a field of hexagons
In which Emily tries to indulge in her girlfriend’s hobbies and spend a nice night together, but, god, she just does not want to make it easy! (human au)
- see notes below!
“You know what I really wanna get into? Tabletop games.” Emily took another swig of her Coke. “Like, I’ve never actually listened to any of those podcasts or anything, but it just sounds like so much fun, don’t you think?” Emily tipped her head back, trying to get the last drops out of the bottle. ”Hey, got any more of these?”
“Second shelf of the fridge, back right.” Emily left the room, so Julia spoke a little louder. “I do something like that, I could set up a campaign for us.”
“Oh, seriously? That’d be so awesome, babe.” Emily came back and sat down. “Ah, wait, crap, forgot the bottle open—“ Julia took the bottle and opened it with the side of the coffee table before handing it back. “Frick, you really are the best!”
“Kesese~ Did you ever doubt?”
⚔︎
“This is a setting I’ve been working on for a while,“ Julia began, leading Emily back into the ‘War room’ (aka dining room). “It’s not exact or anything, but I think it’s pretty damn good, if I do say myself.”
“Huh.” Emily crouched down to take a closer look at the intricate set up of miniature model soldiers, mountains, camps, forests, and more spread across the table in a hexagonal grid. “So, what am I looking at, exactly?”
Julia gave a crooked smile, more to herself than anything as she dug through her closet. “A recreation of the Western Front,” she said, sitting down with a nice fat rule book and an accountant's adding machine.
“Cool, cool.” Emily held up a painted soldier, tweaking his little rifle with her finger. ”…Alright, I’ll bite: where are the dragons?”
“…I think we have a different war in mind.”
⚔︎
“God, this is sooo boring!” Emily exclaimed, idly spinning around in her chair. “Nothing has happened in the last ten turns other than you calculating the weather or whatever the frick it is you’re doing.”
“Well, yeah, duh. Obviously nothing’s happening,” Julia said, rolling her eyes. “Most of the war was spent in a stalemate.”
Emily rested her elbows on the table and head in her hands. “Are you sure I can’t roll to seduce the enemy leader or something?" she asked, batting her eyelashes. Julia even didn't look up. "Or surrender? Offer to play a round of soccer? Certainly, there must be some geese nearby we could fry up and have a gay ol' time with, at least, right?"
“No, of course not," she responded, automatically, still tap-tapping away at her calculator. "You’d be shot on sight. Remember: both of our machine guns are constantly going off at each other during all of this."
Emily let out an exaggerated yawn, leaning all the way back. “Oh! Actually, now that I think about it, I think I have heard of a game like this once! There are dinosaurs in the trenches, right? Can we jump to that part?”
Julia gave her a look. “…Ah, verdammt! You made me lose my place; now I have to start over!”
~ *spongebob narrator voice* a few hours later ~
Emily’s head was slumped down on the table now. ”Ugh, remind me to never let you plan date night again. You’d probably have us literally watching paint dry... Actually, I might even’ve preferred that!" She whined, before sitting up. "What are we trying to do, again?”
“We’re rolling until we trigger an instigating event, something that forces one or both sides out of our trenches. It seems like the most likely one is a nearby stream overflowing, flooding us out.”
“And that requires fifteen minutes of calculations each turn?”
“Hm, if that isn’t crunchy enough for you, I could always switch to the rule set from the Campaign for North Africa,” Julia said dryly, reaching for a four inch thick book off the shelf behind her.
Emily set her head back down. “…I’ll be good.”
⚔︎
“Huh?" Emily said, coming back to sit after a bathroom break. "The pieces are all moved around… were you playing without me??”
“Of course; war waits for no one," Julia replied. "Don’t worry, though! I used the same NPC strategy tables I use when playing alone — you snuck up from the rear and poisoned my water supply, the diabolical bastard you are! Easily shaved a couple months off the battle, let alone how much it damaged my troops’ morale. Good job!”
"Ah, good on me..."
⚔︎
“Hmm…" Emily stood up, suddenly, walking over to Julia's side of the table. "Y'know, I’ve got an idea that will end the war immediately with no more casualties on either side," she said, huskily, then crawled into Julia's lap, moving in for a kiss. "Bombs away, babe~"
- i started this a long time ago, but i've been thinking a lot about the first world war recently. clarifying some references:
- playing soccer: the 1914 Christmas truce
- cooking up a goose: a scene from Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (between pages 93-97 in the copy linked) <3
- dinosaurs in the trenches: the game 1916: Der Unbekannte Krieg (The Unknown War). it seems to have been almost completely wiped from the internet...