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There’s the telltale sound of a key clicking in the lock downstairs as Jerma guesses the wrong country in Geoguesser for the fifth time in a row.
Jerma’s hand pauses on his mouse and his eyes the camera, trying to pretend like he’s reading chat. He hears the sound of feet shuffling to the kitchen and his ears perk up like a dog. He glances at the time on his monitor - he said he’d be home at 10. It’s a little past nine.
He tries to think on his feet. He really does. It’s just that he has a headache today and the Tylenol is wearing off and he really actually has to pee. Otherwise, it would’ve been absolutely seamless.
“Whoa! Sorry guys! Gotta pee. Pee break,” he says, clicking his screen to fade to his BRB screen. Chat will just have to assume it was fucking urgent. “I’ll be back. Time to pee.”
He mutes himself, checks to make sure he actually did it, and then stands up for a quick stretch, bouncing on his toes and rotating side-to-side. Everything’s been pretty stiff, but it’s not too bad so far. Then he leaves his streaming room, his socks soft on the staircase. All the lights are off in the house, except for the kitchen. He can hear the distant sounds of someone ripping open a bag of snacks.
He rounds the corner, and he can see a dark figure in the kitchen crack one of his sparkling waters and down it quickly, coughing as he finishes it. Jerma tilts his hip against the doorframe, watching the sad sight play out.
“Hey,” Jerma says, watching as the figure jumps at his voice. It’s nice that he can still be relatively sneaky. “You’re home early.”
Ludwig turns around sheepishly, wiping his mouth. He’s wearing his nice jacket, the leather one that makes Jerma want to bury his nose in his shoulder and breathe it in. He’s even wearing the shirt Jerma got him, the graphic long-sleeve with the silly Nightwing logo in the middle. Jerma doesn’t melt exactly, but there are definitely parts of him that… sweat.
“Hey!” Ludwig says happily, smiling as he sees him. It’s a great smile, all cheeks and half-shut eyes. He opens up his arms, a sign for Jerma to disengage from the doorframe and go willingly into his grasp. “Aren’t you streaming still?”
“Might end soon,” Jerma says, sliding into Ludwig’s arms. He’s just the right height for him to rest his head on the shoulder. “I’m so fucking bad at Geoguesser. They’re making fun of me.”
“Surely you’re not that bad,” Ludwig says, gently rocking back and forth as they hug. “How can someone be bad at guessing parts of the Geo?”
“You’d be surprised,” Jerma grumbles. Ludwig’s hands are warm on his back. It feels nice against the soreness. Ludwig, as if he heard, starts digging into his lower back with his thumbs and Jerma accepts this with a groan. “How are the guys?”
“Good,” Ludwig says. “Slime and Nick ditched early because they wanted to watch Encanto,” Ludwig’s fingers continuing their slow press up Jerma’s spine. “Hey, they want to go to Italy next month. I said we might be in. Obviously, we don’t have to be.”
“Uh - yes, right there - yeah, I could probably be convinced,” Jerma mumbles against Ludwig’s shoulder. He’s not really a vacation guy, but Ludwig’s talked about Italy ever since they started dating. And Japan. And his family back in New Hampshire. Jerma should actually go to one of those now that they’ve been dating for a while.
“Could be fun,” Ludwig muses. “Eat a fuck-ton of Italian food. Go around on Vespas. Drink wine.”
Jerma can imagine him burying his face in Ludwig’s back, his arms around his waist, Ludwig laughing as they dip a little too close to the road. Just something like that gets his heartbeat going quick. That’s not especially hard though.
“I don’t know,” Jerma says quietly, keeping his hands on Ludwig’s waist as he leans back to look him in the eyes. “I’ll think about it. No promises.”
“Sick,” Ludwig says, smile wide again. That’s as good as a yes from Jerma, not that he’d ever admit it. “That’s great.”
“You’re great,” Jerma mutters, leaning up to kiss him. It’s nice here in the kitchen in the dark, the dust specks and the weird, yellow-tinged lights that Ludwig got someone to install that make it feel warmer and cozier. He’s a huge fucking cornball, sue him. Is that a crime?
