Survival Of The Fittest

((Ming Robinson, Pregame Start))

The music store was surprisingly quiet as Ming perused the store shelves, flipping through various albums as she looked for a albums by a few different bands in particular.

The store smelled distinctly of vinyl, in all likelihood due to all of the records contained therein. It was a pleasant smell, Ming always liked being in the store, even if she didn't buy anything. It had a calm, relaxing atmosphere befitting of a store of its type, one Ming found particularly soothing, especially after a hectic day back at school.

She had been recommended a few different songs by one of her friends, and after listening to all of them, she decided that she would seek out the albums that those songs came from, wanting to hear more. Unfortunately for her, however, most of those songs came from indie bands, making it difficult for her to get her hands on physical CDs and the like.

She pulled out a CD from one of the shelves, glancing at it and the album cover.

It was an old album from the year 2000, from a band called The Avalanches. It was one of the albums that she had been looking for, she felt relief in response to finding at least one.

She glanced down the aisle she was in, her dharmachakra necklace swinging gently in response to her sudden movement. She thought she had heard someone coming into the aisle with her, but it might have just been her imagination. Turning her head back towards the shelves, she continued thumbing through the wide selection to find what she was looking for.

((Stepney Cruz continued from Just Chill))

It was a quiet day, nice and peaceful, the sort of weekend most people dreamed about after a long week at school or work or wherever you'd been spending your weekdays. And most of the time, Stepney was all about that too. The long hours spent happily lazing around in bed, the catching up on whatever Netflix show you were watching (Bojack Horseman in Stepney's case; when you couldn't even tell the difference between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, you weren't left with many options other than animated shows), and spending all day in your PJs or your underwear. Yeah, normally, that was great.

Today, however, was an exception to that rule.

Stepney's whole week had been lazy and peaceful so far. He'd been feeling kinda under the weather, a feeling that had waxed and waned in an infuriatingly inconsistent manner. He hadn't felt up to water polo, hadn't felt up to rock climbing, hell, he hadn't even been in the mood to break out the ol' trick deck and fool some soft-minded souls into handing over their precious cash. He'd played a couple of games of Magic with Toby and Demetri, played pretty shit in them by his standards, and… that was about it.

So now the weekend was upon him, and Stepney was feeling kinda antsy. He'd shaken off that grody feeling, and he wanted to get out there and do something! But, of course, everyone he knew already had other plans, whether that was actually doing something, or working hard at devouring a couple of boxes of pizza whilst finishing whatever video game they were desperately attempting to catch up on.

He could've done the same, tried to go for an arena run in Heartstone or something, but he felt like dusting off the cobwebs and getting a breath of fresh air. Who knows? Maybe he'd bump into somebody. Much better chance of that if he was outside rather than stuck in his room. Hell, if that happened, he'd be pretty inclined and pretty justified to call the police.

It was that train of thought that led Stepney to Off the Record. He'd been here a good few times to grab new background music for his poker games – sure, he could just use Spotify, but there was just something about using a proper CD player that felt right. The people who ran it were always friendly and helpful, and every now and then he'd spot someone he recognised perusing the aisles.

Like right now, in fact!

Ming was currently engrossed in scanning the rack of CDs in front of her for whatever it was she wanted, and as he caught sight of her, a wicked grin flickered onto Stepney's face. With careful, quiet footsteps, he snuck closer towards her, holding his breath. His plan almost got rumbled, when she turned to look away, but he managed to make it to her unseen. He paused for a moment, before leaning down to speak in a low voice into Ming's ear.

"Didja know this place is supposed to be haunted?"

((Demetri Futscher continued))
((also, this post is lowkey NSFW as hell))

Demetri flicked his fingers through the air. It was like he had a guitar in his hand but he didn't, he was just repeating the chords he knew through the air. Humming lyrics to himself too, while he didn't of course actually want to sing them properly because he was in public and he wasn't some degenerate Korean anime chick or whatever. His lips stayed shut.

