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It was a quiet Thursday morning, the kind of grey-lit calm that blanketed the city in a slow, sleepy yawn. Castorice sat cross-legged on her oversized armchair, wrapped in a lavender knit sweater three sizes too big and flanked on either side by a tower of cozy things: a half-finished cup of chamomile tea, a hardcover fantasy novel with the dragon-shaped bookmarks Hyacine had gifted her sticking out of it like spines, and her sleeping cat, Pollux, curled into a tight bun of grey fur. She fiddled absently with the end of her loose braid, humming to herself.
She was off-stream for once. No cozy overlay. No Twitch chat pinging away in real-time. Just the gentle ambient music she played during her reading vlogs, now wafting through her apartment speakers like a lullaby for the morning.
The kitchen light flicked on, and she glanced up with a smile.
"Morning," she murmured.
Mydeimos - ‘Mydei’ to his friends and nearly everyone online - was already dressed in gym shorts and a dark tank top, his hair still damp from his pre-dawn workout. He moved like someone trying not to wake a sleeping house, his heavy frame balanced with surprising care as he shuffled to the stove to reheat the eggs he’d cooked earlier.
"You hungry?" he asked, voice still rough from sleep.
She shook her head, eyes back on her book. "No, you go ahead. I'm at the good part."
He gave a little grunt of approval, and the two settled into the familiar rhythm of their morning routines. Castorice turned a page, Pollux snored softly, and Mydei added another protein scoop to his shake with a precision that would make his YouTube subscribers weep with joy.
They had been together for a little less than a year. Secretly. Quietly. Deliberately.
Not because they were ashamed. Not even because they wanted to protect some influencer-brand identity, though Castorice's chat could be feral in the comments if they got a whiff of romance. No, it was more personal than that. Mydei liked his quiet, and Castorice liked her corners untouched by chaos.
They’d met through Phainon, Mydei’s best friend and chaotic Twitch menace, and quickly bonded over a shared love of mythology and disdain for overcooked pasta. The chemistry had been obvious to everyone except them at first, until Stelle, Phainon’s sharp-eyed and far too nosy girlfriend, had nudged them both into a co-op Stardew stream and left halfway through with a smirk.
The rest was history. Or at least, a very private diary entry of it.
"You streaming later?" Mydei asked as he slid a plate of cut fruit next to her tea.
She nodded. "Doing the haunted library finale. It's either going to be epic or humiliating."
"Or both," he offered, smirking slightly as he walked past.
She stuck out her tongue at him as he disappeared down the hall.
XxxOxOxOxxX
Mydei’s YouTube channel, simply titled “SPARTAN MODE”, was an unapologetic blend of clean aesthetics, early-morning gym grinds, and the occasional protein pancake recipe that ended up in people’s “let’s try to recreate this” TikTok videos. He was known for his muscle, his mild social awkwardness, and his deadpan delivery that unintentionally became a meme. His fans were equal parts fitness buffs and people who just liked watching him silently judge bad form.
His most popular videos, however, featured Phainon.
“Why do I always look like a wet ferret next to you?” Phainon grumbled in their latest collab, adjusting his headband with a tragic expression. “I have a brand to maintain, you know. Chaos, but sexy chaos.”
“You wore socks with cartoon chimeras to leg day,” Mydei replied without looking up from the barbell.
“They’re a conversation starter.”
“They’re a cry for help.”
From offscreen, another voice chimed in. “Mydei, leave him alone. He’s sensitive.”
Stelle, standing with a perfectly balanced smoothie in one hand and her phone in the other, looked effortlessly chic in an oversized hoodie that was very obviously Phainon’s. The moment she walked into frame, Phainon dropped his weights like a cartoon character and all but floated toward her.
“My muse,” he said, draping himself across her like a Victorian poet fainting on a chaise. “My sun, my stars, my post-workout electrolyte.”
“Hydrate,” she said, handing him a bottle.
