Page 36 of Looking for Group

Sanee whacked a DVD into the PS4. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present Adam West and Burt Ward in their 1966 triumph, Batman: The Movie . Because it was from the days when you had to say something was a movie in the title, otherwise people would get confused.”

As usual, they didn’t spend that much time actually watching the entity that identified itself as a movie.

Mainly they drank and ate and did commentary.

While Bruce and Dick were biffing, powing, and socking their way through the criminal underworld, Drew and Kit lost their self-consciousness about being a couple in public and naturally folded together.

Kit was quiet, but he seemed to be enjoying himself, and Drew was glad he was there.

A hundred and five minutes later, the credits rolled to raucous applause and a shower of popcorn.

“So,” Sanee asked, when the noise had died down, “Bats out of ten. I think I’ll give it a seven because it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t really what I want from a Batman movie.”

Drew lifted his head out of Kit’s lap. “Oh come on, man. The nobility of the almost-human porpoise. That’s worth at least an eight on its own.”

“That’s worth minus eight on its own.”

“Well, actually,” interrupted Tinuviel before they could get into a fight, “I think one of Batman’s great strengths is the way he can encompass many identities, and reflect many worlds. The Batman who leaves Ra’s al Ghul to die in an exploding monorail—”

“Oi,” yelled Andy, “spoilers.”

“—loses his impact if he is not set against the Batman who refuses to throw a bomb into a flock of ducklings.”

Melissa nudged into the side of Tinuviel’s neck. “Who could respect a man who threw a bomb into a flock of ducklings?”

“What did you think, Kit?” asked Steff, since he’d been obviously quieter than everyone else.

“Oh.” He thought about it for a moment. “I’d give it eight bats too.

Partly for the porpoise, partly for shark-repellent Bat spray, and partly—with my physicist hat on—for the sheer glorious craziness of…

if you dehydrate someone, and then rehydrate them with heavy water, then the slightest impact will reduce them to antimatter. ”

“Are you suggesting”—Drew grinned at him—“it doesn’t really work like that?”

“Well,” said Steff, “let’s go back to basics. With my medicine hat on, when you dehydrate someone, they don’t turn into blue dust.”

Drew shook his fist in the air. “You lied to me, West, you lied to me.”

They romped on through Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns , and then ordered pizza to sustain them through the nadir of Forever and & Robin .

Drew thought he maybe fell asleep somewhere between Jim Carrey in green latex and Uma Thurman in green latex, soothed by Kit’s fingers moving gently through his hair.

But he definitely woke up about halfway through Batman Begins , mainly because everyone in the room was rasping, “Do I look like a cop” as loudly as they could while still doing Batman Voice.

They’d all basically rallied by the time Batman was hanging the Joker off a high building again , and an emergency injection of very strong coffee courtesy of Tom carried them all the way to the confusing café scene at the end of Rises .

It was 6 a.m., they’d probably got twelve hours of sleep between them. All they’d done was watch eight movies, only some of which were actually good, but nevertheless Drew was left with a tremendous feeling of accomplishment.

Sanee rose a little unsteadily to give his closing statement. “Ladies and gentleman, you have just witnessed the entirety of the cinematographic Bat canon. Those still abed will count themselves accursed they were not here.” 8

Andy was wrapped up in his sleeping bag, snoring softly.

Tinuviel stared meditatively into the middle distance.

Drew found it difficult to tell whether she was knackered, wasted, or completely normal.

“The thing that troubles me the most about Jack Nicholson’s Joker, apart from the fact that it’s clearly just Jack Nicholson, is that because he’s so physically unthreatening, the final confrontation comes down to Batman beating up an unarmed, mentally ill man in his fifties. ”

“It does make Batman look kind of a dick,” agreed Tom.

Steff pulled Sanee back onto the sofa and snuggled into him. “I’m not sure. I think the fact that Batman keeps whaling on him and he just carries on laughing makes him really freaking scary.”

“Most Batman villains are nuts anyway.” Sanee tugged a blanket over the two of them.

“And Batman’s not really all there either.

I mean, he dresses as a bat, for God’s sake.

That’s hardly normal behaviour. I think the reason the bad guys are so OTT is to distract you from what a total weirdo Bruce Wayne is. ”

“You know,” said Kit softly, “I heard the original brief for Batman was to create a character who was more down-to-earth and relatable than Superman, and somehow the concept they came up with for this everyman hero was a genius billionaire whose parents were killed in a freak opera-attending accident 9 .”

Drew was pleased when everyone laughed. It made him feel that Kit had a place among his friends and also secretly proud that he was dating this beautiful, funny, nerdy guy.

