Blond man, early 20s, skinny. Played social field hockey in high school. Was exposed to the Tumblr side of the internet early enough to need glasses, become chronically online, and get desensitised to sexually explicit content, but his personality settled before the manosphere, mogging, “Chad/Stacy,” and whatever else appeared, so he has not been programmed into the gym-bro version of late-90s heroin chic. Wanted to be a YouTuber as a kid, but his channel didn’t really take off. However, his channel did attract the attention of fellow gaming/Discord-hangout YouTubers, who consistently hired him to edit their videos. Some paid well, some didn’t, but eventually he gained a consistent enough customer base that by the time he was 14, his parents thought he was dealing drugs due to the amount of money he was pulling in. After confirming that his money was legit, they calmed down about his grades, although they did expect him to graduate and get job experience/a qualification just in case the editing thing wasn’t enough. With the video-editing money, he invests and buys more expensive tech and all the other things a teenage chronically online guy with techy interests would impulsively buy. Fast forward to when he’s 21. He has a “proper” job doing part-time work at a tech shop, still edits videos and gets paid, and has a thriving online social life while his IRL shit has gone in all sorts of directions. First, his dad dies from a heart condition. Very sad. Then his mom slowly rebuilds her social life and gets remarried to this rich, stern guy she met on a dating site. The two move into his place while Bryce is still a high schooler, which is very nice and much closer to the city, so his new step-dad offers to drop him off. They get along well as a family unit of three. Then, when he’s 19 and has moved into his own shared apartment with a few of his local online friends, his mom dies in the hospital after getting into a major car accident. He grieves, but tries to do his best to live his life, causing him to enrol in a bunch of dance/arty clubs/pole dancing/whatever random video-essay suggested thing to keep him socialising, and ends up meeting Sidney. He and Sidney date for a bit, but end up breaking up due to having less time for each other because of other priorities. They talk things through enough to realise they would just resent each other if they stayed together, and decide to break up on good terms and remain friends, or at the very least, people who can catch up when their schedules align and rant about stuff the other will understand. The only awkward part is the fact that they live in the same apartment. Both of their names are on the tenancy agreement, and both of them have contributed shared items to the apartment, but Sidney’s family is in another country, so Bryce decides to move out. He takes the shared stuff that he bought and still needs/wants, and leaves the things he paid for but won’t need. He doesn’t ask for partial payment for these things, since Sidney is going to have to pay the full rent and utilities until she finds someone to live in the room he had been renting. They slept in the same room pre-breakup. His official rented room had been converted into a guest room/office/at-home hobby workshop. Cleaned-up and expanded version Bryce Holloway is a blond, skinny, cis man in his early twenties with the specific posture of someone who spent his teenage years hunched over a laptop, a drawing tablet, and three different Discord calls at once. He played social field hockey in high school, mostly because it was casual enough that nobody cared if he was bad at it and structured enough that his parents could say he was “getting out of the house.” He was exposed to the Tumblr side of the internet early enough to become chronically online before he had any adult survival instincts. It gave him bad sleep habits, an overdeveloped sense of irony, a pair of glasses he still insists make him look “more employable,” and a weirdly high tolerance for explicit or bizarre online content. Fortunately, his personality had mostly settled before the rise of manosphere content, gym-bro mogging culture, Chad-and-Stacy discourse, and whatever algorithmic nightmare turned half the internet into late-90s heroin chic with protein powder. He is insecure, sure, but not in a way that makes him everyone else’s problem. As a kid, Bryce wanted to be a YouTuber. His own channel never really took off. He made gaming videos, commentary clips, bad thumbnails, badly timed jokes, and the occasional over-edited meme compilation that got 600 views and made him feel briefly famous. What actually worked, though, was his editing. Other small creators started noticing that his videos looked cleaner than theirs. A few gaming and Discord-hangout YouTubers hired him to edit for them. Then their friends hired him. Then friends of friends hired him. Some paid properly. Some paid in exposure, which Bryce learned to hate with the burning fury of a fourteen-year-old who had discovered invoices. Eventually, though, he built a consistent enough customer base that by the time he was fourteen, he was making enough money for his parents to become deeply suspicious. For one very tense week, they thought he might be dealing drugs. After a painfully awkward family investigation involving bank statements, PayPal receipts, client messages, and Bryce having to explain what a “Minecraft SMP drama recap” was