p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Slowly, Dom's eyelids rise up like blinds in the morning letting in the sun on a beautiful day. Most of his face is pressed flat into his mattress. He stares at the cream colored sheet beneath his face. Kylo Ren is beautiful. He closes his eyes again, recalls with the perfect clarity of a mind still half asleep the full lips, the large nose, the perfect black hair that haloes around his face, the small chin, the ears, huge though mostly hidden by the hair, the eyes, sullen and resigned, expectant, like he'd been waiting for Hux to say something cutting like usual. And the lips again, because even in just his imagination they deserve an encore./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Oh, why did his subconscious make him so beautiful? So Dom's type? He tries desperately to take a mental polaroid, not wanting to lose a single detail of the image. His eyebrows had been black, thick, but not bestially so. His eyes had been on the smaller size, but he'd been too distracted by the insecurity, the openness in them to notice. Had the earlobes attached? Dom thinks so, but isn't sure. Were there piercings in them? Damn, he wish he'd had longer before the surprise of seeing Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren, Sith Apprentice to Master Snoke as just a guy, a good-looking, 30-something, expressive-eyed, luscious-lipped guy, had pushed him that last bit of the way towards wakefulness that he'd already been fighting./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"And why did his hair looks so perfect after having been in a fucking helmet for hours? Dom's hair had never looked like that, even after a visit to the salon!/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom rubs his face into his pillow. He's officially become so lonely that he's invented an imaginary love interest for himself. "Bugger," he whispers sadly. The pillow muffles the sound, but not enough to keep Millicent from hearing, apparently, for she appears like a loud hungry genie on the bed next to him. When he doesn't respond to her meows, she pokes at the back of his head. "Leave me to die alone in peace, you needy trollop!" She returns to meowing./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He pulls his head up and looks at her. "Why did I make him so lovely?"/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Millicent doesn't answer./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;""Oh God!" He pulls the blanket up over his head incidentally dislodging the cat and returns his face to his pillow. "I /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: oblique; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"am/span /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"going to die alone! I'm going to die an old cat gentleman!" He knows that there's actually something potentially worse that could happen. He could just sleep all the time hoping to initiate a relationship with an imaginary space serial murderer who wears a silly getup over his emotive eyes and kissable lips. He imagines the padded walls now, the psychologists speaking about him as though he isn't there, "The patient lives mostly in his own head now. We wheel him out to the gardens for brunch but he fully believes himself to be on a spaceship. He becomes violent when we attempt to wake him."/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"In the dream though, Dom didn't feel happy there either. It's weird that there's that disconnect. When Dom wakes up from a dream about Hux, he feels charged up with the importance of the position, the fulfillment of working hard towards a worthwhile goal. However, when he /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: oblique; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"is/span /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Hux, he's stressed out, unhappy about everything but the cause. Everything is about the next moment, never about the current one. If Dom did go mad and reside in his dreams forever, it might give him a purpose, but it wouldn't make him less alone or any happier./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom remembers what it felt like to scale the wall of the gym as Hux. He's certainly never had upper strength like that. It makes sense that in space, they would need to work harder to keep their muscles toned. They wouldn't have to worry about the muscle loss from zero gravity, but the long periods of inactivity in between missions would probably take its toll on both the cardio and the muscle systems. He'd felt high from the exercise. That was probably the only reason why he'd been taunting Ren, not expecting Ren to join them. If Dom had kept sleeping, would they have played a game of goothball together? He has it nebulously in his head that the game is like racquetball but different, maybe having holes and colors? It's hard to remember and he doesn't want to waste any spare memories on the trivial aspects of the dream. But, would Ren have stripped down then? Maybe shed down to just the black pants beneath his robes? How odd would that have looked? Kylo Ren, a normal dude at the gym?/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom looks at the clock. He's woken up an hour before he needs to get up for work, but he doesn't feel like trying to go back to sleep. He wants to scale a wall. He wants to be more than himself. "Right," he announces to the world. Millicent, who hasn't gone far from the side of the bed, tears off to the kitchen assuming that he's just said "breakfast." And why can't she have breakfast now? Just because it isn't quite the time he feeds her, that doesn't mean that he can't, doesn't mean that the world will end if he feeds her early. Just thinking this chaotic thought makes him a tad uncomfortable, like he's just announced that he's made it his goal for the day to rob a bank./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He looks at himself in the rather inappropriate full-length loo mirror, inappropriate because it looks over not just the sink area, but the toilet as well. The face he sees staring back at him looks more innocent than he often feels, but he likes what he sees in the eyes this morning. The dreams have this utterly ridiculous effect on him. It's like walking into a motivational poster./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;""Hey Millicent!" he calls out. Sure enough, her orange highness appears expectantly. "I'm going to the gym."