January 20, 2014 at 7 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

"Rob."

" - get underground as soon as you have enough food to last you for at least an hour. See if you can find any oak trees before the timer -"

"Rob."

" - starts, so the apples will drop while we -"

"Rob."

" - get everything else. I'll head south away from the border to look for -"

"Rob."

" - chickens and cows, and you can stay here and get stone tools."

"Rob."

"Yes, Mat?"

"Chill the fuck out and listen for a second. Did you see the look on Preston's face when he heard you were playing with me?" I sigh and I'm grateful that my webcam is off so he can't see my face. I love Mat to death, but this is one of those moments when I wish I was always automatically assigned to Vik's team instead of his. He laughs that merciless little laugh of his and part of me almost wishes that he would die early in the game so that I won't have to worry about listening to his taunting the entire time.

'That's cruel. This is supposed to be for fun - you can't just throw him aside like that.'

"Yes, I know that he's pissed off at me. You don't need to remind me every ten seconds."

"He was pee-ssed, Robert. Oh, he was pee-ssed!" he cackles, and I wonder for the umpteenth time tonight whether or not he's drunk off of his ass on camera. He might be high... He's still laughing at his own meme imitation when we get teleported to our starting area, and when he starts walking around, I decide that even if he's toked up, he's sober enough to be playing. His reaction time is passable. In the end, I would rather have Nooch tip-toking around than a sober Jerome; I would like to actually win this UHC. When I check the tab and see that Merome are paired together, I know who won't be making the top half of the leaderboard. "You know, Mr. Limp Pancake, if you would stop waffling around and just kiss him already it would all be over and in the past. He wants you so bad that I can smell him pining for you from here."

"Bro, watch what you say when we're recording. This doesn't need to be all over the internet." I can smell the burning plastic already and this is not going to be a good time. God damn it.

'Just calm down, you've already done this fifty times. Just chill. It's just a video game. Everything is going to be okay.' I catch myself flapping my hands in a panic like Preston had told me I do, and I push myself up from the desk and go to open the window looking down over the snowy Boulevard of Broken Memes down below. 'This is fucking ridiculous.'

"Hey, Nooch? When you get a chance, can you come take a look at my computer?"

"Y-eah, boy! What have you got for me?" The saddest part is that he sounds genuinely excited - whether that's about the misbehaving computer or what he thinks he might get for helping me, only time will tell.

"I upgraded the hard drive and replaced the processor a couple of weeks ago, but now the whole fucking thing keeps overheating. I've already lost three recordings from it shutting itself down, and every now and then it smells like a melting garbage bag." I picture him bobbing his head up and down like a cartoon character on somebody's dashboard, rubbing his scraggly little goatee with his glasses perched precariously on his nose, one jumpscare away from tumbling to the floor.

"It sounds like your fan failed. Did you plug it back in when you got done screwing around?" He really thinks that all of us are idiots, doesn't he? I pull the window up three centimeters and feel the freezing wind outside pull all of the warmth out of my office. I check to make sure that the door behind me is closed and I block the bottom of the door with the blanket out of Toby's vacant bed in order to try to preserve some semblance of heat in the rest of the apartment.

"Yes, I plugged it back in. Yes, I'm absolutely sure, so don't bother asking." He snickers and jumps up on top of the birch tree next to me to parkour back and forth while we wait for the mods to finish the teleportations. He had better not fall off of that fucking tree and take damage when the game starts. Friendly combat is enabled and I'll murder his mangled ass myself. I can get more out of a head than a trolly teammate. "Everything works fine... I just have to open the window next to my desk to keep it from overheating so that I can freeze to death, instead. It's too hot and spicy in here."

"Dude, he was so pissed! I took his team name and his Rob-a-Dob-Flob!"

"Mat. The computer."

"Yeah, yeah. If you can hear the fan running, you're going to need a bigger one. If you buy cheap parts, you get cheap parts, what can I say? I would suggest that you take the back of the computer off, buy a desk fan from Walmart, and point it in the back of the computer. It's what I do, more or less."

