Ilad, Jean-Paul
It is funny.
Even to think of them as separate does not occur to me -- but then, what avenue of my life has not been shaped by what I have done, who I have been? The war was my identity. Now my identity is -- must be -- something else, and I do not really know yet what it will become. At the moment, a holding pattern, a waiting game, an exercise in patience: yet there are glimmerings of things we could do. Ways we could become a stronger team. It is not a joke.
But to retool one's life, to repurpose onself at this late stage. Perhaps it is not so late. There are men who have no direction at my age, men who have no direction older than I. Men who never find their way, I am sure there are those men, too. But to have one and to lose it. To find a new one, intermittently, peripherally, tangentially related -- but different, so different. Not a policeman, because policemen are bound by rules of law, and like soldiers, X-Factor is much its own law. But without the structure of the soldier, and without the purpose of the soldier. What are we is an interesting question. What am I to become as part of that we is a baffling question.
And yet, what I have been will shape what I am now, and what I will be. If there are no good men, and the moral value of an action is measured in its intent rather than in its result, then there will be nothing simple left in this world. If I break a man with pain and pressure because I do it for my own sadistic pleasure, why, that is wickedness. If I break a man with pain and pressure because I do it for the preservation of my people, that is service to a greater cause.
If I break a man with pain and pressure because I do it for the preservation of my people, and if while doing so, I act out the vengeance fantasy of a man whose hatreds have been burned into him at a level beneath flesh and bone -- then what is that?
Beyond self-doubt, beyond uncertainty, beyond confusion, there is one thing perfectly clear: in all scenarios, the man is broken and I have done it.
What time of day is it? We'll say pretty early, and miss the crowds later on. The sun is fully risen, but hidden behind obscuring clouds that threaten later rain. A morning chill lingers, but the heat of the water serves admirably to chase away any discomfort. Arms stretched on the side of the hot tub, Jean-Paul comfortably reclines. He has been there just long enough to acquire the faintest of beginning flushes on his skin, and there is a bottle of water near at hand. The movement of the water obscures much of his body, but smart money is on him not actually pulling a Remy. Strong shoulders lift above the water where he leans against the side, with the dip and shadow of his collarbones, the hollow of his throat outlined by a bare gleam of light and dampness. Head tipped back, his throat is bared in a strong column while the hook of his arms against the sides is defined by a certain indolence. Chillaxing. His eyes are partway veiled.
The glass doors separating the natatorium from the patio slides open, and then closes again; Ilad slips through a narrow opening and then glides it shut again. He pauses a moment, as the cool morning impacts his naked skin, drawing the twitch of a chill up his spine. He holds a water bottle by its nose, a long white towel trailing over his shoulder, for a few heartbeats only, he is still. His glance tips sidelong over Jean-Paul where he lounges in the tub, and after that still moment spent too long, he glances away and lopes to the tub on even strides with his bare feet quiet against the night-cooled concrete. He is not pulling a Remy either; his trunks are simple and dark, close to his legs, long enough to hide the bullet scar on his thigh where they hang low on his hips. He tosses his towel to the side, and then slides into the hot water with the a long, low exhalation expelled past the purse of his lips, finally saying: "Morning."
When the door opens, Jean-Paul's gaze shifts. Still veiled by the fall of eyelashes, he glances to the side to track the movement in his peripheral vision. Otherwise unmoving, he sees little enough: he marks the pause of Ilad's feet, half-seen, and identifies him only once he moves closer. He holds his greeting until after the other man has broken the silence, at which point he confines himself to an easy, "Ilad." Politely, he shifts his legs, although it is largely unnecessary to draw them away.
After he has sunk against the side of the tub, enveloped in the heat, Ilad sits straight again to twist around and lay his water bottle neatly against the other side. Then he settles back, working some tightness out of his shoulders with a roll as he drops his arms into the water. The hook of a smile pulls briefly at his lips, elusive in that it fades swiftly; he tips his head and says, "Early start."
"Mm. I like mornings," Jean-Paul says, acknowledging the words with the first hum of agreement. He shifts, arms drawing in a bit, and then reaches to pick up his bottle of water. "Good to get in here before the day gets warmer, too. Or rains."
Ilad tips his head back, glance sliding up the wall of the building toward the grey pallor of the sky; his throat works with a swallow as he lifts his glance. He draws in a long breath through his nose, mouth twitched up at one corner as he inhales steamy warmth. "I like the morning as well," he says at length, dark eyes falling back to Jean-Paul. "The quiet." Dry note of humor infiltrating his accented voice, he adds: "I've never been accomplished at sleeping late, in any case."
