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For the first time since Pierre and Charles started dating—years ago, so far from the present it feels like something they never knew—Charles thinks he actually wants to be mad at his boyfriend.
Because, really, Pierre can be a bit of an ass sometimes. He’s been walking the line between annoyingly adorable and just plain annoying since they were kids, and apparently, nothing changes between the ages of ten and twenty-seven. Charles gives him an unimpressed look from the other side of the counter, where Pierre still looks a bit too proud of himself, familiar quirked grin carved into the pink of his lips as though he doesn’t know how to make a single other face.
Charles wouldn’t be surprised if he’d forgotten. He’s more surprised the arrogance hasn’t burned itself into his expression completely, after all this time.
Sitting on the counter in front of him, still boxed-up and surrounded with tissue paper, is a pair of cat ear headphones. They’re the stupid pink light-up ones Charles sees circulating around Twitter as a joke, sometimes thrown in his direction, never responded to. And now, no one other than his boyfriend has presented him with a pair, sneaking it up on him under the guise of a ‘random gift just because I love you,’ which Charles does believe that Pierre loves him, but maybe not as much as he says he does if he considers fucking cat ear headphones to be an acceptable surprise on some Wednesday morning.
“Why did you buy me these,” he deadpans, flicking at the edge of the box with his nails like that will make them disappear. They slide a bit across the counter, inching a little closer to be Pierre, aided by the layer of matching pink tissue paper still wrinkled up beneath them.
Pierre just chuckles, all slow and arrogant-like. Charles hates that sound. He loves that sound. He hate-loves the way Pierre reaches across the counter, too, leaning forward until his hips are mashed awkwardly into the granite, a grunt petering out past his lips with the stretch of his chest. He taps his knuckles against the edge of the box, making up some of the distance Charles had previously gained and then some, lopsided grin never quite subsiding.
“They will look good on you,” Pierre answers, mirth layered merciless beneath the words. Straightening his back, he laughs again, head tipping slightly to the side. “And you make these cute little noises when you play your racing games,” he starts, crooked knuckles lifting to jut into the edges of his grin, “like—” he mimics the sounds Charles makes when he plays racing games—because he does do that, thank you very much—meandering somewhere between humming and blowing raspberries.
Charles reaches across the counter to hit Pierre’s shoulder, effectively cutting him off; not without a string of prideful laughter. “I do not—” his cheeks flush, and he cuts himself off, huffing. “What does that have to do with fucking cat ears?”
He shoves the box rather aggressively across the counter, finding a vague sense of amusement in the way Pierre barely catches it before it tips onto the floor. Eyes big, he raises both hands up by his head in a mock sense of surrender, though a glimmer of mirth still hides somewhere in the blue of his eyes. Charles has known him long enough and well enough that it never quite manages to hide from him.
“Jeez, Charlito,” Pierre says, hyperbolic in exasperation. He raises his eyebrows in a jitter, flicking the corner of the box with enough edge to his nails to make it pop. “I just think you are cute when you purr during your streams.”
It’s awful how deftly Charles feels the heat rise in his cheeks. He almost wants to flatten his palms against them to hide the awful shade of pink he knows must be there, perhaps as red as the oversized headphones he already owns and wears for his streams, definitely not courtesy of Pierre, or anyone but himself, for that matter.
“I am not—” he starts, cutting himself off with teeth in the back of his bottom lip. ‘I am not purring, I am making engine sounds,’ is probably not going to do anything but make Pierre laugh at him more, so he quits while he’s ahead. “You are so annoying,” he says, instead, like that’s somehow a defense. “I hate you. I am not wearing these stupid headphones.”
Pierre doesn’t even give him the satisfaction of pretending to be sad, never properly losing his grin, head tipping again in that shouldn’t-be-cute way that makes Charles want to melt into the spaces between the kitchen tiles. He hates that Pierre knows exactly how to push his buttons, like a fucking menace, a horribly-placed side effect of having known each other since they weren’t yet tall enough to see over the top of this counter.
“Ay, you love me,” Pierre corrects, looking up at Charles from beneath the shadow of his lashes. He doesn’t really look menacing, only insufferably hot, which is stupid, because he’s not even doing anything. “And why not?” he continues, voice pitching up slightly in a whine. “You would look so cute, my Charlito!”
