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Nick is a pretty observant dude. He’s god-level at making light conversation with drunk people, sitting on a beanbag, and watching the room for a while to make sure no one is going to fall over. He’s gotta make sure the screens work when people start yanking on shit. So he makes his rounds and then plonks his white ass down and listens, checking the stream chat and making sure the mics work.
He sips his Yerba Mate. Aiden sprints over to shoo a drunk Will Neff away from the consoles, the slight stagger in his step the only indication that he had a couple beers with the Australians beforehand.
Ludwig wanders back into the room, looking at his phone and fucking with his hair. He looks stressed, but Nick can’t really tell what for. The stream’s going great. It’s scuffed as fuck, but it’s going as good as it feasibly could. Nick sips his drink as he watches Ludwig type out something on his phone and blink heavily as the effort of it staggers him. The Natty Lights are controlling him like Rat a Tootie.
Jerma appears from the doorway behind him, his eyes locked on Ludwig’s back. Nick loves the guy, and he’s so fucking cool every time they talk, but his face is all red and damp right now and he definitely looks like an anxious kind of drunk guy. Nick watches as he sways forward and back, gnawing on the side of his lip as he watches Ludwig greet Connor and Ted, slinging two arms over their shoulders and leaning heavily on them as he does. Jerma’s shoulders slump slightly, and he looks like he’s the saddest little guy on Earth.
Nick shifts on the bean bag. Maybe he should wave him over and just ask him a shit ton of questions. Maybe ask him something about his set-up. Jerma doesn’t know a lot of people here, and he doesn’t know a lot of people here, so maybe he just needs a familiar face. He’s reasonably sure Jerma likes him too, so it won’t be too bad.
“Jerma!” Nick calls. Jerma doesn’t hear it, but Ludwig does. He turns to look over his shoulder for Jerma, and Jerma straightens up, his expression resolving itself immediately. Ludwig points at Nick and he can see Ludwig mouth his name. Jerma’s shoulders slump again and he nods to him quickly before he comes over.
“Hey man,” Nick greets him, trying not to feel that burn too deeply.
“Hey man!” Jerma says. To Jerma’s credit, he does seem genuinely happy to see him. He rocks on his toes a little bit as he comes to a stop. “You need me?”
“Just wanted to talk to someone who isn’t fucking slammed for a second,” Nick says, lying. He doesn’t give a shit. “You’re good?”
“Me? I’m great,” Jerma says, unflappable. He wrestles his hat down on his head. “It’s weird, I don’t drink usually. It’s usually wine and shit. When Ludwig said ‘beerio kart,’ I was so nervous about, like, chugging. I don’t do that. I’m 36.”
“I hear that,” Nick says, feeling like he’s trying to tame a spooked horse.
“By the way, Natty Lights? Dude,” Jerma says, squinting his eyes and cocking his head. He looks like he’s trying to be a character he saw on a TV show once, complete with fake nonchalance and regurgitated opinions. Nick wants to shake him and tell him to loosen up, but he literally doesn’t know him at all. They’re all just gamers here.
“Beer budget for this was like zero dollars,” Nick says, playing into it. “Don’t look at me. I’m drinking Yerb.”
“Okay, okay,” Jerma says, relenting, putting his hands up. His eyes flit over to Ludwig for a second over his shoulder before touching the tip of his hat and clearing his throat, eyes on the floor for a second as he thinks.
“You need Ludwig for something?” Nick ventures. Maybe he’s not lonely at all and just needs to know where, like, the bathroom is.
“Oh no, no,” Jerma says, eyes wide, looking down at him like he just realized he’s still there. “No, I was just seeing where he was. You know. Just in case he left. Or something.”
“You’re good, dude, he’s definitely not leaving,” Nick says. Top ten weirdest conversations today. “Why, he say he was leaving soon or something?“
Jerma’s eyes go wider. “No! No, no. Just if he had a spare moment and just like. Wanted to talk to me. Or something. I wanted to be here. To talk to him.”
Jerma’s face is somehow even redder now.
“Do you need some water or something, man?” Nick says. He pats the bean bag around him for the water bottle he knows is there.
Jerma stiffens as he looks Nick over, and then droops forward like a cartoon character. “Yeah,” Jerma says, crossing his arms tight against his chest. “If you had an extra. Yeah.”
