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“I’ve decided to become a DNF anti,” George announces, waltzing into Sapnap’s room and closing the door behind him.
“Oh?” Sapnap says, because he’s not really sure what to say.
“I looked at him today, Sapnap. I looked at him. You know what that means.”
“What?”
“It means I was secretly asking him to let me put little DNF babies in him,” George says, plopping down next to Sapnap on the bed. “What are you looking at?”
“Just twitter,” Sapnap shrugs, tilting the screen so George can see it. This proves to be the wrong move, because George hisses and scowls. “What?”
He understands when he glances down, though, even before George explains. Displayed on the screen is fanart from the stream they’d done earlier, George and Dream smiling, each in the other’s merch. It’s cute, in Sapnap’s opinion, a sketchy pastel technique that stylises George’s charcoal hair into pretty waves, little silver stars in his eyes as he looks over at Dream with pink hearts acting as blush on his cheeks.
“DNF sucks,” George says, overdramatic. “People are getting kind of stupid with it, don’t you think? The toxic DNFers are breeding under the floorboards and then wriggling out of the woodworks in their multitudes. We should mess with them. Distress them.”
“Isn’t Dream a toxic DNFer?”
“I guess,” George huffs. “But also that tweet is misquoted all the time, he said toxic shipper with his friends, plural, not toxic shipper with GeorgeNotFound the only man to ever exist ever in the history of the whole world.”
“But you are the only man to exist ever,” Sapnap says. “You and Dream are like Adam and Eve.”
“Stop,” George whines.
“You’re like Romeo and Juliet,” Sapnap continues, flicking off twitter and opening up some dumb addictive mobile game. “You’re like Rose and… what’s-his-face. Fuckin’… Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“His name is Jack, idiot. Also, they’re all dead,” George says, morose. And then again, peppier. “They’re all dead! Just like DNF. You’re so wise, Sapnap.”
“I’m glad you’ve finally realised it, George,” Sapnap says, humming the little jingle that plays as he beats the level.
“It’s annoying, though, if Dream and I so much as breathe the same air it’s seen as a declaration of marriage,” George says. He’s really poking around the topic, the way he does when he’s trying to subtly ask for a favour.
“Maybe if you married him and then divorced him people would stop it,” Sapnap suggests, laughing.
“That does sound kind of epic. Move to the left!”
“I know, idiot, I have eyes,” Sapnap huffs.
“We should do a coup,” George says musingly.
“Huh?”
“Like, a protest.”
“A protest? Against what?”
“DNF slash r slash srs.”
“What?”
“Like if we make it really clear that DNF isn’t real.”
“Like tweeting about it? They won’t take it seriously, remember Dream posting that ‘George and I aren’t gay’ tweet that became a copypasta?”
“You didn’t let me finish, maybe shut up and use your little idiot ears for once?” George says, flicking one of Sapnap’s ears teasingly. “I have a better idea.”
“Oh?” Sapnap says, wary, because generally George’s ‘better’ ideas are ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ and ‘the worst’.
“Me and you should pretend to date,” George says. His voice is a whole mishmash of contradictions, including confident and amused and genuine and nonchalant and excited.
Sapnap watches his avatar crash and burn and die. “What?”
“We should pretend to date,” George says, slower, firmer.
It takes Sapnap’s brain a few more moments to properly reboot. “How is us pretending to date going to stop people from talking about DNF?”
“Well, they wouldn’t know it was pretend.”
“George. Most people would probably presume we were faking to hide DNF. No one’s gonna believe that we just randomly out of the blue started dating.”
“It’s not that out of the blue,” George says. “And we’d be subtle with it, we’d play the long con, it wouldn’t be like an instagram post saying we’re dating now. We can have a whole game plan. Like we could swap clothes, I could pretend I didn’t know you were streaming and call you ‘babe’ or something, we can keep doing the silly snapchat ‘cute dates’.”
“How do you already have a plan?” Sapnap grumbles, relaxing back against the pillows and restarting the level.
“I’m an intuitive man, Sap. Or not intuitive, what’s the word, entrepreneurial. I’ve studied the algorithm, Sapnap, I know what’s what and I know what’s not. And you know what’s not?”
“What?”
“D N F, baby,” George says, with a loud crow that devolves into vaguely maniacal laughter. Sapnap focuses on the crazy giggling and not on the way George’s lips curve up around the word ‘baby’.
George wasn’t kidding when he said he had a plan. Dream is brought in on it as well, of course, seeming amused by the whole ordeal. He wants to play out his own little heartbroken arc but George points out that that would be counterintuitive and distract people away from ‘the main event’.
He wrangles Dream’s whiteboard into the living room and scrawls all over it, rambling wildly. Sapnap watches him carefully, examining the clench and sweep of his hands, pale and slim and dextrous.
“It’s going to be a slow leak,” George says.
“Like a gas leak,” Dream says. “Maybe we’ll all start seeing the ghost of DNF past.”
“I think Dream’s snapchat will be the main battlefield. Me and Sapnap will do joking stuff on ours, like the dates and the kitten stuff, but you, Dream, will be acting as a David Attenborough of sorts.”
“Acting as who?” Dream says.
“David Attenborough. The nature guy.” He puts on some kind of rickety royal accent to say, “’And here we see the humble kitten in his natural habitat, watching anime at six in the morning with bloodshot eyes and a mouthful of crisps.’ You know who I’m on about?”
“You just sound like yourself,” Dream says, grinning.
“Whatever. The point is, we can do stuff in the background of Dream’s snaps, but also he can post like creep shots of us, cuddling and stuff. Yeah?”
“Sure,” Sapnap says, wondering if maybe there is a legitimate gas leak in the house.
“And then we can, like, accidentally mess up when we’re live. Like calling each other ‘baby’ and stuff like that, or pretending we don’t know the other is live.”
“George, you know I’m a shit actor, right?”
“That’s fine, I can do the acting and you just have to react. I’ll surprise you. I know how to get you all flustered, it’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Sapnap says. He thinks this might be what it feels like to get swindled by the devil, swept off your feet by reassurances and bright brown eyes.
“And then… this kind of ties into the Snapchat one, but we should go on more dates. Like, where fans will see us out and about, maybe not even post about it.”
“We do that anyway,” Sapnap points out. “Go places without posting it.”
“Yeah, but we can go to, like, couple-y places, more high-end stuff. Dream, you’ll be the producer for this endeavour, thank you so much for your contributions.”
“I’m not paying for shit, George,” Dream says.
“It won’t be shit, that’s the whole point, idiot, it’ll be good food,” George grins. “So we’re all on the same page, right?”
“Yep,” Dream says.
“Um,” Sapnap says.
“Excellent,” George says, with a clap.
They disperse. Sapnap stays sitting on the couch, staring at the illegible writing on the whiteboard, feeling like he’s missing something important.
The next day George slings himself over Sapnap’s shoulders while he’s making himself a sandwich. Sapnap is frozen, utterly baffled, George’s breath warm and heavy in his ear, George’s pale slender fingers tugging a pickle slice from Sapnap’s plate, and then Dream yells “Done!” And George detaches himself and everything floods back. Right. The plan.
“Give me my pickle back,” Sapnap says, turning around to fumble for it, but George just dances out of his reach, laughing, and then he’s gone.
Sapnap slowly finishes making his sandwich, hands itching painfully. He succumbs as he’s sitting down to eat, opening up Snapchat to see the story.
Dream is the main focus, of course, a selfie of the top half off his face displaying a new cat beanie — purple and pinkish, this time — but Sapnap and George are visible in the background, distant and so blurred they could be mistaken for the same vaguely monstrous figure.
