There's a couple of headcanons I've put in here, like Bakugou secretly needing glasses. If you get confused at any point then just let me know and I'll try and clear it up <3

"The last topic I'm going to talk about in today's video is something I really didn't want to talk about. I find it fucking stupid and I didn't wanna bring any attention to it, but the longer I ignored it for then the longer you would all keep commenting and being annoying. If you follow my twitter, which you totally fucking should, you'll already know what this is."

Bakugou spoke into his microphone as he focused on not messing up his words. He glanced at his messy bullet points so he kept structure to what he was saying. He hated doing multiple different takes for things so he tried to make each sentence perfect from the get-go. Instead of writing a script, he would jot down the basic points he was going to make and just go off ranting about them.

"The YouTuber known as 'Red Riot' has recently been exposed, and you know how much I hate that fucking word. I know a lot of you watch him so you probably know this already, but he doesn't show his face in videos, nor has he made his real name public, like me. However, someone from his middle school found his videos and apparently recognised his voice, so they leaked old photos of him and his name. I don't know why people want to know what I think, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. Those guys are dicks and should've left Red to his privacy. Am I going to show the pictures or say the name? No, I'm fucking not, that's just disrespectful as shit and his content is actually good enough for me to watch regularly. Probably my favourite creator on the site, besides myself of course. We don't even know if all this shit is true yet, as Red has yet to say anything on the matter. If I was him I wouldn't say anything, whether the leaked information is true or not. I'm surprised this hasn't happened to me yet considering how I was to people in school. Of course, I've never spoken to him, but he seems really chill and like a pretty good guy, so I don't really see exactly why this happened to him of all people. Go fucking subscribe to him if you losers haven't already. It'll be the top link in the description." He paused for a brief second before saying his outro. He had gone for a fairly long time without messing up his words but he had also gotten accidentally heated. He wouldn't let his true anger show through the video or else the fans would assume more than what needed to be assumed. "So that's it for today's video. If you liked it then like it, if you disliked it then dislike it, and if you wanna subscribe then I don't give a shit but thanks, I guess. Subscribe to PewDiePie."

The blonde stopped recording and let out a huge yawn, checking the time. It was only 8 pm but he was extremely worn out and wanted nothing more than to sleep. But he had to get this video out today, and he didn't have that much editing to do before it was finished.

He went through the audio and cut up the pauses so that they were much shorter and sounded as though the things were all said directly after each other. Once he was happy with that and thought it was fluid enough, he dropped some gameplay he recorded earlier onto the audio. After adding what he needed to (screenshots/videos of what he'd talked about) he watched the video through, then exported it.

It was 9:30 pm by the time the video was done, but it still had to upload to YouTube, which would take a while in itself.

Normally, he would upload the video on private and schedule for it to release at a set time, but he was just too tired to do that so he just uploaded it straight to the public. He'd almost forgotten to write the description, but luckily he remembered just before sending the video to upload. Just as he said, the first thing in the description was 'RED RIOT'S CHANNEL:' and then the link to said page.

After hitting the upload button, he practically threw himself into bed as he snuggled down into his pillows and duvet. He normally liked to check the feedback on the video a couple of hours after it went up, but that was going to have to wait.

I wonder if he'll see he thought as his eyelids felt heavy and the world around him began fading to black, remembering that this was the first time he'd publicly acknowledged that he even knew of Red Riot's existence. Did Red know of him? That was a mystery in itself.

---

It was around 11 pm when Kirishima was awoken by a notification from his phone. He swore that he had put it on 'do not disturb' mode but apparently not. He recognised the sound as a YouTube notification and rubbed his eyes as he tried to think about just who could've uploaded.

As soon as he unlocked the phone, he turned its brightness down so it didn't hurt his eyes so much. It was then that he looked at the notification, scanning his eyes over the dim words.

New upload from Ground Zero... It read. This immediately plastered a smile onto the red head's face as he clicked on the notification as soon as he had read it. After avoiding social media completely for the past few days, this was a great way to distract himself, laugh, and feel more at ease about his situation.

"What's up fuckers, welcome back to my amazing channel. Today is another episode of recap, where I go over some things that have happened on the internet recently."

