MY STREAMERS CAN’T POSSIBLY BE THIS SHY ! ft. ANAXA, PHAINON, & MYDEI
streamer shenanigans with our favorite amphoreus men | streamer!au, fluff, a little bit of crack, relationship dynamics, gender-neutral reader, pop references (literally just a challenge to how many i can fit in here), not proofread (i never do that guys) | wc: 2.6k
MENTIONS — @felibrary hi pookie
DIRECTOR’S NOTES — this idea had been rotting in my docs for a long time now; i really need to get back on the trailblazer quest bcs im starting to forget how they sound like anws hope u like this one!
ANAXA — NOW PLAYING: THE ORGANIC PHILOSOPHY TUTOR
the organic chemistry tutor, except make it anaxa and philosophy (as a student of one myself)
curiosity is an essence of being human; you’re one to hold yours in broken reins.
the first time you ever caught his stream, it was purely by accident. you’d been scrolling through the depths of that particular website at an ungodly hour, looking for something to lull you into sleep, when the thumbnail caught your eye: a plain white board, some scrawled text about parmenides and his philosophy, and a username that made you snort. ILoveDromas.
he didn’t acknowledge you at first, too deep in his rambling about heraclitus and the river you cannot step into twice or whatever he was trying to say about rivers, but when you asked, “do you actually like dromas that much or is it ironic,” he stopped mid-sentence, blinked at the chat, and let out a laugh—whether it was a sarcastic or genuine one, you wouldn’t know for you lack the references to differentiate one to the other. it cracked through his usual monotone: “neither,” he said, “it’s a statement of intent. dromas are noble creatures. you, however, are clearly someone who judges books by their covers.”
speechless as you may be, you still stayed to listen to him and watch him fill that ridiculous whiteboard with his ramblings in a neat handwriting.
to him, however, this was a rare occurrence—so rare that this is perhaps the first time someone has interacted with him out of their own oblivion and not just the usual void that would occasionally echo back with a stray “lol” or “cool”. he was used to having less than twenty (20) viewers watching him, his chat becoming active once in a millenia, or nothing at all. so having you here with him, attempting to make a conversation out of this boring stream of his, was odd at first but he welcomed it nonetheless.
your questions, though not profound and maybe even stupid, are willingly entertained by him. such inquiries are fostered by the curiosity that led you here and he would answer them with the same seriousness he’d give a doctoral candidate. something about your presence made him want to foster that spark of curiosity, however clumsily it manifested.
ever since then, it has become a routine for you to join in his streams late into the night which is at 10 pm, sharp. you’ve never seen him as one to be particular with time to which he admits he isn’t really but the habit began to grow on him.
occasionally, you'll be doing something as he serves as your white noise or background music. he has a really soothing voice that you could literally just listen to him for hours talking about the most boring topic ever and you'll still stay and feel your eyelids grow heavy in the best way, like being wrapped in a warm blanket while someone reads to you from a book you've loved since childhood.
silence was something he never let linger. anaxa really had a lot of things to think and say outloud and you are very much impressed by how smart this guy is—why is he even here in the first place? he could be at a proper setting for his teachings instead. turns out, he was.
over the course of interacting with him, you’ve come to learn a lot of things—that the man was a philosophy graduate and was simply doing this streaming ‘career’ on the sides, that he likes dromas (which is obvious to his username already), and that he has a sister he greatly adores and looks up to, who have supported him in every step of his way (you stored every detail like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter, not sure what you were saving them for, but certain they mattered).
if it wasn’t obvious to you already, it seems like anaxa has grown some kind of favoritism towards you. it became obvious after a night you didn’t show up, having fallen asleep and waking up at 1 AM to your phone buzzing with a notification from the streaming site: ILoveDromas has started streaming! you have clicked it, confused, and found him still there, extending past his usual routine of ending it when the clock strikes 12.
“ah, you’re here.” though no name is mentioned, you know it’s you he’s talking about. between you and the 7 viewers that who rarely send a message, you’re the only who he consistently talks to and greets. he didn’t say anything else about it, but he stayed online for another hour, answering your sleepy questions with a gentleness that made your chest ache. “whatever it is, i hope everything is in order,” and you realized, with a start, that he had been worried.
what first started with you being his audience, and him as the performer, has, eventually, stopped becoming a matter of performing and started becoming a small thing between two people who'd found each other in the dark. call it what you want, call it what you may be, but you're glad your curiosity has always been the kind that pulls you toward things you don't understand because it led you to him.