"Great... thanks." I remember seeing the baby gate blocking off access to the back of his awkwardly modded computer so that his menagerie of animals can't manage to roast themselves while he grinds MMR for hours on end. This is what my life is coming to.

"Rob. The Preston. Don't forget about the Preston."

"I'm trying to, for the moment. Please just let it drop."

"I'm not Skrillex, nor am I on the toilet. Nothing will be dropping," he laughs while I stick my hands between my thighs to try to keep them warm until the game begins. I'm useless if I can't feel my fingers. "He's really hot and spicy for you, and you know it and everyone else knows that you know it. Just put him out of his misery and go down on him already."

"Nooch, why are you so concerned about Preston's dick?"

"Because I'm tired of watching him grind against you every time you two see each other! When he walked up behind you when you were getting us beers at Mitch's house, tell me he wasn't humping you like a dog."

"He was just messing around, bro. You know how fucking innocent he is; he didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, well... he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was either touching you, looking at you, talking to you, or talking about you from the second he got in your car at the airport to the second you dragged his ass back to the airport. I heard him asking Mitch if he could stay longer!" I feel guilty that part of me is glad that Mitch turned him down. I look down at the update in chat and see that there are only two more teams that need to be teleported.

"Can you do me a favor and please not mention Preston during the game? This is stressful enough without having to worry about whether my subs think he salutes me at night or not, okay? Okay." He giggles and I hear him drinking something right next to his microphone.

'Please don't be alcohol. Please don't be alcohol.'

"Fine, but please do everyone else a favor and just stick your head up his ass at PAX. Your ex's puppy was less desperate than that, and he lost his balls over it." I don't even bother holding back the groan, and he snickers at me again. This is going to be a very long two or three hours of innuendos. I climb up on the tree next to where he is parkouring back and forth, looking out over the treetops for a sign of cows, chickens, caves, sugar cane, oak trees, players... anything. The only things I see are a pool of water and sheep - the one peaceful mob that doesn't drop food. Well, this is a shitty start. "Cupcake! Oh, Cupcake!" Mat starts shrieking in my ears and I actually, physically jump like the nervous wreck I am. Maybe I shouldn't be playing this game mode. "Hi there, Cupcake, oh you're so cute you're so cute I love you, yes I d-ooooo!"

"I hate to be an asshole, but no bunnies. This is ultra hardcore, man, and you promised me that you would really try."

"I will try. But when you said 'hardcore' I thought it was going to be a different kind of hardcore."

"Can you stop thinking about dicks for a couple of hours and help me out here?"

"Sure thing, friendarino. What kind of help did you need?" I can hear the nymphomaniacal grin in his voice and I am breathing warmth back into the cold hands facepalmed firmly against my face. Why did I think that inviting him would be a good idea? Then again, then we would have had room for Preston to join, and I think that might have been worse. I look between my fingers to check chat and I see them teleport the final team to their spawn point before the mods /kill themselves with a blast of cannon fire. "So what did you want me to do again?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Mat! Just go punch some god damned trees until you find an apple."

"Sweet. Count us in, oh great leader!"

---

January 21, 2014 at 12 AM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

I cautiously end the group Skype call and I see that he is still online. After spending all of this time stewing in his own salt, Preston is still lurking around, waiting for me to finish the game that he said he wouldn't be able to attend when we scheduled it.

'Fuck.' I set my away message as quickly as possible and I get up to leave the room so that I can honestly say that I was away from my computer. I head to the kitchen and start another pot of generic, tasteless coffee, and I decide to splurge and pour a few drops of the oversweet vanilla creamer in the empty mug to reward myself for not losing my shit during the three-hour game. My hands are still shaking more than they have any reason to be, and I'm grateful that nobody can see me right now.

'I'm a complete mess.'

