Chapter Text
Katsuki sighs and adjusts the stupid game volume one more time. Giving his set-up one last glance over, he shakes the tension in his shoulders out and presses the ‘go live’ button.
He watches his starting screen countdown from three minutes, and then he makes eye contact with himself. He puts on a smug smile and fits easily into his online persona.
“Hey. Welcome to the stream. If you don’t know me, I’m Dynam1ght, but let’s be honest. You know me,” he smirks and watches the chat flood with greetings. His long-time viewers know well enough that his cockiness is mostly a front.
“It’s Animal Crossing today again. I know I’m already at 5 stars, but I don’t have all types of fruit yet, so that’s today’s goal. Cherries and peaches are all we need. And if you nerds are lucky, we might open a surprise gift on stream. Dunno yet. Depends on how much these stupid animals piss me off today,” he drones. Streaming is a lot of filling empty space, and he knows that, but the beginning of stream always feels redundant.
He goes through the normal routine, checking mail, talking to those stupid villagers, and making sure that no one else has a better looking island than him. He’s nothing if not a perfectionist.
“dyna _kitty asks: it’s saturday, so are we doing an RtH tonight?” the text-to-speech voice monotones.
“We do Raid-to-Help every Saturday. It’s Saturday. So yes. Don’t ask stupid shit,” he pauses, “actually, I get paid every time you do, so go ahead and ask all the stupid shit you want,” he laughs a little.
Honestly, despite how cross he’s been with the donator, he’d almost forgotten about the Raid-to-Help. Every Saturday when he’s done streaming, he finds some other sap who’s streaming whatever game Katsuki was playing that night and raids them, sending all of his viewers to that person, to support them.
The Dynam1ght twist, however, is that Katsuki more often than not wrangles the poor unassuming streamer into a Discord call with him and, albeit gently, bullies them. It’s to help, he promises. Katsuki has incredible skill at pretty much whatever he plays, and he really does end up helping most of the people he raids. And he isn’t mean, not at all, he just… jokes.
“I’m actually gonna call it now, nerds,” he says after another half hour or so, “Let's find some poor fucker to screw with, yeah?” he goads, sharing his screen with his viewers so they could help pick. He really does love his viewers. He won’t tell them that, obviously. They don’t need egos.
“A lot of you guys are saying that R3D_R107 is live with Animal Crossing. I think I recognize that name- are we good with them?” he asks his chat. After seeing an enthusiastic ‘yes,’ he smirks and sends a raid R3D_R107’s way.
“That’s my cue to go. I’ll see you fuckers tomorrow if I don’t end up in Red’s stream. Drink some water. Pet a cat,” he rings out his usual ending and stops the stream, immediately clicking over to the other stream.
“-oh holy shit, that’s a lot of people! Fucking Dynam1ght with a raid of over 43,000! Um, welcome?” an enthusiastic voice calls. There’s no face cam, but the voice is pleasant enough that it doesn’t really need it.
“Uh. Hi. I’m R3D_R107, but you guys can just call me Red. Or Eijirou. Or Kirishima. Uh, that’s my name. Most people just call me Eiji or Kiri though. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t care what you call me,” the voice, Kirishima , says. Katsuki can’t help but laugh a little at how nervous the dude seemed. He gets it, though. He remembers his first stream that broke 10k viewers. He’d nearly shit his pants. He couldn’t imagine getting almost 50k people dropped on him at once. He almost felt bad.
He’s quick to message in the chat, with his name attached, and offers to add Kirishima to a Discord call with him, and Kirishima accepts. Usually, streamers would have an admin or a moderator send the information to Katsuki, but Kirishima paused what he was doing and sent Katsuki his Discord information himself, which Katsuki thinks is kind of endearing.
“Uh- hi? Dynam1ght?” Kiri asks after he answers Katsuki’s call.
“The one and only,” Katsuki’s gravelly voice tolls, low as ever. “You can call me Katsuki, though, if you’d like. Or Bakugou. Or Kat. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t care what you call me,” Katsuki jokes, poking fun at the other boy’s previous stumbling.
Kirishima just laughs again. He seems to do that a lot. This should be a fun stream.
“Well alright then, Kat. Welcome to the stream,” Kirishima says, finally ceasing his laughter. “Can I ask what you, uh, want with me?”
“Come tour my Animal Crossing island,” he says bluntly. Honestly, Kat just wants to show off, but he also assumes it would be a smoother intro than demanding to be let onto Kirishima’s island immediately.
“And if I say no?”
“Are you saying no?”
“...no.”
“Then come on, slow ass. I sent you the damn Dodo code already. Don’t show it on stream,” Katsuki says.
“Fuckin’ obviously,” Kirishima says. And then, after a moment, “Uh. Okay, don’t laugh, but I’ve had this game for an hour. I don’t know what a Dodo code is.”
Katsuki laughs.
“I said, specifically, not to do that! So not manly, Katsuki!” Kirishima complains.
“Jesus Christ. Okay, okay, I’m done laughing. I’ll walk you through it,” Katsuki concedes.
It takes about five minutes longer than it should because both boys keep making the other laugh. Mostly Kirishima. The dude laughs a lot. When Kirishima finally makes it to his island, Katsuki is so exasperated that it almost makes him laugh again.
“Holy shit, man, this place is fancy! There are so many villagers here! Woah- there are peaches in this game?” Kirishima gushes, his little avatar already running everywhere and out of Katsuki’s sight.
