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Chapter Text

the first time he really notices it is when he stumbles off the curb and wakes up to headlights. 

he’d been walking home from working at a cafe, typing away far too late. the last thing george remembered was walking on a sidewalk, blinking heavy, and then the curious blankness that always comes with sleep. 

and then: a stumble off the curb. adrenaline rush and a pounding heart. headlights and a blaring horn as a car had swerved out of his way. 

george had been more confused than startled, if he was being honest. 

he hadn’t really thought much of it- except what? what happened? and then holy shit, i fell asleep - but he figured it was a one-off, that he’d been up too late with the boys recently. 

then he’d been streaming with dream one night, playing geoguesser. they’d started out in their own rooms, talking via discord, before dream had gotten annoyed with the extra effort and made george turn his facecam off so they could be in the same room. 

“i really don’t think it’s america,” george insists. 

dream scoffs. “you’re so- oh my god. you only just moved here. you wouldn’t even know.” 

george rolls his eyes. “whatever. if you’re so sure, then.” 

dream’s right, and he gloats while george shakes his head in fond amusement. he turns to get his water and notices exactly how heavy his eyelids feel, how his head feels like a ship rocking back and forth on the waves. blinking hard does nothing to remedy the situation. 

he’s dazed enough that he doesn’t notice dream watching him until dream lets a huffed breath slip. 

“how are you tired?” he teases, voice still soft and sweet. “you got so much sleep last night.” 

“i dunno,” george says halfheartedly. “maybe i should join the sleepy bois since i’m so tired all the time.” 

“chat, he doesn’t just sleep through streams. he literally fell asleep into a bowl of cereal the other day,” dream says. 

“i did not!” george protests, even though he kind of did. they’d been sat at the kitchen counter- him, dream, karl, sapnap, and quackity- and his spoon had nearly slipped out of his hand, eyes fluttering shut. he didn’t think anyone had noticed, at the time. 

“yes, you did,” dream insists. 

“if you say so,” george says, dropping his chin into his hands and propping himself up. 

dream casts him a look, mouthing you okay?  

george nods, closing his eyes. he really could fall asleep right here. as much as he complains about the stereotype of him sleeping through important events, it is kind of true. he’s always been able to sleep in unconventional places, always dozed off during classes, is always the first knocked out on car rides or planes. 

vaguely, he hears dream talking to their viewers, clicking around on his pc. he’s in that weird, half-awake half-asleep phase, where everything feels clouded and unreal. 

dream’s hand touches his shoulder, pushing softly. “george. you gotta go lay down.” 

george shakes his head, eyes still shut. “gotta finish stream.” 

“i ended it for you,” dream tells him. “you’re falling asleep at your desk. c’mon.” 

at that, george sits up straighter and forces his eyelids open. “what? no, dream, i hardly played at all.” 

“they’ll understand,” dream responds. “i really want you to lay down so you don’t sleep here.” 

for the first time, george looks at dream fully. he looks… worried. concerned. a little overprotective, maybe. it’s not wholly surprising, since dream does tend to mom his friends, but he normally teases george for his sleeping habits rather than getting serious about them. 

and so- “okay,” george agrees. it is getting increasingly harder to keep his head up. dream guides him up and out of his chair and the two feet over to his bed, and the last thing george remembers is his clock blinking 9:09pm and dream curling up on the couch in the corner. 

he wakes up at 11:23am the next morning, and only because karl has flopped onto his bed, whining in his ear about how “half the day is wasted, george, come on ” and dream is hovering to the side with a cup of coffee. 

“you hate coffee,” george mumbles, eyes lidded. 

dream rolls his eyes, tips of his ears going pink. “it’s for you, dumbass.” 

“yeah,” karl chirps, “so you can stay awake long enough to hang out with us.” 

george reaches behind and swats at him. “leave me alone, would you? it’s probably a jetlag thing. i dunno.” 

“jet lag goes away after a week or so,” karl points out. 

“drink your coffee,” dream sighs, handing george the mug. “the guys want to go out for lunch and hang out downtown.”

george looks up, confused. “i thought it was movie night?” 

“it’s that too!” karl says. “what, you don’t like hanging out with us?” 

“no, no, that’s fine,” george insists. “just thought people might want to stream sometime today.” 

internally, he laments his probable lack of an afternoon nap and late bedtime. as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, he knows he’ll be drowsy by 3 or 4, even with the caffeine first thing. he’s got to get his sleep back on track. 