Sapnap opens up twitter. There are a lot of exclamation marks and a lot of question marks and several side-by-sides of the snap with pictures of two stacked cats.
He texts screenshots one of the cat tweets that is captioned with blue and orange heart emojis and sends it to George, saying plan working so far?
George replies with a thumbs up.
The next day they go for sushi. They take matching
pictures. Sapnap takes a candid of George with a piece of fish pinched between his teeth, captions it kitten and posts it to Snapchat. George directs him to a dessert place and they get angel cake. Sapnap captions his snap cannibalism. George captions his stream with me, imma be your E boy and refuses to take criticism.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s real and what isn’t.
George always sits next to Sapnap, but he did that before; George keeps stealing food from Sapnap’s plate, but he did that before; George walks around the house wearing Sapnap’s shoes, but he did that before, though only the one time in LA where he’d come on stream with a towel around his waist pretending to be naked.
Tina invites Sapnap to play Minecraft with her and a few others, including Karl and Foolish and George, who declines.
Sapnap streams it on his alt, with his face cam on, and everything goes pretty chill for a while, besides the usual murder attempts. Sapnap is bouncing around while Tina builds a pretty little cottage, Karl and Foolish and Hannah racing to find diamonds, when he hears a shout from real life. His music is loud enough to muffle it into incomprehensibility, but not enough to fully drown it out.
“Yeah?” He calls out, tugging one side of his headphones off.
“Do you want to go out for dinner, love?” George says, hand on the doorframe as he swings into the room.
Sapnap blinks. Several times. Love. Love. Love.
“George,” he says, slow. “I’m live.”
“Oh,” George says, the smile dripping off his face before snapping back as if elasticised as he steps forward. “Hi, Chat!”
He tugs the spare chair into frame and plops down, hitting the mute key and looking to Sapnap for confirmation.
“Yeah, we’re muted,” Sapnap says.
George raises a hand to cover his lips, and Sapnap copies the movement.
“Do you think they heard that?”
“Yup,” Sapnap says. “I dunno if they saw your little shocked look, though, you were probably blurry.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” George says. “Can I hang out for the rest of stream?”
“I thought you were busy?”
“No, I just had this planned,” George says. “I wanted to come sit with you in real life, love.”
Sapnap’s chest feels squashed and crushed and crumpled. His face must surely be bright red, though maybe the purple light will hide it a bit; enough that George won’t notice, at least.
“Sure,” Sapnap says, squeakily.
George giggles and unmutes them.
“Hi, Chat!” He says. “The stream just got a million times better, I’m here now!”
Sapnap unplugs the headphones so George can talk to their friends as well, and everything goes well. George sits back while Sapnap plays Minecraft and ignores the hellfire that is his chat, and the banter is easy.
And then George reads a chat message aloud, “‘Are you two going on a date?’ I dunno, Sap, are we?”
Sapnap shrugs, not quite trusting his mouth, twisting his chair back to look at George, who cocks an eyebrow and kicks his ankle. Sapnap kicks him back, and then hooks his foot around George’s ankle.
“Nice shoes,” Sapnap says, quiet.
George laughs, and moves on like it’s nothing.
Sapnap spends nearly a full hour scrolling through twitter that night, watching clip after clip of George saying love — because that was what the initial shout had been, George yelling love to get Sapnap’s attention. To pretend to get Sapnap’s attention. To pretend that he wanted Sapnap’s attention. It’s pretend. It’s fake. He needs to remember that, remember that this whole thing is fuelled by George’s spite.
The purple lights don’t hide his blush at all. It’s painfully visible, as is the way his whole brain falls out of his ears when George first comes in, and then again when they’re playing a mini game of footsie.
Several of his friends have texted him asking what on earth was going on, and Sapnap ignores them all because he doesn’t know what George has said.
This is George’s plan, after all. Sapnap is just helping out a friend. George is just tactically deflecting attention away from the thing that irks him.
The next day George knocks on his door and marches in, wielding a hoodie that he tosses at Sapnap’s face and tells him to wear, before rifling through Sapnap’s clothes and grabbing a hoodie of his own.
Sapnap shoos him out so he can get changed. The hoodie smells the same as his do when they’re freshly washed, clean and citrusy. This is good, of course, because it would be really gross to wear George’s dirty clothes, even if it was just to test how his scent and heat clung to the fabric.
Things continue like that.
Every few days they get a meal out. Sometimes they’ll post pictures, of each other or just the food, sometimes a fan will recognise them and ask for a photo, sometimes neither happens and Sapnap ends up feeling faintly confused before he remembers that George and him are, like, friends outside of the weird pact they’ve got going on.
Most days George will bring him a hoodie or shirt to wear; a couple of times he peels the hoodie straight off his own body and Sapnap has to take a while pulling it on to give his flush a chance to simmer down. George starts taking Sapnap’s shorts as well, which is a bit of a problem, but Sapnap just makes sure to keep his gaze firmly at eye level on those days.
Every now and then George will choreograph a photo for Dream’s Snapchat, mostly them cuddling while watching a show. Sometimes they’ll be doing it already and he’ll tell Dream to take a picture of them; sometimes he’ll grab Sapnap for the snap and then he’ll just linger.
It’s while they’re cuddling like this that George says, “I think we should start calling each pet names more often. Because then it’ll be more likely that we actually slip up, and then neither of us will have to act.”
“Sounds good,” Sapnap says. It sounds bad, actually, really really bad because he’s pretty sure the effect that simple four letter word has on him will never fade or falter, no matter how often George uses it.
“You should figure out what you’re going to call me,” George says, eyes on the screen, head on Sapnap’s lap, Sapnap’s fingers running through the soft curls of his hair.
“Isn’t just babe fine?” Sapnap says, voice cracking a little like a ceiling crumbling under the weight of domesticity.
“If you’re the most boring person alive,” George scoffs.
“I’ll… think about it. Mull it over,” Sapnap says.
“Good,” George says. He sits up and Sapnap has to bite back a whining protest, but George just twists around to sling his legs over Sapnap’s and lays back down.
George’s legs are slender and soft, smattered with dark hairs, and Sapnap settles his hands down on them before he can change his mind. One of his hands is just under George’s knee, the other lower on his shin. He slides it further down to wrap it around George’s ankle, just above the elastic of his plain black socks, which cover the bumps of bone enough that he can’t quite get his fingers and thumb to touch around the slight swell of muscle and flesh.
He thinks he can feel George’s eyes on him, confident and curious, and he wants so badly to glance over but he’s pretty sure that George’s honey-thick eyes would blind him, like tiny trapped suns.
He can’t bring himself to mull over it. Well, he can, and does, searching up ‘good pet names’ and reading through a list, cringing over each one. He tries a couple out loud but they feel like acid on his tongue, dangerous and corrosive. Or like medicine, maybe, saccharine chemical flavouring unable to drench the sourness, thick in his throat and trembling on his tongue. A bittersweet necessity.
Sapnap does what he always does when he’s struggling, which is gravitate towards Dream for help. He makes sure George is occupied — trying to teach Patches tricks — and heads to Dream’s office.
“I need help,” he says, once he’s been welcomed in.
“Help?” Dream echoes, turning away from his screen as Sapnap settles onto the bed. He’s editing a video they filmed a few weeks ago. George’s video. Annoyance prickles up Sapnap’s spine and he can’t quite place the source — jealousy doesn’t make sense, because Dream is indubitably a better editor than Sapnap, and Sapnap doesn’t have the same distaste for it that George has so he doesn’t mind doing it himself. Irritation at George’s laziness is also stupid, because George is like a cat, preferring lounging around sunning himself to doing any actual work. Maybe it’s the way Dream is looking at him like he knows something.
