Ilad, Jean-Paul
After his time on the disabled list -- so to speak -- the rust does not flake off with immediate ease, but the fire of competition sears a bright flame in Ilad's blood, making Jean-Paul an excellent choice for today's occupation. Alden's healing no perfect panacea, his leg is weak both from its tender healing and from weeks left between wound and its solution. Still, despite his weakness and a tendency to overcompensate for it in unusual aggressiveness on the mats, Ilad is not so rusty as to be unchallenging in a fight. Dressed in sober greys that now stick close and sweat-damp to the strong lines of his lean frame, Ilad is tiring at the close of the bout, breath coming harder and sweat a bright gloss on fever-heated golden skin as they grapple.
The rough edges of his grappling technique long since polished under Ilad's tutelage, Jean-Paul puts up a better fight than he once would have: he's no easy win, and he is ruthless about exploiting the lingering weakness. He knocks his way out of the grapple to take Ilad down on his bad side in a pin. His weight is heavy, his arms strong, and his technique -- well. He had a good instructor. A gentler heat warms his skin, drawing sweat in a sheen across his brow and bringing just a faint flush of color in exertion. His legs bind Ilad's and he draws his arm back in a submission hold. "Say uncle." A touch of laughter informs the puff of his breath as he speaks.
With a little more strain in his voice to mark the shift and stir of his body against Jean-Paul's sturdy hold, Ilad is quiet for a moment aside from the somewhat ragged huff of his breath. He stills, finally, but rather than say 'uncle', he says with a particular but imperfect blandness, "You are most definitely not my uncle." Its imperfection comes in the form of answering humor, drawn reluctantly but irresistably to shadow his voice.
Jean-Paul's smile flashes in bright response to that blandness. He looses his hold with the threat in the pull of Ilad's arm released. A little more slowly, he detangles and draws back. "English is strange." He offers Ilad a hand up. A few faint red marks have been left on his arms through the course of the bout. Some may grow up to become bruises, a testament to the unusual aggression.
"A strange colloquialism," Ilad says, as though he might begin to pick it apart. Taking Jean-Paul's hand, Ilad attains his feet with an unusual stiffness in his leg that becomes a stagger. His fingers tighten, startled, in their clasp at this unexpected physical treachery on the part of his body; he catches himself, and blows a low snort past his nose, a wry cast to the aggravation that darks his expression as he glances down at himself.
Jean-Paul steadies Ilad with a second hand at his elbow, touch light. Sympathy skews across his expression, starting in his eyes and ending in the twist of his lips. Releasing his hand with a squeeze, he steps back and to the side to pick up their water bottles. He hands Ilad's over first before opening his own. "Watch you don't overwork the leg trying to get to where you were. You pushed yourself pretty hard today."
Ilad makes a noise in the back of his throat that lacks translation but, belike, requires none. Pressing the cool plastic of his water bottle against the side of his face first rather than opening it and drinking, he says, "Having taken the one ... short cut, I seem to want all cuts short. Childish, hm?"
Gaze falling to Ilad's leg, Jean-Paul smiles. It skews faint and wry. "It's a bitch of a shortcut, though. It isn't just strength you've lost. Waited a while before healing, huh? Think it will pull less?"
Rolling the water bottle into his right hand, Ilad reaches down to rub at his newer scarred and currently weaker left leg, jaw setting with the press of his lips in a faint grimace. "I can hope so," he says. "As are my hopes for the PT and so on. It is not as though I am a stranger to scars," he adds, "and yet..." He scrubs a little harder at his leg, through the fabric of his loose trousers, and shakes his head as he straightens.
"You're rough on yourself." Jean-Paul gestures toward the door. Shall they? "I'm pretty sure that once you joined I stopped getting injured. I almost feel as though I should apologize. You certainly take double the usual rate."
Cracking the cap on the water bottle, Ilad smiles with the drop of his gaze. "I believe you have said so before, or something like," he says. "I should advise you against tempting fate, my friend." Taking a long swallow of the water, he starts to move toward the door with something like his usual grace. "I cannot decide if I call it ill luck exactly. If my luck were /truly/ ill, well -- I told Brent once that I liked my scars because they mean that somebody missed."
Lips curving again, Jean-Paul says, "Well, if I'm repeating myself, it's only because you are /really/ due for a stretch of peace." He holds the door as he passes out into the hall. "People sure miss you a lot."
Ilad sidles after at Jean-Paul's heels, drawing another swallow from the mouth of his bottle and letting his mouth resume its curve as he lowers it, low sigh expelled past his nose. "Perhaps it serves me right," he says. "When I have peace, I tend to mislike it and thirst for action. Then when I have action, I find myself shot. My father served his country before me and I assure you, he does not carry half these scars."
"I was like that," Jean-Paul says all old wise man. "I got antsy in the quiet between, so when I went out, I went out stupid." Oh, how he has learned, says his tone. Oh, how much more reasonable and responsible and cautious he is. OH, OH. "Just need a hobby to keep you from getting adrenaline jitters."
The light of a laugh unvoiced warms Ilad's dark eyes as he glances up at Jean-Paul, a skeptic's narrowness to his gaze beneath the slant of his dark lashes. "Ah?" he says. "Found a hobby, did you?"
Answering skepticism with a bright challenge, Jean-Paul tips his head. "Well. You just need a mission between missions."
Mouth twitching at one corner, Ilad studies Jean-Paul's features with a thoughtful query in the quirk up of his eyebrows.