'Come on baby, you're bleeding!'
'I'm gonna di-ie.... in a getaway car,'
'I haven't tri-i-iii-ied, but it sounds too ha-aa-aa-ard.'

'Percolator', by Charly Bliss. He'd thought their album last year had been solid. He'd put it up on /mu/ and the consensus had been both 'voice is annoying' and 'derivative as fuck', and he'd pretty much just abandoned the attempt after a meme had been made out of spam-linking Veruca Salt songs instead of actually talking about OP's music. He'd been a bit pissed but whatever, not his fault other people were elitist pricks. He'd gotten an email from Off The Record, hadn't lost it unlike a certain 'Conman' Massey. Now he was here, enviously eyeing a sleeved up vinyl of Guppy he couldn't afford.

He'd been in the store for a few minutes now, and the only other non-staff face he'd recognized since walking in was... something, Ming Dynasty, or something. She was short and had a kind of sexy bod, the tank top doing wonders. He'd never spoken to her but she was famous for being super granola Zen chick numero uno, and he supposed there was nothing wrong with that sort of deal. He wasn't gonna, like, go and talk to her or anything. There was this thing he'd been talking with Garren about lately, that the nice girls were probably on some crazy daddy's-girl damage behind the scenes. Smoking dick bongs and shit. It was something, like...

> talk to girl
> she says she thinks highly of you as a human being until you are lulled into asking her out on a little date
> 'like nothing small not too fancy i dont want to pressure you'
> oh yes she'd absolutely love to go
> pick her up at seven
> dry cleaned and ironed slacks and the pockets mostly empty of spaghetti
> you couldnt pick out one of the crustier ones because it got squished into a corner
> she opens the door
> big buff ebony skin cuckold literally already in her mouth
> 'i just thought we could double date'
> but muffled because giant shaft of rigid flesh
> ... shit i didnt bring anyone

Demetri smirked to himself all while he continued to hover in a corner of the store like a loser. That had been a pretty good one, he'd have to try and remember it for later.

But yep, anyways, that's pretty much why he was avoiding eye contact. Demetri was thus caught off guard when he happened to glance down the CD aisle she was on and see some other dude... specifically, named Stepney.

Well Demetri had smoked his ass. Taken a few, lost a few, actually held onto his money for a change instead of racking up more of the growing debts. Demetri was pretty sure dude had run out of steam. It was like that one scene from Solo that Demetri had watched yesterday with Dad, where the generic black guy #1- who Demetri was apparently supposed to know the face of because he did music, but whatever- didn't have the tool he needed to cheat at games with in the last scene. Mano y mano, using actual fucking skill instead of whatever it was Stepney used to rig the draws so he always got the taps he needed, dude happened to not be so fucking hot. Reduced to the greasy-haired immigration welfare loser he was.

Wait, what were they up to? Stepney was... whispering, in Ming's ear.

Shit, were they like, a couple or something? Did Stepney somehow against all odds have game? Was he making a move? Hell, Demetri wouldn't even have been surprised if he was doing something to make the poor chick uncomfortable all of a sudden. He could like, barely imagine this turning into an uncomfortable scene he'd retell on a Reddit post or something. Shit, did he need to step in? Make sure nothing unwholesome happened?

He was kinda doing that wishful thinking thing, he guessed, but he watched all the same. Stared a bit too hard over both their shoulders, as if he could hear with his eyes. And that, of course, was not a thing. Who even talked like that, putting words together that didn't make sense together, like that?

Ming yelped at the sudden intrusion to her personal space, nearly losing her balance as she instinctually tried to get away.

Turning back towards her assailant, her look softened as she realized it was just Stepney. A smile slowly crept onto her face as she started to regain her composure, before she burst out laughing. "Oh man, Stepney, you got me."

She chuckled some more, her laughter slowly receding as she covered her mouth with her free hand. She began to rub the back of her neck sheepishly, trying to withhold the residual embarrassment from getting frightened in public. "Man... it's been forever since I've seen you last, Stepney. When was the last time we talked? Two or three months ago?"

