Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sapnap gave a loud, mildly obnoxious yawn from his place behind the counter and kicked his feet up onto the stool next to him. He wasn’t really sure where George had gone while he spaced out but the brunette had definitely disappeared off to somewhere. Though realistically, he probably went to visit their blonde friend from the Claire’s a few stores down. Wouldn’t be the first time this week. Hell, George had already taken several suspiciously long bathroom breaks during today’s shift.

Still, the man huffed a sigh and stretched out his arms, relishing the gentle cracks and pops that came with it. The store was busy as always, filled with little kids flitting about with unstuffed bears and tiny cardboard hangers of stuffed animal clothing. It was more peaceful than usual today though. Sapnap hadn’t seen a pair of angry parents fighting over a bearskin, no one had spilled any drinks, and not a single kid had thrown a bad enough tantrum that he had to kick them out yet. He decided it was a relatively good day, even if his luck would probably pay him back tenfold for the fortune he’d had so far.

He chewed idly at his painted nail, ignoring the weird taste that came with nail polish. He was just as good at ignoring the suspicious and mildly disturbed looks that he got from the adults roaming the store, simply glad he hadn’t been verbally hassled for his clothing choices yet. Sapnap didn’t really care much but he didn’t fit in very well with the light, cheery atmosphere of Build-A-Bear. The store itself was nice, well-kept, and bigger than a fair portion of the other stores in the mall. The only thing that Sapnap didn’t like about it was the fact it was a franchise, eat the rich and all. 

There wasn’t much for the customers to be upset about either. Nothing was wrong with the store itself, obviously, so any complaints about it was because of the employees themselves. Their manager always chalked it down to two things when it came to complaints about the employees: it was either because of their attitude or how they presented themselves. All the employees, few as they were, treated both each other and anyone who came into the store respectfully. Sapnap was known for having a bit of trouble when it came to “behaving” but even he treated customers well. Therefore, the only reason their little establishment had so many complaints was because of their presentation.

Everyone else dressed accordingly. They fit in well with the scene aesthetically, even if their actual personalities were kind of skewed. George dressed like he attended some stuck-up private school but with a distasteful amount of blue. It was only worse considering that George still dressed like that at a whopping 24 years old. Fundy wore ears and a tail to work which fit in strangely well with the whole stuffed animal part of Build-A-Bear. Tubbo either wore a sweater and suspenders or a dark green button-up, which doesn’t really need much more explanation. Tommy more just hung around and didn’t actually work but even he wore a bright red bandana. He looked like less of an employee and more like a weird human mascot.

Meanwhile, Sapnap was often told that he dressed something like a so-called emo. He dialed it down for work but he still stuck out like a sore thumb among everything else. At the moment, he wore his less intimidating pair of combat boots and enough chains to rival Hot Topic’s collection. Not that he would tell anyone the ridiculous amount of money he’d spent on chains alone, but he was dressed pretty nicely. He even wore a collared shirt with his sweater and the ripped jeans that made his ass look good. 

He gave a sigh and kicked idly at the crappy stool, fixating on the way it wobbled without falling and scraped harshly against the floor. While he childishly repeated the action and tried to see how long he could go without knocking it over, George had somehow snuck back into the store and behind the counter. The chair fell to the ground with a loud crash after he startled, much to the amusement of his coworker.

“I wasn’t even gone that long, Sap,” George laughed. “Miss me that much?” The older gave a hard pinch to his upper thigh in jest, laughing more when Sapnap cried out and tried to swat his hand away. Ignoring his giggles, the raven picked the stool back up and motioned for him to take it. He dodged a playful shove to his shoulder, rolling his eyes fondly at the other.

Sapnap quickly gave a half-smile and a wave to an entering customer, trying to make up for the relatively loud scene they’d just caused. The woman still gave them a judgemental look, raising an eyebrow as she looked him up and down. He just waved again, not letting his smile fade until she left. God, he hated people. “If we get another lecture from the manager, it’s your fault.” He huffed a sigh. “I hope you didn’t give Dream the same trouble. You know he’s been getting on Sam’s nerves lately.”

Now George rolled his eyes, shrugging his bag off his shoulder and dropping it close to the counter. “It’s not my fault! He asked me to go over, anything that happens is his own fault.” He gave a quick glance over at the clothes section, raising an eyebrow warningly at a child who had an outfit dangerously close to their bag. They quickly put it back, smiling sheepishly at George before he turned back to Sapnap. 

“He pretty much scarred Tommy after he followed you back in here limping last week, George. Really?” The brunette just shrugged indifferently, mouth twitching with a satisfied smirk. Sapnap just scoffed and kicked at one of the legs of his stool. “You’re terrible. He only puts up with you because he’s just as bad.”

“Whatever,” he laughs in response, running a hand through his hair to fix the effect of whatever had gone down while he was gone. “Someone wants to stuff their bear. Go help them, Snapmap.”

Sapnap stretched upwards again and hummed a little when his shoulder popped. “I said to quit calling me that. You have, like, an arsenal of bad nicknames to use. Choose another one, asshat.” He stood, admiring the gentle thud of his boots. Man, he loves these shoes. “I don’t get why it has to be me but fine. You owe me though, you’ve been disappearing all day.”

“I can’t help that he’s insatiable,” came the half-hearted reply, drawing an exaggerated gag from the other. George smirked at the response, settling into his stool and leaning against the countertop. “Not that I mind, though. He’s pretty fun to watch and his mouth is good. I can tell you more if you like?”

Sapnap wrinkled his nose in disgust and hopped over the counter. “No way. I hate you, by the way.” George just shrugged again. “Tell me if a cute guy comes in, yeah?” It was a running joke between the two. Cute guys hardly walked into Build-A-Bear without a girlfriend attached to them and Sapnap was ridiculously picky anyway. George didn’t know the second part all that well though and Sapnap figured that he’d earned it after how much George had been disappearing.

With that, he walked over to the machine and gave the kid in line an awkward smile, readjusting the name tag on his shirt. It was all pretty much routine at this point, turning on all the buttons and flipping the switches but he made a show of making it look more difficult than it was. Got the kids hyped up, usually. 

“Hey there, man. Ready to do this?” The kid nodded, looking at the man next to him with a big grin. “That’s a pretty cool one. She comes with her own sound and stuff too if you want one. I have one at home too, she keeps me company sometimes.” He gently took the bearskin from the boy and checked over the machine again before going to stuff it. 

“You have one?” The little boy asked, watching. “What’s her name?”

Sapnap grinned. “I named her after a fish I had before. Beckerson.” The kid nodded. “Kind of a weird name for a stuffed bunny but I like it. I think she does too, but that’s just a hunch.” He started off with the limbs, as usual, and tried to avoid overstuffing them. 

The kid tried to sit on the floor only to be pulled back up by the man. Sapnap knew their floors were pretty clean but in all honesty? He wouldn’t advise sitting on it either. “You don’t look like you’d like a pink bunny.” Sapnap simply shrugged, almost finished with stuffing the doll already. “You look kind of scary, actually.”

“Not scary,” he gave the kid a pointed look and took the bunny off the machine, “just fashionable.” He plucked a little stuffed red heart from the container and held it out. Technically, he was supposed to ask if the bear was stuffed well enough but he trusted his stuffing instincts. 

He took the heart and held it up to the light. “What’s this for?” The raven cracked a grin and held up the pink bunny so her open back faced the kid.

“It’s going to be her heart. Simple enough, right?” The boy nodded. “Alright, now, do exactly as I tell you and we can give her the very best heart. It’s not hard so don’t make it difficult. Got it, kid?” Another nod.

“Now, warm it up. Put it between your palms and rub it so she’ll have a super warm heart. But, uh, not so aggressively. Okay, good, now shake it but not too hard. We want to wake up the heart, not give it motion sickness.” He waited for the kid to finish shaking it to continue. “Rub it on your nose so your bear ‘nose’ you and hope she’ll make puns that are more bear-able. Pat it on your back so she’ll always have your back. Rub it on your knees so she’ll always ‘kneed’ you, which isn’t actually a really healthy mindset to have so...do it because you’ll ‘kneed’ her. On your toes, so she’s toe-tally awesome but she already is so it’s kind of pointless.”

He grinned. “Now, my favorite part. Close your eyes. Hold it real tight in your hands, just like that, and make a wish. Don’t say it out loud though or it won’t come true.” Sapnap looked towards the man next to the kid, playing on his phone and having absolutely no regard for the kid whose name Sapnap didn’t even know. Still, he semi-fondly smiled when the kid finished making his wish. “You can choose whether or not you kiss the heart. And once you’re done, I’ll put it in her. You ready, little man?”

The little kid grinned. “She’s gonna have the best heart. I put, like, half my soul into it.” Sapnap laughed and took the little heart, tucking it into the doll’s stuffing with more care than he really ought to have. “Does that not hurt her? To put it in and to stitch her up?”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah, probably. But she doesn’t have her new heart in her yet so she can’t feel it when we put it in. And I don’t think she minds being stitched up, either. All the guys we have are super brave and excited to go home with their new friends. They’re all ready to get stitched but I’m sure it helps to have you with us. She’s probably so excited that she can’t even feel it.” The kid’s smile widened as Sapnap began stitching her up. He made sure to hold the rabbit’s hand while he did it, squeezing it briefly. “There, all done.” He handed her to the kid, who took her and not-so-gently squeezed the living daylights out of her. 

“Thank you!” The boy quickly raced off with the doll, leaving behind the man who was probably supposed to be watching him. Sapnap’s gaze flickered between the kid and his unattentive guardian, narrowing his eyes when the man took a few minutes to realize he was gone. Despite the fact the kid already ran off, Sapnap gave a small wave before turning away.

“Georgie, I’m bored,” Sapnap complained, leaning all his weight against the brunette. George attempted to push him off but only earned a sharp poke to the ribs. He yelped and swatted half-heartedly at Sapnap’s face. “Okay, okay, Jesus, stop hitting me. Dude, that hurts.” George just laughed and watched as Sapnap pushed himself off the shorter and collapsed onto the small amount of counter he could lay on.

He groaned as he lay his cheek against the cold surface. “It’s supposed to. Maybe then you’ll quit attacking me at any chance,” the British man responded with fake annoyance in his tone. Sapnap grumbled incoherently, only eliciting another laugh. He heard a notification buzz from beneath the counter, probably George’s bag, and watched as George pulled it up and went to grab his phone. When he was pulling it out, Sapnap smacked it out of his hands and watched it clatter across the tile. “Sapnap! What the hell was that for?”

“It’s probably Dream,” Sapnap deadpanned with a clearly disappointed expression. “It’s probably Dream summoning you for another booty call or whatever and you absolutely are not leaving this store again until your shift ends.” George rolled his eyes and stood to go grab his phone again but Sapnap kicked lightly at his leg. 

George reached over to ruffle the younger’s hair, smacking the back of his head before going to get his phone. “Relax, I’m not going to leave again. Not that I’ve even been gone that much.” Sapnap laughed bitterly from his place where he was all but melting into the counter. “I haven’t! You’re overreacting.”

“You’ve left like four times today! And every time, you come back with this totally messed up look and I know exactly what you’re leaving for. I hate people like that. You used to, too! You’re turning into a cishet white boy but, like, gay!”

George opened his mouth to reply, probably annoyingly, but was cut off by a more consistent vibration that was more noticeable than the message notifications. He answered it without addressing the look of disgust Sapnap shot towards him. “Hey, Dream? What’s up, baby?” Sapnap gave a gagging motion and then turned away. George got quieter though as he turned around, back to the counter like he was looking for privacy. “I mean, maybe? It’ll take a lot of convincing, though.” 

The raven scoffed and immediately sat up, rejuvenated by anger when he realized George was talking about leaving again. While right next to the person he was trying to evade. Without grabbing anything but his phone, Sapnap stood and walked straight out of the store with the strong urge to do it while flipping George off. The Brit stared like he’d been betrayed, making it harder for Sapnap to follow through with his plan. 

Sapnap ran out of his direct line of sight and pulled out his phone to see several strongly worded messages from George. He just let him know that he was now taking one of his four owed breaks and muted any notifications from George, only a bit disturbed by his own impulsiveness. He didn’t get far before realizing he had absolutely nowhere to hang out while rebelling, decidedly sitting on the mall benches not too far from Build-A-Bear. 

He sighed into the busy air, watching as a pair walked out of the nearby exit. He waved at them even if they didn’t see him and were even less likely to wave back. Sapnap slumped into the uncomfortable bench and grumbled a bit to himself about how it was somehow more exciting in the store. Probably because George was there. Not that George would be there if he took Dream’s stupid summoning or whatever.

Either way, Sapnap found himself to be bored and alone on a Saturday afternoon. As a nineteen-year-old. He realized probably a bit too late that there was nothing for him to be taking a break for but he considered himself nothing if not petty and stubborn. He’d spend fifteen minutes sitting outside his own workplace if he had to. 

Despite that, he got bored of sitting on a bench pretty quickly and opted to walk around. He debated visiting Claire’s but honestly? Not Dream’s biggest fan at the moment. He ended up drifting towards the indoor mall’s tattoo parlor, tempted to schedule an appointment with Techno for his next piercing just to spite Dream. He planned his next piercing to be a tongue one anyway and he highly doubted Claire’s did those. Inkpocalypse, the admittedly cheesy name of the aforementioned parlor, did kind of have actual trained professionals who didn’t learn piercing from a half-baked training manual.

The parlor was strangely close to Build-A-Bear Workshop. If he strained for it, he could see into the store from his normal place behind the counter. The distance between the doors of the two stores was probably around twenty feet, less than thirty. The raven found it funny that you could, hypothetically, walk out of his own pastel and bright workplace to see someone getting decorative ink stabbed into their skin. He wasn’t sure which one was built more recently but he had to commend them on that one.

Knocking on the doorframe, Sapnap peeked his head in and looked around for any sign of life. When there was none, he walked in completely and looked around to see if he’d missed anything or if the store’s employees were more reckless than he thought they were. Even Wilbur, pretty much always stoned whenever he was on shift, didn’t seem like he’d just leave the store unattended. And he talked to a blue sheep tattoo on his arm.

With a somewhat disappointed frown, Sapnap wandered over to the backroom that the store had. Even though he was on relatively good terms with the employees, he couldn’t say he’d ever been in the room reserved for just the employees. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious what was back there. As interesting as they were, the aforementioned employees were pretty secretive about what went on in the tattoo parlor. 

Sapnap made his way to the back of the counter before he froze. Speaking technically, no one was around to stop him right now. Unless there were security cameras, and he was almost positive Phil didn’t think there was much use for it, there wasn’t really any reason not to. If you didn’t consider moral boundaries and all that. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had any malicious intent. He was simply curious and bored. And a little pissed off at his friends but that had nothing to do with this.

