Jocelyn Klaes || Hel (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tohelandback) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} paxletalelogs,@ 2017-06-08 13:17:00 |
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Who: Jocelyn and Max, then Jocelyn and Nishka
What: The newest student arrives early to self-defense class.
Where: Pax Letale’s Gym, then Apartment 201
When: backdated to May 22nd
Jocelyn waited in the gym area for the self-defense teacher to arrive. She was early, but that was by design - she wanted to have a chance to speak with the instructor before class started. She wandered around the area for a bit, before finally sitting down on the ground to start stretching.
Her day had started with a bit of a panic, as she realized that none of her old exercise outfits fully covered the scarring on her upper torso and arm. She hadn’t regularly gone to the gym since the attack - and hadn’t thought to replace anything prior to moving to California. A trip to the store had fixed that, and had even located a foundation makeup that wouldn’t run from the sweating she expected to be doing this afternoon.
Max arrived with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder not long after, humming some peppy tune to herself as she headed over to the class area. “Hey!” she greeted the new girl on the floor and doing a few stretches. “I’m Max; are you here for the class? If not, you’re welcome to join,” she added with a smile and a once-over. She was small and young, and immediately triggered the protective ‘you need to learn to defend yourself’ instinct that seemed to be innate in Max. She’d had the same feeling the first time she met Isobel, and now the woman was a regular.
She set her bag down against the wall and then started pulling mats off the pile nearby, laying them over the hard floor to prepare for class.
“Actually, I am,” Jocelyn replied with a smile as she stood up and moved to help lay out the mats. “Here for class, I mean. My name is Jocelyn - I just moved in a few weeks ago.”
She lifted a mat from the pile, and started to walk it over towards Max. “Actually, I came a bit early, because I wanted to talk to you before we started.”
Max paused in lifting the next mat, looking up at her instead. “Ohh, okay,” she said with a pleasant smile. She’d have to get Jocelyn to fill out their form for new students, but she’d get to that later. “What can I do for you?” she asked her, looking her over a little more carefully.
“I just wanted to warn you that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it through the whole class. I was-” attacked was the word she couldn’t bring herself to say, and so she hesitated, hand moving unconsciously to her neck as she searched for the right word. She took a deep breath and started again. “I was in the hospital for most of the past year, and I’m...well, I guess I’m not sure how good my stamina is these days.”
Max smiled at her, relieved that it seemed to be something relatively simple. “Don’t worry about it,” she assured her, “now that I know I can keep an eye on you in class, we won’t push you beyond what you can handle. I actually have a form you need to fill out before class that asks for details like that, if you have any conditions we need to know about to make sure you’re safe here.” She thought of Nish having to be benched for a few weeks until she got the all clear from her doctor because of her heart - she was back in to things, fully participating again, but Max was still keeping a mothering eye on her all the same.
She moved to unzip her duffel bag and pulled out a clipboard from the bottom, flipping it open and producing a pen for her out of nowhere. “Here you go, I promise we’re not trying to stalk you - we just need contact information in case a class is canceled or moved, emergency contact in case something happens, and medical information because we need to know if you’re gonna pass out on us or not,” she said, trying to keep it light, but not compromising on the rules. She had liability to think about.
Josie smiled at Max. “That’s sorta the reason I wanted to talk to you. So you could keep an eye on me.” She reached for the clipboard and pen. “I just wanted to talk about it before anyone else arrived - I’m not really comfortable with people knowing the details right now…”
Max smiled reassuringly at her, “don’t worry, nobody here needs to know your business except me and my lovely assistant.”
She kicked off her shoes and nudged them out of the way, before sitting down one one of the already placed mats and looking over the paperwork. It seemed reasonably similar to the paperwork she was used to back in Toronto - just a different dialect of legalese, really. She clicked the pen open and started writing in a precise block script, filling out each of the sections in turn. She hesitated when she got to the medical portion of the paperwork - where it asked for her recent medical history. She tapped the pen against the clipboard, the sound shifting from random to rhythmic and back again, before writing:
Well, that was true enough. But it probably wasn’t what Max would be more worried about. She hesitated again, then on the next line wrote:
EXTENSIVE 3RD DEGREE BURNS - FACE, NECK, TORSO, L. ARM
She sighed as she clicked the pen shut. Seeing it written like that, in such coldly clinical terms, was difficult. It seemed almost laughingly insufficient to explain the nightmare that had been the last year of her life, but...there it was.
