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All We Know (feat. Phoebe Ryan) by The Chainsmokers
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Everything moved, tasted, and soothed like honey.
Sapnap hadn't gotten a haircut since he showed up in Rothels, so Karl was braiding small twists into the inky swatches right behind his ear. He was crying, silent tears sliding across his slack cheeks]. He looked lost in his own head. Karl just let him lay there, arms wrapped around his torso like a panda to its mother, clutching to Karl like he'd float into the clouds, a lonely balloon if he loosened his grip.
The motel still wasn't perfect, with minute stains on some of the walls and a fan that refused to be shut off, even after Karl got on a rickety chair and fiddled and fucked with it for almost an hour as Sapnap showered yesterday.
Coming out of the bathroom, jeans riding along his hips and boxers flashy with their high waistband, white towel paused midway to dry his hair, Sapnap had watched Karl. That boy inspected the ceiling fan, brow scrunched and logical, analytical thoughts sprinting like cheetahs and comets, as he tried to figure out its issue. Sapnap had to convince him to get down, Karl chuffing at the fan for defeating his intellect. Even if their setting wasn't perfect, they still thought the other boy was.
"Are you okay?" The end of Karl's question sounded abrupt, like he was going to tack on another word to the phrase before snipping his little paper snowflake short, detail lost in translation. The fan continued to creak. They could've turned the tv to a random cable show, maybe logged into Karl's Netflix if they felt like kickboxing, sparring, or jousting with another piece of technology in that motel room, but they didn't. Sapnap deserved peace, and Karl was content to give it to him.
"What were you going to say?" Sapnap murmured tenderly, voice drifting to the surface of a airy, breathy sea in patches.
They both remembered how they argued about surviving and sleeping in Gullston, Sapnap carding through his hair with stress and barking at Karl about how they couldn't throw the taller boy's savings and money however they pleased. He refused to be responsible for such a thing.
Karl, however, thought it was his own decision, told Sapnap so, and refused to listen to another word. The same way Sapnap couldn't make him spend, he couldn't stop him, either. Fuck the heart burrowed in Sapnap's ribcage, the one that only desired Karl's lips to smile all pretty and lively. The bed they laid on was warm and worth it anyway, the one where Karl wedged himself between any of Sapnap's limbs and received copious amounts of affection.
Karl continued weaving coal shades into miniature bundles as he replied, "I was gonna call you something."
The bed trembled a bit as Sapnap shifted, wiping his tears away, tugging his locks away from Karl's fleet and dexterous fingers, and dragged himself from the cave within his skull, where bats maliciously and cobwebs caught his ankles . He sat up, thighs still on either side of Karl's waist and weight still resting on that boy's pelvis.
Karl was still awed at how heavy a human body was; it wasn't even about it being Sapnap, who was nowhere as near lithe as Karl was. He was sturdier, with fat and muscle wrapped around his thighs and hips, pectorals the closest to defined that Karl had seen on someone that wasn't a football player. No, it was just that humans were fucking heavy. Though, honestly, Karl still enjoyed the attention and contact with and from his lover, his boy. Lover boy.
"We don't have pet names, do we?" Sapnap stretched his back and yawned. Karl watched that boy, three days after they pelted from bitching parents. What were they even meant to do on a Tuesday?
None of it mattered, not as Sapnap's white-based, black-decorated hoodie lifted and flaunted his midriff, a delicate sagittal hair tracing a path from his navel to his sweatpants. Karl, back to comfortable with sharing breathing space and a bed with Sapnap, let his eyes devour that line's entirety till they were satisfied. It took a bit, but Sapnap didn't shy away from the glaze of attention spread thick across his skin, sticky like syrup and just as languidly moving. It may or may not have made drool build in his mouth.
In response to Sapnap's rhetorical question, Karl nodded distractedly. He slid his gaze up as Sapnap's spine returned to the slight slouch, the recognizable, natural curve of a teenage boy.
The shorter of the couple looked at the white sheets on the bed, looking much cleaner than they probably were. He brushed his knuckles against them, that taste of leisure on his tongue that only came from garlicky, pepper-fueled flavors dying with time and mint toothpaste fading steadily. It wasn't a bad taste. It was just normal, a state of being, like these two boys in a motel room, miles from their homes as they fed off the infatuation of the other.
