Chapter Text
For something that started off as late night phone calls, half a bottle deep as you drunkly swerved on truck simulator. Conversations long lost to the haze of it all that lasted into the early morning hours, all blurring together like much of the world at that point in time. Similar nights all look the same in the faded memories you have left, you didn't have anything to do in the morning, not with the world at a halt.
Parts of that time are still etched into the world around you, faintly, though long worn.Years later and the remains of where stickers once told you to stay apart still stuck to the floor like vandalism, the event that held the world still clinging to the world around it, the occasional sign, maybe even a vaccine poster you’ve seen in your local pharmacy the couple of times you’ve stepped in, when Walmart’s run out of the items you needed on its expansion of shelves.
The highlights of your life being left to Minecraft and this, him. His voice lowly rambling on about stuff you’ve missed, your brain went off the rails and now you're left listening to his talking mindlessly, left to piece together the cracks of a conversation you’ve lost the base to. It’s like trying to stand one of those plastic Christmas trees up but you’ve lost one of the three pieces that you slot into the base and now it topples over, though that might just be the alcohol.
But it’s you and him, alone, calling for hours as you pointlessly drive a fake truck, to focus on his gruff voice talking about his issues, you share yours back. Sure your both messed up somehow, that fear of commitment that's caused you to lose so much over the pressure to keep the religious guilt that comes with the exact problem you find yourself in now, what got you thinking, the disordered eating, the therapy (you were both worse back then then you are now), the rare situation-ship either you or him find yourselves in, that to be honest never last.
Those now rare and fleeting moments where you poured your drunken hearts out to each other, a bottle or maybe a six pack of beers down.
Those moments where you danced around dangerous topics, the silly thoughts of if these conversations ever left this call, you’ve told him, and probably even back then, about the fact you could see yourself coming home with all sorts of people, you know he’s the same, that imaginary situation of stepping out of that door. You’ve always been cautious of being on display, presenting loud and upfront to your audience and their watching eyes. Yet hiding everything else away, Diverting gazes away from anything that looks your way, anything personal, they don’t get to have that. He’s the same, maybe entirely equal, maybe your worst, his persona is brash, disliked but you try your best for yours.
You hold yours very close to you, a Magnus opus, you’ve worked so hard to keep your star shining, your community, though not very little. You’ve met wonderful people over the years, more than you could ever hope for, even when the walls were caving in while you stayed. You’ve grown from just English content, from club penguin and toontown Online to the ruins of what is now the Dream SMP.
Yours and his stupid bit, When you originally ran for presidential candidate against Wilbur and Tommy with George. Fundy and Niki as secondary candidates, and eventually him. Names you either removed completely, despite carving out who you are today, you hope to leave with the past memories, or names you talk to few and far between. People who serve a purpose in your identity yet you leave far down along that drag path as you flatten the grass and pave further away, opposite directions like passing comets. You don’t often look back to see who's gone out, occasionally lurking, sometimes you listen just for technos voice. You listen over and over until his voice carves a place into your brain so you wont forget, that server holding remnants of him you’re hesitant to let go off.
Grief aside, That vote was rigged anyways, half that server scripted, co-workers you half heartedly know. A stupid country you’d won, L‘Manburg, later renamed to remove it L, You’d been his second in command sorta, he’d made tubbo Secretary of State, which caused all those head-cannons he and Ted read on their podcast. The dad ones you still laugh at, Part of Tubbo’s character still reflects those ram horns today.
You’d been married for a bit, he was drunk every-time he logged into the server, which you understand now was probably the only way to survive the fever dream of it all, it surprises you how you did it. It sprouted the common abuse head-cannons, his character died in the midst of it all and you claimed you were pregnant and got divorced and so on and so forth. You forget how the whole play goes on.
