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Court-mandated yoga. For ‘anger management’. He had 40 hours required instruction from one of two yoga studios in the county. The first one suggested by his legal counsel was the one his uncle Luke owned, and the one the City of Millville didn’t have to pay for on his behalf. Both those reasons spurred him to choose the other. He didn’t know the name of the owner, and didn’t frequent the area of town it was located in. His probation officer was to pick him up from his house in Downtown and drive him the four miles to the studio, which was aptly named Yoga Outpost. He’d be dressed in loose clothes, and have a red yoga mat shouldered. And he’d play along with it three times a week for the next five weeks. He’d go there with a smile plastered on his face, like he was also just as determined to get rid of the anger that urged him to punch through his mother’s office window in City Hall.
“Have a good day with the hippies. I’ll be at the Starbucks a block from here when you’re done.” Officer Hux said, disinterested. He drives off after Kylo walks inside. He has a sheet of paper that needs to be signed after every 90-minute class. Personally, he thinks being forced to go yoga go against the principles of like... self reflection and relaxation. Or whatever bullshit he’s supposed to go to yoga for. Why couldn’t he have gotten court-mandated kickboxing? Or something.
The studio is done up in the typical whites and pastels and ‘calming greens’. He hates it instantly. It smells like humidity and incense and Febreeze. The class he’s supposed to be in starts in five minutes, which allows him ample time to mingle with the people that don’t know he’s supposed to be there or go to jail. Somehow jail seems appealing. He liked orange better anyway.
“Are you Ben Solo?” A voice catches his attention from the front of the studio, a taller-than-average woman (still almost a foot shorter than Kylo) with her hands on her hips.
Kylo prickles a little bit under the scrutinizing stare of a woman he’d expected to be draped in beads and fringe. She had a black sports bra on, no shirt, and turquoise leggings on that went past her heels on her bare feet. Her hair was the only thing remotely ‘boho’ about her, back in three buns. Despite the buns, a few hairs still unraveled around her face.
“Call me Kylo.” The woman looks like she wants to laugh at him, her eyes flicking down over the rest of his body and back up. A flush threatened to creep up through the collar of his shirt, and he fought the urge to turn on his heel and ask Hux to drive him to jail.
“ Right .” She snapped. “You’ll be right in front here, in front of my mat. Go ahead and set up the same direction everybody else is.” She waves her hand, dismissive. It gives him whiplash, for her to be suddenly so disinterested after her examination. He felt picked raw, almost. At least he wasn’t bubbling with rage, he tells himself. That’s what he’s here for, right? To make sure the City of Millville knows his anger is in the bag.
He aligns his mat with everybody else’s, quiet and resigned to just be on his own. He hates that he’d been singled out like that, a moment before class was about to start. He didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been that.
The woman comes up to the front, on a little raised platform. An altar of sorts, sacrificing herself to the gods of flexibility and breathing. Or whatever. She stands with her shoulders back, greeting everybody before nodding to her secretary in the other room to start the music over the speakers. It was annoyingly relaxing, and he found himself smirking in distaste.
Her voice was very different than when she’d been speaking to him alone just now. There was an airy tone to it, not so much reaching his ears as floating into his bones. “We’re going to ease into a couple of difficult positions today, so I think a bit of warm-up stretches should help us along once we get there.” The rest of the class seemed to simply nod in acknowledgement, accepting her words as truth. It was so strange. He’s never heard anybody talk like that before.
With jerky movements, he followed suit into the same position everyone else was bending into. He could feel his legs stretch out gradually. Usually before a run he would do a short, rushed version of this stretch, more as a thought towards his abused hamstrings than an actual stretch. He couldn’t stop thinking about how her voice sounded.
By the time they reached the first of three ‘difficult’ positions, Kylo had worked up a sweat in his attempt to keep up with everyone else. He could start to see why the court had suggested yoga as a deterrent for anger; there was just no time to be angry when he was struggling to touch the inside of his right elbow to the outside of his left knee, and stay upright. He fell a few times, more frustrated and embarrassed than angry. Kylo held onto that position as best he could, mimicking what the women around him seemed to do so easily. Some were shaking and struggling as well, but the feisty instructor was there to gently lift arms and place a hand on their backs for support, ending in a round of pleasant laughter that made his blood sing. How come she wasn’t helping him? He grit his teeth and tried harder.
He nearly tipped over again when he felt a delicate finger tap against his jaw. Almost instantly, he relaxed his mouth, and looked up, but that instructor was already walking away to help a teenaged girl keep her back leg straight.
The other two positions weren’t as frustrating as the first. Kylo didn’t grit his teeth through them anymore, which somehow made him relax. “Imagine two bath plugs in the balls of your feet, and pull the strings connecting them up with your shoulders. Visualise all the tension and stress in your life flowing out through your feet into the ground, slow and easy.” It was fucking incredible how easy it was to realize this in his mind. It must be the exhaustion in his body overriding the sense in his mind. “When you feel that tension leave you, return to the standing position, but keep those drains open.”
