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Punz didn’t touch people very much. E didn’t really have an exact reason why, e had just never been physically affectionate. E wasn’t a hugger and when eir friends clung to each other, e hung back, letting them figure out whatever touch-starvation they had on their own. The only person who ever touched em was Karl and even that was just because Karl touched everybody. Everyone else respected eir unspoken boundaries and gave em plenty of space, something e appreciated.
Needless to say, e had never really touched Sapnap before. Maybe they would brush arms through their sweatshirts while walking to class, but e couldn’t even think of a time they touched fingers while passing papers to one another. Punz didn’t like touching or at the very least, all of eir friends assumed e didn’t like it and so Punz went with that assumption. Needless to say, e wasn’t sure why Sapnap was asking em for this.
“You… want me to do your eyeliner for the school dance?” Punz asked slowly, raising an eyebrow, and Sapnap nodded even as he flushed red. The color in his cheeks went well with the nice button-up he was wearing, burnt orange and tucked into neat slacks. Punz purposefully kept eir eyes pointed at his face.
“You have a really steady hand, right? You did like, that full-face look on Halloween and it looked really cool so I thought of you first to do my makeup,” Sapnap said in a rush, waving his hands. Punz frowned. He was more frantic than he usually would be, a sign that something was up.
“Are you alright?” E wasn’t too concerned, but it didn’t hurt to ask. Sapnap just got into twitchy moods sometimes, even if emotional fits were more Dream or Bad’s thing. But Sapnap was usually perfectly at ease with Punz, or at the very least, perfectly transparent with why he was acting insane. E couldn’t think of a reason why he would be hiding something unless he was planning something for their school dance. Even then, Punz would usually be roped into whatever stupid plans he concocted, so e was out of ideas there.
Sapnap scoffed. “I’m fine, I just, y’know.”
“I don’t know.”
“I wanna impress Karl when we see him later.” Sapnap’s eyes dropped to the ground and he scuffed his shoe against the carpet. They were in Punz’s room, Punz sitting at eir computer desk and Sapnap leaning in eir doorway after basically breaking into eir house. He was more than comfortable just slamming in, most of their friend group knew where Punz’s dad kept the key and Sapnap especially took full advantage of that. “He said I’d probably look good in it, something about my eye shape, and I just wanna show him I can look cool, y’know?”
Punz snorted. “Of course it has to do with Karl.”
Sapnap’s infatuation with Karl was familiar stomping ground, something Punz had heard plenty about as his best friend. He swore up and down it wasn’t a crush, but one could only hear so many rambles about how Karl giggles and the way he dresses and the so-unfunny-they’re-funny jokes he tells before it was pretty obvious it was a crush. Punz just clapped Sapnap on the back and told him to ask Karl out already every time their mutual friend came up.
“Ask him-“
“Just do my eyeliner!” Sapnap stormed further into eir room, slamming the door behind him. He threw himself onto eir bed, sprawled out to take up most of the space, and Punz sighed heavily. E stood up, closing eir laptop and trudging over to eir vanity. “Please?”
“What kind of eyeliner do you want?”
“Puppy liner.”
Punz chose to not wonder why Sapnap knew that liner, internally blaming TikTok. “That’s my favorite kind, y’know.”
Sapnap let out a proud little giggle. Punz also chose to not read into that. E dug out eir bag of makeup supplies, dumping the contents carelessly over the top of eir vanity surface. E wasn’t a makeup person, usually rolling out of bed about ten minutes before e had to leave for school, but people (mostly Karl) kept giving em different makeup brushes and palettes to try out after e mentioned off-handedly wanting to try it. E was far past wanting to experiment, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort, but Karl liked to give gifts and Punz wasn’t about to killjoy him. It paid off anyways, both during Halloween and moments like now, with a whiny best friend laid out on his bed and begging for makeup to wear to their school dance.
Punz sighed, taking eir phone out of eir pocket and setting an alarm for about 30 minutes before they would have to head out. Knowing Sapnap, he wouldn’t leave until Punz was practically forced to drive him, so it was just safer to set an alarm. E picked out the eyeliner Karl had bought em recently and walked to Sapnap’s side, looking down at him with a fond smile. Sapnap blinked back up at em, returning the look with a dopey grin, and Punz ignored the way eir heart pounded at that.
“Are you gonna sit up?” e asked and Sapnap shook his head.
“Just do me like this.”
For eir sanity, e was ignoring that too, ignoring the innuendo and the sharp grin Sapnap gave. This entire afternoon was going to have to be forcibly removed from eir memory for eir own integrity. Sapnap tended to have that effect on em. Not wanting to fight, Punz just shrugged and swung eir leg over to straddle Sapnap, legs spaced just enough that they weren’t touching. E planted eir left hand over his shoulder, leaning down and taking in Sapnap as e held up the liner pencil.
