"I had a feeling I'd find you in here," Zane says, and I look over to find him in the doorway, wearing a pair of shorts, sneakers, and a sleeveless shirt. He's looking just as sexy as always. "Warming up?"

I'm sitting on the floor at the moment, my legs stretched in front of me and feet pressed together. When he walked in, I was stretched all the way forward, attempting to touch my toes while feeling the backs of my knees burning from the effort, though I've pulled back, letting my hands rest on my thighs as the burning feeling fades just a little.

"Just some light stretches," I tell him. "I already did some exercises."

"Ah, yes," he smiles. "I can see the sweat already. Do you always go shirtless?"

"In here," I confirm. "Once I'm in here, I'm ready for my shadow-walking training. The only reason I'm wearing the shorts at the moment is in case someone else comes in here. And because the tile is cold and that's not comfortable on my ass."

"Yeah," he chuckles. "I agree. Funnily enough, I tend not to feel heat or lack thereof in my stone form."

"Really?" I ask.

"Yep," he answers. "However, I'm warm to the touch, as if still made of flesh and blood."

"That's interesting," I say. "I was wondering, Zane, but you know my training schedule, so I was curious if you'd tell me what yours is. What you're doing to train your power."

"Ah," he says. "According to Lucas, his grandpa gave a progression suggestion for me. I could try to immediately jump into things, but he said it's better to work on my 'stone sense' first. I have to try to sense the element of earth around me. Sounds pretty boring, but I'm going to do my best to do it so I can move on. If I do it in my elemental form, I should manage it faster."

"How long can you sustain the form for?" I ask.

"I've never found a limit," he shrugs. "I just turn it on and let it go. According to Mrs. Lusvaris, the transformation between forms requires magic, but not sustaining the changed form. Elementals apparently have two different pools of magic, too."

"One for each form?"

"Yup," he confirms. "And the elemental form is inherently more powerful than this form. So my sense for the earth around me will be weaker in this form than my elemental form, but awakening it will be easier to do in the other form."

"Makes sense," I say. "About the sense, I mean. I think the other part's kind of weird, though."

"Yeah, it is," he shrugs. "But that's how it is! My training for the ability days will consist of sitting in a room with rocks around me. For the first half, I'll try to sense them in this form. For the second, in my elemental form. I don't need a trainer for this, since it's mostly some for of meditation and sensing, though Lucas's cousin will meet with me every Sunday for a little bit of advice-giving and review and stuff."

"Sounds boring," I agree with his earlier statement. "So you're going to do three days of that and three days of martial arts? Going to go all seven days?"

"Yeah," he answers. "Actually, I was wanting to ask you about that."

"Me?" I ask. "I can't really help you with skill training, if that's what you're asking."

"No," he says. "Actually, I was wondering if we could both train in here for skill training on Saturdays? Mine is supposed to consist of doing something to help me work on my agility and reflexes in that form, and after thinking about it last night and a bit today, I realized that running the blocks would be perfect for that.

"Of course," he says. "I could always use one of the other rooms, especially since I don't need to do it naked like you do, and so wouldn't have to worry about someone coming in and seeing me like that who I didn't want to see me like that. But I figured, it's always more fun when you aren't alone, right?"

Didn't he say it's better to be naked in his other form because it causes an erection, and keeping it contained is uncomfortable? Is he wanting to avoid admitting he'd rather not be naked in a room where some random person could walk in on him in that state?

"You just want to ogle me."

"That, too," he admits without shame. "I was also thinking that if you'd agreed to it, and Lucas was willing, he could do the balls thing with me, too. Naturally, I'd just be chasing after them, not shadow-walking or light-walking or anything. I'd also not expect it to be a competition, the two of us working in separate parts or something."

"Maybe not right now," I tell him.

"Oh," he gives me a sly look. "Want some alone time with-"

"It would make it harder to focus," I interrupt. "Lucas and I aren't together."

"What?" He looks surprised. "I told you last night that-"

"As much as I like him," I say. "He's got some issues to work out. He made it clear he wants to, though, so I'm going to give him a chance to work on them. I'm curious, Zane, but why are you okay with being the backup?"

"Um," he hesitates for a moment. "Well, I realized that your crush for Lucas is bigger than your crush for me, and most of my attraction to you is definitely sexual, even if I do want romance, too. And with how new you are to that sort of scene, I feel like I'd be putting pressure on you, especially with how soon after I decided to give up that sort of lifestyle it is."

In other words, he wants to work on his own past before looking at a future relationship. That only makes him more appealing to me. He's coming off as a much more attractive option for a romance than Lucas is. Now I'm getting a bit hesitant and confused again.

What should I do? Should I wait for Lucas? Should I give up on Lucas now and try it with Zane? Should I wait for Zane to feel comfortable with his past? Should I just go whichever deals with those problems first?

"Alright," I don't let any of this confusion leak out into my voice or expression. "Well, I guess I can understand that. Though I wouldn't say 'yes' just because of pressure."

"Doesn't change how I'd probably feel," he tells me. "So I'm going to wait two or three more weeks, just to give myself time to 'calm down'."

"Wouldn't that only make your problem worse?" I ask.

"It should be enough time for me to deal with handling it alone," he grins. "So back to what I was asking. It would make it hard for you to focus?"

"Using my shadow-walking ability," I tell him. "Still requires focus, even if it's only for a moment. When I do the moving ones, I have to prepare myself in advance. Part of the purpose of the skill training sessions each Saturday is to help me need less focus, turn it to an instinctive thing. Right now, I have to actively use the ability, and we want to get me to where I simply do. Turn it into a power-memory, like with muscle-memory things."

