fandomhighdorms | The Gym, Sunday afternoon

"Ohhh. Hunh." Dinah went into a series of elbow strikes at the bag, then worked her way around the bag to face Cal, frowning. "Rumor Gal, is that the one about the snooty rich kids? And the girl who's so obsessive?"

"You'd be surprised," Cal said, "how many snooty rich kids are obsessive."

"Do you know a lot of them?" Dinah wrinkled her nose, and kicked the bag a few more times, thinking of Arthur. "Then again, if you've met one..."

"I used to go to a private school," Cal said, moving over to one of the weight machines, "in one of the ritzier areas of Detroit. Watching that shit sometimes just reminds me of home."

Dinah took a break, and considered the weight machines, or maybe the treadmill. Hmmm. Free weights. Easier to keep talking that way. She picked up two of the barbells and started doing curls with them, carefully.

"Better you than me," she said to Cal. "Do you miss it at all? Or is it all 'whew good riddance yay'?"

The better you than me comment got a wry grin out of Cal, as well as a yeah, thanks look before he admitted, "Sometimes I do, yeah. But if I had to choose, it'd be this place in a heartbeat."

Dinah did another bicep curl, and down, then another, up to her shoulder. "I like being here because it's cool but also," she took a breath, then another as she finished the curl, "It's nice not to be in Missouri. Two thousand people in my hometown. I knew every kid in school from the time I was in first grade, it seemed like. It's good to have a change."

Cal laughed a little, lightly, at that. "Yeah, change is good. We moved to Grosse Pointe about the time I started middle school, so I got to do the whole changing schools thing then, too. And Detroit's pretty big."

"Did your parents switch jobs, or just wanted a change?" Dinah asked, then said a little wistfully, "I miss New Gotham. I keep thinking I want to go to No Man's Land and shoot some pool."

"Dad's business was doing really well," Cal explained, smiling a bit through his sets. "So it got to be time for a mega-upgrade. And Fast Eddie's has pool; still probably not as cool as a place called No Man's Land, though."

"Really?" Dinah brightened a bit, coming up on her toes for her next arm curl, and smiling as she uncurled it, settling back down on her heels. "We should get some people and go there. And yeah, No Man's Land was awesome. The guy who owns it has a crush on my sister, so I got free sodas and games sometimes. Plus he was always selling weird collectibles out of there, Pez dispensers and comics and dishes and stuff."

"Okay, that does sound pretty awesome," Cal had to admit, "although I don't think I could manage getting the free stuff thanks to a crush on my older sibling. My brother's way too much of a nerd."

"How much older is he? College?" Dinah asked, finishing up her curls and shaking out her arms with a smile. "Helena's twenty-four. And Gibson doesn't have a chance, really, but he keeps hoping. Hoping. Counting the hours he's had a crush on her. Asking if she mentioned him. I always lie and said she said hi."

"Yeah," Cal nodded. "I think he's close to finishing; he's about six years older than me, but kind of a slacker these days."

And then he chuckled a little, "Typical girl move. Keep giving a guy reason to hold on. That's awful."

"I feel sorry for him. 'Hi' isn't a bad thing," Dinah protested, then looked a little guilty. "And okay, free games. But she's got a boyfriend now! Gibson so shouldn't even be asking." She shook her head, moving over to the treadmill, and messing with the settings. "Guys do that too. Make sure a girl stays interested."

Dinah really had him there; he looked petulant for a moment, rolling his eyes before morphing the expression to something more amused as he said, "Okay, fine." He knew he was among last people who could ever say that boys didn't do that. Although, really, if he wanted to get technical...

...he so not about to get technical there. "I guess you've got a point there."

"Thank you," Dinah said, grinning at him. She'd been ready to be really defensive about that; it was nice not to have to. "So are you close with your brother?" It hadn't really sounded like it, but hard to tell from what little Cal had said.

Dinah jumped on the treadmill as it started moving, and began to jog.

Cal shook his head a little. "Not really," he admitted. "Too much of an age gap."

And personality gap.

And presumed gender gap.

"We're a lot closer now than we were growing up, though, ever since Dad died."

And...a lot of other shit. Dinah was getting the abridged story.

"What about you and your sister?"

Dinah listened to that, watching Cal, and glanced down at the treadmill as she considered her answer. "We're really close. She's, actually she's my adopted sister. My guardian was her guardian, when she was my age. Same reason, our moms died."

Cal was definitely getting the abridged story here.

"And she bitches at me when I borrow her stuff, or when I give her a hard time about Jesse, but. She was the first person I met who was like me. And the first person who made me proud of it." She looked up, giving Cal a serious look. "Different. Meta. So. That helped." She was quiet a minute, then asked, "How long ago did your dad die?"

It was hard to think of anything out of Dinah's mouth as abridged.

Cal caught the serious look, and found himself returning it. That different. Meta thing again. He shook his head.

"You guys definitely sound like sisters. My brother and I fought a lot, too. When we moved into our new house, he got my head stuck in one of the doors, and he was always picking on me..."

He had avoided answering her question, but figured he could only talk about Chapter Eleven so much.

"It'll be about two years now."

"That's rough," Dinah said, instead of I'm sorry. That always made her feel so weird, people saying that to her about her mom. "Your mom still lives in Michigan?"

She grinned a little then, and said, "Brothers are meaner, hunh? I don't know, maybe it would've been like that if I'd grown up with Helena."

"Yeah," Cal said, "still in the old Middlesex house. And, yeah, brothers are totally meaner. Helena ever force your head to get caught in a door?"

He said it with a grin, though.

"Nooooo," Dinah grinned, then looked thoughtful. "She regularly dumps me on my butt in sparring, though. No mercy at all."

And that just had Cal wondering if he could take Chapter Eleven in a fight now.

Probably not, since he still punched like a girl.

"But that's good, right? They never have mercy."

"Oh, totally. And she's better than anybody else I've ever had to fight," Dinah said immediately. "I just wish she wasn't smug about it sometimes." She grinned suddenly, and jumped off the treadmill, turning it off as she did so. "The first time I TK'd anything, it was nun-chuks at her head. She thought it was awesome."

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