“okay,” dream says, “up and at ‘em. you gotta get ready, dude.” 

“five more minutes,” george says, faceplanting back into his pillow. 

“george!” dream shrieks, starting to giggle, “you slept for fourteen hours . get UP.”

at that, george sits up and stares. “what? no, there’s no way. that’s so long.” 

“you definitely did,” karl agrees. “i came in at, like, 10 and you were passed out, and it’s 11:30 now.” 

george blinks. “holy shit.” 

“i thought the whole ‘sleeping through streams’ thing was a bit, honestly,” karl remarks. 

“no, it’s just my sleep schedule,” george insists, though he’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. “i just need, like, more routine.”

“i don’t think that’s it,” dream pipes up. “you get way more sleep than the rest of us do. maybe you should see a doctor.” 

“oh my god, dream. that’s so unnecessary,” george scoffs. “i’m not seeing a doctor because i get a healthy amount of sleep.” 

dream bristles. “ fourteen hours isn’t healthy, that’s the whole-” 

“okay!” karl interrupts. “how about george gets ready in the next ten minutes and then we can leave?” 

dream scowls and twists around, all but storming out of the room. he tends to be most volatile when he’s concerned, george supposes, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant to deal with. which- maybe that was why he’d avoided telling dream about the sleepwalking thing. there was no reason for it to escalate, to turn into a point of contention, when it was likely due to poor sleep. 

even if george knew that was an excuse, that he’d been getting plenty of sleep since coming to america. whatever. it’d sort itself out eventually. 

he manages to stumble downstairs right before karl yells at him for taking too long and finds dream in a far better mood, screwing around with the rest of the boys in the kitchen. 

“oh, georgie,” quackity coos in a sickly-sweet voice, “up from the dead, are we?” 

“fuck off,” george says, shrugging him off. “are we getting lunch first thing or after a bit?” 

“first thing,” sapnap says. “you took too long. i’m hungry.” 

“there’s a new sushi place a few minutes away, if we wanna try that,” karl offers. “or we could just do, like, chipotle.” 

“we had chipotle two days ago,” dream says. 

“you can never have too much chipotle,” sapnap says, solemnly. 

“you’re all idiots,” george says. “i vote sushi.” 

predictably, george dozes off on the ten minute car ride to get food, and only rouses when quackity shakes him awake. 

“jesus christ, i thought dream was kidding,” quackity exclaims, unbuckling george and pushing him haphazardly out of the car. “you really do sleep like crazy.” 

“i’m tired,” george protests, yawning so widely his jaw threatens to crack. “i honestly have no clue why.” 

“right,” dream snarks, “which mayhaps is why you could, you know. see a doctor. whose literal job is to tell you why your body does things.” 

“maybe,” george sighs. “can we just eat and not talk about it?” 

they get through lunch with relatively few arguments, besides quackity and sapnap throwing napkins at one another, and drive downtown. they’re walking between shops when george starts to feel his head tip back slightly, his eyelids getting heavier, and he swerves just enough to bump into karl. 

“whoa, dude.” karl grabs his arm, steadies him. “you okay?”

george blinks hard, eyelids fluttering uncontrollably. “i’m just- fuck-”

“no, no, you’re okay,” karl insists, panicky. “uh, dream? help?” 

through the haze of his last seconds of consciousness, george processes the feeling of dream’s arm looping through his, sides pressed together, and the awful dizzying feeling that always comes with falling asleep, for him. 

he wakes up seated at a coffeeshop, slumped on dream’s shoulder, and forces himself to sit up fully. 

“this is not normal , george,” dream says, emphasis heavy, voice full of worry. “please fucking call someone.” 

and george is so taken aback by the tone of dream’s voice that he agrees out of hand. “yeah, okay. a clinic, or something.” 

“okay,” dream sighs, shoulders dropping. “okay. fuck. the guys are out shopping more, but we’re heading back soon.”

“okay,” george agrees meekly. and then, “please don’t be mad at me.”

“i’m not mad.” dream pulls him closer, arm around his shoulders. “i’m just worried . i could feel you go limp against me when you fell asleep, but you kept walking. that’s not supposed to happen.” 

“at least i did keep walking though,” george points out. “it would have been way worse if i’d fallen over.” 

“who’s to say that won’t happen next time?” dream argues. 

“it hasn’t happened so far,” george protests. 

dream stiffens next to him. “this has happened before?” 

oh, fuck. “well- it was fine, and i hadn’t really slept the night before anyway-” 

“ george ,” dream says, and the disappointment in his tone is so palpable that george recoils. “tell me shit. oh, my god.” 

