Shouts of “Come on!” and “Ha! I’m in the lead!” filtered through the fairly large, sparsely decorated house. Despite it being after midnight, the bodies that the voices belonged to showed no signs of tiring. sighed; she really needed to sleep and it really didn’t look like she was going to get any tonight. Three other people sat near her; sat on a lone armchair to her right and and , whom she was sharing the couch with, sat to her immediate left. Every few minutes would, in the heat of the game, jostle her with his elbow as he viciously punched the buttons on his Play Station controller. He had even almost sent her flying straight over the arm of the couch – not that he had even noticed. He was too wrapped up in trying to defeat . She had exchanged a few looks previously with and all he had done was laugh. She was starting to get to the end of her, now slightly bruised, tether. She slid herself to the right trying to distance herself from him some more when she felt something graze her hip; she was already at the edge with nowhere else to go. As she stood up to remove herself from the war zone , again, nearly caused her to topple over, sending her colliding into the side of ’s chair. She narrowly missed having her eye taken out by his elbow. threw his hands out to stop her from falling down completely with a laugh. She steadied herself on him; he had to pay for laughing. She sat on the arm of his chair and slowly rolled towards him, trapping him into the chair when she landed beside him on her hip.

“Get off!” he chuckled, trying to push her off him.

“Nope!”

“Fine then!” he stood up and let her fully drop onto the seat, her chin hitting the spot where he had been sitting.

“Ewww! It’s warm!” she darted upwards, throwing her hand up at him to help her up. He yanked her up, his breath staggering as he struggled to catch some air. His sides hurt from laughing. She hit his back hard enough to warn him to stop laughing yet light enough that she didn’t leave a mark. She really didn’t need to be sued by his management – or attacked by his fans – for injuring him.

sat back down, pulling her with him to sit on his lap. She pouted at him and he made a funny face. Funny faces soon turned into play slapping and play slapping turned into him sitting on top of her trying to tickle her into submission.

“Will you two just go get a room already?” exclaimed. Whilst he had been enjoying thrashing , he had found their pettiness hilarious.

, on the other hand, still hadn’t noticed anything beyond the screen and had to do a double take when he finally realised what was going on. He threw his head back, silently laughing.

She gave him a stern look and he coughed, pretending that he hadn’t been.

He tilted his head at her to see her better; had her pinned face down on the seat again, one arm twisted behind her back.

“When did you move?”

She scowled at him, “When you nearly took out my eye with your elbow.”

A guilty look spread over his face for all of two seconds before being overtaken by a smirk that he made no attempt at hiding, “Ooops. Sorry!”

“You will be!”

let her go and she stood up, reaching across to flick his ear just as he and got back into the swing of the game. He tried to bat her away single-handedly before placing both hands back on the remote and trying to keep her away by using his shoulder to push her back. Impressively, he never took his eyes off the screen as he did so. In an attempt to throw him off his game she picked up a cushion that had hap hazardously been left on the ground and launched it at his head. It hit him square on the side of the head – despite him having ducked – and bounced off in her direction.

Cheers erupted from the other lads as narrowly beat .

“Hey! No fair! I was distracted!” made a grab for the cushion but she put up a fight.

“Hahaha – tough luck !” she stuck her tongue out at him.

He took this as his chance to pull the cushion from her reach and aimed it at her. It flew past her head, narrowly missing her neck.

“Careful, ! You nearly maimed me!”

He scrunched his nose up at her playfully.

A small voice came from behind , “I’m feeling really left out guys.”

giggled, “Aww, !” She playfully shoved out of the way and flung her arms around him. As she did so her phone vibrated in her pocket, tickling .

“Someone’s excited!” he laughed.

She put her palm directly onto his face and pushed him backwards. His face contorted underneath it.

“Don’t you dare lick me!” she warned, digging in her jeans for the phone.

“Would I?” he feigned hurt.

“I know you far too well,” she dropped her hand and unlocked her phone, smiling when she saw that she had one new text message from Luke:

Fancy going for a drive?

She made her excuses and walked through the kitchen to reply to him in peace.

How would you respond to a text from Luke?

A) Sure!

B)I’m tired but can we still hang out?

C)I’m really tired, sorry. I’m going to bed.