Pairing: Chris and Brian
Words: midsummer; lucid; masochism; wishbone


When RJ Helton got voted off 'American Idol', Chris sent him a
fruitbasket.

He understood what it was like to be consistently mediocre in a
world of fame and popularity.  Chris got by through being weirder
and funnier-looking than the rest of the pack, but on talent alone,
he was a lot like RJ: he was an outstanding singer with a range
that didn't come along everyday, in a universe of superstars who
eclipsed him entirely, and he'd never be the worst, but he'd never
be Justin either.  He thought maybe RJ got what it was like to not
be Justin.

No card, because Chris wasn't much good with words that weren't
jokes, and what did you say to someone who'd just lost out on a
dream?

He thought RJ would make it anyway; he should know that there was
room for the boyband type in the music world.  But he couldn't say
that, because believing it didn't make it true and the thing Chris
hated the most about Paula Abdul now was that she gave false
encouragement to people who ended up looking like RJ did when he
had to go, tears in their eyes because they didn't see it coming. 
At least Simon Cowell was honest.

When Chris wasn't joking, he was brutal in that same way.  Better
cruel truth than the niceness that was just another way to lie.

He spent a lot of time these days avoiding niceness.  Even his
friends didn't really understand that he didn't want consolation
over the Fumanskeeto debacle; didn't want to hear that it was for
the best, or that he'd find some other way to make it work.  They
offered him consolation and commiseration.  He didn't want them. 
It was his own fault, all of it.  Maybe if people had been honest
with him from the start, he wouldn't have made the mistakes he had. 
Wouldn't have thought a skater-punk clothing line was a good idea. 
Wouldn't have done a lot of things, and okay, now he was getting
depressed.  More depressed, and there wasn't anything he could do
about the situation except get over it.  Wallowing was just
masochism, and he was tired of hitting himself.  He never seemed to
learn; what was the point?

Chris booted up his computer and got online.  Started *Dark Age of
Camelot*.  Logged in, and in a few minutes was no longer Chris, but
was Jester, a level 50 wizard, in the city of Camelot.

Some loser almost immediately said "plz loan me money," and Chris
grinned.  Making morons' lives miserable.  He lived for this.

"Why?" he typed back.

"i need to buy armor" the gray level 4 mage said.

"Dude, you're a caster.  You don't need armor.  You die in one hit
anyway.  Save your money."

"plz?"

Chris laughed to himself.  *Doesn't give up easily, does he?* 
"Okay, suppose I loan you money.  What kind of repayment schedule
are we talking?  And I expect interest.  Does 10% sound fair to
you?"

The newbie had apparently gotten the message that Chris wasn't
going to help him, because he said, "u suk".

"How'd you find out about that?" Chris replied, typing quickly to
get it all out before the guy walked away.  Having to get your
retorts out quickly was a great impetus to improving one's typing
speed he'd found.  "That bastard!  He swore he'd never tell anyone! 
Last time I ever do anything for him."

His brilliance was lost on the moron, but hey, he felt better, and
had nearly forgotten why he was supposed to be unhappy.

He checked the alliance message of the day and saw that there was
a raid on Midgard planned for fifteen minutes from then -- not that
it would actually happen until later; hurry up and wait was as
active a principle in game combat as in real combat -- and made for
the Cotswold exit from Camelot.  He couldn't remember why he'd
logged out there, but he must've had a good reason at the time.

While he was zoning, he grabbed a Diet Coke from the refrigerator. 
When he got back, he had a private message from someone named
Pietas.  The tell said, "That was just cruel what you did to that
newbie.  Funny as heck, though."

Chris raised his eyebrows.  Proper spelling, punctuation and
capitalization.  Something not often seen online, and nearly always
the hallmark of someone worth talking to.  Despite the stereotype
of gamers as geeks, he still had trouble finding intelligent people
to talk to.  Okay, so half of the people typed the way Justin
spoke, 'yo d00d, wassup?', but somehow, it came across as stupid on
the screen.

He did a quick /who to find out who Pietas was even as he started
auto-running toward the portal keep.  Level 24 cleric, member of
the guild 'The Spanish Inquisition'.  So not a total newbie, and
probably a fan of Monty Python.  Both pluses.  Possibly someone
who'd been around a lot -- with the way inter-realm combat was set
up, a lot of people raised characters to level 24, went to the
battlegrounds until they got too much realm points, and then
deleted the characters and started over.  Not usually clerics,
though.

"Like the guild name," he sent back to Pietas.  "And, yeah, it was
kinda cruel, but the guy was annoying me.  I don't like idiots."