Thumbing open the bottle of water, Jean-Paul tips it up to take a quick sip. He presses the back of his hand to his lips, smile faint behind the curl of his fingers. "Yeah," he says as his hand falls away. "Me either."
Ilad dips low in the water for a moment, letting it lap over his shoulders and the base of his neck, and then slides back up against the back, water a bright gleam over golden-olive shoulders and collarbone where he breaks the surface. He leans, stretching out his legs beneath the surface and curling his toes amidst the glowing heat of the water. His glance lifts, then, marking Jean-Paul's features in an extended moment's study.
Gaze briefly lingering in assessment of the geometry of the body, Jean-Paul looks up when Ilad glances in his direction, holds his gaze just long enough to be totally not guilty, and then glances elsewhere -- casually. Already flushed from the heat, there's no sign of any additional warmth to his skin. He takes another sip of water to cover his entire lack of anything to say.
"It bothers you," Ilad says, abruptly breaking the totally peaceful and not at all awkward silence with a kind of sidewindy directness. "At times, to work with a soldier. Does it not?"
Blue eyes turn back, widening just slightly in a muted expression of surprise. Whatever topic Jean-Paul might have expected Ilad to skip to, that was clearly low on the list. He considers a moment, more thoughtful than hesitant, and then nods. "Yes," he says. "Or, well -- it isn't that precisely. We have others who have served in the military. But." He rolls his shoulder, and shifts to regard Ilad more directly. The water bottle is left at the side, and his hands fall beneath the surface of the water.
The inclination of his head is slight, the expression that pulls at his mouth more relation to grimace than to smile. "Love the soldier, hate the war," he says, tipping his water bottle in Jean-Paul's direction before finally lifting it for a swallow. "My mother has this woven on a tapestry in her office at the university."
"You have done things," says Jean-Paul, blunt, "that I do not think that I could do. I don't know what that means, really. About you, about me."
"I have done things that no good man could do," Ilad answers Jean-Paul, similar of tone as well as wording. He taps the mouth of his bottle against his lower lip, a quietly troubled cast to his expression, where more ordinarily he is inscrutable.
To that, Jean-Paul has no immediate response. He looks at Ilad again, and this time he does not check his study, nor does he attempt to disguise it. Tracing his features with a thoughtful gaze, he says, "Perhaps. But I question the idea of there being any ... good men. To what degree does intent weigh against your actions? I don't know."
The flicker of Ilad's dark gaze upward, before he looks back at Jean-Paul, is not so much an examination of the sky, but an indication of who does know. He rubs at the curve of his jaw with his knuckles, tracing dark scruff with their glide over his chin. "Nor I," he says.
Jean-Paul's lips twist in a faint acknowledgement. He nods to Ilad's bare flicker. Then he asks, "What were your intentions?"
"To serve my country, generally," Ilad says, with a curling twist of one hand above the surface of the water. He draws idle patterns across it with the glide of his fingertips, gaze falling from Jean-Paul's only to watch the ripples eaten by those already made by the bubbling of the jets. "To protect my people. But," he adds, and pauses.
Eyes remaining fixed on Ilad's features, Jean-Paul is generally quiet as he speaks, even patient. He would be a super confessor. "But," he prompts with a turn of his hand beneath the water, shadowed by the swirl and foam.
"But," Ilad says again, and this time the shadow of a smile touches his lips as he lifts his gaze -- not really much to do with humor, or warmth; but a dry edge turned inward, coloring the slow shake of his head. "War does ugly things to your heart, your spirit. I know it very well. Brent does not understand this." He watches Jean-Paul's face, with the twitch of an eyebrow.
Jean-Paul tips his head to the side at Ilad's witched eyebrow. His expression a touch remote, thoughtful, he says, "No. He wouldn't. I am not sure that I do, really -- but perhaps I understand some part of it. I can well-understand that it might be ... a strain. To serve, to protect: those are not such bad things. What of revenge? What of hate?" It takes a special kind of person to take those questions seriously. Jean-Paul is just that. SPECIAL.
"That is the balance, on the edge of a knife." Ilad's smile widens, quick and sharp and then gone again, to leave his mouth sober. He sets his water bottle aside to let the stretch of his arm in a long curve along the side of the tub rest. "To know your own darknesses, to control them as best you can. He does not understand that, either, but I think that you might."