Arms crossing defiantly over his chest, Charles shakes his head. “No,” he says, free of fractures in the clamor of his tone. “You will not wear me down on this one, Pierrot.”
And maybe Pierre takes that as an invitation to be particularly awful, grinning ear to ear as he brings his curled hands up to his chin in a lackluster mimic of paws. Teeth bright and cutting the air from his beard, he mocks, “Little kitty, meow-meow.”
Charles is going to end up on a wanted list before he puts those fucking headphones on.
——
Charles was wrong.
He finds himself wearing the headphones on stream not even a full week later. Maybe Pierre had taken a class on ‘how to be the most annoying boyfriend in the world’ when Charles wasn’t looking, or something. He only winds up putting the god-forsaken things on his head because Pierre wouldn’t stop meowing at him like some kind of freak, and that was probably worse than just sitting through one stream with big plastic light-up cat ears on his head, so Charles bites the bullet.
It was probably an awful idea.
Charles finds himself just staring at chat for what must be entirely too long, face blank and empty, pink lights flashing on his head. He doesn’t even want to know what he looks like right now. The little picture-in-picture on his stream preview feels like damnation.
| leclercluvr: CAT EARS ??
| 16charcandles: holy shit
| hourcat: CAT GIRL CHARLES
| mrsleclerc: CAT GIRL CHARLES !!
“Oh my lord,” Charles mumbles under his breath. He should’ve known this would happen, really, especially given his chat—he shakes his head to himself, rapping fingers against the edge of his desk. “You guys are almost as terrible as my boyfriend,” he admonishes, laughing in spite of himself. “Say thank you to my awful boyfriend for this, chat.”
| Housepandacrimes: TY CHARLES BF
| bestiesharl: THANK YOUUU
| lovely_leclerc: UR BF KNOWS WHAT THE PPL WANT
| actuallygoodusername: wait u have a bf?
Charles looks back at his second monitor, pulling up the game he’s supposed to be playing with a giggle. “Yes, I have a boyfriend.”
From the other room, Pierre yells at the wall, “You are talking about me?”
Charles just laughs to himself, starting the stream properly. He gets immersed enough in the game to forget what he’s wearing until he ends.
——
“I should never have worn those stupid things,” Charles complains, swiping through Twitter with a distracted thumb.
Pierre appears behind him, presence sudden, hands ghosting the jut of his shoulders. “What stupid things?” he asks, though he’ll surely find the answer for himself with how intently he’s staring at Charles’s screen. The smirk feels palpable as it crosses his lips, voice triumphant when he settles, “Oh.”
Charles’s Twitter is absolutely covered in screenshots from his most recent stream—where he wore those godforsaken headphones just to make Pierre shut up—fawning and yelling and demanding he wear them again. His mentions are stuffed up with various renditions of ‘we miss cat girl Charles!!’ and as much as Charles loves his fans, he, unfortunately, does not miss cat girl Charles.
“I told you it was a good idea,” Pierre boasts, pressing the pads of two fingers firmly into Charles’s side. He jolts, reaching for Pierre’s wrist, gripping him tight but not tight enough to make him stop.
“You did not tell me shit,” he counters. Pierre chuckles, presses a kiss to the side of his neck. “You were just a nuisance until I caved.” Like you always are, Charles doesn’t add, because really, it’s only half a complaint.
Pierre hums, perhaps amicable, shifting his lips up to the crux of Charles’s jaw. “Well,” he starts, low and muffled into the stubble on his skin, “I did say you were cute. And I think they agree.” He slips a hand around to Charles’s front, bunching up the fabric of his t-shirt between his fingers. “Maybe you should make it a thing.”
Charles scoffs. “I am not making it a thing.”
——
Charles makes it a thing. His old headphones become dead weight.
——
Letting Pierre sit in Charles’s streaming room while he’s live is an awful idea. But when Charles says he’s going to stream and Pierre gives him those big, pleading, too-old-for-this eyes, Charles can’t just say no.
So Pierre is sitting in the streaming room.
He stays offscreen. Charles’s setup is shoved off into a corner, so it’s not difficult to keep out of frame, sitting on the couch on the other side of the room jamming elbows into fluffed-up pillows that rarely move because no one ever sits there. Charles doesn’t say anything about their offscreen guest when he starts the stream, and he doesn’t plan to, but he’s not exactly subtle in the way he keeps stealing glances at something out of sight, smile tight and flustered every time Pierre returns his gaze.
