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[hyperactive]

[ maybe if stiles were a little more awake, or at the very least, a little less frantically questioning what the fuck he's doing as he climbs over a glass counter like its his own personal set of monkey bars, he'd notice the glimmer beneath his feet. he'd notice the power behind every hushed, frantic whisper from billy, he'd notice the sudden stability in his foothold. as it is, stiles just gracelessly snags the t-rex from his perch and drops back down, waving off billy's attempts to help him, just because he would feel like even more of a weird, awkward burden if he took it. he doesn't know that billy helped him already.

but they're done, and it's over, and the t-rex is propped up next to a carefully righted frogger as stiles has his feet planted on the ground again, none the wiser of anything that just happened. he fidgets with his hands and keeps his head down as he asks the question, and when billy gives him an answer, stiles just nods, still half distracted by what he just did and mildly flushed. getting stuck in a feedback of doing socially awkward things because you feel socially awkward is never fun.

he looks up before billy's done talking, catching a glimpse of the way billy looks at him and filing away whatever it is he thinks he's learned into the back of his mind. billy's giving him an out, now, telling him that they should just go and win their tickets, and stiles nods, willing to do just that, but his mouth just kind of talks before his brain can tell it not to. ]

Okay. Cool. Awesome. Man, I don't think I've ever been that smooth. Or that subtle? The daring feat of athleticism, the probing personal question. Really pulled this whole interaction off as successfully as possible. I really, uh...

[ ... kicked ass on that one. made himself proud. something. stiles just kind of - trails off, mildly nauseated. he doesn't seem at all bothered by billy's answer - on the contrary, under all the self-conscious second guessing he actually looks relieved. he's either put at ease by whatever he's reading into that pointed look and billy's use of the word "really", or he's just glad he managed to stumble through that without putting his foot in his mouth any more than he did. either way... wow, okay. they should just talk about something else.

stiles squeezes the t-rex and finds himself distracted and mildly amused by the chew-toy-esque squeak it makes, but he just sets the big guy back on the counter with an awkward pat on the snout. nose. overbite. whatever. after scratching the back of his own neck and slipping his hood on just to have something to do with his hands, stiles points a thumb back to the machines waiting for them, all those eager bleeps and bloops just ready to bleep and bloop even harder under the practiced hands of a couple of nerds. ]

Uh, so - games? I'll just - I guess I'm just going to... leave... that guy... on the counter?

[ the t-rex. he really doesn't know what to do with it now. cool. stiles does a couple of mouth clicks and fires off some patented finger guns and moonwalks away, with a slightly too loud jesus christ, stiles whispered audibly under his breath. he makes a beeline for the multiplayer games, this time, because even though he's had a lot of fun fighting billy for dominance by challenging his high scores with his own, they should really just play a game together, for once. that's, like, kind of the whole point of being at an arcade with a friend.

he passes by the air hockey table, largely because he's suspicious enough of this place to know that reaching his hand into the puck dispensary would probably get it bitten off by monsters. mortal kombat he looks at, too, and heads on past - he's really not interested in seeing subzero turn into, like, his dad, or something, mid-fatality. he hasn't actually dealt with any haunted creepypasta ghost games over the time he's spent here, but he can picture how spooky various games would be if they were haunted, and it's really just a little too much for him.

stiles ends up at off road, a game with one screen and three steering wheels attached, for some reason, because some idiot out there thought that was decent engineering design. he nods billy over and starts rummaging around in his front pocket for a quarter, slipping it in the slot when he gets it. stiles lines himself up behind the blue wheel, just because - well, blue is pretty. ]

This okay? Wait, shit, I should've asked that before I put my money in.

[billiam]

[ stiles' awkwardness is palpable, but fortunately for him, billy has a lot of experience with feeling awkward or embarrassed in front of people, and he knows how he wishes people would act in situations where he doesn't know how to transition back into something less uncomfortable. he brings just enough attention to it so it doesn't seem like he's uncomfortable or trying to ignore whatever just happened out of secondhand embarrassment (because he's not embarrassed, really, just relieved stiles didn't drop through a glass countertop), but not enough to make things worse. or so he hopes. ]

I'm impressed. Truly.

