Harbinger Of Glory

Carlo was in the parking lot after the session, moving gingerly from the sprain that had kept him out of the day’s work, and he stopped when he saw Leo.

"You getting the game?" he said.

"Yeah, but I am getting the physical copy instead," Leo said.

"Feels much better than downloading."

Carlo nodded.

"I’ll do the same," he muttered before slipping into his car.

"Stay safe," Leo muttered before also settling into his car and then driving away.

The game shop in town was busier than Leo had expected, which he probably should have anticipated given what day it was.

When he got there, he pulled his hood up before going in.

He made it approximately four steps before the cashier behind the counter recognised him and reached under the desk for a second copy of the game.

"Any chance you could sign this?" the cashier said, sliding it across smoothly like some drug dealer.

Leo replicated the action, grabbing it smoothly and then signing it.

Afterwards, he pushed it across, took his own copy, and left before anything else could develop.

Vittoria looked up from the couch when he came through the door, and her gaze went immediately to the game in his hand and then back to his face.

Leo set his keys down. "What?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing," she said with a mischievous expression, one that Leo recognised immediately.

"What did you do?" Leo said like he was talking to a cat instead.

She kept her expression neutral, which was its own kind of confirmation.

He laughed and reached for her hands before she could get up, catching both of them.

"I did not do anything," she complained happily while he asked where his PS5 console was.

She performed innocence so convincingly that he almost believed it.

"You should really act too, aside from modelling," he said, causing her to roll her eyes at him.

"Fine. I didn’t want to have to do this," he said, then pinned her to the couch.

With both her hands held above her head, he started tickling her.

Soon the apartment filled with the sound of her trying to say something between laughs, and every time she got close to actual words he checked whether they were the words he was looking for.

They weren’t, so he continued tickling her.

"I will pee on this couch," she said, at one point, very seriously.

"Go on then," Leo said. "I will never let you forget it for as long as we both live."

She held out for another thirty seconds and then gave in completely.

He let her go while she lay on the couch catching her breath, the strands of her hair across her face, slightly damp from the exertion of laughing that hard.

She stared at him with an annoyed look while Leo also stared back.

"God, you’re beautiful," he blurted out without thought while Vittoria, recognising his blunder, smiled despite herself.

"I know, right?"

Then she got up and walked toward the bedroom, knowing she had technically lost, but she’d won something much more.

Leo followed, wanting to retrieve the game, but they came back out half an hour later because Vittoria had somehow ended up on top of him and refused to move until she felt like it.

Leo had the PS5 under his arm when they finally returned to the living room, and when he did, he found his phone showing that he had a voice note from Jake.

He pressed play, and a second later, Jake’s voice came through, sounding like he’d lost a court case.

Bro. I set this thing to download when I left for training this morning. I come back, and it’s stopped halfway. Now I have to wait. Do you know how long the wait is? Do you know what I’m going through right now?

Leo took a picture of his physical disc and sent it to Jake without a caption.

Showoff, was the response that came, causing Leo to chuckle slightly as he put the disc in the console.

The familiar "EA SPORTS" tagline came through, and a moment later the menu arrived.

Leo tilted his head slightly at how minimal it looked, more stripped back than the previous editions, but he didn’t linger on it and navigated to team sheets and found Wigan Athletic.

The team was two and a half stars when he’d joined, but now, it was three and a half.

"I thought we’d be closer to four," he said as he shrugged and clicked through to the squad and scrolled to his name.

His eyes settled on his OVR, and he was surprised to say the least.

"Ho.....Eighty!" he said as Vittoria appeared in the doorway and found Leo with his phone up already, taking a video of the screen.

She came forward to the couch and sat beside him before looking at the player card that was showing on the screen.

"It should be higher," she said after looking at the card for a while.

"It’s my first official card," Leo said, turning it over on screen to look at the stats.

"Messi and Ronaldo didn’t start at eighty either. Even Mbappe’s first FIFA card was around the seventies!"

"Well, you will be better, won’t you?" Vittoria said, but Leo ignored her ramblings and went through the card.

His pace was seventy-four rated, same as his shooting, which surprised him a bit considering he hadn’t really scored that much the past season, though his numbers were above decent for a deep-lying player like him.

"They must have included this season’s start," Leo thought as he moved on.

His passing was eighty-five, which was his highest, followed by his dribbling, which showed eighty.

And then there were his weaker stats in defence, which were sixty, and then fifty-three in physicality.

He looked at the physicality for a moment and then shook his head.

"I know I am not the most well-built, but the developers need to watch more football," he said.

"Specifically the bits where someone tries to take the ball off me."

"Dodging people and meeting the challenge aren’t the same thing," Vittoria said.

"If you’re being honest, Leo, you’re not that strong."

At that, Leo set the controller down and looked at Vittoria, who was visibly trying to just push his buttons.

Well, it worked as he picked her up a second later.

She made a sound of delight as he hoisted her, straining slightly but getting her up and tossing her gently before catching her again.

She was laughing and saying, "Hmm, maybe you’re strong," in the tone of someone revising an earlier statement under new evidence.

He set her back on the couch and picked the controller back up.

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