December 30, 2013 at 3 PM, Fort Worth, Texas: Preston

            My duffel bag full of crap smacks against the wall and it's finally gonna stay put for a while. After dragging it back and forth through airports twice and across two cities and tryin' to keep track of all the useful junk crammed inside it with Nooch creepin' around, it can finally rest. And so can I.

            The fake leather couch feels so nice and squishy against my face right now and I don't even care about Caleb's Dorito crumbs spilled all over it or ground up in the carpet. One of these days I'm gonna have enough money to buy a Roomba and I'm never gonna clean again. I just wanna sit here forever and be one with the couch. My grody, dusty, chippy, butt-scented bae. I've had some good times with this couch. Anime marathons, COD beta testing, hackers, all the good and bad crap with Hannah, Dad's retirement party, my million sub milestone Twitter storm, that one time Rob came to visit for the convention... I should get his butt down here so we can chill and plan and grind vids together. Maybe when the server's getting set up we can get him a ticket. Not like he has a job or anything he has to worry about.

            I open one eye halfway and I see I've still got like two hours before our next grind session. I'm just so freakin' tired from the Christmas rush and the trip and the grind we did during the trip. And now it's almost New Year's and there's always more crap to do for New Year's. I'm just glad I don't hafta waste time decorating stuff anymore. I wonder what Mom and Dad're gonna do when there aren't hyper little gremlin kids trollin' around they can use to do stuff like sweeping up tree needles and packing up all the decorations every year. Guess manual labor's all kids're good for, huh? And they don't do all that much so it's like you're paying for them to exist but they never pay you back. Like pets. So am I like their pet pleb? I hafta do something nice for them someday when the server's all paid for and I finally have real money like Mitch.

            I still can't believe he paid for everyone to stay at his house for the weekend again and he said something about going skiing next year. Just staying at his place was like at least three hundred bucks in food plus my plane ticket so I can't imagine how much it'd cost to actually go somewhere and do something besides derp around at his house and see a movie. But he did make us stream with him for a couple hours and be in his vlogs so that probably paid for everything. Things like that make me wonder if the Bacca's his only real friend. Is The Pack a real thing or are we all just pretending we're friends like Crafted was? Vik and Lachlan apparently had better things to do but they also live in the opposite corners of the universe and I probably woulda done the same thing and just stayed home. Three days isn't worth that much time on a plane or the cost of the tickets. My butt'd hurt so bad... and I never wanna see that look of nasty surprise on Rob's face again. One butt cyst is the limit for one friendship or else the smell'd kill it ded.

            But even though Nooch was there trollin' around again, I'm glad I went this year. It's the only time I get to see Rob in person not at a convention with viewers to deal with and it was nice just chillin' together, even if I'm still half convinced I froze my balls off. I feel like I finally got my best friend back. After all the drama with Hannah I dragged him into and a whole year of us fighting on and off again, it's like we're finally back on the same page. And now Hannah and Smiley Meme Face aren't around to set our lives on Hard Mode, it's like nothing ever changed. We're back to making dumb jokes and playing rounds of CS:GO on our lunch breaks at two in the morning and arguing about how we're gonna edit our collabs instead of stupid crap like what a text means or why one of us's in a bad mood or why we can't record when we said we would. It's back to just us being ourselves and it feels good. I missed that.

            I groan and slowly sit up but the world still spins, anyways. It's too hot with a hoodie and a coat on inside with the heater turned up and these clothes are grody AF. I really need a shower. I step on the backs of my shoes and slide 'em off and shake my arms outta the coat and look at the giant jagged hole by the pocket. Can too see it. Freakin' Nooch. Mom was nice and got me a new $150 coat for Christmas and I take it up to Canadia where it's cold and coats are supposed to belong and Nooch's dumb bunny chewed a hole right through it like two hours after I got to Mitch's house. And when I caught it doing it, it pooped all over it, too. Then Nooch just picked it up and cooed at it and petted it and kissed it and laughed at me and said it was my fault. How was it my fault the dumb thing pulled it off the coat rack and started snackin' on it when I wasn't lookin'? It's his fault for bringin' his dumb rodents in his suitcase like a weirdo from a Courage the Cowardly Dog re-run. This's exactly why I don't like pets and why I'm gonna work my butt off so I don't hafta take care of kids. That's the wife's job.

