Trigger Warning: This chapter may be offensive or triggering for some people. If you do not think you can handle it, I encourage you to click away. Please see the story description for an updated list of warnings.
October 3, 2011 at 7 PM, Fort Worth, TX: Preston
I toss the last paper plate in the trash and shut the fridge door on my way out of the kitchen. Who knew it'd take so long to clean up after freaking pizza? I feel bad for making Rob wait but I'm also really glad it's just Rob and not someone who'd get really ticked off at me for being a couple minutes late. Rob never gets mad about anything, which's great and scary at the same time. I've known the guy for almost a year now and I've seen him get frustrated and sad and salty, but I don't think he's ever been actually angry. Maybe that's a good thing because an angry derp face would be really confusing to try to figure out. I bet he's one of those people who just smiles when they're angry and you can't really tell that you ticked 'em off until they show up at your window with a Molotov cocktail and grin at you from the front yard while you're screaming for help.
This is where I start scaring myself. Like, how do I even come up with this stuff? Dad used to say that if I got stuck on a deserted island I'd be perfectly fine for years until someone found me because I'm just crazy enough that I wouldn't go completely batflip insane. No, Rob seems more like a dagger kinda guy – he'd knock on the door and pretend to give you a hug, then he'd just stick it in the back of your skull and the last thing you'd see is his evil crooked smile. Or, even more likely than that, he'd just be too nice to try to kill me and he'd just sit there and give me those big ol' sad eyes on Skype until the Bacca showed up at the door and bashed my head in with his precious Betty and they'd sit there and laugh about it together while I bled to death. Okay, I think this has gone far enough. Gettin' creepy now. If this is how I'm thinking now, maybe I shouldn't've bought those energy drinks for the gaming marathon. I finish wiping down the dining room table and I shut the light off and get ready to go upstairs to start a killer weekend of recording and new release hype when I walk right into a starchy blue wall.
"Where're you going in such a hurry? Are you makin' a break for it before someone sees you fingering Keeley's birthday cake?" Daka snickers as he brushes raindrops off his precious origami hat and hangs it up on the coat tree. I can hear Dad putting his keys down on the table in the front hall and I can't afford to make a scene with Dak. The last thing I need is for him to get me grounded a couple weeks before a convention I already booked a flight and bought tickets for.
"Pizza's in the fridge in the foil. Could you please move?"
"Depends. Where're you headed?"
"Upstairs. Like always."
"What're you gonna do up there? Strip for your boyfriend? I don't think even he wants to see that, bro." He pretends to look me up and down and he stops his eyes on my stomach. I keep myself from squirming so he doesn't get the satisfaction of knowing that his words hurt. I already lost thirty pounds but I still have a ways left to go, and Daka takes every chance he gets to remind me that I'm still fatter than him. He's just jealous that my job's a thousand times better than his'll ever be so he tries to make me feel like crap all the time and it usually works. "You might hafta pay him to watch you this time."
"I don't wanna hear what you do when you're deployed, Dak. TMI, dude."
"Naw, I'm not into that kinky shit like you, Pressy. I don't spend every waking second making videos for RedTube like you." He'd be hilarious if it wasn't all directed right at me. I just stand there and stare at him, hoping he'll give up and let me go if he doesn't get a reaction out of me. "So how does that work? Do you just suck on the camera to get him going until you see him at conventions? Or does he send you a sample in the mail and you rub it all over your tig ol' bitties for him?"
"What the hell do you want, Dak?"
"For what? To not tell Mom what you're really doing in your room all day and night?"
"No, to shut the frick up."
"I just wanna understand you, bro. You said you were 'streaming' with your boyfriend this weekend. What else could that mean?" He calls Rob my boyfriend so often now that I don't even bother correcting him anymore. It doesn't do any good and it just gives him a way to tick me off even faster. I know I have a short fuse and he loves to watch me lose my temper and get in trouble, and I won't let him get to me this time. I can't wait until he leaves on Sunday for three months. It's gonna be better than Christmas.
"Are you done yet?"
"No way. I'm just getting started. How many strip teases did you hafta do to buy that pizza?" He pauses for a couple seconds, trying to bait me into it. "Oh, wait. I forgot you can't do math. Sorry." He smirks and I just keep staring at that one really crooked tooth at the front of his mouth even braces couldn't fix.
