“You…” he sucked in a deep breath “I…”
“Spit it out.” My voice came out harsher than necessary.
“Can I?”
“Can you what?”
“Stay?”
“Yeah. Whatever.” I scoffed, rubbing my forehead, brain starting to feel fuzzy.
Matthew swallowed hard, eyes searching my face once more “want to go out?”
“Huh?” What was he on about tonight?
“For a…for a drink. Just…might help.”
“I don’t know.” I replied quietly. Usually, drinking would be the perfect solution to quell my worry, but“I… I’m tired, I think.”
He nodded once “that’s…okay. Yeah. Me too.”
“I know.”
He swallowed, shifting “I will, though. Go out. So…I’ll be back. Without waking you up, I hope.”
“But…you’ve been…you need sleep.” I sounded stupid. What did I care, anyway?
“I need to clear my mind first.” He murmured gently, the look in his eyes entirely too fond.
“Okay.”I mumbled.
He shakily smiled back before exiting my room, and at that I made the decision to stub out the joint, roll over and attempt sleep.
Training was fun the next morning, mainly because Matthew was participating too and was more of a laugh than I’d expected for someone so...rule respecting.
As we waited for everyone to drag themselves down to the field, we had our own mini sparring match, mostly for jokes since neither of us were putting much effort in.
I grinned, breathless, ducking another sloppy punch from him.
“Come on, I know you’re holding back.” Matthew teased, circling me lazily, his waves plastered to his forehead and mouth curved into a smile.
“Maybe I’m trying not to bruise that pretty face.” I shot back, smirking.
He grinned “ah, so it’s pretty now, is it?”
I snorted, by some miracle not feeling the usual embarrassment slamming into my chest, lunging forward and catching him in a tackle that sent us both to the ground in a flurry of tangled limbs.
We rolled off each other, laughing, before Jack stalked over and mumbled “fitness test. We have to line up with the others.”
He offered Matthew a hand and pulled him up out of the dirt; I stood by myself.
Johnathan was waiting for us with most of the others, foot tapping impatiently. As I stepped into line he shot me a half hearted glare but it held no real heat.
“I don’t want slacking this morning.” The commander said gruffly “I don’t want any of you falling behind. Understood?”
I grumbled a yes, confident that Iwouldn’tslack as I stretched out my arms and made sure to shoot Matthew a cocky grin,though even if I did it wouldn’t exactly be achoicelike the man was trying to make it sound.
The test began with a long-distance run: five kilometres during with I made absolute sure to surge ahead of Matt, though I still couldn’t quite outrun Alex or Nico.
