Another Time - 3. Dante

Dante passed the ball to Robert, whose feet danced with the ball for a moment before he shot. The ball smacked loudly against the padded mat that served as their goal, and their team emitted short whoops of joy while in the background Ottmar ended the game with two sharp whistles.

"Five minutes!" he shouted loudly, and Dante expelled the air before slowly walking off the field.

"Good pass.", Robert suddenly said behind him and he shrugged.

"If you say so. You're the one who keeps scoring goals."

Robert blushed and smiled wryly, but remained silent.

In general, there was little talking as the thirty teenagers grabbed their marked water bottles and tried to catch their breath before the real training began.

Only Florian pranced over to them and grinned broadly before starting to babble a little breathlessly.

Dante tried not to get distracted, but Florian's voice was far too bright and piercing for that, his lanky limbs seeming to be in motion the whole time, which made Dante nervous in an irritable way. Before he could say anything, however, Nico said:

"Hold sti-still."

Florian paused and looked down at them, he was a head taller than Dante, but admittedly that wasn't hard. "I have to tell someone about our ping pong match."

Nico merely raised a brow while Robert sighed and Dante rolled his eyes. He had known Robert since they had started training here together. He had grown up in the same children's home as Niall, but unlike the vivacious Niall, Robert was quite shy, and on top of that, he was ashamed of his terribly crooked teeth, so he practically never opened his mouth. Ever since he had been bought by Kingston Security and had met Nico and Florian there, who had subsequently been transferred here from another training group, the three had been inseparable and got on Dante's nerves. Both actively- Florian was constantly babbling and Nico didn't let his strong stutter stop him from chattering either, but that made it exhausting to listen to him- and passively, because the three of them were two years older than him and in comparison he felt even more of a kid than he actually was.
Robert alone as silent company was okay, but all three together? Way. Too. Much.

"Honestly, Nico, if Dante can't play, I can at least tell him about your epic defeat-" Florian then started again, but was interrupted by Ottmar.

"Lineup!" He started counting down from ten and the boys hurried to close their bottles and get to the black line in the middle of the hall.

Dante stood in position at one and straightened his shoulders, hands clasped behind his back. Flanked by Nico and Florian, he watched as Ottmar, a muscle mountain of a man, scowled at the line. The man instilled a tremendous amount of respect in him, although by now he'd heard enough voices that the guy was actually as soft as a newborn kitten. Didn't change the fact that he could effortlessly use boys like Dante as toothpicks.

"Mouse steps." he barked, and they started jogging in place. "You're not mice, you're a bunch of startled elephants." he snorted after a moment, and Dante was glad, not for the first time, for his thin training shoes with soft leather soles which barely made a sound, even if the shoes were pink. "Elephants." Ottmar said again, demonstratively holding a hand to his ear.

Dante suppressed a sigh as Florian beside him let out a low whine, and continued prancing along on his toes.

"There you go." Ottmar snorted. "And next time, please don't take twenty minutes." As usual, he exaggerated wildly. Then he straightened to full impressive height and held the flat of his hands, palm down, at waist level. "If I raise my right hand, you take a step forward." His voice effortlessly reached every corner in the hall without having to raise it. "If I raise my left hand, you take a step back. If I raise both hands, you take a left-side intercepting step. If I lower both hands, right-side dodge step." The instructions varied ever so slightly, but everyone here knew the game. "There are thirty of you. What do I want to hear?"

"One single sound." they all replied in chorus.

"Let's go."

Some days Ottmar rushed them through this exercise, some days he played with their nerves. Like now. Dante pranced forward and back, back and forward, focusing on Ottmar's hands, for their coach liked to make misleading movements with the rest of his body. When a sudden dodge step came, there was a thud from the other end of the row- someone had fallen on their butt. Dante knew better than to look over or even break his own foot rhythm.

Ottmar's hard gaze registered everything, but whoever had fallen there would get his five minutes of punishment after practice. "Forward!" he barked, giving the hand signal for back, a confused sound coming from somewhere. "Back!" he barked, giving the signal for forward, and then again, "Back!" giving the signal for the interception step.

Dante slid forward, Nico to his left, but the rest of the line now finally broke order.

"You're a disappointment, really!" Ottmar exclaimed with a growl, shaking his head. "You should tell your mistresses that you are not worth the money they put into your training." There were always boys who took these insults seriously.

"In a go-good m-mood today." Nico muttered under his breath, and Dante grunted in reply.

"A sip for everyone, then we'll practice defense in groups of three. Go!"

Two hours later, Dante dropped onto a bench in the locker room and drank the last of his water. The left side of his face was burning and throbbing because Levin, that bastard, had tried to mop the floor with him - quite literally.

Further back in the room, Thomas, Max, and Samson were loudly bawling and making fun of Phillip, which only ended when Felix interjected. And no one contradicted Felix.

Dante sucked in a deep breath of air, but felt like he was merely breathing in sweat, deodorant, and testosterone instead of oxygen. He hated how the air smelled here, how it tasted. Tired, he bent over and slipped off his ridiculous pale pink shoes, then stood up to put the bottle and shoes in his bag.

While the first ones were already occupying the few showers, the stragglers came in who had caught some kind of punishment- Ottmar was into push-ups, preferably one-handed. Nico was among them and got mocked by Bastian as he entered.

Dante paid no attention to this, but tried more to calculate whether he already needed to undress or not. Judging by the heated voices from the shower room, probably not.

"What's w-w-wrong?", Nico wanted to know, dropping down on the bench on the other side of Dante's bag.