"Thanks.  I don't really suffer fools gladly either.  I used to be
more sympathetic, but then I played the BG for a while."

So the guy had done the battlegrounds.  "I liked the BG."

"Yeah, well, you're a wizzy.  All I ever heard was 'rez me' over
and over."

"Buf me plz," he sent back, because he understood, he definitely
understood.  Clerics got bugged to resurrect the dead, and wizards
got bugged to provide buffs.  All the time.  He didn't mind it as
much as he minded the idiots begging for money, but he only had a
limited amount of power to cast with, and buffing every yahoo from
Camelot to the Pennine Mountains wasn't his idea of fun.  He did
have things of his own to be doing.  Game here, folks, a game he
wanted to spend doing fun things, not helping people too stupid or
lazy to spell the word 'please'.  Okay, so they were probably just
too lazy, but he wouldn't bet on it just being laziness with all of
them.  There were some real morons out there.

"LOL!" Pietas sent back.

Chris grinned at the screen.  Today was going to be a good day, he
thought.  "Buf me plz!  Y u no buf me?  U suk!"

"Thought you weren't talking about that," came the quick retort.

"You thought I wasn't talking about what?"

"You forgot about our night of illicit pleasure so soon?  I'm
hurt."

He snorted the Diet Coke.  Oh, this guy was good.  "That really
happened?" he sent back.  "I thought it was a dream.  A very vivid
dream."

"You often have dreams about that?  I want your dreams."

God, wizards were slow.  He still wasn't to Castle Sauvage yet. 
"What can I say?  Those books on lucid dreaming are really paying
off."

"Guess so.  Any recommendations?"

"A Midsummer's Night's Wet Dream."

"LOL!"

He passed the guard tower and started paying attention to the
details of getting through the gate.  He hated the gates that all
the border keeps had -- getting in and out required clicking on a
little lever, and if you got close enough to click it, you also
almost inevitably got close enough to get stuck on it, and it was
a lot of fun jumping his character around trying to get unstuck
before the door closed and he had to start the process all over
again.  Eventually, though, he got through, bought a medallion from
the merchant and sat down on the pad, waiting for the port to
Midgard.  He set himself to /anon and then checked the scrollback. 
He had a while to wait until the alliance got their act together
and assembled in Midgard, and he'd rather be talking to Pietas than
listening to them or even his guild who were at least a little less
retarded than the general gaming public.

Buried in the general guild and alliance chatter, he found the last
tell from Pietas.  "Thanks -- you really make crafting less
boring."

"What kind of crafter are you?"  DAoC had several tradeskills a
character could specialize in.  Chris hadn't done anything with
Jester yet because he wanted to be a spellcrafter when that was
eventually put into the game.  But he respected people who put the
time and effort into attaining a high level of crafting.  Plus they
could make the high level gear he'd eventually need as a
spellcrafter so he could enchant it.

"Armorcrafter, 572.  Only choice for a cleric."

He couldn't really use an armorcrafter; enchanters wore cloth armor
made by tailors, and 500 was a relatively low level for a crafter. 
Still, he liked this guy.  "How are you funding your crafting?"

"Friend of mine in the guild has a couple high level characters. 
He gave me a plat.  Will give me more when I run out."

"Cool, cool.  Anyone I know?"

"He's on as Kaotic most often.  Paladin."

He recognized the name dimly; there weren't that many level 50
characters and the extensive work you had to put in to get the last
couple of levels meant spending a lot of time with a very small
pool of people, most of whom were neither interesting or
particularly good people.  Assholes, and not in any fun sense of
the word.  If he remembered correctly, Kaotic was not too bright
and a bit of a jerk.  "Oh, well.  Pallys.  What can you say?"

"At least by becoming pallys, they're identifying themselves so we
can tell them apart."

"I have this theory that there's a constant ratio between idiots
and assholes in this game, and that, as people get higher in level,
the first number gets smaller and the last number gets larger."

"And which category do I fall into?"

The portal ceremony went off, and Chris frowned at the screen in
annoyance as it first froze and then the 'loading' icon came up. 
He hated waiting, and that was a particularly bad moment to get
interrupted.  He waited impatiently, and finally he reappeared in
Midgard.  He immediately started typing.  "Dude, you're neither. 
You're the rare exception, the tiny percentage of intelligent
people who're worth talking to.  There's never enough of those."

"Hey, thanks.  That's very nice of you to say, considering you
hardly know me."

"I know you.  It's easy to tell you're someone worth talking to."

"Like I said, thanks.  And the same to you.  Hey, can I ask you
something?"

"Sure, whatever.  I've got some time.  Doing a relic raid in a
while here, so crafting is probably even more exciting than what
I'm doing."

