𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄

ᴛᴡᴇɴᴛʏ - ꜰɪᴠᴇ

Opening up his string of messages with him, he spotted a small video.

"What is this?"

"Play it and find out, duh."

Doing exactly that, he smiled as the contents revealed themselves.

'Birthday Bitch' by Trap Beckham began to stream through the speakers as a coded version of himself, in pixels, moved across the screen in what looked like a faux battle. The miniature version of himself said 'pew pew' each and every time he shot his gun, killing the targets around him. His smile grew even wider when he ran over to a woman without a face and dipped her, kissing her; he chuckled when his pixel version dropped her and proceeded to pump his arms before ripping open his shirt.

Happy Birthday, Jase was plastered across his pixelated abs to serve as an end.

"How long did this take you to make?" he laughed, placing his phone down.

"Like a week – codes aren't that hard, just time-consuming."

"Well, thank you, I love it."

"I better get something double that," Maverick boasted, standing up.

"Yeah, yeah," his smile faded as he turned, "Wait – where are you going?"

"Do you really want the answer to that question?"

Jase grimaced and shook his head, standing up himself. If he answered without the sassy undertones in his voice, he would have said something that involved crawling up to Mason and kissing his ass. Truthfully, he didn't understand how he could be by the side of someone whose made everyone else's lives hell, nor did understand how could entirely ignore any sense of self-respect by being a rebound.

Then again, he knew that being with Mason wasn't because he actually wanted to be with Mason. He found the game fun, and now that he's finally got the in he'd been searching for, he's going to push to see how far he gets with him. For bragging purposes, but also because no one dares tell him no and gets away with it.

"I'm good, man," he waved him off.

He turned to walk to his room, but his friend, of course, needed the last word.

"—your real present is on your bed, by the way," he smiled, then turned and left.

Pocketing his hands in his pants, he walked to the staircase off to the side of the living room and began to climb them; even though his friend was no longer here to witness his excitement, he didn't want to run up them and push into his room like a giddy little child.

He was three steps away from the second floor, safe from everyone else, when the one person he's been avoiding since Spain just happened to pop out of her fucking room; it also happened to be the one at the top of the steps, making his presence impossible to miss. He bowed his head and cursed under his breath before plastering on a fake smile.

"Jase!" she said happily, "I've been looking for you."

That's a first.

"For what?" he answered tiredly, standing before her now.

"I just miss you – I haven't seen you around much."

Wonder why—?

"Oh."

Franki disregarded his tone, posture, and obvious disinterest in the conversation, or noticed all of it and still decided to act as if it didn't exist and leaned in and pressed her lips to his, kissing him. Admitting it to himself and everyone else, he desperately wanted to kiss her back; just the smell of her vanilla aroma made him weak in the knees and hard in places he thought against allowing.