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The first time George brings it up, he doesn't think it's a big deal.
"I might apply for my visa, actually."
They're talking about America, about how George wants to visit his friends, about how that's difficult because of the current global situation.
"Your visa?"
His mum sounds a little surprised, but surely it can't be all that shocking, can it?
"Yeah, maybe."
"To move there? Permanently?"
She's doing that mum thing where she acts like he's still a little kid. In some ways he hates being the youngest, it doesn't matter how old he gets his mum still treats him like he's her baby sometimes.
"At least more permanently than a visit," George shrugs. "But so I can also make content. I can't do that on a visitor visa."
"Oh, well, that makes sense," she says.
And then George changes the subject because he feels uncomfortable with how upset she's getting about him moving away.
-
When he finally does apply, after procrastinating on it for so long, he doesn't mention it right away. He's not not telling her, it just doesn't come up.
"Did you tell your mum yet?"
Dream has asked him every week since he'd applied, George doesn't know why he's so invested.
"Haven't had a chance."
"George."
George is clicking around his inbox without actually replying to emails. They're supposed to be co-working, but he thinks that Dream is probably the only one getting anything done.
"What?" George says. "I'm going to. Why do you care?"
"I don't," Dream says. "You just said she was upset when you mentioned you might move and I think it'll be worse if you don't tell her."
"She wasn't upset," George says. "She was just… weird."
"Sure, George," Dream says. "She was upset."
"What? You weren't even there. How would you know?"
"I know you," Dream says. "You saying she was weird definitely means she was upset. You just don't like talking about it."
"So don't talk about it, then," George says.
And thankfully, Dream lets it drop.
-
He can't avoid it forever. It isn't because Dream insisted he tell her, or because George feels very strongly that he should, it's just that the subject comes up and George decides that now is as good a time as any.
"I applied for my visa."
It sounds like such a simple sentence when he says it, but the silence that follows it is uncomfortable.
"Oh," his mum says.
They're in some small cafe, eating lunch. They do this sometimes. George kind of likes it.
"We're, uh, hoping I'll be there by Christmas. Early next year at the latest."
She nods, and stabs her fork into the largest lettuce leaf in her salad. She's smiling, but it doesn't look like it reaches her eyes. George's sandwich doesn't seem very appealing all of a sudden.
"That's great," she says.
George sometimes can't really tell when she's upset, but he can tell now.
"Is it?" he says. "You seem… are you mad?"
"Mad? No, George. Of course I'm not mad. It's exciting for you. I'm just going to miss you."
George has spent a lot of time thinking about all the things he's moving for, and not much of what he'll miss. The convenience of London, yes, the friends he hangs out with not nearly as much as he should because he really is a homebody, and of course his family. Of course, them.
"You can come visit," is what he says. "The house is huge."
"And are you just moving in with them?" she asks.
It strikes him then that he's so used to people knowing his business, so used to Dream telling everyone online about their plans, that maybe he hasn't been the best at telling his mum all of the details.
And so he does. Over a sandwich he no longer feels like eating, and a salad his mum eats every bite of, George tells her everything.
"And what about Dream?" she asks.
"What?" George says. He's finished his drink, the straw coming up empty. "What do you mean?"
"Is there anything you haven't told me about him?"
It's pointless, he thinks, to take all of his secrets across the ocean with him. He might as well leave a piece of them here, in safe keeping. And so, George tells her that too.
-
"I told my mum."
It's late, four o'clock in the morning when George checks the time, though it's only eleven in the evening halfway across the world where Sapnap has just left the call.
He doesn't know why he saved this piece of news for when he and Dream were alone, but he has.
"What did she say?"
"That she'll miss me. Obviously."
"Of course she will," Dream says. "She's your mum."
He pronounces mum the way George does, and it sounds weird.
"I'll miss her too," George says.
"I know you will," Dream says. "But we can fly her out whenever you want."
George likes that he says we. He knows that Dream will probably pay for her plane ticket if he asks. Not that he will. Maybe.
"That's what I said. Then she asked about the house and I told her about that too."
"You hadn't mentioned it yet?"
George doesn't answer, which tells Dream everything he needs to know.
"George," Dream says. "You bought a house with us and you didn't tell your mum?"
"Shut up," George says. "I just forgot."
Dream laughs at him. George thinks he probably deserves that.
"I've told her now," George says. Then, "I told her about you, too."
"Me?"
"Yeah. I guess I hadn't… she knows about you. Obviously. I have talked about you before. But she had questions."
"What kinda questions?"
Dream is suddenly interested, George can tell by the tone of his voice, the way the rhythmic sound of whatever he'd been fiddling with has stopped.
"The usual ones people have about you," George says. "And me."
"Oh," Dream says. There's a beat before he says the next thing. "About whether you've really seen my face?"
"Hmm," George agrees. "And the other stuff."
"And, uh, what did you tell her?"
George doesn't want to do this now. He gave his mum his secrets to keep here and so he will also keep them until he is no longer with them. He's waiting to tell Dream until he's there.
