I lead him inside with hands that won't stop shaking.
The apartment looks different through Simon's eyes—I can see him cataloging the space, the sparse furniture, the beige walls that reflect nothing of who I am.
My bedroom is just a bed and a desk, the detritus of a life lived quietly, nothing like Kira's gaming room with its expensive equipment and careful staging.
"This is where you live." He says it like a realization, like he's trying to reconcile the person he knew with the space that person inhabits. "It's so..."
"Boring, empty?" I offer weakly. "I know, I never really decorated. Never saw the point."
"I was going to say quiet." He turns to face me, and there's something in his expression I can't quite read. "It feels like a place someone goes to disappear."
The observation cuts closer to the truth than I want to admit. I have been disappearing here, for years—retreating into anonymity, into invisibility, into a version of myself that takes up as little space as possible.
"Simon." My voice comes out barely audible. "I've never… I’ve never done this. With anyone." I swallow hard. "Not as me."
The words hang between us. I watch understanding dawn across his features—not just that I'm inexperienced, but that every intimate moment of my life has happened behind a mask. In the game, wearing Kira's body. Never as Gordon. Never as myself.
His expression softens. Some of the anger that's been simmering beneath the surface drains away, replaced by something that looks almost like tenderness.
"I haven't either." He steps closer, and his hand comes up to cup my jaw. "Not with a guy, I mean. So we're both figuring this out."
His thumb traces my cheekbone—the same gesture he used with Kira, but different now. More careful. More real. "We can figure it out together."
He kisses me again, slower this time. Not the desperate crash of the doorway, but something more deliberate.
His lips part against mine, and when his tongue slides forward I open for him, letting him explore, letting him learn the shape of a mouth that's always been mine but he's only just discovering.
We move toward the bed in increments. His hands find the hem of my shirt, hesitate.
"Is this okay?"
"Yes." The word comes out rough, needy. "Yes, Simon. Please."
He pulls the fabric over my head. I stand before him bare-chested for the first time—not Kira's curves and soft skin, but Gordon's body. Leaner than it used to be after weeks of atrophy, smaller than what he's used to. Male in all the ways the avatar wasn't.
Simon's eyes move across my chest, my stomach, the trail of hair disappearing into my waistband. His expression is complicated—curiosity and desire and something that might be nervousness all tangled together.
"You're different." He says it without judgment, just observation. "But you're still... I can still see her. In your eyes, in the way you're looking at me."
"Because she was me." I reach for him, pull his shirt up and off. His body is familiar and foreign at once—I've memorized every inch of it at the gym, but I've never been allowed to touch. "Everything you loved about her was me."
He pulls me against him. Skin to skin, chest to chest, nothing between us but air and three years of wanting.
The sensation is overwhelming—no neural feedback to mediate it, no digital translation. Just nerve endings firing, just the heat of him burning into me, just his heartbeat pounding against mine.
We fall onto the bed together.
What follows is nothing like the game—there's no perfect choreography, no bodies designed for fantasy, no system smoothing over the awkward reality of two people learning each other for the first time.
When Simon's hand fumbles with my belt, he has to try twice before he gets it open. When I reach for him, my fingers tremble so badly I can barely grip.
"Sorry." He laughs against my mouth, breathless. "I'm usually smoother than this."
"Don't be sorry." I kiss him again, pull him closer. "I don't want smooth. I want real."
Real is awkward, clumsy. Real is Simon's hand wrapping around me and stroking experimentally, figuring out what works, what makes me gasp.
Real is me returning the favor, feeling the weight and heat of him against my palm, watching his face contort with pleasure that I'm causing.
"Fuck." The word escapes him, raw and unguarded. "That feels… Gordon, that feels—"
I stroke harder, finding a rhythm that makes his hips buck into my fist. He's thick and hot in my hand, and I can't stop staring at the way his stomach muscles clench, the way his head tips back, the way his mouth falls open on sounds he's probably never made with anyone watching.
