Helium DNF tbhyourelame

Chapter 12

Warm water parts beneath Dream's reaching fingertips, aqua rising over his bare knuckles until the lapping surface bands around his wrist. Blues go purple in a crawl up his forearm, blond hairs suspended in their silent glide, and dappled through the water in deep, drifting bliss, jellyfish float beneath his stretching palm. The curve of his long fingers touch down on a mound of moonlight.

A subdued breath escapes him.

Translucent film slips delicately against his fingertips, gooey and thin, and the moon jelly tilts away with grace. A quake begins in the epicenter of his palm; saltwater nudges the corners of his eyes. His hands seem too large to hold such a gentle creature.

"Dream?"

His hands trapped them in glass, stole them from a quiet home, tipped the jars and held them up to gaze at their billows through white-hot sunlight. Grubby fingers clutched the cages on the long rides home; he'd blink and they were gone, dead, dissolved, only taught to take their beauty and never to make it last.

A cold hand brushes against his knuckles. Under the rippling surface, George's fingers drift in a wash of the same lunar shade, pale and slender, and Dream recoils his touch in fear it'll tear straight through.

"Where..." George's voice trails softly. "Where are we?"

His eyes snap up and the world floods back in a bloodrush; shoes bustling the lobby floor, nearby children's chatter, gurgles from a long row of open touching tanks. Overhead fluorescents and blue-shirted employees dot the corners of his swinging gaze until he meets George's stare.

"What'd you say?" Dream breathes out.

"I asked, 'where are you?'" A soft huff blows out the cloth covering George's mouth. "You just totally disappeared on me."

Dream pulls his hand from the glassy edge, ignoring how droplets shake down his palm. "Sorry, I'm sorry, what—what were we talking about?"

George's brow furrows, eyes hanging dark over the fabric pinched across his nose. "That look is on your face again."

"What look?"

"Your... dreamland one," George says. "The one you have when you're not sleeping well."

His jaw tilts up in avoidance of the deep-tanked jellies, swimming, silent, clouding the edges of his mind as he clears his throat. "Ah." He offers up a smile. "So you're watching me sleep?"

"Did us being up late give you bad dreams last night?"

The unwavering flatness in George's voice forces him to sigh, and he silently mourns the masked absence of his lips, hidden freckles on his nose, only a hint remaining of the cheekbones he'd studied in early light before day broke into noon. Truthfully, after shameless gossip turned to mumbles and nodding off at George's side, he'd had the most peaceful night of sleep for the first time since early summer.

"Don't you go worrying about me," Dream dismisses. "I'm the one who kept you awake."

George tosses him an eye-roll. "Exactly. I think we both need eight solid hours tonight."

"Are you threatening to never cuddle with me again?"

"What? We didn't even—ugh. Stop that." Saltwater is flung from George's fingers to land in a spackle across his shirt, and he continues, "All I'm saying is you seem tense. You weren't in the car, but you are now, and you keep yawning."

"It's not because of you." Dream wanders down after him in the line of open, glowing tanks, and he settles on a partial truth. "I have a fear of getting stung, that's all."