“All right, I think I did that right,” she said, as she handed the clipboard back to Max.
Max took the clipboard from her and took a look through it, skimming until she got to the medical information and reading that a bit more carefully. She nodded and kept her expression neutral until she was done, noting that another resident, Nishka, was her emergency contact, which was convenient, and then flipping the clipboard closed.
“Alright, thanks for this,” she said with a friendly smile. “You’re not still experiencing pain from the scar-tissue that would make participating uncomfortable?” she asked casually, not wanting to make a big deal out of it for her.
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Jocelyn replied, relieved that Max wasn’t going to press for more details. “But I haven’t really done anything where I need to push myself, since physical therapy ended.”
Max nodded, “Okay, well if you do you let me know, okay? We don’t want people in pain unless it’s from Daniel’s jokes,” she said with a grin. “Also we do a lot of holds in the class, to teach you how to break out of them. A lot of people with PTSD can find that a bit much for them. Just let me or Daniel know if you’re starting to feel the walls close in and we’ll pull you aside for something else. No matter what we’re doing, don’t feel that you have to do it.”
Jocelyn nodded. “I will.” Truth be told, she’d rather not be trying to do this in a group full of strangers. But she needed to learn it - would have been far better if she had learned it a year or more ago! - and at least Max seemed pleasant enough to work with. “Thank you.”
She looked around. “Is there anything else you need help setting up?”
Max’s smile brightened, “Sure, you can help me spread out the mats...my lazy assistant should be here to help, but he’s probably just gonna show up at class time,” she said with an eyeroll, though it was more fond than annoyed.
She headed back to the stack of mats and pulled one down, lacing the flap with the one already on the floor to make a solid soft surface. “So I saw that Nish is your emergency contact...are you two family?” she asked curiously. “She comes here too, I’m assuming she referred you…”
“Sort of…” Jocelyn replied, as she went to grab another mat to bring to Max. “Her parents and my dad were good friends. She used to babysit me, and I think of her as a big sister. She’s a few years older than me, so we kind of lost track of each other once she went off to college.”
Max’s brows rose a little in interest. “Wow, that must be nice to be close by again then,” she said. Max had no experience with that kind of family friendship, having grown up all over the US at different army bases because of her father. And then because of her own choices. But it was nice to know that those sorts of relationships existed...to be so close as friends that you were family. If only her own family was that close, but it was only her father, and he wasn’t much of a father to her anymore.
“She was really surprised when I showed up at her office a few weeks ago. I…” she laughed, softly. “Well, I hadn’t exactly warned her that I was moving her way. I’d been in Toronto for the last decade or so.”
Mac’s brows rose. “Wow...and you haven't seen her in all that time? And you were still friends?” It was sort of a foreign concept to her that that could happen the only friendship she had that was similar was with Daniel, but that had been a little different. Or...maybe not. She shrugged and grabbed another mat. “So maybe you two can partner up when she gets here,” Max continued, “she's been here a while, she can be a good guide for you.”
Jocelyn laughed. “Great! After a decade away, I can finally get back to being the obnoxious little sister who tags along everywhere.” To be fair, she hadn’t spent too much time with Nishka since moving into her own apartment. Her friend was too busy with work and art class and dating to be around too much. She made a note to invite Nishka over for dinner some night soon.
Max laughed happily at the idea, shifting the last mat into place just as people started to filter into the room.
With Daniel out of commission because of his recent broken bones, she chose someone from among the students to be her guinea pig for the class. As she was asking for volunteers, Nish arrived and immediately spotted the newcomer to the group. “Jo?” she asked, coming up behind her with a smile. “Hey, how are you doing?”
“Hey, Nish!” Jocelyn replied as she turned to greet her friend with a smile and a hug. “I just thought I should start getting back into shape, and I thought this would be a good way to do it.” She looked momentarily concerned. “Do you mind? I mean, if you don’t want me here, I can go somewhere else…”
“What? No, you don’t have to go somewhere else,” she laughed, elbowing her gently in the arm. “We can pair up, looks like everyone else has already,” she said glancing at the group that was starting to coalesce on the mats. When she caught her eye, Max gestured for the two of them to come closer onto the mats and Nish led Jo to a spot where they’d have some room.
