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George has given himself up to early mornings in his new home. He’s become just a sliver of what really exists in this bedroom, taking his time to spread his ankles across silk sheets and hands across rich skin.
His patience doesn’t run as thin as it used to back in England, back when the rain would patter on his windows and when his shoes would fill with water and when his nose would shrivel with an unsettling amount of discomfort over the weather. Now he is kind to the way the clouds roll in over each other and the way they rock and hit and bang in a war above him. It’s peaceful when it storms atop of his head and when he sleeps like a simple man hidden between the doors of a violent and bloody battle.
Dream sleeps through most storms, and Elytra all. George is grateful for her sleeping patterns recently, giving him and Dream more peace and more rest in the hours of the late summer.
May and June and July and August have crossed them, and George sits at the beginning of September, approaching fall with just a few allergies buzzing along his nose. He doesn’t mind them as much now that he’s settled on a prescription to take, but headaches come and go, and he nuzzles his nose into pillows and drowns himself in sleep when the burn of a migraine follows up.
George thinks that Dream’s skin is warm against his palms, slightly rough as he touches it with the tips of his fingers. But it’s always kind underneath him, so rewarding when George needs him and when he wants to praise him, leave a kiss on his chest or sink a bruise along the crevasse of his neck.
It’s early nights that are so delicate, falling asleep before ten when Elytra has gone down from a day out in the sun—a day when Sapnap isn’t streaming, a day when George and when Dream choose to stay snuggled up to each other and choose to stay glued to their beds rather than their computers.
And it’s early mornings that are so fragile, when it’s the two of them and the glow of the young sun, barely reaching the edge of their bed, holding at their ankles like it's desperate to creep up onto their skin. George thinks it’s unfair that the sun gets to touch Dream more than he does sometimes, gets to trace behind his ear and up the column of his spine while George watches.
Peace sinks into George’s bones when his eyes droop heavily and when he rubs at them, trying to push away the loneliness of the morning and the calling for another couple hours of sleep.
He could make breakfast.
He could get started on some editing.
He could wash some of the clothes that are piling up on the laundry hall’s floor—Elytra’s swimsuit probably still soaking wet on the tile from when Dream had thrown it down in a hurry or George’s shirts that are still inside out.
A simple start to his day would get some of his tasks out of the way, but Dream is next to him, sleeping all flat and sprawled out so smooth, and it makes George want to stay. He wants to stay and splay fingers over the dip at Dream’s back, at the spot where all the blankets and sheets bunch up.
George starts with lowering his hand onto Dream’s nape, taking a moment to drink in the warmth that his skin radiates. It’s hard not to want to bend down and press the cold side of his cheek to Dream’s back, to feel it even closer, to tilt even further and seal the promise of a kiss against his skin and many more until Dream shivers awake.
He’s surprised though, when the curled tips of Dream’s hair that are turned away from him shift, and when a face is suddenly in front of George.
“You’re up?” Dream asks, voice hardly there, hardly heard as his eyes stay closed.
George blinks at him, curling his cupped palm over Dream’s nape, pushing further over his neck to squeeze into muscle.
“Me?” He asks. “I’m surprised you were up. You turned the moment I touched you.”
With half-lidded eyes, Dream smirks. “I always wake up when you touch me, Georgie. I don’t like to miss that shit.”
He speaks carelessly, his lazy tone like freshly squeezed juice dripping into George’s ears. It’s sharp, and George wants to hear him speak again and again and again until his voice runs dry.
George slides his touch down Dream’s spine, and grasps warmth as he goes, clings for more in the sunlight and along Dream’s skin. A shy giggle bounces from George’s laugh, light and airy and too tired to be anything Dream opens his eyes for. It’s still something he reaches for though, fingers gripping forward to paw at the front of George’s belly.
“You okay?” Dream whispers. “You’re up early. How come?”
George cannot stop looking. At Dream. Down Dream. Across Dream. Over Dream.
The way Dream talks with closed eyes and the way his eyebrow twitches as he regards George.
He shares ounces of his body heat and touches his hand over George’s cold belly, trying to feel and understand and communicate all in a single graze of skin.
“George,” Dream calls for him quietly, scooting closer until he flutters his heavy eyes open. “Sweetheart.”
It’s a lonely morning, but Dream never lets George stay lonely—not when he talks to him like this, in a sickeningly sweet voice, with such sticky words and a throat full of honey. Not when he opens his eyes wide enough to catch George’s and certainly not when he smiles.
“Hey,” Dream whispers at him like he’s grateful for the contact.
George smiles. “Hi.”
