Dream's shoulders ache.
He sinks into the grass of his backyard under the midday sun. It's humid, and bright, and noiseless. The soil smells like shit.
His sore muscles relax into the cradle of green blades and soft earth, stinging his skin. Tangles of roots and shredded weeds collect beneath his desperate fingers.
He stares up at the white clouds slowly crossing the blue sky.
The repairman had visited two and a half days prior, and ever since the brittle flow of cool air returned to bite at his feet and trace goosebumps down his neck, he's felt empty. He finds himself wandering in blankets and hoodies, or sitting in the shower steam, clinging to the heat that escapes him.
He's grown weary of chasing after that which destroys him until he's left in raw silence, burned to the core.
He sighs into the sunshine.
Only his dreams have offered a double-edged break from the solitude that consumes him. He's swallowed by images of ankle-deep, red water and the numb swinging of his lawless axe. He wakes with fear of bruised hands until he turns on the bedside light, and sees his bare knuckles trembling.
He's been winning. Over, and over, and over.
He woke up in the kitchen this morning, with his cheek pressed to the tile floor and a carton of milk near his chest. He didn't remember falling asleep there. He didn't want to remember sleeping.
You reach for me, George had said between peaceful bedsheets and comforting touches.
Tweets and screenshots flood his life. Questions of where he's gone, endless hours of "I miss Dream"'s, hundreds of fans wondering why, for days, his Spotify has been stuck to one song on repeat. Why he sits in his dark room, on his empty couch, in his spare bedroom listening over and over to heat waves heat waves heat waves.
I'm reaching, Dream poured into his horrid collection of notes one night when he'd been too tired to eat, I can't stop reaching.
His phone hums in his pocket. He lets go of the dirt.
Okay Dream, he reads from Sapnap with his phone held high to block the clouds' glare, get back to me when you can.
He's numb to the guilt by now. Sapnap's relentless concern had ebbed into silence as time passed them by.
He scrolls up, and sees the days-old messages he's poured over with scrutinizing commitment. At first, it was every ten minutes that he'd obey the nauseating pull to reread George's undoing, then every thirty, then once an hour. It's as if he expects the words to change, somehow, for the letters to melt off the screen and reveal new secrets that he missed before. It blurs together too much for him to know.
It's up to you if you want to tell me or not, Dream had typed.
Sapnap's wall of white bubbles begins with: alright.
I didn't want things to get messy, he wrote, but it seems like you're hurting right now so this is all I have. The night before we did the chess thing I was on call with George, and we were joking around about something you'd said about his facecam earlier that day. He made a comment that he's "glad that stuff doesn't bother him anymore" and when I asked him what that meant, he said he used to have some kind of feelings for you when you guys first became friends. He was very clear with me that it was a short thing that went away completely, and that he's happy it did.
We haven't talked about it since. A couple days later u told me the stuff that was going on in Miami and I just didn't really know what to do. I thought you might want to know. I'm sorry if this is shitty and I just made matters worse.