You’d took pride in the las Nevadas episodes with slime and purpled, the portrayal of the characters your now ex-fiancé’s and your polyamorous relations. People you’ve long not talked to after you fell out with, Dream and his claim you ghosted him (you often ghost people), your contrast in ideas about stateship and your own Qsmp project you hold so dearly.
You’d stopped talking to Jay in-between, lost connection somewhere, at some point you’d been on the chuckle sand-which podcast and talked about mentioning your brother in the background, you, Charlie, Ted and Jay sat talking about avocados or smoothing. You can’t really remember the details, but he was drunk, a couple of beers down and he’d reached across and taken your hand and kissed it, something his audience made up of incels and queer teens and women would probably die for, Something you got and they didn’t.
They don’t get the late night calls, the personal-ness, the secrets, the self-loathing, the endless worries as he talked about his face reveal being the worst thing ever, the hiding the pull to have something to yourself something you want, to keep, to huddle and crouch around like a hamster and its food, greedy for something that’s kept hidden. Privacy is something precious, leak twitter always reach it someways, theres only so long you can block the cracks, like the scene in a movie were the cracks in the glass storefronts the dry inside and the water begin to shatter, fracturing until there isn’t enough time, it resources to block it.
But he’s yours, you lost him along the way somewhere, stopped talking to him for like 3 years. You might have ghosted him somewhere, he probably came to LA and asked if you wanted to go out, somewhere to eat, ever the connoisseur of restaurants and you were probably distracted at the time, with people you no longer talk to like the dream team or England and wine streams or people you no longer spend time with.
You have been distracted a lot, Your beautiful Spanish community, one you’ve built, now streaming in both languages, being the first Latin-American creator on karmaland. You’ve met so many great people who speak your language, one you don’t have to be afraid of. It means something to you, even though Jay says it shouldn’t, that you affect the people around you, all the messages about how you’ve encouraged others to embrace their identity, to not be ashamed even in this age, A message from a mother about you helping her daughter who has struggled in an American school, the Spanish Minecraft community, text to speech listing their stories in its weird robotic voice with your little notification sound at the front.
You’ve got your goal and it keeps growing, the Qsmp, a server that hopes to combine the world, using a translator to help connect creators from around the world. There've been hits and bumps along that road, that long winding path you can't see the end of and no longer wish to, from the eggs of Qsmp 1 to the new creators of its second series. Jays in the new series, he’s like a hidden cove along that path and opening in the trees. You love your friends so deeply and you’ve been around the world for them, Spain, Latin America, Europe but he’s that familiar sense you miss.
You’d made contact again and sat together on the bus for the mr beast challenge, appearing in both his video and the dozens of other videos taken from different angles. You’d seen a video recently, a clip even, your not sure who’s its taken from video wise but its a tiktok, centring on jay, his face as he chews his gum on that trip, sat next to you, legs touching, on a coach full of other torrential and streamers and one of the comments said he looked like he was in-love, his dazed gaze as if he was not listening but secretly is focused purely on whoever he’s listening to, eyes fond. I know, or at-least I think I know what these fans on tiktok don’t know is that he was probably listening to me.
He appears in a few Qsmp streams, people joke you drop everything to go to him, maybe you do, people say you act like a married couple, you harass him like an annoying neighbour, teaming up with Katie, who they joke is like his daughter just like they did with tubbo, something you find funny, she reminds you off tommy, full circle or whatever it is. During the court case he’s at the back pestering you like a fly to complete you on going mancala game, you can’t remember when this on going feud came from, only speaking in iMessages game, You have to take breaks from the constant arguing of the unruly court to reply with your go.
You joke like this often, you find comfort in it, on your discord talent show with Casoh, he’s drunk again, dam him and his drinking problems, you joke about your on going nicknames like “guapito”, the small bit of Spanish he knows, the more he’s learned listening to your vents, were you find it too difficult to communicate what you mean in English or maybe you just don’t want to. He’s embarrassed of his Spanish, though as you said on Tina's stream you think he speaks it beautifully, maybe it’s just him though. You love most if not all he speaks, his voice could play in your headphones for hours, well it has, many times over the years.
