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Dream doesn’t hear about the fire on the news, or by a text from his mother warning him; he finds out when he goes out in the middle of the day, confused by the noise, and sees half a dozen or so cats on the edge of the forest. He realizes, rather abruptly, that what he had been hearing and freaking out the kittens and Patches was their mewling.
The rest is almost muscle memory. He finds an old cat bed and something to endear them to. He steals one of Patches’ wet food cans and offers her a single kiss in apology, which she accepts—and places a few plates near where he saw all the cats making a fuss. Most of them scramble away the second they see him, understandably so, small things that they are, but a few of them eye him curiously still. He doesn’t get too close, just walks back and places everything he’s fetched for them to reach just outside of the green walls of their house. Only then does he think of texting his mother.
“Controlled fire”, they say. Clearly, someone didn’t consider the babies.
He watches from his door as they slowly, so slowly, get closer to smell the food.
—
Cats don’t get along very well in closed spaces, unless they’re siblings or properly introduced. It has been a bit of a headache making Sapnap’s demon spawns and Patches get along, but he finds the three of them tucked together into one of the cat beds of the living room. Well, Naomi and Milo are cuddling while Patches doesn’t claw or hiss at them, though she does look a little bit put out.
It’s progress. He counts it because he’s more or less given up on trying to make them one big, happy family.
Anyway, it means that he can never let one of the kittens that roam around the forest anywhere inside, or Patches will find a way to kill Dream and claim her inheritance. Probably run away with a little bindle like those children’s cartoons. Though his sweet baby wouldn’t do that.
“You don’t hate your father, do you?” He asks her, pressing a hand against the top of her fur. She blinks at him, though her slightly disgruntled expression doesn’t wane. “No, you don’t, because I give you more wet food than you should get.”
She thrills, and then stands up and walks away. Naomi’s eyes open and she follows her out.
It’s progress. It has to be.
—
But again, he can’t let the small, poor babies inside, or else he would stress his already terribly distressed daughter. So he thinks. He texts George, a simple picture of two kittens getting closer to the second round of plates he’s offering. And he keeps thinking, letting his playlist continue running. He should get back into the code routine, really; these few hours running around are making a dent in his progress. He saw Callahan ping him earlier, and he should check that he hasn’t gotten any pressing email recently, and check in with the merch companies in case they’re having issues, or see the stats and comments on his latest videos. But there’s something really nice about thinking about the cat thing, because it’s simple and straightforward. And it almost feels like a break.
He likes being busy. He likes having a great, innovative project to work on. But this is good, too.
—
The pet store is empty, which is a small blessing because he’s not really looking to be recognized. He finds a green cat house—because the brand is important—and a blanket and more plates safe for the babies, without the scent of the cats they already care for driving the new kittens away. He chooses with abandon and at the end, he’s left struggling to juggle all these items to the register. When he settles them down with the worker’s help, the first thing he notices is the cat beanie.
Their shiny eyes as they take him in just confirm it. They don’t ask for a photo, or a signature, they just ask if he’s getting another kitten. It makes him smile, their attempt at professionalism.
“No, we, uh. Have a situation at home, heh,” he says, without giving much away. He wonders if Twitter would like the cats as much as he does. It’s a safe thing to come back online for, especially since he’s as close as he can to recording the next video. As in, he’s as close as when George and Nick come back home. He could make it a silly weekly thing. Need to pitch the idea to George, he thinks absently as he goes through the motions of smiling and paying and offering the worker a selfie and walking to his car. Getting out his phone and finding George’s contact is as easy as breathing, and their active texting streak is archaeological evidence of their distance.
thoughts about weekly cat tweets he writes.
Twitter is lame, George replies, in an instant. He must be free, so Dream taps the FaceTime feature without warning him. George picks up faster than Dream can put his phone down.
“Where are you?” he asks, ever curious. The bottom of his face is hidden by the angle, and his brown eyes stare directly into Dream, like they could go through glass and strike him down. The freckles are hidden by the lack of sun. There was a week or so where they were on display, after he came back from Argentina, and Dream suddenly misses that time.
