Page 31 of Looking for Group

“We should. I spent all day sourcing a fat Italian stereotype with an accordion.” This won him a laugh. “No, but seriously,” he went on, “the pasta’s usually a bit crap. They call it Pizza Express for a reason.”

They both had pizzas in the end. Drew normally went for the American Hot, but he changed his mind at the last minute because chili and dating didn’t really mix, and just had the American.

Kit ordered something complicated with chestnut mushrooms, a cheese that didn’t sound like cheese, and truffle oil.

Drew’d been managing the enormous menu for so long that he felt a bit naked once it was taken away.

Now there was nothing between him and Kit except the table and the flower, and he was worried about staring.

The truth was, he liked looking at him, and he was getting used to looking at him, and he was still getting used to liking looking.

Kit had this one piece of hair that wouldn’t quite stay with the rest, and curled down over his forehead.

Drew kind of wanted to brush it back up, just to see it fall down again.

Shit, he was meant to be talking. “Uh, so, how was the masqueraid?”

Kit’s eyes brightened. “I love Greyhallow. Have you ever been?”

Drew shook his head.

“Oh, it’s amazing. As far as I know, it’s got no connection to any plot or anything.

It’s just Count Greyhallow is an eccentric wizard who has invited the PCs to his house and wants to test them to see if they’d make suitable heirs.

You can only get in by doing this incredibly long quest chain, which gives you five gold pieces and an invitation to Greyhallow Hall. ” 6

“Let me guess. Bjorn’s the one with the invite.”

“A couple of people have one but”—Kit smiled—“Bjorn likes to make a big thing about letting everybody in. He’s got this speech about how back in the day there used to be instance attunements and you couldn’t just wander through the front door with your welfare epics.”

Drew smiled back. “And you had to slash-walk to the instance uphill both ways at five frames per second in the snow.”

“It’s like you were there…” Kit glanced up hesitantly from his glass of water “Except I missed you.”

“I missed you too. We were playing board games.”

“What were you playing?”

“Arkham Horror. Do you know it?”

“No, I don’t have much opportunity for board gaming, except at the guild meets or when I visit Jacob in Germany. Last time we played Carcassonne with his kids.”

Drew wasn’t sure what to make of that. He’d known Kit wasn’t particularly sociable, but he couldn’t imagine having so few friends you couldn’t make up the numbers for a two-to-six-player board game. 7 “You should join us next time.”

“I’d like that.”

Well, that had been easier than he’d expected. It was sort of a consensus amongst his friends that they tended to scare people away, but then Kit hadn’t met them, so maybe that explained his willingness to spend time with them.

Just then, the dough balls arrived and conversation ebbed for a bit while they tucked in.

“I think you were right,” said Kit. “These probably do have cocaine in them.” 8

And Drew smiled, feeling like he’d given good date.

“So how come you were in Germany?” he asked a little later as the waiter was clearing away the starter. “Was it a gap year thing?”

“Oh, no, I go out there most summers.”

He blinked. “Just to see Jacob?”

“He’s one of my best friends. It’s nice to meet up, and he’s got a family, so he can’t travel as much.”

“Isn’t Ialdir like fifty?”

“First off, he’s forty-five. Secondly, so what?”

Drew nearly said, Haven’t you got any friends your own age? but realised at the last minute that it was probably the worst thing he could possibly say. And Kit was already sounding a bit defensive. “Sorry,” he tried. “It’s just my parents are in their forties, so it feels a bit weird to me.” 9

“Isn’t that more about them being your parents than how old they are?”

“I guess.” He wasn’t sure he did guess, but he wanted to be supportive.

Kit folded his elbows on the table, and leaned forward a bit, looking at Drew intently.

“You sort of learn in school that you’re only supposed to hang out with people who are exactly the same age as you, but actually, if you’re not into the things everyone else is into, you can’t really live like that.

So I just sort of got used to not. I like Jacob, we have stuff in common, and he’s always been really kind to me.

He was the first person I met who didn’t make me feel weird. ”

“You’re not weird.”

“I know I’m not.” He smiled a bit. “At least, I think I’m not. But I’m aware that I don’t do the things that people think I’m supposed to do.”

Drew wasn’t sure he got it. He hadn’t exactly been lying when he said he didn’t think Kit was weird, but he did think it was a bit unusual to hang out in Germany with a guy whose kids were closer to your age than he was.

