Archive of Our Own

“Have you packed the car yet?”

“I don’t leave until this afternoon.”

“It’s almost noon.”

“There’s time. Chill.” There’s shuffling, Sapnap moving on the other side of the line. The static of the phone mic distorts the sounds of him going about his life. He’s used to hearing him through discord, top quality mics and surround sound noise cancelling headphones. He’s used to feeling more grounded in the sounds of Sapnap’s world than his own. But his mic and set up are packed away, in a box sitting by his door ready to move across the country to stay with Dream. So he can deal with the poor audio quality for a few hours.

“If you’re packed then you can leave earlier.”

“There’s no way my parents are going to let me go sooner than necessary.”

“Sneak out the window.”

“That will definitely not fly.”

“Sapnaaaappp!”

“What! Why are you so eager for me to leave anyway, I won’t be there till tomorrow regardless.”

“You think what day it is matters? This is a week long production.” He looks around the house, which he had, in fact, spent a week getting ready. “I’m so ready for you to get here.”

“And by that I take it to mean you’ve run out of things to do and checked the contents of the fridge five times in the past hour?”

“Exactly.”

Sapnap snorts, something thumping loudly in the background. “Right. Well that’s the last bag, so I guess I can start packing the car now.”

“Go go go!”

He laughs. “I’m gonna have to hang up if I’m going to do that.”

“Fine, just do it!”

“Okay. See you in about eighteen hours.” 

“Bye! Go get ready to leave!”

The last thing he hears before the line goes dead is Sapnap laughing.

He gets little text updates every time Sapnap stops on the way. The first time, when he’s barely even gotten out of Texas and has to pull over to make sure he hasn’t forgotten something, namely his entire suitcase of clothing, Dream replies with the time left until they meet. Then he just keeps doing it, because fuck it, he’s counting anyway, might as well pretend there’s an actual reason to be doing it. 

He’s on call briefly with Karl and Sapnap while he drives, but he quickly resorts back to a strange mix of single-minded waiting and pacing and also trying to get some work done, and making sure everything's ready, again and again. So that it can go exactly how he’s imagined it. 

The last text comes when he’s driving into Dream’s part of the city, and this time it’s Sapnap who tells him there’s only fifteen minutes to go. And it’s a weird in between time of early in the morning but too late to still be up, and neither of them have slept more than five consecutive minutes the whole night and he is buzzing.

He hears the car before he sees it, the truck rumbling as it pulls to a stop.

It only took ten years and fifteen hours for the space between them to shrink from three states to the width of his front door and the driveway. Ten years and fifteen hours and now he’s seconds away from meeting his best friend for the first time. 

He doesn’t want to admit it, but his fingers shake a little as he flings the door open.

“SAPNAP!”

“DREAM!” 

The younger boy is clearly tired, but he’s also laughing, arms spread wide, feet planted on the concrete of Clay’s driveway.

When he collides with his chest he’s real and there and he closes his eyes, trying to remember how this very first hug feels.

“Dude.”

“Yeah.”

Nick’s face is pressed into his t-shirt, and he could so easily lean in and rest his cheek on top of his head. Which he’s not gonna do, because even if they’re both chill with cuddling with the homies, that would still be a little bit too sus for the very first hug they’ve ever had.

Nick pulls back from the embrace and Clay almost doesn’t notice that the palms of his hands are painted electric green.

“No way.” He looks down at his arms. There's streaks of burnt orange where Nick’s hands had dragged along his arms. “No way. No way.”

“What the fuck.” Sapnap is staring blankly down at his own palms, flexing his hands like the green is paint that might just start peeling off.

When he’d lain in bed the night before, imagining all the ways he might be able to fuck up his first hug with his best friend, this had never been an option. 

“We should- we should go inside.”

Sapnap nods silently, grabbing his suitcase from the back of the car. He holds the door open for him.

They end up staring at each other from opposite ends of the couch, boxes left strewn at the bottom of the stairs and still in the backseat of the car. Unpacking feels like far too menial a task when there’s this realisation looming over them, hanging around like a bad texture that leaves a ghost feeling on your fingers.

He rubs his heels against the base of the couch, the rough material grating even through the fabric of his socks.

“So.”

“So?”

“So...what do we do about this?”

He tips his head back against the back of the sofa. The ceiling is stippled, paint making lines that you can trace into pictures. He paints himself onto the wall, then Nick, paints lines in between them, imagining them the way the world would imagine them. All the lines, all the strings tying them to each other, peel off the ceiling and wrap around him and they feel so so heavy.  

“Do we just. Ignore it?” Nick makes a noise next to him, shifts a little on the cushion. “I mean. Not ignore it. But like, nothing has to change between us. We can go about living together the same way we were planning on before.” He drags the corners of his lips upwards, tries to make eye contact with Sapnap who is still shifting around like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “At least now we know we probably won’t piss each other off too much.”

“Yeah.” Nick’s voice cracks and he clears his throat. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Great.” He claps him on the shoulder, making sure not to touch any exposed skin. “Let’s see if we can get your PC set up.”

They don’t touch each other for three days. 

They move boxes without their hands ever brushing.

They eat meals together and no one reaches across the table.

Their first hug remains their only one, after Nick tries to put an arm around him and he can’t stop from flinching back. He tries to take it back, tries to reach out a hand to him, but he steps around the kitchen counter and out of reach so he lets it go, lets it fall into the empty space between them. He swears he can smell the smoke of burning of all those criss crossing lines he decided to cut.

“Hey, uh, were we going to do that stream at some point?”

His room looks half hotel room, half junk storage. Partially unpacked boxes are strewn carelessly around the space Dream had meticulously cleaned and furnished for him. 

“I don’t know, I’m a bit tired.” His eyes are fixed on the carpet between them, not moving as he spins gently back and forth in his chair. 

“All good.” Dream nods, and closes the door behind him. 