“So I don’t know how many of you already know, but Daniel is out of commission for a while due to a broken arm and leg,” Max announced. There were various sounds of concern and shock around the room, and Nish’s eyebrows rose in surprise too, though she resolved to text Daniel later to find out what happened. “Yeah I know, you’re stuck with me for the class...I’ll have to borrow someone to show the new move we’re gonna work on. Any volunteers? I promise not to bite…” there was a smattering of snickers, but no hands went up. Nish glanced around her and then shrugged, lifting her hand, smirking across the room at Max.
All in all, the class went better than Jocelyn expected. In fact, she almost made it through the whole thing - nearly three quarters, at least - before her muscles started trembling from over-exertion while she was in the middle of attempting to break out of the hold Nishka had on her. She tapped twice on her friend’s arm, and panted out “Hold on.” She was breathing heavily, and drenched in sweat.
Nish took the hint and nodded, glancing up at Max who nodded and then pulling Jocelyn over to the side where she could sit and take a breath. “Here,” she said, handing her the water bottle she’d brought with you. “That’s a lot for your first time; you did great,” she said with an encouraging smile, sitting in the chair next to her. She checked her watch and nodded to herself. “We’re almost done anyway. Why don’t you catch your breath and we can have tea or something at my place...Bear misses you,” she added with a smirk.
Jocelyn hesitated, the pause almost mistakable for being out of breath, then took a long drink of the offered water. “Actually, I haven’t had dinner yet, so I’m absolutely famished. How about you come to my place and I’ll throw something together? You haven’t really been by to see the place since all my furniture arrived.”
Nish grinned and nodded, “sure, that sounds great...I’ll never turn down an opportunity to have someone cook for me,” she joked. She glanced over at the rest of the class who were finishing up on practicing the new move, some already starting to pack up their things in anticipation of the end of class. She kept an eye on Josie, waiting until she seemed more or less back to normal, and then stood, offering a hand to her and waving cheerfully at Max as they headed out of the gym.
“So what do you think of the class so far?” she asked her as they walked towards the elevators.
“I think I have a lot of catching up to do!” Jocelyn responded with a smile, as she reached out to hit the elevator call button. Normally, she wouldn’t dream of using the elevator to only go up one floor, but she was exhausted. “Going to have to spend more time in the gym between classes, I think.”
Nish smiled softly, “you’ll get used to it. Don’t be so hard on yourself; you just recovered from a major trauma not too long ago,” she pointed out, stepping into the elevator when the doors opened and hitting the ‘2’ for her. “You did great, by the way,” she added with a little bump of her shoulder on Jocelyn’s.
“Thanks,” Jocelyn replied with a tired smile. The elevator dinged and opened onto her floor, and she turned to walk down the hall towards her apartment, fishing her keys out of her pants as she went.
She opened the door and waved her friend in. “Looks a little less like a disaster zone these days, doesn’t it?” She walks through the small kitchen to peer into the refrigerator. “Anything you don’t eat these days, Nish?”
Nish grinned to herself and then shrugged in an unconcerned way. “Human flesh,” she said casually, though there was a hint of a smirk tugging at her lips. “I’m actually pretty easy to please when it comes to food,” she confessed, leaning one hip against the counter as she watched Josie fish through the fridge. “Jen is actually taking it as her personal mission to teach me cooking skills, so any meal I don’t have to figure out for myself it great,” she said with the same hint of humour.
Rafe had tried teaching her some cooking skills before, and she’d enjoyed it as more time together with him, rather than enjoying the cooking itself. Jen had thought it deplorable that Nish had left home without basic cooking skills and was now focused on training her to be less dependant on restaurants and takeout. She appreciated it, and even liked it, but cooking for herself after a long day at work was not really something she could see herself doing every day.
Jocelyn hmmed thoughtfully as she inspected the contents of her refrigerator. She knew her friend was making a joke with her comment about human flesh, but Jocelyn had spent too much time recently feeling like tenderized meat for the joke to be too funny. She pulled two eggs and a tray of thinly sliced beef from the fridge, then retrieved an onion and a few other items from the pantry, and set them on the counter near the stove. She checked her rice maker, where she had left rice to soak before heading down to class, and nodded, then switched it on to cook.
“That needs a bit of a head start,” Jocelyn commented, indicating the rice cooker. “So, I’m just going to quick freshen up while it’s running, if you don’t mind. Feel free to help yourself to something to drink, if you want it. There’s tea and coffee cartridges under the machine, or white sangria in the fridge if you prefer something a bit stronger.”