She let her hand fall, before taking hold of her purse at her side out of nervous habit. She never quite knew what to do with her hands when talking, she always defaulted to holding onto something, be it her wrist or her hair or whatever she had with her at the moment.

As she did that, she glanced down the aisle again, only to see Demetri looking at the two of them from a vantage point.

Interjecting before Stepney could speak, Ming called down the aisle. "Hey, Demetri! What are you doing over there?"

It occurred to Stepney that he was pretty fucking lucky, in hindsight.

Cause what he'd just done was walk up to somebody he was only about 15-20% sure he would recognise and… tried to scare them. Yeesh. He was mostly certain it would be somebody from school, at least; their height and general body shape suggested they were around the same age as him, and he was sure he'd seen somebody wearing that exact same outfit before. But if it had turned out to not be someone from school? He'd probably be lucky to walk away from that with nothing more than a slap to the face.

It had been a calculated risk, but boy, was he bad at math.

Luckily, Ming was pretty much the perfect person for him to have pulled this stunt on (at least, it sounded like Ming…), so seconds later, he'd completely forgotten about his near miss. His mischievous grin relaxed into an easy-going smile, and he shoved his hands into his pockets as he listened to Ming talk.

And everything was going just swell, and he was about to respond to her comments, when she just had to point out that Demetri was standing and watching from down the aisle, and Stepney could feel his smile tense up and form into a hard, straight line.

Demetri was… a pest. A scourge upon the Magic club. Most importantly, a goddamn cheapskate. His deckbuilding sucked, his tactics were laughably bad, but whenever he lost to Stepney it was always because of ‘some fluke' or whatever, and so he refused to acknowledge the loss. And what that meant was that he always refused to pay up, whenever money was on the line. Stepney was pretty sure Demetri had racked up a debt of at least a hundred dollars by now. Maybe more. And no matter what bullshit excuse the guy made up, Stepney was gonna hound him until he saw that money, damn it.

Stepney didn't really like the guy, if you couldn't guess.

And, God, he was gonna be even more insufferable now, wasn't he? It hurt, his winstreak against Demetri being broken, but what hurt even more was the fact that he knew the guy was gonna brag about how great he was at card games, and how easy it had been to beat Stepney, and what was he gonna do in response? Bring up the past 30 odd games in a row he'd won and look like a braggart?

Probably, yeah, honestly.

Stepney turned to look back at Ming, trying to force a smile back onto his face and answer her earlier questions.

"It's been a while, yeah. It's the eye bullshit sabotaging me, I wager. I don't even recognise myself when I look in the mirror, which is a damn shame cause missing out on this face is a crime."

He laughed at his own joke, always a sign that it was a top quality one, of course.

"Hope I didn't scare you too badly. For the record, I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of ghosts in this establishment."

Demetri had cringed a bit at the yelp but when they were all smiles at each other he realized that was that. His feels as his white knight dreams were forced out of mind, they left him feeling a bit hollow. Reminded him of that exhaustion that followed waking up from a daydream, and he almost never had those.

He was kidding himself about being a bit miffed that he hadn't gotten to be valiant and manly and shit, and also, he wasn't really kidding himself that much.

Demetri had been ready to walk off. His imagined role in the proceedings was over, and honestly he hadn't really had any sort of visuals on how it would go down. He'd... punch Stepney, and Ming Bean would swoon over his dashing heroics? It was a pretty bland picture, he guessed. Maybe worth a short novella. But just as he'd been backtracking for another part of the store Ming called him. Stepney, in addition, promptly ignored him hard. 'Sup' to you too, jackass. At least Demetri had been able to throw in the quick miming of shuffling a deck, all that finger action and shit. Stepney would probably get it.

"I was doing Yearbook for a debate tournament," Demetri being sure to sandwich the loudness of his response right up against Stepney trying to say whatever it was he was trying to say. A bit petty, but, First Amendment. Demetri walked a bit closer but kept a CD rack they-could-see-over between them, and kept mumble-talking to fill up the void Stepney failed to.

