James Potter (snitchnicker) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-08-01 12:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, james potter, yalena yardeen |
Who: James Potter and Dutch
What: A friendly game of pool
When: Early july
Where: A bar
Rating/Warning: Low/none
Status: Complete
Without a job, finding things to occupy James’s mind was a little more tricky than he thought it would be, but after returning home from England, well, that was all he wanted to do. He’d already taken apart, and then, with Anakin’s help, rebuilt his motorcycle, and he was spending more time with Lily than he had before. At some point, he knew that he should find a job, but never having worked a day in his life, he wasn’t entirely sure how to go about doing that.
So today, he was spending the afternoon perfecting his pool game at his favourite pool hall with a game of solo nine ball. He frowned thoughtfully at the table top, took a sip of his beer, and noticed another woman walking into the bar. Since they were the only two people there at this hour, aside from the bartender, he gave her a smile and a nod in greeting, and then lined up his next shot. Luckily, it went exactly how he had wanted it to, banking the three ball off the edge so that it made a straight shot to one of the side pockets.
Lena whistled, pushing off from the bar with her fingers delicately curled around the neck of the bottle she’d been given, feeling the chill against her fingers. Day-drinking was generally frowned upon but she had long since stopped giving any kind of shit about what society expected of her and was trying to just live her life without wanting to throat punch people.
“Nice shot,” she praised, sauntering a little closer and resting her shoulder against the wall. “Fluke or well-honed skill?”
“Oh, it’s all skill,” James said cheekily, shooting her a wink. In this case it was true, though James also had a habit of taking credit for all his flukes too, assuming that he was playing a casual game where he didn’t have to call his shots in advance. “What can I say? I know my way around a pool table.”
Lena’s eyebrows lifted suggestively and her lips curled up into a small smile. “It’s always good to see a man who knows his way around a pool cue,” she teased, lifting her beer to her lips and taking a sip. “It’s also nice to see that I’m not the only person indulging in a spot of day drinking.”
“Well, it’s not as though I have much else to do during the day,” James admitted. Day drinking wasn’t such a sin if you didn’t generally have something with any sort of purpose taking up your time. “Do you play too?”
Lena lifted a shoulder, tipping her head and pushed off from the wall, moving even closer and resting her half-empty beer on the edge of the table. “I’ve been known to play the odd game,” she replied, accent clipped around her words. “Certainly a lot more fun than darts.”
“You’re probably just rubbish at darts,” James quipped, though he had to agree. He did enjoy the odd game of darts now and then, but when given the choice, he’d choose pool every time.
He racked up his current game, not too worried about the fact that he hadn’t finished this round. “I’ll try to go easy on you,” he assured her with a wink, and then gestured to the other side of the table from where he was standing. “Ladies first.”
“Probably,” Lena hummed, though she was quite good at it. She had exceptional hand-eye coordination, but darts was boring. She had less enjoyment of the competition. Picking up the other cue, she glanced at him, chalking the tip, and smiled gratefully. “Thanks, it’s no fun if someone just wipes the floor with you.”
Pushing her hair behind her ear, she positioned the cue carefully, fingers braced behind the line and knocked the cue ball carefully, breaking the racked up balls smoothly, sinking a yellow striped one and managing to look surprised. She’d been hoping to sink two; one of the others rested beside the middle hole.
“Well, it could have been a worse break,” she said, curling her fingers around her beer, weight resting against her cue as she stepped aside to let the other man closer. “I’m Lena, by the way. But most people call me Dutch. Figured it’d be nice to know the name of the man being kind enough to play pool with me.”
James smiled a little at the clean break. Generally once you had enough games under your belt, making good breaks wasn’t difficult at all so it wasn’t any real indication of skill, but at least he knew he wasn’t playing with a complete novice. That was never much fun. Well, not unless he was trying to go home with said novice at the end of the night and could use teaching as an excuse to flirt, but that wasn’t something he did anymore; not since he and Lily had gotten together.
“I think proper etiquette says that you’re supposed to give your name first,” James said, not that he was ever very fussed with proper etiquette. He offered a hand for a handshake. “I’m James,” he said.
Taking and shaking his hand, Lena’s eyebrow lifted. “Are we observing proper etiquette?” she asked, “In a place like this?” Her lips curled up impishly and she moved past him once the handshake was over and sank another ball. She missed the third one, though, relinquishing the table to James.
After all, this was a friendly game, no money on it at all. She tended to only try that when the place was fuller and people were a lot drunker. “Who observes etiquette nowadays anyway?”
“True enough. Not exactly the kind of place for soup spoons and dessert spoons.” He watched her take her shot. She was obviously a pretty confident pool player, now that he could see her in action, though ever confident, James was still sure that he’d win.