The stream never happens, instead replaced by a few quick photos snapped for the sake of proving to twitter that they are, really truly, together. Twitter, of course, remains unconvinced, but they can’t be bothered doing anything about it.

Instead they tread carefully in shared places, in the same room but never in the same space. Words fall through air much further than they ever did through mic’s and headphones and hence seem to take longer to reach their target.

It happens when they’re sitting across the coffee table from each other. Nick is curled up on the couch with his laptop resting on the armrest, brows furrowed as he watches something, tapping away at something every now and then and readjusting his headphones. Dream is sprawled on the floor in front of the door, chewing at the chord of his old earbuds as he tries to figure out the logistics of an upcoming video.

His laptop beeps loudly at him.
“Hey, can you pass me my charger?”

Nick leans over the coffee table to pass it to him. He doesn’t look up from the screen as he grabs it, fingers brushing over Nick’s palm. 

When he brings his hands up to type, the fingertips of his left hand are painted orange. And nothing hurts and no one dies so he figures everything is okay.

“Hi.”

“George!” He leans back into his chair, watching the ceiling as he rolls his half filled water bottle between his fingers. “What’s up? What’s happened in the-” he checks the time in the corner of his screen. “Twenty hours since we last spoke?”

“Hmm, I lived life like a normal person. And experienced a reprieve from your dumbassery. So not too bad.”

“Oh? And if my dumbassery is such a hindrance to your perfect life, then why are you calling me? Hmm? ”

George laughs. 

“I just wanted to know how things are going with Sap. It randomly occurred to me that I haven’t gotten a ridiculous ramble about how ‘amazing it is to live with Dream’ and ‘aren’t I jealous?’ yet.”

“Oh.” He takes a sip of water, holds it in his mouth for a second to think. “Yeah, it’s going fine. There were a couple of little issues at the beginning but I think we’re mostly getting it sorted out.”

“Issues?”

“You know.” He doesn’t know. Dream’s not sure he does either. “Just not knowing how to be in the same space. It was a bit awkward for a few days.”

“Is that it? You guys have never been awkward a single second in your lives. You’re like fucking… pea pods or something. The perfect match to each other's sheer idiocy.”

“Yeah well, real life just kinda brings different things to light. But don’t worry, we’ve got it all under control.”

“Yeah right. I totally believe you.” He bites his tongue, waiting for George to push further. “Just make sure you call me if you burn the house down, okay? I at least want to find out before twitter does.” And then he’s off, talking about something his family did and how Tommy has this ridiculous idea for a video that he is absolutely being forced to take part in and is definitely not looking forward to.

No questions are asked. He should be grateful, because he definitely doesn’t have any answers.

They settle into living together the way a house settles on it’s foundations; a bump at the start, and then gradual progress over time, so slow you don’t even notice it’s happening. 

He makes breakfast for both of them in the morning, or lunch time, or whenever he ends up out of bed after a period of horizontal rest long enough to justify calling it sleep. Even if Sapnap’s not up yet, he leaves a covered plate in the fridge, or the cereal he likes out on the counter. 

When he stumbles into the kitchen he pushes it across to him and he’ll smile, their eyes meeting from under sleep laden lids. It feels like thank you. He keeps cooking in the mornings. 

Nick starts complaining when they don’t eat dinner at a reasonable time. Every night it gets to ten or eleven and he shows up at the door to Dream’s room, knocking repeatedly at the door frame until he gets up, or just asking what he wants to eat, delivery service already pulled up on his phone.

One time he practically riots, storming in at one am, having already been turned away at least once that night, flicking Dream’s monitor off and dragging him away to eat. His grip leaves a vague smear of tangerine across his forearm, and the hands he uses to gesture wildly at him about how he was going to starve to death are lime. He brushes it off and laughs and orders them dinner, and they eat across from one another with their stained hands.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you think horror movies are a valid form of entertainment then we cannot be friends.”

“It’s not even a horror movie!”

“That’s what you want me to believe! You can’t trick me, bitch!”

“Oh, I’m trying to trick you now am I?” Dream shoves his hand away to get his finger out of his face. 

Sapnap looks down at the green over the back of his knuckles and pointer finger. “Hey, Dream?”

“C’mon, it’ll be good, I promise.” He moves the cursor over the movie.

“Dream, when we- do you ever think-” Sapnap breaks off his sentence with a little frustrated noise, looking down at the couch cushions.

“What?” 

“Fuck, just let me get my thoughts in order.” He picks at the fabric of the cushions. “Do you ever think about what we thought this was gonna be like, and then how it actually turned out?”

Dream shrugs. “I dunno, living with you is pretty much exactly the same as how I imagined it. Why?”

“No, I meant like- Nevermind. It doesn’t matter.” He turns away, glancing over his shoulder towards the stairs. 

“C’mon, are we gonna watch this movie or not?”

Sapnap shakes his head. “Fine! But if I get scared, you better take responsibility and cuddle me, got it?”

“Sure, whatever.” He clicks on the movie, shooting a smile at Sapnap and setting his arm up on the back of the cushions. “If you want your cuddles then come and get them.”

Turns out couch cuddles were a great idea. And the colour on the underside of his arms and the back of Nick’s shoulders isn’t that distracting. The occasional streak on kis collarbone or jaw makes him pause in the mirror. And at this point he might as well be dipping his hands in a paint can every morning. Passing touches in the hallway, high fives at the end of a stream or after an upload. Handing things to each other. Cuddling. 

And if orange hands are the price he pays for being comfortable with his best friend, then he thinks the universe could get away with charging higher rates if they wanted to. 

The colours start feeling like home. And maybe that’s scary, but it’s still just them. No one else knows. They don’t care. They’re fine. So he nudges his bare shoulder against Nick as they pass in the halls, painting most of his arm green and sending him stumbling, laughing into the wall. His hand is grabbed in retaliation, a pitiful attempt made at dragging him down the stairs. 

He likes it like this. He doesn’t think he could ask for more.

“Hey, uh.” Nick leans against the doorway, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets. “I’m gonna do a facecam stream tomorrow night.”

