John James Searle (inneedofrepair) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-03-15 15:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 34, jacklyn baker, john james searle, | jack and searle, ~ series: traders |
Week 34 - Thursday
Characters: Jack and Searle; NPCs: Nevaeh and Whitney
Location: Skate park
Summary: Jack and Nevaeh recruit Searle and Whitney to help clean up a skate park close by the farm. Then they skate and Jack gets overzealous.
Rating PG
The skate park had been a mess from months of disuse and neglect, but Searle found cleaning it up almost as fun as he envisioned actually using it. Most of the terrain was above his skill level, so much of his time would be spent wiping out as Jack and Nevaeh undoubtedly laughed at his expense once they actually used it properly, but without a board beneath his feet he was able to run up the ramps and jump off with promise of landing flat on his feet. As such, Searle had spent an equal amount of time goofing off as he’d cleaned up, making sure to pull both Nevaeh and Jack into the festivities. Whitney, too, if she seemed interested.
Searle’s explanation would be that it felt so good to be away from the farmhouse. It was his home, but also confining. The weather was warming up slowly but surely, and it promised days of feeling the wind in his hair and having fun, like many of the days back in Vegas before things had gotten frightening.
“Hey, Jack! Think fast!” Searle tossed an old tennis ball at her, letting it bounce once off the ground before it sailed toward Jack’s middle.
Jack honestly felt better with concrete under her feet. She’d actually brought her deck with her just in case something in the park was usable. If there was enough room to ride today, she would. The feeling of being on board would make all the work worth it. Of course not everything today was work.
She didn’t quite catch the ball and it didn’t exactly hit her. Instead it bounced off her outstretched hands and fell in front of her. “Searle! That’s gross. Tell him that’s gross,” she said with a look at Nevaeh. Gross or not, Jack picked the ball up and whipped it back at Searle.
Nevaeh immediately laughed at Jack’s follow-through action, as she hadn’t had enough time to get the words out before he did it. She was just glad to be there and having fun for a change instead of just working all the time. Granted, she and Searle often found a few hours in the evening to do something fun together, but this was a different kind of fun. It was just them, being kids. She’d missed just being a kid sometimes.
“You’ve got no idea where that thing’s been, ew!” she laughed. Whitney, who had been working on raking the wet pile of leaves and twigs off over the bowl, rolled her eyes and smirked slightly but stayed silent.
The ball fit into Searle’s hands perfectly as he caught it, looking pleased that he’d gotten both girls to tell him how gross the ball, and by extension he, was. They weren’t kidding either, because it had seen better days and was caked with muck, but that made it an even better projectile in his opinion.
“Jack’s touched it, that’s where it’s been,” Searle replied, chuckling. “Gross!” He threw the ball at Nevaeh as he stuck his tongue out at her, making sure it bounced so high she’d have to catch it overhead. Nevaeh squeaked in protest and dodged the ball altogether. Jack glared and gave Searle the silent treatment.
“Aw.” Searle watched the ball bounce away to the other end of the park, but didn’t go after it. Instead, he offered a grin to the girls. Until he spotted Jack’s glare, at which point he brought his hands up defensively. “I was kidding.” Stop being a girl, was at the tip of his tongue, but he thought better of saying that at the last minute.
Jack’s glare broke. “You should be happy to touch anything I touch. Maybe some skate skill will rub off.”
Searle laughed as he wiped his grimy hands on his jeans. “Or you could try being a better teacher.”
“Nah, you just have no leg coordination,” Nevaeh teased with a slow smile. “Hand-eye, sure, but you’ve got two left feet.”
“I have natural skill,” Jack added. “Some things can’t be taught.”
“We’ll see who’s the better skater,” Searle retorted, pointing his finger directly at Nevaeh. Though he tried to sound offended, the smile around his corners of his mouth and in his eyes was obvious. “Jack, you should be the judge when we get out here with boards.”
“Nevaeh doesn’t skate,” Jack pointed out. “She has a bike.”
“Not here, though,” Nevaeh replied, shifting on her feet, her eyes still on Searle as she smirked slightly at him.
“We’ll have to teach her.” Searle was talking to Jack, but his eyes were on Nevaeh, returning her smirk with a warm, open expression of his own.
Jack rubbed the back of her head, making her hair stand up. “No one’s going to do anything if we don’t finish cleaning up.”
“Right,” Nevaeh said, eyes finally moving back to Jack again and giving him a sheepish smile. “Sorry.” She went back to picking up sticks and other debris, bending at the waist and throwing a quick look over her shoulder in Searle’s direction. Searle met Nevaeh’s gaze once more before he, too, turned to get back to work.
Something settled down in Searle, and because of it he stopped harassing the girls long enough for all of them to get some substantial work done. It was strange to him that he still had muscles left that hadn’t been strengthened to the max, but all of the bending he’d been doing in his legs made them vaguely sore in a way he knew he’d feel worse soon enough.
“It’s starting to shape up,” he said proudly, setting his dirty hands on his hips, “but it’s still really wet.”
“Damp’s okay,” Jack said. “I can skate damp. Just have to avoid that last little bit of water.”
“We don’t have to do it today,” Nevaeh said after a moment, grabbing the wall of the bowl and yanking herself up so she could sit on the ledge. “We shouldn’t stay any longer than it needs to clean up. We don’t wanna get in trouble for not contributing.”
“Maybe you don’t,” said Jack, only half under her breath.
