Bruce Banner
"The Erogamer"
LVL: 1 (0%)
Stats

DOM: 30/130
SUB: 50/280
BOD: 11 (+) 
LST: 15 (+) 
SED: 5 (+) 
FUK: 8 (+) 
PRV: 13 (+) 
ERO: 10 (+) 
Points: 5 
Money: $2721.17

Status Effects: 'Innocent' Virgin

Description: Bruce Banner is an MIT graduate student in biology, doing a thesis on an obscure piece of biochemistry whose theoretical intricacies and potential practical applications he will happily tell you all about. He would like to remedy his complete lack of sexual and romantic experience, but keeps finding more important (less terrifying) things to do instead. This is the sort of problem best solved by the Erogame.

Skills:

Erogamer's Body (Lvl MAX): The biological ability to live your life as an erogame. Venereal disease doesn't exist for you, or pregnancies or refractory periods. Arbitrarily large appendages can fit inside any of your orifices. You heal from all marks with a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. Other aspects of this skill depend on the BOD stat.

Erogamer's Mind (Lvl MAX): The mental flexibility to live your life as an erogame. You're more able to accept the realities of your new world. You'll also bounce back from painful, upsetting and bizarre sexual experiences with relative ease. Rape can be anything from a recoverable trauma to a Tuesday afternoon, but it won't ruin your life. Other aspects of this skill depend on the FUK, SED, LST, and PRV stats.

Erogamer's World (Lvl MAX): The consent of reality to live your life as an erogame. People are never too preoccupied to consider sex or romance, not while you're around. Bystanders won't ignore what you do, but they're unlikely to actually stop you. Those who do decide to involve themselves are drawn into the logic of the Erogame. If you go far enough that an authority sees no choice but to intervene… they won't treat you as a simple criminal. Other aspects of this skill depend on the ERO stat.

To Mine Own Me Be True (Lvl MAX): Even at the center of the Erogame, you are not just an erogame character, but a human being possessed of his own free will. Your family will always be safe from you, and little children everywhere.

Perks:

But He Was Such A Good Student: If this were a different game, you'd be starting with a high INT stat. Throughout your scholastic career, your grades continue to reflect your actual knowledge of the course material, and you have no unusual difficulties mastering that material. Even if you miss classes or assignments for, uh, reasons.

Info // Status Effects// 'Innocent' Virgin

Merely existing in the age of the Internet has already raised your PRV stat above 10. Still, until you choose to lose your virginity, the Erogame will not force you to give it up.

Info // Character Stats // Level:

At LVL 1, and 0% progress toward the next level, you'll never be this weak again. You can increase your level by completing the quests the Erogame offers you, or by causing romantic and sexual events to happen to you or around you. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the rewards.

Info // Character Stats // Body:

With the average being 10, and perfect 10s being 40, your BOD of 11 makes you nerdy-cute, beloved of anyone whose porn collection includes more than one picture with a guy wearing tweed.

You can increase this stat through exhibitionism, and other acts that invoke the pure beauty and power of your physical form.

Info // Character Stats // Lust:

At a LST of 15, you're a pretty typical frustrated young male grad student. 

You gain in this stat while experiencing sexual urges that are unusually intense or that go on unusually long.

Info // Character Stats // Seduction:

Your SED of 5 reflects the fact that seducing people usually requires talking to them. In unfamiliar ways, even.

You can increase this stat by arousing the romantic interest or sexual desire of others, and successfully pursuing them or being caught.

Info // Character Stats // Fucking:

Your FUK of 8 shows that, while being thoughtful and considerate counts, and a strong grasp of the relative theory counts, there's only so far you can get without hands-on experience.

How do you increase this stat? Take a guess.

Info // Character Stats // Perversion:

Your PRV of 13 shows that you have looked for porn upon the Internet, and managed not to completely avoid the dubious products of Rule 34. But you're still not quite sure what you like yet.

You can increase this stat by being a little less close-minded, and acting accordingly.

Info // Character Stats // Erogame Logic:

At an ERO of 10, your life has become an erogame taking place in a mostly realistic setting. What happens to you might seem unlikely to others, but it won't break their belief in a sane universe… yet. Witnesses will reach for explanations other than the Erogame, but they'll still notice the unusual events.

If you keep pushing probability to its limits, then probability will learn to be a bit more flexible down there, relax and take it in and not protest so much.

Info // Character Stats // Dominant and Submissive Energy:

If this were a different game, you'd have mana and hit points, and they'd refill from you sitting on your ass.

LOL. 

There's a purple text box all over his field of view. What the fuck??

His first hypothesis is that he's gone so far off the deep end he's about to encounter an anglerfish, but if his perceptions are totally decoupled from reality there's nothing he can really do about it. His second hypothesis is that he's a guinea pig in some sort of bizzare alien science experiment. On sex. Which sounds potentially fascinatig but doesn't make any sense. Also it seems to have read both his mind and his browser history, and is offering him academic assistance to compensate for, uh, spending a lot of time trying to have sex and date.

In case anybody is listening and willing to talk, he says "Explain this, please."

The Erogame does not choose to explain this, for any value of this.

"Explain stats? Explain perks? 'Innocent Virgin'? Main menu?"

At 'explain perks', the purple box dissolves and is replaced with:

(Ir)rational: Up to once per level you may toggle whether or not Erogame Logic suppresses scientific curiosity. While this suppression is off, appropriately minded individuals can recognize you as a total falsification of how they thought the world worked and may prioritize the larger implications. While this suppression is on, people will still experience shock and wonder about specifics, but evince no great curiosity about fundamental issues, nor ambitions of global change. 2 fragments.

Animal Whisperer: Choose an animal family. You are extraordinarily skilled at handling (non-sapient) members of this family, and will experience yourself as being able to communicate nearly intelligently with up to (ERO / 10) chosen familiars. At ERO 40 you may grant your chosen familiars greater intelligence and other powers through the Familiar subskill of Bestow Ability. 1 point. Available at 30 ERO, refunded at 60 ERO

Childe of the Night: Stuff happens, you get turned into a vampire, more stuff happens. These vampires are nothing like Anne Rice vampires, and no characters resembling anyone from her novels will appear at any point. Available at 50 ERO, refunded at 80 ERO.

Cinnamon Roll: Triple all positive effects on others of having sex with you. 1 point.

Edgelord: You always know how close to orgasm others are and never make someone come by accident. 1 point. Refunded at 70 FUK.

Erogame Logic, whatever that is, needs to not be suppressing scientific curiosity. His own curiosity currently feels more "maxed out" than "suppressed" but still, yikes. Those other ones all sound like interesting benefits. At least this thing is offering generous pay, of a sort, for playing along. He especially wants Cinnamon Roll, though he isn't sure what the positive effects of having sex with him are supposed to be. He also doesn't know enough about Anne Rice vampires to know if he wants to be one . Animal Whisperer sounds pretty neat, as long as he's careful not to pick anything he might ever want to use as a lab animal--it would almost certainly mess up his results. Making someone orgasm by accident isn't really relevant given that he's never made someone (other than himself) orgasm on purpose.

Erogame What Erogame: You forget that the Erogame exists. The game automatically levels up, distributes stat points, selects perks, accepts quests, and invokes skills in whichever way it thinks will make your sex life the most interesting. 2 fragments.

Everything Is Better With Ero: On every quest and every path you walk, taking the option that turns you on more will never lead to worse results in the long run than taking the option that seems safe, sensible, and practical. This perk does not operate by reducing the rewards of safe, sensible, practical-seeming paths. 2 points.

Everywhere Erogenous: There is no area of your body that cannot be used to stimulate you to orgasm, though this may still take time and work to do through your elbow. 2 points. Refundable at 40 LST.

Fairytale Painslut: Your masochism is strong enough to embrace any intensity of sexually charged torture, with zero warmup. 1 point. Refundable at 50 LST.

Go Out With A Bang: A doctor diagnoses you with a fatal disease, giving you three months left to live---maybe two, maybe four. Your remaining lifetime is uncertain, but it won't be long now. Your occasional hospital stays are brief and painless, leaving you looking wan, sad, and beautiful in your hospital bed. Sometimes you get a piece of medical good news, giving you a little more time in which to say goodbye and experience all the things you never had a chance to do. No matter how long this continues, no one ever notices that the doctor always gives you around one more month of lifespan per month. You may at will have a remission or relapse of your Terminal Moe. 1 point, refundable at 70 ERO.

The aliens or whatever that are fucking with him can (claim they can) erase memories. He could be getting dictionary-attacked right now. He dives for his computer, confirms that the date and time is what he thought it was, realizes that as soon as he's looking away from the screen he can't be sure he correctly remembers what was on it, and screams very quietly into his pillow for a bit. This is way worse than when he realized he was probably crazy, because if this is real then it could happen to anybody.

It takes him a while to pull himself together enough to read any other "Perks". Go Out With A Bang is just silly and weird, why would he do that? Everywhere Erogenous and Fairytale Painslut are scientifically fascinating and maybe sometime in a million years he would find the guts to take them. Everything is Better With Ero sounds benevolent but has terrifying implications for how much control this game claims to have over the world around him.

Goodbye: You may enter any one fictional continuum at the place and time of your choice, arriving in your current form and with your Erogamer powers. You cannot displace an existing character unless you choose to arrive at the time of an extrauniversal summoning, such as by Louise the Zero. You arrive without your metafictional knowledge of the continuum, and able to speak and write the local language. You cannot ever return to the real world. Even if the fictional continuum includes a 'real world' to return to, you will only return to the 'real world' of that fiction. In the true real world, nobody will ever know what happened to you, and any quests that would have depended on you will fail. 1 point.

Hyperhypnoslut: You can drop faster than your panties when being voluntarily hypnotized. You can be hypnotized without your wanting to be hypnotized, if you are forced or tricked into listening to the hypnotist's voice. A hypnotist can force you to do things you don't want to do, up to your current PRV + 8. You can be given temporary false memories or amnesia. Your ultimate trigger phrase is 'floral ticklish cowboy rabies' and anyone using it gets root access on your soul. This includes permanent memory editing, personality editing, sexuality editing, belief editing, emotional editing, and absolute obedience. You cannot be hypnotized or drugged into giving up this trigger phrase or revealing its existence. You cannot hypnotize yourself using this trigger phrase, even by leaving yourself a recording. Think very carefully before giving this trigger phrase to anyone, or writing it down, or speaking it aloud when you think you are alone in your bedroom. 1 point + 2 fragments.

