"In that case, hold on, because I won't stop."
His mouth crashes into mine, and I stop thinking.
The neural feedback holds nothing back. Every kiss registers a genuine sensation beneath the headset—the pressure of his lips, the slide of his tongue, the way his teeth graze my bottom lip and send sparks cascading down my spine.
Simon's hands map Kira's skin with a reverence that translates through every nerve of my real body, learning the curves and hollows the game has given me, treating each inch like something precious.
"You're incredible," he breathes against my throat. "The way you respond to me..."
I can't form words. His hips roll against mine, and the friction drags a moan from somewhere deep in my chest. In the real world, my body arches in the haptic chair, sweat beading on skin that's never been touched like this.
I've imagined Simon's hands on me a thousand times. The reality, even filtered through code, obliterates every fantasy.
"Tell me what you want." His voice is rough velvet in my ear. "I want to hear you say it."
"Everything." Kira's voice, bold where Gordon's would tremble. "I want everything you'll give me."
He groans, and the sound vibrates through both our bodies. His hand slides between us, fingers finding the place where I'm aching for him, and I cry out loud enough that my real voice echoes in my gaming room.
The dual sensation is overwhelming—Kira's pleasure and Gordon's response, the avatar and the man, the lie and the desperate truth beneath it.
"That's it," Simon murmurs, watching my face as he works me higher. "Let me see you. Don't hold back."
I couldn't hold back if I tried. The pleasure builds in spiraling waves, each crest higher than the last, until I'm shaking apart beneath him with his name on my lips. He kisses me through it, swallowing my cries, hands gentle now as I come down.
"Beautiful," he whispers. "So fucking beautiful."
Before I can catch my breath, he's moving—positioning himself, pressing forward, filling me in one slow thrust that steals what's left of my air. The stretch is exquisite, overwhelming, more intimate than anything I've ever experienced.
For a suspended moment, neither of us moves. We just breathe together, foreheads touching, joined in the only way I'll ever be allowed to have him.
"Okay?" he asks, and the tenderness in his voice cracks something open in my chest.
"More than okay. Move, please."
He moves.
The rhythm starts slow, deep strokes that let me feel every inch of him. His hands grip my hips, tilting me to an angle that makes stars burst behind my eyes. I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, deeper, and the sounds he makes are wrecked and wonderful.
"You feel… God, Kira, I've never—"
"I know." I pull him down for a kiss, pouring everything I can't say into the press of lips. "I know. Me too."
The pace builds. What started as worship becomes a need, bodies moving together with escalating intensity, chasing something that feels like it might break us both. I say yes to things my waking mouth has never shaped.
I beg for things Gordon would never dare to want. And Simon gives me everything—every desperate thrust, every whispered encouragement, every fractured confession that falls from his lips as he loses himself in me.
"Close," he gasps. "I'm so close. Come with me. Want to feel you…"
The climax hits us both at once, a shared implosion that leaves me boneless and shaking. Simon shudders above me, my name—Kira's name—spilling from his mouth like a prayer.
For these few perfect seconds, I am exactly who he thinks I am. Loved by the person I love, and the how of it stops mattering.
We collapse together in the tangled sheets. The candlelight flickers across our skin—his skin, her skin, the illusion of intimacy made flesh. I should feel guilty. I should feel sick with what I've done.
Instead, I feel full, complete in a way I've never experienced before.
Simon shifts, gathering Kira's body against his chest. His fingers trace lazy patterns across my shoulder, nonsense shapes that make my real skin tingle beneath the haptic suit.
"Can I tell you something?" His voice has dropped to something soft and cracked open. Vulnerable in a way I've never heard from him.
"Anything."
"I've never had this with anyone. I've had relationships. I've been with women I thought I loved."
He pauses, and I can feel him choosing his words carefully.
"But it always felt like... like there was a wall between us. Something I couldn't get past, no matter how hard I tried. Like I was performing a version of myself they wanted, instead of just being me."
