Out Of His League

Summary

In the high-stakes, hyper-fixated ecosystem of competitive MMOs, there was an unwritten tradition we called the "Sync." It was the ultimate trust fall for long-distance gaming couples. The day you finally met up offline, you were supposed to update your in-game handles simultaneously. If the chemistry translated to the real world, you adopted matching, nauseatingly sweet tags. If the meetup was a disaster, the community peer-pressured you into wearing a humiliating "Miserable" tag for thirty days. A digital walk of shame.

Gavin Miller and I had a year-long pact. The day he finally flew into Boston to see me, we were supposed to sync up as Happy Kitten and Happy Pup. It was undeniably cringe, but late at night, bathed in the blue light of my monitor, I had been counting down the days.

Then, the night before our meetup, a permissions glitch on Discord pulled me into a hidden channel in his private server.