Expression tightening on a bare curve, Jean-Paul gives that scant acknowledgement before moving on. "You are more fully a soldier, in very particular ways, than anyone else here," he says. "It is the dissonance between respect for you and ... what you have done that bothers me. It is not working with you, exactly. It is not you. But I don't understand your life. And I do not think that I wish to. But I respect you, and I trust you to find that balance."
"Thank you for that," Ilad says, his tone mild, his gravity sincere; the tip of his head acknowledging, he shifts in his lean against the hot tub, sinking once more to let the heat embrace his body more fully. His exhalation low, his gaze narrows.
Jean-Paul tips his head in return and then looks away, finding his water bottle again with a reach of his fingers.
Ilad sits quiet for awhile, listening to the measured sound of his own breathing, the bubble of the water. He glances back at Jean-Paul eventually, a moment more spent in contemplative study in the stillness of the morning. "Heavy stuff, this far before lunch," he says at length, a note of humor waking in his low voice. "Next time, perhaps I will ask you about basketball instead."
Smile faint at the corner of his lips, Jean-Paul looks back to Ilad. "Oh, don't worry. I get this kind of thing all the time. The price I pay for my ... sanctimonious moralizing."
"You do not strike me as especially one for sanctimony, my friend," Ilad answers, with a brighter glint warming his dark eyes. "Perhaps one or two I know in the Rabbanut Hatzvait could give you a lesson or two."
The What What? Jean-Paul's expression asks in the arch of his eyebrows and a vague puzzlement to his slight smile. "I'll work on it," he promises.
"Military rabbinate," Ilad translates with a hooding of his eyes. He shifts, hooking his elbows up on the edges of the tub to pull himself straighter, legs falling in with his new, marginally better posture. "Sounds strange to say in English somehow."
"Sounds stranger in Hebrew. Maybe it would sound better in French," Jean-Paul says, vaguely teasing. His gaze falls toward Ilad's arms and shoulders, and then he looks away with a glance at the sky. Well-pinked, he says, "Time for me to get out, I think." He suits action to words, hands falling in a brace at the side to lever himself out of the tube. Water sluices across the sun-warmed fairness of his skin, with rivulets tracing along well-defined muscles to puddle beneath him. "I hope I haven't made you feel like it was a problem," he says, lingering a moment at the edge with the flex of muscle through his arms and shoulders easing as he takes his weight off them. "Your past."
"Mm," Ilad hums thoughtfully. He tips his head back, watching the stream of water over Jean-Paul's lean frame, the agile motion of his body; he lifts a hand to rub his thumb at one eye, distraction light. "Not as such, no. But Brent told me you had spoken with him. I had not thought--" He pauses, as though choosing his words carefully. "I did not expect that, and thought it best I speak with you."
It does not take Jean-Paul all that long to figure out what Ilad is talking about, because he is /clever/. Head canted, he thinks only briefly before identifying the conversation that it must have been. He pauses, then says, "I mentioned it to him, the laundry room. Yes. I was going to say that wasn't about your being a soldier -- but I suppose that it was, for you." He shakes his head, and says, "We didn't talk about it long. But I -- your experience is so different. It is hard to understand."
"For me," Ilad agrees, a little wryly, "yes, it was. That is the root." He lifts his head, watching Jean-Paul for a long moment; he moistens his lips with a flicker of his tongue, and swallows. "To know a thing is wrong, to feel it anyway -- it is so difficult to grasp?"
Glancing away, Jean-Paul squares his shoulders a little more firmly. Posture already quite good, if not military-perfect in Ilad's manner, that is the only bit of straightening left to him. He allows, "Maybe not."
Dark eyes marking the shift in posture, briefly lingering across the set of Jean-Paul's shoulders and then falling down and away, Ilad turns his head, reaching once more for his water bottle as he shifts away from the side of the tub.
Jean-Paul pulls the rest of the way from the water, standing. "Enjoy the rest of your morning," he says, crossing to pick up his towel. The stiffness exhibited in his stride is minimal, restrained and covered-over.
Ilad turns again to follow his departure with his gaze, his marking of detail ... habitual. He lifts his water bottle for a swallow. "You too," he says. "See you later."
Hand lifting in a brief wave back over his shoulder, just a bare twist of acknowledgement, Jean-Paul heads off.
