Dex thought that living in the Towers would be restricting. In a way, it was. The mentors emphasized the importance of being on time, even more than the other mentors at Foxfire would. Visitors were hardly allowed, that still applied.

But it was also less restricting than he thought. He'd mentally prepared himself for having to spend the next two years in mostly isolation. Except that the people who lived in the Towers were somewhat able to move around as they pleased, as long as it wasn't during class time.

There were no grand parties, but during the evenings, he'd been allowed to go into the other rooms (until curfew), and he was able to see Sophie, Biana and Marella more often than he'd thought. With them, he didn't feel as lonely.

(Okay, so maybe Fitz, Tam and Linh had said that living in the Towers wasn't that bad, but that didn't stop Dex from expecting the worst.)

Though, if he had to be honest, he did feel a little out of place. Sophie was his best friend, and while he was friends with Biana and Marella, he wasn't that close with them. If Sophie happened to be busy, he was still able to hang out with the other two, but it felt a little awkward.

Biana and Marella were both people that talked a lot, which was both good and bad. He was more introverted, so the constant chatter made it feel like he wasn't forced to fill awkward silences. However, he genuinely did like talking with his friends, and he wasn't quite sure what to say, not when he felt out of place.

There wasn't as much of that easy familiarity he had compared to being with his family (who he missed a lot, even his infuriating siblings), or even Sophie and Keefe. He knew that a lot of that could be solved by taking the initiative to just talk, but well, he wasn't good at it.

He returned to his room a little earlier than originally planned, telling the two that he was going to get to work on some of his technopathy. It wasn't really a lie. He got to work, and distantly, he heard the roll of thunder.

It was a little odd, thunder wasn't usually that loud, but it didn't really matter. Instead, he focused on the object in his hands, and how exactly he needed to twist it in order for it to work.

Thunder rolled again. The room was casted in light, and Dex whirked around, because that was strange, none of his inventions would have done th-

"Hey Technoboy, it's been a while, hasn't it?" Keefe said with a large grin, laying down on the bed.

It took a few seconds to process the words, and another few to realize that Sophie was laying there too, under him. Sophie shoved him off of her.

"Keefe, I'm in pain," she grumbled. "Why did I agree to this again?"

Keefe rolled on to his back. "C'mon Foster, you should be used to teleporting by now!"

"Yeah, well usually I don't have people land on top of me!"

Dex blinked. "Wait, you actually got Sophie to teleport you?"

"Fitz asked me to. He told me he was tired of hearing Keefe wishing that Dex was with him," she said.

Keefe rolled his eyes. "As if the two kc you weren't just as bad! I was barely have a conversation with you because you were so busy having your mental conversations with Fitz!"

Sophie opened her mouth for a reply, but Dex cut in.

"I appreciate your efforts to bring him here Sophie. Now both of you stop arguing, you're both really loud."

The two of them rolled to look at him, and then stopped arguing.

Sophie sat up. "Well, I'll leave you both for a while, I'll be back later to drop him back home. Bye!" She left the room.

"So, you actually did end up teleporting here," Dex said.

Keefe sat up and raised an eyebrow. "I told you I was going to do it. You should've known that I'd follow through with it."

Dex smiled. "Yeah, should've figured." He put down his invention on his desk, and moved to sit beside Keefe.

Keefe wrapped an arm around him, pulling him as they fell backwards against the pillows. Dex laughed softly as Keefe moved closer to him, his nose brushing against his neck.

"Missed you," Keefe murmured.

"I missed you too, troublemaker," he replied. "You're not gonna get me in trouble for being here, right?"

"Of course not, it's not like they'd know."

"You do remember that Sophie's teleporting is loud, right?"

Almost as if on cue, the loud thunder-like noise boomed again.

"She's probably off to see Fitzy," Keefe guessed. "But yeah, I guess it is pretty loud. Whatever, that's her problem, not ours. It's her ability. "

Dex laughed. He missed this, the feeling and warmth of having Keefe with him. "Is there something in particular that you want to do, or are we just going to lay down here until Sophie gets back?"

"I don't know, I didn't think that far. I just wanted to be with you."

"You're a dork, you know that?"

Keefe shifted so he could look at Dex's face. "I'm your dork though," he said with a grin."

Dex flicked him lightly. "Yeah, you are." He didn't bother hiding the fondness in his tone.

The two of them laid in bed for a while, not saying much, just enjoying the other's presence. Ever since Dex moved to the towers, the only way that he was able to see Keefe was from his imparter. And as useful as they were, they weren't enough.

