Waking up was a bitch and a half. Xi ached all over, and felt mildly dehydrated and very, very sore. For one long, disorienting moment, he didn’t know how on earth he’d managed to escape being hungover after what must have been an epic night out.

Then, rolling over a bit, he caught sight of the broad, bare back of the man sitting up on his right, and his muddled brain finally caught up. Jiong, he thought, and couldn’t help but smile, and do his sluggish best to get closer to him.

He remembered now. Last night, they’d skipped drinking in favour of sex, sex and more sex. “Hug?” Xi asked, already slinging an arm around Jiong’s waist. Getting up felt entirely out of the question, but this would do. “You’re a beast, you know that, yeah? I can barely move.”

“Xi, there’s—”

“No. Hug.” It took a minute for Jiong to respond, to turn around and lie down and snuggle right up to him, his arm tight around Xi’s shoulders, his bare chest a comforting warmth for Xi to lean his head against. “Mmm.”

Jiong’s other hand stroked through Xi’s hair, tangling in his short, disordered curls. “Can we talk?”

“Mrh.”

“Are you actually awake?”

“Can be.”

“Xi, I’m—Xi?”

“M’listening,” Xi mumbled, pushing a little way back so as to get away from the tempting warmth of Jiong’s chest. “Say it, say what’s happened.”

“Your stream VODs from last night are trending.”

“Oh, yeah.” Xi made a limp wave with his hand. “That’s just, y’know. Perils of Janey.”

“But, remember earlier? When I came in unmasked?”

“S’fine, it’s—um—her manager, I mean, her company makes it… no. I mean, they’re bloody draconian, they add this shitty layer of auto-masking whenever she does a non-professional stream. They’ll have done that, you’ll have a nice blue blob for a face in it, it’s fine, that stuff is a bitch to strip off cleanly.”

“Then why, what was with all the panic back then?”

“People make their own VODs,” Xi muttered, letting his head fall back onto Jiong’s chest. “Stream, no screen capture shit. It’s not super common, but. Thought it best to be safe.”

“Oh.” That was nice, this was always nice, Xi being pressed close enough to Jiong to hear his voice rumble in his chest. “You say it’s not common?”

“Mmm, yeah. Pricey.”

“The software? I thought most HUDs came with that for free.”

“No, I mean, storage adds up. We used to screen-cap too, when we couldn’t stretch to proper cameras. The edits, the extra perspectives, the times you want someone else’s vid and they dump like a week’s worth of auto-record on you, it all adds up. Half our sponsorship money went on that, it’s no fucking joke.”

“Right, right, I get it.”

“Not even sure if you showed up at all on camera, honestly,” Xi mumbled. “Fixed field of view was on the room, not the room entrance. I can check that now, if you want me to.”

“No, I think I’ve tortured you enough, keeping you up when you’d clearly rather be dead to the world.” Though Xi couldn’t see Jiong’s face right now, he’d bet any amount that the bastard was smirking. “Go back to sleep; I’ll wake you for breakfast.”

“Mmh. I’ll check, alright?”

“Yeah,” Jiong said, shifting slightly out from under him, then bending down to press a kiss to Xi’s scrunched up forehead. “I’ll remind you.”

Hours later, Xi was reluctantly sat up in bed, half his attention on the projected screen in front of him, and the other half on the noodles he was slurping up from the take-out container in his hands. Fuck, he loved nothing more than good hand-pulled noodles he’d neither had to make himself, or beg and cajole Gran into making. The sauce and the beef were only just okay, but the noodles themselves had a fantastic consistency.

“Hmm.”

“Anything?” Jiong called out, from the bathroom, that one, eager word made nigh unintelligible by the way he was gargling. Then he coughed and spat, and poked his head out the bathroom door. “Are you even looking?”

“Mmm. Looking.” Which he was doing, if also at the same time as he chatted with the restaurant the take-out order was from, inquiring if they did fresh noodle delivery. “Nothing yet.”

“Are you sure?” Jiong ducked back into the bathroom for a moment, then came striding out, the towel around his waist doing so little to cover him up that it might as well not have been there at all. “Min and Hakon are freaking out a bit, I just want something to tell them.”

Xi, slurping up his last mouthful of noodles, couldn’t help but feel a bit confused. “Aren’t they all your old teammates or whatnot? This isn’t much worse than what they’ve had to deal with before, surely.”

“It’s not that, it’s, it’s just…” Jiong came up and sat down beside Xi in front of the projected screen. “What, you planning on some kind of noodle feast for your next stream?”

“No, it’s my older mum’s birthday in a bit, and she loves them,” Xi muttered, hurrying to minimize that window. “I hate making them, my other mum’s banned from the kitchen, and Gran would seize the chance to blackmail me into going to marriage meetings if I asked her to help me out. You were saying?”

