A group of friends streams their gaming on Wednesday nights. But not all the action is on the dining room table.

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Chapter 19 -- Did We?

“You okay?”

I sighed. “Yes. For like the fifth time, I’m fine.”

Brian held up his hands and leaned away from me but continued to smile. “You’re just fidgeting a lot, is all.”

“Yeah, well.” I harrumphed and crossed my arms. “I’m just ready to get off this boat.”

“You and me both,” he said, laying a hand on my shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

I tried not to flinch at his touch, but I could see the shift in his eyes when he caught how forced my smile was, and he quickly dropped his hand.

I gave myself a mental kick. “Promise, I’m all right,” I told him again, reaching out and squeezing his arm instead. “Just a bit too much alcohol and not enough aspirin,” I said, trying to give him a more genuine smile. It seemed to do the trick, as I watched some of the stress leave his features as he turned around and started fiddling with his phone again.

It wasn’t a lie, after all. Not entirely.

It just wasn’t the whole truth, either.

I hiked my bag up on my shoulder and couldn’t help but fidget just a bit more as I looked around the little room our crew had gathered in, waiting for our chance to unboard with all the complications the film crew would add to that, and thankful that it would be the last shots we had to do for the advertising video. All of us were halfway in our own worlds, what with plans for the convention and the trip there.

Unfortunately, that left me plenty of time to get lost in my own head when that was the last thing I wanted to do….

#

Waking up in our room on the ship that morning had brought with it a number of pleasant and unpleasant sensations.

The feel of the soft, warm sheets on my skin.

The gentle swaying of the boat.

The pounding headache and wooziness told me mojitos were going on the same Do Not Call list as hurricanes, and that I should never trust anything Maria handed me with an umbrella in it again.

“Mrrrngh,” I moaned, sliding my arms out of the warm sheets so I could press my palms to my temples, desperate to squeeze a bit of pain out through my ears.

“Hrmfrmf,” someone else moaned, rolling to face away from me and taking the sheets with them, exposing the rest of my body to the cooler room.

I froze, goose pimples rising on every inch of my skin, both from the temperature and from the realization that I wasn’t alone in bed.

My eyes shot open, and I slowly turned over, like the character in some horror movie, to see what hideous monster might lie in wait to gobble me up.

Worse than that, the back of a very familiar head of sandy blond hair stared back at me, its owner lightly snoring on the other side.

Hangover be damned, I crabbed my way off the bed and into the floor faster than the time I’d fled the dobsonfly that got in my room.

About that time, the cool air and the carpet worked together to bring to my attention another terrifying realization: my dress was nowhere to be found.

I let out a strangled gurgle that might have been anger, or might have been shame, or any number of other brain-shattering emotions and skittered for the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and leaning against it.

Huff, huff, huff.

There was my dress, draped across the side of the tub, my boots and accessories laying in the (thankfully dry) tub behind it.

Well, that was one small mystery solved, at least.

We must have hit a wave because I felt the boat take a bigger lurch than normal. Combined with the swimming my head was already doing, that was enough to send me staggering for the toilet, the mojito, the fuzzy navels, and what seemed like everything else I’d consumed in the last week, making a final and successful bid for escape.

“Hurk,” I murmured, reaching down to cradle my stomach, only to find a soft and squidgy obstacle in the way. The mental image of Maria asking me to make a con save versus morning sickness entered my head, and I could swear I could hear the dice bouncing across the table.

I rolled a one.

“Hurph.”

I dry heaved a couple more times before it felt like things calmed down enough, I could stand again. I held on to the edge of the sink tightly with one hand while I used one of the paper cups from the dispenser next to the mirror to rinse my mouth out at least four times before I was convinced I’d cleared the last of the nasty.

That’s when I finally glanced in the mirror itself.

