[Can’t Opt Out]

Halen would be lying if he said he’d never thought about Emilia as anything other than an adversary and rival throughout their school days, although until this conversation, he would have thought she saw him as nothing but a pain in the ass, despite their moments of cooperation and an enjoyment of each other’s company.

At least, those moments had been enjoyable for him, but practically everyone who knew him—who had seen the two of them interact over their almost fourteen years of knowing one another—had told him there was no way Emilia enjoyed them as well. There had even been an entire conversation with his mother, back in their early twenties, when she had flat out told him that if he wanted a shot with her, he would have to become a better person—not that that conversation or any contemplations on his part about becoming this so-called better person had come to anything when shortly after it had become clear that Emilia and Rafe had something going on.

Even without realizing Emilia had been taken and content, he would have disregarded his mother’s words. The woman, for as much as he was sure she did want him to be happy, had a vested interest in him becoming this better person. For so much of his life, his parents had spoiled him. Always working as they were—and seriously, with them as role models, how had they expected him not to become a workaholic?—they’d given him everything he could ever hope for. Rarely had no been a word heard in their household—not until he hit his teens, anyways. Bored in school, itching for better friends and more stimulation, he had become a terrible person, troublesome and unhappy and bringing everyone around him into his sphere of misery.

While he could now say he wasn’t nearly as terrible a child as he’d been before they’d moved to The Penns when he was sixteen, Halen still knew every aspect of his person that his parents saw as a negative were things they in turn blamed themselves for. For that reason alone, Emilia was probably right about the reason—or at least one of the reasons—his parents wanted him to take his gap decade: his inability to form friendships worth keeping in compulsory schooling—friendships that often lasted a lifetime—weighed on them. His failure was a reflection on them, and any fame and success he could find through Hail and the products he put out wouldn’t assuage their guilt when he ended up alone, only his work to keep him company.

So, his parents wanted him to take his gap decade, make different friends, become their idea of a better person. Yet, that better person wasn’t what he wanted to be; hence, his disregard for his mother’s advice, almost a decade earlier, on how to get Emilia to like him.

Sure, there were some parts of his personality that could probably use some work—parts he was trying to work on, like being too touchy about certain things or being too quick to anger, too expectant to always get his way, whatever the cost—but those weren’t the parts his parents most wanted him to change; rather, they wanted him to behave and bury a part of himself that he liked and never wanted to be rid of.

“How can you expect Emilia to like you if you’re always playing pranks on her?” his mother had asked after the mortifying experience of her guessing they’d had sex while visiting Seer’ik’tine, him too shocked to hide the truth of her accusation.

The thing that his mother didn’t realize was that playing with Emilia was part of why he liked her. She was aggravating and brilliant, the skills she designed beautiful and chaotic, leaping over theoretical bounds for what skills could do with seemingly no effort. Their prank war had long been the most enjoyable part of his life, and if his mother thought Emilia would only return his affection if he stopped, then Halen had decided he didn’t need Emilia to like him back.

While he didn’t exactly want to cause the person he liked harm or misery, neither had he been able to stop himself from enjoying what time they had left together as classmates—years, and yet, not nearly enough time. Follow current novᴇls on novel⟡fire.net

Plus, technically, Emilia had never asked him to stop, not since those first few months when she’d made it abundantly clear that he was never to touch Simeon, each of their skills from then on containing a failsafe that kept them from touching the ECC Dyad, that failsafe later expanded to include Coral as well. When it came to skills that target Emilia, though? She just got him back, got him again, screamed and laughed and promised vengeance when he returned fire until neither of them had any idea who had started their latest round of war.

For those years, he was content to take what he could get of her—bits and pieces of her mind and spirit tunnelling their way through his mind as viruses set to do the most insane things. His favourite had been the one that activated a skill that made a squeaking bed sound every time he thought about sex. While they had only had sex once—and he was almost positive Emilia wasn’t completely sure it had actually been him between her legs, blissed out in the haze of the Krill’ok’gry’s safety as she was—he had had no compunctions about turning it around on her, watching her intently as he dragged his mind back to that night, wondering if she would let him have another go, were he to work up the courage to ask.

Eventually, Emilia had hunted him down, cheeks red in a rare show of embarrassment, and chased him along the beach, attempting to remove the virus. It had taken almost two hours for her to catch him, the skill activating as they ran and he imagined a world where she would catch him and they’d been friendly enough that she’d know about the quirk in his genetics that left her—and every other silverstrain—tasting like candy and drugs to him. A world where she would know how much he craved her energy and personality—how often he stripped his cock, remembering the taste of her on his tongue that night in Seer’ik’tine. A world where she would have slammed him into the sand when she finally caught him, only to flip him onto his back and straddle his face and give him exactly what he wanted.

It was the small moments like those—the small daydreams he had let himself have, as he watched her and Rafe fall apart, the triplets slipping into her life and bed with so much ease they must have already had a plan to get her there—that had sustained him these last few months. He’d hired a few people, but they were mostly fifteen, twenty, thirty years older than him. They had families and homes and educations that left them not quite friends, not quite not, and he had missed Emilia.

Perhaps, if she hadn’t been in the middle of courting Olivier de la Rue as her lawyer, Halen might have sought her out before this moment. Something had told hm not to, and his family still had strong enough ties to The Grey Sands that he had to follow that feeling—it was bad luck not to follow the strange urges that found their way into one's mind.

Emilia didn’t want to see him.

Emilia had better things to do.

Maybe, in several decades, they would meet again and…

And nothing. Emilia would be happy, an army of beautiful men trailing after her, just like always, just like she deserved and perhaps even desired. The triplets still, perhaps. Rafe might figure his shit out eventually and return to her—fucking stars was it obvious he wanted to, even if he’d been holding himself apart from her for several years now. Whatever other men Emilia happened to take a liking to on her travels. Not a harem, but something softer—something where everyone was connected by love and desire in a thousand different ways.

