King of the Cell (DNF)

Chapter 40: We need to talk

Dream POV.

“We need to talk,” I told George firmly as he sat beside me in the mess hall. He glanced up at me cautiously and away from his lunch.
“What do you want to talk about, Dream?” He questioned, tilting his head slightly as he did.

“Not here,” I continued, glancing around at the rest of our group. Although none of them were paying attention at the moment, all caught up in their own things, it wouldn’t be surprising if they heard one or two words and got interested, so that they start eavesdropping on our entire conversation. “Once you’ve finished eating, tell me and we’ll go to our cell.”

“But I have to work in the library after this.” The brunette reminded me. “I don’t want to get in trouble for not turning up.”
“This prison honestly won’t care if you skip a day, these shitty guards don’t pay enough attention to what we do, as long as we don’t bother them or try to escape.” I explained.

“Language!” Bad scolded from the other side of the table, which only proved the point I said earlier about how everyone in our group would eavesdrop on what we said, even sweet, innocent, cult-forming BadBoyHalo who would never hurt a fly… most of the time.

I looked away from Bad to see that George seemed both nervous and sceptical which made me feel bad, so I gave him a gentle smile. “It’ll only take five minutes, okay? You’ll be at the library before anyone knows you are missing.” After I reassured him of that he seemed to feel better, his face brightening up slightly before he nodded.

George’s plate was almost empty when I asked if we could talk, so it only took a minute or so for us to leave, heading to the cell with full stomachs (or as full as they could get from the half-decent prison food). Our minds racing with different possibilities about how this talk would end up going, or in George’s case, what this talk would be about.

When we got to our cell I motioned for the Brit to sit on my bed, which he did. Then it just became him waiting for me to figure out exactly what it is I wanted to say and how. I took as long as I could to honestly say anything, now that George was here in front of me it felt a lot harder to talk to him.

I’m going to be fairly honest, ever since that kiss that George left on my cheek I’d been feeling awkward around him. I’m not sure why exactly, and I managed to cover my true thoughts whenever I was the brunette, but they seemed to bubble up inside of me whenever I was looking into those beautiful brown eyes of his.

After I had been staring off into space for who knows how long I finally figured out what I wanted to say. Eventually the brunette got concerned and began waving his hand in front of my face to get my attention. “Dream?” He asked, “are you okay?”

I managed to refocus my gaze enough to look at him before sighing. “Yeah, sorry I just don’t know exactly how to say what I want to say… or ask.”
“Oh, well if you wanted a minute to think I could come back.” George offered, moving to stand up before I stopped him.

“No need for that,” I stated, causing him to lean back slightly the way that he had been. “I’m sorry for dragging you here saying that I wanted to talk when I don’t know what I want to ask but just, give me a couple seconds to think.” He nodded, and I felt a slight touch of guilt at making him wait, and eventually I spoke up.

“I wanted to talk about when you kissed me on the cheek.” I spoke relatively quietly as I did. “It was a couple of days ago but…” I trailed off, not exactly sure what the ‘but’ was. Thankfully, George began speaking before I had to figure out what else to say.

“I’d thought you’d forgotten about that,” he murmured. “I’m sorry if it made you uncomfortable. I always seem to do that and I should have been more considerate towards you especially after you helped me.” He went on a ramble, ignoring me as I attempted to jump in. “Without you by now I would probably be…” Suddenly the brunette cut himself off with a quick sadness, giving me the chance to talk.

“It wasn’t that I was uncomfortable.” I reassured him, causing him to brighten up slightly. “In fact I kinda liked the kiss…” Oh my God why did I say that? Now he’s going to think I’m weird. “I mean, not like that. It was unexpected, but it’s not like I hate you for it or anything. Just wanted to know if you were okay with the kiss.”
“I’m fine with it if you are,” he responded.

“Can I ask why you did it?” I questioned, leaning slightly closer towards him. “Why did you choose to kiss me?” It took a moment for me to get a response.
“I’m not sure,” he eventually admitted. “I guess I wanted to thank you for looking after me, but I didn’t have much money, or anything else to offer.”

“Well your kiss was lovely, feel free to offer it again whenever you want to thank me.” I bounced my eyebrows playfully as I said that, causing the brunette to chuckle.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He responded. “You’ve just done so much for me Dream, keeping me safe when there are so many people in this place who would do anything to hurt me.”

Honestly I didn’t know how to respond to him, seeing the brunette smiling up at me made me feel a range of different things, all of them good, but all of them indescribable. Another couple seconds passed without either of us saying anything, but George eventually spoke up. “Was that all you wanted to ask about? Cause I should probably get to work.”

“Yeah, you probably should.” I responded, trying to hide my slight disappointment that he was leaving. I took a small step away so that he had room to stand up and walk out of the room, but as he got to the door I said one final thing. “I’ll see you at dinner George.” It honestly wasn’t much, but the brunette turned to give me a small smile and responded with a ‘see you then’.

And then he was gone, off to his job sitting in the library as the librarian (or reading books since people rarely used the library, in fact it was only ever busy when it was raining and nobody can go outside). I let out a sigh as I collapsed onto the bottom bunk, thinking about what had just happened.

It might have been a sigh of happiness because I now knew that he must like me to some extent, or it might have been a sigh of disappointment because he had to leave. I honestly wasn’t too sure at this point.

In less than three weeks we’d be out of this prison, and then myself and George will have to stick together, and I couldn’t believe that that would be the case, yet honestly I wasn’t too disappointed. I had grown attached to him over the past few months, attached in a way that I wasn’t attached to the rest of the guys, I felt like I had to be the brunette's protected after what I let happen to him, and I was surprisingly happy with that.

I couldn’t help but smile as I thought about how soon it would be the two of us, out of prison and against the world with me as the person to stop him from coming to any harm.
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1330 words