Strong Signal (Cyberlove #1)

by Megan Erickson

  But as staged as it was, Kai was very clearly getting off on it. Two seconds of him tugging, a second of his toes curling, and then he hunched forward with his inky hair falling over his face. The loop replayed before he came.

  And I kept watching. Over and over until my dick was so hard the tip was sticking to my boxers, and my breath was coming in harsh pants. I rested one palm over my crotch and used the other to click to the notes on the GIF. Because…what the hell? What was this? I’d thought he was some nerdy Internet kid, but now? Now I had no idea. But the comments from other Tumblr users spelled it out.

  It seemed that before Kai had gotten famous on Twitch, he’d made money uploading videos to XXXTube. The account wasn’t listed under Kai’s name—but it was definitely him. Just from the discrete angle of the profile picture and the name “Gaymer Twink,” it was obvious it was him without clicking on any of the videos.

  And I wasn’t going to. I fucking refused. The still images were enough to flood my mind with complete filth.

  I slammed my laptop shut and jumped to my feet.

  No. I wasn’t going to look. I wouldn’t.

  Pacing, I bit my knuckles and tried to think of something else. Anything else. Shit, I’d rather think of Costigan, and he was just one in a long line of straight assholes looking for a convenient hole. Anything but the idea of Kai putting himself out there for all of those creepy late night Chat people to stare at and obsess over. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t. I had a beef with him and that was it. All of this other shit was unnecessary. And it was going to stop.

  Except, when I lay back on the tiny twin bed and crushed my hands against my face, I couldn’t get that GIF out of my mind. Or the stills of him naked and touching himself. Had he only done solo porn or were there videos of him with someone else? Each question brought to mind more questions until I was wondering about the contents of the videos, and vividly imagining what he was doing in them.

  It damned me. Those videos and pictures and that stupid fucking GIF. I was hard, so hard I was aching, and all I could think of was the last second of that file when he’d hunched forward with his lip caught between his teeth. Right before he’d come.

  I bit my fist again, and slid my other hand into my boxers. I’d meant to adjust myself, but one graze of fingertips against my throbbing flesh, and I was gone. Jerking off so tight and fast the motions were nearly violent. My gut tightened and my balls drew up, but I bit harder into my fist rather than releasing a single sound.

  I thrust up into each pump of my hand, but it wasn’t enough. It was nothing compared to what was happening in my mind—the fantasy of my hand being Kai’s hand. Him smiling at me while he got me off. Staring into my eyes the whole time. And then kissing me….

  Muffling the sound that ripped from my throat was impossible. Half the base had likely heard me come. At first, I didn’t care. Not with my toes clawed in the sheet, my ass arched off the bed, and my hand still clutching the base of my dick. But then I came down off the high of my orgasm and my body cooled.

  Guilt kicked in.

  With a slow exhale, I relaxed against the bed and shut my eyes.

  I’d tipped the scales in an already imbalanced situation, and now…. Now it was time to stop. From now on, if I interacted with Kai or went to his Twitch stream, it was for the sole purpose of learning his PVP rotations and his weaknesses, and beating his ass in FWO. This one-sided infatuation was over.

  But was it? Was it really?

  My mind flew back to XXXTube. Gaymer Twink. Not Gamer Kai. What if he hadn’t intended for people to connect his two identities? What if the armchair detectives of his fanbase had done it for him? Worse—what if they’d found out more than that? There were ways to find someone’s home address and phone number if they used the right websites, or looked at domain information.

  What if he didn’t know?

  Wiping my hand against the already grimy sheet, I pushed up off the bed and went back to my desk to fire up FWO.

  “I already crossed one line,” I muttered. “May as well go out with a bang before I put this crap behind me.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kai

  Watching Shawn eat was always an event, and right now he was housing an entire plate of spaghetti. I’d had a couple of noodles and one meatball before shoving everything from my plate onto his. He hadn’t even noticed.