Figuring it would be more suspicious to close the parlor’s door, he left it open as he went to investigate the closed-off room. The college student let himself in and released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

Long story short, it was kind of plain. Just solid black walls with various obscure inspirational quotes on posters. Something about blood gods and Techno never dying? He was also fairly sure there was something about being in love with e-girls but he tried not to look at them too closely. There were stacks of sketchbooks probably full of potential tattoo designs and a dartboard with an enlarged picture of an ear on it. The dartboard had several darts in it, mostly centered on the lobe and cartilage. Sapnap figured that it was probably Techno’s. There was a guitar and a few notebooks that followed the same color scheme, split black and white, as Ranboo’s hair. He’d heard that Ranboo had some memory problems and was seen occasionally scribbling in his notebooks. There was also a weird amount of Phil’s exact hats stacked atop one another in a corner. That one weirded him out a bit.

Sapnap snapped himself out of his intensive observation to check the time again, finding that his fifteen minutes were already almost up. “Jesus, how long did I stare at Phil’s hat pile?” he mumbled to himself and went to open the door. However, it opened before he could, swinging inwards into his face and colliding with his nose. It started bleeding only moments after, Sapnap moving to hold his hand under his nose to avoid bleeding on the carpet.

It stopped after it hit him, leaving him time to stumble backward while it finished opening. He expected to see an angry Techno or a weirded-out Ranboo but came face to face with someone unfamiliar. The person blinked confusedly at Sapnap and the flow of blood, mouth agape as he struggled to find words. Sapnap looked sheepishly at the ground and waited for the other to say something. Just as he was about to ask the stranger in the colorful sweater who they were, they spoke first. 

“You don’t work here,” the stranger accused, seemingly taking no notice of the blood dripping into the raven’s palm. 

Eloquently, Sapnap promptly responded, “Shit.”

Chapter Text

Karl was pretty sure he could trust his young coworker but it definitely did not feel like it as he followed Ranboo away from his new workplace. He wanted to argue that this was definitely far from safe and they would both be fired if they got the tattoo parlor robbed but Ranboo was technically the superior between the two of them. Besides, the high schooler looked ecstatic about showing him around the mall he’d already been to dozens of times. Putting aside the very conflicting thoughts he harbored about this tour, he went along with it.

Ranboo had decided to start with the furthest area first and then work their way back. As much as he tried to keep up, Karl only remembered a few of the people they came across. He did manage to get along with Quackity from Foot Locker though so he liked to think it evened out. If he didn’t get fired, he’d have plenty of time to get to know everyone a bit better.

Sometime before they reached their own store, Ranboo excused himself to go into Build-A-Bear and see if his “platonic husband” was on shift, leaving Karl to re-enter on his own. A fond smile grew on his face when he entered, savoring the faint smell of ink and chemicals, thinly veiled by what was probably meant to be vanilla. 

Much to his relief, the store didn’t look like it was ransacked by...bandits or something. It looked the same as it did when he came to apply and the same as it did when he did his interview. The parlor was fairly bare overall aside from the random quotes all over the walls but nothing, not even a single chair, seemed out of place in the slightest.

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Somehow, he wasn’t going to be fired on the first day and he was more than grateful for it. He decided that he may have to talk to Ranboo about that later because, as nice as the kid was, leaving the store open and unsupervised during a shift was definitely not a good idea. Actually, he wondered if it would be considered disrespectful to ask Ranboo to never persuade him to do that again. Regardless, he hadn’t even done anything related to his new job but he was already exhausted. He normally only came around to stare at an attractive counter worker so he never really walked around all that much. The mall was much larger than he had previously thought, with enough variety in stores to make his head spin.

The pastel-clad man frowned a bit when he noticed that the light in the room reserved for employees was on. No one else from the store was meant to drop by today, at least based on what Ranboo had told him. He figured it was nothing much to worry about, considering the state of the main area, but still approached with caution. The shadow of a person stood just before the door, close enough that Karl wouldn’t be able to open it without alerting whoever was inside. Though, it was still immensely concerning that a possible robber was right there . Bracing himself, Karl flew the door open and only stopped when the heavy door came into contact with something that was definitely solid. He slowly pulled it back, hoping he hit something that would at least inconvenience whoever was there in case he’d ended up putting himself in danger.

However, he didn’t know how to react to the familiar person standing before him, nose dripping blood while they attempted not to bleed onto the nice carpet of the room. Karl could only blink dazedly as he watched the man stare back with a mix of fear and confusion. If the rambunctious man wasn’t a good enough reason to remember him, his ever-present headband was a dead give away to anyone who’d seen him. He wore the thin decorative apron of his own job, which clashed harshly with the grunge-esque clothing he normally wore. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that the other didn’t recognize him from his multiple trips to Build-A-Bear.

Before he could think of anything better to say, Karl blurted, “You don’t work here.” He cringed internally at how accusational it sounded. He watched the other’s gaze shift from him to the puddle of blood steadily growing in his hand. Karl wanted to say more, to try saying something that would help with the situation at hand, but his mouth went dry and his jaw seemed to lock against his will.

Karl didn’t have time to linger on the man’s name printed on his nametag, Sapnap , before he began stuttering his way through a response. After a moment of unintentional tripping on his words, the raven cursed loud and clear. Karl wanted to almost laugh at that but he suddenly remembered the fact he’d definitely hit Sapnap’s nose with the door when he opened it. 

“Ah, crap, you should come out of there. Before you, um, bleed on the floor in there.” The other just tilted his head and Karl gently ushered him out of the room before he could speak again. “It would be difficult to clean up anything stuck in that carpet. It’ll be easier out here,” the elder explained before clumsily scurrying off to find napkins. He considered himself lucky when he found a roll of paper towels behind the counter, grabbing the entire roll and taking it back to Sapnap. 

He ripped off several and placed a crumpled one in his clean hand. The raven immediately tilted his head back and held it to his nose, coughing a little. Karl pressed another to the dirtied hand and then shot it towards the nearby trash can that he hadn’t realized he’d known was there. He rummaged around again and brought back a bottle of hand sanitizer to find Sapnap trying to stare at him around the napkin held to his nose. The brunette held his gaze for an embarrassingly long moment, caught in the eyes that were so black they appeared blue, before catching the redness gathering in Sapnap’s cheeks. 

After pumping a small amount of hand sanitizer into Sapnap’s hand, he helped him switch out the napkin at his nose and cleared his throat. “You, uh, you work at the place across the hall.” The raven raised an eyebrow at him and nodded, waiting for another comment to follow and looking confused when nothing followed. “It’s an observation. I’m--I’m making an observation. You don’t work here.”

“Right,” Sapnap agreed with a soft murmur, “I do. You don’t work here either, though.” His speech came out as slightly nasally, strained considering his head’s position. While neither had said it, they were both accusing each other of the same thing: breaking into a place they were not supposed to be. Arguably, it looked bad either way. 

“I started working here today.” The other looked suspicious, but Karl just giggled and fumbled for the light switch. “I was with Ranboo. He kind of ditched me to go find out if his friend was on shift.” 

That seemed to do it if the tension bleeding from Sapnap’s shoulders said anything. “He’s not.” Sapnap tilted his head forward again, still holding the bloodied napkin to it but only sniffling a bit. “Tubbo doesn’t have a shift until next week, he’s been slammed with tests and stuff. His teachers are a bitch,” Sapnap offers after seeing Karl’s confused expression, misunderstanding the reason for it. He just laughed again and finally flipped the lights on, allowing him to see the other man better.

Sapnap was beyond pretty , in Karl’s opinion. He often visited the mall with friends mainly in hopes that he could get a passing glance at him, but he’d never seen him so closely. The bits of skin he could see were a tan and olive-tinted color, pleasantly lit with the rosiness in his cheeks. He had high cheekbones that his long eyelashes brushed against so gently that it seemed almost unreasonable in contrast to his sharp jawline. Even with a bloody towel held to his nose, the man was unbearably ethereal in the low fluorescent lights of the tattoo parlor. He looked so effortlessly pretty that Karl froze for a moment, choked up as Sapnap stared back with a smile so small that he couldn’t tell if it was flirtatious or shy. Maybe it was both, judging by the awkward and flustered half-giggle he gave when he noticed Karl’s shameless staring.

The tattooist cleared his throat and willed the heat in his cheeks to fade while he pushed a couple of plastic chairs back towards Sapnap. Taking one, the raven’s nose twitched as if testing how painful it’d feel. If the wince he gave afterwards was any indication, Karl would guess it was a lot. “My nose itches,” Sapnap unintentionally whined, eliciting another giggle from Karl. He gave another sniffle and then stuck his tongue out briefly in disgust at the metallic taste left in his mouth and almost set the brunette into another giggle fit. A long moment passed before he spoke again. “Why weren’t you here? If you, uh, started working here. Not even George, my extremely flaky friend, would leave the store unattended.”

Karl winced at that one. “Ranboo wanted to show me around the mall. Which was really nice, I’m super grateful, but I don’t think that was really proper workplace etiquette. At least, not in any job I know of.”

“Oh. Yeah, Ranboo is nice. He’s a bit scatterbrained sometimes, but he doesn’t have bad intentions.” Karl nodded in agreement, trying not to make it too obvious that he was more focused on how Sapnap’s mouth pulled into the tiniest grin as he talked. “He’s just trying to be nice, even if the method is a little unorthodox. Everyone here is nice enough, actually. Mostly.”

“You sound like you know your stuff. Do you know everyone who works here?” Karl asked as he handed another napkin to Sapnap to switch out for the other one. “This is a big place. If you know everyone, I’m a little intimidated.”

Sapnap chuckled briefly at that. “Not everyone. Just, like, a lot of them. I only really talk about the ones I like well enough, though. Like Puffy and Niki from Panera downstairs are pretty nice. And Schlatt from that one fancy watch place? Him too, but mostly from Quackity. Bad from Claire’s, Skeppy from Hot Topic, the main employees from both of those places. I’ll tell you who to avoid, though. There’s some people you just don’t want to be mixed up with.” Looking unsure what to do with the used towel, Sapnap gingerly held it away from both his and Karl’s clothing until Karl threw it away himself. “A lot of the people I know are ones who’ve been here since before I was working here. I visited this mall for a while before I started working here. I only picked it up since I started college and ramen isn’t as cheap as you’d think it is. Not for a mega-broke college student anyway.”

Karl inhaled sharply, like a backwards sigh. “I don’t envy you. I did an apprenticeship before I moved here so I didn’t have to deal with college and expensive pre-packaged noodles.” The raven laughed, momentarily catching Karl off guard by how nice of a sound it was. “Minimum wage?”

“Minimum wage,” Sapnap confirmed with a nod. “I like the job, though. It’s annoying and the manager is an actual asshat and sometimes the heater or the air conditioner breaks but...I guess it’s not so bad. That’s not to say I don’t think about burning it down sometimes, though.”

“Maybe don’t tell your manager about that last one.” 

“Solid advice, man.” He leaned into the back of the chair, finally relaxing after hunching over for however long he’d been sitting. “Don’t tell the manager how much I want to burn down the building I work at. I think I’d get fired, arrested, and get my mental health poked around in for that. No thanks. You better not have a loose tongue,” Sapnap questioned with a thick raised eyebrow. 

Karl also relaxed into his own chair, checking the door every now and then to make sure Ranboo wasn’t planning on running in out of nowhere. “My lips are sealed,” he reassured Sapnap with a smile. “Pinkie promise?”

“When I don’t even know your name? Scandalous,” Sapnap gasped teasingly. “I’m Sapnap by the way. I work at Build-A-Bear, but you know that one already.”

The brunette hummed in agreement, watching Sapnap cautiously peel the towel from his nose. When he found that his nose had stopped leaking like a bad faucet, Karl spoke again. “Karl. And, well, I work here but you know that one too. I specialize in tattoos more but I can do that and piercings just fine.”

Sapnap nodded again and took a moment to let it all sink in. “Well, thanks Karl. For helping me fix my nose.”

“I was kind of the one who made the problem so don’t worry about it.” Karl took a deep breath and scratched at the back of his neck, preparing himself for possible rejection. “Maybe I could take you to the food court sometime, though? To--to make up for it.” He looked away immediately, hoping he wasn’t given away by the way his flush managed to climb all the way to the tips of his ears.

Still, he caught the smallest hint of a smile even with his head turned. “Like a date?” Karl winced at the bluntness of the question and saw Sapnap’s smile drop as quickly as it came. “Oh, my bad. I was, uh, kidding by the way. If it made you uncomfortable.”

Before Karl could argue that no, he meant exactly like a date , Sapnap jolted at the sound of shouting from outside the store. A quick glance out of the shop’s door showed a brown-haired man paired with the weirdest pair of sunglasses that Karl had seen yelling from just outside of Build-A-Bear. He looked to be looking for something, shouting something he couldn’t make out. 

“Fuck, I forgot I was supposed to be heading back,” Sapnap groaned and got to his feet so quickly that he almost fell. “George just might kill me. Time check?”

Karl fumbled for his phone and flashed the lock screen at him. It earned another curse and another twitch of Sapnap’s nose, which just resulted in yet another mumbled profanity. “Bud, your nose looks kind of bruised,” Karl stopped him, staring at the discolored and slightly swollen state of his nose. “I really think I should check that out. See if we can get you ice or something to help with that swelling.”

Sapnap gave a bright smile and shook his head. “Nah, I’ve had worse. George is really petty in the way that he’ll find a way for everything to circle back to you if he finds me here. Better safe than sorry.” The other nodded dejectedly, humming in acknowledgement. “But, hey, you still owe me something to eat. We can exchange numbers, maybe?”

“Yeah!” Karl answered immediately, all but throwing his phone at the other. Sapnap gave him his with a little laugh and started typing into Karl’s phone, the chipped black nails catching Karl’s attention. Karl cleared his throat and started inputting his own, impulsively adding a purple heart emoji for the contact name and handing it back. “I, uh, I can help you fix up your nails too. If you want it.”

Sapnap stared down at his nails as if he hadn’t even realized they may need to be fixed. “I mean, you can, but I figured I’d just paint over them.” Noticing the hard shudder Karl gave at that, he gave a small shrug. “Fine by me, then. Text you later?”

“Yep,” Karl tried with minimal awkwardness, offering a small wave as Sapnap walked out. “I’m honked.” He groaned and slumped over in his chair, still curled tightly into a ball when Ranboo came in.

Chapter Text

As much as Sapnap, like anyone, hated working under a shitty boss in shitty conditions for a shitty amount of money, he came to the conclusion at one point that he may actually hate off days more. He lived in a shared apartment off campus with George and Dream so it wasn’t as if he could hang out there or sleep in. He spent enough time at work around people that he preferred to avoid spending his off days hanging out with people unless he actually wanted to. And since he didn’t have anything to do on days he didn’t work, he lacked an excuse to not do the pile of unfinished work that only grew by the day. Working sucked, but not working sucked more.

