Chapter Text
Charlie does not know what entity of torture posessed him in order to lead him here, standing outside of a gym of all places, on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon. With a brief glare to his left, he reminds himself exactly which one: Elle makes her way to the door, beaming at him as she holds it open and gestures for Charlie to make his way inside.
Elle has been going on and on and on and on about this new gym she joined for three months now - she saw a flyer for calisthenics classes on the bulletin board at Issac’s bookstore and wanted to try it out. Like Charlie, she was starting to feel age hit her and she wanted to work on her strength and flexibility before it was too far gone and it got harder. Turns out, this calisthenics class was taught by the lesbian co-owner of the gym, who also taught aerobics, yoga, and other classes that combined strength and flexibility. All it took was one session and Elle was hooked.
She even upgraded her membership to include open access to the gym on top of classes so she could continue to work on some of the exercises on her own. Not only has Elle become a total convert to #gymlife, she has found a new love for movement and the strength her body is capable of. Now she just glows every time she talks about one of the classes, and she does truly seem happier and lighter since joining. And if the new hint of definition in her arms is anything to go by, she’s reaping all sorts of benefits from this new-found hobby.
Somehow Elle has convinced Charlie to come check out the gym for a tour to mayybeeee get a membership and join her. Which is how he finds himself on a random Sunday afternoon about to walk into a gym, of all places.
“Chaaarrrrllliiiieeeeeee…” Elle whines. Annoyingly. “Charlie, you’ll love it, I swear. It’s so welcoming and it has the chillest vibes ever. Will you just come in?!”
Charlie is hesitant – he doesn’t see himself as the gym-going-type. All protein powder and ‘lad, mate, lad, no homo’. Yea, no thanks. But he has started to notice he’s a bit out of shape these days. Since moving to London this past year to take his dream role at an indie publishing house, he hasn’t found the time to run as much as he used to. As a result, he’s beginning to lose the definition in his legs. He worked really hard for that definition, and to get himself to a place where it was even safe for his body to run as much as he loved to. He should really get back into that, rewarding his body with strength and movement, which is supposedly good for his mental health too.
Elle is more than trustworthy when it comes to seeking places that are open and welcome - she doesn’t give homophobes or transphobes the time of day. If she says it’s a great spot, Charlie can’t help but trust her. And, if he’s ever going to give any gym a try, might as well be the one that not only literally advertises itself as a queer gym, but also has such rave reviews from his best friend.
With a brief eye roll and deep breath, Charlie steps through the door, ignoring Elle’s pointed comments about how “over dramatic” he’s being.
Charlie really did not know what to expect from a small neighborhood gym but his flabbers are gasted at the sight before him. He’s immediately hit by an explosion of rainbows everywhere from buntings along the front desk, to murals on the walls, to banners and every pride flag under the sun hanging from the ceiling. As he continues to look around, Charlie is broken from his rainbow-induced stupor by a vibrating ball of energy that has come to greet him and Elle with so much enthusiasm they both nearly end up on the (thankfully, clean looking) floor.
After some quick introductions, Charlie quickly learns the loud greeter is none other than Darcy, the owner’s wife, and resident Minister of Menace. Charlie’s heard a lot about them from Elle, as well as their wife, Tara, to whom Elle credits so much of her love for the classes and her blooming confidence in all her body is capable of.
Darcy pulls Charlie along on a tour, and with Elle in tow, the two talk Charlie's ear off about how great the space is and all their offerings, from equipment to classes. He’s impressed by the vast array of classes their small team is able to offer, and even more intrigued by the names of some of the classes, like Bicep-tuals, Hard Core Homo, and Knotty Night.
Charlie is too busy taking in all the information when he suddenly trips over something. He looks down and sees a…dog bowl?…has sloshed water onto the concrete floor from the impact with his foot. He utters a quick apology, but Darcy must clock the confused look on his face, and explains that yes, they do allow dogs at the gym, and kids too!
“When Tara began to toy with the idea of opening this gym, she was worried about leaving our little Echo alone during the long hours it would take to get this place started. Our friend Nick, who she opened the gym with, suggested they just allow dogs, which he said is for the good of the members, but he just wanted to be able to bring Achilles along.”
As part of the tour, Charlie is offered a free open gym session to try out the locker rooms and equipment to see if it would really meet his needs. After saying goodbye to Elle, they part and go into separate locker rooms to change. Charlie has to laugh a bit at himself once he realizes they are actually explicitly gender neutral locker rooms, only marked by having a urinal or not, but old comphet social rules are hard to break sometimes. Shrug.
After changing in the impressively clean and well-stocked locker room (a complete departure from the mangy school locker rooms he remembers from secondary) Charlie decides to give the treadmills a try, going for the most familiar equipment as he gets acquainted. He finds a row of five reallllyyy nice treadmills that are all currently empty, hops on one arbitrarily, and begins programming a quick warm up.
Rather than put on his headphones, Charlie decides to take in the space while running. He scans the neighboring equipment, seeing that this gym really does appear to be welcoming and queer friendly – in his brief scan he’s noticing just how many different types of people are here – all sorts of different genders and body types, and even folks using adaptive equipment for missing limbs. Between this, the lux amenities, and all the equipment and classes available, Charlie is sold. This might be ok.
As he continues his visual sweep, he clocks an adonis of a ginger man walking in his general direction. He feels a slight twang of disappointment when the adonis stops and sits on one of the spin bikes in the row just ahead, rather than settling into a treadmill right besides Charlie, but he quickly gets over that when the seated position of the bike makes the man’s already sinfully-short shorts rise even higher, revealing irresistibly bitable thighs and a large thigh tattoo that Charlie would love to get a closer look at from his knees. Letting his eyes finally move up the man, Charlie takes in the sculpted shoulders and huge arms framed by a muscle shirt with cut out sides that goes down to his waist, revealing a small rib tattoo and those side muscle thingies Charlie didn’t know he was into until this moment. As the man starts his workout, Charlie ups his pace on the treadmill to seem more inconspicuous, while sneaking a few glances at those flexing thighs every now and then. Maybe he’s really going to like attending this gym after all.
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Two hours later, Charlie and Elle leave the gym, freshly showered after their workouts, and Charlie now the proud owner of one gym membership. He decided to forgo the class pass for now, but did sign up for personal training and open gym access. After his run he realized he didn’t know what to do next, not being too familiar with what one actually does with gym equipment, and Darcy and Elle both agreed personal training would be a great way to learn. Plus, Darcy told him that the other owner, Nick, had an opening to take on a new client, and they thought he would be a great fit for Charlie.
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Two days later, Charlie is headed to his first ever personal training appointment at his new gym. He hasn’t been back since the first trip, so still doesn’t know who Nick is, but he hopes he’s as nice as Darcy painted him out to be. He’s confident this man will be knowledgeable since he owns a gym, and he has to hope this Nick guy is queer or at least queer-friendly if he opened a gay gym and has lesbian friends.
Charlie takes a deep breath and pushes open the door, stepping into the gym. He looks over to the front desk and stops in his tracks – the hot ginger from the bike is standing at the desk, doing something on the computer.
Ohmygod he works here!
Before he can fully register what’s happening, the man looks up and they lock eyes. Frozen for a second, Charlie finally shakes himself back to awareness and proceeds to approach the desk.
“Hi-”
“Hi-”
Charlie and the hot-man-behind-the-desk both start to speak at the same time, abruptly stopping and smiling at each other.
“Hello, welcome to The Queer Gym. I’m Nick, how can I help you?”