Who: Sam & Ash What: Testing out a bike Where: The shop Sam works at When: Recent! Warnings/Rating: None!
Sam was jumpy. She'd been jumpy since dinner with Joey, and she hadn't managed to settle the fuck down yet. It was a combination of shit, really. Joey's unpredictability, Neil's surprise infant and the unknown woman who'd produced her, the new apartment, the shit around the new apartment. Stress. She had bills to pay now, which meant she had money, and having ready cash wasn't a good thing when she felt as fucking stressed as she did then. She had her old shrinks back, thanks to Neil's agreement to pay for them, but she was trying to stick by her fucking guns and not ask him for more money. Yeah, so he said he didn't mind, but like wasn't love, and she wasn't going to keep milking him dry. She'd take the shrinks until her court mandated therapy was done, and then she was cutting that shit too. As for the heroin he was supposed to clear out for her, he'd never gotten around to it, and she had it stashed in a good hiding place at work. She wouldn't keep it at the apartment, not with Joey out on parole; she knew better than that. But she hadn't dumped it, either. Maybe it was telling, or maybe she was just tired, done. Joey's pushing about everything wasn't helping her keep her hands off something to keep herself calm, either. Maybe she could trade the heroin for some pills. She hadn't decided yet.
It was late enough that there were only a few stragglers at the old garage just outside the tourist trap that was the strip. The place was old and run down, the type of place broke people brought their shit, because they took payment plans. The old pumps out front didn't work anymore, and the bays were dingy. Sam was in the back, the last bay door open, and the junkie bike that Russ had gotten for $200 leaned against its kickstand. It was a Honda, nothing special, old and rusted with a cracked leather seat. A soft tail, it had seen better days, but the engine block was clean and new, and the kickstand glinted in the lights from outside the bay. Sam wandered outside, dressed in jeans and a faded grey sweatshirt with holes for her thumbs and paint spatters on the sleeves. Her hair was loose and wind-tangled from a spin moments earlier, and her cheeks still held onto the redness of riding without a helmet. Love Never Dies was playing from inside, and Carlos and Juan (still working on a beat up Mustang) were singing along with wrong words and Spanish accents, making Sam grin.
After getting the address for the shop from Sam, Ash had swung by there on her way home from practice at the rink that afternoon. She was still flushed from exertion, a blossoming bruise on her cheekbone from where her and another girl's elbow had met a little too hard, but that was the life she led, battle scars worn proudly. Her bag of gear was slung over her shoulder, dressed in a snug blank tank, black capris, and a grey jacket thrown over all of it to ward off the setting-sun, she stepped out of the cab with a little wave, black braid bouncing against her shoulder as she approached the shop. "Hello, love," Ash said by way of greeting, lifting a hand towards her, an easy smile on her face. "Hope I didn't show up too late. Practice ran a little long, and I was hoping you'd still be here."
"I hadn't put it away yet," Sam assured Ash of the bike as she walked out of the bay. She waved a dirty rag toward Ash's cheek. "Someone got you good, yeah?" she asked, a grin and no concern about where Ash got the bruise. The gear over Ash's shoulder made it obvious enough where the other girl had been. Sam missed the rink. She was having trouble fitting anything like that in now, between Gwen and work and the need to make enough fucking money to actually swing rent for the first time in her fucking life. As for it being too late? Yeah, not really. She loved Joey to fucking pieces, but she was trying to spend as little time in the apartment as possible until she calmed the fuck down. Calm hadn't been achieved yet, so work happened more often than it normally did. She wrapped the dirty rag around her hair, using it as a makeshift ponytail holder, and she motioned toward the bay. "Dump your stuff. Let's take it out," she suggested.
"Something like that," Ash said with a grin of her own, reaching up to swipe at the spot on her cheek, just slightly tender and only a little swollen. "Her elbow wanted to be where my face was. Her elbow won the fight, but only by a little." Moving over towards the bay, Ash dumped her gear down, giving it a nudge with her foot to tuck it alongside one wall and out of the way of anyone in there. "You ought to come by the rink sometime, even just to skate with me for an hour. The girls there are great, but I had a good time with you, too." She hadn't quite figured out how to make this crowd her own crowd yet, and Sam was a familiar, friendly face among the masses, one she liked knowing was on her side. Releasing a breath, Ash finally gave the bike a look over, arms folding over her chest as she thought this through. On paper, a bike seemed nice. Fast, small, easy to get around town on, but now that she was faced with one, entrusting her safety to two fast moving wheels didn't seem as wise. "Do you know how to ride?" Ashleigh asked, glancing over towards Sam with a lift of her eyebrows. "Because I am suddenly feeling a rush of nerves I was not prepared for."