I stare blankly at the grumbling coffee pot, watching the steam rise out of the back, illuminated only by the dim light mounted to the bottom of the microwave. I just want all of the adrenaline to get filtered out of my blood before I have to make another appearance on camera. He'll be there waiting for however long it takes for me to reappear; I've tried that trick multiple times before, and hiding from him just makes him accuse me of cutting, which is a conversation that I'd be happy to never have again. Toby isn't around tonight for me to use as an excuse, and neither are Jake or Mom. I could find something to eat and take my time making it... That sounds like a good plan right about now. I need a break from that fucking computer and constant reminders of how surreal Poofless has become. I reach up in the cabinet and fish out the jar of off-brand spaghetti sauce that I have glanced over for the longest amount of time, turning it under the square spotlight to check the date before I commit to it: 7 Nov 2013. I've eaten worse things. I just bought the noodles, so they should be fine, and so should the vegetable oil. I rattle around in the cupboard, pretending that I didn't just hear my text tone go off on my desk down the hall while I fill up the pot with the coldest sink water I can manage and set it on the stove to boil. After all, I'm not in a hurry, am I? I pour in a couple of capfuls of oil and leave it to heat up, shrugging on Jake's oft-forgotten leather jacket from the coat tree and the closest pair of shoes before going outside to haunt the patio.

It's snowing again, little powdery flakes peacefully floating down from the uniformly white sky, muffling any sound there may have been out here. Almost all of the lights are off in the prison-like grey monolith across the way. I am completely and utterly alone out here in the muted darkness, and I'm perfectly okay with that. With the flick of a switch, the surprisingly tolerable gingerbread vapor that Dar had bought for me as a gag gift fills the air, and the rush of nicotine steadies my shaking hands. I'm not cut out for stressful shit like this; it makes me paranoid and jumpy, and while my subs might find it amusing to watch me scream bloody murder, I don't. I can already hear all of the insults and complaining in the comments: how badly I played, how much better The Cube is, how stupid I am, how I made a mistake at 17:22 two hours in, how I don't know a minor technicality in Minecraft mechanics in tall grass, how gay I am, how I didn't deserve to win. It's nothing I haven't seen before. I'm not going to look at it this time, though, because thinking about that every time afterward while I'm trying to play an uncut, three-hour-long hardcore game is going to make me second-guess myself and fuck up even more. It's a vicious cycle and I had a hard enough time staying in character tonight. I don't need to be making it harder for myself.

I close my eyes and inhale another puff of Mars-colored smoke, and I don't want to open my eyes again. I want to call it an early night and watch some mindless bullshit on TV with my phone plugged in in the other room. I don't want to think anymore. I glance behind me through the glass door at the metal World War II antiques from the flea market and I might get off of my ass for a while and work on that. I still need to buff out the rust during the day when my neighbors are awake, but I can work on the wood for a while. I need to occupy myself with something other than Preston, the server, editing, or scheduling shit. I need to call in a night off tonight.

I don't know how to handle him anymore. We already have to record everything under the fucking sun together, but he wants us to spend our off-time together, too. He has become my daily alarm clock, texting me at five at night every day to get my ass up to return to the nightmare. He wants me to spend not just some but all of my recording time, my lunch breaks, my editing time, and hours on my days off with him. He comments on everything I post on Facebook and Twitter, like he needs me to know that he saw it. If he was half as involved as this with Hannah, I can see why they fought all of the time. It wears you down, and he's already difficult to tolerate sometimes. Don't get me wrong: he's my best friend and he's adorable as all hell, but it gets really, really old when I never get a break from it, not to mention the fact that he gets pissed off when he catches me trying to spend time with someone who isn't him, especially Jake. It just isn't healthy. I shouldn't feel guilty about trying to live my life.

I glance in at the pot and the steam is barely beginning to rise. I still have some time. I have at least five more minutes until I can add the noodles, and who knows how long that will take. After that, I have to wait for the sauce to heat up, then I have to eat, put the leftovers away, and wash the dishes. He'll just have to understand that I have things to take care of that aren't connected to computers, and he'll have to learn that some things just don't fucking concern him.

'He just cares about you. Is that such a bad thing?' I take another long drag on the e-cigarette before I turn it off, holding the last breath in as long as I can.