Hot tubbing is serious business.
Even to think of them as separate does not occur to me -- but then, what avenue of my life has not been shaped by what I have done, who I have been? The war was my identity. Now my identity is -- must be -- something else, and I do not really know yet what it will become. At the moment, a holding pattern, a waiting game, an exercise in patience: yet there are glimmerings of things we could do. Ways we could become a stronger team. It is not a joke.
But to retool one's life, to repurpose onself at this late stage. Perhaps it is not so late. There are men who have no direction at my age, men who have no direction older than I. Men who never find their way, I am sure there are those men, too. But to have one and to lose it. To find a new one, intermittently, peripherally, tangentially related -- but different, so different. Not a policeman, because policemen are bound by rules of law, and like soldiers, X-Factor is much its own law. But without the structure of the soldier, and without the purpose of the soldier. What are we is an interesting question. What am I to become as part of that we is a baffling question.
And yet, what I have been will shape what I am now, and what I will be. If there are no good men, and the moral value of an action is measured in its intent rather than in its result, then there will be nothing simple left in this world. If I break a man with pain and pressure because I do it for my own sadistic pleasure, why, that is wickedness. If I break a man with pain and pressure because I do it for the preservation of my people, that is service to a greater cause.
If I break a man with pain and pressure because I do it for the preservation of my people, and if while doing so, I act out the vengeance fantasy of a man whose hatreds have been burned into him at a level beneath flesh and bone -- then what is that?
Beyond self-doubt, beyond uncertainty, beyond confusion, there is one thing perfectly clear: in all scenarios, the man is broken and I have done it.
What time of day is it? We'll say pretty early, and miss the crowds later on. The sun is fully risen, but hidden behind obscuring clouds that threaten later rain. A morning chill lingers, but the heat of the water serves admirably to chase away any discomfort. Arms stretched on the side of the hot tub, Jean-Paul comfortably reclines. He has been there just long enough to acquire the faintest of beginning flushes on his skin, and there is a bottle of water near at hand. The movement of the water obscures much of his body, but smart money is on him not actually pulling a Remy. Strong shoulders lift above the water where he leans against the side, with the dip and shadow of his collarbones, the hollow of his throat outlined by a bare gleam of light and dampness. Head tipped back, his throat is bared in a strong column while the hook of his arms against the sides is defined by a certain indolence. Chillaxing. His eyes are partway veiled.
The glass doors separating the natatorium from the patio slides open, and then closes again; Ilad slips through a narrow opening and then glides it shut again. He pauses a moment, as the cool morning impacts his naked skin, drawing the twitch of a chill up his spine. He holds a water bottle by its nose, a long white towel trailing over his shoulder, for a few heartbeats only, he is still. His glance tips sidelong over Jean-Paul where he lounges in the tub, and after that still moment spent too long, he glances away and lopes to the tub on even strides with his bare feet quiet against the night-cooled concrete. He is not pulling a Remy either; his trunks are simple and dark, close to his legs, long enough to hide the bullet scar on his thigh where they hang low on his hips. He tosses his towel to the side, and then slides into the hot water with the a long, low exhalation expelled past the purse of his lips, finally saying: "Morning."
When the door opens, Jean-Paul's gaze shifts. Still veiled by the fall of eyelashes, he glances to the side to track the movement in his peripheral vision. Otherwise unmoving, he sees little enough: he marks the pause of Ilad's feet, half-seen, and identifies him only once he moves closer. He holds his greeting until after the other man has broken the silence, at which point he confines himself to an easy, "Ilad." Politely, he shifts his legs, although it is largely unnecessary to draw them away.
After he has sunk against the side of the tub, enveloped in the heat, Ilad sits straight again to twist around and lay his water bottle neatly against the other side. Then he settles back, working some tightness out of his shoulders with a roll as he drops his arms into the water. The hook of a smile pulls briefly at his lips, elusive in that it fades swiftly; he tips his head and says, "Early start."
"Mm. I like mornings," Jean-Paul says, acknowledging the words with the first hum of agreement. He shifts, arms drawing in a bit, and then reaches to pick up his bottle of water. "Good to get in here before the day gets warmer, too. Or rains."
Ilad tips his head back, glance sliding up the wall of the building toward the grey pallor of the sky; his throat works with a swallow as he lifts his glance. He draws in a long breath through his nose, mouth twitched up at one corner as he inhales steamy warmth. "I like the morning as well," he says at length, dark eyes falling back to Jean-Paul. "The quiet." Dry note of humor infiltrating his accented voice, he adds: "I've never been accomplished at sleeping late, in any case."