“Up early?” Dream tries again for conversation.
But George only buries himself into the space he sees between Dream’s neck and his shoulder. It’s warm. It’s always, always warm there.
“Just couldn’t sleep, I guess,” he whispers, nosing Dream's collarbone. “Kept looking at you covered in the sun and everything—just—” George gestures toward the window and then down Dream’s chest. He sighs. “Yeah.”
Dream cranes his neck and takes a look in the direction George points to, raising a smile to his lips before he lies back down.
“Jealous of the sun?” Dream teases him, taking his leg and prying it between George’s thighs to get even closer.
George rolls his eyes at him and presses his spread fingers into Dream’s chest. “Don’t say it like that, idiot, I just wanted to admire you for a bit.”
“Hmm. I don’t mind,” Dream mutters before he tugs George closer to his chest. His eyes flutter, and the panning of his breath becomes hotter the closer he gets to George’s body. “Elytra?”
“Still sleeping,” George tells him as he pinches Dream’s necklace. “Haven’t heard her.”
A noise toggles in the back of Dream’s throat before he sighs. Relief sort of soothes out of him when he tangles himself closer to George, skin welding together in a way that makes them hot. Sweat exudes quickly, but George takes the comforter and wipes it when Dream’s sticky palm stays stuck to George’s bare chest for too long.
Such mornings are like adoration for the two of them, and when Dream’s lips drift toward George’s collarbone, a raised smile is almost inevitable.
He presses light, feather-soft kisses onto George’s neck, his teeth not sharp but dull and blunt across the bone as his tongue pokes out to wet both his own lips and George’s skin.
It’s soft. Simply pure.
An innocent mouth that plays a fresh tune on the warmth of George’s body.
“What are you thinking about?” George asks, knotting faint fingers into the thick mess of Dream’s hair.
He rubs back and forth and apologizes under his breath when he catches too hard, but he cradles the side of Dream’s face and his head and encourages the sensation of his lips against his skin as Dream sucks lightly. A rush of heat. A sudden flip to his belly.
“Should I be honest?” Dream asks.
“Dream—” George stutters in his movements, drags his palm down until he can rest over the fluttering beat of Dream’s heart. “Of course you should.”
Still hidden away from George, but tucked tight into his neck, Dream smiles tightly against him. George raises his eyebrows, sporting a shy smile as his hands guide their way to the thickest part of Dream’s hair. He pulls on the ends, satisfied at the further curl of Dream’s smile.
“I want to take you far away from here,” Dream says hoarsely, nose tipping up to hit underneath George’s jaw. “Somewhere hotter—”
George squeezes the grip he has on Dream’s hair when Dream’s lips part to speak.
“Hotter? You’re kidding. It’s plenty hot in Orlando!”
“No,” Dream replies affectionately, hurrying to place these tender touches over the small of George’s back. He kisses George’s throat once and the swell of George’s leg spasms against Dream’s own as he kisses again and again.
This language Dream speaks to him from their bed is too generous. The way he touches and kisses and melts George into all of these clouds of passion where no stress or worries can get to him—it’s kind, so kind. It’s hardly morning, and George’s feet haven’t even touched the floor today, but Dream has already made him feel as needed as he wants to feel.
“No?” George chuckles as he blindly reaches for Dream’s hand. “You don’t think it’s hot here?”
Dream disregards his words, tickles his hair under George’s jaw to get closer. He holds tight, smirking against the bruise on George’s neck.
And in a voice that George is familiar with, Dream says, “I want to take our family to some pretty beach far, far away from this place. Where we can swim and sleep in and not worry about work for a little bit.”
But it’s that same voice that has the power to lick the feeling out of George, to run him dry and leave him weak. Because it’s the first time Dream has ever put so much meaning into these words in such a simple sentence.
He’s never called this their family.
He’s never called Elytra their daughter.
But in this bed, with the stickiness of their arms and legs and hips and chests all near and in the same few inches of space, George is suddenly understanding that this really all is theirs.
His.
His to take and own and shove into his little pajama pocket and keep and slap on the cheeks of his friends to show off. His to blush over when he’s in the store and when he’s crouched down by the toys with Elytra and when she starts to take off quicker than anything he’s ever seen before. His when Dream watches the two of them from a distance and his when Dream just shrugs at him and says, “go get her.”
Maybe it is his to wrap in a box, carefully, in pretty pink paper and with a bow that won’t match, because things in this house aren’t always perfect but they’re always his.
“George?” Dream interrupts him, letting his palm ride up and down the dip of George’s hip.
