Form
Name: Jules Bouchard
Age: 36
FC: Aurora Perrineau
Job: Sous chef at a very swanky michelin star restaurant in NY
Personality and background: Smooth-talker, charismatic, casual, eager, moody, can be the devoutest devout and the flakiest flake, ups the nonchalance with the need to hide insecurities and lacking self esteem. Evasive? Coward?
High school dropout and all around no good who found passion and purpose in the culinary field after being put to work doing dishes at her uncle’s restaurant. The career has been a slow but steady and successful climb. As focused and dedicated she’s been about work as messy and laissez-faire she’s been about her personal life, people would say. It’s true, for the most of it she’s been an apartment hopping flirt with commitment issues – there might even have been a self-crowning as the perfect rebound sometime in her mid twenties – but it has made for a life with the most memorable experiences. And Jules is not one to regret anything.
High School Sweetheart: Claire Redfield.
Current Partner: Evie Fyre.
Red / Market
2AM
(casting snippet, i just had to)
The door shuts. A duffle onto the floor along with the ruffle of a coat removed. The shifting of shoes being tossed off. And then carefully placed on the rack. There’s a sigh, and then another one. The first one of exhaustion. The other of relief.
Beyond the entry the kitchen lies still and dark. Into it Jules tiptoes, pulling the tie out of her damp hair as she goes. She aims for quiet, the drumming in her earbuds just for her, after all the digital clock on the stove blares 02:03. The blinding light of the fridge doesn’t keep her from finding a bottle of beer in the back, behind quart containers and produce. She opens and gulps down a third before coming up for air, a bit heavy on the breath. Another sigh. This time of tired annoyance.
It has been that kind of day.
Putting down the bottle on the counter top, Jules tries to minimize the clinking it makes against the stone, to some success. Dragging fingers through her hair she shakes loose her curls, easing the all-day tight pull on her scalp with both hands. That before silencing the music with a tap and removing her buddies. All just to find that there is someone else singing.
Turns out there was no reason for stealing in like an unmotivated thief in the dead of night.
Grabbing the bottle by the neck, she rounds the island and heads to the living space. There’s only a reading light on in there, the floor lamp curled over the occupied armchair. Smooth jazz hums the room into relaxation and focus.
“You’re still up,” Jules says, a shoulder against the doorway as she sips the beer.
“You’re in late,” comes the simple retort as Evie looks up from mid-way through her tome of papers in one hand and laptop on one knee.
“Went to the gym afterwards.”
Evie pauses in the shifting of pages, a finger between as a temporary bookmark as they fall closed. “Bad day?”
A slow grin spreads over Jules’ face into the widest thing possible. “Just spectacular.”
There’s a twitch in Evie’s eyebrows. Even disrupted in her work, this late at night, she asks for more. She cares and Jules rather not deal with it.
There has been drama. A month ago now Ben left to sprout another restaurant out of the dirt, like Jules once had been with him to do with this one, and somehow he, who Jules considered one of the best humans on this earth, managed to replace himself with an absolut asshat. That’s about how much Evie knows, but Jules has not gone into details of how bad it has grown. Like how every day she wonders if this will be the night everything boils over and she throws in the towel.
A kitchen is its people and the need for comradery within the brigade is essential. And she’s not alone in having her nerves angrily strumming, within the asshat vicinity. But she’s the one inbetween who is supposed to take the brunt of it, so she does.
“It’s fine,” Jules shrugs and detaches herself to go and sit down on the sofa, throwing her head over the back of the sofa. But looking over, Evie is still looking at her intently.
“Sis keeps bugging me about coming home for Christmas,” she says casually instead, to disarm from further questioning regarding work. Only to find that she has now thrown herself out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“So?”
“So, what?” Jules sits up again.
“It’s the first time you mentioned it without the finality of it never ever happening.”
“Well. She says it might be a good time to get some kind of relationship with my niblings. And to grow up and give mum a chance.” She doesn’t admit that it rather comes as a suggestion from her therapist. Doing so would mean an over-understanding light up in Evie’s eyes, like ‘ oh you are making progress.’ If Jules would give her mum one more chance and if mum still sucks, Jules won’t have to feel guilty about doing the cut. Those might not have been the exact words, but it was what Jules had got of it. “If I’m ever gonna try, might as well be during the pure hellfire of a holiday.” She shrugs and finding a look on Evie’s face that this might not be a bad idea, she instantly starts to back track. “But we already decided to stay in town. To cosy up. Just the two of us.” She tries to sell it better by smiling cheekily.
“It’s November, there’s still time, we can change the plans. While I didn’t think it a good idea to join my parents on a whim Hawaii Christmas, I could make a few hour flight north work.”
“We?” Jules finds herself practicing a freeze frame.