Sapnap had always been attractive. He had a strong jaw, his facial hair wasn’t half as patchy as most of the dudes in their grade, and his eyes were an odd entrancing gray-green-blue color that Punz found eirself lost in far too often. His hair was almost reddish-brown, a color he covered up in black or dark brown dye most of the time, but his roots were growing in enough for Punz to see the original color. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, the exact expression he was sending up to Punz at the moment. His skin was blotchy with acne in a way that Punz found more endearing than anything else, his face accented further by the black mark across his right cheek.
Most people didn’t have highly visible soulmate marks or if they did, it wasn’t on their face. There were a lot of arms, hands, wrists. Punz eirself had eirs on the side of eir thumb and the tips of eir first two fingers, as if the first time e was going to touch eir soulmate, it would only be a brush. Sapnap’s stood out a lot due to the sheer rarity of a facial mark, a black splotch across his face that caught the eye before anything else. He cycled between pride and embarrassment over that frequently, but Punz always liked it. In private, e thought about cupping Sapnap’s cheek with eir hand, running eir fingers across the spot, and feeling his soft skin.
Then e crushed those thoughts down and forced eirself to do anything else than fawn over eir best friend.
“You’re staring, are you actually gonna do something?” Sapnap asked, breaking Punz out of eir thoughts, and e huffed at him.
“Be patient. I’m trying to decide how to do this.” E shifted eir hand to be steadier against the bed, suddenly realizing how precarious their positions were. Punz was practically pinning Sapnap against the bed, looming over him like that one viral photo of the girl doing her friend’s makeup. E swallowed hard and leaned closer, rolling the eyeliner pencil idly. “Close your eyes for me?”
Sapnap hummed and his eyes fluttered closed, far too pretty to be casual, and Punz frowned. And then, as usual, e shrugged the odd behavior off and started filling in the inner corner of his eye. Sapnap winced and Punz picked up the pencil to not smudge it, clicking eir tongue at him.
“Why does it hurt?” Sapnap whined.
“Beauty is pain, now hold still. You’re lucky I didn’t sharpen this,” e scolded and Sapnap groaned. Taking advantage of the fact that he couldn’t see, Punz raised the pencil tip to eir mouth and licked it, wetting the dark pigment, then lowered it to Sapnap’s lid again. He sucked his breath in and e let out a soft chuckle. “You’re so dramatic.”
“It hurts,” he said, doing his best to pout without wrinkling his face. It just looked like he was puckering up or making fishy lips and Punz grinned, amused. “Karl didn’t tell me that it would be like this, he just said it’d be hot!”
“Well, you don’t get hot eyeliner without some sacrifices.” Punz slid the pencil along Sapnap’s eyelid the best e could without touching him, hissing in annoyance when the liner stuttered and came out uneven.
“No, he said you putting it on would be hot,” Sapnap grumbled. “You’re not even like, sitting on me, what’s the point?”
Punz wasn’t sure how to respond to that, hand slowing to a stop. E leaned back slightly, pulling the liner off of Sapnap’s lid as e processed eir friend’s words. Karl and Sapnap were talking about what it would be like for Punz to do Sapnap’s makeup? Sapnap thought it’d be hot but asked Punz to do it anyway, even when he probably could’ve asked Karl to do it? E let out a short awkward laugh, unsure what to say still, and Sapnap tensed, frowning just enough to be obvious.
“Punz-”
“Is it okay if I touch your face?” Punz was going to do what e did best: ignore it and push on. “Your eyeliner is coming out uneven, I need to steady my hand against it.”
Sapnap sighed but his expression relaxed, just a slight wrinkle in his brow. “Yeah, dude, it’s fine. You’re the one who doesn’t like touching, I’m fine with it.”
“You’re overeager for it, even,” Punz teased. The words fell flat and Sapnap let out a humorless laugh. E licked eir lips, a nervous habit that Karl kept trying to break by talking at length about how cracked and dry they were, and let eir hand press against Sapnap’s cheek. E’s breath hitched in eir throat at the thought that Sapnap’s skin was as soft as e always assumed it would be, bumpy but with a pleasing squish to it, and focused eir eyes intently on his upper lid.
Eir hand glided smoothly with the support for eir hand and e ended the neat liner on Sapnap’s right eye, pulling eir hand away to assess how it came out. It looked cute from what e could tell and e went to ask Sapnap to open his eyes to finish it when e noticed something.
Sapnap’s face was clear. Punz blinked, putting the eyeliner down to the side so that e could touch where Sapnap’s soulmate mark should’ve been. The skin was clear, his usual ruddy shade with no interruptions besides a single pimple, and e stroked the spot in awe. E twisted eir hand and sure enough, the mark along the side of eir thumb was gone too, leaving just pale white skin.