“i’m sorry,” george insists. “i’ll keep you updated from now on.” 

dream just nods, and opens his mouth to say something- but as he does, karl bursts through the door of the coffeeshop, wielding several shopping bags and two bobas. 

“we got you drinks!” he says enthusiastically, shoving one towards george and the other towards dream. “feeling better?” 

“yeah,” george says quietly. out of the corner of his eye, he sees dream’s jaw clench. karl looks between the two of them, awkward. 

“okay,” sapnap interrupts, coming up behind karl and tossing an arm over his shoulders. “we gotta get back home for dinner and movie night. quackity wants to edit before we hang out again.” 

that night, they’re strewn across the couches, piled on top of one another and overlapping like a herd of shelter cats, when george predictably dozes off. this time, though, he’s plunged almost immediately into REM sleep. 

in his increasingly-vivid dreams, it’s always shifting. they’re more like nightmares, lately. some days he’s a robot whose battery is giving out; sometimes he’s in a rapidly ending simulation, or he has vanishing gray matter syndrome, or he’s a sinking hot air balloon, or a dying fire. 

in the worst one, he’s in a forest, and he lays down to rest on the moss- but he stays there forever, frozen, mute, numb. mushrooms curl up and out of his mouth. little saplings burst through his throat and chest and ribcage. he morphs into something unknowable. 

though he knows it’s illogical, sometimes he thinks that one will actually happen. as it gets closer to winter and colder outside, his personal risk goes up. if he started to fall asleep and decided to sit down for a minute, or if he collapsed and couldn’t call for help, it’d be easy to freeze to death. 

he doesn’t want to be coddled, but he doesn’t want to be an idiot, either. 

this time, he’s swimming in- a lagoon? a pond, maybe?- with dream, and it’s glittering gold in summer sun, pale blue sky overhead, and they’re giggling together, light and easy. dream’s wrapping his arms around george’s waist, and he tackles him into the water, and right as he dips under he feels his head go leaden, arms limp, eyelids fluttering shut. 

not here, not now , he thinks frantically, heart in his throat, but he can’t speak, can’t reach out, can’t even move beyond the horrible, freezing sleep. 

he wakes up in a cold sweat with the feeling of salt water deep in his lungs. it’s quite dramatic, actually; he shoots straight up, panting hard, and the boys jolt around him. 

“jesus christ, what?” sapnap gasps, startled. 

“i just- can’t- oh my god,” george wheezes, grabbing at his chest. his heart flutters like a dying bird, slamming into a glass door over and over. 

“hey, you’re fine,” karl insists, moving over to sit behind him and rub at his shoulders. “what happened?” 

george shakes his head, and to his horror, feels the pressure of tears behind his waterline. karl’s face morphs from shock to concern to pity in a millisecond, and he turns. 

“quackity, will you make hot chocolate or something?” 

dream’s curled up at the other end of the couch, looking almost as scarred as george feels, terrified. 

“it’s okay,” karl soothes, running his fingers across george’s shoulder blade. “everyone’s fine. dream, breathe.” 

it’s a minute, at least, before they all settle a little, the air clears, it becomes apparent that no one’s dying quite yet. 

“that was freaky, dude,” sapnap remarks, moving to the kitchen. “i mean, please never have that happen again.” 

he startles a laugh out of george, who says, “yeah, i hope that never happens again too.” 

dream snorts, and then karl’s laughing too, and then they’re all cackling, albeit a bit hysterically. 

“please see a sleep doctor immediately,” karl giggles. “what the fuck is happening with you.”

“i definitely plan to,” george says, wiping at his eyes. “i’m sort of tired of the nightmares. and also falling asleep whilst, like, doing anything. writing, even.” 

dream stiffens. “that happens?” 

“yeah, writing and walking have been the big ones,” george says, abashed at having to admit that he’s been lying. “i have meant to tell you. i just didn’t want it to be a big deal.”

“it is a big deal,”  dream says softly. “but it’ll be fine. we’ll work it out.” 

he smiles at george, george’s breath catches, and he wonders if drowning could ever feel this soft. 

