X woke up at 2:00 PM. His real name was obviously not X, in fact X was a nickname. 

X noticed his social media account, 

🌑

SomeX_

he/they

…

His audience would constantly push his boundaries. Every day he would see pictures of some person that was pretending to be him. 

He told himself that one day it would be his real face there. 

X scrolled through his phone for half an hour, and realized that today was a shoot day. That meant he would have to deal with his housemates. 

He walked downstairs, and the house was busy with activity. His brain was not functioning enough to understand half the things going on. Manager Lisa was directing Caleb, who was probably on his fifth energy drink, where to carry a big whiteboard. Upon seeing X arisen from the dead, Caleb dropped the whiteboard. 

“Dude! Where’ve you been? I’ve had to carry like- everything out here! Why weren’t you awake? Also, are you really gonna wear that?” 

“Caleb!” Manager Lisa scolded, “You just broke the whiteboard!” 

Sure enough, the whiteboard had been broken off of its frame. It wasn’t unusable, but it would look awful in the video. 

“WELL YEAH! Because of X!” 

X desperately searched for a reason to get away. They felt perfectly fine, and had overslept to the point that they would not be able to sleep any more if they tried. 

“I’m going to get changed,” he muttered. 

X went upstairs, getting changed into a cropped sweatshirt and jeans. Why does he care so much about what I’m wearing? I should just wear whatever and if he has a problem… well then he can just deal with it. 

X came back downstairs to a fully set up shoot. The idea of the shoot was a cooking challenge, where the house was split into two teams and competed to make the best meal. The twist was that each team could use sabotages against one another periodically. 

Levi, also known as AquaAval, was paired with Cheryl, also known as CherriBlossom. 

Caleb, who had an embarrassing username, was paired with Vanessa, known as Fitnessa online. 

“Alright, let’s line up for the intro everyone!” Lisa said, fiddling with the settings on her camera. 

“Wait, Lisa! What team am I on?”

Lisa sighed, “You are judging, X. You aren’t on anyone’s team. We already assigned the teams. Now hurry up! We need to get started!”

X looked down, he was so excited to do this, cooking was his thing. He made meals for the house all the time, and they knew that he loved cooking. 

Lisa crossed her arms, “X! Line up, you need to be in the center. Or are you going to skip this shoot again?”

X stumbled into the center. 

Lisa had her hand on the record button, “X, introduce the challenge. You are doing the intro. Everyone else, be yourselves” 

Caleb rolled his eyes at that. Lisa pressed the button and gave a thumbs up. 

“Welcome, today we are- uh dammit” X ran a hand through their hair and took a deep breath, “Today, they are going to be cooking for me! Caleb and Ness will be on one team, and Levi and Cherri will be on another! Let’s get cooking!” 

X could feel their heart racing. They were never nervous when it was just them alone in their room streaming, but when they had their face on camera it was completely different. 

X (mostly) trusted the editor to edit their face out, unlike Cherri, who wore a veil. The veil made it harder for her to see, but she preferred it over blind trust.

X waited a bit for the others to talk and the intro to end, then turned to Lisa, “Was that ok?”

Lisa made a face, somewhere between concentration and displeasure, “It was fine” 

X sat down at a table, and watched as the others got to work. They had a camera crew to capture every angle. 

X just wished that they could cook something. It would’ve been fun to cook while their teammate worked with them and the other team sabotaged their team. 

What exactly did Manager Lisa mean by “fine”? X thought that they did really well, considering that they could feel panic rising in their chest. Was Lisa dissatisfied with him? He might just be kicked out. His anxiety was getting worse and worse the more his fame grew. He couldn’t get to sleep, and he woke up halfway through the day. 

Caleb must hate him, he couldn’t even wake up to help his friends. God he is so useless. 

Manager Lisa taps X on the head, which makes him jump miles out of his seat. “X, it’s time for you to judge, head up kid” 

X nods, and wipes the slight wetness from the corners of his eyes. 

He tries the four dishes. One lunch or dinner option, and one dessert option per team. They were all equally awful and had their own flaws, but X ended up choosing Levi and Cherri’s dishes. 

Caleb flipped X off. On camera, it would seem a simple joking gesture, especially since Caleb burst into laughter afterwards. But to X, he turned around before he could see and understand that Caleb was joking. 

