Chapter Text
The video opened up with the title screen to a videogame. It didn’t appear to be anything special, just your typical Role-playing horror game. What made this video worth watching though to the viewer wasn’t the game itself. No, what made the video worth watching was the twenty-year-old sitting in front of a black backdrop with his tousled auburn hair and sharp jawline. Even on a pixelated screen, his bright green eyes seemed to pierce through the screen in contrast to his pale complexion.
“Hey guys Impulse here!” the guy said with a blinding smile and upbeat attitude as he waved at the camera enthusiastically. “So, I’ve got a crash game for us to start playing today. I know it’s a little early for horror games. It’s not even the end of July yet! But honestly, so many of you have been requesting I play this that I couldn’t put it off any longer. I’m not very good with jump scares and I hear this game is full of them. So, I asked a friend of mine to play along. You might recognize him, the main man himself Mr. Blue Beatle!”
The camera then zoomed out to reveal the guy next to him. He was bulked up a lot more than the first and his skin had a deep tan that complimented his short, dark hair and eyes nicely. He wore a signature blue hoodie and he looked at Impulse with mild annoyance.
“This is a dumb idea,” Blue had said with mild annoyance but the playful glimmer to his gaze told everyone he wasn’t actually very upset about it. “How are we supposed to play a single-player game as a co-op?”
“Ah come on blue, stay whelmed,” Impulse said using the phrase first coined by a huge vlogger that went by Robbin before he passed the channel over to his younger brothers. Since then he had started a cover channel singing and made a pretty good name for himself as Nightwing. “Whenever one of us dies we simply hand the controls over to the other.”
Blue still didn’t look amused.
“Besides,” Impulse started as he through a casual arm around Blue’s shoulders. “How else am I supposed to stop myself from feeling the mode if you aren’t there to make it less scary?”
“Anyhow does having me here make it less scary?”
“Sarcasm and dry wit?”
Blue rolled his eyes at that before finally shrugging Impulse’s arm off his shoulders.
“Fine hermano, but if I do this for you you’re coming to that concert I told you about.”
“Noted,” Impulse agreed happily. “So, let’s get this party started!”
…
Bart always wondered how his fans would react if they saw what kind of person he was from behind the camera. He didn’t really have a huge following. Big enough he was fairly well known but not big enough to worry about running into fans on the streets. He was perfectly ok with that. He gets spare cash from ad revenue but it also doesn’t take up his life so he can continue his studies at college. A win-win situation if you asked him.
But either way, who they saw was probably very different from the person he was.
Impulse was always there with his quick one-liner and confident demeanor and always put together with a smile. And while Bart Allen shared those traits, he can’t imagine many of them pictured him in the situation he was in now.
“Hold still,” Traci chastised him for the fourth time as she tried to steady his bouncing leg long enough for her to do his eyeliner. Bart was honestly just hoping she didn’t poke his eye out with the eye pencil. While it wasn’t the first time Jaime’s girlfriend had done his make-up that didn’t change the fact he always hated this part even if she reassured him she wouldn’t stab him in the eye. At least not if he sat still!
“They're back on it again with the bluepulse comments,” Jaime said casually as he scrolled through the comment section of Bart’s first uploaded video of the playthrough they were doing together. Bart had met Jaime back when he was still in high school at a science camp and had been best friends ever since—staying pen pals of sorts through texting and other social media. They both visited each other pretty regularly, It wasn’t THAT long of a drive from Central City to where Jaime lived in El Paso. So, Bart was staying for a few weeks during summer break. In exchange for Jaime filming the whole series over the course of a few days (with regular complaints asking how Bart could film that much in such a short period of time), Bart agreed to go to his friend’s concert. Maybe post a few tweets or Instagram photos.
“My subscribers hear about them enough,” Jaime had reasoned. “You’re a fresh new demographic.” Bart had wondered how much of a different demographic the two of them could have since they both had gaming channels but he had let it go and agreed anyway.
“Ooooo, what are they saying now?” Traci had asked pulling Bart back from his mini-flashback. She sat enthusiastically and waited anxiously for Jaime to start reading off the comments. Bart snorted at that. It was no secret between the three of them Bart had used to have a small crush on Jaime back when they had been in high school or that he was gay. But Jaime had been nice about letting Bart down gently and the two of them remaining close friends. Hell, he was the one who set Traci and Jaime up. Though, Bart usually teased that Traci was too good for him. Only for it to backfire when Jaime would agree with a dopey grin on his face, leaving Bart to gag at how sweet it was.
“You really shouldn’t be that excited to hear this,” Jaime reasoned and she just motioned for him to continue. With a sigh, Jaime did.
“OMG, I ship it so hard! They are total together right? Like they do collabs and Co-ops all the time! I wish they would just announce their together already!” Bart and Traci started giggling uncontrollably as Jaime continued to read the comments in exaggerated voices and accents. “It’s Blue Beatle with Traci13, the beauty guru? What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her!”
