Archive of Our Own

Sapnap’s idea of normalcy was not quite normal. And he knew this better than any outsider ever could.

But it would be a lie to say he hadn’t grown to love it. Not just accustomed to the direction his life had gone, but appreciative of everything he had in it. From his loving boyfriend to the sun in the sky, Sapnap had a lot of things to appreciate.

Even if all his friends had left town after high school in chase of bigger and better things, even if that left Sapnap alone in his little world of Karl Jacobs, he was perfectly content with that. His daffodil-colored haze was the only thing that mattered to him, found spread in shades of yellow when he entered the house he shared with his love.

Though shared spaces sometimes lay in solitude. And for Sapnap, quiet lonesome came more often than not. Karl had once been a man of many secrets, but through years and careful conversation, Sapnap had learned all the most important things about him.

Like the fact that his old pocket watch was a little more than just a family heirloom.

Because there was a reason that Sapnap had to stay in this town, a reason that dragged down a little deeper than just love for Karl Jacobs. It was still him, still Karl, but it was beyond swirls of honey tones that came in afternoon light. It was the fact that he had to leave, the fact that he only had one place to come back to.

Here.

It was always solemn when Sapnap had to watch him go, and things hurt a little worse when there wasn’t any warning. When he’d only wake up to an empty bed and check the nightstand for a cracked timepiece, find that a once proclaimed heirloom was missing from its dust-carved place. It would be nothing but wondering, wondering where he’d gone— when he’d gone—and why he had to leave so suddenly.

Sometimes, he’d get a goodbye kiss the night before. A whisper about how he had to go somewhere, sometime, someplace—that he wouldn’t be around in the morning. And he was always laden with apologies, dull regret about how he couldn’t spend more time at home with the man he loved the most.

Sapnap had gotten really good with reassurance. And it was never feigned, it always really was okay—there was importance in the past, things that required Karl’s help. It would be cruel and selfish to keep him at home in the present.

And on a warm night in late July, Karl was toying with the pocket watch in his hand. Perched on the edge of his and Sapnap’s bed, thumb glazing over a frozen clock face that never looked quite the same. Logically, broken timepieces should always show the same time; but Karl’s always changed.

When Sapnap found his boyfriend staring solemnly at his heirloom, he sat down on the bed beside him. Slung an arm over his shoulder when he slid in close, bodies pressed together everywhere they could be when he leaned his head up against Karl’s. 

“What’s wrong?” Sapnap asked, rubbing gently at Karl’s shoulder with silent reassurance.

“I have to leave,” Karl whispered, tipping his head sideways to meet Sapnap’s eyes. “Tonight.”

Sapnap pressed a kiss to Karl’s lips, finding bittersweet flavor in the softness of flower petals. There were only so many moments like this, where they got to sit so close; even if this one was clearly running on a time limit.

“Already?” he whispered solemnly, though he knew there was nothing he could do about it. “But you just got home.”

“I know,” Karl answered in matching hush, “I’m sorry.”

Sapnap left another petal-soft kiss on his lips, hoping that every ounce of devotion he could feel swelled in his heart would seep through the part in his lips. When he drew back, their mouths were slick; pale hands frozen on a pocket watch with an air of bitter regret.

“Don’t apologize,” Sapnap insisted, “it’s not your fault.”

“I know,” Karl said again, “I know.” His head fell against Sapnap’s shoulder, face buried into the crook of his neck. “I just wish I could stay.”

“I wish you could stay, too.”

And he pressed a kiss to the top of his head, hand rubbing circles into his upper back. It was slow, deliberate, well-practiced because he knew it made him feel better. Even though they’d gotten through the periods of body-wracking sobs; the space between them was still thick and heavy, shaded with flaxen dolor right where Sapnap could see it.

Shades of yellow were dull because Karl’s time was fleeting. Sapnap worried, and he tried to read the numbers on his timepiece.

“Where do you have to go,” his breath caught without realizing, “this time?”

Karl lifted his head slowly, looking down at the clock in his hand to make sure he got the time right. A dainty little moon stared up at him from inside the face, hands pointing out to 7:17 with their unmoving ease.

Karl’s breath shook. “1917.”

There was no denying the way Sapnap’s grip tightened on his shoulder. Though he’d promised a long time ago not to worry too hard, to let his faith rest in Karl because he was trustworthy, Sapnap couldn’t help the way his heart rate spiked in his chest. 

Karl met green eyes when he read his boyfriend too well, gave him sweet petal softness through their newly locked gazes. The hand carrying a pocket watch drew in closer to himself, tucked into his chest like he was hiding it—but not out of secrecy.

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted with enviable softness. “I’ve seen the first World War before, Nick.”

Sapnap had it in him to nod, to press another gentle kiss to the side of Karl’s face. His skin was burning, and he briefly wondered whether it was nerves or just fluster.

“I know,” Sapnap whispered. “I trust you, Karl, just…” he bit his lip with scalding hesitance, “ please be careful, okay?” 

Greyed eyes fell back down to cracked faces, the promise of a war-torn year staring up at him like a twisted grin. Karl swallowed thickly, heavy enough for Sapnap to see the shift of his Adam’s apple and the way his lips rolled beneath his teeth.

“I will,” Karl looked back at him, “I promise.”

They shared another kiss as if to lock those words into place, something like a pinky promise with the wrong piece of themselves. Karl whined softly into the kiss, pressing forward like it may have been the last time he got to have this—in a worst case scenario, it could’ve been. But Sapnap didn’t like thinking that way.

When they drew apart, shared vulnerability bled out through locked gazes. Sapnap swore he could see the twists of bright yellow, the way they came dripping down pale cheeks and smothered the bed in gold.

Wantonly, he hoped it’d stain.

“When do you have to leave?” Sapnap questioned, though he didn’t know if he wanted to hear the answer.

Those yellow-bleeding eyes fell free of Sapnap’s gaze, and he mourned the loss of his true favorite color. It left cheeks bare, left sheets unstained when Sapnap looked down and hoped to see the shades of sunshine.

“Midnight,” Karl answered, “I have to be at the jump point by midnight.”

Briefly, Sapnap glanced at the clock sitting atop the nightstand behind them. Numbers in a threatening red stared back at him, blinking with untimely sickness in a way that twisted his gut.

9:27.

“That’s so soon,” Sapnap whispered without thought. “That’s…” he’d never been very good with math, “it’s not enough time.”

Karl glances behind him. “Two and a half hours,” he said quickly, “and you know I’ll be back soon.”

His gaze returned to Sapnap’s green, glowing yellow beneath a swath of grey. For a moment, they only blinked. Silent without the flick of eyelashes against skin, silent without heavy breaths that seemed to be cast in waiting.

Sapnap was waiting. He was already waiting for Karl.

“When is soon?” he asked meekly, voice so soft he barely recognized it himself.

And he had to watch when Karl’s face fell, when his eyes dropped lower and closer to the bed, when hands tightened around broken timepieces that promised to take his love away. Only ever temporarily, always like this—always soon. If Sapnap had any say in it, Karl would never leave at all; but there were people in the past who needed him, people he needed to help.

“I don’t know,” his hush held tangible regret, “I never know.”

