Work Text:
Staring up at the building he knew was called the Student Center, Karl felt like he was supposed to be scared.
He’d even been scared before, when he was a junior in high school having meetings with guidance counselors and a senior feeling threatened by the quick arrival of May 1st. But now that he was here, now that he was standing still on a sidewalk surrounded by other college freshmen, Karl didn’t feel so nervous anymore.
The Student Center was a little tall and a little imposing, but every twisted feeling of fear had long since been replaced by excitement. And Karl was only here to kill time before his roommate showed up, having already moved himself in during his early-morning time slot and being left to do nothing but wait.
So in his quiet solitude, Karl left his dorm where the sun had been streaming in through the strangely thin windows. He went out to wander campus with the justification of “finding his way around,” which was probably a good idea seeing how Karl barely knew the place and classes started in six days.
But for some reason, in the midst of aimless wandering, the Student Center called to be stared at. Maybe it was because it was the oldest building on campus (Karl remembered that from his tour last summer), maybe it was just the promise of four years—if Karl made it that long—at this school. No matter the reason, it took Karl several minutes to actually walk up the steps and open the door, leaving an afternoon sun behind in favor of the grand interior.
Like the sidewalks weaving through campus had been, the Student Center was cluttered with bodies. Not as crowded as staged photos on school websites made it look, but crowded nonetheless. And though Karl was more apt to be intimidated by the fast motion of too many students than he was by the looming presence of a university building, he still didn’t feel very nervous.
If anything, he only felt excited. So he toyed with the phone in his hands and let his rings click against the case, dragged his eyes over the filling room while he walked slowly in an unknown direction.
Aimless wandering led Karl to the campus bookstore. Led him to looking at textbooks he’d already ordered as if they were the most interesting things in the world and dragging his hands over sweatshirts he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. His venture here had never been anything but an excuse to kill time, though he was glad that he’d come out of his room so quickly.
Glad because holy shit, that was the cutest boy he’d ever seen.
Or was he handsome? No matter which specific adjective he used, the only thing Karl knew was that this guy was attractive, and he was probably staring a little too obviously from the other side of the bookstore.
He was wearing a cap that didn’t let Karl see his hair, looking awfully focused where he stared down at a collection of textbooks. Karl had half the mind to go up and offer to help him, but he was far too intimidated by absurd levels of attractiveness and the fact that he wasn’t dressed very well himself.
So instead, he watched this mysterious stranger look through textbooks for a little bit too long. Walked back and forth between shelves and racks pretending to look at over-branded merchandise he was never going to buy, all of it nothing more than an excuse to still be standing in the place that let him see the best.
He managed to look attractive with every move he made, from the hands running over book covers to the shift of his weight between his feet. From hands fiddling with hats to fingers that adjusted his sleeves, from the smile when he found whatever it was he was looking for to the way he walked up to the counter.
Maybe Karl had been staring a little too obviously, because the boy smiled at him on his way out the bookstore.
And Karl knew it had been directed at him—knew because the boy had met his gaze when he made the expression, knew because he’d turned around the moment he’d left and found no one standing anywhere behind him. So Karl took a moment to stand by a rack of ugly sweatshirts, breathing deep enough to shake his chest in attempts to calm his nerves.
Now, Karl was nervous. But it had nothing to do with a new school or the Student Center.
He practically ran all the way back to his dorm, noticed how the sky had turned all golden with the promise of a too-soon sunset. And Karl fumbled with his key at the door to his room, whipped it open to find that he was, as expected, not so alone anymore.
There was a boy sitting on the bed that wasn’t Karl’s—a complete stranger, as Karl had failed to complete the form that let him pick his own roommate—and his laptop was open while his fingers flew across the keyboard. And maybe Karl looked a little too out of breath standing in the doorway, because his roommate was giving him a strangely incredulous look while he tugged out one of his earbuds.
“Um…” the boy paused, watching Karl a little too closely, “hi?”
Karl giggled, finally shutting the door behind him and stepping into the room. He went to take his shoes off without even untying the laces, leaving them discarded at the foot of his bed.
“Hi,” he answered, turning to face his roommate where he sat. “I’m Karl.”
The boy nodded slowly. “George.” And he pulled out his other earbud, shutting his laptop and laying it on the mattress. “You alright?”
Karl laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The deep breath he took said otherwise. “I kinda ran here, no big deal.”
George raised an eyebrow. “You run?”
“Well, no.” Karl laughed through every word. “I’m terribly out of shape.”
George laughed as well, quiet and shy-seeming with the way he brought a hand up to his lips. But he answered nonetheless, twists of confidence hidden beneath his careful tone.
“God, same.”
Karl smiled, moving to sit on the edge of his mattress. His feet dangled above the ground with half-lofted height, body facing toward George’s bed where it lay on the other side of the room. And George was fiddling with his hands in his lap, still facing half-away and toward the door.
Karl bit his lip, wondering for a brief moment what there was to talk about. Then he remembered where they were, and he couldn’t believe he’d nearly forgotten the most obvious thing.
“What’s your major?”
George perked up at that, eyes flicking back over to Karl as he smiled.
“Computer science,” he shrugged, “riveting stuff.” A brief silence was passed with teeth on bottom lips. “You?”
“Music.”
“Oh,” George turned on his bed to face Karl, “you’re a music person?”
“Well, yeah.” Karl shrugged. “Piano’s probably my favorite, not that you asked, but,” he looked at the floor, “yeah.”
“No, that’s interesting!” George said quickly, bright voice pulling Karl’s eyes back up off the floor. “I was never very good with music, hence the uh,” he paused, grinning sheepishly, “the science.”
“Feels like people are either music, sports, or science,” Karl suggested, “but never all three.”
“We need a sports person, then,” George joked, running a hand through his hair.
Karl giggled. “Maybe.”
And the silence that surrounded them for the next moments was peaceful. Karl was grateful that he already found George so easy to talk to—they were meant to spend the entire year together, after all. Despite years full of concern, Karl found that he didn’t mind the too-small space between their beds or the fact that he could hear every time George shifted against the sheets.
Like the setting sun outside their cracked windows, it felt familiar. Even in complete newness, sitting on a bed he’d never slept in with a boy he barely knew, Karl felt like he’d been here before. And that was the only feeling he could ever ask for in a situation like this, the vanishing of all the fear he’d clung to for so long, everything replaced by excitement and the echo of a warm embrace.
He looked at George with kindness in his eyes, and the brunet was quick to meet his gaze. They smiled at each other with a notion of shared space, and Karl kicked his feet so they swung in the air. George followed suit, and they knocked together once or twice, but it was never met with anything but quiet laughter.
