We play by the rules, now

Author’s Note: Hey everyone! Shame, here. Thank you for the outpouring of support and feedback! All the likes, favorites, and especially comments are what make me so excited to keep writing and continue the story! If you have any ideas on what you’d like to see, or have any clever categories or changes you think might be fun, lemme know what you think in the comments!

Also, something **** is going to happen in this chapter with the changes that are gonna get a little gross. Trust the process, I promise it’s going to lead to something and isn’t the author fucking up power scaling for the kink. I do not have a gross out fetish, and I promise shit’s gonna get less gross as reality changes get less limited and don’t have to agree with actual reality. The game is still getting itself set up and can’t make subclauses off of a single number or letter.

***

Hank didn’t know anything about astronomy. But he could always find Orion. Most people never really noticed when Hank stepped outside a party, he picked his moments carefully, but Talia was never fully engrossed in the fun enough for his disappearance to go undetected. Hank’s humor was more intellectual than drunks could usually appreciate, but Talia would usually catch whatever witticism he’d shoot off and crack a slight smile at the cleverness.

When she stopped hearing the random interjections of unnoticed word play, turns of phrase, or historical references even she didn’t get, that was usually when she realized that her friend was off sitting somewhere nobody would find him. His intellectualism was wasted on such an attention whore. Usually that was the reason he stepped outside, once he realized that no matter what input he was giving from the sidelines, nobody was really listening.

Tonight was different, though. The host had invited one of her friends, Natalie, and she had stuck around Hank for most of the party so far. His little comments were getting actual laughs and responses from her, taking Talia’s place as Hank’s conversation partner. Talia didn’t mind, she liked observing sometimes.

Talia turned to confirm her suspicions that Hank had gone. To her surprise, Natalie remained, rolling her wrist to her shoulder to hold her drink and pretending to have an interest in the game, though her blue eyes glanced regularly to the portal into the kitchen expectantly. Talia had expected the two to have taken their conversation someplace private. Full moon that night would’ve been romantic.

Talia rolled her eyes and slinked away from the table as her drunk friends cheered at the result of one of the playing cards someone flipped over, triggering a drink from someone who already had too many. She found Hank exactly where she would have expected him, on the back porch, looking up at the sky.

He pretended not to hear the door open as Talia stepped out. “Natalie’s nice.” Talia said, closing the door behind her.

“Oh, yeah,” Hank agreed. “I had to step out because I don’t want her to miss out on hanging with Regina and talking to other people, and I was just going to keep talking her ear off.”

Talia nodded, it made some sense. Regina had invited Natalie, who didn’t really know anybody else there. Except Regina was fully focused on her boyfriend and the drinking game. And Natalie didn’t really seem to mind having her ear talked off. The whole party, Natalie had migrated over to wherever Hank was, whether he was shooting pool, grabbing drinks, or just chilling on a couch, he usually wasn’t alone for very long.

Talia typically also hung around Hank just because they were both intellectuals. They didn’t engage with the more practical side of their education. They liked thinking and talking in big concepts that people who showed up to get drunk with friends didn’t particularly care to do. Hank was a lazy student, but he was clever and Talia did find his wit endearing, given the raw passion she usually got from other intellectuals.

“I think Regina and everyone else is a bit preoccupied.” Talia said, pointing her comment to get him to recognize that Natalie kept choosing to be around him.

Hank lifted his eyebrow with a small smile. “You not looking to make a new friend?” He put it back onto her. Then he looked back up at the sky. As Talia got older, she was growing more weary of what she saw as high school drama. Hank still had the image of himself as the unattractive nerd archetype that only existed in movies. He was just going to keep brooding and yearning, hoping for some inciting incident to send him on some quest that would impress the girl so he could claim her as a prize at the end of the movie.

