Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nobody expected it. When the video landed in everybody’s subscription box, the whole world thought it was a joke. Just a simple thumbnail of Mark in front of a white background, looking oh so handsome, with a little smile on his face. The title was simple too. “Coming Out”, two words that changed Mark’s life.

The video starts off with a beep, a black and white filter and a camera like frame, making it obvious that this is the behind the scenes. Mark is sitting down on one of two stools in front of a white background, making it look very professional. There’s a body directly in front of the camera right in the middle, but all that is visible is the back of the knees up to the middle of the person’s torso. It was clearly a male figure, adorning a short-sleeved button down, half tucked into skinny jeans.

A disfigured voice asks Mark if they should start off the video with both of them sitting down. “Eeh… no, let me talk for a second and then you come in.” Mark says, straightening out his sweater. Then there’s a cut, a beep, and on the screen appears Mark, looking unusually serious. “Hellooo everybody, my name is Markiplier and today I have to tell you something.” He starts off the video.

“No, the title of this video isn’t a joke, although some people will still believe it is. I’ve recently figured out something I want to tell you. I’m bisexual.” Mark smiles.

“It was hard for me to come to terms with it, but from the beginning I had the comfort of my supportive friends and family. And I knew you guys would be happy for me, but I had to take some time to figure everything out. I’m aware that this isn’t the end of my journey, there will be bad days and good days, but I’m glad I don’t have to hide. I’m incredibly lucky in the sense that I have you guys, and I have everybody around me. I’m very thankful to be in this position.” Mark looks down to his lap, takes a breath and looks back up.

“And I’m also very thankful to have found a person who was there with me every step of the way. This person helped me a lot these past months.” Mark looks to his right.

“So I’m delighted to introduce to you my boyfriend. Yes, you’ve heard me right. Some of you might know him.” Mark gestured off camera. “Would you like to join me?” he asks softly.

And all of a sudden there’s a second body coming into the frame and sitting down and oh, it’s Ethan Nestor, Mark’s friend. As if they knew most of the viewers are currently gathering their jaws from the floor, the pair stays quiet for a second, just taking in the feeling of being free and out, smiling fondly at each other, their eyes sparkling.

“This is Ethan. If you don’t know him, he’s been a long-time friend of mine, ever since he moved to LA to help me make videos in 2016. He’s been a camera man, an editor, an entertainer, an actor, an employee, a colleague, a friend to me.” Mark turned back towards the camera. “Hello.” Ethan does a little awkward wave.

“Now, we’re aware that most people will think this is some sort of a prank. And that’s entirely on us, because we’ve done some questionable things together, especially on a channel that doesn’t exist. We’ve always put out a certain image of us, not exactly a fake one, just one that probably doesn’t really fit with this whole thing. And so we decided to answer some questions we thought you’d guys ask! We found a list, and we also have our friends behind the camera to ask us what they want to know, because this is news to them as well.” A bunch of voices come from behind the camera.

“We’re also aware of how this looks. I’m older, I invited Ethan out to LA, I was his boss, I know. But we assure you this relationship is 100 % out of our own free will, no funny business here.”

“Also, I’m sure people will have questions. Amy knows, she’s here too-“ “Hello!” “- and she was the first one to call me out. Our break-up went the best way possible and we’re still very close friends.” Mark explained, smiling at Amy. Ethan nodded. “We should also give our thanks to Amy because she’s cool with us and we probably wouldn’t end up together if it wasn’t for her. So everybody clap for the treasure that is Amy Nelson!” He started clapping with a dopey smile and soon everybody followed, while Amy giggled. “Thank you guys, love you!”

“So let’s do this!”

“Okay, when did you guys first realize you had feelings for each other?”

“Well for me it was some time after Unus Annus ended. But I always had very strong feelings towards Ethan, as a boss or a friend, so it’s kind of hard to pinpoint when exactly I fell for him. I just know that it took Amy sitting me down and spelling it out for me to realize.”

“I agree, I also always had very strong feelings towards Mark. I’d also like to make it clear we did not have romantic feelings for each other during Unus Annus. Nope, we painted each other naked just as friends. We’re that type of a couple.” Ethan laughed and Mark with him.

