Chapter Text
The stream deck is on. The second monitor displays the Twitter timeline, OBS, and the Twitch chat. The pre-stream screen is up, and Felix is staring at the clock as he fixes the last few things. His team has connected on Discord, but everyone is muted right now. He’ll start the stream to do greetings in a few minutes.
He scrolls through Twitter to see the replies on his stream announcement to keep his mind occupied. Felix could let the anxiety rise while he waits, but distraction is better. The DM he receives from one of his mods may be too much of a distraction. But he still has time, so he opens it, even though he kind of wants to chastise her for not focusing before they start a four-hour esports stream.
It’s a clip of CB97, and the message explains that the clip is from a stream he just finished. He sits against the usual backdrop for his just-chatting streams, dressed in black with his dark curls drooping over his eyes. Felix has to start the clip over because his surprise kept him from hearing the beginning, that and the initial shock of seeing someone so attractive appear on his screen.
“You know what would be nice?” he asks, eyes scanning over his chat while talks. “That game that’s been popular—Among Us—I haven’t played it yet.” He laughs at a comment in chat. “Stream it? I don’t even know how to stream a game, let alone know nine people to play with.” He reads another comment. “Oh? Play with J.One and SpearB? Yeah, they’d probably want to. They play games in their free time a lot, to the extent that I sometimes get on their case about work. What? Nagging? I don’t really—”
The video loops back to the beginning. Felix stares at the screen for a while before typing out a message to his mod. What??? And why??? He waits for a response, completely focused on this until a voice in his ear catches his attention.
“Cloud?” his teammate asks. “We’re in the lobby. Are you ready?” Shit. Felix unmutes himself.
“Yeah, sorry. I was talking with my mods. Joining now.” He clicks on the server. While it loads, he starts the stream and mutes his mic to his teammates again. “Hey everyone,” Felix greets. He reads out some of the donations from pre-stream while he navigates his character to where his teammates are waiting. “Tonight is Twitch Rivals, so I won’t be reading chat as much tonight. Strats? They haven’t released the bingo card yet, so we—”
He stops when he sees the notification for a Twitter DM. “One second,” he tells chat. Shoot your shot! Invite him to play. You’ve streamed Among Us before. Felix frowns. They’ve known each other a long time, and she, like the fans, is well aware of his little celebrity crush. He doesn’t respond, and instead turns back to chat.
They talk as much as they can before they get the announcements to head to the team servers and prepare to start. The first session passes by in a blur, and his team finishes in third place. “It’s fine,” one of his teammates says. “We’ll come back in the resource gathering and the head hunt.” Felix hopes it’s true. He doesn’t need the money, but his blood is boiling with competitive energy.
The admins give them ten minutes before the next round, so Felix makes himself a cup of tea and tries to relax. His team got third last time, and Felix would love to get first this time. He comes back to his seat before any of his team, so he reads chat.
“Twitter? What about it?” Felix asks. He only sees the wall of check twitter multiply. Felix sighs and refreshes the Twitter timeline. “Oh, I see. Guys, I’m trying to focus.” There are at least a hundred notifications of him being tagged in tweets with that clip of CB97 talking about Among Us.
A couple tweets also tag CB97, and Felix blushes. He’s pretty sure he has no idea who Felix is. “What are you talking about? I’m not embarrassed.” But his chat continues harping on his pink cheeks. “It’s the RGB,” he says, eyes going to the video to make sure the headphones are flashing properly. Of course, they’re oscillating between cool colors right now, which only makes his face look pinker.
“Should I?” Felix asks softly. His chat seems to agree that inviting 3RACHA to play Among Us is a good idea. “Hmm, maybe. No promises. I have to finish this before I even think about that.” He catches a team member moving her character, so she’ll probably unmute soon and want to talk. “After this,” he reminds his chat. The only messages he can see are people on about ‘crossovers’ and ‘otp’ and other things that shake Felix’s focus. Thousands of dollars—but more importantly, his pride—is on the line.
After this.
