In the City that Never Sleeps

IN THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEP
Karl x Sapnap

They met on the street.

Karl remembered it like it was yesterday. Was it yesterday? In all honesty, he could never remember—not even if he tried. Life had become a mess of dark skies and fast cars, a mess of scarred hands caught on handlebars and helmetless riding. (How else was he supposed to feel the wind in his hair when he went 120 in a 50?)

He never slept, either. Sleep had become a concept lost on the world the moment it all turned to pulsing neon, the moment it all became high tech and fast life. Which was, perhaps, some time before Karl had ever been alive. He wasn't sure, and he couldn't remember what they'd taught him in school.

In all honesty, Karl's memory had gotten a little faulty after he took a nasty spill off his motorcycle when he was fifteen. (He wasn't even supposed to have a motorcycle when he was fifteen, but IDs had somehow gotten easier to fake and Karl was known for being tricky).

So he was a little bit messed up. A little bit not-all-there. He may have forgotten the origin of the scar on the back of his hand, but all the important parts remained. The parts that knew how to work a purple chrome motorcycle, the parts that could drive his matching violet supercar. The parts that could fall in line with cute boys on orange bikes on the road beneath neon lights and dare them to race.

Karl liked dares. He liked being a little bit stupid and a little bit impulsive, liked quick decisions about who was the cutest guy he'd seen that night and seeing how well he could bat his pretty eyelashes. (The answer was well, he'd learned from the best).

It was beneath the wash of a red light—a light not bright enough or close enough to spill out onto the street. But there was enough messy color flowing out from the walls of the buildings that swallowed them whole, enough light from the street lights that served to illuminate a city that was known for eternal darkness and starless skies.

Karl had looked to his side at the boy he'd pulled up next to, planted a foot on the ground to stabilize himself and the bike he straddled. They locked eyes across the lane, sat a little too close together with a mutual lack of helmets. It drew Karl just a touch closer to the stranger in the figurative sense, like an agreement that went unknown between themselves.

Maybe he was a little bit stupid, like Karl. A little bit impulsive and a little bit too driven by cute boys on hot motorcycles.

"Wanna race?"

Karl had to yell over the surrounding noise of engines, the echo of high-speed city life and buildings that stretched up into the sky. Dull green eyes flashed in something colored with flame, an electrifying catch that Karl knew better in his own eyes—eyes he'd stained purple in difference to the orange he was locked in with now.

"Tell me your name first."

Karl laughed, and he wondered if the boy could hear it. Ring-clad hands twisted against handlebars, eyes flicked forward to catch sight of a still-red light. It almost felt like time had stopped, and maybe it was just for them. (It felt like that a lot for Karl, both through violet haze and red adrenaline).

He gave the name he'd gotten tattooed on his middle finger. "K."

"K?" An incredulous raise of thick eyebrows, a responding nod from the K in question. "Sapnap."

"Well, Sapnap," Karl prompted, "let's race."

As if on cue, the light turned green. And without checking for stray cars or cyclists, without checking for any kind of obstruction at all, Karl took off down the brightly lit street.