Talia saw him do the same thing through all of high school. He’d pine after a girl, do nothing about it but wait, and then complain about being single. Hank was a grown man and was never going to see women as other people who made their own decisions because he still thought he was a character of some kind, waiting for his story to start. Like all this life was just exposition for the adventure that would one day just find him.

Sarah was right. Talia’s friends were straight out of a high school melodrama. Hank wasn’t the only one. The group as a whole was cliquey and just rife with gossips and shit talking. She was coming to realize that, as much as she loved the memories she’d made with them, she’d outgrown her friends.

“I was just coming to tell you that I’m heading out.” Talia said. Hank looked down at his watch, nodding. The two waved at each other—neither cared for hugs. “Parting words,” the last she intended to give, knowing he wasn’t going to listen anyways, “your letter from Hogwarts isn’t coming.”

Hank smiled, looking down at his shoes momentarily. “You’re right.” He sighed, looking back up with a shit-eating grin. “It’s all through the online portal, now. They send an email—easier on the owls.”

***

Hank clicked his tongue, trying not to panic. He was surprised to find his sex doll—which he’d hidden in his closet the day Talia had come—laying on the couch. Talia had explained that it was for the mini-game, which she confessed to accidentally starting soon after he left. Phone signal was shit at the gas station, so he hadn’t received her texts until he was driving home.

The house was cleaner than when he’d left, which had eased some of his anxiety about later. But he needed to know what had changed. “Well, since you couldn’t draw for your punishment, it just threw two cards into the discard at 08:17. You know, delay of play is two cards.” Talia was shaking. She had been the whole time.

Hank furrowed his brow. He couldn’t remember anything special happening at that time specifically. He’d been on the toilet around that time doing some awful things, but he already had been.

“Do you know what they were?” He asked. He was afraid to open his journal.

“Yeah…” She fidgeted with her fingers. “Do you remember Natalie?”

“Pierce?” He asked, begging for the answer to be no. Natalie had gotten married a few months ago. But before that, she was the crush that Finally broke his spirit. He tried to **** himself to ask her out so many times, but just couldn’t do it. When she brought her boyfriend—now husband—to a party, he finally just gave up on everything.

He stopped writing, stopped going for his teaching certification, stopped applying for other jobs. He just accepted that he was going to be a virgin loser for his whole life. The worst was that her husband was a great guy. Smart, handsome, and just genuinely kind.

“Yeah.” Talia nodded, pointing to a picture on the TV stand. Hank’s eyes widened. The photograph depicted a man who looked like him, but the beard was too neatly trimmed, the hair too well groomed, and clothes too well fitting sitting on a beach. He hated the beach. But next to him was a beautiful woman in a blue sundress that matched her eyes, dark hair allowed to run down her shoulders. His arm was around her shoulder, her hand rested on his thigh. They were looking at each other.

“It…” He looked around, suddenly aware of just how much cleaner the house was. It wasn’t that Talia had slaved away tidying up. The paint was newer. All the furniture was nicer. Broken things kept around from his mother had been either fixed or replaced. “It made her marry me?” His heart was being squeezed by a vice.

She had been so happy! He was a fuck up loser working a gas station while she was getting two master’s degrees! She had a career, she had an amazing husband named Xavier. What possible punishment could have done that? How could she be robbed for a mistake he had no way to have corrected?

“No.” Talia shook her head. She still seemed shell shocked, but managed to push through. “Just… apparently word changes can delete words as well as add or replace them so it deleted the word ‘never’.” Talia said, pointing to his journal. Hank, overcome with grief for a friend, forgot his fear and began opening the book. “History wrote itself around that.”

Hank met Natalie Pierce at a graduation party. He wanted to ask her out and so introduced himself, but got the courage to actually ask her on a date after hours of talking.

Hank saw the glowing underline that indicated where the change had taken place. According to Talia, the word ‘never’ had originally existed between ‘but’ and ‘got’. He continued reading, heart breaking all over again at the description of their relationship that stemmed from that one change.