“I’d die for you,” he replied, dead serious.
“You’d die without water, Phai.”
Mydei raised a brow. “You two done flirting, or should I leave the gym?”
“Don’t be jealous just because you don’t have a gym muse,” Phainon teased, already sipping his smoothie and poking Mydei’s bicep. “Must be lonely up here on Mount Tricep.”
Mydei swatted his hand away. “Focus or I’m editing you out of this video.”
“You wouldn’t. I bring balance to your brooding aura.”
Stelle leaned over to Mydei and gave him a thumbs-up, “He practiced that line in the mirror.”
“I HEARD THAT!”
The chaos continued for several more reps, most of which involved Phainon making increasingly deranged noises while trying to deadlift correctly, and Mydei sighing the sigh of a man who was clearly rethinking all of his life choices.
Later, when the video went up, comments flooded in.
@LittleMewMew: PHAINON IS SO WHIPPED I’M SCREAMING
@ItsAmphover: stelle: exists. phainon: i must ascend
@BoothillSimp: mydei editing out phainon’s screaming would be a hate crime
The dynamic worked. Phainon was a gremlin, Stelle was the handler, and Mydei was the reluctant third party caught in the middle.
And unknown to everyone watching? He was going home to the cozy streamer that made his mornings worth waking up for.
XxxOxOxOxxX
The soft clink of ceramic filled the room as Castorice adjusted her camera, her screen lit by fairy lights and the faint flicker of her ambient fireplace video. A lo-fi playlist hummed beneath her voice as she greeted her chat.
“Welcome back, everyone~ Today we’re cozying up with some Stardew and maybe finishing that book haul from last week. Pollux is asleep behind the monitor again, so she says hi in spirit.”
She smiled softly, wrapped in a lavender cardigan, and reached for her mug of tea…just as a hand entered the frame.
A large hand. Slightly calloused. Veins like highways. It set down a small plate of cookies beside her tea, lingered for half a second like it was making sure the plate was stable, then vanished offscreen again.
For 0.3 seconds, chat froze.
Then it exploded.
@ArgentiNoticeME: THAT WAS A MAN’S HAND 👀
@Teaspoon: WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WHO WAS THAT
@PrincessPeach: ARE WE GONNA IGNORE THE BUFF HAND THAT JUST SERVED HER COOKIES??
@LuochaLover69: HIS FOREARMS HAVE FOREARMS HELLO??
Castorice blinked, slowly turned her head toward the space where the hand had come from, and then cleared her throat.
“...That was... just a friend. A helpful one. Who... likes baking. And arm workouts, apparently.”
@Neko-chan: FRIEND???
@bobatea_dango: IS HE SINGLE THOUGH??
@Celestia: DROP THE @. FOR SCIENCE.
@Castoriceboyfriend: CASTO WHYYYYYY
She tried to move on, pulling up her game window and clicking into her save file, but her ears were pink now, and unfortunately for her, chat noticed.
@Neko-chan: BLUSHING ALERT 🚨
@prinzessin: COZY STREAMER'S GOT A CRUSH
@CavalryCaptain: HANDSY FRIEND IS KINDA A RED FLAG BUT ALSO A GREEN ONE???
Then, the worst possible message popped up:
@Bakudan:...was that Anaxagora’s hand?? 😳
From off-screen, a very faint, very unimpressed voice muttered, “Anaxa doesn’t even know how to bake.”
Her chat went wild again.
@Abyss_Flower: HE SPEAKS
@Cloti4evr: OMG, HIS VOICE?
@Caelus95: DOES HE DO ASMR?!
Castorice coughed loudly. “Okay! So anyway, the winter festival is coming up in Stardew and I need, like, twenty yams. Let's focus, people.”
But it was too late. Screenshots had already been taken, theories were brewing, a hand had launched a thousand ships.
And Mydei, sitting cross-legged just off-screen and munching on a cookie, suddenly had no idea what storm he’d just created.
