Connie swung her legs as Steven rambled on about mixing and she tried to at least hear every word. Honestly she just liked his voice and when he got excited or passionate sometimes his ADHD would flare up and oh my gosh he needed to give context to that thing he just said so she'd know the origin story. "Connie? Baby, are you listening to me, or are you being horny?"

She blinked a few times and recited the last few sentences he just said to her on instinct, causing Adam to raise an eyebrow and grimace. "I hate that girls know how to do that. It fucks up the tempo of my life every time."

Anna gave him a strange look. "Why? We do it to prove we were listening to you."

Adam considered that but still shuddered. "I dunno. It's unnerving, but I guess it does make me think about smiling at you."

Hazel pinched his cheek. "Don't make me get our number one Smile Expert."

Adam continued to give him a jaded expression like he always did. "You guys make me smile in here." He tapped over Hazels heart and then kissed over it. "Can't that be enough?"

A presence behind him had him turning to greet whom he assumed to be Steven, but was met with a stone faced Jacob. "Uhm, hi?"

Jacob's glower turned into a grin and Adam mirrored it just as big immediately to the rest's cheers. Upon realizing he'd been played he went to shove at Jacob but his wrist was caught with a firm hand and a warning swat. "No."

Adam wrenched his arm away and crossed it over his chest. "I totally thought it would be Steven, I was unprepared."

Steven paused his conversation. "No it wouldn't be me. I'm the Love Expert. Hazels my student." He continued on with Connie nodding every once in a while and fiddling with the end of her hair against her lip. Sometimes he still looked like a teen, even at 27. There was an animated brightness to him that Connie was achingly in love with, and that's why she let him ramble. It might've not been showing on her intensely concentrated face, but today she was observing him harder than usual because she could feel how much love the man had in his body just by saying, "Adam and I covered some really hard stuff. And my other student is taking 50% of the load off my shoulders. I'm so tickled about it I could blow up the planet."

Connie giggled. "You up play the amount of alien you are, Starboy. Give me a kiss." She was tired of imagining him kiss her every time he licked his lips. His grin turned flirtatious and he pressed his lips to hers eagerly like they hadn't kissed in the last year.

"Actually, 51%," Adam corrected automatically. "The last three were my tracks, which puts us at 128 songs meaning... I'm at 65ish and you're at 63." He looked to Jacob to check his math and he nodded the confirmation. "So this is what it's like to be Steven. Weird."

Adam's flippant remark set off Stevens competitive side immediately. They liked to tease each other, but this could not be ignored with a chuckle or a roll of his eyes.

"What, you think you could mix with me?" He jeered down at him with a smirk. "Ha, funny, I could cream your little ass so hard it would be embarrassing."

Adam narrowed his eyes. "You think I couldn't? I guarantee I can hold my own." Steven made a series of disbelieving faces that made his own competitive side roar to life as he pushed a hand into his chest. "What, you wanna get your ass kicked in a remix off?"

Steven's eyes lit up with smug delight. "I can't wait to kick. Your. Ass."

"Lotta people saying ass, not seeing any," Hazel muttered to Alex. "I'm interested but wildly disappointed."

Alex sighed as if he were being forced to do chores and leaned up against Hazel with an enticing wiggle. "Happy?"

Needing to get him off before he responded to all that, Hazel grunted and grabbed his hips. "Oh, yeah. Way too happy."

Steven and Adam charged toward the stairs and batted at each other the whole time. Pulling an asshole move, Steven tried to bubble him but Adam leaned against the far side and rammed his shoulder into the pink spheres walls with a bellow of Steven's name. It hit Steven mid descent and they fell, his shield summoning on accident in giddy surprise and popping the bubble.

Connie peeked down the stairs at them tangled. "And what did we learn?"

"Not to run down the stairs," Steven moaned.

"So are you going to keep running down the stairs and injuring yourselves?" She glanced back at Hazel and Jacob who scoffed and held up their hands in surrender, stating they hadn't done anything wrong this time.