Thumbing open the bottle of water, Jean-Paul tips it up to take a quick sip. He presses the back of his hand to his lips, smile faint behind the curl of his fingers. "Yeah," he says as his hand falls away. "Me either."
Ilad dips low in the water for a moment, letting it lap over his shoulders and the base of his neck, and then slides back up against the back, water a bright gleam over golden-olive shoulders and collarbone where he breaks the surface. He leans, stretching out his legs beneath the surface and curling his toes amidst the glowing heat of the water. His glance lifts, then, marking Jean-Paul's features in an extended moment's study.
Gaze briefly lingering in assessment of the geometry of the body, Jean-Paul looks up when Ilad glances in his direction, holds his gaze just long enough to be totally not guilty, and then glances elsewhere -- casually. Already flushed from the heat, there's no sign of any additional warmth to his skin. He takes another sip of water to cover his entire lack of anything to say.
"It bothers you," Ilad says, abruptly breaking the totally peaceful and not at all awkward silence with a kind of sidewindy directness. "At times, to work with a soldier. Does it not?"
Blue eyes turn back, widening just slightly in a muted expression of surprise. Whatever topic Jean-Paul might have expected Ilad to skip to, that was clearly low on the list. He considers a moment, more thoughtful than hesitant, and then nods. "Yes," he says. "Or, well -- it isn't that precisely. We have others who have served in the military. But." He rolls his shoulder, and shifts to regard Ilad more directly. The water bottle is left at the side, and his hands fall beneath the surface of the water.
The inclination of his head is slight, the expression that pulls at his mouth more relation to grimace than to smile. "Love the soldier, hate the war," he says, tipping his water bottle in Jean-Paul's direction before finally lifting it for a swallow. "My mother has this woven on a tapestry in her office at the university."
"You have done things," says Jean-Paul, blunt, "that I do not think that I could do. I don't know what that means, really. About you, about me."
"I have done things that no good man could do," Ilad answers Jean-Paul, similar of tone as well as wording. He taps the mouth of his bottle against his lower lip, a quietly troubled cast to his expression, where more ordinarily he is inscrutable.
To that, Jean-Paul has no immediate response. He looks at Ilad again, and this time he does not check his study, nor does he attempt to disguise it. Tracing his features with a thoughtful gaze, he says, "Perhaps. But I question the idea of there being any ... good men. To what degree does intent weigh against your actions? I don't know."
The flicker of Ilad's dark gaze upward, before he looks back at Jean-Paul, is not so much an examination of the sky, but an indication of who does know. He rubs at the curve of his jaw with his knuckles, tracing dark scruff with their glide over his chin. "Nor I," he says.
Jean-Paul's lips twist in a faint acknowledgement. He nods to Ilad's bare flicker. Then he asks, "What were your intentions?"
"To serve my country, generally," Ilad says, with a curling twist of one hand above the surface of the water. He draws idle patterns across it with the glide of his fingertips, gaze falling from Jean-Paul's only to watch the ripples eaten by those already made by the bubbling of the jets. "To protect my people. But," he adds, and pauses.
Eyes remaining fixed on Ilad's features, Jean-Paul is generally quiet as he speaks, even patient. He would be a super confessor. "But," he prompts with a turn of his hand beneath the water, shadowed by the swirl and foam.
"But," Ilad says again, and this time the shadow of a smile touches his lips as he lifts his gaze -- not really much to do with humor, or warmth; but a dry edge turned inward, coloring the slow shake of his head. "War does ugly things to your heart, your spirit. I know it very well. Brent does not understand this." He watches Jean-Paul's face, with the twitch of an eyebrow.
Jean-Paul tips his head to the side at Ilad's witched eyebrow. His expression a touch remote, thoughtful, he says, "No. He wouldn't. I am not sure that I do, really -- but perhaps I understand some part of it. I can well-understand that it might be ... a strain. To serve, to protect: those are not such bad things. What of revenge? What of hate?" It takes a special kind of person to take those questions seriously. Jean-Paul is just that. SPECIAL.
"That is the balance, on the edge of a knife." Ilad's smile widens, quick and sharp and then gone again, to leave his mouth sober. He sets his water bottle aside to let the stretch of his arm in a long curve along the side of the tub rest. "To know your own darknesses, to control them as best you can. He does not understand that, either, but I think that you might."
