Archive of Our Own ^beta

Karl lives on a half-empty road in a neighborhood where the roads get too hot in the summer.

Asphalt bakes and sizzles in the July sun, stones too hot to touch with any kind of bare skin. It’s far easier for Karl to hide between the walls of his house when the air gets too sticky to breathe—even if his air conditioning doesn’t really work—sweetened apricots residing gently on his lip without the assistance of true fruit juice.

There’s a piece of him that’s afraid the tires on his car will melt in the sun. He knows it’s farfetched, but it’s a worry he’s always dragged behind him, chains scraping on the very same overheated roads that spark concern.

But Karl’s neighbor seems to uphold an entirely different opinion on the season.

Every day, he’s outside. He goes jogging, he does yard work, he sits on his back patio; no matter what, he’s out in the summer heat. Karl isn’t sure how he hasn’t completely melted into the slats of his lawn chair.

They haven’t even spoken to each other once, but Karl has already pinned his neighbor to the opposite likeness where he pins himself. Spends time outside, likes the heat, isn’t afraid of melted tires sticking down to the road; they’re different. Where they converge is this tired neighborhood, half-empty and built on retirees who never open their own front doors.

Perhaps Karl’s residence could be mistaken for someone older. He wouldn’t really mind.

But it’s hard to pretend that no one is home when there’s a knock at the front door, and even if the lights aren’t all on upstairs, the sound of it still expects an answer. Karl is sitting in front of a fan that clicks when it reaches the turnpoint, and he’s staring out his tightly-shut slider at a backyard that isn’t maintained.

(The trees are too large with too many branches, the grass is too long, there are weeds between the bricks of the patio). He doesn’t bother to fix any of it.

Even with a silent expectation creeping steadily down the narrow of the entryway, Karl doesn’t move to answer the door. There’s sweat sticking to the dips in his collarbones, and he’s not wearing anything except for gym shorts, and his hair is messy and rich with perspiration when he hasn’t bothered to make himself appear presentable.

Perhaps his tongue is blue with raspberries, too. Perhaps his lips are stained.

But another knock comes to rattle the door in its frame, as if the stranger on the other side knows Karl is only feigning an absence. With a sigh, he abandons the fan that isn’t serving him very well at all, and he approaches the shaking door with put-off care for how awful his reflection springs back in the mirror.

When the door squeals open to let all the hot air in, Karl finds the neighbor he’s nothing alike standing on his doorstep.

He’s wearing a baseball cap that lets his messy hair stick out of all the edges, shorts and a t-shirt that both look as tired and overworn as Karl feels. He’s sweaty, skin overturned and glistening, and there’s a sunburn skating down his nose that seems to peel where pink turns to cherry. He’s holding something loosely in his left hand, and admittedly, Karl doesn’t really care to look.

Foreign eyes seem to widen—perhaps at Karl’s obviously disheveled state—and there’s no time to speak when humidity is slicking in across the door jam and crawling up the length of Karl’s legs.

“Hey,” the stranger greets, lips sticky and unpleasant. “Sorry to bother you, but I live next door and my shower isn’t working. Would you mind if I used yours?”

Anything that will get me to close this door.

“Yeah, sure,” Karl answers, careless, and he steps to the side to let the stranger in. “Bathrooms upstairs on the right. Give me a holler if you can’t figure it out.”

“Thanks,” the stranger says, and he lets himself into the house properly.

As soon as he can, Karl shuts the door to trap the warm air. He spares a glance at his retreating neighbor—who is perhaps more attractive up close—as he titters up the creaking staircase. Karl realizes that the bundle of something he carries at his side is actually clothes, balled up and clenched with a single fist for the sake of rough convenience.

Karl shrugs to himself and returns to his post in front of the fan. As the sound of his running shower trickles in the distance, he shuts his eyes to the poorly-cooled air, letting it wash over his bare skin in a sorry attempt at reprieve.

He’s not quite sure why he even lives here at all. The grounds are too much maintenance and the air is beyond unpleasant, though the sun gets to be a little more manageable when the months draw colder. Karl wishes his air conditioning weren’t so overpriced and shoddy.

Rickety old fans he dragged here from his parents’ basement can only do so much. And he’s starting to run out of willpower to go to the store and buy popsicles, leaving only the sixteen grape-flavored ones at the back of his freezer he keeps around for emergencies. With closed eyes and sweaty hair, he’s starting to think this might be an emergency.

