Page 99 of Looking for Group
“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 aboutHoL, 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.”
