|
"Going the Distance"Written By: Clara Barton Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following
is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said,
these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask
before reprinting. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Angst, language, violence, sex, AU Pairings: 1x2x3 Summary: Duo Maxwell has just signed on to join Team Gundam Wing, an upstart League of Legends team looking to win the World Championships. Duo Maxwell, the first openly gay professional gamer. Duo Maxwell, the guy hated by almost all of Reddit. Duo Maxwell, the guy whose own brother hates him. Duo Maxwell, the guy who really just wants to find a team that doesn't hate him. A/N: This fic is an AU that has the boys playing
professional League of Legends. I'm going to try my best to not get
bogged down too much in game terminology or things like that, but,
well, I WILL reference the game and try to explain as much as I can,
as I go. I'm also way too lazy to make up "new" teams for
the league, so I will be using existing teams and players, with the
exceptions of Team Gundam Wing, Zodiac Gaming, and the Valkyries.
So… I will be referencing real people and real teams. "Going the Distance" Chapter Eight Solo used to say that Duo's biggest fear was that he would turn invisible and no one would ever notice him again. Solo used to tease him about it, used to pretend he couldn't see Duo sometimes or hear him and it had been frustrating and sometimes scary. As a kid, Duo had liked attention, had craved affection and he'd clung to Solo like a shadow and yeah, he'd been afraid of being forgotten or of being invisible. He wasn't afraid of that anymore, in fact, he wished he would just become invisible. Reddit had exploded after his interview, after his stumbling attempt to gloss over the video and ignore Thorin's damned unfair question. The interview had been live, and Duo made Relena promise that he would never, ever again have to do a live interview like that unless it was on the mainstage, after winning a game and she had agreed, her mouth set in a grim line and it was clear she was just as pissed as he was. Everyone was - practice had been tense and even though they weren't upset with each other, their communication had been off and it had not been a good day. Hilde had called later that night, after midnight, and Duo had sat on the back porch for hours talking to her, listening to her dissect the Valkyries and try to figure out how to make the team better and Duo had never been more grateful for a distraction. It meant that he went into the Friday afternoon games tired and restless, but it didn't look like anyone else had slept very well either. Despite that, they won their game against Curse and, miraculously, they beat Team Solo Mid on Saturday as well. It should have gone a long way towards shutting up everyone who doubted Duo's ability to play in the pros, who doubted his ability to focus and who thought TGW had just been a flash in the pan last year. It should have, but it didn't. Zodiac Gaming released a statement on Twitter about the video, saying they hoped TGW learned to channel their aggression into their gameplay and didn't try to harass ZG anymore. It seemed that everyone conveniently forgot the incident that had sparked the almost-fight: Ralph groping Hilde onstage. Reddit, Youtube and Twitter seemed to be full of Duo and TGW haters, and winning games seemed to only upset them more. At least Duo still had his trifecta of fans, Hilde, NoName333 and Perfect Soldier01 posted a fair amount on Reddit, pointing out the success of Duo and TGW, but three fans among a quarter million enemies wasn't all that comforting. By the time Sunday morning came around, Duo was desperate for the soccer game and the chance to hang out with Jason, away from League. Relena didn't come with him this time, which broke a few hearts, but Duo was grateful for that as well. He liked Relena, a lot, but he wanted to get away from everything for an hour, and Relena was, unfortunately, part of that everything. Jason greeted him with a one-armed hug, like he usually did, and Duo didn't try to linger in his embrace no matter how much he wanted to. The game was good, and it felt great to sweat, to run and shout and yeah, he had a few insults thrown his way, but they were good natured and he was able to toss out a few insults of his own, because he didn't have to worry about sponsors or rules or fans or anything. After the game, everyone drifted away and Duo and Jason walked back towards the ZG house together. "You want to stay for lunch?" Duo asked him. Jason shrugged one shoulder. "Should I? You guys start practice after lunch, right?" Duo nodded. "Yeah, but -" "I don't want to distract you," Jason said. Duo rolled his eyes. "I'm thinking lunch with my boyfriend isn't going to melt my brain for the rest of the day." "What about your team?" "Huh?" "They aren't the biggest fans of mine," Jason pointed out. "Relena loves