All Sapnap gets in response to his suspicious squint, though, is a bland smile, so he continues, cutting straight to the point. “George thinks that we should call each other cute nicknames so that it’ll be more natural if we do it on stream. Like, we’ll slip up on accident so won’t have to act.”
“Hmm,” Dream says, turning back to his editing.
“Yeah,” Sapnap says, and then waits for Dream to offer some advice. “Hello? What do I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what to call him, I guess,” Sapnap says. “He says babe is boring.”
“Well, you’re kind of boring.”
“George isn’t, though,” Sapnap says.
“Hmm,” Dream says again. “So you want me to brainstorm petnames with you?’
“I don’t know,” Sapnap says. “I don’t want him to make fun of me.”
“Why would he make fun of you?” Dream asks, sounding bemused.
“What if I, like, choose the wrong thing and he thinks it’s lame?”
“Dude, he’s the one who wants you to call him a cutesy nickname, he has no right to call you lame.”
“It’s for the… ruse, though. The bit. Whatever the hell. He doesn’t actually want me to, he just wants to annoy the DNFers.”
“He just hates me,” Dream says, shaking his head. Sapnap isn’t sure if the joke is that George hates Dream because he’s Dream, or if it’s because Dream is a DNFer. “Just call him babe, dude, who cares. What does he call you?”
“He called me love on stream that one time,” Sapnap says.
“Oh yeah, I saw that,” Dream says, with a laugh that digs meanly into Sapnap’s gut even though he knows it’s lighthearted.
“I don’t want him to think I’m boring, though,” Sapnap says.
Dream swivels his chair around to look at Sapnap vaguely incredulously. He scoffs a little, shaking his head as he twists back.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing. Have you tried googling it?”
“Yes, they’re all cringe. Or weird.”
“You could lean into the whole cowboy thing. Darlin’ and sweetheart and tootsie pop or whatever the fuck.”
“I’m not a cowboy.”
“You could be. Save a horse and all that.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“I’m not calling George tootsie pop.”
“I guess if the goal is to make it so the nickname become natural you should pick something that feels natural. Maybe call him babe most of the time and then something fancier for special occasions,” Dream suggests.
“Special occasions? What does that mean?”
“Like, if you’re having a moment.”
Sapnap stares at the side of Dream’s face. “What?”
“Like a heartfelt moment or something.”
“You know we’re not actually dating, right?’
“Mhm,” Dream says, and again Sapnap feels like he’s missing something.
“I guess that’s not a bad idea,” Sapnap says slowly. “Calling him babe most of the time and then something cuter every now and then. I just don’t know what that something should be, they all feel so awkward.”
“Maybe you just need to accept that you’re an awkward guy. How about cutie?’
“I call Karl cutie,” Sapnap scoffs. “Karl is cutie, George is…. George is George.”
“You’re like a toddler,” Dream says. “Learning all kinds of things. George is George is George. What about kitten?”
Sapnap wrinkles his nose. “Isn’t kitten, like, a sex thing?”
“You tell me, dude.”
“Wha — you’re so dumb,” Sapnap splutters. “You’re gross.”
“You’re the one posting it all over Snapchat. You literally call him that anyway, it’ll come naturally. Just spin a wheel or something, I don’t know. Or try some of the ones you don’t hate and see what sticks.”
“Ugh,” Sapnap groans, slumping back and bumping his head against the wall. “You’re literally no help. You’re so… stupid. You have no rizz.”
“I mean, I don’t know about that,” Dream says. “Have you asked Karl for advice?”
“That was an interesting segue,” Sapnap says.
“You’re telling me you Karl doesn’t come to mind when you think about dumbass nicknames?”
“I guess,” Sapnap says. “I think I’ll just try out a bunch and see how it goes, I guess.”
Sapnap starts with babe because it’s easy, and George rolls his eyes but allows it. Sapnap puts on some obnoxious country songs and plays up his accent and calls George darling, because he can act like it’s a joke. George doesn’t make fun of him, which he’s glad of, just smiles and shakes his head and giggles a bit.
Once Sapnap has managed to say those two without turning peach-pink and fuzzy inside, he tries sweetheart and sunshine, both of which make George beam approvingly. He takes George back to the dessert place to make the same joke about cannibalism as he eats an angel cake, though they don’t take any pictures this time, and Sapnap calls George angel the whole ride home and George plays Ed Sheeran songs and Sapnap allows it because George is kind of right about him having cute love songs.
It’s easy to pretend, is the thing. It’s easy to get up in the morning and make two smoothies and bring one up to George and say, here you are, sunshine and have him reply, thank you love and make believe that it’s real.
The next two names are even more nerve-racking, though, the last ones on his list and also the most daunting. He turns them both into jokes, to ease into it.
He puts on country songs again and this time George drags him off the sofa so they can dance and because they’re both shit it at they’re basically just jumping around and rocking back and forth, holding hands and laughing. And the closeness makes Sapnap’s brain melt entirely, but he manages to gather his senses enough to follow through with his plan. George makes it easy, actually, because he insists on having Sapnap spin under his arm, and Sapnap allows it with the promise that he gets to dip George in return. George agrees very eagerly and Sapnap half-wishes he’d been more reluctant because he’s been twisting everything George does into having romantic connotations when really this is the kind of dumb shit that loads of people do with their friends.
George makes him twirl till he’s dizzy, and then slumps all of his weight into Sapnap’s arms when he dips him, like he’s trying to make him drop him.
“Nice try, idiot,” Sapnap says, quietly. He’s quiet because George’s face is so near to his, tantalisingly close, and the music has faded into silence, making their faintly panted breaths loud.
“I’m not an idiot, idiot,” George says, giggling, hands gripping the front of Sapnap’s hoodie.
“Why’d you ragdoll like you were trying to fall on purpose, then, doll?”
The red flush from their exuberant dancing and laughing blooms darker.
“Just wanted to see how strong you are,” George says.
“And?”
George shifts one of his hands to Sapnap’s arm and squeezes his bicep. “I guess you’re pretty strong.”
“I think maybe you’re just tiny, doll,” Sapnap says. “Petite.”
“Petite,” George mocks. Sapnap watches his lips shape the word, soft and pink and pretty. “Okay, let me up now.”
Sapnap shudders himself away from thoughts of George’s lips and pulls him upright. He thinks maybe they hold the contact for a little longer than necessary, but really he’s probably the only one clinging.
He trials the final name on Snapchat, taking a picture of George with some kind of beauty filter on one day when they’re eating lunch with their chairs pushed close together, so George can steal from Sapnap’s fries and Sapnap can eat the tomatoes in George’s side salad. He captions it pretty boy and posts it without letting George see and then waits anxiously for the response.
George is talking very animatedly about some TikTok trend he wants to try, and Sapnap is trying and failing to listen, brain stuck on the two little words buzzing around in his head and his phone: pretty boy, pretty boy, pretty boy. Because it’s so true, is the thing, George’s dusky pink lips curving excitedly around all his sentences, the waves of his hair looking perfectly tousled, eyes bright and dark like moonlight glinting on windswept water, all kinds of fluorescent creatures twirling rainbow underneath the surface.
“So will you do it?” George asks.
“Yeah,” Sapnap says, because there isn’t really any other answer as far as he’s concerned.
“Epic,” George says, pulling out his phone. Sapnap fills his mouth with burger and focuses on chewing it down to mush. George leans against him all of the sudden, bonking his head against Sapnap’s shoulder and then twisting so they’re pressed against each other. Sapnap glances over to see his Snap displayed on George’s screen.
“Love,” George says, as if test-tasting the word.
“Pretty boy,” Sapnap says, quiet and hesitant.
“That’s a good one,” George says, equally soft. “I like that.”