“Who asked out who?”

“Me!” shouted Mark in glory before the question was even finished. “It was I, me, moi. Me and my big manly ego knew there was no chance Ethan would reject me.” Mark flexed his biceps while wiggling his eyebrows at the camera. “You’re such an asshole.” Ethan giggled.

“How long have you guys been together?”

“A little bit over 7 months now. We decided to keep it a secret in order to enjoy the first stages of our relationship and it was the best decision we could have made.” Ethan looked at Mark who nodded in agreement. “Some people might find it weird and think we were hiding it, but we don’t think of it that way. We just wanted to take everything at our own pace. And I think that those few months were crucial for our relationship. We’re strong, happy and exactly where we want to be at.”

Mark was looking at Ethan explaining, and couldn’t help himself but lean over to cuddle into the nook of Ethan’s neck. Ethan stopped talking in order to scrunch his face. “What are you doing?”

Mark moved to give Ethan a kiss on the cheek. “What, can’t I give you a kiss?” his voice went higher in pitch. “No, because I know you’ll do the thing.” Ethan said, narrowing his eyes in fear and raising his hand in order to defend himself.

“You gotta trust me more, man.” Mark chuckled and pressed another kiss to the younger’s cheek. The latter stopped cringing, hoping he was wrong, and Mark was only being affectionate. At that moment, Mark quickly moved from his cheek to his ear and blew a raspberry, licking the shell of Ethan’s ear afterwards.

Ethan shrieked, his hand coming up to his ear. He leaned away, giggling. “Ugh, gross! I knew it!”

Mark threw his head back laughing.

“How did you break the news to your friends?”

“Well, we came out to them by accident a little bit.” Admitted Ethan. “Mark invited everybody over, but we decided to not tell them yet. Then Seán took one look at us and completely gave us away!” “That was your fault, by the way.” Muttered Mark. “What?!” Shouted Ethan. “You left me to fend for myself all alone! You were no help whatsoever! I had to try and disguise everything!”

“Well, you could’ve done better.” Said Mark seriously, even though it was obvious he was joking.

The rest of the video went in similar spirit.

“Okay, that’s it for today’s video. We also filmed a boyfriend tag for Ethan’s channel, so don’t forget to check that out, the link is in the description! See ya!”

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At the exact same time Mark uploaded his “Coming Out” video, Ethan uploaded a video simply called “The boyfriend tag”. He didn’t bother with any official coming out, since this could be easily taken as a coming out on its own. The thumbnail was pretty similar to Mark’s since they filmed both videos on the same day. There was Ethan on the right, sitting on a stool in front of the white background. The figure on the left of him was blacked out.

The start of the video was pretty more or less the same, Ethan explaining to the audience that he has a boyfriend. Since 99 % of his subscribers knew Mark, there was no need to properly introduce him.

“Okay, first question!” Ethan cleared his throat and looked down to his phone.

“How did we meet- I think everybody knows this one, we can just skip-“ he tried. “No, no, no, we should do this the proper way.” Mark chuckled evilly. “You were a fan-“

“Next question! We’re going out to eat, where are we going?” Ethan read and looked at Mark, who hummed. “I think that we do take-out more than going out. But if we were, we’d go somewhere we both like and know instead of trying out a new fancy restaurant.” Mark shrugged his shoulders.

“Am I a morning person, or a night person? Well Mark is both. He wakes up early morning and goes to sleep very late. He’s a masochist, you know.” “Hey! Well you’re definitely a nigh person, for you waking up early is after 8 a.m.”

“If I was collecting anything, what would it be?” “Ethan collects a lot of stuff. Action figurines, Pokémon cards, posters, you name it.” “And Mark doesn’t collect anything, he isn’t a materialistic person.”

“What’s my nickname? I call Mark a bunch of names. Idiot, asshole, douche-“ “I’m gonna kill you.”

“What’s my weirdest habit?” “We all know Ethan is weird period.” “I can’t fight with you on that. And the weirdest thing Mark does is the way he eats Takis. Disgusting.”

The video continued on with Mark and Ethan answering the questions truthfully, but with a lot of teasing each other.

Needless to say both videos did extremely well and the pair got massive amount of love.