"I didn't really know what was actually happening, of fucking course, but Faith and Alison sounded good to me." Honestly Demetri was pretty sure GHHS debate was badass in both the past and present tenses, but most the team was a bit too loudass rainbow-kids for his personal tastes. As long as they brought home the trophies, whatever. Good on them for pretending they knew what reality was like. "Y'know? It was a busy event and to be honest kinda fun to watch. But of course, here's where the real action is." He smiled stiffly at Ming. Didn't even fucking bother for Stepney.

"Like, uh..."

Shit, Ming was distracting and cute. Not a girl he had a crush on at all but he felt self-conscious and like he needed to hit the gym as of yesterday.

"What are you guys purchasing, I guess?"

Ming smiled and turned her attention back to Stepney, opening her mouth to respond before Demetri leaned in and interrupted.

She stared blankly at Demetri as he rambled. Ming never really knew what to think of him. They had only interacted a few times in the past, and only ever in passing. He seemed like an okay person, if a little awkward, but she didn't know him nearly well enough to actually consider him a friend or even an acquaintance.

Stepney on the other hand, was someone she was willing to consider a friend, albeit distantly. They had pretty much exclusively had good interactions with each other, outside of the times that Stepney couldn't actually recognize her and treated her like a total stranger.

"I... um... well, I just came here to grab an old album from The Avalanches, since a friend directed me to them." She briefly glanced back at the cover of the album she was holding, thinking. "There were some others I was looking for too, but I can't seem to actually find them."

Absentmindedly fiddling with her necklace for a moment, she realized she didn't actually verify that Stepney knew who she was. "Oh wait! Um, Stepney, you know it's me, Ming, right?" She said, while grabbing onto the boy's shoulder. "I just want to make sure! I mean there was that one time that you didn't recognize me at all and it was... kinda scary, actually."

She frowned, before pulling the boy into a hug. "It's okay though, it wasn't your fault. Your condition doesn't define you."

Nate knew he could just listen to music on Spotify (for free, no less!), but he thought owning some CDs would be pretty cool.

((Nate Schutz continued from Walk Without Rythm))

As he walked towards Off The Record to pick up some CDs that he could put near his computer or something, he took note of the people already inside of the store. There was an asian girl he knew literally nothing about, some other guy he also knew nothing about, and...Demetri Fuscher.

Nate's feelings on Demetri were, to put it lightly, a little mixed. They'd been fairly close friends in middle school, bonding over playing guitar ‘n shit, and Demetri had been there for him during his father's car crash-induced coma. So there was that, but Demetri was also kind of a jackass. Well, more than "kind of", really.

Nate genuinely liked the guy, but his penchant for offensive, shocking humor had slowly made Nate just kinda drift away from him. There was a certain sense of guilt because of that, though, so Nate tried to steer him away from that path.

With limited success.

Really limited success.

Hoo boy.

Nate took off his Aviators, stuck then in his flannel's pocket, and sighed. He'd try to enter the shop discreetly, and hope that Demetri wouldn't see him. He knew that wouldn't work, but gosh darnit he wanted those cool CDs.

Ugh. Of course Demetri was gonna come on over thanks to Ming's invitation. That was the problem with being so, y'know, all loving and nice to everyone all the time. There were plenty of people who'd probably suggest to Stepney that he try it out sometime, but the way he saw it, some people deserved to be loved and others did not. And people who refused to pay up the money they owed even after 15 messages a day on every single communication platform possible definitely fell into the latter category.

And yeah, Stepney noticed Demetri's little gesture. Kinda hard not to. The guy was a lot of things, but subtle was definitely not in his wheelhouse. Stepney could feel the heat rising in his face, and he had to bite the inside of his lip to stop himself from saying anything he'd regret. Yep, that loss still stung hard. God, if Demetri wasn't such an awkward mess of a human being, he'd probably have the smuggest fucking grin on his face. You didn't need to be able to read faces to be able to figure that one out.

