Was it wrong to sometimes enjoy the small things in life? The answer to that depended on the person, really. Some would say that it was a waste of time, that it did nothing for the future, that he should just work for his career instead. Troy did enjoy the small parts, for he had nothing else to enjoy.
Or, did not use to have, would be better phrasing for that. Back when he was younger, there weren't many different activities for him. Through trial and error, he had been forced to find different things to make the time pass faster. Sitting on a bench staring into the air while thinking of nothing was not a preferable method of using one’s time. But, that was all the resources he had had on hand back in those days.
It had only been when he had begun dumpster diving that it got really fun. No matter how advanced a society became, there would always be dumpsters. Products were never made to be consumed fully. There would always be some form of waste-material, no matter how well-made the rest of it all was. And sometimes, just sometimes, something would get thrown in with that waste.
Troy never understood why anybody would throw anything out. Everything had some amount of value, and it could always be resold. Yet people did not seem to bother with stuff like that most of the time, just throwing it all down a chute where it would land it a collective pile of trash. In the inner city where his school used to be, one of these massive trash deposits sat. It was hard to find, of course, never meant to be seen by the public.
Yet he did find it. If not, those memories would never have been made. Troy could not really remember what made him dive into it in the first place. Maybe it was an act of rebellion, his mother going on and on how she did not want to see him being dirty. There was a chance of that being it. However, it was most certainly not the reason he continued doing it.
It was during that first dive that he found something. It was a new magazine, only dirtied by the garbage that it laid by. He couldn't remember the title of it for the life of him. It was something about some tower. But Troy could certainly remember the contents.
It was a magazine about linguistics, bringing on the newest research while also providing look-backs on the older genius in the field. Oh, how he could reminisce about those days, sitting in a pile of trash while reading that magazine. Troy had actually tried to get a subscription to it when he had first gotten knowledge of it. The subject had been fun for him, and it had made him want to know more.
However, being a young child without any dependable source of money was a hard reality for him. That had been core behind why he did it, wanting that magazine again and again. It came out once every two weeks, yet Troy was forced to look for it constantly.
Whoever had the actual subscription had been slow in reading it, taking between one and five days to go through it before throwing it out. Since the garbage was emptied every day, he had been forced to go through it constantly, if not just having to accept that he missed out on it.
Sometimes he would never get it, just looking through the dumpster every day until the new release was sent through. Troy did not mind too much, just wanting something out of it. The act of searching through the trash, finding that magazine, and then reading it for hours on end had become a pastime for him through a large part of his schooling.
Again, he did not gain incredibly much from it all. He might have learned some systems of language-detection, a few insights into the development of languages, and just a general idea of linguistics itself, yet that did almost nothing for his schooling. Nobody really cared if he knew a few words nobody else had heard of.
It was a pastime through and through, nothing gained for the future. He only lost valuable time that could have been used for so many other things, making him a wasteful child who could not understand the real world. Or, so had the words been spat out by somebody that Troy felt unhappy about ever getting to know.
He had not really cared what others had thought of it back then. It had been a fun time for him. And, there was never a moment during it that he had regretted. There might have been times where he was angry or sad, but those emotions flew away when he got himself some small amount of success in his hunts.
Those magazines did stop coming around after a year or so. Troy never did get an explanation for why this was. Maybe the one buying it lost interest in the magazine, maybe the realised how stupid it was to throw them away, or maybe they just moved away from the city. He would never know. And that was honestly fine with him. At that point, he had already found another source to get it from, having acquired a small book about the subject. Those might have been gotten through questionable means, but that part was really thought about. Adventures with his uncle were not a part of his childhood that he liked to remember.
Not that he ever needed to. Troy was always able to distract himself if the need called for it. Pastimes were not always for making time pass faster. For him at least, it was to distract himself from being bored. For when the mind was bored, it would do anything it possibly could to stop that. Thinking back to the past was the common tether.
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There were many things to do, even if he did not have a magazine to call his own. The training was one of them, as it allowed him something to do in his free time. Or, it could be a conversation with Adam, if that was still something that Dr Hale let him do. It wasn't, unfortunately. Yet, that did not matter, as there were many others as well. As one example more, there was-
“Almost freezing my balls off over here,” Charlie commented out of the blue, stopping the relaxed silence between the two that had been at a constant those last minute. “How about you?”
“Why would you start a conversation with that?” Troy said, completely ignoring everything else said by that muscular man. “What could possibly make you think that one-liner was a good idea?”
Here they were, comfortably relaxing after a good hour of beating their muscles into a pulp. Troy had been having a grand old time, just leaning back a little as the ice-box he was standing it its work perfectly. He might have had criticism about it before, yet the effects became more obvious when he got the time to really feel it. All the tension that had been slowly building itself up over the day could be felt diapering by the moment. Even his legs felt semi-normal. And he would have enjoyed them getting completely back to normal, if not for a certain somebody deciding to ruin that atmosphere by talking about his private parts.
