The light flicked on, and the room illuminated. White walls reflected the light back at the two foxes entering the room.
Amanda Hamilton entered the room, a scowl on her little 12-year-old face like a naughty schoolgirl awaiting some kind of telling-off.
Behind her came her father, Rusty. His enormous, red frame took up most of the door, and the granite musculature of his torso was barely covered by the white muscle shirt he was wearing. His arms were corded with impressive thickness, and it made the weightlifting plate he held in his right hand look more like a dinner plate.
Amanda strode towards the weightlifting bench in the middle of the room and flung herself onto it, sitting with her arms folded and one leg crossed over the other.
Slowly, Rusty went over to the rack where the weightlifting plates were kept. It was a proper, commercial-use rack as you might see in an everyday gym, and came with a large range of them, from 5lbs all the way up to 75lbs. He hefted the black plate easily into place on the appropriate peg.
Turning back to his daughter, the large red fox saw that she was still sitting in the same position. Her head was tilted towards him, but her eyes remained averted.
Rusty’s bare feet made little noise as he padded across the black mats that made up the floor of the gym room towards his daughter. He sat down softly on the opposite end of the bench and leant forward, his forearms on his thighs.
The silence hung there for a second in front of the two vulpines, both wondering who would broach the topic that had brought the pair of them there in the first place.
Rusty spoke first.
“So,” he began, a little tentatively. “What was up wi’ yer little weight display just then?”
Despite being offered a chance to speak, Amanda didn’t do so immediately. In fact, she barely even moved.
Rusty sighed internally. For as long as he could remember, Amanda Kallistrate Hamilton had been like this. From the time she was a toddler, she had been remarkably precocious and boisterous, wanting to go off on her own adventures and do things her way. She was also rather tomboyish, preferring to play with model vehicles and soldiers as opposed to princesses and doll houses.
Unfortunately, this had made her a little harder to control than her two twin siblings. She also rarely played well with children who weren’t her brother or sister.
That childlike precociousness hadn’t quite gone away as she’d aged, however, and fairly recently had turned into total, overbearing headstrength.
Case in point: the incident today that had led father and daughter to the gym room.
The children had been expressedly forbidden from entering the gym room by both of their parents, due to the fear that they might play around with the equipment and get injured. This rule had gone largely unchallenged until today, when Amanda had snuck in and tried to remove the 15 kilogram plate from its peg.
This had gone well, up until the moment that the plate had been fully removed from the peg… at which point gravity intervened.
Contrary to Amanda’s belief, her arms were not enough to hold the weight, and, consequently, it plummeted immediately to the ground. Amanda had given a shriek of fright – a very rare moment for her – which had prompted both of her parents to come running.
Back in the present, Amanda shifted on the weightlifting bench slightly.
“Jsst wnn be sturng.” She mumbled quietly at her father.
“What’s that?” Rusty said, leaning towards his daughter.
Amanda, surprisingly, swivelled on the bench towards her father a little and gave a little, throat-clearing cough, before holding her head up and declaring, just as much to the room as to her father:
“I jist wanted tae be strong like you are.”
There was more silence. It had been akin to getting blood from a stone, but finally she had said it, and Rusty let the words sink in.
“How d’ye mean?”
“I… well...”
Again, Amanda shifted uncomfortably. Clearly, it wasn’t the fact that she had been caught in wrongdoing that was bothering her, but more the fact that she had failed in something she had set out to do.
Before she could stop herself, the words came tumbling out like snow in a blizzard:
“I jist wanted tae be strong like you are!” she half-shouted at the room, her voice raised both in volume and in pitch. “I see ye in here every day liftin’ weights an’ bein’ strong an-an how’m I supposed tae be strong when I cannae even lift up the blooming THING?!”
She stomped both of her feet into the gym mats as hard as she could in a display of frustration.
Rusty let this play out, his brows raised the whole time.
“Then why didn’t ye tell me?”