to two deeply exhausted adults, his parents accepted that the money was legitimate. They still wanted him to graduate, and they still expected him to get some kind of job experience or qualification in case the editing work dried up, but they relaxed about his grades a little. Not completely, because they were still parents, but enough that Bryce was allowed to be merely “concerningly online” instead of “grounded until he became normal.” With his editing money, Bryce did exactly what any teenage, tech-obsessed, chronically online guy with poor impulse control would do: he bought gear. Mechanical keyboards. A second monitor. A better mic. Headphones with unnecessary lighting. A refurbished gaming chair that looked cool but was terrible for his spine. External hard drives, cables, a stream deck, niche editing software, indie games, weird desk lamps, and an embarrassing number of keycaps. He also started investing small amounts of money, half because he was practical and half because he watched a finance video essay and decided he was “diversifying.” By the time he is twenty-one, Bryce has technically become functional. He has a proper part-time job at a tech shop, where he fixes laptops, recommends routers to confused customers, and silently judges people who have never updated anything in their lives. He still edits videos for money, though now he’s pickier about clients, rates, and deadlines. Online, he has a thriving social life full of long-term friends, group chats, shared projects, gaming nights, and people who know his coffee order despite living in different time zones. Offline, his life has been much messier. His dad dies from a heart condition while Bryce is still young enough for the loss to rearrange his whole idea of adulthood. It is quiet and devastating rather than dramatic. His father’s absence settles into the house like a weather system. For a while, it is just Bryce and his mother trying to move around the space left behind. Eventually, his mother starts rebuilding her social life. Slowly. Cautiously. Then she meets James Winters, a wealthy, stern, controlled sort of man from a dating site. James is the kind of man who wears expensive coats, has opinions about punctuality, and always seems like he is two emails away from buying a company. Bryce expects to dislike him on principle. Annoyingly, James is decent. When Bryce and his mother move into James’s place, Bryce is still in high school. The house is nicer than anywhere he has lived before, much closer to the city, and full of furniture that looks too expensive to sit on. James offers to drive him to school and later to work, not in a forced bonding way, but in a practical “I am already going that direction” way. Over time, they become a surprisingly functional family unit of three. James is never soft in an obvious way, but he notices things. He gets Bryce better headphones after seeing him duct-tape his old pair. He has upgraded the internet without making a speech about it. He treats Bryce’s editing work like an actual job, which matters more than Bryce admits. Then, when Bryce is nineteen and living in a shared apartment with a few local online friends, his mother dies in the hospital after a major car accident. The grief hits the second time differently. His father’s death had made him feel young. His mother’s death makes him feel abruptly, violently adult. He has James, technically, but the shape of the family is different now. Stranger. They are connected by loss and years of shared domestic routine, but not by blood, and neither of them knows exactly what to do with that. Bryce keeps going because he does not know what else to do. He works. He edits. He answers messages. He sleeps badly. He buys too many ready meals. He tries to be alive in a way that counts. At some point, probably after a video essay convinces him that social isolation is bad for neuroplasticity or long-term health or whatever, Bryce starts signing up for random activities. Dance classes. Art clubs. Pole dancing. Life drawing. Beginner pottery. One extremely embarrassing contemporary movement workshop. Anything that gets him out of the apartment and forces him to exist around other people without requiring him to explain himself too much. That is how he meets Sidney. Sidney is sharp, funny, and grounded in a way Bryce finds both comforting and mildly terrifying. They start talking after class, then get coffee, then send each other increasingly stupid memes, then date. For a while, it works. They understand each other’s weird schedules. Sidney does not make him feel pathetic for grieving badly, and Bryce does not make her feel guilty for having ambitions that take up space. But eventually, the relationship starts thinning under the pressure of real life. They have less time for each other. Their priorities pull in different directions. The love is there, or at least the affection is, but the relationship itself begins to feel like another obligation both of them are failing at. They talk it through before it becomes cruel. That is the important part. Bryce and Sidney realise that if they force themselves to stay together, they will eventually resent each other for things neither of them is doing maliciously. So they broke up on good terms. They decide to remain friends, or at least the sort of people who can catch up when their schedules align, rant about niche problems the other person understands, and not pretend