Halen, for as much as he knew he was attractive—although hearing Emilia telling him so had certainly eased some small, needy part of him that wanted to know she thought him attractive—had never imagined that was a place he would ever be welcome. For all that he had tried for years to be even a little less terrible, he was still an ass who had probably made her school years miserable—an ass who would, in turn, pop any bubble of love Emilia dared let him near.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Unfortunately, as much as he had spent almost a decade trying to convince himself his mother was wrong—that Emilia liked their prank war just as much as he himself did—he’d never quite been able to do so. So, he’d left her alone, content to grow and let any resentment that might exist between them fade in her memory.

Maybe, if she really did hate him, the years would leave her to forgive him, as she so easily did with virtually everyone.

Then, she’d messaged him about food of all things, and he’d been moving before he could think better of it. Gone was the virtual space he’d been working in, the young ex-300 he’d hired as a secretary calling after him but going ignored.

Emilia had messaged him, and yes, it was over food, and it was silly, and before he’d known it, he was stepping off the slide line into Kalink, thankful he hadn’t fallen off somewhere along the line because he didn’t remember a moment of the trip. Then, there was Emilia, gaping at him, glaring, side eyeing him with so much confusion she could never hope to hide it because even he knew he was being weird.

Part of him had expected her to send him away—to pull herself from his grip when he first tugged him out of her chair and began forcing her out of the terrible restaurant Olivier de la Rue had chosen for the class. Halen couldn’t really blame him for choosing it, though; it had good reviews! Unfortunately, the vegetarian selection sucked.

Had Emilia even bothered to tell him she didn’t eat even fabricated meat? Probably not—it wouldn’t be the first time she hadn’t told the teachers or parents chaperoning this or that activity, content to starve herself rather than inconvenience anyone. If Simeon or her siblings were with them, she’d tell them so they didn’t have to. If it were just her? No—Emilia would never bother to ask for what she wanted like that, and it had been after he’d found her eating crackers on one too many extracurricular trips that he’d started telling teachers he didn’t eat meat, fabricated or otherwise. It was ridiculous, and Halen didn’t think Emilia had ever noticed, and yet, he hadn’t been able to talk himself out of it.

Then, somewhere along the line, he’d actually stopped eating meat. It was stupid, he knew, to hope that maybe they could bond over this tiny little thing, but when he thought of eating meat now—of letting go of this small little connection they had—Halen couldn’t bring himself to do it, not even when he’d been convinced they may never meet again. So, to now be sitting with her? Sharing the same food and comparing opinions on cuisine from here or there? Discussing whether shuto or mirung had a better texture? Whether the simulated meat made of either actually tasted any good?

No, Halen didn’t regret his decision to stop eating meat, if only for this small bit of connection to the girl he liked—the girl who, despite his mother’s advice, seemed to like their prank war just as much as him. The girl whose feet were still kicked up onto his knee. Emilia hadn’t even tried to pull them away, despite the soft circles he was still making into her skin.

If he dared move his hand higher, would she let him?

Probably, she would—Emilia was almost always willing to have a good time, even if their current situation wasn’t conducive to the sort of sex he’d like to have with her, slow and careful, dragging pleasure out of her with each thrust, each swipe of his tongue over whatever part of her she would let him worship.

But no, he wouldn’t push it. The last thing he wanted was for her to get the wrong idea—not that he had any clue what idea he wanted her to get. All he knew was he didn’t just want sex from her, and if she got that idea… So, no—no hooking up without making it clear that wasn’t all he wanted from her. If not just sex, though, what did he want?

Fuck. This entire situation was so unlike him, but then again, Emilia had always been good at bringing those unexpected parts of him out. Where Emilia was chaos and spontaneity, he was control and planning. Where Emilia was the sort of person who could be getting high on drugs smuggled in from Seer’ik’tine and decided his mission to trash Coral’s shitty, former school sounded fun, and she wanted to tag along, he had spent days inside the Virtuosi System planning and preparing. Then, of course, her smile had burned those plans to the ground because how could she deny her desire to join him in anything, let alone something like that?

If it had been the other way around—if it had been Emilia heading off to cause chaos and rain destruction down on those who deserved to suffer—he would have found himself following her vibrance, as he had so many times before. Usually, it was the spontaneity of snapping back at her—pushing her down water slides in annoyance or vengeance, seeing a chance to swipe her clothes when she’d been skinny-dipping and taking it—but this feeling now? This urge to tease and play in a much softer way… that was new.

Most likely, it was the result of now knowing she didn’t hate their prank war, that she wanted to continue it—some confirmation that this girl he had come to like because of this push and pull of energy between them didn’t hate the thing he liked the most about their relationship.

It was a tiny thing, but a spark of hope, nonetheless.

Plus, it didn’t seem like she hated him? Not that he thought Emilia capable of much hatred. Certainly, she could be petty, set in her desire to get rid of shitty teachers, but he had also seen her unending ability to forgive. It didn’t matter that Rafe had broken her heart; she had forgiven him so fast, Halen wasn’t sure she’d ever held even his refusal to explain himself against Rafe. Honestly, it wouldn’t have surprised him if she would have eventually forgiven Warren, despite the atrocious things he had done to her, had Rafe not killed him first.

Emilia was just too fucking nice, too willing to put her own needs and wants behind everyone else’s happiness and comfort and convenience—the sort of person who would make herself small, who would let herself be hurt and abused, all for some perception of the greater good.

One day, that kindness of hers was going to get her hurt—was going to lead to misery and pain. Then, it would be left to the people who loved her to make sure she didn’t destroy herself for some greater good.