That's the first thing that comes to mind whenever Mako thinks back on it. Chuck and his father were leaving for the other side of the world the next day, their things packed haphazardly into bags that eventually found themselves lined up out in the hall. Their dads had retreated to beers and war stories, leaving Mako and Chuck to the painstaking exercise of spending time with one another. Not that Chuck and Mako hadn't learned how to over the years, but the easier rapport of childhood had given way to the strained awkwardness of adolescence. An odd sort of tension that was part rivalry and part simply Chuck being Chuck.
In the end they'd bumped noses, bumped knees and bumped teeth, and when everything was said and done Mako wasn't sure if awkward also meant awesome. But it didn't really matter because Chuck was gone and she was on her own again. (That was that.)
—only that hadn't been that; that had turned into this over time. What Chuck likes to call officially the worst idea in the world: the lot of them packed like sardines into a camper, the others following caravan style in a beat-up pickup truck nicknamed Irene and a station wagon that looks older than both of their dads. Mako spends a lot of time in that truck and that station wagon, her bare feet propped up on the dash, toes wriggling against the distant line of the horizon. But for now, she's here, paying her dues by once again taking up Chuck duties.
Although her attention's elsewhere she hears the sound of his hand flopping to the table, the hard exhale of air from his lungs. Chuck's bored which means, if somebody doesn't run interference any time soon, it's going to be everyone's problem and not just his. The feet that dangle off the very edge of the bunk disappear, the sound of cheap sheets sticking to skin as she rearranges herself.
Bracing one hand along the edge of the bunk, Mako swings the top half of her torso out just far enough that, when she reaches out with her spare arm, she can flick the back of Chuck's ear with the cap of her pen.
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That's the first thing that comes to mind whenever Mako thinks back on it. Chuck and his father were leaving for the other side of the world the next day, their things packed haphazardly into bags that eventually found themselves lined up out in the hall. Their dads had retreated to beers and war stories, leaving Mako and Chuck to the painstaking exercise of spending time with one another. Not that Chuck and Mako hadn't learned how to over the years, but the easier rapport of childhood had given way to the strained awkwardness of adolescence. An odd sort of tension that was part rivalry and part simply Chuck being Chuck.
In the end they'd bumped noses, bumped knees and bumped teeth, and when everything was said and done Mako wasn't sure if awkward also meant awesome. But it didn't really matter because Chuck was gone and she was on her own again. (That was that.)
—only that hadn't been that; that had turned into this over time. What Chuck likes to call officially the worst idea in the world: the lot of them packed like sardines into a camper, the others following caravan style in a beat-up pickup truck nicknamed Irene and a station wagon that looks older than both of their dads. Mako spends a lot of time in that truck and that station wagon, her bare feet propped up on the dash, toes wriggling against the distant line of the horizon. But for now, she's here, paying her dues by once again taking up Chuck duties.
Although her attention's elsewhere she hears the sound of his hand flopping to the table, the hard exhale of air from his lungs. Chuck's bored which means, if somebody doesn't run interference any time soon, it's going to be everyone's problem and not just his. The feet that dangle off the very edge of the bunk disappear, the sound of cheap sheets sticking to skin as she rearranges herself.
Bracing one hand along the edge of the bunk, Mako swings the top half of her torso out just far enough that, when she reaches out with her spare arm, she can flick the back of Chuck's ear with the cap of her pen.
Suck it up, Hansen. ]