"I could call you baby, baby." Sapnap's eyes flicked and met Karl's, the seed of a smile buried beneath the surface.
Karl saw it, too, and rushed to put it on the window sill and get it sunlight. "Straightest nickname in the book, Sapnap."
"Babe." Sapnap's mouth twitched again.
Karl stuck his tongue out and faked a gag. "Ew, that's the name of the pig."
The dam finally broke, and Sapnap was smiling until the corners of his eyes bunched gleefully. "Kitten-puppy-cat." He leaned forward, palms on either side of Karl's head as he said the last idea.
"That one." Karl returned the joy from below Sapnap, and they both liked how the other looked in that position. Something was new there; something was especially fetching and lovely about seeing the other, but also with Sapnap pinning Karl down. They both cast the thought away, at least for the moment.
"Seriously?" Disbelief painted Sapnap's expression before it all was let down.
"No."
Sapnap snorted, rubbing one eye with the heel of his palm as Karl draped his forearm across his face. The ceiling fan whirred, and the bed creaked, and their bones ached.
"I was gonna call you lover boy." Karl decided to speak his mind, pulling his arm from his eyes to watch Sapnap for a reaction. It was sweet with sugar, the fake kind dumped into lollipops and toffee in copious amounts. It was the kind that made Karl's body twitch with lightheaded, dizzy euphoria as he giggled uncontrollably. His lips pressed together, and his eyelids squinted for a second before he melted. Sapnap's mouth shaped the nickname, saccharine coating his throat as he replied.
"Then I'm your lover boy," Sapnap resolved, tilting the bow of his lips towards the ceiling, sky, and atmosphere. His affection grew towards Venus and sprouted towards the sun, brushed elbows with Jupiter and waved at Pluto. Karl gushed, gazing at Sapnap towering from where he perched on Karl's hips. Sapnap glanced to his right, harsh jawline and the column of his throat carved from a fine slate facing the boy below. He needed a halo, some golden adornments, Karl decided. Only that could suit him right; only those could present him like the king, well, lover boy, he was.
Karl's lover boy.
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ
Sapnap dived into the pool like slipping beneath chlorinated water was his gift, similar to how some people can speak cryptic words to souls or bake a cake in three minutes under the recommended time. He was graceful, making his broad shoulders and stocky waist look lissome as he plunged into the unnaturally blue water that was close but not quite the shade of his irises. He giggled, which is how he'd been since he and Karl untangled their limbs, deciding on not deciding an affectionate nickname for Karl. They also decided on not deciding when they'd go back to Rothels, if ever. Instead, they'd pulled their swimsuits from their bags and decided on a pool day.
There was the part where Sapnap said they could just turn their backs to one another as they changed.
"I won't look, I promise."
"Pinky promise?"
"I'm not pinky promising, Karl-"
"Pinky promise."
"Fine."
There was the part where Sapnap broke the vow.
He didn't mean to, not really, but when his pupils skimmed Karl's rippling and supple back, he didn't chastise them. Muscle strangled Karl's ribs, twitching and rolling in their regular everyday strength as a swim shirt was pulled on. It draped from narrow shoulders, obeyed gravity and flowed to his waist like a waterfall surrounding in gaggles of moss.
Sapnap decided that it wasn't his fault for falling into infatuation with a boy as gorgeous as that one. It caught him like a fly in a web, not that he minded one bit. The sticky strands must've had some really pleasurable drugs, because he didn't want to go anywhere.
Now, Sapnap floated to the surface of the motel pool, sun beating down on them with ravenous rays. Lack of sunscreen probably was a bad idea, SPF-0 layered on their skin as water carved little isles and rivers across Sapnap's bare chest. His swim shorts were the same color as his hair.
The shorter of the two boys tipped his head back, cognizant of the chlorine-ridden water, so it didn't make the membrane on his eyes burn unintentionally. Karl gazed back at him, smiling happily as he sat on the edge of the pool. He swirled his feet around, anything below his mid-calf dunked in the liquid as his Band-Aids still sparked like flames under sunlight.
