Compendium
iv.) Old People are Awesome
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Requested by New Paladin [on Livejournal]
Erk and Louise, mothering.
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"They're watching us, you know."
Wallace looked at his companion, the sweat on his bald head glistening magnificently in the gym's poor light. "Who?"
Marcus wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and jerked his head to the left. "Them," he said.
"Oh?" Wallace, with the subtlety of a a fist to the gut, turned to the direction is friend had indicated and was met with a sudden flurry of activity from the gym's younger patrons. "I don't see anything."
Marcus sighed. "They think it's odd, two old men like us coming in here an lifting weights with the rest of them, trying to relive our glory days."
Wallace blinked. "Are they really?" He furrowed his brow in thought. "We're not that old, are we? After all, you're younger than me, and I'm only... Only..." He shrugged and ran a hand over his head. "Well. It doesn't matter how old these younguns thing we are—we'll show them!"
"What do you mean?"
The older man grinned and began to walk toward a free treadmill. "When I was younger, I used to run around my college campus at top speed while wearing my football uniform, padding at all."
Marcus joined him at the treadmills, taking a quick sip of water from the the plastic bottle in his hands before stepping up to the machine beside Wallace's. "And what was the point of that?"
"Simple." Wallace pressed a few buttons, and the treadmill whirred into an easy jog. "It was just one step in my brilliant plan to get in shape. It worked, too—I'm going to show these kids how real men work out."
Marcus smirked and watched as his friend increased the incline and speed on his treadmill, glancing every now and then at the young patrons gaping in awe at the two "old" men who, apparently, didn't know how to "let go" of their youth.
If this is what being old means, Marcus thought to himself as sweat began to bead on his upper lip, I wonder what we'll be like when we're ancient.
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Xirysa Says: I need to write Wallace more often, man. And Marcus, too. Neither of them get nearly enough love.
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