Fall Apart (Dream Team)

Chapter 15: The Art of Just Not Thinking About It

CWs: yelling, some one that's not George having a breakdown/yelling

When George woke up, he decided he wasn't going to think about his body, and he wasn't going to think about Dream.  He was going to live his life normally, and he wasn't going to think about what was or was not happening.

He went to grab his phone, checking the time and seeing that it was noon.  Dream's bed on the floor was empty, and a small amount of light came through the blinds in the window. He held his phone up to unlock it, his thumb clicking as he slid up.

He wasn't going to think about that.

Checking his messages, the fingers on his hand felt sore— they were hard to bend and frozen, unnervingly similar to the time his fingers locked up, but more manageable.

He wasn't going to think about that.

As typed out a message to his family's group chat, the joint on his thumb hurt from the continuous bending.

He wasn't going to think about that.

Hitting send and closing his phone, George sat up, moving the electric heat pad and turning it off. He went to grab a pair of clothes to change into and lock the door, the now-familiar pain in his stomach setting in.

He wasn't going to think about that.

He was going to live normally— he was going to talk to his friends, then eat in the late afternoon and stream with the rest of his friends that night, and stay up talking after the stream. Like a normal person— he was a normal person, he did not have some obscure chronic illness, and he was not going to be over-dramatic about a little pain. He was fine, and he refused to think otherwise. He'd simply exhausted his brain thinking about it— what had happened with Dream last night had been the final straw. That was the last bit in the barrage of information thrown at him that he simply stopped being able to absorb it.

He had been doing fine until he came to America, and doing fine until his friends had started panicking over him. They just weren't used to how he experienced things, and there was nothing more to it. When his mum took him to the doctor as a kid when he couldn't keep food down for a week but didn't have a fever, the doctor had told him it was normal. Normal, was used loosely there, but the result was that some people are just more prone to getting sick than others. Kids usually grew out of it, and for some time George had. Now, he was in some pain again, but he assured himself it meant nothing. It was just a continuation of him throwing up a lot as a child.

He got dressed and walked into the hallway, his bad ankle hurting as he stepped on it strangely.

But guess what? He wasn't going to think about that.

He wasn't going to think about any of that.

And he certainly wasn't going to think about what Dream had told him last night. He was no where near prepared to deal with that, nor his feelings associated with it.

He was going to hang out with his friends, and be normal. Because he was fine.

~

Karl had gotten back from bringing Techno over, when Dream finally returned. 

George had no idea where he'd been the entire day, but assumed he was just doing things on his own. When he entered the room, he looked worse than George had ever seen him before— he was very obviously struggling against an ADHD-triggered breakdown, and George immediately went up to hug him to calm him, walking over to the center of the living room.