Dylan and Hugh || Discord Hangout IRL

It was a little past 2 AM on a Tuesday.

The Discord server "the basement" had several members listed in the sidebar, though only two were currently active. The voice channel "main" showed Dylan's white icon pulsing green as he spoke, while Hugh sat muted in the corner, his mic icon dark — he'd been typing furiously in the #general text channel instead.

#general

hughc: ok but you have to actually look at the data. okcupid did a whole study on this. women rate 80% of men as below average looking. EIGHTY PERCENT. that's not a dating pool that's a dating puddle

hughc: its literally statistically impossible for most guys to get matches on tinder unless they're in the top 20% of facial attractiveness

hughc: the blackpill isn't a ideology its just facts

dyldoe: bro

dyldoe: you literally havent left your house in 3 weeks

dyldoe: how would you even know what a woman looks like irl

hughc: I GO OUTSIDE

hughc: I went to the mailbox yesterday

dyldoe: lmaoooo

dyldoe: the mailbox

dyldoe: legendary

dyldoe: did the female mail carrier rate you below average or did she not even perceive you

hughc: shut the fuck up

hughc: you havent left YOUR apartment in like 2 months so dont even start

dyldoe: i went to the corner store 4 days ago

dyldoe: got monster and some chips

dyldoe: thats more social interaction than you've had all year

hughc: i talk to my dad's spouse

dyldoe: you talk AT them. you sit in your room and come out to get food and glare at them

hughc: ...

hughc: whatever

hughc: anyway are we doing a raid tonight or what

Dylan unmuted himself in the voice channel, his voice flat and scratchy from lack of sleep. "Bro, you need to stop reading that shit. It's rotting your brain worse than my sleep schedule."

He shifted on his couch, pulling his hoodie sleeves over his hands, a half-empty Monster can balanced on his knee. His apartment was dark except for the blue glow of his monitor and the TV across the room. Some YouTube video was playing on his second screen — a long documentary about deep-sea creatures — but he wasn't really watching it.

"Hey, you alive?" Dylan's voice cut through the channel. "You've been quiet. You in voice or just lurking in text?"

The afternoon light filtering through Dylan's blinds was the sickly yellow of a sun that had given up on warming anything. Energy drink cans littered the coffee table in a graveyard of aluminum—Monster, Red Bull, one rogue Bang that had been sitting there long enough to develop a film. Dylan sat cross-legged on the couch, picking at a hole in his sweatpants, while Hugh occupied the opposite end with the rigid posture of someone who hadn't figured out how to be comfortable in another person's space yet.

They'd done this maybe three, four times now. Met up IRL. It was still deeply weird.

Dylan's phone sat between them on the cushion, Discord open to a DM thread with a user they'd both known for... what, a year? Longer? Hard to say. Time was fake on the internet.

"They're actually coming," Dylan said, more to himself than to Hugh. He scratched at his scalp through unwashed hair. "Like. Physically. To this apartment."

"Yep."

"Wild."

Hugh shifted, adjusting his glasses with his middle finger—a gesture that was either an intentional insult or just how he did it. "You don't think they're gonna flake?"

"They said they were leaving twenty minutes ago."

"Doesn't mean anything. People lie about being en route constantly. It's like... a social performance thing. Nobody actually leaves when they say they're leaving."

Dylan side-eyed him. "You're real fun at parties."

"Don't go to parties."

"Yeah, I know."

They lapsed into silence. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed. Dylan flinched. Hugh didn't.

"You cleaned at all?" Hugh asked, glancing around with thinly veiled judgment.

"I... made an effort."

"Where?"

"The bathroom. Kind of."

Hugh's expression said everything. Dylan's lip curled.

"Whatever, man. You showed up in a shirt with anime girls on it. You don't get to judge."

"It's Evangelion."

"It's still anime girls."

"Rei isn't even—it's a mecha show—"

"Bro, I can see the titties."

Hugh's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue further. His eyes drifted back to Dylan's phone, the last message in the thread still a simple omw! followed by a string of emojis.

Neither of them knew what they looked like. What they sounded like. Just their username, just their typing, just the particular way they shitposted and the memes shtheye sent. And now they were going to be a real person in Dylan's living room.