Sapnap sighed softly, tugging Karl’s body closer to his where they sat on the edge of their bed. It tipped his head against his shoulder, let Sapnap wrap his arms around him properly so his hands touched against his hip.

He settled his nose in a mess of pale brown hair. Karl always smelled like home, even if his scent was indiscernible.

“I wish you did,” he whispered into a muffle of long hair.

“I wish I did, too.” Karl agreed without hesitation, nuzzling in closer to Sapnap’s neck. 

There was a quiet moment between them, silence broken only by steady breath and beating hearts. Sapnap watched the clock on a closeby nightstand blink to a new time, red numbers blurred to eyes that sought yellow.

Karl pulled his head up from where’s nestled it, pressing lips against Sapnap's jaw like a quiet afterthought. His eyes were clouded, pocket watches held in hands with what looked like a want to let them go. He was quiet with his words, even quieter with intent.

“I wish it wasn’t me at all,” his complaints were always soft-spoken and without whine, “wish we could leave this stupid town and I could…” he faltered, “could forget about this whole thing.” His face etched into a delicate frown with an indignant huff. “I don’t want it to be my problem anymore.”

Sapnap ran gentle fingers through Karl’s hair, hoped the careful drag of his blunt nails against skin would do something by means of comforting. It did urge tense limbs to relax, and Sapnap watched Karl settle into the blankets with fingers that loosened against a pocket watch.

It was only cracked because of times like this, when Karl had grown so frustrated by his own responsibility that he sent the most important object in his life careening down toward the pavement. Whether luckily or unluckily, it all still functioned through a crack. 

Maybe if it had really broken, then Karl wouldn’t be so wound up. (Not maybe, he wouldn’t be).

“One day it won’t be yours,” Sapnap reassured. “Passing the torch, and all that.”

Karl’s breath shook, something airy and damp peering in from the back edges of his throat. It ached with the thick golden honey, seeped into the gaps between Sapnap’s ribs until it stuck his heart to his lungs and made breath impossible without pretty daffodil.

He waited with his ribs running sticky, waited for the words that would come to follow the threat of tears. Waited with shifting hands that sought to do nothing but comfort, gentle in touch and laced warm with intent.

“I don’t want it to be anyone’s problem,” Karl said finally, voice shaking almost as much as his breaths did. “I guess…” he stuttered, “I think I’d rather live forever and deal with everyone’s issues in every era than make someone else do it for me.” 

Sapnap found his eyes again, verdant gaze quick and searching for any semblance of mistruth. But he found nothing but honesty in those fog grey eyes; raw like honey and biting like teeth. There weren’t even the hints that came in dodged eye contact, or the quiver of pretty pink lips where they waited to say more.

Nothing but truthful, unfiltered earnest, somehow worming its way free of Karl’s tongue to spin out in shades of dandelion through the air. And despite crawling yellow, Sapnap exhaled disbelief.

“You don’t mean that.”

Fingers caught around a horrid pocket watch drew tight again. Sapnap could see where his knuckles ran white, could see where his fingertips slipped against spiderweb cracks on glass until it nearly fell to the ground.

He even jolted slightly, as if moving to catch it. Let Karl’s raw breath turn sharper, let it feel like burns where it knocked against his skin.

“I’ve seen hell, Nick.” His throat was scored clear with red. “I’ve seen it a hundred thousand times. And I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” he shook his head in horrified disbelief, fingernail slipping between a crack in the glass, “yet my father gave all his hell to me.”

Sapnap had heard Karl speak unkindly of hell before, had heard him spit fire in the direction of a man he’d never met himself. He knew that Karl was an only child because they only needed one son, knew that his father died when he was far too young because he was running away from every kind of the past.

Knew that it had all fallen onto Karl, manifesting in decades-old pocket watches and harsh responsibility.

“I’m…” but he’d never heard it quite so toxic before, “I’m sorry.”

His apology burned his own skin just as much as Karl’s words did, but the muttered out reassurance drew the yellow back into his eyes. Flecks of red still lingered, and Sapnap wondered just how much it would take to rid his love of the color altogether.

Including the times it got caught beneath his once-painted fingernails.

“Don’t be.” Karl shook his head, eyes cast down toward the messed-up sheets. “It’s not your issue.”

Sapnap squeezed his hand where it rested on Karl’s shoulder, used the one at his hip to slide him across the bed where he’d reeled back. It didn’t put them in the closest proximity just yet, still a space left between them when Karl no longer budged.

Even still, Sapnap found his lurid eyes. Found every word he said in silence through the shades spinning about his irises, found them just like he found his lips for a single, fleeting kiss.

“Your burdens become shared when you pledge your life to me,” he whispered so quietly it may as well have been a secret. “When I pledge mine to you,” he stroked his thumb across a clothed shoulder, “when we share time like this and I say you mean the world to me.”

Karl blinked with increased speed, lashes flicking over pools of color to hit against the skin they spilled against. As expected, things twisted orange where they coated pale skin.

“You don’t want my burdens,” Karl murmured, “I can promise you that.”

How much convincing could one man muster before he fell apart? Sapnap wondered when the world would fall out from beneath him, wondered how much more weight he needed to leave on the ground before it all swallowed him whole.

Until he fell through the world, Sapnap was here. On the edge of his bed with the most important man in the world caught between his arms, wondering when he'd fallen so deep into the past he’d grown blind to the present. Silently, Sapnap begged Karl to open his eyes.

“I already have them, Karl.” His whispers were harsh without bite. “And I wouldn’t trade them for the world.”

Karl looked up at him with eyes that didn’t want to believe. A faint smothering of betrayal where it covered his gold-stained features, like he was expecting the worst (he always was) and couldn’t stomach anything but.

Like the fact that Sapnap was okay sharing their issues was foreign beyond belief. Like he’d never had anyone tell him it was okay.

“I’m sorry,” Karl mumbled, barely heard through tight lips. “It’s…” with a shaky breath, he tucked his head back into Sapnap’s neck, “it’s selfish of me, to want to live forever.”

Sapnap wanted to laugh, low and rumbling and caught beneath breath—so he did. Circled his hand against Karl’s back with a little more haste, swirling laughs catching in his ear where gold couldn’t reach. 

Karl’s hiding place in Sapnap’s shoulder, face lifting to cast incredulous gazes at his now-smiling boyfriend; though even that expression was touched by anguish.

Maybe it was the shared burden. (The things he’d do for love).

“You’ve got it backwards,” Sapnap sputtered through his laughing disbelief, “you're far too selfless.” 

Karl started to shake his head, disagreeing motion interrupted by a kiss on his lips. Sapnap found the sweet flavor of honey-gold, bitter rose petals still buried somewhere beneath the thick of it. 

Once, there had been curiosity surrounding the taste of a thousand worlds, but Sapnap would be the only one to know how Karl managed to bleed so timeless. As if he really could live forever, as if he was archaic in nature and not born a mere twenty-three years ago.

Maybe an old god. Was that the kind of dying star that had forged his ice-blue veins? The one archaic, the one undying until it burst apart just for him.

“No,” Karl disagreed, “it’s unfair, unfair to you.” He gazed up at Sapnap’s eyes, grey spread wide with glows of color. Strangely, he looked remorseful. “You’d be mortal and I wouldn’t be, and you’d spend your entire finite life just waiting for me to come home.” 

