"This whole year has been rotten," Solomon Rites grumbled to his boyfriend and workout partner, Tyson Hurts, as they made their way into the gym in the Claw Coliseum for what was supposed to be a daily workout session.
But the whole pandemic had interrupted that. Even before converting into Animalians, with Solomon becoming a Nile Monitor Lizard, and Tyson becoming a Green Anole, they'd had issues with the Covid 19 Pandemic. The pair had often competed against each other in various body building contests and had done fairly well. It became fairly friendly competition when they both found out they had other interests besides body building. Thus when they trained together they found that they were also into each other in more ways then one, and from there, dates, dinners, and more adult encounters followed. The competitions had no problem with that, so long as they passed drug inspections and there was no indication that their relationships affected their performance, and that wasn't a problem.
The problem came with the Covid 19 pandemic. Many of their competitions got cancelled, particularly early on and those that were held they often couldn't make it to because of either travel restrictions or other gyms putting restrictions on access to train or prepare while waiting. Politics made it worse, and made both of them supportive of the now outgoing administration. They could understand the arguments for health and safety, but they also knew that economics was ultimately something that needed to be the prime concern as as good economic thinking would be the way that would save the people form the problems that came from Covid 19. It was partially why both had been life long Libertarians. As the politics of both major parties hurt them in some way, particularly when it came to the responses to the pandemic.
That in turn lead to them joining Animalia, as they hadn't appeared to have closed things down as much as other places. There was also the hope that Animalians would be immune to the pandemic and thus things could go on as normal. That soon got depressed when reports came in over the summer and early autumn that Animalians, including those that were uplifted animals could contract the virus. That made many of the other sorts of limitations that had hit them before something that was still limiting them. It was frustrating for both Solomon and Tyson as it meant they also found there were restrictions in Animalia too, limiting how often they could work out and thus work on their competition. And this included having to set up times to work out.
"Not completely rotten," Tyson said slowly, "one nincompoop's been voted out and there will be some hope that things will get better..."
"The new nincompoop isn't a Libertarian," Solomon answered, "and being smarter than the guy who's there doesn't say much."
"We'll have to take what good news we can," Tyson responded again.
Solomon nodded in accepting that and returned to doing his sets of curls while Tyson was doing squats at his area. They were close enough to talk, but still far enough away to follow the restrictions and safe distancing that the gym had put in with their rules. Some good news was better than nothing. Both were frustrated with things, but some were things beyond their control and there was some reports of good news coming. The reported vaccines, at least the Human vaccine was coming. That was good news, and they continued to work out for awhile more before switching positions and taking the hand wipes to "clean" what their partner had been working with. As they got started with the new reps, the main door opened and another pair of lizard Animalians came in. The exact species were an unknown to Solomon and Tyson, but they came in and moved toward a set of treadmills.
"Coming in to stay warm?" the female asked to Solomon and Tyson with a small waive before moving to set the program for the treadmill.
"The weather hasn't been too bad," Solomon commented, "Tyson and I have seen more snow in Maine around this time of year... at least in a normal year."
"Yeah... I'm not sure there's going to be much snow here this winter," the male said with a sigh, "which can be helpful for the reptile and amphibian Animalians, but not so much for the mammal Animalians, and particularly the small number of those that are based on Pleistocene mammals."
The female nodded and looked to Tyson and Solomon, "I'm Melissa and this is Andre."
"I'm Tyson and this is my boyfriend, Solomon," Tyson spoke, "we're mostly here to work out..."
"Us too... build up some activity, stay fit," Melissa answered.
"Melissa..." Solomon said slowly and tapping one foot, "weren't you the one that got hurt in a train wreck?"
"Motorcycle," Melissa corrected, "but converting healed all that up and I've been able to get started again... move on to new things and do the things I've liked again."
"And what did you two convert for?" Andre commented, noting Solomon and Tyson's hair. Tyson's hair was rather short with its blonde color contrasting with his green scales while Solomon had dark brown hair that was fairly long and done back in a pony tail.
"Part of it was try and keep working and performing," Solomon commented, "we've commented in some professional body building competition and made relatively decent winnings in places. Not enough to get into "Mr. Universe," but enough to live by. Then came Covid and all our normal meets either got cancelled and because many gyms got closed in lock downs and that hurt our ability to then compete in the competitions that didn't get cancelled."
"But Animalians seemed to avoid a lot of it... and back during the IAC a few years back, a pair of lizard Animalians won the team competition," Tyson added, "So... we figured why not. We'd at least get a chance at a new start."
"As different species of lizard," Melissa said slowly.
"Well... last I heard two men couldn't have children together," Solomon grumbled, "so that wasn't an issue. And I think we both look good, and now we wouldn't necessarily be competing directly against each other. Though we didn't expect Animalia to be hit by all the Covid panic too."
"Well... it was found that Animalians can catch Covid 19," Andre commented, "we can heal from it okay, but we can still catch it. And since Lyre still has a good sized Human population, and Horizon Light has had to take on overflow Covid patients from the rest of northern Nevada, there's some element of "better to be safe than sorry." You know?"
Solomon and Tyson slowly nodded, though they were ready for all of that stuff to end. It had interrupted a lot of their year and their plans, and it seemed like just about everything had been hit hard by the pandemic. They could understand he base reasoning, and particularly as so many people seemed to insist on being irresponsible, which would only lead others to over react to things.
"Hopefully these vaccines start getting things under control," Solomon commented, "get things back to normal."
"Hopefully," Melissa spoke, "it'll take awhile before the Animalian version of the vaccines are ready... but that's a different issue. Once the Human vaccines start getting distributed, things will start to get better and everyone can return to normal safely."
"That's what we're hoping for," Tyson agreed, "along with a sexy male lizard Animalian under the Christmas tree..."
Melissa and Tyson didn't comment on that, as it was clearly something that was more between Tyson and Solomon than them. Though, they were glad to meet some new people and have some pleasant conversation, even if much of it was gripping about the frustrations of the year.