Darcy & Doug: Sparring (backdated)

[xp_darcy]

Darcy entered the gym, eyes spotting Doug across the room and quickly moving to him. "So... stretchy warm up, and then you get to show me how to not get all this," she said with a grin and full-body shimmy, "all bruised up and requiring medical attention?"

Normally for hand-to-hand working out, Doug tended to wear a close-fitting tank top, but today he was wearing a longer (though still tight) shirt that came down nearly to his wrists. Bits of the nanite 'prosthetic' could be seen under the wrap gloves on his hand, but he wasn't quite ready to have the whole thing out there in front of god and man yet. "Well, maybe only minorly bruised," he observed with a chuckle. "That's the thing about fights, even when you win them you tend to get a bit roughed up. Kind of like the whole 'if there's a knife, someone's getting cut, if there's a gun, expect it to go off' adage." He rotated his shoulders and began loosely stretching as he talked. "But yes, the goal is absolutely 'call an ambulance - but not for me'-dot-jpeg."

"Well, if I can avoid a repeat of the spring.." Darcy dropped to the floor to stretch her arms and legs with a grimace at the thought. "Less bruises for me, more asking Natasha very politely to teach me how to crush a head with my thighs once I have the basics down." She grinned at the thought. "Have to be careful to only use that one for evil, if I learn it."

Doug snorted. "Maybe partner could have little a crush, as a treat?" He wasn't sure if Darcy was dating anyone seriously, but he knew she liked to flirt like other people liked to breathe. "But yeah, if you're actually going to pop someone like a watermelon, better to save it for people who deserve it."

Darcy snort-laughed. "Pfft. No, the only thing I'm crushing right now is the motor on some of my toys. Between work, training like this, and helping Laurie I don't have time to go to Helga's like I've been doing." She rolled to her feet with a shrug. "So, what are we covering today that isn't my lack of a sex life?"

"I mean, you're the one who asked me if my nanites could turn into a vibrating condom, so as far as I'm concerned sex lives are definitely fair game," Doug volleyed back. They both settled into loose stances, Doug intentionally mirroring Darcy as they moved. "But as far as actual sparring shit, I was thinking we'd see where you are with basics of punching and blocking, and then cover some basic holds and how to break out of them."

"Oh, it's totally fair. Everything I know about self-defense I learned from Miss Congeniality, so I hope you're wearing a cup. Do you want me to punch at your hands, or just at air?" She mimed a punch, fist loose but thumb untucked.

Doug rapped a knuckle of his left hand against hardened plastic at his groin. "Always." Not wearing a cup was just asking to get hit there, even if accidentally. "We'll start with air and then move on to hands or other targets." He brought his own hands up, fist a bit tighter than Darcy's but not overly so. "One thing to remember with punching is to twist from the hips and extend through the target. It gives you a lot more in the way of reach." He demonstrated the difference, first standing straight up and down, and then pivoting and shifting his feet slightly to reach farther.

Darcy twisted a few times experimentally, then punched across her body. She stumbled slightly, body overbalanced from too wide a step, and got her feet back under her. Frowning, she tried again, treating the movement more like a dance step. A few more attempts, and she looked at Doug for approval. "That's much easier when I think about it like dancing."

Doug nodded encouragingly. "That makes sense. Really, the sort of lessons you learn from an activity where you're moving your body are broadly applicable. Knowing how to move precisely is important for dancing, fighting, lots of different sports..." He bounced lightly on his toes to demonstrate keeping your feet in a balanced stance. "Okay, next step is to remember to protect yourself even while striking." He demonstrated by throwing another of the same punches, this time emphasizing the off hand close in to his body where his forearm and elbow could guard his ribs.

Darcy tried to copy a few times, awkwardly moving around her chest. "Ugh, boobs, why?" Another attempt, where she managed to punch herself in her forearm, and she was crossing her arms in discomfort. "You're not allowed to laugh if I give myself a black eye doing this," she snarked.

"No laughing, promise." Doug raised his open hands palm out. "Everyone has to start somewhere." He paused and considered. "Except maybe Natasha, it wouldn't surprise me if she was doing the thigh grip of doom before she could walk."

