SAPNAP
"Wake up."
My eyes snap open into darkness.
"Get up."
A faint fold of light bends across the rises and dips in the bedsheets.
"Get up."
My surroundings are unfamiliar. I try to grasp the disorienting sight.
Why is there a window there? Why isn't my bed against the wall?
Someone breathes loudly behind me, not even trying to conceal it.
The hair on my arm and the back of my neck rises.
Who is that?
I turn over.
Through the darkness I see a face, features twisted by the dimness and my own fatigue.
Fear nearly knocks me out and my heart thunders through my chest as I'm practically slapped awake. Propping myself up and scooting to the opposite corner of the bed, the looming silhouette striking a frenzied scramble for instincts as my brain goes absolutely haywire. "What the fuck-"
"Sapnap."
The air rushes out of my lungs.
My heart's still recovering from its treacherous drop, but the last wisps of sense just manage to catch me.
I squint in the darkness as my fear ebbs into confusion.
"George?"
He scoffs at me, tone harsh with impatience. "Yes, it's me."
"You- you- ," I sputter, still feeling my pulse raging loudly in my throat. "What the hell were you thinking? Oh my God, if you were any closer than that I would have probably punched you what are you doing in my room-"
"Get."
"Up."
His eyes pierce through the darkness. There's not a trace of kindness in his features.
I'm stunned into silence as my fire dies.
"Let's go."
There's a cold edge in his voice, live steel against my neck. The metal threatens me enough to obey.
I slowly get up.
He takes a few steps back and watches me glacially as I throw on a hoodie and sweatpants. I notice, in the faint glow of the moonlight, he's still wearing the same clothes from the airport.
I grab my phone and stare blankly at his stoic expression. He meets my gaze and abruptly walks out of the room, leaving me stumbling after him, nearly staggering into the door.
"Be quieter, goddamnit."
"Sorry."
My voice is hardly above a whisper. Confusion and fear squeeze every part of my brain and the fact that I'm still half-asleep does no good to my coherency. I follow him blindly through the hallways of Dream's house before practically tripping down the staircase he navigates with no trouble at all.
His eyes are so much better adjusted to the darkness than me.
How long has he been awake?
My socks slip on the wooden floors as he makes a sudden turn towards the front door.
His hand reaches for his shoes.
It's at this moment the fire inside me rekindles and I snap out of my paralysis. My feet stop several paces behind him.
I truly wake up.
My typical stubborness and impulsiveness kick in and my senses keep my feet glued to the spot.
"George. Where the fuck are we going."
He doesn't respond. Silently he opens a drawer and rummages through it. "Where are your car keys?"
"George- what?"
He finds them and tosses them to me, my reflexes automatically catching it before it smashes into the floor, a small impact that would absolutely shatter the silence in Dream's abnormally echoey house.
I rub my thumb over the cool metal. I can feel the anger crawling up my throat, the burn in my face.
"Where are we going- George! Listen to me!" I'm whisper-shouting at him in the dark. He turns towards the front door and has placed his hand on the doorknob when he looks back and sees I haven't moved.
His face is apathetic. Eyes cold, mouth pressed into an emotionless line.
It might be my own mind or the dark room or the unnaturalness of the whole situation. The only light in the room comes from the moonlight emitting from Dream's downstairs windows, it illuminates his features poorly.
He sees my reluctance and I can see him soften.
I swallow as his gaze floats to the keys in my hand. "George, you have to tell me. You can't just drag me out into the night at-" I glance at my phone. "-3 am and expect me to follow you with no explanation."
I'm practically shaking after my defense. I fan the flames more, convincing myself that I have a right to be angry right now. Even though it feels so wrong to lash out at him, after the bond he's established with me.
"I'm the one driving, George. You have to tell me where we're going-"
"I don't know where we're going."
His gaze snaps back up to me. I almost take a step back to steady myself.
The eye contact is fixating. It's terrifying.
My lips part and a word numbly slips through. "What?"
This time, the change in his features is so noticeable I know it's not my mind, not the lighting, not the situation.
His face softens. It falls. Something behind it crumbles, in slow motion.
"Please."
His words show it as well. The rasp of his whisper, an almost inaudible sound that's deafening enough to chill me to the bone. "Just drive somewhere."
"Somewhere," I repeat. My jaw is trembling.
"George, you act like I've been here before. I don't know where to drive, where do you even want to go?"
