I Am the Strongest Femboy, So Stop Protecting Me!-Chapter 44: Searching For a Kick That Does Not Exist.

POV: Silas Carter.

The thing about dungeon work, the part that nobody who hadn’t done it understood, was how much of it was waiting.

Waiting for the gate assessment. Waiting for the formation call. Waiting for Gareth to finish having opinions about the entry approach, which he always had, which were always extensive, and which were always—Silas would admit this privately and never out loud—usually correct.

He was currently on his thirtieth minute of waiting, leaning against the exterior wall of what had been a parking structure before the gate opened in its southeast corner and the association had cordoned off the surrounding block with the brisk efficiency of a city that had been doing this for a hundred years.

The gate was a mid-tier A-rank. Standard designation, standard hazard level, standard recommended party composition. Six was the recommended number, low for a standard party because they had an S rank and two High A ranks now.

They had seven, for some reason, because Gareth had added Silas exclusively to the regular rotation two weeks ago with the energy of a man making a decision he’d been thinking about for a while and had finally stopped overthinking.

Silas had not asked why.

He had a reasonable idea why.

The reason was currently standing four meters away in full gear, reading something on his phone with the focused composure of someone who had completely normalized the concept of waiting outside a dungeon gate in body armor, which was, Silas thought, either a healthy relationship with the job or a concerning one depending on how you looked at it.

The gear was new. New as in recently purchased most likely—also new as in Silas hadn’t seen this configuration before.

It was dark, fitted, the kind that moved with the person rather than constraining them, no visible guild insignia because Aris didn’t have guild insignia. The usual absence of anything that would suggest the person wearing it was going to do anything more strenuous than look good wearing it.

He was, objectively, looking good wearing it.

Enough so that Silas was already regretting that he’d have to look away from Aris soon.

Silas turned to look at the gate.

The gate was a swirl of mana approximately four meters across, dark at the edges, lighter toward the center, pulsing with the regular rhythm of a healthy mid-tier spawn. He had assessed it, noted the relevant details, determined it was unremarkable in every way that mattered. Good. Unremarkable was good. Unremarkable meant he could focus on the job without surprises.

He looked at Aris again.

Aris had put his phone away and was now doing the thing he did before dungeons—a small, almost invisible adjustment, a settling, the particular quality of a person putting something away and picking up something else. Not a visible change. Not a shift in posture or expression. Just a change in quality, the way a room changed quality when someone in it made a decision.

Silas had noticed this the first time they’d gone into a dungeon together.

And here it was again.

"Carter." Gareth appeared at his shoulder with the sudden solidity of a large man who moved more quietly than his size suggested.

"You’re in-charge of left flank on entry. Though you’ll be with me until we get a read on the interior layout."

"Got it."

Gareth looked at him for a moment with the expression he sometimes wore when he was deciding whether to say something. He’d been wearing it more often since the Aberrant dungeon situation, which had produced in Gareth a specific kind of re-calibration that he hadn’t finished working through and wasn’t discussing.

"Good," Gareth said, and moved off to finish the formation call.

Silas watched him go.

Then happily looked back at Aris, who was now standing at the gate’s edge with the patient readiness of someone who had done this so many times it had become ambient, and thought about the picture he’d been building for weeks.

It was very complete now.

He still didn’t know what to do with it.

Letting out a long breath, he walked up to the guy, giving him a quiet tap on the shoulder.

"Just how expensive was this thing?" He patted the shoulder-guard of the armour, feeling the rigidness of it.

Aris didn’t seem surprised at the sudden arrival, well he rarely pretended to be surprised anymore after the S rank assessment, which was not helping the image that people had on him.

Silas was already starting to worry about people deeming him a heretic for courting an angel.

"I don’t know." Aris said after a moment, quietly turning to face him.

Silas raised an eyebrow.

"Lyra got it for you?"

He nodded.

"Guessed so, it looks very cu- ow!"

Silas hopped on one leg, flailing the other.

He looked at his shin, then slowly back at Aris, who had turned back to face the gate with the composed expression of someone who had not just kicked him and had no information about any kicking.

"Did you just-"

"The gate assessment is almost done," Aris said, cutting him off.

"You kicked me."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"In the shin. You specifically aimed for the shin!"

"Gareth is going to call formation soon."

Silas stared at the side of his face. At the perfectly neutral profile, the silver hair, the absolute stillness of someone who had committed to a position and intended to maintain it indefinitely.

The corner of Aris’s mouth was doing the thing.

Just barely. Just at the edge. The shape of something that had decided, at the last possible moment, not to commit, but the evidence of the decision was still there if you knew where to look.

Which Silas did.

He was almost fluent in it by now.

He looked back at the gate.

Felt the grin arriving and made no particular effort to stop it.

"It looked very what, exactly," Aris said, after a moment, in the same tone he used for everything.

Which made it considerably worse.

"Nothing." Silas said, now on the receiving side of the attack.

"You were going to say something." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"I wasn’t going to say anything."

"You said very cu—"

"I have no memory of that."

A beat of silence.

"Silas."

"It’s a very functional piece of gear..." Silas said putting on his best pretense of nonchalance.

"Excellent craftsmanship. Very practical. Good mobility range. That’s all I was going to say."

Aris looked at him sidelong.

Silas looked at the gate.

"Comfortable," he added, after a moment. "It looks comfortable."

The corner of Aris’s mouth did the thing again, slightly more this time, slightly less controlled, and then Gareth’s voice came across the lot with the timing of a man who had no idea what he was interrupting.

Silas quietly cursed Gareth and his horrible timing.

"Formation up!"

Aris turned toward the gate.

Silas fell into step beside him, and if he was smiling at the middle distance in a way that had nothing to do with the dungeon ahead, that was his own business entirely.

He had decided that no matter how many concerned glances he got, he was not going to not enjoy this particular dungeon run.