WHO Jesse McCree & Sydney Clarke WHERE The Summer Fair thing! WHEN Sat, Aug 29th - Evening WHAT Stuck at the top of the Ferris Wheel with a cowboy that hates heights. STATUS PG WARNINGS Casual talk of death and making light of it, heights!
It was balancing the scales, Jesse supposed. He was damn lucky in most cases. He should’ve been dead ages ago, the nonsense he got up to with the Deadlock Gang. But he was alive and living a pretty nice life with one helluva girlfriend and a pretty great dog. He’d barely been shot at all in a year. So really, finding himself stuck at the very top of the ferris wheel he’d insisted he was more than happy to ride - well, that was just karma.
His eyes were clamped shut and he held tight to the bar across their laps. Heights were generally an ignorable thing; he’d jumped out of helicopters and gotten the job done for Blackwatch, after all. But that kind of thing was quick and done. Fly out, jump out, swim where you need to go. Or rappel or what have you. This weren’t no quick and done. They’d been stuck ten minutes already and there was a collection of people down by the controls.
Not that Jesse had glanced back down again in awhile.
“They look like they’re makin’ any headway?” he mumbled. “Not that I ain’t really lovin’ this cool breeze up here.” Some little shit below them rocked his cart and it made the whole damn thing tremble and sway. Jesse swore under his breath. “Real glad I ain’t armed.”
“Want me to agree not to bring him back?” Sydney quipped back, not answering his question, since they didn’t look like they were making any headway and she didn’t want to be the person that told him that. She also didn’t want to say I told you so, since that felt particularly cruel.
She was really close to calling the asshole below them out on his asshole-ness, but knew that if it was a particular brand of asshole, that’d just make it worse. So she settled on a steadying hand to his thigh, squeezing. “Few more minutes, at most. Do you want me to talk about something dumb? Like how the guys managed to talk me into taking an economics class? I thought it was a joke, like only middle aged white dudes in romcoms were economics professors, not that people actually took those classes.
Jesse snorted but didn’t open his eyes. If he just slouched down into the seat, maybe he could regain some of his cool. At the very least, he could cover her hand with his own and squeeze. The ferris wheel continued to sway but he swallowed and forced out some words there weren’t shaky at all. “That’s the sweetest - darkest - thing you’ve ever said to me.”
If he wasn’t careful, he’d start to picture Gabriel Reyes glaring at him for not getting his shit together. It was just a dumb ride. He squeaked open an eye. “Economics. Thought for sure they liked you more than that.” He sounded distracted but like he was trying not to be. “Any good classes in mind?”
“I’d offer to feel you up if I didn’t think that’d be a complete no-go.” Syd leaned her head onto his shoulder, trying not to rock the boat - literally and figuratively - too much, but figuring a little comfort was better than nothing at all. Her movements were slow and careful, and she let her fingers slip into his when he reached down to touch her hand.
“I’m taking that Death in Perspective one with them, just for fun. Business Management, boring. Then there’s a horticulture class, that’s fun to say.” She made a little strangled noise against his shoulder, as if she was in pain - even if it was fake torture she was doing to herself. “There need to be more college classes that’s just hanging out with dogs.”
“It wouldn’t be a complete no-go,” Jesse shrugged, smirking helplessly. Of course there was a loud screech as the ride shifted forward two inches and then shuddered to a stop again. They rocked for a good minute from that, but he stubbornly kept his eyes open and kept talking. His drawl was just a little more pronounced.
“Got a real fine point about the dog courses. Might be somethin’ vet school has, though. What do I know?” College had never been something he was interested in. But then, he hadn’t been too much in the way of school since he was twelve. He turned her hand in his and drew with his finger across her palm. “That Death in Perspective one was where you’d end up takin’ morgue trips, ain’t it? Think that’ll be weird?”
If she could make him laugh, it was a win. Smirking was partly there, at least. “Knowing our luck, I’d get my hand down your pants and suddenly we’d start moving for real.” Syd grinned against his shoulder and then kissed the denim snug against his shoulder, just as it was obvious someone in a nearby cart had heard that promise, and muttered a really just in her earshot. She hoped it was the asshole below.
It was a good thing death wasn’t really a topic that got her upset, and she just shrugged. “Morgues, cemeteries. Or, as I like to call them, a typical Friday night party.” It was a joke, but one she wasn’t particularly ashamed of. Syd usually did her best to actually stay away from those places, since the temptation to fix things was always there. “I’ll just stay in the back, hands in my pockets.”