“Don’t you think it’s a good chance for me to finally meet your family?” Evie says that with bravery, as that kind of social strain takes a lot out of her, but she’s unwaveringly determined still.
“I’m still deciding if I want to meet my family. And you have met sis.”
“For two hours, by chance. Before you carted her away.”
“She needs to be carted away at times,” Jules mutters.
“I’m sure hellfire is an exaggeration.”
Jules is not unknown for her exaggerations. “No it’s not. Luckily there would be plenty of snow piles to throw myself into to cool down.” She pushes her fingers into her eyes for a second. “We can just talk about it tomorrow.”
But somehow it feels like it has already been decided. And Jules will have to think on whether it's for the best or the worst.
Evie looks a bit irritated with it, but lets it go, going back to her reading. The stack is inches thick. In legal lingo. Inches – plural. Probably containing more words than Jules has ever read in her entire life. And probably more than a few words which Jules has never seen before.
“You have court tomorrow.” Jules says softly.
A humming yes comes as a reply.
“You should go to bed. We should go to bed.”
“I really need to go through this once more. Just so there’s nothing I’ve missed,” Evie sighs.
Jules loves her commitment, meticulously so. Her care. The pigheadedness. No matter how many cases she’s gone through, it doesn’t dull her focus. The nervousness that still creeps up the night before as if it was all new. And Jules worries it might one day burn her to a crisp. No resilience is endless.
Jules gets up, walks over. She takes the laptop and closes it and puts it on the coffee table.
“I was using that.” The objection is only half-hearted.
“You have read it through a hundred times,” Jules starts, “page to page, letter to letter. I could probably quiz you on a paragraph on a random page and you’d know what it says.”
Evie grimace, nose wrinkling very cutely. Because it’s almost true.
“You know your mission, facts, arguments, or whatever it’s called.” Jules takes the papers out of her hands, sticking a coaster of the coffee table in as a random bookmark before it gets to join the sleeping laptop.
Most importantly Evie lets her, and makes room when Jules climbs into the armchair too. It’s large enough to fit the two of them snugly. She’d rather deal with others' problems. All day, any day. Comforting as a solution for self soothing.
Jules leans her head in the crook of Evie’s neck. Evie spits out a curl. Jules quietly goes: “Oh, shit sorry,” and pushes the floof of hair out of the way.
“If you wake me, I’ll make you breakfast,” Jules says after a while.
“I thought you are working the PM shift tomorrow as well. There’s no need for you to be up at that hour.”
“I am. But I would have breakfast with you. Then I can go back to sleep when you’ve left.”
Evie doesn’t respond but Jules feels her frame relax a little.
“We should sleep.” Jules says and with a begrudging rumble stand up, hand outstretched. “Let’s go.”
Nail polish
“Look at this!”
They are in the kitchen. Sunlight is shifting in through the windows, hazy in the New York morning.
It takes a second for Evie to react, nose deep in whatever it is her phone is offering her. “Hm?” She looks up as she reaches for her coffee to find two hands, fingers spread wide, over the island and a Jules, grinning even wider.
“What am I looking at?”
“I painted my nails!” Jules holds them up, wiggling. “You are oblivious,” She chides endearingly. Her jolliness is obvious as she turns her hands to admire her own handiwork.
“I do apologise,” Evie rolls her eyes, joining in the playful spare. “I didn’t even think you owned polish.”
“I do now. Yours were too boring. But I think I already mussed them up.” A pout appears for a moment before the grin chases it away again.
“But you are right, you never do wear it.” Evie’s face is slightly quizzical, like you can see the metal note being jotted down. There’s still a learning curve to this relationship, the delight to explore the details.
“Because I can’t for work. Or I mean, I could, but then you have to wear gloves 100% of the time or worst case scenario someone will get a prettily coloured chip in their plate that is not supposed to be there.” Jules lectures with glee as she fills up Evie’s cup and then her own with pure energy. “Polish is the surest sign of a holiday. Everyone knows that.”
“Perhaps I should get myself a set of cheerful red before I leave then,” Evies says, scrutinising her own neutral polished fingertips. A christmas red for a cheerful christmas.
Jules hums as she goes to ransack the fridge for some cream. Observing as she does, Evies’s typical hint-of-a-smile forming is slowly forming.
“You are cheerful, and here I thought you didn’t want to go.”
“Oh.” A face bereaved of the cheer appears as the fridge door closes. “I’d rather not go there. But it’s gonna be pretty awesome to leave the city.” Jules sighs as she pours the cream into the coffee. “I still vote we just rent a remote cabin instead, and we can lie on a bear skin in front of the fireplace and watch those beloved movies of yours and drink mulled wine.”
“There’s a bear skin now?” This isn’t the first time Jules brought up the suggestion, but each rendition came with varying details.
Jules just shrugs playfully, still looking dejected. Overly dramatic? A little bit. She comes around the counter to lean against it next to Evie’s seat.