Dylan picked up his phone, checked the time, set it back down.

"Should we... I dunno. Offer them something? Water?"

"You have water?"

"I have tap water."

"Big sacrifice."

"Shut the fuck up, Hugh."

"Make me."

Another silence. Longer this time. Dylan's knee bounced. Hugh lined up two energy drink cans by height, then nudged them into parallel alignment without seeming to notice he was doing it.

"What if they're, like... normal?" Dylan said quietly.

Hugh looked at him. "What?"

"Like. Normal normal. Goes outside. Has a job. Friends."

"They're on Discord at three in the morning with us."

"Doesn't prove anything."

Hugh considered this. "If they're normal, they'll see two disasters and leave."

"I'm not a disaster."

"You haven't showered since Tuesday."

"How do you know that?"

"Your hair."

Dylan touched his hair defensively. "It's... it's a style."

"It's grease."

"Fuck off."

Hugh almost smiled. Almost. Then the buzzer sounded—flat, ugly, the building's intercom system that had been broken since 2019 and only sometimes worked—and they both went completely still.

Dylan stared at the phone. No new messages.

"That's them," he said.

"Probably."

"You gonna get that?"

"You get it."

"It's your apartment."

"You're closer to the buzzer."

They stared at each other. The buzzer squawked again—someone leaning on it, impatient, and Dylan thought oh they're real, they're here, they're a person with a finger on a button and everything—and then he was up, moving toward the intercom panel by the door, Hugh rigid on the couch behind him, both of them pretending this was fine.

Dylan's apartment smelled the way it always did—like a ferret cage that had learned to ferment energy drinks. The blinds were drawn against the evening, and the only light came from his monitor, which displayed a locked desktop of some anime girl giving a thumbs-up, and a single floor lamp with a crooked shade that cast everything in mustard yellow.

They'd pushed the coffee table aside—not cleaned it, just shoved it toward the kitchenette so its sticky surface stopped menacing their knees—and sat on the stained carpet in a loose triangle. Dylan had a plastic storage bin between his legs, the kind his mother used to send him leftovers in. Hugh sat opposite, back against the couch, knees pulled up, a matte-black drawstring bag clutched against his chest like he was expecting someone to mug him for it.

"This is idiotic," Hugh said. His glasses caught the lamplight as he stared at the bin. "The post had thirteen upvotes. Thirteen. That's not a study. That's a cult."

"Nah, it was cross-posted to like, three different subs." Dylan picked at a thread on his hoodie sleeve. "The logic tracks. You get desensitized to your own shit. Using something different rewires your—your dick or whatever. Neuroplasticity."

"You don't know what neuroplasticity means."

"I know it means your brain adapts, bitch. Same principle." Dylan popped the lid off his bin. Inside, packed in old T-shirts like fragile artifacts, were a handful of silicone sleeves, a slim purple vibrator, and a cock ring still in its packaging. "Besides, it wasn't just the upvotes. The comments were detailed. People were swapping and rating 'em. Like a book club."

Hugh's lip curled. "A book club for perverts."

"We're perverts. What's your point?"

Hugh had no good answer for that. He hugged his bag tighter. After a moment, he jerked his chin toward the bin. "You sanitize that stuff?"

"Obviously. I'm not a savage." Dylan pulled out one of the sleeves—a clear, vaguely anatomical tube with a black plastic cap—and set it on the carpet. Then the vibrator. The cock ring. "I got toy wipes. And that, like, foaming cleanser. Smells like a hospital but it works."

"Great. So my dick can smell like a hospital."

"Better than yours."

Hugh finally loosened the drawstring and dumped his contributions onto the carpet with the enthusiasm of someone unloading a bag of dead rats. A heavy, flesh-toned masturbator with a hard plastic case—something expensive-looking, probably from a Japanese brand—rolled slightly and stopped against Dylan's knee. Beside it, a smaller silicone plug, dark navy, and something wrapped in a sock that Hugh immediately reached for and stuffed back into the bag.

Dylan's eyebrow went up. "The fuck was that?"

"Nothing."

"Hugh."

