Chapter Text
Bad was sitting at his PC, the SMP was a bit slow today. Which wasn’t exactly the norm. He’d talked to Antfrost a bit that day, but other than those slim interactions his stream felt a little dead. Not viewer wise, but his heart just wasn’t in it today. He was cycling through donations like clockwork when he’d read over one he got constantly.
‘Call Skeppy!’ The chat demanded, time and time again.
Usually, he wouldn’t bother Skeppy like this, he considered all the cons to just calling Skeppy right now. He was probably off doing something. His friend was the type that couldn’t sit still, while Bad often felt stagnant. It wasn’t as if bad didn’t do anything-he just wasn’t the kind of guy to go and do whatever he wanted whenever he felt like it. After messing around on his stream more, he ultimately decided asking to call wouldn’t hurt. Grabbing his phone from the left-hand side of his desk, he opened up his and Skeppy’s DMs.
‘Hi! :D I’m streaming rn, do you want to call? owo’
And sent. Now all he had to do was wait!
Waiting was fine for the first hour. He has missed a DM or two from Skeppy before, but lately, their conversations have been so...slow. It put a big damper on his mood, so much so that he felt the need to finally end his stream. Within the last hour, Puffy ended up getting on the call. While the discount Skeppy jokes were funny at first, they left him with a sense of yearning that was hard to joke about. She was good company, even if she memed on him to an insane degree.
“Alright guys, I’m a sleepy muffin, so I think now's the time to wrap up!” He said, after a minute or two of silence from both him and Puffy.
She chimed in, “Aw, night Bad!”
“Goodnight Puffy! Let’s see…” He typed /raid CaptainPuffy into the chat. “Everyone!! We’re raiding Puffy! Go head over to her stream! She’s a good muffin!” Raiding was one of his favorite parts of streaming, the feeling of sending over thousands of folks to your friends so they can get the attention they deserve-unmatched.
“Aw Bad! Thank you!” You could tell she was smiling just from her voice, she was like that.
“No Problem! Goodnight you guys!” And with that, he finally ended the stream. Today the minutes seemed to drag on, he sunk back into his chair. The sudden movement made Lucy blink awake, wagging her tail ever so slightly. At least she could make him feel a bit better. He leaned towards his bed to provide her the best pets he possibly could. A yawn escaped his mouth and that was his cue that he should start attempting to get some sleep.
After doing his nightly routine, he curled up into his bed. Lucy hopped in just minutes later. Ready to stay awake anxiously for two hours before actually sleeping, because that’s the norm in his world. This ritual started off with Twitter, scrolling through posts upon posts on his feed. Then he’d head over to various tags, liking some of the posts before eventually deciding to move onto the next distraction. The letter emotion in the corner of his screen was screaming out to him, he knew nothing would be there, there wasn’t a notification. What would the point be? Never hurt to check.
It’d been hours now, still no response from Skeppy. These days they were talking less and less, Bad barely knew where Skeppy was half of the time. One week he could be in LA, the other Dubai, and sometimes he was in Florida. Much like Bad. Sometimes they felt impossibly close like if he went outside one day he might just see Skeppy standing there. Skeppy would look at him, the sun shining behind him as if to say ‘he’s finally here’. Though, Skeppy wouldn’t need the help shining. Maybe they would run towards each other, maybe they would be in shock a minute or two. The scene would eventually end in an embrace that would last as long as they both needed it to. So close.
Bad knew that this wasn’t going to happen, why would it? Lately, it felt like Skeppy wanted to be with everyone but him. People he didn’t even know were around Skeppy before him. The thought shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, but the fact that some randos were out there with his best friend that he hadn’t met yet-it made his blood boil. Anger was never his strong suit, but everyone has caught onto the fact that he gets jealous. Much more than he’d like to admit. It shouldn’t make his stomach drop every time he sees Skeppy with someone he doesn’t recognize. The tweets Skeppy makes about them meeting up, the tweets he likes about them-together, it shouldn’t bother him as much as it did. Despite the fact that it shouldn’t, it still did. These thoughts were keeping him up almost every night now, meanwhile, Skeppy obviously wasn’t even thinking about him.
It was fine, it would be fine. They will be back to normal in no time and then Bad can go back to being worried about more sensible things. Such as, his dog, or his twitch growth, maybe munchy. You know, things that should matter a bit more than his friend ignoring him for a bit. What if he needed space anyway, and Bad was overstepping a boundary? Maybe everything was getting to him.
