January 11, 2013 at 1 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

Another car slowly crunches its way down the street in front of Mitch's rental house and my ears strain to hear if it is pulling into the driveway. I let out a deep sigh and stare up at the ceiling through one of the thousands of tiny gaps between the crocheted knots in the blanket over my head. I hear classic rock blaring through Mat's headphones from the other side of the room, and when I look over in his direction, I see his body poised to dart behind the door to jump scare the others when they finally make it to the house. I move my eyes up to glance through another gap in the blanket and I catch him looking over at me again, his dark eyes filling me with unease and resignation. Why does everything in my life have to be so complicated and awkward?

I told Mitch from the outset that this plan of his was a terrible idea but, of course, no one ever listens to the old guy. No one pays him any mind. He doesn't know anything; if he did, he would have a fucking job. In what universe is trapping Preston and Nooch together in a house for four days a good idea? Even Preston had his apprehensions about it, but when Mitch gets an epiphany, nothing can stop him – not even Jerome. Our brilliant little ringleader bought a nonrefundable plane ticket for Preston that he knew he couldn't afford to pay back, and he coerced the Nooch out of his dingy lair with the promise of free alcohol and chocolate milk. Being as stupid as I am, I agreed to come along for the ride. Apparently I am here to mediate if something goes down. With a little luck, maybe some additional head trauma will put my brain back in order; no one else seems to know how to deal with the problem, including my doctor. Mat shifts in his chair again and glances outside, his eyes resting on my blanket tent for several seconds before he goes back to his phone.

'Damn it, Mat. I thought you were joking.' Our conversation at the hotel room in August replays itself in my head for the millionth time and I grit my teeth to keep myself from groaning. 'He can't be that desperate; I have to be seeing things. There was no way he was serious. This is worse than my little stint with Bryn in college.' I try in vain to close my eyes, but they always fight their way back open. I can feel the air changing as the impending shitstorm begins to form, the eerie silence sending a shiver down my spine. It won't be this quiet again until Preston flies back home. This will be the first time I get a good look at the catastrophic mistake I have made.

'You knew this was coming. You never should have worked with Preston.'


January 11, 2013 at 3 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Preston

"Are we there yet?"

"I swear, dood… If you say that one more time, I am going to shove your ass out there on the overpass."

"You sound more and more like the Bacca every day." It comes out as more of a whine that I'd intended it to but I'm past the point of caring. My butt seriously hurts. He does that snotty Benja smirk he reserves just for me, the one that looks like the yellow-eyed bully kid from 'A Christmas Story.'

"Much thanks."

"That wasn't a compliment." He snorts and looks in his side mirror before he merges over to the turn lane and I try not to cheer. My butt needs a serious break. I don't think I've ever wanted to run a mile in my whole freaking life, but I do today. All I've got done is sit in squishy chairs for like seven hours now and I just wanna jump out and walk the rest of the way to Mitch's messy, moldy house. But of course it's Canada in the middle of winter, so I'd die if I even thought about opening the door. Why'd I think spending half a week with a buncha Canadian nerds was a good idea again? Oh wait. I didn't. Fudging Bacca. I know he was behind this whole thing – he even mentioned it in one of our group Skype calls! He didn't say anything about Nooch, though. I think he just kinda invited himself like he always does. I wonder what they had to do to get Rob out of his spotless cave of misery and woe. Naw, that's kinda harsh. Maybe it was actually his idea to go outside this time. That freakin' man drives me up the wall to Canadia and back to Texas with his refusing to sleep and his secrets and his lies and his Poofless jokes. I wanna chain him to the wall in Mitch's house so he'd at least have someone to keep an eye on him.

When the car finally slows down and turns into the only not-shoveled driveway on the whole street, I yank my seatbelt off and throw the door open before the car even stops. Mitch's yell sounds like it's somewhere between mad and laughing, but I don't care anymore. My tailbone hurts like frick on fire and I can't deal with it anymore. I just hope it isn't what I think it is. I push that thought to the side and slam the door and crunch through a foot of icy snow to the trunk and grab my old gym bag before I waddle up to the front door as fast as I can. I don't know how these guys do it. I'm freezing my balls off out here and it's only been like thirty seconds.

"Shoes off before you go in and put them on the garbage bag so they don't drip everywhere. If you break it, you pay to fix it. Capice?"

