Heavenstruck (Guardian Angel AU)

More Similar Than I Thought

A week flew by faster than Dream had anticipated. Even if George was a glorified roommate who happened to save his life every couple minutes or so, he had slowly integrated himself bit by bit into Dream's life without him noticing.

Sneaky bastard, Dream thought as he watched George squint at the laptop screen across from him at the kitchen table.

It was just some stupid Minecraft plug-in Dream had impulsively decided to code after tossing and turning in bed for too long. He probably would've finished it within the hour, too, if his traitor of a body hadn't tilted his chair just far back enough for the chair to tip over. George rushed into the room to catch him before he hit the ground, but the interface of Eclipse was apparently recognizable for him to know exactly what Dream was doing even with just a quick glance at the screen.

So here they were now, George scrolling through lines of code painfully slowly while Dream pretended he wasn't the least bit interested in George's opinion by staring intently at him.

Thankfully, George was too absorbed in his own world to notice. Light from the laptop screen streamed in rays onto his face, illuminating his already pale skin (whether that was an accurate representation of his human appearance or a side effect of being an angel, Dream didn't know). His slender fingers hovered over the keyboard, and every time they so much as twitched, Dream's breath hitched. His chin rested on the palm of his other hand.

His face was a blank slate but his eyes were a galaxy. Dream swore the entire universe within the computer swirled around him—constants, variables, expressions, keywords—all of them quietly made up the dark brown color Dream saw at that moment.

Passion. His eyes were ablaze with real, fiery passion for a field not enough people were passionate about.

Then the hand hovering over the keyboard rested on the table.

"I don't know why you were coding on a laptop when you have a computer," George started, his voice quiet, "but there's nothing incorrect with the code. It could definitely be neater, though."

George had thrown him an anchor back to reality. Dream reluctantly held onto the anchor and allowed it to drag him to shore.

Dream blinked, still waving away the fog of his thoughts. "Oh. Yeah, I was in a rush. Sorry."

"Why're you apologizing when I'm the one that demanded to see it? Idiot."

"Wow, okay."

"It's too early for this argument."

"That would be your fault, wouldn't it?" Dream said. Then he continued speaking before he could overthink and shut himself down. "How do you know all this coding anyway? Were you a computer science major or something?"

Did George's shoulders stiffen? Or was that a trick of the light?

"Worked as a freelance programmer," George said. There was no tremble in his voice, no hesitation before he spoke. "I had to pick up some jobs here or there, but I like to think I built up a good portfolio."

"With which languages?"

"A variety, really. People asked for Javascript most of the time, but I got to use Java, Python, and sometimes C++, too."

A moment passed in which Dream forgot how to speak.

It's not that a programmer learning four languages to a good level of understanding was unheard of. It's just...

George? The same person he witnessed faceplanting into dirt?

"You look confused," George said.

Dream shook his head and laughed at the mental replay of their first meeting. "I'm just tired."