Hearing the familiar voice sent a wave of calm through Kirishima. There was a certain gruffness about it yet it was still soft in some strange way. It was kind of hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic or not sometimes, but that was just part of his charm.

The fact that this video was an episode of recap was actually super convenient. Kirishima had been avoiding the internet completely since the whole leak thing happened. He didn't quite know how to deal with it so he decided to leave it until it all died down and no one cared. It was amazing to him how someone from middle school could somehow recognise him from his voice. He was 20 now for heaven's sake, his voice was completely different.

He looked completely different now. Despite the fact that his hair was a completely different style and colour, his shoulders were a hell of a lot broader and his whole physique was much different. The pictures didn't look like him to the point where he'd get recognised on the streets, which was a good thing. The only issue was that if he ever did do an actual face reveal after this, these pictures would be confirmed to be real as there was a scar above his right eye that was definitely noticeable in the pictures. That's the one thing that hadn't changed about him.

As he watched through the video, he giggled every now and then as the smile never left his face, not even once. His heart was jumping around in his chest as if it was looking for a way to escape. It was normal for him to get like this when watching the videos of someone he liked, but this time it felt strangely different. It was almost as if there was a certain feeling of dread added in the mix.

Zero continued talking, but the mood of the video seemed to suddenly change when it was a couple of minutes away from the end. He was known for getting pissed off. It was kind of his brand and he embraced it, but it was still deadly clear when it wasn't just to entertain people.

"The last topic I'm going to talk about in today's video is something I really didn't want to talk about. I find it fucking stupid and I didn't wanna bring any attention to it, but the longer I ignored it for then the longer you would all keep commenting and being annoying. If you follow my twitter, which you totally fucking should, you'll already know what this is."

Kirishima's attention was hooked. He didn't have a Twitter account so there's no way he would've known this. It was super rare for Zero to give any kind of inside context to a story like this. He'd normally just say what happened, give his opinion, and then move on.

This change had Kirishima's heart pounding in his chest. He would always get super emotionally invested in Zero's videos.

"The YouTuber known as 'Red Riot'-"

Kirishima immediately paused the video and sat up in his bed. Hearing Zero say his name, it sent a weird shot of something to his chest. Holy shit, he knows I exist the red head thought, not sure if he was ready for this.

What does he think of me? Is he gonna say? Or will he just say what happened? This doesn't mean he's seen my videos, he's just talking about the leak- Pull yourself together, Eijirou! You're not gonna know until you press play so quit being a bitch and just watch it he argued with himself. After taking a deep breath with his hand clenched over his heart, he continued the video, paying extra attention to every single word Zero spoke.

It was pretty basic at first, he just explained the gist of the situation and what had generally happened. But then it came to the opinion.

"Those guys are dicks, and should've left Red to his privacy."

Kirishima sighed in relief, closing his eyes as he paused the video again. He would've been perfectly happy if it ended there and that was all that was said, but the length of the video proved otherwise. He felt slightly more confident now that was said, so he pressed play without hesitation once he'd had a breather.

"Am I going to show the pictures or say the name? No, I'm fucking not, that's just disrespectful as shit and his content is actually good enough for me to watch regularly. Probably my favourite creator on the site, besides myself of course."

"Of course I've never spoken to him, but he seems really chill and like a pretty good guy, so I don't really see exactly why this happened to him of all people. Go fucking subscribe to him if you losers haven't already. It'll be the top link in the description."

The red head would've had more of a reaction, but he barely heard the last bit considering he had literally thrown his phone across the room as soon as Zero mentioned being fond of his content. Luckily, the phone wasn't too damaged.

Kirishima sat and listened from his bed until the video ended. He mouthed along with the outro, though still completely baffled that that actually just happened.

Ground. Zero. Just. Said. That. I. Am. Probably. His. Favourite. Creator. On. The. Whole. Damn. Site.

His thoughts were fragmented, barely finding their own words. It was all a jumble, barely believing what he just heard. His heart squeezed through his chest, feeling as though it was actually going to explode. It was low-key painful, yet with such a satisfying burn at the same time.

