Gemma laughs loudly in the other room with Eva. I bury my head deeper in to hands before covering my ears. I want so hard to shut them out of my brain and focus on this.
Someone offered me a coding job to update their website. Bad news is I procrastinated it too much, so now I'm on a time limit. Loud neighbors aren't helpful when there's a time crunch.
I can hear Gemma open her bedroom door and walk to the kitchen. The fridge opens and shuts. The thin walls of the apartment allow me to hear even more of their conversations than I could before.
I sigh, picking up my phone. Luckily, Clay answers on the third ring.
"Hey, what's up?"
"Hey, I was just wondering if you were doing anything?" I ask as innocently as possible.
"Oh, I'm working on some merch stuff and have some meetings with some people," he says, "Really boring stuff."
I smile. "Well I have to code some boring stuff," I begin, "Would you maybe want to hang out to get our work done?"
Now I can hear the smile in his voice. "That sounds great. Can you come over here?"
Wow I didn't even have to ask. "Yeah, sure."
I get to his house about twenty minutes later. I found a shorter route to their house, so I can use less gas going there and back. That was one of the best days of my life, which is kind of a sad adult thing to be excited about.
Clay's the one who opens the door when I knock. "Hey."
I follow him back towards the darker hallway. I pause before I step forward.
He turns around. "What are you doing?"
"I've never been down here," I say, "I've always gone to Nick's room."
Clay rolls his eyes. "Well he's asleep right now, so I have no idea what to tell you."
I look past his shoulder at the four doors. There are three on the right side and one on the left. None that I've been in.
"Come on," Clay says, "You're being dramatic."
I take one dramatic step into the hallway, just to go with his words. I stop at the first door on my left. "What's this?"
He slumps his shoulders, already regretting inviting me over. He opens the door slowly, and I laugh.
"Why is this room completely empty?" I ask.
"What? It's not empty." Clay points to a singular swivel chair in the middle of the room. It's flipped onto its side.
"You're calling that furnished?" I raise my brow.
"I'm not saying it's empty."
I shake my head with a small smile before walking to the next door. He sighs and opens it ajar. "Bathroom."
I nod once. "Cool."
He moves with me to the third door on the right. "This is my room."
I motion my head towards the final door which is on the left. "This where you hide all the goods?" I joke.
"What do you mean by goods?" he laughs.
I think for a moment. "Your YouTube plaques, money, all the freaking merch you guys seemed to be selling."
He chuckles. "You know, you're kind of close."
He opens the door, and my jaw drops. It's the first room I actually step into. All around me is green Dream related things, most I assume are fan-made.
I turn towards him. "How obsessed with yourself are you?" I ask.
He laughs. "What? I am not obsessed."
"Um." I motion to the roomed filled with him. "You might be."
He doesn't answer. He just watches as I admire the art decorating the shelves. I point to one and nod my head in approval, then I do so again to another.
When I'm done, I sigh loudly. "You know Dream," I say, "It's okay to love yourself, but there is a fine line between being an ego-maniac."
He rolls his eyes. "That's it. I'm kicking you out."
I point to myself. "Who? Me? You wouldn't dare."
"Let's just start working." He laughs.
I follow him into his room, another place I've never been. It looks like your average room, except for the very expensive PC sitting on a desk. I walk over and drag a finger delicately across the keys. "Nice."
He chuckles. "Compared to yours from the mesozoic age? I bet is it."
I shake my head. "Don't be mean."
I take my backpack off my shoulders and look around for a place to sit. Clay watches me search the room and laughs.
"I'm going to be at my PC for most of the day, so you can sit on either my bed or the bean bag-" he stops when he looks at a pile of clothes on the floor.
The pile of clothes that is so large, I worry it would swallow me whole.
I point to the heap. "Is there a bean bag chair somewhere under there?"
Clay chooses to ignore my question. "Okay, restart." He laughs nervously. "I'm going to be sitting at my desk, so you can sit on my bed."
I nod once before very carefully setting my bag on the bed. I take out my laptop, and I hear Clay gasp loudly.
Turning to see what in the world happened, I ask, "What's wrong?"
"Your computer isn't from the Jurarstic period." He points at the laptop in my hand.
"I thought it was the mesozoic era?" I raise my brows at his misstep.
