1/
fallyn
My taste in men was just the worst. At forty, I was still shite for identifying red flags. A lifetime of bad dating decisions had helped me build up a blind spot when it came to detecting toxic guys.
As I walked through the Salt Lake International Airport, my tummy was a wreck of anticipation. I so very badly wanted this time, the men I was about to meet in person, to be different.
The relationship was better than any I’d had in the past, and I was just enough of an optimist to believe that it would continue to be. It wasn’t unusual that I’d met both men online, and neither was the fact that it had been in a game. I’d been in video game testing for long enough, and an introvert even longer, so it made sense that I’d meet most people through a screen first.
What made this time different were the details. We hadn’t exchanged real names, or photos. Individually identifying details were kept off the table. I was falling for their personalities, and they for mine.
Oh, yeah, there were two of them. And they both knew about each other and didn’t have a problem with meseeingboth of them. I was pretty sure they were together as well, but they insisted they were just co-workers with benefits.
Last time I’d tried awith benefitsrelationship with a guy I worked with, he got me fired when I tried to break up with him. And then stalked me for months anyway, insisting he could get me my job back if I’d just stop being a stupid cunt and go back to him.
Just. The. Worst.
It was easy to spot my bags when they came up on the luggage carrousel—I’d purchased the candy red Samsonite specifically for this trip. I wanted something that was distinctly me, and just as fresh and new as this opportunity.
Stalker-from-Quality-Assurance was the lastseriousrelationship I’d been in, though oddly enough not the first, or last possessive, obsessive fuck.
Was it wrong that I just wanted a guy—or two—who would smack my ass, pull my hair, and call me a filthy whore in the bedroom, but treat me like a human being when we weren’t fucking?
And on a completely unrelated note—I knew this was a small airport, all things considered, but I was about to drown in the sea of people. Why did I think flying out of my small, safe town, to a big city, to wander a convention center with tens of thousands of people, was a good idea?
Because RinCon was good for my career, and because my guys would be here. Puff69 and Archer—I didn’t give them grief about their screen names because they’d never once teased me about calling myself D3m0nK1tt13–demon kittie.
I stepped outside the airport, and a shock of cold hit me. It wasn’t quite so cold in Green Valley, the Northern California town I’d just left behind. And what we’d considered cold in the small London prefect I grew up in were almost tropical compared to this cold. The snow here wasn’t as pretty as in California though. Gray slush built up along the curbs, and dirtymounds piled as tall as me near pillars around the roads and lots.
The guys didn’t know what I did for a living, or any of the smaller details about my life, and I didn’t know about theirs. They were programmers, or so they claimed. For all I knew, they worked help desk at some little call center.
Archer certainly had the voice for it. Sex line operator, maybe. I’d have paid to hear him say a number of things he’d said to me over the past several months, and he’d said them to me for free.
But they thought I was an Instagram influencer. Cosplayer.
A tiny misdirection on my part. Puff had assumed, and I let him. His suggestion to come out here and meet them and make the con part of my feed was appropriate to what I really did anyway.
I grabbed a waiting cab, let the driver load my bags in the trunk, and gave him Puff’s address.
This was it. Last leg of my trip. I was finally meeting these guys in person. Seeing what they looked like. Learning their real names. Maybe fucking like bunnies, but more importantly, hopefully having a lot of fun both at RinCon and outside of it.
I should’ve grabbed one of the airsickness bags from the plane and brought it with me. It would be rude to puke inside this poor guy’s taxi.
The smart thing for me to do on this drive would be to go over my work plans for the next week. While I wasn’t an influencer in the sense Puff and Archer believed, I had an impact on opinions.
I broke video games. My online persona was an intentionally cold-hearted bitch. I loved her, because when I slipped into Online Fallyn, I was untouchable. People didn’t sneer at me for the purple stripe in my long, dark hair. No one called meshortyandcute stuffwhile they patted me on the head.
And I could block anyone who thought they could control or deride me.
Besides, playing the games was fun, and finding the exploits was almost as entertaining.
Instead of making notes about work while I was in the cab, I couldn’t stop thinking about intense, controlling Puff, and adorable, cuddly Archer, and this place they lived.
This city felt massive and small at the same time. I was used to being able to see mountains, but where were all the trees? And how come there were so many houses and apartment buildings, all jammed so close together?
The taxi navigated down one road after another, and when it turned onto a heavily tree-lined street, I would’ve let out a sigh of relief, if it weren’t for the slushy roads. But I could do snow. I’d gotten used to light snow.
Not many of the houses were visible from the road here, and we had to slow down to find a lot of the numbers. Puff had told me his driveway was the one with the wrought iron visible from the road, and sent me a picture. The only picture I had from him.