shake it off

@lyssads

Gabriel rubs his towel through his still damp hair as he closes the door to his locker and picks up his bag from the floor. Today had been a pretty good practice day. Everyone was present and doing well, and it seemed that their captain was also in a good mood. Gabe is proud of them for making it through today.

He fits his damp towel in the plastic bag tied to his gym bag as he’s making his way out of the boys’ locker room. As he’s pondering what he’ll need to do once he gets back to his dorm room, he doesn’t realize that the person in front of him, just coming from the girls’ locker room, steps on an especially slippery patch of ground until her arms are flailing and her body makes a jerking motion backward. He barely manages to catch her, but his arms have awkwardly hooked around her body, one arm around her waist the other over her shoulder and across her chest.

The strap of his bag drops down to the crook of his elbow and he fails to hold back a wince and a grunt at the sharp, stinging pain that comes with the weight of the bag dragging his full arms down. Once he’s sure that she’s stable, leaning against him, he carefully helps her straighten up. He slings the strap of his bag back up over his shoulder and tries to meet her gaze.

But things could’ve been worse. The members of the swim team are all relatively nice, Iz is starting to warm up to her, and most of what they're teaching in class turned out to be things that her father had already taught her and Lyias. She’s adjusting, but she worried that it’s not fast enough to make a difference in her surroundings.

She’s not paying nearly enough attention to the wet floor surrounding the pool and she narrowly misses a puddle. “Shit, that was close,” she mutters, only to have her sudden burst of luck change and step in another, actually falling this time. Her hands grab to cling on to whatever’s nearby, expecting to find nothing, but instead latching on to something- someone. Squeezed shut eyes complete her expression that clearly shows that she’s waiting to hit the ground. Once she decides she’s not going to fall, she opens one eye and peeks at whoever just saved her ass. ‘Oh god he’s attractive,’ she thinks, wincing at that even more than the prospect of wiping out.

“ah, must’ve been the amount of kid icarus i’ve been playing. i figured that since defeating the heart would’ve hurt him in the virtual world, his daughter might’ve possessed a heart. that japanese game wasn’t amazing though, what a lie.” he pulled out a nintendo ds from the back of his pocket before tossing the game cartridge into the field beside them. 

he chuckled lowly at her claim, shaking his head in disagreement. “you might want to read the book again. my father never had to stalk. and didn’t your father teach you not to lie? especially when you’ve caught me lying.” growing tired of the useless exchange of conversation between the other and himself, he pulls out a cigarette from his pocket. “you don’t get to orchestrate how i want my performance to be. if i want to stick to the same choreography i’ve crafted for myself, it’s my choice.” lighting up his stick, he continued, “heroes or villains, it’s your choice, but no way in hell am i going to be your pawn. better luck next time.” 

“The virtual world, huh? You read any mythology? Even that shit is diluted by blatant lies, so why would a kids’ game be any sort of accurate? Ah, a true mistake on your part. Feelings make you weak. There’s no use for weakness here.” Her eyes followed his hands, glancing toward where the game had landed.

“Why would I waste my time? I clearly don’t care about what your father did or didn’t do, nor do his slightly underwhelming accomplishments interest me in the least bit. Again, if you’ve read anything about him, you’d know that he’s just about the best liar there is. He didn’t teach me not to lie, he taught me how to make other people believe them. But that doesn’t mean I’m lying now. Guess you’ll never know, though....” He just made it so easy for her to dig in to his pride, knock his confidence by slipping in sly comments about how bad he was at being bad. Digging in her bag, she pulled out her own half empty box of cigarettes and lit one. “Crafted? You sound like you created some masterpiece when really it’s rather.... Infantile. Simple. Effective at times, maybe, but nothing impressive.” At that point, she’d gotten a bit tired of just insulting him, so she figured that playing to his ego might give her some different results. “Pawn? C’mon, Wolfy, you’re so much smarter than just a pawn. You have your own pawns, don’t you? And you see how they act. Don’t you think I can tell that you don’t play the game? You run it. At least, you try to.”

“that’s up to you.” he responded, shrugging his shoulders in the process. he knew to keep his teeth out of poisonous meat, and she wasn’t too substantial enough to be lingering around with for long periods of time. seth stood rooted while she leaned towards him, mentally uninterested at what she was going to say, and even the close proximity didn’t faze him.

“oh.” he thought to himself, “the girl’s a fiesty one.” 

           “You’re right, it is up to me. Just like standing here and talking to you is entirely my decision.” She shrugged back.