The Gym; Monday Morning.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal had considered just skipping out on the workout today; he wasn't feeling terribly motivated at first, and staying up late last night to do some writing hadn't exactly helped, either. But then he considered what he would do otherwise. Sleep in? Read? Watch paint dry?

He might as well just waste his time working out. So there he was, stretching, doing a quick jog on the treadmill, and then tackling his usual weights.


[[ open for all your gymly neeeed ]]

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[endsthegame]

And so was Ender, his towel slung over his shoulders as usual, greeting Cal with a quiet but firm "Morning," as he mentally plotted out his exercise regimen for the day.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"Morning, Ender," Cal greeted him back with a nod from underneath the arms of the machine he was using. "How goes it?"

[endsthegame]

"It goes," Ender replied, neutrally, tossing his towel at the floor. 'It goes' summarised most of his days well. "Are you trying to injure yourself again?" He let it touch the floor like a long-running joke.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"Again?" Cal asked with a bit of a laugh. "Come on, like I even need to try..."

Actually, though, the weights were safe. He couldn't trip over his own feet just because of a pretty girl when sitting behind a giant metal contraption, pulleys and wheels and mechanics buffering up his muscles as he ignited the structure into moving the stack of weights in the column behind him. He almost had to wonder who made up the designs for this stuff. Dumbbells, they're not complicated enough. Not enough of a torture chamber feel, let's update the system...

[endsthegame]

Stretching his arm behind his neck and grabbing his elbow with his other hand, Ender shot him a look that could almost have been described as demonstrative. "You don't need to," he said, "but you do anyway."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

There was the faint suggestion of a shrug. "Men tend to be creatures of habit," Cal offered and, as he breathed out with the push of the apparatus forward, cables pulling up the stack of calculated weights behind him, cleared his throat a bit. "Especially bad ones."

[endsthegame]

"If we have the chance." His other arm came next; then he rolled his shoulders, shooting the floor a quick look, searching for the best place for a push-up. "It brings structure."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"A sense of control," Cal continued idly musing through his sets, "in a mixed-up, crazy chaotic world."

[endsthegame]

Control. He guessed that would be what this was about: a sense of control over his own life. It was ridiculous even to think about it-- Ender had never had it, and even here, he found himself checking his limbs for the strings periodically, like they'd be visible on his skin.

Now, though, he leaned down onto the floor, pressing his palms firmly to the surface. "You can settle for a 'sense'," he said, and hoped it didn't come out too bitter. He certainly felt it.

Actually, he did hope it came out like that. Let the world see my anger.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"It's all you can settle for," Cal said, after a moment, thinking about Ender's response; he wondered where he was going with this, and almost wondered how he even got started on it. Bullshit philosophy, but his pause, Ender's pause, had him starting to think he wasn't just spouting Socratic again. "Too many factors outside of our control to have control be anything but an illusion, but it's a nice one..."

[endsthegame]

"Until you can see the strings," Ender replied, then fell silent, picking up his push-ups in an even, rhythmic way, straining his arms and bracing his feet so they wouldn't slide too much on the floor.

Funny, that. He was still angry.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal noticed a pooling of Ender's concentration in the precise, careful, particular moves of his push-ups, and was silent, as well, for his own pulling of strings on pulleys, to weights. Pull the strings, force the muscles, but they won't always concentrate. How long had he been working on this and he still felt too slight and feminine?

"Strings can be cut," he finally said. "It's when you've got something more like gravity doing all the controlling that you're screwed."

[endsthegame]

Ender didn't answer until he was well into his movements-- in fact, he didn't answer until the movements slowed, his mind whirling back to carefully shoved-aside memories. He leaned back, settling on his knees, and looked up at Cal with an unreadable expression. "No," he said, "It's the puppet masters that should worry you."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal finished his set, his back hitting the black support of the seat settled into the machine, letting out a breath at the expended effort stopping, arms dropping to his side. He looked up, into the pulley that pulled the weights up and down with the rhythm of his arm; the next breath was slightly grunting, to spurn him into action, leaning forward, careful to avoid the bars, as he reached for his bottle of water. He glanced at Ender, taking in that odd expression, before he took a drink, not sure what to make of it. Not sure how to respond to it. Only puppet master he had to deal with was genetics.

"Jesus fuck," he muttered, shaking his head before adding, move conversationally, "so much for light morning chit-chat."

[endsthegame]

"I was never that good at it," Ender said, picking up his towel and securing it around his shoulders again. "I'll save it for the pudding next time." It had been angry, he had been angry, but Cal's statement had been a stinging reminder of where he was, who he was talking to, and he offered Cal nothing more than a friendly nod before he started his path to the treadmill.

It was a little hard to keep up conversation when you were training, anyway.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"We can blame it on the adrenaline," Cal offered, unable to shake the feeling of anger that had been radiating off Ender as Cal sinuously slipped from the seat of the machine and moved over to the bench, a foot up on it for the angle of his upper leg to prove a platform for his elbow as he took a dumbbell for some curls.

[endsthegame]

Ender shot him a look, but then his focus was pulled to the panel of the treadmill. "It wasn't that bad," he said, tapped in his settings, and got to moving.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"No," Cal agreed, "it wasn't. But that's because it stopped."

[endsthegame]

"Maybe," he said, and that was going to be the last thing. He found his thoughts more interesting: the movement of the treadmill under his feet, the brooding anger he still felt, and the lone, unpurgable thought that this, too, was going to lead to a game somewhere along the line.

He wondered if this was it.