Seven readjusted a bit, making Enzo painfully aware of just how close their dicks were and how little cloth separated them.
At first, he thought Seven wasn’t going to answer, but finally, he said, “It’s just this stupid thing we started as kids when the gamePaladinfirst launched. We loved D&D and it was a D&D based video game, so, of course, we were obsessed. And we were kids, so we made it our whole personality. We called ourselves the Knights of the Kids’ Table and, as you can imagine, seven queer kids running their own guild caught some people’s attention for a minute.”
Enzo couldn’t imagine that. It wasn’t like he hadn’t played video games. He’d grown up playingGTAandMortal Kombatwith his brothers. Hell, he still played things likeMaddenand evenCall of Dutywhen he had time, but he never talked about it like Seven was. To Enzo, it was just a game. Seven talked about it like it was a lifeline.
The idea of a baby Seven playing this game with such fervor that the world noticed was so adorable Enzo wanted to squeeze him until he popped.
“If it’s like D&D, does that mean you create your own characters? Storylines? Stuff like that?” he asked, drawing on what little he remembered of the game.
Seven leaned back, screwing up his face like he was deep in thought. Finally, he said, “Imagine a video game where you’re dropped into a high-fantasy world full of knights, dragons, magic, monsters…moral choices. You can build your hero from the ground up, just like in any D&D game.” Life was starting to return to Seven’s voice, his words coming a little faster. “But there are set players, too, like a cast you can interact with. You can even play as those characters if you want.”
“Which did you choose?”
Seven’s gaze floated away from Enzo’s, almost like he was embarrassed. “I play as an origin character—Rowan Thorn Vale. He's one of the pre-made mains. The devs wrote this whole backstory for him. He’s a ranger from the cursed Greenwood, his dad’s a knight who abandoned him, and he’s got this whole brooding ‘hero-who-never-asked-for-this’ vibe.”
“Dad who abandoned him, huh? Sounds familiar,” Enzo said softly.
Seven gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, he spoke to me as a kid. We both had daddy issues.”
“You didn’t change anything?”
“Not the core stuff. His race, his voice, his past. You can change his class or stats if you want, but his story stays the same.It’s nice to…live inside someone else’s emotional trauma for a while.”
“And you’ve kept him all this time?” Enzo asked.
“The fans…our watchers,” Seven mumbled. “They kind of ship me with another origin character.”
“Ship?”
Seven nodded. “There’s a…romance thing that plays out in our adventures.”
Enzo felt his face fall. “A romance? With another player?”
Seven rolled his eyes. “Not another player, another origin character. Ser Thalos. They like watching our interactions.”
“Are you cheating on me with a fictional character?” Enzo teased.
Seven snorted. “Shut up.”
“Did the others make up their own characters?” Enzo asked, genuinely curious about the inner workings of Seven’s friend group.
Seven shrugged. “It varies. Weirdly, we all fall back to a specific class. Arsen is almost always a paladin, Levi a rogue, Nico sometimes switches it up, but is usually a barbarian. We’ve just been playing this game for so long we’re all kind of set in our ways, I guess. We always follow the same pattern.”
“Like you falling in love with this…Ser Thalos every time?”
He could always tell when Seven was embarrassed or horny because the tips of his ears turned bright red like a beacon. Like now.
Enzo didn’t understand any of this, but he found himself mildly irritated that he was competing against Seven’s fictional love interest. Still, it was clear this game meant a lot to him. “I want to watch you play sometime.”
Seven’s eyes went wide. “You do?”
“Yeah. Why? Can I not? Do you not want your fictional boyfriend to know about your real one?” Enzo teased.
“You sound jealous,” Seven shot back, a smile playing at his lips.
“Oh, I am,” Enzo promised. “But it seems important to you.”
Seven nodded. “It is. We were trying to get tickets to see the voice actors play D&D live on stage, but it sold out in seconds.”
