Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s lying on his back. That’s adamantly clear, his back stiff against the ground. He groans softly, making to get up, and crackling echoes quietly under the uncertain prop of a hand flat against the ground. There’s leaves stuck under his hands and all around the forest area. 

Where am I? His head throbs, pulse ebbing softly, a steady tempo against his temple. He struggles to his feet, feet frazzled and scrambling. Heat pushes incessantly at his head, persistent, irritatingly. 

Through the confused headspace of his, Karl thinks he’s in the middle of nowhere. 

He pushes fingers through his hair absently. It’s a while before he grasps on his bearings. 

He takes irregular strides around the forest, stumbling around thick trunks, digging his fingertips harshly into bark when the world spins and drops around him. It’s disorientating, leaves Karl blinking slowly and steadily against the strain. 

Leaves crackle under someone’s foot and he whips his head quickly, but catches no one. 

It’s a bit before he struggles his way to the base of a sturdy tree. Slides down the side of the tree, presses his face into his palms. 

“Hey, Jacobs.” Hot chocolate tells him, familiar, inviting, welcoming. Someone swings their feet and shifts on the branch above him, and he tilts his head up.

Dark hair falls in waves over steel grey irises, combat boots swinging gently. His breath catches just the slightest. The man just shifts his head just a bit, the smallest motion, and dark strands cast themselves over the white material of a bandana. Light that streams through the small gaps from overlapping leaves snatch the stray strands of black, twirls and turns them into the lightest browns. His irises glow softly under the spilling sunlight, and he’s completely focused on Karl. He’s simply there, gaze steady, warm, enveloping, absolutely breathtaking in every aspect, pretty grey fanned under long eyelashes. He nearly shuts his eyes in submission to the other’s godly aura, if he wasn’t this entranced and breathless by the man’s very presence.

“Karl.” Soft, ticklish. He swallows, faltering, trying to speak without sounding pathetic. 

“Sap.” He manages back, and the slight quirk of Sap’s red lips tells him that it’s enough. 

Karl props the back part of the crown of his head against bark. Sapnap keeps his level gaze, that gaze, that one gaze that pulls him apart and fans the flames of his throbbing temple as the heat grows and licks through his head, zips down the nape of his neck and further down. 

“Isn’t it peaceful here, Jacobs?” Sap’s voice is quieter than he’s ever heard it (because Sapnap and soft just didn’t match in the slightest), and it lulls him into a sleepy peace, like a quiet touch to his temple. 

“Y-yeah. Yeah.” 

Sap does that small laugh that stops his heart, the quick exhale of air out through vocal cords. It’s silent for a bit when they don’t say anything into the soft silence of the forest; faint trickling of water somewhere, the quietest peeps from birds hidden safely in their twig nests. Something scuttles quickly beside him, fur ticklish against his skin, but it doesn’t break his eye contact with Sapnap, who’s resting his palms behind him on the branch, chin tilted and gaze bright. 

He’s entranced, caught in the sticky strands of Sapnap’s very presence, enraptured helplessly in the gaze of someone akin to a deity, and he can’t help but fall further. 

Sap shifts above him, and Karl’s so fixated on his teasing steel grey gaze that he misses the flash of a playful grin on Sap’s laughter-brushed lips. 

“Enjoy looking at me, Jacobs?” Sap asks easily, suggestive as always, the long ends of his bandana casting themselves along with the gentle breeze that’s just stirred up. 

Karl blinks heavily at him, shrugging slightly. “Maybe I do.” 

Sap’s response is to laugh, and Karl does nothing but stare. 

“I want you to look at me like that. Like, always.” The younger says, pulling one booted foot over the branch. 

The heat spreads and spreads and ravages all across his chest, under his ribcage, toying with his waist, and he’s burning, burning powerlessly, and it paints vivid red over rounded cheeks, and he shuts his eyes to a gorgeous, beautiful man too much for his small heart. 

“You can’t just say that-" he shudders quietly, pushing his right thumb harshly into the crook of his left elbow, wrapping himself in his arms. 