Luckily, Ming was able to salvage the situation somewhat, putting her hands on Stepney's shoulders before pulling him into a hug. The action kinda took him by surprise at first, but after a second, he laughed, wrapping his arms around Ming and returning her hug.

"Aw. You mean it's not Demetri hugging me right now?"

Stepney laughed again, and as he did so, angled his head up to look at Demetri. Quickly, his hands cycled through a range of motions. All ten fingers outstretched, then his thumb hooked towards himself, then his right index finger outstretched, then pointed towards Demetri. Then a wink. Really, their score was more like 60-1, but still, Demetri would get the message. Ball's in your court, fucker.

"Heh. Nah, don't worry, I know it's you, Ming. I recognised your clothes-"

Well, he did now that he was absolutely certain it was her.

"-Hell, actually, I think you were wearing that outfit that one time, as well. Sorry ‘bout that again, by the way."

Stepney gently squeezed Ming once more before letting her go, smiling at her. Mentally, he sighed, because Demetri had kinda asked both of them a question, and, hey, it was something to talk about that wasn't his face blindness. Might as well answer it.

"Me, I'm just looking for some new jazz CDs. Wanted to get some new background music for poker nights, maybe some Courtney Pine, something like that. Speaking of, I'm planning on one in a couple weekend's time. Either of you interested?"

Wait fuck, how long had he been talking and retard dancing in their general vicinity? Demetri with the sweet fingerbanging the air... jeez, inopportune as fuck time to spaghetti. Stepney with the score-keeping too. Fair point, but it was like, whatever. The way Demetri thought about it- and he'd put a lot of thought- there were just some things where people weren't fairly matched up. Stepney knew all the tricks and he played the game all the time like a loser anyways, knew all the hacks and cheats and all that. It was like dating girls, all the beta losers were just at disadvantage, through no fault of their own. The problem was with the game.

"Yeah you can leave me out of the hugging. Don't want to catch conditions, all that."

Stepney was looking right at him. Demetri caught his eye, waved his hand over his face, wiggling his crooked fingers over his eyes with a slightly affected dopey expression. Stepney was the one who could autism-mode when you waved at him, right? Ton of people like that in the school, but Demetri was pretty sure Stepney was one of them or something like that. Not like he was paying that much attention.

"Well let me know if either of y'all got specifics, I might be able to hook you up." Demetri dropped the expression, let it slide off his face abruptly as... abrupt thing. Talking music was business time, Demetri took that shit serious. "Jazz section is like, two aisles down that'aways." Demetri gestured the way he'd come. Maybe a hint Stepney could get. Demetri glanced that way, suddenly a bit unnerved. He had pointed the right way? He was maybe eighty percent sure.

Familiar face... unlike Stepney, Demetri could actually get the memories out of his brain without spasms.

Nate Schutz. The two of them went back. Nate was recently more like one of the libtards with the whole 'mind what you're saying' anti-First Amendment BS but he was still pretty cool otherwise. Demetri had time for that man. He looked busy though, so Demetri would leave him to it. He'd walk over if he was fixing for a conversation.

Demetri turned back, stared at Ming and Stepney expectantly... shit, he didn't know what to do to keep saying things.

"Uh... poker sounds good." How many seconds had it been between sentences, for Demetri? Man, one step forward and tripping backwards onto his ass. Another moment of stoic silence, slightly tense lips, "where are you gonna host it, your place?"

"Poker? Um..." Ming began to say, before being interrupted by Demetri.

She let out a slightly exasperated huff, smiling as Demetri talked. It wasn't the first time she had been interrupted by a man, she was used to it at this point. Besides, it wasn't like it really bothered her, she was always happy to wait to speak if she needed to. Patience and kindness were virtues she always strived to embody.

Demetri finished not long after starting, and Ming happily continued what she was going to say. "I might have the time! So long as we aren't actually gambling, at least." She said, before beginning to slowly twirl one of her hands in the air. "I'm happy to just play, but betting any money wouldn't be good. The Buddha advised against it, if I'm remembering that correctly, and besides, I wouldn't want to potentially mess with my karma!"