Finally, Karl spoke again, and the platonic fondness in his eyes sept into his words, too.
“How long have you been here?”
“Few hours,” George shrugged, laughing beneath his breath without anything being funny. “I don’t know. How about you?”
“Just since this morning,” Karl answered, swinging his foot up and keeping it suspended between them. “Wandered campus a bit—it’s cool, I guess.”
“Yeah?” George did the same. “See any cute boys?”
Karl’s face and foot both fell slightly, staring up at George with pure bewilderment. It was strange, it felt like George had already seen right through him—but in a good way, Karl noticed that he didn’t mind. He was only taken by surprise, enough surprise to look at George like he’d just said the craziest thing and he didn’t know how to take it.
And George dropped his foot as well, leg knocking against the frame of his bed. He lifted up his hands as if in emphasis, face morphing into something like an apology.
“I’m kidding,” George said quickly, “don’t worry.”
Karl nodded because he still couldn’t find words, let a smile cross his parted lips when he finally got close to discovery. He brought his hands up as well and giggled quietly, one of his thumbs knocking against his lips where he’d lifted it.
“No,” he said finally, “you just caught me off guard.” And he laughed again, watched the smile return to George’s face. “Like, how’d you know?”
And Karl watched George’s eyes grow wide, watched his lips part before the laugh even spilled past them when he swung his foot back up in the air. In close proximity, he hit Karl’s knee—but neither of them said much of anything about it.
“Oh, so you did?” George flicked his lashes over his eyes. “Tell me.”
Eyebrows knitted in firm confusion. “What?”
“If we’re gonna be roommates, you have to tell me about all the cute boys.” George bounced excitedly on his mattress, hands pressed flat against the bed beside his hips. “C’mon.”
Karl narrowed his eyes. “Okay…”
“Or you can tell me about the same boy every time,” George said with a grin. “Whatever works, really.”
With his still-narrowed eyes, Karl lowered his brows. It came off as playful and accusatory—exactly what he’d been going for—and he was happy to see that it made George laugh a little louder. Karl smiled, too, some of his accusation fading in favor of lilt.
“You just want to listen to me talk about boys?”
“Yeah,” George shrugged, “it’s what I did in high school.” He ran a hand through the front of his hair, pushing it farther from his eyes. “I was, like, the resident listener.”
“Well,” Karl cleared his throat, “resident listener,” George laughed at his emphasis, “I’ll tell you about him.”
George bounced slightly again, feet kicking up to knock against Karl’s legs. They both laughed quietly, gazes locked in waiting from across the tiny room.
“Okay, first,” George stopped moving, leaning in closer with impatient wait, “where’d you see him?”
“Campus bookstore.”
George raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Karl rolled his eyes, but it was all in playful lilt. “And he looked, like,” he frowned, “I don’t know, like he played sports or something.” Looking at George, he gestured vaguely and at nothing. “You know that look? Like, not just the way he was built, just him.”
George nodded slowly, though the look on his face said he had no idea what Karl was talking about. “What sport?”
“Football, maybe?” Karl pursed his lips. “Or baseball? Wait,” he cocked his head to the side, “maybe both?” He shook his head with finality, laughing beneath his breath. “I don’t know, I’m terrible with sports.”
George laughed with him. “Yeah, me too.”
Karl scoffed. “Go figure.”
“Well,” George shifted on his bed, leaning forward just a little bit more, “what’s his name?”
“No idea.”
George sputtered for a moment. “What?”
“I said I saw a hot guy,” Karl said very matter-of-factly, “not that I talked to him.”
George groaned, rolling his eyes with a new type of exaggerated drama. It made Karl laugh, but the flick of white between George’s eyelids drove him to stifle it. So he swallowed the giddy sound, felt where it got caught in his throat and spilled out in near-silence anyways.
When George opened his mouth to speak again, there was a lopsided grin on his face.
“You should talk to him.”
“Shut up,” Karl answered quickly, feeling his cheeks go red, “it’s not like I’ll ever see him again.” He sighed, and he may have described the sound as wistful. “He’s probably an upperclassman, anyways.”
George crossed his arms over his chest. “Karl.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s only freshmen on campus right now.”
Somehow, Karl felt his face turn redder. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” George mocked. “You’re such an idiot.”
And though it had come out in slews of fondness, Karl still shouted a half-offended, “Hey!”
“I mean it kindly!”
George’s tone managed to be both concerned and lilted in a tandem that Karl may have envied, all of it only emphasized by the way his feet kicked out from against the bed. Karl giggled, the back of one of his hands pressing against the front of his lips again.
“I figured,” he said with a smile that shone through his voice, eyes flicking sideways to watch the last stripes of orange fade into the sky.
And George knocked his foot against Karl’s knee with an unspoken intent this time, hands clasped together where they lay in his lap. Karl met his eyes from across the room, a half-joking smile turned into nothing but earnest on pretty pink lips.
“You should still talk to him.”
Karl smiled back, shrugging his shoulders in a gentle motion that may have gone unnoticed in another situation. But when George was watching him so intently—dropping his foot back down to dangle haphazardly from his bed—he didn’t miss it.
“Maybe one day,” Karl said with quiet promise, so quiet it was nearly silent.
George smiled wider, somehow, the flash of ivory teeth more than endearing when it was all across his pale face. His smile made Karl smile, and he knew that was something that’d persist. Even when George was pointing accusatory fingers in his direction, even when the grin was starting to become cocky instead of kind.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
Karl laughed, high-pitched and quick in his throat. “Yeah, okay.”
Karl found that his favorite spot on campus was the library. Strangely, he liked the library more than the music building—which was a fact that he’d never thought to expect. But there was something about the peace in the library that was completely unmatched, not even by the soundproofing of a quiet practice room.
So Karl spent a lot of his time in the library. Sometimes, George would come with him, but he tended to go alone. He’d sit in the corner and do whatever he could possibly think of, would work on his laptop or write music or read books. Sometimes, he’d just sit and do nothing but think.
And today was one of those days, now was one of those times. He’d opened his computer as some kind of cover for it, as a way to remove suspicion. Left his screen displaying a written-on doc that was nothing more than rambling. It was where Karl would go when he had thoughts to get out and, embarrassingly, his most recent addition to the doc was ‘where’d that handsome boy go?’
It had been just over a week since classes started, and Karl hadn’t seen him since that day in the bookstore. He almost wondered if he wasn’t even a student, if he’d been someone’s brother helping them move in or just a friend stopping by. If he’d spent so long staring at textbooks because they were for someone else, because he couldn’t remember which edition they needed or which subject it was for.