“Picking up stuff for the strays,” Dream answers. “The fire made them all come out, they liked it around. There’s this calico baby, super brave, I want him to have somewhere soft to rest.”
“Calico,” George mumbles back. There’s some shuffling on his end, and suddenly he’s leaning back on a couch. Dream wants to stay quiet and stare at him, but it still feels weird even after all this time. So he looks away after a second, and turns the engine on.
“Yup. I think it’s a guy,” he says, biting his inner lip in an attempt to—whatever. “If it’s around when I’m back, I can show you. How, uh, are you?”
“Bored,” George groans. “We’re waiting for Sapnap’s dumb NRG party to leave, because duh, but it’s so annoying.”
Dream thinks, as swift as a shooting star, that if George were next to him, he would’ve kicked his feet like he tends to do when he’s acting petulant for fun. Then, he tries to think, what a dumb thought. But the picture of George being there, right next to him, doesn’t leave easily.
—
Missing George is a fact of life.
When the man had been behind a sea curtain, a day of travel away, Dream developed the habit of picturing him as he was living his day to life.
It was both a coping mechanism and an exercise in creativity, creating a mold of George and then studying if he would fit in it or if Dream had pictured him wrong for years. The experiment had mixed results. In some ways, it freaked Dream out, how closely he was able to recreate the way George would sit on their shared couch, the shape of his hands as he held Patches. Yet, he was unable to prepare for the devastating way George stared at him, every time. How he blinked his eyes open as he woke up. What his skin felt like under Dream’s fingertips.
And yet whenever George left, the habit would appear again. Dream would miss him worse, somehow, and so he would try to think in which way George would react to the dumb comment Dream’s sister just made, if he would complain or talk or nap through Dream’s stress drives in the early morning. Sometimes he thought he saw the shape of him in Dream’s office bed, and that the house was silent because its heart was asleep, not miles away.
Dream was, perhaps, obsessed. Down bad, some would say. But nobody had to know of this exercise of missing George. Least of all George, who would make fun of him, but with that gentle look of his that Dream could barely stand on a good day. No, nobody needed to know about his little creativity endeavors.
—
Cats don’t love him on sight. He knows of people who can charm animals in their wake, and that isn’t Dream. But he knows cats, and he knows how to get them to love him.
He knows that cats need patience, and space. They like keeping their own schedules, and demanding food, and accepting affection on their own terms. They don’t like to be forced into anything, but once there was enough trust they would gladly seek out your presence.
Patches was a bit of an anomaly, to that extent, but not by much. She loved her space, but as far as she was concerned, her space was wherever Dream existed. She goes to greet him when he arrives home, and meows for his attention when she’s going to eat, or nap. Rarely does she sleep on any of the beds spread around their house if Dream isn’t chilling there first. She doesn’t complain at all when Dream seeks her out as the last, softest resort of comfort he has. Many times has George found the two of them cuddling into Dream’s bed, her soft purr silencing his sobs.
(The metaphor was there.)
(The metaphor was there. His voice couldn’t help but be soft with those he loved.)
He knows how to make cats like him. He doesn’t doubt Patches’ love one bit, and he finds himself deserving of her support after many, many trials. He just needs the babies to trust him the same.
—
The Made Up George, as Dream often named him (other nicknames included George Two and George the Second, because Dream liked to think he was funny), was as much of a mystery as George was. After all, it wasn’t about what Dream wanted, really, but rather what kinds of things George could be getting up to. If he knew George—wherever he actually was—was sleeping, Made Up George would be pictured in George’s own bedroom, even if Dream was getting ready to sleep in his own bed, with Patches at the bottom. On occasion, a shadow would appear in the middle of the night and take a bit of space on his right, and bemoan about not being able to sleep with how cold the AC was.
Other times, he would find him on the bottom of the stairs, sitting right next to Patches’ small cave. A few times Dream would adventure into the kitchen after maybe twenty-five hours of intense coding, and find someone perched up on the chairs, who would be gone in an instant. George Two left a small trail of longing and wisteria in his wake where he went.
