In which the Gamer lives up to his title.

While Tryn slaved away at making the kitchen spotless and Adorabelle slept off the fact she probably had more booze in her body than blood, John and Erica searched for somewhere to chat where they wouldn’t disturb either. They settled in the living room, where the berserker spotted something in the cabinet under the tv.

“Sweet! I haven’t played this in forever.” She pulled out his old Octendo Gamesphere and the retro copy of Ultra Wreck Sisters Fight his mom had bought back when she thought her son might have enough of a social life to have friends that he could play games with. John hadn’t, of course, but he’d enjoyed playing it solo and crushing maximum level AI opponents. Erica brushed the dust off the case and turned back to him, “This thing still work?”

“Probably?” he said, crouching beside her and popping open the case; it was empty. His partner let out a disappointed sigh, but John instinctively checked inside the Gamesphere instead. The disk was where he’d left it years ago. He polished it off, put it back and reached into the cabinet to move around some of the cables. The lights along the outer rim of the console flickered on. “Yeah, there we go. Who do you main? I’m best with Meowrio, but Picklechu is really strong too.”

“Seamus Aman, bounty hunter.”

They warmed up with a few practice rounds, and it was immediately clear that Erica was good. Very, very good. Any time he got close, she’d grapple and slam him into the ground, but staying at range was equally deadly. He got that picture after she sniped him from all the way across the map. Somehow she always managed to get him after he dropped his guard… but she wasn’t invincible. He’d just managed to find an opening in her defense when she pulled out a different tactic: teasing him about having slept with the goblin ‘on the job’.

“C’mon, dude, tell me about it!” she said as her character roundhouse kicked his halfway across the map. She gave him a sultry look, “Short stuff wouldn’t shut up about how great your dick was, what did you do to her? Give me all the juicy details!”

John rolled his eyes, “Nothing! I swear. I let her give me a blowjob and she acted like I’d bought her a pony. She uh… really, really, really likes the taste of cum.” He managed to concentrate long enough to break Erica’s character’s shield and toss her up into the air where he juggled her with his side-B attack. “A lot.”

“Kinky.” Erica laughed, “You know, I don’t mind giving the two of you a little privacy if you want. If you care about that sort of thing.” She shrugged, and what she said next was genuinely surprising, “Honestly, it’s just sex. Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Wait, what?”

On screen, Meowrio took a rocket to the face and had his fluffy cat ears tossed off screen at a hundred miles an hour again. ‘Game!’ the announcer called out, and John tossed his controller gently onto the coffee table. It was honestly unfair how good she was at this.

“My ex-girlfriend,” his partner said, as if that explained anything. When it became clear that John had no idea how to take what she’d said, Erica elaborated, “Her community is pretty open about it, a lot of the more ‘natural’ Abyssal groups are. Besides, it’s part of the job. No, really! Last year I helped Moira break up a sex cult in the basement of a pizza parlor downtown. You should’ve seen the look on the Warden’s face when we stumbled across half their members in the middle of an orgy.”

John snorted, “Now that sounds pretty hilarious… I bet she looked like a deer in the headlights!”

“Nah, dude. She was angrier than a wet cat. Moira and sex don’t go together. Oil. Water. You know the thing,” despite her words, Erica was grinning like a cheshire cat. “It’s just a shame we never caught their leader. They covered their tracks well, but it’s obvious they were probably a succubus or incubus or something. Whenever there are a bunch of sex-drunk idiots partying their asses off, it’s probably their doing. Harmless too… until someone ends up literally drained dry.” Her expression hardened, and the humor went out of her voice, “The violent monsters are the straightforward ones, dude. You know where you are with an ogre or a drake. It’s the smart ones that are the worst. The kind that uses sex as a weapon, for example.”

She nodded towards the kitchen, where Tryn was humming a little tune while polishing the floor, “She’s safe, or safe enough, but not everything that offers it readily is innocent. There are creatures that can use sex as an opportunity to rip out your soul or bind you into a lifelong debt with the promise of more. Others have a twisted view of what’s ‘fun’…”

I think I’d rather not find out what she means by ‘fun’.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” John said.

“Good,” Erica nodded. “Anyways, sorry to get all grim and serious on you. Point is, it’s no big deal if you want to take a load off.” She jerked off the air with one hand, grinning. “Don’t mind me, I don’t mind. I’m not the Warden or her dad.”

“Thanks, I’ll uh… I’ll think about it.” An awkward mood hung in the air while John tried to think of a better way to respond to Erica’s offer. It stretched out a bit too long and the berserker’s cheery attitude fell slightly.

“Sorry, man. I thought that might put you at ease, guess not. Damn, that makes things a lot more awkward… so much for hoping you’d be chill about it. Look, there’s something you deserve to know.”

What’s she talking about?

John gave Erica a confused look and his partner withered under it, shying away from his gaze. He could see raw guilt all over her face and had no idea why she’d feel it. What had happened?
He took a shot in the dark, jokingly asking, “What, did you sleep with Tryn or something?”

It was all too obvious that was exactly what’d happened. John’s eyes widened, but not with horror or anger, but genuine surprise. It was so absurd that it was funny. “You… did! That’s…” he snorted, “that’s hilarious, and you were giving me a hard time about it!”

“Hey! It wasn’t my fault!” his partner protested.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. So, what? I don’t own her or anything.”

Erica gave him a look, but her tension had loosened somewhat, “You should tell her that, dude. She might have other ideas. You’re really cool with it?”

