Chapter 24 #2
“Yeah,” Malcolm says, looking over at Damien as well. “I told her that Audrey’s the reason you’ve had to take so many long showers lately—”
Evan pinches his arm—rather viciously—and smiles at me. “Ignore him.”
“Um, ow!” Malcolm protests, rubbing the spot on his arm.
I lower my head, embarrassed, but when I glance over at my friends, Victory is giving me a sympathetic smile and Pal is waggling their eyebrows at me. This was a terrible idea.
I don’t dare glance at Damien on my other side; I get the impression that Malcolm’s joke was mostly supposed to embarrass Damien, but it also implies that he and I aren’t…
But that’s not my fault. We’ve been getting together almost every night that I don’t have a stream for the past two weeks, but we don’t ever… Well, he doesn’t… But I…
I’ve offered. Sort of. Very awkwardly and uncertainly. But instead, it seems he’s been going home and having long showers. Which is his choice, I guess, but I’m worried he thinks I’ll be bad at…that stuff. And given the past criticism I’ve received in that department, I don’t blame him.
“You’re into The Stones of Ayor, right?” Evan asks me, breezing past the awkwardness at the table like it’s nothing.
“Uh, yeah,” I reply hesitantly. “Are you?”
“I played the second game back when it first came out.” She laughs gently. “I played it that whole summer, on break from university, actually. But I still haven’t gotten around to finishing the third one. And now there’s a fourth? One day, I swear.”
She was in university when the second game came out? That was fourteen years ago. She must be at least my sister’s age—early thirties, mid-thirties?—but she doesn’t look it. Though I suppose she does seem more mature than anyone else at the table—which isn’t saying much.
“You spend too much time working,” Malcolm says to her, leaning his shoulder against hers. “You need more time for fun stuff.”
“You’re my fun stuff,” she says, giving him a patronizing pat on the arm. She wrinkles her nose when she realizes how that sounds and then bursts out laughing. “I think that was, as the kids say, cringe.”
Pal snorts and Evan smiles at them, completely unfazed. “She’s too good for you, man,” they say to Malcolm, who just shrugs like, I know.
“Speaking of Stones,” Malcolm adds, like he just remembered something. He looks between me and Damien. “How did the joint stream go last night? I’m sorry I wasn’t available to be a mod.”
“Yeah, that was my fault,” Evan says. “Sorry.”
“It was a lot of fun,” I tell him. We ended up doing the Swindlers Syndicate in the third game, like Damien suggested, but it was way more mellow than a main quest speedrun.
“It was blessedly uneventful, because Link didn’t show up,” Damien adds with a laugh. “I think we scared him off.”
“Link?” Victory asks. “Like The Legend of Zelda, Link?”
“It’s this obnoxious user who goes by the name LinkFarts,” I explain, and Pal practically cackles. Unsurprising, given their sense of humour. “He likes to tune into our joint streams and be a jerk.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Victory says.
“Don’t worry, it’s hilarious,” I assure her. “I don’t find those commenters as unbearable anymore. I guess I’m learning to let go.”
“Also, you totally pwned me, as one person put it, so there’s nothing anyone can say about you now,” Damien adds.
“People still say pwned?” Evan asks, grimacing.
“No, they definitely do not,” I reply, and she laughs again.
The rest of the evening is surprisingly enjoyable, considering that I thought having Pal and Malcolm in the same room would create such a density of dick jokes that they’d form a supermassive blackhole in the middle of the bar, and we’d be trapped for eternity in its event horizon. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of dick jokes from the two of them this evening, but it’s manageable.
Elliot and Nathan are the first to leave—Nathan seemed to reach his socializing limit early on and appeared to just be dissociating in the corner for the last half hour—and Victory and Pal get up to leave shortly after. This was probably a lot of people at once for her too.
“I guess that means I should get going,” I say, standing alongside them. They’ll only be getting off the streetcar a couple stops before I do, so it makes sense to go together.
“I’ll come with you,” Damien offers. “Make sure you get home safe.”
I’m about to protest that I’ll be fine on my own, but when he stands up next to me, I suddenly can’t bear the idea of being apart from him yet. “Okay.”
