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“What’s the matter with you?” Ludwig finds himself giggling and he doesn’t even know why. Maybe some part of him finds this situation kind of comedic. Or maybe it’s because he feels so lightheaded. All the blood in his body is rushing in the opposite direction. “Stop it. What’s your problem?”
Jerma looks blotchy. He looks red and mottled and snotty and stuffy and slimy and absolutely, irrevocably ashamed of himself. He sniffs and it sounds brutal. He’s so unpretty that Ludwig should be completely disgusted with him. He should be. Really.
“I don’t know,” Jerma croaks, his voice pitching up like a squeaking door before he breaks again, coughing out a sob that makes more tears spill down his cheeks. He breaks up the trails when he tries to scrub them away as soon as they come. They’re just followed up with more and more. “Don’t—can you not look at me? Please? I don’t want you to—I wish you hadn’t seen this.”
“I bet you didn’t.” Ludwig gently curls his fingers around Jerma’s wrists, lowering them for him. Jerma’s eyelashes flutter and glitter under the lamplight. “I know you like feeling comfy around me when you think you’re better than me, right?”
Utter confusion and melancholy flickers across Jerma’s face as his eyes bead up again. “What?”
“You know. Jerma doesn’t have real emotions. He’s too cool for that. He’s just an actor. He doesn’t make friends and they don’t get past that nice, hard, thick skin he’s got.” Ludwig rubs his thumb over Jerma’s frantic pulse. He presses down on it and it only gets faster. “No weaknesses, no nothing. He’s Jerma. He’s better than any other streamer ‘cause it’s always all for the bit. I’m, like, seriously, I’m just shocked to see that you can cry for real. Or maybe you’re just fucking with me.”
Jerma laughs a helpless little half-laugh, a noise that sounds wrenched out of him. “What—w-why would you think that? Come on, that’s not—Lud, that’s not what you think, right? We’re friends. I’m your friend. I like you. I-I like you so much, I’m not fucking with you, this isn’t—I’m sorry.”
“You can just admit to it. I’m not gonna be upset.”
“I’m not acting, I’m not—” Jerma sniffles and pulls his wrist away from Ludwig so he can wipe his eyes again. He can’t stop. Ludwig feels something like a film cloud his vision, heat curling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s not a fucking bit or anything. I don’t know what to do. I don’t, I don’t, I’m fucking scared, I’m, I’m getting so old, fucking everything hurts.” He’s hunched in on himself on the couch, kneeling in front of Ludwig in a malformed, dissatisfied shape, some kind of rotten, pale creature that looks destined for worm food in a matter of hours. He’s begging to be put out of his misery. He can’t be, because if he was, Ludwig would have to put himself out too. Jerma has no choice but to stay. Ludwig hopes he knows that.
“I mean, I don’t really know what you want from me. I can’t stop you from getting old. You should probably stop crying about it, though. It’s kind of embarrassing. I don’t like feeling embarrassed by you. Makes my skin crawl; like, you know when you forget to cut the tag out of your shirt? It feels like that.”
A fresh blush makes Jerma’s face that much better. The heat in Ludwig’s stomach twists his insides into brand-new shapes out of a newer and more delightful guilt—or maybe it’s just because he knows he’s supposed to feel that way. He can’t, though. Not physically. He can practically feel the shapes of Jerma’s bones under his hands from how deep he is under his skin. Jerma’s shoulders shake and he sobs again, his head falling as he sinks his fingernails into his arm.
Ludwig tips Jerma’s head back up for him, annoyed that he doesn’t get to look at it properly. Jerma’s nose is dripping. It’s gross. He’s gross. He looks gross. And it’s fucking beautiful. Jerma is so much nicer to look at when he radiates imperfection. He feels more real. When he’s more real, Ludwig can dig into him the way that he digs into everyone else. He wishes he could grab those bones he feels and tear the tendons apart.
He doesn’t kiss Jerma—not exactly. He breathes against the corner of his mouth and listens to Jerma’s shallow, shocked little gasp. “You gotta learn to not disappoint me like this,” Ludwig whispers, his fingers splayed light and gentle over Jerma’s side. “It sucks that I can’t look up to you anymore. Everyone’s hero just ends up becoming a car dealer on local TV channels, right? Jerma’s not any different. I wanna like you. I wanna love you. But not like this.”
Jerma shakes underneath him and swallows hard. “...what do you want?” It’s a plea. It’s a genuine question that he needs answered.
“Be better,” Ludwig tells him simply before giving him a real kiss, a genuine kiss, tasting the salt on his mouth. He knows Jerma isn’t really faking. He’s aware of that. He’s not that fucking delusional.
However, he’ll pretend all he wants that Jerma is still acting. It makes this less real. It makes this a game and Ludwig is just acting back. It’s fake. It’s all fake. It’s always been fake. He needs fake kisses and fake hugs and fake handshakes and fake eye contact and fake admissions of adoration. He’ll take as much as he can get, just as long as it all stays that way.
“You’re so good at this,” Ludwig tells Jerma, his entire body feeling like a livewire as it buzzes in between kisses. Jerma isn’t very good at it—he mostly seems bemused—but that’s not what Ludwig means. “Keep doing it. Keep—keep acting. You’re so fucking good. But you’ve still gotta be better. Keep being better, okay? Okay? You get it? Yeah, you do. You’re so smart. I love you, Jeremy. I’ve told you that, right?”
Jerma is still crying. When Ludwig presses his thumb into Jerma’s cheek and feels a tear roll over it, his cock twitches.
“...yeah.” Jerma’s voice is horribly small. He whimpers when Ludwig licks the split of his lips. “You too. Always. You’re my friend.”
“I wish,” Ludwig says with an air of faux-sympathy, sliding his hand up Jerma’s thigh. “That’d be so nice.”