After a few minutes of letting his heart steady, he jumped up from his bed and grabbed his phone. Then, without thinking, he quickly scrolled down to the comments. He hadn't commented anything before in fear that people would call him out for trying to mooch up to him because he had around 100,000 more subscribers. But this time it was different. He had to say something or else it would eat at him forever. He had to say something, but what?

He couldn't make it too sappy, or emotional, or long, but he couldn't just make it a joke either. Plus, he needed to comment something before his fans could spam him too much about the video so it was clear that he watched it because he'd gotten a notification for it rather than people constantly commenting things like 'GROUND ZERO MENTIONED YOU IN HIS VIDEO!!!!!' and things like that.

He panicked but decided not to let himself think too much. There's no way he'd hate you over a comment, stop being silly.

Red Riot • 23:13
Right back at ya <3

As soon as he sent the comment, he immediately regretted adding the heart at the end. It would look even more suspicious if he edited it and people would've screenshotted it by now anyway.

Before he got any notifications about people liking or replying to the comment, he shut his phone off and placed it face down on the table next to his bed.

He laid back down in bed, heart still jumping for joy as he awkwardly screamed on the inside. It was like he was a middle school girl who accidentally bumped into her crush in the corridor and they said sorry.

Although sleeping was going to be hard to achieve, at least he could sleep with a smile for the first time in a few days.

---

The first thought in Bakugou's mind when he woke up was video. He spent a few minutes actually waking up and adjusting to the light peeking through his curtains, but after that, he picked up the glasses that laid on the table beside him and sloppily placed them on his face.

He yawned as he swung his legs over the end of his bed. Then he walked over to his desk and took a seat at his computer, staring at the monitor on the left as he powered it up. He went to his own page and saw that the video had almost double the views a normal recap video would get him in this time. His breath caught in his throat for a second as his eyes widened.

"Why the fuck?..." He spoke quietly, knitting his brows together as he clicked on the video.

Of course, his first instinct was to check a few comments, so that's what he did. What he didn't expect was the top comment, from Red Riot himself.

As he read it, he swallowed a lump that lingered in his throat. The comment already had thousands of likes and hundreds of replies, mostly from fans freaking out. Bakugou looked at the time it was commented and came to the conclusion that Red happened to be subscribed to him too. It wasn't that much of a surprise considering that they both got a fair few comments mentioning the other, but it was still interesting.

Bakugou couldn't help but let a small smile fall onto his lips as he clicked the heart button. If anyone ever saw him like that then he'd lose his shit and threaten to kill them, but he was alone with his own feelings now and there was no threat to him. He tried to brush this off, but it was still pretty cool. So he watches my videos. It's okay. It's cool. No biggie.

He was tempted to pin the comment too but decided against it considering that it might've seemed too desperate. There was no way it was moving from the top anyway, and he rarely hearted comments as is so this was already special.

---

Kirishima was inspired. He was ecstatic after the previous day's events and was dying to make a video. He decided to take Zero's advice and not even do so much as mention the situation. He wanted to find a way to somehow include or reference Zero without being too obvious about it. So when it came to the end of his video, he decided to do something he thought was quite funny.

Instead of saying his normal and basic outro, he decided to lower the pitch of his voice slightly and add more roughness to it. He said Zero's outro in that voice. It was subtle enough so it wouldn't have alarmed people too much who didn't know what it was on about, but enough that people who did know easily understood.

"So that's it for today's video. If you liked it then like it, if you disliked it then dislike it, and if you wanna subscribe then I don't give a shit but thanks, I guess." It was kind of embarrassing that he knew the full thing without a second thought, but that's just how much he'd watched.

He was slightly nervous about leaving it in, but it was hopefully a way to continue their interactions. Kirishima had this chance to maybe befriend his favourite content creator and he didn't want to fuck it up. Maybe what Zero said had given him an ego boost, but even so, he felt amazing just in general.

The leak of his face and name really did bum him out at first. It wasn't the end of the world, but it still meant that information was out about him that he would rather not be out.

There was something about holding an online alias that was so appealing to him. He was anonymous, none of his viewers really knew who he actually was, despite knowing the general aspects of his personality.

The video was posted earlier than it usually would've been. He hated waiting for a video to go up after he'd made it and it was just waiting there. He just wanted to give people things as soon as he'd made them. So at only 3 pm on a Sunday, a new video was up.

