Team Phison: Team Phison, #1

By Chace Verity

For 55-year-old Phil Hutton, finding a new boyfriend is tough, especially since he's still hurting from his ex leaving him for a younger man. Online dating has been a soul-crushing experience for the restaurant owner. Too many meat-haters interested in microbreweries or something called geocaching. His matches in the multiplayer for his favorite video game have been equally sucky too.

One night, he encounters a newbie who is so helpless, Phil can't help showing him the ropes. It doesn't take long for Phil to become interested in his enthusiastic teammate. 28-year-old Tyson Falls from Georgia loves working as a server in a rinky pizza joint and sees the best in everything. As Phil's online dating matches get worse and his in-game matches with Tyson get better, he finds himself wanting to pursue the easygoing chatterbox with a thick, sexy drawl.

But Phil can't get past the fear that Tyson could possibly want a fossil like him. If his brain doesn't stop being so damn insecure, it might be game over for his heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chace Verity
• Release date: Apr 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215455210

Book preview

Team Phison

Chace Verity

Copyright 2017 Chace Verity

Cover art designed by Shelbie Copas

Contents

Author's Note

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Epilogue

Sunday Funday

About Chace Verity

Also By Chace Verity

Author's Note

Dearest readers,

Thank you for taking a chance on my May-December m/m romance novella. This book was written with a pure need to create something funny, fluffy, and queer. Phil and Tyson have become dear to me. I hope they will become dear to you.

For more information about the book, including content notes, please visit the book's page at chaceverity.com.

Best,

Chace this is my first time, omg Verity

One

If I lose one more match with these self-centered assholes tonight, I’m going to throw my TV out the window. It’ll fall far. Crash prettily on the road, glass glittering under the street lamps. And I’ll sip my sweet, smoky Laphroaig and flip off the whole fucking world.

Ugh. Get it together, Phil. These punks aren’t worth it. When they were in fourth grade, you were knee-deep in a mid-life crisis.

With Curtis.

I shudder when his name crosses my mind. Three years have passed since I’ve seen the toupee-wearing shitstain. It might be as silver as the moon, but at least I’ve got hair.

Protect Earth At All Costs is my current obsession not related to whisky or meat. I am damn good at this game. But not good enough to carry a shitty team through a technology recovery mission.

Once the game flashes red over my twenty-fourth century android avatar, I tell my team where they can stick it and go back to the main menu to switch mission types.

Defend The Flag Holder is pretty easy for me to win, even with a garbage team, as long as I’m not the flag holder. Flag holders can’t use weapons or run, just walk at the world’s slowest pace.

Of course, the match starts, and I’m the flag holder. My randomly-assigned team scatters once the aliens invade.

Why do I play this ulcer-inducing game?

Two of my teammates take off for the base where I’m supposed to bring the flag. It makes sense for one person to go ahead and clear the path of any hard enemies, but the other two should escort the flag holder from the swarm of low-ranking minions. One person can be sufficient for escorting if they’re an expert player.

The person who stayed behind is shooting his laser rifle at a goddamn turret. Our turret.

I stick close to BisonFalls anyway. Maybe the guy is lagging. Poor connections are common at the start of a match when everything is loading.

But a minute passes, and BisonFalls’s aim has turned to the UFO in the sky—the titanium and stardust monstrosity that flies around for decoration only.

Goddammit.

I crouch in the corner of the alley next to BisonFalls in the game and take a sip of my drink in real life. The warm amber cools my rage enough that it’s safe to flick my headset on.

Bison, I admire how you keep firing the Xebulas from a distance.

Huh? Oh? Am I firing at the right thing?

His thick, languid Southern accent gives his hoarse voice some flavor. Firing sounds more like far-in.

Good, a redneck. I’m sure this is going to be grand.

No, you need to shoot the purple blobs coming straight for us. A rifle is useless now. Switch to your shotgun.

How do I do that?

A newbie. Great.

Hold the left directional button down, and a wheel will pop up, I say. Might as well teach what I can in the ten seconds I have left before I’m mobbed. You switch with the left analog stick.

Hey, that worked! Thanks! I just shoot everything I see now?

You need to protect me. This is ‘Defend The Flag Holder.’

All right, I’ll shoot everything.

God help me.

Keep zapping those baddies and follow me, I say.

Oh, okay. I can do that.

Can sounds more like kin.