            I go slither outta my greasy grimey two-days-old clothes and turn on the hottest shower the water heater's ever churned out. Get all the Nooch germs off me. Sitting next to him's even sketchier than touchin' arms with four random people on little tiny airplanes.

But I wonder how having a family's gonna work with Rob? I know he's said more than a couple times he doesn't want kids but everyone says that at some point in their lives, right? I say that right now but I know I'm gonna be stuck with 'em, anyways. But if he went and found a guy who wasn't a piece of crap and they got married... could they even get married? Is it worth Googling it and letting the Bacca see I searched for it? Not really. But if they could and they ended up getting kids somehow, would Rob be the one taking care of them? He's not really a good cook, though... You can't have random meat sandwiches and salty noodles and coffee forever. I dunno how that'd work. Isn't there like a guy who's the guy and the other one's the girl? And I'm pretty sure Rob'd be the girl because you can tell from lookin' at him or listening to him talk for two seconds he's gay as frick, and that's not counting him goin' around twerking at everyone during the Harlem Shake break during the stream. He could make some money for the server by goin' downtown and shaking that thing for rainbow money. He earned his worth in tips on Twitch, that's for sure.

            We should do that. I wonder how much it'd cost to fly him down here for like a week so we could stream and record the stream and post it as videos on both our accounts? We could get tips and double views for the same amount of work, plus we wouldn't hafta edit all that much because it's a stream and it's from the same perspective. Then we could chill more and finish plannin' out t-shirts and ideas for the server and stuff and be done with everything but the grind. I wish he was here now so I could tell him my idea for the server in person. He's gonna be so stoked. I bet he'd get all derpy and touchy-feely and sappy like a maple tree. All my stuff in my bag smells like him from always being next to him with his cheap body spray and from the soap I stole from him because my little tiny airport-sized bottle of crap ran out. Now my apartment's gonna smell like him even after I washed it all off and it's gonna stink like he's creepin' around in here in the shadows like the Ghost of Christmas Never. He's still salty about having to record all during the day then spend all night doing Hanukkah crap with old people he doesn't like and crazy kids runnin' around everywhere. All the kids in his family're probably what keeps the BenjandBac's merch store in business. No wonder he eats ramen with hot sauce for dinner.

            I climb outta the shower and reach down and dig through my pockets for my phone before I accidentally drown it in the hot 'n spicy water rainin' off my butt and I see I barely have an hour before we hafta record again. I kinda wish he'd text and say he needs to cancel but he's probably been chillin' at his apartment and editing while I was flyin' back from that ice pit he calls a home. I don't get why anyone'd wanna live somewhere that freaking cold. If his heater broke for a week, I'm pretty sure he'd be ded like a Banquet TV dinner. I'm in Texas and I'm freezing my butt off with the heater on in a bathroom so hot it's like a sauna.

            "I forgot to get clothes. Frick. Preston, why're so you freaking dumb?" I crawl in the big, fluffy, kinda dusty bathrobe hanging on the hook on the back of the door and pay the penance for being a noob. I can feel it shrivel as soon as the door opens. And it doesn't feel good. The heater's up to like seventy-four degrees and I'm still cold. I fish around in the laundry basket and grab whatever's on top. I don't care anymore as long as I can still feel my balls five minutes from now. I run back in the lukewarm steamy bathroom and try to save whatever's left of my manhood but it's over it now. And here I was hoping I could take a couple minutes to relax and pull a Lachlan and let it go after four days of nothin', but it looks like that's gonna hafta wait. Again. I can still feel it in my stomach and it's distracting. It's hypersensitive and wearing clothes is uncomfortable as frick. I jump on the bed and flounder around in the fuzzy black blanket under the bedspread and try to get warm before I hafta get up again. I'm just gonna rest my eyes for a minute and absorb the warmness. Be the warmness.

            I wonder if Rob misses What's-His-Face staying at his apartment constantly. I bet he gets really cold, livin' that far north with the heater turned way down and without him and the dumb dog creepin' on him. I don't know how he stands it with just sweatpants and t-shirts and cold cups of coffee. I think I'd actually die.

