Work Text:
"Yo Doogie do you wanna stream on your account?"
Doggie looked up from his screen to see Conix standing nearby, scrolling through his phone.
"Nah I'm probably not gonna play for a while longer, we can just do random shi or something I dunno" Doggie shrugged, shifting his focus back towards the game. He kept trying his hardest to lock in, but he knew that realistically he wasn't going to get anywhere on this level playing away from home.
"Okayyyyy thennnn" Conix said, slurring his words. Conix walked on over to the couch where everyone else was sitting. "Y'all ready?" he asked, preparing the stream on his phone.
"Yeah," Denni began, "We still gonna do that thing we were talking about?"
A little bit before evening, Conix, Trick, and Denni were discussing trolling the chat a little bit with Doggie playing Grief. They would start the stream, claiming that they had plans for starting later but wanted to chill since Doggie was cooking on Grief. After around 10-15 minutes, Doggie would switch to noclip and turn off any visual obstruction that occurred, like the green flashes, when he died. Whenever he died around 80-95 was when he would pause the game and reveal that it was noclip all along. It was pretty dumb and probably obvious but it was worth a shot. Besides, they'd have some fun with it.
Trick stood up and headed over to the counter to grab some water. "You idiots never told Doggie in the first place" Trick pointed out. He began filling up a glass when Conix snuck up behind him.
"HEY! You helped us plan this out too, so you count as an idiot" Conix smirked, snatching a bag of snacks and throwing it to the others.
Trick raised the cup to the faucet so it would fill up faster, and tossed the water right at Conix. "Yeah, sure" he giggled.
Doggie looked up after dying once again to see what all the commotion was about. "Wait what are we doing?" he asked.
As the two were over fighting near the counters, Denni explained to Doggie what they were wanting to do. "We were gonna have you do a little sussy noclip run to play around with the viewers"
Doggie slightly smiled. "Bet, can we start soon though cuz I'm done playing this shit"
"Sure thing," Denni started, then turned over to where Trick and Conix were fighting. "Yo Conix or whoever has the phone give it to Cursed so he can get us started"
Conix threw the phone onto the couch with no hesitation. He was still dealing with Trick; he couldn't get too distracted.
"Maybe take it into the other room so we can tell Doogie what he gotta do" Trick said, motioning for Cursed to start the stream in the opposite side of the house. Cursed simply said "aight" and headed down the hallway. "Don't be suspicious bro," Trick yelled back.
Conix took off his now wet shirt and threw it onto the ground. "I'm dumping an entire bucket of water on you later," he teased. They both quickly ran over to Doggie, trying to figure out how they wanted to execute this.
Conix sat down in the back while Trick came up with some ideas. "I think you should just play normally for like 10 minutes or sum and then switch over to noclip without the green flash or whatever that's called again" he said.
Conix intervened, "And don't keep going until the end once you die at like 80 or something just pause and tell us you were on noclip"
"Yeah," Trick agreed, sitting next to Conix. "Denni can you go find cursed real quick and tell em to come out?"
"Always gotta do everything huh," Denni said, but he had already left before the others could respond.
"Doggie when do you think you're gonna beat this" Conix asked, already bored watching.
Doggie was not very confident at the moment. He had gotten 97% early in June, convinced he could beat it before this trip, but ended up scratching that idea. He always had that consistency but just was too bad at the middle parts of the level to get to the end again.
"Like in 3 years or some shit bro this isn't even gonna be top 10 when I beat it" Doggie replied in a monotone voice, still focused on the screen.
"Noooo come on bro you're beating this in like 2 months at most," Conix said. "Doogie you gotta be POSITIVE MAN!" he continued with enthusiasm, trying to invoke some sort of happiness in Doggie.
"Like I haven't heard that enough times already..," Doggie muttered. There were always at least 10 donations per stream telling him, "stay positive dawg you got this!" or "you got this bro I believe in u" or "no negative thoughts doog stay confident!". They were very nice to see, but overtime it was easy to just become desensitized to them. At least they were better then some of the other weird ass donation messages he would get.
"Now HERE'S THE REST OF THE CREW! SAY HI GUYS!"
Denni and Cursed came running into the main room and headed towards Conix and Trick. Conix jumped up and did a very, VERY exaggerated wave, practically yelling at the top of his lungs at the camera. "WHATS UP GUYSS!!!!"
