#howlfic

It could be love. 

Sapnap stared at the phone, the remnants of Dream’s voice still echoing in his mind. It had been the first video call they'd done in a while— a celebratory thing, really, where he had popped in with a quick happy birthday as the clock rolled over to midnight.

Dream’s face, though blurry from the dark lighting, was still clear enough for Sapnap to get a good look at him. The last time he had seen him on camera must have been years ago, and Dream had changed immensely since then. His body had filled out some, from what he could tell, broader than before, and he now held himself with a sort of modest confidence. 

It could really be love: churning, heavy, pooling into his gut.

He was handsome, in a way that still retained that characteristic boyishness Sapnap had grown familiar with from when they were kids. Handsome in the way his smile stayed in his thoughts even hours after he’d hung up.

They were friends⁠⁠—best friends, even. Nothing more than that. 

It shouldn’t have been anything more than that, and yet Sapnap had been grappling with the idea for a while now, turning the words over and over in his mouth as he lay under the covers, remembering the way Dream curled up into himself a little when he’d laughed, tucking his face in the crook of his elbow as he wheezed out some stupid joke he’d seen earlier that day. 

Love isn’t what he wants. It shouldn’t be love. And anyways, Dream had been mentioning a girl he'd met recently, seemed to have really hit it off with her.

It would pass. Sapnap would make sure of it.

⁠—⁠—⁠—⁠— 

Two weeks before high school graduation he gets asked out.

“I know it’s kind of late,” she said, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear. “But you should go out. With me.”

He did his best to remember who she is, but all he could think of was one of his woodshop classes, where she camouflaged into the crowd in the back. She had brown hair. Green eyes. Not memorable in many ways, but the relaxed smile she had given him on occasion when they walked in together had left Sapnap with all sorts of strange, familiar feelings. 

She left him her number this time instead.

He pulled open her contact, and stared at the text box.

They had joked about it before, sometimes. 

When you come down to my place, where should I take you out?, innocently thrown into the recording. Like as a date?

It was too flippant to be real but it had always made Dream happy, even if he cut it out from the final video, and so Sapnap knew it was never a big deal, really. Besides, it was fun to joke around with him, and everytime he laughed there was a tide of affection that rose through Sapnap⁠— slow, crashing, like the way a wave rolled into shore. The idea of love⁠—forsaken as that was⁠—always gave him a little rush of hope, almost pathetic in a way, that made him wish he’d get an answer out of him one of these days.

What kind of flowers should I get you? Roses? They’re your favorite, aren’t they?

He thought about the facetimes at midnight, where the room was so dim that his hair had looked brown, and the green of his eyes; the way he grinned so bright whenever he talked about his girlfriend.

It wasn’t his to take.

So, he texted. When would you be free?

He could work this out.

⁠—⁠—⁠—⁠— 

“I don’t think this is working out.”

She was sitting in the passenger seat next to him, the car parked outside of her house, quiet as radio played some generic pop song that melted into the next.

“I know.”

She wasn’t looking at him, which made it almost worse than it already was. She wouldn’t say a word, she was staring out the window. Her gaze was almost unfocused, as if she were watching something very far in the distance. The reflection glared back at him in the dark of the evening. 

And maybe it was cruel but he couldn't help but feel indifferent at it all. There was pain, sure— the same kind of pain that came with letting anyone go, but it was lighter. Different. It was mutable in a way, easy to ignore, and he found himself thinking about what to make for dinner instead, or if he had any homework due before his lecture tomorrow.

The car door opened. Closed. She never even said a goodbye. 

He couldn’t blame her for that.

The music in the background kept going until the words and the melody faded into a dull static, and when he got home he crept up to his room.

He debated checking Teamspeak to see if anyone was online. There was no way he was going to be able to find Dream that night: he’d messaged him about big plans and she’s gonna love this gift I got her as they’d chatted aimlessly in his discord earlier. 

I’m thinking maybe a fancy restaurant but— how fancy is too fancy, do you think? he’d asked. A dinner date, then. Sapnap couldn't help but close his eyes, and thought about Dream dressed all slick, and as the heat gradually rose to his face he knew he'd never be satisfied. 

But Dream had a girlfriend who he loved very much; he stood no chance, regardless.

He glanced at the monitor. Maybe if he stayed up long enough he’d catch George and convince him to do a quick PVP match, if he woke up early. Sapnap’s first class tomorrow wasn’t until sometime midafternoon, anyways, so he could afford to stay up late.

His phone remained silent from its perch on his desk. She didn’t call or text him back, and he never did either.

⁠—⁠—⁠—⁠— 

>i don’t think this is working out.

Dream’s message startled him awake as the small notification went off in his headphones.

There were papers scattered all over his desk, layered over the top of his keyboard and everything around it. It was normally never that bad, but now, knee-deep in midterms, organization has taken its role as the least important thing to worry about. Sapnap shoved them aside into some poor, forlorn pile to his right as he grabbed his mouse and opened up Discord to type out a reply.

>what??

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, glancing at the clock in the corner of his screen. One in the morning, which meant he had dozed off by accident over an hour ago. Another sound went off as Dream finally sent something back.

