My Gaming Buddy is a Superstar

I texted the guy I'd been gaming with every night for three years.

Me: [you off work yet, babe?]

Seb: [Not yet. Hang tight, sweetheart.]

Normal night. Right up until it wasn't.

An hour later the number one clip on my entire feed is Bastian Song.

The Bastian Song. The actor I have a whole camera roll dedicated to. Live on stream, glancing down at his phone mid-sentence, mouth tugging into a smile he doesn't explain.

Then he says it. Out loud. To a stream full of people.

"Not yet. Hang tight, sweetheart."

Same words. Same little beat of pause before sweetheart. Same everything.

My hands stop working like hands. I screenshot it. I send it to Seb. I caption it with exactly one character.

Me: [?]

He answers before I can get a whole breath in.

Seb: [Sorry. Forgot to turn my notifications off.]

I'm 21 years old and I'm pretty sure I just died standing up. Somebody send flowers.

Chapter 1

"Let's break up. We're not a good fit."

I pick up the phone with a Porsche key still in my hand.

Not just any key. The key. To the car I'd picked up that morning, on our two-year anniversary, to give to him.

The plan was simple. Hand him the keys. Tell him the truth I'd been sitting on for three years that the broke-girlfriend act was an act, that my last name is on buildings he's driven past his whole life.

Instead I get dumped. Over the phone. Holding his anniversary present.

"Why?" I ask.

Hunter scoffs. "You're obsessed with that actor. Your whole feed is Bastian Song. Are you my girlfriend, or his?"

"That's only because he has a new project out"

"I started playing games to be with you. Now I'm a top-two-hundred streamer, and you? When's the last time you logged on with me?"

My fingers close around the key until the metal bites. Knuckles white.

A dozen things line up behind my teeth. Every one of them would end him.

I swallow all of it.

"...Sorry," I say instead.

"Don't bother."

"We're seniors, Sloane. You're an adult. Stop chasing some celebrity and do something with your life."

He hangs up.

Here's the part he doesn't know.

I learned what money does to people early. High school: I'd basically bankrolled a friend, covered everything, never made a thing of it. She turned around and shredded me behind my back the second the money stopped being fun. So I went quiet. No labels in college. No flexing. Just a girl in a hoodie who happened to be cracked at video games.

With Hunter, staying quiet was easy. His family didn't have much; I wasn't about to wave mine in his face. So when he forgot my birthday last month, left me sitting in his apartment all night, came back rumpled the next morning swearing he'd had too much at some industry thing and crashed in his boss's office, I swallowed it. He had circles under his eyes. I felt sorry for him.

I felt sorry for him.

Slipping cash into his streams during donations had stopped being enough. So I bought the car. The Porsche he'd wanted forever. Today was the day I was going to tell him everything.

Greer nearly lost it when she found out.

"He buys you a three-hundred-dollar bag with his streamer money," she said, "and you go put a down payment on a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car for him. Doormats are taking notes."

"He's just frugal!"

"The designer coat he wears? Four grand."

"He finally has a little money, he should treat himself!"

Greer just looked at me. "Mm."

So fine. I'm a little down bad. It's my one flaw.

That night I decided to try one more time. Apologize. Smooth it over.

I never got to send the text.

A push notification beat me to it.

GOAT Hunter live now. He's got something to say.

What. To who. To me?

I open his stream with my thumb shaking, and there's the man who dumped me twelve hours ago, staring dead into the camera like it's the most sincere thing he's ever done.

"Carlene. I'm in love with you. Will you be my girlfriend?"

My brain just stops.

The chat is flying. Two flavors. Half of them losing it, egging her on say yes, say yes. The other half typing the one detail that rearranges my entire face:

Carlene owns his streaming company.

Carlene is his boss.

Last month, when he said he'd crashed in his boss's office?

He wasn't even lying.

I laugh. Nothing is funny. I laugh anyway.

Dumped me at breakfast, declared his love by dinner. Respawn timers are slower than that.

He wanted me to do something with my life.

Fine. I'll start with his.

Chapter 2

Greer was ready to commit a felony. "We are not letting him walk."

"Oh, we're not."

I'm down bad, sure. I'll hand a stranger the benefit of the doubt every time. That has never once made me easy to step on.

You want me to play the long-suffering doormat? Wrong girl.

Here's what Hunter never tells anyone.

He didn't start gaming because he loved it. He started because of me because chasing me meant learning my language. And the only reason his career exists is also, accidentally, me.

I'm Challenger on Riven. Top of the ladder. The kind of mechanics that turn a teamfight into a card trick flash in, cancel through five people, walk out the only one breathing.

