Heatwaves Dreamnotfound (NOT MINE)

Chapter 10: Dust

! READ NOTE ON CHAPTER 9 !

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"Dream," George says, "can I talk to you?"

Dream's heart plummets. He can feel the nerves he'd managed to calm cracking at his throat. The jungle trees on his screen sway with nauseating motion.

He didn't think it'd hurt so much to hear his name leave George's tongue. All the moments it's been spoken with kindness, annoyance, patience, or frustration blink by him in fleeting recollection.

He's dreamed of this. He's yearned for this.

He parts his lips in an attempt to mount the enormous hurdle pressed into the silence, where George's voice reverberates absently.

"Hi," Dream forces out.

It's feeble, and shallow—George wastes no time before responding, "now, please."

George disconnects from the group call.

Dream's eyes flutter shut as the other listeners butt in with confused questions and awkward laughter. The noise fills his headphones and he nearly raises a hand to wrench them off; push the anxious chatter away.

A message from Callahan pops into the game chat: ooooh ur in trouble.

"Oh man, Dream," Tommy pitches between scuffing laughter, "feels like you've just been called to the principal's office. What the fuck did you do?"

"Tommy—shut it," Wilbur says quickly, tipping between subtle warning and playful scolding, "you want your mum coming in and telling you off again?"

"She hasn't done that in ages, dickhead."

They tumble into mindless bickering, lifting the attention to another topic that Wilbur pointedly refuses to deviate from.

Dream is numb. His avatar stands unmoving in his lengthening inaction.

You whisper to WilburSoot: thank you.

He eyes the Discord window on his second monitor, the list of names, the locked voice-channel where George's icon looms patiently.

Trouble. Danger. What did I do?

Sapnap startles him from his muddled thoughts as he orders, "talk to you later, Dream."

Dream's chest tightens.

He exits out of the game, and mutters, "screw you."

Their friends join in with stammered, quick goodbyes, and he can't bring himself to pass any words back before the overlapping of voices is cut off sharply by his disconnection.

His arrowed cursor floats over George's name.

He knows he can't run from this. The inevitability returns at once to frighten and calm him, guiding his fingers down against the slick plastic of his mouse to select the channel with a light click.

Dream enters the call.

He is greeted with silence, and fidgets with his hoodie strings anxiously. George's presence alone is deafening.

"You're back," Dream says finally, unsure of where else to begin.

Blankly, George responds, "I am."

"When did you get home—"

"Two hours after I got service," George interrupts.

Dream's pulse spikes at the sharpness in his tone.

George says, "you weren't picking up your phone. I had to join that call so I knew that you'd answer me."

Dream ties and unties his drawstring into knots. He feels dried up—out of tears, out of luck, out of time. Words die before he can manage to wrap them with the thinnest threads of coherency.