  Teenage boys.

  “So have you talked to Keandra yet?”

  “What?” he asked around a mouth full of food.

  “Keandra? Your chemistry partner? The one with the big boobs?” Of course, I hadn’t seen these boobs. But Shawn had told me about them. Numerous times.

  Again—teenage boys.

  He stared down at his plate, his thin dark braids hanging down to his chin. “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh, dunno what to say.”

  I dropped my feet to the floor. “Compliment her on her clothes or her hair.”

  “Girls like that shit?”

  I never said anything about his swearing. In this apartment, I let him be whoever he wanted to be. I wasn’t his dad. Friend didn’t really fit either. I guessed I was sort of like a scrawny, white older brother. Except sometimes I thought he did more for me than I ever did for him. I sighed. “Humans like that, you dumbass.”

  For a moment, his face didn’t change, then he laughed. “All right.”

  “I’m serious! And ask her out. You have a car.”

  “Yeah I could do that.”

  “I mean, or don’t. It’s up to you.” I watched him push the rest of the spaghetti around on his plate. “How’s your mom?”

  At that, his expression soured. “Still dating that jackass.”

  “What? Who?”

  “You’ve seen him around. White dude with longish hair. Tall but real skinny. I could break him in half if I wanted.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Is there reason for you to be breaking him in half?”

  “Not yet. I dunno. He gives me a bad vibe. Looks at me like he can’t wait for me to get the hell out and go to college so can take over or whatever.”

  I wondered how much of it was based in reality and how much of it was Shawn worrying about leaving his mom in the summer after he graduated. They’d been a team for so long that he was likely overprotective. I didn’t blame him. I’d grown close enough to worry myself.

  “Well, maybe…he’ll end up being a nice guy,” I offered.

  Shrugging, Shawn picked up our plates and carried them over the sink, scraping off the uneaten food before placing them in my dishwasher. That was our agreement. I cooked for him, he cleaned up. Of course, he could cook for himself. He had for years since his mom worked two jobs and wasn’t home in the evenings, but he liked things to be fair.

  We’d exchanged words for the first time four years ago. He’d been a skinny thirteen-year-old standing in my doorway with a too-big sweatshirt covering his hands. With a guarded voice he’d tried to cover, he’d asked to borrow a can opener.

  No one had ever knocked on my door before. We kept to ourselves in this apartment complex, although I had seen him and his mom a couple of times as they came and went from the apartment across from mine.

  I wasn’t sure what had prompted me to leave the apartment that day, but instead of letting him borrow mine, I’d followed him to his place. There I’d found a can of soup, a broken can opener, and the knife he’d been using to pry the top open. I’d pictured him accidentally cutting his hand, and something in me had cracked a little.

  I’d invited him to my place and had made him a grilled cheese and some tomato soup.

  He’d been visiting me ever since—the only person who ever came into my apartment. And now he was no longer that scrawny thirteen-year-old. He was a seventeen-year-old senior member of his school football team who ate everything in sight, and his frame showed it. He could probably bench press me.

  “If you get to harass me about Keandra,” he said. “Then I get to give you sh
it for not leaving your apartment.”

  I tamped down my irritation. Shawn rarely brought up my hermit status, but I knew he was concerned. I hadn’t always been this bad. Well, I’d never been so great in social situations, but I’d managed. I’d even danced in off-Broadway musicals in Philly in my early twenties, although I’d thrown up before every performance.

  Eventually, I’d taken fewer roles as my anxiety worsened, and I’d started my Twitch stream. Once I’d gotten subscribers and sponsors, I’d earned way more money than I’d ever earned while dancing. Not puking my guts up was also a nice bonus.

  As time went on, I’d realized I never had to really leave my apartment if I made all my income on Twitch. So I’d stopped. And now, three years later, I wasn’t sure I could leave. What had once been social anxiety now felt closer to agoraphobia.