you. And Quatre doesn't have anything against you." "What about Heero and Trowa? Wufei?" "Fuck those guys. This has nothing to do with them." Jason looked at him steadily. "I don't want to cause problems with you and your teammates." "You won't! It's just lunch. If they can't handle the sight of two guys talking over cold cuts then -" "Then what?" Jason challenged. "You'll quit?" "No, of course not." Jason nodded. "Then maybe you should focus on not antagonising them. If this means that much to you..." "You're saying I have to pick you or my job?" "No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that I'm in the way of your job and you want your job a lot more." Duo stared at him and he knew he should be a lot more upset about this, should be angry that Jason was dumping him, that Jason was suggesting that Duo more or less hide his sexuality from his team so that he didn't ruffle any feathers, but Duo felt strangely disconnected. Maybe this was step one towards invisibility? "Can I... still come hang out on Sundays?" he asked and he winced when he heard how pathetic his voice sounded. Jason looked at him for a long moment. "You'd better," he finally said, "or I'll have to listen to Mike bitch about me chasing away the only decent mid-fielder we have." Duo appreciated the attempt at a joke and he chuckled. "Wouldn't want that to happen," he said. It felt awkward, when they reached the street in front of the MSG house, and Duo wondered what he should do. With Alex, the break-up had been pretty quick and very clean - Alex came back from the hospital, packed up his shit, told Duo to fuck off when Duo tried to talk to him and that was that. Jason held out his hand and Duo stared at it for a minute before realizing. "Oh." It felt weird, to end this on a handshake, but Duo supposed it was a lot better than ending it on a trip to the hospital. "See you next week?" Jason asked as he let go. Duo nodded. "Next week." He watched Jason walk away and he sighed. So much for that sex Duo planned on having ever again. -o- "You realize that we're in fourth place," Relena announced at dinner on Thursday. "You realize it's only week four," Wufei shot back and Duo rolled his eyes. The guy was full of snark even when someone was giving him good news. Of course, Duo couldn't really blame him for his crap attitude these days. Duo had received a majority of the negative attention after the video and the interview, but there were plenty of Reddit trolls commenting on the fact that Wufei had attacked his former teammate and Ralph's comment about not being able to get Wufei on ZG. To Duo's knowledge, no one had come out and asked Wufei about that, about whether or not he really had wanted to jump ship with Ralph, and Duo felt pretty confident no one would. "Only six weeks to go," Quatre shrugged. "If we can finish top four this Spring Split I think we'll be in excellent position to finish top three in the Summer." "You really want to go to Worlds," Duo shook his head at Quatre's enthusiasm. "But there is a long time between now and September." Quatre nodded. "Exactly. Which is why we need to work together and put all of this drama behind us." Quatre drew in a deep breath. "I know it's rough, for all of us, but especially for you, Duo." Duo wanted to shrug that off, but then again, there weren't Reddit threads with thousands of posts about Quatre's inability to play League because he sucked cock. "We need to focus, all of us. We won our games last weekend and I want us to win them again this weekend. We're four and two right now, but that's only one game ahead of Complexity. We have six weeks until the All-Star break. I want us to do everything we can to play well, but we also need to work on our PR. We can't be the most hated team in the League, or it's going to start affecting our sponsorships." Duo hadn't really thought about that. "How do we work on our PR?" Heero asked. Quatre looked over at Relena. She tucked her hair behind her ears and cleared her throat. It was clear she was about to deliver a rehearsed speech that none of them wanted to hear. "We need to work on the image of the team as a whole, and also on your individual images. Quatre and I are going to do a live interview next week with IGN, and that should be a good first step. Also next week, there is an MLG event in Chicago on Thursday and I want Duo and Wufei there, at the League of Legends booth, signing autographs and being nice and not answering a single question about ZG." She looked at both of them until they nodded, Wufei with a scowl on his face. "Then, in two weeks, TGW will host a twenty-four hour stream event. All of us - Sally, me, you guys - will take shifts playing the game with the community. We're going to be nice and funny and it's going to be streamed on Twitch." "We have to play. With the community?" Wufei asked, a sneer on his face. Duo thought he was being a bit dramatic about it, but he was pretty uneasy himself. Relena nodded. "We need to make ourselves available, to