Chapter 135: Possessive Support, Practical Lover

Chapter 135: Chapter 135: Possessive Support, Practical Lover

"Oh," Rei drawled.

"Fucking finally."

Gianna’s voice stacked on hers, dry as dust.

"You feel what we feel, huh?"

"That isn’t—"

"It is," Gianna said.

"You’ve been the open socket people can theoretically steal. We’ve been the ones watching women look at you like a resource with legs. Now the grid is full of other gold nodes, and you’re preemptively jealous of the path."

Rei propped herself on an elbow, still flushed from the crash.

"Say it plainer, Everheart. Our little fulcrum just realized hunting means proximity. He’s afraid we’ll get curious."

"I’m setting a rule."

"You’re confessing a fear," Gianna corrected.

"There’s a difference."

I dragged a hand over my face and let it fall.

The deferred fatigue made honesty cheaper.

"Fine. I don’t like the picture of either of you holding someone else’s feed long enough to get ideas. Sever. Interrupt. Drop them. We are not building a second network in the middle of an entrance exam."

Rei’s smile softened into something almost like respect.

"Possessive."

"Practical."

"Possessive," Gianna repeated, but there was less edge in it than there should have been.

She lay back again, shoulder near mine, near Rei’s.

"For the record, I didn’t sign a dual slate to collect spare supports in a Scramble. I signed it to keep you from becoming someone else’s amplified battery."

"And I signed it to stop being scenery," Rei said.

"Stealing a rival’s fulcrum for score is work. Keeping them is politics. I hate politics more than I like new toys."

I turned my head enough to see them both, blue-tipped hair and blood-dark eyes, cooperation still weird and useful, the Zenith hangover painting all three of us equal for once.

"Good," I said.

Gianna’s mouth twitched.

"Good that you’re finally on the correct side of the anxiety."

Rei snorted.

"Train it out of him tomorrow. Today I’m enjoying the fact that unlimited stamina is real and our chew toy is territorial."

"Don’t call me that."

"Earn a different name in the Scramble," she said, and closed her eyes.

Gianna didn’t close hers.

She watched me for a second longer, channeling quiet but present, and I felt the brush of her attention again, not digging for the old regret this time.

Just checking that the man who had set the sever-only rule was still the one inside the bracelet.

"I am," I said, answering what she hadn’t voiced.

She looked away first.

"Hydrate. Then we run one more radius cycle without your miracle hour. The exam won’t let us live on a single activation."

"Copy."

I sat up slowly.

The system pane lingered like a smug bruise.

[Zenith Circulation — Cooldown pending analysis]

[Team residual: Cooperative spike logged]

[Host jealousy marker: recorded — Operationally useful]

"Shut up," I told it.

[Declined.]

We trained one more beat of rescue before the hangover fully claimed the afternoon.

No Zenith or miracle hour this time.

Just raw legs, short Fracture Steps, and a forced fifty-meter line that had to be closed before a mock capture timer hit zero.

Gianna yanked the path clear with tight telekinetic shutters.

Rei cut the pursuit drones’ legs out from under them with budgeted blood edges.

I stayed the moving problem, hard to hold, harder to keep once they decided I was coming back.

When the last buzzer died, the three of us were actually finished.

Rei packed slower than usual.

"Hey..."

She turned to look at me and Gianna.

The expression on her face was different. Less sneer, less mock, something closer to an unguarded edge.

"What’s it?" I asked.

"...We are a team, right?"

"..."

"Of course," Gianna answered before I could.

Clean and immediate.

"We three are in this together."

Rei finally smiled, real enough to change the temperature of the hall, and winked at both of us.

"I’ll be leaving then."

She headed for the door.

From the corridor, without looking back, she shouted:

"You can make out now."

I laughed and sat down on the mat edge, still breathing off the last rescue sprint.

"Subtle."

Gianna shook her head once, but the corner of her mouth moved.

She started packing her bag with the same precise economy she used for everything else: gloves, strap, residual cloth, water.

There were still things I needed to train.

Anti-hook angles.

Channel recovery after a partial peel.

Zenith timing windows that didn’t dump three bodies into the floor at the wrong minute.

The list didn’t care that the mat was quiet.

"See you tomorrow," Gianna said.

"That’s it?"

She glanced up.

"...What?"

"You’re leaving?"

"Obviously."

"Stay for a few minutes."

Gianna shook her head and sealed the bag.

"Last time I stayed, we kissed like animals and talked about something I don’t want. Not now."

The car. The chain. The question she had asked, and I had denied too smoothly.

Fair.

"Then can I come with you?"

That surprised her.

The bag strap paused halfway over her shoulder.

"To the public hall?"

"I’d like to see what you do there."

Her eyes narrowed quickly.

"Oh... it’s contagious, isn’t it?"

"What is?"

"You think I’m training with a secret support."

My eyes widened.

That was not what I had been thinking at all.

Not until she said it.

The moment the words hit the air, the picture assembled itself without permission: Gianna in a public hall, some quiet battery in the lane beside her, practice she had never mentioned, a clean replacement waiting if dual filing went ugly.

Now that she had voiced it, I really did want to tag along.

"I’m coming."

"I didn’t say yes."

"I don’t care."

"You’re shameless."

She slung the bag fully on and started for the door.

"My secret support won’t like you."

I caught up in two steps, towered into her space without pinning her to anything, and kissed her once, brief, deliberate, a punctuation mark.

"Who?"

"My..."

I kissed her again, softer, stealing the next syllable off her mouth.

"Who?"

"Supp—"

Another kiss.

She made a frustrated sound that broke into a laugh against my lips.

"...Stop."

"Say the whole word, and I’ll consider it."

"You’re an idiot."

"Secret support’s name, Gia."

She shoved two fingers into my chest, not hard enough to mean distance, hard enough to mean she was choosing not to escalate into another sealed-car disaster in a guild corridor.

"There is no secret support."

"You brought it up."