Wait a fucking minute. Jerma scrunches his face up. Ludwig hums, oblivious to his confusion.
Ludwig’s mouth tastes like his fucking Baked Lays.
“You dirty motherfucker,” Jerma murmurs against Ludwig. Ludwig mock gasps, which Jerma giggles at despite his best intentions otherwise. He breaks away and pushes his finger into the middle of Ludwig’s shirt, right where it hurts. “Stop eating my fucking Baked Lays.”
“First of all, if I had died just then because you pressed the chussy too hard, you would’ve felt incredibly awful,” Ludwig said, his hand coming up to curl around his wrist.
“I would’ve felt bad for maybe a second,” Jerma says, fighting the smile again. It seems to be winning. “One.”
“Second of all, I will replace your Baked Lays tomorrow. I’m bargaining for just a bag. One single bag.” Ludwig wheedles. “Just one. I had a little drink. I want snack. One.”
“One bag?” Jerma says. Ludwig nods, so serious. He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Eat my one bag of Baked Lays.”
“Already did. WOO!” Ludwig crows, leaning over to kiss him again before he can push him off. Ludwig has an uncanny talent to get the last word. What a fucking weirdo loser. Jerma hums into his mouth happily, even though this man stole his fucking favorite chips.
They kiss for a while, unhurried. Jerma winds his hand through Ludwig’s hair and leaves it there, fucking up his carefully constructed hair swoop irrevocably. Thank God he gets to do this, in his own kitchen, with a hot guy that adores him. What a lucky, undeserving bastard he is.
Ludwig, eventually, the voice of reason, mutters, “Don’t you have to go back, by the way? Are they going to think you died on the toilet like Elvis?”
“Does that matter?” Jerma mumbles, relishing the puff of air against his cheek as Ludwig chuckles. “They already think I shit myself every stream anyway.”
“I hope not, that chair would be hard to clean,” Ludwig says. He pecks Jerma once on the mouth, once on the forehead, and then taps him gently on the ass. “Go guess some more countries. Bring home the bacon.”
Jerma isn’t a child, so he doesn’t stomp his feet and frown. It’s a very, very close thing though. He accepts his fate, grabs the sparkling water Ludwig offers him, and goes quietly back upstairs to the streaming room where everyone is spamming one vulgar thing or another in chat. He can hear the faint footsteps of Ludwig downstairs, the Beethoven song he sings to himself quietly. Hopefully he doesn’t fall asleep before the stream ends, Jerma wants to talk to him more about his night. Among other things.
He unmutes himself after a time, gearing himself back into streamer mode. He debates leaving facecam off, but it would just be suspicious and he doesn’t need any more “sus” jokes in his life. He switches back to Geoguesser, and his little facecam in the corner doesn’t look that rumpled — maybe his cheeks are a little redder, maybe his hair’s a little fucked up. It’s doable.
“Hi everyone,” Jerma says quietly. Fuck, he still has to pee. Whatever. “We ready?”
He gets sucked back into Geoguesser so entirely, so wholly, that he doesn’t even notice the time passing until Ludwig knocks at his door, just the briefest glance of his knuckles against the wood. This one is really stumping him too — it looks like the middle of fucking Any City, USA. He’s about to start grinding his teeth into little nubs.
Ludwig is smart. Ludwig knows places. So he motions a One Second finger to the camera and then turns off his facecam and mic so chat doesn’t get an eyeful of his ass as he gets up.
He opens the door to an immediately surprised Ludwig, who is already changed into one of the many novelty anime t-shirts and basketball shorts combos that he wears to bed. “Hi?’ Ludwig says, his hand still hanging in the air. His phone is blaring some YouTube video. “You - we good?”
“Do you want to be on stream?” Jerma says fervently. Ludwig looks very worried. “And help me win this fucking game? Please. I can’t handle this.”
“As your boyfriend or as, like, your bro?” Ludwig says, immediately on board. Jerma is thankful for it. “I’m down to be either.”
