Welcome to Gaia! ::

He took one long leg, stretched it out in front of him, and leaned forward. Holding that for ten seconds, Richard switched legs and repeated the stretch. Straightening his posture, he bounced on the balls of his feet, stretching his arms forward, behind him, and windmilling them. The moon was nice and bright and full and the night clear, so he wouldn't even really need a flashlight as long as he was smart about where he ran. He had reflective striping on his sweatpants anyway.

He was an insomniac, not an idiot.

One, two, three, bounce bounce... He didn't want to stretch too much, knowing that being too limber pre-workout would actually make him more prone to getting hurt if he slipped, so he refrained from continuing and forced himself to start off at what was--at first--an easy lope. Most of his height was in his legs, so he was covering a considerable amount of ground even at this pace. And so, once he felt he was sufficiently warmed up, Richard increased his speed to a faster jog. This had his breath coming faster, though he probably could still hold a conversation without any difficulty.

Conversation was what occurred to him when he squinted into the distance at what he thought was a form and saw that, indeed, there seemed to be someone else out on the streets. Instinctively, his mind flashed to muggers, et cetera, but he thought maybe this person was busy doing something. He couldn't tell from this distance, but they certainly didn't seem to be holding still, at any rate. Should... he be worrying?

Again, there were thoughts of muggers in his head.

For now, he decided to keep on his course. He'd... deal with that if he had to.

Richard was, admittedly, relieved when he got closer to see that the person off in the distance was a young woman who also looked to be out for a jog. He'd been able to see some of her stretching as he got closer, and he wondered for a moment if he should avert course so as not to make her nervous. He was still moving at his previous pace, so not actually running, and his concerns were allayed when she, after what seemed like a while to him, gave a polite wave. Reflexively, he raised a hand and waved back even as she turned. Had she seen it? He couldn't really be sure, but she didn't seem to be too concerned if she was turning around, so he kept going the way he'd been moving.

Even still, he shifted his path just enough to put a few feet between them in advance of--he figured, anyway--passing her in a minute or so. It was only polite, and with no one around, there was really no point to crowding her. Sure, the city was big enough that there were vehicles fairly frequently, but even then there was more than enough sidewalk and easement space should someone just happen to drive by as he went to pass the other person.

That was, admittedly, probably a huge "if".

Still though, as he got close enough for his voice to carry without outright yelling at her, he called out, "Hello! On your left!"

As he drew up alongside her, Richard reflexively matched her pace for a moment, his strides turning shorter and quicker. Though they were sharing the same area of sidewalk, there was probably a good couple feet between them. Neither of them were very broad--though Richard's shoulders had finally filled out a bit in the last couple years--so it wasn't hard to keep from bumping into her.

That being said, he hadn't missed the polite--not necessarily open and gregarious--nature of her smile. There was certainly the element present of him being a guy she didn't recognize running around at night. Richard was more than aware of what that could mean to a lot of women; while he, himself, was nowhere near a threat, there were plenty of men that were. There were plenty of reasons for women to think he was. His parents had always been careful to explain to their sons that people couldn't always tell they had good intentions, and not to take it personally if someone got nervous.

He'd keep it light, he'd keep it polite.

"Nice night, yeah?" If she didn't want to engage, he'd just speed back up and keep going, is all. He was fine running alone, too.

He relaxed when she responded to him, flashing her a grin for a moment when she mentioned the stars. "Yeah, it'd be nice to have something other than streetlights." Then again, if there were that many stars visible, Richard had to admit he might be unnerved by it. He'd lived his whole life in a big city, after all. The tall buildings and perpetual light in some sectors were just part of the background radiation. So if he were out under the open sky, with thousands of stars visible, it might feel a little too open.

But then again, he'd seen pictures and--one day--would like to experience that for himself. The panorama of, not thousands but billions of stars stretching overhead, from horizon to horizon, with maybe even the Milky Way visible...

That would be really cool.

"Oh, uh, just out for a run," he finally remembered to respond. "I do this a lot if I can't sleep. You?"

