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He heard her shuffling, but his attention stayed trained on the screen in front of him as fingers flew across the keyboard, partnered by the occasional but urgent clicking of the mouse. Toes wiggled under the coffee table as he adjusted himself, back pressed against the couch for support.

Unlike his matching sister, the teenager wore a plain black t-shirt that read Video games don't make me violent, lag does along with green PJ bottoms that his doting older sister had given to him with the golden Triforce symbol patterned around it. Fuzzy cow faces made an appearance in the corner of his peripheral vision and he grinned. God, his sister was such a dork, but it was endearing - though he'd never openly tell her that, or anything. They'd been together for nearly two decades as it was - their quirks were embraced, not shunned.

When a faceless voice announced the end of round one and the screen went blue, he finally pulled his attention away from the laptop to give his sibling a smirk. The only reason she wanted to know about any video game character meant one thing: she was writing smut about them. Generally, he liked to give her a hard time about her gross little hobby, but he was in a good mood that afternoon thanks to a streak of wins, so he was feeling rather amiable.

"I'll do you one better - lemme show him to you."

The screen flashed back to the game, but Alrik clicked a button and a display of over a dozen faces popped up in front of them. Clicking on the Asian man in the corner, a young looking samurai suddenly appeared on the screen.

"This," he said as one finger touched the samurai in-game, "Is Hanzo. He's from a family of assassins - actually, his family runs this huge crime syndicate of bad guys; it's practically an empire."

As the countdown fell to zero and the gates were open, his hand flew back down to his mouse, shoving the character forward. As he ran, he continued, "But yeah, he prefers to use a bow, so he's a sniper class. He's got a brother, Genji, who he has these MAJOR issues with, mostly because he thought he'd killed him when..."

His hand froze over the keyboard, stopping the character in his tracks. Blue eyes darted over to meet matching ones as Alrik stared his sister down. "You're not writing incest smut, are you? I know some girls are all about that, but... Penny, tell me this is not the pairing you're doing."

"I..."

It didn't matter how many times she'd talked to him about his games, pulled information from him about various characters and their backgrounds. She'd done it for Final Fantasy, she'd done it for World of Warcraft. He'd even told her about Borderlands and Skyrim, giving tidbits of storyline and the world building it took. Some of her commissioners were oddly specific in their requests and since her stories helped pay for the pizza and the grub in the fridge... well, he wouldn't complain. Mostly. It wasn't like she ever made him read what she'd written... he was just the fact checker, remaining blissfully unaware of what sort of positions she was putting his beloved characters in.

Despite the fact drilling, though, he would never get over how gross Internet People were and their strange requests. Especially girls, ugh. Why two manly men would want to talk about feelings and all that crap, then drop trou and do... stuff...well, it was beyond him.

"I'll show you Mccree in a bit, I need to die first - already in the middle of the match."

As if to emphasize, he climbed up the side of the closest building and pulled back on his bow. In his binocular-like vision, he watched the opposition's healer struggle to top off one of the DPS. Tilting his angle slightly, he waited...and waited.... BAM.

"Fu----dge." He caught his cussing mid-word, remembering where exactly he was sitting (and with who). Widowmaker, the sniper on the other team, had taken him out right as he'd lined up his own shot.

"Okay, Mccree." Clicking away, the unshaven cowboy was picked and dropped onto the screen in front of them. "Well, the big thing about Hanzo is his honor. Mccree, he's more of an outlaw. Talks real cowboy like, sort of a John Wayne without the old man...thing, or whatever."

Tapping the letter C, he swiveled over and hit the voice line, where the western twanged cowboy uttered, "I'm not good. Not bad. But I sure as hell ain't ugly."

"See?"

Rolling forward, the dusty cape of the character began to billow as he made his way into the brawl. "He was part of the Deadlock Gang, another group that dealt with trafficking weapons and stuff."

Eyes darted across the screen and he shot off his Peacekeeper, sending one of the enemies to their spawning grounds. "Do I even want to know what kind of story these two'll be in?"

He followed her finger, which rested upon a one legged man with fiery hair, who was responsible for tossing out bombs in practically every direction - including Alrik's. A few fans of his gun and a nicely timed Dead Eye ult sent the pyromaniac to his grave.

"That's Junkrat."

Angling his character off into a distant corner allowed him a small break to continue focusing on his conversation, rather than keeping himself alive. "He's yet another outlaw, but this one's an Aussie. About your age, actually. He lost his leg in the Omnic Crisis down there, that's the big war between smart robots and the humans. I really like him, he's crazy."