“Ok?”

“So, uh, I need you to not touch my hands or anything. I can’t have any colours on stream.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure thing man.”

“Great. Thanks.” His shoulders raise as he fills his lungs. Dream spins slowly on his chair. “Bye?”

“Bye!” He laughs, tipping his head back over the headrest of his chair. “Goodnight. Sleep well.”

“Yeah. You too.” He kicks off the doorframe, disappearing down the hall. 

He taps the faded orange of his fingertips together, interlocking his own fingers to brush against where the colour is streaked against the inside of his knuckles. He doesn’t remember when his hands were intertwined enough in Sapnap’s space to be colored like that, but now that he’s not allowed that’s all he wants to do.

He hasn’t really intentionally invaded his roommate's personal space before, but suddenly he wants to. It’s a common feature of being told to not touch; the sudden need to put his sticky fingers all over something. It hasn’t manifested itself for a person before, but then again, he’s never had someone around that there was any reason for him to not be able to touch. 

He shrugs and settles on just hugging Sapnap after he’s streamed.

The minute the facecam turns off and the stream switches to online he busts down the door of Sapnap’s room, throwing his arms over the back of his chair.

“What the fuck-”

“Relax, I’m literally just giving you a hug!”

“Last I checked that didn’t involve attacking someone, oh my god.”

Warm hands rest over his own where they’re linked over Nick’s chest, patting gently before eventually shoving him away. “Alright, alright, don’t strangle me.”

“Aww, but I missed you!”

“Yeah right.” He pushes himself a little closer to the desk. “I need to tweet something. Are you gonna make yourself useful and help?”

“You should tweet a selfie of us together. Or like, you, with me only partially in frame. Give them their content cause we didn’t stream together.”

“Sure.” He slips his phone off the desk, opening up the camera. When they spot themselves in the viewfinder the sides of Nick’s neck as well as the entirety of Dream’s hands are painted brightly, unconcealable and unmissable. “Or… Maybe not.”

“Yeah.” He retracts his hands fully, watches the last of himself removed from the screen. “Come find me when you’re done though.”

“Sure.” He pulls up twitter in his browser, not even looking over his shoulder.

Sapnap never comes to find him.He waits a few hours before he backtracks to his room. When he pushes his bedroom door open, the light of the hallway spills over his sleeping face.

He goes to brush his hair off his forehead but the second the tiniest splotch of green forms at his temple he retracts his hand. Instead he just pulls the blanket a little higher around him and closes the door as softly as he can.

The next morning the slightly faded streaks over his collarbones are on full display, his t-shirt dipping low as he leans over a half empty bowl of cereal.

There’s a single spot of green, like a singular nuclear freckle, just below his hairline. 

It makes Clay smile behind his water bottle.

But in a few days the freckle has faded back into Sapnap’s normal skin and the dark streaks over his shoulders and chest are barely visible.

And it’s not possessive. More curious. He doesn’t get this with anyone else, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. And his colours are pretty, especially against Nick’s pale skin and auburn hair. 

As he passes by Nick in the kitchen he presses a hand against his shoulder, moving him against the counter so he can slip past. It leaves green fingerprints along the collar of his t-shirt. He stops, traces a little smiley face into his skin. His shoulder blades draw together. “Quit it man, that tickles.”

“Sorry.”

When they sit down to eat Nick takes the seat next to him rather than across. As he lifts his sandwich to his mouth something brushes across his forearm for just a second, He doesn’t think about it, glancing across at Nick who seems fully focused on his own food before letting it go.

When he’s back upstairs in front of his computer he notices that the mark that’s been left is in the shape of a crudely drawn flame.

It’s a normal day. Get up, breakfast with Nick, go upstairs and sit in front of the computer for far too many hours. But at some point in the afternoon the walls of his room start closing in on him. He rolls his shoulders out, tries to stretch out the jitters, tries to convince himself that he can’t touch the walls, that he doesn’t have to shove them away from himself to escape them. It doesn’t work and he almost knocks over an open water bottle in the process so instead he decides to escape. 

He gets to the living room before he realises he hasn’t brought his laptop with him to actually get any work done, just his phone that he’d mindlessly slipped into his pocket. 

So he scrolls through his dms, replying to fans, and when that starts feeling repetitive he moves to tiktok and likes some of the ones tagging him, then fanart on twitter, and aww, there’s a cute picture of him and Sapnap cuddling, sprawled over the couch the same way he is now, except in the drawing they’re lying half on top of each other, clearly laughing, even in the still frame.

He likes it and keeps scrolling.

There’s a creak on the stairs behind him.

“You’re not busy?”

“Of course I’m busy. Can’t you see that I’m doing very important work right now?”

Sapnap snorts. “Oh, sorry.” He sits at the other end of the couch, turning a little so their legs are pressed together where Dream is taking up far more than his fair share of space. 

“What about you? Where’s your incredibly important work?”

“Oh, well, unlike some people, I actually streamed recently so my fans aren’t starving for content. I can afford to take a few hours off.” 

He sits up so he can smack him. 

“Oh no! I’ve been wounded!” He slumps against Dream. Flopping back onto the couch was supposed to be retaliation of some kind but Sapnap just kind of stays, head resting on his shoulder and chest half pressed to his own. Clay could shove him off onto the floor. Instead he just lets him stay.

He keeps scrolling, eventually switching to replying to emails when he’s exhausted twitter. He’s in the middle of a sentence when something tickles against his bicep. He almost drops the phone.

Nick traces a slow line across his skin, careful, like he’s trying to avoid being noticed. Clay tries not to move.

The line turns into a slightly wonky looking star. It’s joined by another one, and then another, all leaning one way or another, smudging together on his skin. It’s nothing like the masterpieces you see on instagram, soulmate marks spread across someone’s entire spine in a monochrome painting. The colour splotches darker in some places and trails off in others and it's clearly unpracticed and he obviously doesn’t have an artistic bone in his body and Clay tries very very hard not to smile.

