.•°¤* ꜱᴛᴏᴘ ᴀᴄᴛɪɴɢ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ *¤°•.

~13~

tw // mild homophobia, in italics

“Dream! You have all the iron, what are you doing, you dingus?” Sapnap scolded Dream after he had gone silent for a second, his player unmoving and tauntingly holding an iron ingot. We waited patiently for him to answer despite our increasing irritation with him. I said nothing but I shared Sapnap’s frustration, drumming my thumbs against my desk and leaning back in my chair. A long pause wedged its way into our call before we heard distant shuffling.

“Stacy’s calling me, I’ll be right back, guys,” Dream muttered to us hastily before muting himself. I let out a groan without realising it but Sapnap seemed to be just as disappointed as he released a heavy sigh. 

It hadn’t been awkward while we were recording up until this point, but there was definitely tension in the air due to the huge elephant in the room. We did our best to keep up our regular jokes and shenanigans even if it seemed off. A week or two had passed since the whole ordeal with Stacy but nothing settled down and Dream hadn’t given me a single sign of wanting to talk about the kiss. I wanted to give up on the topic, brush it off my shoulders and call it day, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. 

It was like a tick, a parasite that attached itself to me without remorse. I couldn’t just rip it off my arm and chuck it in the trash because the device inflicting me with pain would still be there. I would have to use special tools to pry it off of me, but even then, there was a huge chance of infection and disease. I knew bringing it up with Dream while recording was a bad idea and I didn’t know if he told Sapnap anything about what happened between us, so I couldn’t risk that. 

The whole situation still bothered me, even through the distraction of recording with the team and trying to survive ingame. At this point, the kiss was the least of my worries; it was Stacy. Dream hadn’t said anything to me about it, but who’s to say he wasn’t withholding information from me? It felt oddly familiar to a particular situation I had been in during high school. An old friend threatened to out me to the whole school without any reason when I was 16. Everything was so surreal the first time he told me his intentions on my way home from school one day and I couldn’t deny the fact that I felt the same dread with what Stacy was doing.

I remembered it so vividly in my mind, the fear and the racing of my heart that climbed up my throat. Our frosty breaths mingling in the December air as he pointed his index finger at me menacingly, my eyes wide and stucken with fear. I hadn’t even grasped what he was saying to me before he gave me a warning slap to the face, the stinging so prominent in my mind I reached my hand up to my cheek as if it had just happened. His words were the worst.

“You little faggot, do you really think I don’t remember what happened between us a few years ago? And you think you can just show up to someone’s party and tell that story about us? Just because of a stupid game? No, shut up, I don’t care that you didn’t give out my name, you still told so many people. I thought we wouldn’t talk about it after it happened. You know what? I’m glad we fell off, I’m glad we’re not friends anymore. You’re a backstabber, I can’t believe you’d do that to me. You’re just as selfish as all those other fags."

“Stop it.” I muttered involuntarily, the same way I had said it when he began to make advances on me. He had pushed me into the sludge on the ground and left me there, spitting on me before storming away. When it happened I couldn’t wrap my head around it and even when I got home I was still confused. 

I had been so invested in my memory I had forgotten about the fact that I was still on a call with Sapnap. 

“What was that, George?” He asked absentmindedly. My face flushed with embarrassment as I tried to think of something to say. I stammered for a minute, pretending to busy myself with something on my desk just to give myself more time to come up with an answer. Looking around the room, I spotted my cat sleeping on the windowsill.