His first shot was pretty well lined up, so he sunk it with ease, and the second shot he also managed to sink, this time shooting from behind his back with a cocky grin in Dutch’s direction. But he missed his third shot with a muttered curse.
Lena snorted. “Tell me about it, chivalry is dead and all that.” She waved her hand and circled the table, watching James sink two shots, including a trick that made her eyebrow lift and her lips curl in a slight smirk. “Showing off?”
She walked around the table and tapped her fingers near one of the corner pockets as she looked at the way the cue ball had rolled to a halt.
Her original shot was still lined up so she took it, and since she couldn’t easily see another ball for her to pot, she knocked the cue ball into a corner, bouncing it off the side pocket and leaving it at an awkward place with an innocent lift of her eyebrows.
“Oops.”
James winked, because yeah he was showing off. He didn’t see anything particularly wrong with flaunting whatever skills you might have, but then Dutch took her shots and his countenance fell a little.
Obviously, she’d been holding out on him, and he circled the table, his arms crossed across his chest as he tried to look for a viable shot.
“Are you sharking me, Dutch?” James asked with an eyebrow lift of his own, and the hint of a smile. He stood behind the cueball and frowned in concentration, and then, aiming his cue low, he jumped the ball over Dutch’s balls and hit one of his own. He didn’t manage to sink it, but at least he had managed to avoid the scratch.
Dutch looked at James with wide-eyed innocence and lifted a shoulder. “I was going for that one,” she told him, waving her cue vaguely in the direction of the cluster though the edge of her lips was curled up in a small smile.
She sank her next two shots but missed her third. “We should team up some time,” she told him after a moment, leaning back against the wall. “Could probably make some decent money.”
“Pull the other one,” James snorted. He had very little doubt in his mind that the cue ball had ended up exactly where she had wanted it to. He frowned in concentration, mulling over the pool table where his balls grossly outnumbered Dutch’s, while he considered Dutch’s offer.
James had never had to worry about money in his life; his father had founded and owned a multi-million dollar haircare company, and James had never wanted for anything in his life. Even with his parents gone, James could comfortably live off his trust fund and his inheritance for the rest of his life if he’d wanted. That didn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy playing for money. It added an extra thrill that just wasn’t there when there were no stakes involved.
“Maybe we should,” James said, finally lining up his shot, feeling some relief while the ball he’d shot for sank cleanly into the pocket and the cue ball rolled back a couple inches to the spot where James had wanted. “They’d never see us coming.” He tried not to let the relief show on his face, while he sunk the next ball. His third bounced off the corner of the pocket, and he frowned. Well, at least there weren’t nearly twice as many solid balls as there were stripes on the table anymore.
Dutch tilted her head and looked at the table. She only had a few balls left to pot and she knew she could probably do all of them but one in this turn. Then it was a race for the black, she supposed. She didn’t move to hit anything for a moment, wandering around the table, her fingertips trailing along the edge as she did.
“Tempting isn’t it?” she asked, “You look like you could hold your own, too, in a fight, if someone took umbrage with our beating them.”
Tongue between her teeth, she bent over the table and bounced the cue ball off the top edge, knocking the first of her final few balls in, two more followed but she missed the final shot. One more and the black for her, but James was pretty close behind. Since there was no money on this one, Dutch wouldn’t mind awfully if she lost.
“I could use a bit of extra cash,” she admitted, “minimum wage jobs barely make the bloody rent and my other job’s sort of on hold indefinitely.” Which was beyond annoying.
“I generally try to avoid fights as much as I can,” James said cheerily. He liked to think he could hold his own in a fight, at least, though he’d never been in a proper one before. Of course, James liked to think he could do just about anything that he set his mind to.
And that included winning this match. Sure, there was no money running on it, but James was nothing if not competitive and it was a point of pride at this point.
He spent a long time looking over the table to decide the best plan of attack to catch up, and then finally lined up his shot. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and he eased the cue back and forth over his knuckles, before he finally jabbed it forward for his shot. Unfortunately, instead of the usual thunk of the cue hitting the cue ball, there was the crack of an unchalked tip hitting the ball, and the cueball veered off to the side, bounced off the edge of the table, and fell to a rest somewhere in the middle of the table, not having hit a single ball.
James didn’t move from his shooting position for a moment, looking at the ball like it had betrayed him, and then he let out a heavy sigh and slumped forward. “Bugger.”
Lena smiled a little and twirled the cue around her fingers dexterously before she circled the table herself. She leaned forward and knocked the cue, finding that it had fallen pretty perfectly to let her pot her final ball and go for the black.
“Guess I’ll settle for hustling on my own,” she reassured him, moving around the table again and lining up her final shot. “I’ll get the beers,” she added as she pushed the cue forward and heard the tip crack against the ball.