In due time, the shower turns off. And his still yet-to-be-named neighbor comes stumbling down the stairs, sweaty clothes and a dirty hat now held at his dripping side. He comes to thank Karl again before he leaves, and it provides a few moments too much time for the former to stare at the water dripping from his hair and down the sides of his burning neck.

Yeah, way attractive up close.

“Thanks, man,” the stranger says, beaming with a smile to outshine the sun. Karl’s face must be the asphalt; he feels like he’s on fire. “I already called to get mine fixed, so hopefully I won’t be bothering you again.”

“All good,” Karl dismisses, trying his best to smile through the mind-melting heat. “What are neighbors for?”

He tries to blame idiotic speech on the too-high temperatures. As the front door closes on pretty boys and godless ichor, Karl isn’t so sure he even believes himself.

Karl is repeating an overdone action the very next day.

It’s just past the height of afternoon, and he’s fresh out of an ice cold shower with water still dripping down his skin. The air conditioning still won’t work as well as it’s supposed to, leaving Karl topless in his kitchen once again, overstretching the cable to his fan so he can keep it closer than it needs to be.

He’s starting to think this must be a kind of torture. With the taste of grape medicine easing cold against his tongue, he sucks the disheveled flavor out of a damp wooden stick until all he tastes is splinters. He thinks he’s going to be the first person to get a sunburn without ever going outside.

Everything about the heat drags redundant. Humid air finds a way to reach him despite the closed-off walls, and Karl is still biting splitting wood like there’s anything left for him within it. Life feels eventless, and he figures he’s alright with that, dirty with a lack of motivation that keeps him from so much as pulling weeds up from by the gutter.

But, as if the world is laughing at him, there’s a knock on Karl’s front door.

He huffs, the chewed-up popsicle stick remaining between his teeth. He wanders with bare feet over to the door, swallowing discontent as his hand finds a way to the warm-going doorknob. It peels open, and there stands his neighbor, in all his sweat-glistened glory.

He’s dressed with all the same sticky ease, a smile to put the world to shame hovering peach-cut on his lips. He’s holding something again, and again, Karl doesn’t care to look very closely—instead, he hovers in the humid gap made by the door with a popsicle stick between his teeth, waiting.

“Hey again,” the still-stranger greets. “I figured I owed it to you yesterday, so I came by with some popsicles, but it seems…” he gestures vaguely at Karl’s front, “like you already have that sorted.”

Karl blinks slowly, lethargy nestled between the heat of his wisping lashes. He pulls the bitten popsicle stick from his mouth, purple stains a wooden aftertaste remaining alive on the warmth of his overturned tongue.

His neighbor is, in fact, holding two popsicles in his hand. Plastic-imbued white packaging crinkles between his fingers as he shifts, a lopsided grin sticking saccharine to Karl’s wordless conscious.

“That’s nice of you,” he remarks.

The heat is too stifling to put up much more of a fight. A dying grin of politeness still urges Karl to fill the air with “you didn’t have to do anything,” and, “I didn’t expect anything in return,” but his skin is too sticky to bother. Whatever flavor or overdyed ice is hiding in that wrapper is something Karl wants more than anything.

“I’ll take a popsicle,” he settles, reaching forward across the slim gap between them.

His neighbor grins. “Grape or cherry?”

“Cherry,” Karl quips, scoffing through his purple tongue. “Are you crazy?”

The other man laughs, handing over a well-concealed popsicle. Upon bursting it open, Karl is delighted to find the garish shade of red, a sucrose yet temporary reprieve for the blistering heat still on his tongue.

Sweat slithers down every angle of Karl’s skin, only spurred on by the still-open door. But his neighbor is still hovering on the doorstep, a grape-flavored popsicle cracking between ivory teeth and dirt-scattered fingers. Their silence sticks almost as heavily as the summer air, the space between them appearing to ripple with thick, unpleasant moisture.

But even with the surmountability of a seemingly endless summer, Karl’s neighbor is still grinning through the sweat along his brow. He’s wearing another dirt-riddled baseball cap that hides his messy hair, sunburns coupling on his cheeks despite a shredded visor. The slow hints of an ugly farmer’s tan hide beneath a drooping collar, pale skin hidden beneath sweaty t-shirts and lined-out embarrassment.