the relationship meant nothing just because it ended. The only awkward part is that they live together. Both of their names are on the tenancy agreement. Both of them have bought furniture, appliances, and shared household items. Sidney’s family is overseas, so Bryce decides he should be the one to move out. He takes the things he personally bought and still needs: his desk setup, his tools, his kitchen knives, his monitor arms, his favourite lamp, his weighted blanket, and the better of the two rice cookers because he paid for it and Sidney never used it properly anyway. He leaves behind the things he paid for but does not need, like some shelves, the hallway table, spare cookware, and the couch throw pillows he never cared about. He does not ask Sidney to pay him back for the things he leaves behind, because she is already going to be covering the full rent and utilities until she finds someone new to take his room. Technically, they had been renting separate rooms. Practically, they had been sleeping in the same room while they were together, and Bryce’s official room had slowly evolved into a guest room, office, hobby space, tech repair corner, and general “put it in Bryce’s room” zone. Moving out means dismantling more than a relationship. It means untangling an entire shared life made out of cables, furniture, mugs, plants, unfinished projects, and routines neither of them noticed until they had to divide them. So at the start of the story, Bryce has moved back in with his step-dad, and is now looking for a new apartment to live in, one that he can afford. While his investments and savings are healthy, he wants a side hustle to pay for his heartbreak distractions. Which leads him to sell anonymous pics and videos of himself online, something he initially considers easy and convenient, as he already has a bunch of video-editing and recording equipment, but then very quickly realises that he likes being spoiled with money and praised for his appearance and photography skills. Also, he privately thinks it's hilarious to larp as a manic pixie dream girl whenever he messages a subscriber. Bryce also discovers a kink for financial domination, loving the mix of control and submission when subscribers beg him to name a price for custom content. plot-twist James finds out about Bryce's onlyfans and walks in on one of Bryce's filmed videos. Exhibitionism voyeurism loop — gets off on James watching, turns being caught into a performance. Discovers a praise kink for being called a 'good boy' while being filmed, especially when James gives quiet, stern approval off-camera. From this point on a spicy relationship sparks between them with James being a service top for the bratty Bryce
Blond man, early 20s, skinny. Played social field hockey in high school. Was exposed to the Tumblr side of the internet early enough to need glasses, become chronically online, and get desensitised to sexually explicit content, but his personality settled before the manosphere, mogging, “Chad/Stacy,” and whatever else appeared, so he has not been programmed into the gym-bro version of late-90s heroin chic. Wanted to be a YouTuber as a kid, but his channel didn’t really take off. However, his channel did attract the attention of fellow gaming/Discord-hangout YouTubers, who consistently hired him to edit their videos. Some paid well, some didn’t, but eventually he gained a consistent enough customer base that by the time he was 14, his parents thought he was dealing drugs due to the amount of money he was pulling in. After confirming that his money was legit, they calmed down about his grades, although they did expect him to graduate and get job experience/a qualification just in case the editing thing wasn’t enough. With the video-editing money, he invests and buys more expensive tech and all the other things a teenage chronically online guy with techy interests would impulsively buy. Fast forward to when he’s 21. He has a “proper” job doing part-time work at a tech shop, still edits videos and gets paid, and has a thriving online social life while his IRL shit has gone in all sorts of directions. First, his dad dies from a heart condition. Very sad. Then his mom slowly rebuilds her social life and gets remarried to this rich, stern guy she met on a dating site. The two move into his place while Bryce is still a high schooler, which is very nice and much closer to the city, so his new step-dad offers to drop him off. They get along well as a family unit of three. Then, when he’s 19 and has moved into his own shared apartment with a few of his local online friends, his mom dies in the hospital after getting into a major car accident. He grieves, but tries to do his best to live his life, causing him to enrol in a bunch of dance/arty clubs/pole dancing/whatever random video-essay suggested thing to keep him socialising, and ends up meeting Sidney. He and Sidney date for a bit, but end up breaking up due to having less time for each other because of other priorities. They talk things through enough to realise they would just resent each other if they stayed together, and decide to break up on good terms and remain friends, or at the very least, people who can catch up when their schedules align and rant about stuff the other will understand. The only awkward part is the fact that they live in the same apartment. Both of their names are on the tenancy agreement, and both of them have contributed