Malcolm and Evan stand up to give us all hugs goodbye—Evan is also a really good hugger, wow.
“I know Damien was afraid you wouldn’t want to come, but I’m glad you did,” Malcolm says quietly when he hugs me again. “You’re good for him.”
“So are you,” I tell him.
“Oh, you have no idea.” He laughs.
When we leave the bar, we fall into formation, walking two-by-two to the streetcar.
“What did Malcolm say to you when we were leaving?” Damien asks, leaning towards me and keeping his voice low. He sounds like he’s bracing himself for the worst.
“Um. He said that I was good for you,” I tell him, and he just nods.
“Evan said you were good for me, too.”
“In the interest of transparency,” Damien says as he pulls off his wet boots in my doorway. I managed to arm-twist him into crashing here tonight, since it’s pretty late for him to be going back to his place. “I am tired and a little tipsy and I kind of just want to go to sleep.”
“Oh, thank god,” I say with a weary laugh. I’d felt a twinge of guilt after I invited him to stay, thinking he’d assume something was going to happen—it is pretty much his birthday, after all—but I’m exhausted as well, so his words are a relief.
Though part of me feels like his reluctance is my fault.
“I can sleep on your couch if you don’t want me in your bed, though,” he adds, draping his plaid jacket over the chair.
“No, I definitely want you in my bed,” I say quickly, before I register the words and turn red. “Um. Also, you’re, like, twice as long as that couch, so.”
“Fair enough.”
“Oh, but wait—” I suddenly remember that there’s an actual reason it’s good that he’s here, after all, and I can assuage my guilt a little. “I have a present for you!”
I switch on the lamps in the living room as I make my way over to my desk where I grab the rectangular box that I left sitting there. I spin around to bring it to him only to find that he’s right behind me.
“Hi,” I say with a laugh. “This is for you.”
He frowns at me fondly—if that’s even a thing. “You got me a keyboard?” he asks as he takes the unwrapped box from my hand.
“Yes, but it’s not the one that the box says,” I tell him. “That was just the first box I could find that would fit it. I didn’t have time to order you a keyboard and customize it for your birthday, so this is one of mine, but I want you to have it.”
“Audrey—” He’s stunned now. “I can’t take one of your keyboards.”
“Please. It’s a good one,” I say, placing my hands over his on the box. “It’s got really light linear switches that are amazing for RPGs and shooters. And I hand-lubed every switch—don’t laugh—so they are super smooth, and I even upgraded the stabilizers—”
“Oh my god,” he says, half-laughing, half-groaning. “This is because you hate my space bar—”
“Well, it’s awful—”
“It’s not even that noticeable on stream—”
“I notice it every time! It’s like it rattles the inside of my brain.”
“You’re the only one who’s ever complained to me about this.”
“As your friend, I think it’s my duty to point out when you are committing crimes against humanity.”
“As my girlfriend, I think it’s your duty to support me no matter what, even when I choose horrible keyboards.”
“I can’t do that, Damien, I really can’t.”
“I don’t know even know what a linear switch is!”
“It doesn’t have the bump that you feel with tactile switches and—you know what, it doesn’t matter,” I say, shaking my head. “Because this is a much better keyboard than that stock piece of crap that you use, so just accept your freaking birthday present, for the love of god!”
I’m not sure if it’s the ridiculousness of my words or the seriousness of my voice, but he bursts out laughing and then hugs the box to his chest.
“All right, thank you, I will treasure it on a shelf forever,” he says, and I give him an evil glare. “What I mean to say is I will definitely use this as my only keyboard from now on.”
“At least until Christmas,” I say with a fake smile.
“You’re going to turn me into one of those people, aren’t you?” He sighs. “Collecting limited edition keycap sets and spending hours trying to determine which switches are the thockiest even though they all sound the same—”
“Blasphemy.”
“Come on,” he says, lowering the box in one arm while he puts the other around my waist and starts moving me towards my bedroom. “I wasn’t kidding about needing sleep.”
“Yeah, but talking about keyboards gave me a second wind and now I want to watch switch comparison videos on YouTube for hours—”
“Sleep.”
“Yeah, okay…” I let out a defeated sigh and trudge alongside him. “But in the morning, we’re watching the videos.”