“You wanna take a seat on the beanbag too?” Nick says, giving up on the search around him and reaching blindly above him for the water bottle that’s definitely there on the desk. “Plenty of room.”
Jerma nods jerkily and takes a very small section of the beanbag to perch on. He actually looks more uncomfortable than he was before, but Nick has done as much as he can here. He seizes the corner of the bottle and triumphantly yanks it toward him, but the bottle has nothing in it when he gestures it forward.
“Fuck, sorry, Ted must’ve drained the rest of it,” Nick says, scanning the rest of the room for an unopened bottle. Ludwig is twirling one in his hands, but it would not be a good idea to mess with whatever Jerma has happening right now with Ludwig. That’s just an executive decision Nick makes.
“Aiden!” Nick yells instead. Aiden, who is curled over his laptop talking with one of the PAs, raises his head like a gopher. Nick waves and Aiden gestures like what?
“I think,” Nick says, miming the action when it becomes clear that Aiden can’t fucking hear him. He points to Jerma next to him, who has gone back to staring at Ludwig like a kicked dog. “Jerma. Needs. Water.”
Aiden’s mouth drops open a little as he thinks, and he stares around the room person by person until he lands on something. Then he opens his mouth more as he yells “LUDWIG!”
Nick shakes his head as casually as possible as Ludwig pops his head up, looking at Aiden with raised eyebrows from his current position putting Yingling in a chokehold. Nick doesn’t even want to look over at Jerma right now.
“Can you give Jerma your water?” Aiden calls, throws a thumbs up, and then bends back over the computer as he inputs the newest tallies like a loser.
Ludwig looks down at the bottle of water in his hand pressed against Yingling’s neck, looks at Nick, and then looks at Jerma, and unleashes Yingling, causing him to gasp gratefully as he’s set free. He mimes an underhand throw over to Jerma, and Nick looks over to see Jerma incredibly intent on getting this water bottle, eyes open and watery, hands out and quivering.
It becomes incredibly clear that Jerma will not be able to get this bottle. He’s not, like, blackout, but he’s not an athletic guy. He just isn’t. Ludwig is also a bad shot, so Nick leans forward to Neo-grab this bottle out of the air before Jerma catches it with his head.
Ludwig lobs it in a very shaky-looking arc over Nick’s head and outstretched arm, and straight into Jerma’s waiting hands. Jerma looks so incredibly happy at that moment that Nick cheers and slaps him on the back, which Jerma takes with a nod and a grimace.
Ludwig flashes them both a thumbs up and goes back to his conversation, a smile still smeared onto his face like he forgot it’s there.
“Thanks,” Nick calls. Ludwig doesn’t hear. He’s too busy waving his arms around telling a story, flicking it this way and that. He gets really into it, enough that poor Connor and Will are swerving out of his way to avoid getting hit.
“Is he always like that?” Jerma asks, kinda out of the blue. Nick looks over at him, and he’s staring at him again, the water bottle cradled between his thighs, untouched.
“A good shot?” Nick says. He scoffs. “Not a fucking chance in the world, dude.”
“No,” Jerma waves that away. “Not that. Like. You know. On. Him.”
“Oh, in Ludwig Mode?” Nick says. He fucking wishes Slime were here. He’d know what to say. “Yeah, kind of. He’s sorta been the same since I met him. He’s gotten a little more, I guess the word is outgoing? Yeah. He’s still an asshole though.”
“Huh,” Jerma says, fiddling with the ridges of the water bottle, the cap, the thin plastic. “That’s good. Or not good. But it’s nice to know that this is, like, him. Like, he’s not different.”
Nick nods. Maybe Jerma’s, like, a sad drunk. “Yeah. Same guy underneath it all. He just doesn’t beg for writing jobs at Smash tournaments anymore.”
“Really?” Jerma says, eyes up on him finally. His smile reaches his eyes for a brief moment, warm and blue. “No way.”
“Yes, dude,” Nick says, relaxing his head back onto the bean bag and closing his eyes. “It was awful. No shot he would've ever got them. Him and Slime fight about it all the time.”
“I wish,” Jerma says quietly. “I don’t know, it’s stupid. Wish I could’ve met him before. Is that weird?”