She didn't know if Stepney implicitly meant gambling when he mentioned poker, but Ming was not one to judge even if he did. They might not be walking the Path that she walked, and that was okay. Different perspectives were important and valuable, and she wasn't going to discourage them from doing what makes them happy, however temporary that happiness may be.

"And, you know, if you are gambling, then maybe we could hang out some other time?" She said, tilting her head a little to the left. "Really, it'd be nice to spend some more time with you, Stepney! We never get to hang out."

It had been less than five minutes, and Stepney was already sick and tired of the sight, sound, and general existence of Demetri.

It took a lot to anger him, at least he thought as much, but for whatever reason, Demetri was making his temper rise at an alarming pace. Like the guy had just slapped the temperature on the stove to max with his dumb idiot hands, hands that he’d been waving around in front of his face, like that was supposed to prove something.

Ugh. He knew he wasn’t innocent in all this; if there was anyone at George Hunter who had mastered the art of the persistent jibe, it was Stepney himself. He could pin it all on the fact that Demetri’s very personality was repugnant and obnoxious… buuuut there’d been plenty of people who’d said the exact same about Stepney.

That loss had obviously got to him worse than he’d thought, but in a couple of days, he’d probably forget all about it. He just needed to drop it, for the time being. He didn’t wanna cause a commotion in a public store, and especially not in front of someone he actually liked, and who liked him back.

He’d just have to steamroll Demetri the next time they brought their Magic decks out. Which was as easy as breathing, 99% of the time.

Stepney glanced at Demetri, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other ruffling through his hair. Best get the talking to this chump up and out of the way first. Then he could focus his attention on talking to Ming.

“Dude, I’ve been here before, I know where the jazz section is,” he said, fixing his favourite easy-going grin onto his face, the one he used to lull tipsy acquaintances into playing Three-card Monte at parties. “Generally, when you see someone you know, you go up and talk to them, unless that’s just one of my weird little quirks.”

A little flash of the teeth, to show he was all charms and good nature, even though he was sick to death of Demetri’s stupid face. Didn’t have a clue what it looked like, but the mere concept of it was pissing him off.

“And yeah, I was planning on hosting it at my place. You guys both know the way? I can give you directions if you need ‘em.”

And with that, he turned to face Ming, casual grin turning sheepish as he scratched the back of his head.

“Heh, well, y’know, there might be a little bit of gambling. Just a tiny bit, between friends and all-“

Man, he liked Ming a good deal, but if she was honestly expecting a Cruz poker night to be free of money changing hands, he’d have to call her crazy.

“-But it’d still be cool to have you! Bust out the Monopoly, let you use the money from that or something. And if that still isn’t your jam, I’d love to hang out sometime! I’m sure I can make room in my busy schedule for you.”

He'd noticed that Ming in particular had looked kind of annoyed, but Demetri couldn't have put a guess as to why... unrelated shit, probably, that whole separate brain thing women had going when they were from Venus and men were from... Uranus, if soyboys like Stepney were any indication.

Speaking of, Stepney looked more obviously annoyed- smile faker than some of his poker faces- but that was a given. Dude was probably just super try-harding, just to remember who it was he was even talking to in the first place.

"I mean, generally when you talk to people you also recognize them in the first place, but I might be overblowing that." Though, point to autism-incarnate, Demetri was a cuck too up his own ass to sometimes just talk to girls and play the game all proper. Stepney had his number on that one- for now at least- and even in recent memory there was proof with how cute and handsy he and Ming had acted up... ugh, PDA. Demetri wasn't jealous or anything, it just screamed 'overcompensating' all kinds of hard, if you asked him.

He almost clipped his speech straight into Stepney's friendly banter with Ming, or into her response, because goddamn if he wasn't going to up and randomly insert his two cents into the most inconvenient conversational crevasse he could find. Conversational crevasse... what did that even mean? Right brain Hindu Kush-smoking tier BS.