But that was exactly why he was looking forward to this upcoming Saturday. 

He and Karl had managed to set up a good time and day for their lunch, if it could be called that. Normally he would’ve been much more reserved and reluctant about spending an entire meal in the presence of someone he barely knew but at this point? Karl wasn’t really someone he barely knew anymore. Sapnap could easily say that they spent more time talking than time not talking. Much to his professors’ disdain, he’d made it a habit to text Karl in the middle of class, even setting him up in a video call in class once and struggling not to laugh throughout the entire thing. 

Sapnap tried not to think about it too hard but he acted differently around him. He didn’t know when it happened and had even less of an idea as to why, but it was undeniable. He’d always made it a point not to depend on anyone too heavily but he constantly found himself leaning in Karl’s words and the little promises he always made. Whether it was promising to try sausage on pizza or swearing he’d get Sapnap to wear nail polish colors that weren’t black, he actually trusted that they’d happen. Maybe not now, but something about Karl felt earnest in a way that was different from Dream’s loyalty but self-serving actions and George’s good intentions but difficult nature. He couldn’t pinpoint why but he already trusted Karl a dangerous amount. And that, that was somewhat terrifying.

Still, he couldn’t fight down the strange giddiness he had for getting lunch with Karl. After consulting Dream to the point that the blonde threatened to stuff him in a trash bag and call it a day, he settled on something more adventurous than what he used for work but not enough that he’d get kids asking to touch the spikes on anything he wore. 

They’d decided to meet outside the mall entrance close to where they worked so that they could walk in together but he ended up getting there earlier than he intended. He was pleasantly surprised to find that, twenty minutes before they were supposed to meet, Karl was already sitting on a bench and scrolling idly through his phone. The brunette immediately found his gaze and Sapnap swore he watched his face light up when he saw him. He was wearing the same jacket he’d worn when they first met but his nails looked to be painted to match its colors this time around. He half-jogged to meet Sapnap halfway, hands stuck together in the pocket of his hoodie.

“Hey,” Karl said brightly, a giggle rising in his throat. He immediately walked to his side, slinging an arm around Sapnap’s shoulders and sharing the strange amount of warmth he had for someone who seemed to wear such a small amount of layers. Then again, he seemed to wear jackets all the time so maybe his internal temperature was just naturally higher. He didn’t lean into the touch but Sapnap definitely didn’t make an attempt to push it away, instead opting to shift a bit closer so Karl’s arm wasn’t in an awkward position.

The raven laughed and shook his head fondly, gently nudging Karl in the ribs with his elbow. “Hey yourself.” Even once they were inside, Karl didn’t give any indication that he wanted to move so he didn’t move either. “What do you want to eat? Do you even know what we have in the food court?”

Karl gave a sheepish shrug. “I know there’s an ice cream place. That, uh, that’s about it.” Sapnap laughed, only kept from doubling over by Karl’s grip on his shoulder. “I’ve only been here for, like, two weeks. Give me a break, Sappy.” Sapnap struck him in the ribs again, mostly to hear the exaggerated complaint he’d get in return. 

When they were walking past a somewhat reflective store window, Sapnap caught a glimpse of the two of them walking together. It was laughable, really, how much they clashed in looks alone. Heavy boots laced up over his ripped jeans, chains gently jangling at every move, three layers stacked atop one another simply for the aesthetic, and a spiked collar that he knew looked badass even if it earned him weird looks. On the other hand, Karl had on the most well done eyeliner Sapnap had ever seen, dressed in this loose colorful sweater, a few flower pins pushed into his hoodie, and what was almost definitely several necklaces and bracelets made out of glow sticks. Not to mention the weirdly professional-looking paint on his nails. And, as if they couldn’t push against stereotypes any further, Sapnap with his spiked accessories was pressed into Karl’s side with a colorful arm draped around him. 

He could barely keep himself from laughing to avoid alarming the other with his observation. Still, it made him smile as they walked past Inkpocalypse and Build-A-Bear. The raven hadn’t noticed that Karl was attempting to get his attention until those painted nails were snapping in his face. It took him by surprise and he stumbled enough that he’d have fallen if not for the other. “Hey, are you okay? You kind of...zoned out there.” Sapnap was flooded with warmth at the look of relief Karl had when he nodded, breath stuttering for a moment before he cleared his throat. “If you’re sure then we should probably get going, lunch break ends soon.”

“I forgot you were on shift today,” Sapnap admitted with a low hum. “I don’t have anything to do so I can hang around the store with you if you want. Keep you company, talk your ear off, that kind of thing. Anything you want.”

“You sound like you’re offering a bad advertisement deal.” The man giggled at his own remark. “Like, uh, ‘this is a one-time offer, don’t miss your chance!’”

“Order now and I’ll throw in a good ol’ platonic hand holding. Best in the mall, I’ll have you know.”

There was a brief squeeze to his shoulder as Karl laughed again, holding onto him like he’d fall otherwise. To be frank, though, Sapnap didn’t doubt that he’d fall over; there had been way too many incidents in calls where Karl would randomly yell out ‘honk’ because he ran into something. “Only--only suitable for ages 18 to 25,” the man gasped out between laughs.

“Incorrect,” Sapnap said in a matter-of-fact tone, “only available to Karl Jacobs and just Karl Jacobs. I’m not holding Dream’s hand, I don’t know where it’s been. Probably somewhere on George.” Sapnap gave his normal exaggerated gagging motion, which pulled more breathless giggles from Karl.

Bright warm brown eyes, not far off from being the color of overly milky hot cocoa, met Sapnap’s deep black ones. Karl’s were partially obscured by the apples of his cheeks solely because of how big his smile was, the sight alone making Sapnap feel devastatingly close to flustered giggles for someone who barely knew how. He refused to acknowledge it though, simply shifting his position to pull a hand up from his side and holding it palm up next to Karl’s.

“Want a test trial?” he offered with a smirk that bordered too close to fond for his own liking.

Releasing his grip on Sapnap’s shoulder, Karl flexed his fingers and hovered his hand just above Sapnap’s calloused one. Just before their hands touched, Karl leaned in closely to his ear and whispered, like it was a secret, “You wish, pretty boy.” The brunette jerked away in that moment to start running towards the food court, looking back along the way to taunt Sapnap. To tease him into a chase, with wheezed giggles and narrow dodging from each other’s touch.

Sapnap didn’t hesitate for even a moment to do just that.

“Are you sharing your shift with Techno today?” Sapnap tried to ask around a mouthful of fries. Karl gave his signature laugh and motioned for him to swallow first, too busy trying not to choke on his own bite of his food to answer verbally. After a couple of swigs of a large soda and more near-choking incidents than he’d like to admit, Sapnap repeated the question and Karl shook his head.

After taking a moment to properly swallow his own food, Karl answered, “No, I’m with Wilbur again today. Techno probably won’t be in for a hot minute, he apparently doesn’t come in when he doesn’t really have to. Unlike the rest of the population, he somehow has enough money to not take every shift available.” His voice was so thick with envy that it would be very difficult to take his joke seriously. “And Wil said he’s dying his hair again anyway. Apparently, his presence in the store for the next week or two will be determined by however well Techno does at dying his eyebrows.”

Sapnap snorts a laugh at that. “Sounds about right, that’s for sure. It’s too bad though, guess I’ll have to come in another day.” With a small shrug, he took another large bite of his food. 

“Are you getting something done?” Karl frowned. “I’ll be in, I can take care of it. I barely have any appointments for the rest of my shift.”

“If it isn’t a problem, then sure,” he replied as he picked at his nails. He only stopped when Karl swatted at his hand for doing it, something Karl did say that he would do if he saw it happen. He was strangely strict about how people took care of their nails. “I just thought that Techno usually takes care of the piercings. You said you mostly did tattoos, anyway.”

“I do,” the brunette began as he wrapped up the rest of his food, “but I do piercings too. You kind of learn both in an apprenticeship. I just like doing tattoos more than putting holes in people. And quit messing with your nails, I’m supposed to do those as soon as you’re done eating.”

Sapnap idly drummed said nails on the table. “Aren’t you the one who said lunch break doesn’t last forever?” He raised an eyebrow at the elder. 

This time Karl shrugged and looked away sheepishly. “Wilbur won’t care. Besides, I said I’d do it. Can’t go back on a promise, right?” 

And there was the rush of warmth again, the faint feeling of fluttering in his middle. Because, right, Karl would totally keep a promise that Sapnap thought only he remembered from two weeks ago. Of course he would. “Guess not. But if you get yelled at for being late, I’m not being held responsible.” He laughed before Karl could answer. “Do you even have the nail polish for this? You were at work, Karl.”

Almost completely sure that he did it just because he could, Sapnap watched as Karl whipped out an entire little bag that was probably full of nail polish. He didn’t know why he was surprised, it was the same guy who claimed to like the taste of carbonation. “Of course I do, silly goose. Why wouldn’t I? Always gotta be prepared, right?”

“For painting nails?” Karl gave him an unimpressed look, raising his hands to show off the glossy and weirdly perfect-looking nails. “Okay, fine. Go ahead then, I give you full permission to do whatever you want to my hands. Nails. Whatever.”

Karl wrinkled his nose. “Hand sanitizer first, heathen. We just ate greasy food, no nail polish is sticking after that.” He stood to go find a hand sanitizer dispenser but paused when Sapnap pulled out a small bottle from his pocket. “Alright, alright, hurry up so I can get rid of that ugly paint job.”

“It isn’t ugly,” Sapnap rolled his eyes and offered some to Karl. “I did them myself, don’t be rude.”

“You have ugly paint jobs on top of ugly paint jobs,” Karl giggled. “It’s okay though, I’ll fix up these poor things so that they don’t have to look atrocious anymore.”

Sapnap held his hands out toward Karl, wiggling his fingers impatiently. “If it’s so bad then fix it already.” Karl hummed lowly as he forced Sapnap to lower his hands to the table and pulled out nail polish remover to get rid of what was already there. “Is that really necessary?”

“You should always have a clean, smooth surface to work with. Otherwise, it’ll just look like, well, that. And any normal person wouldn’t want it to look like that.” He wet a cotton ball with it, because of course he had cotton balls in a tiny bag, and Sapnap flinched away at how cold it was when he pressed it to his nail. “Sorry, it’s cold. You have to stay still though or it’ll get everywhere.”

“A warning that it was cold would’ve been helpful before you put it on me.” 

Karl giggled at that. “Geez, how do you even do your nails?” Sapnap chose not to bother with an answer, opting to stay silent even if his eye roll was loud as hell. He did have to admit though that it probably would’ve been a good idea to at least wait until he picked off all the nail polish before he put anything over it. “Now, we’re going to use a base coat just to make sure it’s completely smooth before we put anything on top of it. I think it helps to make the polish stick better too.”

The raven crossed his legs at the ankle and kicked them back and forth under the table. “Aren’t you supposed to be the expert?” 

“I just have experience and what I learned from other people, anything else is beyond me.” He starts painting on the base coat with an elegant precision that Sapnap can’t bear to make himself look away from. He has no idea how it works, how Karl doesn’t even shake anymore as he paints each nail with so much care. “It isn’t as if I took a course on it, Sapnap. I didn’t even go to college, let alone for nails.”

“Why not?” Sapnap questions immediately, earning a light slap to the wrist when he leans forward and jostles the hand Karl is trying to work with. “Sorry. And not the college thing, I’m pretty sure you don’t take a college course on nails. But why didn’t you go into it if you enjoy it so much?”

Karl carefully shifted the positions of Sapnap’s hands. “Not everyone just goes into what they like the most. Besides, I like painting nails but I don’t do it for other people often. You’re actually the first person outside of my family whose nails I’ve painted.” Sapnap’s breath caught when Karl leaned in to get a better look at what he was doing, the warmth of the brunette’s exhales ghosting over his skin with every breath. “I went into what I do now because I wanted to. There’s a certain sentimental value to tattooing for me and I’d happily do it for the rest of my life. Besides, I have a lot of hobbies but I don’t pursue them all as a career.”

“I never really thought of it that way,” Sapnap admitted. “I just pursued what I liked. And I figured that, hey, if I don’t magically become famous and play gigs then I can settle for being a band teacher. Yours sounds...a lot more complicated. And more thought out.” The tips of his ears burned lightly in shame, reddening just enough for Karl to take notice.

“There’s nothing wrong with just doing what you feel like, buddy. I’m entirely sure you have your own reasons and that is more than enough.” He looked up to shoot Sapnap a smile before finishing up with the last nail. He didn’t lean back far enough to give the younger the room to raise his hands to his face and inspect them, but enough so that he wouldn’t be just above Sapnap’s hands. “We just have to wait for the base coat to dry now. Do you want to pick out a color?”

Sapnap fought the urge to fidget and fiddle with his hands, fingers twitching every so often with the temptation. “Just black is fine. So it fits with everything else.” Karl laughed at the reply and pulled several different dark colors from his bag. “I want to say those are all black but I don’t think I’d be right.”

“Most of these are just especially dark variations of colors and only one is actually black.” The brunette laughed at the perplexed look on the other’s face. “Scootch over a bit. Here, look, if you hold it up to the light like this then you can see it has a more noticeable edge to it,” he pointed out as he held two up towards the light nearest to them. It was a relatively small difference but it would be clearer in broader light and especially against actual black clothes. 

It took a moment for him to see it, but Sapnap eventually pointed out the actual color of both the bottles. He nearly frowned when Karl pulled out more that were a bit lighter in color and easier to see but still a struggle. He’d already had enough trouble choosing with the other ones, let alone more. “Karl, I actually can’t choose one. They don’t all look the same anymore but I literally can’t pick.” 

He laughed. “It’s okay. We can stick with actual black for now and work our way up if you want to, alright? They look better with designs and stuff anyway.” After putting away the other ones, he popped open the black nail polish and closely inspected Sapnap’s nails. Karl seemed relatively content with how dry they were and motioned for Sapnap to give him his hand. The raven resisted a flinch when the nail polish brushed against the very edge of his skin, cold in contrast to his naturally high temperature. “Hold still, bud.”

Even though Karl hadn’t looked up, Sapnap nodded anyway. He forced himself to relax and lean back into his seat, willing his hand not to shake. The man quirked a small grin when Karl started humming under his breath, probably unintentionally, eyes stuck on how brown eyelashes fluttered every now and then.

By the time his nails were done, Sapnap was left lightheaded and with his stomach feeling tight in an unfamiliar but not unpleasant way.

Despite how much he was scolded at his actual job for sitting on the counter, Karl said nothing about him being perched up there as he finished cleaning up after his most recent appointment. He’d been up there for a while, yes, but this was the first time Karl could spare his attention for more than two seconds. After all, he was pretty much etching permanent art into people’s skin. That wasn’t exactly a job that he could easily look away from.

