Chapter Text
The silence of the library was shot dead by a stampede of high schoolers that bustled through the front doors.
They walked close together like a gaggle of very pissed off geese as they bickered with each other, and Steve didn’t even have to look to know that it was his group of little dorks causing the noise.
It was three o’clock on a Friday, after all. It was the designated time slot for the kids to take over the rec room and play their weekly game of Dunces and Dumbasses — he knew what it was actually called, but he liked seeing them get annoyed whenever he pretended not to — and as much as he came to adore these nerds over the years, he still had to do his job.
“Hey, buttheads,” he called out, in what the kids commonly referred to as his Mom Voice. “Did you forget this place is a library?”
The kids paid no heed. They swarmed the front desk and started talking over each other in their desperate attempts to maintain all of Steve’s attention.
“Can you settle a debate for us?” Dustin asked.
Erica rolled her eyes and scoffed. She looked more annoyed than Steve had ever seen before.
“Don’t ask Steve, dummy. He’s always going to take your side.”
“Better than your side.”
Dustin barely managed to duck out of the way when Erica tried to snatch the baseball cap off his head.
“Alright, enough. Either cool it, or take it outside. Whatever it is, I’m not getting involved,” Steve said, still using the Mom Voice.
The kids immediately erupted in a burst of noise made up of pleas and arguments. He practically had to drag them all to the rec room so they didn’t disturb the rest of the library’s patrons, then he sat them down at the table and put his hands on his hips with a scowl.
“One at a time. And keep the volume down, or I swear to God, I’ll kick all of you out.”
The kids glanced between each other, silently deciding who they would elect to speak on their behalf, and it was no surprise to Steve that it turned out to be Dustin and Erica again, but he knew how that would end, so he overrode their decision and picked Will instead.
It was pretty straight-forward: the Party was divided. Half of them wanted to postpone the final session of their months-long campaign in order to watch a livestream of their favorite online D&D group, while the other half thought that the mere suggestion of postponement was blasphemous.
Mike, Dustin, and Lucas were on Team Postpone.
Will, Max, and Erica were on Team Blasphemous.
Jane was just happy to be there and didn’t really care either way, which was pretty much the same boat that Steve was in.
He said as much too, all he got in response was Dustin’s phone shoved in his face.
“Hellfire only streams twice a year! Eddie just announced it’ll be next Friday at three, how are we supposed to watch it live if we’re here?”
Steve nudged Dustin’s phone away, but not before he caught a look at the screen.
It showed a tweet by an account called EddietheBanished, announcing the livestream with a picture of a guy holding up a well-decorated poster full of details.
To say that the guy was attractive would have been an understatement. He was pretty much Steve’s exact taste in men. Dark and wildly curly hair, brown eyes that reminded Steve of a baby cow, a light dusting of freckles on the bridge of his nose, a massive amount of tattoos, a wardrobe that looked straight out of the eighties metal scene. That was without mentioning all the nerd paraphernalia in the picture, like a necklace with a D20 charm around the guy’s throat and a map of what had to be Middle Earth in the background.
Steve liked the bad boy look, what could he say? On the other hand, he also gravitated toward the nerds and outcasts, so this guy was right up his alley.
He took a mental note of the username and filed it away for later, then left the kids to squabble in the privacy of the rec room and went back to the front desk with Robin, who was getting a headstart on scanning all the returned books of the day.
“How are your dingus children doing?”
“They’re at war. I might check on them in an hour to make sure they don’t kill each other.”
“Nerd stuff?”
“Nerd stuff,” Steve confirmed. He grabbed the books that Robin already scanned and started organizing them on one of the carts. “They might postpone next week because of a livestream. Have you heard of some guy called EddietheBanished? He does, like, D&D videos or something.”
“Actually, he plays video games most of the time. He only streams with his friends in Hellfire twice a year.”
“Man, has everyone heard of this guy except me?”
“I only know him because She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named watched his streams while we were dating,” Robin shrugged.
She tried to appear as nonchalant as possible, but Steve knew better. They never spoke of Robin’s disastrous relationship from last year, just as they never spoke of Steve’s. It was an unspoken agreement.
So, they didn’t talk about EddietheBanished for the rest of their shift, but Steve’s brain was still buzzing about him while they made the walk back to their apartment building.
And while they made dinner.
And while they washed dishes.
And while they gathered their dirty clothes into laundry baskets.
Halfway through the walk to the laundromat, Steve decided that he knew exactly how he was going to spend his time there tonight, rather than doing what he normally did, which was complain with Robin about their apartment building’s lack of a laundry hookup and then count the ceiling tiles while she watched a few episodes of the most recent show she was obsessed with.
He did indulge her in a little bit of complaining once they got there — just to keep up with tradition — but after he loaded everything into the washers, he sat at a little table in the corner, put his headphones over his ears, and opened his laptop.
