Work Text:
i love you.
Dream stared mindlessly at the white screen in front of him, three simple words screaming at him as his mind remained blank. The document he had open was barren, black text taking up only eleven characters, and he should probably capitalize one of them. Writer’s block, the bane of every english major’s existence, had finally decided to curse him when he desperately needed to finish this letter within the next few days.
A solemn sound cut through the air, causing the blonde to pause in his turmoil and look up to see Sapnap, eyes closed and chin resting on a violin. He started to play, vibrant strings vibrating and coming to life, the music echoing in the music studio and it almost looked like the other was speaking a second language, something that felt easier than words.
Whenever they both had assignments, Dream would come down to the music studio and work on his laptop while Sapnap practised whatever composition he had. The english major found it to be easier to write in the presence of music while the violinist shone with an audience, no matter how small.
He bit his nails, other hand tapping softly on the wooden surface and he watched the other immerse himself into song without a second guess, plunging into the deepest oceans with a breath. In the shaking sunlight that barely lit up the room, the other looked as if the heavens had given him a stage to play his heart out.
I could write a ballad about him , he thought to himself, captivated like a moth to a flame.
Sapnap sighed, resting the violin down gently beside him and caught the blond staring, smiling sheepishly in return. Dream felt butterflies and remembered why he hated the particular insect so much. He hadn’t realised he had been staring for so long, the violin must have drowned out the ticking of the clock. Or maybe you got lost in him. Again , he scolded himself.
“Was that okay?” the violinist pulled out a chair near him, plopping down rather dramatically, “Do you think he’ll like it?”
Suddenly the butterflies dropped dead, wings withering like flowers, and a cruel wave of reality ran through him before settling in his heart. The three, little words on his document were screaming at him when he remembered why he was here.
“Absolutely perfect,” Sugar coated a petty bitterness and he had to force a smile out, “I’m sure George will love it.”
George was the new art major who had joined the campus two months ago. He heard rumours of one of his works winning a competition and temporarily being on display in the state museum but he had never talked to the other, their schedules never really crossing. Sapnap, on the other hand, saw him nearly every morning on campus and then every afternoon at the cafe George worked at. Dream had listened to Sapnap ramble about the art major for hours, keeping painfully quiet every single time the other mentioned his smile, his laugh, his eyes.
It made him sick when the violinist would wear his lovesick smile every time the new student gave him a cupcake for free. It made him ill when the other would come late to their study sessions because he had taken a detour to the art faculty. It made him go green when Sapnap hid his laugh while distracted by his phone, the sender always the same name with a blue heart.
Worst of all, he hated himself for being upset when Sapnap was happy. He was mad at himself for pining away from afar because now it was too late. He was mad at himself for being weak for the other and agreeing to help him with this stupid idea which he knew will only lead to more heartbreak.
“How’s the letter coming along?” Sapnap asked, leaning closer to try read what was on the english major’s laptop but the other tilted it out of his sight.
“You’ll have to wait till I’m done,” Dream chides lightly, ignoring the other’s pout.
“I-I just want this to work out,” the violinist sighed, falling in his seat, “I need it to go perfect.”
“Are you underestimating me?”
The other was quick to defend himself and Dream has to force himself to laugh. He knew the other was aware of how good the english major was at writing, winning a national short story competition twice and being first in their college. He just wished he wasn’t writing this letter in particular.
If there was anything Sapnap was bad at, it was flirting. He had begged Dream for days to help him win George’s heart and the blond wished he could kill his past self. He had refused at first, staying strong from pleading puppy eyes but he broke the sixth day. He had been tasked to write love letters, to a person who he barely knew, supposedly from a person he wished he could have.
“It’ll be done soon,” He mumbled quietly, watching Sapnap’s face light up.
“I’m going to keep practising,” the other boy beamed, quickly jumping out of his seat, and picked up his instrument. Dream turned back to his screen, something in him ripping apart and sinking aimlessly.
i love you.
He hated the words, he hated that he was doing this and he wished things were different. He wished it was him who Sapnap was writing a song for, he wished it was for the violinist he wrote this letter to.