"It's a good thing the Navy wanted you. The good Lord knows you wouldn't've made a living in Vegas."
"Yeah, you're really one to be making Vegas jokes, Pressy. Is that where your next meet-up is? I bet he has an extra large pole with your name written on it." I keep staring at his snaggle tooth and I wish we were kids again so I could tackle him down on the stairs and drag him across the living room floor so he'd get covered in cat hair. "Did he send you your maid costume yet?"
"It's pretty sad you already ran out of good jokes. It's only been, what, two minutes? You're losing your touch, Dak. Can I go now?"
"Yeah, sure." He sidesteps out of my way and he ruffles my hair as I go past him so I'll look like I just got hit by a tornado. "Just tell Rob I said congrats." I turn around and keep walking backwards to my room.
"For what?"
"On the baby. You're, what, like seven months along now?" I roll my eyes and duck into my room so he won't see how ticked off that made me. I wish he would pick on Josh or Caleb or Keeley once in a while and give me a frickin' break! Five times a day, seven days a week, every week of the year it's always me and I'm sick of it! If there's one thing that's worse than being called fat, it's being called fat, gay, girly, and pregnant at the same time. If anyone's gonna be preggo, it's gonna be Rob.
"Okay, no. What? What the heck?" My mind did not just go there. No. Just no. Oh, Lord. I can see it now. With flowers painted on the walls and giant stuffed animals everywhere and his dumb blue sweater stretched all the way out and a baby with huge brown eyes wearing a mini blue sweater and chugging on a bottle of chocolate milk. Make it stop. "What the crap, Dak? Why you do dis to me?" I don't know how long I'm gonna hafta sit with my head buried in my pillow before I can face the real Rob without crying or having a seizure or something.
October 3, 2011 at 8 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob
'He said he might be a few minutes late, but this is getting ridiculous. He must have gotten into it with his brother again.' I swivel my desk chair away from Zubenelgenubi's many monitors and stare out the window at nothing in particular. There is a light powder of snow on the roofs of the small houses below and, for a night with no moon, the street is oddly bright. 'I wonder where mine is right now.'
'Wherever he is, he isn't thinking about you.' The truth is harsh but unavoidable. Thinking about Darryl is always painful, especially with the holidays approaching and invitations arriving. How anyone could walk out the door and leave their entire family behind always baffled me, but after the disaster at Debra's house earlier this year I am beginning to understand how appealing that kind of freedom is. If I am completely honest with myself, I would rather stay home alone than face Debra or Angela again. That may make me a terrible person but even I have to draw the line somewhere, whether or not anyone else understands. If only Preston could see what a truly dysfunctional family looked like, he would stop wishing his was so different. He honestly has no idea how lucky he is, how blessed he is to have so many people who love him so much. A bit of teasing is less damaging than seven years of invisibility.
'Can you afford not to go? Can you imagine what Mom would say if you told her that you were never going to another family event again? Would that make you just like him?' My older brother was always the strong one, the smart one, the sure one, and I wanted so much to be like him that I prayed every night to be him. I wanted to be perfect, too. Darryl was everything my parents had ever wanted in a child, even if he was the only one they could ever have. They had never expected to have another baby, and to Darryl I was always the half-baked, dim-witted, broken down younger brother who always got in his way and got away with murder. They were Dale, Darren, and Darryl Latsky, and I was Robert, the a-la-carte special who was never as good as the original.
When I began having severe mood swings in grade eight, Darryl continually accused me of trying to steal his glory and trying to ruin his graduation. He was winning top academic and athletic awards and preparing to go to uni, and here I was, restrained in a hospital bed with stitches holding my arms together, failing all of my classes and turning Dad's hair grey with worry. I was the filthy dirt under my brother's feet and my name became an insult, a swear word. Even when I graduated from high school at the top of my class, I was still the dead pixel in the middle of his flat screen TV; when he realized I could not be fixed, he replaced the entire TV with a bigger, better one and threw me out. He stays in contact with Mom and Dad, but for me, there is nothing but radio silence. 'Maybe it's for the best. If it makes him happy, who am I to judge him?'
