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Moving in with Dream is- well, an experience, for sure.
Sapnap has known him for ages, known all the nooks and crannies of him that he’s learned over the years. He knows how he sounds when he’s upset, his lying tells and give-aways, knows the script for when Dream gets too irritated to listen but still needs someone around to ground himself to.
He’s also become familiar with the faint sound of feathers ruffling when he moves around; got used to random bangs from Dream’s end when he spins in his chair too fast and knocks shit off his desk with the winged limbs. He’s learned to remind Dream to preen every few days - just in case he forgot again - and each time Dream’s birthday comes up, Sapnap spends a good few hours scrolling through every fashion site he knows, looking for clothes Dream would like that are made for winged people.
And then they move in, and everything changes, and yet somehow nothing changes at all.
Just like before, Sapnap learns - gets used to Dream’s insanely long showers that he spends barely standing under the water stream, splashing the water through his dusty feathers. Gets used to random feathers all over the house, just like Patches’ fur, and gets used to the abnormally wide doorways.
He thought their cuddling invitations were a joke, but Dream got oddly clingy and lonely after preening and their normal casual anime binges have upgraded to cuddle sessions as well. Sapnap doesn’t help him - it’s like washing someone’s hair, Dream explains. It’s nice, but a little too intimate for others to do, so he does it himself. But plucking every little grain of dust and dirt out of hundreds of little soft feathers takes ages and Dream always, always seeks him out after. Unsurprisingly.
Another thing he learns is that Dream spends most of his time shirtless, not as a flex or anything - though it could be, with how his arms look- Sapnap’s not blind, okay - but Sapnap never realized how complex winged clothing is, and as he watches Dream explain how it ties, how it comes together and eventually wraps around his body while keeping his wings fine and untouched, he gets a little dizzy.
Like. He gets it. If that’s what it took for him to wear a shirt, he couldn’t be assed to do it either.
(“You could just wear a towel or somethin’,” Sapnap suggests half-jokingly. Dream’s wing swats him over the head.)
Most of the fun comes after the face reveal. The internet freaks out over all of Dream Team meeting up, then it freaks out over Dream’s face, and then it freaks out once more over Dream’s wings.
Nobody was expecting it, clearly - and even if it doesn’t get as much coverage as, like, manhunts or something, Dream’s wings become the talk of the internet for a good while.
“Do you think Dream gets George to preen his wings for him? ” Sapnap reads out as Dream and George are sitting by the TV, controllers clutched in their hands, Dream’s character beating the shit out of George’s in a game Sapnap doesn’t recognize. “Ooh, there’s a reply- Isn’t preening like a super close thing? No, another- Isn’t that a sexual thing? ”
Dream lets out a little scandalized noise, too distracted to properly answer. “N- no, what the hell- George! How did you get a- Sapnap, stop reading the fucking tweets-” Sapnap chuckles, “Shut up, oh my God-” Sapnap howls with laughter.
“Yeah, Dreamie,” George drawls, smirk on his face. “Want me to preen your wings for y- what the hell!”
Dream cheers loudly and claps as he falls back onto the carpeted floor, wings spreading out as to not get squished. George continues yelling as his character on the screen slowly topples to the floor, disappointingly falling backwards, Dream yelping as his wing gets laid on and pinched. Sapnap scrolls a little further, huffs a laugh at a particularly cute piece of fanart of all three of them with Dream in the middle, embracing them with his wings. Like a mother hen, Sapnap thinks, and gives it a like.
“You just need to get good,” Dream says matter-of-factly, forcefully shoving George to the side to release his wing and brush away a plucked feather, “You’re dogwater, literally dogwater, piece of sh-”
Sapnap watches as George lunges, brings them both back to the floor, and he sighs lightheartedly as they playfully wrestle, loud flaps of wings filling the room as Dream struggles to keep himself upright. He sprints around them, avoiding the flailing limbs and wings to pick up the few stray feathers and toss them in the special collecting bin they have for that specific purpose. “Dream- George, stop- you’re getting dust all over the place!”