X walked away. He had no idea what he was doing, but his feet carried him to his room. He needed to be alone, for the constant noise in his head to go away. 

Now, behind the closed door of his room, the voice in his head, the noise, only got louder. 

They all hate you. 

You’ll get kicked out soon. 

You don’t deserve anything you have. 

You should stop bothering them. 

You can’t even remember when your shoots are, you are so stupid. 

You don’t even care. 

You don’t deserve this life. You don’t deserve anything. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. 

X began to cry, all he was at this moment was a small, damaged kid. 

He was like that when Lisa found him and took pity on him. All the other members of the house had audiences before they came to live there, but X was the only one to join the house without an audience. He had been kicked out of his childhood home after his mother discovered him wearing what she called “girl clothes”. She had been frustrated with him and his anxiety, which bled into his grades, and was looking for a reason to get rid of him. 

Lisa found him wandering the street. They sat on a bench and talked for a while, and Lisa saw something in him. 

So he started streaming, and became wildly popular. It was a lot of change for him, but he lived in a house of people who had done the same. He didn’t want to show his face, it attached him back to the lonely boy who was kicked out of his house. 

His door opened, and footsteps broke through the endless noise of his mind. When he looked up, he was surprised to see Aqua. 

Aqua said nothing, he was waiting for X to speak. 

“I’m sorry. About today” X spoke, barely able to overpower his tears and shaky voice. 

Aqua pulled X in for a tight hug, “There’s nothing you need to be sorry about. It’s really our fault”

“No, no- I was the one who ruined the shoot. Lisa is gonna kick me out soon right? Everyone hates me anyways” The tears poured out of his eyes. He couldn’t hold them in anymore.

“X! My god, how could you say that? Lisa loves you to death, she would never kick you out. We are a big- slightly dysfunctional- family” 

“But she sounded so pissed today”

“She’s stressed, X. Not because of you. The sponsor for the video pulled out, and they were awful about it”

“What did they do?” 

Aqua cracked a small smile, “They said all our content sucked and that we were impossible to work with” he chuckled a little. “Lisa panicked but didn’t tell anyone. That’s why she was so stressed” 

“Oh” 

Aqua looked at X directly in the eyes, and placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, “You’re all good X. I’m sorry that you had a panic attack though, I wish I could’ve noticed and done something to help”.

Looking at him now, X realized Aqua had been running his hands through his hair, and it was all messed up. 

X realized that the person in front of him was Levi, not Aqua. 

X smoothed Levi’s hair with his hand. There was something calming in touching someone else’s hair for once.

They both laughed at the ridiculousness of what was happening, but X kept on petting Levi’s hair, unable to stop. 

Until he remembered Caleb. 

“Wait, what about Caleb?” X said as he pulled his hand away. 

“What about him?” Levi looked inquisitively at X. 

All of a sudden, footsteps, quickly pounding up the stairs. 

“Isn’t he-“ 

“RIGHT HERE! What up, nerds? Cry out your feelings yet?” Caleb said triumphantly. 

Lisa was quick to follow him. “CALEB! I told you to-“ 

X stood up and hugged Caleb. It’s clear they both had no idea what they were doing, as their movements were stiff and unsure. Lisa couldn’t finish her sentence, she just froze. 

“I’m so sorry, Caleb. I’m so awful to you and- I never really show how much I appreciate you” 

Caleb closed his eyes tightly, but the tears underneath flowed out anyways. He sobbed into X’s shoulder, letting out all the feelings from inside. Eventually Levi and Lisa joined in the hug, and Vanessa joined in from the doorframe she was leaning on confidently. Cherri was the last to join. She squeezed them all tightly together.

The group eventually scrapped the video they shot. It hurt to have multiple hours scrapped, but they all agreed it would be for the better. 

The group instead settled on coming up with more ideas on their whiteboard to feel productive. At least the day wasn’t a complete failure.

Afterwards, X decided to repay them. He nervously set up a tripod in the kitchen, and using his phone, he shot a video where he made a literal feast for his friends. They then filmed their reactions to the immaculate taste of the food he had made.

That was the most popular video out of all of their group videos. 

It wasn’t professional, it wasn’t spectacular. 

It was an act of love for people he cared about.