I looked a mess. Wild hair. Smeared makeup, from my eyes to my chin: if there had been any hope of determining the night’s activities based on my lipstick, it was long gone with one glance. My bra was still on, thankfully, though it was pulled up so that the band rested uncomfortably directly across my nipples, a problem that, now I noticed it, required immediate correction. And, there below it, that evil mound of rubber and goop and trouble.

And below that, just the barest visible hint that I really, really needed to pee.

For one bleary-eyed, headache-fueled moment, I considered standing up to do so – just to prove the point – but another lurch of the ship was enough to convince me that was a bad idea. “Not like these underwear have a flap anyway,” I muttered as I undid the snaps on the bodysuit, lowered my panties, and plopped on the toilet, whimpering only a little as the jostling caused ripples of pain through my skull.

As I sat there, I looked down at myself and thought.

Okay, Leigh. What’s the sitch?

I got drunk last night. Easy bead on that, at least. More to the point, I got drunk while on a casino boat while dressed as a pregnant elf sorceress. Blackout drunk, even. So, that’s a story to never, ever let anyone tell my future kids.

And this morning, I woke up in bed, in only my underwear, with my best guy friend and roommate, Brian.

What in God’s name happened in between?

I looked at my costume, draped across the tub. It didn’t look like it had been tossed there haphazardly, and it looked like everything I’d left the room with the night before was still present. So, that means that either I regained consciousness long enough to strip down, or someone else stripped me down. I couldn’t imagine Brian or Maria leaving everything in the bathroom, so it was probably me.

So, what about…?

Blushing, I lifted my hand to my face and used it to sniff my breath. I grimaced at the smell of nasty from throwing up but didn’t smell anything else. With an even deeper blush, I shifted on the toilet seat, seeing if anything felt… off down below that I might have missed in my panicked rush earlier. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any pain or anything, so that probably didn’t happen either.

I didn’t even consider anything in the other direction as a possibility.

Okay, so. If there was any drunken debauchery, it was, at worst over-the-clothes stuff, even if that was less clothes than I’d hoped. Then again, all evidence pointed to my state of undress being my own doing, too, so nobody to blame there.

Maybe it was all just an innocent thing?

BANGBANGBANG

“Eeep!”

“Hey, you about done in there?” Brian’s groggy voice came through the door. “I got about a gallon of beer I need to get rid of.”

“Ah, yeah, just a moment!” I called back, higher pitched than I’d intended. “Just, umm, cleaning off my makeup!”

"Well, can I come in and piss while you're--"

“NO!”

“Okayokay! Five minutes.”

I heard him step away from the door, grumbling something that sounded suspiciously like “sorry princess” under his breath, not that I could blame him.

Feeling drained in more ways than one, I stood up, wiped myself down, and pulled everything back in place before going back to the mirror to do exactly what I’d told him I was already doing. I pushed through the pain with only a little more moaning and gathered my costume pieces to carry back to the room with me.

Brian gave me a winning smile the moment I opened the door, one that never left his face even as he very stiffly walked over, pushed past me, and closed the bathroom door behind himself, the latch barely clicking into place before I heard what sounded like a faucet running and a very satisfied sigh.

I rolled my eyes and dumped my costume stuff on the bed before going to the closet and pulling out my overnight and garment bags.

First things first, I dug in the little pocket on the side of my bag for the bottle of aspirin I always kept there, popped two, and almost packed it again before changing my mind and instead setting the bottle on the end table next to the bed we’d shared the night before, in case Brian needed any.

I started to strip off my body suit but hesitated. What if Brian walked in on me while I was naked? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen me undressed, sure, but it felt different now. More… I dunno. It just didn’t feel like something that should be that casual?

Thankfully the sound of the shower turning on told me I had at least a few minutes before I had to worry about him coming back out. I considered waiting and taking a shower myself, but the last thing I wanted was to still be standing there in my underwear when he came back out, so I gave myself a sniff, decided I was okay for another day and stripped down.