At this point, everyone was talking about their relationship. Tubbo implied they’re dating, Vurb and Spifey with their constant sweets, Quackity’s general mayhem, and Puffy going as far to pretend to be Skeppy just to get a rise out of him. Their roleplay together within the SMP was very...intense. It made him cry-just the thought of losing Skeppy. The idea that he might not want to be around him anymore, that he would change so much nothing he could do would make him happy. He just wanted to make him happy.
Was that all too much for him? What if he was losing Skeppy, for those reasons or ones he hadn’t even thought of yet? The growing distance both emotionally and physically could be intentional. What if Skeppy wanted to be lost? His mind was racing, going from point to point, questions with no answers were having a race inside of his brain. Whichever won would be what he had a breakdown about tonight-
Ding!
He snapped out of it almost instantly, looking at the notification on his phone. Blinking a bit, he felt water run down his cheeks. When did he start crying? He wiped them away, he didn’t even know if it was from Skeppy. But the distraction was obviously needed.
It did end up being Skeppy. A sigh of relief escaped him.
‘Sure :)’ He said. Just a few hours too late. It was not a big deal.
‘Skeppyyyyy. I ended the stream hours ago!! Next time? :L’
And of course, the double text. ‘Were you busy? What are you up to?’
He waited about 5 minutes for a response, just staring at their DM screen. Somehow he’d convinced himself that if he clicked off again Skeppy would never respond.
‘Yeaaaaa. I was recording some stuff. Wbu?’ Skeppy responded.
Bad bit his tongue. It’d been a while since Skeppy recorded a video without him. Another sign?
‘I’m trying to sleep, but you know how that goes :(‘
Skeppy wouldn’t know. If he did, Bad wouldn’t be having this problem right now. Skeppy would’ve just kept messaging him regularly, and they would never have that problem.
He responds quicker this time. ‘Im sorry :( anything I can do abt it?’ Pay more attention to me. Bad thought for a quick second, then shook his head. It wasn’t about attention, it was just about them feeling distant. That just wasn’t the right phrasing. The help he wanted, the help he craved was for Skeppy to be here. Be in his space, soak up every aspect of him until they’re practically the same person. You know, best friend things.
His mind would wander a lot these days, what was Skeppy up to right now? What if he was talking about him, or thinking about him. Dreading their next conversation maybe?
Bad responded. ‘Not really.’ No emoji, this was serious stuff.
Skeppy’s response came almost instantaneously, maybe he got the vibe?
‘Wanna call?’ His heart leaped into his throat. It was like his brain stopped working, he nodded his head despite knowing no one could see it.
‘Yeah!! That would be really nice actually :D’
‘K get on disc :)’ Another quick response, just talking to skeppy made his mood shift so quickly. He wondered if he ever did the same for him.
Bad didn’t have to get on discord, he already had it open on his laptop. Which was perched right next to his bed-just encase he wanted to do some work off his desk. He reached over, poking at the trackpad until the screen lit up. Before he could go to call him himself, Skeppy had begun calling him.
“Hey,” He heard his best friend from the other end. It felt like the panic from earlier was just a bad dream, all the doubts had subsided for just a second. All from the word-hey.
“Hello,” Could he tell his voice was strained? No, of course not.
“Are you at your PC?” Skeppy asked, he could hear faint taps coming from the other end.
“No, I’m still in bed. Laptop,” he smiled, hopefully, it came through with his tone. “Sorry, should I get on?” Bad yawned.
“You’re good, I was just wondering why your mic was shit-” Skeppy laughed.
“Hey! I paid good money for this laptop-”
“You could’ve just used discord on your phone, the quality might’ve been better.”
Bad huffed. “Well, I’m sorry Skeppy. Maybe I prefer PC discord.” He didn’t actually have a rebuttal or an actual argument, all he knew was that he wanted to be right. Not sure what about yet.
“Okay, but that doesn’t change the fact your phone might have a better mic than your laptop!” Bad could hear Skeppy faintly giggling on the other end. They both got a kick out of ‘fighting’ like this. Maybe that’s why they worked so well together.
“No. You’re wrong-what if you recorded my voice now, right? And then I could call you on my phone. Then we can both compare the quality and decide which is ACTUALLY better.”
“What would be the point? Does it matter?” The words at face value might make it seem like Skeppy was willing to agree to disagree, but then he continued. “You can just admit I’m right, it’s okay.”
