365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Exercising

10/9/19

Yusei was really regretting not keeping up a regular work-out routine the next morning, to say the least. He wasn't completely out-of-shape of course, hell he was still in a lot better shape than a lot of people, but compared to Judai?

He had a long way to go to come even close to keeping up with him. Granted, it really wasn't fair at all to compare himself to Judai, who was half-duel monster and had enough stamina to keep himself going for literal days, but he wanted to at least be able to keep up a little bit.

"Come on Yus, you can do it!" Judai called encouragingly, stopping a couple yards ahead of him to wait for him to catch up, "We've almost done two whole laps around, then we'll take a break!"

If he had the breath, Yusei would've snapped back some sort of witty remark, but as it was all he could do was focus on regulating his breathing and attempting to ignore the stitch in his side from jogging around the biggest park in the city, which had about a half-mile circumference - hence, they were running two laps to make it a full mile. He'd been fine for the first lap, but towards the start of the second he started to feel the burn and slowed down significantly, though Judai was quick to notice and help him set a better pace to try and stay at.

Luckily it only took another minute to reach their initial starting point and when he got there, he only barely managed to stay standing because he knew logically that it was better to walk around to cool off after running rather than sit or lie down because it'd help the muscles stretch out, having a far lesser chance of cramping as a result. If it weren't for that though, he'd probably have either flopped down onto the bench nearby or Judai himself (he was short enough for that and it greatly appealed to him as he could imagine how cutely he'd complain about it if he did).

"Five minutes, then we'll do another lap around and call it a morning," Judai said, patting him on the back lightly with a sympathetic but amused grin on his face.

"You're lucky I love you," Yusei muttered in reply, taking deep breaths to try and calm down the adrenaline pounding uncomfortably through his system as he paced around slowly back and forth. Judai leaned against the back of the bench and simply watched him, his grin never fading and only mellowing out a little bit to be more fond than anything else.

"Out of curiosity, how much could you run before?" Judai asked after a while, putting his chin in his hand as he looked up at the sky in thought, "I know you said three miles before, taking your time and all, but now that you've got an actual comparison for it what would you say it was?"

"Still three miles - having to trek back and forth for parts all the time and occasionally having to run from either turf wars or sector security was great for keeping in shape," Yusei answered, finally feeling like he'd caught his breath back and was cooling down enough to have a level head again and stop pacing; he leaned on the bench next to Judai instead, leaning in such a way that his head was low enough to rest it on his shoulder with a relieved sigh.

"Mmm... you're sweaty, y'know that?"

"Deal with it, you're a good pillow."

"I'd have thought it'd be uncomfortable to lean on me when you're like that 'cause of how warm I am to you."

"Having a headrest beats out any downsides to this, Judai."

Judai laughed at that one, wrapping an arm around him to pull him closer and leaning down to press a short kiss to his forehead, "Well, either way don't get too comfy, we're going again in about another minute or so."

Yusei'd take what he could get though, so he tiredly wrapped his arms around him to hopefully soak up some of that positive, not-tired energy Judai had for himself. Before he could really start to settle in though, Judai nudged him up and off the bench with another quiet chuckle, starting to set the pace again with Yusei following right behind as he felt the stitch in his side start to fade back into existence.

If I have to go through this every morning I'm going to get something else out of it too, Yusei thought dryly to himself in between focusing on his breathing and making sure Judai was still in front of him at a close distance and not super far ahead of him. The question was, what should he do about it?

...Fuck it, he was going to need to shower after this and so was Judai, so he might as well drag him with him. It might backfire occasionally of course and end up making him even more tired, but at least for today he was going to pull as many tricks in the book as possible to make sure it ended with him being victorious.

The thought was good enough to get him through the rest of the lap and all the way back home, at least.