'I wonder if Preston's brother is like that. Are all YouTubers social outcasts, or is it just our group?' I watch a white car crawl down the street and into an empty driveway, the woman and her two kids hurrying up the walkway to their front door to escape from the cold. I stare at their miniscule black footprints in the thin snow, imagining our old house in Saguenay and the days when our family portraits had four people instead of three. When Skype finally rings, I nearly fly out of my chair in terror. I laugh and turn on the lamp and the webcam before I answer his call.
"Whew! For a second there I thought you weren't gonna pick up because you finally got a job! What a relief!"
"You know I try, babe. It's just so hard to find a job during a blizzard in the middle of an economic downturn." He snickers while he turns on his webcam, squinting as he uses the monitor as a mirror to fix his tousled hair. "It looks like you just played a round of UHC. You okay, man?"
"It's just Daka being a prick again. My whole family is a buncha cacti, I'm tellin' you. Are you ready to churn out some Dinos before the epic-est midnight of life?"
"Yeah, boy! Dark Souls hype!" Preston can always find a way to cheer me up and bring me back to reality. This is going to be the best marathon playthrough ever, with three days to run through the best game of the year with my best friend. "I can host it on 'Preston's Butt' if you just give me a minute to do a reset."
"You could just call it 'Mods,' ya know."
"I know. I just like 'Preston's Butt' better." He rolls his eyes and pretends to glare at me, but the ghost of a smile gives him away. I connect to the server and begin preparing the new mod pack for the survival series he has been pestering me to do with him since August.
"Everyone knows that, Robert. That's all you ever talk about."
"Don't you know it, sweet-ness." His face breaks into a genuine smile, and he puts his hands up to cover his face.
"Ugh, don't ever try to imitate Mitch again. You can't do the accent, dude, and it's just disgusting."
"I-I'm sorry." He joins the server and begins smacking my character mercilessly with his flaming fists while I crouch and stare down at the ground sorrowfully.
"Stop being a filthy pleb and let's get this party rolling! We only have four hours to make two hours of footage! Snap to it!"
"I would if you would stop beating me! Preston, please!" He hits me a few more times for good measure, leaving me with only one heart of health. We begin preparing for the recording – setting the death counter, reconfiguring the server settings, fighting over the best place to set our initial spawnpoint until we can make a base. When we are finally satisfied and everything is installed and ready, we stand side-by-side and look up at the early morning sky. "Ready? In three, two, one…"
"Hey, what's going on guys! It's Preston here with the Rob-a-Dob-Flob, and we're finally bringing you Mecha's Triassic Park modpack!"
October 3, 2011 at 10 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob
"Hey, Rob. Can you give me your bone for a minute?" I glance over at him on my Skype monitor, but he obviously has not realized what he just said. He looks so innocent with his big, coffee-colored eyes and that cocky little smile he always gets when he thinks he just figured something out that no one else could possibly know.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I just wanna see your bone for a minute and I'll give you something good," he whines with a fake pout, his Minecraft character staring over at me, too. I wait him out for a few seconds before he connects the dots, and he facepalms hard enough for me to hear the smack through the microphone. "I mean your dinosaur bone."
"Now you're calling me a dinosaur? You said you loved me just the way I am!" He grins, although he looks pinker than usual now. His face changes colors so quickly and so frequently that he must be part lava lamp.
"I do, bby plz. Just let me see your bone." I make a derp face and slowly wheel back from the desk while he begins leaning toward the camera until all I can see is one huge, dark eye looking downward. "Hey there, bby."
"Hey, cutie. You're… hot and spicy." We both burst out laughing until we have tears streaming down our faces and my recording program sends me a notification about readjusting my volume settings.
"All my tears… It… hurts!" Preston hiccups as he wipes his eyes with the side of his hand.
"What the hell are you doing in here? For fuck's sake, Pressy! Are you really trying to blow your camera? I was a joke, dude." Preston jumps in his chair and slowly turns his head to look at the man leaning in his doorway. He looks like an older, wiry version of Preston with short-cropped hair, his angular face pulled into a mischievous grin and his cell phone pointed toward Preston's computer set-up.
"Get the fudge out, Dak! You're screwing up my recording!"
"Uh, it looks like you're screwing way more things than me. Why the hell are you making that awful noise? People are tryin' to sleep!" He steps into the room and peers at the computer monitors, his eyebrows raised in incredulity when he sees me looking back at him, like he had been expecting to see an entirely different kind of creature. I have never spoken to the guy, but I can already see why Preston doesn't get along with him. "This is your sweet little boyfriend, Pressy? Isn't he a little too old for you?"
