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Sapnap finds his soulmate in a Starbucks when he's 19. It feels like such a damn cliche, too - he walks into the coffee shop, just out of class, one hand clutching the strap of his messenger bag in the pose of Every Rom-Com Character Ever when the film goes into slow-mo and music plays as they make eye contact with the love of their life. Except instead of music playing, what Sapnap gets when he locks eyes with the disgruntled barista behind the counter is If this motherfucker orders something with soy milk, I'll eat my shorts.
Sapnap's eyes snap wide open and he can see the barista mirror him, immediately straightening up as his hand flies to his mouth in shock. The disembodied complaint about soy milk melts away into Holy shit, is it you?, and all Sapnap can do is nod.
All he can do is nod because he wasn't prepared for this. He knows the deal - you see your soulmate, you hear their thoughts, etcetera etcetera, happily ever after - but he didn't really process that it would actually happen. And now it is happening and he's not sure what the fuck he's supposed to do right now.
"Motherfucker," the barista declares out loud, ripping off his apron and tossing it unceremoniously on his coworker who's unlucky enough to be standing next to him at that moment, cutting off the start of a cry of, "LANG-". Then, in a true rom-com move, he vaults the counter and crosses the shop in what seems like one stride, crashing straight into Sapnap and knocking him to the ground.
Sapnap hits the floor with an extrenal, "Oof" and an internal What the fuck, man? The man on top of him - his soulmate, holy shit - smiles nervously.
"Uh, sorry," he says, scooting off of Sapnap and offering a hand to help him into a seated position. "I saw that going...way differently in my head." Sapnap conveniently receives a mental image of exactly how this guy did see that going, which is, for some reason, Sapnap getting swept up in a passionate kiss while angels sing and flower petals inexplicably float around the store. He must physically - or mentally, actually - react to that, because the guy goes a little red and says, "Okay, listen, I was just excited!" He clears his throat and says, "Okay, starting over. Hi, I'm Karl!" Karl wants to take Sapnap's hand and shake it - which Sapnap knows because, well, you know - but their hands are still intertwined from a second ago, so instead he just kind of limply moves their hands up and down. Sapnap fails miserably at holding back a laugh.
"Hi, Karl," he says with a smile so big it kind of hurts his face. "I'm Sapnap."
"Hi, Sapnap," Karl echoes, continuing to awkwardly "shake" Sapnap's hand. After a moment, he realizes he's doing it, and stands up instead, tugging Sapnap all the way back to a standing position. Karl's thoughts inform Sapnap that Oh shit, he's taller than I thought he was, which is kind of adorable, a rogue thought which in turn makes Karl go red - well, redder - and slap him lightly on the arm. Sapnap laughs, and Karl thinks it's an amazing laugh, and Sapnap hears that Karl thinks it's an amazing laugh, and so on.
"Uh," Karl says, clearly disoriented by the feedback loop of thoughts. "Well, I've decided I'm off now-"
"YOU ARE NOT!" yells the victim of Karl's apron attack, but Karl turns and jabs a finger at Sapnap, and then at his own forehead, and the coworker - Bad, Karl's brain informs Sapnap - seems to realize what's going on. "Oh," he amends, eyes wide and a grin slowly spreading across his face. "Yeah, okay, you're off."
Karl gives him a toothy smile, a thumbs up, and a, "Thanks, dude!", and then turns back to Sapnap and says, "So, uh, do you want to, y'know, have some coffee?" Of course you want to have some coffee, you came into Starbucks for a fuckin' reason. "I mean, like, just, uh, get to know each other...?" I am so very good at saying so many very stupid things today! Wow!
"You're not stupid," Sapnap tells him, and he sees a second of shock flicker in Karl's eyes before he seems to remember, well, the entire fucking situation. "And of course I want to get to know you. Come on, let's get something to drink, yeah?"
In a split second they have an internal argument over payment, because Karl could just get them the drinks for free probably but Sapnap wants to be a gentleman, but it immediately resolves with Sapnap just going forward and handing Karl's bewildered coworker his card before Karl can even say anything outside of their heads.