XxxOxOxOxxX
The internet had never known peace, but today it was in rare, spectacular form.
Within an hour of the “Cookie Incident,” social media lit up like a bonfire made of tinfoil and conspiracy theories. Castorice’s chill little corner of the internet had become ground zero for the latest soft-launch romance mystery.
#WHOISTHEHAND trended by noon.
#CASTOCRYPTID trailed closely behind.
#COOKIEGATE topped Reddit’s front page.
By evening, Twitter was ablaze with wild, passionate speculation.
@RafayelsBaby: That hand had CEO wristwatch energy. I’m betting it’s Jing Yuan. You can’t teach that kind of cookie placement.
@feesh: Hear me out: ARGENTI. He’s got the hands of a harpist. And the guy literally called her “ethereal” in that one interview.
@MissVoid: This screams Anaxagoras. Look at the chain around his wrist. That’s a dromas charm, I swear.
@MuscleTheory143: okay but it could be someone totally unknown. Like a baker from Belobog with a hidden six-pack. Don’t limit her, y’all.
Reddit users conducted frame-by-frame hand analysis with annotated screenshots. Someone even made a 3D model of the mystery wrist using Blender. YouTubers started posting ten-minute videos titled “10 Reasons the Cookie Hand Is NOT Anaxagoras”. Spoiler: he was in another city that day, live-streaming his bird-spotting trip in a Dromas onesie.
And all the while, the actual hand in question sat on Castorice’s couch, holding a protein bar like it had personally betrayed him.
Mydei, silent, stoic, and at times emotionally constipated, scrolled through the theories with a blank expression. One of the TikToks used a slowed-down version of Careless Whisper over a zoom-in of his hand. He watched it. Blinked. Closed the app.
“Argenti?” he muttered, incredulous.
Castorice, cozied up beside him in socks with tiny foxes on them, tried and failed not to laugh. “To be fair, Argenti did comment a few star and rose emojis under my last post.”
Mydei turned to stare at her like she’d just confessed to dating a marble statue, but the worst of it arrived five minutes later in the form of a FaceTime call from Phainon.
“Hey, buddy! I just wanted to check on your mental state after finding out your girlfriend might be dating a billionaire hotel CEO.”
Mydei felt like hanging up on him without a word. “…I’m not going to dignify that with a-”
“Anaxagoras, huh? You’re gonna lose her to a man with a Dromas icon and a PhD in moss.” Stelle’s voice reached him from the background, pushing Phainon slightly to the side to fit into the frame.
Almost immediately, Phainon wrapped his arm around her waist and stared Mydei dead in the eye with a seriousness that meant whatever was coming out of his mouth next would put Mydei into an even worse mood. “Bro. He has a cardigan named after him on Etsy. Etsy, Mydei. Step your game up.”
Mydei, visibly weighing the pros and cons of lifting them both like kettlebells, rolled his eyes. “He once tried to open wine with a spoon.”
“A spoon of culture, my friend.”
Stelle grinned, leaning her head on Phainon’s shoulder with mischief written on her forehead like a flashing, neon sign. “I’d date Anaxagoras, honestly.”
“Then you two deserve each other.”
Phainon gasped and pressed a hand to his chest, feigning offense. “I already have a soulmate, thank you.”
The last thing Myeimos saw before ending the call was Stelle pushing Phainon’s face away with a laugh while he chased her lips for a kiss.
That night, Mydei lifted heavier than usual at the gym.
He didn’t say a word about it. Would never admit he was irritated and would certainly never admit he Googled “what do women see in harpists.”
XxxOxOxOxxX
The board game café smelled like cinnamon rolls and passive aggression. It was game night, which meant chaos, competition, and Cipher bringing an unnecessarily complicated rulebook for a cooperative card game no one had asked for.
“Okay, okay,” Phainon said, laying down his cards dramatically. “I’m casting a frost shield on our rogue. That means the fire demon can’t…Ugh, wait, who’s the rogue?”
