1. Quinn

CHAPTER 1

Quinn Griffin's life was a mess. He had a pile of problems, starting with, but not limited to: a fresh divorce, a strained relationship with both his older brother and his best friend (and co-homeowner), parents who now were living out of state, and a work life that hadn't seen balance in months.

Maybe being laid off would be a good thing. He tuned back in to what HR was saying to him on Zoom.

"Of course, this is purely a business decision. It had nothing to do with your work output. Thank you for being part of the team. David will be in contact with you regarding your equipment return."

"Thanks," Quinn said as the call ended. He'd started his day with a ten-minute meeting on his calendar at eleven a.m. with just the head of his department and the head of HR. Instead of doing anything else, he'd baked himself a Dutch baby—a pillowy, oven-baked pancake the size of a pie—and eaten the entire thing himself while watching video game streamers while he'd waited for his meeting to start.

Now that it was over, Quinn had the whole day spread out ahead of him. His whole life. Thinking about it immediately exhausted him.

His parents' condo in downtown Minneapolis was much nicer than his own aging house; he was staying there while he gave Hunter space and worked on his own healing. They both needed it.

His folks were letting him stay for free so long as he unpacked and organized the things they left behind and was there to receive furniture orders that they had been putting off. Mike and Nancy Griffin were RVers now and were cruising around the Southwest. They'd sold the house Quinn had grown up in and bought an RV and a condo in its place to have a home base in Minnesota. They hadn't spent a night in the condo yet.

Quinn had. Quinn had spent nearly twenty-one nights there. He'd unpacked boxes full of kitchen things, stacked linens in the linen closet, put up art, and made this house a home. For someone else. He hadn't bothered to do the same for himself.

He leaned back in his dad's office chair, his own laptop and external monitor on the desk instead of his dad's things. His view out the window was of more tall buildings. Living downtown had never appealed to him. Everything was lifeless. Including him.

Quinn had no stable, full-time job. He'd need to figure out health insurance now. He had a mortgage to pay. And while he had freelance clients, he couldn't make a living freelancing.

Every day was one miserable day after another.

He wouldn't choose a history of depression for anyone else, but since he'd gone through this before, he knew it would end. And more importantly, his family knew it would end. Hunter knew. Quinn knew he would wake up one day and realize that he was feeling better. Good days would pile up until bad days were the minority, and it felt like he was having more good days lately. All he had to do was survive this.

Some days that felt like a pretty tall order. Today, for example.

He had YouTube up on the living room TV, playing a recording of an old MidWeston stream. Weston was his favorite video game streamer, but he was never on this early. Usually, Quinn watched a handful of other streamers in the morning before Weston's regular streams started around one p.m. However, he needed the extra comfort today.

On screen, Weston was in the top left corner. His black hair flopped over his forehead, hiding the widow's peak Quinn knew he had. The headset he was wearing had little devil horns on the headband. His nails were purple. He had a giant smile on his face, like he always did.

"GoodQ's in the chat," Weston said on screen. Quinn picked this video specifically. He'd saved it in his favorites. Some days he spent more time in Weston's stream chat than he did getting any work done. His handle for stream chat was GoodQ, and he loved the way Weston sounded when he said it. Maybe Quinn was projecting, but Weston said it differently than other chatters' handles.

Weston squinted to read what Quinn had typed. "Did I miss you? Of course I missed you, baby. Chat is nothing without you." He winked, and Quinn felt an echo of the warmth the interaction had given him when it had happened in real time. "Looks like the rest of chat is glad you're here too. Weston's boyfriend is here," he read. "Ooo la la. He's gotta show up with flowers and a gluten-free donut from Sally's before he can be my boyfriend. I have stipulations here."

Quinn saw his own message pop up in the bottom left corner, the newest message in chat—an emoji of a bouquet and a donut.

"You're just here to flirt with me and distract me," Weston teased. "Look at this mess of a house. That's what I get for trying to build a house while talking to Q." Weston played a handful of games, mostly in the cozy genre, but Fixer Upper was Quinn's favorite to watch. It was pretty uneventful. You bought an ugly old house and redecorated it to increase the sale value.

It reminded him of Hunter.

Since there wasn't a lot of eventful game play, and nothing time sensitive, Weston was especially chatty when he played it.

There were a million streamers who streamed Fixer Upper. Quinn could watch someone play this game around the clock if he wanted to. But if Weston never played it again, he would still tune in to Weston's stream over anyone else's.

He and Weston had filled the next twenty minutes of stream with flirting, and the rest of the chatters egged it on. They had their own shippers. And while Quinn knew it was fake—that Weston welcomed it because it increased engagement—and it wouldn't ever go anywhere, he still loved it. Weston gave him levity when he couldn't summon any of his own. He showed up to Weston's streams for the teasing and the banter, and he let himself disappear into this digital space. When he was chatting in a video game stream, he didn't have any other problems.

He could be silly, and Weston would flirt back, and life would hurt a little less for a few hours.

It wasn't the healthiest way to spend his time, but it was how he was staying alive. For a while, he would let himself have the unhealthy choice.

The ground level of his parents' condo had a convenience store and a bakery, and it meant Quinn hadn't left the building in days. He took the elevator down to the public lobby the building shared with both stores and grabbed a premade sandwich and a bag of chips from the convenience store and—with Weston on his mind—a gluten-free donut from the bakery.