"Doubt that, but here you go.  Say you have one wish, like on a
birthday candle or a wishbone or a falling star or something.  Do
you wish for something, or do you figure it's all just superstition
and forget about it?"

"Kind of a weird question.  I dunno.  I gave up on thinking I could
get a pony a long time ago.  Hell, I don't even want a pony
anymore.  How sad is that?"

"Realistic, I think.  I've been having an argument with a friend --
Kaotic, actually.  He still thinks he can get a pony by wishing for
it."

"Obviously he's never had to shovel much horse shit."

There was a wait for the reply, not unusual, and Chris took the
opportunity to get up and throw the empty Diet Coke can in the
trash.  He got back just as Pietas' answer came up.

"You have no idea how true that is.  You'd think he would, but he
still seems to think that the end product is completely unrelated
to the pony."

"Not very old, is he?"

"Old enough.  He's 22.  Should know better than that."

"Yeah, well, maybe it's better that way.  Not everyone needs their
nose rubbed in the shit.  I'd rather believe in the immaculate pony
theory.  Or at least get some joy out of riding the damn horse." 
He was getting depressed again.  He was going to go out on his own
and started looking for Mids to hunt soon if the alliance didn't
get there.  He needed to kill someone and dance on their corpses. 
The 21st century version of well-adjusted: you did your killing
virtually.

"Immaculate pony?  lol!  I love it.  Wish I could put it that way
to Kaotic, but he wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about."

"Pallys."

"Exactly.  So is it true what they say about wizards?"

"Which part?"

"I think it goes, do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you
are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."

"You're thinking of dragons.  We're subtle and quick to anger." 
The port keep was filling up with people, all shouting various
things, demands that people go /anon, which he'd done while on the
pad waiting for the port, requests to join the raid chat group,
asking for group... he would have preferred to block all of it out
and concentrate on the conversation with Pietas, but eventually
they were going to move out, and more likely than not, it'd be
communicated like this, in yells and says and as disorganized as
fuck.  Which, unfortunately, was how things worked.  People like
Pietas were the exception, not the rule.  If he had twenty people
like himself and the cleric, they could take over the server, but
they didn't.  They did, however, have an endless supply of morons
and that would have to do.  It usually did.

"Ah.  Clerics don't have a clever saying.  When people mess with
us, we just watch them die, don't rez them, and laugh at their dead
bodies."

"That works too."  He added Pietas to his friends list, so he'd be
alerted when the guy was online.  He hoped they were online at the
same times.  Chris tended to have a lot of free time, but in
chunks.  He'd have a couple days of nothing at all to do, then
wouldn't be able to get online at all.  He really needed to put the
game on a laptop, but there never seemed to be much point; when he
was traveling lately he was usually doing something NSYNC-related,
and if he had a chance to play video games then, it was nearly
always Playstation so the guys could join in.

"Makes people mad, though."

"Screw them.  If they're not nice to their rezzers, then they get
what they deserve.  By the way, have I told you recently that I
think you're a wonderful, talented individual.  And that you're
really smart and good-looking?"

"LOL!  Won't do you any good; I'm too low-level to rez you."

"It's never too soon to start kissing up."

"You're an excellent kisser."

"I am, not that you'd know that."

"Can I ask you something else?"

"Sure."

"Are you a man?"

Chris sighed.  He hated it when people got hung up over real life
identities.  Everyone did it to some degree or another.  Whether
they wanted to know something basic like age or gender, or got more
intrusive, wanting names and hometowns, he didn't like it.  He
wasn't going to give out personal information, and he didn't expect
anyone else to either.  In fact, he expected people to lie about
it.  It didn't bother him that he was probably flirting with a guy;
if it did, he wouldn't bother flirting with anyone ever.  Even the
people who said they were women online were probably men.

"Yeah, not that you can prove that," he replied.  "Why?"

"Just wondering.  You're awfully comfortable with saying things
like that to me, and you don't know what I am."

"What, you're secretly a paladin?  'Cause I don't do pallys." 
*Shut up, shut up, shut up,* he demanded, hoping Pietas would drop
it, let himself be redirected into humor.

"I'm male, and I'm married.  That doesn't bother you?"

"Should it?"  Chris knew it should; all questions of his own
sexuality aside, one of the universals of the online gaming culture
was that 'gay' meant bad, fucked-up, wrong.  'Dude, that's gay' was
a common phrase, so common that when someone inevitably brought up
to those people that they were being insensitive to homosexuals,
the people in question would invariably be puzzled.  They didn't
seem to connect 'gay' to 'homosexual'.  Chris didn't let Lance or
JC anywhere near his gaming; he didn't think either of them would
understand.  Justin, on the other hand, would probably think it was
gay, if any of them were capable of saying things like that.  Even
Chris had had political correctness beaten into him, slowly and
painfully.