"You do something enough times, it becomes as natural as breathing," he nods. "Yeah, my ability is like that. When I was younger, I used to have to spend a few moments tapping into the power. Now, I simply tap it and it works. Though it does take a few seconds for me to transform."

The door to the room opens, startling Zane, who's still standing in front of them. Lucas locks the door and steps past Zane, who's shifted to the side. Strangely, Lucas is carrying a box in his arms. Even though I'm sitting on the ground and so unable to see what's inside, I'm pretty sure it's full of tennis balls.

"You can work on that," Lucas tells him. "According to Grandpa, just practice switching back and forth between forms. He mentioned you probably feel a little drained after each switch and that practicing them will help you with that as well."

"Okay," Zane says. "Well, I guess it's time for you two to start your training, so I'll see you."

"See you," I stand as he leaves. "Same as always?"

Yeah, those are tennis balls in the box. However, there are yellow, green, orange, and pink ones, rather than just the yellow ones. All of them are bright and bold, looking new. One, why does he have tennis balls, two, why are there four colors of them now?

"Same as always," Lucas says. "How did the pancakes turn out?"

"The timers helped a bit," I tell him. "And the, uh, diagram for the knob settings."

"Good," he nods.

"While I appreciate the cutting board," I say. "Why?"

"I passed through that aisle on my way to the kitchen timers and saw it," he shrugs. "Keeping the sizes consistent helps with cooking things evenly. Now, let's get started. I've got a slight variation for the agility training today."

"Does it involve the tennis balls?"

"Yeah," he answers. "I'll explain once you've done the first batch of jumps."

"Okay."

I strip off the shorts and set them on the barrier before climbing over it, then begin performing the shadow-steps. It's been almost two weeks since I began this training, and I can already tell a difference.

When I first did these short, consecutive shadow-steps, I had to take about three seconds after the first to cast the second. Today, it's down to two seconds. Each consecutive shadow-step took me about three to four seconds longer than the previous gap did in order for me to manage, too. This time, it's only two to three seconds.

Lucas's assessment about me possibly being able to do several of them in a row without needing to wait a few seconds within a month of starting this training might not be off. Overall, the ten shadow-steps takes me around two minutes to finish.

Upon finishing, I notice that I have almost enough magic to perform an eleventh one. If I'm increasing my magic and decreasing the cost enough for that already, then I'll probably be able to perform an eleventh at five feet on either my Tuesday or Thursday training session.

I'm about fifteen feet away from Lucas at the moment. Normally, I'd walk back over immediately to start the agility training, but I want to check something first.

"Hey, Lucas?" I look over at him, noticing him holding one of the green balls, and he looks up to meet my gaze. "At the end of each session, I'm supposed to do as many five-foot ones as I can, then use up the last of my magic to go however far I can manage. When I'm able to do more than just the five-foot ones during the earlier shadow-walking sessions, should I do a shadow-step that covers that distance?"

"No," he shakes his head. "It takes you more than three minutes to recover enough magic to perform a five-foot shadow-step. That's an extra three minutes and some seconds it'd take to reach full. Only do that for the final one at the end."

"Alright," I walk back to the barrier and grab my shorts.

"Before you put those on," he says. "I was wondering if you'd prefer to leave them off during your training sessions in here."

He's pretty bold, asking me that outright. It can be taken at least two ways. The ones I can think of are that he's confident that he'll be able to date me and wants to ogle me, or he wants me to be comfortable enough with him to look past his lack of attempts at doing something. Either time will tell if he's making the attempts or if he just wants to ogle me.

Or I can just ask.

"Uh-"

"Not for ogling or anything," his face quickly flushes as he realizes what I was thinking. "Sorry, I probably should've just explained first, Kieran. On Saturdays, you leave them off entirely because you're shadow-walking anytime you can, so you'd keep having to pick them back up and put them on. You'll end up having to do that again in about an hour and a half, only to have to take them off again half an hour later. I was just thinking that since you were comfortable enough to go the whole two hours on Saturday, you could do it now as well."

"Leave off the shorts entirely for a minor inconvenience?" I ask.

"Uh… it sounds kind of ridiculous when you put it like that," he chuckles. "I always had the spellsuit to train with, so the whole naked-not naked thing is new territory to me."

"I mean, it's a little bit weird to have it flopping about," I tell him, causing him to snort. "But sure. I'm getting used to it. Going to explain about the tennis balls now?"

I set my shorts back down as he sets the tennis ball he was holding into the box.

"Training," he tells me. "To start, though, you should run from here to the other end and back twice as a warm-up. Once you've done that, I'll explain the next stage."

"Alright," I stretch for a moment, then turn around.

Taking off, I do my best to reach the other end of the arena. This training is going a fair bit slower than the shadow-walking training, though, which I expected. It still takes me a little more than three minutes to reach the other side while attempting to navigate the blocks. If I work hard at this, though, I might be able to manage one length in three minutes within a week. Bringing myself up to a full lap in under four minutes within a month, though, seems like a fantasy.

That only reinforces my desire to lose the bet. I want to prove myself wrong with this, and part of it is to take advantage of that reward for him. I need to figure out what I'm going to make him do. First, though, I need to put more effort into this. From now on, I'll start every martial arts day with a warm-up in here.

It takes me about fourteen minutes to finish both laps, and I know I slowed down a bit towards the end. I'm definitely building up stamina with the constant movement he's putting me through. It's only when I stop for too long that the exhaustion starts to set in.

"Alright," I tell Lucas. "So what are we doing with the balls?"