"Are you getting in?" Sapnap moved from floating to treading water, the two boys on the deeper end of the pool. Honestly, what was going through the motel's mind when they allowed the couple to check a room without asking for an I.D. was unknown to either of the boys. Letting them swim in a pool that looked a perfect balance between neglected and doted on, especially on the end that went so far that Sapnap could only touch the bottom when he attempted with all his might, was just the cherry on top of the negligent company sundae. Again, it's not like the two fugitives were complaining, though. This was easier than whipping out fake identification and making up some story they'd both be required to remember.
Karl shook his head in response to Sapnap, watching small waves and tremors flood and flow around the boy.
"Please?" Sapnap begged, water twirling around his arms and legs deliciously nice as he treaded the water steadily. Karl's lips pushed together like he was thinking about it before it dissolved into another rejection, cinnamon hair kicking up from the shake of his head. "Fine, I'll just make you."
All of Karl's muscles tensed; his back straightened. "No!"
"Yes!" Sapnap grinned, swimming the space between the two of them so he was clinging to the rough concrete of the pool wall. His knees were rubbed raw from the rugged surface as the front of his body went flush to it inadvertently, unseen currents guiding him any way they pleased.
"No, Sapnap." Karl lifted one foot and splashed water across the boy's face, rivulets streaming from bundles of damp hair into the pool and drops slithering down his chin, jaw, and neck to build in the hollows above his clavicle. His necklace, the one with the shiny, no-key-to-rupture-it padlock gleamed and glowed, even with small ponds accumulating in its near vicinity.
"Yes, Sapnap," the shorter boy mimicked, wrapping an unforgiving grip around Karl's ankle so he couldn't kick and disturb the water again. Karl struggled against it, flexing his calves' muscles before Sapnap darted up.
It was like Sapnap was floating, feathered wings sprouting from his shoulder blades or magnificent mermaid tail propelling him up, as both hands went to either side of where Karl was sitting. Callouses got worse from the uneven, scratchy material of the poolside. Their knees jangled against one another, a windchime if things were a bit different, and Sapnap's head was tilted up to gaze daringly at Karl's stormy eyes.
Karl wanted to kiss that boy or wrap him up in acrylics or plaster to keep his image immaculately preserved. This was what living was, with Rothels dozens of miles and a ferry ride away, with Sapnap's lips close, with chlorine desperately clamping its jaws down in the summer air. The fangs tasted and felt so good, though, more a dull gnaw than anything else.
There was water moving and splashing, clouds flawlessly white and puffy like unflavored cotton candy, everything felt like it could be okay, amazing, incredible, in time. It wouldn't happen now, fuck no, but it could. Someday, Karl would be wrapped up in Sapnap in a type of domestic bliss and love, hearts warm and desires fulfilled, rings on their fingers and satisfaction threaded in every cell of their bodies.
Before Karl could continue to get lost in his mind, Sapnap shifted slightly. Karl idly wondered what was happening before he was dragged into the pool, strong hands on each of his forearms, nestled just under his elbows. He gasped for oxygen, chlorine accidentally breaching his tonsils and flooding his stomach, lungs, and windpipe.
The boy shattered the surface of the pool quicker than Sapnap thought was possible, actions swift and reactions rapid. Meanwhile, Sapnap stayed underwater, eyes open as he gazed at the world doused in eerie but calming blue. Karl's skin on his arms and legs— where it wasn't patched over in vibrant Band-Aids— looked waxy and glorious, like if Sapnap touched it, it would become impure. He didn't listen to such ludicrous things.
Sapnap snatched Karl's wrist up again and tugged him beneath the surface like a rowboat requiring extra assistance, rope knot typed around Sapnap so Karl wouldn't drift away. The taller of the two obeyed, pores becoming soused as he held his breath, cheeks puffing out like a greedy chipmunk. Sapnap giggled to himself, watching the boy who convinced him to snip-snap-snop all the veins and arteries from his heart to give it away with some candy-coated scissors.
No regrets, never.
Karl smiled, slowly exhaling the breath stored in the crevices of his mouth, bubbles flying from his nose and tickling the water they flowed through. He waved slowly from the water chaining his speed into bondage, iron pinning his wrists with malicious but ignorable intent to keep him reduced to a tempo slower than a tortoise. Sapnap returned it, two fingers perked and the rest folded, a lazy salute.
