I'd Quench That Thirst [Closed]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Venus and Brock Samson
WHAT| Gym rat hookup.
WHEN| A few day before the crowning.
WHERE| The Training Center
WARNINGS| Sex. Also probably swearing.

They see each other regularly. After all, there are only twenty-four hours in a day and Venus spends up to six of them at the gym any given weekday, and Brock's got his own regimen. Half the time she sees him from upside down, practicing handstands, flips, situps, swinging from bars both parallel and uneven. She's usually drenched in sweat, her muscles quaking at the joint, the gym clothes she came in with sticking to her skin.

At some point, she should actually talk to him. She ponders, for a little while, a language made entirely of the grunt and huffs that they make incidental to each other in the Training Center. She wonders if an alien observer would consider it a sort of animalistic communication, like birdsong but more brutish, throaty and punctuated with gasps and wheezes.

They're the only two in the gym this morning, and Venus is finishing up her routine, dressed in a sports bra and tight shorts with "DISTRICT FIVE" printed across the ass, at Porrim's request. She grabs a towel from a rack and throws it over her shoulder, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist. This morning has mostly been cardio: gymnastics, kickboxing, a run through the cold before she even arrived here. Her face is flushed and normally it would start to drain, but it seems to stay pinked as she approaches Brock.

"Hey, so, um, I put in that suggestion, the one about the adults only Arena."

Comments

[samson]

Working out is probably pretty pointless, in terms of practicality. After death in the Arenas, everyone gets reset to the point in time when they were pulled to this world. Brock knows this both because he's been told and also (which he trusts more) because the way he jacked up his knee kicking a door at Vendata was there again when he woke up.

Not that Brock is particularly worried about practicality. He's already in peak physical condition, and his regular exercise routine is more to keep him at that peak than anything else. He imagines it's much more demoralizing for Joe Schmoe who's used to sitting around doing nothing all day and only has the few weeks between Arenas to bulk up, before having to do it over again. Not that he really cares about other people's problems.

Brock's routine is the same every day, with some variation. He'll start in the morning with calisthenics, and then he'll either weight-lift or run. Sometimes both. Today is one of those days where the lattermost is most appropriate, and he's zipping up his hoodie as he prepares to go out. His muscles are burning but he's still got a ton of energy bouncing around inside him, and he pauses with his hand on the zipper when Venus comes up, his eyes bright.

"Oh yeah? How'd that go?" he says, doing up the rest of the zipper. His hoodie has a needle and thread emblazoned on the shoulder, marking his own District a little less ostentatiously.

[celebrityskinned]

"They said they'd take it under consideration. It kind of felt like when you give your headshot to a casting agent and they don't even bother to have you read lines."

She shrugs, both with her shoulders and her face, lower lip jutting out like the rind of some pink-glossed fruit. She has a handful of products that stay on her face despite sweat and exertion, and as such the simple mascara and gloss make her look just that much more ready for the camera than any of the other people in here. Her agent always told her to put her looks first and her safety second, and while the Arenas, with their showerless, humid weeks on end don't lend themselves well to that, old habits cling to her like staticky gauze in the Capitol.

"Are you finishing up here?" Of course he is. She sees him often enough, takes note of his presence (and she tells herself that's because he's big and easy to keep track of) every time they're in the gym together, and she has his routine fairly memorized. She couldn't recite it back in order, but she knows it ends with a weight lift or a run each time.

[samson]

Brock snorts, rolling his eyes in sympathy. It was a nice thought, anyway, to give the kids a reprieve from the constant grind of, you know, fighting for their lives. It's all dependent on what sells better, Brock supposes.

Then again, the Capitol seems to have a constant hard-on for gimmicks, and Professional Killer All-Stars Arena does have a particular glamor to it. But maybe he's biased; that sort of thing would be right up Brock's alley as a general rule, were he in the Capitolites' shoes, apart from all the killing. He can't say he's never watched American Gladiators.

To Venus's question, Brock jerks his head back toward the exit. "Yeah," he says, not mentioning the fact that he knows she's seen him here enough to have sussed out his schedule by now.

Instead, he pauses, looking her over. One of Brock's many talents (if you can call it that) is being able to read women pretty well. It's not flawless, of course, but nothing ever is. His hand slowly shifts up from the zipper to over his shoulder, and he points a thumb back at the exit now. "You wanna get outta here?"

[celebrityskinned]

Venus doesn't entirely make herself hard to read, although some of it is subconscious, the product of being coached from the age of sixteen to play on 'her best features' and be sexy, inviting, sound interested and available without coming off as desperate. And so she doesn't go cat-in-heat, but her hip is cocked at an angle, her eyes bright.

Some of it is conscious. She's never been one to prowl, but she can't deny that Brock doesn't hurt to look at, and she wouldn't mind keeping him in eyesight for a bit longer.

"That an invitation?" She rubs her towel over her face again and then tosses it in one of the hampers nearby. Her own hoodie is hanging over a bench, and she slings it on. "You got a place in mind?"

[samson]

When Brock first met Venus, he wouldn't have considered her for a lay, to be honest. Then again, she was also fall-down drunk at the time, and Brock is not that guy. But she's also young, and women that close to the boys' age always give him pause. However, there is something to be said for youthful enthusiasm, and he would have to be fuckin' blind or stupid not to see that she's gorgeous. Hell, even when she'd had the brand on her face, she was still beautiful, and if there is one weakness Brock Samson's always had, it's a beautiful woman.

He watches her appreciatively as she moves, but it's a good question. He's pretty sure the suites are fully bugged, even the bedrooms, but it's not like they have a lot of options.

