2. Weston

CHAPTER 2

Sunday nights were Weston's favorite stream nights. After five days of playing video games, he gave his hands a break from holding a controller. Back when he had a regular nine-to-five, Sundays were one of the worst days of the week. The anticipation of having to clock in on Monday morning could ruin the whole day. He wanted Sunday streams to be a solace to the folks who showed up.

Sometimes he did a crossword puzzle, sometimes he would cook something, but tonight he looked at his chipped-ass nails and knew he needed to repaint.

His studio apartment didn't have a ton of storage, so all of his nail polish was in a drawer in his bathroom. He grabbed remover, a royal-blue polish, and a topcoat and dumped them on his stream desk. He turned on his computer and his lights and then started up his "STREAMING SOON" screen.

Then he grabbed his water, fixed his hair, and put on the barest hint of eyeliner. He had a spreadsheet where he tracked stream variables, and he'd found he made more money when he wore a bit of makeup. Yes, he did this for fun, but it was also how he paid his bills, and he was barely paying them. Every dollar counted.

His stream setup had come a long way since he started. He had LED lights in his background and a faux neon sign with his stream handle on it. There was a shelf full of stuffed bats; that was his unofficial mascot, so viewers would send them to his P.O. box.

Weston loved his viewers, especially his regulars. He'd been living a life of isolation lately, and stream was social and fun. He knew so much about some of his regulars. And while streaming was still a performance, the connection he felt to them was real.

As always, he hoped that his favorite regular would show up.

It was fruitless to have a real crush on one of his viewers, but he couldn't help that Quinn—"GoodQ" on STRMR—made him feel good. He said sweet things and gave him lots of coins and gifted subscriptions to others in chat all the time. Flirting with Q at this point was just as much part of the stream as any video game Weston played.

He took a breath and hit a button on his Stream Deck to make his "STARTING SOON" screen fade out.

"Hey, freaks," he said, greeting his waiting viewers the way he always did.

Quinn wasn't there yet. He wasn't worried. Even if Quinn wasn't punctual, he rarely missed a stream. Especially in the last handful of months.

He turned his attention to the chat and read messages out loud so folks knew what he was responding to. "What am I up to today? Great question. First, we're all going to wait for my boy to show up, and then I'm going to paint my nails. How was everyone's Saturday?"

Saturday was the only day he always took off. Sometimes Wednesdays too, but always Saturday. He had the lowest view counts on Saturday, so from a business perspective, it was the best choice.

"Apple picking, huh? Jennie, you freak. You're so wild." If he had a bit he felt beholden to, it was pretending wholesome, regular things were scandalous. "I haven't picked an apple in forever. Going to the orchard is so sad because everyone is eating those fucking apple cider donuts, and no orchard in the history of the world has ever had a gluten-free option. It's on the list of disappointing life events." Weston had been diagnosed with celiac disease as a teen, so he unfortunately knew from childhood how good those donuts were.

He missed real donuts the most. Even more than bread.

Someone else mentioned doing a pile of laundry, and he bemoaned his own laundry that took half of his day. Someday he wouldn't have to deal with communal laundry, and he dreamed of that day.

And then finally: GOODQ JOINED THE CHAT

"There he is," Weston said, relaxing back in his chair. Quinn was four minutes late. Weston watched the chat greet Q. His streams were only doing alright until several months previous, when his stream regulars started establishing themselves. The viewership numbers grew as the experience of being in chat got to be more fun and dynamic. People started feeling left out when they had to miss a stream, and that was when the money hit a viable place.

Weston had been able to get by narrowly before then, surviving off savings and his credit card, but in the last few months, he had been able to pay his bills with stream money. He'd started paying more than the minimum on his credit card. In order to continue to do this full-time, he would need his channel to keep growing. Being barely viable wasn't sustainable, but he was going to do this for as long as he could swing it.

His health meant that he wasn't always able to show up for a nine-to-five with the kind of attendance record that was always expected, and having a job he was in control of, where he set his hours and could be kind to himself when his body wasn't doing great, was invaluable.

"Q, what's up? How are you?" he asked, putting his nail supplies in a neat line as he waited for Quinn to type out a response. Having a conversation like this, where Weston asked questions on video and people had to respond via text, had been weird to get used to. When he was all alone in his studio apartment with his camera on, he felt like he was alone. He could separate himself from the fact that hundreds of people could see him—sometimes thousands.

The distance from reality was hard to consolidate.

Quinn's message popped up. Hangin in. I figure I'll give myself a week off before I have to start looking for jobs.

"Fuck, dude. Have you ever thought about streaming?" It was a joke. Weston didn't have any advice for people who wanted actual jobs. Plus, if Quinn started streaming, how would he continue to be Weston's favorite part of his own streams?

GoodQ: I've thought about it, honestly. Getting into it is intimidating. Plus, I don't know how to paint my nails.