“If it gets miserable, let's do that.” As for all the time the suggestion have come up, it is the first time Evie indulges it, even just for a hypothetical, as she’s dead sure it can’t get that miserable. Can it?
Jules smiles again, the sun still shining but the clouds still invading the previous clear blue skies.
“I gotta go,” Eivie stands, grabbing her phone again and downs the last of her coffee. “Text me when you get to the airport, okay? And call when… ”
“And when I land, and when I get there. And to update you on how it’s going,” Jules drawls.
“I was gonna say when you miss me,” Evie says dryly.
“If I’d do that neither of us would get anything done.”
Red
With some people who you have not met in a long while, you find only awkwardness upon reunion, as your paths and persons have split from what was. If you liked them back then, you exchange a few words and smile and wish them the best as you go on with your lives, and if you didn’t, hopefully you’ll never have to see them again or you’ll avoid eye contact like the plague, should it happen. And then with some people, it is like no time has passed, no matter the years or neglect. You are still meshed together, by the same humour and by the same care. You find it all the same even though you might be fundamentally different people now.
Twenty years had passed, but meeting Nathan Drake again, at the repair shop Jules found herself transported back to being sixteen. In the best way, sans the having to actually re-live the angst of teenage years. But to the stupidity of youth and carefreeness of it all. For a moment it was nice to breathe the air of it. To laugh and talk, especially after having spent two whole days in a house where everything was tension with sharp corners but also trying to put on a good show.
“Oh look at this,” Jules stops at a shiny motorbike parked to the side in the shop, “she’s gorgeous.”
“You ride?” Nathan looks over from where he has resumed tinkering, half bent into the open hood of a patient.
“Hahaha, no, I’d fall and flay myself faster than one skins a chicken. I barely even drive.” Jules leans in to scrutinise the bike, not that she knows anything about it but one can still appreciate a thing in many different ways.
“What?!” A squeak of disbelief sounds behind her, she grins as she sees his played up dismay.
“Remember I got out of here before we barely were allowed to, I mean I got the licence, but there was always you or anyone to pick one up, offering to drive somewhere. When should I have had time to learn properly? And then there was hardly a need in Toronto, dad sold the car, and New York roads are hella scary. But,” Jules nods to the bike again, “have I imagined a pretty in a leather jacket asking me to hop on and ride into the sunset? And would I say yes? Ye-ah,” she says with empathise before turning away from the beauty and walking back to him.
“It wouldn’t be too hard to arrange.”
“Oh, you’re not pretty enough.”
“Only because I’m way too handsome to ever be called pretty,” Nathan snickers as he wipes his hands on a cloth that Jules is pretty sure is even dirtier than his hands. “You walked here then?”
“Nearly fell on my butt twice even though I brought sensible shoes.”
“City life has made bambi of ya.”
“I didn’t move all the way to Texas, if that’s what kept you from visiting. I kept north enough not to miss out on ice and freezing. But it has been a while since I saw powder like this.” The sentence started out chiding but ended in some kind of nostalgia.Coming back here is really throwing her all about the place.
Jules might not be the greatest fan of christmas, but she liked winter. And this was peak winter. Out here it was as it should be. Not turning grey and slushy in an instant like it did in the city. Out here winter wore its coronation garb. The snow cover could lay untouched for miles, only tiny paws of wildlife disturbing the perfect blanket. It was just fluffy and white and whimsical.
“Are you in a hurry? If you have time to wait I can get you back in an hour.”
“Oh, I have time to bitch with you for longer. All waiting for me at home is joining in the chaotic detangling of christmas lights and family ties. And thank the christ’s mas that at least you aren’t going all overboard with the festive decor…”
The door into the shop went towards the end of her speech, having her trail off.
“I always tell him to put up some decorations!” The woman who just stepped in says cheerfully, obviously only hearing half of Jules’ comment and running with it to suit her own excitement. Like, who isn’t jolly about christmas? “Even a little would go a long way, especially here where the only appearance of colour is reliant on the lacquer of the cars in for a sprouse.”
“Hey, what does colour have to do anything with my work?” Nathan gestures with a wrench, half insulted, half confused, to someone he obviously knows. And not just that, it’s someone Jules knows too. Or at least did, once upon a time in teenage years. But Jules is already thrown back hard and this arrival only underlines the feeling.
“Oh, damn,” Jules says under her breath, as who has just pushed up the door is no one less than Claire Redfield, with the widest of smiles and burning locks falling over her shoulder, out of a blue knitted hat.
Claire doesn't recognise Jules at first, and Jules doesn’t blame her. There's nothing too unique with Jules, and it’s been twenty years. Nothing as unique as that bright face and those oh-so vibrantly red waves. The few times Jules had run into anything like it in the years since, out at a bar, walking down the street, it had always made her whip her head around. Half a second of mind drift before the regular scheduling could be resumed. Of course it had always been some other fortunate redhead, who won the genetic lottery or just got blessed with a really good hairdresser.
