Chapter Text
“I wish Karl was here.”
The sounds of mechanical gunshots and his friends’ braying laughter pour out of Sapnap’s headphones and into his ears, too loud to be good for his hearing.
“Why, so you could kiss him?” Dream teases, his voice softened in a love drunk way. Drunk on his friends, on how good it feels to stay up too late playing games with them. Sapnap connects to the feeling. It’s why he always has his volume turned up so high—he doesn’t want to chance any sounds from the outside world finding their way into this space they’ve made for themselves here, just theirs.
“Yeah, at least then I’d have someone to be in love with.” The retort earns a resigned scoff from Dream and a chuckle from George, who both know they’ve been flirting with each other for most of the night. They all do it—the three of them—and even more so when any of their other friends are involved. It improves the gaming experience to be able to make your friends blush from a few time zones away. But even though Sapnap thinks he can keep up with the best of them when it comes to flirting with friends, it’s easy to feel like a third wheel with Dream and George. They play off of each other’s jokes well, especially when there’s a camera rolling. And tonight, there’s a camera livestreaming their CS:GO game to tens of thousands of people, all waiting for Dream and George to talk to each other like they might secretly be a little in love.
As much as he’s having fun, high on the euphoric feeling of gaming with two of his favourite people, that bitter green and yellow feeling of being left out sits in the middle of his chest like phlegm. He feels like he might still be that lonely, anxious kid, only able to make friends on the internet, always worried they’ll get bored of him and log off for good.
He finds that he has to remind himself consciously that that’s not going to happen anymore. Dream and George are real, they’re really his friends, they really love him. Dream isn’t even just behind a screen anymore; he’s here, just one room over, and he’s confided to Sapnap in late night conversations cracked open with timid vulnerability that he’s grown up with similar fears that no one cared about him as intensely as he did about them. Yet here they are, caring about each other years later. Sapnap is safe with him.
But maybe he still wishes he had someone to flirt with sometimes.
A Discord message pops up on Sapnap’s monitor just as he launches a smoke grenade around a corner.
I’m here if you’re still looking for someone to be in love with :]
The message from Karl lights up his face in a bright smile. He knew he could count on Karl to be around when he needed someone to keep him company. Even though he’s a newer friend than Dream or George, Sapnap’s got a funny feeling Karl’s not going anywhere any time soon.
Lurking on my stream? he sends back, a playful grin on his lips. He’s grateful to not have his face camera turned on, otherwise he’d be trying to hide his toying expression from his audience. There’s something freeing about going unobserved, unseen.
Always am! Karl replies, which makes Sapnap glow even brighter. It’s not surprising that Karl keeps an eye out for his streams—he likely has his Twitch notifications on, just as they all do for each other. But something about the idea of Karl always making an effort to watch, even if just passively while he does other things, makes Sapnap’s cheeks warm. Maybe being observed isn’t so terrible when it’s by someone like Karl.
As he’s thinking up a reply, a noise blares from the game into his headphones, making him jolt back to the match. George and Dream are laughing at him.
“Shit,” he breathes into his headset. He’s been shot and is laying dead on screen.
“What were you even doing? You were just standing there!” George struggles to say over his laughter, which sounds so bright and full of air that Sapnap can’t help the smile that comes over his face. Even when he’s being mocked—or maybe, especially when he’s being mocked—his friends’ joy fills up every part of him, pushing out all of the thick feelings of loneliness and fear and leaving behind only the feeling of being wide open, floating. Loved.
He mutters a playful shut up as he rejoins the game. George’s laughter fades, leaving behind the sound of Dream’s much breathier chuckles. “He was too busy thinking of kissing Karl,” he says, his voice deepened deliberately to punctuate his teasing. Sapnap just chuckles along with him, cheeks beginning to ache from smiling.
Another Discord message pulls his attention despite himself.
Didn’t mean to be such a distraction :P
Sapnap realizes he doesn’t care enough about CS:GO to ignore any message from Karl. He couldn’t care less about where it got him last time. So, in full acknowledgment that it will probably result in him fucking up in the game, he starts another reply.
