Chapter Text
Being a nineteen-year-old shut-in sucks, because what are you supposed to do but play games all night after sleeping through most of the day?
Well that, or engaging in definitely less-than-legal activities with your Sensei.
Thankfully, Tomura never minded this life. This way of living. In fact, he loved it. He loved taking out his rage for the world on strangers on the internet since, at the moment, Sensei wasn’t allowing him to engage in hardcore villainy. Fuck you, Sensei.
His setup had seen hundreds of different games. But a recent favourite of his has been this hero shooter called Overwatch — which was pretty ironic considering his whole villain thing — and it wasn’t too far ahead of League of Legends (shocking how that game was still a thing, even decades after its release).
It was a good evening to be playing. Rainy, sure, but it was that sort of pleasant spring rain that you could hear softly pitter-pattering against your window if it was quiet enough. Perfect atmosphere to down a couple energy drinks (Kurogiri definitely would not approve), curl up with a blanket in his far-too-expensive gaming chair and destroy some NPCs on his equally far-too-expensive gaming pc. Oh, joy.
And, as he listened to the familiar clicking of his mouse and soft clack of his keys, he felt as if he could just forget about everything. No real stress, just the momentary, fleeting feeling of wanting to kill your teammates. No pressure, just winning. Because he usually won, let’s be real.
The launcher was taking forever to load, which he wouldn’t usually mind, but today had been a horribly frustrating day and he wasn’t opposed to decaying something so easily replaceable. Or maybe not, who knew if Sensei was willing to pay for a new setup with the price of parts these days (he definitely was, but it was also usually met with a lecture on responsibility and self-control and other fatherly jargon). And shortly after, the familiar menu that he’d grown to (unfortunately) love popped up on his screen. He decided to save himself the earache and shifted his focus to actually getting into a match.
Now, what role to play? That age-old question was always so difficult to answer. Sure, Tomura was definitely a dps main, but he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to scream down the mic at his supports for not healing him. Tank was admittedly a lot of fun, but then again, he was usually stuck with the most brain-dead teammates that there was no point in trying. Curse high diamond lobbies. And he wasn’t planning on playing support without a duo, which he definitely did not have due to not knowing anyone who could match his superior gameplay (denial).
So dps it was, and it was time to wait for that “Game Found!” ding that he knew by instinct by now.
“Welcome to Junkertown.”
Banned: Sombra, Zarya, Hanzo, Mauga.
Well fuck.
Tomura wasn’t exactly a one-trick, but player handyman#50011 had over a thousand hours on Sombra and he was seriously looking forward to playing her. No need to panic, he could just play Genji or Ashe, because again, he wasn’t a one-trick, and Widowmaker was already taken. Hopefully, they were a decent Widow, because he didn’t want to play with an extra bad NPC. He had the mentality that, no matter what, his teammates were always shit and he had to suck it up and deal with it.
“Shit, stupid D.Va. Switch you idiot, switch!” No reply, Obviously. He wasn’t on team VC for them to be able to hear him.
[Hanzo’s death sound] “Fuck! Literally, why are you not healing. What the fuck.” Silence.
“Heal me, you idiots. Oh my shit I’m going to find your family and end them.” More silence.
The tank was horrific (literally who stays on D.Va against a good Rein?), but the rest of his team weren’t doing too bad, if he were to be honest. Not to stroke his own ego, but it was looking like he was smoothly cruising by with a K-D of 24 to 4 so far. While it wasn’t great by his standards, the enemy team were putting up a decent fight. And the Widowmaker, oh my, they had a K-D of 19 to 0 (literally how? this was a diamond lobby), and seemed to be amazing at hitting all of their shots. Or, alternatively, they just had good gamesense and ran from fights they couldn’t win. Whatever it was, they were good and Tomura could admit that, pride be damned.
“Score: Zero to One. Switching sides.”
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Stupid brain-dead tank, stupid team, stupid everyone.
Tomura found himself slamming his fist against his keyboard. At least they had at least one more round to turn things around, the other team had gotten the payload to the end, but in Overtime. So, they had a pretty solid chance of topping that.
He had to actually focus now, it seemed. And his team didn’t really appear to be communicating very well through in-match comms, so maybe he’d have to go on voice chat? He didn’t know if the rest of them were on, and he only ever went on it as a last resort or if he was clicking well with his teammates by the second round.
“Hello?” his voice rasped into his microphone as he watched his username icon pop up in the top left corner, indicating that he was speaking.
A few seconds ticked by, and Tomura was considering disconnecting from the chat again until he heard a voice come through his headset. A feminine voice. They had an accent that he couldn’t place, but their Japanese sounded decent enough from the five words that they’d said. And he wanted to deny that their voice sounded nice, but he just couldn’t. Their voice sounded lovely, not quite high pitched but soft, like vaseline to his dry lips, or a fluffy blanket. What was he thinking? This was a random stranger he’d probably never speak to again after this match. Probably.
“Uh, hello? Can you hear me?” the voice said, and from their username and hero icon he could tell it was the Widowmaker he’d grown to respect over the past twenty minutes.
Okay, focus, Tomura. He cleared his throat, “Yeah, I can hear you.”
Shit. Did he sound okay? Normal? Fuckfuckfuck. What was he actually doing? This was a random NPC, admittedly a very skilled one, but someone irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
“Okay, good,” the voice said again, and he felt like melting just from the sound.
