Chapter Text
After the initial avalanche at the wedding, George’s memories start returning at a much more manageable, yet steady rate. His new favourite pastime quickly becomes sharing any notable moments he remembers at any given time and gleefully watching Dream and Sapnap’s reactions. It’s endearing to see their eyes light up or their lips part in shock, and hilarious when he catches them off guard with something that makes them stutter and blush.
They aren’t always good ones, though. A few days after the wedding, George decides to take a bath, and Sapnap finds him a few minutes later half-naked with the water running, curled up on the floor and sobbing into his arms. He can’t speak through his tears and rapid breathing, but when he calms down enough he describes the sudden vision he’d been hit with of Dream laying unconscious in the bathtub, chest and arms bruised black. Sapnap holds him right there on the floor until he calms down, and as soon as Dream gets home that evening George immediately launches himself into his arms, gripping him tight enough that his arms ache.
The gifts all have their place in his room: Bad’s candy jar (which Sapnap affectionately dubs as the ‘candy egg’) sits on his desk, next to Skeppy’s glass ornament. He keeps it angled so it catches the light in the mornings, and he admires the way the rippling water casts reflections up the side of the red jar and delicate vines.
Wilbur’s button sits in the box that Philza’s locket was in, tucked safely away in the bedside drawer so he doesn’t lose it. The locket itself dangles from the corner of his mirror. When he opens it for the first time, he realizes that the inside is empty, but in a few days both sides have a picture in them: one he’d snapped of Dream and Sapnap in a quiet moment snoozing under the willow tree; the other full of the smiling faces of their friends taken before the wedding ceremony. He opens it every once in a while to look at the photos; they never fail to fill his chest with warmth.
Techno’s gift is the one he uses the most. When he’s alone and a bad memory hits, he sticks the earbuds in his ears and listens to the soothing tones of the violin.
As for Ranboo’s story, when he thinks to go back to it a few weeks later, it’s disappeared. Not the papers: the words themselves seem to have vanished off of the page. He vaguely remembers something that Puffy said on his first night visiting her coven: that Ranboo’s writing “doesn’t disappear until someone ‘buys’ it.”
He wonders if he should ask Ranboo himself, but something stops him. He hasn’t seen him since the night he recovered his memories, but he remembers how he’d seemed...almost distanced. There was no look in his eyes when he looked at George that hinted at anything different, and while he himself still isn’t sure what happened that night, he knows it has something to do with the story witch.
Either way, he knows that there’s nothing he can do about it...and, for the first time, that doesn’t bother him. The thought that this is something he might never know does scare him, but he’s finding that lately, those things aren’t bothering him as much. He fell back in love with Dream and Sapnap even when all hope of retrieving his memories had been lost, and while a few months ago it would have been impossible to let this go, with every day that passes the thought slips further and further from his mind.
“What’cha doing?”
George looks up, startled by the sudden voice. Sapnap is standing at the top of the back stairs, holding two steaming mugs, and George scoots over to make some room for him to sit on the bottom step beside him. He smiles in thanks at the mug Sapnap hands him and sets down the bundle of twigs he’s been fiddling with to wrap both hands around it, letting it warm his numbing fingers.
“Just a little thing,” he shrugs dismissively and takes a small sip of the hot chocolate. “I’ve been wanting something to do with my hands, and the last storm blew down a bunch of little twigs so I picked some up and…”
He gestures to the tangle of sticks, and Sapnap leans over to get a better look.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
He snorts, and Sapnap hurriedly backtracks.
“That came out wrong--”
“No, you’re fine.” George chuckles at the sheepish look on his face. “I don’t really know. Getting my memories back has been making me sort of nostalgic, and I’ve been missing the bird’s nests…”
“So you’re making one of your own?”
Sapnap sounds amused, but not mocking. George laughs, blushing a little.
“Not on purpose, but it’s kind of turning into one.”
“I like it.” Sapnap bumps him with his shoulder.
Autumn is drawing to an end, and the last few mornings have started with frost. It melts quickly, but even in early afternoon, the air is still cold enough that the hot chocolate is a blessing. He finishes it quickly, humming in contentment. Sapnap chuckles, and he looks over questioningly.
“You’ve got a hot cocoa mustache,” he says, giving George an endeared smile. He leans in and kisses him sweetly, lips lingering for a few moments before he pulls away.
“Got it,” he says, obviously trying not to laugh at the look on George’s face.
He buries his face in Sapnap’s chest with a groan.
“You’re the worst.”
Sapnap is warm and his hoodie is soft, and George lets himself rest there for a few moments. He sighs happily as Sapnap’s fingers comb through his hair.