It wasn’t the first time Searle would be torn between Jack and Nevaeh, and he was almost positive it wouldn’t be the last time, but he tended to agree with Jack. Even so, he went over to lean against the rim beside Nevaeh, setting his elbows atop the ground she was sitting upon. “I don’t think we need to hurry back. It’s not like we sit around and do nothing on regular days, and all of the adults get to have fun and do whatever they want.”
Nevaeh’s brow wrinkled as she looked down into his face, then over to where Whitney was sitting in the car they’d drove over in, head bopping mildly along to some CD she’d brought to play. Whitney wouldn’t want to stay away too long, that much she knew for sure. Her eyes moved back to Searle’s again.
“If Whit says we gotta go, then we’ll go,” she said at last, aiming for a compromise. “But I won’t ask her or bring it up unless she does.” Her expression looked doubtful, though. Watching Jack skate didn’t sound like a fun time to her. Cleaning had been fun because they’d raced and made other games of it, but now that it was all done...
A grin spread slowly across Jack’s face. “I’m definitely not going to ask.” She climbed out of the bowl and ran for her skate deck, which she’d stashed nearby. All she wanted to do was skate; to feel that nearly flying rush of adrenaline and move until her muscles ached and every thought she had was driven right out of her head. They’d done all this work and waiting wasn’t fair.
She examined the bowl. Either she dropped in by going right over the edge or she could go down the ramp beginners used. “I should probably be careful,” Jack said to no one in particular. “Jed’ll kill me if I break anything else.”
On the other hand, she wasn’t a beginner even if it had been months. “Hell with it.” Jack set the back of her board against the lip of the bowl and then it was simple to set her front foot forward, transfer her weight and drop in.
Nevaeh quickly pulled back and away from the edge of the bowl. The last thing she wanted was for Jack to ram into her, accidental or not. She settled on a low-seated bench a half-dozen steps away, bringing her knees up onto the edge and wrapping her arms around herself.
It had taken Searle less than a minute to follow Jack with his own skateboard, though he hopped back into the bowl with it beneath his arm before throwing it down on the concrete. For how rusty he was, he didn’t wipe out once - even if one time he definitely would have fallen on his backside had he not backpedaled into a wall to watch his skateboard roll away from him. Nevaeh bit her lip, but managed to keep from laughing at the sight.
“Hey, Nevaeh!” Searle called, shortly after that mishap when he had his board back underfoot. “Come in here, we’ll teach you some stuff. You can use my board.”
“I’d rather watch,” the redhead called back, smiling slightly at him. “I’m no good at that kind of balancing. You guys have fun.” Searle pouted, but didn’t protest.
Jack didn’t bother trying to change the other girl’s mind. Crowding wasn’t exactly a problem so there wasn’t a chance Jack would accidently run into Nevaeh while she learned but she couldn’t help feeling possessive over the thing. Skate parks were for people who knew how to use them.
For her part, Jack was keeping things simple to start, simply riding the curves of the park. “Hey, Searle, stop sucking!” she yelled at him.
“Hey, I’m not!” Jack’s taunt (or command, even) pulled his attention away from Nevaeh in an instant, and he kicked off the ground to get his board moving again. Nevaeh frowned a little but didn’t say anything, watching as Searle skated off.
The longer they skated, the more comfortable Jack felt. She remembered how to do this. Even after so many months, her body knew how to move. As a test, she tried an ollie on flat ground and that went as well as it ever had. Same when she repeated the trick on a low ramp.
Encouraged and eager to show off, Jack yelled out to Searle to watch her. She was going to try an indy grab - reaching to hold the edge of the board between her feet. The launching herself into the air part was fine but the lack of practice finally caught up with the girl. Using her hands distracted her and although she did make the grab her feet were all wrong when she landed. The board shot out from underneath her and Jack slid painfully down the concrete ramp.
Searle was kneeling at her side in a moment, his board rolling forgotten not too far away. All he could think about was how long Jack had been forced to wear a cast on her arm, and how if she re-broke it they might not be allowed to come back to the skate park for a long time.
“Are you okay?” he asked, somewhat breathless even though he hadn’t run more than a few yards to get to her. Nevaeh appeared a few seconds later, her own face drawn with concern and worry.
“What happened!?” Whitney shouted, already heading at them from where she’d been parked. She was down in the bowl in no time, skidding to a stop and crouching at Jack’s head. “Give her some room, you two!”
A fall always meant an extra jolt of adrenaline, a sudden panic of am I okay? As far as she could tell, everything seemed to be working. “Man,” she groaned. “That sucked.” Slowly, she sat up and climbed to her feet. “I think I’m okay?”
The question was a result of a painful stinging at her hip, filtering through the adrenaline now that her heart rate and breathing were leveling out. With a hiss, she tugged up her sweatshirt. The fabric had ridden up during the fall and the skin was torn up and a little bit bloody. “Ugh, road rash.” A forearm was kind of skinned up too for the same reason, but that wasn’t so bad.
Searle let out a breath of relief, standing as he examined Jack’s minor injuries. That wasn’t anything Louisa May couldn’t fix. “Talk about sucking,” he said, in a light enough tone that he hoped it might make Jack laugh rather than get mad at him.
Whitney, on the other hand, seemed far from laughing. “You shouldn’t skate without pads and a helmet,” she said firmly. “C’mon, show’s over. We’re goin’ back to the house.”