Right around the time I got up the confidence to whisper in Morgan’s ear if she wanted to take this to her room, we heard an “ugh” from Doug, coupled with the setting down of the controller on the table. Instantly, my hand retracted from inside her shirt but stayed under the blanket, trying to play it cool.
“You alright?” Morgan asked, a little hazily. I smirked at her. She smiled shyly back.
“I just fuckin’ suck at this game, man,” Doug replied dejectedly. He eyed me and his head made exaggerated movements from the controller to me, back and forth. He was clearly as much of a lightweight as his sister.
“Alright, Quinn. Here ya go,” he told me, as if he was holding out until I was ready or something. He passed the controller to me.
“Yeah? You want me to beat the Orphan for you?” I asked.
Doug chuckled and closed his eyes. “If you can,” he simply said.
I shrugged meekly. “Okay.” I felt around the controller with my hands — a little sweatier than I was used to, but I could make it work.
Morgan pulled me back and whispered in my ear, “You’d better beat it on the first try,” teasingly.
I smiled back at her. The harder the boss, the more time I dedicated to learning it, inside and out. And bless her, even though Morgan had no idea what was going on, she was enjoying this power play between her brother and myself.
My smile got bigger when I got an idea. “Hey Doug.”
“Yo.”
“How many blood vials do you think I’ll need to beat the Orphan of Kos?” I asked innocently.
“Like, all twenty?” Doug answered, confused.
“Okay,” I simply replied.
Morgan audibly giggled as Doug understood where I was going with this. “Oh, no way, dude. Come on. You can’t play me like this, he’s one of the hardest bosses in the fuckin’ game.”
Doug, especially drunk, was hesitant. He seemed to play Bloodborne like any other Souls game. But Bloodborne was fast and demanded you to be faster. It was calculated and demanded you out-calculate it. It favored the bold. From the moment I entered the arena, it was like the living room faded from around me. There was no Morgan or Doug anymore. There wasn’t even a Quinn. There was only the Orphan of Kos and its Hunter.
The world went by in a blur for the next few minutes. I wasn’t even sure how many. All I knew was that my reflexes told me what buttons to hit and my eyes practically never moved from the center of the screen, seeing from the corner of my eye the movements made and how I needed to respond. I didn’t regain consciousness until after I heard the telltale groan of the Orphan falling and the Kos Parasite appearing onscreen.
I exhaled, as if for the first time, then regained my sense of self. “So, how many blood vials did I use?” I asked Doug, half-bragging, half genuinely unsure.
“Two,” Doug muttered in disbelief. “Jesus. You know how to play, I’ll give you that.”
“I was aiming for zero,” I admitted. “I guess I don’t really use your build much, so-”
“Alright, alright,” Doug cut in, snatching the controller back. “You got your time to brag.”
A little nervous given his reaction, I sank back to the couch seeing Morgan give me a look. I knew that look well — Morgan liked when I put on little displays like this. Less ‘Bloodborne,’ more ‘showing Doug up,’ but she was definitely giving me the ‘fuck me’ eyes.
Enter, stage left, who fucking else. Right when Morgan and I were about to kiss, we heard the front door slam and Morgan immediately looked back in bewilderment.
Doug was less fazed. “Who is it?” he called.
“It’s me,” Taylor’s tired voice ran through the hallway.
At the sound of Taylor’s voice, Morgan’s head snapped back into place, a look of pure frustration and nothing else on her face. Without even looking at me, she pushed the blanket off of herself and got up at the couch to meet Taylor, who was already walking past the hallway.
“Hey Doug — oh. Hey, Quinn.” She began her sentence with, granted, no enthusiasm, but at least energy. When she got to me, her voice went all quiet. I didn’t even know which look I should have been giving her at that moment.
“Hey Tay,” Doug replied.
In a voice barely audible enough for me to hear, Morgan told Taylor, “Hey, it’s good to see you, but uh…” She hugged Taylor politely to complement her point. “Could this wait? I kinda wanted to be with Quinn alone tonight.”
Taylor, not gifted with subtlety, answered with a regularly-volumed voice. “No. I need to talk about Joel stuff with you. You need to know.” She slowly turned to face me, and just looked at me. Morgan turned and looked at me too, then back to Taylor. “I think… Quinn should know too?” Taylor continued, with a lot less confidence.
“And this can’t wait?” Morgan asked.
Taylor shook her head no and, winning Morgan’s approval, motioned for me to come upstairs with them. I sighed, said my goodbyes to Doug, and followed the two of them into Morgan’s room.
“Okay, so what is it?” Morgan asked in a borderline impatient voice.
“So,” Taylor began, waiting for me to shut the door. “This is about Joel.”
“Yes, we know it’s about Joel,” I cut in. “You said that at the door.”
Taylor looked at Morgan, probably expecting Morgan to defend her, but deflated like a balloon when she saw Morgan’s face reflecting mine. She sighed angrily. “Okay, so basically, Joel doesn’t believe Milo, I think.”
“What?” both of us asked at the same time.
“Like, I think this is okay,” Taylor continued, as if that’s all we needed to know.
“What do you mean, you ‘think’ he doesn’t believe him?” Morgan asked.
Taylor started fiddling with her hair. “So, like, Joel was high when Milo told him, and I think he, like, thinks it’s a joke. Or thinks he doesn’t know if it’s a joke.”
Morgan had to deal with the confusing details and the reality of the drink hitting her harder by the minute. “Wait… he told you this?”
Taylor nodded enthusiastically. “He went up to me and was telling me, like, how he doesn’t think Milo is funny, and how pathe- no offense, how pathetic Quinn is and stuff.”
“Yeah, who could possibly take offense to that?” I sarcastically grumbled, pacing around the room. “This doesn’t sound like it concerns me. Can I leave?”
Morgan looked back and forth from Taylor to me, eventually stopping with a cold look at Taylor. “Yeah, Taylor, you need to stop pretending his feelings don’t exist,” she told Taylor in a cold voice, a voice I didn’t think Morgan had. “He’s had to deal with so much bullshit.”
“And I haven’t?!” Taylor erupted. “Do you want me to tell you what happened or don’t you?”
“You could have sugarcoated it, or even implied he was wrong for saying that,” I shot back with a louder voice than I expected. “You could have defended me, whether it was with him or with your own friend group half the time when I started hanging out with you more regularly. You could have treated me like more than just your plaything.” At this point my voice was barely above a growl. “You could have chosen not to order me to crawl.”
Weirdly, none of my accusations seemed to hit her hard until the last one. The last one broke her. She started breathing more rapidly, although I couldn’t tell if it was anger or trying to stop herself from crying.
Great story! And..great story telling!