Chapter Text

sometimes, george remembers that he did, actually, survive a near-lethal car accident. 

it had been during his visit to the states to see dream for the first time, just over a year ago. dream had picked him up from the airport, and on the way back- something had happened. george had been asleep with his head against the window, and woken up upside down. 

dream didn’t remember what had happened either. they had been taken to the ER, where dream had been diagnosed with a concussion and george told he was fine. lucky, all things considered. ridiculously lucky. the passenger window had been smashed, and yet neither had a scape besides dream’s minor head injury. 

or so they thought. 

they’d had a nice visit regardless, both more grateful to have survived than traumatized by the accident, and george had flown home. a month later, he found he couldn’t sleep no matter what he tried. and then his vision had gone completely blurry one day. 

the doctors said he had post-concussion syndrome. his symptoms had cleared up by february, but had the doctors at the ER noticed his concussion then, he could have been spared six months of awful symptoms. but they had cleared up eventually. 

at least, that’s what he thought. 

the clinic doctor that he had gone to see about the sleep issues had been deeply concerned, and sent him to a neurologist. the neurologist said that he suspected george had narcolepsy. 

“the primary theory is that it’s caused by some form of brain damage,” the neurologist said. 

the thing was, he had woken up during the accident, briefly. he remembered the sensation more than the visual, of being weightless, slamming back in his seat, and then having no memory until the flashing lights of the ambulance. he must have gotten knocked out in between. 

ironic, really, that the accident he slept through was potentially the thing that made him sleep forever. horribly ironic. the sort of irony people kill themselves over. 

george blinked. “i, um. i have brain damage.” 

the doctor frowned. “that wasn’t in your history.” 

george shook his head. “no, it- that’s not my real doctor. i just moved here, i don’t have a primary care person. i got in a car crash last year.” 

“and sustained an injury?” the doctor asked. 

he nodded. “post-concussion syndrome.” 

“i would almost guarantee that caused this,” the neurologist said. “traumatic brain injuries often have long-term, unexpected consequences.” 

traumatic brain injury sounded so much more dramatic than concussion. like it was a big deal. 

“so what do we do then?” george asked. “if i have narcolepsy, i mean.” 

“well, we don’t know for sure,” the doctor said sympathetically. “the most i can do right now is order a sleep study for you. you’ll sleep with some sensors on to measure your heart rate. breathing, and brain waves, and then we can confirm a diagnosis if the results line up.” 

george knows immediately that he cannot, no way in hell tell dream, if he can avoid it. an illness like that is a far bigger issue than simple sleep deprivation. he’d freak out, get all overprotective- even more so than he already is. 

but, of course, he gets home from the appointment and dream is waiting on the couch, clearly not paying attention to the anime on the tv. 

“hey!” dream says, sitting up hastily. “how did it go?” 

george rolls his eyes, walking into the kitchen. “it went fine.”

dream follows. “fine, as in…? what?” 

“well, he thinks he knows what the issue is,” george says vaguely. 

“and what is the issue?” 

fuck. dream’s too smart. 

george sighs and turns, finally facing dream. the other looks tired, bags like purple bruises under his eyes, and george realizes with a start how worried dream is for him. 

he relents. “okay, it’s- he thinks i’m narcoleptic, or something. i have to do a sleep study to find out.” 

dream frowns, visibly upset. “that’s what i thought he’d say.” 

george blinks. “what? you expected this?” 

“yeah, that’s what i gathered from my research,” dream says, as though it’s obvious. “all of your symptoms line up.” 

and george is- ridiculously touched, actually. that dream cares enough to do research even knowing that only the doctor can say for sure. 

he relaxes a little more, feeling less cornered and more cared for. “i mean, at this point we just have to wait for a study. i scheduled one for two weeks out.”

dream nods. “i think that’s a really good idea. what can i do for you in the meantime?”

george raises an eyebrow. “uh. like, in general?”

“like, to support you. or make you feel better about it, i guess,” dream says. 

“we could get sushi for dinner?” george offers.

dream laughs. “sure. easy enough.” 

as he pulls his laptop open to order food, george decides then and there to never mention the cause of the narcolepsy to dream. dream always blamed himself for being the driver, for causing george long-term health issues, even if they cleared up. but apparently they hadn’t, and if dream knew that he had caused george to have a permanent disability… 

not formally diagnosed yet , george thinks. maybe it is just sleep deprivation . 

in the back of his mind, he knows that his thinking capacity has been decreased lately too. it reminds him of the early days of his concussion, when he hadn’t known what the problem was but had only realized how much harder it was to think and process. it makes him think that maybe it’s progressive, that the brief reprieve of symptoms was just that. that his brain damage is getting worse. 

