12 am w weesa
part 1 of: between dusk and dawn | a psyfe series
very brief summary: you and weesa finally attempt a tournament after many saturday night gaming sessions
rating: e
genre: fluffy oneshot
notes: you know i usually write angst so sometimes when i write fluff i'm like is this toooooo much fluffiness? if it is and you're cringing, sorry, if it's not, i hope you like it haha!
Snacks? Check. Pyjamas? Check. Weesa insisting you play video games even though you were already half asleep? Check. These were the normal characteristics of Saturday night.
'Let me guess,' he hummed.
He brushed his fingertip across the spines of the cases of all his video games. He stopped exactly where you knew he would.
'This one?' he asked, eyebrow raised like he was really unsure if you wanted to play your favourite game.
It was basically just a huge variety of cute characters who needed to collect valuables and drop those valuables off at various checkpoints around the map. Nothing crazy, but so addictive to play.
'If you insist,' you groaned, which made him chuckle.
Weesa always let you pick the game, because he loved just about anything. He said it didn't matter because he liked playing with you. Sleep also didn't matter to Weesa. He had just as much energy in the middle of the night as he did in the middle of the day and you envied that, having to meet his energy supply by way of coffee.
You preferred the upbeat cartoonish games over anything else, and you would say that you've played this game enough with Weesa to actually be quite skilled at it. It wasn't your favourite because you played it on your own. You gamed almost exclusively alongside Weesa at this point.
'You know...' he began as he put the cartridge into its console, 'we have yet to play the online tournament.'
You snorted, 'I don't know if I'm up to that standard. It's full of people who like... quit their jobs to play and stuff.'
'We should try it anyways. It'll be nice to say we've tried it!'
You figured there was no harm, it's not like it required money to join. You'd never attempt it by yourself, but you and Weesa made strategies when you played games together and it made you two a powerful duo.
He was the kind of person you wouldn't mind being lost with, a person who could make any worst-case scenario feel a little less bad. Definitely a person that could make even an online game tournament nothing but fun.
He plopped down on the couch beside you and passed you your controller, the one you brought from home and left at his place. They were both the same colour, so he customized them both with some of his drawings that he had made into little stickers. Yours had different types of flowers.
'You ready?' he asked.
You weren't sure you were now. He was stretching out his arms and legs, cracking each of his fingers. You felt you should have spent a week training for this. You settled on taking a couple sips of your coffee and hoping for the best.
It was only a matter of time before things got serious. You began the tournament laughing, talking, and asking each other if you were really doing this. It was just a silly game.
Between round four and five, you looked over to see Weesa's gaze locked on the screen, eyebrows furrowed, fingers tight around his controller. He was into it now; there was no going back. Seeing him so invested in the game urged you to try your best to win.
'What if I take the side route?' you asked, 'Would that help at all?'
His hair was tied up, but a couple strand had fallen out and bounced as he nodded his head.
'Yeah, yeah! I'll give you the valuables I have and you take them along the side route while I distract everyone else.'
It was a series of this, making plans and seeing that people totally already knew about them. The rounds were ending and starting so quickly that there suddenly wasn't much time left to pull yourselves up into a good rank.
By the last round, you were both rambling and yelling at the TV as you tried to figure out what to do. Weesa was flailing his feet as though that would help his character run any faster. You could see his character on your screen, who was smiling and looked confident and was as far from the real Weesa as it could possibly get.
'That's walking! How can you consider that running? Go! Go! Go! Come on!' he urged his character.
Unlike Weesa's, your character matched your real self quite well at the time as it anxiously ran around in circles to get away from the five other players trying to steal what it had. You were getting rush after rush of adrenaline; muscles you didn't even know you had were tensed.
You finally got away from the opponents, who decided to start stealing from each other instead, and you were running closer to Weesa's character. You could see the checkpoint. Weesa was barely breathing beside you.
Out of nowhere, one of the characters that had a special ability of flying swooped down and took Weesa out. All his items spilled over the floor around him, diamonds and fruits and coins. Weesa wailed.
'I'll get them!' you cried, your feet flailing a little too now as you tried to get your character to Weesa's things before anyone else.
