Work Text:
“Nate needs to see you.”
There’s a pang of concern that rattles Damien’s body as he processes Shayne’s words. He’s in the middle of a conversation with Chanse about the latter’s current run of Mass Effect 2 and the office is in a lull between shoots for lunch break. Shayne just claps a supportive hand on Damien’s shoulder and shrugs in response to Damien’s silent yet pointed look of anticipation. Chanse and Shayne shift attention to one another as Shayne allows Damien to meander from his loose grasp, but the gears are already turning in Damien’s head.
Is this about something I did during filming?
He’s filing through possibilities when he’s signaled into Nate’s office to take a seat. He’s about to ask Nate why he’s here when-
“Oh, nice. You’re both here. This shouldn’t take long.”
Damien turns and immediately understands the likely source of the meeting as he watches his bud, pal, coworker - and most recently - girlfriend Angela ogle in Nate’s direction just as uncomfortably as he does. Angela typically maintains composure in meetings like this pretty well. Contrary to her on-camera personality, she can hold it together when necessary - they both can given their line of work. Still, it doesn’t stop her from grimacing at Damien and scrunching her nose with a worried expression. There are no words but the message is clear.
Sorry, bro.
Damien makes the same face back because, quite frankly, he’s still trying to figure out how they slipped up. It doesn’t matter if Angela was actually the cause or not because he’s already thinking of ways to blame himself. He must have let his guard down somehow. Gained a little too much bravado.
A less mature person would blame Angela. It’s so easy to feel at ease and comfortable in their relationship, so it’s only natural that the flirting would follow, right? But Damien isn’t a less mature person. He’s been through this before and he knows better, and right now, he knows he very well could have been the one that screwed them.
They sit in the chairs in front of Nate’s desk like they’re two teenagers that just got caught skipping class together. It’s…odd and surreal to be in this position again. They’ve discussed matters of their relationship with HR before. It was back when they were dating long enough for it to be a workplace matter.
There’s a set of rules that are necessary in cases like this at the company since the parasocial nature of their job puts them in a unique position as internet microcelebrities. The involved parties keep their working relationship strictly professional regardless of their status outside of work. This includes maintaining that professionalism in the event of break-up or conflict. Additionally, third party cast, crew, and admin respect the involved parties’ right to privacy and do not post content - be it through personal social media or any of Smosh’s official pages - related to their relationship unless it is explicitly cleared by both involved parties and Nate.
It’s a little operation that the Smosh office has since dubbed The Shourtney Protocol. In Shayne and Courtney’s case, it went off without a hitch. While there have been other relationships among cast and crew, their marriage caused one of the biggest stirs online due to them both being consistent audience-facing cast members. It’s why Spencer’s relationship with Erica doesn’t get the same amount of attention despite her significant contributions to the Smosh office.
Almost as if she materializes due to Damien’s reticent musings, Erica files into Nate’s office alongside Shayne, who shuts the door promptly.
Nate clears his throat. “We wanted to talk to you guys about a few things we’ve noticed recently.
Damien can see the way Angela’s breath hitches in her throat as she holds air in her cheeks and puffs them out slightly. He does her the mercy of addressing Nate on behalf of the both of them.
“Did something happen?”
“We actually wanted to ask you that, Damien,” Erica flipped her phone to face them.
She shows a post from Instagram highlighting their latest zeitgeist: a clip of Damien “mansplaining” TVs at the gym to Angela from the latest Smosh Mouth episode.
Suddenly, it all becomes abundantly clear why they’re having this conversation. Right underneath Erica’s thumb is Damien’s comment from his personal Instagram account.
I was just repeating what Shayne said. In the style of “Chappy comes on screen in the movie Chappy. I turn to my girlfriend and say ‘That’s Chappy.’” 😅
And there it is. Damien just threw them both to the wolves and animal control is trying to quell the pack while retrieving the carcasses…but also victim blame them? No, no. That’s too accusatory. Animal control is trying to fish the carcasses out of the water? Wolves don’t usually drag their victims into the water. Wolves don’t usually have human victims, either. Actually, this entire metaphor is getting too confused and granular for Damien’s own good.
Especially when he’s very much not facing a pack of wolves or animal control but sitting in the middle of Nate’s office and scanning the faces of his coworkers and partner, the latter of whom was completely unaware of Damien’s comment and has now chosen to to speak for the first time since she’s entered the room.
“Jesus fucking Christ-” Angela utters from behind her hand in the most defeated tone Damien thinks he’s ever heard from her.