Expression tightening on a bare curve, Jean-Paul gives that scant acknowledgement before moving on. "You are more fully a soldier, in very particular ways, than anyone else here," he says. "It is the dissonance between respect for you and ... what you have done that bothers me. It is not working with you, exactly. It is not you. But I don't understand your life. And I do not think that I wish to. But I respect you, and I trust you to find that balance."
"Thank you for that," Ilad says, his tone mild, his gravity sincere; the tip of his head acknowledging, he shifts in his lean against the hot tub, sinking once more to let the heat embrace his body more fully. His exhalation low, his gaze narrows.
Jean-Paul tips his head in return and then looks away, finding his water bottle again with a reach of his fingers.
Ilad sits quiet for awhile, listening to the measured sound of his own breathing, the bubble of the water. He glances back at Jean-Paul eventually, a moment more spent in contemplative study in the stillness of the morning. "Heavy stuff, this far before lunch," he says at length, a note of humor waking in his low voice. "Next time, perhaps I will ask you about basketball instead."
Smile faint at the corner of his lips, Jean-Paul looks back to Ilad. "Oh, don't worry. I get this kind of thing all the time. The price I pay for my ... sanctimonious moralizing."
"You do not strike me as especially one for sanctimony, my friend," Ilad answers, with a brighter glint warming his dark eyes. "Perhaps one or two I know in the Rabbanut Hatzvait could give you a lesson or two."
The What What? Jean-Paul's expression asks in the arch of his eyebrows and a vague puzzlement to his slight smile. "I'll work on it," he promises.
"Military rabbinate," Ilad translates with a hooding of his eyes. He shifts, hooking his elbows up on the edges of the tub to pull himself straighter, legs falling in with his new, marginally better posture. "Sounds strange to say in English somehow."
"Sounds stranger in Hebrew. Maybe it would sound better in French," Jean-Paul says, vaguely teasing. His gaze falls toward Ilad's arms and shoulders, and then he looks away with a glance at the sky. Well-pinked, he says, "Time for me to get out, I think." He suits action to words, hands falling in a brace at the side to lever himself out of the tube. Water sluices across the sun-warmed fairness of his skin, with rivulets tracing along well-defined muscles to puddle beneath him. "I hope I haven't made you feel like it was a problem," he says, lingering a moment at the edge with the flex of muscle through his arms and shoulders easing as he takes his weight off them. "Your past."
"Mm," Ilad hums thoughtfully. He tips his head back, watching the stream of water over Jean-Paul's lean frame, the agile motion of his body; he lifts a hand to rub his thumb at one eye, distraction light. "Not as such, no. But Brent told me you had spoken with him. I had not thought--" He pauses, as though choosing his words carefully. "I did not expect that, and thought it best I speak with you."
It does not take Jean-Paul all that long to figure out what Ilad is talking about, because he is /clever/. Head canted, he thinks only briefly before identifying the conversation that it must have been. He pauses, then says, "I mentioned it to him, the laundry room. Yes. I was going to say that wasn't about your being a soldier -- but I suppose that it was, for you." He shakes his head, and says, "We didn't talk about it long. But I -- your experience is so different. It is hard to understand."
"For me," Ilad agrees, a little wryly, "yes, it was. That is the root." He lifts his head, watching Jean-Paul for a long moment; he moistens his lips with a flicker of his tongue, and swallows. "To know a thing is wrong, to feel it anyway -- it is so difficult to grasp?"
Glancing away, Jean-Paul squares his shoulders a little more firmly. Posture already quite good, if not military-perfect in Ilad's manner, that is the only bit of straightening left to him. He allows, "Maybe not."
Dark eyes marking the shift in posture, briefly lingering across the set of Jean-Paul's shoulders and then falling down and away, Ilad turns his head, reaching once more for his water bottle as he shifts away from the side of the tub.
Jean-Paul pulls the rest of the way from the water, standing. "Enjoy the rest of your morning," he says, crossing to pick up his towel. The stiffness exhibited in his stride is minimal, restrained and covered-over.
Ilad turns again to follow his departure with his gaze, his marking of detail ... habitual. He lifts his water bottle for a swallow. "You too," he says. "See you later."
Hand lifting in a brief wave back over his shoulder, just a bare twist of acknowledgement, Jean-Paul heads off.
Hot tubbing is serious business.