In the midst of a lot of other things, this was one thing about returning Jules had forgotten to agonise over. Not that she hadn’t envisioned more than once, nor been immune to be guilt ridden about a lot that had come to pass between them.
Now, here, it caught her off guard and a footing different in time.
“Hi there, Red.” She really has no right to use a twenty year old pet name, but she does. She even chuckles as recognition bleeds into Claire's cheeks.
“Bu – Jules!” Claire reaches her hands to her face, finding them mittened, they drop again. The blank canvas of utter surprise morphs into I-can’t-believe-my-eyes, then into an unconvincing smile, growing more convincing and real. Perhaps there is more complication of emotions behind the eyes, but Jules is too preoccupied to catch any.
“You look good,” Jules says and she has even less right to say that. It’s true, but still not right. But no one said young-Jules was a beacon of righteousness. She was someone who could sugarcoat her smiles and honey her words, and sting you, unwittingly or not, with her thoughtlessness and egoism. As she has uttered the words she catches herself stumbling over the years of personal development, and potential lack there off, her smiles flutters into dread for a second. “I mean, it's good to see you… It’s been too long.” Then she laughs a little again, acknowledging the awkwardness, and then a more humane smile settles on her lips.
“Hi! Oh my god, it’s you! It’s so good to see you,” Claire calls, but there is a pitch to her voice that calls into question if it really is so good. It’s a surprise alright. “It’s been so long, I can’t believe you are ba-ack.” Clarie almost trips over her own tongue, laughing it away before letting it continue its marathon. “When did you arrive? I didn’t know you were coming, your sister was by the Den just the other day and she never said anything! Are you here for the holidays? Oh, you must come by the Den and tell me all about it. Nathan, make sure to take her.”
There is a bit of a back and forth, or answers as Claire had asked more than half the questions in one go. She arrived yesterday. Yeah, Camille hadn’t made a mention, but then her sister could take the price of the most scatterbrained. Staying for christmas, if the household is still alive by then, cross your fingers or not. Haha. The Den is the Wolf’s Den, the bar Claire runs now. And the promise to both be taken there and to come by is made before Claire seems satisfied.
“Well, I have to be going and open up the bar. But don’t be a stranger, kay?” Claire beams again, now undoubtedly so. She waves as she turns.
“Uhm? Claire?” Nathan calls as she is already heading towards the door. “Was there a reason for coming by? It’s not ready for pickup yet.”
“Oh, shit,” she curses and turns again, “I’m a non-stick today,” she laughs, “I could have texted but I was driving passed so I thought I might as well come in and as if you’d come and help –”
Jules doesn’t catch exactly what it is Claire needs assistance with, just that Nathan promises he’ll drop by after he’s driven Jules, she’s caught in the slight relief that at least she didn’t manage to crash their friendship in her … hasty exit. Or if she did, they managed to rebuild it.
“Hey Jules,” Nathan sneaks up on her in the moment she’s been standing and spacing after Claire’s back. The sound of the car starting up and driving away, already gone.
“Hm? Yeah?” Jules snaps out of it.
“The bike,” Nathan nods to the previously admired motorcycle, “it’s Red’s.” He chuckles
She turns to him, spacing for another moment before returning to some form of semblance. “Oh, come on. You didn’t have to tell me that,” she says, half in disbelief, half straight up – she didn’t need that picture in her mind. Not now.
Hot chocolate
Evie and Jules are at the market, Evie having arrived the day before. E is cheerful about the christmas vibe, buying some cute ornaments, J is more moody until she's called out for it and tries to make up for it by being cute.
It being earlier in the day they go for hot chocolate instead of mulled wine, to an bit of childish glee from Jules. A bit back and forth joking/half dead serious about family that I do not know how I would summarise (just background plot vibes I'll perhaps I'll try to get across in the future instead) More them being kinda cute and then them running into Claire. Jules makes the introduction Claire - Evie, Evie - Claire, by name and not including past/present relationship epitet. Claire is energised, coming off as cheerful and nice, and they talk a little. As they have parted Evie makes a comment that C is nice, questioning if/saying that if she is one of the J's old friends, as Evie would have heard about a Claire. Jules would have sometime during their relationship told her about Red, as she's not neccesarily one to hide her past dick-moves. SO a abit sheepishly, J admit Red is CLaire, and Evie sort of makes a comment that she should perhaps guessed, but at the same time, - sort of saying but def wording better - considering the ass Jules had been Claire greeted them much better than she would have thought. IDK, does that make sense? If not tell me!
Consider this done!
I do not have it in me to do it properly at the moment, but we are hoping for christmas miracles
Last edited by tricole (18/12/2024 at 21:47)
