𝐂𝐄𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒; sapnap ✓

𝐈𝐗.

CHAPTER NINE.
"irl."

          and call he did. sapnap called liv within a matter of minutes. when a random number called her, she worried it wasn't him. but she never received spam calls anymore so she knew it had to be him. she answered.

          "hey, sap?" she asked, wanting to make sure it was the man she had been stressing over for the past twenty four hours.

          "hey, liv." his familiar voice rang through, clear as day. no doubt about it, this was sapnap.

          "hey." she wasn't sure of what else to say. she had been the one to initiate the call and now she couldn't even form a coherent thought to say to him.

          "hey," he chuckled. "so did you want to talk? or did you just want to hear my voice? i mean, i can't really blame you if that's why you wanted to call."

"oh, get over yourself," she laughed. their banter almost felt normal for a moment, but she could still sense the tension through the phone call. "umm, i just wanted to talk to you about yesterday."

"liv, i told you it's fine." he let out a sigh. he didn't want to talk about it just as much as she didn't want to talk about it, but she needed to know why he was so upset.

"well, obviously it's not, sap. you read me those discord messages and tell me everything is fine," she glanced at the computer screen in front of her.

"ok, so, i was a little disappointed when you didn't want to meet up. is that a crime?"

          "no, it's not! i just wanted to understand where you were coming from," she started. "i just didn't want this to mess up our friendship."

          "our friendship, yeah." this confused her but she looked past it. "i just... i just really wanted to meet you, liv. that's all. you know, we've gotten kinda close and i thought it would be really fun. and if it didn't go well with the fans, dream and george are meeting in like a week anyways. so everyone would move past being negative and focus on that," he was talking so fast she could barely understand him.

          "i get that, sap. i really do. i appreciate you thinking about plans in case it doesn't go over well. and i really, really want to meet you too. but i don't want to rush it, you know?" she rubbed her eyes, her head aching from trying to articulate her thoughts. "it's just that you're only faceless once. once i put my face out there, i can't go back. and i don't know if i'm ready for that. and we can't really make any special content for the meetup if i haven't revealed my face."

          "why don't you want to face reveal?" there was no hesitation to ask. he wanted to know the answer, she just wasn't sure if she wanted to let him in.

          "it's complicated," she massaged her temples, trying to relieve her headache.

          "i've got all the time in the world for you, liv. if you'll talk, i'll listen."

          that was all the reassurance she needed. she went on to explain just about everything related to why she couldn't face reveal. she was made fun of in middle school and high school because of her appearance. people jeered at her for just about anything they could. to this day, she still wasn't quite sure why they were so mean. in hindsight, she looked just like everyone else, but not everyone else was made fun of.

          she explained how this led to lasting self image issues that she had just started making progress on. she was finally at a point where she could look in the mirror most days and not feel awful. she didn't want to lose that by face revealing. it had taken so long to reach this point, and she was not going to let some people on the internet set her back. she couldn't risk letting years of therapy go to waste.

          by the end of it, sapnap felt like a dick. here he was, upset that she wouldn't meet up with him. it wasn't about him. it was about her. he let out a huge sigh when she finished her explanation. "liv, i am so sorry."

          "oh, it's okay! like i said, i'm working on everything, and it's getting a lot better!" she fidgeted with a pen on her desk, clicking it up and down. "i just want to make sure that i'm in a really solid place mentally before i put myself out there, you know?"

          "i know," and he really did. this was practically dream's exact reasoning for not face revealing for so long. he had similar conversations like this with his best friend every day. "i really hope you get to a point where you are comfortable enough being out there. because you deserve to be out there."

          "me too, sap. me too." a few seconds passed without a word from either of them. "so... are we good?"

          "yeah, liv, of course we're good," she searched for a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but the only thing she could find was total sincerity.

          "great," she smiled. "i'm glad."

          "me too."