But he stayed silent, not daring to speak a word of his own pain, his own broken heart. He refused to cry, he refused to scream because he cared more about the other’s happiness. He let it all flood the pages, to be read but not heard. A confession for the wrong person, a letter addressed to a stranger on the other side of the world, a wrong number.
i love you.
He looked at his Sapnap and then the document.
He stayed silent and knew that he could never tell Sapnap the three words on the page were meant for him.
I love you.
Plain and simple. Straight to the point, an arrow to its target. It hurts sometimes because I think I love you too much, I think my heart is too small to handle falling for you. I’m still falling, ever since you smiled at me for the first time and I’ve gotten so used to it, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not be falling, to not be so captivated by the fire which is you- I’ve forgotten how life works before I met you. I’m scared that I’ll burn if I come too close to you, I’m scared if my bones will break when I finally stop falling.
I don’t want to know- I don’t want to know how a day feels without your smile there to make it brighter, without your laugh to make it warmer, without your hand to make it feel safer. I don’t want to imagine a world without you.
I think I want to spend the rest of my life falling for you, never out- just deeper and deeper.
“So? How did it go? What did he say?”
“How am I supposed to know? I just put the letter on the first page of his sketchbook.” Dream collapsed on the floor, looking anywhere but at Sapnap, “What did you want me to do? Wait and stare at him?”
“He’s very pretty to look at,” Sapnap grinned wolfishly.
You’re pretty to look at.
He felt his stomach grumble and he groaned, rolling to his side in exaggerated pain. He heard something be placed down in front of him and he recognises the square box to be pizza.
“Your payment,” Sapnap offered, with a soft smile, “Eat up, can’t have my wingman dying on me.”
“Pineapple?”
“You have no taste but of course.”
He doesn’t mean to be dramatic but Dream wanted to kiss him.
I don’t have a day and night. I only have the hours which I spend with you and the hours I’m away from you. Honestly, there’s no difference for me. When I’m with you, there’s light, there’s a brightness I never want to let go of, there’s a hope that we can make every day last as long as the summer. When we’re apart, it’s cold and dark but there is no fear, only patience because you leave me with a promise. Like the sun who sets every night and leaves the world in total darkness, the sun promises to rise the next day and bless the earth with a choir of songbirds. Sure the monsters come out of their lairs, eyes on us like we’re vulnerable prey but I fight. I’d fight a thousand shadows and a thousand more if I can see the light, you, the next day.
I miss you when you’re gone of course. I keep you in my dreams, I keep you in my heart. When you’re not here, I am blind. Blind to the moon and stars, blind to whoever else exists in our world, blind to everything that lives in the dark.
I don’t have a day and night, I have the seconds that go by too quickly when I’m with you and the seconds which feel like hours as I count down to when we meet next.
(Soon the letters become words which Dream had never said out loud.)
It shouldn’t have surprised him when he finally gets a response from Sapnap’s crush but a part of him never expected someone to hear these words that he had kept hidden for so long.
He was on his way to the art faculty, with the fifth letter at hand. There was a cupboard where all the sketchbooks were kept and it was a game of chance if the art major had taken it home or not. But today it was there, third pad from the bottom and he opened to his regular page.
For Sapnap , he has to tell himself each time he bitterly made his way to this room.
He grabbed the letter, about to place it in between the pages when something caught his attention.
dear mysterious stranger,
i mean this in the nicest way possible but please get a life. i’m rrly not that special and i think you should save your letters for someone who deserves it. i frankly don’t enjoy you making my ears go red every morning (my friends acquaintances are idiots) and i guess it’s a bit weird that a stranger makes my heart go weird. i’m not good with words so here’s a drawing.
pls stop for my sanity and inflation of my ego,
George
He blinked at the messy handwriting, clearly rushed, and couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. Under the message was a detailed drawing of a pink stop sign, completed shading and line art. He scours his bag for a pen, different colour to the ink the art major used and quickly scrawled under his message:
No <3
He slipped in the letter, leaving everything back as it was before, and turned to leave. He should probably feel annoyed at the chore like he usually does but today he felt light.
Sometimes, it was nice to be heard.