"Yeah, yeah. Just open the fudging door already!" I push him gently outta the way and sprint into the house, sliding my soaked shoes and socks off and throwing 'em somewhere in the general direction of the magic flying garbage bag. Mitch scoffs and hangs his jacket up on the little hanger things by the door and watches me until I do it, too. I would've just thrown my jacket on the garbage bag, too, but Mitch's shoes are down there and I don't know if they're the new ones or not. The guy has like fifty pairs of shoes and you'd probably have to carbon date the nastiest smelling ones to see if they're made of pickled dinosaur meat. "Where's Rob?"

"Probably still asleep. He was on the couch downstairs when I left," he says as he points the way to his dingy underground cavern. I nod and creep down the stairs and start looking through all the rooms to find out where the jobless legend ended up. I almost skip over Mitch's living-room-office-thing until I see a big, grey, lumpy ball in the corner of the couch and I sneak over and sit on it. He immediately throws me off towards the floor and I just jump back up and lay on top of him completely.

"In Can-aw-da, the cold Can-aw-da, the senpai sleeps at noon!" I sing and he starts chuckling somewhere under my shoulder. He weakly tries to roll me off of him, but it doesn't work.

"Preston, that hurts. Please get off of my arm."

"No. Too warm and comfy."

"Preston, please. Your butt is heavy."

"Are you calling me fat?"

"No, I-" I shift so I'm laying back on when I guess is his head and he makes a pitiful little giggling noise like he doesn't wanna cry uncle. I'd feel bad if it was anyone else but him. I do a lap dance on his head and he tries to get a grip on me to shove me off the couch. "AAAAAH! Pres-ton! Get your ass off of my neck!" I see Mitch watching me flail around on the couch like a Magikarp, then a door opens somewhere and he turns to look down the hall and rolls his eyes.

"Fuck you, Mat. That was supposed to be for after dinner."

"It is after dinner. We ate dinner yesterday." Nooch sidesteps past him into the living room and settles into the desk chair with a water glass halfway full of orangey-brown liquor. This guy has zero rules and gives zero fudges. I bet he's drunk before the food even gets here. "You two should go get some after you get done eating each other. It isn't that cheap shit Rob always buys." It stuns me just enough that Rob manages to push me off and throw his scratchy yarn blanket on top of me. I don't care what anyone says – I'm still freezing to death and this thing's as warm as Satan's butt crack, so I'm gonna use it. Mitch rolls his eyes at me as I throw it over my shoulders and he pulls out his phone to order whatever the connoisseur wants us to eat for dinner. He rolls his eyes so much, I bet he spends half the day looking up at the ceiling.

"For someone who never hosts the party, you are awful picky about the drinks," Rob says as he jabs his finger between Nooch and Mitch's turned back. When you're being called Mitch-picky, that's a burn. "I remember a certain fifteen-year-old who used to give me his allowance and bribe me with packs of cigarettes so I would go buy him generic beer. I guess no one remembers the good old days, eh?" Wait, so Rob used to smoke? When did that happen?

"We're all a bunch of sinners. What do you want me to say?" Nooch answers as he downs a quarter of his glass. I wonder if any of us are even gonna remember this vacation. He offers the glass to Rob, who crinkles his nose and pushes it away before he gets up and goes upstairs. When he comes back with a couple bottles of beer, Nooch makes a gagging noise and scoots away from the couch on his rolly chair. "Uncultured swine."

"Picky ass. Not everyone was Prince Aladdin in their past life."

"Are you calling me a street rat?" Mat's face breaks into his typical toothy, Noochy grin and it just makes me crack up. Something tells me I'm gonna be learning a lot of deep, dark secrets this weekend.

"I would have called you Abu, but then you wouldn't have any pants to hide your loot in."

"Hey, a man's got to do what a man's got to do. You could pull it off, too, if you didn't wear your bleeding heart on your fucking sleeve with your puppy dog eyes. Here's your lesson for the day, Pressy: if you sell your heart and soul, you can buy a ticket to full personhood, no matter how much money you don't have. Then the whole world is your buffet."

"This guy can walk into a corner store weighing fifty kilograms and walk out weighing sixty – and he always walks out. If you ever need a pack of gum, just check his hair." Rob sits down next to me and tosses one of the beers in my lap, then pulls his keys out of his pocket and uses one to pop the cap off his bottle. Showoff thinks he's an MLG beer pro or something. "Back before he started YouTube and professional gaming, we called him Filch instead of Nooch. You knew he liked you if you still had all of your shit when he went home."