There’s no way he’s getting actual work done while this is going on, typing making his hands move around too much for Sapnap to keep working, so he goes back to twitter. The fanart seems to be overrun with people screaming about Dreamnap. 

Mostly it’s meetup art, people finally realising that if it had been a joke they would have known by now, excitedly doodling them in domestic settings, creating masterpieces of them running to each other.

There’s a more abstract ove, a hand with Panda charm bracelet intertwined with one marked with his distinctive smile emblem just at the crease of the wrist. All the lines are black and white except the slow creep of colour that flashes between their palms, bright green and a fiery red. It’s only a few shades removed from the actual colours. He really wants to tell them so.

“How bad of an idea would it be for me to reply to Dreamnap soulmate art?”

“Absolutely fucking terrible.” Nick looks up at him through the hair that’s fallen over his forehead. “Hilarious. But still a very bad idea.”

“Fair enough.” He scrolls past it and the hand that had still been resting on his arm drops away, instead landing on the collar of his shirt. A few lines are traced there, but he can’t feel what it is and Nick’s palm smooths over it a few seconds later, obscuring the original marks from view. 

That night he turns back and forth as he brushes his teeth, studying the little starry sky on his arm. Final verdict; kinda cute, in a sappy sort of way.

“I hate business meetings.”

“Same. Why are we complaining about this now?”

“Two hours on call for lawyers and accountants for the shop. I don’t wanna do it. I can’t do it!”

Sapnap glances over at Dream sprawled across his bed. “Have you refilled your water bottles and put your fidgets out on the desk?”

“Yes.”

“”Then I’m sure you’ll manage.” 

“Saaaap…. Will you do it for me?”

He laughs. “Absolutely not.”

“Aww.” He sticks his lower lip out, trying to flutter his eyelashes. “Not even for your soulmate?”

Nick scoffs, looking away, crease forming between his brows. “Piss off dude.”

“Fineeeee.” He shoves himself off the bed. “I’m going then.”

He paces around his room, trying to shake out the excess energy before he has to sit still, which only serves to build up the tension in his wrists. He tries to crack his joints but the pops aren’t deep enough and he’s just overly aware of all of his bones as he sits down in his office chair.

The meeting starts without a hitch. There’s a presentation, then a discussion, a list of things he needs to sign off on, things that are routine or necessary but somehow still require a great deal of detailed going over. 

He has effectively tuned out every word that isn’t “Dream”, “Clay”, or some version of “approve” by about half an hour in. He kind of wishes he’d thought to boot up a game to play quietly in the background.

At the two hour mark (to the second, he was counting) he speaks up. 

“I’m sorry, but I have another engagement I have to get to. Will you all be fine to carry on without me?”

He gets some polite goodbyes and reassurances which he tries as hard as he can to return without sounding dismissive, and then hangs up as quick as he can. 

His restless limbs carry him out of his room, to Sapnap’s room which he finds empty, down the stairs, making far too much noise on each step. Sapnap is sprawled over the entire length of the couch. His feet carry him into the living room, stopping in front of him. He bounces up and down on his toes.

Nick gives him a strange look for a second, almost calculating, before throwing his feet off the couch to leave space for him. He takes advantage, flopping down firmly in Sapnap’s personal space despite the rest of the couch being free.

“That sucked.”

Hands tug at his wrists, drawing away the harsh grip he has decided to inflict upon his hair.

“You survived.”

“Barely.”

“Well, now you don’t have to do any more work.” His fingers linger on Dream’s arm, doodling little shapes as they talk.

“I have to do something. What do I do?”

“You can just stay here. Give yourself like, a whole entire ten minutes to recover.”

“Right. And after that?”

“I don’t know? Whatever you want?” 

Dream slumps over onto him.

“I don’t want to think…”

“Poor you.”

He lets himself breathe against Nick’s shirt for a few minutes, his fingers still moving in gentle patterns across his skin. Nick just lets him, not moving a muscle as he tries to calm the buzzing in his head. He manages to walk his heart rate down to a more normal level, manages to forget about monitoring his heart rate, manages to get his thoughts to stop colliding into one another and blaring ‘panic panic panic!’ about a situation he’s not even in anymore.

When he lifts his head up he’s in a considerably better mood. 

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

He glances down at where hands are still resting on his exposed skin.

There’s a line of little love heart shaped blobs on his forearm.

“Aww. Cute.” He grins up at Nick. “Do you love me?”

His shoulder smacks against the floor hard, gasping to try and regain his breath through his laughter.

“I hate you so much.”

“C’mon, it’s just a little love heart. I think it’s adorable!”

“I’m going upstairs.”
“No, don’t leave me!” 

Nick steps over him where he’s still struggling for breath on the floor, flipping him off over his shoulder as he heads up the stairs.

“Love you too bro!”

He doesn’t get a response.

Dream would like it to go on record that he has no idea what he did. If he wasn’t the only other person in the house he would have assumed it was something that happened when he wasn’t around. If she wasn’t a perfect angel he seriously would have considered blaming Patches.

He ate breakfast alone. Which was not the end of the world. He had heard Sapnap moving around sometime in the hours of the morning where even they’re normally in bed, so he left the food in the fridge, not counting on him being up before mid afternoon. 

Lunch came and went and he didn’t even notice. No knock on the door to let him know that Sap was going to eat, no text, not even the shuffling of feet on the carpet outside. Even if they don’t normally eat together, learning it was better not to bend Dram’s work around someone elses schedule, normally he at least drops by to remind him to eat.

Midnight rolls around and he realises he hasn’t moved at all in at least six hours and hasn’t spent more than two minutes not looking at a screen in over twelve. Which begs the question of what Sapnap has wound up doing.

He ends up knocking on his door. 

“What do you want to eat?”

“Don’t bother getting anything for me. I’m busy right now.”

He doesn’t look busy, browser pulled up with a line of tabs pulled up and an empty window on the screen.