Did you know there's a spider in South America that eats birds?
To be honest, I didn’t believe it at first. Birds are free, the sky is their kingdom and the winds are their slaves. They soar above the deepest of lovely blue, soar so high that you and I look like ants. Their wings fight against the harsh reign of gravity who drags them down so they don’t reach the heavens and the stars. They can fly for hundreds and hundreds of miles and a spider eats them?
It's a bit anticlimactic, isn’t it? For the sovereigns of the sky to fall into the hell we call land, tangling themselves in the forgotten hunting traps of a spider? The bird probably struggles, it cries out in pain, screams out for help but it’s too far from the sky. It’s fallen too far down, to keep and now that it’s fallen, it’s not sure if it can ever get up. The spider will poison the bird, letting the bird live a slow death, letting the bird suffer because it fell too far down, too fast and it’s beyond help.
I’m the bird and I guess you’re my spider. It hurts when I love you, and I know it’ll break me when I stop falling for you because there is no soft landing for me at the bottom, there is only a silk thread that will snap as I crash into the ground.
It’s going to hurt, more than I can possibly imagine but if it’s for you, it would have been worth it.
The fan whirred in the background, the soft breeze bringing a quiet comfort to the two boys who sat in bothersome heat. Twirling a pen in his hand, Dream looked around the room for something which stood out, for something that made something in him click. Sapnap groaned beside him, ripping out a page from the book and scrunching it up before he threw it at Dream. The blond shot him a glare and stretched forward to pick up the small paper ball.
“Not cool, save the trees,” he scolded, slowly unfolding the crinkled finger as the violinist brought up his middle finger.
“Don’t read it. It’s bad.”
They were trying to write the lyrics for the song which Sapnap had composed for George. They were in a desert, inspiration was a dry well and the two of them were thirsty of even a sliver of an idea.
“I love you with all my belly. I would say my heart but my heart is bigger- Sapnap, what tumblr post did you get this shit from?”
“I don’t see you coming up with anything better, gay Shakespeare,” The music major hid his face in his arms as the other wheezed, “S-stop laughing, you know I’m terrible with words.”
“How does he make you feel?” Dream took the notepad from the other’s hand and stared at him unabashedly, “Does he make your heartbeat go faster? Butterflies? Does he make you feel alive?”
“Stop it.” Sapnap whined, cheeks now bright pink, “I- how can you say all that cringe with a straight face?”
“I’m a writer, cringe is all I write,” he rolled his eyes, “Come on Sap, stop being a coward and actually think about your feelings. How do you write music?”
“Just like how you write your masterpieces and other people draw the next Mona Lisa. I love it,” he snapped, “Except I don’t have to think about which word I should use or why one eye looks bigger than the other. I just listen. Sometimes when that doesn’t work I see and I feel.”
“For me, writing music- it’s like feeling a heartbeat. Sometimes I’m bringing to life a song, sometimes I’m giving the melody stuck in my head a name.”
The violinist lived and breathed music. The blond had seen the other go for hours with food or drink to practice an instrument, to polish what was already perfect, to memorise what he had already memorised a hundred times. Dream couldn’t blame him, he was the same with his own writing. Mulling over the flaws of an A graded report, rewriting the same sentence until he was satisfied with it, building a thousand lives he wished he could bring into reality.
When writing was his letter to the world, music was Sapnap’s and Dream couldn’t help but fall a little further.
“Compare then,” the english major sighed, his free hand tangling itself in the violinist’s curls, “Try to compare how you feel around him to when you’re around me. I don’t make your heart flutter, do I? ”
Sapnap fell silent, the unnatural sort which made Dream wonder if he had said something wrong. The other boy’s eyes look anywhere but him and something ugly grows between them, planting a tension that shouldn’t be there.
“Sapnap?”