“Well,” Sapnap says. “It’s true.”
George laughs, pink and pearlescent, and takes a handful of fries from Sapnap’s plate.
Sapnap is randomly scrolling twitter, tuned to Dream’s space. He’s rambling about nothing, retelling a story that Sapnap’s already heard. He’s only half-listening, Dream’s voice more soothing than actually interesting, but then Dream says, “— And then George said — what was it, you were like, English pizza is the best because there’s no tomatoes on the margaritas. He had the audacity — the audacity! — to say in a good Italian restaurant that shitty English pizzas were better than actual Italian pizza.”
“It’s true!” George says, clearly pretty close to the phone’s microphone. “Tomatoes suck, guys, if you like tomatoes you’re an idiot.”
“I like tomatoes,” Dream says, pout audible in his voice.
“Exactly,” George says.
“‘Didn’t you say you were in bed?’ Well, yes, I did. George is in bed with me, guys, DNF is real.”
“DNF is not real,” George says, but he’s clearly smiling. “I’m only here because Patches is here, and I’m only on the bed because I wanted to talk to you guys. I was on the floor literally two seconds ago.”
“DNF Is totally real,” Dream insists. “DNF is real. We’re in bed together and in love. Twitter is in shambles. I know someone else who’s probably in shambles right now.”
There’s something secretive in the tone of his last sentence, something slightly pointed and sharp and mean. It digs into Sapnap’s chest and he’s standing up before he’s even aware of it, jamming the power button and shoving his phone into his pocket as he rushes through the house, trying to tamp down his annoyance.
George is sitting on the floor, twiddling a fishing rod toy over Patches’ head, laughing as she tries and fails to grab it.
Dream is lying on the bed, talking into his phone, and Sapnap figures the space is still going till he says, “Well, maybe I said it because I wanted you to call, did you think of that? You’ve played right into my trap. Who’s the idiot now, huh?”
Sapnap tries to catch Dream’s eye but he’s staring up at the ceiling, grinning.
“Obviously I wanted your attention,” Dream says, rolling his eyes and then finally glancing over at Sapnap. “Can I help you?”
“Who are you calling?”
“Your mother,” George cuts in.
“No one,” Dream says. “You two should leave now, bye bye. Take Patches.”
“What the fuck,” Sapnap says. “Who are you calling?”
“None of your business,” Dream says. Sapnap is planning to stare him down till he cracks, but then George scoops Patches up and bumps against him as he leaves.
“I’m gonna make pancakes for dinner, do you want some?”
“Crepes, you mean,” Sapnap says, following him automatically.
“Crepes,” George scoffs.
“Fine, sure, I’ll have some of your dumbass pancakes, babe.”
George has always tagged alongside Sapnap, and vice versa, since he arrived in Florida, but it’s gotten to the point where even when one of them is working the other will be in the same room, sitting silently on their phone or deliberately trying to be annoying.
George idly twirls around on the spare chair while Sapnap fiddles around with the editing of a video, his head starting to spin.
“Wanna go live?” he asks, calling quits and saving the file. “Chill survival or something?”
“Sure,” George says, stopping his chair and standing up.
“I meant — I thought you could, like, stay in here,” Sapnap says. “Just sit with me. Q and A or something. If you wanna go so you can play, that’s fine, though.”
“No, I’ll stay,” George says, settling back down and scooting his chair closer. Sapnap begins the stream on the starting soon screen, mic muted, checking a few settings and tweeting out that he’s going live to play Minecraft with George.
He unmutes to say, “Hi chat, how are you? I’m here with Gogy. This is gonna be a pretty chill stream so if you wanna ask questions feel free… we’re going to try to speed run, I think. ‘George is in Florida?’ Don’t be silly, guys, obviously George isn’t in Florida, what a ridiculous thing to think.”
“Absolutely ludicrous,” George says.
“I’m going to play and George is just going to sit pretty and read chat,” Sapnap says, turning on the face cam and giving it a wave. “Should be pretty easy for both of us.”
“You’re such an idiot,” George says.
“You’re an idiot,” Sapnap counters, loading up the first world. It takes a little while to find a good seed, and George takes it upon himself to echo Sapnap whenever he says the word seed, voice very serious.
When he finally gets settled into a proper run, George screams to startle him into falling into a lava lake in the nether.
“You fucking suck, d- dude,” Sapnap says, nearly saying doll but catching it just in time.
“I think that you suck, actually,” George says matter of fact.
“I guess we can both suck,” Sapnap says. He expects George to fluster, but he just arches an eyebrow. “Whatever. Okay, I don’t trust George not to kill me again, so we’re going to take a break and answer some questions from chat. Send ‘em in, boys.”
It’s all dumb shit, stuff he’s answered before or people wanting them to get Dream or people asking about DNF.
“DNF is dead,” Sapnap says, absentminded but a little annoyed.
“It’s true, we killed it. A stab to the back and a bullet to the head,” George says, sounding pleased.
“In a video game,” Sapnap says dutifully.
“No, in real life. Real life DNF is dead and buried and gone!” George says, with a dumb maniacal laugh.
“Not Dream, to be clear, Dream is alive and well and busy right now, so stop asking for him,” Sapnap says.
“Wait — hold on, scroll back,” George says, knocking Sapnap’s hand off the mouse even as he says it. Sapnap watches the movement of his slender fingers as he searches for the chat message. “‘I can’t believe George killed DNF, I bet Sapnap made him do it’. It was actually Karl, guys. Yet another victim to the Karl effect.”
“Dream’s been seduced,” Sapnap says, shaking his head.
“No, I’ve been seduced,” George says.
“By Karl?”
George blinks at him. “Sure. Idiot.”
“Idiot,” Sapnap says, settling back in the chair. George scrolls through chat and finds questions and Sapnap answers them. It doesn’t take long for them to get bored and switch back to Minecraft.
Sapnap tries to take the mouse back, but George tucks his free hand into Sapnap’s and then raises an eyebrow as if daring him to say something. Sapnap glances at the stream preview. Their hands are out of view.
George moves their joined hands to rest on the table, pushing the keyboard up a little as Sapnap sets his fingers on it.
Sapnap nearly says load the world, idiot, but catches himself and says, “We’re gonna speedrun again and break the world record on the first seed.”
“Seed,” George laughs, taking the hint and loading a new world.
They’re a bit clumsy off the start, but they settle into it, bickering heavily, of course, because that’s all they do. The arguing keeps Sapnap from getting too caught up in the fact that he and George are holding hands, George’s skin cool against his, his fingers slender and twitchy and his hand stupidly small. It gets to nighttime, and they’re terrible at staving off the mobs, failing crits and dodges, hearts rapidly dwindling.
Sapnap tries to shake off George’s hand, “Let go of me, idiot, we’re going to die if we keep playing like this.”
It takes him a second to realise what he’s done, but George’s giggle makes him forget his annoyance, letting their entwined hands drop onto his lap as he glances over at chat, which is spamming variations of WAIT WHAT ARE THEY HOLDING HANDS.
“Um,” Sapnap says, ever the eloquent one. “Me and George aren’t — okay, we are, but only because — look, the whole premise of the stream is one player on keyboard one player on mouse, did we — did we not say that? So we’re holding hands because — just to keep them, like, out of the way. For convenience. Yeah.”
“You’re so bad at lying,” George says, gazing at him with fascination.
“Shut up,” Sapnap says, squeezing George’s hand till he squeaks in pain.
