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russellrustles · 1 year

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Game Night - c. leclerc

a/n: just a little something to get back into writing! This is mainly fueled by my current obsession with horror games. Maybe this counts as an early Halloween fic?

warnings: just a light dash of occasional swearing

word count: 2.3k

summary: for some extra entertainment, you decide to make your regular game night a little more spooky, and Charles is determined to prove that he’s not the only one feeling unnerved.

masterlist

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“You ready?” Charles asks, dramatically flopping down next to you on the sofa and throwing the Xbox controller at you. He’s quick to sprawl out across the majority of the sofa, reaching for a blanket that’s thrown over the back of it and snuggling up amongst all the pillows.

“I will be once I have enough room to sit here without falling off,” you reply, and he looks over at you with a confused expression before realising that you’re sitting with your legs tucked against your body right on the edge of the sofa. He gasps quietly and then breaks into a laugh, now aware that his attempts to get comfortable have resulted in you nearly landing on your ass on the floor.

“My bad - come here,” he apologises, shifting over to the side a little and reaching over to pull you down until you’re lying down next to him, neatly tucked against his body. You give an incoherent little mumble of approval before resting your head on his chest and grabbing the hem of his t-shirt to have something to fiddle with.

Charles gently picks up your hand and guides it to his cheek instead, quietly saying something along the lines of, “Darling, you’ll wear out all my shirts if you keep picking at the loose strings.”

You respond with a stubborn hmph but settle on running your thumb along his cheekbone.

He grabs the controller again, pressing a few buttons and turning on the game. The two of you usually prefer more light-hearted, multiplayer games for your game nights, most commonly something like Mario Kart that leaves the two of you hurling jocular obscenities at each other, but after some discussion you had decided that it’s finally time to switch it up a little and play a horror game.

In preparation for the game, you’ve already turned off every light in the house and shut all the curtains - if you’re going to be scaring yourselves, then you have to go full-out, just for that extra credit.

“So, like, how are we going to do this if it’s single-player?” Charles asks, starting a new game and placing the controller down as the loading screen comes on.

You ponder over the matter for a second, before conceding, “We’ll just swap every now and again.” He gives a small hum of agreement, idly running his fingers through your hair whilst waiting. Sighing contentedly, you embrace the moment of intimacy before his hand leaves your hair and picks up the controller once again despite your weak protests.

Neither of you have played this particular game before, only having read the description and watched a short trailer for it, and you’ve persistently nagged Charles not to read or watch anything more about it in order not to spoil anything for tonight.

“Are you sure about this?” he laughs quietly, selecting a new save file and causing another somber loading screen to appear on the TV. You nod confidently, determined not to chicken out tonight and to fully finish the game - whether Charles would stick around for the entire duration of it is another matter.

He’s not a wimp by any means - for Christ’s sake, his entire job revolves around him doing stuff that requires an insane amount of bravery - but sometimes when it’s just the two of you and he feels like he can show a bit more vulnerability he’s quick to cuddle up to you or tuck himself under a pile of blankets if there’s a particularly bone-chilling scene in a movie. However, you don’t really have the right to mock him for that, seeing as the last time you watched a horror movie together you hadn’t allowed him to turn the bedroom lights off for three nights afterwards.

Soon enough, the game begins, with the initial setting being some sort of dingy, decrepit corridor. The classic horror game first-person point of view adds to the rising sense of vulnerability as Charles slowly starts to explore what seems to be a rundown house. Silently, you both take in the details of the environment, hyper-vigilant as you pass doors barely held on by their hinges and windows showcasing an outside world far too heavily steeped in darkness to show anything of comfort.

Charles is the first to break the silence.

“Are those claw marks?” He stops moving down the corridor to closely examine a wooden door. You squint your eyes a little, trying to take a closer look, but in the poor lighting you simply can’t make out much detail and reply with a shrug.

After that, the tension doesn’t fall in the slightest. There have been no jumpscares as of yet, nor any paranormal encounters, but the rising feeling of helplessness and the persistent thought that there’s a chance that you’re being watched makes the trek through the seemingly never-ending maze of rooms and corridors greatly unnerving.

Eventually, you’re faced with a locked door, and Charles sets off to attempt to solve a puzzle of sorts in order to unlock it. You busy yourself with stroking his shoulder and chest instead of his cheek, unwilling to admit to him that you’re feeling slightly creeped out.

And maybe it’s just paranoia, but in the corner of the screen, in the darkness of the room…

“Oh my god, that’s a face! Right there!” you yelp, pointing accusingly at the exact spot where you’re certain you’ve just seen a distorted face emerge.

“Where? Where?” Charles panics, abandoning the puzzle and frantically looking around the room. After a thorough search, he looks down and frowns, “There’s nothing here,”

“But I swear!”

The two of you burst into laughter in an attempt to ward off the skittishness that you’ve been experiencing since you began playing. Seeing this as an opportunity to take a tiny break, you ask Charles to pass over the bowl of popcorn that you’d prepared earlier.

“Why can’t you do it yourself? Just lean over and grab it,” he whines, dramatically throwing his head back in mock distress.

“You see, that’s exactly what the problem is, Charlie,” you begin to explain in a very serious tone, “if I lean over and put my hand over the gap between the sofa and coffee table, a monster could reach up and grab it and pull me down and-“

He furrows his brows before replying, “So you’d rather have that happen to me?”

After a brief pause, you mumble, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Wow,” he drawls, rolling his eyes but yielding and handing over the bowl of popcorn, resting it on his stomach as he lays on his back.

Giggling quietly at your victory (and the guaranteed safety of your hand) you busy yourself with munching on the snack as Charles returns to the puzzle.