"I've wanted this for so long." The confession spills out before I can stop it. "Three years, Simon. Three years of watching you at the gym, memorizing your body, going home and touching myself thinking about exactly this."
He groans at my words, thrusting harder into my grip. "Show me. Show me what you thought about."
I push him onto his back and crawl over him, positioning myself between his thighs. His cock juts up toward his stomach, flushed and leaking, and I lower my mouth without hesitation.
The taste of him explodes across my tongue. Salt and musk and something distinctly Simon—I've imagined this so many times, but imagination was nothing compared to reality.
He's hot and heavy against my lips, and when I take him deeper, his whole body arches off the bed.
"Holy shit." His hands find my hair, grip tight. "Gordon, your mouth…"
I hum around him, and he practically sobs. I work him with lips and tongue, learning what makes him gasp, what makes him curse, what makes his fingers tighten in my hair until it almost hurts.
When I hollow my cheeks and suck hard, he yanks me off with desperate hands.
"Stop, stop—I'll come if you keep doing that, and I don't want to—not yet—"
He pulls me up, flips us, pins me beneath him with a strength that makes my breath catch. His eyes are wild, pupils blown so wide there's barely any blue left.
"I want to be inside you." His voice is wrecked. "Is that… can I…"
"Yes." The word comes out like a prayer. "God, yes, please."
He fumbles for supplies—a pause that should break the mood but somehow doesn't. I watch him slick his fingers, watch his hand disappear between my thighs, and when the first touch comes I nearly come off the bed.
"Easy." He presses a kiss to my hip, working me open with patient fingers. "I've got you. Just relax."
One finger becomes two. The stretch is uncomfortable at first, unfamiliar, but he finds an angle that sends sparks shooting up my spine.
"There?" He does it again, watches my face. "Right there?"
"Yes, fuck, Simon…"
He works that spot mercilessly, adding a third finger, stretching me until I'm writhing beneath him, begging for something I don't have words for.
"Ready?" He positions himself, the blunt head pressing against me. "Tell me if it's too much."
He pushes in, and my world narrows to the sensation of being filled. It burns at first, a stretch that borders on pain, but he moves slowly, giving me time to adjust, and gradually the burn transforms into something else.
Something overwhelming and perfect and exactly what I've been craving for three years.
"You're so tight." His voice shakes. "So fucking tight, Gordon. I can barely move inside of you."
He bottoms out, and we both freeze—his forehead drops to mine, our breath mingles, ragged and desperate. I can feel him throbbing inside me, can feel my own body clenching around him, adjusting, accepting.
"Move." I dig my nails into his shoulders. "Simon, please move."
He moves.
The first thrust punches a sound out of me I've never made before. The second makes my toes curl. By the third, I'm meeting him stroke for stroke, my hips rising to take him deeper, harder, exactly where I need him.
"Yes, just like that, don't stop!"
His pace builds from careful to demanding, his hips snapping forward with increasing force. The angle shifts and suddenly he's hitting that spot with every thrust, and I'm falling apart beneath him, sounds spilling from my throat that I couldn't suppress if I tried.
"You feel incredible." He's panting now, sweat dripping from his brow onto my chest. "I can't… Gordon, I'm not going to last—"
"Touch me." I grab his hand, wrap it around my cock. "I'm close, I just need—"
He strokes me in time with his thrusts, and the dual sensation is too much—his hand on my cock, his cock inside me, his eyes locked on my face watching me unravel.
The orgasm builds at the base of my spine, cresting higher with every movement. I shatter. The climax tears through me, my back arching, my vision whiting out, Simon's name ripping from my throat as I spill over his fist and my own stomach.
My body clenches around him, and he follows seconds later—burying himself deep, pulsing inside me, a broken groan vibrating against my neck.
We collapse together—sweaty, breathless, trembling. After a long moment, Simon presses a kiss to my hair.
"I'm still pissed at you." A pause. "But I'm glad you told me."