I See You: You are able to perceive, remember, and have sex with anything that would ordinarily be undetectable by you, be misperceived by you, or slip out of your memory. 1 point.

It's Like Saying Hello In Japan: No negative consequence of any kind will occur to you, including to reputation or personal friendships, from forcing yourself on a person of primarily Japanese descent. Any person who has voluntarily watched more than 200 hours of anime is considered Japanese for purposes of applying this perk. 1 point. Available at 30 ERO, refunded at 70 ERO.

Library of Sodom: You automatically know any detail of abstract knowledge that you want or need about any sexual activity that has been described in public writing. For example, directions for how to tie a shibari knot, or that one ought to avoid striking the kidneys with a flogger. This knowledge does not convey skill. 1 point, refunded at 40 FUK.

Bruce reads "Goodbye" and realizes that oh, of course, the universe is a simulation. That explains everything. Whether he grew up in the real world and was instantiated as a simulation just now, or has always been in one, is unclear. Whether everyone around him is unthinking bots is also unclear, but if he's conscious there's no reason everyone else shouldn't be too. Which means It's Like Saying Hello In Japan is still morally horrifying. Maybe this is an experiment on whether people will do morally horrifying things if convinced the rest of humanity and the world is fake. Well, he isn't going to. 

Library of Sodom is sort of like "I know Kung Fu" but for sex, which fits pretty well with the Matrix-related train of thought he's having. I See You is, again, cool with terrifying implications. Hyperhypnoslut is terrifying with cool implications, which he will not think about because that is a terrible idea. Even if he found someone he could trust with that sort of power (and who was willing to use it; his cousin Jennifer would be too weirded out), it's still too dangerous. Just because he could maybe hack it for eidetic memory and unlimited willpower does not make it a good idea, why is he even thinking about this.

Like Uber For Costumes: If you can find any manufactured fetish clothing (not a one-off creation, and you must not have been involved in inspiring it) that corresponds to a profession, you can act with the full skill of that profession while wearing that clothing. For example, using firearms while dressed as a sexy soldier. Available at 60 ERO. 1 point + 1 fragment.

Mad Inventor: You can create devices whose functions correspond to many Erogame skills and effects. These devices cannot be mass-manufactured, but can be loaned to others. You must wear steampunk goggles while wielding this perk. Available at 30 ERO, refunded at 70 ERO. 1 point.

Mad Scientist: Your powers give you the ability to test hypotheses about sexuality that conventional science cannot or will not investigate. Use all skills at double their base level whenever you are primarily seeking general knowledge. (Extracting the location of an enemy base does not count as 'general knowledge'.) You must wear a sexy lab coat while invoking this perk. 1 point.

Marshmallow Test: Receive two additional perk points, for a net of one more perk than you would've had otherwise. This perk can only be taken after reaching LVL 7 and only if it is the first perk you have chosen. (Your starting perk does not count, likewise any perks automatically awarded by the system.) 1 point.

Mesmer Inoculant: Guarantee that the Erogame itself will not apply mind control, mind modification, mind replacement, or any other similar effects on any nonconsenting subjects. Effects in this category were either already happening, or are enacted by or on the Erogamer, who is assumed to be consenting to all mind alteration effects that they bring upon themselves by changing their stats, using skills, or taking perks. Anything that looks at first pass like the Erogame mind-controlling someone will in fact merely be probability manipulation; for example, taking the Yousexual perk only guarantees that the people you meet happen to already have been people who would otherwise have been attracted to you, without actually modifying any existing persons' preferences. Taking this perk will render some perks inaccessible and cause other perks to have significantly smaller effects. 2 points.

That last one sounds like other people are in fact still conscious, and also like the game at least understands the concept of being morally horrified. He's definitely going to take that perk, because if it's telling the truth it'll stop him from accidentally mind controlling anyone and if it's lying it probably still does at worst nothing.

The first three on this page are also frankly amazing and he wants them, but obviously he's going to pass the Marshmallow Test first, because that's what you do with tests, is you pass them.

Mom/Dad: Your horrible parent is replaced by a helpful, loyal parent who will not interfere with your Erogame business. You may opt to keep your memories of the old parent, or simply remember a happier childhood, in which case you will gain a small, unimportant additional perk and not remember that this true perk exists or that you selected it. You may also opt to retain the ability to tell this new parent about the Erogame. If you have an additional absentee parent or awful step-parent, they are replaced by a corresponding kindly parent who is dead due to a random accident. This operation leaves your family's finances unchanged. 2 fragments. 

More Competitive Than You: For any activity whose primary purpose is competition (e.g. chess, drag racing, or martial arts; but not stock trading, or literary authorship) your skill level adjusts to match your love interests and/or romantic rivals. Your skill level is such as to make you just barely worse than your love interest, or just barely better than your romantic rivals, whichever is higher, if you try your best. 1 point.

Perfect Sadist: Inflicting pain on others, no matter how severe, never causes any permanent damage you did not intend. 1 point, refundable at 40 FUK.

Perfect Subbing: You can at will perceive subtitles in your native language for all speakers whose voice you can hear, and subtitled translation for all foreign-language texts. This does not enable you to speak or write other languages. 2 fragments, refundable at 60 ERO or 80 SED.

Pretty Smart: The conventional attractiveness of people you meet now strongly correlates with their intelligence, conscientiousness, corruptibility, or other mental attributes you might find attractive on a... deeper... examination. (Making people smarter using technology or spells available at higher ERO will automatically increase their physical attractiveness as well.) 1 point, refundable at 70 ERO.

His parents aren't the best parents, but he's not going to erase them from reality and replace them with fakes who are proud of him, that would be immoral and also totally missing the point of wanting your parents to be proud of you.

More Competitive Than You is another gateway to fabulous knowledge and skills, except it requires someone to either fall for him or be legitimately romantically jealous of him, so that's not really exploitable the way those others were. Similarly, Perfect Sadist is only any use if someone wants him to hurt them, so forget that.

Perfect Subbing is just straightforwardly cool. Pretty Smart is also cool, but has weird social implications and might turn out to be more trouble than it's worth. Even if he himself is exempt, does he really want to know that much about everyone he passes on the street?

Real Scientist: Your unusual experiences have given you insight into open questions in human sexuality, leading you to form new testable hypotheses. You instinctively understand experimental methodology and statistics. So long as you report your outcomes honestly, other scientists will discuss your results seriously; and overlook your lack of credentials along with any questions about the morality or possibility of your experiments. You can write proficiently in LaTeX if you are wearing latex. If you simultaneously hold the perks Mad Inventor, Mad Scientist, and Real Scientist, you become able to develop reproducible technology, including the experimental apparatus required for others to further investigate and extend your discoveries. An actual PhD in a scientific field, acquired the hard way, can substitute for the Real Scientist perk in this trinity. 1 point, available at 30 ERO.

Seduce Contain Protect: You are a magnet for any person or sapient entity with a significant chance of producing global catastrophe. They will inevitably cross paths with you and find you highly attractive. 1 point.

Sin Of: You may take this perk only once. Choose:
- Envy: Take over another person's life. Everyone in the world now believes unshakably that you are they. The displaced person no longer exists.
- Gluttony: You never get tired, bored, or over-satiated during any pleasurable act, no matter how long it continues. You may accumulate unlimited DOM and SUB from such acts.
- Greed: You find a winning lottery ticket with the lump-sum cash payout option selected. After all taxes are paid, your after-tax winnings are a bit over $100,000,000.
- Lust: At will, you may temporarily increase your LST and/or PRV to any higher level you wish, for as long as you wish, up to a maximum of 100.
- Pride: All stats and skills increase faster.
- Sloth: Removes all time limits for acceptance or completion of quests. Negates or softens all other visible deadlines for accomplishing anything within the Erogame or your life.
- Wrath: Instantly kill anyone you choose. Bypassing quest challenges in this way will reduce their rewards. You may invoke this perk an unlimited number of times.

1 point.

The Eye of Yandere: If you are romantically attracted to someone, you are always alerted when they are romantically or sexually attracted to someone else or when someone else is romantically or sexually attracted to them. You do not know the strength of this attraction, just that it exists. 1 point.

To Boldly Come Where No One Has Come Before: You somehow get your hands on a starship, enabling you to visit nearby star systems and meet the many interesting and nubile life forms to be found there. 1 point + 1 fragment. Available at ERO 55, refundable at ERO 80.

He's going to get perk synergy from finishing his degree, that is so great. He might also take the perk at some point after that, for the other nifty benefits.

Seduce Contain Protect is either the dumbest idea ever, or absolutely necessary to minimize the odds of global catastrophe. Probably that first one.

Pride is a diamond in a dunghill; he might want that one first after the marshmallow one. Eye of Yandere is just stupid. And immoral. And stupid.

To Boldly Come is a Star Trek reference, which is weirdly comforting. It may also be the simulation-runners wanting to fuck him in addition to fucking with him. Either way, he really really wants to meet aliens, especially if they have interestingly different minds and aren't just green-skinned humans. Fucking them . . . he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Oops, that's what she said. 

True Love Conquers All: If you love someone enough, nothing can ever permanently separate them from you. The only exception is their wishing to leave you---deliberately, voluntarily, and based on correct information. This applies to any type of love, not just romantic love. If you would undergo hardship and sacrifice to protect someone, if losing them would leave a scar on your heart that never fully heals, then in time you will always be reunited. This perk retroactively includes everyone you have previously lost, but still love. If somebody you love is already dead (e.g. a beloved parent or grandparent), taking this perk automatically begins the Heaven's Feel quest to revive them after your ERO reaches 50. 1 point + 2 fragments.

Trust: Whenever somebody honestly tells you that they love you, or like you, or admire something about you, or shows trust in you by confessing a truth to you that they would not tell others, you know that they mean it. Taking this perk renders you ineligible for a significant number of Erogame quests and reduces the rewards of many others, but it's here if you need it. 1 point.

Truth: Regardless of any other Erogame perks taken and any other powers affecting you, you regain your memories of who you really are, what really happened, and what reality was like before. No further such effects can deceive you. Think hard before taking this perk. 1 point.