“What the fuck,” e said eloquently and Sapnap’s eyes opened, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“What? Did you really fuck up my face? Let me up.” Sapnap started pushing em back as he sat up and Punz grabbed his wrists, pushing him back down. “Oh, come on. We both know I can throw you off, don’t play right now.”
“Your soulmate mark is gone,” Punz said without thinking and Sapnap’s playfully distressed expression felt into a gape of shock.
”What?”
“It’s- your cheek- dude.”
“Dude,” Sapnap said back, grabbing Punz’s hand and pulling it closer to look it over for eir now missing soulmate mark, his agape mouth transforming into a wide grin. “What the fuck?! Oh my God. Get off of me.”
Punz let him shove em away this time, watching as he scrambled out of bed and over to the vanity. He leaned forward to look in Punz’s mirror, eyes wide, and in the background of the reflection, Punz looked just as surprised. Eir cheeks were red, eyebrows raised in a worried arc, and e rubbed eir face to dispel the look as soon as e noticed it. When e dropped eir hands, Sapnap was turned back to face em, still wearing that goofy big grin.
“Holy shit! We’re soulmates!” He threw out his arms, then gestured at Punz with both hands, then gestured to himself. Punz watched, an unreadable cocktail of emotions swirling in eir chest.
E had spent the better part of the last year ignoring any sort of feelings e had for Sapnap, maybe even longer than a year. It had become such a regular habit that e couldn’t even explain when it had begun, had no concept of when e woke up and suddenly realized that Sapnap was the cutest guy e knew. All Punz knew was that e couldn’t acknowledge it, wouldn’t allow eirself to and potentially get eir heartbroken when Sapnap inevitably got together with Karl, and here e was now. Soulmates with Sapnap all along.
What the fuck.
“What about Karl?” e asked, instead of repeating ‘what the fuck’ for the third time in this conversation, and Sapnap’s expression fell a bit in confusion.
“Huh?”
“Karl, the guy you’re utterly in love with. What about him? You’re so thrilled to be soulmates with me or whatever, but I’m not the one you’ve been obsessed with since freshman year.” Punz crossed eir arms, trying not to look too much like a kicked puppy, trying not to feel like a kicked puppy. E didn’t like assessing eir own feelings for a reason. Getting overemotional over something as dumb as a crush on a boy was stupid, even if he was eir soulmate. “You don’t have to act like you like me just because we’re soulmates.”
Sapnap blinked at em, confusion turning into a frown. “Punz, I’ve told you a million times, I don’t like Karl like that. He’s just my friend.”
“But you’re always talking about him and hanging out with him and like, you do anything he says like it’s the fucking rules-!”
“Because he was trying to help me fucking get you to see me in a romantic light!” Sapnap cut em off, exasperation clear in his tone. Punz jolted in surprise. “I mean, yeah, Karl’s awesome. He’s one of my favorite friends. But the reason why I bring him up so much to you, in particular, is because he basically coaches every conversation I have with you, you fucking idiot.”
“You liked me?” Punz asked, stunned, and Sapnap covered his face to scream into his palms. “Jesus Christ, no need to be so dramatic.”
“You are so oblivious that it’s infuriating!”
“Well, you’re so subtle that it’s infuriating! Why wouldn’t you just tell me that you like me?!”
“Because you were convinced I was in love with Karl and it put you so far up your own ass that you can hardly look me in the eye half the time!” Sapnap dropped his hands to his sides. “God! You piss me off.”
Punz rolled eir eyes, groaning. “Do you like me or hate me?!”
“Both when you’re this stupid!” Sapnap huffed and started stalking closer to em. Punz felt eir cheeks heat up and e shifted back on the bed until eir back hit the wall. Sapnap paused at the edge of eir bed, putting his hands on his hips and looming over em. Sapnap never loomed over em, considering the solid few inches Punz had on him, and e couldn’t help the way eir heartbeat ticked up at the change in perspective. “I literally can’t tell half the time if I wanna kiss you or slap you so you stop burying your head in the sand.”
This time, Punz let eirself acknowledge it; Sapnap was kind of hot when he was pissed off and standing over em. “Kissing sounds better, I will admit.”
The corners of Sapnap’s annoyed pout twitched up as Punz’s response settled in his brain, as if he wanted to be pissed but couldn’t help but be pleased with eir answer. “Really? Cuz you don’t fucking show it.”
“Well, acting head over heels for your best friend is sort of a dick move when you think he likes someone else,” Punz pointed out, letting eir eyes drift down to Sapnap’s lips. They turned upwards again, maintaining the expression this time, and Punz looked back to meet his eyes. “I wanted to, y’know, be a bro or whatever.”