"Anywhere. Anywhere. That's not-" His arm limply gestures at the house.
"-here."
His voice wrenches and the syllable cracks.
A beam of moonlight faintly flickers over both of us.
Somewhere in my weary and overwhelmed body the dots manage to thread themselves together.
My feet move.
Quietly he opens the front door and I shuffle after him, shoes still half on.
It's raining.
Hard.
I don't know how I didn't realize the consistent patter on the windows earlier.
He pushes on and I quickly pull my shoes on all the way before stumbling after him.
The driveway is slick with a steady flow, and petrichor infiltrates my nostrils. There's a streetlight a few yards away but it's almost unreachable through the thick sheets of water. The droplets pound down on my head, my face, my back, a rhythmic beat that presses around my entire body.
Fumbling with the keys with one hand, I unlock the rental and feel my way through the dark, through the rain, making my way to the driver's side. Grasp at the slippery door handle and collapse in the car, swiftly wiping away all the water on my face with the sleeve of my hoodie. Let out a breath that had trapped itself during the desperately blind careen to the rental.
I blink the water from my eyelashes and see George fall in the seat next to me, hearing his stifled gasps that attempt to mask how shaken up he really is.
Turning on the ignition and ignoring the water that I smear everywhere, I place one hand on the steering wheel and look at him, one more time, through the corner of my eye.
The raindrops pound heavily on the windshield, the wipers practically serving no purpose at this moment. We both take a moment to take in the severity of the weather.
The words pass between us, louder than thunder, quieter than death.
His eyebrows arch as he meets my stare. I see his jaw shift as his eyes dart back to the window.
An almost unnoticeable dip of his head.
My foot presses the pedal.
~
The streetlights are no more than blurry flashes that line the highway. Rain falls incessantly, the window wipers turned to the highest speed.
The inside of the car is still silent. Uncomfortable tension thickens between us.
My eyes are glued to the road except for the occasional glimpses towards the passenger seat. He's turned away from me, face propped on elbow, leaning against the ice cold window.
I've been driving for 10 minutes now. Numbly I continue, despite how I absolutely cannot identify where we are, or how we got here. The rain distorts the outside world so badly I can barely see the gray highway right in front of me. The front lights of the car only illuminate a limited radius, one in which I can see each separate raindrop as they fall relentlessly onto the earth.
A stronger glow emits from the distance, on the right side of the highway. I assume there's an exit and carefully shift lanes even though there's probably not anyone else within a mile of us.
Tires slip on the road. The car lurches as I try to slow the momentum of the sudden movement, carefully steering into the exit ramp.
"Sorry," I mutter, both hands on the wheel now. He sniffs in acknowledgement.
A few more minutes of silence pass as I drive us around wanderlessly, to see traffic lights, around buildings, through blocks we've probably already gone through several times. The rain becomes unbearably resounding, thousands of tiny droplets pelting against the ceiling, hindering my vision.
"There's a gas station over there." Suddenly he sits up in his seat, his arm extending to point slightly towards the right side. Blindly I follow his instructions and eventually a smudged outline and distorted lights come into view.
I move the car right next to one of the stations, park under a roof, and finally the pounding noises on the car cease. A groan of relief escapes my lips as I take my hands off the wheel and let them fall into my lap.
The lingering stress from the dangerous drive stiffens my joints. The muffled raindrops are astounding in comparison to the previous nightmare.
I allow myself several moments just to breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
I close my eyes to shut out the forlorn setting around us, to block out the nag that's creeping in slowly.
3 am, pouring rain, off in the middle of nowhere in an unfamiliar city. The old and beaten down gas station, with a shabby little store attached to a completely defaced bathroom area. Trash pressed to the coal-black ground by the consistent flow of water, paint on some supports are scratched off by years and years of scrapes and accidental car-door bumps.
But where else can I take us?
At least it's somewhat quiet.
George's heavy exhale breaks through my rumination. My eyes flutter open.
Blearily I recall what time it actually is, only adding onto the absolute audacity of the entire situation.
Propping up one elbow, I lean it on my window and place my head on my left palm, looking at him out of the corner of my right eye. He stares numbly ahead, lips pressed into nonexistence.
I'm too tired to feel angry. Or annoyed. Or whatever other emotion I'm supposed to feel right now; worry, concern, vex?
Rain quells fire.