Utility Monster: Your experiences are a trillion times more important than the experiences of those around you. 1 point.

You Fools Can't Stop Me: Your schemes can only be thwarted by those near or above your own intelligence level, and only by their having been cleverer than you. 1 point.

Zombie Sexpocalypse: An extremely contagious virus turns 99.99% of the human population into sex-maddened creatures bent on fucking anything within reach. You, and everyone you personally like, are among those naturally immune to the disease. While most of the infected die quickly, some retain sufficient intelligence to become hominid animals living off the wilds or on food stores. Defending against their rapes and thefts is an ongoing problem requiring the survivors to band together. Some partially-immune survivors have greatly increased LST and PRV. Use this perk if you're tired of living in a complicated technological civilization. Think carefully before taking this perk. 1 point. Available at 30 ERO, refundable at 80 ERO.

True Love Conquers All sounds great. Jennifer would be safe. He could raise the dead, if he manages to fall in love with them. Kind of an obvious implication of the world being a simulation in hindsight, but still, wow.

Trust is . . . weird. Also possibly kind of mind-reading. He can't see what the problem is with Truth and the fact that the game doesn't want him to take it kind of makes him want to take it.

Utility Monster sounds like it's threatening to make everyone else chatbots. How about NOPE. Zombie Sexpocalypse is even more NOPE, what in the star-spangled void. 

You Fools Can't Stop Me would either make all his endeavors succeed or fill his environment with smart people, so that's nice.

The Erogame patiently waits for input. 

(Possibly he wants to assign his stat points.)

Right, yes, stat points. Clearly he needs to put them in SED and FUK. 

Hmm, does FUK apply to masturbating? He moves to his bed, starts jerking off, and puts a point in FUK when he's halfway through.

He has noticeably but not substantially better instincts for how best to touch himself.

He just got aliens to modify his brain to make him better at fapping. What is his life.

. . . Weirdly nice, is what his life is. Or at least his orgasm.

Quest available: Rules of the Erogame

Increase FUK, SED, LST, PRV, BOD, and ERO by 1 each without using stat points; learn your first skill; level up. (You do not have to do this in the same action. Using your stat points now will not cause you to fail your quest.)

Success: +1000 xp
Failure: The Erogame will handhold you through more of your adventures. Maybe you'll stumble across a rulebook.

Apparently he's being encouraged to experiment, which is a good sign. He cleans himself up, accepts the quest by poking the little "yes" button, then puts three points in SED and the last one in FUK again. Now, how to raise those stats in other ways? Might as well start at the top; BOD runs on exhibitionism. He tries heading out into the dorm's common area, wearing just his shorts and a blush of oh geez people are going to judge me for being shirtless while ugly. Being told by a text prompt that he is "nerdy-cute" is not really as concrete as the obvious-to-him fact that he's pale as a sheet and mostly composed of gangling elbows.

There are a handful of people in the dorm common area. One of them is very conspicuously staring at her laptop.

+1 BOD for walking outside shirtless and running into someone who thinks you're cute.

This is fine, this is fine, he's been shirtless at the beach ever and nothing bad happened except sunburn. 

Someone in this room thinks he's cute. Or the game is lying to mess with him, that's always an option.

He looks at the girl with the laptop. Is she looking away because she doesn't want to look at him?  Or because she does want to look at him? The first seems more plausible but the second is pretty relateable. Maybe if he talks to her he can find out and also get SED? He should do that. He will do that.

After he ducks back into his room and grabs his shirt.

Okay, now he'll talk to her. Or at least he'll sit at the same table and blush some more, that's sort of like talking, right?

The Erogame does not appear to think that sitting at the same table and blushing some more counts as talking. 

The girl bites her lip and stares very very intently at her laptop. 

No, it really isn't, is it.

Social rejection can't actually be scarier than learning that the universe is some incomprehensible entity's sex experiment, but it is anyway. He screws up his courage and says, "Hello," at a higher pitch than he had intended.

"Hello!" the girl says. "Uh. Hi. I'm Sarah."

"I'm Bruce. Uh, what're you reading?" Stop staring at the table and look at her, Bruce, come on. At least long enough to notice what color her hair and eyes are and what she's wearing, even if actual eye contact isn't happening yet.

Her hair and eyes are both brown, and she has a shirt that says SCIENCE: IT WORKS BITCHES.

"Uh. I'm reading the Warrior's Apprentice?"

What a great shirt. (Bruce's shirt says "A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.")

"Neat. Sounds like a fantasy book?"

"No! It's science fiction. It's by Lois McMaster Bujold." And she gives a quick plot summary.

"Cool, I love science fiction. Especially with really clever protagonists. I should read the Vorkosigan series sometime."

"Awesome! You should tell me what you think sometime."

Managing to have any sort of conversation with a person you know thinks you're cute has raised SED by 1!

The textbox throws him off a bit (and he doesn't know she thinks he's cute, just that the game is asserting it), but he manages to say, "I-I will, yeah." And now he has an excuse to talk to her again, as soon as he's read the book. Which makes him realize he's actually enjoying this conversation. So of course he has no idea where to take it next. "So, what are you studying? I mean, what's your subject?" Ugh, real smooth there dude.

"Climatology, actually. I want to study global warming."

"That's very practical. I'm studying the biochemistry of aging. Trying to make lab mice live forever, sort of thing."

"That's awesome! --Pretend I asked the question I should ask to get the most interesting response." 

Oh, what a good way to phrase that. He grins. "Then I'll pretend you asked me how I know anything I do to the mice is relevant to humans, and the reason is . . ." he happily burbles on about immune systems and genetic similarities and feedback loops for a solid two minutes.

Sarah listens and asks intelligent questions!

Bruce gives intelligent answers! He also asks about Sarah's work. He imagines climatology involves a lot of mathematical modeling, what's that like?

Sadly, the author of this thread is not capable of discussing mathematical modeling, but Sarah can, and she has many opinions about it!

The Erogame wishes to draw Bruce's attention to the fact that Sarah has breasts of the sort a video game developer would look at and go "that's a bit unrealistic."

The Erogame can, in fact, draw Bruce's attention thusly. He appreciates this fact quite a bit, even. She doesn't just make excellent models, she would probably make an excellent model.

Oops, now he feels like a jerk; her eyes are up there dammit. He ends up alternating between eye contact (yikes), boob-staring (double yikes), and looking down at the table (sigh). At least she hasn't called him out on it; maybe she hasn't noticed. 

She is smiling a little bit at a private joke! Maybe it is about his breast-related struggles.

Ugh, probably. Better stare at the table some more and keep asking intelligent questions. She's a fellow scientist, damn it, not a pair of tits.

Soon he finds himself failing to totally fight off a massive yawn, and blushes again. "I'm sorry. Your research is fascinating, but I'm on forty hours of sleep-dep. I should really crash before I have to go back to the lab again." Also, sleep might cure him of the hallucination that this erogame thing probably still is.

She waves.

"Catch you around sometime!"

The Erogame does not bother him as he naps.

"See you!"

When he wakes up, the Erogame is still there, which is probably bad news but he finds himself glad of it anyway. It's just so interesting. 

Now that his head is clearer it's full of experiments. Does his statblock emit light that can illuminate other objects? Does it show up in reflective surfaces or on his phone camera? What happens if he sticks his hand in it? He promises he will get back to work on that quest sooner rather than later, but this interface is frankly too fascinating not to mess with.

The statblock is readable no matter how dark it is, but does not emit light.

The statblock does not show up on reflective surfaces or his phone camera.

If he tries to stick his hand in it, it will teleport to a different part of his visual field. 

Ooh, he can chase it around with his hand, that's cool. Does it produce an afterimage like one would expect of a bright pink thing? What if he shuts one eye at a time or adjusts his focal depth, does it behave as if it's at a specific distance and being seen by both his eyes at slightly different angles? What if he blindfolds himself with a scarf but keeps his eyes open underneath? 

It does not produce an afterimage.

It behaves as if it is at a specific distance. 

If he blindfolds himself, he can still read the statblock, but now it's more similar to a Google Glass popup rather than a physical thing in the world. 

That's pretty neat! Okay, back to questing. He's already raised BOD and SED; the easiest-looking next ones to try are LST and PRV. And the obvious place to start is with weird porn. He gets on the internet in incognito mode and searches for . . . Hmmm, how about "alien mind control erotica", that seems appropriate.

The Erotic Mind Control Story Archive has many stories about alien invasions!

All the stories Google suggests are hot and, more importantly, properly spelled and punctuated. One might expect alien intervention.

His life: continues to be bizzare. But hey, well-written pornography! He's pretty surprised by how turned on he gets reading about people getting beamed up into flying saucers and subjected to invasively sexual "science experiments". Which is not an invitation to do that to him in "real life". Probably. 

If he would like to subject people to invasively sexual science experiments instead the Erogame is happy to accommodate. 

As it is it is just weirdly easy to find hot porn.

The Erogame didn't say that where he can see it, so he can't remind it of the importance of consent.

How much weird porn does he have to read before his PRV goes up?

If he successfully finishes while reading weird porn he will get a PRV point!

Yeah, he's definitely jerking off to this stuff. And then continuing to read it after he comes, because his taste in porn runs to the plot-heavy and he wants to know what happens next.

This is extremely cute but will not get him any sort of reward.

Sure it will, the reward is he gets to find out how the story ends. Hmm, how to raise LST, FUK, and ERO?

FUK is likely to be the hardest, since it requires finding someone else willing to interact with him in a sexual context. Maybe if he finds someone with really low standards?

Well, now that he puts it that way, the solution is obvious. People with really low standards, looking for sex, with a minimum of risk? Chatroulette. Even with his distinctly mediocre FUK, he can probably make someone's webcam jerkoff session better than a string of people ignoring them and wishing they'd go away.

Hopefully the game isn't expecting him to enjoy it much, though, since he's straight and the vast majority of people jerking off on chatroulette are guys. No, wait, his life is ridiculous now, maybe he'll immediately get a hot woman. Only one way to find out, though, and he's already got this incognito window.

He does not immediately get a hot woman!

He immediately gets a cute nerdy guy with glasses.

Is he very sure he is straight.

