Five Months Later

Quinn stared at the email she received in disbelief. She must've read it over a thousand times, but still the words didn't seem real.

We would like to congratulate you on your nomination for in the 12th annual Streamy awards. Click to confirm your nomination.

"Ellie," Quinn yelled at a concerning volume, "Ellie come here!"

The blonde ran in the room with a look of worry on her face, "Hold on, Nick," She lowered the phone from her ear, "Are you okay?"

Wordlessly Quinn flipped the phone, showing her roommate the email. She watched as Ellie's eyes scanned over the words, and then grew with excitement.

"Oh my god!" She gasped, "Nick, I'll have to call you back, love you," bye." Ellie hung up the phone quickly, before screaming.

"This is so awesome," Quinn let out a victory noise of her own. This was a dream come true for Quinn, it was her signifier, she had made it.

The past five months had been busy to say the least. Quinn had started up a solo role play, which she told in the form of minecraft streams, writing her own story and programming the game to fit her needs. This went pretty viral, and Quinn's viewer count doubled on her streams, which was pretty substantial, to say the least. Another exciting thing that happened was that one way or the other, Nick had gotten the courage to ask Ellie out, and now the blonde girl could often be found on the phone, no doubt talking to him. Quinn had used the separation from the boys to reach out to other content creators, and collaborate with them, resulting in a growing community. One of Quinn's most popular streams was when she and Valkyrae played a horror game together, in October. Things were really looking up for Quinn's career, and the Streamy nomination was proof of that.

As for Quinn and her personal life... it was a different story. Clay and Vanessa were still together, and she had appeared more and more regularly in his streams. Most of the fans loved her, seeing that on camera, she made Clay pretty happy. But there were still a few fans who, like Quinn, weren't going to give up hope on a relationship for him and Quinn. Sometimes, Quinn wondered if the fans knew how close they were to actually being together. It didn't matter, though.

Her communication with Clay had been spotty, seeing as the longer his relationship with Vanessa lasted, the less and less he reached out to Quinn. At least she heard from George and Nick often. They didn't really stream together anymore, seeing as their content was changing and differing, but even just talking to them every once in a while was nice.

"We have to celebrate," Ellie rested her hands on Quinn's shoulders, a bright look in her eyes, "This is incredible. You are incredible."

Upon hearing her words, Quinn did something she hadn't done in a while, she cried. She was so proud of herself, everything she had worked so hard for, was going to pay off, even if she didn't win, she knew it was worth it. All the times she thought about quitting, or giving up, she was glad that she didn't.

"I'm so proud of you," Ellie hugged her roommate tightly, "I knew you could do this."

"It doesn't feel real," Quinn checked the email again, making sure it wasn't a scam. She checked her breathing and her pulse, this was so exciting. At that moment, a Twitter notification popped up on her phone, a tweet that she was tagged in, from the Streamy page, announcing her nomination.

It took maybe twelve seconds until she was getting a FaceTime from George. Quinn smiled at his quickness, and answered, watching as the dark haired British man appeared on her screen, his jaw seemingly hitting the floor.

"You're joking," he said, "It's not April, is it? That was real, right?"

"It's November, George, that was real," Quinn's smile was so big, her cheeks started to hurt.

"Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, that's insane, congratulations!" George yelled, and then he looked up, someone had entered his room.

"Is that Quinn?" It was Nick's voice. George nodded, and flipped the phone around so that Quinn could see Nick.

"YOOOOOOO, I'm so proud of you!" He was grinning ear to ear, and Quinn could feel the pride in his energy. It made her miss them.

The drive was about forty-five minutes, and even though it wasn't impossible, it was just hard to find time in everyone's schedules to hang out. Especially now that some of Nick's time was spent seeing Ellie.

"Where's Clay?" Quinn asked, purely out of curiosity.

"He was just right here, where'd he go?" George walked out of his room and down the hallway, looking for the blonde.

"He probably went to get Nessa," Nick called, and Quinn felt her ego bruise a little, hearin Nick call her a nickname made Quinn a little jealous, "Tell Ellie I'll be on my way soon."

She felt her spirits rise significantly. Nick was coming over? Even if he was coming to see Ellie, he would still be here.

Ellie entered the room silently, and instantly, Quinn could tell something was wrong. It was written all over Ellie's face. Quinn's eyes widened at her roommate's discontent.

"What?" Quinn asked nervously, "what happened?|

"Don't check Twitter," Ellie swallowed dryly.

Quinn swore her stomach dropped into her feet. She watched as George's camera paused, and then opened Twitter herself. Quinn thought she was going to be sick when she heard George gasp.

