Work Text:
Three weeks into Karl’s first year of college, it pours.
His dorm is, of course, on the other side of campus, so he seeks refuge in the nearest building. The nearest building is, thankfully, a library, so he can at least get some work done while he attempts to dry himself off. He pulls down the hood of his sweatshirt and ruffles his hair, and tries to ignore the dirty look the librarian gives him.
Just his luck, the library is full of students trying to escape the rain. Nearly every table is full, wet study materials spread out around them. He weaves his way through backpacks to try and get to his normal table, situated in the back corner. There’s one person sitting there already, but there’s easily enough room for him.
“Hey,” he says, slamming his backpack down on the ground. The guy looks up. Shit, he’s hot. “Mind if I join you?”
The guy nods toward the other end of the table, as if saying go ahead, and Karl takes this as a sign to start working.
“It’s a mess out there,” he tells the guy. The guy doesn’t look up or respond in any way. Oh, well, Karl thinks, some people just aren’t friendly. He can’t blame the guy.
He goes back to his study materials, pulls a Monster out of his backpack, and gets to work. He’s got a test in Calculus tomorrow that he’s definitely not prepared for, so hopefully he can get something done while he waits out the rain.
He doesn’t even realize how much time has passed before the guy’s standing up and leaving, then coming back five minutes later.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s done raining. You can probably go… wherever you were trying to go, now.”
“Oh,” Karl says, looking up from his notes on Taylor polynomials. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” the guy says. He starts to walk away.
“Thanks for letting me share your table,” Karl calls out, and he turns back and salutes.
The next day, Karl finds himself at the same table, this time reviewing history. And this time, it’s the guy coming up to him and asking if he can share the table.
“Sure thing,” Karl says with a grin. “I’m Karl.”
“Nice to meet you, Karl,” the guy says. “I’m Sapnap.”
“Sapnap,” Karl repeats. It’s an odd name, but he’s not about to judge. “Nice to meet you, too, Sapnap.”
He goes back to his dorm that night having done exactly no studying but with a new contact in his phone and a promise of meeting at the same table again the next day. His roommate is sitting on his bed and scrolling through his phone when Karl enters the dorm, and he takes this as permission to completely spill to George about his new friend.
“Sounds like you should bang,” George says, not looking up from his phone. Karl sputters out something unintelligible in response. “Hey, did I tell you about Dream?”
“The one-night stand with the weird name?” Karl asks. He distinctly remembers one week into the year coming back and finding a sock on the door handle, going to the library, coming back three hours later, and finding a sock still on the door handle. At that point he’d gone in anyways, exhausted and willing to scar his eyes, only to find his new roommate fast asleep on top of some guy that could easily be a football player.
“Right,” George says, and Karl listens to George gush about Dream and how they’re going on a date for the next twenty minutes.
As it turns out, Dream and Sapnap are roommates, as revealed by George dragging Karl along to some random campus event to meet up with Dream. Sapnap and Karl spend the whole time third-wheeling their friends, and by the end of the event, Karl’s got Dream’s phone number, too.
The four of them become fast friends, eventually dragging in a law student called Quackity, too, and the five of them become notorious around campus just for being them. Karl and Sapnap continue their little study dates in their corner of the library, even long after the five of them move into an apartment off-campus together.
And through it all, Karl and Sapnap revolve around each other in a sort of will-they won’t-they situation. Karl’s pretty sure he’s in love by sophomore year, and George remains the ear he cries to (or rather, pines to).
“I’m yearning ,” he complains on one momentous occasion junior year. It’s just the two of them in the apartment. Karl is wearing one of Sapnap’s hoodies, gifted to him as a joke that they both took too seriously.
“Hi yearning, I’m George,” George replies. Karl throws a pillow at him.
Time passes. Their senior year, they wind up nearly suspended for a prank that Quackity pulls gone wrong. It just brings them closer, the two of them hiding in a closet of some random frat house, pressed against each other, mingling in the same air. Nothing happens, no matter how much Karl desperately wants it to.
At least, nothing happens until their last day of senior year. Finals are over, graduation is the next day, and Karl finds himself in the back corner of the library, sitting at their table, reminiscing. He almost isn’t surprised when someone clears their throat behind him. Karl doesn’t need to turn around to know who it is.
“Mind if I join you?” Sapnap asks.
“Be my guest,” Karl replies, and Sapnap takes his usual place.
“It’s been a long time,” he says.
“Four years,” Karl agrees.
“Hopefully we’ll have longer,” Sapnap says. They will. The five of them are keeping their apartment, Dream and George sharing one room, Karl and Sapnap sharing another, Quackity getting the third to himself. They’re all working in the city, so they can stay together.
“We’ll have forever,” Karl says, and that feeling of something hits him hard when he looks Sapnap dead in the eyes. “Or at least, as long as you’ll let me be by your side.”
“I’ll let you be by my side forever and then some,” Sapnap tells him. He holds out his hand across the table. Karl takes it.
“Forever and then some,” he echoes, and there’s the promise of something more underlying it. He doesn’t need to worry about that right now. Because they have forever to figure it out.