Chapter Text
In hindsight, Joe should know better than to get online when Booker is like this.
But he’s had a long day of auditing classes, it’s a Friday night, and all he wants to do is let off some steam with his friend who clearly wants the same thing, given his Discord message to Joe that reads, eloquently: Boys nght all RIGHT!!
Joe starts his Playstation 4 with a silent prayer. The wifi in his dorm is awful, rendering online games unplayable half the time with lag or downright refusal to load at all, but he usually has better luck on weekends, when more people are out and about and not hoarding the internet all to themselves. He rummages for his headphones while waiting for the console to gather its strength, finding them under the multicultural lit textbook lying half open on his bed.
He plugs them into his phone and goes to enter Discord’s voice chat, then hesitates, only entering the call after he turns the volume on his phone down about halfway. It’s a good call. The second he enters, the low, tinny sound of music blares through his headphones. It’s what Joe likes to call incomprehensibly french- though he speaks the language fluently and uses it almost exclusively with Booker, the wailing of the singer warps the words so strangely that he only knows it is french the same way he knows how to find the kitchen from his childhood bedroom even in the dark, feeling his way to it from the shape of the things in his hands alone.
It takes him three tries to get Booker’s attention, each attempt tightening the knots of anxiety he feels in his stomach. It’s almost quiet hours, and he can’t afford to get into trouble with the school. Again. At least he's not disturbing Nile, his friend/roommate spending the weekend with her family, her mother and brother visiting all the way from Chicago.
“Joe!” Booker greets him, finally. The sound of the music lowers, but unfortunately doesn't stop. “Hey, man. How’s it going?”
Joe shakes his head, smiling a small, exasperated smile.
“It’s going. How about you, how you doing?”
“I’ll be better once we start fucking actually playing. You ready to go or what?”
“Working on it,” Joe says, frowning down at the headset sitting on his desk. Did he remember to charge it last night? He thinks so.
“Work faster,” Booker demands.
The Old Guard’s title screen flashes across Joe's TV, brightening both the room and his mood. His fingers flex around the controller.
"A little eager for someone who's just going to rage quit halfway through the first match, aren't we?" He jokes.
Booker scoffs in indignation. "I don't rage quit!"
Joe hasn’t played many online, team-based shooters before. He prefers roleplay games, immersing himself in a story where he gets to make his own characters and decisions. He’d first tried The Old Guard for Book, his friend on another spiral about his sometimes girlfriend, and because he refuses to resort to Call of Duty to hang out with him.
He hadn’t heard anything about the game, though Book told him it had had a beta for months, and so the starting screen was a complete, utter shock. It rooted him to the spot in his chair, mouth hanging half open, handful of pomegranate seeds (Booker mailed one right to his school in Nowhere, Nevada. Joe had nearly wept) halfway to his mouth.
The character staring back at him looked...well, familiar. Like staring in a mirror, but one that showed you more than just yourself, showed you a reflection of all who came before you. YUSUF, the screen read in big, bold letters below the man, the game mode options to the left of him forgotten entirely.
Joe went right to the internet to search for information on Yusuf al-Kaysani, forgetting Booker couldn’t see him through the phone when he distractedly waved away his friend’s baffled questions.
Yusuf was so much like him, it was unreal. He was him. They were both Muslim, both hailing from Tunisia, both gay- though Yusuf was married, to another playable character, the Wiki said- a Nicolo di Genova. He had made a face at that- a white Italian, really? But it was short lived, overshadowed by the amazement of a character like him, like this, a hero, in a video game. Never mind that he was fun to play as, with his dual-wield shotguns, sword, and special abilities, all based in his background as an immortal scholar saving the world since his birth in 1066.
All this to say Joe couldn’t help but be a Yusuf main. How could he be anything else, when the character was made so specifically for him? He even changed his screen name to RealYusufal-Kaysani, pointedly ignoring Booker's ribbing about it, especially since Booker's own screen names often ranked on a list whose parameters ranged from weird to downright cringeworthy. (His current one, Fwenchy, leaned towards the latter).
This is how he finds himself, a half hour after they start, playing Yusuf to Booker’s offense character Sebastien, the pair of them and their four teammates trying and mostly failing to capture the first point of the Merrick Lab map. Booker, taken out by an enemy Keane, curses in rapid-fire french. Joe hears something clatter over the headphones as Booker waits to respawn into the game.
“Hey, don’t go getting toxic on me,” Joe says, trying for a light tone.
“If our team would just group up,” Booker spits back, cutting himself off with a growl. More sounds of clattering come through the headphones and into Joe’s ears.
He winces and wishes Booker would just rage quit for once. As much as he wants to spend time with him, it’s more fun to solo queue than listen to Booker go off like some Twitch streamer on the verge of saying a slur.
Joe waits for him at the left gate into the point, knowing Book prefers to go around rather than storm the main entrance into the Merrick building. The rest of the team, a Noriko, Andromache, Lykon, and Nicolo, go to the right.
“Maybe we should follow them this time,” Joe suggests. He starts to move Yusuf in that direction, dodging between cars in case the other team is sneaking around the area. The Noriko spots him, quickly crouching up and down in a teabag greeting. He smiles and teabags back. The Andromache and Lykon join in, but the Nicolo just stands beside them, watching.
No fun, Joe tells him, silently.
“Fuck that, this’ll work.”
Joe reluctantly peels away from the rest of the team to follow Booker. It doesn’t work. Their team’s Lykon leaves, and doesn’t return.
More cursing, and now a rustling that Joe can’t place, until he hears two of Booker in his ears- like the one isn’t bad enough- and realizes Booker’s turned his headset on, taking his complaints directly to the source of them.
