Chapter 18 #2
I jerked my arm out of his grip, then grabbed my shirt to hurriedly pull it over my head. We’d had enough close calls for one morning.
“Sorry you’re not as strong as you thought. I don’t bruise that easily.” I dismissed him. I absolutely did, and my arm was still sore, since I wouldn’t have a chance to get into the restoration pods again until dinner time, but I was dealing with the discomfort.
“Maybe I misjudged you.” He shrugged, though I couldn’t tell if that was a friendly shrug or an antagonistic and sarcastic one.
Mine were usually the latter. “Oh, and you’re welcome for the rank boost, by the way.
I’ll be taking that back on our next Evaluation, so don’t get too comfortable.
You’re still rank 4,208 by skill.” He had to get that last jab in before he headed into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
“I look forward to it,” I hissed back, not at all looking forward to it, and knowing he was way out of earshot.
I exhaled, glad he was finally distracted and out of my hair, then I got the fuck out of there.
I’d been blessed by the fact that Elio refused to sleep in the same room as me, but it was still an incredibly volatile situation.
I didn’t know how long he would tolerate having to give up his room, anyway.
He seemed to have picked me as his worst enemy, and I wasn’t looking forward to what else that might mean.
Back at Basics, days rolled by, every one feeling exactly the same and a new torture at the same time.
Run five miles, carry bags, fall off the horizontal ladder, carry more bags, push-ups when I couldn’t carry the bags, get laughed at by Elio—he laughed a lot for someone filled with so much hate, honestly—then swim across a bog, trip over rings, get singled out by Sebastian in hand-to-hand only to take his palm straight to the forehead when misreading his step.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
But after so long, I was finally starting to feel like I’d settled into the routine, and in some ways, I was even succeeding.
Everything was falling into place again, and Elio hadn’t been a problem for the rest of the week.
When we weren’t in the same room or in VR together, we coexisted far enough apart that I could breathe.
When my one free day of each week showed up—they called it Sunday, though the way the 21 hour days and five-ish hour light and dark cycles worked on Saturn made every week feel much longer—I opted to get some extra training in the weight room.
As much as it would have been nice to spend my off time recovering, before I’d come here, my favorite hobby had always been training with Vann, so I didn’t really know what else to do.
I needed to work twice as hard as everyone else to get respect around here, anyway, so going to the gym was my best chance at catching up.
I felt strong and accomplished the longer I made it through the daily grind, and my weights were starting to reflect that.
The numbers may not have been impressive for most men, but in the actual bounds of my physical body, I was hitting new personal records every week, and it gave me a zip of much needed joy to add another ten pounds here or twenty pounds there.
Unfortunately, this was one place where my roommate was unavoidable.
Elio was always in the weight room when I was, which wasn’t surprising since he was blatantly and obviously one of those guys who was married to the gym.
Still, I couldn’t afford to avoid everywhere he existed, especially not when it came to training, so I didn’t pay him much mind.
If I didn’t want to get knocked out by even the most unskilled recruits on the mat, I knew I had to do everything I could to work toward some level of good enough.
And yet, no matter how much I hyped myself up every time I stepped off the leg press and watched some guy have to lower the weights before he used the machine, today was chest day, so I was back to being reminded I was firmly at the bottom of the physical barrel, as I ticked down every machine’s set weight to double digits.
I approached the bench press, and I programmed the bar for eighty pounds.
A respectable weight, in my opinion. I’d had to work up to it, but the rapid recovery, paired with man-portioned nutrition and woman-levels of dedication, had me hitting some pretty respectable numbers for someone of my size and stature.
My body had always put on muscle fairly easy with my higher than normal testosterone levels, and I was going to revel in this rare situation that made me appreciate my hormonal disorder.
It was a shame to acknowledge that no one here would appreciate that I was actually smashing my weight training.
Granted, I couldn’t admit that a beginner weight for everyone else was pretty damn good for me as a former treadmill hero, but for the sake of my sanity and pride, I was still going to silently pat myself on the back.
