Chapter Nineteen
Theo
“On your left. Wait, fuck, no, your other left… fucking left! Fuck!” I laughed as Alex cursed, screamed, and swore into the mic as a horde of zombies surrounded us.
I heard him smashing his keyboard, frantically trying to take out half of them as West, Mason, and Lane did their best not to get mowed down.
Meanwhile, I skipped gleefully through them, taking off as many zombie heads as I could with my favourite weapon: a huge fuck-off sword that I occasionally paired with a machine gun when absolutely necessary.
The gun felt like cheating, though, especially in situations like this when I was the most experienced player on the team.
The five of us were all playing Age of Blood together online, with me sat curled up in my plush pink gaming chair wearing my pyjamas and my matching light-up cat-ear headphones that were currently programmed to flash neon pink whenever I killed something.
Which they were doing quite a lot at the moment.
“Jesus fuck, Theo, how many have you killed?” Lane asked. His avatar was dual-wielding pistols and looked a bit like John Wick. I was so glad he’d been able to join us today, and it hadn’t even taken that much persuading to get him to say yes.
“A hundred and twelve,” I said casually as my avatar calmly sliced off more heads. They were wearing a bloodied cheerleader uniform with blonde hair in pigtails. I’d styled the character after Babydoll from Sucker Punch. “A hundred and fourteen now.”
“You’re too good at this,” Alex muttered. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“You’re doing great, though,” I said. “And this is, like, sort of my job. I’ve played this a lot, so if I sucked, I’d be a pretty shitty streamer.”
“Sometimes it’s fun to watch people do badly, though,” West said as his American football-styled avatar clattered into a group of zombies trying to attack us from the side.
West had apparently decided to eschew all his weapons in favour of simply running zombies over and crushing them with his bare hands.
It wasn’t the most successful approach but he seemed to be having fun with it.
“Yeah, like that time we watched what’s-his-face fail epically at the final boss fight of Final Command!
I mean, I felt bad for the guy but it was fucking funny,” Mason said.
He was quietly holding his own and seemed content to be there as West’s moral support while occasionally taking the piss out of his best friend.
“Oh… was that Daryl? Er, Daryl_Always_Dies?” I’d known Daryl for a few years.
He always hammed things up when he was streaming, with jokes, laughs, and overdramatic death monologues, but in reality he was a very quiet, mild-mannered data analyst. It was like streaming unleashed a whole other side of his personality and sometimes it was hard to tell which was the real Daryl and which was the fake.
Hiding his true self like that must have been exhausting.
In fact, I knew from experience it was.
When I was younger and had first moved out of my parents’ house, the toxic relationships I’d fallen into had always involved men who’d wanted me to be a certain way—quieter, pretty but not too pretty, sexy but not too sexy. Like a doll.
I’d done my best to be the person they’d wanted because I’d been so deathly afraid that nobody would want the real me. After all, my parents hadn’t, so why would anyone else?
So I’d shrunk myself down, taken the insults, the manipulation, the gaslighting, and the backhanded compliments, and tried desperately to mould myself into a completely different version of myself.
And when it hadn’t worked, they’d dumped me and I’d fallen for the next man with smooth words and a false smile who’d promised me the world.
And the cycle had begun again.
Every time, it’d snuffed out a little more of my spark and dulled a little more of my shine, leaving me as a small hollowed-out shell, desperate to be loved and wishing I could be what those men wanted.
I’d probably still be stuck in that place if it wasn’t for Laurie.
We’d started talking online and the way he’d spoken to me…
it was like I’d been seen for the first time.
He’d nudged me into being myself simply by being unapologetically himself—a queer goth who loved the Romantics, historical documentaries, and mythology.
Who wore make-up and suits and had the most ridiculous reverse tramp stamp.
Who saw what the world expected of him and decided to do it his way.
When I was nothing but a broken caterpillar, Laurie had given me wings and helped me soar.
I didn’t think he’d ever accept how much he’d changed my life. Laurie just seemed to view his actions as nothing more than something any decent person would do, and he refused to let me thank him any more, even though I owed him more than I’d ever be able to repay.
Although if Laurie even heard me use the term repayment, I’d get the longest hard stare in history. And probably a spanking to go with it.
“Yeah,” West said. “It was Daryl. He was so torn up over it.”
I snorted. “Did he do the whole over-the-top death speech?”
“Yeah, think so.”
“That’s so Daryl. I think he fucks up on purpose half the time so he can do a new dramatic monologue.
” I wouldn’t have been surprised, considering how many views they gave him.
There were fucking compilation videos of his speeches on YouTube.
He was clever and careful with them, though, not doing them so often they got boring but enough to keep his fans hooked.
“We’re all going to fucking die in a second if we don’t do something fucking spectacular,” Alex said, his HP bar flashing at the top of the screen. Next time round, he needed better weapons. And something resembling armour. And a totally different character.
He’d chosen a slick-looking FBI agent this time around and it just didn’t fit his playing style, and while it didn’t matter as much when you were playing a multiplayer horde encounter, if you were the sort of person who threw yourself into the oncoming zombies headfirst, not being totally squishy helped.
“You’re so dramatic,” I said, hitting a few keys so my character leapt into the air, did a neat somersault, landed in the middle of the group mobbing Alex, and started slicing them in half with deadly precision while animated blood spurted everywhere. “See? It’s not that bad.”
