Work Text:
“Ahah!” Kidd exclaimed as the monster on the screen exploded into millions of pixelated pieces. “Take that! See?” He turned to point at the camera, his controller held loosely in hand. “I told you all the Bazooka of the Evil Death would be worth all those hours of farming!”
He relaxed back into his seat, a giant computer chair covered in deep red leather, and looked to the side, at a second screen that was invisible from the camera’s angle.
“Thanks for the compliments!” He preened, reading the comments that appeared on the side of the screen. “And I said no spoilers!” He clicked his tongue. “Yes, that includes the names of weapons that are unlocked only later into the game.”
Kidd read a few more comments before looking at the camera again. “Ok, what should we do now? I’ve been feeling up for a little PVP… Think it’s time to try out the Golden League yet? I mean, with this new weapon I could do a bit of carnage, what do you think?”
He threw a look off to the side again, looking at the chat which was filling with approbation, before grinning all shark-like.
“Yeah, you’re right, time to kick some butt!”
A little ping sound coming from the video game indicated an incoming notification. It was Kidd’s add-on, which tracked the PVP score of the people he befriended in the game. This score was one of the game’s features. Every month, the people with the highest score won awards and special limited edition items to enhance their characters.
“Oh, Trafalgar is beating my PVP score? Nah, I’m coming for his ass, too!”
In a few clicks, the character in the video game lit up in a flash of blue and reappeared in an arena-like structure. Kidd talked to an NPC and signed up for the next tournament. While he waited for other players to sign up too, he took a sip from a cup sat on the side of his desk. The cup, like the chair and like everything else in his gaming set, was bright red. The microphone was red, the headphones, the controller, etc. Only the wall behind Kidd was black: a sheet of fabric hiding it, hung there to lower the sound reverberation.
“Well, well, well, look who we have here!” Kidd smirked as Law’s character appeared on his screen, indicated as being Kidd’s next opponent. “Guess it is time to settle this. This is gonna be fun.”
Kidd’s character, a woman with red skin and giant horns, threw several mines to the ground immediately. They exploded when Law’s character, a big guy with a pair of angel wings, threw himself toward Kidd’s character. Law’s character took a few steps back, clearly changing strategy. He started an incantation, sparks slowly gathering around him.
“Sorry dude, that won’t work,” Kidd said, his tongue sticking out in focus. His character cast a spell and a small tower appeared on the battlefield next to her. It immediately shot at Law’s character twice, breaking his incantation. Kidd didn’t give Law a moment to breathe. He pulled out his new weapon, the Bazooka of the Evil Death, and shot restlessly. Between his character’s and the tower’s assaults, Law’s character was incapable of starting another incantation, stuck raising his shield to protect himself, his health bar slowly lowering.
Kidd whooped as Law’s character fell to the ground, defeated. “Boom! Now, who’s the best PVP player, eh? I bet he’s raging all high and mighty again.” He imitated Law’s voice. “Like ‘this game is poorly balanced, characters that are harder to master should be more efficient, it’s unfair if some newbie who mashes the buttons can beat your fully enhanced character just because they hit harder.’ Ah! He’s just a sore loser!”
A few comments in the chat noticed the uncanny accuracy of Kidd’s Law impression. Some of his fans also watched the other streamer, as they often played the same games. Kidd laughed.
“He’s such a nerd. You should see him with his figures and his coin collection.” Kidd snorted in laughter. “Some of that stuff is older than both of us, but he’s very protective of it. If you ask him about it, he’ll explain to you the lore from some series dating back to the 60’s. One time, I was stuck listening to it for four hours.”
Kidd didn’t pay attention to it, too busy mocking his rival to care, but the chat on the side of the screen showed a few confused emojis and questions from people wondering how he knew about this and requesting more details.
After all, while Law and Kidd were rival streamers, they didn’t seem to have a relationship outside of it. They were both very discreet about their private lives and had never met in real life for their streaming careers. So it was a wonder as to how Kidd knew so much about Law’s collections.
Kidd, distracted by the cutscene that started in the game to celebrate his victory, didn’t notice his fans’ interrogations and the chat naturally moved on.
*******************************
The camera turned itself on when a tall man wearing cute white headphones with bear ears settled down on the plush chair in front of the desk.
“Hello everyone.” He waved at the camera. “I noticed quite a rise in following since the last stream so I’m going to introduce myself again.”
The man straightened his microphone and checked that his chat was properly connected and appearing on the side of the screen. He wasn’t sharing his screen just yet.
“For newcomers, welcome, I’m Law, and I’m a streamer who analyzes games and their various dynamics. Here, you’ll see a lot of games that require strategic thinking, since they’re my favorites.”
Behind him, there was a massive shelf, filled to the brim with figures, game strategy books, DVD cases and manga. There was an open book on the shelf, in which a collection of coins was neatly exhibited.
“Today,” Law announced, starting to share his computer screen with the stream, “we’ll be working on solving a few secret quests in order to raise our character’s base stats.”
The viewers recognized the game he’d been playing most lately, the one in which he had this weird rivalry with that other streamer, Kidd. His character was standing in the middle of a field, a medieval-like castle could be seen in the background. A lot of big lizard creatures were crawling around, running away whenever they got too close to Law’s character.
“I spent a little while decoding the scroll we earned from the dungeon we explored last time. According to it, there’s a dragon in that castle, there.” Law’s character started running toward said castle. “And, if we reach its nest without defeating it, we can find one of its eggs. It’s the item we’re looking for.”
As the character reached the castle, a cutscene played, showing the dragon breathing fire to destroy the bridge that led to it. Law expertly clicked on the buttons that appeared on the screen and his character evaded the flames and ran across the leftover pieces of the bridge, before disappearing into the castle.
