Waltzes and Waterfalls

Chapter 2

" George?!"

Dream was there.

Dream was there, in front of him, in real life.

"Happy birthday?" He managed awkwardly.

His body was frozen, limbs quite simply unresponsive. Yet, despite his motionless demeanour, his mind was going into overdrive, every thought starting with Dream and ending with Dream twice over. It was all he could think about, his thoughts consumed with the man before him. He was very tall, Sapnap certainly wasn't lying about that, and his eyes looked greener in person; over the camera, they verged on hazel but here they were brighter, similar in colour to a forest, to the sea early in the morning, to—

His useless metaphors were snuffed by the welcome interruption of two strong arms wrapping around him, pulling him against a solid body, his face pressed into the crook of a neck.

"Hi!" Dream mumbled into George's hair.

"Hi." George laughed softly, moving his arms to wrap around Dream's waist. He wondered if Dream could feel his pulse, how it was racing, how it roared through his ears so loudly that it was a miracle he could hear anything going on around him at all. It was so strange, almost overwhelming, being able to put a body to the voice, see a physical person speak and—well—sound like Dream and it only made him smile when Dream held him just a little closer after George had started to pull away.

"Can you hurry up , Clay? I wanna meet him!" He heard Sienna whine, and he felt the way Dream's chest shook with those little chuckles that the microphone would only just pick up on a call and wondered how he had ever gone without hearing them in real life.

"Sienna! He's literally hugging his boyfriend for the first time, give him a moment." Dream's older sister sighed.

George stiffened. Boyfriend?

"Can they be all sappy later? I think I'm gonna be sick at how sweet this is." Another voice grumbled—Dream's little brother Dylan, he guessed.

"Shit ." Dream mumbled, quiet enough that only George would hear it.

"What the fuck is going on, Dream?" George hissed into his shoulder, attempting to wriggle out of Dream's grasp but firm arms held him in place.

"Fuck- I... just go with it, please, I'll explain everything later." Dream begged softly and George only hummed in response as he finally maneuvered out of the hug with a big smile and as little confusion on his face as he could manage.

"Finally- George!" Sienna greeted him cheerfully, giving him a quick hug.

"Drista!" he mimicked jokingly, matching the excitement in her voice.

"You're tiny, you know that?" She guffawed, "I'm almost taller than you and I'm fourteen. And a girl."

"Don't be so rude to our guest!" Sarah chided, but George only laughed.

"You're all just freakishly tall!" he shot back over his shoulder to Sienna as he was dragged away by Dream to meet the rest of his family; There was his older sister, Maddison, who he had seen in many photos but never actually spoken to and his younger brother, Dylan, who gave him a polite wave before darting away. Of course, there was Sarah, but she didn't need much further introduction, and her husband, Mark, only looked slightly intimidating but George didn't dwell on it and then there was his Grandpa, Harold, who gave him a stern look before smiling welcomingly.

They seemed like a lovely family, and for that, he was thankful at least. They had the typical charm that George thought of as so unabashedly American wherein they immediately just acted as if he was a long-term family friend rather than a stranger and it was nice. So much so, that he almost forgot the whole situation until Sienna told him to go and get his boyfriend. And so he did go to get Dream, but he didn't intend on returning him to Sienna before he could finally have a word with him in private.