"Hey! You can't do that! How can they be allowed to do that?! That's fucking cheating!"

I had to temporarily take off my headset to calm myself. I had never been good at losing at games, especially not when I felt like it was unfair. This was definitely unfair. I had lost yet another round of Bedwars and I was not happy about it to say the least. Chat of course took this as an opportunity to make fun of me. I love them, but they can all be a bunch of bastards sometimes.

"Shut up, okay, it's harder than it looks," I said laughing, while trying to keep the tiny bit of dignity I still had left. When I had calmed down, I put on my headset again, starting a new game. This game went a lot better than the previous one, and I actually believed that I could win this. Just as I was about to win, I heard a laugh. Not the creepy kind, but it kind of threw me off since it was in the middle of the night. This caused me to fuck up once again, leaving me frustrated for the 100th time this night. I didn't think much of the laugh. It was probably just something my mind had made up.

I continued playing the game. "Okay chat, so I don't know if you all were able to hear that, but I just heard someone laugh and it's like in the middle of the fucking night here." I chuckled a bit when some of them began freaking out, while others simply told me to say hi to whoever was here at this time. Some time had passed when a shout could be heard. Not an angry shout, more someone just speaking very loudly. This time I knew it hadn't been something I just imagined. I could clearly hear someone being very loud in this building, in the middle of the night.

After some time, yet another loud laugh could be heard, this time loud enough for me to not ignore it. "Sorry chat, but I just need to go tell whoever is being so damn loud at 2 am to calm down. I'll be back in a moment."

With that, I left my computer, leaving my chat to entertain themselves. It wasn't because I found the mystery laugh to be annoying, it was rather sweet actually, but I was more curious about who was awake at this time. It was in the middle of the night after all. Most people with healthy sleep schedules would be fast asleep by now, yet me and this other person were still awake. I didn't really have the right to be angry about someone being loud though, when I had not even an hour ago yelled at the person clearly cheating.

I gently opened my door and made my way out to the hallway. Another laugh could be heard in the otherwise silent building. I followed the sound, trying not to be too loud myself. To my surprise, the sound came from the door next to mine. No wonder the laughing had sounded so loud. The walls weren't very thick in this place. I wondered if the person in there had been able to hear me rage too. I was about to knock on the door when I realized that I had no idea what I was going to say to the stranger. I couldn't exactly ask them to be more quiet, since I didn't really follow that myself. With no real plan, I decided on knocking anyways, hoping for things to work out well.

I heard the voice on the other side of the door say something along the lines of "be right back." To who, I didn't know, nor did I care. The person might just have been with some friends. That would also explain the laughter. As I heard footsteps coming closer, I heard the same voice as before mumble "who the hell is knocking in the middle of the night?"

I hadn't really given it any thought how ridiculous this whole situation was. Not until now that was. And it was kind of impossible to stop it at this point. The door in front of me opened with a soft click, revealing a tall man behind it. He was wearing a yellow jumper, light brown curls falling into his face. He had a questioning look on his face. I found myself slightly embarrassed, when I realized he was waiting for me to speak.

"Oh uh sorry," I blurted out. "I just wanted to ask you if you could keep it down a bit. You're being pretty loud." I chuckled. The man before me looked down at the ground, a smile on his face. "Oh yea sorry about that. I didn't think anyone would be here at this time of the night. I'll try to keep it down," he said, lifting his gaze from the floor to look at me. "Thank you," I said and smiled at him.

Even though I knew it would be a weird thing to do, I peeked into his apartment in an attempt to see what on earth could possibly be so hilarious that it had kept him up this late. To my surprise the apartment was completely empty. Not a single person. It was completely dark too, nothing but a computer screen lighting up the otherwise pitch black room.

"Looking for something?" The voice of the man before me brought me out of my thoughts. "Sorry, I was just wondering what was so funny in the middle of the night?" He looked a bit taken aback by the question, not having thought that he would need to explain himself. "O-Oh uh that was just," he stuttered. "Wait, I could ask you the same thing. I mean, not what was funny, but why you got so angry? Yeah I can hear what you are doing too, you know."

