chapter sixteen
CLAY STARES AT HIS monitors. He swore he would livestream again. He promised. But his fingers are frozen together and his arms are too heavy to lift to his mouse and move it to the start streaming button.
It's two a.m. He could just scrap it. Could just play it off as passing tiredness. He stares until his Teamspeak lights up with another notification. A prompting word from George. The three stern letters set him into motion.
There's a few seconds of delay before messages start to fly through the chat. Loud exclamations of his name, disbelief at the fact he's live after more than a month away. He leans forward in his chair, sighing heavily.
"Hello," he finally manages. Despite his nerves, a smile starts to grow at the amount of people that have responded to the Twitch notification. "There we go. Hello," he says again, starting to move his character around the game. It feels weird to use the controls, despite his constant lifestyle involving Minecraft. Even a few days off throws him into an inconsistent cycle. "Hi," he chews his lip, "how is everyone doing?"
His eyes flicker to the chat as he continues to move, rambling quietly. His settings are off...the game noises too loud in his ears. Probably from one of the stupid shorts he filmed a while back. He winces as he adjusts it. He talks casually to the chat, holding off on the most important issue. When the chat is going fast enough, he begins.
"I miss streaming. I miss talking to you guys." That's true...for the most part. Streaming wasn't the problem. "I've fallen off," he jokes as the number of viewers doesn't match the speed of the messages on his screen. "I'm alone, yes, but I do have Sapnap and George in Teamspeak. So, I'll call them in a couple of minutes. I just want to talk to you guys." And here's the hard part. Pushing past his slump. He wishes Irena was on a silent call again, listening through the night for moral support. He continues casual banter with the chat, delaying as long as possible. He sucks in a deep breath before finally addressing the elephant in the room. "So, here's the plan for today. Everyone knows about the whole speedrunning drama that went on. But I'm not going to let that stop me from having fun. So I'm going to speedrun, I'm not going to submit any of my runs to the leaderboard, regardless of what happens. Even if I get an amazing run. But I'm gonna have fun."
His heart is hammering. He laughs nervously as he finishes the quick opener. He's slipping back into the normal routine of being in front of a live audience. His fingers fly across the keyboard as he leans forward. He's still nervous, but he knows his nerves will dissipate when he adds Sapnap and George to the stream.
The green figure jumps across the screen easily, rusty tactics smoothening out with each passing minute. There's no way he could catch chat, but he tries in between mining blocks and traveling in search of structures to perform the various techniques.
When Sapnap's teasing tone finally slides into the voice channel, followed by George, Clay finally sinks back in his seat. It's a lot easier to go through the motions of beating the video game when he has someone to banter with.
There's playful teasing and jokes as the night crawls on. Almost two hours pass before his eyelids start to slide shut. His answers are slower even as Sapnap continues to talk. He's forcing himself to interact with the chat still, but his friends are doing most of the talking. He takes advantage of a small lull to choke out a rushed goodbye, promising more streams with empty words.
The very moment the live button fades back to start streaming, there's a heavy weight on his chest. George's laughter fades away into a faint background buzz as he stares at the wall above his main monitor.
"Dream? Still awake?"
"Hmm?" He responds to Nick's prompting.
"Go to bed," his friend laughs. "You too, George. You haven't slept in like two whole days, dude."
"Ok, Mom," George scoffs. His quip is cut off by a strangled yawn that he doesn't mute in time.
"Bedtime!" Sapnap sings.
"Ok, ok, I'm going." There's scuffling on George's end. "Goodnight guys."
"Night," Clay chokes out. George leaves the call, leaving Sapnap's cartoon avatar to glare up at him with accusing eyes.
"What's up?" Nick asks, voice dropping in a rare moment of genuine care. He wouldn't be caught talking like this in the daylight, that much is sure. Clay doesn't normally hash things out with him — just like he'd told Irena. Things get too awkward between them when nights grow long and the barriers on their emotions finally shiver with transparency. Clay knows it's a bad idea but his chest shudders with buried angst he just needs to let out.
"I don't think I'm going to stream again. Not any time soon."
"Oh. I thought that went well?"
"It did..." Clay winces still, thinking about how many people are going to scrape through his twitch account to rewatch that vod. How many people are going to screen record and clip and analyze every single millisecond of his movements? He groans, rubbing his face. "I think I'm just gonna stick to doing offline stuff for now. Not forever. Just a month maybe."
"You haven't even been doing offline filming."
Nick's right. He'll sit in a call for hours with them, even if he doesn't touch his keyboard otherwise. Sometimes he's just talking to Irena, other times he zones out. His hours on his favorite video games have seriously dropped.
"I'm not sure what's up with you dude, but I get the no motivation and fear. Anxiety is a bitch, y'know? I know you and George talk a lot, but if you want another ear...you know I'm always here."
"Thanks. I'll probably be fine in a few weeks. Usually am, right?" There's unspoken memories between them of the tense night where Clay's gone into spirals and George had to pull him back out. Sapnap would hear about it the morning from a sleepy George as Clay slept. And Clay would feel guilty when he finally woke. There hasn't been a night like that in a long time. He wonders if his call would still go through George's do not disturb setting.
"Does Irena...?"
"We sort of talked about it before I left. Haven't really since. I want to...it's just hard being far away."
"You're sort of stuck there. None of us live close." Clay chuckles slightly, remembering vague plans of moving in together on hazy summer mornings. Those were the highest and lowest points of Clay's life — the humid days where the sun shone early through his blinds and his eyes were foggy with laughter and a lack of sleep. Realizing that he'd played games through the night and that he got to do this as a job...back then it was exhilarating. Now it's just exhausting.
He wishes he could return to the simpler months. He wishes that until his phone lights up with a notification and his mind is swimming in the memory of her. He wants to go back to being able to be goofy with his friends and ignore the stress. But Irena...
"She said 'I love you,'" he blurts out, the memory swimming into his mind. There's a minor inhale of breath from Sapnap's end. "I didn't say it back. Does that make me a dick?"
"I think that makes you realistic." Sapnap replies.
Those words play through his head until the sun rises again and his phone lights up with her name. He's not a dick because his emotions work differently than hers...right? She's more outgoing, more fiery with her thoughts. She's a lot more openly passionate than he is. Irena said it best — he'll keep it in until he explodes. All he can do is hope she keeps understanding him in a way no one else ever has.