"Well technically the Jurastic period is a section of the mesozoic era," Clay states matter of fact. "So suck it, y/n."
I laugh loudly. "Did you just tell me to suck it over dinosaur facts?"
He nods proudly. "Yeah, I did. Boom. Roasted."
I laugh harder. "God, this is awful."
Eventually we calm down a bit and get to work. He sits at his desk writing emails for a bit before getting on a call. I have my headphones in as I continue coding. We talk from time to time about whatever we're doing, but other than that we're pretty quiet.
At one point, I stop and look around his room. His walls are a medium-gray color and his sheets are a dark green. It's a very calming color mixture..
I glance at Clay. He's talking quietly to his PC, careful not to disrupt me. I'm pretty sure he's just talking to his friends now though since he seemed to be almost done about an hour ago.
It's a very comforting atmosphere actually. We're both doing our own things just like how Nick and I did. I perk up for a second, actually wondering where Nick is.
"Is that Sapnap?" I ask Clay, unsure who he's talking to.
He turns around and lifts his headphones from his ears. "What?"
"Is that Sapnap?" I repeat.
He shakes his head slowly. "It's George."
"Darn." I sigh. "Is Sapnap awake?"
Clay chuckles. "I don't think so. He would've joined us if he did."
"Poo."
Clay puts his headphones back on for a second. "George says you should wake him up."
I shake my head. "Yeah, no I'm not doing that."
"Why not?" Clay laughs.
"He seems like he'd be mad at me."
Clay listens to his headphones again. "George agrees."
I laugh, facing my computer again. "Glad he and I agree on something."
He chuckles and goes back to his call.
Eventually Clay turns back around to face me. "George had to go to sleep."
"Really? It's only like five in the morning there" I say as I shut my laptop.
"I know right." He shakes his head jokingly, standing up from the chair and walking towards me. "He's such a loser."
Clay completely flops onto the bed. I have to move my feet at the last minute so he doesn't crush them. He turns his head to look at me. "Do you think Sapnap is still asleep?" he asks.
I shrug. "You're the childhood best friend or whatever." I move my laptop off my lap and onto Clay's nightstand, hoping it doesn't break.
As if on cue, we hear someone in the kitchen. Clay's smile grows before nodding his head towards his door.
We stand up and walk ever so carefully down the hall. We can hear Sapnap yawn obnoxiously loud from around the corner, unknowing that we're here. He closes the door to what sounds like a fridge.
Dream turns towards me and puts three fingers up to count down. He removes one to make it two, and he's about to say go when Nick begins to sing under his breath.
"II'mm going to swing from the chandelier!"
Dream covers his mouth to hold in his laughter. We stay there for a second to listen for more.
"From the chandelier!"
Dream turns towards my and brings a single finger to his lips, saying to stay quiet.
We hear some sort of shuffling that I believe might be dancing. "One, two, three.. One, two, three DRINK!"
Dream kneels over with laughter. I pray he holds the wheeze in because I want to get to at least the second chorus.
"One, two, three.. One, two, three DRINK!"
Something in the way that Sapnap said the word drink causes Dream to let out a very loud wheeze like a deflating bike tire. The singing instantly stops and Sapnap appears from around the corner.
"What are you guys doing?" he asks, sounding like he was guilty of something.
"Nothing, just..." I attempt, but I can't stop looking at Dream who is practically fallen to the ground. I look at Nick and give him an awkward thumbs up. "Great performance, man."
This only makes Dream laugh even more. I try to casually step over him and continue a conversation. I gesture to the food laid out on the counter.
"Cereal for dinner? Nice choice." I nod once.
Sapnap decides to just go with my antics. "Want some?"
I shrug. "Why not?"
He grabs another bowl for me and calls over his shoulder, "Want one Dream?"
We hear a rough version of a yes in betweens breaths.
I help Nick make the cereal even though it's not really hard. Clay partially recovers enough to walk over to us.
I remember where their cups are and reach towards the cabinet to grab some. I smile at Sapnap for a moment, and I'm pretty sure we both know what I'm going to say.
"Hey Clay," I look behind me, "Do you want a drink?"
He laughs so hard he drops his bowl.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
for some reason i sing chandelier whenever i'm searching my cabinets for food.. does anyone else have a food-searching song or is that just me?
also thank you guys so much for 10k!
have an amazing day :))