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The clock on the wall ticked very slightly out of time in comparison to Sapnap’s watch, which Dream could hear even across the room. They were facing opposite walls, with their backs to the room and dividers stopping them from looking side to side – not that it mattered, since they were the only people in the room, other than the teacher who supervised them.
Dream sniffed, his nose still slightly blocked but no longer bleeding, and if the teacher hadn't already yelled at him for talking, Sapnap might have made some comment about leaving a mark. He didn't say anything, however, and Dream smirked. Maybe the bruise on Sapnap’s jaw was starting to ache.
The sound of shuffling papers came somewhere from his right, or Sapnap’s left, as the teacher turned the page on whatever shitty romance novel she was reading today. Regardless of what she was reading, the cover was a horrific pink and white combo, only being slightly dimmer from the dirty-blue paint on the walls of the room. The windows to his left, Sapnap’s right, didn't let in much light even when it was sunny out, so on an overcast day like it was then, the room was positively miserable.
He turned his gaze away from the blue wall in front of him and instead faced his work, where the novel swam before his vision in a collection of words and punctuation marks. Never had Jane Eyre seemed like such a steep mountain to climb, and his essay subject didn't help since he didn't even choose it. That was always the curse of english essays – the complete and utter lack of imagination with the questions. He didn't give a damn about whether Jane was feminist enough ( anything women did back then which wasn't usually done could be argued as a feminist undertone) and he didn't care if Brontë was secretly a bit sexist with the ‘twist’ in the novel.
Dream rubbed at his eyes and held his hand against them for a moment, twitching as his thumb brushed his nose again. He couldn't tell if it was the book or the punch to his nose that caused his headache.
A throat clearing caught his attention, and he turned his head to the front of the room, where the teacher had put down her cheesy novel and raised her gaze to look at Dream and Sapnap in turn.
“I’ll need to leave you here a moment,” she said, her voice serious, “and I expect you both to follow the rules even when I’m not here. If you don't, you’ll both be in here after school for the rest of the week. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh,” Sapnap said, seemingly unaffected by the words.
Dream just nodded.
With a slight tilt to her head, almost as if she was agreeing with herself, she got up and left the room. For a moment, neither of them talked, with Sapnap keeping his head down and Dream staring at the wall without really thinking much of anything. His nose still hurt.
“What, uh – “ Dream cut himself off, but he could already hear Sapnap shift in his seat to look at Dream out of the corner of his eye, “What text are you doing?”
His own voice sounded clogged, his nose still stuffy from earlier.
“Jane Eyre,” Sapnap said, his voice short.
He didn’t sound particularly pissed off, but he wasn’t forthcoming with another response, probably still sore from the fight they’d had outside the music room during lunch. It had only been them involved at that point, but if either of their ‘clans’ had been nearby at the time then rest assured it would have been a bigger issue. George wasn’t one to let go of arguments when he thought he was right, and Bad was loyal to a tee, not to mention Antfrost and Skeppy's last argument ended with a broken bone. They weren’t allowed in the same room together after that one.
“I didn’t mean to land us here,” Dream said and when Sapnap didn’t respond he made a point of continuing, “Sorry about your jaw.”
“If you were sorry you wouldn’t have walked up to me and punched me.”
Okay, now Sapnap sounded a bit pissed, and Dream couldn’t help but cringe at the recollection of their encounter. Sapnap, technically, hadn’t been doing anything wrong in the eyes of the teacher that found them (other than standing in Dream’s spot, and Sapnap knew damn well it was his) so it was an unnecessary detention that he landed himself in, after punching Dream in self defense.
Neither of them were willing to claim nor deny what happened afterwards, but the teacher didn’t hesitate in giving them detention for that too.
“Okay, maybe I’m not,” Dream said, “but I do want to ask, what is your essay about?”
Sapnap scoffed, “The stupid, dumb nature one. It was the less obvious question.”
“I just chose the easiest.”
“The God one?”
“Yeah,” Dream chewed his lip, “Do you, uhm. Like, do you have any scenes that might work for me?”
He could hear the chair on the opposite side of the room creek as Sapnap leaned back, doing that thing where he held the book above his head and faced the ceiling. He did it to stop his stupid reading glasses from falling down his nose now that Dream broke them, but Sapnap didn't let it affect him. Sapnap had left a rip in the side of Dream's coat that day, causing a bigger argument which he smiled through, and really all it did was make him seem untouchable.
“The one in the church is pretty obvious, and in the garden.”
“The garden?”
Dream flipped back through the book, finding a renewed interest in it now that it wasn't a wall of unbreakable text but instead a bit more of a treasure hunt. He could hear Sapnap flipping through his edition too.
“Page 109,” he said, and Dream turned back to that page, having gone past it without realising.
He took a quick glance at it, scanning the thick wall of text, before he stumbled across it. Dream re-read the segment.
“The tree?”
“An act of God,” and although Sapnap’s voice didn't become anymore forthcoming, out of the corner of his eye he saw Sapnap wave his arms up and out for dramatic effect, “or something. I dunno, make something up. If it's believable then you won't be marked down for it.”
“Thanks,” Dream said as he scribbled down a few notes in the margins, but the quiet lingered in the air between them, even with their backs turned to one another he could feel it like an unwelcome guest who wouldn't leave.
Even as he listened, all Dream could hear was the clock ticking on the wall to his right and the noises of the art kids going home after staying late to finish their projects, not to mention the band kids sitting outside on the steps to the road with their flutes and violins in hand. Thankfully for his concentration they weren’t playing, and since Dream couldn't see them he could resist the temptation to distract himself.
