Heavenstruck (Guardian Angel AU)

Who are they?

By the time Dream got a grip on himself and everything collapsing on him, it was one in the morning. He had been kicked from Munchy for inactivity and his body had somehow made its way onto his bed, but that had only barely registered. His mind was static, whatever thoughts he had drifting aimlessly through space, just high enough he couldn't pull any of them together to make a coherent thought.

A car passed by just next to the apartment. In the distance, an insect chirped. The night was overwhelmingly, oppressively still.

Dream looked out the window, only to be met with pitch darkness.

The world still moved on. Despite it all, the world still turned and time still ticked by, with or without him.

God. He needed to stop wasting what time he had left.

But everything felt off, not so far off-center he could identify what was wrong but slightly to the left. The atmosphere felt all wrong, like an imitation of itself. He was frozen on his bed with his heart pounding in his chest. It was cold, it was cold, it was so cold—

"George," Dream called quietly. His voice was raspy, dry, and the name on his tongue was undeserving of such a voice. "George."

There was silence, then a soft knock on the door.

"Dream?" came an even softer voice. "I don't mean to intrude. Would you like me to come in?"

Dream opened his mouth, but the words caught on his throat and clotted against themselves. They piled up like cars on a highway, and each one that got tangled in the mess pushed Dream closer and closer to the edge of the precipice.

He supposed the silence was enough of a confirmation, as the door creaked open and George stepped in.

He took a couple more steps into the room before taking a seat next to Dream on the bed. "Patches is sleeping on the living room chair right now, if you'd like to look."

Dream shook his head but smiled at the thought of Patches curled up into a ball. His thoughts were obscured under a hazy cloud.

There was a moment when George paused to look him up and down, his eyebrows furrowed in worry. His gaze moved back to meet Dream's eyes. "Are you alright, Dream? You seem a little tense for it being one in the morning."

Dream hesitated before nodding.

"Well, that's bullshit. I'm assuming you don't want to talk about it?"

Fuck. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about it; his throat was too choked up to speak. But to be fair, what would he even say after everything that had crashed down on him?

Then George reached out to take his hand, and Dream's busy mind finally shut down.

The hand was a warm comfort. It wrapped around his own hand like a blanket, entangling with his fingers. But his heart—instead of twisting or jumping like it had with his previous crushes—only warmed with a fuzzy feeling unfamiliar to him. He struggled to rein in the urge to get closer, to get more warmth. George was already iffy when it came to physical contact; he shouldn't push it.

Then Dream looked up, only to find George smiling at him, not in that teasing, sarcastic smile he shot him when Dream tripped over the stupidest thing, but in the way a best friend would shoot their friend when watching them ramble about something they're excited about. In the way a friend looked at another friend when they're too busy entrenched in their passion to notice. In the way a partner would look at their dumbass partner in crime doing literally anything.

Love. That was love. What kind of love, Dream couldn't decipher just yet, but there was love in that gaze, and Dream melted underneath it.

"George," Dream called softly, the thorns in his throat receding.