honeydew and vanilla with malt
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Faster
Rating: G/PG
Challenge: Honeydew #29: joyride, Vanilla #19: games/sports
Toppings/Extras: malt
Wordcount: 373
Summary: You do these things for people you love.
Notes: pfah; Simmins : Three times faster at everything.
eta typo fix!
With its mosquito-like whine the streetbike returned to the triangular courtyard wedged between three of Britannia City’s thick skyscrapers, coming to a skidding halt that spun it almost in a complete circle. People sat smoking on balconies and in doorways glanced absent-mindedly towards it as the girl practically fell from it, face splitting in glee.
“Oh my God, Sim! That was fuckin’ ace!” she called to her friend.
Stood in the shadow of a garage door embedded into a ‘scraper known as Exeter Spire was Simmins, her closest friend, chewing gum and squinting at her a little through the harsh glare of the sun gleaming from the wall of windows that was the opposite skyscraper, stretching up through the dark brown Smog and forever into the sky.
Oil-smudged ad rat-haired, Simmins grinned as Pia leapt from the bike with a clump of her boots on the cracked concrete and began wheeling the gleaming bike towards him triumphantly. Her hair was wild as ever, streaked with cheap light blue dye that didn’t quite disguise its former colour, and the proud smirk on her face stretched her freckles. Simmins had a fresh cut under one eye-just his latest of many injuries from his various entanglements with the local gangs. It was an ordinary state of being: Pia would have been more shocked if he hadn’t been sporting a new injury every time she saw him.
“Good,” he said, sniffing and trying to wipe oil from his fingers onto an already-stained cloth. Although rusty and cobbled together out of many different parts, Pia’s streetbike-named Trevose, which was brightly painted in a curving semicircle on its body-was her pride and joy, and it always got her where she needed to go.
“How’d you do it, punk?” she asked, punching him affectionately in the arm once she had dragged out the streetbike’s kickstand with one foot. “You’re not even a mechanic!”
“You pick these things up,” Simmins said, not meeting her gaze.
“You fixed it right up, Sim. That’s the fastest I’ve ever had Trev go. You’re a star!”
“Nothin’ really,” Simmins said, embarrassed and trying not to seem too pleased. “Are you gonna wear a helmet next time or what?”
“Don’t be stupid, Sim.”