Military Love » Harry Styles

chapter forty five

As hard as I scrubbed the floor, the dirt didn’t disappear. Honestly. I didn’t even want to know what it was. Cleaning the latrine had been a horrible job for the past hour, but cleaning the floor had been worse.

I don’t know what happened –or what died, on this floor, but it was just plain gross. And whilst cleaning the dirty floor- I couldn’t help but let my mind wonder off to a few days ago.

I still wonder why we fell apart. It just happened like that. He was trying to control me, I wanted to control myself, and that was that. He was rude, and this time he was the only one to blame for the breakup.

“Well well well, never thought I’d see Violet as my slave.” I heard someone chuckle. I turned around to see Brad standing there with a large smirk on his face.

“Brad, you are an absolute jerk.” I snickered as I continued working and tried to ignore him.

“Now Violet, don’t misunderstand me.” He continued to grin. “If only you asked, I would assist you with this,” he stopped for a second “filthy job.”

“Please?” I asked hopeful and pouted to increase the change that he would help me.

“You know I can’t resist that face.” He kneeled down next to me and grabbed the remainder cloth –which was still clean. 

“Are you going to explain how you ended up in this mess?” He stopped rubbing the floor for a second and looked at me. 

“I stood up for this girl and pretended that I did something wrong instead of her.”

“And I bet Harry wasn’t all too happy about that?” Bradley asked.

“Well,” I paused. “look where I am now.”

I looked down at the piece of floor on which he had been pressuring with the wet cloth – it was completely clean and even blinking.

“How do you get it so clean?” I exclaimed to change the subject. “I quit!” I yelled afterwards, throwing the cloth onto the floor so that the object crashing into the linoleum floor created a terrible squeaking sound.

“Just admit that I’m ten times stronger than you.” Brad laughed and continued scrubbing the floor.

“It’s better to face these things with a sense of poise and rationality. I’m a girl, you’re a boy and a Military Brad.” I sneered at him, pissed off about the fact that I had to keep cleaning the boys’ latrines until they were all clean.

“Now love,” he spoke. “don’t tell me I’ve never done anything for you after this.” He winked and stepped out of the boys’ bathroom. 

I was confused, what did he mean? He just walked out of the room. I just sighed and continued to rub the floors. But only two minutes later Brad returned. And he wasn’t alone.

Along with him, he had brought several boys –some of which I knew existed, and others were completely new to me. All of them were muscular and had rolled up their sleeves so that their muscular arms were clearly visible. You didn’t hear me complaining.

I still remembered a few of the faces from when Brad got my underwear up on the flag pole. Looking back at it, it was quite amusing.

“Now boys, let’s get to work.” Brad yelled out and all of them cheered. My mouth hung open.

“How?” I spoke out softly. “Thank you so much Brad.” I hugged him tightly in his chest. “You’re the best friend ever.”

“I’m doing this for my own good too.” He pulled me closer and hugged me tighter. “You see, me and the boys had something planned out for tonight and wanted to ask you to come along –you know, for the boys to apologize to the lingerie incident.” He smiled difficultly and I chuckled.

“And it would be useless if we held a ‘Sorry Vee we hung your underwear on a flag pole in the military camp’ party without you, now wouldn’t it?” He laughed and I stomped my elbow into his stomach playfully and broke free from our hug.

“You’re a jerk.” I stated as I sat down and continued scrubbing.

---

After thirty minutes more of scrubbing the floors we were finally done. It was about 10 in the evening by then and everybody left to change into other clothes. I, however had nothing to change in and still wore my pyjamas.

“You’re not going to wear that.” He pointed down at my clothes and pulled me into the boys’ cabin. I received a few confused glances but mostly smirks from the people who only remember me from the underwear incident.

“Here.” Brad threw something at me, but since I was too busy staring around it slammed against my face and bumped me onto the floor.

“Idiot.” Brad mumbled. I shot him a glance and looked at what he had thrown. Some sweat pants and a hoodie. Great.

---

A rush was sent through my body and I could feel my heart beating in my throat. The adrenaline raged through my torso as an unstoppable thunderstorm.

Brad rubbed my back reassuringly, as if he promised me that all was going to be okay. One by one we jumped over the fence, and a minute later only Brad and I were left.

“I’ll help you.” He smiled and put his hands on my hips just like he did when he was helping me box and pushed me into the air like it was nothing. The boys on the other side of the fence helped me down. 

Only a few seconds later Brad appeared on the floor and we all ran off to one of the cars. In total we were with eight so when we ran to a car who only allowed 7 to sit in it, I sighed – I knew what this meant.

A few minutes later we were all packed and ready to go and only then I started to wonder if this was a good idea.

“Can you please stop moving around.” Brad mumbled whilst looking outside, not paying attention to the girl who was sitting on his lap; me.

“Sorry” I muttered looking around in the car to the other boys who were either busy with riding the car, looking outside or jamming out to the radio. It was an unknown song to me, but then again I had missed out on the media for four weeks.

In ten minutes we arrived in a dark forest, but then again everything seemed black because it was night. One boy started heading into the forest and the rest followed. I was going to ask them where we were heading, because I am not really one of the dark forest and night things, but then decided to was better if I just kept my mouth shut.

Without making much sound we managed to walk into the woods for two minutes and reached an open space.

“What exactly are we doing?” I whispered to a boy I didn’t know. I would have asked Brad but he was busy talking to someone else.

“We’re doing something fun.” He smirked as he stopped, throwing a few bags onto the ground, as did the rest. I only noticed now, that they carried bags.

“C’mere” Brad said when he suddenly was behind me, obviously done talking to someone else who tagged along on this strange trip.

“Brad,” I breathed out. “what is going on?” He didn’t say a word, he just guided me towards something that looked like a trunk of a tree. I didn’t ask any more questions but just let him guide me.

“Don’t ask questions love” Brad whispered.

“Is this you asking me to marry you?” I whispered an joked.

“No.” He chuckled. “This is me being a good friend.”

i'm so in love with brad it's not even funny anymore