“see you tomorrow.”
PHAINON — HOP OFF THE GAME, YOU $#1*?!
ragebaiter reader x victim of ragebaiting phainon
“who just called me phainshit?”
phainon takes pride in his patient and understanding personality. even so, he is not one to express his frustrations or annoyance easily but you arrived in his life so abruptly like a meteor crashing down his roof and suddenly, all of that is thrown out the window.
the first time phainon ever encountered you (not you encountering him), it was in a ranked match that he genuinely thought would be an easy win. he'd been streaming for a few hours, facecam on as always because he knew exactly what his viewers wanted, which was, apparently, to watch him slowly lose his mind over poorly coordinated teams and questionable gameplay decisions.
you were his random duo queue partner, and within the first thirty seconds, you'd done something so bizarre that he actually stopped moving his character to stare at his screen. "what," he said flatly, reading the chat explode with laughter, "was that."
you sent him a friend request and when he accepted it, you typed him a message that simply said: "nice moves, grandpa. try to keep up next time." in all honesty, he could have just blocked you and moved forward with his life, but he typed back and you typed too, and him again, then you—all of this were relentless and his chat could only speculate behind their screens on what is happening that is causing the pretty boy’s face to crumple and break into laughter then crumple again.
“accept the party invite, so i can carry you again.” and shamefully, he did.
friendship bloomed between you both despite the endless ‘banter’ that would occur. he couldn't even be actually angry—not really—because the way you'd lean into the bit, clearly holding back laughter, made something in his chest feel weirdly warm. he'd never admit it, but your attention, even when it came in the form of ragebaiting, was better than the alternative. besides, he does the same to you, too, and funnily enough, you also fall easily right into his trap.
“wow, good job. i didn’t know you could read.” he teases and you could only bark, “shut up,” as a response before he fully dropped it after a few more words. he, too, finds joy in ragebaiting but doesn’t do it often as much as you do. it feels like you have established this stupid and ridiculous relationship with your whims and fortunately, or unfortunately, it was a strong foundation.
at one point, he questioned you if you even know who he was and much to his surprise, you do. you just couldn't care less about it and seeing that his chat likes you anyways, you would occasionally acknowledge them as if you, were was a streamer on your own.
you two cycled through games like other people cycled through hobbies; one week it was tactical shooters, the next it was survival games, then fighting games, then random indie horror titles that made him scream in ways that would have chat spamming with "clip that". the throughline was always you, lurking in his ear, waiting for the perfect moment to say something that would make him choke on his own spit.
in horror games, you'd go silent for minutes at a time, letting him forget you were there, and then when a jumpscare happened and he yelped, your voice would cut through with a calm "scared?" that made him want to reach through the screen and strangle you.
he doesn’t really admit it, at least not to you, but you’re a great person and he truly enjoys every second of his time with you. he’s felt it in the small things—the way you'd notice when his voice went flat and ask if he'd eaten anything that day, the way you'd defend him against actually toxic players , the way you'd stay in the call after streams ended and just talk about nothing until one of you inevitably fell asleep.
and he noticed, too, the way his chest would feel full when you did those things. you were still a menace but you were also the person he wanted to talk to first when something good happened, and the person he wanted to hear from last before he went to sleep. you were carving a space into his mind so much that his thoughts are consumed by you. he didn't know what to call that, all he knew was that he didn't want to lose it.
"you know," he said one night, after a particularly ridiculous match where you'd spent the entire time trying to get him killed, "for someone who claims to hate me, you sure do spend a lot of time with me." there was a pause on your end, and for a moment he thought he'd actually gotten you. but your voice came back, perfectly even:
"i don't hate you, phainon. matter of fact, i like you a lot. i just hate losing and you make winning entertaining." he opened his mouth to respond, found he had nothing. whatever you attached with the word ‘like’, it was making him feel like he’d just been hit with an arrow straight to his chest.
