fandomhighdorms | The gym [early evening]

Cal nodded. "I've kind of noticed," he said, but he also sounded like he totally understood why. Not specifically, of course; he never pressed for details, but it was just one of those things that you could tell.

"I have a habit of being where things explode," Ben said, going back to rhythmically beating on the bag. "It's better to be in shape than be not quite fast enough, you know?"

Or, in Cal's experience, in the position of a lot of sheer, dumb luck. At the same time, however, he was owed some luck. He snorted a little, agreeing with Ben, although, really, he'd never, ever been 'fast enough,' had always just been lucky.

"I like having all my limbs, which is something that's a bit of a rarity with the guys in my family," Ben overshared.

"No kidding?" Cal asked, grinning a bit, and met overshare with overshare. "You're lucky, then. Males in mine typically wind up dead."

He was still so, so glad not to be a part of Ben and Jaina's family, which was saying a lot for a Stephanides.

Ben nodded. "We have some of that, too," he said, smacking the bag good and hard.

"Yeah," Cal said, finally taking to his weights, "I've noticed there's a bit of that around here in general."

"Think it's because the island attracts the hard luck cases?" Ben asked.

Cal thought about this carefully through a rep or two.

"It would make sense," he mused. "I mean, it's a boarding school. Boarding school are typically either for kids with too much money or too many problems. Sometimes both."

Ben thought about it. "Guess I'm kinda both," he said. "Not that Dad's rich, but he's totally famous."

"Totally famous, huh?" Cal said, with a slight smirk and a little bit of ribbing in his voice.

Ben blushed. "Like, already in the history texts famous," he mumbled.

"...Wow," Cal said. "And here all my dad ever did was make a fortune on hot dogs."

"Because they inflate to be so big," Ben said, smirking again. "I'd rather have that, really, than have everyone recognize my last name."

"If it makes you feel any better," Cal offered, "I have no idea who your father is? That's at least someone."

Ben gave him a huge smile. "It really does help," he admitted. "He casts an awfully big shadow."

With the wattage of the smile that attempt (which Cal hadn't assumed would be anything more than a poor one at best), Cal couldn't help grinning back. "Good," he said. "My ignorance, for once, has served me well."

"I'm certainly not going to enlighten you about him," Ben said. "You can just continue to think that I'm as astral as a Skywalker can possibly be." He smiled. "Jaina is going to be better, just because she got better genes. Her dad is soooooo cool."

And, well, Cal had to admit that Jaina was pretty cool, and he definitely had more interest in Solo than Skywalker. Not that he was about to admit that to Jaina's cousin or...whatever it was that Ben was.

"What makes him so much cooler? I mean, other than the fact that he's not your dad?"

No one thought their own dad was that cool.

"He used to be a smuggler and he's flies this amazing heap of a ship that shouldn't even be able to break atmosphere any more because it's so old, but it can AND it's really fast and it shot down a lot of bad guys! And best of all he's does all of it without being a Jedi!"

Ben might be a bit of a fanboy.

There was a bit of a pause before Cal thought of anything to say in response to that.

"My grandfather died smuggling booze across the Detroit River from Canada?" he offered. It was...kind of close. He couldn't imagine Jimmy Zizmo having much of a car while he did it. But, if forced, he'd admit, that, okay, yeah, Jaina's dad was freaking awesome.

"That's totally astral, too," Ben declared, nodding. "Was there a booze shortage here?"

It was only then that Cal realized that astral was actually slang, and he grinned a little. "Prohibition era," he explained. "At one point, this country's government actually thought, 'hey, you know what would be cool? Let's make alcohol illegal.' Booze-running from Canada was huge around the Great Lakes, Detroit, Chicago."

"Well, that was a stupid idea," Ben said with all the vehemence of a 14 year old.

"Ohhh, yeah," Cal agreed. "Needless to say, it didn't last too long."

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