"Just wondering.  Most of the people I run into either start
wanting to cyber the second they hear a hint of sexual innuendo, or
are female.  And you didn't sound female."

He wasn't sure, but he thought maybe he'd just been complimented. 
"How do I not sound female?  What do women sound like?"

"Probably the swearing.  Most women curse less."

"Oh, I'm sorry.  Did I offend your delicate little ears?"

"No, I have the bad-words filter enabled.  But that only scrambles
the swear words; I can still tell you're doing it."

"You have your /filter on?  You're missing all the good stuff!"

"Somehow I doubt it."

The chat group leader was shouting for people to move out.  Chris
got Jester up and used the /stick command to attach himself to his
group's minstrel so he'd be in range of the speed song and be able
to keep up.  Good.  Maybe in ten or twenty minutes they'd actually
be doing something.  "Well, for one thing, the cybersex is a lot
more boring with /filter on."

"I wouldn't know.  I don't want to know."

"Good.  Cybersex is icky."

"Icky?  LOL!"

Chris nodded firmly.  He'd been trapped on a bus with JC when JC
was doing the research for 'Digital Getdown'.  He'd sat in on some
of the sessions.  It was fascinating at first, then, for a brief
period, titillating, then quickly became boring.  When it got to
the point that he was considering asking Lance how to do a macro
for 'ooh' and 'ahh' so he could go read a magazine, he'd decided JC
could do his own damn research or whatever he wanted to call it. 
Lying in his bunk listening to Justin jerk off was more exciting. 
"Icky.  I don't put out, so stop thinking that right now, you
pervert."

"I'm the pervert?  I'm not the one with the pony fantasies."

"Actually, I think it was your pally friend who was into horses."

"True.  Think it's a pally thing?"

"I do my best not to think about pallys at all.  You want me to
group with a pally?  What pally?  I don't see a pally."

"lol -- I should try that on Kaotic sometime.  I don't think he'd
get it though."

"Of course not.  He's a pally."

The group was moving out now.  Chris paid more attention to the
main screen instead of just the chat window.  They probably
wouldn't be doing much fighting until they got to the first keep,
or at least the milefort gate, but just in case, he needed to be
alert.  The groups were running along when suddenly he heard a
click.

He recognized that sound.  His Internet connection had just gone
dead.  He was still in DAoC, but he was effectively link dead.  In
a second, the game would catch up and --

Yeah, there it was.  The screen went black and a prompt came up
instructing him to hit Escape.  Chris swore.  This kind of thing
happened every time there was a big raid; the large numbers of
people in a small space seemed to cause it.  Normally, he accepted
it as a hazard of playing the game.  You wanted to play, you
sometimes went LD.  It happened.  Usually, it didn't kill your
character; you just ended up relogging where you'd gone LD in the
first place.  But sometimes you ended up dying to some monster who
killed you after you'd lost your connection but before the game had
registered it and logged you out.  You just had to deal with it. 
He hadn't gotten to 50 without becoming used to stuff like this,
and worse stuff too.  Like idiots and assholes and paladins.

Except this time he'd been having a conversation with an
interesting person, and it sucked getting cut off in the middle of
it.

He waited to be returned to his desktop, then rebooted his
computer.  Impatiently he drummed his fingers against the keyboard. 
When he was finally back in Windows, he went through the process to
log back into the game.  It was several minutes before he was back
where he'd gone LD.  He hadn't died; he was in the Midgard frontier
-- alone, because his raiding party had gone on without him.

He sent a tell to Pietas.  "Hey, I'm back."

The tell didn't show up in his chat window.  He frowned.  Had he
gone link dead again?  Oh.  No, he hadn't.  There was a message in
the top half of the chat window.  Pietas wasn't in the game.  He
was gone.

Damnit.

Chris sent a tell to the leader of the raid chat group asking to be
readded, and started toward the keep they'd been going to take. 
Pietas was gone.  Maybe link dead too, maybe gone for the day.  He
hadn't thought to ask how often he played the cleric or if he
played any other characters.  He was a crafter, though, so
presumably he came on to do that.  He'd see him again.  Eventually. 
If their schedules matched.

He felt a little like sulking, but hey, places to go, people to
kill, morons to harass.  The death messages were starting to
scroll; he needed to haul ass if he wanted to get in on the action.

Still, 'Pietas' was a cool guy.  He kinda felt like he knew him
already.