"Terrifyingly competent assassins don't count for this, agreed." She grimaced as she moved back into the stance, trying again. "I hate being bad at things."

Doug shrugged. "I mean, does anyone really like that? I mean, not like, content with just being so-so at something, like actively likes being just terrible at it." He supposed there might be some real jerks out there who took glee in dragging others down by being a poor teammate, but even that was more about the performative aspect than being unskilled. He moved behind Darcy, gently adjusting her stance with his flesh hand. "You don't really want to punch across your body, you want to twist your torso a bit more."

"Fair. I don't mind it as much for fun hobbies, but those aren't high stakes." Darcy moved her body as Doug guided her, twisting a punch into the air. "More like that?"

"That's much better, yeah." They practiced for a while, Doug providing pointers and occasional correction of body positioning. "Okay. Generally punching is going to be most of a fight, because it's faster than kicking. However, there's a few things kicking is very good for. Number one being destroying someone's knee so you can get away from them."

He demonstrated with a very slow tap of his foot to the inside of Darcy's knee.

"And I know there's a way to do that so I don't injure myself in the process," Darcy replied dryly. "You can use both of your hands for guiding, I'm not that scared of your nanites." She widened her stance slightly, stepping forward to shift weight and followed through on a slow kick that ended with the ball of her foot resting against the inside of Doug's knee. "I did a little bit of kickboxing in college as a workout, but tend to snap my own knee too hard when I kick my lower leg out."

"It's not that I think you're that scared." In some ways, Doug had gotten very quickly acclimated to the nanites and the replacement hand they had created. All of the small day-to-day uses of his hand had come right back - typing, eating, and the like. He hadn't had an extended time to get used to being one-handed, so he didn't have to relearn much in the way of getting around. But touching someone else...that was the part he shied away from. "And yeah, hyperextending your knee is bad, mmkay? Keep things a little tighter and don't just swing away."

"I'm not sure why you'd be skittish otherwise. Don't come at my neck without warning, but I'm not flinching away from Laurie's arm anymore for standard touch, so." She shrugged, following his advice as she aimed increasingly powerful kicks into the air. "Better that we're in a safe environment if I freak out."

"Maybe I'm the one that is riding the edge of a freak out," Doug shot back snappishly. Then he stopped, blew out a long breath, and rubbed at his forehead, covering a fair amount of his face with his left hand. "Sorry. It's just...I'm used to it in some respects, and very...not...in others." Hence why the sexual turn to discussion on the journals had left him a little bit peevish.

Darcy's eyes were wide at his tone, but she lightly grabbed his shoulder with her hand instead of snapping back. "We're good. If my issues were the problem, I didn't want you to hold back, but since it's your issues..." Her thumb rubbed idly along the curve as she talked. "Well, probably still best to address it in a safe environment, but it doesn't have to be right now. You know it's going to get pushed, though."

His shoulder was far enough from where the nanites were that he didn't jerk away, but close enough that it was making him slightly anxious. "I mean, that's what I have a therapist for," Without Dr. Grim, he would not be half as put together as he generally was. "And I definitely know it gets pushed." Doug shook his head wryly. That was basically why he'd gotten in therapy in the first place, after all.

Darcy dropped her hand and stepped back, face somewhere between a grimace and an attempt to smile. "At least we know, I guess? As long as you don't touch my neck without warning, either hand is fine. And I'll try not to touch your hand until you're ready to deal with it. We can work with that."

"I can work with that, yeah." Doug straightened his shoulders in an attempt to get past the moment. "Speaking of which, do you feel up to breaking some holds?"

"I can't decide if you want to get your hands all up on this or make sure I end up on my ass for upsetting you," she replied, biting her lip to hold in a laugh. "But go ahead, let's see if I can break your hold on me."

A snort escaped Doug at Darcy's relentless...Darcy-ness. Teasing, flirting, god knew what else mixed in. It was definitely a particular brand of chaos. "It can be both?" he replied, taking a moment longer to get back into banter, but thankful for it. "Okay, I know you've watched Miss Congeniality, so I think we'll skip the grab from behind. I don't fancy getting the Sandra Bullock treatment." He looped the fingers of his left hand around Darcy's right wrist as he faced her. "Let's start with wrist grabs and understanding the weak points of any grip."

