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Bunny walks into the gym with his headphones already on, bobbing his head along to his AC/DC playlist. He came in early today to do some work on his own before leading the crossfit training later in the evening, and some of the usual participants seem to have had the same idea, because he recognizes a few faces in the changing rooms and around the gym.
Jogging upstairs to warm up, Bunny soon ends up running through a series of squats, burpees, push ups and pull ups to wrap up his routine, music blaring through his headphones all along.
The gym fills up quite quickly despite the thick layer of snow outside, night falling already as people come out of work and straight to their evening classes. One pale face in particular catches Bunny’s attention during his mandatory thirty seconds rest in between two rounds of exercises, and he skims his calloused fingers over his short, salt and pepper beard.
It’s a light haired lad from his crossfit class, the one who seems to breeze through any workout Bunny throws at him and well…
Bunny wouldn’t usually go out of his way to make a workout harder than necessary or worse, unachievable, quite the contrary, he’s a firm advocate that cross training is beginner friendly. When it comes to this Jack Frost though, something about him makes Bunny want to outsmart the smartass or, if it comes down to it, finally tire him out.
Anything to wipe that infuriating smirk off Jack’s face.
They could go at it all night long, he fears, and wouldn’t that be sweet…
No.
Bunny throws himself into another series of squats, thighs burning with exertion. He moves on to the burpees next, leaping to his feet with gusto. He springs to his feet once more when it happens.
The music cuts off abruptly, and the headphones crackle before another song comes on, except it’s nothing by AC/DC.
Pulling the headphones off with some children's song blaring out, Bunny checks his phone. He should be listening to Thunderstruck, but the joyful Let it go! echoing out of the headphones are anything but the Australian heavy metal band’s vocals.
When Bunny glances around the room in askance, his eyes soon fall upon Jack, who blinks owlishly at him, bright blue headphones dangling from his own hands. Jack glances from his phone to his headphones, then back at Bunny, and understanding dawns on his face as he grins sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.
“Oh,” he mutters, frantically typing away at his phone to shut the music down.
Bunny’s headphones fall silent with one last, cheerful Let it go!
“Sorry about that, Mister Bunnymund,” Jack says, and he looks anything but.
“Bunny,” the aforementioned corrects him absent-mindedly.
“Looking like that? I don’t think so.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I’m not calling you Bunny and giving you a good reason to punch me.”
“I’m not going to punch you.”
“Are you sure about that? You look murderous every time I’m in your class,” Jack, asks, skeptical.
Bunny stares, then glances down at himself. Black tank top, matching sports shorts… he pulled his salt and pepper hair up in a bun to get the unruly mane out of his eyes during training and sure, the shirt doesn’t quite conceal the black edges of his neo-aboriginal tattoos but there is nothing wrong with them.
At least Bunny doesn’t work out shirtless like Jack bloody Frost.
Really, it’s the shifty, mischievous blue eyes, Bunny finds, that put him on edge. Every time he locks eyes with Jack, an icy shiver runs down his spine and he can’t quite bring himself to believe that Jack is genuine. The lad is just so… cheeky. Brazen even, the name and overall demeanor — chill and traitorous — give Bunny a sense of hot and cold more often than not.
“Perhaps because my class isn’t adapted to your current level. You could move on to Baby Tooth’s class. It would actually give you a challenge,” Bunny snaps.
“Where would be the fun in that? I like your class!” Jack beams, and with his phone finally connected to his headphones, he wanders off, humming to himself. “The cold never bothered me anyway ♪”
If Bunny makes Jack run more drills than the others in class that day, then the other participants are none the wiser.
It’s that, or kissing him senseless which the others could object to.
Bunny himself ends up humming the damn song as he helps tidying the gym at the end of his shift. It’s late, and the gym is mostly empty except for Pitch whom Bunny doesn’t recall ever seeing in broad daylight before.
“Will you keep it down?” Pitch growls, struggling at the leg press.
The poor bloke wasn’t gifted with good genetics when it comes to bodybuilding, but he comes dutifully every night, working out in the darker corners of the gym. A bang of black hair falls over Pitch’s sickly white face and the baggy sweatshirt and pants he wears hang off his frame, giving off strong, scarecrow vibes, so it’s not unusual for people to startle when they notice him using equipment they initially believed was available. Pitch must be self-conscious, Bunny reckons, so he leaves the other man to it.
“Sorry,” Bunny mutters, but the song is stuck in his head.
A muffled giggle catches him on the way to the changing rooms. He smiles sheepishly at Sandy, who also works out late most days, although Bunny suspects they suffer from a severe case of insomnia — it’s the golden bed hair that gives it away —, among other health issues due to their age. Bunny and them spent a lot of time together when they first joined the gym, to put together a good program for Sandy to keep in shape, safely.
Sandy, all charming smiles and sun-kissed cheeks, struck up a friendship with Nick, who used to be a bodybuilder back in his prime.
Nick won Mister Olympia several times, in fact. It shows, even with the white beard, in his rosy cheeks and the softer curves of his pecs and shoulders, the weight of the years settling in over the muscle mass built through years of weightlifting.
“This doesn’t sound like your usual heavy metal,” Nick comments, pursing his lips.
“Because it’s not,” Tooth sing-songs as she pulls off her boxing gloves.