“Y-yeah, I guess,” The violinist still wasn’t meeting his gaze, “Let’s keep going.”
dear mysterious stranger,
i appreciate the sentiment but i’m not exactly the biggest fan of spiders. also i do not consent to my heart being stolen like this, you thief, you rascal and i will be taking you to court. i dunno how these things work in america, secret admirers kinda stop once everyone has a phone. but i can still sue u right? isn’t that the american christmas spirit?
i bet ur pretty though, at least half as pretty as your words. i was thinking whether i should bother trying to figure out who you are but i’m too lazy for that. honestly im waiting for ur sappy ass to man up and confess but it has more to do with the fact that there’s something sweet about letters.
you know what’s not sweet? the fucking soft serve in mcdonalds. how did u americans ruin something as amazing as mcdonald’s?
The rest of the note was a rant about the disgrace known as American food chains and Dream laughed to himself, slipping in the next letter. Today the art major had drawn a spider, not just a mere doodle or cartoon but in complete detail, small strokes depicting hairs and beady fangs that looked as if they would jump out of the page. There was a small blank under the drawing and the blond grabbed hold of the closest pencil, hesitating only slightly when the lead met the page.
Take me to court? What about you take me out on a date to shake shack. Who needs fucking Mcdonalds when you have the literal god of burgers.
He put down the pencil and smiled.
They were sitting in a cafe, Dream trying to stop himself from gagging when their waiter placed Sapnap’s order of coffee in front of him.
“Sludge.” Disgust dripped from his voice and he made a puking gesture.
“Caffeinated sludge,” Sapnap grinned at him, leaning close enough that Dream gets caught off guard and has to stop himself from staring at the other’s lips.
“Begone vicious beast, stray away with your foul breath.”
“You’ll come crawling back for me,” the violinist teased, “You are my biggest simp.”
“I’m not kissing you,” he blurted out, his mind too slow to stop his lips from speaking out, “Not until you’ve brushed your teeth.”
He watched the other’s face flush red and something in him soared. It was a slip of the tongue, he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. If they were a month in the past, he would have stayed quiet like an obedient child trying to steer clear of trouble. But the last few weeks, confessing feelings that he had been so adamant to hide (albeit to the wrong person) had made his self-control slip. He would blurt out every little thought, speak out as soon as an idea was born, a notion that was both liberating and troublesome.
A plate appeared in front of him, snapping him out of his train of thought. He pouted when he realised his slice of cake only had one strawberry.
“Here,” Sapnap mumbled quietly, fork picking up a few strawberries from his own plate and placing them on the blond’s plate, “Don’t like the ones at this place anyways.”
That was a lie, a terrible one too, and they both knew it, Dream trying to stop a smile as he took a bite from his cake. It was sweet, maybe a bit too sugary and definitely not worth the money he spent on it. But the company was , he thought as he snuck a glance at the violinist.
“Dream,” He heard Sapnap start softly as he played with his food mindlessly, “D-do you- nevermind.”
“What?”
The music major looked embarrassed and stayed silent so Dream decided to push a little harder.
“You can always tell me, you know that right?” Hypocrite.
The other didn’t say a word, stubbornly refusing to meet his gaze, and continued to eat his dessert a bit faster. The english major wondered if there was trouble in paradise, recognising the look on his best friend’s face as anxious.
“Do you think it’s possible to- to fall in love with two people at the same time?” Sapnap stared at him with a boldness the violinist didn’t seem to have expected from himself.
Two people? At the same time?
His heart didn’t know whether to float in the hope of seeing the sky or continue to sink in its own turmoil. Two people- who else could it be? He noticed the table shaking slightly, probably to Sapnap’s knee bobbing up and down, hitting the table each time gently. He was waiting for an answer, Dream realised.
“There aren’t any rules saying you can’t,” Dream said softly, “You’ve heard of poly, right?”
The other nodded and the blond expected him to expand, only to be greeted by nothing. God, he could feel his heart getting its hopes up with each passing second, growing bigger like a balloon which Dream dreaded to see pop.
“Sapnap, do you think you might be poly-”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
So they didn’t.
“You’re Sapnap’s friend, aren’t you?”
Dream was waiting outside, mindlessly going through twitter as he waited in the rain. A British accent caught his attention and he turned to see a shorter student, with large glasses and brown curls and his hands filled with a mismatch of art supplies. He had paint on his face and none of his clothes seemed to go together cohesively. Cute, he thought as he nodded.