Sapnap looked at him with words he didn’t want to say. Found the flecks of red where they bled into gold, where it all twisted tangerine beneath a stormy cloud. It wasn’t quite gold, more like a regretful flame glowing beneath dark irises.

Realization was shaded in the same glowing hue. Again, Sapnap had to watch his face fall through the floor.

“You…” Karl hesitated, like he didn’t want to say it, “you do. You spend your finite life waiting for me to come home.”

Sapnap kissed him quiet, as if his warm lips could withdraw all the regret from his tone. As if showcases of golden affection would make him forget sudden realizations, would push a better narrative into his too-pretty head—the one that Sapnap wanted to push. 

Maybe actions spoke louder than words, but words were perfect when the choice words were known. 

“You’re worth waiting for.” 

Quiet; full of promise, rich with honesty. Sapnap could never lie well, and Karl knew that. So it was burned with the licking flame of something genuine when Karl smiled up at him, when their lips knocked back together with clumsy ease and drips of yellow. 

Sapnap wished they could stay like this forever. Maybe in another lifetime, they could—a lifetime where an alternate version of Karl hadn’t been given eight handfuls of hell in the form of a too-powerful pocket watch. Where there weren’t sick hands pointing him in the direction of World War I, where Sapnap had never stood by their front window and watched him walk away. 

Another life, another time. Why was it always time? 

And did Sapnap want more of it or did he want less?

“Do you need help getting ready to go?”

His question was just as quiet as affirmations had been, hands running through hair with gentle admiration. Karl’s colorful eyes danced about his surroundings, finding interest in creasing bed sheets and the space between their knees. His hesitance was palpable, thick and hanging in the air where everyone could see it. 

Sapnap waited. His hand never stilled, and he could guess his lover’s impending answer before it ever reached his tongue. 

“No…” Karl whispered, shaking his head slowly. “no, my issue. Not yours.”

Sapnap had guessed right. 

And maybe golden kisses on waiting lips could convince him again, or maybe Sapnap needed to be reminded that he still had a voice. Even when it was quiet and strained over wanton hues of daffodil, he still had a voice—one that Karl could hear, one that Karl might listen to. 

“I want to help you,” he insisted. “Please?”

He watched Karl roll his bottom lip between his teeth. Felt his fingers where they gripped his hand, where his entire body was wracked with hesitance, and he waited. Just a little bit longer, because Sapnap never lied; Karl was worth waiting for. 

“Okay,” Karl whispered. “Alright, you can help. Just…” as if his mind had run away from him, Karl’s eyes burned sizzling red, “if I don’t come home, don’t wait for me.”

Sapnap shook his head, hand freezing where it still lay in Karl’s hair. And he kissed him with the same bright devotion that he had been all night, with the same air of convincing that would bleed from his lips. There were always a hundred thousand things to do and say, and Sapnap would be the first to admit that they never had enough time.

Even if he was a time traveler, Karl was still finite. And there always was, there always was that possibility—a reality where Karl didn’t come home, where he got lost to history either by means of entrapment or death. 

In either situation, Sapnap would be ruined.

“Don’t say that,” he murmured, swallowing the asphyxiation where it rose scarlet in his throat. “You’ll come home,” words were more for himself than he thought they would be, “I’ll see you on the other side.”

Karl blinked up at him, that same unwavering vulnerability cast heartache through his eyes. “You promise?”

“I promise,” Sapnap said without hesitation. “I’ll be standing on the other side of hell, whenever it is you get through it.” He left another gentle kiss on his forehead, bangs caught beneath fingers to push them out of the way. “And if you fall on your last step, I’ll be there to catch you.”

Whether figuratively or literally, he’d always be there to catch him.

Karl smiled sadly, a layer of glass shading his lurid grey eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Sapnap left one more kiss on Karl’s waiting lips, and they dragged themselves up off the edge of the bed when the time grew too close to midnight. Karl found all his dated clothes in the back corner of their closet, and Sapnap helped him get dressed in a war uniform he couldn’t remember the origin of.

Was he allowed to hate the way his lover looked dressed up like this? The khaki color on his period-specific clothes struck a knife through Sapnap’s honey-thick rib cage. It was probably worse than the camouflage of today, because unlike an ongoing war, Sapnap knew the horrors of the one he was letting Karl return to.

His helmet was a little too big. That part of it was endearing, but everything else just made Sapnap ache. It got worse when they were standing out on the doorstep, struck over and over again by well-expected hurt.

Karl looked like he didn’t want to leave, and he didn’t.

“Be careful,” Sapnap whispered, hands dragging against a uniform of the past.

“I will,” Karl promised, nodding slowly where he looked at the ground.

He fiddled with his hands in front of him. They were ringless, they didn’t look like his.

“And do…” Sapnap hesitated, “do a good job. Like you always do, I’m sure.”

Karl nodded again. “Thank you.” When he looked up, Sapnap wondered if it was for better or for worse. “I’ll try my best.”

“Your best is perfect.”

For better. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Karl said in hush. “Not soon enough, but soon.”

Regret in his eyes was just a little too visible. Sapnap left a kiss on a cheek still yet to be stroked with gold. 

“You could never be late.”

“Good…” Karl’s breath shook, “good night, Nick. Sleep well for me.”

“Yeah.” Though he couldn’t, alone. “For you.”

One more kiss beneath a midnight sky, one more pathetic seep of devotion through barely-parted lips. And then it was nothing but watching him go, dressed for the wrong day and the wrong time until he finally reached the point. The jump point, as Karl called it—the only reason why they hadn’t moved away.

Sapnap had seen it once before. When he’d insisted to Karl that he wanted to, when it had been five months of watching him walk away at night and actually knowing where he was going. It had been a fight, a fight, but Karl had relented; let Sapnap follow him one night when he was finding importance in the American Revolution, when Sapnap had still been frightened by a surplus of period-specific dress.

Karl told him that he hadn’t wanted Sapnap to see it. And at first, he didn’t understand—it was only the top of a hill in the center of a bright green field. It was only Sapnap standing ten feet away from his boyfriend when the man had held his arm out, shouted warnings about something dangerous and let his eyes break from afar.

Sapnap wondered through patient wait, wondered why this had to be such a secret to him. Wondered why there had been so much insistence to keep him away, to keep him at home—but all questions were answered when that stupid pocket watch hissed and Karl shut his eyes like he was ready. 

He’d never heard Karl scream so loud.

And it was worse, worse because he couldn’t ask him if he was okay. Because he disappeared after what felt like infinity but was really only sixteen seconds, vanished from thin air as if he’d never even existed at all.

Sapnap tore the grass out of the ground when he cried, and he admitted to himself that Karl had been right. Worse even still, he couldn’t tell him so until he came back from the past.

And it took eight days. Eight days of lonesome regret until Karl came back with someone’s blood on his clothes. He’d cried, and he’d cried, and he’d cried until there was nothing left to spill, and Sapnap never told him that he’d been right. He didn’t think Karl wanted to hear it.

Eventually he learned that Karl screamed because it hurt. It’s like being torn into a million tiny pieces. Sapnap couldn’t even imagine, and he didn’t think he wanted to.

