Who: Wash and Liv What: Skateboarding tips When: Beginning of January Where: Local Skatepark Rating/Warnings None/Low Status: Complete!
Now that where and how he was going to have his next drink wasn’t all consuming, Wash had slowly started returning to the hobbies he’d once taken a lot of pleasure in. It was an on-going process. The desire – the need - to drink was still there. Somedays it was more of a need than others. Those were the bad days, when Wash’s mind refused to obey and clamped hold of a specific thought or idea and obsessed to the point of utter distraction. Epsilon, ever present and whispering, was always louder on those days and that certainly never helped. The remedy had been drinking to the point of utter oblivion, but that was no longer an option. It wasn’t so much another round of detoxing in a secluded place that terrified him so much as the reaction he’d get if Carolina ever found out.
So, with nothing else to fall back on, Wash turned to those hobbies he’d had before. Video games, comic books, and his lifelong passion: skateboarding.
He’d substituted a couple of cold ones at a local bar for a trip to the skatepark into his daily routine. He’d been a little rusty at first, having not set foot anywhere near a skateboard in well over six months – probably closer to a year. But it didn’t take long for muscle memory to kick in and for his body to once again relax into the jumps and tricks that made him feel as though he was flying.
As eclectic a place as Orange County was known to be, Wash – at the ripe old age of thirty – was easily the oldest person on the ramps and the pipes. It didn’t take long, though, for the kids half his age to start looking to him to teach them. His afternoons spent between his shift at the ranch and when he started his bounty hunting had turned into a kind of workshop with the skatepark kids. Which, all things considered, was a lot more fun than drowning at the bottom of a whisky bottle.
Liv had the urge to go skateboarding, a lot. This new brain was still somewhat knew, but she had still spent both her lunch breaks and after work hours there. While she was pretty competent on the board, not falling off and could even do a few basic tricks, there were still some she couldn’t do. And yet she wanted to.
Liv spotted a guy who seemed pretty good at all the ollies and flips. In fact she even saw him teaching a few others. She skated on over to him popping the board up when she reached him. “Mind giving me a few pointers?”
Wash had noticed the blonde woman at the skate park a couple of times. It was hard to miss her. She was one of the few out there who was about his age, clad in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. She looked a little out of place not sporting a particular brand on her chest, but what really made her stand out was the amount of make-up she seemed to be wearing around her eyes. It was very heavy and actually seemed to make her look even more pale then Wash figured she must have been.
Wash wasn’t one to judge, though. He’d gone through a time in his life in which his blond hair was a different color each month. In high school his best friend had wanted to be a cosmetologist and Wash was often was her guinea pig. Of course the practice had stopped when he went into the Marines, but he kind of missed it. If he wasn’t so concerned about looking as though he was an old man trying to recapture his youth (or going through an early midlife crises), he’d have already gone ahead with making his hair Pepsi-can blue. So, he had a lot of respect for the blonde woman with the heavy eye-liner.
“Sure,” he said, the end of his skateboard balanced on the top of his foot. “What did you want help with?”
Liv was used to people looking at her oddly. She had been pale with her platinum blonde hair for awhile now. Sure she could do the whole fake tanner and hair dye thing that almost all the zombies in her dreams did, except Blaine. But that was never for her. She owned what she was and how she looked. So being almost 30 at a skate park didn’t phase her in the slightest.
“I haven’t quite got the Alley Oop down yet,” Liv admitted not at all ashamed. Sure some skaters might have been but this was all new for Liv. “I was hoping you could show me?”
The Alley Oop was a must-have for any skater as it was the first building block to a lot of other tricks. It was a pretty basic maneuver, but did require a lot of practise to get down and not end up on either your back side at the bottom of a pool or, worse, grinding your face down a ramp. Both were unpleasant experiences Wash’d had at one time or another, and if he could help someone else avoid doing the same, he was only happy to help.
“Sure I can,” he nodded with a slight smile. He motioned over to where the empty “pool” was. “Let’s head over this way and I’ll show you how.”
“Thanks,” Liv said hopping back on her board and skating over to the ‘pool’ with the guy. “Name’s Liv by the way.” It was only polite after all, to introduce yourself to the person helping you. Or to anyone you were talking to really. Liv didn’t go around not giving her name or even worse giving a fake name like some people.
