the gauntlet discussion

A long trail that goes through the woods that is extremely difficult to run on -- if you wanted to test yourself blindfolded. I would make sure you do it with a partner though at first, just to make sure you do not stray off the path. Wouldn't want you to get eaten or something.

Damen stretched his arms behind his head and yawned loudly, feeling a satisfying pop travel down his spine. The sun was up and shining bright, but standing in the middle of the trail, with the tall trees acting as effective shading, it was nice and cool and dark. The trail itself was bumpy and curved in unexpected places, and even though Damen himself wasn't blindfolded, he had played hell picking his way carefully through with his bad leg. It was just fortunate that it was a good day today, otherwise he probably would have barely been able to keep up with Elias.
Speaking of.
Damen glanced over to where he was supposed to be observing the other man, tipping his head to the side and allowing his lips to stretch up into a lazy grin. "Hey, babe?" he called out, keeping the laughter out of his voice. "You might want to step a little to the right. There's a tree right in front of you. Careful, now. Wouldn't want to hurt yourself."
There wasn't actually a tree in front of Elias' path.
In fact, if Elias moved to the right, he would be tripping over a protruding stone that Damen could clearly see from where he was standing. He just wanted to give Elias a feel of how unexpectedly the unexpected could show up. Plus, it would just be funny as hell to watch.
He was such a thoughtful "husband".

It hadn’t even been a week at the academy and Elias felt like he had to sneak away just to spend time with his husband. Sure, it had been like that when he and the other two all lived together as well, but now it seemed to be more of a struggle- or maybe that was just because Damen was now easily accessible and just beds away instead of miles. Now here they were being counterproductive with their alone time and training for the race. Not to say that wasn’t important, but he’d much rather be doing other things with the man.
Things weren’t made much better with the blindfold around his eyes that was blocking out the little light there was. Elias already seemed to be in an automated zone as he lightly jogged on the path, which was brave of him considering he’d only led Remus around the trail once and really wasn’t familiar with it. That seemed to show his total and utter faith in the man who was guiding him. Just then he heard instructions to turn right to avoid a tree. Sure-footed he didn’t slow his pace and stepped in the direction given. As he did so his toes caught on something hard and he took a tumble. Scrapping his palms he let out a string of curse words. In the same moment he also held out his hand for support from the tree that he had been warned about. When his hand only grasped at an empty space he growled in annoyance. “Damen.” He said with a shake of his head before he hopped to his feet in a singular fluid motion. Instead of turning to face the direction in which the other’s voice had come from he continued forward at what he thought was the same pace as before, but he was noticeably slower than before. Probably due to his wariness of falling again as well as the hand he was holding to his chest that had taken most of the fall and was bleeding slightly. “Just remember that you’re running next.” He huffed out loud enough for the other to hear his subtle threat as he hoped he was closer to the end than anticipated so he could get his revenge.

According to plan, Elias stepped right and tripped over the rock, and Damen's laughter filled the space between the trees as the other man took a tumble. Damen made no effort to assist the other man, because when they were running the Gauntlet for real, he had to be able to get up on his own. He felt his lips curl into a smirk at Elias' threat. "I don't see why, it's not like I'm actually wanting to win." he pointed out with a shrug he knew the other man couldn't see. "Especially not with my leg. Besides, there's going to be a lot worse in the actual race than one rock."
Damen watched as Elias effortlessly hopped to his feet and continued jogging, his amusement quickly fading as he noticed the man holding his hand to his chest. Had he hurt himself? Guilt welled immediately in Damen's chest, because he had only meant to trip Elias up a little, not get him hurt.
He watched Elias job a few more feet before he let out a soft hum, beginning his own, slow jog to get ahead of his husband. On a good day, they were about evenly matched in speed, and today happened to be a good day. Damen stopped a few paces away, holding his hands behind his back as he watched Elias getting closer. "Keep moving forward, but shift to the left just a little." he directed, smiling a little as he stooped down just enough to be level with Elias' mouth. "Go easy. Trust me this time, no more tricks." If Elias really had hurt himself, Damen would genuinely feel horrible and would make sure to get it taken care of. If he wasn't hurt, chances were Damen would still stop being a little prankster, but he would probably go back to laughing at the image of Elias sprawling across the forest floor.