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“I can’t stand you when you get like this,” Rayla said, arms crossed. Her white hair was coming loose from the bun she had clipped it up in; it tumbled across her shoulders as she shook her head, eyes alight with humor. Callum could study her eyes for hours; every time he looked at them, he found new flecks of color in them, blue and brown and gold and pink merging together to create the deep purple wells he now gazed into. The pair were sitting in Rayla’s college dorm room, sitting on the rug on her floor. At the foot of her bed rested Callum’s computer, that showed his screensaver - a picture of Rayla, his brother, Ezran, their friend Soren, and his sister Claudia. Rayla was kissing Callum on the cheek, his face and ears tinted pink in a blush. Ezran was playing with his dog, Zym, and Soren and Claudia were bickering - or rather, Soren was trying to argue with a disinterested Claudia, who had returned to her book and was entirely ignoring him. There were blankets and pillows laid out in front of the computer, perfect for movie night. Callum had even brought over his childhood stuffed animal, a yellow-and-blue toad Pillow Pet that used to light up but who’s batteries died years ago.
“Honestly. You’re even worse than Ethari. At least he doesn’t cheat as blatantly as you!” Rayla placed down a red four, looking at her hand with obvious distaste.
Callum gasped dramatically, a hand clutching his shirt as he glanced back down at his hand of cards. “Is it really so hard to believe that I just have incredibly good luck?”
“When you’ve made me draw four three times now, yes. It’s one game! There are only four of them in the whole deck! It’s highly unlikely.” Her eyes tracked Callum’s hand as he set down a card, holding it above the discard pile but not flipping it over. “Don’t you dare.”
“What?” Callum asked with faux-innocence, a smirk steadily growing on his face.
“You know what, you little shit.” She grabbed his wrist, flipping over the card. “You bitch!” Callum laughed maniacally as she threw her head into her hands, her hair falling into her eyes. She brushed it back with a hand as she sat up, throwing her hand of cards on the floor. “I quit! I give up!”
“I can't control which cards I pull!” He smiled and started to clean up the mess of cards on Rayla’s dorm room floor.
“For all I know, you cast some kind of curse to stop me from winning,” The competitive tone in Rayla’s voice was almost completely gone as she laid down on her pillow and held up the blanket to make room for her boyfriend.
He smiled. “Let’s just kiss and make up, it’s not worth fighting about.”
“That, we agree on,” She tucked the blanket in around Callum and then wrapped her arm around him, cupping her other hand to his cheek and pulling him to her. She hesitated, their noses touching, and he felt her exhale and smile against his face. He could smell her shampoo, a woodsy, homey smell that made him think of his favorite hideaway as a kid; a wishing well hidden deep in a forest, covered in vines and moss and who-knows-what-other green things. Callum’s cheeks warmed, and he closed the gap between them, gently pressing his lips to hers. We forgot to put on a movie, he thought distantly as he wrapped an arm around Rayla’s lower back. Ah, fuck it. Nobody would have watched it anyway. He smiled against her mouth, the kiss growing slightly awkward as both their lips thinned out, but he didn’t care. He was happy, and he was in love. And he was home.