"See you, Danny," Zane says once we reach the Korriska Building.

Hanging out with Zane and Danny was pretty nice, and so was getting to spend time with Isaac again. Especially the part where it was just Isaac and me, because then we got to pick out clothes I actually liked without the hassle of dealing with Zane and Danny adding in their comments or forcing me to try on other clothes while they were trying on outfits, themselves.

Danny and Zane didn't buy anything, with Zane saying he'd need to go to a few more stores for a new coat, but I did buy the jacket that I was looking at when Isaac arrived. I'm wearing it over my hoodie now, and there's a noticeable different in warmth with it. By that, I mean that I'm actually warm in it.

"See you," Danny waves to us. "Thanks for letting me hang out, today was fun."

"Which part?" I ask. "Getting kicked out of the clothing store and being forced to wait for Isaac and me to finish picking out my clothes? Or when you nearly got kicked out of the restaurant due to the argument over who was a cooler vigilante?"

"Okay, so next Thursday," Zane says. "We're going to an arcade. That's final. I'm kicking your asses in the games there, so you're both coming. Got it? So mark next Thursday for the hangout."

"You're on!" Danny says. "And while there, I'll definitely convince you that-"

"We should probably go put this stuff away," I say. "It's getting close to time to train at the center and I don't want to be late. Lucas will probably think you did something to me."

A look of horror crosses Zane's face, and he gives Danny a fist bump before saying goodbye again. Danny leaves and Zane and I head inside, taking the elevator up to his apartment.

"Are you leaving your stuff here while we're training?" Zane asks.

I know it's fine by him, so I'm not going to bother saying that in my response.

"Yeah," I answer. "I'll stop by here and grab it before heading home. It'll add a little bit more of a walk, but I'll be fine."

"I'll still walk you all the way home," he tells me. "I'm more capable in a fight than you, so I'll be fine even with the hour."

"Okay," I say. "Let's head up now."

Zane and I make our way inside and into the nearby elevator, taking it up to the floor with his apartment in it. When we reach the floor below it, the elevator stops and Zach steps on.

"Hey, Zach!" Zane greets his brother. "We're back! But only shortly, we're going to head over once we drop his stuff off."

"Went shopping?" Zach asks as the elevator stops on Zane's floor, and he steps off with us.

"He ran into a friend of his," Zane nods. "Rich guy who's trying to make up for something. He bought Shadow Boy here a bunch of clothes."

"Want me to take care of those for you?" Zach asks. "I can throw them in the wash here, and it'll be done before your training's over. That way, you don't have to handle washing them the first time yourself, since you've been getting busier and I know most places, you'd have to stay with the clothes."

"Are you sure?" I ask.

"Yeah," he answers. "I'm not doing anything else this evening. I was just going upstairs to see if Dad wanted to play some chess."

"Okay," I say. "Thanks."

Zach takes the clothes, then enters the elevator again. Zane and I enter his apartment and collect our workout bags, and I can tell he wants to know what Isaac did that he's trying to apologize for. While I'd hesitated on telling him after Isaac left, I know that if the Patron wanted Isaac's powers to be secret, he'd prevent Zane from understanding what I'm about to say.

"His power awakened in our school," I tell him. "It kind of destroyed the place and left some of us trapped for a couple of days. I still have nightmares over what happened, and still can't stand very tight spaces. Unlike some of the others, I actually somehow remained conscious through the entire thing. I also had a couple of dead bodies in front of me."

"Oh," he looks sad for a moment, then steps forward and wraps me in a hug. "Well, I'm glad you survived, you're an awesome guy, Kieran."

"Thanks," I return the hug for a moment, it's nice. "We should head to the rec center, you and Danny arguing over vigilantes as we walked around took way longer than it should."

"Yeah," he chuckles, stepping back. "Let's go."

We leave his apartment and make our way down to the rec center, Zane accompanying me to the blocks room. Instead of changing in a changing room like he normally does, he undresses in here as I do, but when I slip on shorts, he doesn't pull anything on. It's showing off his absurd erection.