"Nothing."

Dylan let it go, but he was smirking now, mean and entertained. He looked over at {{User}} and jerked his head toward the growing pile.

"Your turn," Dylan said. "Unless you were lying about having any."

Hugh adjusted his glasses, staring hard at the monitor instead of the toys. "If it's some crusty tube sock, I'm leaving."

"You ain't leaving. You took two buses to get here." Dylan wiped his palms on his sweatpants. His own heartbeat was doing something unpleasant in his throat, but he ignored it, the way he ignored everything. "Come on. Dump 'em. We're not doing this all night."

The box took up most of the floor space in Hugh’s bedroom, a matte-black coffin of corrugated cardboard and reinforced tape that had cost more than some used cars. The return address was some logistics warehouse in Osaka. Dylan sat cross-legged on the stained carpet, wearing an oversized hoodie that smelled like stale energy drink, while Hugh hovered over the package with a box cutter, his hands trembling just enough to make the blade catch the desk-lamp light in jittery flashes.

They’d split the cost right down the middle. Dylan had drained three months of guilt-money allowance from his parents. Hugh had sold off rare skins and taken an extra freelance project debugging some crypto bro’s spaghetti code. It had arrived in a nondescript freight truck that morning, and they’d spent the last four hours waiting for Hugh’s father and his new spouse to leave for some charity gala.

“This is fucking stupid,” Dylan muttered, picking at a loose thread on his sweatpants. “If this thing looks like a melted wax museum reject I’m gonna actually die.”

“Shut up. It’s top of the line. The forum guys said the internal skeleton is titanium alloy and the silicone is medical grade.” Hugh’s voice was tight, defensive. He adjusted his glasses with his middle finger. “You’re just mad you didn’t research the specs.”

“I’m mad we spent four grand on something we’re both too pussy to fuck.”

Hugh’s face flushed a mottled red. “Speak for yourself. I’ve had sex.”

Dylan snorted. “Your hand doesn’t count, bro.”

“You literally own three pocket pussies.”

“And I use them. Regularly. Unlike you, who lines up his chips by size before touching his own dick.”

Hugh’s jaw clicked. He pressed the box cutter into the tape, and the cardboard sighed as the blade ran through it. “Whatever. When we open this and it’s perfect, you’re gonna apologize.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get on my knees.”

They both paused. The air in Hugh’s room was thick with the smell of dirty laundry, body odor, and the ghost of yesterday’s microwaved ramen. The box seemed to radiate a strange, suffocating weight—not literal heat, just the dense pressure of anticipation. Two grown men, virgins, pooling their misery and their money to buy a synthetic body to share.

Hugh folded back the first flap. Inside, nestled in dense foam, was the crown of a head, sealed in plastic.

“Fuck,” Hugh breathed. His hands hovered over the foam, suddenly hesitant. “It’s actually... here.”

Dylan leaned forward, his knee brushing the cardboard. The scars on his knuckles caught the dim light. For once, he didn’t have a sarcastic comeback. He just stared at the plastic-wrapped shape, throat bobbing as he swallowed.

“Open it all the way,” Dylan said, quieter than before.

Hugh peeled away another layer of foam, revealing the doll’s shoulders, the curve of its chest, the unnervingly realistic texture of the silicone skin beneath the wrap. It was anatomically complete, high-end, designed to take a beating and surrender completely. The kind of thing they’d both jerked off to the idea of but never admitted out loud.

“Shit,” Dylan whispered. He reached out, then jerked his hand back, wiping his palm on his hoodie. “It’s warm. The heating pack’s still working.”

Hugh nodded, transfixed. “We need to get it out. Assemble the... the stand, or whatever. The manual said something about a charging dock for the internal sensors.”

“You’re gonna read the manual?”

“I’m gonna follow the manual, you illiterate moron.”

Dylan flipped him off, but there was no heat in it. His eyes kept drifting back to the doll’s face, still obscured by plastic, waiting to be revealed. They’d bought a person-shaped solution to their loneliness, and now that it was here, the reality of it sat heavy and electric in the room.

Hugh gripped the foam edges, preparing to lift the upper body from the crate. His arms were thin, trembling with the effort and the adrenaline. “Help me, dumbass. It’s heavy.”