"Nothing," Dante returned simply. Here in the locker rooms, away from Ottmar's sharp eyes or those of his assistants, the law of the strongest applied and any sign of weakness could be used against you. And Dante was already a frequent target of ridicule and scorn anyway, whether because of the sapphire in his collar or the fact that he was still shorter and thinner than most others his age. The only one who had fared worse was Phillip, but he... well. Other than looking pretty, he couldn't do anything.

"C-c-come on, you l-l-look like c-crap," Nico insisted, and Dante glared at him, raising a hand and pointing at his face.

"Thanks to Levin for that."

"But-"

"Let it go." Robert said quietly from Nico's other side.

While Nico's mouth was open and he struggled with his stutter, Dante decided he didn't care about the crowds in the showers and pulled off his sweat-soaked shirt. As he simultaneously peeled his pants and underwear from his skin, Nico found his voice again.

"They're f-f-fresh."

And then Dante winced as Nico's warm fingers touched the welts on his back. "From yesterday." he growled, and had to force himself to finish the movement and undress instead of actively avoiding the touch, then he gave Nico a scowl.

"Wh-what ha-have you d-d-done?", Nico brought out strained.

At first Dante didn't want to answer at all, then he shrugged. "Broke a glass."

"You're getting whipped for breaking a glass?" Florian asked, clearly too shrill.

"Yes, miss, very well, miss, more sauce, miss? May I suck the wine out of your panties, miss?" Bastian sneered, striding past them in all his burly nakedness, his damp towel slung over his arm in a silly butler imitation.

"Panty-sucking is the responsibility of others," Dante returned coolly, grabbing his own towel before walking past Bastian with his head held high. Vehemently, he pushed back the memory of his former mistress trying to have her fun with him without him knowing what she even wanted. He was still ashamed of his innocence.

The lukewarm water felt good on his heated skin for only a brief moment before it became too cold. Still, he held his face in the water and grimaced as the scrapes throbbed louder as a result. He had just taken a half step forward to reach for the soap dispenser installed on the wall when someone came up behind him. A pale blue towel was thrown over his own white one on the high shelf.

"That l-l-looks r-really na-na-nasty," Nico stuttered out quietly.

Dante glanced over his shoulder and suppressed a sigh, but not the scowl. It wasn't unusual to be in the shower two at once when under time pressure, but Nico was pestering him a bit as of late.

"How ma-many?"

"Ten." He squeezed shower gel into his hand.

"T-ten? F-for a f-f-fucking glass?" Outraged, Nico stared at him and he shrugged before turning away again, partly so the spray wouldn't get in his face, but mostly because Nico was a lot of what Dante would have liked to be. Maybe not the tallest, but well-proportioned and with a pleasant amount of body hair. Skin that always looked like after endless days under the sun. Matching brown eyes and wavy hair. A dazzling smile.

"Was an expensive glass, I guess." And Dante? Too short, too slender, too pale. Dirty green eyes, hair that immediately stuck out in all directions when it got too long.

"I've g-got s-some sa-salve in m-my bag, I c-c-could-"

"No thanks." Dante didn't usually interrupt him, and that he did now said enough, really.

Nico made a soft strange sound before leaning past Dante and taking some shower gel.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dante saw Nico blush, but he swallowed an apology. Likewise the question of who he had to thank for the ugly bruise on his thigh. They weren't friends, and Dante didn't go in for friendships.

But Nico seemed to see it differently, because when they were back at their bags drying off, he pulled a tube out of a side pocket. "R-really, you sh-sh-should put s-something on it." As if to emphasize the point, he smeared a little ointment on his own thigh.

"I can do that at home, too," Dante returned, trying hard not to sound too dismissive. Still, couldn't he just leave him alone? He felt Nico's gaze on him, raised his own, and found something in the dark eyes that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Worry, perhaps?

"You can't force anyone's happiness," Robert remarked from the side.

~

"You got a sh-sh-sh weapons clearance already?"

Dante sighed deeply before turning around. Astonishment was on Nico's face and it didn't help Dante's already bad mood. "For weeks now." he replied coolly. "I'll be sixteen before I can take my first exams."

"Ah. Smart m-m-move." Nico grinned and hunched his shoulders as a cold wind blew through the side yard of the range, bringing with it the voices of various instructors.

Shivering, Dante did the same and made a face. He hated weapons training even more than combat training, and now Nico was following him here, too. It was easier if he could quietly nurse his bad mood on his own.

"Your s-s-scrapes are l-l-looking b-better. What about y-y-your ba-back?"

"Healing." Dante shrugged and looked over at the other teenagers and young men waiting to finally be allowed into the hall. Sometimes he wondered which of them here really enjoyed shooting, maybe even had more fun than was good, and who was solely pulling the trigger because otherwise there were consequences at home.

Nico smiled wryly. "You we-weren't so t-t-tight-lipped in s-s-summer."

"I hate cold."

"It sh-sh-shows." The smile grew bigger, almost a grin, and Dante scowled back.

"Go ahead and make fun."

Vehemently, Nico shook his head, the half-grin slipping. "No! I j-j-just m-mean..." He took a step to the side and the next cold blast hit him in the back instead of Dante in the face.

Whatever he had meant, he swallowed it down as one of the women stepped out into the courtyard. She rattled off eight names, then pointed to the paintball hall. "Suit up and get ready to run." Her voice was icy cold and cutting, making the wind seem like a lukewarm whisper. "Kingston Nico and Sapphire, get ready to attack. Take the clip vests."

"Yes, miss." it chimed from various corners of the courtyard, and Dante followed it up with a sigh. He already hated the paintball hall either way, but being linked to Nico via a short chain to increase the difficulty level made his mood drop big time.

"This is g-g-going to b-be fun." And Nico had the nerve to grin as if it were a long-awaited reward.

Dante sighed again and trotted off. "I'm in charge."

Nico's grin only widened.