June 15, 2013 at 9 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

"To-by! Oh, To-by!" I stick my head back in the doorway and I make a loud kissy noise to try to persuade him that I'm nowhere near as annoyed as I really am. Sure enough, he comes galloping down the hallway with a dirty sock in his mouth from who knows where, his oversized puppy paws sliding helplessly across the wooden floor. I swear to god, this dog is a living demonstration of Newton's law of inertia: once he gets going, nothing can stop him, even himself. He tries to drift around the edge of the couch but only manages to crash unceremoniously against the wall next to the door. The sock somehow disappears again before he trots outside on the patio with me to sniff everything in sight except the overpriced potty training pad I had to buy for him. "Over here, Toby. Come on, good boy." He's already distracted but since the sliding door is shut far enough that he can't get back inside, he can't do too much damage.

'Famous last words.' There's nothing out here that he can ruin beyond recognition. I've already checked. He does, however, lock eyes with the metal lamp just inside the door and, deciding that this could be a fun new trick to play on the dumbass human pampering him while his owner is gone, he cocks his leg and pisses all down the side of the glass patio door. I feel like Lachlan, throwing my head back in saltiness as he ambles over to the far corner to sniff at the spider web that some poor, determined creature continues to rebuild despite its endless destruction. I look back down at the splattered door and curse Jake for the twentieth time for not having any foresight.

"No. You know what? That's okay. At least it was outside this time. I can live with that." I slide the door open again and he darts back inside, probably to finish shredding the sweaty black sock, wherever it went. I'm not even going to bother cleaning the door until he goes home because I have a feeling that that is the closest thing to potty training we're going to get for the next three days. I hear his paws thumping up and down the hallway and I haven't even found the sock before he's dragging a green and white Creeper t-shirt down the hallway, tripping on the long sleeve trailing behind him on the floor. "Damn it, Toby."

It doesn't register in his mind that I'm irritated with him, and I slide down the wall to sit on the floor next to the shirt he left behind, deciding that as long as he isn't ripping up or eating anything, he can play his little game until he can't walk anymore. Notch knows I need to actually get some shit done tonight. Another black sock follows, then the pair of grey sweatpants with the little orange bleach stain on the bottom of the right leg, then one of the many MrWoofless t-shirts that Mitch's print art guy designed for me to choose from for my first merchandise campaign.

"Where are you getting all of this from?" He doesn't answer, of course. He simply drops the shirt in front of me on the floor and zooms back into the living room, through the little gap between the end of the couch and the end table, and back down the hallway to my bedroom. Three more shirts, a pair of pajama pants, and a blue sweater precede a parade of matching, brand new socks, then without pausing, he reappears with a giant white feather in his mouth. "Nope! We aren't going to do this again today, man. You can't go around eating everything you see." I scoop him up while he tries to turn around and escape, but all he manages to do is run in place because he can't get any traction. "Let's go see what you did oh my god, Toby, what the fuck did you even do?"

At some point, he had learned to jump up on the bed and had knocked the mostly empty laundry hamper over, then he had grabbed my dirty clothes and decided to dust mop the floor with them. When those had run out (and I know for a fact there were more in there than what he brought to me), he had started jumping up and grabbing loose clothes out of the old TV stand I use as a dresser. I hear myself laughing in defeat when I see that he had ripped open the other end of the decorative bed pillow that he had already destroyed once. The floor next to the bathroom is covered in hundreds of wet, clumpy white feathers, but all I can do is laugh harder because I have a faceful of sweaty-sock-and-dog-food-scented puppy breath as he frantically kisses my face in genuine excitement.

'You can't have a single job. Now he thinks he did something good because you're laughing. Great.'