“This item is mostly hard to find because players are idiots. They slay the dragon without a care, and at the end of the fight, the dragon destroys its own nest to make sure no one gets to the egg.”
Law explored the different parts of the castle, beating moving skeletons as he went, the dragon having retreated somewhere deeper in the castle, probably convinced that the threat was gone, now that the bridge was destroyed.
“You should have seen Kidd’s face when I told him about this. He whined that he had already explored this place from top to bottom and that he found nothing. Said that this scroll was just some bullshit to create rumors online. He’s one of the idiots who don’t understand the complexity of this game. He thinks that mashing buttons makes him a better player.” Law rolled his eyes. “That only works in fighting games, though.”
Law’s character evaded an attack and slipped behind a wall, apparently having found a hidden passageway. Law glanced at the chat on the side of his screen only to catch a question.
“Have I ever played fighting games with Kidd before?” he read aloud. “Yes, I have. He’s a terrible loser. One time I beat him and he sulked for a week. He doesn’t look like it but he pouts and refuses to talk to people like a toddler. I had to bribe him into talking to me again with a tacos dinner.”
Law’s words confirmed it to the viewers. Kidd and Law knew each other in real life. And they seemed to be very close, actually, maybe even friends.
*******************************
From then on, Kidd and Law’s popularity skyrocketed.
The mystery of their IRL relationship began attracting more and more viewers. People interrogated them, trying to figure out the exact definition of their relationship. Some believed them to be friends, others to be rivals, some even thought them to be lovers. There was even a rumor that the whole thing was a ploy, a made-up story to boost their popularity.
Law and Kidd refused to confirm or deny anything. Law insisted that his streams were for game analyses and strategies only, so he wouldn’t dwell on anything else. Kidd just shrugged and ignored it when asked.
If viewers got them talking, though, they managed to get more and more glimpses and details out of the two streamers. Mostly, they trash-talked each other, but sometimes, they said something about the other that made fans raise a collective eyebrow in suspicion. How did they know that? They wondered.
“He’s a softie,” Kidd said about Law. “He loves his dad and has about a thousand items featuring heart prints cause it reminds him of him.”
“Streaming is only a hobby for Kidd, he’s an engineer in real life, built his own computer and all,” Law explained about Kidd.
“The heart patterns theme goes all the way to his tattoos. He has big heart tattoos on his shoulders and chest,” Kidd told the chat one night, making everyone wonder how the fuck he’d seen the other streamer’s chest. Law was usually pretty decent on screen.
“His prosthetic is a wonder! It was a basic hospital-issue one at first, but he pimped it up himself, making it the most extraordinary prosthetic I’ve ever seen.” Law waved his hands excitedly. “He has a mobility and agility that I thought impossible to regain for amputees.”
“He’s got a favorite mug, in which he drinks his homemade cold brew coffee. I wish he would slow down on that stuff, he’s already sleep-deprived enough as is.” Kidd’s latest comment on Law turned bittersweet.
The tenderness they felt for each other was so obvious at this point, it was only a matter of time before the precise nature of their relationship was revealed to the public.
*******************************
A few days after Kidd’s comment concerning Law’s lack of sleep, Law ended a stream at midnight, as he usually would.
“And that’s it for today, guys. Next time, we’ll explore the dungeon of the Desperate Necromancer, and try to steal their magic staff. According to online rumors, we could use this item to create an armor capable of doubling our character’s DPS when their health is low.” Law waved at the camera. “So goodbye, have a nice day and hope to see you again tomorrow.”
Then, Law clicked on the button to turn off the stream. He sighed and let himself fall back into his chair.
On the side of the screen, a figure appeared.
“You good?” A deep voice asked.
“Yeah, just tired. This last boss wore me out.” Law massaged his forehead.
“Oh?” The figure teased. “The boss fight wore you out? Not the fight we had right before that?”
The chat on the side of the screen was going crazy. People trying to warn Law that he hadn’t turned off his stream were quickly drowned out by delighted messages. Fans going “I told you so!” over and over, others screaming nonsensically, others insisting that this didn’t mean anything, friends bantered like that all the time.
Law glared and the figure walked closer, only to sit on Law’s lap, facing away from the camera. The people who’d been following Law recently knew who he was, though. That large back, that prosthetic, and that shock of red hair were all unmistakable signs.
This was Kidd, the streamer fans had been wondering so much about!
“You mean that quick spar? The one during which I kicked your ass? Yeah, sure, that was exhausting.” Law snorted, the smirk in his voice hidden from view.
“You didn’t ‘kick my ass’.” Kidd growled.
Law’s hands appeared, one on Kidd’s shoulder, the other on the side of his head. Kidd leaned into the touch, despite his grumbling. Then, he leaned down, a smacking sound resonating, then wetter sounds.
Kidd and Law were kissing. Kidd and Law were dating.
The screeching in the chat intensified, the “they’re just friends” comments being quieted pretty quickly, replaced by more salacious comments and protests to please keep the chat PG-rated.
“Come to bed with me,” Kidd said, pulling away from the kiss.
Law hummed, too tired and kiss-drunk to really answer.
“Come on,” Kidd insisted, “to sleep, you haven’t been sleeping enough lately.”
Law’s arms came to hug Kidd close, and he mumbled something into Kidd’s chest. Kidd snorted a laugh and replied, “I’ll take that as a yes.”
He climbed off Law’s lap, shushing Law’s protests, which died down pretty easily when Kidd pulled Law up instead and carried him away and out of the frame.
The sound of a door opening and closing resonated, then the chat was left alone, freaking out and simping late into the night, until the stream ended up turning itself off due to Law’s inactivity.