(Dear god this chapter was a lot of work XD 5654 words)

For the first time in a long while, King was nervous about streaming. He had everything set up and he looked pretty darn good in a pair of black jeans and his King jersey, but still...

Nervous.

Lifting his hand to sift through his hair for the hundredth time, King nearly choked on his own breath when his fingers were gently grasped in warm ones, drawing his attention up to a calmly smiling Baron.

"You're messing up your hair, hun," the man said as he gently fixed it before handing him a glass of water.

King took it, but then stared at it for a moment before looking up at Baron.

"We just had water a bit ago."

Baron nodded but instead of taking the glass back, he sat down beside King's chair with one of his own, then looked up at him.

"You're dehydrated."

Huh?

"You had a small cup of water, but you've been licking your lips a lot and even used chapstick twice already."

King furrowed his brow, still confused on the correlation, but didn't bother to argue as he lifted the glass to his lips and downed half of it in one go.

When he lowered it again, he raised an eyebrow at Baron, earning a grin in return.

"Thank you," the man said before lifting his own glass to his lips and slowly drinking a few sips.

King openly stared as Baron turned his attention to the screen, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was currently the main focus of someone else. Well, that was until he turned his attention back to King a moment later and removed the glass from his lips, snapping King out of his daze.

"I think it's time to start your stream? Your game has been beeping for a minute now," Baron said, making King quickly look at his computer monitors.

Oh crap, I really spaced out. I'm so used to staring at his cute nose. I wasn't expecting to suddenly be distracted by his lips, too.

It had probably been because they were pressed against the rim of a glass, but then again, he hadn't gotten distracted by them the last time the guy had drunk something!

Inwardly groaning, King forced himself to focus as he accepted the voice invitation from the matches MC.

"Ah, there is our King! Welcome to today's match, your highness!" the man said, his enthusiasm boiling over into the two chat windows he'd pulled up.

They were both surprisingly active already, with several wondering why King, who had always been on time before, had been late this go around.

Only by a minute or two guys...

Glancing down and to his left, he caught Baron's eyes at the same time the man looked up at him, a hint of humor to his grin as he mouthed 'unforgiving, huh.'

King grinned, then turned his attention back to the computer screens... only to realize his mistake too late.

Floop: Bro, Prince is there! I bet you he was looking at him just now!

MimiIsAPerv: Plz tell me he's naked this time, too!

"Sorry I'm late guys," King replied, ignoring the comments about Prince.

"Not a problem, our King! As luck would have it, your partner is running a bit late, too. They did inform us ahead of time that they were having connection issues, though, and were working on getting things taken care of," the MC said, making King's eyebrow twitch.

Connection issues my arse.

He was just about to look back down at Baron when he remembered that he was on camera and forced his eyes to stay straight ahead. In fact, since he wasn't playing just yet, he reached over and grabbed the half-full glass of water Baron had brought him and began sipping at it to give himself something to do.

A little chime caught his attention a moment later, then two more a few seconds after that one.

What's going on?

He slowly lowered the glass from his lips and eyed the donation bar as it steadily began to go up, then glanced toward the comments on his personal profile.

CompletelyInnocent: How is he so cute just drinking water? Does anyone remember seeing him drink or eat when streaming?!

Gay4King: Never! Not even once, but I'll pay to see it again!!!

Uh, they're thirstier than I will ever be...

A quiet chuckle sounded from beside him, drawing his attention to Baron without his own mind's consent.

The guy was grinning again, and clearly trying to stifle his laughter with a hand over his mouth.

He must have heard his thoughts again, or he was reading along with the chat. Or, more than likely, both of those things.

The chime for his donation notification suddenly sounded almost as if it were a song playing note after note to a specific rhythm.

GayJesus: THAT WAS PRINCE LAUGHING JUST NOW!!

Gay4King: I-I think I might be gay for the Prince, too... that sounded so adorable!

Hey now...

"I'm afraid I'm currently taken, guys," Baron said suddenly, making King jump a little and look back down at him, surprised that he'd actually say something when he had his microphone turned on!

As the chime for his donation account triggered nearly nonstop, King felt as if his heart was also beating at that same speed. He wasn't sure why Baron had said such a thing when he was currently getting a divorce, but he definitely wasn't about to ask him about it.