Sometimes, Dream would be ready to sleep when something that felt like the hand he knew but wasn’t brushed his hair away from his forehead and pressed chapped lips to it.
—
They stay on call for what feels like forever, from Dream’s drive home to him trying to figure out the best way to arrange the new furniture and blankets without frightening the kittens who have come nearer. He introduces them to George, and George tells him he recognizes Peanut from his walks around the woods of their house—it explains how he’s the bravest out of the bunch, not like his partner, who stays far away from the house but keeps his eyes on the small calico as it approaches the small plate Dream had just set up. It won’t let Dream close, he can tell, by the curl of its little spine.
That’s okay. Dream can be patient.
They stay on call as Dream orders lunch and eats. His phone is placed in such a way that George can see him speak and shove mouthfuls of Chinese food inside his mouth, because maybe two years ago he had complained that Dream spent enough time gatekeeping his own face. And it’s an easy thing to do, for George.
Besides, George lets him see him too, eating a small snack and hanging inside his small AirBnb room in LA.
“We should really find something out there,” Dream says, mindlessly. “So you have a place to crash when there are plans.”
“That’s so annoying, though,” George replies. He doesn’t wait to swallow what he’s chewing before answering again, and it’s not endearing, it’s not. “Because then we would have to move all the things we’re storing there, and the lease, and I bet Sapnap would ask us to get a place close to him, or whatever.”
“But like—George, you already spend half your time with him, so it’s whatever,” Dream says. It feels like a slip up, like something he’s not supposed to say, but it isn’t a lie, so he lets the comment sit between them, even when George suddenly picks up and stares at the camera with a strength no man should possess. It feels like Dream is weighted under the pressure, for some reason.
George lets him sweat for a few seconds, but his face goes through a hundred expressions, in which Dream can mostly recognize amusement. He shallows, and places his hand under his jaw, a pose which really shouldn’t be that attractive, but. It’s George.
“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” he says, a small smile adorning his face. Dream’s indignant “What!” is more out of commitment to the bit than anything.
The world moves on. The words make him nervous and shy like a little kid, but it’s nothing new, so he moves on, too.
At night, it’s odd to be on the other end of their dynamic, later than where George is. Whatever plans George had were forgotten as they just kept putting off their goodbyes. Before he knows it, he’s spent an entire day away from his coding. And he didn’t reply to Callahan’s ping.
“Fuck,” he mumbles softly as he realizes, eyes dropping where they’re staring at the column of George’s neck. George gives him a soft hum in reply, a request to elaborate.
“We spent the entire day talking,” Dream says, laughing because he feels like he might cry if he doesn’t. “And I was supposed to check Callahan’s—like, he sent a ping, I saw it on the app, and I was meaning to check it after I figured out the kitten’s thing, and I need to make sure the bugs are fixedbefore we film the video, and I don’t know how long that’s gonna take but I shouldn’t have missed an entire fucking day just, like, doing nothing.”
“I’m nothing?” George answers. There’s the hint of a joke, there, but Dream can’t follow that path.
“Of course not—you’re, like, you know how important you are, you know—but, like I’m already running behind and they’re counting on me and it’s just so annoying when the code is just there and it doesn’t work,” Dream whines, feeling only a little pathetic. Patches mewls softly from her end of the bed that feels a tad empty. There’s a lack of whatever makes George smell like George there. “I just want to make my videos. And I want people to like them.”
He knows how juvenile it sound to George, and yet he can’t help it. Dream’s soul opens to him almost unwillingly.
“Oh, Dreamie,” George says, all light and kind. It’s a shock to Dream’s system every time. It feels like the first time Patches dug her small, fragile head between Dream’s shoulder and neck. “It’s going to be fine. You’re being silly. Silly boy.”
Dream lets the words wash over him, chasing away the stray tears gathered around his eyes.
“They will love it, the ones you, like, actually wanna impress. The ones that already trust your vision, because it’s you, Dream,” George says, quiet and calm, not a sound of falsehood to his voice. He knows how George sounds when he lies, when he’s hiding something, when he doesn’t want to speak. This is something George believes with his entire heart. “You’re the goat, the kind of person who says they’re going to put a real person inside of Minecraft and then do it. And the rest of them are just—stupid fucks.”