Hey, you don't have to be into guys to appreciate them aesthetically, and this guy is certainly aesthetic. "Hey."

"Hi!" 

Cute nerdy guy blushes! It is a bit weird to blush when you were planning to jerk off in front of a stranger, but such is life.

"So, uh, this is my first time. On this website, I mean. So I don't really know what I'm doing." Godfuckingdammit, just because "arbitrary appendages can now fit in any of his orifices" does not mean he needs to eat his entire foot.

"Uh, that's cool," the guy says, continuing to jerk off his dick. 

He should help, somehow, be an active participant. He can't quite bring himself to take his own dick out, but he can at least be encouraging. People who do this probably like attention and compliments and stuff. "You look really sexy, I bet you always get appreciative audiences," he tries. It's not super honest but not exactly a lie, either. 

The guy moans and keeps jerking off.

+1 FUK for a solid attempt at dirty talk.

Thank you, sex aliens, apparently reality now grades on a curve and that's really convenient. And the guy seems to be enjoying it too. "Yeah, that's right, you're doing great."

This is not super great dirty talk but you know what? Random guy on ChatRoulette is going to take it. At least it's not disgusted stares.

Turns out dirty-talking someone you aren't actually into and in fact don't know from a hole in the ground is really hard! And not the boner kind of really hard, the "I am super insincere and worried that that's obvious" kind.

The guy clicks to the next person. 

Well, that was embarrassing. 

Bruce doesn't know that guy's name and will never see him again and doesn't super approve of his life choices, but his disapproval still makes Bruce want to crawl into a hole. He signs off Chatroulette.

Also he feels kind of gross and wants a shower, but isn't sure if the Erogame will try to make him do sex things in the dorm showers and more sex things with people he doesn't like in that way is the last thing he wants right now. So instead of showering he pirates Shards of Honor and starts reading it while curled up in bed.

There's a knock on his door!

Oh right, real life is still going on under the layer of weird sex game and also the layer of badass space people. Bruce makes sure he is wearing a full complement of normal clothing and then goes and answers his door.

"Hey, so, I had a question about the experiment we're working on--"

Quest available: Get Laid With A Little Help From My Friends

Help ??? Aarons get laid.

Success: +2000 xp, improved relations with ???, ????
Failure: ????

He gets to wingman for people? What a nice quest! So much better than the previous thing which in fairness was his own bad idea. "Yes?" He says, aiming it at both Lev and the quest prompt.

"Yeah, I was thinking about the methods we're using for measuring cognitive decline in aging mice--"

Lev has opinions about cognitive decline! Lev also looks less pervasively miserable than he does at essentially all other times.

Lev looking less pervasively miserable is great! Cognitive decline is kind of an inherently miserable subject but Bruce enjoys hearing Lev's opinions on it more than enough to cancel that out.

"Those are some good ideas! You know a lot of cognitive science for a biochem guy, I'm impressed." Bruce has suggestions for incorporating said ideas into their next round of experiments!

Oh look there's the pervasive misery again!

"Yeah, I do."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was--being obnoxious about it or anything. I just meant you're good at lots of things."

"It's fine. And I'm not really but thank you."

"Pretty sure you are. We should write this stuff down before I forget it all, though. Come into my room? I have paper." He steps backwards out of his doorway.

His room has a bed and a desk and a chair and a dresser and a bookshelf that looks about to collapse under its burden, and about two square feet of open floorspace left over.

It's a good thing the conversation has gone away from the perilous topic of whether Lev is good at anything. 

He comes in and sits on the chair and has opinions about mice.

Bruce leans awkwardly against the desk and has opinions back!

At one point he wants to show Lev a graph and ends up standing sort of behind him and leaning over his shoulder. He notices that Lev has fluffy hair.

Oh no Bruce is really really close.

(Internal screaming.)

Bruce finishes pointing at the thing and moves away a bit, though given the amount of space they have it's not much. "Oh, while I'm thinking about it--I'm going to be on campus over Thanksgiving, but it would be good to have at least one other person around for the stuff that needs doing every twelve hours. What's your schedule look like over the break?"

"I'm planning to lock myself in my room, put on a skirt, read psychology books, and wank myself into a daze," he doesn't say.

"I'll be around," he says.

"Cool. Can I dragoon you into doing some of the mouse maintenance? Tell you what, I'll cook you Thanksgiving dinner for it."

On one hand, both mouse maintenance and Thanksgiving dinner would cut into his crossdressed masturbating time. 

On the other hand, Bruce is smiling at him. 

"Sure," he says, with the smallest smile, barely lifting the corners of his mouth.

Lev's smiles are so excellent! He should make Lev smile more. Lev is smart and thoughtful and creative and Bruce really respects him as a colleague. 

What he says is, "Great! I love having excuses to cook for people." Also his previous plan had been to Skype his cousin before she went to Thanksgiving at her girlfriend's house and then spend the break in his room rereading Arthur C. Clarke between trips to the lab, so.

"I like having excuses to eat!"

Little tiny smile. 

Eeeee.

"Man, it would suck if we could photosynthesize, then we'd probably be morally obligated to do that all the time instead of eating."

Now that he is done making that remark he is pretty sure it made no sense, but if he doesn't point that out maybe he can get away with it.

Wow, there's a real smile. It lights up his whole face.

(This is maybe the first real smile Bruce has seen Lev make.)

"We could still eat for fun."

Suddenly all of Lev's earlier tiny smiles seem totally insufficient without having become any less objectively good in themselves. There's no way he's going to say "but agriculture contributes to global warming" while Lev is smiling like that. Also if the universe is a simulation they probably won't get wiped out by global warming after all.

"We could! And it would be convenient on long car trips." 

"But photosynthesis would also be convenient because you wouldn't have to stop what you're doing to eat."

"Yeah, that too. I wonder if people would get cravings for photosynthesis the way they do for potatoes or whatever."

Bruce's shoulder is right there and he could put his head on it. 

Instead he says, "But it might actually be awful because you'd have to take your shirt off somewhere sunny, and then people could see."

Why is he now imagining Lev shirtless. Probably this is the sex aliens' fault somehow. And/or Bruce is just very distractable.

"I bet if everyone could photosynthesize public shirtlessness would just be totally acceptable all the time. But I guess you'd still get people, like, ogling you or whatever and it would make sense to want to avoid that." Imagining is not the same as ogling but it's probably still rude and Bruce should really stop.

"I mean, people don't want to look at me shirtless."

Why did he say that. Stupid stupid stupid.

"I would be a huge hypocrite if I told you not to care what other people think, because I absolutely care what other people think, but, it really isn't any of their business? You should wear whatever you want."

ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no. 

"Yeah well. I should probably get back to. Studying. And things."

Awww. "Alas. Don't we all. Um, I'll see you in the lab later?" Obviously he will, they're both in there all the time, but it would be nice to know exactly when they'll run into each other again. Having a well-defined schedule is good. 

"Yeah," he says, and stands up hurriedly and-- doesn't run away. Just walks away extremely quickly. Those are different.

Everyone wants to avoid him today.  Bruce waits a bit to let Lev get as far away as he wants to get, then takes the notes they made and starts heading to the lab. Hopefully the lab mice won't all decide they want a different experimenter.

The Erogame, in its infinite mercy, allows him to do his actual job for a bit and does not pop up any quests about lab rats.

And then he gets:

Quest available: ???????????????

??????????????????????

Success: 1 perk point, +5,000 xp
Failure: ????????????

Yeah, any attempt to mix rodents and Ero would be seriously objectionable.

"What? What? Oh come on, that's just not fair, you know all my buttons." He accepts the Mystery Quest, because how can he not. This is clearly a bad idea but slowly dissolving of curiosity is also a bad idea, so.

Science accomplished, he decides to go for a walk around campus. Maybe he'll encounter a clue to the "???????", or have an idea for how to raise his Ero. 

There's an extremely buff man in his underwear running. He reaches a tree, jumps up to swing on a branch, and backflips around it.

(The Erogame had nothing to do with this. Asher just does that.)

If people were linear regressions, that dude would have an r^2 of .99, because he is fit. Bruce stares at the impressive display of athleticism.

The man sees him and turns himself upside down on the branch. "Hello."

"Put some pants on."

"Thank you for not putting pants on."

"H-hello."

"You're cute. My name is Asher."

"I'm Bruce. You're really impressive; are you a gymnast?" Oh no he just remembered the etymology of "gymnastics"; if he wasn't pink before he is now.

"I'm an aspiring economist."

"Oh, neat! I'm in biology. Neuroscience. What sort of econ are you into?"

"Well, I'm not sure, I'm in undergrad."

(He looks about seven or eight years too old to be an undergrad.)

"Huh! I'd had you pegged as a fellow grad student. Guess you have plenty of time to specialize later, then. What made you pick econ?"

"Probably you thought I was a grad student," Asher says, "because I spent the last seven years as a member of the New York City Ballet. --I was going to do math, but I took an econ class and fell in love, and also figured it was probably a good idea not to choose a second discipline you're only good at before you're thirty."

He flips off the branch and looks like he's about to land on his face and at the very last moment twists into a crouch.

Bruce flinches when it looks like Asher's about to faceplant, then says, "I don't actually know anything about the New York City Ballet but I am nonetheless extremely impressed. And picking a major because you took one class and fell in love is awesome. Except if I did that I'd also still be an undergrad with six majors and no hope of graduating."

"Well, we don't know that I'll avoid that tragic fate yet."

"True. Maybe you'll fall in love with three other fields and end up some sort of polygamous polymath." His mind really needs to exit the gutter at some point, but the metaphorical gutter, much like literal ones, seems to be a local minimum.

"Now when did I say I'm poly?"

"I, it, it was an academic metaphor, I wasn't trying to speculate about your personal life, sorry."

"You're adorable. And not wrong."

This time the compliment actually registers, and Bruce emits some phonemes the author's keyboard is not equipped to represent. "Thanks!"

"Very adorable."

Asher steps a little bit closer.

Those. Sure are some amazing muscles. Right there in front of him where he could totally put a hand on them if he was capable of voluntary movement. 

"Want to go back to my place?"

This sex game seems to be trying to get him into men. Which as premises for an alien experiment on human sexuality go is pretty plausible. He's never been religious, but right now, "trust the incomprehensible entities in whose hands I have found myself" seems like the best option on a list of one. It seems to have been kind to him so far.

