On one of the rare days where Sage wasn't attached to Karl's hip, she was lounging on her couch inside of her townhouse, her laptop propped up on her thighs. Her last class of the day, held in a virtual meeting, was officially over, and now she was glancing over all of her schoolwork that had to be done in the following days and weeks. The list of assignments seemed never-ending, and she was ready to pull out each strand of her hair one by one.
Then her phone started buzzing. Karl was calling, like he did every single day, like clockwork, to check on how her school day had gone. During the calls he also judged her mood, deciding whether or not she absolutely needed to hang out for a pick-me-up, or if he should wait for her to ask for him to hang out. He did it every single school day, and had done it since they had started getting close.
The girl pressed the green button before propping her phone up on her laptop, groaning as soon as the call completely connected. Karl laughed, putting his own phone up against something near his PC, continuing his work on his computer. "Bad day?" The question was light-hearted, but he was obviously genuinely listening, constantly flipping his gaze over to her before back at his computer screen.
With a small sigh, she shook her head. "Not really. I just have so much homework, it's stupid. It's like they don't realize we're adults with actual lives. You know, I'm gonna have to get a job soon, and this homework is just gonna become even stupider to me. And my grades are just gonna plummet and then the next stupid nine-to-five job I get is going to be my life. I won't even get the opportunity to write little descriptions for magazines, much less actually become a full-fledged writer!" At the end of her rant, she threw up her hands in exasperation, and the boy on the other end of the line just giggled at her.
"First of all, I will help you find a job you enjoy in case you end up spending the rest of your life doing it," he teased, before jokingly flinching when she turned to glare at him. "Second of all, I'm sure your homework isn't that bad. What is it?" Suddenly, his full, undivided attention was on her, the streamer turning his full body to glance at his phone screen.
Sage looked over at him before back at her computer screen, sighing again before clicking for the description of one of her assignments, reading it in her head before relaying the information back to Karl. "This one says to write an essay about my week, starting from today to the end of Sunday. It's due next Sunday. Dude, I don't even do anything during my week except for sleeping and hanging out with you," she scoffed, glancing over at the boy who grinned at her. "Why are you smiling at my demise?"
"Because you forget that your sexy, handsome, amazing best friend does amazing, interesting things every day for his lines, plural, of work," he responded swiftly. When her eyebrow raised, totally not at his description of himself, he rolled his eyes before starting to explain. "Everything I do for YouTube is crazy, right? I mean, every video we film, including the ones that don't make it to the actual website, is full of amazing things that people find incredible enough to click on no matter what. There's no way it won't make for a long, amazing essay. It doesn't even have to be just that, either. I could give you the best week of your life, and then you won't have to worry about having nothing to write about."
The excitement flooding Karl's tone and written all over his face made Sage smile. Every day he proved to her more and more that everything he did was for the happiness of others and not for his own leisure or profit. He was constantly doing things for his friends, checking up on his friends, losing sleep to work on projects he knew people would love and to talk to the people he knew that either stayed up late or woke up early in other countries. In fact, the only time Sage really knew he was asleep was when she was at his house and he decided to take naps, and that was rare.
"You'd do that for me?" She asked, raising her eyebrows with a grin.
He scoffed, rolling his eyes. "I'd do anything for you."
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The next day, the pair were making their way on to a soccer field way too early in the morning, Sage anxiously walking right next to Karl while he blended right in, yelling greetings to everyone he saw and admiring the things Jimmy had set up for his new video. The last time the girl had spoken to Jimmy, Chandler or Chris was when she had been in a video herself, and to say she was nervous would be a huge understatement. After all, these were Karl's best friends and coworkers. What would happen if they didn't like her?
Obviously Karl wouldn't drop their friendship off the face of the Earth if Chandler happened to think she was too annoying, but it was still a stressful thing to think about.
For the next day or so, they would be filming a main channel video where different people tried to complete many seemingly impossible trick shots for money. Apparently, Jimmy had things like soccer, basketball and baseball planned. What Sage hadn't known until right before they got there is that those would be made harder with limited goals and even a helicopter.
Karl had asked Jimmy if she could tag along during the filming process and, as expected, he said it was fine. So her job was to just sit behind the cameraman on the sidelines and look pretty. Easy enough. The only problem was that Sage had had classes all day, so the only time she had been able to tag along was later in the night, when they were pretty close to wrapping up the day.
"Jimmy!" Karl yelled, as if he hadn't seen the older man just an hour or so before. The brunette boy had dressed for the occasion, dressed in an athletic tee and shorts that Sage hadn't even known he had. She wasn't sure if his shoes counted as athletic shoes, and frankly she didn't care. He looked good. She moved her eyes before she thought anymore about the appearance of her best friend.
The older man turned on his heel at the sound of his name, his lips pulling into a smile. "Karl!" He looked more welcoming than ever, and the fact that he turned and yelled Sage's name as well just added on to it. "Hey! Glad you're here. Are you excited to see how many hours goes into an about ten minute video?"
Sage's eyebrows raised before she chuckled awkwardly. "Yeah. Fun."
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After they had finished filming, with Sage sitting on the sidelines and watching closely, the cameramen had started packing up all of the equipment, with Jimmy telling people what to do and planning filming for tomorrow. Instead of helping and being productive, the girl and her companion were now kicking a soccer ball back and forth, ignoring the ruckus behind them.
"So, I didn't know you could kick. What the fuck was that goal?" The girl raised her eyebrow, using the side of her foot to gently kick the ball to Karl.
He stopped the soccer ball by placing his foot on top of it, shrugging. "Pure luck, I guess. I was never very athletic in high school, so I promise it's not because I'm secretly super jacked." he joked, gesturing with his hand for Sage to step back. When she moved back a few feet, he stepped back before kicking the ball harder than they had been.
It came spinning at her and she moved to stop it, but it simply whizzed past her, rolling in the grass until friction made it slow down. "Okay, fuck you, I'm not running," she grunted, turning to glare at the floppy-haired boy in the middle of the field. Sage could hear him laughing loudly behind her when she turned to go fetch the ball, and she was glad that the grin that pulled at her lips was on the opposite side of what he could see.
Instead of returning to their game of kick-and-stop, the girl picked up the ball with her hands, walking up to Karl. "Remind me to not put sports on our list of things to-do. Oh, and I definitely will not be writing about this in my essay," she added, wrinkling her nose at him as she walked past him.
Karl caught up with her, walking beside her with a small laugh. "Well, do you at least have something to write about from today?" His eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly in curiosity, his arm brushing hers as they walked. She tried not to dwell on how hard her heart beat against her ribcage at the small touches, instead focusing on answering the question.
"Yeah, definitely. I learned a lot about how exhausting it is to entertain millions," she chuckled, bumping her shoulder into his and hoping that she didn't accidentally bump him a bit too hard. Her eyes moved to his feet, but they seemed to still be moving in the exact same direction with no wobble. Reassured, she took a breath and glanced back up at his face.
His grey eyes stayed glued to hers and she found herself holding eye contact, even though she hated holding it with anybody else. She made a mental note to compliment him on his eyelashes sometime in the future - they were long, and they accented his eyes really well. They made him look as genuine and gentle as he actually was.
Sage was brought back to the waking world by his laugh. "I mean, it's not exhausting to me, since I'm so good at it, but it must be different for you, since you're not used to it," he scoffed, poking her ribcage. In return, she squealed, smacking his hand.
"Shut the fuck up, asshole," she mumbled, although really, she never wanted him to shut up. Ever.