(send me a word on retro and, if it's in the sd12 draft, i'll post the passage it's in) you were definitely fishing for something, and i admire it, but this chapter is not where you'll find it! :)

Dream sputters. “Shut up. I was freshly eighteen, okay, cut me some slack. I did kiss him back, okay? Like, right after. He was wearing cherry chapstick, I think, which I usually found gross whenever I made out with girls at some high school party but, just…everything was different. I don’t really know how else to explain it, but it made all of that feel stupid and irrelevant. Like none of that had counted, and it’d just been a shitty practice run or something.”

“Not at all like the girl in the resort, then?”

“Not even close.”

There’s still a soft smile clinging to Dream’s lips now that he’s finished recounting the story, and it’s easy to see that he can still feel all of it, even years later; some gray-eyed boy had carved himself into the inside of Dream’s skull for years and left a permanent memory of a single moment, suspended in saccharine time, that he would cherish likely until the day he died. George doesn’t think he’s ever done that for someone. He doesn’t know if he’s the sort of person able to even come close. For anyone.