An imparter couldn't allow him to see every detail of his boyfriend's face, the way those ice blue eyes were so expressive. An imparter wouldn't be able to truly capture the look of Keefe's smile, the thump-thump of his heartbeat, the scent of baked dessert that could still be found on him, the warmth of him in his arms, the fluffiness of his hair, the feel of his lips.

If it were later in the evening, he probably would have been lulled to sleep by soft breathing and the rhythmic heartbeat. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and eventually, Dex sat back up. While tempting, he couldn't just do nothing for the rest of the evening, it was probably better to be productive.

Reluctantly, he moved to sit up, ignoring Keefe's protests. He glanced at what he'd been working on before the interruption, debating on whether he should go back to it or not.

Keefe followed his gaze. "Oh yeah, you were working on that, weren't you? If you wanna go back to that, you can do that."

He turned away from it. "I don't feel like working on it now," he decided. As he thought about what to do, he saw his imparter on the table.

Well, it'd been a little bit since he'd last called his family. He picked it up and called Bex, knowing that she was the most likely of the triplets to be able to answer the call.

"Ugh, about time," she said as greeting. "It's like you forgot about us or something."

"I miss you too," he replied. "Are the the others at home?"

"Yeah, everyone's here. I'll go get them." The screen was a blur as Bex got up and began running to call the rest of his family. "Alright, they're coming."

"Ooh, is that Bex?" Keefe asked, leaning over his shoulder to look at the imparter.

"Hey Keefe!" She greeted happily. Then her eyes narrowed. "Keefe, how, and why are you in Dex's room?"

Keefe grinned. "I've got my ways."

Dex sighed. "Can you not encourage her to sneak into the Gold Tower?"

Bex smirked. "Oh trust me, I didn't need his encouragement. I was already planning on trying anyway, but now that I know it's possible, I'll work over my plan."

Neither Dex nor Keefe bothered to tell her that the only reason Keefe was in his room in the first place was because of Sophie.

"What plan?" Kesler interrupted. "Should I be worried?"

Juline's sigh was loud. "Please try not to get yourselves into trouble." Then she picked up the imparter that Bex had been holding, as the other two brothers came, arguing over who got to hold the imparter.

Dex just smiled, as this often happened everytime he called his family. After a minute, they all settled down.

"I'm glad that you were able to call us Dex- Keefe? What are you doing there?" Juline asked. "Did you sneak in?"

Unlike with Bex, Keefe didn't just grin, he looked a little nervous as he explained. "I had Foster use her teleportation to get me in here..."

Juline looked skeptical, but considering she was a member of the Black Swan, concerned about potential threats from the Neverseen, it was justified. But she let the matter go.

The conversation between them all didn't last for too long, but it was calm, relaxing and also fun, it was nice to have so many of the people that he loved with him. Eventually the triplets had to leave, since they had work to complete, and then shortly after, his parents told him to have a good night.

And then after that, Sophie had come back so she could teleport Keefe back home.

"Aw man Foster," he pouted. "You couldn't have stayed with Fitzy a little longer? I'm sure he'd want you to stay a little longer."

Sophie tilted her head. "You do know I have responsibilities, right?"

Keefe sighed dramatically. "Fine." He turned back towards Dex, and gave him a quick kiss. "Love you, Technoboy, I'll be seeing you again soon!"

"Hey!" Sophie yelled. "I'm not doing this every day!"

"I know, I know," he waved his hand carelessly. "But I do expect you take to take me at least once a week."

"We'll have to see about that." She pulled Keefe off the bed, and the two of them walked out the door.

Seconds later, Sophie poked her head through the doorway. "See you tomorrow Dex!"

"Bye Sophie," he said back, waving.

After making sure that the door was locked, he went back to his bed. He didn't hate the Elite Levels, but he missed being home. But despite the fact that he wasn't always able to see everyone all the time, it wasn't that bad. If everything continued to go as it'd been going so far, he figured that the Elite Levels wouldn't be too bad.

1) Welp, it's been a while since I've updated this fic. In August, I got into another fandom, called Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, and it currently has complete hold over my brain (it is so so good, basically a reader accidentally transmigrates into the world of his favourite novel, and now he has to survive the apocalypse, but the story is about storytelling and relationships and its just brilliant. I'm so in love with the story. The webnovel is super long though, but there is a webtoon that's also in progress! (It is dark though, there's a lot of violence and trauma)

1.5) So yeah, I've been writing some stuff for ORV, though I'm not posting it on here, only on my tumblr and ao3. Updates should go back to coming out a little more regularly, hopefully, we'll see how school treats me ig

2) Also! I mentioned about how I was editing the fic, and I would like to say that edits are now finished! The changes themselves are mostly just polishing the scenes already there, but a couple scenes have been added, so feel free to give it a re-read!

3) The nickname Technoboy comes from the user razzleberriess!