Heavenstruck (Guardian Angel AU)

You in my Life

"What're you doing?"

Dream snapped his head up, only to see George staring at him with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms. Admittedly, sitting at the kitchen table with pictures scattered everywhere like he was conducting a ritual was a bad look. The lit candle in the middle of the table (which he somehow hadn't burnt himself on) probably didn't help. Neither did the dim lighting everywhere else in the apartment. In fact, nothing around him was a good sign.

"Don't worry about it," Dream said.

That apparently wasn't the correct answer, because the perplexed expression on George's face didn't fade.

"... Interesting," George said, taking a seat across from him. He picked up one of the pictures. "Oh, are these the photos Sapnap sent? You could've just told me instead of being all cryptic about it."

"Where's the fun in that?" Dream chuckled when George rolled his eyes and picked up two pictures. "I'm trying to decide which ones I should frame."

"Didn't you buy, like, twenty frames?"

"Yeah, but I only have enough space for three."

"Then why'd you buy so many?"

"Well, I didn't measure out every available spot in my apartment before buying picture frames. And you were the one who said this was a good deal on frames, so..."

George scoffed, yet his lips curved into a fond smile nonetheless. He started sifting through the pile of pictures on the table. "I can't believe you sometimes. Have you decided on any so far?"

"Nope."

"I mean..." George handed him a picture with a close-up on Sapnap's toes. "This is a masterpiece."

Dream wrinkled his nose and set it face-down on the table, laughing. "Why'd I print that?"

George shook his head but continued sifting through the pictures.

Among the pictures, a selfie he and Sapnap had taken at the Minecraft convention stood out. Sapnap held both his phone and the sapling figurine while Dream waved at the camera. They wore bright grins on their faces.

In another picture, half of Sapnap's head took up the lower left corner of the picture. On the other three-quarters of the picture, Dream flinched away from a pan on the stove while George looked like he was mid-shout, his arm blurred as if he were about to push Dream out of the way. Patches, who had witnessed that entire scene and wanted nothing to do with it, was a blur of white and brown on the ground. Sapnap seemed completely unperturbed.

"Hey, what about this?" George said before handing Dream another picture.

Dream had to smile.

It was their final picture together in Dream's apartment. The three of them were squeezed together, Dream in the middle having thrown his arms around his friends' shoulders. Their smiles were warm, their eyes were bright. Even if the picture had only been from a week and a couple days ago, Dream couldn't help but feel nostalgia swelling in his chest.

"Yeah, I like that one. How about these two?" Dream asked, sliding the other two pictures across the table to George.

George flipped through each picture, then handed them back to him with a smile he couldn't bite back. "They look fine."

Later when Dream caught George staring at the pictures he had framed and hung around the apartment with a goofy grin on his face, Dream would only smile.

*

"Why do you want me to pick out a chair again?"