Kylo thinks he’s got all of that tension gone after a minute, and rises. Peeking an eye open, he sees the women around him still in the last position. He feels confused. Why didn’t everyone feel as devoid of tension as he did? The instructor was back at her little sacrificial yoga mat, looking at him with a strange expression: curious, but laced with disappointment. He feels his already-sweaty face heat up again. He must have done something wrong.
The instructor dismisses the class one by one, allowing them to leave in peace rather than abruptly. She dismisses Kylo last. He sees that woman he’d met at the beginning come back. “Where’s your sign-off sheet?” She demands. He almost answers with a ‘what?’ before he realizes oh yeah, you’re technically an unhinged gateway criminal , and gets out the folded paper he’d put under his mat. She looks at it with distaste and moves past him to the reception area. He rolls up his sweaty red mat and shoulders it before slipping his shoes back on and shuffling after her.
She’s just finishing signing it with a flourish before capping her pen and handing it back. He couldn’t make out more than the R of her first name. R looks up at him with an expression that seethes, get out of my studio now .
“Have a good day.” He mutters quickly before high-tailing it past the women waiting for the expectant mothers class to start. The blast of cool air on his face is refreshing and grounds him. He pounds the pavement to the Starbucks where Hux is, pushing hair out of his face angrily. He’s miffed that this was all it took for him to be back to where he was. Borderline unhinged. He sees Hux with an open newspaper in the window and walks in.
“Well you look like shit.” The man says distastefully, folding his paper and finishing his overpriced drink.
“Can you just drive me back already?” Kylo whines.
“I see the anti-anger stretching didn’t help much.”
“It did.” He snaps defensively. Until I walked out of there .
“What about the teacher?” Hux asked as they walked to his Civic.
The question catches Kylo off-guard. “What about her?”
“Well is she attractive, at least?”
“I like her voice.” Kylo manages to answer, haltingly.
“Her yoga voice? All that deep breath in, hold bullshit?” Hux laughs, starting the car and pulling into city traffic. Kylo chose not to speak the rest of the trip. “See you Wednesday.” Hux says before pulling away from the curb.
Kylo tried to grasp for that peace he’d found at the end of class while he was beating off in the shower, but his own pitiful orgasm was nowhere near the level of satisfaction that he needed.
Wednesday came and with it another round of yoga. His hair was starting to really piss him off, getting in his face every two seconds. He had to keep spitting it out. The woman next to him in his row (still the front) tossed a hairtie onto his mat when R wasn’t looking. He broke position quickly to pull his hair back. He wanted to thank the woman next to him, but she was dismissed before he was, as he was expecting now. Maybe he’d see the woman before class on Friday, but he remembered pitifully that she wasn’t ordered by a judge to be there. So he kept the hairtie. R was still giving him those distasteful looks he didn’t quite understand. He still lost his barely-achieved peace the moment he stepped outside the door.
At the beginning of his final week, he approaches R after she’d signed his paper, humble and placating, almost. Like he was pleading for her to not look at him with that same disdain she had every time he was in her presence. “I’m supposed to be here for anger management, and it’s so easy to find that kind of peace I want, in here, but the moment I step outside the building, I lose that control.” He’s babbling. He doesn’t want to look up at her eyes, lest he find that same disappointment.
His fears are confirmed when R says, “Listen. You’re not one of the actual paying members of this studio, not even remotely. You’re only here because somebody told you to be. Don’t get any illusions about you ‘finding inner peace’ here. Forced anger management classes are still forced actions, and hold no remorse upon completion. I’m here to sign your paper and pay attention to my class. I’m not here to further your self-enlightenment.”
The silence between them is brutal and thick. He lifts his eyes up to hers finally. Her expression changed from stubborn annoyance to a wince. Something must show in his eyes.
“Right.” He swallows, and tries again, this time without whispering. “Right. Got it. Yeah, sorry about that.” He plucks the sheet of paper from her, folding it up. “No illusions.” He gives a tight-lipped smile, more a grimace, before turning around. Jail is still an option.
He’s about halfway down the block when he hears, “Kylo, wait!” Behind him. He stops and turns. He’d expected anger to flood his veins, but instead it was just unexplained sadness. She’d given him hope that he could achieve some higher plane, transcend his anger and emotions so he wasn’t feared anymore. He sighs and shoves his hands in his pockets as R dashes forward. “I’m sorry for what I said. It was uncalled for and none of it was true—”
“Don’t patronize me.” He rolls his eyes, on the defensive. “What you said was true. You feeling bad about it doesn’t change anything.”
“Will you shut up and let me apologize?” She asks, that stubborn streak still there. Good. I hate this regretful version of her .
“Go ahead.”