"Yeah, it can be a bit of a mystery to get started. If you're into it, let me know and I can help you figure out what you need for a setup to try it out. And I can also send you a tutorial for painting your nails." He winked at the camera. Flirting was the most enjoyable part of any stream, and he craved the back-and-forth. He liked imagining Quinn blushing. Sometimes when he edited his streams for VOD, the things Quinn said made him blush.

He didn't even know what Quinn looked like. He could be anyone. The biographical details he'd sprinkled in chat throughout the last several months could be lies.

Still, no one was breaking down his door to lavish him with romantic attention. He'd take what he could get.

He grabbed his base coat and took a peek at the notecard he had off screen. He always made a list of things to talk about before he went live, whether he needed them or not. It was a helpful trick when he was starting out, and the habit was comforting.

"Did you see that they're trying to start a new movie franchise about cars? I'm not sure whether they're trying to be Fast and Furious, or Transformers, or Pacific Rim, honestly, but the messier and less focused these movies are, the more entertaining they'll be." Movies were a frequent topic. As a certified Sick Kid?, he had spent a lot of time watching movies in hospital beds or on the couch in his living room on his journey to getting diagnosed.

Sunday night streams always went quickly, as chatting and painting his nails stretched out for much longer than it would take him to do them off stream. He showed photos from what he did the day before on his Saturday off and chatted about the new gluten-free snacks at Trader Joe's, and suddenly he was yawning. His stream time was up, and while he sometimes stuck around for longer, he was hungry.

To ease the transition to the end of his stream, he found one of his friends he played games with on Friday who was on and pulled all his current viewers over to her stream. He stayed to chat awhile, hopefully helping her gain some regular viewers, and to say hi and be polite before he logged off. Then he shut his stream lights off along with his mic and put his computer to sleep.

He was too tired to cook himself something real for dinner, so he boiled some water and dumped some rice pasta into it. He leaned against the counter in his teeny-tiny U of a kitchen and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Quinn kept bubbling to the top of his mind. He'd called Weston pretty at least three separate times that night. Weston had offered to help Quinn explore streaming, and while his hesitations from before hadn't disappeared, he didn't want to wait until tomorrow to talk to him.

He pulled up STRMR to DM him.

MidWeston: did you want to talk about streaming? i feel so bad that you got laid off. are you going to be okay?

Quinn was none of his business, but after talking to him pretty much every day, Quinn felt like his friend.

His phone buzzed with a new message.

GoodQ: I'll be fine. I have some savings. I would love to pick your brain sometime about streaming though.

It was just after eight p.m. Quinn obviously didn't have to wake up early to work the next day. And Weston's curiosity was eating him alive. He wanted to know what Quinn looked like.

MidWeston: wanna video chat in an hour?

The response took longer to arrive than the previous ones. Weston tried not to shake out of his skin while he drained his pasta. His comfort food was a bastardized version of tuna mac, with just the noodles, a can of tuna, and ranch dressing. It wasn't a meal he offered to other people.

Finally, Quinn's message came through.

GoodQ: For real? That would be awesome.

They pinned down a time, and Weston killed an hour with dinner and a few admin tasks. When it was time to call Quinn, he checked his hair in the mirror. He was a different kind of nervous from when he streamed. This wasn't a performance.

Quinn picked up and...fuck. He was beautiful. He had a chiseled jaw with a sprinkle of stubble and a flop of shiny blond hair. Masculine, but still beautiful. His big eyes were brown, and Weston didn't need to see the rest of him to know how broad his shoulders were.

"Hi," Weston said, holding back a flirt. Without the audience, it felt inappropriate.

"Hey." Damn it. His voice was deep. Weston took a breath and tried to pretend Quinn didn't look like, well, that.

"Nice to meet you for real," Weston said. "I had been wondering what you looked like."

"Disappointed?"

"Not in the slightest. So what streaming questions do you have? I figured a video chat would be most helpful so I can show you my setup and shit."

"Honestly, I'm pretty intimidated by all of it. Whenever someone shows off their setup, it's worth more money than I think I'd ever be able to make off it."

"You can start pretty cheap. The audio is the most important. I have an old mic that I upgraded from. I can send it to you."

"Shit, I'm not asking for your charity."

"It's not charity. It's sitting in a box in my closet. You live in the Midwest, right?"

"Twin Cities. Northeast Minneapolis."

"Oh, shit, I'm in Duluth." Weston tried to keep his exact location vague, so he never said his city name. He just said "Northern Minnesota," even though Duluth wasn't that far north.

"I didn't realize you were so close. I could just come pick up the mic." It was a joke—Duluth was a good two hours north of the Cities; more with traffic.

"You should," Weston said. "Come visit. Do a stream with me. See if you like it."

"What if I'm a serial killer?"

"Then that would solve a lot of my problems."

"What if you're a serial killer?"

"I'm just a nerd," Weston said. "No pressure, obviously. I just figured, I know your life is going to be upside down for a while, and I'd like the company, not to sound pathetic." Quinn already felt like a friend, and Weston could use as many of those as he could get.

"You're serious?"

"I've made worse decisions."

"Okay. I could go for a bit of impulsivity."