Despite their status as literal strangers, Karl still felt his heart fall just a little with the thought. Even without ever knowing him, he wanted to know where he was. He hoped he was still around, hoped he was a student here, hoped that he’d stuck around through the first week of classes—even if it was a little bit of a drag.
Apparently, timing felt like being divine. Because despite having spent the last two-odd weeks wondering where the mysterious boy had gone, Karl watched him stroll into the library the moment he wondered about his name.
He wasn’t alone this time. He was with another athletic-looking guy, someone noticeably taller and starkly blonder. Both strangers were smiling with bright flashes of ivory, and Karl found it notably more difficult to pretend to focus on an unimportant document.
It only got more difficult when handsome stranger and his friend sat down at the table next to Karl’s, not far enough away from him for how loud all his thoughts felt. He heard his heartbeat where it pounded in his ears, and he forced himself to switch tabs into his composition software so he could at least pretend to write music. The bluetooth headphones he’d been wearing since he got here weren’t even connected to anything, and the whole thing was just for show.
In close proximity, Karl could hear the words that spilled past his favorite stranger’s lips. And his voice was just as attractive as the rest of him, low and all-encompassing in a way that Karl may have been envious of if he didn’t find it so attractive on someone else.
“No, dude, I actually have so much work to get done.”
Karl watched him open a laptop from his peripheral, the two of them sitting practically beside each other. There was space between their tables, but Karl was close enough to see where the boy’s fingers laid across his keyboard and typed in a password too fast for anyone to discern.
The blond who had sat on his other side of him was also typing something on a newly opened laptop, but he was going one-handed while he tapped his friend on the shoulder.
“Is that why we’re here instead of outside?”
“You can go practice if you want,” the brunet insisted, fiddling with his cap.
“How am I supposed to practice football alone?” The blond scoffed, flicking his friend’s temple. “You’re such an idiot.”
So they did play football. Karl almost wanted to pride himself on being right in his assumption, because it was true that that boy looked like he played football. He made a slightly pathetic note to himself to go to one of the games, even if he didn’t understand how the sport worked at all.
“Shut up.” The handsome stranger elbowed his friend lightly, but the blond pushed it off. “I bet someone’s down at the field,” he tugged his arm away, “so you wouldn’t be alone.”
“I don’t know anyone else well enough yet.”
“You’re clingy.” The blond punched his shoulder with a grin. “What the hell, Dream?!”
“Dude,” the blond— Dream —said quickly, “shut up, we’re literally in a library.”
The brunet only scowled at him, rubbing at his shoulder where he’d been punched. “Then maybe don’t hit me.”
Dream scoffed. “Maybe don’t be annoying.”
“Oh my god, shut the hell up.” His hands returned to their place on the keyboard, already typing with enough fervor to be heard. “I came here to do work.”
And both of them fell quiet beside Karl. Their presence became nothing more than typing sounds and the knowledge that there were people there, huffed out breath when things grew difficult. Karl tried not to be creepy or obvious, tried to keep his hands moving on the keyboard and trackpad so it was feasible that he was doing work.
He even started a new composition. Dragged notes all over the place and dropped them in random spots like he was doing something, but he could tell just by looking at the mess he’d created that it would sound terrible if anyone ever tried to play it. Though he also knew that the point was not to actually write good music, the point was to make it look like he wasn't eavesdropping.
The headphones definitely helped, even if there was no sound coming out of them. Even if Karl was far more interested in the sound of hands on a keyboard, flying a little faster than he was used to—and when he dared glance next to him to see if he could catch a glimpse of the boy’s screen, he saw a scattering of code that he’d never be able to understand.
Karl turned back to his own laptop screen, leaving the handsome boy and his friend alone in his peripheral. Maybe he was losing his mind.
“Sapnap.” Dream nudged the handsome stranger, and Karl could only assume that was his name. “Sapnap. Sapnap.”
“What,” he said finally, knocking Dream’s arm away from him, “oh my god.”
“What’s another word for, like,” Dream paused, tapping his fingers against the table, “showed.”
“Showed?”
Sapnap spoke with accusatory question, his tone sounding nothing short of annoyed. There was something about it that made Karl smile, and he brought a hand up to his face to cover his mouth.
“Yeah,” Dream paused, “like, ‘the author showed this in the passage’ type thing.”
“I don’t know, man,” Sapnap scoffed, “ you’re the English major.”
Karl swallowed the laugh before it rose too high in his throat, slipped his palm properly over his mouth as if that would seal his lips shut. And he leaned his elbow against the table with feigned ease, tried to flit his fingers across the trackpad in a way that made it look like he was doing something other than shifting his screen.
“I hate you,” Dream said finally, and Karl barely caught it when he knocked Sapnap on the shoulder, “so much.”
Sapnap shrugged. “I’m just being honest.”
“C’mon,” Dream practically whined, “you had to write essays in high school, I know you’ve got one.”
“Nope,” Sapnap laughed quietly, “I’m not helping you.”
Dream sighed indignantly, throwing his head over the back of his chair. Sapnap paused his typing properly for a moment and turned to look at him, flicking his forehead hard enough to make Dream flinch.
Karl, ever the people watcher, leaned against his hand just a little bit harder and sank his teeth into the skin of his palm. And he tried to pull his eyes away from them, he really did, but something about the way they existed was just so enticing to him. And it wasn’t just because he thought Sapnap was so attractive, though that certainly was still a part of it.
“Didn’t you take AP English?” Dream asked, sitting up quickly enough to fall elbow-first against the table.
“Yeah.” Sapnap sounded unsure, the word dragged out a tad more than what would’ve been normal. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“My AP teacher was super into synonyms for ‘showed.’”
Sapnap scoffed. “Then shouldn’t you have, like,” he paused for a moment, and Karl could barely see his eyebrows furrow without looking at him directly, “a thousand?”
“Well,” Dream sighed, “I forgot.”
“Cool,” Sapnap said nonchalantly. “Then remember.”
“Dude.”
Dream’s plea was met with silence aside from a clicking keyboard. And Karl had to bite his tongue, had to twist his head away from the two of them so they were completely gone from his vision. But even still—even when he closed his eyes and promised not to look back—Karl couldn’t stay away for too long. His vision came forward again and he feigned enthrallment with the notes on the staff, fiddled with them like they meant anything at all.
They didn’t. And he was still beyond just a little more interested in the people next to him when compared to those useless notes.
“Sapnap,” Dream tried again, “please.”
Sapnap sighed loudly. “Exemplified.”
