Work Text:
Oskar had nothing against being alone.
He hadn't come back to Poland to celebrate Christmas Eve, and so he was sitting in his gaming chair in the otherwise deserted Fnatic office. Everyone, even the content guy that kept visiting him until a day ago, was spending this time with their families or loved ones. It's not like Oskar didn't have any of those things though – he could've been in Tczew, looking out of the window in search for the first star, traditionally indicating the start of the Christmas dinner. The reason why he wasn't was simple – he chose not to.
There wasn't great philosophy nor any religious reason behind this choice – he was just too lazy to go back home. After all, his city was a small one, offering nothing Berlin couldn't. The only thing to look forward to would be the family, but he was 21 already and didn't appreciate his mom telling him what to do like she always did when he came back home. This time, to spite her and the rest of his Christian family, he stayed in Berlin for Christmas.
The dim atmosphere of the afternoon was illuminated with Christmas lights of various colors hang around the street lamps outside of the office, their bright glow painfully reminding Oskar what day it was. He also heard what Mariah Carey wants for Christmas at least 500 times the last two days. To say it was just getting on his nerves would be an understatement, but someone in the neighborhood just kept playing the song. The only thing worse would be to know what happened on the very next day the last Christmas... whoops.
This was too much.
Oskar had nothing against being alone, but somehow it felt lonelier than usual on this particular day.
He was waiting for a League of Legends game, but the queue wasn't popping for 34 minutes already. Guess not many high-level people were playing on this day – he found the game before after 4 dodges and besides Oskar, the lineup consisted of three diamonds, two plats three masters, and one challenger. Regardless, there was nothing better to do. He could play something else, but if it took this long to find a game of League, there was no way he would easily get any other queue to pop.
He went onto his discord – everyone was saying their „Merry Christmas”es and spouting other meaningless phrases. Boring. Painful. Irritating.
Loneliness felt like a thirst that one can't sate. Like the walls of the room slowly coming closer and closer, enclosing Oskar in his space too wide for one person. It felt like something that shouldn't be there, but was, and even though it was with him, it wasn't a friend, quite the contrary actually. It evoked the need to speak to somebody, even though he knew it'd be just a surface-level solution.
Almost nobody from Oskar's friends' list was online. Maybe they were just hiding? He tried calling Crownie but, of course, he was offline and didn't answer. It was around the time where he would sit around the table with his family.
Oskar called a few other friends to no avail and finally decided to just go for somebody who was online. There wasn't much choice, and the best was probably...
"Hello?" LS's hesitant voice reverberated from the other side of the call. He sounded surprised and wary, rightfully so. He must've thought that Oskar would've never called him without any insidious motif and he was mostly right. Well, except... it just happened.
"Hello. What you up to?" Oskar asked casually, a bit worried inside that the man would just cut the call. He'd made it in a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability and it would hurt his ego to be straight up rejected.
LS sighed.
"I'm working. Can you cut to the chase?" he huffed.
"You're working? Today?" Oskar asked. He knew that if LS had been really busy, he wouldn't have answered the call in the first place. Not from him at least.
"Yeah, people tend to lose their minds around Christmas but it's just a day! I'm not doing anything urgent, just the usual stuff. I was going to take a break anyway. So? You got my full unadulterated attention, go on."
"I don't know, I'm just bored. You up for a game?" Oskar said and turned on his camera.
"Oh my god, if you aren't spoiled. I'm not playing with 300 ping, Mr. European," LS replied, not tartly remarking the fact that Oskar was now looking at him from the screen, but instead silently switching on his own camera. His room was dark, the only light coming from the computer. His face was barely visible through the shadows, but he looked tense, his eyes nervously switching between something on the screen. Nonetheless, he raised one eyebrow and smiled faintly.
"Hmm," Oskar hummed, "I'm sure I could still slay with 300 ping, but I don't know if it'd be enough to carry your ass," he said but considered logging into the Korean server anyway.
Just before he clicked to cancel the queue, it popped.
"Heyyy, I finally got a game! You can watch me play, how about that?"
Oskar accepted the game and smirked when an idea passed his mind. The player assigned toplane was a plat 1 Darius one trick. Seemingly a nice guy, he instantly agreed to Selfmade's request.
"You know people pay me to watch their games, right?" LS pointed out jokingly, looking straight into the camera.
"You should pay me for being able to watch my gameplay from up close," Oskar answered.
"Fine, we can make it a deal then," LS said with a shrug.
"You're not trying to scam me? Wow, Christmas spirit, let's go!"
"Okay, turn on the screen share- wait, why did you switch for top? Is this guy a jungle one trick or what?"
"Nah," Oskar said as his mouse hovered over Renekton. He attempted evil laughter and even it wasn't very successful, LS' grimaced face involuntarily relaxed into a smile.