"My place or yours, I guess. Depends on your roommate situation." Jolie is a gossipy bitch and Brock will never hear the end of it, but it doesn't matter too much. "Unless you want, to, uh..."

He glances over to the locker rooms. Brock, no. Other people use that.

[celebrityskinned]

She doesn't know what, exactly, she expected. A date, a dinner out, a quickie in the communal showers - Venus realizes at that instant that she often uses her beauty as a means towards someone else's fantasies with no endgame of her own.

She had ideas, of course, of what sex would be, but her anticlimatic first time and the ensuing fallout deflated all those conceptions like a second-day circus tent. And since her belief in a five-course meal with butterflies in the stomach for the appetizer and kids and a picket fence for dessert has been crushed, she realizes she kind of wants some fast food. Something quick and easy and satisfying. She's beautiful again now, and for so long she's been every part of a pin-up dream except for this, and right now she wants to be that whole package.

And so she figures she's sort of sealing a deal when she confirms what she wants out of this. When she realizes that it is, in fact, exactly what she wants.

"No offense, but there are places I seriously don't want athlete's foot." She grabs her gym bag and slings it over her shoulder. "Your place. Mine's got the screamy troll."

[samson]

"Oh, sure," Brock deadpans, rolling his eyes up. "We're fresh outta those in my District."

Screamy trolls. He comes from a world filled with supervillains and necromancers and fully-functioning parasitic twins, but actual trolls is something he's having trouble wrapping his brain around. He'll probably have to get used to it by the Crowning, though. That lucky motherfucker.

Brock pauses, eying her for a second, and then an easy grin spreads across his face. "You know what? I'll race you."

He doesn't wait for an answer, just bolts for the stairs. With anyone else, he wouldn't have pulled that -- but Venus spends just about as much time as he does in the gym, and if she's anything like him, physical activity gets endorphins flowing. All physical activity. There's nothing wrong with warming up a little before something more strenuous, anyway.

[celebrityskinned]

She has about a half a second of a grin splashed across her face before he's going for the stairs.

"You're on!"

She swings her bag back and joins him in the sprint, making up for her shorter strides with her training's emphasis on speed. She isn't built like the human mountain he is; her combat technique has always required her to tire out larger foes, to reverse their momentum, to move faster than they can throw down. So they're relatively evenly matched in terms of a flat run, and she gets to the door of the stairs a hair after him. Unwilling to let him take the lead for the entirely of eight floors, rather than taking the steps she jumps to the wall, propelling off it to grab the rail one stair above and swing herself up, blocking him. Laughing.

sure did lose this notif

[samson]

Brock Samson isn't one to take losing easily. He's surprised by her move, all Spider-Womaning around like that, and his steps falter for a precious second -- but then he's grinning as he lowers his head and charges after her, up the steps. They have a long way to go to District 8's suite, but Brock wouldn't have suggested it if he didn't think Venus was in as good a shape as him. (Let's be real, she's probably in better shape. Brock smokes... a lot.)

He's confident that they'll still have energy to spare when they get to their destination.

Venus is ahead of him now, despite Brock's attempts at just barreling up after her. He hasn't tripped over himself, which is good, because it would be embarrassing; instead he just lets himself get into the chase, the pursuit, seeing glimpses of her ahead of him on the stairs as she rounds landings just ahead of him.

[celebrityskinned]

She's breathing quite hard by the time she reaches the eighth floor, and the run has given her plenty of time to contemplate that she doesn't have a key to that Suite. She knocks at the door, rose-faced, hoping both to be let in so she can beat him and simultaneously, contradictorily, that no one's in the Suite, so they'll have privacy.

She turns and presses her back to the door as he rounds up the landing only a moment behind her. No one comes to the door.

"If you win just because you have a key to this floor and I don't, I'll call shenanigans." There's a flush of excitement in her face, a bit of a daredevil edge that comes from her psyching herself up to do something she finds a bit wild and crazy. She's never hooked up before, despite appearances, and there's a string of fear or, more accurately, plain insecurity, that wires its way through her torso.

[samson]

Brock stops when he reaches the floor, quickly assessing the situation: the way her back is pressed to the door, the way her face is flushed. No one's in the suite. He's honestly never been the most courteous roommate, but he's glad they won't have to fumble awkwardly through Trey's knowing glances or some other kind of horseshit.

Grinning, he calmly draws closer, cool as anything -- there's no need to rush anymore. His blood is already thrumming in his veins from the chase, the pursuit, and he slips his hand into his pocket for the suite keys. "Nah, I think you won fair and square," he says, but he doesn't unlock the door right away. She's standing in front of it, after all.

Lowering his voice, Brock leans down close to Venus, his hand snaking around to fit the key in the lock, pressing closer to her than is necessary. But in a way, it's not fully unnecessary, either. He's assuming that twist of nerves he sees in her body is nervousness or excitement or some combination of the two, and it's encouraging. A little vulnerability is nice. "We never really discussed terms. What kind of prize do you want?"

[celebrityskinned]

With him so close, she can smell it between them, the sweat and those pheromones her gut recognizes but her nose doesn't, the electricity that seems to fill the air in the gap between his breath and hers. She feels it, warm and humming inside her, a primal urge when the body recognizes that mutual benefit is imminent.

"That depends on what prizes you got to offer." She's perfected a hundred different sensual voices, from coos and mewls to husky drawls that draw on her natural Georgian accent. Her tone now is much closer to the latter. She's playing a part, a bit, but it isn't something she hides behind so much as something that emboldens her now. "But I hope they got to do with your ass and your abs."

No point beating around the bush.