She was trending, but this time, it wasn't good.

Fans speculate if Dream cheated on his girlfriend with ex-roommate Quinn, after texts messages and photos are released to the public.

"No way," Quinn couldn't look. She didn't want to. But still she clicked on the tag, and as she scrolled, she was certainly going to be sick. Some of the tweets were old pictures, or text messages, from before Vanessa was even in the picture. Quinn's eyes brimmed with tears when she saw the root of the rumor. Someone had screenshotted pictures from Vanessa's private twitter.

"Since when does Vanessa have a private Twitter?" Quinn tried to keep her voice from quivering.

"Breathe Quinn, I'm gonna leave now, I'll be there shortly," there was an urgency in Nick's voice that no one could ignore.

"It's okay, Quinn, I'm sure it's not as bad as it seems," George attempted to reassure her, but he obviously hadn't seen what Quinn did.

"Not as bad as it seems?" Quinn took a deep breath, reading Vanessa's tweet out loud, "To everyone asking Clay why Quinn moved out, just stop, it's annoying. I've been quiet about this for too long."

Vanessa had made it a thread, attaching screenshots, that she clearly took from Clay's phone. Some of them were discord messages between him, Nick, and George, there was a text message screenshot that was between him and Ellie, and there were even messages between Clay and Vanessa. As she read through each of the screenshots, he stomach sank lower and lower, Vanessa collected fake evidence well.

The first screenshot was Clay talking to George and Nick, it was a conversation that took place between the boys on one of the nights that Quinn streamed with Ellie. In his messages, Clay was very persistent that he had to be there to watch Quinn's stream, it was important that he was there for her. When George asked Clay why it was so important he responded with, because I care about her, even if she's not living in the house anymore.

The second was a screenshot between Clay's and Ellie's messages, and it was downright snooping that Vanessa did to find the messages. It was about planning Quinn's birthday. Ellie reached out about planning the surprise, and Clay had responded seemingly friendly enough. When Ellie mentioned Vanessa, Clay was insistent that she wouldn't be there, and said that he probably wouldn't mention it to her, knowing Vanessa would just get mad. A message that caught Quinn's eye was one from Clay that read I'm excited to see her again, it's been too long. I miss her.

The third was a text message screenshot between Clay and Vanessa, except this time, it was taken from Vanessa's point of view. It was clearly an argument that they had, and from the looks of the message it was about Quinn. Vanessa had angrily accused him of 'sneaking out' to go see Quinn for her birthday, to which Clay responded with as much sass talking about how Vanessa didn't live with him so it wasn't sneaking out. Quinn gasped herself when she read the last line of the text messages, it being a quote from Vanessa. Oh so should I ask to move in? Maybe that way you'll sleep with me and then get drunk and tell me you love me. Since that's what you did with her.

The evidence seemed pretty stacked against Quinn, except for the fact that he never cheated on Vanessa. The screenshots made it obvious that he still cared for her, but never that they engaged in anything together while he was with Vanessa. Still, Quinn knew what the internet was capable of, and she knew this had to be fixed.

"What am I supposed to do?" Quinn asked, she had managed to get the shakiness out of her voice, now knowing the truth behind the rumor.

"You have to explain," George reasoned, "This puts both your and Clay's career at stake, you can't let her get away with this."

"Does Clay know?" Ellie asked, "I thought he was going to get Vanessa."

"George, tell me you're on the phone with Quinn, please!" Clay shouted, it was very obvious that he was in fact home. He entered the room and Quinn could feel his antsy energy through the phone, he was shaking.

"Yeah she's here," George showed the phone to Clay, who sighed in relief.

"I'm gonna fix this, I promise," he seemed scared. Every time a rumor got out about Clay, he turned into a ball of anxiety until he knew it was going to be okay again.

In the six months that Quinn lived with him, she could only remember one time that he looked this nervous about something on social media. That night, he stayed up with Quinn and they watched a kids cartoon, so he was distracted.

"No, you can't fix this, Clay," even though she was trying to be comforting, Quinn had to be honest, "right now you need to focus on fixing your relationship, so this doesn't happen again. I can take care of the rest of it."

Quinn had put on a brave face, this wasn't the end of the world. It couldn't be.

"I'm so sorry, Quinn," Clay's voice was hardly a whisper, "I don't know what I did to make her upset with me, I was going to pick her up and then I saw that and I turned around. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, I'll figure it out," Quinn didn't know if she would figure it out all the way, but she knew that she had to do something, or else she could say goodbye to her dream job.

