains, and he pulls George in the general direction of the convention centre. “We can probably find something to eat in here.”
George follows, enamoured by everything. He’s never really been big into watching Twitch, but he knows Wilbur streams sometimes and gained a bit of a following so he knew there was something there but enough for an entire convention centre is still crazy.
“Through here.” Wilbur pulls George in some random direction and he almost tumbles when he does. “I know some of my streaming friends are here.”
Streaming friends, George notes. He doesn’t know any of them, can barely tell you any of their names, but he follows anyway. He picks at the skin around his thumbnail as he follows Wilbur, who’s peeking into various rooms to find someone he recognises. George tails behind, the crowds of people dissipate the further they get down the hallway.
And then Wilbur yells, “Dream!”
George freezes in his spot as he watches Wilbur disappear into the room he yelled into. He’s almost positive it’s a coincidence, but what a strange coincidence it would be. It’s not a name like Max or Daniel, something so common that any random guy at TwitchCon could have.
A name like Dream is something so specific though.
George regains the ability to move and quickly goes through the door Wilbur had gone into as well. There’s a crowd of people and they’re all laughing as they share jokes and comments about the travel. The room is filled with American accents, and it makes George laugh at first until he hears one specific person speak.
It’s familiar, in an odd way. In a way that George knows he hasn’t heard this voice in years, but he could recognise it even after all these years. He thinks he’s hallucinating at first, that it’s just some really, really, fucked up trick his mind is playing on him.
But George looks towards the group, looks at the person standing in the middle of everyone and gasps so loudly that he somehow gets everyone’s attention.
They all turn to look at him. Most of them are looking at him confused—one of the shorter guys next to Dream gives him a weird look too—but George can only look at Dream.
He somehow still looks the same. He’s bigger now, much bigger, George thinks, he’s taller than me now, but he has the same curly hair even if it is a little bit darker now. His eyes are still as friendly and welcoming as ever. George feels like everything has stopped at this moment. He never thought he’d see Dream again, had accepted that they had lost contact but being here, in France, and seeing Dream in person it feels like fate.
“George?” he asks, and a shiver runs down George’s spine as the words reach his ears. Dream takes a cautious step forward, like he’s trying to work out if this is who he thinks it is, if this is his George.
And George nods, and says, “Dream?”
It’s like no one else exists in the room, the way the two of them move towards each other like magnets and crash their bodies together. The hug is different now, they’re so much older, their bodies are different but it’s still the same feeling. Safe, comfortable, loved. It’s crazy to think it’s still the same, after all of these years.
They stand like that for a while, longer than for what looks like a first-time meeting. But no one says anything. It seems like they’ve gotten the hint that this is something important, because instead of goading and interrupting them, they leave them be and continued talking amongst themselves, leaving Dream and George to do whatever they please.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
It’s a little awkward, given the circumstances of everything, but it’s not uncomfortable. George clings to Dream as his life depends on it, his hands gripping the denim jacket he has on.
“So this is weird,” George says when they finally break apart. Up close, Dream really does look the same as he did all those years ago, and George still has the same feelings too. The ones that make him feel like he’s going to die if he’s apart from Dream for any longer than twenty seconds.
And Dream laughs, and it’s the same laugh that he had as a kid and it still makes George feel lightheaded. “Very weird, but good, right?”
George nods in agreement. Of course, this is good, it’s more than good but he doesn’t say that. “Yeah,” he says instead, “It’s good, Dream.”
The name feels foreign in his mouth, he hasn’t said it aloud in so many years.
“How have you been?” George asks, and he feels a little silly saying it.
“Good, good,” Dream says, fiddling with his jacket, playing with the buttons next to his hands. “I do YouTube full time, started writing some music, it’s good.”
“Music?” George repeats, and he’s shell-shocked. “I remember as a kid you always said you wanted to do something with Minecraft for your job. I called you an idiot.” It’s a fond memory he has, and he sees Dream smile softly as he clearly remembers it too.
“Yeah, Nick and I,” he says, gesturing to the shorter guy who earlier gave George a weird look, “We started doing videos and stuff together. Nick mostly streams these days, but…” He trails off, clearly not knowing what else to say, but it’s as if a lightbulb has gone off in his head.
“Wait? Like your friend from when we were younger?” he asks, and now the weird look he got given earlier makes sense. Dream’s nodding a little too enthusiastically, and now everything makes sense. “That’s crazy.”
It makes him wonder what life would be like if he never moved away. If he would be a part of this, in some weird alternate universe.
“What do you do?” Dream asks, pulling George from his daydreams.
And George picks at his fingers when he says, “It’s not as impressive as you.” Dream shakes his head as if to say ‘No it’s not’ so George continues speaking. “I do software engineering.”
Dream’s eye bulge out of his head. “That’s so cool though! You were so smart as a kid, I was always so jealous.”