"We're going to take a break from... this disaster. Okay? Okay. Come on, you little asshole." He's wiggling and squirming and wagging out of control as I tuck him under one arm and go over to the closet to grab a sweatshirt that isn't covered in puppy piss. I slip it on, one arm at a time, careful not to let him get away because I know it would take another ten minutes to catch him again. I zip it up halfway and we head over to the office so I can try to be an actual adult today and pretend I have a job, his nose twitching as the mystery door opens for the first time. "Yeah, you aren't allowed in here, are you? No, you aren't. Maybe someday when you're older and you won't electrocute yourself, or me." I sit down and roll the chair back over by the desk, feeling somewhat guilty when I see how horrified he looks at the sudden movement. My toe clicks the power button on without me looking and the computer starts to boot up while I prepare myself for what could be either a huge success or a nightmarish catastrophe. "We're going to try something new, that way I can watch you but you won't be crying in your cage. But you have to cooperate, okay? Now get in there." I hold back the front of my sweater and he claws his way down the front of my shirt, looking up at me in confusion as I pull the zipper up a few more centimeters so he won't have an easy time getting out. He squirms in circles for a couple of minutes before, at last, there is peace in this world. I glance down and he's rolled up in a ball against my stomach, hopefully for at least an hour or two.

I check my exports and uploads for the last day and for tomorrow morning and everything looks perfect there. I check my e-mail, my Skype, my Twitter, my whiteboard schedule, even my text messages before I start setting everything up to record, knowing that it all might be over the second I open my mouth. I connect to whichever multiplayer server is at the top of the list, hoping to try something new or at least find something I haven't played in a while. I click on the third game in the directory and walk over to the wall of signs in the middle of the lobby to find out what the hell I stumbled into today. Apparently this is one of their newer games. They gave me a free membership to their server for a reason, and I can at least help them promote some of their less popular game modes to repay them. I memorize the rules and the names of the game and server, repeating them back to myself in my head while I set up my recording equipment and get everything ready to go. I cringe and give a silent plea to the listening universe leaning into the breathless stillness before I start the recording, knowing full well that this might not be happening any time soon.

"Three, two, one... Hey, what's going on, guys? It's Woofless here with a test run of a new game called solo Mob Wars, and I hope you've been having a great day. Now let's see if we can hop right into a game and get this party rolling." I sprint through the only active portal and glance down at the strangely calm ball of fluff in my shirt while I wait for the game to load up, giddy that he didn't start freaking out as soon as he heard my voice. I check to make sure that he's still breathing, and he is. I feel like a mother kangaroo with a furnace in my pouch, but if this is what it takes for me to keep an eye on him without him howling all night, I can live with that. With a little luck, this might last until I'm done recording with Preston at twelve so I won't have to hear about our subs' Poofless withdrawal this week.

----

June 15, 2013 at 11 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

"Hey there, handsome man. What took you so long?" I let out a sigh of relief when I see that he called on time and seems to be back to his normal, bubbly, suggestive self. I've missed the old Preston and it feels good to have him back at last. I turn on the webcam so we can chill for a couple of minutes before we get to work, and my stomach feels pathetically empty when he appears on the screen with a cheeseburger nearly the size of his head hanging out of his mouth.

"I was looking at my paycheck for this month. Did you-"

"Pfffft. You hafta have a job to get a paycheck, Robert." There is a violent jerk against my ribs followed by tiny claws digging into my skin, and I smile and hold in the stream of obscenities flying through my mind. Two floppy ears and a snuffling nose pop out of the top of my sweater, and he bangs his head against my chin several times while he looks around for whoever else was just talking through my headphones.

"God damn it, Toby." I hold onto his flailing middle as he reaches one foot, then the other up and out of the shirt, struggling to get free. Preston frowns with his mouth open, a bite of unchewed burger threatening to fall out on his keyboard.

"Wait... When'd you get a dog?"

"I didn't. My friend was brilliant enough to get a puppy right before he had to go on a business trip he knew about six months in advance. Now the little horror show won't want to leave, watch and see." I'm amazed at how easily the word 'friend' leaves my mouth, how normal and fluid it sounds as the blatant lie floats through the air, into the microphone, through the internet, and out of his speakers. He buys it without an instant of hesitation, not bothering to question where this unnamed, never-before mentioned friend came from or who they are. Or he might just still be shocked about the giant Furby thrashing around against my throat. "Can you call my phone in like, two minutes? I need to get him out of here before the whole fucking apartment floods." He snickers and I leave Skype open, struggling to grab my phone while simultaneously hugging the hyperactive puppy to my chest. I sidestep to open and close the office door and step over the mound of shit he drug into the living room and he starts wiggling again when he hears the sound of the lock on the door. "Chill, bro. Two more seconds, I swear."