/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"His flat is a touch on the fancy side, which he hadn't really needed but it was offering such good deals since the building had just reopened, he couldn't pass it by. Plus, he's not that many stops away from his work. When they'd tried to sell him on the amenity of having a gym in the building, he'd scoffed. It wasn't that he was a lardass or anything like that, but some nights he only has enough time to shove dinner in his mouth before having to get to bed to get ready to go to work and do it all over again. He's a busy, professional man. Also, he's a bit on the scrawny side. Always has been. There's no point in him trying to deny it to preserve his ego. He could spend all bloody day in a gym and he'd still come out of it looking like the stereotypical ginger with sand in his face at a beach. But he's not here to try and change his appearance. He's here because it had felt good to do it in the dream./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"It takes a good five minutes just to find the electronic key card that permits him entrance to the gym. He never thought he'd need it, so he'd stuffed it in his leasing packet. Luckily, he keeps meticulous records and finds it under the "Housing" file section in a white formerly sealed welcome packet. It works when he pushes it against the black pad next to the door. Then, he's in the gym and completely lost. Not literally, of course. The room, despite the office manager's ravings, is no bigger than the average family den. But he doesn't actually know what to start with. There's no peg wall, but that had seemed beyond his current capabilities anyway. There are two treadmills, one stationary bike, one complex looking weight machine, a row of dumbbells of varying weights, a standard weight bench with giant free weights already hung up, and a rowing machine that looks like it's seen better days./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom's in great luck that there are no other residents in the gym because he feels so awkward. He tries out each type of machine. He's tentative and unsure. He reads the instructions on the fancy weight machine. It can be used for so many different exercises! He runs through, picture by picture, testing it out, seeing where his starting weights are for the different exercises and he jots the numbers down on his phone. He enjoys some more than others. The treadmill can get pretty fast and he likes the resounding of his sneakers on the conveyer belt. The stationary bike pinches his balls and he uses that for the shortest amount of time./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He's so lost in play that he stays too long, nearly 15 minutes past when he should already be on his way to work! He hasn't worked up a sweat really, but there would be no way on Earth he would touch all that used equipment without a quick shower. It's the oddest feeling. He's standing under the water, maybe a touch too hot, but it's winter and that's a minor indulgence, and he knows that he's running late, but he doesn't feel like the world will come crashing down because of it. He's usually early, so this might put him on time, but it could make him late and still, he's fretting about it in a small, restrained way./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Even on the train, which is usually such a sad place for him, such a shining example of the hopelessness of his future, he keeps his cool. He's not tapping his foot desperately willing the train to go faster, to transcend the limitations as physics. He's just googling exercises that can be done on the machines available to him at his flat's gym. There's still enough of his usual uptightness to leap to his feet like a cat chewing an electrical cord when his stop arrives and it does bring a great deal of relief to have made it less than ten minutes late. Considering his lollygagging in the shower, it could have been a lot worse./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Throughout the day, Dom behaves in a manner consistent with all the other 'useless' employees. He looks up the cultural differences of living in America. Every article mentions how he'll need to have a car because things are so much more spread out in America. That's consistent with how he thinks of the country. Dom finds the thought rather exciting, not being at the whim of a transit schedule, though he hadn't been that great of a driver when he'd taken the classes years ago. As a matter of fact, he remembers his father's great disappointment to find that he wasn't immediately Dale Earnhardt./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom also continues his exercise research. He finds proper forms for the strength training exercises - though it seems that these are more necessary for the free weights than the machines, which are geared towards the uninitiated. He finds some routines, but Dom figures he'll come up with his own in time, maybe just haphazardly float through different exercises as he did this morning. He may be working towards some undefined goal, but he's in no rush to get there./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He fritters away the day this way. Oh, he does some work, of course, the things that can't