Doggie remained locked in on Grief. He was pretty used to the others being all loud and rowdy. He had a job to do too, and he wanted to try his best to not mess it up at all. Naturally, one of the other members had to interrupt.
"Doggie you gonna say hi or somethin?" Cursed had the stream phone in hand, sitting behind Doggie amongst the rest of the members. After he died, he said a quick little hello. "Sup guys, as you can see I'm quite busy right now"
"Yo Trick why did we start the stream again I lowkey forgot" Denni leaned in and asked, hinting that he knew EXACTLY why they had started the stream. They were setting up their little trick.
Trick gently grabbed the phone from cursed, walking back over to the catch to get the bag of snackies Conix threw to Cursed earlier. "Yeah chat we were gonna do some rounds of hide and seek later tonight but Doggie is COOKING on Grief right now so we decided to start early" he explained.
"Wait what's your best run right now I wasn't watching earlier" Cursed asked.
"Uhhhh I got 72 earlier and got 67 at some point too" Doggie replied, pausing his game for a moment. He looked back at the others for a second. "I'd say that's pretty good for not being at my setup"
"See Doogie you're going to beat it soon you're doing SO good right now," Conix chimed in.
"That'll be more believable if I pass tacos again" Doggie stated, mainly to himself, and kept playing. He decided he would try to get decently far into the level and then start up the noclip run.
Trick came back from the couch with not one but 4 bags of chips. "Like I said guys for now this will be a Grief stream," Trick started, dropping the bags next to everyone. "If there's a mod in here can one of y'all rename the stream to that"
Doggie was currently at the predrop; if he passed 17-20% right before the drop he was pretty confident he could get to Iris and possibly Mercury if he locked in.
"Have y'all heard that one singalong to Grief or whatever," Conix mentioned, trying to start a conversation. "It's like 'come on Doggie! You got this for many months, you've fought this' dadada"
"Bro I watch way too much YouTube I swear I've heard EVERY single Grief remix ever created" Cursed quickly responded, intrigued. "I have like that whole song memorized."
"We MUST sing it to Doggie guys, right? Yes I know you all love that song right? Type 1 if you like the song, type 2 if you have no clue what we're talking about" Conix said.
The YouTube chat flooded with 1s; it seems that most of the viewers were pretty caught up with all of the Grief content. It was impossible to avoid if you were even only slightly invested in the GD community online.
Doggie made it right to the end of Cuber before he died. "Bro I swear if you guys start that singing shit again I will kill Trick" he remarked, continuing the level.
Trick looked back and fourth at the others. "Bro I didnt even SAY anything about that why me"
"Trick we all know everything's your fault" Denni stepped in.
The rest of the TCD crew sat behind Doggie, bickering and arguing about the most random shit that mankind has ever heard of. Doggie figured that this would be a great time to execute his little plan. He needed to find a way to notify the crew that he was going to switch to noclip, since the camera was still on him.
"Wait guys I'm lowkey curious do all of you fit if you sit in that spot together" Doggie turned around and pointed to a seat next to the bench they were already sitting on.
"That's a very random question," Cursed blurted, taking the phone from its current position.
"That's what happens when you play the same ass level for over 2 years I need something else to think about" Doggie said, then continued his clicking.
"I guess bro"
-
Doggie turned on the noclip and began his run. He died at the beginning a couple times before locking in. Even though it was noclip, when he got to Burg or Greafer then he needed to make sure that it wasn't obvious. He had faith in everyone's ability to make it seem real. They were extremly good at that. Doggie was also curious on how far he would make it without dying. He prayed that he didn't get to Greafer or farther without a death, since that would have meant he probably would have gotten a new best run that day in noclip mode.
Once Doggie reached Triplash, the others took notice and started to watch. Doggie quietly sighed and locked the FUCK in. Yes, playing a Top 1 level with 4 of your homies watching you was harder than playing it by yourself. Not to mention everyone in the stream watching.
Phone in hand, Conix flipped it to show Doggie playing. "We've got a drop attempt guys! Wooo!"
"Where do y'all think he's dead at" Trick asked.
"He's dying to the 49 click trust" Denni predicted.
