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The first time Leonie met him, Dimitri was standing over the sets of weights she used every week she came to the gym. Her weights* would end up used for an entire four hour session** and Leonie was left with the grubby weights with the gross rubber texture instead of the nice grit-stone sort***.
*as much hers as they could be considering all she could afford was the discount gym membership
**doubly so considering if she’d paid for a year’s worth at the gym she was going to use it or die trying
*** her set of weights
While she could not say anything to him, Leonie could immediately figure his type of person. That guy* was blond and tall and already too strong for his own good, decked out in a too-tight work out shirt** with the most horrendous possible logo and color for his complexion***. Clearly, this was the kind of person who thought he looked good when he didn’t****, even though he was obviously wrong and just acting like a cocky asshole who believed he was the most gorgeous man around*****.
*Read: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, former future CEO of the Blaiddyd Circle, purported to be the most eligible bachelor of the therapy circle Sylvain invited him to every other week, as Leonie would eventually find out
**Given to him by tangent friend of Leonie, Ashe Duran, as a nice left-over shirt Dimitri had personally picked out from the pile of clothes Ashe was about to give to the thrift store and fellow trans power house Caspar Bergliez
***It was green and pink and had a cute elephant on it. Dimitri was fond and Leonie would be loath to admit the same.
****He did, though.
*****He isn’t and he doesn’t.
The second time Leonie met Dimitri, she decided he hated her.
“Exhibit A.”
Dimitri sat next to her and began to use a weight from the set she had already begun using. When she picked up another from the set to start working it in her other hand, he took the final one and began doing reps in sync with her. When she was finally fed up, Leonie put her weights back and stomped away to an exercise bike. For some terrible reason, Dimitri also ceased working with the hand weights the moment she did.
“Leonie,” Dorothea muttered. “You’re not serious. Right.”
“Listen to me,” Leonie said, already too heated. “Exhibit B.”
She tapped the video up on her phone. As Leonie started going on her exercise bike, Dimitri could be seen in the background awkwardly edging around the side. As Leonie’s pace lessened, she barked out a – “What?”
Dimitri could be heard quietly asking exactly how to set up the timer on the bike. Leonie gave an exasperated sigh. “Just take mine.” The video ended with a swipe of her hand.
“Yeah, I’m gonna have to copy on that. Leonie.” Claude leaned his face against his palm. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am serious! This guy has it out for me,” Leonie yelled, before bringing it back in with her friends’ quick push to shush her. “Everywhere I go, the dude is also using the same amenities, and always asking me questions, like he’s trying to push me out of the place, or like he’s trying to challenge me. Me!”
Dorothea and Claude glanced at each other.
“Don’t you two do that,” Leonie said. “Spit it out, don’t do that … smart kids giving a side glance because I don’t get something obvious. Because it’s clearly not obvious.”
“He probably likes you,” Dorothea shrugged.
“It’s Dimitri. He’s great, but just. Terrible at being obvious,” Claude explained. “He’s El’s brother? Doesn’t really go out to big get togethers, but he’s super nice. I really doubt the dude hates you.”
“You guys don’t get it.” Leonie let her posture melt and laid her head on the table. “How am I supposed to win at the gym if he’s always throwing off my balance.”
“How do you win at gym,” Dorothea asked, raising an eyebrow.
“That’s not the point,” Leonie whined. “He’s got so much more muscle than me, too! And ever since I started on progesterone, it’s harder to keep the gains I had previously. It’s like he’s trying to make me look bad.”
“Listen,” Claude said. “Instead of assuming the worst, like you are right now, take a step back. Talk to him. He clearly wants to be friends.”
“If he wanted to be friends, he should just tell me that,” said Leonie.
“Not everyone is so straight-forward as you,” he answered.
She couldn’t very well disagree with that.
LP > he hates me
Who hates you. I dont hate you. Wat happened? < AD
LP > Dimitri
LP > i went to the gym this week all ready to play budy budy
LP > and the dude never showed up
LP > what the hell
Uh. < AD
Could you tell me more about your Dimitri < AD
LP > tall blond knows hes beautiful nightmare of my life
LP > rich guy with no hobbies so hes gotta neg poor girls like me
LP > does he rly xpect me to believe a guy with muscle like that doesnt know how to work a treadmill
Ah. < AD
LP > what
I think you might be mistaken. < AD
LP > ugh
LP > dont tell me you know this guy too
I think I have the right one in mind! Is he wearing silly shirts to the gym. < AD
LP > yeah theyre terrible
LP > the kind of stuff a rich boy buys off designer sites because some celebrity says its cool
Yeah those are my old shirts. < AD
LP > oh
LP > Sorry.
S’okay! < AD
Sooo. I can tell you he doesn’t hate you. < AD
But I can also tell you he took Sylvain’s advice and backed off. < AD
LP > ???
Sylvain told him to ask him if he needed advice with a girl and when he asked uh < AD
Sylvain said he was flirting with a girl who hates him < AD
LP > I dont hate him
LP > he just made me mad because he didnt communicate
Yeaaaaaaah < AD
Well. I will tell him you want to see him at the gym again! If you want me to. < AD
Leonie stopped texting.
It was stupid she was even talking to Ashe about this in the first place. She was an adult woman. She had the documents to prove it. She wasn’t even that interested in men, but. Thinking back on it, it was so easy to hurt someone and not even realize she’d done it. Maybe – just maybe, she could at least apologize directly.
LP > nah
She screamed at herself internally.
LP > my gym membership is running out soon anyway
At least that wasn’t a lie.
LP > you should tell him to keep up the gym thing tho
LP > he probably needs it more than I do
“Exhibit C,” Dorothea proclaimed.