Back then I hit Challenger and got bored, so I climbed on his account too. The client auto-saves the highlights. He took those clips, posted them, and woke up famous.

That's when he started streaming.

He has never once played Riven on stream.

Not because he won't. Because he can't. His Riven is fine. Average. Next to mine it's a different sport. People asked questions early, but he waved them off, said he'd never re-run a champ he'd already hit Challenger on, and he had clean fundamentals and a pretty face, so the questions got quieter, then died.

It bugged me at the time. But Hunter said, "My grades are bad. I don't know how long it'll take me to give you a stable life after we graduate, and streaming actually pays right now"

Then he bought me a three-hundred-dollar bag.

My housekeeper wouldn't carry that bag.

But I was down bad, so I carried it, and I forgave the entire world.

"What's the plan?" Greer asked.

"Plan?" I laughed. "I'm going to leave him with nothing."

That night I recorded a Riven game. Same cancel sequence, frame for frame, as the clip that made him.

My account had maybe a handful of followers. Nobody watching.

But I have a stupid amount of money.

I bought a little traffic. Accidentally bought my way to number one trending.

Top comment was Greer.

Greer: [this combo looks REALLY familiar. almost like GOAT Hunter's entire career]

I replied, because subtlety is for people with less free time than me.

Me: [weird, right? almost like the play that made him was never his]

Hunter called that night.

"Sloane. What are you doing?"

The nerve. The actual nerve.

"Hunter. Don't you owe me an explanation?"

"I thought we were pretty clear."

"Clear." I huffed. "You cheated, then handed me the breakup like it was my fault, so I'd be the one feeling guilty. First time anyone's run me that clean."

He smiled. I could hear it. "Who do you think you are? Sloane, out of respect for what we had, I'd rather this didn't get ugly. Just name a number."

A number.

He's offering me a number.

Something in me went very quiet, and very clear. Three days of this and I suddenly couldn't remember why I'd bothered. I'd liked this. Cried over this. Given it three years.

What a waste of perfectly good eyesight.

"I'd name a number you couldn't cover," I said. "Take your dirty little money to the grave. Don't show me your face again."

I hung up.

I stopped boosting the post. The topic sank, the heat bled out, the whole thing rolled back like a tide. I deleted a couple of threads digging for my name and told Greer I wasn't spending one more minute on a deadbeat.

I thought that was the end of it.

Then, past midnight, the whole thing detonated again.

Because Bastian Song liked my post.

The Bastian Song.

He un-liked it half an hour later and posted the least convincing excuse on the internet: butterfingers.

I think I might be the first person alive to get noticed by her own celebrity crush via butterfingers.

The internet lost it. Bastian's so cute. Pass the popcorn.

Hunter, meanwhile, got shoved right back under the lights. Liar, they said. Everywhere. Prove it. Put Riven on stream and prove the play was ever yours.

Chapter 3

The white BMW that cut me off at the campus gates had a woman in it.

She unfolds out of the driver's seat. Thirty, maybe. Good figure, a face buried under so much makeup I can't find the real one, perfume strong enough to stagger a person from ten feet off. She looks me up, then down, chin high.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Carlene."

I've never stood on this end of a scene like this. I just stand there.

She reads the blank on my face as fear, and it feeds her.

"Hunter is a streamer my company is building. He also happens to be my boyfriend." Her voice drops into something bored and expensive. "So name it. How much to go public and walk the whole thing back?"

I find my voice. "Walk what back? What I posted is true."

"The truth isn't really the point, sweetie." She tips her head, all patience. "And that cute little post of yours? You spin a good story, I'll give you that. But a bitter ex inventing things only holds up for so long. Word of advice: learn to quit while you're ahead. You haven't been out in the real world yet, you don't know how hard money is to make. What I'm offering you right now is more than you'd clear in ten years of clocking in. So? Yes or no?"

"Quit while I'm ahead." I smile with nothing behind it. "You call me sweetie, and you're the one robbing the cradle. You want me to clear his name? Dream on."

Her face ices over.

"Sloane, is it? You wait. I will make sure you can't show your face anywhere around here."

She shoulder-checks me on her way past, hard enough to knock me a step sideways, gets in the car, and peels off.

My hand is shaking around the strap of my bag.

A ring of students has gathered to watch, murmuring, pointing.

"What's going on?"

"Looks like the girlfriend came to drag the side piece..."

"The what?" I round on them. "Who's a side piece? Open your eyes."

The guy who said it flinches like I might bite, and the crowd scatters, whispering.

I have been spoiled my whole life. I have never once swallowed garbage like this.

Make sure I can't show my face?

Let's find out whose face goes first.

