Chapter Text
Claude was mindlessly scrolling through twitter on his phone, supposedly taking a ‘short break’ which inevitably ran away from his grasp. His thumb melodically scrolled as if on autopilot, liking random fanarts of his online persona, and reading any of the threads and “relatable” posts his timeline spewed out.
That’s when he came across the first post about it.
A fan of Leos, wishing him health and prosperity during his time away in a long, well written paragraph.
Claude brushed it off. Thought it might’ve been an old post just now popping up on his feed. That if he kept scrolling he’d eventually come across a post from Leo about his next schedule or stream, confirming that he was just overthinking and that Leo didn’t go on hiatus without saying anything.
To him at least.
He started getting anxious, the work he’d been sorting through forcefully shoved to the back of his mind. It wasn't his priority anymore, something he needed to waste more time worrying about. His knuckles paled under pressure as he gripped the phone tighter subconsciously, fingers finding the search bar and typing in the name Leo Kuga faster than his mind could even comprehend.
Leo’s banner immediately popped up when Claude pressed enter, the red and white haired heads of his genmates Toi, and Teto loading into view. Claude quickly tapped it, finger ghosting across the glowing screen as he scrolled down looking for any sort of indication that Leo was taking a break.
The last thing Leo posted mentioned a stream that he would be doing later that day, a zatsudan in which he would talk about his time in a recent RP server he participated in.
That tweet was posted 15 hours ago.
Claude continued to scroll for the next 10 minutes, nothing else in his recent posts pointed at the possibility of any kind of hiatus. With an ache in his chest, Claude returned to the top of Leo’s profile and finally clicked on the link attached to his latest tweet.
The link opened Youtube, comments loading in quickly and wishing the missing streamer a nice break. Claude wafted through them until he came across a particular comment, one singular time stamp with an orange heart next to it.
He tapped it.
The long red bar adorning the lower half of the video window quickly refreshed, the circle now closer to the end of the VOD. Leo looked conflicted, gray eyebrows furrowed as he anxiously held his bottom lip in between clenched teeth before speaking. The chat replay moved rather slowly, the streamer reading one message out in particular.
“Sensei, are you okay? You seem tense.” Leo read aloud, his voice gently rising after every syllable in a questioning tone.
The boy leaned back into his gamer chair, hands hovering over the desk before falling onto his lap.
He softly smiled.
Oh, how Claude missed that smile.
“I’m glad you asked to be honest. I’ve been meaning to tell you guys about this for a while now.” Leo began, fidgeting with his fingers.
“I’ll be taking a little break. Around 3 weeks maybe..?” He finally confessed, the words seeming to lift some sort of invisible weight off his shoulders.
“It won’t be long. I’ll be back soon, okay?” Leo reassured the chat, who had begun to send crying emotes and well wishes to the boy now looking up at his monitor, reading every single message they sent.
He continued to comfort the chat. Comfort Claude, who abruptly tapped the screen of his phone, pausing the stream on a frozen frame of Leo who had been smiling again. Leo with his gray fluffy hair, his tired eyes, his baggy sweater, and his lithe vocal tone.
Leo who in that frame was smiling at Claude, like he smiled at everyone else in the chat that day, not for Claude and only him like he did in private when it was just the two of them. When Claude was able to coax a grin out of his crush without the help of others.
Before he became distant. Before he stopped communicating.
Or had the line blurred? When had Claude stopped reaching out as well, asking how Leo was doing, finding time to play games with him even if he had things that weren’t done?
Claude placed his phone on the desk, the frozen frame of Leo’s smile still illuminating from it. He clenched his fists in an attempt to calm himself down.
“Where did it all go wrong?”
Slowly morphed into a:
“I miss you so much it fucking hurts.”
But Claude only realized that fact after the person he loved so dearly suddenly dissipated, not while he was still there.