He’s not even really doing anything. He’s just sitting there, feet kicked up on the too-clean coffee table, scrolling through something on his phone. Charles mostly ignores all the chat messages demanding to know what it is he’s looking at, only answering real questions and nice messages, trying (and probably failing) to act as though nothing is out of the ordinary.
And, of course, he’s wearing those stupid cat ear headphones. Because that’s just part of his brand, now.
He gets a donation about it, which he reads out loud: “‘Why are you wearing cat headphones?’” Charles grins a bit, slightly flustered, flicking another stolen glance towards Pierre. He finds he’s already looking right at him. “You must be new here,” Charles starts, shifting the gaudy headphones where they sit on his head. “It is just—”
“All thanks to me!” Pierre interjects, speaking in English, talking rather loudly to ensure Charles’s mic will pick it up from across the room.
Charles looks at his boyfriend with wild eyes, flickering between his stupid face and the screens still splayed out in front of him as if to say, ‘I am live, you idiot, what the hell are you doing.’ Pierre just laughs, stretching his arms up above his head to grab at the couch cushion behind him, the hem of his shirt riding up his stomach in a woefully distracting way.
Charles glances back at his chat. Various iterations of “who is that??” whip past him in a flurry.
“I am the creator of cat girl Charles,” Pierre continues from the couch, looking rather triumphant where he sits melted into the cushions. Charles looks at him again, cheeks burning red, surely pitching dark enough to be picked up on stream. “Your fans should thank me, chéri. I do so much for this community.” He tips his head back in mock exasperation, as though anyone but Charles can see him.
Charles just scoffs. So dramatic.
“I have already made them thank you, mon amour.” He rolls his eyes, head shaking as he turns to face the camera a bit better. “I will not make them fuel your ego any more. God knows you do not need it.”
Pierre laughs, and Charles wonders if his mic is good enough to pick it up when his head is tipped back and away. He’s not sure if he wants it to or not, but he knows he loves that sound, the way it seems to fill all of Pierre’s chest, even the spaces it shouldn’t reach, overblown and contagious by the time it reaches Charles’s ears. It’s too much. Maybe he doesn’t want it to reach the ears of his viewers.
He looks at the view he has of his own camera feed, and he can see the pink in his cheeks clear as day, half flustered, half embarrassed to be splayed open like this in front of his thousands of viewers. Pierre has milled about the background of his streams before—especially in their old apartment, when Charles was smaller, and his setup was in their living room—but he rarely spoke, known only to his fans as Charles’s boyfriend, maybe the guy who bought him his headphones, no name or face or any real evidence of his voice to put to that title.
Now, though, they have a little bit more. Charles watches the chat run by him, almost too quick to read; surely too quick to answer.
| littlepinkcat: IS THAT YOUR BF??
| catgirlsharl: omg his voice
| number1charlito: he sounds hot
| darling_monegasque: THE PET NAMES
| F75_byte: bf reveal
| verycoolchatter: BF REVEAL
“Non, no, no boyfriend reveal,” Charles says, English getting clumsy. Pierre laughs from the couch again, sound big enough to steal Charles’s attention for a moment. “Had I known he was going to sit and make comments,” he glares at Pierre, who lifts his hands above his head in surrender, but never loses his grin, “I would not have let him in here.”
“He wants me to go make dinner,” Pierre jokes, now speaking more for the audience than anything else. “I am such a good housewife for my Charlito. If not for me, he would be too dead to stream.”
Charles huffs. He thinks the face he’s making is one Pierre would call cute, and maybe that spurs him on, arms crossing over his chest. The game he’s supposed to be playing is long-paused and forgotten about.
“Calamar, if you do not shut up, I will never let you back in here.” Charles tries to wear a serious expression when he says it, but he knows it’s cracking at the edges, facade weak and inglorious where it sits. “I will get a big sign, for the door, it will say ‘KEEP OUT.’”
“Oi-oi-oi, you would never,” Pierre argues, and Charles hates that he’s right. He sinks down a bit in his chair. “I can not—” Pierre interrupts himself with a laugh, “—cannot take you seriously with those ears, Charlito. So cute, mon petit chat, meow-meow.”