Instead, he shook off his shock and decided to look at the chat again.

B!tchPlz: Omg I'm so jealous! Someone's got King's heart?!

Size15Shoes;): Is there room for one more?!

Gay4King: ^I second this!

FriendlyNeighborhoodHerpes: I picked the wrong name for this chat but can I third the above statement???

King quickly reached back and rubbed at his neck, rather uncomfortable with the whole situation.

"Alright, so it looks like your partner isn't able to login, so what would you like to do, King? We can do a roulette and just let the computer pick someone who is online, though they might not be as close to your level, or if you know someone you want to play with, you can get them online," the MC said, giving King at least a little break from the comment section.

He really didn't know anyone close to his own rank and level that would work well with him. He wasn't about to ask that girl he'd played with before, either.

I guess I'll just have to try my luck with the roulette system.

He was just about to tell the MC to generate a random player for him when he felt a hand gently squeeze his thigh, immediately bringing his attention down to Baron and a pink tint to his cheeks!

"Would I be good enough for this kind of thing? I'm willing to try it. Though I don't want to bring you down if you know I'm not ready yet," he said, no doubt making the chat ping with a million messages of swooning fangirls and boys.

King ignored them all, however, because Baron had asked him an honest, serious question.

The guy was really good already, but it was true that he'd never done person versus person content, and definitely not at such a high level, either. He would pretty much be throwing him to the wolves, but at the same time...

Glancing at his donations steadily rising, King paused for a moment, then looked at both his personal, and the match's comment sections.

OneScoopPlease: I'll pay! Even if he isn't good yet!

Same: Same! He's just a baby to Infinity but he looked great when you were playing with him the other day! Let him experience a PVP match!

B!tchPlz: I agree! We won't be upset if he's not great. He's still learning! We'd love to see him try though!

King pursed his lips and thought it over. He didn't mind if Prince played, but if he lost, his rank would drop a bit. Not that it would likely affect his current contract, but it would be some work to rebuild. However, if they somehow won, not only would his rank rise since he was using a completely new player as a partner, but Baron would also gain a good amount of points, and they'd both likely earn a hefty chunk of change, too.

There's only one real problem, though.

Looking up, King addressed the MC.

"I have a friend who is willing to play, but his character isn't at the level cap yet. Can you give me a minute so I can buy a jump token for him?" he asked, curious if it would be allowed.

You had to be a certain level before you would even be allowed to buy such a token, and it took millions of in-game gold just to afford a single one.

For higher ranked players, however, they were extremely useful and helped level a character to max when you don't have time to do it yourself.

The MC paused for a moment as he considered this, or, more likely, waited for an OK from the higher ups, then after a minute he replied cheerfully, "we'll take care of that for you! The character is Prince, correct?"

King nodded as he said "yes," then set his controller aside and leaned forward to begin setting up the laptop for Baron.

"B—Prince, you're going to have to look at a quick guide for the job you're playing so that you know what your new skills are. Pull it up on your phone real quick," he said as he began the login process for the game on the laptop.

Baron quickly did as told, then scrolled through the new information.

"It doesn't look too bad. I think I can learn it quickly," he said as King finally leaned back and handed Baron his spare controller.

"Don't worry about winning, okay? Just do what you're comfortable with and I'll handle the rest. You might want to stay behind me for the first round to learn what the other players can do, too," King said, earning an understanding nod from Baron as he glanced between him and his phone, doing his best to memorize what he could as his character loaded onto the screen.

King took that moment to teleport back to the standard game, then run up to Prince once his character materialized next to where he'd been left previously.

"Here, take this gear real quick. It's not perfect for your class, but it's at least appropriate for your new level," he said as he quickly traded the items, then looked back up into his camera lens.

"Alright, I think we're good to teleport back to the private PVP instance," he told the MC, needing the man to initiate the teleportation spell since it wasn't one that could be used by most players.

The MC quickly did as told and teleported both their characters back into the area King had originally been.

"Alright, it looks like we're all set! Your opponent today is team Firestorm, though I'm sure you've already read that in your match notes! I'd like to give them a big thank you for being so patient as we got things fixed!"

"Not a problem, guys," the leader for Firestorm said over the mic, surprising King a bit.

