fandomtownies | Outside Luke's, Saturday afternoon

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Outside Luke's, Saturday afternoon

After spending much of the morning flinging himself full speed up and down the stairs around the island with Val leaping after him frantically to keep up/probably yelling at him to be more careful, Eliot decided it was time to spend some time relaxing.

So he picked an awning he rather liked, shoved a battered copy of ~~meta for~~ Treasure Island down the back of his pants, and climbed up on one of the outdoor tables to get into reach of one of the supports.

He loved reading. He especially liked to do so in extremely awkward and hard to get to places. They made it way harder for Gertie to come bug him and get him in trouble for not playing with her.

He lost his grip trying to swing his legs up around the support beam, and barely managed to break his fall by grabbing onto one of the closed umbrellas leaning against the wall. Momentum carried him and the umbrella down to the cobblestones with a thud, and he lay there for a moment staring up at the awning.

"Ow."

Then he grinned, jumped back up, and tried it again.

[open!]

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"Cool." Eliot swung his body back up and grabbed onto the support beam with his hands. It took a little bit of maneuvering before he figured out where to brace his leg and get the leverage to pull himself upright on top of it, and then he was scrambling onto the awning.

The rest of the building stretched up frustratingly smoothly. He couldn't see any handholds he could use to get up to where she was.

"How'd you get up there?"

"Out the window." She pointed to the open window over to the side from the apartment inside, and then the drain-pipe she'd shimmied up, kind of like he'd climbed the awning. "You could make it up from there, I think?" Now that Eliot kept trying, she was kind of half-hoping he'd make it all the way up. "Can you jump over to that?"

"Probably." It wasn't super likely, no. But Eliot didn't have an overabundance of good sense at this age. "Lemme see."

He sidled towards the very edge of the awning, hands pressed against the wall, only a single wrong step from busting through the canvas and falling back to the ground again. He crouched slowly down, keeping a firm eye on the window, then sprang --

and managed to brush his fingertips on the window ledge before falling the rest of the way and landing in a bush.

Parker leaned out even further now, hands bracing herself on the wall below her. "Eliot? Are you hurt?" Whoops. Maybe he needed more practice. "Did you knock yourself out?"

Edited 2015-11-21 22:03 (UTC)

"I'm alright!" Eliot called from the bushes. He was rather a bit scraped up, but that was pretty much his default mode. "Don't s'pose there's a fire escape?"

Parker smirked. He wasn't giving up! And, also, she was better at this than him. "Other side of the building. If you want to use that."

Pffft. Whatever. She hadn't even TRIED to jump from the awning to the window, had she.

Eliot flashed her a thumbs up and went running around the building. And came running back to grab his book off the ground so no one would steal it first and went running back around. He scrambled easily up the fire escape and stood tall and proud on the wall on the edge of the roof.

"Wooooaaaaahhhhh." You really could see a bunch of stuff from up here!

Now that he was actually up here, Parker was feeling a little shy, and hiding behind her hair again. "Uh-hunh." She kicked her feet on the side of the roof again, and pointed silently over at the clock on the town hall, the boats, and the castle-type-building.

That was alright. Eliot didn't always feel like talking, either. He came over and looked where she was pointing, keeping his distance since she looked kind of uncomfortable.

"Can I sit down next to you?" he asked.

Parker folded up her lips and hunched her shoulders, then shrugged. "Okay. Just. Not touching." Not because he was a boy or anything. Just. "I don't like that." She watched him carefully. He'd asked, which made him way better than most people.

If he didn't ask she might've hit him. And then he'd have to hit her and his momma taught him better than to hit girls.

"'Kay," he agreed, and sat down on the wall, his legs dangling over the edge like hers, a good foot of space between them. "I like this place," he said. "It's got lots of stuff to climb on."

Parker's face lightened up a little more when he cooperated, then still more when he mentioned the stuff to climb on. "I was mostly climbing here to get good at it. But there are trees in the park. What else did you climb on?"

"Mostly railings and walls and things," Eliot said. "But over that way is a whole forest. I thought maybe I'd check it out before dinner."

Because, like, half an hour was plenty of time to explore the entire preserve.

Parker's face brightened still more, and she gave a little bounce. She settled almost immediately though, and looked down at her shoes. "Can I come with?"

And if he said no, that was okay, she would just flip off the roof, nyaaah.

Eliot shrugged, even as he fairly beamed at her wanting to go exploring with him. She could climb things, not like Gertie! She wouldn't slow him down! "Yeah, okay. You seem pretty cool."

Parker gave him a brief look of wonder when she got to her feet, then had to check. "Are you making fun of me?"

Eliot frowned. "No. Why, do people do that?"

HE WOULD BEAT THEM UP.

Parker hunched again, not looking at Eliot and started crawling down the roof. She was starting to think he was really cool, and maybe he wouldn't think she was if he knew other people didn't think so. "Sometimes." Easier to say when you don't have to look at someone. "'Cause I'm in foster care. And I'm weird."

Hmm. Could she jump down from here, like he fell from the window? Parker gave the bushes below them a speculative look.

Eliot would recommend trying to land on the awning rather than the bushes. But then Eliot hadn't shown the MOST sense yet, today.

"Oh. People are dumb." She did seem pretty weird, but mostly in a cool way, so. "What's foster care?"

Parker gave him a look of surprise, then admitted, "It's when you don't have a mom or a dad and they put you with another family. With other kids, sometimes. And the family doesn't really like you but they get paid to take of you." She looked from the awning to the bushes, then back. Then grinned at him, and stuck one leg out over the edge. "One. Two--"

And jump down to the awning! And almost roll off it!

"AHhHHHHH!"

"Like an orphanage?" There were lots of orphanages in the books Eliot liked to read. "Watch out! Grab the umbrella!" Then he followed after her, because that looked like fun.

The awning would never be the same again.

Parker made a grab for the umbrella and caught it with one hand, then managed to get her leg around it before she fell off the awning. Then she slid down it with only a few small "ow"'s at the friction. She was laughing when she landed, and then laughing more when she saw that Eliot had followed her. Ha! She knew he was cool!

That poor awning was sagging and had muddy footprints on it now.

And ripped, once Eliot put his foot down in the wrong place. He fell through up to his knee, managed to grab onto the side of the awning, and in a move almost smooth enough to look deliberate, flipped over the side support until he was dangling by both hands, low enough to the ground to be able to drop without more than a roll to soften the landing.

He stood up, dusted himself off, and checked to make sure his book had stayed in his pants this time. "That was definitely more fun than the fire escape."

If she were a different sort of girl, Parker would have given Eliot a hug or high-five for that. As it was, she gave his shoulder a light shove, and grinned sideways at him. "That was way cool." She grinned wider, then gave the awning a speculative look.

Nah, it had had it. No trying that a second time.

"Let's go find something else to jump off!"

Edited 2015-11-21 23:35 (UTC)

"Okay!" Eliot shoved back with equal force. She'd started it, right? His stomach growled. ". . . And maybe find some lunch."

He'd already eaten lunch (poptarts he'd lifted from the Quick Stop). But he could eat a second one.

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