Now it was my turn to be startled by his words. I didn't want to tell him that I was a streamer, since that would only lead to loads of complications, but I didn't exactly want to lie straight to his face either. He seemed like a nice guy and I didn't want to make a bad first impression. I decided that telling the truth would be the best way to go about this. The chance that I would ever be talking to him again anyways was very small, so it couldn't do much harm.

"I was streaming. And it can sometimes get a bit heated," I laughed. "Ah well that makes sense. Shouldn't you get back to the stream then?" he asked me. My eyes widened slightly. My stream. Fuck. I had completely forgotten about it while chatting with him. "Fuck you're right," I answered. "I better get back to my stream. Anyways, it was nice talking to you...?"

"Wilbur."

"It was very nice talking to you Wilbur. Have a good night, or morning I guess."

"Goodnight."

With that I turned towards my own apartment, running slightly so I didn't make my chat wait for longer than they already had. I could hear Wilbur laugh at me behind me, before closing the door to his apartment.

I rushed to my chair again, immediately apologizing to chat for being gone for so long. "I'm so sorry everyone, I completely lost track of time! The person making the noise showed to be this pretty chill dude and we talked for a bit. Again, I'm so sorry! Anyways, should we try playing another round of this stupid game? This time I'm going to win, I can feel it! I just need to believe I can do it!"

I carried on the stream as if nothing had happened, but my mind kept drifting back to this Wilbur character. There was just something nice about him. I had a hard time finding the right words to describe his appearance. His voice was extremely calming and he seemed really sweet too. Something inside me really hoped this wouldn't be the last time I saw him.

It was beginning to get seriously late and I decided that I should probably end the stream for the night and get some rest. I explained to chat how I would be streaming again tomorrow and thanked them all for all the donations and the sweet messages. They never failed to bring my mood up, which I thought was amazing. "Now, who should we raid?" I asked them, looking at who else was streaming.

My eyes widened, as I noticed a familiar face pop up. "Are you fucking kidding me," I mumbled, leaving the chat confused. Believe it or not, the man I had just stood face to face with was on the front page of Twitch, currently streaming with a bit over sixty thousand viewers. I couldn't believe my own eyes. Thinking about it, it did actually make a lot of sense. It would explain all the laughing and the other weird noises occurring in the middle of the night with no one else around. I couldn't believe how stupid I had been. Of course it was that. That could also be the reason why he didn't want to tell me what he was doing. I know far too well how embarrassing it is to tell people that you play block games in front of a live audience for a living.

I decided on raiding him with my about two thousand viewers. I said my final goodbyes to chat, as my stream came to an end. I should most definitely go get some sleep, but I decided on staying on Wilbur's stream for a bit. Just to get a better sense of how he was. I found myself weirdly interested in him after only speaking to him for a short amount of time. He was speaking to some other people I didn't know.

He finally noticed the raid. "Thank you so much for the raid Avery! To everyone new here, hi I'm Wilbur! I mostly stream Minecraft, but I occasionally play Among Us or other games with my friends too! I really hope you all will stick around!" With that he continued the game of Minecraft he had been occupied with prior to my raid. It was weird to hear my name being mentioned in front of so many people. I was of course used to streaming in front of a big audience myself, but not nearly as big as his. He obviously didn't know I was Avery, which was weird to think about. It felt kind of creepy that I knew him without him knowing me.

After our little talk today, I promised myself that it wouldn't be the last time I spoke to him. He was really nice and I would love to become friends with him.

After watching his stream for a bit, I made the decision to go back to my apartment. It was a bit more comfortable to sleep in my bed than in my chair. And sleep was exactly what I needed right now. It was almost 4 am and I hadn't gotten any sleep since last night. Even then I didn't sleep for too long. As I locked the door to my office, I could still hear Wilbur's voice coming from his office. Does that boy never sleep?

•

a/n
Thank you all so much for reading! I'm really exited about writing this and I really hope you all will enjoy reading it too! I'm really sorry if this is shit, I'm tired of rereading it and over analyzing every single sentence lol. Consider this a taste of what's to come, since I don't know when the next chapter will be published!

Also, feel free to give me some feedback! It has been a very long time since I last published anything and I personally feel like I got a lot better, but it would be nice with other people's opinions too!