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Alexis had missed streaming quite a bit. Granted, it’s not like he does a lot on stream—he just plays the game, like he does every single day, listens to music, like he also does every day, and sometimes, occasionally, talks with his chat about whatever is going through his mind or just to hype up a goal. He hadn’t been using his facecam too often, but, to celebrate his more active streaming routine, he decided to use it today, having turned it on halfway through the stream.
Recently, he had noticed Jack and Samy in particular playing more six mans in this one server; the queue seemed to be decently full almost every hour of the day with different pros from different teams jumping in to play with each other. He had been streaming for just under an hour, having played a couple of ones and a couple of twos, just getting himself warmed up. Alexis opened the Discord server, reading who was in queue—Dralii, Joyo, M0nkey M00n, itachi, ExoTiik, those and other very familiar names lined his monitor.
He contemplated for a little before deciding that, yeah, why not? He’d rather play this than play against some more DDOSers in ones or twos.
This server worked like any other Rocket League LFG server; he accepted the game and waited patiently, not having been made the captain of his team. He used this time to just chatter with his chat for a little while, changing the song he was listening to about seven times before finally settling on one. By the time Alexis had picked out his song, he realized he had also been picked. Or, more accurately, he had been picked first into the team; now the third and final guy had been chosen.
Alexis didn’t bother to see who it was; he instead hopped into the voice chat and adjusted his microphone volume. To say he sort of wasn’t expecting Evan’s voice in his ear would be a lie—“Zenito! How are you, bro?” suddenly sounded in his ears.
Alexis chuckled, shaking his head a little, turning from his own seat to look at Evan from across the room: “Ça va, ça va,” he answered back, pushing up his glasses with a little smile. Brice’s grin in between them didn’t go unnoticed as another person joined the call, this time, of course, their third teammate, who greeted Alexis much the same. The bigger half of Vitality, ExoTiik and M0nkey M00n, Brice and Evan, had been playing twos together for basically the entire evening, only queuing up a few minutes before Alexis had.
“Must be fate,” Evan joked, and even with the distance between all three of them and the fact that Alexis didn’t look away from his screen, he could physically feel the stupid grin and exaggerated eye roll from Brice. The three of them all entered the lobby code and loaded in, Brice being the only one to sport Vitality’s new decal.
It took only a few seconds before their opponents loaded in as well; a mixture of players from the queue Alexis had read before. The familiar three beeps all six players in the lobby had heard several hundreds of thousands of times rang through his headphones, and the newly familiar “GO!” popped up on Alexis’ screen—he had only recently decided to make the switch from the in-game language to English, rather than French.
Alexis called out his position, letting his teammates know he would fake it, both Evan and Brice gave him an imaginary nod and affirmative callback. It surely had to be a little bit unfair being their opponents right now—those three weren’t on a team together, they were. Well, they’re more than a team, really.
The youngest of the three players tried not to dwell on it too much as he messed up an air dribble, earning a little teasing “Come on, bro,” from Evan across the room. Alexis grinned, praising Brice for a great last-second save from inside the goal, his mind dwelling on what they had become recently.
Honestly, he couldn’t really figure out what they were. Alexis had figured out that Evan and Brice had been together together as a couple for a little while now, ever since they had been on Karmine Corp together. He figured that out from, well, Brice telling him. He had put in little effort to figure out why Brice had been so giggly, so happy, why he’d constantly check his phone even when he was with the 23-24 Vitality boys. Alexis was happy for him, he really was, despite being a little confused at first.
So, when he found out they’d be joining his team, he was a little taken aback but nevertheless happy to play with someone he considered a great friend of his. Alexis still remembers it so clearly: after scrims, him sitting at his computer, spaced out, his fourth DDOSer of the night. Turning around, taking his headphones off, and seeing Evan give Brice a kiss on the forehead. At that moment, something stirred inside Alexis, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
Next time, and all the times after that, spotting his teammates’ closeness became so much easier. Them holding hands around the facility became so much easier to spot, them sharing their snacks and food was so common all of a sudden, and Evan cradling Brice like a little bunny rabbit made butterflies stir inside of Alexis’ stomach.
For the longest time, he decided not to bring it up, not to mention it at all, not to do anything about this—it was jealousy, he concluded. He was just jealous because one of his friends, one of his closest friends, has a wonderful, loving, amazing relationship with another pro player, and Alexis can only dream of something like this happening to him too, so he is jealous. Surely.
Well, Alexis’ promise to himself didn’t last long, as he had accidentally let his mind wander around Brice just a couple days before this very day. They were doing nothing, chilling together, watching some random French soap on the TV as Evan had gone to the gym, scrims had been finished, and Kassio was finishing up whatever new strategy he had been cooking up for the past few weeks. The show was boring, Alexis’ mind was racing, and Brice just looked so… so huggable.
So he took the plunge.
With a hasty tone and occasional stutters, Alexis poured his heart out in a couple-minute-long ramble, detailing his recent borderline obsession with watching the two and how he feels like he has somehow fallen in love with both of them—quickly cutting himself off to explain that, no, it was jealousy.
Brice, with the same awkward blinks he always does, almost burst out laughing as he could see past Alexis’ facade immediately. They talked and discussed, Brice explaining that, hey, Evan has said some very non-friendly things about you, how he himself has had some form of fluttering feelings for the younger Frenchman since they were both teenagers, how the pre-existing couple would always be open for him, how they could make something for the three of them—just the three of them.
Alexis felt his face get warmer as he got demoed in a stupid way for what felt like the sixth time in that single match. He had to snap out of it, he pleaded to himself as he called out to Evan to pass the ball to him, which he deftly did. Alexis had almost had enough, with the game having gone on for almost four minutes with no goals yet. He used almost half his boost to get into the air, attempting the same air dribble as before, but succeeding this time, flinging the ball to the backboard before getting a sweet triple touch to score the first goal of the match.
Both his teammates yelled, “Nice!” from Evan and a “Zen!” from Brice. The latter wasted no time, shooting up from his seat and running to Alexis’ table. He cooed, “Aaaah, Zenito!” His voice unbelievably high-pitched as he reached out to pinch the boy's cheek, messing up his glasses in the process, “You’re so good! So cute! That’s our boy!” As the replay on the screen reached its end, Brice raced back to his own chair, almost throwing himself onto it to get back into the game. Evan just laughed as he stared, a proud smile on his face, “Our boy, huh?”
The two older Frenchmen locked back into the game immediately, as if nothing had happened, but Alexis had to take some extra mental time to process everything. He decided to not even look at chat; the only messages he could spot were three people sending in ‘gayge,’ and that had been enough for him to figure out how this situation will go down on Twitter.
The rest of the game was uneventful; Alexis scored maybe only once or twice, too distracted by the lingering feeling of Brice’s hand on his cheek and Evan calling him ‘their boy.’ The heavy lifting was done by Brice, getting a couple of nice air goals and a beautiful fake during overtime in the third game to make them win 3-0.
The six players exchanged a quick “gg” in the in-game chat before Alexis turned to his stream for a couple of minutes, bidding them a goodbye and a promise to be back on stream again soon. As soon as the stream ended, he slumped over in his chair, Brice turning to look at him with that little mischievous glint he always had in his eyes.
“I was streaming, by the way.”
Evan, on the other end of the room, similarly slumped over and buried his face in his hands; the little smirk on Brice’s face faded as a little pink dusted his face.
“Oh…!”