There were a hundred thousand reasons for Sapnap to stay away from the jump point. Hellish screaming was only the first one.

Tick, tock.

Clocks were forged by the devil himself. Sapnap learned the hard way, Karl learned the harder way.

He wanted to know why they’d even bought a clock that ticked. He couldn’t remember who’d been the one to pick it out, but he was pretty sure it had more to do with the way it matched the wood grain of their living room and less in regards to rhythmic ticking.

Tick, tock.

He’d been listening to seconds pass by for seven days. A week alone in a house built for two people, a week alone and wondering if his lover was okay. There would always be a fear of the worst, no matter how many reassurances Sapnap could whisper in the time before midnight. It only worked halfway for him, all optimism fading before he even hit the third day.

So when time travel was more of a weekend excursion, Sapnap was spared from the brute of the pain. Typically, it was not a short trip. Typically, Sapnap was bound to ache.

Tick, tock.

Had he been left to his own devices in trench-style warfare? Had he not been ready enough for the horrors of war? Did Karl even know how to shoot a gun?

Tick, tock.

He had to. Even if Sapnap couldn’t imagine it himself, he knew he had to know. Gentle hands caught around harbingers of destruction, shotgun shells cast off to the floor.

He didn’t like thinking about it.

Tick, tock.

It reminded him of too many possibilities. All the worst things, all the bad realities, all the pain drawn tight around like vices.

There was no fire in the fireplace, and there was no staining gold on the bed sheets.

Tick, tock.

Sitting alone on a couch made for two and listening to a still-ticking clock wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He thought he was hearing more than before, but standing up was always something easier said than done. Instead, he slipped his eyes shut like that wouldn’t bring him agony. Instead, he tried to look past the flashes of a war-torn scene.

Instead, he tried to ignore the blood-streaked face of a man he knew better than anyone.

Tick, tock.

It wasn’t going to stop. And it had never been this bad before, had never been so haunting—what was so different about now?

Tick, tock.

Why was it so loud?

Tick, tock.

Had it always been enough to fill the room?

Tick, tock.

How had he put up with this so many times before?

Tick—

Shards of glass scattered the hardwood floor. Sapnap couldn’t remember standing up.

But the ticking had stopped. There was silence swallowing the room, broken clocks left to die by his bare feet and staring up at him with mock, mock.

But the ticking had stopped. And Sapnap could breathe through his lungs again.

When he went to bed that night, there was still a shattered clock left lying on the floor. There hadn’t been enough left in him to clean it up, not when he’d torn it off the wall and sent it careening down into the hardwood. Not when it had erased the only constant left on the wall behind him, not when it had forgotten to take the war down with it.

Alone on a mattress made for two, Sapnap cast his gaze up to the ceiling. He made an itemized list in his head to help him fall asleep, a list of all the good things that had happened this week.

1) In technicality, he’d still kissed Karl this week. In technicality, he’d seen his face in real life.

2) He found his rings in a pile on the nightstand the first morning alone. They made him smile, because they were a reminder of him.

3) They reminded him how much of himself he had to leave behind when he ran away to the past.

3) An old friend came to town to visit. Sapnap saw him at the corner store with a man he didn’t recognize. They looked happy.

4) He was jealous that they got to spend time with each other like that.

4) He had a dream about Karl last night. They were on the hill that made the jump point, but it was covered in yellow flowers instead of grass. Something silent told him that they had happy memories on that hill instead of bad ones.

5) He woke up crying because it was only a dream.

5) He talked to their neighbor for the first time in a while. She was nicer than Sapnap remembered, gave him flowers to leave on the new dining table she’d seen get brought in the other day.

6) When she asked where Karl was, it hurt Sapnap more than anything to say he’s at work.

6) The flowers looked nice on the dining table. 

7) They would be dead before Karl got home.

7) He finally got the old piano fixed. One of the keys was sticky and it was out of tune for almost six months, and he finally got it fixed. 

8) What if Karl never came home to play it?

The list ended. Sapnap wondered why it had to be so short. But even still, running through the eight seven things he’d managed to find helped him fall asleep that night. 

Alone, in a bed made for two. It got a little bit colder every night.

He woke up before the sun. Or maybe he didn’t—the sky would’ve been dark anyway, shrouded by storm clouds that loomed above their house. On any other day, Sapnap would’ve cursed the gods above for waking him earlier than he wanted to.

Sleeping passed the time much faster than being awake did.

But it was not the gods who had woken him up. It was an finally in-tune piano, it was the sweet softness of someone else being home. The end of a list curled ebon with flame.

Without hours of mindless sulking, Sapnap got out of bed. He didn’t check the blinking red clock on the table beside him, only stumbled out the door as fast as his feet could carry him when the sound of thunder shook through all his bones.

Karl was sitting in front of the piano in their living room. A strike of lightning illuminated him in the dim yellow light, brought attention to his rain-soaked hair and khaki-colored uniform.

The tune was lost when he turned to look over his shoulder, and before much time had slipped away from them, he was caught between Sapnap’s arms in a bone-crushing hug. His clothes were cold and wet and just waiting to pass such qualities between their bodies, but Sapnap found him to be the warmest thing in the world.

In the midst of their hug, he pulled Karl up off the bench in front of their piano. Let an embrace become a mash of impatient lips, tasting the rain and the thunder and the lightning all off Karl’s mouth in a mess of something heavenly.

Through the storms of the great outdoors, Karl tasted just like home.

And maybe Sapnap would’ve been content to stay like that for hours, and maybe they did. The closest he’d gotten to checking the time was a glance out the far window and stepping around a shattered clock still left on the hardwood floor, a clock now placed beside a discarded World War I helmet.

But it wasn’t like time mattered now, not anymore—not when Karl had returned, not when he was soaking wet from the rain he’d run home in and caught between Sapnap’s waiting arms. There had been an emptiness left behind with him for far too long, something impossible to quell no matter how many pillows he gripped to fall back asleep.

Emptiness rang true no longer. The only thing that mattered anymore were Karl’s lips on his, were hearing his voice again when they finally broke off and spending time together in a living room they’d worked so hard on.

Karl was the first to pull away. And only then did Sapnap realize that his breath was shaking, shuddered against his tingling lips at the same tempo his hands quivered against Sapnap’s chest.

He brought his own hands up to grip Karl’s, face contorting into something less happy and more concerned. Glancing downward, he found the broken nails and shades of red ebbed into his cuticles, found that he was still ringless as expected and only shaking harder as more time went on.

They looked even less like his hands than they had last week, still coming out from the ends of khaki-colored sleeves.

“Are you okay?” Sapnap asked, though the quiver of Karl’s lips may have answered his question.

Though it was true that a shaking head was a greater answer, a stumble forward until his head was knocked against Sapnap’s shoulder and they both slipped backward a step. Sapnap caught him in his arms just like he said he would, losing grip of blood-edged fingertips where they caught against the sweatshirt on his back.

There was thunder outside, there was a strike of lightning somewhere else. Sapnap closed his eyes and pretended that the only sound was heavy rain against the windows and rooftop.

“I never want to see that place again.”

