"Again? Dammit."
I smirk, turning back to the hologram as Leron hauls on his gaming sticks. "Seems like you lose, Herrero."
"No! Not yet! It's not over!"
Rolling my eyes, I twist the softly glowing cyllinders in my palms, lifting one gently to my upper left, driving the other to my lower right with a sharp flick of my wrist. One avatar goes flying to the left, brought high in the air by a violet shroud, falling broken to the ground with a satisfying crunch. I watch Leron's face as his avatar's flaming armor extinguishes.
"And match," I say softly, tilting my left hand to make my own avatar bow, her mage's cape billowing in the wind.
Leron leans back precariously on the cushion, head thrown to the side, a mournful whine leaving his closed lips.
With a secret smile, I thumb the pad on one of the iridescent blue sticks in my hands, watching the screen dissolve into pixels, and pixels fade into nothing. I place the gaming sticks onto the table beside me, retracting my fingers as the metal plating encircles them and pulls them down as the table descends. Leron's sigh blows past the soft metallic whir.
"I thought maybe I'd finally win this time," he pouts, dropping his own green sticks over the side of the cushion, collapsing in a heap onto his mound of pillows. "You could be a Skywalker."
I only laugh. "Yeah, as if. VG skills don't make you a Skywalker. You'd be better suited than me."
He sends me a quirked smile, stretching as his head turns away, white T-shirt crinkling around his arms and exposing his lower stomach. "At least I can run the lap at Velvon."
Sticking my tongue out at the mention of the academy, I pull one knee to my chest and wrap my other leg around it. "Ha, ha, very funny. What happened do 'we'll never speak of this again'?"
Green tipped hair falls onto the faded pink cushion as he turns his head, emerald eyes sparkling at me. "That only lasts around other people. You, I can speak to."
A voice screams Leron's name, and he scowls at it. "What?" he snaps. "I'm with Davenport!"
"Get down here anyway! And tell Saniya to do something other than play that dreadful game! Leron! Are you listening to me? I said—"
The voice fades with the prerecorded pop, and his hand falls from his regulation wristband. "Like I said, you, I can talk to."
I offer him a small smile in return, poking his stomach with my toe. He grabs my sock and laughs when I wriggle my foot inside of it. In his eyes, I can see the affection he tries to hide, and I look away. I could lie to myself, say that he cares deeply for me, and would do a million things to protect me, but I know the truth. He would do anything. Anything at all, to protect me from the smallest things. And letting these feelings get stronger only builds the risk.
"You should probably go," I say, looking away, out of the circular floor-to-ceiling stationed next to the cushion. "You know she doesn't like to be kept waiting."
He flops onto his side, fingers woven through the green strands of his hair until his chewed nails poke through his brown roots, emerald eyes crinkled as his lip pulls up in a smirk. "Yeah, but you're more important." Without waiting for my disapproving look, he turns his head and snaps his fingers, snatching his sticks back from the responding tray. "Besides, if worst comes to worst, I can just tell her that you were beating my ass again. It wouldn't be too far from the truth, eh?"
I look at the standard three-way locks across my door, the counter jutting out from the wall beside it, the very edge of a blanket poking out around the corner of my loft, the gilded stairs leading up to it, anything but his crooked smile. "You know that'll only make it worse."