  Sometimes I considered the question of whether a tree in the forest made a sound when it fell, and I applied it to myself. Years from now when I was gone, and I wasn’t missed, would I have lived? God, that was so depressing.

  Anyway, I was pretty sure Shawn would miss me. “Don’t give me shit.”

  “How about you date?”

  That was a definite no. The only people who interacted with me were all online, and the thought of meeting one of them in person—no matter how much I liked them—was not pleasant. There was no way to explain my reclusiveness without feeling like a complete fraud.

  “No.”

  I hadn’t really ever dated—sex had always been casual, no-strings-attached hookups with friends. Those had ended around the same time as my dancing career. How the hell could I date? Oh hey, I spend my life online playing video games, I never leave my apartment. I also used to jack off on camera for money, and those videos are everywhere online. Nice to meet you.

  Shawn rolled his eyes. “If I ask Keandra out, you gonna help me pick out clothes?”

  “Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I love personal shopping.”

  Shawn frowned. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted help and don’t wanna bug my mom about it since she conks out right after work.”

  “Oh, well, of course I’ll help.”

  I felt like a shithead, but Shawn smiled—over it in an instant like teenagers always were. I internalized everything and turned it over and over in my head until I wanted to scream, but things rolled off Shawn’s back as easy as water.

  He glanced at the clock. “I should get going. I have a ton of homework to do. Math. My favorite.”

  I nodded and stood up to stretch. I needed to check my messages and sign into Twitch. “Yeah, I need to work.”

  “All right, man. Have fun fighting the bad guys with your orc.”

  “Yeah, I’m perfecting my victory dance.”

  “Sure you are. Later.”

  After my front door shut behind him, I locked it—doorknob, two deadbolts and a chain—then grabbed a cup of coffee and went to my bedroom. Several messages were waiting for me on FWO after I signed on. One of them made me pause mid-sip and turn my head so I didn’t spew coffee all over the monitor.

  I had one message from Hazzard. The American hero I’d embarrassed. Oh fuck.

  All it said was: Hey, can I talk to you about something? …Not about you killing me in the game.

  That was it. That was all it said. What did he want to chat about? Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’d seen my Twitch stream. He’d seen me. And he’d kept up his cryptic comments and vague insults on my gaming style for weeks. There was no way this was going to be good. I’d never actually had a hater attempt to contact me privately before. Maybe I’d been lucky to avoid it all along, or maybe Hazzard was some extreme psycho.

  I gulped down another sip of coffee and winced as it scalded my throat.

  Okay, so, a message. About chatting.

  I rarely engaged people privately. The emails in my inbox mostly went unanswered. I gave so much of my life to people online that I made every effort to keep my life here in the apartment to myself. Online, I got to choose who saw what, and I could present myself in only the ways I allowed. So far, no one had ever seen the real Kai.

  So why was I opening up a pathway to further communication when it could blow up in my face? Maybe it was because he intrigued me—this deployed soldier who spent his free time watching my stream. If I thought about it objectively, he hadn’t merely trolled my chat for weeks. He’d also offered real tips and constructive criticism. Once, I swore he’d made a comment that had been complimentary right before he’d lapsed into sarcasm again. It was like he’d been fighting with himself about whether or not he should harass me, and the genuine gamer side of him had kept winning out.

  Either way, it was just an email address. It wasn’t my longitude and latitude coordinates.

  Before I could change my mind, I typed: Sure, email okay? GamerKai18 at gmail.

  It wasn’t a big deal. I knew that, and told myself that repeatedly, but my nerves were still shot. Even so, I got into Gamer Kai mode. After signing onto Twitch, I plastered a smile on my face. I had a job to do.

  * * *

  My first thought after waking the next morning was to check my email.

  Fighting the urge, I rolled onto my stomach on the bed. It was way too big for one person, and sometimes it emphasized how alone I was. Maybe I should get a cat. But that was just another thing I had to feed and take to appointments. No thanks.

