Chapter Text
“So, this is the game of the week, huh?”
The plat_stars donation already came in earlier, a sort of alarm clock to play another game. Now, for the past half-hour, Kakyoin played Hello Kitty Kruisers on a WiiU emulator. Brought up only because of his admission to enjoying racing games, in his weekly poll of user-submitted games, it became the highest voted game of all time. That meant he had to play it for the rest of the week, thirty minutes at minimum. He now considered taking that thing down. Well, he considered that every single week.
It wasn’t the worst of bad things the chat forced him to play, but it was up there. Sure, there was the choice of cars, boats, and airplanes; but they all controlled the same. It didn’t help that it felt so slow compared to something as simple as Mario Kart. At least he could play as Hello Kitty, a character he liked.
“Wow, I feel like we’ve seen this before,” he said, alluding to the fact that every stage for each vehicle was the same. He wasn’t unamused, enjoying the thought this game somehow got through quality checks. He wasn’t not having fun either, especially with the chat egging him on despite the game’s lackluster visuals not doing much for anyone.
He drove along as the cat in a boat, though it felt just like the car and airplane he played with earlier. Even with that, his investment in the game was questionable, leaning closer towards his screen as he steered with his controller in hand. From the corner of his eye, he could see the chat going wild with emoticons, support for a game he could win with ease.
Thanks to his concentration and headphones over his ears, he didn’t notice several things: his bedroom door opening, the scent of overly sweet iced tea, soft steps behind him—
A warm touch on his shoulder. “Honey, I got you—”
“Oh my god!” Kakyoin said, dropping his controller and hopping out of his chair, only to see his mother right behind him. He hadn’t stopped the game. Instead of saying a word, an intense warmth rushed into his cheeks. In all his time streaming, his mother never interrupted him.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Ann pressed a hand to her chest before holding a glass up, full of iced tea. “Got you your favorite.”
Kakyoin nodded, albeit rushed and hesitant as he took then placed the glass to the side. “Mom, I’m busy,” he said, coming out as a whimper that the chat would make fun of for years. He didn’t care too much.
For a moment, confusion stayed strewn on Ann’s face before she looked to the PC’s screen. With the game still running, her eyes went wide, and she mouthed an apology before rushing away. She wasn’t keen on newer technology, but at least knew when she interrupted something. Kakyoin took a quick glimpse at his other monitor to see people going wild, and he sighed.
He wanted to utter a joke, though he grew afraid it would come out snarky and rub everyone the wrong way. Instead, he bent down to take his controller from the floor, dusting it off before pausing the game. Unexpected to him, he fell into last place. “I should lock my door.”
He stared into his camera and shrugged, exiting the stage he was playing to play as another character. This time, he let the chat choose who to pick, distracting the viewers from earlier happenings. What ended up in a boat this time was a fish character he barely knew. “Look, I know you guys voted, but you must all be out of it if you think I’m playing this shit for like, an hour a day. This is some bare minimum stuff.”
A soft ding came from the side, a smaller donation. Luckily, he hadn’t started the game yet, still stuck on track selection. As he glanced to the side and saw it was $10, he knew to indulge whoever it was a bit. Though bewilderment set in when he realized who it was.
“Wait, plat_stars?” This was the first time the other donated twice, as well as donating much less than the usual. What was Jotaro trying to do? He squinted his eyes as he read the message underneath the name.
plat_stars donated $10!! That’s neat!!
talk about a mama’s boy
It took a while before the comment sank in, causing the heat in his face that had disappeared to return. He shook his head, pouting as he chose a stage at random—an ice stage. “Look, plat,” he said, happy he didn’t let Jotaro’s name slip. “I like you and all, but I think that’s the final straw.” He wrinkled his nose before laughing, shaking his head. “Eh, I’m kidding. Thanks for the ten bucks, plat. I’ll probably get some chicken nuggets later or something.”
Then he noticed two chat messages from Avdol and Polnareff; both of them were just ‘lol’. While he wanted to overthink and see it as the pair nudging him to speak up about Jotaro—he said nothing about the boy to anyone yet—it was probably another silly thing they did in tandem. Now that he thought about it, the two talked a lot more in their server than usual and were always playing Minecraft at the same time. Maybe they were getting closer, or it was all some weird coincidence. Either way, he always thought of the two as compatible.
He leaned back in his seat and continued to play, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he focused a lot on something that meant little to him.
*
The stream ended two hours later, and Kakyoin hopped into Discord. As usual, Jotaro was online. They decided on a schedule of sorts: video calls after streams on weekdays, staying on texts on a Saturday, and never-ending calls on Sundays. There were no plans for this, a noticeable lack of discussion, yet it fell into place so perfectly that they stuck onto it. It had only been two weeks since their first video chat.
Before he could type in their typical greeting, the prompt for a video call came up. “Jesus,” he mumbled to himself, unable to hold back surprise. He knew Jotaro enough to know he wouldn’t start a call without warning. But this happened once, when Jotaro’s mother called him to do something right before a call. Either way, he accepted it, and he pinned Jotaro’s camera to the center as their videos loaded in.