Another thing Sapnap eventually learns is that people have no real respect for wings. Which is just rude, if he says so himself.
The main reason why winged clothing is so complicated and well thought-out, is because wings are pretty sensitive things and the normal constant stimulation of clothes is way too much to handle. Especially with someone like Dream, who’s already sensitive to stimulants because of ADHD.
And so when they find themselves outside - touching grass, crazy, Sapnap knows - he is shocked by the lack of accommodations in the world that he only begins to notice because of Dream pointing them out, even if indirectly.
“Why do we have to walk,” Sapnap complains as they stop at the nth red light crosswalk, their destined restaurant still half an hour away. He thought they’d pick up public transport or something - buses seemed to go all the time and Dream has a travel card somewhere in his house, he has to. Dream just huffs a laugh as he leans against the lamp post, eyes squinted in direct sunlight.
“The chairs are all… Squish my wings n’ stuff,” He twists the point of his shoe into the dirt, “And there’s only like, four chairs for wings… And they get taken by children all the time.”
Sapnap blinks, but doesn’t say anything.
Then it happens again, walking through the store and Dream hissing under his breath as the tiny revolving doors push onto his back and flatten his wings against the glass. People at said store squishing past them, carelessly letting their arm or bag or cart barrel into the drooping wings, the random people asking to touch his wings, or take a picture of them or even worse, those who don’t ask at all.
The 3D glasses at the cinema plucking loose a few downy feathers behind Dream’s ears, Dream picking up sewing really fast because his sister’s graduation gowns don’t include accommodating winged gowns for her, and the most heartbreaking one of them all - Dream having to squish his wings into a Sooners hoodie during games because they don’t offer winged ones either.
It seems their fans are the best about it. Once Dream complains about the Sooners hoodie on a Discord podcast, their P.O. box gets filled with hoodies people have either ordered and fixed into a version available to tie in regular winged clothing fashion, or winged hoodies people have straight up made from scratch.
When they get recognized by other winged people, it goes from a shy few-second meet and selfie into a full half hour conversation about wings and sharing their experiences and Dream even follows back a few of them on Twitter.
And one of his favorites has to be the art; the art that goes from simple inclusion of Dream’s wings in normal fanart, to full wing-driven art, whether that’s the stupid laughable preening tweet made into a drawing, or one where Sapnap gets absolutely covered in the soft feathers - he bookmarks that one.
A small controversy happens then - Dream gets excited about making winged merch that incorporates the designs into the type of tying method it uses, and forgets to release the original merch design regularly. Which people get very worked up about.
Dream groans from his place on his spinny office chair - a winged design, the chair going as normal except for two spaces made in the side that Dream fits his wings through - scrolling through his phone mindlessly. Sapnap tilts his head from where he lies on Dream’s bed, watching his hands as they grip the phone and, and his gaze shoots upward when he feels Dream’s eyes on him, focusing on his face instead. “Hm?”
“I kinda wanna stream,” Dream says. “But like- Hm.” He cuts himself off mid-sentence and goes back to his phone, leaving Sapnap in the dark for a minute before the iconic Discord call ring echoes through the room. “George!” Dream says the second the ringing ends.
“WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME,” George says.
“Wanna stream?” Sapnap asks, assuming that’s what Dream called him for.
“STOP CALLING ME- I live right below you, what the-” George hangs up.
Seconds later, George slips in through the door and tackles Sapnap on the bed.
“George,” Dream says again. “We should all play FNAF again.”
And that’s how they end up on Dream’s stream, with the two of them having pulled up chairs at his sides, Dream trying to breeze through the game as fast as possible.