“You’re head over heels for me?” Sapnap gave up the fight of maintaining his frown, tilting his head with a pleased grin, and eir face burned.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.” Sapnap dropped his knees to the bed and crawled onto it, shuffling forward into Punz’s space. E silently resented the way they were eye level with each other now, then pushed away the thought. “You said kissing sounds good, huh?”
“I didn’t say that either,” Punz poorly defended. Sapnap just pressed further into eir space, a shit-eating grin on his face, and e couldn’t help but smile back. “I said it was better than being slapped. I don’t think that counts as a love confession.”
“But I want it to be a love confession,” Sapnap said, eyes dancing with mischief, and Punz sighed. “Come on, dude. I’ve seen you looking at me before. I’m not ugly or anything.”
“No, no you’re not,” Punz muttered, raising eir hands to hold Sapnap’s face and hold him in place before he could fully climb into Punz’s lap. “You’re very attractive, actually, I’ve said this before.”
Sapnap pressed into eir hands with a happy smile, almost like an oversized cat, and Punz’s heart twinged at the affection. E still wouldn’t say e was one for physical touch, but watching the way Sapnap responded to such a simple gesture, e was starting to see the benefits. E swiped eir thumb across the top of his cheekbone and he practically nuzzled into the touch, eyes falling closed.
“Thank you. You’re hot too, but I think you know that.” Sapnap ended his words with a silly little giggle and something in Punz’s chest snapped. Impulsively, e dragged him the rest of the way in for a kiss, pressing their lips together and Sapnap melted into it, wrapping his arms around eir neck and falling into eir lap. Punz was more than happy to take on his weight, just content to finally be kissing him. He was enthusiastic verging on over-eager, one hand tangling in the hair on the back of eir neck, and he tasted like mint chapstick and something indescribably sweet. His lips were soft, a far contrast from the wreck that was Punz’s, and e internally lamented the fact that e always ignored Karl’s bids to make em wear chapstick.
Wait. Punz pushed Sapnap away, rolling eir eyes when he whined.
“Does Karl harass me into wearing chapstick because you wanted to kiss me?”
Sapnap blinked at em, expression flat. “I still want to kiss you.”
“Is that a yes?”
Sapnap just pulled em into another kiss by the back of the head and with a grumble, e let him, unable to deny eir feelings any further. E let one hand drop from his face to grab at his waist instead, clinging to the rough fabric of his shirt and pulling him closer, and Sapnap gave a delighted giggle against eir lips. E couldn’t help but grin at the sound, further ruining the kiss, and they both pulled back with shared goofy expressions.
“You’re so dumb,” Punz whispered and Sapnap scoffed, face dropping into a jokingly offended scowl.
“Excuse me, but-!”
He was cut off by Punz’s phone alarm blaring and they both jumped, glancing at the vanity at the same time. It took a moment for Punz to process what it was, swearing under eir breath.
“Oh my God, the dance.” Sapnap scrambled off eir lap, pushing his hair back from his face. “You didn’t even finish my makeup!”
“Sapnap.”
“You’re not even dressed. Shit. How fast can you get dressed? Are we allowed to arrive late? I think they close the doors at 6:30.” Sapnap crossed the room to turn off the alarm, fumbling with Punz’s phone.
“Sapnap,” Punz repeated, tiredly, and Sapnap glanced back at em.
“What? Get up!”
“I don’t want to go to the dance. Can we just stay here?” Punz slumped back against the wall, willing eir face to downturn into a pleading pout. E wasn’t half as good at it as most of eir friends, but Sapnap was also stupidly weak to any puppy eyes thrown his way. Sapnap bit his lip for a moment then crumpled, his shoulders sagging.
“Dream and George are expecting me there,” he pointed out and Punz huffed.
“I don’t care.”
“Karl chose out my outfit and wanted to see it-”
“So take a selfie and come back over here.”
Sapnap sighed, long and heavy. “You really want me to, what, just ignore the money I spent on a school dance ticket and stay here with you instead? Make out or whatever instead of hanging out with our friends?”
“Yes, exactly, I’m glad you get it,” Punz agreed, nodding, and Sapnap rolled his eyes, exaggerated so Punz could see the movement. “Please?”
“Since when do you say ‘please’?” Despite the snark, Sapnap caved, walking back to the bed and crawling into Punz’s arms. E grinned, wrapping eir arms around his waist and pressing eir face into his neck. Sapnap’s arms came up under eirs, wrapping up around eir shoulders. “Punz?”
“Mhm?”
“Can you finish my eyeliner?” Sapnap’s voice went soft and shy and Punz grinned against his neck. “It looks really nice.”
“Anything you want, babe,” Punz promised. “Just don’t leave my bed again.”