“Are you genuinely worried about my gaming habits? Or are you unhappy with your own?”
“I’m really confused,” said Drew, slightly plaintively.
Kit reached over and took his hand—and that was such a relief that Drew couldn’t remember if he was supposed to be angry right now. “The thing is, Drew, it took me quite a long time to get comfortable with who I am. I spent the beginning of my first year trying to fit in with the university geek societies, but I never did. Whenever I told people I played HoL, they’d take the piss, and I kept getting this feeling that the only way they could feel okay with what they liked to do, was by looking down on what I liked to do.” His lips turned up ruefully. “Some of them even played the game. It just wasn’t socially acceptable to genuinely be into it. And I decided there’s no point pretending you don’t care about things you . . . do.”
Everything Kit had said swirled around in Drew’s brain looking for things to connect with.
“I care about you,” he blurted. “And I also care about my friends. And I really want you to like them and I really want them to like you and everything’s . . . sort of . . . bleurgh and . . . this is really important to me.”
Kit’s thumb stoked soothingly over the back of Drew’s hand. “It’s important to me too. But I feel that whatever I do, it could . . . take something away from me. I want to be with you and I want to be part of your life, but I want to be me too. But, then, if being me is the thing that messes us up, then . . . I don’t know how to deal with that.”
“I don’t not want . . . I mean I don’t want you not to . . . I like who you are. Can’t we meet in the middle here?”
“Where’s the middle?” Kit sounded kind of wary again.
“I don’t know. Like, maybe could you spend a bit more time with me and my friends. And I won’t bug you about the HoL thing.”
As far as Drew was concerned, this cut right to the heart of the issue, and for a moment, he was a little bit impressed by his own maturity and relationship-fu.
Unfortunately, Kit didn’t look much happier than he had before. For what seemed like a long time he didn’t say anything, and then he sighed. “Well, um. I guess. Let’s give that a go.”
It was somehow a little delicate after that, but by the time they’d eaten the rest of the cakes and finished their tea, they were deep in discussion about the mysterious yellow orb they’d found in Torment, and things were almost back to normal. Almost, but not quite.
A couple of weeks slid by without further disaster. More by luck than by judgement, Drew seemed to have got his Kit/course/friends/HoL/pub balance about right. Which meant in practice that he only rarely felt under-Kitted or under-friended and, when he did, it was to about the same degree. Also Sanee had completely dropped the Drew Is A Loser Gaming Addict thing and was only intermittently entertained by the fact he was dating a boy now.
Things were going well with HoL and the guild. Everyone was pretty excited for the next major content patch, which had just launched on the Public Test Realm. Back when he’d been running with Anni, they would have been over there, trying to get as familiar with the new fights as possible, but at the moment, Drew had too many other things to care about. And actually, it was weirdly fun to sort of wait and anticipate and know that they wouldn’t be downing the last boss of the expansion within the first week. And then spending the next three to six months farming it and whinging about it.
They’d never actually discussed it, and Drew wasn’t entirely sure it had been what he’d meant, but he and Kit had abandoned their medusas at level thirteen, freeing them up to see more of his friends, and to spend more time doing boyfriend things. They’d taken to wandering around the Botanic Gardens on sunny afternoons and mellow evenings, holding hands and geeking out. Sometimes they sat under Kit’s favourite willow playing . . . well . . . it was still Torment because, seriously, that game was huge and full of words. At