His sleeves still rolled up as he waved goodbye, Karl leaned against the counter and looked up at Sapnap. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be up there,” he giggled and poked his thigh. “C’mon, Sappy, get down. We have places to sit that aren’t counters.”

“I like the counters though,” Sapnap frowned, kicking lightly at Karl’s arm. “I’m staying up here, thank you very much. It’s much better than a hard, plastic chair.”

“Our chairs are nice! I like our chairs.”

Sapnap snickered and ruffled Karl’s hair from above. “And I like the counters.”

“Fine, fine,” Karl conceded, backing away with his hands up, “but I can’t do your piercing while you’re on a counter. There’s probably some rule against that.” The brunette began cleaning up the area again, giving an exaggerated sigh and a not-so-subtle glance over his shoulder to see if Sapnap had gotten off or not.

The younger grumbled for a bit before hopping off the counter and patting it softly as a goodbye before reluctantly making his way to Karl. “You got me there,” he admitted, sitting on the edge of the large, cushioned chair he’d need to lay on. “Where do you want me? On the thing that looks like the chair-bed in doctor’s offices?”

“Yeah. Is this your first time doing anything at a tattoo shop?” The shorter easily settled into the chair, sitting up to hold Karl’s gaze properly. “And did you make sure you signed everything?”

He nodded. “Checked about four times. I didn’t really read most of it though, I just kind of skimmed it.” Karl laughed and shook his head in mock disappointment. “Hey, I’ve gotten piercings before. I think I mostly have the gist of what I’m signing on.”

“Pierced where? At Claire’s?” he answered in a teasing tone. The silence the other man gave was enough of an answer, enough to pull Karl into another fit of laughter. “Seriously? That’s like giving a kid scissors and telling them to cut your hair, Sapnap! Or giving a butcher a stethoscope and calling them a veterinarian. Please don’t tell me that’s where you got your septum pierced.”

“In my defense, I pierced my cartilage myself when I was like fourteen. Claire’s is a step up, man.” Karl absolutely cackled at that one. “Jesus, you’re so judgmental.”

There was a faint snap as Karl put on a new pair of plastic gloves, already having everything else set out. “Have you ever gotten an infection from there? I know one of the biggest concerns with piercings there is the fact that the employees aren’t typically professionally trained in putting holes in people. It would be a hell of a lot worse if there wasn’t proper sanitation either.” 

“My friend Dream, I mentioned him before, works there. All the ones I’ve gotten from Claire’s were done by him and he’s really careful about it. Even if he makes fun of Techno for doing the exact same thing.” He narrows his eyes for a moment, staring at nothing in particular as if thinking over what he’d just said. “Man, what a hypocrite.”

Karl nods in agreement before grabbing a few things from the counter, holding the readied clamp and wiping it down another time just to make sure. “Still doing your tongue?” The man rolls his eyes and sits back, giving him an annoyed look. “Alright, alright. Just making sure. Open up for me, please. Tongue out.”

The brunette gently taps Sapnap’s jaw as he speaks, prompting him to do exactly as he asked. Sapnap doesn’t have the time to be annoyed at Karl for the orders before Karl is using the clamp on his tongue, jolting slightly at the temperature and the strange pressure on his tongue. Karl looks over at him, a silent question of whether or not he’s okay, and Sapnap shoots him a thumbs up. The needle that gets put through the appendage hurts less than the clamp does, which is a pleasant surprise. Karl lets go of his tongue, turning to sterilize all the tools and clean up while Sapnap pulls out his phone to observe the new piercing in his phone’s camera. He’s much more focused while Karl gives him the rundown on how to take care of it, making sure to add everything to the list of notes he’d started when he first thought about getting one.

His gloves were stripped off now, leaving him to card a hand through his hair. The room was warmer than it was outside, probably out of consideration for Sapnap and his odd internal temperature, and Karl’s hair had dampened enough for the curls to stick to his forehead. It was oddly endearing to see loops of his hair darker than normal and sticking out against the pale skin like it was drawn in. “You better take care of it, Sap. I’ll check it every time I see you if I have to.”

Sapnap burst into loud laughter, the sound somehow louder in the emptiness of the room. “I know that Wilbur isn’t here but I think that’s a little too PG for the workplace.” He shot a playful smirk towards Karl, the raven obviously choking back laughter. “I mean, come on, we haven’t even held hands yet.”

Then he felt a squeeze around his hand to find his own hand tightly squeezed around Karl’s. Somehow. He distantly heard Karl giggle as he tried to remember when the hell that happened. There wasn’t a glove on that hand and Karl had used both hands to pierce his tongue so it had to have happened in the last few minutes but he had no clue when that was. “Do you seriously not remember this happening?” the brunette asked with a smile that wasn’t entirely innocent. “You’re the one that grabbed onto my hand, I’m appalled that you don’t even remember.”

Sapnap sputtered for a moment, clearing his throat in an attempt to redeem himself. “No, no, I knew I did it. I was, uh, referring to holding hands with the homies in a different way.” He pushes himself off the back of the chair so that he’s sitting up now, trying to figure out a way to get off it without letting go of Karl’s hand. Another thing he tries not to linger on. “How the fuck do you get off of this? I hate these things,” he grumbles. 

Using the hand that wasn’t tangled with Sapnap’s, he leads the other off the side of it with a giggle. “So vulgar.” 

A long moment passes where the two stand face-to-face, looking at each other. Sapnap swings their intertwined hands together between them and stares at their nails in particular, at Karl’s pastel colors against his tan skin and his black against Karl’s pale tones. “You’re not letting go,” he mumbles, slightly sheepish. “Do...do you mind it? Holding hands, I mean?” 

The smile that spreads across Karl’s face is shy, almost embarrassed as he shakes his head no. His cheeks are tinted pink too, but a small part of Sapnap that he wants to keep buried deep, deep down whispers that it’s not out of shame or embarrassment. That it could be something more. He wants to bury it down further. “No. No, uh, I don’t.” Karl breathes the words into existence, granting Sapnap the littlest bit of hope for something he doesn’t want to acknowledge, let alone hope for.

“We can hold hands until you have to work again then.” His words hang in the air, an unspoken promise or wish for something even if he won’t ask for it. Karl seems to hear the question anyway though and smiles with this radiance that Sapnap can’t help but wonder if he’s tainting it. Still, he can’t bring himself to worry about it much when there’s this light right there. “If you want. I--I don’t mind if you do.”

Karl squeezes his hand reassuringly, just this small little moment where his grip tightens and it feels like Sapnap is getting endorphins transferred into him through his hand of all things. He may run hot but every bit of skin that touches Karl’s feels like fire. “I want that, yeah. Sounds good to me.” 

For a frightening moment, the warm, pale brown of Karl’s gaze stares straight into the dark, pupil-consuming black of his own eyes. And Sapnap is suddenly afraid that Karl’s pretty brown won’t like his, the color of inkblots. But there isn’t any sign of dislike, just this look that makes him feel like he’s all that Karl sees for a moment. It’s terrifying. It’s terrifying simply because he wants to hold onto that, for Karl to look at him like that all the time. He doesn’t want to think about it. At all. He refuses to think about it, take these thoughts with him to the grave if he has to.

“Sapnap?” Karl mutters carefully, still managing to avoid breaking the fragile calm that’s settled between them. He squeezes Sapnap’s hand so carefully but it’s so grounding that it brings a whole new swarm of butterflies to add to the three already fluttering around inside him. “I’ll come sit on the counter with you. Hopefully, Wilbur won’t yell at us if he ever comes back.” A weightless giggle flies loose from Karl’s throat.

He can’t help his own smile, small and so painfully void of sarcasm. “I’ll teach you the best ways to sit on a counter,” he offers, relishing in the shared laughter that follows.

Chapter Text

Karl isn’t sure what he did to earn Sapnap’s hand in his but he makes a mental note to do it a hell of a lot more. He’d never been more grateful that he had a relatively boring shift in that moment, beyond glad that his last appointment for the day ended up cancelling and no one wandered in with the intention of getting anything done. He didn’t have to break away from Sapnap until the very end when Wilbur came back with Techno in tow and the pink-haired man half-heartedly lectured them for sitting on the counter. He was largely just glad that it wasn’t Phil who came in. The man was sweet, that was for sure, but he considered himself lucky that he didn’t have to see the repercussions of whatever that would’ve caused.

He was sure his hand was probably a little clammy by now, Sapnap’s bracelets were digging into his arm, and his glow stick bracelets probably weren’t all that nice to Sapnap either but he just couldn’t find it in him to care. They were holding hands. 

Once he and Wilbur switched off with Techno at the end of their shift, Karl let himself get dragged to Build-A-Bear by Sapnap. He may’ve been mostly fixated on the presence of the college student but he enjoyed meeting a couple of the coworkers that he’d heard a lot about since befriending him. Meeting Tubbo and Tommy was an...interesting experience for sure. Tubbo was kind of flitting everywhere since it was busy but he pretty much talked mainly about Ranboo and Michael, the pet that he and Ranboo shared custody of. Karl wasn’t really sure what kind of animal Michael was but from what he heard, he sounded like a parakeet or something. He was a nice kid though, if a bit distracted and a bit odd. He clashed a lot with Tommy, who was doing an excellent job of sitting behind the counter and drinking a juice pouch. And, for some reason, seemed to be coming up with vulgar nicknames (which all sounded slightly insulting) for Karl. 

When they did eventually split up, Karl found that he definitely missed the weight of someone else’s hand in his. He tried not to think about it too much so that he could drive back to his lonely little apartment in peace, but the feeling of a cold hand after being wrapped carefully around someone else’s for so long was jarring. He stuffed the hand into the pocket of his jacket as soon as he could do so safely, but it was still rather depressing.

“I’m home,” he yelled out to the empty apartment, closing the door behind him. He received no answer just as he expected but a small piece of him wished someone had been hiding around the corner or something so that he wasn’t so alone. He’d picked up food on the way home since there wasn’t anything inside his fridge, not that he’d be accustomed to cooking for just himself anyway. He’d lived with a couple roommates in an apartment not much bigger than this one only a month or so ago, recent enough to excuse the few boxes in his living room but not recent enough to be considered anything more than lazy. Honestly, most days he came home and just wanted to sink into the familiar couch and pretend there were people living with him again.

After half-heartedly throwing the bag of food on his small, cluttered table, Karl lets himself fall over the arm of the couch and face-first into the cushions of the sofa. “It’s so quiet,” the comment muffled. He gives a low sigh before pushing himself up off the couch, grumbling as he forces himself to eat despite still being full from lunch with Sapnap. The reminder makes him feel even less inclined to eat.

One of the things he hated most about his apartment was simply how big it was for one person. He had managed to save up for a while even with typically low wages, specifically by having two roommates. The apartment had only one actual bedroom and an office that had been turned into one. It was small, it was cramped, and it was always so loud but it never felt so cold. The loneliness of his own apartment was stifling.

Karl nearly jumps when he suddenly hears his phone ringing. It nearly buzzes off the table before he can get to it, immediately brightening a bit when he sees Sapnap’s caller ID. “Hello?” he says into the phone, the greeting coming out much more cheery than he had thought it would. He can practically hear Sapnap’s bemused smile through the phone in the way he laughs a little. 

“Hey, Karl. I hope I’m not bothering you?” the other asks, just barely avoiding being cut off by the loud honk that follows. Karl can barely hear Sapnap grumbling to himself before he’s muted, presumably to yell, and offers an apology once he’s back. “I’m, uh, stuck in traffic. There was a big accident on the road I take to my apartment and I’m a little bit freaked out because neither George or Dream are answering me and they--they went out today, I haven’t heard of them since before I left and that was hours ago, and...and I’m sorry.”

Karl squeezes his eyes shut as he breathes in deeply, the sound audible and coaxing Sapnap to subconsciously follow his breaths. He takes a few more, without even instructing Sapnap to follow them, until the shakiness in Sapnap’s breathing evens out for the most part. He waits for a bit to see if Sapnap realizes he’d been tricked into doing a breathing exercise and almost sighs in relief when nothing follows. He’d noticed it in the last couple weeks, that occasionally Sapnap talks and talks when he’s stressed, sometimes just rambling, and gets lost inside his head a bit. Once he’s sure that Sapnap is breathing steadily again, he speaks. “No problem, dude! I’m about to eat dinner but I think I bought too much.” He waits a beat before continuing, listening to see if there’s any change on Sapnap’s end. “I just got home a little while ago. I was just reminiscing about how loud it was at my last place. It, uh, it was nice. I realized I miss it being loud here.”

Sapnap gives a shaky laugh. “Man, I can’t imagine anywhere being quiet. I’m used to everything being so loud by now.” There’s the low hum of his car moving for just a moment, probably only inching forward by a bit. “It’s loud even in traffic. It’s like it follows me, yeah? It’s...it’s actually a little overwhelming. Thanks.”

Karl furrows his eyebrows and smiles into the phone, asking, “What are you thanking me for?” 

“For talking to me. Makes it easier. I’m about ready to turn around and get out of this traffic, to be honest.” Sapnap sighs and there’s a faint thud, which is probably him leaning forward to lean his forehead against the steering wheel. He’s heard Sapnap do it a lot. “I don’t think I have the energy to spare for this right now. Mm, tired too.”

“Then,” Karl laughs, “come over. I have too much food anyway. And I’m lonely, I want cuddles.” He still flushes a slight amount in embarrassment at the bluntness of his request, but it’s worth it from the relieved mixture between a sigh and a laugh that comes from the younger.

Sapnap doesn’t say anything as his car moves again, just the slightest bit forward again. “Don’t tempt me, I just might. Cuddling with the homies sounds really good right about now.” There’s something deeper there, something exhausted that goes beyond just being physically tired but Karl can’t bring himself to push. “Convince me. There’s an exit coming up, I’ll take it if you can.”

The brunette grins to himself and leans up against the back of his couch, scanning what he can see of his apartment. It’s like a game, a challenge. He can do that. “Well, I’ve been told I’m a very good little spoon and a good big spoon. Versatile. We can even switch at any given time, whenever you want.” He follows it with a giggle, unable to keep a straight face. He can hear laughter from the other line too. “And I have these little dishes that look like frogs. Like frog plates, frog bowls, even a frog cup. I’ll let you use the frog cup.”

“Mm, I’m tempted. Not quite there yet, push a little harder,” he hears in response, light teasing in Sapnap’s tone as he inches the smallest bit forward. “Get a really good one and we can hold hands again.”

“Deal!” Karl answers quickly without any shame, laughing his way through the word. He looks around one more time, trying to find another good reason among all his unpacked boxes and empty fridge. Makes a mental note to pick up some basic snacks and drinks if Sap’s not far. “Oh! I have, like, a honk ton of blankets. And they’re all really fluffy too. It’s a godsend, I promise you.”