“Hey, I'm just stating some straight facts over here,” Charlie defended, only able to turn his head over at him instead of the body. The thing with the therapy chambers was that they did not allow much space to move around. Troy did have it easier with his smaller body, but the muscular man did not have the same luxury. Touching the surface area of the inside directly was never a good idea, and Charlie was making sure that it wasn't happening to him. A wise choice, even if it did make him look a little silly. Troy was at least able to turn his body slightly so that the position wasn't too awkward to keep. “It's extremely cold here. You must have noticed that!”
“It's supposed to be cold, you stale piece of toast,” Troy fired back, not believing what he was hearing. “You have been using these things for years. How are you first noticing the temperature of these things now?”
“As a matter of fact, I have noticed that before,” Charlie said proudly as if that was something anybody should have felt proud of. It was more just the standard of things. It was well and good if they were able to feel the temperature, and extremely worrying if they weren't able to. There was no in-between with that. “I was just testing you.”
“... Are you bored?” Troy asked, suspicious of the man.
“Why would you ask that?” Charlie said, not answering the question stated. Suspicions arose even more.
“Just answer the question. Are. You. Bored,” Troy stated, slowly repeating himself to make sure that the man understood perfectly what was being asked of him. The young man did not want a sudden change in the subject, nor was there to be any sudden intrusions made.
“... A little,” Charlie confessed.
“I knew it!”
“Why is that even important for you to know?” Charlie asked back, sounding more accusatory than anything, firing along with anything that could come on the man's thoughts.
“I understand your confusion,” Troy said, doing his best to sound like the smart-ass constantly hiding inside him. It was rare for him to be an absolute prick without repercussions, and he would damn well use it to his fullest when he got the chance. “It's not something somebody who’s not a master at deduction would be able to figure out.”
“You're going with that? Okay. Pleasure, do continue,” Charlie answered, looking like he was just interested in how Troy was going to spill it all out. And the man would get what was coming to him because the young man would do his damn best at it. He had been practising in his off time!
“Last time we were in this position, we spent the entirety chatting gleefully about a variety of interesting subjects. We had fun and the time just flew by like it was never there, to begin with,” Troy began it off, Charlie nodding along as if he needed to understand it. “This time, however, we have spent our time in silence, just enjoying the sensation of our bodies getting to destress themselves after a long time spent working out. This has caused you to be bored.
But, and this is a very big but indeed, what do you normally do when I am not here? Do you have another person to chat up? While possible every few times, I do doubt that you had anybody here consistently. This must mean that you had some way to entertain yourself while stuck in these damned freezers. So in conclusion, where the hell are you hiding the tv-screen?”
A TV. That was the only solution to how the man could possibly withstand doing nothing for ten minutes while being extremely cold. Or… maybe Troy’s guess was slightly biased, the young man just having an extreme craving for digital entertainment options. Charlie unceasingly laughing in his general direction was pointing towards that being the case.
“You seriously thought that was it?” Charlie asked incredulously, not even trying to hide how absolutely stupid he found Troy to currently be. No offence was really taken, as it was understood why that might have been the case. “Honestly, you got the first few parts right, but how did you come to the idea that I just have a TV lying around somewhere to exclusively use for after fitness.”
“Well, what do you use to distract yourself then?” Troy challenged, still wanting to know just how man survived all those years. “There has to be something, right?”
“Oh, there most definitely is,” Charlie agreed, that big, wide, and dumb smile on his face, as if it just needed to be there to torment the young man for all of eternity. Troy was sure to have dreams about cracking a few teeth in soon. “But… I feel like not telling you will be more fun.”
Like pure magic, the clock above them rang out. They had spent their allotted time inside the machines and would need to step out into the normal air. The young man positively hated this messaged, having been too distracted to really feel the effects given to his limbs. Maybe next time it would be better.
The two momentarily paused in their jabbing, as the machines opened up for them to walk out of. A few seconds were spent getting their regular clothing back on. An unmentioned positive of the freezer was the cleaning of the body. While it did not do much for the hair, Troy just did it later. Being able to go away from the sweaty clothing was positive in itself.
“The reason for why you brought up TV,” Charlie began, the muscular man finally getting himself in his regular attire. Just like Troy’s own hair, the hair was still a bit stuffy, not having been properly. The two could each feel empathetic for their shared troubles in both mind and spirit. “If I am to guess, have you had some lacking entertainment options? Like, have you been given accommodation for getting the entertainment packages yet?”
“Accommodation for what now?” Troy asked, needing a repeat to be sure that he wasn't severely misunderstanding what was being said.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Charlie said. “Well, since you are clearly starved of modern television, do you wanna have a movie night? I don't have anything else on the schedule, and I really do doubt that anything will be popping up.”
“... Sounds fun,” Troy answered after very little internal deliberation. “Doesn't sound like anything that can go wrong.”
Troy felt weirdly relaxed about the fact that he was going to eat those words whole.