—
The night turns to early morning faster than Sapnap wished it would. He is dizzy with sleep-deprived delirium, and the sounds of the earliest morning birds remind him of the anxiety that accompanied the all-nighters he would pull in high school when he put something off for too long. But he doesn’t want to hang up. He never wants to hang up and be left alone. On nights like tonight, he’d rather curl up on the floor beside his gaming chair and fall asleep with his headset still on than say goodbye.
When the stream had ended, he told Karl to join the call, and he did so eagerly. Quackity joined not too long after. They had mercy on George and let him go to sleep around 6am, his time. Sapnap tries to feel bad for him, but he knows deep down there’s no reason to; George knows as well as he does that having to go to sleep feels like a curse when you’d rather be up with friends. He knows that if he were in George’s position, an ocean away from the people that feel like home, he’d turn his sleep schedule upside down too.
“I’m falling asleep sitting up,” Quackity says. It comes out sounding like one long sound rather than five separate words, so Sapnap knows he’s giving everything he can to even find the energy to say that much. He appreciates him for it. “I think I’m gonna head off to bed.”
Karl and Sapnap both make a slur of words that only vaguely sound like ‘good night’ with context, and Quackity makes kissing sounds into the microphone as a last good bye. Dream doesn’t say anything.
“Dream, you up man?” Sapnap questions, but he doesn’t get any kind of reply.
“Go check on him,” suggests Karl, sounding by far the most awake of any of them. Sapnap’s not sure if he ever really loses his energy completely. During the day he’s like a spark shooting off from a blazing fire, but in the night, he’s like one of the last resilient embers, tame but unrelenting.
“No way, he’d kill me if I woke him up right now.” Karl laughs at that, but Sapnap isn’t even really joking. He might be safe with Dream in an emotional sense, but he still worries that he’d kick his ass if prompted. Plus, he doesn’t want to do anything that would piss Dream off and make him send him back to Texas.
“He must’ve brought his phone to bed and dozed off,” Karl says absentmindedly. Just then, almost as an act of confirmation, they hear a gentle snoring sound coming through Dream’s mic.
“Oh yeah, he’s asleep,” Sapnap laughs. “Sweet little baby.” He clicks on Dream’s Discord icon and kicks him out of the call. “Let’s give him some peace and quiet,” he says, and Karl makes a soft noise of agreement.
The call goes quiet then, leaving only Karl’s even breathing and the birds in the distance for Sapnap to listen to. It’s still dark outside, but he can see a whisper of light timidly peeking up over the horizon.
Karl breathes in deep, and it’s then that Sapnap realizes it’s often just the two of them left after everyone else has gone to sleep. He knows why he himself refuses to give in to sleep, but he wonders what Karl’s reason for hanging on as long as possible might be. There’s a moment where he chalks it up to the fact that Karl never seems to get tired. But that doesn’t feel like a satisfying answer, and curiosity overtakes him.
“Why is it always just us left at the end of the night?” The way it comes out, he worries it might sound annoyed, like he resents being left alone with Karl. His gut clenches for an aching second where he hopes he doesn’t get the wrong idea.
But Karl seems to understand him. It always surprises Sapnap how infrequently they misunderstand each other, despite only being in each other’s lives for a few months now.
“I like talking to you,” he says simply, like it’s the easiest truth he’s ever told. It makes Sapnap’s cheeks blush a light pink. “I always kinda hope you’ll stay on so that it can be just us. You know?”
“Yeah, I…” he starts in reply, but has to stop to try and think of how to word what he wants to say. He wants to say that he hopes every day to get a chance to speak to him, that every time he sits at his computer or looks at his phone that he wishes for an opportunity to talk to Karl Jacobs. But he worries it might come off as weird. “I like talking to you too,” is what he settles on, but it doesn’t feel like as big of a truth as it did when Karl said it. Sapnap never feels like the things he says are entirely what he means for them to be. Every time he starts to believe that he thinks too much, the next thing to come out of his mouth sounds as if he didn’t think it through well enough at all.
