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Dream is starting to think that Karl has a thing for attention.
It starts long before they even meet in person. It starts with Karl miles away, stuck on the other side of a computer screen, when their face-to-face interactions are limited to video calls and scratchy microphones.
Admittedly, Dream has been spending a little too much time with Karl. Turning down appearances on streams in favor of staying up late with Karl on the other side of a Discord call, sweet loopy laughter filtering through his speakers. Admittedly, Dream is giving Karl the attention he seems to crave, and maybe that’s only fueling the fire.
But it’s not the long calls or good morning texts that have Dream put under assumptions. All that is normal, something he’s done and continues to do with plenty of people who aren’t Karl, so he doesn’t bat an eye towards any of that normalcy.
What he does give a double take is Karl’s willingness to take off his clothes on camera.
It’s always in a completely innocent way. Getting changed into more comfortable clothes at the end of a long day, showing off whatever new piece of merch showed up at his door, getting too hot to still be wearing a hoodie instead of a t-shirt. Dream has seen Karl lacking most of his clothes more times than he can count, and he’s almost afraid to admit just how much he doesn’t mind it.
It happens again late one afternoon, when Karl is all but bouncing off the walls to find Dream’s new subscriber milestone merch waiting for him outside his house. Dream can’t help but smile at the way Karl practically buzzes out of his skin, holding the article up towards the camera as if Dream hasn’t seen the design a thousand times before.
“It’s so cool, Dream, you really outdid yourself this time,” Karl complimented, pulling the sweatshirt back in closer to get a better look at the design for himself.
Dream laughed, leaning his head against an outstretched hand. “That’s all the designers, I just approved it.”
Karl laughed, too, dipping his head back down into frame to show off his beaming smile. Without missing a beat, he huffs, “Hang on, I’m gonna put it on.”
And typically, were this anyone else, the declaration of hang on would’ve been met with a retreat from the camera’s frame. Were this anyone else, they would’ve slipped out to where Dream couldn’t see them, and he would’ve waited with a view of an empty room and quiet rustling coming from just barely off screen.
But this was Karl, so that’s not the way it was going to go.
Karl didn’t go anywhere, merely throwing the new hoodie over the back of his desk chair before he stripped himself of the plain white t-shirt he was wearing before. He’s all pale skin, everything on display above the waistband of his boxers that Dream can just barely see, hands reaching for the new sweatshirt with a search for the bottom.
Dream has never been so grateful that his camera is switched off. He stares unapologetically, lips slightly parted with the gape of his jaw as he just watches. He watches Karl exist in less clothes than he should, watches him stretch his arms up above his head to pull the hoodie down onto himself.
When all his skin disappears beneath the fabric, Dream is almost upset for the moment to be over.
He tries not to sigh into his mic. At the very least, Karl still looks irreparably adorable in Dream’s merch.
“Looks good, Karl,” he mutters, hoping to god that the drool of over-appreciation doesn’t seep in through his tone.
Karl smiles wider, if possible. And he collapses down into his chair with a giggle, pulling the ends of his sleeves up over his hands before he goes back to what he was doing before.
Dream curses himself mentally. Damn Karl and his stupidly attractive confidence.
It’s three days later, when Dream is sitting on the floor in Sapnap’s room, that he realizes there might be something more to the way Karl acts on call.
Maybe he’s been trying to ignore the messy thoughts in his head, maybe he’s been indulging in them with too much ferocity. Dream isn’t quite sure, but one thing he does know for sure is that he isn’t thinking of Karl in a strictly platonic way, not anymore.
So he breaks the silence that settled between himself and Sapnap with a question, back leaning against the ridges of desk drawers while the soft sounds of a keyboard flit from beneath Sapnap’s fast-moving fingers.
“What do you think about Karl?”
The typing sounds halt for a moment. Dream turns, looking up at his friend where he sits, barely able to read the frown on his face from the awkward angle. Maybe Sapnap can feel Dream’s eyes on him, because he looks down at the blond where he sits on the floor.
“Karl?” he echoes, to which Dream nods his head. “He’s one of my best friends, man, you know that. Why?”
And Dream frowns. Maybe he didn’t really think through the question; he isn’t sure what to say. So he huffs, declaring, “I don’t know,” before his mind can settle on a real answer. “I guess there are just some things about him that confuse me.”
That much is true. Karl has always been something of an enigma to Dream, even when he exists so open and confident.
Maybe it’s the open confidence that’s an enigma to him.
“Really?” Sapnap questions, a furrow situating in his brows. “Karl’s always been a pretty straightforward guy.”