“Fucker, slow down. Don’t run on top of the goddamn flowers! Jesus, Red,” Katsuki huffs.
“Oh- heh, sorry, sorry. I just got excited,” Kirishima apologizes.
“No worries, nerd. Lemme give you an actual tour,” Kat says, to which Kirishima eagerly agrees.
The other boy seems to look at everything like an excited puppy. Honestly, Kirishima reminds him a bit of his best friend, Izuku, which is probably why Katsuki ends up caving to his requests so damn easily.
“-alright, fine, damn it. You can have one of each fruit. Jeez, it’s like I can feel the damn puppy dog eyes you’re giving me,” Katsuki agrees after being asked about the fruit for the third time.
“Fuck yeah! I knew that would work. Most guys who seem like hardasses are big ol’ softies under the surface. Guess you’re the same, Katsuki,” Kirishima teases.
“Watch it, Red. I’ll kick you off my island in a fuckin’ heartbeat,” Katsuki teases back.
The tour also takes longer than it should. Kirishima has the attention span of a fucking goldfish, apparantly. When they finally end up back at the airport, Katsuki almost feels relieved.
“What now?” Kirishima asks.
“We go back to your island and I laugh at how inferior it is, duh,” Katsuki says. It sounds like a joke, but that’s what’s gonna happen.
“Duuuuude, no fair! I just started today!” Kirishima pouts.
“Sounds like an excuse,” Katsuki goads. He can hear the sigh as Kirishima realizes that he’s essentially stuck in this situation. Then he mumbles something that Katsuki can’t make out.
“Speak up, Red.”
“...show me how to leave the island, please,” Kirishima repeats, only a whisper higher.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
*
“Eijirou.”
“...Katsuki.”
“What the fuck have you even been doing on this island?” Katsuki asks, watching the screen with a pained expression. It doesn’t look like he’s done anything except knocking fruit out of trees. It’s entirely plain. He has decent starting villagers, at least.
“Fishing!” he calls, enthusiastically, “And catching bugs! Wanna see them?”
“But you don’t have a museum…” Katsuki says, confused.
“Woah, is that where they’re supposed to go?” Kirishima asks.
“Oh my god,” is all Katsuki can reply. He lets his head thump audibly on his desk and squeezes his eyes closed. “You fucking himbo. Where are the bugs and fish?” he asks without lifting his head.
“My house!”
When Katsuki finally lifts his head, he sees his avatar being repeatedly hit with a net by Kirishima’s avatar.
“You’re gonna kill me, Red,” Katsuki groans. He just meant it as a general complaint, but he couldn't hold back his laugh as Kirishima immediately stopped hitting his avatar.
“No, not in the game- oh my god. You can’t die in this game. I meant in real life.”
“I… think I’m confused,” Kirishima admits.
Instead of answering, Katsuki just goes around the island pulling weeds and any fallen shit on the ground, and Kirishima mostly just follows him around, chatting idly.
“I have a proposition,” Katsuki says after a while. He realized at about the 2 hour mark that there’s too much wrong on this island to fix in one stream.
“Kinky,” is all Kirishima responds.
“Nevermind, I hate you,” Katsuki immediately counters.
“No! Nonono, I was joking. I am listening respectfully and attentively, I promise,” Kirishima rushes.
“Mmm. Fine. Only because I feel bad for you,” he says, before, “the proposition is as follows: I come back to your island in a week's time and I will help you out again. Do what you want in the meantime, but also, I don’t care, really. Rinse and repeat until you have a nice, pretty, 5-star island,” Katsuki offers.
“I mean- that’s enticing, obviously, but what’s in it for you?” Kirishima asks. Huh. He hasn’t actually considered that aspect of it. On a base level, Katsuki is doing labor for no reward, just to do it. He isn’t sure what to do, so he just mildly panics.
“Content,” he says successfully instead of panicking. “I’ll stream next time, too. My viewers are mean and would probably get a kick out of it, honestly. I know I do,” he admits.
“You’re a weird, dude, Katsuki,” Kirishima says.
“Is that a no?”
“...no.”
“So, same time next week?”
“Fuck it, why not? Same time next week, Katsuki,” Kirishima says with a soft laugh.
“Sounds peachy. I’ll message you later to confirm details later, but I gotta bounce. I hope my viewers are nicer to you than they are to me. Good luck with them. And goodnight, Eijirou,” he says, ending the call before Kirishima could get another word in.
With a sigh, Katsuki finally shuts down his PC and steps out of his streaming room. Streaming with another person is always cathartic, which is why he tries to do it at least once a week. And Kirishima seems like a decent dude, so Katsuki is more than happy enough to use his larger platform to get some fresh eyes on his channel.
The more he thinks about it… he kinda feels bad for coming on so strong about streaming again with him. He doesn’t wanna seem like that much of a jackass, and he definitely doesn’t want to make a guy that nice do something he doesn’t wanna do. Before he can forget, he shoots Kirishima a message.
‘I kinda came on strong on stream without meaning to- you don’t have to stream with me again, or anything. I don’t wanna, like, pressure you or whatever. I just had fun, and it seemed like you did, too, so I didn’t wanna leave without at least offering.’
Katsuki was content with just that, having sent the message and knowing that his conscience was clear, but he couldn’t help but feel a little happy when Kirishima responded in less than five minutes.
‘softie’
‘no, but seriously, i appreciate you doing that! im still totally down to stream n stuff and i did have lots of fun! i look forward to it!’
And with that, Katsuki let himself look forward to the next week, and hopefully solidifying a friendship.