            I wonder if he thinks about him when he's getting ready to go to sleep and he has to take care of stuff. What'd he even like about him? He wasn't even that good-looking. Even Lachlan's nicer looking than he was and he's Lachlan. He must see something good in him I don't because they're still friends for some freaking reason. Why would he wanna do that? They talk and send stuff to each other like every single frickin' day. I haven't talked to Hannah since I told her not to bother contacting me again the day Steem posted the video, so why'd he still wanna be friends with that creep? He has plenty of friends. He doesn't need his dumb butt lurkin' around to remind him how all they did was fight and crap. I wish he'd go crawl back in the fancy freakin' car I know he's gotta have with that much money and go take a hike back to the other side o' the rainbow where he can smile 'til his mouth falls off. It was better they broke up when they did. He wouldn't have enough time to grind and deal with him at the same time and we'd still be fighting all the time and they'd be fighting all the time and he'd be all sad when he finally got rid of him. Dumb dog's still over at his place all the time, though, probably so Smiley can go cheat all over the world on some new guy he's playing. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Why do so many people think he's so special, anyways? I bet Rob just went and got coffee and Smiley walked up and pulled a Nooch and started flirting with him and he was so lonely he decided he was good enough and started dating him. Not like I was around a whole lot to keep him company. I was a crappy friend so he ended up with Mr. Meme Face and now he regrets it since we're friends again.

We spend a lotta time together like we used to now Hannah and Smiley are gone, and even when we're dead tired and can't concentrate long enough to do anything but laugh at how dumb we are it's like there's never enough time to spend together. It's only been like six hours and I already miss him, and I probably won't get to see him again until at least the end of January if he can afford tickets to come to PAX South. He better find a way to come. I'm not gonna take no for an answer now that I'm back home and he can stay with me and we can drive downtown together. I won't even charge him rent. Or cab fare. But it'll suck when he has to go home. It's not like I can keep him here forever - they'd know where to look and they'd come rescue him and take him back to his little igloo apartment full of dog hair and weird smellin' vape fumes. Whoever bought him that nasty thing deserves to sit in front of it and smell him blow that blue minty crap in their face 'til the end of time. Even sitting upwind doesn't help and it makes everything he touches stink. I don't get how the viewers haven't caught on he's a rainbow smoke factory.

            I catch myself picturing him with that metal pipe in his mouth again. I don't know what's up with that. It wasn't that interesting and we were just sitting outside and watching it snow while we froze our butts off. I had two layers of clothes and a hoodie and my coat on and he was just chillin' down on the concrete in his little leather jacket and a t-shirt and jeans. And those jeans're so tight they can't be warm. Maybe he's got so much hair because it keeps him warm? The middle seams of his jeans are pushing against stuff I shouldn't be able to see but he's too worried about explaining something about the server to be thinkin' like that. And it's back in his mouth while he scribbles something down on a sticky note and how are his lips not getting stuck to the metal like the kid in that Christmas movie Mom makes us watch every year? He shouldn't sit cross-legged like that. It's all squishy and he looks so warm. The wind gusts and he's laughing and brushing snowflakes off his leg and his hand's so close to where the X marks the spot... Dumb derp didn't notice there's snow in his hair now. I brush it off and he shivers and we laugh and blue-white smoke drifts outta his mouth.

I finally feel warm, and it's more than one kind of warmth. I check my phone and I still have half an hour before I hafta get it in gear. That's plenty of time.

---

December 30, 2013 at 5 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

            He calls back five minutes later, wrapped up in a black sherpa blanket like he's stranded at a base camp on Mount Everest, a mug of something sending steam up in his face. I can't imagine him stepping foot on a ski slope without freezing solid and rolling his way down. His face lights up when he sees that I've answered and I feel guilty again. I don't know how much longer I can avoid this, but I'm not ready to deal with his little bromance. I'm not even sure if he recognizes it for what it is, at least not yet, and I have enough stressful shit going on in my life right now without having to try to explain gay sex to Preston. With a little luck, he might take a few more years and work through it himself.

            "What took you so long, man? I even started updating Flash while I was waiting on your ass." His nose crinkles up in laughter and he swallows whatever boiling concoction he came up with this time. I hope for his sake that it isn't that chunky hot chocolate shit from the dollar store that he used to buy in Washington and slosh around for me to see.