Jerma did tell chat he was seeing someone a couple of months ago, but he never mentioned gender or names. The presence of anybody in his house in the middle of the night would probably be obvious, but he thinks he has a solid straight vibe that could convince a casual viewer. If he doesn’t drink ever. And doesn’t speak too much.
Ludwig could pass too. He could drop his voice a couple of octaves, utilize his schooling at Arizona State University to pass as a gamer frat bro. He’s seen him do it, as seamless a transformation as you might expect from a high school theatre kid. Sometimes it’s the posture too: shoulders wide, knees spread. Jerma thinks about it often.
“Let ‘em wonder,” Jerma decides. Ludwig isn’t a streamer — he works in a production company with his friends, usually organizing and sometimes commentating on hometown Melee tournaments, so there’s little chance of anybody recognizing him. But still. Jerma himself is still only known as J to Ludwig’s many Smasher friends, which he’s absolutely fine with. At least it’s not like Dickbag or Lunchbox or whatever the other guys are called.
Ludwig nods, coming in and gently shutting the door behind him so Otto doesn’t freak. Jerma watches him run a hand through his hair, click off his YouTube video, get himself ready. Ludwig knows tangentially what streaming is and what it involves — commentating is a little bit like streaming, after all — but it’s big. Jerma knows it’s big. Ludwig catches Jerma staring and gestures like what are you waiting for?
Jerma loves him. He should tell him that. He makes a mental note to do that later.
He fixes his hair too and sits down, taking his screen off BRB. His sweaty, red face appears in the corner again. Ugh. Whatever.
“Told you it would be quick. We have a special guest here to help me!” He mimics a drum beat with his mouth and gestures Ludwig forward. It feels very Sesame Street.
Ludwig appears next to him in the window way too close to the camera, his cheekbone taking up much of the facecam as possible. Jerma reaches forward and adjusts the camera so it shows both of them a little more equally, and Ludwig immediately braces his shitty clip-on light on the side of Jerma’s monitor so it doesn’t fall. A fuckin’ natural.
“Ludwig is a friend of mine,” Jerma says to the chat, who are reacting with question marks and Pog faces. “He is more worldly than I am. He’s French.”
“Oui,” Ludwig says, hovering in front of the monitor, taking it all in. Jerma tugs him back a few inches again so it’s not as intense. “That’s not hard to do though. This guy’s just from Boston.”
“Hey, that’s worldly,” Jerma says. Ludwig is still looking at chat, reading whatever they're saying. He’s acting a little bit like a human shield, the bulk of him blocking the light and the noise. It’s nice. “I know New England like,” he snaps, “Like that.”
“New England, Old England, same shit, right?” Ludwig smiles, looking back at Jerma. His hair swoops over his forehead limply, freshly washed. “And I got New Hampshire.”
“New Hampshire, Massachusetts,” Jerma says. “Las Vegas, of course.”
Ludwig looks back at the chat buzzing across the screen. “Las Vegas and Arizona. It’s a Welcome to the NHK shirt, by the way. It was a gift from a friend,” Ludwig answers, pointing down at his chest. “No, not Jerma. He’d never.”
“I know anime!” Jerma protests. Ludwig didn’t drag him through many discussions of Attack on Titan and One Piece for him not to know something. And he watched Full Metal Alchemist! “Not a lot, though. I’d probably give you a Star Wars shirt or something.”
Ludwig rolls his eyes, purely for show. “He doesn’t prefer the prequels. Irrelevant.”
“Okay, okay,” Jerma giggles, shoving him. “Hey, you’re supposed to be helping me with Geoguesser, by the way.”
“Oh yeah,” Ludwig says, pushing his hand through his hair. “Show me.”
Jerma clicks over to the offending window, and Ludwig takes a long, hard look at it. Jerma helpfully clicks around a little bit, shows a little of the green area he keeps getting stuck in. It’s a highway. He thinks.
“This is Japan,” Ludwig says. “There’s Japanese right there.” He points to a road sign that Jerma has definitely missed.
“Are you sure?” Jerma says despairingly, zooming in to the offending sign. “It’s already been Japan, like, ten times.”