  I stumbled to the bathroom to piss and attempted to force myself to the kitchen, but still wound up backtracking to my room. Once at my desk, I opened Gmail and chewed my nails.

  Why was I agonizing over this? This was bullshit.

  I had a whole bunch of emails, most of them nonsense, but my heart rate bumped up when I spotted a personal email address. GReid22.

  The subject line said: hey

  No punctuation mark or capitalization. That was it. Why the hell was I analyzing a subject line? With a growl and a violent tap on my keyboard, I opened the email.

  Hey,

  This is really stupid, but I’m doing it anyway. Look. I only went to your Twitch channel because I was pissed that you felt the need to demolish me in front of your entire Twitch audience even while knowing I was lower level and undergeared. But I said I wasn’t going to talk about that, right?

  The point is, while looking you up I found a whole bunch of other shit. People are fixated on you, man. They have Tumblr pages dedicated to you. And buried in the notes of a Tumblr post, I found…a link to some shit you maybe don’t want attached to Gamer Kai, you know? You seem like an okay guy and…not a douchebag, so it’s upsetting to think this is being passed around by your chat, and you don’t realize it. Some of those people are total scumbags.

  Either way, it’s none of my fucking business and I’m sorry for prying. I could be wrong about all of this, but I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you didn’t know.

  Peace,

  G.

  By the time I got to the end of the email, I tasted blood. I looked down at my hand. “Shit.” I’d bitten off half my thumbnail.

  I grabbed a tissue and wrapped it around the bloody finger, then read the email again. And a third time. I leaned back in my chair, staring at the G. What did the G stand for? Gary. Glen. Garth.

  Some of those people are total scumbags.

  “But not you, G?”

  I’d always known some people were aware of my dual personas. I’d started making videos for XXXTube a couple of years ago. Something about the camera recording me, and having people watch me but not be able to touch, had turned me on. I’d made one video, uploaded it, and had received enough views to get some ads from the website. My videos had supported me after I’d stopped dancing, but now Twitch paid more than enough and kept me busy, so I hadn’t made a video in a year or so. But I still got bank from them, so I hadn’t shut down my channel.

  I wasn’t embarrassed about jacking off on camera. I did it anyway, so why not film it? It wasn’t like I had a family to judge the things I did to earn an i
ncome. Well, my dad was supposedly still alive, but he was probably in prison for yet another drug charge, so whatever.

  I thought about how to answer this email. If it were someone else, someone more trollish and 4chan-esque, I might have told them to fuck off. Or sent him a link to one of my favorite videos just to be an asshole.

  But with Hazzard/G, I didn’t want to do that. In fact, despite the caustic and scathing persona he’d been using in Chat, his email was kind of sweet, all dripping with concern. Protecting people was his job, right? Other than Shawn, it’d been a long time since anyone had cared about my wellbeing.

  I rested my fingers on the keyboard, tapping the keys. The wise decision would be to say, “Thank for your concern, but I know.” Which actually wasn’t totally the truth. I knew people were aware of both personas, but I had no idea what kind of creepy stuff they’d done with the information. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Shit, I needed ice cream already. And it was ten in the morning.

  With halting movements, I replied.

  Hey G,

  Thanks for the heads up, but I knew some people had figured it out. It’s likely why some of my late night Chat guys seem to know nothing about gaming and are more concerned with me putting on a show. Which, as you know since you’ve been squatting in my chat for weeks, I don’t do. I keep that stuff separate.

  So, did you really want to talk about this or did you just want to talk to me? Why are you always hanging out in my stream chat? Do you need FWO pointers or something? ;)

  Kai

  It was more than I’d intended to say, and a little snarky. Continuing this correspondence was an awful idea, but I also couldn’t stop myself from being a little…intrigued.

  Instead of logging into FWO again, and hooking up to my stream, I puttered around the apartment and tidied while considering the situation. I was halfway through a serious attempt to reorganize my game cases when my phone chimed with a new email notification.