“I’m Wash,” the former marine answered, because yes, it was proper etiquette to give your name when someone has introduced themselves to you. “It’s nice to meet you, Liv. I think I’ve seen you around the park a couple of times before.”
He rolled with her over to a section of the pool that didn’t have quite as much skate traffic. He glanced around to be sure they were clear before he started giving her a few tips on how the Alley Oop worked, such as how to place her feet, when to shift her body weight and where, how to lean into the upward momentum when she approached the incline. He showed her each step as they stood there by the side of the pool, using his own deck to show her what her own board would be doing. “You wanna give it a shot?” He asked when he was finished. It was one thing to have the mechanics explained to you, but Wash had always found that actually doing them made all the difference.
“You too,” Liv replied honestly. Because it was nice to meet him, especially since he was going out of his way to help her out. “Yeah, I started coming about a week ago. It’s all still new to me.” And soon enough she probably wouldn’t be coming around anymore. Yeah, there were certain hobbies from the brains that she would like to keep up, and this would probably be one of them. But each brain was so consuming it didn’t leave much room to go back to other things she picked up, she barely even did the things she had always liked to do. As Liv, the human.
She understood everything he was saying, watched carefully as he did the moves. Now it was just a matter of trying. She nodded her head in response to his question before taking off n her board. She positioned her body just how he did, shifting her weight at the right times and bam. She got it. “That was awesome!”
Wash was grinning when Liv met up with him again at the side of the pool. She’d picked up his instruction quickly and she looked very comfortable on the skate deck, as though she’d been skating her whole life. “That was great,” he told her. “You’re a natural. You sure this is new to you?”
“Positive,” Liv replied with a smile. “I’m just a fast learner.” that was plausible after all. It was just too bad that soon enough her skills would fade. “How long have you been doing this for?” She assumed a while given how all the kids seemed to be coming to him for tips. Just like she had.
Totally plausible. When he’d been younger Wash had known a kid who only had to see a trick once and was able to replicate it almost perfectly afterwards. Wash had been a little envious of him. It usually took him months on end, and several wipe-outs and varying injuries before he’d have been able to do the same trick nearly as well.
“I’ve been skating since I was thirteen,” he said. “More or less. I was in the Marines for ten years and there’s not really much of a chance to get on a board when you’re overseas.” He shrugged lightly. “And I kinda missed it.” Which was something of an understatement. Wash had taken his job as a marine seriously. He’d had to. His squad had trusted him with their lives, just as he had trusted his life with them. He’d been good at his job too, the squad’s mid-range weapons’ specialist. However, combat, clandestine missions and sneaking behind enemy lines had sometimes made him miss the feel of a board under his feet.
“Thanks for your service,” Liv said sincerely. Even if he had mentioned it as an off hand comment, shrugging it off like it was no big deal, it was. It took someone special to fight for their country, and Liv truly did appreciate it. Thanking him was the least she could do.
“But yeah, I can see that. Fighting a war probably doesn’t leave much time for skating.” Not like Liv could actually speak from experience, but she just assumed as much.
Wash probably would never get used to people thanking him for his time spent with the marines. “You’re welcome,” he answered her a little awkwardly, but with a faint smile nonetheless. “And no, it doesn’t. Not a whole lot of skate parks in the desert,” he joked. “So I’m glad to be back and able to get on a board again. Even if I am the oldest person here,” he added with a glance around the park.
“Probably didn’t bring it with you either.” Again, not that Liv would know. Who knew what people brought to war. She assumed it was just clothing and pictures. “And yeah, the sand would definitely be a bit of a buzz kill. But hey, at least you can skate again now.”
“Actually…” Wash chuckled. “I did have one. I didn’t take it overseas with me, but I had a deck that traveled to the barracks in the states with me. You need to have some thing like that to do. Some kind of hobby, you know?” He shifted his footing a little uncomfortably. He switched the topic of their conversation. “Did you want pointers on anything else?”
Liv was no dummy, not matter what brain she was currently eating she still had her smarts. She could tell Wash didn’t want to talk much about the whole army thing. Especially with the subject change, which really skating was much more fascinating to her at the moment anyway. “If you have the time,” she replied with a hopeful smile. Yeah, Liv could use all the pointers.