"Zane?" I ask as I start my stretches.

"Well," he says. "The first time you saw me in my stone form, you were kind out of it due to having been frozen by the rain. I doubt you really took it in much. Then earlier, I was clothed, so you really only saw my face and neck. I've seen you in the use of your power, so I'm showing you mine properly."

Zane transforms to his stone form, turning back to the grey stone I remember him being last night. This time, I do actually take in even more than I did last night. It really is a perfect replica of him, made out of stone. There's no color to it, just the greyness of the stone, but every detail of his body is perfectly visible. The slit of his dick, his foreskin, his abs, his balls, his nails. Even his hair, every last strand of it visible yet one. His eyes, his eyelashes, his eyebrows. Even his freckles are there, small spots of darker grey against the rest of his face.

That really is incredible. His cheeks seem to be a darker shade of grey than the rest of him, just a little bit. The little detail there is strange, but only accents the fact that he's still a person, as it only makes his freckles darker. Wait…

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Are you blushing?" I ask.

"No," his cheeks turn even darker.

"The great Zane," I grin. "Shameless and fearless, without hesitation when it comes to hooking up with any random guy. Shy over showing his elemental form to someone like me?"

His cheeks turn even darker, to an almost black-grey.

"Can I feel?" I ask.

"Which part of me?" He puts his hands on his hips as he grins, and I can tell he's trying to cover up the fact that I'm right.

"Well," I say. "I was thinking your arm, but I do wonder if it would hurt more to punch your face while in this form than the other."

"You can feel my arm," he holds out his right arm.

I reach over and feel it. The feel is strange, but not weird. It's smooth, like polished stone, yet warm and soft, like flesh. I press down on it and find that it does still have the give of skin.

"Try punching me," Zane says. "And you'll find it like punching stone. Same with cutting me. Dad demonstrated that to me when I first awakened this power back when I was little."

"I can't imagine it would be safe if you got shot, though," I tell him.

"Probably not," he shrugs. "I can still be cut, it just takes more effort to cut this form than my human one. Though in theory, I can probably become tough enough to resist bullets, too."

"Possibly," Lucas says. "Grandpa said that since your family has consistently kept and trained the form over many generations, even as little as you have, the power is still strong in your bloodline. The perks of being an earth elemental is the ability to toughen your stone form to a near-impervious state. That might take you a few years, though."

"Hello, Lucas," I greet him.

"Yo," Zane flashes him a peace sign.

Lucas is dressed in his uniform, as always when here, and he has a slight look of suspicion towards Zane. This is starting to get a little bit ridiculous, his worry over my safety around Zane. He's even here early today, did he end his class early so that he could check on me once he knew I was here?

"You're early," I tell him. "I normally have another ten minutes to warm up. Did you leave your class early?"

"Grandpa taught my lesson today," he tells me. "I was needed to help a new client."

"A new client?" I ask. "Consultation?"

"Yeah," he answers. "Managed to save up enough money to afford a month here on the silver plan and wanted help learning how to control his power. Grandpa was going to help him, but the guy apparently has trauma that makes him extremely twitchy around the elderly, so he asked me to help instead."

I can guess at what happened judging by the way Lucas says 'trauma'. For the guy's sake, I hope he finds this place safe and comfortable, with its facilities able to meet his training needs. This place is good and the staff is friendly, even overprotective at times. I'm sure if he's actually dedicated to learning to use whatever his power is, he'll find this place doing its best to help him in the month he has with them.

"Don't," I interrupt Zane before he can ask what the new client's power is.

"Eh, I'll probably find out eventually," Zane switches back to human form, then pulls on a pair of shorts, zips up his bag, and slings it over a shoulder. "Since you two are here, I'll be heading to the room I do my training in. See you after it ends."

"See you," I say, and Zane leaves.

Lucas is giving me a worrying look.

"Is something wrong?" I ask.

"How did hanging out with him go?" Lucas asks. "I can't imagine he was able to keep his hands to himself. Zane is far too touchy and inappropriate."