“What are you doing when you get out of here?” Sapnap asked, his voice still coming across as disinterested but at least a little more polite than before.
Dream tucked his pen behind his ear as he thought about it, but nothing sprung to mind, and he told Sapnap exactly that.
“Well,” he seemed to hesitate, and Dream tilted his head to the right to look at Sapnap from the side, “cool.”
“Yeah.”
Dream didn’t quite know what to say. The teacher, perhaps miraculously, hadn’t burst into the room and started to berate them for talking to one another, but she hadn’t come back to tell them their time was over in detention for that day. It was weird being in a controlled environment, being told not to move but with nothing to actually stop them from getting up and starting another fight, it was like the only thing holding them back was some sort of mutual understanding that throwing hands would just mean more time being forced to sit in a room together.
“Do you think,” Dream said, half apprehensive, “we could get out of here without being caught?”
He heard Sapnap put his book down. A pause.
“Yeah, I think we could.”
“Would you… want to?”
"Yeah, I don't know. On the one hand, getting out of here is a real plus, but they'll notice if we leave and then they'll just give us another detention. It's a dumb plan to follow through with even if it was a success."
Dream snorted after Sapnap finished his explanation. Sapnap was someone who asked questions for the sake of an,not taking risks or making decisions until he knew the kind of thing he was getting into. Maybe that's why he and Dream clashed so often – just a typical conflict of interests.
"God," Dream said, "I knew you were boring but I didn't realise that you were this boring, man. We're gonna end up here anyway, we might as well at least give them a run for their money."
"What money?"
"It's a metaphor, you know– "
"No, Dream, I don't. Why do you keep doing this?" Sapnap turned around in his chair now, his voice raised and looking straight at the blonde with an expression Dream could only call 'frustrated', "you keep fucking with me, getting me into shit. You know before this year I'd never had a detention? You know how much my reputation has gone down with the teachers since you started this shit?"
Dream blinked, at a loss for words.
"You fought back."
"I never start fights, but I'm not about to let some weirdo wearing all green think that he can just punch someone and get away with it."
There was a silence between them, heavy in atmosphere after Sapnap had confessed what he really felt towards Dream. He genuinely didn't know what to say in response, so he waited to see if Sapnap would add anything more to it, but the only noise after was the clock on the far wall and the faint sounds of people outside. Just as he went to open his mouth however, the door to the detention room opened and the same teacher from before came in.
"Alright," she said as she went over to the front desk, "You two are free to go. Now I don't want to find you two getting in any more fights, alright?"
Dream stood up at the same time as Sapnap, tucking in his chair and picking up his stuff. The teacher took her leave before them, wedging the door open with the doorstop and leaving them to it. Sapnap seemed to think that there was nothing else to say, but just before he could dissappear Dream spoke up.
"Sapnap," he said, and the other man turned to look at him.
He looked tired, his cheek a sore red colour and the arm of his jacket scuffed from their tumble earlier. He didn't say anything, but raised an eyebrow at him.
Dream swallowed.
"Sorry."
Sapnap paused, his expression unmoving but he turned around to face Dream fully.
"Why are you saying that now? Isn't it a bit late?"
"It is a little," Dream admitted, "but still."
"So why now?" Sapnap didn’t look impressed, if anything he was angry.
Dream shrugged with one shoulder, the one without his backpack on it, and said, "I don't know. I won't fight you anymore. I'll tell George and Antfrost not to either. Deal?"
Sapnap looked him up and down, and being under such scrutiny made Dream go from foot to foot.
"Tell me why you kept getting in fights with me and only me and I'll agree."
Dream blinked.
"That's it? That's all you wanna know?"
"It's all I care about knowing from you."
"Ouch. Is that all I'm good for?"
"Yeah."
"Damn, okay, uhm." Dream paused as he figured out how to say it in a way that didn't damn him completely.
On the one hand he could just tell the truth, but that meant being honest, and he hated being genuine and legitimate if it made him look like an idiot. On the other hand, he could lie, which meant coming up with something that sounded legitimate, a skill he was terrible at.
So really it was lose-lose regardless of his decision.
"I wanted your attention," Dream blurted out, which, great, there weren't a lot of worse ways to say it.
Sapnap’s previous defense of keeping his expression blank and his body language closed off crumbled like a cookie in milk, his face going from being unimpressed, to shock, disbelief, then anger. His cheeks, around the bruise, flushed.
"What the fuck do you mean by that?" He asked, crossing the space between them, "what kind of jokes do you think you're telling?"
Dream held up his hands in front of him in defence, taking a step back when Sapnap looked like he wanted to punch him.
"I, I-" He struggled to get out what he meant, "I just–"
Sapnap was close enough to touch, his backpack slipping off one shoulder and onto the floor of the detention room as he let the door close behind him, and the teacher that was previously supervising them was long gone. There wasn't another way out of this anymore.
"Just what?" Sapnap demanded, "why the hell did you want my attention in the first place?"
“You’re untouchable, okay?” Dream near yelled, “like, you’re always there, you always do well in class and people like you. You just– you didn’t even look at me.”
Breathing heavily, they looked at one another, Dream with his eyes heavy but refusing to look away, and Sapnap with an obscure kind of judgement that couldn’t be placed. Then, Sapnap took a step back.
A pause.
“Tomorrow morning,” he stated, “meet me behind the music building.”
Dream raised an eyebrow, facing the challenge presented head on.
“That’s my spot.”
“It is,” Sapnap said as he turned to walk out the room, but he stopped halfway out the door, “you better take it back then, huh?”