Fall Apart (Dream Team)

Chapter 8: Heat Waves [10 Hour Version]

"HEAT WAVES BEEN FAKING ME OUT, CANT MAKE YOU HAPPIER NOWW"

Dream may have overestimated his patience for driving what became 12 hours to Karl's house. At six hours in, he'd been listening to Hear Waves on repeat for an hour straight at full volume, screaming the lyrics as he drove up the highway.

While the song was already a song he'd listen to, he found the fanfiction lore behind it exceptionally funny.  Sometimes, he'd leave his spotify playing on silent so his profile would say he was listening to heat waves and laugh at the reactions on twitter.  Inciting chaos pleased him.

He still hadn't read that fanfiction, but he knew enough of what it was about from twitter as well as George and Spanap's summary that he found it... interesting.  He never liked George in that way of course, but he also never minded people thinking it.  He thought it was funny on the surface, but he couldn't explain why.  There wasn't anything funny about being gay really— after all, it was perfectly normal, and he'd definitely kissed some of his make friends growing up.  There was never really any gender difference in the people Dream liked, but he supposed it was the friendship thing.  Dream didn't like dating friends, because if you broke up you'd loose that friendship.  And then you'd have no one to go to during a breakup.  And your friend group would get torn apart.  Especially now that his friend group was all on a public stage, he couldn't handle it breaking apart.  He'd have no one to go to, and millions of twitter accounts screaming at him that it was his fault, that he took to teasing George too hard, or that he wasn't good enough...

Wait, what?

Dream went back to the scream singing.  "YOU LOOK SO BROKENN WHEN YOU CRYY, ONE MORE AND THEN ILL SAY GOODBYYEEE"

~
Dream had left at 9 in the morning to leave for Karl's house.  The night previous he'd gotten a backpack and thrown in the essentials that he thought he would need, then threw random clothes, pillows, and anything else he had lying around in the backseats of his car.

Was it organized? No. But Dream didn't exactly care— he'd just empty everything back into a bin and throw it in a closet when he got back anyways. If he really needed something, he'd find it.

The one thing he did pack with care however, was his favorite and only blanket on his bed— it was a christmas blanket he'd gotten as a gift years ago and had since lost it's soft touch, but no blanket could ever compare to it. Anything else felt scratchy and uncomfortable to him, and he'd gotten accustomed to bringing it on every trip he went on so he could still sleep. At first he'd felt a little awkward taking a blanket around as if he was a child, but after a weeklong trip with his family in a hotel, he'd stopped caring. The teasing was absolutely worth being able to sleep normally. Besides, it was still a full-sized blanket, it wasn't like a child's blanket. It was red with a very minimal white pattern— he refused to call it childish, even to himself.

The blanket was comforting to him— sometimes he would feel overwhelmed with the world, and the blanket helped. It was familiar, soft, and could block out the outside world; when things got to much, Dream would simply put it over his head, blocking out light and a small portion of the sound. If he hadn't yet completely overwhelmed himself, Dream would often be able to block out the buzzing with the blanket. Even if he couldn't, the soft, familiar material felt comforting when he pressed it against his face.

He was hoping that no one in the house would actually care. They were all good guys— he didn't think they would bat an eye. After all, it was just a blanket to anyone besides Dream.

Still, Dream was planning on taking the blanket inside under his regular bag and hiding it. He knew he couldn't handle anyone, especially George, making fun of his blanket so he'd wanted to avoid topic entirely.

~

As he pulled into a rest stop to refil the gas in his car, as well as walk around and buy a soda.

After typing in his phone password since masks interfere with facial recognition, Dream opened the discord app on his phone and asked his friends:

Does anyone have music recs? I'm so bored send help

Dream purchased an orange soda, and got back in his car, opening discord and he shut the door.

<sapnap> heat waves ;)

<eret> there's mother mother? you might not like it

<tubbo> entire minecraft soundtrack

Dream sighed, replying that he'd been listening to heat waves for about 2 hours straight, and stating he'd check out mother mother. Sapnap laughed at him in response. He sent a quick text to George that he'd see him soon, and got ready to get back in the road— only 4 hours left, as google maps informed him.

Opening spotify with his right hand and merging into traffic, Dream used the voice search function to find mother mother and shuffle their songs.

"I wear women's underwear,
and then I go to strike a pose in my full length mirror,
I cross my legs just like a queer..."

So this was Eret's gender crisis music, Dream thought to himself. He laughed, it made sense though.

Given as Dream was comfortable within his sense of masculinity and gender presentation, he decided to go back to listening to Glass Animals. He'd leave Eret to their gender crisis music. He did make a mental note to try to get them something feminine on the SMP though— no mentally stable person would listen to that music. Not to say that Dream himself was mentally stable, but he was mentally unstable in... a different form. Still, he supported his friend, and whatever pronouns they did or did not end up using.

~

After a long drive, Dream finally reached Karl's neighborhood hood and began looking for the house numbers to find him, opting to knock on the door and surprise everyone.

a/n sorry these be short, I didn't plan these chapters very well lmao