(i'm worried) it will always be you

Chapter 3 - We swapped our smiles

Sapnap stopped, finding himself standing still on the sidewalk, while watching Karl practically ran away from him.

The pit in his stomach was more like a black hole at that point.

There was no reason Karl's mood should have such an effect on him. Not a single one. Karl wasn't necessarily his friend, wasn't even more than an acquaintance, really. If anyone else who was as similarly uninvolved in his life as Karl was in a bad mood, Sapnap probably wouldn't have even picked up on it.

Sapnap gave a valiant effort to brush off the feeling of swirling anxiety in his stomach- or at least tried to suppress it for the sake of his exam grades.

The studying that he planned on getting done in the library was about as unproductive as it would've been if he stayed in his dorm, just without the soundtrack of Dream's snoring driving him nuts.

By the time he walked out of his first exam, his phone had flooded with messages in a group chat, all about everyone wanting to get together for lunch before they went their separate ways for the next week.

Sapnap planned on declining, better yet just ignoring all the messages like he usually did, but then one more came in.

Karl: i can make it

Sapnap sighed, tucking his phone into his pocket, and headed in the opposite direction of his dorm.

The walk there was filled with a lot of unanswered questions swirling around his mind. The biggest doubt on Sapnap's mind was, what if Karl didn't want him there? He didn't seem happy to see him that morning, so how much could change in a couple of hours?

Karl's text also lacked the usual emojis and exclamation points he typically used, which made Sapnap suspect that whatever was bothering Karl earlier had persisted.

"Hey, man! I didn't think you were coming." Dream said with a smile, walking over to Sapnap and slapping his back.

"Hi, Sapnap!" Tina said with a bright smile, waving from her place at Brooke's side. The rest of the group was made up of George, Quackity, Punz, and a guy Sapnap was pretty sure went by some weird nickname like 'Goofy' or maybe 'Foolish'?

Oh, and Karl. He was practically hiding behind Quackity, one arm tightly wrapped around his chest, and his eyes primarily fixed on the ground.

"Did you invite Cleo?" Quackity asked, struggling to keep a positive look on his face.

Sapnap was all too aware of the fact his girlfriend- well, not his girlfriend right now- was not well-liked by his friends. With good reason too. They broke up towards the end of Freshman year, after a video of her making out with some random girl was posted to someone's Snapchat story.

Come the start of the semester, Sapnap made the mistake of giving her another chance. It wasn't even the end of August before she lied to him about who she was hanging out with. It wasn't even that Sapnap cared who it was, he cared that she felt the need to lie about it.

That quickly became a pattern; her making a mistake, Sapnap ending their relationship, her promising to change, and him being swindled into getting back together with her- usually there was some very persuasive head involved, but that's besides the point.

"No, we, uh, we're not really talking right now." Sapnap shrugged, surprised to find himself waiting to see Karl's reaction to the news. He was even more surprised at how disappointed he felt when there was no reaction.

"Well, if that's the case, I think we're just waiting on Sylvee and Hannah and we're good to go." George said. Like usual, it felt like he was only talking to Dream.