“C’mon you need to eat. I can get pizza and you can eat in here.”

“I’m not that hungry. Don’t worry about it.”

He twists a little so that Dream can’t see more than the barest sliver of his profile, trying to act like he’s intently focused on the screen.

Dream leaves him be.

But then he finds himself eating alone again the next morning, even if he swore he heard Sapnap getting up. And he is the one who goes and gets the other for dinner, breaking their little ritual for the second time in a row. He tries to talk to him as they eat, tries to catch him in a hug, anything. Sapnap keeps his limbs tucked in tight to avoid touching him at all and give one word answers to everything.

And so Dream concludes that he fucked up.

And now he just has to figure out what to do about it.

He’s so thankful he has fans. Not only do they let him do what he loves and help him keep motivated to produce content, sometimes they are the kindest, most helpful people in the world without even meaning to be. And by that, he means that sometimes he can be exceedingly dumb and the fans call his attention to things he completely blanked on.

This time it comes in the form of a series of clips sent to his snapchat.

Hi! I know you probably won’t see this, but you and Sapnap living together was making me nostalgic for old dream team content, so here’s a little compilation I put together.

He has nothing better to do and he’s justifying wasting time on his phone by interacting with his fans. And if he was gonna give them a decent answer, he should at least watch their compilation.

There’s a bunch of crackhead conversations that they’d had late into recording sessions, back in the days where they were convinced that no one would ever be bothered remembering what they had to say. He laughs at half recollected memories of George screaming, of Nick complaining about little mundane pet peeves and George immediately doing exactly the thing he was complaining about, of all of them talking about school because that used to be the most important thing in their lives.

Then, right in the middle, there’s a clip of them chatting about the future. 

“We’re gonna blow up! That’s what I’m gonna be doing in five years.”

“I want to have better friends than these two idiots.”

“I want to have met my soulmate.”

“Aww is Sappy getting all sappy?”

“Shut up George! I’m not being a sap. I just want to be happy with someone, y’know?”

“That’s sweet, Pandas. I’m sure your soulmate will love you so much.”

“Dream! Don’t encourage him.”

He knocks on the door before pushing it open.

“Hey. What’s up?” 

Sapnap’s knee thunks repeatedly against the underside of the desk, glancing away from the screen to look at Dream and then back again. Dream leans against the doorframe before kicking off it again, stepping further into the room.

“Hey. Do you mind if I-” he gestures towards the bed.

“Go ahead.”

He sits on the edge of the covers, gripping them between his fingers.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Alright. No need to sound so serious about it.” He huffs, clicking the monitor off and turning to face Dream. “What are we talking about?”

“The soulmate thing.”

“Oh. Okay, maybe we do need to sound so serious about it.” He slumps down in his chair, staring at Clay from under his brows. “Why now? What happened?”

“Soulmates are important to you, aren’t they?” He wants to wince at his own lack of tact but pushes on regardless. “Why didn’t you force me to talk about this earlier?”

“You didn’t want to talk about it.”

“But you did.” He rocks his weight forward, bracing himself on his knees. “This was important to you and you just let me brush it aside.” 

“Listen, it’s fine, I’m fine, you don’t have to worry about it. We’ve been fine so far, nothing has to- nothing has to change.”

“No! Don’t just- Don’t do this for my sake.” He grabs Nick’s hand dragging him closer to the bed. He ignores the way the contact paints over both of their skin. “Talk to me. How do you feel, what do you want. Tell me.”

“I want my best friend. That’s the most important thing. Right?”

“Is it?”

“What else would be as important as that?”

“You tell me.”

“Well it’s not like having a soulmate is an option at this point, so. Yeah. I choose having a best friend.” Nick laughs uncomfortably, pulling at his shoulder like he’s trying to get him to leave. “So if you could go and we could forget this conversation ever happened...”

“Sapnap. What are you talking about? You have a soulmate.”

“It doesn’t count. You don’t want it to be like that.”

“Do you want it to be like that?!”

“Just- just shut up. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He tries to pull away. Dream doesn’t let him

His hand paints lime streaks across the side of Nick’s neck as he wraps his fingers into the baby hairs at the back of his head, tugging him forward harsh enough that his hands fall onto Dream’s shoulders to brace himself. Clay guides their lips together too fast. There’s too much heitance in his kiss, too much tension in the way he holds Nick against him. Hands push at his shoulders.

“Nick-”

He almost trips over as he stumbles away from the bed, hand making contact with the doorknob. And he’s gone. A few minutes later the front door slams as well.

He just wanted to make him happy. So what the fuck happened?

He’s sitting on the couch when Nick gets back. Patches kept him company for all of ten minutes before getting annoyed at how distracted and irritable he was and meandering away to play with the dust bunnies under the TV instead. He tried to lose himself in the scroll of twitter but instead just made himself more agitated.

So he’s staring straight through the front door when it swings open, Nick kicking off his sneakers and trying to avoid his eyes.

“Why are you mad at me?”

“Give me a bit more time man, I don’t wanna-”

“Why are you mad at me? Wasn’t that what you wanted, a happy ending with your soulmate? Why aren’t you happy?”

“This wasn’t what I wanted.”

“What do you mean?” He’s on his feet. 

“I mean that this isn’t what I wanted!” And oh, he’s yelling. They haven’t had a screaming match in years, it’s been so long since anything in their life felt big enough to bother fighting each other for.

“Then what do you want?” He crosses his arms, hiding his clenched, brightly painted fists in the folds of his shirt. “Because you clearly haven’t been happy. And you haven’t been talking to me about it. Excuse me for trying to make you feel better.”

“Thanks Clay, you made me feel so much better.” His hands are shaking. 

“Okay.” He steps back, trying desperately to shake some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Listen, I’m sorry for kissing you. That wasn’t the right move. I crossed a line. Now will you just fucking talk to me?”

“Fuck off. I’m not talking about shit with you.” And he turns away from him. And something in him fucking snaps, not willing to let it go.

