Page 33 of Looking for Group
They assembled underneath the needlessly oblique Back to the Future poster, and Kit took his hand as if drawing stars in the sky. Drew stole a sideways glance at him because this felt weirdly romantic, and Kit’s lashes were really long and very gold from this angle.
“So”—Kit drew his finger to the third dot on the top row— “we start in 1985, go back to 1955.” They followed the line to the second dot.
“Then back to 1985.” They closed the circle again.
“In the second movie”—they slid to the next panel—“we start in 1985, go forward to 2015.” Their joined hands moved from the third dot to the fourth.
“Then back to alternate 1985.” They followed the spiral round to the single dot in the second row.
“And finally back to 1955 to stop Biff getting the sports almanac.”
“Oh, I get it.” Drew pulled Kit over to the second dot on the third panel. “They start in 1955, then go back to…shit, like, the Wild West, whenever that was.”
“1885,” offered Kit, wickedly.
“And then finally”—their fingers traced the spiral to the third dot—“Marty comes back to the present. By which I mean, back before I was born.”
Kit turned and pressed his lips to Drew’s cheek, swift and a little shy. “Do you know they’re making a musical?”
“I really don’t do musicals.”
“You have to. It’s part of the Gay Laws.”
“Stop labelling my sexuality.”
They kissed again under Kit’s no longer confusing Back to the Future poster.
And, afterwards, they both sat on the bed, side by side, with their shoulders nudging, and their backs against the wall.
Drew mimed casting a line into the water, and Kit laughed and did the same.
They fished for a little while.
Suddenly, Drew remembered something. “Shit, I haven’t done my dailies.”
“You can borrow my computer if you like.”
“Like, no. Seriously, no. I’m not going to sit in your room with you doing my dailies on your computer.”
“It’s cool. I don’t mind.”
Drew swivelled round, scurfing up the duvet. “I’d rather do something with you.”
Kit’s eyebrows went up.
“Not in a sex way. Not that I wouldn’t in a sex way. I mean. Um. Do you want to play a game or something?”
“I’d love to.” Kit slid to his feet, grabbed his laptop, and came back. “I’m not sure I’ve got much that’s two player.”
Thinking about it, Drew couldn’t remember the last time he’d played a co-op game on one screen.
That was what the internet was for. But then he remembered Sanee and Steff, and their weekends playing Total War: Era Number , X-Com , and Europa Universalis .
“I’ve got a couple of mates, I mean I’ve got mates who are a couple, who play strategy games together.
They pause a lot and argue about what they’re going to do next.
Like, ‘No, flank the catapharcts.’ Or ‘We have to core Granada.’”
“That sounds really nice except, y’know, the arguing. And the only strategy games I’ve got are Civ and CKII , and that’s only because—”
“—it’s secretly an RPG.”
Kit beamed. “Aw, you remembered.”
“So what are we going to play?”
“I’ve mainly got RPGs.”
“I’m good with anything. We can decide which elf to sleep with and whether the Staff of Whatever is better than the Sword of Thingamy.”
“I think you’ll find”—Kit gave him an arch look—“that what we’ll be doing is engaging with complex moral questions through an interactive medium which will aid us in our task by helpfully highlighting all of the evil options in red.”
Drew laughed. “Bring it on.”
Kit fired up Steam, and scanned down his library. “The problem is a lot of these are a bit too action-heavy. Weirdly, we might be better off with something turn-based.”
“Wait. I draw the line at musicals and JRPGS.”
“How do you feel about retro?”
“Isometric retro or ASCII retro?”
“Black Isle retro.”
“You mean the guys who turned into the company who are legendarily incapable of finishing games?”
Kit closed down Steam, and opened the GoG launcher. “Jacob’s got me hooked on Good Old Games. Um, the site, but also games that are old, and also good. He’s kind of convinced that PC games are dwindling into the west like Galadriel, and every game worth playing was made in the late nineties.”
“Back when everything came on twenty CDs?”
