Chapter Twenty Six
[CW: talks about food and calories in the first paragraph]
"Caelum!" Clay called from downstairs. I was currently upstairs working on a new painting to get my mind off food. I had only been eating around three hundred calories each day since we came back from Texas. I definitely would have boycotted food completely most days if Clay wasn't around. It seems that having him around and knowing about my eating disorder, but not pushing me, has helped. However, I've really been struggling mentally and recovery seemed harder this time around even though I'm more determined. I didn't have a reason to recover last time. At least not the copious amount of reasons I have currently. I'm not only recovering for myself, but for the fans, my boyfriend, my friends, etc..
"Yeah?" I called back.
"Dinner's ready!" He yelled.
I sighed, "Be right down!"
[CW: food in the next paragraph]
This morning, I was having a good body image day; I still feel that way. I voiced this to Clay because I was really proud of myself. He suggested that he could cook a meal for us, anything I decided. It was really cute how he presented the idea. He shyly asked me, hesitated the entire way through his words, then immediately clapped a hand over his mouth afterwards and started taking it back instantly as if he did something terribly wrong. In the end, it was too hard to say no to him when he was so excited about it. I decided on teriyaki chicken and a salad with actual dressing this time. I usually eat salads without dressing.
I spent the next ten minutes slowly cleaning up my art supplies. I put my oil paints back in their respective drawers, then washed off my brushes and placed them back in the dry mason jar. I grabbed a lime green Dream hoodie from my closet and threw it on over my yoga pants. Clay's sizes ran a bit bigger so the medium fit more oversized on me and I loved it.
[CW: talks about food slightly in the next two paragraphs]
When I got downstairs, Clay was hunched over the food, plating it and drizzling more sauce over it. I started laughing at him; he turned around right away and started smiling at me. He raised both his and my plate in each hand. It didn't look terrible. The chicken looked a bit burnt, but I'm sure it'll taste great. The salad looked amazing, but it is a salad. There's not much room to mess that up.
I grabbed my plate from him and sat down on the stool at the island. He joined me with a proud smile and handed me a fork. It was silent at first as he wolfed down his food, but he soon realized that I was just staring at my food and pushing it around with my utensil. A few seconds after, he began talking up a storm which I assumed was to distract me from my food. Not going to lie, that was a smart play because it actually worked.
"The among us group wanted to play a few rounds if you're up for it."
"Are you sure they want the both of us back? We screamed at each other like the whole time. I didn't think they'd ever invite us back at the same time," my giggle muffled through my chewed food.
"Oh trust me, I was shocked too. Shubble's not playing today. I think it's Tubbo, Sap, Punz—"
"Punz? Who's that?"
"You don't know who Punz is?" He exclaimed, "I thought you would've heard about him by now. He's in the SMP and streams a lot. He's on the timeline quite a bit too. I assume you don't follow him though?"
I shook my head, "Yeah I've never heard of him before. Is he nice?"
"Yeah," he said in a higher pitched voice, causing me to laugh, "He just sometimes goes hard in among us and it seems like he's being rude or pushy, but he's not. Don't take anything he says too seriously."
"Well, we all get a little heated in among us," I said, insinuating our huge fight near the end of the stream last week when George was here.
"Let's sit in opposite rooms this time."
"Yeah that's a very good idea actually."
I ended up deciding that I'd be upstairs on my setup since I wanted to stream it; Clay would be downstairs in either the kitchen or living room playing on his laptop. We finished eating within a half hour and more people joined in on among us while we were gone. The full crew was Tommy, Tubbo, Clay, Sapnap, George, Scott, Niki, Wilbur, Punz, and I. Having Niki in the game was very exciting because her and I are very close.
I started my stream a few minutes before joining the lobby. The viewers were very excited to finally see my point of view with among us. I guess they enjoyed Clay and I joining in with the group last week.
User1 donated $50: you set the cap higher :( have a good stream!
"Sorry about that guys! I was getting a lot of spam with the cap being $20 so I upped it to $30 to ween down the donations and have a more chill stream. It's sometimes very stressful trying to make sure I read everyone's donations. I hope you guys understand!"
When I entered the vc and the among us lobby, it erupted with a series of hellos.
"Iguana, hi!" Niki exclaimed, trying to be louder as to not get drowned out.
"Hello iguana!" I replied back happily.
"Iguana?" Wilbur questioned quietly as if he heard us wrong. We both laughed but ignored him, "Iguana? What the fuck—" he whispered almost to himself. I think he believed he was going insane. It was quite comical.
"Not Cal again," Tommy sighed dramatically.
"Shut the fuck up child," I rolled my eyes.
He immediately got heated up, "Don't call me a child when one is literally running your country. Get yourself a queen."
I laughed too loudly and Tommy joined in, "That—I, I can't even be mad Tommy. You're so right it actually hurts."
The rest of the vc started laughing at the interaction as well. No one denied what Tommy said because we really couldn't. It was true; our president might as well be a child. In fact, I think some children would be able to run our country better. In fact, I think Tommy might be able to run America better. Well, maybe not. Let's be glad we'll never find out.
"Is everyone ready to go?" Scott asked. A chorus of 'yeah's responded and the game started shortly after.
I got impostor with Wilbur and knew right away that I was going to target Dream. He was way too good at this game and knew me scarily well to be able to stay in this game longer than first round. He'd probably ask me some ridiculous question and know I'm impostor right away. When I hunted him down, he was doing a download. I giggled quietly, then pressed the kill button. Only a few seconds after, he screamed so loud that it picked up on my mic all the way in the bedroom. I didn't realize that until chat flipped out about it.