'Shit. This is going to be a serious problem. I am so fucked right now.' If Preston's brother tells his parents how old I am and about our jokes and innuendos, I might face federal prison time. If he started recording outside the door earlier and he is still filming, I will absolutely get federal prison time. 'Merde!'
"Shut the fudge up and get the frick out. You're not funny, dude." Preston gets up and tries to gently push his brother back out of his room, but it only encourages him to get closer to the computer.
"Naw, I'm hilarious. You never let me meet any of your little internet friends and it hurts my feelers, bro." He strolls over and plops right down in Preston's beloved red gaming chair, unplugging the headphones from the sound system and propping his dirty feet up centimeters from the brand new keyboard that it had taken his brother two months to buy. I can see Preston standing behind him, his face bright red and frozen in a glower. He is completely livid. "So you're the amazing 'Rob the Flower King' that Pressy and the kiddies are always talking about. I heard you like two kinds of pansies." My blood runs cold and I thank the many gods that Preston isn't just like his older brother. Darryl might be a soulless bastard, but at least he was never a piss poor bully.
'I absolutely cannot afford to screw this up. If this was any more dangerous, it would have electrified barbed wire around it. If I can deal with Angela, I can deal with Daka Arsehead.'
"Yes, of course. It's nice to finally meet you. Preston talks about you all of the time." He looks confused for a moment, unable to make sense of my answer. Meanwhile, Preston is beyond humiliated in the background, settling for a spot at the end of his bed, his face magenta in chagrin.
"Really? Now there's a surprise. So what'd he tell you?" Preston's eyes widen in horror and he stares into the camera, pleading for me to stop. He would be shaking his head furiously if he knew Daka couldn't see him on the monitor.
"He talks about your deployments and your awards. He always says how proud he is to have a brother who chose to serve his country and followed his dad into service." Preston still looks mortified, but his panic is beginning to fade away. At this point, I am just glad he trusted me enough to keep his mouth shut and let me handle it, a serious accomplishment in his case. I don't think he understands how bad this situation could turn out.
"Aww, now isn't that cute. I didn't know you loved me, bro." He glances behind him at Preston, who glares daggers at him and silently points to the door. Daka just scoffs and turns back to the monitor, crossing his arms stubbornly. "Did Pressy tell you I said congrats?"
"For what?"
"On your baby. I know you two've been at it for a while. You must be so proud." He nudges Preston in the stomach with his big toe, his other foot moving closer to the expensive keyboard, warding off a counterstrike.
'If looks could kill, this guy would have been tortured and burnt alive a hundred times.'
"Oh, definitely. Our baby is so beautiful that I cry every time I see it." I watch both of their faces twist in bewilderment as I lean out of the shot, carefully grabbing Procyon from the other end of the desk, the blue galaxy designer shell Preston had bought me for my birthday glimmering in the light. I hold the computer lovingly to my chest in front of the camera and Preston starts laughing at Daka's first puzzled, then annoyed look. He knows that, as long as I am the one trolling his brother, he is absolved of any backlash. "I love my baby."
"Wow, how'd you get that beaut? Is that what he was knocked up with over the summer, or did he buy it for you?" He looks pointedly over at Preston, as if he is waiting for a semi-serious answer. Is he actually suspicious of my friendship with his brother? I gently set the computer back on its shelf, wiping a smudge off of the top of its cover.
"It's an early 2010 model. I bought it before we met. Preston is just a little salty that he doesn't have one yet," I reply as evenly as I can, holding back the indignation his last comment sparked. I may not look immaculate or rich, but I get tired of everyone assuming that I am destitute and unable to buy my own things. "He did buy me the cover, though. He cares about my baby." Preston smirks in the background, no doubt remembering the fire faux leather seat covers I had sent him for his car after I realized that he had bought me a birthday present and I had not returned the favor. Preston is to cars as I am to computers, and my star-covered, twilight blue, top-of-the-line Mac is my heart and soul.
"How do you guys handle custody? Wait, I get it. You just met up again at that gaming show in July so Pressy's get another one in the oven. That's why you're so moody and hungry, innit?" He goes to poke him in the stomach again, but Preston crosses his arms over the spot with a disgusted expression on his face. "Is that why you're so butthurt about everything all the time? You played the wrong kind of demo at the convention? Not everything with a joystick is a video game, bro."
