The arena loads, and I already know we're going to lose.
It's in the way Simon's avatar stands three feet farther from mine than usual. In the stiff set of his shoulders, the careful angle of his gaze—looking at the spawn point, the crowd, anywhere except at me.
The kiss hangs between us like smoke neither of us knows how to clear.
"So," he says. "Tournament match. This is the one that matters."
"I know."
"We should probably focus."
"Agreed."
The conversation dies there, strangled by everything we're not saying. Our opponents materialize across the field—a matched pair who move in perfect sync, bodies angled toward each other with easy familiarity.
The kind of partnership we had forty-eight hours ago, before I ruined it with my mouth.
The countdown begins. I position myself in our usual formation, but Simon shifts left, putting more distance between us. Compensating. Protecting himself from accidental contact.
Three. Two. One.
The first serve comes, and Simon rushes it. He's playing aggressive, trying to handle shots that should be mine, covering ground he doesn't need to cover. I pull back to avoid collision, and the gap opens between us like a wound.
"I've got the edges," I call out. "Like last time."
"I know. I've got it."
He doesn't have it. The next volley catches him reaching too far, and his deflection goes wide. I lunge for the save, but I'm out of position because I was avoiding his space, and the sphere detonates behind us in a cascade of failure.
"Shit." Simon shakes his head. "Sorry. That was my bad."
"It's fine. Reset."
We reset. The serve comes. This time I move for it, but Simon moves too, and we nearly collide—his arm brushing mine, the neural feedback sending a jolt of contact through my real body. We both flinch. The hesitation costs us another point.
The score climbs against us. 2-0. Then 3-0. Our opponents aren't even that good; we're just that broken.
Every time our avatars brush too close, there's a half-second delay while we recalibrate. Every combination we used to execute instinctively now requires conscious coordination that arrives too late.
"Kira." Simon's voice cuts through after the fourth detonation. "What are we doing?"
"Playing badly."
"That's not what I…" He stops. Takes a breath. "Never mind. Focus."
We focus. It doesn't help. The final point comes almost mercifully, a clean serve that neither of us is positioned to return. The sphere detonates, the match ends, and we're eliminated from the bracket with a humiliation that feels like a brand.
The arena clears around us. The crowd vanishes. The opponents disappear to celebrate somewhere we can't see. We're left standing in the empty lobby, two avatars in a space designed for triumph, surrounded by nothing but the weight of failure.
Simon's arms cross over his bare chest. His jaw is tight, shoulders squared, and I recognize the posture—it's the same defensive stance he takes at the gym when someone criticizes his training methods. He's waiting for something. An explanation he doesn't know how to demand.
I feel sick beneath the headset. The nausea is real, physical, churning in my actual stomach as I stare at the wall I've built between us with one impulsive kiss.
"Simon." Kira's voice comes out steadier than I feel. "About what happened last time..."
He doesn't respond, just waits, arms still crossed, giving me nothing.
"I shouldn't have kissed you."
The words taste like ash, bitter and wrong, but I force them through Kira's lips anyway.
"It was out of line. We were caught up in the match, and I made a mistake, and I'm sorry. If you want to pretend it didn't happen, we can do that. Go back to being teammates. Keep things simple."
I'm giving him the exit. The easy retreat to safe territory, where Kira is just a gaming partner and Simon doesn't have to examine what any of this means. It's the right thing to do. The merciful thing.
He doesn't take it.
Instead, he steps forward. Closes the distance I've been so carefully maintaining. His hands find my waist—grip firm, confident, the kind of touch that doesn't ask permission because it already knows the answer.
He pulls Kira's body against his in one smooth motion, and suddenly I'm acutely aware of how much larger his avatar is than mine. How easily he could lift me. How completely I'm encompassed by his arms.
I feel small. Vulnerable. Desired.
Everything Gordon has never felt in the real world, everything I've spent twenty-three years convincing myself I didn't need.
Simon tilts my chin up with one hand, forcing me to meet his eyes, and the hunger in them makes my breath catch.
Then he kisses me like he's been starving for it—deep and demanding, his other arm tightening around my waist until there's no space left between us. I'm pressed against the solid wall of his chest, held in place by hands that could break me but choose instead to worship.