He didn't even think they were in the voice chat yet.

"It's nice to finally get the chance to play against you, King," the young man said, making King return his words with a smile.

"Likewise, let's have a good match."

He knew better than to ask for any kind of leniency for Baron. He'd agreed to play a ranked match, so the other team wasn't going to go easy on them. Besides, they might gain some points for killing him a few times, but they won't gain a whole lot for killing Prince, since he had absolutely no person versus person standing to begin with.

Allowing him to play was pretty much one of two things to the other team. A free, easy win, or a chance to play against King that they didn't want to pass up.

Either way, they wouldn't bother with Prince much until they got him out of the way first.

Reaching up, King pressed the mute button on his headset, then looked down at Baron.

"Don't play defense at all, okay? They aren't going to care about you nearly as much as they will me since you aren't worth half the points I am, and even if they go after you, once they catch you you'll be dead almost instantly since I couldn't get together fully upgraded gear for you so quickly."

Baron looked up at him and nodded with a calm smile.

"Got it. I'll just focus on attacking and evading instead of shields or healing," he said, making King smile and nod.

He was extremely nervous about the match about to start, but it seemed like Baron was quite calm and collected as he attacked one of the fake NPC dummies that were set up in the area to test your newer skills on before matches.

He continued to focus on it right up until they were teleported into the battlefield.

"Alright! Thank you everyone for your patience! I'll be the MC for this match, my name is Butch, by the way, and without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you a fan favorite, team Firestorm!"

King watched as Baron continued to press buttons, changing around his abilities and skills last second.

"And their opponents; I'm sure everyone knows our main man, the King of Infinity!" the MC said, making King quickly look up and smile sheepishly.

"I'd also like to introduce those who are just now joining us to our King's partner for this match! Since his original assigned partner is having connection issues, King brought in none other than his sweet Prince to play at his side today!"

You're milking this quite a bit, huh?

Baron chuckled again, his smile contagious as he shrugged one should and grinned up at King.

Deciding not to let it bother him, since Baron seemed perfectly fine with the added nonsense, King just continued to smile until the match was finally started.

"Alright, so the goal is to pretty much either take over their base by destroying the pillar within their borders, or the easier way, in my opinion, is get enough kills to win by points," King said as he began advancing slowly, making sure that Baron was keeping up fine.

"You aren't going to be worth many points because you haven't even finished the main storyline, let alone done any PVP, so their main target will be me. That will leave you to either help me kill them, or go after their pillar. I'll leave that up to you," King said, glad that he'd turned his mic off earlier so that the other team couldn't hear him.

The game started off as he'd expected, with Inferno, Firestorm's head player, immediately coming after him. Neither him nor his partner, Flame, even batted an eye at Baron, leaving Prince to do as he wished as they chased King's character down like rabid dogs.

Baron struggled to keep up with his casting right off the bat, and his ranged attacks were missing, too, due to the opponent's speed and fulling upgraded stats and gear.

"Don't worry, just do what you can," King reassured him as he spawned a shield just in time to block a fireball aimed at his back, then jumped to the side as an arrow whizzed past his nose!

Baron simply gave a hum of agreement and continued to focus, but King was hearing a surprising amount of buttons being pressed when considering how much the guy's character was actually doing.

Is he resetting his abilities again? In the middle of a game?!

"Oh ho? I can see Prince's character's statistics changing faster than his arrows fly! I've never seen someone do such a thing in the middle of a match before!" the MC yelled, confirming to King what was happening.

Well, I did tell him to do as he wished...

Shrugging off the odd tactic, because he couldn't fault Baron for anything since he'd just thrown him into the match as a newbie, he simply refocused his attention on keeping himself alive.

Darting into the forest, he hurried through the trees, bushes, then finally out into a small swampy area. It was harder to move in such a location since the sandy mud automatically reduced your speed, but that also meant that it would slow down his attackers, too. One of which was a much stronger melee than they were a caster, saving him from taking too much damage as he focused more on deflecting his partner's stronger magical attacks and returning fire whenever possible.

Still, he would likely end up dying soon, though he was trying his best to at least take out one of them before he went down.

"I think I figured this out," Baron mumbled to himself as the screen on both of their computers suddenly shook as the edges turned a sandy brown before slowly fading away.

