Rep by Rep
An after-hours lift turns into a different kind of training.
One More Set After Close
The locker room after midnight was a secret, a hush broken only by the hum of fluorescent lights and the thrum of blood in your ears. Most of the daytime staff were gone; the last shift nurse had waved tiredly before the heavy steel doors snapped shut, leaving the space suspended between exhaustion and something sharper. Only the janitor’s cart creaked in the tiled corridor, some floors away.
The gym existed outside of regular time now, pressed into the hospital’s bones like a rumor only the right people ever heard. The air was dense with the smell of stale sweat mingling with the biting scent of disinfectant, embedding itself into the fabric of the night. The echoes of distant footsteps bounced off the cold, hard surfaces, creating a symphony of solitude, partially muted by the faint, lingering odor of cleaning chemicals that seemed to cling to the very walls.
We met there more than once, but tonight, I found you first: Shaan, hands planted on either side of the incline bench, head bowed, dark hair sweat-damp and curling against your temple. I remembered the first time I stumbled upon you here, how you quickly hid the flicker of surprise behind a calm facade. That night, we barely spoke beyond trading courteous nods, but the connection was undeniable. Your scrubs hung in the open locker, revealing the faded MGH hoodie you wore like armor and the running shorts that revealed how much you were holding in. You looked like you didn't belong, like you belonged nowhere, except you returned every night you could slip away, like this was the only place you trusted your guard down.
I made myself slow, the soft tread of my Brooks deliberate on the blue rubberized mat. No point in startling you; no point in pretending I could ever sneak up on you. You always heard me first, or maybe you just felt me—the two of us occupying the same nervous register, somewhere between craving and caution. My palms tingled as I fumbled in the dark for an excuse: forgot my phone, forgot my badge, forgot which part of my life I left in here.
You looked up. Not a smile. Not even welcome. That flicker you gave me was hunger, sharp and hidden, like you needed one more rep just as badly as you needed to not screw this up.
“Late for you,” I offered, voice soft against the tiled acoustics.
Shaan wiped his neck, not meeting my eyes. “I couldn’t sleep. Figure if I hit legs, I’ll be too sore and tired for the anxiety.”
I stepped into the pool of sweaty light beneath the old elliptical, letting the scent of rubber, old deodorant and disinfectant fill my lungs. Something about this place always reminded me of my dad’s garage—a fusion of iron, determination, shame. The lockers here rattled just like they did back then, the same clank promising (or threatening) witness.
“Mind if I—?” I gestured toward the dumbbells. Ritual offered as truce.
You shrugged, and the offhand permission curled into something warmer, some private choreography preserved from a thousand midnights in a thousand gyms. “It’s your ritual, too,” you said. Underneath, I heard the layers: invitation, warning, plea not to make it worse by acknowledging what was building in the space between us.
We lifted in parallel for a while. I worked the rack, keeping my gaze steady, feeling the old injuries in my right wrist pulse—a line of history no X-ray could ever explain fully. The ache that comes from showing up again and again, even after everyone expects you’ll quit. I wondered if Shaan had pain mapped the same way, a story he never told: pressure from family, the constant adjustment that begins the day someone first names you ‘different’ and never ends.
“Your locker’s still busted,” I said, forcing the small talk. “Third time this semester. You must be the hospital’s public enemy number one.”
This time, you snorted—half-laugh, half-deflection. “Let’s be honest, Jac: I’d have to work a lot harder for that. But the cleaning crew says it’s haunted, so maybe everyone’s just afraid to fix it.”
We shared the ghost story. The legend said one of the old residents never left—stuck reliving the worst night of his life, patrolling the ER and the weight room with equal parts duty and dread. Hospital queer lore, always a mix of fear and the thrill of coded knowledge. I let the silence return, but not comfortably.
Your set finished. You stayed on the bench longer than you needed to, hands spread wide, eyes tracking the scuffed floor tiles as if they held answers.
“How’s the cardio project?” I asked, when you finally stood. “Still making the new interns regret their life choices?”
You snorted again, warmer this time. “Only Devin. He whined about shin splints, so I gave him my old Brooks and told him to earn their magic.”
That was the moment you finally looked up and met my eyes. The old, careful barrier was still there, but thinner. “Why’re you really here, Jac?”
I shrugged, working a smile. “Same reason as you, I guess. Trying to outrun the rest of it.”