The words “and you don’t have to” found their way to the tip of Sapnap’s tongue, but he swallowed them like hot acid when he found them to be untrue. He couldn’t make those kinds of promises, not when he didn’t know if they’d pan out the way he wanted them to.

For all they knew, Karl would have to go back there tomorrow.

So instead of false promises, Sapnap only shifted their bodies away from the piano. “Let’s sit down, okay?” And Karl nodded against his shoulder.

For a moment that may have hurt a little more than it had to, Sapnap left Karl sitting alone on the couch. He brought him clothes that didn’t smell like blood or glow with memories of an old war, ones that were softer and looked more like Karl.  

He started a fire, watched the heated tangerine where it glowed to life behind the cover of their fireplace. It made the room smell like embers, it made the whole of their world warm—somehow, it managed to wedge just a little bit more distance between the two of them and the pouring rain outside their house.

Sapnap sat down on the couch next to Karl, tugged him up against his body where he’d slipped away. He was silent, too silent, breath still shaking where it fell past his lips and his hands drawn tight around Sapnap’s hoodie. In the time it had taken Sapnap to start a fire, Karl had washed his hands.

There was still blood stuck around his nails. Sapnap didn’t want to know if it was his or not.

“I missed you,” Sapnap whispered, pressing a kiss to Karl’s temple as if in emphasis.

The grey eyes that had fallen so distant on a roaring fire turned to look at Sapnap. When they locked gazes, his chest turned at a lack of gold. A lack of anything.

“I missed you too.”

Even still, he sounded genuine in every returned sentiment. Let his head fall back against Sapnap’s body, pressed to the front of his chest below his chin. Sapnap’s lips couldn’t quite reach the top of his head, so he only rubbed circles into his back with a careful hand.

Every word he considered saying felt as though it was made out of glass. He wanted to talk to him, he wanted to share their time with quiet conversation just as they always did—even if their silence felt just as comfortable as talking did, he always missed the sound of Karl’s voice when he was away.

But maybe there were a hundred thousand things he wasn’t supposed to say. A million questions he wasn’t supposed to ask, a thousand tripwires waiting for him around Karl’s ankles. And though he could say he wasn’t going to strike any of them, how could he really know?

“I’m glad you’re home.” Was all he said.

Somewhere unspoken, there was an implication.

I’m glad you made it home safe.

I’m glad you didn’t die in the war.

I’m glad you didn’t leave me all alone here.   

“I’m glad I’m home, too.” 

And Sapnap wondered if it was all going to be call and repeat. If there was anything original left on Karl’s lightning-flavored tongue, if he had any other words to say that Sapnap hadn’t already.

Patience. Sapnap always had patience, there was no point in letting it slip through his fingers now.

“I hate it there,” Karl whispered, and Sapnap let his hand pause in its circles. “I’ve even…” he stumbled over his words, “I’ve been there before. I’ve seen that war, I’ve seen it.”

Hands tightened around fabric-covered chests when thunder struck, breaths shook a little harder where they fell past frightened lips when it turned into lightning. Sapnap could remember it, too—clearly leagues different from the way Karl remembered it, but he remembered nonetheless. When he’d watched Karl leave through the front door on his way to the same place, but maybe not quite. 

“A different time,” Sapnap said quietly. “1914. You saw 1914 last time.”

Karl’s head lifted from its place against Sapnap’s chest, wide-open eyes glassy with something silent and vulnerable. Sapnap once again looked for the color behind his grey, and he once again came up empty-handed.

“You remember that?” Karl is asked in the same shaking whisper, blinking the tears from his eyes like that’d make it all disappear.

Sapnap ran a gentle hand through his hair, the smile on his face halfway to forced where he felt the corners of his mouth tip downward. There was something to be said about a gaze that held nothing and everything at the exact same time, something to be said that was wickedly similar to agony.

“I always remember,” Sapnap answered truthfully. “I spend every day you’re not here thinking about where you went.”

Karl’s pupils seemed to stutter against a pool of grey. And the hands lacing through fabric seemed to grip impossibly tighter, red-stained nails digging into heather grey.

“So you sat here,” he murmured “for seven days,” eyes fell to the floor “and thought about war?”

For a moment, Sapnap’s hand froze. Paused right where he’d left it caught in Karl’s hair, even if only for a moment. But by the time he’d picked up the motion again, he knew that Karl had noticed—knew that he was still waiting for an answer when his fallen gaze flicked back up to Sapnap’s face. 

“I thought about you,” he tried to reassure, “war is just where you happened to be.”

Karl tucked his face back into Sapnap’s neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Sapnap said quickly, leaving a kiss on Karl’s head. “It’s okay,” he soothed, “there were some good things that happened this week, too, don’t worry about me.”

With a final shaky breath left in a stain against Sapnap’s skin, Karl lifted his head back up. For a brief moment, there seemed to be a lick of yellow surrounding his too-wide pupils.

“What kind of good things?” he asked, the curiosity in his still-harrowed tone wavering all the same.

And it took a moment. A moment of silence, one where there was thunder in the far distance and a crackling flame nearby. Sapnap waited for the lightning to strike, waited for it to flash through Karl’s wide-open eyes.

Neither of them blinked. Karl only flinched when Sapnap’s next inhale shook.

“Do you…” he hesitated, “don’t you want to talk about you, though?”

Karl’s eyes fell away again, looking out toward the fire where it roared in tangerine life. Sapnap could see the way that light danced in his eyes, too—looking just as pretty if not prettier than the flash of lightning outside their window.

Though it was true that Karl’s eyes were the prettiest when they glowed with his very own gold. 

“I don’t…” he hesitated, as if the words he considered carried too much weight to carry, “I don’t want to depress you.”

The hand threaded through his hair found his shoulder instead, rubbing in comforting motions that were hard in all the right ways. Karl leaned his head back against Sapnap’s shoulder and let him just hold his body there, cuddled up to his side beneath the light of the fire. 

“I’m asking you to tell me,” Sapnap said, thumb rubbing circles into Karl’s shoulder, “but only if you want to. If there’s anything you want to say, then I want to hear it.”

“Okay,” Karl agreed quietly. “How about…” he paused for a moment, one long enough for Sapnap’s head to turn, “how about for every thing I tell you, you say something, too.”

Sapnap raised an eyebrow. “Something about me?”

“If you would,” Karl said in hush, something like fear laced at the edges of his tone.

“Yeah,” Sapnap matched his softness, “yes, of course. You can go first, if you want.”

“Okay.” Karl nodded, shifting his body against Sapnap’s in an attempt to get more comfortable. “I went to France. I’ve always liked going to France, you know that, but it was…” he stuttered over a shaky breath, “it was different, this time. I’d never seen anything like it in a thousand years.”

And maybe it hurt to know that he was being literal in all those years. Maybe it was striking at the center of Sapnap’s chest, pain just as loud and clamorous as the thunder outside their window.

“What kind of different?” he asked, letting the next strike of lightning light up the whole room.

Karl shook his head where it still lay against Sapnap’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you after you tell me about your week.”

Sapnap swallowed thickly. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten, he only hadn’t realized just how little one thing about my week had been. But he was never someone to pry, and he had no intents on becoming such—so he wondered, ran back to his list from earlier that night and let it glide through his head. 

“I got the piano fixed and tuned.”