It was risky to pick them all up; Weesa was urging you to just go. This was so intense that you couldn't believe it was a game recommended for ages eight and older.
Weesa worked hard for the valuables and you weren't going to leave them behind. His character came back to ward off anyone who wanted to steal from you as you picked up his things and you darted off to the final checkpoint on the map. Neither of you said a word as your character ran and ran.
'Yes!' the two of you cried in unison when you finally reached it.
Weesa slumped back on the couch, sweat beading across his forehead. He looked over to you and smiled.
'We did good. No top tier, but we still did really good!'
'I'm surprised we got anything to the checkpoints,' you nodded.
Weesa looked back to the TV with a tired exhale. Then, everything about him went rigid again, as though there was a surprise round at the end and you were both missing it. When you looked, you could understand his expression.
Third place.
First try.
'No way...' Weesa whispered, standing up to take a closer look at the screen. Sure enough, your characters were standing on the winner's podium after a couple replays of the game. Your characters were holding hands with little bronze medals around their necks.
Weesa turned to you with wide eyes, smiling like he did when he got accepted into his top pick of university. You stared at each other for a few moments.
'We did it!' he cried.
You suddenly remembered the neighbours, but couldn't possibly tell Weesa to be quieter now. You were just as loud, jumping onto your feet and excitedly laughing, even more when Weesa pulled you into his arms. Your feet came off the ground when he stood up straight and squeezed you.
He danced with you to the 8-bit music playing in the game, doing his best to half-sing along although the sounds weren't humanly possible to make. You laughed so hard at how excited and happy he was that you could feel tears building at the corners of your eyes.
He pulled away after a few moments, his cheeks bright pink from how worked up he got.
'You did it! I remember when I showed you this game and you could barely pass level one, and now you're a pro!' he said as he ruffled your hair, then pretending to break down into happy tears.
'It wasn't me who won!'
He looked at you with wide, excited eyes, 'You saved me and my belongings!' he laughed, 'I have to tell my friends!'
He did, at almost 1AM. You both sat down on the couch again and split some snacks as he dialled the number of one of his friends. You didn't know who this friend was, but Weesa used your name with him and didn't need to specify that you were his friend/classmate/weekend-gaming-partner.
You looked away, smiling to yourself at the thought of him talking about you to his friends. You talked about him all the time, but you never expected that you'd come up in his other conversations.
When the music from the TV stopped, you could hear his friend on the other line,
'Did you carry the team?'
'No!' Weesa snorted, 'She really did so well. She'd beat you, no problem!'
'Man... she's good at gaming, funny, pretty, offers to hang out with you all the time—Is she even real?'
Your heart raced, like, so hard that you thought Weesa would be able to hear it. You pretended that you weren't paying attention, instead scrolling through the first thing that appeared on your phone screen.
'Somehow, she is.'
You gulped, your entire body breaking out into a sweat. This was so cute, but this was also Weesa. He was that friend of yours who loved music and drawing and cool clothes—that's what you knew him as.
'Oh god, Weesa in love is so cringey!' his friend cried, so loud that Weesa knew you could probably hear him say that, clearing his throat and standing up to pace the room while he talked now.
'I'm not.'
You looked up when you knew he was looking the other way. He was blushing and biting his nails.
'Maybe we'll play you sometime! We can all join a tournament, and you already know who'll win,' he snickered after a few moments of listening to his friend talk.
He didn't like to talk too long on the phone when you were there, which you thought was kind of him—he'd even tell his mother, who he'd usually talk for hours with, that he had to call her later.
"I promise I'm okay. Yes, I'm eating enough. Mom, I have to go! I had dumplings two minutes ago, Mom, I'm not starving."
'Well, I'm exhausted,' he sighed, and returned to the couch beside you.
You nodded, 'It takes more energy than you'd think.'
There was a moment of silence between you. Weesa was blushing again. He stood up.
'I'll put a movie on, and turn out the light,' he rambled, turning the light out first.
You got ready for bed as he did this, used to the routine. You found a lot of comfort on his couch because it pulled out into a bed and he always put a bunch of comfortable pillows on it and gave you three blankets to make sure you weren't too cold. He sometimes fell asleep there too, but was usually gone if you'd wake up in the middle of the night. He didn't sleep well those nights, always tossing and turning.