“Marriage meetings?” Jiong said, his low, aggrieved tone entirely at odds with the suggestive way he was stroking his hand down Xi’s bare back. “Isn’t jiongjiong enough for you right now?”

“You can stop that,” Xi said, turning his gaze pointedly away from Jiong’s powerful thighs, and the mouthwatering sight the hem of that small, slightly damp towel made against them as he shifted in place. “I’m far too sore to be fucked, and remember, I’m doing you and your friends a favour you don’t fucking deserve after I told you—stop it!”

“Huh? You’re already hard?”

“Do you want me to finish taking a look at this shitty VOD search or not?” Xi hated the way his voice cracked midway through that snappish sentence, hated the fact that he was so tired and horny that he couldn’t effectively wriggle out of Jiong’s grip. “I’m not letting you in me again, so stop.”

“Jiongjiong doesn’t need to be inside Xi-er,” was the low, provoking answer. “Jiongjiong just wants to drink Xi-er’s milk.”

“No you fucking don’t,” Xi said, peeling his lover’s insistent hand out from between his thighs. “I’m the only one that drinks any fucking ‘milk’ in this fucking—”

“But you like hearing it, right?” Jiong bent in sinfully close, sucking the tip of Xi’s suddenly all-too-sensitive earlobe into his mouth. “Right? Xi-er likes hearing jiongjiong’s filthy words?”

“You—nnh—let me fucking finish this? Please?”

Jiong chuckled, and the brief glimpse Xi had of his slight, wicked smile as he pulled away made Xi horribly certain he was going to take the obvious opportunity to earnestly promise to let Xi ‘finish’ very well. However, instead, all Jiong did was lean back and smile over at him.

“Fucker,” Xi couldn’t help but mutter, even as he turned his hazy attention back to the screen before them. “Shit, where was I… right. Okay.”

Understandably, with the eager presence of Jiong serving as a distraction, Xi didn’t end up digging much beyond the third page of results for Janey’s trending secret~ karaoke party. Jiong crept closer and closer without quite touching him, and just having him there, warm and very slightly damp from his shower, his cock an obvious half-hard lump beneath the towel, was a greater weight on Xi’s mind than the search results he was scrolling through.

“Anything?” Jiong finally said, his breath hot on Xi’s bare shoulder.

“Fuck. Off.”

“Have you checked the stream VOD yet?” Naturally he would pick a sensible question right as his filthy, glorious, wicked hands landed on Xi’s thighs!! “Can you open that for me?”

Xi barely managed to navigate to the right file and folder for the VOD of last night’s stream. And then he forced himself to pay attention as the quick, primitive face-matching search ran, because even a partial hit really could spell trouble when the journos and hacks eventually, inevitably got their hands on the raw VOD. Luckily, the only hit that came up was a brief, fuzzy, 3-second shot of the side of Jiong’s face as he turned back towards his friends, who weren’t really in the shot either.

“Okay, that looks liveable,” Xi murmured. “You’re just there, on cam, not doing anything crazy. The after-party’s another thing, obviously, but all cam frequencies were banned, and the lighting was all that anti-screen-cap stuff. We’re—ngh—I think we’re alright.”

“Can I do it now? Can I suck you?”

“Y-yeah, fine, fuck…”

After that—which added on a solid, tortuous half-hour before Jiong’s eventual departure back to team digs—Xi felt he could finally relax. He peeked out of the tall, clear living room windows, marvelling at the semi-decent view. He stuffed last night’s soiled sheets into the washer, remade Jiong’s deliciously wide bed, and then lolled around in it for an hour or two, leisurely catching up on work.

Then, long after noon had come and gone, Xi dragged himself over to the sadly small, spartan kitchen to see if anything could be done with what was on offer. By then, he was streaming again, privately, to the ad-hoc group of k-streamers and hangers-on that had swung by to Janey’s impromptu send-off last night.

> XiXi: ah, there’s practically nothing [tears]

> XiXi: this guy wants to starve me to death ah

> erich: what fucking starve

> erich: order in, or get out!!

> janeuwyn: hehe, aren’t you just dying of jealousy ah?

> yuri: lol for real, whole time we were buttering up jiong’s friend, this motherfucker was all like, so, so have you met any of the other Stars???

> erich: hey!!! didn’t you fuckin say no kiss and tell?

> yuri: did I say anything about his friend??

> yuri: hmm? [innocent blink]

> erich: …QAQ

> erich: you wanted to know too!!

> ursurule: so, eric, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is it that you’d bend if jiongjiong called your name, hmm~

> erich: 1!! obviously !!!!!

> janeuwyn: ah, ah, but doesn’t that mean you’d bend him for yourself instead, mr. gong~?

> erich: you…

> [erich rains curses down on janeuwyn’s ancestors, to the fifth generation!]