“I love you,” he mumbles against his chest. Sapnap tucks a curl behind his ear and leans down to kiss the top of his head.
“Love you too, Georgie.”
He watches George work for a few minutes before taking their empty mugs inside, leaving him alone again. The act of weaving the twigs together is calming, the repetitive motions almost hypnotic.
“That’s an interesting hat.”
Patches sounds amused, and George rolls his eyes as she hops down the stairs and joins him at the bottom.
“It’s not a hat.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s…” George hesitates, turning it over in his hands. “It’s a bird’s nest, I guess.”
“You’re not a bird.”
“Thank you, Patches,” he says, shaking his head as he winds another twig through the rest. “I wasn’t quite sure until now.”
“No need to be sarcastic,” she chides.
She sniffs at the nest, then bounds off through the yard. George passed the point of trying to understand her motivations a long time ago, so he pays it no mind.
When Patches comes back a few minutes later, she’s carrying a few long twigs in her mouth. She drops them on the stair George is sitting on, then nudges them towards him.
“Try these.”
The twigs weave together easily, and Patches seems proud of herself. George raises his eyebrows.
“How’d you know?”
She tilts her head and blinks up at him innocently.
“Would you believe me if I said it’s intuition?”
“Not even a little bit.”
The implication of Patches’ crimes against birds aside, they spend the next hour working together on the nest. Patches disappears for a few minutes at a time and returns with twigs that George carefully adds to the nest. With her help, it’s not long at all before he’s bending the last one in place and holding up the nest to give it an appraising look.
“I think it’s finished.”
“Congratulations.”
“I don’t think I deserve that,” George laughs a little, setting down the finished product. “Mother birds do this all the time without help.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
George looks down at her, confused. Her eyes don’t give anything away, and without another word she’s gone, slipping back through the cat door.
“Cats,” he mutters, shaking his head. His knees crack as he stands up, sore after sitting for so long.
Dream is just walking in the front door when he reenters the shop. George hurries to put the nest down and take one of the bulky grocery bags he’s carrying.
“Jeez, Dream,” he teases, “are we trying to feed an army? What’s with all the food?”
Dream laughs a little breathlessly, and George follows him as he carries the bag to the kitchen.
“There’s supposed to be another storm in a few days,” he explains, plopping the bag down and starting to sort through it, “so I wanted to make sure we have enough stuff just in case the power goes out again.”
The first storm had been bad enough, knocking the power out and toppling some of the flower pots they’d set out in front of the greenhouse. There wasn’t any lasting damage, aside from the food in the fridge, which had gone off overnight.
“What’s this?”
Dream’s voice snaps George out of his thoughts. He’s looking at the nest he’d put on the table, turning it over to admire the details.
“Oh--just something I’ve been working on,” George says with a little shrug. “Patches actually gave me a hand...ah. Metaphorically, anyways.”
Dream laughs, but he seems a little distracted. He gives the nest one more look before carefully placing it back on the table.
“It looks good. You should take good care of it.”
It’s strange. Everything about both Dream and Patches’ behaviour has been strange, and George can’t for the life of him figure out why.
It isn’t until a few days later that he gets his answer.
The storm seems to be blowing in right on schedule, and George wakes up to a dark, cloudy sky and wind already beginning to make the trees sway. While he normally doesn’t mind storms, something about today is giving him a bad feeling. He’s not quite sure why, but it keeps a strange pit in his stomach that doesn’t go away as he goes about his day around the shop.
He’s in the library around noon when he realizes what’s wrong.
“Oh no, oh no, oh dear--”
George startles, almost dropping the book he’s holding at the sudden interruption. He knows right away it’s a bird, which doesn’t make that much sense considering the fact that he hasn’t been listening to the birds recently. She must be barely a hatchling, and her distress is so strong that George can feel it even through the connection.
He opens the window, struggling a little with the wind, and pokes his head out. A cardinal is hopping anxiously along the ground, holding a small twig in her beak. A gust of wind rolls past, nearly knocking her over, and she flutters her wings to keep balanced.
“No, no, bad, too windy, no no no--”
“Are you alright?”
The cardinal is startled by the sudden communication, and she drops the measly twig, which blows away in the wind. She hops closer to the window.
“Nest too late, storm coming,” she explains. “No nest, no cover, bad bad bad--”
George’s eyebrows shoot up. The timing is…
“Stay right there, okay?” he says, trying to speak soothingly. “I’m going to come out to help.”
He sprints out of the library and practically runs upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. He rips open his dresser drawer hard enough that it rattles the whole thing and grabs the nest where he’d stashed it the other day, then flies downstairs and bursts through the back door and into the wind.