He turned on the TV and let a random show play, not overly interested in actively picking something. You weren't interested in actively watching either. You could only think about this phone call, and all the context that was missing.
His friend said you were pretty. Did his friend see a photo of you and make this conclusion, or did Weesa call you pretty?
His friend said he was whipped, but would he say this based only on one or two mentions of you? Did Weesa talk about you all the time?
You didn't notice the silence much until Weesa let out a soft laugh.
'Are you asleep already?' he asked.
You shook your head and looked at him, slowly coming back to reality. You looked down into your lap at your phone. It softly vibrated in the pile of blankets before going to voicemail.
'S-Sorry, was it ringing that long?' you tittered.
His confused expression turned to something that looked defeated. He slumped over and rested his head on your shoulder. His hair tickled your cheek, and you couldn't help but take in the smell of his shampoo, something that lingered faintly on the pillows he gave you when you stayed over.
'You... heard what he said, didn't you?'
As though a switch was flipped, any tiredness that was building in your body disappeared in seconds.
'What who said? Someone said something?' you blurted, trying but failing to seem clueless.
'Your face was just as red as mine probably was. I'm sorry.'
You almost turned to him to make sure he could understand that he really didn't have to be sorry, but the closeness and the confrontation were paralyzing you. You took a shallow breath to plan your next words, trying to prevent any more obvious sounding lies.
'Why are you sorry? You said nice things about me to your friends, there's nothing wrong with that.'
Weesa sighed, lifting his head off your shoulder and looking right at the side of your face. You forced your eyes in his direction.
'I don't know if I want us to just be friends,' he mumbled, and his gaze snapped away in seconds. 'N-No, I'm... I don't know what I'm saying.'
He shook his head and lay down fully. His back was to you now.
You felt bad, because you had this idea of how he felt about you because of that phone call, but he had nothing. For all he knew, you never thought about him as more than a friend.
He had no idea that wasn't true at all.
You thought about Weesa a lot, in so many ways. You thought about Weesa in the morning, when he'd text you about a dog he saw on his way to school or when he'd say that you left something at his place on Sunday morning after you went home. You thought about him during the day, in class or on the bus, because Weesa was the type of person that lived through everything. It was either that someone resembled him, or you saw something he liked, or you saw something you felt he would like. Weesa was always with you in that way.
You thought about him at night, on weekends like this, where you'd cozy up in his apartment and simply be. You'd be childish, you'd be hyper, you'd be together; that thought made you so happy.
What made you happier was the confirmation that he not only thought about you too, but talked about you to his friends in a way that made them think you weren't real.
Before thinking, you spoke.
'Sometimes I can't believe you're real either.'
Man, was that ever cliché.
You also turned away, and curled into yourself a bit as though it would ease the embarrassment.
Just as you started to feel like this moment had turned sour, you felt the familiar comfort of Weesa's blanket drape over you.
'So you did hear what he said,' he chuckled.
You pursed your lips to hold back your smile.
'I'm sorry, I did.'
He gently rested his hand on your shoulder, like he didn't know if it was okay to. The lines that once defined your friendship were now blurred and warped. You turned to face him, hoping to find guidance in his facial expressions at the very least.
He was much closer than you expected. His eyes flickered across your features. Colours from the TV faintly danced against the side of his face. Seeing his face didn't tell you as much as you thought about what he was thinking about your relationship, but it did make your heart race and your mind whisper,
Kiss him.
You had so many things you wanted him to know but no way of telling him that wouldn't sound like it was from a badly-written poem.
A strand of his hair fell in front of his eye, and you gently brushed it away.
'I really like what we have right now,' he began, and swallowed, 'But like my friend said...' he trailed off.
You nodded, and buried your face into his chest to hide your happiness, as well as to avoid doing something too impulsive.
His pulse was frantic.
He lay down and wrapped his arms around you, and pressed a soft, hesitant kiss against the top of your head.
'Let's talk more in the morning,' he said.
'I'd love to,' you replied.
'Sweet dreams,' he murmured.
Definitely.