Charles throws a sweatshirt at him to make him stop fucking meowing in the background of his stream. He knows this is already getting clipped to hell, and the last thing he needs haunting his Twitter timeline is a sound byte of his boyfriend mocking him with cat noises while he sits there flustered.
He tries to settle back into streaming-mode and ignore his obnoxious boyfriend, unpausing the game and muttering, “No, chat, no boyfriend reveal,” again.
Off-screen, Pierre shouts triumphantly, in French, “Chat!”
——
That stream does get clipped to hell and back. Charles will never hear the end of it—see the end of it—constantly barraged with his own stupid face in those stupid headphones angling dirty looks off camera without relent. Pierre thinks it’s incredibly amusing, of course, and takes it upon himself to flit about the background of as many streams as possible after the fact.
He still never walks into frame. But he’ll come and put an energy drink or something to eat on Charles’s desk, mumble in French about how he needs to take care of himself, and leave like nothing happened. Chat always freaks out, because ‘oh my god, that’s so cute, can we please meet your boyfriend, please,’ and Charles has to spend an entire five minutes of his stream dismissing it.
Or he’ll just be all mushy in an attempt to rile Charles up—and it always works, because of course, it does—saying something saccharine in French with a grin that says he knows what he’s doing, and Charles always answers to his boyfriend’s hyperbolic flirting, still just as much in French so his mainly-English audience won’t pick up on it until after the moment has passed. He always sees the tweets after those streams, where someone has translated what both of them said and are gawking over it like being in love is some outlandish thing, and it makes Charles smile a bit, because yeah, he does love Pierre, and he is getting pretty obnoxious and showy about it, and he’s okay with that.
Usually, though, Pierre is just being a dick. It’s something he’s really good at, so Charles isn’t exactly surprised by the development, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to play up being annoyed at him. If Pierre wants to dawdle around his streams just out of frame to get a reaction out of the audience, then Charles can play a game with it, too. Even if he kind of hates the screenshots of him all flustered during streams, looking off at something the viewers can’t see, captioned horribly with something along the lines of ‘look at his heart-eyes!’ he doesn’t hate it enough to tell Pierre to fuck off properly.
He would probably listen, if he did.
But Charles is content with his chat knowing vague things about his love life, and Pierre is content being the mystery boyfriend with no name and no face, just a disembodied voice the fans keep swooning over and siding with. Where’s the fun in having a semi-famous Twitch streamer for a boyfriend if you don’t get to be a nuisance about it?
During one of Charles’s more casual streams, Pierre is sitting on the couch again, poking fun at Charles every time he dies in his game. He’s mostly on his phone, not really paying much attention to the gameplay itself, but once he figures out which sound effect means Charles just died, he’ll look up from whatever it is he’s scrolling through and say something along the lines of “you are terrible,” as if he could do any better.
“I do not want to hear it from you, calamar,” Charles huffs, frustration building like raucous flames beneath his skin. His lips twist into a narrow-kept line, fingers tense against the keyboard as he restarts. “We both know you are shit at games.”
“I am good at real sports,” Pierre counters, too-easy like he’d been waiting to say that, for Charles to egg him on. “Maybe you should do a stream where you play football, so all your viewers can see that you are utter shit.” Charles doesn’t even have to look at him to know the way Pierre’s grinning. “And so I can make thirsty tweets about you on my secret Twitter account.”
Charles’s hands fumble so bad he dies again. Pierre laughs, open and unapologetic. He’s about to ask if Pierre actually has a secret Twitter account—which would probably be a mistake, encouraging this topic—when a text-to-speech donation interrupts his train of thought.
“I noticed u call ur bf calamar. Is it like calling him baby?”
Charles feels his face dip to an even darker shade of red. Of course, he’s seen the tweets about this, too, because they’ve both let that nickname slip during streams. Charles is a bit more attentive to the words coming out of his mouth—trying not to let Pierre’s name or any of his slightly-altered versions of it slip—but it’s almost funny to see his fans try and guess where they’re coming from with it, because the direct translation is just squid, and why would Charles and his boyfriend be calling each other squid?
