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"I kind of like grinding," Noah confessed, looking embarrassed about it. "It's, like. Soothing?" A surreptitious sideways glance, and he clicked open the Minesweeper clone on the computer he was using and expanded the grid for a new game.

It didn't mean he wasn't listening. He interjected opinions from time to time, apparently more comfortable with asserting what he thought when he didn't have to make eye contact while doing it. He liked incrementals but Cookie Clicker had lost his interest pretty fast, he preferred games with some kind of story attached instead of just being, you know, Progress Quest; he'd liked zombie games before but now he felt kind of weird about it because Laz, his weapon you know, was a zombie dog - like Resident Evil, seriously, it was cool even if creepy as hell - and even though Laz seemed to have no real problems with the idea of taking down other zombies and was actively in favor of it if they were threatening his human it was still, you know, kind of weird; he was really really bad at MOBAs so he didn't play because people hated carrying him, not a big deal he didn't like the playstyle that much anyway so it was fine, he liked standard MMOs better and kind of missed WoW; he liked plot-heavy games, the Mass Effect series had been amazing even with the ending, he was more okay than she was with games-on-rails if the plot was interesting because that was kind of the point of that kind of game, that the gameplay was serving the story, even if it was cooler to have more options or free exploration; he admitted, shamefacedly, that he sucked at platformers, please don't take away his gamer card okay, it was a spatial thing and he was bad at judging jumps and hitboxes and he just died a lot and it wasn't much fun ...

Minesweeper was infinitely repeatable, and the conversation was a subject in which he was right at home and enthusiastic, and no work was getting done as long as this could be kept up.

By the time the conversation petered out, Noah was slowing down a little between his clicks, because he had been awake for quite some time. Felicia got a grateful glance and warm smile for her defense of gaming as whatever game you liked to play, and no comments at all on the stutter, he was pretty sure that people had given her crap about it and he knew what that was like even if not specifically over a speech impediment and he wasn't about to add to the pile of crap, and anyway even if she had to find a different word sometimes he sympathized because sometimes he just ran out of words and if people got impatient about it or suggested helpful alternatives it did the opposite of helping. And he really kind of wanted Felicia to like him, because it seemed like they liked a lot of the same things and she didn't automatically consider his interests boring even if she didn't know what he was talking about and really she was pretty cool all in all.

"I like pyramid solitaire best but the phones don't have an app for that," he volunteered. "You can always play solitaire. It's, like, the game everyone's played and it's always there. And it's not boring. Well, I guess it's a game you play when you're bored, but it's not boring itself, hey, a pack of cards is like, the original randomizer, do you think?"

He peeked at her slump with mild concern. "Oh, um, hey. Did you sleep recently? Or eat?" he asked, remembering suddenly that these were actually things humans needed to do for maximal well-being and remembering that he hadn't actually had anything to eat since Pey had brought him a sandwich and he wasn't really sure when that had been. He'd gotten slightly better at basic self-maintenance while on the job, mostly because she bugged him about it if he didn't, but it was still something he forgot about and he would bet fifty bucks and a good candy bar that Felicia forgot these things too.

"I saw a pack of cards once that was printed to look like the old Windows Solitaire cards, like, when they were pixel art, that was really cool," Noah offered.

His eyes went wide at the suggestion. "Dwight's stash? Won't we, like, get in trouble? I mean if he catches us? We're just trainees, I don't want to scrub test tubes for a week again ... "

"They were like an art project or something. Like only 200 made. Or 300. I don't remember, I saw it ages ago. You could probably print some if you pulled the graphics files," Noah offered.

"Whoa, really?" Felicia got a wide-eyed and distinctly impressed look. "I didn't know anyone who had family here. That's sort of cool. Wait, he put itching powder in your pillow? Okay I don't feel bad about stealing his food any more like at all."

Noah closed down the database he'd been working with and logged off the computer, properly this time, and collected his notebooks to shove into the dilapidated backpack beside his chair. He looked suddenly a little nervous at the warning Felicia explained she'd been given. "Um. Really? I don't, I never knew anyone who, not in my family, uh. Not that I know everyone who, I have like eight aunts and uncles, that's kind of. Uh." This was not something he had realized he might have to be careful about, and okay they were from totally different parts of the country, but it had never even occurred to him to check whether ...

He shook his head and decided not to think about that any further, because it was disturbing and anyway a moot point if the distant possibility was actually true. "I'm, it's not really feeling bad for him so much as that he has cameras and stuff and he knows everyone and if he wants to mess with me, I don't know, but if I'm with you he can't get too mad, right?" he finished hopefully.

Noah tried to stifle a groan, but about half of it escaped anyway. He hadn't wanted to hear that, and he fully intended to suppress it promptly.

He swung his backpack onto his shoulder and followed Felicia obediently. "Hey,' he said suddenly, sounding surprised, "I'm pretty hungry."

"I just get distracted. Other things seem more important." At the question, Noah looked shamefaced. "Not recently," he confessed. "It's harder for me, I don't, like, have connections. I should be able to afford getting a laptop converted soon, then I can get stuff from outside when I have leave, that'll be cool."

He was actually having to put in some effort to keep up with Felicia. Usually his longer legs provided a distinct speed advantage when walking with girls, but she was just as tall as he was and in a hurry. That was probably what had reminded his digestive system that there was very little in it.

"I just had my iPod, all the rest of the stuff was really more my family's," Noah confessed. "I mean, I couldn't take stuff my sisters were using, or my parents, you know?"

He looked around the room. There was a moment of startlement when Felicia dropped her bag on the significantly messier side of the room; for some reason he hadn't expected her to be the messier one, except maybe he should have? He was neater than this, maybe that was why. "Okay," he replied, "thank you," and dropped his bag beside the beanbag, doing a quick and surreptitious check for mysterious stains before he sat down.