"'Cause I didn't want to, I can dae stuff on my own."
Rusty held back a groan at his daughter’s outburst. As usual, Amanda’s pride was preventing her from seeking the aid that she needed.
She was like that with many things. Something she wanted on a high shelf? She’d climb said shelves, regardless of the danger to herself. Failing her results in school? She’d struggle on, instead of requesting assistance from a teacher or even her own family.
Slowly, Rusty shifted off of the weightlifting bench and positioned himself in front of his daughter, before sinking down to one knee, so that he could look her in the eye.
“Amanda.” Rusty said gently, leaning one elbow on his thigh. He softly reached out his other hand and placed his forefinger under her chin. Her eyes had been closed, but as soon as his finger touched, she opened them to look at him.
Amanda’s eyes were an amazingly intense shade of red. In fact, Rusty recalled, 12 years ago, when Amanda and her siblings were born, that Aurora, their mother, cooed over Amanda’s eyes, calling them ‘little rubies shining with divine brilliance’.
Her crimson orbs stared into her father’s sky blue ones.
Despite Rusty's wild red hair and rock-solid exterior, when Amanda looked into his eyes, they betrayed a softness and a deep care within.
“I know how ye feel- ah, come on, now!” he said as Amanda snorted derisively, folding her arms even further together. “Look, I'm no' just sayin' that because I'm your Dad.”
Here, Rusty sat down on the gym mats in front of his daughter, his legs crossed and his hands together.
“I didnae always want to be a musician; I actually wanted tae be a boxer.”
At this, one of Amanda's eyebrows raised, as though silently asking him where he was going with this. Rusty took the lack of speech from her as a sign to continue.
“Now, I wis like you are: I wis young, an' I wis quite big. Now, I wanted tae get intae boxin' because, well, there were people in my year that did boxing that I quite wanted tae hit.”
Again, Amanda snorted, but now, it sounded a touch more humorous, rather than derisive.
“Now, there was this one guy called Bobby Kinnaird. He was a big guy, and acted like a hard man, but really, he had a poundshop brain and a body from the poundshop bakery.”
Rusty shifted himself on the floor as Amanda actually let out a breathy, quiet little laugh at her father's remark, unfolding her arms a little.
Rusty unfocused his eyes somewhat, letting the memory of that situation wash over him.
“Bobby liked to pick on people wee-er than himsel', as did his group of roaster mates. Hitting people, taking lunch money; yer usual cartoony, Neanderthal behaviour.”
“Now, I thought Bobby was a proper tosspot, swaggerin' about and showin' off for his mates, and he kent that. Any time he wis there, being a big bully, I wis there, telling him and his goons tae bugger off. He'd always fire his mooth off, but he always backed off cos I was the only one as tall as him.”
Then Rusty leaned forwards toward Amanda. “But once, he took it a wee bit too far.”
Amanda had unfolded her arms completely by this stage and looked pointedly interested.
“So: this time, he wis threatenin' one o' the wee lads in my year to do his homework or he'd punch his face intae a question mark.
Well, I wasnae havin' any o' this. I pushed past him, stood in front of the poor wee lad and told 'Blobby' and his stupid mates to get tae!
He was like "Out o' the way, Hamilton, ye big ginge!" and I was like "Just cause you werenae born wi' a brain doesn't mean others have tae do your homework!".
“So what did ye do?” Amanda was pretty engrossed, now.
“Well, I'd distracted Bobby long enough that the wee lad that he wis threatening took off, and he wasnae pleased by that! I'm jist tryin' tae move away, when he turns tae me and goes:
"Hamilton, the only thing ye're good for is hammering nails, jist like your dad!"”
Amanda frowned and opened her mouth to issue forth an insult to Bobby Kinnaird, but her father had not yet finished;
“So I turned and absolutely _cracked_ him one on the cheek.”
To emphasise, Rusty slowly extended his right arm, hand clenched into a fist, hooking it around towards Amanda's face.