He's pretty sure Dream knows that, too.
"Do you really think Christmas will happen?" George asks, changing the subject.
He can tell Dream is disappointed. They both are. Any time they skirt near the subject they have silently agreed not to touch until they are together, it's hard not to feel it like a jab under the ribs.
"I hope so," Dream says.
And George does too.
-
Christmas doesn't happen. They wait and they wait and George expresses his anger about the slowness of the process to anyone that will listen.
"Then you should have applied earlier," Dream says in the middle of one of his tirades.
"What did you just say to me?" George says.
"You procrastinated," Dream says. "Like you always do. It was stupid to think that you'd get a response in like three months."
"Maybe next month—" George starts, but Dream cuts him off.
"We say that every month, George. Just… stop."
George knows it's just disappointment talking, just his frustration shutting things down because what he cannot control he doesn't like, but it still hurts when Dream hangs up on him.
Calling his mum is probably a dumb thing to do, but he's run out of people online who will listen to him complain about the visa process and so she is the only one left.
"And Dream just got angry and said I should have applied earlier," George says. He's been ranting at her for at least a half hour at this point, filling her in on what little news they've had - which basically amounts to nothing - before arriving at his last conversation with Dream.
"Could you have applied earlier?" she asks.
"Maybe," he confesses. "There was just a lot of paperwork."
"I see." She says it like she knows exactly what happened. She probably does, because she's known George his entire life and he can't remember a time when he did anything precisely when he meant to.
There's a reason his advice to budding Computer Science students is always 'keep up with the work'. He never did.
"It's got to be hard on you both," she says. "All this waiting."
"Every month he says it'll be next month," George says. "And there are a lot of people online who are, like, waiting for us to meet. They ask about it all the time and he doesn't know what to tell them. It's a lot."
"For him?" she asks. "Or for you?"
"Both," he says.
"Then, at least you have each other to go through it with," she says, sagely.
And George had never thought about it like that.
-
The rejection comes in February and George tells Dream he's basically depressed.
He isn't going anywhere, or seeing anyone, his life feels as though it is on hold. Stuck. Waiting for a piece of paper that he's now been told might never come.
It isn't a full rejection. If it were, reapplying would be a nightmare, and almost impossible once you've been rejected for a visa. But it does mean he needs to give them more paperwork, more evidence, more explanations. And, most of all, it means more waiting.
"I hate the whole thing," George says.
He's already sent them the extra stuff they needed. He didn't procrastinate this time, and he let Dream sit on call with him and double check everything because they absolutely cannot miss this chance.
"Me too," Dream says.
"I'm just, like, sad."
It surprises him, the honesty with which he says it.
"Wait," Dream says.
"What?"
"Just, wait there. I need to—"
Dream's mic goes dead, the call still on going but nothing but silence coming from the other end. He's muted himself.
George is frustrated, annoyed that he's been left alone after telling Dream he's so upset about how things are panning out, but he doesn't hang up.
After a few minutes, Sapnap joins the call, and then Dream's mic comes back online.
"What's going on?" George asks.
"Nick has a suggestion," Dream says. "I thought he should be the one to tell you, not me."
"What is it?"
Sapnap takes his time. He knows it winds George up when he does and so he drags it out for as long as he can, until George is yelling and Dream is trying to rein them both in, only then does he tell George the plan.
"I'm coming to the UK."
"What?"
"You can't come here so I'm going to come there."
"But, you hate flying," George says. That's always the reason he hadn't come before. That and the fact that they'd always thought they were at least one month away from George being in the US.
Now they know it might be a bit longer than that.
"Yeah," Sapnap says. "I do. But, I'm coming anyway, just as soon as I get my passport sorted out."
George doesn't know how to express his gratitude for that, so he doesn't. Instead, he tells Sapnap most vehemently that he isn't allowed to stay in his house and that he cannot meet his mum.
He sticks to both of those things.
-
The rest of the year passes in what feels like a slow drudge. He can feel it, the way he slows down, the way ant and all enthusiasm he feels is for what comes next and not what is happening now.
But at least his mum knows about it now.
He likes having her to talk to when talking to Dream becomes too much. It isn't like he'd want to get into it with any of his other friends, and Sapnap is already in it too so there isn't much he can say. But his mum is good for keeping him going, even if he knows that deep down she might be a little happy that he hasn't gone yet.
She calls more, invites him to lunch, drops by with groceries - which is good because George is kind of terrible at buying them for himself. It's like she's trying to get all the last minute mothering in before he leaves.
"You know I already moved out twice," George says. "To uni and then to here."
She's putting fruit into his fridge and sighing at the pile of dishes in his sink.
"I know."
"So I'll still call you," he says. "It won't be much different."
"You've always been so…" she closes the fridge and looks at him. "You never liked being too far away. What if you get there and you hate it."
George shrugs. "I don't think I will. But, if I do it's not like I'm going to be alone."