I take out my phone and call my brother.

"Hey. I want to buy a streaming company."

"Well. She finally calls." Julian laughs. "Sure. Buy one. Buy ten. Whatever you want."

My brother moves fast. Inside a month there's a contract on the desk in front of me, black and white. Hunter's company isn't big. He's the poster boy for their entire gaming roster. I look at the pages, then at their year-end numbers, and I genuinely cannot work out where Carlene found the nerve.

Julian taps the contract. "So what's the move? Want me to walk you through your new company?"

"Not yet," I say. "We don't go to them. I want them coming to me."

He ruffles my hair. "You're really furious, huh."

I nearly died of it, honestly.

He'd just taken over the family business, so he's slammed. He didn't stay long.

Then I get to work on the next part.

First I screenshot every message between me and Hunter. The gifts. The transfers. The replies that came rare and half-there. The cheating left fingerprints months ago I just hadn't let myself read them.

I save all of it. Then I open the game to record Riven again.

Last time, someone doubted the play was mine.

So this time: three cameras, one continuous take, no cuts.

The game doesn't even finish loading before a message slides in.

From someone I haven't spoken to in years.

Seb: [busy night.]

Me: [here to laugh at me?]

Seb: [why would I. told you he was bad news a long time ago. you just didn't want to hear it.]

My eyes go hot before I can stop them. Three years, and the only person who saw this coming is a guy I've never met. I blink it down fast and don't let myself ask why that lands harder than getting dumped did.

Chapter 4

I met Seb playing games.

Three years ago. College handed me a stupid amount of free time, and outside of class I barely did anything but climb ranked.

I'd hit Challenger on Katarina and gotten the itch to try support, so I picked up Lulu. I play carry, not enchanter, but the game sense carries over and I knew the kit, so Lulu wasn't hard.

Our ADC, on the other hand, was a disaster. Tempo, mechanics, all of it. Fed twice before level four. I wasn't even four yet myself; I couldn't save him. The gold gap blew wide open.

Before I could say a word, he beat me to it.

ADC: [a girl?]

ADC: [bet you only play Lulu. ride someone's coattails up the ladder, right?]

ADC: [nothing worse than getting a girl on your team]

He was vile, so my temper shot straight up.

Me: [you're 0/2/0 in lane and you've got notes for ME?]

Me: [a girl, so what. a brick sitting on the keyboard would outplay you right now]

Me: [there's no saving someone who speedruns his own death. forget what you are, you absolute NPC]

ADC: [lol]

Then a string of garbage, and the system muted him.

He gave up completely and went AFK in the fountain.

I was about to say something when the jungler spoke up first.

Jungler: [come with me, Lulu]

Me: [you're on Rengar though]

His whole identity is the stealth leap. My peel isn't as sharp as a real jungler's; one bad ward and I'd light up his position before he could land it.

Then he opened voice. The voice was young, and easy on the ears.

"It's fine. Their comp can't scale. We just have to outlast them."

I checked the enemy team. Fair point. So I tucked in behind him, warded his paths, shielded him through fights.

His tag: SebTheGOAT.

Turned out he kind of was.

By the end he'd done fifty percent of our team's damage and dragged that sorry excuse of an ADC to a free win.

I added him and said thanks.

SebTheGOAT: [anytime. couldn't just sit there.]

A thought sparked. "Climb together sometime? I main carry. My Riven's filthy." I typed it fast.

He took a second. "Challenger carry? Not bad."

Me: [I just like the carry feeling.]

I pulled him into my queue. Then it occurred to me.

Me: [wait, do you main jungle? am I stealing your role?]

Voice again, this time with a little of that cocky-young-guy lilt. "Nah. I've got a deep pool."

After that night we traded handles and added each other on Discord.

His feed never had a scrap of his real life on it. Just a steady drip of obscure songs nobody else had heard of.

For a while there we played almost every day. Ran 1v1s to learn new champs, gifted each other skins; later, little pieces of real life, gossip threads back and forth.

His voice was good. Patient, sunny. He sounded young, but the way he played, the way he talked, there was something settled underneath all of it.

One time I was on my period and didn't log on when he pinged me. He worked out I wasn't feeling great, got my address out of me, and sent over a care package. A heating pad. Midol. A couple containers of hot soup.

Indie caught me grinning at my phone and flicked my forehead. "You're in love. Why are you smiling like that, it's unsettling."

"I am not smiling like anything."

Indie clocked the spread of food on my desk. "Who ordered that? Don't tell me it's the gamer boy you're glued to every night."

I didn't deny it.