“Why the fuck are you so mad at me!? I was trying to fix your fucking problem!”

“Because I was trying so hard not to ruin this! And then you went ahead and ruined it for something you don’t even want!” He whirls around to throw it back in his face and the pain in it stings against his cheeks but they’re going and they can’t stop now.

“Who said I didn’t want it?”

“You did!”

“Really? Please tell me when exactly I said that? If you’re gonna put words in my mouth, at least do it properly.”

“Every fucking time you flinched! The very first time we met and you thought this was something we should ignore! Every fucking time you used it to twist my arm behind my back and then fucking friendzoned me!”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck.” Nick’s chest is heaving and even though he’s only an arms length away, crossing the space between seems like a dangerous journey. 

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s fine. Be sorry.” He takes a deep breath that whistles between his lips. “I’ll forgive you for hurting me. I’ll tell you if you’re doing it again. But please. Just…. Let this go.”

“Nick… Don’t do that. For your own sake.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I know. But it’ll be better.”

“Fine.” Nick crosses to collapse on the couch, and Clay forces himself to not flinch as he passes. “Talk.”

“Oh. I thought-” He sits down opposite him, tucking his legs up. “I thought you were gonna talk.”

“You know where I stand. Your turn.”

“Um… What exactly am I supposed to be talking about?”

“Soulmates. Go.”

“Right.” He draws in a breath, tries to let it out slowly. “Right. 

“I said I don’t care. I don’t care who the universe pairs me up with because I want to make the decision on my own.” Nick looks up like he’s going to say something. “Please. Please, I know I’ve been a dick, but just let me say this. I… I don’t want the universe to have the final say in how I live my life. But you’re one of the most important people in the world to me, soulmates or not. And this is important to you.” He scrunches all the freckles on his nose a little closer together. “So I want to choose to make you happy.” 

“Clay-” There’s hands cupping the underside of his jaw, nose brushing against the side of his own as their lips slot together. He’s so ready to start getting used to this but they only linger for one, two, passes of their lips over each other’s before Nick is pulling away. “Okay. Okay, um.” Suddenly they’re back to having space between them and he’s so confused. “So. You want to try being soulmates. Properly.”

“Yes.”

“Right.” He sighs, drags a hand through his hair, finds the opposite side of the couch to curl into. His face is still pink from yelling. “We’re going to take this slow, yeah?”

“Whatever you want.”

“No Dream, not whatever I want. You have to have input into this, otherwise it isn’t real. So we’ll go slow, because if we rush into it then it’s all for my benefit and not actually because you have feelings for me.”

“I love you, Pandas. I’ve told you a million times.”

“I know.” He slots their hands together, slowly and intentionally. “We’ll try our best.”

“We’ll get there.”

He leans in, tilting his head a little to the side, eyelashes fluttering down towards his cheekbones. He’s met by hands on his cheeks, pushing him back.

“First step is to stop kissing me like you really want to mean it, and start kissing me like you actually mean it.”

“I do actually mean it!”

Nick shakes his head, turning him softly so he can press a chaste kiss against the hollow of his cheek. He can feel his stubble brushing against his jaw.

“I meant that.”

“Okay…” Carefully, like he’s going to get pushed away again, he presses his lips to the edge of the crease of his smile line. “Oh. Yeah, I meant that one.”

“I could tell.” He pushes his head back into the couch cushions. “I- Fuck.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” There’s green across almost every inch of his face. Handprints on his cheeks and jaw and along his hairline. Lips imprinted, just slightly offset from his own, and smeared from the accumulation of their attempts. Dream looks away. “Is it- is it okay if I go upstairs? I still feel like I need to get my head on straight.”

“Go ahead. I’m here whenever you’re ready.”

The smile he gets in return is still shattered, but at least someone has taken the effort to gather all the pieces together and dig the glue out of the back of the cupboard. Dream is ready to be the one to piece it back together, even if his hands get sliced up in the process.

He watches as Sapnap disappears up the stairs, waiting until the door swishes against the carpet and clicks closed. The couch cushion is cool against the flushed skin of his neck. 

He can make himself mean it. They can talk and he can make himself mean it and they’ll get better.

If it takes time that just means he has a while to perfect his technique for wooing him.

Patches crawls out from where she’d been hiding to bat at his socks. He leans down to scoop her up. 

“What do you think?”

The look he receives is pure disdain.