My slightly damp clothes are chilling me to the bone. Not a flicker of warmth continues to burn.
But smoke rises from the charred remains. It rises and painfully etches my throat.
My lips part to let out the foul taste.
"Is this the somewhere you wanted to go?"
The toxic gas laces my words with poison, spitting them out with an inflection I didn't know I was capable of.
I see him stiffen. His lips hardly move as he speaks. "Yes."
An exhausted scoff comes out of my nose.
He turns his head to look at me sharply. I force myself to freeze in the same nonchalant position, except for my eyes that raise to meet his.
"I like the rain."
I visibly roll my eyes. "Shut the hell up, right now."
"I do."
My gaze snaps back to him. My lips curl up at the edges, but I stay silent.
"It's, so... loud. And busy. I've never seen anything like it."
Disbelief forces my forehead into a furrow. "What?"
He shuffles in his seat. Turning my head more, I see the moonlight slipping over his clothes, casting strange shadows on his face.
His features are softer though, as they peer out into the darkness. "I couldn't sleep because of it."
I follow his gaze. "So you had to wake me up? And make me drive us all the way here? Because you wanted to see rain?"
One of his hands reaches up to wipe away a stray strand of wet hair that begins dangling near his eyes. I watch a droplet fling off the strand with the motion.
Sighing, my eyes flutter shut again.
I ask trivial questions despite the answer I already know.
But the smoke's foul taste still lingers in my mouth. "I nearly crashed the car several times, for fuck's sake. I don't know if you realized, but I could barely see 10 feet in front of us. You couldn't have just stayed in your room-"
"His house is so quiet."
Both of my hands rise to cover my face, rubbing my eyes, my cheeks. The words spill out faster than I would have liked.
"I know."
I lean my elbows on my laps, face nearly hitting the steering wheel. I can practically feel him staring at me.
"You know?"
I move my fingers to look at him. "I do. I've noticed, what a surprise. His house is so- what the hell's wrong with it."
An uncomfortable laugh, dry and tenative.
I sit up and I notice even more.
Even in the unreliability of the uneven lighting, the murky dark.
His knees have turned away the slightest degree. His fingers lace themselves just a slip more tightly. I look up and see his eyes dart everywhere but at me.
Words. They tumble.
"But it's not just his house, is it?"
I watch his entire body stiffen.
His eyes dart towards me during the most rebellious second, the brief moment in which his reflexes were able to overpower his self-control. Something I assume he thinks I can't pick up.
He's good. Stronger-willed than I thought.
But I'm better.
Something burns in me as a strange bout of confidence takes control of my tongue. "No? It's not his house, is it?"
Two things occur to me after the childishly derisive words leave my lips.
One.
I'm too good at this. Much, much too good at this.
Two.
Smoke doesn't last this long. Something else is burning, and it's not the remains of a previous blaze.
The raindrops are muffled now. The quietest they've been in the past hour.
I can hardly hear them anymore, behind the crackling of a rekindled flame.
My throat burns. The words scorch their way out. Poisonous, toxic, dangerous. More than I'll ever be.
"You can't even be near him?"
His eyes snap back to mine. Dark, hooded, a mixture of shock and anger.
My left hand forms into an L-shape with my pointer finger and thumb and I rest the same elbow on the car door. I rest my cheekbone on my thumb and jam the side of my finger into my temple as I look at him.
Contempt only grows with each passing second. I don't know where it's comes from.
His mouth opens, and closes. He presses his lips together and looks down at his lap. "What the hell, Sapnap."
"What?"
By the way his mouth floats open and shut, I know he's searching for words. He shakes his head briefly like he's clearing his mind, and a droplet flies off his hair onto the seat.
"Is it that obvious?"
I chew the inside of my cheek, lips pressed together tightly. Memories of less than 8 hours ago resurface.
Seeing them both at Dream's house for the first time. Dream was eager to greet me, and in the background I remember George standing quite a few paces behind him. He plastered on a smile at our embrace, I'm sure, but I remember the stiffness of his joints, his formal stance.
We watched a movie and ordered take out. George acted impressively normal, but I could see it. The smallest things, the tiniest details that separate the way he treated Dream from how I treat him, or how Dream talks to me.
I don't think Dream noticed at all. Maybe George isn't as transparent as I thought. Maybe it's just me.
"It wasn't obvious at all."
I lean more into my fingers.