As soon as the body suit was off I stretched and let out a long sigh of relief, fighting the urge to scratch at all my newly exposed skin. Instead, I reached back into the side pocket of my bag and pulled out the pack of baby wipes there and gave myself a wipe down before pulling on fresh underwear, then grimaced as I opened my second garment bag and took the second suit out of it.

I’d thought it was bad enough when Cici had made one, but knowing that there were now three of these things out in the wild, all made specifically for me, sent a bit of a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the quickly drying moisture from the baby wipes.

I took one last breath, enjoying my freedom, and pulled on my pregnant prison.

By the time Brian came back out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist and his hair still dripping wet, I’d mostly finished putting on my new outfit.

“Cute,” he said, watching me buckle up my boots while he air-dried.

I started to say thanks but instead found myself looking at his abs and blushing. Gah, get it together, Leigh! “Ah, thanks. I still have to do my makeup.”

“Well, bathroom’s yours again,” he said, spying the painkillers on the nightstand and grinning slightly as he went for them.

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

I tried to think of something else to say, but unable to do so, I grabbed my makeup bag and headed for the bathroom instead, just catching a glimpse of his bare ass in the mirror on the back side of the door before I closed it behind me.

....

Whoo boy.

I set my makeup bag on the little counter next to the sink and once again looked at myself in the mirror. My makeup was gone, but my cheeks still held a flush, and for some reason, my breathing was tight.

“And this is just the second day of the trip,” a voice inside my head that sounded suspiciously like Brian’s reminded me.

I shook my head and got to work fixing my face.

#

“Lunea!”

“Wha?!” I jumped, Maria shaking me with enough force that I almost dropped my staff. “Sorry, umm.”

Maria rolled her eyes while Brian gave me a look that was half-amusement, half-concern over her shoulder. “We’re ready to go. Did you hear the plan?” Without waiting for my answer, she continued. “John and Adrian will lead us off, followed by you and Burg, then Sunny and Dahlia. I’ll come down last.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Oh, and can you hold on to Burg like the two of you are in love?”

“...Yes?” I responded, Brian’s grin over her shoulder turning my affirmation into more of a strangled question.

“Good!” She said, then clapped her hands. Turning around, she yelled, “Okay, folks! Hit the deck!”

The crew cleared out of the room to take their places at the top and bottom of the ramp, leaving the rest of us to find our positions. Jonah and Aaron got their things around and took position at the door, then I stepped up behind Aaron, Brian on my left.

“So, you wanna hold hands now, or wait ‘til we step outside?” Brian asked me, adding an elbow bump for good measure.

“Umm—”

“You should do it now,” Deidre said from directly behind me. “In case the cameras are rolling when we step out.”

I looked over my shoulder at Deidre and Sydney. Deidre looked calm, but I could see the crinkle at the corner of her eyes that told me she was trying not to crack. Sydney, on the other hand, wasn’t even attempting to hide her opinion, giving me the toothiest smile she could manage, with two thumbs up to boot, only slightly hampered by the axe and shield in her hands.

I rolled my eyes, but when I looked at Brian, I saw his eyes twitch down. Following his gaze, I saw that he’d put his sword in its sheath and was offering me his hand.

I looked up to his eyes again, and for the first time since waking up in bed that morning, really studied his expression.

If we had done anything the night before, he hadn’t mentioned it, nor had he made any insinuations that things were any different between us than they’d ever been.

But for whatever reason, they felt different.

I felt different.

Like our trip to the park, I felt butterflies in my stomach that seemed to leave the boundaries of my real body and fly through the silicone baby bump that was even now pushing my dress outward, visible for the world to see. A baby bump that represented our baby in-game.

No, I reminded myself. Not our baby: our characters’ baby.

But really… was there a difference?

I shook my head, hoping the jostling would knock the intrusive thoughts away, but all it did was make me a little dizzy.

I felt Brian’s fingers touch my hand and almost unconsciously opened my own, letting him slide his fingers across my palm as he took my hand in his.

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NOTES:

As always, comments and kudos appreciated.