Chan stares at the offending email for a long time, even after reading it. The address and the signature are curious things. Chan gets a lot of crap in his business inbox, but this looks real.
CB97,
A couple days ago, one of my moderators sent me a clip where you expressed interest in streaming Among Us. I’m a fulltime streamer, and I’ve played the game before. A lot of my fans showed interest in chat, on Twitter, etc. in seeing us play together. If you want, I can put together a lobby for you with some other streamers? We can play for charity if you’re interested in that.
-CloudYong
He takes a screenshot and sends it to the group chat with Jisung and Changbin. Honestly, Chan has no idea what he’s supposed to do with this. He said that thing in his just-chatting stream as a throw away line while he was rambling. Of all the things he expected to get clipped from that stream—the bum conversation or the feet conversation, for example—he was not expecting for this to come back on his radar. While he waits for his friends to respond, he might as well look this person up.
At the bottom of the email are a couple links to Twitch, Youtube, and other social media. He clicks on the Twitter link. The profile is very professional, and the picture is a hand making a peace sign in front of a fancy latte on a wooden table. Maybe they’re one of those gamers that doesn’t show their face, Chan thinks to himself. He starts to scroll but stops when he sees the follower count. 1.2 million? How is that even possible?
So a celebrity emailed him. Chan scrolls down to see that their most recent tweets were announcements for streams or video postings. They make fucking Minecraft content? Chan feels even more lost than when he had just the email. At least his friends responded.
A.Changbin: So are we doing it or nah?
A.Jisung: I’m down!
A.Jisung: Charity stream sounds fun!
Chan: I messaged you bc I have no idea
A.Changbin: Fuck it why not
A.Changbin: Or, first, is this person legit, Hyung?
A.Jisung: True
A.Jisung: Do we know that they’re not a Nazi?
Chan: I don’t think they’re a Nazi??
Chan does a quick search with ‘scandal’ after the person’s name. The only articles that show up are scandals from other professional Minecraft gamers and one tabloid that attempted to shade this person coming out as a scandal. He tries with different search words to find a fan post praising this guy for taking stances against racism, homophobia, and the likes.
Chan: He seems legit. Only good things showed up on naver/google
A.Changbin: So what do you want to do?
Chan: I guess I’ll tell him we’re interested? And see what happens from there
Chan: And I’ll bcc you in so I don’t have to keep sending pics to you
CloudYong,
We’d love to! Thank you for getting into contact with us. Truthfully, none of us have streamed any game content, just music stuff and chatting. Would you be able to help us with that? And as far as a timeline, how about a week from now? It can be longer if it needs to be, whatever works.
Sincerely,
CB97, 3RACHA
The Discord jingle plays, and the video call connects. “Hyunjin! Jeongin!” Felix says. They both lean back from their cameras. “You have to help me!”
“We’re on call, aren’t we?” Hyunjin asks. “Will you tell us what you’re freaking out about?”
“Okay, so you know that rapper I like,” Felix starts.
“CB97, right?” Jeongin asks.
“Exactly! I emailed his business address and offered to help him stream an Among Us game.”
“…What?” Felix gives them the rundown and paraphrases the three emails between them.
“Look at you,” Hyunjin says, making a deal of looking him up and down—or at least, doing it as well as he can over video call. “Shooting you shot and landing it.”
“I’ve landed nothing,” Felix grumbles. “I’ve never hosted before. What was I thinking? And how am I supposed to get six other people to agree to play with us and coordinate their schedules on a week’s notice?”
“You have me,” Jeongin says. “We haven’t played Among Us in a couple weeks.”
“I couldn’t possibly turn this opportunity down,” Hyunjin says. “Literally my only streams for the past two months have been dancing or Among Us.”
“It kind of seems like an obsession at this point,” Jeongin mutters.
“Kind of,” Felix agrees. “But thank you guys, seriously.”
“Hey, anything to get that sweet rapper dick, am I right?” Hyunjin asks. Jeongin and Felix both groan.
“Disgusting,” Jeongin says.