The laugh escapes from him. “Stupid fucks?” he asks, awed. There’s a small sound of blankets moving on the other side of the world, like George just nodded.
“Stupid dumb fucks,” George insists, giggling to himself. “That don’t know anything. Who don’t understand how cool what you’re doing is. The cool people know. Like me. We know what’s cool,” he says, unable to stop his own laughter to continue the next best thing to a pep talk.
“I guess if you say it, cool person,” Dream replies, a little too sleepy to withstand how in love he is. George’s smile shines through the camera.
“I know,” George says. His glee is contagious. He lights up Dream’s AC cold room without struggle.
The guilt sticks around, but it’s easier to deal with it when he has George’s face and soft voice to lull him into resting for what feels like the first time in decades. He doesn’t notice how genuinely tired he is until his eyes drop closed and, at George’s small “sleep well, Dreamie,” he rests.
—
In the morning, there’s the shape of a person next to him.
He keeps his eyes closed, and reaches out. It’s like magic: it doesn’t smell quite like George, but it’s similar enough. He thinks, if he knew George any less, he could be fooled. He wonders if it’s something psychologically wrong with him that makes Made Up George appear, or if it’s really just a figment of his too imaginative mind. His mother had always said he was a bit too much. If he had an imaginary friend when he was younger, he hid it well from his parents, and for whatever reason, he also gatekeeps Made Up George.
He feels the press of Made Up George against his own body, and subtle movement in his rib cage. It feels like enough.
—
The tweet is a success.
As in, people remember who he is and are excited enough he thinks the next video he posts will be met with excitement. He just needs to actually fix the code. And film it. And edit it in a way that makes the most sense, while keeping the important and funny bits in, in a way that creates a compelling story. Which really is the easy part.
So he makes sure the kittens are tended to and gets to work.
Getting lost in the lines of coding is easy, and familiar, and so stupidly and disgustingly draining. The only good things from all those hours drowning in numbers and signs are the stream of texts between him and Callahan, checking each other and discussing new solutions, and George’s small updates of his day through Snapchat or texts. The pictures that include his face feel like salvation. But the rest is pure, boring, yet reliable coding. Coding can’t make him feel anything more than frustration.
Made Up George makes his life around the house, when Dream remembers he exists. He spends a few hours in the morning soaking in the sun outside, having much more luck bonding with the strays. He then tiptoes to the kitchen where he helps himself to one of his pre-made lunches, to Dream’s absence. It reminds Dream he needs more substance than frozen grapes, and he steals one of George’s packets.
Sometimes, when he buys them with George in mind, he wonders if he’s also thinking of George Two as he does so. The line between his imagination and real life is thin, at best.
—
Patches sits herself in Dream’s lap once he gets back to work. She spends an entire afternoon there, instead of any of the sunny spots inside their gigantic home. Then, she feels George Two sneak into the office bed, and joins him.
—
He finds Naomi napping on their second cat tree, and he takes a picture of her. He sends the picture to George, Sapnap, his mother, and sister in quick succession before being reminded of his own tweet idea and posting it there, too. She can be cat of the week for how cute she looks. Sapnap likes the picture, and George just says, miss her a little bit.
It’s such a—dumb thing to say. Only a little bit?
Not more than this, George writes, and accompanies his texts with a picture of his thumb and index finger almost touching.
That’s very little
Not that little. It’s an appropriate little
Dream has never been good at stopping himself. And how much do you miss me?
This much. George says, his two fingers touching.
Aw :(
sorry you had to find out eventually
That’s not fair. Dream scoffs. And you’re lying.
Am not!!
It’s hard not to smile at the screen. He sees George’s smile, in front of him, and then he’s gone because he has to type his next response. He drops the bit for a picture of Peanut and his stray friend. They came back.
of course. George writes, using two cat emojis of different fur colors to emphasize his point. You gave them food
They didn’t come back just for that. They love me already
They love that ur rich, George writes. And you give them wet food
That was only the first time. Dream isn’t defensive. He sends another picture of Peanut, this time returning to the other cat’s side and brushing his side. The movement is so tender it makes Dream need a second to compose himself.