His lips are turning purple. Karl’s turn red.

“You wanna sit outside with me?” the nameless man asks, persistent with dripping teeth and angled obscurity.

There are one hundred thousand reasons why Karl doesn’t want to do that—namely, the mucky stick on every last inch of his skin, the abundant mosquitoes nestled in tall grasses, and the burning heat of his stone steps—and probably only one reason why he would agree.

He thinks his neighbor is attractive. (Farmer’s tan and all).

“No way,” Karl scoffs. “It’s, like, hotter than the devil’s ass outside.”

His neighbor laughs, loud and startling. It’s a far more pleasant sound than the hum of summer bugs between the bushes and Karl’s creaking floorboards; perhaps the dwindle of it into silence catches him more off guard than the sound itself.

Purple-cornered grins reign without mischief or perceived novelty, sticky sugar bordering a disagreeable grin. The man is airy, and there’s sugar on his tongue, and there’s a heat-spun desire ricocheting off Karl’s rib cage that wants to kiss him dry.

“It’s a nice day!” his neighbor argues, and Karl has never heard something more incorrect in his life.

“You’re insane,” he asserts, draining cherry out of ice in desperation.

His neighbor huffs again, licking his lips coolly. Grape syrup drips down into the gaps between his fingers, sticky and unpleasant with the violet of oversaturation.

“Then I’ll head,” he mutters, nodding towards his house. “Thought I’d stop by while I was taking a break from weeding, but I should get back to it.”

Karl shakes his head, dragging a dwindling popsicle free from his lips with the scrape of cold-going teeth. Flitting, he skates his free hand through his sweaty hair, loathing the stick where it runs between his fingers.

“I can’t believe you still have weeds to pull,” Karl mutters, dismissive.

Perhaps that says too much; I’ve seen you weeding, I swear you do it every week, how fast do weeds grow, anyway?

His neighbor just laughs. “There are always weeds to pull,” he remarks. “Don’t you weed your yard?”

Tufts of green and ugly flowers between cracking bricks say more than a simple dismissal ever could. Perhaps Karl is ashamed of how ugly his backyard is; he’s not ashamed enough to fix it, though. Not in this unbearable heat.

“No,” he mutters, biting laughter on his tongue; he replaces it with artificial cherries.

“Oh.” His neighbor frowns. There’s grape stuck to his cuticles. “I can come do it for you if you’d like.”

Karl is ashamed of how ugly his backyard is.

Still not enough to fix it.

“Nah,” he dismisses, “I’m alright. Thank you, though.”

The man only purses his orchid lips and nods. Karl sways in place, silence reigning stagnant with stifling heat. Every breath tastes of citrine and overbaked asphalt, sizzling roads spiking high enough to fry eggs without effort.

Karl hides on the curt hardwood, summer’s blaze trickling in across the slats of an unswept floor. Sneaker-clad feet stand on a dirty welcome mat, dripping sugar hollowing out the letters of something borrowed.

“Oh, but,” Karl starts, cherry ichor running down his chin. “Before you go, would you tell me your name?”

The lines on his neighbor’s face pull out slowly, festering with dirt and pink-going burn marks. “My friends call me Sapnap.”

Karl knits his brows together, beading sweat nestling into the creases of his skin. “Sapnap,” he repeats, familiarizing. “Uh, I’m Karl.”

“Karl,” Sapnap parrots, grinning through melted ice. “Well, see you around, neighbor.”

He stumbles off down the steps, grape popsicles still balanced between thick fingers. Karl stands idle and watches him go for dwindling seconds, the blistering sunlight aching fire across his skin. Quickly, he closes the door, leaving the overheated house alone with the hum of a ticking fan.

It’s quiet. Sweat clings to the column of Karl’s throat, slick and untouchable without demise. Cold teeth bite down on over-sweetened cherries, icy tombs flooding down feeble throats in effervescence. Karl dwells on the differences between his chipping fingernail polish and the dirt ribbed along Sapnap’s knuckles.

One of Karl’s friends from college stopped by to drop off a basket of fruit late in the evening. Hot summer sunsets are pinned outside of doors, wicker baskets splintering into dainty fingers before Karl can get it back into his kitchen.

He makes lemonade with the lemons and digs the pits out of fresh peaches. Sticky fingers wash inelegantly in the kitchen sink, pitchers of fresh lemonade left to chill in the fridge overnight while Karl tosses and turns beneath thick-feeling sheets.