"How long'd it take for you to figure that out, Dak? Can you please leave? We were in the middle of doing something when you showed up." Preston's horror is quickly fading into irritation, and we both feel that his brother has overstayed any welcome he may have had.
"What were you up to? If you don't be careful that mouse is gonna make your wrist limper than it already it. The Bieber hair is bad enough, Pressy, wouldn't want you to get a lisp and start speakin' ze French, too. You're faggy enough already." Preston laughs and that just pisses me off even more. How ignorant can this guy be? Even worse, who is that cracking up behind him? Preston wouldn't gay bash, would he? Could he really be so clueless?
"Okay, you're calling me a fag? You're the one who sits in a room with eleven other guys circle jerking until the sun comes up every day. If anyone here's a fag, it's definitely you, Dak. You're just AIDS." I obviously don't know Preston as well as I thought I did. Who is this person?
"Look who's talkin'. You're the one who plays with flowers and rainbow animals on Minecraft every fucking day. The only way you'd be gayer is if you changed your name to 'Presilla' and started wearing make-up." Preston scoffs again and rolls his eyes, pointing to the door a second time.
"Can you get out now? Please? I don't want you leaving skid marks on my chair."
"Hey, I'm gonna be gone until January. I have to get my money's worth before I leave." Daka slides his bare foot off of the desk and slowly stands up, stretching as he ambles his way over to the door, his phone clutched in his big, square hand. To my relief, its screen is black and blank. "Nighty-night, Pressy. And try to keep it down so the normal people can sleep. No one else wants to hear your moaning and your cock fights with your boyfriend in Canada."
"Out!" Daka stops at the door, waving sarcastically at the camera while Preston shoves him out and closes the door after him, ensuring that it is locked this time. He lets out a sigh of relief and jumps back in his chair, reconnecting his headphones and brushing a dusty footprint off of the top of his desk. "Sorry he's such a jerkwad. He's just salty he has to go back up to Washington and I get to stay here and chillax. Are you ready to get back to work?"
'What do I say to him? I actually have nothing to say to Preston.' I am so pissed off at him right now I can hardly think, but more than anything, I'm hurt. 'I was never friends with him, not really. How could he not have known, with all the time we have spent together in the last year and all the times I all but told him? Now that I know he still thinks I'm straight and I know what he thinks of queer people, how would he react if I told him I was bi? What do I say to him now?'
October 3, 2011 at 10 PM, Fort Worth, TX: Preston
"Rob?" He didn't answer my question so I look over at him on Skype. He's just sitting there, leaning on the arm of his chair with this unreadable expression on his face. I've never seen him act like this. Did Dak somehow manage to piss off MrWoofless? My brother is a freakin' legend if he pulled that off. Rob's still analyzing me and his eyes look… defeated? Angry? Tired? What's up with him? "Are you ready to get back to work? I think I figured it out."
"There are just so many things… Just no. No."
"What?"
"What do you mean 'what'? Where have you been for the last five minutes?" His voice isn't raised but he sounds really sarcastic when he says it, like he's daring me to say something back.
"Jeez. Chill out, dude. What's wrong?" He isn't scary when he's mad like I thought he'd be, but the fact that he's so upset just makes me feel really bad. Seeing him like this is even worse than having him flat out yelling at me.
"You're kidding me. You are absolutely fucking kidding me. Right?" He sounds beyond salty, more like acidic, and I lower my voice before I reply.
"I know he's kind of a jerk but what can I do about it? He's my brother and-"
"No, Preston, it's you I am pissed off at. He can do and say whatever he wants to, but I expected better from you." That's what that look on his face is: it's disappointment. It's my least favorite feeling in the whole freaking world and Rob being disappointed in me just burns my soul in a thousand different places. He's my best friend and my partner in crime and my mentor and I look up to him, and making him disappointed really, really hurts.
"I'm sorry, but I don't know what I did." My voice sounds small and pathetic and he just leans forward and huffs while he runs his hand through his messy brown hair like he always does when he's frustrated. "I'm sorry."
"Preston, I… I don't even know what to say."
