We've all got bruises. (Leico)

New Year New You.

"NICOOOOOO! NICKY! NEEKS! NICSTER! N-DAWG! LOSER! COME ON OUUUUT!" Leo demanded, never ceasing to bang on the door as he worked his way through every possible nickname he had for Nico, even going as far as to call out the infamous name puns, like "Not opening the door isn't going to make me Nic-go!", all to no avail.

Out of spectacular puns (for the moment) he slid down the door dramatically and resigned himself to waiting for Nico to unlock the door to the room they share, dang it.

He passed the time by fidgeting with his various machine parts nervously, aware that he hadn't ever been locked out of the room by Nico. Ever. It was now New Year's Eve, and all their friends were officially coming back to school. Don't get him wrong, Leo loved his friends to death, but he wanted to spend his last few completely isolated hours with Nico, before everyone invaded and he crawled back into his shell.

"Nico, please!" he finally shouted. "Let me in! Don't make me start singing Do you Wanna Build A Snowman! You know I will!" No answer. He sighed, standing up and calling a quick "You asked for it!"

"Nico?" He knocked on the the door and took a deep breath. "DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAA-AAAAAGJ!"

Right before he could burst into amazing song, Nico opened the door he was leaning on, causing him to topple forward onto the ground in the room. He'd expected Nico to be sulking in the dark, but instead there was brightness everywhere. The room, the bathroom, the closets, and every corner were flooded with light, leaving no space for shadows. Looking up, Leo realized Nico hadn't even opened the door himself. He'd tied string to the handle and yanked it open from his bed.

"Uh....you okay?" Leo asked awkwardly, stepping towards Nico's bed hesitantly. "Everyone's gonna be back here in little bit. I thought we could spend our last few hours alone...together?" He winced at his terrible wording.

"Yeah," Nico said, looking out the window. Leo heard ruffling beneath his pillow as he turned, and knew that if Nico had the pictures of Bianca under his pillow again he was really stressed. "You wanna play a game?"

There was a pause. "Yeah. Sure." Nico said it quietly, getting up and stretching his legs as Leo went to the closet and searched for a game.

"Candy land?"

"God, no."

"Monopoly?"

"Nuh- uh."

"...cards?"

"Sure."

Next thing Nico knew, they were on the floor and he was learning how to play what Leo called "the slaps game." Playing with only two people was a little difficult, but they made up for it with extra fierce competition.

In Slaps, you each got a certain number of cards, which you held face down without looking. One by one, the players placed a card in a pile in the center, face up. Anytime a card turned out to be a Jack, a double, (two cards of the same in a row) or a sandwich (different card stuck between two of the same) you had to slap it. Whoever slapped the card first got to keep the pile of cards. The point of the game was to win the pile and keep going. Whoever ran out of cards first lost.

It admittedly got a bit heated, the slaps becoming faster and harder. Nico was winning by two piles, and Leo was running out of cards, making him more and more desperate. It had all started with "best two-outta-three?" and somehow escalated to "best forty se- SCREW YOU NICO DI ANGELO I HAD THAT PILE!"

Neither of them stopped to count who was winning after that.

The number of games was somewhere in the 60's when the others arrived, and still Leo and Nico were locked in an epic battle of Slaps, playfully bantering back and forth.