By morning, he’s rested enough to consider taking a glass of fresh lemonade next door. The sun is no less hot than it has been all month, gravel raising steam with the thick of malted air. Karl stands in the kitchen with two tipping glasses of ice cold lemonade, sunspots dripping in through the windows above the sink—he hesitates for a moment. Sour citrus holds him steady, condensation gathering on glasses that barely belong to him.

He sighs impartially. His air conditioning sucks so much he thinks the air might feel the same outside, and maybe, just maybe, he wants to see Sapnap again.

But he doesn’t want to admit that.

Holding his breath sticky and golden in his chest, Karl slips on a pair of sandals and wanders out his front door. The humidity of the outside air hits him immediately, ice cold glasses of tall lemonade spinning closer to room temperature before he even makes it down the steps. There’s a certain heaviness to the summer sun that feels stifling, a certain taste of honey-nectar that makes Karl wonder why anyone bothers to enjoy this at all.

Ice cubes rattle and clink in the glasses as he wanders down the slope of his inelegant pathway. Glancing next door, he can already see Sapnap; he’s washing his car halfway down the driveway, water from a loosely held garden hose spraying all around him. Sugar-stained lips worry between melting teeth, and Karl’s approach is slower in the too-hot sun, but he wanders unwavering into Sapnap’s sightline along the road.

He can tell once he’s been noticed. It’s obvious, really—Sapnap perks up, a sweet grin on his face as he stops the water from spraying out of the hose. He waves, the motion of it slightly cheesy and a little more than just predictable, but Karl treks up the driveway in spite of that.

“You’re outside,” Sapnap comments, sounding surprised.

To be fair, Karl doesn’t think he’s spent much time outside since summer started. He’ll quote-unquote get some fresh air every so often during the night, when the air is at least a little bit cooler to the touch and the sun isn’t blazing with a vengeance. But even the nights here are too hot to handle, and the pavement always feels warm; even with a broken air conditioner and sticky fans that don’t quite work anymore, Karl is happier in his house.

“Don’t act like hell just froze over,” Karl retorts—he thinks he could go for a frozen hellscape right about now. “I brought you lemonade.”

“Sweet, thanks,” Sapnap beams, reaching for the glass Karl thrusts out at him.

Their fingers brush together against the glass. All their skin feels damp with moisture, whether it’s the air or half-washed cars or a glass’ condensation. Sunlight swells down on the back of Karl’s neck, demanding shades of stippled pink to rise from beneath paper pale skin. Perhaps he should’ve applied sunscreen, but it’s difficult to be bothered when he’s only going next door.

Karl doesn’t really care if he gets burned, anyway.

For the moment, sticky distractions make themselves known with the drip of stuttered lemonade down the corner of Sapnap’s mouth. Sugar-laden citrus and swollen lips stick out amongst the heat, cold fingers finding a way to shake against a glass full of ice that’s already melted. Karl stares with a little too much earnest as his neighbor gulps down his freshly-squeezed lemonade, sweat glistening along the crest of his throat under an unpleasant summer sun.

Ginger, Karl takes a sip from his own glass of sweetened citrus. As Sapnap settles himself, his eager eyes are dancing between his soaped-up car and where Karl lingers in his driveway, ice pressing nicely against his lip in a chill that makes him want to remain idle.

“Any particular reason why you’re coming outside to bring me drinks?” Sapnap questions, the lazy grin on his face sticking peach-sweet.

Karl forces himself to shrug. And he takes the sliver of melting ice between his lips, letting it settle in a chill against his tongue while he mulls over the right answer. It’s a calm juxtaposition to the heat that swells along every other part of his body, sticking rather deftly to the inner bend of his elbows and the backs of his unsteady knees.

Ice melts too quickly in the heat of his mouth. Karl smacks his lemon-laden lips, burning face knitting to a twist at the center of himself.

“Felt like being nice,” he settles. “And you brought me something yesterday, so it’s only fair.”

Sapnap scoffs over something aside from annoyance. “I brought you a popsicle,” he argues. “And you let me use your shower. You can’t repay my favor with another favor, that’s not how this works.”

Stormy eyes roll, sips of lazy lemonade taken without effort or well-paid mind. Karl takes another half-gone ice cube into his mouth, already missing the chill of it where the water fades. The curve of his top lip is just as sweat-slick as it is sweetened.