"I quit this fucking game!" He yelled up the stairs. I heard stomping and suddenly, he was right behind me with a hard scowl on his face. He was so angry that I couldn't help but laugh.
"Clay what about your tasks?" I questioned.
He punched the top of my chair, "I don't care anymore. I quit."
"It's only the first round."
"I hate when you're impostor. You always target me! Stop targeting me!"
"Sowwy," I pouted.
"I forgive you, only because—"
I clapped a hand over his mouth. He realized quickly what he was about to say and stopped talking. Then, he licked my palm to get me to stop muffling him, "Ew! Clay!"
He ran back downstairs, giggling the whole way back to his laptop.
"He's such a child. How do you Dream fans deal with him? I need tips."
Everyone in the chat just responded with "we don't" to my question. There were no tips, just everyone agreeing with me and saying that they don't exactly know how they deal with him. I got a donation asking me for tips. His fandom is hilarious.
Eventually, we got tired of the Skeld map, so we switched to Polus. I've played on this a few times offline. It's a fun one; I enjoy it better than the original because it feels like there's so much more to do in terms of tasks and places to sit. After a few rounds, I got into a groove of being crewmate. I was actually sad when I got impostor. I ended up getting it with Scott.
I ended up hunting down Nick first since he's the one that knows me best second to Dream. I would've killed Clay, but I feel like that would be suspicious as no one else tries to target him first. Sap is a good first target. I killed off Sap, then went to do fake tasks with someone so I had an excuse. Twenty seconds after the kill, his body was reported. Scott ended up killing Punz. I was about to ask where Sap's body was when Clay interrupted everyone.
"Guys just quiet real quick, okay?" He asked for silence and we all hummed in agreement. I leaned back in my chair and sighed softly enough for the vc not to pick it up, "Just out of curiosity Cal, what was the exact temperature of that one task I saw you doing?"
"Uh," I tried to think of a number that seemed reasonable for that specific task, "320."
"Guys, she's the impostor," he accused quite quickly. There wasn't a second of hesitation.
"What?" I exclaimed.
"How?" Scott asked astonished. He knew at that moment that I was going to be voted out. Clay's very outspoken; a lot of people listen to him and vote out who he accuses.
"She has these little quirks. One of hers is always remembering the exact temperature when doing that task. She'll make a little jingle, a little song in her head and start singing the number while she does other tasks. If she actually did that task and didn't fake it, she would've been able to answer my question with no hesitation. You hesitated, Cal."
The remaining players oooh'ed and most of them voted immediately after his accusation.
"I-I," I stuttered, then ended up voting for myself when I realized I couldn't sway the remaining voters to win, "You know what? You're a motherfucking bitch Clay. Fuck you. Like actually. How the fuck? I'm so mad! I haven't gotten impostor in so long! I should've killed you—" I muted myself up after the ejected screen showed.
The game continued and Scott wasn't able to pull through a win. As soon as we went back to the lobby, I threw a fit again about Clay obliterating me.
"I just know you too well," I could hear the smile in his voice.
"It's actually scary how well you know her," Scott laughed, "I would've never even thought about that."
"Son of a bitch!" I laughed, "This is so unfair!"
"You sing a little song?" Wilbur asked.
"Shut up. I feel like you all are making fun of me," I pouted, leaning back in my chair.
"It's cute, don't worry," Clay replied. I rolled my eyes at the fact that he just said that on stream. I knew exactly what was coming next.
"FLIRTING!" Sapnap shouted. Yeah, I knew he was going to say that.
I decided to quit and end the stream after that monstrosity. There's no way I had the mental power to endure another call out from Clay.
"I've gotta go too guys. If I don't, she'll stand behind me and slap me until I get off."
"I am not—I don't do that!"
"Cal," he said in a stern tone.
"I slap him lightly guys!" I retaliated.
"Have a good night guys," Scott farewelled.
"Movie night later?" Sapnap asked in lowercase.
"Call me after," I replied, then left the vc.
"Thank you everyone for joining the stream. I'm sorry it was so chaotic. I mean, you can't put Dream, Tommy, and I in the same game and expect it to be relaxing. There's just too much—yeah. Go do your homework or sleep; I know you fuckers don't get sleep. Have a good night everyone!"
"Goodnight!" Clay shouted in the background as he entered my room, "Love you!"
"Yes what he said. Love you guys! Bye!"
I ended the stream after that. We laid on the bed on separate apps (mostly Tik Tok or Twitter) while we waited for the boys to get done with their game. I even posted on my private Instagram. It was a picture of Clay and I and I captioned it "my boyfriend cooked me dinner guys". I forgot that none of my friends knew about me having a boyfriend, so let's just say they were very shocked. Some of the comments from them were "when do we get to meet him?" or my personal favorite "you actually left your house long enough to meet someone?".
"I forgot that my private doesn't just consist of yours and saps private accounts and that I have actual non content creators on there that don't know anything about my life."
"How funny is it that I know more about you than someone you've been friends with for years?"
I rolled my eyes, "You just love having bragging rights huh?"
He smiled proudly, then we talked about my friends. He actually proposed to me that I should introduce him to my friends. I love how much he wants to be invested in my life. It makes me feel like he actually cares about the relationship and wants to be in it for the long run. I mean, we've only been dating for a week so we'll see how it goes.
An hour later, Sapnap called us and we started watching a movie. We forced George to join the call too. By force, I mean we each took turns spamming his phone until he had no choice but to answer or turn off his phone and bury it in a drawer. He chose the latter. He wouldn't let us watch any scary movies like last time, though. We were stuck watching Shazam. I've gotta say, as someone who doesn't watch superhero movies or anything within that franchise, it was a really good movie. George wouldn't know, though; he fell asleep ten minutes in.