Not Gonna Die (A Skybrine Fanfic)

|Chapter 9| 'What's happening to me?'

          Spring was finally pushed out of the way and summer came in all of its splendour and heat. Over this time, Adam almost forgot his strange reaction to snow as the general busy life of running an army base occupied almost all of his time. The days quickly became hotter and almost all of the army recruits groaned with the thought of having to train in leather armour under the sweltering sun. On one particularly hot day, the training sessions were cut short by about half an hour and the recruits quickly dispersed to take a refreshing cool shower, leaving Jerome and Adam to pack up all of the training weapons.

          "How can you wear that?" Jerome finally blurted to Adam, wiping the sweat off of his forehead.

          Adam shrugged a little, picking up a few more practise dummies and moving them over to their designated rack. While most people were wearing short sleeves or even singlets with shorts, Adam felt fine with his shirt sleeves coming down to his elbow and his shorts coming down to his knees. He wasn't sweating as much as most people: Some days he didn't sweat at all. It was hot though, he could feel it, he just... didn't react as much as he normally would. He liked it though; it made it easier to work.

          Something else that always came with summer was a desire to do something, to be active in the great outdoors. Of course, this was somewhat dampened by the excessive heat, but Adam always wanted to be outside and doing something ever since he had first come to the lower country. He struggled to sit still at his desk, his hands constantly tapping his pen, the desk, the chair. His constant energy started to irritate his friends, who would often crash in the common room at the end of a day while he was either outside or pacing the hallways.

          "Adam, just sit down and relax," Ian coaxed.

          Adam managed to sit for a grand total of six seconds before he was up again, walking the four corners of the room. Ty groaned and put his head in his hands, probably becoming dizzy from Adam's pacing.

          "Adam, anyone would think that you were hyped up on sugar," Jerome told him.

          "And you would know all about being hyped up on sugar, don't you Jerome?" Jason replied instantly, no doubt remembering the times late at night where Jerome would run up and down the corridors for hours after having too much sugar.

          Jerome went red and mumbled something and a few chuckles came, one of which was from Adam. Eventually, they managed to keep Adam sitting down for more than a minute and some decent conversation occurred, but night had quickly arrived and everyone went to bed. Adam found himself becoming annoyed at this constant energy but it wasn't until he was in the armoury sharpening his dagger that he started to worry. The whetstone made a lulling zing zing as it rasped over the steel blade of the dagger. His thoughts were dully mulling over information when a sharp pain across the palm of his hand demanded his attention. He glanced down and saw that somehow in his inattentiveness, he had made a thin cut in his hand which was bleeding profusely, a testament to the sharpness of the knife.

          With a sound of annoyance, he cleaned the traces of blood from the blade and sheathed it at his side, pressing the side of his thumb to the cut and leaving to find Quentin. The man had been a trained lifesaver before he had joined the Team but had quickly learnt to become a medic. Usually he hung out near the training grounds or in the infirmary. Today, it turned out to be the latter. He was tending to a patient so Adam waited outside the room. He could have gone to someone else but Quentin didn't ask questions and he didn't want to have to recount how he cut his hand open because he wasn't paying attention.

          "Hey Adam, what's up?" Quentin asked when he closed the door behind him.

          "Can you just bandage my hand for me real quick?"