“For sure it is. Look,” Ludwig says. “That’s Japanese lettering for sure. Hiragana, even.”
“Do you know what it says?” Jerma asks, looking up at him. Ludwig knows a little about a lot — he’s constantly bringing up little morsels to him, like the Canadian age of consent of anal sex or a fact about the Roman Empire and Nero. If he just started speaking Japanese one day, well. It wouldn’t surprise him that much.
“Not a fucking word,” Ludwig says, tucking his arm against his side again. “But by God if I don’t know my hiragana.”
“Okay,” Jerma blusters. He zooms in on a section of Japan on the map. “Well, it seems like you don’t know your hiragana, so.”
Ludwig squints his eyes at him, and then looks at the camera in a can you believe this guy kind of way. Jerma’s heart warms and jitters and shudders. He’s so handsome. He’s so funny.
“Give me another one,” Ludwig says. Jerma decides on Osaka and isn’t shocked to see that it’s only a few miles from the waypoint. Of course he’s right.
“Yeah, sure,” Jerma says, switching to another one. A picture of a gas station loads up, and Jerma relinquishes ultimate control of the mouse very easily.
“Okay. This shit looks Canadian to me. Look at the color scheme,” Ludwig says, pointing to the red and white building on the screen. “Caltex is a beast name though. Wait, where’s the sun?” He scrolls the mouse to the side and tilts his head. “North-ish? Aw, fuck. The cars are on the wrong side. This shit is down under.”
“Sure,” Jerma says. He’s not listening.
“I’m thinking like an Australia,” Ludwig says, eyes intent on the screen, “Is that crazy?”
“No, that’s not crazy,” Jerma reassures him. “You’re, like, thinking about it and being smart.”
“I almost want to say that it’s NZ,” Ludwig says, ignoring him. “It’s pretty lush too. Isn’t Aus like a desert? No water, not a coast. Fuck, I don’t know. I’m picking…”
He scrolls around the little map for a second. “Christchurch. Sure.”
He presses Submit and the little screen delightfully informs them that he is only 30km away. Ludwig bows to the camera, cheese ball that he is, and the chat erupts into Pogs and EZ Claps and Jerma wants him here all the time, constantly, just parked next to him.
“One more,” Ludwig relents. He goes to sit down on Jerma’s lap so he can see the screen better, but jerks when he remembers this is platonic and just squats down next to his chair. “I’m killing it.”
“Go ahead, man,” Jerma says, leaning back. Ludwig looks tiny in the preview. It’s adorable.
A desolate-looking road surrounded by trees loads up, and Ludwig’s face drops in disbelief as he clicks down the road.
“What the fuck?” Ludwig says, scrolling and zooming into the trees. “This could be anywhere!”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Jerma says. “All of these places look the same.”
“This could be any - hold on, there’s a sign,” Ludwig says, zooming in on a small sign by the side of the road. “’Road ends here.’ Definitely NA.” He looks at the chat for a second, his eyes moving from side to side quickly.
“Are you cheating?” Jerma says, smiling at him.
Ludwig immediately looks away and rolls his eyes. “Of course not. The fact that you would even think that is hurtful. I was looking at one guy sending that stupid frog emote a thousand times.”
On cue, the chat fills up with peepoHappys. Jerma smiles and puts his head on his fist to keep watching.
“But for real, does anyone want to tell me where this is?” Ludwig says, leaning back to crack his knuckles. “Alaska? I was just thinking that too, PantsMasterX. You read my mind.”
“Definitely not cheating, though,” Jerma muses.
“No, course not. Are you insane?” Ludwig says, clicking around the little map and settling on Juneau and leaning back, looking at chat again. “‘This guy looks like he smells like chicken wings.’ Crazy thing to say.”
“It’s true,” Jerma says, rubbing his fingers together absentmindedly as he smiles.
“Alright,” Ludwig says, locking in Juneau. “Well. Rude.”
“No, no, he doesn’t. He smells like nothing,” Jerma relents, the guilt suddenly eating him alive. “Or he just smells like him. It’s a very neutral smell.”
