Work Text:
Charlie totally loved LARP. She considered herself a bit of a larping queen actually. But she preferred high Fantasy, elves, dragons and magic. She felt comfortable in that setting. She could min-max her way to being the baddest bitch on the game floor. She read books like Harry Potter and the Hobbit. She liked fantasy, it was a happy place where the heroes always won—well, except for Song of Ice and Fire. It was an escape, a warm blanket of an escape. She liked fantasy. She had no interest in dark and gritty settings. Comics in the 90’s had been terrible. Batman was overrated.
She’d seen the source material a few times in her local game store. Books that were marked ADULT as if somehow playing vampires or werewolves were the mature thing to do. Charlie had plenty of adult encounters while in Middle-earth, thank you very much. But when there had been a flyer in her local gamer den for a new larp on the local college campus? Yeah, Charlie had decided to give it a go. Not because she was interested in this pretentious system but because her main game was in its offseason.
Sometimes a girl just needs a larp fix, regardless of the genre.
She had sent an email to the contact on the flyer for the online group for the game. Roads Not Taken was a silly name for a campaign but Charlie had once been in a D&D game called Elf Quest so who was she to judge? She joined the topic for new players where the Story Teller–how weird was that to call your game master?– that told her the system was just humans who got tapped with powers to fight monsters. It didn’t sound as goth as she had been expecting.
Charlie was wowed by just how normal and geeky everyone had seemed. Just normal geeks who were planning on starting a larp about hunting monsters. One of the other players offered to help her build a character for the system. Charlie was fairly sure she could figure out how to build a character by herself but the offer game with the chance to actually know someone before hitting the game floor so she’d agreed.
They had chatted privately for a couple days before agreeing on a time to meet up before the game to go over the basics. Charlie learned her real name was Jo. Charlie loved talking to her if she was honest. She learned Jo had an older taste in music. She worked with her mom at a bar not too far away. Jo had a wicked sense of humor. Jo also apparently was super well versed in the system. She had pdf copies of all the books for the system that she had emailed to Charlie through an encrypted server. It wasn’t the first time Charlie had gotten a crush on a girl across the internet but she was falling hard for her.
Charlie felt comfortable enough to talk about her own life. How she worked in IT. What her favorite books and tv shows were and how much she really missed having a game that ran on a set schedule. How her Hogwarts house was Gryffindor and Hermione was her favorite character.
Jo said that was adorable. Charlie had screenshot that exchanges to her phone and stared at it sometimes feeling her face go red every time.
Her favorite character from Harry Potter was Ron. She considered herself to by a Gryffindor as well but Pottermore had sorted her into Slytherin of all things. Jo talked about her collection of fantasy swords as well as just knives in general. She mentioned her favorite shows were a little more mystery than fantasy. She liked terrible B horror movies as well as good horror.
Jo even made Hunter the Reckoning seem interesting and three dimensional. Jo made it a very human story. How people could just be going about their lives when suddenly the powers that be pulled back the curtain and revealed the monsters that existed in the world. Jo made the dark and gritty world of darkness even seem kind of cool.
Charlie learned from talking with Jo on her skype that Jo was in at least 3 other larps in the city. Charlie got to learn all the drama of the intersecting Organizations of larps, two vampires and one werewolf. She got to hear some off-topic stories about how her friend Dean was constantly in some new crisis in a game because he couldn’t ignore or not take the bait for a plot. She heard about how the politics of one vampire game screwed up all her fun in the other one.
Jo even asked for her facebook. Charlie had been hesitant to give it at first, it was full of some memes and her different cosplay pictures. But she gave it anyway. She liked Jo. Jo seemed like a good person. Jo was gorgeous. Her smile in her photos was infectious. Charlie found herself smiling every time she got a text or IM from Jo anyways but now she had a face to go with it.
Through facebook, she also got to put other faces to names. Jo started a small group chat with some of the other players going to the hunter game to have a slight chance at building a group that sort of knew each other. Charlie found she liked most of them thought Sam and Dean seemed to be constantly getting each other off track. Adam normally only seemed to communicate with memes. Castiel was the assistant Storyteller for the game and seemed to be trying to keep Dean from getting too out there. Charlie was falling in love with Jo’s friends too.
The only thing Charlie couldn’t seem to ask was whether Jo felt the same way about how they were getting along. They were talking all the time now. Once facebook had been exchanged then Instagram and twitter followed. Charlie wondered if she had a Tumblr but was afraid to ask, her Tumblr was overflowing with personal posts gushing about how much she liked Jo, it seemed a bad plan to open that door right now.
So when are we meeting tomorrow? Charlie texted Jo.
Want to catch coffee tomorrow before game? I want to see if the Unicorn thing is as bad as everyone says. Jo responded.
It’s a date. Charlie had responded without thinking.
Hope that means you’re paying ;) Jo had texted back.
Charlie had to lay on the bed and remember how to breathe.
Charlie totally hadn’t driven herself crazy with what to wear to meet Jo for the first time. She wasn’t sure if it was a date-date or just a ‘gals being pals’ event. That would have been insane to hyper stress about what to wear. She had stuffed her character clothes in her bag and showed up fifteen minutes early to the coffee shop and tried to calm her breathing.
When Jo walked in with a t-shirt of Captain America’s shield colored in the bisexual flag Charlie was sure she’d died and gone to heaven.
“Cute shirt.” Charlie has said waving Jo over.
“thanks. I only save it for first dates with cute girls.” Jo had grinned.