"Why can't y'all just let him lock in you're going to jinx it" Cursed mentioned, now standing beside Conix, watching Doggie's progress. At this point he was in the middle of Cuber's part in the level.
"True true" Conix agreed. Trick and Denni got up and stood behind Cursed, well aware that Doggie was doing his "special run".
It was silent for some time. Doggie kept going; from Iris past 49 to Mercury, and continued onto Burg.
"Guys he's getting far!! Go's in the chat guys!" Conix said. He peeked at the bottom right of the screen. Zero deaths so far.
When the rest of TCD realized that Doggie was genuinely locked in, they were just as hyped as they would be on a normal run. At the duel jumps before Greafer, they were wanting to shout so bad. But they couldn't mess up Doggie's flowstate.
"Holy shit keep going" Trick muttered, feeling himself get a little nervous. He passed 67 and 68 without any deaths.
Conix turned the phone to him and the others, then back. He had a genuine shocked face. "Are you guys seeing this???" he said, quickly flipping it back to Grief. It was the jumps before Tacos. Doggie adjusted his posture and sighed a deep sigh.
It was at the point where it was becoming hard to watch. If he had passed the first Tacos wave without a death, it was very possible he could legitimately get to 90. They didn't want to think about the other outcome.
First he passed 79, then 80, then 82... he kept going! The stream chat was going absolutely bananas right now. Some people thought something was off, but for the most part it was a very believable run.
Then it was 90. Trick, Denni, Cursed, and Conix were all standing right behind Doggie, praying that he died here. His death count still remained at zero.
"No shot..." whispered Cursed. Everyone was sweating bullets at this point.
Doggie passed the ship. He was at the wave.
Nobody said a peep. They just anxiously watched as he reached that 97 death point. Still zero deaths.
After what felt like an eon, he reached the last clubstep monster. Everyone watched in horror. Did Doggie even know he had zero deaths? Nono, he had to since he agreed he would stop playing at around 80-90%.
As soon as his icon flew into the right side of the screen, the entire room erupted as the dreaded text popped up. He had completed the level with 100% noclip accuracy.
"WHAT THE HELL BRO WHAT THE FUCK DOGGIE" "NO SHOT WHAT" "NAHHHHH THATS BULLSHIT DUDE" "DOGGIE NOOOOOOOOO" The entire room was filled with screams that sounded like they came out of a horror movie; they were completely justified reactions.
Doggie sat there for a second, threw his headphones off, and sped away into the hallway with his face buried into his hands. Even over all the commotion, everyone could hear his muffled "Ohhhh myyy fuckingg godddd I want to diee right now"
Chat was FLYING. The audience was freaking the HELL out, but also a little confused. In the middle of all the screaming, Conix interrupted the insanity to clarify what they'd planned to do. "Ok wait wait wait wait chat chat ok so we told Doggie to do a noclip run to 90% to troll y'all but he accidently did the noclip run with ZERO DEATHS. ZERO DEATHSSS!! THATS FUCKED UPPPP" And the yelling continued.
The stream chat continued exploding, pouring like a never-ending waterfall with messages like:
WTF WTF WTF HOWWWWWWWWW
NAHHHHHHHHHH WHAT
He HAS TO be able to submit that right???
I'm actually going to lose my shit and I'm not the one playing
2 years just for this bullshit lmfao
Wait is Doggie okay? Omg what
I'd quit the game atp cuz wtf
Cursed suddenly paused everyone. "Wait wait wait Conix hand over the phone," he started, "Where did Doggie go?"
"Oh shit," Denni realized. They all heard him walk down the hall but didn't try looking for him. They were too distracted by the chaos.
"Wait yeah I feel like he would have come back out now where'd he go" Trick added.
"Dude HE JUST FUCKING BEAT GRIEF AND IT DOESNT EVEN COUNT he's probably FUMING" Conix snapped back, harshly handing the phone to Cursed.
Cursed walked away and started looking in the rest of the rooms in the house, and the others followed closely behind. They weren't sure what condition they would find Doggie in. He was obviously mad. I mean, who wouldn't be? This was probably Doggie's way of expressing his anger; maybe slamming some pillows from a bed onto a floor or something. None of the members can remember the last time he actually yelled out of frustration, even outside of GD.
"Yo Doggie where the fuck you go dude" Denni said out loud, not expecting a response.