Sapnap makes a strangled noise at the mention of a promise but Karl’s heard it enough times to know it’s a positive noise. A good one. “You’ve got me. I should be at the exit in a bit. Text me your address?” Karl shoots it to him in a text at a record speed, having already been hovering over the phone’s keyboard the entire time he was trying to convince Sapnap. “Jesus Christ, you’re fast. Uh, I think that’s like half an hour away so don’t expect me super soon. You live in the opposite direction of the mall, I’m pretty sure.”

“That’s fine! Gives me time to restock my fridge and clean up a bit.” 

“Do you...want to hang up for now? While you do that?” There’s hesitance in his voice, like he’s afraid of the answer. It was easy to understand what he actually wanted, even if he couldn’t bring himself to actually say it. It was predictable, in a way, not that Karl minded. It was a bit endearing, actually.

Karl quickly grabs his wallet and keys again, despite having only put them away like ten minutes ago. Probably less. “If you don’t mind then I like hearing you. It’s soothing,” he answers simply as he walks out. This time, he’s preoccupied with asking Sapnap about what drinks he likes and doesn’t bother saying bye to his empty apartment.

Half an hour later, Karl is still trying to set up the TV he took when he first left his parents’ house when Sapnap knocks on the door. He scrambles to get it, nearly sliding into his bookshelf in his haste, and opens it to find the younger holding a disposable plastic bag filled with a colorful array of different brands of chips. His cheeks look flushed from the cold, the temperatures still strangely low even as February began, but there’s a toothy grin on his face. Karl impatiently urges him to come in with shouts of ‘ it’s honking cold, dude!’ and ‘I’m going to get killed if you catch frostbite because of me!’ , which does little more than make him laugh little puffs of warmth into the air.

“Welcome to my personal library that I just happen to also sleep in!” he exclaims with a flourish when Sapnap walks in. It earns an eye roll and a chuckle that borders on a laugh, which is considered decent in Karl’s book. “No, but really, my room is kind of just a library I sleep in. Like, my desk is out in the hall because there isn’t room for it with all the book cases. My mom says it’s a problem. I agree.”

The raven snorts a laugh and drifts towards the open living room, attention drawn to the mess of cords on the floor. “You haven’t set up your TV?” He frowns simply because he had to even ask in the first place, which only deepens when Karl nods. “You don’t use it often, then?”

“Eh,” Karl shrugs as he pulls up a dining room chair and sets the back against the back of the couch, “not really. But I felt bad about leaving a giant TV box there when I’m having company so I figured it would probably be a better idea to just try. Not that it did much more than just make more of a mess than it would’ve been in the box.” He wrinkles his nose at that, settling down backwards in the chair so that his chin is propped up on the backing and his arms loosely hug it.

“I can help, if you want it,” Sapnap offers with a smile, tugging on one of the two loose ends from the cloth tied around his forehead. “I don’t mind.”

Karl shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I’d rather play Uno.” Sapnap is silent for a moment before bursting into raucous laughter. “I’m serious! I have, like, five different types of Uno. Including the one with unicorns.”

“Uno-corns?” he asks with a raised eyebrow. “Pics or it didn’t happen.” The raven settles on the couch in front of Karl, facing him with a cocky grin.

Karl scoffs and ruffles the mess of black hair before standing and walking out of the main area, yelling back, “I don’t need pics if I have the actual thing, dorkus!” Sapnap watches the door with rapt attention, leaning forward to rest on the solid backing of the couch. Still, he doesn’t expect it when Karl throws the whole box at him, yelping as it comes flying towards him. 

It hits him in the shoulder anyway but he picks it up and observes it thoroughly, far too long to be a genuine observation. “Good enough. Bust it open,” he returns with a grin, tossing it back to Karl. “I’m about to kick your ass in Uno.”

The brunette sits himself on the chair with a laugh but hesitates before opening it. “Would this be easier if we sat together? So the cards don’t fall?” Sapnap seems to give it 0.2 seconds of thought before shrugging in a gesture that can only really mean that he doesn’t care. He briefly regards the raven with confusion in his face but opens up the box anyway and starts shuffling it on the backing of his couch.

“You’re good with your hands,” Sapnap notes as he watches, seemingly enraptured by the flicks of color that appear with the motion. “I never figured out how to shuffle cards. George and Dream get really competitive when we play, but I guess I do too. Anyway, we play and one of them always insists on shuffling the cards because ‘George will bend them’ or ‘Dream sends them flying everywhere’. It’s both disastrous and funny to watch. And also the reason we don’t play card games much anymore.”

“Have you heard from them?” Karl asks carefully, cringing a bit at how nosy the question sounds even if with good intentions. 

The younger shakes his head but answers, “No, but they already identified the victims of the accident earlier. Everyone involved should be okay in the long run, though. I was checking the news right before I came.” His gaze flickers up for a moment to look at Sapnap but he lets go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Thank you for asking. And inviting me over.”

Karl waves it off with a giggle. “No problem, I’m glad you came. I should be thanking you, really. The place felt too quiet anyway.” He finishes shuffling the cards and evenly distributes ten to each of them, setting aside the rest. “You said you were, what, kicking my butt in Uno-corns? Want to put money on it?”

“Only if we do it in fives.”

In the end, Karl ends up five dollars richer but much poorer in dignity. Sapnap had badly lost the first few rounds but got a grip of the game in the last half. In all honesty, he was glad that Sapnap called it quits or he’d have started losing money fast. 

Karl had managed to snag Sapnap for a few more hours that day but the raven did eventually have to go back to his own apartment. He expressed a wish to come back more often, which was easy to look forward to. Still, it somehow felt colder than it did before without the brief warmth that filled it. In all fairness, it wasn’t as if he was around often enough for the depressing atmosphere to be truly debilitating; in the month since he’d moved into it, he didn’t find himself sitting around the apartment when there was pretty much anything else he could be doing. Working, going for walks, sitting on benches at the nearby park, that sort of thing. Though, realistically, it probably wasn’t great that he avoided his own house like the plague if he could.

He huffed a sigh as he fell back onto his bed, the beddings still messy and unmade from that morning. Objectively, he knew that he couldn’t let his bedroom be the only fully unpacked room in his apartment but it felt rather pointless. Why put so much time into unpacking all the boxes when he was hardly here? It didn’t make much sense.

Briefly, he wondered if unpacking would make his place feel less like an apartment and more like a home. That was what people always said, after all. For a split second, he considered calling his mom just to see if she knew a way to make his living space feel less cold, less like he was simply an intruder in a stranger’s home. He decided against it in the end, realizing that he probably wouldn’t have done much more than barely leave his bed. He wasn’t able to force himself out of bed for anything more than to rinse off a very minimal amount, not even bothering to get under his blankets. Karl just lay staring at his ceiling as he tried to fall asleep, wishing for the snores of another person instead of the sound of doors closing in the distance.

Chapter Text

Sapnap was fairly sure this may’ve been the worst he’d ever felt. 

He’d admit that was a bit of an overstatement. The world wasn’t ending, he wasn’t (completely) flunking out of school, and he wasn’t fired. Yet, at least. What did happen was that Sapnap managed to get sick. 

George and Dream were both scheduled for shifts on the day that he woke up feeling like complete and absolute shit. He’d felt pretty out of it the night before but he had brushed it off, chalking it up to the allergies of the change in seasons. He realized now that it was probably because of that kid from his shift who sneezed on him, but it was disappointing when he woke up only to run immediately into the shared bathroom and brush past George to empty the contents of his stomach into the toilet. He’d felt dizzy and sweaty and somehow even more nauseous than before but he was still able to make out the elder yelling for Dream as he fell back into unconsciousness.

He woke up sometime later to hear George and Dream attempting to argue quietly by his bedside. His throat felt dry, his mouth felt gross, and he wasn’t sure if he was incapable of getting up because he physically felt weak or because of how many blankets were piled on top of him. He eventually managed to open his crusted over eyes to see them both holding individual bowls of what looked like soup. He stifled a small cough, making just enough noise to draw their attention.

“Sapnap!” George immediately whisper-yelled before he cleared his throat as if he’d forgotten he was whispering just a moment ago. “You should go back to sleep. Or have some soup. Preferably mine, Dream put bacon in his.” The raven gave a rattled laugh that only prompted a deep, painful cough. He groaned but his voice cut out halfway through it, chest aching. 

Dream rolled his eyes and pushed George away from Sapnap just a bit. “He can barely blink, I doubt he’s eating soup whether there’s bacon in it or not.” Sapnap vaguely recognized the little twitch Dream’s hand gave, an involuntary habit the blonde had developed at some point whenever he wanted to keep an eye on the time. Because, right, they had work. And what they did not have was time to dote on Sapnap like he typically did for them, not that he was bothered by it. Or, not that he’d admit to it at least. “George,” Dream hissed with urgency in his tone, lightly tugging at the sleeve of George’s sweater to pull him out of Sapnap’s earshot.

The man’s vision blurred the longer he tried to watch them, eyes slipping shut for more than a moment on a few occasions before they came back. Even with the fuzziness surrounding his vision, Sapnap could make out the movement of their mouths, trying to tell him something. He just gave a delirious smile, clearly out of it as his eyes slipped shut. It sounded like there was cotton in his ears, making everything incoherent and unreasonably funny in his delirium. The other two just continued to talk, unaware of his slow blinking and half-lidded eyes until he fell back asleep. He was jolted awake only a moment or two later by hands on his shoulders, obsidian-colored eyes shooting open with mild panic before he settled down.

“Sapnap, were you listening?” The sound was clearer this time, less like someone speaking into a microphone submerged in water. “We were asking a question.”

Sapnap hummed to himself for a brief moment before slurring a question of, “About wha’?”, a lazy smile still stretched across his face. He waited patiently for an answer as George and Dream looked guiltily towards each other, both wondering how to ask.

The man with a face mask, which was suddenly reasonable considering Sapnap’s possibly contagious condition, leaned forward to gently brush the sweat-slick hair from his forehead. He almost wanted to lean into the touch, strangely reminiscent of different -- smaller, pastel-nailed, shaky but somehow warm even against his constantly high temperature -- hands repeating the same motion. He couldn’t even muster the energy for that much though, leaving him to settle for enjoying the warmth spreading into his skin even if it only added to his own burning temperature. 

Dream sucked in a breath as his knuckles brushed against Sapnap’s forehead, glancing over anxiously towards George. “He’s really warm. Are you sure that we’re supposed to be making him hotter?” The words held more venom than he’d intended them to, tensing when he noticed how stiff George looked. “Sorry. I--I don’t really know what I’m doing either. I just don’t want him to get a heat stroke on top of whatever is going on.” 

“It’s fine, Dream,” George offered an awkward smile. “Still with us, Sapitus?” The raven in question gave a low hum in response, still not bothering to open his eyes.

Dream carefully readjusted the blankets for the thousandth time, untucking and re-tucking them around Sapnap idly. “Do you know anyone who might be able to come take care of you while we’re gone?”

He jolted a bit as he reluctantly snapped away from unconsciousness again. Was there? He was pretty sure Bad was busy today, he thought Dream had mentioned it in passing before. And even if not, it felt like today was supposed to be important. Before he could answer, an accented voice spoke. “We would’ve asked Bad but he’s supposed to be celebrating his birthday with Skeppy today. I think you were going to go, too.”

Sapnap immediately tried to force himself up, remembering what George was referencing so quickly that it made his head spin. That in combination with the nausea and the weird awareness of how tight his throat was sent him leaning over the bed and retching into a conveniently placed trash can next to his bed. The lingering taste in his mouth led to another bout of dry heaving and the threat of acid coming up since there wasn’t anything else left to throw up. He’d suddenly lost the little energy he had and fell limp all at once, almost falling into his own mess if not for Dream catching him by the armpits and gently laying him back into bed. Sapnap was barely aware of the low whine he gave and would’ve flushed in embarrassment if any more heat could rise to his cheeks. It was possible that he did but it was completely unnoticeable among all the other warmth there. 

Even if he didn’t know what he whined for, George apparently did if the glass of water and large mixing bowl was any sign. It let him at least rinse out his mouth and feel a bit cleaner, even if he couldn’t currently sit up let alone brush his own teeth. Vaguely, Sapnap was aware of all the things that were supposed to be good ways of taking care of fevers, learned from his experience in taking care of the other two when they were sick. They were definitely not doing it right, but at least the effort was there.

“You need to rest, Sap,” Dream half-mumbled, concern etched into what was visible of his face. A faint frown casted a shadow even through Dream’s thin, decorative face mask when Sapnap whined again at the command. “Bad wouldn’t want you anywhere but resting in this condition. If you feel better later then maybe you can give him a call but you’re not leaving. Okay?”

Half-lidded eyes flickered between Dream and George, both wearing the same determined but anxious expression. “Okay,” he agreed reluctantly, much to the relief of both. “Dunno who else would come stay wi’ me, though.” A cold shudder shot through his broad frame, making him sink deeper into the mountain of blankets piled atop him. 

Dream and George exchanged a look again -- Sapnap was beginning to notice just how often it happened -- before the green-clad man snapped and grabbed Sapnap’s phone from his dresser. It didn’t have a lock to get into it so it let Dream immediately go to whoever he’d thought of. Despite Sapnap’s fair patience with his friend’s antics, he definitely would’ve scolded Dream for just going into his belongings like that on most any day. He probably wouldn’t mean it, but he would’ve. It rang for a few times before whoever was called answered, their voice not clear enough to make out who it was but their tone sure sounded cheery. 

The blonde carried the conversation while George set to cleaning up the mess Sapnap made, leaving the youngest to watch on hazily and guiltily. He managed to slip back asleep a few times before Dream was off the phone. “You can start getting to work, Gogy,” Dream murmured softly to his boyfriend right after he hung up. George was in the midst of looking up what medicines to use for fevers and nausea when Dream approached him. “Sam isn’t that strict, I can stand to be a little late before he comes.”

Sapnap wanted to ask who was coming but his voice failed him, not even giving a croak when he tried to speak. “You’re on thin ice at your job, too.” Dream just quirked a little smile at that, bringing a hand covered in a fingerless glove to George’s face, gently tracing over his cheekbone with his thumb. “Don’t give me that look. Sam isn’t going to be patient forever. Besides, Punz is still fairly new. He can’t deal with that new employee all on his own.”

“Foolish isn’t difficult, Punz can handle it.” The taller leaned forward to press a gentle but firm kiss to his forehead. “Just go, okay? I’ve got it. Trust me.”

George took a moment to consider before pressing his lips to Dream’s cheek and leaving the room. Even in his delirium, Sapnap was sure that George hadn’t taken more than a couple minutes before leaving the apartment. He really was in a rush. 