The cardinal is still where she was, still hopping nervously. George kneels in front of the bushes along the side of the shop, shifting the leaves and branches until he finds a suitable place.
He secures the nest inside, making sure there’s enough room for the young bird without being exposed to the rough weather ahead. Once he’s done, he moves aside and gestures at it.
“Will this be okay?”
The cardinal hesitates before settling herself in the nest. An intense gratitude pours through the link.
“Thank you,” she gushes, “thank you much, very much, very safe here.”
George smiles, heart warming.
“I’ll come check on you when the storm is over, alright? Stay here until the wind dies down.”
“Yes, good, stay here, stay safe. Thank you, thank you.”
He carefully lets the leaves fall back into place, obscuring the nest.
When he gets back inside, he’s surprised by Dream and Sapnap waiting at the back door with excited looks on their faces.
“Uh...hi?” he says hesitantly, closing the door behind him.
“Was that the nest you made?”
Dream’s practically bouncing on the balls on his feet. George looks between him and Sapnap, who looks equally as excited.
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Why?”
“When you started making it,” Sapnap cuts in, “it wasn’t meant for anything in particular, right? Like, you were saying you just started it and followed your gut.”
“Pretty much.”
They look at each other, and he feels like he’s missing out on something. Dream grabs his arm and squeezes.
“Georgie. You made a gift.”
“A g…”
He trails off as the words click in his brain. He looks between them again, lips parted in realization.
“Like...the things that unlocked my memories?”
He looks behind him, where the wind has picked up and rain is starting to spatter on the windows. He thinks of the cardinal, nestled safely away in the shrub.
“It was magic?”
“More than likely.”
And sure enough, when George returns early the next morning once the storm has blown over, the cardinal is sleeping soundly in the entirely intact, untouched nest. The branches of the shrubs are tangled, and he has no doubt that a regular nest would have been damaged; yet the cardinal is completely unharmed, as is the nest.
She wakes up while he’s checking the shrub, and immediately hops out and flutters onto his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she gushes, bumping her head against his cheek, “thank you, nest is safe, warm nest, good nest. Thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” George laughs. “Are you going to stay there?”
The cardinal tilts her head and ruffles her wings.
“I can stay?”
“Of course,” he says, grinning as she chirps happily.
He helps her gather some more things to make the nest more comfortable: some stems from the greenhouse plants, along with some crushed berries and seeds to snack on. He’s so caught up in it that he entirely forgets that he rushed outside in his pyjamas, and doesn’t realize how cold he is until Dream rounds the corner of the shop carrying a thick sweater and a blanket.
“You’ve been out here for two hours,” he says, amused but scolding. “You’re going to get sick.”
“I’m fine,” George insists, but pulls on the hoodie anyways.
“Tall,” the cardinal chirps. “Tree human?”
George can’t help but burst into laughter. Dream gives him a puzzled look.
“What’s so funny?”
George just grins.
“Don’t worry about it.”
With a little convincing that borders on threatening, George bids goodbye to the cardinal with a promise to check on her tomorrow and lets Dream lead him away. Surprisingly, he doesn’t take him inside--George instead follows him to the willow tree and watches him spread the blanket out under it.
Dream sits and pats the blanket beside him, flopping down and stretching out over it. George laughs, but he lays down beside him anyways, pulling his hands into the sweater sleeves and cuddling into Dream’s side.
“Way to wait for me,” Sapnap’s teasing voice comes from above them. He’s holding a large thermos and three coffee cups, which he carefully sets on the blanket when he settles down on George’s other side.
The thermos is full of tea, and George eagerly takes the mug from his hands when he fills and hands it to him. It smells so sweet, and he hasn’t eaten breakfast yet, so he immediately takes a sip and burns his tongue, earning laughs from Dream and Sapnap.
They sit and talk about nothing for most of the morning, then roll up the blanket and head inside for some actual food. George watches as Sapnap starts on some pancakes, shooing both him and Dream away to give him space, and he couldn’t wipe the smile off of his face if he tried. He thinks about the cardinal, and about how in a few months they might hear the tiny chirps of little hatchlings coming from the nest under the library. He thinks about the snowfalls that might come this winter, and spending afternoons in snowball wars with his husbands and friends. He listens to Sapnap belting out pop songs as he cooks, and to Dream’s wheezing laugh at the lyrics he makes up when he forgets the words.
And he thinks, as Dream grins at him and shakes his head, and Sapnap asks over his shoulder if he wants one pancake or two, that he has never felt so much at home.