In reality where the laws of physics and the rules of grammar properly applied: "We can keep the gambling separate anyways, different room- like, I mean. Just for the dude banter or whatever. I'm sure Step's got a bunch of other folk invited, we can all find groups, get along." Who else did Stepney know? ... Blaise, Andy, off the top of Demetri's head...

To be honest he probably needed to decline this invitation in terms of ASAP but he would feel like a loser, declining an invitation to a party a cute girl would be at. And, to fucking reiterate, it wasn't even like he was actually into Ming at all, it was just her mere presence was somehow... weighty. Dragged his aura around, to use liberal hipster hippie terms for no reason.

"Oh yeah, I guess that could work," Ming said, after both boys had finished talking. "It could be fun! And it's not like the Buddha had anything against harmless fun."

She wasn't entirely sure if she would actually like the game of poker, even divorced from the gambling aspect, as she had never really been into card games in the past. Even more complicated and strategically interesting card games like Magic: The Gathering that she knew Stepney liked to play weren't very fun to her. She had always been partial to purely skill based games like Go and Chess when she played more traditional games. The fact that those games also didn't cost her an arm and a leg to play was a nice plus.

Gently shaking her head and clearing her thoughts, Ming turned her full attention back to Stepney. "Besides that, though, it'd be nice to hang out another time," she began, "getting some one on one time with you again would be a good change of pace. I could probably make some room in my schedule during a weeknight. My parents are pretty cool about me being out late, and I never have to worry about homework, I always get it done in class."

"Heck, I could even help you with the homework you have, if you want," she said, with a slight giggle.

Stepney began to respond, while Ming glanced over at Demetri, their eyes briefly making contact. She formed a small smile, and waved the fingers that were previously tightly wrapped around her purse at him. Ming always felt awkward when she made eye contact with someone and then didn't in some way acknowledge them. She was fairly sure other people tended to feel the same way, and she was as happy as ever to try to ease tension and make everyone around her feel comfortable, even those people that she didn't know very well, like Demetri.

Very rarely, there were times when Stepney was incredibly glad he couldn’t read other peoples faces, and boy oh boy, was this one of those times.

Stepney’s fist clenched inside of his jacket pocket, and he kept his foot pressed flat against the floor to stop it from tapping in annoyance. This whole meetup was really pulling him in opposite directions. On the one hand, you had Ming! Stepney was feeling completely relaxed and at ease around her, despite his earlier slip-up. He was already looking forwards to hanging out with her, and, y’know, she was cute as all hell. Stepney had always been self-conscious when it came to the dating scene, because there was the possibility every single day that he wouldn’t recognise his girlfriend, and he could only imagine how shitty that would feel. But, if there was anyone at school who would forgive him for that, it’d be Ming.

Shit, he was getting way ahead of himself, here. Thinking about that when they’d only hung out a couple of times before. He couldn’t help himself from developing the smallest kernel of a crush, though; Ming really was cute. He didn’t need to see her face to know that.

Plus, it’d almost certainly infuriate the fuck out of Demetri.

And speaking of…

Demetri. The other hand. Stepney wasn’t exactly proud of himself for letting Demetri get so deep under his skin, or for how badly he was letting it affect him, but he’d clearly underestimated the guy. He wasn’t just an obnoxious annoyance who was totally clueless when it came to card games. He was also a straight up shithead. Most people at George Hunter didn’t piss Stepney off, because most of them had the common human decency not to make fun of his face blindness.

There was a coin tucked into the folds of Stepney’s pocket, a surprise to absolutely nobody, and he started to turn it over between his fingers, trying to calm himself down. Just acknowledge the fact that Demetri had, once again, suggested another infuriatingly good idea, then move swiftly along and focus on Ming again.

“Yeah, that’d definitely work,” Stepney said, shooting Demetri the most cursory of glances. “There’s plenty of room at my place. Dining room for gambling, living room for the non-gamblers among us.”

Stepney smiled and nodded at Ming, the lady of the hour.

“And that sounds aces, yeah. You know how hard it is to do history homework when you can’t even recognise what Honest Abe looks like?”