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Entry tags:

#9

Passengers: Travis and Misty
Location: the Gym
Date: Mar 13th
Summary: Temp-temp gym day
Warnings: none yet but it's Travis, there will be curse words

Travis shows up to the gym's door early. Needlessly early. Part of it feels like not having anything else exciting to do, and another part of it feels like he's accidentally given himself some sort of Pavlovian training. Iht's like how e used to have an automatic cat feeder for Jeane, and she'd gotten so used to the routine that six o'clock would come around and she'd be flinging herself across the room waiting for it, rolling around in front of it. Desperate for the food drop. He'd had the thing for three fucking weeks! It took three fucking years to wean her off it, get her to stop waiting for a specific time on the clock! How does a creature with no concept of time learn that shit!

Now he's the cat. At the tail end of his month with William, he's sitting at the gym door like an animal, waiting for that sweet, sweet dopamine hit from lifting a bunch of heavy shit, and pounding it out on the treadmill.

Travis cranes his neck to peer down the hall. She's not there. Of course she's not. He's here obscenely early. He sighs at himself, letting his head fall back against the wall.

With William pretty much done, now there's gonna be the new chick. He's curious to see what she'll wear. The airy shawls and big 'ol boots he'd glimpsed didn't look fit for anything but drifting around Coachella. He can teach her, he figures. Teaching other people gym shit isn't hard, but it does feel like being on the bunny hills after winning an Olympic medal. Okay, maybe not an Olympic medal. Travis is not catch-and-jerking close to 500 lbs. He probably never will, given that shit is a young man's game. But even if he's ancient at 34, he's put what, a decade into the gym? That's no small amount of time. You can do a lot of things in a decade. What experience does she have? Nothing? What if she isn't into it at all? What if she says nah, fuck it, let's go to the library instead? She looks smart. Maybe she's one of those sexy academic types.

When he finally sees her coming, he gets his ass up off the floor. He rolls his shoulders and settles quite comfortably in a posture he knows is cool. He decides to resist the urge to introduce himself too much: she probably knows. Even if he hadn't made a spectacle of himself with the commissary buy, William crosses his 'i's and dots his 't's. Hell, he does it so much he's earned himself a mission.

He settles on:

"You ever lifted before?"

It comes out a little over-eager anyway. Oh well.

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"Good call."

The corner of his mouth twists; it shows the barest flash of teeth. Fair enough. You never know when some asshole with a grudge will come at you, come at your loved ones, willing to die to take your life.

"I used to play baseball," he says, stopping at the mat. "There was a little bit of strength and muscle endurance, but I couldn't cut it on the field. Not very good at team sports. I've always been a big fan of pro wrestling, so I learned some of that, too, but pro wrestlers are usually taller, heavier, and I can't bulk that much."

He beckons for her to join him where he is, chatting as he goes:

"If you're gonna do something you might as well be the best at it, right? So I just decided I'd make my body the best it could be, and figure out what to do with it later."

Setting her drink on the floor at a distance she hopes will be out of the way, she stops at his side. Pro wrestling raises her eyebrows, but there's no obvious turn in her expression beyond the surprise. She's seen a lot of creative weapon use in passing, a variety of martial arts, but never wrestlers.

"Have you figured out what to do with it?" She asks, already invested in the answer, easily sold on people striving toward self-defined goals. "Or still in the build-up stage?"

He sizes her up. And, being Travis Touchdown, it's a little theatric –– he walks a long, slow circle around her. Thunder Ryuu did that to him, once upon a time, and Travis liked it a whole lot more than Lovikov's half-drunk half-glance appraisal, or Master Jacobs' disconnect. It was honest. It made him feel seen.

"Found a lot of things to do with it," he replies. "The other wardens don't like it when I say this shit, but I was the top hitman in the US for a while. Now that that's-–" (Finger bunnies) "––not allowed, I'm back at square one."

Been there for a while, actually, but he's good at swallowing that.

Turning her head, she follows his movement as best she can while rooting herself to the ground, squaring her shoulders and clasping her hands behind her back. She likely won't clock as a competitor or threat, but she's entitled to her pride and a decent presentation.