All he had accomplished that day so far was an unideal call with HR and a half hour of Weston's old stream. Since he didn't know what else to do, he called his mom and, once again, cried on the phone to her. He was almost twenty-eight, and he still needed his mommy to comfort him when he was sad.

Pathetic.

He wanted to fly back down to Arizona and stay with his parents again on their freaking spaceship of an RV, but he knew he brought down the mood when he was there. His parents loved him, of course, but they were freshly retired and wanted to party. They didn't deserve a sad middle child on a converted couch bed forever.

Now he had lunch and sugar. Weston's stream was starting soon. It was Friday, and he always played a racing game with a bunch of other streamers on Fridays. It was fun, and sometimes Quinn bounced around to the other racers' streams. But racing was a high-focus category of game, and it meant Weston had less time to chat with him.

Quinn grabbed a Coke from the fridge and got set up in the living room, with the stream on the TV and the chat on his phone. He could watch on his phone too, if he needed to, but he liked having Weston up on the largest screen possible.

He cracked open his turkey sandwich and his Coke. He wanted a beer so badly, but he also liked feeling in control of his drinking. As long as he could say no when he wanted to drink, he would be okay. He took a sip of his Coke. At least it was cold.

Weston's "STARTING SOON" screen was blinking and playing familiar royalty-free music, and then Weston faded in, taking up the entire screen instead of hovering in the corner, like he would when the game started. "Hey, freaks," he greeted. A part of Quinn's truly terrible day melted away. If there was a silver lining to getting laid off, it was that he didn't have to pretend to work through Weston's stream.

He typed a quick message in chat. Hi honey 3

"My boy Q is here, thank God," Weston said, smiling as he focused on the chat. "Missed you, baby. And WaveyDavey, Marisol, ConcussionKing, Violet. Hi hi hi." Like any good streamer, Weston's chat was already filling up with regulars.

Weston didn't exclusively flirt with Quinn, but Quinn was the primary recipient of Weston's overt flirting. Quinn knew it was probably because Quinn matched his energy, and it increased engagement of the rest of the chat, too. He knew that Weston making him feel special wasn't about how much Weston liked him—it was business. Still, it felt good.

And as much as Quinn loved the personal interactions he had with Weston, he thought of the rest of Weston's regulars as his friends, too.

Weston chatted for a half hour before the rest of the racers were on and ready. Then most of the rest of the stream was race focused.

Quinn dropped in the chat that he got laid off that day, and while Weston was preoccupied, the other viewers in chat consoled him. Six months ago, he would have sought comfort from Hunter after a day like this. A year ago, he would have cried in his ex-husband's arms, still legally bound and unaware of what was coming for him.

Now, he had internet friends.

Weston usually streamed for about six hours, sometimes longer, and Quinn usually watched while he worked. Now he didn't have a project to pretend to work on.

Earlier in the summer, Hunter asked if Quinn was designing any of his own stuff, but his creativity was dead. He felt such a canyon between himself and the person he was when he could do a project like the 36 Days of Type and have something new to post every day for over a month. When Quinn felt real creative inspiration, hours melted away.

When he did corporate graphic design, or work for clients, that was the work that he had to pull teeth for. And soon enough, there was nothing left.

He grabbed his iPad out of his backpack and opened a new drawing file. Having a pen in his hand was the most natural feeling in the world. He was sure this was how his siblings felt out on the ice in goalie gear. This was the most correct version of himself.

He started with warm-up exercises. They were always worth it. He sketched through a series of the little cars on the racetrack, pixelated and retro-looking, even though this game was new.

Sometimes, he opened a blank page ready to fill it with ideas that were already in his head, and other times he had to draw for a while before he found a direction. Forty minutes into it, he looked down at his page and realized that he was drawing Weston a new logo. His existing logo was mostly text, and he had complained about his branding on a stream a few weeks prior. Weston wasn't artistic, and so many streamers did their own design for everything. He felt his was lacking.

Perfect. Quinn had nothing better to do, and for the first time in a while, it was fun to sit and watch a stream while trying to flex his feeble creative muscles. He lost hours to drawing and listening to Weston's voice as he raced round after round until he finally said good night to everyone and signed off.

Quinn took a shower after stream and wondered who else he had to tell about getting laid off. Usually, Hunter would be the first on his list, but now he was debating whether he could skip it or if he owed it to Hunter, since he was the person Quinn shared his mortgage with. He had enough in savings to not need to worry about that yet. Disappointing Hunter again might break him.

His parents' bathroom was gorgeous. All marble and white everywhere. Hunter would hate it.

He thought about Hunter more than Lee these days. Quinn thought his world had ended when Lee left him, but Quinn didn't miss a man who didn't want him back. He missed his best friend. His best friend who was now dating his brother.

Jonathan was a good man. Quinn understood why Hunter gravitated toward him. He deserved an anchor. Quinn wanted an anchor.

He was tying himself up in knots again as he brushed his teeth, on his way to the same spiral he always got himself into, especially at night, when he picked his phone up off the bathroom vanity. He had a message. It was a DM on STRMR, the streaming platform Weston was on.

MidWeston: hey sorry i saw your message in chat about getting laid off and i couldn't respond. i'm so fucking sorry.

The knots loosened.

GoodQ: Hey, no problem. I still had fun. Did some of my own drawing for once. Ate a sandwich.

He didn't expect Weston to respond, but he did, and quickly.

MidWeston: ha ha ha. i'll see you tomorrow in stream right?

Nowhere I'd rather be, Quinn answered. And it was the truth.