And Dream seemed to brighten up immediately, sitting a little straighter as if he needed to look any taller than he already did and turning quickly to write the word down. Karl was digging teeth into his flesh again, feeling the divots carve themselves into the palm of his hand.
“See?” Dream tapped his hand against one of Sapnap’s shoulders without taking his eyes off the screen. “Now was that so hard?”
“Shut the hell up and write your essay.”
Dream scoffed and shook his head, both hands falling back to his keyboard. Karl listened to the sound of clicking keys as it swelled in his ears, eased his teeth up where they dug into his skin. The rhythmic sound of work had always been therapeutic to him, even when they didn’t abide by a proper tempo—but even with that, maybe it was the music major in him.
“Exemplified is a really good word, you know.”
Sapnap only huffed, but it still sounded prideful. “Yes, I do know.”
“Maybe I should keep asking you for synonyms.”
Sapnap threw his head back the same way Dream had earlier, hands halting where they’d been flying across the keyboard. And when Dream laughed a hellishly contagious laugh, Karl had to dig his teeth back into his palm. As if he’d never even stopped biting, Karl forced himself to swallow giggles.
“God damn it,” Sapnap complained. “I should’ve given you a bad one.”
Dream wheezed. “You did this to yourself, Sappy.”
And Sapnap groaned, picking his head up and raising one hand up off his keyboard. Karl couldn’t tell if he’d clenched it into a fist or not, but he could tell that he was threatening Dream with it.
“Shut your mouth before I hit you.”
And apparently that threat held weight, because Dream shut his mouth. Karl finally felt safe enough to ease his teeth up from his palm again, but he kept his hand pushed against his mouth for a few moments longer. He kept fiddling with the fake music on his screen with his free hand, dragged another set of eighth notes onto the staff of whatever instrument.
Karl’s eyes were still fighting to look at his screen. Even though he wasn’t doing anything, he still just wanted to look at Sapnap. Sapnap. He was glad to finally have a name to put with his face, even if it was a little strange—and besides, it suited him in an equally strange way.
There was something of a person behind that handsome face in Karl’s head now. He used that as justification for his enthrallment; because now it didn’t feel shallow, it felt earned. Even if they’d never spoken, even if all the things he’d learned had been via eavesdropping, Karl knew something about the handsome stranger in his head.
Dropping the hand on his mouth back onto his keyboard, Karl thought briefly about the conversation he’d had with George. And with his eyes catching just enough of Sapnap through his peripheral vision, he considered striking up a conversation. Maybe introduce himself, ask him what his major was to confirm suspicions of computer science.
But Karl didn’t do any of that. He thought about it, played the scenario over a thousand times in his head, but he never opened his mouth. And he’d be quick to blame it on the fact that his phone had just gone off in his pocket, but even Karl knew that was just an excuse.
Excuses or not, Karl had a text from George.
wanna grab dinner? i’m so bored
Sure enough, at some point, the clock had struck seven pm. So Karl texted back a quick ‘sure!’ and got his stuff together to leave the library. Maybe it was in his head, but Karl would swear he felt eyes on him as he left the table.
But he was happy to get dinner with his roommate. George—the self-proclaimed resident listener —let Karl talk his ear off about overheard conversations and newly learned names. Even if he made fun of him a little more than he needed to, Karl was happy to have a friend more than willing to listen.
The last thing George had said to Karl before they turned off all the lights in their dorm was, “You have to talk to him.”
And begrudgingly, Karl admitted, “I know.”
Karl knew that it would be weird for him to hang around the football field, especially when he knew that was somewhere Sapnap had to be. But that didn’t stop him from changing his route to the library just to walk closer to the field.
He hadn’t seen very many people around there. Nothing more than faces he didn’t recognize tossing a ball back and forth—Karl didn’t even know when the team’s official practices were. All he knew was that he was being weird, and that he was waiting to catch a very specific face over the fence when he walked by.
It was probably two weeks after what George had dubbed ‘the library incident’ when he finally saw the boy he was looking for. Dressed in his unofficial practice uniform, tossing a ball alone between himself and who Karl recognized as Dream. Karl paused where he’d been walking to stare between the links on the fence, everything but leaning up against the metal and making his presence just a little bit more known.
Maybe it was weird to stare, but late Saturday afternoons didn’t bring many people out to the football field. Karl was practically alone, alone besides the two people he was watching toss a football back and forth. And they seemed a little too caught up on that very game to notice Karl’s presence, that and they were a little too far away.
Karl watched a tad too intently, caught up on the pass of a football between hands. Caught up on the way Sapnap seemed to shine beneath the afternoon sun, caught up on the fact that this was the first time he’d seen the boy without a hat on. God, he was so handsome.
And maybe it was all in Karl’s head, but he would swear that Sapnap had met his eyes when Dream caught the last pass. When the blond was jogging off toward the sideline, when it was just Sapnap standing alone toward the center of the field.
Karl froze for a moment. Watched from a distance as Sapnap’s lips curled up into a smile, the slight nod of his head feeling unintentional when he turned to walk over to Dream. And despite the body-freezing feeling of being seen, perceived, caught, Karl couldn’t pull his eyes away. His gaze followed Sapnap when he walked over to the bench, lingered on him through the links of a fence when he stopped to talk to Dream.
They were too far away for Karl to hear anything they said. But he could see their mouths moving, could tell they were laughing when teeth flashed brighter and hands came up toward lips.
Karl shifted the bag on his shoulder and swallowed thickly, finally dragging his eyes away to stare off in the direction of the library. He again considered leaving, again mulled over just how weird and ridiculous he was being standing at the edge of the football field. But his thoughts had been so clouded by boys he scarcely knew anything about, time spent daydreaming by himself and rambling to George about everything he possibly could.
He had the same thought he’d had in the library all that time ago: he was losing his mind.
And he was about to leave—he’d swear, he was just about to leave—when he heard the fence in front of him rattle. Karl jumped, eyes coming back forward to find Dream standing there, fingers caught between the links of metal and a too-wide grin spread across his lips.
Karl glanced over Dream’s shoulder, and he could barely see where Sapnap had sat down on the bench along the sideline. He was fiddling with his own fingers in his lap, shifting rather awkwardly where he was sitting. But clearly, Karl needed to pay attention to Dream—he was the one standing directly in front of him.
Oh god, was he about to tell Karl off for being weird?
“Um,” Karl stumbled, “hi?”
“Hey.” Dream stood up properly, hands sliding out from between the links of the fence. “I had a question for you.”
Karl raised an eyebrow. “A question?”
“Yeah.” Dream shrugged. “Oh, first,” he pointed at himself, “I’m Dream. I would shake your hand but, uh,” he tapped one of his hands against the fence, “intrusion.”