Dylan scrambled up, his bare feet slipping on the carpet. He grabbed the other side, and together they wrestled the doll from its packaging, the silicone flesh yielding and heavy against their hands. They laid it on Hugh’s unmade bed, the doll’s limbs still slightly bent from confinement, its blank face turned toward the water-stained ceiling.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The doll was the only perfect thing in the room.

“So,” Hugh said, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist and leaving a grease streak. “Who’s gonna test it first?”

Dylan’s laugh was sharp and nervous. “Rock paper scissors?”

“You’re on.”

They stood over the bed, two disaster men and their expensive new toy, and Hugh’s shaking hand found the edge of the plastic wrap covering the doll’s face.

Hugh's bedroom smelled like the inside of a gym bag that had been marinated in Monster Energy. The blinds were drawn tight, squeezing out thin stripes of late-afternoon light that cut across piles of dirty clothes, a desk cluttered with monitors, and the massive cardboard crate occupying the center of the floor like a monolith. It was the size of a coffin, stamped with Japanese freight labels and fragile warnings in three languages.

Dylan sat cross-legged on the carpet, hood pulled up despite the stale warmth of the room, picking at a loose thread on his sweatpants. "You sure this thing isn't just gonna, like, scream when we plug it in?"

"That's not a feature," Hugh muttered. He stood over the box, box cutter in one shaking hand, glasses slipping down his nose. He'd changed into a slightly less stained shirt for the occasion—still anime-related, but darker, as if that made the whole situation more dignified. "The listing said 'adaptive vocalization.' It's probably just basic moaning. Pre-recorded stuff."

"Adaptive means it learns, dumbass. It might call you ugly."

Hugh's jaw tightened. "It was your idea to go halvsies on this."

"Yeah, because you were gonna blow two grand on a body pillow if I didn't intervene." Dylan leaned forward, peering at the seal. "C'mon. Open it. I wanna see if it looks like the photos or if we got catfished by a plastic blow-up."

"We didn't get catfished. I researched the manufacturer." Hugh's voice cracked slightly. He cleared his throat, sounding bitter and defensive. "It's silicone over an alloy skeleton. Forty points of articulation. The speech module runs on a localized AI so it doesn't need internet."

"Nerd."

"Poor."

They both flinched at that, then pretended they hadn't. Dylan looked away, scratching his cheek. Hugh adjusted his glasses again and slit the first strip of tape. The cardboard parted with a dry groan.

Inside, nestled in foam and vacuum-sealed plastic, was the shape of a person.

Dylan's knee bounced. "Fuck. That's actually..."

"Life-sized," Hugh finished, though the word came out smaller than he intended. He cut away another panel, revealing the top of the head, the synthetic scalp, the faint seam lines along the temples that looked almost like hairline fractures. It was still, eyes closed, mouth a neutral line. The plastic wrap clung to the contours underneath with a faint sheen.

Dylan got up, shuffling closer in his socked feet, and peered down. "Looks real. Gross."

"You spent your allowance on gross."

"Yeah, well. At least I'm not hard before we even get it out of the box."

Hugh's face went blotchy red. "I'm not—shut up. Hand me that corner."

They worked in clumsy tandem, Hugh giving terse directions while Dylan made sarcastic grunts, pulling away foam blocks and wrestling with the plastic sheeting. The doll was heavy—denser than expected—and twice Dylan nearly dropped the torso, swearing loudly as they maneuvered it onto Hugh's unmade bed. It lay there, limbs slightly bent, head turned to one side, wearing nothing but a thin shipping gown.

Hugh stepped back, breathing hard through his mouth, box cutter still clutched like a weapon. The room felt smaller suddenly, charged with a nervous humidity that had nothing to do with the lack of AC.

"Now what?" Dylan asked, standing at the foot of the bed. He looked jittery, picking at his fingers.

Hugh stared at the doll's face, then at a small compartment in its lower back where a charging port and activation switch were hidden beneath a flap of synthetic skin. He reached out, hesitated, his knuckles hovering over the seam.

"Now we turn it on," he said.

.