"Oh, stop it. You're making me blush," Nooch cackles as he downs the rest of his liquor and slams the glass down on the table like a frat boy who just won a bet. This guy's too much. "Come on, Pressy, get alcohol'd. Someone has to be the other end of our sandwich later." I stop messing with the cap on my beer bottle and just look at him, trying to figure out if he's actually saying something or just being a troll. I decide he's just screwing around when I see that Rob's facepalmed next to me and his scalp's turning tomato red. I guess it's an inside joke I missed.

"Stop being such a ham and go finish your bottle of Fireball," he replies to Nooch's delight.

"Let's be real here: you would be the ham." If it's even possible, Rob turns redder and he looks like he wants to crawl under the couch and hide for two months.

"You are really a dick, do you know that?"

"Only for you, Woof. Only for you." Now his face is purple and the tendons are standing out in his neck. I almost feel bad for him.

"Senpai, plz donz die," I laugh as Rob purses his lips just like his mom does and tries not to shrink down any more in his seat.

"I'm not going to die – I just want to kill this narcissistic little asshole over here."

"You're going to kill my a-"

"Forty-five minutes, boyos, then it's a party," Mitch interrupts as he plops down between me and Rob on the couch and looks pointedly at Nooch, who just raises an eyebrow and nods.

"What did you get us?" he asks as he gets up to refill his glass. Who knew Nooch was a walking beer keg?

"Hoagies."

"We got them sammiches, boys!" Nooch yells from the stairs and I can hear him snickering while Mitch just looks back and forth between us in confusion.

"Damn it, Mitch," Rob mutters as he takes a big gulp of beer and runs his hand through his hair. What the frick did I get myself into?


January 13, 2013 at 5 AM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

"Why you comin' home at five in the morn? Something's goin' on, can I smell your feet?" Mitch is grinning maniacally with his phone in one hand while he steadies himself against the wall with his other hand. I think I might be the only one here who is just tipsy – even Nooch is flat-ass drunk, and that is truly an accomplishment for him.

"Yeah, sure. Go for it. Here," I say as Mitch snatches my foot and gets a big whiff, trying to hide a look of astonishment when he realizes that my feet don't smell like a rotting corpse like his do. I hear Nooch giggling quietly behind me from his little drunken cocoon on the couch, and I don't think I want to know what Preston is doing behind me on camera.

"Delicious. Get a piece o' dat, girl! Nuh-uh," Preston adds with his sassy voice, and I turn to see him with his hips cocked to the side and his fingers wagging at me.

"Here." I wave my foot at him and he latches onto it, burying his nose in the top of my sock. He can never be outdone by Mitch, even in foot-sniffing. "I can't stretch like this for too long!" Preston chuckles but continues pulling at my leg, like he is trying to force me off of the chair so he can finally have somewhere to sit. Mitch turns the camera on his phone toward himself.

"Alright, we're going to get to bed now. We need some sleep," he says with a short slurp, eyeing the oddly silent, mostly naked Nooch on the couch while he prepares to end the recording. None of them are going to remember this later.

"Hot and spi-cy," Preston adds as he sits on top of me, sliding down to rest on my lap. He finally gave up trying to get Mat and me to move. Mitch laughs and pockets his phone, but not before he takes a picture of him splayed on top of me.

"Are you comfy, Perston?" Mitch cackles as he grabs his last beer and finishes it off with relish.

"Mmm." Preston throws his hand up on the back of the chair behind my head and slumps down like he fell asleep. It would be comfortable if he had sat on the other side and wasn't crushing things that don't enjoy being crushed. We sit like that for a few seconds before Mat scoffs and raps his knuckles on the wall behind the couch.

"Why don't you two just go upstairs and fuck already?" he asks deadpan, his other arm draped over his face like the light is hurting his eyes. Preston scurries off of the chair and goes to lean back against the wall, his face flushed dark pink. "We won't even post the audio on YouTube. Well, we won't post it on Mitch's channel."

"Shut the frick up," Preston hisses as he brushes his bangs off of his forehead and turns to throw his empty bottles in the little trash can by the door. He stomps his way upstairs and I hear him walk down the hall to his bedroom and snap the door shut. Nooch huffs and turns over to bury his head in the stiff arm of the couch in contentment, his eyes squinting in the light as he smirks at Mitch and me.

"Good job, Mat," Mitch murmurs under his breath as he flips the light switch off and turns to look at me to see if I am going to follow him upstairs. I shake my head and point to the computer, pretending to log him out of his YouTube account so that I won't have to deal with the awkwardness of walking with him. The worst thing I can do is have Preston catch me talking about him behind his back.