And huh, Sapnap is kind of starting to see the appeal of this whole soulmate thing.
///
A year passes. Karl and Sapnap move in together, Karl gets Sapnap a job at the Starbucks where they met, and everything settles into a new, mind-reading soulmates kind of normal.
Until it's suddenly not normal anymore.
///
"Ohno Sapnap you gotta take my spot."
Sapnap looks up from where he's busy organizing the syrups in the back of the store and locks eyes with an intensely panicked Bad. Sapnap has had a year or so now to get used to working with Bad, who, as he's learned, is somehow the general manager of the store, despite, well...despite shit like whatever the hell is going on right now.
"What happened?" Sapnap asks incredulously, watching as Bad smiles nervously and absently presses his fingers to his temples, which is a gesture that immediately answers his question. He's seen that gesture many a time - it's the one you do when your head has gotten too damn loud. As of two minutes ago, Bad hadn't found his soulmate - so that means sometime in the past two minutes, that changed. Sapnap sheds the incredulousness for a proud smile. "Hey, nice, dude! Yeah, get out of here! Go hang with them!"
Bad shakes his head, eyes wide. "Oh no, no, I'm not going to go talk to him. Sap, he's really pretty and really tall and I think I just need to lay down for a little so I don't die? Can you please take the register?" He proceeds to give Sapnap the best attempt at puppy eyes an adult man in the throes of a gay panic attack can manage.
Sapnap would love to make the logical point that Bad's soulmate can probably hear all of that right now, but his friend is clearly having a moment, so instead, he just sighs and nods. "Okay, sure," he says. "Go take a break. But you're gonna have to talk to him eventually, you know." Bad just gives him a terrified look, and Sapnap works very hard not to roll his eyes. "C'mon. Go lay down. It'll be okay."
With that, Bad nods, squeaks out a quick, "Thank you!" and heads off to the break room. Sapnap sighs and makes his way up to the front of the store. On his way, he pushes back into the edges of his mind and shoots Karl a Babe, I gotta tell you about Bad when I get home. (Soulmates work by proximity - next to each other, Karl and Sapnap can hear everything, but at a distance like this they have to purposefully work at it to send each other messages.) Okay, sure, comes the response, in the muffled, echoey kind of way that Karl's thoughts come whenever he's half-asleep - at two in the afternoon, go figure. Sapnap laughs to himself and does his best to send the feeling of affection through their link as he steps out back into the coffee shop proper.
It's not hard to find the man that had Bad so freaked - he is, in fact, tall and pretty, and is standing anxiously at the register, his card held up in one hand as if he was getting ready to pay and just kind of froze there.
"Hey," Sapnap says, strolling up to the counter and surveying the register, finding that Bad had already rung the guy up for his drink and everything. He assumes his manager had taken the order while staring at the screen and only looked up to take the card, and then seen the man holding it out, and, well, the rest is history - if two minutes ago counts as history, at least.
"Is...is he okay?" the man asks nervously, pointing back behind Sapnap, in the general direction of Bad's disappearance. "He doesn't, uh...sound okay."
"He'll be okay," Sapnap says with what he hopes is an encouraging smile. "He gets freaked over stuff sometimes. Just give him a minute."
The man smiles and nods understandingly, and Sapnap can see the internal interaction taking place behind his eyes. He takes the card and swipes it, hands it back, and passes a stickered cup over to his coworker who's making the drinks today. And then he turns to the next person in line.
And everything gets loud.
He's looking at a tall, lanky man with an unruly mop of blonde curls, looking down at him with bright green eyes that are peeled wide open in shock. But it's not what he's looking at that matters. It's what he's hearing.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit can you hear me? You can fucking hear me can't you I can hear you oh my god. I'm more composed than this usually I promise oh my god it's you is it you?
Sapnap feels like he just got run over by a truck. The wave of rambling thoughts hits him upside the head and he's so dizzied by it that when he thinks Whoa, that's way faster than Karl thinks that he realizes this shouldn't be happening.
Sapnap's already found his soulmate. It's supposed to be said and done and final and forever. But what it's supposed to be doesn't do anything to change the fact that another person's thoughts are currently running through his head.