>how did you get over your breakup?

Breakup.

Breakup?

When had they broken up? Dream had seemed fine just yesterday, from what he could remember. He’d never come to him about any fights before, seemed happy. He sat there and looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember the last year, but all he could think of was the sound of Dream’s voice.

>just stay strong man

>it only hurts for a week 

>or two or three

Sapnap watched the three dots fall as Dream stopped typing, and waited for a bit for a response. Minutes passed, and then an hour, and Sapnap went back to looking at his notes. He knew Dream better than almost anyone else, and he knew when he needed his space.

⁠—⁠—⁠—⁠— 

“Don’t you think George is kinda cute?” Dream had asked one day, while they were playing on Hypixel together.

Sapnap's first thought is what?, and he sat there, dumbfounded, until he realized that it deserved to be said out loud.

“What?”

“You know what I mean! Kind of like a cat!”

Sapnap, in fact, did not know what that meant. He hadn’t even really known George all that well up until about a year or so ago, when Dream had pulled them in a Teamspeak channel together one day while brainstorming ideas for his new video.

Objectively, George was no cuter than a pigeon or something he’d pass on the street. He was fine, really, but Sapnap couldn’t see anything overly remarkable about him. Sapnap loved to bicker with him, and he was funny⁠—a little crazy, even⁠—but Dream thought he was hilarious even doing nothing at all. Dream waxed terrible poetry about his smile, praised the way he programmed, and always talked about the way his eyes had looked the one time he did a face reveal for a video.

Sapnap wasn’t really sure what to do with this information.

Dream likes him, he thought to himself later that night after George had joined the channel. Dream tried goading him into saying I love you while he was tossing him a stack of roses in-game, and George’s face flushed a funny shade of red as he finally said the words to get Dream to stop.

Sapnap looked at the two and buried his head in his hands. He stayed like that for a very long time.

⁠—⁠—⁠—⁠— 

Eventually he had hit a breaking point. 

They were streaming together, that’s how it went. They were streaming together, and Dream was riding off on another horse he’d picked up somewhere out in the near distance of their survival world. He was on his way to gather some more wood while he chatted with the viewers on Twitch in a relaxed lull.

Sapnap had been quiet for the most part, contented in his own small journey traversing the stripmine. He hummed along to some song from the chill beats playlist he’d pulled up half an hour ago as he tossed out andesite from his inventory. They had put George in charge of fixing a ruined flat of land near the tree farm, where it had only recently been wrecked by some creepers and poor timing. The battered holes had remained in the ground for about a week, until everyone was tired of being lazy and finally decided to do something about it. George sat there, where he complained for what must have been the last ten minutes about the lack of cobble to make stone bricks with and, well, Sapnap had figured he might as well get some more iron for all of them while he was at it.

“⁠—thank you for the dono,” Dream’s voice cut in, the rhythmic lilt of it so jarring that it snapped Sapnap out of his near daze as he dug along the grid patterns cut through stone. “Hi there. I love watching all of your videos! Can you tell George that you love him? And can you get him to say ‘I love you Dream?’ too?” 

Sapnap looked over to the second monitor on his left, the donation box fading from the screen by the time he glanced at it. Dream’s stream silently continued to play in the background. He was towering up to reach the farthest edge of a large oak tree, inching towards the last log buried somewhere within the leaf blocks. The chat picked up as some fans started to bicker amongst themselves. Dream didn’t mind them—never did, really—and plowed on through with his reply. 

“Haha, thank you. I’m glad you love watching them,” he said, not even missing a beat. “I tell George I love him all the time! He’s the one who never says it back. Geooorge, I love you.”

Suddenly how all of his collected material was sorted became the most interesting thing in the world to him. Sapnap took his time as he meticulously lined up the stacks for what felt like an hour. A second passed. George gave some kind of stilted laugh, the kind that he lets out when he feels too embarrassed to properly respond. Sapnap’s only thought was about the singsong way Dream called out that name in. 

“See guys? It’s not my fault, I have no problem saying it! C’mon George, do it so they don’t waste their money. Just say I love you Dream.”

“I’m not saying that,” George butted in, his mic crackling a bit. His video was off but even then Sapnap could tell from how he said it that he was practically squirming in his seat. Coward. It wasn’t as if he’d never said it before, but he was always so camera shy⁠, especially with his crush— 

Dream was still play-pleading for an answer, and so Sapnap decided to indulge him. 

“Aww, Dream, you know I love you. You’ll always have my love, even if Georgie hates you.”

That got a reaction. Dream burst out in laughter as he breathily wheezed out a silly, off-tune heart been broke so many times while George started sputtering, trying to deny it. 

Those two idiots. Sapnap’s been around them enough to know what flirting looks like. He thought about Dream, with his late night calls, where he bounced ideas off of Sapnap on what would get the best reaction from him in his newest video, and the way he had been doing it on and off for the past few months, now; George on his tiptoes until he ultimately stumbled into Sapnap’s DMs on Teamspeak, flustered over something Dream told him. 

Coward, Sapnap thought, as he watched the two of them do their dance. He and George both were, he’d give him that.

I love you, I love you, I love you.