EddietheBanished was easy to find. He had accounts on just about every social media platform a person could think of, all under the same username, but Steve was more interested in his Youtube channel than anything else.
He had just over five million subscribers and just under four-thousand videos with a wide variety of games, so there were a lot to choose from.
Steve looked at his playlists to decide. Among the many that caught his eye, there was a long Baldur’s Gate 3 series that seemed to still be ongoing, a series for almost every Legend of Zelda game under the sun, two different Stardew Valley series, and a lot of mini-series for indie games like Dredge and Firewatch.
He almost didn’t know where to start, but after a few minutes of scrolling, he clicked on the first video in a playlist for one of the Assassin’s Creed games simply because Eddie looked especially cute in the thumbnail.
The video started with a little intro where Eddie said hello and talked about the game he was going to play. Something about ancient Greece and being late to the party, but Steve didn’t entirely pay attention.
He was too busy looking at the set-up in the background.
It was a different place than the one he saw in the picture on Dustin’s phone, with deep everglade walls and golden Christmas lights hanging along the perimeter of the room. There was a vaguely IKEA-looking bookshelf that took up half the wall, full of different dorky knickknacks and cases for various console games, then a honey brown leather armchair next to it, which had a small table with a lava lamp and books on the other side.
There were also a fair amount of plants that Steve couldn’t tell were fake or not, plus a bunch of papers and posters hung up on the walls that looked like letters or artwork sent in by subscribers.
It was a cozy atmosphere that Steve immediately wanted to stay a part of, and Eddie’s voice definitely helped. It was low and a little raspy, but really warm too.
Steve could understand why people liked watching the guy’s videos, between his looks, his voice, and the vibe he had. It had only been about two minutes and Steve was already a little endeared.
The rest of the video did nothing to change that.
If anything, it exacerbated it.
Eddie was chatty while he played, but not so much that it drowned out the important stuff, and he was as funny as he was entertaining.
There was a moment when he was trying to complete a quest where he had to dive to get a necklace in shark-infested waters, and he went on a tangent about how scared he was of them.
Apparently, right before he first saw one of the Great Lakes, his uncle had him watch Jaws so he wouldn’t swim too far from the shore. It had the effect that his uncle intended, as Eddie lost the desire to swim far out, but it worked a little too well because Eddie also lost the desire to swim at all.
When he mentioned that there were a solid six months where he was afraid of taking baths because he was afraid a shark would come out of the drain and attack him, then immediately got attacked by a shark in the game and shrieked at the top of his lungs, Steve had to cough to cover up the laugh he almost let out.
It was at that point, too, when both of Eddie’s cats decided to rear their heads.
There was a male orange tabby cat that he called Cheddar and a fluffy brown female cat that he called Roux, and he had a Cat Cam for whenever they decided to jump up and sleep in his lap so his viewers could see them.
They stayed there for a long time, until Eddie got really invested in a battle with another mercenary and started muttering frustrated curses each time he took damage.
It was a long video, but Steve didn’t mind. Not when he was having fun. The two hours they usually spent at the laundromat flew by, and by the time he was done watching, they had to fold their clothes and leave.
Before he closed his laptop, he subscribed to Eddie’s channel and liked the video so he knew where he’d left off in the series. Just in case there was a next time.
There was a next time too.
There were a lot of next times.
In just a handful of days, Steve had watched the better part of three playlists of Eddie’s videos. He finished the Assassin’s Creed one he’d first started with, he finished the mini Dredge series, and he was ready to start the Firewatch playlist after a particularly rough day at work.
It was comforting, in a way. Besides the simple act of curling up in a nest of blankets and pillows in his bed, it was kind of like being on a video chat with a friend.
He hooked up the projector above his bed to his laptop and got comfortable, then let the video play.
Eddie looked a bit younger than he did now and he had less tattoos, but everything else was the same. He started with his little introduction and a spiel about the game he was playing.
Steve hadn’t heard much about it, if he was being honest. The bigger games that Eddie played were familiar, he’d even played a handful of them himself, but the smaller ones were like surprises.
This one packed a bit of a punch.
Once the text in the beginning started talking about the main character’s wife and early onset dementia, once Eddie had to choose between putting the wife in a home or taking care of her himself, he went quiet. His face got sullen, brows gently furrowed as if he was stewing on it, then he clicked the option to put the character’s wife into a home.
The mood quickly brightened back up after the choose-your-own section of the game was done, with Eddie examining and finding dialogue options for every little thing, and even finding a turtle that he kept as a pet.
It was a cozy video, so much so that Steve ended up falling asleep halfway through, and the troubles of his day were forgotten.
After that, he watched Eddie’s videos pretty much whenever he had an hour or two to himself, sometimes he even put them on in the background for extra noise while he was cooking or cleaning, or even on his breaks at the library, and it was at that point that Robin noticed and started teasing him about his growing ‘obsession.’
