Charlie had always prided himself on being the brave manly one—at least on camera. “I play a lot of horror games on this channel, and yet some people still think I’m a baby. Which I’m not,” he declared, his voice tinged with a mock-threat as he ran a hand through his unruly blonde spikes. His chat, naturally, was already in stitches. That was the beginning of the end—not the dramatic kind, but the kind of downfall only a Twitch stream could immortalize. It was cute, really. But no one watching was going to let him forget this day.

He was all set up at his desk, the soft hum of his PC filling the studio as two monitors glowed in front of him—one showing the stream and all its logistics, the other displaying the third horror game of the day. He hadn’t lasted more than thirty minutes in either of the first two without his heart rate shooting past 100 bpm. His goal now was to keep it steady at 80, and he was doing surprisingly well—until she walked in.

The door opened, and his head whipped to the side almost instinctively. There you were, stepping quietly into the room, a bottle of water in one hand and a bowl of snacks in the other. That’s all it took.

Shit.

His brain scrambled. You hadn't done anything but exist in his line of sight, and still—fuck, she makes my heart rate spike. If chat figured this out, they’d never drop it.

In a desperate attempt to cover his reaction, he leaned into a bit involving a weird, three-pronged object in the game. But it was too late. The AI assistant—voiced by Grizzly and designed to help him manage his in-game panic—popped up on the screen, a cute avatar blinking at him. “Oh no, your heart is beating too fast! Inhale. Exhale!”

Charlie stared in horror as the number shot over 100. Betrayal had never looked so pixelated. Slowly, silently, he lowered his face into one palm and simultaneously side eyeing his stream to hopefully not embarrass him in front of his girlfriend.

The chat was already exploding.