What has my life come to? Wasting away Sunday nights on a video game, desperate for one lousy win. I ought to quit now and do something more productive like lick every spoon in my kitchen, but I’m so close to unlocking the ammo upgrade for my assault rifle.

I take a lot of damage, but BisonFalls figures out what he’s doing and blasts away the swarm before the flag disintegrates.

What the hell are the other two nimrods doing? Jerking each other off? Their avatars glow ostentatiously with full health in the corner of the screen. They’re still in the game and quite alive.

Hey, that alien dropped a health pack. If you pick it up, you’ll heal the whole team, including me, I tell BisonFalls.

He trots over to the floating medicine pack, and the flag stops burning. It’s still seconds away from shredding to pieces, I’m sure.

Another wave of minions slithers toward us from a crisply-rendered hill. We’re not even a quarter of the way to our base.

You can’t pick those up? he asks.

No, flag holders can only walk. They can’t do anything else. That’s why you have to protect me.

Oh, so I’m like a knight?

A futuristic one, sure.

That’s pretty cool.

Is this your first time playing? I ask.

Yeah, I just got the game today.

You didn’t do the tutorial?

It was boring, so I quit. He shoots several of the minions while talking. Hey, how do I reload my ammo?

This kid. At least he’s nice.

Down directional arrow when you’re on zero. Play lots and you’ll be able to earn upgrades so your weapons will reload automatically.

That’s awesome. You been playing long?

Since the day the game was released six months ago? Possibly. But I’m not buzzed enough to make that sort of confession.

Long enough.

I wanted to pick this up back in February for my birthday, but then my car broke down. So I had to fix that. And it took a long time to save up since I needed to buy the console too.

Stop talking and shoot, Bison.

But it’s too late. The flag’s taken too much damage, and the match is over.

Dang. Was that my fault? I’m sorry.

Don’t apologize. I wipe my sweaty palm on my leg. You’re new. The other two asswads in our party should have been helping.

We had other party members?

Yeah. This isn’t your first FPS, is it?

FPS?

First-person shooter?

Oh. It’s not. I play a lot of these.

One of the other players drops from the team, and we have to wait in the lobby for someone else to join. I really should quit and go to bed. Or count the tiles in my bathroom floor. Something more satisfying than this.

Hey, thanks for helping me out, Bison says. Do you think you can show me how to play the other games? You’re better to listen to than the tutorial.

Swell compliment. What the hell? This kid is decent. Amiable. Better than the no-mics and the foul-mouthed misanthropes and the mystifying teenagers.

I invite BisonFalls to a party, and we start a bronze survival mission.

Teaching him the ropes isn’t too bad. It’s almost enjoyable, sipping whisky and training a greenhorn in the not-so-complex world of alien invasions on a planet where all the humans have been engineered into androids.

The game’s fun to play. I never said it had a Pulitzer-worthy story.

BisonFalls and I play a few rounds of each kind of match before tackling Defend The Flag Holder again. I’ve finally gotten my ammo upgrade too.

The game starts, and I’m so relieved neither of us are the flag holder.

But halfway through the map, the flag holder quits and the game ends. Goddammit. I express my feelings over the mic in the form of four letter words.

Aw, that ain’t right, BisonFalls groans.

Yeah, it sucks. I rub my eyes and check the time on my phone. 10:00 PM. Shit. Look, Bison, I need to call it a night.

Cool. It was real good playing with you, GlacialSilt. Am I saying that right? We should play again.

Uh-huh.

Doubt I’ll see him after tonight. This isn’t a game where I’m aiming to make friends. I’d go outside if I wanted friends.

I shut the console down and flick the TV off with the remote app on my phone. The darkness of the room is my only companion while I sit and remember the times I went out every night. Always with my friends.

Curtis and I had met in a bar on such a night.

We spent nearly two decades together before he decided I was too old for him. We had eight measly years between us. I couldn’t keep up with the late nights, the constant black-out drinking, the month-to-month leases on shitty apartments.

He got a new, younger boyfriend so fast. So fast.

The pangs of loneliness drive me to check the other sort of matches I’ve been into lately. Online dating has been a needlessly frustrating experience over the past year, but a glimmer of hope tugs at my heartstrings every time I open the app.

Maybe, just maybe, one of these faces will be the one.

I swipe through the six new potential loves-of-my-life and hate them all equally. It’s not a surprise the selection of men seeking men over fifty in Massachusetts is colorful, but none of these hues complement me. A quick glimpse of their profiles reveal boring, pretentious hobbies like microbreweries or impossible standards for