"Selfmade, no."
"Selfmade fucking yes!"
Oskar picked the champion, marveling at the sight of LS shaking his head in disapproval.
***
"Your whole team is down, this Lilia is 1/17, freeze the lane!" LS malded, much more into the game than he would like to be. Oskar wasn't listening to the coach's advice and his team was losing. It wasn't his fault though – he won his lane hard and was midlane seemingly 24/7, but his Yone still managed to lose to Akali. The autofilled jungler was inting, but the worst of all, their Bard was staying botlane all game, despite him and the ADC losing both towers and going 4/20. Well, at least the score was funny.
"Fuck your freezing, do you really think I can win this game by staying here and not doing anything?! They're inting if I'm not here," Oskar said, and just as he was finishing the sentence the enemy Akali found the Bard and the screen announced that an ally has been slain. "I don't even scale! What the fuck do you want me to do by afk farming?!"
"It's your fault for picking Renekton, this champion is literally useless. Congratulations, you went 13/0 in the laning phase, so what? You can kill two or three of them, but with their team comp you can't win a whole team fight by yourself."
"It's not about the team comp, man! My teammates have clearly no hands, this is a support difference," Oskar yelled, throwing his hands into the air in exasperation.
"This game was lost in the champion select."
"Fuck you, it was not! If my teammates weren't complete idiots I'd be able to do something. They're griefing, there's nothing I can do." Oskar's rage finally erupted and he screamed some Polish curses at his teammates.
"What I'm saying is that you'd lose even if they weren't," LS shrugged, visibly content with how the game went. It was irritating the jungler to end to see him smug like the green cat some people sent on discord.
"Ahhh, I can't stand you and your bullshit, you're completely delusional," he ran his hand over his hair in frustration.
"Okay, how am I delusional when you picked this champion and now you have no options. That's a W for me, any truers?"
"Oh my fucking God, you're not even streaming LS! You don't get this, do you? This game would be lost even if I was a fucking... whatever you like, Kassadin? It's a team difference, not a comp difference."
Oskar was fed up with the game. The surrender vote went through as and he closed the client as soon as the suffering finished.
They sat there in complete silence for a few minutes, only the clicking of their keyboards and some tacky Christmas jingle hearable in their empty rooms. Despite Oskar's malding, the call stayed unbroken. LS's rapid typing sounded like a machine gun over the call.
"Okay, you have to calm down. Let's just find something that we both like and talk about it, okay?" LS said finally. "For example-"
"I think I know what you're thinking about," Oskar cut in, seemingly already in a better mood after he watched a cats falling down from the bed compilation on YouTube.
"Really? What?"
"Nemesis," he said with confidence.
"Oh. Thaaat guy. I was thinking about fries with ketchup actually."
"I eat mine with mayo."
"Nemesis?"
"Fries, you fucker," Oskar blurted.
LS laughed but stoped abruptly.
"Wait, fries with mayo? Are you a barbarian or what?"
"Hm, maybe," Oskar answered with pride. "I'm both a barbarian and a sinner, can't do anything about this."
"But you do like sushi, right?" LS asked out of a sudden, sounding slightly pressed.
"Huh? Yeah, of course. There's even a place in Berlin that serves sushi with chicken, I love it."
"Okay, greeeat," LS drawled and silence fell between them like a blanket of snow, so coveted on Christmas. Oskar looked out of the window to watch the lonely Berlin streets, completely deserted at this hour. Somehow the view wasn't painful anymore. The colorful lights were now switching colors in regular beats, matching with his heart.
"Are you not celebrating Christmas?" he asked.
"No, I was working. I have no one to celebrate with either way," LS said casually, but his jaw tensed a little.
"Ha, what a loser. Guess we just spent it together then," Oskar smiled reassuringly.
Was it to LS or to himself, he couldn't tell.
"Yeah," LS said simply and grinned. "Okay, it's 4 AM, if you allow I'll have to excuse myself."
"What if I don't?" Oskar teased. He wasn't particularly wishing that the streamer would stay on the line any longer, the words just felt right.
"It wasn't a question. Enjoy your Christmas dinner, bye bye!" LS waved into the camera and cut the call.
"I'm not having a-" Oskar started but realized LS couldn't hear him anymore. He was alone once again.
The doorbell rang. Oskar considered not opening the door at all since he wasn't expecting anyone, but it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
It was food delivery. The address was right, the name was also correct, but it was ordered under an unfamiliar phone number. Oskar took it anyway, already expecting what was inside. He couldn't help but laugh to himself when he unpacked the sushi, Merry Christmas! written on the plastic lid with a marker.
LS didn't know a thing about the game he was a coach of, he was stubborn and stupid, but it seemed like during Christmas even he could talk in a human voice.
For the rest of the night, Oskar had nothing against being alone.