“Stop speedrunning the fucking game,” Sapnap says through chuckles as Dream dies to the same guy the seventh time. George is on his phone answering Twitter’s questions, and Dream is looking like he wants to die, despite this being his idea. “Look, you have to go this way, and then sprint-”
“I can’t fucking sprint!” Dream shoves his hands back onto the keyboard as he loads back in, screaming seconds later as the same jumpscare gets him. “Fuck off-! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I hate this game- I literally ran this time!”
It takes them a little while to move on, and this time, the jumpscare takes all three of them by shock. Dream first, who’s scream devolves into an audible keysmash, wings shooting open - then Sapnap, who gets knocked off his chair, and then George, getting pulled down as Sapnap tries to latch onto anything in his desperate attempt to save his life.
WHAT HAPPENED? Chat spams, along with DID THEY FUCKING FALL and oh my god his scream lm aoskofkgl and oh my god his wings are so fucking loud and :KEKW:.
The clip goes trending and it stays trending for a few hours as people animate it, draw it and repost it to TikTok.
“My wings are f-fricking bruised,” Dream says on a Discord podcast the next day, “I like- okay, so, here’s what happened,” Sapnap watches him as he leans back, a small smile growing on Dream’s lips as he recalls the incident and prepares to launch into a long monologue about it. “I got scared, and my wings just- shoot open, from like, shock, right. And Sapnap is right there, and he falls instantly because I just- knocked him right out. And then he grabs George, and then George falls, and I’m- um, trying to recover, but he’s just- falling and they end up on the floor. And then it’s everywhere.” His eyes flick to chat for a second. “Yeah- I mean, you could hear my wings! I did not- chat, I did not push them off on purpose-”
“Your wings?!” Sapnap yells in faux offense, just to play into the bit, to prod and tease and be the little shit he was born to be. “My back is fucking gone, man, I couldn’t even bend to pour Patches’ food this morning.”
Dream twists to stare at him, and as soon as Sapnap sees the look in Dream’s eyes, he knows this will not end well. “Oh yeah? You wanna see my bruises?”
And. Well. Dream has always been a little desperate for attention and the benefit of the doubt of their fanbase- so really, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he posts a blurry picture of his bruised wing on Twitter, crying about how much it hurts and how much Sapnap should start paying rent now.
And, well.
Well- Twitter eats it up, of course. They started theorizing that Sapnap went away, because this only happens when Sapnap leaves, and then that photo got plastered absolutely everywhere with captions like, Okay hear me out, Are bruises bothering you king? with a badly photoshopped gun pointed at the bruise, and I could put some pain ointment on that for you dweamie.
It’s safe to say that Sapnap lost this one.
He does take inspiration from that tweet, though, and he shows up in Dream’s room soon after with some pain ointment in hand. “C’mon, man. I’ve got you, I swear-”
“You’ll tear my feathers out!” Dream protests, crawling further away from him on the bed, wings half-spread and on guard, resembling a guarded owl. Sapnap does not find that endearing and does not save the mental image in his mind. “This is your revenge, I just know it, I know it you- idiot.”
Sapnap sighs, much like he would if he was dealing with a small child. “Dream.”
Dream blinks at him - owlishly, Sapnap thinks, almost smiling. Then he sighs, creeps closer and spreads out the bruised wing. “Okay, but like- if you do yank me, I’m beating the shit out of you.”
He does not beat the shit out of him. Sapnap takes this moment very seriously, careful hands getting between feathers and slowly caressing the ointment into the weird, skin-like texture of the wing. As he goes, he sees a little hair of fur from Patches wedged between the smooth and soft body of a feather and gently takes it out, shaking his hand to make it drop somewhere on the floor.
The small action makes Dream sigh, wings fluttering - loud sound of feathers filling the room for a second - and he seems to relax.
Sapnap takes it as a go-ahead to continue, covering all the bruised areas with careful hands and then wiping his hands off. “There you go, idiot,” he says affectionately, and Dream goes boneless right into his arms, Sapnap scrambling to tilt to the side and make room for his wings. “Well- okay. That’s- okay.”