“Fine,” he huffs, ice still hovering on his tongue. “I just wanted an excuse to see you again.”

A new shade of pink seems to assert itself on Sapnap’s face, something other than aid from the summer sun. Calloused fingers shift against an empty glass, breaths of swollen laughter slipping through sugar-slick lips. Karl shifts uncomfortably beneath the unwavering attention, watchful eyes that burn holes in his psyche reigning unmatched.

For a moment, it’s not the blazing sun that’s his primary concern. As the asphalt bakes and roses appear to melt, Karl feels at complete room temperature—it has nothing to do with melted ice spreading knocked-out water across his tongue.

“Aw,” Sapnap begins, voice thick with apricot mirth, “you like me?”

Another defiant roll flicks across Karl’s eyes. He takes another sip of lemonade like it’ll slow his racing heart.

“Only a little bit,” he retorts, heartbeat stammering behind sloppy-forged ribs. “Don’t act too arrogant.”

Rich scoffs blossom in the overheated air, a bloated pause meandering its way between them. Setting his empty glass down by Karl’s feet, Sapnap picks up his work where he left off; washing the rest of the dripping soap off his car. As patches of fallen water run abandoned beneath sticky tires, Karl swears he can see where steam rises up off the driveway. Perhaps he’s going mad.

Water from Sapnap’s hose mists off the car and into the surrounding air. Ephemeral, the heat runs distilled, cut open by buzzing water to stick down against Karl’s skin. It resonates with all the same hasty presence as his sweat, only it’s cool to the touch.

Refreshing. Karl hums, content, the soft sound of it washed out dutifully by the spray of an overzealous hose. If the pucker to Sapnap’s lips is anything to go off of, he’s whistling invisibly, too. Maybe they know a similar exhausted tune.

As the spray slows around dirty tires, Karl muses, “Water feels nice.”

He takes another sip from his lemonade, as if emphasizing a splay of faux-relaxation. Sapnap lets up on the handle completely, leaving the air to go still and stagnant again.

Forgotten heat comes back with a vengeance, stuttered and hasty in a cling to the creases along Karl’s skin. He shakes his wrists out like it’ll make all the heat go away.

“Yeah?” Sapnap breathes, barely audible.

A mischievous grin works its way across his lemon-cornered lips. Hose nozzles tip, and Karl isn’t stupid enough to fail to see what’s coming—it’s beyond obvious, painted through the tangible air in broad strokes and burdened tangerine.

Defensive, he throws a sticky hand up in front of his face. “Don’t spray me with it.”

Sapnap laughs, boyish, but he lets the hose nozzle fall anyway. “Your loss,” he says, shrugging.

He picks up washing the soap off his car again, catching the hood where it’s lathered thick with hasty suds. Filth drips off a shiny veneer with minimal effort, a lackadaisical air to the yard work Sapnap gets done always. As if pulling weeds is fun somehow, and Karl is the one who’s missing out—he’ll never see it. He keeps his car in the garage so it requires being washed less.

(Definitely not for any reason related to melting tires or irrational fear).

“There’s a difference between being misted and being drenched,” Karl argues, though he knows his words come in vain.

All his fruitlessness spins out against the helpless spray of water, silence raining down around them with the spatter of a freshly-washed car. Lemonade goes warm as Karl attempts to enjoy the sweet mist, skin cooling with a different essence than the water of his ice cold showers.

His gaze clings too easily to the spots where Sapnap’s shirt bleeds wet. Bare skin throttles him in all the places tan lines hide, far past the simple loss of a susceptible mind.

The summer sun bakes him halfway to overdoing it. Every time Karl swallows, it’s sticky with confounding variables.

Karl talks to Sapnap three more times after that before one of them breaks the status quo.

It’s on a day that somehow manages to be even hotter than normal. Karl is beyond over summer, but a calendar stuck in late July tells him in earnest that it’s not quite over yet.

He’s tired of melting.

Afternoon peaks too soon, the elegance of a calm orange morning fading off into scattered gold. Sun rays stain the wicked walls thin, golden ichor bleeding down the chipping paint with a haste that calls for attention. Karl is once again sitting before his fan, only he’s perched on the kitchen counter this time, seeking solace in the chill of granite stones beneath the flesh of his too-exposed legs.