“Karl.” He waved vaguely, laughing beneath his breath despite overwhelming nerves. “And don’t worry about it,” his breath shook, “just ask me the question.”
Dream seemed to freeze for a minute, hands tugging at fingers down by his waist. And his momentary silence gave Karl enough time to worry about every possible outcome, to worry about accusatory questions regarding being weird. To worry about things that weren’t even questions at all, things like statements and hellish cruelty.
“You’re friends with that,” he took a breath, “the British guy, right?” Not what Karl had been expecting. And he certainly hadn’t been expecting the palpable nerves radiating off of Dream, either. “With the brown hair?”
“Uh,” Karl furrowed his eyebrows, hoping his nerves weren’t as noticeable as Dream’s, “George?”
Dream shrugged. “If that’s his name.”
“Yeah,” Karl swallows, “he’s my roommate.” He paused, licking his too-chapped lips. “Why?”
“Nothing.” Dream said quickly, maybe too quickly, “Nothing bad, don’t worry about it, I just…”
Dream looked toward the ground, running a hand through his too-long hair. And he stumbled over what sounded like a hundred different words, eyes flicking everywhere but up at Karl’s face. Karl laughed quietly, more like a giggle where it rolled up his throat. One of his hands lifted to push against his lips, bitten slightly and etched with teeth marks.
“Do you—”
Dream looked up at him quickly. “No!”
Karl laughed again, but it sounded more like a scoff in its quickness. “No?”
“I just think he’s cute,” Dream’s eyes were everywhere but Karl’s, fingers tugging at his own wrists, “shut up.”
“Then just talk to him,” and Karl was all-too aware of how much of a hypocrite he was being, “he’s nice.”
“Yeah, I’ll get there.” Dream answered quickly. “Sorry to bother you, Sap—my friend,” he coughed intentionally, “is annoying and wouldn’t tell me his name.”
Karl raised his eyebrows, feeling the shock course through his body. “He knows it?”
“I guess they have a class together.” Dream shrugged. “Sucks that he’s annoying.”
“Yeah,” Karl feigned a scoff, “sucks.”
“Oh,” Dream piped up, “and while we’re talking about Sapnap,” he seemed to smirk, eyes cast momentarily over his shoulder as if to look at the boy in question, “don't tell him I told you, but he thinks you’re really pretty.”
Karl just about short-circuited. “He what?”
“Shush!” Dream said in laughter, lifting his hands up by his head as if to coax Karl into silence. “He’ll get pissed if he finds out I told you, so,” he cleared his throat, “don’t tell him.”
“Uh, yeah, don’t worry.” Karl laughed sheepishly, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t think…” he frowned, “I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity.”
“Okay,” Dream nodded, “well, thank you.” He paused, tapping his knuckles against the fence again. “For George’s name. Don’t say anything about me to him because you’ll ruin it.”
Karl raised his eyebrows. “It?”
“Something,” Dream said quickly. “Shut up. Don’t worry about it.” And he started to turn back toward the field, but he stopped before he’d even gotten halfway. “Uh, sorry.”
“Yeah,” Karl nodded, “okay. Have a nice…” with unwavering anxiety, Karl managed to wave again, “a nice day, Dream.”
Dream nodded back. “You too, Karl.” And he ran back toward the field.
Karl faltered for a moment, but he turned back in the direction of the library before Dream got in front of Sapnap. And he started walking, walking away from the field and toward the place that had been his destination all along, a hundred thousand thoughts running through his head in tandem.
Sapnap thought he was pretty? So had he actually been looking at him that time when he left the library, had it not been all in Karl’s head?
Karl was practically stumbling when he walked, and he figured it may have just been a better idea to go back to his dorm, but then he wouldn’t have had any reason to go out in the first place. So he tugged his phone out of his pocket instead, distracted himself from the fact that he was nearly falling over with every step he took. And, of course, he texted George.
i talked to dream
After he sent it, he realized that may have been wrong.
well dream talked to me
and apparently sapnap thinks i’m pretty ??
Karl would’ve turned off his phone and put it in his pocket, would’ve waited until he heard it go off or got to the library to take it out and check again; but his patience was waning and his thoughts were running wild, so he kept his phone out and tapped fingers against the side of it while he waited for the little typing bubble.
George did have a tendency to take a bit of time to text back, but Karl knew he wasn’t busy then. So he was both surprised and unsurprised to see the bubble he’d been looking for pop up within five minutes, to see it disappear and reappear what had to be at least six times. Karl’s tapping finger got faster, and he felt the tempo grow irregular when he stumbled up the steps to the library.
and you still haven’t talked to him??
you’re an actual idiot
Karl scoffed, though it wasn’t like George could hear him. And he tugged the door to the library open before he replied, wandered his way to the table in the far back corner that he always took when it was empty. He tapped his finger against his phone again while he thought of a response, ran through a hundred thousand words in his head before he finally settled on the right ones.
shut up
i’ll talk to him if you talk to dream
Taking the attention off himself felt like the best course of action. And the rapid turn of typing and not-typing from George’s end said that had been the right call, and Karl was smiling to himself while he pulled his laptop out of his bag.
dream??
When he realized that—even after all that typing and backspacing—that was the only response he was going to get, Karl rolled his eyes. And he picked his phone up off the table to type his next answer in a flurry, thumbs moving fast over the keyboard with practiced ease.
yes dream
just trust me
Per Dream’s request, Karl tried not to “ruin it.” Though he still had no idea what it was, Karl wasn’t cruel. At least, not to anyone but himself.
you’re distracting me from what matters
Damn it.
talk to sapnap you idiot
Karl sighed to himself when he opened his laptop, finding that it was once again open to his mindless rambling doc. It had increased in size since the last time he’d been here, the addition of new words still haunting him where they lay. The blinking cursor seemed to taunt him, flashing right before his eyes alongside the words he wanted to erase.
But he’d made a vow to himself not to delete things, so when he texted George back, the “does he love me?” seemed to stare right back into his soul.
i will
next time i see him
Karl did not talk to Sapnap the next time he saw him.
To be fair, he’d only really seen him in passing. So, in Karl’s defense, there was barely any time for him to strike up a conversation. He’d only passed him in the hallway on his way out of the English building, had been met with kind green eyes and a too-bright smile. He felt a push against his back when he finally passed him, but it had to be his imagination.
When Karl stumbled out the door and started his route back to the residence hall, he found that the sun wasn’t quite as bright as Sapnap had been. Despite it being the early afternoon beneath a sky lacking clouds, he felt like he was in the dark. Maybe it was all in his head—not maybe, it had to be all in his head—but Karl really felt like the world had gone black.