“Stop it, stop it! You’re so mean,” George says. “Move us forward, idiot.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, idiot,” Sapnap counters, doing exactly as George tells him. He’s trying really hard to avoid looking at chat, because he’s pretty sure it’s a dumpster fire by this point and he doesn’t want to have to deal with that on top of the stomach-churning almost-anxiety that George holding his hand gives him. Butterflies in his tummy or whatever the fuck, but they’re mosquito hybrids and keep stabbing with with their… mouth tube thingies.
“What do you call the mouth tube thingy of a mosquito?” Sapnap asks.
“To get to the other side,” George says. “And whack a fan.”
“What?”
“You phrased it like you were setting up a dumb joke,” George explains.
“You’re a dumb joke.”
“You don’t even know what a mandible is,” George says.
“Mandible? I’m pretty sure it’s not that, right, chat?” Sapnap says, risking a glance. “Proboscis? Is that it? See, you’re as much an idiot as me.”
“Probe,” George says.
“You’re disgusting,” Sapnap says. “Oh! Is that a lava pool?”
It is; they focus on building and lighting the portal, and then the Nether is so treacherous they really can’t afford to bicker, but they do anyway, and die.
“What the fuck,” Sapnap says, annoyed. “Can you not listen to basic instructions, George? I told you to look left, you moron.”
“Yeah, when we were already falling!” George’s hand wriggles in his own as he tries to bring it up to emphasise his point. The feeling simmers down Sapnap’s annoyance to a mild irritation, but he keeps arguing anyway, because it’s funny.
“No, I saw the lava and told you to look left —”
“If you saw it you should’ve stopped! And given me time to move!”
“I’m sorry, I clearly overestimated you, I gave you plenty of time to move —”
“No, you literally didn’t, you’re actually so stupid. And I told you we needed to make a bed! If anyone’s not listening, it’s you,” George says, and then keeps ranting, hypocritically ignoring all of Sapnap’s attempts to cut in. He’s on a roll, having moved on to general insults, grinning at Sapnap with just a touch of fondness hidden under his irritation.
He’s clearly not going to stop anytime soon, so Sapnap decides to shut him up by force and sheer willpower, practically yelling over the top of George’s animated tone, “Hey, honey, sweetheart sweetheart sweetheart just shut up a second, pretty boy!”
George stares at him a little shocked, and Sapnap is glad that his final blow worked, because pretty boy is the name that gets George the most flustered. George’s free hand whips up to cover his smiling face as he says, “Oh my god.”
“What?” Sapnap says, confused, and then he sees chat zooming by in his periphery and his whole stomach drops, mosquitos and all. “Um. That’s — an inside joke. Yeah. Yeah!”
“You are so bad at lying,” George practically shrieks, dissolving into giggles, burying his face in both hands. Sapnap ignores how cold his hand feels at the loss.
“I’m not lying,” Sapnap says, staring at the Minecraft pixels as he sets his hand on the mouse and starts running distractedly around spawn. “Let’s — babe, come on, it’s not that funny — fuck, oh my god. Whatever. We’re ending. I’m — yeah. Yeah. Bye. Jesus fuck. I’m deleting the VOD, I don’t even care. Chat — bye. This stream never happened. You’re all having a collective hallucination.”
With that, he hits the end stream button and slumps back in his chair once he’s sure the stream has died. George is still giggling, fitfully, feet up on his chair so he can curl up into a ball of laughter.
“Oh my god,” Sapnap says. “That’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Did you — was it on purpose?” George asks.
“No! It really wasn’t, I’m just — I do it to get your attention, and I wanted to get your attention and you were, like, annoying me, and then you —” looked at me and I forgot that you don’t actually love me because it looked so real.
“And then I?”
“And then it just slipped out.”
“It slipped out like a billion times,” George laughs, and then says, rapid-fire, “Sweetheart sweetheart sweetheart!”
“Shut up,” Sapnap whines.
“It’s gonna be all over twitter,” George says giddily. “All over everywhere!”
He sounds delighted. The familiar weight drops onto Sapnap’s chest. Right. Twitter. Snf. Dnf sucks. Of course.
“Ugh,” Sapnap says, standing up, struggling to keep his tone casual. “That tired me right out, oh my god. I’m going to bed.”
“It’s only nine,” George says, uncoiling himself so he can stand as well. “Do you wanna come watch something on the couch with me? You could fall asleep there if you really are tired.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Sapnap says. “I’m just gonna crash, I think.”
“Okay,” George says, brightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, love.”
“Night, darling,” Sapnap says, half-automatically. The words are sour and sticky in his mouth, lingering as he struggles to drift into sleep.
Sapnap does his best to avoid twitter. He fails miserably, of course, but the weird thing is most people seem to think that the slip-up was just a prank, or an inside joke like he said. It’s kind of relieving, kind of good, kind of annoying, kind of bad, kind of a lot of things that he can’t quite figure out.
One thing he has realised, though, is that the longer it takes for people to properly pick up on it, the longer he and George will have to keep doing it, and Sapnap is selfish enough to hope that they have to keep doing it forever.
Things are pretty normal for the next few days — normal by the current standards, at least, with swapped clothes and cute nicknames and Sapnap’s heart beating practically out of his chest whenever he sees George — and it’s not that out of place for George to invite Sapnap to the beach. Invite Sapnap to drive him to the beach, that is.
They’ve never really been, because they’re not super close to it and none of them are particularly fond of it, but George says he wants ice cream and apparently the best ice cream is always by the ocean and he wants to sunbathe as well.
“By the time we get there the sun’s going to practically be gone, George,” Sapnap says.
“Don’t care, didn’t ask? Besides, that’s good, because all the annoying little children will be gone. I’ll buy the ice cream. We can get triple scoops,” George says, wheedling like he needs to actually convince Sapnap. He pretends to think over it for a little bit longer, slumping back on the couch and staring thoughtfully at George, who rolls his eyes and makes a grab for his hand, trying to drag him upright and failing miserably.
Sapnap stands up in order to avoid the temptation to tug George down onto the couch with him, which would definitely not end well.
“Fine,” he says. “But I get to pick the music.”
George picks the music. He plays ‘Roadtrip’, claiming that they’re going on one, even though the drive is barely half an hour long.
The sky is still warm blue as they buy ice cream, and George insists on asking for the little wooden spoons so they can share. George kicks off his shoes and leaves them on the edge of the beach despite Sapnap’s warnings that they’ll get stolen, and they wander down to the water so George can paddle. He kicks and splashes at Sapnap, who shouts and yells but can’t do much to retaliate, because he’s holding both ice cream cones and he doesn’t want to drop them.
George gets bored or cold and demands his ice cream back, licking it up with voracity, making weird eye contact the whole time and then having the gall to make fun of Sapnap for it.
“I’m just admiring the view,” Sapnap says, rolling his eyes.
“You’re an idiot,” George laughs.
I’m your idiot Sapnap wants to say. He busies himself with finishing off his quickly melting ice cream to stop himself from blurting it out.
“Let’s sunbathe,” George says, once they’re both done.
“The sun is quite literally setting right now, George,” Sapnap points out.
“Well, we can watch the sunset and admire all of its many colours, then,” George says.
“Oh,” Sapnap says, weirdly saddened. “Okay, we can sunbathe.”
“You’re an idiot,” George says again.
“You’re pretty,” Sapnap retorts. It’s not his best. It’s really not his best. It makes George laugh, though, so he’s winning anyway, really.
“Thank you,” George says, plopping down onto the dry sand.
Sapnap settles down next to him, tucking his knees up. The sky is alight with blazing colours, dusty pink and scorching orange and deep red. Sapnap glances over at George to find him already looking at him.
“What?”
“Just admiring the view,” George grins. “Is the sunset pretty?”
“Not as pretty as you,” Sapnap says, probably a little too sincerely. George doesn’t falter, though. If anything his smile widens.
