Chapter Text
song: Ever Since New York - Harry Styles
The morning light shone through her blinds, the sounds of the city bustling 20 feet below her awaking her. Thalia Brooks stared at the ceiling of her apartment in New York City, dreading the workday ahead of her. She enjoyed her job, she got paid okay, she just didn’t like standing for hours on end, bent over a coffee grinder and making extravagant drinks for the richest douchebags of NYC. As she sat up, she stretched, reaching for her glass of water and her glasses on her nightstand. Her alarm clock displayed the time, it being about 7:30 am.
Thalia stood from bed, lazily making it before padding into her small kitchen. She brewed herself a cup of coffee while scrolling through the news on her phone. The news, of course, was never a good way to start the morning, but she was used to the magnum tons of black pilling it dealt her on a daily basis.
As she waited for the cup to fill, she leaned against the counter and caught her reflection in the microwave door. Her pink silky bonnet was slipping past her hairline slightly, revealing the neat beginning of her long brown braids. Hazel eyes blinked back at her from behind a pair of thick glasses, still heavy with sleep. Her oversized hoodie, stretched out at the collar, and frayed at the cuffs, hung loose on her tall frame. The old Rutgers lettering stitched into the grey fabric caught her eye, and she smiled faintly. The hoodie was worn, slightly stained, deeply loved. She looked tired. Her deep, warm skin always caught the light in a soft, glowing way, but tired all the same.
Full ride, political science and art history double major, master's degree, none of it had made her life any easier now. Still, she was grateful. Grateful to have escaped rural Tennessee. Grateful for New York, despite its grime and rent and isolation. Life was still hard as hell, but at least she wasn’t shoveling pig shit anymore. Rutgers had changed her life. The Keurig sputtered to a stop. She grabbed her mug, took a cautious sip, and padded to the couch, settling in with a blanket and her phone again. She had about an hour before her shift at the café. Nothing better to do right now than scroll, maybe peek at her few and far in between YouTube comments.
As she opened the app, she looked at the top right corner, noticing something odd.
99+ new notifications
Thalia choked on her coffee. She quickly set her mug down on her coffee table, investigating the sudden influx of views, comments, and subscriptions. Her latest video, which was at about 43,000 views the last time she checked, sat at around 184,000 now. She has about 300 new comments, and most importantly, her 20,000 subscriptions had gone up to nearly 25,000.
Where the fuck did this come from?
Thalia chewed on her thumbnail while scrolling through the new comments.
hgarcias24: hi chat
jk_hostage6: this is such a good video! hasan sent me :)
sprinkles_7: I LOVE SOCIALIST COMMENTARY
hasanabis_pubes: glad to see a woman put hasan (a man) in his place in the marketplace of ideas
schmeat_618296: socialism when no 2.7 garillion dollar mansion
Thalia blinked. These people couldn’t have appeared out of nowhere. She leaned back on her couch, bringing her knees up to her chest as she instead opened Instagram, baffled as to what was happening with her Youtube. However, this was an even bigger mistake. A single notification popped up. A message. Thalia tapped the icon, not thinking much of it. It was from… a verified account? Who was this guy? Thalia tapped on his profile.
She froze for nearly ten seconds as she read the account name.
Hasan Piker…
It took her a few seconds to recognize that name. She tapped on his profile, opening his recent instagram stories. The first one was a meme about a Republican state senator wearing a weird outfit during an interview, the next being an article she didn’t care to read through very much. The third story made her heart stop. A familiar face spoke directly towards his phone camera.
“What’s up folks? I’m live and alive and there are a lot of things to go over today-”
Thalia tapped again to open the final story, showing the man taking a mirror selfie to show off his outfit. She knew who this was now, and she was in total shock. Hasan Piker, a person she hadn’t thought about in at least fifteen years. He had completely changed since the last time she saw him. She remembered him being a little bit chubbier, his hair shaggier and curlier, and he was always wearing extremely baggy cargo pants. Now he had 1.3 million followers on Instagram? Thalia swiped back to read the dm she had received from him.
hasandpiker:
“watched your latest yt video on my twitch broadcast today. it was really good. long time no see”
There was a second message sent about 5 minutes after.
“also watched that old debate footage on the stream. you steamrolled me. we should catch up"
Thalia swallowed thickly before reaching for her coffee cup again, realizing it had gone lukewarm. She didn’t realize she had been sitting here on the couch for the past 30 minutes just trying to process what was happening to her right now. As she stood, she checked the time, realizing that she only had 30 minutes before her shift started. She quickly ran off towards her bedroom to change and do her makeup, her coffee left almost completely untouched.
—
“You look pale.”
Thalia turned over her shoulder towards a short Dominican woman nursing an iced chai. She raised an eyebrow.
“Did something happen?”
Thalia let out a soft sigh.
