"I am telling you, Duke, this is a bad idea..." Jess started, not wanting Duke to go running off like this, especially when things were like they were right now. She swore ever since this had happened he was reacting to their youthened state the worst, his aged and newfound young mental states synergizing into a downright impulsive person.
"I...I just NEED to go workout, Jess. If I wanna eventually grow back up into a football stud, I gotta get my start early." Duke was also feeling suspicious, though he did not say anything, like the presence of the Lots was making his mind acclimate to his body. Making him feel younger.
She responded, "But do you need to go to Tony's place? Like you said when you were older, that place is---"
Duke remembered what he had said about the place one time, and his mind wandered to the idea. "...Don't worry, I'll be careful."
He headed out to retrieve some lost and found clothes, coming back and smiling at Jess in a tank top and shorts that actually fit him now, along with some street clothes in a bag. She just nodded and said, "Just don't make any big mistakes, Duke."
With that Duke headed out, running along - Tony's gym, Star Fitness, was not too far away, in fact that was most of why he was so eager to go there. What was less awesome about it was the fact that there were oodles of steroids going around in that place. Entering the front door, Duke shyly introduced himself and asked if he could get an intro pass to the gym. Not like they'd believe he was who he was.
The front desk lady, who young Duke was almost immediately overwhelmed by in terms of her attractiveness, guided Duke over to the exercises and let him do some workouts. She seemed impressed when he could use the 45 lbs bar by himself, and even up it by 5 lbs. Duke was finally feeling stronger, like he was improving, like he was moving up! 10 lbs however he could only get to 8 reps, before his body couldn't take much more.
The desk lady asked, "Are you by any chance on a sports team, little guy?"
"Oh yeah," Duke answered with a smile, "I'm on a Junior High Football Team."
"You'll make Varcity some day," she said as she guided him along, "I can tell."
Duke wanted to say he had already made Varcity once already, but figured there was no point in weirding her out about this whole thing. Duke found himself really enjoying the time there, especially because of the desk lady, who seemed kind and helped him thru any trouble he had. He just hoped his young hormones didn't act up.
Heading to the locker room after, Duke was patted on the shoulder by an older man named Jay, "Nice going out there. Really refreshing that the young generation isn't as a whole a childhood obesity case. Keep going and I think you've got a great future ahead of you."
"Don't I know it..." Duke murmured to himself. As he took a seat to change into his street clothes, he saw it on the floor. As usual from what he remembered, the steroid heads of Tony's place were rich enough and careless enough to leave their stuff all over the place; the new stuff was transdermic patches with applied gel. Less risk from injection. With just as strong effects as when the drugs were applied via a needle.
Duke thought about it for a moment, looking left and right before pocketing all ten patches in his hoodie's pockets. He personally despised using steroids, and he'd never been into it when he was Varcity. But...now, as a younger man, he was so much weaker, so much more insecure...even though he'd tried to tell himself he picked em up to turn them in to the right people, his mind was now constantly on his new acquisition.
He walked right out the front door with them, and breathed. No explosion of activity. No person running up to scold him. Duke thought from here about what to do...