“Let’s stargaze,” he says, flopping back.
“There’s no stars out yet,” Sapnap says, even as he follows George’s lead.
George sits up, pulling a face, and says as if it’s Sapnap’s fault, “I have sand in my hair now.”
“Well, too bad. You should’ve remembered to bring a towel.”
“When we get home I expect you to pick every speck of sand out of my hair.”
“Anything for you my darling,” Sapnap says, putting on a sarcastic tone of voice even though he’s really being completely genuine.
“I thought sand would be soft to sit on,” George says.
“It’s pretty soft,” Sapnap says. “It’ll be softer if you lie on it. Like the bed of nails stuff, more surface area or whatever.”
“I could lie down and get more sand in my hair. Or…”
“Or what?”
“I could sit in your lap.” He’s grinning, teeth made vivid in the encroaching darkness.
“You’re an idiot,” Sapnap laughs.
“I’m being serious. Slash srs,” George presses, and then out of nowhere he’s swinging his leg over Sapnap’s waist to straddle him. He doesn’t settle, just hovers, knees either side of Sapnap’s hips.
“What the fuck,” Sapnap says.
“Can I sit?” George asks, smug, like he already knows the answer.
“Sure,” Sapnap says weakly. George sits properly down. It’s kind of like when Karl did a similar thing in London. George is smaller than Karl, and lighter, but Sapnap is pretty sure he’s sitting purposefully heavy to be annoying. He eases up, though, and Sapnap’s hands shift to settle over George’s shorts, right at the hem, pinky fingers barely brushing his skin. He’s pretty sure his heart rate is spiralling up into dangerous territories. George peers down at him, the outline of his hair tinged pink and gold by the sunset.
“Do you remember when Karl sat on you like this?” George asks. He’s smiling happily, dark eyes fixed on Sapnap’s with an enthralling intensity.
“Don’t phrase it like that,” Sapnap laughs.
George laughs with him, and then asks, “Do you remember when Karl and I kissed?”
“Well, yeah.” He’s not sure where this is going; he’s a little terrified to find out.
“I think about it sometimes.”
“You think about kissing Karl?”
“No, idiot. I think about — you were there, and you kept begging us to kiss you. And we didn’t. Because you’re gross,” George says, squishing his nose up so it’s obvious the last part is a joke.
“Right,” Sapnap says. His heart is revving in his chest. “Is this relevant?”
"It can be if you want it to,” George says. Sapnap suddenly realises how nervous he sounds and smiles as reassuringly as he can.
“What happens if I want it?” Sapnap asks, throat achingly dry.
George raises an eyebrow, then reaches down and takes off Sapnap’s cap, setting it backwards on his own head.
“Hey,” Sapnap protests mildly. Any annoyance melts out of his brain as George slowly, carefully, leans forward. He’s allowing plenty of time to stop him, as if this isn’t all he’s ever wanted ever, and Sapnap is half-terrified that he’ll stop and half-terrified that he won’t.
He doesn’t. Sapnap’s eyes shudder shut.
George's lips brush against his, silk-pillow soft, and Sapnap leans up to kiss him properly, if a little messily.
George tastes of sea salt and vanilla ice cream and his tongue licks across Sapnap’s lips like he’s trying to figure out his flavour too.
George pulls back to gasp in a small breath, and then leans back down, tilting his head into another intense kiss, and Sapnap can’t help but match his greed, hands on George’s slim hips and a warmth seeping through his body as if his heart is beating so damn fast it’s caught fire. George leaves a delicate peck on the corner of Sapnap’s mouth before pressing his face into Sapnap’s neck, body shaking with giddy giggles like he’s as unbelieving as Sapnap, like this feels straight out of a daydream, laughing on the beach with the taste of the person he loves linger on his lips.
George is mumbling something but it’s too muffled and soft to hear. Sapnap snakes his arm around George’s back and hugs him tightly, like he’s trying to get their ribcages to tangle together, locking them in place.
“George,” he whispers, almost drowned out by the sea, but George presses his lips to Sapnap’s neck briefly, just briefly, and then sits up, beaming.
“Okay,” George says, all lightning and neon. “Let’s go! Let’s go, let’s go. We’re so epic. This is epic.”
“Epic,” Sapnap grins. “You’re so dumb.”
“You’re dumb,” George says, flicking Sapnap’s nose and then clumsily standing up. Sapnap misses the weight and warmth immediately. “Let's get McDonald’s on the way home, I want shitty fries.”
“You can get much better shitty fries elsewhere,” Sapnap says, gathering his wits enough to stand as well, brushing sand off his clothes.
“I want shitty shitty fries,” George says, grabbing Sapnap’s wrist to tug him along. It takes a few seconds, but Sapnap musters up the courage to twist the grip until they’re holding hands properly.
They have to separate to get in the car, and Sapnap wants to reconnect their hands once they’re settled but George points out that he’d get distracted and crash and Sapnap can’t really disagree with that.
The McFlurry machine is working, by some miracle; it feels like a sign. They get burgers and fries and split an apple pie in half and Sapnap doesn’t even complain when George gives him the smaller half.
They keep the music low and talk about random stuff for most of the drive, cranking it up occasionally to belt a particularly good song. George is looking at him basically the whole time, meeting Sapnap’s gaze every time he glances over. Sapnap’s pretty sure his cheeks will be permanently stained red after this.
They settle on the couch to watch some dumb movie, and George lays his head in Sapnap’s lap. Sapnap fiddles with his hair and runs a finger down the curve of his nose and across the softness of his lips, and George pretends to bite him, laughing when Sapnap jumps.
“You’re awful,” Sapnap whines. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t,” George says, smug.
“I don’t,” Sapnap admits.
The movie ends. George was yawning throughout the last twenty minutes, so Sapnap isn’t surprised when he decides to head to bed.
“I’ll walk you to your room, doll,” Sapnap says.
“You’re a proper gentleman,” George says, approvingly.
They hold hands up the stairs, and hover for a second in the hallway. George laughs bright and loud and raises Sapnap’s hand to his lips.
“Goodnight, love,” he says, and then he’s gone and Sapnap is lingering in the hallway grinning like an idiot, hand and cheeks tingling with heat.
He gets ready for bed, regretting the loss of salt and vanilla as he brushes his teeth, and settles under the covers.
He’s feeling all fuzzy and fond, hope blooming beside his heart in little flowing seaweed strands, and then, because he’s the stupidest motherfucker alive, he opens twitter.
The video was clearly taken from a distance, zoomed in and blurry, but it’s also pretty easy to tell that it’s them, Sapnap in a hoodie and cap, George straddling his waist in his stupid Nike shorts with all the patches. And then George is taking off Sapnap’s cap and putting it on his own head backwards, and then leaning over until their lips meet. Sapnap can recall the crisp salt and sweet vanilla flavour of George’s soft lips, and the pink dusting his cheeks as he pulled away, the nervous giggle as he leaned back in, pressing deeper, his hands cold on Sapnap’s cheeks. Then there’s the small peck on the corner of Sapnap’s mouth before George collapsed into giggles, burying his face in Sapnap’s neck, and Sapnap’s hands moved up to wrap around George’s back. The video loops back to the start, to George sitting up tall, straddling Sapnap’s waist.
Sapnap turns on the audio on the next replay. The person behind the camera whisper-giggles what the fuck a few times, I swear that’s them right, someone else answering, I think so?. There’s the whoosh of wind, the soft spill of the ocean, and then George’s laugh, clear and bright, as he buries his face in Sapnap’s neck.
The video loops. Sapnap feels ill. The video loops. He hasn’t even looked at the replies yet, he feels frozen, all his limbs landlocked, bones crushed down to sand, the caves in his lungs submerged in algae-choked water. The video loops.
