[ location]: I mean some sort of russian bathhouse right next to Central Park.
[ Open Starter ]: Because we ride at dawn.
The steam billowed around Gale's feet as he opened the door to the oh-so-heated room and slipped inside. A towel wrapped around his waist securely as he took every step with the confidence of a man who hardly cared if it fell. Part of him was unsure about this place as the woman at the desk had just stared at him, uttered something in Russian that, frankly, was a little judgey, and handed over a locker key. But the location was more important than the actual facilities. The whole place looked like it stepped out of the past- like it had been frozen in the eighties and never moved on.
If he was honest with himself, he'd come here for a distraction. A distraction from that singing in his veins and the mental pull to this particular city. To the park only a block away. That particular feeling felt...beyond him in a way that he hated. Gale was used to standing in the middle of a storm and never letting the winds push him away, rooting himself to the ground in a situation most would flee from. The sudden urge to follow the most indescribable feeling had thrown him a little. He was used to jumping into situations without considering the consequences, but this felt more like he was some pawn on a chessboard he couldn't see.
He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as the heat already started to prick over his bare skin most delightfully. His eyes dipped to the large empty pool area, at least for the moment. Gale couldn't work out if he was relieved or disappointed. Sometimes of the noise of other people was better than dwelling on the who's and whys of the current situation.
At least it made the current situation a little easier as he dropped the towel near the stairs of that heated pool before stepping into it with a soft, pleased hum. There was no hesitation in his steps as he moved further into that water, bare as the day he was born, till the water slipped up to his neck and he dropped himself against the edge of the pool with a little soft hum.
He was just getting comfortable when the sound of that door opened and his eyes flicked up to take in the figure across from him.
[ David Corenswet, pansexual, cismale + he/him ] ･ﾟ: ･ well met, Gale Bronte, for 33 years, they have believed themselves to be only mortal. they walked beneath silent skies, unaware of the hymn sleeping within their veins. but blood cannot forget its maker forever. the song has answered. the blood of Zeus now stirs within them, calling them toward a destiny older than history itself. before the awakening, they lived as Storm chaster/ meteorologist, calling Flordia, USA. home. Born in Belfast, Ireland. now, the impossible has found them, and the world they once knew is beginning to unravel like thread. should the fates remember them kindly, their name will be woven alongside their protective, extroverted, and bold. should they falter, history will forever echo with their reckless, impulsive, and self-destructive. the old gods have begun to stir. the blood hymn has found another voice. now the world waits to learn whether Gale will become its salvation or its requiem.
"You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?" - a background.
Gale was born in Belfast, Ireland, with its rolling green fields and beautiful, sharp, imposing cliffs that seemed like some old god had carved a piece out of the world. He'd always been an adventurous child growing up, never one to sit inside when he could be out climbing trees and exploring the world with friends. He'd make up games of sword fighting with sticks and slay made-up enemies to be the hero of the day among his friends. Sometimes even pretending to have an oh-so-dramatic death while he did so, for what story is complete without a sacrifice? Even when the sky darkened, and the clouds rolled over the moors, and his friends would scatter from the thunder and the rain, Gale would stay on top of some broken-down tree stump or fallen in the mud of the storm, fighting some mythical monster that only his imagination could see. The sound of the thunder cracked as he swung that tree branch with all his might.
His mother, a loving school teacher in the city, never seemed to worry about her only child out in the dark and the thunder. Perhaps just content, her son seemed to be enjoying himself when perhaps others might have feared the lightning as it crossed the sky. As he grew, Gale would often look to the skies during class as the rain pelted against the glass, and that same love would evolve into a love of chasing that high he got when he heard the thunder. His studies seemed to be more focused on the science of the weather when it came up in class, and while he wasn't always the smartest student in the bunch, he was, by far, the most enthusiastic. That certainly didn't diminish as that same love caused him to follow meteorology into a university degree. A time in his life that was marred with just as much sex and romance as it was actual study.
Gale had always been popular when it came to such extracurricular studies; his bed was never empty with a man, woman, or anything in between. Between a charming accent and utter boldness that couldn't be diminished, he'd always enjoyed the company of another, even if it was rarely anything solid. The rare exception to such a rule was Kieran, a dark-haired beauty who had stolen his heart. Late in the years of his degrees, It had been a connection so strong that Gale had almost convinced himself that they'd loved them far more than even his love of that crack of thunder. He'd lost many a night entangled in the sheets with the boy, hands clasped, and moans whimpered into the night. Kieran's passion for forests and woods of the country had enchanted Gale just as much as anything else in his life had.
There came a moment when he'd had the choice between chasing his love of storms and being grounded by the roots and trees that Kieran loved as graduation and the bigger world loomed. It was a choice that broke his heart as veins seemed to sing with a choice that he always knew was coming. He left. Gale left his friends and family, and that love that had made his heart sing, to travel across the world to become someone who chased the whipping winds and cracking thunder. A storm chaser in Florida and around the USA of all places.
He finally had a different sort of thrill; his life had seemed to go from 10 to 100- life became a blur of roaring engines, of randoms in bed, and more data numbers than you could shake a stick at. Gale became an adrenaline junkie without a concern for his own safety; he'd take the jobs the others in his field wouldn't, and stay longer in the worst of the worst storms. He'd started to live life on the edge in all aspects, perhaps trying to cover the lingering down of the choice he'd made so many years ago. The danger made his veins sing in the way that the hymn later would. It made him feel alive.