The irony is a knife in my chest. I know exactly what he means.
"And with me?" Kira asks, because Gordon needs to hear the answer even if it will destroy him.
"With you, there's no wall."
His arms tighten around me.
"You see me—the real me, not the loud guy who makes jokes and takes up space. You make me feel known in a way I didn't realize I was missing. Like I fit into a space in your life that was always waiting for me."
My eyes are burning. Beneath the headset, real tears slide down real cheeks, and I'm grateful he can't see them.
"I feel the same way," I whisper, and it's the truest thing I've ever said through Kira's lying mouth. "Being with you feels like coming home to a place I didn't know existed."
"Yeah." He exhales, pressing a kiss to my hair. "Exactly. Home."
We lie there in the simulated afterglow, wrapped in silk and candlelight and the impossible perfection of this moment. Simon tells me about his family—the boisterous brothers, the parents still loud about loving each other after thirty years.
He tells me about feeling like the golden child who never quite earned the gold. About relationships that burned hot and fizzled because he couldn't give women the depth they needed. About wondering, sometimes, if something was wrong with him.
"Nothing's wrong with you," I tell him, and I mean it with every atom of my being. "You just hadn't found the right person yet."
"And now I have." He tilts Kira's face up to his, kissing me soft and slow. "Crazy that it happened in a game, crazy that I've never seen your face. But I know you, Kira. I know you better than people I've spent years with in the real world."
The guilt should be crushing me. Instead, all I feel is the desperate, selfish need to keep this. To hold onto the only version of Simon's love I'll ever get, even knowing the foundation is sand.
"I should go," he murmurs eventually. "It's late. Real-world late."
"I know."
"But I don't want to." He nuzzles into my neck, and I feel his smile against my skin. "Can we do this again? Not just the… I mean, yes, definitely that, but also this—talking, being together."
"Sure." The word comes out before I can stop it. "I want that too."
"Then it's a date." He kisses me one more time—lingering, sweet, full of promise. "Goodnight, Kira. Dream about me."
"Goodnight, Simon."
The world dissolves. His warmth vanishes, replaced by the cold absence of disconnection. I float in the void between logout and reality, clinging to the ghost of his touch.
Then my gaming room crashes back into existence.
I pull off the visor, chest heaving, eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. The sweat is cooling on my skin, the haptic suit damp and uncomfortable. The brutal silence where Simon's voice just rang in my ears like tinnitus.
"So that's what you do in here."
The voice freezes my blood.
Lily is sitting on my bed. She's facing my monitor—the one that mirrors the VR feed for recording purposes—and her face is drained white.
The screen behind her shows the frozen final frame: Kira and SimonTheGreat tangled together in silk sheets, his username blazing in the corner like an accusation.
My stomach plummets through the floor.
"Lily." My voice comes out strangled. "How long have you…"
"Long enough." She stands slowly, and her expression cycles through emotions I can barely track. Confusion, horror, a terrible, dawning understanding that settles into her features like ice forming over water. "SimonTheGreat. That's Simon.”
"Lily, please, I—"
"You sick bastard…” Her voice cracks, and suddenly she's not my sharp-tongued little sister anymore. She's eighteen and scared, looking at me like I'm a stranger.
"I know. I know it's fucked up, I know I should have stopped…"
"But you didn't stop." She wraps her arms around herself, physically recoiling. "You had sex with him, I watched my brother have sex with my… with—"
She can't finish the sentence. Her crush on Simon hangs between us, unspoken but suddenly, horribly visible.
She's not just disgusted by the deception. She's wounded by it. By me. By the revelation that her brother has been claiming the man she wanted for herself.
Then her voice drops to a whisper, quiet enough that I almost don't hear it.
"I know your secret now, Gordon."
The words land like a blade between my ribs. I stare at her, trying to read which secret she means. Catfishing or my sexuality? The fact that I've been in love with my best friend for three years and this was the only way I could have him?
The answer matters less than the look on her face.
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