Joe fumbles for his own headset in a rush, settling them uncomfortably over his headphones instead of wasting time pulling the earbuds out of his ears, his finger already on the power button. But when he checks the screen for the symbol alerting his headset has been turned on, he notices with not a small amount of relief that the other three are all in a group. Booker either hasn’t noticed, or doesn’t know that people in groups have their own in-game voice chat separate from the general team one, and Joe certainly isn’t about to tell him.
He’s about to shut his headset off again when the notification pops up on the TV. A party chat invite, from AndYEt. The Andromache player.
He glances towards his phone, uncertain. Booker’s still muttering about team dynamics and people pulling their own weight. Sucking in a breath and holding it, Joe mutes his Discord mic and accepts the party invite.
“Yusuf! Hey, welcome to the party!” Andromiko, the Noriko player, cheers in English.
“Hi, yeah, thanks for the invite!” he responds in kind.
Their group joins him and Booker at the left gate, Noriko teabagging at him again. He spams in-game waves and hellos back when the first half of the match ends. They're returned to the spawn room for the countdown to the start of the second half, their team now on defense in Copley’s home.
“We couldn’t not invite the real Yusuf al-Kaysani,” Andromache says. “But about your friend there, the Sebastien-”
“Is he good?” NicoloPiccolo- Yusuf wrinkles his nose at the concept of a Nicolo main and lover- interrupts, bluntly.
“Are you?” Joe challenges, and whether it’s out of defense of his friend, or something else, Joe can’t say.
“You can find out for yourself, if you want," Nicolo says, his tone clearly amused.
"I'll take up that guantlet," Joe tells him. He's been running in short circles behind the still-closed spawn doors, but drops the controller abruptly, not wanting the other guy to think he's nervous.
"Hello?" Andromache says. "What is this? Is this fucking Yusuf/Nicolo roleplay?”
Joe feels heat rushing to his face. It’s just- Nicolo’s accent is strong, unmistakably Italian, and the idea of him and Joe, an Italian and a Tunisian, a Nicolo and a Yusuf, here together, isn’t lost on him.
“Oh, like you don’t enjoy a good roleplay in-” Noriko laughs.
“Whoa, whoa, hey. Age check first, yeah?” Andromache says in a rush.
Joe instantly straightens in his chair, that warm feeling of recognizing other potential lgbt people flaring in his chest. The Andromiko screen name had been his first hint, but you couldn’t always count out shipping, of course.
“Oh, no, you’re right. And you cursed, too!” Noriko gasps.
“Huh? Oh, shit, I did. Oh, f- uh, darn!”
Joe leans back in his chair again and laughs.
“It’s cool, I’m 24,” he tells them, putting an end to their misery.
“Oh, thank fuck. And your, uh, the Sebastien…?”
“My Booker’s 30.”
Speaking of the devil. Joe glances at the screen, where Booker’s headset icon is still flashing. He wonders what his friend is saying, if he’s still trying to talk strategy to an audience of none.
“And I suppose you would like us to invite him, as well?” Nicolo asks, in a sigh. Joe furrows his brows at Nicolo’s tone but chooses not to comment. It’s not like it’s his party, he’s only a guest here.
“If that’s okay? Or, actually, if we could just switch to team chat? Parties make my wifi struggle. If not, I can go, it’s not a big deal,” he says.
Booker may be Booker, but he’s still Joe’s friend. He and Nile are the only ones getting Joe through the nightmare of a semester he’s spent stuck at this school. And he’s probably tired of Joe’s venting himself, after every one of Joe’s attempts to make something of his Fulbright Scholarship here are shut down by the administration, again and again.
“Team chat it is,” Andromache says, after a moment’s pause. She leaves the party immediately, followed by Noriko with a cheery “See you there!”
Nicolo leaves without saying a word. Not that Joe was hoping he would, or paying attention at all, really.
Joe leaves the party at last, rejoining team chat just in time to hear Andromach speak, still in English.
"So here's the strat," she says, continuing over Booker's indignant spluttering. "Yusuf and I will take the lead, holding the chokepoint with my labrys and his shotguns, whittling away at anyone who gets too close. Sebastien, you hold up our rear and make sure no one gets past us with whatever it is you do. Keep an eye out for Kozaks and their sleep darts. Quynh's going to pretend to overextend, baiting stragglers to follow her into our line of sight. Use your bow if you have a good shot, otherwise don't risk getting caught. You know the drill. Nicky, you'll be in the first floor window, sniping whatever moves and calling it out if they try to take the fight elsewhere. Any questions?"
A moment of silence stretches, with only the game music playing in the background, a bold, exciting tune that finishes with a flourish as the spawn room doors finally open wide.
“No? Cool. Now then,” Andromache says. There’s a sound like- did she just crack her knuckles? “Who’s ready to win this thing?”
"Poggers," Noriko says.
"Poggers," Joe echoes, and though he can't tell if she said it unironically or not, he still can't help but laugh.
Booker's mumbling in french again, something about young people and their gamer terms, and...Doritos?
A message notification pops up on his screen, catching his focus.
NicoloPiccolo: be sure to keep up, yes?
Joe scoffs, grabbing his phone because using the PS4 app is faster than trying to "type" with his controller.
He replies: save it for the 1v1 ;)
NicoloPiccolo: looking forward to it
Joe grins, something like anticipation flaring in his gut.
"Joe," Booker barks. "You're up front, remember?"
"I'm coming, I'm coming," he mutters, and with that, charges out the front doors beside Andy, the rest of the team falling in line as planned.