butterflies ઇଓ matt sturniolo imagines

𝘯𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘴

ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅ઇଓ

     matt was a nervous wreck. you were too, but not as much as him.

     he was conflicted, and for good reason. matt had been hiding you in plain sight for a long time. you'd been in countless videos, and far too many posts and documentations of his life to count; him and his brothers' fans knew your face well, and they liked you. you'd collected your own small following just by being associated with him. it was nice. you liked being a part of the work the boy did. but that's all it was- nice. pleasant, and polite, and secretive.

     you and matt have been together for a while now, close to a year, and it's been increasingly difficult to keep that off camera. his brothers and friends have been a huge help, always making sure to keep the two of you out of sight if they're filming without you, and you have both learned to be perpetually on edge. the second a camera is out, the guard goes up. no touching, no hand-holding, none of those soft kisses on the cheek that matt simply cannot help himself from giving whenever you walk by (he calls it the kiss tax) and no ruffling his hair in that cheesy way you like to. you had to keep your hands to yourself, and you had to be mindful of the way you looked at each other, too. that was the hardest part, because physical touch was avoidable, but puppy eyes were not.
people got wise a while back. matt accidentally looked at you with just a little too much sparkle in both eyes, and the viewers suddenly became seasoned detectives. they started pulling other clips from past videos and posts where it could be possible that maybe the two of you might, just a little bit, have something going on. and you were the worse culprit, because now that everyone had their eye out, you had an even harder time keeping your looks on lockdown- or maybe you were just finally aware of how head over heels you looked all the time.
     this outburst of speculation was spreading matt thin. he wanted to keep you private, and keep what you had all to himself, because he didn't believe anybody would ever respect you if it went public. he wanted to protect you from the few psychos that absolutely exist, and also from all the other people online who love to be a little bit mean. no matter how many times you expressed your lack of care towards it all, or promised you could handle a little hate, the boy refused to reveal a thing.

that is, until the evidence was stacked against you.

you had to hand it to the internet- you guys were terrible at hiding it, and they knew it. there was more video evidence of the two of you smiling at each other awkwardly, and sitting far too close to each other in restaurants, and having little inside jokes nobody knew the origins of than footage of you guys acting normal. you'd told everyone the truth without even saying a thing.
that's why today you were going to come clean, and matt was buzzing with nerves.

     the boy figured revealing your relationship on a livestream would be best, because it's a contained and monitored group of people, and it's unedited; this way the truth can be told authentically, to less people, and the word can get out on its own. it was effortless, and it was less daunting than posting a video to a channel with enough subscribers to constitute an army.

"we don't have to tell anybody anything," you reminded him as he clicked away on his keyboard.

you were sitting in a spare dining room chair in matt's room with mr. wrinkleton gently resting in your lap. matt was stiff in his gaming chair, setting up a twitch stream at an anxious pace; his hair kept falling in his eyes and he kept blowing up at it, but it refused to cooperate. he grumbled as he continued typing and modifying the stream details, half-ignoring your presence.

"matt, slow down," you reached your palm out to rest it at the back of his neck, "you're stressing me out with all this!"

the boy let out a heavy sigh and leaned back into the chair, closing his eyes and frowning. "i know. i'm sorry."