Camp Gym; Late Wednesday Morning.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

He'd been up so late last night, trying to sleep but unable to until he exhausted himself to the point of practically passing out from crying and trying to keep it quiet so no one else in the cabin noticed it, that Cal thought about just skipping the workout thing all together. But the fact that he had been up all night for crying seemed to only convince him that skipping the workout was the last thing he could do. He felt drained and ridiculous and tired, emasculated and embarrassed, and, as usual, thought that somehow working out could make up for it.

If anything, though, it always did make him feel at least a little better.


[[ open, of course, for all your gymly needs! ]]

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[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

It was Wednesday. John needed to keep his mind clear and so, deciding there was no better way to do that than a workout, he made his way to the gym.

One finger touched his head in a lazy sort of salute to Cal as he hopped on a treadmill with his water.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

From behind the hanging handles of one of the weight machines, Cal returned John's little notch of a greeting with a lift of his chin, and the obligatory grunted, "Hey."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Hey." As he set up the machine to force him to work hard, John returned the greeting with a smile because it was the polite thing to do. That was also the reasoning behind his introduction of smalltalk. "Glad to be back in the cabins?" John wasn't, but he knew most people liked them.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal's derisive grunt in response to that made it fairly clear that he figured the people who liked them had to be crazy. "Oh, yeah," he muttered sardonically, "I love the loss of my privacy and comfort."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John snorted and almost laughed, "I'm glad it's not just me feeling the loss. To go from a single to a quad just isn't right." He hated his own memory for pointing out that he was in a triple at the moment.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"Could be worse, though," Cal told mostly himself, and unconvincingly. He was still paranoid about what might have been overheard and suspected last night, although the reality was that no one cared, much less noticed. "At least it's a bed and a roof over your head."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"You've got a point there," John admitted. "Though I might be tempted to spend a night or two on the beach." Especially if his side of the cabin wasn't full by Thursday.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal considered this for a moment in between his reps before deciding, "I think I'd be way too worried about being eaten by a dingo or carried off by a kangaroo for that right now."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"I thought dingos just ate babies?" John snickered. "Besides, aren't the bugs supposed to be the worst part?"

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"Okay, then," Cal allowed, slightly smirking at the baby comment, though reluctantly. "I'd be worried about the bugs."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"I dunno," John had yet to have giant bugs attach themselves to his body, so while he wasn't fond of bugs, he didn't quite hate them yet. "At least I feel like I could probably smush them since they're smaller than me."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal's head tilted behind the bars of the machine.

"But, if you were sleeping," he reasoned, "you wouldn't be awake to smush them before they got to you."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Maybe it's a survival of the fittest thing," John said, increasing the incline of the machine. "If I fail to wake up when insects swarm on me, maybe that's just my destiny." Oh class, get out of his head.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"That's a pretty shitty destiny," Cal observed, quietly weighing it against his destiny of forever being a complete and utter emasculated fool.

He'd rather take the bugs.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John could imagine worse than the bugs. "Maybe it's the Earthside version of one of those layers of hell."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Earthside? Cal couldn't help but wondering, and his head tilted a little as his weights steadily kept rising and falling behind him as he pushed the bars forward and back.

"Nine layers of hell, according to Dante," he mused. "I don't remember anything about bugs in any of them, though."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Well, it's not like Dante really knew, right? Just a guy with some ideas and a lasting writing style," John said.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"He could have known," Cal reasoned. "Who knows? He could have gone to school at a place like this, and the historians just didn't mention it."

Really, Cal had no strong feelings either way on the matter, but, in his apathy, as far as John was concerned, he tended to be antithetical without even realizing it.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John shrugged, "Guess there's no way of knowing without going back in time. There could be some truth to his stories, but I'm happier with fiction being fictional. Real life's messy enough already."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

And even if he had been trying, Cal couldn't be antithetical about that. He gave a soft grunt of a sound in agreement, but wasn't about to elaborate any more on the agreement other than establishing that it was there.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

Focusing back on his task of running as hard as he could for as long as he could, John was glad Cal apparently saw his point, even if his point sucked.