He holds a finger up sheepishly, “So, I was trying to quote a meme-”
“Oh, we’re aware of the meme,” Erica confirms perkily, then turns her laptop around on the table and gestures to David Roth’s original Tweet from 2016, “but that’s not what the meme says.”
Sure enough, Roth’s original Tweet differs from Damien’s statement in a critical way.
*Chappie comes onscreen in the film CHAPPIE*
*Me whispering to my date, but in a super-thick Wisconsin accent* “That’s Chappie”
Damien can feel his blood run cold. The distinction of “girlfriend” definitely didn’t help his case.
“We just weren’t sure if you guys wanted to go public. You’re not in trouble at all, but we were a little confused about whether or not this was your…” Nate hesitates for a moment, “hard launch.”
“We just wanna support you when you feel comfortable!” Erica adds in, “There’s no pressure on our end, but we figured we’d talk to you guys about it now because you might want some help with navigating this stuff whenever you make it known.”
It now also makes sense why Shayne’s in the room, too. According to Shourtney Protocol, in the event that both involved parties choose to publicly divulge information about their relationship, Nate sends out a memo to the entire office regarding the change so everyone in the office knows to relax and shift their language and demeanor about the couple in question moving forward. In this case, both parties also coordinate with Erica to figure out the best way to move forward with “dropping the bomb.” Shayne’s been through it before. Spring 2024 was such a surreal time for the Smosh office.
Damien and Angela glance at each other. He can tell Angela is feeling some pressure and once again starts speaking.
“That’s definitely not what I was trying to say,” Damien clarifies, “I royally misquoted that Tweet and Angela and I would have come to you guys before I posted anything. And trust me, I wouldn’t be ‘hard launching’ something this important in the comments of Smosh’s Instagram reels.”
Angela smiles earnestly hearing his words and a bit of tension releases from her shoulders.
“Well, we also just wanted to make you aware that fan attention surrounding your guys’ on-camera relationship is growing,” Erica explained, “The comments section on the Try Not to Laugh episode from a few days ago is…Well…”
She trails off and clicks on another tab on her laptop screen. It’s the YouTube short of what Angela has affectionately dubbed Damien’s “candy wrapper crashout.” She points at a comment, which comfortably sits at the top of the page with over 3 thousand likes.
If I had a nickel for every time Damien and Angela swapped spit in a Smosh video, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice!
The replies are a feeding frenzy of rabid fans desperately asking about the first time they’ve “swapped spit” (likely a reference to Damien’s bottle of Nin Jiom from an old episode of Who Meme’d It?) mixed in with people arguing over whether or not Angela leaning into Damien’s “Irish Johnny Bravo” impression constituted flirting (it did).
It’s a relentless pursuit to satiate their hunger, and Damien just spilled blood in the water. Erica clicks on another tab.
“There’s also the Marvel Movie Night Conspiracy on Reddit.”
“The what?” Angela squawks.
Erica allows Damien and Angela to scroll through screenshots from a Reddit post where one user is explaining their suspicions about the nature of Damien and Angela’s relationship because of how both of them made references to Infinity War in the past few videos. It cites Angela’s mention of it at the beginning of her last appearance on Reddit Stories and Damien’s Thanos impression on the same show only a week later. It’s even punctuated by him alluding to Iron Man in his “candy wrapper crashout.” Thinking about it now, it felt a little too obvious for fans with prying eyes, but Damien is nothing if not relentless when it comes to making Shayne laugh. He really tried to go for the kill.
The evidence is damning, and Angela can’t stop herself from closing her eyes in disappointment and moving her hand from massaging the skin between her eyebrows to keep her sanity intact.
Erica turns her laptop back towards herself, “We already asked mods to delete it and reached out to them about banning other posts like this, but we wanted to talk to you guys because we haven’t seen this much engagement on Reddit about a Smosh ‘ship’ in awhile.”
“It’s just something we want you guys to be aware of,” Nate says, “We’ll support you as much as we can, but based on recent fan activity, we anticipate that it may get harder to maintain your privacy.”
Shayne makes a pointed face as Damien and Angela sit with the weight of Erica and Nate’s words as he sheepishly ramps himself up to translate what it means for everybody in the room.
“What we’re trying to say is that your proverbial log has hit the net. Well, the internet.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence for a beat. Then a fraction of a laugh choked out by Shayne in a desperate attempt for levity, but the damage has already been done. Angela presses her tongue to the inside of her cheek and stares blankly at the screen. Damien heaves a lofty sigh.