"That's a hell of a jump from wrestling," she observes, eyebrows rising higher. "How does that happen?"

She's got potential. Not that Travis has ever trained with a girl other than Shinobu, but some girls, they get precious about muscle. Travis turns his back on her and goes to get an empty barbell from the rack. 44 lbs, men's standard.

"How'd I get to the top, or get back at the bottom?"

Two radically different stories.

She observes, special attention paid to the amount of weight he's then carrying.

"Whichever came first, I guess, hear the story in the right order. So, the ascent."

Chronological. He likes her. Most people just want to skip to the climax.

"I met this hot chick in a bar," he says. "She told me if I could kill the top ten assassins in the United Assassins Association, she'd sleep with me. I said sure. I want to be number one."

Unflattering but true, or at least part of the truth. Travis holds the bar out to her, two-handed, and he doesn't let go until he's sure she has it.

"You got this? If it's too heavy, let me know. Anyway, I was broke, too. It paid."

It's a silly beginning, but she accepts it. It's too imperfect a personal portrayal to be a lie, at least a poor one, and she can't imagine he'd be spinning a more careful narrative this early.

It's heavy, but having clocked the listed weight she knows what she's getting into and has braced accordingly. She lowers it, careful and controlled, until her arms are fully lowered toward the ground. More slowly, she starts drawing it back up. With a nod, he's freed to continue.

Imagining a world where there's such a thing as an association of assassins, she presumes well known, is worrying.

"How long does something like that take?" She asks.

His gaze drops to her hands, to her elbows, and with the ginger care of someone who knows he's going to be beheaded if he strays even an inch outside of some invisible line, he adjusts her grip, the position of her elbows.

God, he's gotta think about dates.

"Took about a year," he says. "Train, fight, recover, over and over. Pretty grueling, but I was in the best shape of my life by the end of it. People who have been at the top of their game for that long, they make you work just to keep your life, let alone the win."

In return he gets a smile, another nod of understanding as the next pump slows, committing the orientation of her limbs to memory, feeling for any subtle differences that will clue her in to improper form in the future.

A year is both longer and shorter than she'd have expected. Her eyes widen, but she doesn't interrupt. He's alive and not missing any limbs, so she feels comfortable guessing the broad strokes of those fights.

"What happened after that?" She continues. "Once you hit the top."

"I retired," he says, his eyes still on the barbell, following it down and then up again. "Spent a couple years figuring out what to do next, then someone took out a hit on my fighting coach, and then a hit out on my best friend."

He shifts on the spot, ostensibly settling into reaching to brace the barbell if it gets to be too much, but he always feels his blood running a little cold on this subject. His gaze stays low.

"They called it revenge, I called it war."

He doesn't linger on it for more than a half second before flicking his eyes up to hers and asking, sincerely:

"You good with that weight?"

Most newbies can manage four or five, if they blow their energy on it. His hands hover under the barbell to take it if he needs to.

"I'm probably on my last one, but I don't think I'll lose an arm." There's a huff of a laugh, good-humored self deprecation. It's likely an insignificant amount to him, after all. As the weight is lowered she leaves it hanging, waiting for some cue she can either hand it off or place it on the ground.

The natural follow-up would be to ask about the fight that presumably ensued, his self-declared war. Instead: "Did you find what you were going to do next, before?"

He takes it from her and walks off to put it away. Beckons for her to follow.

“No. Once you do something like that, that’s your life. Your full-time job is fending off assholes who want your title.”

He’d been that asshole, but at least he’d done it right. Worked his way up.

And follow she does, uselessly rubbing her forearms all the while. There's a frown forming on her face, but it's sympathetic more than displeased.

"Sorry you're dealing with that." Or were, dead as he must be. "Would you do it again, if you had a do-over?" Knowing that's where it would land him, a goal reached and nothing to follow afterward but struggle without reward.

“Yeah.”

It’s shit but he’s even now. He’s not sure if he’s even sorry about it, and that makes his answer feel fast and sure.

“Sit down on the bench,” he tells her, while he picks up a couple small weights. Baby ones. She can do thirty reps. “I think regret’s a waste of time. It happened. Might as well just own it.”

