asterlingfox:
Where: Hotel Gym | First Floor Date: Friday, August 31 Time: 10:18 PM Soundtrack: Shoot It Out - 10 Years ((open))
It’s been three years - three years of trying and failing, of frustration, of people saying he shouldn’t let it get to him like this - and Sterling still hasn’t figured out a way to take the edge off away losses. They smart like a paper cut on the crease of a joint until they get back to campus, until the paw print at center court is under his feet again. Home losses are easier, ironically, with bottles and red cups crowded atop counter tops in one of the suites where they gather to talk and drink, yell and complain, with Sterling’s fail safe of a little collection of joints in the tin in his desk drawer, with the pale reassurance of the familiarity his own bed at the end of the night.
But there’s no comfort in hotel rooms, despite the consistency of their awful decor and questionable sterility, and it feels difficult to make promises of improvement, to put a down payment on next time when he still feels the loss around him like it’s in the air, like the Jackals have claimed this space, too. Team is a language he’s still learning to speak, so Sterling reverts back into the familiarity of alone and recedes away from the other to replay the game over and over in his head, to dissect their performance as a team, but most importantly to dissect and criticize his own.
Sometimes the Foxes have the dubious privilege of access to a hotel gym, and no matter how sparse and outdated they are, it always lends a feeling of familiarity that the rooms don’t. This hotel’s is meager at best, a small collection of machines and a mediocre free weights selection, a large window at the front of the room that looks out onto the hotel elevators and doesn’t lend any privacy. But at least it’s deserted - the other hotel visitors apparently have better things to do with their Friday night than exercise. The game emptied his tank - Sterling’s running on fumes, having left everything else on the court - but the music from his earbuds and clips of professional sports on the TV and the pound of his feet on a treadmill are better than staring at the ceiling in his room. His body won’t thank him for taking the loss out on himself like this in the morning when they’re doing Saturday sprints, compliments of Wymack’s penchant for corporal forms of punishment, but he’s too angry, too disappointed to care. He’ll deal with it. A flicker of movement near the door catches his eye, and his irritation at someone breaking the solitude is writ clearly across his face when he turns his head to look at them without slowing his pace.
She should have known there was going to be another Fox in the gym. After a loss, she should have been more aware that there was more people like her than the opposite. Sterling... she couldn’t quite figure out. He was quiet, but he had a bite to him, and she knew that she wasn’t in the mood to be chastised for the mistakes she had made.
In a way, she stands by what she did. They deserved that. They were trying to go after not only her, but another one of her teammates, who pulled the same action that she did, however, she was the one with a yellow card already. It was a stupid move, even she could admit that. She was a cause of the sprints they were essentially promised at the end of the game, but she wasn’t going to let Sterling’s icy glare stop her from running, even though there were only two treadmills.
Making sure her shoes were tied before she bumped up the speed, she tried to lose herself the best that she could in her run. She didn’t want to think about what just happened - the wound was too fresh. Instead, she wanted to sweat it out - push herself to the point where all she was doing was running, and thoughts had entirely escaped her head. She didn’t need music to run. When she ran away from Owl’s Bend, she had nothing on her. She was sure she didn’t even have something to eat for a few days. Her life had turned around since she was in the group home, but she wondered if it was for the better or for the worse.
Hitting the speed up again, she could feel her long ponytail almost whipping her back as she sprinted, closing her eyes as the beads of sweat started to form at her forehead. However, she swears she can feel someone’s eyes on her. Someone directly next to her. She closes her eyes tighter, tries to run through the anger, but it’s pointless. Opening her eyes as she spreads her feet to the treads on the side, she looks to Sterling, hands on her hips, breath heaving. “What the fuck are you looking at? It’s an open gym, anyone can come in. It’s not yours to hog.”
