“So what do you want to do tomorrow?”

 

“Let’s go to the PC Cafe. We can play Dota 2 together.”

 

Baekhyun couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he thinks back on the conversation with Chanyeol yesterday. Even though it is getting increasingly common for girls to indulge in online games, he didn’t expect his girlfriend to be interested in games, much less his favorite Dota.

 

He’s half an hour early, his excitement waking him up before his alarm goes off and Baekhyun waits impatiently in front of the bus stop, counting down the minutes. The sun is scorching, a clear sign of summer, but Baekhyun is overdressed, in a black hoodie and matching black jeans. Chanyeol had always loved wearing black hoodies regardless of the weather and Baekhyun wants to wear matching couple outfit for once.

 

“Baek,” Chanyeol gets off the twelfth bus that passed by (yes Baekhyun kept count) and makes her way to him. In contrary to his assumption, Chanyeol had changed out of her “uniform” and chose to don a flowy white dress with sneakers instead.

 

“Don’t you feel hot in this hoodie?” Chanyeol asks, eyeing his outfit.

 

“Yeah, a bit. I thought we could match, but,” Baekhyun tries to laugh it off, rolling up his sleeves up awkwardly.

 

“Oh,” It was random but Chanyeol bursts out laughing, her entire body convulsing as she laughs. But she quickly regaining her composure, apparently embarrassed by her sudden outburst, “you could had told me. Let’s wear couple tee together the next time.”

 

“Okay,” Baekhyun agrees readily, lacing their fingers together, “let’s do that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun had never been to the PC Cafe he had chosen for the day, simply picking it because of its convenient location. As the lift climbs steadily, his heart soars bit by bit till it gets lodged in his throat as he worries about not performing up to standard. He is in no way a pro, but Baekhyun will say that he’s pretty good at the game, winning most of the ranked games and at one point, was the best player in his high school. He has no idea how good Chanyeol is at the game, but his ego tells him that he needs to impress his girlfriend.

 

The lift door opens when it reaches the 4th floor and Baekhyun takes a deep breath before stepping out of the lift, “Let’s go.”

 

“For 2,” Baekhyun informs the cashier as he pulls out a 10,000 won bill from his wallet.

 

“Is it your first time here?” The cashier asks.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Please register an account,” He points to the machine besides the counter, “After that you can choose any of the open spots and the number of hours you need. Payment will be done through the machine too.”

 

“Oh okay. Thanks.

 

Do you think one hour is enough?” Baekhyun turns to ask Chanyeol, who is looking around the room in interest, “We can catch a movie after that if you want.”

 

“I plan to stay the whole afternoon here,” Chanyeol jokes and Baekhyun’s face drain of it’s color. Just how good is Chanyeol that she wants to spend the entire afternoon on games.

 

“Ah, we can do that too.”

 

“Nah, one hour is enough.”

 

As always, the chairs at the PC Cafe are always too comfortable, so comfortable that Baekhyun is tempted to slump himself on the chair rather than focus on the game.

 

“Which hero do you normally use?” Baekhyun swivels his chair to face Chanyeol as they wait for the game to load.

 

“Hero?” Chanyeol echoes. “Oh you mean the character I choose?”

 

An ominous thought strikes Baekhyun, but he shakes his head ridding himself of those thoughts. “Yep, I normally play a support character.”

 

“I’ve never played Dota before.” Chanyeol confesses.

 

. This might be worse than Chanyeol being better than him in the game.

 

“Can we still play like this?” Chanyeol’s huge eyes blinks at him innocently, and Baekhyun couldn’t find it in him to tell her no, even if it is suicide bringing a total newbie to a public game.

 

“Of course. It is really easy,” Baekhyun lies, “I’ll just coach you as we go along and you’ll be fine.”

 

It’ll be fine Byun Baekhyun, it’ll be fine, he whispers to himself as he creates a party. He needs to be fine.

 

“Okay. First you have to choose a hero,” Baekhyun explains to Chanyeol once he’s done with his hero selection, “For newbies, Crystal Maiden is pretty good. But if you’re not good at playing support, maybe you can choose Viper instead.”

 

Chanyeol ponders for a moment, before turning to Baekhyun for help, “What do you recommend?”

 

“Let’s pick Viper then.” Baekhyun types the name in and locks in the hero. Yeah, with Chanyeol’s personality, she’ll suit being a tank better.

 

What Chanyeol lacks in skills, she makes it up with her enthusiasm.