Of course he was in a rush. After all, Sapnap had kept both of them here because he was sick and unable to take care of himself. Even if they were assholes sometimes, they were always so nice when it mattered. It didn’t feel like he deserved to have friends like them, that they’d eventually go if he wasn’t careful. There’d already been that one time when the three of them had gotten into it and Dream had claimed not to care about them anymore, which had hit a sore spot inside him. He was normally able to convince himself now that it wasn’t his fault, that Dream hadn’t meant it but something about the fuzziness in his head made it more difficult to dismiss it. What if Dream had meant it? And even if he didn’t now, what if he did in the future? He and Dream and George had been friends for so long, he and Dream since childhood , that he couldn’t imagine trying to go through anything without them now. The thought physically hurt. 

He didn’t realize he’d bursted into tears until Dream was hushing him kindly but insistently, brushing hot tears away from his cheeks. Without realizing it, he fell into the same pattern of breathing that Dream currently held, eventually helping to soothe the aggressive panic that had been rising. “You’re okay,” Dream reassured him as he brushed away another tear before it gathered enough to fall down his face. “You’re okay, Sappy. Look at me, right at me, you’re okay.” Sapnap nodded the slightest fraction just to get across that he understood, ignoring the sharp pain that pressed into the back of his skull at the motion.

“Sorry,” he hiccuped. “And thank you.” His voice sounded wrecked, like it had taken a month-long vacation before being used.

“Don’t apologize,” Dream answered simply. “You should be thanking Karl for being willing to come babysit while me and George are gone. Do that, okay?”

Sapnap sleepily hummed his affirmative response. Something about the babysitting part sat differently for some reason he couldn’t place. “Kay.” Dream’s hand came to brush the sweat-slick hair off his forehead again, pulling it to stand straight up and laughing a little. The raven squirmed away with a low cough, wrinkling his nose. “Don’ do that,” Sapnap grumbles, face pinching when the older ruffles his hair. 

“Alright, alright,” Dream surrenders just before making sure the other’s hair is thoroughly messed up. “I still have to get ready for work but I’ll be just outside. I’ll still hear you whether you fall off the bed, throw up again, anything. I know it hurts but yell if you need anything, alright?”

He lets his eyes close again, humming lowly in response. It seems to suffice since Dream goes immediately afterwards, leaving Sapnap alone in the room. The weight that pins him to the bed would’ve been stifling at pretty much any other time, not to mention how claustrophobic he would’ve felt by being tucked in if he were in his right mind. But right now, it felt like a warm embrace, which he liked no matter how much he tended to flinch away from physical touch. The only real exceptions were Dream, George, and someone else. He could do with being hugged by Bad and Skeppy’s weird acts of affection but regularly, even brushing shoulders with someone made him flinch away.

Sapnap was mostly asleep again by the time Dream wandered back into his room, awkwardly holding his own phone and probably texting George. The blonde stood by the door, watching him carefully as if he was afraid that he’d suddenly die if he didn’t. Even if Sapnap’s eyes were closed, it was hard not to feel the warmth the man emanated on a regular basis. It wasn’t a physical warmth like his, more just an aura that could only really be described as being similar to coming home. He hoped it would never change. “Sapnap,” Dream called quietly, “Karl’s going to be here in a moment.” 

It clicked that Dream had been talking to Karl, not George, and he gave a weak but happy smile. Dream’s voice still sounded far away, twisting and bending in ways it probably shouldn’t, but it was better than before. Still, he didn’t push himself to try sitting up or doing anything too difficult just yet. “Karl,” he drawled quietly, testing how the word would roll on his tongue. It made him giggle softly and try it a few more times, much to the confusion but amusement of Dream. “I like seein’ Karl.” The blonde just nods slowly, trying not to think too much of it. He’d already proved to be irrational when sick, he supposed it wouldn’t be too farfetched to say he was probably at least a little delusional.

“I like seeing Karl too,” Dream settles on replying simply, turning when there’s a knock at the door. “Hold on, man. Give me a minute.” Sapnap gives a hum, which was quickly becoming a routine answer, before Dream leaves again to find Karl at the door.

“Hi,” the brunette greets with a smile. Somehow, he’d managed to cook and pack soup in the time since Dream texted him, which he found more than a little impressive. He and George had taken a while to make soup on their own but they’d been microwaved one-person meals they just happened to have in the apartment. Karl’s soup admittedly looked a lot better and a lot more suited to a sick person. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he’d heard more about the healing properties of chicken noodle soup than he heard about French onion soup. “How’s he doing?”

Dream winced. Right, he’d forgotten to really update him on how bad Sapnap was. Thinking about it, he wasn’t really sure how much he knew about Sapnap’s condition. He was pretty sure that neither he nor George had taken the youngest’s temperature, actually. “Warm. Uh, he’s thrown up a few times but I cleaned the containers out so there shouldn’t be anything gross in there right now. He tried to sit up earlier and, well, he got dizzy and puked.” Karl looked thoroughly more concerned as he went on, but he barrelled on anyway. “He hasn’t eaten so I don’t know if he will any time soon. Kind of...emotional, maybe delusional. It’s sort of bad. Sorry.”

Karl shook his head and gripped his container of soup a little tighter. “No need to apologize, really. Does he need to go to a hospital, though? That sounds, uh, kind of bad for him.” 

“We considered doing it while he was passed out the second time. Neither of us has a car though and Sapnap despises hospitals. And the second he regained awareness, he’d start arguing about it being unnecessary.” Dream rubbed at the back of his neck, sighing a little. “And I don’t think any of us are really in a good position to...pay for a hospital visit. We all work at Claire’s and Build-A-Bear Workshop, after all.”

The older nodded. “Yeah, it makes sense. I’ll help to the best of my abilities.” He awkwardly held up a few boxes of over-the-counter medicine, all different brands and different colors. “Do you have medicine? I picked some up but I don’t know what’ll work for him. “ 

“He actually hasn’t been sick around us before so I don’t know what works for him. Normally it’s him taking care of whoever is sick.” Dream gave an anxious glance towards the bedroom, debating on checking on Sapnap even if there was nothing to be heard so far. “George was trying to find the medicine earlier but I have no idea where it is. I’m sorry.”

Karl smiled warmly, just big enough to be soothing but not so much that it would be awkward considering the situation. “It’s fine, really. I can’t say I’m the best at it, but I’ll help however I can.” He slowly came in after being let in by Dream, leaving the medicine and soup on the large apartment’s kitchen counter. “When does your shift start, by the way?”

Dream hesitated before answering, sighing before he even spoke. “About forty-five minutes ago?” His words came out more inquisitive than he’d intended it to, his unsurety about the situation seeping into his tone. “Sam is going to be more than a little pissed off. Do you mind if I…?”

“Yes,” Karl drew out the word, “go already. It wouldn’t really be a good idea to get fired.”

Dream grinned thankfully, all but bolting out the door. “Oh, uh, one more thing,” he added as he was racing out, hanging on the door frame. Karl had already shifted his attention to reading all the medicines but looked up. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Karl. He talks about you a lot.”

The man smiled, waving a little. “Likewise, Dream.”

The raven finds his vision to be extremely blurry when he opens his eyes, as well as the dim light feeling far too bright and his eyelids much heavier than they should be. He knows deep down that there’s almost definitely something wrong with his rationality from the moment he comes down from his brief panic that he’s blind. He’d believed it even after being soothed and shushed back to sleep, only realizing after waking up again that he couldn’t see simply because his eyes were closed. Despite the blurriness to his vision, he can make out a familiar shade of brown hair, similar to George’s but with more noticeable highlights and darkened tips. The neon colors of his hoodie are familiar too, physically painful to look at but soothing. 

“Sappy?” he hears, the sound more clear than when Dream and George had talked to him but still incredibly fuzzy. “Buddy? Can you hear me?” Sapnap makes a low, wounded-sounding noise in his throat in response, hoping it’s enough of an answer for the familiar stranger. Luckily, it seems to suffice because the person seems to nod and then proceed to gently peel a room-temperature weight from his forehead. It takes a moment but he recognizes it as a washcloth when it’s dipped into a small basin of water and then replaced on his forehead, now pleasantly cool against his skin.

A hand, warm but not unbearably so, comes to comb through his bangs and he sighs into the touch. His vision is impaired enough to hide the fine details of it, but he can faintly see the smile the stranger gives. The way their fingers run idly through his hair, careful to make sure not to tug too harshly when there are knots in the way and lingering on the ends like they’d thought there was more hair than there was, is so incredibly familiar that he’s overwhelmed by guilt for not recognizing who it is. It’s such a wonderful contrast to the pain he’s feeling, well, everywhere that he can’t help but let his eyes close in a makeshift sleep. However, it doesn’t take long before tears come to his eyes for what is definitely not the first time today, but they’re quickly thumbed away and the wetness of them is smeared across his cheekbones in a caress. 

“Sapnap, hey. Hey, can you look at me real quick, please? Just for a moment?” He barely registers the request, too caught up in his fascination with the low, soothing timbre of the stranger. It feels like a warm embrace on a cold, snowy day being wrapped around him, similar to the warmth of fireplaces and hot cocoa. After admiring the voice for a while longer, he finally realizes exactly what had been asked of him and gradually manages to open his eyes just a crack. It’s easier from there, turning into a consistent flutter of his eyelashes until his weary and unfocused eyes meet Karl’s. “There you go, you did very well, Sappy. I have to ask a few questions to see how you’re doing and I need as much attention on me as you can give, okay? I won’t be mad if you fall asleep, but I’d appreciate it a lot if you can stay awake for me. Alright?”

Most of it flies over Sapnap’s head, his only thoughts being on the fact that Karl is there and putting cold towels on his head and playing with his hair. He feels as if the pain in his body has been lessened by at least half, even though he knows deep down that it’s quite a ridiculous thought. However, that doesn’t stop him from accidentally voicing it and Karl giggling contentedly at the comment. Sapnap recognizes that his mouth feels weird and not completely under his control but it doesn’t stop him from excitedly but tiredly repeating Karl’s name over and over again. He does it for quite a while until Karl shakes his head fondly and kindly shushes him, trying to get his focus back on track. “Your name,” Sapnap mumbles with a tone that leans a little too close into child-like for his liking.

“What about my name, buddy?” the brunette replies, the sound almost aggravatingly soothing compared to Sapnap’s own cracking and hoarse voice. He can’t bring himself to be angry either way though, evident in the half-hearted grumble he gives.

It takes Sapnap longer than it should to recognize that Karl is asking about something he’d said, which almost makes him feel bad considering that the elder had said something about wanting to ask questions. “I like it,” he eventually mumbles, a little unreasonably cross at the need to explain. “ Karl . ‘s nice.” Karl simply hums in acknowledgement, somehow annoying Sapnap to the point that he attempted to roll over and face the other way. He was barely on his back before the brunette gently ushered him back onto his side, muttering softly something about how he could literally choke on any food coming back up and die. A frown painted the younger’s face before he could stop it, mainly because he liked to believe he’d have rolled back over anyway. Still, he didn’t bother saying anything more and just grumbled faintly as his eyes fluttered shut again.

There’s almost immediately a slightly insistent tapping against his shoulder. “Sap, buddy, can you stay awake for just a little longer?” The effort put into the nod that followed was almost worth it for the fond smile he received. “How do you feel?” Karl asked vaguely.

“Like shit,” was the croaked reply, somehow making the other giggle. Sapnap couldn’t understand why for the life of him but the sound was nice so he decided to attempt to hear it more.

Karl hummed for a short moment. “Do you think you can eat? Like, sit up and eat? And keep it down?” This question, or questions to be more specific, required more thinking. Trying to think of the answer alone made his head hurt. “I have some medicine that could maybe help but you have to take it after eating. I didn’t read through all of them but the side effects of intaking it with an empty stomach don’t seem worth it.”

Sapnap's eyes nearly fell closed once more but he jolted himself awake. “Tired,” he replies simply, wriggling under the layers of blankets for a moment. “Not hungry. And medicine tastes...gross.”

“You don’t feel hungry because you’re sick,” Karl sighs, “which won’t be helped until you have medicine. Which you don’t want. And food would help make you feel better later, bud. I even made soup for you.” His tone isn’t patronizing, simply laced with hints of a scolding. Something about the tone makes Sapnap feel strangely inclined to tug Karl into his warm nest of blankets and curl around the elder or force the elder to curl around him. There’s a strange fondness that the raven can’t quite hold the capacity to decipher when Karl notices his vacant, glassy stare back at him.

Karl is about to get up and walk away, to do things far beyond Sapnap but more importantly so far away , when Sapnap stumbles over a frantic reply. “I-I’ll eat,” he croaks, the words sounding truer than normal towards his feelings but almost overwhelmingly desperate. His stomach flips in awkward ways at just the idea of eating but he hides the wince he gives in what he hopes is a convincing cough. “I like your soup.”

He can tell the other’s seen straight through his act at the frown Karl gives, staring for a moment before sighing and settling all his weight back onto the bed beside Sapnap. “You’ve never had my soup,” the man argues softly, fondly combing his fingers through the other’s hair. “It’s okay if you don’t want to have any. You can just have medicine, I don’t think you need to eat for at least one of them.” 

“But you’re gonna leave if I don’t eat it.” His frustration doesn’t quite come through due to how his voice cracks and the sleepiness of his tone, but the tears pooling at the corners of his eyes are proof enough. “I’ll like your soup forever if you don’t leave.” His vision is still blurry, the raven only just capable of registering the way Karl’s posture sags in a defeated way.

“Here, just...don’t worry about the medicine. I won’t go anywhere, okay? I’ll be right here until you go to sleep.” And there that promising tone is again, pulling pleasantly at Sapnap’s heartstrings. Even if he can’t fully place the reason for it, the simple promise damn near breaks him down into a puddle of tears and blankets. 

Sapnap feels the want to argue, the desire to have absolute surety that he won’t wake up alone and cold despite the layers upon layers he’s wrapped in, but if he was tired before then he’s practically comatose by now. His eyes start drooping closed, lashes fluttering against flushed cheekbones as he settles into an even foggier state of consciousness. Vaguely, he can feel himself peeling an arm and hand from underneath the blankets and holding it limply out to Karl. It’s about as voluntary as breathing, simply a gesture to communicate his internalized wants as best as he can. Karl easily takes his hand, holding his embarrassingly clammy hand and drawing shapes into the back of it with his thumb. “Karl?” Sapnap whispers with a croak.

“Yeah, buddy?”

The bedridden man smiles softly at the way he’s addressed, his liking for it only amplified by his current state. “Thank you.” Even with his thoughts all muddled, he can tell there’s so much more at the tip of his tongue just waiting to be said, pressing and urging him at the back of his mind to just spit it out , because it’s Karl and Karl isn’t like everyone else. Karl doesn’t laugh when he starts drumming on tables and Karl doesn’t get mad when he’s over excited and messes up a fresh coat of nail polish from two minutes ago and Karl is so warm and Sapnap is fire and every touch from him makes the younger feel like he’s laying in an oven. But none of it makes it out of his head, every unsaid declaration of an unfamiliar and dangerous feeling simply fades out as he sleeps again for what feels like the thousandth time today.