“Don’t give me that. He’s my best friend. I love him. I can make this work.”

~~~

“Dream?”

“Uh huh?”

“What the ever loving fuck is this?”

“Oh. Well, I wasn’t sleeping great last night so I got up early and I figured I should make breakfast. Then I realised there was no way you were gonna be up at seven am to eat it, so instead I decided to make something that would take longer. Thankfully I realised half way through making bread that there was no way that was ever going to work so I tried to find something that was in between and like, pancakes are good! But they looked plain, so I-”

“Dream. Are you feeling okay?”

“Me? I feel great. A little sleep deprived maybe, but nothing food and possibly some exercise can’t fix. Do you want syrup or bacon and eggs on your pancakes?”

“Slow down.” He tries to extract the plate from Dream’s grip but he just holds it above his head. 

“Sap! Syrup or eggs?”

“Syrup. Did you sleep at all last night?”

“In my defence, an honest attempt was made.” A plate with what is realistically too many pancakes is shoved into his hands. “I texted my mum for the recipe and I don’t think they’re quite like what I had as a kid but they’re not bad so I’m counting this as a success.”

“Were you worried about what we talked about last night?”

“Worried? Why would I be worried?” Dream turns back to the stove, loading bacon on top of his own pancakes. “I should get up early and do breakfast like this more often. Why are we both so opposed to early mornings? Or we could do it for dinner. We should stop ordering so much takeout honestly, I know we can afford it and it’s not inherently unhealthy but-”

“Clay!” He freezes, back still turned. “Clay. You’re manic.”

“I’m fine.” The laugh he lets out is shaky and wrings the tension out of his shoulders like dirty water out of laundry, spilling everywhere. “It’s just the lack of sleep. I’ll be fine once the adrenaline rush wears off.”

“This does not seem fine.”

Dream spins around, bracing his hands on the countertop and resting his full weight on them and lifting himself up onto his toes. 

“I’m fine. Promise.”

“Is this about last night? Because I know you don’t have feelings like that for me and the last thing I want to do is-”

“No, stop it! If I’m concerned about anyone here it’s you! There just- there just wasn’t like a huge amount of closure last night? So I guess I was a little anxious about what you want from this?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Cause that’s a conversation soulmates normally have when they first meet, except obviously we didn’t because yeah. And then I realised I don’t really know what you want except for like, the usual soulmate-perfect match-forever shit. So… yeah.”

“Fuck. Sorry for dipping last night. That was pretty fucking hypocritical of me.”

Dream shakes his head way too fast. “It’s fine. It was dumb, definitley shouldn’t have kept me up all night. Like, I’ve been in a relationship before, I know how to act.”

“Right.” Sapnap doesn’t look away from him as he lifts a bite of pancakes to his mouth. “If you’re sure. But like, we’re not rushing into anything. I will not have you forcing yourself to-”

“You’ve already said that about a million times.” He grins, grabbing his own plate and settling in beside him. “It’s fine. This was my idea anyway.”

“Okay.” He takes another bite. “Can we go back to that idea in which you make pancakes more often. These might be the best thing ever cooked in this house.”

“I don’t know if I’m being complimented or insulted.”

“Both. Definitely both.”

He goes upstairs after breakfast. He tries to clean up the horrific mess he’s made, but Nick insists on doing it, urging him to go catch up on sleep. Instead he falls back into his gaming chair, getting into a call with George and getting back to work.

Half an hour later there’s footsteps on the hall carpet. They pause for a second, either outside his door or at the top of the stairs, he can’t tell from sound alone, but they quickly continue on when he stays quiet.

A few hours later there’s a gentle knock on his door before it swings open.

“You’re not asleep.”

“That I am not.”

He steps up to Dream’s desk almost between him and the screen. 

“You need to rest. You were bouncing off the walls earlier.”

“I’ll be fine! I’ve calmed down, I’ll go to bed early. If I sleep now then I’ll just be up all night tonight.”

“Dream.” He looks like he wants to reach out but he doesn’t.

“It’s one night. Don’t worry about it.” He turns back to the screen. “You still there George?”

“Still here.”

“George!”

“Tell the idiot that I’m cussing him out right now.”

“George says to tell you that he’s cussing you out.”

“Aww, he loves me.” Sapnap pushes off his desk. “You have to go to bed after dinner.”

“You can hold me to it.”

There’s the faintest ghost of a hand brushing through his hair, brief and tentative, before Sapnap’s gone.

“What’s going on with him?”

“What?”

“Sap was being all, like, soft with you.”

“Hmm.” He leans back in the chair. “I’m not sure I can talk about it right now. But there’s just something going on. I’m sure you’ll get the whole dramatic story with all the secrets later.” He tilts his head back up to stare at the lit up discord symbol. “I probably should have thought about telling you sooner. Kind of surprised Nick didn’t to be honest.”

“Whatever, you weirdos keep your secrets. I don’t actually care.”

“I promise to tell you eventually, Gogy.”

“Good.”

It’s just a day like any other and they’re halfway through eating dinner when he realises that in any context other than the fact that this is what they’ve done every night for months, this would be a date. And then he promptly shuts his mouth to avoid saying whatever stupid thing was on the tip of his toungue.

“Dream?”

“Huh?”

“You were saying something?”

“Uhh. I don’t remember?”

“Okay…”

“Seriously.” He leans his elbows on the table. It would be an awkward movement to try and grab Nick’s hand with how close they are to his body. He’s not sure what else he could do.”

“Pretty sure it was something very important and along the lines of having sexual intercourse with one of our friend’s mothers.” 

“Yeah. Right.” He looks down at the table.

“Dude. You good?”

“I’m fine.” He pauses. “Do you wanna, like, hang out after dinner?”

“Is that not what we’re doing right now?”

“Yeah but like-” He grasps for words. A slow grin spreads across Sapnap’s face. “Listen, I just wanted to-” Sapnap bites on his lip to hold back a laugh. “Shut up!”

“I’m not saying anything!”

“UGH!”

Sapnap’s forehead drops onto the edge of the table, laughter wracking his chest.

“I hate you.” He stands up, grabbing the plates from the table. “I was gonna try to do something nice for you, but no.”

“Oh?” His smile softens a little. “What were you gonna do?”

“I… was gonna figure that out?”
Sapnap laughs. “Right. How about instead we just play together for a bit?”

Video games are good. He knows how to do video games. He’s definitely better at video games than improvising dates.

“Minecraft?”

“Or... you could play valorant with me?”

Dream wrinkles up his nose but doesn’t say anything.

Sapnap pokes him between the ribs. “You said you were gonna do something nice. Plus, I didn’t go through all the effort of transferring it to console so that I could play alone.”

“Fine. Fine.”

Sapnap boots up the game, handing Dream his second favourite controller as they settle into the couch. “I’m gonna suck. You know that right?”

“I know. Kicking your butt is always a good time.”

He does suck. And Sapnap does kick his butt. And he gets very justifiably angry about it. He isn’t a sore loser. The game just sucks. He informs Sapnap of that. Loudly.

“You’re so cute when you’re mad.”

“Fuck off. You’re hacking.”

“Maybe you’re just bad.”

He growls under his breath, gripping the controller tighter and mashing the buttons. On screen his character jumps around a corner and is promptly shot to death.

“FUCK!”

Sapnap somehow manages to keep playing while he laughs, knocking out another player before they finally lose.

“I don’t even care if we lost. That was worth it.”

Dream throws all his body weight at him, tackling him back onto the sofa.
“Dream!” He squirms under him, green markings smearing as he tries to escape Dream’s grip.

“You suck!” He shoves down harder, pinning him against the couch. Sapnap stops moving.

He’s hovering over him, their faces close enough to touch. Nick has gone pink in the cheeks, hands clutching at him. 

He could lean down and kiss him. This was supposed to be a date after all.

Nick turns his cheek. Clay sighs.

His lips graze against the curve of Nick’s cheekbone, fleeting and barely even leaving a tinge of spring green.

“Okay?”

He nods, glancing back up at him. “Okay.”

He pushes himself up off the couch, reaching down to help Sapnap up after him. 

“Do you- do you wanna play another round?”

“Sure.”