They continue talking for ages, catching up. There’s something between them that George hasn’t felt in years. Every time their hands brush, a jolt of electricity runs through his body. Every feeling George has for Dream has been reignited after seeing him again. It’s back with vengeance. George can’t stop looking at his mouth as he talks.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Wilbur says, “George are you still hungry?”
His stomach grows on cue, and George sheepishly nods his head. “Shall we go?” he asks Wilbur, and they start their round of goodbyes as they explain they found the ground when they went looking for something to eat.
“Wait,” Dream says before George leaves, and he sees him rustling through his bag trying to find something. He grabs a pen and rips apart a piece of paper from his notebook and scribbles something on it before shoving it in George’s hand. “See you later?”
George pretends his heart doesn’t clench at Dream’s words. “See you later.”
When Wilbur and George are at the café, he finally looks at the piece of paper that’s been shoved in his hand.
Dream
407-164-333
They spend all weekend texting then, and it’s like nothing ever changed between the two of them. George follows Wilbur around the convention centre and sits in on panels he’s doing too. Wilbur starts telling the staff that George is his manager so he can get into places he shouldn’t.
He’s sitting on the sidelines of some random panel when his phone vibrates in his pocket.
Dream
> do you want to come to drinks tonight?
> it’s just a few of us wanting to catch up before our flights leave tomorrow.
> wilbur can come too! :)
George can’t stop looking at Dream’s lips as he talks. He feels crazy, like Dream has crawled inside his brain and rewired it. All the love he had for Dream as a kid still exists, and seeing him again has awoken everything in him.
He wonders if Dream feels the same.
It’s not that late, and he’s not that intoxicated if he really thinks about it, but the buzz of the alcohol in his system gives him some sort of confidence. So, George reaches forward, brushes his fingers against Dream’s, and he stutters, stumbling over the words that George isn’t listening to.
“Sorry,” George says, pulling his hand back towards himself but Dream stops him, grabbing his hand and holding it in his own. George tries not to overthink the action; they’ve both had something to drink, but Dream’s hand is comforting. It’s bigger than George’s, and Dream’s thumb runs across the top of his hand.
“Is this okay?” Dream asks softly, and all George can do is nod. It’s more than okay, he wants to say, but he can’t find the words. Instead, he grips Dream’s hand just a little bit tighter, a reassuring squeeze.
They’re in the corner of the random bar they found. Everyone around them is speaking French but George isn’t paying attention to anything but Dream. He doesn’t know where Wilbur is, or any of Dream’s friends. “It’s more than okay,” he finally says, taking a step forward towards Dream.
Their chests are touching, George has to look up at Dream. He looks even more beautiful from this angle.
“I’ve missed you,” Dream admits, “I’ve missed this. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to keep in touch.”
George feels his heartache, and he squeezes Dream’s hand again; a form of reassurance that it’s okay. “It’s okay, we can do better now, right?”
Dream hums, and he looks down at George. There’s a look in his eye that he’s never seen before, one that makes George wonder if he’s going to kiss him. I want to kiss him, he thinks, and it’s the first time every feeling that’s been consuming him has been put into words.
“We’ll be better this time,” he confirms, “No emails, and we can text without it costing a fortune now.”
This makes Dream laugh, and George feels the vibration run through him. It sends a shiver down his spine.
Without overthinking anything, George leans up and presses a kiss to Dream’s lips. He goes to pull away quickly, but Dream doesn’t let him. Instead, he feels big hands wrap around his waist and pull him closer, and George physically relaxes as he runs his own hands around Dream’s neck.
It’s perfect if he’s completely honest. And it makes him realise he’s been wanting to do this for years, since he was a kid if he thinks about it.
When he pulls back, he can’t look Dream in the eye. A hand comes up to his chin and lifts his head, and he looks into deep, green eyes that are filled with so, so much love. “Was that okay?”
George laughs. “I kissed you.”
Dream makes a face as if to say touché, laughs, and pulls George even closer to his chest. It’s almost impossible to tell where one of them ends and the other begins, but George relishes the feeling of being so close to Dream after all of these years. “Just checking.”
“I think I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” George admits quietly, “Since we were younger, I mean.”
“Me too.” The admission makes George relax, it’s something so comforting to know his ridiculous feelings are reciprocated so intensely. “I can’t help but think it’s fate, that you’re here.”
He can’t help but agree. How perfect is it, to think that despite being separated so many years ago, with an ocean between them, the love that they have for each other still exists. That they get a second chance at being together, properly this time.
The next morning, everyone is leaving Paris.
Dream had left for the airport hours prior. Just like when they were kids, they both cried. Sapnap made fun of Dream relentlessly for it, and Sylvee punched him in the arm to shut up because ‘it’s cute!’ George had blushed like crazy, and hidden his face in the crook of Dream’s neck.
When George is on the train back to London, Dream texts him.
Dream
> hi :)
> when are you free to come and orlando?
He must have just gotten through security, George thinks, and he feels giddy, like he’s a teenager again texting his first boyfriend on whether or not they can hang out after school.
George
> i’ll apply for annual leave asap and let you know <3