slow burn; sapnap

four

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@ sapnap
wowww
harsh

@ augusttweets
oh man i meant to put jk**
my bad

@ sapnap
oh well if thats the case no problem

@ augusttweets
how are you doing?

@ sapnap
has it been so long we have to ask cliches:/

@ augusttweets
maybe but i also do genuinely wanna know how you are

@ sapnap
im okay. things have been pretty good but theres been a lot of stress with that
how are you?
its been a while

@ augusttweets
im okay, too. things have just been weird content wise
ive kind of hit a creativity block
its been too long (deleted)
i've missed you (deleted)
im sorry (deleted)

@ sapnap
would you maybe wanna call later? we could catch up?
its okay if not

@ augusttweets
i would like that

august held her phone against her chest, trying to calm herself down from the exchange. aside from corpse's stream, it had been eight long months since she had spoken to sapnap.

eight months since she and him went back and forth with banter.

eight months since since she listened to him sing along to the music he would play when they sat on call.

eight months since she would ramble about her day and he threw in his active-listening-habits of inserting 'yeah' and 'uh huh' into the conversation, really just wanting her to know she had his attention.

however, that was eight months ago.

what would be different now? would it be okay for her to let her guard down? would a comforting lingering silence even survive the atmosphere now?

after just a few moments of too many thoughts, august's attention was grabbed by her phone ringing. her heart sank, remembering that his number no longer had a home in her contacts.

(xxx) - xxx - xxxx
accept | decline

"sapnap?" august answered with her voice betraying her and slightly breaking.

"aw, come on august. you know i'm not sapnap to you." the warm voice felt like it was covering her.

"hi nick."

"hi," she could practically see his smile through his tone. "so, um, what's been going on with you?"

"that's not super easy to answer. i guess not a lot has been going on with me. like i said on twitter, creativity block has been kicking my butt. so i have been kind of lacking in the content creating department. corpse thinks i need to take a break to help, but i really don't know."

"oh. i'm sorry august. i know that's got to frustrate you." and he really did know. he knew what frustrated her and what comforted her.

"enough about me. how have you been? what's been going on in nick's life?"

august laid back and listened as nick told her about what his life was looking like. he told her about how he finally moved in with dream, just like he always talked about wanting to do. he told her about all of the exciting merch he was getting ready to release. and maybe the most heartbreaking part, he told her about how happy he has been.

"can i ask you something?" nick said, ten minutes into their conversation. he was hoping he had the courage to ask.

"mhm." she said quietly.

"why now? i mean, like why did you follow me back now? i'm sorry that sounds rude, doesn't it? i didn't mean for it to."

unaware of the other, they both paralleled each other in their separate rooms. both august and nick were laying on their back on their beds, with their phone set to speaker laying beside them.

"well, when we did that stream with corpse, i don't know- it was weird. not weird, but different. it was nice talking with you and for the first time in a while i didn't hate your existence." she awkwardly giggled but he matched it with a stronger laugh.

"glad to hear you don't hate me anymore," he said through his chuckle that made her heart melt. "so would it be too lame to ask if we can be friends again?"

"yes, we can be friends, you nerd."

while she said this teasing him, she quickly tried to ignore that it hurt her to think they were only friends. their relationship had regressed so far and it felt like she was now back at stage one after she worked so hard on building them up.

"sweet," he quietly added. "it's getting kind of late here. i think i'm gonna head to bed."

"oh okay," she tried to hide the slight disappointment. "i will talk to you soon then?"

"of course. goodnight augy."

"goodnight nick."

august laid down. at first, she was feeling content with the achievement of welcoming nick back into her life, but then her mind flooded with the memories of their last argument.

8 months ago

"you're crazy!"

"i'm crazy? seriously? i'm the crazy one? nick you can't even admit to your own best friends that you have feelings for me, much less that we have something going on. how am i supposed to trust that?"

"well how am i supposed to trust you? i don't even know you! i just know 'august'. you only show me what the internet gets to see. i don't even know your name or what you look like so how am i supposed to have any feelings for you?" the tension shifted from one of anger to one of hurt.

"so you don't have feelings for me?" august quietly asked.

"i want to. i want to so badly. but how can i? you won't let me in augy." nick said sadly.

"don't call me that. in fact, i really don't want to hear from you again." august had made up her mind.

"no, please don't do that. we don't have to do that. let's just talk about this and-"

"no. why waste both of our time, right? just go ahead and forget about me."

"august-" she was sure he had more to say, but she hung up before he had the chance to get his thoughts across to her.

august had never wept more in her life than she did at that moment.