Dream
dream
I’m joking
?
I know idiot. And then, the picture of Peanut and—Dream has decided—his boyfriend Frank. Look they’re in love
No way.
Yes
They found love in the dransion
I think they knew each other for a long time now
Ok
Whatever
Will you marry them
A shiver runs down Dream’s spine. The text shouldn’t make his poor tender heart stop and then run on overdrive. It’s like, for a second, he’s in another place physically, the Real George staring at his hands as Dream tries to explain what being married can actually mean without spilling his guts into the mattress. His hands had been sweaty with the effort to keep them from shaking.
The memory is like phantom pain.
If they wanna be married
We can build a cat chapel
they’re gay
can we even marry them in a chapel
i mean its a cat chapel we would be building. we can do whatever
ok once I’m back we’re making them a small chapel
—
His sister comes to hang out and make sure he actually isn’t losing his mind. The latter mission is a lost battle, but he’s still excited about seeing her, and their mother, as she’s dropping her off. If Dream thinks about it, it may be on their brother's orders, but he likes being none the wiser. Also, they have fun. Made Up George makes himself scarce for her, except in the afternoon, where he stares at them with a smile on his face from the window as they spoil Patches.
—
Every time George comes back to their house, after a long time gone—which, to Dream, could be a day—it feels like an event. It’s always as nerve-wrecking and exciting as the very first time they saw each other, for some reason. Once, George had pressed into his collarbones the thought that, maybe, it was just the world reminding them of what they hadn’t had for so long. He couldn’t help but agree. It also made him want to do something drastic, the way George was being more adorable than usual.
But, if there was one thing that he didn’t exactly adore about George coming back was that Made Up George disappeared into the morning mist. It made sense, but it always felt slightly wrong. Like there was a version of George that was all alone in some limbo-like space. Forever untethered.
Real George didn’t need to know the lengths his obsession went, so he swallowed down the wrongness. Besides, Real George was still a mystery being unveiled.
Very often, Made Up George would get something so wrong—really small things, but still—, and not realize until Dream saw George doing the very same thing. Once it happened, it was corrected the next time Dream was alone with his maybe-illusion George. Dream didn’t have to pretend that was the reason he paid such close attention to George, because he was over rationalizing what was the deepest love he felt for another human being, yet it helped. In a way, being obsessed with Made Up George was really just another alleyway to obsess over George.
And because of that, he worried.
George, as usual, noticed his damp mood.
“Upset I’m back and you don’t have the room for yourself anymore?” he asks, drying his hair with one hand after using Dream’s shower. He claimed he had to, after more than a week with only Sapnap’s gross shower and the AirBnb’s weird tub.
“Of course not.” Dream smiles at the sight and the stupid question. George in baggy shorts, wet hair and messy five o’clock beard was a sight. He was a lucky, lucky man. And he was moping about it.
“Why the face, then?” George asks, a rumble before he steals a chaste kiss from Dream’s lips. He leans away quickly like a bird, as if he were trying to get away with something prohibited. Dream’s hand, which flung to meet the nape of George’s head, disagreed.
“This is the face I was born with,” Dream says, easily, and steals the kiss back. He recalls something about doves and illegal kisses from his English classes, but it is gone as soon as he tries to follow the thought.
“You know what I mean,” George says, rolling his eyes as he gets comfortable on top of Dream’s chest. He’s not wearing a shirt, a fact of which George immediately takes advantage of by tracing patterns on top of his sparse body hair.
“I don’t,” Dream replies, sticking his tongue out at George. “You’re an idiot.”
George finds no better retribution than to bite his nipple. Dream exhales a mix of a moan and a gasp at the sensation.
(See, that, Made Up George would never do. Why is he still thinking about him? Dream doesn’t know.)
“What the fuck,” he ends up saying.
“Tell me what’s going on,” George says, grinning. “Or I keep biting.”