“I guess so,” Charles answers, a bit mumbly, gaze distracted as it tries to find Pierre in the corner. He has a fond smile on, much softer than his usual blistering arrogance, and something about it still makes Charles want to melt into the creases of his gaming chair like he’s a kid with a schoolyard crush. “It is something from when we were kids. I have known him a long time.” Chat flies with a flood of ‘aww’s, and it makes Charles smile. “And yes, it does mean squid. We were kids, do not ask for things to make sense.”
| heismybabygirl: AWWW
| coolstorybro: CALAMAR!!
| catgirlsharl: POWER COUPLE
| incoherentscreaming: YOURE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS ???
| leclercsmysterybf: SO CUTEEEE
“None of you can start calling him calamar,” Pierre says, grinning a bit more wildly, lips crooked and tipped up at their corner. “I will be very jealous. That is only for me.”
And Charles smiles, too-fond, not really thinking about the screenshots.
——
With Pierre’s encouragement, Charles sets his next sub goal as ‘boyfriend reveal.’ He doesn’t really acknowledge it, just changes the text on his stream layout and goes live, but nearly every single donation he receives that stream is asking if he’s serious.
“Yes, chat, I am serious,” he says for the umpteenth time, head heavy with the repetition. “If we hit it by the end of the month, I will do a stream with my boyfriend.” He smiles, a bit mischievous. “Properly.”
——
Charles may have underestimated how badly his viewers want to see his boyfriend.
He set the subscriber goal as an overestimate in hopes it would, at the very least, make it difficult to reach; at the most, it wouldn’t be met in time, and Charles would postpone his boyfriend reveal. Instead, it’s surpassed in the second stream it even exists, and Charles has to go ask Pierre when he’s free to stream after he spent an entire week of their lives acting confident that it wouldn’t be hit for a while.
Pierre acts smug about it, because he’s Pierre.
But it’s how they end up sitting at Charles’s setup, a second chair squeezed into the space next to him and spun so the back is facing the camera, Pierre still hidden from view. Charles is waiting a bit to build up anticipation, one hand holding Pierre’s chair still because he keeps swaying in it, the bastard, watching the little playback of the video feed as Pierre sticks his arms out and waves them around, the first Charles’s fans have seen of him for real.
Chat reacts accordingly.
| LECLERCLOVER: OMG HE HAS RINGS
| sharlnumber1fan: HANDSSSS
| littlepinkcat: oh i know he’s hot
Charles stifles a grin, looking back at the camera and asking, “Are you ready, chat?”
Pierre tries to turn the chair himself, again, stopped by the curve of Charles’s palm. “Stop being a tease,” he quips, words slightly muffled where he’s facing away from the microphone. “Your viewers all want to see my pretty face, chéri, spin me around.”
With a displeased breath, Charles pushes at Pierre’s swivel chair. It turns a bit slower than he expected, but it turns, revealing Pierre on the other side of it, already smirking with his signature lopsidedness. He waves at the camera, not shy at all, giving a half-sarcastic “Bonjour,” as accompaniment.
“This is my boyfriend, Pierre,” Charles says, gesturing. Pierre looks down at the video feed and fiddles with his hair a bit, predictable and vain. “I am going to make him play games with me. You can ask us questions, if you want, and we will answer. Just do not be weird,” he points towards the camera, frowning a bit, “the mods will ban you.”
Pierre giggles cruelly. “You are so cute, Charlito.” He reaches for his face, pressing a thumb against the bridge of his nose where it wrinkles. Charles jolts at the touch, but his efforts at pushing Pierre’s hand away are half-assed at best. Pierre runs the hand through Charles’s hair, stopping to press against the nape of his neck. “Are you going to put on your headphones, mon petit chat?”
Charles huffs, but he does put on the headphones. Pierre gets his old ones.
| littlepinkcat: I KNEW HE WAS HOT
| CL16lovebot: HIS SMILE ??
| livingoffredbull: holy shit
| littlesquid: WHERE DID YOU FIND HIMMM
| ambivalent_answers: BOTH OF U ARE SO PRETTY WTF
| 16charcandles: NOT FAIRRRR
| mrsleclerc: the way he looks at u :(
Charles feels a bit smug reading chat, watching them fawn over his boyfriend. It’s a little strange to have a bunch of strangers so invested in his relationship, he’ll admit it, but it’s also sweet to think of the ways their love for each other is obvious; he doesn’t mind it, really. He only feels weird when he catches the occasional [message deleted], making a mental note to thank his mods after the stream is over for keeping whatever was said off his radar.
