"Morning," Cal muttered back, wedged between restraining a grunt at the lift he was in the middle of. The lift became a bit suspended for a moment, though, as he took note of Worf's...approach and found it...interesting.

Well, maybe he'd warmed up before he got there. Either way, Cal resumed his lifting with the note to not pick a fight with this one. Not that he intended to pick a fight with anyone, of course, but it was good to have a list of who to avoid if he ever felt the urge.

"Hm?"

Cal, rarely aware of his occasional glances until they were brought up, was momentarily confused, causing another pause of his work as he figured it out.

"Oh. Uh, nothing, it's just...well," he presumed his lifts, "so much for a warm-up there."

Well, that abated that particular curiosity quite well. Cal nodded. "Well...good. Wouldn't want to pull a muscle or anything."

"A dashing hat," Cal corrected, unable to stop a wry grin at the bar as he repeatedly pushed it up away from him, and then brought it back in. "And, hey, glad to help. Even if, yeah, definitely turned out that fitting in? Was not the object of the workshop after all..."

That stopped Cal's lifts a little, blinking a bit at the bar before settling it into the holds before his arms refused to hold it like that much longer and crush his carefully sculpted chest. He stayed laying down on the bench, though, hands resting on his stomach as he looked up at Worf.

"You want help fitting in?"

And he was asking Ca--

...Okay, so, maybe, if one looked at the situation carefully, Cal was possibly one of the best people to ask about this, although he doubted Worf knew this. In his sixteen years, Cal had discovered himself apt at unconscious blending in, natural chameleon. No one, not even himself, had been none the wiser for fourteen years, and, in the past year, if anyone came close enough to notice, they were still shocked.

Snorting slightly, Cal rolled up to a sitting position, reaching for his water bottle. "Can't have that," he commented. "And, really, the appearance bit really isn't...that disruptive, so long as you don't mind people boggling at the head thing. I mean, there are a lot of freaks out there in the world, they're just few and far between, which makes them at least passing-glance noticeable. And we've already covered that it's easily taken care of by hiding it. Your manner, however...now, if anything's going to start an interstellar incident..."

"It's just that you're a bit on the...you know," Cal shrugged a shoulder, "hard-edge side. Not too terribly personable. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you're looking to not cause undue attention, you might want to look into that a bit, too."

Cal hid his slight grin a little with a sip from his water bottle. "Shows how much work we've got to do," he said. "But, no, you've actually gotten a lot better since the first time we met, that's for sure, which shows you can get better, but at the same time, I have no idea how you are with other people, either, and I'm a fairly easy guy to get along with."

Assuming certain topics weren't ever brought up, is all.

After a moment to consider if he dared chance it and deciding that, hey, Worf came to him for help, so he was going to get it and if Worf wanted to get all grumpy blah-blah I'm a warrior and a Klingon and proud about it, well, then, he shouldn't have asked Cal's opinion.

"New clothes," he said, "might not hurt, either. Not that that's anything wrong with what you wear, but, you know, in certain situations...clothes can really determine a lot about how people respond to you."

Cal needed a moment to try to remember the girl's name, a series of thoughts that landed him, ultimately, at a flower in the hair and Chapter Eleven's exgirlfriend and recollection.

"Morning, River," he greeted congenially, and passively, in a way that neither of their workout would be interrupted.

Cal partially blamed the nice, casual approach to working out today for his unusual chattiness. "That bag," he observed lightly outloud, "has got to be insanely well made to hold through all the beatings I've noticed it gets."

"Very true," Cal said, "but inanimate objects," like tractor wheels, for instance, "can still pack quite a punch back. Around here, I'm just half waiting for the moment that things becomes animate and seeks revenge..."

This place, really, was doing wonders for Cal's creativity.

It was also making him regret having landed those few soft, pathetic punches and kicks on the bag when he first came in. Maybe, hopefully, it was the comparative equivalent of a nice massage, considering what it was used to.

It seemed an odd question to Cal. "Why does anyone work out?" he asked in response. "To stay fit. To build muscle."

There were, of course, other, less general reasons why Cal himself did it, that he figured weren't so general. Muscle to hide the lingering touches that his estrogen had wrangled into his feminine form. Muscle to perhaps one day be able to do more than just clench up at the knees as estrogen made him protect that most delicate area during an assault. Muscle to build because building muscle released more of the testosterone he craved.

"You don't need to work out just for movement," Cal pointed out. He wasn't trying to be antagonistic, merely...observant.

"Aw, see," Cal said, smiling back a little although his eyes were on his lifting so he hadn't actually noticed River's smile. "And swimming's a lot nicer on the poor punching bag."

He tried to remember the last time he'd really gone swimming; he wondered if the tank that made Octopussy's Garden at the Sixty-Niners counted; if it did, that would be it. If it didn't, it would have been the Object's family's cabin in Petosky, where he didn't so much as swim as just hide his self-consciousness in the water as he failed to ignore the Object in a bikini.

Cal shrugged as well as he could in his current state of pumping iron. "It's all right, I guess," was his answer, while his mind was left wondering how he'd really feel about swimming after all the things he could associate with water, all sexuality and death and embarrassment.

But he didn't say no. Cal didn't say yes, either, though, for that matter. He simply rather sharply diverted himself away from any invitation from anyone on something that was, for most people, something simple but, for him, was one of the gateways into intimacy, put up a wall, and send his attention lightly over toward River's current position.

"Show-off," he muttered, slightly teasing, although admittedly a bit fascinated, definitely impressed.

Cal's grin at the bar holding his weights was a little wry, a little sad; it was unfortunate that River seemed to want some sense of finality to the whole thing, that he couldn't have just left it there and unanswered, just so he wouldn't have to give the inevitable answer.

"A no," he told her, hesitant and regretful but also relieved. "Sorry. I don't swim much any more."

"I don't really do much," Cal admitted. "This," he said, indicating his work out, "that play in town, work. I write a little. Nothing good or substantial. I smoke too much. Think too much."

There was a pause, filled to the brim with thoughts, especially for how short it was, that probably only made that last statement overly simplistic.

"That's about it, really."

The easier question would be what didn't he think about. Himself, the world, the people in it, his past, his present, his future. The call of the Muse and the cynicism of Fate, his mutated extra gene on a critical chromosome that left him either half a man or a monster of a female, of unfulfilled longing, perpetual longing, of red hair and blonde hair and brown hair, of fingers that itched to touch but resolved themselves not to. Of clothing that would always smell used and his naive forgetfulness of the dangers of cars and the people who drove them. Of Greek food and Greek tradition and Greek tragedy, of husbands who were brothers and wives who were sisters, matrimony of cousins and their manifestation. Of how he no longer had hair to nervously chew as he hid behind it, and, besides, it made his hair smell when he did that, and whether or not he smelled now and didn't realize it, of receding hairlines and waxing moustaches one minute and wishing he could grow one in the next. Of...

He shrugged a little again. "You know. Just stuff. Nothing interesting."

The giggling quirked Cal's eyebrow slightly, as did the statement matched up with her movements.

"So can be that which surrounds the mind," he mused.