“Say what?” Sapnap is bold, so very bold, and there’s just heat and warmth and scorching fires in his voice and his blue-grey eyes, more grey than blue, no matter how sharply he proclaims. There’s a soft thud, and he startles into eyes a storm. 

“What can’t I say, Karl Jacobs?”

He’s inches away. Karl thinks he can feel Sap’s soft breaths on his lips, his eyelashes on his own cheeks. His foot tingles with the warmth that spreads south, spreads and rages through his body, and he’s crying out loud with the force of the heat, digging fingers into his skin. 

“What do you want, Karl?” It’s not aggressive, the opposite really. Sap gazes down at him, a pretty pretty face sheltered with dark flyaways and bangs that frame his eyes, his lips. He stutters, won’t speak, can’t, because Sapnap’s left him breathless, stole his heart like the fucking menace he is to his heart. 

“What do you really want?” A hand circling his wrist softly. 

He can’t react, nerves and all feeling too fried from the fire that roars from his head to his toes when Sapnap presses his lips chastely on the bridge of his nose.

He wakes up, gasping, panting heavily, fisting his sheets.

--

Karl shudders, pushes his face into his hands. It’s cold, all of a sudden, in front of his pc, the monitors all set up and on and running, streamlabs open, twitch on. It’s just a normal stream. 

Why is he so nervous? He fingers the mouse, fitted to the dips of his hand. The cursor hovers over go live. 

(He’d promised Sapnap to a call when he streams.)

Why is he so nervous?

(the dream, too real.)

The kiss lingers still on the bridge of his nose, stubborn and scorching. It’s like he’s afraid that the imaginary kiss’ll show on camera.

He’s nervous.

He hasn’t noticed that his right hand’s shaking the slightest bit on the mouse, pressing on the left button, not hard enough to click on the command. Oh my god. 

He shuts his eyes, and he makes to shakily press on his right index finger. 

Stream starts, and he’s adjusted the face camera as horizontal as possible, smiles to the camera when chat rolls in with various greetings and ‘first’s. He does a funky little wave, and hopes his plastered smile doesn’t give off how frazzled he feels. 

“Hey, chat! What’s up?” he grins, adjusts his headphones. Subscriptions ring off and he rattles off some of them, idly narrating through the list of twitch users. 

Discord pings lightly, and he turns to his other monitor. 

Sapnap

youre live! vc?

He swallows. Heat swirls again, low in his head. 

The cursor on the typing bar blinks curiously at him for a while before he smashes out a short message.

sure :) vc 2? i’m gonna get on the smp for a bit i think

always up for a chill stream :)

He hates him. The small smiley Sapnap’s sent mocks him when his heart skips unintentionally. 

Why’s he gotta be this… 

Perfect. He never shows his face, hates anything that has his face in it, but he is gorgeous, pretty, and everyone who’s thrashing on Sapnap’s jealous. 

He swallows thickly again, and he forces himself to make small talk for the chat when he joins vc 2.

“Hey.” Sapnap’s voice is sleepy, rough like he’d just woken up. 

“Hey!” Karl forces out, smiling wearily. 

“You look very handsome today, Karl, like always.” He’s teasing, he always teases. 

“Part of the Karl package,” he jokes. “being pretty all the time.” Sapnap hums in quiet agreement. The room spins, just a little.

His eyes dart to chat, and a message flashes for just a split second with how fast chat is going, but he’s flushed and flustered and wrecked just by the innocent message. 

END3RCH3ST: they’re such a cute couple omg 

“Uh,” he goes, because he knows he blushes easily, and a side glance at the face camera tells him that the pink flush that litters his cheeks is shining and obvious. He presses a hand across his face, a valiant effort to hide. 

“Karl, you’re blushing?” Sap says, mocking softly, a hint of a snicker in his voice. His voice wraps him in its hot chocolate quality. 

“For you.” He banters back. (it’s true. Sapnap doesn’t have to know that.)

Sap’s small hums in the background in an unknown tune drops suddenly at his words and Karl’s heart follows. He hopes falteringly that Sapnap didn’t catch the earnest pitch in his voice. 