“I kinda figured, otherwise you’re just really polite,” Karl says over a bubbly giggle—his iconic laugh that Sapnap is just now becoming familiar with. It fills him with joy just like any of his friends’ laughs would, but he has a hard time imagining anyone not considering Karl’s laugh to be more joyful than most.
He takes this as an opportunity to try one more time to be as honest as he can muster.
“No, well, what I mean to say is… I know what you mean. To be clear, I love hanging out with everyone. But I do always like when it’s just you and me. You’re really… easy to talk to, I guess.”
It was much easier to say than he thought it would be. So he keeps going.
“I feel like I’m still learning so much about you, and, when we’re alone, I actually get to hear the stuff you wouldn’t say to all the guys. I dunno, it’s like, we can get closer like this, if that makes sense?”
At first, Karl’s response is a soft mhm, so close to the microphone that it makes a muffled sound, and Sapnap chooses to believe that he can hear in the other boy’s tone that he’s smiling. After a moment of quiet, though, Karl speaks again.
“I feel like I’ve always known you.”
A fluttery feeling fills up Sapnap’s stomach.
“We just met a few months ago.” He knows his reply is useless. He really just hopes Karl will say some more sweet things if he doesn’t say too much.
“I know,” Karl whispers, the first sign that he might be getting tired. “I just don’t feel like I’m ‘learning’ you anymore. I feel like I know you.”
“I kinda get what you mean,” Sapnap tries, but the truth is that Karl is always surprising him. Never in a bad way—the first three things Sapnap learned about Karl were that he was funny, creative, and kind, and those three things have remained true every second of knowing him. What surprises Sapnap is just how funny he can be, how creative, how kind. He expects Karl to be wonderful, and then he’s ten times more wonderful than he anticipated. He fits in nicely with this group of friends that he’s found himself in, full of people that he almost doesn’t believe that he deserves. But they never fail to remind him that he does in fact deserve them, that he deserves all the love they give him and more.
“I guess, for me, it’s like both. Like I know you so well because it was so easy to get close to you, but like, there’s still somehow always more. I guess. If that makes sense.”
“Makes lots of sense,” Karl says softly.
A cool breeze blows in from the open window and tickles the skin on Sapnap’s arm and thigh. It’s a welcome change in the stale air of his bedroom. Even in mid-January, the weather in Florida is somehow much hotter than the winters in Texas ever were.
Sapnap thinks about Karl, about North Carolina, and how he isn’t really sure what the weather’s like there. He thinks about all the things he’s yet to ask, and how impatient he is to know all the answers.
“Is it cold where you are?” The words come off his tongue without him ever really planning for them to. His eyelids are heavy, his thoughts disconnected, but he’ll fight to stay awake until he can’t fight a second longer.
“Freezing,” Karl answers over another giggle, a giggle that’s too bright to have come out of a boy who’s stayed up late enough to greet the morning sun. Karl defies all odds.
“Do you have heat in your house?”
“Yeah, but I don’t like to turn it on, really. I like to sleep cold.”
Every sentence he learns something new, and yet, none of it feels like a surprise. Maybe this is what Karl meant when he said he feels like he’s always known him. Maybe he means that, even when it seems impossible, he feels familiar.
“Dream does too. He turns the AC all the way up every night. He didn’t today though, so it’s hot in here. For January, at least.”
“I like the room to be cold, but then I bury myself in really big blankets.” Karl’s voice has a proud lilt to it, like he’s made a great discovery about the best way to sleep. Sapnap hears the sounds of him shifting around, and wonders if he’s in bed now.
“Is that what you’re doing right now?” he chuckles.
“Yep, all cozy in bed.” Sapnap can definitely hear the smile on his face this time.
He glances behind himself to his own bed. In a moment of weakness, he finds himself yearning for it. “Maybe I should get in bed too…”
“Don’t leave me,” Karl says quietly, voice cracking over the words.
It’s a joke. Or at least Sapnap thinks it is. He doesn’t dare risk it though. He doesn’t dare leave Karl. In case he means it.
“Okay, I’ll stay,” he says. The words are a promise.
