out of the light love reasons [dnf]

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They land in London after dark.

Stepping off the plane, George feels so dizzy he starts to wonder if he has somehow gotten drunk off the Diet Coke he ordered. Of course, that's not the case. The real reason is standing right next to him calling them an Uber — Dream, here, with him.

They're staying for a long weekend, to get away from work and stress and humid heat. George has a feeling the dizziness will persist.

~

Sometimes, he can't help but wonder if this is the furthest they will get. This gray zone no one else seems to understand.

That, for some cosmic reason, actually getting together would be an intimacy they simply can't dip into. Because it would alight something irreversible inside of them. Put them too close.

But he doesn't really believe that. He knows they're a thread's width away from risking everything.

~

He has thought about it;

Dream, eyebrows scrunched together, breathing hot into his pillow. Soft sheets and darkness and the smallest, secret noises escaping parted lips.

Imagined the warmth of his skin in a moment like that. The touch of his hands. The smell of him.

Even before he knew what Dream looked like — especially then. When Dream would send him faceless selfies and George would make a game out of piecing him together. A glimpse of an arm, a shoulder, of a cat resting on someone's chest. Undecipherable close-ups of eyes and hair. Blue, striped bed sheets.

It was easy to let his mind wander back then, and even easier now that Dream is just in the other room instead of a phone call and an entire ocean away.

~

Dream checks them in at the front desk, smiling and making the receptionist laugh. It's endearing how he doesn't always notice the effect he has on people. He's smooth and naturally flirty, warming the room like a light. The woman blushes and George suppresses a grin, turning to look around the hotel reception, taking in the high ceilings and wispy chandeliers.

Dream's hand hasn't let go of his for longer than a minute at a time since the airport. George holds onto it like an anchor.

They get upgraded to the lovers' suite, which they both laugh about on the way up in the glass elevator.

"It's cause you flirted with her the whole time!" George says, leaning up against him.

Dream shakes his head, smiling as soft and bright as the sunset behind them. "You're impossible."

~

His sister wants him to bite the bullet and just ask already. To get out of the gray zone she doesn't understand.

"Just to clarify," she keeps saying; as if it's obvious that there's anything between them in need of clarification in the first place.

George thinks it's a stupid idea. It's so typical of her to oversimplify this huge thing — the biggest thing in his life — to something so small. To this vague, cliche question that's not going to solve anything.

Because he already knows 'what they are'. They don't fit into any category, not any category his sister will understand, anyway. It feels wrong to give Dream any ordinary label when he is so much more than that. He's more of everything. He is everything.

His sister always laughs at him when he says it like that;

"That's what it's like to be in love with someone, you idiot. You practically just read the dictionary definition."