“Pretty much, but now you can just download them for about five dollars.” He double-clicked on a picture of an angry-looking blue man with dodgy dreads, and a tiny little cinematic popped up of an island and a storm.
“This is one of his favourites, but I haven’t actually got round to trying it yet.
It’s called Planescape: Torment . It’s about this guy who—”
“Kit, I’ve heard of Planescape: Torment . It’s like the Breaking Bad of RPGs. People who’ve played it won’t shut up until you do.”
“We can try something else?”
“No, it’s cool. It’s like a gamer rite of passage, and I’ve been meaning to look at it for years.” 15
On the screen, a slightly blurry zombie was pushing a slab with a grey dude on it slowly through some kind of dungeon.
“Wait,” said Drew. “Do we start off dead?”
“Only mostly.”
“Hang on, what’s the pillar? Why are there skulls? Who’s that chick, and why is she on fire? Is the guy in the mirror us? Why are we a zombie? Is that the same chick and is she dead now? Is she the ghost as well? Hey, stop laughing.” 16
“Sorry.” It wasn’t a very convincing apology, especially because Kit was still smiling. “I’d say it was an old-games thing, but to be honest I think it’s just a Black Isle/BioWare/Obsidian thing. You just kind of have to go with it.”
When Drew next checked his phone, five hours had passed. “Shit, it’s nearly two. I’d better be getting back.”
Kit pushed his laptop out of the way. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”
“It’s that game, man. It sucks you in and it makes no sense, and the journal system is borked.
And where the heck are we supposed to find someone to grow this black barbed seed for us?
I mean we took it to the people in the market who specialise in growing weird plants, and they were like, no, sorry, not our bag. ”
“Yeah, I’m beginning to think the humble quest marker gets a really bad rap.”
“I’m never complaining about having to kill fifty harpies again.”
Kit laughed, and crawled off the bed. “It’s really late. Do you want me to walk you home?”
“Kit, if you do that, I’ll have to walk you back again, and we’ll get stuck in an infinite loop.”
“And then we’ll have to hard reset the evening.”
Drew felt a bit goofy, but he went with it anyway. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Neither would I.”
They smiled and stared at each other.
“Look, I could…” Drew began, at the same time Kit said, “Do you want to…” and just in case that turned into an infinite loop as well, Drew jumped straight to, “Yes.”
He’d shared beds with people before for various reasons, but this was different.
They dithered for a while about what exactly was appropriate to keep on and what wasn’t, and finally settled on boxers and T-shirts as a safe middle ground.
And then Drew hopped into bed, pulled Kit’s duvet right up to his chin, and tried not to look like a complete dork.
Kit was equipping a slightly worn blue T-shirt, which meant Drew—who wasn’t watching, honestly—got to see the curve of his spine, the shift and drag of muscles under his skin, the freckles on his shoulders. Then Kit flicked off the light and slipped into bed.
It was a single, so there wasn’t much room to be coy. Too many limbs to sort out. Soon, they were pressed right up against each other, wriggling and kissing, and trying to find places to put their hands.
“This is nice,” said Drew sleepily.
Kit answered with a murmur, drowsy and content.
He rolled onto his other side, and Drew very naturally curled up round him.
Only slightly self-conscious because kissing and closeness and stuff had sort of…
Well...if Kit had ever been worried Drew wasn’t into him, he now had, um, concrete evidence he was.
Drew was just dropping off when Kit suddenly twitched in his arms. “What’s wrong?”
“I just realised something.”
“Huh?” This was kind of worrying.
“We met a guy in the hive called Mourns-For-Trees.” 17
Now Drew twitched. “We should totally check that out. Can you remember where he is?”
“I remember he was wearing green.”
“I think I saw someone like that near the Flophouse but that might have been the weird guy who gave us the box we weren’t supposed to open.”
“It might have been down by the Burning Corpse, or maybe I’m thinking of Amarysse. We can look tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Drew was smiling as he tucked his head against Kit’s neck. “We can look tomorrow.”