“I know we don’t talk that much but mind helping a friend of a friend?” The art major gestured to the burden he had to carry, “Sap was supposed to help me carry this to the art faculty but he stood me up so I’m borrowing his attractive tall friend.”
Attractive?
“Tall friend? I have a name.”
“I know, he never shuts up about you. Dream this, Dream that.”
It made him a little giddy but the english major didn’t have time to be and took some of the weight off the other’s arm.
“Likewise,” he grinned. He followed the other to a part of the campus he had become accustomed to, the two of them sharing an awkward silence.
“Down there will do,” George said quietly when they walked into one of the empty studios. The room was mostly clean, a few spray paint stains here and there and graphite markings on the desks. The walls were decorated by the hard work of countless students but his eyes fell onto the empty white canvas which the other had seated in front of.
“What are you working on?”
“Nothing really, I just wanted to throw some paintballs.”
He watched the other pull out a tray of brightly coloured balls and then a gun. Avant-garde , he thought.
“Shouldn’t you lay down some paper? It’ll make a mess.” He frowned.
“Have you seen this classroom? This place thrives on the mess.”
He let out a small chuckle, leaning against a table as George picked up a ball, throwing it at the canvas. Dream was mesmerised by the explosions of colours, reminding him of bombs whose shrapnels stained every colour of the rainbow rather than blood.
“Your aim is terrible,” he scoffed when one of the paintballs completely missed the canvas and hit a wall.
“The wall needed a spot of yellow.”
“Um, that’s green.”
George shot him a lazy smile, a finger tapping on the side of his glasses, “Colourblind.”
Oh.
“I know, colourblind art major. Hilarious right?”
“Talented you mean. Didn’t one of your works get put on display.”
“Luck,” He shot another ball, this time not missing, “Is that red?”
“Purple.”
“I think it should be red.”
“You can’t change colour.”
George shrugged, placing the gun beside him, “I do. I don’t believe colour is something you have to see. It can be something you hear, something you feel.”
He shot the gun again, “Orange.”
“Brown.”
“I dunno, that blob looks happy to me.”
Dream laughed out loud, “It’s a blob,”
“Ecstatic, over the moon, definitely on drugs kind of blob.”
Giving colours a meaning, it sounded awfully like writing where an author could make each word tell a thousand stories. Dream understood, when the reality wasn’t working, when logic had failed him and common sense was thrown out the window, he liked to make things up to bring sense into mismatched puzzle pieces.
“I’m going to head out now.” Dream said suddenly and he wondered why.
“I-oh, sorry,” The art major flushed with a blazing smile, “I got distracted. Yeah, sure. Thanks by the way. I owe you,”
Stop being so pretty, he thought sourly as he left.
dear mysterious stranger,
i reject to this courtship (that feels like a word that hasn’t been used since the 18th century). i refuse to be with someone who has the audacity to order pizza with pineapple. good day to you good sir, farewell, au revoir. i’ll make sure to run over you with my scooter every sunday in hell. to think you had taste but then again, you’re wasting your poetry on me so maybe i was wrong.
ps: i drew my cat this time. she deserves the world, fight me pineapple dickhead.
His heart felt light and a carefree laugh bubbled in him. These love letters weren’t a chore anymore
i think u deserve the world, scooter boy.
It scared him when he realised he actually meant it.
Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with two people at the same time?
As Dream stared at the small pile of drawings and notes from a stranger hidden in his bag and then a studious Sapnap beside him, he panicked. The music major’s words had been haunting him for the last two days and it was breaking him, bit by bit.
It wasn’t love, right? He barely knew George, only what Sapnap had told him ( every word ) and whatever he remembered from the letters they sent back and forth ( every word ). He didn’t feel butterflies like he did when he was with Sapnap, didn’t think about holding the other’s hand all the time and didn’t think his heart was going to die every time the other walked into the room.
But there was a gentle flutter every time he walked into the art faculty, a child-like excitement that made him feel like a highschooler. He stared at his hands in pure horror, his body trembling. He was on the tip of an iceberg, struggling to stay at the top, slipping and trying to catch himself before he fell into the bottomless ocean. One simple push, a flick of the wind, a nudge of fate and he would spiral down the same twisted path he did for Sapnap.