I shut the door all but a crack before I set him down, and he starts bowing in playful circles around me when he hears my phone ringing in my pocket. I light up my e-cig for the fifth time today before I answer, not wanting to hear someone almost ten years my junior lecture me about my health again. I poke the toothy little menace with my toe and he starts sprinting in circles around the patio with his tongue flying out of his mouth. I answer Preston's call seconds before it would have gone to voicemail.

"You're in slow mo today. Puppy got your tongue?"

"Don't give him any ideas. He tries enough shit on his own."

"How long you got him for?"

"Just three days. On the other hand, it's only been... six hours, and we've gone through a full roll of toilet paper, the same bed pillow twice, the plastic moss at the bottom of a fake plant, and all of the clothes in my laundry basket."

"Sounds like somethin' Keeley'd do. Don't let him start it with the make-up. That's when all the bad things start happenin'."

"Can you imagine if he came home and I had a wig and fake eyelashes glued to his dog, or if he was sitting on the rug eating a tube of lipstick? I would be so fucking dead." I poke him in the shoulder to get him running again, and off he goes, spinning in circles all around me. I get what's coming to me, though, when he bites my ankle on the way past. "Owww... Toby. That isn't nice."

"Stop threatenin' the poor little guy with make-up, Rob. What you do in your spare time is your business. Doesn't mean you hafta torture him, too." It looks like he lost interest in my feet again and he goes over to investigate the wadded up potty pad that he skidded on when he ran past, then he trots right on over to the door to wash it down again. When does he drink this much water?

"You were the one who brought up the make-up. Why do you have so much experience with it, huh?"

"Because I have a sister. And a girlfriend. And every time I leave the house with one of 'em, I hafta stand there and hold their crap while they buy more make-up. I'm convinced girls want guys to pay for dates just so they can afford all that freaking make-up. Do you know how much it costs just for one of those pencil things? I asked Keeley once why she can't just get a box of colored pencils and melt the ends and use those, 'cause then she'd have like fifty different colors for half the price of a real one." It sounds so stupid that I have to laugh, and that makes him laugh, too. It feels so good to hear him laugh again.

"What did she say?" Toby is standing in front of the door, whining and looking sorrowfully up at me to let him back inside. I can't tell if he wants to go inside because it's warmer and away from the brewing rainstorm, or because he wants to get back to whatever mayhem he can find this time. Sure enough, as soon as the door slides open, he's scrambling out of sight past the couch and toward the bedroom. I click off my miniature hookah and scoop up most of the pile of dirty clothes before I follow him.

"She just slugged me in the arm. Mom thought it was funny. Wouldn't that work, though?"

"I don't know. Why don't you try it some time and let me know?"

"Fudge you."

"I love you, too, Preston."

"Go make out with your hairy little namesake. He's the only one who'll ever love you, you pleb."

"I know that. Why do you have to rub it in?" He cackles again and I pull the laundry room door shut behind me, suspicion growing out of Toby's silence. "I just wish he would woof less. Eh? Eh?"

"Don't ever talk to me again." I follow the whirlwind of destruction into the bedroom and my heart stops when I hear an ominous tearing noise. It sounds like he's shredding something made of paper this time. I walk around the bed and between the rubbery, chemical smell and the wetness smeared all over his face, I already know what he got into. Seeing that the nightstand drawer is open only confirms it.

"Oh, holy hell. No. Nonononono. You give that back, Toby." He starts chewing faster and before I can get to him, he runs off with a fresh, unrolled condom in his mouth. Preston is laughing hysterically on the phone and I open my eyes and look up at the ceiling, slowly letting all of the air in my lungs out through my nose.

"What'd he get this time?"

"He just... he keeps getting my socks. These were the really expensive ones." I wouldn't ever live it down if I told him the truth, and I'm already salty enough that the puppy just devoured almost all of a twenty-five dollar box of condoms that I had to buy online. I start making the somehow convincing kissy noise he likes so I can trap him in here with me, ducking by the closet door so he won't see me before I can shut the door. "Toby! Let's go!" When he reappears, his face is a gooey, slimey mess, from his nose all the way up by his ears. Even his front legs and collar are covered in thick, water-based, ass-friendly lube. To top it all off, he has a little piece of clear latex speared on one of his front teeth and he can't seem to get it off with his paws or his tongue. "Oh, god. Why did you do that?"