“I think I was wrong about you.” She begins again. “You walked in with your court order and I got the wrong idea instantly. I’ve been neglecting you in class when you needed it, and I’ve singled you out, and made fun of you because I have this great big perception of who you are as a person and that was...completely unprofessional of me to do.” She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. “You’ve been nothing but respectful and polite since walking in and I let my own opinions cloud my sense. I’m so sorry.” She finishes.
Kylo wants to bring it on himself to say something snarky and sarcastic, but find he can’t. He has the words there, at the ready in that place in him where hellfire springs forth from. But the fire has been smothered. He nods in acknowledgement, swallowing roughly. Gratitude, a foreign feeling in his chest, surges up into his throat. “Thank you.” He rasps out, voice deep and thick.
R rests her hand on his arm with a concerned look. “I know you only have one more session left. Would you rather attend the private session I do for meditation?”
He’s shaking his head as soon as she suggests changing up their schedule. “No, that’s fine. I’d rather the ladies don’t think anything’s up.” He shrugs. He’d become a favorite in his class, with his little bun and his toned long legs and arms. “They don’t know I’m ordered there, right?” He asks worriedly.
R shakes her head. “No, they all adore you.” She assures him. It’s a relief. “Do you think you could stay for a few minutes?” She asks.
He shakes his head again. “My probation officer is waiting for me.” He says with a sigh.
“Oh. Well maybe Wednesday then.” She suggests. “We’ll have to see.”
They leave on those terms. Better than normal.
Hux is leaning on the wall by the Starbucks when Kylo walks up. “You’re usually in such a hurry to get away from the studio. Everything alright?”
“Fine.”
It isn’t until Kylo is back in his apartment that he realized he felt more at peace at home than he had in a long time. He wipes down his mat with Lysol before showering. A pleasant hum replaces the angry static that usually plays in his head. It continues for hours on end, through the night and morning. His control slips, however, when he tries to deal with other people.
Wednesday comes, and with it, a sense of dread in his stomach. Part of him doesn’t want R to treat him any differently, and part of him is excited that he’s going to be included as part of the group now. The starting stretches go by quickly, Kylo right in front of R.
“Kylo, could you lead the class in the Four Forms today?” The question is asked in that voice he’d been obsessed with for a month now. His head snaps up to look at her, surprise written all over his face, and trust radiating off of her. He nods once before awkwardly adjusting his mat to be next to R. He faces the class from a new perspective now. He had been so excited to be one of them, but now he was back where he started, so it seems.
He looks at the twenty other people in the room before slowly moving his arms in the right position. His voice drops to an unbelievably calming tone, even by his own ears, as he explains the sixteen steps of the Four Forms. An excited titter falls over the class at first, but everyone falls into place soon enough. R patrols around, lifting arms and stabilizing backs and tapping on muscles for people to relax. Twenty minutes later, the Four Forms are done, and R says he can return to his spot.
Class resumes as normal, and aside from that brief moment at the beginning, nothing is any different. R was a different person up there on that platform. She was helpful and instructive and believed in everybody around her.
Kylo is the first to be dismissed, that day. All the ladies want to talk with him in the reception area while he waits for R to come sign his paperwork. He laughs along with them and greets the women in the expectant mothers class. It’s amicable and sweet. R walks out of the studio into the reception area and asks him to come back with her to the office for a few minutes.
Rey’s office isn’t more than a couple chairs, a desk, a computer, and extra yoga mats and incense. It’s very sparse, but then again, Rey is hardly ever back there. She leans on the desk, like the chair is too foreign for her. “Thank you for today. You did very well when I asked for your help. I wanted to thank you personally, instead of out there.” Her arms are crossed slightly, as his are. It’s awkward for them to be trading thank you’s and I’m sorry’s. He nods again, like he had last Friday.
“I was nervous I was gonna fuck it up, honestly.”
“After the second week and you’d been practicing your flexibility, it occurred to me that you were a natural at yoga. Your body is kind of humongous, but you make it work for you. Good job.”
The silence stretches on. “Are you busy Friday?” She asks him, finally. He frowns, and so does she.
“I’m meeting with the judge that day.” He says.
“Well maybe when you’re done, if you need to come blow off steam...I’m thinking of letting you have a free trial here. Just for a little bit, of course.” She adds quickly.
“You want me to come back?” He can’t help a little smug grin at her blush.
“Maybe.” She lifts her jaw up. “I’m going to give you my cell phone number. I want you to let me know if you want to make your usual Friday class….just text me. Or call me.” She gives him a card with her number on it before signing off the final signature box. “There you go.” She hands the paper back. “Good luck with your hearing.” She says.
“Thank you. I’ll let you know.”
She smiles at him for the first time, and it feels like his heart is going to explode out of his chest.
“Well you probably don’t want to keep your probation officer waiting.” She says, not bothering to cover her grin at this point.
“Probably. What’s the worst he can do? Assign me more yoga?”