Here's chapter four! Hope you enjoy it. I'm trying to hurry and upload it before I have to go to work, so it's only had a hasty read over to check for typos. SO please forgive if there's an overwhelming amount of them.
"So…do you play video games?"
Quinn looks over at Logan, her eyebrow raised. "Not really."
"Oh." Quinn looks over at Logan again. She knows this must be weird for him. They hardly ever hung out just the two of them and now they have an entire week together. She wonders if Logan has a library she can lock herself in. She dismisses the thought almost as soon as it pops into her head. Logan is, for once, trying to be nice. The least she can do is try and be nice back.
"Well, I did play a video game once. It was…kind of fun."
Logan perks up at this. "Yeah? What game?" He heads into the kitchen, still able to hear her answer.
Quinn's face scrunches as she tries to think of the title. "Uh, the Legend of Zelda, I think."
Logan hands her a bottle of Blix, apple banana, and returns to the couch. "Which one?" He asks, taking a sip of his own Blix.
"Um, there's more than one?"
Logan laughs, but there's nothing mean in it, he finds her obliviousness to "normal" teenage things kind of endearing. "There's like ten or something."
"Oh." Quinn's eyes widen in shock. "Then I have no idea which one I was playing." She confesses.
Logan flips on the TV and hands Quinn a controller. "Oh well. At least you've played a video game before. Come help me kill zombies."
The music pours out the speakers and Quinn looks uncertainly at the controller in her hand. "Um, okay?"
Logan hits start and watches as a horde of zombies rushes at the screen. "Just press the green button to shoot." She does so and a bullet bounces harmlessly off the zombie closest to her.
"Yuck!" She hides her face behind a couch pillow as said zombie reaches her character and begins to, quite graphically, snack on her character's brains. "That is disgusting."
Logan grins. "I know, isn't it awesome?"
She glares at him from over the pillow, but the effect is somewhat diminished because her new bangs are askew from her sudden movement. She sort of reminds him of his great aunt's poodle, the way her hair is falling into her eyes, but he figures it's in his best interests if he keeps his mouth shut about that.
"Okay," He picks up the controller from where she'd dropped it in her rush to get the pillow, "you need to shoot them in the head. They are zombies after all."
Twenty minutes later and Logan is beginning to suspect that Quinn just isn't meant to play video games. She's managed to at least start shooting the zombies in the correct place, but after the first few she keeps getting over whelmed. After her character falls victims to the zombies, and Logan's falls shortly after, for the twelfth time, Logan puts down his controller and sighs. "Maybe we should try something else."
"No." He's taken aback by the determination in her tone. "I'm going to re-kill these zombies if it takes me all day! Show me again how you switch between guns."
Logan grins, partly because of her enthusiasm and partly because he's pretty sure it might actually take them all day, and leans over, pointing out the two buttons she needs to know. He picks up his own controller once more. "Are you sure?"
Quinn nods enthusiastically. "Absolutely. I will not be bested by the undead."
Logan shrugs and hits start. "Okay."
An hour later and she is finally not the worst gamer he's ever met. She's better than Chauncey at any rate. They've managed to hold off the zombies in this latest round, Logan had lost count of many they'd played after the thirtieth one. In fact, they manage to make it to the point where zombies have stopped coming out of the stores and all they have do is kill off the remaining zombies.
"Eat gunpowder, zombie scum!" Quinn shouts and she actually manages to shoot the last one, in the head and everything. "I did it!"
"Nice." Logan congratulates her. "You've finally completed level one." The sarcasm is evident in his voice and she sticks her tongue out at him.
"Ha ha. How many levels does this game have anyways."
"Like fifty."
She glances at the TV then back at Logan, looking sheepish. "Uh, maybe we should play something else."
Logan nods in agreement. "Yeah. I don't think I have enough patience to get you through level two."
Quinn whacks him with the couch pillow once more and he seriously considers having Chauncey hid every pillow in the house until Quinn is gone. She clearly gets way too much enjoyment from hitting him with them. To avoid further injury via pillow, he gestures to the kitchen. "Want some lunch?"
"Yeah, that sounds good." She bumps her hip against his on her way to the kitchen, throwing him off balance, but luckily not onto the floor.
He can't help but watch her hips as she goes. He is a red blooded male after all. And really, it's her fault for drawing his attention there in the first place.
oOo
"Here." Logan hands her a plate before opening up the pizza box in front of them and grabbing himself a slice.
"Thanks." She grabs a slice for herself, letting it sit on the plate and cool, before taking a bite. "I kind of feel bad for massacring all those zombies. I mean, I know it's just a video game, but still."
Logan laughs, taking a bite of his pizza and blanching at how hot it is. "You're like my mom. She kept apologizing to people she ran over the first time she played Grand Theft Auto."
Quinn blushes, knowing how silly it must seem. "I mean, I know they're just pixels, but I still feel a little bit bad."
"Well don't. These aren't people. These are emotionless, soulless beings that only look human, sort of."
Her face falls and she gives him a weak, "yeah," before focusing her entire attention on her plate and picking at her pizza. Logan mentally kicks himself, realizing that, while Delfiggalo wasn't a zombie (well probably not), he was sort of emotionless. And naturally Quinn would be hypersensitive to anything that even remotely reminded her of her ex.
He wants to apologize, but can already see her blinking back tears and he doesn't know if he can handle her crying again. So instead he smiles weakly and takes another bite of his pizza, wondering how he can fix this.
oOo
Quinn spends the rest of the day in a Mark-induced funk. She doesn't mean to, she realizes that it's probably rude, but she can't help it. She cries in her room for a little while after lunch, unaware that Logan, who is downstairs watching TV, is acutely aware of where (and why) she has disappeared to.
She eats dinner silently and heads back up to her room as soon as the movie Logan suggests they watch is over. She can feel his eyes follow her up the stairs and she thinks maybe he wants to say something. She's kind of glad when he doesn't though. If she tries to talk about it again, she'll probably end up crying all over his shirt again.
Because one of the worst things about crying over Mark today, was that Logan wasn't there to wrap his arms around her and rub her back in a small attempt to comfort her. And, for some reason, she really misses that. She tries not to think too much about it though, figuring she's not in a good frame of mind to judge any of her emotions, no matter how odd they may seem.
As she changes into her pajamas, she vows to try and be more cheerful tomorrow. She also vows to try her best to not let herself think of Mark, no matter how much she might be reminded of him. She grabs two ponytails and automatically puts her hair into pigtails, almost completely forgetting that she'd lost about two thirds of her hair the day before. She looks at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are still a little red, but other wise it's nearly impossible to tell that she'd spent most of the day crying.
A knock on her door breaks her concentration and she turns just in time to see Logan stick his head in the room. "Hey."
She waves half-heartedly at him and then berates herself because not even five minutes ago she had promised herself to be more cheerful. "Hey." She replies and is pleased to note that she doesn't sound nearly has monotone as she had earlier.
Logan must notice this as well because he gives her a small smile. "Try not to sleep in too late tomorrow. Dad thinks I should show you the "sights of Santa Barbara," which I'm taking to mean the beach because there's not much else to see here."
"Sounds good. We can leave after breakfast if you want. I'll be sure that I'm ready by then." She tries to smile, but it's half-hearted at best. She'll have to work on that tomorrow.
"Good night." He tells her before he disappears from view. "Sleep well."
She smiles as the door closes behind him, this one more genuine. She is actually looking forward to tomorrow, for some reason. She's still too tired to analyze her own feelings though.
"Good night Logan."
And there's chapter four. Hope you guys enjoyed it! Let me know what you guys think!
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