This man has heard those past few thoughts - Sapnap can tell because of the look of confusion that crosses his face and the fact that his unintelligible rambling has transferred into a seemingly endless chant of What the fuck?
"What the fuck?" the man proceeds to say out loud as well. It occurs to Sapnap that he's shaking, mostly because the man across the counter from him is thinking Oh shit, he's shaking.
"I - I don't-" Sapnap stammers, expecting to be more coherent out loud than in his head, but finding out that that really isn't the case. "You - uh - I already-"
"-have a soulmate," the man finishes in the same shocked and confused tone that's coming out of Sapnap's mouth - and his brain, for that matter - right now. "I...yeah, I heard that."
Sapnap laughs nervously, forcing back the panicked idea that oh god, maybe this means the universe has changed its mind about him and Karl, is that even possible? This new man's thoughts are still spiraling through his head, and what's worse is that on top of that, a still-sleepy Karl is pushing through with a Sap? Are you okay?, which is a problem because then he and Karl are still soulmates so does he have two of them and what is he supposed to do about that and now he's simultaneously being bombarded by Holy shit babe are you okay? What's going on? and I'm so sorry I wish I could turn it off I can't even imagine- and two people's panicked thoughts alongside his own is just too much and that's when he blacks out.
///
When Sapnap wakes up, his pounding headache has subsided, but the two voices that caused it are still bouncing around inside his head. Thankfully, though, they're much calmer and much quieter. He sits up, finding that he's been laid down in his and Karl's bed, and wonders briefly how he ended up here after passing out at work. A second later, he's made aware by a passing thought that Karl had brought him home. Sitting up, he slips out of bed and makes his way out of the bedroom.
In the living room, he finds Karl...and the tall man from Starbucks. He blinks a few times, trying to clear this illusion out of his vision, but it seems that the second man really is here.
"Hey," Karl says, turning to Sapnap. Don't freak out.
Shit, is he gonna freak out? This thought makes Sapnap jump, because it's not Karl's. And not only is it not Karl's, it's in response to Karl's. Which means Karl and this other man can hear each other just like Sapnap can hear both of them. Which means they're soulmates too.
"This is Dream," Karl says, pointedly ignoring Sapnap's panicked realization, and gestures to the man at the table with him, who waves nervously. "He's, uh...our soulmate."
"Our soulmate," Sapnap echoes, looking between the two men in front of him, trying to process this information. Our soulmate. As in belonging to both of them. As in this Dream guy is Sapnap's soulmate and also Karl's and Karl is still Sapnap's and - and holy shit, that's a lot of soulmates.
"Yeah, apparently I am," Dream pipes up nervously. Well, his voice isn't nervous, but his thoughts sure are - twisting strings of What if he doesn't like me? What if this makes me some sort of freak? What if we're all just really fucked up? What if you can go to jail for doing soulmates wrong? Whatifwhatifwhatif?
"I heard you panicking, and then your thoughts just stopped, and I knew something was wrong," Karl explains a fraction of a second before Sapnap could manage to actually ask how these two had ended up together at his own dining room table, damn it. "I came to work immediately and you were just...out cold in his-" he jabs a thumb towards Dream as if he really needed to specify "-arms and then he looked up and I heard him. And then we both freaked out for a second or a minute or half an hour or whatever, who can say, and then we figured out what was going on and brought you home. And that's, uh, basically it."
Sapnap takes a moment to process this information, painfully aware Karl and Dream are currently listening in on him doing so. He didn't think having multiple soulmates was, y'know, a thing. But here they are, two men in front of him, both their thoughts running through his head, and for some strange reason, he's meant to be with both of them.
He takes a deep breath. "Okay," he finally says, crossing the room and taking another seat at the table with his soulmates. Soulmates. Plural. It's odd, but getting more normal by the second. It takes one more breath for his heartbeat to still from panicked to mildly anxious, but once it does, he finds he's ready to figure this situation out.
"So," he says to Dream, who has clearly felt his acceptance and is grateful for it, "tell me about yourself."