 

They didn’t start off too badly, their opponents at the safe lane more interested in farming the creeps rather than attacking them immediately, and Baekhyun is glad for that. It is obvious that Chanyeol is a noob at the game and he wouldn’t be able to save her if they ever decide to attack.

 

“Don’t go too close to the enemies,” Baekhyun reminds, keeping an eye on Chanyeol’s character as he makes his purchases, “and remember to always hide behind our creeps so that you don’t take any damage.”

 

Chanyeol nods in understanding but it takes less than 5 seconds before she moves ahead of the creeps and takes the brunt of the damage, again.

 

The first blood, undoubtedly is Chanyeol being slaughtered, ironically not by the opposing heroes but by the creeps who surroundeded her.

 

“I died,” She whines while waiting to get resurrected, “I’ll get my revenge, I swear.”

 

It is really cute, the amount of effort Chanyeol is putting into a game she is unfamiliar with and Baekhyun finds himself smiling despite the sense of foreboding, “I’ll help you get your revenge.”

 

“Use your money,” It had been 20 minutes into the game, and without a doubt, Chanyeol had the highest death rate. While it is not uncommon for newbies to die so often, she might had set a new record for the amount of times a carrier died in a game.

 

“So what should I buy?”

 

“Power treads and Mekansm.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“The boots and the thing that shoots out light under core items,” Baekhyun retreats his hero to behind the tower and helps Chanyeol with her purchase. “You don’t have enough money to buy everything now, so what you can do is press Shift + Left Click, the items will then appear at the bottom right corner,” Baekhyun points to the screen, “and you can buy what you can afford first.”

 

The distraction costs Baekhyun his life and a slew of swears from his teammates as he waits at the resurrection point. Thank god, he switched off the chat function for Chanyeol before the game started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Oh sh-”

 

“What?” Chanyeol asks, taking her eyes off the screen.

 

“I mean, oh shame. What a shame,” Baekhyun plasters on a smile immediately, “You could have killed off the opponent if they didn’t gang up on you.”

 

It is another blatant lie, the eighth one or is it the tenth one already? There was no way that Chanyeol could had won with the haphazard way she barged into the battle and the creeps attacking her on top of the heroes. But the important thing now is to keep Chanyeol’s morale high, while trying to keep himself alive, though he doubts it’s possible.

 

The game continues in a downward spiral for their team with Chanyeol getting killed the minute she returns to the battlefield and Baekhyun in an attempt to help out his girlfriend, underperforms and gets ganged up on by the opponent’s heroes more often than not.

 

The gap caused by the two heroes allows their opponents to destroy their towers quickly and before long, their Ancients crumbles, signalling the end of their game.

 

“I’m really bad at it right?” Chanyeol asks on their way out. “And you were really upset right?”

 

It had been difficult, but Baekhyun had made sure to fake a smile whenever Chanyeol turns to look at his direction, and every expletives was transformed into a tight press of his lips and a frown.

 

“No I’m not,” Baekhyun reassures his girlfriend. To be honest, Baekhyun is upset. He had wanted to impress Chanyeol and win the game, but at the same time, he’s a lot less upset than he had expected himself to be - Chanyeol’s resolve and unfounded confidence throughout the game made losing a lot better.

 

“You’re not bad for a beginner. I’m surprised you managed to take someone down at the last minute.

 

You could do a lot better though. If you stop messing up the keys,” He reaches out to pinch Chanyeol’s cheeks, earning a glare and kick to his thigh.

 

“I’ll do better the next time.” Chanyeol folds her arms together in determination, “Just wait and see.”

 

“Impress me.” Baekhyun humors his girlfriend. For now, he is contented with going on movie dates or cycling trips at the Han River.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun had thought that Chanyeol had been joking when she claimed that she would be better in Dota but apparently she had been practicing diligently behind his back.

 

“Oh . Did you get the first kill?” Baekhyun asks in surprise when he sees the message on his screen. Chanyeol had decided to solo the mid-lane and Baekhyun had expected her to get pawned and not destroy the opposing team within 5 minutes.

 

“Of course, didn’t I say I’ll do better? It’s time for you to buck up.” The arrogance in Chanyeol’s voice is obvious but Baekhyun doesn’t get riled up by the challenge. Instead, he drops his mouse and presses a loud kiss onto Chanyeol’s cheeks, “You’re too cute.”

 

 

 

 

A/N: Inspired by Baek playing LOL on Vapp. But I've never played LOL before, so changed the game to Dota instead. It feels more like a Dota tutorial by the time I finished it, but that's how I imagined Baek will interact with his girlfriend if he ever needed to teach her how to play. There might be some inaccuracies as I'm not really good in Dota.