“wanna watch a movie?” dream asks, and george shakes his head to clear his thoughts. 

“whatever you want,” he mumbles. 

dream side-eyes him, but clicks on a netflix film. fantastic mr. fox, one of their favorites. 

george watches the film, zones out to “i know what it’s like to be… different,” and thinks that perhaps he wasn’t as lucky to survive the accident as he once thought. 

he coasts through the next two weeks with no change to his sleeping habits. he does research of his own, joins a reddit forum, reads up on what, exactly, a sleep study is. he’ll be doing an overnight and then an mslt, a multi-sleep latency test, which he learns is a series of naps to measure how quickly he falls asleep and whether he enters REM in a short amount of time. he learns that narcolepsy can be debilitating. he learns that it often worsens over time and wonders if dream knows that. 

mostly, he sleeps. 

though he gets ten to fourteen hours of sleep a night, he still dozes off, during mario kart tournaments, during streams, during merch meetings, movie nights, late-night drives. the head rush before a sleep attack quickly becomes his least favorite feeling. to the boys’ credit, they attempt to keep it lighthearted, posting pictures of him asleep with the caption “can’t hang.”

george suspects dream told them what the neurologist said. 

karl becomes the designated alarm clock, since george tends to wake up rather violently and he’s the best at dodging. he’s always gentle, pushing george’s hair back and then hitting the ground to avoid the fist swinging his way, and giggles while he waves off george’s apologies. 

they get through it. 

on the day of the sleep study, george is tasked with not napping throughout the day, and quackity makes it his job to ensure that doesn’t happen. 

“quackity,” george groans, facedown on the couch, “i’m begging you to stop.” 

“no shot,” quackity says serenely, and resumes banging two pans together. 

by 7:00pm, george is ready to get the study over with. he eats with the rest of them, and then dream is ushering him to the car so they aren’t late. 

“we’ll play jackbox tomorrow,” dream assures him on the drive. “to keep you awake between naps. and you can call for anything you need.” 

“i know, dream,” george says. he can pretend to be annoyed, but he’s touched at the effort that dream is putting into the situation. 

he gets dropped off, and walks into an empty, silent office. he can see a broad-shouldered man sitting in the back, watching something on a computer. 

“uh… hello?” he calls anxiously. “i’m here for a sleep test.” 

the man jolts, turns, gets up. “what’s your name?” 

“george davidson,” george says. 

the man- bart, his nametag reads- clicks around on a computer for a minute before nodding at george. “follow me.” 

he’s led into a hotel-like room with wires spread overtop of the covers. there’s a camera in the upper right corner of the room, aimed directly at the bed. 

it looks, in all honesty, like the setup to a horror film. 

“i have another patient here as well,” bart tells him, “so i’ll be in to get you set up in about thirty minutes. in the meantime, feel free to do whatever. there’s a restroom down the hall if you need to change.” 

“okay,” george says meekly. bart leaves. 

as soon as the tech is gone, george whips out his phone and texts dream a photo of the room. 

what the fuck? dream sends back. that’s so scary.  

it’s so weird , george texts back. there’s, like, three people in the building and i’m one of them. 

:/ that sounds spooky. are u gonna be able to sleep okay? 

honestly pretty tired already , george sends. we’ll see though. 

dream sends an 8-ball request. 

by the time bart comes back, george has already changed into a pair of sweatpants and resorted to clicking around on various social media sites to keep himself awake. texting dream was only so engaging, and he couldn’t afford to screw up the horrendously expensive test, even with his head drifting back and eyes nodding shut. 

“okay,” the sleep tech says, shutting the door. “ready to get wired up?” 

the end result is a clumsy, unwieldy mess of medical equipment. george has sensors on his legs, chest, back, neck, jaw, face, and across the back of his skull, as well as two bands- one around his chest, one around his stomach- and a nasal cannula that itches slightly. all of the sensors are plugged into a brick of an electronic, handily attached to a lanyard so he can carry it with him to use the restroom. 

“if you need anything, just say it out loud,” the tech tells him. “there’s a microphone in here, so i can hear you, but you can’t hear me.” 

“okay,” george says softly, curled up under the covers. he imagines he looks like an android, or a patient on death’s door. certainly not like an otherwise-healthy 20-something. not like a highly successful internet celebrity or a bright and fun human being, but perhaps as tired as he feels. 

“okay,” the tech says. “goodnight.” 

“goodnight,” george mumbles, and falls into a dreamless sleep.