“Leave me alone,” Leonie muttered.
“You stopped going the moment he did, and have refused to go back ever since he returned,” her friend drawled, like it was a victory pulled from the maw of a dragon.
“She’s got a point,” said Claude.
“Listen, it was picking between this and my archery magazine and something has to give!” Leonie said. “I’ll save up and buy my own weights, I sure as hell don’t need a treadmill to do running, and if I want a bike to ride, I can borrow one from Ignatz. It’s just not feasible to keep paying for something I don’t need!”
“Right,” Dorothea said.
“Riiiight,” Claude said.
“I am not interested in him,” Leonie said.
“Listen,” Dorothea started. “You said you would hold off on dating until after you were comfortable with your transition. You even turned me down.”
“Yeah, you turned down girl lover extraordinaire,” Claude added. “That’s just weird.”
“It’s stressful,” said Leonie. “Why would I want to deal with dating on top of government and doctors giving me constant bullshit?”
“But you’ve managed all your major goals,” Dorothea continued. “And you still refused to date. It would be one thing if you didn’t have people asking you out, or something if you weren’t the kind of person to complain about PDA, but you are, and you want to date someone. So.” She pulled out her phone and pulled up a number. “Why don’t you make a move.”
“Because I’m not interested in Mr. Rich Boy CEO,” Leonie said.
“He’s not a CEO,” Claude added. “He mostly does freelancing copy work.”
“Cool, I’m still not interested in rich boys.”
“That’s fine,” Dorothea interrupted. “Regardless. He did want to be friends, right? And you do feel at least a little bad about it. Riiight? Since you have been trying to avoid him over it.”
Leonie harrumphed.
“Good,” Dorothea said with some joy. “So give him a call and say you’re sorry and ask if he wants to join you for a fun morning jog. This will be the easiest not-date you’ll ever have.”
When Leonie left, she did leave with Dimitri’s number saved in her phone. If nothing else, she couldn’t say no to Dorothea about taking it. However, she thought as she placed the phone in her pocket, it wasn’t like she actually had to follow through.
The problem came in the reality of Caspar and Ashe being friends. Dorothea would talk to Caspar, as he was her darling not-brother, and Caspar would talk to Ashe, and Ashe would talk to Leonie and, unfortunately, Dimitri.
And the issue came in the reality of –
“You like Dimitri!?” Ashe’s voice over the speaker was strangled from his yell.
Telephone.
“Ashe?” Leonie scrubbed the sleep from her eyes. “It’s 11 pm.”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you calling me,” she deadpanned.
“If you like him, I can absolutely help out!” Ashe said, too much delight in his voice. Too much like Dorothea.
“I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s not true,” she grumbled.
“But you stopped going to the gym because he did! I thought it was weird that you didn’t renew!”
“I stopped because I’m poor and have better things to do with my time than throw it at a sinkhole like a gym. Goodnight, Ashe.”
“But –“
At that, she hung up.
It wasn’t like she’d regret it*.
The next morning, there was a knock on her door. It wasn’t often that anyone came to her apartment, considering its size and relative distance from major city hubs, so she took her time to answer the door. It wasn’t unusual for religious proselytizers to come knocking at hellacious times of day. Instead, when she swung open the door rather than looking through the eye hole, she saw –
“Dimitri?”
He gave a quiet nod, shoulders hunched over like he was trying to bely the reality of how tall he was.
“…why are you here?” Leonie asked.
“Oh,” Dimitri murmured. “A friend told me you couldn’t afford a gym membership, so I thought I might help. You were very kind to me. I never had the chance to use gyms much, before, so it was nice to have someone there who knew so much as a partner.”
The word partner made her heart leap into her mouth and she could have coughed it out onto the floor and stomped on it for being so stupid.
“Nah, it’s okay,” she lied, brushing the feeling off like water. “I have other things to do than the gym. It’s really all a big scam, anyway.”
“It’s a scam?” He looked at her like he’d never heard such a thing before. “How so?”
Though Leonie could have gone on about it, she stumbled over herself mentally, her hands dropping to her sides. “It’s a joke,” she said. “Thanks. I’ll take it. I appreciate the offer.”
“Then I’ll see you again?” Dimitri asked.
“I mean, I guess,” Leonie shrugged. “I’ve been trying to pick archery back up and I’ve got a lot on my plate at work, and …”
“Oh, you’re an archer?” It was terrible, but his eyes sparkled, and the fact annoyed her even more.
There wasn’t a reason to be excited. She hadn’t been able to practice in years and there was nothing special about facts about her and it didn’t help him and Leonie shut the thoughts down.
“Kinda,” she said, rubbing the back of her head. Having him stand outside the wide open door became more awkward by the moment, but inviting him in would make her seem desperate, and she couldn’t just act that way. “I should really get going, I –“
“Could I go with you to see your archery?” he asked.
“…why?”
“Sylvain says it’s a good idea to…” At that, Dimitri trailed off. “I apologize. You aren’t going to be interested in that. But I was interested in what you do and … I’ve never been much of an archer. Some of my friends are. I don’t mean to presume you’d allow me along.”
For all her fumbling, Leonie said the right thing.
“Sure,” she said. As Dimitri began to light up, she added, “Ashe can come along too.” Leonie couldn’t just let him win. That was unfair.
As they exchanged information, Leonie couldn’t quite hide the number Dorothea had already given her, but if Dimitri saw it, he gave no indication. For whatever disappointment he should have been showing, he gave a wide smile and left Leonie to her own frustrated, flustered thoughts.
That was what was unfair.
*She would find herself correct.