Maybe he could feel Karl’s smile when he couldn’t see it, maybe it was only wishful thinking.

“I noticed,” he said it close to a whisper, but it felt more musing than silenced. “It sounds much nicer.”

“Will you play it more, now?” Sapnap asked, perhaps just a little bit hopefully.

Though he rarely admitted it out loud, he wanted Karl to play it more. In the six months it took for him to get it fixed, he missed nothing more than waking up to soft piano songs or cooking dinner with the noise in the background.

“Of course,” he answered like he could read Sapnap’s mind. “I learned something when I saw the Classical Era and I haven’t gotten to play it for you yet.”

Sapnap let his head fall on top of Karl’s. “Soon.”

“As soon as possible,” Karl whispered, “preferably.”

“Yeah,” Sapnap agreed. “As soon as possible.”

Silence was only ever temporary, and that would always be the best part about it. Sapnap could still part his lips and words spill out into the night, even through crashing thunder and the hundred thousandth strike of lightning he’d shared with the most important man in the world.

“How was France different?”

It came with the echo of roaring thunder. Karl hesitated with fingers caught in fabric.

“People,” he whispered, “so many people. I saw the French Revolution and I thought nothing could be hell quite like that in those streets, but I was wrong.” A gasping breath shook, and so did his foregin-looking hands. “So wrong it may as well have killed me.”

“How was it…” Sapnap pondered over choice words, let the breath he took shake, too, “what made it hell,” he wondered aloud, “this time?”

There was another moment of silence. Only temporary, just as the last one had been—only this time, Sapnap waited for Karl to be the one who broke it. With words that he’d never be able to string together himself, with a voice that sounded so pretty (prettier after a week’s time without it). 

“You know when something doesn’t look terrible,” he said with the same forever-hush, “when you see pictures, maybe, or just hear about it in history class. And there’s the things that make your skin crawl, and there’s the things that just feel like extra information.” He lifted his head up from Sapnap’s shoulder just to look him in the eyes. “You know that feeling?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap agreed almost immediately. “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

“U.S. troops landing in France then always felt like extra information,” Karl continued, eyes flicking away to find the fire at the other side of the room. “Even when my father would come home while I was in high school and tell me a thousand stories of the worst things he’d ever seen, even when he was handing me a pocket watch on my eighteenth birthday and telling me it was my turn. It was always just extra information.”

“Were you…” Sapnap hesitated, wondering if he even wanted to ask anything else, “were you wrong?”

“It wasn’t bloody,” Karl answered, “it wasn’t bloody like the…” he shook his head as if he wanted to forget, “like the rest of it. It was just… people. It was people. Everywhere, all over the streets, French people who looked so ecstatic to see the Americans in their country.”

Sapnap rubbed circles into his shoulder, bit back a temptation to tug Karl’s body back down against his. 

“Because you were coming to help.”

Karl turned his head to look at him. “Because they couldn’t help themselves.”

There was something glowing and orange hidden beneath his eyes, and it wasn’t just the fire.

“You said it was worse than the French Revolution?” Sapnap asked in hush, the words dancing at the tip of his tongue feeling just a little bit dangerous.

Karl nodded, but even still, an air of confusion passed over his eyes. Maybe the tangerine was disappearing, maybe it was only just the flame. In all honesty, Sapnap couldn’t quite tell anymore.

“In a way I don’t think I can explain,” Karl said finally. “There wasn’t…” he frowned, “I didn’t fear for my life like I did then. It was weird.” He shook his head again, one hand leaving Sapnap’s chest to push hair away from his eyes. “Like I was supposed to feel appreciated, or happy, or something about being just as giddy as them because I got to come help,” he sighed. “Keep my name out of the history books, but I got to help.”

“Then…” Sapnap furrowed his eyebrows as well, sitting up slightly on the couch to draw his body closer to Karl’s, “just, the unspoken things? Maybe a little quieter than revolt, but…” he hesitated over words he didn’t quite know, “but there, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Karl agreed. “Something like that. I’m sure those people were so afraid that they would’ve taken anything,” he sputtered in near-disbelief, gasping over all the air that seemed to escape his lungs. “And I always feel so out of place in the past because I know how every story ends.”

Sapnap’s face fell slightly, leaning forward even still so he could rest his chin on Karl’s shoulder. With a hand rubbing circles into his back, he left a kiss on the side of Karl’s neck. It was heavy with silent apology, heavy with all the devotion he found when it was lips on lips—but even still, he pulled away to voice things. 

“I’m sorry.”

As expected, “Don’t be.” Karl didn’t take it. “Tell me something else good about your week.”

Despite any temptation to protest, Sapnap returned to the list from their bedroom. He wished he could truly erase the things that had been crossed out, but that wasn’t how life worked.

He found something to say, something scarcely affected by the deletion of unwanted words.

“Niki gave me some flowers,” he pressed another kiss to Karl’s exposed skin, “said our dining table was nice, that she was jealous of how well-furnished our house is.”

Karl laughed quietly, and it was the best sound in the world. “She hasn’t been over in forever, has she?”

“No,” Sapnap shook his head with a smile, “no, she hasn’t.” And he laughed, too, pressed right against the skin of Karl’s neck. “But I don’t think we’ve changed much recently besides the dining table.”

Karl hummed in acknowledgement. “I like our house.”

“I do too,” Sapnap agreed without hesitation, leaving another kiss on Karl’s skin. “It’s ours.”

One of Karl’s hands lifted from his lap to slip through Sapnap’s hair, wrist twisted awkwardly but no attention paid to it at all. He only urged Sapnap’s lips closer, only hummed again in quiet appreciation.

“I miss Niki,” he said quietly, voice drawn up in something like reminiscing.

“She misses you, too,” Sapnap answered against Karl’s neck, “Asked me where you’d been.”

“How long…” Karl paused when his breath stuttered, and Sapnap wondered briefly how far away his laughter had gone, “when did you talk to her?”

“A couple days ago,” Sapnap answered. “After the…” after the optimism had worn off, “never mind.”

Maybe it was surprising, maybe it wasn’t—but Karl didn’t ask. He only leaned in closer to Sapnap, pulled his head away but only so he could turn and look at Sapnap properly. The hand in his hair fell to his shoulder, eyes meeting in newfound distance where Sapnap’s lips parted over nothing at all. 

“We should invite her over for dinner,” Karl said. “Tomorrow night, before anything can take me by surprise.”

“Yeah.” Sapnap nodded. “Okay, let’s do that.”

A smile crossed Karl’s lips. “She can sit with us at the nice dining table.”

Sapnap smiled, too, nodding in another pass of agreement. Karl leaned forward to kiss him, so they did, letting thunder sound again where Sapnap had managed to forget. He wondered if it had really gone away for real, or if he’d only gotten lost in Karl’s voice and the crackle of a bright orange flame.

When Karl pulled away, there was still a smile on his face. For some reason, Sapnap had let his falter.

“I wish her flowers didn’t die so fast,” he said quietly, something like regret passing over his tone.

“She’s a gardener,” Karl said with a quiet laugh, “I’m sure she knows how the cycle of flowers work.”

“I know.” Sapnap sighed, turning his gaze down to the floor. “But you never got to see them.”