“D-Dream? What’s going on, buddy?” Warm hands grabbed his cheeks and Dream realised his face was wet and his mouth was salty, “Hey, talk to me.”
He grabbed onto the violinist shirt, hiding his face in the other’s neck and let out an ugly sob. He was so tired, so tired of drowning for people who he shouldn’t, so tired of falling aimlessly with no safety net. He needed something real, something more than pretty words on a paper, something more, something more than his own abstract ramblings of love.
He was falling for the wrong people and this was fate’s punishment to him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Dream cried out pathetically, hands fisting the collar of the violinist’s suit, “Don’t hate me, please, please. Please don’t hate me. I promise I’ll stop. I p-promise I’ll stop it.”
“Stop what?”
He was overflowing, a tidal wave crashing over the dams, a love too big for the world. It was like motion sickness, turning and twisting down an endless road or becoming dizzy after dancing with a hurricane. He wanted it to stop, he needed it to. He didn’t want to walk alone, lost in time, taking a step forward even when his limbs threatened to fall off. Why should he keep going when there was no treasure at the end, just one aimless adventure which will end with no one to recount the story to.
“I’ll stop loving you, I’ll stop loving George.” Dream shook harder, shaking his head, “I promise. Just make it stop hurting, please-”
Arms wrapped tightly around him, refusing to let go, and for the first time in months, Dream felt like he had an anchor. He wouldn’t float away, he wouldn’t sink into a bottomless pit. He trusted the other to drag him down, to pull him up no matter how far he had gone.
“You moron. Don’t you ever apologise for something like that.” Sapnap whispered in his ear, breath tickling his ear, “We figure this out okay, one by one, minute by minute.”
“But I love you-”
“Don’t say it like that’s a bad thing.” They pulled apart and Sapnap smiled shyly, “I’m glad you do.”
“But I might love George and I barely know him-”
“Then learn to know him,” the violinist looked into his eyes as his hand interlocked with the blond, “Teach him to love you like I do.”
“And how do you love me?”
“Like I love George.”
“And how do you love him-”
Sapnap laughed, his voice merry and light.
“I could spend all my lives writing songs about you.”
This is going to be my last letter. Maybe. Probably.
You don’t know me. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know you that well. But that’s how people fall in love right? Every person you meet in your life, whether lover, friend or family- you were strangers at some point. There was a point of time where you knew next to nothing about someone but a part of you knew that you would spend the rest of your life loving them anyways. We just skipped a step, it wasn’t even love at first sight like those stupid fairytales, we simply jumped into this too fast, hoping the water wouldn’t burn us and it should have, but it didn’t.
It was a miracle that we didn’t burn, that we didn’t scar. Maybe that’s a green light from fate, a sign from the stars that this was meant to be something more than angsty letters and random rants about pizza toppings.
I wonder if it’s too much to ask, but could we go back a step. Could we rewind back without time’s permission? Could we turn back the page because we forgot to read the words, the small print? Because I think we read this book wrong, some people spoil it for themselves by skipping to the end, some people do it how it should be done, from the beginning. We just opened to a random page in the middle and nothing makes sense to us but we were just going with the flow because we knew this would end up turning into something.
I want to do this right, I want to do it right with you. I don’t want this to be my last letter to you, the last time I grace you with my pretentious metaphors and similes. But maybe next time, it could be a late-night text to your phone or the vows under ringing bells. Maybe next time, it could be me stopping you from leaving the country at the airport or me serenading you under the stars. (I can not sing for my life so maybe not.)
But I want to do this right with you but not only you. I’m in love with two people at the same time and it’s kinda hard to read two books at the same time. So if we wrote both books together, as one, would you mind?
I want to do this right with you but we need a place to start. There’s an amazing pizza place fifteen minutes away from campus and we (yes we) will like to take you out on a date. Friday? At five?
All this time, I’ve been writing to hear colours and see music. All this time I’ve been drowning in the middle of everything that makes sense and everything that doesn’t.
This might be my last letter but I hope it’s not the last time I say I love you.