fandomhighdorms | Gym; Monday Morning.

River hadn't been to the gym in a long time, but it didn't matter. She stepped out on the floor and threw herself into a sequence of kicks and punches, stopping just in front of the opposite wall.

While the gyms here certainly did a lot to help Cal improve his physical strength, it seemed to do absolutely nothing to improve his attention span. Of course, could he really be blamed for that when so many people here seemed to rather pride themselves in performing rather elaborate, impressive, and, more importantly, distracting routines? Without even stretching first. Could pull something...

Cal kept a good deal of his attention actually on his bench presses, but couldn't help sparing a little for watching the girl a bit in the corner of his eye.

She hadn't kept her mind shielded, so River noted the attention, and gave a small smile and a nod in Cal's direction, before embarking on another sequence across the room.

Well, the smile was...well, it was a smile, so it was nice, but a smile interspersed with moves like that was also a little unsettling, and Cal shook his head slightly, focusing back on his lifting as he thought about how the majority of the girls he had met here could probably kick his ass with their hands tied behind their back.

He wasn't quite sure how he felt about that yet, but mostly remained comfortable about it with the perhaps foolish assumption that he couldn't see himself ever doing anything to make them want to.

River stopped and gave him another smile. "Takes a certain kind of practise. Different kind of school. Do you dance?"

And then the talking always came, too. Well, not always. With a slight grunt, Cal pushed up the weight bar for his final count, stretching up a little more to settle it in the bars and carefully roll up. He tossed the sweat-drenched hair out of his eyes a little as he reached for his water bottle. "Not really," he admitted. "It looks a bit like you do, though; either that or you're just naturally that graceful."

Which wasn't fair, although it made sense. If attributes were to be distributed based on levels, she could stand, based on those moves, as the epitome of grace and he could stand at the complete lack thereof. He needed water for grace, and a complete lack of inhibitions (two small creatures, children, rolling around in a bathtub, water splashing onto tile with a euphoria they couldn't understand, perfect, perfect, until the albino's grandfather saw them, and instantly fell under the death call of a heart attack from shock; he never realized what was so shocking back then), and he never went near either one any more, for the most part.

He drank, heavily, from the bottle. Reached for his towel to dab away the sweat in his eyes.

"Similar. One aimed to cause pain, one aimed to cause pleasure." She giggled, seeming relaxed. There were things in his mind she had better not mention.

Cal couldn't help grinning a little wryly; he couldn't decide if the giggle was cute or absolutely disturbing. "I don't know," he commented lightly. "Some of that dance stuff looks pretty painful for the dancer."

River shrugged. "Perhaps their kind of pleasure." She stretched out her arms and began to spin around.

"To each their own, I suppose," Cal said, thinking idly on field hockey and goalies and how that was definitely not his kind of pleasure, the pain of being pelted with balls, but that's probably why he never made it very big in field hockey. His head tilted slightly at the spinning.

"Having fun?" he asked.

"Better than when standing still," River replied, but she let her arms fall to her side and stopped. "Are you?"

Cal took a moment to consider the ramifications of saying what he was thinking. This girl would probably be a lot quicker than Hugo, but Cal still liked to think he could suffer a beating still, although it'd be nice to avoid it.

He said it anyway.

"Well," he commented with a slight grin, "it is pretty entertaining to watch."

There was another giggle. "I'm glad you find me amusing," she said. "I'm River."

[Going home now, woo!]

A giggle was a successful, unharmed response. Good.

"Cal," he told her. "I like River; that's a cool name."

It sounded like the sort of name Chapter Eleven might have given his kids if he'd stuck around with that Meg girl. Or one of those randomly appearing, then disappearing girlfriends of the Deadheads in Golden Gate Park. He wanted to see her with a flower in her hair.

If he wanted to see her with a flower in her hair he'd have to give her one, but River didn't say that. Cal had too many secrets, so letting him know she knew the small ones meant he'd know she knew the big one.

"So, Cal, would you like to learn how to dance?"

"Not really," Cal said, shaking his head, and he meant it, too. "But I appreciate the offer."

River looked disappointed, but she wasn't going to push the subject. "Shouldn't keep you from your workout," she said quietly.

Cal gave the disappointed look an apologetic smile, but dancing just...too much risk of being too close to someone with dancing. Too much of a possibility in error, in slips of the body to give one's self away. He then shrugged, shifting a little before getting up off the bench and moving to another machine.

"Not like it takes that much concentration," he pointed out. "And I shouldn't exactly distract you from yours, either."

Fear was always the reason not to, but of course, Cal had different reasons to be afraid. Not that there were any reasons to, but fear wasn't always rational. "Not much concentration," she agreed, smiling a little. "A lot safer." She turned and began another series of kicks across the floor.

And practical, as he lifted the hand weights in a strong, focused curl, feeling the muscles flex and pull and harden just slightly, to add eventual definition to his new body, his new self. "So, where're you from, River?" he asked as he worked. He felt a bit conversational today; so shoot him.

"Osiris. Different solar system. The future." She had to raise her voice to let it carry across the room, then made another series of moves, returning closer to where Cal was.

"Ah," Cal said; his curls became idle and mechanic as he watched River a little more, gawking over the whole fascination over people who could do that without tripping of their own long, awkward legs like he would have. "One of those them. I'm getting a lot of the future, different galaxy thing."

She grinned. "Not surprising. Tell me about yourself."

Oh, yes. One of his favorite topics. He shrugged a little, passing the weight to his other arm. "Not much to say. Only from thirty-four years in the past, which isn't as impressive as five hundred years in the future. I work out too much, I smoke too much, and I'm playing a dead guy in the play they're doing in town. I'm so average it hurts."

Really. Average. Completely and totally normal. Really.

River couldn't help it; she snorted. "You like playing dead?"

"Okay, well, technically, I'm not dead until the second scene or something, but for the rest of the play, I am. Easiest damn role I ever played. Amber tells me I've got the dead thing down, too."

Her face suddenly turned serious. "As long as you don't die before your time." She paused. "I don't act. Creates too much noise."

Cal quirked an eyebrow at that. "I...don't plan on it," he said, but, instantly, his mind was taken back, his last play, his last role, before this current one. No. It was a few roles back...Before Cal was Cal, before Cal was with the Object, when Cal was Calliope, and Calliope was Tiresias, and she turned her unblind eyes into a cloud of red hair as Maxine Grossinger's aneurysm burst and she dropped dead right in the middle of the Annual Baker-Inglass Classics performance.

He shook his head. Damn it, that felt like ages ago. It had only been two years... "What do you mean? Too much noise?"

She couldn't tell him the truth, of course. "Too many voices. Have enough with my own." She spun around, making a few punches in the air. "A play lets them speak. Not like the sea, where all the waves move together in a giant murmur, opposing forces lost in the multitude."

That earned just a bit of gawking at River.

"Uhhh, right. That's cool."

River looked at him. "Not cool. Noisy." Perhaps it was the fact that she was leaving soon that made her a little impatient when people didn't understand. Not much time left.

Gym; Monday Morning.

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