Did... did he just cast gravity? In a PVP match?!

"Whoa! I haven't seen anyone use gravity when doing a ranked match! There are so many better spells, but we can't fault Prince for not knowing!" the MC said, being completely honest.

Gravity wasn't bad when fighting against lower level monsters, but to use it against opponents in a ranked match was kind of bad. There were much better spells, like fireballs and blizzards, that could be useful in those magic slots.

"King? The guide said that water will conduct electricity in this game. Do you have any of those attacks on your hot-bar available right now?" Baron asked calmly as King continued to deflect the blasts and their opponents completely ignored that their character's movement speed had been reduced further by Prince's gravity spell.

Since he was so busy, King simply nodded and pressed the button on his controller to unleash a massive storm of lightning! It wasn't the strongest spell he had, and he definitely favored water abilities against their current opponents who were wearing fire armor to deflect that element better, but when the bolts of lightning hit the water and Flame's hit points immediately went from sixty percent to zero, King blinked, stunned.

Inferno's points also took a bad hit, dropping to twenty-five percent and were now dead even with King's.

"I'll finish him," Baron said calmly as he unleashed his own weaker single lightning bolt attack.

Inferno tried to dodge out of the water, but the gravity spell was still in effect, halving his jump distance and slowing down his movement speed enough to allow the attack to overtake him with the help of the water still clinging to his armor.

"Did... did you guys just see that?! Not only did Prince use gravity in a competitive match, but him and King used the conduction utility of water and caught not only Inferno and Flame off guard, but I think all of us as well!" the MC yelled, clearly stunned.

King glanced at the comments for only a moment, but it was clear that no one had expected such a simple set of skills to work.

He was about to say something to Baron, congratulating him on a great plan, when he noticed the guy pressing a bunch of buttons on his controller again!

Another set of changes?

Unable to help himself, King just grinned and winked at the camera.

"My Prince is pretty amazing, huh? Even having only played for a day, he's got the hang of it," he said, making his personal crowd, as well as the match's general chat, erupt in excitement!

His payment chime also hadn't stopped going up ever since Prince had made his first kill.

There's going to be a lot of money coming out of this match.

"I'm going to go try something alone. Is that okay?" Baron asked, making King nod as he got back to business and ran from the swamp, unwilling to risk getting caught trying the same strategy twice.

"Go for it, do whatever you'd like," he said as he quickly healed himself, then began putting up several magical shields around himself.

He watched as Baron's character disappeared off the edge of his map, going out of view of the distance he could see... and likely what their opponent could see, too. Most people didn't bother using abilities to extend their sight in person versus person since the highest points were always gained by killing your highest level opponent.

If someone tried to attack your pillar, an alarm would go off and let you know to return, so paying attention to people who were so far away that your map didn't register them was generally pointless.

Hmm... if Baron is going after their support pillar then maybe I can help him out.

Switching his own abilities around a bit, King began placing binding traps, the first time he'd used them in PVP since he was new. They didn't hold strong players long, a mere few seconds, if that, but most people didn't expect to see them in a serious PVP match, so they wouldn't have any upgrades to deal with the binding timers.

"Can anyone tell me what King is doing? Your highness, what are you doing?!" the MC asked, clearly confused since King never bothered with such basic tactics.

Pushing a button on his headphones to turn his microphone function back on, King smirked and used a cloaking spell, making his marker disappear from the map before he jumped up into one of the trees there to wait for Inferno and Flame.

At the same time, Baron spoke, calm as ever.

"Can you turn your mic off please?"

King immediately pressed the button to mute them again, making the MC quickly begin throwing out assumptions on what they were discussing to bolster the ever growing crowd of spectators.

"I'm going to put down some timed spells to deal damage over time once they are completed, then start attacking their pillar," Baron said as he got to work.

King's cloaking spell wouldn't last much longer, so he was setting up his own spells to get his best possible chance at a surprise attack.

"Okay," King replied, but then paused as he thought of something.

"Hey, could you actually start attacking the pillar as soon as you're done with the spell you're working on? I have an idea."

Baron didn't even hesitate when he replied, "sure."

Not a moment later the notification came up on the screen that Firestorm's team pillar was under attack!

