Disclaimer—Recognizable characters belong to Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Author's Notes—After much cajoling, I have picked up another prompt... Thanks to Night_Lotus for the beta!
Prompt: Skeeball
Release—The key is letting go. Written for the Jellie Shippers June Carnival Challenge.
She wasn't sure why she asked him to come along. She was even less sure of why he'd agreed. It seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe, to get away from the places that reminded her of sad times, to find a place that was supposed to be happy. Surrounded by cheering children and upbeat music as they strolled along the Santa Monica Pier, it didn't actually help as much as she thought it would.
And he was being ever silent. It wasn't that much of a stretch. He was always quiet. They hadn't said a word to each other since they'd left and that had been about a half hour ago.
She wanted to apologize and she'd never been too proud to say she was sorry but, for some reason, her mouth just wasn't working. She wished he'd say something—anything—to break the ice, to save her from her thoughts, but he seemed content.
They circled the park three times, ignoring the coaxing carnival workers. They weren't interested in the rides, in getting their fortunes told, or having someone guess their age or weight. They passed funnel cake carts, soda stands and even the deep-fried Twinkies place.
Only when she looked up at him, thoroughly lost, did he seem to take control of the trip. He led her into the arcade. It was stuffy and muggy around the newer games, the ones Chuck and Morgan would play all the time but there was a gentle breeze by the older games, the games that took real skill and the occasional tilt.
Casey wasn't fond of the games where you controlled pixels by mashing buttons.
She watched as he fed a five dollar bill into the change machine, as he split his take with her, at the new pile of shiny tokens in her palm.
He looked amused, seeing her expression. He was willing to bet she'd never dropped a single quarter into any of the games before. He bet Chuck had siphoned off every cent into one of those shoot-em-up types when they were kids. With a shrug, he deposited his first token into one of the skeeball machines.
She watched as nine balls slid into the accessible part of the chute. With surprising speed and accuracy, he landed them all, impressively, in the top-scoring hole.
His shots came quickly, each alike. Propelled, banked, sunk. Propelled, banked, sunk. In mere seconds, he had twenty-six tickets spitting out of the machine.
He glanced back at her questioningly.
She selected one token from her palm and, taking a breath, she dropped it into the skeeball machine next to him. She watched as the balls slid into the chute. She tried to remember what he'd done. Propelled, banked, sunk. She could do that.
Except, when she let her first ball fly, it missed banking off the wall, didn't have near enough force, and she wound up with a gigantic goose egg for her score. Undeterred, she tried again.
It figures, she decided, watching as another ball missed its target.
Anger fueled her next throw, making it less than perfect, much like the two before it.
He could tell she was starting to get annoyed. Instead of playing another round, he removed his tickets, sliding them into his back pocket. He moved to stand behind her, which initially freaked her out.
She looked back at him, alarmed.
He just met her gaze.
Those cool blue eyes never seemed to be anxious, never seemed to be upset. How could he do that?
He reached past her, grabbing the ball from the chute before placing it in her hand. He eased her fingers around it. While he didn't offer any verbal hints or tricks about what she was about to do, he continued his wordless coaching.
She felt his body seem to conform to hers, curling around her, his hand wrapped around hers as he brought her arm back.
She had nothing to do with the shot other than the ball had been in her hands mere seconds before the release. The aiming, the force, the shot itself had been all Casey. She watched, in shock, as it landed in the three hundred slot. Not quite as good as his, but he hadn't had a gangly, uncoordinated woman to play through.
Of course, she'd been pretty coordinated, pretty good at swing and follow through when she'd hit him with the frying pan in her kitchen.
Casey could tell her body tensed again, that she wasn't letting go, that this trip to try to calm her down wasn't working.
She reached for another ball, however, and Casey was at the ready again to help. This time, it wasn't a complete assist. He adjusted her stance slightly with a hand on her hip, easing her feet into a better stance with the toe of his shoes.
She took a deep breath and reared back for another shot, but before she could actually follow through, Casey adjusted her arm, straightening it, angling it for her. She looked at him.
He could see the unasked questions hiding just below the surface. He knew, too, that she was a Bartowski, that once she eventually said one word, it would be all over. She'd say a thousand of them, probably in one breath.
While he minded terribly listening to her brother go on and on about whatever was on the top of the kid's head, he felt differently about what she had to say. He told himself it was that she was a lady, and he'd always been taught to respect women like her. He told himself that it was because she was smart and tough, not anything like Chuck. He told himself it was because of any number of reasons except the one that lingered in the far recesses of his mind. The one reason that meant more than any of the other fake ones he came up with.
He told lies so often, it was easy to tell them to himself. But, this one was getting harder and harder to believe.
He didn't care about her because he liked her, because he was attracted to her. No. He didn't care about her because she was beautiful in addition to being an amazing woman in general. No.
He saw the impressive follow through he'd seen before, momentarily remembering how she'd rung his bell with that cast iron, as the ball landed in another mid-level scoring hole. He saw, too, that she set her jaw tightly.
She wasn't perfect at it. She wasn't perfect at anything. She couldn't control her emotions. She couldn't control anything in her life. Her father was gone, her family had lied to her, and she'd misplaced trust all the way around. She'd trusted those she shouldn't and mistrusted those she should've. Everything was too topsy-turvy. Everything was different.