> janeuwyn: muah, muah, it seems i’m still loved…

“Well,” Xi said, sighing exaggeratedly, “I guess I’ll just keep him to myself, then. Ooh, eggs…”

> hail: does this guy even have a fckin frying pan lol

> ursurule: bet he does, but there’s no spatula, no cooking utensils, nothing

> janeuwyn: 99% likely it’s the tools that are missing

> yuri: 100% bet on the missing pan ah

> itsB: joke’s on you JJ, I saw a bunch of tools in a dusty cup while Xi was swanning through

> yuri: haHA!

> [yuri bursts into a victory dance]

Yuri, unsatisfied with just the emote, went as far as opening up her own substream and forcefully voting it into visibility with her usual fleet of bots, so as Xi set a half-dozen eggs to boiling in a saucepan, he was accompanied by the sight of Yuri dancing in what looked like the working half of a hotel room to Eric’s high-tempo singing.

> janeuwyn: wow, you and eric really treated that girl right

> janeuwyn: isn’t that hotel sha-sha?

> [erich is smugly determined to maintain his pure silence!]

> phink: right in one, J

> janeuwyn: ohhhhh??

> phink: B and I got the room across from them

> itsB: HEY!!! YOU FUCK!!!

> yuri: o_O!

> erich: waoooooooo

> hail: OwO

> ursurule: O_O!!

> janeuwyn: ━(((;ﾟДﾟ)))━!!!

> janeuwyn: [happy tears] congratulations! It finally came!!

> itsB: phink, you fuck!

> itsB: who the fuck is in fucking hotel sha-sha with you, ok??

> itsB: look!! My room door! [room-door.jpg]

> itsB: look, outside! And I’m in it!!! [room-door-out-and-me.jpg]

> janeuwyn: …oh [deflates]

> hail: aiyyaaa… my happy dream…

> phink: haha

> itsB: what dream, what fucking, you guys all have the most bullsh$$ imaginations

> itsB: talk to you later Xi, I’m out

> [itsB has shaken their sleeves and left the chat]

> XiXi: awww, you guys scared him off

> phink: yeah, couldn’t you have been more sensitive?

> phink: man, now that the fun’s gone… I think I’ll head out too…

> yuri: oi, oi, where do you think you’re going

> yuri: aren’t we fucking comparing pulls rn? Huh??

> [phink has shaken their sleeves and left the chat]

> ursurule: …hey

> ursurule: is it just me, or was that kinda… suspicious?

> janeuwyn: man, I wish you weren’t thinking too much, but

> hail: lol we wish it happened… Orz

> erich: imagine how much shame we could heap on them both lolol

> devi: hey guys~!

> devi: i’d ask who pulled hardest last night, but, hahahaha, it’s obviously me, so

> erich: [barf]

> devi: who pulled second hardest, hm?

> [devi is winking at ursurule]

> yuri: isn’t this amount of dog food1 a goddamn crime ah??

> hail: single dogs only, ok!!!!

> erich: right, right, fuck off with that lovey dovey crap

> yuri: if you’re here, you’re here as a single dog ah!!

> ursurule: ah? then what about Xi?

> yuri: come on, he’s boiling eggs to eat with some shitty rice!

> hail: yeah lol his big bad BF left him alone to starve…

> XiXi: yet somehow I will live [tear]

> [XiXi is thinking fondly of eating while enjoying the view from Captain Michael Star’s expensive fucking flat]

> devi: heheheh you’re gonna show us the view right?

> erich: [bites thumb] you!!! you traitor!!!!

> XiXi: no time to chat~

> XiXi: eggs done~ rice done~

> ursurule: ah, the jiongjiong~ it’s strong here at the source ah~

> erich: [shudders] why… the tildes…

> yuri: don’t ask, man. Just don’t fucking ask.

Grinning, Xi did as had been requested, and ferried his somewhat humble meal of rice, tender hard-boiled eggs and generous drizzles of soy sauce and pepper to the small, yet spacious-feeling living room. The pleasant, sun-drenched view of downtown Haeguk and a tiny slice of the elevated river seemed even more luxurious with his friends’ exaggerated weeping and despair in chat, especially once he started in on his food, and could also enjoy Yuri’s angry ruminations about how rice was a cursed grain.

> yuri: like black fucking magic

> yuri: don’t know how many times i’ve changed fucking pots

> ursurule: why not just use a cooker?

> janeuwyn: why even ask, ah, don’t you know our yuyu?

> janeuwyn: still dreaming she can pull some rich fuck by cooking from scratch

> yuri: how the fuck would it be that, ah?

> yuri: omg I tell a joke ONE FUCKING TIME

> janeuwyn: now now~

> janeuwyn: every girl has her secret dream~

> erich: ah, yuyu, it’s ok to dream ah~

> yuri: hahahaha… aren’t you also fxcking dreaming??

> erich: isn’t it different for a boy though? OwO?

