Chapter Text
It started with xbox live.
More specifically, it started with an online game of Halo 3 after school and some cocky British prick squeaking about how fucking good he was and, once the phrase “pwned that noob” came out of his mouth, Michael was done with it.
"Fucking christ cocksucker, shut your goddamn mouth," he growled into the headset, no longer caring how many times he died or how many people he killed, hunting down the obnoxious player and shooting him. He then continued to do so after every spawn, and for the following three rounds, trash-talk included. The guy just kept squeaking and screeching, shouting no and yelling at Michael to stop.
In the end, instead of getting rid of the little bitch, Michael got a friends request from GFree and a message.
-You’re an asshole. Want to play again sometime?-
For whatever dumb reason, Michael accepted.
It became routine, then, for them to play. Michael would come home from school and play Halo or Minecraft and sometimes GTA with his new friend for a few hours until it was late in the UK and dinner time in the US.
For a few weeks, it was mostly trading semi-jovial insults over games and back and forth messages about what they were going to play that day. No names, no ages, little personal info shared, just a couple of gamers doing their thing together, no big.
And out of no where, just a month after they started playing together, Michael got a message.
-hey add me on skype? haloking83-
It took two minutes of snickering over the username, several minutes of anxious internal debate about whether or not it was a good idea. What if this guy was some old creep? Unlikely, considering his voice and vocabulary pointed more towards nine than ninety. A few more minutes of toying with his computer, muttering abuse at it while it slowly loaded skype, and finally five minutes of staring at the screen before Michael pressed enter.
The response was instant.
And now, Michael had a face and name to match to the voice and gamertag.
