meet me at twilight

xiii

Karl couldn't do it. Goddammit, Karl couldn't do it. There was this small flicker that kept him back, tugging at his will and promising his future because he wanted another night like the time he met Sapnap. Karl wanted the days where he feels like he's alive, huddled against Sapnap and snapping bubblegum and sipping whiskey and losing all the worries he's ever had. Things were perfect that way; it wasn't his fault perfection never lasts.

Karl stared at the ground, watching flowers and small twists of graceful weeds wave against the wind. Lynching himself meant he'd never reach the ground, forever flying from the branch without wings. Hanging, hanging, brutally hanging; Karl thought that's what he always wanted. He'd flaunted and flirted with death, nothing but thick twine and will in his clutches.

Death left hickeys, love marks across his skin in the form of bruises left by Rhett, cuts left from the times Karl shouldn't have been left alone with a razer, it honestly felt like an equally inescapable relationship as Rhett had been. Karl punched Rhett; there was just no way to strike out against death except to put the killer down-drop the cyanide, run from the leopard, extinguish the fire, so Karl did. Karl, with shaking hands and morals that hurt to think about, untied his noose with controlled motions, untwisted it from the tree bark, and chucked the rope like he once threw smooth gray stones. Sapnap didn't rise from the flowers this time, though, making Karl's heart tear itself to shreds.

<><><>

Sapnap was still shattered even once he stood, his nerves all glitching and emotions running haywire. It was a comforting type of chaos, it felt like the weirdest sense of euphoric to float and question whether the universe you lived in was real. Breaking through your senses to ones you didn't know you had, letting your intellect fuck itself while feeling took over everything. Pupils dilated, lips idle, was this supposed to be heaven or hell?

The boy stood, jaw set and neurons taking pleasure in painting themselves in vibrant prisms. This was better than being drunk, this was worse than being happy. This was some sort of middle ground. Is this what happened when a person downed all their medication, cut open all their blood vessels, cocked a gleaming gun? Sapnap wandered to the foot of the couch and looked at the puddle of broken glass on the ground.

Dream and George were nothing but bastards, Sapnap decided right then and there. They were sadistic, manipulative villains that didn't deserve any sympathy, in fact, they deserved the opposite. Dream and George deserved pain, burning, torment, agony, and every little hue in between. Calloused hands moving without a conscious thought, Sapnap scooped glass fragments into his palms.

Impulsive and unthinking, Sapnap padded his way down the hallway, his pride-colored Vans tapping against the floor. With one more lightning spark of complete and utter malice, Sapnap threw and spread all those tiny, transparent daggers all over the sheets. Hopefully, his boyfriends slept there that night and the night after that and the night after that. Sapnap hoped Dream's evergreen eyes bled to the point of no return, willed for George's porcelain skin to lose its brilliance and become nothing but infected, disgusting scars.

With his little mission done, Sapnap blinked and felt his thoughts come back. His desires still sat there, hoping his boyfriends would tear just like he ripped up that photograph. After that, his feet planted in the apartment he'd learned to hate, Sapnap felt an even stronger desire to sprint to Karl. He'd shoved him away, not to hurt him but to protect him. Sapnap knew something like this was going to happen, where he drowned in colors and floated in emotion. He secured Karl away, and now he felt okay enough to be around that sugary boy. Sapnap's tastebuds ached for honey but he told himself he'd only hurt the boy more.

<><><>

Karl willed himself to do it so many times over, to drop to the ground and grab his safety blanket of tan twine. He could hang here until his body decayed and that would be swell. Karl knew he would've done it if it weren't for Sapnap, the boy with an incisive jaw, crystal and cryptic eyes, the one who'd let Karl warp their heaven as indigo twisted and twirled across their skin. Karl would've done it if he wasn't so dedicated and devoted to feeling the complete, utter silence within his mind when Sapnap's hands cupped his face. He wanted calloused palms pressed against his cheeks, grounding him to the point where Rhett didn't exist, where his only worries were what would happen to the glob of bubblegum in his mouth once Sapnap kissed him.