All of that goes through his brain after his mouth has already said "Sure."

"Cool," Asher says, and kisses him. 

!!!

This is not what he had expected his first kiss to involve, on so many levels! But it's good.

Oh right, kissing back, that's a thing, he should do that. He's going to have to figure it out from first principles.

Asher has so much experience guiding people who haven't had their first kiss yet!

So much experience. 

Quest available: Easy As Pie

Asher is very hot and very eager and very, very good at what he does. Find out what happens if you sleep with a person who, if he were the Erogamer, would have over 20 FUK.

Success: +1000 xp, 'Afterglow' status effect
Failure: --

He is glad he already knows what to expect from the popups when there's something in his face (in this instance, another face). He stares really hard at the "yes" option and tries clicking it with his mind. It's not like he isn't being constantly mindread, he should be allowed to use it as a UI so he can dedicate his hands to slowly, tentatively making their way onto Asher's back.

The popup disappears!

Asher's hands are also making their way along Bruce's back but his are not slow or tentative at all.

This is actually happening, he's actually doing this, apparently he is seduceable by acts of extreme competence (not a shocker) and also by at least one man (something of a shocker) but why is he thinking when he could instead be makeouts?

This is Asher's thought exactly!

"My room," he says when he comes up for air, and "I didn't actually get your name."

"Bruce." He could have sworn he said that already, but he's questioning a lot of things right now. Not Asher, though; Asher is thoroughly convincing. "Your room. Yes. Good plan."

Asher holds his hand and tugs him towards Fifth East.

"If you'd met me five years ago I would have scooped you up and carried you, but unfortunately I'm not in the shape I once was."

Bruce permits himself to be tugged!

"I think if you were any more in shape it would break my already stretched suspension of disbelief." Shit, did that make any sense without the context Asher doesn't have? It at least sounded complimentary even if it wasn't coherent.

"Am I that implausible of a person?"

"Extremely good-looking people don't usually backflip out of trees and take an interest in me, so, yeah?"

"Extremely good-looking people have terrible taste in either activities or hookups."

Sporfle!

Oh hey, they're going to Fifth East. Bruce is not super aware of undergrad dorm stereotypes but even he knows Fifth East has a lot of people with . . . exotic sexual tastes. Not making assumptions, not making assumptions, just rolling with it and trusting the Erogame--to do what, he isn't sure.

When they get up to Asher's dorm room Asher pulls him onto the bed, kisses him, and says, "so what are you into?"

"I'm--not sure? What are you into, I want you to be having fun."

"Unfortunately for you, I'm into getting people off, so you don't escape that easily."

"Oh dear, infinite regress. Um, how about we both get naked and make out some more until we think of something?" He is now somewhat embarrassed by their unbalanced state of undress, but also somewhat embarrassed by the thought of revealing his significantly scrawnier torso, so while he makes the suggestion he doesn't actually manage to start disrobing.

"Sounds like a good plan," Asher says, and slips his hands under Bruce's shirt to pull it off.

Asher's hands are strong and confident and warm. Bruce makes a happy little sound and helps get his shirt off.

Asher takes off his own underwear while they've already interrupted kissing.

His dick is the size of an unusually well-endowed porn star's.

Of course it is. Anything else would be a departure from the pattern. He stares anyway as he starts removing his pants, intimidated but also thoroughly appreciative.

"It's unlikely to come up again," he comments, "but you really should tell people you're a virgin before you fuck them."

"I--sorry. If you've changed your mind--"

"Not at all. What kind of monster would I be if I made you get an inferior blowjob for your first time?"

Weak little chuckle. "Thanks." He immediately resolves to do his level best to reciprocate, though between his inexperience and the size of Asher's dick he's afraid he's going to fail miserably. "I'll try to be a quick study."

"Hey," he says, and presses a kiss to Bruce's forehead, "don't worry about it. You'll do fine."

agdhfjahalfkjhs forehead kisses. Bruce melts a little, and reaches out to run his fingers over Asher's cock.

Asher hisses and wraps a hand around Bruce's hand to show him what to do.

Bruce can follow directions! Asher's reactions are fascinating and he wants to induce more of them.

+1 FUK for learning how to give a handjob.

Asher drops his hand, makes fascinating little noises for a moment, and then starts taking off Bruce's pants.

Yay, getting better at stuff! Yay, fascinating noises! Yay, no pants!

(Bruce is averagely endowed, shaved, circumcized, and hard as a rock.)

And now he's inside Asher's mouth!

Behold FUK 20.

Oh, he's beholding, alright. 

Any attempt to express Bruce's inner monologue here would involve mostly keymashing, and not even on the letter keys. Suffice it to say he is having an excellent time.

He probably won't be able to keep having this excellent of a time for very long, but the fact that he already came once today is helping.

Fortunately for him, Asher pulls off, kisses his thighs until he calms down enough to say words, and says, "do you like things in your ass?"

Last week he would have said no, that sounds painful and slightly gross. But this week he has Erogamer's Body and gets stat bonuses for expanding his horizons. "I'm not sure . . . want to help me find out?"

He kisses the tip of Bruce's dick. 

"How about you fuck me senseless and I'll save fucking you for next time, my dick is a bit much to take for your first time ever."

"Yeah, I was thinking something significantly smaller than your dick. That all sounds good." Then his brain catches up to the words "next time" and he's grinning like an idiot.

"Do you have condoms?" He can't get or spread STDs now, but Asher doesn't know that.

"Yeah." He looks in his nightstand drawer. "--Actually, shit, no, I'm all out. That's weird, I thought I'd bought some."

Did the Erogame steal Asher's condoms. Is that a thing that just happened. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so juvenile.

"Well, I'm too much of a virgin to give you anything, and neither of us is at much risk from oral, but what are you comfortable with?" Somehow he suspects that the pharmacy is out of stock.

"Well, I don't want to give you something. Shitty first time partner thing."

"We could stick to--hands and mouths? If you tell me you're clean I'll believe you." Or at least believe he's more likely to be correct than mistaken and more likely to be mistaken than lying, and that it doesn't matter anyway.

Asher answers this by deepthroating him.

yeah this would totally be worth a course of antibiotics for

that's such an irresponsible thought

ahsgsgdkflgjshahdkfl

Asher has absolutely no gag reflex and also he makes enthusiastic little noises when he's sucking cock and also his hair is so soft. Has Bruce considered touching his hair? It's very soft.

Bruce had been refraining out of a vague sense that it's wrong to touch people's hair without permission and it's also wrong to ask permission to touch a Black person's hair, but his sense of touch is very much not vague right now and he is definitely petting Asher's hair. It's so soft and fluffy and excellent. Bruce is making incoherent little happy sounds about all of this.

That is good. They can both make incoherent little happy sounds. This is the sort of behavior Asher approves of in his hookups.

And after a bit more of this:

"Ah--gonna--'mm gonna--"

Asher swallows and then pulls him close and cuddles him.

Mmmm, cuddles. Bruce attempts to communicate "that was excellent" and "you are excellent" and "being close to another human is so great" through cuddles, since words aren't fully online yet. 

You no longer have the status effect "'Innocent' Virgin."

A skill has been created by a special action! Cuddling Asher has created the skill 'Cuddle.'

Info/Skills/Cuddle

Cuddle. Lvl 1. Active. 1 D|S / use.

When this skill is active, you will instinctively know the best ways to hold someone to make them feel warm, safe, protected, and comfortable. Your limbs will not fall asleep no matter what position you are in. More advanced cuddle skills will be unlocked at higher levels.

He gets a cuddle superpower! The sensation of new intuitions appearing in his head is pretty amazing. He takes full advantage and adjusts to snuggle Asher more optionally.

Asher makes a soft happy noise and rests his head on Bruce's shoulder.

He's still hard but he doesn't seem super inclined to do anything about it.

Then Bruce will just cuddle him for a few minutes while he finishes rebooting, and then ask softly, "Your turn?"

Asher kisses him. "Sure-- although I don't mind at all if you're selfish."

"I am being selfish--I want to see how good I can make you feel."

"What an excellent kind of selfish to be," Asher says, and kisses him again.

Mmm, kisses. What an excellent reward for his current total lack of brain-to-mouth filter. Still, better make sure his mouth stays occupied. He disengages from Asher's mouth after a bit and kisses his chest instead.

"You have the pecs of a Greek statue." Whoops, apparently that was not sufficiently mouth-occupying.

"Thank you. --You have an adorable shy nerdy-cute thing going on."

"Thank you." He smiles a little smile up at Asher and scoots farther down the bed. Hmm, how to approach this? If the Erogame lets him unhinge his jaw like a snake it hasn't been super clear on the details. He'll start by licking the head, that seems pretty safe on all fronts.

Asher hisses.

Bruce has instincts-- almost muscle memory-- about how to give a blowjob, even though he hasn't ever done it before; the Erogame coaxes him to open his lips more, to lick, to take it deeper into his mouth.

Spontaneous knowledge! That he can use to make someone feel good! And that someone is awesome and makes noises! If this is a tutorial level it's the best one.

He follows his instincts, repeats anything that seems to have a positive result, wraps a hand around the base of Asher's cock for better fine control.

"Ah--" he says. "I was going to give advice but you're a natural-- fuck--"

Bruce makes a happy humming noise at the praise and keeps going. Keeping his mouth open this wide for this long at the dentist used to be unpleasant but now he finds he can do it no problem. Hmm, experiment time: how much cock can he fit in his mouth before he gags or stops being able to breathe properly?

Fortunately for Bruce, arbitrarily large appendages can fit into any of his orifices!

"Oh-- god-- fuck--"

He's gonna fit this entire appendage in his orifice, then! Possibly if he was less full of hormones he would be able to figure out whether this was being accomplished through space distortion or changes to his anatomy or instinctive skills allowing him to push the limits of the technically humanly possible, but right now, on nom cock.

"Fuuuuu--"

Om nom cock coming in his mouth. 

Quest completed: Easy as Pie

+1000 xp
'Afterglow' status effect

Info/Status Effects/Afterglow

Afterglow: For the duration of this effect, your LST is halved and your Cuddle skill is treated as if two levels higher. Also, it feels nice.  