Lowering herself to the bench she accepts the weights, implicit instruction clear enough. She paces herself, knowing just enough about proper workouts to understand that their light weight doesn't mean she'll be well served by blowing her energy in the first few minutes.

His answer is interesting. It's too early to call it any particularly revealing gaze at anything, but it seems honest, and that's frequently half the battle. There's an angle in there she can find admirable, she thinks. He doesn't seem to struggle with committing.

"Were you happy with it?" She asks next, distinct but not wholly dissimilar from the question preceding it. There's an impulse to clarify that she smothers. His interpretation is probably as important as his answer.

"Like this," he says, picking up a set of his own weights and showing her the movement –– and overhead press, handles in the base of his palms, directly above his forearms. Straight up, chin tucked back. "Thirty times. Do twenty if it starts to suck."

For her question:

"I know myself better now," he replies. For better or for worse. Happiness feels harder to pin down. There's something there, but he's not sure who he's talking to: "You ever killed anyone before?"

Watching carefully, she moves to replicate it. Again, feeling for the adjustment relative to what she'd have done left to herself. One, two performed before he continues.

His answer smacks of William, and she can't help but smile. Very likely facets to all of this she can find admirable, then.

"Yeah," she answers, easy but not jovial. "You learn from that, you think?"

He lets out a huff that could almost be a laugh.

"I learned I like the rush," he replies. It's not quite an admission; he's been too transparent about his love of a fight for that, and sincerity is never something he has to think about. "It was the best thing about the climb to the top. In the early days, every kill left me so fucking euphoric I couldn't sleep for days after. Just sitting up through the night, in the gym or in the shower, replaying it in my head."

Yeah. That was happy. His gaze is steady, confident.

Edited 2022-03-14 20:24 (UTC)

Easy to follow, if admittedly tricky to make palatable. It's becoming unsurprising that most early word on him had been in warning.

She stares through him, chewing that reply over before refocusing. "Is it competition, or just murder that's doing that for you?"

"I want the win," he replies, firm. Sure. "If they can live with the loss, I'll let 'em go. They can get stronger, and if they want to give it another go, I'll kill them then."

There's a little flex to the muscle of his jaw, the slightest cock of his head.

"It's always mutual. Otherwise I'd just be some psychotic maniac."

"If you can win without killing them, why kill them?" She asks, an eyebrow raised. "Not knocking it outright, I'm just not familiar with the—"

One, two lifts as she searches for a better word and finally settles on, "—sport. Nothing like it where I'm from, at least that I've heard about."

We're assassins feels like a stupid answer, but the question throws him for a little loop, kiddie-coaster style. There are people out there who only understand killing as it's spoken about on the evening news, and there are people who have lived it. This chick has killed and she doesn't get it?

"It's not a sport." A thread of intensity comes through, taut like wire. "It's real. It's proof you lived. If you just shake hands and walk away, you never had a stake."

Edited 2022-03-14 21:32 (UTC)

"Just trying to figure out what's the most apt word," she says, her tone leaning apologetic. "I get the stakes of it being that real, that clear cut, it's just throwing me that there's stuff like rankings and that you can decide to let people go lick their wounds if you want to."

Death as proof of living, to her, is something altogether more animal. No pleasure to be found, no sentiment— a matter of eating or not eating, continuing to live past the moment of attack or not. She doesn't want to prematurely decide there's an element of conquest here if there isn't; so she's going slow.

"It isn't part of the....expected life cycle of this kind of thing then, that people are going to be at you until you're dead?"

Or maybe it's solely the crossfire that's soured it.

"There's the way I do it and then there's the business," he replies.

The line between the two feels like a wild scribble in his head, a tangled mess with no start or finish he can make sense of, even years later. He sets down the weights, thoroughly distracted.

"So it was all run by this association. They managed everything. The assassins, their hits, the money."

Cleaning up the messes.

"If you're at the top of their ranks, you make them big bucks, and you get the best fights. You're a prize dog for big-ticket fights. They don't care if some newcomer ambushes you on the toilet on some random Tuesday. New guy's their new dog."

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