“The thing that gets me about Batman is the little pointy ears on his helmet. They’re so adorable I don’t know how anyone can take him seriously. ”

Tinuviel shut her eyes for a moment. “I suspect”—she put her fingers to her temples—“that if he did not have the little pointy ears he would look like a butt plug.”

“Argh.” Sanee yanked the blanket over his head. “You have ruined Batman forever.”

“No, Jim Carrey ruined Batman Forever .”

Sanee groaned. “Oh, I see what you did there.”

By unspoken consensus, people began to find themselves comfortable passing-out nooks. Drew and Kit aligned their sleeping bags and drifted off, holding hands.

It was afternoon by the time everyone was awake again, and they were finishing off the last of the snacks and wondering what to do with the rest of the day.

Drew was used to this kind of space. They’d sit around for a while, just chilling, and chatting, and occasionally fiddling on their phones.

Eventually someone would suggest playing a game, and eventually they’d play one.

It was a nice, low-pressure way to spend Sunday.

At around two, just as they were debating whether it was worth trying to find a board game that would take eight players, or if they should split into groups, or maybe just go for food or something, Kit stood up and said he should be going.

Drew was a bit startled. He thought he’d been having a good time, and he didn’t want him to go. “You don’t have to. I’m sure we can find something for eight players, or we can do teams.”

“It’s not that.” Kit packed up his sleeping bag. “It’s just I think I want to go home now.”

Drew wasn’t sure if he was supposed to offer to go with him or not, and came down on the side of not in case he looked intense, creepy, and codependent. “Um. Okay, well, I’ll catch you later.”

Kit bent down, kissed him goodbye, and started picking his way between the sleeping bags and the empty snack bowls.

“Mate,” said Sanee, “why are you running out on us?”

Kit froze by the doorway. “Um, I’m going to catch up with some friends in HoL .”

“Wow, and I thought I was a nerd.”

Awkward.

Kit had gone kind of red. “Yeah, see you later.”

He hurried out.

Steff whacked Sanee in the arm. “Why are you being such a dick?”

“I wasn’t being a dick. I was inviting him to stay. I like the guy.”

“Squidge, it’s not a personal insult when someone wants to leave your house.” 10

Drew wasn’t sure where to look or what to feel. Obviously Kit had a right to go home when he wanted to, but he was still weirdly hurt. It wasn’t like Kit had anything else on, so it just felt uncomfortably like being rejected.

They sort of hung until about four, and then Sanee suggested they crack open Cards Against Humanity. Which, after two rounds of play, Tinuviel actively hated.

“I think my fundamental problem,” she explained, “is that it bills itself as a card game for horrible people but feels more like a card game for people who want to try very hard to prove how horrible they are.”

So they played Dixit instead.

And Drew tried not to miss Kit. And worried he was being needy, and worried that Kit didn’t like his friends, or that his friends felt insulted, or that Sanee was right and Kit had needed to run away for his MMO fix. Basically he just worried.

He got home late, and logged in to HoL to do his dailies.

[Guild][Ialdir]: Yo

[Guild][Morag]: Hey

[Guild][Heurodis]: cant talk must pewpew

[Guild][Solace]: Hi Drew

[Guild][Mordant]: Hi

[Guild][Orcarella]: Hi

[Solace] whispers: Sorry for bailing earlier

To [Solace]: it’s fine. are you okay?

[Solace] whispers: Yes, I’m good

To [Solace]: so why’d you leave?

[Solace] whispers: Like I said, I just wanted to be at home

[Solace] whispers: Also I hadn’t logged in to HoL in a while

[Solace] whispers: So I wanted to say hi to everyone

To [Solace]: You blew off my friends to play HoL

It was a long few seconds before any new messages popped up.

[Solace] whispers: Drew, I didn’t blow anyone off

[Solace] whispers: I left your friends who we’d been hanging out with for more than 24 hours

[Solace] whispers: To come and hang out with my friends

[Solace] whispers: Who I hadn’t seen for a while

Drew stared at the screen.

To [Solace]: did you not like my friends?