Our banter hung there, aching. The empty echo of the gym was thick with things you didn’t dare say—to family, to coworkers, to yourself. I knew that territory. I’d lived it since my brother stopped calling after I announced my residency choices. Our family dinners used to be filled with discussions about our future plans, but those grew shorter and less frequent as the kitchen table became a battlefield of unspoken expectations. My brother, who once shared every milestone, now withdrew into silence, a seeming disapproval that cut sharper with each ignored text and missed call. I knew he wanted something other than what I had chosen—a path that resonated more closely with our family's traditional values. The focus always turned to what gifts I could keep giving, shift after shift, until the giving hollowed me out. I wondered, with a jolt, if you noticed how much of that I carried now, visible in the way I held myself at midnight, in rooms that should have belonged only to ghosts.
You pulled your hoodie over your head and for a second, the hem bunched, baring your stomach—brown skin, goosebumps rising, ink peeking near your hip. Not a tattoo I’d seen before. Maybe hospital-issue, maybe not. A symbol I’d ask about if I thought I deserved to touch you there.
“Last set,” you said, voice ragged from more than exertion. “Spot me?”
I nodded, setting my water bottle aside, deliberate. Every muscle tightened in anticipation, in the awkwardness of how careful I’d have to be. The rule we both obeyed: this isn’t a pickup. This is mutual aid. A mutual dare, maybe, but couched in plausible deniability.
You slid underneath the bar, glancing up. Eyes dark, wary, something rich with longing unguarded for a flicker. I stood behind, hands ready just above the steel. Your body beneath the weight: tense, vibrating, scent of cedar and sweat and the cheap hospital soap everyone pretended to hate.
“Ready?” my voice low, not a command, just a promise.
Your fingers flexed on the grip. “Yeah. Don’t let me drop it.”
I counted your reps aloud, steady as metronome. The intimacy of numerals, of keeping each other’s bodies safe from the stories no one else would ever know. Five. Six. You faltered on the seventh, breath catching, a low gasp. The bar wobbled. My hands steadied just below, not quite touching.
“You’re good. Right here.”
I meant the weight, but not only the weight. You bit your lip, finished the set. I racked it for you, our arms scissoring for a breathless second. There was a moment we both looked at the hands, then away. The right place for them was on the bar, but the right place for them was also on each other. I felt heat gather somewhere between my navel and my throat—a chemistry not of desire alone but the danger, the rules, the threat that someone might walk in and rewrite the legend: the next shift, the cleaning crew, a gossipy intern who knew too much about not minding his own business.
“Thanks,” you whispered, the word out of breath, heavy, like you’d moved a different kind of weight. You didn’t look at me as you wiped your forehead, but when you sat up, your knees brushed mine, deliberate, then accidental, then deliberate again.
Outside, a cart rattled two floors down, the invisible eyes of the hospital always watching. I reached for my water but found only the ledger—my old training logbook, numbers inked in Navy blue. A cheap, spiral-bound thing, battered and sweatstained, older than my last real relationship. I always carried it, never let anyone else see the pages. As if by reflex, I flipped it open and held it between us.
You looked at it like it was a relic. “You still track everything?”
I nodded. “If I don’t, someone vanishes. My dad wrote every workout down. When he got sick, he let me take over. It became—”
You didn’t let me finish. “A ritual.”
We sat, the air cooling between us, but never comfortable. I wanted to tell you that rituals were all I understood, that they’re the only thing the world can’t take away without asking. I wanted to touch your hand, and for a second, I almost did. Instead, I pushed the ledger across the bench—an offering.
“You want your numbers in the book?”
You grinned, real, dazzling, and it broke something soft in me. “Yeah. But only if you add a legend. About tonight. Let it haunt whoever reads it next.”
I hesitated, feeling the meaning twist between us—what gets written down, what persists. “Deal. On one condition. Next time, you bring the pen.”
Your hand lingered a second longer than strictly necessary as you took the pen from my bag, fingers warm on mine, grip tentative, then firmer. “Promise,” you murmured, eyes serious for the first time all night.
A checkpoint ritual. A pledge to meet again, with witnesses as silent as iron and sweat and memory. The only aftercare we could promise tonight was continuity—the promise that tomorrow, or next week, after another shift, the ledger would be here. That we’d be here, again.
The clock on the wall flicked another minute away. Neither of us moved to leave, and the air crackled with possibility—the next set waiting, even as the risk of discovery nipped at our heels. I caught your eye one last time and let the hope hang in the ache.
