James walked Sasha to the door, though Alex accompanied them, so it was a mere hug and a wave goodbye. It wasn't fair that she had to leave so that somebody with a job could have a party, but then again, Sasha might also not have been a late-nighter like James was. However, after the ball dropped, the party began to generally disperse anyway. Everybody seemed vanish within the hour and, though they would have liked ot wait until morning, the Delacourt family was left cleaning up the most noticeable parts of the mess. As James was left with his mother in the kitchen, wrapping up leftover snacks and taking care to make sure that they were put away correctly to prevent spoiling.

"So," the woman began as she emptied the contents of a pot into some tupperware, "You and Sasha seem to be having a lot of fun with your first relationship." She smiled brightly to her son, but something felt off.

"Uh... y-yeah, I guess so. I mean, we really like each other, so... Why?" He asked, looking over curiously, quirking an eyebrow in confusion.

"Well... Uhm... I just wanna make sure you two aren't moving too fast... You know, at your ag-"

"Mom! No, stop, don't," He dropped what he was holding and it fell to the counter as he turned and waved his hands, "Let's not go there. Nothing, uh... er... l-like [I]that[/I] is going on," He said, clearly flustered and blushing hotly in humiliation. Matt had just started walking by at the wrong minute and the older boy nearly fell to the floor, laughing his ass off.

"Oh, look at him, poor little guy," He teased.

"Shut yer trap, Matt!" The boy snapped, turning back around to take care of the leftovers, trying his best to just... disappear. The subject, thankfully, was dropped.

[B][CENTER]February 11'th 2019[/B][/CENTER]

James was just about to sit down, open his lunch, and tear into it. He was starving. His friends were all waiting with a friendly hello as he was just about to sit down. "Hey, guys, o-oh!" He yelped as he was quickly tugged away, "Nevermind! Guess not today!" He said with a laugh as he was pulled away, almost missing his lunch bag as he stepped away, just barely managing to grab it. He would be the last guy to let go of Sasha's hand, so he caught up to her rather than being dragged along and softly squeezed it inside of his own. "Oh, uh, sure," He said, shrugging. They almost never ate without their friends. They hung out nearly every day after school, anyway, so "alone time" wasn't really a problem. As they took their lunch a little farther from their friends, the two found a place under a tree at the edge of campus. They were allowed free roaming, so long as they were back to the school before class started again, so some students would even go home for it; James knew a few who would go home and play PlayStation until the break was over.

"So... did you hear? The next Sony console was finally announced a few weeks ago. It's pretty huge news, the style of actual console gaming, they said, is going to die with the PlayStation Five. The next one is going to take their Morpheus and turn it into a fully-supported gaming device - entirely run by digital copies of games, which was entirely expected anyway. Looks like VR is taking quite a while, but the head and hand tracking is making leaps and bounds, I wonder how it'll play..." He mused, "But I think I'm going to sit the next Sony generation out - I hear Valve is funding a little third-party company that's been working on full-V.R. for years now and from what I've seen in leaks, it's going to be huge. Knowing Valve, I wouldn't be surprised if the release date wasn't announced until only a few months before it hit the market, but I wanna be the first one in the running while everybody else is still clinging to the media-hyped stuff," He explained, "We'll have to see how limiting it is, I don't imagine they've cracked the code for all five senses in one fell swoop when all they've gotten thus far is some neat head tracking and motion control."

It was sadly true, the hype of the "VR Movement" was a bit underwhelming at the turn of the last decade. The senses were really hard to recreate, as was expected, but even more so than most realized. Even still, five years later, they were still trying to find a way to control a character without placing a controller in somebody's hands. Third-party consoles had been making a huge amount of noise in the community, but few beyond hardcore or passionate gamers and tech-lovers knew much about them.

James then realized he'd been completely out of it and rambling about something that was clearly far from Sasha's mind. He felt like an idiot, looking over to her, he knew she wanted to talk about something, and there he was, back on technology and games. "Oh, geeze, sorry," He said quickly, rubbing the back of his neck and he unwrapped his sandwich. "So... uh... what's up, Sashie?" He asked playfully, using his pet name for her before nudging into her with a bright smile and placing an arm over her shoulder. James leaned his head back against the tree and took in the scenery while he waited for her to speak. If he was being perfectly honest, he'd almost completely forgotten about Valentine's Day. He knew the weekend was important, but he just couldn't remember why. His mom had mentioned something, but he'd not really listened, he was on his way out the door when she mentioned it a few days ago.