"Oh ho! The newbie has gone directly for Firestorm's pillar! This won't end well for King's Prince if he doesn't get him out of there quickly!" the MC announced loudly, sounding almost like a fanboy, himself!

As expected, Inferno and Flame both slowed their characters to a stop, likely discussing who was going to go back and handle the new guy's pathetic attempt at toppling their pillar, but King couldn't have picked a better spot to not only wait in hiding, but also to have set binding traps.

While Flame was sent to dispatch Baron's cat boy, Inferno stayed behind to keep tracking King's human. Except, right as he turned to continue in the direction he'd been going, magical vines of light suddenly erupted from the ground, wrapping around his legs before his character could jump out of the way!

"Gotcha," King whispered as he quickly unleashed a multitude of magical spells to practically fill the entire area with blinding light, then he leaped down from his hiding spot, withdrew his sword, and scored a perfect critical hit for the meager remainder of Inferno's hit points!

"Did you guys see that?! Did you?! Because I didn't see anything after that mass of spells, but now Inferno's HP is completely gone!" the MC squealed like an overly excited little girl!

"You guys! He's not the King of Infinity for nothing, yeah?! For those of you just joining us, this is the King's match day for donations, and his little Prince has even joined him for his first ever PVP match!" the MC said, then added as he caught his breath, "and Prince even got first blood!"

Unable to control his excitement, King leaned forward and tapped the microphone button on his headphones.

"That's right, you guys underestimated my Prince, and now you're going to feel the consequences," King said as he quickly dashed through the forest towards Firestorm's pillar.

It was still slowly losing stamina points even as he saw Prince's own hit points steadily dropping as he tussled with Flame.

Surprised you're still standing, but I really shouldn't be, should I?

While Inferno was still waiting on his respawn timer, King arrived just in time to deflect a fireball, making Prince spin around abruptly in order to seize the opportunity he was given! He quickly sent a blast of water just over King's head as he ducked!

King finished Flame off with a quick water whip, then immediately turned to begin a full-on assault on Firestorm's pillar!

"Look at them go! I've never seen our King bother to go for the enemy's pillar, but if they can get it down, the match will end and all remaining points will be awarded to his team!"

A quiet beep alerted them to Inferno's approach, but King just grinned down at Baron, who was looking up at him with a similar expression.

They didn't need to speak to know what the other was thinking now.

Let's go... friendly fire.

He'd heard Baron tapping away at his controller as he was simply resetting his damage over time spells, so when he suddenly became much faster, but his overall attack and defense dropped dramatically, he knew what he was going to try and do.

As Inferno actually ignored King and went after Prince in a rage of explosive melee attacks, King hurried about, intercepting the guy's character at every chance he got! Inferno had to be extremely careful not to damage his own pillar, though, so with Prince's speed helping him, Baron was actually managing to survive the guy's erratic but cautiously-aimed attacks.

"Look at that dodging ability from Prince! It seems like he's downgraded all of his attack and defense in favor of speed and maneuverability, but you can't tell me that isn't pure skill, too!" the MC shouted excitedly!

Inferno's hit points actually dropped to zero right before he could finish off Prince, leaving Baron's character at 2% hit points!

"Look at that mastery! It is art! Art I tell you! These two were born to play together!"

With Inferno out of the way again, King and Prince turned their attention to the pillar and attacked as fast as they could, ignoring Prince's slowly regenerating health in exchange for the chance to deal more damage!

"They're going for it! They're doing it!" the MC shouted as the comment and donation section both hummed with nonstop notifications!

"Focus on the pillar. Ignore everything else!" King said as he set up as many shields as he had the mana for, then continued tearing at the pillar along with Prince!

He could hear Baron switching his skills again and noticed his attack rising steadily as his speed dropped, but ignored it in favor of making sure that he was doing as much damage as quickly as possible, too.

"Flame is up! He's coming, guys!" the MC yelled, clearly on the edge of his seat, too.

King completely ignored the attacks now leveled at him, not even bothering to dodge as his shields took the brunt of the force.

"Four percent! It's at four percent!" the MC shouted!

King's hit points began to drop as Inferno finished respawning and joined the attack on him, quickly dropping him below fifty percent!

King still refused to pay them any mind as he unleashed as much damage as he possibly could over and over again!