“I’ve got, like, two fucking HP left,” Alex said. “Has anyone got a med pack?”
“Yeah,” Lane said, taking out a line of zombies with neat headshots. “Just give me a second.”
“I’ve got one too,” West said as his character literally picked up two zombies and smacked them together.
“Don’t you need it?” Alex asked, sounding concerned. “You’re not doing great either.”
“It’s fine. You can have this one and I’ll have one of Mason’s. He’s got two.”
“You can’t just decide to take my shit!” Mason exclaimed, lobbing a grenade into the group that had just appeared, splattering them everywhere.
“Why the fuck not?”
“I might need it.”
“You don’t need both,” West said. “We’ve only got another three minutes of this round and we’re so close to making it through.”
“Fine,” Mason said with a sigh. “But we need to find some more after this. Theo, any idea where we can get more med packs?”
“Yeah, there’s a house over the hill at the end of this round that’s got some.
Also, in the break we should be able to buy some.
We’ve picked up enough coins from the zombies to be able to get one each.
” I glanced at the dial in the top right-hand corner of my screen that had all my character’s info at a glance.
“We might even have enough for a couple of us to have advanced packs. There’s some weapons and ammunition in the house too.
Alex, there’s an old-fashioned tommy gun in there you should grab. ”
“Are you saying I’m doing shit?” Alex asked teasingly.
“Not totally shit…” I said sweetly. “Just a bit shit.”
Alex laughed as he took a med pack off Mason’s character. “I’ll take that.”
The final horde of zombies for this round crested the digital hill in front of us. “Okay,” I said, unable to keep the glee out of my voice. I fucking loved this game. “Two minutes to kill all of them and we win this round! Let’s kick some zombie butt!”
It took us up to the last second to clear the field, and as the final buzzer sounded, my heart was pounding and I could hear my breathing. It’d been an intense few minutes but I’d loved every second of it, especially because of the people I’d gotten to play with.
Usually when I streamed with other people, I didn’t know them nearly as well, so I didn’t have as much emotional investment in their fate.
Yeah, I didn’t want them to die but that was because it fucked up our stats, and if we were playing one of the more extreme survival modes, one person dying meant we lost.
But playing with my best friends, with my brother, meant more to me than I could’ve ever imagined.
And seeing them all get on so well was a whole other level of amazing.
When I’d mentioned to Alex about maybe joining West and me for a game or two, I’d never imagined both him and Lane joining me, and I’d also never imagined they’d adopt West so quickly.
Especially because Alex could be a prickly asshole by his own admission.
Cacti were cuddlier.
“How’s it going?” Laurie asked, sticking his head around my bedroom door.
He’d swapped his suit for pyjamas, which were black and had little pinstripes on them, as well as some cosy-looking slippers and a chunky knitted black cardigan that Fred had made him for Christmas last year. “I thought I heard yelling?”
“Not from me,” I said as I muted myself.
We’d all agreed to a quick ten-minute comfort break before we tried the next level.
I needed them to be super focused on zombie killing, not the fact they needed to pee or wanted a snack.
“Maybe you heard Alex. He was very loud! Honestly, you’d have thought he was actually under attack from zombies.
” I scoffed. “Maybe if he focused more on shooting them than shouting, he wouldn’t have almost died. Twice!”
Laurie chuckled. “I’d have thought Alex would be the calm one.”
“No, that’s Lane. He’s like a fucking man on a mission! West is great too, and Mason’s the quiet, sneaky one and then boom grenade!”
“I’m glad you’re having fun.” He walked across to my desk and placed a kiss on the top of my head.
“Me too. I’m so glad we actually managed to arrange this. I’m glad Alex and Lane joined us too—they’re fun to play with, mostly because I like winding Alex up.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Please, you love it!” I smiled sweetly at him and winked. Laurie raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t antagonise Alex,” he said, kissing me again. “Just because he’s your pet honey badger does not mean you should wind him up and turn him loose.”
“That would involve Alex actually being able to hit anything. Although maybe he’s like the Hulk… maybe if he gets mad, he’ll get better.” I thought for a second then shook my head. “No, the madder he gets, the worse he gets. It’s like he can’t focus and just smashes the keyboard.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Laurie said. “Would you like a drink? I just boiled the kettle. I wanted to see if you fancied a hot chocolate.”
“Ohhh, yes please! Can I have marshmallows too, please? And cream?”
“We don’t have any cream, but we do have marshmallows.”
“Okay, I guess that’ll do.” I pretended to pout and then giggled when Laurie shot me an unimpressed look. “Can I have a snack too, please?”
“Of course. I’ll bring you some biscuits.”
“Thank you.” I tilted my head and puckered up, hoping for a proper kiss. Now that we did wonderful things like kiss, I wanted them all the time. Laurie was happy to oblige and I sighed blissfully as his lips met mine.
I hoped we never stopped doing this. I didn’t think I’d ever been as happy as I was right now.
“I’ll get you a drink,” Laurie said softly, kissing my forehead before heading back to the door. “Enjoy killing zombies. And remember, Alex is not your pet honey badger.”
“Fine,” I said as I turned back to my computer. “If I can’t have a pet honey badger, can I have a guinea pig instead?”