They end up staying like that for a while, Sapnap tugging his phone out of his pocket and scrolling as Dream seems to fall asleep on him, head resting on his thigh with his wings sprawled across the bed and Sapnap as well. Just as a little bit of an inside joke, Sapnap retweets a fanart of him and Dream cuddling, and Dream’s phone vibrates somewhere from the desk. The noise brings Dream back to partial consciousness, shifting a little, wings fluttering briefly to find a comfortable position again.
“Why’d you stop?” He asks in a sleepy voice, turning a bit just to hit his wing in Sapnap’s face. Sapnap huffs wings out of his face, looking down at Dream’s sleepy face - and proceeds to melt. He drops his phone onto the bedsheets and reaches down to brush a hand through Dream’s hair, fingers gently passing over the downy feathers scattered behind his ear. “Mm- not the… hair. The wing. Continue- w’th the wing.”
Sapnap’s hand hovers in hesitance, blinking owlishly as Dream drapes an arm over him, wing following suit. He lowers his hand onto the soft feathers, eyes darting from his hand to Dream’s face that relaxes back into satisfaction, seemingly drifting back to sleep. He continues the gentle motions of his hand, smoothing over the feathers and picking the stray hair of fur or bit of itch-looking dust he stumbles upon.
Roughly an hour later, Sapnap’s been reduced to a glorified body pillow, Dream’s grip tight on him as he continues to sleep peacefully. Around that same one hour mark, the door opens and George looks about ready to join them, throw himself onto the bed and start complaining.
Sapnap almost gets whiplash from how fast his head turns. “No,” he whispers firmly. “You’re gonna wake him up.”
George blinks. “What? Oh-” And something clicks on his face that has Sapnap feeling like he’s nine again, getting caught awake past his bedtime. “Okay.”
“No, like-” Sapnap desperately tries to salvage in fast whispers, “He must be, like, insanely tired to fall asleep so fast.”
“He is also right here,” Dream mumbles. Sapnap’s head shoots to look at his barely-open eyes, feeling like a deer caught in headlights.
George clasps his hands and raises his voice astronomically, running and throwing himself onto the bed next to them. “Great, you’re awake now, here’s what I was thinking-”
A very unique problem arises a few weeks later.
Dream got nominated for something- Sapnap’s not entirely sure what. He gets nominated a bunch, being as big as he is, but this one is important, and they’re all suiting up to go.
And that’s where the problem starts, because that’s two layers - a dress shirt, and the dark green blazer Dream wants to wear on top. And so as soon as they get the invite, they breeze through every fancy store out there, looking tooth and nail for suits that could fit his wings. Unsurprisingly but still disappointingly, they find none.
Which is not an issue, because they have money. So a day later, Dream is on the phone for an hour with a custom tailor that would be willing to make a last minute suit set, except suits are a fucking nightmare and it turns out that if Dream really wanted it to look as fancy as possible, it would have a thousand small dangling strings to tie and put together.
Then the suit has trouble arriving, their posting company deciding to flip them off when they need them the most, so Dream doesn’t even get to practice the tying before they’re all sprinting through the house, getting ready.
“Sapnap!” Dream calls, breathless, struggling to fit the last few feathers of his tiny feather-tail into his pants. “Can you please tie the- the suit things for me?”
Sapnap is immediately apprehensive. He wants to make a comment about accidentally plucking a feather or two, or maybe tying it too tight - something about dritties, he’d say - but he sees the panicked look in Dream’s eyes and one look at the clock makes it obvious they have no time to discuss.
And so that brings them to a large mirror, Dream faux patiently rambling off the instructions as Sapnap does his best to make quick work of the suit strings.
“To the left- yeah, and tie it with the white one.”
Sapnap pauses, staring at the tan skin that has not one, not two, but three white strings hanging over it. “Um. There’s three white ones.”