Jean-Paul blands to query, something a beckpedal to the determined mildness. "What catches your interest, Ilad? What stirs your passion?"
"I have taken to browsing Israeli papers for--" Ilad tips his off hand in a vague gesture and then lowers it. His mouth tightens a little, his focus heightening with a predator's habit where Jean-Paul eels aside from his non-question. "But all in all, I am no analyst. It almost serves to make me more restless, not less."
"Well. A vacation to Israel in the between-times seems a bit much." Jean-Paul gestures with a round of his hands. "Maybe more local."
Dark eyebrows sweeping up, Ilad asks with the dryness of the desert in his voice: "Do you have a suggestion?"
"No." Up the stairs they go, with Jean-Paul breaking quiet to sip from his water bottle.
"I see," Ilad says, words dropped low to almost a rumble of humor. He sips from his own bottle and takes the stairs two at a time even though he should probably be kinder to the stiffness of his leg.
Glancing back at Ilad, Jean-Paul sidesteps to allow him to two-step up ahead of him. He answers humor with a bright gaze. "You're resourceful. You'll figure something out. Or else keep getting shot."
Reaching the top of the stairs, Ilad pauses and turns back, resting his weight on his heels, if tacked a little to the right, weight a subtle shift to the not-bad side. "So," he says, "if I find a mission between missions, who will get shot instead?"
Glancing at Ilad, gaze sweeping in mock-thoughtful appraisal, Jean-Paul says, "Well. Someone else, anyway."
"Irresponsible," Ilad murmurs in reproof.
"It's terrible, how I've fallen," Jean-Paul agrees.
Ilad does not quite go so far as to click his tongue. He cocks an eyebrow instead.
Jean-Paul ignores the eyebrow to head into the locker room and right up to his locker. He tugs his shirt up and over his head with a pull at the back of his collar. "I think the al-Sahra investigation helped steady me, too," he carries on. "There was always -- something. So just ask Carpenter to find a ridiculously huge investigation to put you in charge of, no matter your skills."
Ilad murmurs a low Hebrew word beneath his breath, probably to the tune of 'God forfend' although it is hard to tell since he is not speaking English. Why does he always do this. Padding up to the lockers and the bench, Ilad takes a long swallow of his water before setting it down on the bench behind. His glance pauses on Jean-Paul's lean back, perhaps arrested in contemplation of the scar tissue at his shoulder -- ah, well, perhaps not. He looks away quickly, then, and pulls off his own shirt in a hasty rumple of sweat-damp dark hair. "I suppose," he says. "If you are going to be injured all the time, they might as well saddle you with a desk."
Glancing back at Ilad with a smile, Jean-Paul says, "I hadn't thought of that. Maybe that explains why he passed it to Jamie when I stopped getting injured so much."
Ilad works his shoulders a moment as he folds up the sweat-spotted grey tee to tuck away amongst his things, almost as though the stiffness of his leg muscles threatens to seep through every tension-gnawed area of his body. "Maximize your utility, hm?" he says, and smiles answer.
"Yeah." Looking forward to twirl off his lock with a twist of his fingers, Jean-Paul sets it to the side to pull out various showery things. "Although I suppose you are already testing out a desk, searching Israeli papers."
"Frustrating," Ilad dubs his experiments in desk work. "Terry showed me what to do. But -- it still does not ... I feel like a man, walking in the desert, permitted to wet his lips but never to taste the water on his tongue." Doors do not slam open very effectively, but the jerk of sudden tension that accompanies Ilad's opening his locker makes it a fair attempt.
Jean-Paul glances sidelong at the emphasis. "If you see something of concern, Ilad, pursue it. Bring others in."
"I don't," Ilad says, "as yet, not really." His breath sighs out past his lips, the tension ratcheting down again under the force of willpower. "It is home, that is all. In any event," he adds, pulling out his own shower stuff and moving aside to set it down on the bench. "Alden is not yet so accomplished a student of Hebrew where I would set him to sifting through all of this rubbish, and I would think that Isabel has enough to do."
"Isabel always likes more to do," Jean-Paul says, smiling a bit as he throws her under the bus. Somewhere between one line and another he got naked and wrapped a towel around his waist. So fast! Lifting his things, he angles on toward the shower. "And Alden -- well. What better way to learn? I mean, sure, he might miss some vital clue...."
Ilad is not so superhuman about stripping off his pants and applying his towel around his hips; shoes toed off, he takes the pants off with the hitch of his bare shoulder in a lean against the nearest shut locker, dragging down fabric over his scarred thighs. "My own personal project as a teaching aid, hm? Well -- I suppose I doubt if he'd seriously object," he says, though there is still a hint of odd uncertainty in his expression as he speaks, shaking loose his pants from his ankles and winding his towel around his middle only a bit late.
"Better than putting him in front of a soap opera," Jean-Paul says back over his shoulder as he heads on in to the showers.
"What a tortuous instructor you imagine me to be," Ilad says, as he paces lightly after Jean-Paul into the shower area.
Jean-Paul starts to say something, swallows it, and -- a little awkwardly -- turns on the water. "Builds character," he says before ducking his head under the spray and thus killing his side of the conversation.
Ilad starts his own shower and falls to a pensive quiet for a long while under the hard hot spray of water.
Enjoy your hard hot shower, Ilad.
Stfu.
:D
Just physically this time at least.