wait, but overall, he absolutely has not earned his wages for the day. The slacking increases his father's voice in his head, but he resolves to return to being exemplary tomorrow. Today was a celebration, a celebration of Dom looking to the future, not with grim determination, but with a playful optimism./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Oh, why did his subconscious make him so beautiful? So Dom's type? He tries desperately to take a mental polaroid, not wanting to lose a single detail of the image. His eyebrows had been black, thick, but not bestially so. His eyes had been on the smaller size, but he'd been too distracted by the insecurity, the openness in them to notice. Had the earlobes attached? Dom thinks so, but isn't sure. Were there piercings in them? Damn, he wish he'd had longer before the surprise of seeing Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren, Sith Apprentice to Master Snoke as just a guy, a good-looking, 30-something, expressive-eyed, luscious-lipped guy, had pushed him that last bit of the way towards wakefulness that he'd already been fighting./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"And why did his hair looks so perfect after having been in a fucking helmet for hours? Dom's hair had never looked like that, even after a visit to the salon!/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom rubs his face into his pillow. He's officially become so lonely that he's invented an imaginary love interest for himself. "Bugger," he whispers sadly. The pillow muffles the sound, but not enough to keep Millicent from hearing, apparently, for she appears like a loud hungry genie on the bed next to him. When he doesn't respond to her meows, she pokes at the back of his head. "Leave me to die alone in peace, you needy trollop!" She returns to meowing./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He pulls his head up and looks at her. "Why did I make him so lovely?"/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Millicent doesn't answer./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;""Oh God!" He pulls the blanket up over his head incidentally dislodging the cat and returns his face to his pillow. "I /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: oblique; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"am/span /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"going to die alone! I'm going to die an old cat gentleman!" He knows that there's actually something potentially worse that could happen. He could just sleep all the time hoping to initiate a relationship with an imaginary space serial murderer who wears a silly getup over his emotive eyes and kissable lips. He imagines the padded walls now, the psychologists speaking about him as though he isn't there, "The patient lives mostly in his own head now. We wheel him out to the gardens for brunch but he fully believes himself to be on a spaceship. He becomes violent when we attempt to wake him."/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"In the dream though, Dom didn't feel happy there either. It's weird that there's that disconnect. When Dom wakes up from a dream about Hux, he feels charged up with the importance of the position, the fulfillment of working hard towards a worthwhile goal. However, when he /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: oblique; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"is/span /spanspan style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Hux, he's stressed out, unhappy about everything but the cause. Everything is about the next moment, never about the current one. If Dom did go mad and reside in his dreams forever, it might give him a purpose, but it wouldn't make him less alone or any happier./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom remembers what it felt like to scale the wall of the gym as Hux. He's certainly never had upper strength like that. It makes sense that in space, they would need to work harder to keep their muscles toned. They wouldn't have to worry about the muscle loss from zero gravity, but the long periods of inactivity in between missions would probably take its toll on both the cardio and the muscle systems. He'd felt high from the exercise. That was probably the only reason why he'd been taunting Ren, not expecting Ren to join them. If Dom had kept sleeping, would they have played a game of goothball together? He has it nebulously in his head that the game is like racquetball but different, maybe having holes and colors? It's hard to remember and he doesn't want to waste any spare memories on the trivial aspects of the dream. But, would Ren have stripped down then? Maybe shed down to just the black pants beneath his robes? How odd would that have looked? Kylo Ren, a normal dude at the gym?/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom looks at the clock. He's woken up an hour before he needs to get up for work, but he doesn't feel like trying to go back to sleep. He wants to scale a wall. He wants to be more than himself. "Right," he announces to the world. Millicent, who hasn't gone far from the side of the bed, tears off to the kitchen assuming that he's just said "breakfast." And why can't she have breakfast now? Just because it isn't quite the time he feeds her, that doesn't mean that he can't, doesn't mean that the world will end if he feeds her early. Just thinking this chaotic thought makes him a tad uncomfortable, like he's just announced that he's made it his goal for the day to rob a bank./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He looks at himself in the rather inappropriate full-length loo mirror, inappropriate because it looks over not just the sink area, but the toilet as well. The face he sees staring back at him looks more innocent than he often feels, but he likes what he sees in the eyes this morning. The dreams have this utterly ridiculous effect on him. It's like walking into a motivational poster./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;""Hey Millicent!" he calls out. Sure enough, her orange highness appears expectantly. "I'm going to the gym."