[Solace] whispers: I like your friends. I had a good time

[Solace] whispers: But I wanted to go and do something else

To [Solace]: I could have come with you

[Solace] whispers: You could have, but you seemed happy with your friends

To [Solace]: i dont want to choose between my friends and my boyfriend

[Solace] whispers: I’m not asking you to

To [Solace]: but you sort of did

[Solace] whispers: I didn’t mean to

[Solace] whispers: But you can’t make me choose between you and my friends either

To [Solace]: kit this is a video game

To [Solace]: i know HoL has been a big part of your life

To [Solace]: but these are just people you know on the internet

To [Solace]: half of them are twice your age

To [Solace]: half of them don’t live in this country

[Solace] whispers: Drew

[Solace] whispers: i really dont know what to say

[Guild][Ialdir]: Hey Drew, Solace said you two started playing Torment 11

[Solace] whispers: or why you’re saying this

[Solace] whispers: is this what you really think of me

Drew stared at his screen in horror. He was in the middle of something he was pretty sure was an argument with his boyfriend—an argument he wasn’t sure how he’d started, or what it was really about.

Trying to have a conversation about classic video games in guild chat at the same time was slightly beyond him.

[Guild][Orcarella]: y

[Guild][Ialdir]: How are you finding it?

To [Solace]: i didn’t mean it like that

[Guild][Orcarella]: they don’t make them like that any more

[Guild][Ialdir]: Yeah, it’s tragic isn’t it?

[Solace] whispers: So how did you mean it?

[Guild][Orcarella]: it takes some getting used to

[Guild][Solace]: There’s obviously a lot of love in it

[Guild][Solace]: Like every zombie in the Mortuary has its own identity

[Guild][Ialdir]: Every time I play it I find something new

To [Solace]: i’m just worried about you

[Guild][Ialdir]: You’re really lucky you can discover it together

[Guild][Ialdir]: I tried to get Stefan into it back when we were first going out

[Solace] whispers: Because I only wanted to spend 24 straight hours hanging out with your friends? And not 36?

[Guild][Ialdir]: Disaster

To [Solace]: they’ll think you don’t like them

[Guild][Ialdir]: I turned into this total jerky control freak

[Guild][Ialdir]: I was like no, you have to have wisdom 18

[Guild][Ialdir]: And we should solve this quest exactly like this

[Solace] whispers: So you think your friends will be insulted because an adult human eventually chose to leave their company

[Guild][Ialdir]: And we’ve got to go to ragpicker’s square as soon as possible 12

[Guild][Orcarella]: wait what’s so important about ragpicker’s square?

[Solace] whispers: And *I’m* the one you think you have to worry about?

[Guild][Heurodis]: SPOILERS MAN SPOILERS

[Guild][Orcarella]: Seriously, what’s in ragpicker’s square?

[Guild][Ialdir]: Oh my god, I am the worst person ever

[Guild][Solace]: Also I’m pretty sure we skimped on wisdom

To [Solace]: but you’ll spend whole weekends in HoL

[Guild][Solace]: You can’t even play a cleric

[Guild][Ialdir]: la la la I can’t hear you

[Guild][Heurodis]: dont worry everyone starts off as a noob

[Guild][Heurodis]: youll really understand the game on your third or fourth playthrough

[Guild][Morag]: Sometimes I think life is just too short for Bjorn.

[Solace] whispers: Yes, Drew. Funnily enough, I find it easier to spend a long time doing something I like and have chosen to do

[Solace] whispers: with people I’ve known a long time

[Solace] whispers: than something somebody else chose to do

[Solace] whispers: with a group of people I’ve only just met

[Guild][Heurodis]: Sadly, Morag, nothing can change the nature of a man

[Guild][Ialdir]: Wow, you really missed the point of that game, didn’t you?

To [Solace]: you can’t build your whole life around a video game

[Guild][Morag]: I thought the point of that game was Annah

[Guild][Morag]: Maybe because I played it at an impressionable age

[Guild][Morag]: But I blame Torment for my lifelong thing for feisty redheads

Solace has gone offline.

Whoa. That had gone super badly wrong. And Drew wasn’t sure what to do or even why it had happened. He had a cold, creeping sense it might have been his fault, but then he usually did when he fought with people he cared about.

He sat there for a little while, feeling increasingly terrible. And then sent Kit a quick text: We okay? After a moment, he got back: Just need some space.

Drew stared at his phone. What did that even mean?

Was it a polite way of dumping him? Were they on a break?

Was everything basically fine, and Drew was overreacting?

He really wanted to reply and ask for clarification, but he was pretty certain that the one thing it absolutely didn’t mean was, Please text me back immediately .

Between the all-nighter, the argument, and the Batmen, Drew’s brain had turned into soup.

The part of him that was upset and panicky wanted to Do Something Right Now, but the part of him that was operating on eighty minutes’ sleep made deciding what the Something should be, or indeed standing upright, borderline impossible.

He reeled away from HoL and fell facedown onto his bed. He was conscious just long enough to notice how spacious and empty it felt.