You weren’t sure where it started this time. Sure you’d met up with people before, shared intimate moments, you’d met up with people purely for it, crossed oceans your so touch starved. You’ve got commitment issues, you’ve dropped exes before because you’ve reached this sudden pit of doom that emerges when you have to face your problems.
That TV turned on in the corner of the room once, you walked into it by accident, the screen flickered and you couldn’t put it back out, you’ve thought about it, taking the plug out, you’ve got the scars where you’ve been electrocuted trying, your less tempted to now, you’ve changed the shape and size of the tv, starved it off power until it buzzed until you realised it wasn’t going away , you’ve changed tried to cover it with a cloth, hide it away, stuff it in a closet, smother it but at the end of the day, you will always find yourself sat in-front of it. Like a ticking time bomb, half of that screen shows what feels like a death sentence, every-time you take the cloth off and stare at that tv you feel the eyes of the cross nailed to the wall above you though its palms, the gold one on your neck, which is so so dear to you. You once lost it in a hotel and were heartbroken, but luckily it was returned. It compliments you, Jay always says it does, tan features, black hair, all warm toned like the cross. The cross burns when you look at that tv with it on, like a scolding iron, you think it would leave a mark on your skin, like when you sleep and it indents itself but it never physically does.
Maybe, overtime that image on the tv morphs, not into something you tell yourself is better, something you could outwardly show and not have to hide but something you think is becoming worse. You imagine telling them, your parents, your family is very dear to you, but you feel mother Mary’s eyes on you as you stare at her sons cross and you decide although that impending waterfall drop is coming you’ll slow your canoe down, drift like snails in the slowest piece of music ever alongside that damn path. You already think you know what they’ll think, or at-least you know what some of them do, and you will bear that disappointment for the future.
He feels the same way, he has a similar guilt he carries with him, he knows the desperate attempts to turn off the tv until you claw so recklessly your skin become raw, that drag path you know you have to walk across to get here, lines drawn long ago so carelessly on you skin, You feel like the sun burning every-time you try to change the chair of that tv, removing all source of power till your at your wits end, Before that tv doesn’t turn off and you have to learn to deal with it differently.
You’ll turn around at that tv and he’ll be sitting on his own.
He knows.
His own commitment issues get in the way, his toxic cycle of slop content creation he doesn’t want to do but yet he always comes back too when rents due, He’s got his own body issues slightly different from yours and his own scars to prove his own battles, you are different, yet one in the same.
He’s been with girls, you know that, he’s talked about boys yet you don’t know if he’s gone as far as you.
Yet you find yourself in his bed, lying towards each-other, tangled together, merging your beings. He’s asleep, ruff facial hair pressed against you, his arms around you. He’s asleep and you are scrolling twitter over his shoulder, head resting on his, he’s soft like this, a giant teddy bear. He’d talked about losing weight earlier, which you’d brushed off in hopes he doesn’t, you both need to shower really, clothes part way on and bits missing. You’re in his home in New York, one you’ve only seen snip-its of through silly photos of Jambo or mugs he takes of himself, Even before this only you’ve seen specks. Your beanie is missing, it's probably in the front seat of his car, stuff in the drivers door after where you left off earlier. His hand wrapped around the back of your head rubbing small circles as he tells you how gorgeous you are, as he describes what you look like to him and maps out every mole and birthmark. His lips are softer than you expect him to be when you meet earlier, and you blindly follow through his front room and into the bedroom you know it, scrapping your earlier decisions to find the position you are in now. He smells like sandal wood and he snores softly in your ear.
You think about previous exs, how by now you’d be afraid of being ratted out, a picture posted of parts of your most private moments, for people to ogle at and stare, like a doll made to perform, But you realise he’s all yours.
This is all yours, they don't get to have this.