Gentle Sprinkling [Dreamnotfound]

Fifteen

Curiosity is a curious thing. Innocent, pure...

And dangerous.

To know or not to know, that's the question. To choose one or the other has its own downsides. There's risk in the former, there's peace in the latter. The riskier, the more tempting.

And the thing about temptation is that it's not bad until you give into it.

Unveiling secrets—ones that are carefully guarded, hidden in the dark, buried in the deepest depths, and most especially those that one's been so painfully eager to know—could grant satisfaction, a feeling that of letting out a breath you would have been unknowingly holding...

...or could curse you with a man-made mountain's worth of more questions, not to mention the said man who made the mountain was none other than yourself.

George, to his misfortune, was most certain that he was experiencing the latter. He supposed that this was what he got for being curious, for choosing to know. What could he say? He simply couldn't help himself.

Now? Hell. He had learned almost everything he'd been wanting to know for the past months in the span of a couple of hours. One could only soak in so much overwhelming information. Almost every question answered, but at what cost? A complicated situation with his friends.

Rather, knowledge of the fact that it was already complicated to begin with.

George's eyes were closed, afraid to see what would greet him. He felt so much more conscious now that he knew. When he did, there it was, the void. The damned, god forsaken, white void.

George vaguely remembered being with Dream and Sapnap before this. They had been explaining everything to him at a steady pace, yet it still overwhelmed him. They decided to call it a night, with Sapnap bidding them a good night (or morning? George couldn't remember how late it was), and him falling asleep. He figured Dream must've left while he was, seeing as he was in this null space.

It upset him, that in the end, they still left one another, despite blatantly wanting to be together once again. He understood why, Sapnap was still not over the losses, and Dream was inevitably following those cycles, but that didn't make the thought hurt any less.

Perhaps they couldn't be together the same way again, the way they wanted to be, the way things once were. It just pains George more that he didn't have any recollection of what they once were.

"Dream?" He called out, beginning to walk. "Are you there?"

After a moment of silence, the brunette heard footsteps from behind him.

"Hi," said a familiar voice.

When the brunette whirled around, there he was. That same, familiar, freckled face.

Without thinking, George wrapped his arms around the taller, burying his face into Dream's sweater.

"...Are you real?" George mumbled against the fabric.

Dream laughed once through his nose, ruffling George's hair. "I don't know, am I?"

The brunette pulled away and punched him in the arm with a pained smile. "You're so stupid. I'm being serious."

"Fine," he giggled. "I guess you could say that."

"You guess?"

"I guess. I don't feel real, but I think I am? It's like I'm half here, half there."

"Where's there?"

"I don't know," the blonde shrugged. "Same place you 'wake up' in. I don't know what to call it. Like- Where everything's alive." Dream stares at the other boy before trailing his gaze elsewhere with a wince. "...Almost everything." He corrected himself.