“I’m just saying, you seem a little smitten,” she said. They rolled the cart down the aisle of shelves and she handed him another book to put away. “I mean, how many hours have you spent watching his videos in the past few days?”
“Why does that matter? You watch Doctor Who to fall asleep every night and you don’t see me accusing you of having the hots for Amy.”
“I’m a Rose girl and you know it, but that’s not the point, Steven! Did you or did you not ask to alter your hours today so you could go home early and watch that Hellfire livestream?”
Steve’s face burned red with embarrassment.
He had altered his hours to watch the Hellfire live stream, because as much as he tried to pretend otherwise in front of the kids, he actually enjoyed watching them play D&D. He was excited to go home, curl up in his bed, and watch Eddie and his friends play for a few hours.
“No comment.”
“My point exactly,” Robin said, smirking. She took her phone out of her pocket and checked the time, holding it up for Steve to see. “You’ve only got five minutes until your shift is over anyway. Go watch your celebrity crush play a nerd game.”
“He’s not a celebrity crush, he’s just some cute guy who plays video games for a living and happens to be entertaining.”
“Alright, alright. I’ll back off. What do you wanna do for dinner tonight? I’m feeling something easy, like takeout or leftovers.”
“I’ve got free time tonight, I can make something.”
“Ooh, well in that case, I humbly request some lasagna soup.”
Steve chuckled. Ever since he first made the recipe for Robin, she asked for it almost once a week.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, but he already knew they had the stuff to make it.
He walked fast and got home in record time, partly because of his excitement for the Hellfire stream and partly because of the chill in the air. Their cat, Pickle, greeted him at the door with an enthusiastic meow and rubbed against his legs with a purr. She followed close behind him as he grabbed his laptop from the coffee table, holed up in his room, and got comfortable while he put on the Hellfire live stream (which, at that point, was just a countdown until they actually went live).
When the stream started, Steve was laid in bed with Pickle sprawled out at his feet and his laptop on his stomach.
There were four men in that room with the map of Middle Earth, all sat around a rather impressive gaming table that was covered with maps, figurines, and colorful dice.
Eddie stood up with a smile, then extended his arms and slightly bowed to the camera.
“Welcome to Hellfire, one and all! We’re glad to have you here on this fine evening. So glad, in fact, that we have a big surprise for you.” He stood back up and his grin grew even bigger, like he could just barely contain his excitement. “Our stream today is not a one shot, but the beginning of a campaign, and starting today, we’ll be streaming twice a month until the campaign ends.”
Steve smiled. He could imagine the kids freaking out about the announcement, probably shrieking and playfully slapping at each other while they waited for more words from Eddie with bated breath.
“So, without further ado, welcome to ‘The Master of Puppets!’”
He sat back down at the table and had each of the others introduce their characters.
Jeff was a tiefling sorcerer and noblewoman, Gareth was a half-elf rogue and urchin, and Freak was a human barbarian and outlander. They had artwork for each of them that they showed, and then it was time to play.
Eddie set the scene: a group of childhood friends at an inn for a reunion, when their hometown suddenly broke out into chaos. There were people seemingly possessed — people they knew — who were frenzied with a bloodlust in ways that felt unnatural. They called them the Flayed.
It was fun to watch. Eddie was clearly close friends with each of the other guys and they played off one another beautifully. It was almost like watching a group of musicians in a jam session.
Steve could barely tear his attention away when his alarm went off to start making dinner. He watched while he made his way to the kitchen and set up his laptop so he could multitask, and listened while he opened a can of food for Pickle to eat.
The party had to escape their hometown before they were rounded up and killed by the Flayed, and it looked grim. There were look-outs everywhere and few places to hide. Steve had actually stopped in the middle of chopping onions when Freak caught the attention of one of the Flayed, unable to ignore how captivating Eddie’s voice was as he described it.
In the end, they just barely managed to escape. They had killed two of the Flayed, found that their blood ran black, and fled into the surrounding woods, where the session ended.
The livestream was done by the time Steve started scooping ladlefuls of soup into bowls, and Robin came through the door not long after.
They regaled each other with their tales from the few hours they were apart. Robin talked about how someone came in asking for ‘the big, orange book’ with no other knowledge of what it looked like or who it was written by, and Steve talked about the livestream.
Hellfire Night became an event in their apartment from that day on. Steve kept his hours altered to go home early and watch the livestream, and he made lasagna soup as a way to make it up to Robin.
He kept up with the posting schedule for Eddie’s other videos and streams via Twitter too, and even started commenting on them. Nothing crazy, just little things here and there.
Robin still teased him about his ‘celebrity crush,’ but it was a comfortable part of his routine, and it wasn’t like it was going to become anything else…right?