Survival Of The Fittest

((Wade Colter continued from Strength is Power ))

Wade looked at his phone again. It'd been about five minutes since class should have started, which translated to that same amount of time stuck outside of the classroom waiting for the teacher to actually show up. Not that he wasn't the only one dealing with this, but it was still a major inconvenience to him specifically due to the fact that he'd just got done in the weight room and his legs were as sore as a waxed asshole at the moment.

Grunting, Wade leaned on the wall beside the locked classroom door and let himself slide to the floor. He wasn't standing for this; he didn't care how hard it was going to be to get up again.

((Beau Larkin continued from What do they say about "Seizing the Day?"))

Just a few buildings over, another kid was running, if not sprinting, to his next class. It's a rare occurrence that Beau would be late to school, but out of all the days it'd happen, his family's car broke down. Again. Although he has no problems with it, the car breaks down at the most convenient times. For instance, his family once got stranded beside the 15 freeway after a tire popped.

After enough running, Beau finally makes it to his class. "I'M HERE!! I-I'm here!! I totally wasn't late, but I'm here!!" he said through staggered breaths. before he could approach the door, he noticed another kid leaning against the door.

"Oh hey Wade!"

He did care about getting the shit scared out of him though, which tended to happen when someone comes sprinting in yelling at the top of their lungs.

Ok, not yelling, but the effect was still Wade doing that twitch-jump thing people did in the half second before realizing ‘hey, I know that guy.’

“Hey Beau.” Wade responded, giving a brief wave. “No teacher yet, so no worries about not being late.”

Beau was good, as far as Wade was concerned. Good to talk to and good to kill time with. Which they seemed to have plenty of at the moment.

Beau looked at the door, then to Wade. "Awww man..." He replied, tired out.

Beau went over to a nearby wall and leaned against it. The sun's heat was getting a bit too much for him as he began to fan himself with his shirt. It wasn't long until he slid down and sat on the floor. "Well, at least I won't have to make an excuse of why I was late. Pretty sure a car breaking down wouldn't be good enough to avoid a tardy."

He looked over to Wade again. "So, I guess you've been here for a while." He said, jokingly.

Wade shrugged. Someone car breaking down seemed like decent enough excuse to him, but he honestly just didn’t feel like making that the talking point for this conversation. He looked at Beau as well before answering him.

“About five minutes. Not enough for sun stroke or anything but, hey, day’s still young.” He said, pausing between ‘day’s and ‘still’, which wasn’t anything new for him but still caused a vein in his temple to tighten. He always had trouble not mumbling with back to back S’s, not that he could tell you why. The sounds used to get stuck together, is the best he could describe it, and now it’s the opposite problem; needing to put a bigger space between the words than needed to get them out.

“How are you, anyway?” Wade asked, the mild agitation over his pronunciation (enunciation?) vanishing as quickly as it came. “Aside from the car breaking down, I mean.”

"Oh! I'm doing good and well!" Beau cheerfully replied. Even though he felt exhausted, it felt like his positive energy was radiating off from him.

Beau took a moment to stretch out his arms before returning them to both of his sides. "Don't know why, but running across the street up to school and through campus is enough to get your body hyped up! I swear, my heart's beating a thousand times per second." He then brought a hand to his chest. Yup, it's beating like crazy alright. As he felt his chest, his mind wandered over to the closed door to the classroom. Pretty sure the teacher's not gonna make it any time soon.

"Heh, maybe I could exert my energy to do pull-ups!!" He said, humorously.

“Ugh, don’t talk to me about running,” Wade said, making a show of rubbing his legs. “My legs are sore enough already.”

Wade stopped himself from going into detail about his workout (squats, leg lift, then leg press like a fucking lunatic). Back and forth was the key, he knew, to good conversation. Dominating it was a bad idea, as was the idea to make a crack about Beau being too short to do pull ups, mostly because Wade was struggling to work out how that made any sense.

And because of Beaus feelings and shit. That was also important.

“I’m not gonna stop you.” Wade said, before noticeably hesitating, like the proverbial lightbulb just went off in his head. “Wait, where are you gonna do them?”

"I know, I know! Running's a pain of the heels!" Beau replied to Wade. He couldn't help but agree to his pleas, not because of sore legs, but the fact it reminded him of the one time he ran in a new pair of sneakers. Big mistake. He could still remember the blisters that formed on his heels.

But looking at Wade, he could tell he had returned from working out when he rubbed his legs. He probably used the treadmill and got sore from running for a long time.

When Wade questioned him about his earlier statement, Beau felt excited to tell him. "Oh! Well, I could try and pull up from..." He stopped for a moment. Where can he do pull-ups? He looked over around the campus. A concrete shade structure? Too high. A nearby doorframe? Too easy. A metal support beam? Also too high. The only other place he could think of was the gym, but it might risk him being more ate to class than he already is. At the same time, the teacher was already late.

"Hmmm, I'm not actually sure where I'll do them..." He said quizzically, although it might already be clear he's torn about going to the gym or staying.

Wade followed Beaus gaze to all the spots he looked at. Wade wasn’t coming up with anything. He didn’t have much inclination to do so either, despite how life or death the situation clearly was, so he just shrugged when Beau spoke up again.

Was there a hint he was supposed to be taking? Maybe this was one of those moments where Wade was supposed to pick up on subtext and come up with a solution. Fuck, now he was getting antsy about social bullshit! With Beau, of all people!

“Uh,” he started, because he didn’t feel comfortable being totally quiet anymore. “I don’t know either. Could probably… yeah, I don’t know.”

He wanted to speak more, again, because of that discomfort at not doing so, but there wasn’t any thing he could actually come up with. So, he looked away and made like he was looking around.

Unfortunately for Wade, Beau was terrible at reading emotions and catching hints. Even if those hints would've been very obvious, they'd most likely flown above his head right now.

Fortunately for Wade, the boredom was starting to sink into Beau. They'd been sitting around for quite a while, and for an active kid like himself, he couldn't bear waiting any longer. Quickly, Beau stood up.

"Welp, I'm officially bored. I need to do something productive. And by productive, I mean something other than waiting!"

As Beau was standing up, Wade pulled out his phone to check the time. Three minutes had passed since Beau showed up to now. Wade stowed the phone back into his pocket and decided that, yeah, Beau was probably right on the matter of productivity. That certainly didn’t make his legs burn any less as he slid himself up the wall.

“Well…” He stopped speaking for a second to focus on not grunting from the effort of standing up, which wasn’t much, really. “I may as well join in. Better than sitting around.” He let his gaze wander to one of the concrete shade structures and, let me tell you, that lightbulb went off.

“If you’re still looking to do push-ups, why not do ‘em on that thing?” He said, gesturing toward it.