Players:
Summary: While Robyn practices his powers and Dallas works out, they discuss getting out more.
Date: January 4, 2010
Log Title Weight Room Chatter
Rating: PG
Xavier Mansion - Weight Room
All the weight machines are powered by hydraulics, you set the weight you want and your bench-pressing that many pounds, or even tons in some super strong students' cases. Punching bags, stair machines, bicycles, treadmills, weights, and anything found in your standard gym can be found here.
It's not to far from lunch time and Robyn's had the last half hour off from classes so he's decided to practice with his powers for a bit. Glad the gym is empty, he's set up a gym mat so he won't get to hurt. Right now lying on the mat is Robyn's body, looking like he's sleeping or something. His mind is else where at the moment, traveling around the basement of Xavier's in Astral Form, trying to see how far he can go and long he can maintain himself in this form.
Dallas wanders in during the break between morning classes and lunch, hoping to sneak in a quick workout between cleaning up after lunch (yay, punishment detail) and afternoon classes. After a quick stop off in the locker room, he's wearing his comfortable workout clothes and has an iPod loaded with a lecture from Dr. McCoy ready to listen. He yawns as he enters and then stops, seeing Robyn apparently sacked out on the floor. Dallas's expression is momentary torn between a wistful look at the chin up bar and his new, sort of tentative and too early to be a jerk to friend. After a moment he sighs and starts to head back out again. Maybe handball or something.
Robyn is out for quite some time, almost ten minutes before his eyes just snap open and he starts to breath deeply. He sits up and moves. "Oh..Dallas…sorry, I didn't realize anyone else was in here." He says as he moves his hands to straighten out his hair a bit. "I wonder if I can try that again so soon." He says half to himself as he starts to go over what he did in his mind.
Dallas stops as Robyn apparently wakes up and asks, "What, nap? I'd suggest the library. Nobody has any reason to go in there." And the sad thing is that he means it. Since Robyn is awake, Dallas stays, starting to stretch a little before his workout. After a few weeks of using the gym and pool as his primary sources of stress relief, he has a constant low-level muscle ache going on but on the other hand, is in even better shape than he was for the start of football season back home.
Robyn shakes his head. "No, not a nap. If I was gonna nap I'd go to my room, it's not like my roommate is ever there. No, I was practivng with my powers and I didn't know how far I could go. I was able to go a little beyond the walls." Robyn says with a smile as he stands up and stretches. "I was able to find my way back a lot eaiser this time too!"
Dallas blinks at that and says, "Seriously?" He pauses a moment as he reaches up to get a good grip on the bar and then lifts his legs at the knee so his whole weight hangs by the muscles of his arms and shoulders and upper back. He's still looking at Robyn and his expression is curious. "Ok, I've got to ask. You can, um, leave your body, right? And be all ghostly, right? So what does it look like underground when there are no caves or rooms?" He starts the pull ups, slow and steady.
"Kinda." Robyn begins still sitting there on the mat. "I don't get all ghostly, I go to a different plane, the Astral Plane. It's like this one but it's kind of all mental, I don't really know. If you can't see things on that plane, you can't see me. I haven't been underground yet, where there are no caves or rooms but I imagine it looks like dirt and rock." He hasn't gotten the confidence yet to let his feet leave the 'ground' when in that form.
Dallas blinks at that and asks in a mock-serious tone, "You don't think /this/ plane is mental enough?" Another pause and then, as though he's obviously been wondering since they first met and discussed powers. "Ok, yea. I get that. But I'm wondering. How do you /see/ that it's dirt and rock? I mean, if you ever do."
Robyn can't help but laugh. "Yeah, it's pretty crazy here. I'll agree with that one." He thinks about Dallas's question for a bit and doesn't really know how to answer it. "I don't know, I mean it's like when I'm on that plane, everything looks as it does now just..foggy. I don't know how I process it since I don't have eyes. I just don't want to go down that far and get stuck or something, not be able to find my way back."