Shayne clears his throat, “But we’re here for you guys. Court and I already talked and you can come to either of us. We’ve been through it before. It’s a lot to reveal something like this, and you’re gonna have a lot of mixed emotions about it, but so much of the community was supportive and happy for us. They’ll show up in the same way for you whenever you’re ready for that.”
“Just think about it for now,” Nate stands from his desk and takes a deep breath, “We’re here if you guys change your mind. I’ll leave the paperwork for it in the folder attached to my office window. Until then, we’ll proceed like nothing’s changed.”
Everyone trudges out of Nate’s office to go eat lunch for the rest of the day, but Angela and Damien linger behind the rest of them. Damien immediately launches into an apology.
“I’m so sorry, Ange-”
“It’s okay,” she interrupts him and gently shakes her head, “If anything, it’s a relief that you can’t use ‘I know Damien’s!’ against me. I’ve got my own ammo now.”
She smirks and Damien raises an eyebrow playfully in return.
“I’m glad ChappyGate is bringing you so much joy right now, though I’m gonna remind you that it absolutely pales in comparison to my arsenal. I still haven’t forgotten about ‘It just means big balls.’”
She groans loudly and they start walking in the direction of the kitchen.
“We can talk about it seriously when we’re done for the day. I just wanna focus on the shoot for now,” she pats his shoulder affectionately.
They’re not usually touchy at work and they never show PDA in the office. It feels too weird for both of them. Still, it’s nice to have reassuring human contact in the midst of a possible PR fiasco. He reaches into the folder outside of Nate’s office and takes the papers for both of them to look at later that night, though he highly doubts the possibility of signing them any time soon.
Thinking about it now, maybe he’s just paranoid. If the fans could forget about Angela’s Sagittarius comment from a few months ago, they’d probably let his slide with time. During bouts of significant attention like this, he’ll lay low and stay off of social media for a bit. He already postponed his stream the day after the Smosh Mouth episode went up so the internet could run its course. For the first time since the meeting, Damien allows himself to truly breathe.
The log has not hit the net.
“So…how serious is this for you?”
Angela straight up chokes on her drink as the words enter the air. Water dribbles down her chin for the seventh time that day, this time out of shock as opposed to laughter. She wipes her face and opens the glove compartment of Damien’s car to search for napkins.
“Can you repeat that?” she croaks.
Damien contemplates putting the car in park, but LA traffic is ruthless and they’ve already sat stationary in the same lane for about 5 minutes, “Not to ambush you. We can save it for tomorrow if you’re too tired-”
“No, it’s fine,” Angela clears her throat and caps her water bottle so she can place it in the cupholder, “Listen, I don’t always wanna hide this, but I don’t feel ready yet.”
“I don’t either,” Damien grips the steering wheel and puts his turn signal on, “but when…will you? What’s the threshold for you?”
Angela doesn’t say anything for a beat. Truthfully, she’s trying to consider both of them. They’ve discussed his prior relationship and what it meant for him to publicly acknowledge it early on and the consequences that came with it. They’ve discussed how her sexuality is a topic of conversation in fan spaces and the fears she has whenever she debuts any relationship at all. Their lives are messy as performers, and the last thing either of them want is to feel like they have to “perform” when it comes to their relationship.
As Angela contemplates this, she recognizes that her silence has filled the car for longer than she’s preferred. Damien deserves an answer, though she feels no pressure to give it right away. He’s patient like that.
“I honestly don’t know how to define it,” Angela admits, “I know that I love where things are right now with us and I know that I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he says back like it’s second nature, “I feel like I don’t know when it’s right, either, but I don’t think it’s now.”
There’s another brief stretch of silence.
“Not because I’m ashamed. I could never be,” he reassures, and Angela feels her heart swell a little bit because she wouldn’t accuse him of that but he still takes every opportunity to remind her of how wanted she is.
“I mean…Shayne and Courtney waited until they got married.”
Damien brake checks the car admittedly a little too hard upon hearing Angela say that, “What’s up?”
She starts panicking. Jesus fuck, what is she thinking just throwing that out there?
“I’m not-”
She stops herself eloquently.
“Not that I’m trying to imply that-”
She cuts herself off with grace.
“This isn’t me trying to-”
She sophisticatedly prevents the next sentence from leaving her mouth and sighs deeply.
Angela looks helplessly at Damien and puts her head in her hands, “I made this weird so fast. I’m so sorry.”
She looks up at him and he’s giving her that self-satisfied, close-mouthed smile he does when he’s amused by her misfortunes before he turns back to look at the road. Her expression quickly sours.