He’s familiar with George’s body. He touches him and makes love to him, cups his face and pants into his mouth as they play rhythms of hot breaths and whines and mewls. But Dream’s grip and his touch and the way he holds George has never not been special, and George hangs onto it with every last bit of bliss he knows.
So he grips over Dream’s palm and holds it steady, leaving the awkward positioning to laugh over later.
“You called it our family,” George tells him, knowing that Dream’s furrowed brow and the curious curl of his lip will not leave anytime soon.
Dream blinks. “I. Yeah. I did. It is,” he speaks with a firm tone, his muttering soft enough to give George satisfaction. Dream’s noticing it too, George realizes. And he’s shy. And it’s perfect. “It’s our family. As long as you want it to be, of course.”
Of course.
Of course, of course, of course.
Because Dream doesn’t just look after Elytra. He doesn’t just tiptoe around her when she’s sleeping, he tiptoes around George and their relationship and the ups and downs and rights and lefts they’ve had since George has moved in. He takes good care, goes forward and back and apologizes when he thinks he’s overstepped.
But they’ve moved so far forward from those little conversations and that hotel room in Fort Lauderdale. They’ve progressed through thick forests and stormy nights and fights that resulted in tears and tires leaving driveways and George hates, hates, hates when Dream gets so frustrated that he feels he needs to give George some space but they’re working on it. Because they want to. And it’s their family, so they have to.
And George’s rock is beginning to wear down from all the gripping he’s done against it. But he struggles to leave it alone. It’s his promise and it’s Dream and it’s part of his family.
“Always,” George says as he brings his fingers through Dream’s from over the top. “Holy shit, hold on. You called it our family. You and me and Ely.”
Dream seems to catch onto his sudden change of breathing, the restlessness that starts to spread from his throat to the rest of his body.
“George, baby, sit up,” Dream instructs. And George follows, letting himself be guided into a better position until his back presses to the headboard. Dream watches him, flushes the nerves on his cheek with a careful thumb as he smirks sadly. “You all right?”
His mouth goes a little dry as he looks to Dream, sun still shining against him, hitting his back a lot stronger as it wakes up, as it yawns and stretches and beats down on Dream.
All George can do is touch back. Dream’s kneecap and his upper thigh, warm skin making his insides all the more warmer. Dream touches his thumb to George’s chin and then scoots forward to press his own cheek to George, moving his face back and forth until he gets the opportunity to kiss George.
Their mouths meet, and George inhales as his hand reaches up to cup the side of Dream’s face. He opens toward Dream, mouth and body and arms, letting the walls of his heart crack open as he thinks: family and daughter and theirs and his.
A knock at the door pulls them away from each other.
George turns to it as soon as he hears the hinges of the door. They’re louder than the footsteps that come in next.
“Someone’s looking for the two of you,” he hears Sapnap say before he clears his throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Two of them.
Briefly, George feels a hand on his leg underneath the blankets, grazing up his inner thigh like it’s something reassuring. The other hand leaves George’s nape to give Sapnap a little wave.
“Don’t worry,” he says to Sapnap.
“Hi, my love,” he says to Elytra.
“You okay?” He asks George.
But every word sort of slips in and out of George’s ears, and he keeps blinking and breathing, even as Elytra comes between their bodies and even when Dream starts pressing kisses to her chin and her cheeks and her forehead, George just sighs.
Dream reaches his fingers toward him to poke him in the ribs.
“I need to get some eggs and pancakes in you, or what?” He teases, not even noticing that George’s eyes have welled up with tears.
George blinks hard. He reaches to fix the back of Elytra’s sleep shirt, and as he tugs on it, she falls back into his arms.
“Morning, darling,” George whispers.
George pulls her toward him and doesn’t try to avoid the way his entire chest grows ten times heavier. Dream watches the two of them as he yawns, messing up his own hair with his fingertips like it’s a normal morning.
Because it is.
A normal morning in their bed.
George feels Elytra's hands press into the underside of his chin as she stretches and as she laughs, but George cannot stop looking at Dream’s intense gaze. He knows.
He always knows what George is thinking.
“It’s okay if you want to cry in front of her,” Dream tells him with the tiniest smirk on his face. And it’s enough. God, it’s enough for George to shatter a little. “Dads cry in front of their daughters sometimes.”
George lets his first tear down his cheek.
Fuck you, he mouths.
Dream scrunches his nose up and shrugs, clutching George’s ankle over the comforter.
Your daughter, Dream mouths back.
His. Theirs.
George nods. Again and again until his head hurts.
Below him, he feels Elytra grip his hand.