Everyone had stopped running about three minutes ago—everyone except Ruaan.

He finished his tenth lap and stopped directly in front of Harolin.

His hands were on his knees, and his lungs were doing something dramatic. His legs had already filed a formal complaint that he was ignoring. He looked up at Harolin from that position and just breathed for a moment.

Harolin held out a water bottle.

"Thank you," Ruaan grabbed it, opened it and drank the whole thing in one go without stopping. Water ran down his chin and wet the front of his uniform and he did not care even slightly. All he was concerned about was drinking everything in that bottle.

"Slow down," Harolin said.

Ruaan finished the bottle.

He stood up straight and kept panting and then gave up on standing and sat down on the field floor, both palms flat behind him, legs stretched out, face to the sky.

He looked across the field.

The new officer was looking back at him.

Ruaan held eye contact for three seconds then looked away.

"Fuck," he said, still panting. "I hate him already."

Harolin was quiet.

Ruaan didn’t see it but Harolin was looking at him. At the wet patch on his collar from the water. His chest was rising and falling fast. At his bottom lip slightly swollen still from days ago. At the long lashes when he blinked and the way his hair had gone slightly damp at the edges from the run.

Harolin looked away.

He was not going to do anything in the middle of a training field with forty people on it. It was definitely not because of the rules. Not because of the code of conduct or section two paragraph one or any new officer with a memorised manual. Simply because he didn’t want to and he was choosing not to.

Ruaan belonged to him.

That was a fact he had arrived at somewhere between the storeroom and the shower block and the spare key and he was not examining how he had arrived there. It was simply true.

"His name is Oren George," Harolin said. "He’s new. Strict. Probably here to prove something to someone and also the fact that he doesn’t want friends."

Ruaan waved his hand at the field. "Oren George," he repeated, like he was testing the weight of the name.

Harolin crouched down in front of him.

Ruaan almost looked away out of habit. He caught himself doing it and stopped but didn’t quite make full eye contact either, looking somewhere near Harolin’s shoulder.

"Look at me," Harolin said quietly and it was not a demand. Something else.

Ruaan didn’t.

Harolin said, "Don’t make me jerk your head toward my cock in front of all these people, Ru."

Ruaan’s face went red so fast it was almost impressive.

He looked at Harolin.

Harolin tilted his head. "Good boy."

Ruaan opened his mouth to curse him or say something but he was interrupted.

"Don’t call that man’s name in front of me again," Harolin said with that same quiet tone. "The only name you call is mine. Understood?"

Ruaan pressed his lips together and nodded once.

"Say my name."

A pause. Ruaan looked at him with an expression that was caught somewhere between embarrassed and stubborn. Then he folded his lips and said, very quietly:

"Lily."

The vein in Harolin’s jaw moved. He was expecting Ruaan to say Harolin, not Lily. He would have punched a hole in his face if he wanted, but it was Ruaan.

He stood up. "Once it’s 1pm, meet me at the officer shower block."

"I don’t have a watch. How am I supposed to know when it’s 1pm?"

Harolin unclipped the watch from his wrist and held it out. Ruaan took it and looked at it and then looked up but Harolin was already standing and looking at the field.

"Everyone is watching us," Harolin said. "Go train."

He walked away.

Ruaan rolled his eyes and pushed himself off the ground and walked to the nearest weights. He picked up the 20kg bar, positioned his feet, and checked his grip. After all, that’s what he could carry.

"What exactly is going on between you and that officer?"

The bar nearly took him to the floor.

Ruaan caught it and turned around and Seo was right there, glasses slightly steamed from the heat, comic nowhere in sight for once, looking at Ruaan with an expression of genuine scientific curiosity.

"Don’t do that," Ruaan said. "You almost gave me a heart attack. Again."

"Everyone could feel it," Seo said. "The chemistry. From all the way across the field. It was like watching a forbidden romance drama."

Ruaan set the bar down carefully and turned to Seo and grabbed his nose between two fingers and pinched.

Seo’s eyes went wide. He started breathing through his mouth immediately.

"Nothing," Ruaan said, "is going on between us. We are enemies. He came to this facility specifically to make my life difficult. That is the entire relationship." He let go of the nose. "Tell that to everyone who was watching."

Seo rubbed his nose. "I don’t believe you."

"I don’t care if you believe me or not."

Seo turned his head toward the other side of the field where Oren George was walking between groups, correcting form and making people visibly nervous just by existing near them. Seo bit his bottom lip.

Ruaan noticed.

"Fuck no," Ruaan said.

Seo turned back with an innocent expression. "What?"

"Whatever you’re thinking. No."

"I was just looking."

"You were doing more than looking."

Seo pushed his glasses up with one finger and said, very seriously, "He’s hot."

Ruaan stared at him, wearing a disgusted look on his face.

"What?" Seo said. "Why are you making that face?"

"This is my normal face."

"That is not your normal face. You look like you stepped on something shitty."

"This is my normal face," Ruaan said.

Seo looked back at Oren George. "He’s probably not into men. Probably a virgin." He nodded slowly, like he was working through a strategy. "That’s actually better. I might have a real chance."

The look on Ruaan’s face got worse.

"I’m going to ask him to spot me," Seo said. "That way I can get a feel for his cock..."

"Seo."

"Just his general energy of his cock."

"Seo, I genuinely need you to not do that."

"Why not?"

Ruaan could not explain why not without explaining things he was not ready to explain. He opened his mouth and closed it.

Seo adjusted his glasses, patted Ruaan’s shoulder once, and walked across the field toward Oren George with the calm confidence of a man who had already decided the outcome.

Ruaan watched him go with an expression that had fully given up trying to be neutral.

He picked the bar back up.

Someone pressed a water bottle against his arm from behind.

He turned automatically, expecting Harolin, and found Yoon standing there with a slightly too casual expression and a second water bottle in his other hand.

"Here you go, I stole two extra so I thought I’d give one to you," Yoon smiled.

"Why me? Give one to Petre or Luca." Ruaan looked at the bottle. "Besides, I’m not thirsty. The officer already gave me—"

"Speaking of which." Yoon stepped closer and his voice dropped. He moved behind Ruaan and put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in close to his ear. "You’re sleeping with that officer, aren’t you?"

Ruaan turned around fast. "What—"

Yoon’s grip on his shoulder tightened and he kept his voice low and easy, like they were having a pleasant conversation about training. "Don’t make a scene. Just listen."

Ruaan went still.

"I saw how close you two were today," Yoon said. "And I’m not the only one. Everyone in this field saw it." He paused. "I just want one thing from you. Whatever you have going with that officer, I want in. Include me."

Ruaan stared at him.

"Or," Yoon said, still smiling, still friendly, "by the end of training today, everyone in this facility knows that you’ve been spreading your legs for an officer." He tilted his head. "I think that would be very bad for you. Especially with Cullen already watching you."

He let go of Ruaan’s shoulder and stepped back.

"You have until training ends," he said pleasantly. "Don’t disappoint me, Ruaan."

He walked away as if nothing had happened.

Like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb and walked off smiling.

Ruaan stood on the field holding a 20kg bar and staring at the space where Yoon had been standing with the expression of a man doing a rapid damage assessment.

His eyes moved across the field automatically and found Harolin.

Harolin was already looking at him.

Across the field, through the heat and the noise and the forty people in between them, their eyes met.

Ruaan’s face said everything.

Harolin’s expression sharpened immediately.

Ruaan held the look for one second and his eyes said it clearly without a single word.

’We are in trouble.’