'This has gotten completely out of hand. Can I even fix this mess?' Now that it seems like everyone knows that I like Preston, even sitting next to him at a restaurant or sharing a bag of chips has gotten awkward. I don't know if Jerome sold me out or if I am actually that obvious about my feelings, but either way, the Poofless craze online definitely hasn't helped the situation. Every time something awkward happens between us, the tension just grows and he goes running back to Hannah with chocolates and roses to prove that he doesn't share my feelings. I hope he does a better job of convincing himself.

"That was really pitiful, you know," Mat says quietly and I ignore him. I pull out my phone and check Twitter to make sure that Mitch and Preston aren't drunk-tweeting things they will regret later. If they do something really stupid, Jerome is going to come down on my head for not babysitting them. "I just don't see it happening anytime soon, Woof."

"The answer is no, Mat."

"Oh, come on. It's not settling for second-best if your first choice was never a choice. If he was going to run into your arms in slow-mo, he would have done it at PAX. Now he has that makeup girl he's going to live with in 'Worsh-ing-ton.' "

"No."

"I'm not asking for that much. All I want is a chance."

"Why are you making this so hard?"

"I'm not making anything hard. Get your hand out of your pants," he slurs and I give an involuntary snort of laughter. If the situation was different and he was a couple of years older, I would be tempted to give in. But I can't. It would cause so much unnecessary drama and tension, and I don't want to fuck up my friendship with Mat by screwing him. Not only that, but let's be honest here: Preston would lose his shit if I started dating Mat, whether he will admit his feelings or not. It just isn't worth it, no matter how long it has been since my last venture. I can't take that risk. "Do you know what your problem is? You are both so goddamn stubborn that neither of you can get your own pants off, let alone someone else's. If he would just admit he likes cock and you would admit you like his cock, we'd have world peace."

"You need to stop hitting every time you go up to the kitchen," I say as I lock my phone and stretch, announcing that this conversation is over and I am going upstairs. "It just wafts off of you every time you move. You aren't fooling anyone."

"Fuck you."

"No offense, but I'll pass. Sleep it off." He nods and I turn the computer monitor off, quietly walking up the stairs into the quiet, still house. It doesn't smell like weed up here, thank God, and I grab my shoes and my coat and head outside to clear the stench out of my nose. Like a stark naked Nooch, it can't be forgotten and it always comes back to haunt you later. It would be my luck to get pulled over for speeding on the way home, then have my car searched in the snow for drugs because I smell like a blunt.

I silently shut the back door and walk out into the snowy backyard, heading around the corner to the dead, neglected garden from the previous tenants. I dig my nearly empty pack of cigarettes out of my coat pocket and light up, the stress melting away as the thick white smoke chases the smell of the basement out of my lungs. This trip is a complete fucking disaster. All it has done is push Preston and Mat farther and farther apart and stick me right in the middle of their giant, swirling shitstorm. Meanwhile, Mitch sits on the sidelines and munches on Cheetos. Mitch might be a ladies man, but Mat is an equal opportunity man where everybody has a chance and nobody is safe, even couples, siblings, and me. Overall, he is a good guy, but his morals are even more questionable than Jerome's.

'If you were him, what would you do?' I shake my head and lean up against the white panel siding of the house, closing my eyes and soaking in the sharp, freezing air. As hard as it is for me to make ends meet, I can't help but admire Mat. No matter how hopeless it seems, he always finds a way to make it work, even if it means pilfering peanut butter and bread from the grocery store so that his little sister has something to eat for dinner. Between his mom's disability benefits, his sponsors from YouTube, and his financial aid from his university, they still barely make it by. Someday, and I don't know when this day will come, he is going to trip on the tightrope and his balancing act is going to come crashing down. Someday, and I don't know how it will go down, he is going to have to turn to Mitch for help to pay the bills and buy his family dinner. Someday, and I don't know what he will choose, Mitch is going to have to show where his loyalties truly lie. I am afraid to hear his answer. When Nooch is gone, I will be next in line to be cut. Mat and I aren't profitable like Vikk, Jerome, and Preston, and we both depend heavily on Mitch and Jerome to stay afloat.