[ and he laughs quietly, mostly under his breath, just to show that he's unbothered by whatever stiles is getting flustered over.

billy's not expecting the t-rex to come equipped with a little squeaking mechanism, but as soon as stiles gives him a little squeeze and he lets out a sad little squawk of a sound for a dinosaur, billy looks... immensely pleased. frogger's boyfriend just got so much better. and also so much stupider, but as he looks at the little bowling ball of a toy, he just... laughs at it. god, he loves it already.

as stiles moonwalks away, billy gives the little dinosaur an affectionate pat on the head, reassuring it that he and stiles will come back for him, and then he grabs frogger up so he isn't accidentally given away to someone else as a prize. not that there's anyone else in the entire arcade, but billy doesn't want to risk it. he jogs a couple steps to catch up to stiles, falling in beside him with a stuffed alpaca tucked under one arm and a quiet, unexplained excitement starting to buzz in his veins.

billy eyes the air hockey table as they start to pass and opens his mouth to say something, probably suggest that they play, but he quickly closes his mouth, seeming to share stiles' thoughts about the potential for something gross. billy still hasn't forgotten about the teeth he found in the coin return of two different machines he tried to get his coins back from the first time. it's a no for him - of course, if stiles said he wanted to play, billy would probably just suck it up and play and hope to god or whoever that the machine didn't dispense like - a cutaway of someone's skull, poorly shaped into something resembling a puck, or something equally messed up.

stiles keeps going though, so billy keeps following, content to let stiles lead him wherever, to play whatever. he wanders closer at stiles' nod, already starting to take off his backpack to put frogger away as stiles drops a quarter in (he refuses to put him down on the floor, where it's probably sticky and gritty). billy hooks one of the bag straps over the yellow steering wheel, frogger facing toward stiles, and steps up behind the red wheel. ]

No, this is good. I think I've played this maybe... once? Not here. [ back home. it seems vaguely familiar, anyway. billy taps one of two buttons on either side of the wheel, progressing to a screen that prompts him to add a name, and enters 'BTK'. he enters a random date for his birthday, and then waits for the game to start, his hands on the wheel at ten and two, just like everyone says they're supposed to be. when the race starts, billy... floors it. which doesn't make him go any faster than everyone else, but he's here to win, not to play.

he's here to lose, apparently, because the first turn absolutely takes him out. his little red car takes a nosedive straight into a wall, bounces back, stalls for a second before he can get it turned around, and by then, three cars including stiles' have pulled ahead of his. how embarrassing.

billy tries to distract from this by asking something he meant to ask the last time he hung out at stiles' place. ] Uh, hey, so...

[ he trails off for a second, distracted and digging his teeth into his lower lip as the yellow car, played by a computer, wipes out. billy tries to pull ahead, and only continues once he's overtaken the computer. ]

Sorry. What was the, uh. The grizzly bear thing about? You have a dog I completely missed or something?

[hyperactive]

[ between the dizzy spells, the hard hitting impact of losing his second or third winds and the laundry list of symptoms always ready and waiting to rear their ugly heads in the back of his mind, stiles is often brought out of his good, easy moods when a reminder of his condition takes him by surprise. that happens here and now, too, once they're staring down a screen prompting them to enter their names - stiles can read it all just fine, none of the letters are falling out of sight or blurring into each other in incomprehensible shapes, but when he stares at the first row of letters and feels a panicked jolt in his chest as he runs his eyes over them to make sure they're right, it's...

well, it's kind of depressing, and that display back at the prize wall doesn't really mean all that much anymore. stiles darts his tongue between his lips and curls his fingers around ten and two, watching billy input his name before following suit. he's tempted to just write AAA and be done with it, but clearing his throat, he goes for the far more engaging ASS instead. any connection that might have to the first high score billy set here is completely coincidental.

the game gets started and stiles handles himself pretty well, avoiding the pitfalls billy drives headfirst into whenever the poor kid ends up smashing his car into the wall. he's played this game before, so the reflexive muscle memory comes in handy when he's battling the incomprehensibly slippery steering controls all racing games from the 80s seem to have, but even if he was new, roscoe's seen better days. knowing how to drive an old car despite all of its imperfections is just part of being a man. ]

Oh - uh.