There's something.... off. Something burning. I feel different.
It feels wrong. It feels right.
Through half-opened eyes I hear him breathe out shakily. "I thought you would be more supportive."
His words strike something. I can feel the spark.
Almost sarcastically, I turn my head to face him, my gaze still flat and my face still stoic, except the new flare behind it.
"Have I not been supportive?"
He doesn't look at me.
"I drove you to this literal deserted place at 3 in the morning because I figured you needed to talk, and you think I'm not supportive?"
His lips curl up at one end. "That's not what I meant, you know. When you said the 'oh, wow, you can't even be near him', you were literally just mocking me. I thought, at least," he swallows. "You would take my problems seriously."
I remember my tone. I remember what I said.
I know I should be taking his problems seriously. And I know, as always, I should be babying him, asking him to spill his problems, coddling him and trying my best to fix everything he's struggling with.
The fire burns and I realize I don't want to.
I'm not meant for that. I'm not meant for naive reassurances, lies to his face and telling him that everything's going to be alright.
Karl's words slowly invade my brain. His reassurance techniques. A jumbled mess of distant support and strange encouragement.
Am I a good person?
I don't feel like one.
But if I have to force out support I don't want to give. Tactics that I don't believe in.
There's no need to go further. That's all you need to get out of this. Don't worry about whether or not they can save themselves. That's up to them now.
Have I taken that statement too far?
I feel something crawling up my throat.
Do I care too less? Do I worry too little?
Panickedly I search myself and come up empty handed. Flames flicker in the darkness.
They fuel my tongue as the sparks spread.
"You don't think I'm supportive," I repeat.
Heat rises.
I hear a heavy huff before he speaks. "You know that's not what I-"
I snap my head up from my previously resting position and turn to stare him dead in the eyes. "Do you know what I've been doing for you? What I'm doing to myself?"
Flashbacks of sleepless nights, stress-filled days, preparation for his calls and his talks that take immense tolls on my mental health. They all blur in a fiery mess, in front of George's slightly shocked face.
All for this.
Angrily I glare out into the pathetic sight of the gas station.
"This is the first night."
Inexplainable fury tears through my veins. The flames climb higher and higher.
"The first night, and we're already here." My gaze snaps back to him. He's avoiding but I see the shock in his expression.
Our first Facetime call. The night of the trident stream.
Do you see where this is going? Can you see where this is going?
Silence stretches.
I glower back at the window.
My worries, his efforts. His worries, my efforts.
For this.
Words fueled by anger are harsh. They scorch my tongue painfully.
"I thought you were more capable than this."
I hear the sharpest inhale from him. It's shaky.
I feel like I should have regretted that. I feel like I should be regretting everything at the moment. It's not too late to turn back, assume the caring and tending persona once again. If I tried, I could undo the trails of destruction I've laid down.
The fire just won't stop burning.
"You can't even be near him. Can't even be in his presence."
My voice sounds halfway between a whisper and a scoff, the most demeaning sounds that have ever come out of my mouth.
I see his jaw shift. "You don't know what it's like."
Aggressively I turn to face him. "What's it?"
His eyes close. "What I... feel."
My eyebrows furrow, almost out of annoyance, but I let him continue. "It's... inescapable. It's taking over."
"Yeah. I can tell."
His dark eyes flick at me. They're hurt, they're angry, they're still mostly unreadable. "So, you're getting like... this over something I can't control. Something you haven't experienced and something you don't know-"
"Yeah. I don't know. And I shouldn't know." My hands fly to my face and I rub furiously.
"I'm nineteen fucking years old. I'm- I'm not meant to deal with this kind of stuff."
My voice cracks.
It's spread to my eyes. The hated burning sensation is behind them.
"Back home, I still have a shit ton of college work to do, taxes I need to figure out how to pay, I'm still a literal teenager and I don't know how..."
My voice drifts off.
One part of me's still trying to figure out where all of this is coming from, the source that's set off this furious blaze. How I got like this.
Where it's been hiding this entire time.
I saw the faintest glimpses of it, that night with Karl.
Now it's all slowly unveiling. The thread slowly unravels itself.
The other part of me loses its fuel. Fatigue hits me out of nowhere. The angry blaze begins burning itself out.
I still feel the heat. But higher up, behind my eyes.
My lips float apart, silence swimming between them.
I stare at the windshield.