Short shorts and bare chests can only go so far. The half-cool air only stays on his skin for so long, fading away quicker than the fan can run him down. Where brittle bones crack, his skin melts to blood and guts and glory, reds and pinks spilling sunless across the slick stone of his dirty countertop.

If it weren’t so hot and uncomfortable in his bed, he might just go to sleep. But the sheets are sticky and crease-prone, windows letting in too much sun to be fought off by skinny blinds and a sorry excuse for cotton fabric.

Karl merely resigns himself to dealing with the mutter of an unbearable summer, avoiding thermometers and unpleasant truths for as long as he possibly can. His freezer has long since been emptied of popsicles—even the emergency grape-flavored ones—and Karl has no will to get into his overheating car and drive to the store to buy more.

So he just sits. Attempts to hold himself in an awkward position that prevents his skin from touching itself, watches the ticking fan spin and get stuck at every turnpoint for a few seconds too long. Sunlight scatters thin across the steel of his sink, wrapping around his ankles with an unforgiving hold.

It’s between desperation and misconduct when the knock comes to his door.

Karl nearly jumps out of his sweat-sticky skin. Even when visitors—or rather, visitor—have grown to feel like normalcy, Karl still isn’t used to the sporadic and too-loud knocks at his front door. Between overheating and peeling sunburns, he’s forgotten how to operate without the aid of expectation.

He still manages to stumble off the countertop, abandoning his sorry excuse for cool air in an approach to the front door. Fatal-standing and tacky, he reaches for the warm brass handle, prying a swollen door free of its frame to find his neighbor standing breathless on the other side.

His sunburns have gotten worse, and his skin all looks sticky. Baseball caps are abandoned in favor of freshly-cut hair, the muddled scent of lawn clippings and sweltering heat sticking down to his dirty collar. Sapnap isn’t smiling—and neither is Karl, for he may argue that it’s too hot to smile—and is instead breathing restlessly, as though he’s just run a few too many miles.

“Hey,” Karl breathes, shoulders dipping with oppressive heat wafting in through the door. “Do you wanna come in? It’s fucking awful out there.”

In lieu of words, Sapnap only nods, stepping in over the threshold with a bitten sugar tongue. As the door clicks shut, he’s kicking off his shoes, abandoning them in the pile Karl has made of his own underused footwear right by the door. Friendless urgency drips down the sides of Sapnap’s face, a syrupy kind of much to mottle certain skin.

Karl furrows his eyebrows. He’s never seen the other man operate in so much haste.

“Everything alright?” he asks, and the words feel heavy on his tongue.

Unbitten ichor strikes the air, hingeless. Karl can taste the rotten sunlight where it crawls in beneath his closed front door, limbs too heavy and bendless to be considered operational. In the heat-heavy silence, Sapnap stares at him, the ripple to his irises putting July’s hot asphalt to shame.

The quiet lingers. Karl shifts under the breakless attention, neck heating up with something other than tired strawberry burns and the sun’s reckless zeal. There’s an awkward stagnance stuck between them both, an untethered string tied up to broken fingers asking kindly to please, let this be unwound. It strains under the weight of an endless summer, uneasy exits glowing red and bent cupid’s bows.

Lips part and slip shut again. Above them, words stick. Karl swallows something hot and prickly.

“Hello?” he mutters, trying to hide the shake in his voice. Nerves plague his throttled wrist as he waves a hand in front of his neighbor’s unbridled face, waiting. “Earth to Sapnap?”

A misplaced apology breathes near-silently into the plaguing air. When Karl takes a step back, Sapnap takes one forward.

“Karl,” he says slowly, voice grating on the back of his glistening throat. “I know we barely know each other,” he glances at the door, “and you’re just my neighbor, but—” hot breath interrupts, and Karl holds his own. “Can I kiss you?”

A wave of heat rattles down Karl’s unabashed front. Everywhere he can feel anything, there’s a prick of certain sunlight, overripe apricots and sweet lemonade rippling down his overexposed skin.

Lashes blink wrought and slow. Heedless, the question flutters out on repeat in his head, the sound of a recognizable voice aided by the stare its owner gives him. Karl wilts, slipping into the slats of his floorboards with a heat-exhausted ease—he melts into the outdoor asphalt, burned at every edge.

“Yeah,” he answers, breathless—I thought you’d never ask, he wishes he could say. It’s too hot for anything but, “please.”