For the first time in my life, I understand what it means to be wanted so badly that someone can't help but take.
This isn't the careful kiss I gave him. This is three years of want compressed into a single moment, months of messages and matches and something building between us that I thought I was imagining.
His mouth moves against mine with desperate certainty, and I feel it everywhere—lips, skin, the hollow of my real chest where my heart is trying to escape.
When he pulls back, his voice is rough. Cracked open in a way I've never heard from Simon Hale in three years of friendship.
"Don't apologize," he says. "I've been trying to figure out how to do that for weeks. You just beat me to it."
"Simon..."
"I know this is crazy. I know we've never even met in real life. But I can't stop thinking about you, Kira. When I'm not in the game, I'm counting hours until I can be in the game."
His thumbs trace my cheekbones, featherlight.
"You're the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing before I fall asleep, and I have never felt like this about anyone. Tell me I'm not alone in this. Tell me you feel it too."
Every rational thought in my head screams to stop this. To log out, delete the account, confess everything before the lie grows any larger.
I am not the woman he thinks I am. I am his best friend, hiding behind a face he's allowed to want, and if he ever discovers the truth it will destroy us both.
But he's looking at me the way I've dreamed about for three years. Vulnerable. Wanting. Choosing me over every other option in his life.
"You're not alone," I hear myself say. "I feel it too."
His smile breaks across his face like sunrise, and something in my chest breaks with it.
"Then come with me." He takes my hand—Kira's hand—and I feel his fingers interlace with mine. "Somewhere private. I rented a space, just in case you said yes."
A notification pulses in my peripheral vision. Invitation to private server. Love mod enabled. No restrictions.
My real hands are trembling against the headset. The haptic gloves register my elevated pulse, my shallow breathing, the full-body response to what he's offering.
I know what happens in love mods. The game's unrestricted spaces exist for exactly one purpose, and the neural feedback holds nothing back.
I should decline. I should protect myself, protect him, stop this before it becomes something I can never undo.
Kira accepts the invitation.
The world dissolves. Colors blur and reform, the arena lobby melting into something softer, warmer.
When the rendering completes, we're standing in a candlelit room—amber light flickering across silk sheets, gauze curtains drifting in a breeze that exists only in code.
The space is designed for intimacy. Every surface, every shadow, every carefully programmed detail exists for exactly one purpose.
Simon's avatar stands close enough that I can see the pulse point in his throat. The neural feedback translates his proximity into heat, into presence, into something my real body responds to beneath the headset.
"We don't have to do anything," he says softly. "I just wanted somewhere we could be alone. Talk. Whatever you want."
But what I truly want is the thing I've never let myself dream about—Simon's hands on me, Simon's attention undivided, Simon choosing me with full intention.
"I don't want to talk," Kira says.
His breath catches. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
He reaches for me slowly, giving me time to change my mind. His hands slide around my waist, pulling Kira's body against his, and I feel every point of contact like electricity through water.
The neural feedback translates his touch into something devastatingly real—warmth and pressure and the impossible sensation of his chest against mine.
His mouth finds mine again, hungrier now, and I open for him without hesitation. The kiss deepens, his tongue sliding against mine, and a sound escapes my throat that I've never made in my life—raw, wanting, completely unguarded.
In the real world, my body arches in the haptic chair, responding to sensations that exist only in code but feel more real than anything I've ever experienced.
"God, Kira." His voice is wrecked already, barely a rasp. "The sounds you make."
His hands move up my sides, fingers tracing the curves the game has given me, and I shiver beneath his touch. The avatar's outfit offers no barriers—strategic straps and bare skin, designed for exactly this purpose. When his palm slides over my breast, I gasp, and he swallows the sound with another kiss.
"I've thought about this," he confesses against my lips. "Every night since we started playing together. Couldn't get you out of my head."
"Show me." The words come out bold, demanding—Kira's confidence wrapped around Gordon's desperation. "Show me what you thought about."
He groans, low and rough, and suddenly I'm being lifted. My legs wrap around his waist on instinct, and he carries me toward the bed like I weigh nothing.
The silk sheets are cool against my back when he lays me down, his body covering mine, and I can feel exactly how much he wants this pressing against my thigh.
“In that case, hold on, because I won't stop.”
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