"Stop being paranoid about him," I roll my eyes. "I told you this morning, everything would be fine. It was. We went shopping for a new jacket, ran into the childhood friend I'd mentioned the other day, he insisted on buying me some clothes so we spent some longer time at the store, then he left and we went to go eat lunch. After lunch, we just walked around. Most of it was actually Danny and Zane heatedly debating vigilantes.

"Zane isn't as bad of a guy as you like to think," I say. "You're just annoyed that he likes to tease you, Lucas. When he figures out a limit, he sticks to it. He knows I'm not available for certain things and won't try to make a move. That's part of why he wants to hold off on getting into a relationship – because he knows he'll try to have sex with me and will feel as if he pressured me into it if we do. He wants both to calm himself down on that front and give me time to get more comfortable with things. He teases you because he knows he can get away with it and your reactions amuse him."

That's part of what makes Zane interesting and appealing: he looks for his limits and while he pushes them, he'll keep to them if he knows they're a hard limit. With Lucas, he knows that Lucas gets aggravated, but if Lucas actually got mad at him, he'd learn and not do that again. If Lucas wanted Zane to stop, it would be really simple to get him to.

"If you want him to stop, he will," I tell him. "You just need to actually make it clear that you don't like him teasing you about sexual things. Or you can just tease him back. Seriously. Next time he comments about the difference in your sizes, say he's probably lied about being a top because there's no way someone would let that thing in their ass and he's just projecting his wistful fantasies."

"I really don't think he would-"

"Do you see him teasing me like that?"

"He wants in your pants."

I'm not the only one in this room Zane wants to sleep with, Lucas.

"Let's just get to my lesson," I sigh.

"Alright," he says. "Do your warmup, then we'll get started."

I continue my warmup, stretching and performing some light exercises, then I take off my shorts and climb over the barrier, before beginning the five-foot shadow steps. Today, I'm able to manage eleven full ones. After the eleventh, I have almost no magic left, about as much as I did when I did that massive shadow-walk to find out my limits.

With the shadow steps completed, I perform two laps back and forth across the room. I manage it in thirteen minutes this time, averaging about six and a half minutes per lap. I can probably actually go faster than that, but I'm worried that my current reflexes aren't enough to keep up with the speed – that I can run and jump faster than I can react. Maybe another couple of weeks of this, and I'll be able to really put in the speed I know I can manage while on the blocks floor.

When I return to Lucas after the second lap, he nods approvingly.

"You're getting better," he says. "How do you feel about the bet now?"

Even if it doesn't seem like I've improved that much, I know what he's asking. He knows I can tell I'm going to start improving a little bit faster, now that my body is getting stronger and I'm eating better. There's no real noticeable change to my build yet, but the fact remains that I'm feeling stronger and more energetic.

"I might actually make one lap back and forth in under four minutes by the time I'm contacted," I tell him. "That means I should probably figure out what my instruction for you will be."

"The look on your face says you already know," he frowns a little.

"You sound worried," I smile. "Why? Do you think it would be something like 'passionately kiss Zane on the lips for a full minute with a little bit of tongue action', Lucas?"

I wouldn't actually do that, that would be cruel. But I can tell by Lucas's expression that he thinks that my order would be something like that, and he probably can't figure out a way to call it 'unreasonable'. Actually, he'd probably say it's a fair punishment for him because it's something he'd hate, which is part of why I won't make the order be that.

"Dammit," he mutters. "And the bastard would happily do it, too."

"Probably," I say. "What now? More running?"

"No," he seems happy to have switched topics away from him possibly kissing Zane in the future. "Walk a lap around the edge of the arena. Walk, not run. Go over every single obstacle that you can, only going around when you can't. I had the room set up so that there's a lot of blocks in the way that you'll need to climb, jump, whatever."

The fact that he can request specific setups for this room hasn't crossed my mind at all. I honestly thought that the setup was always based on something random, or the whims of whoever set it up.

Has Lucas made specific requests for my training before? Or is this the first time?

"Okay," I say. "How many laps?"

"Until I say stop," he answers.

"Okay," I stretch for a moment, then begin the first lap.