loves-pie:

A snippet from the mystery fic I was talking about last week. @semperama should know what it’s about, since she gave me the idea (although I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s forgotten, since that was literally an age ago – I’m still waiting for my muse to come back from the war *sigh*). Anyhoo, here you go.

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Sure enough, Chris was on the treadmill in
the hotel’s gym, and judging by the amount of sweat covering his loose gray t-shirt, he’d
already been there for some time.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you.”

Chris looked up, but didn’t slow his pace.
“Oh?”

“I thought we could go for a morning
workout together, but clearly you beat me to it.”

“Oh. Yeah… sorry.” Chris offered an
apologetic smile. “I’ve kind of got used to early starts after filming in
England.” He tapped the machine, gradually lowering the speed until it came to
a stop, and stepped off to grab his bottle of water. “Your turn.”

Zach dropped his towel onto a nearby bench
and stepped onto the treadmill. “How far do I have to run to catch up with
you?”

Halfway through drinking, Chris shrugged.
“A few miles maybe? I’ve been testing out all of the equipment here; the
treadmill was last on the list.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

Chris shrugged again, grinning.
“Improvise.”

Keeping up a quick but steady pace on the
treadmill proved fairly easy when Chris was chatting beside him in-between
push-ups and sit-ups. It felt easy… familiar. 

And then Chris decided to take
his shirt off.

The next thing Zach knew, he was on his
ass, having stumbled and subsequently been thrown off the back of the machine.