"I'd have such a short fucking career in the derby," Sam admitted. "I'd punch someone in the face, and then I'd be good and fucked," she admitted with a shrug, one that said she really didn't fucking care if she got kicked out. A good punch in the face was something she missed throwing; it had been a while since she'd had the balls for it. Her response to the comment about coming to the rink was a noncommittal shrug. "Yeah. Maybe. My brother's in town. Neil might have told you?" she asked, realizing it was probably stupid to assume Neil had. "Yeah, no, he's in town, so I'm spending nights at home these days," she said, and it wasn't a lie. Sure, she was working a fucking ton, but she was trying to spend as much time when she wasn't working or through the door. Finally, the look Ash gave the bike made Sam laugh. "It won't fucking bite," she promised, backing into the bay and returning with two, old helmets. "Come on. Get on," she said, straddling the bike first, and holding a helmet out, after letting up the kickstand and walking it back to where Ash was standing.
"No, you'd just spend forever in the penalty box and probably get punched in the face in return first time you came out." Ash gave her a grin, easy and comfortable in its essence. "And your brother?" Ash echoed a moment later, the lift of her brows saying that no, Neil hadn't told her, but it seemed that was one of the things her brother was good at, not letting people know things that were going on, not that it seemed wholly important to Ash that Sam's brother was in town. "So, you have a place? Not sleeping here anymore?" If her brother in town meant that was the case, then Ash was all for this, ignorant as she was about the relationship Sam shared with her brother. Ash's family wasn't perfect, but there was a certain closeness between the siblings that had persisted even with all the issues the parents had brought into the mix.
Ash took the helmet that was held out to her, watching as Sam walked the bike over towards her, her expression dubious. "You sure about the biting part?" she asked, nervousness leaking into her voice bit by bit as she stepped towards the bike, reaching out to touch it with one hesitant hand. "I suddenly feel as though I'm signing my death sentence even being near it," she commented, though she didn't move away or go into hiding. Instead, she drew in a breath, settled her nerves, and swung a leg over the bike to straddle it, feeling awkward at first.
"That doesn't sound so fucking bad," Sam said of sitting out and getting a punch back. It sounded a lot like her fucking childhood, actually, and that made her grin. Her grin faltered slightly when Ash admitted to not knowing about Joey, but it was back in place a second later. She had to get better at dealing with this shit. "Yeah, we borrowed your kitchen the other night. He's Lou's brother too, and Lou's never met him," she said of Joey, trying to explain why it mattered, but not following up with more than that. And yeah, maybe that didn't matter to Ash, but Sam was touchy about shit. She needed to work on that, too.
"Yeah," was Sam's simple answer about having a place to crash. She needed to get out of the habit of whining about shit, and there was no time like the present. "Joey and I got a place."
Sam laughed at Ash's uncertainty, and she waited until the other girl settled behind her on the bike to slowly back up. "Hold on," she said over her shoulder, a quick pause to settle gloves on her fingers, which still didn't always work the way they should. The gloves assured her grip didn't slip, and she'd run the bike around the block often enough to feel secure in her ability to grip the bars.
A second later, the bike was on the Vegas blacktop, the air whipping, and the motor loudly accelerating.
“I think you’d get on well in the derby if you ever wanted to try it,” Ash commented, and really, she meant it. Sam wasn’t like a lot of the girls that Ash had met over the years. She had an edge to her, wasn’t afraid to react honestly, and that was something Ash could really get behind. When she mentioned her brother, and the fact that he was also Louis’ brother, it gave Ash a moment to think. She knew that Louis was adopted, much like she was, but her knowledge of Louis and his biological siblings was small. She knew Sam was included in the number, and obviously this other brother, and part of her had to wonder what had happened that Louis had been adopted out but not the others. And that line of thought also had Ash thinking about her own mother; she had never known the woman, didn’t know who her father was, and honestly, she didn’t care to. Her parents were the ones who had raised her, even if they weren’t the ones who had made her. She did, however, wonder if she had any other siblings wandering around out there, and if they knew they had a sister someplace.
She didn’t linger long on those thoughts, however, instead pulling the helmet on over her head and settling behind Sam on the bike, arms around the other girl’s middle. She thought her hold was tight enough, at least until the bike was rolling. A very girlish yelp escaped her as her grip on Sam grew tight, the wind pressing against her, the sound of the motor filling her ears, the warm girl in front of her, and though adrenaline was spiking and her heart was in her throat, Ash found herself loving every minute of it. It wasn’t like a bicycle, wasn’t like a car, it was the best of both worlds. Fast with the world pressing in so close.
Sam liked the physicality of the rink, but she liked physical things in general. She liked climbing things, and she liked danger. It was coming back slowly, those old loves, but it was coming back. People still freaked her the fuck out, but that fear didn't extend to a good I-Beam anymore, or a good fucking sweat, and she liked to think that meant crap was looking up. Joey might not think so, but she needed to believe she was getting better, even with the occasional fuck up or security hit hidden within reach. "You just want to see me fall on my fucking ass," she teased, because Ash was much better than her at the whole skating thing, and she wasn't ashamed to admit it.
