Summary: Reno talks Zack into going to a Hot Yoga class.
Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or anything in it. I also do not own any systems of hot yoga. Any resemblance to any particular system is purely coincidental.
"Are you sure I shouldn't wear a shirt? I feel a little funny, I normally train with a – what is that?" Zack had to jerk his eyes back up where they belonged after observing what looked like a colorful pair of briefs on Reno's hips. Very tiny, shiny, colorful briefs.
"This is the outfit, yo." Reno spun in a circle, an action which caused Zack to look down involuntarily before looking back up again. "What you've got on, well, you look like a SOLDIER. Look, even Rude wears the outfit."
Rude strolled by them, wearing to Zack's horror an identical matching set of boy shorts to those that Reno had on. The bigger bald man merely shrugged.
Zack looked down at his own long, baggy athletic shorts. "I think I prefer looking like SOLDIER. Reno if you get a hard-on wearing that it's going to fly off."
"Don't worry about me, Zacky, I got a method. Come on."
They stepped out of the men's locker room and walked towards training room. The hallway was filled with women wearing what looked like some female version of Reno's outfit; two scraps of fabric instead of one. It was like he stepped out of his office onto the beach. Quite a few of these girls he knew, some he had been to bed with, and some he'd never seen in anything but office clothes. It was a dizzying combination. They were all smiling and friendly.
"Hey Rude.. Hi Reno... Look who came to Yoga, it's Zack! ... Hi Zack!" Several of the girls passed suggestively close to Rude, and one ran her hand over his bald head.
Zack greeted all of them the best he could, remembering to keep his eyes at face level. The gaggle with Rude in their clutches disappeared into the yoga room, leaving Zack and Reno staring at the door.
"What was that method, Reno?" Zack asked.
Reno only laughed and went inside. The air in the room hit Zack like a furnace.
"Shit," he said, "I thought you were just making that up about the temperature!"
Several of the girls laughed. In the big mirrors that coated three sides of the room Zack could see one of the other few men present smirk.
"No way, I was serious. Hundred and five. Fifty percent humidity."
They set up in a spot on the floor where Reno directed, in the row behind his partner, unrolled their mats and laid their full sized beach towels on top of them. A bead of sweat rolled down past Zack's ear and disappeared into his towel. He took a swig from his water bottle and noticed with annoyance that the two Turks had brought water that was half frozen. Bastards.
He cast his gaze around the room, made all the more easy by the mirror covered walls. Reno had been right; it was an ogler's dream. Everywhere he looked sweat glistened and highlighted the bare skin around curves, shoulders, breasts, calf muscles. Mostly women, but a handful of men. A couple of the men were really buff. He took a quick self conscious glance at himself in the mirror. OK, still no problem, all muscle and no fat. He noticed Reno also bouncing him an appraising look off the front mirror.
"Quit," he mouthed silently.
Reno smirked. Like that was going to stop him.
Sweat trickled down the undersides of his arms and the air felt like he was trying to inhale tomato soup. No wonder everybody was mostly naked. Zack noticed his heart rate was up a bit, even though he hadn't done anything. Maybe it was the visuals, but maybe it was the heat. He decided it was the heat, it felt like his body might not even respond in that way under these conditions. Maybe that was Reno's method. He blinked as several drops of sweat that had completely overrun his eyebrows and fell into his eyes.
"Wow, you're a good sweater," Reno said. Zack scowled in his direction.
"OK, everybody stand up on your mats and towels, we'll start with a breathing exercise." A very perky young woman with even less body fat than Zack (if possible) got up on a podium in the front of the room and directed them in deep breathing. Zack's sweating picked up, but if this was all yoga was about he was going to be just fine. This was easy. On the other hand if this was all they did he wouldn't get to show of what he knew was his superior athletic ability.
The first actual pose was also easy. Hands over the head. Interlock the fingers. Palms together, elbows straight, biceps against the ears.
Hmm, those last two commands weren't so easy. Zack struggled to straighten his elbows, straining the muscles in his shoulders. He looked at himself in the mirror. Gaia, not only were his elbows still not straight, his biceps, as full as they were, came nowhere near his ears. He looked around the room. Almost all the girls had their elbows straight and arms plastered against their heads. Well, girls were skinny; they didn't have all that muscle to get in the way. Reno also seemed to be having no problem, but he reminded himself that Reno was pretty skinny too. But Rude also had his arms all the way straight, and he was a pretty burly guy. And older than Zack. How was he doing that?
By the time it came to bend the body to the right he had already been struggling full force with his arms in a futile attempt to straighten them and his arm muscles were shaking. Not off to a good start he thought. How long is this class? Ninety minutes? He looked at the clock. Six minutes had passed. He was forced to give in and let his elbows bend even farther from straight just out of self preservation.