Two droplets catch my eye, falling from the top edge of the car almost simutaneously. I watch as the left one combines into the other and they trickle down the glass. With their combined masses comes their hastened fall.
Words bubble up from my chest.
"I wanted to help you, George. I really did." I bite the inside of my cheek as I look at him through the side of my eye. "I've been... trying. A lot."
He's silent but I can see that he's alert.
A bout of weariness gently pushes my eyelids shut. "But come on, man. Was all of this-" Lazily I gesture to the gas station with one hand. "-really necessary?"
My eyes stay closed as I wait for his response.
When he doesn't say anything, I sigh and carry on. "What did you want to talk about anyways?"
"Well," he says sarcastically. I can faintly sense a tinge of bitterness. "Since you made it sound so dumb, basically the thing about his presence." Another huffy exhale. "Yeah. Yeah, his presence."
I did say that. I don't know if I regret it or not. Something in that moment just was so compelling to do so.
I pick at my fingernail. "I guess, you can talk about it if you want to."
A short laugh. "But you think I'm absolutely... you know."
The hints of a humorless smile tug at the edges of my lips. He catches it.
"I just couldn't thinking about how he's... right there. I was thinking about it the whole time at the airport yesterday too. Like, he's real. He's not something just in my dreams. He's no longer purely something I had to imagine."
I watch him press his lips together. "It's hard to explain. I don't really want to think about it. It sounds really, really desperate now that you've explained it to me like that."
His gaze meets mine. "But you've been some kind of reality check. You're always the one who... rationalizes. Logic over my emotions."
He looks back outside again. "As much as I hate to admit it, maybe you're right."
Sucking in a breath, his chest expands as well. "This is kind of far."
A small part of me screams at me to turn him back, convince him that it's all fine, listen to him repeating himself for several more hours, remove the nag that makes me feel like I'm invalidating his feelings.
I'm not like that. Too spirited, too sparky for that.
"Damn right l am."
His head drops and he laughs quietly. Silence encapsulates the inside of the car again.
Actually, I can hardly hear the rain anymore. I look through the windshield and see that the previous sheets of rain have thinned into light droplets.
The flames haven't completely burned out.
But they're kinder now. It's more of a campfire burn than a raging wildfire.
"He's just a person, right?" Softly the words drift out of me. The poisonous taste of smoke is gone as well.
I look over and see a small smile spreading on his face.
After a short pause, he speaks. "Wow, I'm really... bad."
"Really bad?"
"Yeah. Like, this, all of this, it's really bad." He scoffs at himself lightly. "Desperate, incapable, all that great stuff you said."
I pick at my fingernail. "Maybe that was a bit harsh." My lips press into a line. "I was just really... furious." I remember the flare in my belly.
He shifts in his seat and leans his arm against the car door. "I think that was really needed."
"What's that?"
"You know, the truth. In all of it's severity."
But I haven't even told you the truth yet.
The words threaten to spill out of my mouth.
Numbly I push them aside and let a few others take their place. "The truth," I repeat.
"Yeah." He inhales slowly. "Maybe I should try to... let go of some of it. And maybe the rest of our trip will be somewhat normal."
"You mean, like, get over him?" He's beginning to travel into a direction I both want and don't want him to go in.
"Well, yes, but no." I watch as he laces his fingers together tightly. "Lighten up on it, maybe. I'm letting him control me too much, and I guess I have to at least try and prevent that from happening. Thinking about him so much is... a part of the entire fall but it's also really harmful."
He looks at me to see if I'm listening, before continuing. A shaky breath pulls his lower lip between his teeth.
"I'm still going to wait for him. I'm still going to wait for an answer."
His gaze flicks back at me. "I just won't go to, you know." He gestures at the gas station. "These extremes."
I follow his gesture and notice that the sky outside is considerably brighter. The rain's even lighter. I check my phone. It's been an hour and a half since we first got here.
I see the faintest glow in the distance. The weakest rays of the sun, easily confused with an extraordinarily bright streetlight.
A heavy huff from him pulls my attention back. He looks at me, and presses his lips together. "I think I've been overestimating you."
My nose scrunches and my eyebrows furrow. "What do you mean?" Faintly, inexplicable annoyance burns. I'm not as capable as he thinks? Is that what he means?
"Well, not overestimate," he corrects himself, almost as if he can read my thoughts. "I've been pushing you too far."