> hail: just how the fuck would it be different lol

> hail: doesn’t it always boil down to this??

> hail: “[tender look] eric, my honey. Come here and let this jiejie raise you ah”

> erich: exCUSE me, I wanna be raised by a hot older woman??

> erich: no shrimp gals my age allowed~~

> yuri: hahaha… then die!!!

> yuri has struck down erich with fire! One mark of fire is disfiguring erich’s heart tree!

> yuri has struck down erich with fire! Two marks of fire are disfiguring erich’s heart tree!

> yuri has struck down erich with fire! Three marks of fire are disfiguring erich’s heart tree!

> erich’s heart tree falls to the ground and shatters into dust! erich has been silenced from the chat for the period of: thirty minutes

> hail: lololol we’re eric free now

> ursurule: how the fuck do you keep getting mod, yuri

> ursurule: don’t we do a rotating vote?

> XiXi: who knows

> janeuwyn: according to log, phink had it last

> yuri: heheheh I bought it from him this time

> yuri: if eric whispers you, just tell him it’ll cost 5000 crystal to buy back in

> yuri: MINIMUM.

> janeuwyn: ohoho, I smell revenge~

> devi: tell, tell, tell! did he hog your girl too much?

> [yuri is declaring that her lips are sealed!]

> ursurule: yup, as expected, it’s that

More gossip flowed. Other old friends logged in briefly to either boast, exchange anecdotes, or diss each other’s performances from last night. It was all just like old times, except without the low-level stress of worrying about homework or college papers or lectures or grades. There were other worries, of course—people musing about where to move next, or angsting over a missed promotion at work, or putting out feelers in a way that indicated their current relationship was on a downslope.

Then, just as Xi was ambling back to the kitchen to start cleaning up, Sylina unexpectedly logged into the stream chat, only to meet everyone’s happy greetings with a bombshell:

> hail: sy! my baby!!

> janeuwyn: !! what brings you here?

> erich: aren’t you still on tour???

> sylina: janeuwyn, fans have gone fucking nuts

> janeuwyn: ?

> sylina: my agent sent you and erie a chat link, hurry up an join

> hail: hey, wait, what’s going on?

Xi’s heart sank. If Janey was getting pulled onto an emergency chat with Sylina’s people, something had gone very, very wrong…

Hurriedly, Xi set down the dirty dish in Mike’s otherwise pristine sink, then quickly pulled up his default search on Janey’s stage name. Initially, he couldn’t tell what he’d missed, and it was only when he started drilling down into the comments on the highest-ranked video—a clip from last night, one of Janey singing her heart out onstage—that he found it.

The first four or five highest liked comments were the usual ‘omg, J.E.M. forever, sob sob’ type comments he’d been expecting. The seventh comment was a different story, one that had been posted at something like the crack of dawn this morning:

>>> jem4eva: guess who i found…???

>>> Huuuge harvest came to watch our family’s J.E.M., ( ✧Д✧) OMG!! Stills are attached~

>>> [DJ Wreck.jpg]

>>> [SM-UNI’s bingbling.jpg]

>>> [elephink.jpg]

>>> [SM-UNI’s hailey.jpg]

>>> [three boys’ eric.jpg]

“Hahaha, fuck,” Xi said, shaking his head. “Hailey’s never going to let him forget that…”

The stills went on and on, listing mostly k-streamers and pop stars in their often well-known, iconic masks, along with the occasional notable hanger-on—Devi, for example, earned a mention because the Patels used to own a scarily large chunk of property in Haeguk, including the iconic Daehu Karaoke Club that launched five different mega-famous acts. And of course there were pictures of ‘J.E.M.’s old crew’, i.e. Xi, B, Ursula and Yuri, all in mostly flattering poses.

The moment Xi’s blood pressure skyrocketed was the moment he saw the following header, and its requisite picture:

>>> all-knowing-jemaunt: J.E.M. harvesting from new fields~

>>> All you baby fans crying out to know why that last song got sung, heheh, let this great aunt teach you well~

>>> An ad song for FOV naturally means FOV stars can be found:

>>> [FOV’s e.d.i.e., top ADC this season.jpg]

“Ohhhh fuck.” Sure, the picture of Eddie was fairly blurry, an awkward, distorted three-quarter shot that looked a bit like it might be a lucky reflection, but it was pasted next to a full, unmasked picture of her smiling, and had an 85% FaceMatch score pinned below, clearly the result of having been run on both images.

If this crazy fucker had gone as far as running FaceMatch on even random one-off stills from the crowd, there was no fucking way they’d have ended up missing Jiong. And, indeed, just two pictures below:

>>> [FOV’s starmike, top tank four years running.jpg]

Xi put his face in his hands. “Shit.”

dog food (狗糧): online or offline displays of affection provided by couples that ‘single dogs’ (self-deprecating nickname for single people) are forced to watch↩