“Switch to your phone. Then you can lay in bed and there’ll be no reason to have to go anywhere.” The suggestion is earnest. Maybe it wasn’t entirely a joke.
Sapnap does exactly as he’s asked, connecting to the call through Discord on his phone before climbing into bed. His body sinks into his mattress as if it had been desperate for rest for a long time. He must’ve been more tired than he wanted to admit, but even as the light in his room starts to brighten with the slowly rising sun, he’s certain he can keep himself up just a little while longer. Long enough, at the very least, to listen to the sounds of Karl falling asleep in his own bed, miles away.
Just as he feels himself surrendering to his exhaustion, after a short while of the sounds of nothing but gentle, steady breathing coming through his earphones, Karl’s soft voice wakes him up again.
“Nick?” he says, sounding barely there. It’s the first time Sapnap’s heard him use his real name in the entire time he’s known him.
“Yeah?” he answers back.
“Thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” he asks, confusion evident in his voice.
He receives no answer except for the sound of Karl’s sleep breathing.
—
Meeting Dream in person taught Sapnap something about himself that he still wishes wasn’t true.
He pulls away from touch, even when it’s safe.
Touches between him and his childhood friends were rough shoves on the playground, slaps on the back. Touches between him and his family were awkward side hugs, half-hearted fist bumps and high fives.
He soon grew out of the friends he had as a kid, grew instead into uncomfortable hellos in high school hallways in avoidance of the reality of abandoned connections. He became too old for aunts and uncles to wrangle him into unreciprocated embraces. It wasn’t long until he found himself averse to being touched at all.
Sometime around when he began making friends online, he started to perceive himself through the lens of the internet—the lens his new friends had to view him through. Online, he was a disembodied voice of humour and playful wit. He was a screen-name of an animal he loved. He was PandasCanPvP, a block boy with black hair and a bandana, with the power to change anything about himself on a whim.
Soon enough, he did become a real name and a real face to his closest friends. But even then, the version of him that they could see was always flat, always well-lit, always only from the shoulders up. And, most importantly, he could control when the camera turned on and when it turned off.
He became so familiar with himself as he was seen through the screen that it began to feel like mirrors were reflecting a lie.
It’s hard to be sure of how to respond to touch when you can’t remember a time you felt connected to your body.
He didn’t consider this when he met Dream. In truth, it wasn’t quite yet something he understood about himself until his best friend had him confront it. In the weeks leading up to his move to Florida, he was entirely certain that getting to see Dream in the flesh, confirming to himself that he was concrete and real, was going to be one of the most beautiful revelations of their meeting. He spent much of his time making half-sincere jokes about finally getting to cuddle him, hold him in arms. Half-sincere, because actually doing so was as equal a joy as it was a terror.
His initial impression of Dream was that he was tall. His first embrace swallowed him whole. Smothered against his chest, secured by his arms around his back, he wanted with everything in him to be able to relax into Dream’s hold. But the panic rising like bile in his throat made him pull away far too soon.
Unlike so many of the people in Sapnap’s life before him, Dream caught on to his touch aversion and didn’t take it as a personal offence. He did, however, challenge him on it one day, several days into their time together.
“You know you’re like, safe, right?” he had said, staring unflinchingly into his eyes from across the kitchen table. “I’m not judging you or anything. You can breathe a little bit.”
Sapnap’s response was a rushed mumble of affirmation over a bite of cereal, gaze pointed down into his bowl. But Dream then reached across the table and laid an open palm on Sapnap’s forearm. His eyes left his breakfast and focused instead on the place of contact.
“Hey, I mean it,” he said in the same kind tone that had soothed Sapnap’s worries so many times before. His teenage years, which were soon coming to an end, had been defined by his devoted friendship with Dream, by his promise to follow him wherever he should go. He made that promise because Dream never once let him down. “You’re safe here. This is our house, together.”
“I know,” he said.
Dream pulled his hand back and relaxed into his chair. “Good. And there’s nothing wrong with letting yourself get comforted by a little physical affection every once in a while, you know. You’re my best friend. You’re good.”