That’s when Nick catches on that there’s something a little hinky going on here. To be fair to him, he never really thought to look for it. Everything resolves itself in his brain like he just put a new pair of glasses on.
Him and Aiden were wondering why Jerma said yes before the tournament started. Maybe a bet, maybe he really likes Mario Kart, maybe he just wanted to hang. Ludwig didn’t chime in, just kept gnawing on his cheek, watching the clock.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Nick counters, trying to recover from the tailspin his brain just took him on, the new reality that he was just forced to reckon with. “But it’s sweet or whatever. For what it’s worth, he probably would’ve liked you then too.”
Jerma is silent, and Nick looks over to him to see him, face bright-red, shaking his head like he can’t believe it. Like it’s like suggesting he would win the lottery and grow another arm all at once.
He liked Jerma before — he liked the work ethic, the effort, the creativity. He’s the first guy in the Twitch space to do something out of the box and actually try. Now he’s here, red-faced and short as hell in an event-appropriate shirt, and he just wants to pat his shoulder and say it's all gonna be okay.
“Maybe,” Jerma concedes. He taps his thighs with his fingertips. “I’d be, like, the weird old guy that hangs around you guys and buys weed.”
“Oh, like Slime?” Nick says, and Jerma smiles at him finally, his smile upside down, eyes squinted. It’s too bright to look at. “No, we already have one of him.”
“Me and Slime, man,” Jerma says, gearing up for a bit. His shoulders go back, his arms get loose. You'd spot it from a mile away. “We could cage match for the spot.”
“Slime would lose so bad,” Nick says to his benefit. No shot, but whatever. “You’d be able to see Blonde Ludwig. That was pretty cool.”
“Yeah, I watch his old videos all the time,” Jerma says, completely oblivious to how crazy that sounds. “I saw that. I actually saw your old Smash videos too.”
“Jesus, dude,” Nick says. His whole YouTube career flashes in front of his mind. “Don’t say that. Please. You’re so cool. Please.”
“No, they’re good,” Jerma says, shrugging. “For real good.”
“You suck at lying,” Nick says. Jerma stiffens suddenly, and before Nick can figure out what that means, Ludwig is standing over both of them, casting a shadow that would cover the whole sun. Nick didn’t even see him come up to them.
“Jerma, last match,” Ludwig informs him. He’s flexing that cheek muscle again, like he’s worried about something. “We have to beat Mango and Connor.”
“Done,” Jerma says. He puts his hand up to Ludwig to help him up and Ludwig obliges, leveraging him upwards with his pure muscular strength. Jerma bounces off of him and nearly falls back down on top of Nick, who squawks and dives forward out of the way. Ludwig catches him at the last second with a hand on his waist, then he lets go.
“Hey!” Jerma says indignantly, catching his balance on the table. “What gives?”
“Don’t know my own strength, I guess,” Ludwig says. He won’t look at Nick. “Ready?”
“Yeah, dude,” Jerma chirps, and then off they go. Ludwig stops him a couple of feet ahead of Nick and leans down to whisper in his ear, a hand on Jerma’s shoulder, a breath away from his mouth. Jerma nods, dazed in a way that Natty Lights couldn't touch. Damn, if Ludwig is leading Jerma on, they will have Words after this.
They leave again and sit down in their seats, their heads pulled together like two magnets, talking about whatever they talk about. Nick drains the rest of his Yerb and watches as they laugh and swerve and get second in the competition. Ludwig hugs him, then hugs him again, and Jerma looks like there’s nowhere else he’d be in the world, his hands on Ludwig's shoulders, smiling wider than what Nick ever got.
“I think Jerma has a thing for Ludwig,” Nick says to Aiden, who’s now hovering around the stream set-up, coasting off adrenaline and the hotdogs they had earlier, trying to get their sticky mouse to click down. “Like a crush.”
“Dude, what?” Aiden says, clicking around on the desktop. “No way.”
“On God,” Nick says. “No cap.”
“Well, fuck,” Aiden says, looking at him sideways. “Okay. You have to tell Slime too.”
“No, he’ll be so annoying about it,” Nick says. “Can you keep a secret for once in your goddamned life, Aiden?”
“Fine,” Aiden says. “But I’m not happy about it.”
“Whatever,” Nick says. Somewhere at the other end of the room, Ludwig laughs long and loud.