“’Choo doing?” Sapnap says, and it’s muffled slightly by something. Karl tries not to take it to heart. 

“Smp stuff,” Karl yawns, shifting on his elbows. “Wedding stuff maybe? Or the El Rapids stuff Q was going on about in the storyline.”

Sapnap chuckles quietly. “I forgot about the wedding.” 

“Of course you did, mister I’m-best-friends-with-GeorgeNotFound-therefore-I-never-ever-remember-or-show-up-to-events.” The sentence takes the crap out of his lungs for no reason, and he pauses to take a breath.

“Shouldn’t we create the wedding in real life?” isn’t the sentence that Karl’s expecting to drop out of Sap’s very imaginably red lips (very kissable) next, and he voices so.

“No, but like, not the whole marriage part,” Sap laughs, a real one this time. “Y’know, meet up. At yours. With Quackity? If you want,” Sapnap continues.

“We should!” He says. 

(His hands tracing Sap’s hips, pulling him closer, lacing fingers through his dark dark locks, stark against Karl’s pale skin-)

Sap laughs again, and he’s slipping down.

(Soft whispers right beside Sapnap’s ear, Sap’s arms wrapped around the nape of his neck, lips inches away, breath mixing, brings his lips up just slightly to glance Sapnap’s forehead with a kiss just like the one from his dream-)

He exhales shakily into the material of his sweater he’d bunched up in a fist. 

“I wanna see you, Karl, see- y’know, you. Apparently you’re taller than I am. I’m gonna go to confirm that.” Sap’s voice drops to a whisper, barely heard, and it sounds fucking genuine.

“I wanna see all of you.”

And he fucking reels. He ducks his head down, and covers it up with a strained laugh. Chat is flying fast, so quick, and his view count is steadily rising, watching-

Watching him fall apart under Sapnap’s carefully crafted words, strung intentions, his pretty pretty fingers and steel grey eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know what Sapnap’s doing. 

Stop fucking playing with me. He shudders into the cotton material. 

“Karlnap real?” he suggests, and he almost misses the quiet giggle at the other end. 

“Maybe,” Sap plays back into the playboy character he is, flirts right back, because it’s how he just is. It’s not because he likes Karl or anything. He’s just that fucking stupid for hoping it. 

“Ay, Carlos, Sapnap!” Q screams the moment discord tings with the join sound and Karl snaps slightly inside. 

“Quackity,” Sapnap greets, and he goes from quiet to quieter. 

Karl shuts up too, and there’s nothing from the both of them as Quackity rambles, a comforting drone of obscenities and vulgarities that weave effortlessly through his normal speech patterns, and he feels grounded by it, but so so far away from Sapnap, who’s silent. 

He turns to start up minecraft, and they talk throughout the stream as normal.

--

#karlnap is trending fifth on twitter. ‘Content creator Karl Jacobs flirts with fellow content creator Sapnap, teasing thirty thousand live viewers with their offhanded flirty banter.’ 

It feels illegal to stare at the tag for so long, even more so when he taps on the tag, and pictures of his red-faced self posted and put up on the internet with captions of concerning amounts of capslock. 

SEAN!!! @thesisean: 
#SAPNAP: I wanna see you. I wanna see all of you. 
NAWWWWW THEY’RE TEASING US SO BAD PANDASTWT AND HONKTWT #karlnap

The phone clatters from his grip. He’s heaving and disoriented.

He dives to his bed, and he flops down, face-up, phone pressed tight to his chest, where his heart beats against his chest loudly, frantically, throwing itself repeatedly against his ribs until they bruise. His breathing is fast, ragged. 

I hate you. 

(Steel grey stares steady at him, and Sapnap leans into his cupped hand, pushes his cheek against his palm in a way that feels so trusting, genuine, loving-)

“Stop it,” he mutters, and it’s to himself and his lovesick heart.

Fuck you. Karl grits his teeth, and it’s all he can do before he wraps his hands around his body and curls up on himself, and his phone slips and plunges from his hand onto his bed. He runs his fingers through his own light brown curls, and imagines that it’s Sapnap’s.