Now that doesn’t quite make sense to Dream. But Sapnap sounds so earnest, so confident, so set on what he says. It’s enough to confuse Dream even more, because he can’t quite see what Sapnap means by straightforward guy.
“You think so?” Dream pries, tucking his knees up close to his chest.
“I know so,” Sapnap huffs. “Says what he’s feeling and stuff, I don’t know. He’s pretty easy to understand.”
And he shrugs, nonchalant and self-assured. Hands fall away from a keyboard to rest gently on knees, the spin of a swivel chair giving Dream a better look at his friend’s confused face.
“Okay, maybe you’re right,” he relents, “but like… don’t you think it’s weird that he gets changed in front of people?”
Somehow, the confusion on Sapnap’s face etches deeper. “What?”
Dream’s frown re-asserts itself across his features. And he shifts slightly where he sits, looking up at Sapnap like he’s just undone everything he thought he knew.
Perhaps he has.
“Like, on call,” Dream explains. “He doesn’t go offscreen to change, or whatever. He just kinda… takes his clothes off.”
Sapnap scoffs, but there’s no malice behind it. “He doesn’t do that when I’m on call with him.”
In an echo of his roommate’s previous words, Dream exclaims, “What?”
“I think he’s even…” Sapnap lowers his brows, deep in thought, “he’s gotten changed while I’m there before, but he always turns his camera off.”
“Huh,” Dream mutters. “That’s so… weird.”
“Yeah, kinda,” Sapnap admits, shrugging. “I don’t know, man. Maybe Karl isn’t as straightforward as I thought.”
Dream frowns. He almost wants to confront Karl about it, but how the hell is he even meant to bring that up?
He tries not to think about it.
Miraculously, Dream manages to evade his own mind until he meets Karl. For the first time in person, they’re together. And the airport was full of a certain tension Dream couldn’t place, a certain tension he’s unsure if Karl felt, too.
He drove Karl back to his house with the same heavy air between them. And they came back to where Sapnap was waiting for them, laughing and acting as though the world didn’t exist outside the walls of their house.
Dream can’t shake the tension. And he tries, he really does, but it always comes up short. He sits on the couch in the living room long after the sun has set, alone, and he tries to ignore the distant stirring in his gut. There’s something about the state of things that makes him uneasy, something about the way everything is falling into place.
It feels like something’s missing.
Perhaps it’s the worst kind of punishment when he can’t figure out what is missing. He wishes he could just fall asleep, could refresh himself with a new sunrise and a new day and, hopefully, a new attitude.
It would suck if he spent all of Karl’s visit so wrapped up in his head. He would hate to look back on the limited time they spent together and acknowledge how he wasn’t really there, how he was distracted the whole time and never really got to enjoy himself.
A sigh escapes through his parted lips. Artificial light paints his skin unpleasant and gold, and Dream sinks down into the couch cushions as though he might fall asleep there—if only he felt tired at all.
But his reprieve doesn’t last long, sitting up suddenly at the sound of a creaking door. Dream looks toward the hallway curiously, surprised at the indication of anyone else being awake at this hour. He’d already resigned himself to the fact that he was the only one still up, basking in the solitude of a sleepless night where anyone could stumble in and see him.
As it turns out, he’s not so alone anymore. But his position in the living room does reveal him far sooner than a closed door would, the light flicked on in the corner drawing people just as well as it draws moths, apparently.
Karl lingers in the doorway.
“Dream?” he questions, and he sounds more awake than Dream was expecting him to.
Swallowing in a vain attempt at slowing the rapid beat of his heart, Dream returns, “Karl?”
With a huff, Karl admits, “I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither,” Dream mutters, and he neglects to mention the fact that it has everything to do with Karl.
And Karl walks slowly into the living room, wearing nothing but a thin white t-shirt and a pair of shorts that Dream would consider too short. Maybe that’s only personal preference, or maybe he’s biased based on the mess running through his mind.
Either way, he clenches his fists.
“Your house is so hot,” Karl complains, fanning at his chest with fingers pinching the collar of his shirt. Giving a pointed look towards Dream, Karl questions, “Do you not have AC?”
“No, we do,” Dream mumbles, shaking his head distractedly. “We just don’t use it.”
Karl looks at him like he’s an idiot. “You live in Florida.”
“I commend your observation skills,” Dream remarks, sarcasm dripping heavy from the edges of his tone.
Scoffing, Karl curls his fingers beneath the hem of his shirt. “You know what I mean, nimrod.”
