Chapter Text
“So let me see if I got this straight,” Tommy said in that amused, borderline gleeful tone that never failed to scream: Gird your loins, Billy Kaplan, because I’m taking a swing at every last thing you hold dear. “A couple times a year, you and all your nerd friends—”
“For the record,” Billy interrupted, looking up from his half-packed bag, “I’m already protesting your interpretation.”
“—gather together in a series of cabins upstate for a long weekend, where you dress up like Medieval Times rejects—”
“I think you mean assume carefully constructed personas.”
“—wave around stupid foam swords—”
“Some of us use magic instead.”
“—and fight in epic lame battles. Except you’re not actually fighting,” Tommy added, flopping down on Billy’s bed with an aggrieved sigh. He poked his way through the pile of clothes still waiting to be carefully folded and packed away. “Because at least if you were actually fighting, there’d be a point to all of this.”
Billy shot him a flat look. “I question your priorities,” he said, leaning over to snatch the tattered red cape out of his twin brother’s hands.
“And that’s not even getting into what I’m judging by all this spandex must be the weird sex stuff,” Tommy said. “Which is creepy as hell even for you, B.”
He had to pause at that, cape still spilling out of his hands, cheeks flushing almost as red. The rest of it, Tommy could mock as much as he wanted. He could make fun of the lavish costumes, the rules, and ‘magic’ and swords and battles and drama of it all, but Teddy…
Well.
Teddy was a whole different, whole new, whole weirdly complicated thing; Billy wasn’t even sure he had the words to define it for himself, much less his obnoxious twin brother. “It’s,” he tried, stammering like an idiot—giving himself away. “I mean, I’m not— We’re not—”
Tommy slowly straightened, eyes locked on Billy—going wider and wider and wider the redder Billy’s cheeks flushed. “Holy fucking shit,” he said. “I was just fucking with you, but, Billy. Are you telling me all this,” a single gesture took in the costume, the foam daggers and colored bundles of bird seed that represented his spells, “is actually getting you laid?”
“No!” Billy sputtered, even as his stomach twisted up into anxious knots, because…because yes, sort of. But not really. But maybe. But argh.
“ARGH!” he moaned, covering his face with Wiccan’s tattered cape, hating the fact that he was practically immolating from the inside out at just the thought of Hulkling. That golden hair. The deep green skin with its delicate swirls across the bare shoulders and arms, like iridescent scales. The broad chest and black leather and huge claymore and and and—
Tommy prodded him hard in the stomach. “Start talking,” he said. “I want to know everything. I can’t believe you have a boyfriend at nerd camp and never even told me!”
“It’s not like that,” Billy protested, voice muffled. It really, really wasn’t like that, and it was a bad idea to let his lizard brain think of Hulkling—Teddy—that way. Bad and dangerous and really…addictive. He dropped his hands with a blustery breath, fighting not to flush harder at Tommy’s flat look. “It’s really not. Teddy’s not my boyfriend.”
“Oh Teddy is it?” Tommy said, brows dancing.
“…but Hulkling sort of is.”
That had Tommy’s expression morphing into a frown. “Wait,” he said. “Hulkling? What?”
Fuck, this was so stupidly complicated. Billy threw down his cape (then paused and picked it up again, carefully folding it with all the due reverence it deserved before packing it away) and flopped onto the bed on the opposite side of his small rollerboard. “Look,” he said. “Here’s how it works. Every PC comes into the game with a—”
“Wait,” Tommy said, holding up a hand. “I thought this was live-action roleplay shit? But you’ve got computers?”
…really stupidly complicated. “No, sorry, no—that’s a game term. PC means Player Character. Like…have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?”
Tommy shot him a flatly unamused look.
“Okay. How about a Bioware game? An Obsidian game? A—”
“You can pretty much assume the answer is always going to range from no to fuck no,” Tommy said. “So why don’t we skip the analogies and go straight to how you’re kind of but not really doing the do with some weirdo named Hulkling.”
He actually bristled at that, instinctively wanting to come to Hulkling’s defense. Because Hulkling was the bravest and the kindest and the best of all of them, and there was no way their party would have made it through half the shit it had without him. He wasn’t just the tank: he was the heart and soul of their team, and Tommy had no right—
“This may all seem like a stupid game to you,” Billy said hotly, “but it’s important to us. We’ve sunk a lot of our time and energy and and and souls into this. I’ve been playing Wiccan for almost four years now, and he’s just as much a part of me as anything. He’s my character,” he continued, before Tommy could ask. “My Player Character. I created him, and I dreamed up his backstory, and I cobbled together his costume, and I make him come to life a few weekends a year. When I’m out there, wearing this,” Billy gestured to the gear half-packed away: the belt with its many leather pouches, the silver diadem, the shoulderguards and demi-gauntlets with their gleaming faux onyx…hell, even the fucking tights, “I’m not me. I’m him, Wiccan. A level thirteen sorcerer who has seen some shit and lived to tell the tale. And for that long weekend, I’m happy to live in his skin for a while.”
Tommy was silent for what felt like forever, studying him. He still looked dubious, but the mockery had faded (at least a little) into more honest curiosity. “All right,” he said slowly. “So you’re Wiccan, a…sorcerer? And Hulkling is…?”
Billy cleared his throat and looked down again. He hated that his traitor skin seemed determined to flush every time that name was mentioned. “Hulkling’s another PC. Uh, Player Character. He’s played by this kid named Teddy, though that’s really all I know about him.” And he only knew that much because Kate was his best friend and knew how to twist some arms when she had to. “You’re strongly encouraged to leave all the player business behind you when you step on the field. It helps with immersion.”
