Yeah, Don't Do That Please

Geez, Alex hadn't been messing around when he said his whole life revolved around training. That was more hours than the average full-time job!

This was only the physical aspect of it too. He still learned other things like how to arm car bombs, use weapons, and break into houses. That was no way for anyone to live. There had to be time for relaxation and fun.

Claire's understanding of the guy's rigid personality increased exponentially after watching him just now. He really was more machine than human; even professional athletes didn't spend that much time a day in training!

He truly was a terrifying force of nature. And there were fifteen more like him.

The thought filled her with fear and broke her heart at the same time. So many kids had lost their childhoods to such intensity because someone got the bright idea of training an army of human weapons.

"…do you like training less?" she found herself asking. She really couldn't think of anything else to say to that.

Alex nodded. "Yes. I prefer having fun with Claire. Training all the time got very boring. I like trying new things instead."

So he really had originally spared her out of boredom. Insane. At least she didn't have to worry as much about keeping him entertained as she had before he pledged his loyalty to her. He seemed to be pretty easily entertained anyway.

This new information explained why he was able to focus on a single thing like a phone game for so long without getting bored too. He was used to a lot of repetition so that was why he had a longer attention span than anyone else she had ever met.

"Remind me to find you a good gym later," Claire said. "You deserve better equipment than my couch."

"That would be nice. I would like to be able to spar again too but I doubt I could find anybody with my skill level to go up against. I might end up killing my opponent by accident," Alex replied matter-of-factly.

She bit back a sigh. He was so cavalier about life and death. They would have to work on that if he wanted to fit in.

Old habits die hard. Reducing a ten-hour training regimen down to two was already major progress. Of course he would want to keep at least some of what he was used to. Maybe there was some sort of professional MMA fighter around here or something who might be able to challenge him at least slightly.

"Yeah, don't do that please," Claire said. "We can figure something out later. For now we should focus on keeping me alive and finding whoever put a hit out on me."

Alex nodded. "We should start looking through the boxes in the spare room tomorrow."

That did seem like the best course of action. The only other places there might be anything useful were the attic or the garage. But she was fairly certain the only things in the garage were childhood memorabilia of hers and holiday decorations.

She had looked through all of the holiday boxes multiple times since her mother's death since she put them up out of habit every year. It was highly unlikely anything secretive would have ended up in there; she had never noticed anything unusual.

There might be something in her childhood memorabilia though. It wasn't like she ever looked through that stuff so it would be a decent hiding place.

"We should. But for now let's watch some TV. You know, after we've showered. You might not sweat much but I do and I feel gross," Claire said. "I call the bathroom first."

She took her shower and changed into a thick fleecy matching pajama set decorated with cartoon pandas and waited for Alex to come downstairs before turning the TV on. In the meantime she heated up some leftover pizza.

He came down in a plain white long sleeve shirt and blue plaid pajama pants. His other pair of pajama pants was identical aside from being gray. Usually he wore basketball shorts or sweatpants instead.

The day they went shopping he hadn't bought any jeans because he didn't like the way they restricted his movements. He bought black jogger pants, gray and blue sweats, and a pair of black shorts. All of his shirts and his new hoodie were solid neutral colors as well.

The day Claire first met Alex he had been wearing a black hoodie and a different pair of black jogger pants that had to be thrown out because of blood stains. He was probably used to wearing neutrally colored athletic wear all the time.

She wondered if he would ever branch out or if his dress style would remain this dull and colorless forever. Personally she liked things to be as bright as possible.

"I heated you up some pizza," she informed him. "Your plate is on the side table."

"Thanks," he said and grabbed it as he sat down. "Are we going to continue that show from last time?"

They were four episodes into their third anime (if you counted the one he secretly watched with her while debating whether to kill her or not). Claire kept picking shorter ones that were around twenty-five episodes because she hoped that this would be all over before they had time to watch one of the longer ones.

It was a rather pointless wish. At this rate, Alex really would be here at Halloween and they would end up watching scary movies together like she had offered.

She had been more than a little surprised by the fact that he seemed to like the shoujo anime she kept showing him. She liked shounen too, don't get her wrong, but they hadn't gotten to that yet.

Most of the shoujo anime she watched wasn't based on school life. That wasn't her speed. She tended to lean toward the fantasy romance ones instead, though there were a few that still fell under the school life category at the same time.

She supposed Alex found them interesting because he had never been exposed to anything like them before. He didn't know what was considered girly; he was glad to have TV access at all.