interact with the fans and we need to try to change the story and get away from all of this drama." "What about us?" Trowa asked, gesturing to himself and Heero. Relena actually smirked. "I'm so glad you asked, Trowa!" She left the room and then returned a moment later with two black boxes. "You and Heero are Gunnar Gaming's newest models!" She handed each of them one of the boxes, and Duo had to chuckle at the mildly disgusted look on Trowa's face. Heero only shrugged and opened his box. Duo had to stare, as Heero put the yellow tinted gaming glasses on. He looked... stupidly sexy. Relena was staring as well, but she looked over at Duo and winked before turning her attention to Trowa. Very reluctantly, Trowa put on the other pair of glasses. Duo knew he was a nerd, had known it about himself for a very, very long time. But something about Heero and Trowa in those tinted glasses... they were criminally sexy already, but the glasses made them look even more so. "You two will be at the Gunnar booth next week at Gamestorm in Portland." Heero frowned slightly. "That will affect our practice schedule." Quatre shrugged. "It will. You guys will be gone Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but our games aren't until Saturday and we'll practice each night, after you guys are done at the convention." Trowa sighed, and Duo couldn't help but be amused by how much he resented being a poster boy for Gunnar Gaming. "Is there going to be a photo shoot?" Duo had to ask. Trowa glared at him. "Yes, I'm so glad you asked," Relena said and Trowa turned his glare on her. "But that's three weeks away. Which means you've got between now and then to stop looking like you want to rip those Gunnars off and crush them," Relena added with an arched eyebrow in Trowa's direction. "It will make my headset too tight," Trowa grumbled. Duo could sympathize with him. When Solo had first gotten his contract with Gunnar he hadn't wanted to wear the glasses while he played, but he had adjusted to it and now wore them all the damn time. "You'll get over it," Relena said, completely without sympathy. Heero turned to Trowa with a smirk. "At least they won't make you wear the headset during the photoshoot," he consoled his partner. "You're just loving this, aren't you?" Trowa shot back and Heero nodded, still smirking. Trowa rolled his eyes and looked away, but there was a slight curve of his lips that made Duo feel irrationally jealous. He was glad they had each other, glad their friendship was so strong and that they had such great synergy in the game, but it didn't change the fact that he envied them and wished he had someone like that as well. "Okay. That's it for tonight. Get some sleep. We leave at ten in the morning for the studio, and we're going to be playing against Cloud 9 and Complexity again, so let's make sure we're on top of our game." Duo tried to sleep. He laid in bed for two hours, tossing and turning and thinking about all of the ways that he and Wufei could seriously fuck up the MLG event. Eventually, Duo gave up on sleep and decided to head downstairs and play a little. Trowa was already there, a mug of milk beside his right hand, sitting in front of his computer and scowling at it. Duo had to laugh, as he watched Trowa try to adjust the glasses and his headset to make them fit better. Trowa heard him and turned to glare. "Sorry," Duo apologized. "Here, let me show you a trick Solo does." Trowa sat still and allowed Duo to adjust his headset, changing the size and then putting it back on his ears a little higher, so it rested on the glasses frames instead of pinching them against Trowa's skull. "How does that feel?" Trowa turned his head a few times experimentally. "Better," he allowed. "And you can see better too, right? I mean, the glasses are actually kind of awesome." Trowa arched an eyebrow. "Do you want them?" Duo snorted. "Nah. I mean, I wouldn't mind wearing a pair, but it's you and Heero they want to model them. I don't think any company is going to be beating down the MSG door asking for me to represent their gear. But you and Heero... obviously they want you two showing off their stuff." "It's going to die down eventually, Duo." "You think so?" Duo shrugged. "I'm not so sure. All this shit started nine months ago and it still hasn't gone away." Trowa clearly didn't know what to say to that, so Duo waved him off. "It's fine. I just don't want it to drag down the team." "You get that part of being a team means being there with you," Trowa said. Duo sighed. "That's not going to help anyone. If everyone on TGW starts getting the kind of hate mail I do, it's going to sink the team. Relena's go the right idea, sending you and Heero off, her and Quatre doing things together - containing me and Wufei at the least important things. We're the toxic elements on the team. The rest of you guys can go out there and make TGW look good and maybe that will be enough." Duo doubted it, but he had to hold out hope for something. Trowa looked