Dallas grins as Robyn laughs and his breathing goes deep and steady as he continues the set. He considers that and finally says, "I'll stick with hitting things. It's simpler." He pauses a moment again and says, "So what did you think about the new guy?"
Robyn's face goes serious as the new guy is mentioned. "He seems like a prick. I don't know what happened before I got there but faking injury, is never something funny. Especially with the people we have here where it can happen so easily. And Mikhail, I found some stuff out about him last night." He says. Robyn usually doesn't like to tell people about other people's lives but he wants to address one thing.
Dallas sighs and stops, just hanging there for a moment. "Dude. I /keep/ rubbing people the wrong way. I'm starting to get worried. This new guy, all I did was say hello and he got on my case. But I guess it the playing dead thing was a fair payback for Mik throwing him in the pool." He grins faintly. "That boy has a temper."
"Who, Mikhail or Lucas?" Robyn asks pushing some of his hair out of his face. "You're fine the way you are Dallas. You've never rubbed me the wrong way but then, I'm pretty easy going. Lucas was the first person I really wanted to punch in the face, well besides the assholes back at my old school. I guess he kind of reminded me of them." He shrugs and bites his lip. "About Mikhail though, he's got a crazy fear of fire, I'm afraid cause we have Annalisa on our squad, her power is fire."
Dallas goes back to the pull ups. He says, "Mik. Lucas is just a jerk." He frowns and says, "Wow. That's going to be a problem. Maybe we can do something to get him used to it in small doses? Maybe like a fake camping trip on the grounds or something? Hard to fear something that produces s'mores." He pauses for a moment working through the ethics of helping the other team versus helping people he likes and finally just lets it go. Even for him, competition isn't /quite/ everything. "Whatever you come up with, I'll help if I can. He's a cool guy and I don't want to see him freaked out like that."
"I've never been camping so that sounds like it would be fun." Robyn says with a smile. "I really like Mikhail, I've never met anyone that makes me feel a need to watch out for them. I'm used to people like you, Jordan, Owen, you're all pretty dependable, not a skinny kid like me. Mikhail…he's just been through so much where I've had it easy. "I was going to talk to Mr. Weyrin, our instructer, and Mr. Summers about it too. I'll see what I can think of."
Dallas grins at Robyn. "You're not skinny, you've just got a runner's build." Which is a very polite way of saying skinny really. He pauses and adds, "But seriously, if you want to add some muscle mass, it's not that hard. If not, that's cool too. Every team needs the brain guy. And I /was/ dependable, until I got here. I haven't met Jordan yet. Owen rocks." He finishes his set and hangs there a second before putting his feet down, sweat darkening his t-shirt in patches. He stretches again, headed towards the sit-up/crunch station, tilting the bench until it is deeply inverted, locking it and then laying down, looking up at Robyn as he locks his feet into the braces and puts his hands behind his head. "And Mr. Weyrin? Him I don't know."
Robyn holds up his wrist and pulls down his hoodie showing his tattoo that reads 'thin as a dime'. "I've always been a skinny kid." He chuckles as he mother always told him he was 'thin as a dime'. "What do you mean until you got here? I think if I needed to ask for help from someone, you'd be towards the top of the list." He watches Dallas thinking that what he's doing would get him tired in no time. "Mr. Weyrin, he's the invisible man. He's really cool."
Dallas starts his sit ups, speaking whenever he relaxes back to the rest position and trying not to grunt the rest of the time. "Cool tattoos. I kind of wanted a Patriots logo on my shoulder but my dad said no." He gets in another couple of reps before he continues, "I'm so not 'me' here. I'm not this angry. And invisible teachers? Great. There goes my plan to pass half my classes." His tone is wry and joking on that one.
"Patriots…as in the football team?" Robyn does know who they are as he does live in the North East. "My parents let me get them for my sixteenth birthday. Oh and Rob wears clothes so you can see him, he just's exactly like the inivisible man." He watches Dallas curiously for a bit before lying back down on the mat, looking up at the ceiling. "So what's got you so not 'you' here? Just the whole weirdness of the school and how it feels like you're at a school for mutants?"