"I'm in here," a faint response could be heard from one of the bedrooms. The remainder of TCD heard and rushed to the bedroom to find Doggie sitting on the edge. He had his hands wrapped around his forehead, trying to comprehend what the hell just happened.
"Are you good bro?" Denni asked as the rest walked in.
Doggie sat still for a moment before shaking his head in denial. He slammed his hand on the bed. "I'm so fucking done with this level this is fucking exhausting 2 fucking years and then this shit happens yeah I'm totally good bro"
The other 4 stood close by, not really knowing what to say. Conix decided to say, "I'm so sorry dude, this must be horrible beyond our comprehension".
Doggie already knew that he couldn't submit this to the list. There were plenty of advantages to completing a level with a no death noclip rather than beating it normally. He could barely think right now; he spent 2 years enduring the hand and wrist pain, the accusations about doing it for the money, the pressure, the endless negative thoughts torturing his mind convincing him it was impossible, just for him to complete it on a run that wasn't even considered a legitimate completion. He quite literally just wanted to melt into the floor and disappear. Doggie wasn't even mad at this point; he was disappointed, disappointed in himself for letting this happen. He never liked doing runs from 3 or 4% or noclip runs from 0 for this exact reason. Naturally, he blamed it all on himself.
Doggie couldn't recall a moment in his entire Grief career that made him feel this down.
"Maybe we probably shouldn't have done that from zero... that was definitely on us" Trick said, attempting to make Doggie feel better about it.
No, it's definitely my fault. It's my fault. You know what fuck this, Doggie told himself in his head, giving up on trying to make himself feel better. He simply shook his head again and ran his hands down his face.
"How do I mess up THAT BAD," Doggie said, slightly raising his voice. "This shit is never getting Top 1 bro I just keep messing all of my shit up I can't do anything right I always die to the fucking easiest clicks of the level I just I..."
"Nah I dunno" Doggie mumbled. He just looked down at the floor again.
"Doogie, NONE of this is your fault dude, and look, you're going to feel bad right now, and feel like it's worthless to keep going foward, but if you keep going after this, everyone will see how truly determined you are to beat this one hell of a level. I don't think I've ever met someone with the amount of dedication you have. You gotta stay strong buddy" Conix encouraged Doggie, trying to revive some sort of positivity.
"Yeah, and bro TRUST ME this is getting top 1, this shit's harder than like over half of the other top 1s being verified," Denni countinued, "And like Conix said you're amazing for keeping this up for 2 years bro, I could never, and I bet no one else in this group could either"
"Yeah absolutely not," Cursed started, placing the stream phone onto one of the nearby dressers unconsciously. "I feel like I should mention you're so much of an inspiration to me because of that ability, and I guarantee you that you've inspired tons of others to keep going after having their own struggles on the game."
Trick didn't like having to say anything while being in situations like this, but even he had a little something to tell. "You're a goat for even taking this on in the first place, you can't give up now"
Doggie tapped his finger to the click pattern of the level while trying to calm himself. He was so used to everybody screaming and yelling at eachother over the countless games they've played together, and the overall silliness to the point where he didn't know how to process all these compliments. He couldn't find words to respond with. Doggie didn't really wanna say anything either; he didn't want them to notice his voice was shaky. He wasn't sure if he had a choice anymore though.
"Yeah... I guess..." he spoke softly, trailing off. As he processed their words, he just became even more emotional.
Eventually he just gave up. He sniffled and tried to wipe away any tears that were threatening to come out.
"Fuck you guys for making me cry bro ohmygodddddd" he said, burying his face in his hands.
The entire group's facial expressions dropped as they realized he was crying. None of them had ever seen him in tears before.
"Aww Doogie you wanna hug?" Cursed stepped foward and asked. The other 3 members nodded.
"..Yeah" he barely managed to get out.
Denni, Trick, Cursed, and Conix all walked up to embrace Doggie. Doggie was so grateful to have friends that were willing to hug him like this. After 2 years of being told the exact same thing over and over by the stream chat, it was easy to just get used to all the "You're so amazing for taking this on!" "Your dedication is so inspiring!" compliments. It hit real different when he was told that to his face by 4 of his closest GD friends. He didn't say anything more; he just kept crying onto his friends shoulders.