I was just grateful that all weights were programmed into the bars and dumbbells with a few presses of a button, much unlike the very telling sand bags we had to carry, and any visual indicator of my actual numbers was in the form of a small digital number on the bar itself that no one could see from across the gym.
For all these guys knew, I could be bench pressing two hundred pounds.
I laid back on the bench and started my first set, grunting appropriately as I unracked the bar above me then lowered and lifted.
I peppered in some annoying ‘ooh’ and ‘grrrah’ sounds while working out, assuring I got to live every part of the man experience.
I sometimes felt like it actually helped when lifting heavy weights, but mostly I was just blending in with the natural chorus and ambience.
6… 7… 8…
“Need a spotter, Mishka?” Elio’s voice made me jump out of my skin, and it was a wonder that I didn’t send that bar careening down onto my neck. I re-racked the bar immediately, not wanting that kind of weapon loose between me and the worst person I’d ever met.
Elio placed his hands on the bench, gripping the edges on each side of my head, and supporting himself at arm’s length.
He looked down at me with a casual yet cruel smirk.
His piercings glinted from the reflection of the gym lights and the beads of sweat that speckled his brow, and I should have asked him if wearing so much metal in your face was dangerous when he trained.
I bet it hurt way more to get punched in a dermal piercing.
I was not going to ask him if he had any tips or routines to suggest for strength training, however, despite the fact that I had to acknowledge that his unholy arm muscles were annoyingly impressive when they were taut and filling my entire periphery.
I would question myself for always noticing all of the defined lines of his triceps and biceps and deltoids and everything that was his very dedicated physique, but it was literally impossible not to notice with the way he seemed to be allergic to sleeves.
“I’ve got it, thanks.” I rolled my eyes, extremely not wanting to interact with him right now. He was lucky the restoration pod was able to speed up healing the inflammation from my dislocated shoulder, but the resentment was still fresh and bleeding.
“Do you though?” His voice was flat and filled with doubt.
“Yes. I do.” I narrowed my eyes as our gazes remained locked.
“Want to test that?”
“What—”
Without warning, and with completely casual psychopathy, Elio knocked the bar from its rack with a thrust of his palm, sending it hurtling down directly in line with my neck.
My heart stopped, my breathing ceased, my eyes squeezed shut, and my hands shot to my face, as if there was any chance that would protect me from the impact of an eighty pound weight with two feet worth of momentum slamming into my bones.
Is he trying to fucking kill me?
My whole body shook with tremors, trying to will away this reality, and I waited in absolute terror for the moment that bar would slam into my forearms, and I’d hear my bones crack. That brief moment felt like minutes, when it was really only fractions of a second.
Wait, that’s weird. Time must have literally slowed down, because I counted to thirty in my head in those fractions of a second, and the bar never hit me.
I slowly and nervously peeked out from between my fingers, just in case I was already dead, or this was really all just a hyper-lucid nightmare where I was sharing my last moments on this planet with fucking Elio Marx.
But no. I was never that lucky. I instantly regretted opening my eyes as the world came into focus.
There, not an inch from my face, were the wrapped, warm brown knuckles of one Elio Marx, hovering over my nose, with his fingers twisted around the center of the bar, stopping it in midair.
I was still hyperventilating as he curled the bar one-handed and glanced at the weight setting. He snorted.
“Eighty pounds? Fuck, you really are a mouse,” he said, ever so smugly as he placed the bar back in its secure holder.
I was still trying to slow my heart rate, while my hands were still frozen on my face as he gloated above me.
He didn’t even check the weight before he pulled that shit? He didn’t know for sure he could have caught it!?
“Y-you could have killed me.” I stammered, unable to hide the very real terror of the situation from my voice. With every breath, that fear slowly but thankfully traded itself for anger. “If you hadn’t caught that bar, you would have fucking killed me.”
That only made him grin wider, because he was truly and genuinely the devil himself. “Now now, don’t get carried away. I promise I always secure my area of control.”
“Y-you didn’t even know the weight of my bar until you caught it and looked.” Absolute rage. I didn’t care that my voice was shaking and I was stammering, I was so fucking mad.