He found his way back to his dorm through all the feigned darkness, found the room empty and the beds unmade just as he’d expected. And he let his bag fall to the floor beside his desk, wandered over to the window and shoved it open without thought.
Despite golden light that spilled out onto the gross dorm room floors, Karl still felt like he was in the dark. It was all in his head, and deep breaths of the fresh air that streamed into his room would hopefully prove that with finality. Even when he closed his eyes and nothing seemed to change, it was all in his head.
Karl fell against his bed. And it put him in a strangely twisted position, one where he was hanging off the mattress because of a half-loft and not quite enough height. But he crawled up onto the bed to lay properly, stared up at the terribly cracked ceiling with a mind full of thoughts and clearing vision.
A cool breeze came in through the open window, and Karl made a point of breathing in perfect sync with it. Tapped his fingers against his palm with a careful tempo, turned deep breaths into steady humming that matched a tune he couldn’t quite place.
Maybe it was something he’d played on the grand piano in the music building earlier this week, maybe it was older familiarity. Maybe it was something he’d made up entirely and on the spot—Karl had too many songs in his head to remember them all, though it was true he was always looking for more.
In his head, he found songs with Sapnap. Maybe he’d find songs for Sapnap, and they’d share earbuds on his bed when their feet hung off the edge of the mattress. It could be their thing, their thing, their special little thing that burned association into their brains with fondness. Let it become a song that couldn’t be listened to without careful thought, that couldn’t be heard without reminders of mixing breath beneath awful dorm lights.
Karl shook his head, heard the sound that was his hair dragging against the pillowcase. And even with all his hope that it would make the wishful thinking go away, the fantasies persisted.
Even when it involved a boy he’d never properly spoken to, a boy he only knew by name and voice because of stolen words from people he actually knew—Karl wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
He rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, breathed slow and out of his mouth when fingers tangled in the sheets. He didn’t even know what he was supposed to be thinking anymore, he didn’t even know where patheticism started and if it was returned.
Shared smiles had been real, declarations from blonds he both knew and didn’t weren’t fake, and the world finally had a reason to be dark when Karl closed his eyes against the pillow.
Was he waiting for something?
Karl tugged his head up from the pillow, glanced sideways and at the wall that George’s bed was pressed against. One of his notebooks lay forgotten on the bed, and Karl recognized it as the one he didn’t need for any classes. It was dark brown and leather-bound, closer to the word journal than it was notebook. Sometimes, Karl wondered what words his roommate wrote on those yellowed pages, but he was never pushy enough to ask.
It was like Karl’s absurdly long doc. Only George’s was scrawled out in pen ink instead of typewriter font, only George’s could be taken off his bed and wasn’t password protected. But even still, the idea of proper journaling had always tempted Karl. Like the way he preferred to write out his sheet music on paper before he put it in the software, like the science behind handwriting that didn’t extend to fast fingers across keyboards.
Karl smiled. It was almost ironic, a computer science major keeping a handwritten journal. It was almost ironic, a music major with a penchant for blue ink keeping a word doc. It made a perfect amount of nonsense in his pretty little head, and somehow, that was enough to pull him up to sitting against the wall..
He only leaned, tipped his head up to stare at the ceiling. Only slipped his eyes shut to find darkness when he knew the sun was starting to set, when he’d already seen the light cast across his floor turn to darker gold. He only waited patiently for swirls of tangerine and pink, for the pretty colors in the sky that reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place.
Was he waiting for something?
There was a moment replaying in his head behind closed eyelids. Quick and fleeting, warm smiles in the hallways of the English building. Quick and fleeting, joy shared in passing with eyes of recognition. In feeling the air move beside him where Sapnap had been, in feeling hands push against his back and convincing himself that it had all been falsely created.
A face that grew more familiar every time he thought about it flashed through his head. Faintly, Karl wondered if Dream had been lying. He hoped not, but he didn’t know the blond well enough to predict his levels of honesty. He could already predict those things when it came to George, and he found that George was more apt to lie about the things that hurt him.
It wasn’t until Karl was tapping his foot to an unknown beat that he realized his shoes were still on. It wasn’t until he let himself get distracted that he reeled back to thoughts from before, wondered if there was something more—something real —to touches against his back.
So Karl dragged himself off the bed, let shoed feet hit the ground with the quietest sound. A cool breeze rushed through his window and swallowed him whole, just barely enough to make Karl sway where he stood unstable on his feet. And he wandered closer to the desk pitted at the foot of his bed, surprised that he hadn’t seen it sooner.
A neon pink post-it note was stuck to the fabric of his backpack, written on with what looked like black sharpie. Karl frowned slightly, and the expression was more incredulous than frustrated—but even still, he bent down to unstick the note from his bag.
He was almost surprised it hadn’t fallen off on his way back from the English building; as he was assuming that’s where it had come from, when he felt presses against him that were light beneath the obstruction of his backpack. It was endearing no matter what the sense of it was, passing notes had always felt a little more intimate than other things.
And the note said nothing bad. No cheesy “kick me” from a movie Karl would’ve complained about, no harsh words or jarring insults.
Only a “Hey Karl :)” written in handwriting he didn’t recognize. It was too thick and intentional to be George’s, and if he was being honest, George was the first person whose handwriting Karl had managed to memorize. But it couldn’t have been George even if the handwriting had been similar, because George wouldn’t have been in the English building.
A thought Karl didn’t want to admit he had, the image of those hands he’d watch type code in the library when he wasn’t supposed to be looking.
He flipped the note over.
“ — Sapnap, btw”
He may as well have just shot Karl dead.
So Karl didn’t talk to Sapnap, but Sapnap didn’t talk to Karl, either. And though Karl had been planning not to tell George about shared smiles in the English building, when it became passing notes, he couldn’t keep the secret. So he told his roommate the moment he returned from class, showed him a bright pink post-it note like it was the most important thing in the world.
In a way, maybe it was. In a way that Karl was slowly starting to think wasn’t so pathetic after all.
George immediately told him to go talk to Sapnap. Tried to push him out the door of their shared dorm room, but Karl had protested with defenses of dark skies and tired eyes. George had given in, but it was nothing short of reluctant—and it didn’t even happen until Karl promised to talk to Sapnap, promised to the extent of locking pinkies between their beds.
And Karl slept well that night. Woke up just a little before the sun, when the sky was all pink and orange again and he got to watch it turn gold. Neither him nor George had remembered to close the window before they went to bed last night, so the room was just a touch colder than Karl was used to.