MYDEIMOS — COOKING WITH MYDEI
mydei, streamer that became popular for no reason x reader, a popular streamer, who gets shipped with mydei after one mention of him
mydeimos—mydei to his chat, mydeimos on his birth certificate, and apparently the topic of conversation in your streams now—had absolutely no idea how he'd ended up here.
he was a cooking streamer; he showed people how to make perfect omelettes and discussed the ideal sear on a steak. he did not play video games, he did not have dramatic facecam reactions, and he certainly did not expect to be mentioned in the chat of someone who did do all those things. but here he was, scrolling through his own stream's chat one evening, when someone asked "hey have you heard of [name]?" to which he said "no, who's that?" and that tiny moment of curiosity was apparently enough to start a fire.
and because of that, your chat keeps on mentioning a particular name in your streams. one time was a passing, two times is something, three times is a topic, and four times is what gets you calling for their attention. mydei. mydei. have you seen mydei's stream. mydei would love this game. mydei mydei mydei. you'd paused, genuinely baffled, and said, "chat, slow down, who's mydei?" and the response was overwhelming and mostly unhelpful. cooking streamer. he's so chill. he mentioned you once. you should collab. MYDEI MYDEI MYDEI. you squinted at the screen, trying to parse the chaos and the flood of text that fades away in a blur, and finally just said "okay, i'll look him up. calm down."
welp, there goes sealing your fate.
you, being you, decided to watch one of his vods to understand what your chat was losing their minds over and you expected something mediocre. you really expected something bland and boring. what you got, however, was forty-five minutes of a ridiculously attractive man (because of course he was, the universe had a sense of humor) talking about mushroom soup in a voice so calm it made you want to take a nap. you watched the whole thing, then you watched another, then you watched one from three months ago where he made paella and accidentally set off his smoke alarm and just brushed off the incident. all of this witnessed by your audience because you were too drowned and focused on this random guy your chat selected to hyperfixate over in your stream.
by the time you were done, you had a problem and you also had a chat that was very interested in your opinion. "he seems nice," you said carefully, which was the understatement of the century.
mydei’s cooking streams was, for the lack of a better word, calm. his vibes were opposite of yours in every single way possible—where there is peace and silence in his, there was chaos and screaming in yours (literally just hooting and hollering at times). for someone who looks intimidating and scary, he sure does act the opposite. maybe this was why your chat and his find you two as the perfect match.
he'd been doing this for two years, slowly building an audience of people who found his voice soothing and his food beautiful. he'd never had a viral moment, never been in drama or any allegations (which is quite rare in this playground), never done anything except exist quietly and make really, really good food. and then someone in his chat asked about you, and he said "[name] sounds like a cool guy," and somehow that was enough to break that fragile glass.
you feel bad for the guy, really, that you sent him a private message, apologizing for suddenly dragging him in this mess when he’s just trying to do his own thing peacefully. he responded soon after saying that it was alright. his viewer count had gone up because of you, so if anything, he should be thanking you.
the tension between your two communities became its own ecosystem. your viewers would raid his streams with compliments and his viewers would show up in yours. and occasionally, one of you would mention the other in passing; you'd say "i tried making pasta today, it did not go like mydei's," or he'd say, "i don't understand this game but [name] makes it look fun" and his chat would be bombarding him with questions if he was going to ask you to teach him. neither of you addressed it directly, because, of course, neither of you needed to.
outside your streaming life and his own, you would actually talk to him. it started small, just as all things are—him sending you a recipe he thought you'd like after you mentioned struggling with dinner, you sending him screenshots of your attempts: "i followed your video step by step. i don't know what happened." then it became more frequent, more personal, developing and spiraling into something you never expected but embraced. he'd ask about your day, and you'd tell him; he'd send you photos of his cat, and you'd send him photos of your takeout, and he'd respond with gentle scolding about your eating habits that made something warm curl in your chest.
none of you said anything about what it meant because maybe you didn't need to say it at all.
one night, late, after your stream had ended, you were scrolling through your phone when you stumbled upon a short video of him saying something that made you freeze: "i don't know if i believe in fate, but i do believe in the people who find you when you least expect them. my chat found me and i found cooking. and lately, i've found someone i didn't expect to find at all."
✦ content warnings : smoking, written pre-release (likely ooc). ~800 words. is it gap moe if it's inexperience? no beta we die like the destruction this 4.0.
“I didn't take you for a smoker.” His voice swallowed the silence of the alleyway. “What are you doing in a place like this anyway?” Ashveil questioned, it was clear he didn't expect an answer.
After a tiring case, you didn't have the energy to push him away.