Pierre is messing with his headphones next to Charles, resizing them to fit his head properly. Charles can tell he’s looking at chat, expression already arrogant, and he knows what’s coming before the words even reach the air between them. “Your fans think I am hot, Charlito.”
Charles blows out a breath. “Arrogant,” he mumbles, to which Pierre just laughs.
“You think I am hot, too, do not deny it.”
Charles doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t agree, either. Perhaps the flush on his cheeks says enough.
Pierre is just as terrible at video games as Charles already knew he was. His viewers seem a bit more surprised, asking how Pierre can be dating someone who is essentially a professional gamer and still be complete shit, much to Pierre’s chagrin.
“He never plays with me!” Charles complains. “I have asked him to, but he always says no. Maybe you would be better if you said yes, Pierrot.”
Pierre scoffs, waves a hand in front of Charles’s face to distract him, because he’s awful. “I have no interest in this shit,” he claims, as if he hasn’t been acting like a sore loser since they started. “It is more fun to just watch you play.” He gives Charles a predictably dirty look. “And see how much I can distract you.”
Charles knocks the heel of his palm into Pierre’s chest. “Pierre!” He laughs. Charles doesn’t even bother looking at chat.
They switch to a bit mellower of a game, led mostly by Charles while Pierre sits there, looks pretty, and dies. Charles will admit he’s distracted, too, trying to read chat and answer donations, as he once again reminded the viewers they could ask the couple questions if they wanted to, as long as they weren’t too invasive.
“How did you guys meet?”
“We went to the same elementary school,” Pierre answers, fumbling a bit with the controls. He dies again. Charles resets the game without acknowledging it. “I was very pissed because I had just moved from somewhere else. I wanted nothing to do with new friends, but Charles was persistent. And he was cute.” He reaches over, pinches Charles’s cheek rather harshly, shaking his face with a grin. “How could I say no to this face?”
Charles shoves him hard enough to make Pierre’s chair roll. “Shut up,” he huffs, face red. Fiddling with the lights on his headphones, he mumbles, “what he said,” instead of giving his own side of the story.
(He had thought Pierre was the cutest boy he had ever seen, even when they were seven years old. He did everything in his power to keep him in his life).
“What does Pierre do?”
Charles is about to ask the—probably useless—clarifying question of, “like, for work?” when Pierre says, “Underwear model.” Charles looks at him like he’s out of his fucking mind, but Pierre has kept a completely straight face.
Chat is still chat. Charles doesn’t even have to look at it to know what people are saying.
“Be serious,” Charles scolds. The beginnings of a smirk tug their way onto Pierre’s lips, but he doesn’t say anything, fingers clicking away at the keyboard. Charles looks back towards the camera, eyes rolling, and says, “he is something of a model,” because that much is true, “but his clothes stay on.”
Pierre laughs, mischievous and creeping. “Not when you are around.”
“Pi-erre!”
Charles shoves him so hard the entire chair topples over. Pierre is on the floor, laughing all loud and stupid, Charles’s face unforgivably red and messy. He glares down at where his boyfriend sits crumpled on the floor, arms crossed and skin hot. He hates him. He loves him. He can’t believe he’s been convinced to do this on livestream.
Pierre needs media training.
“That is it, Gasly,” Charles says, rolling his chair back into the center of the frame. He kicks at Pierre’s a bit, still on its side on the floor, occupying the space he was once in with a frown, trying his best not to let the stripes of mirth seep through. “I am never letting you back on my stream. This is my show again, now.”
He feels a tug on the leg of his chair, shifting him a bit to the side. “Oi,” Pierre mumbles from the floor, standing up with a quiet groan. He ends up behind Charles’s seat, barely visible in the viewfinder, not much more than a pair of hands wrapped around the side of the plush. “If you do not make room for me,” he leans his head down beside Charles’s shoulder, grin big, “I will just sit on your lap.”
“Do not!”
Pierre starts teasing, acting like he’s going to sit in Charles’s lap, even going as far as to hook one of his ankles over the armrest of the chair. Charles shoves him hard enough that he nearly topples over into the wall, and he figures he should apologize for that, but Pierre is still laughing, and he’s still smug, so he keeps his hyperbolic glower.