He closed the window and willed the chilly air away. Without the comforting wrap of his blanket or his bed, Karl was left nearly shivering in the room. But he got ready with enough quickness to leave just as the sun rose, leaving George a note on a purple post-it note that said he’d gone to get breakfast.
He had taken the pad of purple sticky notes with him to the dining hall, and he made sure he had a black sharpie. Maybe he was overthinking his handwriting, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that the air was cold and familiar, the point was that clouds in the sky weren’t doing enough to swallow the sun. Karl’s vision still felt a little darker than it normally did, but it was always brighter than it had been the day before—and he could actually find justification in the clouds in the sky, covering blue and turning it pale grey.
Karl ate slowly and he ate outside, he ate with watchful eyes that were looking for a boy he barely knew besides a pretty face. When he checked his phone, there was still too much time before his first class and Karl didn’t really feel like going back to his dorm.
So he sat on top of a picnic table and sipped coffee, let his gaze flick over every inch of campus he could reach without moving. Lingered on every passing student, made guesses about them in his head because he found it entertaining.
Like girls with their hair tied up dressed in workout clothes but not running, like boys with bags too big to carry anything that wasn’t sports equipment. In his head, Karl knew everyone a little better than he really did. In his head, Karl knew a lot of things that he really didn’t.
After a few minutes too long spent sitting on top of a picnic table, Karl got up and decided to wander campus. He hadn’t walked truly aimlessly since the first day he’d been here, since the day in front of the Student Center with nerves that caught him off guard. So he was almost glad to lack direction again, slipping into a past state of mind where he didn’t know anyone and his life was nothing more than a guessing game.
A guessing game that he could actually win, one that wasn’t pitted so ferociously against him that he felt pathetic. It was just the sense of everything being unknown, the knowledge that every face he saw was one that belonged to a stranger and he didn’t even know his roommate’s name or what his major was.
But even in that prior mindset, Karl was looking for someone. Looking for a familiar face amidst the sea of strangers, though even he knew that the face he sought wasn’t much more than a stranger itself.
Even still, Karl walked down every sidewalk around every residence hall he’d never been inside of. Kept his eyes open wide and searching because he didn’t know which building was the one he belonged to, didn’t know which side of their not-too-large campus he spent the most time on or if his classes were very close to his dorm.
When Karl checked his phone for the time again, there was still plenty of time to kill. Plenty of time to kill and a text from George.
talk to sapnap today
Maybe, but only if all the pieces fell into place. Only if the world was on Karl’s side and things went in any one of the nine hundred positive directions he’d imagined before he’d fallen asleep last night. He would’ve taken any one of the scenarios he’d created, because none of them had ended poorly.
And George’s text didn’t require an answer, so Karl had only smiled and put his phone away. Kept his eyes wide open where they skated across a too-large crowd of people, finally finding the person he’d been looking for walking conveniently in his direction.
When they walked past each other on the sidewalk, Karl smiled first. And Sapnap returned the expression tenfold, grinning just as bright as he always did, even lifting his hand up to wave gently at Karl when they drew closer.
The world seemed to move in slow motion when Karl let his smile grow wider, when he brought a hand that carried a purple post-it note up as their shoulders knocked together. He spun just enough on his heel to stick the note on Sapnap’s backpack, hoped to god that it'd be sticky enough to stay where he’d left it and turned back around fully to walk away as fast as he could.
He hadn’t even done anything very bold. He’d only returned the same friendly greeting that Sapnap had given him first, changed nothing more than the handwriting and the color of the paper. He did wonder how long it would take Sapnap to find the note, wondered if he’d smile as big as Karl had the day before.
In his head, he could still see that slip of purple paper. He’d stared at it so long to make sure all the words looked right it had practically been burned into the backs of his eyelids.
“Hi Sapnap! :)
—Karl, ofc”
Karl went to the music building after class that day. Not even he was sure why he’d gone there rather than anywhere else, especially after he’d spent the whole semester arguing with himself over how much better the library was.
But there was something in him that wanted the dead silence of a soundproofing, wanted the grand piano in the corner of the room he’d just had class in a few hours earlier. And he let his fingers press gently against the keys, eyed both the black and ivory and the silver rings he’d left on top of the instrument.
He’d gotten so lost in notes that didn’t go together that he didn’t even hear the door open. Didn’t hear the footsteps when they approached him or register the presence when it came to a halt behind him. He just pressed down on another chord and let the note ring out, hummed in melodious harmony with the confidence of being alone.
“Hey, Karl.”
Karl just about jumped out of his skin.
His hands pulled up off the keys as quickly as they’d settled there, a high-pitched yelp falling past his lips before his hand could cover his lips. And he turned his head to peer over his shoulder, eyes searching for that damn familiar face he’d been so keen on finding that morning.
But now, it was evening. Now, he was supposed to be alone with the grand piano in the music building. Now, he was not supposed to be locking eyes with Sapnap where he stood behind him with a smile.
Somehow, this didn’t line up with any of the scenarios Karl had run through in his head the night before.
“Um,” he stuttered, “hi, Sapnap.”
Sapnap smiled down at him. “George told me you’d be here.”
Karl raised an eyebrow. “George did?”
“Yeah,” Sapnap shrugged, “I found him in the library,” his expression turned sheepish, eyes flicking away toward the far wall, “where I thought I’d find you. He said that if you weren’t there, you’d be here.”
Karl looked down at the floor. “Oh.”
“He seems to know you well.”
“Yeah,” Karl said quietly, barely more than mumbling under his breath. “Maybe a little bit more than I give him credit for.”
“Yeah?” Sapnap grinned, his voice pulling Karl’s eyes back up to meet his.
Quietly and in the back of his head, Karl said that Sapnap wasn’t supposed to hear that. Out loud where Sapnap could see him, he only giggled to fill the space. Watched as Sapnap raised one hand slightly to gesture toward the bench Karl was sitting on, with his hands still positioned on top of the piano keys but no longer in a position to play them.
“Can I sit?”
Karl nodded a little too quickly. “Sure!”
He worried about his voice sounding too ready and too willing, but all the fear seemed to dissipate the moment Sapnap sat down beside him. Like the entire world disappeared in favor of just the two of them, like the close proximity managed to defeat everything else.
Karl turned his head back toward the piano now that Sapnap was next to him and not behind him, shifted his fingers along the ivory but never applied enough pressure to play anything. It didn’t do much of anything besides click his nails against the keys, a quiet sound that Karl wasn’t sure if Sapnap could hear it all.
And they sat in silence for another comforting moment, with Sapnap’s eyes falling to Karl’s hands where they sat gently on top of the keys. Their shoulders brushed together when Sapnap shifted, but neither of them said anything about it.