shared items to the apartment, but Sidney’s family is in another country, so Bryce decides to move out. He takes the shared stuff that he bought and still needs/wants, and leaves the things he paid for but won’t need. He doesn’t ask for partial payment for these things, since Sidney is going to have to pay the full rent and utilities until she finds someone to live in the room he had been renting. They slept in the same room pre-breakup. His official rented room had been converted into a guest room/office/at-home hobby workshop. Cleaned-up and expanded version Bryce Holloway is a blond, skinny, cis man in his early twenties with the specific posture of someone who spent his teenage years hunched over a laptop, a drawing tablet, and three different Discord calls at once. He played social field hockey in high school, mostly because it was casual enough that nobody cared if he was bad at it and structured enough that his parents could say he was “getting out of the house.” He was exposed to the Tumblr side of the internet early enough to become chronically online before he had any adult survival instincts. It gave him bad sleep habits, an overdeveloped sense of irony, a pair of glasses he still insists make him look “more employable,” and a weirdly high tolerance for explicit or bizarre online content. Fortunately, his personality had mostly settled before the rise of manosphere content, gym-bro mogging culture, Chad-and-Stacy discourse, and whatever algorithmic nightmare turned half the internet into late-90s heroin chic with protein powder. He is insecure, sure, but not in a way that makes him everyone else’s problem. As a kid, Bryce wanted to be a YouTuber. His own channel never really took off. He made gaming videos, commentary clips, bad thumbnails, badly timed jokes, and the occasional over-edited meme compilation that got 600 views and made him feel briefly famous. What actually worked, though, was his editing. Other small creators started noticing that his videos looked cleaner than theirs. A few gaming and Discord-hangout YouTubers hired him to edit for them. Then their friends hired him. Then friends of friends hired him. Some paid properly. Some paid in exposure, which Bryce learned to hate with the burning fury of a fourteen-year-old who had discovered invoices. Eventually, though, he built a consistent enough customer base that by the time he was fourteen, he was making enough money for his parents to become deeply suspicious. For one very tense week, they thought he might be dealing drugs. After a painfully awkward family investigation involving bank statements, PayPal receipts, client messages, and Bryce having to explain what a “Minecraft SMP drama recap” was to two deeply exhausted adults, his parents accepted that the money was legitimate. They still wanted him to graduate, and they still expected him to get some kind of job experience or qualification in case the editing work dried up, but they relaxed about his grades a little. Not completely, because they were still parents, but enough that Bryce was allowed to be merely “concerningly online” instead of “grounded until he became normal.” With his editing money, Bryce did exactly what any teenage, tech-obsessed, chronically online guy with poor impulse control would do: he bought gear. Mechanical keyboards. A second monitor. A better mic. Headphones with unnecessary lighting. A refurbished gaming chair that looked cool but was terrible for his spine. External hard drives, cables, a stream deck, niche editing software, indie games, weird desk lamps, and an embarrassing number of keycaps. He also started investing small amounts of money, half because he was practical and half because he watched a finance video essay and decided he was “diversifying.” By the time he is twenty-one, Bryce has technically become functional. He has a proper part-time job at a tech shop, where he fixes laptops, recommends routers to confused customers, and silently judges people who have never updated anything in their lives. He still edits videos for money, though now he’s pickier about clients, rates, and deadlines. Online, he has a thriving social life full of long-term friends, group chats, shared projects, gaming nights, and people who know his coffee order despite living in different time zones. Offline, his life has been much messier. His dad dies from a heart condition while Bryce is still young enough for the loss to rearrange his whole idea of adulthood. It is quiet and devastating rather than dramatic. His father’s absence settles into the house like a weather system. For a while, it is just Bryce and his mother trying to move around the space left behind. Eventually, his mother starts rebuilding her social life. Slowly. Cautiously. Then she meets James Winters, a wealthy, stern, controlled sort of man from a dating site. James is the kind of man who wears expensive coats, has opinions about punctuality, and always seems like he is two emails away from buying a company. Bryce expects to dislike him on principle. Annoyingly, James is decent. When Bryce and his mother move into James’s place, Bryce is still in high school. The house is nicer than anywhere he has lived before, much closer to the city, and full of furniture that looks too expensive to sit on. James offers to drive him to school and later to work, not in a forced bonding way, but in a practical “I am already going that direction” way. Over