Sapnap feels actually awake for the first time that day when the sun’s already disappeared out of the sky, only able to tell by the sudden realization of how dry his mouth is and how his head only feels just clear enough to be annoyed at what isn’t. He’s irritated mostly at himself for having to spend an entire day in bed, for probably being incapacitated and borderline delusional like Bad’s always said he’s gotten to be like when sick. A good portion of it dissipates when he finds a familiarly warm weight in his hand, a new addition curled to the outside of it to sandwich his hand between two others protectively. Karl is very clearly asleep where he’s slumped over on Sapnap’s bed, set in an uncomfortable-looking position to avoid touching Sapnap and potentially waking him up.

Despite his newly regained sense, there’s a part of him that knows there’s a large chance he won’t have enough strength or energy to nudge the other awake. Instead, he squeezes the hand in his lightly in a rhythmic pattern until he squeezes it harder on one and Karl shoots up as if he’s been shocked. His hair, darker than usual in the lack of light, is much messier than Sapnap’s accustomed to. Though, he doubts he can say anything considering how he hasn’t even been out of his bed aside from when he woke that morning. 

Karl very clearly doesn’t care for the state either of them are in, seeing as he immediately fixes his gaze on Sapnap. “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah,” the raven answers quietly, cringing faintly at the scratchiness in his own voice. “Better than before. ‘M warm though.” Sapnap wriggles underneath the solid weight of the blankets pointedly, still unable to lift them off of him. He can feel himself sweating, adding onto the layer of grime already on his skin. 

Karl presses the back of his unoccupied hand to the other’s forehead and then almost frantically rushes to peel back some of the blankets piled atop of him, finally letting Sapnap stretch out his limbs for the first time in what feels like forever. His joints protest the movement and all of him aches but it’s pleasant, a satisfying burn. “How’s that?” the brunette asks with a soft smile, gently patting the heavy mound of blankets that now sit along his legs. 

“Good,” Sapnap hums, though sleepy again. It takes him a moment to try to continue speaking, eyelids fluttering closed again while the hand in his rubs slow circles into the back of his hand. “I might be able to get up,” he murmurs quietly without opening his eyes.

Karl immediately opposes it, tensing so much at the idea that Sapnap can tell just by the way Karl lightly squeezes his hand. Though, in Karl’s defense, it’s a habit that Sapnap had picked up on after they started holding hands regularly. “You’re not going anywhere on your own, you can barely speak. Do you need something that I can get you?” 

There’s a grumble before Sapnap answers. “Water. And food. And a way for me to brush my damn teeth, I feel like there’s fuzz growing in my throat.” Karl laughs at that. “Medicine is in a shoebox under my bed. Had to hide it from George. Think we’re out of the one that works best for me though, I meant to get more.”

“Didn’t do a very good job, George found the shoebox this morning.” When Sapnap groans in exasperation, Karl giggles again. “Why’d you hide it anyway? I’d assume that people older than you know better than to try eating it or something.”

“George always tries to take care of everyone,” Sapnap half mumbles, trusting that the other would be listening regardless of the volume. “Doesn’t matter who. Me, Dream, himself. Sometimes our coworkers. Random customers. The list goes on. He just cares a little too much sometimes, even if he’s an asshole. He’s normally pretty good at it, especially at knowing what someone needs without them saying it. What he sucks at though is taking care of sick people. Can’t read medicine labels for shit, he’s bad at making soup specifically, either goes overboard or underboard. He knows it and tries to get better but most of the time he’s just made the situation worse.”

The brunette was listening with rapt attention, jumping to ask a question. “Couldn’t he just learn then? Can’t typically get much better without practice.”

“Well,” Sapnap nods, “in most situations. But not with a sick person. Like, uh, he’s normally way overprotective of Dream when he’s sick, but he’s more a danger than any help. I was staying with my dads the first time we were all together and Dream got sick and George called me at, like, four am to tell me that our oven was on fire, Dream had been laid up in bed for two days, and he’d given him four different types of off-brand medicine.”

Karl chokes on air at that, giggling loudly. “How’d he set the oven on fire?”

“He actually didn’t,” the raven started hesitantly, “even though the stove was wrecked and the inside of one of the pots looked like he put an angry cat in it. Dream apparently had a dream about it and rushed to incoherently scream to George.”

The elder cackles, laughing himself breathless before pushing himself up off the bed. “No wonder Dream looked so panicked this morning.” There’s a short pause. “That explains the bacon and pot of cold water.

“Dream is a terrible cook,” Sapnap rolls his eyes, smiling despite the annoying rasp in his voice. “Though, I’m pretty sure I’d even take his flavored bacon water right now. God, I’m starving. Would you mind if I asked for whatever the weirdos made?”

“I made some soup before I rushed over, actually. You don’t remember?”

He shook his head. “I barely remember seeing a brown lump that looked like your hair. You made soup?” Something warm flutters in his chest for a moment, making his gut do a gymnastics routine that requires too much thought to think about right now. “God, I haven’t gotten to eat your food in a bit. I miss your house, it’s quiet.”

A faint flush dusts Karl’s cheeks and nose but he grins. “You were there, like, three days ago. And you stayed over the day before. Remember, you still owe me a clean borrowed jacket?” There’s a teasing lilt to his tone, enough to make Sapnap weakly and playfully shove at whatever part of Karl he can reach. “Hey, hey, don’t hurt the guy who’s going to be making you food. There’s plenty of time for me to spit in it.”

“Ew,” Sapnap wrinkles his nose. “I’m already sick, all you’re going to do is be indirectly making out with me.” He laughs a little harder than he should’ve at the way the pleasant flush on the brunette’s face turns into horror. 

He’s fighting off a fit of coughs as he waves Karl off, leaving him wheezing a bit while the other goes to get food. The promise of food is the only thing keeping him awake until his friend returns, eyes closed and tiredly melting into the bed. 

“I forgot to mention it, but I got medicine before I came since Dream was pretty vague about everything. I, uh, brought everything though since I didn’t know which one you needed.” The words are spoken even as Karl walks into the room, two bowls of soup carefully but precariously perched in one hand and an arm while the bag hangs off the other. There’s a few boxes in his bowl-less hand, vaguely recognizable from Sapnap’s trips to buy some. “They’re all knock-off brands but there’s a lot. I’m assuming I probably have some version of whatever you regularly use. Probably.”

He smiles, cracking an eye open to make eye contact with Karl. “I use the off-brand ones too, they’re pretty much the same.” Grey eyes flicker to the boxes, scanning them for a moment. “You have it in your hand. The medicine, I mean.”

Karl looks down at his hand, then holds it up with a box wedged between each of his fingers. “Which one?”

“The radioactive one. Bright green.” 

He doesn’t even look back at them as he tosses it toward the bed, throwing the others into his plastic bag and putting it down by the door. No longer balancing a bowl on his arm, Karl gently puts one by Sapnap’s side before sitting next to him and eating his own. 

And if Sapnap decides that this was definitely not the worst he’d ever felt, then no one else needs to know.

Chapter Text

Karl isn’t sure when Sapnap being in his house became normal. It’s not that it bothered him, really quite the opposite, but it only hit him in mid-June. He couldn’t pinpoint when it happened, just that it felt almost as if the younger had been slowly moving into his apartment. It only hit him after he’d come home to see Sapnap on his couch, which was a strangely usual sight to return to, cramming for an exam with several cans of Monster on his coffee table and eating out of a large bag of chips that Karl remembered buying but hating all the same. By some miracle of a coincidence that wasn’t a coincidence since Sapnap had gone shopping with him back then and almost every time since, he did know they happened to be the raven’s cheapest comfort food. 

It only got worse from there. Now, he could recognize that everything in his apartment had traces of Sapnap embedded in it and he unsurprisingly didn’t mind. Simp , his mind supplied unhelpfully, a romantic simp.

Because his blankets were folded in that weird way that Karl couldn’t figure out how to mimic but was the only way Sapnap knew how to fold them. And not all of them, just the ones that he knew Sapnap liked best and oh god, when did he realize that they were his favorite? And when did he realize that Sapnap’s list of favorites included ones that were his favorite but were folded in the way Karl could fold them, untouched because of how Karl had playfully complained about how he didn’t know how to unfold the ones Sapnap folded? When did his pantry start to have food that Karl couldn’t stand to eat but Sapnap liked? When did he start thinking of his stupid frog cup as “Sapnap’s cup” instead of “the frog cup”? When did he start using the colorful dishes and leaving the more monochrome ones for Sapnap? When did his drawers start having a weird blend of his and Sapnap’s clothes that made it so weird to pick out outfits but felt so normal? When did it become normal for the younger to steal his clothes and wear pastel hoodies with the rest of his very themed clothing? 

When did Sapnap just seem to move in with him?

He couldn’t remember the last time Sapnap wasn’t there on a weekend. The last time his apartment felt as empty and quiet as he feared it would, because this refrigerator didn’t make an annoying humming noise and this couch didn’t creak when he sat on it. When did he start saying “home” instead of “the apartment”?

He would’ve laughed at the realization if Sapnap wasn’t staring at him like he’d grown a third head because he’d been so caught up in it. The house even smelled like smoke because Sapnap had probably been burning paper in the bathroom sink to blow off some steam. He couldn’t think right, his head was just so full of all these realizations that all he managed to say was, “When did you start living here?”

The raven very clearly didn’t take it seriously, instead laughing until he was choking on his lack of air. “Start doing what?” the man asked, smiling and shaking his head. “Karl, this is your house. I live with Dream and George, remember? I know you’ve had some weird things going on with your memory, but I swear I haven’t moved in or anything.”

“Sapnap, you’re wearing my socks,” he pointed out, dropping the bag he’d brought to work at the door. “And your hair, which is way too long now, is tied up using my colorful hair ties that you claimed to hate. And--and those are my reading glasses. Why are you even wearing them, you read just fine? I went with you to the doctor, remember? He said--why do I remember going with you to the eye doctor, Sapnap?”

“Because…” the raven trailed off. “Karl, why did you take me to the eye doctor?”

The elder rubs at the bridge of his nose and sighs, laughing a little at the sheer absurdity of it. “You complained at not being able to read the sign at the bakery. Like, you couldn’t read it until we were right in front of the counter and you couldn’t decide what to get. And you didn’t know what a croissant was.”

Sapnap jumps at the sound of his phone going off but he ignores it, turning the device off before speaking again. “Didn’t he just tell me that I was dehydrated?”

“Yeah, you drank like all of my Monster. Something about your brain prioritizing functions?” He reaches over the couch to attempt swatting at one of the empty cans, sighing and collapsing over the back once he realizes he won’t reach. “You aren’t supposed to drink it anymore, Sappy. Especially not while you’re cramming.”

“But I’ll fail! I can’t risk sleeping right now,” Sapnap sighs and carefully puts all the cans farther away. It would’ve sucked if it spilled all over their carpet. No, his carpet. Sapnap didn’t live there. “I need the energy or I’ll crash.”

Karl groaned and walked around to actually sit on the couch, draping an arm around Sapnap and leaning all his weight on him. “I think that’s a sign you should go to bed. I’ll make you breakfast before you head off for your shift tomorrow.”

“But your eggs taste like ass.” Karl headbutts the other’s shoulder at that. “They do! You put too much salt and you don’t mix them around enough so they’re kinda stuck together. And you use the brown eggs.”

The brunette gives another exaggerated groan, louder this time. “You put the white ones in the cart last time. And your eggs taste like nothing, Sapnap. Your best dish is chicken noodle soup.”

Sapnap throws his hands up in exasperation and sighs. He elbows Karl in the chest until he gets up, then snaps his laptop shut and grabs a can and downs it. He doesn’t even wince, a large improvement since the first time Karl told him to have some and the student spit it out. “Let me finish these notes and I’ll go to bed, okay? Your room or mine?”

They’d gotten into the habit of swapping rooms for changes of pace, liking how it felt to stay in a bed that isn’t their own. Karl is about to answer when he realizes that the guest room isn’t the guest room, but Sapnap’s room now. Seriously, when was the last time Sapnap slept at his own place? A couple weeks ago? Longer? He flounders for a moment, several minutes passing before muttering, “No. And my room, I’ll go tuck you in later. Make sure you take your pillow though, you drooled all over mine last time.”

Sapnap simply yawns and gets up, looking longingly at his laptop again before disappearing into Karl’s room. It leaves the elder outside in their living room ( his living room, for honk’s sake) alone, putting his head in his hands. 

“What just happened?”

Karl doesn’t have the chance to talk to Sapnap about his apparent cohabitation the next morning. He’s too busy cooking and trying to work out the conflicts in his schedule for the upcoming weeks and Sapnap is busy trying to get George to take over his shift because apparently the call he ignored the previous night was a reminder that his final had been moved to that morning. Well, afternoon, but Karl had let him sleep in and that proved to be a mistake.

When Sapnap came back, he looked worn down and frustrated, enough so that Karl couldn’t bear to talk to him about the fact they were pretty much roommates in everything but name and a shared rent. Karl definitely didn’t ask about the fact that Sapnap had holed himself up in Karl’s room, though leaving the door unlocked as a silent request for Karl to hang out with him anyway. Sapnap barely spoke until he learned that he passed, settling for nonverbal communication cues that he’d negotiated with Karl after he expressed a difficulty with speaking. 

Karl didn’t bring up the topic until after Sapnap began talking aloud again, which had taken nearly a week. Frankly, he’d forgotten about it completely until Sapnap had mentioned that week had been his turn to do laundry. 

“Why do we have a system for taking turns with the laundry?” Karl asked, still holding the hamper of dirty laundry. “Why do you help with the laundry, Sapnap?”

The man shrugged from his place on the couch, the same spot he was normally in. “I help with it back at the apartment. Why wouldn’t I, Karl?”

“You don’t live here!” Karl exclaimed, not angry but his arms flapping with the urge to throw his hands up. “When was the last time you did laundry at Dream’s and George’s? When was the last time that you called it ‘home’ instead of ‘the apartment’?”

“I call this place ‘home’ all the time.” Sapnap frowns, putting his phone down and looking at Karl over the back of the couch. Again. Reminiscent of the first time they’d had this conversation. “Like I say ‘welcome home’. I say ‘I’m on the way home’. I say ‘I’m home’.”

The brunette sighs and slumps forward, putting the hamper down. “That’s my point. I meant yours, Dream’s, and George’s place, not here. I don’t mind you staying here Sapnap but seriously, when did this become our place?” He gestures wildly to the main area, tense as he throws his hands around. “Like this? Our living room. Our kitchen. That’s our TV, our couch, our carpet. Our dishes, our sink, our fridge. That? That’s our pantry! Even your stuff is in there! I hate spicy food and, like, half its contents are spicy! That’s your room over there! And there’s pictures of you, printed and framed, around this place! Sapnap, you live here.”