It had the potential to be overwhelming, which was why she'd left earlier that day, why she'd gone and gotten Casey, why they'd wound up here. But it wasn't helping. Nothing did. She couldn't even play skeeball worth anything.
Casey lifted another ball, placing it in her hand. She was almost through with her token; she should finish.
She looked up at him, those hazel eyes of hers a mess of emotions. His were never that chaotic. They may not always be serene, but they were never at a loss, like she knew hers were.
He looked down at her hand, again wrapping her fingers around the ball, placing each where they needed to go individually.
There was something tender about his touch. It was refreshing and confusing all at the same time. When he was done, he looked back up at her again.
He just nodded.
Still, he said nothing. There was no reassurance that she could do it. There was no pep talk. There was just him, standing there, saying nothing. The more nothing she heard, the more infuriated she felt.
Taking a slow breath, she looked at the various points on the board. She wanted to hit the big score, she wanted to do something right. She tried to remember from a moment ago, her stance, her aim. She wheeled back and released again, but it still wasn't what she wanted.
She threw the next two in rapid succession, watching as they bounced around the lower scores.
The last one, though, before she could grab it, Casey snatched it.
"John..." As she huffed his name, she realized she sounded more like a petulant child than a grown woman.
But, he didn't respond. He placed the ball in her hand with a little more force than he had before.
Her fingers automatically wrapped around it. She could feel that fury again. She didn't jump as Casey moved to stand behind her. In fact, she just ignored him. If he wanted to play some weird silent-treatment thing, she could, too.
Except, he finally spoke, right as she was getting ready to throw her final shot.
"Just let go," he whispered, his voice low, his breath warm on her ear.
She wasn't sure what happened in the next few seconds. She wasn't even sure what had happened in the next several minutes. All she knew was that it was like the dam had finally burst. She was fairly certain the ball had rolled up the ramp but she didn't know where it landed. She'd turned, looking up at him. The words came fast. "I didn't know. I didn't know anything. Nobody told me anything. In trying to keep me safe, they made me more vulnerable-"
Casey hustled her out the back of the arcade, into a quieter alley.
"-and I didn't know what to do. So I made all the mistakes I could've possibly made and I made them all because you," she said, poking at his chest, "and everyone else lied to me. And I'm sorry about the frying pan, but I'm really not, either, because this was all preventable. Every last bit of it. If you'd just told me. Wasn't I trustworthy? Did you honestly think I would sell you out? My father is dead. My brother is... is... I don't know what he is, but he's not the man I raised. Devon is... weirder than normal and you..." She looked up at him.
At the fact that he'd just stood there and taken everything she'd thrown at him and he didn't look mad or annoyed. He was listening, really listening to everything she said. And when she'd drifted off, his head tilted slightly to one side, curious as to what else she had intended to say.
"And you..." she tried again. She swallowed hard. And he was different. He didn't walk around her on eggshells like the others were doing. He'd gone with her to the pier, spent real time with her doing nothing... and yet everything. She reached out, running light fingers over where she'd poked him. "You don't deserve my being so angry at you," she finished lamely.
He caught her hand briefly, just long enough to remove it from his chest. "I'd rather you be mad at me."
"Why?" she asked, looking up at him.
He shrugged slightly. "I have a hard head."
She wasn't sure what that meant, until she remembered, vividly, standing in her kitchen, in the shadows, her heart pounding, fighting the bile that threatened to evacuate her stomach, a heavy, cast iron skillet in her hands.
He meant he could take it. He meant he would take it.
She shook her head. She didn't want that, though. She wasn't sure what she wanted but she didn't want that.
"Be mad at me, Ellie."
"No-"
"I'm the one that broke into your house."
"Stop-"
"I'm the one you're scared of."
"I'm not!" she insisted.
He was giving her the control she was after, couldn't she see that? "I'm the one that ordered your brother not to tell you anything." Technically, it had been Graham and Beckman, but he'd helped enforce it. "I'm the one that ruined your wedding. I came in, guns drawn, blasting through blenders and blankets. I'm the one..." He wanted to tell her that he was the one who'd come within a trigger pull of killing her brother. But, even he couldn't get that one out.
"I don't care!" she said finally.
"Ellie-"
"No, John, dammit, I don't care! I'm not mad at you, and I don't want to be mad at you, I want you to..." She drifted off abruptly.
"What?" he demanded. Maybe, if he could be harsh, she'd push him away. It would help him lie to himself and it would help her get past it.
She looked up at him. "I want you to help me. Like today. Today..." She took a slow breath. "Today has helped. More than you'll probably know."
"If that's what you want..."
She nodded.
"Okay," he said, relenting easily.
Ellie hugged him impulsively, rocking up on her toes and resting her chin against his shoulder. She was holding onto him, tightly, for dear life.
Casey stiffened. Of all the reactions she could've had, he never would've expected that one. He slowly eased his arms around her as well.
Ellie closed her eyes. "You are the strongest person I know, John, but I'd rather have you shoring me up instead of having me try to knock you down... again."
He let out a small, amused grunt, holding her a little closer. "Okay," he whispered.
End.