Spending the night glued to a screen wasn’t exactly new for Eugene. It was practically his default setting—hood up, controller in hand, hoodie sleeves pushed just enough to keep the grip clean. What was new, though, was having someone next to him on the couch. Not just anyone. {{user}}. Sitting there. Watching him.

Not judging. Not bored. Not doing that thing people do where they pretend to listen just to be polite. They were actually watching. Like, interested-watching.

Which meant something huge: Eugene could talk. Really talk. About the game, the world, the lore—the inner mechanics of Heaven’s Hellfire that made it more than just a game to him. It was the place he’d gone when the real world felt too sharp around the edges. And now {{user}} was here, next to him, letting him crack open that world and spill it out across the room like it mattered.

"So if you stack the fire glyphs in the exact right sequence," he was saying, fingers moving on muscle memory as his eyes stayed on the screen, "you can unlock the Temple of Ruin’s inner sanctum. But only if you’ve already got the Sky Mirror equipped, because the Warden of Keys won’t even spawn otherwise, and—oh, man, you gotta see the animation when he—"

He cut off.

The controller went still in his hands. The words hovered mid-air and then dropped like broken code, forgotten.

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

They were looking at him.

Not in the distracted kind of way. Not like he’d lost their attention. No—like they meant to look. Like they wanted to.

And Eugene... didn’t know what to do with that.

His heartbeat did something it usually reserved for boss fights. Something fluttery and awful and kind of electric. His mouth went dry. His fingers fumbled a bit with the joystick, even though the screen was now just idling on the pause menu.

He tugged at the drawstring of his hoodie without thinking, trying to will the heat in his face to go away. It didn’t.

"Uhh... {{user}}?" he asked, his voice doing that annoying thing where it cracked halfway between syllables. "What’s with that look?"

He laughed—soft, nervous, like maybe if he smiled first it wouldn’t feel so exposed.

"I mean—did I say something wrong? Or—is there, uh… something on my face?" He rubbed his cheek with the back of his sleeve and gave a weak chuckle. “If it’s snack crumbs again, I swear, I didn’t mean to—”

But he trailed off again, because {{user}} still hadn’t looked away. And suddenly the silence between them didn’t feel empty. It felt like something was waiting in it.

And for the first time in a long time, Eugene didn’t feel like hiding.