[ billy distracts him once he strips that first lap, asking about a grizzly bear that stiles only has vague recollections of mentioning. stiles is gaining enough traction on the competition that he'll probably be on billy's ass in a matter of minutes, and if he feels guilty enough to slow down and take it easy on the poor guy, well. hopefully that won't be obvious. ]

So there's this guy I know from home - Derek. He showed up here around the same time I did, I think? He's been crashing on my couch for the past, uh...

[ stiles slows down a little too much, and the yellow AI-controlled car starts shadowing him a touch too closely for stiles' liking. stiles frowns, mumbling a distracted oh no you don't as he steps down on the pedal beneath the machine, followed by another mumbled come on, baby as he picks up speed. ]

I don't really know how long? He just kind of showed up one day. But, uh, yeah... he's kind of a hardass. Big, beefy. All body hair and teeth. I've told him to be nice to my guests, but. You never know how it's gonna go with that guy.

[ stiles wets his lips, chancing a few seconds away from the screen to look at billy, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. he's just teasing, it's obvious in his tone of voice, but - ]

Did you... maybe think that I had a real grizzly bear in my living room?

[billiam]

[ ASS might just be coincidence, but billy still squints a little and cuts a sideways glance toward stiles anyway, his mouth pinching a little near the corners. when they first met, stiles had the decency not to point out his grave spelling error and spare him his dignity, but this obviously has to be a callback to his ten seconds of panicked embarrassment. billy isn't particularly bothered, though. if anything, he finds it kind of funny in a self-deprecating way and huffs a quiet breath out of his nose.

the game is a mess, though - or rather, billy is garbage at it, which is hugely disappointing and definitely embarrassing for someone who prides themselves on being good at video games, among other things. to go from a high score to crashing into walls and falling an entire lap behind because he can't quite get a grasp on the lag in the controls is just... a bad look. terrible for his reputation. he leans on the pedal under the machine a little harder, as if he can somehow push it past its limits, and splits his attention between trying to navigate around potholes and listening to stiles, lips pressed together into a thin line as he stares at his little pixelated car zooming around the track.

he doesn't know why he's a little surprised to learn that stiles has a friend from home here, but he is. his eyebrows lift slightly, and he almost looks away from the screen to pay closer attention to stiles, but he can't afford to fall anymore behind than he already is, so he just tilts his head toward him a bit instead to indicate that he's listening. intrigued.

billy's got someone from home here, too. plenty of someone's, actually, though he's more familiar with loki than all the rest. that being said, loki isn't exactly his favorite person, considering all the lying and manipulating he did, the things he told teddy, the things he didn't tell any of them. they're certainly not close enough for loki to just crash on his couch whenever he pleases.

it sounds like stiles is at least pretty decent friends with this derek guy, if he's able to just come and go as he pleases. billy's glad for him, happy that he's not entirely alone in this messed up town, even if derek does sound like he has the potential to be a little bit of a jerk. what does billy know, though? not derek, so maybe he's wrong.

billy hasn't touched any of the buttons near his wheel since he stepped up to the game, but he presses one now while stiles is mildly distracted, unsure what to expect. it says 'nitro' right above the button, but seeing his little car launch forward leaving a little pixelized dust cloud behind is enough to kind of amp him up. his eyes light up and he murmurs a confident come on, come on, you're so close under his breath. only half a lap behind stiles now, but only by pure luck.

it's maybe a stupid move to look away from the screen when he's only just managing to make up the distance he fell behind, but billy lifts his hands off the wheel like he's part of a stick up shoulders rising up in a shrug as he looks at stiles. ]

Look, I— [ he immediately realizes what he's going and clamps his hands back around the wheel, whipping his head back around to the screen. the yellow car has overtaken him again. he considers using nitro again, but somehow that feels like cheating. ] I don't know! Craaap.

[ he laughs at his own stupidity though, both at having let go of the controls, and also for even entertaining the fact that stiles could have had a wild bear for a pet. kitty pride's got a dragon, so. ]

... Maybe? Or maybe just a big dog, like a chow chow? Or... one of those rugs. With the head still on it. I have no idea! 'Yeah, sure, come over, but just watch out for the bear downstairs'. Like I was supposed to know you were talking about your - big, beefy friend.