I think so. Should I be? I mean, it’s not like Tryn’s my girlfriend, so it’s not cheating or anything, and Erica’s cool. If it were Frank or… nope, don’t want to think about that anymore. Anyway… sure, it’s a little weird and all but… it’s Tryn. She’s basically a sexual wrecking ball. Also literally a prostitute. Yep. Gonna stop thinking about this.

“Yeah, of course. Why?”

“Well, maybe ‘cause it happened in the middle of our rescue attempt,” she said flatly, and her mood sank even further. John’s laughter slowed and then stopped. The room’s temperature seemed to drop a degree.

Oh.

John mentally held up the ball of feelings inside of his body and tried to chisel away at it to untangle the twist of emotions that her admission brought up. There was a bit of displeasure at her prioritization, a bit of betrayal from the part of him that balanced the value of his life against sex with Tryn… but beyond that was the emotional equivalent of a shrug. Erica felt guilt for not doing everything she could to help him, but John had lived through his situation.

Realistically, unless she had a set of water breathing or curse breaking skills that he knew nothing about, getting into the barrier with him would’ve only made things worse, and he’d survived. There was an argument to be made that if she’d reached Mrs. Wentworth faster… but then would Tricia have been around to keep him from bleeding out? Things had lined up in such a way that he’d gotten absurdly lucky. Even one minor change in what’d happened might lead to a possibly fatal outcome.

He looked at his partner, who had withdrawn into herself somewhat. The tall, confident berserker was gone and in her place was an emotionally compromised girl who actually looked the age she was. It was strikingly, almost painfully different.

She really cares.

John gave her an encouraging smile.

“It’s fine. Really. But… you realize you’re the one with the ‘juicy details’ now, right?”

“Heh,” she cracked a cautious grin, “I guess I am.”

“Don’t worry about it, really. Most people would kill to get laid at work, right?”

“Probably.” They shared an honest laugh and his partner leaned back in the reclining chair, stretching out her legs. John admired them politely. “Thanks, dude,” she said. “That’s honestly a load off my back.”

“Anytime.”

She offered a fist and John tapped her knuckles with his, bringing the awkward conversation to a close. Then, he felt a sly smile spread over his face.

“But…”

“What?” Erica was momentarily panicked, but when she saw the look on his face, her expression shifted to a much less serious one.

“Details. I want them.”

His partner sighed, but it was a happy sigh. Then, she rolled her eyes and said, “Boys. This is why I’m a lesbian.”

Contrary to her complaining, Erica was more than willing to tell John all the little details of how Tryn had eaten her out, managing to thoroughly thrash him in the game the whole time. He suspected she was doing it mostly to fuck with him… and if she was, it was working. Trying to pull off a combo with a boner was not easy.

Another defeat later, John begged her to switch characters.

Erica agreed with a laugh.

Things balanced out after that. He won almost as many games as he lost, and they started playing the sillier modes just for fun. The craziest games came from a setting he personally referred to as ‘Aloha Snackbar’: items on very high and only food and bombs selected. Skill was largely invalidated when half the floor was healing and the other half threw you around like a ragdoll. At some point, Adorabelle wandered in, sober enough to fly and land on Erica’s chair to watch and cheer. The fae never picked a side and seemed happiest whenever the stage managed to wipe one of them out.

“Alright, dude,” Erica winced as he juggled her character to the top of the map and smashed her off it for the third time in a row, setting her controller down, “you’ve made your point. I concede.”

“That’s it? Awww, but I was having fun…” Adorabelle complained from beside her.

The berserker offered the tiny fae the controller, “You want a go?”

“Hell yeah! Let me just go get a potion of ‘not being fucking smaller than that’ first. Oh wait, I don’t have one of those, Snow!” The redheaded pixie dramatically waved her arms in the general shape of the offending object. Her words were a little slurred still.

Erica reached up to pat the enraged girl on the head, causing her to spew out even more insults as her face turned bright pink. John watched the exchange with amusement.

“You’re pretty good friends, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I guess you could say that, dude.”

“Absolutely fucking not, you moron!”

Adorabelle blushed deeper and fluttered away from them in a huff. She flitted back quickly and landed on John’s chair, giving Erica a look. Both the humans shared a knowing glance, but they’d had enough teasing the tsundere fairy for now. John set down his controller and let himself relax.

He’d needed this so badly. Friends, games, time to properly de-stress and no responsibilities for the first time in ages. It felt… good. Really good. It was like someone had slotted a missing puzzle piece into place and he was complete. Finally.

John closed his eyes and let himself drift away, zoning out. The chair was comfortable. Everything was alright.

“Hey, dude. I think someone wants your attention.”

After a lazy moment, John opened his eyes again and looked over at Erica, who tilted her head in the direction of the kitchen. Standing there, looking at them, was Tryn, want visible in her eyes and her shirt unbuttoned to the point that her chest was practically bursting out of it. She caught his eyes on her body and crossed her arms underneath her bust. The effect was that her breasts were pushed up against their confines, so they bulged out of the too-tight outfit and gave him a wonderful view of her cleavage. His pants tightened. John stared. Thinking was… difficult now.

Tryn reached up to tug on the corner of her bra, her finger pushing into her soft chest as it **** itself between her breast and her shirt, peeling it down until her nipples were nearly in view.

Fuck pants… and goblins. Definitely goblins.