"You're gonna beat Grief bro," Conix said, trying to cheer him up. "You'll beat it with the power of LOVE!" he added, hoping that he was still capable of taking a joke.
Doggie smiled a small smile. Classic Conix. He eventually sat up when everyone let go and just kept looking down. He knew he needed to say something, but he wasn't sure what. Doggie didn't want everyone else awkwardly looking at him.
"I don think you guys understand how much I needed that," he managed to raise his voice slightly, drawing circles on the floor with his foot. "Sometimes it just becomes really hard to deal with all the shit at once and stuff"
"Dude, we're ALWAYS here for you if you need it," Denni said.
"Yeah bro I can imagine it being rough I mean this shit is the most hyped thing in the entire GD community" Trick included.
Doggie nodded. That was certainly true. He couldn't surf anywhere on the platforms he was on without seeing at least 5 posts about Grief, and he was most likely involved in them. It did indeed get rough sometimes.
He sat up, getting his composure together. The other members were happy to see that he was feeling better. Doggie began walking out of the room, wanting to see if the completion message was still on the monitor. He considered playing from 0 for a little bit, but he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to do that. "Ima go back outside and see if I wanna keep playing for a bit or I dunno"
"Aight we'll be right out there," Cursed replied. As Trick and Denni left, he suddenly remembered the phone. The stream phone. He frantically looked around for a moment and then spotted it sitting on one of the dressers. Oh shi did everyone just hear this entire conversation? He thought.
Conix was about to leave but noticed Cursed looking at the phone. "You good bro? Why are... oh..."
Cursed pulled the chat to fullscreen, praying on his life that nobody was saying anything weird or insulting anybody. To his suprise, barely any people were acting like that at all. If anything, they found it cute, which made him giggle a bit.
"What's so funny bro," Conix said, walking up behind Cursed to peak at the chat. Cursed scrolled up, curious what others had to say about when this first went down.
awwwwww
wait this is so cute wtf
bro is he good? 😭
dam bro
noo doggie don't blame yourself (srsly)
okay so he didnt cry cuz of the run he cried cuz of his friends telling him good stuff thats amazing lmao
*doggie cries* W Doogie 💛
everyones talking about this convo but did y'all forget HE LITERALLY VERIFIED GRIEF IF HE DIDNT USE NOCLIP?
aww no doggieeeeeeee
needed this today im ngl lol
doggie donttt cry brooooooooo
this chat is actually tolerable for once tf
wtf happened I just joined
gng ts stream started like 20 mins ago and we already got grief fake verified and doggie emotional this has to be the stream of the month
i acc cant bro they're so nice to him
why don't my friends do this bro
can you play my level
"We don't need to tell the others about this right?" Cursed said aloud, still scrolling through messages.
"Uhhhhh yeah," Conix agreed, trying to figure out a way to hide the fact that the phone was in the room with them.
"Chat pretend this never happened, start talking about how we all left y'all behind in the living room or sum", he began, hoping that they would play along. "Cursed we can just pretend that we left the phone in the living room and nobody knows whats going on"
"That works until everyone and their moms start making YouTube shorts of this" Cursed scoffed. "Eh, they can find out later"
They both smiled and worked their way towards the couch again.
------LATER-------
Off-stream, the gang gathered together on the couch, just chilling and talking about shit, the thing they were good at. Doggie was scrolling through TikTok when he came across a certain video captioned, "he fr deserved this i cant imagine how heartbreaking that must be to literally beat the level but not being able to count it this was such a breath of fresh air to hear from the group"
Doggie wasn't particularly horrified to see this, thankfully. He was rather confused. "Hey guys," he said, interrupting their conversation.
They all paused and looked over at him. Doggie simply held the phone out and played the TikTok.
Cursed and Conix glanced at eachother. It would only be a matter of time until one of them found out.
"Well uh this will be a fun run of shorts to watch," Trick mentioned, watching the video. "Not like we can do anything about it now I guess"
"Now you have to LEGIT beat it so people have another thing to focus on," Conix added. He then realized that the noclip run would probably keep everyone hyped, but he wasn't too sure if they'd combine the two events into one; whatever the case was, it was definitely going to get talked about.
"Fantastic," Doggie said with a hint of sarcasm.
Everybody returned to talking and eating snacks and scrolling on TikTok.