That brings up another dubious point: what does Mat really want from me? Is he actually interested in me as a person, or does he just see me as an easy source of income? I don't make much above subsistence level from YouTube, but that is still more than he has and I am an easier target than the other four are. It is easier to ask your boyfriend to help you out every now and again than it is to repeatedly ask a friend to loan you money they know they will never get back. He doesn't seem like the kind of person to use someone for money, but desperation distorts morality beyond recognition. If he claims to have already sold his soul to save his family, would he sell his body, too? It would also make it easy for him to blackmail me if we hooked up or dated and I denied one of his requests in the future. I might be overthinking this, but my overanalyzing and anxiety are the things that have kept me alive this long, not my lack of wealth or my beer-goggle good looks. I am not pathetic enough to sell my conscience and my reputation for a night or two in bed.

I crush the stub of my cigarette out on the bottom of my shoe and crunch my way back to the door, sliding my shoes and coat off before heading to my makeshift bed on the loveseat in the living room. Leave it to Mitch to make the tallest person sleep on the smallest piece of furniture. I know he did it so he could watch me and keep me from hurting myself, which is equal parts annoying and creepy. It also leaves me vulnerable to Preston's pranks and I have no way of escaping Mat's negotiations. The more time I spend alone with him, the more it feels like I am getting pushed into an arranged marriage.

'How often do the poor marry for love?'


January 13, 2013 at 12 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Preston

I don't wanna go downstairs. My tailbone feels like it's broken and I just wanna hide up here forever and pretend to be hung over so everyone'll leave me alone. Especially Rob. I was acting like a stupid freaking clingy idiot around him yesterday and now I can't even think his name without getting embarrassed. I'm pretty sure Mitch won't say anything even if he somehow remembers any of it and I know Rob'll just pretend it never happened like he always does, but Nooch… Nooch never forgets anything. He never lets anything go, either.

And it gets worse than that. He sits and pretends to flirt with him to try to make me feel bad for being stupid. Like he's gonna make me jealous or something. Like I give a frick if he likes Rob. But I seriously don't like the idea of Noochless being a thing, and it has nothing to do with Poofless not being a thing. I just don't like how Nooch torments him all the time and takes his food and steals his clothes and breaks into his phone and walks up to him and starts petting his head like a complete weirdo. Just little stuff like that really pisses me off and I don't know why. And Mitch rolls his eyes and Rob laughs it off, so he keeps doing it because no one tells him off and puts him in his place. He thinks it's cute but it's just freaking annoying, okay? If he touches me like that or tries to take a bite out of my burger, I'm gonna deck him one. I don't care if he's Bill Nye the Science Guy or not – he's gonna get a nose job.

But there's another part of it that really ticks me off: what if he isn't joking around? What if he's actually hitting on Rob all day, every day? And what if Rob gives in and starts dating him? I've known him for like three years now and he hasn't dated anyone since I met him, at least that I know of. The Bacca said something about him having a really nasty break-up with some girl named Vanessa but… judging by how many girls Mitch and Jerome have gone through in three years, I thought he'd like someone. Is he still afraid of dating a guy because of the backlash from the fans? Since he doesn't like girls, that has to be the problem. And then there's Nooch over here grinding on the back of the computer chair and grabbing Rob's butt and posing in his socks and underwear on the loveseat where Rob sleeps. It has to be a joke, right? And even if it's not a joke, there's no way he'd date Nooch. He wouldn't do that, would he? Nah, he can't like him. It's Nooch, for gosh sakes! He's just too nice to shoot like down like Duck Hunt. But what if he really does like him?

You know what, it's none of my business. It's his choice who he swaps fluids with. Why do I care what Rob likes or who he makes out with? So what if he likes Nooch? So what if they get it on when they're drunk? I don't care. I don't care! As long as I don't have to listen to 'em, I don't care. But what if they kiss in public or come up with stupid nicknames or do weird, Noochy couple-y things where everyone has to see it? I don't wanna see that crap. It's not that they're two guys. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that one of the guys is Nooch. And the other one's Rob. They can't…

There's no way I like Rob. No. It doesn't work like that. I have a girlfriend. She's awesome and sweet and beautiful and I love her, even though sometimes I wonder if she loves me as much as I love her. But that's just me being paranoid. The point is, I have a girlfriend, I like my girlfriend, and she's a girl. That means I like girls, not guys. Rob's a guy, so there's no way I like him – he's just my best bro. There's nowhere for Rob to factor into this. I don't like Rob. I just don't like the idea of Rob-and-Nooch. Or Rooch. Or Noob. They don't even have a good couple name. Whatever it's called, I can't let it happen. I can't stand the idea of them having creepy, Noochy derp babies together. I think I might hate that mental image more than the stack of Poofless fan art I got at the last convention.