Miguel's eyes widened, his carefully constructed defiance crumbling into startled amusement. "Did you just say 'fuck'?"
Finn held back a laugh at how Miguel whispered ‘fuck’ almost two octaves lower than his normal volume.
"I did," Finn confirmed. "I'm not your teacher or your parent. And it is Friday night."
A grin slowly spread across Miguel's face, transforming him from moody teen to the child in those photographs. "Cool," he said, then hesitated. "So... what do we do instead?"
Finn glanced around, his eyes landing on the entertainment center where a gaming console sat. "You have an Xbox?"
Miguel nodded, animated. "Yeah, you play?"
"Sometimes," Finn admitted, following as Miguel led him to the living room and began pulling out game cases.
"I've got Fortnite, Minecraft, some racing games..." Miguel rummaged through the stack before pulling out a case triumphantly. "And I just got this one."
Finn examined the game. Zombie Apocalypse 3.
"There's endless waves of zombies that try to kill you," Miguel explained, eyes gleaming with the excitement only inappropriate entertainment could inspire in a twelve-year-old. “My mom doesn’t know about it. Let’s keep it that way.”
Finn looked from the game to Miguel's hopeful face, thinking of the thirty dollars on the counter and the empty evening stretching before them. "I got four words for you," he said. "Pizza, zombies, Mountain Dew."
Miguel's grin was answer enough.
"What kind of pizza do you want?" Finn asked, picking up his phone.
"Supreme," Miguel said quickly.
Finn remembered Elena's words -when he's trying to act cool, he orders supreme.Miguel was trying to impress him. There was something enormously satisfying about that.
"Supreme, got it. Mind if I order half cheese? I’m boring and like it simple."
Miguel offered a simple nod, deftly concealing his inner excitement.
Finn spoke into the phone. “One large pizza, half supreme, half cheese. And a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.” Finn hung up. "Forty-five minutes until the food arrives. Show me how this zombie game works."
Miguel scrambled for the controllers, tossing one to Finn. "It's co-op, so we're on the same team. The zombies come in waves, and they get harder each round. You collect gold to upgrade your weapons."
Finn studied the controller. It had been years since he'd played, but the button layout hadn’t changed much. The game loaded, dropping them onto a post-apocalyptic battleground. Miguel's character began running in circles, providing instructions to Finn. Finn fired his pistol into a zombie, killing it.That felt pretty good.They got through the first five rounds pretty easily, but then it started getting noticeably harder.
"So what's our strat this round?" Finn asked, his character already moving toward a supply cache.
Miguel took a calculated risk: he took his eyesoff the screen for approximately one second to face Finn in ‘real life’. "Did you just say 'strat'?"
"Strategy," Finn clarified, eyes on the screen as he collected ammunition. "We should decide how we want to take on the next wave."
"How do you know gamer vocab, dude?" Miguel asked, watching as Finn's character mowed down a pack of zombies.
Finn shrugged. "I wasn't born a lab assistant, you know. I went through a gaming phase in college." The next wave of zombies appeared on screen. Finn was lighting it up. Headshot after headshot after headshot.
"Holy shit," Miguel breathed. "You're actually good."
Finn reveled in the praise, grinning. "Yes, Iamgood at this."
Miguel turned toward him again. “Jeez dude. Don’t get weirdly happy.”
They quickly developed chemistry as a zombie-killing duo. As the zombie horde grew, they established a position in a slim hallway. The zombies could only come from two directions.
"Behind you!" Miguel yelled as Finn's character reloaded. "Use the shotgun!"