Now they were leaning over to the side. That shouldn't have been so hard, but the instructor kept telling him to bring the opposite hip forward, and every time his did his torso popped up. He had to flex and push with every core muscle he had just to keep bent over in an approximation of what everyone else was doing. Reno's perfectly straight arms were almost pointing at two o'clock, and he could barely get himself past 12:30. After twenty seconds of this determined effort his abs and back started to shake. Not that again. Fuck, was the whole class like this? They bent over the other direction, which brought temporary relief, but long before the posture was over he was mentally begging to go back to the first side. He did briefly check himself out in the mirror. Damn, his abs looked good doing this. They should, considering they were all popped out with the amount of effort he was expending.
He was only vaguely aware of the room full of nearly naked women around him, and only occasionally caught one another pair of eyes. When he did, they smiled, but there was nothing playful about it. They rather had a look of vacant concentration, and something else he couldn't immediately identify. But eventually he did. It was pity. Sweet Shiva, they were pitying him! Sweat was now dripping off of him with the frequency of a light summer shower, and when it came time to step to a new location his foot sunk the towel into the spongy mat below and oozed up a pile of water. He was drinking as fast as he could but it looked to him that his losses were outstripping his intake.
"Hey Zack," Reno leaned over, "You can sit down if the heat's getting to you. It is your first time."
"Fuck you," Zack replied, while attempting to wrap his arms up in eagle pose. He was concentrating hard with his last four brain cells that had not died from heat stroke. Right arm under left, twist the wrists...
The instructor had to actually come down off the podium and physically place his hands where they were supposed to go. He just couldn't seem to get hands to twist all the way around to where they should be. It was quite possibly the most frustrating task he had ever attempted at ShinRa, and he was SOLDIER damn it! He did hard things all day! He glared at the instructor just as his eyes lit green.
"OK, that's good, that's a good point for you to go to," she said, abruptly stepping away from him.
The leg twisting was worse, Zack watched as Reno snaked one leg up, over, around, and behind the other until his toes hooked around the opposite ankle, all while sitting in a chair that wasn't actually there. There was no way in hell Zack was ever going to be able to do that. Yet, as he looked around, every other student managed it, more or less, even the men. Zack put himself as far into the pose as his body would let him go and glowered at his own reflection in the mirror. Green. Green eyes. His body was resorting to mako burn to get through a damn Yoga class. Fuck, he thought. So be it. It was getting damn difficult to care about anything except survival. He was nauseous and dizzy and miserable.
After ninety grueling minutes that Zack would have gladly traded a repeat of his entire basic training for, the last thing they were directed to do was lie on their backs. Dead body pose, the instructor said. For good reason. She told them to relax, but as much as Zack wanted to he couldn't, his heart was racing, probably because he was quarts way low on fluid. All he could think about was getting out of this hellishly hot room. When they were finally dismissed he stood up abruptly, scooping up his towel that ran like a faucet onto his mat.
"Uh, you don't want to get up so sudden- wow," Rude said, watching the water spill from Zack's towel.
The world went blue black, and Zack Fair hit the floor.
He was only out for a few seconds, but when he came to the two Bobsey twin dressed Turks and about five girls were looking down at him.
"Hi." he said, unsure what else to say, and waved them all away.
"You didn't drink enough water, yo," Reno said.
"It wasn't possible for me to drink enough water, Reno!"
"Yeah, maybe, I've never seen anyone sweat like that. You are like the god of sweating."
"Thanks." Zack retrieved his items and this time stood up more slowly. The relatively warm hallway outside the yoga room felt like arctic air by comparison, and he refilled his bottle at the water fountain, swallowed the whole thing without stopping, and refilled again. Reno looked on in amazement.
"That's another thing I've never seen anybody do. Were you mako burning in there?" Reno asked.
"Yes," Zack snarled, "You didn't notice?"
"Sorry pal, I was zoning, it's the only way I can get through it."
"Hi, SOLDIER, right?"
Zack turned to see a very wet, very sexy blonde smiling at him. He remembered her, vaguely. She could bend over at the waist and touch her head on the floor right between her feet without bending her knees. With the extra water intake his brain was almost recovered enough to remember what that might be useful for. He managed half a smile. "Zack," he said, offering her his hand. She took it and their slick palms and fingers slid past one another.
"Clarisse," she said, "Every time a SOLDIER comes in it's the same, you guys go way too hard for the first time. You're the first one who made it all the way to the end before passing out."
"Thanks," he said, not sure whether to be proud or chagrined.
"Hey, you'll need some electrolytes, maybe a bite to eat. Would you like to go down to the cafeteria? I mean with me?"
"Yeah, I'd love to," he said, his trademark grin returning.
"OK, great, I'll just hop in the shower and see you out here in a minute," she said, almost colliding with the water fountain for not taking her eyes off him.
Well, maybe sweaty yoga wasn't all that bad after all, he thought.