Cigarette smoke swirled in his mouth. As the bitter taste hit the tip of his tongue, the smell of blood was briefly masked. The air here is always like this. Metal, dust, blood, and a faint scent of humanity.

Disgustingly enough, he had become ridiculously accustomed to this foul combination.

He took a deep drag of the filter until the very last puff, then crushed the cigarette under the sole of his combat boot. Life felt so tedious that even this series of actions made him feel sick with boredom.

Shoving his hands into his uniform pockets, he walked into the medical unit with a notably slouching, arrogant gait. The smell of disinfectant peculiar to old military tents stung his nose, but her scent reached him much more strongly.

Ah, sweet.

The sound of chair legs scraping against the floor echoed briefly. He plopped down onto a rattling metal chair across from her desk.

As soon as his weight hit it, the sharp sound of the chair scraping the floor cut through the silence of the medical unit. Without paying a shred of attention to the grating noise, he leaned his arms on the desk, rested his chin on his hand, and looked straight at her.

Even before she looked up, he was picturing that gaze of hers. Cold, quiet, and annoyingly restrained. Cute, really.

"So, have you thought about it?"

There was no answer, and she continued to silently write something in a chart with her head down. Leaning forward from his seat, he watched the amount she was writing with a crooked posture, like a child craving attention.

But soon, as if bored by that too, he straightened up and leaned back against the hard chair, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. The same damn predictable white tent of the medical unit.

"The sun's gonna come up at this rate."

His words were a mix of a sigh and a complaint, but funnily enough, the exhaustion trailing at the end of his voice sounded like a joke. Somewhere in between sincerity and dissatisfaction. She never even gave him a glance.

He found that strangely amusing. A somewhat haughty face, but to a man who had seen faces like that dozens of times, it didn't have much effect.

"Yeah, playing hard to get is cute and all."

He picked up a cheap ballpoint pen from the desk and slowly twirled it with his fingertips. A silent urge, or perhaps a threat. Or maybe, a desperately persistent temptation. The pen spun once between his fingers and then fell back onto the desk with a thud.

The sound echoed strangely inside the medical unit, and he looked up again. His voice was slow, his tone laced with a smile. But there was no longer a joke in his eyes.

"Doctor. I'm busy, so speak up. What's it gonna be?"