“I thought you were the rogue,” Stelle said, sipping her soda.
“No, I’m the wizard. My hat has stars on it.”
“Your hat is a napkin with googly eyes.”
“Magic doesn’t need fashion,” he sniffed.
Tribbios, seated cross-legged at the end of the table, was absentmindedly stacking cards into a small architectural marvel. “Not to brag, but I do have very elegant wrists,” she said, admiring the flex of her hand as she placed a card turret.
Mydei let out a slow, tired exhale through his nose but didn’t look up.
Hyacine, sipping from a bubble tea decorated with so many rainbow sprinkles it would blind a Leprechaun, raised an eyebrow. “Don’t encourage him, Tribbios. You’ll make Phainon start quoting wrist-based poetry again.”
“Elegance is its own language,” Tribbios said serenely, picking up a second set of cards.
Across the table, Castorice was trying very hard not to laugh as she watched Mydei silently suffer through another round of indirect hand-based speculation. His jaw was tight, his grip on his dice whiter than the frosting on the cinnamon rolls.
Under the table, she slid her hand over to his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He didn’t look at her but he squeezed back.
Just when Mydei thought he might get a moment of peace, Cipher leaned over from her seat and “accidentally” turned her phone so the screen was visible to both Castorice and Mydei. A paused YouTube thumbnail: “Top 10 Moments That Prove Castorice’s Boyfriend Is Anaxagoras.” Another tab behind it read: “Who’s Hand Was That? A Frame-By-Frame Forensic Analysis.”
Cipher blinked innocently. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to…uh, just had this open for... research. Stream meta stuff.”
Mydei stared at her as Castorice reached over, plucked the phone from Cipher’s hand, and flicked it off. “No phones during game night,” she said sweetly, sliding it out of reach.
Cipher held up her hands in surrender. “You’re the one with the famous boyfriend now. I’m just staying informed.”
“I will replace all your shinies with pudding,” Castorice said, not breaking eye contact.
Hyacine snorted. “I'd pay to see that.”
Tribbios raised a hand. “Can I get pudding too?”
“Why are you all like this?” Mydei muttered.
Finally, after yet another failed group attempt to coordinate their in-game strategy, the round ended in defeat, and people started packing up. Castorice lingered behind with Mydei, who was still a bit pink from the memes.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and murmured, “It’s okay, you know.”
He glanced down at her. “What is?”
“I like your stupid hands. Even if the internet thinks they belong to Argenti or some billionaire jazz pianist.”
Mydei stared at her for a second. Then let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
“…They're not stupid,” he said quietly.
She grinned. “They are. You flex every time you pass the fridge.”
He paused. “…That’s for posture.”
“Sure it is.”
XxxOxOxOxxX
It was a rainy Sunday, and Castorice’s stream was hitting peak cozy.
She had her signature fox mug, a warm blanket that Mydei had knitted for her draped over her shoulders, and a candle labeled “Old book pages & Vanilla” burning softly in the corner. The game of the day was a gentle pixel-art farming sim where she was trying to befriend farm animals and help them solve problems no farm animal had ever had to solve. Seriously, a goat paying taxes?
“Okay,” she said with a yawn-smile, “today we’re naming our new cow. So far I have: Soup, Crumb, and, oh god, Tax Fraud. Who did that?”
The chat was chaotic, affectionate, unhinged. Exactly as usual.
But it wasn’t long before the cow-naming was buried beneath the inevitable:
@Cocogoat: it’s gotta be Anaxa, right???
@LighterXBelle: Maybe it's her editor??
@No1Gepardlvr: please let it be that buff guy from Phainon’s gym vids 😭🙏
@Yangyang: ok but what if it’s ACTUALLY argenti and they’re hiding it for ✨drama✨
@MossLuvva: anaxagoras supremacy. give me cardigan bf or give me death
Castorice did her best to stay cool. She chuckled and kept planting virtual pumpkins, sipping her tea like a true professional.