Yeah, Karl was pretty sure things would end up alright.
When they resurfaced, one sputtering and the other breathing like he was made to inhale particles made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen, Karl told that boy so. Sapnap gazed at him, treading water steadily before parting his slicked-up lips. "I think they're alright right now."
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ
"I'm hungry."
Karl snorted and looked up from his phone, Sapnap standing under the transom of the doorway to their bedroom. He leaned against it with his shoulder, a content grin curling his lips in a way that made up for his completely monochromatic outfit's lack of color. The black tank-cut shirt Sapnap knew damn well Karl loved was snug to his torso, riding up a bit so the button and fly of his equally dark jeans was visible. Denim looked stark and fine against his figure, the tears that crawled up his leg to nestle at his thigh tempting as hell.
"You're always hungry, Sapnap," Karl replied to the boy. He stood up nonetheless and fixed the collar of his shirt, already preparing to go somewhere.
"Yeah, but I want actual food this time."
"How daring of you."
"Come on, Jacobs. I think I saw a diner on the way from the ferry."
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ
Sand was getting fucking everywhere, Sapnap cringing for a millisecond as he sat beside Karl on a beach. It was one of the coasts with more miniscule pebbles and silt than boulders or rocks, recommended by the waitress in the diner they spent nearly two hours in. Karl struck a chord with her, seemingly gushing whenever he made her giggle with that laugh like glass.
The two boys sat on the same booth seat, elbows knocking harmoniously and hips rubbing when one of them moved.
They were so obviously more than friends, especially as Karl scooped a glob of thick whipped cream from the pancakes he got for lunch and skidded it off on Sapnap's nose.
They were so obviously lovers, especially as Sapnap kissed the boy once the whipped cream had been licked off fingertips, doing it so carnivorously that Karl had to murmur a warning of publicity to stop their recklessness.
The waitress seemed oblivious, looking under the age of 25 and teasing, flirting, batting eyelashes at the cinnamon-haired boy that was so blatantly Sapnap's. He'd taken a rapid grip on Karl's inner thigh, perfectly on the slope of where it was directly wired to the primitive parts of his brain, as he replied to the girl's decidedly last question. Karl sat there, eyes fluttering wide, hips leaning into the contact Sapnap's hand gave, lips parted as he made the hormones in his blood, ecstasy and anticipation a better drug than cocaine, calm forcefully.
"Yeah," Karl had answered lamely. His breathing went uneven from Sapnap digging his thumb into plush flesh, claiming him with a ferocious mark that would bloom by midnight. Before anything more could occur— Karl intrigued but not feeling impulsive enough to find out how far Sapnap might just go in that red, vinyl booth in a 1950's-styled, milkshake-spinning diner— Karl spoke again: "Can we have the check, please?"
Now, Sapnap was kissing Karl on the beach, which only looked abandoned. Sapnap had the sneaking belief that the waitress recommended the spot as a location to meet Karl, secluded and sandy. Salt flew in the air from the ocean's waves, which lapped and laved rather than crashed and roared.
The parking lot they tied the rein of a mechanical horse down in was empty, and as they drove, there were no cars or motorcycles, passerby or cyclists, for at least a couple miles.
Maybe it was from being on what was practically the other side of Gullston's county island, but it was desolate enough for the brush of bushes to sound like a loud cacophony. It was empty enough for them not to stop.
The sun battered the skin of Karl's back, beating down on the spine and ribs that were smooth and threaded in silk. It drove Sapnap's mind to material for wet dreams.
Sapnap could picture it, how if they didn't act on the desperation and heat ebbing from one body to the other, he'd wake up groaning in the middle of the night. His boxers would be grossly sticky against him, clinging and hitching against his groin as he writhed, Karl in the same bed and so easy to touch and take, tempting from hair the color of oak to thighs that Sapnap's sure could be featured in one of his magazines. Except Karl wouldn't be, not under Sapnap's gaze, because that boy was his, not to be catered to random audiences to awe and gape. Only Sapnap could ogle pristine sculpture and slide his gaze over Karl's body.