Karl pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’ve seen flowers before.”

“Not those ones.”

It struck a silence between them, even if only for a moment. In that moment, there was thunder again, and Sapnap decided that it couldn’t have gone away entirely. (He missed the ignorance where he couldn’t hear it at all).

“I’m sorry, Nick,” Karl said in anguished honesty. “I’m sorry that I don’t get to share those things with you.”

There was a piece of Sapnap that regretted prior words, gaze lifting to find Karl’s again where it was waiting for him. There was yellow in it, Sapnap found, and it was radiant just like the sun that hadn’t come out yet. The same color as the flowers that had been on his dining table before they all died.

“No, no, don’t apologize,” he said quickly, a thumb stroking down Karl’s cheek. “I’m sorry that you have to live through wars, I’m sorry that I can’t do anything about it.”

“It’s okay,” Karl smiled despite himself, “I’m used to it.”

“But you shouldn’t have to be,” Sapnap insisted. “No one should have to get used to war so quickly the way you did, Karl. The way you do.”

Karl wrapped fingers around Sapnap’s wrist, the smile on his face persisting despite a layer of glass over his yellow-dotted eyes. He huffed out something caught between a laugh and a sigh, lips quivering over a form they no longer wanted to hold.

“I’d rather it be me than you,” he sputtered over a lump in his throat. “I’d rather it be me than anyone else.”

In a way, Sapnap had expected that answer. In a way, it wasn’t the one he’d wanted to hear.

“I wish I could help you,” he huffed like he was angry with the world. “I wish I could keep the blood from under your nails, I wish I could keep the tears out of your eyes and the stupid…” he shook his head, “the stupid military uniforms off of your body. I wish I could keep you out of hell, Karl. You don’t deserve to spend so much time there.”

Karl kissed him like he wanted him to shut up, and the thunder outside their windows wasn’t quite as loud as they could’ve been themselves. In a kiss that still tasted of rain and war and forgotten silent, Sapnap wanted to cry. And there was a cut of salt when Karl gave in to the tears in his eyes, a taste that only made Sapnap want to cry more.

When they drew apart, flashes of lightning were long gone when they’d made their eyelids glow red.

“It’s okay,” Karl whispered through a starting mess of tears. “If you’re…” he swallowed, “if you’re worried about anything I said last week, please don’t be.”

“I’m always worried, Karl.”

Grey eyes flared, and it wasn’t ever going to be just the fire. “I’m sorry.”

Maybe there was agony in words meant to be reassuring.

“No, it’s okay,” Sapnap rushed to say, “I picked the wrong words. I’m not always worried, like,” he stuttered, “like now. I’m not worried right now.”

Karl blinked his vulnerable eyes up at him. “You promise?”

“I promise,” Sapnap said without hesitation. “I could never be worried when I have you right here.”

Their hands locked between them, squeezing each other like one of them was about to run away. Maybe, somewhere deep down, they both worried that was going to be the truth.

“Do you…” Karl hesitated, waited when his pause was elongated by a sudden strike of thunder, “do you worry that I’ve,” his breath shook in heaviness when lightning struck, “that I’ve died? Out there?”

“Every time you walk someplace dangerous I worry that you’ve died,” Sapnap confessed. “I wish you could get whisked away to the Renaissance, or just anywhere you aren’t made to hold a gun.”

Karl’s voice fell almost to silence. “I never said I had a gun this time.”

Sapnap almost wanted to crawl into himself.

“You didn’t need to say it,” he said instead. “I know you keep them all out there and not in here. I just wish you didn’t have to keep any at all.”

Karl shook his head, swallowing when his tears started to fade. “I’d get rid of them all if I could.”

“I know,” Sapnap rubbed his shoulder reassuringly, “I know you would, Karl, I know.”

“And I won’t die,” Karl said meekly. “I can’t,” he insisted, “there’s a thousand reasons why I can’t, and my father made me memorize every one.”

“He…” Sapnap faltered, “he did?”

“Would read them off to me every night when I was younger,” Karl shook his head, “made me read them back without the paper.”

The non-permanent silence between them felt like waiting. Maybe Karl was going to say something more, maybe he wasn’t—but either way, Sapnap would wait a thousand years for it. Get lost in the crackle of an orange flame, in the rain against the window, in the thunder that came about again with the promise of soon-to-be lightning.

Karl found the words through a shaky breath. 

“Dead people become history, and I can’t become history. Dead people are mourned, and I can’t be mourned. Dead people get graves, and I can’t have a grave. Dead people are known, and I can’t be known. And I…” his breath shook unforgivingly, painfully, in unbridled agony, “and I can’t die, because then I’d leave you here waiting for me.”

It shouldn’t have to hurt this bad.

“But all the other things you said are true,” Sapnap insisted despite a sharpened ache in the center of his chest. “Your…” he stuttered, “your job, you’re only doing it right if no one knows who you are.”

Karl nodded slowly, his next swallow rolling thick in agony and unseen poison. Sapnap wished he knew what to do, but the only thing he could find in himself was the ability to stroke Karl’s shoulder with a comforting hand.

“Yeah,” Karl agreed quietly. “I’m only there to help and be nameless, run off an alias and shoot enemies dead without enough skill to gain recognition.” He looked to Sapnap, a flurry of wonderment strewn about his eyes without all the glow that made it perfect. “It’s hard, you know. To shoot a gun for the hundred millionth time and pretend you only just learned how to pull the trigger.”

Sapnap felt where his breath caught in his throat. He could’ve pointed to the exact place if someone had asked him to. 

“I can’t imagine.”

Karl shook his head. “I don’t want you to imagine.”

“But I know you’ll be okay,” Sapnap reassured. “I know you’ll come back. It’s only a mindless worry, okay? I trust you and I trust that you’ll come back to me.”

“I appreciate that, but…” Karl shook his head, “don’t blind yourself too much, okay? I don’t want it to hurt too bad if I ever…” his hesitation cried aloud with fear, “if I ever don’t come back.”

Like optimism that fades within moments.

“You’ll always come back,” Sapnap insisted despite himself.

“Until I—”

“You’ll always come back,” he interrupted. “Your father came back, didn’t he?”

The look on Karl’s face faltered. Something that had once been strictly yellow twisted, but it didn’t turn orange like Sapnap may have thought it would—he watched a pretty daffodil be swallowed by sick rose, and even Sapnap knew better than to think that shades of crimson meant love this time. 

“My father came back because he was a coward,” Karl’s tone held a newfound harshness. “If I hadn’t been waiting at home the day before my eighteenth birthday, he would’ve dropped dead in the middle of the Civil War. All that was left for him back in the present was the knowledge that a stupid pocket watch was going to be mine and not his, that every last shred of responsibility would come to me with a stupid old timepiece.”

“That’s not…” Sapnap whispered, “that’s not entirely true, is it?”

“It’s not like he was coming back for my mom.”

Sometimes, Sapnap didn’t think hard enough about his words. And every time that happened, he wished his life had an undo button. Though it didn’t, he did have the power of an entire language—maybe even more, if he learned to look in the right places. 

“But you’re not your father,” he whispered. “I’m sorry…” he shook his head, “I’m sorry I even tried to make that comparison.”

