Mark My Words || DNF Soulmate AU

Chapter 41

The third and last day of Dream's heartbreak respite, he tries to ease himself back into the life he's become accustomed to seeing as "normal."

The past few days have been dramatic and emotional, tears scorching through the plains of his wounded heart and blazing trails of molten ash that cool into dust. Dream surveys the ruins of the field and tries to salvage whatever it is that remains still from the disaster.

He gets back to work tomorrow, so he needs to do what he can today.

Dream then spends the better half of his morning staring at the blank screens of his monitors and zoning out. Extremely productive, though really only mentally.

From an outsider's perspective, his life must be anything but normal.

As a Minecraft YouTuber, he sits in front of a computer all day and is technically an internet celebrity, though no one would be able to recognize him if he went outside and kept quiet. He gets attention and money for playing a block game, which he always thought oversimplified the situation, but doesn't have the energy to propose anything otherwise. All of his friends are online, he rarely hangs out with people in person, and he has garnered a following of millions all in the space of his own home.

It's bonkers.

He barely even registers the fact that he has a subscriber count larger than the entire population of Florida, and while his fame is always somewhere in the back of his mind, becoming pronounced and prominent any time he so much as moves on the internet, it has no bearing on anything he does in real life.

He could escape it all if he just deleted all his social media accounts, removed his YouTube channel, and disabled Discord.

No one would be able to find him then.

The thought makes Dream's stomach churn, though not necessarily in a bad way; it's more of disbelief mixed with incredulity at the evanescent tidings of internet fame.

Fortune comes and goes like the capricious master tugging puppet strings on desperate, willing subjects, only to drop them when she has had her fun.

Dream himself has been a favorite of hers for a while now, though not without consequences.

Naturally, fame has its downsides, which Dream has experienced the brunt of through his career thus far.

Dream could escape it all if he put his heart to it, then he won't be swayed by any of it. He could cut the strings off from the puppet master, and walk on his own.

He throws off his blanket and changes out of his pajamas. The cold rush of air swimming over his skin snaps him partially out of whatever strange mentality he had woken up in. By the time he's brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, whatever thoughts that have crossed his mind in bed are opaque and difficult to grasp.

Dream lets the fading thoughts go without much protest, instead shifting his attention to all that he needs to finish doing today before he returns to the regularly scheduled program.

George has gone long enough without his crucial equipment for streaming, and while Dream is sure he hasn't received any sort of text urging him to give it back, he remembers George asking him to ship the stuff back as soon as possible the night he left.

Guilty memories of playing around with George's set-up yesterday resurface, and Dream makes an effort to take care of his morning duties as quickly as possible to deliver his stuff back to him.

He gets started the second breakfast is finished.

From some closet he barely remembers having in the house, Dream lugs out the box the set-up arrived in. Inside, the packaging of monitors, brown packing paper, and a variety of other equipment coverings crowd the space and jostle around as Dream pulls it through the hallway and to his room.