“I guess you are right,” Pierre settles, stroking a hand through what he can reach of Charles’s hair. He scratches behind one of the big light-up ears on his headphones, the sound of nails against plastic nearly abrasive so close to Charles’s actual ear. “It would make more sense if you sat on my lap, mon petit chat.”
This stream was a horrible idea.
——
It becomes Charles’s most viewed VOD, because of course, it does. The next time Charles streams, chat asks him where Pierre is, and Charles answers he’s at work—like, actually, he’s busy—but that doesn’t keep some of his chatters from talking about him. Maybe Charles should’ve known better than to admit Pierre was busy working, when they all know what he does.
Twitter found the modeling shots almost immediately after the reveal stream—it wasn’t hard, when they have his face and his name and any basic search engine to work with—quickly plastering them all over their own timelines and calling him hot. Charles has seen plenty of tweets consisting of pictures from Pierre’s work next to his own more-professional-than-stream-screenshots images plucked off Instagram, declaring them the ‘hottest couple on the internet,’ filling Charles with a strange sense of pride. In spite of his better judgment, Charles shows Pierre, too, and it boosts his ego to an irreparable degree.
He’s also seen plenty of screenshots of Pierre just staring at him during the stream. He looks at them for a little too long, completely immersed in it; the way Pierre looks at him when Charles can’t catch it isn’t something he gets to see very often, as there are rarely cameras pointed at them during those moments. Pierre loves him loudly, even on stream, and those screenshots are certainly enough to rival the surplus of images the fans already had of Charles looking at Pierre when he was still off-screen.
“Twitter loves you,” Charles comments, nearly a full week after the reveal stream, when he’s sitting up on the kitchen counter. The granite is cold beneath his bare thighs, ankles crossed in the air, thumb scrolling down a timeline that still hasn’t shut up about the stream. Charles smiles. “Maybe a bit more than they should.”
Pierre laughs. “I have seen it,” he says, slotting himself between Charles’s knees. He grips his calves to uncross them fully, inserting himself into the space created, hip bones mashed into the edge of the counter. “I have gained so many followers, Charlito. Your fans must love me more than they love you.”
Charles scoffs. “Shut up.” They sit in silence for a moment, Charles on his phone, Pierre just staring at him. Every time he glances up over the top of his screen, Pierre smiles, big and all-consuming and occupying his entire face. “Would you do another stream?”
“If you wanted me to.” His grin slips a little wider. “I know your fans want me to.”
Charles smiles, huffs, shakes his head. “I can’t believe my fans—”
“Oi,” Pierre interrupts, pushing his thumb down harshly into the flesh of Charles’s thigh. “My fans.”
Charles kicks him in the leg.
——
They do more streams together. It becomes something of a regular thing, having Pierre around, even if he’s still complete shit at games. He still hangs around in the background of some of Charles’s other streams, too, only now, he’s allowed to walk into frame. Perhaps that makes him more annoying—like when he comes up behind Charles in the middle of an intense game and just shakes his chair like a lunatic—but usually, it’s nice, and Charles has come to like how insane his chat gets every time Pierre’s face dips into the shot.
| hourcat: PIERREEEEE
| FranceIsntReal: pierrepierrepierre
| pierresnumber1fan: HOLY SHIT
Pierre laughs reading chat, leaning over to kiss Charles on the cheek. He’s just come back from a shoot, and he smells like expensive perfume and hair products, shirt silk and probably more costly than their rent. Charles blushes both from his proximity and the amount of fawning going on in chat, game paused and completely forgettable.
“They love me more than you,” Pierre teases, standing up straight and pulling his face out of frame. He bumps his knuckles against Charles’s shoulder fondly, asking, “Dinner tonight, yes?”
Charles smiles. “Yes, calamar.”
As Pierre walks out of his streaming room, he makes gross kissy noises in Charles’s direction. The microphone does—whether fortunately or unfortunately—pick them up just fine.
——
During one of their streams together, Charles presents Pierre with a gift. He can barely keep his smile at bay watching him open it, eyes curious yet untrusting, glancing between the well-wrapped box and Charles’s face like something is going to jump out and eat him.
It’s a pair of blue cat ear headphones. Charles only feels smug about it until Pierre puts them on, looks disastorously cute, and starts fucking meowing again.
Charles doesn’t even want to be mad at him anymore.