Sapnap surges forward to close the gap as soon as those words find the space between them. Reckless, Karl stumbles, but his face is held between two overworked hands and his lips are locked with punch and dying wildflowers.

Sapnap tastes irrevocably like summer. As if the heat of the outside could be bottled and kept on a shelf, as if it could be slathered across Karl’s cracking lips with sloppy, unspoken ease. There’s out-of-season citrus and stumbling apricots, the same blister of cut grass that sticks to the skin of his throat now enveloped between Karl’s greedy lips.

All the breath left inside him escapes, all-too easy with skin and bone. He finds his hands grappling at the front of Sapnap’s shirt, tugging at fabric that makes ugly tan lines and chasing more, more, more from the lips that give him so much of everything. The burdened red of July summer sits pretty on his tongue, and Karl takes all of it with a swallow of lost apologies and heat.

And it is so, so hot. There are not enough confounding variables between Sapnap’s teeth to fog Karl’s memory into forgetting it all, elbows still sticky where they bend and lips overexposed with uneasy sweat. He still lets Sapnap drag their bodies together, and he lets summer lips swallow him whole, but as he’s being dragged from the dimly-lit entryway out into his living room, he feels his skin get tackier and tackier with the bleed of plastered sun.

When their mouths fall away from each other, there’s a buzz on Karl’s lips. He whines beneath the hands on his hips and the dirty violet bruises they seek to make, all his exposed skin dripping with sin and overheated carmines that mix and muddle along his waistline.

Lips press hot to his neck with a whisper—“I want you so bad, Karl.”

He melts all over again, impure guts sticking down to a new part of his floor.

A heady whine curls off his tongue, and Sapnap only pulls their bodies apart to find his way through Karl’s unfamiliar living room, stumbling down onto a couch Karl has been avoiding and dragging the former down into his lap. Hands tighten against clothed shoulders, lips parted and slick with the swell of mindless heat.

“How long?” Karl asks, concise with the overspin of his bloated mind.

Sapnap presses his lips to the skin beneath Karl’s ear. “Since before we ever spoke,” he answers, superficial but oh-so tantalizing. “There’s a reason I asked for your shower instead of the couple on my other side.”

With hands tangling into capless hair, Karl breathes out a laugh. “So this was all a ploy?”

Offended, Sapnap pulls away. Lines crease orange and bridled down the sides of his sticky face, unfriendly orange juice and pitted apricots making homes in the dilation of his eyes. Every breath he takes is overworked and shaded with gold, sunlight dotting inelegantly against his overdone skin.

“Not exactly.”

Karl kisses him again just for the easy silence. He chases the simplicity of orange blossoms, the taste of something familiar and beyond sun-letting windows etching desirable against rapacious lips. Though Sapnap’s hands roam with arguably more greed, dipping below Karl’s waist with a rough kind of ownership that twists so much like sin.

Whimpers part between them. Karl squirms in the other’s lap, bristled by his own hitching breath. As their lips unlatch with a stick, Karl rubs against something hard and unmistakable. Sapnap groans.

“Oh, god,” Karl whines, head tipping back until his sight is full of ceiling.

Sapnap tugs him in closer, greedy hands slipping low beneath his waistband. “You see what you do to me?” he asks, breathless—Karl can only whine in answer. Hushed, Sapnap adds, “God, you’re so hard, too.”

Understatement. Karl doesn’t think he’s ever been this hard in his life.

And they’ve barely even done anything.

With a groan, Sapnap re-attaches his lips to the front of Karl’s throat. Shades of iceless violet drip down his sensitive skin, hot and battered messy with the nip of inelegant teeth. Karl rolls his hips down into Sapnap, breath hot and fogged in the air, chasing dirty vibrations ebbed beneath his skin with the crawling tendrils of something hot and heavy.

Karl grapples with the fabric of Sapnap’s shirt until he eventually gets the hint and takes it off, uneasy tan lines staking claim all across his skin. Even still, Karl puts his claiming hands to all of it, nestling himself into the crook of Sapnap’s neck with lips that seek to claim.

It leaves Sapnap biting at a pale shoulder, drooling summer sticking in a pool to the divots along a freckled collarbone. The heat between them climbs, something hotter to make amends on the hottest day of the year; a distant fan still clicks with wasted talent, poor air conditioning units buzzing along the space between climbing walls and flattened ceilings.