Sapnap smiled.
“You’re here in the flesh! After so long! Enjoy it!” Dream exclaimed, his arms a mess of gestures to the space around them, his bright white teeth shining behind his beaming smile. Sapnap felt for maybe the first time in his life like he was at home.
—
“How are you up so early?” Dream asks Sapnap from the couch in their living room as he descends the staircase. Sapnap hadn’t really noticed the time when he had rolled out of bed, foggy-headed and stiff. He pulls out his phone and looks at the screen. 1:17 pm.
“What the hell are you talking about, it’s the afternoon,” he says, locking and unlocking his phone to make sure it’s displaying the right time. He sits down on the couch right at the end of Dream’s feet and rubs the sleep from his eyes.
“Well, I mean,” Dream says over a side smirk and a shrug, “you were just up pretty late last night.”
“So were you,” Sapnap reminds him.
“Yeah but, you were up the whole night.”
Sapnap scrunches up his face in confusion as he looks over at Dream. “How do you know that if you were asleep?”
“Woke up this morning and saw that you and Karl were still on call,” he says. Sapnap isn’t exactly sure why he looks so smug as he says it.
“We just fell asleep on call. He hates going to bed.”
Without taking his eyes off of his phone, Dream’s eyebrows shoot up and he begins to nod slowly. The smirk hasn’t left his face since the two of them started talking.
“What?” he scoffs in demand, face stoned with confusion.
“Nothing, just…” Dream says, trying not to laugh. “Nothing.”
“I’ve stayed up ‘til sunrise with you before, you know.”
“Sunrise,” Dream repeats, smile widening. It’s not exactly a happy smile—it’s very obviously a teasing one, curling only one side of his mouth. His eyes frustratingly don’t leave his phone, aggravating Sapnap to no end.
“What’s your problem?” he asks, stabbing at the underside of Dream’s foot in annoyance. Another frustrating thing about Dream is that he isn’t ticklish, so there’s no reward for the action. He pokes at him anyway.
Dream seemingly makes an effort to appear more serious, but the amusement he’s deriving from teasing his friend is still written all over his pursed lips. He even locks his phone and places it down on his chest before speaking. “It’s really nothing, I’m just in a—I don’t know, a goofy mood, I guess. I think it’s cute.”
“Why cute?”
“Just is,” he shrugs, returning to scrolling on his phone. Sapnap’s anxious personality sometimes doesn’t jive well with Dream’s nonchalance, his honesty-over-everything conversation style. He can’t fully understand why it would be cute for him to stay up all night on call with Karl, considering it’s something he and Dream have done together countless times. Although, admittedly, he’s never fallen asleep in bed while talking to Dream. On the floor or in his gaming chair accidentally, maybe—but never has he deliberately gone to bed with anyone in his earphones still on the line. Still, he wholeheartedly can’t comprehend a difference between the two things.
Dream must sense Sapnap’s spiralling, because he rolls his eyes, puts down his phone, and begins to clarify some more. “Sap, it’s alright. I’m just happy you and Karl are getting along. Quackity, too. Like, I’m glad we’re all becoming really close friends.”
Sapnap softens at that. He’s also been thinking about how amazing it is that so many of the newer members on the SMP are becoming his closest friends. A short while ago his life felt so much smaller. Now, the enormity of everything that he’s gained is almost smothering, if being smothered feels like being warmed from the outside in.
“Me too,” is all he says in response, but the bemusement he was experiencing earlier has completely dissipated. Dream gives him a good squeeze on the shoulder. Somewhere in the few weeks they’ve lived together so far, he had learned the kinds of touch that could be comforting to Sapnap, and the kinds of touch he flinched away from. He was always sure to use the comforting kind of touch as often as possible.
“Let’s order something to eat and sit outside with it,” Dream suggests, staring out the window. The sun is shining bright, and Sapnap thinks for a second about how different the sky looked this morning before he fell asleep. His room was glowing purple as he drifted off with the sounds of Karl’s breathing playing in his ears. Now, it’s an unbelievable sky blue, almost blinding in its early-afternoon brightness. The January breeze has been cool while the sun keeps things warm. Despite the fact that neither of them typically loves to get outside often, Sapnap can understand why Dream suggested it today. The world looks inviting through the glass of the window.