You have leveled up!

You have leveled up!

You have leveled up!

A skill has been created by a special action! Having Asher finish in your mouth has created the skill The Nectar. 

Info/Skills/The Nectar

You gain benefits from consuming sexual fluids you have personally extracted from others. (With the Mad Inventor perk: sexual fluids extracted via machines of your own creation that you personally operate.) Every person's precious bodily fluids convey different potencies, hinted at by tastes and sensations you may learn to identify. Mixing synergetic sexual fluids yields greater results, but the fluids must be mixed in situ.

Info/Skills/The Necar/Asher

1) You're the center of attention in any crowd (12 hours).
2) You understand and appreciate the subtleties of classical ballet (24 hours).
3) You won't fail at anything (2 minutes 39 seconds).

Bruce has several thoughts all sort of piled on top of each other.

* Success! With totally awesome moaning.

* Asher is super great.

* Asher's come tastes way better than his own did that one time. Kinda pumpkin-flavored.

* He should totally be cuddling Asher right now. (This one is actionable, and gets implemented.)

* Wow, three level-ups in a row. It's like the early levels of Pokémon. Which is a horrible Skinner box, but he'll worry about that later.

* Better not go near a crowd for twelve hours.

* Oh neat, ballet knowledge! He has no use for this at present, and forgetting it in a day is going to feel weird and wrong, but it's still neat. 

* Holy SHIT, he can't fail at anything for the next two minutes 39 seconds? Okay, if he tries something impossible it'll probably just take him more time than that and then he'll fail, but he should definitely start coming up with good experiment ideas right now and succeed at doing so. Because that's an ambitious useful thing he can do while still cuddling Asher.

Asher, completely unaware of anything that has just happened, cuddles him and says, "you are surprisingly good at blowjobs."

"I guess it's my superpower. Man, I didn't even know I was bi this morning!" He laughs at himself. "You learn something new every day."

Quest complete: Bi The Way

+5000 xp
+1 perk point

You have leveled up!

"Am I that persuasive?"

"Well, looking back on my experience watching Carl Sagan in Cosmos I'm pretty sure the option was always there and you just pointed it out, but if I was gonna believe anyone could turn a straight guy bi it'd be you."

"I thought I was straight for a while but it turns out actually the thing I was was 'monogamous.'"

"As in, you were dating a girl and lost interest in everyone else? That makes sense. And it's cute."

"Not only that, I lost interest in everyone else for a couple years after we broke up!"

"That's really romantic but also sounds really unpleasant; my sympathies."

"Well, I didn't really mind, because I loved her. --The getting maudlin about ex-girlfriends is not a common feature of hooking up."

"It's fine, get as maudlin as you want." Bruce is still using his cuddle powers. Also Bruce should really clairfy at some point whether this was a one-off hookup or the first in a potential string of hookups or a very sudden start to an attempt at boyfriendhood or what, but he can't come up with a phrasing that doesn't sound stupid and his no-failures power has worn off. He did at least get some good science ideas out of it, though.

Kiss. "You're cute, newbie."

Blush, kiss, "Takes one to know one."

"Oh god, newbie, you blush, that's adorable."

Stupid grin! "Well, I seem to have acquired an endearingly embarrassing nickname, so."

"I could try to think of a different one," he says. "Are you doing research on some interesting sort of animal, should I call you Zebrafish?"

"Newbie is fine, I didn't mean to suggest it wasn't. I do work with mice but Mouse would be even more cutesy." He chuckles at the concept and also at the random mental image of himself with mouse ears.

"Boring," Asher announces. "All biologists work with mice. If I called you 'Mouse' I'd only be able to sleep with one biologist."

"Ah, so you need a unique nickname per hookup. I'm suddenly curious what other ones you've come up with. --If that's not a rude question."

"What, ever? --Well, there's Spider, Raincloud, Sugarplum, Nutcracker, Swan Princess, Lovelace... I just called my ex Robin 'love'..."

"Adorable ballet dancer nicknames!" Asher is too cute.

Asher grins and snuggles Bruce until he gets bored.

Eventually Bruce gets bored too. "I need to go do boring science things, but this was really fun."

"Have fun!"

Bruce's lab is not ero. No one has placed little fishnets on the mice, there are no giggling undergraduates fucking on the table, and no one has pulled Bruce's grant and told him he needs to study penises instead.

The ideas Bruce writes in his lab notebook are arguably ero by proxy, since he got them from a semen-fueled brainstorming session, and one of them tangentially relates to reproduction by way of heritable epigenetics, but they are otherwise as normal as the rest of the lab.

It's almost a disappointment, in a weird way. He wants to do science to the weirdness overtaking his reality, and possibly exploit said weirdness for awesome world-changing applications, and his science setup is apparently the only thing that's immune. Still, it's a damn sight better than having the Erogame biasing the results of his unrelated work.

As soon as he turns from his lab notebook to his experiments, everything slips away and three hours later he looks up, his to-do list entirely complete, with a feeling like surfacing from underneath deep water.

That was the most intense flow state he's ever been in. Possibly the effects of "But he was such a good student", or possibly the slightly more mundane effects of having gotten laid. The sensation is pretty great, though his episodic memory of the past three hours could be a lot better. Maybe if he sleeps with so many people he forgets who they are he'll get an eidetic memory.

A skill has been created by a special action! Lab work has created the skill Biochemistry.

A skill has been created by a special action! Combining single micrograms of liquid and staring at them with a microscope that costs more than a car has created the skill Fiddly Lab Work.

A skill has been created by a special action! Using Good Student's less well-documented advantages has created the skill Beauty With Brains.

Info/Skills/Biochemistry

Biochemistry. Active. Lvl 1. 1 D|S / use.

You have an intuitive knowledge of the chemical processes within and related to biological organisms. You have a chance, scaled according to the skill's level, your ERO, and the difficulty of the problem, of knowing the answer to any biochemistry question you pose. 

Info/Skills/Fiddly Lab Work

Fiddly Lab Work. Passive. Lvl 1. 

You don't drop the beaker onto your foot. It is easy to squeeze out precisely the amount of the chemicals that you intended to use. Machines no longer require mystic incantations or propitiary gifts to work properly, although for best results you should get fucked in your lab on a regular basis.  

Info/Skills/Beauty With Brains

Beauty With Brains. Active. Lvl 1. 2 D|S / use.

The game doesn't have an INT stat, but there are times when the hot guy with glasses will be called upon to have an opinion about quantum mechanics. When using this skill on a specific question of general knowledge, you have a BOD% chance of knowing the correct answer. Beauty With Brains cannot provide insight into problems or give you information that you would not be able to find in a diligent search of Wikipedia. 

Being able to pull biochem information from thin air at higher ERO is the best thing. Fiddly Lab Work is also the best thing in a different way, namely that he will absolutely have sex in the lab if it means the electron microscope will stop giving everyone "Sensor Adjustment Error" and "Stacker Pusher Movement Error" at the worst possible moments.

Quest available: Better Than That Ponce

You know what's not ero? Aging is not ero. Disease is not ero. People having bodies other than the ones they feel most comfortable and happy in is definitely not ero. Fortunately for you, you can fuck your way to a cure. 

Accepting this quest unlocks the Come With Me If You Want Everyone To Live quest tree. 

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest available: Uplift

Successfully uplift, and then have sex with, a member of a commonly eaten food species, allowing it to advocate for itsef and leading to the development of cultured meat and an end to animal consumption.

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest available: Fuck Your Arbitrary Standards

Cause the definition of a kilogram to be changed.

Success: ???, +2 science, +? XP
Failure: continue to live in a world in which a kilogram is defined as the mass of a particular metal rod in a sealed dungeon in Paris.

Quest available: Never Forget a Fuck

Personally administer orgasms to 250 strangers.

Success: Eidectic memory. 

Quest available: Optimize The World With Friendship and Ero

If people are wondering where their next meal is coming from, they're going to have trouble having multiple orgasms and a fulfilling sex life. Fuck your way to a post-scarcity society.  

Your ERO is too low to begin this quest.

He is not at all sure what "Ponce" he is supposed to be "Better Than" but if it gets him a cure for aging he'll figure it out. Or ??? trying, apparently. Accept!

Uplift an animal to sapience and fuck them: surprisingly appealing! He is learning all sorts of things about himself. Such as the fact that when he asked himself "which species" his brain answered "octopuses are considered food in some countries". He wonders if he'll end up doing this quest with or without ero things other people won't be able to replicate, and which way would be better given that other people might try it with variously benign and nefarious motives. Anyway, accept.

It appears the, let's say the GM, agrees with him on the obnoxiousness of the standard kilogram. And . . . he thinks he might be getting a sense of how this game works, and especially how it does wordplay . . . Do they want him to put the standard kilogram up his ass? Does he want to put the standard kilogram up his own ass? Even if that's not what the quest meant he'd probably get away with it now, both medically and in terms of not ending up in a French prison. But does that mean he should do it just because the entities running the universe dared him to? And offered him whatever tempting thing "+2 Science" is? Whoops he just hit the accept button before he could second-guess himself anymore. It's not like anything will change if he fails, he can wimp out at any time.

Oh look, it took him up on the weird dumb idea. He's not sure he's actually psychologically capable of sex with 250 strangers, but his levels of lust and comfort with sexual things are now raisable stats, and there's no time limit or failure penalty, and eidetic memory would be really great . . . Accept but not in a committing-to-do-anything way, he just wants to keep the option open.

"Optimize the world" . . . yeah, he really needs to raise his ERO stat. Which reminds him, he's still got that quest to raise all his stats by one point. Hmm, how to deliberately increase the weirdness of his life? His mind goes to a certain xkcd that seems appropriate. He pulls out his phone, generates some "random numbers" (aka whatever numbers the game wants him to get) and puts them into Maps. Hopefully it will lead somewhere reachable by public transit, since he doesn't have a car and barely remembers how to drive one.

It sends him to a coffeeshop not far from campus!

There are several people he doesn't recognize, Sarah of the astonishing breasts, and Lev, reading a copy of Thinking Fast and Slow.

+1 ERO for allowing the Erogame to make decisions.