“Yeah, sure,” Nish nodded and watched her go. She made herself at home, pulling a glass down from the cupboard where they’d put them the day Josie moved in and opened the fridge, surveying the various drinks that were available. She bit her lip and reached for the sangria, but at the last minute stopped herself and put it back. Instead she went for the brita and poured herself a glass of cold water and shut the fridge, settling herself on the couch in the living room and taking a long drink from it.
She’d noticed lately that her alcohol consumption had slowly become more of a habit than an actual desire, and she was consciously making the decision to not have alcohol if she could. The odd time she’d forget and order an alcoholic drink when she was out at a restaurant on pure reflex, and be surprised about it when she finally had it in her hand. She blamed Jen’s influence for that, but she couldn’t help but feel it was something else entirely.
Jocelyn disappeared into the bathroom, and a moment later the shower rattled to life. She was only gone for a few minutes before she reappeared, dressed in a tank top and yoga pants, and toweling her hair dry. “Much better!” she commented as she pulled her hair up with a scrunchie. She set a pan on the stove to heat up, and poured herself a small glass of sangria while she waited.
“So, you seem to be in a better mood these days...I take it life is treating you well?”
Nish followed her into the kitchen once Josie emerged freshly scrubbed from the shower. She couldn’t help her eyes from lingering a little on the patches of burns on her friend’s skin, but forced herself not to stare so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. “Yeah, I guess so,” she said with a smile. “I’m...I don’t know...just happy. Which is weird; I just broke up with my boyfriend a month ago…” she frowned briefly at that, like a cloud passing over the sun. But then the smile came back. “I guess it’s helped to have a hobby to focus on. And friends…”
Jocelyn peeled the onion and started to cut it into thin slices as she listened to her friend talk. “Hmm...well, I suppose it doesn’t pay to think about it too hard, right? Being happy is a good thing, and lord knows you deserve to be happy.” She smiled at her friend, then turned her attention to the pan on the stove. Nish smiled too, but it was somewhat less than her friend’s. Jocelyn quickly mixed together a sauce and poured it and the onions into the pan to cook, then reached for a bowl and cracked an egg into it, followed - after a moment of thought - by the second.
“Your ex lives here in the building, right? Have you run into him lately?”
Nish took a sip of water and swallowed hard before answering. “Yeah,” she said with a nod, setting her glass down, suddenly awkward. “Uhhm...I’ve seen him around, in passing.” They had yet to have a real conversation about what happened during that week when they were locked up together, but she knew it was coming. Probably sooner rather than later. She allowed a wry smile, “Fortunately, none of those times were when Jen was around.” She wasn’t sure she was ready to have that conversation with him. They’d broken up only a month ago; she didn’t want him to think that she’d been in a hurry to replace him. Far from it.
Jocelyn frowned thoughtfully, “This wasn’t the guy that lives on your floor, was it? Because, I’ve got to tell you, he’s a real piece of work.”
Nish’s eyes widened in sudden terror, “what? No, absolutely not,” she insisted vehemently. “That guy is...well, he’s dangerous. He’s...not someone you want to mess with,” she said quickly, her fingers tightening slightly on her glass. “Why, you haven’t...you met him?” she asked, suddenly concerned.
“I’ve only run into him once,” Jocelyn replied, her attention carefully trained on stirring the onions as they cooked. “It was that week when I was staying with you. You had your painting class that night, and I had accidentally locked myself out of your apartment...I could have sworn I told you about this, didn’t I?”
Nish shook her head, “not about that part of it,” she said, frowning and watching Jocelyn stir the food in the pan. “He didn’t…” she paused, bracing herself, “Josie, he didn’t touch you, did he?” she asked, her frown deepening with concern and protectiveness. She wasn’t sure about in what way she was asking, but any contact between them was unacceptable. She wanted him as far away from her and anyone she cared about as possible.
“He didn’t touch me, no.” Jocelyn checked the onions, and decided that it was probably ready. She picked up the plate of steak and dumped the contents into the pan, stirring everything together. She didn’t meet Nishka’s eyes, preferring to stare at the stovetop instead. “I just...he…” she hesitated, trying to remember the details of an encounter she had spent the last few weeks trying to forget. She shrugged. “Maybe he just reminds me too much of Nathan, I don’t know.”