Traci was hunched over in a fit of laughter now. Bart wasn’t far behind as he threw his own head rolling back so he could let out his own laughs.
“Oh Traci if only they knew I was more likely to steal you away from Jaime then the other way around,” Bart said as he tried to catch his breath in pants—fanning his face to stop the tears of joy from smudging the make up and making Traci having to start her whole process over again.
“Paradon?” Jaime asked with a raised eyebrow and smirk.
“Yes, it’s true Jaime I’m leaving you for Bart because he actually lets me do his make-up,” Traci said melodramatically with a flip of her hair and bat of her eyelashes. She had yet to do her own make-up but she was still a beauty even by Bart’s standards with her long chocolate hair and eyes and freckles dotting her tanned skin. She wasn’t as bronzed as Jaime but she definitely made Bart look like a ghost.
Jaime could only roll his eyes at her statement. Especially considering they all knew for a fact before Bart ever got a hold of him for the co-op Jaime had sat for a full three hours so Traci could do his make-up for a video. That video wouldn’t be up for another three weeks, but Bart could already see the comments. They almost set him into another laughing fit.
“Alright, enough playing around, if I don’t get Bart’s make-up finished, I’m never going to get mine done in time,” Traci said with a smile as she turned back to Bart.
“I could have gone without the make-up. This is supposed to be a smaller scale thing anyway.”
“But I never get the chance to do another person’s make up!”
“Aren’t you a cosmetology major hoping to make your own line of products? Like you are majoring in doing other people’s make up.”
“…Shut up and let me do your lipstick.”
Now it was Jaime’s turn to start laughing uncontrollably as his best friend and Girlfriend bickered.
…
Bart was glad he went with the make-up and Traci’s outfit of choice (skin-tight pants and a casual button-up shirt with the first few buttons undone and sleeves rolled up) because the club was a lot less casual than the two had promised. Almost everyone was dressed to the nines with the goal of getting wasted or getting laid.
“I thought you said this was going to be a punk/rock cover band?” Bart half yelled to Jaime where he stood about two feet away.
“It is,” Jaime responded as he grabbed his and Traci’s drinks. Bart wasn’t technically supposed to be there since he was under 21, but as the designated driver they let him in since they also served food and he wore a wrist band to prove as much. It was crash by him though, it meant he got free soda all night.
“Then why is everyone dressed like a music-festival?” Bart asked and Traci and Jaime only shrugged.
“Atheistic?” Was the best answer Traci could give.
“Is it always like this at the club?”
“Pretty much yeah.”
“No wonder you didn’t tell me. I hate these pants, and already want to go home.” Bart was only half-joking about this. He was glad he came. He thrived on this kind of energy that vibrated like electricity in the air. But the pants did suck. They were constricting and hard to move in. Forget dancing, he could barely stand walking in them. But he had put them on anyway because Traci had said they made his ass look good and he really couldn’t argue that logic.
“You’ll live, besides their starting now.” Sure enough, he watched as the band members entered on the stage. He thought about snapping some shots for social media then but decided to wait for mid-performance. He had already done the update that he was out with Traci and Jaime earlier before they left the house in the form of a dumb bathroom selfie with the three of them making various ridiculous poses.
The first person on the stage was a kid in a hoodie with neatly done corn-row-braids and the sides shaved and deep skin. He twirled drumsticks in his hand as he walked to finish setting up his set. Next was a petite Japanese girl with her hair wild and sticking out in every way as if fighting the headband and hair tie that tried to constrain them. She had a guitar in her hands and close behind was a guy with long black hair wearing a matching headband. Bart could recognize him from the photos around Jaime’s house and vague memories of a visit back when he was in high school. That guy was Tye, the lead singer.
“That’s Virgil on Drums and Asami on guitar.” Jaime offered the names of the members he wouldn’t know.
Bart nodded then as he began to pull his phone out to take a full photo of the band setting up on stage and maybe film the opening speech to put on Instagram. That was his plan until the bassist walked on stage.
Red leather jacket, long legs, and Spike Spiegel hair. Bart had to stop himself from letting his jaw drop the moment the guy got on stage. His skin was the same deep tan that matched Jaime but his face was less rugged and more angular along with the rest of his build being less broad and more streamline. Though he still seemed taller and more muscular then Bart.
“Who’s that?” Bart asked hoping his voice didn’t come out as squeaky as he thought it did.
“That would be Eduardo, the bassist.”
Bart took it all back. He was glad Traci had the foresight to make him over. He quickly snapped a photo of the group and quickly posted it to social media as promised. He wanted to make sure he filled his end of the promise to Jaime now because he made no promises to keep his eyes anywhere but the stage for this show.