There’s a long pause. Sapnap’s eyebrows are furrowed, mouth set in a deep frown as he thinks. Karl swears he can hear the gears turning in his head. “I have jewelry in our bathroom. Your bathroom? Our bathroom? The bathroom. We share shampoo and--and I have a washcloth here. Karl, we have a whiteboard for groceries. I put bagels on it this morning. I don’t even like bagels. You just ate all of our bagels and it wasn’t on there yet so I put it down.”

“You have a key,” Karl whispers, eyes wide. 

Sapnap laughs quietly, “Yeah. It’s on my work lanyard.”

“Sapnap, I think you live here. And I’m not that upset about it. You make a good roommate too, even if you always order way too many toppings on pizza. And you lose the TV remote. And you steal my clothes.”

The other just laughs harder and leans his head against the back of the couch, choked pieces of laughter floating up every now and then. “You sort the laundry really weirdly. And you forget to put stuff back in the fridge. And you don’t always hang your towel.”

“So...do you want to move in?” Karl leaned forward to put his hands on the hamper, distractedly crushing it with his weight. “Like, actually?”

Sapnap fumbles with his phone at the question, face reddening. “Dream and George would like being alone, I think,” he answers vaguely, the roundabout reply being betrayed by the bashful grin he gives.

“Dude, are we roommates now?”

“Dude. I just moved into your place. Like a month ago.”

The air feels heavy and terribly tense as Karl sits at the table of their apartment, sitting across from several familiar faces with unfamiliar expressions. From what he can remember, it’s Dream, George, a manager from Claire’s, and the sole manager of Hot Topic analyzing him from the more crowded side of his table four feet away. 

Bad, wearing the same demonic get up as he does at Dream’s workplace, stares at him with milky white eyes, which utterly fails to have the same level of intimidation that he’s fairly sure it’s meant to. It isn’t because Bad’s blind, but simply because the other is so tall that he’s hunched over and the man himself is less dangerous than Tubbo. But in all fairness, Tubbo’s recently developed a special interest in bombs and nuking things, so it’s not a very difficult feat. Beside him, Skeppy is comically small in comparison but somehow more threatening than Sapnap’s other dad.

The ones who are legitimately terrifying are the ones next to them, deep scowls on both Dream’s and George’s faces. He’d seen the two on a few occasions since Sapnap had gotten sick but he was fairly sure they were much friendlier than they looked now. Then again, he was also mostly sure that they were the reason that he’d come home from an outing to find Sapnap conveniently absent and four people in his house. Karl stared right back at them, a questioning look on his face as he waited for one of them to speak.

After a long minute, George finally broke the silence. “Sapnap said he’s moving in with you.” Well, things certainly made much more sense now. Karl had thought they were waiting more than a few days to tell anyone, but it was fair; Sapnap was supposed to be slowly taking his possessions from the other apartment and he most definitely wasn’t the type to lie if he was caught. Convincingly, at least. “Why is he moving in with you?”

“What do you mean?” Karl asked, genuinely confused. “I’m assuming because he wants to?”

“He wouldn’t just suddenly ask to move out,” Dream interrupted, leaning forward. “He’s impulsive, sure, but not that impulsive. I’ve known him since we were kids. All of us have. Skeppy and Bad adopted him once they were old enough. We--he barely knows you.”

Bad didn’t make any comment, simply nodding aggressively. “Did you ask him to?” Skeppy raises an eyebrow with the question, the diamond-studded piercing in it glinting in the light.

“Yes,” Karl admits, “but we’ve been talking about it. Especially because he’s kind of already moved in.”

“What?” The accented voice rings through Karl’s small dining room as the goggled man narrows his eyes at him.

He fiddles with the sleeves of his pastel hoodie, sighing. “He’s here really often. Not because he asked to be or anything, but he’s said he just likes being here.” Karl shrugs, smiling anyway. “He was spending most of his free time here a couple weeks after we had lunch that first time and he just kept coming back. Now, his stuff is like everywhere. He has about half a closet full of his clothes here and whatever stuff somehow makes it back into my drawers. He’s lived here for a while.”

“You can be in a place without living there,” Dream reasons, eyes narrowed. “I know the term ‘living at work’ but you don’t actually. Same thing.”

“He reorganized my spice cabinet.” The man giggles at his own reply.

“Really?” Bad speaks up, face breaking into a wide smile.  “Did he do that thing where he doesn’t remember how he organized it and has to take everything out every time he wants to get something?”

“Yeah! Then he gets all upset because it doesn’t look nice anymore even though it is the most convenient.”

The blind man looks satisfied at that, leaning back in the chair and grinning widely. “That muffin.” Karl giggles at the way Bad looks so smug about it, as if proud about the little habit. “I always tell him to just let it go but he always insists. He used to color code it when he was younger and if we kept moving them out of place, he just painted the bottle or something.”

“There was that one time he put the actual seasonings in different containers and said it would work,” Skeppy adds. 

“Back on topic.” George runs a hand through his hair, propping his goggles up on his head to reveal exasperated brown and blue eyes. “What do you mean he’s already moved in?”

“Just look around!” Karl wildly gestures to the visible open space. “George, we commute to work together. He controls the radio on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He likes being here, I wouldn’t force him into anything.”

Dream puts a hand on George’s shoulder, the tension immediately slipping out of the older at the gesture. “We don’t think you would. We just don’t want Sapnap doing anything he’d regret. It’s...hard to let him go. It was hard when he lived with Bad and Skeppy and it’s hard now.”

“It’s not like I’m making him pay rent. If things get dicey, maybe, but he’s a college student. I don’t expect too much. Besides, he’s been leeching off of me for this long,” Karl replies adamantly. “He can always go back if he wants, I won’t stop him.”

The masked man opens his mouth to speak again but he’s interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. Karl turns around to see Sapnap holding a couple duffel bags and a cardboard box, lazily dropping the bags to the floor before half-throwing the box on their couch. “Karl, I’m home!” He kicks his shoes off and sits on the couch without a look to their open dining room. “You know that one old lady who lives a few doors down? Who has that cat named after a dog breed? She said she bought too many tomatoes, asked if we wanted any. I said I’d check and I know we don’t have any left right now but you’re weirdly particular about tomato brands for some reason--”

“Welcome back!” Bad greets him, waving enthusiastically. “Sappy Nappy, did you make sure you got everything? I’m sure George and Dream would let you go back but I think it’ll be best if you get it all while you’re using Karl’s car.”

“He can use it anytime! I usually bike or something to the mall unless the weather is bad.”

Sapnap turns so fast Karl’s sure he gets whiplash, jaw dropping comedically as he sees everyone. “What?” he chokes out, breaking into a coughing fit only a moment later. “Dude, what are all of you doing here?!” 

“Hi Sap,” Skeppy waves, much more energetic than he had been a moment ago. “Me and Bad never got to meet Karl and George and Dream were being all weird over you moving out so we came along because we wanted to meet him!”

Karl laughs loudly but Sapnap just reddens in embarrassment, covering his face with his hands. “Dream, George, I’m not a kid! You aren’t my parents! God.” The raven doesn’t look angry, simply annoyed and mildly unsettled. “Get out! We work in the same area, I see you guys there more than when we lived together.” Sapnap rolls his eyes, pointing to the door from his place on the couch. 

They very obviously want to say more but the two, followed by the overly enthusiastic Skeppy and Bad, make their way out. Sapnap groans loudly and slumps into the back of the couch once they’re gone, huffing annoyedly. 

Karl isn’t able to say anything before Sapnap speaks again, accompanied by a loud laugh. “Holy shit, I’m not gonna miss cleaning their bathroom.”

When Karl had gotten out of bed at three in the morning, he’d been ready to call the cops over the insistent knocking and yelling at their apartment’s front door. He would’ve if it weren’t for the fact Quackity messaged him with something along the lines of “I know you’re in there” and had just decided on a whim to give Karl a heart attack in pure Quackity fashion. 

The man had burst in, frantic but not quite crying, the moment that Karl opened the door and tackled Karl in a full-body hug. Karl nearly fell over but he held the other steady, soothingly drawing circles into Quackity’s back and waiting for him to speak. It doesn’t take long for him to back away and start making jokes again, lightening the atmosphere. The man is extremely loud by default which Karl hadn’t minded but somehow, this is the first time Quackity has spontaneously burst into his apartment while Sapnap was there. 

Not long had passed before Sapnap began to groggily pull himself out of bed and hear the muffled voices, looking for Karl and finding him absent. He’d fallen asleep on the floor of Karl’s room only for the older to probably drag him into his bed and take his place on the floor or go sleep on the couch or in the other room, but that didn’t explain why there were at least two other people in the apartment and one Karl missing. 

He peeks his head out of the door to see two vaguely person-like figures sitting at their table. He’s seen before he’s all the way out of the room but the voice that calls out is Karl’s, making him relax a bit. “Karl, it’s like...I don’t know what time it is but it’s late,” Sapnap frowns, wrapping himself tighter in the blanket he decidedly borrowed from Karl’s room. “Who even is that?”

“Sapnap?!” Quackity near yells once he comes closer, the youngest wincing at the noise.

Sapnap can barely make out Karl trying to quiet him down, vision blurred by sleep, but he can recognize the familiar color scheme of the other’s clothing. “Quackity? Why are you in our apartment?” He turns to the pastel-clad man, rubbing at his eyes. “Karl, why is he in our apartment? What time even is it?”

The brunette sighs and runs his hands down his face, definitely feeling too tired for this. “It’s like half past three, I think. He’s been here since three.” Sapnap turns to Quackity with an eyebrow raised, who nods intensely several times in agreement. “He’s...he’s done this before. A few times. You just weren’t here, somehow. Wait, dude, did you take my socks again?”

“They were in the bed.” Sapnap snickers, pointedly wiggling his toes. “Finders keepers, Kawl,” he teases, drawing out the nickname.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Quackity interrupts, holding a hand up, “‘our’ apartment? You share an apartment? With Sapnap?” The man looks at Karl with disbelief, eyes narrowed and mouth agape.

Sapnap launches himself at Karl, draping himself over the older’s shoulder and making kissing noises. “Yeah, we live together,” Karl giggles, leaning away from Sapnap but bumping him with his shoulder. “Sapnap, can you put my blanket back? We sleep with that one. I’ll get you another one from the living room, okay?” 

The raven disappears back into the room to put it back while Karl grabs one and wraps it around Sapnap once he’s back. “No fair, Karlos. You’re sleeping with Sapnap without even telling me,” Quackity mock frowns, their previous topic of conversation already forgotten. “Our poor pact. You’re even courting him of all things.”

“Ah, yes, courting. We started sleeping together and then one day, he brought me a bouquet of thorny roses and the heart of a bear in a basket,” Sapnap calls from Karl’s room, followed by the muffled sound of something being knocked down. “Destined love at first session of nail painting.”

Karl hums under his breath as he looks through his excessive collection of blankets to find one of the ones that Sapnap likes. “Why’d we hook up before the bear heart? Doesn’t sound very gentlemanly,” he frowns. “And what did you just break in my room?”

“Karl, you killed a bear and then carved out its heart. I’m pretty sure that would’ve taken a while.” Sapnap walks out of the room, wiping virtually nonexistent sweat from his brow and gratefully taking the soft blanket offered to him by Karl. “As for the thing in your room...I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Quackity whistles lowly, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Wow, Karl. Pleasure before manners and customs? That’s low.” He mock sighs and shakes his head. “See, I could treat you so much better, Sapnap. Dump him for me, it’ll be good.”

“Aren’t you dating Schlatt?” Sapnap asks, now settled at one of the table’s seats. “Just because Karl is courting me doesn’t mean you can’t.” The student seals it off with a wink and a sly grin, exaggerated to the point that Karl’s aware it’s a joke.

Quackity falters for a moment before shrugging. “Working on the first question,” he says vaguely. “I’m pretty sure he’s trying to propose soon. We’ve been together since, what, second year of high school? It’s been a while.”

“Are you…trying to break up with him?” The other’s nod is enough for Sapnap to let go of the breath he’d been holding. “Didn’t like him anyway. He looks like he’d drink tea and call me a worm,” Sapnap continues, wrinkling his nose.

“Well, putting aside whether I like him or not, he didn’t do anything.” Quackity sighs and looks at Karl for guidance, silently asking a question. Karl gives a single small nod, smiling faintly and holding a loose thumbs up. “Hasn’t been the greatest recently with everything going on with the Student Council at our university but it’s not that.”

Sapnap shrugs. “Color me surprised. Why are you trying to break up with him now though?”

Quackity hums to himself for a moment before running a hand through his hair. “I realized I don’t like him that way. After this entire time. He’s literally just like an intimate friend with benefits.” It takes him a bit longer to get the next part out. “I don’t like anyone that way though. I never have liked anyone that way so it just took a while to realize. I just don’t know how to tell him I’m aromantic.”

“You probably should do it before he proposes. Imagine if he has a marching band or something and gets shut down.” Quackity barks out a laugh, only drowned out by the loud choking noise that Karl makes. “Oh, come on. He’d definitely hire an entire orchestra and put it in Quackity’s closet or something.”

“You’re not--” the man has to break due to laughter, “you’re not wrong.”

“I know I’m not.” Sapnap curls the blanket a little tighter around himself, borderline disappearing in it. “Wouldn’t say it if I was,” he continues, eyelids falling shut in a half-hearted attempt to sleep. 

Weirdly enough, it actually works. When he actually does fall back asleep, Karl lets him sit at the table for only a bit before somehow bringing him back to his room. He looks more worn out than exasperated when he emerges from his own room once again, quietly shutting the door and mumbling about having to fix the lamp in the morning. “Sorry about that.” Karl offers, smile muted but as bright as ever. “I’d have told you that he moved in but I thought I’d have a bit more time.”

Quackity waves his hand dismissively at Karl’s general direction as the brunette sits back down, shaking his head. “Nah, you’re fine. Though I am surprised that you and he finally got together and you didn’t tell me.”

Karl’s smile falters for only a moment. “Not quite. He just accidentally moved in until he did on purpose. Which wasn’t until recently anyway.” His expression falls at the sympathetic pat to his hand that Quackity gives, the action surprisingly tender. “Do you think that he’ll figure it out eventually?”

“Figure out what? That you’re in love with him?” Quackity asks rhetorically, pity evident in his face. “He’s a bit dense, Karlos. I’m not sure it’ll happen unless you tell him first.”

Karl sighs but grins anyway, nearly all traces of his underlying mood having vanished. “Enough about me. How are the plans for your attempt to break up with Schlatt going?” The overexaggerated wince that Quackity gives makes him laugh, giggles loud. He’s glad for the subject change, to stray away from the pining he so desperately wants to leave unattended to. Especially not with Sapnap just in the room over, even if he was supposedly sleeping. There wasn’t any real chance in hell he’d be able to lie if Sapnap became  even the slightest bit curious