Her jaw dropped. "Are you out of your mind? You handed over your address, your number, just like that? There's one internet cable between you and this guy. You have no idea who he is. What if he's dangerous?"

"He doesn't seem dangerous..."

"How would you know? Because he's good at the game?"

That landed. It sobered me right up.

She was right. I didn't even know Seb's real name. What was he like off-screen? He sounded young. Was he in college too?

Indie sighed. "Lo. End of the day, he's a guy on the other side of a screen. You can't really know what someone's like. You've seen the stories... Look. Stop living inside the game. Come back to the real world. Let me drag you to the basketball game tomorrow?"

I hesitated, then nodded. "Okay."

That basketball game was where I first met Hunter.

Indie introduced us before tip-off, and his eyes kept drifting back to me. By the time it ended, when he sank the last three and the stands went up like a wave, he turned, without thinking about it, and looked straight at me.

Chapter 5

After that, Hunter came at me full-court press.

Breakfast outside the dorm every morning. Saving us seats in lecture. My entire suite was about ready to be bought off.

Indie pulled my bunk curtain back, fishing. "So. You and Hunter. What's the status?"

"There's no status," I said, flat on my back.

"The struggle continues, comrade." Then: "Although. I've noticed you barely game anymore."

I sighed.

It wasn't that I didn't want to. Seb just wasn't around.

I'd gotten used to climbing with him. Without him, the hours I kept for ranked just sat there empty. I'd open the client and not know what to do with myself.

Our chat had gone quiet sometime yesterday. I'd asked if he wanted to play; he'd said work was crazy lately, sorry.

So he had a job now. Good to know.

"Ugh!" Coco swore from the bottom bunk. "Bastian Song actually got hurt!"

"Who?" Indie's head popped out. "That actor who blew up recently?"

"Yeah, too many fight scenes, wrecked his leg. He's been in the hospital since yesterday. Fans wouldn't quit hounding the agency until they put out a statement. My poor baby, I'm in pieces."

Indie rolled her eyes at the mom-stan routine. It went in one of my ears and out the other.

Right then Hunter messaged: wanna play?

I glanced at Seb's frozen chat. Sure, I wrote back.

Hunter wasn't good. But you could tell he was trying, really studying it, asking me every day which champ suited him best, hunting for anything we had in common. Breakfast, saved seats, dropping into my major's lectures, rain or shine.

Indie sighed, watching it. "Even I'm a little moved."

It split me down the middle. One side, a Seb who drifted further out of reach every day. The other, a Hunter who was right here, warm and relentless.

The part I couldn't sit with was that I was comparing them at all.

Hunter and I crossed a line on a rainy afternoon.

No umbrella, stuck at the library. Indie was out on a date, my other two suitemates weren't answering. I stood under the overhang watching it come down in sheets and texted Seb: not gaming tonight, I'm not even back at the dorm yet.

Nothing.

Less than ten minutes later Hunter jogged up out of the rain, umbrella tipped over me, looking at me like he wanted to be looked back at. "Indie said you were stranded. Came to get you."

Some traitor part of my chest softened anyway. He walked me home, half his shoulder soaked through by the time we made it.

After that, the one playing games with me was Hunter. He wasn't great, but he kept getting better.

Then one time Seb invited me, and Hunter happened to be over.

"Finally dug out from under it," Seb said. "Sorry about the last stretch."

"It's fine. Let me grab someone."

"Sure. Friend of yours?"

"Yeah."

I pulled Hunter into the lobby. Maybe I imagined it, but Seb went quiet. Barely said a word the whole game.

Hunter locked Ezreal. I jungled. Seb took a tank.

Hunter fed too hard. By the end Seb sold an item, built half-tank, and carried us anyway. Then he left the queue.

I messaged him. What's up?

His reply: that's a lot of patience. Boyfriend?

My chest pulled tight, sharp and out of place. Yeah, I said.

Seb didn't answer for a long time. Then: got it.

Two words. He could've said anything, and he picked the two that close a door without a sound.

I set my phone face-down. The mood to play didn't come back.

The next morning Hunter was waiting downstairs with breakfast, a bag of warm pastries and a coffee. He watched me carefully, that handsome face all clumsy caution. "I'm sorry... I played badly. Your friend isn't upset, is he?"

The warmth of the bag bled through my palms straight into my chest.

It was so stupidly real I caved. I smiled. "It's fine. He's my boyfriend. I'll teach him."

Hunter blinked. Then his eyes lit up like someone had flipped a switch.

I told myself this was the right call.

On the other side of a dark screen, the one person who'd warned me had gone quiet and some part of me already knew that quiet would cost me.