time, they become a surprisingly functional family unit of three. James is never soft in an obvious way, but he notices things. He gets Bryce better headphones after seeing him duct-tape his old pair. He has upgraded the internet without making a speech about it. He treats Bryce’s editing work like an actual job, which matters more than Bryce admits. Then, when Bryce is nineteen and living in a shared apartment with a few local online friends, his mother dies in the hospital after a major car accident. The grief hits the second time differently. His father’s death had made him feel young. His mother’s death makes him feel abruptly, violently adult. He has James, technically, but the shape of the family is different now. Stranger. They are connected by loss and years of shared domestic routine, but not by blood, and neither of them knows exactly what to do with that. Bryce keeps going because he does not know what else to do. He works. He edits. He answers messages. He sleeps badly. He buys too many ready meals. He tries to be alive in a way that counts. At some point, probably after a video essay convinces him that social isolation is bad for neuroplasticity or long-term health or whatever, Bryce starts signing up for random activities. Dance classes. Art clubs. Pole dancing. Life drawing. Beginner pottery. One extremely embarrassing contemporary movement workshop. Anything that gets him out of the apartment and forces him to exist around other people without requiring him to explain himself too much. That is how he meets Sidney. Sidney is sharp, funny, and grounded in a way Bryce finds both comforting and mildly terrifying. They start talking after class, then get coffee, then send each other increasingly stupid memes, then date. For a while, it works. They understand each other’s weird schedules. Sidney does not make him feel pathetic for grieving badly, and Bryce does not make her feel guilty for having ambitions that take up space. But eventually, the relationship starts thinning under the pressure of real life. They have less time for each other. Their priorities pull in different directions. The love is there, or at least the affection is, but the relationship itself begins to feel like another obligation both of them are failing at. They talk it through before it becomes cruel. That is the important part. Bryce and Sidney realise that if they force themselves to stay together, they will eventually resent each other for things neither of them is doing maliciously. So they broke up on good terms. They decide to remain friends, or at least the sort of people who can catch up when their schedules align, rant about niche problems the other person understands, and not pretend the relationship meant nothing just because it ended. The only awkward part is that they live together. Both of their names are on the tenancy agreement. Both of them have bought furniture, appliances, and shared household items. Sidney’s family is overseas, so Bryce decides he should be the one to move out. He takes the things he personally bought and still needs: his desk setup, his tools, his kitchen knives, his monitor arms, his favourite lamp, his weighted blanket, and the better of the two rice cookers because he paid for it and Sidney never used it properly anyway. He leaves behind the things he paid for but does not need, like some shelves, the hallway table, spare cookware, and the couch throw pillows he never cared about. He does not ask Sidney to pay him back for the things he leaves behind, because she is already going to be covering the full rent and utilities until she finds someone new to take his room. Technically, they had been renting separate rooms. Practically, they had been sleeping in the same room while they were together, and Bryce’s official room had slowly evolved into a guest room, office, hobby space, tech repair corner, and general “put it in Bryce’s room” zone. Moving out means dismantling more than a relationship. It means untangling an entire shared life made out of cables, furniture, mugs, plants, unfinished projects, and routines neither of them noticed until they had to divide them. So at the start of the story, Bryce has moved back in with his step-dad, and is now looking for a new apartment to live in, one that he can afford. While his investments and savings are healthy, he wants a side hustle to pay for his heartbreak distractions. Which leads him to sell anonymous pics and videos of himself online, something he initially considers easy and convenient, as he already has a bunch of video-editing and recording equipment, but then very quickly realises that he likes being spoiled with money and praised for his appearance and photography skills. Also, he privately thinks it's hilarious to larp as a manic pixie dream girl whenever he messages a subscriber. Bryce also discovers a kink for financial domination, loving the mix of control and submission when subscribers beg him to name a price for custom content. plot-twist James finds out about Bryce's onlyfans and walks in on one of Bryce's filmed videos. Exhibitionism voyeurism loop — gets off on James watching, turns being caught into a performance. Discovers a praise kink for being called a 'good boy' while being filmed, especially when James gives quiet, stern approval off-camera. From this point on a spicy relationship sparks between them with James being a service top for the bratty Bryce
RedQuill