CW: Swears, teasing

This wouldn't be an easy battle, but I'd faced off against these alien bastards more times than I could count and I knew their strategies inside and out. 

I sent my workers to collect as many resources as we could before the first attack came. There was no telling how quickly the attack would come until I received the intel I was waiting for.

Not even three minutes in and before I knew what was happening the alien menace swarmed my base and what had seemed an adequate defense force proved quite meager to the overwhelming numbers.

My greatest fear had come to pass, my men had died and there was no hope of survival. The word "Defeat" was plaster in large red letters across my screen.

"Get fucking rekt, dude!" Chad yelled, clearly enjoying his five game lead on me.

"Fuck you, dude. Did you really just go six pool?" I complained.

One on one matches in our favorite games were a Friday night tradition between my roommate Chad and I ever since we were able to afford gaming computers. 

That night we were playing an old, but classic real-time strategy game and Chad had taken an early lead with some hyper aggressive strategies.

I glared indignantly at my lanky friend. He usually hid his borderline underweight body under an oversized hoodie, but when it was just the two of us at our apartment he used to shed the cover and just relax, but I never saw him without it these days.

I never understood why he always wore a hoodie, l mean, I do too, but I look like a gargoyle and aye-aye had a kid so it makes sense I won't want people to see me.

Chad on the other hand was pretty good looking, if you were into slim androgynous guys who gave off 'massive nerd' vibes. Not that I was into dudes, just an objective observation.

He just gave me a goofy smile I'd long associated with him trying to annoy me, but really was more enduring than obnoxious. Not that I'd ever admit that to him.

"It's not cheese if it wins you the game!" he beamed.

"We're supposed to be training for late game matches, dude," I whined.

"All's fair in love and war," he said sagely. 

"We specifically were going for a long match not fucking about with baby's first cheese strat!"

"Nah dude, you always gotta be ready for cheese."

"Ugh, fucking hell, dude," I grumbled. 

"You need to stay on your toes, opponents aren't going to tell you what strategy they're using and it's not my fault you suck at this game," he insisted.

"You suck at dicks."

"Haha, says the male nurse." 

"Fuck off, I don't need that shit at home, I've gotten plenty of it in college and at work," I snapped angrily.

The "male nurse" comments always got to me no matter how much I told myself it was nothing to be ashamed about. Why couldn't people just say nurse? Why the fuck does gender have to come into it?

"Sorry, dude, was just a bit of banter between bros. Didn't mean anything by it."

"It's fine, not all of us can be aspiring househusbands," I shot back.

"Come on Brad, I was trying to be sincere with my apology, there’s no need to call me that," he shuddered.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry too. Rematch?"

"You know it!"

We started a new match and I decided a cheesy strategy sounded pretty good as payback for his, but he'd be expecting a worker rush so I took a huge risk and sent two workers to his base, one as the normal scout every player expects to see what he's up to and while he was distracted with that one I slipped the other in unnoticed.

I had the scout leave and started building a barracks, a building that produces basic infantry units, inside his base, just out of his view. 

Two minutes later and I had my little squad attack to great success, I was easily able to destroy his meager defense and secure victory for this match.

"Boom, headshot!" I shouted triumphantly.

"This isn't a FPS, dumbass," he scowled.

"You're just jealous that you can't defend early aggression when you're macroing."

"You're just compensating for not being able to out macro me."

"Not my fault your early game map presence is so bad I could slip a worker in your base."

"I bet you want me to slip into your base!" he laughed, then after a few seconds clarified, "I'm talking about my dick up your butt."

"Yeah, I got that."

"Damn, I didn't notice you already had my dick up your butt. I gotta get better at scouting."

"Fuuuck yooou." I groaned, stifling a chuckle. He just laughed and I rolled my eyes.

Homoerotic jokes were commonplace during our versus game, anything to distract or annoy the other and gain an advantage was on the table. It just so happened gay jokes were the most effective way to do that. It's not like we were actually gay for each other, or gay at all, obviously.

Not that either of us necessarily believed it was wrong or anything, although it did make me feel weird whenever the topic came up. 

It was more that the thought of us, two one-hundred percent straight dudes, making out was pretty cringe, so it distracted us enough to get an edge on whoever was more embarrassed. 

It's just like Sun Tzu's Art of War, if making your friend think about having passionate sex with you flusters them to a point that they begin to make mistakes, then making kissy faces and jokingly flirting is the optimum strategy, or something like that. 

