Captain America: Professional Best Friend

Evaluations

One early morning, Emma wakes up to a loud banging on her door. She jumps up with her heart racing and flings open the door to see her training partner knocking. "What are you doing knocking on my door at this hour, Decker?" Emma asks groggily.

He looks completely exhausted and out of breath from running to get her, but manages a cocky smile as he says, "Well good morning sleeping beauty. I would love to stay awhile, but we're doing training with Captain Rogers and Sergeant Wilson today. Rumor has it they're also doing evaluations. We have ten minutes to get out to the field for laps."

Emma sighs and nods, "Thanks for telling me. I'll get dressed real quick. Wait for me?" He nods and waits outside in the hall while Emma gets dressed. While quickly getting her shirt and pants on, she asks herself, "What is it with Steve and getting up at the crack of dawn for exercise?"

Once in her training gear, Emma emerges from her room. Chris smiles and says, "Looking good Baker, you ready?"

Emma nods and brushes off the flirting. "Thanks for coming to get me," she tells him, "my room isn't close enough to the rest of yours to hear any announcements about training."

"You're lucky you have a partner like me then," Chris tells her with a wink while they jog to the fields outside the compound.

"Well thank you," Emma responds. She then thinks out loud, "You know, Sam and Steve are gonna get it later since they didn't come to get me, it's their training day after all and Sam's room is right down the hall from mine!"

Chris laughs as they approach the fields and says, "Just don't let them hear that, or else you'll get it during the evals today."

They make it onto the field just as Sam clicks his stopwatch and blows a whistle. He nods at Chris and says, "Thank you for making sure there was no man left behind, Decker."

"Yes sir," Chris nods quickly.

Soon after, everyone lines up on Steve's orders before taking off for their laps in groups. While running the grounds, Chris strikes up a conversation with Emma, saying, "I don't know too much about your personal life, Baker, so tell me what exactly is your role in...all of this? I know you're a reporter, so why are you doing training with the rest of us? We're here for military training."

Emma is concentrating on her breathing and maintaining her stride, so she doesn't answer right away, and she's lucky she doesn't because at that moment Sam and Steve had jogged up to the group. Steve looks over to Chris and tells him, "Decker, if you have enough breath and energy to have a conversation while running, you aren't working hard enough. Go catch up with the next group." Emma can't help but almost laugh because he got in trouble, but maintains her composure so she can keep an even stride.

"Yes sir," Chris tells him and pulls away from their group to catch up to the one ahead of them.

"Glad to see you made it this morning, Baker," Steve tells her as they maintain pace with the pod of recruits.

"Glad to be here," Emma replies, keeping her eyes forward.

Sam asks, "How much time did you have left by the time Decker got to your room to get you?"

Emma narrows her eyes and responds with, "Respectfully, Sergeant Wilson, didn't you two just send my partner up for conversing while training?"

"Touche," Sam replies.

"Good response," Steve laughs. "We'll get going. See you later in the training gym."

Emma nods as the two jog off to meet up with the next group. It always feels so weird having to be formal with them seeing as they were her best friends, but if they were in fact doing evaluations, it could be the day they promote her to training with the team. She doesn't want to get her hopes too high, but Emma makes a note to take extra care with all of her actions for the day just in case.