"Oh no! King is about to go down but Prince definitely doesn't have the amount of attack he does! He might get killed before he can finish off the pillar! This is a close one, guys!"

King ground his teeth together, knowing that the MC was right.

If they died, then the pillar will automatically begin restoring its hit points while they respawn on the other side of the map. It would have been a wasted effort.

We have to destroy it right now!

Noticing a blur within the flurry of effects, King forced his mind to ignore it as he summoned the last of his stamina! In that exact moment his hit points stopped dropping at three percent, giving him exactly the amount of time he needed to deal the killing blow to the pillar!

The animation for the massive pillar of stone slowly falling from the sky to crumble before his character's feet took over the screen as the words VICTORY appeared on the screen.

With his hands actually shaking as they held the controller, King waited with baited breath as the cutscene finished, then returned them to the battlefield. Only then did he heave a loud sigh of relief.

He's still alive.

He had no idea when he'd started thinking about the time he'd found Prince on the bridge right after Baron had attempted to kill himself, but somehow he had known that the fleeting image his eyes had picked up right before he'd dealt the final blow to the enemy's pillar was Prince darting in front of his own character to shield it from attacks just long enough for them to succeed, but...

Leaning back and letting his controller drop from his hands, King closed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

Jesus, that scared me to death...

"Let's here for our team Royalty!" the MC shouted, making King blink open his eyes as he sat back up with a tired smile.

Team Royalty?

"That was an absolutely amazing game! We're going to give our players a few minutes to take a break and relax before we do our after-game interviews, stay tuned!" the MC said, signaling that King could turn off the stream for a few minutes.

King did that immediately, then made sure his mic was off before leaning back a little and looking down and to his left.

Baron was there, smiling up at him as he always did.

He's here, and alright.

Swallowing, King sniffled, then felt a tear run down his cheek, making Baron's smile quickly vanish as he reached out just in time to catch King as he fell right into his arms!

You scared me! I know it's just a game but I was so distracted and I thought...

Strong arms held him firmly to Baron's chest until he managed to calm himself down, then finally look up with damp eyes and cheeks.

Baron had returned his smile to his face, but it was a careful one this time as he leaned forward a little to press a kiss to King's forehead.

"I'm sorry I startled you, sweetheart. I was so focused on making sure that we won that I didn't think about anything else," he said honestly as one of his hands began to gently rub along King's back.

King stared at him, blinking silently for several moments before he finally simply leaned forward and settled his head against Baron's shoulder, then closed his eyes.

"We won..." he said after a little while.

Baron replied immediately.

"We did. I really enjoyed playing with you."

Tilting his head up a little, King blinked open his eyes, then froze.

Baron was staring down at him, his steady smile still on his face, but the expression in his eyes had changed.

Swallowing for a second time, King pursed his lips, then licked them, feeling quite dehydrated now.

"Alright, let's call our teams back for their interviews! We'll start with our winners, Royalty!"

King abruptly snapped out of his daze and sat up as Baron's arms easily fell away from his back and the man's eyes cooled.

"I-I have to do the interview," he stuttered as he felt his face warm.

Baron simply gave a quiet chuckle and reached up to rustle King's hair.

"Go ahead, hun."

King nodded, then carefully got back into his chair on his now-wobbly legs.

"King?"

Looking to the side right before he intended to turn the stream back on, he froze as he felt Baron's thumbs gently press beneath his eyes and brush away the remaining moisture there.

The man had gotten up on his knees in order to reach his face, which put his face just-barely below King's... and he didn't seem interested in removing his hands just yet.

"I just wanted to say that you did very well in our match, and I'm proud of you."

King felt his face warm further, but before he could respond he heard a beep from his computer, telling him that the MC was waiting for him.

Smiling, King decided to settle on the quick way of responding and turned his head to the side, then pressed the briefest kiss to the palm that still hadn't lowered from his face yet.

"Thank you, my Prince."

He didn't get a chance to even look at Baron's expression in response to his words or actions because he knew that he was on a timer and quickly reached forward to turn his stream and microphone back on to do their interview.

Besides, he probably wouldn't be able to handle any kind of response from Baron right then, because his heart was literally pounding in his ears as his tongue struggled to make the simplest of words as the interview began.

Wh-what did I just do?