Quest complete: Rules of the Erogame

+1000 xp

Nice, he finished a quest on purpose! And now he can spend his level-up stat points on things. He can probably get Lev to not immediately write him off as bonkers if he spends a bunch on BOD while Lev is watching and possibly filming. Then Lev could know about the Erogame and they could investigate it together and that would be super great, because Lev is an excellent scientist.

But first: he has a quest to set Lev up with somebody, and here's Lev and someone he knows to be cool hanging out in a coffee shop the game sent him to. He can take a hint. He orders a small coffee with sugar and no milk, mostly to have something to do with his hands but also because caffeine, and then makes his way toward Sarah's table.

"Hi!"

"Hi! I've been reading Shards of Honor; it's lots of fun. How's your life going?"

"In spite of all my work, the earth continues to warm."

Quest available: It's Getting Hot In Here (Let's Take Off All Our Clothes)

Mitigate the effects of climate change.

Success: ????
Failure: ????

No, Erogame, he is not getting naked in a coffee shop. Arguably it's less crazy than putting the standard kilogram in his ass, but that he can at least theoretically do without getting caught. Also it's intruiging on an appel du vide level. Public nudity is just rude.

"We're a morbid pair, aren't we? Both have a good chance of getting killed by our fields of study."

Lev chuckles at something in his book.

"I find a little fear of death spices things up wonderfully."

"I'm afraid I can't say the same, but you do study much more exciting kinds of death. Speaking of research, one of my labmates is right over there. Hi Lev!" This last is a bit louder and accompanied by a wave.

Lev glances up from his book to see who has so inconsiderately interrupted him, waves, and returns to reading.

"Come over here and be social!" Says the massive hypocrite. "You can tell us what you're reading about."

He puts on his noise-cancelling headphones.

Hypocrites get what they deserve, he supposes. He'll have to apologise to Lev later. "Ah well, no book review for us," he says to Sarah. "Too bad, you should meet him sometime. He's brilliant. Anyway. Do you enjoy a little risk when you're not at work too?" Shit, was that an accidental innuendo or is he just expecting to see them everywhere because of the game?

"Sometimes. --Unfortunately I have a meeting in a few minutes, catch up with you later?"

"Sure, see you 'round." Dammit dammit dammit he is such an awkward fuckup, he is now two for two in this coffeeshop on people he tries to interact with avoiding him. Except the barista but she's paid to interact with people.

Lev sees that Sarah has left and takes off his noise-cancelling headphones.

Bruce is not going to bother him again immediately. He is going to sit here and drink his coffee and feel awkward and wonder if putting points in SED will give him general social skills or just make people want to sleep with him.

Quest available: Just Spit It Out

Have a real conversation with ??? Aarons for fifteen minutes. ????????????

Success: +500 XP, +1 SED, +1 LST
Failure: The Skip the Boring Parts perk, ????????

Maybe this is the Erogame's way of saying Lev wouldn't mind talking to him. It seems like sort of thing the Erogame would do in that circumstance. On the other hand, P(A|B) is not P(B|A); this might also be the Erogame wanting him to do something obnoxious. But there's only one way to find out. He gets up, brings his coffee over to Lev's table, and smiles nervously. "Mind if I sit here?" he asks, flashing back to more real and fictional First Days Of School than anyone should have to put up with.

"Go ahead!"

Oh thank goodness, Lev isn't still annoyed at him. He grins, sits, and starts trying to read Lev's book upside down. This last isn't really a conscious decision; he just does that.

"Don't bother, a bunch of the studies didn't replicate."

"Alas. Anything in here that did?"

"Yeah but-- he keeps going 'priming might sound weird but the weight of the scientific evidence is so strong that there is no option but believing it's true' and, no, the weight of the scientific evidence wasn't that strong, in fact it turns out that priming effects exist only for the most obvious things like word-stem completion tests and, no, it is not true that if you are primed with elderly people you walk slower. And that would be fine if he'd said that the evidence was weak and he was uncertain, science moves on, but he's so overconfident and it's really really annoying."

(Lev has never been this passionate about anything related to biochemistry.)

"Ugh, yeah. And now science marches on and he has egg on his face, but I doubt you're willing to trust his interpretation of the evidence on questions where the jury is still solidly out."

"Yeah, I think the lesson of Thinking Fast and Slow is that academic social psychology can't yet outperform just thinking about what people you know are like and drawing conclusions about what humans are like from that, which is terrible. I mean, you don't even get to know that many people? But the studies are all conducted on MTurkers or undergraduates who are even less representative than the people you'd meet in your day-to-day life, people barely ever do cross-cultural studies and when they do it turns out people from the Anglosphere are strange--"

He's wearing a necklace with a rose and a ring with a cubic zirconia diamond on it. If Bruce is observant enough, he'd notice that Lev is also wearing foundation, eyeshadow the color of his skin tone, and a tinted lip balm, and his fingernails are painted with clear polish.

"Man, now I want to gather some objective data about how good I am at even noticing what people I know are like, I might be even worse than academic psychology. Analyzing bad tools with different bad tools." 

He doesn't notice the makeup, but does notice the jewelry and that Lev is very nice to look at today. He tries to think of a way to compliment him that doesn't sound any of weird, douchey, or lame.

"Well, I mean, I could ask you about studies and you could guess whether you'd think they'd replicate and then that would tell you if your intuition could outperform Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman."

Facial expressions! A thing Lev generally does not particularly have most of the time! And in general he seems much more relaxed and much happier.

"That sounds extremely fun actually, do you want to?"

"I always want to talk about psychology." (This is a fact Bruce may previously not have noticed.) "True or false: people are more likely to donate to a charity if the overhead for that charity is already covered than if they have to pay for it themselves."

"Hmmm. Irrational but plausible . . . I'm gonna guess that replicated."

"Yes, it did!" When he is happy, apparently, he bounces. "How about this-- if you get someone to look at a picture of Rodin's The Thinker, that makes them report a lower level of religions belief."

"Pffff. No way. At least I sure hope not. Sheesh."

"Yeah, that one's not real. People can tell how tennis players feel during high intensity game moments without looking at their faces, just by looking at their body?"

"To be fair, I could have inferred that one from your earlier comments. Hmmm, now we run into the thing where I'm bad at people . . . I couldn't do that with tennis players, but it seems like the sort of thing normal people could. I'm gonna say that one replicated."

"Before a high-stakes math test, students who spend ten minutes writing down how they feel about the test do better on the test than those who don't?"

"Before I heard that one study found that, I would have guessed it made it worse. But one study is still evidence, if weak evidence. Man, this one really sounds like the sort of thing that would work awesomely for some people and not others, if I was checking it I'd want an absolutely massive sample. Gonna guess it failed to replicate but my probability is very close to point five."

"Well, you're right, it didn't replicate. --Do you want to keep going? I can do this literally all day."

"Lemme estimate how many we'd need to do to get decent statistical power." He whips his phone out of his pants. "Swear I'm not looking up answers," he jokes. (He is in fact doing math and not looking up answers.) After a minute he comes up with a number that won't take too long to do but which will meaningfully compare him to Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.

Oh no Bruce is really cute.

Lev can name the results of dozens of studies and whether they replicated off the top of his head.

Bruce comes up with answers, sometimes immediately, sometimes after a bunch of closing his eyes and going "hmmm". He's not right every time, but he's quite good.

"You're not even looking these up in the book, are you, you just have all this stuff memorized, that's so impressive."

"I don't really have a life."

Bruce makes a "pfah" hand gesture. "Lives are for the real world; this is MIT. Science is cooler than having a life."

"Yeah, well, this is not exactly the science I'm supposed to be doing either."

"Maybe you should switch subjects. There are plenty of professors who'd love you, and you know so much you'd hardly lose any time. I--we'd miss you in the lab but that shouldn't be a factor, I mean we've been shorthanded before."

+1 SED for successfully seducing someone with the replication crisis!

+1 SED for eliciting one of ???'s deepest and most shameful secrets.

Quest available: Deep and Dark

Learn all of ??? Aaron's deepest and most shameful secrets. 

Success: +7,500 xp, 'Good Listener' status effect, +1 LST, +2 PRV, ?????
Failure: +2 ERO, reduced relations with ???

"I can't."

Bruce has just enough time to make a sympathetic face before the popups appear and set his mind racing.

If, as seems likely, all those question marks are pointers to Lev, Lev has a secret extra name (like a superhero secret identity?) and the game wants him to find it. And also to pry into Lev's business generally. And also apparently Lev is into him now, and now that he thinks about it that's definitely reciprocated, but that's so not the important thing here.

Bruce does want to get to know Lev better, but more than that he wants to keep him safe from the game. He needs to get Lev alone and tell him the full truth as soon as possible, and if he's lucky he'll end up in a mental institution if and only if he is in fact having a psychotic break. He's not clicking either yes or no on that quest any time soon.

He wrenches his train of thought back to the conversation at hand, after a pause that's surely way too long. "Can you tell me why you can't? If, if it isn't a secret or something?"

Lev has looked increasingly uncomfortable over the long pause.

"Not a lot of jobs for people with a PhD in psychology. And I did biochem in undergrad, I'd be competing with people who actually have relevant undergrad degrees."

"I can't really advise you there, my life plan is 'apply for tenure track positions and pray'." Last week he would have added "and I don't believe in prayer" but he has occasionally had powerful alien beings respond directly to his thoughts so uh.

A gust of wind blows in a piece of newspaper; out of the corner of his eye Bruce catches the phrase YOU'RE WELCOME.

"I'll just go into industry."

He sounds distinctly unthrilled by this prospect.

That newspaper thing was weird and having someone sane to talk to about this shit is going to be such a relief.

"I feel like, maybe, if you try something risky it might suck, but if you commit to something you hate it will definitely suck. But it's your life. Listen, do you want to come back to my dorm? There's something I want to show you."

"Sure!" he says. 

+1 SED for accidentally successfully propositioning someone. 

Oh, did Lev-or-whatever-his-name-is just agree to make out with him? Thank you, Erogame, for pointing that out, he would have totally missed it and that would have been mega awkward. Now he will instead get to make out with Lev! If Lev doesn't decide he's insane, and if he's still interested after learning about the Erogame, both of which are pretty big ifs. Still, he smiles and stands up from the table.

Lev-or-whatever-his-name-is is smiling at him and gingerly reaches out to take his hand as they walk back. 