'The way he goes about showing it is. I shouldn't have to be stressed out about dealing with my best friend.' I go back in the slightly warmer apartment and tug on the door behind me to make sure that it's locked before I go to hang up Jake's jacket again. He's going to be so pissed when he remembers he left it here and realizes that it smells like gingershit. I put my numb hands and burning face down over the steaming pot and let the white steam melt the cold out of my bones. I just want to pull up a chair and stay here until the sun comes up. Unfortunately, the world won't stop turning just because I tell it to. It's close enough to boiling now that I can't even persuade myself that it's reasonable to wait longer. Hopefully the cheap ass noodles won't want to soften up. I pour the family-sized box in the massive, bubbling cauldron and I realize that I don't have meat to flavor the tasteless sauce.

'It looks like it's time to check in the fridge.' I feel like Steve from Blue's Clues, back before he lost his mind and all of his hair fell out. I scan the freezer and the fridge, trying to take my mind off of the still-buzzing phone in the next room for just a little bit longer. For meat I have: a.) a meatloaf TV dinner that looks like something Toby would leave on my patio, or b.) sketchy, soggy hot dogs.

I pull the pack of hot dogs out and set them on the counter by the pot to deal with in a minute. I need to check my phone to see if anyone actually needs something important from me. I have three text messages: the usual one from Preston as soon as I left my computer, and two from Mat shortly thereafter. I'm concerned for all of two seconds before I unlock my phone and see what he said:

TheGreatN00ch: i luv u robbie

The trolly text is followed by a GIF from a porn video with Preston's face Photoshopped on the guy in front with the rapidly spinning meat. I wish Preston would stop making faces like that and posting them on Twitter where anyone can use them for any nefarious purpose. The worst part is that I've walked in on Preston getting dressed with the door open so many times that I know that his meat is bigger than that, and I shouldn't know that.

I also shouldn't be picturing it right now.

I shouldn't know how short he trims his hair.

I shouldn't know that he's circumcised.

I shouldn't know these things, but now my mind has superimposed them on the GIF and I promptly delete it from my phone.

Me: Once again, why are you so worried about his dick?

TheGreatN00ch: its so salty i can taste it

TheGreatN00ch: just put his sausage in your buns, you like mayo

Me: Don't let your mom see how trashed you are.

TheGreatN00ch: i didnt take anything but maybe you shud

The GIF reappears, sped up this time so that it looks like the spinner might actually take flight from his propeller.

"God damn it, Mat." I delete it a second time and leave the text thread, going over to check to see what Preston wants. I need to change his name in my phone; it's making me uncomfortable just looking at it, thinking about him waxing his fuzzy pears.

Pearst<3n: howd uhc go?

Me: Nooch and I won, Merome died to mobs less than an hour in. You should join next time.

I lock my phone again before he can write back, determined to take my time on my shitty dinner and to keep my temper in check. He's so oblivious that he legitimately doesn't understand how annoying he's being. Why is he so endearingly obnoxious? More to the point: why did I accept his offer to stay with him during PAX next week?

'Could you have turned him down? That would have gone over really well.' I walk back out to the kitchen and see that the noodles are still standing at attention out of the edge of the water; we still have some time. I see the little red '1' on the answering machine and I clear the pharmacist's awkward voicemail from last week as I walk past, wondering once again if Jake and I would still be together if I had tested poz, too. I should plan something with him to get my ass out of this god-forsaken apartment and away from Preston's grubby little hands. I'm not his pet, or his toy. Somewhere deep inside, something part of me likes the thought of him being jealous of me spending time with my ex. My phone buzzes again and the first five notes of his channel's theme song chime, echoing in the quiet rooms. I move the oversized planks of pressed wood from the wall by the front door over to the couch, turning the light on the overhead fan on so that I can see what I'm working with: this needs so much sanding that I should just tie it to the back of my car and drag it along the fucking beach. I'm definitely going to be busy with this for a while. I spread the plastic tarp down over the couch and the carpet and move the coffee table out of the way so that I can sit on the floor with my disaster, already regretting falling for Mom's little gremlin smile and her insistence that I can do anything I put my mind to.

'I don't know how to build a fucking table. What am I doing?' I throw the little plastic sanding tool with the stack of refill papers over on the couch and go back to check on the food: it just sank under the water and it's clinging to the side of the pot for dear life. Not that I can blame it - I don't want anything to do with the 'meat-flavored' sauce, either. I grab a knife from the butcher block and go to grab the pack of hot dogs when my phone chimes again. 'Why do I do this to myself? Why can't I either sit down and deal with him, or tell his ass off and be over it?'