/span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"His flat is a touch on the fancy side, which he hadn't really needed but it was offering such good deals since the building had just reopened, he couldn't pass it by. Plus, he's not that many stops away from his work. When they'd tried to sell him on the amenity of having a gym in the building, he'd scoffed. It wasn't that he was a lardass or anything like that, but some nights he only has enough time to shove dinner in his mouth before having to get to bed to get ready to go to work and do it all over again. He's a busy, professional man. Also, he's a bit on the scrawny side. Always has been. There's no point in him trying to deny it to preserve his ego. He could spend all bloody day in a gym and he'd still come out of it looking like the stereotypical ginger with sand in his face at a beach. But he's not here to try and change his appearance. He's here because it had felt good to do it in the dream./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"It takes a good five minutes just to find the electronic key card that permits him entrance to the gym. He never thought he'd need it, so he'd stuffed it in his leasing packet. Luckily, he keeps meticulous records and finds it under the "Housing" file section in a white formerly sealed welcome packet. It works when he pushes it against the black pad next to the door. Then, he's in the gym and completely lost. Not literally, of course. The room, despite the office manager's ravings, is no bigger than the average family den. But he doesn't actually know what to start with. There's no peg wall, but that had seemed beyond his current capabilities anyway. There are two treadmills, one stationary bike, one complex looking weight machine, a row of dumbbells of varying weights, a standard weight bench with giant free weights already hung up, and a rowing machine that looks like it's seen better days./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom's in great luck that there are no other residents in the gym because he feels so awkward. He tries out each type of machine. He's tentative and unsure. He reads the instructions on the fancy weight machine. It can be used for so many different exercises! He runs through, picture by picture, testing it out, seeing where his starting weights are for the different exercises and he jots the numbers down on his phone. He enjoys some more than others. The treadmill can get pretty fast and he likes the resounding of his sneakers on the conveyer belt. The stationary bike pinches his balls and he uses that for the shortest amount of time./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He's so lost in play that he stays too long, nearly 15 minutes past when he should already be on his way to work! He hasn't worked up a sweat really, but there would be no way on Earth he would touch all that used equipment without a quick shower. It's the oddest feeling. He's standing under the water, maybe a touch too hot, but it's winter and that's a minor indulgence, and he knows that he's running late, but he doesn't feel like the world will come crashing down because of it. He's usually early, so this might put him on time, but it could make him late and still, he's fretting about it in a small, restrained way./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Even on the train, which is usually such a sad place for him, such a shining example of the hopelessness of his future, he keeps his cool. He's not tapping his foot desperately willing the train to go faster, to transcend the limitations as physics. He's just googling exercises that can be done on the machines available to him at his flat's gym. There's still enough of his usual uptightness to leap to his feet like a cat chewing an electrical cord when his stop arrives and it does bring a great deal of relief to have made it less than ten minutes late. Considering his lollygagging in the shower, it could have been a lot worse./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Throughout the day, Dom behaves in a manner consistent with all the other 'useless' employees. He looks up the cultural differences of living in America. Every article mentions how he'll need to have a car because things are so much more spread out in America. That's consistent with how he thinks of the country. Dom finds the thought rather exciting, not being at the whim of a transit schedule, though he hadn't been that great of a driver when he'd taken the classes years ago. As a matter of fact, he remembers his father's great disappointment to find that he wasn't immediately Dale Earnhardt./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"Dom also continues his exercise research. He finds proper forms for the strength training exercises - though it seems that these are more necessary for the free weights than the machines, which are geared towards the uninitiated. He finds some routines, but Dom figures he'll come up with his own in time, maybe just haphazardly float through different exercises as he did this morning. He may be working towards some undefined goal, but he's in no rush to get there./span/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"span style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"He fritters away the day this way. Oh, he does some work, of course, the things that can't wait, but overall, he absolutely has not earned his wages for the day. The slacking increases his father's voice in his head, but he resolves to return to being exemplary tomorrow. Today was a celebration, a celebration of Dom looking to the future, not with grim determination, but with a playful optimism./span/p