But Mydei, off camera, behind her, reading the chat over her shoulder while holding her second mug of tea, was reaching the end of his very large, very gym-shaped rope. There was a long pause. Then, from somewhere offscreen, a low, incredulous voice reached Cas’ ears as well as those of her chat.
“…Are they serious?”
Castorice turned in her chair slowly, amusement tugging at her lips.
“Mydei,” she said softly.
He stepped into frame.
The chat froze.
It was like watching a deer stroll into the middle of a fireworks show. Mydei, unbothered, walked up behind her chair, his hand resting lightly on the back of it. Then he leaned down, kissed her temple and then her mouth, softly, with that quiet confidence of a man who had nothing to prove to Reddit.
The stream went dead silent.
Then it exploded.
@SLEEPYPOTATOES: OH MY GOD
@BicepBeliever: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
@Cocogoat: HE’S REAL??? HE’S BUFF??? HE’S HERS???
@GainsAndGames: bro kissed her like a Studio Ghibli finale goodbye
@NOTcipher (actual Cipher): THANK YOU I CAN FINALLY SLEEP AGAIN
@catboylawyer: anaxagoras has logged out in mourning
Castorice laughed into Mydei’s shoulder, her cheeks pink. He was still blushing too, but smiling down at her with that slightly bashful look he only got when it was just them.
“Well,” she said to her viewers, clearing her throat with mock drama, “there you go. The hand has a face. And a name. And a bench press PR.”
Mydei waved sheepishly at the camera, thought to himself for a second, and flexed his arm.
The chat lost its mind again.
XxxOxOxOxxX
The internet, predictably, imploded.
But not in the way Mydei had feared.
After the clip of “The Kiss” went viral - which it did, within minutes; edited, meme’d, set to lo-fi beats and dramatic violin covers -, the vibe online turned almost entirely wholesome. Fans from both communities banded together under one banner: #HandConfirmed.
Fan art exploded. Someone made a pixel animation of them kissing with a tiny animated fox mug steaming beside them. A cozy fan game popped up within three days where you played as Castorice making tea for Mydei while dodging Anaxagoras-themed conspiracy theories.
Castorice’s stream chat became a chaos of support.
@Musclemommylover: I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT WAS HIM. THE HAND NEVER LIES.
@HeygirlieHoldstill: they’re so real 😭 she’s the cozy and he’s the chaos-suppressant
@Imperator: HE LIFTS BOOKS TOO?? this is peak romance. I want what they have.
And Mydei?
Mydei made a Q&A video.
The thumbnail showed him holding Castorice’s favorite novel in one hand and a 30-pound dumbbell in the other. The title read:
“Yes, I’m the Hand. Yes, I Lift Her Books Too.”
In the video, he awkwardly answered fan questions with Phainon giving him wide grins and thumbs-up from behind the camera.
“How long have you been dating?” (A bashful, mumbled “A year.”)
“Do you really flex by the fridge?” (“That’s called core engagement, actually.”)
“Who would win in a fight: Anaxagoras or a goose?” (“Goose. No hesitation.”)
At the very end of the video, he felt the corners of his lips lift in a soft, genuine smile.
“Thanks for being cool about it. She means a lot to me. And, uh… I’m really lucky. So. Yeah.”
XxxOxOxOxxX
That night, long after the hype had started to settle into a steady stream of wholesome fan edits and soft shipping hashtags, Castorice curled up on the couch beside him, half-asleep, wearing one of his hoodies and still holding a half-eaten cookie.
“You know,” she murmured, “you’re a pretty good secret boyfriend.”
He slid an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “I liked being your secret.”
She tilted her head up just enough to meet his eyes. “You like being my not-secret?”
He smiled, slow and sure, and leaned down to press a chaste kiss to her lips. “Yeah. I like that even more.”
She smiled back, reached for his hand, and intertwined her fingers with his.
The End