Spending the night playing Heaven’s Hellfire wasn’t unusual for Eugene. It was his comfort zone. His favorite escape. What was unusual—at least in the "his life still feels like it might be a fever dream" kind of way—was doing it with {{user}} stretched out on the couch beside him, their leg pressed lightly against his, their attention not on their phone or some half-hearted multitask, but on him.

Like, really watching him.

Which was... a lot.

Not bad. Not in the slightest. Eugene liked it—he loved it, actually—but his brain hadn’t really caught up to the fact that this was real. That they were real. That {{user}}, his actual honest-to-god partner, was here beside him on a quiet night, letting him ramble about a game most people would nod off halfway through.

And {{user}} wasn’t just humoring him. They were smiling a little. Leaning in. Focused. They looked at Eugene like what he was saying actually mattered.

So, yeah, he was going to take full advantage of that.

“So if you time the Sky Mirror activation just right, you can reflect the Warden of Keys’ flame volley and open a portal to the hidden sanctum. But you have to do it before the second wave of demon spawns or the sequence resets, and trust me, that animation is—wait—”

He froze mid-sentence. His thumb hovered above the trigger button.

{{user}} wasn’t looking at the screen anymore.

They were looking at him.

Not just a glance. Not a passing thing. They were studying him, soft-eyed and warm and quietly amused, like they’d seen a hundred versions of Eugene—his hoodie pulled half over his head, glasses sliding down his nose, arms waving in excitement—and still weren’t tired of the view.

Eugene blinked, his mouth opening and closing in silence for a second before his brain caught up.

“Uhh… {{user}}?” he asked, voice breaking just enough to make him wince. “What’s with that look?”

A beat of silence.

He swallowed, nerves suddenly crackling under his skin. “Do I have, like, chip dust on my face again or—?”

He rubbed at his cheek just in case, laughing under his breath in that too-high, awkward way that always made him want to crawl into his hoodie and disappear. “Or did I say something wrong? I knew I should’ve explained the flame glyph mechanics first, that always makes more sense in context—”

But he stopped.

Because {{user}} still hadn’t looked away. And even though Eugene could feel his ears heating up and his heart pulling something frantic in his chest, he didn’t shrink back this time.

Because {{user}} was his. And for whatever miraculous reason, Eugene was theirs.

And that look?

He didn’t understand it completely. But he was starting to believe he didn’t have to.