“What?” Dream tries twisting his head to look, and his wings lower a bit from the high position Dream forced them into for the time remaining, nearly knocking Sapnap in the head. “What do you mean, three-”
One of the wings almost droops down entirely, threatening to untie Sapnap’s work in progress, and he panics, reaching a hand out to hold the underside of the wing with a careful hand. “No, don’t- I think I know which one, the- the middle one, yeah.”
There’s silence as Sapnap hesitantly releases the wing, and Dream wordlessly raises it back, tips splayed out against the ceiling. He continues to tie the suit around Dream’s back, pointedly ignoring the flush across Dream’s face, hopeful Dream is doing the same with Sapnap’s.
And then they’re standing on stage, Dream’s wings proud and majestic, not interfering with the suit he wears that looks- just amazing, really. (Sapnap is already expecting screenshots all over his Twitter feed.)
There’s also confetti. Lots and lots of tiny little paper confetti, and as they drive home, Dream can’t stop wiggling in his seat, wings fitted through the side-spaces of the seat fluttering about.
“Dream,” George complains at some point, because of course he’s in the backseat, “You’re getting dust everywhere.”
The feathery noise stops, and Sapnap looks over at Dream as he squints at the road. “Sorry, the- fuckin’... Confetti, s’ makin’ me go insane.”
“That sucks,” George says, and briefly looks apologetic. “We should get you one of those bird baths.”
Sapnap immediately jumps on. “Yes! The small ones, especially. You just have to twist around all the time to get your shit clean.”
“You’re so dumb,” Dream shakes his head with a smile. “We’re not getting me a bird bath, what?”
“We have a pool,” Sapnap offers.
Well. They do have a pool. And they make use of it as soon as they’re back home, but George argues that he’s too tired and goes right to bed.
Sapnap feels a little like he’s watching a dog, with the way Dream stays in the part of the pool that leaves water at his hips and goes through the motions of how he cleans his wings apparently - splash some water, ruffle it all, splash some more and shake the water out. “Better?” Sapnap asks, when Dream finally joins him at the deep end, wings floating on the top of the water.
“Not really,” Dream says, crossing his arms at the edge of the pool. “Too many big pieces I can’t get.”
And, for a second, Dream’s eyes meet his with a specific look on his face.
Sapnap blinks. “I can get them for you, if you’d-”
Dream’s face floods with relief. “Please.”
They move to the hot tub for the cleaning, enjoying the hot jets on their skin as Sapnap sits behind Dream, hands carefully fixing feathers and plucking out the confetti pieces. “Why’d they aim at your back,” he mutters, taking out a particular one that was stuck real hard, and Dream almost collapses into his arms with satisfaction. “That’s so dumb, what the hell.”
“I ‘unno,” Dream mumbles, eyes long closed. Another stuck piece goes, and his wings flutter in the water, hitting droplets onto Sapnap’s skin that he can’t find it in himself to be upset about. “Did’t consider it, I guess.”
Consider? I hardly know her, Sapnap thinks, and almost laughs like a moron. “Yeah. That’s-” He huffs a laugh. “Stupid. So stupid.”
He’s done fairly soon, Dream completely boneless in his arms. He turns a little to properly embrace him into his arms, and for the first time since they’ve met up, Dream’s wings come around him and wrap him up tightly. It’s a bit of a religious experience, if Sapnap was entirely honest.
“You’ll get your feathers all messed up again,” Sapnap mutters, but he’s well aware if he tried to move right now, he’d die.
Dream opens one eye lazily, sticking his tongue out. “You’ll just fix them again for me,” he responds, in the telling, sleepy tone, and Sapnap doesn’t protest.
A little later, Sapnap’s the one gently shaking him awake so they can go to bed. It doesn’t work out the way he intended, though he’s not complaining - by the time the clock hits morning, they’re wrapped up in each other in the soft bedsheets of Dream’s bed.
When George checks up on them later, he doesn’t even see Sapnap at first, not with the way Dream’s wings seem to encompass him entirely.