Page 7 of Game Over

Even when her heat came, she never made me feel less than. I’d worried at first that she’d want to break things off if I couldn’t satisfy her needs in the normal way, but she just shrugged and said she would go to the clinic.

It bothered me a little, not being able to give her what she needed. But I was too smitten to worry about it too much. As long as our situation worked for us, that was all that mattered.

I would’ve really liked either of them to be here tonight. But I understood her distance. Especially as I watched another mass of messages get removed by one of my mods.

I sighed, rolling my shoulders as I tried to refocus on the task at hand. The countdown timer steadily progressed towards zero as the little red dot beside Tara’s icon lit up.

Tarable - finally over. Wanna cuddle and watch movies tonight?

God, every time she texted, I got giddy. Excited butterflies chasing each other in my stomach.

Theybe_Knot - of course baby, miss you.

Tarable - Miss you too. Be over soon. With snacks!!

I heart reacted and sat back in my chair, grinning.

“Chat, this’ll be my last match of the night. Bet your channel dollars now on if you think I’m winning it!”

I watched as the odds rose against me. Though channel dollars were a fake currency that held no real value, the viewers loved them and took these betsveryseriously, meaning they really didn’t believe in my ability to deliver.

Ouch.

Time to prove them wrong.

Once the match started, I locked in. I needed at leastonegood round, and it seemed like I’d been sorted into a decent team. Solo queuing was always a bit of a crapshoot, but if you were a good player you should be able to shine with any team behind you.

Our healer was doing a great job at keeping our front line alive, and I continued to pick the other players off at every opportunity with my sniper rifle. A lot of people thought it was all about getting rid of tanks and other damage-heavy players, but I’d found without the base of a solid healer, the entire team crumbled.

Meaning my job was to make sure that I got rid of them at every opportunity.

“Behind,” I yelled to one of our midfield players as one of the tanks from the other team used their special.

They jumped out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting taken on by the move. It also gave me the space to line my dual guns up and take my shot, eliminating them quickly.

It was a bit close before that, but with only one healer I was concentrating on, and everyone on our team doing their job, that victory screen came swiftly.

Finally.

“Hey, Watcher, great heals,” I said to the other player.

“Thanks,” they said. Their voice was on the masc side, but I never assumed over voice chat. “I’m working my way up the ranks slowly. This isn’t my normal kind of game.”

“Well keep it up, you’re great.”

I watched as the moderators input the results and the chat got equal parts excited and irate. My constant believers were basically the only ones in this situation who voted for me, and they were also always some of the loudest in chat. It always made me laugh how worked up people got over channel points with no real value, but it did keep people engaged and interactions up so I wasn’t about to point that out.

“I told you I’d pull through, chat,” I said with a grin. “I’m logging off, but I’ll be back tomorrow for our regularly scheduled stream.”

I took a minute to find another streamer friend who I could raid. Eva_aft3r was on. She was more Tara’s friend than mine, but I didn’t mind sending her my audience.

I sent the raid and said hello quickly, watching her kick ass at Murdered by Midnight for a couple minutes while I responded to emails. She was really on her game today. Though I wasn’t really into horror games, it was pretty fun to watch other people play. Especially every time she hooked another player.

As I watched a ping came through, a friend invite from the Watcher player, AetherNomad6. I didn’t normally accept random friend requests, but they seemed chill, and they were really good, so in this instance I did.

It wasn’t long before I’d sifted through my post-stream tasks enough for my favorite reward, a baggie of watermelon sourcandy. I opened the little treat while I let my computer boot down, giving my desk a quick wipe before heading into the kitchen to prep for Tara. I popped us some popcorn and grabbed all the cozy blankets I had—plus the pillows off my bed. Even when she wasn’t in heat, the need to nest, even in small ways, was always there.

It wasn’t long until she was knocking on the door, her smile bright as I opened it.

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