Chapter Text
“Excuse me, but will you be leaving soon?”
Jesus shitting Christ on a firecracker. Who the fuck lacks the common sense and patience to blatantly ask someone that so rudely? You frown and glare hostilely at your offender, who seems to be a relatively harmless man. He immediately takes a step back. “Do I look like I’m leaving soon? Or maybe your numbskulled brain is too shriveled to understand the basic concepts known as courtesy and patience. You know what? Fuck you. Fuck all of you asses and your idiotic excuses of thinkpans!”
Ah, shit. That last word was not welcome just now. Your stupid gaming sessions are really going to your head. Suddenly silent and slightly ashamed of your slip-up, you keep your head low and briskly leave your table, ignoring the strange looks you get from watcher-ons, who picked up on your shrill voice when you were raging. You’re too busy hitting yourself internally for ranting over a fucking question over the availability of a table to notice that the lanky charmer in glasses was staring at you the entire time.
==> Be the lanky charmer in glasses
Your name is Sollux Captor and you think you’ve just met an interesting man.
Okay, “met” is probably not the most accurate term—“stared at intensely” would describe it better. But he was interesting to you, or rather, you were interested in him. After you two caught eyes, he was distracted by a customer, who appeared to ask him something that also enraged him. A couple seconds later, you heard him brutally lecture the guy, and then heard the word “thinkpans.”
That brought back memories. Memories of your beginner coding days, where your two fathers encouraged you to mess around with their simulation programs (they ran a game company) to stimulate your creativity. It didn’t really stimulate anything, but you did get some good laughs from it. A particular game you remember helping your parents with ended up being sold to the public. It didn’t do well, but the game itself was hilarious. Some shit about an alien universe and dating weird devil-creatures you designed on a whim. Of course, you didn’t forget the gratuitous self-insert, and you sneakily put your “trollsona” into the game as well. You’re pretty proud to say that you were probably the most dateable character in that game, but on the other hand, the rest of the personalities you inputted weren’t that top notch.
But enough of that. It seems like that nubby guy picked up your game and played it seriously, too. Who else would accidentally use the strange, made-up anatomy vocabulary you inserted into the game? You actually would be intrigued to know what he thinks of the game, though you guess you’re actually more intrigued just to know more about him in general.
“Sorry guys; I’ve got to bolt,” you say noncommittally to a group of acquaintances at the table, who you’ve been ignoring during your entire thought process. Grabbing your recently served drink, you make your way outside. Maybe you’ll be able to catch the guy. Maybe, though you won’t completely admit it just yet, just maybe, you could consider yourself attracted.
==> Be the guy briskly walking out of the café
“Hey—I said hey, wait up!” Someone calls out to you while you fastwalk your way down the street, pondering over whether you should go home and play more Sgruban Love. You’ve just generally been in a really crappy mood, and at the moment, playing games seem to be the only consistent activity that brings you happiness. And wow you sound like a loser admitting that.
“Hello? Are you even listening?”
You turn your head and your eyes widen. You’re surprised to see Sollu—no goddammit his name isn’t Sollux you fucktard stop naming people after your video games just because they look alike—the bespectacled man walking next to you. Then you remember the outburst you made at the café. God no, you hope he didn’t pay too much attention to that. “I heard you the first time,” you say sheepishly.
“You could’ve turned around, you know.”
“I have better things to do in life than entertain strangers that ask me to wait up for them on the street.”
There was a short silence. Your point was pretty valid.
“Well, whatever, I just wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“I saw you in the café earlier, and you said something about thinkpans, so I was—”
“Wait stop right there, nope.” Oh fuck no. He heard it. Fuck, he heard it. He heard you blow up at some poor guy who just wanted to know if you’d be leaving a table soon (in hindsight, you feel a little bad about blowing up on him) and he heard you spout your weird video game nonsense. Okay, it was one word. And normally, you wouldn’t care about any kind of spectacle you make of yourself, because you’re not that type of person, but you can’t help but feel overly self-conscious and you have no idea why. “Okay, first, that was an accident. Happens to the best of us. I just slipped up my wording. I have no idea what a thinkpan is. End of discussion. Bye.” You begin to speed up your walking pace, but the other man stays hot on your heels.
“Wait, just hear me out for a sec! There’s this game that I helped design a while back, and I was wondering if you’d played it—well actually I’m pretty sure that’s the only game on the market with the word thinkpan in it—but I thought I might as well ask,” he concludes.
You slow your step and eventually come to a halt. “Okay, let’s just say that I hypothetically played your weird game. Why do you want to know?”
He seems frustrated for a couple of moments as he tries to pick out a satisfactory answer. “Because I’m interested in you, I guess?”
You’re not sure if you want to read more into that comment or not. Interested how? Surely this stranger you met in a café that coincidentally looks like a dating sim character is not hitting on you. You try to pay no mind to his nonchalant answer and stare at him square in the face, which makes you tilt your head up because he’s goddamn tall.
“Listen, buddy. I’m going to make this short. I’m not in a good mood today, and you’re definitely not helping. It’s not that you’re a douchebag or anything—I’m not saying you aren’t, though, but I would really rather not talk to you right now. I kind of just want to get home.”
He’s surprisingly understanding about it. “Yeah, sure,” he says, “but maybe you could give me your email or something? I’d like to talk to you again.”
You ponder over the idea and decide why the hell not. Hopefully you won’t get spammed later because of this. “Got a piece of paper?” you ask.
He hands over a napkin and a pen, which you grab and scribble on.
“Here’s my Trollian.” You give him back the napkin with the word “carcinoGeneticist” on it. “I don’t really check my email, and if you helped design Sgruban Love, you sure as heck better have a copy of the game.” You’re pretty much past him finding out you play the game. He helped designed it anyway—you assuredly can’t lie yourself out of this one.
An apparently hip feature of the dating simulation is that it has a chat client. Normally, it would be used as part of the game, and is a main facet in communicating with the characters, but when connected to wifi, you could use it to chat with other users who own the game. You’ve never used it to contact real people though, so you’re not quite sure how different the features would be. The person on the other end of the chat definitely wouldn’t be spewing out compliments on how great your hair looks and how much they like you, that’s for sure.
“Thanks then. I’ll message you later today then, okay?”
You nod absentmindedly and before you know it, he’s heading back the direction he came.
Time to go home, you guess.
==> Hey, you got his Trollian!
Okay so catching up with the dude was not the greatest idea you’ve ever had, but at least you got his Trollian, which also confirms your suspicions that he indeed does play Sgruban Love. You’re pretty excited to troll him, and you know he’s going to freak when he realizes your account is basically an exact mirror of the game’s AI version of you. You guys share the same text color, typing quirk, and handle, because you technically are the same person anyway. Normally, the game automatically doesn’t allow users to make accounts that copy its bachelor AI information, but being a part of the game production team has its benefits.
You’re fucking Sollux Captor, and you’re in a pretty good mood.
You bypass the café you were at originally and keep walking. It feels more like a stay-home day for you, especially when you’ve got people—or a certain person—to talk to. Grinning, you make your way back to your apartment.