"I think when you're a boy, stairs is a competitive sport," Anna muttered and snuggled into Jasmin for warmth she was lacking in the absence of the other two standing so close.

After moving a bunch of their stuff to the downstairs theater, Adam and Steven wrangled their friends with the task of voting for the winner.

"This is so silly," Connie remarked with a shake of her head. "I feel like we're always breaking up fake fights between you two."

Jasmin leaned over Jacob's lap and he hummed lowly. "It's cause they're gay."

Adam threw his beanie at her. "Fuck you guys. It's not about being gay."

He ignored their noises of disagreement and turned to Steven, standing directly behind him. "Are you having fun down there?" He teased, fingers slipping under his shirt for fun.

"Fuck you, too," Adam grumbled. "I'm not a baby, I don't need guidance." Suddenly he was unable to look away from the hybrid's eyes. They were so loving he could drown in them.

Steven licked his lips and rumbled in amusement. "Oh, but you want it though, don't you?"

"Yes," The shorter mumbled dreamily.

"Steven, goddamn it!" Connie threw a pillow at him as soon as she caught Adam's eyes going purple with Steven's pink mixing in. "Do not charm Adam so he can't have a fair chance!"

Adam blinked and turned his head forward, pressing up against Steven in a new idea. "Fine then. Have it your way."

Adams ass against Steven was immediately problematic, but he refused to lose that easily. "I always do. We'll do Anna's song Escape."

Anna's eyes practically popped out of her head up and she shot out of her seat to squeal. "You liked it that much?"

"Are you kidding?" Hazel exclaimed, pulling her back down to sit on his lap instead. "Escape is one of my favorites, Little One."

Adam nodded in agreement. "Yep."

Steven pulled up and recalibrated his mixing table, switching from instrumental to more of a looser form with stranger sounds that couldn't be made by a mortal instrument without heavy mods. Adam smirked and hip checked him aside, finishing the task by pulling a bit more files and samples up. "You almost forgot these, Princess."

"I was working on it, Kitty." Steven fake glared at him but it was unconvincing of how mean he was when Adam knew he probably would want to cuddle afterwards. "Since you want to keep testing me, how about I return the favor and start?"

"How long are they going to be argue flirting?" Alex asked Connie. "Don't they know we're still here?"

Connie glanced away from her Steven. "They're totally in their own world now. I can't even understand half of the things they're saying. It's cute that they have their own little language." She giggled, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the seat in front of her. "I love that my husband has so many kinds of love to give."

Alex rolled his eyes and gagged. Connie was no help either. He didn't stop watching though, seeing them all flirt and moon at each other like idiots was comforting in a gross way, like seeing your parents kiss in the kitchen.

Steven took the first half, now pressed against Adam and pining him to the table. He was focused and so excited he started mixing before the track even started. His eyes and hands were trained and skilled, traveling over the mixing table and hitting touch screens almost lovingly. He was in love with his music, you could see it in his face. Steven knew what he was doing and the flare of competition reached his skin quickly.

Adam wasn't worried at all. He watched, he analyzed and anticipated Steven's next move. Going on five years of training and then fucking around in his free time or when he couldn't sleep had proven useful. He didn't quite share Stevens love for music (He wasn't sure anyone did, it was a very high bar), but he respected it deeply. It changed people. I'd Rather Be Me With You was remixed in front of him and the feeling it gave him had broken down so many walls he couldn't even find the pieces to anymore. Music didn't run through his veins, but he thrummed with a steady yet chaotic rhythm every day. He'd find himself caught up freestyling in his head mid-shower and Anna knocking on the door in worry as a 15 minute shower became an hour long one.

They both experienced mixing precisely the same. To create and destroy, to pull and push dials and buttons, to make something new out of silence brought them a peace. Adam was once silence, invisible. He had grown from nothing to something, something he tried to believe was important. Steven had gone from zero to hero quickly, he had created and destroyed things with his mind for what felt to him like eons. But for them, remixing was once again pulling meaning and twisting it around to make something different. It gave that song further purpose, it gave them further purpose.

It gave them escape.