There was no longer a description of Hank’s limerance and unrequited crush. No mention of his depression following the event.

New text was being written faster than could be read. An account of their first date, then second, then their first kiss, their first time having sex. Her comforting him through his mother’s insanity, then his mother’s ****. Him supporting her through her schooling, celebrating each of her achievements and accomplishments while helping her stop to enjoy life.

He was a teacher. She was in marketing. He took care of their home, she went away on work trips. Their relationship gets strained, but they know there’s a light coming. They want to get married. They start looking for destinations.

Hank dropped the book in his lap in utter disbelief. It was like reading one of his daydreams. An account of five years of vacations, anniversaries, arguments, and love all stemming from him just simply asking the question he had wanted to ask that night.

For the first time in his life, he couldn’t hide behind the unknown. He couldn’t take comfort in believing that had he done things differently, they would have gone worse. For the first time he realized that all his fantasies he played in his mind were just realities he’d given up on.

And now he got his fantasy at the expense of someone else’s reality.

“What… what else did it…”

Talia choked on her own tears, gesturing for Hank to follow her. She couldn’t say. She needed to show him.

She had been pulling a trash bag filled with protein shakes out of the can in the kitchen when everything changed. The can had gone from a beat up white plastic to a tall stainless steel tube with a foot pedal to open the lid. The contents of the bag were envelopes stamped PAST DUE.

The cabinets were completely different styles and weren’t chipped and cracked with their dark lacquer. The dishwasher looked newer, along with the fridge. All the condom wrappers were gone and the sex toy sat on a couch similar to the old one save for the cum stains and ripped cushions.

She naturally checked Hank’s glowing journal. She’d been fast enough to see the tail end of their history explode onto the page:

Talia gets dumped and needs a favor and Hank never declines a friend in need. Talia moves in. Natalie leaves for a business trip. Talia plays on Hank’s insecurities and convince him that Natalie is having an affair. Hank and Talia have sex. And don’t stop. Natalie comes home and everything explodes. The break up is messy, Talia and Hank are blacklisted by their friends and families, Hank gets fired and takes a job at his old gas station.

Initially, all of it happened a year ago. But then came the second word change, the punishment for taking more than an hour for Hank to draw a card.

Talia opened the door to her room, the rancid smell of BO and sex assaulting the hall. The floor was littered with grocery bags filled with used condoms and protein shakes. Boxes and boxes of condoms, plan b, lube bottles, everything had had initially been spread throughout the house and over the course of one year was now relegated to her bedroom and on a much shorter timetable.

The affair began half a year ago, when Talia convinced Hank that Natalie was cheating on him on the work trip.

Two thousand rounds of sex. Condensed into six months. Her journal hadn’t even changed in the sex with Hank stat, as it was still within 365 days.

According to the biography, there wasn’t ever much time that both were home that they weren’t having sex, which was medically impossible. Heartbroken Hank never let it happen anywhere but in Talia’s room or the shower. If they were awake, they were having sex with each other. They just couldn’t stop. Hank only ever worked enough hours to afford their nutrition and contraceptives.

He wanted to vomit. Not just from the smell and the sight, but from the whole situation. He barely made it into the guest bathroom, face in the toilet bowl. Bile burned his throat, brown liquid that once had been a chocolate protein shake left his mouth.

In a single chapter, he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted and lost it in the most deplorable way possible. And he had gotten to experience none of it. He just appeared in the crater of the meteor that was dropped on his own house. How cruel a thing the game was. To punish him for his passivity by rubbing his nose in it.

Talia closed the bedroom door and stepped into the bathroom, extending the bottle of probably expired mouthwash towards Hank as he finished emptying his stomach.

“We play the rules now. We don’t do anything without the other present.” Talia said, her voice and eyes in another world entirely. “We don’t fight back or cheat. And we don’t resist.” She was broken. “Rinse your mouth and come make out with me on the couch before your friend gets here.”