“Karl,” Sapnap breathes, relentless, “can I fuck you?”

It earns a whine, aching lips and burdened heat running stale without envy. Hot breath mixes in the hotter air, messy hair sticking down to tacky foreheads with the glisten of well-arched brows.

Answers are rough and breathable through summer-scrambled minds.

“No,” Karl huffs, “‘s too hot.”

Sapnap groans into Karl’s throat, lifting his hips as if in protest. The hard outline of his cock rubs against Karl’s in a way that’s so tantalizing, but it’s not tantalizing enough to give in amongst stifling heat. Plaguing sunlight still crawls across his exposed back, sticky ichor reigning true without bleeding gods to spur him on.

The tacky bristle of their closeness is scarcely breathable as it is. Karl feels himself melting into Sapnap’s lap, dripping goo finding a new shape to gather against his neighbor’s firm presence.

Two hands hold his ass in an unforgiving hold. Breathless, Karl twists.

“Get off like this,” he mutters, breathless. Sapnap only holds him tighter.

“Like this?”

The whine in Karl’s throat is supposed to be an affirmation. Hasty, he nods, sinking into Sapnap’s arms where they tug him down against his cock. Between layers of fabric and overwhelming heat, Karl loses himself.

“Wanna be close,” he slurs, voice almost as sloppy as his slackening mouth. “So sweaty,” he spits, “gonna die.”

Sapnap hums out a sound that might be close to a laugh, but it’s distilled peach by desperation and the same drooling heat. His hands trickle up out of Karl’s shorts, flattening across bare skin with asphalt palms and breaking fingers.

“Can I take your cock out?” he whispers.

The whimper Karl tries to answer with is obscene. “Please.”

Quick hands roam through unfathomable heat, unfastening buttons and tugging down flies with a storm of rough humidity. Neither of them lose their clothes entirely, fabric only pushed far enough out of the way to expose both their overeager cocks to the air of Karl’s fogged-up living room.

He feels hot everywhere. And with Sapnap’s hands around his cock, he feels especially hot below his gut, something molten pooling slowly in the pit of himself as the colors wash him out. Unbridled summer sunlight bleeds like thick desire, covering their sticky bodies in something rich with avid sweat. They’re close—just as Karl pleaded—close enough for Sapnap to grip both their cocks in one hand and jerk them off slowly.

And Karl is already twitching. He melts into Sapnap’s shoulder, at ease with letting him do all the work, swelling out into a pool built on messy stains and misaligned pornography. Sapnap just holds him steady, groaning blistered into red-turning ears as his hand goes erratic.

All they’ve dwindled down to is hot breath and hotter want. Karl loses his grip on himself in tandem with his own undoing, stifling heat and weighed-down chests lifting slowly with the flutter of oversaturated raspberries. He tries to move his hips with the unsteady rhythm of Sapnap’s hand, but he’s too sloppy, whispers of blood and sweat dripping down against white walls that cry for ice.

Skin sticks to itself. Karl loses it, and he cums on Sapnap’s hand.

“So pretty, Karl,” the other praises, mindless. “All for me.”

“For you,” Karl whimpers, going limp against Sapnap’s shoulder.

Sapnap finishes himself off quickly, staining the sizzled skin of Karl’s stomach with his own too-hot release. There’s a piece of Karl that wants to sit in wrapped-up minds for a little while longer, but the heat of his garish body demands otherwise.

Everything is tacky with summer heat, the shades of gold from rough backyards glistening abysmal against their shared-feeling skin. Karl feels as though he’s burning up, stippled cherries seeping out from beneath his skin in a farfetched promise.

God, why did they have to do this on the hottest day of the year?

“Too hot,” Karl protests, peeling away from Sapnap’s body despite his shaky legs. “Too… too sweaty.”

Sapnap pouts, nearly. “But it’s nice.”

Wobbling on sticky knees, Karl huffs. He’s starting to think Sapnap really is out of his mind.

“No,” he argues, still breathless. “That’s it, I’m not letting you fuck me until it snows.”

Sapnap startles. “That’s not fair!”

No, it’s not.

Karl laughs despite the heat. His heart swells, unbitten. And beneath the unease of a startled summer sun, he melts with something glistening, a new kind of sugar to stain his lips pathetically red.

His old fan ticks in the distance. Sapnap kisses him slowly.