~~~

The windows in his room face west. The afternoon light diffracts around the pane divisions, sending streaks of warm light through the room. He feels like he never appreciates it, the time spent lounging in bed tending to be in the morning or well after dark. 

There’s something about lying there, watching the sun dip towards the rooftops. But it’s boring. He forces himself out of the comfortable spot and out into the hall. The door to Sap’s room swings open under the lightest touch.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” He leans over his shoulder, checking he’s not doing anything too urgent. “Come be lazy with me?”

“Sure.” He tilts his head back to look up at him. “Why?”

“Just cause?”

Sapnap stands up, Dream’s hand slipping off his shoulder. It leaves a streak of green below the sleeve of his shirt. He watches it as he follows him back down the hall to his own room.

He settles against the headboard, scooching across so there’s room at the edge of the bed for Sapnap. Which was apparently not really necessary as he flops down horizontally across the mattress. 

“This is nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I want to be a fucking cat.”

“I’m sure Patches wouldn’t mind if you decided to join in on lounging about the house.”

He hums. “Plus cats don’t have to edit videos.”

“They do not.” Sapnap’s hair glows almost red in the sunlight. He reaches out to run a hand through it. “But they do have to eat the same thing every single day.”

“If I were a cat you would feed me different food every day. Probably off your own plate like you do for Patches. Because you’re a softie.”

“Surely in this hypothetical situation we’d be cats together.”

He rolls so his face isn't half obscured by the comforter and his arms.

“We would lie around together and do nothing all day.”

“Realistically we’d probably spend a fair amount of time pushing stuff off counters”

“That too.”

The center divider of the window pane is painting a stripe across his face, leaving one of his eyes shaded while the other glows. “We can do that you know.”

“What?”

He extracts his legs from under Sapnap’s sprawled arms, twisting around to lie next to him. “We could just spend all our time lazing around. Stream once in a blue moon just to keep the fans on their toes. The chanel can just sit there making revenue. We’d be fine.”

“You’d go stir crazy.”

“Maybe. Maybe not if I was with you.”

The sunlight falls gently on him. He can see the shadows cast by his stubble. The individual strands of hair falling across his forehead. He brings a hand up to brush them away. Leaves the hand resting on his cheek.

“Can I-” He pauses, swallows. Fights the urge to lick his lips. “Can I kiss you?”

Something in the lines of Nick’s cheeks softens a little. “Yes.”

He brushes his thumb against his upper lip before he leans all the way in, like he’s leaving a little mark so his lips know where to fall. He paints over the green streak with another layer, the lightest layer of lime green. Then another. Nick leans a little further into his space and he slides an arm around his waist, leaving a millimeter of space between their lips as he drags him into a more comfortable position, half sprawled across his chest.

They kiss again, and he slides Nick’s upper lip between his teeth, slowly, testing and taking and suppressing a little sigh at the returned pressure on his lower lip.

They pull apart slowly, reluctant tongues and teeth lingering. Nick’s hands rest against the side of his neck as they breathe.

“You meant it.”

“I think I did.” He grins. “I meant it. I love you. I’m in love with you.”

“And you only made me wait ten years for it.”

“Hey, be fair. I can only be held directly accountable for about three months.”

Sapnap leans in to kiss him again, fingers pressing firmly against his collarbone. The mark is going to be almost red by the time they untangle themselves.

“No. I’m going to blame you for all of it.”

“I think I can accept this responsibility as long as I can atone with more kisses.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of all the chores for the rest of forever. But I guess that works too.”

“Forever.” He rests their foreheads together. “We have forever.”

~~~

Dream wakes up in his own bed with the pillow next to him smelling like Sapnap. These days it almost always does.

He can still feel the ache behind his eyes from spending the majority of the time allocated to sleep lying awake, propped up on his elbow, counting and recounting the moles scattered across the back of Sapnap’s neck and shoulders. Every time he moved he would roll over and shoot him a tired glare, until eventually it devolved into grumbling, and then to just grabbing his arm and pulling it over him as he drifted off to sleep. He’s not sure how much longer he stared at him before he passed out.

He rolls out of bed, almost tripping over the pile of blankets that fall off with him. They always build up at the edge of the bed because Sapnap hogs the covers. He dumps them back on the bed before venturing downstairs.

Sapnap is leaning against the breakfast bar, slumped over. He still looks barely awake and sleep warmed.

He presses his lips to the bump of his spine where it curves over into the tired slump of his neck. He traces a smiley face into the skin next to it with a fingertip.

“That tickles.”

“I love you.”

“Wonderful. Are you going to make breakfast or do I have to do it myself?”

“I love you.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“I love you.”

He presses another kiss overtop the first one, trying to line it up as best as possible so he leaves a clear mark. Then he lets him go so he can start making food because the consequence of always making breakfast for both of them is that Nick’s level of competency in the kitchen still hasn’t progressed very far past ‘hazard’.

He can feel eyes on his as he stands over the stove, moving scrambled eggs around in the pan.

“I love you.”

“Do you plan on saying anything else this morning?”

He leans over the breakfast bar to kiss him, painting over the green on his lips that had faded a little too much for Dream’s liking. “I love you. Also, can you get the juice out?”

“Sure.” An arm wraps around his waist as he passes behind him to get to the fridge. “Love you too.”