---

Bakugou's phone pinged beside him. He had his headset on so it was lucky that it was in front of him so he could see the screen light up, or else he wouldn't have been able to see or hear the notification.

New upload from Red Riot... He dropped his phone down on the desk and his heart picked up in pace as he left what he was doing on his computer to go to YouTube and pull up the video immediately.

Red's videos were the only ones that made Bakugou feel like this. He felt as though if he didn't watch the video immediately, he would be missing out on something huge or that an opportunity would be missed. It didn't make much sense even to him, but he rolled with it anyway.

"Hey, guys! Red Riot here, and today is episode 5 of 'why the hell is this in my recommended?', where I browse through my YouTube recommended page and find some weird shit." The familiar voice filled Bakugou's ears as his eyes focused on the Overwatch gameplay in the background. He immediately relaxed. This was the first time he'd heard his voice since the incident.

There was a certain eagerness in his voice that Bakugou swore wasn't there in the past few of his recent videos, which was nice to hear.

He watched the video with full attention, laughing along with Red every time he lost it over something completely hilarious that he ended up watching. He was laughing more at his laugh than the video itself, but it was still entertaining nonetheless. However, he was taken by surprise as the video was just about closing. He heard his own outro, being said in what appeared to be a subtle impression of him.

Then, as he was scrolling down to the comments, he noticed the top line of the description. 'SUBSCRIBE TO GROUND ZERO:' and then the link to Bakugou's channel. He chuckled at the subtlety yet appreciated it too. He could practically already see the comments freaking out.

He continued scrolling until the comment box was visible on his screen, where he dragged his mouse to and clicked.

Ground Zero • 15:17
Straight up using a clip of my outro‽ Smh

It wasn't very well thought out but it was a cheap crack at something resembling a joke. It can't have been that bad at least, considering the comment was pinned and hearted within the first minute.

This kind of thing continued on for a few weeks. On every new video either of them had uploaded, they would include small but noticeable references to each other in the videos. Whether it was a direct quote from their previous video or even just text flashing on the screen for a second nodding towards them, it was always there.

They were both in the comments of each other's videos without missing a single one as well. Fans had quickly caught on and found it to be a little game of 'what are they gonna do next?', and some extreme fans had started strange theories about the two which were far from correct.

It was all well and good. Both Bakugou and Kirishima were enjoying it thoroughly, and it was nice for the fans to see how this had started to develop into maybe an actual friendship.

However, the comments were rather indirect. They had only talked specifically to each other through the comment sections on their videos, and those conversations never lasted long because fans would always intrude.

Bakugou was quite fed up of this. He thought it was clear that they were just hinting to each other that they wanted to talk more and in private and become actual friends but it seemed that Kirishima wasn't quite catching on. So he was done with subtlety, as the red head was clearly too much of a dumbass to get it.

Bakugou was never normally the one to initiate things like this. He didn't have many friends because he just wouldn't let himself. They were a distraction, they dragged him down. But Red... He understood. He got it. He just seemed like another dorky, optimistic guy but he was also incredibly understanding and was willing to befriend anyone who was up for it.

People like him normally pissed Bakugou off more than anything. But for some reason, Kirishima instinctively knew how to speak his language. He didn't think his actual personality came across as crystal clear in his videos but Kirishima blasted through that without a second thought. It was unclear whether it was intentional or not.

So Bakugou just decided to take the hinting a step up.

Ground Zero • 20:45
Stfu and get twitter already

As soon as Kirishima saw this, his internal organs all flipped inside him. This meant that Zero wanted to actually talk to him more, right‽ Even if it didn't, the opportunity was there, so he opened a new tab immediately and made an account.

The first thing he did was follow @Ground0, who followed him back almost instantly. Zero then tweeted publicly.

It was then that Kirishima's eyes scanned over the 'direct message' button. Zero had tweeted publicly first, so maybe the best course of action was to do that for a while until they somehow ended up in the direct messages.

The one thing he didn't want to do was push Zero away, make him think that this whole thing with him was a mistake from the start, so he had to not act desperate. It would probably be nice to get to know him before getting so personal anyway, though he strangely already felt like they knew each other so well.

---

I'm sorry if this is garbage! I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.