She had asked both Clay and George to honestly explain what was happening in the messages. She needed a leg to stand on, if she was going to fix this. As soon as she hung up with George, she tweeted out that she was going live to clear up some rumors. If she was confident then her audience would trust her.

She had to wait until she didn't look like she was going to nervously burst into tears. Quinn felt sick to her stomach and more than anything, she wanted to pretend that none of this was happening. Of course, on the day that Quinn should be celebrating, she was anxiously trying to salvage her reputation.

When she calmed down enough, she went live, with her full face-cam and a big fake smile.

"Hey guys," Quinn was quieter than she normally was, and it was because immediately the chat started asking questions, "I feel like we should talk."

Quinn opened up twitter on her computer and when she got to the screenshots from Vanessa's private Twitter she shared her screen, "I know this looks bad. It looks like Clay's an awful boyfriend, and I'm his side piece, but these screenshots were posted without any context, and I feel like before anyone makes any more judgements, you deserve to know the truth behind the messages."

Quinn pulled up the first one, between George, Clay, and Nick.

"This was a conversation that happened like six months ago, when I first moved out. At face value, it seems like Dream is being persistent about watching my stream because he wants to see me or he cares about me more than he should, or whatever. But this was right after I moved and it was like, I think, the first stream I was doing here, and he wanted to make sure I wasn't going to have any technical difficulties," Clay lied to Quinn when he explained the messages, but she didn't need to know that he had been trying to get over her. "It was perfectly reasonable. Even though I moved out, we were still friends, he's allowed to care about his friends."

Quinn looked at the second picture. She had to find a way to word this, so that it didn't seem like she was just trying to throw Vanessa under the bus. Despite being an awful human being, and a bad girlfriend, some part of Clay cared for her, and Quinn had to respect that.

"Now this one, was a conversation that was from June, right before my birthday. You guys remember that the boys surprised me on my birthday. Well, being the best friend she is, Ellie was the one to organize it. This makes Dream seem like an awful person, saying that he wasn't going to bring his girlfriend, but that was purely out of respect for boundaries on both ends. Vanessa and I don't have the best relationship, and it was one of the reasons that I chose to move out, out of respect that she didn't like me living under the same roof as her boyfriend. Dream knows this, it's been something that we came to an agreement on. He knew Vanessa wouldn't want to see me, and so he didn't invite her. There's nothing I have against Vanessa, I think she's a good girlfriend for Dream, and I wouldn't mind if she had come along, I just know we didn't get off on the best foot." Quinn felt weights begin to lift off of her chest, and then she remembered that this last screenshot was the one that people were the most interested in hearing her explanation for.

"Now, before I talk about this last screenshot, I need to clear something up right away. Dream and I have never slept together. We have never hooked up, not while him and Vanessa were together, and not before him and Vanessa. We have only ever been friends, so I don't really know what Vanessa means at the end of these messages. But I can assure you guys, we've never been together like that," Quinn's throat felt so dry, and she willed herself not to cry. As soon as she ended her stream, she would be able to do whatever she wanted, but not on camera. She broke down the message and explained, hoping to get it through to everyone that Clay wasn't a cheater.

"You guys have always been an understanding community, and I know there was a lot of information that was flung at you today, but I want you guys to be able to make judgements when you have as much information as you can. I'm not going to deny that I care about Dream, he is one of my best friends, but I would never disrespect Vanessa, or his relationship with her. I try to stay honest with you guys, and this was as honest as I could be right now," Quinn almost forgot that she wanted to end the stream on a lighter note. She switched tabs and opened up the email that congratulated her on her nomination for a streamy.

"I know that was a lot and it was heavy information, but I wanted to thank you guys for this," she shared the new tab, "This is so crazy. We did that guys! A Streamy nomination, oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it. This has been my dream, for the longest time, and you are all such a wonderful community and made it happen. I owe you guys the world. Thank you so much."

Quinn ended her stream and then slumped against her desk, sobbing. This was all too much.

"Oh Quinn," Nick opened the door and felt himself slump when he saw her state of being, "Come here."

He practically picked her up in a hug. For the first time in a while, Quinn felt weak. She had hoped she had done enough. And she hoped that Clay was trying his hardest to do his share of fixing this mess.

Quinn met Ellie on the couch in the living room. She was teary eyed and utterly exhausted. Ellie let Quinn lay her head in her lap, as Nick cuddled neck to Ellie while they watched a movie. It was quite the sight to see, Nick with his arms around Ellie and his head on her shoulder, as Ellie was running her fingers through Quinn's hair, practically putting her to sleep.

Nick glanced down to Quinn, frowning, he knew the truth about Clay. He wanted to tell her, but now wasn't the right time. He would have to wait.