This was confusing him. He'd spoken to women before, so why was he so affected by this one? Assuming they were a woman anyways, only being able to guess so by their voice.
The on-screen timer said ten seconds until the round started, so he figured he’d mentally prepare himself for both scenarios he’d settled on for the outcome. Either A, winning by a landslide, or B, winning just barely. He wasn’t planning on losing, the previous round was a fluke, and their tank would surely focus. And anyways, he was playing Ashe now. His ult could make up for an idiot tank if used right.
Kami-sama save me.
Holy shit, it was thirty seconds until overtime, and it actually looked like they were gonna do it. He had B.O.B. ready, the enemy team had just wasted most of their ults on a teamfight away from the point (which they lost, by the way, good teamkill from him and the slightly less stupid D.Va) and the payload was so close to the destination. They could actually win this! And, after a very lucky teamkill, they did just that.
“Score: One to One. Switching sides.”
Fuck yes, they won. Of course they did, the team had locked in and actually used their collective four brain cells to clutch this round right at the very end.
Obviously, player emomari#7770 was doing amazingly well, with only 4 deaths to 38 kills (genuinely, how were they doing that?), and Tomura himself had a humble k-d of 51-7. Not bad.
“So, where are you from, emomari?” he figured that he’d test his luck while he still had it. It was just him and the Widowmaker in the voice chat, so it wouldn’t hurt him to actually get to know the mysterious, attractive as hell voice.
“I'm Polish. And uh, just call me Mari. Pfft,” the voice, no, Mari responded, seemingly amused by his question, “Is my Japanese that bad that you can tell I’m not a native, handyman?”
“No, Kami, no. Your Japanese is great, Mari-san. You just have an accent. And you roll your ‘r’s like crazy.”
Did Tomura seriously just compliment a stranger? He must’ve hit his head or something, hell, he must be high. Both, actually. Or, alternatively, his heart was doing flips in his chest every time that Mari spoke over the voice chat, and he wanted to hear more of that voice, more of that laugh.
“Oh, and, uh. Call me Tomura.”
Should he be giving out his actual name to a stranger? Probably not. But did he care? Absolutely not.
“Okay, Tomura-san. Cover me on Genji, will you? They’re noticing me more and more.”
Fuck no. “Sure I will.” Tomura promptly switched to Genji to do exactly what Mari had asked him to do.
Maybe this Mari person would want to play with him more after this match.
“Hey, uh, you mind if I add you? I could use a good duo, if you’re up for that,” which was definitely testing his luck now.
“Umm, yeah, of course! I usually play support, though, if that’s good with you,” they responded again, just as the round began.
Behind the monitor, Tomura was grinning to himself. Of course that was good with him, in fact that was amazing. Mari here seemed like an incredible teammate, and it’d be good to have them as a pocket or something.
“Fine by me, Mari-san. Gimme a sec and I'll send you a request.”
It took until the end of the game itself for Tomura to actually send that friend request, as he hadn’t had a moment to go into the menu to do so. But they’d won by a landslide, so who was he to complain? Even though he definitely could’ve sent it during the intermission between the final two rounds, but he’d been a bit preoccupied. Talking to Mari. Who genuinely sounded more and more interesting the more they talked.
So now he was sitting in the launcher, waiting for that little yellow text in the corner to say “emomari started playing Overwatch” so that he could send them a message. Maybe ask for their Discord. Definitely ask for their Discord.
[emomari:] haii
They’d beaten him to it.
[handyman:] hey
[handyman:] may i ask for ur discord?
Bold move, Tomura. Seriously.
[emomari:] sure!!
[emomari:] its marinetka
[emomari:] add me andill add u bakc
[handyman:] okay
[handyman:] one sec
That had been a very, very productive one single Overwatch match. Tomura had not only won (and gotten out some of that pent-up frustration), but he’d also gotten a pretty-sounding person’s socials. Score. He just prayed that their pronouns were in their discord profile, because he genuinely was not sure about their gender by voice alone. Which he supposed was a good thing, he was into the androgynous types. Maybe he fell too easily, but that wasn’t exactly his fault. Not many people intrigued him as much as this Mari individual had, after only an hour of speaking with them.
[handyman:] added u
[emomari:] okii! lets talk on there okay bai
[emomari has stopped playing Overwatch]
Smooth, for a quick exit.
Tomura, too, closed down Overwatch, and opened up Discord. He usually had it running on a second monitor, but he kind of wanted it to be the main thing he focused on at the moment. Purely because he actually wanted to talk to Mari.
He saw that they’d added him back, so he took the chance to snoop a little. He clicked on their profile. Okay, pronouns, check. They/them, so no hints on their gender? Unless they were nonbinary or something, which he could work with. Okay, yeah, definitely nonbinary. Their bio stated as much, anyways. Along with a quote from… is that Attack On Titan? Holy shit that’s definitely Attack On Titan. Literally where else would a quote like “itterashai, Eren,” be from. So they were cultured too.
He noticed that they didn’t have Nitro though, hm. He could definitely fix that. He had the money, he bought the username “hands” after all.
[hands]: hii
a wild gift appears!
Nitro: expires in 24 hours.
[marianetka]: holy shit
[marianetka]: um
[marianteka]: tysm tomu rhsjandjsh. thank youdhwh!!1!1!1!!!
Oh yeah, Tomura could so do this whole “rizz” thing no problem.