Chapter 6

For a long stretch after that, I still played with Seb here and there. Not often. He seemed busier and busier. I wondered sometimes what he did for work, then figured we were just two people who'd met over a screen. No reason to dig.

We fell out about six months later.

Hunter uploaded my Riven game and went viral overnight.

Seb forwarded me the clip that same night.

Seb: [this is you, right?]

Seb: [why is he saying he played it?]

Seb: [and you're just fine with that? he's streaming off it now.]

Seb: [would he even dare queue Riven on stream?]

I hadn't checked my phone in a while. I opened it to all of that, and it scraped me the wrong way. My tone came out worse than I meant it.

Me: [this is between me and my boyfriend. pretty sure it's not your business.]

Seb took a long time. Then one word.

Seb: [sure.]

We never spoke again after that.

Hunter apologized, and he meant it. Or seemed to. I knew his situation: regular parents, money tight just keeping him in school. Good-looking, always out at events, a campus somebody, and underneath all of it, deeply insecure. So I let it go.

And then it became a one-way street.

Early on he'd send little things back. That stopped. Soon it was only ever me. Me reaching out, me covering it, me telling myself he was busy. He started leaning on busy like a crutch. Started complaining that streaming wore him out. Went dark for whole nights, then surfaced the next day with an explanation. We fought more. Went cold more. Until it curdled into the circus it eventually became.

I take relationships seriously. I don't fold easily.

Maybe he did like me once. Maybe he was even real about it, once.

It all just turned out to be worth nothing the second real money waved at him.

Seb, watching me go quiet for too long, tried again.

Seb: [why so quiet? you're not actually holding a grudge, are you?]

Me: [no...]

He sent a sticker. A fat orange tabby, mid-loaf.

I cracked a smile before I could stop it.

Me: [one game?]

Seb: [thought you never wanted to look at this game again as long as you lived.]

Me: [before that, I need to make someone else never want to look at it again.]

He got it.

Champ select. First pick, I locked Riven on instinct. Seb took Lulu.

Since when do you support, I started to type.

And then, for the first time in almost three years, I heard his voice.

"Haven't watched you play Riven in forever. I need a close-up, see if you've gotten rusty."

My pulse did something stupid. I kept my face still.

I laughed at him instead. "Sit back and watch, then."

I opened the cameras and started the screen recording. Seb's Lulu sense was sharper than mine had ever been; his timing on every engage was clean. With him peeling for me I just took off, flashed across the enemy team, made them look like bots, took a pentakill.

After, I said it straight into the lens. "Watch closely. No cuts. Riven. Played by me."

Seb caught on. "Take your headphones off. Put me on speaker."

I pulled them off.

After all these years his voice was still smooth, still low, and somewhere under it, strangely familiar. Smiling, easy, coming out of my phone speaker:

"Mm. I'll vouch for it."

My heart tripped. I kept my face flat and switched the recording off.

He sounded pleased with himself, lazy with it. "Watching you makes me want a Riven game of my own."

I was in a good mood now. "Sure. I'll Lulu for you."

He laughed. First pick I grabbed Riven for him, then locked Lulu myself.

Loading in, there was a familiar face on the other team.

An Ezreal. Tag: HunterGG.

Seb went quiet for a beat. He'd clocked it too.

A second later I heard him pull up Hunter's stream on his end.

His voice came back, lazy, delighted. "Guess what. The poor guy's running ranked with his viewers right now."

Hunter recognized my tag too. Whether he remembered who SebTheGOAT was, I couldn't say.

But Seb was in the mood to play, and that mood looked a lot like moving into Hunter's lane and never leaving.

Three minutes in, the Ezreal coughed up first blood.

Call it an omen.

It set the tone for the whole game: a wipeout, start to finish.

Maybe it rattled Hunter, knowing it was me across the map. His escapes stopped landing. His skillshots sailed past Riven like she wasn't there. Every time he tried to step up and poke, Lulu was already on me and I was already on him.

I wasn't even on his side of the screen, and I could feel how miserable he was.

Riven became the one thing he could not shake.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

By the end, Riven had taken six kills off him. He closed it out 2/9/6 and lost the game.

Seb still had the stream up, and you could hear it bleeding out the chat turning on him all at once, the viewer count sliding down the corner of the screen like sand. Hunter just sat there, frozen, the color drained out of his face, mouth opening on nothing.

Neither of us bothered watching him find the words.

I just heard Seb, on the other end.

"Want to bet he never touches this game again?"

I pressed my lips together.

"I'm out here getting even for you," he said. "No thank-you?"

I shot back, flustered. "As if you need thanking!"

"Mm. Fine," Seb said, low, the smile audible in it. "Then save it for me