“Uh-huh,” Tommy said, eyeballing him.
“He plays a level thirteen half-orc barbarian-paladin cross-class, and he has the most beautifully complicated backstory I’ve ever heard and he’s been the heart of our party for a few years now and last session he and Wiccan finally admitted that they had feelings for each other, which had been slow-burning forever and I don’t freaking know what to do about it now that I finally get to see him again!”
The words, once started, all came out of him in a headlong rush. Billy fell back against the mattress with a muffled groan, flinging one arm up to cover his eyes. It was all such a mess inside his head and his heart, and while it felt good (incredible; indescribable) to finally say the words out loud, it also was enough to drive him crazy.
Because the rules their DM set up explicitly forbade discussing mun life during game-time, but they also forbade discussing game details during real time, which meant that even though he and Kate hung out just about every weekend, they were freaking honor-bound not to say anything about the campaign. Meeting her for coffee every Saturday, trying to telegraph his hope and excitement and burning dread for fucking months had just about killed him.
This was the first time he’d gotten the words out in anything more than tragic journal entries and epically bad poetry, and it felt like lancing a wound that had gone to rot. The release of pressure was just incredible…and horribly messy.
“…so let me see if I get this straight,” Tommy said. He shifted, the mattress moving beneath him with a creak. “You play this sorcerer kid—Wiccan. Wiccan and this…orc…”
“Half-orc barbarian-paladin cross-class,” Billy offered, voice muffled by his arm.
“Right,” Tommy said. “That. The two of you have been buds in this game for a long time now, but there’s been sexual, or romantic, or whatever, tension boiling. And finally, last game, you both admitted that you were crazy hot for each other.”
Billy dropped his arm, staring wistfully at his brother. “He said he loved me,” he admitted, voice so low it was almost a whisper.
Tommy shook his head. “That’s… Wow, Billy. That’s a lot. And…did you…?”
He couldn’t answer that; all Billy could do was nod.
“Shit. Okay. So you two confessed your big gay love for each other,” Tommy twisted his fingers through silver hair, trying to spin the serious moment back into a joke, “and everything was great, and then you packed it in for the weekend and came home and…what?”
“Nothing!” Billy all but moaned. He sat up again, too restless to keep still for more than a few minutes at a time. “I don’t know who he is or where he lives or anything about him. Teddy-him,” he clarified. “I know just about everything about Hulkling-him, and he’s wonderful.”
Tommy sighed. “Sometimes I can’t believe we’re actually related,” he said. “So what are you going to do about it? You’ve got your chance coming up,” he added at Billy’s blank look. “You’re packing up and heading back to nerd camp to see Teddy. Hulkling. Whatever. So what’s your plan?”
Billy flung out a helpless hand, trying to encompass all the tumultuous emotions running riot within his skinny chest. There were a thousand and one things he wanted to do. He wanted to go tearing upstate and fling himself off the bus to find Teddy. He wanted to catch his eye—his attention—before play officially began Friday evening. He wanted to talk, to ask him if maybe there wasn’t something more going on…if maybe it went beyond Wiccan-and-Hulkling’s epic continent-spanning love.
(A love that bards literally composed ballads about, thank you very much.)
…and yet at the same time, he wanted to curl up under the safety of his trademark tattered red cloak and never come out again.
“I don’t know,” he had to admit after a long minute, feeling excited and dejected, hopeful and hopeless. What if Teddy was just that good at playing a character? What if he didn’t feel anything for Billy at all?
What if it all really was just a game?
Tommy looked around at the ruin of Billy’s room, with his half-packed bag and his carefully laid out diadem and tights and color-coded bags of “spells”. He flicked his gaze up to the posters that lined the walls and the laptop that was often Billy’s only connection to the world—to friends—to a life.
Then he sighed and stood, shaking his head down at his twin. “Well, you’d better come up with something on the way up there,” he said, effortlessly sidestepping Billy’s half-hearted kick. “Because I am not going to spend the next however many months between this LARP and the next hearing you moan about some orc’s nice ass.”
“I hate you,” Billy muttered. “You’re the worst brother.”
“I’m the best brother,” Tommy sing-songed back. “You know why?” When Billy refused to rise to his bait—refused to ask—he kicked at Billy’s foot for his reluctantly undivided attention. “I’m going to teach you how to have some game.”
That, Billy decided, sounded like the worst idea imaginable. But since he was literally drowning in angst and indecision—and since he’d spent nearly four years slowly chipping away at his complicated feelings for his gorgeous traveling companion with nothing to show for it in the real world—he figured, well. Hey. Anything was worth a shot once, right?
“Okay,” he said slowly, sitting up. He eyeballed his twin, who was looking too smug for his own good. “So what exactly did you have in mind?”
“Well, we don’t exactly have time for the master class,” Tommy said. “But shove over and we can go over some tips tonight. After you email your, uh, head nerd or whatever.”
Billy gave him a flat look. “Game master,” he said.
“Sure,” Tommy said with a flick of his fingers. “Fine. After you email that guy.”
He could feel the suspicion building slow and steady within him—a rising tide of dread filling his chest as he studied his brother’s lopsided smirk. Oh. Oh hell. He knew that look. “And why,” Billy said, hoping he was wrong even as he saw the crisis coming from a mile away, “would I want to do that?”
Sure enough, Tommy’s grin widened, catlike and promising seven kinds of trouble. “Because your crew just got a new player. PC. Whatever. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to do it right.” Then he paused and tilted his head, silver-blond bangs swinging into his eyes. “Got another pair of tights I can borrow?”