“I'll never forget the look on his face as he tumbled backwards towards his mates like a sack of potato salad. I'm fairly sure I've seen less painfully haunted faces in the costume shop at Halloween!”
"Cool!” exclaimed Amanda, throwing her fists in the air. “You destroyed him!”
Whilst telling his tale, Rusty had had a small smile on his face. But at hearing his daughter's almost gleeful reaction to it, that smile slowly faded.
“I did get in loads of trouble for it, though,” Rusty explained, his voice taking on a more serious tone. “Bobby's parents were raging, yer Granny an' Grandad got called in to talk to the heidmaster an' I got grounded for a fortnight.
The day after, Grandad sat me down on my bed and had a talk with me… just as I’m doing with you jist now.”
“Was he mad at you?” Amanda asked.
“Not really,” the big fox murmured. “He wis a bit more concerned than mad.”
Rusty's voice became a little less quiet now, and he shifted his stance on the floor so that he was resting on his knees, his head level with his daughter's. “But he said to me what I'm going to say to you now.”
He brought both of his arms up and gently gripped her shoulders with his massive hands.
“Sometimes you need to step back and take a look at what you're getting into. That goes for everything, no' just fights. Because you can be as strong as you like, but unless ye’re tempered by this,” And Rusty delicately pressed a thick forefinger to his daughter’s forehead. “Ye’re no’ gonnae get anywhere.”
The words resonated around the room as Rusty leaned forwards and tilted his great head downwards, softly touching his forehead to the 12-year-old vixen’s.
They stayed like this for about 30 seconds in total, and Amanda genuinely did not know how to react. Whenever her behaviour gained her the ire of those around her, it usually resulted in angry words from teachers, classmates and their parents, and it usually consisted of her being called uncouth, unruly and unladylike.
But her father was never like that. Whereas her little stunt with the weights would almost certainly have gotten her put into detention, her father had no unkind words to say, no punishments to mete out – he hadn't even raise his voice at her!
A small, oddly wet noise issued forth from Amanda's throat without her consent, which brought both vulpines back to the present.
As he opened his eyes and pulled his head away, Rusty noted that his daughter wasn't crying – she hadn't properly cried since she was in primary school – but her crimson eyes did look a little misty.
"But...” Rusty spoke up, and, as he did so, he stood up to his full height of six feet and five inches. Turning around, he walked over to the dumbell rack on the floor by the far wall and crouched down by it.
He turned and returned back to Amanda, except that he was now carrying a little grey case, made of hard plastic.
“...Grandad did recommend that I get intae boxing, and he went and got me these...”
As though he was John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, he presented Amanda – who had stood up off of the bench at this point – with the case, flipping the two catches on it and opening the lid.
Inside the case, shiny and silver, lay a pair of metal dumbbells. They were clearly quite old, as they had a myriad of little dents, scratches and nicks from a lifetime of use.
“Have a go of them,” Rusty told Amanda, and she did so, putting her hands into the old plastic case and removing the weights.
Immediately, Amanda noticed that these weights definitely weighed less than the heavy plate that had gotten her here in the first place.
She looked them over, and upon seeing the bottom of them, noted that the answer was engraved there:
3KG
“Three?” Amanda said, incredulous. “Aw come on, Dad, that’s tiny!”
“It’s enough to be getting on with,” Rusty answered. “They’ll no’ try an’ rip yer fingers off like the plate did.”
Holding the silver dumbbells in her hands, Amanda gave them a trial run by doing a bicep curl with each of them, and, as she brought the weights up towards her head, she found that they weren’t very difficult to lift.
“Och, this is easy,” Amanda said confidently, continuing to do bicep curls. “Should have got bigger ones.”
To this, Rusty said nothing, merely folding his beefy arms and waiting.
As he had predicted, his daughter’s pace gradually slowed, and the confidence in her face slid off like treacle off of a spoon. Her expression became more and more strained as the reps continued, her brow furrowing in both stress and annoyance.