He laughed, understanding very well what she meant. "I do not miss grade anxiety, let me tell you." Though that had been something nice about his Master's as opposed to his Bachelor's--fewer classes meant fewer tests to study for, and a lot of them were pretty narrow-scope anyway that they'd been easier to study for than say... calculus. Calculus had been a beast. He did not miss calculus 2 and the endless derivations and integrations and just what the hell was a Taylor or Maclaurin series anyway? Integral of sine "x" times the arc-cosine of "y", quantity squared, u-substitution...

Calculus 3 had been also a beast, but not the kind of beast the second semester had been.

Anyway.

"I don't always jog alone," he shrugged. "Sometimes my boyfriend comes with, but he was tired tonight." He was tired a lot, lately, it seemed. It did worry Richard sometimes, but Ignacio always insisted he was fine, so... Though Richard wasn't... always sure about that... "I always run really loud on the treadmills," he confessed with a short laugh. "So I figure out here there's no gym staff to give me a dirty look." He didn't do it on purpose! But he was tall, and height and lean muscle added weight, so he wasn't exactly 100 pounds, either.

"What's your major?" Wait... was she a high school student or just beginning college? Richard was bad with ages.

Astrophysics! His eyebrows shot up toward his hairline and he let out a long, low whistle punctuated only by the whuffs of air as he breathed out in time with his footfalls. She deserved that proud grin, she really did. "That's really impressive, geez." And he meant it. Perhaps it was for the best that she'd resisted the slightly salacious comment, as he was able to focus on being impressed instead of on sputtering. Finding out she was far enough along in college to have declared an astrophysics major also adjusted her age mentally in his mind, and he nudged his estimation upward a couple ticks.

"Hey, running is a better sedative than a lot of other options," he agreed. He had had to be on anxiety medicine as a kid, for a few years anyway, and it had always made him super tired. He could appreciate ways of sleeping that didn't involve medication. His aforementioned boyfriend's medication sometimes also made him tired, or out of it, and Richard could always tell he wasn't happy about it when it happened. That didn't mean Richard eschewed medication, but... it was nice sometimes to not have to fight off the effects of an actual medicinal sedative. "So how many years do you have left? Before your doctorate and all."

"Uh... I think mine was three semesters?" he squinted at nothing as he tried to remember. He had just gotten it, so, uh... how long had he been in school for it...? He'd also done an accelerated program, partly due to the experience he had already had. It had waived a couple of the interpersonal training classes for him to have been his mother's right hand man. He already knew how to deal with people on a professional basis. Work experience waivers were pretty nice, honestly... "I think it depends--business majors probably don't have as much Master's coursework as astrophysics." His tone was good natured. "Your doctorate's gonna need you to get published, though, so that's what's really going to take some time."

There was a reason Richard was not pursuing a doctorate, aside from it not really offering him any benefit to be "Doctor Bell".

"I dunno if it'd take til your mid-thirties, though, if you get signed on at a good research place or university position." A couple of Richard's peers had become "Doctor so-and-so" while he was there, and he'd congratulated a couple of his TAs on their successful doctorate thesis defenses, and they were all still in their twenties, so there was that. Granted, he had a lot of overlap with doctors-to-be in some of his classes, especially given what he chose for his electives.

"Sounds like you're still pretty into it, though?"

"Well, better late than never," he offered with a small smile in return to her lamenting her lateness, and was more than willing to let it go when she seemed to want to move the conversation onto a different topic. Richard had known nontraditional students coming back to school in their late twenties, their thirties, forties, even later, so she was hardly running out of time. But he knew she might not see it that way and so was quiet about it. Plus, they'd only just met, so it wouldn't exactly be proper for Richard to become the "you can do it!" pep rally leader--it would probably be weird and overbearing, honestly. She was just out on a run and trying to relax. She didn't need some guy she'd never met trying to convince her that he knew enough about her to tell her it'd be fine.

Or something like that, anyway.

He did notice her hair, and what she said next, combined with what she was wearing, honestly made a lot of sense. "That's a pretty name," he agreed, "and very fitting." His was just Richard Arra Bell, which... well, his first name was pretty standard. His middle name was something from his father's side of the family, a great-great-great-grandfather's name from north Africa, or something. The one who had emigrated and settled in Greece, he was pretty sure. He would have to ask his father. His father tracked all of that sort of thing, and he would know who had what kid when and where.

Anyway.

"Is there a certain sub-field in astrophysics you're going into?"