I'm silent but he takes one look at my expression and continues. "Like tonight. When I woke you up, I just assumed you would come with me. In the past, you've always been pretty.. cooperative, you know. That's why earlier I was so harsh. I was, as bad as it sounds, shocked that you weren't listening."
Deep within my memory I remember him waking me up. It feels like several lifetimes ago.
The cold edge of his voice. Metal against my neck. I shiver.
He sighs and leans back in his seat. "I slept practically the entire flight here. I couldn't sleep at his house, not like I was sleeping at a regular schedule back home anyways. I'm always awake at night. Thinking."
A breath shudders out of him. "Thinking," he repeats. "The fact that he was literally in the next room over, I just couldn't... stay put. I had to escape."
His jaw shifts. "The way I've already told you so much, I guess I just thought you would understand why I'm doing the things I am, even if they're as desperate as this. I didn't realize how... far I've been slipping, and in a way, you really put me back in place, reminded me that there actually is a limit."
I fidget with my hands, searching for something to say.
"Well, someone had to do it."
A small laugh escapes both of us.
"You've always been there," he murmurs quietly. "You've always backed me up. It was really a wake-up call when you actually opposed me for once." A wary smile creeps on his lips. "It's good. You had enough sense so I wouldn't bring you down with me."
I lean my head on the window and bite my lip. "I guess I've just realized that... some things aren't meant to be soothed. Like, sometimes you can't tell someone that 'everything's going to be okay', because I try to be realistic. Because sometimes change is needed." My words drift from relevancy as something else slowly invades it.
Karl's words. Karl's strategy.
My talk with him. I see it here.
The faintest streak of pink appears in the night sky. The sky is lightening. The gas station is even brighter. The rain's completely ceased, despite the occasional droplets that land on the windshield.
"You've always been... very accessible," George repeats. I can hear the wheels in his head turning.
He's smart. Unfortunately.
His next words feel like a dream. "What did you mean when you said 'do you know what I've been doing for you?'"
My head pounds subtly as I shakily look at him. "It seems obvious."
His expression softens. "Tell me."
I do.
With barely any warning. The words spill out faster than I would have liked.
Almost an exact replica of my call with Karl except for the parts about Dream that I carefully steer clear of.
It feels freeing. It feels dangerous. Constantly I remind him that it was my choice and he doesn't need to feel guilty for what I put myself through, even though earlier it seemed like I was blaming him. He listens and gently thanks me for my efforts.
Karl's words echo in my head, once again. It's like he's been behind me this entire time.
One day, he'll thank you for the true heights of your support.
Is this it?
Our conversation lightens into careful recalls of the night's events.
The first encounter with Dream, when he first saw him at the airport. Briefly he tangents on how I should have warned him more about how attractive he was.
How truly nervous he was throughout the entire evening. I tell him he acted surprisingly well, truthfully admitting that Dream might've not sensed that anything was off.
We discuss the movie we watched. The take-out we ordered, something from a fast-food place George had never even heard about in his life.
The night slowly falls as the day shows its first rays. In the distance, the pink streaks grow into yellowish glows and orangey tints.
From the overflow of rain throughout the night, and the clearness of the sky, I know there's going to be a rainbow later. We talk about that too.
It's almost 4:30 in the morning and we're still here.
The previously forlorn and desolate area has somehow transformed into something comforting. Both warm glows and cool undertones spill through the car, illuminating both of our faces.
We assume we have time.
My phone begins vibrating incessantly in my back pocket.
I hear both of our voices die away from a topic I can't remember. I see his face slowly fall and I can feel mine doing the same.
Agonizingly slowly, I remove it from my sweatpants and shakily turn it face-up.
The green button for answering. The red one for declining.
They glare at us from the screen.
Why the hell is he up so early?
My heart pounds as my fingers freeze with indecision. Softly I hear a curse from George. I look at him, look at the lightening sky.
Carefully turn on the ignition.
Fuck you, Dream.
~
a/n ok well hello new readers! vv cool to see the number of uniques go up hehe
also are the chapters too long? all of them are like 4-5000 now (this one esp.) and idk how it keeps happening but im trying to go for that slow burn yknowww i just really dont want to rush the story
also also uploads might be slower bc i wanna try and revise more and make the chapters better since i always reference back at other chapters and it hurts me to read :)!
also also also 3k! danggg thanks for all the new comments as well!!