Chapter Text
The voice call was never quiet for long.
Someone was always laughing too loud into their mic, or forgetting they were unmuted, or testing some broken mechanic they swore would be “the next big thing.” It was a clutter of noise, overlapping jokes and inside references, the kind of chaos that held the group together.
Jandel tolerated it. He didn’t join for the noise — never had.
For him, the call was just an easier way to coordinate builds and scripts, to run admin events smoothly, to keep things from unraveling. He didn’t need the laughter. He didn’t need the chatter. He needed silence and order, the kind that let him focus.
But silence was the one thing Sammy could never give him.
“Do you ever stop talking?” Jandel asked one night, sharper than he meant to, words slipping out before he could stop them.
It was the first thing he’d ever said to Sammy directly.
Sammy only laughed, careless, like silence was something he’d never learned to carry.
“Do you ever stop sulking?”
The group had howled at that. A chorus of muffled chuckles through cheap headsets, overlapping until Jandel couldn’t tell who was laughing more — them, or Sammy himself. It should’ve ended there, another forgettable jab lost in the noise.
But it didn’t. Because somehow, from that moment, they were rivals. Not the kind that clashed with knives or sudden gunfights from the west — worse. The kind that followed you into the dark after the call ended. The kind that sat in your chest, replaying itself over and over, until you caught yourself wondering why it bothered you so much.
Jandel told himself it was irritating. That was all. He didn’t have time for distractions. His nights were already carved out by upcoming updates and long lists of unfinished features. He worked in silence, in structure, in the comfort of order. The work demanded precision, and he delivered it faithfully.
Sammy was the opposite of faithful. He was loud, reckless, messy in a way that seemed deliberate. His games were simple, but they caught fire anyway. Mechanics about stealing and waiting for a brainrot to appear. An audience that adored him. Jandel could see the similarities Sammy built with his “admin abuse.” He could point to the obvious copies, the specifics, the chaos — but none of it seemed to matter. Sammy’s creations spread, they lingered, they lived.
And Jandel hated that. Hated that it worked.
. . .
Some of the admins teased Jandel when he tries to formulate a few proper working scripts for an admin abuse event.
“Bro, Jandel’s about to do something,” one of the others said on a late Saturday call, laughter cutting through the static. They were all in a studio together, testing something small, a simple arena map Sammy had pitched.
“I’m not—” Jandel started, but Sammy cut him off.
“You are,” Sammy said, voice sing-song. “Don’t be silly Jandel,”
Jandel’s jaw tightened. “Because half the mechanics you pitch sometimes don’t even make sense…”
“That’s what makes them fun,” Sammy shot back, grinning into his mic. He always sounded like he was smiling. “Come on, admit it. You’d be bored without me.”
The channel erupted slightly again — wheezes, snickers, quiet laughter.
Jandel muted himself. He stared at the glowing lines of code on his screen, fingers frozen above the keyboard. He could almost feel Sammy’s smirk through the static, the cutesy tone of his voice.
Infuriating.
Absolutely infuriating.
But even muted, the sound of his laughter lingered, bleeding into Jandel’s focus, fraying the edges of his concentration.
. . .
It became a pattern.
Every group session, every playtest, every late-night call — Sammy poked, Jandel bristled. Sammy teased, Jandel scowled. The group ate it up. “Here they go again,” someone would say, and the chat would light with emojis and clipped audio of their bickering.
“Rivals,” they called them.
It was half-joke, half-truth.
Sammy leaned into it like it was a game. He didn’t mean to be cocky — not really. He was playful, smug without realizing the weight of it, quick to grin, quick to jab. He threw out little taunts like sparks, careless of where they landed.
And Jandel caught every single one.
Why does it bother me this much? Why can’t I ignore him like everyone else?
He didn’t know.
He only knew that it stayed. When the call ended and the green circles disappeared one by one, he was still hearing Sammy’s voice. Still replaying the rhythm of his laughter. Still feeling the echo of words that should’ve meant nothing.
“You’re too stiff,” Sammy teased once, after Jandel shot down another of his half-serious mechanics.
“Games aren’t supposed to be machines. They’re supposed to be fun.”
“Fun doesn’t break half the time,” Jandel muttered.
“That’s what makes it fun,” Sammy said easily, like the conversation was already won.
Everyone laughed. Jandel stayed silent.
But the air in his chest had grown tight again, sharp in a way he couldn’t name.
. . .
Nights stretched into early mornings.
The others would log off, one by one. Voices faded, laughter dimmed, the group thinned until it was only Jandel and the quiet hum of his fan. His room sat in shadow, lit only by the monitor glow. He should have felt relief at the silence.
Instead, he caught himself staring at Sammy’s profile picture, at the little gray icon where the green circle had been.
Waiting for the flash of color that meant he was talking again.
He hated that. Hated himself for noticing, for waiting, for giving even that much attention.
“You’re insufferable,” he muttered once, unable to hold back.
Sammy only grinned through the static, voice low and sing-song, like he’d been waiting for those words.
“Good. Means I’m doing my job.”
Then he texted a single “:3.”
The smugness, the cutesy tilt of it — it was getting on his nerves.
Jandel should have brushed it off. Filed it away as more noise. But instead, it stayed. Like an ember buried in ash, glowing long after the fire was gone.
. . .
After one particularly long call, Jandel sat in the quiet glow of his room. His hands hovered uselessly above the keyboard, the code on the screen blurring into nothing but lines and numbers. He should have been working. He had work to do.
But his mind was elsewhere, circling back to that first moment.
The first jab.
The first laugh.
“Do you ever stop sulking?”
The words should have been forgettable.
They weren’t.
And for reasons Jandel couldn’t begin to untangle, he knew they never would be.