Filia fumed from the relative privacy of the locker rooms. Her nose was sore and she'd pulled a hamstring, but what hurt more was her pride.
She'd wanted to win so badly ever since Miss Amelia had proposed the game. Well, she was competitive by nature! It didn't matter if they were talking about basketball or macrame! The fact that Xellos was on the opposing team made her burn even more with that desire.
And they had won, technically. More than technically. The girls' team had comfortably trounced the boys' team. Mister Gourry's natural dunk had nothing on Miss Lina's levitation and frequent personal fouls. And it wasn't as though Xellos was keen on actually being helpful to his team. They won and it wasn't close.
…But she didn't feel like she had won.
Xellos spent the whole game making faces at her, and therefore she had spent the whole game trying to crush him into a fine paste. It hadn't worked out. She'd only managed to deflate one of the balls on the spikes of her mace, leave a crater in the floor, and fall smack dab on her face.
"Feeling sorry for yourself?" came the voice of Xellos from the door. He was still in his red uniform, tank hanging loose and a towel around his sweat-less shoulders. He was wearing shorts like an absolute monster.
Filia rearranged herself on the bench so she was facing away from him. "This is the women's locker room."
Xellos shrugged. "It's only you," he said, walking over. As though it was just her that wasn't worthy of respect.
"You hurt yourself out there?"
She sniffed indignantly. It had been his fault. She wouldn't have sprained her leg if he just stayed still and let himself be bludgeoned to death. "My leg," she said, gesturing dismissively.
"And you're not healing it… because?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes. "It's a sprain," she said. "It's not worth the magic. And anyway," she admitted, blowing her bangs out of her face, "it's sort of my fault." She added quietly to herself, "for missing."
Xellos took a knee in front of her, reaching for her thigh with ungloved hands.
"Hey!" she cried, squirming away from his touch. "Just what do you think you're doing?!"
"Come now, Filia," he said patiently, "if you denied yourself medical assistance every time you were at fault, where would you be now?"
"You don't even know any healing magic," she said, tone heightening. But she didn't stop him from putting his hands on her.
Xellos shrugged, gently massaging the sore muscles. "True," he admitted. "But this? It's just a matter of increasing blood-flow. Simple."
"Oh, and you're good at increasing blood-flow," she said in her most poisonous of tones.
He squeezed her leg a little too hard. "That's not the insult that you think it is."
She clicked her tongue. Really, though, her leg was starting to feel a little better. She couldn't for the life of her understand, though, why Xellos would put himself in these situations. There was something sort of satisfying about it though—probably the Xellos-being-on-his-knees-before-her thing.
He looked up at her and the sudden sharpness of the eye-contact knocked her breath away and sent blood rushing to her cheeks. His fingers pressed against her thigh and the tips of them just barely brushed the hem of her athletic shorts and
Oh dear. Oh dear.
She was having an unwholesome thought.
Suddenly the door to the locker room pushed open and the draft it sent out was like cold water dropping into her lap. "Miss Filia!" Miss Amelia called. "Miss Lina wants us to go out to cele…" She cut herself off as she took in the scene.
"…brate our win," she finished belated. Her face went nearly (nearly!) as red as Filia's, before she averted her gaze and began flailing her arms apologetically.
"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt!" she said, hurriedly walking backwards. "I'll just tell Miss Lina that you and Mister Xellos are busy!" she said before zipping out of the room.
Filia struggled to get up. "Over my dead body, you will!" This kind of thing was exactly how rumors started.
Xellos kept his grip for a moment, like a babe latching onto a barbarian, before letting go. Filia was at least full of enough vim to run shrieking after Amelia, so she was probably already feeling better.
She'd be just fine.