“No, not really, I just…”
She couldn’t explain her strange morning to Marisol, her best friend, a woman that would have no idea how to grasp the complexity of her feelings right now. Thalia shrugged.
“I think I saw a mouse in my kitchen this morning.”
Mari clicked her teeth while shaking her head.
“I’ve been telling you to get a cat. There’s probably a colony of them living outside of your building right now. Just go grab one.”
Thalia rolled her eyes while grabbing a spray bottle from under the counter.
“Help me clean off some tables while we have time. The lunch crowd should be rolling in in about fifteen minutes.”
With a soft groan, Mari followed Thalia, the two of them cleaning up the small cafe in no time. Thalia busied herself with making sure their library was looking clean and organized, flipping books around that had been shelved incorrectly, fluffing up the beanbags in the shop windows, and sweeping small crumbs from the hardwood floors. No matter how busy she made herself, she could only think about one thing.
She didn't know why this dm was bothering her so much. It felt like her life had almost been flipped upside down. Here she was, making YouTube videos for fun with her useless Poli Sci degree, suddenly being reached out to by an (apparently) incredibly established influencer, who she just so happened to have some history with. Was this her time to shine? Was this her gateway out of this coffee shop and into a more respectable career path? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she needed to start preparing some orders, as a gaggle of construction workers began entering the shop. Thalia quickly got behind the counter to brew some fresh cups of coffee. Hopefully the lunch rush would take her mind off things.
—--
By the time Thalia clocked out, her lower back ached and her feet were screaming. She slipped out the back door of the café, waving goodbye to Mari, who blew her a dramatic kiss and reminded her to buy mousetraps. The sky had dimmed into that pale blue-grey of early evening, and the sidewalks were crowded with commuters, dog walkers, and teenagers with Bluetooth speakers tucked in their coat pockets. The city buzzed around her, sirens in the distance, steam rising from vents, the bassline of a passing car’s stereo, but she barely registered any of it. Every time she tried to think about something else, her mind dragged her back to those two little messages in her Instagram inbox. That casual “we should catch up” opening message rattled around in her brain. He had no idea how strange it felt to see his name again after so long. A part of her was frustrated with how casual he was. They weren’t best friends or anything, but Thalia considered him to be a friend, at least she did years ago. They had spent a lot of time together while studying at Rutgers, then separated once they both graduated, as he moved across the country to work under his uncle’s media broadcasting business. All those all nighters, bar crawling, frat parties, the memories came trickling back. Now he was texting her like they had only gone a few months without speaking. Whatever, she was making way too big a deal out of this. It’s not like he’s uber famous or anything…
Thalia sighed as she reached her building and entered the dingy elevator. Her ride up 20 floors smelled like curry and damp wood and somebody’s laundry detergent. How appetizing. She let herself in, tossed her keys into the bowl by the door, and got to work removing her shoes. She stood still for a moment in the center of the room, her bag still slung over one shoulder. The air conditioner was on, the radiator humming. The city rumbled outside her window. Her thoughts that had once been clouded by those mysterious messages were now imagining something else; something to fill her empty stomach with. First: pasta. Then: work. Then, maybe, she’d figure out what the hell she wanted to say to Hasan.
An hour later, Thalia sat cross-legged on her couch, laptop balanced on a pillow in her lap, an empty bowl of buttered noodles pushed to the edge of her coffee table. Her glasses slid down her nose as she reread a line of her video script for the third time.
“2024’s double strike by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA did something strange: it made labor feel attractive. Marketable. Even cool.”
She paused, tapping her fingers against the side of her ginger ale glass. Her tone felt right, but she didn’t want to come off like she was mocking the strikers; she believed in the cause. But she also believed in questioning how easily everything could be repackaged for likes. By the time she finished the second page of notes, her ginger ale was watered down and her back was starting to ache from hunching forward. She sat back in her chair, staring at the cursor blinking in the doc’s title bar.
She thought of all the comments she’d seen that morning. All the new followers. Thalia hadn’t let herself dwell on it too much at work. She couldn’t afford to. But now, with the apartment dark and quiet, she let herself open Instagram again. His message still sat there, completely unanswered. Thalia sighed softly through her nose before relaxing back into her couch, her thumbs moving slowly across her phone’s keyboard. She drafted a few messages only to end up holding the backspace button to erase them. She didn’t know why she was finding it so hard to write a simple message.
Thalia stared at her phone, rereading her message over and over again.
thalia.brooks:
“hey! thanks! didn’t realize you were internet famous now. i hope you’ve been doing well with yourself!”
Thalia chewed on the inside of her cheek, then took in a deep breath. She hit the little ‘send’ arrow, watching the message deliver. She stared at her screen for about thirty seconds, halfway expecting to see her message go from “Delivered” to “Seen just now”, however nothing happened. Thalia let go of the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding, then tossed her phone down beside her. Whatever. She needed to get back to writing.