up from speed-dating.
But he pushed all that stuff aside, got himself a six-pack, and settled down in front of his keyboard. He’d expected it to be a sort of undermanned, overgeared, half-arsed business, but actually, it seemed really popular. There were even people who weren’t on the raid hanging out in Mumble chatting as they levelled or played other video games or, in Caius’s case, worked from home. And, to his surprise, Drew found he was having a good time.
Solace had posted him an [Elegant Tuxedo] set, so for the first time since he’d started playing, Drew actually put something in Ella’s cosmetic slot. She kind of looked like a really angry butler, but he was glad he’d bothered, because everyone else was in an equally silly costume. Solace, as promised, was wearing a [Lovely Red Dress] from the Valentine’s event, Morag had a pumpkin head from Halloween, Ialdir was wearing a set of elven chain Drew suspected had some kind of deep lore significance, and Bjorn had somehow managed to polymorph himself into a mushroom, which Drew was pretty sure was one of the really heavy faction rewards from vanilla.
They made a strange party as they burst through the gates of Traitor’s Spire in pursuit of Maladreth the Betrayer, the elf responsible for the schism in the elvish people, who, to be fair, was dressed almost as ludicrously as they were. He was sort of this crazy bishi sorcerer with ankle-length black hair, swirly black robes, massive nineteen eighties shoulder pads, and an enormous pointy helm that had been the subject of many cock jokes down the years.
They scythed in a leisurely manner through what had once been top-tier raiding content, bickering affectionately over which drops looked coolest or stupidest or most like a wang. They were constantly stopping to take screenshots for the guild photo album, look at cool things, and listen to Bjorn and Ialdir trying to out-lore each other. People, including Drew, got steadily drunker and louder as the evening progressed. There was even singing, led by Bjorn, who had a surprisingly impressive baritone.
What there wasn’t, was anything from Solace. At least not on Mumble, at least as far as Drew could make out. But then it was hard to tell because there were a lot of people chipping in all over the place. It was something he’d been low-key aware of for a while. Different guilds had very different voice policies, and it was hard to keep track of who was saying what in the middle of a raid anyway, but it was getting to the point that it was A Thing. And he felt bad that it was A Thing. After all, it was pretty normal for some people not to talk in Mumble.
The truth was, Sanee’s jokes about chicks on the internet had opened up a whole can of gender-related worms that Drew had been very careful to keep closed.
Then again, maybe he’d been right to. Whatever was going on with Solace, they were just hanging out in a video game. And obviously it was better for Drew to imagine this cute, lonely gamer girl instead of, well, someone like him. But basically whether Solace really looked anything like her avatar was none of his business.
Also, Tinuviel would have pointed out that assuming everyone on the internet was a middle-class white dude was totally sexist. And, now he thought about it, SCDD had a pretty high proportion of actual women. Especially compared to Anni, which was a legendary sausage party.
So, really, there was no reason Solace couldn’t be a girl IRL. She was into, y’know, looking pretty and being quirky and having feelings about things. That was girl stuff, right? And thank God Tinuviel couldn’t hear him thinking like that. She would have torn him a new one.
Drew went to sleep far too late and woke up completely hungover. When he finally peeled himself out of bed and turned on his computer, his desktop was papered with screenies, most of which were him and Solace. He’d basically never taken a screenshot before that wasn’t for his course. He stared at them, feeling weird.
It had become blatantly obvious that the “don’t fancy imaginary elves” rule was kaput.
And he had no idea what to do about it.
In a panic, he scrambled into his clothes and ran down the hall to Tinuviel’s room. There was usually a message on her door if she had company or didn’t want to be bothered, but since there was only