“Actually, I changed my mind. This relationship can’t work unless you wipe that shit-eating grin off your face,” she sticks her tongue out at him like the mature adult woman she is.
“I just need you to know that I’m laughing with you,” Damien chuckles as she scoffs at him.
The moment passes and he answers genuinely.
“You didn’t make it weird. I want that for us, too,” his eyes are on the road but she can see the way his face reddens, “I just don’t know if I can…wait as long as Shayne and Courtney did.”
Angela squints at him incredulously, “Well…how long is too long?”
Damien’s eyes shift around mischievously, “Don’t know…guess it’ll just depend on when she asks me.”
Angela rolls her eyes but plays along.
“I dunno. I haven’t asked his ma for his hand in marriage,” she shrugs her shoulders and dons a heavy Italian-American accent.
Damien just snorts. He puts the car in park as he pulls into his parking spot and turns to look at her fully.
“Look, we started having the conversation and that’s enough for now. Let’s leave it in the car and we’ll look over the papers this weekend when we both have a clearer head,” he places his hands at the sides of her face and kisses her on the lips, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says back like she knows it as truly as her own name, then kisses him on the forehead before she unbuckles her seatbelt, “We have time to figure it out before the…log hits the net-”
“We need a better name for it.”
“Agreed.”
It was supposed to be a relaxing evening for the both of them. Damien and Angela had mutually agreed that they wouldn’t let their talk last longer than the car ride back from the studio. They didn’t plan to make any rushed decisions at the moment and simply wanted to put it in the air for consideration.
They ordered dinner, put on a reality show, and split for the night so Angela could shower and Damien could stream. Their call time was later in the morning, so they had down time before both of them had to wrangle their respective pets and be in bed.
Despite being together for well over a year, Damien and Angela’s living situation had only changed recently. They were still in the process of introducing Spork to Zelda and Freyja, which had to occur over the course of a few weeks. Right now, they were in the stage of acclimating them all to each other’s scents, so the cats stayed where Damien streamed and Spork stayed in the bedroom. At night, they’d swap so the pets could slowly expose themselves to the new smell of a foreign creature. It lengthened Damien and Angela’s nighttime routines more than either wanted to admit.
Herein lies the problem, because Damien loves his girls more than life itself, and Angela would kill for Spork, so it’s no question that the floor of Damien’s residence is littered with assorted toys for all three of them. The pet switching also means that the location of said toys is constantly changing. Neither Damien nor Angela, being only human, took the time to realize that they both neglected to secure the doors to either room after their emotionally exhausting day.
This all comes to a disastrous boiling point while Damien is streaming. He’s answering a chat question when he suddenly hears a low growling noise. He turns and sees that Zelda is scrunched up and on guard. She hisses at Spork, who’s managed to wedge his way into the room to sniff around for his favorite toy.
The toy that just so happens to be directly below Zelda’s position on the couch.
“Shit,” he mutters as messages of concern flood the chat.
In a flash, Spork scurries for the toy and Zelda yowls. Thudding footsteps come down the hall before Angela bursts through the door in a panic. She tries to take Spork as Damien politely yanks Zelda from the couch. Angela loses balance as she trips over a cat toy, and in a swift motion, she attempts to grab the arm of Damien’s desk chair. Instead, she pushes it further into both the monitor and Damien and unceremoniously hits her head on the corner of the sofa. Spork sprints out of the room and down the hall as Angela, face down on the floor in her uncoordinated stupor, pushes the door shut with her foot. She is nothing if not a genius well-versed in comedic timing.
Damien sets Zelda down on the windowsill next to Freyja - an unbothered queen - curled on the cat tower nearby.
“Ange?”
He kneels on the ground next to her immediately and turns her gently by the shoulders so she’s facing him. She’s got a minor cut above her right eyebrow from where she hit her head.
“Are you okay?” Damien tries his best to keep his tone even and waves his index and middle fingers in front of her, “Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”
She sniffles and props herself up by putting a hand on his shoulder. The pain blooms across her forehead and she blinks a single reactionary tear from her eye. He steadies her by putting his hand on her hip as she adjusts.
“Two,” her face crinkles.
Damien uses his free hand to cradle the right side of Angela’s face.
“We need to clean this and make sure you don’t have a concussion.”
“Can you kiss it better?” she quips, closing her eyes and pursing her lips at him like they’re filming at the Board AF table, now a recurring inside joke between the two of them.