On that note, he visibly winced as he realized his sister's reason for questioning. "And okay, I'm going to admit it: most have paired him and Roadhog up together. Pleeeeeeeease don't ever, ever tell me if you write about those two, okay? I'm so, so, so not into that sort of thing."

For added effect, he turned and gave his sister the best dramatic puppy eyes he could muster, leaning in to nudge her, shoulder to shoulder.

"You're insane," he teased lightly, moving back to rolling his outlaw cowboy out into the open, where he was immediately accosted by a flurry of freeze spray, a young, chubby Asian girl giggling in the background of his game. Mei. He hated Mei.

A few minutes later and the point was secured, the counter at the top of the screen ticking away quickly as he stood on point, now a giant cyborg machine with a tiny teenager inside of it. The percent rose faster and faster...97...98...99...

As the team secured the final win, he clicked out of the group and was transported back to the main screen, where a robot in the background began to juggle what looked to be a handful of metal balls. Pushing his laptop away, he turned completely to stare his older sibling down.

"Okay, so. What exactly is it with you girls wanting to throw these characters around together, anyways? Isn't that what writing romance novels is for? Just...creating it as you go, making new characters?"

Granted, Alrik had tried reading some of his sister's books before, to figure out what was so appealing about a bunch of people professing their love for each other and smooching it up. He'd even peeked past the cover on Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight to see what the craze was about, when his sister left them sitting around the apartment.

It was a wonder, really, why he wasn't more traumatized than he was over the whole romance thing.

Leaning his head back, blonde hair softly bumped into the couch cushion as he stared up at the beige, boring looking ceiling above. It made him think of the time, back at their parents' house, when his sister had meticulously arranged the appropriate constellations on the giant extra-large pack of stars he'd been determined to put on his ceiling, to keep the monsters at bay. He'd haphazardly been sticking them in any open spot he'd seen, but she went through the list, instructing him on the exact placement of each one. In return for his assistance, not only did he have a ceiling full of correctly-placed stars whose light successfully warded off monsters, but she proceeded to tell him the stories that each one represented.

"Well yeah, I mean, sometimes I see a girl and I'm thinking woah, she's super hot.... but that doesn't mean that the first thing I'm going to do when I get home is sit down and write five pages about how hot she is and how she does a guy or something."

His cheeks reddened at the potential implication of what he did instead of writing a story about hot girls, but he shrugged it off casually. Penny knew what he meant.

Alrik was never the eloquent one of the Rey household and he never tried to be. He left the fancy wordings and writings to his older sister, while he focused on more important things in school, like how to get out of it without the teachers noticing. He always knew, though, that his sister would have the right thing to say at the exact right time, should he find himself getting into trouble.

His head rested against hers, mindful not to unintentionally pull on her messy bun.

"You're just kissing butt because you still have questions about characters," he teased softly as he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. Alrik knew his sister was sincere in her comments, but he never knew how to respond to all her mushy things in an appropriate manner. He'd give anything to help his sister...even if it meant ruining a few of his favorite, manly characters' reputations.

"Hey - why does she have to be meek?" Truth be told, Alrik wouldn't mind any attention from the ladies, as he had approximately zero interactions with any of them, excluding several classmates who he'd rather not touch with a ten foot pole, much less date. Then again, having your sister working at your school didn't exactly help his A-game.... or hm. Could it? "I bet there's some gamer chick out there who'd actually play video games with me, not just write porno stories about them."

"Something tells me that they won't get the opportunity, if you're still hanging around, Schwester dearest."

One hand rose up and fingers gently tugged on the back of her messy bun, but not enough to inflict anything more than a mild, teasing discomfort. His sister was always protective - he secretly loved it, truth be told. From a young age all the way up through high school, she'd kept a watchful eye over him to ensure that nobody - girl or boy - was messing with her little brother. He'd attempted to do the same, but quite frankly, Penny was an unstoppable force of her own with little need for protection. Back-up, maybe, but it was incredible to watch her feisty personality come to life.

Peeling her off from him, lanky legs pushed forward, raising him up with the assistance of the couch for support. His arms moved up to stretch out, popping out the tight kinks that had formed from sitting and playing video games for a two hour stretch.

"Now... what's for lunch?"

As if to echo support, his stomach let off a ferocious growl. "I'm starving."