"You could sing in the opera with a voice that high."

"He's all sticky!"

"Are you gettin' it on with a dog? R-ob! Stop! My ears!" He can barely talk, he's laughing so hard. Soon he'll be hiccuping and coughing on his own laughter.

"Why would you do that?! What made you think that was a good idea?! UUUUUHHHH!" He sits down with his ears cocked back in scared confusion at my fake scream. I pick him up and tuck him under one arm while I put the phone on speaker and pocket it so I can go over to pick up the mutilated condoms with the other hand before the lube can soak into the wood floor. "You are in so much trouble, you tasmanian devil dog. Wait until your dad hears what you did."

'He'll just laugh it off. Eventually I will, too.' Even Preston is still giggling, and he doesn't actually know what happened.

"Hey, I'll call you back in a hour or whatever after I get a couple vids done. Sounds like you've got your hands full."

"Thanks, bro. I'll see you in a few."

"Just keep it in your pants next time. I know you're happy to see me, but geez..." He's still laughing when he hangs up, and my phone beeps when the call disconnects. Now I'm safe from Preston's delicate ears.

"You. These are no-nos." I wave a limp, wet, unfurled condom in front of his face and he has enough sense to look ashamed. I step on the pedal on the trash can and wave my hand around to unstick the pieces from my skin. "You don't eat these, Toby. I don't like eating them, either, but I know not to swallow them, you don't. You're too young to be thinking about that stuff, okay?" I hold him up in front of my face and he looks at me, his eyes full of misery while he tries to lick the piece of latex off of his tooth. Even his whiskers are plastered flat to his face. "Okay, fine. I'll forgive you if I can take a picture." I fish my phone out of the pocket on the front of my t-shirt, and I turn him and hold him up to take a selfie to send to Jake. He can share in some of my suffering all the way over in B.C. "Now you have to take a bath. Hey, you brought this on yourself. You like swimming, anyway." I untangle the scrap of latex from his vampire teeth and he leans up and tries to bribe me with a toxic-smelling kiss, smearing clear dick goo all over my face in the process. "I take that back: now we both need a bath. Thanks a lot."

---

June 15, 2013 at 11 PM, Sumas, Washington: Preston

"You're putting on some weight there, Rob. Better cool it on the Swiss Rolls." He rolls his eyes at me and he rubs his hands back and forth over his jiggling belly and scoots his chair forward. Maybe he thinks that'll calm the puppy down? All it does is remind me of the preggo Rob I know I've already spent way too much time picturing for my own sanity. He looks like he's in The Sims with a big, wiggly alien baby bouncin' around in his belly and he's way too happy about it. That or he's just happy he might get another break.

"Anyway, like I was trying to say earlier, I was looking at my channel statistics for this month and..."

"Yeah, the sub count? Mitch was complaining about how they had this new thing where they dump all the subs who haven't watched a video from you in like six months or something? It hit him and the Bacca real hard." The lump stops moving for a second and it looks like it just deflates. Did he do the impossible?

"I can imagine. I only - well, only - lost three thousand and some odd subscribers. They each probably lost ten thousand, at least."

"At least. That hurts just thinkin' about it. It's not like they lose money from that, though, ya know? It's all by views."

"Unless it drops them down a revenue bracket. What were they at before?"

"Yeah. I dunno. I thought Jerome just broke two million. You'd think he'd be the one losing his ish about it, not Mitch."

"Now you, see, Pearston, there's this thing called 'Merome' that happens when a Benja and a Bacca love each other very much." Glad he thinks he's funny 'cause he's the only one. I've had enough TMI talks in the last month to last years. I still don't know if I wanna keep going with Hannah or if I've had more than enough of her, too. I don't wanna hear about how it all works and what it looks like and how it feels and crap. I have enough trouble figuring out how my own parts work and if they're back to normal or not.

"Cut it out and quit bein' a creep."