He’s quick to solve it, and you give a little cheer and whoop of joy as he now moves through the door. Yet, despite the short-lived moment of triumph, you can’t help but feel that something’s just off.

All of a sudden, the lights in the newly-unlocked section of the corridor start to flicker before turning off completely, only to answer Charles’ hmm of confusion with a blood-curdling jumpscare.

Charles’ limbs go flailing in all directions and you cling onto his chest, ignoring the clattering of the controller on the floor and the popcorn raining down around the room as the pair of you somehow manage to launch it in the air with your sudden movements.

“Nope, no, fuck this,” he blurts out, picking up the controller, shoving you into an upright sitting position and climbing onto your lap, “It’s your turn to play now - I’ve seen enough.”

You laugh a bit out of sheer shock, slowly wrapping the blanket around you and Charles as he sits sideways across your lap, his face pressed against your neck as he clings onto you. “Are we calling it a day and going to sleep or continuing?” you ask him, running a hand up and down his side in an attempt to comfort him.

“You’re continuing, I’m sitting here safe under this blanket and watching,” he states firmly.

“Oh, shush,” you giggle, picking the controller back up and shifting your attention to the game once again.

The jumpscares and tense atmosphere only get worse from that point onwards, leading you to question whether admitting defeat and leaving the game for another day would be a sensible choice. Yet, just to prove a point and boost your own ego, you keep forcing yourself to plough onwards through the plot of the game, doing your best to mask your shaking as feeling cold and your yelps as awkward coughs.

“You can’t be cold when there’s a blanket and an entire person on top of you,” Charles questions you, raising an eyebrow and smirking. You shrug absentmindedly, pretending to be too focused on solving another puzzle to answer him properly. “Just admit that you’re scared,” he continues.

“I’m not scared,” you mumble, refusing to look him in the eye, “you just need to do a better job of warming me up.”

He immediately bursts into laughter and you cover his mouth with one hand before he gets the chance to make any further comments.

Without a doubt, the final few minutes of the game prove to be more horrific than anything you had witnessed up to this point. You can’t even tell if Charles is watching at this point as the maze of corridors gets unmanageably convoluted during a chase scene. To be completely honest, if you could close your eyes at this moment too then you eagerly would.

But no - you have to be able to brag about finishing the game. It’s a simple matter of earning bragging rights and an ego boost.

By the time it’s all over you can feel your heart pounding in your chest and Charles tightly holding onto you with both arms.

He’s the first to speak, “What the hell?”

“Yeah, what the hell,” you mumble, thoroughly spooked yet unwilling to admit it.

You both just sit there for a minute or two, staring at the blank black screen and trying to take in the events of the last few hours. By now, judging by the sliver of moonlight creeping in past the drawn curtains, it must be well past midnight.

“I think we should maybe clear up all this popcorn,” you mumble once you’re out of your stupor, giving Charles a gentle kiss on the head before shifting him off your lap. He stands up right after you do, shooing you away from the pieces of popcorn on the floor and taking the bowl from your hand.

“You go up to bed, I’ll sort this all out,” he assures you, gently pushing you in the direction of the bedroom.

“Are you sure?” you ask, feeling rather guilty just leaving him with all this mess.

He nods in affirmation and you slink off with the intention of having a quick shower before you get into bed, despite the late hour.

But the further away from the living room you get, the more eerily dark your surroundings get…

And for some reason, your corridor has never looked so menacing…

You scold yourself for being so childish - it was just a game, after all, nothing real at all - yet still sprint to the nearest lightswitch and slam your palm down on it. Ignoring Charles’ concerned shout of, “Is everything alright?” you make your way to the ensuite bathroom with renewed confidence.

By the time you’re snuggled up under the duvet in bed, you’ve made sure to turn on all the bedside table lamps and the fairy lights strung around the room - Charles had spent an entire afternoon putting those up a few months ago, because every time he secured one end, the other end would fall right down. You’ve managed to create quite a cosy atmosphere in the room, determined to ward off your paranoia and instead replace it with warm relaxation.

The sudden appearance of a figure at the bedroom door makes you gasp and Charles’ raucous laughter fills the room, “You said you weren’t scared, amour?”

“I’m not, you just surprised me!” you deny his assumptions, rolling over onto your side and facing away from him. You can’t possibly give him the satisfaction of you admitting that you’re only faking fearlessness.

“You don’t recognise your own boyfriend? I am very upset,” he sighs, feigning offence. You hear him taking off his hoodie and sweatpants, followed by the gentle click of him turning off the lamps.

“Leave them on,” you whisper, barely audible under the heap of duvet and blankets that you’ve buried yourself under. He ignores you, turning off the fairy lights as well before climbing into bed. Wrapping his arm around your midsection, he pulls your back against his chest.

“Maybe I was terrified while we were playing the game, but at least I’m not scared of the dark afterwards,” he teases you, paying no attention to your groan of protest.

“You’re so annoying,” you grumble, only to be met with an amused huff from Charles.

“I love you too,” he whispers, giving you a kiss on the cheek before laying his head down on the pillows.

Already drifting off, you manage to quietly mutter back a slurred, “Love you.”

After a few seconds of silence in which you presume he’s fallen asleep, Charles whispers, “But, you know, if you wake up and the lights start flickering and there’s some scratches on the door-”

A gentle kick to the shin is enough to cut him off mid-sentence, but it doesn’t stop him from giggling as he holds you tighter. He knows you too well - you wouldn’t be able to hide a secret from him even if your life depended on it.

Maybe next time you’ll just stick to playing Mario Kart.

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a/n: please nag me to post more regularly in the future! thank you for reading :)

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