If I Held Your Breath At Least We Would Touch

None of the League was enthusiastic about his offerings. Well, almost no one. There's some something about old, shitty arcades that made her heart feel soft. They reminded her of the ones she had at her "home" town, and a place where she had few of her good memories. Sneaking off after school to play games to avoid going back to the housing institution. The poor town could never afford new games, and half of them were always broken and reeked of shitty cigarette smoke.

She wasn't sure how much arcade machines ran for but had to assumed that he'd spent a fair deal on the new additions to the Villa with the way Tomo raged about it for the first day they were installed. He got over it quickly, it seemed, since he hadn't made a noise of complaint after then.

Nia mashed at the one button this game used, her unblinking, bloodshot eyes watching the pixelated gunfire shootdown the alien spacecrafts. Tapping the joystick from side to side to avoid the incoming assault, all while the score in the corner ticked it's way up. Somebody had already put some scores on this machine, though she'd not seen anyone else occupying it since it was here, and now she was finally getting close to overtaking the one at the top spot.

"Your regiment meeting is starting in twenty minutes," the deep voice comes from out of the blue, declaring her time limit and nearly startling her so badly that she almost dies. In game, that is. She's doesn't take her eyes away from the screen, she doesn't need to see since she can already feel the way Tomoyasu is hovering over her.

"Okay okay, I'll... go when I'm done... with this game...."

He leans further, head eclipsing hers and the long ends of his hair that hang down brush against her shoulders.

"You don't have to hit the damn button so hard, you're going to break it." He glowers over her. Nia snorts at his criticism, however she does let up on how aggressively she'd been mashing that button while she was lost in the gamer zone.

"I was... always told that... the harder you hit... the button, the stronger your... attacks are...."

"That's not how that works and you know that!"

It's true, but Nia had to confess that it was too easy to infuriate him and it was just a little bit entertaining from time to time. She's still keeping her main focus on that last push for the number one score, and with one last life left on the line.

That concentration starts to splinter on the form that's now pressed flush up against her back, swallowing her up in long limbs and shadows. Her hands start to shake and she's struggle to be as precise as she would have liked. Just a couple more minutes of tuning him out and she's fine but he's making it harder with her hips now caged between his and the arcade console.

Even as fingers grasp at her chin, forcing her head up to twist away from the position she'd been holding it in for so long now, Nia fights to keep her eyes on the CRT monitor. That battle is quickly lost the moment he bends in to capture her mouth with his own, an all-consuming embrace that almost felt like a snake wrapping itself around the prey it was resolute to crush and suffocate.

It succeeds in making her breathless, her body goes into auto-pilot and her eyes are too heavy to hold open, and it's a relief to shut them after holding them open for far too long. The only thing that snaps her out of the smothering affection was the tinny, 8-bit tune of defeat that blasts out of the arcade machine's speakers as he pulls himself off of her in time to see the screen of defeat.

"Ah! I was... close to winning.... You couldn't... have waited for... a couple of minutes...?" Nia sighs in disappointment, although her heart was still running on overdrive there was the slight sinking of failure. 'ISO' she inputs the letters into the score for the second place score, only a couple hundred points away from overtaking the leader. 'CHI'. She knows that name somewhere....

Spinning around on her heels, Nia is greeted by the victorious grin that looms over her. A smile of ominously large teeth and looking exceedingly pleased with himself for his dirty tactics.

"Fie, you fiend...! You dirty cheater...." Her accusations only make his glee stronger, that villainous laugh that makes her bones rumble.