Jesse heard the snippy commentary from below too and narrowed his eyes a bit. Would serve the seat shaker right if they were fooling around right above his head. But he knew it would take a lot to distract him from the keen buzz of fear that was keeping his body tense. He leaned over and kissed her head.
“Ain’t that the truth. It’s the thought that counts anyway.” The view was real nice. Even Jesse could admit to that. And there was no one he’d rather be stuck with. He shifted so he could drape an arm around her shoulders and pull her in a little more snug against his side. “I guess I was just a little worried that would drag you down. Tuckin’ away in the back and not doin’ somethin’. Fixing things.”
Syd settled closer against him without complaint, though she did make a little apologetic noise as her shift rocked the boat just a little. It caused her to still comically until the rocking stopped, just so she wasn’t that guy in making things worse for Jesse.
“I know.” He had a point, a pretty good one. “It might suck, I’ll make Ronan throw something at my head.” She liked fixing things and it wasn’t that long ago that she wouldn’t have held back when it came to a dead body in her reach.
Syd used the opportunity of trying to avoid serious talk to lean her head a little over the side and look down at the people working. They looked just as confused as before, only there was another person added to the group. “Do you think this thing is run with magic and the wizard that charmed it went to bed or something?” Syd mused, mostly to herself.
Frowning, Jesse smoothed a hand over her hair. He didn’t love the idea of anyone throwing things at her, but Ronan was somehow the kind of shithead she could trust to distract her that way and Jesse wasn’t about to question it. He’d had a few trustworthy shitheads in his life too, after all. “If it gets to be too hard, can you just skip out and come find me? We can go to the shootin’ range or sneak off to Atlantis or somethin’.”
His stomach tipped when she leaned, even though the cart only swooped a little. He still shifted his hand to her back and fisted his fingers into her shirt, like that would somehow help if she tumbled out of this bucket of doom. “He better not have gone off to bed,” Jesse grumbled childishly. “Can’t be only one ride magician around, right? That’d be downright criminal.”
Syd laughed at the hand tightening at her back, and settled up against him again. “Already suggesting I skip school, McCree?” She would, probably to a degree that would make Adam frown. School was eh to her, but it was worth giving it a shot, to see how it went. That was what these worlds were good for, new experiences.
“No shit. Wait! I think they—” Just as she was about to say got it, the ride started moving again, slowly. Then it stopped, putting them on the very front of the ferris wheel, overlooking everything and able to see nothing below them without a lean. Syd huffed out an annoyed little sound, her voice pitching higher so someone might hear her complaints.“Oh come the fuck on. Are you kidding me?”
Jesse shrugged about his suggestion. He didn’t have strong feelings one way or another about school. He wasn’t even sure if his GED really held up under inspection. It’s not like Blackwatch didn’t have ways to get around red tape when Gabriel Reyes needed something done. Thankfully, the DOA didn’t seem to care if he was educated as long as he did his job and didn’t shoot anybody who didn’t deserve shooting.
He had to remind himself that he was pretty good about not shooting people who didn’t deserve shooting as the ride clattered to a stop again.
“Christ on a cracker,” he grumbled tensely. The cart took longer to come to a stop this time and there was a general scatter of voices below as people complained or cheered or some combination of the two. Jesse’s eyes were shut again. He sighed. “I just wanna say, I’m glad to be stuck with you and if this becomes a real life or death moment, I promise to get my shit together and help us escape.”
Sydney didn’t like laughing at things people were scared of, but made a small exception for Jesse offering to get his shit together. In what she hoped was the least mocking way possible. “Jesse McCree,” she started out, grinning at him. “We’ve been shot, stabbed, stuck in a nightmare hellscape for several days, abandoned by collectively shitty parents, traveled to two different worlds, and been stuck as numerous animals.”
She leaned up and in and kissed him on the cheek, stopping her grin just for that moment. “A fucking ferris wheel isn’t taking us out, I promise. Once our feet are on the ground, we can get the good alcohol and then maybe get horizontal, okay?”
“Well now, when you put it that way…” Jesse smiled, looser than he had for the last ten minutes. He still wasn’t trying to peer over the side, but hey. Progress was progress. He hooked his arm back around her shoulders and slid his other hand over her knee.
“Gonna focus on that last part and not on how you just talked about the animal thing here. It’s like you want to be a hummingbird again.” He also didn’t want to talk about the nightmare landscape where he’d been forced to face this exact same fear. Sometimes progress was a long game, alright? Sighing, he tucked in close and spoke into her hair. “Wake me up when we’re on the ground and on our way to the sexy bits.”