George must’ve seen them. The angle is a little hard to tell — along the beach, closer to the road, he thinks. Tricky for Sapnap to see, lying down and facing the other way, but probably right in George’s line of vision. Sapnap studies his face closely on the next replay, but it’s too blurred to tell if his eyes drift to the camera.
Sapnap remembers George’s eyes on his, caramel seeping into his core, warm and sweet, but he also remembers his eyes fluttering shut as their lips met, the feeling fizzing through all his nerves.
He feels sick and small and sad and stupid, and the video loops, and George laughs bright and clear, over and over, and Sapnap feels so so stupid. He gets up on seasick legs and locks the door, staggers back to his bed and tries to ignore the way it sways as he struggles to swallow down the sickness enough to sleep.
He wakes up to insistent knocking on his door.
“Sapnap!” George calls out, singsong. “I made you a smoothie, get up, sleepyhead!”
Sapnap pulls his duvet over his head and tries his best to burrow wormlike into the mattress.
His phone rings from the bedside table, buzzing against the wood, the sound resonating in his teeth.
He reaches out a hand from his cocoon and grabs it. He means to decline but his finger slips and he’s not even sure if it was accidental or not.
“Are you sleeping?” George asks. “Did I wake you?”
“Yeah,” Sapnap says. The fragility of his voice is blanketed by the bleariness of clinging sleep.
“Sorry, darling,” George says, the delight in his voice cleaving clumsily through Sapnap’s stomach. “I made you a smoothie, come unlock your door?”
“I think I’m ill,” Sapnap says, sinking down into the crumpled crush of his throat to sell the lie. Though it’s not fully a lie; he feels nauseous and anxious and if someone could die of embarrassment he would be well set in rigor mortis.
“Oh, actually? That sucks. I’ll get Dream to make soup, is it just a cold, do you think?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me in and I’ll take care of you,” George says. “Is your throat sore? I bet the smoothie would be nice on a sore throat.”
“I think I just wanna sleep it off,” Sapnap says. “I’m tired.”
“We can nap together,” George says, sounding pleased and excited and happy. He must be glad that his plan is working so well.
“I don’t want to get you sick,” Sapnap says, and he means it. Though he supposes he’s lovesick and he wishes George would catch that, but it’s not contagious and also not actually real.
“Well, I don’t care. I want to hang out with you and take care of you.”
“I’m tired,” Sapnap says, surprised by how close to tears he suddenly sounds.
“Okay,” George says, relenting for once. He must hear it too. He probably doesn’t want to have to deal with a crying Sapnap, and he can’t really be blamed for that. “Do you want me to stay on call?”
“No,” Sapnap says, wishing that was true. “Just gonna sleep.”
“Okay. Call if you need me, love,” George says.
Sapnap hums, vague and shaky, hangs up, and flings his phone across the room.
He’s not sure how long he stays under the blankets for. His brain runs both haywire and cyclical, making it feel simultaneously rushed and stretched. Eventually there’s another knock, and he’s planning to pretend to be asleep and ignore it, but then Dream says, “Sap, let me in,” in a voice that Sapnap can’t help but obey.
Dream is safe, and warm, and he has an annoying knack of knowing when Sapnap is upset and also what’s causing it.
Sapnap shuffles to the door and unlocks it. Dream slips in with a bottle of water and a bowl of soup, handing both to Sapnap once he’s settled back in bed, sitting up this time with his back against the headboard.
“Thanks,” Sapnap says.
“Are you actually sick?” Dream asks.
Sapnap shrugs and takes a careful sip of water. It smooths out the prickles in his throat, making it easier to breathe without feeling on the verge of tears.
“I’ve been trying to get the video taken down,” Dream says. “But people have been posting it everywhere and if I tweet asking people to stop they’ll take it as confirmation that it’s real.”
Sapnap stares at him. “You can’t take it down.”
“What?”
“The whole point of the plan is for people to think that me and George are — are together. This is the perfect scenario. It all — it all went perfectly.” Even as he says the words he can feel the tears returning, fuelled this time by the few sips of water he’s drunk, so they actually spill over. He tries furiously to scrub them away, nearly knocking over the bowl of soup on his lap, and Dream springs into action mode, taking the bowl and bottle away and clambering into bed next to Sapnap.
Dream gathers him into a tight hug and Sapnap allows himself to melt into it, face pressed into Dream’s shoulder as sobs are heaved out of him, cracking and aching.
Dream mumbles soothing nonsense, big hands rubbing Sapnap’s back, and eventually Sapnap whimpers himself into shaky silence.
“I’m so stupid,” he whispers. “I thought that maybe… I feel so stupid, Dream.”
“Because you are,” Dream says, gentle but definitive. “You both are. Sap, stay here, okay? I’m going to go get George, you need to actually talk this out.”
“No!” Sapnap yelps, scrambling to grab Dream as he stands up. “No, don’t leave, Dream, I don’t wanna talk to George, please —”
“You need to, Sap, I promise you’ll feel so much better after you’ve spoken to him. Just trust me on this, okay?”
“No —” Sapnap begins, but Dream is already gone, with a thumbs up and a quick smile. He collapses back into the bed and pulls the blankets over his face again. Talk it out? What does Dream mean by that? Does he think Sapnap is stupid enough to tell George that he’s been in love with him for years?
Sapnap is well aware he has no chance with George, that he never has and never will, because George is pretty and perfect and clever and witty and Sapnap is just the annoying tagalong friend who has no use beyond being a punching bag or the punchline or the pliers used to bend the world to his whims.
He’s content to follow George around like a stray puppy, taking the scraps of affection George deems him worthy of. The whole fake dating thing has made him forget himself, a little bit, is all. He’s remembered now, being thrust violently back into reality. He can tone it down, tune it out. Tell George that everything is fine.
He hears the door open and involuntarily stiffens. Footsteps drawing closer to the bed.
“Sapnap,” George says, muffled into softness by the blanket. “Can you come out, please?”
Sapnap’s throat is too thick to choke out a reply, so he just frantically shakes his head and hopes that George can decipher the movement through the layers of his cocoon. He hears a sigh, he thinks, a heavy exhale of annoyance or disappointment or something worse.
Then George is lifting up the covers and Sapnap tamps down a shriek as he tries to tug them down, but George is too quick, slipping under the blankets next to Sapnap and shifting them back up so they’re both trapped in the chrysalis.
Sapnap wriggles away as best as he can, turning so his back is to George and there’s a gap between them. It’s not a very big gap, nowhere near enough to stop the heat that radiates off George from burning Sapnap’s fragile skin, but it’s better than the brief contact they had, which sent Sapnap’s heart into triple time.
George doesn’t say anything, just breathes, really loudly. It takes Sapnap probably too long to realise that he’s trying to be helpful. He struggles to slow his hyperventilation to match George’s deep inhales, calm exhales, but eventually he manages. Maybe if he stays under here long enough he’ll die of oxygen depravation. Maybe with George here with him he’ll die twice as quick and twice as happy and twice as sad, all at once.
George still doesn’t say anything as he shifts closer to Sapnap and snakes an arm around his middle. Sapnap’s breathing is knocked all out of whack again, but he can’t bring himself to tell George to stop, even though he knows he should.
George’s chest is pressed flush to his back, arm wrapped firmly around Sapnap’s stomach, and even though there are layers of clothes between them the contact feels like far too much. George’s forehead tips to meet the back of Sapnap’s neck.
“Sapnap,” George says, softly and fondly and Sapnap feels like he might cry again, and maybe never ever stop, because George seems to know just what to do to break him open, how to shape the syllables of his name into something precious and tender like a dappled blue bird egg so Sapnap can’t help but hope he’ll tend to and care for it rather than crushing it in the palm of his hand. It’s all a lie, though. He thinks outright cruelty would be better than this false fondness.
