this love ☼ dreamnotfound

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at some points, it had felt like george wasn't going to survive the rest of his junior year, but he ultimately made it out alive. it really wasn't all that bad after halloween, but of course it wasn't perfect. he was still recovering and dealing with a lot of trauma, but at least he was doing better. clay had gone through a lot too; his parents divorce was the best solution, but it was still hard for him.

the monsters that were locklyn and clay's dad got charged for their crimes, getting the punishment that they deserved. that took a lot of stress off of both george and clay, allowing them to actually enjoy themselves. they were beyond happy together, it it was safe to say that they saved each other from the issues that were slowly destroying them. despite the occasional teasing, their friends were incredibly supportive.

george received quite a few questions from the people at his school about his disastrous halloween party, wondering why everyone had suddenly been ordered to leave. he didn't give an actual explanation to anyone, instead just telling them to keep their noses out of his business. george had noticed himself getting a bit mean at times, but he really didn't mean any harm. he was just short-tempered and didn't like being bothered- especially about the halloween party.

george's parents never found out about the party, but it took a lot of work to hide the evidence. karl's parents owned a pretty big storage unit, and karl eventually convinced them to keep the secret and let george store the decorations there. sapnap had to practically steal his dad's truck to bring everything to the storage unit, and it was not easy to load the giant, bedazzled coffin into the back of a pickup truck.

the next party that george had attended was a small christmas party hosted by wilbur. it wasn't really a party- well, not a party that filled the entire first floor of the biggest house in their town. george knew everyone that was going, and he didn't want to turn down an invitation from wilbur. wilbur offered to hold the party somewhere else in case george didn't want to be in his house after what had happened to him there, but he ended up being fine. the small group of attendees planned a game of secret santa in advance, but nobody could keep their mouths shut about who they got, so it wasn't necessarily a secret santa, just a silly gift exchange.

wilbur's christmas party was held on christmas eve, and everyone spent christmas day with their families. george did end up driving over to clay's house to give him a present even though they had both promised to not buy each other anything. the present was pretty lame in george's opinion- it was just a designer jacket, but the price tag made up for the lack of sentiment. clay obviously protested accepting the gift because he didn't want george to get him anything, but eventually he gave in and fell in love with the jacket. it was pretty hard to find a designer jacket that seemed like something that clay would actually wear, but george did a pretty good job.

only three days later was alex's birthday, which was pretty laid back. it did give george the perfect opportunity to get revenge on alex, and he was going to make the most of it. since alex didn't know how old george was on his birthday, george was going to pretend to do the same, but he was obviously going to step it up. he managed to get himself in charge of getting the birthday cake by insisting that he knew a really good fancy bakery. he did end up getting the cake from an overpriced, luxury cake store, so he wasn't lying, but he added his own twist. when he bought the cake, he told the chef to write 'happy seventh birthday alex' on the cake instead of seventeenth, and george thought it was hilarious. alex didn't even notice at first, but when he did, it earned george a terrifying chase around alex's house that quickly evolved into alex grabbing a knife. nobody was harmed, surprisingly.

soon after that was new years, which was spent at karl's house. it consisted of a lot of eating- mainly of karl's mom's famous cookies, but also of other snacks that left everyone feeling like they had a pile of bricks in their stomach. they had even pretended to be pregnant because of how bloated they were, and they took 'maternity photos.' they didn't realize how ridiculous the photos looked until the next day, and they relentlessly made fun of themselves.