Pearst<3n: just finished edits

Pearst<3n: wanna play dota?

Me: Mat said he had a date to go Clocktwerk.

Pearst<3n: wanna play csgo?

He reversed his plans so quickly that it makes me laugh loud enough that I worry about my neighbors hearing me cackling to myself at one in the morning.

Me: I'm making dinner right now. Be on at 2-ish?

He takes about a minute to reply; I can feel the disappointment flowing from his fingers.

Pearst<3n: sweet, ill go warm up

I turn the noodles down before they boil over and start working on my hackjob hot dog meat cylinders, cringing at the greasy, slightly gritty meat between my fingers. These are even sadder than the mystery meatballs in the Banquet TV dinners. I pull out a saucepan and pour the thin, ketchup-like spaghetti sauce in, and when I plop the hot dog chunks in, it looks more like regretti. I drain the slightly yellow noodles and dig out plastic containers for the remains of something that looked and sounded much better when it was in the packaging. Lumpy, watery tomato guts drip down through the layers of what would have been fettuccine in another timeline. I didn't even buy the right kind of pasta. Why does everything I make turn into prison food?

'You made your bed, now lay in it.' It looks like a rat's nest after the parents ate the babies. It looks like a replica of the 'Hamster Hell' shorts. I grab the crushed red peppers and the hot sauce from the cupboard for good measure before I lean against the bar, getting in my hour of not-sitting for the day. The first bite tastes like unseasoned ramen noodles mixed with the ketchup and rehydrated onions scraped off of a McDouble. This is unfortunate. I'm mixing in some hot and spicy taste-killers to make it less pitiful when I see a miniature dick pointed directly at me, shining in the dim light.

The wrinkled end of the hot dog drags my mind back to Mat's lewd GIF and the very real problem that I'm facing: what am I going to do when I have to live with Preston for a week? I don't know if he has come to terms with his Poofless obsession yet, but it exists regardless of whether or not he recognizes and acknowledges it. So the real question here is this: if the moment comes, would I be willing to fuck Preston?

'I mean... he's cute?' Something about him just makes it feel... taboo. I don't know if it's his deep-seated religious devotion, the fact that he was underage when we met and he still has a baby face, or something else, but I feel dirty when I strip his clothes off in my mind. It's just too fine of a sight to stop. His dick is big enough to intimidate me, he's attractive, he has a sense of humor, we have a lot in common, and I wouldn't mind hearing him scream obscenities at me in his pillow. He touches my ass too often for it to be passed off as a joke, and I catch him staring at my crotch even more than Mat does. Not that I'm one to talk - regardless of whether he's a grower or a shower, I don't blame him for not wearing sweatpants in public. And after having him sit on my lap like I'm Santa Claus, I wouldn't mind slapping that ass, either, even though that visual reminds me of Mat's GIF. Honestly, after a little while of warming up to him, I wouldn't have a problem with going down, up, sideways, or backward on him.

I guess the problem here stems from the fact that I'm not sure if I want to date Preston - he would never be down for hooking up. I don't know if we've hit the peak of his dependency yet, but I'm not crazy about the idea of having a three-toed sloth as a boyfriend, clinging to my back to watch every step I take, every move I make, and being a backseat driver in my personal life. I let Jake step over the line into my internet life because he isn't a judgmental ass - Preston would have trouble with my reliance on prescription drugs to even function, my 'rainbow train vaping' as he calls it, and the little bundles of weed Mat occasionally slides under my front door, and those are just the things I can think of off of the top of my head. He is also still passively aggressively trying to get me to remove Jake from my life entirely. There's no doubt he's sweet even when it's uncalled for - he named the server 'Cosmic' and based it around the concept of a star system with different planets to conquer just to make me happy. However, he can also be extremely sour and salty.

But I can't deny that I like him.

My phone buzzes again against my plate, his distorted theme making the sauce jiggle in the light from the microwave.

'As if this meal needed something to make it worse.'