“Sapnap,” George says again, sadness creeping into his tone. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Sapnap reassures. “It’s fine. It’s — I’m okay.”
He wishes he could find better excuses and reasonings and lies, but he’s not sure what George needs to hear right now.
“It’s not, though,” George says. “I’m stupid and selfish and — and a coward.”
“No, you’re not,” Sapnap argues automatically, but George barrels on regardless.
“Just — shh, and let me explain, okay? I — I had this idea, and I had this whole script for how it would go but it just — it just didn’t, nothing went how I hoped, and I just ended up fucking everything up. Sapnap — the whole thing was a lie.”
“I know,” Sapnap says, confused. “That was the point. Pretending to date.”
“No — the plan was fake. I just — I wanted to — I asked Dream about it and he said I should just tell you but I couldn’t, because I’m a coward and I didn’t want to risk making a fool of myself so I came up with the plan to — to see how things would go and I meant to tell you, I really did, but then I started to worry that I was wrong and I thought maybe it would be best to just keep it going because then I could pretend.”
“Pretend what?” Sapnap asks, struggling to understand George’s rambling.
“Pretend that… you were really mine,” George says, careful and quiet and he sounds so scared.
“What?” Sapnap says, way too loud, and George’s hand leaps away from its place resting on his ribs as George tries to pull away, but Sapnap quickly grabs it and refuses to relinquish it. “Wait — no, George, say that again. Say it again.”
“I wanted to pretend that you were mine,” George says, still quiet but with a glitter of hope.
“Why?” Sapnap whispers, struggling to fight down his own hope.
“Because… I like you. I really really like you.”
“You like me,” Sapnap says, incredulous.
“I — what do you want me to say, Sap? That I love you? Because I do, I really do and I can’t stop it so don’t make fun of me, don’t be mean —”
“No — no, George I didn’t mean it like that I meant, like. You like me? You actually like me?”
“I love you,” George says, quiet and faintly annoyed, and Sapnap can’t help but roll over to face him.
“You love me,” he says. George is all shadow and liquid mercury eyes and almost-upturned lips.
“Yes,” George says.
“Wow,” Sapnap says, with an incredulous laugh. “Holy fuck. What?”
“Don’t laugh,” George says, indignant, but giggles spill out of him as well.
“You love me,” Sapnap says, too delighted to be a proper taunt. “I can’t believe — this whole time — wait, did Dream know about the fake fake dating plan?”
“Yes,” George says. “He kept telling me it was a stupid idea and I kept telling him he was stupid but I guess — I guess maybe he was right, just this once.”
“Just this once,” Sapnap agrees. “He said — just now, he said we were both dumb. Which was also correct, I guess.”
“He’s so annoying,” George says, nose scrunched.
“Yeah,” Sapnap says. “So like — for you, was — was all of it real?”
“Yes,” George says. “I always pretended that it was real. You calling me — all those things, baby and darling and doll, it nearly broke me. It was unfair. You’re so — you’re so mean to me.”
“You’re mean to me,” Sapnap counters without heat. “Was — was the kiss—?”
“Yes,” George says. “I thought it was… like, a way to tell you without actually telling you.”
“I knew,” Sapnap says. “I thought that, I thought it was… real, but then I saw the video and I figured you’d seen them and done it so they would… and then I figured it was part of the plan.”
“It wasn’t,” George says. “I really didn’t see them, I promise.”
“It’s okay,” Sapnap says. “It’s okay now.”
“I’m sorry,” George says. “I’ll make it up to you. Do you wanna go out for tea? Get sushi? Burgers?”
“I could go for a burger,” Sapnap says. “Maybe we order in, though. I dunno about… I don’t wanna risk getting seen.”
“Okay,” George says. “That’s fine, that’s totally fine.”
Sapnap takes a second to just look at George. Chocolate eyes and rumpled hair and tiny pale freckles like flecks of gold dust.
“So,” he says, careful. “Are we, like… is it real now, or…?”
“Yes,” George says. “If— if you want that. I want that. Really bad. But I know I kind of — fucked up a bit. A lot. So if you want to take it slow, or maybe wait and see, I don’t mind. Whatever you want.”
“I want to kiss you,” Sapnap says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Yes, idiot. Kiss me. Idiot.”
“Shut up, then, idiot.”
“Oh, you don’t like hearing me talk, huh? What, do you hate me? Do you hate me, George? Well, Mr NotFound —”
George kisses him. It’s a quick, sharp press of lips on lips, messy because Sapnap is mid-sentence, borderline aggressive because that’s just how they are.
“You’re stupid,” George says. Sapnap leans in slower, and their second kiss is more careful, gentle, tender.
George’s lips are plush but slightly dry, so Sapnap swipes his tongue across them to alleviate the issue. George tastes of strawberry and mango and sweetness and Sapnap wants to keep the flavour on his tongue forever but he pulls back.
“Did you drink my smoothie?”
“What?”
“Did you drink my smoothie?”
“Okay, first of all, it was my smoothie, because I made it —”
“You were going to give it to me, though! You brought it up to give to me!”
“Secondly, no. It’s in the fridge.”
“Go fetch it for me,” Sapnap says.
“What?”
“I’m thirsty, I want to drink it. Go get it for me. Please.”
“Do you really want me to go get it?” George says, arching a coy eyebrow.
“Yes,” Sapnap says, setting his jaw firmly, grinning as George pouts.
“You suck,” George says, clambering out of bed. “You literally suck.”
“Sure,” Sapnap says.
George rolls his eyes as he turns to leave.
“Bring two cups up,” Sapnap calls after him. Once George is gone, he hops up and changes into clean clothes, tugging on one of George’s hoodies that was draped over his dresser. He grabs a hoodie of his own, the purple mewtwo one with pink sleeves, to give to George, and settles back onto the bed, swiping back and forth on his home screen and resisting the urge to open Twitter.
George comes back with the smoothie already split into two glasses, one distinctly more full than the other.
“Put this on,” Sapnap says, poking the hoodie towards George.
George hands him both glasses and happily slips the hoodie over his t-shirt, the soft fabric engulfing his smaller frame.
“The bigger one is for me,” he says.
“I don’t think so,” Sapnap says, taking a loud slurp from it.
George huffs but takes the glass with less smoothie in it, gazing at Sapnap as he takes a careful sip.
“Is it good?” he asks.
“Very good,” Sapnap says. His next sip is small and slow. George’s brows furrow.
“You’re so annoying,” he says.
“What? I’m just savouring the smoothie that my bestest friend made for me.”
“Bestest friend,” George scoffs.
“Second bestest friend,” Sapnap corrects. “Dream is first. Ya snooze ya lose.”
“That’s not fair,” George says, clearly opening up a defensive rant.
“Because you’re my boyfriend,” Sapnap says, sickly sweet. “Right?”
“Right,” George says, relaxing. “Yes. Fine. But Dream is my first best friend, then, if that’s how it works.”
“I think we can probably be best friends and boyfriends at the same time,” Sapnap laughs. “I think that’s allowed. It’s like, the best case scenario, I think.”
“You just said ‘I think’ like five times despite the fact that you’ve never thought a day in your life,” George says.
“I think,” Sapnap says, defensive. “I think real good.”
“Sure you do.”
“I think you’re pretty. I think you’re clever. I think you’re cute. I think you’re annoying as all hell, and an idiot, and beautiful, and mine. Or is that not true?”
“It’s true,” George concedes. “Drink your stupid smoothie quicker, I want to kiss you again.”