On the other hand, it struck him as kind of brave to know people would think that, and to do it anyway.

And he’d probably made Kit explain himself enough for one evening. “So, uh, what’s with the opera?”

It wasn’t exactly a seamless transition, but Kit seemed to go with it.

“Greyhallow is full of these scripted fights that are pretty awesome, but also pretty gimmicky. It must have been hell to actually raid, but it’s brilliant for tourism, and there’s some wild drops.

I got this staff once with a whole octopus on the end.

I like to get it out when I’m RLing and the raid isn’t behaving. ” 10

“I could make a tentacle joke right now, but I’m just too sophisticated.”

“Don’t worry, Dave’s got you covered.”

Their waiter emerged and set a pizza down in front of each of them before producing an enormous peppermill and brandishing it threateningly until they both insisted they didn’t want any.

“Anyway,” Kit went on, “the opera is basically one of three random scenarios all based loosely on bits of actual theatre. At least I think they are. They’re pretty weird.”

“Which one did you get?”

“Koblencrantz and Gildenbold Are Dead. Have you ever done Trollheim?”

“Isn’t that the really crappy raid that was all just trolls?”

“Hey, it had a dragon at the end.”

“Oh, that’s fine then.”

Kit laughed. “The third or fourth boss was Gragthar the Slave Master. He had this big swarm of kobold minions who would run around and jump on people and sometimes explode. It’s the one with the famous YouTube clip of that champion charging a huge mob of kobolds, shouting his name, and then blowing up the whole raid. ”

“Wait, is that ‘many kobolds handle it’?”

“No, that’s the other one. So this event is basically two of that guy’s minions wandering through a compressed version of the entire Trollheim raid, constantly missing it.

You have to DPS them while they walk, and every so often a boss from another bit of the instance will spawn, and the tanks will have to pick him up, and the raid will have to cope with all those mechanics, while the kobolds walk past.”

Drew frowned over his pizza. “And the point of that is?”

“We never worked it out.” 11

It took a while, but Drew eventually stopped worrying about Making Conversation and just let it happen.

They talked a lot about HoL , and the friends they had in common and a bit about friends they didn’t, sometimes about books, sometimes about university, all the time finding little points of similarity, difference, and connection.

He learned other things too, like all the blues in Kit’s eyes, and the way he sometimes hid his smile behind his hand when he was nervous.

At Drew’s suggestion, they split a cheesecake for dessert, and laughing, Kit nudged the last decorative strawberry across the plate with his fork.

“I was going to use my nose,” he said, “but I remembered I wasn’t a loveable cartoon dog.”

There wasn’t really a good response to that, so Drew picked up the strawberry by the bit of leaf and held it out.

Kit eyed it apprehensively. “I’m sure this would be great in a movie, but I’m probably going to mess it up.”

“It’s a strawberry. How badly wrong could it go?”

“I could get it stuck in my throat, the nice old lady over there could give me the Heimlich manoeuvre, and I could spit it into your face.”

“Wouldn’t it be worse if she didn’t give you the Heimlich manoeuvre and you just died?”

“If I was dead, I’d be a lot less embarrassed.”

“Look.” Drew mock scowled across the table. “If we’re talking about being embarrassed, I’ve been sitting here, holding a strawberry for about five minutes now, while my boyfriend talks about spitting in my face.”

Kit gave a little moan. “Oh God, I’m hopeless at this.”

“And I have way overhyped a piece of garnish.”

Blushing slightly, Kit leaned forward, and took a neat bite of the strawberry. They’d dithered about it for so long that Drew thought it had become a joke. Except it totally wasn’t. There was something weirdly intimate about it, just in offering, and being accepted.

Also it was, honestly, kind of sexy.

Having Kit that little bit closer. Being able to see tiny details like the flicker of his light-gold lashes, and a faint suggestion of shadow following the line of his jaw. How close his lips were to the tips of Drew’s fingers.

Flustered, he ate the other half of the strawberry and put the leaf back on the plate.

They were quiet for a moment.

“Boyfriend?” said Kit, who was still a little bit pink.

In the midst of all the excitement, Drew had forgotten about that. “Uh. Is that… Was that…uh.”

“No, it’s nice.”

And Kit put his hand over his mouth, and smiled.

After they’d awkwardly paid for each other’s food, which would have been really faffy if Kit hadn’t turned out to be good at mental arithmetic, they tumbled out onto King Street, where they stood about for a bit, shuffling.