“You never made a comparison,” Karl said, though his words didn’t quite match the red in his tone. “Don’t worry about it, Sap.”

Sap.

“Is everything okay?” Sapnap asked, reaching out to place a hand on Karl’s shoulder.

The answer came a little too sharply. “Yes.”

“The answer can be no,” Sapnap insisted with gentle softness. “It’s okay if it’s no, and it’s okay if you’re upset with me.”

“I don’t want to be upset with you,” Karl whispered. “You waited for me for so long, and I’m upset with you.”

Sapnap pressed a kiss to Karl’s temple in spite of previous admittance. “You’re always allowed to be upset with me.”

“I hate it when you bring up my father,” Karl confessed.

“I’m sorry,” Sapnap punctuated it with another kiss, “I won’t bring him up anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” Karl agreed. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Sapnap craned his neck to kiss his lover on the lips, instead. “More than anything in the world.”

Karl smiled again, soft and in earnest when he shifted on the couch to face Sapnap better. They both seemed to agree in silence that they wouldn’t dwell on anything they said, especially not anything about Karl’s father. Even if Karl brought up the man himself, it wasn’t the same when Sapnap was the one to mention him first.

“Did anything else happen while I was gone?” Karl asked curiously, knocking his fingers against Sapnap’s knee.

Sapnap smiled. “I saw Dream.”

“Talked to him?” The gold had returned to his eyes. “Or just saw?”

“Just saw,” Sapnap’s smile fell, but only halfway. “He was with someone else, I didn’t recognize him, but he looked…” he furrowed his eyebrows, “you know when you look at someone and you can tell they mean a lot?”

“Like, to Dream?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap nodded, “to Dream.”

Karl nodded like he understood, a soft smile only emphasizing as such. “I’m happy he has someone like that.”

“Me too,” Sapnap sighed. “Last time I saw him, he couldn’t believe I was still here,” he admitted. “Still with you.”

Karl’s smile fell, too. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” Sapnap answered quickly. “He just…” a frown returned to his face, “well, I’ve changed a lot since high school, and that was the last time I really saw him.”

Karl sighed almost wistfully. “That was a long time ago.”

“It was.”

“I wish I could go back to then,” Karl mused. “Instead of the Great War.”

“You’re not allowed to go back to a time when you were still alive, right?”

“Right,” Karl agreed, though the lone word seemed to hang in melancholy. “That’s also… that’s why it can’t just be me forever. Even if I cracked the code to immortality, it has to be someone else one day.”

Sapnap was pretty sure he already knew the answer. “Who’s it going to be?”

“It’s supposed to be my son.” He had known. “It just needs to be someone with my blood, and apparently…” Karl frowned, edged deeper than it had been before. “I don’t know. They always say that it doesn’t carry on to women, but I think that’s bullshit.”

“Maybe it is,” Sapnap whispered. “We’ll see. One day, we’ll see.”

Karl looked up at him hopefully. “One day soon?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap smiled, “soon.”

“You wouldn’t be so alone when I go, then.”

That hadn’t even been a thought in Sapnap’s head. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“I still…” Karl sighed, “I’d still feel bad. Leaving it all for someone else.”

“But you just said, it can’t be you forever.” Sapnap pulled him closer again. “And I’m sure…” he furrowed his brows in disagreement, “no, no not sure—maybe they’d be happy, to go back in time.”

“I was happy about it once, too,” Karl whispered with his head on Sapnap’s shoulder. “It was exciting, even after everything was so dreary with my father for so many years. Finally getting the watch, it felt like I owned the world.” His voice dropped quieter still. “In a way, maybe I do.”

“You deserve the world,” Sapnap contended. “Just not like this.”

Karl sighed just as quietly as he spoke. “You’re missing the point.”

“Do tell.”

“It was only exciting the very first time,” Karl confessed. “Then I had to watch men die and know I couldn’t save them. I can’t go un-assassinate people, I can’t sway old elections, I can’t…” breath shook undeniably, “I can’t stop anything that’ll rewrite the course of history, I can only help with the little things. Make winning a war a little easier but still hard enough for it to feel like victory.”

“It’s still help,” Sapnap reassured. “It’s still something.”

“I just want it to be over,” Karl murmured. “Why do they even need anyone to meddle with time? It feels so useless.”

“I used to ask the same question, remember?” Sapnap spoke with a pretty rose tint, though the smile on his face almost felt unbelonging. “And you told me the same thing every time.”

Karl lifted his head from Sapnap’s shoulder. “What did I tell you?”

And Sapnap had the sentence down verbatim.

“We don’t have to understand everything, we just have to know that it’s important.”

Karl smiled, too, and it made Sapnap’s feel less out of place. “I guess that’s true.”

“The smartest man in the world told me,” Sapnap grinned, “so I’ll agree.”

Karl rolled his eyes playfully. “Shut up.”

Sapnap laughed, leaving another kiss on the side of Karl’s face. “Never.”

“I’m not the smartest man in the world,” Karl disagreed, returning a kiss on Sapnap’s lips, instead.

The kiss didn’t last anymore than a few seconds, forgotten thunder startling them apart and leaving their foreheads knocked together. Under the cover of lightning, Sapnap smiled wider.

“You’ve certainly seen and learned a lot more than anyone else,” Sapnap whispered against his lips, “Even if it’s hell.”

“You say a lot of good things, Nick.”

Sapnap scoffed slightly. “I steal a lot of it from you.”

“Okay,” Karl’s voice fell quieter. “If you say so.”

He dropped his head back down against Sapnap’s shoulder, cuddling into him like he didn't want to let go. And it was true that he didn’t, true that Sapnap didn't want to let go, either. He was content to sit here forever, wrapped up in each other in front of the dying flame where he could feel the falling breaths left against his skin.

“Tired?” he asked quietly, lacing his fingers back into Karl’s long hair.

“Maybe,” came the mumbled voice buried into his shoulder.

Sapnap laughed quietly, but it was only at how undeniably cute his boyfriend was.

“Want me to take you to bed?”

“No,” Karl murmured. “Here.”

Sapnap smiled wider still. “Here?”

“Yeah.” Karl’s eyes peered up just barely from a place within Sapnap’s shoulder. “And keep talking, please?”

“I love you, Karl,” he said first, twirling his hair around his fingers.

“I love you too,” Karl whispered, turning his head back into Sapnap’s neck,

“We’ll talk to Niki tomorrow, okay? And I’ll…” He tipped his head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling where his fingers still moved. “I’ll kiss you a hundred times when you wake up. Hopefully it won’t be storming anymore come sunrise. I don’t actually know what time it is, but I think it’s the best time in the world. Because it’s the time I’m spending with you. And I love you, and I’ll keep loving you through every year, even the ones I don’t get to see.”

When he didn’t answer, Sapnap knew he’d fallen asleep. And he smiled down at his resting face, at his pretty still body where he lay curled up against Sapnap.

This was their normal. Sleeping forms tangled up in each other, basked in the light of a dying flame. And even if Sapnap could wish for a hundred thousand things, he’d take this over not having Karl any day at all.

Even if it was hard to love someone he didn’t get to see all the time, Karl made everything worth it. Maybe Sapnap was worth the war, too.