ready to argue the point, and Duo jumped in before he could. "I'm going to grab a drink, need a refill on your milk?" "No," Trowa said with a slightly irritated sigh and he turned back to his computer. Duo decided to go the milk route as well, and when he came back into the game room he hesitated before logging on. He could log onto his main account, TGW Deathscythe, but whatever he did would be available for anyone to see, and he didn't feel like being a try-hard at the moment. He also really didn't want to deal with seeing Solo's name pop up on his Friend's list if his brother was on. So, instead, Duo logged onto his other account, the one he had made back in October when he got sick of dealing with hate messages every time he logged onto his main account. DeathFeedsMe wasn't an account he used often, especially not since he had joined TGW, but his stats on the account were still good, still put him in the highest level of competitive play in Solo Queue, and Duo wasn't surprised that he was matched up with a few names he recognized, including COL Prolly. He had played with and against the mid laner a few times, over the years in Solo Queue, and he had great respect for him as a competitor. There were two other players on Duo's team whose names were vaguely familiar, they weren't pro players, but he had encountered them in Solo Queue before. Those two called the bot lane and locked in, earning a slightly snarky comment from Prolly in the lobby chat about instalocking, but their fifth teammate said he was fine with the Top Lane. Duo frowned as he looked at the name. NoName3. Was it just a coincidence that his name was so similar to NoName333, or could this guy be Duo's Reddit fan? Duo locked in Gragas for his jungle pick, which earned a few complaints from the bottom lane, and Prolly asked him if he had been watching Korean streams or Duo Maxwell play it. It made Duo chuckle, because he had been playing it a few times, on his main account, in Solo Queue, and he felt a little vindicated at the knowledge that Prolly thought he was a strong enough competitor to care what he had played. Good to know I'm not the only Duo fanboy, NoName3 typed in. He's pretty cool, Prolly agreed and Duo felt like he'd entered an alternate universe. It had to be the same NoName from Reddit - a guy who was good enough at this game to get matched up with Prolly on his main account and Duo on his other account. Not only that, but Prolly thought he was pretty cool? The game loaded and Duo made himself stop internally cheering and focus on the game. They didn't know who he really was, but Duo didn't want to let his team down either way. As the game loaded, Duo looked to see who they were playing against. Of course. ZG SoloWinsGG and ZG Ralphie were on the other team. The game was hard, and it was long - over an hour - and Duo died more than he should have, but in the end, due to some damned good gameplay from Prolly and from NoName who destroyed the Top Lane, their team won. In the post game lobby there were GGs all around, and Prolly told Solo and Ralph to expect a similar loss tomorrow when they faced off against Complexity. Duo felt better, after the game, after beating Ralph and after helping Prolly kill Solo eight times, but despite the fact that it was almost two in the morning, he wasn't ready to call it a night yet. He started up a new game lobby, but then he received a notification from NoName3, asking him if he wanted to duo. He accepted instantly, the guy was a monster in the top lane, and Duo wondered who he really was, wondered if he was another pro like Duo, playing on a second account so he didn't have to worry about getting called out. But Duo didn't ask, he didn't really want to admit who he was, so it didn't seem fair to expect NoName3 to confess his real name - if he even was a pro. He could just be an incredible amateur. They played two more games that night, winning both handily, and by the second game Duo and NoName3 were feeling confident enough to start roaming the map together and pulling off outrageous plays that Duo knew Wufei would never attempt with him. Duo called it a night at four in the morning, sending NoName3 a friend request before he logged off. He noticed Trowa was still at his computer, and felt a little guilty when he realized he had completely tuned out the presence of his teammate. He probably should have played with Trowa, should have spent the night practicing on his main account, but Duo shoved his guilt aside. He'd had fun, playing with NoName3, and he had been practicing. Maybe it was selfish not to play with his teammate when Trowa was right there, but Trowa hadn't asked him to play either. "Night," he said when he shut down his gear. "I'm right behind you," Trowa said and shut his own computer down. "I didn't mean to stay up this late." Duo nodded. "Yeah, me either. Still, we've got six hours until the drill sergeant drags us out of bed. Plenty of time for beauty sleep." Trowa sniffed. "As if I need it." ~ * ~ |