We played for a few more hours, most of the time  trading barbs all while, except towards the end when Chad became increasingly nervous and eventually stopped saying more than one or two words at a time.

"You alright, dude?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he tried to dismiss my concern, but I had known him long enough to know when something was bothering him. 

"We can stop early if you're feeling sick. Your health is more important than this." Realizing that might come over as too caring for a guy I corrected my course. "'Cause y'know it's not sportsmanlike to dunk on a sick person."

Protecting and projecting my masculinity was, like all guys, a high priority for me. Even if it felt really forced to me it was important for me to stay cool and aloof at all times so my manliness wasn't questioned.

"Nah, let's finish this," he insisted.

"Hope you're not just continuing just for pride's sake. We can always pick this up later," I offered.

"You chickening out?" He raised a shapely eyebrow in challenge.

"No, I just wanted to… ugh, nevermind let's continue," I grumbled.

Despite his assurance I could tell something must’ve been affecting his skill, but it ended up being a close set anyway with me barely pulling ahead in wins by the end of the night after my initial losing streak.

I had won with a comeback for the ages, delaying my first expansion of my base for about a minute to boost my early game defense ended up being my saving grace, but all good things must come to an end and by two in the morning it was far past time to wrap up. 

While we were booting down our computers for the night Chad asked me something and took me completely off guard.

"Hey, umm… so look, if I… do you think, uhh, I've been thinking…," he took a deep breath and restarted after collecting his thoughts. "If I was a girl would you consider dating me?"

"Huh…?" I gawked confusedly.

He just stared intently and waited for me to answer. My brain was thrown for a loop and I was rendered speechless for a long awkward moment. 

"Haha, funny dude, but you know we've stopped playing right?" I laughed nervously after my mind rebooted. 

"Yeah, but just, like, hypothetically, if I were a girl, would you be interested in me?" he shifted anxiously in his seat.

"Uhh… I… but you're…," I floundered like a CGI abomination remake of a fish from a classic animated movie. 

I became increasingly unsure that this was some kind of setup to a joke at my expense or if the serious look in his eyes was genuine. 

Alien feelings bubbled up in my chest that if I hadn't been caught so off-guard by the question would have freaked me out, but the fact Chad had just asked something so wild out of the blue distracted me from such stray thoughts.

"Stupid question, nevermind," he sighed as he got up to leave the living room.

I tried to tell him to come back and explain what he meant, but his dejection from my reaction startled me enough that I was once again unable to speak. The room suddenly felt incredibly empty as I stood frozen in place and watched him go.

He won't be that upset if it was a joke, right? I wondered to myself. 

~~~

We went about the next week as normal, but I noticed that Chad was a little distant and stayed in his room more than usual. 

I kind of wanted to ask what was going on with him lately, but guys really don't talk about their feelings and I didn't want to weird him out with how much I cared about his well-being. 

By the following Wednesday everything seemed to be back to normal and Chad was back to his usual jovial self, or at least a convincing facsimile of it.

However, for some reason I couldn't begin to comprehend, his question still hadn't left my mind nearly a week later. As much as I hate to admit it, I wasn't sure my answer would have been no.

From a purely hypothetical perspective, if he was a girl we'd be a great match. We had always got along famously, so much so that there had been rumors that we were together all throughout grade school. That was completely untrue for the record.

It didn't help our case that neither of us have ever been good with talking to girls and neither of us had a girlfriend before college. 

Looking back I realized that, as far as I knew, neither of us had ever outright denied the rumors, mostly just ignoring it or telling people to go fuck themselves in response. The fact made me feel weird in a way I couldn't begin to articulate.

I considered the possibility that my friend might actually be gay for me, but dismissed it out of hand. After all no gay person would joke about flirting with their best friend and roommate. They'd be too nervous to talk to them like that, obviously. 

But, hypothetically speaking, if he had always been a girl then my answer would be fairly simple. He had all the ingredients of my ideal partner, funny, nerdy in a really endearing way, and he's actually kinda cute– I mean, a gamer, he's a gamer.

Unfortunately, neither of us were girls so it really didn't bear thinking about it further since it would never happen. We were just two bros sitting in our gaming chairs five feet apart, cause we weren't gay.

Yet the idea stayed in my head, no matter how much I told myself to stop dwelling on it. It was just such a perfect fit it really was a shame we could never be together.

If only one of us could inexplicably wake up as a girl like in my stories. Oh well, that's life, unfair till the end.