            "My butt was frozen to the plane. They had to scrape it off the seat and ship me home in a hot tub limousine."

            "Cool story, bro." He snickers and the mug finally descends to the desk; now the grind continues. His face softens and I can see something that definitely isn't friendship in his eyes when he looks at me onscreen. I haven't seen that look on his face in a long, long time, and I had kind of been hoping that I wouldn't see it again. Then again, seeing how things went with Hannah, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. He starts looking for something on his computer and his mouth settles back into his usual absent-minded smile, the one Mitch and Jerome teased him about during the entire trip and teased me about after he left. Everyone in the world has figured it out; everyone except for him. "I still have about three minutes left before it will let me melt my eyes again, so chill."

            "It's chill. It's too frickin' chill. I swear my heater's broken. Why's it always so cold in here?" He gives a dramatic shiver and I start to think that him claiming to be cold might be a little more than just his sad attempt at trying to hit on me.

            "Are you sick? Maybe you should go back to the Nether."

            "I'm sicka you! Maybe you should go back to the Nether."

            "I'm not the one who is acting like a Ghast." He frowns and looks over at me on his other screen and I pretend to be wiping tears away with both hands. He scoffs playfully and pushes back from his rickety desk in mock offense, and I half expect him to spill his mug all over his crotch. I know I wouldn't be able to keep myself from laughing at his antics if he did.

            "I'm not cryin'! Down here in the South where there's sun and-"

            "Crocodile tears."

            "Shut up. Your summer's like our winter down here and you're just jealous you can't get a suntan that ain't outta a bottle. Not my fault you got ice crystals in your eyes when Envy died." He looks self-satisfied, like anyone would consider that an insult. He needs to warm-up a little more before we start recording or people are going to be unsubbing and crying in a corner from his bad jokes. Why is he running short on insults for me these days? You would think us spending almost every waking moment together would give him more ammo, although to be fair he spends at least a quarter of that time in his own little dimension, smiling in giddy reverie about something. It would be adorable if I didn't know it would end in disaster; even Jake couldn't deal with me for six months and his tolerance for bullshit is much higher than Preston's.

            "My tears were too salty to freeze. Envy was amazing and you know it."

            "Envy was a jerkwad. Why do you always hafta feel sorry for the jerkwads?"

            "I mean, I feel sorry for you." He turns and stares at me with his wide, mahogany eyes, the ring light outlining his pupils and making them glow like he's trying to cast a curse on me. Knowing him, maybe he is. "What? I said I feel sorry for you because you're cold."

            "You just called me a jerkwad." I know if he were here right now he would be body slamming me on the floor or sitting on me in my chair, trying to bully me into taking it back. I actually know what his ass feels like from multiple different angles now, and he definitely has something worth squeezing.

'I shouldn't be thinking about him like that. I'm hopeless.'

            "No, I just have the ability to empathize with other people. Maybe you should work on that, eh?"

            "Yeah, I'll emphasize how you're a freakin' jerkwad. Dumb pleb." I catch the beginning of a grin starting to tug the edges of his mouth up, and I hope that this might be just enough to temporarily get rid of the doe-eyed flirt who seems to have possessed Preston Arsement, of all fucking people. Us spending fifty hours per week together isn't helping, and neither is the upcoming convention four weeks from now. If he clings, cuddles, and coos to me in public like he did at Mitch's house, we're going to be in some serious shit. I see enough disturbing things online about us without adding concrete evidence to fuel the cracky ass Poofless fandom that already haunts me in my nightmares.

'At least he hasn't mentioned Jake yet,' I muse, the stadium of voices in my head unanimously cheering at either his increase in tact or his loss of short-term memory. I lost count of the number of times he asked about him after the second day; you would think we had all been in a relationship together, as concerned as he was. I look over and catch him watching me again and I pretend I wasn't looking at him, yet again. I don't need him thinking his puppy love is a two-way street and getting his hopes up.

"You done yet?"

            "As done as I'm going to be without taking the money and cashing it in for beer." I catch him spaced out with a smile again, and I can't tell if I want to hug him or groan and hang up on him, so I just ignore it and launch Minecraft.