Helium DNF tbhyourelame

Chapter 10

Silence carries out into the open air. The night sky turns slowly above Dream's shoulders.

That was the one. His ears ring. His thoughts ring. That was the one, wasn't it?

His eyes don't leave George's face as pale palms stretch to cover it whole. Soft lips disappear behind sharp knuckles, tinted cheeks below set brows suddenly ripped from his vision.

Wasn't it?

The heartbeats in his throat tighten around any urge to push out thoughtless words. His mouth burns cold. Sapnap's wayward shouts fell to the buzzing of a phone call in Dream's side pocket moments ago, replaced soon after by accidental clanging of skateboard trucks against railings in the stairwell. His hands didn't dare reach for his glowing screen then; nothing but the rise and fall of his shallow chest moves now. 

"That..." Dream's voice is grating, and he clears his throat to force the words from him. "That was the one that counts."

A beat of nothingness passes. The gnarled nerves in his chest tangle further.

George's hands slip down his face. Leaned back against the concrete ledge, his elbows draw close to his sides, and he curls his fingers into the cloth of his collar. He nods slowly, but doesn't lift his eyes.

A warm exhale flees Dream's lips. The soles of his shoes feel misplaced on dry-dusted stone, yet despite himself, the elation in his chest spreads into his brain.

"I—I don't understand," Dream breathes. George's eyes fall shut again. "You said—"

"Clay," he whispers.

Dream's face drops. Something in him splits underneath the ribonned bolt of hearing his own name, his core splintered open; left to become a burning pyre. It sounds familiar, like the moments on call when George fell into the depths of himself, when his voice shook enough to make Dream's ears strain for inaudible hiccups of tears, and he whispered, "What are we supposed to do, at this distance, with our different lives?"

"This is scaring me." Dream's voice wavers as he searches George's face. "You're starting to freak me out. Please say something else."

He earns nothing but the slowing of a breeze into still air. The blunt edge of his fingernails curls into his palms; familiar crescents, age old wounds. Acid pools in the low swoop of his gut.

"You can't say nothing. You can't just kiss me and say nothing."

"I don't—" George cuts himself off in a sudden inhale. Slowly, he proceeds, "Have words... to say." His eyes are closed, brows knitted together in a tense frown. "I don't have words. I don't. I didn't."

"You... didn't?" Dream echoes.

You didn't have words, he pieces together the spaces of George's thoughts.

"That—that's—" George huffs. He tugs the collar of his shirt over his jaw, knuckles pressing to his mouth again.

Dream watches the motion with concern. "That's... why?" he finishes. "You're saying that's why you..."

Got it over with. Made it count. His head skips around their guarded words. Kissed me. You kissed me, George.

More quiet blankets the rooftop lot, broken only by faint echoes of faraway shoes scuffing the gum-spotted ground. Sapnap's occasional humming floats off the walls of the stairwell in a mimicry of how the three had arrived at the parking garage, trudging together in a collection of tone-deaf notes, the night full of possibility and noise.

He stares at George in the uncertainty they've created.

You kissed me and you don't know why. You know you didn't have the words.