“Maybe you don't know me as well as you thought.” You responded with a heavy drag.
His nose scrunched up. You could practically see him hold himself back from swatting the smoke out of the air.
“Well, I have very good intuition." Ashveil drawled, leaning against the wall opposite to you.
You took the cigarette out of your mouth, blowing the building smoke to the side. You raised your gaze to his, only meeting the brim of his hat.
“What do you want?” You got straight to the point.
“I'm sorry?” He tilted his head, but a smirk still rested on his face. Like a dog pretending to not hear his owner. He pretended to not hear your subtext.
“You're not the type to do things that don't serve you.” You flicked your cigarette to the ground. The burn of tobacco wafted through the alleyway. It fit nicely with the scattered trash on the floor and the yowling of alleycats.
Ashveil let out a dry laugh. “Oh, you know me well, investigator.” He spoke with a grating charm. A cadence you've heard many times during your reluctant cooperation with him.
“I have a good intuition.”
His smirk fractured into a humored smile. He sucked in a breath. “Since when were you this fun?”
You ignored him with a roll of your eyes and reached in your pocket to grab the almost empty pack.
You noticed how Ashveil's eyes followed your movement.
“Want one?” You teased monotonously. “It's been a long case.”
He raised his head, and you saw that blank expression you now associated with panic.
You hummed with the satisfaction of momentarily flustering him.
“Sure, why not.” Your eyes snapped back to the detective.
He was not the type to smoke. You could tell.
Even so, you flicked open the lid where 5 lonesome cigarettes stood. You held one out to him, the dim yellow just visible enough.
He leaned forward to rest the filter between his lips while the cigarette was still in your hands.
You stared at him, unimpressed.
Before he got the chance to pull away, you slotted a cigarette between your lips.
Ashveil didn't back away from the close proximity, as you pulled out your lighter in a fluid motion.
His gray eyes skimmed your face, visually tracing the slopes and curves till he reached your lips.
The rolling flick of the lighter cued the sparks to burst into a flame. Catching the butts of your cigarettes at the same time.
You took a quick drag, barely letting the smoke simmer in your lungs.
Ashveil followed your motions. You looked relaxed, as if filling your lungs with the vapor of nicotine was soothing.
He rested two fingers around the width of the cig, and breathed in...
Ashveil sputtered out a cough, smoke following suit.
The smoke took out his balance and he fell into an awkward lean against the grimy wall.
“Oh shit.” You exclaimed, watching the suave mask of this renowned detective crumble with a drag.
You awkwardly patted his back as he wheezed out the soot in his lungs.
“What the hell…” He gritted out.
You responded with a lilt. “Smoking isn't meant for everyone.”
“How is it meant for anyone? This… god, what the hell?”
You shrugged “It draws its own crowd.” Smoking after you closed a case was a ritual for you. It felt good to blow off steam after the intense push and pull of any investigation.
Especially with this one. Working on it for a few months, only for your chief to bring in this guy to ‘help’? Ashveil, whoever he was, is efficient. In three weeks he found leads in unlikely places, leading you to where you are now.
You wonder… how much time he put into this, even when he wasn't clocked in.
“I could even teach you how not to cough up your lungs.” You offered. That surprised you. You could've sworn that just a day ago you were glad to not have to see his face around your office again. “It'll add to your mystique.”
He sucked in his teeth. “I don't need to kill my lungs to do that.” But watching the confident Ashveil sputter like a first-timer was oddly charming.
“Ah, so that's your view.” You hummed “Never mind then. Just pay me back for that cig.”
Ashveil looked at you incredulously. If you were him, you'd probably be just as bewildered.
“What? it's not like you're going to finish it.” You reasoned.
His bottom lip curled upwards, almost like he was pouting. No. You must be seeing things.“I will.”
Stubborn. But that makes a good detective.
“Is that you being bold or a cheapskate?”
Ashveil clicked his tongue. “I'll let you draw your own conclusions, investigator.”
He raised the burning cigarette back to his lips. Hovering the filter before his mouth. “Now, how do I finish this thing?”
You smiled, amused. “Just follow my lead, detective.”
I really enjoy calculating when I should wake up to get a reasonable amount of sleep at a late hour. Sure it removes any plausible deniability that I "lost track of time" but nothing hits better than the 3am. promise to pull an all-nighter then wake up at 2pm the following day.