"No," she says, like she wants to say something else but can't. "You're going to be with Dream."
Something about how she says it tells George what the other thing might have been.
He doesn't bother to correct her.
"Yeah."
"It's not really about Florida, is it?"
George shakes his head. "It could be anywhere," he says.
It might be the most revealing thing he's ever said and he vows never to say it to anyone else, ever.
"Then it's worth waiting for," she says.
And so George keeps waiting.
-
Eventually it arrives. It's just a brown envelope with a stamp and his address on it. Innocuous looking, really.
He opens it with shaking hands and pulls out the thing he's been waiting for for what feels like forever.
He should text Dream first, but he finds himself typing out a message to his mum instead. Just, it's here, because she'll know what it means.
Then he takes a moment just to look. He breathes in deep and steadies himself for what comes next. Everything that comes next.
He's ready.
And so he texts Dream, sets up his camera, gets busy documenting the next step in his life.
Congratulations his mum texts back when do you leave?
And the reality of it sinks in.
-
He lets her drive him to the airport.
The last few weeks have been so busy George feels like his head is in a spin. Between packing up and moving out and the charity match and the Mr Beast shoot, George has done more in the last short while than he has all year.
He knew the visa would be the start of everything but he sort of expected it to be after he arrived in Florida.
Not that it won't be busy then, too. Any notions he might have had of settling into his new home in a calm way have been shattered. His visa came to come to everything else, and once they were already traveling they just kept adding in new things.
It's mostly driven by Dream, who says yes to every concert and influencer event he can lay his hands on because he's had to say no to them all for three years.
George doesn't blame him. He knows what it is to wait for something and then finally feel like you're free.
But it means the next few weeks - hell, months - of George's life are going to be jam packed with things to do.
He probably won't get back to any semblance of routine until January. But who needs routine when you've got adventure, when his hands will finally be able to touch the things he's wanted to for so long.
"Are you ready?" His mum asks.
They're in the car, George has filmed a clip put through the windshield for his video and now there's just the background noise of tyres in tarmac and the low song playing on the radio.
"Yeah," he says.
"Nervous?"
George glances down at his phone. There's a string of text messages between him and his friends, updates in his journey even though he's only just begun it.
"Kind of," he says. "But excited too."
"Will you think I'm being a fussy old mum if I ask you to ring me when you land?"
"No," he says. "I'll… yeah. I'll ring you when I get there."
She seems satisfied with the answer, and lets the car fall back into quiet.
It gives George time to think, to turn it all over I'm his mind. He wonders when it will sink in, at what moment it will start to feel real.
When he sees Dream's face in person for the first time? When he's finally in his arms?
He smiles, and shivers.
"What if—" he starts, putting voice to a worry he's been carrying around with him.
"What if what?"
"What if it's weird?" He says.
"You mean what if he doesn't like you," she says.
George hates that people know him well enough that they can do that, but it also saves him the trouble of having to actually explain his feelings so he can't really complain.
"Hm," he says, agreeing.
"Do you really think that's likely?" She says. "You have both been so crazy with the stuff that you've done for each other. You don't move across the world for someone you might not like, George. And you don't put your entire life and career on hold until a person can be with you, either."
It's true, Dream has done that, hasn't he?
George doesn't like thinking about it, because it makes him feel guilty. But it has been Dream's decision, he's wanted to.
"What if he changes his mind?" George says.
"Then home will be right here waiting for you," she tells him. "But something tells me as soon as you get there, and you meet him, you're not going to have anything to worry about."
Perhaps he needed one last pep talk from his mum because something in George settles. She hasn't been wrong so far, so hopefully she's right about this too.
-
The journey is a blur. He films, he sleeps, he watches the animated plane on the screen make its way across the vast blue of the Atlantic Ocean, and then he's there, in Sapnap's car, in the driveway.
In Dream’s arms.
Amongst it all there's no time to call his mum until much later, and by then so much has happened.
Dream kisses him for the first time when he brings George's suitcase up the stairs.
He puts it down in the middle of George's new room, and they're alone without Sapnap or a camera around for the first time, and George can sense they both know where it's going.
Dream kisses him, and George lets him, and any worry he might have had simply floats away.
This is what he's been waiting for.
-
He finally calls her late night for him and afternoon for her.
"I was beginning to think you'd forgotten me already," she says.
George laughs. He might have worried, before, that she was angry or sad about it. But in his own joy he can hear the happiness she has for him underneath it all.
So he tells her everything, about the flight, about the house, about getting settled in.
"And the other thing?" She asks. "Was there anything to worry about in the end?"
George grins. He can hear Dream moving around downstairs and Sapnap shuffling around in the next room.
His stuff is still in boxes, he doesn't have a bed frame, and he's looking down the barrel of the busiest few months of his life.
But his lips are still tingling with the touch of Dream's, his skin can still remember the sensation of Dream's palm against his lower back. He might not even sleep in this room tonight if he gets his own way.
And so, "no," he says. "Nothing to worry about at all."