"The moral of the story is that Mitch is the bark and Jerome is the bite. The mob boss tends to get a little more irritated about these things than the head security guy does." There's a pause in our banter and I try to remember what we'd planned to record today, and the lack of detail on my sticky notes isn't helping. "Are we doing Hunger Games on said Fridge?"

"Sure. I ain't payin' to play on the Underground. One of their admins doesn't like me and they took back my free access. You think they're recording on there, too?" I mentally curse myself for being too easy to read. My laugh's kinda high-pitched and I sound like I just got picked to get up on stage and strip at Twitch Con. Grow up, Preston! It's not that big of a deal! Sure enough, Rob looks suspicious when I catch him looking at me. Why'd I hafta be friends with the awkwardness bloodhound?

"At this time of day? It's probably the best chance we have of running into them. Why?"

"I dunno. I... I just get this weird feeling that they're... like... together?" I glance over at him on my second monitor and I see him frowning right at me fullscreen in all his derpy, curly-haired glory. He looks flabbergasted someone finally said it out loud, like me saying such blasphemous things'll magically make them come true.

"You should watch what you say on here, man. You know how that goes. And while I would like to make a disclaimer that there's nothing wrong with that in case we have an audience," he looks directly into the camera as he says it, knowing my luck that the Bacca might have a stream of bloody coffee pouring outta his nose like a tea kettle right now, "I don't think that they are. They play up Merome just like we play up Poofless. Plus, I thought Mitch was dating... Ashley, I think was her name?"

"Who knows? He switches girlfriends every five minutes. They just seem kinda... maybe too close? They can read each other's minds and crap and when we met up at PAX I coulda swore I saw Jerome checkin' out his butt." I notice my voice gets quieter the more I talk and the grin on his dumb face gets bigger and bigger. It's times like this when I just wanna slug him one.

"Okay, bro, all speculation aside, one does not simply gossip about the overlords when said overlords may be observing their pet plebians from up above. Second, so what if they're dating, or used to be, or might be someday? I ship it." He laughs at the look on my face, and it's not so much that they'd be tongue slurping and biting and tickling each other in unmentionable places as it is the idea of Rob really liking that idea more than he should. He ships it? Does he think about crap like that when he's trying to get his motor going? Dang it, why'd I hafta think about that? Would that mean he thinks about Poofless, too? Does he think about me? "Hey, Preston? You're turning purple. Maybe we should stop speculating about what they do with their light sabers during the battle between Good and Evil and actually get some work done. Yeah?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Good idea." I try to rub the images outta my eyes but I can still see Mitch sitting on the Bacca's lap and now he's doing that Spongebob dance where he brings it around town and it's gross and horrible and I can't stop seeing it GIF-style. Was it the fan art on Twitter that started this? I couldn't think this up on my own, right? I'm still mad-but-really-glad Hannah's on the pills and probably won't be having a baby anytime soon, and even though none of this's stuff a good Christian should be thinking, I really hope there's no way they'd be able to have kids. Can you imagine like a five-year-old with the Bacca's nose and Mitch's elf-y, like, almost girly face, and then those little beady black eyes that can see through your freaking soul? What would a girl Benj-ca look like? What if they had six kids like my parents did? Or ten? Or twenty like that one weird reality show Mom used to watch before the dad got put in prison for selling his daughters for other guys to marry? Is that how they'd make money after YouTube died? Would they be reality TV stars and keep makin' new test tube demon babies for every season?

"Do you still want to fool around on the Fridge, or...?" I pull myself together, kinda, sorta. I clear my throat and take a big swig of Coke Zero and I click the button to officially enter Merome territory.

"You just don't wanna get your butt kicked. Bring it, before the three days is up and you're woof less again." He makes a crying face and it's freakin' awful and I snort and start hunting down a lobby. We both know he's gonna be all sad and lonely again when his friend takes his bratty puppy back. I bet he gets a dog now, too. It'd be his new mascot. I kinda hope he does, that way he'll have someone to keep him company when everyone else gets busy. It must really suck to be by yourself all the time and not be able to find... a guy like that. Might be kinda nice, though: no fighting, no making bad decisions, no accidents, no meds, no clinics, just peace and quiet and the occasional baby wild animal. He might be onto something there.