“You play piano?” Sapnap asked suddenly, but the question never felt jarring.
“Of course I play piano,” Karl laughed, “I’m a music major.”
“You are?” Sapnap questioned, and Karl met his eyes to nod. “Well, I guess that checks out.” Sapnap shrugged. “Suits you, y’know.”
Karl raised an eyebrow. “Does it?”
“It does.” Sapnap’s tone held a warmth that Karl had never heard before, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him feel warm, too. “I’m computer science, but maybe you knew that.”
Karl shrugged. “Maybe.” And he’d never admit anything more than that.
Unsurprisingly, Sapnap was unbelievably easy to talk to. He spoke with an ease that made Karl feel like they’d known each other for years, made him feel like they’d already sat in this exact place a thousand times before with a million more words spoken between themselves. He nearly wanted to loathe himself for taking so long to ever say anything, but truly, he wasn’t the one who’d said the first thing. Not in writing nor in spoken word.
But perhaps that was okay—maybe this was the way it was meant to be. If Karl was to believe that everything happened for a reason, then this would surely be included in his everything. Maybe it was the only thing there.
“Did Dream say anything weird to you?” Sapnap fiddled with his hands in his lap. “The other day, by the field.”
“Not really,” Karl said in honesty. “He just asked me about George, said he was cute or something.”
“Yeah, he’s an idiot,” Sapnap laughed before adding, “Dream, I mean.”
And the silence came back down between them, a silence filled by quiet breaths through parted lips and the cracking of knuckles above piano keys. Karl had drawn his own hands back into his lap, bit back the temptation to reach over and grab Sapnap’s hands with a want to crack his knuckles for him.
“He didn’t say anything about me,” Sapnap said again, “did he?”
“No,” Karl answered quickly, maybe a little too quickly. “Not that I remember.”
And Sapnap laughed, gave up tugging on his fingers with a want to make his joints pop and looked at Karl with a lazy, lopsided smile. Everything about his expression was lilted with familiar ease, any previous nerves that had hung heavy against his skin completely vanished from the look on his face.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible liar?”
Karl sputtered. “What?!”
“You’re a terrible liar, Karl.” Sapnap repeated, and somehow, there was even more lilt in his tone. “He told you something,” he persisted, “didn’t he?”
“No.” Karl spoke too fast again. “Well, maybe.” The look in Sapnap’s eyes said he could see right through him. “Yes.”
Sapnap laughed, cocking his head to the side. “What’d he say?”
In a last-ditch effort to save the pink on his cheeks, Karl looked down at his lap and stumbled over the sentence. “He told me not to tell you.”
“And I’m telling you to tell me.”
“He said…” Karl swallowed, felt his cheeks heat up despite himself, “he said you thought I was pretty.”
“I never told Dream I thought you were pretty.”
Karl looked back up at Sapnap quickly, head snapping up with enough speed to shift his hair. And though there was scarcely any honesty behind the lilt, Karl still felt his heart twist behind his ribs.
“You didn’t?”
“No.” Sapnap shrugged nonchalantly. “I told him that I thought you were really pretty.”
“Oh my god,” Karl buried his face in his hands, “you’re the worst.”
Sapnap was only laughing, the sound of it friendly and contagious where it rang through the air. Karl couldn’t help but laugh along with him, the sound muffled by his palms when he refused to expose his burning face.
“Am I?”
“Yes,” Karl groaned. “I hate you,” he brought his head up finally, “go away.”
Sapnap huffed out a laugh. “I don’t think you mean that.”
Karl dropped his hands back down to his lap. “Maybe I don’t.”
“You are very pretty.”
“Stop it,” Karl threatened, “say that one more time and I’ll hit you.”
“You’re pretty.” Sure enough, Karl hit Sapnap on the shoulder—but that wasn’t quite enough to get him to stop. “Karl’s pretty,” and he hit him again, “he’s pretty,” and again, “he’s so pretty.”
“Stop!” Karl interrupted. “If you get to say…” his cheeks warmed just thinking about the word, “that,” Sapnap laughed at his avoidance, “then I get to say you’re handsome.”
“Yeah?”
Karl shrugged, tried to match Sapnap’s nonchalant arrogance. “Probably the handsomest guy I’ve ever seen.”
“Is that true?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Karl admitted, and even he was surprised by the ease in his tone.
And without missing a beat, Sapnap’s lilted smile turned more to gentle earnestness.
“I can’t stop thinking about you, either.”
The silence between them was almost too loud to stomach. For the first time since Sapnap had showed up in the music building, there was tension hanging between them. For the time since ever, Karl wanted there to be tension in the air.
His eyes dropped to look at Sapnap’s lips. He noticed on the upstroke that Sapnap had done the same.
“Can I kiss you?” Sapnap whispered, and only then did Karl realize that they were sitting close enough to feel the breath against his lips.
“Not if I kiss you first.”
Even after saying that, Karl couldn’t say who’d kissed who first. All he knew was that they’d both leaned in at the same time, already sat so close together that they barely even needed to move at all.
And it was only a moment before there were hands in Karl’s hair, only a moment before they both slid across the bench to sit closer. Karl didn’t hesitate to throw his legs over Sapnap’s lap, and Sapnap didn’t hesitate to wrap his hand around Karl’s thigh. And with hands on Sapnap’s face, he parted his lips in welcome invitation.
They kissed like they’d waited a thousand years to do it, they kissed like they weren’t sitting in front of a grand piano in a building that was very much open to the public. And Karl was gasping for air without ever pulling away, stealing breath from Sapnap’s lungs in more ways than just one.
He tasted like arrogance and Friday afternoons, he tasted like the sun and a thousand reasons to do this again. Karl smiled into the kiss, smiled wider when Sapnap returned the expression. With careful slickness and a gentle tug, Karl pulled off to laugh against his lips, to fill Sapnap’s ears with swirls of carefree and the shadow of Sunday morning.
“You have no idea” Sapnap whispered, stealing another kiss in the middle of his own sentence, “how long I’ve been waiting to do that.”
Karl giggled, and he stole one back. “How long?”
“Since the campus bookstore,” Sapnap admitted, kissing him once more like both their lives depended on it. “You looked so stupid cute, I just wanted to kiss that nervous smile right off your pretty lips.”
“You should’ve,” Karl joked, “would’ve saved us a lot of time.”
“Then I guess we just have to make up for it.”
Their fingers interlocked in the space between their bodies, lips falling back into each other with red trails of connection. And this time, Sapnap tasted like the entire world spun backwards and on its head—like everything, like Sapnap, like Karl’s.
And he wouldn't have it any other way.