“Still easy?” Rusty jested, fighting hard to keep the smirk from his face.
“Mmmf...” Amanda grunted, forcing her arms to do what they were giving up on. “Bit… trickyyyy...”
But it was no use. With a sigh, Amanda lowered her arms and dropped the dumbbells onto the gym mats, where they made a dull whump noise.
Rusty unfolded his arms, knelt down beside his daughter and picked up his dumbbells like they were made of papier mache.
Amanda rubbed her sore biceps, staring daggers at the metal weights the whole time, even as her father placed them back into their case.
This glare did not go unnoticed by Rusty, who continued to smile. If he knew his daughter, she would not allow this defeat to stand.
“You fancy havin’ another go at this tomorrow?” he asked airily.
Amanda's eyes locked with his.
“Aye.”
----------------------------------------
4 years (and one day) later…
Sembra una vedova che alfin si toglie
i bruni panni ond'era involta.
A chorus of Italian voices filled the gym as Amanda worked. The horizontal silver bar situated across her shoulders was digging into her trapezoids, but the vixen paid it no mind.
She was an absolute machine, performing barbell squats like they were nothing to her. The black weight plates on each side brought the overall mass of the thing up to a considerable number, but she soldiered on, flexing the knees of her powerful legs, then thrusting herself back upwards.
All'opra! all'opra!
Dàgli, martella.
The door to the gym opened as Amanda pushed onwards, and her father stepped in.
Rusty Hamilton was now in his 40's, but you wouldn't think that to look at him.
Perhaps the lines on his face were a fraction more sunken in, perhaps the fur on his muzzle looked a little scruffier, but otherwise, he still looked like he always had – like a rugged muscle man.
He was clad only in a pair of black and gold boxer shorts, making him look like he'd only been out of his bed a few minutes.
His lack of clothing afforded a look at his exceptional musculature, though - his sculpted torso, dense arms and thick, steely legs were still in the same perfect shape they had been 4 years ago
Amanda didn't hear her father enter at first, mostly because of The Anvil Chorus which was coming from the room's stereo system:
Chi del gitano i giorni abbella?
Chi del gitano i giorni abbella?
La zingarella!
The clanking of the weights on Amanda’s shoulders went quite well with the clanking percussion of the chorus’ titular anvils, Rusty thought.
Personally, though, he’d have stuck on some Judas Priest.
Rusty leaned against the door as his daughter straightened up, carefully placed the barbell back into place on it’s rack and turned around to see him.
The transformation that Amanda had gone through in the four years since she’d started lifting weights was staggering, to say the least.
Her thighs were like tree trunks, her biceps and shoulders two sizes bigger than anyone in her year at school, and her back rippled like a sack of pythons.
She was tall, straight-backed and strong, and it was impossible not to be proud of her.
But while Amanda’s physique was astounding, it wasn’t entirely to the vixen’s liking, thanks to her gigantic rear end.
The squats that she was currently doing pronounced it better than anything else could. Every time she began to bend, a considerable amount of the leggings she wore completely vanished into the crevice between her mighty cheeks.
Once Amanda had wiped her face with a towel, he spoke:
“Alright there?”
Once she had turned the stereo off, she replied:
“Aye, nae bad.”
Rusty entered the room, strolling casually up to the rack where the barbell now lay and leaning up against it.
“Any room for an auld man in here?”
Amanda snorted.
“Aye,” she said to her father, one brow raised slightly. "If ye can still keep up.”
At that, Rusty snorted a laugh and walked over to the dumbell rack to select a pair of weights.
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A lovely pic by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
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Nori's muscle game has come on leaps and bounds, and it really shows here: Rusty looks like fucking Heracles.
Also: Rusty is no longer Captain Cockbulge - he's Commander Cockbulge. Got to get a pic of him flopping that massive hose out.
As usual: thanks to \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
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