“Ange, I love you so much and you know this, but I’m not kissing anything better until there’s a Band-Aid on that cut,” he laughs.
She smiles at him and things feel right in the world for a brief second until Angela hones in on Damien’s desk behind him. Her face drops.
“…Did you turn the stream off?”
“You might be concussed, Ange. I’m not wor-”
He stops himself as he realizes what she means and feels the color drain from his already ghostly face. Damien looks up at his monitors and confirms what he feared: The stream has been running the entire time. Not only that, but to make matters worse, Damien knocked the angle of the camera downward when Angela crashed into his desk chair, and it was tilted downwards to provide a direct line of sight for her glorious fall…as well as every interaction between them that followed.
Damien removes his hands from Angela’s sides like he’s been caught holding her too closely during a middle school slow dance. He’s never seen the chat messages move so fast as he cups a hand over his stream camera and exits out of Twitch. Angela sits on the floor, defeated.
“I think I heard the log hit the net.”
The log has now hit the net.
Damien and Angela are mentally kicking themselves. She’s sitting on the couch directly next to him, both emotionally defeated from the disastrous past few minutes. Their hands are intertwined and she buries her head in his shoulder as she ekes out a malcontented noise.
“I can’t believe I did that.”
“Well, I definitely made it worse by declaring my love for you on a livestream,” Damien cringes as he scrolls through his Twitter feed in abject horror.
“We could play it off as an elaborate joke, maybe?” Angela suggests weakly, “Maybe I’m trying out a new role and needed experience falling in enclosed spaces?”
“That won’t change the fact that you’re wearing my shirt. Fans clocked it already,” he points out, lightly yanking the sleeve of the shirt she pillaged from his drawer, “…Nor does it explain the…aftercare.”
She gags at his word choice but also snorts at it as she readjusts so her head is nestled in the crook of his neck, “Don’t call it that. You were checking on me.”
“Their words, not mine,” Damien shakes his phone at her.
They fall into a comfortable silence that soon becomes fleeting when Angela picks up Nate’s papers with her free hand.
“I guess we’ll be filling these out sooner than expected,” she smiles wistfully as her fingers graze the page on top, “Wanna get married, asshole?”
She can feel Damien’s chest shake from laughter at her reference.
“Ange, come on,” he starts, “You didn’t even throw any Disney DVDs at me or make a quiche with my mom. How am I supposed to know you’re serious?”
Angela actually lets out a true, genuine laugh at him for quoting one of her favorite videos back at her.
“I wish I could go back and redo the past two hours,” she laments, “I fucked up.”
Damien squeezes her hand.
“Hey now. We fucked up,” he corrects amusedly, “People might know that we’re in a relationship, but they don’t see all of us.”
Angela sits up and faces Damien head on, matching the adoration in his eyes, “They don’t.”
She places her hand at the crux of where Damien’s head meets his neck and kisses him comfortably. He reciprocates and wraps a hand around Angela’s waist as he inhales peacefully. It lasts longer than the kiss they shared in the car, but they still break apart after a few seconds.
Angela brushes a few wisps of hair out of Damien’s eyes contemplatively.
“So…what now?”
Nate’s startled by a flutter and thud of papers that hit his desk around 9:15 in the morning. He’s still gathering his bearings since he came in a few minutes late and he’s barely had time to even unlock his desktop monitor.
He looks up and makes eye contact with Damien and Angela, who both look considerably more relaxed in his presence than the day prior, yet still exhausted with hints of resignation in their expressions.
Nate expected to see them at some point during the morning since they’d been (in the internet’s words) “caught in 4K,” but they’d beat him to the punch before he could even call them in.
Nate flips through the pages and nods as he recognizes the text and Damien and Angela’s signatures scrawled across a series of lines towards the bottom.
“I…take it this is because the…uh-”
Nate can tell that the two are prepared to finish his sentence in unison before he can even get the rest of it out.
“The log hit the net.”
He clicks his pen to sign without another word.
Subject: Shourtney Protocol - DaHa & AnGi
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi, everyone. I hope this email finds you well.
As of September 11th, 2025, on-screen talent Damien Haas and Angela Giarratana have made their romantic relationship public knowledge due to a recent incident via Twitch.
Both parties will post official statements within the next 72 business hours confirming their romantic involvement. Any videos posted after the week of September 28th, 2025, may reference this relationship in accordance with Smosh company protocol.
Should you have any questions regarding appropriate business practices, please reach out to me.
Nate Deas
Head of Human Resources
Smosh
[email protected]