"Okay, walk me through it. Finger and thumb meetup is obvious if we're similar in size." She studied their arms for a second. "Rotation? Clock or counter?"

"Whichever is faster to get your wrist parallel. Then you use that to attack the finger-thumb meetup." He let Darcy try several times to get used to it. "Just about every breakaway follows the same principle. Find the weakest point, and apply maximum effort at the smallest spot possible there."

"If my other hand is free, is it worth the effort to pry the fingers back, or just try to claw somewhere else to make them drop their grip?" She mimed the play of curled to splayed with her free hand.

Doug thought about that for a moment. "It kind of depends on the grab," he decided. "Sometimes you can clasp both your hands together to get better leverage. Here, do me," he said, having Darcy mirror the grip he had just put on her, and this time clasping his nanite hand to his flesh hand to pull away more sharply.

Pained amusement flashed over her face at the innuendo. "Well, that's always one option for encouraging a different sort of hold. Maybe once you're comfortable using both hands I'll take you up on it." She raised an eyebrow in challenge, stepping into his space and getting a solid grip on his flesh wrist. "Can you twist an opponent's arm while in a grip like this? It feels possible, but I'm not sure about which direction or how it'd end up."

Lightning-quick, Doug rotated his wrist so that Darcy's went along with it, outward and awkward at the limit of its rotation. From there, his wrist slipped out between her thumb and forefinger as he reversed the grip and grabbed her right wrist a bit harder. Continuing with the move, he sidestepped around her, pulling her arm to extend it and then yanking it upward to bend her elbow. When he finished, Darcy's wrist was pinned against the upper middle of her spine, his nanite hand resting on her shoulder so that he could push forward with the pinned wrist to have her slightly off balance. "Like that," he murmured from where he stood just behind her.

Darcy let out a hiss of discomfort. "Yeah, that would be effective enough for me," she replied, attempting to squirm free but mostly succeeding in going off-balance and making it hurt more. She grit her teeth, sliding a foot around in an effort to at least regain her balance.

Doug held the hold a moment longer, then loosened his grip, allowing Darcy to regain her balance with some gentle assistance, keeping his grip on her wrist until he knew she wasn't going to fall over. "Sometimes, if there doesn't seem to be a weak point on the grab, you have to create one by getting the other person off balance. So for that, one thing you could have done is shoved backward sharply to loosen the grip and give yourself more room to twist away."

Darcy turned to face him, rotating her shoulder as he detailed what to do. "Again so I can try it, I guess? Just... careful on the twist, since I'm not switching arms." Her fingers curled firmly around his wrist as she got back into place.

Once again Doug reversed the grip, though he noticed that it was more difficult since Darcy was ready for it this time. When he had her wrist pinned again, making sure he wasn't putting too much pressure on her elbow or shoulder, he cleared his throat. "Okay, go."

Darcy moved quickly, stepping back and twisting her hip and shoulder into his hand as she attempted to break the hold and spin free. She managed to get free, immediately ruining any semblance of grace with a miss-step and flail, landing on her hip with a thud. "Well, that wasn't great," she groused, rubbing her hip with a wince.

Doug had to rotate his hips slightly or take Darcy's hip right in the crotch, which, even wearing a cup was not the most comfortable thing in the world. The turn gave her just enough room to execute the escape, as he'd hoped. He hadn't made it super hard on her, but he hadn't made it easier either. "Falls happen," he told her, offering her his left hand to help her up.

"That doesn't mean we like them. At least I didn't fall on my knees." She gave him a smile, sliding her hand around his forearm for a better grip and leveraging herself up. "Thanks. What next, oh wise one?"

"Cooldown." Doug led Darcy through an abbreviated bit of stretching to keep things from getting too sore. "We covered a lot today." And not just self-defense either, he thought wryly. "Keep practicing the punches on a bag, you want to get to the point where it's just instinct."

"I'm sure the list of takers won't let me get too lazy about it," she laughed. "Or someone will give me that disappointed look." She shuddered, and admitted with a mutter, "I hate that look."