After Midnight

1.

It's well after midnight, and the light of pre-morning is cutting through the shadows. It stripes through Tyler's too-thin curtains and wakes him mid-snore, the keyboard sticking to his cheek as he blinks bleary eyes and sits up, trying to focus.

The video is still rendering on his screen, it's only forty percent and he can just vaguely remember it starting at around one am.

He reaches for the mouse, everyone logged off of Skype hours ago, but he's not ready for bed, not yet, not even now sore and only half-awake. But there's a minimized tab at the corner of his screen and he clicks on it.

And it's from Luke's web cam.

There's no one in front of it, Luke wasn't stupid enough to fall asleep in front of his computer. And Tyler is mid-motion of closing the tab when the cursor stops, there's someone in Luke's kitchen, and it isn't Luke.

A lanky man, with dark hair - that's the closest feature he can make out with the kitchen lights off. It's dark in North Carolina too, and Wildcat squints into the glaring light of his computer, the white background other pages makes seeing all that much worse.

There's tattoos, spiraling up the man's back and hip and sides, no shirt but wearing loose pants. A soft light from outside, street lamps probably, illuminates the counter just before the fridge.

The man walks slightly hunched over, holding a hand to his head and mumbling something that Tyler can't hear. He pulls out the milk and drinks it straight from the carton.

It's still too dark to see in Luke's house, and too bright in Tyler's.

But he sees the man stop drinking, lower the milk and sway a little. He opens the cupboard above the counter, he pulls down a glass out of it, and puts the carton in.

He leaves the cupboard door open as he turns, with his empty glass, still rubbing his head, the light from the open fridge highlighting him as he walks out of the room.

Tyler can just make out the edges of what must be a couch in the next room, shifting back and forth in the next few seconds that it would take for someone to amble over to and fall into.

It's still dark in North Carolina, and it's dark in Indiana.

But Tyler is still squinting at his computer, his nose pressed to the screen, waiting.

--

And it's two days later when they're all in chat again, almost two in the morning, having played for hours.

"I'm fucking tired," Luke whines when Wildcat starts another round of Prophunt, Brock and Vanoss agreeing. Nogla kicks his desk and whines.

But Tyler doesn't say anything. And they play one more time. Once more before morning.

And this time he's awake when Luke forgets to turn off his webcam, the computer monitor falling into power-saver mode and shutting off, the tiny red recording light of the webcam blocked by a cup of coffee on a cluttered desk.