Helium ( DNF )

Maybe

Threads of blues and greys swirl on the rug beneath Dream's legs. From the end of his socks to where George's chest-drawn knees begin, cat hair blankets carpet, and pillows stolen from the couches for cushioning dot the floor. He breathes out; the footrest to the lounge chair behind him digs into his back.

"Explain it," Dream says, eyes tracing his drained face from feet away. "One more time."

George swallows and wipes his rosied nose with a tissue rescued from the coffee table. Sides of the cardboard held in his lap have ducks and flowers dotting down the edges; Dream isn't sure when he'd handed him the box, sometime after they'd stopped standing together, stopped holding each other, sank to the floor instead of the couches and began to talk. All he really remembers is hearing the strained confession of "June, June, June," and pulling George in tighter until any traces of hiccuped breaths were subdued for good.

"Okay," George mutters. He clears the sound of muddied tar from his throat. "So, you and I had just finished getting tickets for this trip. My whole time on holiday I was... excited, and when my mum saw that, she and my grandparents convinced me to try for a visa." He sniffs. "Wanted to talk to you about it before I applied, but by the time I got back—you know."

Dream's jaw tightens. Static between them lingers too unsettled to air out his guilt, and he urges it down with a silent nod for George to continue.

"I wasn't sure if I should still apply for a while, but—" George's voice strains where ebbing tears had interrupted him the first go around. "But I missed you. I knew the process would take a long time, too, and there'd be a lot of steps involved, so I figured I'd start anyway. You seemed so busy working all on your own, I felt helpless without something to focus on. I don't know."

Dream's features slip into softness, and his fingertips twitch with the urge to move across the rug and gently take George's hand. Silence continues in their shared immobility.

"So," Dream assists, "you applied anyway."

George exhales shakily. "Yeah. I did. I thought it'd be accepted by the time I got here, and I've been calling home every day, but the embassy hasn't sent us anything."

"Why didn't you want me to know?"

He didn't have it in him to ask questions the first time George talked through the process, listening carefully instead to dates, deadlines, hard to swallow confessions and lengthy pauses where they both had to recollect their spilling thoughts. The fragility of George's features and shock resounding in his own head had kept his interrogation at bay, and his words land unexpectedly.

George's tone changes. "I already told you why."

"It was a little hard to understand you before," Dream says carefully, and a blunt beat of silence follows. "Please, George."

"Yeah, yeah. Okay." George wrings his hands together in his lap, eyes busied with the tightening grip. "The main reason I didn't mention it to you, Dream, was because things were so fragile with us already. We weren't talking, nothing made sense, and if I told you too soon just for it to get denied two months later, I..."

George lets his words trail as his brow pinches together sharply. Inklings of surprise trickle in Dream's head at the surreality of witnessing his unfiltered emotion, saturating the glassy sheen of his eyes, the slight puffiness to his cheeks, and reddened skin under sticky tracks of dried tears. The sight topples his piling concerns.

You're used to this, he thinks, and he forces a harsh swallow down his throat. Crying because of me.

A slight tremor forms in the press of George's lips, and his heart climbs high in his ears. He knows he won't be able to think if George tears up again.