Baby Tooth follows after her, both of their long brown hair swaying behind them. They don’t really look alike — where Baby Tooth somehow kept some roundness to her tawny face, Tooth herself is thin and angular — but there is a definite likeness to them, like fate brought them together by chance and they came to love each other like family.
‘Do you know this song?’ Sandy asks — well, they don’t speak as they don’t feel comfortable with the sound of their own voice, but the question is suggested in the way they arch their eyebrows and nod at the two of sheilas.
“I feel like I’ve heard it before,” Nick adds.
“Have you?” Bunny replies, not admitting to anything.
“It’s from an animated film for children,” Baby Tooth explains.
Bunny isn’t quite sure why Jack would listen to this kind of music while working out, but the lad has an odd sense of humor, and it doesn’t warrant much more pondering than that. He shrugs, heading to the changing rooms before his friends can pry answers from him (it is indeed not the kind of music he listens to either). By the time he comes out, freshly showered and ready to leave, everyone changed as well and Tooth calls a taxi to go downtown.
Tonight, they’re having drinks (and Bunny ends up spilling everything about his crush on Jack).
~
The next day brings fresh snow and both Bunny and Jack back to the gym.
Much like last time, Bunny comes in wearing his headphones and goes about his warm up with gusto, running through the same series of functional movements. AC/DC blares through his headphones once more and he comes down from a pull up to rest for thirty seconds, glancing around the gym as he waits.
The room is mostly empty except for Jack, a pale reflection in the window with bright blue headphones over his head, as outside night falls just a little earlier than yesterday. It is quite a bit of snow Bunny reluctantly trudged through to get to the gym today, so he doesn’t blame other people for sitting this one out. He’d have stayed burrowed under a pile of blankets too, if he’d had a choice.
Not Jack, though. The light haired lad warms up with a wooden stick, although Bunny isn’t quite sure if Jack means to stretch or juggle.
It would be funny if Jack were to slam himself in the face with it, Bunny reckons, unfortunately the lad displays surprising flexibility, spinning the stick with ease. Shaking his head, Bunny resumes his squats, Brian Johnson singing on about being back in black through his headphones. He shouldn’t be musing about Jack’s nimble figure and the sheen layer of sweat on his neck and shoulders-
That’s when it happens again.
The music cuts off, only to be replaced by a child’s voice asking about snowmen.
Bunny blushes beet red in embarrassment — convinced he’s been caught staring through the window — and swivels around, glaring. Jack, however, isn’t looking at Bunny yet as he pulls his headphones down. The younger man opens his eyes comically wide when they finally lock eyes, mimicking a shocked expression, but the oops that he blurts out sounds more like a cackle than a truly apologetic exclamation.
So maybe Bunny can bluff his way out of this situation, then. Arching an eyebrow in utter desapprobation, he crosses his arms over his chest, waiting for Jack to turn the annoying tune off.
“Are you sure the cold won’t bother you if I toss you out the window?” he asks.
Bunny doesn’t really mean it, at least not literally. He’s just hung up on his unrequited crush describing him as murderous yesterday, but Jack blanches and fumbles with his phone and both their headphones fall silent.
“Bunny! Stop picking on the poor thing, he’s just messing around,” Nick calls out from the bench press.
“With my music and my work out,” Bunny argues, but to no avail.
Tooth’s insistent look from the welcome desk makes Bunny do a double take. Jack won’t meet his eyes this time, toying with the stick as he looks down at the ground, and Bunny sighs. He walks over, reaching out to squeeze Jack’s shoulder and put this all behind them, when Jack finally looks up, quiet determination flaring to life into his blue eyes.
The bluest Bunny’s ever seen, and that’s without mentioning Jack’s naked shoulder under his palm.
“Look, I didn’t know how to work up the nerve to talk to you, and yesterday was the first time we had an actual conversation that wasn’t related to your class, thanks to the issue with our headphones. I figured why the hell not make good use of it again, but clearly you’re not interested…” Jack trails off, biting his lower lip in frustration.
“Interested in what?” Bunny asks, trying his damn best to avert his eyes.
Jack’s got very kissable lips, alright?
On the other side of the room, Sandy face-palms.
“What?” Bunny insists, hands flying up to remake his bun out of anguish.
“To build a fucking snow man, what else?” Jack snaps, and Baby Tooth tosses a foam pad at him. “I want to ask you out, dummy,” he eventually settles for.
“You’re interested in me,” Bunny repeats, at a loss for words, or a reply of his own.
Someone coughs, and Bunny can’t see whom, but his bet lies with Pitch.
“Come on, give a bloke a break, this came out of left field! He basically said I scared him, twice!” he protests, and a chorus of denials rings out from all corners of the room.
“Right, because you’re not interested in me,” Jack reiterates and Bunny groans.
“Don’t be thick, I very much am.”
“Really?”
The flicker of hope in Jack’s eyes brings Bunny forward with a magnetic pull he doesn’t dream to fight off, leaning into it instead to peck Jack on the lips and make his point clear. Jack kisses back, throwing his arms around Bunny’s shoulders and holding on as the stick clatters to the ground nearby.
There may be some clapping in the distance, but Bunny ignores it in favor of pulling Jack to the side, a somewhat private corner of the room. There, they finally cut into some of the ever present tension between them, and Bunny kisses that smirk off Jack’s lips, more or less.
The class starts late, and Jack sticks around afterwards, if only to build a snowman (and toss some well deserved snowballs at Bunny’s friends when they head out at last).