And he takes his top off with all the ease he always shows, discarding the cotton fabric to the floor without thought. Dream’s mouth runs dry just as his nails start digging curves into his palms, all the muscles in his body tensing beneath freckled skin.
With a sigh, Karl collapses onto the couch next to Dream. They’re sitting close—too close, if Dream were to make the call on it—and Karl still looks so effortless. He doesn’t even look all that warm, and Dream wonders if he even really is overheating in Dream’s not-very-hot house, but he doesn’t bother to pry.
He should bother to watch his gaze, though; he’s staring, apology lost to him when his eyes sit so wide on Karl’s exposed skin. It earns him a bemused look from stormy eyes, widened pupils glistening beneath the unpleasant golden light.
“Is something wrong?” Karl asks, genuine concern hidden somewhere in his tone.
“Uh, no,” Dream says quickly, clearing his throat in haste. “No, nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Not a ghost, Dream’s mind supplies, just you.
He thinks he’ll always be more startled by the latter.
“Oh, sorry,” he mutters, but he doesn’t really mean it. Scratching at the back of his neck, Dream offers the excuse, “I think I’m just tired.”
Little white lies burn bitter on Dream’s tongue. Karl looks at him with a certain kind of accusation behind his gaze—something that Dream has never seen on him before—and they sit at odds with each other. Dream swallows again, heavy and thick, and he wonders why he even made anything up in the first place; he’s always been such a terrible liar.
It has to be because the truth scares him more than conviction.
Even still, he can feel the cruel admittance working up from the base of his spine in a heat-heavy crawl. As soon as his hands start shaking, Dream knows he can’t last any longer with his true answer kept behind bared teeth, and he spills the words that make him quiver sooner than he can think to take them back.
“Sapnap told me.”
Admittedly, it’s not very descriptive. Admittedly, Dream was vague on purpose. And maybe that makes it worse, because now Karl is confused and curious and has that stupid cute furrow to his brow, but Dream is already biting his tongue until he can’t breathe anymore.
“What?” Karl pries, inquisitive, and Dream has to swallow his pride again.
“Sapnap told me that you, um, that you don’t just…” and he hesitates, feeling small beneath the gray-wide gaze of the dirty blond. “He told me that you don’t just take your clothes off when you’re on call with him.”
Karl’s mouth falls open, then it shuts again. In soft admittance, he says nothing more than a tiny, “Ah.”
“Sorry,” Dream stumbles, but his heart is still beating out of his chest. “I just… why?”
“Huh?”
Heedless, Dream questions with his steady-racing heart, “Why do you only do it around me?”
“I don’t know,” Karl tries, shrugging, but even he knows it can’t end there. “You always sound so… flustered, when we’re on call. I guess I liked that I could mess you up like that.”
Thoughtless, Dream murmurs, “So it is about attention.”
Karl giggles. “Only if it’s yours.”
The admittance makes Dream’s face burn red, and he figures this is exactly why Karl does it. And he almost hates that he can’t hide behind inactive webcams anymore, that he has to be open and on display right where Karl can see him, that he can’t take back the look on his face or the words on his tongue so long as they’re still here.
He swallows the last bit of himself he can fit in his too-tight throat. Lilted, he questions, “So are you really too hot to be wearing your shirt right now, or were you just saying that?”
Despite the flush creeping across his face, Karl shrugs with nonchalance. “Maybe I’m exaggerating.”
It’s almost too much for Dream to handle. Because Karl is so close, and nothing he says feels real enough to believe, all of it slipping too close to his wildest dreams when he lets himself indulge.
Maybe he’s afraid of losing this, afraid of waking up only to find it was just another too-good-to-be-true dream. Maybe he just wants to make the finite time Karl has in Florida count, the finite time he has where he’s close enough for Dream to touch, because he’s coaxing Karl closer with a lone syllable pushed through the tightness of his lips.
“C’mere.”
And Karl obliges, seeming just as thoughtless as Dream, climbing over to sit in the blond’s lap without hesitation. For the record, it’s not the position Dream was expecting to wind up in, but he takes it with all the pride he would’ve taken anything else and mashes their waiting lips together.
They kiss messily, mouths sliding against each other in a haste that can’t be matched by anything but want. Dream fears he might like it too much, hands tight around Karl’s waist, but he takes it that Karl wants it just as much as he does. The world ceases to exist for as long as they’re melting into each other, turning a friendship into something more beneath the low light of Dream’s living room.
Dream is grateful that Karl only takes his clothes off in front of him. In truth, he wants to keep him all to himself.