"Then just say something." He looks at me again but this time he just looks sad. I was right – this is so much worse than him screaming at me. I've never wanted to apologize so much in my life but it's just making it worse because I don't know what I'm apologizing for. Whatever it is, I wanna take it back and pretend it never freaking happened. "Just say something. Anything."
"I would, but you wouldn't want to hear it."
"Who cares if I wanna hear it. I need to hear it." He sighs and leans back in his chair, his hand resting against the side of his jaw with that guarded look on his face he always gets when we do Battledomes. He's on the defensive and I already know I'm not gonna like what he says.
"You can't… You can't say things like that, Preston. I know I am a little too PC for your taste and you don't like it when people tell you what you can and can't say, but… You can't say things like that." I think back to our conversation with Daka but I can't think of anything really offensive I said. It's just stuff everyone says, even my friends and Mom and Dad sometimes. Why's he making a big deal out of this?
"I don't get it. Why are you mad?" Rob just sits there and looks at me for a second, like he's trying to decide whether he should say something or just keep his mouth shut. If we're still friends after this, I should seriously ask him to teach me how to do that.
"You need to watch what you say and how you say it, and some things should just never be said to begin with. Sometimes your first impressions about people are wrong, and you might offend them if you poke fun at something sensitive like sexual orientation." I must look confused because he continues even though he sounds like he doesn't want to. "You wouldn't tell an Auschwitz joke to a Jewish person, so you shouldn't tell an AIDS joke to a queer person." I just stare at him, trying to put the pieces together and he stares back, studying me. I know I probably look like a complete jack-all when it finally clicks but he doesn't say anything. He just keeps watching me, waiting.
"What? So you're gay?" It sounds so weird to say it. It feels even weirder to think it.
"Yes, and no. I think of myself as bi, even though I prefer guys."
"Oh. I thought it was just a joke and… Oh."
"Oh."
"Wait, does that mean all those times you said…?"
"We were only kidding around, Preston. Don't flatter yourself too much." He still looks unsure but some of his humor is coming back and his eyes look gentle again. It's going to take a while to get used to it, but he's still my best friend. It's just really weird thinking of him like that. With a guy. Or guys. Making out. Doing things. Now stop it!
Daka can never find out about this. Ever. We would both be so royally freakin' screwed if he found out my best friend likes guys. He'd never stop barging in during recordings and making awful jokes. He'd probably pick the lock just so he could drop in and insult us some more. If what Dak said today pissed Rob off, I can't let them meet again and risk having him say even worse stuff – what he said today was pretty tame for him. I need to keep him away from Rob at all costs.
"Oh. Okay."
"You look a little freaked out." I shake my head a little too enthusiastically and I kinda wish I didn't have my webcam turned on or I had a pause button or something. I don't wanna screw this up and make him hate me. "It really isn't that big of a deal, or at least I don't think it is. It doesn't change anything. I just… I wasn't sure how you would react."
"It doesn't matter. I still love you, dude." We both look a little surprised as soon as it leaves my mouth, but it's the truth. He's like my best friend and my business partner and the perfect older brother all rolled into one, and he could tell me he was secretly a Russian serial killer cow with twenty personalities and he'd still be my favorite person of life. "It's just different. I'll get used to it, don't worry about it." He nods and seems mostly content but still worried, like I might be toying with him or something.
My family isn't exactly pro-gay but they don't sit around quoting Bible verses about it, either. They're just sort of against it and think it's bad and wrong, but this is Rob we're talking about. He isn't bad in any way, shape, or form. He's like the exact opposite of bad and he's always so freaking nice and kind and generous and friendly. If Rob's gay, then gay people can't be bad. On the other hand, that isn't something I know a whole lot about. I think part of the reason this's such a huge deal is because I don't know any other gay people, except for that glammy guy last year in English and that manly girl who's in my weight training class but I never really talked to either of them. Rob's just a regular guy and we have pretty much everything in common, but I'm not gay. It's just weird that he was there in plain sight the whole time and I didn't know he was really gay or bi or whatever he is. He hid it by passing it off as a joke and it's frickin' brilliant.
"Can we keep this between us? I don't want other people to know, especially the viewers."
"Yeah. Yeah, of course. I wouldn't do something like that." He nods and we just sit there for a few seconds in silence before he leans forward and grabs his mouse, ready to start grinding fossils again. "You know, I still wanna see your bone." He tries to fight back the smile, but he fails just like he always does.