"Who made you so pretty?" Sapnap breathed once his mouth had pulled away from being an electric conductor with Karl's. The boy's cheeks were scarlet above him, the ridge of his zygomatic bone framed in an azure blue sky. Sapnap's hands were splayed, one in hazel hair and the other in the vicinity of Karl's waist, maybe dipping lower, maybe gripping his ass. It wasn't as if there was anyone to report what was happening, and neither Sapnap or Karl could define where their bodies ended and the other's began. Sapnap was ensnared, and Karl was entangled.
"Think of how pretty we are together, then," Karl replied. He traced his fingertips over Sapnap's clavicle and pectorals over his fitted shirt. Karl's teeth ached a bit, his jaw clenching in random spasms, tongue running against his lips and shoving itself against his inner cheek. Before Sapnap could reply with another comment sopping with corny love, Karl blurted, "Did you know the inside of your cheek is the same material as a vagina?"
Sapnap snorted and slipped his hands both to Karl's hair, raking and carding it absentmindedly as his bones and nerves complained. They wanted euphoria, saccharine sugar ground up and dusted, tasted and felt against every sensitive dip, valley, canyon of his body like cocaine, not this. Either way, though, Sapnap still couldn't find it in himself to mock Karl. It wasn't his fault that random thoughts graced that boy's brain often, nor that he said them aloud. Annoyance absent with only the slightest bit of sexual frustration that he didn't let lift to the surface, Sapnap answered: "No."
"I just saw you touch it with your tongue," Karl teased, thighs still straddled on Sapnap's waist. Sand stuck to his knees and rubbed against Sapnap's black jeans. "Dirty bastard."
"Hey, at least I'm not the one who knew that fact," Sapnap retorted as he slid his tastebuds against his inner cheek again, wondering slightly if the velvet would feel different from Caroline's cunt to Karl's-
"Are you okay?"
"I almost just came, Karl, holy shit."
"In your pants?" Karl cringed.
"Wasn't a choice."
Karl laughed but stood, watching Sapnap's fingers quiver pathetically. He tried to brush silt off his skin, but gave up rapidly and traded it for gazing at Sapnap, who looked pained but blissed out of his mind, back arched so his head tipped back to balance on the crown. The waist Karl had been settled on bucked up, Sapnap breathing hard and ragged, uneven and guttural, as he went to palm himself. Before Karl knew what he was doing, he dove back down and clasped Sapnap's wrist in his hand.
"I want to do it," Karl exhaled, Sapnap's eyes flicking to him full of desire and want. The idea of Karl doing it, stroking him to climax as they kissed ravenously made a lock over his entire body come and go. It sounded too good for a mortal, even if they'd done it once before. He'd live forever if Karl did such a thing again, immortal only for and from sex with a boy named Karl Jacobs.
Sapnap shifted to sit up on his elbows, watching Karl against the, quite frankly, fantastical landscape behind and surrounding them. Sand filled with random people's memories, the sea from some current in the middle of nowhere, blue sky that shrouded stars in how it was daytime, white clouds crafted with water particles from heavenly and pure sources. When Sapnap muttered back to Karl, chin barely moving as he told that boy to step up to the plate, Karl shook his head.
"You can wait." Karl lifted to his feet again. He glanced down at Sapnap, splayed and tortured in the sand of that empty beach, and took up a grin that was just devilish enough to look sadistic. It slipped away in an undertow quickly, though, replaced by the same amount of desire and reluctance spun in Sapnap's expression. "I'm not blowing you on a public beach."
Sapnap's eyes went wide, and he scrambled to stand haphazardly. Sand stuck to the shoulders that were bare from the cut of his shirt, sweat letting it cling. Karl leaned forward and pressed his presence towards the inky-haired boy. In reply, Sapnap hummed out a moan, rumbling and simmering deep in his throat, the cavern right beneath his adam's apple, the one that bobbed like a buoy in a salty Caribbean Sea. He floated like one, too, as Karl brushed his thumb over the bulge of his jeans, tracing the zipper there with intent that made Sapnap growl low. "You said you weren't going to do it here, Karl."
"I'm not," Karl responded, pulling away like that was his cue.
A seagull called.
"Can we go now, lover boy?"
Exit stage right.