And as usual, Jotaro wasn’t in his seat yet. He was probably getting himself a glass of water or a snack, maybe both, either always present during their calls. The bed had lilac sheets this time. His eyes fixated on the posters on the wall, now recognizing a few people: Mako Ishino, Yoko Oginome, Mie and Kei from Pink Lady. When Kakyoin asked his mom about the artists, she didn’t hide astonishment as she told him she hadn’t heard any of the names in years. This made him question if Jotaro knew anything about modern music, but shrugged it off.
After a minute or two, Jotaro appeared before him, waving with his empty hand. The other held a plate of large chocolate chip cookies. It differed from the typical healthier choices of fruits or a small cup of yogurt.
“Grandma made me take these,” Jotaro said as he fell back into his chair, taking one of the cookies into his mouth. From the way hardly any crumbs fell, it seemed to be a chewier cookie.
“God, I wish I had those,” Kakyoin said, smiling at the thought of sweet flavors tickling his taste buds. “No one bakes here.”
“I can teach you.”
Kakyoin paused. The expression of want that had his mind drifting off into the distance disappeared. What was once a longing for fresh-baked goods turned into confusion. “Wait, you bake?”
Jotaro stared into the camera at the question, face as neutral as it could while chewing a large chunk of cookie. When he swallowed, he spoke: “Hey, how’d you feel about my extra donation earlier?”
The mere mention made memories of earlier hit Kakyoin like a truck. Thankfully, he didn’t blush like he expected to. “You want me to be honest?”
“You know I always say yes,” Jotaro said, covering his mouth, but it was obvious from his muffled words he was eating. The slight lag didn’t show him taking a bite.
“Kind of embarrassed.”
Maybe it took a while to process or Jotaro swallowed his food first, but his reaction was delayed by quite a bit. As soon as it came out, it startled Kakyoin a bit: loud, booming laughter, Jotaro tossing his head back, and what he assumed was a knee slap.
“Hey, what’s so funny?” Kakyoin grinned; he didn’t understand a thing, but the laughter was infectious. Jotaro didn’t laugh like that often, always hard to elicit. A part of him expected the comment to come.
“Do you not get the irony of it all?” Jotaro asked, quick to recover from the brief laughing fit, already composed with another cookie in his hand. “You’ve been so desensitized to getting thousands of dollars a week, but ten bucks irk you? Not even the comment I put?”
Kakyoin sighed, running a hand through his hair, his perfectly styled hair noodle bouncing with the motion. “I mean, I guess. Not going to lie, though; you’ve given me a lot more money than I know what to do with.”
“Huh.” Jotaro might have been speechless, maybe thinking over what to say. “But you said your family’s been paying stuff off with it.”
“We already kind of have. Paid everything off, I mean."
“Oh.”
Maybe Kakyoin’s eyes were mistaken, but Jotaro now looked like he was pondering some deep thoughts. The boy had his hand on his small plate, reaching for another cookie, though there was no attempt to grasp one in his hand. Instead, he gawked and stared somewhere off to the side. For a second, Kakyoin felt an odd sense of impending doom. Did he just ruin their friendship forever? The money meant nothing, a loss he could make up for, but friendship? That was rough. He had no idea how he came to his near conclusions, but the thought irked him.
Kakyoin gulped. “Hey, Jotaro. Jojo?” He didn’t want his overthinking to get the best of him. “Are you still with me?”
Jotaro snapped back to reality before speaking like he didn’t have such a long pause: “Sorry, lost in thoughts. Okay, so does this mean you don’t want the donations? Like, do they make you uncomfortable now?” It all came out perfect, probably what had the boy pause without warning.
Kakyoin blinked once, twice, thrice. Good question, simple answer. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. As for the donations, it’s your choice, anyway.” Then a thought hit him. “Why do you donate so much, anyway? $100 is already insane for me; that would have sufficed.”
“To be blunt about it—” Jotaro bit on an enormous chunk of a cookie, covering his mouth again to talk. While it muffled words, they were at least understandable, though there were interruptions as he swallowed food. “—I have no idea what to do with my money most of the time. Got too much of it, I thought I could at least spend it on something entertaining. I’ve been watching since October last year, so I thought the New Year was a good day to hand out money.”
God, Kakyoin wished he had that same problem. Excess money? He could only imagine what he’d do with it. It astonished him that Jotaro had been watching for so long, though. “Giant allowance, right? Like, what does your family do, anyway? Don’t have to answer anything, by the way.”
“Oh, my grandpa doesn’t like me talking about that stuff.” Jotaro took his hand down from his mouth. “That’s the one thing I adhere to from him. Let’s just say they, uh, handle something big.”
A scoff, then a mocking tone. “My dad works for Nintendo,” Kakyoin said, pitch changing with each syllable. Jotaro chuckled. “I mean, why me, though? I know you watch other streamers, so why give me the money?”
“I mean, there’s a multitude of reasons.”
“What’s the most important of them then?”
Jotaro hummed, his face shifting as an answer tried to make its way past him. His lips pursed, pouted. “Well,” he began, now looking into his webcam. Kakyoin didn’t respond, distracted by a bug on the wall. “Kakyoin?”
“Oh! Yeah, I’m listening.” Kakyoin looked right into the camera as well, eyes meeting Jotaro’s. If they were face to face in real life, this would have been unnerving.
“Well,” Jotaro repeated. “You felt special, that’s all.”
Kakyoin didn’t notice a faint flutter in his stomach, an airiness overtaking his body. Instead, he gasped then giggled, unaware of his own developing feelings.