Mark My Words || DNF Soulmate AU

Chapter 39

Dream wakes up in a panic at the thought of George's flight not making it back to England.

Trembling fingers reach for the phone lying on his nightstand as he turns over onto his elbows and opens the Messages app.

Dream

did you make it ba

He pauses, then looks at the time.

7:13.

It's only been five hours since George left, he's not even arrived back in England yet.

Dream stares at his message, then deletes it with a sigh. It's better that he doesn't send it.

George wants time and space away from him, he needs to respect that. This will just feel like he's trying to interject himself back into his life again and cause him more trouble.

Dream fiddles with his thumbs as his mind races for some other way to check in on George's progress.

He doesn't know George's flight number, doesn't know his departure time, and doesn't know which airlines he chose. Everything's a dead end.

Eventually, he taps open the Google search bar and inputs "plane crashes today." He begs that nothing comes up about a plane traveling from Florida to England.

Frantically scrolling through the results about military planes and matters beyond Dream's concern, he collapses onto the bed when it's clear that what he feared the most was of his imagination only. The fogginess of sleep clouds around him as he closes his eyes and his muscles relax from its tense posture a second before. It's too early for him to be awake, he hasn't fully recovered from yesterday yet.

Dream pulls his blanket up to his shoulders and falls back asleep.

-

When Dream started YouTube and got George and Sapnap to join him, things changed even more from subtle personality changes before. They created personas that were fine-tuned to fit a certain set of guidelines needed to become popular, and drew clear boundaries between what they presented on the internet and what was kept out of viewers' eyes. Their interactions in front of the video camera were tailored to be child-friendly, and for fear of embarrassing themselves in front of strangers on the internet, their usual craziness and random screeching were also modified into more digestible actions.

To Dream's surprise, George had no trouble adjusting to being appropriately presented in front of an audience. He controlled his cursing, let the weirdest bits of his personality hide just beyond the frame of the audience's gaze, and behaved perfectly for his role. On top of that, once he started Twitch, the frequent usage of webcams only continued to curb the sort of personality he presented online.

Despite the changes necessary to gain their target audience, the one thing that did not go away was the subtle hint of flirtation in the way Dream and George interacted. Of course it wasn't over-the-top, manifesting more instead in Dream's protectiveness or little words here and there that suggested something more. They also decided, without previous negotiations, that perhaps sex jokes were off the table until their future was stable and they had a dedicated audience and fanbase.

To both of their surprise, the audience latched on to their dynamic quickly and intensely. It shouldn't have been surprising at all really, seeing as soulmates and soulmarks made romance play a big role in society, but Dream and George somehow both failed to expect just how immensely popular their ship would become. It was funny to see how a frequent inside joke amongst friends became widely recognized in their fanbase as well, and the outpouring of content, clips, and art for "Gream" only brought more popularity to their relationship.