“Nothing is going on,” Dream insists, sweating a little. “And that’s a bad—ah—incentive to stop.”
In a matter of seconds, there are teeth marks all over his chest, neck, and arms. He gets hot all over thinking about how the bruises will look in the morning light. “Tell me!” George insists.
It must be finally too loud for Patches, because she meows very annoyedly and her small paws take her away from Dream’s room. Dream looks at George, insert as much disappointment as he can into his stare. “Look at what you did,” he says, clicking his tongue.
“Me!” George gasps, the picture of offense. “You’re the one who wouldn’t shut up over some love bites.”
Dream blushes all over again. His skin may stain the blankets pink, someday. “Shut up. Also, you’re the one who won’t shut up about me telling you something.”
He fucks up. George’s eyes dilate in the same way that Patches does, as she’s preparing to pounce.
“Yes. Tell me. Now,” George says, again. His hands drape onto Dream’s chest as he rearranges both of them, sitting on top of his stomach. Dream’s hands find their place on his low back, teasing his ass because nothing is better than when George holds his hands and lowers them himself. He doesn’t fall for the bait this time.
“I genuinely have no idea what you mean,” Dream confesses, offering him an awkward smile as tribute. George’s face falls, the smallest bit.
His hands soften, start gently rubbing over the marks he left a few minutes ago. “Please? You’ve been working so much lately, but I haven’t seen you like this recently. Except when we went to, like, Argentina.”
The undertone of George’s voice makes Dream’s body drop all the tension. It’s futile to refuse George; Dream doesn’t know why he keeps trying to.
“I… I don’t want you to think I’m being too weird. Like, I know it’s weird, it’s okay if you think it’s weird, but I don’t want you to be weirded out by me, or like, get freaked out, or I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to even explain. I’m trying to find the words right now, I want to tell you, I really do, but I can’t, and it’s frustrating and I’m sorry but like—there’s this thing that like—,” Dream starts losing his breath, quickly, like George’s weight is suddenly too much. He can’t look him in the face as he shows him what he thinks about when he’s gone. It’s suddenly too much.
He doesn’t wish Made Up George were here. But he does wish he could just show George his mind and have him understand in that kind, gentle way he always does. He attempts the next best thing.
He shuts down his eyes and feels that weight next to him, the exact same number of pounds as the person on top of him. Made Up George’s scent of wisteria clouds his senses as he opens his eyes to see George, blinking rapidly.
“Ah,” George exhales softly. “I didn’t think it would be so weird to see him.”
Then, his eyes fall onto Dream, who is, of course, so confused he could stop breathing and die. “Were you worried I would be mad?”
“Um. I was—worried? For him?” Dream’s rabbit heart tries, and fails, to slow down. “He just disappears when you come back.”
“I really wouldn't love it if you were cuddling with another man as I’m here,” George confesses, the smallest bit embarrassed. “But I know you miss me.”
Dream has questions. He knows George Two has been there for longer than George has lived with him. He knows he became able to touch him only after a few months of knowing George in all his angles. He had theories. But frankly nothing matters as he feels their two hearts beating, in unison, not a second of difference between them. He would know that heartbeat under the weight of soil and ocean.
George drops his own body on top of Made Up George, who disappears into the air. Except, George’s warmth and sweet body smells a bit like the purple plant he’s taken to remember as Made Up George. He wiggles a little bit, like Patches when he’s fitting into a new cat bed. “You don’t have to miss me anymore.”
Content to know that every George is safe, Dream leans forward. His love meets him there.
—
George joins him outside in the morning. Despite his wails, he looks excited to meet the kittens. A few of them, still wary, eye them and approach the food plates further away. But for much that Dream looks and looks and looks, he can’t find Peanut. Even his gay lover appears. It breaks Dream’s heart in half.
George’s hand is warm. He still smells a little funny, though it may be that they didn’t shower yesterday. “It will be okay. He knows you love him.”
“How can he?” Dream asks, pouting. His poor Peanut.
“You’re good with cats,” George says. “You’re patient, and give them space.”
That’s true, at least. The pets George offers to his hair help bring his mood up a bit more. He can wait.