The arms around Sam's middle were feminine, despite the lithe muscles beneath the skin. She didn't tense. She didn't freak. She knew she had Tristan to thank for that. Tristan, and that one good experience after all the shit with Micah. Tristan had pushed, and she'd let Sam push back, and that had made all the fucking difference. She laughed when Ash yelped, and she pushed the old bike to its limits. The thing didn't go very fast, but the rush was still a good one. Fuck, now she wanted a decent bike. Maybe she could talk Neil into getting one she could bum. The idea made her grin. She had no problem with mooching; it was being a responsibility that she didn't like. But if Neil wanted to buy a bike, well, that wouldn't meet with any argument.
A light turned red, and the bike idled. "You like it?" Sam called back.
After that moment of surprise that swept her breath away, the movement of the bike wasn't as frightening as it had been initially. Bit by bit she relaxed, arms an easy hold around Sam's middle, even her head lifting to face forward, the thick braid of black hair picked up by the wind every so often. It was a rush, it was energy and speed and all the things that Ash enjoyed, and in particular, it was the freedom of the moment. That bike made her feel positively unstoppable.
When it came to a slow stop, Ash couldn't help the grin that pulled at her lips, the nod of her head in response to Sam's question. "Like is an understatement," she called back, a laugh rumbling through her. "I need to learn to ride so I can get one of my own. I can't imagine having a car in this city, but a bike?" There was another laugh, arms tightening around Sam's waist again, a squeeze of happiness. "I could do this."
"There are classes," Sam called over her shoulder. She'd done one during rehab, as one of her shrink's physical therapy exercises. "A couple of days, and they teach you all the basics," she explained, as the light changed and the bike lurched forward and sputtered, before finding an even speed again. "I was thinking of making Neil take one," she admitted of her plan to trick him into a bike. She didn't worry about how Ash would afford the classes without a job. She was pretty sure Neil's sister wasn't hurting for cash. As for not needing a car, she wasn't wrong. It hardly ever rained in the fucking desert, and even winter didn't come with any wet snow that would make a bike a pain in the ass.
Sam avoided the lights for the rest of the ride, using back roads that crossed in front of shithole motels, and she only rounded back to the dingy old garage when the lack of fuel threatened to leave them stranded. Even so, she took her time pulling the bike into the bay and setting the kickstand down, and she didn't get off the bike right away. "You liking the desert, baby?" she asked. Ash had just been settling in the last time Sam had really talked to her.
“I can make some noises at Neil too, if you want,” Ash offered, and this time, as the bike lurched forward into motion, it didn’t take her by surprise. Instead, she pressed against Sam’s back, more relaxed now that she knew what to expect with the bike. “Maybe I’ll even drag him to class with me. He can make sure his sister doesn’t kill herself on the big bad motorcycles.” She laughed at that, unable to help it at the thought of Neil on a bike. Somehow, it simply didn't fit in her personal perspective of her brother, but it was something she would enjoy seeing.
When they returned back to the garage, Ash pulled the helmet off and settled it on her knee, pushing a hand back through the loose hair around her face to get it out of her eyes. "It's different," she responded after a moment, her lips twisting for a moment. "It's certainly not home, but it has things about it that I like. I'm still not used to the arid desert, though." One shoulder shrugged up and Ash leaned forward, chin on Sam's shoulder. "People make up for it, though."
"Oh, I'll get him on a fucking bike," Sam assured, the grin that accompanied the cocky statement a hint of what it had been a year earlier. Yeah, ok, maybe she was getting better. She chuckled under her breath when Ash pressed against her back, and she decided she liked the feeling of someone needing to hold onto her for a change. It had been a long time since that shit had happened; she could get used to it again, she decided. It made her think of the heroin back at the office. And, reluctantly, she talked herself into swapping it out for some Xanax once she left work. It was legal, she could take it home without Joey having parole issues, and her crappy public assistance shrink had prescribed plenty of the fucking shit in the past week. It was still weak, but it wasn't a needle, yeah? That had to count for something.
Sam took her helmet off as Ash talked, and she hung the strap over one of the bike's bars. She reached back for Ash's helmet a second later, and that beat-up thing joined hers on the bars. The feeling of Ash's chin on her shoulder was nice, reassuring, and Sam looked up at the darkening desert shy. She motioned with her free shoulder, indicating the red-purple light still slightly visible behind the mountains in the distance. "The dryness sucks, but that's fucking art," she said, comfortable to just sit and look at it for a minute. "And, yeah, people make all the fucking difference," she admitted. No point pretending that shit wasn't true anymore; no point lying to herself about it.
There was something about the moment, the sliver of peace as they sat there on the bike together, the setting sun and the last vestiges of light that filled the sky. She'd talk to Neil about the bike as well, and who knows what would happen there? But for right now, there was only here, only now, and Ash would have been content to stay here for some time. "Scotland doesn't have sunsets like this, that's for certain," Ash said after a moment, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. "But yeah. It's the people for me, too."