I didn’t have the heart to tell Jesse that it hurt more than helped to play together, my rank taking a nose dive with how poorly we did as a duo—mostly because of their inability to keep their hands on the keyboard instead of covering their eyes.
Looking through your fingers really wasn’t an effective way to push the objective towards victory. But Jesse was too much of a fraidy cat for PG-13 slashers, much less the stress of being in control of the murder victim themself.
“If I say yes, and you see it’s fucked, will you leave it alone?” I asked, the barest spark of hope flickering to life.
Maybe it would open the window for us to talk about the other day, if not about the whole heat thing. Break the ice a little.
“Yes!” Jesse said triumphantly. “Okay, bye! See you in there!”
I sighed as our private call disconnected, pinching the bridge of my nose as I debated logging off for the night instead.
But that was, in fact, weenie behaviour.
And I was no weenie.
I let my mouse hover over the voice channel of our server for a couple of moments. Everyone’s little icons were there, including hers, causing my nerves to come back in full force. Finally, I brought myself to click into it, my headphones exploding into a wall of sound as little video boxes containing my friends populated the screen.
“Indiiiii!” Tara shouted by way of greeting, leaning way too close to her webcam so we were practically looking down her throat as she shouted gleefully, “Finally! Where have you been? Where's POTATOOOOOO?”
But it wasn't the brunette who caught my attention. It was a shock of bubblegum-pink hair, carefully styled into long, flowing waves that framed her face beautifully alongside her short bangs.
"Hi, Indi," Eva said, her soft, bubbly voice pulling a smile to my face that she matched with one of her own.
“Hey, man,” Charlie called, mellow as always.
“I told you I’d get them to come, is my little chippy baby?”
"She's napping in her cave," I said, to answer Tara's question about my pink Eastern garter snake. With some effort, I managed to pull my eyes away from Eva, who was nibbling on her lower lip shyly, and cleared my throat. “Are we here to gush over me, or are we going to play?”
"Play, now that we have a half-decent healer—" Tara started, cut off by Charlie's warning, "Hey!"
Things felt surprisingly normal as we loaded into OVWatch to play for the evening, rounds slipping by between inside jokes and the same barbed comments that’d become the standard when we played together. It almost made me sad that I'd been avoiding it, the time with my friends a welcome change in my routine that'd started to center too much around work in an effort to keep myself busy.
We were just waiting for another game to load in when I scraped together the courage to stop being a wuss and message Eva.
hey, about the other day… it’s not that i didn't want to.
i know i could feel how badly you wanted me, remember?
Eva_Aft3r
I glanced at my second monitor, catching the subtle smirk tilting Eva's lips.
i didn't react how i would've wanted to without alcohol involved. you did the right thing, ok?
with wanting to talk to Joon first…
did you?
Eva_Aft3r
I swallowed.
In truth? I hadn't quite figured out a way to bring it up that didn't make me sound like I was trying to have my cake and eat it too when it came to the two omegas. But Joon and Eva were friends, sort of… At the very least, I knew the omega was attracted to her.
Luckily, I was saved from having to respond as the round started, the conversation I'd only been half listening to shiftingto orders from Tara to push ahead towards the goal, or from Jesse looking for healing. It was a pretty brutal mismatch of skill between our teams, and it didn't take long before the white and neon green victory text was bannering across my screen.
Nice.