Nish nodded, “I don’t doubt it,” she said, her eyes never leaving the pan as Jocelyn worked on their dinner. “He’s...not what I thought at first. I guess in that way he reminds me a little bit of Stephen,” she admitted, though it wasn’t entirely true. She had loved Stephen once, very deeply, until their dom/sub play turned into outright abuse. “He’s dangerous,” she said with frightening certainty, noticing her teeth clenching and forcing her jaw to relax. Instead she took another sip of water, and then busied herself pulling the pitcher from the fridge and refilling her glass.
“I don’t like him. He stands too close, and when I tried to back away he followed.” She handed the bowl of egg and a fork to Nishka. “Wisk that, please?” she instructed offhandedly. Nish, who was nodding at Josie’s assessment of Abel, took the bowl from her and started whisking as instructed. “I felt so off-balance. Like I knew I should get away, but that running would be bad, and in the end I just felt…trapped almost?” Again, Nish nodded in agreement.
Or maybe there was a part of me that didn’t want to run away. Which was the most disconcerting thought of all.
“I guess I know what a mouse feels like when it finds itself face to face with a snake,”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” she said, somewhat distantly. She was remembering the look in his eyes when they met hers in the mirror on Valentine's day. Pounding savagely into her from behind, his face had contorted in what she could only describe as rage. At that point, they had barely known each other, and so the look had caught her completely by surprise, terrifying her, but to her shame it had only heightened her pleasure in their little tryst. And then there was his...domination of her in the library at the courthouse, that had made her feel dirty and desirable at the same time. And the diary, and the intimidation afterwards. She was glad she’d successfully been able to avoid him for the past few weeks.
Pushing those thoughts aside, she handed the bowl of scrambled eggs to Jocelyn. “So what are you making?” she asked, changing the subject before any of those thoughts were voiced.
“A few years back, we were doing some filming in Japan, and there was this great little place near where we were working that did nothing but donburi - basically meat and veggies and sauce over rice.” She seemed more relaxed now, happy for the change of topic. “I ate there pretty much any chance I could. But it’s basically trashy diner food, so none of the Japanese restaurants I’ve found outside of Japan bother to serve it. So I had to learn to cook it myself if I was ever going to have it again.”
“That sounds really good,” Nish said, becoming more interested in what her friend was doing.
The rice cooker chirped, letting them know it was finished cooking. Jocelyn gestured to one of the cabinets. “Why don’t you grab a couple of the rice bowls and get the rice scooped out?” she suggested. “I’m just about done with this.” Josie started drizzling in the eggs, stirring the beef and onions enough so that the egg cooked in light strands in the sauce instead of heavy clumps.
Nish nodded and turned to fetch bowls from the cupboard, setting them down and pulling the lid of the rice cooker. “I actually made dinner for Jen the other night,” she said with a smile, scooping the rice out with the paddle and filling the bowls about half way. “She said we have work to do,” she added with a little chuckle. “The rice was a gluey mass; maybe I should invest in one of these?”
“I would,” Jocelyn said with a smile. “It’s about the cheapest idiot insurance you can get for cooking.” Nish smirked at the comment as Jocelyn looked at the bowls. “You’ll want a bit more rice, or this’ll be too soupy. Voice of experience.” She reached across the stove to turn the burner off, then moved the pan onto one of the cold burners.
As soon as the rice bowls were filled to her satisfaction, Jocelyn divided the contents of the pan between the two bowls, and put the now-empty pan in the sink. “There’s silverware in the drawer under the Keurig, or chopsticks in the same place. Help yourself.”
After a brief pause, Nish took a fork from the drawer, thinking the chopsticks might be a little messy with so much sauce. She followed Jocelyn to the dining table and sat down, taking a bite and nodding her approval. “This is really good, Josie,” she praised with a smile. “When did you become such a good cook?”
“Right about the time I took a low-paying industry job in a town with a high cost of living,” Jocelyn replied, a wry grin on her face, as she sat on the other chair at the table. She took a careful bite of her still-hot meal, then nodded in approval. “This is nice. We should do this more often.”
Nish looked up at her and smiled, “Maybe I should hire you as my own personal chef,” she said with a little grin. “We should,” she added, a little more seriously, “It’s nice having you here.” She took another bite of dinner, “so that wasn’t quite a typical class,” she went on to explain. “Usually there are two instructors, and they do the demo at the beginning, and then they circulate while while we practice. But you have yet to meet Daniel…oh my god, let me tell you about Daniel…”