Lev's hands are very very soft.

Eeee handholding! Bruce adjusts his stride length so they can hold hands more easily. They get back to his building pretty soon.

Lev smiles at him when they're back at his room.

"You're really cute."

"Thanks! So are you, I've been admiring your taste in jewelry. . . . But I need to explain some stuff before we do anything else. And before I lose my nerve."

Bruce bites his lip, trying to figure out what order to say stuff in. Possibly he is also trying to remember where he put his nerve.

"So should I, probably," Lev says.

"I guarantee you mine is weirder. I promise I have evidence of what I'm about to say, please don't write me off as insane and run away before I can show you."

Deep breath.

"Magic exists, in the form of, my life has turned into, somesortofvirtualrealitysexgame." He gets more mumblesome over the course of that sentence but stays mostly intelligible.

"...okay. I am not going to write you off as insane and run away but I really want to see the evidence."

"Definitely. You might want to get your phone out and record this so we have more than just our memories to go on." He starts recording video on his own phone, and props it up on his desk so it's pointing at his face and torso.

He does!

All of Lev's complicated feelings about this have been replaced with curiosity.

And Bruce faces both cameras, looks Lev in the eyes, and puts five of his twenty unspent stat points into BOD.

And he shifts to become approximately 25 percentile points more attractive.

"What the fuck."

"Oh thank fuck you can see it too I'm not totally losing my mind. I have no, okay I have some idea what the fuck but not, like, an actual explanation, just a bunch of data and some variously hard-to-test hypotheses."

"I--" and he cuts himself off.

"Do you have a hypothesis? I wanna hear it before I say anything else, you might come up with something I missed."

"No, I don't have anything, sorry. Hyperadvanced aliens? But that's not really a hypothesis, it doesn't have moving parts, it's just saying 'magic' in a way that makes me feel less like I'm in a YA novel."

"Yeah, my mind also went straight to aliens. It actually fits the data better than you'd think--I've got these, these text boxes, that only I can see, that tell me the game rules and give me quests to do things. Actually I should see if you can see them now that you know." He pulls up his stat screen, careful not to disturb the "Find out all Lev's secrets" quest from the corner of his vision where it's tucked itself away awaiting an answer. "Does this," he gestures at the relevant chunk of air, "look like anything?"

"I can't see anything. --I guess if you're the player of the game it only changes your physical form, right?"

"Mine is the only one I can change for now, but some of the quests I've gotten are seriously epic. I've gotten a quest to end death, and another one to turn an animal into a person, I just bet there's a way to get other people shapeshifting powers if the aliens or whatever cooperate. They didn't stop me from telling you, so that's probably a good sign."

That is a facial expression of outright longing. 

"...my thing seems pretty dumb now, I was just going to tell you I'm straight."

"Oh. Okay, um, sorry for misreading your signals. The game was trying really hard to convince me you were into me but thinking back it could have been telling technical truths and I was just wishful thinking. Sorry." He really wants that eidetic memory right now, so he could look back at all those pop-ups and see how much the game was misleading him and how much was his crush on Lev deluding him even before he was aware of it.

"--uh, no, I mean, I'm straight, I'm only attracted to women, but I uh kindofkinkonhavingsexwithmen."

He's blushing.

"So does that mean you don't want to sleep with me, or you want to sleep with me but not date me?" He is pretty sure having no-strings sex with someone you've just realized you have a crush on is a bad plan, but the alternative doesn't seem very appealing either."

"I want to sleep with you but not date you?"

"So, uh, I'm fine with that but you should know that I have a crush on you and sex will probably not help me get rid of it and also the game wants me to find out all your secrets for some reason, I haven't told it yes but I haven't told it no either but I assume you want me to?"

"...I would rather you not find out all my secrets, yes."

"Unsurprising! Want me to read you the quest text before I delete it?"

"Uh, I guess."

Quest available: Deep and Dark. Learn all of question mark question mark question mark Aaron's deepest and most shameful secrets. Success, +7,500 xp, 'Good Listener' status effect, +1 lust, +2 perv,'--those are stats I have, I can explain those next--and some more question marks. Then 'Failure: +2 ero, reduced relations with question mark question mark question mark.' I don't know why your name is question marks, my best guess is that you're secretly a superhero or something and the game wants me to find your other identity because it has no manners. . . . If you are secretly a superhero I promise to give you alibis and not tell anyone."

Wow, Lev looks profoundly uncomfortable.

"I'm not a superhero."

"And I'll stay out of your business. Sorry. Right, stats, I was gonna explain stats." He says No to Deep and Dark and pulls up his stat screen. BOD is my physical appearance as defined by I don't know what metric, so far I haven't had any disagreements with its idea of hotness. LST is, like, my average level of horniness? PRV is basically Openness to Experience but specifically sex-focused because this thing is weirdly obsessed with sex. SED is basically charisma, FUK is how good I am in bed, and ERO is a measure of how little sense my life makes." He gets pinker and pinker as he explains, but it's still better than talking about how the game wants him to mess with Lev.

Lev also looks very relieved to get the concept of his secrets off the table.

"I guess I can't ask how many points you have in half of those without it being awkward oversharing."

"It's fine, I want a second brain on this, if it's not a hallucination it's potentially a really big deal." He reads off the rest of his character sheet--stats, skills, and active quests.

"I should probably have a reaction to this other than 'I want to know what my Nectar is.'"

"Well, that's definitely something we can find out!" Bruce says in a rush of mostly-scientific excitement. Then he realizes what he just said, turns absolutely crimson and stares at the space over Aarons' shoulder. He does not, however, do anything that might constitute taking it back.

Lev kisses him.

Kissing! Awesome! It's hard to remember, when they're kissing, that this isn't romantic on Lev's end, it's purely sexual and scientific. It's hard to care as much as he should either. Kissing back enthusiastically, though, that's easy.

Maybe they should be on a bed and still kissing. 

He makes soft little noises into Bruce's mouth.

Lev has such excellent ideas. Bruce wants to be kissing him even more than he already is. He has fifteen unspent skill points and puts five of them in FUK as they enter the bed.

Lev kisses him for a moment and then pulls away and says, "what just happened?"

"I, uh, I raised my good-in-bed stat. I haven't spent all my points yet and I wanted to be kissing you more effectively."

"You're so cute."

Oh thank goodness, he was half expecting "that's cheating you cheater". He grins and makes a little "eee" noise and resumes Effective Kissing.

Lev has no objections to being kissed maximally effectively!

Honestly, if he were in charge of it Bruce might put all of his stat points into FUK.

Bruce likes the idea of having some stat points on hand just on case, but if he was going to allocate them all at once then FUK and ERO are clearly the best skills and the idea of having a really high FUK makes him a lot less nervous than the idea of having a really high ERO. 

Does Lev have any objections to Bruce putting a hand on his shirt hem? Maybe with some of the fingers being technically under the shirt hem rather than on it?

He does not!

In fact he puts his hands up under Bruce's shirt.

Then Bruce will try taking Lev's shirt off, though if Lev reciprocates they might end up rather tangled.

He does not reciprocate while Bruce is taking his shirt off.

He does, however, close his eyes.

(--breasts I have breasts I am a girl with breasts and I am fucking my boyfriend and he loves me and--)

Bruce cannot read Lev's mind and wouldn't be doing it if he could. He can kiss Lev's neck and run his hands through Lev's hair and press their hips together. His own eyes are closed too, the better to focus on all of his other senses.

Those are very good non-gendered body parts to be touching.

He briefly wonders if the FUK skill will direct Bruce automatically away from his gendered body parts, decides this line of thought is too close to thinking about how disgusting he is to make for a good sexual experience, and returns to concentrating very hard on the idea that he is a girl and Bruce loves him. 

Lev is completely hairless-- her his chest and stomach and back are very smooth. SHe has pink lines on his chest that, if Bruce had more experience, he might recognize as the sort of marks made by an ill-fitting bra. 

Bruce has never removed a bra, ill-fitting or otherwise. He does notice that Lev shaves, and worries that that might mean Lev finds him unpleasantly hairy. There isn't anything obviously doable about that right now, though, not as his current level of shapeshifting finesse. He takes advantage of the lack of hair to try licking a nipple.

She whimpers.

(--he's playing with her breasts, which she has, because she is a girl--)

"Was that a good noise, or a bad noise?" Bruce murmurs, running his hands down Aarons' stomach.

"Good," she says, "very good--"

He remembers what kind of underwear he's wearing, realizes Bruce is maybe really close to trying to take his pants off, and pulls off his pants and underwear in a single hopefully-not-that-conspicuous movement.

The pants-and-underwear removal is very conspicuous! Bruce is now highly aware that this person he has basically promised a blowjob is now not wearing pants or underwear! And that's awesome, because he's pretty excited about giving that blowjob. He hastily shifts his attention dickwards, shuffles along the bed a bit, takes a moment to consider his approach, and starts by licking a line from the base of said dick to the head. 

Oh shit Bruce is touching the gross thing.

He tries really hard to remap the sensations-- to think that Bruce is licking his clit because he's a girl-- but he can feel himself starting to get soft.

Oh no Bruce is doing a shitty job. Fuck. Now what. He can't ask what Lev wants, that would be drawing attention to the problem and embarrass him. He hesitates, runs a nervous hand over the inside of Lev's thigh, tries sucking the head of his cock.

This is fine, this is fine, he can get soft and then eventually Bruce will give up and he can suck him off or get fucked and it'll be nice--

"I'm sorry," mutters Bruce. "I still don't know what I'm doing. I, can try to figure it out?"

"It's fine," Lev says, "I don't really like... being touched there... at all."

"Oh. Okay." That's sad but maybe it will still work for the Nectar if Lev masturbates while Bruce is licking his nipples that is so not the priority right now. "We can, go back to what we were doing before? I liked that." He still selfishly wants to make Lev come, both for science and because he wants to see it, but if that isn't happening it isn't happening.

"I can just suck you off, I'm really good at it."

"Um. Don't get me wrong, that sounds awesome, but also I want to make this good for you too? If you aren't having fun we should. Not." Bruce is definitely not an ethics expert but he knows that if someone doesn't want to have sex then you shouldn't have sex with them.

"You can play with my nipples if you want to."