“No!” Bad practically shouted, Lucy poked her head up from his blankets. “We will test it-get your recording software open.” He could hear Skeppy sigh, an audible eye roll.
“Say something,” Skeppy said.
“Hello-I am Badboyhalo from my Laptop. This is a recording. To prove I’m right. And that Skeppy’s wrong.” Bad laughed a bit.
His friend clicked around a bit. “Now call me on your phone discord-” Skeppy had already sent Bad the first audio file.
Bad shuffled through his covers, grabbing his phone. When he turned it on the screen was still open on their DMs, he was so glad Skeppy asked to call. This was exactly what he needed. He closed out of them, opening discord to call Skeppy.
The call connected and on the other line he heard, “Say something.” The same prompt as before.
“Hellloooooo Skepppyyyyy.” He paused for a second. “This is….” Another pause. “Badboyhalo. On his phone.” Bad could barely hold his amusement.
“Why do you keep pausing?” Skeppy asked.
“I don’t know what you mean-that’s just my phone audio! It sucks, right?” He had the biggest grin.
“Oh my god, that’s cheating Bad!” Skeppy sounded annoyed, but not angry. The clicking started up again, and another audio file was sent. Bad reconnected on his laptop.
“Okay, let’s listen.” Skeppy unplugged his headphones on the other end so Bad and him could listen to the files at the exact same time. After giving them a quick listen, Skeppy spoke up.
“They sound the same-”
Bad interruption. “Actually, Skeppy, my phone audio cut out a LOT. I think that might affect quality.” Skeppy laughed a bit more, before responding.
“That doesn’t count! It didn’t really cut out!” He shouted back.
“Mmm. I don’t know about that, Skeppy. Sounds like it cut out to me.” Bad was memeing, it was obvious, but Skeppy still seemed amused.
As they normally do, they went on with this argument for a while. It was all for fun, of course, they don’t have many serious arguments. Though, they are opposites on a lot of spectrums. Skeppy was a lot more extroverted than Bad, Bad was a lot more organized and rational than Skeppy, Skeppy didn’t live in his head as much, but despite all of this, they still got a lot. They got along a lot better than most people, some would argue. You would guess because of how different they are, they’d have more arguments like this. Their friendship prevailed, however, so the arguments were short-or just non-existent outside of teasing.
After a while, they both got quieter. It wasn’t like the conversation was dwindling, they were both tired. It was getting late, so it was understandable. Bad had calmed down a lot since he started talking to Skeppy. He yawned, quietly but it must’ve still picked up.
“Aw.” He heard Skeppy say. Bad smiled to himself, he always appreciated the compliments his friends gave him. He could hear Skeppy shuffling around on the other end.
“Are you going to bed soon, Skeppy? It’s getting late.” Bad said the shuffling was less noticeable now.
“Uh, yeah, soon. I was just working on something.” He said. Something told him Skeppy didn’t actually plan on sleeping anytime soon.
“If you don’t at least get in bed, I’m never going to leave.” Bad joked, yawning again. He might fall asleep before he even gets the chance to end call-
“Then I won’t get in bed, what.” Skeppy laughed.
He could feel his heart start to pound, “Skeppy, that’s sweet but you need to sleep.” He continued. “How about this-if you don’t get in bed then I WILL leave.” Immediately he heard a beep, signifying Skeppy had left, then another when he rejoined.
“Sorry, switched to my phone, I’m going I promise.” He has a working mental image in his head of Skeppy sprinting to his bed at the thought of Bad leaving. It was comforting, knowing Skeppy wanted him to be around.
“If I don’t get off I’m going to fall asleep on call…” It wasn’t like they hadn’t done that before, it was never intentional. It just happened.
“I don’t mind. Get some sleep Bad.” Skeppy responded, this felt a lot different from the past few days. It felt normal for once. Was it all in Bad’s head?
“You don’t? I just..what if it’s weird? I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay on…” Bad muttered, half shoving his face into his pillow. He was practically already asleep. Part of him thought if he fell asleep, the past few days would just repeat themselves again. Skeppy was busy, he knew that, he wasn’t sure why he worried so much about it.
“Bad, I want you to stay.” Bad’s heart fluttered, why was it still beating so fast. He was really excited to be talking to Skeppy, he guessed. Whatever. It could’ve been a million other things. Lucy nuzzled up closer to him, so he held her under the covers. Bad just hummed in response to Skeppy. He was fading in and out of sleep until he eventually fell.