“Yeah, sounds good,” he says. Despite his late night and his brief moment of worry this morning, he feels optimistic that today will be good. He takes Dream’s phone from him, starts an order from the sandwich place they both love to eat at. While they wait, he tells his friend about the dream he had last night where he was inside a hot air balloon, rising and falling with the gentle movements of the wind that drifted like the soft breaths of someone sleeping peacefully.
—
The first text Sapnap sees when he wakes up on the morning of Valentine’s Day is from Quackity. It’s a gif of a locket that opens up to say “sapnap my beloved <3.” The picture beside the message is an image of his own face with cat ears edited atop his head.
I hate you, he types in reply, but he’s smiling.
The second text he sees is from Karl.
Alex took my idea to send you a heart locket gif :/ Guess I have to settle for a heartfelt v day message instead. Sorry you don’t have any love in your life, that must suck pretty bad. Can’t imagine what that must be like because as you know, I have all the romance and get all the ladies. Good thing you have my whole heart because that’s all you can really ask for. Have a good day my beloved :]
By the time he’s finished reading—and rereading—the message, his smile is wide enough to squint his eyes. His reply is short, but he hopes it conveys the affection he intends it to:
Your v day message is way better than quackity’s
He may not have realized that his friends would even acknowledge Valentine’s Day, let alone take the effort to send him commemorative messages. He thought single people usually hate the holiday. It’s always made him feel lonely and undesired, considering he’s never really had a valentine. It doesn’t cross his mind that this is maybe the first Valentine’s Day that he’s woken up and had something to smile about.
A tiny bit of guilt at his own lack of effort starts to nag at him, so he googles “minecraft Valentine’s Day card meme” and tries to find something funny to send as a reply. The one he chooses is a picture of a Creeper that says “being around you makes me want to explode.” He sends it to the feral boys group chat, and surprisingly only George replies with an inappropriate sex joke.
There’s a knock at his bedroom door. Dream comes in before waiting for permission.
“My mom brought over some cupcakes,” he says, extending his hand, a tray of pink and white cakes balanced atop it.
“Jesus, I didn’t realize how important Valentine’s Day was to all you people,” he says, but his mouth is already enveloping one of the frosting-covered baked goods, so the sound comes out muffled.
Dream laughs at him as he scoops some icing onto his finger. “Any reason to celebrate this year, I guess,” he suggests, and then Sapnap gets it entirely. He’s spent many months of the past year actively trying to avoid becoming cynical and reclusive, but it hasn’t worked all of the time. Maybe turning every small thing into the biggest possible instance of joy that it can be is the only way to make sure you don’t want to die.
Dream leaves his room with the cupcakes, but not before Sapnap’s able to steal one more for later. The top of his pick has an L written on it in icing, but he can’t recall what word it once belonged to.
He sits down at his desk and turns on his computer to find something to fill the silence in his room.
He thinks he’ll look for a new anime to watch, but before he begins his search, he sees on his Discord that Karl is online. He prefers his friends as a distraction from the silence over anything else, so he starts a call and hopes Karl will join.
Of course Karl joins. He wonders why it was even a question in his mind.
“Nick, my angel,” is the greeting he chooses upon answering. The pet names Karl gives him always make him blush, no matter how often he hears them. Karl gives love to his friends so tenderly and so sincerely. Sapnap feels as though he’s learned a lot about how to love freely simply by being in proximity to someone as open as him. Karl makes him want to try it today, being as loving with his words as he feels in his chest. ‘Tis the season, after all.
“Karl, my beloved,” he offers in return, beaming.
“Aw, no, I called you that this morning. You can’t steal my word,” says Karl, his tone a playful scold.
Karl’s right. He had already endeared him with my beloved in his text earlier. But it’s not like it’s the most original address—it’s literally a meme. Still, Sapnap aches to make him smile, so he tries again.
