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“You never talk to me.” He confesses, finally letting the dam fall. “You never listen, either. You never let me feel heard or understood or even loved, because every time I bring up something serious you explode and then ignore it and storm out.” Water rushes faster than expected, flushing his lungs and Sapnap could kill for a breath of fresh air as he feels himself sink away into the drunken mess of alcohol and months of withheld emotional frustration. It engulfs him completely with the words:
“Then maybe this just isn’t meant to work out.”
Sapnap’s eyes creaked open to the light of his bedroom window with a crick in his neck, a pounding headache, and stains of whatever forms of alcohol were consumed the night before scattered over his barely conscious body. The raven stretches as he attempts to run his hands through tangled hair, wondering how poor of shape he could be in to find confetti in his hair.
He could only assume how badly the house looked, and every ounce of sense in his body screamed at him to clean up the house before his clean freak roommate returned home from whatever one-night-stand he managed for New Years. For a moment, he’s overcome with something near envious onyx - how nice it would be to be out getting laid rather than at home at a party that could have been fun, had Sapnap not been fighting with his boyfriend all throughout. The onyx seemed to settle as a bitter charcoal taste on his tongue that would likely soon be washed away with Pedialite as he made his way out of his bedroom.
Warm hips hosting a pair of gray swears press up against cold counters, the coolness of the marble bleeding through gray as he fumbles through the cabinets for something for his headache. Once found, he pops two tablets into his mouth quickly and swallows them down with tap water.
There’s spilled candle wax on the floor, hardened on the hardwood panels in an innocent vanilla sandalwood puddle. There’s polaroid pictures on the counter of various guests together, and even one of the raven and the brunet. Sapnap tosses that one aside, landing near the garbage can.
The kitchen was m0st likely the worst room of the house, so, with what little sense hadn’t been washed away by waves of emotional torment and his awful headache, he decided to clean there first. He couldn't even imagine how the house got into this shape to begin with - he hadn’t invited many people. The waste of used confetti poppers, beer bottles, and soda cans could convince differently if Sapnap hadn’t been the host himself.
There’s a pattering of barefoot feet tip-toeing through the hallway and slipping through the house. The escapee was carrying her shoes in her right hand and a purse in her left, and as she turned, Sapnap could recognize her as an old friend; an attendee of the night before. He offered a single wave returned by her quick smile before slipping out the front door. Sapnap wished he could escape that quickly, but there’s glitter clinging to him, shining in drunk words and sober thoughts he wishes were never revealed.
His next guest that presents himself is not only unwanted, but just the sight of him makes Sapnap’s stomach turn, his thoughts similar as the sight of tired eyes and wrinkled clothes grips and twists his mind until it’s numb.
George seemed to be of similar state to Sapnap, hair appearing a bit messier due to its length but lacking the tangled confetti. Shades of eminence exhaustion tainted the deep bags under his eyes, and if Sapnap weren’t in such a state as he was now he might find concern that he can most likely relate to the dark exhaust. Instead, Sapnap was busy intent on the words (or more accurately, screams) drenching his memory in a gasoline sweat.
“Morning.” Sapnap offers. It’s cruel how little emotion a word can hold that once could have meant oceans of affection.
There’s no return.
George made his way over to the cabinet himself, retrieved the same bottle the raven recently took from and repeated the same actions. Waxy sandalwood shock coats Sapnap as he watches the other man dip into a cabinet to grab a black garbage bag. There was something so aggressive about the way he pulled it out of the box, and paired with the emotionless, numb face he feld, Sapnap had no clue where his head was at.
After a moment he joined Sapnap in cleaning up the kitchen, emptying the overflowing garbage can into the bag in his hand and reaching for empty and half-filled bottles on the counter. Sapnap stopped scrubbing candle wax off the floor just to look over at the brunet with an unreturned gaze.
“Did you mean it?” Are the only words George said over the sound of clinking bottles.
Sapnap paused once again. Tides of words exchanged the night before fell back into his mind, arguments that maybe Sapnap had been holding back for months, sitting on the tip of his tongue as the present issues happened to get worse.
They were the perfect couple, appeared as the two boyfriends that would soon become engaged, have a large, much too formal wedding and adopt two, maybe three kids. They’d move out and find a bigger house to suit their family and they’d live the rest of their lives like that, stuck together at the hip and being the blueprint for other couples.
Sapnap disagreed. Of course, he’d never confess that to anyone, not even himself, but it was true. There were issues that needed to be dealt with, simply pushed into a corner to be grown over with poison ivy and passive aggressiveness that’d soon pass until the next problem rolled around. It went on for months, Sapnap ignored it. George wouldn’t talk to him, the raven returned the favor.
“Yeah.” So he admitted, the flavor of hot charcoal in the back of his throat burning his words as they forced their way out of tense lips. He remembers the hot words that George spit, painted with a numb expression that just once again made Sapnap feel like he couldn’t care less that he had ended their relationship with ‘ then maybe this just wasn’t meant to work out’ . “Did you?”
George nods. There’s dark tension everywhere: in their posture, in their eyebrows knitted close together, hanging in the thick air like the weight of ten pounds of glass could drop on them and shatter at any moment, the end matched with a hundred shards of glass and a death by a thousand cuts.
“So,” The brunet began once more, each word stinging at Sapnap more than the last, hot coals on skin still cold from previous arguments. “We can talk now, if you want.”
Sapnap furrowed his eyebrows. “Talk about what?” He almost knew; the question is almost a test.
A phantom of a shrug finds itself on George’s shoulders. “You said I needed to talk ,” He emphasizes the last word cruelly with a slight shake of his head, as if he doesn’t understand the very thing that he ended everything for a mere eight hours before. “So let’s talk.”