Dallas winces and actually stops to give Robyn an 'are you /kidding/?!' expression a the question. "Um, yea. The team." He goes back to the crunches and then rests, still inverted, panting slightly, before starting the next one. "And cool. If I bump into any invisible, naked teachers, I'll know who to bill for the therapy." He frowns faintly and says, "It's complicated. And um, actually, I was handling being a mutant okay, all things considered."
"Sorry, I don't know a lot about sports. I know the Yankees won the World Series this year cause New York was crazy about it and the Giants won a few years ago but my parents aren't into that stuff. My mom's an artist for children's books and my Dad's a musican, I wasn't raised on sports." Robyn says knowing that the kind of electic upbringing led him to being the 'weird kid' a lot of the time. "It took me a while to adjust here too Dallas. I still don't know if I'm fully adjusted but it's gotten better."
Dallas grins at Robin, his face red from being half-way inverted on the bench and exertion. He says, "That's cool. Artistic is good. Somebody has to make the movies and songs and stuff worth getting." He continues the set and says, "I'll work through it. No big deal."
"I'll be the one working on the movies." Robyn says with a chuckle as he has a great love for anything animated and all the old monster movies and such. "Songs, I don't know about that but I do play the cello, which really isn't that cool at all." He laughs again as he pushes himself back up to a sitting position. "Well if you ever need someone to just hang out with and relax or something, let me know."
Dallas holds the last crunch long enough to undo the velcro straps holding his ankles in place and catches himself on his hands as he starts to slide down the bench headfirst. He kicks off the board and that inverted position becomes a handstand that he holds briefly, wavering as he lowers himself down in a vertical push up. Yes, he's showing off. Not trusting his ability to do another right this second, Dallas laughs flops onto his back, feet and shoulders hitting the floor to take the impact before his spine and rump do. It sounds loud, being a staple of pro wrestling, but it results in no damage or distress at all. He looks towards Robyn and says, "That would be cool. I need to do that. Relax. And a couple of people have offered. But, you know…. school here is a little more, um, advanced. And I've been working out. And on detention. But if you guys want to get together for something, I'd be good for it."
Robyn nods and smiles at Dallas's showing off and shakes his head. "I sometimes like to try to do movie nights here, get some weird old movies and see if anyone wants to watch them. Sometimes I find interest. I'd love to do a night with Werewolf in London. Also just getting out into the city is fun, and if you haven't really been to New York yet, you should. There's plenty of sports stores for you to go nuts over."
Dallas rolls up to his feet and goes to sit on a weight bench near Robyn. "Seriously? You know, I bet the ones here have /everything/. We have a Sports Authority back home but you know, it's kind of cheap." He pictures endless rows of athletic goods and his eyes get that way away look that is most often associated with prophets having visions of the afterlife. "Wow." And then he shakes his head and clears his throat. "And um, yea. Movies would be good too. I like movies. And old movies are good too. Classic stuff like Back to the Future and Mask and stuff."
"I've passed a few in Times Square, they are pretty huge." Robyn says but he's never really been in one. "88 miles per hour in a Delorian with a Flux Capacitor to go back in time." Robyn says chuckling as he likes a lot of the other older movies rather than the new ones, unless Tim Burton is involved or something along that vain. "One of my favourite old ones is Arsenic and Old Lace, it's about these two crazy old ladies who kill people with Arsenic and it's so fanny."
Dallas looks blank at the name of the movie. "Hm. I guess I haven't seen that one. Must be in black and white or something." Because really, who watches /those?!/ He nods and says, "Well, cool. We have to go sometime. I still have some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket." He grins and says, "Maybe we can find something athletic that looks interesting to you." Because like any good fanatic, he wants to convert his friends.