Steven pulled away and grinned at Adam, pink eyes against periwinkle. Adam tried not to find the way Steven was towering above him with that self confident expression hot. He was tugging at his mind without even being connected yet.

Adam pulled the same beat that Steven had put on the first verse and tipped his head back and forth, shaking and sifting through the ideas until one found his fancy. It was almost too easy, he tapped the beat pad with one hand and watched the lyrics instead of the track. That's where the tells were for him, in the words Anna was singing, imploring him to escape with her and take her hand. He rose on his tippy toes as energy filled him from his chest out and he rose the grit with him, flirting with the notes and tossing Steven side eye just as he stopped the chorus from happening and Steven's eyebrow raised. He leaned over Adam's shoulder to watch, curious to no end.

Adam took the remix in such a completely different direction that Stevens glow connected to him immediately. He stared wide eyed as he went techno with it for no reason other than he could, keeping the most important notes only to mess with them a little. It seemed the smallest Dominant in the house couldn't help but translate his chaos into his music.

"You're one upping me," Steven murmured, grabbing his hips to drop a kiss on his head bobbing with the rhythm.

Adam chuckled, keeping his hands in motion. "I know. I still love you."

A flash of light and they were Pluto, barely missing a beat and continuing on combining their skills. They moved far faster now, it was such a blur that he didn't even know where his hands were anymore, he just felt the music and worked with it.

A moment of clarity had him realizing he'd finished the song ten seconds ago and was now just staring at the mixing table.

"Holy shit." Hazel stood and threw up his hands. "How the fuck am I supposed to vote on that?!"

Anna wiggled happily and made grabby hands. "Hugs! I demand hugs!"

They cheered and clapped and hollered, hyping their friend probably more than they should have if they didn't want him to think he was God himself.

Pluto bowed and flexed their hands, trying to remember the feeling they just had. "I'm happy you guys liked it."

Jacob's eyes opened again and he glanced to the side. "Is it selfish of me to wish of another?"

Pluto tipped his head as he hugged Anna and ran a hand over her hair. "How are you guys doing on magic? Can you take more?"

Attentive as always, he was more worried about hurting them than he was about following that nearly audible siren call of continuing.

Jasmin tucked her head into Jacob's neck and nodded. "Yes. This is so nice. I feel like I've been plugged into a charger. Hot, but good."

Pluto smirked and ran a hand through his hair. It was more of a nervous tic than it was an intimidation tactic, but he still caught eyes avoiding his and it made him giggle too. "If my lovely polycule insists, I suppose I can appease their hunger," The fusion sighed in mock exhaustion.

Connie tugged at the back of his shirt and he turned, grinning at the ebony beauty. "Sorry, you're hot and I just like to look at you. I have nothing to say."

Pluto picked her up, setting her down only after he'd kissed the life out of her. Her cheek burned against his hand, she was so dizzy she couldn't remember why he'd kissed her in the first place. Just that he was whispering something to her, and she couldn't comprehend it. "C-Come again?"

He leaned in closer to her ear, gripping her backside as hard as he could without seriously hurting her. "I told you that you'll be crawling on your hands and knees by the end of the night."

Her knees buckled like her body wanted to now (it did) and she nodded. "Yes, of course."

Plutos eyes glowed purple and Connie felt his silky voice against her skin. "ᦓﺃꪻ  ᦔꪮ᭙᥇."

She sat where she was standing and he smiled. "In a chair, Connie. You need to be in a chair."

"Oh." She looked confused for a moment and climbed onto the seat with Jacob and Jasmin. He pulled her to sit on his lap and she bit her lip. "I think you have charmspeak."

Hazel blinked and realized he was sitting again without his knowledge. He frowned, a little discombobulated. "Really strong charmspeak."

Pluto swept his gaze over them. "ᦓﺃꪀᧁ ᠻꪮ᥅ ꪑꫀ."

Jasmin sat back up. "What would you like to hear?"

Satisfaction crawled up his spine and he shook his head. "Never mind. Just checking." He returned to the mixing table and gazed at every single detail. "Any requests?"