“I’ll take that,” Ludwig says, clicking the next screen and zooming in on store signs on a busy city street. “Would’ve taken a compliment there, but you know.”
“Come on, come on,” Jerma says, waving him off. If he wasn’t streaming, he’d put his arm around his shoulders and kiss his cheek to bug him, but unfortunately he can just beam at his lap.
“France, by the way,” Ludwig says, scrolling through the map and clicking Normandy. “Easy dub. It’s French.”
The game emits a sad beep as the map widens to show that it is, in fact, Quebec City.
“WHAT?” Ludwig screeches, mouth gaping. Jerma hangs his mouth open, just to not feel left out. “No shot. QUEBEC? That’s just fake France.”
Ludwig slams the desk in jest and the whole setup starts swaying like an old ship. They both rush to steady all his screens and monitors before it all goes sideways.
“Alright, get out of here before you break my fucking monitor,” Jerma says, unable to take this any longer without kissing him and throwing the whole charade away. “Thank you for the help, Ludwig.”
“GGs,” Ludwig says, stretching up to give a salute to the camera and then blows a kiss to Jerma once he’s stretched off-screen. Jerma can’t stop smiling at him. And once he’s out of the room, he can’t stop smiling in general.
Look, okay. Chat isn’t oblivious. Chat picks apart every single iota of his appearance and surroundings looking for weakness, and here comes a big walking gunshot wound that makes him blush and stutter and giggle like a little kid. It’s not hard to put two and two together.
He wraps the stream a little bit later, his bladder close to bursting. His chat demands Ludwig back for a good night, but Jerma shakes his head. No way. He’s too sleepy. Something will slip if it hasn’t already.
He bids them goodnight, clicks off, and then stretches his back, neck, and hands. He’s a little tight, but nothing a little Tylenol and a massage won’t fix. If Ludwig is still awake.
He hopes he is, he misses him. He switches off his lights in his office and quietly walks over to the bathroom, where he finally pisses, brushes his teeth, and washes his face. He does his nightly routine of staring in the mirror and prodding at his skin and seeing if he looks old yet, but nothing gives. Still looks good.
He creeps to the bedroom, where he can hear the quiet noises of Ludwig watching some video. His heart swells. God. He pushes open the door and Ludwig is passed out, his arm over his eyes and his phone blasting a video about speedrunning Super Mario. Otto is on his back next to him, sometimes twitching and yelping in his sleep.
Jerma carefully makes his way to his side of the bed and opens up the covers to slide in, making sure to not jostle any of the sleeping occupants. It sucks that he’s asleep, but they both have the day off tomorrow, so it’s not that bad.
Ludwig rouses slightly as Jerma relaxes, finally putting down his phone on the bed and turning to sling his arm over his waist. “Hello,” he mumbles into his shoulder. Otto snorts as he kicks Jerma right in the shin.
“Hi. They loved you,” Jerma says. Ludwig nods, eyes still closed.
“Course they did. Love you too,” Ludwig says, nuzzling Jerma’s shoulder. Ludwig isn’t a big fan of PDA, but he’s a clingy guy. Many times Jerma has woken up to Ludwig spooning him or halfway over his chest, always making sure to touch some part of him. It’s nice. And usually very warm.
“I love you too,” Jerma clarifies quietly and Ludwig hums his appreciation.
“I love you too,” Ludwig echoes gruffly. “Sleep.”
“Goodnight,” Jerma says, and Ludwig nods, already breathing wetly into his hair. He’ll just repeat it in the morning when he’s making them a shitty breakfast that Ludwig will eat with gusto, and Ludwig will say the same thing as his eyes sparkle. Then he’ll call Nick or Brandon or Slime and they’ll game or he and Ludwig watch some movie Ludwig heard about or Ludwig will tell him some story about his college years when they go out for dinner.
But right now, Jerma is lacing his fingers through Ludwig’s and wishes he was awake because he misses him and he just potentially got clocked in front of his whole audience. But there’s always tomorrow.