Sapnap was torn, deciphering what the brunet could possibly be attempting. George had always been difficult to analyze, maybe that’s what made him so appealing to Sapnap in the beginning. He was so closed off, but the raven knew he got to see more of the boy than anyone else. He felt important, special. However, that bit of him wasn’t enough - Sapnap has to remind himself, not wanting to fall back into old feelings that were cut off the night before - he needs someone who can speak and listen, pull and push the rows instead of floating miserably on waves of confession and need.
“Okay.” He finally offered in return. “You don’t talk to me.”
George was quiet, almost as if he was once again ignoring the accusation, but the furrow of his brows and twists of watermelon lips suggests he’s trying to understand where Sapnap is coming from; articulating a response or explanation that would accurately describe where and why the issue arose. Sapnap waits.
His words are quiet, branches of their shared roots of misunderstandings snapping, flowing along a quiet stream, spilling off the edge of watermelon lips and ivory teeth. “I don’t know how.”
“You don’t know how.” Sapnap repeats, not a hint of malice nor sarcasm in the confirmation. “I just needed you to tell me what you need without blowing up at me.”
“I don’t know that, either.”
Sapnap began to hear irritation creeping up on him, building a dam of patience to hold back mahogany cries. Once more, the burden of communicating and addressing issues was presented upon Sapnap in a crown of thorns. “I love you- ut I just can’t do all the pushing stuff to the side and not talking about anything. You keep running away from me.” There were thorns of tears pricking at his eyes as he confessed.
“Right. Uh, I’m sorry.” George returned. There was no sign of emotion in his tone, an obviously forced remark sent when having nothing else to say. He twisted his posture, fiddling with his hands connected in front of him, eyes glued to the floor and avoiding looking at the boy in front of him.
Sapnap was almost glad he wouldn’t return his scowled gaze, for George couldn’t sense the thorns of what once was a daisy, now poison ivy, growing in his eyes.
For once, Sapnap wished he’d fight. When there’s nothing left and he’s lost to an open end, his only need is for George to show him that there is something left there, to prove that this, Sapnap, was worth fighting for.
Sapnap left the brunet in silence, reaching for his painfully familiar voice to mark him once more in vermillion - whether it’s painted across heated cheeks or in scars of thorn wounds in watery olive: Sapnap reached for it, begging to fight for him.
George didn’t say anything.
“You’re sorry.”
Nothing. Not even a quick gaze.
Sapnap wanted to scream. He wanted to spew everything out at once, scream everything he wants and everything he feels; but George can’t handle that. He would shut off, leave - it wouldn’t be the first time. Except this time: George wouldn’t quietly open their bedroom door that night, slipping into bed against a warm body and silently making unfaithful promises to be done fighting.
“Where did you go?” Sapnap questioned, willing any other topic to present itself than the one in front of them, spilling out of empty, clinking bottles.
“What?”
“Whenever we fought, you would run off. Where did you go?”
George furrows his brows together, looking up to the raven for the first time that morning. “What, do you think I cheated on you?” The words are spit with such gasoline-soaked malice that the raven is afraid a single spark could set the whole kitchen ablaze.
Sapnap shook his head quickly, screaming against the pouring guilt for bringing out that cruel, defensive side of George- the side that came out in arguments and often led the raven to falling asleep (or attempting to, and failing) on the cold sheets of an empty bed. “I know you wouldn’t- I just want to know where you were all those nights.”
The brunet’s face contorted at the sting of all those nights . “I usually just drove around; gave me a chance to think. Or not think.” He answered. “I went over to Dream’s once, but he kept asking questions and just looking all sorry for me. I hated it.”
“Did you feel guilty?” Sapnap continued.
Umber darted away again. “Yes.” He answered, genuinity dripping from the words in a raw syrup. “I tried not to think about it, though. I didn’t know how to apologize.”
You wanted to apologize .
As if he heard the silent words, George repeated, “I didn’t know how.”
The raven nodded with a loss for anything left to say. Surely after nearly a year of being together, the end would have more to say. Silence hung in the thick air. Is this closure?
They should be fighting. They should be screaming at eachother, ripping their own hair out at their frustration, spitting words they’d both silently regret in the morning. They should be making up by the figure of a brunet boy climbing into bed in a dark room, void of light and any words. They should be doing what they've done for months.
But for the first time, they’re talking- and Sapnap almost wishes he remembered what they’d fought for.
“What a way to kick off the new year, huh?” Sapnap chuckled pitifully.
George forced a quiet huff to match Sapnap’s, both obviously coated with numbed heartbreak rather than genuine amusement.
The raven let his mind wander to where George would go after this, who he would find himself with, or who he would become. Sapnap didn’t want George to be the one he lost; the stranger who’s laugh he could recognize out of a room of millions.
“Right.” The heartbreak welling in and spilling out of Sapnap’s eyes was obviously unmatched in dry spruce. “I think I should, you know, get going now, then.”
Sapnap nodded, still wiping tears from sorrow-stained cheeks and biting his lip to hold back sobs. He almost expected an embrace, or an ‘I love you’, or just some way for Sapnap to know George was as heartbroken as him. But like always, there was nothing. The brunet slipped out of the kitchen, and Sapnap stood, body unwilling to move when he heard the front door open, a step, a hesitation, and a click as it closed again.
Maybe, yet foolishly, Sapnap expected the brunet to have turned around; realized they could work it out in the last split-second. Maybe he wanted George to come back to grab him and hug him as broken sobs shook his small frame. Sapnap would let him; would hug even tighter back, running hands through messy brunet hair and whispering soothing words as he sobbed into his shoulder.
There was no return; no break in George’s numb mask. The only thing Sapnap was to hold onto of the brunet was empty bottles, scarred vermillion, and tear-soaked candlewax on the hardwood floor.