Robyn nods. "Yeah, it is. Some of the best movies are in black and white." Robyn is the kind of guy who watches /those/. "I don't really have any Christmas money left but I just haven't been in the city for a while, well to Manhattan. I went to Brooklyn a few days ago to visit my parents for Christmas. They still don't know about the frog and I'm keeping it that way."
Dallas gives Robyn a look like he just said that being hit with bricks is fun and says, "Um, I suppose. Hey, it's cool that you like what you like though." At the mention of Robyn keeping his parents in the dark, Dallas's expression goes pensive and a bit sad. He nods and says, "Yea. Sometimes people don't have to know stuff that would only confuse and bother them."
"My mother….she doesn't like superheroes or villians or really anything with superpowers. It unnerves her. She didn't talk to me for a few days after we found out but things are fine and we get along great. I just don't want her to worry. She's already afraid enough that the worst is gonna happen with me being a mutant." Robyn's already been through a few rocky moments with his powers and caused his Mom to worry, he cares too much about her to let her worry more.
Dallas listens to Robyn, his expression sympathetic and thoughtful. After a long moment he asks, "Does she know about, um, other parts of your life?" He doesn't exactly say which parts but there aren't that many things that somebody would be that delicate about.
"Other parts?" Robyn asks trying to figure it out before breaking into a smile and nodding. "Yeah, I told her, and my Dad. They weren't that bothered by that. They even met Jordan cause I had him come over for a weekend. It's just the whole power thing my Mom is unnerved by. Growing up in New York, we saw a number of superhero fights. With my parents being the way they are they didn't care too much about other stuff. It actually made sense to them they said."
Dallas nods and says, "They sound cool." His voice is very even and careful on that and his expression has gone somewhat detached. After a moment he clears his throat, plasters on a smile and says, "Ok! A trip into the city! And movie nights. So when and when?"
"They are, I don't think I could have been adopted by cooler people." Robyn says with a smile as he leans back. "How about movie night any night this week is good and city this Saturday. I don't have any plans that I know of. What movies do you want to watch, do a marathon of something?"
Dallas nods. "That works for me." He pauses and then his assumed smile becomes an entirely amused grin. "I'm thinking that you probably should pick the movies. Because my choices will all involve football, something exploding or footballs exploding." He shrugs, "I never really got into movies." A second later, he adds, "Not that I'm not willing. Just, you know, always something else."
"Well we can do something were I pick one and you pick one. We can watch a football movie and then a weird movie that I like. I'll try not to pick one I've seen a hundred times like Edward Scissorhands." Robyn loves movies, mainly because he wants to go into that field and go into speical effects with sculpting. "Too bad I don't know of any monster movies with footballs."
Dallas grins, "Most of the times the jocks get eaten first in horror movies. Probably because most writers are nerds. And I'm serious. Whatever you want to watch is cool. I, need to branch out a little. I didn't notice until I came here and met so many people who don't like what I do but I may be a little, um, focused." He shrugs, not exactly apologetic but very much feeling like the odd man out.
"No, I know what you mean, but when I say Monster Movies, I mean a little older like Dracula, WolfMan, stuff like that." Robyn does know what Dallas means by the jocks getting eaten first. "But I doubt you'd let yourself get eaten first. You'd probably shadowpunch it in the face or something." He says with a chuckles. "I think I'm a bit focused too Dallas, we all are. We have what we like."
Dallas nods again. "Yea, that we do." He laughs and says, "Well, Magneto is going to be a little more scary than Jason Voorhees." He tilts his head and says, "And I can watch that kind of stuff. I haven't seen it before but they've been ripped off so many times that they have to be at least a little good."
Robyn chuckles and nods. "I don't watch as many horror movies, well recent onees. No imagination, all blood and guts. The black and white ones were the best." He finally pushes himself up off the mat and streches. "And I'm getting hungry so I'm gonna go find some food, but I'll think of a good movie or two for a movie night and see if anyone else wants to join." Except maybe that Lucas jerk. "I'll see ya later Dallas."
