Mac Pulls a Muscle

[morebetter]

Who: Mac and Aleifr, Mac and anyone else who wants to say "huh?"
What: Mac invents a new exercise move!
Where: The Training Area
When: in relation to events/plots if needed
Warnings/Notes: Your usual Macness - bigotry of all stripes, alcoholism, bizarre misreadings of religion, etc. More info here. Also, prose or brackets are up to you!

Mac’s been scarce at the gym, not because he doesn’t go, but because, like the public showers, it’s a place where the other Hires just don’t get it. Mac’s near bulletproof to criticism, on account of the fact that he knows who he is and he knows that person is the consummate badass who’s just working with subpar equipment and suffering the deleterious effects of a cafeteria that doesn’t appreciate the need to carbo-load.

But he can’t seem to get the others in the Hires to see things his way, and so he’s staggered his exercise schedule as much as possible so that he doesn’t have to run into them as much. If they’re not going to appreciate him, he’s not going to grace them with this exquisite specimen of manly capacity. Why bother vying for the approval of people who just don’t get it? Mac certainly doesn’t have time for that.

(Mac always has time for that. Just not here.)

So he’s here at a weird hour - he hasn’t been sleeping well at all since he got here, worse now that Peter isn’t there - doing that body-weight stuff to keep his pump going. He’s developed a new move called The Humper, which is a little like a dolphin pushup but with your back rounded for maximum compression on your pectorals and your glutes raised up in the namesake hump to get a good stretch in your calves. The corporate towel boy snickered at him when he tried to demonstrate, but again - these bozos just don’t get it.

It’d be nice to run into someone who does, though.

Comments

[aleifr]

Probably would be, but judging from the intensely skeptical once-over that Aleifr gives Mac when he walks into the gym and sees ... whatever the fuck it is he's doing, odds are that Mac is going to have to keep waiting.

Aleifr doesn't give him a second look. Just walks on past towards one of the various large weight machines, set down his towel the way he was taught, and starts loading on the large, 45 lb plates.

Maybe Mac'll be too preoccupied with grinding his cock on the floor to bother him.

Probably wishful thinking, though

[morebetter]

Mac, of course, wouldn't dream of letting someone just walk on by and miss the opportunity to interact with him. He is, of course, an extrovert, which is way cooler than being an introvert, whom he's sure are uniformly nerds, and fuck nerds.

He starts making the most agonized, hardcore grunts and groans of gym-rat exertion as his lungs can manage.

[aleifr]

Aleifr ignores it at first, but the grunting and rutting noises just keep going. The longer Aleifr ignores it, the louder Mac gets - like a child demanding attention.

By the time Aleifr's sat down on the bench to actually start lifting, he's run out of patience for it. He sighs in annoyance, drags his hand down his face, and finally looks at Mac.

"What?"

[morebetter]

"Oh, you know, just trying to demonstrate the method here." Mac pulls himself up to his feet. "I mean, I wouldn't want you to leave here thinking that you were getting the most out of your workout when you're-"

-he gestures at at Aleifr, cocking his head to the side and lifting an eyebrow as if Aleifr isn't the buffest dude he's seen in his life-

"-clearly in need."

[bothbarrels]

North has just arrived on Piper 90 and the fact that there’s a real gym to partake of is the best news he’s heard in a while. He couldn’t work out properly while on the run all those years. So he makes it a priority to get to the gym as soon as he can manage it. He’s missed doing regular bench presses and leg presses and just…anything that isn’t a bodyweight exercise.

So soon after, North walks in to the gym to see a demonstration of the worst push-up form he'd ever seen. He’s normally kind of a live-and-let-live sort of person in the gym, but this guy’s going to hurt himself, he thinks. So he walks over to the place where the man is doing his exercises and squats down to look him in the face.

“You needing some help working out how to do that?”

[morebetter]

"Help?"

Mac doesn't need help. Mac needs an audience. Mac, professional mooch and apartment-dweller who's never actually owned a credit card or bank account or, honestly, a bath towel that he isn't stealing from his roommate, doesn't need help. He needs, like Jesus did, a witness.

"Dude, I am inventing the most strenuous-" dramatic groan- "core-strengthening exercise there is. I need a patent."

[bothbarrels]

North's brows draw both up and together, and he lets his incredulity show.

"That's not—"

He shakes his head, trying not to laugh.

"You might be feeling it in your core, but your form is all wrong, and you're going to end up hurting yourself. That's a guarantee."

[morebetter]

"That's a lie, bro! That's just what Big Fitness tells you, because they want you to be fit-" Mac pulls himself into a child's pose- "but not like, fit."

He gets to his knees. "The secret here is that it's all about intuition. Your body naturally knows where the most work happens, and that's how you get-"

He gestures to himself, "-really impressive."

[bothbarrels]

North's brows are still high as they can go.

"You think there's a 'Big Fitness'?" he says. "Ah, I hate to break it to you, but I learned proper form during my time in the military."