“Karl, my—my sweet… boy,” he finally says, which earns him the beautiful sound of Karl’s joyful laughter pouring through the call. He can’t help but feel accomplished every time he does that, every time he can make him laugh.
“I am a sweet boy, how did you know?”
“First-hand experience.”
The two of them laugh again. Together, they produce the most giddy, bubbly sound.
The greatest love and the closest thing to romance Sapnap has ever had in his life is friendship. Flirty, honest, affectionate friendship, the only thing going untouched being, well, touch. He remembers once reading a Wikipedia article on Romantic friendship and feeling like it described his relationships with Dream and George at the time, even though they didn’t have any physical element to their friendship. Yet, when he imagined meeting them in person, touch was there every time—hugging, cuddling, sometimes even sharing beds and holding hands. He never thought George would be reciprocal to that level of intimacy, maybe some cuddling when he’s in the right mood. But Dream has always been open to physical affection, since the day they met. Sapnap loathes himself for flinching away from something he’s wanted for years.
And now, since finding himself deeply enamoured with his new friend Karl, he can’t stop wanting to hold him. Hold him in his arms, hold him around the waist, hold his hand while they sit together and do nothing. The urge he can’t seem to shake is how badly he wants to cradle Karl’s face in his hands, examine every part in detail, draw him in closer…
“Karl, has anyone asked you to be their valentine yet?” he blurts out fast, like he’s realized a sudden need for urgency.
“Hmm… about a hundred people on Twitter,” he answers, a smile in his voice.
“Dammit,” Sapnap laughs. “Anyone you’re planning to say yes to?”
“No, probably not. I feel like that would cause some tension in my indirects.”
Sapnap lets out a round chuckle at the thought. He wonders how Karl is able to sustain his determination to make everyone happy, all of the time.
“That’s good news for me then,” he says playfully. “Do you think then maybe you’d want to be mine?”
Immediately, he regrets the way he phrases it.
“Not like, mine mine, just like, my valentine… you know, for the day. Valentine’s Day.”
“Jesus Christ, Sapnap,” Karl giggles. The words aren’t separate from the giggle, but instead roll over it, like Karl is made of laughter on the inside. “I knew what you meant.”
“Good,” Sapnap sighs, relieved.
“I’d love to be your valentine, Sapnap.” When he says it his voice sounds wistful, feminine. Like he’s acting out the part of a protagonist in a romantic period piece.
“Good,” Sapnap says again. He rests his hands on his cheeks and feels that they’re warm.
“What does being your valentine entail?”
“Um…” He hadn’t necessarily thought this far ahead. “I… take you on a date.”
Karl gasps, as if Sapnap hadn’t given him the most obvious response. “What kind of date?”
“Uhhh… How about a um—a Minecraft date. Yeah, let’s go on a Minecraft date.”
The delighted hum Karl makes at the suggestion leads Sapnap to believe he likes the idea. He grins to himself, satisfied. The rapid thrumming of his pulse is a puzzling distraction, but he resolves to ignore it.
“I’ll go on a Minecraft date with you,” Karl says as Sapnap stares at the game’s start menu on his computer, “on one condition.”
“Oh yeah?” Sapnap says, teasing. “What’s that?”
“You have to turn on your face cam so I can be reminded of how handsome you are.”
Sapnap breathes in, tugs at his bottom lip with his teeth, feels his blush spread higher up his cheeks. Throwing out compliments is so natural to Karl, so obviously easy. Sapnap should be used to them by now. And yet, receiving them always catches him off guard.
“You know what, Karl, anything for you.” He first opens his phone camera, fixes his hair and readjusts the hem of the t-shirt that he slept in. Then, he opens his Discord window, turns on his camera, and waits for Karl to do the same.
When he does, Sapnap thinks for a brief moment, if he were to compliment Karl’s appearance, he wouldn’t use the word handsome. There’s a word that floats around in his brain whenever he looks at Karl, but he’s never quite been able to grab ahold of it, pin it down under his finger and read what it says, until now.
Beautiful. Karl is beautiful.