“I’m just saying,” Hyunjin says with a shrug. “So. We need four more. Who do we know?”
“Seungmin and Minho?” Jeongin suggests.
“Like we could convince those two to stream together,” Hyunjin says. “The last time they streamed together was just before Seungmin started his character design series.”
“If anyone could convince them, it’s Felix,” Jeongin says.
“You think so?” Felix asks. It would be nice to play with both of them together again. He hasn’t managed that in at least a year, always having to pick one or the other.
“It’s worth a shot.”
“So that’s eight,” Hyunjin says. “Any of your Minecraft friends want to?” Felix shakes his head.
“My servermates who I’m actually close with aren’t interested in playing Among Us.”
“Can’t understand why.” Felix shrugs.
“I could ask Chenle,” Felix says.
“Oh, ZongZhong, he played last time with us, right?” Jeongin asks.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, that’s nine,” Hyunjin says. “If you want, I can ask DaikiKo.” Felix struggles to remember who that is. “He does RPGs mainly, but I’ve played Among Us with him before. He’s really good.”
“Sure,” Felix says. “That’s ten, if everyone agrees.”
“Tell them it’s for love and they’ll agree,” Hyunjin says.
Felix isn’t so sure about that, but he sends everyone a message to see if they’re interested. Hyunjin and Jeongin stay on call to chat about less stressful things. They congratulate him on his Rivals win and give Felix spoils for their upcoming plans and projects. It’s only late at night that they end the call.
A little research into a future business partner is, in fact, not stalking. He does refuse to watch any of CloudYong’s streams or videos, because he doesn’t want to cheat. Among Us is one of those games where knowing the opponents’ play styles may be too much of an advantage. Chan already knows Jisung and Changbin like the back of his hand; it would be too unfair to secretly case this guy as well.
He does get a bit flustered when he sees the tweet where CloudYong quoted a tweet with the video clip of Chan talking about the game. Thank you all for sending this clip to me over one hundred times!! I’ll contact him so chill out! Chan rereads the text and tries to decide if it’s hyperbolic or not. Are his fans really that invested in them playing together? 3RACHA doesn’t even have that large of a fanbase, so he can’t imagine there is any significant overlap between the two of them.
His self-censored research doesn’t yield much else about the guy. He finds out that they’re around the same age and both from Australia. He’s been making content for six years, so he must have started pretty young. Nothing bad shows up still, so Chan isn’t worried about it. What he’s worried about is whether or not the stream going well. Chan streams frequently—much more frequently than Changbin or Jisung ever solo stream—but he’s never streamed while playing a game. He’s only ever done it while chatting, producing, or playing acoustic covers.
At least CloudYong answers all his questions and offers advice. They’ve exchanged multiple emails, each one from CloudYong detailing how to stream with other people over Discord, how to use StreamSquads, and even how to play Among Us. Though, Chan requested for CloudYong to not give away any of his strategies. He, Jisung, and Changbin played several anonymous rounds with strangers over the past week so they aren’t flying totally blind this weekend, but none of them are going to pretend they’re professionals.
And the stream is tomorrow. He announced it on Twitter a couple days ago after CloudYong confirmed that the lobby was set, and the fans responded with excitement. Chan idly scrolls through the replies instead of working on his open track.
So we finally get to see 3RACHA proving that they’re gamers?
The crossover we’ve been waiting for—minecrafter and self-made rappers stream
When your fave finally gets to work with his fave
Chan notices a trend in the comments. Has he talked about Chan before? Either that or they really have a lot of overlap in their fanbases for some reason and the fans have active imaginations. His fingers fidget to open a new tab to search for answers, but he decides against it. It’s never good to self-search, especially not with another public figure’s name. Bad idea.
It doesn’t matter anyway. Tomorrow they’re streaming together. It’ll be nice to do something fun for once, especially since he hasn’t played with Jisung or Changbin in a while. Even if there are strangers too, he can pretend it’s just friends getting together. He’ll probably get railed about his shit gaming skills or streaming skills, but it will be okay.